Comments on: xkcd has the Spirit

By: ben

ben — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:32:33 +0000

coming to the party rather late but: I think it’s a good thing that we can empathise with machines now. It seems likely to me that when machines become sapient, they too will have hopes, fears, goals, perhaps the desires for recognition or communing with other sapients or continuing to exist. If we can empathise with them and recognise these shared qualities, there is less chance of us alienating them as ‘other’ and ‘lesser’ and thus bringing on the Matrix/Terminator/BSG future. (to say nothing of empathising with fellow humans who look, speak or think differently)

And in the meantime, as earlier commenters have noted, some humans put quite a bit of themselves into those rovers. For them, Spirit shutting down might be like losing a cybernetic eye or arm or, yes, a beloved pet.

And finally, I choose to believe (without any evidence) that, along with excellent engineering and cunning work-arounds, part of what kept those rovers going so long was metaphysical: the thoughts and wills of all the humans following their mission. Maybe we projected an otherwise absent personality onto those machines, but in doing so we actually gave them some of ours. Just throwing that out there.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 08:27:31 +0000

@ ^ Radigan : To be human is to be illogical.

[Channelling Spock.]

Sometimes that is good.

Oh & yes I’m crazy & I’m not sure anyone’s truly sane these days, the whole world is crazy so how can we not be?

By: Radigan

Radigan — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:03:47 +0000

Many of you feel bad for this rover. That is because you crazy! It has no feelings! And the new one is much better.

By: Caravelle

Caravelle — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:20:09 +0000

My gmail status message was “Bring Spirit Home !” for months after reading that strip.

By: El mundo de las matemáticas, en viñetas « RDi Press

El mundo de las matemáticas, en viñetas « RDi Press — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:27:55 +0000

[...] xkcd has the Spirit (blogs.discovermagazine.com) [...]

By: Cornbread

Cornbread — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:50:28 +0000

Don’t worry Spirit, we’ll come for you soon.

By: Dan Oberste

Dan Oberste — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:49:41 +0000

Don’t anthropomorphize the Mars rovers!!! (they hate it when we do that)

By: Grimbold

Grimbold — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:58:45 +0000

It’s the last panel that evokes feelings of loneliness, the way its zoomed out and Spirit looks so small among the giant red wasteland.

Also, #17, when has xkcd ever sucked?

By: Dotan Cohen

Dotan Cohen — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:56:31 +0000

Now that it is stuck in one place, will they change it’s designation from Rover to Spot?

By: Pi-needles

Pi-needles — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:40:43 +0000

@24. Naked Bunny with a Whip Says:

Oh, for pete’s sake. Did Spirit get hit by lightning on Mars? We need to protect our robots from lightning strikes better so they stop developing sapience.

Nice reference to “the Five’s Alive!” Wonder how many others will get it?

By: bulletproofcourier

bulletproofcourier — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:29:45 +0000

I heart you, Spirit!

By: The Drinking Bird

The Drinking Bird — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:49:28 +0000

It’s not quite dead……

…it could get better!

This XKCD sums it up. The rollover text says everything that needs to be said….

By: Korman643

Korman643 — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:49:20 +0000

…and by the way, it’s almost 01:00 am in Northern Italy now, a beautiful – and freezing – clear night of full moon. Mars is very high, almost at the zenith – I really had to get out of home to look at it, and share a thought for Spirit, stuck in the sands of that tiny red dot far away in the night sky….

By: Sohvan

Sohvan — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:53:55 +0000

Maybe one day when we’ve colonized Mars, Spirit and Opportunity will have their place of honor in a musem.

By: Justus

Justus — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:52:56 +0000

I’m a sad panda… :’(

Brilliant comic, though!

By: Pierre

Pierre — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:12:41 +0000

Guys, guys, don’t feel so sad. My take is that in a few decades (or centuries) Spirit will
still be at the same spot, admired by lots of kids and adults marveling at the rover as they
go about visiting a bright and cheerful museum built around it.

By: ClockworkRobot

ClockworkRobot — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:56:25 +0000

I thought they were going to go with a parody of ‘MOON’
“Day 91 – Spirit finds Opportunity… what the heck”?

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:36:14 +0000

#42: If the NASA PHBs even let the team try …

If a “cost-saving measure” doesn’t simply put the driving team out on the street!

By: Spectroscope

Spectroscope — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:14:39 +0000

Poor Spirit?

Very good Spirit rather I’d say!

Like # 43 Stuart Van Onselen, I think of her (NASA’s choice of anthropomorphic pronoun) as someone that was expected to die young who, instead, has amazed the doctors in living to be well over a hundred and achieved some incredible, wonderful things in that time. Spirit has had such a “good innings” as we say in cricketing terms – & in exceeding all expectations as she has, we can let her go with pride and thanks.

Like # 33 Nemo, I think Mars is and always was Spirit’s true home. What could she do & what would she be on Earth after all? Nothing near as special as what she is and has accomplished on those cratered plains of Mars. Its where she lived her whole life, where’s she’s succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams and now where she will – fittingly – rest in peace.

By: DrFlimmer

DrFlimmer — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:32:50 +0000

Whenever things become humanized (much easier to spell than “anthropomorphize”), we develop feelings for them. Curse you, human being.

Poor, poor Spirit!

By: Stuart Van Onselen

Stuart Van Onselen — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:25:45 +0000

Without even reading this cartoon my mom was feeling sad for Spirit. I told her to think of it not as a sad lost little robot, but as an old man, with a lifetime of spectacular achievement behind him, dying, not in his bed, but instead while out doing what he loved most.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:19:04 +0000

It reminds me of Voyager (?)…the little space probe that could. Still out there, faithfully sending back information. I think we expected you would break before you’d be sent out beyond the comfort of our solar system alone. Good luck little guy.

By: pheldespat

pheldespat — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:00:36 +0000

After Winter passes, they’ll do a routine check and discover that 5 of Spirit wheels are working. She’ll get out of Troy and will continue roving Mars as if nothing happened.

/wishful thinking

:’(

By: Plutonium being from Pluto

Plutonium being from Pluto — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:27:42 +0000

2. Ken B Says:

So, that’s how to spell “anthropomorphize”.

Well some of us would spell it with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’ but I guess that’s the difference between *real* English english and the corruption that is American english!

Poignant cartoon – well done to the cartoonist as that sure worked for me as well as clearly, most others.

Vale Spirit brilliantly done you wonderful old girl, brilliantly done. Thankyou.

By: IBY

IBY — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:01:34 +0000

It is an inanimate object… Why does that comic make me feel so sad?