Let's talk tech (Now with Glossary)!

[TB3]

Hmm...in theory, one could travel forwards in time - it still depends a little bit on how the mechanics work - if it is a memory device (as is my personal belief), it would need some means of targeting the kids in the future in order to aim their memories into their brains.

Also, if it is just a memory device, what happens to the kids in the past - and why would their past memories over-ride memories that already include them?

Basically that all gets very messy and it becomes very unlikely.

Don't give up though, because the other means of travelling to the future (and also far simpler and neater) would be to load someone into a scanner and then hold their data in a memory file - with their conciousness inactive you could hold them in the scanner for years, and when they come out from their perspective they have travelled in time. You could also RTTP to any point in between, by simply directing their new memories back into the computer and integrating them into their minds during materialisation.

If you think about it, Aelita physically travelled forward in time 12 years in this manner between 1994 and 1996, but aged mentally because she was on Lyoko for a lot of that time (compare Aelita1994 to Aelita2006 for comparison - 'Daddy' becomes 'Father', her innocence is replaced with a certain calm wisdom etc.)

In both cases though there is likely to be no 'time-bubble' - if you think about temporal mechanics it's most likely the visible effect of a timeline being erased - the whole universe burns away revealing ZPE space underlying existance. So it's not a growing bubble, but the universe swirling down a plughole.

How's that?

Oh and Reesane, nice examples of XANA's emotions. While still not 100% sold on the idea of XANA himself having emotions, I do believe some of his posesses retain theirs (Sissi, Jim, Nick etc), and also of his 'simulated' humans having emotions. HopperXANA for example, could well have been built from the trapped Franz Hopper's data and thus experienced an emotional reaction not shared by XANA.

When XANA shows frustration, it could also be the effect of conflicting data (It's not logical!) - imagine when your computer stalls or freezes and apply that to an advanced AI - things are gonna go pop!

However at this point it's all up for debate - though I would point out that XANA is an artifical intelligence, and emotions are not thoughts but mostly a biological function rather than mental.

EDIT:

Since the computer stores and records all data from an episode's events, XANA could start developing emotions from the addition of emotional data from the posessees. This might also explain why he showed elements of fear and hostility in S1, because these are the kind of primal emotions one could expect him to pick up from the rats - very bestial, very animalistic. Towards the end of S2 however any suggested 'emotions' become more frequent and refined - possibly due to all the extra human data now flooding the supercomputer.

[Reesane offline]

If XANA took Aileta's Human memorys, than some cross contamination could have ocured. My theory is that XANA didn't start out with emotions, but they rubed off on him/It. thuse, XANA could have reguler fits like the one in Gost Chanal.

[YDV offline]

Reesane... no offense, but you're not making any sense..

Loving your ideas about traveling forward in time, though, TB3. Holding one's consciousness in a memory file for a number of years... definitely possible. Couldn't that be likened to cryogenics? (Not the actual freezing, but the same principle)

But wouldn't that raise a number of problems? For instance, speaking rhetorically here, what if Odd wanted to go into the future. For any given reason. Jeremie would scan him in-- manually though. It wouldn't be necessary to use the virtualization program, for obvious reasons. And there he would stay, in the computer's memory.

What happens when someone starts wondering where he is? The school and his parents would get panicked and call the police, thinking he was abducted or murdered. The only way for that to work is a) The person is willing to give up their lives or b) Everyone went in together, so they wouldn't be harrassed about where Odd was and Jer could set off an RTTP in the future.

But would that even work? Sure, their memories would be sent into their bodies before they were scanned, but then they wouldn't storage progress to the future (new term! lol) so the memories would never have been sent back in the first place... *rubs temples* Perhaps it would create a new timeline... yes, it would. Okay, that checks out.

Perhaps a different method that avoids all that missing persons stuff would be sending their entire consciousness files through the TAP into their bodies in the future, rather than just their memories. But then you'd have two consciousnesses existing in one body, and that would cause a paradox that would probably rip them out and send them back or just never allow it to happen in the first place. Hmm... this is perplexing.

I think the first method is the most viable to work. But they'd all have to go at the same time to avoid the fiasco about the person disappearing and all those years doing nothing but waiting for the person to come out, or possibly having to forget about them. Or knowing that all of it would be pointless because the person's memories of the future would be sent back and that timeline would be erased anyway. But they wouldn't know it was erased or that they ever lived it because THEIR memories wouldn't be sent back... ugh. RTTP's are way easier than RTTF's. lol

[Cassius335 offline]

Though we do know ghosts exist in CL.

[DL offline]

To Cassius: Huh? when did that happen?

To YDV: I like the way that you described the possible trip to the future. About the two conciouses existing in one body I believe that either a new body would be constructed or the memories from the origanal conciousness would be stuck into the future body. In this way, the person who went into the future would not have to figure out what the hell was going on and they would remember exactly what they needed to. Or there mightnot be a future body because they have gone forward in time and have to returned yet, which at that point the future bodies would come into existance. Damn this gives me a headache. If they were to ever do this in the show they had better explain it well otherwise we would be here forever trying to explain it.

[Cassius335 offline]

To Cassius: Huh? when did that happen?

To YDV: I like the way that you described the possible trip to the future. About the two conciouses existing in one body I believe that either a new body would be constructed or the memories from the origanal conciousness would be stuck into the future body. In this way, the person who went into the future would not have to figure out what the hell was going on and they would remember exactly what they needed to. Or there mightnot be a future body because they have gone forward in time and have to returned yet, which at that point the future bodies would come into existance. Damn this gives me a headache. If they were to ever do this in the show they had better explain it well otherwise we would be here forever trying to explain it.

Here:

EPISODE FORTY-EIGHT: IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?
XANA having dabbled in physcological warfare in 'XANA's Kiss' now goes all out - his latest router construct is a amorphous blob (with a habit of turning invisible) playing on a legend of Kadic being haunted - possibly to intimidate the group.

What is most curious about this ep is the fact that XANA was able to attack the super-scan and corrupt it in order to prevent the tower from being detected. What's more, although the damage was repaired by a RTTP, Jeremie was unable to fix it by hand, instead sending Aelita and Yumi to Carthage to initiate the repair. This suggests that XANA is now powerful enough to exercise a limited control over the console.

After lessons learned in 'Ultimatum', Ulrich again used an electrical device to disrupt the 'ghost', basically svering the SAP connections.

As an aside, this episode also verifies the existance of the soul/the supernatural in the world of CL with confirmation at the end of the existance of Leon Corbe's ghost haunting Kadic.

[DL offline]

Umm the ghost was Odd...they played a trick on Sissy. You might have missed that it was in the last three seconds of the episode. Also the "ghost" you are reffering to in ultimatum was not really a ghost but Mr. Delmas, he had been taken over by a specter and his body was pixilized. Which is why the emp was effective, an emp only effects electrical objects so it would have no affect on a real ghost.

[TB3]

Cassius is referring to the fact that at the end of 'Is Anybody Out There?', after Odd and Ulrich had left the boiler room, the firebox door slammed shut by itself, which exists as 'proof' of the existance of the supernatural in CL. How far you want to extend this depends entirely on your personal spiritual and religious beliefs.

Personally I take that as confirmation that 'unexplainable' phenomena exist in CL as much as they do in reality. However the show rarely has these moments of metaphysical phenomena - do we ever see the kids questioning if they're technically dead having gone through a scanner and had their bodies destroyed at the atomic level? Or, even if they are alive, are they now souless imitations of their past selves.

Personally, I think the soul exists within the conciousness, and so I feel they are alive, but still.

As I've stated before however, I highly doubt the concept of an 'evil entity' despite all this - XANA is a construct - highly advanced, highly complex, highly flawed (no thanks to Hopper!) - but we've never seen any evidence to prove otherwise and the constant tech talk in the series (and our own theories which are constantly being confirmed by the show) reinforces this concept.

[Reesane offline]

New XANA phycology theory, if this make no sens please tell me.

Code Lyoko Theory: Why XANA is Insane

I have been reading a book called “Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down.â€

[TB3]

"It's not logical!"

Brilliant little idea Reesane - that's an excellent way of describing how a computerised intelligence might interpret an unforseen or incomprehensible factor.

[Reesane offline]

Yessss! Some one finaly understod my theory!

[YDV offline]

Puzzles... jelly... wood... metal... what?! That went wayyy over my head. Okay, so you're talking about how XANA thinks, right? He thinks like a program, because, essentially, all self-upgrading qubits and swirling vortexes of doom aside, he is one. That is to say, he thinks logically. Step by step. Factor this in, factor that out. Human emotions and relationships make no sense to him. And then we could add in your idea about unknown factors being likened to "jelly". Moldable-- he makes conclusions (like jamming a puzzle peice made out of jelly somewhere) to what they could possibly mean, and adds them to the equation, and if it's incorrect, he moves it somewhere else, probably concluding that it makes perfect sense and he meant to put it there in the first place (because "his logic is undeniable" )

Hmm.. since we've figured out all the mechanics of Lyoko, we're now computer psychologists

[Reesane offline]

Yup, that's what hapens when you have 40+ phycology books laying around.... And you like reading them...

Also, has anyone noticed that XANA seems to think that kissing is a seal of trust that's broken when you kiss someone els?

[TB3]

Well why not do computer phsycology - and nice quote YDV, here's one which best describes how XANA possibly became sentinent;

'There have always been ghosts in the machine - random segments of code which have grouped together to form unexpected protocols.

Unanticipated - these free radicals engender questions of free-will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul.

Why is it that when some robots are left in darkness they will seek out the light? Why is it that when robots are stored in an empty space they will group together rather than stand alone?

How do we explain this behavior?

Random segments of code? Or is it something more;

When does a perceptual schematic become conciousness?

When does a difference engine become a search for truth?

When does a personality simulation become the bitter mote, of a soul?'

Dr. Alfred Lanning, I Robot


God I love that quote - and prior to Season 2 many of us might well have considered these as relevent to Aelita - when does code and application become humanity - kindness, grace, humour, anger and hate?

But with XANA, we have something else...I, Robot is based on the concept of evolving AIs which are guided by an intrinsic set of Laws;

1. A Robot cannot harm a human being, or by inaction allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A Robot must oney orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law.

3. A Robot must protect it's own existance as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.

This 'Perfect Circle of Protection' as devised by Issac Asimov however leads to problems when one exposes a robot to an environment where human beings violate the laws guiding robots - as seen in the movie, intelligent beings guided by these laws will usurp mankind in order to protect mankind. Asimov himself realised this and later added a Zeroth Law in 1985;

0. A Robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm

The question is, did Hopper ever realise his creation, XANA, became concious - if he believed he was merely dealing with a highly capable drone with no actual 'intelligence', would he have included such programming as the 4 Laws of Robotics.

As such, what programming values guide XANA? - everyone has the ability to grow above their 'programming' - our natural reflexes and impulses, but those 'Prime Directives' remain with us throughout our lives i.e. pain is bad, fight-or-flight, a smile is a natural expression of joy, a howl an expression of discomfort;

Does XANA have such 'Prime Directives', or is he truly the perfect sentience - a being which emerged from the ghosts in Hopper's faulty programming, emerged with no preconceptions, no intrinsic values of right and wrong, an unbiased, self-taught sentinence.

Or, is XANA merely following his original programming;

Hopper created XANA to destroy Carthage - that was his purpose. But Hopper may well have changed plans before utilising his weapon - could XANA, purpose unresolved and now sentinent, be growing above his original programming but still remain confined to it like VIKI from I, Robot or Major Chip Hazzard from Small Soldiers;

'It can learn within the boundaries of it's prime programming - whatever it's core programming the X1000 (AI CPU) enhances it, from within.' - Small Soldiers

Could it be, that after all that has happened, XANA is merely trying to fulfil his purpose, his reason for existance, and is set on that goal to the extent of betraying his creator and endangering hundreds of lives;

Destroy Project Carthage.

[Reesane offline]

Good job TB3, but I think XANA is resentful. He/It is angry for being used as a tool.

Ooooh, new event sequnce theory:

1. Hopper and Aileta go to Lyoko.
2. Men in black folow them into the control room.
3. XANA is board out of his wits, and is planing to torment Hopper and Aileta to intertain himself.
4. Men in black tell XANA he must destry them emidently.
5. XANA says no.... and they tell him they have to obay his new masters...
6. Guess what hapens next.

[TB3]

Hmm...I'm not sure if the agents ever discovered the lab because all of the equipment would have been stripped out pronto - what happened after Hopper and Aelita virtualised is pure conjecture at this time (but we can all harbour our own ideas ).

EDIT: And the idea of XANA having emotions at that early a stage is unlikely - he needed time for them to develop before he develop a sense of resentment - even in Season 2 he didn't try to torment the kids in any way that would have been a waste of resources, no matter how he feels.

To quote Arnie in Terminator 3 - 'Desire is irrevelent, I am, A MACHINE!'

In fact that's another thought - Terminator is a learning computer with a simple read-only/write switch on his CPU (to prevent lone units thinking too much) - in the first film he followed his directive precisely because he was set to read-only.

In the second movie, set to 'write' he eventually grew beyond his programming and also developed emotions, but still had a sense of his mission, his purpose, supplemented by a new sense of 'right and wrong' - having learned the value of human life.

In the third, set to 'read-only' Terminator was partly reprogrammed by the Terminatrix to attack his protectee. In this case he was defeated by being forced into a 'jam-piece' situation.

JOHN CONNOR (about to get squished): What is your mission?
TERMINATOR (on verge of killing him, very little resistance): To ensure the survival...of John Connor, and Kathrine Brewster.
JOHN CONNOR: You are about to fail that mission.

Terminator subsequently got stuck in a program loop, shut himself down and rebooted himself to pruge his system. During this kill/don't kill sequence, his HUD was constantly flashing conflicting commands (TERMINATE....COMMAND IMPOSSIBLE...TERMINATE etc.) and this is the situation much as happened to XANA in Ghost Channel - as you put it - jam piece.

Again however, these are examples of how AIs can be bound to their programming, with varying levels of freedom.

[Reesane offline]

Ok, now for my guess on XANA's human behavor ideas.

Kissing- A seal of trust which is broken if you kiss someone els.
Proof- "I kissed you": XANA convincing Aileta he is the real jeremy. (Yet another misinsurted jelly peice.)

Friendship- XANA probly bangs his head against the wall when he tries to understand this.
proof- Gost Chanal as a whole

Talking- Only when absolutly nesesary.
proof- How many times have we heard XANA talking?

Joking- Another head banger for XANA.
Proof- See above

Love- Defently doesn't grasp the consept. Ever.

and on an after thought, XANA remids me of....


The Unabomber!!!!

There's just something so simaler about them....

[TB3]

Nice...very nice, though I would reckon over time XANA develops a better sense of what drives 'human-group-bonding'. His kissing affair certainly showed he had a better idea of 'human-pair-bonding' than we might initally have thought.

With time, XANA will either understand emotions, or like an actor reading from a script, know how to mimick them perfectly without necessarily understanding them.

[Reesane offline]

now my only question is... does XANA know what will hapen if he causes two people of the same sex to kiss?

[Cassius335 offline]

Good job TB3, but I think XANA is resentful. He/It is angry for being used as a tool.

Ooooh, new event sequnce theory:

1. Hopper and Aileta go to Lyoko.
2. Men in black folow them into the control room.
3. XANA is board out of his wits, and is planing to torment Hopper and Aileta to intertain himself.
4. Men in black tell XANA he must destry them emidently.
5. XANA says no.... and they tell him they have to obay his new masters...
6. Guess what hapens next.

Isn't that the first Pokemon movie?

[Reesane offline]

wait, Pokemon movie? pokemon has a movie? Oh, that. Never whached it.

[airox offline]

wait, Pokemon movie? pokemon has a movie? Oh, that. Never whached it.

its had about 7 last I checked. just about 1 for each tv season i take it.

[TB3]

Oh, the Pokemon movies - 1 was pretty weak, but had an excellent opening (from after Pikachu's Vacation to when we see Ash and co for the first time), and 2 was altogether a stronger project. 3 was alright but from there on I've never seen them and don't particularly want to.

And not to sound mean or dictorial, can we keep this on topic. Do any of the 'old-hands' like DL, YDV or Animenologist have any comments on Reesane and I's banter about AI?

[Reesane offline]

The Nieve Scintist

the best way to discibe this is to give an example:

we are about to step into the shower when we spot a spider next to the drain. the nieve scientist in us says "It came up the drain! Run!

Soooo, the problem is: Does XANA have a nieve scienist? It just doesn't fit.

[Osiris offline]

i would say that i think that TB3 is right here nice i, robot example by the way

XANA may not have detailed knowledge of human emotion but he does have the capability to learn and from what i have see of season 2 (which isn't much) he does know a little about it and he may have shown a little knowledge of human relationships in image problem when the clone yumi flirted with jerimie.