Star Wars: Andor

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I will be profoundly disappointed if Luthien turns out to be a Jedi. Doubly so if he ignites a lightsaber.

I still expect a family member was a Jedi or a Padawan and the crystal he carries was theirs. And he could still be force-sensitive, but never trained formally. He would make a good Grey Force user. KotOR had them and Ahsoka definitely feels like one.

 

[Celebrim]

B2EMO is breaking my heart and I love Brasso being so empathic towards the droid. I find the status and sentience of Droids is one of the weirdest things about Star Wars, and a lot of things break if you look too closely at it, but I am a sucker for kindness towards droids.

I have always felt Star Wars treatment of artificial intelligences is one of the best things about it.

Artificial intelligences defy current human experience because the only intelligent and sentient beings we are familiar with at present is us.

Humans therefore tend to respond to robots in one of two equally bad ways. Either they assert that they are human, and therefore want to treat them according to human rights and dignities. Or else they assert that they are objects and want to treat them as objects with the rights and dignities of an object. But AI's would be neither, and either one is a dysfunctional category failure akin to the well-meaning Hermione Granger attempting to trick Hogwarts house elves into receiving clothing in the wrong-headed and condescending effort to "set them free". Granger is operating from the theory that the best way to relate to a non-human intelligence is to assume its wants, desires, dignities, and so forth are exactly what a human would desire where a human to find itself in the same circumstances. This is a failure of imagination, or as in Hermione's case, a failure of empathy by our favorite semi-autistic nerd girl.

Star Wars has always charted what I think is the correct middle way of seeing them as some entirely different class of being with its own set of rights and dignities that good people will recognize and respect, but at the same time not human and not trying to impose on them unwanted humanity.

It's a fundamental human arrogance to suppose both that everything else wants to be human, and that what humans want is in fact the right and noble way to live.

 

[Celebrim]

It's a sign of how much I bought into Luthen's way of thinking that after fist pumping over his escape, I'm like ... oh, damn, gotta get rid of that ship before it gets traced back to Luthen's shop.

Which as a Star Wars GM running games in this era is absolutely how protagonists have to think. Because the good guys simply don't have the resources and the Empire is overwhelmingly powerful.

As for Brasso, I'd love to see a Rebels: Spec Ops series with Brasso and Melsh as Pathfinders conducting small commando missions.

 

[MarkB]

It's a sign of how much I bought into Luthen's way of thinking that after fist pumping over his escape, I'm like ... oh, damn, gotta get rid of that ship before it gets traced back to Luthen's shop.

He's probably okay, given the sophisticated ID-spoofing tech he has on board. On the other hand, I seem to recall Cassian commenting on how rare it was for a ship of that class to have a hyperdrive, which he pretty clearly demonstrated it to have when escaping.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I have always felt Star Wars treatment of artificial intelligences is one of the best things about it.

The few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that dealt with this made you think too, especially the one where Data built his own "daughter".

 

[Celebrim]

The few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that dealt with this made you think too, especially the one where Data built his own "daughter".

The Data situation is different than the typical Star Wars droid. Data was made specifically to be an independent sophont by a creator that viewed Data as his progeny and inheritor. As such, it's quite possible that Data does deserve to be treated as human, does want to be treated as human, and will be made happy and healthy by being treated as a human in a way that is not true of say R2-D2.

Which isn't to say that R2-D2 is an object but that no one is going to buy an astromech that wants, needs, and deserves to be treated as human and perhaps more critically, it's an engineering design failure that in my opinion is severe enough to be considered an act of immorality to design an astromech that wants or need to be treated as human or has a human emotional framework through which it judges and experiences life.

 

[Celebrim]

He's probably okay, given the sophisticated ID-spoofing tech he has on board. On the other hand, I seem to recall Cassian commenting on how rare it was for a ship of that class to have a hyperdrive, which he pretty clearly demonstrated it to have when escaping.

The PC's in my game have a similar problem. They fly a medium freighter that has been modified to be an assault carrier that can carry 4 Z-95's. While they can turn off their transponder and/or transmit a forged transponder code, their ship is unique enough that they are probably the only people in the whole quadrant flying a ship of that sort in that configuration. When they are doing something clandestine, if they get close enough to an Imperial vessel to get focus scanned and they leave survivors or enough time for the enemy ship to use an unjammed comm system, Imperial Intelligence or the ISB will eventually put two and two together. They've already gotten in trouble once because they made a banking transaction that raised red flags. They won't survive another mistake. Or rather they might, but as they put it, "Pretty soon we're going to have to go work for the Hutts".

It's a good bet the Empire now knows that there is a Fondor Haulcraft out there with a class 0.5 hyperdrive, advanced engines, side mounted lance projectors, advanced targeting software, and an experimental micro-missile array. The ISB has the resources to simply request all the records of all Fondor Haulcraft that have made hyperspace jumps in the last week, and then go investigate every single one of them. It's a big galaxy, but any number that isn't in the millions is perfectly doable for the Empire.

And here I was hoping Luthen would survive the season.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The Data situation is different than the typical Star Wars droid. Data was made specifically to be an independent sophont by a creator that viewed Data as his progeny and inheritor. As such, it's quite possible that Data does deserve to be treated as human, does want to be treated as human, and will be made happy and healthy by being treated as a human in a way that is not true of say R2-D2.

Which isn't to say that R2-D2 is an object but that no one is going to buy an astromech that wants, needs, and deserves to be treated as human and perhaps more critically, it's an engineering design failure that in my opinion is severe enough to be considered an act of immorality to design an astromech that wants or need to be treated as human or has a human emotional framework through which it judges and experiences life.

Aside from all that other stuff about Data, he has zero emotion capability until very late in the series/movies, so that is something that Star Wars AI have as an advantage (disadvantage?) over him.

 

[Ryujin]

And yet we frequently see droids being treated simply as property, in Star Wars. Probably one of its few recurring social commentaries.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

And yet we frequently see droids being treated simply as property, in Star Wars. Probably one of its few recurring social commentaries.

Yeah, I think the only way to "be your own droid" is to become a bounty hunter. There may be a few that are employed and not owned, but it is still a very grey area to me.