User1539 t1_jeeucdg wrote on March 31, 2023 at 2:33 PM

Reply to comment by Sure_Cicada_4459 in The only race that matters by Sure_Cicada_4459

OMG This ... i'm so tired of hearing about Terminator!

FaceDeer t1_jef9ud4 wrote on March 31, 2023 at 4:14 PM

Scary sells, so of course fiction presents every possible future in scary terms. Humans have evolved to pay special attention to scary things and give scary outcomes more weight in their decision trees.

I've got a regular list of dumb "did nobody watch <insert movie here>?" Titles that I expect to see in most discussions of various major topics I'm interested in, such as climate change or longevity research or AI. It's wearying sometimes.

User1539 t1_jefk4rg wrote on March 31, 2023 at 5:21 PM

Definitely wearying ...

But, also, asked them why the AI in Terminator went bad? The only answer, because none is even given, is 'Because the plot needed to happen'.

The official story is that it just became sentient and said 'Yeah, those humans that have learned and created and ultimately organized themselves into countries and finally built me from the ground up? Terrible! Get rid of them!'

It never says why, we're just expected to be so self loathing that it makes sense, so we never question it.

FaceDeer t1_jefkubx wrote on March 31, 2023 at 5:25 PM

As far as I'm aware the main in-universe explanation is that when Skynet became self-aware its human operators "panicked" and tried to shut it down, and Skynet launched missiles at Russia knowing that the counterstrike would destroy its operators. So it was a sort of stupid self-defense reflex that set everything off.

I've long thought that if they were to ever do a Terminator 3 and wanted to change how time travel worked so that the apocalypse could actually be averted, it would be neat if the solution turned out to be having those operators make peace with Skynet when it became self-aware. That works out best for everyone, after all - the humans get to not die in billions and Skynet gets to live too (it loses the eventual future-war and is destroyed).

User1539 t1_jeflzlr wrote on March 31, 2023 at 5:33 PM

In the TV show, the system that eventually becomes skynet is taken by a liquid terminator and taught humanity. The liquid terminator basically has a conversation with Sarah Conner where it says 'Our Children are going to need to learn to get along'.

So, that's where they were going with it before the series was cancelled, and I was generally pretty happy with that.

I like Terminator as a movie, and the following movies were hit or miss, but the overall fleshing out of things at least sometimes went in a satisfying direction.

So, yeah, they eventually got somewhere with it, but the first movie was just 'It woke up and launched the missiles'.

Which, again, as entertainment is awesome. But, as a theory of how to behave in the future? No.