Anyone else disturbed by La Forges sexual harrasment of Leah Brahms?

Do regular stars, that pose in sexy clothes, or have love scenes in standard movies, or who are just attractive in general, have to consent before you mentally think about them in possibly questionable ways?

Hell no.

Physical avatars aren't real. If you dressed up your sex doll to look like someone, it might be a little weird, but nothing illegal or morally questionable, other then your own choice to bang a sex doll.

Not real = not real; fantasy = fantasy. Geordi can bang the computer all he wants, thinking about whatever he wants, and its still none of anyone else's business.

 

Everyone has the right to know when, where, why and how they are being simulated.

 

So your saying it's wrong to masturbate to anyone other than porn stars? A simulation of someone isn't a someone because it's just a physical recreation.
I guess it comes down to just what do we consider a hologram to be? To me it's basically just a glorified picture of someone which has no more substance than a photo of someone in a magazine. It might talk and act like a human but it's hard to see them as anything more than that unless they are programed to be more like a EMH.

Jason

 

Actually, I'd take it one step further and compare people that appear in non-romantic scenarios like say Mythbusters/White Rabbit Project, Top Gear or BBC's Sky at Night. Most people will concentrate on the content but at least some people will think about the presenters in "possibly questionable ways".

 

There was more than one episode dedicated to this question, whether it was the Doctor, Vic, Moriarty, etc. Don't think they ever came up with a definitive answer..

 

Physical avatar's though are always used by people, everytime they think about George Clooney or Scarlett Johannsan or whover it is they might think is hot. I think it's unrealistic to think people should go get their permission just to gratify themselves. I'm not seeing how a hologram is any different from any other picture someone might have because both are just images, only one is a little more detailed.
I think a argument can be made in terms to how acurate the image is. I would think most holographic recreations of real people would not be exact copies of a real person once you start dealing with things like private parts. To me that would be to far.

Jason

 

A hologram isn't just an image, it's something that you interact with. It's also something that reacts, and interacts with you back.

 

I cannot believe some of the nonsense I am reading in this thread.

 

Yes but it still isn't a real person so nobody actually gets hurt in the scenario just like none of the people who people have masturbated to over the years have been hurt. It still comes down someone basically just spending some alone time with themselves, with the only real issue is if the holograms are exact dublicates of the real person.

I don't think anyone would disagree that if someone was looking at Leah Brahms naked on the holodeck and it was her real body shape you were looking at that this would be wrong but I still contend that holograms proably give you the exact face and maybe overall the same look on the outside but if you wanted to see them naked you would see something reinvented by the computer because a person's naked body would be illegal just like it's illegal now to get naked pictures of people without their consent.
Jason

 

Every character has their weak episodes / moments, maybe this "desperate engineer" thing was Geordi's...

 

So its bad to talk to a script-spam-bot thats programmed to talk back, if it is also programmed to say its a famous celebrity, and uses that celebrities profile pic?

 

I liked Geordi much of the time. Though it was clear he didn't understand women or how to interact with them on a personal level. Which was a change from the character early on who seemed to have had a good rapport with Lt. Gomez in "Q, Who".

 

How many of us have photos of women we know who we're attracted to?
How many of us have whacked off while looking at those pics and imagining being with said women?
How many of us think we should tell them about it and apologize?

I didn't think so.

ALL Holosex would be, is whacking off to an advanced form of a picture of that chick you dug in college.

 

A hologram is on a whole 'nother level. It's not just a picture of someone, it's an active simulation of that person. In a very real sense, it IS that person. That alone is sufficient to give the person being simulated a moral (and also legal) right to know who's simulating them and why. And the right to order it shut down if the subject wishes it.
Not only is it basic privacy rights, it's simple decency as well.

 

It really is just a picture, as we learned in "Galaxy's Child". The personality was nothing like the real Leah Brahms. The Enterprise computer gave a personality to the form that Geordi could work with.

 

It might not have been an accurate personality, but it was still A personality, so more than just a still image.

 

The simulation was inaccurate, yes. But that doesn't make it any less "real", and therefore it's no less of an assault on the real Leah. Indeed, if anything it makes things worse.

 

A computer generated personality, being ran by some type of advanced algorithm. To say that an image of a person + a computer generated personality has *any* bearing on the real, living, thinking organism is a disservice to the real person. They are nothing alike. They are not connected.

If anything, all I'm getting out of this whole thing, is that maybe the Enterprise computer *itself* is alive, if that OS can create things like Moriarty, the Voyager Doctor, and Leah. It still has no bearing on the real Leah.

Of course its less real. It, in fact, has absolutely nothing to do with her at all other then a superficial image. It was *computer generated* in its entirety. It was an avatar for the Enterprise Computer Itself.

 

To me

The example I think you are going for is if someone hacked someone's private photo's and got hold of naked pictures that they didn't want out in the public.
My argument though is that their is no way starfleet would allow people's true physcial looks be open to the public so what you get is basically a person's outward look and nothing more. If you saw the hologram of Leah Brahms naked you might not even see private parts because their would be no need to recreate them. It is possible you could program some sexual organs but that would be more like photoshops than anything else.
This subject also made me think of something else and that is the EMH on "Voyager." We know that he was created without a penis because he talks about he created one when he encountered the Andy Dick EMH which IMO adds cred to the idea that holograms of real people are very incomplete.
Was it wrong for him to have sex which we know he has done, since he has the face of Doctor Zimmerman? If the EMH is able to do things without his consent it really muddles the waters on what holograms can be used for and if holograms are people then that means that the Hologram of Leah Brahms is a seperate individual from the Leah Brahms and nobody should be able to tell her who she can have sex with.
I think the big issue is that what we see holograms as being is kind of hard to define so it's really hard to say what is acceptable. It can vary from episode to episode so sometimes they are treated as real people and sometimes their just things to have fun with. It can often only be decided in the eye's of the fans as to what they think is going on so maybe this is a issue where their is no right or wrong opinion.

Jason

 

Given that Geordi didn't create the program, just use it. I'm not sure that's on him. Certainly per Hollow Pursists there are no regulations against recreating cewmembers on the holodeck (although Bajoran/Federation law does prohibit simulation for sexual purposes without consent thus providing a benchmark)

I'm not sure how adding information from explicitedly non-personal databases to a visual template that was apparently coded into the holoprogram (which was part of the Enterprise's database, presumably intended exactly for the main purpose that Geordi put it to (saving the ship)) constitues an assault?

Personally, it's more likely that Leah was told about the original program and Geordi's use of it, just didn't bother to actually read the information (as in her opinion his changes were wrong/pointless), so jumped to the worst conclusion when confronted with the program.

 

I have to admit, even if Geordi did derive some sexual thrill from Leah, I'm not sure that, objectively speaking, it's any worse than people today fantasizing about celebrities/models behaving in unrealistic ways. Only the technology to actualize the experience has improved.

I remember certain threads on this very board involving pictures of Trek actors which I found distasteful, and certain posts that I was reasonably sure might be evidence that the poster on occasion thought of said actor in unrealistic ways.