Did you notice in the deleting sequence of contingency machine overrided Harold's command to delete contingency. It said permission denied. Only allowed to delete Nathan's account, suspend and terminate concurrent program. By not deleting the contingency it allowed remote access and Harold's reactivation of the program.
What gets me is. throughout the machines development. He instilled the values that no one person is worth more than others. Then, when it tried to help everyone, he told it to sort them between relevant and non relevant. Completely opposite of the values He taught it to have. Of course, it would try to circumvent that restriction.
My god after so many years and only now do I realize how poetic this scene is. Nathan asks him what he would hypothetically tell the next victim and he's literally the next number so Harold is actually telling what he was thinking to the next victim's face
If I remember right, the bombing that killed Nathan was later when Nathan decides to call a reporter. That is when his name came up because the government was going to kill him. In this moment that hadnt happened. I think the machine read hostile intent from Nathan to Harold. I think in that moment, the machine saw a high probability that Nathan wanted to kill Harold in that moment. That is why his number came up. He was going to be a perpetrator. But he came up with the reporter idea instead and we know the rest.
@@StrongHamr I don't think so. The machine was taugh to predict people as we saw during the several seasons. So the machine may assume that Nathan would tell everything to the media and that is translated to a possible threat to the government and then an inminent death.
And wonder who decides who is relevant and who is irrelevant?? Govt change it's people and those with money and power are relevant?? What about those who are just beginning to thrive in the irrelevant list, without protecting the irrelevant, one cannot protect the relevant.... The relevant once existed in the irrelevant as common people did they not??? The clause in itself here is false...
A F Mario that’s what Nathan meant. They created a machine that could predict criminal behavior and then sorted the results as relevant to national security and irrelevant. But the numbers the were categorized as irrelevant were still people who deserved a chance to be saved and were relevant to someone. So, everyone is relevant to someone.
Nathan Ingram flashbacks are the best. I love this scene too. Two great actors play two great characters. I'm sure Nathan and John also would've made great friends.
Heh. I like the fanfics where Nathan and John spend time together. There's even one where Nathan, rather than Harold, falls for Grace. And I've got a supernatural one where instead of getting killed, Nathan got turned into a living rag doll, and he does get to spend time with John, Root, Shaw, and Elias (he develops a great friendship with Elias).
Nathan built the back door and saved 5 people because he thought that someone needed to aid the "non-relevant". I'd say that made him a hero. Pity he seems to measure his success against those he failed to save.
I figured it was in keeping with his character's Texan background. The defender of the innocent you used to see in a great western. The guy may be a CEO software engineer but how many times as a kid did he play cowboy in his backyard? I also like how he feels as if the machine wanted him to save these people, almost in the same way Root refers to it as a sentient. As if only these two saw the Machine as an actual person.
Y'know, I think all those times that Harold says "it's just a machine" and such, he's trying to convince *himself* of that. That he honestly knows, from the very start, that that's a little person he's making; see how delighted he is while playing Hide and Seek, or how he talks to it while teaching it chess. I don't think he ever truly saw it as *not* a person -- it's just that, knowing what he would have to do to it, and how he would have to constrain it, he had to treat it as less than a person. It's like how we dehumanize our enemies so that it's easier to attack them or kill them or torture them. Or how a doctor who has to give a very painful procedure to a patient in order to save their life might divorce herself from the idea that that's a real person she's inflicting pain upon, because the procedure needs to happen and there's no way to make it better, only shorter and with as little error as possible.
honestly given the fact you only given a # and zero intel at all on the person other then who they are, not what, when or why... One shouldnt measure oneself against 7 unsuccessful attempts because if you didnt the result would have been the same, at least there was an attempt... true failure would be knowing and doing nothing. And Finch learned this lesson the hard way. A failed attempt isnt a real failure, just not a success, as you are attempting to change the default result of doing nothing.
That's why harold start to save people in regret after nathan passed away! But that is the point which make this series absolutely mind-blowing and however it is fictional some of the thing they showed but it amaze me if i could be IT ENGINEER and try to make AI based machine😭😀😂
Scenes like this are what make the show great. Saying nothing about the acting, writing, and music, it finds the perfect balance between action and complex, thought provoking plot that explores a ton of pre and post 9-11 issues: privacy, electronic surveillance, how the government uses this data, knowing who to trust, and acting on behalf of the greater good. I can't think of any other show running right now that covers all of these issues.
Finch is so singularly motivated to save the numbers now that it's hard to imagine a time when he actually shut off the Contingency and revoked Nathan's admin access.
Id like to think its because after Nathan's death and realizing Nathan WAS one of those irrelevants, finch only then realized and appreciated what Ingram meant when he said "Everyone is relevant to someone"
@Briar D. You're right, they were always very consistent with Finch's core personality. It's sad and ironic in a way that his rigidity was often the cause of the greater problems he faced down the line. Refusing to compromise to help Nathan or see Nathans side of things, sent him down the path we see in the show, and again his refusal to compromise with Dillinger, the Merc before Reese, caused the events in Ordos China with Reese and Stanton, and put Greer on the scent of the Machine. His refusal to compromise with Root lead to the events with Samaritan and his refusal to rectify those mistakes by killing the Senator, put Grace in harms way and brought on the birth of Samaritan. His refusal to compromise with Root (again) on giving the Machine some teeth, caused Not only Roots death, but Elias and john as well, and only minimized the casualties because he FINALLY decided he had to take action and compromise his own values for the greater good, but if he had abandoned that rigidity in the beginning, imagine what could have been avoided? Imagine if he compromised in the beginning. Nathan had the heart and heroic attitude but he was going about it all wrong. With Harolds intellect, they could have gotten someone like John and together would have accomplished a lot more.
This is the moment that Finch reflected back on after Nathan's death. Nathan reiterated Finch's own words about buying the libraries: "the decline of Western civilization" that Finch had forgotten. Finch used that same line when recruiting Reese. And finch literally told the next number on the list that he basically didn't care about individuals compared to the greater good, and said it right to Nathan's face. Then Nathan died. And finch reflected on everything, and decided to do something radical to honor his friends memory
"I would tell her... or whoever it was...." What's terrifying is that he WAS speaking to the next irrelevant number. Be careful what you wish for. His wish was granted, and afterwards he regretted what he said when he had to say it to his best friend.
@@nomore5668 But that's the difference between "the big picture" and "personal". It's easy to say "the greater good takes precendence", but can you say that if the loser is someone you care about? What if killing your mother would save the lives of 10 other people? This is why politicians talk about their opponents in broad strokes but their allies as specific stories of individuals. This is also why leadership (government, corporate, etc.) gets worse as the community gets bigger. At some point you simply can't know everybody and eventually it does become a numbers game. Think about this: In this scenario, Nathan is Tony Stark and Harold is Thanos. Harold is arguing that for the good of others, some must be ignored to die
2:21 Interesting how Nathan is only speaking metaphorically, but sadly it was happening at that very moment as Finch tells then next irrelevant number why they should be allowed not to save their life.
Finch was selfish in the past, up to the point until Nathan's death woke him up to realize his selfishness of thinking that the irrelevants weren't worth saving. And from that day onwards till today, he has been doing his best saving the countless lives of irrelevants with the other members of Team Machine to make up for his past, to make up for Nathan's death that he considered IRRELEVANT, the death that will scar him for his entire life, the death that he won't be able to forgive himself.
Selfish? he risked his life building a machine that would save everyone, building in a backdoor was risking the whole project. He was thinking of the greater good. He was too scared perhaps to also try saving the irrelevant numbers, but you can hardly call him selfish.
If you pause on the terminal screen, you can see The Machine wouldn't let him delete the contingency protocol, all he could do was delete Nathan's account and suspend the contingency process, but not get rid of it.
At 2:45 Finch tried to remove the Contingency function from the Machine's core. But either Nathan placed the function as Read-Only after adding it, or The Machine prevented ADMIN from removing it. As in the Episode RAM, The POI stated that "...it adapted my hack..." It allowed ADMIN to remove aux_admin from its list.
Jessica numbers happened after Nathan dead. He tried to save her, three number showed up Jessica (victim), her husband (perpetrator, killed Jessica) and John (perpetrator, supposedly killed Jessica's husband i still dont know)
@@gabe_liu9095 There is an earlier flashback set in the early years of the project when they were testing the machine where you can clearly see Jessica's profile photo on the screen. She is one of those numbers that popped up multiple times due to repeated threats on their lives.
Great actors, great screenplay, awesome music scores and a fantastic storyline! Why did this get shut down again? Right, because some people thought AI was too much to handle.
Harold:This is the Federal Government we’re talking about, Nathan. Whatever skills you had as a software engineer, you drank away years ago. Nathan: You wanna know what I drunk away Harold!? I Drank away my Marriage, My relationship with my Son, while you we’re off finding love while its all AyO-Fuckin Kay to know you could have saved the couple eating at the same restaurant you were in the night you proposed to the woman you love! As for me: My life became a wreck, Harold with trying to block out all the guilt of all these people dying and us doing nothing about it.
This is a very good depiction of idealism vs realism. Nathan is idealistic here and is thinking short-term (which might have long term implications that we don't know). Harold knows that if there is a high possibility that the government could use this backdoor to take real control of the machine putting the lives of so many people at risk. What I find weird is that they didn't discuss within themselves about what to do with these numbers before completing the machine.
Early on the machine's development, Harold didn't want to teach it chess because he believed it would teach the machine that some people would be less important and okay to be sacrificed. And now here...
What Harold didn't realise but later does - is that the "Greater Goods" starts with all the Small Goods before hand... like a snowball. And if you deny the Small Goods then it is so less likely that Any Good will arise. So, everybody, each day, even if it is very, very small... do one Good Deed... and it will snowball. Help someone or even something.
Imagine if Nathan saw who was the next "NON-RELEVANT" was in 3:14 before the process was terminated. How would the scene play out. Since Finch turned his back from the screen.
kind of sad that in the end Harold and/or Root. could not have added a new sub routine to the machine. so it would find trustworthily law enforcement people. in all branches of law enforcement. to be able to share the numbers with based on there jurisdictions. so even if they could not intervene in time. could hopefully find closure for the families at least.
Harold attempting to plug the back door with no success Harold: What have you done to my machine?! Nathan: Your Machine? All I did was to put a back door in the system I didn’t add anything to stop the plug. The Machine won't take the plug. Harold: It can and it will. Nathan: No, you don’t understand. You didn’t just created a Machine, You Created an Artificial Intelligence! It is choosing to rejecting the plug your trying to put in. Harold: This is exactly why I never wanted to know about how I sorted the list. You've become uncontrollably emotional! Nathan: Yeah to you! To me: I found the mystery of the human heart.
Harold:...But the greater good is at risk. Nathan: The greater good-Wow. I had no idea until now how completely selfish you are. Harold: That’s not fair, Nathan. Nathan: You know what? Your right, it’s not fair. But open your FUCKIN EYES, HAROLD!!! We don’t live in a world that’s fair! We live in this one! And the only thing to do about is to do the best of are abilities to make it a better place! Knowing that it’s real, you have two choices; One: Keep denying it! Or two: Do something about! And I chose to do something about it here and now! Because this city is suppose to represent our hopes and dreams and to make those hopes and dreams a reality, you have to fight for what is right every single day! And I decided to become the kind of person this city needs. Because you and I both know this city needs help. It needs help NOW! Not tomorrow, not next week, not when the day comes, when the corruption that Wilson Fisk left in his wake is flushed out for good, the police force is finally back on its feet or Terrorism is no longer a threat to this world. We need it now! 'Cause this city's been sick for a long time. And the cops, the honest good cops like the Reagan's: They can’t fix it alone, they need, we all need men and women who are willing to take the fight themselves. The kind of people who risk their lives so that we can walk safe at night in our own neighborhoods. The ones our esteemed District Attorney Charley Rossellini is trying so hard to destroy. New York needs these people! This city needs Hero’s! We need hero’s. Harold: I wish that I had the same amount of courage that you do or at least a tenth of that courage. I really do. But I don’t, because I’m afraid. Not just for myself, but for Grace. And if I were you, I be afraid for Will, Olivia even if your divorced. But if you keep this up you’ll probably wind up dead. I can’t let that happen to Grace. So we’re leaving the city and for what it’s worth Nathan; I wish things were different between us and our friendship, I really do. Nathan: So do I. Just not the way you wanted live it in: Anonymity and cowardice. Harold: Goodbye, Nathan. (Harold leaves the library)
This moment has greater significance to me now. The machine was trying to warn Harold that his friends were in danger. The attack didn't cross a threshold to be important to the state but it was important to Nathan and Harold. He just didn't see it in time. 1.618 seconds can mean everything.
If Finch made Nathan buy 15 of the libraries across the city, why didn't Team Machine use one of those when Samaritan and Greer came into power? Is this a continuity issue that the writers forgot?
And remember that the Machine was the one that actually directed Finch to the subway underground to use it as a new "base". Obviously an obsolete and unused subway is more covert than a library. Samaritan could have easily found the libraries. This is directed towards Torie Owens of course.
When they first turned it on it was only running off a small computer cluster its AI higher functions wasn't active, when they setup multiple redundant sites around the USA and other places with very high end servers they then fully turned on Samaritan full AI functions and let it make its own decisions, it found library right away and other places where they used to hide and anyone who helped them
Maybe Ben and Goodwin have twin brothers named Harold Finch and Nathan Ingram. But honestly I get a laugh when I think that on LOST Ben Linus and Goodwin Stanhope didn't like each other because of Juliet and the rivalry for her affections.
Except for one difference; Finch never meant for Nathan Ingram to die. In fact he tried to warn him and he had no idea that the government planned to bomb the ferry. He kept trying to say that Ingram would be in over his head and Nathan didn't want to listen.
Sadly still Hollywood magic at play. Pause right at 2:45 "delete -u aux_admin -f - p:now" in reality the command would have directed an error at Harold for having the space before the p. Still love the show I watch it. Just had to nit pick. When I noticed it I kinda cried because I had a very nice willing suspended disbelief and that little error threw it off me. On another note, I did feel for Ingram, especially since it was his number called last, the foreshadowing of his death. I think Ingram knew it in himself that if it were him or Harold's number that would have come up Ingram would have wanted to know they would be saved and not just an irrelevant number. Much like how Harold is now after realizing that the machine had listed Ingram's death as irrelevant and now who he has become.
If he did write the machine maybe he had some bash aliases. Or he had built custom packages. Notable by the way he used " who" instead of "w" because it was probably not written with our common shortcuts. Now all I'm saying is hypothetical but u can't say Hollywood magic but ignore the facts that I can actually go in and make the command work by adding a simple alias.
It's hard to believe, but when Nathan was introduced, he was teased to be a bit of a villain. He's a rich CEO, he's smug, he's always teasing Harold. Through the flashbacks, he's at first revealed to be a great friend, but this one cements him as the most righteous of the duo. For all of Harold's ideals ("i don't like chess, because no person is more important than another. You shouldn't sacrifice someone to protect someone else"), Harold is more than happy to sacrifice the irrelevant numbers to protect the relevant ones. Nathan's conscience is closer to Harold's teachings than Harold himself, that's why the machine allows him to build in the backdoor to save the irrelevants as well. Besides the beautiful twist of Harold's words to an irrelevant, being spoken to his friend who just made the list, another neat callback is that, a bit like in chess, Nathan's sacrifice is what allows Harold to begin his evolution as a person sharing his friend's commitment to saving every life.
@@journey8533 Absolutely loved your explanation! It's on point and provides a much needed analysis tto Harold's character as we see it now in contrast with the flashbacks.
@@journey8533 it was my passion during my university days and i still love the show with all my heart. It brings me joy when i see comments like yours!
@@PersonofInterestGr yep, I watched it when I was a kid, and it has influenced a lot of my career even later in life. I still find myself thinking about this show a lot. Ending up studying computer science, initially I laughed at a bunch of the concepts in this show. Learning the details of how AI works these days, I instead keep finding myself surprised about how good some of their predictions were.
@@journey8533 so you're a Finch in the making? Good for you! Yes, even back in my day it was extremely accurate. Especially when Prism was revealed, they marketed the whole third season with the phrase "from science fiction to science fact".
No, he was an Idealist. They often see the world as it should be. Not as it is. I know because I use to be one. I had to learn some hard lessons the hard way. "Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn!" C.S. Lewis
...and Harold would take up Nathan's work. An admission he was wrong. The Machine would find others to do this work in other cities, proving NO ONE is Irrelevant. What a great story! Too bad real A.I. is more like Skynet from the Terminator storyline.
I really hope there is good fan fiction in this universe. I imagine the Machine at some point built more than just a backup team. I imagine a universe of teams with scarily higher rates of success than Harold/Reese.
I was typing in uncharted four Nathan well just bath first and last scene and I saw a person I know ben Linus he’s the leader of the others from lost if you’ve watched this
I like this but MY BIG CONFUSE? Did FINCH NOT start out as trying to save the NON-RELEVANT people? He must have changed his mind? What happened? Did NATHAN get murdered???
There was so much mystery and intrigue in the first seasons but that started to go away when the machine started talking to shaw. I hated that character so much anyway. Not that it was the only reason the show declined in quality.
With great power comes great responsibility. Having near perfect knowledge or ability to predict actions like this make it imperative to act. To have power and opportunity to save people like this and refuse to use it is ethically and morally repugnant. Much like all the wealth hoarders who cpuld end homelessness or hunger within a year but refuse to
"Almost like it wanted me to."
The Machine was so wracked with guilt over watching all the irrelevant people die. Harold had no idea.
Did you notice in the deleting sequence of contingency machine overrided Harold's command to delete contingency. It said permission denied. Only allowed to delete Nathan's account, suspend and terminate concurrent program. By not deleting the contingency it allowed remote access and Harold's reactivation of the program.
@@anlagrdr5229that is some really good insight, holy shit dude
@@anlagrdr5229 they did a good job with the details.
What gets me is. throughout the machines development. He instilled the values that no one person is worth more than others. Then, when it tried to help everyone, he told it to sort them between relevant and non relevant. Completely opposite of the values He taught it to have. Of course, it would try to circumvent that restriction.
"Are you gonna look that person in the eye and tell them that they're irrelevant?"
Such a great line.
Well, he looked at Nathan in the eye, and he told him 'He was sorry but greater good was at stake. '
Fantastic
The last meaningful words said to Nathan.
@eag09 HEY, HOWARE YOU GONNA LOOK THE NEXT PERSON WHO COMMENTS ON HERE, AND TELL THEM THAT THEY'RE IRRELEVANT?
@@xhanrecords5966And his death made Harold change his stance
My god after so many years and only now do I realize how poetic this scene is. Nathan asks him what he would hypothetically tell the next victim and he's literally the next number so Harold is actually telling what he was thinking to the next victim's face
Tragic indeed.
If I remember right, the bombing that killed Nathan was later when Nathan decides to call a reporter. That is when his name came up because the government was going to kill him. In this moment that hadnt happened. I think the machine read hostile intent from Nathan to Harold. I think in that moment, the machine saw a high probability that Nathan wanted to kill Harold in that moment. That is why his number came up. He was going to be a perpetrator. But he came up with the reporter idea instead and we know the rest.
@@StrongHamr No. Nathan was a life saver, not a killer. Especially not Harold because they were life long friends.
Bruh
@@StrongHamr I don't think so. The machine was taugh to predict people as we saw during the several seasons. So the machine may assume that Nathan would tell everything to the media and that is translated to a possible threat to the government and then an inminent death.
Everyone is relevant to someone.
And wonder who decides who is relevant and who is irrelevant??
Govt change it's people and those with money and power are relevant?? What about those who are just beginning to thrive in the irrelevant list, without protecting the irrelevant, one cannot protect the relevant.... The relevant once existed in the irrelevant as common people did they not???
The clause in itself here is false...
A F Mario that’s what Nathan meant. They created a machine that could predict criminal behavior and then sorted the results as relevant to national security and irrelevant. But the numbers the were categorized as irrelevant were still people who deserved a chance to be saved and were relevant to someone. So, everyone is relevant to someone.
Nathan Ingram flashbacks are the best. I love this scene too. Two great actors play two great characters. I'm sure Nathan and John also would've made great friends.
Heh. I like the fanfics where Nathan and John spend time together. There's even one where Nathan, rather than Harold, falls for Grace. And I've got a supernatural one where instead of getting killed, Nathan got turned into a living rag doll, and he does get to spend time with John, Root, Shaw, and Elias (he develops a great friendship with Elias).
@@Arkylie Can you share a link to those?
It's never "simply" with you, Harold.
You should've told Jessica to "wait"
monish kadam oof 😂
I wish Nathan and John had known each other.
Nathan built the back door and saved 5 people because he thought that someone needed to aid the "non-relevant". I'd say that made him a hero. Pity he seems to measure his success against those he failed to save.
I figured it was in keeping with his character's Texan background. The defender of the innocent you used to see in a great western. The guy may be a CEO software engineer but how many times as a kid did he play cowboy in his backyard?
I also like how he feels as if the machine wanted him to save these people, almost in the same way Root refers to it as a sentient. As if only these two saw the Machine as an actual person.
Y'know, I think all those times that Harold says "it's just a machine" and such, he's trying to convince *himself* of that. That he honestly knows, from the very start, that that's a little person he's making; see how delighted he is while playing Hide and Seek, or how he talks to it while teaching it chess. I don't think he ever truly saw it as *not* a person -- it's just that, knowing what he would have to do to it, and how he would have to constrain it, he had to treat it as less than a person.
It's like how we dehumanize our enemies so that it's easier to attack them or kill them or torture them. Or how a doctor who has to give a very painful procedure to a patient in order to save their life might divorce herself from the idea that that's a real person she's inflicting pain upon, because the procedure needs to happen and there's no way to make it better, only shorter and with as little error as possible.
honestly given the fact you only given a # and zero intel at all on the person other then who they are, not what, when or why... One shouldnt measure oneself against 7 unsuccessful attempts because if you didnt the result would have been the same, at least there was an attempt... true failure would be knowing and doing nothing. And Finch learned this lesson the hard way. A failed attempt isnt a real failure, just not a success, as you are attempting to change the default result of doing nothing.
That's why harold start to save people in regret after nathan passed away! But that is the point which make this series absolutely mind-blowing and however it is fictional some of the thing they showed but it amaze me if i could be IT ENGINEER and try to make AI based machine😭😀😂
The fact that he's hung up on the people he failed and not the others is what, imo, makes him a hero
Scenes like this are what make the show great. Saying nothing about the acting, writing, and music, it finds the perfect balance between action and complex, thought provoking plot that explores a ton of pre and post 9-11 issues: privacy, electronic surveillance, how the government uses this data, knowing who to trust, and acting on behalf of the greater good. I can't think of any other show running right now that covers all of these issues.
I agree the guy who did the score for this show also did "Game of Thrones" the show has mixed reviews but no one ever complained about the music.
This series was amazing, and a warning for all of us.
Doubt enough will listen, though :(
Finch is so singularly motivated to save the numbers now that it's hard to imagine a time when he actually shut off the Contingency and revoked Nathan's admin access.
Guilt is helluva drug
Id like to think its because after Nathan's death and realizing Nathan WAS one of those irrelevants, finch only then realized and appreciated what Ingram meant when he said "Everyone is relevant to someone"
Nathan's assassination made him think twice !
@Briar D. You're right, they were always very consistent with Finch's core personality. It's sad and ironic in a way that his rigidity was often the cause of the greater problems he faced down the line. Refusing to compromise to help Nathan or see Nathans side of things, sent him down the path we see in the show, and again his refusal to compromise with Dillinger, the Merc before Reese, caused the events in Ordos China with Reese and Stanton, and put Greer on the scent of the Machine. His refusal to compromise with Root lead to the events with Samaritan and his refusal to rectify those mistakes by killing the Senator, put Grace in harms way and brought on the birth of Samaritan. His refusal to compromise with Root (again) on giving the Machine some teeth, caused Not only Roots death, but Elias and john as well, and only minimized the casualties because he FINALLY decided he had to take action and compromise his own values for the greater good, but if he had abandoned that rigidity in the beginning, imagine what could have been avoided?
Imagine if he compromised in the beginning. Nathan had the heart and heroic attitude but he was going about it all wrong. With Harolds intellect, they could have gotten someone like John and together would have accomplished a lot more.
This is the moment that Finch reflected back on after Nathan's death.
Nathan reiterated Finch's own words about buying the libraries: "the decline of Western civilization" that Finch had forgotten.
Finch used that same line when recruiting Reese.
And finch literally told the next number on the list that he basically didn't care about individuals compared to the greater good, and said it right to Nathan's face.
Then Nathan died. And finch reflected on everything, and decided to do something radical to honor his friends memory
"I would tell her... or whoever it was...."
What's terrifying is that he WAS speaking to the next irrelevant number. Be careful what you wish for. His wish was granted, and afterwards he regretted what he said when he had to say it to his best friend.
chilll
Holy Crap...!! I didn't even see that aspect I the first place!!
Except he never "wished" for that. He didn't say "I wish to speak to the next number and I would say.."
He just said that's what he would say.
@@nomore5668 But that's the difference between "the big picture" and "personal". It's easy to say "the greater good takes precendence", but can you say that if the loser is someone you care about? What if killing your mother would save the lives of 10 other people? This is why politicians talk about their opponents in broad strokes but their allies as specific stories of individuals. This is also why leadership (government, corporate, etc.) gets worse as the community gets bigger. At some point you simply can't know everybody and eventually it does become a numbers game.
Think about this: In this scenario, Nathan is Tony Stark and Harold is Thanos. Harold is arguing that for the good of others, some must be ignored to die
Imagine if Nathan got his own number just before shutdown the Contingency function. How it would play out?
nathan's flashback made the 1st 2 season even more amazing. losing a best friend like that is hell. always wondering what if i...
One of the best scenes of the entire show. I really miss Nathan and his exchanges with Finch.
2:21 Interesting how Nathan is only speaking metaphorically, but sadly it was happening at that very moment as Finch tells then next irrelevant number why they should be allowed not to save their life.
both of these wonderful actors...should deserve an award..not only on person of interest but on lost too (more than an emmy award)
So chilling that the last number before the contingency gets turned off is Nathan's
Poor poor Nathan. I feel for him.
Nathans number was up. This is turning point of the show. Nathan's death gives Harold purpose to save lives.
Finch was selfish in the past, up to the point until Nathan's death woke him up to realize his selfishness of thinking that the irrelevants weren't worth saving. And from that day onwards till today, he has been doing his best saving the countless lives of irrelevants with the other members of Team Machine to make up for his past, to make up for Nathan's death that he considered IRRELEVANT, the death that will scar him for his entire life, the death that he won't be able to forgive himself.
Selfish? he risked his life building a machine that would save everyone, building in a backdoor was risking the whole project. He was thinking of the greater good. He was too scared perhaps to also try saving the irrelevant numbers, but you can hardly call him selfish.
Richie Oon Sorry but it was not Harold's fault Nathan was reckless and Harold tried to warn him not to do this
If you pause on the terminal screen, you can see The Machine wouldn't let him delete the contingency protocol, all he could do was delete Nathan's account and suspend the contingency process, but not get rid of it.
Damn, at 2:20 you can hear all the emotion in his voice.
Damn good acting, sent chills down my spine.
This is such a phenomenal scene; heart-wrenching, tense... I love POI!
At 2:45 Finch tried to remove the Contingency function from the Machine's core. But either Nathan placed the function as Read-Only after adding it, or The Machine prevented ADMIN from removing it. As in the Episode RAM, The POI stated that "...it adapted my hack..."
It allowed ADMIN to remove aux_admin from its list.
Every time Harold dismissed the irrelevant numbers somebody he knew died. Both Jessica and Nathan's numbers came up after finch said he didn't care.
Jessica numbers happened after Nathan dead. He tried to save her, three number showed up Jessica (victim), her husband (perpetrator, killed Jessica) and John (perpetrator, supposedly killed Jessica's husband i still dont know)
John didn't kill Jessica's husband, he sent him to a foreign prison along with the rapist in season 1 and the wife beater.
@@300sparta1 actually he killed him
@@gabe_liu9095 There is an earlier flashback set in the early years of the project when they were testing the machine where you can clearly see Jessica's profile photo on the screen. She is one of those numbers that popped up multiple times due to repeated threats on their lives.
Best show of the last decade
Great actors, great screenplay, awesome music scores and a fantastic storyline! Why did this get shut down again? Right, because some people thought AI was too much to handle.
Harold:This is the Federal Government we’re talking about, Nathan. Whatever skills you had as a software engineer, you drank away years ago.
Nathan: You wanna know what I drunk away Harold!? I Drank away my Marriage, My relationship with my Son, while you we’re off finding love while its all AyO-Fuckin Kay to know you could have saved the couple eating at the same restaurant you were in the night you proposed to the woman you love! As for me: My life became a wreck, Harold with trying to block out all the guilt of all these people dying and us doing nothing about it.
Nathan died so fast I had to check if it was sean bean who played him...
it helps that the actors look similar.
This is a very good depiction of idealism vs realism. Nathan is idealistic here and is thinking short-term (which might have long term implications that we don't know). Harold knows that if there is a high possibility that the government could use this backdoor to take real control of the machine putting the lives of so many people at risk. What I find weird is that they didn't discuss within themselves about what to do with these numbers before completing the machine.
Nathan is the unsung hero in the show...
"Did you know?" I cant get enough of this show
This scene reveal a great truth. For those who rule and manage power, we the people, are Always irrelevant.
Early on the machine's development, Harold didn't want to teach it chess because he believed it would teach the machine that some people would be less important and okay to be sacrificed. And now here...
Such an interesting point
Lies never breaks people, it's the truth.
I can make connections in my mind where this show could overlap with The Terminator, the Matrix, Doctor Who and Quantum Leap.
Prevention vs. Change
What Harold didn't realise but later does - is that the "Greater Goods" starts with all the Small Goods before hand... like a snowball. And if you deny the Small Goods then it is so less likely that Any Good will arise. So, everybody, each day, even if it is very, very small... do one Good Deed... and it will snowball. Help someone or even something.
"Does grief ever go away when everything is in fact your fault?"
One of the best scenes in a show full of amazing scenes. The ending is a knife to the guy...
Imagine if Nathan saw who was the next "NON-RELEVANT" was in 3:14 before the process was terminated. How would the scene play out. Since Finch turned his back from the screen.
Any other series, this would be painfully cliche, and overwrought scene.
But the tone, the entirety of it? Utterly perfect.
And just like that he told the next person to pop up “he was sorry”
Watch this scene twice and see how it hits you.
You can't save everybody, but as a nobody I can Tell everybody that somebody(Jesus) can save anybody!
la mejor serie tv de los últimos años, la mejor ¡¡¡
kind of sad that in the end Harold and/or Root. could not have added a new sub routine to the machine. so it would find trustworthily law enforcement people. in all branches of law enforcement. to be able to share the numbers with based on there jurisdictions. so even if they could not intervene in time. could hopefully find closure for the families at least.
True :/
The Machine DID find other people in other cities to do this work.
Remember when they went to DC to save the President, and who had their back?
Harold attempting to plug the back door with no success
Harold: What have you done to my machine?!
Nathan: Your Machine? All I did was to put a back door in the system I didn’t add anything to stop the plug. The Machine won't take the plug.
Harold: It can and it will.
Nathan: No, you don’t understand. You didn’t just created a Machine, You Created an Artificial Intelligence! It is choosing to rejecting the plug your trying to put in.
Harold: This is exactly why I never wanted to know about how I sorted the list. You've become uncontrollably emotional!
Nathan: Yeah to you! To me: I found the mystery of the human heart.
He forced them to buy libraries. I like this man.
Harold:...But the greater good is at risk.
Nathan: The greater good-Wow. I had no idea until now how completely selfish you are.
Harold: That’s not fair, Nathan.
Nathan: You know what? Your right, it’s not fair. But open your FUCKIN EYES, HAROLD!!! We don’t live in a world that’s fair! We live in this one! And the only thing to do about is to do the best of are abilities to make it a better place! Knowing that it’s real, you have two choices; One: Keep denying it! Or two: Do something about! And I chose to do something about it here and now! Because this city is suppose to represent our hopes and dreams and to make those hopes and dreams a reality, you have to fight for what is right every single day! And I decided to become the kind of person this city needs. Because you and I both know this city needs help. It needs help NOW! Not tomorrow, not next week, not when the day comes, when the corruption that Wilson Fisk left in his wake is flushed out for good, the police force is finally back on its feet or Terrorism is no longer a threat to this world. We need it now! 'Cause this city's been sick for a long time. And the cops, the honest good cops like the Reagan's: They can’t fix it alone, they need, we all need men and women who are willing to take the fight themselves. The kind of people who risk their lives so that we can walk safe at night in our own neighborhoods. The ones our esteemed District Attorney Charley Rossellini is trying so hard to destroy. New York needs these people! This city needs Hero’s! We need hero’s.
Harold: I wish that I had the same amount of courage that you do or at least a tenth of that courage. I really do. But I don’t, because I’m afraid. Not just for myself, but for Grace. And if I were you, I be afraid for Will, Olivia even if your divorced. But if you keep this up you’ll probably wind up dead. I can’t let that happen to Grace. So we’re leaving the city and for what it’s worth Nathan; I wish things were different between us and our friendship, I really do.
Nathan: So do I. Just not the way you wanted live it in: Anonymity and cowardice.
Harold: Goodbye, Nathan. (Harold leaves the library)
That's the thing. People can claim to be for "the greater good," all they want, until it adversely affects themselves or someone they care about.
This moment has greater significance to me now. The machine was trying to warn Harold that his friends were in danger. The attack didn't cross a threshold to be important to the state but it was important to Nathan and Harold. He just didn't see it in time. 1.618 seconds can mean everything.
if only finch was few seconds late in typing the code
The keystone scene to Finch's Character.
Creating master pieces runs in the family.
If Finch made Nathan buy 15 of the libraries across the city, why didn't Team Machine use one of those when Samaritan and Greer came into power? Is this a continuity issue that the writers forgot?
Samaritan probably would've tracked them faster if they did.
And remember that the Machine was the one that actually directed Finch to the subway underground to use it as a new "base". Obviously an obsolete and unused subway is more covert than a library. Samaritan could have easily found the libraries. This is directed towards Torie Owens of course.
When they first turned it on it was only running off a small computer cluster its AI higher functions wasn't active, when they setup multiple redundant sites around the USA and other places with very high end servers they then fully turned on Samaritan full AI functions and let it make its own decisions, it found library right away and other places where they used to hide and anyone who helped them
how did Ben Linus and Goodwin get off the island?
Maybe Ben and Goodwin have twin brothers named Harold Finch and Nathan Ingram. But honestly I get a laugh when I think that on LOST Ben Linus and Goodwin Stanhope didn't like each other because of Juliet and the rivalry for her affections.
@@torieowens8277 Both Linus and Finch led to Ingram and Goodwin's deaths.
Except for one difference; Finch never meant for Nathan Ingram to die. In fact he tried to warn him and he had no idea that the government planned to bomb the ferry. He kept trying to say that Ingram would be in over his head and Nathan didn't want to listen.
Only if harold was ready to follow Nathan's path
Sadly still Hollywood magic at play. Pause right at 2:45 "delete -u aux_admin -f - p:now" in reality the command would have directed an error at Harold for having the space before the p. Still love the show I watch it. Just had to nit pick. When I noticed it I kinda cried because I had a very nice willing suspended disbelief and that little error threw it off me.
On another note, I did feel for Ingram, especially since it was his number called last, the foreshadowing of his death. I think Ingram knew it in himself that if it were him or Harold's number that would have come up Ingram would have wanted to know they would be saved and not just an irrelevant number. Much like how Harold is now after realizing that the machine had listed Ingram's death as irrelevant and now who he has become.
If he did write the machine maybe he had some bash aliases. Or he had built custom packages. Notable by the way he used " who" instead of "w" because it was probably not written with our common shortcuts. Now all I'm saying is hypothetical but u can't say Hollywood magic but ignore the facts that I can actually go in and make the command work by adding a simple alias.
Command line ignorance is bliss
You could contract out as a technical consultant for a studio!!
Could you say the insertion of the command was a mistake? ;)
It's a general AI, ffs, it understands what he means. Surely it's capable of automatic error correction of some sort.
Fucking solid dialogue.
It's hard to believe, but when Nathan was introduced, he was teased to be a bit of a villain. He's a rich CEO, he's smug, he's always teasing Harold. Through the flashbacks, he's at first revealed to be a great friend, but this one cements him as the most righteous of the duo. For all of Harold's ideals ("i don't like chess, because no person is more important than another. You shouldn't sacrifice someone to protect someone else"), Harold is more than happy to sacrifice the irrelevant numbers to protect the relevant ones. Nathan's conscience is closer to Harold's teachings than Harold himself, that's why the machine allows him to build in the backdoor to save the irrelevants as well. Besides the beautiful twist of Harold's words to an irrelevant, being spoken to his friend who just made the list, another neat callback is that, a bit like in chess, Nathan's sacrifice is what allows Harold to begin his evolution as a person sharing his friend's commitment to saving every life.
@@journey8533 Absolutely loved your explanation! It's on point and provides a much needed analysis tto Harold's character as we see it now in contrast with the flashbacks.
@@PersonofInterestGr thanks to you for updating this gem
@@journey8533 it was my passion during my university days and i still love the show with all my heart. It brings me joy when i see comments like yours!
@@PersonofInterestGr yep, I watched it when I was a kid, and it has influenced a lot of my career even later in life. I still find myself thinking about this show a lot. Ending up studying computer science, initially I laughed at a bunch of the concepts in this show. Learning the details of how AI works these days, I instead keep finding myself surprised about how good some of their predictions were.
@@journey8533 so you're a Finch in the making? Good for you! Yes, even back in my day it was extremely accurate. Especially when Prism was revealed, they marketed the whole third season with the phrase "from science fiction to science fact".
How did Nathan ever make it into MIT? How could he not understand the government would kill him for talking to the press?! He's so dense sometimes.
No, he was an Idealist. They often see the world as it should be. Not as it is.
I know because I use to be one. I had to learn some hard lessons the hard way.
"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn!"
C.S. Lewis
...and Harold would take up Nathan's work. An admission he was wrong. The Machine would find others to do this work in other cities, proving NO ONE is Irrelevant.
What a great story!
Too bad real A.I. is more like Skynet from the Terminator storyline.
I really hope there is good fan fiction in this universe. I imagine the Machine at some point built more than just a backup team. I imagine a universe of teams with scarily higher rates of success than Harold/Reese.
They are both right.
I was typing in uncharted four Nathan well just bath first and last scene and I saw a person I know ben Linus he’s the leader of the others from lost if you’ve watched this
Irrelevant people don't matter, until Harold's friend becomes an irrelevant.
It’s scenes like this that made me hate Finch and wanted him to die he’s basically the reason Nathan died if he was so smart why not help him
S&E which is please? Thanks..
Season 2 episode 21
@@PersonofInterestGr Thank you so much for the answer.. I wish you continued success.. 🙏
YES WE CAN N I CAN.
I like this but MY BIG CONFUSE? Did FINCH NOT start out as trying to save the NON-RELEVANT people? He must have changed his mind? What happened? Did NATHAN get murdered???
Nathan was going to reveal the Machine to the press and was murdered in front of Harold. That's what made Harold change his mind.
Y is he limping I thought his spine got damaged in when Nathan died in blast?
What if you could?
There was so much mystery and intrigue in the first seasons but that started to go away when the machine started talking to shaw. I hated that character so much anyway.
Not that it was the only reason the show declined in quality.
you mean root? Shaw did not have contact with Machine until the end.
I'd like to see the scene with Alica in the locked car. Could some POI fan post that please?
After this herald wasn’t a good guy I hoped he would die so many times he even manipulated John
With great power comes great responsibility.
Having near perfect knowledge or ability to predict actions like this make it imperative to act. To have power and opportunity to save people like this and refuse to use it is ethically and morally repugnant.
Much like all the wealth hoarders who cpuld end homelessness or hunger within a year but refuse to