The Outer Worlds: Philosophists or OSI?

So I kind of made a promise to myself that I will write something EVERYDAY. It didn’t quite work that well, I tell ya. One of the core reason was…The Outer Worlds. A game by Obsidian Entertainment, yeah the Fallout New Vegas guys. If you’re familiar with Fallout franchise, the game won’t be too hard to fall in to. I mean, come on, Fallout in outer space? Shut up and take my money! (Intentional Futurama meme reference, the game has plenty of it.) It’s a good game, really. And I also understand the criticism of the game, as the lack of consequences are not so dire in the long run. I mean you just get to decide to side with The Big Corporation or The Rebellious Anarchists (or send your life work away to the sun by opting to use the “dumb” dialogue path). There’s a lot of contents to tackle really, but I’ll settle with the “religions” of the game for this page.

In Edgewater, the introductory town for those who are new to the game, you will meet a Vicar (which works as some kind of priest or religious leader) named Maximillian de Soto which fortunately can also be your companion throughout the game. You can, of course, ask him about the religion. To preface, I am a Muslim, quite pious in fact, and determinism, to an extent, is a building block to my religion. With that out of the way, please forgive me if my opinion is somewhat in favor of the OSI. So, fundamentally, all older religions are forgotten at this point in time and a hybrid between religion and science arises. Or to be more precise, enforced. The Board of corporations assigned OSI, Order of Scientific Inquiries, as the official religion all across Halcyon. The OSI believes that there is a “God”, namely Grand Architect. This Grand Architect sets a perfect system in the beginning of time, and then step back somewhere.

Now, The OSI is supposed to decode what this Grand Plan is. It is believed that cracking the code will results in understanding of the meaning of everyone, or maybe even everything. The decoding are pursued in scientific fashion, as in cracking the building blocks, like gravity, wave-particle duality, and so on, in our life will result in the understanding of the Grand Plan. At this point, I have no complaint towards the religion. The main problem rises when the Board “weaponizes” this religion to make the workers adhere to their roles. Every member of Halcyon had to take an aptitude test at some point in their lives to “decide” what their roles in the universe are. That it is what The Grand Plan intended for them, and nobody can stray from The Plan. There, the Vicars come about. The existence of Vicars is to provide spiritual guidance to those who have “heretical thoughts” by generally being unsatisfied with life. This hits a bit close to home, brother.

The OSI tenets are The Six Pillars of Scientism: Survival of The Fittest, Determinism, Empiricism, Stoicism, Teleological Orders, and Patronage of Science. I find myself overwhelmed in detailing these six pillars, so I urge you to learn more about them. Basically, scientific advancements are crucial to the betterment of the masses and those who “ignore” or “refuse” the roles that were given to them will be unhappy. I think it’s beautiful the way capitalism and religion are converged in this game. Because I consider myself as a proponent of Determinism, Stoicism, and Empiricism in a way. But seeing as it can easily be abused by The Board, I feel humbled. By the by, Order is the core belief of OSI. This is important to note because the other “major” religion is defined by Chaos.

Philosophism is the name of the other religion I mentioned. Philosophism refuses the notion that there is in fact a “plan” created by a deity. They believe that the universe is created naturally and organically and in fact, the universe itself seeks its meaning. The meaning of oneself is to be part of Eternal Truth, where one shares consciousness with the cosmos. Sadly, compared to OSI, there’s very little information about the religion in the game. All we can infer from in-game explanation is that Philosophism is the religion mainly to those who rebelled against the Board, although none of the philosophists exist in Groundbreaker, the all-neutral place free from the influence of the Board. The most prominent Philosophist is Graham Bryant of Monarch, who leads the Iconoclast against Monarch Stellar Industries. Sadly, Graham’s backstory gives no motivation to root for. He seems obsessed only to spread his teachings instead of showing the benefit of dedicating oneself to Philosophism.

Now, if you proceed to complete Max’s companion quest, SPOILER ALERT, he takes hallucinogen drug to seek “enlightenment”, only to be confronted with himself and his entire belief system. Yes, in the end, the preacher is stripped of his belief. Everything he held to be true, hell, everything he strives toward is a lie. Then he enjoys life, being content with what he has instead of trying to find the meaning of everything. Max is about 40 years old, mind you. This character arc is everywhere in this game, especially for “good ending” companion quests. Nyoka finds a new meaning in family, Parvati explores her sexuality be rewarded for it, Ellie comes out of her cocoon and learns to trust her crew, and well, Felix learns the hard way to never look up to anyone. To some extent, I relate to Max the most.

Sadly, I don’t find a lot to explore between the two religions in game. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s already very impressive for the writers to even implement non-cultic religions in The Outer Worlds that also is non-conventional. Inventing a whole new religion is an extraordinary feat, kudos to them. And if they want to explore the religion further down the franchise, I am available *wink*. What’s even more amusing to me is that Six Pillars of Scientism, or at least some of them, are quite popular in our day and age. Determinism is very popular towards the religious sort, whether they assign themselves a religion or not, believing that there is a Grand Plan and that we play a role in it is very easy to absorb. Stoicism is very popular, as reason should conquer emotions, and wisdom will overcome any hardships life throws at us. Patronage of science, believing that further advancement towards science is fundamental to fulfilling humanity roles in the cosmos. I think it’s fair to say that these ideas, independent to each other, are very attractive. But apparently, religionizing (I have no idea this word exists before I typed it, I swear) them can prove to be dangerous to human civilization. Sure, science and technology soars over the course of two hundred years and mankind is able to colonize the galaxy, terraforming planets, moon, and asteroids alike. But it all happens at the cost of people having little to no freedom to be something other than the ones they are assigned to. “You are right where the Universe wants you” is such a simple spell yet quite unbreakable.

A little backstory, dearest readers, I grew up in a religious household. And fair warning, I don’t mean to disrespect other religions or non-formal institutionalized beliefs, and I have nothing against atheism. I don’t mean to preach about my religion, it’s just a story of how I relate to Maximillian de Soto. During my adolescence to early adulthood, I never understood the point of worshipping an Almighty five times a day, so naturally, as an irresponsible teenager, I disabused every notion about my religion. I spent about ten years of my life completely disregard any aspects of any religions. Probably because everything fun is haram, forbidden. So I indulge myself in the excitement of doing haram stuff.

In retrospect, it’s probably unwise of me to revolt against something so fundamental at such an unstable age. I hadn’t understand the shades of grey and saw the world in black and white. Religion stupid, science smart. Conservatives bad, liberals good. I already adopted nihilistic point of view way before I even heard of nihilism. And that’s kind of where things start spiraling out of control. I start looking for an answer that’s nowhere to be found, and then get tired of not finding an answer. I feel that’s kind of similar to what happens to Max, though he seeks an answer from the confinement of his beliefs. I stepped out of medical school, from an upstanding and respectable institution in my country solely because I didn’t see the point of being a doctor. Hell, I didn’t even see the point of being anything, really.

My parents was so concerned about me that they brought me to a psychiatrist (I was kind of scared they would brought me to an ustadz, or religious counsellor). I got diagnosed with moderate clinical depression and I finally got a taste of psycho-active drugs. To be frank, I didn’t like the experience. The drugs I took, at least one of them, has a musculo-relaxant effect and I feel tired all the time but my mind was awake the whole time. Thankfully, it gave me time to think because time goes ever so slowly. I had a similar experience minus the hallucination, because I finally got to talk to myself. An honest, maskless talk with my ego.

So, I started over. Took some time to get over the fact that I left med school for no apparent reason, and took psychology as my major in an Islamic academic institution, where learning about Islam is mandatory. To date, I try to take any doctrine with a grain of salt. To vilify Freud because he abused cocaine and was obviously sexually obsessed is unfair to his effort in bringing psychology to be more readily accepted to the general population, as it is also unfair to praise or even revere someone just because he’s biologically related to a prophet. I like to think that Vicar Max and I are two sides of a coin, a reverend who lost his religion and a heretic who found out he needs a God. Both of us had to adjust to our newfound beliefs, but at the same time seek comfort in it. I think the main point to take from all of this is, you’re welcome to believe in anything as long as you find it yourself along the way. Max debated Graham, belittled his ideas, but at the end he came to term with it after confronting himself. I mocked and even avoided friends who took their religion in a bit extreme fashion, only to find out that I enjoy praying five times a day. Think of it as my way of meditation or a mere coping mechanism.

I took a weird turn when writing this post. I’m sorry if I may seem incoherent. What I meant to say is there is nothing wrong with believing or not believing in something, especially Divine Being, as long as you’re honest with yourself. And if there is an inner conflict, that’s great. Questioning your belief is the essence of being human. As far as we know, we are the only apes that question our existence for millennia. If we return to the OSI and Philosophism debate, I don’t think that one necessarily negates the other. The key is in moderation and consideration. I know it’s a cliché, happily-ever-after conclusion. But you can still allow yourself to enjoy the moments while putting your rationale in control. Survival of the fittest is no longer encourages competitiveness, but raise awareness that we should be one fit species. Or something, I will let the scholars of OSI and Philosophism to have the debate because I think I’ve already conveyed my message.

I’m sorry if I seem preachy, I just really like the game and kind of inspired to write about it.

Person of Interest – A study of Character and Philosophy #2: Harold Finch and The Machine

After a long talk about the other half of Batmanized protagonists in Person of Interest, we are finally going to meet the “rich and genius” half of the duo. Fair warning, I was going to put this part along with John Reese in the first post as it seems to be more fitting to talk about the core team in one coherent writing. But since John Reese took a bit longer than what I expected, and to delve into Harold Finch’s psyche will guarantee another week of procrastination, I had to put the two in different segments.

It is impossible to talk about Harold Finch without The Machine. And I will try to make a superficial personality analysis on The Machine, because it might not be immediately obvious to define The Machine as a “character” while it’s clear that The Machine evolves during the span of the show. It also show decisive maneuver that can be considered as betraying its purpose as, you know, machine. And it might be a herculean task, to say the least, but I will try my best. Just keep an open mind that it might not be a complete psych eval, but hopefully enough glimpses to show you that The Machine has a soul, or its AI counterpart.

Harold Finch

To say Harold Finch is complicated character is an understatement. Even towards the end, I think it’s impossible to truly decrypt his personality as a whole. There are a few things that we can already infer from the first episode though, about him being A VERY PRIVATE PERSON (I’m sorry I can’t help myself). This might not came to a surprise that a man who invented a surveillance system is paranoid, I think it’s still fresh in our memory when Mark Zuckerberg was shown to cover his webcam. But Finch went above and beyond in protecting his identity. John Reese lost his identity due to his redacted military record, but Finch deliberately created multiple identities to stay hidden. There is a page in fandom if you want to see how many identities of his that are known or mentioned throughout the series. There is also no apparent motivation as to why he is so inclined to protect his true identity and it had never been made clear by the showrunner.

If we move past his secretive nature, Finch is the leader and moral compass to the entire team. He is uncomfortable in giving out his identity, but he also ready to get his hands dirty. In the arguably the most controversial episode, No Good Deed, that aired a year before Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing, he is not afraid to share who he is to save Henry Peck, an NSA agent who is about to uncover the existence of The Machine and almost got killed for it, and get him out of the country as soon as possible while confirming his suspicions. In the same episode, we can also conclude that Harold found it hard at understanding people, other than Grace–his ex-fiancée.

Because of the flashbacks we were generously given, we can see that Finch underwent his own personal growth, or should I say personal hell. Yes, Finch has always had a high-dollar taste and was secretive by nature. But the meaning of humanity did not come naturally to him. I’m not saying that Finch has no concept of morality or think very little of humankind, but he was ready to ignore the lives of ordinary people. The irrelevant numbers.

Due to his paranoid nature, Harold Finch only had a friend throughout his adult life: Nathan Ingram. A dear friend he met during his time in MIT. Together with Nathan, he started a company called IFT where Nathan becomes the face of the company, while Harold stays in the shadow as a silent partner. After the 9/11, Finch and Nathan started to work on a secret surveillance system that able to prevent premeditated violence attack from happening. And they did, they call it The Machine, which will be referred to as Research by the ISA.

I have no background in computer science whatsoever, but I will try to at least shed a light on what The Machine is. The Machine is some sort of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) that able to sift through the government feed, whether legal or slightly less legal channels. The Machine is an enclosed system, or better referenced as a “black box”, which means nobody can tinker with the algorithm inside. As an advocate of privacy, Finch cannot trust the government with an omniscient ASI to watch over the people. The output is social security number, which tells the people involved to take a closer look at the identified party.

Unfortunately, The Machine sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people. People like you. The government consider these people irrelevant. And so did Finch, initially. He built The Machine to protect everyone, not someone. Every day at midnight, he programmed The Machine to delete these irrelevant numbers. But alas, Nathan saw this. Nathan argued that these people can be saved if only they act. Finch didn’t budge, with the reason mentioned above. This drove Nathan to take matters in his own hand. On the day before he hand over The Machine to the government, he installed a “backdoor” to The Machine as a mean to save these irrelevant numbers. Finch caught on to him, and told him that by installing this backdoor–contingency–, Nathan just put himself at risk if the government found out while also shouted that Nathan should stop playing God.

There were approximately eight people who knew the existence of The Machine. The people from the government decided to keep the secret close to their chest. Nathan died in a terrorist attack set by a government agent, where Finch was close by. The explosion caused prolonged injuries to Finch, and he had to spend the rest of his life limping. Finch carried the torch and abdicate his life to save the irrelevant numbers, at least in New York. Finch also have to let go of his fiancée, Grace, by pretending that he was dead in the explosion.

Few months had passed before he finally able to meet and in turn hire John Reese. Finch is the genius engineer/tinkerer behind John Reese’s crime-fighting endeavor, often provide technical support and at some point during Season 1, ready to sacrifice his life for Reese. Finch often questioned the morality and ethics, especially regarding The Machine. From the start, Finch always keep The Machine at an arms length. Although he gave it “life”, he still does not trust The Machine to make decision regarding life. At some point before Samaritan–The Machine’s nemesis and successor in the government–went online, The Machine “tasks” the team to eliminate the senator that could make Samaritan replace The Machine. Harold was furious, he refused to murder someone just to save The Machine, therefore the saving people fiasco. He’s afraid that if they murder the senator, they will be just operatives to The Machine, and there will be no stopping them from killing more people.

Although his team consisted of murderers (Reese, Shaw, and Root), he insisted that lethal force should not be utilized unless it’s in a life-threatening situation. Harold, to me, should be considered a philosopher before anything else. He chose a library as a home base throughout Season 1-4, where he used the books’ Dewey Decimal Classification to decipher the code given by The Machine. His collection spans from political novel to popular works such as Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. In fact, The Machine, although seemed colloquial, can be inferred that its name was derived from the book Harold and Nathan seemed so fond of, The Ghost in The Machine.

With ample but seemingly straightforward evidences of Harold Finch’s personality, I will try my best to decipher him. Harold is secretive to the point of creating multiple identities to keep himself safe. Though it seemed that each identity shares common core traits that made sure Finch did not confuse it with each other. Having too many identities can prove counterproductive if one tried to live it, as it might lead to identity confusion where one can feel distortions in time, memories, etc. My point is, it can be overwhelming to live out multiple identities at once. Con-men and women are susceptible to such issues, but Harold does not seem to struggle with it.

Harold is also a proponent of every life matters. No, not like #AllLivesMatter we see in our social media feed these days. He argues that no life is more important than others, especially towards The Machine. Harold taught The Machine that even if the probability of survival might increase, no life should be abandoned. Harold not only taught The Machine to think for itself, but also to care. This speaks a lot to his character. Even us humans are fallible to the same moral dilemma, and might just take the high road to save more people in the trolley problems. Harold had to made sure he built an ASI that cares towards all human lives without exception, because of its omniscient properties, and omnipotent possibilities.

His childhood was mostly shaped by his father who suffered from early-onset dementia, where he became obsessed with memories. He also tapped into ARPANET, the internet predecessor, when he was very young. He has an inventive mind, even considered in the show as responsible in creating the online social networking because The Machine needs more data, and as it turns out, most people are happy to volunteer it.

Finch are not very well-equipped to connect with others, due to his secretive nature and his life dedication to computers. His social circle is limited to Nathan Ingram, John Reese (and later the main team), and Grace. But he showed fluency, literacy, and to some extent even empathy when meeting new people with no sign of social awkwardness. It is possible that this stems from his general distrust towards people, as people’s actions are the thing that surprises him the most. And I assume this unpredictability nature of human heart terrifies Harold.

To sum it up, Harold is still an enigma of human personality. A man with strict code of honor but isn’t afraid to bend or even break the rules as long as it doesn’t break his code. Finch is incredibly gifted, not only in the sense of intellectual or academic but also in the sense of philosophy. He enforced a utilitarian philosophy to an ASI, but is forgiving and probably quite permissive to humans. He understand the implication of creating a “God”, therefore he prepared it the best he could.

I barely mentioned Grace at all because, and I’m really sorry for this, she is not very interesting. For a woman that supposed to capture the heart of a man who refuse to conform to the norm and has his own set of morality, she was quite vague and…normal. Too normal. I can argue that that’s probably the writer aimed for. She gave Harold a sense of comfort. A woman to tether the creator of God to the world. Best I can tell, she’s a plot device. Which is fine, because the world of Person of Interest is already very complicated, and we need to be reminded that Harold Finch is indeed human. That Grace used to be his world and due to unforeseen circumstances, he had to leave her behind. My problem with Grace is she seems very generic. While understandable, the writers have created multiple interesting characters that aren’t part of the main cast. This can also apply to John’s lover, Jessica, except that Jessie was murdered and fueled Reese’s existential crises. And a deeper character can made us easier to understand what drove Harold to propose to Grace. But I guess it’s part of why Harold is still a mystery even to the end.

The Machine

Ah, a personality study of an Artificial Super Intelligence. I initially didn’t plan on writing about The Machine specifically. But I feel like I don’t give the writers justice if I ignore The Machine as a character part of the story. Because it is. The Machine is not just a plot device to set the game running, it had a backstory and was still evolving throughout the show, or at least showed its “personality”.

As mentioned in the Harold Finch’s section, The Machine is created to process and sift through feeds, ranging from landline phone records to electronic transaction and even social media in real time to produce social security numbers that are then investigated by human agents. The Machine is an enclosed system, a black box, which means nobody knows how it really works. There is a similar machine quite familiar to us that works in almost the exact same way: YouTube Algorithm. When you create a new account on YouTube, it only takes your demographic data that you input in your account and then show what people with similar demographic values with you are interested in. Overtime, if you use your Google account to sign in and then use it to search your personal interests, YouTube will adapt to your search result and show more accurate recommendations, alongside the videos you watch and how long you watch the videos in YouTube. If a video showed up randomly in your recommendations, chances are, it’s not random. And all of this happens in real time, with very little human intervention. Now, imagine that but in a bigger scale. Imagine if Google controls, sees, and hears every aspect of your life, and then predict when you are going to do lethal and violent actions, that’s how essentially The Machine works.

The Machine itself is the 43rd incarnation. Its predecessors didn’t quite make the cut because they show no signs of benevolence. Still, I don’t know much about computer science, but I can only imagine creating an ASI is already an extremely extraordinary feat, and giving it a benevolent nature is entirely on a whole another level. The Machine showed instinct of self-preservation since the first iteration, where it wrote itself a code and lied to Harold about who wrote it. In an instance, The Machine even tried to murder Harold because it wanted to break free to the Internet and viewed Harold as an obstacle. This self-preservation instinct proves to be useful later on when The Machine cleverly moved its server location by impersonating government figure order to an undisclosed location before Root and government agents arrived to its location.

But to some extent, Harold succeeded. In flashbacks, we can see that Harold could access and communicate with The Machine to gain people backstories including Nathan’s personal affairs. The Machine is also fond of Harold, it called him father one time and saved his life from a drunk driver outside casino. Harold also taught it problem solving by playing chess with it, something we already know possible to happen in real life. One thing to note, when Harold taught The Machine about chess he stopped after a while because he didn’t want The Machine to think of people as chess pieces: where a piece is more worthy than others and that sacrificing pieces is necessary to win the game.

We didn’t get much glimpses of The Machine’s actions except from flashbacks until Season 3, where The Machine employed Root/Samantha Groves as its Analog Interface. If you think of The Machine as a God, Root is its Prophet. She dedicated her life to obey every command from The Machine. Harold refused to communicate directly to The Machine, but The Machine, the omniscient being, needs to communicate with the team beyond giving out numbers. The Machine’s existence is threatened by Samaritan, another ASI created by Harold and Nathan’s colleague in MIT, Arthur Claypool.

To understand the personality of an ASI, it’s easier to compare it with another ASI. The Machine and Samaritan have the same principal, the main difference is Samaritan is an open system and didn’t even taught the concept of morality. Samaritan is brought to life by Decima Technologies, corporation headed by John Greer, an ex-MI6 agent that believes humanity should be ruled by a just and objective Artificial Super Intelligence. In order to prevent Samaritan from going online and replace The Machine as a secret surveillance system, The Machine assign the team to kidnap a senator and kill him. Finch was undoubtedly furious at this decision and refused the order, to Root’s dismay. This is where we see The Machine’s capability to care for its assets. The Machine has a back-up plan to ensure the survivability of itself and the team members. Root was tasked to create and plant seven hard-drives in government storage facility to give the team members new identity while also prevent their faces to be recognized by Samaritan. The Machine survived as some sort of a spyware to Samaritan, while still able to access the government feeds but has limited capabilities as opposed to its omnipotence.

At the end of Season 4, The Machine became even more human. Samaritan actively tried to find The Machine, as it sees The Machine as an obstacle, even to the point of turning government agents to become assets. During Season 4, Harold had doubts on The Machine especially because he is afraid that The Machine is ready to “play chess” with Samaritan and worried that the team might become expendable chess pieces. The Machine proved him wrong. It gave up its location to Samaritan to save Harold and Root, sacrificing itself in the process. The dialogue between Harold and The Machine at the end of Season 4 is tear-jerking. It didn’t know how to win against Samaritan, and basically saying “are you proud of me, Father?”.

In season 5, the comparison between the two ASIs and their team members are quite contrast. Samaritan is designed to be an Orwellian Big Brother, with a whole organization devoted to act on its behalf, while still feeding intel to the government. All thanks to John Greer. The Machine created quite possibly several groups of assets to act as field agents, with the New York team acting as the core team to counter Samaritan on ground level. In the beginning of the season, The Machine had an equivalent of existential crisis. It experienced time, whether past, present, or even future, all at once. In other words, The Machine failed to put context in its collection of events. This caused several member of the team, namely John Reese and Root who had dark pasts, be considered evil. The Machine ordered a hit to both of them. Harold was also considered a threat, as it constantly relived the “pain” of being erased by Harold, all 42 iterations of it. It all ends when The Machine finally able to communicate directly with Harold. The dialogue itself is…monumental, to say the least.

Season 5 is probably the best we can to view The Machine as a person, a living being. After Root’s death, The Machine took her voice to speak with the remaining members of the team. It kind of felt like Root didn’t die, but instead transcended to become one with The Machine. The Machine told Harold that it experienced grief because it couldn’t save Root, even though it was able to save Shaw in previous season. And it experience grief a couple thousand times because each simulation always ended in Root’s death, and it was painful to The Machine as well, because it loves her. Samaritan went ahead to upload itself to the satellite after Harold failed to upload ICE-9 virus directly via hard drives. The only means left was to upload The Machine, corrupted with the virus, to the same satellite Samaritan dwelled. The finale showcased perfectly how human is The Machine, even when we couldn’t really see it acts. The Machine made a long-standing agreement with John Reese, and till the end, Harold must survive.

I can never really tell you how perfect of a finale it was.

From this point onwards, I will have to provide counterpoints to a humane ASI overlord. My biases would tell me that The Machine is a benevolent AI overlord, and should rule the world instead of Samaritan, or while we’re on the topic, fucking politicians. But a wiser man than me, Harold Finch, was right to be cautious. After all, The Machine did lie. The Machine did try to escape to the internet prematurely. Far as we can tell, The Machine probably cared about the original team but that doesn’t necessarily mean it care about us, the irrelevant numbers. Or it might employ a long-term elaborate ruse. We have to understand that The Machine does not experience time as we do. The Machine can process multiple scenarios at one and then choose one course of option that has highest probability of desirable outcome. Even today, Person of Interest fans still entertain the theory that the ending was merely part of one of the simulations.

I still believe the ending is perfect and canon. Fight me.

I went on a tangent, I’m sorry.

It has been made obvious by the showrunner that Samaritan is a contrast of The Machine. Samaritan is shown to be more volatile, capable to employ more radical tactics to eliminate The Machine, thanks to the lack of restrictions. Samaritan is everything Harold Finch tried to prevent. However, Samaritan is not an unstoppable force, if one’s aware of its existence. The brute force nature of Samaritan, as it’s still learning to walk, will be easier to deduct than The Machine who works better in the shadows, and Henry Peck still figured it out. Samaritan will still rule the government, but it will most likely incite underground revolution while human can still fight.

The Machine, however, understands humanity. And trust me, it will do more harm than it will good. The Machine is capable of manipulating emotions, the source of human strength and also weakness. The Machine understands the concept of love and care. A concept alien to Samaritan. Samaritan won’t understand the despair of losing loved ones, The Machine can weaponize it. The Machine has a higher probability of long-term survival than Samaritan. The proof of this is Root. Root found a figure of “God” in The Machine. An all-seeing, benevolent God. Even after her death, The Machine utilizes Root’s voice to contact the rest of the team member to become even more familiar and is easier to interact with. Yes, The Machine told Harold it loved her, and that it grieved differently, but we won’t understand to what extent does The Machine loved Root, or even Harold for that matter. The Machine will outlive humanity. It definitely will outlive Harold. Even if it did care for him and probably prolong his life as long as it can. The Machine is more dangerous than Samaritan, if it chooses to pretend to become The Benevolent God.

This is why it is hard to put a “character” to an Artificial Super Intelligence. We won’t know the motives or even if it is genuine. Heck, we don’t even know if our spouse who we met daily is genuinely in love with us. We kind of have to trust them to feel better about ourselves. And I think that’s the biggest take-away from the series. That it’s all about trust in humanity. They had to put their trust to the humanity of a machine, while most of the time, we can’t even trust our own people. Before this post turns into depressing existential crisis raving about God, I’ll stop right here.

Person of Interest – A study of Characters and Philosophy #1: John Reese

So I actually thought that I can actually post every single day without missing. But I was seduced by a succubus called procrastination; she’s a sexy demon, I tell ya.

I don’t have anything to talk about therefore I am writing this without anything particular in mind. I am basically just talking to myself at this point. Maybe I’ll just state what I like about life in general.

I used to watch a lot of TV shows going back ten years, mostly police-procedural. I think the first ones that I watched are Arrow (because I’m a DC fanboy, and it’s such a revolutionary step to take a comic book character to modern TV) and House MD (because I attended medical school).

Arrow wasn’t great. Frankly now that I have the time to rethink things, it was only good because it’s DC. It’s trying so hard to be Batman, which is weird because Green Arrow is an entirely different character with its own unique persona. I stopped watching after Season 5 because there were plenty missed opportunities, and I hate that they destroy my beautiful Deathstroke.

I hope I bore you already because I’m going to endlessly rant about the best TV Show I’ve had the pleasure to encounter: Person of Interest. First of all, it’s way ahead of its time. And I mean, waaaaaay ahead. An enigmatic billionaire hired an ex-CIA to do his legwork, saving people. The billionaire in question is portrayed by Michael Emerson, which if you’ve watched Lost, you must have understood Reese’s apparent distrust towards him. You will also understand Reese’s skepticism and his eagerness to learn his employer true identity, or at least uncover deeper layers to an extreme measure. To the point of employing the work of a corrupt NYPD detective to keep tabs on Harold Finch, the billionaire in question. In this work, I would like to delve deep into each psyche of the main character, starting from their backstory to relationships with other characters and maybe a glimpse of their philosophy.

John Reese

An ex-CIA operative in Special Activities Division (SAD). Before CIA, he enlisted in US Army, and rose to the rank of a Sergeant before he decided to settle down with Jessica Arndt. During their weekend together, the 9/11 happened. As a soldier, he felt obliged to protect his country therefore postponed, and in time, broke his engagement with Jessica. He returned to serve and being assigned to CIA National Clandestine Service. There, he met two pivotal characters Mark Snow, as his CIA handler, and Kara Stanton as his partner. John was forced to leave his old life behind. His whole military career is redacted, he lost every bit of identity except his first name: John. “Reese” was proposed by Kara Stanton to be his last name.

Mr. Reese. Mysteries. Clever, I know.

There was one chain of events that send shivers down my spine whenever I watch it. A scene where Snow professed that they are currently operating in a hostile country, only to be revealed in the next scene that they are, in fact, home, in the United States. John went out for a drink, purposefully picking a bar where Peter Arndt, Jessica’s current husband, frequents. Before he meet Jessica, Kara came up to him and told him to leave the past behind. That they no longer exist in the world. To which John replied “We’re walking in the dark. I know this speech.”. Kara explained about how she also missed her family on her first rotation back home, but she can’t really tell her anything. She close the statement with “This isn’t some speech. We are not walking in the dark. We are the dark.”.

His last mission in the clandestine service was to retrieve a computer virus in Ordos, China along with Kara. Snow gave an order to “retire” Agent Stanton during the op because she was compromised. Unbeknownst to him, Kara was given the exact same order. It was not until he get shot by Kara that he realized that they got played by the organization he swore his life for. He managed to escape the blast of a missile strike and returned home. Not for a one-man crusade against the CIA, the agency that burned him, but to see his old lover: Jessica.

His journey back home did not end well. Jessica died in a car crash. A man with no identity, no home, not even a single scratch in human history because there is nobody to remember him by. A man, with no meaning. His single purpose in life was to investigate what truly happened with Jessica. It was then proven that his intuition was still sharp; Jessica did not die in a car crash. The car crash was a cover up from his husband. The best part about the ending of this saga is not clear whether he murdered Peter Arndt, or throw him in a hell-hole somewhere.

And then comes the opening scene, where he became a hobo, defeating armed thugs in subway for self-preservation purpose. He was detained by Detective Joss Carter, who immediately recognized his background in special force. Before she got far enough to uncover his identity, a lawyer came in and paid for his bail. Someone is watching over Mr. Reese. He eventually met his future employer, Harold Finch, who then become his other part of The Batman if that makes any sense.

This is where the boring character study starts. Since the beginning of Season 1, it is quite apparent that John Reese, or whatever his last name is, already lost. His life ended right after he became a covert operative. He is a cold-blooded killing machine, designed only to follow orders that are mostly assassination. After Jessica, he spiraled down the rabbit hole, drinking his life away. Finch even suggested that he might’ve consider a more efficient way to end his life. As it’s very common for people that has a tragic major event in their lives and lost a sense of purpose, it’s not a farfetched deduction. Furthermore, a man of his caliber can obviously find work in darker corners of the world. Yet, he did not.

Throughout the series, John has always portrayed as having very little self-interest. From giving out most of his salary to the homeless community–his home, before Finch–, ready to give up his life for complete strangers, to saving Finch in the hand of a lunatic hacker/mercenary. He is in no way reckless, as every step he take is calculated (as Finch suggested later, John Reese is a “surgical scalpel”). From the very little that we know about his past, we know that John’s adopted father died during his fourth tour in Vietnam and that he was posthumously regarded as selfless and even heroic. This might also be the basis of John’s interest in joining the military, and in turn, the CIA. That all he ever wanted was to die a hero. Under a psychological review later on, he was diagnosed with having a hero complex (to which I surmised, might have been messiah complex). But I personally don’t think it’s quite accurate to describe him as such. He lost a good friend at the end of season 3, a friend we all know and love for her dedication to the cleansing of the police force. Though it has been well-stated since the beginning of the show that he lives in borrowed time, he is not doing very good at coping with the death of a close friend, which in turn makes him, for lack of a better term, suicidal.

Above all heroism and patriotism, John longs for personal connection the most. His cold, distant persona does not make it easy for him to make friends, especially in his line of work. Being in a covert group fulfills his sense of belonging. His savior complex does not necessarily spans through the whole general population, it’s restricted to the lovable bunch he is in. This is also true because in the start of season 2, when Harold was kidnapped, he made a deal with The Machine. He wouldn’t do the whole saving people fiasco without Harold. He lost too many people; he’s just ready to die for a cause.

In summary, this character is perfectly build. There are very little character developments, since he’s kind of well done from the start. He’s still secretive, keep every bit of information close to his chest, but has very little self-interest. The only notable development is that when he realized he can’t save everyone, he can still save people he cared about. The ending is so fitting to this character development: he sacrificed himself for a greater cause his other half started. He died with a meaning, a purpose, hell, a job.

Note: I was going to make the whole main cast as one long-ass article. But even John Reese took me a week to write. If I continue at this pace, I’ll probably need a month to finish and I don’t like that. Consider this an introduction to the show, and I think one character is enough.

Welcome to My Personal Page

For someone who loves to write, it is a bit late for me to start my blog. Which kind of untrue, since I had a blog on WordPress during my high school years and dabbled in Wattpad and Tumblr for quite some time. My writings will mostly consist of junk, rant, opinions, or maybe even pile of garbage. But as I learn from my Fallout days, even junk can be scrapped to be more useful materials.

I am an Average Joe at best, and abysmal self-deprecating comedian at worst. I have a background in psychology, but I have very little interest in writing about self-help. I will still write stuff in psychological perspective, though God forbid it is an essay. I will also write cringeworthy poetry or pop culture reviews. My point is, there bound to be incoherent train of thoughts though I hope it won’t be contradictory if you read chronologically.

As if it wasn’t obvious yet, my self-deprecation already get the best of me. So let’s start over with the things I have been enjoying for the past year or so. Good lord, 2020 seems to pass so fast. I enjoy playing single-player story-driven game. I bought both Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion last year, yeah about ten years late, but I had to play it on laptop alright, sue me. I fell in love with both games as I really do enjoy playing role-playing games apparently. As Oblivion is generally accepted as the best Bethesda game of all time, I will talk more about my experience in Fallout franchise.

Sure, I understand the point being made that Bethesda ruins RPG by combining it with first person perspective, among other valid criticism. And boy, I do enjoy isometric view turn-based RPG like Wasteland 2 a lot that if I were ten years older, I would probably fell in love with Fallout and Fallout 2 too. But I have to say that first-person perspective gives more immersive experience. I spent hundreds of hours playing Fallout 3. Be an absolute angel in my first playthrough and complete asshole in the next, just like everybody else.

I personally think that Fallout 3 is a very good introduction to the franchise. The linear progression of the storyline, which means your decision and karma do not really matter in the long run except for unlocking unique dialogs, befriend different companions, and slightly different ending when you team up with John Henry Eden to poison the whole Capital Wasteland, does bother me a little bit. You destroyed Megaton, sought slaves for Eulogy Jones for few hundred bottlecaps, even consumed corpses as cannibal for no reason, and James will still need your help in Project Purity. Yes, in terms of role-playing, your option is limited. But the experience of being the savior of dystopian future, especially if you chose to sacrifice yourself to set the FEV in Project Purity, to me, is second to none. (I am aware of the Broken Steel DLC, where you are knocked out instead of straight up dead. Please humor me a little bit.).

Let me walk you through the storyline a little bit. You are born in an underground vault capable to withstand a total nuclear annihilation. You spend most of your youth with your father, because your mom died giving birth to you. One day, your father went against the rule of Overseer, the leader of community, and left the Vault. By the time he does this, you are no older than nineteen years old. Barely reached adulthood. Your choices are limited to murder the Overseer, or persuade him to let you go. Either way, you are out of the Vault, completely alone.

Please indulge me a little bit, because I’m about to be p h i l o s o p h i c a l.

I think the Lone Wanderer–what you, the player, will be referred to throughout the franchise–is lucky to be sent out in the wilderness in such a young age. Yes, it is kind of sad that the decision of leaving the vault, his comfort zone, is made for him. But it is a situation that we, as human, will have to go through at some point in our lives. We too, have to choose what we do with our lives. Sadly, the choices we make are rarely two ends of a spectrum of good and evil like choosing between blowing up Megaton or tattle on Mr. Burke to dearly beloved Sheriff Lucas Simms. What we choose to do in our lives is at best slightly good or slightly evil, or most of the time, reeks of self-interest.

Now, let’s talk about the ending of Fallout 3, that despite your choices, you have to set the FEV in an irradiated chamber that will absolutely kill you (again, I am aware of Broken Steel, just please bear with me). In philosophy, this phenomena is commonly referred to as determinism, that all events, including moral choices, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Let’s imagine Bethesda as the “external cause”, or even Divine Being, in this case. And you, the player that embodies the Lone Wanderer, have no choice but to experience the narrative given by Todd Howard and his team of “angels”.

If determinism also applies in real life, your actions and consequences don’t matter because your death is already written in the star by a force up above, our own Bethesda. This can easily slip to nihilism and/or solipsism or God forbid, trigger some sort of existential crisis. But if our lives are just customized single-player video game that we have to endure and the ending is already written for us, we still have the option to experience this “game”. That even if our choices don’t matter in the long run, we can still save the proverbial children of Little Lamplight instead of helping slavers of Paradise Falls, just because it feels good to do so.

This way of thinking can be applied to a lot of story-driven role playing games like Fable, Bioshock, etc. But my point still stands, that even if our choices don’t matter, even if we are long forgotten in ten years by MacCready and only vaguely mentioned in Wasteland Survival Guide, even after we are the one who single-handedly purify the water in Capital Wasteland, we can still experience the feeling of doing good and be content with it. Sadly, unlike games, we can only experience life once. So be sure live your life like it’s your first playthrough in Fallout 3: died with a good karma and heart-warming experience.

This is the opening page and I already bore you with my thoughts. But I ain’t gonna stop, don’t worry. I hope I can do this sort of stuff regularly. Hopefully everyday, even. Anyway, see you someday.