Alekseandrea wrote:Salus Maior wrote:Burgers aren't sentient, independent beings.
Well, are synths truly that?
Have you ever heard about the "Chinese room" thought experiment?
[url]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room[/url]
Either synths are conscious beings OR they simulate consious beings.
I believe they simulate them.
Why?
1. They can be reprogrammed for other tasks (Coursers) and their memories can be replaced without much issue (institute mind-wiping, railroad messing around), Curie's memories can be copied to a synth without issue showing us that they ARE, without doubt, robots.
2. Well, there are self-aware AI's in fallout, but those are room-sized. That's several magnitudes larger than what can be put in a synth.
3. The institute didn't start from scratch to build the gen 3 synths. The gen 1 and gen 2 synths came first. If gen 1 and 2's aren't self-aware, why would gen 3's be?
4. The institute, the faction who designed and builds them, considers them to be automata, little different from other robots.
5. There is no reason why synths would NEED to be sentient or self-aware.
Obligatory "Ghosts in the Machine" monologue.1. Humans can be "reprogrammed," at least in the Fallout universe: the United States developed the CODE (Challenge, Opportunity, Discipline, Ethics) program to recondition soldiers and prisoners of war. Curie's mechanical memories are transcribed into a Synth's consciousness, but so are Kellogg's, and Kellogg was a human.
2. The Fallout wiki lists the Synths as the most advanced example of
artificial intelligence.
3. Gen 1 and Gen 2 do exhibit a degree of self-awareness. They talk to themselves. Question. But they are also purely mechanical and lack a proper "brain". This is not the case with the third Generation, which are essentially 3D printed biomass cloned from human DNA. At various points in Fallout 4, the Gen 3 Synths are described as biologically indistinguishable from traditional humans: only an autopsy can distinguish between the two, most likely by finding whatever cybernetics the Institute implants them with.
4. But they most definitely
are distinct from robots, and the fact that they were produced for a specific purpose doesn't mean that they can't deviate from that purpose.
5. I whole-heartedly agree: There is no reason for Synths to be self-aware. And this is why I consider the Institute to be too stupid to live. They get so caught up in the "Can we?" that "Should we?" gets thrown out the window. They already had a legion of reliable mechanical janitors to fulfill whatever menial labor needed to be done. Something they could smack around as much as they wanted to. Something that did not feel, or desire, or fear.
Then they wanted to make a Synth that could do those things. "I want something that can resent me for treating it like garbage," someone must have said.
"
Simulates resent," someone must have replied.
"What's the difference?"
"One actually hates you, the other just
thinks that it hates you."
"Which will be an excellent consolation when we're both smoldering in an irradiated crater together."
"I concur."