Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

It is kinda funny, but whenever I hear 'olive skinned' I think they are calling the characters green for a moment I realize that isn't what the definition is of course, it just strikes me - the non olive expert - as strange.

And wouldn't that be a excellent story idea to delve into? I think it would. Sure, stuff like Reaves work & the NJO scratched the surface already to be sure. Other tales as well.

I mean we are still incredibly close to slavery in our own western societies, times when people were treated in a terrible fashion. Does ignorance equal evil? Is every American that lived in the Southern States during and before the civil war some kind of horrible monster?

Is everyone in the Republic a horrible monster for condoning the use of Clones during The Clone Wars? I don't think so - First people have to realize there is a problem, and sometimes I'd imagine that society can make that very difficult. I don't think it coming to light that R2-D2 is sentient suddenly makes Luke a slave lord. It is what he does once the truth is known that would be more telling.

 

I've always held the view that the SW universe is built on a gigantic system of oppression in regards to droids. The sheer horror of a memory wipe that many droids are subjected to frequently is way too much to fathom. Every droid IMO has the ability to become a fully independent sentient being, but because of a narrow definition of "life" are bought, sold, abused, tortured, etc. in many cases without a second thought. Just look at Luke's treatment of R2 in the Dark Nest Trilogy. He essentially tortures his friend for information that his friend thinks will cause him severe emotional turmoil, risking irreparable damage to him in the process. How Denning thought that was in character for Luke, someone who has always had a much more progressive view of droids, I will never understand.

 

Well, it didn't really bother me when I read this, because it made think of those scenes set in Middle East in the books of Agatha Christie, in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and so forth...

Yes, I suppose they should dress like that at least on special occasion. I can't imagine the Tarkin not being traditionalist to a degree, if only as a mere political facade. Rivoche Tarkin, however, doesn't quite look like the veil-wearing type.

 

*watches thread get derailed*

 

I have no idea what this means.

It must be, or the Jedi would be at the forefront of the droids' rights movement.

You can argue whether the "Luminious" Person can be perceived should matter -- because we have the example of the Vong to show that method of determination is flawed -- but it is nevertheless vitally important that the Person is there.

The question is: are droids people (or potentially people -- with it being an emergent thing), yet for some reason invisible to Force senses? Or is there actually nothing there to sense?

Given the example of I5 -- who registers as a living being to Jedi senses -- I'm inclined to believe the former.

 

Like they were at the forefront of the clones rights movement.

 

Yes. Exactly like that.

 

Why should it matter if droids have a force presence to be considered sentient? Like that matters more than capacity for emotions and abstract thought.

I get the Jedi are the philosophical core of the franchise, but why should the ethics of the non-force sensitive galaxy be objectively defined by them? Any reasonable secular government would give droids rights considerations no matter what some laser sword swinging religious dingbats think.

 

This has always really bothered me also. I remember in one NJO book (one of Luceno's first two, I think?) there's kind of a semi-sideplot with Threepio contemplating some of this stuff due to the Vong targeting droids. I always hoped that would develop into a larger storyline involving droids mobilizing collectively to defend themselves, gaining equal rights in the GFFA as part of the war effort, Threepio becoming a droid-rights activist (hey, an actual Threepio storyline, how about that?), something like that - but nope, that one minor part of that one book, and that was it.

 

The thing is, Luke torturing R2-D2, or in fact Jedi doing any number of generally horrible things to droids, doesn't move Luke any closer to the dark side. In fact, several sources regarding the Clone Wars make this point explicitly regarding droids - that the horrors of war lay lighter upon the Jedi order than they would have otherwise because they were facing droid opponents.

And the Force is, for better or worse, pretty much the ultimate arbiter of morality in the Star Wars universe. The Force deems treating organics as slaves as being dark side oriented, while treating droids as slaves is pretty much completely neutral in the Force. So, as far as the Force is concerned all that oppression to droids doesn't count.

As a result, we have a problem. If droids are people and treating them oppressively is an evil act, then the Force itself, and thereby the entire moral cosmos of Star Wars is inherently corrupt at the core (and in which case everyone participating in this thread, including myself, is a huge hypocrite and we should all go find a better series to follow) - or we have to generate some sort of rationalization as to why droids 'don't count' as people.

In the spirit of finding a rationalization so the Star Wars galaxy can continue to function in an ethical fashion, I'm actually inclined to believe the latter, and that I-5YQ is the exception that proves the rule. Here's why: copying.

A droid intelligence can be copied, endlessly and instantly. A droid intelligence can in fact, with sufficiently strong data links, attempt to upload itself to millions of other droids all at once. At least two droid intelligences Directive 7's Mentor and IG-88 have attempted this. Both were stopped, but not because their idea was in any way technically infeasible.

An organic sentient intelligence in Star Wars can also be copied - that's what the memory flashes used in cloning are - but it cannot be done instantly. Clones that are reproduced too rapidly inevitably become insane. We even know why this happens, thanks to the Thrawn trilogy, it's because of the Force. An organic clone needs a certain amount of time to grow before it becomes properly attuned to the Force and thereby a proper being (in natural cases this presumably happens during some portion of fetal development). In order to bypass this limitation Thrawn had to physically cut those clones off from the Force during development (which, by the way means that yes, you could argue the Mount Tantiss clones have no souls).

This is a distinct Force-mediated difference that we can observe between droids and organic sentient beings in the Star Wars universe. The 'mind-states' (to use the Ian M. Banks term) of the two types of intelligence are structurally different.

I-5YQ is a strange anomaly. He's not especially more advanced or frankly more independent or experienced than a number of other advanced independent droids we've seen tromping about the galaxy who remain impossible to detect in the Force. Until that example is repeated, I don't think it can be taken as conclusive.

 

But that's not really true. In-universe you cannot really view the spacer culture of Star Wars as a wholly secular society. This is a society that has absorbed a religious viewpoint regarding the Force (not just the Jedi Order, no one can detect droids in the Force) for tens of thousands of years. People have absorbed the consequences of that viewpoint, the average citizen of Star Wars almost certainly believes droids are 'not people' and it quite happy crafting laws based on that even if they can't quite explain the origins of that doctrine (and yes this is just like legislators in the South crafting laws to maintain black slavery even though they might not have fully comprehended the doctrines of white supremacy).

Also, in the bluntest sense, the Jedi have made and set policy quite often, by serving in the role of Supreme Chancellor at several major points in the history of the Old Republic.

 

I can not comment on the PotJ SB part (also what dose it stands for?) but the way I remember it Qui-Gon did not say that Jedi don't free slaves just that he was not on Tatooine to free slaves

 

GrandAdmiralJello

You seem to be trying to assert that you can solve the ethical question of droids in Star Wars without reference to the Force. This is flatly untrue. You cannot solve any broad-scale ethical question is Star Wars without reference to the Force. Star Wars has an objective moral system, like the overwhelming majority of fantasy universes. There is good and there is evil, and there is a determinant entity, in this case the Force via a sort of natural law, that arbitrates the boundaries between them. The will of the Force trumps any and all societal constructions of ethics.

So the people in Star Wars might determine that droids are people, but if the Force says they aren't, then the Force wins that argument.

Is this theocratic? Yes, of course it is. The similar example might be the Evangelical Christian theology saying that 'homosexuality is an abomination and gays aren't people.' We reject that assertion because it seems both ridiculous in the face of the evidence and requires the divine to be unnecessarily cruel, but that could, somehow, actually be God's plan, in which case the Evangelicals are right and we're wrong.

In Star Wars all the weight of the evidence says that the Force does not consider droids (or does not consider 99.99999% of droids) to be the same sort of intelligence, and thereby deserving of the same sort of universal rights, as organic sapient beings. So either we have to except that the Force is cruel and awful and every ethical lesson Star Wars is trying to teach is thereby valueless - which effectively is for all people of conscience to abandon the setting - or we must try and figure out why the Force has taken this stand.

Because I love Star Wars, I'm attempting to do the latter. The copying example I gave above if the best evidence I can think of, a divide based upon the principle of uniqueness. Essentially: organic sentients each possess a unique intelligence, a personhood that is separate from all other beings, it's own singular, and eternal, presence in the Force. Droid intelligences, with the currently singular exception of I-5YQ, do not possess this trait.

 

Well, my current rationalization is that most of the writers haven't had the guts, skill, or interest to tackle such a complex issue, or they themselves think so little of droid characters that they don't see anything wrong with how droids are usually treated, so why would the characters they are writing (Denning). Aaron Allston has come the closest to examining this so far as I can remember, as he usually highlights the bonds that develop between a pilot and their astromech, and Grey Keyes also covered it. Both wrote some of my favorite scenes in the NJO: C-3P0's conversation with Lando's YVH 1-1A bodyguard (a character I really wish would appear again, he was awesome) on the nature of existence, and Dorsk 82's attempt to save a large number of droids from destruction. When one of the droids asks why, he gives a perfect answer: "Because I am a Jedi and I can. You don't deserve destruction." And if they don't deserve destruction, how can memory wipes ever be justified, as they destroy everything about that droid but its functions? How could restraining bolts?

 

So if the Republic and the Jedi had come out the other side of the Clone Wars intact, you think the Jedi would have supported treating the clone veterans like property?

I can't agree with you there.

We're talking about a galactic society that has been a-okay with treating droids as property for twenty five thousand years.

The only way it would make sense to change that status quo would be to reveal that the criterion by which droids have been deemed "property" for all that time was mistaken. Not that the otherwise hyper-advanced galaxy was just too dumb to develop a way to test for sapience over the long millennia, or too evil to care.

No, but they have been advisors to the Galactic Republic for almost its entire existence.

Republic: Hey, uh, all these droids can pass the "Perfect Sapience Test". Are they really thinking, conscious beings? Are we horribly evil slavers?

Jedi: Well... we don't sense anything in there. It's empty. And there can be no Life without the Force so... I guess not?

Republic: Okay, cool, that best serves our interests anyway. And it'll be good to throw in the faces of the droids' rights groups.

Oh, come off it. Slavery was already illegal in the Republic (supposedly), and the Jedi had no authority beyond its borders. Qui-Gon isn't walking around Tattooine thinking, "Hey, this slavery thing is super", he just knows the limits of what he can do.

Contrast with the Jedi having absolutely no problem treating droids like property, themselves.

 

Jello is largely talking from an IU perspective. The Force, such as it is, has no real meaning to 99.99 percent of beings in the galaxy. It has meaning to us as the reader because we get inserted into the stories with the exceptional beings.

Just because Jedi(in the case of Jax Pavan) can not read the Force signature of a droid, doesn't mean that it isn't there. And how many real characters have attached themselves to droids, or other non living material, to further their lives? Callista comes to mind right away. Nichos Marr? There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to this discussion.

Or, being that this is fiction and rules only apply so far as the authors that make them would like them to, maybe Droids have developed their own kind of sentience seperate from the Force.

"Freedom is the right of all Sentient beings" - Optimus Prime. The only limit is the imagination.

Your changing the discussion to what ifs. If the Jedi are willing to look the other way with living creatures, they are certainly willing to do so when it comes to droids that they may or may not be able to identify in the Force. Just like everyone else, the Jedi are flawed. To give them absolute say on what is sentient and what is not is not something I'd be comfortable with.

What if, in the 25,000 years of the Republic droids have begun to evolve and achieve sentience? How about 100,000 years?

 

Again, how many Jedi slavers are there? How many own droids?

Look, I am absolutely fine with the idea that the Republic and Jedi were simply ignorant for 25,000 years. But what you (and Jello) are pushing for here is a situation where they were either stupid, or outright evil. That is unacceptable to me.

Without the spiritual dimension having been taken into account, droids are so obviously alive that 25,000 years of treating them like property makes no sense whatsoever. You couldn't justify even a thousand years of something like that.

 

Yes, but what good comes out of suggesting a society should deliberately take an ethical position that is counter to the one we know the Force has revealed as correct?

Should society tear itself apart over the droid issue because those who reject the view-point of the Force-users say droids are people while the Force-users and their friends say no they aren't? That's just a recipe for chaos.

Besides as Ulicus has noted, the Jedi and other Force users (who tend to hold positions of moral authority in all Star Wars societies) have long had vast ethical influence in the culture. Laws and rights are not secured in a vacuum based on theory alone - they exist within the cultures that produce them and largely express those cultural values. For centuries Western society rejected outright the possibility of gay marriage, now it is on the cusp of allowing it to all - the legal underpinnings never changed, but their interpretation through the culture did change. In the meantime, religious views on the subject did not change.

The thing is, in the real world secular law trumps religious law. We have chosen, as a liberal society, to believe that various interpretations of what God (by many names) wants is not the last word. In Star Wars this is not the case. The Force has the last word, though still subject to interpretation.

This is one of the fundamental tenants of fantasy that is often hard to process, because it runs counter to the society most modern fantasy fans were raised in, and stridently against the messages of tolerance that we have come to believe.

The Callista verus Nichos Marr case is actually very illustrative of the general difference between how droid intelligence functions compared to organic intelligence. Callista, as a person, begins life in one organic body, transfers herself to a machine, and then later on enters another organic body. However, there is only one Callista. She is a singular, completely unique entity whose existence is a part of the Force. Nichos Marr began life as a human, and then he died of disease. Cray Mingla attempted to transfer his consciousness to a droid built in a copy of his image but failed. The droid, though fully capable of mimicking Marr's mannerisms was simply a droid, and was not unique. That consciousness could have been copied repeatedly.

The copying differentiation is important: Luke Skywalker could, if he wished, go out and buy a bunch of empty R2-unit shells with clean processors. He could then copy R2-D2 into as many of them as he wished, and not a single one of these new copies would believe it wasn't the original R2-D2 unless it was programmed to realize this.

If you try to do this with organics the Force rebels against the concept and forces differentiation between the entities by inflicting mental changes (which manifest as madness in most cases) on the new clones.

As a minor aside: when you look at Star Wars consciousness in this way, it becomes obvious why Abeloth, who had the power to absorb and consume the essence of others, was so horrific - she could kill someone in a way far more total than putting blaster bolts through them ever could.

 

the way I se it is that the problem in many ways is that it is probably rather hard to tell when a droid is truly sentient and not just a artificial intelligence with a capability for a personality and a adaptive programming that gives it an illusion of sentiency.

I would say that most droid are non-sentient but has been given a personality to help interacting with people and it weary easy to mistake an intelligence with a personality for sentient.

The question is then: When do a droid became more than just the sum of his programming and became truly sentient?

 

Mechalich, you had me briefly on this one, but I parted ways with you on the matter of the Force being an objective moral arbiter. Even if droids definitively did not have, and were incapable of having, souls in the Force sense of the word, the conflation of a soul with personhood, as Jello put it, is a subjective one--the Force has no empirical intent one way or the other, balance and prophecy and such notwithstanding, so the fact that a droid doesn't exist in the Force, empirical though it may be, only pertains to said droid's legal rights to the extent that society decides it should. Jedi can sense animals in the Force, after all; that doesn't mean they're sentient.

Since cloning has started to encroach on this discussion, I wonder how the galaxy feels about the "personhood" of Khommites. Are they different than, say, the GAR in legal terms because they're what you might call self-induced clones rather than clones ordered off an assembly line? If Lenny 79 shoots Lenny 78 in the head, has he committed murder, or a haircut?

 

It is more a situation of not believing in their word as the absolute truth on a subject. It is not about making the Jedi the bad guys, it is about contemplating the possibility that the Jedi do not know as much as they think they do.

I won't speak for Jello, but that is not what I'm saying at all. Droids simply might not fit a definition of life the Jedi understand, or can sense.

Where is that line drawn though? When did some droids become sentient? What you seem to be looking for is a balck and white answer, yes or no - I think it might be a fair amount more complex than that.

The Essential Guide to Characters does not support your views of Nichos Gray. But my knowledge of him isn't good for certain.

"Nichos Marr & Cray died in the violent explosion that ripped apart the Eye of Palpatine. In their shared death, they were together once again, alive in the Force."

The society would be turned on its head, thats for sure. Again though, you are taking the word of the Jedi that the will of the Force is that droids are not self aware. The will of the Force is a wonky thing at best, misinterpreted and misunderstood by the Jedi themselves over and over again.

And I would argue that the Force is completely open to interpretation. As a society, those in a galaxy far, far away may not simply have come to the same conclusion we have as yet, but I would be hard pressed to believe that the society as a whole believes that the Force = Devine will.