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Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Beverly Crusher and Wrath
Broadcast: yes, video
Action: Find Beverly and Wrath on the Blue Fish right now (Wrath on the Windrose later)
When: Current

Good afternoon, Fleet, I’m Dr. Crusher, of the Blue Fish, [She gestures a hand towards Wrath] this is Wrath, of the Windrose, and we have an important request of our fellow fleet members. Wrath needs to undergo complicated back surgery, involving the removal of cybernetic implants. I have the skills and done the research necessary in order to do this, but I do not have the facilities or all of the equipment that I need. If anyone with medical, engineering, or computer knowledge would be willing to help us construct a surgical suite, I would, of course, compensate you for your time and energy. Please send us any questions you may have and thank you!

[Wrath waves and grins. She's leaning on her familiar cane.] Hi everyone! Um! Like Dr. Crusher said, I really appreciate any help, it'd be great to be back up to full effectiveness and kicking ass! This is so great, I never thought this injury could get fixed so I'm really... just hopeful. So thank you everybody.

And uh. It'd probably also be good to have someone who can talk to the nanobots that regulate my bone growth and muscle fibers. Cuz my old doctor put a governor on the muscles so I wouldn't hurt myself, but once my back is fixed I should get retuned to full speed.

I'll definitely compensate anyone for help too!

[Responses can come from both Wrath and Dr. Crusher!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Really.] Does it come up often? That seems rather extreme to me.

Additionally, the rest of us are under no restrictions to speak of our home timelines, all in all.

Not often, but it does happen.

[Her voice gets quieter.]

It almost happened to my son. But there is absolutely no way I would have allowed it. Some things come before even my commitment to Starfleet.

It's important to consider personal moral convictions. Mine are to preserve life whenever feasible.

[Which is to say, he agrees with her choice.]

It was more than morality - it was love.

[No considerations, either. There was only one acceptable answer to that situation.

She considers Vision for a moment.]

May I ask you something? About your nature, as an android?

The can most certainly influence one another. Love, especially so.

[He inclines his head.]

Of course you may.

Edited (repetitive repetition) 2016-04-22 02:26 (UTC)

Do you experience emotions? I don't mean necessarily in the way organic species would, but in general... do you feel love? And if that's too personal of a question, please, don't feel obligated to answer.

I don't find it too personal, Dr. Crusher.

Yes, I do recognize emotions. I can't guarantee they're the same to me as you might feel, but I've more than enough organic components to feel.

[The specific question brings a smile to his face.]

I know beauty when I see it. I know sadness, that it will be eventually lost. I know joy, that I have witnessed it before it's gone. According to Shakespeare, that ought to be enough.

[What an eloquent way to put it! It's naturally appealing to Beverly, given her background in theatre.]

And we won't dare argue with the Bard, will we?

[She smiles.]

I ask because I have a friend at home who is an android and was the only one of his kind for a long time. Even now, there is only one other who is still functioning and she is... well, it's complicated. In any case, he has always maintained that he does not have emotions and I have often felt - [Another small smile at her inadvertent choice of words] I have wondered if he was perhaps comparing himself too much to us because he never had anyone else to measure himself by. It's been something I've been thinking about more lately, having now met androids from other universes.

[Of course, Data is not her only reason - it'd take very little prying to discover Daneel's role in this as well.]

He is an authority on human emotion. [And all of his works are easy to find, being on the public domain. Not that he couldn't access everything else with a little more effort.]

Ah, I see. I believe the importance here would be in how one defines emotion. If it's the reaction of certain chemicals in the body to create a subconscious response, an android body could certainly be created without those. If it's defined instead as the collection of experiences and input creating a reaction that is other than logical, any sufficiently complex intelligence would be able to experience that - artificial or not. Expressing emotion in the same way is different between individuals of the same species, is it not? [Perhaps his standards were skewed, if he was only comparing himself to humans.]

Of course. There's a biological component, certainly, but so much depends on experience - and on culture too. So yes, I believe I would probably use your second definition.

Edited 2016-04-24 20:24 (UTC)

[Oh, good. He's glad she's open-minded about the issue. Certain people think he's the same as an elevator, cough Dad cough.]

It's something of a philosophical question, so an argument can be made either way. I prefer the more inclusive one.

[There is no doubt whatsoever in her mind that Vision is more, much more, than an elevator. It's not his or any other robot's personhood she's wondering about. She just wants to try to understand them better.]

As do I.

[She smiles.]

Thank you, for answering. It helps to have several personal perspectives on this.

[Yes, well, that's why he volunteers to help her and Wrath.]

It's my pleasure, Dr. Crusher. While I've never been less than unique by any measure, the more people I speak with here the more similarities I find between us. It's quite refreshing.

Edited 2016-04-25 19:44 (UTC)

I take it you didn't have that at home?

No, I can't say I did. There were too many eager to point out the differences instead.

It happens all too often, I'm afraid.

[Even in the Federation.]

Data had quite a bit of trouble getting people to accept him as an individual, a person in his own right. Even now, it can be struggle.

[He nods.]

Thor treated me as a fully realized individual from the beginning, but his culture has far more galactic contact than Earth does in my time. Simple exposure helps a great deal toward recognizing what one has in common.

Though I find it strange your technology is so advanced and you don't have more AI. Or are they typically not embodied?

A stable positronic brain has only ever been successfully built by one scientist, Dr. Soong - Data's father, who has now passed away. It's been something roboticists have researched for decades and many, including Data, have tried to replicate Dr. Soong's results, to no avail. Data had a daughter but...

[Beverly drops her gaze, saddened by the thought of Lal.]

She didn't make it past a few weeks.

I'm sorry to hear that. It must have been very difficult for him.

A positronic brain is far from the only way to develop artificial intelligence, though stability in any form is difficult to achieve. Perhaps that was the most dense memory material you had access to?

Honestly I believe the main reason is that artificial intelligence has simply not been a research priority. Humans particularly are wary of so-called supermen, because of some of the atrocities that occurred during World War Three. Even now, most forms of genetic manipulation are banned in the Federation, and I think for many, AIs hit too close to that as well.

AI seems to me to be very different than genetical manipulation of humans, but I suppose a board of inquiry might be hesitant regardless. Does your friend Data suffer from the association? Or has it been long enough they simply have difficulty interacting with him because he is different?

Dr. Soong was the descendant of a geneticist who almost brought about the resurgence of the augmented human beings who launched WWI, believing that they would not behave like their predecessors. But when they too tried to take over and even tried to kill him, he abandoned his hopes for genetic engineering. Instead, he turned to the development of artificial intelligence, in his quest for perfecting humanity. So the connection between the two is not entirely unwarranted.

[She sighs.]

It's... a complicated issue and I'm not a historian - I can't do the subject proper justice. All I can tell you is that we should not let our fears dictate our actions, yet we do, all the time. Not that fear is entirely the source of people's reactions to Data - others simply cannot see him as anything other than a machine for our use, like my tricorder.

Edited 2016-04-27 00:24 (UTC)

Judging people based on what their ancestors did is detestable, though that won't stop anyone.

[Which ties in directly to her next point, so he just nods.]

That's likely due to lack of exposure, then. Were there a thousand like him--or a million, or an entire planet--people would feel differently, I think. When you're the only one of your kind, you'll always be treated as an outsider by someone.

Very true. [Though... not that that stops the people of Daneel's world from treating him as less than.] Perhaps that is why people here are more willing to accept differences - most of us are here alone and for all of us, we're constantly encountering people from different worlds with completely different values and histories from our own, and we're all considered strange to someone.

That may be it. There's no standard of "normal" among us, so we must instead judge individuals on their own merit.

[He smiles faintly.]

Though that doesn't stop people from giving me odd looks due to my appearance.

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