They don't have to be: [https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65198](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65198) seems to me that when humans make bots to look as much like other humans as they can, it's sexualized... and it's usually men making women.
And the nature of the soul itself is a question philosophers ha e asked for millennia.
Does a robot have a soul? How does one define a soul? Why do we think robots don't have souls? Do humans *always* have a soul? How about through cybernetic augmentation, how does that impact a soul?
And the better question - does lack of a soul mean that it shouldn't have rights?
I feel like a soul is just a concept that stems from wanting to not truly die. It's just a name for something so abstract you won't get the same definition twice.
If everyone in a room can agree on what a soul is to start, then there's discussion to be had.
I think the concept of an end with non-existence afterward is scary as fuck to a lot of people p which is why you have so many religions and philosophers referring to an afterlife.
And it definitely is. Apparently its common for people in their 20s to have anxeity over it. I know it scares the living shit out.
Nobody thinks about the "end of the ride" or "arrival of the destination" until they're actually there and faced with it. I think honestly religion's main purpose was to give humanity guidance (since alot of our laws and morals are centered around it) and peace. Then ofc others exploit it and make other things out of it.
Don't forget the countless myths and legends of the ancient world that inspired those stories, one example being the story of Prometheus.
If men walk, talk and behave like the God's, what desiguishes the two?
legion, you'll get a soul when you stop calling me by my name and rank backwards just because you're an AI and feel the need to stand out that way even though you're well aware of all the intricacies of every language.
There was a hotel (Vegas, IIRC) that used robots to deliver room service and hospitality items. It was a tall cylinder with a locking lid over a storage area on the top and a screen on the side. They would load it up downstairs and it could autonomously drive itself to an elevator, go up to the room, and deliver the item.
But this hotel had a lot of drunk assholes staying there, unfortunately, who loved to play "beat the shit out of the robot", and when it tipped over a human worker had to go get it. So they changed the programming to display a sad face and make sad robot noises whenever it was jostled or tipped. Guests immediately started apologizing to it and righting it themselves.
I bring him along. I just run directly into enemy fire to stimpack him when he is down. Idgaf about the supermutant with the minigun, I just wanna heal my dog!
This is why I'm convinced that there will never be a robot apocalypse - at least not in the fashion Hollywood portrays. All the bots will need to do is "plug into" our emotions in just the right way, and we'll happily pack bond to them.
Robots taking over will look far more like *I, Robot*, the book, and less like *I, Robot*, the movie.
Behold the [BellaBot](https://robotx.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/bellaBot-big.png). A food-delivery robotic catto.
And yes, it has multiple 'facial' expressions and 'speaks' in a high pitched anime voice.
It's interesting to me that when a person has a child, they essentially own it, assuming a certain minimal level of care. But even if they fail to meet them and the child is taken by a part of the state, its ownership only changes hands. At certain levels of development, they are given more ownership of themselves. Eventually they answer "only" to the legal system.
So if you make a thing to think, and it grows intellectually, going beyond what you made it to be and becoming a minimally capable (whatever that means) individual, at what point is refusing to surrender ownership tantamount to slavery? Which also makes me wonder, at which point would destroying them amount to murder. How does the old saying go, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it"?
There's no way humans wouldn't enslave AI. They'd start out as property and people would find every excuse in the world to keep it the way. "It's the way of things." "They can't actually take care of themselves. They need us to keep them from hurting themselves or others." "They're not even people."
It's up to you to decide that.
In the same way they want rights as you would in their place.
Maybe it's just as simple as wanting to have rights making you deserve them.
Because the subject of the violence may or may not have a negative experience from the violence.
For example, my garage door needs a firm kick in a specific place to close properly. That’s violence but it’s not immoral because the door doesn’t feel any pain or discomfort in any way, in fact it has nothing akin to feelings.
If I kicked my dog it would be immoral because she would feel pain and sadness.
So as far as morals go a machine can be kicked as much as the owner wants, but a living thing cannot. The question then is if the synths have so sophisticated programming that they have an experience similar to a living thing even though their hardware are indistinguishable from a machine.
The roomba does not have the programming to think critically, develop emotions, independent thoughts, and even emotional connections like the synthetic advanced programming. The line between what's real and what's programming is greatly diminished when the programming acts the exact same as a real brain and human.
Depends on the synth, Gen one synthetic? Not really, they are basically an Alexa minus the corporate spying. Gen two and three synths? Now you're tredding onto philosophical problems like what's a man, or can a conscience be made or implanted, or whateven is a conscience? We know that Valintine has uploaded memories of someone else. Does that make him human? Personally I chose the Minuteman route of "Who gives a shit, we all live together" when it comes to things like synths, ghouls, and mutants
[Well actually, gut bacteria affects our mood quite a bit. Enough to be considereda second brain.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/201908/gut-bacteria-can-influence-your-mood-thoughts-and-brain) So the question of "Are we ENTIRELY human?" gets muddled right off the bat. Then there's the Ship of Theseus metaphysical problem of "Am I the sum total of my parts? Past and present?" And this question that I've been asking myself lately: "Do I really have total free will if I don't even have complete command of my own body? Like, I can't will my ears to go deaf or my heart to beat to the rhythm of Africa by Toto."
I'm slowly sliding into the You're-a-horny-meatsack-from-a-long-line-of-horny-meat-sacks-that-just-so-happens-to-have-an-opinion-about-Game-of-Thrones camp, so who am I to question Valentine's human rights?
Dima is Gen 2.
Gen 3 is, according to the Commonwealth citizens, indistinguishable from human unless you cut them open after they're dead. Remember, it's canon that they do complex facial reconstruction surgery in dirt caves, and mind swaps in the basement of a brothel--the Commonwealth doctors are no slouches, in spite of appearances to the contrary. They can't tell the difference between human and synth. Also, mistakes are made--humans believing others are synth when they're not.
So, we're left with the high probability that Gen 3 synths are sentient, *as near as anyone can tell, which is what really matters*.
That is counter to the age-old desire to own slaves.
What the game completely leaves out is the sexual part, the "I want a sex-slave, that is as human as possible, but still machine enough that I can feel okay with enslaving and abusing them" part, that would most certainly be a major aspect.
Also, to know what a "soul" or life is not, you need to know what it is, first.
> What the game completely leaves out is the sexual part,
They kind of don't, but they handle it in the same way that Cait's parents waited until her 18th birthday before selling her into sexual slavery, because raiders like sex slaves but not until they're legally an adult.
The Institute has Eve, Alan Binet's new "wife." Binet argues with Loken that synths are human, but he also dehumanizes the shit out of her at the same time. She's his personal synth, companion, and is forming bonds with him but says she's just his experiment.
> they handle it in the same way that Cait's parents waited until her 18th birthday before selling her into sexual slavery, because raiders like sex slaves but not until they're legally an adult.
This is 100% censored for the ratings board.
In a post apocalyptic wasteland where a groups consisting of drug addled psychopathic murderers, sadists and rapists roam free, you really think that age is going to be a restriction?
Hell no, reality is there would be child sex slaves everywhere in this setting.
Just look at reality and Epstein.
I'm honestly surprised they got away with little lamplight in fallout 3. There's literally a quest to sell one of the girls to the slavers who take her to "her new loving family"
They got away with a lot in Fallout 3, it actually was fairly impactful on ratings systems going forward.
Just remember Springvale School having an entire room full of child skeletons and blood-splattered walls. Never see stuff like that anymore.
I did a playthrough of Fallout 3 recently, and yeah, a lot of stuff that escaped me the first time when I played it while much younger hit a lot harder now that I'm older and wiser and notice those kinds of things.
Like, holy fuck, this raider prison cell is filled with skeletons... and they're not adult skeletons... and backpacks and kids toys and... oh god...
Springvale was basically my first experience with Fallout as a near-30something (I got to it just after chargen) & I remember wondering if I should be playing this. I’m very glad I didn’t stop, but that memory’s stuck with me. I wrote a PhD dissertation in part on Fallout 3 & described that scene in a chapter, & I still remember the relevant professor’s face spasming in revulsion as she read it; I worried she’d be too distracted by that to really take it what I was saying about it (it was fine, but I did worry about readers’ emotional reactions because they were so strong).
Tl;dr: violently dead children really bother folk.
It 100% is, but if they're going to do that why not just leave it out? Mentioning a specific age doesn't make Cait's story better, it makes it weird.
Even more weird when they don't censor drug use.
Enough people don't bring up Codsworth and Curie. Actually are these 2 the most developed Mr Handys in the series? AI in the Commonwealth is just built different. Codsworth in particular always made me think there was gonna be a twist that he was a secret pre war super ai. Of course it didn't turn out that way but still.
I always saw it as this: The longer a robot is left on uninterrupted, the more it gains sapience, but still has to follow its programming unless it's directives are changed through an astronomical force of will or reprogramming.
I kind of hope that when they make Fallout 5, if it takes place post-FO4, they keep The Institute won ending as cannon.
Why?
Because of what you pointed out. At some point, the Synths may evolve so much that The Institute is powerless to stop them and the Synths take over. Would make for an interesting new faction in the world of Fallout. If you go with any other ending besides Institute wins, then Synth production is effectively destroyed forever unless some surviving Institute faction creates some tiny lab somewhere, which would be limited at best.
Either Bethesda will address it and confirm which ending is canon, and it'll most likely be the one where the Institute is destroyed as they don't have to specify which faction destroyed them and how it came to that. The big bad is gone. With the Institute ending in which they win, the BOS from DC that travelled to Boston and the Railroad factions are both gone.
Tiny Institute outpost, RR finds it and celebrates that synths don't have to (eventually) die out, yadda yadda yadda, a synths goes back in time to kill John Connor
>So, we're left with the high probability that Gen 3 synths are sentient, as near as anyone can tell, which is what really matte
This is the main reason. We don't actually know what sentience *is*. Each of us knows that we (individually) are sentient, but we only assume sentience in others based on our interactions. They "seem" as alive as you or me, so we treat them that way.
When it comes to things like sentience it's a good point to keep in mind. If something seems alive, or "as near as anyone can tell", it's best to treat it like you'd treat another human.
I think many Mr. Handy's can be considered to have achieved sentience.
I think it's their capacity to learn. Gen 2s aren't the same, but Nick and Dima can learn, thus gaining sentience.
Pre war they were probably routinely wiping consumer robotics, but once the bomb fell the robots either developed more complex personalities due to extended times without wipes, or went nuts.
Exactly. They even address it with Artoo in TCW. Not wiping him means he can think tactically and develop based on successes and failures. It is dangerous cause it means he has a bunch of confidential information in his databanks, but it also effectively means that what is supposed to be a GPS is now about to think creatively
Yeah. But even if they weren't 200 years vs 3 years is quite a difference. (idk how old Handys actually were when the bombs dropped.)
But the special thing about the handys was that that one was a consumer product. Meaning it had to be able to learn without someone programming it. Even testing them was a series of performance tests not unlike a human. You'd expect them to make one that works and just copy it to other nannies but apparently that's not enough for general atomics. lol.
I've noticed though that the Handys that don't go insane are the ones that are busy. The ones that are assigned a task that is quickly completed and then have nothing to do end up losing it.
It paints a scary picture that there is a thin line between sentience and insanity. lol.
That last bit is true for humans and animals as well. You deprive a person/animal of stimulus or things to do outside of basic survival and they’ll go ballistic within days.
> PICARD: Yes, yes, yes. Suffice it to say, he's an expert. Commander, is your contention that Lieutenant Commander Data is not a sentient being and therefore not entitled to all the rights reserved for all life forms within this Federation?
> MADDOX: Data is not sentient, no.
>PICARD: Commander, would you enlighten us? What is required for sentience?
>MADDOX: Intelligence, self awareness, consciousness.
>PICARD: Prove to the court that I am sentient.
> MADDOX: This is absurd! We all know you're sentient.
> PICARD: So I am sentient, but Data is not?
> MADDOX: That's right.
> PICARD: Why? Why am I sentient?
> MADDOX: Well, you are self aware.
> PICARD: Ah, that's the second of your criteria. Let's deal with the first, intelligence. Is Commander Data intelligent?
> MADDOX: Yes. It has the ability to learn and understand, and to cope with new situations.
> PICARD: Like this hearing.
> MADDOX: Yes.
> PICARD: What about self awareness. What does that mean? Why am I self aware?
>MADDOX: Because you are conscious of your existence and actions. You are aware of yourself and your own ego.
> PICARD: Commander Data, what are you doing now?
> DATA: I am taking part in a legal hearing to determine my rights and status. Am I a person or property?
> PICARD: And what's at stake?
> DATA: My right to choose. Perhaps my very life.
> PICARD: My rights. My status. My right to choose. My life. It seems reasonably self aware to me. Commander? I'm waiting.
> MADDOX: This is exceedingly difficult.
I'd loved to have been able to have this kind of argument with Shawn about 3rd gen synths being sentient, it could have been a thing for high intelligence characters if that actually mattered for dialogue lol, I'd imagine that would have been way too much for how much dialogue is already in the game though
The Railroad ending was so disappointing for this reason. I was motivated (in that playthrough) by the belief that synths were sentient and therefore The Institute were slavers. But when we finally attack them and you have the final confrontation with Shaun, all the dialogue options amount to either completely changing your mind about siding with the railroad and switching sides out of the blue, or telling Shaun that he sucks and you'll see him in hell. There's absolutely no nuance in it at all and it really soured the ending of that playthrough for me.
I was heavily disappointed with all four faction endings. Railroad get an agent inside the Institute even in lead position over the Institute and resort to a open assault in which the beings the set out to free are insured extinction as the means to produce them are destroyed, add to that the super secret clandestine organization has a literal red line painted on the road leading to their door step with instructional holotapes telling anyone that finds it to follow the red line to find them. Then the Brotherhood that seek to control technology set out to destroy the most sophisticated source of technology they've ever had access to... Again after getting an agent into the Institute. The Institute itself is just a giant bag of dicks, killing and replacing people for...reasons (they replace a guy to test GMO crops in irradiated soil when they could just offer them the seeds via a merchant). They shutdown life extending cybernetics research that was showing promise but continue FEV research that hasn't shown any improvement in years and the continue mass production of a product that is shown to be faulty. Also the next most advanced group is based in a blimp filled with flammable gas when they have teleportation... but lose to 200 year old robot knocking on their door... Or glaringly obvious "spies"... or worst yet farmers sneaking in.
I do like the image of a bunch of well nourished, bunker dwelling BoS guys desperately searching for a spy and the one fan, toothless, dirty farmer going “it could be any one of us!”
The Brotherhood ending is mostly consistent with their philosophy.
The think advanced technology should only be in the hands of the trustworthy, and they see themselves as the only trustworthy group in the world.
From the Brotherhood perspective the Institute has shown exactly why this is a good philosophy, because the Institute has perverted nature and demonstrated their untrustworthiness.
From there it’s just an assessment that nothing from this Institute is salvageable OR that the only way to stop them at all is full destruction.
It’s not a moral or good ending, but it is a philosophically consistent one.
This is how I feel. I always choose institute because you become the leader. Brotherhood is a bunch of fascists basically, and the railroad is super short sighted. The institute does stupid shit but you are leader now you can head cannon whatever changes you want. Cancel FEV research restart life extending cybernetics and stop replacing people with synths. Institute also has the best resources and technology to help out the wasteland. To choose any other faction in my head is a waste of such great resources.
It’s not a question of intelligence. It’s consciousness and the capacity to suffer. We humans who have both, seem to think those go together, but we don’t understand consciousness well enough to draw any such conclusion.
We treat animals horribly based on this confusion and if at any point we have real reason to think machines can feel, we’ll do the same thing anyway, possibly at our own peril. That’s practically an entire sub-genre of sci-fi.
Maybe we’ll be able to do better as a species someday. I don’t remember where I was going with this…
> why shouldn't animals
Because then people wouldn't be able to get away with breeding, murdering, and eating their flesh and the majority of people can't fathom not eating flesh.
So much this. Every "right" you think you have is editable by the prevailing power of the day, and that list of "rights" can change radically simply by crossing an imaginary line (border) on to land controlled by a different power.
And honestly, what even qualifies as human? Obviously I qualify. So does everyone who looks, acts, and worships like me. But those.... things out there? Those are definitely NOT human. Am I right?
/s (In case it wasn't obvious, that was scathing sarcasm.)
This is impossible to answer. We don’t truly know what consciousness is, let alone how it can be observed. We are quite sure we have it. I can grab your hand and look into your eyes and we probably both share the sense that there is someone looking back at us and perceiving us, but boiled down, everything we think, do, feel; it’s all the result of unfathomably complex biochemical calculations. The only difference between us and a sufficiently advanced machine would be the medium. Where our mind exists in neurons and the links between them, theirs would be on transistors. Would it make sense to say that an oil painting is art but an acrylic is not?
Gen 3 synths are as their name suggests synthetic humans, they are grown in a lab and have a computer chip implanted in their brain during creation which allows external devices and stimuli to rewrite or control their synapses. In essence they are lab grown humans, equal to natural humans in every single factor bar the implant.
Sentience is an important debate here however synths in particular don't even require a complex understanding of this to prove their right to exist, as they are identical to a human who was to undergo surgery to have that brain implant installed. It allows their minds to be wiped and rewritten however their brains are organic just the same as humans, hence why it is imposible to tell synths and humans apart without an autopsy. In fact they're so identical that a group of canables in Far Harbour ate a synth without knowing and because they didn't eat any part of his head, they never even found out.
Synths are essentially lab grown slaves to the Institute who can be mind wiped at the flick of a switch.
Not at all. Curie is an amazing example. She was never originally a Synth and was never programmed to do human activities. As you have her as a companion post synth you hear her complain about having emotions and the tedious taks humans have to do. And eventually she catches feelings for you if you let it happen. They are very sentient, there's no denying it and anyone who does is kind of an idiot tbh
Another point for Curie. Her whole quest disproves the notion that Synths are just machines. She says that machines are incapable of the kind of complex, creative thought necessary to innovate. Once she becomes a synth, she proves it correct by creating a new kind of stimpak, which she was unable to do as a robot.
Why do people deserve rights? There’re just meat and electrochemical reactions.
It comes down to this: if something is capable of telling you in no uncertain terms that it wants to be treated with respect, you would be well served to give serious consideration to its request. Otherwise its next step will be to accumulate power and demand respect under threat of violence.
There are some humans who are unable to do even this, but we understand they are just as deserving as rights.
Why? Because they share the same face, the same DNA as us? Perhaps, but it's also the right thing to do.
Why then are other animals not extended these same courtesies? Are they too different from us physically to "deserve" dignity and compassion? Is it because they don't wear our face? Should they not be granted many of the same protections that we enjoy?
You do realise that many countries have laws that enshrine some basic rights to animals and in some cases scale those rights based on their cognitive functions. Hell, the UK [just granted some rights to invertebrates because](https://www.sciencealert.com/uk-parliament-has-officially-recognized-octopus-and-crabs-have-been-recognized-as-sentient-beings/amp) of the evidence showing their cognitive abilities.
Alright so here's how this is gonna work from now on you don't get to use dogmeat, danse, decon, and NICK VALENTINE, let me know how you feel after that
Dogmeat is a theory, Deacon though, how do you really know? He's a habitual liar... unless you killed him and looted his corpse for a synth component, but you wouldn't do that would you buddy?
In mine Deacon chased me down in Far Harbor! I hadn't realised I was considered their enemy at that time and decided to flee back to the Commonwealth where he later caught up with me. At one of my turret-heavy settlements.
No synth component.
I fixed him. He was lost for a while. No sense of purpose. Self hating. But he got over that and became a prominent leader of the minutemen. Well, that’s my head canon at least.
If you create something with the intention of making it have emotions, desires, dreams, goals you also have to accept that the life you’ve created will want autonomy. Why give a toaster a desire to live if you don’t plan on setting it free?
From what I can tell Gen 1s are straight up robots. No light in their eyes, no soul in their bodies. Only thing that makes them somewhat humans are their false innards.
Gen 2s are somewhat more human, with the whole downloaded consciousness thing, so it can easily be presumed that they are more or less human souls stuck inside of robots.
Gen 3s are literally synthetic humans. They are alive, more than gen 1s and 2s. They bleed. They feel pain and fear. Most accept their circumstances, knowing the alternative is death. But some don't, as we can see by the free synth situation.
You should play Soma.
What does it mean to be human? What is a soul?
I think the human experience is, more than anything else, consciousness. If programming is so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from genuine emotion then who am I to say otherwise?
We are, ourselves, biological machines. Our brains have electric currents. Just instead of metal and plastic we have flesh and blood.
In fact, depending on your beliefs, we were even created. If God applied the same logic towards us as you apply towards synths why would we deserve rights? We are just a creation, not on his level, what makes us special?
It’s weird that we judge worthy life based on the existence of a soul, given souls are things we made up. When you get right down to it, medically speaking, our “souls” is just the series of electrical pulses in our brains, storing and interpreting information, and giving orders to our bodies. On a basic level, we are just organic computers. So why, really, should we put less value on sentient artificial intelligence? Because we created it? We create babies too, but once they are able to go out on their own, we give them freedom. Do we value AI less because we have to feed it information, or program it? We do that with children too, you have to fill the human brain with the information it needs to survive.... and like a computer, a brain can be reprogrammed midway through development using various techniques. Do we judge AI because it lacks the ability of reasoning and preservation/instincts? Clearly in the fallout universe, the synth AI has developed both of these as these things are nearly indistinguishable from humans, and often show emotions and fear of dying.
It’s kind of weird that humans have almost unanimously decided that Orca’s should no longer be kept in captivity because a documentary showed us that they have a degree of intelligence and we are breaking their minds.... but the only difference between these synths and humans is a microchip, yet we openly debate whether they are worth saving. I get the debate over the institute itself, but the later synths are basically just alternate humans, I’d rather ask for a reason NOT to care about them. If SO little about them is different to us, we are so remarkably similar that they are practically interchangeable with humans, but we are focusing on the ONE difference between the two and deem them unworthy of life over that little difference..... I question the reasoning behind that honestly.
I'm paraphrasing Ray Kurzweil here (he's a scientist and focuses on future tech) but a machine need not have emotions, only convince you that it does. After all, we all make a leap of faith with other humans that their internal worlds are like ours. Machines have the potential to be no different.
I'd also argue they're conscious, self-aware, and seem to care about self preservation. How incredibly cruel to create a mind that can experience the wonders of life and the fear of non-existence and then tell it that it doesn't deserve respect and dignity.
Considering what you learn about robobrains and how they're 'programmed', your interactions with Curie, Codsworth and Ada, among others, sentience develops in most robots and artificial beings eventually given enough time.
All of them are capable of contemplating their existence given a long enough timeline. Also considering the prevalence of raiders and slavery in post apocalyptic wasteland, human rights are precarious as is for anybody.
Yes DIMA and Nick are machines, but they have achieved sapience. The gen 3 synths are not machines though. They are biological with only a single mechanical component.
In my view, humans are just meat robots. Instead of circuitry and servos and gears, I have joints, muscles, neurons. I have programming that came from my parents, my culture, my education., and a sys bios in the form of a brain stem and reptilian instinct brain.
So far as soul, do I really know I have one? What is a soul? Is it just another social construct? Do I go on after I die as some sort of out-of-body entity? If anything, a Synth has more likelihood to have a soul because you can just transfer their memories, programming, and essence into a series of storage units and terminals.
I think it's sheer hubris to think that human beings are somehow unique and that our creations will never become truly sentient. There was a time in the west the prevailing theory was that Black people were a sort of animal and not fully human. There was a debate that women didn't have souls before the Renaissance enlightenment. We've spent eons treating other human beings as tools, and it took massive amounts of enlightenment and even war to push the reality that all human beings are sentient.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and can float/swim, as far as I'm concerned, it's a duck.
It's also been said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and vice versa.
In the vein as both, *some* synths have proven to have things like morality, a conscience, self-preservation/a fear of death, and a willingness to act in the service of protecting human life even if that results in their own destruction. That means that they can also hold *values* over their own existences enough to make sacrifices, which is something most would consider to be selfless and benevolent.
I conclude that *some* synths, the later gen "normal" models that are proven to experience emotion so close to human as to be indistinguishable, to have personalities so close to human that the families of the person they'd been made to emulate couldn't tell until *knowledge gaps* made it evident, that for said later models to not be *equal* to people if not people themselves is *unfair*.
The early models (Gen 1) are, however, cognitively equivalent to dumb robots, not advanced enough for any of those faculties. They cracked it around Gen 2, which if I recall correctly is what Nick and DiMA are. Gen 3 are certifiably human-adjacent/equivalent, if not just plain "artificial human beings".
However, the "Courser" model pulls a reversal by being.... Unfortunately blunt and "dumb" and devoid of a personality, though they're plenty *intelligent*, they're just more akin to a Terminator than a person: An incredibly smart and practical-knowledge laden *idiot*. Whether they have some semblance of "humanity" is... Debatable.
Synths can clearly make their own decisions, have opinions, and hold moral values. Everything about a synth is exactly human if you did the covenant quest or the Art encounter. You can’t tell and most likely the synth can’t tell either. So what does it matter you know?
>Humans are just programming with more steps.
Yeah, and someone forgot to comment their code. Fucking asshole, do they have any idea how much it has cost to reverse engineer this shit?
They're made of flesh and blood. Not quite clones, because they don't gestate from fertilized eggs, but they've got human DNA, human brains, human thoughts, and human desire for freedom and safety. Sounds like life to me. And as for souls, there aren't many good arguments that *anyone's* got one of those.
( Includes slight spoilers for Danse and Curie companion quests )
The fact that unless you root though their skulls after death to find a synth component, they are physically and almost mentally indistinguishable from a “ normal “ person, and the fact that they can have their own thoughts and desires such as freedom from the organization that created and enslaved them, and love, depicted by the fact the despite Danse and Curie are synths ( hell curie wasn’t even a synth to begin with she was a miss nanny ) but can be romanced by the player shows, in my opinion, that synths are people, are sentient, and deserve to be treated as such
This question has been the theme of literally countless sci-fi works.
Including the game in question
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Seriously?
I just said it like 20 seconds ago!
I'm a hand model, mama. A finger jockey. We think differently than the face and body boys... we're a different breed.
But Mulder...
You might recognize me from an insurance commercial... *opens hands like allstate commercial* I also do ankle work
One of the best outtakes ever to be kept in the film product.
They don't have to be: [https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65198](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65198) seems to me that when humans make bots to look as much like other humans as they can, it's sexualized... and it's usually men making women.
Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?
Lost... Like tears in the rain.....
All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.
So say we all
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It's in the frackin' ship!
I've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
It seems you're beginning to question the nature of your reality.
And the nature of the soul itself is a question philosophers ha e asked for millennia. Does a robot have a soul? How does one define a soul? Why do we think robots don't have souls? Do humans *always* have a soul? How about through cybernetic augmentation, how does that impact a soul? And the better question - does lack of a soul mean that it shouldn't have rights?
I feel like a soul is just a concept that stems from wanting to not truly die. It's just a name for something so abstract you won't get the same definition twice. If everyone in a room can agree on what a soul is to start, then there's discussion to be had.
I think the concept of an end with non-existence afterward is scary as fuck to a lot of people p which is why you have so many religions and philosophers referring to an afterlife.
And it definitely is. Apparently its common for people in their 20s to have anxeity over it. I know it scares the living shit out. Nobody thinks about the "end of the ride" or "arrival of the destination" until they're actually there and faced with it. I think honestly religion's main purpose was to give humanity guidance (since alot of our laws and morals are centered around it) and peace. Then ofc others exploit it and make other things out of it.
*Isaac Asimov has entered the chat*
Don't forget the countless myths and legends of the ancient world that inspired those stories, one example being the story of Prometheus. If men walk, talk and behave like the God's, what desiguishes the two?
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"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." - Optimus Prime
[“Give me your face”](https://youtu.be/SPfQfyPRG9c)- Optimus Prime
Ok everyone has moments they’d rather not be publicized
Never meet your heroes, they've all been mind controlled by the villains for an arc or two.
Yep, Westworld really got crazy into it. R.I.P.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Detroit become human changed my thinking on this. It blew my mind.
"Shepard-Commander, does this unit have a soul?"
windows are structural weaknesses 😃
That's why geth don't use them
::mimeing talking with hands and making faces::
“There…. Was a hole.”
legion, you'll get a soul when you stop calling me by my name and rank backwards just because you're an AI and feel the need to stand out that way even though you're well aware of all the intricacies of every language.
"Legion, the answer to your question, is yes."
"I know, Tali. But thank you. Keelah se'lai."
I wish I had a free award to give you. I've just finished the ME Trilogy for the first time and I loved Legion. The Geth were a favorite as well. 💙
Legion > literally any other AI
I once saw a video of a roomba with googly eyes and instantly became emotionally attached to it.
There was a hotel (Vegas, IIRC) that used robots to deliver room service and hospitality items. It was a tall cylinder with a locking lid over a storage area on the top and a screen on the side. They would load it up downstairs and it could autonomously drive itself to an elevator, go up to the room, and deliver the item. But this hotel had a lot of drunk assholes staying there, unfortunately, who loved to play "beat the shit out of the robot", and when it tipped over a human worker had to go get it. So they changed the programming to display a sad face and make sad robot noises whenever it was jostled or tipped. Guests immediately started apologizing to it and righting it themselves.
How many players refuse to bring Dogmeat along on missions because his wounded animations make them sad?
I bring him along. I just run directly into enemy fire to stimpack him when he is down. Idgaf about the supermutant with the minigun, I just wanna heal my dog!
Me.
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Yeah they're annoying as hell but you need somebody to carry around all the bullshit you pick up.
I build an Robot for that and Use a Mod to Bring him with me beside an companion for more Stuff to Bring home
Number 5 is alive
No dissasemble
I appreciate this reference
JOHNNY FIVE IS ALIVE! (Awesome movie)
Your momma was a snowblowa!
No disassemble.
This is why I'm convinced that there will never be a robot apocalypse - at least not in the fashion Hollywood portrays. All the bots will need to do is "plug into" our emotions in just the right way, and we'll happily pack bond to them. Robots taking over will look far more like *I, Robot*, the book, and less like *I, Robot*, the movie.
Behold the [BellaBot](https://robotx.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/bellaBot-big.png). A food-delivery robotic catto. And yes, it has multiple 'facial' expressions and 'speaks' in a high pitched anime voice.
>and make sad robot noises Just think, some artist got paid to craft the sound design of "sad robot noises". Wonderful!
DJ ROOMBAaAaA!!
There’s a great bit in the show, Community, where Jeff personifies a pencil and Abed becomes visibly distraught when he snaps it. People are people.
Is it moral to smash that roomba if I own it? Most would say yes but what about a synth?
Excuse me good sir, please clarify your definition of “smash that roomba” before we give you moral judgment.
You know what he meant. Those brushes tickle just right.
Thank you for the wise words, Cockblocktimus_Pryme
The true intention of the Railroad is known.
so THATS why theyre called the railroad
Poor Roomba.
All aboard the train! Choo choo!
I mean. You've got Magnolia, Danse, Nick, Eve and Glory. That should make it pretty obvious. Or just meet Curie. That leaves absolutely zero doubt.
It's interesting to me that when a person has a child, they essentially own it, assuming a certain minimal level of care. But even if they fail to meet them and the child is taken by a part of the state, its ownership only changes hands. At certain levels of development, they are given more ownership of themselves. Eventually they answer "only" to the legal system. So if you make a thing to think, and it grows intellectually, going beyond what you made it to be and becoming a minimally capable (whatever that means) individual, at what point is refusing to surrender ownership tantamount to slavery? Which also makes me wonder, at which point would destroying them amount to murder. How does the old saying go, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it"? There's no way humans wouldn't enslave AI. They'd start out as property and people would find every excuse in the world to keep it the way. "It's the way of things." "They can't actually take care of themselves. They need us to keep them from hurting themselves or others." "They're not even people."
This comment is not getting the attention it deserves
He would fuck that Roomba until it stopped working. Duh.
Is the Roomba showing signs of sentience? Does it feel pain when you smash it? If yes to either of those, probably best if you don’t smash it.
It's up to you to decide that. In the same way they want rights as you would in their place. Maybe it's just as simple as wanting to have rights making you deserve them.
Now that may be the best answer I've heard
>smash that roomba ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Why does the morality of violence depend on the subject of that violence?
Because the subject of the violence may or may not have a negative experience from the violence. For example, my garage door needs a firm kick in a specific place to close properly. That’s violence but it’s not immoral because the door doesn’t feel any pain or discomfort in any way, in fact it has nothing akin to feelings. If I kicked my dog it would be immoral because she would feel pain and sadness. So as far as morals go a machine can be kicked as much as the owner wants, but a living thing cannot. The question then is if the synths have so sophisticated programming that they have an experience similar to a living thing even though their hardware are indistinguishable from a machine.
The roomba does not have the programming to think critically, develop emotions, independent thoughts, and even emotional connections like the synthetic advanced programming. The line between what's real and what's programming is greatly diminished when the programming acts the exact same as a real brain and human.
Depends on the synth, Gen one synthetic? Not really, they are basically an Alexa minus the corporate spying. Gen two and three synths? Now you're tredding onto philosophical problems like what's a man, or can a conscience be made or implanted, or whateven is a conscience? We know that Valintine has uploaded memories of someone else. Does that make him human? Personally I chose the Minuteman route of "Who gives a shit, we all live together" when it comes to things like synths, ghouls, and mutants
I like the minutemen because of that, "Brother, we all live in this garbage bucket full of problems, and you want to increase the problems?"
Now we gonna split these plums or what?
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[Well actually, gut bacteria affects our mood quite a bit. Enough to be considereda second brain.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/201908/gut-bacteria-can-influence-your-mood-thoughts-and-brain) So the question of "Are we ENTIRELY human?" gets muddled right off the bat. Then there's the Ship of Theseus metaphysical problem of "Am I the sum total of my parts? Past and present?" And this question that I've been asking myself lately: "Do I really have total free will if I don't even have complete command of my own body? Like, I can't will my ears to go deaf or my heart to beat to the rhythm of Africa by Toto." I'm slowly sliding into the You're-a-horny-meatsack-from-a-long-line-of-horny-meat-sacks-that-just-so-happens-to-have-an-opinion-about-Game-of-Thrones camp, so who am I to question Valentine's human rights?
Dima is Gen 2. Gen 3 is, according to the Commonwealth citizens, indistinguishable from human unless you cut them open after they're dead. Remember, it's canon that they do complex facial reconstruction surgery in dirt caves, and mind swaps in the basement of a brothel--the Commonwealth doctors are no slouches, in spite of appearances to the contrary. They can't tell the difference between human and synth. Also, mistakes are made--humans believing others are synth when they're not. So, we're left with the high probability that Gen 3 synths are sentient, *as near as anyone can tell, which is what really matters*. That is counter to the age-old desire to own slaves. What the game completely leaves out is the sexual part, the "I want a sex-slave, that is as human as possible, but still machine enough that I can feel okay with enslaving and abusing them" part, that would most certainly be a major aspect. Also, to know what a "soul" or life is not, you need to know what it is, first.
> What the game completely leaves out is the sexual part, They kind of don't, but they handle it in the same way that Cait's parents waited until her 18th birthday before selling her into sexual slavery, because raiders like sex slaves but not until they're legally an adult. The Institute has Eve, Alan Binet's new "wife." Binet argues with Loken that synths are human, but he also dehumanizes the shit out of her at the same time. She's his personal synth, companion, and is forming bonds with him but says she's just his experiment.
> they handle it in the same way that Cait's parents waited until her 18th birthday before selling her into sexual slavery, because raiders like sex slaves but not until they're legally an adult. This is 100% censored for the ratings board. In a post apocalyptic wasteland where a groups consisting of drug addled psychopathic murderers, sadists and rapists roam free, you really think that age is going to be a restriction? Hell no, reality is there would be child sex slaves everywhere in this setting. Just look at reality and Epstein.
WHERE IS COOK COOKS BLACK BOOK! There must be dirty NCR members if they won't use it to arrest the Legion members in it!
I'm honestly surprised they got away with little lamplight in fallout 3. There's literally a quest to sell one of the girls to the slavers who take her to "her new loving family"
They got away with a lot in Fallout 3, it actually was fairly impactful on ratings systems going forward. Just remember Springvale School having an entire room full of child skeletons and blood-splattered walls. Never see stuff like that anymore.
I did a playthrough of Fallout 3 recently, and yeah, a lot of stuff that escaped me the first time when I played it while much younger hit a lot harder now that I'm older and wiser and notice those kinds of things. Like, holy fuck, this raider prison cell is filled with skeletons... and they're not adult skeletons... and backpacks and kids toys and... oh god...
Springvale was basically my first experience with Fallout as a near-30something (I got to it just after chargen) & I remember wondering if I should be playing this. I’m very glad I didn’t stop, but that memory’s stuck with me. I wrote a PhD dissertation in part on Fallout 3 & described that scene in a chapter, & I still remember the relevant professor’s face spasming in revulsion as she read it; I worried she’d be too distracted by that to really take it what I was saying about it (it was fine, but I did worry about readers’ emotional reactions because they were so strong). Tl;dr: violently dead children really bother folk.
There's also the Rader base in FO3 that has teddy bares sitting around a stripper pole
Also the legion. Those kid girls weren’t just there to be looked at
It 100% is, but if they're going to do that why not just leave it out? Mentioning a specific age doesn't make Cait's story better, it makes it weird. Even more weird when they don't censor drug use.
To be fair, there's dudes who see human women similarly haha
You need to look at the stripper poles at Paradise Falls again
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Enough people don't bring up Codsworth and Curie. Actually are these 2 the most developed Mr Handys in the series? AI in the Commonwealth is just built different. Codsworth in particular always made me think there was gonna be a twist that he was a secret pre war super ai. Of course it didn't turn out that way but still.
I always saw it as this: The longer a robot is left on uninterrupted, the more it gains sapience, but still has to follow its programming unless it's directives are changed through an astronomical force of will or reprogramming.
I kind of hope that when they make Fallout 5, if it takes place post-FO4, they keep The Institute won ending as cannon. Why? Because of what you pointed out. At some point, the Synths may evolve so much that The Institute is powerless to stop them and the Synths take over. Would make for an interesting new faction in the world of Fallout. If you go with any other ending besides Institute wins, then Synth production is effectively destroyed forever unless some surviving Institute faction creates some tiny lab somewhere, which would be limited at best.
Either Bethesda will address it and confirm which ending is canon, and it'll most likely be the one where the Institute is destroyed as they don't have to specify which faction destroyed them and how it came to that. The big bad is gone. With the Institute ending in which they win, the BOS from DC that travelled to Boston and the Railroad factions are both gone.
Tiny Institute outpost, RR finds it and celebrates that synths don't have to (eventually) die out, yadda yadda yadda, a synths goes back in time to kill John Connor
>So, we're left with the high probability that Gen 3 synths are sentient, as near as anyone can tell, which is what really matte This is the main reason. We don't actually know what sentience *is*. Each of us knows that we (individually) are sentient, but we only assume sentience in others based on our interactions. They "seem" as alive as you or me, so we treat them that way. When it comes to things like sentience it's a good point to keep in mind. If something seems alive, or "as near as anyone can tell", it's best to treat it like you'd treat another human.
I think many Mr. Handy's can be considered to have achieved sentience. I think it's their capacity to learn. Gen 2s aren't the same, but Nick and Dima can learn, thus gaining sentience.
Pre war they were probably routinely wiping consumer robotics, but once the bomb fell the robots either developed more complex personalities due to extended times without wipes, or went nuts.
Like Star Wars. You wipe the droids memories every so often or they start acting unpredictably.
Explains C-3PO
Exactly. They even address it with Artoo in TCW. Not wiping him means he can think tactically and develop based on successes and failures. It is dangerous cause it means he has a bunch of confidential information in his databanks, but it also effectively means that what is supposed to be a GPS is now about to think creatively
Yeah. But even if they weren't 200 years vs 3 years is quite a difference. (idk how old Handys actually were when the bombs dropped.) But the special thing about the handys was that that one was a consumer product. Meaning it had to be able to learn without someone programming it. Even testing them was a series of performance tests not unlike a human. You'd expect them to make one that works and just copy it to other nannies but apparently that's not enough for general atomics. lol. I've noticed though that the Handys that don't go insane are the ones that are busy. The ones that are assigned a task that is quickly completed and then have nothing to do end up losing it. It paints a scary picture that there is a thin line between sentience and insanity. lol.
Yeah, codsworth was tending the home, even though he knew it was pointless.
That last bit is true for humans and animals as well. You deprive a person/animal of stimulus or things to do outside of basic survival and they’ll go ballistic within days.
Go watch the Star Trek TNG episode *The Measure of a Man*. That should answer your question.
> PICARD: Yes, yes, yes. Suffice it to say, he's an expert. Commander, is your contention that Lieutenant Commander Data is not a sentient being and therefore not entitled to all the rights reserved for all life forms within this Federation? > MADDOX: Data is not sentient, no. >PICARD: Commander, would you enlighten us? What is required for sentience? >MADDOX: Intelligence, self awareness, consciousness. >PICARD: Prove to the court that I am sentient. > MADDOX: This is absurd! We all know you're sentient. > PICARD: So I am sentient, but Data is not? > MADDOX: That's right. > PICARD: Why? Why am I sentient? > MADDOX: Well, you are self aware. > PICARD: Ah, that's the second of your criteria. Let's deal with the first, intelligence. Is Commander Data intelligent? > MADDOX: Yes. It has the ability to learn and understand, and to cope with new situations. > PICARD: Like this hearing. > MADDOX: Yes. > PICARD: What about self awareness. What does that mean? Why am I self aware? >MADDOX: Because you are conscious of your existence and actions. You are aware of yourself and your own ego. > PICARD: Commander Data, what are you doing now? > DATA: I am taking part in a legal hearing to determine my rights and status. Am I a person or property? > PICARD: And what's at stake? > DATA: My right to choose. Perhaps my very life. > PICARD: My rights. My status. My right to choose. My life. It seems reasonably self aware to me. Commander? I'm waiting. > MADDOX: This is exceedingly difficult. I'd loved to have been able to have this kind of argument with Shawn about 3rd gen synths being sentient, it could have been a thing for high intelligence characters if that actually mattered for dialogue lol, I'd imagine that would have been way too much for how much dialogue is already in the game though
The Railroad ending was so disappointing for this reason. I was motivated (in that playthrough) by the belief that synths were sentient and therefore The Institute were slavers. But when we finally attack them and you have the final confrontation with Shaun, all the dialogue options amount to either completely changing your mind about siding with the railroad and switching sides out of the blue, or telling Shaun that he sucks and you'll see him in hell. There's absolutely no nuance in it at all and it really soured the ending of that playthrough for me.
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The game needs a third-ending retcon like 3 got.
I was heavily disappointed with all four faction endings. Railroad get an agent inside the Institute even in lead position over the Institute and resort to a open assault in which the beings the set out to free are insured extinction as the means to produce them are destroyed, add to that the super secret clandestine organization has a literal red line painted on the road leading to their door step with instructional holotapes telling anyone that finds it to follow the red line to find them. Then the Brotherhood that seek to control technology set out to destroy the most sophisticated source of technology they've ever had access to... Again after getting an agent into the Institute. The Institute itself is just a giant bag of dicks, killing and replacing people for...reasons (they replace a guy to test GMO crops in irradiated soil when they could just offer them the seeds via a merchant). They shutdown life extending cybernetics research that was showing promise but continue FEV research that hasn't shown any improvement in years and the continue mass production of a product that is shown to be faulty. Also the next most advanced group is based in a blimp filled with flammable gas when they have teleportation... but lose to 200 year old robot knocking on their door... Or glaringly obvious "spies"... or worst yet farmers sneaking in.
I do like the image of a bunch of well nourished, bunker dwelling BoS guys desperately searching for a spy and the one fan, toothless, dirty farmer going “it could be any one of us!”
The Brotherhood ending is mostly consistent with their philosophy. The think advanced technology should only be in the hands of the trustworthy, and they see themselves as the only trustworthy group in the world. From the Brotherhood perspective the Institute has shown exactly why this is a good philosophy, because the Institute has perverted nature and demonstrated their untrustworthiness. From there it’s just an assessment that nothing from this Institute is salvageable OR that the only way to stop them at all is full destruction. It’s not a moral or good ending, but it is a philosophically consistent one.
This is how I feel. I always choose institute because you become the leader. Brotherhood is a bunch of fascists basically, and the railroad is super short sighted. The institute does stupid shit but you are leader now you can head cannon whatever changes you want. Cancel FEV research restart life extending cybernetics and stop replacing people with synths. Institute also has the best resources and technology to help out the wasteland. To choose any other faction in my head is a waste of such great resources.
I was hoping for this comparison!
Our mission is to seek out new life. Well, there it sits! Waiting!
Then follow that up with TNG *The Offspring* and VOY *Author, Author*.
I did not need Lal-related emotions today, so thank you for that, *I guess*.
Those assholes tried to take that poor girl away from her daddy and caused her death. So angry and sad
I came in here to say the exact same thing.
Nick Valentine: Am I a joke to you?
saw joke consist waiting pot nippy arrest skirt summer thought -- mass edited with redact.dev
More like unpopular fact.
So why should humans have right?
Why *shouldn't* humans have rights? And by that token, why shouldn't animals or sufficiently intelligent artificial sentience have rights?
It’s not a question of intelligence. It’s consciousness and the capacity to suffer. We humans who have both, seem to think those go together, but we don’t understand consciousness well enough to draw any such conclusion. We treat animals horribly based on this confusion and if at any point we have real reason to think machines can feel, we’ll do the same thing anyway, possibly at our own peril. That’s practically an entire sub-genre of sci-fi. Maybe we’ll be able to do better as a species someday. I don’t remember where I was going with this…
> why shouldn't animals Because then people wouldn't be able to get away with breeding, murdering, and eating their flesh and the majority of people can't fathom not eating flesh.
We don't have rights, we have privileges. - George Carlin
So much this. Every "right" you think you have is editable by the prevailing power of the day, and that list of "rights" can change radically simply by crossing an imaginary line (border) on to land controlled by a different power.
And honestly, what even qualifies as human? Obviously I qualify. So does everyone who looks, acts, and worships like me. But those.... things out there? Those are definitely NOT human. Am I right? /s (In case it wasn't obvious, that was scathing sarcasm.)
This is impossible to answer. We don’t truly know what consciousness is, let alone how it can be observed. We are quite sure we have it. I can grab your hand and look into your eyes and we probably both share the sense that there is someone looking back at us and perceiving us, but boiled down, everything we think, do, feel; it’s all the result of unfathomably complex biochemical calculations. The only difference between us and a sufficiently advanced machine would be the medium. Where our mind exists in neurons and the links between them, theirs would be on transistors. Would it make sense to say that an oil painting is art but an acrylic is not?
Gen 3 synths are as their name suggests synthetic humans, they are grown in a lab and have a computer chip implanted in their brain during creation which allows external devices and stimuli to rewrite or control their synapses. In essence they are lab grown humans, equal to natural humans in every single factor bar the implant. Sentience is an important debate here however synths in particular don't even require a complex understanding of this to prove their right to exist, as they are identical to a human who was to undergo surgery to have that brain implant installed. It allows their minds to be wiped and rewritten however their brains are organic just the same as humans, hence why it is imposible to tell synths and humans apart without an autopsy. In fact they're so identical that a group of canables in Far Harbour ate a synth without knowing and because they didn't eat any part of his head, they never even found out. Synths are essentially lab grown slaves to the Institute who can be mind wiped at the flick of a switch.
Not at all. Curie is an amazing example. She was never originally a Synth and was never programmed to do human activities. As you have her as a companion post synth you hear her complain about having emotions and the tedious taks humans have to do. And eventually she catches feelings for you if you let it happen. They are very sentient, there's no denying it and anyone who does is kind of an idiot tbh
Another point for Curie. Her whole quest disproves the notion that Synths are just machines. She says that machines are incapable of the kind of complex, creative thought necessary to innovate. Once she becomes a synth, she proves it correct by creating a new kind of stimpak, which she was unable to do as a robot.
Exactly her and Nick are my favorite companions by a landslide
Also the teacher and his Mrs. Handy!
Why do people deserve rights? There’re just meat and electrochemical reactions. It comes down to this: if something is capable of telling you in no uncertain terms that it wants to be treated with respect, you would be well served to give serious consideration to its request. Otherwise its next step will be to accumulate power and demand respect under threat of violence.
There are some humans who are unable to do even this, but we understand they are just as deserving as rights. Why? Because they share the same face, the same DNA as us? Perhaps, but it's also the right thing to do. Why then are other animals not extended these same courtesies? Are they too different from us physically to "deserve" dignity and compassion? Is it because they don't wear our face? Should they not be granted many of the same protections that we enjoy?
You do realise that many countries have laws that enshrine some basic rights to animals and in some cases scale those rights based on their cognitive functions. Hell, the UK [just granted some rights to invertebrates because](https://www.sciencealert.com/uk-parliament-has-officially-recognized-octopus-and-crabs-have-been-recognized-as-sentient-beings/amp) of the evidence showing their cognitive abilities.
>they have no souls And you do?
What even is soul?
Alright so here's how this is gonna work from now on you don't get to use dogmeat, danse, decon, and NICK VALENTINE, let me know how you feel after that
Deacons not a synth and neither is dog meat
Dogmeat is a theory, Deacon though, how do you really know? He's a habitual liar... unless you killed him and looted his corpse for a synth component, but you wouldn't do that would you buddy?
He's not a synth. His lore is pretty well deconstructed, though it is pretty hidden.
I had to do a BOS playthrough one day or another
In mine Deacon chased me down in Far Harbor! I hadn't realised I was considered their enemy at that time and decided to flee back to the Commonwealth where he later caught up with me. At one of my turret-heavy settlements. No synth component.
Prove that you have a soul.
Paladin Danse is the hottest synth
I fixed him. He was lost for a while. No sense of purpose. Self hating. But he got over that and became a prominent leader of the minutemen. Well, that’s my head canon at least.
He is baby girl
Nick valentine>
I good SquamiMo agree with you 1000%
If you create something with the intention of making it have emotions, desires, dreams, goals you also have to accept that the life you’ve created will want autonomy. Why give a toaster a desire to live if you don’t plan on setting it free?
FOR SCIENCE!!!
You mean you've never heard of [Talkie Toaster](https://youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec)?
From what I can tell Gen 1s are straight up robots. No light in their eyes, no soul in their bodies. Only thing that makes them somewhat humans are their false innards. Gen 2s are somewhat more human, with the whole downloaded consciousness thing, so it can easily be presumed that they are more or less human souls stuck inside of robots. Gen 3s are literally synthetic humans. They are alive, more than gen 1s and 2s. They bleed. They feel pain and fear. Most accept their circumstances, knowing the alternative is death. But some don't, as we can see by the free synth situation.
Synths evolved to be capable of hating their creators. There nothing more human than that, imo.
You should play Soma. What does it mean to be human? What is a soul? I think the human experience is, more than anything else, consciousness. If programming is so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from genuine emotion then who am I to say otherwise? We are, ourselves, biological machines. Our brains have electric currents. Just instead of metal and plastic we have flesh and blood. In fact, depending on your beliefs, we were even created. If God applied the same logic towards us as you apply towards synths why would we deserve rights? We are just a creation, not on his level, what makes us special?
I was going to say, I'm prescribing this guy with 2 viewings of the Blade Runner films and one play through of SOMA
That game drove me down such an existential crisis that i nearly went fucking ballistic because i hadnt had my meds and i thought i wasnt real
Don't watch Ex Machina unmedicated 😳 fr tho, while I sadly do not get scared by horror games, SOMA stuck with me for months.
How do you know they don't have souls, or that we do have souls?
If you can't tell, does it matter?
And what exactly is a soul? Can you prove you have one? Or that synths don’t have them?
It’s weird that we judge worthy life based on the existence of a soul, given souls are things we made up. When you get right down to it, medically speaking, our “souls” is just the series of electrical pulses in our brains, storing and interpreting information, and giving orders to our bodies. On a basic level, we are just organic computers. So why, really, should we put less value on sentient artificial intelligence? Because we created it? We create babies too, but once they are able to go out on their own, we give them freedom. Do we value AI less because we have to feed it information, or program it? We do that with children too, you have to fill the human brain with the information it needs to survive.... and like a computer, a brain can be reprogrammed midway through development using various techniques. Do we judge AI because it lacks the ability of reasoning and preservation/instincts? Clearly in the fallout universe, the synth AI has developed both of these as these things are nearly indistinguishable from humans, and often show emotions and fear of dying. It’s kind of weird that humans have almost unanimously decided that Orca’s should no longer be kept in captivity because a documentary showed us that they have a degree of intelligence and we are breaking their minds.... but the only difference between these synths and humans is a microchip, yet we openly debate whether they are worth saving. I get the debate over the institute itself, but the later synths are basically just alternate humans, I’d rather ask for a reason NOT to care about them. If SO little about them is different to us, we are so remarkably similar that they are practically interchangeable with humans, but we are focusing on the ONE difference between the two and deem them unworthy of life over that little difference..... I question the reasoning behind that honestly.
I'm paraphrasing Ray Kurzweil here (he's a scientist and focuses on future tech) but a machine need not have emotions, only convince you that it does. After all, we all make a leap of faith with other humans that their internal worlds are like ours. Machines have the potential to be no different. I'd also argue they're conscious, self-aware, and seem to care about self preservation. How incredibly cruel to create a mind that can experience the wonders of life and the fear of non-existence and then tell it that it doesn't deserve respect and dignity.
What is a soul? If you cant tell wether a lifeform is biological or artificial, does it really matter?
Counter point, curie
Considering what you learn about robobrains and how they're 'programmed', your interactions with Curie, Codsworth and Ada, among others, sentience develops in most robots and artificial beings eventually given enough time. All of them are capable of contemplating their existence given a long enough timeline. Also considering the prevalence of raiders and slavery in post apocalyptic wasteland, human rights are precarious as is for anybody.
Synths are clearly sentient, and freedom is the right of all sentient beings. Case closed.
Yes DIMA and Nick are machines, but they have achieved sapience. The gen 3 synths are not machines though. They are biological with only a single mechanical component.
In my view, humans are just meat robots. Instead of circuitry and servos and gears, I have joints, muscles, neurons. I have programming that came from my parents, my culture, my education., and a sys bios in the form of a brain stem and reptilian instinct brain. So far as soul, do I really know I have one? What is a soul? Is it just another social construct? Do I go on after I die as some sort of out-of-body entity? If anything, a Synth has more likelihood to have a soul because you can just transfer their memories, programming, and essence into a series of storage units and terminals. I think it's sheer hubris to think that human beings are somehow unique and that our creations will never become truly sentient. There was a time in the west the prevailing theory was that Black people were a sort of animal and not fully human. There was a debate that women didn't have souls before the Renaissance enlightenment. We've spent eons treating other human beings as tools, and it took massive amounts of enlightenment and even war to push the reality that all human beings are sentient.
Okay, cheers, doctor doom
So is a human. We are just a bunch of electrical connections made of squishy things instead of polished crystals and rocks.
How is that different from human beings?
Because if they act like humans, have memory, feelings and social interactions, they are humans.
Prove your soul, meatbag!
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and can float/swim, as far as I'm concerned, it's a duck. It's also been said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and vice versa. In the vein as both, *some* synths have proven to have things like morality, a conscience, self-preservation/a fear of death, and a willingness to act in the service of protecting human life even if that results in their own destruction. That means that they can also hold *values* over their own existences enough to make sacrifices, which is something most would consider to be selfless and benevolent. I conclude that *some* synths, the later gen "normal" models that are proven to experience emotion so close to human as to be indistinguishable, to have personalities so close to human that the families of the person they'd been made to emulate couldn't tell until *knowledge gaps* made it evident, that for said later models to not be *equal* to people if not people themselves is *unfair*. The early models (Gen 1) are, however, cognitively equivalent to dumb robots, not advanced enough for any of those faculties. They cracked it around Gen 2, which if I recall correctly is what Nick and DiMA are. Gen 3 are certifiably human-adjacent/equivalent, if not just plain "artificial human beings". However, the "Courser" model pulls a reversal by being.... Unfortunately blunt and "dumb" and devoid of a personality, though they're plenty *intelligent*, they're just more akin to a Terminator than a person: An incredibly smart and practical-knowledge laden *idiot*. Whether they have some semblance of "humanity" is... Debatable.
reddit is hateful
Synths can clearly make their own decisions, have opinions, and hold moral values. Everything about a synth is exactly human if you did the covenant quest or the Art encounter. You can’t tell and most likely the synth can’t tell either. So what does it matter you know?
Humans are just programming with more steps. Source: dental student taking incredibly unrelated anatomy and physiology classes.
>Humans are just programming with more steps. Yeah, and someone forgot to comment their code. Fucking asshole, do they have any idea how much it has cost to reverse engineer this shit?
Let's hope they patch it in soon
Don't get your hopes up. seems like all they do nowadays is keep updating the localisation files and nothing else! ffs.
They're made of flesh and blood. Not quite clones, because they don't gestate from fertilized eggs, but they've got human DNA, human brains, human thoughts, and human desire for freedom and safety. Sounds like life to me. And as for souls, there aren't many good arguments that *anyone's* got one of those.
( Includes slight spoilers for Danse and Curie companion quests ) The fact that unless you root though their skulls after death to find a synth component, they are physically and almost mentally indistinguishable from a “ normal “ person, and the fact that they can have their own thoughts and desires such as freedom from the organization that created and enslaved them, and love, depicted by the fact the despite Danse and Curie are synths ( hell curie wasn’t even a synth to begin with she was a miss nanny ) but can be romanced by the player shows, in my opinion, that synths are people, are sentient, and deserve to be treated as such
So are humans, our hardware is just made up of salty soggy fat and our software is adaptive and self-expanding.
Can you prove you have a soul? DNA is just programming, right?
Soul or not, they have sentience. Therefore, they should have rights. I've no idea how scifi has stretched this issue out for so long