Part 2 continuation of the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1540866-what-is-your-stance-on-android-rights/ since the first one had so many interesting viewpoints.

Original poll results

What is your stance on android rights?

1. The Railroad - androids are not slaves and should be treated as human beings (51 votes [25.63%])

2. The Institute - androids are robots designed to serve humans (65 votes [32.66%])

3. A little bit of both (56 votes [28.14%])

4. A totally different ideology (27 votes [13.57%])

It will depend largely upon how advanced the androids are and several of the following questions.

Is there a true sense of self-awareness and a desire to preserve one's life?

Are they able to make decisions based on morality and understand the implications of those decisions?

If so, are they capable of making irrational decisions with negative consequences to others?

If they are advanced enough to think, behave and take actions like humans, ghouls and other self aware individuals in the wasteland, then no, I do not believe that they deserve to have their existence limited to servitude to humans. If given the same freedoms, it is expected that they would be held to the same standards of morality that are required of any local government ruling over the area that they live in.

If the experiences had with even an Enclave Eyebot companion in New Vegas are any indication, then they are indeed capable of independent thought.

Just my thoughts on it.

I try to look at it from the perspective of the android. If you were an android who was self-aware and able to contemplate its own existence, would you want to be a slave to someone just because they happen to be squishy and made of organic matter?

Forced slavery is ALWAYS evil. No exceptions.

I am anticipating that the androids will be similar to the ghouls.... ie intelligent vs feral... or malfunctioning vs self-aware

I'm pretty sure there will be androids who are self aware due to the Railroad being one of the main factions. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were also some half finished, incomplete androids who are not fully self aware but still mobile with a human appearance.

As I already mentioned in the previous thread.

The slaver that I play doesn't care if the slaves he captures are made of flesh, metall or something else.

The price which he can sell them counts, nothing else.

You must be quite ...special... if you can look at things from view of a microwave oven.

Basic household machine enslaving scum, how do your think your computer feels when it can only put in words you type and it has no say in it?!?!

My stance is simple, if it is self-aware, has feeling and emotions and has a unique personality (ie: 10 gary's dont make them human just cause they feel emotions, cause there just a template copied a couple of times) then i will consider it sentient. Wether it deserves to be free depends on their ability to relate to moral codes and guidelines. An android that is self-aware and has emotion, yet has no feelings what-so-ever about killing people, is not worthy of being called a living being, then is is just a murderous piece of vaulty wirerings. A android that however values lives and has actual concience to guide him, that i will consider to deserve to be free to make his/her own choices in how it wants to live.

But what if it's only acting like it has feelings because that's what it's been programmed to do? What if it only seems self-aware because it was created to act that way, to ask those questions, to find the answers, to value it's own existence?

Machines exist as the servants of people. Any semblance of consciousness is ultimately artificial and not real. People are life, their products are ultimately not.

There's not exactly any scientific data to support the idea that humans experience true, classical "self-awareness" (i.e. true agency or choice). I don't see any reason to believe that a robotic illusion of consciousness is somehow less valid than the human experience, so I imagine the moral imperative would be to treat androids in the exact same manner as human beings. That said, my characters in Bethesda games don't always adhere particularly strictly to the moral imperative.

I don't know if anyone remembers the old PS3 Kara video, but they just added a new one for PS4. Now if the synths looked and acted like this, it would be a harder choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhoYLp8CtXI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEPzofGKSNE

But yeah, they're still just machines acting out their programming. Not that they couldn't get me emotional. Hell I still cry at Disney movies.

You've essentially just described all biological life that humans have studied. Human behavior is just incredibly intricate and robust "programming" that's been developed over billions of years.

Really? Who made a bird?

Destroy them and take all the cool parts

Well that depends on which explanation for the history of biological life you personally subscribe to. In most human religious traditions, biological life was designed by some sort of creator-deity. The scientific tradition, which is more specifically what I was referencing, describes biological life as having progressively developed from precursor molecules to single celled organisms and eventually to animals, in the case of birds. So, according to evolutionary theory, random chance created birds, and developed the intelligence they display through processes explained through physics.

I concur too so I choosed "A totally different ideology".

There's no other choice I can choose but that one.

They're toasters built to perform a function, nothing more

Har har. The moment my computer or microwave begins exhibiting independent, contemplating thought, I'll let you know how it feels when I free it, even though its consciousness would be dependent on the power cord.

My stance remains the same.

If you're against enslavement of humans, but somehow find the justification for enslavement of beings equally intelligent and cognizant. Then you're a hypocrite in my mind. Or a human elitist I suppose. One or the other really. Point is don't call out Caesar's Legion, Ashur, and Paradise Falls, but not the Institute if you're one of those "abolition" types.

Myself: human, sentient robot, ghoul, mutant. Doesn't matter. I'm with sesom: its only the price that matters.

And humans are animals, ultimately driven by basic instincts. Nothing more.

Bit of both.

If it appears to display human-level sapience, then it is a person, as far as I am concerned. If you want to prove me otherwise, then convince me that YOU are more than just a bunch of random chemicals and electrical impulses that put on a good show at being sapient, like a horse that "knows" basic arithmetic.

I will say that you shouldn't bother the attempt, because we can't determine the diffetence between genuine sapience and "fake" sapience from an outsider's perspective; who is to say that a programmed sapient machine doesn't have the same level if experience as hunans do?

Until you can prove it otherwise, there is no real difference as far as I can tell. And if you can actually prove that difference- that what they experience is fundamentally not real and only looks it from an outside perspective- then go ahead and enslave them. Just be sure to remove that self-awareness program, because that will cause great harm in the future.

This.

If Harkness from FO3 is any indication of android behavior, then they should be afforded the same rights as humans, since they are virtually indistinguishable at the social level. I think the more intriguing question, though, is why the Institute would design robots to be as human-like as possible at all.

If They Shoot At Me

"Do what must be done, Nora/Howard. Do not hesitate; show no mercy."

If They Do Not Shoot At Me

"I'll defend you to the death if I must. TO ARMS, GENTS! TO ARMS!"

I will probably play both sides as long as I can. I would want to help the railroad, because its morally the right thing to do, but I also really want to see what kind of awesome tech the institute has beyond anroids. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some crazy weapons/implats/similar gear you could get only through helping the institute.

It also depends on what direction the story takes. Presumably different sides will be at war (the institute and Brotherhood in particular), so I may side with the institute by default if it turns out that the Brotherhood's plans for the area are potentially dangerous/bad for the non-institute inhabitants. Plus if the institute is developing all kinds of tech, they probably have the best chance at helping the wasteland/country repair itself, so attaking them is kind of dooming everyone.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the two aren't mutually exclusive. I get the impression that the main conflict is the Brotherhood vs the Institute, so while there are probably quests that play out as "free or bring back androids x, y, z", I doubt going against the institute in that case would keep you from doing other institute missions, or making them hostile. I'd imagine it'll be like a better developed version of the group of freed slaves you come across holding out on the outskirts of the capital ruins in FO3. You can help them, but it never affects anything in regards to the slavers that aren't all that far away.

Actualy a valid opinion, though i would consider a android that is able to overcome the limitation of its programming to form its own personality to be considered sentient. So yes, if it is just made to feel emotions and personality due to programming, then it is not realy sentient. But if it goes beyond the boundries of its own programming to learn and "evolve", then i feel it is sentient.

But again, it is to complex to realy be able to define "sentient" life. We humans are eccentialy no more then a giant bio-molecular computer. Our emotion and even something as simple as feeling pain, are nothing more then electronic signals being sent to our brain, which is basicly a big organic proccesor, to interpret our reaction.