The Final Five are talking to me...

[lizardbeth]

In some strange convergence of coincidence, I found out yesterday that Naomi Novik wrote a fic for yuletide pseudonymously (I knew she used to write fanfic, and she defends it vigorously, but I didn't know this was an ongoing thing, especially now that her series has been optioned for a gazillion dollars by PJackson). Then today one of my magazines arrives and she's on the cover. You think maybe some higher power is trying to tell me to just read Temeraire already?

In my copious free time. hee.

But I've been thinking a bit.

I have a meta idea on BSG, relating to Measure of Salvation. It struck me while watching Terminator 2, that the Colonies must not have had any science fiction tradition.



Because, if my Roomba (a small vacuuming robot, if you've never seen one) decided to take over the world, I'd at least have the vocabulary to discuss the options. We could ask whether it's a sentient being, whether it's a life-form (not the same question at all), and whether all Roombas are programmed to take over the world, or whether they are capable of individual decisions. We could compare them to images in our culture: are they the T-100 or more like C-3PO? We could ask if it was human hubris that made the creators not hardwire the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics into Roombas, and others could debate whether it would have made a difference. People could have debates about sending an EMP to wipe them all out. But we can only do this because we have a hundred years of writers and other artists who imagined very many different scenarios with machines "waking up", both cautionary and hopeful, and framed the issues for us.

That is, I think, not true of the Twelve Colonies. In fact I get the idea that no one so much as raised the question about whether smart robots might be a bad idea way back before the First Cylon War. (Caprica if it goes, may make that untrue, but for now, it holds)

I see it in the way the debate is framed in such a binary way: Roslin, Lee, etc think of the Cylons as machines. Toasters. Sometimes they may acknowledge that the Cylons are alive, but that's as far as any of them go. The Cylons are no more worthy of existence than a broken car.

Whereas Helo, because of his love for Sharon and Hera, made the jump to seeing the Cylons (all the Cylons) as People. Wrong People, enemy People, but people. But few others have made that conceptual leap: Baltar, and Bill Adama, probably. Others seem to acknowledge Sharon as a person, but without necessarily extending that to all the Cylons.

So Helo decided genocide isn't a moral option even in Self/species-defense. But Roslin and Lee never reached the question of the morality of genocide in this situation because to them it wasn't genocide at all. Genocide is only genocide, if you're annhilating people; otherwise it's pest control. And we rarely think twice about tenting our homes for termites, do we?

The two points-of-view ended up incomprehensible to each other because they didn't have the words to find middle-ground. That middle ground being closer to the truth -- the Cylons are their enemies, they are not-human, but they are sentient beings. But without a tradition of stories about alien visitors and machines-run-amuck, they're forced to use the only two boxes they have: machine or person. They can't conceive that someone can be both.

Whereas we, for example, already debate how intelligent chimpanzees and dolphins are and how much they think. It's not a stretch to imagine us debating, not whether our computers are smart, but how smart they are, or whether our cars are deserving of protections from abuse. Even animals not generally regarded as thinking beings are protected from cruelty, so why not Robot Dogs?

So, what does this mean? On a superficial level, I'm sure a RTF of Earthlings might very well have some more ideas of what to do about the Cylons. But more importantly, the Colonials are going to have to come to the realization that Cylons are not the monolithic, 'machine' society they think it is. We the audience already know, but the RTF still has to discover that Sharon isn't unique. At least some Colonials will have to move beyond their two cozy, narrow categories and find some more. The question for me is what they do with that knowledge. I've often wondered whether the conflict would become more three-sided (Hard-core Cylons, Hard-core Humans, and a small group of both working together in opposition to the other who only want war) and that knowledge may be the key to get them there. Without it, I don't think there's any hope of anything either than one side or other other's extermination.



*blinks*

ok, that was rather more than I intended to say on that. I hope it made some sense. *g*

And there's now a thunderstorm outside.

Comments

[ellestra.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. Hate and fear usually leads to calling enemy inhuman and it is understandable in from Colonials in their current position, however Roslin’s and others reactions in miniseries suggested they’ve never considered cylon sentient and autonomous. She always repeats that they are programmed to do/think like this but them who programmed them? I always thought that was their (Colonials) main problem. That’s what got them into this whole mess. Things could have been much better if they’ve acted differently when the cylons showed sings of consciousness first. But then we wouldn’t get the BSG to watch :P. I wrote more about treatment of AI in movies at my lj - if your interested it's here :http://ellestra.livejournal.com/2577.html#cutid - and I don’t want to spam you with this as it's rather long so I just say I hope we can do better then scream “pull the plug” when/if we get there.

Oh, and one more thing – I mostly thing about humanoid cylons as humans with some serious delusions. But maybe that’s just because I’ve read way too much about humans with neural interfaces, re-lifeing from backups, nanotechnology and cloning :P

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

I mostly thing about humanoid cylons as humans with some serious delusions. But maybe that’s just because I’ve read way too much about humans with neural interfaces, re-lifeing from backups, nanotechnology and cloning

precisely *g* Our definition of 'human' is much more flexible than any Colonial. I rather like the bits of Cylon culture we've seen that are not human and more alien, but that's my own SF subgenre bias. A detailed alien culture will always punch my buttons more than cyber-humans. *g*

I would bet that attitude of "we did this ourselves" was more prevalent in the First war, when the Cylons were more clearly their creations, instead of the self-evolved beings they are now. The Cylons seem to be the only ones who remember, or care anyway, that the humans started it all.

As far us on Earth go... yeah, we can hope that reason will win out. And we will have all those movies and such to point to and say, "We all saw that movie. Do you want to cause Judgment Day? Let's not panic and try something else."

[ellestra.livejournal.com]

I read Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth duology while watching the second season of BSG and I remember wondering what would happen if Colonials found such Earth. Humans are networked and immortal - more like Cylons then them. SI - Sentient Inteligence is integral part of society. Could Colonials accept such life or would they became another isolated world unable to accept the Commonwealth rules?
The way it AI emergence is shown in this books is something I hope we can achive - humans and AI separate and having own goals but coexisting.