Saga Is there a reason for the anti-droid racism?

Because it's all programming.

Still limited to their programming.

So can computers.

"If droids could think there would be none of us here, would there?" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi, Attack of the Clones

No, it isn't.

Because those "wider points" are based on false premisses, like saying that the only things that separate droids from living beings is their synthetic material and restraining bolts.

Seriously?

 

Please note that Threepio's ill-fated colleague on Hoth held the same rank (judging by his red rank dots) as the human "Captain" Cassian Andor in the upcoming Rogue One film.

So if a droid can hold a military rank and be the superior officer to other humans, what does that tell us?

 

Seriously. It's speculative fiction, not real,

But the moral points stand.

 

That we can count on the efficiency of his programmed abilities. Just like computers can do certain tasks better than hundreds of humans.

 

It was resentment after the clone wars.

 

Isn't 3P0 reason enough for anti-droid bias? Just ask Han Solo; he'll explain it to you.

 

I guess Lucas was thinking about civil rights when he wrote the cantina scene.

 

As someone posted, I think originally GL did not thought it through, or maybe he did, but what was his vision regarding the rights of droids and if they're considered alive or not in GFFA.

As for torture, you just have to look at Jabba's palace. They had specific dungeons and torture machines for droids.

But it's inconsistent, or it depends on the person. Anakin, Luke seem very attached to droids, while Padme, Leia, Obi-wan only see them as tools that will break at the most inopportune time and can be sent to potential destruction without so much as breaking a sweat. Padme's astromechs in the ship blockade runner. Obiwan's R4 and R2 units from the jedi fighters. Leia is worried for 3PO in Bespin but then she's ok with sending it to Tatooine and other dangerous missions.

In ANH the droids are treated like "slaves" in Tatooine by the Jawas. They capture them, put them in shackles and sell them to "new masters". The Lars see them as farm equipment. So does Han.

Droids are used as Doctors and helpers to biological entities and they're also used as weapons and bounty hunters IG-88 (does he do it for the money?, was he programmed by a maker to be an assassin droid?).

There doesn't seem to be a concept similar to the three laws in the GFFA either. Robots kill directly or by their actions cause the death of other robots or biological entities. They also go beyond their programming and do other things without the benefit of a SW upgrade.

Computer systems seem very open and fragile as R2 and other astromechs seem to have no problem accessing files, and hacking to any network (imperial or otherwise). Yet we don't see any attempts to hack an R2 or other droid. The closest we get is when 3PO's head gets put in the body of a battle droid. I believe battle droids are intentionally not given a high level AI (they're intentionally programmed to be dumb), so that they don't turn on their masters/ are easily disabled if they do. It's interesting that though R2 can hack any system it doesn't hack the network that runs the battle droids from the trade federation. Again many inconsistencies.

R2 is able to fix a droid, but is he able to "make" one?, and if a droid makes another droid from his parts (3PO offered to donate his circuits to repair R2 in ANH), do they become relatives?

Again, this is one area that GL choose not to expand but provided many potential avenues to question.

Lastly if the droids in GFFA are sentient, why have they not taken over said GFFA?,

 

The same disregard for droids allowed R2's and 3PO's escape pod to the surface, or the Empire would have shot them down to begin with on the suspicion that any "non life forms" could do some kind of harm.

That ignorance can be a blessing.

 

I believe "I" was merely told to hold my fire because Vader had ordered not to attract unnecessary attention (in the extended script). After their public display of fireworks in the Tatooine sky earlier only crew members trying to evade capture would have been the exception.

 

I'm sure that's what was said at the inquest. How far did Bolvan's explanations and excuses get him?

 

What?

 

Depends on how good he was covering up that this was already escape pod # 2 ("There goes another one"). According to the radio drama Leia had ordered the first one to be jettisoned empty, but I'm not exactly sure.
Commander Praji only reported one escape pod with no life forms aboard jettisoned during fighting. Well, Vader didn't get mad about this, so they probably had received orders not to fire unnecessarily.

 

A droid entering an escape pod will be deactivated, this must equal some kind of death sentence.

Thus, what happened to Threepio at the end of RotS was apparently merely a memory flush, but his personality was kept intact.

Erasure of personalty / A.I. = death sentence

 

Seeing this the other day got me thinking on this point. I would agree that any lingering resentment towards droids seen in the OT may derive from the Clone Wars.

Still, the bartender's comment leaves me puzzled. "We don't serve their kind here." First off, his tone immediately conveys some form of bigotry and/or racism. Second, his choice of words: serve them? What exactly would you be serving them? Why would you be serving them to start with? If droids are seen (and built) primarily as tools then why have any type of service for them? I don't take my hammers and power saws to the local watering pub for service. I would think any kind of service a droid would require would be provided by it's owner rather than by a saloon. (Who pays for this service? The owner? I must really like my droid to go that length.)

The droid dungeon scenes at Jabba's palace are also puzzling. That one droid was spun upside down and had hot plates extended unto it's feet, it clearly responded in pain as a result. If it's all programming why program pain into a droid? For that matter, if they're all interchangeable disposable tools, why not simply blast/scrap the droid instead of going through such measures? (Especially if you're a successful crime lord)

 

"A lot of SF" coming to a particular conclusion on a topic isn't exactly proof of anything. Obviously many of us really want all the likable robotic characters in the stories we tell to be just like us. We really want to dream of the day where we can play God and create a new form of intelligent life to keep us company in this lonely universe. But the truth is we just don't know. At this point, we don't even understand our own, biological consciousness--not at any level that would resolve the philosophical conundrums being pondered here.

But as far as George Lucas is concerned, there is a difference between living beings and machines, and that difference is absolutely central to the story being told:

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/george-lucas-and-the-cult-of-darth-vader-247142/

Now, technically, this doesn't necessarily mean the droids in Star Wars lack any form of consciousness. But it does mean that they're lacking something. They don't have free will. They don't truly understand the difference between right and wrong. They can't hear the Force speaking to them.

That's what is being represented when Anakin is transformed into a robotic being. He is sacrificing his ability to choose between right and wrong in favor of being told what to do and how to act--by Darth Sidious, in his case. Even when he plots against his master, he is still acting according to the way Sidious "programmed" him to be when he remade him into a Sith Lord. That's what Sith ideology, or fascist ideology, or really any ideology is: a program.

At the end of the day, Artoo and Threepio are not that different than Vader--the only difference is that they've been programmed with a more benign, compassionate ideology. But their compassionate natures are not something they've arrived at through a lifetime of experience and learning and struggle, in the way that we see Anakin, Luke, Han Solo, and other human characters do. The droids came with all that stuff built-in--which is a good thing, of course, but it makes them very limited beings, in a spiritual sense. The capacity for evil is also an essential part of what makes us human, and Artoo and Threepio have no such capacity. They each have one set nature, and they literally cannot act contrary to that nature. They can't look inward and reflect on their own being. They can't have an existential crisis. They can never have this moment:



The ability to transcend ideology and think for ourselves is what marks us out as human, for better and worse. It's an ability that allows us to make terrible mistakes, but it's also an ability that allows us to grow and become something totally new. Luke is a better person precisely because he knows what it is to be Darth Vader. On the other hand, C-3PO can never know what it is to be anything other than C-3PO.

Whatever real intelligent robots would actually be like, we don't and can't know, at least not yet. But this is the thematic role they play in the Star Wars films.

Personally, I suspect droids really do suffer. In a way, they're "made to suffer," as Threepio laments. Each droid is programmed with a specific purpose, a specific goal in life that never changes. They can't grow or change or learn to accept the perpetual uncertainties and disappointments which define life. For as long as they exist, they can never stop striving for a contentment that will never come.

By design, droids are like unenlightened humans. There's no way for them to deal with the existential conflict that exists between what they wish to be and what they actually are. For example, C-3PO is a protocol droid, designed for duties related to translation, etiquette, and protocol. But the world wasn't designed for the purpose of conforming to the needs of protocol droids. As the events of the Star Wars films attest, the world is actually quite a harsh and unforgiving place for protocol droids. But C-3PO is a protocol droid nevertheless, and can be nothing else. It's not something he can ever let go of, because that's literally all there is to him. He's permanently attached to that identity.

I think that's what that line about suffering is meant to communicate. C-3PO is us as we tend to falsely perceive ourselves: in a state of permanent suffering, left to aimlessly wander in an existential desert. But unlike us, his suffering really is inescapable. He was literally "made to suffer."

Droids are imperfect simulacra. They're images of humanity, designed by humans to resemble humans as humans see themselves. Humans aren't gods, so when we attempt to create beings in our own image, we inevitably fail. Our understanding of the nature of our own existence is, tragically, too limited.

 

Yes, there is. Dune.

 

Droids aren't a race but machines, made by humans or other creatures. They may be programmed to resemble humans, but they are still MACHINES, assembled in factories or by hand or whatever, out of plastic and metal etc. They are NOT creatures, they did not grow, they were built, period. So the term "racism" simply doesn't apply. Oh, I guess I'm being racist and cruel myself when I shut down my computer without knowing if it wants to be shut down.

 

Droids are artificial intelligences. Not quite the same thing as regular computers.

 

It would be a bit cruel to cause pain to a machine if a machine could feel pain.

 

First, two things from really OLD EU and I could mis-remember or be wrong as I don't know the EU all that well and this was years ago when I heard about these.

1. The Empire was apparently into "droid abuse", that was listed as one of their crimes.

2. Wiping the memory of droids. Many of the droids in SW, if they spend time with "humans", as in sentient, sapient species not just human beings, they learn some mannerism and become more "human" as a result.
In order to prevent this, that is one of the reasons why droids have their memories wiped regularly.
So steps are taken in order for droids to "grow" too much.

About droids never growing beyond their programming and all that.
Take R2, he is just an astro-mech droid and yet he is able to do a lot of various things. Some that would fall outside his basic function.
Ex, take how he manipulates Luke in ANH. He needs Luke to remove the restraining-bolt in order for him to be able to leave.
He heard Luke talk about the rebels and being curious about battles so R2 decides to show some of Leia's message in order to get Luke curious. And then he lies in order to get Luke to remove the bolt.
Possibly C3PO could also be lying as he mentioned the Princess earlier and yet seems that he does not recognize Leia here.
C3PO is fairly flexible, he protests about pretending to be a God but eventually accepts the role.
And C3PO can at times be fairly, for lack of a better word, "smooth". Taken when he talks to Owen in ANH.
He is doing his best to "sell" himself and make himself seem useful to Owen so that Owen will buy him.

Lastly about Anakin/Vader becoming more evil once he becomes more mechanical.
First there are a lot of very evil people like Tarkin, Sidious, Dooku that are fully human.
And Anakin embraced evil when he was human, well he had lost an arm.
Secondly, Obi-Wan says that "He is more machine now, twisted and evil." But I think RotJ makes the point that Obi-Wan is wrong. Anakin isn't gone, there is still good in him.
He can still choose.

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

There are lot of instances in the films where an equivalence is clearly being drawn between the way people treat droids and the way people treat oppressed minorities in the real world. It's pretty hard to misinterpret a guy shouting "We don't serve your kind here!" at Threepio as anything other than a reference to black citizens being kicked out of dining establishments in the pre-Civil Rights era.

So Lucas is drawing those things to mind with the droids. But he's also employing the droids as representatives of the technological theme, which in the Star Wars films has to do with the ways that technology is fundamentally different than humanity and the natural world. So you could argue Lucas is kind of having it both ways.

In any case, cruelty to droids is discouraged by the films. Characters who treat droids with compassion and respect, like Luke and Anakin Skywalker, are portrayed positively for doing so. At the same time, this compassion and respect doesn't include any notions of mass droid emancipation, because that wouldn't make any sense. Droids exist to serve man. C-3PO doesn't want to be "free." The very concept wouldn't have any meaning for a droid. He just wants to do the job he was built and programmed to perform, and to be appreciated for it.

His personality is very person-like in many ways, but he isn't an actual person. He isn't wired like a person. One of the great running jokes of the character is that, despite being specifically programmed to understand humans, he is perpetually incapable of comprehending anything that strays beyond the most basic human behavior. Han Solo, for instance, is an enigma to him, because Han Solo is driven by instinct rather than by logic--but Threepio has no instincts. This is also why Threepio is so often paired up with Chewbacca, and why Threepio says he finds "that Jar Jar creature" to be "rather odd" in The Phantom Menace. It's all to display the contrast between the instinctual man of nature and the logical man of technology.

Where a logic-based character like Threepio differs from one like Mr. Spock is in his level of neuroticism. Threepio's insistence on fitting an illogical world into a strict matrix of logic actually renders him even more anxious and emotionally unstable than someone like Han Solo, who routinely ignores the mathematical odds and refuses to think himself to death.

Of course then we have Artoo, an extremely inhuman-looking robot who is even more aligned with the technological world than Threepio, and yet somehow manages to understand humans better than Threepio does. Such is the enigma of R2-D2.

 

"Equivalences", sure, we see that in the Alien films, 2001, Silent Running, even Blade Runner (where the replicants are clearly shown NOT to be robots), I Robot, even Bicentennial Man and AI, or let's say Transformers (which I don't like)...... In all those movies robots are STILL robots, no matter how much human "emotion" is programmed into them. They are MACHINES - with the exception of Blade Runner - where replicants are CLONES (with possibly REAL human emotions), and their only purpose is to fulfill a role and serve humans. I don't see SW as being any different. Sure, droids are made to be "cute" (but let's not forget the battle droids of the PT), but THEY STILL ARE MACHINES. Even Terminator 2, where Arnie is given some humane and redeeming qualities, it's still only programming, which he is a prisoner to (he says so himself), no matter how humane and understanding he may be at times.

I don't think so at all! Blacks are also humans who have the same needs/rights as whites. But droids ARE MACHINES, they don't need liquor, food or other entertainment. I'm sure there were stations in Mos Eisley for droids where they got proper maintenance. Besides the bartender wasn't just rude to the droids but grumpy towards Luke and other customers as well. Just a grumpy guy, which doesn't necessarily make him "racist". Also, he was just an employee following the management's policy. Personally, he couldn't have cared less.

 

Well I can think of two possible explanations to the difference between R2 and C3PO.
1. Memory wipes. We know that C3PO had his memory wiped at least once. R2 was not as far as we know. So all of C3PO's "progress" or "experience" was erased and he was brought back to "level one" so to speak.
R2 kept his memories and kept growing.

2. C3PO is programmed with human behavior but as you say, humans don't always behave according to some norm nor do all humans act the same.
So C3PO is programmed and thus expects certain behavior but when faced with behavior that does not fit, he gets confused. His program says one thing, the actual behavior says another.
Humans can fall into this trap as well, like for example thinking in stereotypes. That all people from a certain country or region of a country acts a certain way. And so when they interact with those people and they don't act according to this stereotype, they can get confused.

R2 on the other hand is likely not programmed with all sorts of human behavior.
Instead he has observed humans and built his own understanding of how humans act.
So experience vs book knowledge.

The replicants in Blade Runner were not programmed with emotions, they developed them by themselves.
The new thing was this implant childhood memories in order to give the replicants a foundation of sorts.
To make them less likely to rebel.

As for T2, they have chip that is a learning computer, but this chip that the is pre-set to read only, so their ability to learn is limited. In the SE of the film, they flip this switch and so Arnold is able to learn more and grow.
In the end he understands why humans cry but he can not do this himself.

Lastly, take Mr Data in TNG.
They have a full episode, "Measure of a man" where Data's legal status is debated. Is he just a machine and thus property or is he in some measure "alive"?
The requisites for life in that instance was intelligence, sentience and self-awareness.
And they concluded that Data could qualify.

Another fairly good episode is "The most toys" where Data is faced with a person that he can not reason with and that he can not subdue without harm. So he resolves to kill him. Data could still know what an outrage was even without having emotions.

As for the ANH scene, given the time-period, I think the line was done in reference to how blacks had been treated not all that long ago.
But I don't think Lucas saw droids as black people.

Bye.
Old Stoneface