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Lord Hydronium posted:Now here's a question: is there any way Palpatine could have been redeemed? In the otherwise not-very-good Legends comic Dark Empire, Luke tries to do just that (and fails because, well, Palpatine). It's a very Luke thing to try, but would it even be possible? How much evil makes someone unforgivable? I kind of think he'd have to regret any of his decisions in order for that possibility to even be on the table.
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May 3, 2017 04:43
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Bongo Bill posted:Well, there are two objections here. The first one is that you can tinker around with a human brain and change their personality as well. The second one is that I can't tinker around with C-3PO because he's a fictional being from a setting in which it's impossible to create a robot that isn't also a person. Having a rod accidentally impaled into a persons brain ain't that same. Come on. Also, and this has been brought up before, not all droids show emotion or the ability to think. The person hood of the droids in the Star Wars universe is muddled at best. Some "think" some show no emotion and exist just to kill. It's a wash and not a particularity interesting part of the Star Wars universe. Lord Hydronium posted:Now here's a question: is there any way Palpatine could have been redeemed? In the otherwise not-very-good Legends comic Dark Empire, Luke tries to do just that (and fails because, well, Palpatine). It's a very Luke thing to try, but would it even be possible? How much evil makes someone unforgivable? Yeah, them being a witness to everything in the PT is another glaring flaw. Yaws fucked around with this message at 04:47 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 04:44
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Yaws posted:Having a rod accidentally impaled into a persons brain ain't that same. Come on. there is a slave auction about ten minutes into ANH. it is pretty darn interesting actually. all droids show display the ability to think by virtue of just existing onscreen
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May 3, 2017 04:47
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If droids are just tools, then Yaws must be upset that Vader's prosthetic arm and Luke's lightsaber were also present at the wedding.
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May 3, 2017 04:48
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Yaws posted:Having a rod accidentally impaled into a persons brain ain't that same. Come on. The Phineas Gage case is proof that a human being's personality can be changed invasively. It's more common to use drugs to do this, of course. Or is your objection that a person in Star Wars would have the knowledge of how to reprogram a droid, whereas a person on earth does not have the knowledge of how to reprogram a human? The droidekas are the only droids in the series I can think of that have a significant screen presence but aren't shown emoting. You could liken them to the emperor's guards, the guys in the red armor, in that sense. And this comes after three movies in which droids are people with feelings, and during another movie in which multiple droids with feelings had already been shown. Are there others that I'm missing?
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May 3, 2017 04:48
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Yaws posted:Also, and this has been brought up before, not all Stormtroopers show emotion or the ability to think. The person hood of the Stormtroopers in the Star Wars universe is muddled at best. Some "think" some show no emotion and exist just to kill. It's a wash and not a particularity interesting part of the Star Wars universe.
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May 3, 2017 04:50
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"Droids aren't people" is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have rebutted it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
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May 3, 2017 04:53
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Serf posted:there is a slave auction about ten minutes into ANH. it is pretty darn interesting actually. all droids show display the ability to think by virtue of just existing onscreen Bongo Bill posted:"Droids aren't people" is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have rebutted it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it. My god, the hubris You have done nothing of the sort.
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May 3, 2017 04:53
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Yaws posted:I'm going walk in the Vacuum aisle at Sears and call it a slave auction. You seem to have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality. All robots that have ever existed in reality are not people. However, all robots that have been depicted existing in Star Wars are people. Edit: also, only a very small subset of the vacuum cleaners that have ever existed in reality are robots
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May 3, 2017 04:53
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Lightsabers are cool.
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May 3, 2017 04:52
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Lord Hydronium posted:Now here's a question: is there any way Palpatine could have been redeemed? In the otherwise not-very-good Legends comic Dark Empire, Luke tries to do just that (and fails because, well, Palpatine). It's a very Luke thing to try, but would it even be possible? How much evil makes someone unforgivable? Unforgivable and irredeemable aren't the same. "Unforgivable" is in the eye of the beholder - Luke could very well have forgiven Palpatine. But Palpatine could not be redeemed (as we see him in episodes I - VI), because he doesn't think of himself as a bad person. He has no internal conflict. There's nothing he wishes he would have done differently. He doesn't want to change, and he doesn't even want to want to change. The moment he feels a little bit of (moral) doubt while throwing lightning in someone's face, he's redeemable. In theory.
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May 3, 2017 04:53
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Yaws posted:My god, the hubris Your sense of irony is malfunctioning. I'm going to power you down and reactivate it.
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May 3, 2017 04:56
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Bongo Bill posted:The droidekas are the only droids in the series I can think of that have a significant screen presence but aren't shown emoting. You could liken them to the emperor's guards, the guys in the red armor, in that sense. And this comes after three movies in which droids are people with feelings, and during another movie in which multiple droids with feelings had already been shown. Are there others that I'm missing? Buzz droids, mouse droids, IG-100 MagnaGuards... probably more
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May 3, 2017 04:55
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Mouse droids are, famously, capable of being afraid.
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May 3, 2017 04:56
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Mandalorians are cool. Sabine is my favorite.
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May 3, 2017 04:57
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Yaws posted:I'm going walk in the Vacuum aisle at Sears and call it a slave auction. I'm going to point this out as nicely as I can: you're mimicking the snark at the idea that black people could be seen as human displayed by plantation owners to a frightening degree. If you weren't arguing in good faith, your amazement that anyone could see these tools as people could pass as parody of anti-abolitionist rhetoric. Your argument that not all droids act like people is a sci-fi version of the argument that the dehumanized appearance of uneducated slaves is proof of their base animal nature. Who made those droids unable to emote? Were they perhaps the people who profited from the sale and labor of droids? Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 05:00 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 04:58
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The battle droids show far more humanity than Storm Troopers ever displayed. (Minus Finn)
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May 3, 2017 05:01
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Yaws posted:Buzz droids, mouse droids, IG-100 MagnaGuards... probably more Chewbacca frightens a mouse droid in the mouse droid's very first scene. The buzz droids scream when Anakin shoots them off Obi-Wan's ship. Even the dying magnaguard, who is admittedly rather reserved, tries to speak as Obi-Wan chops it in half. Also, we were originally talking about C-3PO.
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May 3, 2017 05:00
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I hope Rey uses a double-ended lightsaber.
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May 3, 2017 05:01
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Bongo Bill posted:Chewbacca frightens a mouse droid in the mouse droid's very first scene. The buzz droids scream when Anakin shoots them off Obi-Wan's ship. Even the dying magnaguard, who is admittedly a rather reserved person, tries to speak as Obi-Wan chops it in half. Programmed emotions. They don't "feel" anything. God drat, why do you insist on bringing this up so often? Even if I were to concede this point to you it's not a particularly interesting aspect of Star Wars and it's well trod ground. loving examining the person hood of robots. Brilliant.
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May 3, 2017 05:05
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If anything, the whole Droid Slaves dynamic gets around a problem with cinematic depictions of slavery which this Race Space thread discusses: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3817168 Jack Gladney posted:There is a problem generally in media set in the past where racism usually resides entirely within one or a few vicious and hateful white characters (who are also like child-abusers or deadbeats or other kinds of creeps), while audience-identification whites are either anachronistically good or come to realize that racism is bad because they were just naive or didn't know any better. It's a version of the past that allows people to believe that all racism is the result of personal hatred from irrationally bad people and that they would be good if they lived in the past. In the Star Wars universe, you can see what it looks like when good people accept and profit from slavery without ever questioning it. And people still get upset when you point out that those good people were in fact proud slave owners.
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May 3, 2017 05:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Not only that, but any idiot can commit a mass murder. Vader is beyond such things. "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." Yeah, I'm sure a dude who tortures military prisoners as part of some sick familial drama is beyond mass murder. Vader's whole thing in TESB is that he's a petty rear end in a top hat. Watch how he gets off on pushing Lando around.
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May 3, 2017 05:08
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Yaws posted:Programmed emotions. They don't "feel" anything. God drat, why do you insist on bringing this up so often? Even if I were to concede this point to you it's not a particularly interesting aspect of Star Wars and it's well trod ground. loving examining the person hood of robots. Brilliant. Yes, the personhood of AI is a core theme of science fiction. Did the end of Terminator 2 upset you by pointing out that Arnold was a better father than any of Sarah Conner's boyfriends were and perhaps even could be?
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May 3, 2017 05:10
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Will Luke end the Jedi in TLJ?
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May 3, 2017 05:11
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porfiria posted:Yeah, I'm sure a dude who tortures military prisoners as part of some sick familial drama is beyond mass murder. Vader's whole thing in TESB is that he's a petty rear end in a top hat. Watch how he gets off on pushing Lando around. I think they meant "beyond" in the sense that he's moved past that, not that he is above doing it. After all, we see him committing mass murder twice in the PT.
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May 3, 2017 05:11
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Covok posted:Will Luke end the Jedi in TLJ? I believe the depressed Luke at the beginning of the movie does. But then Rey will convince him to train her and it'll be all good then.
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May 3, 2017 05:11
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spacetoaster posted:I believe the depressed Luke at the beginning of the movie does. But then Rey will convince him to train her and it'll be all good then. The title will be a bigger lie than AOTC.
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May 3, 2017 05:14
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Yaws posted:Programmed emotions. They don't "feel" anything. God drat, why do you insist on bringing this up so often? Even if I were to concede this point to you it's not a particularly interesting aspect of Star Wars and it's well trod ground. loving examining the person hood of robots. Brilliant. You don't think the first twenty minutes of A New Hope are interesting? I'm examining the personhood of characters in a film. My roomba, a robot that exists outside of fantasy, is clearly not a person. I have in fact made robots in the past, so you don't need to convince me that robots and people are disjoint sets in reality. Why create a film in which the fantastic fictional robots are programmed to emote? Either they are people, in which case the movie deals with the condition of people in a condition of servitude ("robot" means "servant"); or they are not people, in which case the movie deals with people's reliance on and attachment to their tools; or their personhood is ambiguous, in which case that ambiguity is probably the entire point of the film. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems pretty obvious to me which of those themes is more present in Star Wars movies.
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May 3, 2017 05:12
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Hodgepodge posted:I think they meant "beyond" in the sense that he's moved past that, not that he is above doing it. After all, we see him committing mass murder twice in the PT. The point is he's just a lonely loser who uses the awesome powers available to him to murder subordinates and try to connect with his son. That's like Vader's whole arc--he comes into the movies as an invincible badass and at the end he's just sad old man who can't breathe right.
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May 3, 2017 05:13
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Hodgepodge posted:Yes, the personhood of AI is a core theme of science fiction. Did the end of Terminator 2 upset you by pointing out that Arnold was a better father than any of Sarah Conner's boyfriends were and perhaps even could be? Yikes, did Sarah Conner's boyfriends go around shooting innocent security guards with a .45? "he'll live"
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May 3, 2017 05:14
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Yaws posted:Yikes, did Sarah Conner's boyfriends go around shooting innocent security guards with a .45? Would any of Conner's boyfriends be willing to shoot people to protect her son, or to secure a better future for him? It's an interesting question.
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May 3, 2017 05:18
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Bongo Bill posted:Why create a film in which the fantastic fictional robots are programmed to emote?
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May 3, 2017 05:19
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quote:Not only that, but any idiot can commit a mass murder. Vader is beyond such things. Unless its youngling murder, he's pretty cool with that quote:
An interesting question; is T3 better or worse than being nuked then murdered by a robot? 
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May 3, 2017 05:20
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Yaws posted:Comedic relief? In the PT it gives our heroes the opportunity to use their cool laser swords on countless enemies and the audience doesn't give it a second thought. No one watched Obi-Wan cut those droids in half and thought to themselves "man, these movies are gory!" Because that would be stupid. Because they're not people. Those droids were manufactured to kill. That's all they "know". I don't think you're trying to say that comedic characters aren't people. Why create the first twenty minutes of A New Hope?
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May 3, 2017 05:22
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Yaws posted:Comedic relief? In the PT it gives our heroes the opportunity to use their cool laser swords on countless enemies and the audience doesn't give it a second thought. No one watched Obi-Wan cut those droids in half and thought to themselves "man, these movies are gory!" Because that would be stupid. Because they're not people. Those droids were manufactured to kill. That's all they "know". "The Universal Law of Slavery," by George Fitzhugh posted:The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's providence of habits and money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3141t.html Those droids are suited only for battle, as if the Force Itself had shaped them for that purpose.
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May 3, 2017 05:22
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porfiria posted:The point is he's just a lonely loser who uses the awesome powers available to him to murder subordinates and try to connect with his son. That's like Vader's whole arc--he comes into the movies as an invincible badass and at the end he's just sad old man who can't breathe right. The sad old man is Anakin Skywalker (who is played by Sebastian Shaw), not Darth Vader (who is played by James Earl Jones and David Prowse).
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May 3, 2017 05:24
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None of the characters in Star Wars think or feel. They're just portrayed as thinking and feeling by actors, who I am told (and I believe) do both. So claiming that the droids aren't people isn't incorrect... from a certain point of view.
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May 3, 2017 05:24
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RBA Starblade posted:An interesting question; is T3 better or worse than being nuked then murdered by a robot? It really depends on where the bullet wound is or the strength of the dose of radiation; some deaths are far shorter and more merciful than T3.
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May 3, 2017 05:24
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Yaws posted:Programmed emotions. They don't "feel" anything. My dude, neither do you! "You" are a flesh robot made completely of tiny autonomous, unthinking, unfeeling cells. Your reactions to stimuli are patterned - nobody (especially not you yourself) taught you to wince or flinch or laugh or cry. Your genetic programming encodes these basic responses. You have no choice about them. And if the programming was different, your reactions would be different. The gestalt being, the observer, - the "you" that lives behind your eyes - arises somehow from the network of very complexly connected but completely deterministic cells with no personhood whatsoever. Humans in the real world aren't really sure how this happens. Since we don't know how we are still people in spite of our absolutely determined mechanical nature, how can you be sure that the robots depicted in Star Wars cannot be (let alone are not) people?
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May 3, 2017 05:24
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Schwarzwald posted:So claiming that the droids aren't people isn't incorrect... from a certain point of view. Thank you. I think we can put a cap on this argument now.
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May 3, 2017 05:27
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