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ThePhantomoftheButt Since: Dec, 2016
Nov 17th 2023 at 9:00:02 AM •••

The "Broken Aesop" entries on the main page really need to be cleaned up. I get what the entry is getting at, with the actual nature of androids and their capacity for empathy being something that's left up to reader interpretation, but I'd honestly advocate for removing the Broken Aesop section entirely and shifting the entries under it to a more appropriate trope like Alternate Aesop Interpretation or Alternate Character Interpretation.

I also feel like the tangent trying to relate the work to AI ethics to be more than little bit off-base and a prime candidate for deletion. While there's an obvious thematic connection between the androids of the book to AI as a concept, they're really more artificially created lifeforms than robots.

I've also removed a reference to Less Wrong friendly AI concepts and Roko's Basilisk from the entry as it presented both a misrepresentation of the work (The androids in the novel are not instances of artificial intelligence in the traditional sense, they're artificially created humans) and a misrepresentation of the rhetoric being referenced (Roko's Basilisk isn't something an AI does to "punish" humanity for anti-AI sentiment or mistreatment, it's a weird thought experiment whereby a hypothetical future, "friendly" AI tries to retroactively blackmail people in the modern day into investing more resources into AI research that leads to its creation)

WarriorsGate Since: Jan, 2012
Nov 15th 2015 at 1:24:07 PM •••

Changed the entries that objectively stated androids can't feel empathy.

"'He's really upset,' Irmgard said nervously. 'Don't look like that, J.R. And why don't you say anything?' To Pris and to her husband she said, 'It makes me terribly upset, him just standing there by the sink and not speaking.'"

Despite what Deckard and his society says, that is a textbook example of empathy, delivered by an android.

The book was written in 1966, during a string of books Dick wrote about Nazi ideology, such as The Man in the High Castle, The Simulacra, and Martian Time-Slip. Taken in the light of his past work, DADOES is clearly about the ingrained dehumanization of Jewish-Marxists in Nazi culture.

Edited by WarriorsGate Hide / Show Replies
vinterguffin Since: Mar, 2013
Aug 13th 2021 at 4:17:41 AM •••

But Irmgard doesn't understand why Isidore is upset. She thinks it has something to do with the TV. Pris, who knows him best, tells her it's actually the spider.

If there are Nazis in this book, it's the Rosen corporation. My fan theory is that there aren't any rogue androids at all, they're all loyally working as intended in a conspiracy to undermine human empathy - Roy's advance knowledge of Buster Friendly's exposé suggests as much. And think about the fake police station they set up, seemingly just to undermine one single bounty hunter's humanity.

Many people today work under some notion of "capability" as what gives us value. For PKD it's instead a profound, mystical unity which gives us value, our call to walk up Mercer's Golgatha-like hill, take part in his suffering and his love for everyone. The real problem isn't the androids, they're just the tools of people who reject that unity.

Think of Sloat, Isidore's boss. He's clearly devastated by the cat's death, so he's capable of empathy, but I don't think he wants to be, since he's still an utter asshole. The Rosens might even be capable of building truly empathetic androids, but they wouldn't want to because they hold such feelings in contempt.

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