Souls of Machines

Thanks to Robert, i started to watch „Battlestar Galactica“. One of the things he had mentioned was the atypical distribution of roles: the female president forced to make tough decisions while the male warlord was allowed to behave in a balancing and harmonizing way – btw basically the same formula for success as in X-Files, where the woman was analytical and the man had to be mysterious (meaning vague, undefined and without proofs).

But regarding information...

there is an interesting insight into the true nature of information processing systems to be seen in “Battlestar Galactica”, proving how well humans understand information. While there is always a person telling us “they” are just machines, the story tells us the opposite.

“Downloaded”...

tells us once more, how Sharon, “just a Number Eight”, can love and is able to see the difference between good and evil, how she feels guilty and suffers from bad conscience or how a Number Six struggles to accept that she has fallen in love and that she doesn’t want to have a new life, but prefers to suffer to protect the “current body”...

They have names – a member of a production series (“Number Eight”) is called “Sharon” and the “different versions” of Number Six also got different names...

names to identify the “instance”...

i couldn’t have said it better – it’s not about the genes, and it’s not about the body. Sure, both are important to offer the “intelligence”, the “engine and storage” to detect, evaluate, store and retrieve datas and their relations to create a representation of the ongoing information around...

and sure, as long as those active information processing systems are “high intelligence”, they need some pre-programmed default-solutions like “instincts” and “emotions” to be capable of real-time processing...

but these “intelligences” are equal for the whole production series, may it be “Number Eight” or “the Human Species” (ok, the Human Species offers a wider range of varieties, but comparing it with Chimps or Bonobos, you see, what i mean).

That, what makes us all individual, makes us all unique in the whole wide infinity of the universe...

that, what gives us souls, what let us decide what’s right or wrong against anyone else designed like us...

is the unique space-time-path our intelligence had gone...

is our experience...

and that is so impressive about “Battlestar Galactica”. Despite the fact, that some always say “they are only machines”...

the story shows us on and on different “instances” of those highly intelligent active processing systems (able to learn individually) with different lifes and different experiences...

therefore different people with different souls.

And?

They are perfectly right.