Just to briefly touch on the fuzzy-cuddly geth debate, I think that regardless of the geth's open admittance of their less than corporeal state and nowhere near biological systems, that isn't why the story has them. They may say they're not alive, but they're there so we as an audience question where the line is that demarcates "living". Sure, we can go to the nearest sceince textbook and know the geth are not living beings - they do not consume, excrete, reproduce in a biologically conventional sense, etc. Yet they do behave in ways that are suggestive of living things. The geth exist to make us question what alive is. As they stand, they're not alive; they're just
thoughts of life, waiting perhaps for realisation. By our considered standard for judging artificial intelligence, the geth fall a little short of passing the Turing Test anytime soon due to a lack of humanlike flexibility of expression.
But, and I say
but, there's no reason why they shouldn't eventually. I happen to be part of the crowd that thinks that a machine potentially can eventually reach a level where it can completely fulfill our
concept of intellect. If a machine can make abstract judgements based on experience and learned knowledge combined, if a machine can display altruism and selfishness in such a manner as to be indistinguishable from a living being, if a machine can solve problems with massive ranges of complexity - from opening a door to constructing another machine as complex as itself, if a machine can grasp and comprehend abstract and highly personal concepts such as morality, humour, desire or regret and in turn display them in its own actions... does it not at least
simulate us?
The geth have access to the extranet... they must have read
Frankenstein by now. Now, when we read that story, do we judge the creature as alive? Of course we do. It acts to perserve its own existence, just as the geth did. The geth though, do not yet feel the essential spark for us to accept them as "alive" in the same way we accept Frankenstein's creation - the geth don't feel lonliness, or dispair, or anger, or pity, or regret. No geth feels regret over a life it concludes it must take. But, if we think about it... a good question to ask Legion would be why the geth maintain the quarian homeworld so diligently? They don't require those things to be done to survive there - hell, they may as well just stripmine the whole planet for any resources they can use (they don't need food, shelter, etc.), but no, they don't. They buried the dead, tend their graves, reconstruct what both sides destroyed, and for no discernable, logical purpose. If they were doing it for the Creators to come home, why don't they ask them to? Waiting for concensus? I don't buy that. Why begin executing an action before you get concensus for the result? It's my supposition that the geth are close to being able to judge that they can make illogical decisions; that they can do things based on a "gut feeling". If concensus equates to that, so be it. Could their actions be accepted as "guilt"? And can that not be accepted as being the feeling of a living being?
Taking Jack along with a Shep to the geth station doesn't really sway me in either direction; I find it hard to see the geth as 'alive' even through they walk and talk and do a whole bunch of other things living things do, but completely lack the abstract or emotional aspects we hold dearest in other beings. Jack humanizes the geth in her conversation points on the station - she certainly has no issues seeing them as "alive" - and I would have actually taken her as the person most likely to see them as little more than jumped-up pocket calculators. I would, for now, feel no more guilt in rewriting the Heretics than I would performing surgery on a childhood toy; I'd not be taking anything from them other than a programming subroutine.
But that changes the moment they can stand up as a whole and say they
feel. Legion is very close to this, I think, and thus the geth themselves are close to being what we judge as complete beings - ones with abstract thought, morality, desires of their own, empathy to others outside their own being, and a notion of individuality within a group. Self-preservation is not enough - even the simplest lifeforms can do this. Eventually, those programming subroutines will perform in exactly the same way as emotions; reacting and executing in a way that outside of computational examination will appear just like a human
feeling. And once that happens, who is able to judge which is more real - our feelings or theirs? The geth are not alive, no, but I think the statement should be the geth are not alive
yet. And chances are, they will be sooner rather than later. What do I base that judgement on?
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Modifié par Mondo47, 23 août 2010 - 11:50 .
Guest_yorkj86_*
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That would be a funny scene.
Well, okay, so she went with Cerberus anyway, just as Shepard did. Damn them!
