"Avatar 2" is released! The story behind the movie is really "terrifying"!

On December 16, "Avatar: The Path of Water" ("Avatar 2") was finally released.

From the world view to the story, Avatar 2 is a continuation of the first Avatar movie. So, do you still remember what Avatar was about? What is so great about the world of Avatar? Today, let's take a look at the scientific settings.

01

A Neural Network Across the Planet

Although there are spaceships, anti-gravity, and alien life, the core story of "Avatar 1" is a fairly standard re-skinned version of the "North American Colonization Story":

The colonists came to the New World to plunder resources and clashed with the indigenous people. The protagonist identified with the noble savage values ​​of the indigenous people and helped them drive the colonists away.

Image source: Internet

This theme is very classic. Movies such as "Dances with Wolves", "The Last Samurai" and even "Dune" are typical examples of this theme.

"Avatar 2" also continues the story of the first film. The protagonist Jack has completely integrated into the life of the alien natives in the new film.

So, what’s so powerful about the alien natives in “Avatar”?

In general colonial stories, the values ​​​​arranged for the indigenous people are mostly the pursuit of harmony with nature, while the Na'vi in ​​"Avatar" are truly harmonious in the literal sense:

They and all the complex life on Pandora, including animals and plants, can access the planet's neural network and communicate directly with the mother of the planet, "Eva".

This "Eva" is not just an object of faith, but also a real "global consciousness" supported by a massive amount of neural links on the planet Pandora.

Image source: Internet

Under normal circumstances, there is a certain degree of continuous communication between the individual lives on Pandora.

When encountering important occasions, the Na'vi tribe can gather at the "Tree of Souls" and connect the "braids" on their heads directly to the neural network.

According to the setting in the movie, at this time, the Na'vi can even read the memories, experiences and even consciousness of their ancestors.

02

Is this possible with future technology?

It’s no wonder that Jack from Earth is so impressed by such cool “pan-planetary telepathy”.

However, the humans on Earth in the movie have at least developed space exploration technology and possess avatar technology. Can't they also come up with something similar?

It is definitely possible, and there is more than one technical route.

For example, if all human beings were uploaded into a computer network and turned into digital life, they could naturally use the existing Internet to achieve an effect equivalent to telepathy.

For example, retaining the physical body and translating thoughts and ideas into electrical signals and then transmitting them through a brain-computer interface is also a very promising route.

We can even consider using bioengineering to transform the body so that life on Earth can grow braids that can establish neural connections.

As long as it is a problem at the "hardware" level, there will basically be no "insurmountable obstacles".

03

Animals don't want telepathy.

"Can" is one thing, "should" is another. If a network connecting everything is born on a planet, what will happen? Questions will ensue.

The first to encounter a problem are the animals—the fox wants to eat the rabbit, but the rabbit does not want to be eaten by the fox.

If this "Pandora-like neural network" really achieves "all living things are connected as one", then the fox will be able to directly sense where the rabbit is hiding, and the existing ecological balance will be completely destroyed immediately.

It won't be long before all the prey that rely on "hiding" to protect themselves will be eaten, and all the predators that rely on "ambush" to hunt will soon starve to death.

Without prey, the predators will die; and without predators, the prey will reproduce infinitely - if this continues, the planet will soon become a wasteland.

Well, maybe this kind of telepathy is not "passive" and requires "active speaking".

So, suppose the fox broadcasts: "Little rabbit, little rabbit, where are you?". Is it possible for the rabbit to answer honestly?

Of course it is impossible. All the rabbits that answered were eaten. The ones that survived must have run away when they heard the broadcast.

After a few times, the foxes would find that such broadcasts were not only useless but also gave away their location. Soon, telepathy between most species would be completely severed.

In fact, even within the same species, similar neural networks have problems.

There is also competition among rabbits. In nature, there is no such thing as a "rabbit alliance". Each individual must first follow his or her own interests.

In many natural ecosystems, the pressure from competition is much greater than the pressure from predation.

If a rabbit discovers a safe nest or a lush lawn, it will broadcast it to stranger rabbits who are not related to it - but it will suffer losses. Hiding it secretly or even lying to mislead stranger rabbits is the "advantageous" choice.

04

The Na’vi may not be simple either.

Once intelligent life joins this neural network group chat, things get even more chaotic.

Although the Na'vi people of Pandora do not have any highly developed technological civilization, they are able to skillfully use tools and domesticate animals, and their intelligence is no worse than that of humans on Earth.

Image source: Internet

No matter how varied the intrigues between other species are, they are ultimately limited by the level of their brains. More advanced strategies need to be written into "instincts" through a long period of natural selection.

Now that a species with highly developed intelligence has joined the mix, wouldn't it be able to use its intellectual advantage to manipulate other species at will?

The movie's setting says that the Na'vi domesticated many local species through the planet's neural network at a speed far exceeding that of the people on Earth.

On Earth, domestication is primarily a biological process, which involves changing the nature of animals through long-term artificial selection.

If the Na'vi skipped this step, it would be unlikely that they used "biological means" but more likely "psychological means" - in other words, deceiving and manipulating PUA.

In short, having the hardware conditions for communication and being able to truly connect with each other are two completely different things.

In fact, the people on Earth have suffered similar losses for generations. Every time a new communication tool is invented, there are people who dream that it can bring "world peace", but the result is always a bloody lesson - the most recent one is probably the emergence of "social networks".

05

Let planetary consciousness take charge?

Well, Pandora is a little different from Earth. Their planetary network is not just a passive hardware foundation, it also has a native planetary consciousness called "Eva".

If we let "Eva" take charge of everything, different lives will probably be able to live in harmony, right?

However, this first means that the creatures on Pandora lack one thing, something that most people on Earth consider to be the most precious - free will.

There is certainly no reason for the Na'vi themselves to be an exception. It is hard to imagine that Ava would control the behavior of all other life forms while leaving the Na'vi alone.

Image source: Internet

If the Na'vi were different from other creatures and possessed free will, then not only would conflict between the Na'vi and Eva be inevitable, the Na'vi themselves would also inevitably be divided internally, making it impossible to maintain peace on the entire planet.

And the implication is even worse:

It is true that humans are selfish in destroying the environment, but at least all other creatures are also fighting for themselves, eating what they should eat and killing what they should kill. Humans are just more powerful and more destructive.

If the Na'vi became the only life on the planet with free will, they would become the only disharmonious factor on an otherwise harmonious planet.

This also means that the entire Pandora ecosystem can no longer follow the principle of "evolution", but everything comes from design and creation. How an individual organism acts, whether it can survive, and whether it can reproduce has nothing to do with whether it adapts to the environment, but depends entirely on the will of "Eva".

06

Diversity is just a decoration

This will lead to a series of other problems. If one type of animal is made to be the food of another type of animal, they will just be eaten without any resistance, and any means of self-defense and defense will become meaningless.

If an animal reproduces when told to do so, then traits related to courtship and ornamentation are equally meaningless.

In other words, almost all biodiversity has become a mere decoration, or even has no reason to exist.

The problem isn’t limited to animals.

Plants are not born to be eaten. They also need to survive and reproduce, and for this purpose they have evolved a series of adaptations, including hard shells, fibers, thorns, secondary metabolites, and so on.

For example, chili peppers evolved capsaicin to prevent mammals from eating them and chewing up their seeds. Humans' liking for capsaicin is purely accidental.

If it weren't for the survival needs of plants, there would be no reason for capsaicin to be created. The beautiful flowers of plants exist entirely to attract pollinators.

But in a system where everything moves on command, flowers are meaningless, and any diversity is meaningless.

If you think about it carefully, you can't say it so categorically. The only meaning left is to please the creator and commander - Eva. In other words, this so-called ecosystem is Eva playing house.

07

A terrifying setting

However, now, in the story of "Avatar", "invaders" appear when "playing house". Don't forget that the Na'vi are also dolls used in "playing house". So, what will they do?

The natural thing is to help Eva and take all means to drive out the invaders.

When facing an enemy with higher technical level than oneself, the best way is to cause internal strife among the enemy; and the key wedge lies in Jack who aspires to be a noble savage.

In the movie, we thought that he decided to abandon his old identity and side with the Aboriginals out of love and sincerity;

But the terrifying thing is that perhaps all of this was carefully designed to win over the earthling Jack. It was all a big chess game, and he himself was just Eva's pawn.

If the protagonist or the invading species were changed, the appearance of the Na'vi civilization and even the planet Pandora might be different.

But what's wrong with that? After all, it's just a movie and we're all just actors.

Author: Fan Gang

Reviewer: Tao Ning, Associate Researcher, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences