[MASSIVE PLOT SPOILER DISCUSSION] - WAU

[1minus1is0]

I share this feeling. You can not sympathize with WAU. Its reasoning was very black and white and Ross' entire gripe was about how dangerous a machine trying to process and decide what constitutes living was. WAU was fine with reviving corpses. It was fine with merging living people with nearby machinery. I don't see how anyone can look at characters like Amy and think, "Yeah, stopping WAU is unreasonable and Ross is the dick!" If you don't do as Ross asks, it's very likely that WAU would simply continue on with its experiments, creating more Simons (and others, considering the library of brain scans it now controls). Not to mention the environmental impact it was having on sea life.

Also as I recall the WAU was originally created for the purpose of maintaining the structure gel that was holding most of the living/working places together under water. Things began to take a turn for the worse when WAU began to spread structure gel not only around itself, but on people.

Sure you can sympathize with WAU. And even if you don't it's sort of irrelevant when you just use the technology and resources it freely provides you without any ulterior motive. If not for Simon being freaked out at his situation and murdering robots left and right, his situation is actually not that bad at all. As far as Amy (and Carl, and apparently a good number of copies) we have already learned that all it takes to help her is pop out her cortex core, slap on some eye cameras, stick it into the neck of a nearby corpse and pour in gobs of structure gel and all of a sudden she is now an immortal robot transhuman that needs neither food nor air and can survive in virtually any environment if you properly shield the electronics. At that point rebuilding civilization is simply a matter of time and hard work.

Of course, it is easier to be mopey and have existential crises than to roll up one's sleeves and apply good ole' human ingenuity and hard work.

edit: my point on Ross being that before his death and subsequent apparent insanity and failure to reason or question previously held beliefs, he never imagined a circumstance like Simon-2 would ever happen. edit: oh wait he had considered it a possibility. So yeah, his position is actually just genocidal racism and unconscionable.

[RossisBoss]

Sure you can sympathize with WAU. And even if you don't it's sort of irrelevant when you just use the technology and resources it freely provides you without any ulterior motive. If not for Simon being freaked out at his situation and murdering robots left and right, his situation is actually not that bad at all. As far as Amy (and Carl, and apparently a good number of copies) we have already learned that all it takes to help her is pop out her cortex core, slap on some eye cameras, stick it into the neck of a nearby corpse and pour in gobs of structure gel and all of a sudden she is now an immortal robot transhuman that needs neither food nor air and can survive in virtually any environment if you properly shield the electronics. At that point rebuilding civilization is simply a matter of time and hard work.

Of course, it is easier to be mopey and have existential crises than to roll up one's sleeves and apply good ole' human ingenuity and hard work.

edit: my point on Ross being that before his death and subsequent apparent insanity and failure to reason or question previously held beliefs, he never imagined a circumstance like Simon-2 would ever happen. edit: oh wait he had considered it a possibility. So yeah, his position is actually just genocidal racism and unconscionable.

Rebuilding civilization? There was around 60-70 people alive by the time WAU began to rampage. Subtract from that number the people who killed themselves and were disposed of, the people who drowned out in the ocean, those who were picked off by/torn to shreds by crazed sea life or maimed by insane robots who had had human brain scans forced upon them and the supply of usable corpses is very, very slim. But how would they even build a civilization? Simon only coped with the situation because he believed firmly that he could escape it. Corpses can't reproduce, for one.

Simon's existence was a bad thing, despite what he accomplished. WAU considered the preservation of humanity in a very black and white manner. Reviving corpses, having a large quantity of human minds, despite their being insane, was okay. It isn't some racism or wanting to commit genocide; it's wanting to stop a chain of suffering that had started back when the comet hit. Having your mind forced into the body of one of your dead friends isn't alright. Catherine was only okay with it because she was explicitly a strange loner. Simon had no personal relationships with any of the bodies he inhabited, and again saw them simply as a means to an ends when saving himself - but he still says time and time again how wrong it feels to be using the bodies of those who have been killed by WAU.

The ARK ensures that everyone who was scanned is allowed to live on. Destroying WAU ensures that its experiments stop and some manner of the natural life on Earth is preserved without being mutated so that eventually something new may evolve from the ashes untouched. There is no reason to leave the WAU. It is a wide-spreading and uncontrollable AI set on desecrating the corpse of the human race - quite literally.

[1minus1is0]

Rebuilding civilization? There was around 60-70 people alive by the time WAU began to rampage. Subtract from that number the people who killed themselves and were disposed of, the people who drowned out in the ocean, those who were picked off by/torn to shreds by crazed sea life or maimed by insane robots who had had human brain scans forced upon them and the supply of usable corpses is very, very slim. But how would they even build a civilization? Simon only coped with the situation because he believed firmly that he could escape it. Corpses can't reproduce, for one.

Simon's existence was a bad thing, despite what he accomplished. WAU considered the preservation of humanity in a very black and white manner. Reviving corpses, having a large quantity of human minds, despite their being insane, was okay. It isn't some racism or wanting to commit genocide; it's wanting to stop a chain of suffering that had started back when the comet hit. Having your mind forced into the body of one of your dead friends isn't alright. Catherine was only okay with it because she was explicitly a strange loner. Simon had no personal relationships with any of the bodies he inhabited, and again saw them simply as a means to an ends when saving himself - but he still says time and time again how wrong it feels to be using the bodies of those who have been killed by WAU.

The ARK ensures that everyone who was scanned is allowed to live on. Destroying WAU ensures that its experiments stop and some manner of the natural life on Earth is preserved without being mutated so that eventually something new may evolve from the ashes untouched. There is no reason to leave the WAU. It is a wide-spreading and uncontrollable AI set on desecrating the corpse of the human race - quite literally.

WAU considered the preservation of humanity in a very blue and orange manner. Nothwithstanding, you are making several very unreasonable assumptions:

1) The supply of usable corpses is at least 20 in Omicron alone, although it may be worth replaying to count. Let's assume 10. We know for sure there are at least that many robots with eye cameras on the station, with Upsilon being the best place to go once you run out of robots just laying around and LCD monitors with facetime cameras. Structural gel literally drips from the ceiling. And you don't need any special structural gel, either. So, that's at least 10 immortal cyborg bodies before you even need to START getting creative. What about personalities? Well we have one surviving disk at Theta which has, what, 12? We don't even need to start datamining WAU yet and we haven't even started duplicating people yet.

So: 10 immortal cyborgs that can survive anywhere.

2) Yes, cyborgs can reproduce. Simon-2 asexually reproduced to create Simon-3. Simon-2 himself is a hodgepodge of mix-matched code that vaguely believes it is a person from 2015 magically transported to 2104(5). Simon-2 isn't even a full scan equivalent to the ARK scans.

Furthermore, cyborgs can reproduce without corpses by just building regular robot skeletons, popping in a cortex core and pouring in some structural gel. Using corpses at first is just easier because it requires zero infrastructure or technical knowledge.

As for more personalities? Easy enough. Everywhere on Earth had those scanners. Everybody who went in for an MRI at any time in the last hundred years is now a candidate.

And if you only consider humans like us to be a life worth living? It's not like structure gel corrupts DNA or is toxic. We are told that it has no toxic or mutating properties whatsoever. You just clone the first batch of humans from the cells of the fully alive human bodies at Theta, and then they reproduce naturally.

Bam problem solved, humanity is not only saved but better and stronger than ever. You just need time and one Simon or Simon-like robot. Which we have in Simon-2 since regardless of the choice to kill him or not WAU will just bring him back and Catherine only gave Simon-3 the choice to make his caveman brain feel better about himself so he could do some useful work.

Time and work is all that the world of SOMA needs to be fixed. It is a powerful story of hope and human perseverance overcoming adversity.

Or you can be mopey and have existential crises because that is what you WANT to do, and that's the situation you WANT, not because logic or reason requires it.

further edit: you are also ignoring that WAU was able to scan people on the fly and had been doing it for months at the very least. Carl Semke-2 was inserted from the time he was piloting a drone, not from when he was scanned into the ARK.

further edit: what are your thoughts on this guy right here?

[Fortigurn]

I enjoyed the conflict between the WAU's approach (keep the body alive heedless of the state of the consciousness), and the human's approach (preserve the consciousness, heedless of the body). The WAU was initially unaware, then aware, then frustrated, then enraged, then dangerous. It finally abandoned its protocol, and was an inimical enemy. Ross was right, and the WAU had to be shut down. Ross wanted people to live with dignity and personal choice; I don't see what's so terrible about that.

[Kaliyo]

You can blame WAU, but it's like threaten bot that killed you in-game. Is this bot fault or programmer? Or maybe corporation that forced programmer to do this according to thier needs? Or maybe your's, cause bot's actions were actually response to your's? I say messing with nature-related matters is always risky. It's easier to clone someone than rethink whole chain of consequences. Creating complex AI (or any simpler program) might be risky. Malware are example.

I'm not telling you can't have bad feels toward WAU. I personally don't approve it's actions. But it's kinda matter of preserving humanity by all cost or accepting death. It's everybody's opinion. And I love when folks have different feelings, that makes world less flat

The more I dig into SOMA story the more I like it.

[Fortigurn]

You can blame WAU, but it's like threaten bot that killed you in-game. Is this bot fault or programmer? Or maybe corporation that forced programmer to do this according to thier needs? Or maybe your's, cause bot's actions were actually response to your's?

The WAU was programmed correctly, but it went rogue once it became aware, and started perverting its protocol. That's when it became an enemy to the humans, because it could never really be alive in the same way they could.

[1minus1is0]

The WAU was programmed correctly, but it went rogue once it became aware, and started perverting its protocol. That's when it became an enemy to the humans, because it could never really be alive in the same way they could.

How do you figure WAU became an "enemy" to humans, or rather humanity, and how do you define "enemy"?

[Fortigurn]

How do you figure WAU became an "enemy" to humans, or rather humanity, and how do you define "enemy"?

It wanted to become truly alive. All that structure gel isn't just controlled by WAU, it is WAU. It experimented with fish and other animals, then moved on to something more complex with a sophisticated consciousness; humans. It took over bodies, and threw out the individual's mind.

Early on it seems to have destroyed the mind of the people it took over, so that didn't work; they just became empty shells. Then it tried transferring their consciousness to robots which it controlled and which were part of itself due to the integration with structure gel. But those robots kept their independent consciousness, without conferring humanity on the WAU.

It tried again and again to become human, but it never worked. It was mad with jealousy and rage at our humanity, which it could never gain, so it punished any humans which tried to stop it. When someone takes away your humanity because it can't have humanity itself, that's an enemy.

[1minus1is0]

It wanted to become truly alive. It took over bodies, and threw out the individual's mind.

what ingame are you basing this on? Several notes and dialogues contradict this.

Early on it seems to have destroyed the mind of the people it took over, so that didn't work; they just became empty shells. But those robots kept their independent consciousness, without conferring humanity on the WAU.

1- what ingame are you basing this on?
2- the robots conferring humanity to WAU is contradicted ingame. WAU was trying to bring people back to life. The WAU is not fully aware of what humanity even means, let alone wants to be human.

It tried again and again to become human, but it never worked. It was mad with jealousy and rage at our humanity, which it could never gain, so it punished any humans which tried to stop it. When someone takes away your humanity because it can't have humanity itself, that's an enemy.

what ingame are you basing this on?

[Fortigurn]

what ingame are you basing this on?

The people whose minds were transferred into robots and then kept "alive" with structure gel. Some of them were unaware of it, but others were clearly being tortured by their need for structure gel, like an addiction (one of the small navigation aid robots you discover is hostile for this reason).

1- what ingame are you basing this on?

All of its failed experiments, like the mutated fish and other reptiles, and the human bodies which are still breathing but which have no consciousness left in them; they're just empty shells.

WAU was trying to bring people back to life.

I am not sure it was actually trying to bring people back to life. It started by trying to stop people dying in the first place, because its protocol was preventative (not restorative). A good way to do this (it thought), would be to simply take them over with structure gel, or transfer their consciousness into robots. None of this worked. The WAU had absolutely no regard for the personal will or feelings of any human left alive, and did whatever it wanted, treating all the humans as lab rats at best, and enemies at worst.

The WAU is not fully aware of what humanity even means, let alone wants to be human.

I agree. That's why it completely messed up.

what ingame are you basing this on?

Its repeated deliberate takeover of humans, its deliberate failure to keep humans alive, and its deliberate refusal to protect humans from its own creations. Throughout the entire game it never once tried to keep me alive, it just kept supporting all the things which were trying to kill me.

Remember, the WAU became corrupted, it abandoned its correct protocol. Its structure gel was contaminated and cancerous. It grew out of control. There's no evidence that there was anyone still alive who could actually create new, uncontaminated structure gel. There was only one uncontaminated sample left, and we used it to create the body for Simon-3.

Ross was a hero, I am convinced he created the body for Simon-2 and then set Simon-2 off on his mission to defeat the WAU and save humanity from it (Catherine interfered for her own personal reasons, but that was ok, I still completed Ross' mission).