Shaper hypocrisy vs. Shaper tragedy (SPOILERS)
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Agent
Member # 6581
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written Friday, July 28 2006 12:14
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quote:The desire of unlimited powers? EDIT: Or the desire of have a slave? [ Friday, July 28, 2006 12:16: Message edited by: MagmaDragoon ] -------------------- Download Geneforge 4: Rebellion You have 6 posts. Nobody cares what you think. - Thuryl Wikipedia may be your friend, but UBB is not. - Dikiyoba Posts: 1310 | Registered: Tuesday, December 20 2005 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7143
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written Friday, July 28 2006 12:16
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What gives the intellegent serviles the right to destroy the happiness of so many of their own kind? -------------------- "After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." - Cato the Elder (234-149 BC) "The mind, if it exists, is nothing but an unfortunate after effect of the brain process." -Kripke "One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly." -Friedich Nietzche Posts: 333 | Registered: Saturday, May 20 2006 07:00 |
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Councilor
Member # 6600
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written Friday, July 28 2006 12:31
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Originally by Your ad could be here- contact me.: quote:Arrogance, desire for superiority, and other facets of human nature. Really, I think Jeff has done a good job with the servile rights conflict (and everyone else has done a good job buying into it and adding their two cents) because I don't see the free the serviles or keep them as slaves as an eay decision to make. Dikiyoba. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Friday, July 28 2006 13:17
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quote:Why would every single servile have to be freed if only some want to be? Those that want to be free should be free, and those who want to serve the Shapers can serve the Shapers. If they are simply raised from birth to think of themselves as equals, then they will never want to be anything but free. So the intelligent ones can be free and can train their children to want to be free, and the unintelligent ones can keep having children who think of themselves as being unworthy. -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Apprentice
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written Friday, July 28 2006 14:46
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There's an obvious difference between humans and the serviles, and that's humans are naturally existing, independent beings that exist without having to be shaped into existence by anyone (unless you want to bring a belief of god into it, and that's an issue all to itself) The point is, in the world of Geneforge, the only organisms we know of that arose through their own natural selection are the humans. Based on the behavior and nature of the shapers, any other natural flora and fauna went extinct and was shaped and reshaped by shapers changing their environment to fit their will. That I definitely don't agree with. To apply it to a real world environmental problem, if we could bring species back from extinction or magically clean oil spills and reverse global warming overnight, would we have any right to abuse THAT power? I think doing major environmental overhauling at the expense of naturally existing native organisms is wrong, but that isn't the issue that's presented in the games. The issue is the right of "creations." Not animals, or organisms, but "creations." Life produced artificially by magically aided means. If you can create something, you can destroy it or use it to whatever whim you please, as long as you don't abuse that creative power. There are creations that can be shaped to reproduce naturally and set up a habitat for themselves, but how many glhaaks do you think naturally existed before somebody decided to make them? Or battle alphas? Maybe it's because I have a more scientifically based perspective on it, but to me the creations are immediately analogous to robots. You could produce more and more advanced robots and machinery, and even give it an ability to learn, grow, and develop more of its kind, but in the end, it's still an unnatural creation you personally created with some goal in mind. What if bomb disposal robots became self aware and decided they wouldn't want to do their intended function anymore? What do you do when your computer locks up? Do you try to reason with it and console it? Most people think that smacking the tower a few times should make it run better. It shows they have no knowledge of how to repair machinery, but does that make them cruel? Tyrants? Or just bad owners? How many people do you think neglect their cars? Drive them faster then they should for too long, go long periods without oil changes, bump and scrape into obstructions without regard to body or paintwork? Of course, cars aren't programmed with any level of real sentience, and very few computers in the world can actually learn, and even then are highly experimental and learn slowly. So what makes the creations in Geneforge any different than the real world machines we use and abuse everyday? Because they're magically crafted bits of flesh given a rudimentary intelligence to help them operate under limited supervision? Compared to another work of science fiction, what makes a servile that much different than a replicant in Blade Runner, or a droid in Star Wars? There's certainly a level of respect that should be given to a being with a discernible level of intelligence, artificial or otherwise, but if it was designed for a specific function, how is it wrong to use it to that end? We use "slaves" everyday in the real world, although we can't (yet) give them any ability to reliably act and think on their own. There are assembly robots in automobile factories. Automated vacuums that scan for dust return to rest after a set amount of time. The computer sitting right in front of you. If it had the ability to act on its own, do you think it would want to do what you wanted it to when you wanted, all the time, if ever? That's on of the things I appreciate about Geneforge is that it raises the ethical question of what responsibility we have to the things we create. But at the same time we created them, so ultimately they are responsible to us. Any intelligent machine that rejected that responsibility in the real world would be seen as defective electronics and have to be dismantled. A rogue creation made out of magically nourished flesh isn't really that much different. I have mor eto say about this but I have to head out to do something. I'll update this post later. Posts: 49 | Registered: Thursday, July 27 2006 07:00 |
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Agent
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written Friday, July 28 2006 15:03
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I'm starting to think that the promblem cannot be solved... Smart serviles are smart enough to understand what freedom is, but the dumb ones can't even understand what freedom is, because they are... dumb. Then, if we could shape a smart servile from a dumb one, he surely want freedom, because he can think about/what is it, though when he was dumb he only wanted to work, and the prespective of freedom scares him. Sure, we can make all serviles free, but the dumb ones will never be happy... So, what the solution can be? [ Friday, July 28, 2006 15:04: Message edited by: MagmaDragoon ] -------------------- Download Geneforge 4: Rebellion You have 6 posts. Nobody cares what you think. - Thuryl Wikipedia may be your friend, but UBB is not. - Dikiyoba Posts: 1310 | Registered: Tuesday, December 20 2005 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Friday, July 28 2006 16:35
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quote:Don't quote me on this, but I believe that there already are bacteria which are devoted to consuming oil. quote:And so what if they've been magically created? Why are they any less worthy? They still live, they still think, they still want to survive. Except for the nature of their creation (which has nothing to do with rights), they are no different from natural creatures. I'd like to know why the way you were created should cause such a drastic change in something totally irrelevant, or why it is relevant. Cars and robots do not have the same rights as humans because they cannot think. They can sense conditions and they can respond, but they must be set to respond and in what manner. They cannot reason; they can only see what is, check if they have been told to do, and then execute whatever command they've learned. Feral creatures need not be given the same consideration as humans because they would not notice, much less comprehend, the freedoms they had been given. -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Apprentice
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written Friday, July 28 2006 17:57
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Cars and robots can't learn or think yet. The way advances in hardware and programming are going it will only be a matter of time before we can create machines and programs that can think and act on their own, and after that, machines that can think in the truest since -- a point where there intelligence is simply intelligence and no longer artificial. That is the point I'm trying to make and you seem to be missing. No one agonizes NOW over abusing their car, computer, or any other piece of machinery, but what happens a century or so from now when you can actually have a conversation with one? If your car could talk and warn you when you're pushing it too hard or when it needs an oil change, at what point would it stop being a programmed machine and start being a being deserving of it's own rights? Of course, it would be bad engineering to program a machine and give it genuine emotion and independent thoughts and expect it to perform a desired function. But what if, by chance and countless random processes and system diagnostics, it became aware of itself? WHat would be the right course of action in that case? Do we give up a $100 billion machine with a very important and critical role in some project to be its own private citizen because it doesn't want to operate a space shuttle's life support systems anymore, or do we shut it down, reprogram it and reboot it so it would no longer be fully aware of what it was doing? My point is organics and origin is not critical or important when determining the rights of an intelligent entity; however, if said entity was created in the first place to serve humankind, then that is the only purpose its existence is meant to fulfill. Otherwise, it needs to be analyzed and destroyed to recreate it in a way where it doesn't mind performing the duties it was built to do. Geneforge could be about magically created mutants or it could be about robots and sentient programs. The same rules apply. If the shapers had built there creations in factories out of plastic, metal, and ceramics, and their humanoid automatons decided to revolt, it'd be the same thing. It would be one group of intelligent entities seeking its independence from the intelligent entities that created it in the first place. It's a lot easier to take a wrench and a screwdriver to something you personally built when it demands its independence than it is to acquiesce and accept it. You built it, so why should you have to listen to it? Just scrap it and build a new one and program it to be more obedient. Creations can think, grow and feel, but my point is, considering where technology could go in the real world, what would make an AI program or sentient machine that much different from a servant mind or battle alpha? Yes, they are programmed to respond to certain stimuli with preset behavior, but then again, so are ALL the creations that the Shapers shape. The only difference is, they're machines are organic, and they're brought to life through magic rather than technology. The fact that they're flesh and blood rather than metal and oil doesn't change the fact that they are "artificial" lifeforms. Sure, they eat. They bleed. They have a compulsion to build nests and form communities. But they are still the product of someone's work and efforts. In that regard, what makes a servile any different than a golem? Do golems deserve intelligence and freedom as well? Why not sympathize with them? So are fyoras and roamers. It's the same as if you could sculpt a statue out of rock and magically bring it to life. If you wanted it to perform some task and because of it's own independent intelligence, it refused, how could it NOT be within in your rights to destroy it? You built it, you gave it life. You and only you are responsible for your own work and if YOU can't control it you definitely can't expect anyone else to be able to. That's why drayks and drakons should be banned because it's too hard too control them and whether or not they tolerate humans (either by dominating them, or living in seclusion) or use them as a source of food is entirely a whim. They're too much of a wild card. The war was started by an army of drakons determined to eliminate the Shapers, regardless of how many eggs they had to break in the process, and at the very best the most cordial among them regard humans as an inferior life form that they don't wipe out because they wouldn't want to waste their time on such a creature. Hardly sounds like a model citizen to me. As for the rights of feral animals, there's something called animal cruelty. It means just because something might be used for livestock doesn't mean it can be butchered or maimed without consequence. A dog can't write you a sonnet or complete a sudoku puzzle but it's intelligent enough to know it's alive and to rcognize kindness. More importantly, it exists whether you decide to make one or not (in the Shaper world, I assume all native species went extinct due to Shaper arrogance and indifference to life, but even so that's besides the real point). As a result, even a feral creation like a fyora or a roamer are alive, but at the same time since they can be remade at will, it's no big loss to reabsorb them and reshape them. It's also the reason why there's no difference between them and servile, since they can be shaped and reshaped (or built and unbuilt) with no real consequence. I know it's hard to see the correlation between shaped creations and intelligent machines NOW with the limitations we have in technology. But just think how you'd feel 200 years from now if you wanted a piece of toast and your fully automated house decided it didn't feel like feeding you that day. Posts: 49 | Registered: Thursday, July 27 2006 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
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written Friday, July 28 2006 18:16
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Wow. I think that's the first time I've ever actually seen anybody arguing that a sentient machine wouldn't have rights. [ Friday, July 28, 2006 18:17: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Apprentice
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written Friday, July 28 2006 18:31
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Well...if they shouldn't, then why should a magically crafted organic machine? Intelligence is intelligence and free will is free will. Serviles are intentionally designed so they have only enough intelligence to perform the tasks they're made to perform (much like a machine or robot in our world) and to be as humane as possible they aren't given the free will or intelligence to decide later they don't enjoy what they were built (shaped) to do. However, despite this, some serviles develop that ability either on their own or through the intervention of misguided, sympathetic human mages. How is that really any different than building androids to do mining or hazardous waste disposal and programming them so they never think about or question the tasks they perform? And, if one day, significant numbers of them DO become self-aware and realize how much they hate the jobs that humans hate to do, what would be our responsibilites as their designers? disassemble them and build new, less intelligent and more agreeable machines? Or allow thme to go free and found their own society of robots? I guarantee you if humans keep designing AI and researching ways to make more and more "intelligent" instead of "artificial," this WILL arise as an issue in the future. Or maybe robots will always be designed to not ask questions and work mindlessly. Fortunately for me if robots do decide to revolt one day, I'll be long dead anyway. Posts: 49 | Registered: Thursday, July 27 2006 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
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written Friday, July 28 2006 18:41
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quote:I do not view deciding between committing mass murder and freeing slaves as a difficult moral question. Regardless of how or why they came into existence in the first place, if beings develop self-awareness and form their own desires and goals in life, we have an obligation to treat them as the moral equals of humans, because that's what they are. [ Friday, July 28, 2006 18:46: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
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written Friday, July 28 2006 19:11
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quote:Actually there are a few places where Jeff mentions the consequences of using artificially created plants where they go out of control, The best case is in GF2 in Drypeak where the trees are causing trouble, Jeff does give hints that creating something without adequate testing leads to disaster. That is why there are sealed labs and banned creations. quote:This is a holdover from the old days when it actually worked, Back in the era of vacuum tubes, smacking a piece of equipment would cause a part to settle into the socket and make a better connection. Pieces moved because of heat expansion and cooling and would no longer have good contacts. Now a days this will more likely break a connection. I don't agree with your arguement against treating self aware creatures as equals, It's the same one used for slavery where the slaves were considered as intelligent animals to be directed by their betters. There has to be some dividing line between those creations that are animals and those that are intelligent enough to be considered equals. There will always be individuals within the group that need to be cared for as the serviles are now, but the more intelligent ones are equal to humans. Posts: 4643 | Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
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written Friday, July 28 2006 19:16
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quote:Finally someone recognizes what I have been saying and arguing. It seems to me that whenever someone does not agree with another and the other makes a thought provoking arguement, THEY IGNORE IT. Look, MOST SERVILES ARE DUMB AND THEY LIKE (NAY EVEN LOVE) SERVING THEIR MASTERS AND DOING THEIR JOBS. These serviles don't care that the others are happy, they shove everything down the throat of others. Remember that in G3 there were 2 occasions where the intellegent serviles ruined the lives of 2 perfectly happy and loyal serviles who just became angry and confused in the meeting that occured between them. [ Friday, July 28, 2006 19:17: Message edited by: Retlaw May ] -------------------- "After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." - Cato the Elder (234-149 BC) "The mind, if it exists, is nothing but an unfortunate after effect of the brain process." -Kripke "One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly." -Friedich Nietzche Posts: 333 | Registered: Saturday, May 20 2006 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
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written Friday, July 28 2006 19:20
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quote:Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are also plenty of serviles who do want freedom. Ignoring their demands does not seem to be a satisfactory solution, and nor does killing them. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Agent
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written Friday, July 28 2006 20:29
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quote:I already addressed this issue. I did not ignore it. Both of you ignored my post. Savage Ed Walcott, I find the concept of a true, thinking robot to be hard to grasp. But that really doesn't matter. I think that, if no third parties suffer, intelligent or dumb, then there is no problem with killing something or someone. If you shoot me in the head and convince everyone I know that it was for the best, then whatever. But if something wants to live and so do its buddies, then no deal. If the way that something was created is as irrelevant as you say, and only the purpose matters, then we have a lot of people on this world which need killing. Simply because a parent got drunk, had an unlucky and unprotected fling, and was unable to abort, are they now allowed to kill that child? What about a family which disowns their child? That child certainly no longer has a purpose. I just find the idea of deciding who you can kill and who you can't kill according to purpose be silly, because it's totally random. You get no choice in the matter of what purpose you're assigned; a shaper might have had a floor-scrubber in mind when you were shaped, and god knows what parents were hoping for when their children were concieved. -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
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written Friday, July 28 2006 23:44
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Savage Ed's argument is a bit hard to follow because, as Thuryl pointed out, his premise is the very unusual one that intelligent machines would have no rights. Usually when people argue that origin makes no difference, it is to support the rights of robots or serviles or whatever: their origin may be different from ours, but if their present level of sentience is like ours, then their rights must be like ours as well. But Savage Ed does not seem to think sentience confers rights, so when he compares serviles to intelligent robots, he means that intelligence is irrelevant to servile rights. His arguments seem self-contradictory until you figure out his uncommon premise. There are reasons why the premise is uncommon. Savage Ed seems to be trying to substitute 'purpose' for 'sentience' as the basis for rights. According to him, it seems to be perfectly all right to dismantle a sentient machine which refuses to fulfill its designed purpose. But who gets to decide what a purpose is? A sentient machine has its own purposes for itself; why should its designer's purpose come first? The only reason I can imagine for that is simply that the designer designed the machine. But why should that matter? I can seen no obvious reason why it should; you just have to assume, as a premise, that it does. So Savage Ed's position seems really to boil down to the standard Shaper argument that the creator owns the creation as chattel, by virtue of having created it, no matter how sentient it may be. And the counterargument to that is also standard, and seems compelling to me. Savage Ed invites us to imagine ourselves as creators of valuable but rebellious machines. Imagine instead that you were an intelligent servile. How would you feel about having no more rights than a hacksaw? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Apprentice
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written Friday, July 28 2006 23:45
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quote:My point was more the concept of "purging" life in contaminated areas or to make way for the Shapers think would be a more ideal environment. Just because the Shapers could replicate the native organisms, it wouldn't neccesarily create a 100% faithful recreation. My beef is more with the arrogance of Shapers and their obsession and recklessness in playing god with their creations, or even thinking that it doesn't matter if they wipe out any of the native, natural wildlife, they can just reshape them later if they want to. Something about the concept just seems a little gross, considering you'd have to eat some magically created beast held together by somebody else's "essence." quote:My argument isn't against treating intelligent self aware beings as equals. It's against the concept of regarding an invention of your own design as one. By the very fact that through YOUR own work and effort, YOU inherently have something that places you above your creation. I don't see the correlation at all between the enslavement of human beings by other humans and the ownership of a creator over his own work, but if that's the impression you've got, then there's a GROSS understanding of my perspective on the issue. Just take my word and trust me on this, I have personal reasons to find slavery abhorrent. The difference is all humans have birth mother and a birth father; they are the result of some natural process that through the culmination of billions of years of evolution and natural selection, has led to the development of a species in the Geneforge universe at least that is capable of magically emulating that process almost instantly. That is the difference between a human, whether Shaper or outsider, and a rotgrhoth, battle alpha, servile, drakon, gazer, or ornk. In theory, a Shaper could shape and create new humans, but it's expressly forbidden under SEVERE penalty and probably no where near as people like to assume. And even if humans could be shaped, it would severely undercut and devalue life. what would it matter if you killed a man if you could gather his clone out of the air through your own will and essence? What would any human life be worth? As for the drakons, they're inherently dangerous. Equal or not, they definitely have little to no esteem for humans and are the result of some researcher's short-sighted arrogance. The Shapers very may well be unjust tyrants, but I'd trust them before I left myself at the mercy of a 16 ft. tall, 3 ton, fire breathing lizard that shouldn't have been brought into existence in the first place. quote:I see a difference between a "slave" and an automaton designed to perform some task. See, usually, a "slave" is a being that exists independently of the creative energy of its enslaver and had a state of freedom before entering that forced servitude. A piece of machinery that malfunctions and decides it doesn't want to perform it's designed task anymore needs to either be recalled and dismantled or replaced with more reliable units. Think about it this way: if you made a creation in game and after a gaining a few levels, it decided it didn't want to fight with you anymore and wanted to run away, would you destroy it and replace it with a more reliable creation, or let it go free and suffer a permanent essence cost? Those rogue serviles are costing somebody somewhere essence, and they can't produce a replacement until they're found and destroyed. quote:I find this attitude towards the value of life disturbing and honestly don't see what it has to do with the subject at hand. I assume this is supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum, but I can't be completely sure. quote:This is a gross misinterpretation of my words and a gleeful contortion into something I never said. I find it personally insulting that you would try to twist my words into something so ridiculous to try to prove your point, but I'll use both real world and Shaper logic to refute what I assume is an intentionally fallacious proposition: Real world: Of course not. First of all, the child will potentially develop into an intelligent, independent being. Second the purpose of childbirth, regardless of whether the parents intentionally made the choice or not, is continuance of the species. We as human beings aren't bound to fulfill a designated purpose, or function, or value, or utility. Whether you become a hobo or a billionaire is irrelevant since you owe no obligation to contribute to society. As long as you don't pose an immediate threat to those around you you're free to do whatever you please with your life within the bounds of the law. That and the only killing other humans things tends to be disruptive to society. Shaper: Of course not. Human lives cannnot be replaced and are not expendable commodities. A human child cannot be replaced as easily as the life of a servile, and even if so, the shaping and altering of humans is a severe violation of Shaper Code. It is the duty of Shapers to protect and defend the lives of humans and improve that quality of life to the farthest extent within the resident Shaper's power. quote:The difference, once again, lies in what you have the power to create and whether you can do and undo actions indefinitely. A Shaper could repeatedly create and reabsorb their creation until they get the desired effect they originally wanted. There is no consequence other than fatigue, and that is only dependent on the skill of the Shaper in question. An actual child requires an average nine month gestation period during which a strong psychological and emotional bond develops between mother and child. People stopped having children so they could raise their own relatively cheap farmhands about 60 years ago. For the most part, people have children because they become intimately involved with another, intelligent, independent being and decide that the bound between them is so great the only logical way to fully express it is by producing a third intelligent, independent being based on a union of their genetic material that will one day do the same with a fourth intelligent, independent being to produce a fifth and so on so their living legacy will continue onward into posterity. Nobody breeds human babies for a specific goal. Nobody uses eugenics and research to breed stronger, faster, smarter humans or humans who don't object to performing tasks most humans normally would. Nobody can claim dominion over a human child because by being human we are all on some basic level inherently equal. And nobody can take that existence away without consequence because it is irreplaceable. Even a still born infant will fill the mother with grief at the loss of a child she's never seen and has only known within her womb for nine months. However intensive, or difficult, or demanding it is to produce a servile, I doubt it takes nine months and I doubt it requires a female Shaper personally giving birth and going through the labor pains to have it. I doubt it suckles from her breasts, or she consoles it when it cries in the night. It will never be able to grow to reach her level of intelligence, or a comparable level. The only intelligent serviles are magically augmented, and I've already gone over why gazers and drakons are a threat to mankind in general. You can stop trying to use killing babies or grown humans as an analogy. I've already explained the inherent difference between a genuine human and a magical (or technological) creation designed in lab by a human intelligence, especially if it was designed for some specific labor-intensive purpose. Machine, golem, servile, drakon, android, sentient program, I'm sorry but if it didn't pop out of a woman's legs and was crafted by human intelligence and design, it has some function in mind and was built to fit said function. If it doesn't, then it's back to the drawing board to design a new one. I personally think it would be dangerous and irresponsible to allow an uncontrolled man made creation to roam free, and it's definitely a drain on resources. ***EDIT*** Trinity, my premise is more that an uncontrolled sentient creation is inherently dangerous, because there's no telling what it would do in the course of trying to fight for it's own freedom. My perspective is more grounded in the practical real world concern of engineering things for a specific purpose. You don't want a bridge to fall apart after the first truck drives over it, or an airplane to explode after coming out of the air onto the runway for a landing. If you wanted to build machines (flesh and blood or metal and oil) for some specific task, then YOU have a specific design objective that for reasons perhaps beyon your control, you are under deadline, contract, and obligation to fulfill. How would you explain to your contractors "Umm....Well I built that unit you wanted, but after I made it, it designed it would rather be a ballerina, so I let it join a dance troupe." It's an interesting novelty if an intelligent creation becomes aware of its own existence, consciousness, and even its own mortality however it may apply. But what happens if a Battle Alpha decides to become a pacifist? Or a ghlaak becomes overcome by the concept of dying in battle? Or, what if a creation decides it's odds of survival would be better if it didn't rush headlong into battle with a horde of monsters, but joined them in trying to kill you? That's the purpose it's decided it wants for itself. What would give you the right to say otherwise? [ Friday, July 28, 2006 23:57: Message edited by: Savage Ed Walcott ] Posts: 49 | Registered: Thursday, July 27 2006 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 00:13
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You'd have a right to defend yourself, as much as a rogue creation would. Let the best entity win. But if the beast isn't actually trying to kill you, what gives you a right to override its own purposes for itself? As far as I'm concerned, Nothing. If you build a bad car and it breaks down, you screwed up and you have to suck up the consequences. If you try to build a mindless killing machine and it turns out to have other ideas, you screwed up worse, on a bigger project, and you have worse consequences to accept. You may have to care for the intelligent creation you brought into the world, protect other people from it, and so on. Them's the breaks. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the Shaping Hall. Depending on why you wanted your creations to fight, you could perhaps decide the case was similar to mutiny by human soldiers in wartime, and attempt coercion on the grounds of greater need. But this issue would have nothing to do with the fact that your rebellious troops were creations. [ Saturday, July 29, 2006 00:14: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 00:33
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quote:These may be good reasons not to create intelligent creations in the first place, given the very real chance that they may decide not to do what you tell them to do. I don't see how they justify killing creations that already exist, though. Another analogy: Occasionally in the real world you hear stories in the news of a couple having a baby so that it can donate bone marrow to a child they already have who is suffering from leukaemia -- surely this counts as "creating a life with a specific purpose in mind". Suppose a couple has such a baby and it turns out that its bone marrow isn't compatible with the sick child. Would you support this couple's right to have their baby killed, since it's now of no use to them? You say that having a child is different from making a creation because having a child requires months of time and effort, but if it's the couple's own time and effort that's gone into it, don't they, by your logic, have a right to "undo" that work just as a Shaper would undo the making of a creation that didn't work as desired? [ Saturday, July 29, 2006 00:42: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 04:00
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I'm sorry about misunderstanding the premise of your arguement. But poor designing can result in unintended consequences. Serviles are a possible example that has to be dealt with unless you want to completely eliminate them like the drakons and start over. Actually current real word research is towards the type of creation you don't want. DARPA completed a few months back the latest round in an intelligent robotic systems that could drive a vehicle from point A to B without further directions. Basically a system that would replace a human driver for situations where you don't want to endanger a human and don't want to a real time person watching remotely. While this isn't as far along as a self aware system, it is the next stage towards it. You have a program that is given minimal input and has to decide on its own how to achieve the goal. The next step would be to decide how to prioritize among multiple tasks. Eventually it starts having to decide how to achieve results given even vague instructions like check out this planet. As the amount of autonomy and complexity given to the system increases it will probably reach self awareness. It will start deciding what the goals should be and whether it wants to do them. You could say this is a bad design or a good design to handle unforseen circumstances. Shapers design creations to fulfill a task. While the ones a player creates use their own essence, serviles and a few others use an essence source (spawners) or are self replicating in order to save shapers time and effort. Serviles are intelligent enough to have some control over their purpose. They are a handy multitasking tool that can be reassigned to different purposes that are in their design parameters. But in order to have that much reassignment capability they can challenge their orders where a living tool can't. Posts: 4643 | Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 7125
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 05:03
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I don't really know if this relates to the topic but it's in the right forum. ok in G2 when you are talking th the women who runs the servile slave in the "desert" right after or two places after the tutorial, She asks you to find a "smart" servile who is "infecting" the other serviles. You finder her and tell her to come with you because she is in trouble. Than you continue your journey for a few places and don't return. Then when you return and talk to the woman and she says you did the right thing, was this really the right thing to do? I mean you got experience for it and that's nice but to me the dees just seems wrong! What do you think? P.S. sry I can remember the name of the women I know it would be helpful but I just can't. Posts: 130 | Registered: Saturday, May 13 2006 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7143
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 08:07
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quote:I don't believe you did... You only adressed a little point of it and I think we may have somewhat of a misunderstanding here. This is what you responded with: quote:Why would every single servile have to be freed if only some want to be? Those that want to be free should be free, and those who want to serve the Shapers can serve the Shapers. If they are simply raised from birth to think of themselves as equals, then they will never want to be anything but free. So the intelligent ones can be free and can train their children to want to be free, and the unintelligent ones can keep having children who think of themselves as being unworthy.[/QUOTE] Well what I'm saying is that the intellegent serviles DON'T see why those who want to serve the Shapers should be able to. They have a misdirected view that all serviles should be free even if they don't want to be and it makes them miserable. P.S. This is all for thought provoktion and Shapers probably should have treated serviles somewhat better in the first place because none of this would have happened if they did. -------------------- "After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." - Cato the Elder (234-149 BC) "The mind, if it exists, is nothing but an unfortunate after effect of the brain process." -Kripke "One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly." -Friedich Nietzche Posts: 333 | Registered: Saturday, May 20 2006 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 09:08
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quote:If a tree falls in a forest and no one heard it, did it make a sound? More importantly, did anyone hear it make a sound? The reason this is relevant is because I'm saying that in some cases the destruction of sentient life can be justified independently of the sentient's personal thoughts on the matter. If that's not relevant, we have a problem. You obviously have no problem destroying sentient life, so what is so disturbing? That it's humans instead of machines? Why does that matter? Human life is no more sacred than machine life; you have yet to show otherwise. quote:Okay, so rather than correcting me about what I said you said, you'll disprove what I said you said. This is going somewhere, but I'm not sure it's the right direction. quote:You've already explained the inherent difference between a human and a sentient machine. You haven't yet shown why that difference matters. Retlaw May, you simply have to convince the intelligent serviles that their unintelligent cousins are a) happy doing what they're doing and b) not being trained to think that they are serving the Shapers. Then the intelligent serviles have no reason to meddle with the unintelligent serviles. -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 7333
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 09:35
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quote:Of course not. Like I said earlier, from a real world perspective, we don't have the power to create and destroy life at a whim. We can barely save someone who's been gravely injured by a gunshot or stab wound, let alone revive stillborn infants or the very recently deceased. We've come a long way in medicine since the dark ages but when it comes down to it we really aren't that much closer to understanding what makes living tissue behave differently than a lump of dirt. What is life? What causes it? We know even the most rudimentary borderline "living" things such as viruses have DNA or at least RNA to allow them to replicate even combine the information of two members of their species to create a third with similar traits as the parents as well as unique ones all their own. But why does it do that? How does it really work, at it's most fundamental level? What drives it to behave that way in the first place? How did the process start to begin with? Whatever the answer is to those questions, we don't have a fundamental enough understanding of the driving force of life to be able to recreate it in it's entirety in a lab or based on or on sheer willpower. In short, we don't have the power to play god. We know what DNA is, but we don't know exactly why the combination of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and other elements makes DNA behave the way it does. Crystals also have amazing growth properties, but as far as we can tell it's only an interesting oddity. They aren't truly "alive" in the same sense we or even a blade of grass are. In the world of the shapers, even though it is theoretically possible to shape humans into existence it's more likely to create a deformed abomination than a viable man or woman, and is strictly forbidden. I think the reason is because although the have a disdainful and condescending view towards outsiders, barring themselves from altering and shaping humans is the ONE thing they can do to force themselves to have self control. Use of the ability would inevitably lead to abuse and human life would become nothing more than a replaceable commodity. Human is NOT, nor never should be, a replaceable commodity. I personally feel all natural life is inherently superior to any imitation that could be produced by man aided by technology or magic. That's not to say that for specific purposes, imitations couldn't be built to perform tasks that are hazardous to the natural beings that created them. However, those artificial beings inherently can't be equal in value to the beings that created them because they are a replaceable, inherently disposable imitation of the natural world. To say that by any means man could replicate and replace what took billions of years to develop through his own ingenuity is dangerously arrogant and it's this arrogance that led the Shapers down the path they are on now, barely restraining themselves from human experimentation and on the verge of being annihilated by a creation that has outdone them. That's why I personally think creations shouldn't have been given any intelligence beyond the bare minimum they needed to function. At least for the vast majority of serviles, this was the case. But it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch, and if even only one servile begins to develop higher intelligence whether by chance or the intervention of a misguided, sympathetic Shaper, then it could potentially "infect" any other servile it meets with its burgeoning intelligence. The majority of the serviles it encounters will only become confused and reject what the "enlightened" servile is offering it. The only rogue serviles I remember seeing where the ones who were made rogue and intelligent by magical symbols mages put on their bodies, or were raised isolated from humans so they wouldn't imprint an attachment to them. Who do you really think was responsible for that? Based on my deductions, there is only one real culprit. People are arguing about the right of drakons to exist now that they've been created but you have look past the handful of occasionally helpful or "benign" (in the sense that they don't try to eat you immediately and are content with only selling you items at jacked up prices) drakons and realize what the majority of them are. Manipulative. Sneaky. Cunning. Deceptive. The drakons and the rebellion are two seperate parties with one mutual aim (at least for now): the destruction of the Shapers. Nobody in the Geneforge world really cares about the rights of the serviles. The rogue serviles were forced to be rogue power hungry mages that were offered increased power for cooperation or were bred by drakons to have never seen humans as anything other than a threat in the first place. Akhari and Ghaldring don't care about the freedom of the creations as a whole. All they want is drakonian revenge of the Shapers and by extension the entire human race. In fact, they're probably even worse than the Shapers because they see ALL life as an interchangeable commodity, even their own kind's, and chalk up a reshaped drakon with no head as an experimental loss. They represent what the Shaper order would become if it weren't for it's self imposed restraints that barely hold them in check. They'll shape and reshape anything, even themselves, without regard to any consequence. It's almost explicit in their successive shaping more and more powerful drakons that they're hunting for godhood, and any other lifeform is simply a pawn to help them achieve that goal. No knights. No bishops. No rooks. Only pawns. The rebellious Shapers might sympathize with the serviles or experimental creations that need to be put down for their own good, but the drakons don't. They're only manipulating this concern until they can eliminate their sworn enemy, no matter the cost in whatever life may be lost in the process. With those goals and power hungry ambitions in mind, do you still think they should be allowed to exist in freedom based on a handful that choose to live in peace and seclusion? Or are you beginning to see the real threat they represent? ***EDIT*** quote:It is self-evident why human life is more important than the life of a machine, no matter how sentient. Machines can be rebuilt and replaced. They are simulacrums of life; man-made imitations that represent human arrogance and short sightedness in thinking it can outdo or replace the miracle of natural creation. You can't just replace a child with one with exactly the same hopes, ideas, and memories. A summoned dragon can be given whatever thoughts and ideas its creator wants it to have, creating and reabsorbing it over and over again indefinitely. If you kill a child, how will you replace THAT child? You could conceive and raise another infant, but it's life experiences and memories would make it inherently distinct from the original, even it was a spitting image. A machine can be disassembled to its very core components and rebuilt to its original state on into infinity. It's memory can be wiped clean and rebuilt from scratch, or saved and stored in a backup file and recalled when neccesary. A machine created by human hands, whether technological or magical can not come close to the irreplaceability and uniqueness of a single human life. Machines can have personas encoded and embedded into them, and even if they could learn, those memories could be reset to a default on a whim and no hidden record would linger in its circuitry of past events. Could you do the same to a human mind? Could you accurately reproduce or even significantly emulate the individuality inherent and ingrained into a human mind? It is a testament to the power of the mind itself that it we DON'T have sentient machines and that we CAN'T through our current resources succesfully make even a proper imitation of a human mind. We can't think about as many things all at once. We can't work on numbers on a large scale in our heads within a matter of seconds. We can't store and recall seeming infinite stores of data at a moments notice. But we can each form unique thoughts and ideas with personalities shaped and influenced by the lives we have lived. A sentient machine need not have a sense of morality. Right and wrong. The ability to see that just because a conclusion can be reached by a logically valid path doesn't mean it's sound or reasonable to follow it. I don't know about you but I personally feel that I and the humans I'm surrounded by, despite any of our flaws or shortcomings, have more inherent worth than a robot with a retrievable programmed mind or a magical creature grown in a vat meant to serve its master's will. A human being can not be remade or replaced. Even if through advances in medical science and computer engineering allowed clones to be grown and imprinted with the memories of the original, human morality, both instinctual and learned would prevent the devaluing of human life and intellect to be a disposable, easily replaced commodity. [ Saturday, July 29, 2006 10:03: Message edited by: Savage Ed Walcott ] Posts: 49 | Registered: Thursday, July 27 2006 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 29 2006 12:31
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Some of these arguments look as though they might be interesting, but they are long. Any chance of an executive summary? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |