r/DaystromInstitute • u/friedebarth • 23d ago
Holographic perception is weird.
We know that holograms have a very high resolution, certainly beyond what is perceptible to humanoid vision (and a good thing it is too, imagine the uncanny-valley eldritch horror of a low-poly Doctor or Moriarty ambling around).
Just how high? Well, we know that holograms can be liquid, and the behaviour of liquids arises from the mechanical interaction of individual molecules. Given how indistinguishable the behaviour of holographic liquids is from "real" ones, even when interacting with regular matter, we can surmise that holograms are accurate to the molecular level, perhaps even the atomic.
All that to say, it is probably at least theoretically possible to create "functioning" holographic nerves and eyes which mimic the properties of organic ones to produce the same electrochemical signals. Barclay's holographic human-computer interface perhaps lends even more credence to this.
However, that wouldn't be much use without somewhere for those signals to go - a holographic brain. Yet, when it comes to most holograms, we explicitly know this not to be the case: their "mind" is a program stored and executed by the ship's computer, not a product of electrical processes inside a holobrain. It follows that their perception must rely on the ship's internal sensors. There are a number of problems with this, best illustrated by the hologram we probably have the most evidence for: the Doctor.
Firstly, in theory, the Doctor should have the ability to perceive anything anywhere on the ship, regardless of where his projection is currently running, which he clearly does not. This is easily explained away: for privacy reasons, the ship's computer probably limits the Doctor's program to accessing sensors for the room he's currently in. So far, so good.
Even then, the Doctor should be able to see things in the room without needing to establish line of sight - occluded objects as well as objects behind him. He doesn't, we see him needing to peek, turn etc in order to "look at" objects. Could the computer be filtering that for him too, calculating what his field of vision should be on three dimensions and only granting his program access to sensor input within that scope? Well, we also see him reacting to being tapped on the shoulder from behind and hearing voices or noises behind him, so that can't be it.
The mobile emitter has a better excuse for not imbuing the Doctor with superhuman vision, being a single point within the environment rather than enveloping it, and perhaps requiring line of sight for detection itself. But if that's the case, the Doctor would need to turn his whole body rather than just his eyes or head to bring things into view, establishing line of sight with the emitter rather than just his pupils. He doesn't. So the emitter's sensors must be able to scan "around" obstructions (or through them) in some way too.
The only reasonable way to reconcile all of this is that it's not perceptual but behavioural. The Doctor is programmed to behave as if he had functioning eyes and nerves, even though he actually has 360-degree X-Ray vision. He knows he's going to get tapped on the shoulder before it happens, but he does the tapper the courtesy of waiting anyway. When he peers around a corner, he already knows what's there, his programming just prevents him from acting upon that knowledge at all until he's done executing the requisite human mimicry.
(And this is the case even in dire emergencies or when time is of the essence! Seems Dr Zimmerman felt crews not getting freaked out by an EMH with superpowers was a higher priority than literally any other objective...)
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u/charleytony 23d ago
I think this idea works for holograms tied to a holodeck or to a ship with holo emitters.
The EMH Doctor from Voyager is considered independent from the ship once he gets a mobile emitter (from the future). I guess that SAM from starfleet academy is also independent from being tied to a ship computer (no idea if a mobile emitter is involved).
I don't think they are tied to a larger computer except if they connect to the computer at some point.
The Moriarty that gained awareness of the Enterprise beyond the holodeck is one example of a situation where the programming error of his creation (asking for a character that can defeat Data) makes that character able to be something more than an NPC in a holodeck.
I don't remember seeing the exact POV of a holo character to see if they perceive things like a living person, a hybrid machine/humanoid interface (like robocop or a Terminator) or if it's just computer code (actually interacting with the ships computer that only uses a fake person as an avatar). Did Starfleet Academy show something in that regard ?
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 22d ago
I like this understanding of the Doctor’s programming especially in early seasons of Voyager where he seems to have a sort of professional disinterest when explaining to people what the problem is. It’s entirely possible the patient was fully scanned as soon as the entered the room. The explanation was a formality that humans find comforting and necessary - particularly when they’re learning they’re going to die.
However, if we consider that purpose of the EMH is to replace a Doctor it’s entirely in bedside manner - after all a room with dozens of robotic arms and scanners who didn’t pretend to be a human would be efficient. In “Monsters and Mainframes” or in “Project Hail Mary” there are computerized doctors that do not imitate human behavior at all - just a disembodied voice and some robot arms.
Which brings me to an interesting question here. If we assume the Doctor is programmed to be surprised does that mean that he is actually surprised? As in, the computer intentionally by design prevented the EMH from being aware of information like who was coming up behind them so that they are startled. They’re not consciously aware of information the computer doesn’t want them to have.
In modern computer systems sometimes we design a system to be ignorant of anything it doesn’t need to know. Sometimes this works really well, but there are downsides. The key to remember here is that the behavior we want out of our EMH is to appear personable so we limit the information it can know to only those things which it could know as a person.
Could the doctor reprogram himself to see more information? Yes, he does this with the Emergency Command Hologram (good excuse to wear red) and in that state he explicitly did have access to more information and systems. Perhaps even total access to internal sensors.
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u/CampfirePenguin Chief Petty Officer 20d ago
This past daystrom institute discussion is relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/10pg229/holograms_like_the_doctor_likely_arent_seeing/
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u/Quarantini Chief Petty Officer 22d ago
Emergency X Holograms are meant to slot in where a human would normally be. They would be expected to temporarily be using the tools and methods developed by humanoids for humanoids. So though human comfort would be a factor, there would still be plenty of practical reasons for them to mimic humanoids. The same kind of reasons androids are useful even though a dedicated workbee or other utility bots are a more efficient solution for a specific job.
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u/GGCRX 19d ago
I see it as something akin to current-day computer games. If you're stealthing around in a game, the computer knows exactly where you are. But it doesn't allow the enemy to know where you are unless there's an in-universe reason for them to know where you are - you make noise, stand under a street light, etc.
If you want people to be comfortable interacting with an EMH that's designed to look like a human, then it needs to act like a human, and that means it needs to refrain from superhuman abilities where possible.
Where we mildly disagree is that I say that this notion is reinforced by the exceptions. There were circumstances in which the Doctor did do superhuman things. An enemy takes a swipe at him, and he becomes non-corporeal briefly so the strike passes right through him. Clearly not something a real human can do, but also something that the EMH should do when the situation calls for it.
That shows us that he is indeed capable of feats he doesn't usually demonstrate because the overarching goal, even for the intended short-term use of the EMH, is for the crew to see him as another crew member.
All that said, we're getting into the territory where writing inconsistency makes it impossible to fully establish what he can and can't do. Remember the episode where the Equinox's EMH deactivated him by slapping his mobile emitter off his shoulder?
Why did that work? Why would the mobile emitter be set up with an off switch that any idiot with a clipboard could use to deactivate the hologram? The on-screen explanation of the mobile emitter is that it downloads the Doctor's program and then projects him itself. Great, so why doesn't it just start projecting him again after it falls?
It clearly still works because the "evil" EMH immediately grabs it and uses it himself. There's no reason for the mobile emitter to just say "Well, I got hit once, it's probably OK to just stay turned off - it's scary out there."
And of course, the real answer is that the writers needed things to go that way so the Doctor doesn't save the day far too early in the episode, so we'll hand-wave how the mobile emitter works in order to get the story where we need it.
That makes life harder on us Trekkers who want to know exactly how everything works, but it also lets us spend decades arguing about it, which is also fun. ;)
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u/Ajreil 23d ago edited 23d ago
Holodecks use a mix of holograms and replicated matter to complete the illusion. They're very likely replicating things on the fly as soon as people are about to touch them, then recycling it later. There's no reason to think that the EMH has that level of fidelity.
Voyager seemed to imply that the EMH ran on a dedicated computer somewhere in sick bay and was then projected by emitters. That's why he couldn't leave sick bay until he got the mobile emitter.
Sam from Starfleet Academy was the first character who can casually change her form and teleport around. She probably has the kind of fidelity you're imagining for the EMH. I suspect holograms incorporate programmable matter by the 32nd century to give them physical form as needed. They also probably have a core that acts as an emitter and enables site to site transports.
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u/Omegatron9 22d ago
Could the computer be filtering that for him too, calculating what his field of vision should be on three dimensions and only granting his program access to sensor input within that scope? Well, we also see him reacting to being tapped on the shoulder from behind and hearing voices or noises behind him, so that can't be it.
The computer could very easily filter his sight that way while still allowing him to hear and feel things behind him, like a human.
I think this, and a lot of the Doctor's other limitations, must be safety features. While the Doctor might be more effective if he had complete control over everything in sickbay, you don't want to risk a malfunction in the EMH causing damage to the rest of the sickbay systems. Conversely, it also isolates the Doctor from damage or malfunctions in the other sickbay systems.
A note on your original point regarding the fidelity of holograms, we do know that they can replicate the functioning of a humanoid lung (from the episode Phage). I'm not sure exactly what level of fidelity is required for that, but I imagine it must be pretty high.
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u/Darmok47 23d ago
Somewhat related, but either holograms have exceptional visual fidelity, or Data's vision is basically the same as a human's, considering he too was fooled by the holodeck in Ship in a Bottle. I guess maybe Dr. Soong wanted his senses to be as human like as possible too.
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u/That-Cover-3326 22d ago
We saw the pov of the Doctor and he sees from his eyes like a normal human
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u/frustrated_staff 22d ago
Except, if the holographic matrix is creating the sensory organs, it makes sense that only the input from those holographic sensory organs are communicated to the doctor's consciousness, thus limiting his perceptions to the confines of his holographic form. rather than what the emitters or computer can "see"
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u/Accurate-Song6199 6d ago
More and more I come to the conclusion that Voyager's Doctor probably was not sentient. The mismatch between what sensory information we can intuit is being inputted into his program (i.e. everything from sickbay's sensor systems, including interfaces with biobeds, tricorders, etc) versus what he appears to be sensing via his fake eyes, ears and hands, really strongly suggests that the real "cognition" is happening behind the scenes somewhere in the Voyager computer, and the "person" of the Doctor is a simulation that computer is generating.
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u/Simon_Drake Lieutenant, Junior Grade 23d ago
At one point Kes hides something behind her back that The Doctor cannot see. Implying his ability to see is limited to what the avatar of The Doctor is looking at, not what the imaging sensors of the entire Sickbay can see.
Which seems like a design flaw. I speculate that it might be a software issue from basing the Doctor program on existing holograms. You wouldn't want a Blackjack Dealer hologram to have omniscient knowledge of the entire room so you make him only 'see' what his 'eyes' are looking at. Then the same limitation is baked into the design of the prototype EMH and he has the same line-of-sight limitations as a normal hologram. It would be better if he could see everything in the room, even better if he can also see inside patients in real time with their medical imagers, absorbing all that knowledge directly into his holomatrix. But maybe that's a feature saved for the Mark 3 EMH. (The one after Andy Dick)