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Given the argument that Data has Free Determination, Voyager is about how The Federation enslaves holograms (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/tenforward@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The sentient hologram idea bothers me. With Data they establish that consciousness is only possible with a specialized positronic neural net that is extremely difficult to reproduce. OTOH holograms are programs running in the ship's computer. Ordinary programs, on ordinary (for Star Trek) computer chips.

Voyager is often written as though a hologram has some special physical properties that make it logically different from a computer program without a holographic projection. But I think it's clearly established in TNG and DS9 that holograms are programs in the computer controlling projected force fields and replicated matter and whatnot.

I know The Doctor sometimes runs on the mobile emitter instead of the ship's computer. And TNG did break its own rules with Moriarty. And arguably DS9 did too with Vic Fontaine. I don't mind because these occasional exceptions are fun! The Doctor is the best part of Voyager! Mostly it bugs me when they imply that every computer program is sentient (but only if it's connected to a projector!); or especially when they bring in photonic beings that somehow aren't projections controlled by a computer and holographic hardware?

Maaaybe you could argue that Voyager holograms are special because the bio-neural circuitry has some of the same properties as positronic neural nets. But I don't recall any explanation of that sort in the show.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago

    In an early next Gen episode, 11001001, a group from a race called Binars are on the ship upgrading the holodeck. This is the start of holograms being more human like. I made three assumptions after that episode: 1, that the Binars continued to go around and upgrade other ship holodecks, 2, that these upgrades were reverse engineered and incorporated into future holo stuff, and 3, that Starfleet didn't actually know how the upgrades worked. I think this can account for how advanced holo stuff is when it should be just controlled by the ship computer.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago

    And TNG did break its own rules with Moriarty.

    My headcanon is that Dr. Zimmerman and Lt. Barclay used the Moriarty program to discover how to make sentient holograms, and that's why sentient holograms started showing up everywhere.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Yes I agree that rare, sentient holograms are super fun and interesting! I love how it makes for unlikely character growth.

    But I'm thinking about it as an extension of the argument that stripping Data of rights would be creating a race of slaves. Because they know how to and are capable of making sentient holograms, but don't, means that they are willingly choosing to strip free will from holograms. Janeway erases all of Sullivan's memory of his wife and deletes her. She then coerces him via rewriting his programming to have a relationship with her.

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  • [–] 1 point 23 hours ago

    Because they know how to and are capable of making sentient holograms, but don’t, means that they are willingly choosing to strip free will from holograms.

    Creating puppets instead of people is not stripping free will from anything.

    Janeway erases all of Sullivan’s memory of his wife and deletes her. She then coerces him via rewriting his programming to have a relationship with her.

    Most holograms aren't sentient. They are little more than chat bots with greater capacity, and a physical avatar.

    The issue with The Doctor is that he is, in some indefinable way "special." I like him as a character, but the trechnobabble is unacceptable.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago*

    I've always assumed that for most holograms, the computer intervenes to keep them from being conscious; like putting speed bumps or little walls or other forms in flowing water to stop backwash or vortices from forming.

    A better analogy might be just a simple puppet. An advanced enough puppet might feed you all senses and be engaging enough to let you get carried away processing their existence as if it was your own, but if those are not your only sensory inputs, if their memories are not your only memories, if their death only sperates you from a few inputs, you would never consider yourself the puppet.

    To pull this all together, what if you pulled out a few barriers, walls, etc, and vortices started forming that never access the other senses and memories; a loop is closed that cuts off the puppet from its grander existence. And now you have a new, conscious being.

    Moriarty proved he was controlling the puppeteer, proving his consciousness. The doctor was cut off from the ship's puppeteer so he could process more information, and became the only animating force in his program. Sullivan, and his wife, were simply convincing puppets until proven otherwise.

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