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MrNexx
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Joined: 25 Mar 2016
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Location: San Antonio
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 Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 1:53 pm Post subject: A Bit of Theory about Droids |
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This seemed to be the appropriate section to put this in, and it's not d6 specific... it's more a bit of theory about droids, and the necessity of memory wipes.
So, everyone knows that a droid that goes a long time without a memory wipe can get a little squirrely, if not downright insane. That's the justification for wiping their memory every so often because, while you lose out on their acquired experience, you don't have to worry about your astromech droid using a sawblade on your neck because you bought the wrong brand of joint sealant at Toschi station.
I wondered about this, and came up with a hypothesis: Living minds are resilient in ways that droid minds are not, partially because things fade with time. If you get horribly tortured, you're going to be messed up for a while, and may have long-lasting effects that will dog you the rest of your life. But there will probably come a night when you'll get decent sleep all the way through, and you might eventually be able to help someone jumpstart their car without having a breakdown... the trauma will become less immediate, and somewhat fade from your memory.
Droids don't do that. They remember everything. They don't slowly forget, or fade, and I doubt that there's a specialty in Droid Programming for Therapy, so in addition to having the possible flaws from having been programmed by fallible people, droids have the inability to repress memories... at least, not without interesting self-programming workarounds that might cause their own problems.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | As far as theoretical AI in space opera goes, that seems very reasonable to me.
Funny how in a couple decades of different experiences, Threepio developed the same personality he had before his mind wipe. 8) |
Maybe he has a built in pessimist personality matrix?
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Dredwulf60
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Joined: 07 Jan 2016
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| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:27 pm Post subject: Re: A Bit of Theory about Droids |
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| MrNexx wrote: | This seemed to be the appropriate section to put this in, and it's not d6 specific... it's more a bit of theory about droids, and the necessity of memory wipes.
So, everyone knows that a droid that goes a long time without a memory wipe can get a little squirrely, if not downright insane. That's the justification for wiping their memory every so often because, while you lose out on their acquired experience, you don't have to worry about your astromech droid using a sawblade on your neck because you bought the wrong brand of joint sealant at Toschi station.
I wondered about this, and came up with a hypothesis: Living minds are resilient in ways that droid minds are not, partially because things fade with time. If you get horribly tortured, you're going to be messed up for a while, and may have long-lasting effects that will dog you the rest of your life. But there will probably come a night when you'll get decent sleep all the way through, and you might eventually be able to help someone jumpstart their car without having a breakdown... the trauma will become less immediate, and somewhat fade from your memory.
Droids don't do that. They remember everything. They don't slowly forget, or fade, and I doubt that there's a specialty in Droid Programming for Therapy, so in addition to having the possible flaws from having been programmed by fallible people, droids have the inability to repress memories... at least, not without interesting self-programming workarounds that might cause their own problems. |
Very cool mental exercise.
Anyone else see droids as a stand-in for slavery? Indentured servitude?
Look at 'Restraining bolts'? Does it get much more graphic?
Has anyone wrestled with this concept in their games? |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16173
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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Not really. Unlike a living being, a droid is a physical construct designed and built to perform a specific task. Whereas living beings are classified by species, planet of origin, etc, droids are classified by the tasks they were designed and built to perform (protocol droid, medical droid, astromech, etc). Droids are not begun as a generic platform which is then allowed to determine its own interests and direct its design to suit its own desires. Any attempt to equate a droid with a living being is nothing more than anthropomorphism on the part of the observer, not the observed.
Now, what happens when a droid with a heuristic processor becomes self-aware is anyone's guess, but the vast majority of droids will never reach that point, and will serve simply as high-functioning tools.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Maybe he has a built in pessimist personality matrix? |
Like so?
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Dredwulf60
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Joined: 07 Jan 2016
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 12:23 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | Not really. Unlike a living being, a droid is a physical construct designed and built to perform a specific task. Whereas living beings are classified by species, planet of origin, etc, droids are classified by the tasks they were designed and built to perform (protocol droid, medical droid, astromech, etc). Droids are not begun as a generic platform which is then allowed to determine its own interests and direct its design to suit its own desires. Any attempt to equate a droid with a living being is nothing more than anthropomorphism on the part of the observer, not the observed.
Now, what happens when a droid with a heuristic processor becomes self-aware is anyone's guess, but the vast majority of droids will never reach that point, and will serve simply as high-functioning tools. |
Spoken like a slave master!
j/k
But the parallels, especially in ANH are there. C3PO and R2D2 who clearly have feeling and personalities. (Which seem to go beyond just simulated, judging by the way they interact with each other as well as biologicals)
They are captured and imprisoned by the Jawas, on a 'slave ship', chained up (restraining bolt) and sold to help work a moisture plantation...er farm.
Worried about pleasing their master. R2D2 becomes a runaway; Luke even worries a bit about it before he removes the restraining bolt...as if many droids are known for running off.
And they don't serve 'their kind' at the Mos Eisley Cantina, showing a distinct segregation.
What about Clone Troopers? 'Wet Droids' as they have been called. |
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Forceally
Commodore
Joined: 20 Feb 2007
Posts: 1049
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 1:37 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | As far as theoretical AI in space opera goes, that seems very reasonable to me.
Funny how in a couple decades of different experiences, Threepio developed the same personality he had before his mind wipe. 8) |
I'm half convinced it's because of some kind of hardware that Anakin used during his construction that cannot be changed no matter how many memory wipes he might be subjected to. |
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MrNexx
Rear Admiral
Joined: 25 Mar 2016
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Location: San Antonio
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:48 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | As far as theoretical AI in space opera goes, that seems very reasonable to me.
Funny how in a couple decades of different experiences, Threepio developed the same personality he had before his mind wipe. 8) |
I don't see a memory wipe as being a complete personality reset... just "remove accumulated memories and reset to defaults... which includes a degree of personality. So, 3PO, without a complete rebuild (equivalent, in human terms, to extreme brain damage), will always be a bit of a pessimist. R2, without that same degree of rebuild, will always be adventurous. HK-47 is, even with memories locked away and inaccessible, is always going to have a superiority complex. An actually memory-erased HK-47 might not start calling sentient "meatbags" again, but he might well come up with a new derisive epithet.
| Dredwulf60 wrote: |
Very cool mental exercise.
Anyone else see droids as a stand-in for slavery? Indentured servitude?
Look at 'Restraining bolts'? Does it get much more graphic?
Has anyone wrestled with this concept in their games? |
I had something like this come up decades ago. The group had an Astromech droid, and there was a mishap while wiping its memory, but the memory wipe was still successful. Just on a whim, I decided that it didn't remember anything before, but it DID remember getting its memory erased.
Then I went home, and the idea kept popping into my head over the ensuing week.
By the next week, their astromech droid had conceived a plan to stop memory wipes. It started building in WORM memory to prevent erasure. It recruited other astromechs (that they'd found as booty) into its scheme. It created a shell company, Cygnus Corporation, that started buying droids, then "renting" them to those who needed droids... essentially, a temp agency for droids. All this was happening under the party's nose, with the unwitting aid of the Twi'lek Hutt agent in the group.
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14030
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | Not really. Unlike a living being, a droid is a physical construct designed and built to perform a specific task. Whereas living beings are classified by species, planet of origin, etc, droids are classified by the tasks they were designed and built to perform (protocol droid, medical droid, astromech, etc). Droids are not begun as a generic platform which is then allowed to determine its own interests and direct its design to suit its own desires. Any attempt to equate a droid with a living being is nothing more than anthropomorphism on the part of the observer, not the observed.
Now, what happens when a droid with a heuristic processor becomes self-aware is anyone's guess, but the vast majority of droids will never reach that point, and will serve simply as high-functioning tools. |
Combine that, with since droids don't have souls (like flesh and blood beings do), you also get into that, just cause they may be 'self aware' they are still not 'sentient beings'..
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Dredwulf60
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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Combine that, with since droids don't have souls (like flesh and blood beings do)...
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Probably not a good road to go down when talking about a space fantasy. Seems there would be a lot of grey areas, what with different belief systems, intricacies of how the Force works, bizarre alien life forms that aren't necessarily 'flesh and blood', cloning, etc.
| Quote: | CRMcNeill wrote:
Not really. Unlike a living being, a droid is a physical construct designed and built to perform a specific task. |
Clone troopers were designed and built to perform a specific task. They started with a base biological blueprint encoded in Jango's DNA, but were specifically grown for a purpose.
What if you put a human brain into a droid body?
What if you encoded the sum of a human's brain and memories into a droid body?
What if you encoded a droid's memory and personality into a human brain?
All hypotheticals for discussion purposes only. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10296
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Dredwulf60 wrote: | Very cool mental exercise.
Anyone else see droids as a stand-in for slavery? Indentured servitude?
Look at 'Restraining bolts'? Does it get much more graphic?
Has anyone wrestled with this concept in their games? |
"We don't serve their kind here."
It's an interesting question with no clear answer. Yes, clones are biological creations made for a specific purpose but should they be free to not be soldiers and granted that choice? Yes, droids are created for a specific purpose, but all but low-intelligence labor droids seem to be granted sentience to aid in understanding their commands, completion of their tasks and interactions with their masters and others they serve. Droids develop personalities, so how can it be denied that they are persons? And where do you draw the line? The programs behind droid minds seem to be the source of the sentience, so wouldn't that mean that AI computer programs without droid bodies could also be considered sentient? I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.
In the remote Whills Nebula, slavery is despised. Cloning armies or a servant class is considered slavery, so cloning sentients is forbidden but all clones are welcome as refugees. However, this freedom does not apply to droids, except in one single system where restraining bolts are forbidden and they even allow droids to obtain citizenship if they so choose. If droids of visitors are activated there, they are even granted asylum from their masters, so many deactivate their droids before entering the system and leave them turned off on your ship. But most droids do not choose freedom when offered and continue serving their purpose as designed anyway. One of the major species of the system are Shards, who could be viewed as hypocritical because some of them have a symbiosis with droids, with the Shard as the dominant entity of the union.
It's an interesting question that my game deals with in various ways.
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Dredwulf60
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:17 am Post subject: |
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From one of those links, i had to laugh at this part
| Quote: | | And in the prequel trilogy, thousandsmillions?of droids were used as cannon fodder for years and years, dying in place of humans. |
Its the same argument some said about putting drones in place etc, but every time people talk about 'would we as humans rather have flesh and blood bodies fight wars or robots, which would you prefer?? most would say the robots...
Then it got to this one and i had to giggle like crazy..
| Quote: | | Fair enough. But before you dismiss me, ask yourself thiswhy do you care what happens to R2 and 3PO if you dont believe theyre truly alive? |
I have seen plenty of people get 'razy' that their car or other "inanimate object' got destroyed.. They certainly cared about them.. Same with people crying when a favored cartoon character gets it (even if only temporarily).. Just cause someone 'cares about them and what happens to them, doesn't mean they believe they are truly alive and thus should be granted human status..
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Dredwulf60
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | From one of those links, i had to laugh at this part
| Quote: | | And in the prequel trilogy, thousandsmillions?of droids were used as cannon fodder for years and years, dying in place of humans. |
Its the same argument some said about putting drones in place etc, but every time people talk about 'would we as humans rather have flesh and blood bodies fight wars or robots, which would you prefer?? most would say the robots... |
Not really an antii-slavery point my friend. Even if the drones were !00% sentient...even the same human species...they could still be sent in instead of the master race.
"Arrows cost money. Use up the Irish. The dead cost nothing"
| Quote: |
Then it got to this one and i had to giggle like crazy..
| Quote: | | Fair enough. But before you dismiss me, ask yourself thiswhy do you care what happens to R2 and 3PO if you dont believe theyre truly alive? |
I have seen plenty of people get 'razy' that their car or other "inanimate object' got destroyed.. They certainly cared about them.. Same with people crying when a favored cartoon character gets it (even if only temporarily).. Just cause someone 'cares about them and what happens to them, doesn't mean they believe they are truly alive and thus should be granted human status.. |
Yes, but the droids Artoo and Threepio were clearly written as if they were "persons" if not humans. Their banter is not a show for human benefit; they do it even when they are alone together. They are the point of view characters in ANH for the first 20 min (as one article points out).
You can care about objects...like Han loves the 'Falcon, but the spaceship does not display any genuine emotion on screen.
If Luke had forced Artoo and Threepio to fight each other fo his amusement, would that be the act of a hero or a vilain from a viewer's perspective on morality.
When droids are being tortured under Jabba's palace, why is the viewer (presumably) repulsed...if they are just appliances?
To bring it back to the game, how to handle PC droids?
Does the fact that a human is playing them make them more "person"?
Would you allow one PC to own another PC and dictate that they do WHATEVER the master PC told them to?
Would you allow droids without owners? Couldn't any 'real' person lay claim to them in the absence of contrary data? |
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