Westworld

[Del Murder]

Ed Harris still raped an increasingly self-aware robot, so he doesn't get a pass from me. But his scenes were great in this episode. Love the hints dropped about who he and William are on the outside as you gradually get to know them. I'm actually far more interested in them than any of the robots, though Paolo and the main hooker lady are growing on me.

Interesting that Ed Harris's exploding cigar was a somewhat of a 'cheat code' in the park that they had to authorize at master control. That means they do know who he is and maybe even what he is up to, and yet don't seem to care. It's possible the maze is something people are intended to find as sort of metagame on top of the usual wild west shenanigans.

Probably my favorite episode so far.

[Psychotic]

After that brief flashback Dolores had of the incident in episode 3, me and the WW fans at work no longer think he raped her. We think he was going after some information relating to the maze just as he has with all the other hosts. I don't think it's a coincidence that they both are the two characters most concerned with it.

[Slothy]

I'm still not sure on what the cycle is for the park - sometimes it seems like things are reset daily but then you have camping out for longer adventures and things like Hector being broken out in 3 days time. Not a huge deal to me anyway.

It's possible that they only reset when not actively engaged in a story with guests.

[Del Murder]

After that brief flashback Dolores had of the incident in episode 3, me and the WW fans at work no longer think he raped her. We think he was going after some information relating to the maze just as he has with all the other hosts. I don't think it's a coincidence that they both are the two characters most concerned with it.

That makes sense and maybe he didn't rape her this time but it's clear that he's done so many times over the years as he mentions how she 'fights it' and the whole scenario is very familiar to him. She may have been less sentient at the time, but it is hard to root for a guy who forces sex on a humanlike non-sexbot.

[Mirage]

well, as far as he's concerned, they are just robots, right? very few people know that some of them are self aware. Would he have killed them if he thought they were self-aware? Would he have scalped them? Would he have shot a little girl's mother in the head while she was looking if he thought they were self-aware? I dunno. Maybe? My point is just that if we're going to judge the players based on what they do to sentient robots when they don't know they're sentient, then basically 80% of the guests are horrible human beings deserving the death penalty. Some of these guests just indiscriminately slaughters entire families for fun, remember

[Del Murder]

Well, sentient or not, 80% of the guests probably are horrible human beings, but that's a topic for another day.

[Psychotic]

How many of us have played a game like GTA and gone on the rampage, smurfing up everyone's trout for no other reason than fun? This is just the same principle with more advanced technology.

To the best of my knowledge the NPCs I killed were not sentient nor remember what I did so I don't feel any guilt over it. Sure, they ran away screaming and cried out in pain when I shot them, but that was just their programming. It's part of making a realistic experience. If I was suddenly made aware that actually they have the same cognition as the hosts in Westworld I would feel like an almighty piece of trout and wouldn't do it again. But they don't... I hope

[Del Murder]

Hey man, I never said any of you guys were great...

Also, there's a difference between taking your GTA character into a van with a hooker and sticking your actual penis into a robot that is pleading for you not to do it.

I guess it will be interesting to see how Ed Harris and the other guests react to the knowledge of the robots becoming self-aware, and if they continue to do what they've always been doing, since there seems to be no dispute that you are horrible person at that point.

[Slothy]

Yeah, there's a big difference between the likes of GTA and raping and murdering robots made to pass for real people to the point where their bodies are indistinguishable from human bodies at the surface level and who are able to interact and pass for human if you don't talk about things they're not allowed to talk about.

It's not actually a question of whether they're sentient, it's whether you could tell that kind of determines if you're an asshole or not. When they're this realistic and you still don't even hesitate for a second, there may be something wrong with you.

[Mirage]

Hey man, I never said any of you guys were great...

Also, there's a difference between taking your GTA character into a van with a hooker and sticking your actual penis into a robot that is pleading for you not to do it.

I guess it will be interesting to see how Ed Harris and the other guests react to the knowledge of the robots becoming self-aware, and if they continue to do what they've always been doing, since there seems to be no dispute that you are horrible person at that point.

The only difference is the level of realism. Fast forward a decade or so, perhaps, and we might have VR games where the NPCs act nearly as human as these, and might look so real that it would be hard to tell the graphics apart from actual video of humans. Would you be a horrible person for killing an innocent NPC who begged for their life just for fun? You could say that you as the player would be *pretty sure* that these NPCs in your game did not have any sort of self awareness, and you'd probably be right.

However, for all we know, strong AI with self awareness might not have been invented in the world Westworld takes place in either. The characters in this show are basically computers with computer programs running inside them. Why should the players assume that for some reason these programs were self aware when no other program in the entire world is? I mean they're just playing a game, why would game characters have self awareness when this doesn't even exist in state of the art computer research projects? Are the actions of the player any worse when they are done to a self-aware program without a physical body than one that does have one? I don't think so. Putting more value to a physical body than a virtual body might be natural for a human to do, as they physical world is the only real world they know, but isn't that sort of discriminatory towards lifeforms that don't have physical form?

Or to make another extreme example. This might be a bit graphic so be warned.

What if there was a westworld character with the same personality and perceived intelligence as one of the humanoid robots, except this robot was a metal box with wheels. Is putting a bullet in this robot less evil than putting a bullet in the innocent young woman robot's head? What about putting your penis inside these two robots (lets assume the metal box has something resembling a bodily orifice that isn't uncomfortable to use)?

[Psychotic]

Also, there's a difference between taking your GTA character into a van with a hooker and sticking your actual penis into a robot that is pleading for you not to do it.

Is there a difference between shooting someone in the face yourself and, say, using a drone to do it as you control it through a screen from thousands of miles away?

[Loony BoB]

Damn, you guys gettin' all philosophical in here. I'm just intrigued by the entire story and am leaving it at that. xD I don't want to overthink it to the point that it loses the story and becomes a research paper. Interesting thoughts all around, though.

I don't know who Paolo is that Murd mentioned in an earlier post...?

[Del Murder]

The outlaw who comes to town every 3 days to shoot everyone up is Paolo from Lost. Probably my favorite robot character. Should learn his name.

[Del Murder]

Also, there's a difference between taking your GTA character into a van with a hooker and sticking your actual penis into a robot that is pleading for you not to do it.

Is there a difference between shooting someone in the face yourself and, say, using a drone to do it as you control it through a screen from thousands of miles away?

There's not a lot of difference, no. But the killing is not all that bothersome. If you shoot some robot in the face with a gun or you doing by controlling a drone through a screen, it is still somewhat external to you. You are controlling a device (gun/controller) and the device is doing the killing. Especially if it is the 'bad guy' and part of the 'game' to do this. Even if you are shooting good guys, you are playing some role and it is part of the game design to play like this.

Sex, particularly rape, is very different than this. It is intrinsically internal. Controlling a drone dick and putting it in some VR character who is screaming for you not to do it and writhing in pain as you do, and getting pleasure from that, puts you on the same spectrum as someone who would do that with their own flesh dick. The flesh dicker is just so much worse because it is so much more real for them, but both people are pretty messed up.

Same as if you, say, mutilated these robots while they were still 'alive' or shot every man woman, or child in sight. There is still the line between doing this in a fantasy world with no consequences and doing it in reality to real people, which of course separates people from being criminals from simply being disturbed, but there is another line that separates the disturbed from the non-disturbed based on what level of torture, even fake, gives you pleasure.

A lot of the guests in Westworld are disturbed. They are probably not criminals. Hell, crime is probably down in this world since you can satisfy these urges legally in this fantasy world (if you can afford it).

[Shaibana]

The outlaw who comes to town every 3 days to shoot everyone up is Paolo from Lost. Probably my favorite robot character. Should learn his name.

we dont know Paolo from lost, so lets just keep it at Hector :P