Storage for coded information?
[Project 0 3-0 1 : Disposal of YoRHa]
The backdoor of the Bunker has been set to open once the time approaches to switch to new models when enough combat data has been collected. The Bunker will be disposed of by having it be deliberately attacked by machines. At this time, all materials regarding the YoRHa project, including this document, will be lost, and falsification of the information that mankind still resides on the moon will be complete.”
9S existential crisis consists of two overlapping elements. He breaks down because he finds out that there is no great purpose, or meaning for his existence. Humans have died long time ago and are not on the moon, and earth was empty when the aliens came. Thus the purpose why he was created, to serve the noble humanity and reclaim their home, ceases to exist. What also breaks down 9S is the revelation of his “true purpose”. As the YoRHa Disposal document states, the bunker was rigged to be demolished as enough combat data was collected, and the time to switch to the new models was at hand.
I find the contents of the Disposal documents especially fascinating because, when one thinks about, one can see that it presents a nihilistic world ruled by a biological point of view.
So firstly the game establishes this point: humanity is no more, and thus you, the android, have no purpose, or any grand god given external meaning behind your existence. This situation is a possible analogy to us, to humanity, who live in a world where the corpse of gods/god lays cold in the ground, non-moving, non-responsive. Grand purpose has died and the meaning behind our existence with it.
So instead looking at the sky, or in the androids’ case to the moon to find why we are here, we look inside, to our biology.
Biology paints a very fascinating picture of why we are here, and what it is that we should do. The only thing that matters in this world is the passing down of genes. That is what we are here for, to reproduce and pass down coded information. As this quote from a blog post from Scientific American quite well illustrates:
From an evolutionary gene’s-eye perspective, the genes are immortal, and our role, the meaning of life, is to perpetuate the genes. In a few centuries, all traces of our existence as human individuals – memories of us, all our accomplishments –will likely be gone and forgotten, except for genes that survive from those of us who successfully reproduced through the generations.
Source: x
Within the context of this post, I find this comment from the well known evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkings, quite fitting:
So I use this phrase a survival machine. A body, an individual is a survival machine, and that is by far the most powerful way, of interpreting what an individual organism is. An individual organism is a throw away survival machine, for, the self replicating coded information which it contains.
The quotation starts from 1:24
If one thinks of this in a pessimistic fashion, an bleak vision of the world and meaning within it opens before the individual. The only thing that matters is the passing down of this coded information. You, the individual, are just one phase, one pathetic link in a chain of survival. You yourself do not really matter.
I think this kind of vision is presented to 9S trough the Disposal document. He as an individual is just one phase or meaningless particularity. The only reason why he is here, is to be sacrificial pawn that collects combat information. As enough of this information is gathered, he will be eliminated and replaced by new models, which likely will use this collected combat information from the “previous cycle”, to enhance and improve their performance. This data, information (and genes are coded information) is the thing that matters. It is like 9S would be reduced to just one part of natural selection.
Quoting Dawkings, 9S is just a survival machine that houses information, or has gathered it through his actions for the higher-ups to use, and who is eventually cast aside. This information, what ever the combat data turns out to be, lives on in the new models, but 9S himself, will cease to exist.
To conclude I`d like thank my friend Lav @kaus-quietis for helping me with this post, by commenting on it and assisting with the proofreading of it. It is also good to point out, that I am talking about a very complicated subject in a bit of nutshell like manner.