Author Author

[hux]

Good episode.

I know some fans grasp onto Living Witness as Voyager's best candidate for a possible mirror episode but I prefer this one for that honour. After all, it involves Two of Three (they're triplets' you know).

Yeah sure, it's a poor mans Measure of a Man (but with jokes) and there's nothing new here but I still like it.

Oh and it includes my favourite line I the history of television.

NEELIX: There's an old Talaxian expression. When the road before you splits in two, take the third path.

Umm, OK.

There's also a line from Reg about Zimmerman which makes it seem like he's dead.

Barclay: He travelled halfway across the galaxy to care for Lewis Zimmerman, the man who created his programme. It was like a son who wanted to show his father what he'd become, so the old man would be proud of him. And if you ask me, he was.

He was? So he's dead right?

I always thought the verdict that the doctor was an artist but not a person was a bit of a cop-out though.

 

[WoTe]

Sometimes, when I see the stupid people around me and my society -- all acting like sheep with the same predictable responses over and over again -- I wonder if it isn't humans who are the genetic programs running around laughably, pretending to be sentient...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Sentience is nothing that 15 years of marriage can't do away with.

 

[WoTe]

I enjoyed Author Author for its humor. One of the few good holodeck eps on Voyager, (the Maquis Insurrection had potential but fizzled out into another braindead action flick). I wish I saw more of the USS Voyeur

I thought the ruling was sensible enough. Clearly not every hologram is sentient. But by that point, it just another Measure of a Man episode. Good but been done. If the judge really wanted to, should have made it a simple breach of contract law -- and since the hologram is owned by SF, then between SF and the publisher. As it was, the Doctor really struck one for holographic rights.... not that I really buy into it.

Since I don't buy into it (you can make unlimited "entities" with a flick of a switch), the greatest counterpoint against my disbelief is that for those that believe Data is sentient, that the doctor is the same basic mind processes but just without the physical body. The problem is that human hardware and software isn't interchangeable (yet). You are what your physicality is, your brain (hardware) is also your software. Although Sci Fi and Trek had characters change identities/mind_swaps often enough that that proposition isn't true in their fiction-verse.

I'd like to have seen the Doctor knocked down a peg by a crew tired of his... ego. He was too quick to abandom them in Virtuoso and there was no on-screen fallout from that, which should have been coming. If Kes were still around, she'd probably have chewed his ear off.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Had the EMH been given limitations he would've been a far more interesting character, but since he could do everything he just grew to be more and more annoying, with episodes dedicated to stroking his ego--such as "Author, Author".

They might've been better off giving the ship self-awareness, that would create a more interesting dilemma.

The EMH to me is a tool. Highly sophisticated and capable of acquiring new data, but still a tool. If he was to be given "human" status then what about Vic Fontane or Moriarty or the star of Vulcan Love Slave? Where would it end?

 

[Guy Gardener]

The slippery slope argument is shitty.

It's about the consequences inflicting on the ruling class majority from being deprived their benefits of exploiting minorities.

It should be right or wrong, and damn the consequences.

Well, I suppose they are doing what's wrong and damning the consequences, which is so much easier than doing what's right and damning the consequences.

Although...

He is a tool, not a person.

You prove this by programming him to love being a slave, and who ever the #### programmed him to question his slavery was an idiot.

Of course, three days in a dark room being beaten by a rubber hose and you can program a real person to believe anything or say anything.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The question of machine sentience is a pretty complex one. If we accept that machines can be sentient there has to be some cutoff for considering them people. It's not unreasonable to say that Data, the Exocomps and EMH are on one side of the line and other holograms are not. Just like we say humans are sentient and frogs are not.

I liked the part of the episode about the Doc planning a holoprogram about his struggles being accepted as sentient. I don't like the legal aspect of the episode.

 

[Jedman67]

Had the EMH been given limitations he would've been a far more interesting character, but since he could do everything he just grew to be more and more annoying, with episodes dedicated to stroking his ego--such as "Author, Author".

They might've been better off giving the ship self-awareness, that would create a more interesting dilemma.

The EMH to me is a tool. Highly sophisticated and capable of acquiring new data, but still a tool. If he was to be given "human" status then what about Vic Fontane or Moriarty or the star of Vulcan Love Slave? Where would it end?

The question of machine sentience is a pretty complex one. If we accept that machines can be sentient there has to be some cutoff for considering them people. It's not unreasonable to say that Data, the Exocomps and EMH are on one side of the line and other holograms are not. Just like we say humans are sentient and frogs are not.

I liked the part of the episode about the Doc planning a holoprogram about his struggles being accepted as sentient. I don't like the legal aspect of the episode.

I thought it was an entertaining popcorn episode.
Here are my thoughts on the matter: the Original EMH was designed to supplement the medical staff of a ship - wait for it - in case of an emergency. In Voyager, with the entire medical staff dead in the first episode (highly unlikely but whatever) the EMH became the ships PCP, and had the opportunity to become more than his programming - to become sentient. All holographic characters are programmed to mimic sentience; in actuality that is a very complex AI provided by the holodeck computer - with some notable exceptions, like Moriarty, or Minuet in 00111010111 (whose program stopped when the binars left the ship).

 

[hux]

Moriarty was about as sentient as a box of nettles with piss on them. The idea that all you need to do to create genuine self-aware life-forms is say the words... "computer, create an adversary capable of beating Data"... is ludicrous.

If the computer is capable of such a feat then it stands to reason that the computer itself is a self-aware life-form. Then in the next instalment, Moriarty has apparently programmed the duchess to be a self-aware, sentient life-form too. Either creating sentient life is a piece of piss or these silly people are deluding themselves.

There's a reason why Picard puts Moriarty and the duchess in a box of illusions and never mentions them ever again.

 

[Kilana2]

Torrey, Tulak, Kymble and Marseilles aboard Starship Voyeur.....hilarious. Kymble was definitely more interesting than Kim.

And the Doctor lamenting his legal standing which would be that of a replicator.

What would hux do in the Doc's holo adventure? Certainly seize command of Voyeur

The Doctor's status (including holographic rights) are part of the novelverse.
A lot of things that remained unclear or were poorly conceived are picked up later on. There are still many topics for the authors.

 

[hux]

What would hux do in the Doc's holo adventure? Certainly seize command of Voyeur
.

I'd seize command of One of three, Two of three and Three of three. That sounds wrong. What i meant to say was, i'd respect them as independent, intelligent women and invite them to play Kadis-Kot and discuss the issues of the day.

 

[Catarina]

What would hux do in the Doc's holo adventure? Certainly seize command of Voyeur
.

I'd seize command of One of three, Two of three and Three of three. That sounds wrong. What i meant to say was, i'd respect them as independent, intelligent women and invite them to play Kadis-Kot and discuss the issues of the day.

I'm a tad suspicious of that, Hux.

 

[stardream]

The Doctor's status (including holographic rights) are part of the novelverse.
A lot of things that remained unclear or were poorly conceived are picked up later on. There are still many topics for the authors.

Those novels weren't the best of the relaunch but I did like that they followed through with that.

I liked the episode. Like was said above, good popcorn fare. I didn't mind the hearing but to me it wasn't so much if the Doctor was sentient but could an artificial lifeform create art and could it claim ownership of said 'artwork'.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Rejecting the premise that machines can be sentient in real life is different from rejecting the premise in a fantasy world. It's pretty clear, in the logic of the Trek universe, Data and the EMH are sentient. The EMH is not sentient in episode one but becomes sentient at some point along the journey.

Whether sentient AI can exist in real life can not be answered without solving the problem of whether the soul literally exists.

 

[Danny99]

The fundamental difference between Data and the Doctor and their quest for humanity comes down to writing.

Data learned from humans around him and saw what they could be and wanted to be one of them.

The Doctor, while being the butt of jokes from Tom Paris, suddenly decided he was a slave to humanity and demanded freedom, really out of the blue.

I can enjoy the first part of Author, Author as him, and his pompous attitude, trying to write a holo-novel, but all of the Season 7 "I need rights" comes across more as whining than anything else.