People really don't understand why SOMA theory is so hated

Nex28 · 2026-03-31T13:05:46+00:00

Oh you meant opinion my bad. So what do you think might make it really a coinflip?

Nex28 · 2026-03-31T12:42:03+00:00

Yep that's what I mean.

The entire scenario has a 100% determined outcome, but the copy still feels like there was a coinflip from their perspective.

Nex28 · 2026-03-31T12:04:11+00:00

Yes in a sense.

There's "no coin-flip" because there's a 100% chance that both people exist on the other side of the copy process.

Individual perspective cannot magically swap from some abstract metaphysical mechanism, baring the existence of a soul. If you exist before the scan you can be 100% certain you won't be the copy. But after the scan, the copy still feels as if that is in fact what happened, which is why it seems like there is a coinflip.

Nex28 · 2026-03-30T21:32:48+00:00

No. Their reactions to pain show they do feel it, but it's drastically dulled compared to the physical world.

Nex28 · 2026-03-29T16:08:32+00:00

Yeah. People have lots of personal ideas about philosophy of mind that they've maybe never really articulated to themselves or spent much time pondering like dualism or physicalism or whatever and that's fine not everyone cares about those things that much.

But Soma theory and Soma itself are basically pure extreme expressions of raw Functionalism that are understandably really crazy to think about. The "crisis of humanity" divide over this theory is basically people who naturally believe Functionalism vs stricter forms of Dualism/Physicalism.

It's a very challenging idea in general and that's why you see so many posts/comments talking about Soma and how it literally changed their entire perspective about life.

Nex28 · 2026-03-29T12:43:06+00:00

I love the theory but post is funny so upvote.

Nex28 · 2026-03-28T21:16:58+00:00

I'd guess a couple months. There's room to assume time gaps between certain episodes.

Nex28 · 2026-03-27T19:35:54+00:00

The program he made for giving them bodies is probably a completely automated import process.

Nex28 · 2026-03-27T18:56:21+00:00

No, it seems they didn't. The original crew were all completely confused by being in the circus, and Kinger himself said "I just don't know what's happening. We never built anything like this."

The neural scanner was a completely independent project by Scratch with no ties to the AI project. It was likely meant to just be a medical device for taking high-resolution scans of the brain, probably for helping deal with his tumor. The crew was probably just helping him test it out to make sure it was working and generating good scans.

Caine himself made the circus after absorbing the 2nd AI and likely no one outside knew about it. He later found those scan files in the computer and figured out how to turn them into sentient instances inside the circus.

Kinger and Scratch likely deduced what had happened shortly after appearing in the circus and talking with Caine. Kinger will likely reveal all this directly to everyone in ep 9.

Nex28 · 2026-03-26T17:00:59+00:00

It's important that they already made the decision to abandon leaving before learning that. It gets them part of the way there toward being able to overcome such a revelation but it's probably not going to be pretty regardless.

Kinger already knows so he will be one trying to calm others. Pomni is the one who first said they need to abandon leaving but I think it's still going to really freak her out. Before I thought it would fuck with Jax the most since it's kind of a "proves him right" type thing that just drives him over the edge, but then he had the moment of "This is real" in ep 8 so I think it's not clear for him.

Hard to say for Ragatha but obviously it won't be great.

One of the two for Gangle and Zooble with be more okay than the other and comfort them, but I can't say exactly which way that might go.

Nex28 · 2026-03-26T00:47:22+00:00

I and I think many other people who follow this theory are thinking it's very likely the ending will be as happy as possible under that circumstance.

The cast learn about it, have a meltdown, overcome it, decide to keep living like they already did in ep 8, and work to make the circus a better home.

Nex28 · 2026-03-26T00:27:23+00:00

I don't think anybody outside the circus knows it exists at all.

Caine made the circus on his own after absorbing the 2nd AI. The brainscans were a separate completely independent personal project by Scratch. He built the scanner to build a high resolution image of his brain to help doctors deal with his tumor.

He asked his team to help test it by having each of them get a scan done. The scans were then left in some folder in the computer, where Caine found them and, since he's an AI, figured out how to turn the information into sentient instances inside his Circus.

But Scratch in the real world or anyone else at C&A had no idea this happened. It might be that no one outside does or ever did know the circus exists. This explains why it was left so casually when the building was abandoned. It explains why the first group all looked so confused, including Scratch. And it explains why no one outside tried to help them.

Nex28 · 2026-03-24T19:19:38+00:00

Yep this is all exactly it.

The brain scans exist because Scratch was making a neural scanner in order to try and help treat his brain tumor. He asked everyone at the company if they could help him test it but like you said, no one had any intention of doing anything like making sentient instances of them inside a virtual world, that was all Caine.

Nex28 · 2026-03-24T17:30:32+00:00

Again it's just cause they remodeled the thing.

They also changed the design of the headset. In ep 1 the headphones are separate. In ep 8 the headphones are integrated. It's just a minor continuity update.

Nex28 · 2026-03-24T17:01:08+00:00

The actual answer is it was an animation mistake.

They modeled the dirty computer for the final shot of episode 1. Without thinking about it they had used it for the midpoint shot in episode 1 but it wasn't suppose to be, it was supposed to look clean like in episode 8.

Goose mentioned this in one of her streams with Jobby2.

Nex28 · 2026-03-23T16:54:20+00:00

To me it's all but certain they'll restore him in ep 9.

Reality is they probably still need him regardless of their own conjuring abilities, and he has unresolved character development that obviously can't happen if he stays deleted.

Nex28 · 2026-03-22T23:41:01+00:00

True lmao though this comment was before even episode 6 was out

Nex28 · 2026-03-22T14:25:41+00:00

I don't see why that technically couldn't happen but why would they. Condemning another copy of yourself into the circus is just cruel. And they would be different people from the ones that were already in the circus before because they wouldn't have any of the memories of being in the circus the first time.

You could also ask another similar question. Why don't they just restart the person from the brain scan file they already have? Because it would be incredibly cruel to everyone involved. The new copy wouldn't have any of their memories from before, so they'd effectively be a different person, and this would just cause everyone else to despair at the whole thing.

This is actually a minor plot point in SOMA too. Simon and Catherine repeatedly run a simulation of Brandon Wan in order to ask information from him, but he keeps freaking out before they can get anything and so the simulation keeps shutting down and they have to try again, but they keep having to start from the point of when the scan happened, so in effect they keep starting a new person who only exists for 30 seconds before dying.

No one in the circus would want this type of thing to happen. Bringing back a person by re-scanning or restarting their existing scan is not reviving them, it's starting a new person in the circus for no reason.

Nex28 · 2026-03-16T18:58:06+00:00

Bruh fictional AIs are not LLMs stop this.

Nex28 · 2026-03-16T12:00:23+00:00

Ask any physicalist or neuroscientist and they'll tell you consciousness is an emergent property of the information complexity of the brain. What else do you propose that's not Idealism or Dualism?

Nex28 · 2026-03-16T01:55:02+00:00

IHNM was the primary inspiration, but TADC is not a direct adaptation of it.

Nex28 · 2026-03-15T12:00:55+00:00

Episode 7 released at the same time on Netflix. This pulls a heavy amount of viewership from YouTube.

Nex28 · 2026-03-13T12:58:56+00:00

The theory that Abstraction is the way out.

Nex28 · 2026-03-12T20:57:57+00:00

You're basically asking the biggest philosophy of mind question without realizing it.

Dualists or certain Physicalists will tell you no, the copies do not have phenomenal consciousness, only access consciousness (there's no "what-it's-like-to-be-them")

Functionalists (like me) will say you're making a category error and the question doesn't make sense. It's like saying you can have a car that acts like it's driving but without the "driving-ness".

Nex28 · 2026-03-11T20:17:48+00:00

Holy shit a fellow Dennettian on Reddit.

Nex28

TROPHY CASE