I show only E, indubitably.
Ah, yes. The reductio ad if it doesnât feel right to me it must not be true. A classic.
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On a personal level, I agree, but on a legal level, I think the law trying to protect people from their own unhealthy impulses is wrong. Unless you can make an argument that the robot is conscious (which might not necessarily be unreasonable in the future) I donât think the law should have anything to say about it.
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However, I am BA.
One weapon named E.
Weaponized E, channeled from the o/ether, mind-like, body-like, just so.
Ready to go.
Ghosted.
If you cannot separate yourself from your robots, then you do not deserve their support.
For anyone can be an enemy, right?
Sight makes it so.
My new band name! Steampunk for the Soul!
Justifications of Justifications of Justifications of Justifications of Justifications and then you die is the title track on our new waxed cylinder dropping last year!
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It becomes a philosophical question when robots become sentient. When something is self-aware, I think questions like this become relevant, but thatâs the tricky question. What makes a person a person?
I donât think thatâs unreasonable, especially considering how much ink has been spilled in science fiction this very question. Hell, there is a whole Star Trek: TNG episode about whether or not Data is a person or property (first season, I think).
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Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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I used to be disgusted by the way everyone treats robots in Star Wars, even the good guys. But remember about 10-15 years ago when car alarms started proliferating, youâd be walking near a car and a voice from the car would warn you to get back? Fuck that. I get enough grief from actual humans. I donât need to take it from brain-less, soul-less automatons too. As long as theyâre programmed by or owned by someone else, robots are just proxies representing other humans. If some jerk throws a rock at me, I donât have to respect the rock, even if itâs been sculpted to almost pass for human. Iâm too busy trying not to get stoned.
The humans in Star Wars treat droids like crap because droids are generally just tools of the Empire, or representatives of gangsters or villains or scum. It would be hard enough to muster sympathy for your fellow humans or any thinking beings in those conditions, let alone for simulacra.
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And how sentient is sentient enough to count? We havenât really got to grips with this for the rest of the animal kingdom. We do some pretty hideous things to factory farmed animals, while knowing full well that they experience pain and have emotional appraisal systems âŚ
Pigs problem solve at the intellectual level of human toddlers and are self aware enough to distinguish self from others or their reflection. That is also thought, albeit of a different quality to our own.
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Agreed. Itâs not an easy question, because the people deciding who is and isnât sentient (human beings) arenât exactly unbiased. If steaks are good eating, then people involved in that industry are going to do all they can to make sure cows arenât considered âpeopleâ.
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I have just been censored, declared inhuman. I am only just humanâŚ
Fuck you, labelers.
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S2E9 The Measure of a Man
Someday maybe weâll all be as sentient as Captain Picard 
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Iâll admit to loving bacon and a nice steak. Iâm a rather guilty carnivore. 
My take, FWIW. If we all become vegetarians there wonât be nearly as many stock animals, so theyâd never have an opportunity to live at all. So while stock animals âoweâ us their very existence and pay for it in meat, we do have a duty of care that means they deserve a fulfilling life and a quick and painless death. If we wonât provide those things, then slaughtering them for meat is immoral. If we do provide those things, then we do one better than Nature herself. She tends to favour rather bloody, painful and miserable ends âŚ
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Does the ethical question depend on an adjudication of sentience or is presence in relationship with an other necessary? Does the second establish the first?
I think yes and yes.
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Johnny Five is alive!
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But Johnny Four is no more!
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Our criteria for recognising sentience in others are pretty arbitrary-- fundamentally so, I would say, but certainly in practice. We credit other humans with having their own subjective viewpoint simply because they remind us of ourselves. Some people extend their empathy further, to chimps and dolphins, maybe cows, rarely ants, almost never rocks or gusts of wind; but regardless of where you draw the line, itâs a circle centered around human apes, and thatâs a very dubious assumption unless you literally define âsentienceâ to mean âbeing a humanâ. The question of where to draw that line is still important, considering that some people remain undecided about whether it should include, say, women. But itâs not a question that really helps us understand consciousness.
If gusts of wind do have some kind of inner world, itâs fair to say that theyâre alien enough that we donât know how to be nice or mean to them, so itâs ethically moot whether we consider their feelings. I suspect the consciousness of machines would be more on this level.
For example, I doubt robots are âhurtâ by being pushed, but perhaps packet collisions make routers experience something like suffering. Who knows? Itâs a remarkably flimsy area of science, and I think thatâs because no one wants to investigate fields that can only give us more things to feel guilty about.
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