46 – Come With Me If You Want To Live: Time Travel and The Terminator

Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts once again joins Mike and Wendy as they start their discussion with what they’re planning on wearing for costumed for June 30th’s   first Asteroid Day , hearkening   back to their discussion of “global-killers”, asteroids that would cause mass extinction events.

But the big discussion this week is Terminator Genisys ! Ah-nuld is back and Mike breaks out his impression less than five minutes into the podcast before proceeding to beat that horse dead throughout the episode. They all talk about their first experience with the Terminator (where Allison saw it at a special Arnold Fest hosted by Twin Cities’ independent filmmaker, Michael Heagle.) And in fact,  Sunspot once went as the Terminators for a Halloween show where the entire band dressed up like a Terminator…

This week was Alan Turing’s birthday, who was a seminal figure in the history of computers and Artificial Intelligence, as well as helping us win World War II. Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed him in the recent film,  The Imitation Game ,  and was Academy Award-nominated in the role. The Turing Test is something he devised to tell the difference between humans and a computer trying to pose as a human, something used in  Blade Runner  as well as a main plot point in the recent movie,  Ex Machina.

And they start talking AI, including Eugene Goostman , a chatbot pretending to be a 13-year old Ukrainian boy which passed the Turing Test, successfully fooling the judges that it was a human 33% of the time.  The conversation turns to Kevin Warwick , a leading researcher in “cyborganisms” (listen to the podcast to get that).

Some of the world’s most prominent minds (including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates) have said that Artificial Intelligence could spell the end for the human race. And they talk about how an AI recently got “testy” with its programmer (but that might be more of a sensationalistic spin) and talk about the movie  She,  which Mike loved (the first likable Scarlett Johansson performance since Lost In Translation , albeit just her voice) but Wendy was lukewarm on the film.

But one of the issues with  The Terminator is that (SPOILERS for a 31-year old movie) has an “ ontological paradox “,  which is the classic “chicken and the egg” quandary, if Kyle Reese was sent into the past by John Connor to save Sarah Connor from The Terminator and became Jonn Connor’s father in the process, how did John Connor get conceived in the first place? If time is linear, well, how is that possible?

I’m the time-travelin’ Baby Daddy!

So, (SPOILERS for the 2014 film, Predestination, so STOP READING NOW if you care about that movie and love Ethan Hawke (who is an unsung hero that’s reliably into sci-fi movies!)) Mike goes into talking about Robert A. Heinlein’s “All You Zombies”, which takes the novelty song, “I’m My Own Grandpa” a little too seriously. The song will eventually also become inspiration for  Futurama  episode, “Roswell That Ends Well” as well as becoming the inspiration for the latest Spierig Brothers movie, and this discussion eventually turns to Steve Goodman  and “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” .

The conversation turns to how time travel could actually work in real life and that leads into wormholes, time dilation, relativity, Matthew McConaughey, and  Ender’s Game.  Then Wendy wants to know where the evidence is about time travelers in our current life and we finish the episode by talking historical doppelgängers, the Count of  Saint Germain,  and the “ time-traveling hipster “.

The muscle in my chest that keeps the beat won’t let me rest.

The clock that’s running out, sometimes it can get worn out.
Because my heart’s a time machine,
that wants to change my history,
take out my enemies, alter my destiny.

All the ones I should have kissed,
All the chances that I missed,
this time I’ll invest,
I’ll fix what I wrecked with,
The Slingshot Effect.

We’ll go so fast that we’ll erase the past.
I’m gonna retcon my whole life.
Event one, hit the reset button.
We get to start again,
we get to start again tonight.

I’ll stop myself from telling lies,
And I won’t step on butterflies.
Every little regret,
Is now something I can correct.
Because my heart’s a time machine,
that can change all my history.
give myself an intervention,
across the fifth dimension.

All the words I should have said,
All the lives I could have led.
this time I’ll invest,
I’ll fix what I wrecked with,
The Slingshot Effect.

We’ll go so fast that we’ll erase the past.
I’m gonna retcon my whole life.
Event one, hit the reset button.
We get to start again,
we get to start again tonight.

There’s no going back,
no alternate reality.
Tonight’s the night I reboot,
all my continuity.

There’s no going back,
no alternate reality.
Tonight’s the night I reboot,
all my continuity.

The muscle in my chest that keeps the beat won’t let me rest.

We’ll go so fast that we’ll erase the past.
I’m gonna retcon my whole life.
Event one, hit the reset button.
We get to start again,
we get to start again tonight.

I don’t need a contraption,
to pay for my infractions,
I can’t make everything correct,
I don’t need The Slingshot Effect.
My convoluted history,
always slingshots right back at me.
I will not live by hindsight,
I will start again tonight.

The muscle in my chest that keeps the beat won’t let me rest.
The muscle in my chest that keeps the beat won’t let me rest.

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