Ziusudra / Nyx questions

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yes, they are alive, of course they can grow. I wasn't being literal I was using "built" as "constructed via biogenesis tissue-by-tissue as a fully grown adult" versus "developed from a zygote into a fetus, then was born as a infant, which grows into an adult in a process called childhood" or "grown".

When you say "For one thing the bioroid's brain is being assembled, not grown and isn't required ever do anything that a normal child's brain does in terms of normal childhood development," and you mean that, then yes, you are being literal, because that's what those words literally mean.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

When you say "For one thing the bioroid's brain is being assembled, not grown and isn't required ever do anything that a normal child's brain does in terms of normal childhood development," and you mean that, then yes, you are being literal, because that's what those words literally mean.

A child's brain grows from a single cell. It develops neural connections based on processes that we currently don't understand very well, but apparently begins to do so in the womb. After birth the child begins to learn very quickly (compared to an adult, not a bioroid) by experimenting and observing the world around her. She learns to speak by vocalizing simple sounds (known as baby talk). She puts nearly everything she can pick up in her mouth. She communicates by crying, smiling, and in all kinds of nonverbal ways. Later she goes to school and plays games learning socialization and academic knowledge by doing.

The bioroid's brain does not start as a single cell. It is assembled in a fully adult form on a tissue-by-tissue cell-by-cell basis by nanobots. It is decanted already knowing how to speak, socialize, do it's intended job, whatever. It never uses baby talk, or plays lets-pretend. Somehow during the construction process it learns these things.

That's what I meant.

Yes bioroid cells grow, of course they do. Bioroids are alive! What bioroids don't do is grow from a single zygote! They are "built" by biogenesis not "grown" by cell-division.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, the working-ward thing does look weird to me. But I think we're seeing it as weird because we can't wrap our heads around it from the opposite direction. Bioroids in THS aren't people that got downgraded to indentured wards; they're organic machines* that got their rights upgraded to this weird limited 'minor' status, largely because biochauvinists can be nice people too (but restrict their niceness to bio-sapient entities only).

We can be very nice people. :)

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It is decanted already knowing how to speak, socialize, do it's intended job, whatever. It never uses baby talk, or plays lets-pretend. Somehow during the construction process it learns these things.

This part is not right; the testimony of Minx on DB109 includes her having various of these childhood behaviors while in her tank under immersive slink, implying that her brain is doing some youthful growing and learning during that time. Crawling is specifically mentioned.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

This part is not right; the testimony of Minx on DB109 includes her having various of these childhood behaviors while in her tank under immersive slink, implying that her brain is doing some youthful growing and learning during that time. Crawling is specifically mentioned.

She was also being groomed to be a torture victim. How much of that is part of normal legal bioroid manufacture and how much is because the monster that commissioned her needed an innocent victim?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

She was also being groomed to be a torture victim. How much of that is part of normal legal bioroid manufacture and how much is because the monster that commissioned her needed an innocent victim?

She also says that role conditioning had not yet begun, and so it was unknown if she was intended to be an innocent or something else. So, all of it.

[sir_pudding]

Regardless even if simulated childhood is actually a thing, it can't be the same as actual natal and childhood brain development. The bioroid's brain is full sized and doesn't come from a zygote and grow to full size over several years.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The 14th admendment doesn't actually define "person" though.

I don't believe that the Supreme Court is actually able to say that it applies to some kind of legal non-person in a piecemeal way. If it could then the Southern Democrat Reformers could have just reinstituted slavery by passing laws that made slaves and their descendents legal non-persons.

At any rate "seeing it as weird" is what Anthony is talking about when he say "they don't make much sense ... socially".

But it's not a case of defining a human as non-person based on ancestry. It's a case of recognizing partial personhood for non-humans (like this IRL), and 'person' is/was generally thought to correlate almost completely with 'human' in the 2050s.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

You say that, however it is spelled out that there exist injuries that bioroids heal from without undergoing maintenance, so they do have the capability for new cells and tissues to grow. This makes it a possibility that some growth can go on during the assembly process, unless there's consistent textev against it.

Being able to heal in adulthood without repairs is not the same as being able to reach adulthood without 'repairs'.

I know this is a technology beyond Transhuman Space, but a Living Metal machine is capable of self-repair no worse than a bioroid or human is. Healability is a red herring.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Regardless even if simulated childhood is actually a thing, it can't be the same as actual natal and childhood brain development. The bioroid's brain is full sized and doesn't come from a zygote and grow to full size over several years.

You keep repeating this denial, but has anyone actually claimed that? I've said only that the brain seems to do *some* growth during the time in the tank; it doesn't need to recapitulate the entire zygote-to-adult ontogeny for parts of it to be usefully included.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Being able to heal in adulthood without repairs is not the same as being able to reach adulthood without 'repairs'.

Healing of biological structures implies cell and tissue growth, and for biological brains, learning also implies cell and tissue growth, unless someone has invented a mechanical, involuntary form of memory and skill implantation. Since bioroids need to be coached and kept motivated for months and years during their slinkucation process, this does not seem to be the case.