Day: August 7, 2022

Marjorie Prime

The film’s focus is on the character Marjorie who suffers from memory loss. The image of her young husband retells stories to her, using episodic memories. She doesn’t remember the day previous, like when he told her about getting a dog before they have children. She adds in little things, additions to how she felt, and he responds “I’ll remember that.” 

We find out that this image is a technology like an AI called a Prime. Walter Prime is like a vessel then for memory. 

The script itself talks about memory a lot on a scientific basis. Tess reiterates that you remember the last time you remembered a memory and not the memory at its source. 

Music is predominant in this film, what Marjorie chooses to listen to and she talks about her desire to play the violin, she remembers how to read music and the names of the strings, the first song she learned. In a scene before this, Tess plays the piano after a discussion about memory. This feels like a subliminal message about how music sticks with you over other things, could it be that this is an example of affect as information, information as memory retrieval? 

Earlier in the film, the story of how Marjorie was proposed to is much different from the memory that comes when she looks at her wedding ring, which is a real example of affect of information since looking at the ring prompted her to remember. I think she was also influenced to remember by the story, a part of her might have realized it wasn’t the real thing that happened, affect of priming? 

The different primes are made up of the autobiographical self but it’s composed of the perception of memories of the family members making the Primes more biographical. A question asked at one point is to a prime was, do you have emotions?

What I like about this film is that it’s a real depiction of what it’s like to take care of someone with memory problems, aside from the science fiction of the AI technology. 

There are a lot of layers to this film, I liked the subtle revelation that Marjorie had passed away. This was one of the sadder movies I have watched in my life, so intentional from every shot, what they choose to include in every scene (the mess, the whisky, etc.); really excellent filmmaking. 

Star Trek “The Measure of a Man”

Firstly, I have been watching the Star Trek episodes on my computer and I watched this one on my TV, I can’t believe the amount of makeup they put on the person who plays Data! 

The scene that stood out the most to me was when Data was gathering the items that have meaning to him, looking at them nostalgically and Commander Maddox comes in to try to convince him to undergo the procedure of taking him apart, saying he will keep his memories. Datas main concern is those memories loosing their essence, the emotions that come with them. 

The common theme of the two works is: are computers able to conceptualize memories and feel? 

Also, I think the films for this week and last were kind of interchangeable due to that theme. These last two modules were my favorite to learn about and had me thinking about the lectures in my day to day life, too. 

I have to say, I’m glad I don’t have to watch any more films or television episodes! This class has reinforced that I’m a book person and not a television or movie person. However, the films were great reinforcers of the concepts we learned throughout the course, and I enjoyed making connections between the two. 

Hello, folks.

I hope you’re doing splendtastically well. It’s the last analysis of the class. Kind of bittersweet if you ask me. But it’s also, I suppose, good for some of you that I won’t be allowed to post any of my top notch, professionally presented, High Quality Jokes™.

Well, it’s okay. We’re all bound to forget those amazing jokes anyways. Speaking of forgetting things…

…

Uh…hold on, give me a moment.

*pretends to look through a file that details an outline of a blog draft, even though the so-called writer never plans what to write and instead wings it*

Ah, found it. Okay, so let’s talk about memory.

I have to say, that both the movie and the episode did a great job expressing the complexity of how memory works. I want to cherrypick some small scenes that stood out to me…well, I’m kind of supposed to cherrypick scenes because…you know, assignment and all that…

Let’s start off with Marjorie Prime. I have mixed feelings towards this movie. I’m not sure how to feel towards it (oh, is that what mixed feelings mean?). In any case, if we’re talking about memories, it, undeniably, does a great job at portraying how they shift over time, and how we’re the ones that, inevitably, rewrite our own versions of how our personal histories happened. Case in point, there is a scene where Tess and Jon are talking while the latter is playing piano and drinking Scotch. Jon is talking about a student who got an A on an exam by basically saying, “I don’t feel like it” (wish this was possible in real life). Tess recalls the first time Jon told her this story by remembering the ice cream they were eating. In her memory, they were eating vanilla. Jon denies this and says it was pistachio, but Tess says, “You’re insane, it was vanilla.”

I really enjoyed how simply this scene showed that these little things such as ice cream flavors can have an effect on what you remember. Though Jon and Tess remember different ice cream flavors, they both implicitly agree that Jon had told Tess the story when they were eating ice cream. This is autobiographical memory. Perhaps Jon, in his later years, started to prefer pistachio ice cream over vanilla (which, for the record, ew), and so he rewrote the original memory with this flavor in mind. Or Tess did that with vanilla. Who knows? One thing is certain: the central idea to the memory (the story about the student) has remained the same.

It’s interesting because both of them are technically right and wrong at the same time. Sure, maybe it was vanilla, but does that make the story false? Nope. Same thing goes if the flavor was pistachio. Definitely a cool way of showing that, sometimes, there is no objective right or wrong when it comes to memory.

Star Trek, on the other hand, focused on the value of memory. I generally love seeing android characters defending their right to existence. This episode was thematically reminiscent of a video game called SOMA that tackles the same kind of idea of “are machines capable of feeling?” If you like video games, please give SOMA a chance. It will not disappoint you.

Basically, Data’s life is threatened. He is to be taken and dismantled and used in a dangerous experiment. Apparently, the researcher (whose name I have forgotten because he pissed me off with his pompousness) claims that Data will have his memories intact. However, Data says he will lose “the flavor of the moment”. He makes an example of this by sharing how he read books about chance and probability, only to lose a poker game, which is an experience he is able to cherish and attach, not only to the people around him, but also to the act of learning about something only to be shown that textbook knowledge isn’t enough. If he simply gets these memories wired into him after he gets re-assembled, it’ll be like reading through a textbook, not really adding anything to that knowledge.

I adore this analogy, because it’s like knowing something without knowing why or how you know it. I have had moments where I just simply know things without understanding how I came across that information. It happens. Maybe I picked it up at school and forgot how I did so. Now imagine if all your memories were like that. It’d be…terrible, to say the least. You’d be disconnected from everything you remember.

I, personally, would have an existential crisis. I wouldn’t feel any form of emotional attachment to the memories of me getting my first electric guitar, or coming to the United States and leaving the place I’ve called home for 16 years, or eating my first Italian pizza in Rome, or laughing with my friends. I’d just know I did these things, and any form of emotion would be gone.

The Star Trek episode really made me appreciate my memories more, both the sad and happy ones. They have all shaped me as a person, affected my thinking, brightened and darkened my days. They have a grander purpose than just them being reminders of what you have done.

Anyhow…

Hello, folks.

I hope you’re doing splendtastically well. It’s the last analysis of the class. Kind of bittersweet if you ask me.

Wait…hold on…I feel like I’ve said this already.

You know, just in case I have, I will just call it a day.

Thank you so much for reading, folks. I have enjoyed going through your blog posts and reading about your opinions and experiences.

Warmly,

Guga

In “Marjorie Prime” the concept is very interesting, imagine being able to have a replication of a deceased partner? A digital reboot clone of Marjorie’s deceased husband Walter. He learns to become more human by interacting with humans.   He’s the Walter who Marjorie knew when she was the younger woman being courted, and eventually proposed to. It is hard for her daughter to understand the memory of him because she was so young. The Primes learn and improve as the people they’re designed for get steadily worse. Marjorie herself says as much to Walter before she dies, complaining, “You said I’d get better, but you’re the one getting better.” Hologram Walter is there for Marjorie to help her remember her past.  As a hard reminder also of Alzheimer’s disease and affecting memory. During the first hour and 38 minutes of the movie there is a slow and sad conversations involving painful memories of the death of their first child. Subjective memory is one’s perceived memory ability, independent of objective standards or performance. Subjective memory reflects one’s perception about his or her personal memory functioning. As we learned about this in lecture it changes up the theory a bit.  How can she know if she cannot remember?  She may have episodes of Episodic memory of remembering bits and pieces.  Maybe it is better because the hologram is having her remember the good times and not when the marriage began to fall apart. The good ole days.

 

In Star Trek  “Measure of man” similar to Marjorie Prime where these prototype’s that are not actually living and breathing.. are they capable of the same human capacities? Do they have memory.  In one scene Captain  Louvois exclaims” It sits there looking at me; and I don’t know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics – with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. But I’ve got to make a ruling, to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul?”

The question is will this happen in our future? It is a possibility there can be prototypes of living deceased relatives but they will not be able to have what humans do and those are emotions and memories.

 

While we watched inside out Riley remembered a happy memory but realized there was sadness attached.  We can feel a happy part of the memory and then it makes us feel differently after when we remember it differently. As we spoke about in lecture When we recall a memory, we retrieve specific details about it: where, when, with whom. But we often also experience a vivid feeling of remembering the event, sometimes almost reliving it. Memory researchers call these processes objective and subjective memory. You remember the joy later on and it can change over time. How you remember something can be influenced! I thought it was interesting in lecture how we spoke about the Mandela affect.  I had done further research and  false memory occurs when people incorrectly remember the same thing.  Many people had thought Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980’s. However he passed in the early 2000’s.  Widespread incorrect information can influence individual memories! crazy! so for the longest time everyone knew the saying in star wars as “Luke, I am your father.” It is actually “No, I am your father.” I actually took a poll with friends and ALL of them thought the incorrect saying was actually in the movie! *mind blown*.

Our memories are changing as we get older! what we remember as a child is different as we age!  I remember less details the older I am getting from what I remembered in my 20’s.  My emotions feel differently with certain situations tied to the memories! Just like Riley!  To this day it is important that I write out my shopping list or I will not remember what I need at the grocery store. Human beings are so interesting, aren’t we?

This week we watched Star Trek and the film Majorie Prime . I have to say that the episode of Star Trek this week made me emotional because it was so good. I didn’t think a science fiction show would make me feel so many emotions but it did. I must say I think I will start watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on my own time even after this class ends.

Starting with the episode of Star Trek titled “A Measure of a Man”, I realized how influential memory is on humans and more so how it makes us human. This episode of Star Trek revolves around the debate on whether or not Data can be dismantled for examination because people are arguing the star fleet on Data not having any say in what happens to his body. Something that stood out to me as important was when they’re in the court and Data is asked why he carries around 2 items. His response is that he does not know. I think that this is true for actual humans. I hold onto to things without really knowing why other than that it carries a memory or some emotion to it. Although Data wasn’t a human to some, the people that really knew him believed he was just as human as them. I do believe that Data was cognitive. He had memories a past intimate relationship and furthermore in the lecture it was stated that cognition is constituted and extended by our interactions with the environment. I think Data definitely felt and was sentient. I also really loved the scene when the was Data was being treated was compared to how slaves are treated. Data was described as an “it” and was expected to not put up any argument to being dismantled because he supposedly had no emotions and feelings. They assumed he had no memories or cognition because he was an android. Slaves are treated the same way; they aren’t seen as human and therefore people think they can do whatever they want to them.

The film “Marjorie Prime” was crazy. I feel like that is an understatement somehow. The movie was just really mind boggling and good at the same time. The film revolves around an old woman spending the end of her life with a computerized version of her husband. I think the main thing I learned from the film was that a memory of someone is all we have left after someone passes. I think something the film really focuses on is autobiographical memory. The relationship of Majorie and Walter was remembered differently throughout time. As time passes the memories that Marjorie has of Walter changes slightly the more times she thinks back to certain times. This is true to real life and even how I think back at certain moments. Over time the way I remember things changes because I add different emotions to the experiences.