measure of a man question

[spaceballone]

I love the episode Measure of a man but there is one thing that has always bothered me about it. How was there ever a question of Data being property of Starfleet? He was not built by Starfleet in the first place. Data made a decision to apply to the academy, was accepted and graduated earning grades and promotions like any other officer. He lived his own life outside of class and duty.

Imagine a current independent scientist builds an android of the same caliber as Data and that Android makes a decision to enter NASA or some military service or any job. He is accepted and does what is expected of him like everyone else. He lives a normal life outside of work. Then he decides to leave wherever he is working. They couldn't just make a claim that he is property. There would not be any basis for it because he never was their property.

If Data was built by starfleet and treated like property from the start it would make more sense.
Like I say, I like the episode and the ideas but this always bothered me.

 

[Da'an]

I thought the same thing. They had no claim to Data to begin with, it's not like they purchased him from Dr. Soong.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Maybe Soong got many of his resources from Starfleet so that Starfleet felt they could lay claim to him following Soong's death.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

I think the logic went something like this:

Data 'belonged' to Soong. Soong, however, vanished after the Crystalline Entity attack, presumed dead, leaving Data with no 'owner'. In comes Starfleet, picks up the pieces, finds Data, who decides to come with them. Starfleet then expends resources in (presumably, being a mechanical being) maintenance, upgrades, and research on the android, as well as providing access to Starfleet data and resources, it could be seen as a 'purchase' of sorts (though the 24th century economy confuses me somewhat), or at least an implicit declaration of ownership, as they wouldn't provide these resources to some rogue robot.

Admittedly flimsy logic, but I think that's the long and short of it...

The real question, I think, is what would Soong himself have said on the matter of 'ownership'. He certainly didn't have a problem shutting down and dismantling his earlier, less functional prototypes. Who's to say Data wouldn't have ended up the same way, eventually, had Soong not been derailed by the Entity...

 

[Timo]

Nobody knew that Data belonged to Soong when the android joined Starfleet. His origin was a mystery to everybody, including himself. The connection with Soong was only established in "Datalore", after Data had served for eleven years. One wonders if anybody even knew that Data was a positronic robot, because that field of robotics was Soong's speciality and indeed obsession, and should have been a major hint...

So Starfleet took Data in without sweating over the minor detail of whether he was a sentient being or perhaps a toaster. We don't know the exact details of that deal, but it does sound a bit unusual. Perhaps Starfleet is like the Foreign Legion, and they just don't ask questions. Or perhaps Starfleet made Data sell his soul (or at least his body) to them at enrolling, because of the rather special circumstances? There could well be a piece of paper or PADD or whatever establishing that Data was Starfleet property, even if there isn't a comparable document establishing Picard or LaForge as Starfleet property.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Salvage, simple as that.

 

[rahullak]

Maybe it would help to think of it this way:

You find a novel and exquisitely formed toaster in a shack in the middle of some forest. You lay claim to it, since the shack has obviously been abandoned and so has the toaster. You put the toaster to good use after finding out its complicated controls and training yourself to use it. In time, the toaster learns as much from you as you do from it and begins to show signs of sentience. Eventually, the toaster exceeds even your formidable intellect and begins to invent the quantum slip-stream drive, something it felt it had to do. Thus, it exhibits free will. Now would you still consider the toaster to be your property?

I think Starfleet did have rights to claim Data as salvage or property and get him to learn and work when they first found him. But once he exhibited sentience and free will, it behooves Starfleet to heed its own mission statement "...to seek out new life.." and grant Data his freedom.

 

[Timo]

However, the fact remains that Starfleet doesn't sweat sentience. The JAG office doesn't sweat Data's sentience. Data himself doesn't sweat his sentience. It's only when Commander Maddox finds out, thanks to a slip of JAG officer Louvois' otherwise exquisite tongue, that Data's sentience or lack thereof might provide a legal loophole by which he could study Data's innards, that everybody suddenly starts worrying about Data's sentience.

Data's freedom is in doubt now, thanks to a legal loophole rather than any deeper sociopolitical concern about his possession of free will. Maddox exploits the loophole to the max, not because he wants to limit Data's civil rights per se, but because he wants a legal means to study Data and this incidentally requires trampling on his rights.

So proving that Data is a self-aware living being is not really in anybody's interests directly. Starfleet and Louvois have no desire to give Data any recognition, and indeed the court never rules in favor of Data being self-aware, or entitled to any specific rights hinging on self-awareness. Data himself doesn't want to prove his self-awareness, either - people either take it for granted, or ignore the issue, and he's usually happy with it. It's the mere legal technicalities that force our heroes and our villain to unwillingly go through the farce of a "trial", the outcome of which interests nobody beyond the point of deciding whether Maddox can perform his risky experiment on Data.

Probably nobody considered Data "Starfleet property" until Maddox learned of the loophole. Louvois said "But the Enterprise computer is property. Is Data?", and Maddox then jumped at the opportunity, saying "Of course", and leaving Louvois in sudden doubt about the issue, doubt that did not exist before. In the preceding scenes, Louvois had explicitly agreed that Data was "a Starfleet officer" and "people", with appropriate rights.

Now, if we could only read the "Acts of Cumberland passed in the early twenty first century" that define Data as Starfleet property, according to Louvois... Why do these Acts remain in force even though Starfleet didn't even exist in the early 21st, and even though WWIII came after that and wrought all sorts of havoc with Earth legal givens? There must be some pretty important stuff in those Acts, something that negates the idea of "accepting Data as a non-owneable person" as a matter of principle, and absolutely requires explicit hard proof on him being a person. And this is something that even the 24th century Federation agrees with and finds laudable...

Perhaps in the early 21st century, intelligent machines were being pushed for having citizenship rights, for really nefarious purposes? Perhaps this is what the Acts want to prevent for all eternity.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Nobody knew that Data belonged to Soong when the android joined Starfleet. His origin was a mystery to everybody, including himself. The connection with Soong was only established in "Datalore", after Data had served for eleven years. One wonders if anybody even knew that Data was a positronic robot, because that field of robotics was Soong's speciality and indeed obsession, and should have been a major hint...

Also I find it a bit strange that nobody made the connection that Data looked EXACTLY like a young Soong.

 

[Da'an]

Whatever happened to the Exocomps?

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

Nobody knew that Data belonged to Soong when the android joined Starfleet. His origin was a mystery to everybody, including himself. The connection with Soong was only established in "Datalore", after Data had served for eleven years. One wonders if anybody even knew that Data was a positronic robot, because that field of robotics was Soong's speciality and indeed obsession, and should have been a major hint...

Also I find it a bit strange that nobody made the connection that Data looked EXACTLY like a young Soong.

It's a good point. While it's a large galaxy, certainly in Starfleet's initial evaluation of Data, he would have had to have spent substantial time at the Daystrom Institute, a place where Soong would have no doubt been recognized by someone.

There's really a lot of mystery and questions surrounding the existence of Data. Lang's Immortal Coil does a very admirable job covering a lot of those questions, as well as the related questions of the history of AI in the AQ. It has frustratingly little information, however on the personal history of Data himself.

Who was Soong, really, and what drove him to enact such narcisisstic fantasies in creating identcally looking androids to himself?

Why, after making B-4 or even Lore, he didn't parade the android in front of the Daystrom Institute with a big "See, I'm not crazy!". Especially since, up until the EMH's began rolling out, Starfleet had nothing remotely as sophisticated in Artificial Intelligence.

Why was he laughed out of the scientific community to begin with?

What was Lore's personal history? Was he really constructed badly, or was there some trauma in his early life that made him sociopathic? Was that trauma perhaps Soong's own doing?

Why did no one at Omicron Theta ever see fit to inform anyone that mad scientist Soong was making artificial lifeforms in his lab and letting them run loose on the colony? Especially after Lore went bad.

Where, exactly, did Soong get the parts for making these androids, especially since Starfleet seems unable to reproduce positronic technology? If he had an on-site fabrication facility, Starfleet would have found it in the inital sweep of Omicron Theta (which I'm sure they took apart after finding Data). Did he use private contractors to make the various parts? If so, why hasn't Starfleet tracked those down as well? Did Soong, perhaps have access to some form of advanced techology not available to anyone else? Borg, perhaps?

If he even remotely used a human brain as a template for his positronic creations, how exactly was he able to do something as complex as excise emotional capacity from the design so easily after the Lore incident? How exactly did he think that would have even helped, exactly. There is an established history of AI's acting crazy even without expressing emotion (Nomad, the Exo III androids, the Mudd androids... and I'm sure plenty more.). Was there more to it than that?

I'm sure there's more unanswered questions here, but these are the ones that immediately pop into mind.

 

[Timo]

Some musings:

Why, after making B-4 or even Lore, he didn't parade the android in front of the Daystrom Institute with a big "See, I'm not crazy!". Especially since, up until the EMH's began rolling out, Starfleet had nothing remotely as sophisticated in Artificial Intelligence.

I'd argue we have no proof that Starfleet and the UFP didn't have advanced AI. They had pretty much sentient starship computers in TOS already - those just happened to know their place, and spoke in tinny, submissive voices. Starfleet in TOS already also knew how to build android bodies.

So perhaps Soong had to come up with something truly amazing, something completely finished, in the neglected field of positronics, before he could emerge from his hiding on Omicron Theta. Lore might have been it - but there was precious little time between the creation of Lore and the attack of the Crystalline Entity, probably not enough for staging a triumphant return.

Why was he laughed out of the scientific community to begin with?

I'd argue because positronics was seen as a dead-end path - it was referred to as Soong's "dream", after all. Other sort of AI research was well respected, as we found in connection with Ira Graves. Perhaps UFP science could already do everything Soong's positronics promised to do... But Soong believed he could do it in more compact form with positronics, and a good demonstration of that would be to cram an entire AI into the skull of an android, when existing AIs were of mainframe size.

Why did no one at Omicron Theta ever see fit to inform anyone that mad scientist Soong was making artificial lifeforms in his lab and letting them run loose on the colony? Especially after Lore went bad.

About 90% of colonies in Trek seem to be of isolationist mindset. They'd not trust outside authorities, least of all the soulless minions of orthodoxy from Starfleet. Hell, even the seemingly conformist major colony and former shipping hub Deneva didn't stay in any sort of steady contact with Earth or Starfleet - a silence of a full year was met with a shrug.

I'm sure Soong chose Omicron Theta specifically because he knew nobody there would squeal on him.

Where, exactly, did Soong get the parts for making these androids, especially since Starfleet seems unable to reproduce positronic technology?

I see no evidence of an inability to reproduce or produce the hardware component of the tech. Data did it in a heartbeat in "The Offspring". There simply were fine details with the tech that people like Maddox didn't quite understand - there was no obstacle in manufacturing that we'd know of.

If he had an on-site fabrication facility, Starfleet would have found it in the inital sweep of Omicron Theta (which I'm sure they took apart after finding Data).

But it's explicit Starfleet didn't even find the underground colony itself. Apparently the Tripoli folks just went there, thought "Hey, yet another colony of idiots completely wiped out by some random space threat, only this one left behind an android. Let's go, we have a dozen more cases like this waiting to be checked out this month!", and moved on.

That sounds relatively natural. Omicron Theta was a non-entity as far as Starfleet and the UFP were concerned; they had few obligations regarding it, and few quarrels. At that point, they apparently didn't have evidence of a pattern of destruction relating to what they saw at OT, either, so the "random space threat" would warrant no further study, at least not with any urgency.

If he even remotely used a human brain as a template for his positronic creations, how exactly was he able to do something as complex as excise emotional capacity from the design so easily after the Lore incident?

I'd think the use of a human template was only a feature he added later on, for the android copy of Tainer he built after the original's death. And presence or lack of emotions would be relatively simple fiddling: holocharacter designers probably do that all the time, and they have been around for a long time (Janeway had holonovels in her childhood already).

Also I find it a bit strange that nobody made the connection that Data looked EXACTLY like a young Soong.

This begs the question of whether the young Soong really was a visually identifiable celebrity or not. Considering his shady and elusive nature, he might even have changed his appearance after disappearing from public but before building his androids. However, ENT sort of negates this possibility by showing us a Soong ancestor with the same looks and the same megalomania.

Data could simply have been considered a cruel prank initially: "Hey, an android that looks just like that crazy coot Soong! Somebody has a mean sense of humor... I wonder who?"

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captrek]

Lore was intended to seem human, so why did he have the funny skin color?

And when the colonists were terrified of Lore and Soong decided to create one that wouldn’t frighten them, why did he make the new one look exactly like the one that frightened them so much?

 

[Bad Atom]

Two words: Finders keepers.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

Lore was intended to seem human, so why did he have the funny skin color?

And when the colonists were terrified of Lore and Soong decided to create one that wouldn’t frighten them, why did he make the new one look exactly like the one that frightened them so much?

More of that narcissistic megalomania. The more one delves into the possible psychology of Soong himself, the more one gets the impression that this was not a very likable man, with deep psychological abnormalities... a far cry from the kindly Gepetto archetype that Data's been given to believe in. Hell, perhaps Lore worked exactly as advertised, and Soong underestimated the depth of his own psychoses.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

I'd argue we have no proof that Starfleet and the UFP didn't have advanced AI. They had pretty much sentient starship computers in TOS already - those just happened to know their place, and spoke in tinny, submissive voices. Starfleet in TOS already also knew how to build android bodies.

Sentient computers, yes... and quite spectacular failures at that; enough that it wasn't until the EMH that Starfleet even allowed mission critical duties to be carried out by one, even if it was just a CMO backup.

But sentience isn't the same thing as sapience: the ability to move and experience in a similar fashion as us, with the capacity for abstract thought and feeling (which, despite all his protestations, Data had in abundance). This doesn't seem like a great distinction, but just ask Sargon what it's like to be a brain-in-a-box and it's limitations...

Of course, the cybernetic aspects were likely easy. 400 years of research in limb replacement alone probably took care of that one, nevermind the various androids already found by the original Enterprise. Of course, looking at androids like the Exo III and Mudd varieties, one can easily see their brains left much to be desired...

So perhaps Soong had to come up with something truly amazing, something completely finished, in the neglected field of positronics, before he could emerge from his hiding on Omicron Theta. Lore might have been it - but there was precious little time between the creation of Lore and the attack of the Crystalline Entity, probably not enough for staging a triumphant return.

How long a time, really, was it between Lore's creation and the Entity's attack? As far as I know, that's a very open question. Could have been weeks, years, or even a couple of decades. Soong's biography is suprisingly scant on these matters. In any case, I'm not sure if there was any evidence of there being 'little time' between the two events, though I could be wrong about that.

In any case, it would help if we knew what was so different about positronics that distinguishes it from duotronics, isolinear chips, or bioneural gel paks. In any case, even having had decades to study Data, Starfleet doesn't seem either interested or capable of reproducing the feat, and it still seems to be seen with a certain amount of awe... enough that I have to imagine it's somewhat superior to whatever computer tech they've already got going.

I'd argue because positronics was seen as a dead-end path - it was referred to as Soong's "dream", after all. Other sort of AI research was well respected, as we found in connection with Ira Graves. Perhaps UFP science could already do everything Soong's positronics promised to do... But Soong believed he could do it in more compact form with positronics, and a good demonstration of that would be to cram an entire AI into the skull of an android, when existing AIs were of mainframe size.

This is possible, though typically, once a feat is shown to be possible by scientists, the mere fact of it's proven possibility is enough to spur others to re-create it, usually faster, better and cheaper, especially with an example or prototype to look at. This doesn't seem to have happened with Data. Either the tech is extremely complex, or it's advanced enough to defy reverse engineering. Either possibility could work, but unfortunately only raises even more questions.

About 90% of colonies in Trek seem to be of isolationist mindset. They'd not trust outside authorities, least of all the soulless minions of orthodoxy from Starfleet. Hell, even the seemingly conformist major colony and former shipping hub Deneva didn't stay in any sort of steady contact with Earth or Starfleet - a silence of a full year was met with a shrug.

I'm sure Soong chose Omicron Theta specifically because he knew nobody there would squeal on him.

This I don't really have a reply for... other than this really should be investigated, as it doesn't seem like very healthy behavior to have isolationist colonies continually fleeing your sphere of influence. And while I understand that it's a Federation where worlds aren't forced to participate, it just seems ludicrous that all these colonies would choose to remain out of contact with each other... I know it's just a plot device in order to generate throwaway planets for the lates space terror of the week, but seriously, this is very weird behavior.

I see no evidence of an inability to reproduce or produce the hardware component of the tech. Data did it in a heartbeat in "The Offspring". There simply were fine details with the tech that people like Maddox didn't quite understand - there was no obstacle in manufacturing that we'd know of.

Whether hardware or software, something is non-reproductable. Even Data couldn't pull it off, as Lal died of cascade failure days after activation, a problem he never seemed to find a solution for, and, in fact, Soong appears to be the only one who knows how to compensate for it, since according to Data himself, he shouldn't work (see his discussion of faith in 'Birthright'). Admittedly, I'm not sure what 'cascade failure' is, exactly, but it would appear to be the main hurdle for creating stable, positronic matrices that no one other than Soong has managed to work around.

But it's explicit Starfleet didn't even find the underground colony itself. Apparently the Tripoli folks just went there, thought "Hey, yet another colony of idiots completely wiped out by some random space threat, only this one left behind an android. Let's go, we have a dozen more cases like this waiting to be checked out this month!", and moved on.

If true (which I have no reason to believe it's not), that's just ridiculous. No wonder colonies drop by the truckload, if Starfleet forensics isn't even up to the task of finding out WHY colonies and people drop dead beyond saying 'Huh, would you look at that.' Not criticizing your point, which is valid, just that it's a dead-stupid way of handling things that I wouldn't expect from Starfleet. I can imagine how the plot of The Doomsday Machine would have gone if the Enterprise had adopted that attitude...

That sounds relatively natural. Omicron Theta was a non-entity as far as Starfleet and the UFP were concerned; they had few obligations regarding it, and few quarrels. At that point, they apparently didn't have evidence of a pattern of destruction relating to what they saw at OT, either, so the "random space threat" would warrant no further study, at least not with any urgency.

My only problem with this logic is that we saw exactly this kind of investigation going on ALL THE TIME in the show. Or is the Enterprise the only ship with the personnel capable of investigating such things (must have been, since they were the one's that figured out what happened with Omicron Theta... thirty some odd years later).

I'd think the use of a human template was only a feature he added later on, for the android copy of Tainer he built after the original's death. And presence or lack of emotions would be relatively simple fiddling: holocharacter designers probably do that all the time, and they have been around for a long time (Janeway had holonovels in her childhood already).

We don't know anything about the ease or difficulty of holoprogramming, whether the 'personalities' are coded by hand or the result of some kind of synaptic scanning or neural emulation or some such. As well, we don't know how personalities are 'customized', though I suspect it's not easy... otherwise, Voyager could have saved itself some headaches by just saying 'Decrease EMH snarkiness by 90%'.

As for human emulation being a later addition, I don't see why. It's obvious that Tainer's 'rebirth' was an application of Ira Graves synaptic scanning technique that the old man himself used to hijack Data's body. Soong was obviously familiar with it (it seems too much of a coincidence that he would have developed it independently, especially seeing as the two worked together at some point in the past), and, I suspect, used a more primitive understanding/application of it with both Lore and Data, not tranferring his memories or personality, neccesarily, but possibly his basic brain patterns or some such as a 'template' on which to build, which makes more sense than re-crafting every nuance of human experience from scratch, essentially re-inventing the wheel. Personally, I'd always wondered why, if Soong could eventually pull off an entire tranfer with Juliana, why he never did it to himself. The man certainly had the mindset to want to live forever... you'd think he'd have done it.

This begs the question of whether the young Soong really was a visually identifiable celebrity or not. Considering his shady and elusive nature, he might even have changed his appearance after disappearing from public but before building his androids. However, ENT sort of negates this possibility by showing us a Soong ancestor with the same looks and the same megalomania.

But considering his megalomania and narcissism, I highly doubt he'd change his appearance... that just doesn't seem in character. And why, really? He wasn't a criminal, just a disgrace. Obviously, he wouldn't be a celebrity to the 'man on the street'. but I imagine to his peers and contemporaries at Daystrom, he'd be recognizable, like Henry Ford knowing the face of Nikola Tesla.



Good points all, and an interesting discussion.

 

[Tom Riley]

Admittedly, I'm not sure what 'cascade failure' is, exactly, but it would appear to be the main hurdle for creating stable, positronic matrices that no one other than Soong has managed to work around.

A cascade failure is basically one small failure, whether it be mechanical or programming, which in turn causes another component to fail, which causes another part to fail, which just builds and builds into a huge failure of lots of different things.

Personally, I'd always wondered why, if Soong could eventually pull off an entire tranfer with Juliana, why he never did it to himself. The man certainly had the mindset to want to live forever... you'd think he'd have done it.

Don't forget, Lore killed Soong. I doubt he was expecting to die quite then, he could have been waiting until he felt he was closer to death to do it. Or he even could have been in the middle of creating it when he was killed.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

Don't forget, Lore killed Soong. I doubt he was expecting to die quite then, he could have been waiting until he felt he was closer to death to do it. Or he even could have been in the middle of creating it when he was killed.

Or, if you wanted to get really dark about it, perhaps Soong WAS going to transfer his consciousness... into Data... the Emotion Chip did have memories and such, supposedly... maybe it was meant to have a complete personality overwrite, and got corrupted by Lore when he stole it... might explain why he went COMPLETELY nuts after putting it in.

 

[Tom Riley]

Don't forget, Lore killed Soong. I doubt he was expecting to die quite then, he could have been waiting until he felt he was closer to death to do it. Or he even could have been in the middle of creating it when he was killed.

Or, if you wanted to get really dark about it, perhaps Soong WAS going to transfer his consciousness... into Data... the Emotion Chip did have memories and such, supposedly... maybe it was meant to have a complete personality overwrite, and got corrupted by Lore when he stole it... might explain why he went COMPLETELY nuts after putting it in.

Haha, that would be so messed up of Soong to do. And it would totally seem like Soong had no regard for Data at all. The only thing is, don't you think Soong would have wanted a body that looked more... normal?

 

[Mojochi]

Possession is nine tenths of the law. I'd suspect the outcome might be the same were it happening in present times too. They can make the claim, whether warranted or not, and probably would, because militaries would really like things like mechanized humanoids, but I suspect it would meet with the same result in the end. His choice to choose to be in Star fleet would be off the table, once his lack of worth as a sentient being were ruled upon, especially given the circumstance that he was discovered by Starfleet

Brilliant episode