Ah, Bender. What a genius creation he was.

"But I don't have emotions" Data said, REGRETTABLY.

@@EddieDalmunda haha, reminds me of how Terminators have always been shown to have some semblance of emotion. It's a weird concept, but it's there. They weren't designed to have emotions. But they do... in a way. "this is not the outcome desired... and I don't like that." sort of thing.

damn you beat me to it lol

​@@jsalsmanChatGPT is a word processor. Not comparable to even an android like Data or a robot like Bender.

There's a lot of neurodivergent reading of Data, and there is a book that posits that cats are autistic (cats and humans on the autistic spectrum display very similar behaviour). Data also created a massive menu for Spot to eat.

Another good point

Only cat-typical cats are autistic. Its a startling difference when you have one of each. ( especially a large breed like Maine Coon or Norwegian Forrest Cat . they are chill & more social but the flip side is they expect interaction and the cost of them listening to you, giving you neurotypical attention is expecting to be listened to when they want to )

At "he is a good cat. He is a pretty cat." lol!

I'm thinking 🤔 the episode scene where data ask worf to take Care of spot. Worf "I Will feed him"

I agree with this take, it almost feels like he.. gaslit himself into feeling emotion?

Perhaps in his noted wish to be human he slowly observed and took in the emotional behaviors of his crewmates and attempted to emulate those actions and thoughts when applicable.

@@kujo9927 I kind of assume he's had the emotions all along, he wouldnt even be able to long for emotions without an emotional drive, but what he lacks is the ability to perceive them because he tricked himself into not looking for them

If anything, the emotion chip just gave him a main hub where he can process it, before that he slowly learned around his neural net, now the chip streamlines how its processed.

@@Elliasal Like a flashdrive with the software database on how to read emotions. But over time he sort of subconsciously populated his own database.

From a scientific perspective. Biological beings experienced evolutionary advantageous chemical simulations to certain situations. Given Soong's insistence to make androids passable as humanity, personality albeit not programmed in any individual (artificial or not) will naturally manifest approximations by proxy of appropriated social situations seemed advantageous. We generally regard emotion separate to personality however which gives the rather mundane answer unlock to Data of less controllable approximated subconscious expressions

Honestly, that's my read too. Data has emotions. They just aren't like neurotypical human emotions. As an autistic person, Data's emotional spectrum often feels similar to mine - difficult to pinpoint and express in ways recognisable to neurotypical people. I do struggle to recognise my emotions and even if I'm having one if it's not a passionate or intense emotion.

@@majuuorthrus3340 This. Even if it's just a failure of the writers as emotional human beings, a lot of Data's behaviour seems to be dictated by some kind of "emotion", his most overt emotion being curiosity.

I was thinking the same thing ... Data showed a lot of emotion with Lal ... when Commander Riker was flirting with Lal in 10Forward and his efforts to save Lal. To me, him having no emotions would have caused him to deactivate her before the system failure, but he actively tried to save her. At some level, he had some type of emotions.

He also has been showing some level of care and compassion in the fact that he has his own pet cat that he voluntarily took on. A pet that, despite a public image that would indicate otherwise, both needs and exhibits a fondness and preference toward his owner.

There was also Data's interactions with Spot in so many episodes. His concern that Warf would feed, water and nit leave her alone too much, his irritation when he was trying to get her to "follow his commands" and she kept jumping up on his console while he was on the computer, his concern for Spot's kittens when she disappeared, and so many more. there were subtle hints all through the series, even his concern for Lore.

@@jacklow9611 I think that Data does have emotions but he cannot feel or express them as intensely as his brother, Lore. This was likely intentional on Dr. Soong's part so that Data doesn't lash out at people in a fit of temper over a perceived offense or allow his emotions to overpower his good judgment. But throughout the series, we can clearly see that Data can enjoy things, be fascinated by things, show concern and bond with people and animals, even show annoyance when people mispronounce his name, and even anger when his subordinates are unwilling to obey his orders.

Not to mention some key dialogue between Crusher and Data, when Data approaches her for parenting advice, and Crusher tells him of the importance of giving children love and attention, and Data says, "I can give her all the attention (paraphrased) but I cannot give her love." "Now why do I have a hard time believing that?" Or the moment that Data opens his mouth to respond to Lal's proclamation of love as she is dying, before uttering that he cannot share in the feeling with her. Who wants to bet he was on the verge of saying it back to her? I will never forgive the writers and producers of TNG for killing off Lal; she had so much character potential, both for herself and for Data, and she wouldn't even have to be a huge character, either; she could have appeared in one to three episodes per season, allowing the producers to work around Hallie Todd's schedule with any other projects she was involved in.

This is what I favour: he has non-logical preferences, which are "emotions" and are valid but not easily recognised by the organics (nearly all humans) around him.

Through observation, Data could certainly emulate emotions, or begin to understand what will cause emotional responses in others, especially those he knows well (so manipulation Picard becomes a possibility). Given that Data's positronic brain has the ability to work with the cheap means the capacity for emotions must exist- even if he cannot normally express them without updating his drivers or whatever. I feel he experienced "proto-emotions" from time to time, but rarely enough that he could still say in a given moment that he was incapable of feeling them. Not bad for a brain that is merely twice as powerful as the most advanced computer we have today!

@@PositionLight yeah, it's liek the terminator analogy. Terminators have very complex decision-making behaviors... that often make NO sense to Humans. Why? Because the machines have an utterly alien concept of emotion. It's most easily visible when they get angry. But it comes up in more ways than that.

I figured it is almost a necessary part of sentience, emotion is often used just to allow rapid decision making so to have preferences and such would already beget a rudimentary form, and Data shows capacity a good bit beyond that. Now, it might be that he wants a fuller range, and that is perfectly reasonable, but he definitely has SOME

@@jamesgasik3424 I think the strongest evidence of his emotions is the episode with his daughter Laal. Although he says he cannot feel love for her, he does in his way. At the end of the episode he transfers her memories to his and talks about how she so enriched his life. There is some sort of feeling there

Data could have simply told him "I am not the only android. I have a brother, so to complete your collection you would have to aquire him as well" Data Lore team up!

Lore would've taken the ship inside of ten minutes.

Omg, Lore would have a field day with that distuptor. Would have made Fajo look like a saint.

Data trolled that guy more than it would seem apparent. Maybe Data is just trolling everyone because he's just one cool mo fo.

I’d love to see that tbh

oooh, Yeah, it's like how Soong told Data that it's PROGRAMMING that makes the difference between him and Lore.

That's actually quite an amazing little true story. I like it.

This works really bloody well as an analogy.

That is what I was thinking along the lines of too. It’s not like you either have emotions or don’t, there are a lot of them out there. It’s obvious Data has some emotions, he just lack the ability to process them properly without his chip.

I am now emotionally invested in your tv lol

He could probably put his unique emotional range into words, but why would he bother? He was taught from "birth" that he has no emotion; ergo, he won't bother to contextualize his sensations as emotions. Then he gets the chip, expecting to feel intense emotion; so he's more willing to describe himself in emotional terms. The chip itself could be a placebo and still mean the world to him for this reason.

So Data has alexithymia.

@@evapadilla8342 Pretty much. Being mildly alexithymic myself, as part of a whole heap of other neurodivergence, I find it particularly amusing that my family had nicknamed me Data as a teen, back when TNG was first running. Definitely better than how we called my sister Worf because of her wild hair and temper!

There's a fantastic (now noncanon, sadly) Trek book called Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory, where Dr. Soong survives in an android body and keeps tabs on Data and Lore, and when he learns that Data installed the emotion chip, he reflects to himself that Data always had to have some kind of emotions, otherwise he'd have no will or desire to do anything. Curiosity, loyalty, a desire for harmony, a drive to improve himself, a sense of duty, a passion for art and music, close bonds with other beings...Data didn't experience emotions the same way humans do, but he was a very driven and passionate person, even if he didn't realize it.

There is an argument to be made that his expression is a logical behavior to better integrate and work with the crew. The definition of emotion is hard enough to sift through. We've been trying for 60,000+ years to define what emotions actually are. Logically is is beneficial to express the behavior of grief at the loss of someone simply to improve the function of others by showing a series of actions that look like grief to benefit the others whom are also grieving. It is beneficial in a social organization to share in responses. Logically the execution in turn could be just a simple function of assessing what the emotional response of the survivors and that killing him is the optimal solution. When transported, Data simply reassessed the consequences and calculated that the execution wasn't optimal, the omission of the attack was the better response. The confrontation at the cell may seem like gloating, or simply Data assessing if the threat is in fact neutralized to a sufficient capacity. The question of Data having emotions is no different then asking if a complete psychopath has emotions. They can express things that look like emotions, but are they genuine or simple emulations of a sincere emotional response. Any complex system may exhibit 'emotions' but they could be just a projection of human emotions to something that doesn't actually have emotions ("That storm sounds angry"). Data clearly on too many occasions show clear examples of behaviors that look like emotions, but in reality the only one that could answer that is Data himself since we still can't answer it for ourselves, I doubt Data could either. On the other hand... who's to say if the storm is, in fact, angry? Only the storm could answer that. What is anger but a response to specific inputs? I slap you, you get angry, raise the humidity and the storm gets angry. Is it any less or more anger?

Data may have used the term "miss" but "miss" to an android/robot/computer is not an emotion as it is with humans. There is a circuit known as a missed-pulse detector. It isn't displaying an emotion either.

Less murder and more execute a murderer, in order to put an end to his threat to everyone else.

I always took it that when he says that to Riker... the way he says it and the look he gives Riker (and the understanding look that Riker gives back) he's saying without saying "yeah, I figured I had no choice" and Riker's like "it's cool, buddy, I've been there."

@@shadizersilverhand2113 Nope! Still murder! A unilateral decision to end someone's life? He wasn't protecting anyone else or himself, just killing to get rid of a bad person. Like Dexter 😁

@@sarahscott5305 nope, not murder. Of course he'd have been protecting himself and others. Left alive he'd someday if able to escape custody he'd be back looking to recreate his collection including Data and as an obvious sociopath who casually horribly murdered someone right before Data's eyes surely has murdered other people to get his way. Execution is what he deserved.

@@davidpickens8800 OMG will you met the nice Dr Helen Noel?

Yes indeed, I can't help but think that if we were to get stories about Data being written today the neurodivergent allegory would be ladled on thicker than clotted cream.

The episode with the blank poetry is another good evidence of his emotions.

Nailed it

This!!

Exactly how I see it. I also think this was exactly according to Soong's design. After the failure that was Lore, Daddy Soong needed to tweak Data's 'emotional subroutines' just a tad. He's also enough of a bastard to straight up lie to his son about the whole 'no emotions' thing.

yeah he just doesn’t feel anything in his gut basically. to him, fear means “i’m in danger” instead of “i feel sick to my stomach and i can barely think.” once he has the emotion chip, fear can totally overwhelm him.

I think thats true. He's also missing emotional valence towards most sensations. But i think he does possess some emotion but its mostly in a monoband of fascination- curiosity. This is akin to sepia. Its definitely a color. But as its neither black & white nor has any valence or contrasting emotions , and is subtle, he lacks an ability to perceive it as an emotion. If you saw everything in one color you could never explain to someone else you see a color, nor know you do. In humans our emotions themselves can produce emotional responses & we ( sometimes ) are aware of both even at the same time. Data lacks this self awareness without the chip. It might have been on purpose to prevent emotional psychsocial conflicts in his early development. His daughter was capable and it may have backfired. Lore was a giant mess. But his "mother" Android was ok, and it may have been because She already developed ( Soong could ve wiped her memory of her growing up once she developed and programmed her as his wife . just as he did with Data )

It is like an emotional accelerator unit.

Yeah, even if he had emotions before, it’s clear the chip changed how they manifested.

He has all the cognitive aspects of emotion that a mere machine wouldn't, wanting company sometimes and preferring the company of certain people to others, doing stuff that interested him, wanting to be helpful and to have a sense of purpose, a sense of self preservation and the need to decide his own fate; But not the physical sensations that accompany these wants and needs, the jolt of fear, the euphoria of love, the lethargy of sadness etc... which would require having an endocrine system and receptors in the brain that give us the responses to its chemicals that we think of as our emotions.

I always said he had emotions but he lacked "passion" both good and bad.

Thats called "valence" . Its built into most of our senses.

The way he tries to save Lal... Holy crap. After that there's no way anyone can tell me Data didn't love his daughter.

This is the theory I think is probably closer to what the writers probably had in mind, that he has emotions but that they were switched off or suppressed. We see examples of this, in the episode when Data is recalled by Soong, and when he's in the lab, Soong just tells him where the information in his mind will be and Data is able to access it, which implies that there are levels of his mind he can't access directly without assistance. Another example of this is the dream program that gets kicked off by the energy beam contact in the cross over episode with Bashir. I think that Data was supposed to eventually get to the point that emotions were unlocked, but Soong was dying and wanted to give Data a gift, and the chip was designed to remove the suppression of emotions.

@@manjackson2772 oops sorry you’re right

Ditto...

Had it been, we’d have to come up with some award 🥇

Release the Shive-r cut!

His ethical subrotines is actually what makes him function so well in society. Everyone is all about Asimov's laws of robotics, but forget what Asimov tried to say with them: That they don't work. We can't just tell a robot what they can and can't do. We have to program them with a huge set of databases and algorithms to decide what is right and wrong. If I order my robot to make me tea, the robot will go and make tea. But what if there is a baby in the way, lying on the ground? The robot would just walk through it. Okay, lets put a big off switch on the robot, so that I can jump in and stop it. But if I do that the robot can't follow my order and make tea. So it will prevent me from turning it off. Okay, lets put the off switch higher than following orders. What happens? I tell the robot to make tea, and the robot turns itself off, because that is better than following orders. What if I prevent the robot from interacting with the off switch? The next generation won't have that switch, because robots can't interact with it and can't put the switch on other robots. What if I simply program in that stepping on babies is bad. Which directive is more important, following my orders or avoiding babies? Would the robot just stand there and wait for me to remove the baby? but if I program the robot with ethical and moral code and the ability to problem solve by itself, it would come up with something that gives me my tea and keeps the baby safe. Like going around it, or picking it up and carefully putting it aside. Another example. Let's say there is a bad guy in a plane (or spaceship or whatever), and he intends to fly the plane/spaceship into a group of people. There is also a robot on board that follows the laws of robotics. The robot has to protect itself, follow orders, and avoid harming people or letting them come to harm by inactivity,. In increasing priority. The robot can't use force to get the baddie out of the cockpit, because he could be harmed. So robot wants to go into the cockpit to take over the plane and prevent the bad guy from doing his plan, saving all the people. But the bad guy orders the robot to stay out of the cockpit and not interfere with the plan. Now the robot has an issue. It has to save the people, because not doing anything would cause harm. It can't enter the cockpit, because that would go against orders and might require harming the baddie. it can't manually control the plane because again, against orders. A robot with ethical code would analyse the situation and come to the conclusion that lightly injuring one bad guy would be morally better than being passive or leaving. So the robot goes into the cockpit, subdues the baddie, makes contact with ATC and lands the plane at the next airport. Saving not only his own existence and the targeted people, but the bad guy as well. What does that have to do with Data? He has moral and ethical code that moves him towards doing the "right" thing. There is one episode where something bad happens and the entire ship is moved away and everyone's memory of the event is wiped. Only Data knows what happens, and he won't tell. Even when ordered to do so. So the crew wants to go there again to figure out what happened. In the end they had made contact with very aggressive aliens that usually kill everyone that comes to them, and the crew has decided that wiping their memories would mean nobody has to die and the aliens accepted. Data prefers staying quiet and not following an order by his superiors, because it is the right thing.

I like to use a Terminator analogy. Terminators are designed by Skynet to be remorseless killers hunting down Humans without pity.... and yet... they seemingly have emotions. Not the same as Human emptions to be sure, but still.... they can get angry, confused, and in the case of Cromartie... get annoyed because someone is wasting his time. that was a particularly creative one. Cromartie is trying to find the Human resistance fighters in the present day, he finds a teen who claims to have useful info, drives around for a while but gets annoyed at the girl for babbling about nonsense Cromartie didn't care about for an hour or so... so Cromartie throws her out of the car... he could easily have killed her but chose instead to safely eject her from the vehicle and just leave her behind, stranded miles from home. Also, Cromartie at one point murders another Terminator for getting in his way. Not a Terminator working for the Resistance like Cameron, but one who was going to kill one of the Humans Cromartie had been getting information from. Weird choice when he could have just asked the other Terminator for help. Nope, sneak attack backstab murdered.

either i have this or i’m just anhedonic

LOL I JUST mentioned this condition to a friend when talking about this video.

It’s a common part of autism and often ADHD!

I suspect having that and that's why data vibes so hard with me. (adhd and autism here) from my experience: it's like you still definitely have emotions, you just sometimes don't really realize them, until you are yelling, and like.... oh, apparently this is really pissing me off. or when I talk about traumatic shit and at some point I start shaking and realize... oh it's probably emotionally too much to me? it's not like being a fun cool robot tho, because you definitely still have emotions... not being aware of them tho makes it hard to listen to what your mental health needs, if that makes sense? but some parts of datas experience definitely vibe.

It literally means "no words for feelings" and yes. The human brain actually does some very quick logical calculations based on past experience and available information when making decisions about what to do. We call it instinct or emotion because the brain doesn't usually show its work. The amygdala, a major emotional centre of the brain, is basically a threat calculator. A human brain makes you feel fear, while a positronic brain says, "running away is the strategy most likely to mitigate this danger at this time." That's why Vulcans complaining about silly little human emotions has always rung a little false for me.

I think this is accurate. We don't have a complete and inerrant understanding of emotion in the present day. Emotion can be an interpretation of physiological responses, framed in a context that we learn to be appropriate from past experiences. We can also seemingly trigger those physiological responses by recalling memories which induced them in the past, and through imagination, media, and storytelling. Data was always a vessel for understanding what it means to be human. He is a stoic by design, but that makes his humanity obvious when it peeks out, like when he tries to execute his captor in the episode discussed in this video. Emotion isn't binary, it isn't simple, and it isn't solely the physical response that is goosebumps or a racing heart. It's intertwined with our sentience, and essential to our evolutionary makeup. Data is sentient. He learns to be empathetic. He learns to speak in emotional terms. He learns to think in emotional terms. The emotion chip just emulates the physiological input that we take for granted.

Yes, Data can not communicates what the feels, even to himself, so he concludes that he does not feel. Words to describe it do not exist.

Yeah it's notable that Data had been exploring that "dreaming" subroutine... BEFORE getting the emotion chip.

Doesn't Soong explicitly state the exact opposite of your theory in an actual episode though lol I mean he says I designed the emotion chip for Data to give him emotions but Lore stole it and it doesn't work for Lore because it was designed for Data, it's kind of open and shut

@@kylezo Does the chip add the hardware processing for emotions or just apply a software patch? So is it more like an EPU (emotional processing unit) or like a ROM chip (with the necessary drivers and databases).

That is the generations movie after he gets the emotions chip.

yeah, this. Soong mentioned that the real difference between Data and Lore was "programming". Also, Lore didn't actually USE the chip in the way Data later did. which raises the question: did Lore have emotions because of the chip... or because his programming worked differently?

I went through a period of a few years when I was in a series of stage plays in a community theater. After a while, I started to think about the differences, if any, between my emotional reactions on stage, and the ones I had in real life. It made me much more conscious of my own motivations and behavior, which I think is a good thing; so in a sense I became less emotional and certainly more contemplative.

@@peterwyetzner5276 yeah, in my case I don't WANT to cry watching sad movies... so i don't.

I agree. The emotions of an artificial intelligence need not align with those of a human.

The chip adding the database of how to identify and interpret emotions. The hardware functionality was there, but he needed the patch to make proper use of it.

The cool thing about Data was his programming was designed to improve over time. I always figured Soong withheld the emotion chip from him because he knew he needed to develop as a being first or the emotion chip would likely just turn him into another psychopath like Lore.

Like Mork and Mindy when Mindy pointed out to Mork that he was displaying emotions even though he said he didn't have any I was told that living beings need emotions to survive

I think something similar. "Data had emotions all along" certainly doesn't have to mean "the chip changed nothing".

Yes. No emotion, no motivation. The chip gives him strong passion, which he has no experience handling.

I don't even know if the chip 'enhanced' them so much as 'plugged them in to his body.' There's a huge difference between understanding that you hate someone and getting that blood-boiling rage tearing through your body. I personally think THAT'S what the emotion chip added, allowing Data to feel the actual feedback of his emotions instead of just having to logic based on them.

Very interesting yes I agree

They've worked together before.

I thought about this. Data could have held everyone at gunpoint indefinitely, trying to get more to turn on Fajo. I think he had time, he didn't know he was getting beamed out. No one was getting murdered at that moment so killing Fajo right then did not make logical sense - I call emotions, which confused him leading him to then mislead Riker about what he had done - also from an emotional place. Data could have said "I believed that the crew was in mortal danger, so I fired" and everyone would have understood, but he didn't. maybe because he felt some shame over feeling and reacting to rage

Data wears clothes because when he was first activated, he saw no logical need for them (being an Android) so Soong and Juliana had to program with a modesty subroutine in order to get him to stay dressed, because he was, after all, "anatomically correct". XD

@@ZeoViolet exactly what I was about to reply.

The very last interaction between Data and KF tells me that he may have lingering trauma about the incident. Just as Data turns to walk out, KF snaps his fingers. Data pauses for a moment. I haven't gone looking but I'll bet he has a response of some kind to the snapping of fingers after that.

WRT Measure of a Man, Data has a sense of self-preservation. Whether it's a pre-programmed thing or something he developed, it's there. He even says in the episode, "I am the culmination of one man's dream. This is not ego or vanity, but when Doctor Soong created me he added to the substance of the universe. If, by your experiments, I am destroyed, something unique, something wonderful will be lost. I cannot permit that. I must protect his dream." He knows that he has to preserve himself.

honestly, it feels a bit distateful from the part of the writers presenting Data has not having human emotions, when so much people with depression or psychosis have difficulties connecting with their emotions

the way data feels after getting his chip is akin to several experiences of people with mental illness when they seem to get off bit from dissociating

And how he kept the hologram of her all that time.

Lol I'm dying 🤣

This is a general other way the topic might have been addressed - through the reaction of others. Example: Dr. Crusher, in "The Offspring" says she finds it hard to believe that Data is incapable of giving Lal love. I think the ending makes a case that she was right to think that way. The reaction of Admiral Haftel to what Data did to the systems failure of Lal is of a person reacting to the profound emotion of another, not just his own.