But Gena was clearly affected by the rapes and torture. Wasn’t she pretty much bat-sh*t crazy once Balter rescued her? To me that makes it more than a programmed response.
What if they created with genetic engineering instead of electronics? What about a couple that just wants to genetically correct a childhood disease in their unborn fetus?
Are you a bio-bigot? Or do man’s creations include genetic design?
Cylons would be more organic than Data.
An argument could be made – but it wouldn’t be a good one. Are you at all familiar with the arguments that have been made by philosophers?
Have you ever heard of a Philosophical zombie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/zombic.htm
There’s a story that A. Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard in the 1920’s, wanted to impose a Jew quota because “Jews cheat.” When someone pointed out that non-Jews also cheat, Lowell replied: “You’re changing the subject. We’re talking about Jews.” Likewise, when one asks the strong-AI skeptic how a grayish-white clump of meat [your brain] can think, the response often boils down to: “You’re changing the subject. We’re talking about computers.” — Scott Aaronson, “Alan Turing, Moralist”
How do you know that your emotions are real? Tyrol, Tigh and Anders didn’t know their emotions weren’t real.
Would you feel that way if you found out that you were not a natural thing?
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i don’t see fixing down’s syndrom thru fetal gene therepy and building robots that later figure out how to fight a war and make their own bio-robots as being alike in this discusion. I am not saying science is bad… i am saying a bio-construct created by robots is not a person… even if it thinks that it is and acts as if it is… because machines aren’t by definition a species or race ( and they themselves don’t claim themselves to be… they claim to be models) That being said. A human sperm that was artificialy paired with an egg in an artificial environment that grows into an organism to become a human beiing is a different story. ( although I don’t believe that is possible ever because of the massive ammount of biology that a mother contributes to the birthing process. Also there is soooooooooooooo small a chance that a baby is born out of all the times that sperm fertalizes eggs. It is estimated that women have at least 2 miscarriges every three years- excpet in science fiction where that testube or Alien 3 jar could produce a 30 year old) That creation wouldn’t be able to interact with fiber optic lines… spread computer viruses, download, and have it’s emotions and even thoughts and alliences programmed in.
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I don’t know what a bio-bigot is… that’s a little too sci-fi PC for me. If it means do I think that robots in sci-fi like Data or Johnny 5 or Mudd’s androids aren’t really lifeforms in the realistic sense… yeah I guess I am.
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being organic or not isn’t the point. The point is their origin. Data and a bio-robot are neither one a species, race or liveing being. ( except on star trek where their universe simply says that he is)
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LoL. I am in the real world… they are made up characters on a TV show. How made up characters act… has nothing to do with us real humans’s psychology. ( but to speak in geek for a moment- they are final
and I don’t lump them in with the s7’s none of my argument applies to them I have a different theory on how to clasify them) -
you mean here in the real world… or if I were in a TV show? In the real world that is a crazy question… we’re all people on the forum ( unless one of us is the dog from Dean Koontz’s The Watchers). On BSG… if i found out I was a final 5… I guess I would play it by ear. If I was an s7, I would understand that I was programmed- the way Sharon admitted.
I do concede that if RDM says in the next few episodes that they are… I go with what he says. All this is theory and not based on anything real, ( or in my oppinion plausable in 1000 years. In the context of the episodes so far… this is how I feel. If RDM writes that these guys are feeling real emotions and that they are a real race… who am I to dispute that.
That doesn’t sound much different than writing into law, as the Supreme Court once did, that a negro descendant of slaves could not be a citizen of the United States:
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2007/03/06/dred-scott/
Until you come to this:
The only thing that machines seem to lack as far as being a species is an “evolutionary history” – but even that is an illusion. Cars have evolved, go to a museum to see the fossil record of steam engines and model-Ts. Computers have evolved, I’ve got a fossil XT in my attic. They evolve faster than biological organisms and once machines start making themselves then you’ve got reproduction and evolution on a Lamarckian scale.
If the Cylons can breed with humans then they may indeed be part of the human species even if their origin is different.
They did early in the show, but now they are seeing themselves differently.
But you do believe in cloning, genetic engineering and test tube babies, right?
Where do you think your emotions and thoughts come from?
You don’t think they were essentially programmed by evolution and your experiences?
A bio-bigot is someone who thinks biology is specially capable of creating consciousness and a machine can never do anything but fake it.
That is implied by bio-bigotism.
What makes one’s origin a deciding factor?
If a person is born sterile are they no longer a person? If they become sterile?
But no one ever asked her what she thought of human thought, feeling and behavior. She might think they are programmed too - programmed haphazardly by evolution.
You’ve never bothered to read Ray Kurzweil’s “The Age of Spiritual Machines.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines
[QUOTE=Big Hairy Bee;131320]Putting the Cylon rape issue aside,QUOTE]
wasnt adama about to go exacTly do Cain’s path?? wasnt roslin his stabilizer(in the early ish)???.. without her(roslin) i think adamma couldve and probally wouldve been as brutal/if not worse than Cain??
am i remebering correctly or???
Yes you are; Adama had not hit the point of confiscating civilian equipment, but he was just as ready to leave them behind to go on and fight the war.
that pretty much the same thing in my book, and with the downward trun he has taken, and looks like he is still 2 take???
adama: i love the man, but, he’s crahsn F’n hard
On another post, not to long after “Razor,” I looked up the number of people who would die due to Cain’s decisions after the beginning of Cylon War II. Even assuming the BSG was destroyed on New Caprica, more people would have lived if Cain and the Pegasus had actually died at the docks. Yes, I had a lot of time on my hands at the time.
Regardless, Cain, a good leader? I have to disagree.
true, but in the end??? maybe a lesser of 2 evils???
Regarding Cain, I believe everyone here has given the many reasons that she was not a good person. And I have to agree with Audra regarding her treatment of Gina, when you are determining if a person is humane, it is not their actions just toward other people, but their actions AS a human that you have to review. She ordered and then allowed the continued rape and abuse of Gina as a punishment for her betrayal. To me, that alone diminishes her humanity.
Additionally, when I add in her treatment of the civilians that she encountered, I find that she did was not justified in her actions. The military force of any organization (country, group, etc) is, in the words of wikipedia, "They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external and internal aggressors. In some countries paramilitary forces are included in a nation’s armed forces. Armed force is the use of armed forces to achieve political objectives. " Defense includes both acting as protector and attacking the enemy to prevent further attacks against one’s own nation.
So, I believe that she is failing in her responsibility to defend these citizens. Even if she felt it was important to attack the cylons, it could only have been as a retaliation for their actions, and not to prevent further civilian deaths, as she was leaving these very civilians (which might have been the last ones, as far as she knew) in the path of the cylon fleet. She was failing to do the one thing that could help to make a difference in the future of humanity, ensuing the continuation of the human race.
Anyway, that is my two cents.
smarx, My thoughts exactly. Cain forgot what the military is actually for.
I can agree with RH that Cain retained her humanity throughout the ordeal. She just happened to retain all the ugly parts of it and none of the good. The anger, the need to lash out, the desire for control, all very human responses to a traumatic experience. Her talk with Roslin and Adama about her experience in the attack reveals that she is/was more affected by it than she lets on to her crew.
The ability to make “tough decisions” doesn’t make one a good leader, and I certainly don’t think Cain was.
Cain was ultimately a very human crapbag, and that’s my take. (Not even gonna go near the sentience debate!)
Blowing your XO’s head off and sending humans to their death by stranding them in space is not maintaining your humanity. She was getting revenge on the cylons for her little sister and acted like a sociopath in the process.