I mentioned this before. I have always felt that the holoband from Caprica is evolved adn adapted into the place where Six says the cylons go in their mind while they are walking around in the ugly ship! It’s their “special place”? Not to far off I don’t think.
How say you all?
Agreed, so say we all.
I also think that the Greystone’s avataar building techniqe ( aka buildning copys of the Adama girl and Zoe) later becomes the same technology that the Cylons can use to “map” a brain. AKA make Athena and Sharon the have the same memories and feelings as well as “downloading”, or giving the final 5 all new personalities and memories and families ( we never knew for sure weather the final 5 had all been orphans. Sure Sharon was an orphan … but she had only been there for like 5 years. Chief might have preplaced a real Galen and knew his mom and dad. Anders might have had fake parents. Torry might have had an evil family that taught her to be an evil twsted bitvh… just some thoughts on the origins of some of our bsg tech… it’s more than just the Larry’s we’re seeing being buit.
Your mention of “brain-mapping” raises a question I’ve had for some time now.
Is it true that there are some personality traits which are consistent among all individuals in a Cylon model line?
Was there ever an explanation given? Would it be safe to assume that the five creators used Earth human brains as templates for their skin-job creations?
I guess it stands to reason that some deep-seated or inherent personality traits would cascade to all subsequent copies, you’ll never make a completely “clean” copy of a Cylon.
Kind of like how deleted files can be recovered by using a program that scans the hard disk sector by sector and mapping the residual traces of the file system. Even though those files aren’t currently in use they still exist until you format the drive.
Now, was there any actual brain mapping in the series? I’m operating under the impression that the mechanism for generating the virtual personalities didn’t involve any actual contact with people at all. My recollection was that this was glossed over with a semi-coherent description of how Mr. Graystone, in conjunction with his daughter’s code, assembled publicly available electronic data (audit tags, library cards, purchases, etc) to create the personalities.
I think it’s one of those ‘the how is not as important as the what’ descriptions, as I don’t see how my electronic data trail could recreate my actual personality, but then again, I’m just this guy, you know?
2 words : Cylon. MATRIX.
As discussed in another thread, the other key issue is that it looks like the holoband avatars are integral to enabling the mechanical Cylons to operate. While, for some reason avatars can’t just be simply copied, new ones can be created de novo by using he history of different individuals (i.e. Tamara). Even after downloading into the robot cylons the avatars, such as Zoe, still maintain a human self image. Soon I guess we’ll end up with a robot army of Cylons who each think of themselves as human yet viewed as slaves by every one else. That really changes the way we view the Larry models.
I suspect that once the technology is worked out Graystone will figure out that the Cylons are actually intelligent with a human self image. However at that point trying to give them the rights and considerations the deserve will cut into the profits of the company, which will quickly lead to his ouster. Just a thought…
Orrrr… he will attempt to mentally neuter them the way the skinjobs did in BSG, causing them to rebel.
?
My roommate and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. I love the idea that the cylons rebelled because they were all basically “people” trapped in robot bodies. It also explains how the centurians gave the idea of the “one true god” to the final five and eventually the skinjobs. It all came from Zoe.
Ever notice, at the series finale of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, that all the Terminators were evidently self-aware (in a machine sort of way) and each one had it’s own personality.
The audience isn’t aware of this transition in their minds (from, they’re just frakkin’ toasters to it’s not Cromartie anymore, it’s something BIGGER) until the show is over and done with.
I have this idea stuck in my head and it won’t go away :
the PERFECT actress for the Zoe character, to me, would have been Zooey Deschanel… 
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. It does seem like there’s a hole in the Zoe/Cylon personality once in a while, so I think you’re right, it’s not perfect. Of course, she’s the first Cylon so there’s bound to be thousands (or more) of revisions by the time BSG happens.
I was thinking of building a Cylon as being like building a computer system. There are two parts: Hardware and software. Hardware (motherboard, CPU, memory, etc) is obviously the Cylon body, but the software would be not just the Windows/Apple/Linux operating system or human personality. There are SO many levels of software that make a computer system work. Maybe with a bit of a stretch of the imagination you could see how they’re analagous to humans.
The BIOS tells the computer how to start, runs a low-level self-test on the attached hardware (that it is capable of detecting), and controls the reference clock (front side bus) used by ALL other components of the system for coordination. This I would compare to the parts of our subconscious autonomous human software that are perfectly common to all of us:
Heart beat
Breathing
Waking state/sleeping state
The next level would be the operating system initialization (not all processes have been started yet). In my little mind they would be analagous to self-preservation instincts:
Pain/pleasure response
Desire to eat/drink
Desire for shelter
Urge for procreation and sexual orientation
These are all also common to all of us, but are not as sub-conscious as the “BIOS” functions.
Next would be the full-on Windows experience, much more specific to each of us. How do we like our desktop to look? Windows XP or Windows Classic? I would liken this to generalized conscious personal preferences/likes and dislikes.
Like/dislike spicy food
Like/dislike mates with blonde hair or brunette or red or black hair?
The highest level, like writing a program coordinated by the operating system (be it a video game or a database server or a music playing application) makes VERY specific modifications to the behavior of your computer and it’s hardware. In Cylons they might be conscious or subcsonscious decisions, but still behavioral modifications:
Are you outgoing or an introvert?
What is your temperament? Are you prone to flying off the handle in bad traffic or do you stay chilly?
Lazy or driven?
Left handed or right handed?
Moral/immoral?
Susceptible to guilt?
Prefer football Americano or futbol?
Miller Lite or Bud Lite?
Chocolate or peanut butter?
Sy Snoodles or Samantha Carter?
My point is, if I were going to build a human consciousness and 99% of what makes us what we are is common, I wouldn’t bother building the BIOS and the OS. I’d just use what already exists and play around in the sand box until I came up with something I like. If I did that I probably would end up with common low-level personality traits (what makes us who we are) copied off the original.
I want to be Frankenstein some day. 
I don’t know if I was going somewhere with this or not. I think I just kinda went off.
Sry.
I just occurred to me why networking was so dangerous once the Cylon war started. Cylons will want to reproduce themselves to increase the size of their own army. Initially, they may have needed access to the Colonial networks to access the data records of particular individuals to create avatars to run new centurions. Maybe the Colonials would have to shut down the networks to put a stop to the ultimate form of identity theft…
What I think is interesting about both Zoe and Tamara is that they do not exist as real people outside the virtual world anymore. Everyone else who plugs into v-world via the holoband still exists outside v-world, and can leave at any time. I think that difference is somehow going to be significant as the series progresses. What if all the future Cylons are like Tamara? People who have died, but want to live on in the v-world? One can imagine people setting up files of themselves based on all their medical records and other data, and then downloading that avatar into the v-world once they die. But once they get there, they can only exist as v-world avatars or inside a Cylon shell that everyone else on the outside only sees as a slave to serve humanity. That sounds like a good setup for a revolt to me.
–the enslaved people in robot bodies thing is dramatic. But Zoe doesn’t seem like the type to do it, but Tamara does. Still, then we have to get the one true god thing into all the larrys. Hmm.
what happens if they try to create the avatar of Zoe terrorist boy friend? wouldn’t that nutjob enslave people in robot bodies?
That would be too easy. Remember, RDM is still involved. He doesn’t do easy ways out. Where else could the nutjob go if reborn as an avatar? Would he find Tamara to be more appealing than Zoe perhaps?