Holden: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...Quick background in case you've never read the book or seen the movie. It's set in the future, where we made androids to do dangerous manual work on the moon (I think?), they are almost indistinguishable from humans, except there's one test that claims to be able to pick them out - the Voight-Kampff test, which looks at the respondents emotional response when answering questions to judge whether they're humans or robots.
Leon: What one?
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical.
Leon: But, how come I'd be there?
Holden: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down and see a tortoise, Leon. It's crawling toward you...
Leon: Tortoise? What's that?
Holden: [irritated by Leon's interruptions] You know what a turtle is?
Leon: Of course!
Holden: Same thing.
Leon: I've never seen a turtle... But I understand what you mean.
Holden: You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon.
Leon: Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden? Or do they write 'em down for you?
Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Leon: [angry at the suggestion] What do you mean, I'm not helping?
Holden: I mean: you're not helping! Why is that, Leon?
[Leon has become visibly shaken]
Holden: They're just questions, Leon. In answer to your query, they're written down for me. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response... Shall we continue?
- Blade Runner
I don't know what I'd say. If there was a tortoise in the ground, and it was on its back, but it couldn't turn it over, why wouldn't I help it? Maybe because it might be a poisonous tortoise, do those exist? According to Yahoo Answers, the answer is no. Perhaps the sand is hot, and I don't want to burn myself? It might be quicksand, and I might sink if I reach over to the tortoise - and apparently, if you lie on your back and expand your surface area, you can't sink in quicksand as it's more dense than a human body, so the tortoise is better off on its back!
I used to be really worried that people would think I'm evil or a sociopath. For some reason, animals always seem to come up to me, and they say that animals can sense evil. Or maybe I'm just really smelly, I'd prefer to be smelly than be evil. When it comes to writing about how I feel, I have no issues, but I've never been particularly good at expressing myself in person. I don't have the best poker face, but I try to keep things neutral. The reason for that is that sometimes I really don't know how to react. Sometimes I feel like laughing, but I get the feeling that it's inappropriate. Or that I want to react with horror, but sympathy seems more appropriate.
How do you know what normal is meant to be? I mean, I know that I'm not "normal" in the sense that I'm slightly unconventional, but I don't want to be at the level of showing symptoms for being a serial killer or anything like that. Note: I never burned any ants as a kid. I tried once, but I didn't really have the patience to get the magnifying glass to light anything on fire. I also never tortured any pets, as we only had goldfish.
I also spend a lot of time thinking about how to commit crimes. Like when I was working at the casino, whenever I had a dead table, I'd think about how I'd rob it. Not even Ocean's Eleven style, just the small stuff. That's probably not something you should confess to, but to be fair, I never actually did any of those things. I guess that's what makes it OK, right? I can think these things, but as long as I never actually do any of them, then I am still within the non-criminal range on the psychiatric scale. Here's to hoping.
....
I still don't know how to answer the tortoise question without seeming non-human though.
2 comments:
I'm sure you'd pass as human on the test! The test isn't about what answers you give but about how you react emotionally to the test.
Because replicants are only a few years old they aren't able to put their emotional experiences into context. The voight-kampff test measures their involuntary emotional response to questions and answers.
Remember Rachael answers most of her questions coolly and calmly with little reaction: this is NOT what flags her as a Replicant and it takes over 100 questions for her to be detected.
Replicants don't have LESS emotion than humans - they have different emotions and less emotional control.
Pretty sure you're safe from Deckard :)
(So I don't think the actual answer you give to the question is important - it's how you emotionally react to being asked!)
Otherwise all the replicants would need to do would be to steal the question bank and memorise the answers!
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