Yes, there are some nice full-size female dolls for sale made out of soft squishy rubber, but they're very expensive otherwise i'd try to find one that looks like Victoria in the High Chapparal..
Would you serve under Data?
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Yes, there are some nice full-size female dolls for sale made out of soft squishy rubber, but they're very expensive otherwise i'd try to find one that looks like Victoria in the High Chapparal..
The crew of the Nostromo were presumably friends with the science officer (Ian Holm) without knowing he was a bot, but he's the one who got all the crew (except Ripley) killed by opening the airlock door to let them carry John Hurt inside with that thing plastered on his face..
Nobody regards him as human.
They regard him as a sentient being, because he is a sentient being.
Have you actually watched the show?
In real life, I don't believe it is possible for a machine to be a sentient being. Mostly that is owed to my personal religious beliefs.
However, within the context of the Star Trek universe, I am willing to accept that he is a truly sentient being, just as I accept that it's possible to break someone down into energy and transport them without killing them and making a new copy each time or that it's possible to have sex with a ghost who lives in a candle and reanimates your dead grandmother to attack your friends.
Within that acceptance, yes, I think I could serve under Data if I existed in that universe.
However, within the context of the Star Trek universe, I am willing to accept that he is a truly sentient being, just as I accept that it's possible to break someone down into energy and transport them without killing them and making a new copy each time or that it's possible to have sex with a ghost who lives in a candle and reanimates your dead grandmother to attack your friends.
Within that acceptance, yes, I think I could serve under Data if I existed in that universe.
In one episode a scientist who regards Data as just a soul-less robot arrives and wants to take Data back to a lab to dismantle him to find out what makes him tick and make more like him, but of course the crew are against it, so in that respect they're impeding the advancement of science..
On the same theme several small man-made drone-type things show signs of intelligence which sparks a soul-searching debate about whether they're "a new life-form" that should be respected and have "rights" (yawn)
Okay.
As long as this is a general "Data sentience" thread, the thing that always bothers me is:
Data's positronic brain is the reason for his sentience, and why we're to consider him alive but not the Enterprise computer, or the jank-o-trons from "I, Mudd", or Picard's chair - that's absolutely fine as a quick and easy "just go along with it" gesture to the audience, and in 90% of episodes, works perfectly. The script says Data is alive and thus he's alive, no questions asked or needed - it's simply a fact, in the same way that Betazoids being sapient is a fact.
The snag is that in certain episodes, characters will say in dialogue that the reason Data is alive is because he offers what they consider a convincing simulation of humanity. Equating "life" with "acts human" obviously raises some big issues in a universe filled with entirely non-human life, but putting that aside - holograms emulate humanity better than Data does. The positronic brain actually seems less sophisticated than the Enterprise computer (which, remember, is running multiple ultra-realistic holograms simultaneously, and even manages to give birth in "Emergence"). I mean, Minuet doesn't briefly freeze up and jerk around weirdly when trying to understand common idioms, nor does she have an unexplained inability to use contractions.
I always liked the Data episodes where he himself suggests he has no internality and tells other characters not to get over-excited by him (In Theory, Ensigns of Command, etc), which seems like an interesting vein the show might have tapped more, though I suppose doing it too often would dull the character's appeal.
Data's positronic brain is the reason for his sentience, and why we're to consider him alive but not the Enterprise computer, or the jank-o-trons from "I, Mudd", or Picard's chair - that's absolutely fine as a quick and easy "just go along with it" gesture to the audience, and in 90% of episodes, works perfectly. The script says Data is alive and thus he's alive, no questions asked or needed - it's simply a fact, in the same way that Betazoids being sapient is a fact.
The snag is that in certain episodes, characters will say in dialogue that the reason Data is alive is because he offers what they consider a convincing simulation of humanity. Equating "life" with "acts human" obviously raises some big issues in a universe filled with entirely non-human life, but putting that aside - holograms emulate humanity better than Data does. The positronic brain actually seems less sophisticated than the Enterprise computer (which, remember, is running multiple ultra-realistic holograms simultaneously, and even manages to give birth in "Emergence"). I mean, Minuet doesn't briefly freeze up and jerk around weirdly when trying to understand common idioms, nor does she have an unexplained inability to use contractions.
I always liked the Data episodes where he himself suggests he has no internality and tells other characters not to get over-excited by him (In Theory, Ensigns of Command, etc), which seems like an interesting vein the show might have tapped more, though I suppose doing it too often would dull the character's appeal.
I guess to me that's somewhat akin to suggesting that since some LLMs can generate text that reads better than what some people's natural writing looks like that the LLMs are closer to humanity than those people.
I'm somewhat agnostic on the question of whether androids and holograms and Tuvix are 'alive'...after all, humans could be considered to be simply the end result of a bunch of biological versus technological programs...but I prefer to err on the side of caution, and believe that if they seem to be exhibiting the traits that we associate with sapience then they merit being preserved.
I'm somewhat agnostic on the question of whether androids and holograms and Tuvix are 'alive'...after all, humans could be considered to be simply the end result of a bunch of biological versus technological programs...but I prefer to err on the side of caution, and believe that if they seem to be exhibiting the traits that we associate with sapience then they merit being preserved.
It's not my suggestion, it's TNG's - characters essentially argue that simulation of (human) consciousness is a basis for being considered alive, but they simultaneously want to believe that holograms and the Enterprise's computer aren't alive despite matching those criteria.
The handwave is "positronic brain" which works as an abstract convenience for most of the show, but crumbles when a script decides to focus on it, since it circles back to "the reason we trust in the positronic brain is that it allows Data to exhibit signs of human-like life", which is also true for huge amounts of other technology in Star Trek (and, now, in the real world).
Presumably the writers' initial logic was that the positronic brain is akin to a human brain, but of course, Star Trek has lots of sapient species without any brain, which sort of renders the shape and structure of the technology irrelevant.
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I can accept Data over a hologram.
Data, due to his positronic brain is self contained. He has a brain just like you, me, or Spock. A sentient consciousness would dwell in there.
In contrast, the EMH is simply a program on Voyager's computer. Vic Fontaine is a program on DS9's computer. The compute is the real intelligence. If the Doctor is sentient, then, logically, it's Voyager's computer that is really sentient. Just like the discussion about Minuet. She was part of the Enterprise computer and felt real or alive due to the augmentation performed by the Bynars on the Enterprise's computer.
This goes back to one of my complaints of TNG and how Trek treated holograms. In "The Nth Degree" Geordi makes a comment about Barclay discussing unification theory with Albert Einstein. Um, no he didn't. Barclay was having a discussion with the ship's computer. The Einstein hologram was merely a holographic interface. All the knowledge that hologram had was in the computer.
Really it's the haphazard and inconsistent way artificial intelligence is depicted in Trek. The ship's computer is not sentient, yet can create sentient holograms like Moriarty based off of a poorly worded command prompt. Or can contain a sentient program that draws all it's experience and knowledge from that very computer's database.
Sentience, the most complex and mysterious things in the universe. It's so complex nobody can duplicate Soong's work and create another Data, yet it can come into existence through a careless phrase in a Sherlock Holmes program and can be transferred into artificial android bodies or come about as the result of programming a computer with too much data.
Data, due to his positronic brain is self contained. He has a brain just like you, me, or Spock. A sentient consciousness would dwell in there.
In contrast, the EMH is simply a program on Voyager's computer. Vic Fontaine is a program on DS9's computer. The compute is the real intelligence. If the Doctor is sentient, then, logically, it's Voyager's computer that is really sentient. Just like the discussion about Minuet. She was part of the Enterprise computer and felt real or alive due to the augmentation performed by the Bynars on the Enterprise's computer.
This goes back to one of my complaints of TNG and how Trek treated holograms. In "The Nth Degree" Geordi makes a comment about Barclay discussing unification theory with Albert Einstein. Um, no he didn't. Barclay was having a discussion with the ship's computer. The Einstein hologram was merely a holographic interface. All the knowledge that hologram had was in the computer.
Really it's the haphazard and inconsistent way artificial intelligence is depicted in Trek. The ship's computer is not sentient, yet can create sentient holograms like Moriarty based off of a poorly worded command prompt. Or can contain a sentient program that draws all it's experience and knowledge from that very computer's database.
Sentience, the most complex and mysterious things in the universe. It's so complex nobody can duplicate Soong's work and create another Data, yet it can come into existence through a careless phrase in a Sherlock Holmes program and can be transferred into artificial android bodies or come about as the result of programming a computer with too much data.
but of course the crew are against it, so in that respect they're impeding the advancement of science..
Hi, Josef! How did Nuremburg go for your idea of science?
The issue is surely that in Star Trek you don't need a brain to be conscious; we have sapient nebulas, hive minds, gas clouds, silicon or crystal-based life, etc. There are entirely non-humanoid forms of life that disrupt the idea that a human-style brain is needed for life.
If a positronic brain can hold a consciousness, there's not really any reason why any other computer system can't - the Enterprise computer is also (presumably) self-contained. This'd also retroactively render the Norman and Stella androids from "I, Mudd" sapient, as they were also self-contained units.
Of course the added awkwardness is that writers sometimes treat holograms as discrete programs separate from the computer (eg the EMH "transferring his program" to the mobile emitter), which again raises questions as to what the difference is meant to be between a "holo-matrix" and a positronic brain since both emulate consciousness, the former perhaps more effectively and robustly than the latter.
To me, Moriarty was just a computer creation and Picard must have thought the same thing which is why he put him in a box with his ladyfriend to happily live out his life without knowing the difference..
Here's the short relevant clip-
I think Moriarty presented as being as sapient as the EMH or Vic Fontaine or other self-aware holograms. Picard put him in the holocube because at the time there was no way for Moriarty to exist outside the holodeck, so the holocube was essentially giving him the next best thing, in Picard's estimation. The question becomes whether Moriarty should later have been allowed to truly exist outside the holodeck by virtue of (portable) holoemitters, especially given that some of the actions he'd committed to that point would almost certainly be considered crimes.
Yes, if Moriarty had been a decent friendly sort of chap, maybe Picard would have cut him some slack, but he was a bit of a b*****d so no wonder Picard boxed him..
PS- Moriarty's ladyfriend said he "excited" her because of his shady nature, and as I once got 3 months in the slammer on a vigilante rap, maybe I should start telling women i'm an ex-convict on dating sites to "excite" them..
PS- Moriarty's ladyfriend said he "excited" her because of his shady nature, and as I once got 3 months in the slammer on a vigilante rap, maybe I should start telling women i'm an ex-convict on dating sites to "excite" them..
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