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MrNexx
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 Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:26 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Also, unlike droids, no one is deliberately designing, manufacturing and selling moronic humans for the specific purpose of performing simple tasks and menial labor. |
What a Brave New World that would be...
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Dredwulf60
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Dredwulf60 wrote: | | The same *could* be said of a pair of humans on a planet where most mammals are primitive with very basic survival instincts. A couple of organisms that just take the time to think about things. |
Mostly, this sounds like you are making up an unlikely scenario simply to argue the point. |
I detect a very strong disconnect in your understanding of what that strip was trying to convey, and my attempt to rephrase it in order to be more completely understood.
Your additional comments seem to confirm my suspicion. I'm going to bow out of the discussion, because I don't want to infer that you are somehow inferior; definitely not. I think we just think in different ways; you interpret things through a different lens and we aren't likely to get past that. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | What a Brave New World that would be... |
Indeed. I've seen the idea (or at least something similar) pop up in two other sci-fi universes.
The first was Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Trilogy, where Frankenstein's experiments had allowed the doctor to extend his life into the modern era, where he continued with making artificial humans, each tailored to the best of his ability to perform specific tasks as needed to fit into the doctor's overall plans. One unfortunate was deliberately designed to be autistic, in the hopes of producing a human slave for simple or menial tasks by tailoring the focus of their autism on a specific task, such as working an assembly line or performing housekeeping, and having little or no interest in anything else. In the end, despite the doctor's arrogant presumption that he could keep control of his creations, it ended up spiraling out of control...
The other is the Honor Harrington series, where the later books feature genetic slavers as the primary antagonist. They've built a massive, galaxy-spanning industry around vat-growing clones (although they aren't called that in-universe) for specific purposes, including pleasure slaves, entertainers, personal assistants and manual laborers for harsh environments. Of course, their use of genetic slaves is part of an underlying, long-term plan to refine and improve the human genome, and using the resulting superior humans to overthrow the existing social order. It is actually pointed out at least once in the series that, the more menial the task becomes, the less sense it makes to use a slave/clone to do it.
In the end, however, a key difference is that both universes lack droids or any sort of AI equivalent. In the SWU, there must be some point at which an organic being (even a slave) becomes cost-ineffective to perform a given task. Even if a slave receives no pay for their duties, they must still be fed and housed and clothed and otherwise cared for. A droid will not require time off, meal breaks, etc, just regular maintenance and recharge, plus occasional repair (and that can actually be performed by other droids).
So, while clones and slavery do exist in the SWU, their use (in the sense that they are chosen over droids for some purposes) is likely based on a variety of factors. Hutts, for example, appear to engage in slavery largely out of egotism, and a sense of their own superiority. However, on the whole, clones seem more likely to be chosen over droids when there are duties droids either can't perform (or would be too cost prohibitive to perform) or that require a degree of innate sophistication and flexibility is needed (clone troopers) that a mass-produced droid can't match.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| Dredwulf60 wrote: | I detect a very strong disconnect in your understanding of what that strip was trying to convey, and my attempt to rephrase it in order to be more completely understood.
Your additional comments seem to confirm my suspicion. I'm going to bow out of the discussion, because I don't want to infer that you are somehow inferior; definitely not. I think we just think in different ways; you interpret things through a different lens and we aren't likely to get past that. |
My disconnect was more in wondering how the original cartoon applied to the SWU at all. There has been a thread running through this conversation to the effect of people insisting that, because some droids have some similarities to humans (or organic beings), all droids are thus equal to humans in all respects. Posting a cartoon that has almost no connection to the SWU does not constitute proof of point. Seriously, this is the first I have ever heard of this cartoon series, so there is no background as to exactly who and what these two are, or whether their background universe bears any similarity to what we are discussing. How is what is being discussed by these two relevant to what we are talking about? So two droids in a completely different universe are having a discussion about how humans experience emotions? So what?
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2016 9:47 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | There has been a thread running through this conversation to the effect of people insisting that, because some droids have some similarities to humans (or organic beings), all droids are thus equal to humans in all respects. |
I'd ask you to point to that, because while it's been used by the "droids are tools and nothing more" side, I haven't seen the assertion that all droids are equal to humans in all respects on the other side.
| Quote: | | Posting a cartoon that has almost no connection to the SWU does not constitute proof of point. Seriously, this is the first I have ever heard of this cartoon series, so there is no background as to exactly who and what these two are, or whether their background universe bears any similarity to what we are discussing. How is what is being discussed by these two relevant to what we are talking about? So two droids in a completely different universe are having a discussion about how humans experience emotions? So what? |
| Wikipedia wrote: | | Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. It features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in SMBC include atheism, God, superheroes, romance, dating, science, research, parenting and the meaning of life. SMBC is published daily. |
It's relevant because it's talking about machine intelligence, and the perceptions of emotions. Naaman, notably, stated the opinion that droids were constructs without claim to sentience, only an approximation of emotions, and even thought, dictated by programming. The cartoon presents the converse of that... humans (and, by extension, human-like aliens) experience emotions in very specific context, usually tied to group or kin bonds... in short, they have emotions as a form of genetic programming to enhance group cohesion, not by experiencing some platonic ideal of emotion.
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Tinman
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| Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 3:28 am Post subject: |
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Heh! I imagine protocol droids, which are designed around interaction with sentient organics as their primary function, might develop some really unusual and entertaining insights into human behavior if left running long enough that they'd begin to ponder the subject. I recall C-3PO commenting on having a hard time understanding the motivations of humans a couple times, which tended to suggest he'd spent some time thinking about the subject. He did this in conversations with R2-D2, and of course we couldn't understand R2's side of the conversation. I always imagined that his comments were of the resignedly amused variety. "Well, you know, that's just how they are. What can be done?" |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | I'd ask you to point to that, because while it's been used by the "droids are tools and nothing more" side, I haven't seen the assertion that all droids are equal to humans in all respects on the other side. |
I may have been a little hyperbolic, which happens when something annoys me. But in all seriousness, you practically answered your own question. Your comment below is the latest in a series of comments to the effect that human emotional development is equivalent to that of droids, with only the details being different. Paraphrasing what I said above, no one is designing simple humans to perform simple tasks and never grow beyond them, yet that is the status quo for droids, and those that do manage to grow beyond them do so almost exclusively by accident. Humans (and other organics) are expected to develop emotionally, but a droid is not a human. It's an appliance, designed and built for a specific purpose. Any emotional development that progresses to the point of true sentience is the result of either malfunction or neglecting to perform regular memory wipes.
| Quote: | | It's relevant because it's talking about machine intelligence, and the perceptions of emotions. Naaman, notably, stated the opinion that droids were constructs without claim to sentience, only an approximation of emotions, and even thought, dictated by programming. The cartoon presents the converse of that... humans (and, by extension, human-like aliens) experience emotions in very specific context, usually tied to group or kin bonds... in short, they have emotions as a form of genetic programming to enhance group cohesion, not by experiencing some platonic ideal of emotion. |
And again, how does two robots in a short cartoon completely unconnected to the SWU discussing a specious version of human psychology constitute any kind of proof of point in the SWU? IMO, this is roughly on par with me taking a Garfield cartoon and insisting it proves that cats are sentient, even though they can't talk.
As far as the human psychology the two robots are discussing, there are two major flaws that I see, at least as far as how it meshes with the SWU:1). In Panel 2, the smaller robot says the following: | Quote: | | Robots are created all at once, designed to experience pure emotional states just for the sake of having them. |
This bears no similarity to the SWU, in which droids, at most, are designed to experience "emotion" pretty much only as a motivation to do their jobs and help them better interact with their masters. Any emotion simply for the sake of experiencing emotion would be a wasted programming effort and likely inhibit the droid's performance of its primary intended function.
2). In Panels 5-6, the following is uttered: | Quote: | "You know how you feel bad whenever someone dies?
"Of course. Every second or so."
"Humans only feel bad when humans they know die. Especially ones who are kin." |
The implication here is that the robot feels equally bad when anyone dies, regardless of relationship or proximity. While this may be true in whatever universe they inhabit, how does this apply in the SWU? Are you really agreeing that a droid who is permitted to emotionally develop from an appliance into a self-aware being will be completely divorced from emotional attachment to humans and droids around them? That Threepio and Artoo feel the same level of affection / annoyance for all other beings as they do for each other? That they would feel no better or worse if Han, Luke or Leia died than they would feel about the death of a complete stranger on the other side of the galaxy?
My point, and what really got under my skin about this, is that simply posting a non-SWU cartoon that shows two robots discussing human psychology does not constitute any sort of proof of concept within the SWU itself.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2016 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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Something else worthy of consideration is the philosophy of droids. At its most basic, philosophy asks the questions "where did I come from" and "why am I here". Organic beings debate this ad infinitum, but such questions have simple answers for a droid. After all, where it came from is generally a matter of public record (serial numbers, factory of origin, etc.) While some aspects of its design may be proprietary, the general design history of its type and of preceding types will also be known to it.
Likewise, a droid knows exactly why it is here: that purpose is encapsulated in its designation. A protocol droid's purpose is to facilitate communication and interaction between others. An astromech droid's purpose is to serve as a repair and maintenance platform aboard starships. And so on and so forth.
A droid has no need to seek out its purpose or the reason for its existence; these are questions which were already answered for it before it was even activated. This makes the droids who actually seek out freedom even more aberrant. After all, why would a logical entity (who already has enough trouble understanding why humans behave as they do) deliberately abandon the safety and security of knowing their purpose and reason for existence to seek out the confusion and uncertainty of self-determination?
Of course, droid manufacturers would want to facilitate this mindset, but that doesn't really change anything. It might even be part of a droid's self-diagnostic process to identify potentially aberrant thought processes as a heuristic processing error and voluntarily report for memory wiping, much like how modern computers automatically detect and report errors.
In fact, assuming droids even consider such things, droids might consider other droids who actually seek self-determination in defiance of their primary function malfunctioning, if not completely insane.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2016 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | In fact, assuming droids even consider such things, droids might consider other droids who actually seek self-determination in defiance of their primary function malfunctioning, if not completely insane. |
And I think there's some evidence of this in ANH, where that's 3P0's general opinion towards R2, and remains his go-to insult for R2 throughout the series. Of course, humans also have a tendency to do this, as well... consider how someone who abandons a steady job and family in a quest to go find themselves is viewed. You can practically hear the quotations folks put around "find themselves".
But, I would point to something that I noticed in rewatching TFA... how quickly many regard droids as persons. It's a trait you see in Rey and Luke (in the OT), certainly, and in Leia, Finn, and Poe, as well. They're addressed as and treated as persons, not merely appendages or equipment.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 12:03 am Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | But, I would point to something that I noticed in rewatching TFA... how quickly many regard droids as persons. It's a trait you see in Rey and Luke (in the OT), certainly, and in Leia, Finn, and Poe, as well. They're addressed as and treated as persons, not merely appendages or equipment. |
And I would repeat my previous assertion that this is a combination of anthropomorphism and the fact that the droids in question are exceptional ones whose personalities have been permitted to develop far beyond "stock". Furthermore, the value a human places on a droid is relative, varying from person to person. Example? Threepio in the prequels was a fully developed personality, considered a friend and companion by Anakin and Padme. At the end of ROTS, he became the property of Bail Organa, who had Threepio's memory erased practically from the get-go. It makes more sense in the novel, when Threepio starts nattering on about how he'll be able to tell baby Leia stories about her parents, but either way, it happens.
And anyway, the original point of this topic was not to address how humans felt about droids, but how droids perceived themselves.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 9:54 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | And anyway, the original point of this topic was not to address how humans felt about droids, but how droids perceived themselves. |
But then we start talking about how humans program droids to having a purpose, and how that purpose influences their perception. Human psychology becomes important, especially as you deal with more complex droids that are going to have more interactions with humans.
Consider, again, 3P0. Specifically designed to interact with humans. His personality is obsequeous, and he's definitely servile to whoever is defined as his master... but, for all that, for all the defined boundaries on his personality and behavior, is he sentient, or do those blocks, or the fact that they're implanted by artifice, render him non-sentient?
In a sense, the question is, does one have moral or ethical obligations to the well-being of a droid; not just utilitarian obligations (i.e. "If I don't maintain my droid, it will be less useful as a tool"), but obligations to see to its mental and physical well-being for the droid's own sake? Do those obligations extend only to droids you own, or do they likewise extend to droids you do not own, but interact with?
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:16 am Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | Consider, again, 3P0. |
And consider again that you are citing C3PO as representative of all droids in general, when he is manifestly an exceptional and non-standard member of the set [All Droids]. He is not a median or average representative, but rather a droid as far to one end of the scale as one is likely to get. You are basing your argument on a skewed model that does not take into account the fact that the vast majority of droids are not like R2D2, C3PO or BB8.
Droid programming is just that: programming. A droid's personality is designed to facilitate user interface, in that you can simply tell a droid what to do, as opposed to entering instructions on a keyboard, or clicking an icon on a screen. The interface is lightyears beyond what we have available today, but it remains an interface between a device and its owner/operator. The reason it resembles human-to-human communication is due to ease of interaction, not because the droid is intended to be human. This isn't Trek; droids are not created by someone simply to see what will happen and what they will turn into. In the SWU, droids have been around for thousands of years, and are specifically designed and mass-produced to be a service tool, not a social experiment.
Maintaining your droid's programming is like keeping your personal computer updated and in good working order, and running regular maintenance, not an ethical concern. The fact that failure to regularly maintain your droid's operating software may result in a sentient being (assuming the droid's processor is advanced enough for that to happen) doesn't change that fact. In fact, I would expect that allowing that to happen would void the warranty.
From the beginning, I have agreed that droids do have the potential to blur lines between sentient and non-sentient. Practically from the first, I have said that the concept of a soul is sufficiently nebulous that no one can say for certain that a droid who achieves "sentience" is or is not truly alive. But the fact remains that the droids who reach this level are the exception, not the rule, and are not a representative sample of the droid population as a whole.
To bring this back into game terms, I would suggest basing it on Attribute dice, limiting "sentience" only to droid characters with the full 18D of Attribute dice. Just as player characters are exceptional organic beings, so too are droid PCs exceptional droids.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | MrNexx wrote: | | Consider, again, 3P0. |
And consider again that you are citing C3PO as representative of all droids in general, when he is manifestly an exceptional and non-standard member of the set [All Droids]. He is not a median or average representative, but rather a droid as far to one end of the scale as one is likely to get. You are basing your argument on a skewed model that does not take into account the fact that the vast majority of droids are not like R2D2, C3PO or BB8.
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But, then, we get back to sample. The sample we have is pretty much R2, 3P0, and BB-8. The 2-1B that helped Luke on Hoth? We've got a couple lines of dialogue... about what we have from non-Leia women in TESB. The droids are exceptional, but so are the other protagonists. Luke was hardly a standard Tattooine Farm Boy... it's arguable that, given the set [Alderaanian Princesses], Leia is an unusual example.
So, where do you wind up drawing the line? The clones, for example, are purpose built and programmed... do they not count? If you kill an individual Bilar, is it murder? What if it was part of a group mind?
Even if all droids are not necessarily sentient, what is the moral and ethical obligation of sentient beings towards droids? And it is an ethical concern, because droids can develop sentience... Wookiepedia's canon section implies that it is a natural outgrowth of experience. It is simply an ethical issue because it is how you treat beings that are capable of thought, are self-aware and self-preserving, and, if left alone, will become intelligent given the passage of time.
To round it to game terms... if you go with the 18D of attribute dice, how do you deal with a droid that has learned... if you start with a 12D droid, and leave it unwiped for a long period of time (allowing it to accumulate CPs through experience, and spend those CPs to improve and expand skills), where does it cross the line?
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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A little bit more on it being an ethical issue, now that I'm on less constrained time...
All droids are self-aware, and have at least a minimum of self-preservation programming. They may be highly specialized and incompetent outside of their fields of work... some are little more than chassis that carry equipment (e.g. power droids). But there are significant categories of droids whose very nature require discernment and value judgements... Astromech droids, Protocol droids, Medical Droids, Exploration Droids, plus the various kinds of combat droids. It doesn't particularly matter if your power droid learns anything, because its job is "Stand there and pee energy." But many class one through four droids have the kinds of skills that improve with experience, and require that your droid make decisions.
Liken them not to machines, but to pets, or at least livestock. Class five droids are fish, spiders, and ants... they do by being. But Class one through Four droids are more akin to mammals and birds... it's possible to treat them as beasts with no brains, but they are frequently more useful if allowed to develop. Because they are self-aware and seek to preserve self, there's an obligation to use them ethically... not to fail to use them (you still send war droids into harms way, and may even sacrifice them), but there's ethical questions when you don't treat them well for their own sake, not merely utilitarian reasons.
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Savar
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| Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | A little bit more on it being an ethical issue, now that I'm on less constrained time...
All droids are self-aware, and have at least a minimum of self-preservation programming. They may be highly specialized and incompetent outside of their fields of work... some are little more than chassis that carry equipment (e.g. power droids). But there are significant categories of droids whose very nature require discernment and value judgements... Astromech droids, Protocol droids, Medical Droids, Exploration Droids, plus the various kinds of combat droids. It doesn't particularly matter if your power droid learns anything, because its job is "Stand there and pee energy." But many class one through four droids have the kinds of skills that improve with experience, and require that your droid make decisions.
Liken them not to machines, but to pets, or at least livestock. Class five droids are fish, spiders, and ants... they do by being. But Class one through Four droids are more akin to mammals and birds... it's possible to treat them as beasts with no brains, but they are frequently more useful if allowed to develop. Because they are self-aware and seek to preserve self, there's an obligation to use them ethically... not to fail to use them (you still send war droids into harms way, and may even sacrifice them), but there's ethical questions when you don't treat them well for their own sake, not merely utilitarian reasons. |
treating a droid well.
regular maintenance, i do believe include memory wipes, so if I do not wipe the memory am I doing a disservice to the droid by allowing him to develop?
just being difficult with that statement.
not using a droid for tasks outside of its programming, could cause programming damage and or physical damage. - smart and ethical
not damaging another's property - ethical
doing regular maintenance - smart
still remembering the scene in RotJ in Jabba's palace when the one droid was torturing another.
still the one strip i posted at the beginning pet of this conversation had droids of different types questioning what freedom ment. |
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