Difference between revisions of "Bliss"

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== <big>Plot</big> ==
 
== <big>Plot</big> ==
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Bliss begins in a dreary office with the middle-aged, and recently divorced father of two, Greg Wittle [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Wilson) (Owen Wilson)] sketching his "dream" house in extreme detail. Due to his lack of concentration, among other reasons, Greg is told to go to his boss’s office to be fired. Then, Greg accidentally kills his boss. In a panic, he flees to the bar across the street where he meets the disheveled, homeless Isabel Clemens [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salma_Hayek (Salma Hayek)]. Isabel tells Greg that they are living in a simulation and nothing around them is real. Isabel, then, is somehow able to manipulate the situation in Greg's favor, ultimately gaining Greg's trust. After that, Greg and Isabel explore poverty-ridden Los Angeles. They take the yellow crystal to give them control of the simulated world i.e., they appear to have [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychokinesis telekinetic] abilities, which they start off using for mischief, but then expand into committing high level crimes, which they interpret as "living freely." While Greg and Isabel explore the power of these yellow crystals, Greg's daughter Emily becomes very worried about her dad and begins to investigate what he is up to, although his son, her brother does not share the same enthusiasm. Emily doesn't stop searching until she finds him; when they begin to interact, it is then clear that he has lost all sense of reality and time because Emily tells him about all the events he has missed, such as her graduation. She hands him her graduation photo with her phone number on the back; she realizes that he has been living a drug induced life and tells him to call her when he is ready. Eventually, Greg’s beliefs of Isabel's simulation begin to waver, so Isabel decides to take him back to the real world via the blue crystals. Prior to ingesting the blue crystals, she explains to him that they are very rare crystals and that they need to ingest ten each, throughout the nostrils via some kind of mechanical apparatus. However, she does not have enough crystals, but they proceed anyway, disregarding the risks she made obvious. On arriving back to what she calls "the real world," Greg wakes up in a semi-reclined seat in a futuristic world, with an apparatus attached to his face, which made some kind of connection through his nose and up into his brain. The other end of the connection led to a large container in the shape of a cube, with what appeared to be multiple human brains suspended in a water-like liquid. all of Greg’s dreams have come true. He discovers the house he drew earlier was his real home. It is the perfect world. But the simulated world begins to meld with the real world, leading Greg and Isabel to go back into the simulated world. The film ends with Greg choosing between the two worlds, the two versions of himself.
+
Bliss begins in a dreary office with the middle-aged, and recently divorced father of two, Greg Wittle [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Wilson) (Owen Wilson)] sketching his "dream" house in extreme detail. Due to his lack of concentration, among other reasons, Greg is told to go to his boss’s office to be fired. Then, Greg accidentally kills his boss. In a panic, he flees to the bar across the street where he meets the disheveled, homeless Isabel Clemens [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salma_Hayek (Salma Hayek)]. Isabel tells Greg that they are living in a simulation and nothing around them is real. Isabel, then, is somehow able to manipulate the situation in Greg's favor, ultimately gaining Greg's trust. After that, Greg and Isabel explore poverty-ridden Los Angeles. They take the yellow crystal to give them control of the simulated world i.e., they appear to have [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychokinesis telekinetic] abilities, which they start off using for mischief, but then expand into committing high level crimes, which they interpret as "living freely." While Greg and Isabel explore the power of these yellow crystals, Greg's daughter Emily becomes very worried about her dad and begins to investigate what he is up to, although his son, her brother does not share the same enthusiasm. Emily doesn't stop searching until she finds him; when they begin to interact, it is then clear that he has lost all sense of reality and time because Emily tells him about all the events he has missed, such as her graduation. She hands him her graduation photo with her phone number on the back; she realizes that he has been living a drug induced life and tells him to call her when he is ready. Eventually, Greg’s beliefs of Isabel's simulation begin to waver, so Isabel decides to take him back to the real world via the blue crystals. Prior to ingesting the blue crystals, she explains to him that they are very rare crystals and that they need to ingest ten each, throughout the nostrils via some kind of mechanical apparatus. However, she does not have enough crystals, but they proceed anyway, disregarding the risks she made obvious. On arriving back to what she calls "the real world," Greg wakes up in a semi-reclined seat in a futuristic world, with an apparatus attached to his face, which made some kind of connection through his nose and up into his brain. The other end of the connection led to a large container in the shape of a cube, with what appeared to be multiple human brains suspended in a water-like liquid. As Greg scans the futuristic room in which he has awoken, it is then apparent that he is part of some kind of experiment ran by Isabel with multiple participants. Isabel also awakens, but none of this is new to her so she immediately heads over to one of the scientists gathering data and asks to be filled in on anything new. As the pair begin exploring this alternate reality, Greg does not remember any of it. Isabel fills him in on the period of darkness that humanity went through before making the significant scientific breakthroughs that ultimately shaped the utopian world that they were currently in. She explained to him that the three pillars of creation were automation, synthetic biology, and asteroid mining. all of Greg’s dreams have come true. He discovers the house he drew earlier was his real home. It is the perfect world. But the simulated world begins to meld with the real world, leading Greg and Isabel to go back into the simulated world. The film ends with Greg choosing between the two worlds, the two versions of himself.
  
 
== <big>Computer Simulations</big> ==
 
== <big>Computer Simulations</big> ==

Revision as of 19:17, 3 April 2021

Bliss (2021) primary poster. Images © Amazon Studios or related entities. Used for publicity and promotional purposes. https://www.movieinsider.com/posters/576469

Bliss (2021) is a new, drama-science fiction, Prime Original film on Amazon Prime. The movie was directed by Mike Cahill and stars actors such as Salma Hayek and Owen Wilson.[1] Bliss follows the main character, Greg Wittle, as his mundane life turns upside down when he discovers that everyone around him is part of a computer simulation except, his new companion, Isabel. Computer Simulations being a replacement for reality, the algorithms involved holding biases, mental consequences for users, and equal access to the technology are ethical implications with regards to computer simulations that are explored throughout the film.

Plot

Bliss begins in a dreary office with the middle-aged, and recently divorced father of two, Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson) sketching his "dream" house in extreme detail. Due to his lack of concentration, among other reasons, Greg is told to go to his boss’s office to be fired. Then, Greg accidentally kills his boss. In a panic, he flees to the bar across the street where he meets the disheveled, homeless Isabel Clemens (Salma Hayek). Isabel tells Greg that they are living in a simulation and nothing around them is real. Isabel, then, is somehow able to manipulate the situation in Greg's favor, ultimately gaining Greg's trust. After that, Greg and Isabel explore poverty-ridden Los Angeles. They take the yellow crystal to give them control of the simulated world i.e., they appear to have telekinetic abilities, which they start off using for mischief, but then expand into committing high level crimes, which they interpret as "living freely." While Greg and Isabel explore the power of these yellow crystals, Greg's daughter Emily becomes very worried about her dad and begins to investigate what he is up to, although his son, her brother does not share the same enthusiasm. Emily doesn't stop searching until she finds him; when they begin to interact, it is then clear that he has lost all sense of reality and time because Emily tells him about all the events he has missed, such as her graduation. She hands him her graduation photo with her phone number on the back; she realizes that he has been living a drug induced life and tells him to call her when he is ready. Eventually, Greg’s beliefs of Isabel's simulation begin to waver, so Isabel decides to take him back to the real world via the blue crystals. Prior to ingesting the blue crystals, she explains to him that they are very rare crystals and that they need to ingest ten each, throughout the nostrils via some kind of mechanical apparatus. However, she does not have enough crystals, but they proceed anyway, disregarding the risks she made obvious. On arriving back to what she calls "the real world," Greg wakes up in a semi-reclined seat in a futuristic world, with an apparatus attached to his face, which made some kind of connection through his nose and up into his brain. The other end of the connection led to a large container in the shape of a cube, with what appeared to be multiple human brains suspended in a water-like liquid. As Greg scans the futuristic room in which he has awoken, it is then apparent that he is part of some kind of experiment ran by Isabel with multiple participants. Isabel also awakens, but none of this is new to her so she immediately heads over to one of the scientists gathering data and asks to be filled in on anything new. As the pair begin exploring this alternate reality, Greg does not remember any of it. Isabel fills him in on the period of darkness that humanity went through before making the significant scientific breakthroughs that ultimately shaped the utopian world that they were currently in. She explained to him that the three pillars of creation were automation, synthetic biology, and asteroid mining. all of Greg’s dreams have come true. He discovers the house he drew earlier was his real home. It is the perfect world. But the simulated world begins to meld with the real world, leading Greg and Isabel to go back into the simulated world. The film ends with Greg choosing between the two worlds, the two versions of himself.

Computer Simulations

A simulated neighborhood. Image: Magnolia Pictures. https://www.polygon.com/2021/3/1/22303776/simulation-theory-movies-about-living-in-a-simulation

A computer simulation is a computer program that uses a model of a real system to duplicate the functional relationships within the real system.[2] The technology that created the simulated world in the film was known as the Brainbox. All of the real participants were placed into the same world for research purposes. The computer-created people were known as FGP (fake generated person)­­­­­. The idea behind the world was to explore the not-so-perfect pieces of oneself, without the fear of death. The FGPs are periodically respawned if they ever die. A similar concept is developed in the TV series Westworld.[3] Virtual Reality is a form of a computer simulation in which the user experiences and can interact with the artificial 3D world created by the simulation.[4]

Ethical Issues

Replacement for Reality

The technology seen in the film is a futuristic version of the virtual reality devices seen and commonly used today.[5] As this technology gets more and more realistic, it can replace human interaction, and cause the user to think the simulation is real, as seen in the film.[6]
Virtual Reality headset. https://learn.g2.com/virtual-reality
Spiegel writes that there are four major areas of moral concern and social hazard regarding virtual reality which raise questions of public policy: mental health risks, personal neglect of actual bodies and physiological environment, personal privacy, and social risks.[7][8] Risks to mental health include anxiety, depression, social phobias, and potential neurological problems. [8] Virtual reality and simulation technology can also be used as a form of escapism, creating feelings of relaxation if in moderation or of loneliness if over-indulged.[9] VR technology can create a false sense of agency that violates privacy and personally manipulates beliefs, emotions, and behavior. [8] The illusions that VR creates has been referred to as “consensual hallucinations” and draw on specific political, ideological, and mystical beliefs as essential aspects of their moral foundation.[10] The foundations these virtual realities are built on allow for social hazards and other moral concerns to be easily transferred between people. [11] Humans are social mammals and require communication.[9] Because of this, people enjoy using social medias as a way to connect.[9] A 2014 study of 689,000 Facebook users showed that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.[11] This study shows that behavioral influence occurs on the scale of social media and similarly virtual reality. The ongoing convergence of virtual realities and social networks - Virtual Reality Social Networks (VRSN) - pose threats to informational, physical, and associational privacy and autonomy in terms of freedom, knowledge, and authenticity. [12] O’Brolcháin et. al. propose a number of recommendations for policy-makers and users to overcome these ethical dilemmas, including strong legislation in information limits for companies and examination of contracts being offered to users of VRSN technologies. [12]

Unintended Bias

In the film, Greg became attached to the simulated world, and it became his real reality. This was an unintended effect of the Brainbox simulation. New technological breakthroughs, if not designed carefully and thoughtfully, like the Brainbox, can have unintended results.[13] Microsoft engineers created a Twitter bot to chat with Millenials, but within hours of release, it began posting racist, sexist, and Holocaust-denying tweets from the algorithm that was teaching it how to respond.[13] The engineers intended the bot to be a fun way to get Millennials involved in Twitter, but instead they created a controversial bot.[13] Langdon Winner describes how the simple design of an overpass in Long Island caused years of subtle discrimination of poor people and African Americans, who at the time normally used public transit.[14] Winner says that one software developer can put bias into a given product to lend intended or unintended consequences.[14] It only took one engineer’s bias to created discrimination in society.[13] Algorithms collecting micro and macro data are being designed to make decisions on real people. [15]

Consequences for Users

The usage of virtual reality/simulation technology can have psychological impacts on the user.[16] In the film, Greg and Isabel live life without consequences. Greg can kill his boss and get away with it. If someone is living their perceived life with no penalties, they are more likely to do more negative things which can lead to negative reactions after.[16] A psychological study has been done to learn if real, lasting consequences can occur from interacting with virtual reality games. The researchers discovered that an individual playing a virtual reality game can experience intense negative emotions. They followed up and concluded that the participants utilizing the virtual reality had negative emotions that lasted up to a day as compared to participants playing a similar game on a laptop.[16] The findings show that the negative emotions created during an immersive experience can cause memory rumination leading to a more depressed mood.[17]

Equal Access Right

The ideal world that Greg and Isabel are in is utopian. Everyone has the time and money to explore their passions, and climate change has been reversed. The purpose of Isabel’s research is to show that her simulation technology should be a human right. At that time in the film, there was not positive consensus with the benefits of her technology for various reasons, equal access to all being one of them. Equal access to information and technology being a human right is an ongoing debate.[18] Two terms that are often used when discussing this debate are equality and equity. Formally, equality is defined as the quality or state of being equal.[19] Equity is defined as justice according to natural law or right, specifically, freedom from bias or favoritism.[20] There is a balance between reaching equality and equity in regard to access to information and technology. If there is too much of a focus on equity, there will be backlash from those who resent such programs as ‘unfair’.[21] Achieving this balance is a goal of librarians and other scholars involved in information technology, since they play a large role in creating change.[21]. To create fair and equal access, there needs to be justice from equity.[21]

References

  1. ↑ Bliss. (2021). Amazon Prime. Retrieved 11 March 2021, from https://www.amazon.com/Bliss-Salma-Hayek/dp/B08RMNMGNB
  2. ↑ T. (2017, April 27). Computer simulation. Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer-simulation
  3. ↑ Kornhaber, S. (2018, June 27). The virtual afterlife of 'westworld' might not be fiction. Retrieved March 25, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/06/westworlds-virtual-afterlife-wont-always-be-fiction/563741/
  4. ↑ Mitchell, C. (2020, November 21). Virtual reality. Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/virtual-reality.asp
  5. ↑ VR home. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://arvr.google.com/vr/
  6. ↑ D. A. Bowman and R. P. McMahan, "Virtual Reality: How Much Immersion Is Enough?," in Computer, vol. 40, no. 7, pp. 36-43, July 2007, doi: 10.1109/MC.2007.257. Retrieved March 25, 2021 from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4287241?casa_token=f-LZZyOKtAoAAAAA:76N2PK4ZZECYKgAJxnb1dr35MQsAJkyccxYF98Kd2C79UTSEluottDKsYJ0bMJhR4vfgqExeZpM
  7. ↑ Spiegel, J. S. (n.d.). James S. Spiegel, Ph.D. Retrieved March 25, 2021, from https://jimspiegel.com/
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Spiegel, J.S. (2018). The Ethics of Virtual Reality Technology: Social Hazards and Public Policy Recommendations. Sci Eng Ethics 24, 1537–1550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9979-y
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2
  10. ↑ Mantovani, G. (1995). Virtual Reality as a Communication Environment: Consensual Hallucination, Fiction, and Possible Selves. Human Relations, 48(6), 669–683. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679504800604
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Kramer A., Guillory J., Hancock, J. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 O’Brolcháin, F., Jacquemard, T., Monaghan, D., O’Connor, N., Novitzky, P., & Gordijn, B. (2016). The convergence of virtual reality and social networks: threats to privacy and autonomy. Science and engineering ethics, 22(1), 1-29.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Rainie, L., & Anderson, J. (2020, August 06). Experts on the pros and cons of algorithms. Retrieved March 25, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/02/08/code-dependent-pros-and-cons-of-the-algorithm-age
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Winner, L. (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121-136. Retrieved March 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652
  15. ↑ Turner-Lee, N., Resnick, P., & Barton, G. (2019, October 25). Algorithmic bias detection and mitigation: Best practices and policies to reduce consumer harms. Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://www.brookings.edu/research/algorithmic-bias-detection-and-mitigation-best-practices-and-policies-to-reduce-consumer-harms/
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Lavoie, R., Main, K., King, C., & King, D. (2020). Virtual experience, real consequences: The potential negative emotional consequences of virtual reality gameplay. Virtual Reality, 25(1), 69-81. doi:10.1007/s10055-020-00440-y
  17. ↑ Park, R. J., Goodyer, I. M., & Teasdale, J. D. (2004). Effects of induced rumination and distraction on mood and overgeneral autobiographical memory in adolescent Major Depressive Disorder and controls. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 45(5), 996–1006. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.t01-1-00291.x
  18. ↑ Cook, K. S., & Hegtvedt, K. A. (1983). Distributive justice, equity, and equality. Annual Review of Sociology, 9(1), 217-241. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.09.080183.001245
  19. ↑ Equality. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equality
  20. ↑ Equity. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equity
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Admin. (2017, May 20). Equality and equity of access: What's the difference? Retrieved March 11, 2021, from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/equalityequity
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