Colossus: The Forbin Project

I remember seeing this movie on TV in reruns as a child, and Dr. Minsky mentioned it at his recent talk I attended, and I saw it was on DVD, so I rented it and just now finished watching it. It is as I thought - I remember pretty much all of the movie, chalk one up for me and total recall!

See, during his talk, he mentioned something things that I didn't remember from the movie. I figured that he was older than me when he saw it and there were some things that I didn't understand when I first saw it, so maybe I misremembered it. It turns out I was right on both counts, the scene he mentioned wasn't in the movie, but was close to what happened in one of the later books upon which the movie was based, and I didn't understand some parts of it when I was a child. I can now update my memories!

As a spoiler for the book/movie: the movie is about a supercomputer that takes over the world. There were two more books beyond the movie, where the reason that the computer takes over the world is due to it figuring out that there is a martian invasion force and it wants to unite the world so that it can repel the invasion (my summary from reading people's reviews of those books).

That which I didn't understand at that time: why one of the scientists was shot at one point during the movie. It didn't make sense to me. Two scientists get together to discuss how to shutdown the supercomputer. The computer figures it out, some people show up to the meeting and hustle away one of the scientists while the other is shot. I thought for sure that the computer had taken over those men's minds! There was no other explanation. But now I see all...

The computer threaten to blow up a city or two unless its will was done. It asked that the one scientist be shot, so agents for the USSR shot him. Can you see the source of my confusion? Why would people do something unless controlled? They had to make the choice to go to that location and shot that scientist. Everyone was sad that he was shot, and yet they were the ones doing the shooting, so I therefore concluded that the computer had somehow controlled their minds.

This touches on some posts from probably a year back - I never understood blackmail, and now I can see that this non-understanding was always with me. I felt then, and still do now, that there is no such thing. The people who take an action and claim that they were forced to do it are responsible for what they do, not for what they do not do. If they didn't obey the computer, they would be clean. Any actions the computer took, it would be responsible for those actions.

There is no proof that a threat would be carried out, they are just words until the deed is done. At that point, you can not go back and do what is asked. So, before the threat, there is nothing but words so any action you take is your responsibility. After a threat is carried out, the blackmailer has nothing on you any more, so you have no reason to capitulate then either. It never made sense to me, but at least I now know why the people were sad - they blamed the computer for their actions and felt powerless, even though in reality they were in total control.

The Edward