
The Science Behind “Blade Runner”’s Voight-Kampff Test - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-science-behind-blade-runners-voight_kampff-test
======
rl3
One of my major life regrets is noticing a half-read copy of _Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep?_ in my optometrist's bag and not cracking a joke
about the Voight-Kampff Test prior to him administering an eye exam.

~~~
gjtorikian
If that’s a major life regret you must have a pretty nice life.

~~~
rl3
Nah, it's just that I've already made peace with the usual things like wasted
career and family prospects.

I will however continue to regret not cracking that joke until the day I die.

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cmsefton
As pointed out, Scott has said before e.g. in a documentary written and hosted
by film critic Mark Kermode called On the Edge of Blade Runner that he meant
for Deckard to be a replicant. Harrison Ford never believed he was a
replicant, and Rutger Hauer claimed the debate came up after the fact.
However, Mark Kermode recently revealed a debate between Scott and the
director of the new film, Denis Villeneuve, where Scott repeated this claim,
saying that if Deckard wasn't an android, the film wouldn't make any sense:
the unicorn, the dream - the central twist is that Deckard doesn't realise
that he is a replicant, and that he is chasing himself. Villeneuve however,
disputed this, and said that it's not as clear cut as Scott makes out, and
that the film is much more ambivalent than that.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/entries/7070baee-
ad33...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/entries/7070baee-
ad33-4024-868e-019939dd2c9b)

~~~
moomin
It's pretty clear cut. It just doesn't batter you around the head with it the
way the Sixth Sense does.

One of my favourite details: there are only five* "healthy human specimens" in
the entire movie. Everyone else is fat, old, scarred, suffering from a
degenerative disease.

Deckard would probably notice this if he had any friends. Instead, he stays
home and drinks surrounded by photographs.

*Cue a crack about Brion James

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CalChris
No, the jury concerning the character in 1982’s _Blade Runner_ is NOT still
out. Deckard _is_ a replicant. The article gets that wrong and director Ridley
Scott himself even explains it:

[http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/blade-
runner/news/a616639/i...](http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/blade-
runner/news/a616639/is-blade-runners-deckard-a-replicant-ridley-scotts-
definitive-answer/#~oYOhQbdmEOioE2)

I’ve seen _Blade Runner_ maybe 10 times. I saw it again Tuesday night, in
digital projection for the first time, at the Grand Lake in Oakland. Wow.
Beautiful.

~~~
mlevental
you realize there are more people that contributed to the construction of that
universe than just Scott right? (at the least Philip k dick) and none of them
have come out agreeing with him, let alone that if it's not substantiated by
the source material then it doesn't matter what anyone says (and indeed the
are no clear indicators in either of the films that deckerd is a replica the)

~~~
CalChris
You realize the article specifically cited the 1982 movie by Ridley Scott,
right? It's most definitely substantiated in that movie, as Scott pointed out.
He set the whole movie up for the final unicorn scene.

~~~
jhbadger
The problem with that idea is it makes no sense from the standpoint of Roy's
epiphany, which is ultimately the moral of the movie. If Deckard isn't human,
there is nothing noble about Roy saving Deckard. Anyway, the unicorn wasn't in
the original version of the movie. Directors quite often screw up their movies
through reedits, like Lucas' edits to make Greedo shoot first.

~~~
njarboe
I thought the line in the original cut when Roy says to Tyrell, "I want more
life, fucker." was great. Roy very succinctly is saying, "You made me with a
short life span and that was evil, fix it now. I give you no respect."

In Scott's most recent cut he changed it to "I want more life, father."
Horrible change to me. Why change that?

At least I own the original on DVD and not some paid access to an online cloud
copy that can be changed by others at will.

~~~
coldtea
> _In Scott 's most recent cut he changed it to "I want more life, father."
> Horrible change to me. Why change that?_

Perhaps because he felt the second version is even more powerful, what with
the allusion to him being a prodigal son, Tyrell being a father/God, etc.

~~~
njarboe
Sort of liked the slave saying "fuck you" to his creator a bit more. To each
his own.

~~~
coldtea
I think the fuck you is still implied (by the tone -- and end result).

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solidsnack9000

        I once had a very strange
        conversation with a
        Lacanian psychoanalyst,
        the sort of person I don’t
        normally interact with. We
        were talking about whether
        machines could be conscious.
        He got very cross and said,
        “No, of course they can’t,”
        and I said, “Why not?” He
        said, “Because they don’t
        have a mother.” This is
        almost what I’m beginning
        to think might be an
        interesting point.
    

I tried to find some references for this but I am not having much luck so far.
People are social animals, and respond to isolation poorly, so maybe there we
find at least the beginnings of the idea, that people are only fully people in
society. And entry to society more or less demands an upbringing...

~~~
mjburgess
I really don't know why you're getting down-voted.

Modern research child development pegs development of _self_ -conscious to the
way we are raised. We are born "pure animals" only feeling, and develop a
self-image and awareness-that we are feeling through interaction with others,
in particular the care-giver (.../mother).

It is by observing others in our animalistic state, reacting to us, that we
develop our capacity for self-reflection -- which still isn't fully there at 4
/ 5 years old.

To put this point most generously: self-consciousness describes a _biosocial_
process by which _animals_ acquire a recognition of themselves as conscious.

The claim is then a machine (an oscillating electric field) does not, nor
cannot, participate in biosocial processes.

NB. If you redefine consciousness to "seeming as-if conscious" then anything
may be trivially true of a machine (or, of anything).

~~~
solidsnack9000
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Are there any articles or books that seem
particularly representative of this point of view to you?

------
DonbunEf7
"As a psychologist, I am very interested in the question of how we know
whether we are seeing reality or not. Everything we know about the world is
based, to some extent, on these very crude sensations, so we always have to be
epistemically vigilant. Don’t believe what you see."

Finally, somebody _gets_ it.

~~~
kleer001
Sure, but the probability we're hallucinating goes down quite a bit when all
(or most) of our 5+ senses agree that a thing is really there and happening.
If it weren't we wouldn't have lasted long in the real world.

~~~
QAPereo
Hallucinations are the addition of something which isn’t there, we work more
by heavy filtering. We see a narrow slice of EM radiation, what we see is at
best, only part of what is real. That doesn’t imply magic, but it does about
the incompleteness of our senses.

~~~
kleer001
There's also distortions that can mess up our evaluations of the world. We've
got some majorly flawed equipment, but it still seems to work just enough so
enough of us can reproduce.

