Are holograms the slave class of the Federation?

[The Squire of Gothos]

A hologram is no more sentient than the programme that is running its personality and telling it how to appear.

That's the Fed's problem, they really need to stop giving "dum" machines such high intelligence.

 

[ntypical]

And as we all know, say it with me folks:

"Novels aren't..."

Ok as the new guy I hate to bring this up but please read this site in its entirety.

http://www.canonwars.com/STCanon.html

Now please say it with me. Canon isn’t canon. There is no true canon in a fictional universe so you have to accept all the work that is authorized by Paramount. And yes, all Star Trek books that are sold for profit are in one way shape or form authorized by Paramount as they hold the copyright.

 

[OmarB]

You can't call something non-sentient, non-self aware a slave. A hologram is like a DVD playing on your TV screen, it's just there to run it's course, though it does have some level of interaction it cannot get off the rails of what it's programmed to do, it's serves it's function and shuts down. We can't ascribe human qualities to computers projecting an image no matter how human the face.

If it's programming tells it to behave in such a way as to be a criminal or what have you it will. That's not a personality or a working mind, just a computer telling a collection of lights to act in a way typical of the character it's portraying. It's no more alive than a leaf-blower.

 

[DarthTom]

OmarB said:
It's no more alive than a leaf-blower.

Than why did a leaf-blower get holo-novel owernship rights in ST Voyager?

 

[JD]

DarthTom said:

Turtletrekker said:
"Canon" is an entirely useless, meaningless and irrelevant concept when dealing with a fictional universe. The books are as real to me (in some cases moreso) than the shows and movies and I don't give a flying fuck about such a meaningless issue as "canon".

Fiction is fiction and I feel sorry for people who think otherwise, because they are missing out on some really good stuff for no relevant reason.

While I tend to agree with you and some ST fans get just a little too obsessive compulsive about trying to get all of the pieces of 'canon' to fit together - nonetheless, good fiction should be at least consistent within its on universe. And my angst sometimes with Trek is it is not consistent.

I first want to say that I agree wholeheartedly with Turtle. Also DartTom if you were to read any of the books written within the past 10 years, that they are more consistant with on screen Trek than on screen Trek is with itself. So much so that they have actually explained some of the inconsistancies in on screen Trek.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

DarthTom said:

OmarB said:
It's no more alive than a leaf-blower.

Than why did a leaf-blower get holo-novel owernship rights in ST Voyager?

Why do little old ladies remember their cats in their wills?

 

[Timo]

IMHO, the whole concept of sentience is so ill-defined as to be entirely meaningless. The best test we have devised for it tells whether the supposed sentience can use language to mimic human social conventions. Plenty of clever humans would fail that test, either by being ignorant of the language or the conventions.

What separates us from dogs or leafblowers has no fundamental quality, no qualitativeness to its name. It is merely a collection of quantitative differences in how we use language, memory, deduction and other such processes that are found in all animate and many inanimate objects in some form.

That in mind, I'd view holograms with the good old "if it quacks like a duck" ideology first and foremost. If they do passable mimicry, they are sapient enough to be subject to ponderings of the sort that resulted in the current concept of human rights. If they do poorer mimicry, they might earn something akin to animal rights, or rights of the disabled, or rights of children. Such rights are there to facilitate the exploitation of such "lower sentiences" in a maximally useful way, after all - they would be just the right thing for complex computer programs as well.

And if they do better mimicry than humans ever could... Well, that's fairly likely, considering that computers in Trek should be way smarter than humans. We simply must accept at some point the fact that our level of sapience is in no way distinct from others around us, and not necessarily even the highest on the continuous scale.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[OmarB]

I'm not gonna ever consider a holograph sentient. It's programmed to mimic lifelike responses but that does not make it alive. Just means it serves it's intended function. Sentience doesn't just have to do with speech or reacting to stimulus in a life-like way. We don't ascribe human qualities to a parrot because of it's mimicry but put the same thing coming out of a more human face and suddenly it's alive? No, then puppets are alive by your logic.

Man is a rational animal with limitless potential, because of his imagination and unlimited ambition. I've never heard of a machine that can possible take stock of itself and it's lot and improve upon itself based. Whatever it does will president set by previous action taken and programmed in based on what the hologram's function is. Where a hologram is designed for the sole purpose of entertainment, education or whatever it will act in this area and have no option like a human does to leave this task (job) and decide to something else or act completely outside of previous president.

 

[Sci]

OmarB said:
Man is a rational animal with limitless potential, because of his imagination and unlimited ambition. I've never heard of a machine that can possible take stock of itself and it's lot and improve upon itself based.

Well, of course not in real life! But that's exactly what machines like the various EMHs, Vic, and Data did numerous times in Star Trek -- they displayed rational thinking skills, creativity, and the ability to take stock of themselves and improve upon themselves.

Where a hologram is designed for the sole purpose of entertainment, education or whatever it will act in this area and have no option like a human does to leave this task (job) and decide to something else or act completely outside of previous president.

Except, once again, we have seen EMHs decide to refuse to perform their medical functions -- the Doctor deciding to leave Voyager for an opera career (a skill he developed himself, mind you). We've also seen the Doctor actually develop revolutionary new treatments for exotic diseases -- something EMHs weren't designed to do, something that signifies the ability to problem-solve and think creatively in a manner that only sentience can allow for.

 

[OmarB]

The Doctor huh? Yet another reason I can ad to my list for not liking Voyager.

 

[Sci]

OmarB said:
The Doctor huh? Yet another reason I can ad to my list for not liking Voyager.

Whether or not you enjoy Star Trek: Voyager -- and, for that matter, whether or not you like the character of the Doctor -- is irrelevant. The evidence consistently indicated that the Doctor and the other Emergency Medical Holograms had developed sentience.

 

[Timo]

Man is a rational animal with limitless potential, because of his imagination and unlimited ambition.

I have some difficulty swallowing any of that. "Rational" is merely an ex-post-facto attempt by mankind to cast its natural behavior patterns in a positive light. "Limitless" in practice means "within the limits of our biological nature and inherent psychological fixations". And "imagination" and "ambition" require the definer "human" in front of them.

Just put "feline" in there instead of "human" and you see analogous phenomena. Wait till the (Trek) 24th century and you can put "machine" in place of "feline". Cats may have less of the properties listed above; machine intellects may well end up having more of them. (Or then not, as the Trek version of our future involves quite a few convolutions...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Navaros]

OmarB said:
You can't call something non-sentient, non-self aware a slave. A hologram is like a DVD playing on your TV screen, it's just there to run it's course, though it does have some level of interaction it cannot get off the rails of what it's programmed to do, it's serves it's function and shuts down. We can't ascribe human qualities to computers projecting an image no matter how human the face.

Except, that what you've described here is not what Trek put on the table in terms of what holograms are. Rather, it is merely what holograms are in real-life. But holograms on Trek must be judged by what Trek put on the table for them to be, not by real-life standards.


Vic, Moriarity, the Doctor, the psycho hologram who tried to kill Belanna etc. etc. all have free will, are self-aware, and do things they were not programmed to do.

The Doctor hologram was even able to produce a child with via intercourse with a humanoid alien. Which further goes to throw the "they are just projections" concept out the window.

 

[Sharr Khan]

Thing is, how can one tell if a holgram is sentient?

Err I cringe how "sentient" gets tossed about so casually these days (because of my dealings with "Animal Rightists" re: PETA) and can only imagine its 20x worse in a setting like the 24th Century.

First I personally think *sapience* should be our concern not if something can simply react to stimuli.

If any individual hologram can demonstrate its personhood such as the Doctor, Moriarty, or Vic by acting in a sapiant manner then of course they should have rights but I would doubt your run of the mill hologram could do such.

-Desire more then one needs to survive and be capable to reflect on how to make it so
-Make art for its own sake

Sharr

 

[AdmiralGarak]

DarthTom said:

Turtletrekker said:
"Canon" is an entirely useless, meaningless and irrelevant concept when dealing with a fictional universe. The books are as real to me (in some cases moreso) than the shows and movies and I don't give a flying fuck about such a meaningless issue as "canon".

Fiction is fiction and I feel sorry for people who think otherwise, because they are missing out on some really good stuff for no relevant reason.

While I tend to agree with you and some ST fans get just a little too obsessive compulsive about trying to get all of the pieces of 'canon' to fit together - nonetheless, good fiction should be at least consistent within its on universe. And my angst sometimes with Trek is it is not consistent.

Hundreds of men and women writing over 40 years worth of material spanning six television series, eleven movies, and hundreds if not thousands of novels and comics. It's remarkable that they've kept it coherent, let alone consistent. I think they can be forgiven for occasional inconsistencies.

I agree with TurtleTrekker. What's the point of discussing Star Trek if you limit the discussion to something as pointlessly arbitrary as canon? It's not as if the so-called canonical material is somehow less fictional than the other material.

Getting back on topic:
I've always been disappointed at how the supposedly advanced humans of the future are always trying to deny rights to sentient artificial lifeforms. One would think that the case in "The Measure of a Man" would have set a precedent that Starfleet scientists would be very keen to explore. Instead, the same problems are immediately brought up with each new artificial lifeform-- Lal, the Exocomps, the EMHs. The Federation must always be forced to begrudgingly extend basic rights to a new artificial lifeform.

I think Vic is actually an exception, though. He was given free reign over his program very soon after the crew realised he was more than just a glorified GUI.

 

[The Borg Queen]

If the laws of this fictional universe were set out at it's conception, then there is no excuse for anything inconsistent.

Were all the "rules" of the Star Trek universe planned and arranged when Gene Roddenberry first sat down and came up with the concept of Star Trek?

 

[Timo]

-Desire more then one needs to survive and be capable to reflect on how to make it so
-Make art for its own sake

That would exclude monks and nuns from sapience.

If the laws of this fictional universe were set out at it's conception, then there is no excuse for anything inconsistent.

Sure there is: highlighting of the fact that we do not know the rules in their entirety, that is, the rules are too complex to be comprehended by any human being.

That adds a degree of realism to the fiction, because that's how the real world behaves, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Sharr Khan said:

Thing is, how can one tell if a holgram is sentient?

Err I cringe how "sentient" gets tossed about so casually these days (because of my dealings with "Animal Rightists" re: PETA) and can only imagine its 20x worse in a setting like the 24th Century.

First I personally think *sapience* should be our concern not if something can simply react to stimuli.

If any individual hologram can demonstrate its personhood such as the Doctor, Moriarty, or Vic by acting in a sapiant manner then of course they should have rights but I would doubt your run of the mill hologram could do such.

-Desire more then one needs to survive and be capable to reflect on how to make it so
-Make art for its own sake

Sharr

"Sentience" and "sapience" are both largely bullshit terms designed to cement human exceptionalism. Every time an animal is discovered to possess a heretofore human trait, we move the goal posts. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to hunt down some bacon and eggs.

 

[JD]

The Borg Queen said:
If the laws of this fictional universe were set out at it's conception, then there is no excuse for anything inconsistent.

Were all the "rules" of the Star Trek universe planned and arranged when Gene Roddenberry first sat down and came up with the concept of Star Trek?

Not even close. Look how much things changed in the beginning of TOS. They didn't even have the Federation till quite a ways into the series. And I think some of the other things changed or were replaced as things went on, I just can't think of any others right now. .

 

[Sci]

The "laws" of the Star Trek Universe were not set down at its conception. They were developed and evolved as the show did. This is, let's recall, a fictional story, not a real universe, and the needs of the story come before all else.