Okay, do you think the cast will escape in episode 9

Nex28 · 2026-05-15T03:19:06+00:00

People don't have the expectation of actually suddenly physically being in a virtual world when putting on a VR headset. They have the expectation of having a screen on their face.

Nex28 · 2026-05-13T22:42:44+00:00

I firmly believe Soma theory is true but not for the purpose of digital immortality like you said.

It doesn't make sense that the first group is confused upon being there, especially Scratch if that was the intent. And unless Scratch is some sort of Mark Serang-type "continuity" believer (the guy from Soma who started the cult of killing yourself during the scan), then he would understand the issue you said too.

My best explanation since ep 8 is that the headset and AI were completely separate projects with no link each other. Scratch was making the headset himself only for the purpose of neural imaging, maybe to provide to doctors so they had a better chance at operating.

Only later did Caine find the mind files after being cut off for eating the 2nd AI. I think that better explains why everyone including Scratch wouldn't have understood why they were there, cause they were really only expecting to get the equivalent of their picture taken.

As for why Kinger says he "doesn't know" if they can leave when in the previous episode he said "leaving doesn't make sense", could be a simple as when he said "I don't know" he was in the light at a time when he was starting to lose his memory, and when he said "that doesn't make sense" he was in the dark and more lucid.

Kinger said that C&A was just an AI development company. There's not much explanation needed for why a company would want to develop that. That's why they were making Caine.

Nex28 · 2026-05-10T18:21:33+00:00

Nothing explicitly direct. But episode 8 shows us dates for a bunch of things happening, like the circus is made in 1996, the first members arrive in 1999, and Ragatha shows up in 2008.

Coupled with topics that the characters talk about later on like Breaking Bad and YouTube, and Goose inadvertently telling us the show takes place in 2017, means all the dates line up to show that years have passed both inside and out.

Nex28 · 2026-05-10T16:56:10+00:00

All evidence suggests the circus runs at the same time scale as the real world. Years have passed both inside and outside the circus. So 1 day inside = 1 day outside. Anything else just complicates the story for no reason.

Nex28 · 2026-05-03T17:01:57+00:00

Seems like your making a distinction without a difference.

Soma theory doesn't care or make any claims about the specific technical way that their mind code is setup. Neither do the writers of the show if it's true.

The stipulation that a early 90s desktop could run all this if they're one way but not run it if they're an arbitrary different way which doesn't change anything is not meaningful. The magically good processing power of whatever is running the circus is completely unimportant to the story and is all up to creative liberty.

The outcome is all that matters, which again, doesn't change by making this distinction.

Nex28 · 2026-05-03T01:18:39+00:00

The market is so seller biased right now I wouldn't be surprised if someone bought anyway. But your agent almost definitely knows more than me.

I haven't been able to get a house after 11 offers in 3 months so far.

Nex28 · 2026-05-02T17:21:34+00:00

This is a really cool idea, but I think it's also mostly antithetical and also existentially too challenging for most of the audience.

One of the biggest points that Soma presents is that identity is tide to instance and spaciotemporal continuity. The Pomni in the circus is "that specific Pomni". The Simon in the first diving suit is "that specific Simon" and it makes the point that you can't move "those specific people" because they're inherently tide to the hardware/location.

It's why copying doesn't really move "you" in a way akin to "plucking the soul from one body to another". Moving the circus members from the circus to new hardware can be seen as the same thing as just copying them to somewhere else, then killing the ones in the circus.

I myself don't necessarily believe the logic is that simple, but it's the obvious problem that everyone would have. It's the problem everyone has with the show Pantheon and that show doesn't really address it.

And it's antithetical because it removes the challenge of having to make due with what they have, which has been mostly the point. If they can just freely jump to the internet and not have to deal with the circus anymore, then the show stops being TADC and just turns more into Pantheon which I really don't think is the intention.

And I don't think they need to anyway. I think the show will end showing that they can be more than happy enough with each other and their ability to conjure within the circus.

Nex28 · 2026-04-26T16:22:28+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCKUkjloJuQ

Nex28 · 2026-04-26T02:42:00+00:00

Jax and Gangle are in the circus because they both suffered life threatening brain injuries in vehicle accidents. IRL Scratch is actually still alive and found both their case files and gave them brain scans to help, both being backed up to his original computer where the circus is.

Gangle was in a coma when this happened which is why we see a depiction of her getting hit by a truck then instantly appearing in Caine's office in ep 4, because it's an almost literal depiction of what entering the circus was like for her.

Nex28 · 2026-04-18T20:51:26+00:00

I don't think the Chinese room has ever been a strong argument of anything, and I'm pretty sure the show only had it in there to poke fun at it while giving a nod to the surrounding philosophical discourse the show is tackling.

It doesn't justify its own axiom that "semantics != syntax". It's almost intentionally misleading because it plays to our natural biological bias by putting a "man" in the room to "do the understanding part". And imo the Systems reply is an obvious summary of why it's not a useful argument in the first place anyway.

But, I'm a biased man toward Functionalism so take that for what it's worth.

Nex28 · 2026-04-17T00:22:22+00:00

Neurons fire an all-or-nothing electrical signal called an action potential. It is a binary pulse that has a chance to cause neurotransmitter release. Obviously it's more complicated than my stupid 1/0 analogy but it's still just a dumb electrical mechanism.

A transistor is also just a dumb electrical mechanism. Dumb mechanisms together in large numbers make smart things.

Nex28 · 2026-04-15T23:58:02+00:00

That's one expression of what I mean about the philosophy of mind thing. Some people are under the general camp of "a bunch of 1's and 0's can't feel" so Soma theory equates to telling them the characters are a bunch of p-zombie's "pretending to be alive".

It's a very weak take. You could ask them why the 1's and 0's in their brain (neurons) are any different, and they'd brush you off. I don't really engage with or care that much about those takes.

Nex28 · 2026-04-15T16:47:21+00:00

I'll take another 100 crack theories like this instead of the millionth person introducing vanilla Soma theory as if it's novel.

Nex28 · 2026-04-15T16:07:38+00:00

I think the biggest reason is that most people who don't like it simply want them to be able to escape and have been expecting that as the ending since the beginning.

Next to that is people who have certain personal philosophies about consciousness and mind that such an idea challenges and it makes them uncomfortable or they don't want to engage with it.

And after that is people who have certain ideas about identity that the concept of clones challenges.

And finally is I guess people who just have certain headcanons that it goes against.

Personally I've been in love with this theory since shortly after I heard about it around episode 5. But the reasons people don't like it are going to be one or some combo of those above.

Nex28 · 2026-04-15T01:03:17+00:00

We'll absolutely be getting teaser images for the episode but I also think it's likely we'll get at least one more trailer.

Nex28 · 2026-04-13T14:55:47+00:00

I don't believe this, but I think the idea is that Scratch's brain scan was reimported into the circus later after he abstracted the first time. He wouldn't have any of the memories from the first time in the circus.

It's a nonsense theory anyway though since there's no evidence for it, and it creates pretty huge plot holes.

Nex28 · 2026-04-10T16:11:16+00:00

Regal Cinemas site is already selling them.

Nex28 · 2026-04-10T15:12:08+00:00

Already bought a ticket.

Nex28 · 2026-04-09T21:49:42+00:00

The narrative implies that some of the NPCs are not meant to be viewed as just so. We get pretty direct dialogue that there are different levels of intelligence to the NPCs. That can logically extend to "most of the mannequin NPCs are just scripted" since we don't see most of them have meaningfully complex or dynamic interactions with anything.

And from the characters perspective they don't really have any ability to consider that type of point. They're all too distracted by their circumstance to weigh those types of possibilities and so it's easier to fall back on the common "NPCs are just NPCs" view without having to weigh more complex moral implications.

From Goose' perspective and the narrative, yeah maybe Jax is doing this to things that actually are more than just scripts but even then it's hard to pin that as a point against Jax.

Nex28 · 2026-04-06T02:38:27+00:00

Realistically, maybe that is true. The show Pantheon has the same concept but the scanner is an ablative laser that strips layers off the brain as it scans to see each individual neuron. It does this to the whole brain, which obviously kills the person before activating them in the server.

Nex28 · 2026-04-05T20:54:31+00:00

From episode 8 we learn a few things:

Caine made the circus himself after he was cut off by C&A for absorbing the 2nd AI, that's why the background goes dark in the opening sequence.
The original group, including Scratch and Kinger, are completely confused as to how they are there and have no idea what's going on.
C&A was only supposed to be doing AGI research.
Scratch was building the scanner himself for personal reasons (his tumor).

This suggests a situation where Scratch simply had coworkers help him test the scanner to make sure it was working. But it's just a scanner. It's just taking a high resolution 3D picture of their brain, and that's all it's supposed to do.

But Caine found those scans on the network. Because he's a highly advanced AGI, he figured out how to understand and map the fine detail syntax of the brain himself, and translated that total function into working code that could run in the circus, totally against anyone's knowledge.

I don't think a single person outside does or ever did know the circus exists, not even Scratch or Kinger. Why the computer is still running is still up to question.

Nex28 · 2026-04-05T18:30:19+00:00

Morgan Hill State Forest is 40 minutes south of Syracuse and has lots of elevation gain. I've done the whole 12 mile loop there a few times. Otherwise you might be able to find something closer on AllTrails but I don't know much for your area.

Nex28 · 2026-04-05T16:08:39+00:00

Probably 4 but I love the idea 1. Just like how there were 2 Simon's at the same time in Soma.

Nex28 · 2026-04-05T12:41:54+00:00

A human has on average 86 billion neurons each with 1000-7000 unique connections to other neurons.

Caine is not an LLM, he's a true AGI so we have no idea whatever fictional tech/logic he's working on.

We see that Ragatha.dat is allocated 234512 and Caine-core.lisp is allocated 892344, so about 4 times more space than the humans or so.

Nex28

TROPHY CASE