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It's less that digital things can't be alive and more that to be alive you need to exist independent of technology that's simulating your life for you. All biological organisms pass this test. Data passes this test. The Doctor and every other hologram does not.

If you want to call the human body and perception an equivalent, I'll point out that when you cut yourself something has actually occurred to your physical body, it isn't just your brain seeing a knife and deciding it hurt you.

But hey, you are welcome to disagree at which point holodecks become extremely unethical. This is, after all, just philosophy.

Don't even get me started on how transporters don't make sense, haha.

Yes, Voyager's writers take this position, but I think it's nonsense.

Holograms are programs that run on a computer. They have no physical form, they are force fields and light being projected from a piece of hardware bolted to the wall to convince you they have form, but their true "self" is just data in a computer like any other program. Their experiences are database entries. They can be deleted, copied, transmitted, paused and restarted like any other program. They are incapable of doing anything that the computer they're running on can't do.

Like the EMH miners that pass along Photons Be Free - total bullshit. Why simulate that much intelligence when you've already installed devices all over that are capable of scanning and mining ore without physical form or the capacity for misery? Just let the computer do the work.

Or the Hirogen holograms. They're simulating pain, and it's fucked up the Hirogen want it that way, but does that make it unethical to hunt them? After all, when you hurt them, you're just updating a data structure in a computer that calculated the trajectory of your phaser fire, determined it was a hit and decided to relay that information back to you as simulated damage and pain. It could just as easily make the holograms impervious to all damage.

The Doctor can be special to the crew and they can want to keep him intact and running without pretending he's more than a simulation - he's designed to create rapport and they've bonded with him. But holograms in general? You might as well be concerned about being nice to a replicator or a navigation array, or an NPC in a videogame.

My God... Is the fact that boomers think '60s weed was mind altering proof of time incursions from the dank future???

I'm with you on rejecting AI being sane, but the idea that gaming wikis should be integrated into wikipedia is kinda nuts. If I search "Iron" on wikipedia I'm looking for facts, not a thousand item long disambiguation cluttered with every game that has iron as a resource. Conversely, on a game wiki my search for "Iron" has an entirely different context and I'm looking for different info.

Not to mention game wikis have way lower editorial standards, their own tone (e.g. making jokes), versioning concerns, their own new user friendly homepages etc.

Wikipedia could tuck this all into a separate namespace, sure, but that's effectively a separate wiki anyway and then it raises questions like "why is wikipedia hosting a mechanical guide for this porn game?" or "How long do we need to host the content for this game that peaked in 2012 and is now abandonware?" that are conveniently sidestepped by those communities supporting themselves.

Either interpretation could be correct, but it needs to be consistent.

To me, the holograms aren't people. People can't be reset, copied, or restored from backup. Holograms have no body to damage and no nerves to register that damage. The computer is recognizing that a humanoid would be damaged by whatever action and making its avatar express that in a way intended to be understood by other humanoids. That's all.

This is different from say, Data, because even though he can be manipulated and is inhuman in some of the same ways he is independent from any other computers and, importantly, his processing of pain is a real condition. He can be harmed, and even though he may say "Ouch!" to mimic humans, the real pain is his physical response to that damage, the reality that he may be less capable than before, and the need he has for repair.

I like the Doctor, I would treat him with respect, but if it was between him and a biological in a life or death situation, I'd choose the biological every time. I can always spin up another EMH mk. I from disk.

I actually just watched those episodes. Don't think it's her worst decision. The Hirogen had already taken Voyager and had everyone at their mercy, Janeway had to make a deal or die.

However, I will also say I think Voyager kinda flubbed the whole holograms-are-real-people-too idea. Holograms are just visual representations of what the computer is doing with force fields. When the holograms feel pain, it's simulated - they have no nervous system and they have not actually been harmed. The more sophisticated the AI the more realistic their reflection of "pain" but it's not real. OR it is real, and everything you do with a holodeck character is unethical.

I'm a little late to the party, but this episode is everything I wanted from modern Trek.

I'm loving that the cadets are competitive but ultimately supportive of each other. I love that we spent an entire episode focused on Jay'den's backstory and the Klingons, without any tedious martial arts or (real) space battles but the stakes were still plenty high. I found the resolution, and the message (not letting go of the past, but letting the present in) to be excellent Trek.

Caleb is also proving to be a bit more of an academy-era-Picard style character (great at a lot of stuff, but arrogant) rather than the sort of troubled genius vibe in the first bit of the show. I am looking forward to seeing him, and the other cadets, developed further.

Holly Hunter is doing great, bringing her own style. Loved she had a history with the Klingon guy and advocated for her student. I get why she's rubbing some the wrong way, but she is masterfully handling the people around her, leading with empathy, and has been very effective.

Also love we got some classic Klingon music from the movies, it was a nice nod.

Overall, I think this show is finally taking real advantage of the far future timeline. It is a little silly that major diplomacy is being effected at the Academy but because the Federation is still finding its feet again and the fact that the world has been mixed up from 90s Trek, it makes the Academy a much more interesting lens on the world than it would have been if it was set in the TNG-VOY timeframe.

I've been doing that and, in a world where Democrats are actually interested in making the world better and more fair, maybe that would work.

The problem is that Democrats don't want that. They want to continue supporting big business, deporting "illegals", drone striking foreigners, making tons of money from corporate donations... But occasionally wave a rainbow flag. They want to keep our race into fascism under the speed limit, and are wondering why they're getting no traction with people who want to turn the fuck around.

If they had a platform that made even modest promises about taxing billionaires, bringing bloodsucking insurance companies and predatory banks to heel, getting the police in line etc. they'd have a wildly popular platform and they'd naturally stop trying to squash progressive candidates. But unfortunately, the corporations say fixing issues will make their stocks go down.

Vote Blue! Their platform includes

• Small budget cuts to the jackbooted thugs murdering you in the streets!

• Slapping billionaires on the wrist in the court of public opinion, the only court that matters!

• Allowing all of their legislation to get hung up by a rotating cast of party traitors and then backing them to the hilt when a progressive candidate primaries them!

• Throwing money at healthcare industry donors to fix healthcare!

• Restoring faith in American alliances by promising to look the other way when any of our pals decide to genocide those naughty minorities.

• Gerrymandering, but this time it's us so it's cool!

Ahem. To be clear, I'll vote against Trump any chance I get, but we are still totally fucked until we get politicians that can actually stand for something that big business doesn't donate to.

An anti-DEI fork by a wingnut and a project that isn't even half way ready to use starting from scratch in a niche language. Neither of which are capable of dealing with the fundamental problem of X, the protocol itself, without becoming something entirely different.

... I'm not holding my breath.

Agreed. I was an early Wayland convert because once upon a time I started writing a WM and taking an interest in X internals... And then my face melted off like I'd opened the Ark of the Covenant.

Things are so much simpler now.