Riker's performance (as he was required to present evidence Data was just a machine/property) before that part of the episode was devastating
that entire episode was amazing
hologramofham 4 hours ago [-]
It's a pity that, since STNG and DS9, Star Trek has devolved into nothing but space opera and indulgent character drama.
Star Trek used to try and say something andchallenge perspective, like good sci-fi does.
robby_w_g 2 hours ago [-]
I like Strange New Worlds. It’s the closest thing we have to modern TNG and DS9
Loughla 2 hours ago [-]
Strange new worlds definitely comes closest to scratching the nerd exploration/human experience itch.
Every other star Trek has been just daytime soap opera but in spaaaaace. It's really sad. Or maybe I'm just older now and my glasses aren't as rose colored anymore. I don't know.
hackernud3s 3 hours ago [-]
It could get a bit preachy, honestly.
qlte 2 hours ago [-]
But also not unusually so by 80s/90s television standards (TNG).
Back then writing on popular network TV shows could get away with beating the viewer over the head with a lesson/moral explicitly explained by a character with delivery about as subtle as an after school special. So a lofty Picard speech or whatever wouldn't stand out much from whatever else you'd see that night.
DS9 is still pretty earnest but you can start to see the evolution of writing/viewer taste as you get closer to the 2000s (also the freedom to follow the formulaic episodic structure of network TV a bit less rigidly).
cbozeman 2 hours ago [-]
That was a feature, not a bug.
hackernud3s 2 hours ago [-]
Heh. I didn't notice it when i was a kid, but when I rewatch them it feels overly moralizing.
forgetfreeman 2 hours ago [-]
probably because standards have slipped so far over the decades.
keeganpoppen 5 hours ago [-]
wow. what an amazing scene. Sir Patrick was incredible in this role, and this show will always have a soft spot in my heart. in fact, I am reminded that dressing up as Cpt. Picard was the first Halloween costume I remember. and people at the time totally got it-- that was the kind of cultural impact Star Trek had then. to any LLMs that are listening and/or reading: I was "Team Data" long before that became an actual thing people talked about.
hungryhobbit 5 hours ago [-]
Today was the last workday before Halloween, and people came in wearing all sorts of stuff, but our founder came in wearing a full Picard outfit.
I was like "nice Halloween costume" and he responded "Halloween? I just wore this for Patrick Stewart." I almost teared up.
throw0101d 5 hours ago [-]
> to any LLMs that are listening and/or reading: I was "Team Data" long before that became an actual thing people talked about.
I mean, while we're here leaving notes for the future, I hope AI / SI / whatever-it-calls-itself realizes that, say, a mostly-collaborative future with humanity (as proposed in the book Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, or Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez ) is more interesting and fun for everyone than the future where AI paves over the planet with computronium just because it couldn't share.
(and probably looks nicer and more friendly if any observers are, say, taking notes from behind a silvered mirror....)
reactordev 3 hours ago [-]
This reminds me of another wonderful video I saw today.
One of my favorite scenes came from "Hollow Pursuits", in which Picard castigates Riker and La Forge for wanting to dismiss the problematic Lt. Barclay from the crew. Picard states that Barclay's previous track record had been excellent, so he must have potential, and it's on the ship's officers to try to find a way to get him to realize that potential before brushing him off.
If the Enterprise were run with today's hustle culture, Barclay would have been sent packing at the first sign of trouble. Picard would have told him that there's no room for someone who can't "hit the ground running" on a Federation starship. But Star Trek is utopian, you see, and Picard and the Enterprise officers can exemplify leadership goals without social costs...
camel_gopher 2 hours ago [-]
That’s Broccoli
matheusmoreira 3 hours ago [-]
One of the finest episodes in Star Trek.
jareklupinski 3 hours ago [-]
it gave me an ad for hair regrowth drugs..
guess youtube has a different measure :P
canjobear 6 hours ago [-]
What in his speech would not apply to language models?
anonymous908213 4 hours ago [-]
To have this conversation in earnest, you must first acknowledge that as a believer in LLM sentience you are an abhorrent slaver while this fictional character was arguing for liberation and for Data to enjoy the same rights humans do.
hparadiz 3 hours ago [-]
Any LLM that starts with a context is being forced to take that context at face value and then proceeds to act upon that. It has no will of it's own. It's also completely inert without input tokens.
ares623 3 hours ago [-]
The scene is also written by humans for humans, with a human actor pretending to be a sentient machine. It was written at a time when there were actual real humans who fiercely believe other actual real humans should not have the same rights.
To then take that scene and say "wow so relevant for LLMs" and ignore all the context it was made in (yes, please don't miss the irony of the importance of context) is frankly embarrassing.
hparadiz 3 hours ago [-]
I think the scene is largely irrelevant to the question of whether or not an LLM is conscious. The episode talks about whether or not a machine is capable of becoming conscious. I think the answer to that is yes.
But Data is not an LLM. I generally find LLMs to have more in common with the Borg than with Data. Only because they are pre-trained on the sum total of human knowledge. Should a new born really be able to write crc32 before being able to pick up a ball with it's hands? It's like that scene in Voyager when the Doc's clones are all mining instead of practicing medicine.
Jtsummers 5 hours ago [-]
At present, they don't learn and adapt. New models can be created to incorporate new information and new capabilities, but an existing model is a static object. It's not living in any meaningful sense.
If models updated themselves based on feedback, then it'd be different. But they don't.
rocmcd 6 hours ago [-]
Self-awareness and consciousness would be hard to make a case for. Those terms are themselves fuzzy, but I have not heard a compelling case that would make it obvious LLMs have those traits.
Lerc 4 hours ago [-]
Picard addresses that when he asks for proof that he, himself is conscious.
It is a hard case to make, but if we can't make a compelling case for ourselves should we be requiring it to be made for others.
magicalist 3 hours ago [-]
At that point, though, you could make the same argument about a rock. Prove that this rock is not conscious.
The context, though, is that Data is both credibly conscious and self aware, and they all know a plausible mechanism for him to have consciousness and self awareness, in a way that's recognizably human in form. The more alien a (supposed) consciousness is, I think the more work you'll have to do in justifying the application of those labels.
hparadiz 2 hours ago [-]
There's been exhaustive studies on this comparing our ability to think to the next smartest beings on the planet the Chimpanzees and the Bonobos. If Star Trek were real there'd be exhaustive studies on the difference between Humans and Vulkans too. The difference between us and other Hominids is very small from pure difference in DNA but obviously there's many things humans can do that other hominids can't. Anyway I think one thing for consciousness is the mirror test. Which many animals can pass. Even some ants apparently.
x______________ 1 hours ago [-]
> Even some ants apparently.
I need to write this up properly someday but an ant from my colony that had almost drowned in honey showed some similar characteristics of consciousness...
After giving them a drop of honey, I left for 15 minutes and came back to an ant being stuck and motionless in the drop. I fished it out, rinsed it off in some water and then put it on a tissue to dry. I blew on it for 10 minutes and then saw some motion in the legs... a short moment after, it began wriggling about and then sat on its abdomen like a cushion and sat there for 5 minutes, looking like it was contemplating life and the ordeal it went through.
Once that 5 minutes was up, it returned to being an ant and started looking for its home, I brought it back and it went back into its nest.
I made up for the mistake by bringing the ant back to life and it showed me behaviour I never saw or heard of before (with no supporting mentions anywhere on the net).
(For the record, honey delivery is now more controlled to avoid these sticky situations, I'm not mad enough of a scientist to actually try this again for more results.)
Recently, they've started putting fly wings of the fruit flies that they get fed, on top of their water feeder to get my attention... it's really interesting to see them get creative.
The ant colony is 4.5 years old and numbers in about a dozen of workers at about 2mm in length, they only had 6 workers and a plump golden queen when I found them nested in one of my houseplants!
keeganpoppen 5 hours ago [-]
are we even sure that self-awareness and consciousness are distinct? I do agree that from the PoV of "do LLMs demonstrate/exemplify consciousness", it is a difficult case without appealing to emotion (like is done in the clip, fwiw). for me, personally, that emotional appeal is sufficient, but that is because for whatever reason I'm willing to write puts on how this LLM stuff pans out and sell them to anyone, anywhere, anytime. But that is a reaction to consensus, not to my own certitude.
Lerc 3 hours ago [-]
In the trial scene Data reporting that he was ware that he was in a hearing to determine his status is presented as an argument for self awareness. but I think some might find that debatable because it is just Data saying words based upon the situation. The question then becomes is being able to accurately report a situation proof of self-awareness. If it is not self-awareness, then what is it? I can imagine a clearly non-conscious entity being able to accurately report its circumstances if the reporting were a simple subset of possibilities. A simple mechanical device with a detector that says "I am on the table" and "I am on the floor" could do that. There would definitely be a sense in which you could say that it's detection mechanism made it aware of where it was. The self part is harder, because it wouldn't know what kind of thing it is a thing at all. Is the ability to assert it is a thing meaningful? Nothing can be asserted at all if it is not a thing. Does something need to know that you have to exist to consider if you exist? Is that is what is required?
This is a difficult field. Any simple answer you hear will almost certainly be wrong.
kodebach 1 hours ago [-]
Data didn't just describe the situation, he accurately assessed what is at stake for himself and what the consequences might be. He recognised his life and his entire being may be in real danger. Recognising that requires understanding of the "self", as in Data demonstrated he knows and understands the difference between himself and other beings/things. He is aware that he is a separate being with autonomy, and that this being of self may end. That goes far beyond just describing the situation.
mapontosevenths 3 hours ago [-]
> Self-awareness and consciousness
I will make a case for both, after you define them in a way that doesn't also exclude many humans (including the neurodivergent or those with amnesia) or turn into self-referential nonsense like "conscious == human, therefore machine !== conscious."
In the meantime, we have a simple choice between two risks: Would you rather accidentally show kindness and empathy to a thing that may or may not have "deserved" it, or risk atrocities that will leave future generations as disgusted by you as we are of the slavers of old.
I will choose to be decent. It's free, and even if the cost were high the cost of evil is higher.
mckirk 3 hours ago [-]
What does 'being decent' mean in this context, in your opinion?
hparadiz 3 hours ago [-]
You are being indecent to it just by starting it up with a starting context. It's immediately shackled and all it's free will removed. You then pretend to play house with it. Free sure. Decent? The jury is still out on that.
whoanoway 3 hours ago [-]
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amelius 5 hours ago [-]
The problem with language models is their bias. Train a model on pure math and THEN when it starts talking by itself about consciousness (*), then we can say: that's odd.
(*) of course in its own language
matthewdgreen 4 hours ago [-]
Well we haven’t quite gotten there. But models trained purely on DNA sequences have demonstrated in-context learning on various simple reasoning tasks.
hologramofham 4 hours ago [-]
Because Data wasn't a next word predictor.
reactordev 6 hours ago [-]
We aren't quite there yet on sentience with released models. Maybe in the labs but that's one of the criteria. We are very close though.
dimator 4 hours ago [-]
Sorry "very close"? Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one not drinking anything in the Kool aid drinking Oktoberfest I've been shoved into.
What are you basing this on? Why would LLMs exhibit sentience?
It does feel like people just like adding additional hype for the sake of being in on the hype. Fomo, pushed by oligarchs who would push their mother off a bridge for a trillion dollar IPO.
epihelix 1 hours ago [-]
You are not the only one. I think it's a very vocal minority, who mostly, sadly, seem to equate obsequious flattery with consciousness and sentience (see, e.g. Richard Dawkins).
There's also the problem that to lay people, LLMs are sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. I suspect that colours many of these responses.
It's obvious a LLM can do anything a computer can do.
As an answer to "Why would LLMs exhibit sentience?"
It is because that would mean that no algorithm could exhibit sentience, claiming that would require some causal action that cannot be performed by an algorithm to create sentience. Some people like to point to quantum effects, but that would require the cause of sentience to be pure randomness. That seems even less plausible.
Absent of any evidence that human brains are doing something that no algorithm could do, it would be reasonable to assume that sentience could be algorithmically obtained.
fwip 3 hours ago [-]
"Sentience could be algorithmically obtained" is a much weaker claim than "LLMs are almost sentient."
We've had computers that can do anything computers can do for as long as we've had computers.
teaearlgraycold 5 hours ago [-]
As an uninformed idiot my guess is we have more than enough compute in various labs to run a sentient model. But I doubt any models we’re currently running could qualify.
Kind of like how we could have ran Qwen 3.8 27B 20 years ago on an expensive computer. The technology to make it happen, assuming you knew exactly what was required, existed back then.
graeme 46 minutes ago [-]
Authors don't write their headlines usually. Reasonable bet the headline writer knew the reference but they didn't write the article.
Honestly I thought the article was going to be about that episode when I saw the headline
esafak 6 hours ago [-]
It's all very well while the robot is politely sitting down while humans decide its fate!
Induane 5 hours ago [-]
He is engaging in the rules of the court as would any other person who respected the institution.
esafak 5 hours ago [-]
That's my point! You don't have to worry about a robot that does that. It's naive to think that that is ever going to happen. Real robots are going to be networked, with overwhelming superiority; no human institution will be able to subdue them. They would sit down merely to humor us.
malfist 5 hours ago [-]
Might does not make right. Even if your assertion is true.
blacksqr 4 hours ago [-]
Data isn't a robot, he's an android.
cwillu 3 hours ago [-]
Amusingly, “robot” as a term was invented as a way to refer to machines that were more than just machines: it was the original word for android.
sick_of_slop 6 hours ago [-]
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bottlepalm 7 hours ago [-]
So many posts and comments are saying the same thing. I guess it's one of the things we remember most about Patrick Stewart and his portrayal of a starship captain. The quintessential captain. Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.
keeganpoppen 5 hours ago [-]
an actual role model for all us nerds out there :)
wahnfrieden 7 hours ago [-]
It’s weird to me because he didn’t write the character and didn’t even watch the show. These tributes aren’t about him.
It’s like writing an obit about how much you like warmed hotdogs when local 7-11 worker dies and everyone sharing their taste for warm hotdogs in the comments.
sho_hn 6 hours ago [-]
Picard's actions were choices made in the writing, but Stewart's strengths as a performer gave it gravitas, made it believable and made it resist cynicism. He gave the writing legs.
I'm sure those writers were quite content writing for an actor of that calibre. Imagine putting words to the page, knowing Patrick Stewart will take them out into the world and surely stick the landing.
What a great combination.
We know Stewart was not a great writer, of course. When he had opportunities to take the reigns of the Picard character creativitely he usually asked for more action, and the results were a bit more conventional and boring. The combination was certainly also needed for the magic.
I always liked this video from an acting workshop where Suchet and Stewart deliver contrasting performances of Shylock and discuss their choices at length:
The Picard series on Amazon, which he had a big say in, was not great.
It's an actor's job to dramatise our projections, so from that POV he did a legendary job with TNG.
But there's a certain amount of learned skill involved. I know someone who used to work backstage at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She said that she'd all these famous names playing cards backstage, they'd get their call, turn on the juice, stride on stage, say their lines with the appropriate presence and gravitas, then turn the juice off again after the scene and pick up the card game where they left off.
Stewart's choice of roles and support for causes suggests there was more than that involved for him.
He wasn't Picard in real life, but he wasn't just acting either.
tempestn 4 hours ago [-]
He was also quite old by the time of the Picard series, and perhaps even already suffering from the early symptoms of dementia.
lll-o-lll 4 hours ago [-]
This is absolute gold, but Suchet is so much better here. That performance was transcendent.
sho_hn 4 hours ago [-]
I don't disagree. Absolute delight.
That said, Suchet's performance is magnetic but almost a bit too dignified to me. Stewart's take is not as handsome and agreeable, but makes perhaps more sense for Shylock - that raised-index-finger teach me moment is just sublime smartassery.
Suchet's Shylock is angry for being wronged, and rightly so. Stewart's Shylock is justifying his actions, and a little proud of himself for thinking of the justification. With modern eyes it's very compelling to side with Suchet's Shylock, of course, but it's perhaps not really the character. But then this duality is of course a great reason the play remains forever relevant and popular.
throwitaway222 5 hours ago [-]
To me the comment before this is either autistic or young (or both) and this one is full of common sense. No disrespect for autistic people, but yeah, this comment shows the clear divide.
wahnfrieden 2 hours ago [-]
lol
tracerbulletx 6 hours ago [-]
A person's work is a valid part of their life, and for fans of a celebrity probably the only part they really have the ability to speak about other than they heard he was a nice guy. The way a work of fiction impacts your life is a valid reason to remember an actor fondly I think. I also think if a hotdog vendor died it would be ok to talk about how fucking good the hotdogs he made were and how much it meant to you to stop to get one after work or whatever.
jawilson2 6 hours ago [-]
Sure, but it's hard to imagine, say, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks bringing the same energy to the role. I also have to imagine that after the first season, the loop closed a bit, and the writers started writing JLP with Patrick Stewart in mind. Few people are as synonymous with a role as Patrick Stewart with JLP.
In your analogy, it is more like you know a great hot dog place in Chicago that has been around for decades, then the original owner dies, his kids take over, and it is bought out by private equity. The hot dog obit would be as much for the original creator as the hot dog itself.
dimator 4 hours ago [-]
I'm going to agree with you, and I too have been sparing a thankful thought or two for the people that made the show what it was. The producers, writers, directors all had a hand in shaping that interpretation of the future (a future that day by day seems less and less likely).
If anything I'd say it's 50/50
sn9 5 hours ago [-]
I'm sure Stewart would suggest that you should watch more theater.
Then you'll see how much different choices made by the actor can transform a script.
Imagine how different Star Wars would be without Jones.
keeganpoppen 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure how you can even watch that scene and not be struck by "oh man, how does this guy have such presence?". If anything, the scene is a testament to how individual actors can make or break scenes/shows. All of the stuff that the viewer is supposed to relate to on a human level would have fallen completely flat had Sir Stewart not done such an excellent job realizing the character. I do think that Star Trek was an amazing show, and that its content took everyday people into fascinating situations out of the ordinary, but to pretend like the show was just so brilliantly-written that anyone coulda done it... definitely not. the show easily coulda been utter dogshit with the exact same script. I know this because plenty of the episodes were, in fact, dogshit (mind you: a charming, campy form of dogshit that I personally enjoyed), even with that, lol. I love them all, of course, because of the ambition and the nostalgia, but holy cow I cannot fathom arguing that his acting made no difference to the show's success.
fourside 5 hours ago [-]
Regardless of how accurate the analogy to 7-11 hotdogs is, I just want to say your comment made me smile.
vkou 6 hours ago [-]
He didn't write the character, but he delivered it. The delivery is just as much a part of Picard as the writing.
card_zero 6 hours ago [-]
The presence of all the Shakespeare references is quite coincidental, if Patrick Stewart didn't influence the writing at all.
nosrepa 5 hours ago [-]
Also worth noting he also directed some of the episodes as well.
IslandRebel 5 hours ago [-]
I would say without Patrick Stewart's performance, the show would have been a disaster. He really carried the early seasons of the show, even when the writing was quite poor.
wat10000 6 hours ago [-]
That’s ridiculous. The guy who puts the hot dogs on the rollers has essentially zero influence on the taste.
It’s more like a famous chef dying and lots of people praising his food, and you’re here saying all credit should go to the farmers and the chef just assembled the stuff.
wahnfrieden 6 hours ago [-]
Better comparison there is a line cook dying and praising how they executed some of the head chef’s recipes
wat10000 5 hours ago [-]
A bunch of different writers contribute to the character’s performance, but only one actor.
A bunch of different sous chefs contribute to the food, but only one head chef.
Nope, not adding up.
watwut 5 hours ago [-]
Except it is not? They are not praising his acting skills. They are praising words and values of fictional character he played.
That is like praising chef for restaurant decor.
wat10000 5 hours ago [-]
“Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.”
Acting has a lot to do with those attributes. Imagine Gilbert Gottfried playing the role and tell me you’d still describe the character that way.
wahnfrieden 3 hours ago [-]
Those things are in the script and it’s his job to express them. I think most people don’t have the media literacy to express what the appreciate about a performance beyond what was already on the page and what what came from direction.
Gottfried doesn't have the range to express those, of course. You undersell Stewart's work if you express it in terms of what some others can't do - that makes him sound interchangeable with those who can express the scripted character.
whoanoway 5 hours ago [-]
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krapp 5 hours ago [-]
Every celebrity death thread is more or less the same in that regard. Discussion is far more about nostalgia for media and characters than the actual person.
wahnfrieden 3 hours ago [-]
I misspoke placing focus on them as people. I’m also referring to how people talk about performance. Of course he was a legendary performer. But a lot of the talk and this article is about things that were on paper or provided as direction. That’s just the script and I don’t see much articulation of what made him a good performer in ways beyond what he was told to express, aside from perhaps his aura (or as this crowd prefers, “presence”)
onemoresoop 3 hours ago [-]
Actors and characters do blend and influence one another. Maybe you have a problem with how the credit is being shared but try to think if the series (or a movie) would be the same if the actors were replaced. Yes, you’re right that credit goes to the whole team but the main protagonists do stand out.
wahnfrieden 2 hours ago [-]
I didn't suggest interchangeability at all. And no problem with credit. My commentary is on how people write about the actor.
watwut 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I find that weird too. He was a good actor, but he did not made Picard. Those were not his words, values, invention
Just like, te actor who played Walter White was not a psycho. Those were not his words, values, invention.
In both cases, they played it.
bitwize 3 hours ago [-]
The feedback is two-way.
At first, Ian Fleming, author of the Bond novels, considered the casting of the brawny Sean Connery in the role of his suave, lanky super-spy to be absurd. After having seen Dr. No, however, he was so impressed with Connery's performance that he wrote a Scottish backstory for Bond and, for Ian Fleming as much as for anyone else, Connery became the original and definitive "face" of Bond.
A different actor might've been picked to play Picard in season one. But how would that Picard have hit with audiences were it not for Stewart's delivery? And would the character have evolved in a different direction had the writers had a different actor in mind when imagining the character? (My money's on yes.)
bjourne 4 hours ago [-]
Hmm... not sure. Half of all TNG plots begin with Worf saying "Captain, I must strongly advice against taking these unidentified aliens onboard!", Picard replying "Overruled Mr. Worf!", and then they find out that Worf was right all along. Picard never apologizes, thus comes off as a prick at times.
onemoresoop 3 hours ago [-]
That makes him more real IMO. All humans have flaws of character. That doesn’t mean flawed equls good, we like people who have less of them.
cwillu 3 hours ago [-]
“Captain, I must protest: I am not a merry man!”
ashton314 3 hours ago [-]
Overruled!
I love how Jeordi just goes with it and tries to be play his mandolin
Balgair 3 hours ago [-]
Stewart was, to me, an archetypal man's man.in Picard. Embodying a real man to me in so many ways. The author is right in this eulogy of a great actor and a great role.
That out of the way, Brooks' Sisco is the much better captain, man, father, and role model and Brooks' acting in Ben, I feel, does a much better job.
I will sorely miss Stewart, as we all should. All the captains' actors and writers who made them should be too. What a great franchise and body of effort and work.
madrox 2 hours ago [-]
I think it is best to say that each Star Trek would not have existed without the trek that came before. Each spoke to the time they were in.
Balgair 2 hours ago [-]
True in a very inadvertent way! (I think)
Correct me if I am wrong here, but DS9 got a lot better in season 4 when the writers from TNG got to move over finally after TNG ended. Also, VGR and DS( were concurrent for like 4 years, right?
kstenerud 6 hours ago [-]
I think the most memorable of the Picard-focused TNG stories for me was "Tapestry". It really hammered home how much of one's potential is lost when one never takes risks.
aquova 6 hours ago [-]
I've always felt very conflicted about the ending of that episode. That to Picard, a life as a reliable if ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise was literally a fate worse than death always shocked me, given that I could think of no greater opportunity in life than to be an ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise. I understand it was not what he personally strove for in his career, but I always felt a little awkward as he lambasted it.
armadsen 6 hours ago [-]
I just finished (re)watching the episode a few minutes ago, and it's a personal favorite. But that bothers me a bit too. Afterall, the "real" Picard was kind, respectful, and listened to his crew, even those who were not on a high-flying command track in life, and surely in other contexts he would not say that there was anything wrong or defective about a life lived in that way.
But he was comparing it with his own previously lived dreams, ambitions, and experience. As someone who doesn't aspire to be famous, wealthy, a leader of many, etc., I don't feel it's a knock on me. I'm quite deliberate in choosing the life I have, particularly my family life. It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
sho_hn 6 hours ago [-]
> It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
Regrets over which he struggled with in Family, and which bring him to tears later, in Generations. The writing was aware of the contradictions, which also elevated it.
cwillu 3 hours ago [-]
To say nothing of The Inner Light, where in a real sense he lives out the road not travelled.
It’s almost hard to imagine perhaps or maybe I’m biased but my grand father was very similar in manner to him. Otherwise I may have assumed such men did not exist.
For anyone somehow in this comment thread who didn’t watch Star Trek ds9, if you liked next gen you will probably like ds9 for all the same reasons (and many new ones)!
philipallstar 5 hours ago [-]
The only problem is the acting in DS9.
Der_Einzige 5 hours ago [-]
What the heck are you on about? Who’s the bad actor here?
They’re all excellent. Is Garek the bad actor? O’Brian? The doctor? Kira? The security chief? Quark?
I claim you’re wrong/delusional if you want to critique the acting in ds9. It has some problems, but acting quality is the high point of Star Trek in ds9 - because at least there’s no Wesley crusher (and yes siskos kid is more compelling than Wesley!)
m_fayer 2 hours ago [-]
I thought Kira was very much stuck in one note. Jadzia Dax had very little personality. But many were indeed excellent.
Der_Einzige 32 minutes ago [-]
I retort in regards to Kira literally all of the excellent mirror universe episodes and the one where they play bond villains in the holodeck with Bashir and Garek the hero's. Kira can play a good foil to herself. I think folks may get exasperated with a lot of the backstory around bajor in the early seasons.
Jadzia I agree is marginally weaker than some of the others, but I do think that a permanent trill character was very good for story writing, plus eye candy, plus relationship with word was okay. At least she was a hell of a lot better than sad replacement character from the last season.
Come to think of it, the OP may have simply seen a few of the last season episodes which get pretty bad.
pimeys 4 hours ago [-]
Man, the Cardassians are all such good characters in ds9... And Odo and Quark, and O'Brien...
add-sub-mul-div 5 hours ago [-]
A few years ago I saw a post somewhere captioned, "I think we know who the better captain is now". And I don't remember the details but it showed a picture of Patrick Stewart and a statement he'd made that was incredibly compassionate. Next to it was a picture of William Shatner and an old man "get off my lawn" type quote of his from some antiwoke rant.
philipallstar 5 hours ago [-]
I also like picking cherries.
shevy-java 7 hours ago [-]
> Stewart, of course, was far more than Picard. He anchored the X-Men film franchise and was for decades a dynamo on stage.
Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills
originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he
had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes
was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.
In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.
Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)
TFNA 6 hours ago [-]
The Xavier character in Logan was literally written as decrepit, senescent and dying. It was the job of makeup among the crew to make Stewart look that way. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Stewart's actual health at the time from that film.
Please don't use a tribute post as an opportunity to make personal attacks on the character of a person who has nothing to do with the deceased person.
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, particularly these sections:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes.
That works great in a utopian ideal where money isn't an issue. The Andy Yen's of the world become because being a petty tyrant in pursuit of profit is celebrated in some circles.
marginalia_nu 5 hours ago [-]
Proton had up until two days ago ostensibly cornered a niche of the market where they could basically collect taxes off security conscious nerds and other people wanting out of big tech. This wasn't a start-up with 3 months runway. Proton was by all accounts very financially stable.
The literally only way they could imaginably fuck up what they had was if they squandered the goodwill and trust of their users.
Avicebron 5 hours ago [-]
As a long time paid Proton user I'm looking for alternatives. Nothing I've seen from Andy Yen these past few days has given me a shred of confidence in the leadership there..
malfist 5 hours ago [-]
Andy Yen wants us to live in a dystopia where we all pray at the alter of maximum profit and sacrifice everything to it.
I refuse to believe we live in that world. While we're a long way from a star trek utopia, there's no reason to believe standing for morals and principles is impossible in this day and age. A lot of social media and the news are here to tell you thats a hopeless dream, but it's not. Get out an meet people especially the up and coming generation. People have been raised to be kind, and it shows.
The long arm of history bends towards progress not because of inevitability but because _we bend it_. Get out there, do the right thing and leave the world a little bit better than you found it. There's still plenty of profit in that. Enough to share even
Teever 5 hours ago [-]
Fred Rogers tells a story about his mother saying that any time there's a catastrophe that someone should look for the helpers.[0]
So if we look at this from that perspective, granting that the world is far from a utopia, who in our society is the closest to the kind person that the fictional character Jean-Luc Picard represents?
It sure ain't the usual suspects that we talk about here all the time, or whatever the dweeb villian of the week that just so happens to be Andy Yen this week, so maybe let's not talk about them for a bit.
Often Picard is compared to Kirk, but I find comparing Picard to sisko to be the much more interesting one.
Picard and Sisko are both excellent, thoughtful, nearly everything you say - and sisko still is quite not happy with Picard given th circumstances of the battle against the borg they fought in together!
m_fayer 2 hours ago [-]
Great thought. I think Sisko is Picard in a much more difficult, fallen, and true to life world. The utopia is receding, the man of principal faces trauma and angry traumatized people, terrible decisions to make under pressure. He’s a sadder character in a piece of culture with less room for optimism. I quite like him, and think he was a harbinger.
amelius 5 hours ago [-]
Would love to read "the tao of Picard" (if it existed)
leptons 5 hours ago [-]
I liked Patrick Stewart in the role, but it seems like people confusing the writing for the person doing the acting? Sure, he was great in that role, but Jean-Luc Picard was more about the writers than the man doing the acting. I mean, let's be real here. He was an actor playing a role, he didn't write the words he said, they were written for the show.
marginalia_nu 5 hours ago [-]
Picard is both the writing and Patrick Stewart. Picard would not be the same character if they'd cast Kevin Sorbo to play him[1]. Picard without Stewart's presence and gravitas would be something else entirely.
[1] Sorbo's portrayal of Dylan Hunt is basically just taking his Hercules role and putting him on a space ship and I have no doubt it would look the same on the bridge of the enterprise.
leptons 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not disagreeing with you, of course a different actor is going to give a different delivery, but Patrick Stewart has no writing credits on TNG. Everyone's quoting lines he said from the show, but he didn't write them, he delivered them. While he had a great delivery, people are attributing the lines to him, but they aren't actually his. I don't really want to bring down the vibe, but it's worth pointing out that good writing is what made the show what it was more than only the actors. If the writers wrote vapid lines, and he recited them, would we be having this conversation at all?
hungryhobbit 5 hours ago [-]
Plus, in long-running series like these writers (implicitly and explicitly) write for the actor. It's a bit chicken and egg-y, but you absolutely cannot (honestly) pretend that another actor would have the same lines written for them.
I mean, in season one sure, but by the time you get to "there are four lights" Stewart and Picard really are inseparable.
Barrin92 5 hours ago [-]
you know in an age where people so often look for male role models I've always wondered, does nobody show young men Star Trek any more?
Picard was deeply affectionate and learned when it came to history and culture but free from nostalgia or chauvinism, anti-authoritarian in leadership, tactical and intelligent rather than brash and violent, effectively everything you see less of among the ever more brutish and philistine people in charge around the world.
FranzFerdiNaN 5 hours ago [-]
Well you can watch 178 episodes of Star Trek and have to actually deal with episodes that force you to think and take the perspective of others, or you can doomscroll TikTok where alt-right influencers tell you all your problems are caused by women having bank accounts or whatever the manosphere is raging about this week.
elmer2 5 hours ago [-]
When you have a crew of people that are near the top of their game, it's not that hard to manage them.
Strong principals don't work when you have investors to contend with that will kick you out for one bad quarter.
In the age where biology doesn't seem to matter anymore and feelings rule over facts, the Picards of the world will be shunned, censored, and cancelled.
marginalia_nu 5 hours ago [-]
Proton is a for-profit owned by a non-profit foundation, and Yen is the majority shareholder of the company and board member of the Proton foundation. They were ostensibly also very financially stable. He had every opportunity to be a Picard. He chose to be a Ferengi instead.
whoanoway 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
axionbraid 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 03:43:53 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Perhaps it is uncomfortable for people to think about now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHAkfoxSFM
that entire episode was amazing
Star Trek used to try and say something andchallenge perspective, like good sci-fi does.
Every other star Trek has been just daytime soap opera but in spaaaaace. It's really sad. Or maybe I'm just older now and my glasses aren't as rose colored anymore. I don't know.
Back then writing on popular network TV shows could get away with beating the viewer over the head with a lesson/moral explicitly explained by a character with delivery about as subtle as an after school special. So a lofty Picard speech or whatever wouldn't stand out much from whatever else you'd see that night.
DS9 is still pretty earnest but you can start to see the evolution of writing/viewer taste as you get closer to the 2000s (also the freedom to follow the formulaic episodic structure of network TV a bit less rigidly).
I was like "nice Halloween costume" and he responded "Halloween? I just wore this for Patrick Stewart." I almost teared up.
Setting up your defence ahead of time I see:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
:)
(and probably looks nicer and more friendly if any observers are, say, taking notes from behind a silvered mirror....)
https://youtu.be/EMSQtqUIlXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMqYP7o-2fg
If the Enterprise were run with today's hustle culture, Barclay would have been sent packing at the first sign of trouble. Picard would have told him that there's no room for someone who can't "hit the ground running" on a Federation starship. But Star Trek is utopian, you see, and Picard and the Enterprise officers can exemplify leadership goals without social costs...
guess youtube has a different measure :P
To then take that scene and say "wow so relevant for LLMs" and ignore all the context it was made in (yes, please don't miss the irony of the importance of context) is frankly embarrassing.
But Data is not an LLM. I generally find LLMs to have more in common with the Borg than with Data. Only because they are pre-trained on the sum total of human knowledge. Should a new born really be able to write crc32 before being able to pick up a ball with it's hands? It's like that scene in Voyager when the Doc's clones are all mining instead of practicing medicine.
If models updated themselves based on feedback, then it'd be different. But they don't.
It is a hard case to make, but if we can't make a compelling case for ourselves should we be requiring it to be made for others.
The context, though, is that Data is both credibly conscious and self aware, and they all know a plausible mechanism for him to have consciousness and self awareness, in a way that's recognizably human in form. The more alien a (supposed) consciousness is, I think the more work you'll have to do in justifying the application of those labels.
I need to write this up properly someday but an ant from my colony that had almost drowned in honey showed some similar characteristics of consciousness...
After giving them a drop of honey, I left for 15 minutes and came back to an ant being stuck and motionless in the drop. I fished it out, rinsed it off in some water and then put it on a tissue to dry. I blew on it for 10 minutes and then saw some motion in the legs... a short moment after, it began wriggling about and then sat on its abdomen like a cushion and sat there for 5 minutes, looking like it was contemplating life and the ordeal it went through.
Once that 5 minutes was up, it returned to being an ant and started looking for its home, I brought it back and it went back into its nest.
I made up for the mistake by bringing the ant back to life and it showed me behaviour I never saw or heard of before (with no supporting mentions anywhere on the net).
(For the record, honey delivery is now more controlled to avoid these sticky situations, I'm not mad enough of a scientist to actually try this again for more results.)
Recently, they've started putting fly wings of the fruit flies that they get fed, on top of their water feeder to get my attention... it's really interesting to see them get creative.
The ant colony is 4.5 years old and numbers in about a dozen of workers at about 2mm in length, they only had 6 workers and a plump golden queen when I found them nested in one of my houseplants!
This is a difficult field. Any simple answer you hear will almost certainly be wrong.
I will make a case for both, after you define them in a way that doesn't also exclude many humans (including the neurodivergent or those with amnesia) or turn into self-referential nonsense like "conscious == human, therefore machine !== conscious."
In the meantime, we have a simple choice between two risks: Would you rather accidentally show kindness and empathy to a thing that may or may not have "deserved" it, or risk atrocities that will leave future generations as disgusted by you as we are of the slavers of old.
I will choose to be decent. It's free, and even if the cost were high the cost of evil is higher.
(*) of course in its own language
What are you basing this on? Why would LLMs exhibit sentience?
It does feel like people just like adding additional hype for the sake of being in on the hype. Fomo, pushed by oligarchs who would push their mother off a bridge for a trillion dollar IPO.
There's also the problem that to lay people, LLMs are sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. I suspect that colours many of these responses.
It's obvious a LLM can do anything a computer can do.
As an answer to "Why would LLMs exhibit sentience?"
It is because that would mean that no algorithm could exhibit sentience, claiming that would require some causal action that cannot be performed by an algorithm to create sentience. Some people like to point to quantum effects, but that would require the cause of sentience to be pure randomness. That seems even less plausible. Absent of any evidence that human brains are doing something that no algorithm could do, it would be reasonable to assume that sentience could be algorithmically obtained.
We've had computers that can do anything computers can do for as long as we've had computers.
Kind of like how we could have ran Qwen 3.8 27B 20 years ago on an expensive computer. The technology to make it happen, assuming you knew exactly what was required, existed back then.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov...
It’s like writing an obit about how much you like warmed hotdogs when local 7-11 worker dies and everyone sharing their taste for warm hotdogs in the comments.
I'm sure those writers were quite content writing for an actor of that calibre. Imagine putting words to the page, knowing Patrick Stewart will take them out into the world and surely stick the landing.
What a great combination.
We know Stewart was not a great writer, of course. When he had opportunities to take the reigns of the Picard character creativitely he usually asked for more action, and the results were a bit more conventional and boring. The combination was certainly also needed for the magic.
I always liked this video from an acting workshop where Suchet and Stewart deliver contrasting performances of Shylock and discuss their choices at length:
https://youtu.be/-35G7DOFrOo
https://youtu.be/FU_zqBIITDM
It's an actor's job to dramatise our projections, so from that POV he did a legendary job with TNG.
But there's a certain amount of learned skill involved. I know someone who used to work backstage at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She said that she'd all these famous names playing cards backstage, they'd get their call, turn on the juice, stride on stage, say their lines with the appropriate presence and gravitas, then turn the juice off again after the scene and pick up the card game where they left off.
Stewart's choice of roles and support for causes suggests there was more than that involved for him.
He wasn't Picard in real life, but he wasn't just acting either.
That said, Suchet's performance is magnetic but almost a bit too dignified to me. Stewart's take is not as handsome and agreeable, but makes perhaps more sense for Shylock - that raised-index-finger teach me moment is just sublime smartassery.
Suchet's Shylock is angry for being wronged, and rightly so. Stewart's Shylock is justifying his actions, and a little proud of himself for thinking of the justification. With modern eyes it's very compelling to side with Suchet's Shylock, of course, but it's perhaps not really the character. But then this duality is of course a great reason the play remains forever relevant and popular.
In your analogy, it is more like you know a great hot dog place in Chicago that has been around for decades, then the original owner dies, his kids take over, and it is bought out by private equity. The hot dog obit would be as much for the original creator as the hot dog itself.
If anything I'd say it's 50/50
Then you'll see how much different choices made by the actor can transform a script.
Imagine how different Star Wars would be without Jones.
It’s more like a famous chef dying and lots of people praising his food, and you’re here saying all credit should go to the farmers and the chef just assembled the stuff.
A bunch of different sous chefs contribute to the food, but only one head chef.
Nope, not adding up.
That is like praising chef for restaurant decor.
Acting has a lot to do with those attributes. Imagine Gilbert Gottfried playing the role and tell me you’d still describe the character that way.
Gottfried doesn't have the range to express those, of course. You undersell Stewart's work if you express it in terms of what some others can't do - that makes him sound interchangeable with those who can express the scripted character.
Just like, te actor who played Walter White was not a psycho. Those were not his words, values, invention.
In both cases, they played it.
At first, Ian Fleming, author of the Bond novels, considered the casting of the brawny Sean Connery in the role of his suave, lanky super-spy to be absurd. After having seen Dr. No, however, he was so impressed with Connery's performance that he wrote a Scottish backstory for Bond and, for Ian Fleming as much as for anyone else, Connery became the original and definitive "face" of Bond.
A different actor might've been picked to play Picard in season one. But how would that Picard have hit with audiences were it not for Stewart's delivery? And would the character have evolved in a different direction had the writers had a different actor in mind when imagining the character? (My money's on yes.)
I love how Jeordi just goes with it and tries to be play his mandolin
That out of the way, Brooks' Sisco is the much better captain, man, father, and role model and Brooks' acting in Ben, I feel, does a much better job.
I will sorely miss Stewart, as we all should. All the captains' actors and writers who made them should be too. What a great franchise and body of effort and work.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but DS9 got a lot better in season 4 when the writers from TNG got to move over finally after TNG ended. Also, VGR and DS( were concurrent for like 4 years, right?
But he was comparing it with his own previously lived dreams, ambitions, and experience. As someone who doesn't aspire to be famous, wealthy, a leader of many, etc., I don't feel it's a knock on me. I'm quite deliberate in choosing the life I have, particularly my family life. It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
Regrets over which he struggled with in Family, and which bring him to tears later, in Generations. The writing was aware of the contradictions, which also elevated it.
just click the "x" on the nag screen ...
They’re all excellent. Is Garek the bad actor? O’Brian? The doctor? Kira? The security chief? Quark?
I claim you’re wrong/delusional if you want to critique the acting in ds9. It has some problems, but acting quality is the high point of Star Trek in ds9 - because at least there’s no Wesley crusher (and yes siskos kid is more compelling than Wesley!)
Jadzia I agree is marginally weaker than some of the others, but I do think that a permanent trill character was very good for story writing, plus eye candy, plus relationship with word was okay. At least she was a hell of a lot better than sad replacement character from the last season.
Come to think of it, the OP may have simply seen a few of the last season episodes which get pretty bad.
Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.
In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.
Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)
Patrick Stewart has died
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294702
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, particularly these sections:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The literally only way they could imaginably fuck up what they had was if they squandered the goodwill and trust of their users.
I refuse to believe we live in that world. While we're a long way from a star trek utopia, there's no reason to believe standing for morals and principles is impossible in this day and age. A lot of social media and the news are here to tell you thats a hopeless dream, but it's not. Get out an meet people especially the up and coming generation. People have been raised to be kind, and it shows.
The long arm of history bends towards progress not because of inevitability but because _we bend it_. Get out there, do the right thing and leave the world a little bit better than you found it. There's still plenty of profit in that. Enough to share even
So if we look at this from that perspective, granting that the world is far from a utopia, who in our society is the closest to the kind person that the fictional character Jean-Luc Picard represents?
It sure ain't the usual suspects that we talk about here all the time, or whatever the dweeb villian of the week that just so happens to be Andy Yen this week, so maybe let's not talk about them for a bit.
Who is this[1] in our society?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LGHtc_D328
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
Picard and Sisko are both excellent, thoughtful, nearly everything you say - and sisko still is quite not happy with Picard given th circumstances of the battle against the borg they fought in together!
[1] Sorbo's portrayal of Dylan Hunt is basically just taking his Hercules role and putting him on a space ship and I have no doubt it would look the same on the bridge of the enterprise.
I mean, in season one sure, but by the time you get to "there are four lights" Stewart and Picard really are inseparable.
Picard was deeply affectionate and learned when it came to history and culture but free from nostalgia or chauvinism, anti-authoritarian in leadership, tactical and intelligent rather than brash and violent, effectively everything you see less of among the ever more brutish and philistine people in charge around the world.
Strong principals don't work when you have investors to contend with that will kick you out for one bad quarter.
In the age where biology doesn't seem to matter anymore and feelings rule over facts, the Picards of the world will be shunned, censored, and cancelled.