Writer's Block: Humans and Cylons
Jan. 16th, 2009 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrako[Error: unknown template qotd]
Well - that question has been the basis of many a science fiction story, and not just Battlestar Galactica - add to the list Star Trek in various incarnations, Terminator, AI, The Iron Giant (my favourite) and so on - in a probably infinite list. It's akin to the likes of E.T. and King Kong.
Obviously, there is no point where any individual, or culture, decides that a creature is sentient. Other races, species, alien life and non-life - there's no rule, and even when we make rules, there's no way to enforce their acceptance. Give me the day when people stop dropping bombs on other people and I'll answer a question about 'feelings and rights'.
Boil the question down to its deepest philosophical point. I think the value in our individual lives lies in treating everything as worthy of reference, living nor not. Dispense with definitions. The criteria should not be whether we can communicate with something, or relate to it, or whether it is useful to us to destroy it, or whether we love it or fear it. The criterion should be the universal validity of all existence, living or not, sentient or not.
This is why I call myself a pantheist.
Well - that question has been the basis of many a science fiction story, and not just Battlestar Galactica - add to the list Star Trek in various incarnations, Terminator, AI, The Iron Giant (my favourite) and so on - in a probably infinite list. It's akin to the likes of E.T. and King Kong.
Obviously, there is no point where any individual, or culture, decides that a creature is sentient. Other races, species, alien life and non-life - there's no rule, and even when we make rules, there's no way to enforce their acceptance. Give me the day when people stop dropping bombs on other people and I'll answer a question about 'feelings and rights'.
Boil the question down to its deepest philosophical point. I think the value in our individual lives lies in treating everything as worthy of reference, living nor not. Dispense with definitions. The criteria should not be whether we can communicate with something, or relate to it, or whether it is useful to us to destroy it, or whether we love it or fear it. The criterion should be the universal validity of all existence, living or not, sentient or not.
This is why I call myself a pantheist.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 05:07 pm (UTC)Sentience itself is such a narrow-minded term, in my mind, as it merely means can we communicate with whatever the item/person/animal/thing in question. It makes me think of the gorillas taught sign language and can then speak with their handlers. There was one (though at the moment, I find myself torn between it being a gorilla or a chimpanzee, although I think it was a gorilla) who was able to tell the story of her mother being killed by hunters and the sadness she STILL felt at the loss many years later. A story told with her hands in a bridge of communication that this gorilla had the patience to learn in order to string together thoughts she obviously seemed to have.
It's very arrogant of us, as a species, to consider ourselves the only 'sentient' thing out there. And thusly is why in the case of man vs. machine in all of these contexts, humanity NEVER sees it coming.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 07:09 pm (UTC)I haven't seen AI - not sure I want to. It sounds so sad.
I agree about sentience. Some species communicate with smells or colours - others have forms of intelligence wholly unlike ours. How can we judge it in any way? In the scientific attempt not to be subjectively anthropomorphic, I think we lose something of the flavour of empathy. Every being has its own instrinsic value, unrelated to how much it's like a human being.
About the gorilla: I almost cried just reading your account.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 07:18 pm (UTC)And yeah, AI is one of those beautiful, yet tragically sad movies that you really need to only watch once in your life. Then you get to carry around that heavy in your chest feeling for the rest of the day/week and feel the need to call people you care about~
You're also right about being empathic with things around us. To be scientific, one CANNOT be empathic, even though that will often show an entirely different side to any situation that mere science can't achieve. Love is something that every animal has in one way or another. My family are life-long vegetarians and my father often tells a story -back when he worked on a farm- about how a calf was taken away from it's mother and that mother cow ran after the truck with her baby for over a mile~ How people can deny a level of sentience, of emotional tangibility, to animals is ridiculous sometimes. With the gorilla, we only managed to put into an understandable middle ground of the pain this animal suffered in ways that broke through a scientific bridge of study (educating the gorilla with sign language) to an empathic level of understanding where we can feel this animal's pain of sorrow and loss. *hugs* sorry for making you tear up about the gorilla thing, but it's a story I do think more people ought to know about because of that weight of emotion~ Your empathic response to it validates that gorilla's experiences and feelings.
For me? Sentience is emotion. To feel, to express, to point out to another individual or being or computer chip some sort of self-created emotion is sentient thought.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 07:26 pm (UTC)There are maybe half a dozen characters I feel that way about - Adam is one of them. I also love Detective Swanson, Captain John Hart, Beth, and the space whale... I wish Gray had been more interesting. Or Tommy. Mary came close, but didn't quite make the list. (Though I found her mighty attractive. I think my problem was that her motivation seemed lacking.)
I agree with your points about sentience and emotion.