Simon is stupid

[volfin]

He throws a fit about there being a copy of himself like it's something terrible. It would be amazing. I'd make 1000 of me If I could. Grow up Simon. Then after all that crying, he doesn't even complain when the battery drain fails. SO must not have been that important, eh Simon?

[El Fuerte]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYBzl5OCXjE

[volfin]

nice to know my thoughts gave you a hard-on. Very life-reaffirming.

[76561198292631324]

Simon is pretty dazzled in the story and he has the right to be so. He also gains a lot of knowledge quickly, which would cause him severe existential shock if he was anything else than a machine. Even Simon walking the seafloor instead of swimming is explained eventually, which at the beginning I thought was just terrible simplification. But this is how the game unfolds. Actually the only issue I have had with SOMA background story is that all those people thought there could be only one copy of them in the universe - what an irony - and that the scanned copy is as real as they are in person, so that they have had to kill themselves for that matter. If they had just a bit of sense of humour, they would let their scanned twins live in the flawed Arkworld, while themselves continuing - the paradox of "continuity" term - to live the lives they lived. Just like that. The entire issue did express the delusion, sick self perception, sectarian atmosphere and desperation of the place the suiciders dwelled in.

[volfin]

I learned about all of it at the same rate he did. But i'm just smarter than he is I guess. I clearly understood that transferring is a copy. he's just super slow.

[76561198292631324]

I think this is the hidden mechanics of narrative employed in game, that the player - once catching a grasp with what is going on - will be faster than the protagonist in understanding certain things, thus making own predictions and theories, having a game in own mind some sort.

[Brigandine]

Let's see how you cope waking up a hundred years later in a blink of an eye after getting a brain scan, in a room that looks like every horror movies fetish dungeon. Your only recourse is to break a window to get out and pray you aren't in a Silent Hill version of Rapture. 10 minutes after holding your breath, waiting to hear air-raid sirens, a cyberpunk Quasimodo clip-clops his way around, that you have to try avoid.

One of the first sentient things you come across is a direct descendant of CL4P-TP that sasses you as its being devoured by The Underneath.

Your best friend is an anti-social digital head-in-a-jar that's as comforting as a loofah made of shards of glass who may or may not be lying to you.

And if that small sampling of the insanity you wake up to isn't enough; The first chance you get to look in a mirror you see you're robot with the head of Johnny Number 5 and a flash light for a nose.

And if that isn't enough; just as soon as you're coming to terms that you're not actually who you think you are, your entire personality, entire being is the foundation of artifical intelligence in the future, but that you are in fact dead a hundred years ago - you're told not only are you a robot, you're a robot zombie with the head of Johnny Number 5 rammed into the half-decapitated head-shelf of a woman, held together by Venom Symbiote snot and an electro-probe up your butt, stuck inside a diving suit with a flashlight for a nose.

And one final mind f***, You are charged with constructing another you; hunting down a toaster, corrupted Ooze that made the Ninja Turtles, and 4 futuristic D-cell batteries, trying not to upset a Borg version of a Witch from Left 4 Dead and being stalked by SCP-173. Finally to shove that all into the remains of a woman whose head you inadvertantly popped off like a grape, when you uncorked her armor.

So I can forgive Simon for being a little out of his gourd and upset and not being at his A game after these events transpired.

[76561198292631324]

Superman, great piece of hypertext. What actually made me kind of put off the saddle in the game was when I learned the matrix the Simon was based upon - the one recovered from the past archive of amateur test scans - was obsolete, flat and limited version of anything that has been going around with SOMA current day technology.

[PrOxAnto]

Yeah it's not scary at all to think that you're basically a copy of a copy of a .... you get it.
Having seen so many sci-fi shows, films related onto what it means to be you ... this is probably one of the most scariest things to deal with.

And basically everything "Superman" said sums up what Simon has been going through / had to deal with.


I also think that Simon knew it was hopeless figuring out some of the "humans" which are again, copies in fact, that think they're still the original them, visuals showing they're right there in their human form etc.

Going through the story I'd put myself in his shoes and think what it really means for him, what he must be going through ... I was actually devastated thinking about the stuff.

[76561198292631324]

Originally posted by "PrOxAnto":

I also think that Simon knew it was hopeless figuring out some of the "humans" which are again, copies in fact, that think they're still the original them, visuals showing they're right there in their human form etc.

I think the case is more generally the matter of perception, while perception is more than just visuals. If their mind was "hacked" to make them believe they were humans, their perception would tell them that, meaning they would just receive the things the way to verify their notion of reality. Well, basically it would be rather unlikely for them to ever take it seriously they are something else than humans, especially that they were artificial. Even walking the seafloor instead of expected swimming or generally experiencing weird physics would seem somehow explainable, otherwise the conscious reception of it should get bedimmed.

[PrOxAnto]

Originally posted by The Consumerist:

Originally posted by "PrOxAnto":

I also think that Simon knew it was hopeless figuring out some of the "humans" which are again, copies in fact, that think they're still the original them, visuals showing they're right there in their human form etc.

I think the case is more generally the matter of perception, while perception is more than just visuals. If their mind was "hacked" to make them believe they were humans, their perception would tell them that, meaning they would just receive the things the way verifying their notion of reality. Well, basically it would be rather unlikely for them to ever take it seriously they are something else than humans, especially that they were artificial. Even walking the seafloor instead of swimming would seem somehow explainable or the entire experience should get dimmed out.

Yeah you're correct, I'm really pumped when talking about this sort of stuff but I'm not always able to properly explain it ^^

[DeltaBlast]

@Superman: great summary of the game :D
@OP: Simon is, in fact, stupid, as he's a poorly recorded AI/scan. Although in his self-perception he's pretty normal, I wouldn't be surpised if to Catherine he sounded like someone with down syndrome or something :P

[Nobody]

Simon seemed to handle the horror of his situation pretty well.

The only stupid part was

him thinking he'd somehow magically teleport onto the ARK. I saw that ending coming from a mile away, but it's like Simon hadn't been paying any attention at all.

[76561198292631324]

Simon was limited because he was artificial. His mental abilities were determined by what his recorded thought patterns allowed him to reason out. Once I heard a very nice comparison. If you were in the womb of your mother and someone told you that one day everything will be hard against you, that you will need to struggle and put effort just to secure your physical survival, that conditions around you will change often and you will dislike it most of the time, that you will actually need to walk on your feet - wait, what does "walk" mean? - would you know what the informant is talking about and would you believe him? Simon was less like that child. He was like the Agent from the Matrix. He was unable to evolve otherwise than through external intervention of forces capable of providing him with the better version of Simon program.