History Headscratchers / Westworld

** True that, which would further bias the self-selection towards people who were already pretty callous and heartless. Combine that with the fact that new entrants to Westworld are told that the Turing Test ''doesn't mean anything''...you have a part specifically tailored to attract the worst behaviors in humanity.

* We currently have enough trouble with the UncannyValley when modelling real human faces with [[https://vid.alarabiya.net/images/2015/04/14/747dcfae-07c0-4205-af91-07d2272d4daf/747dcfae-07c0-4205-af91-07d2272d4daf_16x9_788x442.jpg CGI]] and [[http://icdn6.digitaltrends.com/image/uncanny-valley-humanoid-android-with-creator-468x312.jpg animatronics]] where the result inevitably looks glassy-eyed and dead. We are terribly bad at creating and modelling a human face from scratch that never existed in real life without borrowing elements from other real faces. Part of what makes a human face so distinct are the years of history and life lived by its owner that can't be replicated well by a designer. So are the hosts designed from scratch? What if they're modeled on real people, living or dead?

* Why and how did Halores cooperate with Serac after he blew up her and her family? (If she wasn't cooperating with Serac, does that mean Clementine and Hanaryo were working for Halores alone? How?)

** There might also be a WeirdnessCensor in place.

** We also learn in S2E8 that the techs only bother to update hosts when they die. If a host isn't damaged, it's easier to leave it as it is- some guest or storyl ine will ensure their death eventually.

*** Alternately, the thermographic sight could've never been intended for use during a scenario at all - if a storyline requires the Gunslinger to track down a guest, the park's staff who monitor events via CCTV can just radio in and ''tell'' the robot where its next scene should be - but rather, to facilitate cleanup after an encounter has played out. Guest and Gunslinger play out gunfight at saloon, Gunslinger goes down, guest gets drunk celebrating and passes out on the floor, set lights go dark so guest can sleep it off, "dead" Gunslinger gets up and walks out under cover of darkness ''without'' stepping on visibly-hot guest.

** It's not much of a defence, but you ''can't'' exclude swords from [[TheThemeparkVersion Themepark]] [[TheMiddleAges Middle Ages]]. The vacations were 100% about the experience, and the experience in Medieval World would be inauthentic without them.

** The swords could potentially have been very blunt as well, similar to the swords reenactors use, you can swing them with a lot of force and do only minor damage, therefore only the robots could be set to react to them.

** One word: friction. An animal's bodyheat doesn't stick around long enough to stick to the footprints, anyhow. The friction heat caused by the steps themselves might.

** There are actual artificial-world games that have a similar free-form quality, such as the computer game ''[[VideoGame/SecondLife Second Life]]'' and the New York immersive theatre production ''[[Theatre/SleepNoMore Sleep No More]]'' (which has been selling high-price tickets for years).

** That they reset by night seems confirmed when the crew sent to pick up Clemetine note that she must have done something terrible for the order to have gone out to pick her up in the middle of the day, when guests could see.

** The system in place allows for targeted problem solving by Westworld employees to make realtime adjustments to the story to still have it function as best it can. Beyond what we see from the staff, it is conceivable that they deploy "distractions" to pull guests away from areas they are attending to. They also are willing to intercede when damage by a guest exceeds what they are able to handle in terms of cleanup.

** We also learn in S2E8 that the techs only bother to update hosts when they die. If a host isn't damaged, it's easier to leave it as it is- some guest or storyline will ensure their death eventually.

*** In a EW interview with creators they said "...the animals – aside from the flies – are hosts..." Granted, they didn't say flies were not in fact security cameras, but I took as an indication that flies are actual flies. Especially seing how a whole bunch of them were all over those half-dead men hanging on the trees in Whyatt trap in episode 3.

** Aethestics.

*** In Sweetwater the guests are always surrounded by hosts and under constant surveillance by the staff. A guest trying to harm another guest in town would be stopped under most circumstances. The further from Sweetwater the guests travel, the more intense the experience gets and more dangerous it gets to the guests. eg. in Pariah, hosts are allowed to beat up guests though not in a way that would do permanent harm. By traveling into the more dangerous areas, the guests seem to implicitly consent to the fact that they will not be protected as well and could get seriously hurt. Guests who want to go there have probably signed some sort of legal waiver.

** The staff can disable the guest's guns if they feel a shootout has gone too far and/or will interfere with other guest's storylines. After the Man in Black kills an entire posse, a staff member suggests shutting him down but is overruled because as a VIP, the Man in Black gets away with stuff normal guests do not.

* Granted, there is a sizeable number of people running the park and constantly monitoring everyone, but what if there was a natural disaster or a terrorist attack? Or, I don't know, an employee that is sabotaging the park? If you're a guest, you're miles away from the nearest city, you can't call anybody or even trigger an emergency beacon because you voluntarily gave all that up. You didn't even get an orientation of any kind so you're on your own. It seems your only alternatives are either to walk out of the park without even a compass or a map, or go to back to Sweetwater, follow the railroad tracks back to the Mesa Gold and hope for the best.

*** Yet those above activities have one thing in common; informing the people of the risks. Airliners have mandatory safety briefings on the location of the exits, the oxygen masks, and floatation devices. On Cruise ships, they have GPS locator systems, life jackets and life boats with food, water and radios along with safety drills. That equipment and information can make the difference between you walking away and dying. In the United States, the US Department of State maintains a website chock full of information about International travel, including a list of travel advisories and warnings about other countries. There's also the news as something like the possibility of civil war breaking out would be newsworthy.
*** By contrast, both explained by the viral website and by Angela, there is "no orientation, no guidebook." Delos repeatedly states that you are in no real danger and that if there's an emergency they'll whisk you to safety, but there are no other details. Granted, there may be discussion groups, blogs and walk-throughs in the real world and it would be up to the guest to weigh the risks involved. But the lack of "what to do in an emergency" from the company selling you the vacation itself should be a red flag. In other words, Delos is deliberately downplaying the risks and providing no meaningful safety information. [[spoiler: In light of recent events with Dr. Ford, it seems that there's little to no interest in truly safeguarding the lives of anyone.]]
*** It may be worth noting that from the scant descriptions we have of the world outside, things like terrorism, for example, may simply not be a problem anymore. Ford's monologue to Bernard makes the world sound fairly utopian. Obviously, there's a dark underbelly to it, but it's quite possible that in many cases the kinds of dangers being discussed simply don't occur to people anymore because they've been all but eliminated in the "real world."

* Why don't either of them run to Security or Behaviour to tell them about Maeve despite her threatening them both repeatedly? Why does Felix follow her every suggestion? Why did they amp her intelligence and lower her loyalty instead of the very opposite and undo her as a threat?
** Felix has a ForScience thing going on. He appears to legitimately be interested in (and terrified to an extent, but still fascinated by) Maeve's sentience and development. Sylvester is more of a case of self-preservation. He was at first bullied into helping her because Maeve literally had him at knifepoint, after that it was a case of them having crossed a line: if they told management, they'd be fucked either way because of what they already did. So now they're just digging themselves deeper.

* It's not like every single host is superbly attractive. The Confederate general, that malfunctioning sheriff in the first episode, etc. As noted, fat or unattractiveness can be an important narrative trait.

[[folder: How does Maeve know how the storylines go?]]
It's unclear exactly how much time has passed since Maeve got her core stuff boosted, but how does she know how every storyline in the park will go (down to Armistice's "you damn fool" line)? Is she somehow connected to the other hosts? Is there a big database of storylines she has access to? Has she actually ''lived through'' all the storylines, like in Film/GroundhogDay, so she knows what will happen because of that?

* It's implied Maeve spent a while with that tablet after having her intellect boosted - she could have used it to read up on the park's storylines.

** It could be some eccentricism on his or his family's part. Perhaps the vacation took place in a similar park to Westworld, where guests could dress up to suit a time period. Perhaps this was what planted the seeds of Westworld in Ford's mind?

** A possible solution to this is that Ford's initial plan was to use the massacre as cover while Maeve escaped - as Bernard notes, her newly-programmed storyline had her arrive at "the Mainland" and then proceed with some secret task, then perhaps live out the rest of her days among humanity. She scuppered that by deciding to retrieve her 'daughter' first.

* So... Bernard is a host that looks, sounds, dresses and behaves exactly like Ford's old partner Arnold. There is a picture of them together. Dolores recognizes him. Why doesn't anyone else? Unless Delos or Ford was able to retroactively make him disappear, there would be all kinds of records of Arnold's existence leading up to the opening of Westworld. He was married. He obviously was a big name in the tech industry. His university probably had him on the board or at least used him as a gigantic promotional tool for their Comp Sci department. Then he's killed in the park... and apparently vanishes from the collective memory? And after that, several years later, there's a new hire who looks and sounds just like Arnold down to his choice of glasses who becomes Ford's right-hand man... and no one thinks that's odd at all? Especially considering that Westworld specializes in making lifelike humanoid replicants?

* Think about it a little longer and you get: William cheated on his wife with a plastic sex doll. Then it broke his heart by rebooting. William didnt reach the “dispair event horizon;” there was something fundamentally wrong with him to begin with.

** Quite so, yet there's a vast difference between scripted computer-generated characters running on a single networked video game console and a real environment populated by artificial beings. You aren't merely interacting with the environment with a gamepad, you are fully immersed in a real environment populated by beings that can pass the Turing Test.

*** But literally everyone has access to at least cutlery (if not outright bladed weapons). We see Logan stab a host in the hand with a fork. Presumably, a guest can mistake another guest for a host and stab them in the eye. Creators said there's a good Samaritan device in place, where a nearby host will sense that something like this is about to happen and will take the harm instead or will try to intervene seamlessly to prevent it (we see this where Teddy instantly intercepts Black Hat when he threatens Ford). But what if something like this happens in a remote area with no hosts nearby? Some guests are pretty violent AND drunk, so yelling in their face "I'm not a robot" might not work quick enough to stop them...

*** But literally everyone has access to at least cutlery (if not outright bladed weapons). We see Logan stab a host in the hand with a fork. Presumably, a guest can mistake another guest for a host and stab them in the eye. Creators said there's a good Samaritan device in place, where a nearby host will sense that something like this is about to happen and will take the harm instead or will try to intervene seamlessly to prevent it. But what if something like this happens in a remote area with no hosts nearby? Some guests are pretty violent AND drunk, so yelling in their face "I'm not a robot" might not work quick enough to stop them...