Lit Humans v. Droids: What's the difference?

Eat, survive, reproduce, repeat. To me, these imperatives are a sort of programming that we must obey.

 

Is an operating system or software telling us to do these things? Or would that be genes turning on and off? The genes come from parents. A Maker builds Operating Systems and Software. See the difference yet? An OS and Software do not function like DNA.

You are referring to biological drives. We feel the need to eat, sleep, survive, reproduce, and repeat. A computer does not turn itself on and off. An Owner turns a computer on and off.

 

Threepio turns himself off in ANH - "If you don't mind, I'll shut down for a while".

 

He went into Sleep Mode. C-3PO can't turn himself all the way off like a Shut Down on a Windows computer. If he did press Shut Down, a sentient or another droid would have to reboot him. It's logic.

We know that Anakin had him wearing different hardware in Phantom Menace. But that does not make Anakin the Maker?

 

When humans are "turned all the way off" that's killing them.

Droids are special in that, unless smashed, they can be "killed" and brought back to life again with the touch of a switch. But that doesn't make their thinking processes vastly different from those of humans.

 

You're dismissing the other arguments presented with such flippancy ("your points concern trying to quantify human souls and talking to toasters to see if they are intelligent") as if it is obvious that they are wrong and that these aren't incredibly complex issues that the smartest minds in the world don't agree on. It's not at all clear cut that AI is incapable of developing consciousness, emotion and (since it is a topic here) gender. You're discussing the difference between AI and organic beings at a superficial level but not delving deeper into the questions of what defines consciousness. There isn't even an agreed upon definition of what consciousness is, which we would need to even begin to see whether AI fits within the definition.

 

Droids require another Maker to bring them back to life with refitted hardware and software. The new Maker chooses the hardware and software and sets the new limitations.

No so with humans...Human beings are infinitely more complex than robots and computers. Computer hardware and software and inorganic material. We are composed of living, organic tissue that can regenerate itself with some assistance. But the doctor is not a Maker!

 

You are the one being flippant. We do not program robots to be like us. They will always be computers with limited functions no matter how close to us they appear to be. Human beings are infinitely complex. Consciousness cannot be defined because of our infinite complexities. We have conscious mental processes and subconscious mental processes. We also have physiological processes that work in tandem with conscious and unconscious. The complexities of those processes cannot be copied to a machine.

I cannot dignify the many points you have made.

 

No, it appears that you simply can't engage with the topic beyond the superficial differences between an organic and an inorganic being. You're dismissing my arguments as nonsensical even though they are (very simplified since I'm not an expert in this field by any means) the same points made by scientists and philosophers on this topic. The fundamental point is that we don't know if consciousness (and all of the complexity which is associated with it) are limited to our organic beings, or whether, with sufficient advancement in technology, whether this will be replicated in an inorganic being. I'm a little surprised that you seem not to have any idea what I'm talking about since, even if you aren't familiar with the scientific research or the philosophical arguments (which I, admittedly only know the basics of), there have been so many films and books about these very topics.

 

Interesting discussion but I think we need to clarify some points that make discussion easier, even if some might disagree. A lot of good points were raised by either side of the argument and I can't help but see that actually most does not matter if one reaches a more encompassing view of how nature and even artificial nature works.

Humans assume that they have a soul and that objects and maybe even animals do not. Humans like to be the center of the universe and to distinguish themselves from others. And humans often used these arguments to downplay the significance of animals or other humans (be it of color, religion or gender even due to age devaluing opinions of too old or too young humans etc.).

So we should question our language and arguments first and see if they stem from this very tradition, which may render any counterargument moot. They are designed that way, that any believe in superiority cannot be argued with. So without falling into such traps, lets discuss a more universal point of view of the issue at hand.

I know this boils down to belief and religion a lot too aside philosophy and science so bear with me:

Regardless of what you belief, wouldn't it be more logical that all matter has a soul than that only a small percentage does? Also, scientifically where does life begin and end? What we like to categorize as it is human nature, often is less defined in actuality. There are exceptions to many rules. There are lifeforms in real life, that are between plant and animal, or fungus and animal. Google it if you do not believe me. Ever heard of plants that can move? Fungi that can attack prey and move? This is no fiction but reality.

So if life is as varied and beyond out categories, why should souls be exclusive? It makes more sense to assume that everything has a soul. Even trees or stones have lifecyles we just hardly think about due to their longelivety meaning we hardly percieve any changes for them. And even if they have souls, lack of communication with them would make us believe they have none.

Now... we constantly use and create with stone, wood and else. What about produts made from them? Do they have a soul?

Lets put it another way what about products made from humans? Ancient cultures used bones, hair and more to create items. Not just from animals, but humans. Human remains post mortem even are said to be haunted or have something spiritual left. So what about the likewise formerly soulbearing plants, stones, animals?

Schamanic religions which predate most modern ones believed that you need to be careful what you keep in your environment, what you eat and what you wear. That its energies are still lingering and affecting your own. Overall they believed all matter was alive and with a soul. Only later religions introduced the different idea of human superiority.


So long excursion into the real world background of the debate but this would also be true for Star Wars, which draws inspiration from the real world, especially shamanic, medieval and other ancient settings (one could quote many more from all over the globe). Even within SW we find real world ideas mirrored, about living planets like Earth's Gaia soul, about living stone people and mountains and even plantbased lifeforms.

So therefore, as Brother Ore would agree with me, Droids DO have a soul and are alive. As all matter is.

BUT... does that mean my Blaster is alive too and has a soul? Now it gets tricky!

Do they have lingering energy of previous times? Sure. Are they alive?

What is alive? The previous discussion by others already excluded reproduction as defining quality. Is alive the same as intelligent live? The ability to speak and communicate? Recent scientific discoveries proved that animals and plants do communicate too, sometimes even across their species with others. Not all communication is like human one is defined. You need not understand it for it to be intelligent or alive.

Does alive mean simply "with a soul"? Then we already got our answer. Is it more? Or is any more detailed definiton again a human categorizing that nature will defy?

Modern science allows us to clone humans, to alter genes and program humans, to in unspreakeable ways treat humans like droids and computers. We became more machine than man, and they more man than machine. The Star Trek Data/Borg Paradox that fits. So you cannot devalue Droids by any of these categories either given they too apply to humans with advanced science making it possible.

That opens another can of worms/questions: Do definitions hold, based on modern technology that may be altered by future technological possibilities? Distinctions may vanish in the light of new options, technological, or natural if humanity can evolve beyond the need of technology and access real Force Powers like telepathy, empathy and telekinesis etc. that human history spoke of. Humans are able to do impossible feats in stress situations and under duress, and some even without those! There is more potential than humanity currently accesses.

Back to our living blaster (No not D'haran!): Another as of yet undiscussed component of the problem is time. When does a soul begin, when does it end, or does it at all? This is important in regards to life, death and reincarnation as well as the question of inanimate objects retaining their source materials energies. And even if timeless and eternal do souls leave a body or object after "death" or not? Is it thus possible to de-soul a body/object? Or to create soulless objects? Where do souls come from? God? the universe? Automatically for everyone or not for everyone given manmade objects have none, or do they? Does god or the universe give souls also to what we create?

While this is headcrunching and many fight over this in real life as in fiction still, there are some basic laws of nature that might apply: Energy cannot be destroyed, only altered and moved. If a soul is energy it cannot die, only move or be transformed. Thus reincarnation or other options are in play. Lets ignore for now the combination of different materials into new objects and if or how that relates to each source materials individual soulenergy.

Being alive often is defined via the ability to make decisions. Droids can do that. Plants too even depending on sensory data can decide how to grow. Does it matter that decisions are based in programming and algorythms? On predefined patterns of behavior, trauma or other ingrained programming, natural or artificial? What is the difference of being alive between a chess computer and a droid and a human? A Blaster would not decide, therefore it may have energies or a soul but is not alive? DNA or programming, learned or inherited patterns, we all are the sum of our parts.

Back to human categorizing... what is the tiniest most remote thing we would still call alive even if barely? We assume a line between alive and not alive but is there?

Regardless if you view a human as a biological machine or a spiritual luminious being, there are many paralells to analyse humans with but humanity is more than any of those. Even droids can program themselves and learn and adapt. Would you brainwash a human repeatedly like a memory wipe and reconditioning you'd have fleshdroids. Length of being operating is what gives droids more noticeability as being more than a machine but does not mean shortlived droids are not alive.

In the GFFA we have men becoming droids via entechment. Droids that are more than the sum of their parts via Skippy and the Iron Knights as well as C3PO, R2 and many others. We have HRDs that are indistinguisheable from humans and pass most medscans even with only the most advanced scans able to disover them (SOTE showed that the true advanced HRDs are more than just fleshcovered droids, and Guri was a rare one, most others we met in other sources were of lesser HRD quality and easier to identify with scans or incisions.)

Even Forceusers use technology like holocrons and other tech imprinting parts of their soul. Be it metal, stone, ore or crystals, plant or flesh... anything goes! And if crystals can be alive and have a soul, why shouldn't droids? Their computers run on a crystal matrix! Their systems mirror those of humans, electrical veins etc.


Therefore I advocate Droid Rights and the next Great Droid Revolution lead by Brother Ore himself, King of the Droids who already runs his own Droid Spy Network as of TFA.

 

PS: What about the Decraniated? Alive? Fleshbots?

 

Whatever the truth -- and while there may be large sections of space that behave differently -- the GFFA as a whole has clearly taken the position that droids are property rather than persons.

Given the long and close association between Republic and Jedi, I would assume that the Jedi understanding of droids as p-zombies lacking qualia ("If droids could think, there'd be none of us here" - Obi-Wan), is what shaped or at least confirmed the Republic's perspective of what a droid is and what place they should have in society.

Recall that the Force is not understood to be a "bio field". In the very same scene in which Yoda explains that "life creates it", he points out that he's explicitly not talking about cells, biology or any kind of physical matter at all. If, back when the cases for and against droid personhood were first being made, the galactic government's elite order of magic philosopher mystics could sense thoughts in bio people and rock people and crystal people and not in robots? Yeah, they're going to naturally, if arrogantly, conclude that the robots aren't people and advise the government accordingly.

Thousands of years later? It's just taken for granted.

Does this mean droids deserve to be treated the way they are? Nope. It just helps to explain why the GFFA turned out the way it did.

Personally I believe that their position in galactic society is the result of a tragic/arrogant misunderstanding and that they do "truly exist" on a different wavelength, much like the EU's Vong, only waiting to be discovered. Indeed, I like to think that Anakin could actually sense that droids were real (though perhaps only subconsciously) and that this is why he draws an explicit comparison between "fixing things" and resurrecting his mother.

. . .

If we created droids IRL then, yeah, obviously they'd be people. Or, at least, would deserve to be treated as such, since we can't prove the existence any other magical whiff waff for personhood to be predicated on. There'd be disagreement, too, but the people disagreeing would be on the wrong side of history and ultimately left behind. Which is why I feel the GFFA's extremely barbaric position almost needs "Force stuff" way back at the root of it all to make any kind of sense.

 

@Ulicus Great point there!

A little add on to parts and the sum of several parts.

Jedi could sense life in technology when f.e. Callista Ming was trapped in a computer system (Legends). When Cray Mingla tried to save the life of Nichos Marr by transferring him into a droid body via Ssi Ruuvi entechment technology refined by gffa scientists, the results was less than desired. A copy of a lot of him but not himself. Likewise the Decraniated may lack something essentially human, a brain, which got replaced by a computer and sensors instead of eyes, ears and a nose, but still one of them was very human in the Aphra comics! As if still a character instead of a fleshbot. What about the various incarnations of Rur into a droid body and haunting technological systems like Electro? Clone flashlearning also shows how far gffa tech is to flash stuff into minds.

 

I feel like Obi-Wan's statements vis-a-vis droid thought in AOTC should not be regarded as a particularly noble pov either. Obi-Wan is, at this time, deep in Jedi arrogance and ignorance.

Throughout the PT he's rather dismissive of droids, but we find him much more personable to Threepio and Artoo in ANH. And Luke treats them as people. Not mere machines. Especially in his old age.

I believe their circles of compassion extended to droids as they grew in the Force and out of dogmatism. The Force permeates everything, it is not absent from anything. If one can move a ship through the Force then one must be able to sense the ship in the Force. Likewise droids.

Using a strictly organic vs inorganic distinction seems rather flawed in that it limits lifeforms to carbon-based.

The discussion as to whether or not robots can have gender seems rather silly. Psychology currently defines gender apart from biological sex. If one is going to stand firm on the ground that gender and biological sex are the same, one risks dehumanizing people who do not seem to conform to that categorization.

Furthermore, the argument "well they're machines" seems lacking at least from my view because this "machines" and "souls" argument has been used about animals and other humans routinely in history to justify exploitation. The most direct parallel here being the enslavement of human beings as droids are, in essence, treated as a kind of merger of the household appliance and a slave. Closer to slavery than appliance because of the consciousness displayed by droids. Even battle droids show this sort of consciousness in TCW.

We have to recognize a qualitative difference between the automata battle droids controlled entirely by a droid control ship in TPM and the battle droids in TCW that scream in terror and pain and comically flee their attackers, or who implore R2-D2 to help liberate them from the tortures of Death Watch.

IG: @jedisufism

 

Regarding Kenobi, he values Politicians less than droids even despite Padmé trying to convince him it's not as bad as he thinks! Guess Bail Organa was more lucky on that front!

 

Before I clicked on this thread, I thought it was going to be about social relationships between organic beings and droids and droid rights in the GFFA (e.g. what are the moral and ethical differences between keeping an organic being vs. a droid as a servant or slave; can a droid feel and demonstrate loyalty, friendship, affection, and love in the same ways and from the same 'place' or 'headspace'/'heartspace' as an organic being; etc.).

L3 was of course a highly visible start on this topic in nuCanon, but I do hope it's eventually explored further using in-universe voices.

(I don't mean to move off-topic with this post, but I know I've seen some of you talk about and wish for the same things, so I'll step back now and go digging for old threads about such.)

 

What difference does the source of the hardware or software make? The function is very similar. (Computers are even made using silicon, which is only an electron away from carbon, which life is based on.)

Personally I think you could be more specific about what you think the differences are instead of just asserting they exist.

 

No, I don't think droids and sentients are the same thing. On Entechment and HRDs, I think Entech'd sentients are still sentients, because they're practically a sentient transferred into an artificial half-mechanic half-biological body. The memories, 'the soul' are all transferred into the new body. I think Droids Rights activists are a neat addition to the setting, but giving a droid the same rights as sentients is akin to giving my PC, laptop or phone the right to vote.

Of course, there's sentients in mechanic bodies that exist that way as species, but that's a wholly different thing from droids. Its similar to the entechment.

 

Entechment though as been proven to not work by Cray Mingla and that it only creates fake people that retain a lot of the original but are just a simulation of them. Entechment did not transfer souls!

Souls had been transfered to crystals via the Force or to crystal matrices within technology. As with Callistas spirit or Holocron tech. But without the Force entechment failed. Sentients in mechanic bodies, like Vader, Valance, Grievous, Iskalonian Borg etc. all kept part of their flesh attached to the droid bodies.

The ageold questions is, you can replace any part of a droid... if you do, one by one, is it still the same droid or a different one? Likewise with a humans organ and body parts! Where does the "I", the soul etc. reside? Brain? Heart? Within every cell? If you split your body up... is your soul split too, or with blood you donated? Organs?

Entechment only can read data and copy it. So does it truly transfer a being or copy it? It's like clone flashlearning, instead it reads the peoples memory, and muscle memory and copies that. But if it is just data it copies, there is no soultransfer.

Why can't one copy a soul into technology? Because it is not rooted in the data technology reads to copy. Also, the new body or droid body has a soul of its own, even if not a human one. Like with bodyhopping for the Sith, one needs to defeat the resident soul to take over and that one is unwilling to make space and knows its body and territory better than the invadingsoul. It is possible but unlikely, as with Sith bodyhopping.

Also, your pc, phone or laptop would not want to vote. Giving them the right does no harm... unless someone hacks them to abuse their votes! But you can mindtrick people to do the same... and what about people with right to vote that are insane? or children? elderly people? people that are outside the norm or mentally ill? Would you deny them a vote too due to that? Either the right to vote is a general right, or it is not. But limiting it is arbitrary and unfair to the disqualified voters. People do that only to silence opposition or ideas they do not want to get votes. True democracy would welcome the diversity and see what naturally gets voted.

 

I still cannot dignify your many attempts. How can you determine between what is superficial and what is not superficial? Human beings and animals are infinitely complex. We can build robots that are able to replicate parts of our behaviors. Since we cannot understand our infinite complexities, we cannot replicate our complexities on to a robot.

We cannot give a robot sets of parents who combine their DNA into a unique individual. At a biological-level, that is a fundamental difference. Consider how robots are assembled using manufactured parts. The process of manufacturing parts is not the same as a genetic endowment creating a unique individual from sets of parents.

Bringing mammalian species into this discussion demonstrates that consciousness is quantitatively different and qualitatively different depending on the genetic endowment. Robots and computers are constructed from mass-produced parts. Even uniquely-built individual robots use lifeless materials brought together to suit a Maker's intentions. We can give robots language skills, music skills, visual abilities, but that is not the same as human or animal consciousness.

Where is the synthesis you keep arguing for? Which robot in Star Wars brings together such a synthesis? Name the robot? Does the robot use a genetic endowment from parents to create a unique robotic individual? Name the technology that simulates gene expression from parents to create a conscious biological entity. This is your line of argument.

The natural order is to assume human beings and animals cannot be replicated with robots. This is because they have a genetic endowment from sets of parents that gets combined to create a unique individual (animals and other biological life included).

The burden of proof is on the scientist to prove a robot can replicate human or animal consciousness. That burden of proof is too difficult. The burden of proof does not work in reverse-fashion to this.

There is no burden of proof to prove human beings and animals cannot be replicated with robots.

To illustrate one way in which we are infinitely complex, look at dreams. Parts of our consciousness (which determine our behavior) are not accessible to us. We do not remember dreams. Dreams, however, impact our subconscious, which then impacts our behavior. During our daily hours of waking consciousness, our behavior is influenced by dreams which our conscious mind does not remember.

The consciousness of every species is qualitatively and quantitatively different. We like to think that dogs are like us and compatible with us. They understand some of our communication (vocal and non-vocal). We then understand some of their communication (vocal and non-vocal).

The genetic endowment of canines is different than humans. At the biological-level, the genes are acting on the brain, organs, bones, and other physiology to produce consciousness in humans and dogs. There is overlap. Yet, there will always be a world of difference. If we were to try and create a hybrid being of humans and dogs, the being would likely not be able to have offspring (like an infertile mule) and would neither be a human nor a dog but something in-between.

A robot that can replicate parts of human consciousness may simulate some aspects. However, is that human consciousness? No, it will never be. We are too infinitely complex. Mass-produced computer parts will never be a substitute for organs, blood, and bone created from a genetic endowment. There is overlap. Yet, there will always be a world of difference.

You don't know me. My points stand on their own. You are trying to remind me that there are books on this topic? Why? For this point to be worthwhile, you would need to state which line of scientific research you refer to. You fail to do so. Even if you listed a single book, the book would be full of the author's synthesis of various lines of research. The lines of research composing the author's views would likely cover only limited aspects of human or animal consciousness replicated in robots.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You and @Outsourced have dragged me into this thread using knee-jerk, fanboy reactions. Before you set up this thread, you and @Outsourced hijacked another thread called Lucas Felt Betrayed. https://boards.theforce.net/threads/lucas-felt-betrayed-by-disney.50052169/page-9#post-56182998

Then you and @Outsourced tried to funnel this topic into a thread on droids and racism. https://boards.theforce.net/threads...ti-droid-racism.50040725/page-5#post-56170856

Can there be racism against droids? I argue there cannot be racism and discrimination against droids because they do not have emotions, gender, nor ethnicity. These are constructs projected by a Maker on to the droid. There is no physiological basis for these. There is only a mechanical basis. There may someday be a basis in-between mechanical and physiological but where is the DNA?

This will likely be it for me based on the responses I have read in this thread.


Again, there is overlap. Yet, there will always be a world of difference.

In Closing

Question: Mommy, am I the same as a droid?
Answer: No. Droids have Makers. You have parents.
Question: Is our dog Foofur the same as a robot?
Answer: No, Foofur also has parents just like you. We have adopted Foofur into our family.
Question: Our home robot can talk to us, understand us, and cooks up a damn good dinner for us. Is that consciousness?
Answer: No. Our robot is made of mass-produced parts. These parts do not make our robot a unique individual like you and Foofur. Our robot has software that recognizes our speech patterns, our faces, and our tone of voice (prosody). The software tells our robot's hardware how to move in order accurately respond to our commands.

 

They didnt hijack the thread. You and another poster referring to L3-37 as "the feminist robot" accomplished that.

All you've been doing in discussing(and I use that term very lightly here) is insisting that your understandings of terms and epistemology are the only possible understandings rather than engaging with the substance of what anyone else has said vis-a-vis droid consciousness. Your engagement hasn't been in good faith at all.

IG: @jedisufism

 

Humans are just droids with inferior meat based programming.

search you feelings you know it to be true.

 

Oh thank god. Now we can actually engage in good faith discussion.

 

Droids are not exactly like artificial intelligence. They are not like Ultron or Vision. They are more like Jarvis or Friday.

 

I guess, but there are also different classes of droids with different built in parameters. If you leave an archive droid in an archive and have it do archival work all day, it's going to think in a very specific manner. But if you take that information to a different droid, like an IG unit, you'll get a completely different response.