I completely disagree. Social interaction is subtle and not easily broken down to algorithms. And social sciences kind of suck compared to any other science goes as far as predictability/repeatable goes. One hurdle self driving cars have to overcome is that they can’t anticipate other drivers’ reactions, a rather bare bones social interaction.
Eta: not to say an AI society couldn’t have awesome social skills but it would take more than downloading a pile of psych PhD papers.
Even that, though, presupposes the trope that machines don’t have emotions, which is nonsensical on its face. I’m not sure where this idea came from that machines could develop almost perfectly human-analogue intelligence with no problem, but would somehow be divorced from the strongest forces that helped develop it in us. A machine capable of one is capable of the other, full stop.
“Full stop”? Your confidence in your assessment on the capabilities of imaginary super computers is rather impressive.
Social science researchers take great care to design experiments that follow the scientific method and are repeatable and measurable. I know it’s cool to poo-poo them as not real science, but it’s simply untrue that they’re not predictable and repeatable. That’s their entire point.
Presumably when Bortus said that Moclans don’t have hair, he meant the conspicuously visible kind. Consider that in everyday speech it’s perfectly acceptable to say that most human women and children don’t have facial hair. Anatomically speaking, of course, they do, but it’s the much finer “vellus” variety. Perhaps Moclans, like humans, are covered in vellus hair, and also like humans, some follicles that produce vellus hair can be stimulated (via hormones, drugs, or whatever space-age technology the Orville has) to produce a thicker kind.
You’d think so but:
Replication Crisis
So maybe reality has a cool bias? 
Humans may be intelligent but we have a hard time understanding how an elephant or a whale thinks or deciphering what information is contained and communicated in their vocalizations. And they are fellow Terrans that exist in social groups, that like us sexually reproduce and have family units.
Intelligences are adapted to the sorts of problems they evolved in context of. Human intelligence evolved in the context of trying to read other humans, and to some degree to fool and cheat or trust and cooperate with other humans who were similarly trying to game or cooperate with us, by use of social intelligence and skills.
If a species of machine intelligence evolved in another and different context, one in which cheating other agents was not done, it could be unequipped for that sort of context, for solving those sorts of problems, or even understanding what the questions are.
We evolved to feel certain drives in certain ways, both pleasant and unpleasant. We have consciously experienced states of hunger, satiety, lust, fatigue, boredom, love … a machine could just as easily be driven to fill up on energy by programming to do such at such a level of priority when level is X or Y without experiencing the state. There is no a priori reason that it has to have the same or even a similar conscious experience … or even any conscious experience at all.
It might, but assuming that any intelligence that can solve other problems we can solve must be otherwise similar in how it gets there, can solve other problems we can solve that have never been salient to them, or must experience consciousness the same way we do, seems unlikely to be accurate.
Which is why the standards for published research include detailed hypotheses, methodologies, etc.: So they can be subjected to peer-review and replication. You didn’t disprove my point. There’s a heavy emphasis in social science, particularly psychology, to painstakingly construct experimental designs to these standards to facilitate replication.
I did disprove your point. A whole bunch of landmark social science studies cannot be replicated. Doesn’t matter how careful they crafted their methodology.
I’ve been running a couple episodes behind and have finally caught up, so I have a few things to say.
Re Birthday Cake: Ugh. A big miss, mostly for the reasons others have covered. Before the plot even kicked in, when Kelly said that Bortus’s birthday was “8 days after” hers, I immediately thought, that doesn’t make any sense. They are from different planets, presumably with much different yearly and daily cycles. Then I thought, maybe the Union calculates and assigns non-human personnel an Earth birthday for record-keeping purposes. That was enough to quiet my doubts for the time being. But then when the whole astrology thing came up, I was pretty much done. Yes, differing planetary alignments should have been Ed’s primary argument. Yes, killing a shitload of guards, whether you’re a Geliac or not, should carry a very severe penalty. Yes, the whole thing was resolved way too quickly in the end. The random person pointing at the sky and yelling “Look!” was just too ridiculous for words.
Re Happy Refrain: Wow. Like night and day from the previous episode. So much better in every respect. Again, most of my thoughts have been covered already. Let’s just say I agree with every positive thing that’s been said so far. Nice of them to let Mark Jackson out of his Isaac getup for a few scenes.
Re the series as a whole: I’m still waiting for it all to click. Happy Refrain was a good sign, but there’s been so much inconsistency that I’m cautiously optimistic at best. When I first heard about this show, I expected one of two things: A Police Squad-like, joke-a-minute sci-fi parody; or a workplace comedy along the lines of The Office or Superstore, where the workplace just happens to be a spaceship. I think McFarlane could have hit either of those concepts out of the park, but he was clearly aiming for neither. And the balance between earnest/serious and silly/crude/funny hasn’t always landed well. The latest episode was a pleasant exception to this observation, so here’s hoping Seth can keep successfully walking this line. I like it enough to keep watching, but dammit, I want to like it more than I do so far!
My favorite movie, out of nearly 1500 I have ranked on Flickchart.
Exactly what Claire was warned would happen with Isaac happened; what exactly was she expecting? :dubious:
The crew wasn’t in on it, but yes it’s extremely weird how nonchalant they are about it raining on the bridge.
I think it’s fair to assume that Isaac knew that the water wouldn’t damage anything permanently.
Of course but that’s not the point.
Say I’m outdoors in beach clothes and suddenly a sprinkler turns on near me and soaks me with water. My initial response is surprise / alarm and I jump back away from the sprinkler, even though I know water is harmless to my clothes and body.
There are reasons why being soaked with water is shocking beyond just “something might get damaged”.
So I hadn’t ever heard of Flickchart before. Sounded interesting. I signed up. My like, 8th choice was Schrek vs Schindler’s list. I don’t even know how to go about making that choice.
“Ahh, I have a saturday afternoon with nothing to do but watch movies all day. Let me recline here, pick up the remote… Hmm… Schrek… yeah that’s always enjoyable… or… Schindler’s list. Well, tha’t’s uh… Oh I don’t know, it’s so close.”
I also thought having real rain was very weird. Why exactly is the bridge wired for that?
However, I liked it and thought it was funny. Everyone just sitting there was unexpected, but in a good way for me. After a moment my brain decided they’re all just jaded to weird things happening.
The main thing for me in this episode was seeing Norm Macdonald. I never realized he did Yaphet’s voice! I really like him (I loved “The Norm Show”) so I felt very silly.
I mean, the weirdness of the rain thing was lampshaded in that very scene, with “we are definitely the weirdest ship in the fleet”, I don’t really see the problem.
I’m surprised the Norm MacDonald thing didn’t click for you. He has a distinct voice and vocal mannerisms.
Maybe the Union has some alien races who prefer a more pluvious environment. Union ships could be fitted with environmental systems that can effect a wide variety of atmospheres, but which are normally set to whatever is habitable and preferable to the majority of the crew. On a Union ship populated mostly by whatever The Orville’s equivalent of Ferengi are, maybe the rain is on all the time.
Then again, the water might also just be the bridge’s normal fire suppression system that Isaac is repurposing for romantic effect. A lot of buildings in the real world have ceiling sprinklers for this purpose. I mean, for putting out fires, not for drenching your girlfriend. 
So if someone takes a dump on the bridge, as long as a crewmember remarks “What a weird ship”, it’s all good? It all suddenly makes sense and I can’t point out their reactions are odd?