Odyssey Conundrums

The Front Counter is the main place for general Adventures in Odyssey discussions. Grab a Loc-Kno-Stra-Mal, and talk it up!
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Bob
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As far as the RoC goes, I see two opposing schools of thought.

The first one is that yes, logically, it would be. This sentiment is even supported by what Whit does in two episodes. In "Into Temptation" he constantly nags not only Jimmy but all of his virtual friends and family. Also, in the episode where Trent and Marvin use the I.S., Whit rebukes Trent's notion that talking back to a virtual teacher is a "new experience" that he should be interested in, and recites Scripture: "Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely..."

The differing viewpoint would be that perhaps it isn't wrong, if the user is doing it for the purpose of understanding why the wrong thing is wrong. If this philosophy were correct, what happens requires no further explanation.

Not so if not, though. The question that the first view leads us to question, then, is that if it is wrong, why does Whit allow and sometimes even encourage kids to use it for that purpose? If Whit was really worried about kids doing evil in his inventions, you think he'd have cut Alex's trip in the RoC short very quickly in "No Boundaries".

One hypothesis I had, to explain what happens through the lens of the first view, is that maybe the kids aren't actually doing the things; maybe they're just observers of what goes on, as the AI simulates it. That doesn't seem to be the case, though, judging by most of how the episodes seem to go, and the one time this is confirmed to be the case in "For Three Dollars More" it is explicitly mentioned that it's different from how it normally is.

So, I'm not sure there's an easy or good answer to this question.

Unless maybe Whit is just evil. That would explain everything. ;)
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Shadow
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In "The Trouble With Girls" Connie gives Jessie some advice to decieive Jimmy into loving Jessie that Connie probably wouldn't give since she was a CHristian. This was a Officer Harley remake but couldn't they have changed Connie's advice?
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Tarol
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That's typical sit-com advice @Agent I wouldn't say it's that odd even for a teen Christian, especially if it was just following a trope, especially for that time.
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TigerShadow
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What did she even say?
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Tarol
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I actually don't really remember, but from what I'm thinking, she said "Ignore him, then he will like you." You know, /that/ basic trope. =p

I don't know if this is the best place to put this, but I'm too lazy to ask somewhere else. In Idol Minds... is having a robotic Whit really idolatry? I get the point they are trying to make, but honestly I don't think I would call that idolatry... or if it was, the problem is with Whit in general (they rely on him more than God), not on a robot Whit.

-- Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:48 am --

ETA:

What in the world actually went on during the first sketch of Mandy's Debut? Did Whit really have all those things happen to him? Mandy, Eugene, and Connie could just be exaggerating, but there's no way Bernard was only exaggerating. Come to think of it, he could have just been trolling, I guess... (since he does do that again in the album xD) But still. o_0 OH, or are they saying that Ethel came into Whit's End and had all those things happen to her there, but the people at Whit's End felt so guilty they claimed it was Whit instead of Ethel? #headcannon xD But seriously, am I missing something here? o_0
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Shadow
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No, you see, Ethel was at home and they thought they landed whit in the hospital.
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Tarol
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So, Connie, Eugene, Bernard, and Mandy are just delusional?
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Shadow
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Ysah, but all of Mandy's Debut is a play so...
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Connie G.
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...which means it could have been completely irrational or just have a plot hole

-- Tue Jan 31, 2017 11:24 pm --

...which means it could have been completely irrational or just have a plot hole
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I suppose, but still. The whole moral and everything. *shrugs* It still bothers me.
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HomeschoolCowgirl
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I'm wondering a bit how the "death" program differentiates between Christians and non-Christians; it's a machine, and can't see people's hearts. Only God can see what's in the heart. Obviously it can differentiate and does, because Eugene had a horrific experience and Whit a wonderful one, as is partly the point of the episode.
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PennyBassett
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I have wondered about that myself. The only explanation I can come up with is that either the imagination station can search through the occupant's memories and find out if they have verbally excepted Christ and go off of that. Or, when Whit programmed the adventure, he put in the names of the people around Whit's End and whether they were Christians or not. But I really don't know. The other is that why did Tom let Eugene go into the death program when he knew Eugene wasn't a Christian? I guess he could have assumed that Whit only programmed Heaven and not Hell, but you'd think the fact would have crossed his mind.
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TigerShadow
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PennyBassett wrote:The other is that why did Tom let Eugene go into the death program when he knew Eugene wasn't a Christian? I guess he could have assumed that Whit only programmed Heaven and not Hell, but you'd think the fact would have crossed his mind.
Tom didn't let Eugene go into the death program. He told Eugene to erase it after about only a couple of seconds of experiencing it himself, and Eugene was the one who didn't do what Tom told him to do and went in to see what it was. Tom didn't know Eugene would do that; he was in a rush to see Whit at the hospital. When he found out, his exact words were "Only someone as smart as Eugene could do somethin' so stupid!".

As for how the machine differentiates between Christians and non-Christians, I think it's reflective of the fact that in the Imagination Station, I think it's because your mind makes it real—there are pre-programmed actions, but the specifics are left up to you. I always thought it was implied that Eugene had absorbed enough Christian theology and maybe started to believe in it even if he didn't realize he had. Or it's entirely possible that the program had something like an if/then statement—like, if this person identifies as a Christian, here's what will happen, and if they don't, this other thing will happen, and maybe the machine picks up on those brain waves somehow? It's probably not explicable with modern technology, but then again, neither is the Imagination Station itself.
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PennyBassett
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Oh, that's right! I don't know how I can listen to that episode so many times and still forget vital storyline points like that! :lol:
"Let me get this straight. I bet all those non-friends of yours try to embarrass you about your love for that stuff, right? So, you almost feel like you have to hide your treasures away and can only take them out in secret on rainy days when your mom goes to the store to get more liver and nobody is around to berate your sensitive spirit. Is that what you’re saying?" -Jay Smouse
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HomeschoolCowgirl
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PennyBassett wrote: Or, when Whit programmed the adventure, he put in the names of the people around Whit's End and whether they were Christians or not.
Whit, being Whit, wouldn't have programmed it to know Eugene's name. Because he stated explicitly that it was to help CHRISTIANS know that death is not bad. Eugene not being a Christian, Whit would certainly not have created a scenario in which it was even hypothetically possible for Eugene -- or any non-Christian whose name was given to the Imagination Station --to experience Hell. No matter how much he wanted Eugene saved, no Christian would wish Hell on anyone, not even their enemies.
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PennyBassett
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That is true. Though, he must have programmed something about Hell. If he didn't, the imagination station wouldn't know to stimulate such an experience.
"Let me get this straight. I bet all those non-friends of yours try to embarrass you about your love for that stuff, right? So, you almost feel like you have to hide your treasures away and can only take them out in secret on rainy days when your mom goes to the store to get more liver and nobody is around to berate your sensitive spirit. Is that what you’re saying?" -Jay Smouse
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Connie G.
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Except that the imagination is obviously insanely brilliant beyond explanation. I think Whit may be a brain donor.

And as I was relistening to The Top Floor, I noticed this. When Dalton breaks into Eugene's house, he hears Eugene's voice on the answering machine and immediately 'recognizes' it as Leonard's voice. However, in all the flashbacks of Leonard (even before Eugene is born which is before Leonard meets Dalton, so it's not because of age differences), he sounds exactly the same as he does in the most recent episodes we have of him. Why would they not just use Will Ryan to voice younger Leonard when they used Shane Baumel (who plays Everett) to voice younger Eugene in the "A New Era" flashbacks?
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TigerShadow
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I was confused about that, too, but at the tail end of the message, which we hear Eugene leaving toward the beginning of that episode, you can just hear Leonard beginning to say "It was good of Whit to watch over her". So I think that's the voice that Dalton recognized.
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HomeschoolCowgirl
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Also, Leonard has a distinct British accent, which Will Ryan would've had to fake in order to play Leonard. Not that he couldn't do that.
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Connie G.
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That part is confusing too, how Leonard and Eugene are "SO much alike" yet their voices (notably the only part about them *we* can tell) are completely different 0_o...
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