The Voight-Kampff Test

[Dave]

I have some reservations about whether the Voight-Kampff Machine, which tests subjects emotional responses would actually work:-

Replicants are manufactured organisms designed to carry out work too boring, dangerous, or distasteful for humans. The Nexus 6 replicants are much stronger and faster than, and virtually indistinguishable from humans. (In one draft of the script of ‘Blade Runner’ Bryant tells Deckard they did an autopsy on the replicant that was fried trying to break into the Tyrell Corporation. and didn't even know it was a replicant until two hours into the procedure.)

“More human than Humans”, the most modern replicants made by the Terrell Corporation, including the Nexus 6 series, are designed to develop their own emotional responses: Love, Hate, Jealousy. Replicants presumably differ from humans in one important factor: they are lacking in empathy. The manufacturers noticed that replicants had eccentricities because they were emotionally immature. Rachael was a prototype replicant with experimental memory implants, designed to provide a cushion for her emotions. Consequently, she was unaware that she was a replicant.


Without the implanted memories as an emotional cushion, the replicants will begin to develop a strange obsession about their origins, and for more information on what they really are. Therefore, as a fail-safe device, a 4-year life span is built into them. Their short life span gives them relatively few years to store up the emotional experiences that humans take for granted. This is said to make them inexperienced in emotional responses and leads to the test that the Blade Runner can employ to identify the replicant.

In the same way that a Lie Detector or polygraph works, his equipment, a Voight-Kampff Machine, has bellows that would appear to measure blood pressure, heart rate and respiration rates, as well as a camera that measures the dilation of the pupils of the eye. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the bellows are designed to measure the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body.

Eldon Tyrell informs us in the film that the device measures such things as "capillary dilation of the so-called blush response, fluctuation of the pupil and involuntary dilation of the iris"

When humans experience an intense emotion, such as fear or anger, there are a number of physiological changes that take place, and it is those changes that the Blade Runner observes. He typically carries out the test accompanied by sets of pre-prepared critical questions and statements designed to instigate severe emotional responses. Usually, about 40 questions are sufficient, but it has been known to require over 100 questions to make a firm decision.

The current problems that exist with the use of a polygraph appear to have been overcome by the use of minute iris contraction measurements. At present the reliance on respiration and heart rates, and galvanic skin responses is not foolproof, and is usually supplemented by voice stress analysis and body language analysis in advanced machines. Replicants appear to mimic the correct voice stress patterns and body language of human emotional responses, but strangely the pupil dilation controls are not as good.

In ‘Blade Runner’, the replicants' eyes glow (even those of an artificial owl), however Ridley Scott has stressed that this is merely a cinematic technique, and the glow can't be seen by the characters in the story, only by the audience.

I think that it would be far easier to build a machine that could mimic the correct iris contractions than it would to build one that could mimic the correct body language and voice stresses.

[Dave]

I take it all back!

You must read this:
http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.ph...rticleid=24031

They apply the Voight-Kampff Test to the San Fransisco Mayoral candidates with startling results. Some of the politicians really are replicants!

[Tabitha]

LOL That's funny. I especially liked the one guy who clocked to the test immediately!

[warhammer]

Lol, priceless.