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by Lambent_Cactus 1626 days ago
There's a haunting version of this in Blade Runner 2049 that they call a "baseline test." Replicants have to prove they're sufficiently robotic by reciting extremely alienating things about themselves in rapid succession:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h-seEowtDw

1 comments

Originally the Voight-Kampff test[0] was for this purpose, from the original novel by Philip K Dick "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"[1] from 1968. The test was designed to distinguish between replicants (androids/bots) and humans. Blade Runner (both the 1982 original[2] set in 2019, and the 2017 sequel[3] set in 2049) both feature the machine.

The baseline test seemed like an unnecessary deviance, and more like an active-duty psych exam measuring the psychological effects of the job.

It's also arguably the point of the novel/movies (I'll leave it at that to avoid spoilers).

[0]: https://nautil.us/blog/the-science-behind-blade-runners-voig... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2049

Yeah, I liked the idea that it's asymmetrical. You use the VK to find replicants trying to pass as human, but to try to make sure they're sufficiently robotic you need something else. Which makes sense: the original VK would be easy to tank if you were _trying_ to act like a replicant.

And narratively I think it works amazingly. The idea of forcing someone to prove that they're sufficiently inhuman ... shudder.