should the doctor be acknowledged as a person?
- Thread starter Kai Winn
- Start date
That's where the real fun in this sort of debate like this begins, because it essentially becomes a case of two questions: at what point does life start, and at what point do living things start to have rights that we can't ignore?
I'd say you're pretty safe killing all those goombas, and most, if not all currently availible computer constructs. No intelligence, no self awareness, no ability to feel pain or fear. But move forward to a future where we have created something that is self aware or intelligent or something that can suffer, and we're suddenly in a grey area.
The Doctor is a wonderful case study in this sort of thing. Much like a human child, I don't think he was sentient right out of the box. It took time, as it does for us - we don't develop theory of mind, the key to self-awareness, until around age three.
But if he can achieve sentience, so, in theory, can all those hundreds of other Mark I EMHs. EMHs for subsequent generations and other expert programs out there probably have the same sentience in potentia that he did. At what point do they become sentient? Is deleting them before they're activated for the first time abortion? Is deleting them after they've been activated, even if they haven't achieved sentience yet, even if you've only turned them on for but a second, murder? Is it ethical to create more of them, or to copy the,? What responsibilities do you have towards them?
^ Of course, the problem with something like that is I'd have to accept that binary computing is capable of creating life. I'd have to accept that my copy of Visual Studios 2008 (or hell, even Notepad) can create life. All we need is a strong enough processor, enough RAM, huge hard drive, and a pretty sweet video card to run it.
Why on earth would you have to do that? It's akin to saying I could edit a movie in notepad because I can do it in Premiere.
Binary computing *may* be capable of creating life. There are scientists out there at the moment who are trying create a strong artificial intelligence, but no one's succeeded yet (that we know of, anyway). Things like natural language processing, true machine learning and heuristics are proving to be huge barriers.
And in purely Trek terms, they have moved beyond binary computing in any case.
How many Bioneural gelpacks does voyager need befoe it qualifies as a life form? You know like moss is a lifeform.
Before the "modern era" Isolinear Computing ruled on Picards Enterprise, and before that Deuotronic computing ruled on kirks Enterprise. You might as well compare binary computers to "stone knives and flint".
What about that garage from deadstop who thunk Mayweather had enough grunt between his ears to light up more than a Christmas tree when it was looking for spare parts for it's bioserver farm?
Not true. He was completely sentient right out of the box, or all holograms left "on" for long enough will become senitent, or he never is or was or could be sentient with out something extraordinary beyond the programers comprehension happening, but no "one" magic moment marked his birth as a person more so than when they turned him on in the beginning when he clearly had the factory standard settings, so it's all or nothing I'm afraid.
Unless the Doctor didn't notice his magic moment, and just assumed that he had always been sentient after he had become a real thinking person despite that earlier in his "life" that he wasn't.
Before the "modern era" Isolinear Computing ruled on Picards Enterprise, and before that Deuotronic computing ruled on kirks Enterprise. You might as well compare binary computers to "stone knives and flint".
What about that garage from deadstop who thunk Mayweather had enough grunt between his ears to light up more than a Christmas tree when it was looking for spare parts for it's bioserver farm?
Not true. He was completely sentient right out of the box, or all holograms left "on" for long enough will become senitent, or he never is or was or could be sentient with out something extraordinary beyond the programers comprehension happening, but no "one" magic moment marked his birth as a person more so than when they turned him on in the beginning when he clearly had the factory standard settings, so it's all or nothing I'm afraid.
Unless the Doctor didn't notice his magic moment, and just assumed that he had always been sentient after he had become a real thinking person despite that earlier in his "life" that he wasn't.
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Oh how wonderfully arrogant we as humans have become to believe that we have the self-appointed right to judge, categorize and execute authority over other beings when we lack even the simple morality to eliminate the causes of downfall and decay in our own society.
We are not the all-in-all or the focal point in this universe--simply becuase we lack the simple right to dictate the terms of our own existence. Frankly--I think we are the one's who need to re-evaluate our 'usefulness' and 'rights-to-existence' in a broader scope of terms.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being" ~ Carl Jung
We are not the all-in-all or the focal point in this universe--simply becuase we lack the simple right to dictate the terms of our own existence. Frankly--I think we are the one's who need to re-evaluate our 'usefulness' and 'rights-to-existence' in a broader scope of terms.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being" ~ Carl Jung
That so xatso?
You argument might be fine for good reasons not to club baby seals or farm whale blubber or rape the rain forests, but honestly how many human lives would you sacrifice to save a toaster from falling into bathtub?
I still laugh at th ham with which the line "but all life is photonic" was delivered by an other dimensional explorer in bride fo Chaotica... Did life naturally evolve in some free-suspended phontonic acutuarium, or were these the guys who kicked the shit out of organic life so long again they forgot that there was a struggle at all ever?
You argument might be fine for good reasons not to club baby seals or farm whale blubber or rape the rain forests, but honestly how many human lives would you sacrifice to save a toaster from falling into bathtub?
I still laugh at th ham with which the line "but all life is photonic" was delivered by an other dimensional explorer in bride fo Chaotica... Did life naturally evolve in some free-suspended phontonic acutuarium, or were these the guys who kicked the shit out of organic life so long again they forgot that there was a struggle at all ever?
You presume that sentience is digital - you have it or your don't - rather than analogue. And I've written earlier as to why some holograms might have the potential for sentience, if left to run in a stimulating environment, when others don't.
Yes, the old assumption that we have the sole right to existence because, because, because...
The needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the one--but the progress of a few requires the sacrifices of many.