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The Psychology of Droids
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Dredwulf60
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think if someone like Lucas took The Lord of the Rings and retold it as a space-opera instead of making Star Wars that Samwise Gamgee would be a droid.

And he'd be a sentient character still. And a machine built to serve as a gardener.

Still Frodo's servant, but becoming a true friend after it all.

And later people on a forum would be debating whether gardener droids could be sentient.

It's pretty clear that Sam was a gardener and didn't seem to want 'freedom' to be anything but a gardener to Mr. Frodo. That was his job and Tolkien was English from a time when English society was still very classist.


But we didn't get that. Instead we got a movie that lifted elements from a Samurai film, from a period where Japan was extremely classist. The peasant serving class...was made into droids.

I think I've stated this idea before, but I've presented it a bit differently here as food for thought. Obviously people are set in their own ways of thinking, but I hope it's worth thinking about some more.

----

Look at the Cantina scene.

"We don't serve their kind here!"

If droids were universally scene as just appliances...why would he say that?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Maybe 'leave your appliances outside.' 'You can't bring your motorcyle into this bar.'

But...'SERVE their kind??'

Implying that other drinking establishments would serve mere appliances?

No. My mind is firmly in the realm of droids being a mechanical servitor race built by biologicals but still 'persons' if only second-class beings.


Last edited by Dredwulf60 on Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:47 pm; edited 1 time in total
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think that because it's obvious to me that a programmer could set up a droid to say "Ow" instead "My cranial...". And would do so to make the product easier to interact with.

Droids think (albeit via artifice, like a computer playing chess, something once stated to be impossible) but don't feel.

A lot of animals feel but don't think.

Somewhere in between, several types of animal including us both think and feel.

Why don't I think droids do both? Because I know machines with better processing speeds and more space-efficient data storage and retrieval systems than we presently have, could do everything they do, artificially.

What does C-3PO do that non-sentient machines can't?

Basically, I think he's just following programming because I know programming could elicit the things we see onscreen. The purpose of the programming being to make him easier to be around for lifeforms. Do you think that because Amazon's Alexa can tell jokes, that it actually has a sense of humor? If banging his head actually elicited a pain feeling, having his arms torn off should have left him screaming incoherently.

As for what Starkiller Base has to do with it, you asked me to cite SWU examples, but my point is, when things like that are in the SWU, to me it's meaningless to try and read much into it anymore.

Sutehp wrote:
Whill wrote:
CRMcNeill wrote:
I’m less concerned about droids actually being sentient than I am about the assertion that being sentient requires that droids have, need or even want to be independent and self-determining, or the assertion that sentience in the rare, exceptional droid like R2, 3PO, or Bollux should be considered the norm for all droids, all the way down to the simple-minded drone running the static broom out in the hallway.

Is anyone actually asserting that?


Out-of universe, no. No one I've seen is making that assertion, at least so far as I've read in this forum.


The bolded type is where you said "no one" (presumably including you) is asserting that they are the norm.


Last edited by TauntaunScout on Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:54 pm; edited 2 times in total
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
I think if someone like Lucas took The Lord of the Rings and retold it as a space-opera instead of making Star Wars that Samwise Gamgee would be a droid.

And later people on a forum would be debating whether gardener droids could be sentient.


This is the most accurate point. The movie makers don't think about this stuff as hard as we do in the years that follow. He wants the sidekick to be a robot so, *poof*, he's a robot.
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Dredwulf60
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

TauntaunScout wrote:
I think that because it's obvious to me that a programmer could set up a droid to say "Ow" instead "My cranial...". And would do so to make the product easier to interact with.

Droids think (albeit via artifice, like a computer playing chess, something once stated to be impossible) but don't feel.

A lot of animals feel but don't think.

Somewhere in between, several types of animal including us both think and feel.

Why don't I think droids do both? Because I know machines with better processing speeds and more space-efficient data storage and retrieval systems than we presently have, could do everything they do, artificially.

What does C-3PO do that non-sentient machines can't?

Basically, I think he's just following programming because I know programming could elicit the things we see onscreen. The purpose of the programming being to make him easier to be around for lifeforms. Do you think that because Amazon's Alexa can tell jokes, that it actually has a sense of humor? If banging his head actually elicited a pain feeling, having his arms torn off should have left him screaming incoherently.

As for what Starkiller Base has to do with it, you asked me to cite SWU examples, but my point is, when things like that are in the SWU, to me it's meaningless to try and read much into it anymore.


Living organics, including us also follow programming.
Instincts and other traits are 'hardwired' into the DNA.
Other things like learned behaviours are biological 'software'.

Humans are biological machines. Whatever sentience is, leaving out the divine, if we achieved it...an advanced machine could also achieve it.

There are geniuses at work right, with billions in funding right now working for that eventual end result. If it was a silly, impossible concept it probably wouldn't be being pursued so diligently.
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
If it was a silly, impossible concept it probably wouldn't be being pursued so diligently.


Oh it totally could. Or not. Humans have wasted tons of resources in the past on researching unachievable goals.

This is my last post on this thread, people seem to be way too emotionally involved in my opinion on the sentience of non-existent persons. Not you, but, in general. You'd think I was defending the abuse of actual people who exist in real life. I don't get what the big deal is, if I interpret a machine in art as a machine, and not a magical machine like other people interpret it. The fact that C-3PO was a thing explained an awful lot about SW to me, and was always something I liked about it compared to other franchises.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 12:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indeed. The insinuations that those who believe droids aren't sentient are therefore prejudiced in general are quite off-putting, especially in a time where accusations of prejudice and bigotry can literally destroy people's lives.

And really, what's the point? Is it your goal to make all Star Wars gamers forswear running any campaigns other than Droid Liberation Front zealots attempting to secure equal rights for non-existent mechanical devices? Even if you were to convince us of the righteousness of your argument, what's your next step? Where is it supposed to lead?
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Sutehp
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 2:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Indeed. The insinuations that those who believe droids aren't sentient are therefore prejudiced in general are quite off-putting, especially in a time where accusations of prejudice and bigotry can literally destroy people's lives.


I've never insinuated that Tauntaun was bigoted against real people. After all, we're discussing fictional droids depicted in a made-up sci-fi setting. It would be the height of silliness to suggest that Tauntaun is a bigot or somehow prejudiced against real people based just off of his opinion of fictional mechanical characters.

CRMcNeill wrote:
And really, what's the point? Is it your goal to make all Star Wars gamers forswear running any campaigns other than Droid Liberation Front zealots attempting to secure equal rights for non-existent mechanical devices? Even if you were to convince us of the righteousness of your argument, what's your next step? Where is it supposed to lead?


The only goal I had in asking Tauntaun to explain why he thought droids weren't sentient was so that I could understand his thought process why a machine that seems to imitate human behavior so well as to be indistinguishable from a human personality wasn't sentient. But he didn't come up with an explanation that made any sense to me, so I asked him repeatedly to clarify. None of his clarifications sufficiently explained to me his thought process in a way that made any sense to me. Now that he has refused to make any further posts on this thread, I suppose I'll never find out what he meant. *shrug*
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