Battlestar Season 4: Premiere Thoughts

Starbuck is... Alive??!

Too bad she's a frackin' toaster...

Well, the Battlestar Gallactica cast are back for one last season =) I've never mentioned BSG in my blog... Not sure why, it's a really fun modern sci-fi show and well written to boot. For those of you who've never seen it, it might interest you, because unlike genre-typical shows like Star Trek Voyager, BSG doesn't have that really optimistic, glossy clean feel to it. Oh no. It's actually really dark and gritty and does a nice job exploring the ugly side of post-apocalyptic humanity. Now I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've noticed a lot more films and movies with these type of themes in recent years. I guess it figures, people already speak of cold war 2...

But alas, let's recall my post on 90's animation and how occasional escape into fiction is crucial in dark times, and let's get back to the BSG season opener:

First things first: Totally stunning space battle. I loved the picturesque nebula setting... I'm telling you, all I need is a few more light-years of Air Miles and I'm there!
Secondly: Is it just me, or has Starbuck gone more apeshit than usual? Also, how is that possible?!

And now on to the nice dialog bits that made me want to blog about this to begin with...

The scene with the 2 Adamas talking in the briefing room was key... It was a small scene, but I feel that what Lee says is actually quite profound. He says something to the effect of "Even if my brother was a Cylon, if he had never been a human being, would that change the way we feel about him? Would that really change who he is?" This is interesting because it's sort of posthumanism, in a sense. Lee in fact has quite a humanist attitude towards self-aware "machines".
This is an interesting paradox, one that, who knows, people living in the real world may face within the next century. Many of the current problems and barriers faced in the field of robotics are in fact not technical, but legal. Figuring out where the human input ends, and where the machine's autonomous functioning begins is highly problematic, and a source of potential liability for technology manufacturers. It's one of the main reasons why we don't already see production cars that drive themselves, who is to blame for the accident? The software company, the driver (who isn't really driving in this context) or the car manufacturer?
Similarly, in a world where robots are used in warfare, who is to blame for the war crimes? The machine that made the decision to fire, or the human being that made the decision to build the machine? Can we blame a creation of humanity for being as violent as humanity itself? Where does this sense of moral high ground come from?
It's funny, I was just having a similar conversation with my cousin, who was surprised to learn that there are over 600 drone aircraft currently deployed in Iraq. I wonder, if to Iraqis a robot war is indeed science fiction :S...
Anyway back to BSG, another great scene was Baltar's "spiritual feedback". This is interesting, because for most spiritual people, prayer is sort of a one-way thing. A form of meditation, a means of achieving solace and inner peace. But here's a guy who by nature is a skeptic, and in a desperate moment makes a seemingly genuine plea to spare a child's life, offering his own in exchange. And oddly enough, he finds himself almost getting it. He nearly gets killed, the child lives.
This ties in with the paradox of Cylon monotheistic spirituality. In itself, it seems like an absurd concept. How can a software driven machine be programmed to worship? How can this make sense? Well, the human brain is not unlike a computer, and the language(s) we learn that form our thoughts are quite analogous to programming languages that form code and complex subroutines.
I recently read a book about the nature of thought. It which explores the differences between traditional Western thought and Eastern thought, concepts which the author describes, respectively as rock logic and water logic. They can be summed up as "I am right (and therefore by consequence) you are wrong" vs. "There is some right and wrong to both of our positions". The author, who is a doctor and has a good understanding of neuroscience, points out that our thinking is in a very real sense limited by things like our vocabulary, and more importantly the many limitations of the language we speak.
What I'm really trying to explore here, is that we are sometimes unaware of just what extent of our own humanity is basicallty programmed. We make moral choices, memorize taks, prayers, obsess over the righteousness of our chosen system of belief, even go to war over them. A book I'm currently reading explores the impact on the Crusades on today's world. We see the effects of causality and these almost machine-like obsessive tendencies. I discussed similar ideas in my post entitled "Trying Times? Self Control."

Or maybe what's really amazing is that such discourse was inspired by a science fiction story! See, this is why I really enjoy sci-fi in the style of Battlestar Gallactica, it's sort of darkly honest, and at a stretch gives a unique lens through which to observe events in the real world.

Well, looks like it's gonna shape up to be a fun season then ^__^