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Post by Tobu Ishi on May 5, 2010 11:47:33 GMT
In the course of all this fun and crazy discussion about Jack, I realized/remembered something. Something seriously alarming. Remember "Residential", guys? If not, take a look at these pages... And then take another look at this page. ...I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
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Post by Casey on May 5, 2010 13:23:21 GMT
Your image tags, they is da broken!
Might be better to just link to the pages.
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Post by Tobu Ishi on May 5, 2010 13:39:53 GMT
Fixed it. That'll teach me to get lazy and direct link, now, won't it?
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Post by legion on May 5, 2010 13:46:10 GMT
Jack is racist against green eyed robots? (Seriously, I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, here).
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Post by Tobu Ishi on May 5, 2010 13:53:23 GMT
More like, how is it that those earlier strips show Jack going out of his way to fix robots and talking to them like friends, and now he's smashing them without apparent remorse? That's a major about-face.
There were a lot of people saying in some previous threads that Jack probably just doesn't personally think of robots as people, unlike sentimental Antimony, and his smashing of the Guard Robot was (in his mind) as harmless as breaking a toaster...but Tom specifically established in those earlier scenes that Jack used to like robots and treat them with respect and affection.
I'd forgotten about that until now, and now that I've remembered? It disturbs me a lot more than shadowed eyes and bandaged fingers.
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Post by blackboe on May 5, 2010 13:56:21 GMT
Yeah, dude, wow. I did not notice that.
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Post by legion on May 5, 2010 14:08:30 GMT
Oic. I thought we had been over this already though, but, yeah.
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Post by Casey on May 5, 2010 14:23:50 GMT
It did get mentioned in the thread discussing Guard Robot's death, yeah, but some fans don't remember every detail... I've noticed that too, when discussing events, I'll reference something that happened in the past that I remember clearly, but not everyone does, so sometimes the point is lost. I think it was a good idea to spell it out as Tobu has done, though it would have been more useful back then when people were still trying to argue that Jack was a good guy *grin*
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Post by Tobu Ishi on May 5, 2010 14:49:22 GMT
[...]back then when people were still trying to argue that Jack was a good guy *grin* Honestly, this weirds me out beyond the simple question of whether Jack is naughty or nice. After all, people who were once fond of cats rarely decide of their own volition to start hitting them with cricket bats and calling them dumb animals. This is a much larger attitude shift than acquiring a few physical tics, a case of insomnia, and a tendency to laugh abruptly at inappropriate moments in the months following a traumatic experience. Since we didn't have much time to get to know Jack before he entered Zimmingham, it's kind of hard to argue whether he's different now; he was certainly mischievous all along, which clouds the issue somewhat. But this is concrete fact and as weird as all get out: Jack was very kind to robots, once, and that has changed completely.Totally aside from whether Jack is misunderstood or bad to the bone, this is making me wonder if Jack's behavior is even entirely under his own control. I don't want to write off this kind of stuff as simply "oh, the spider's making him do it", but...really? Petting them a few weeks ago, and trashing them now? Something's amiss here.
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Post by King Mir on May 5, 2010 15:05:19 GMT
One possibility is a kind of racism. Jack's sees them as human enough for some things, and so might help a robot in need. But ultimately he still sees them as inferior to humans in so far as value of life is concerned.
The other possibility is that he does care about robots, but felt that his objectives were too important. If a human was in his way he might be willing to do the same.
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Post by Casey on May 5, 2010 15:37:53 GMT
So King, I'm unclear... are you saying that Jack's POV regarding robots has not essentially changed over time, or that it has?
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Post by the bandit on May 5, 2010 16:30:33 GMT
"Strange, right?"
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Post by warrl on May 5, 2010 18:00:22 GMT
One possibility is a kind of racism. Jack's sees them as human enough for some things, and so might help a robot in need. But ultimately he still sees them as inferior to humans in so far as value of life is concerned. Another possibility is a sort of inverse racism because of the Uncanny Valley. Basically the laser cows are non-human people, but anthropomorphic robots are too human to be non-human people yet not human enough to be human people.
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Post by King Mir on May 5, 2010 18:17:42 GMT
So King, I'm unclear... are you saying that Jack's POV regarding robots has not essentially changed over time, or that it has? I'm suggesting that it has not changed.
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Post by avurai on May 5, 2010 18:23:23 GMT
I think of it this way. When you see a human fall over, you laugh. When you see a dog on the floor weeping, you feel really really bad for it.
Robotic-humans are just an inferior version of you. Beating up other human beings is sometimes cheered over. Kicking animals can get you arrested and hated by a large majority of the civilized population. Maybe the same sort of rules apply to their robotic counterparts. Animals are just a lot easier to sympathize with, mechanical or not.
Also, Jack has probably been watching movies and TV shows about robots that have suggested exactly what his excuse was. "It's just a dumb robot." His brain has been colored.
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Post by Mr Pitchfork on May 5, 2010 18:24:16 GMT
Interesting observation. It's as if he has suddenly gone insane.
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Post by nikita on May 5, 2010 18:28:25 GMT
The cows just didn't pose danger to him.
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Post by Casey on May 5, 2010 18:33:03 GMT
I am interested in everyone's reasons for attributing this different attitude to such diverse ideas as you have, rather than the much more simple and obvious answer that Jack's etheric parasite has driven him into madness. Somewhere out there, a guy named Occam is getting ready for a shave...
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Post by Tobu Ishi on May 5, 2010 22:13:11 GMT
I am interested in everyone's reasons for attributing this different attitude to such diverse ideas as you have, rather than the much more simple and obvious answer that Jack's etheric parasite has driven him into madness. Somewhere out there, a guy named Occam is getting ready for a shave... This. This isn't a plot hole that needs explaining away. He changed.
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blue
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by blue on May 5, 2010 22:56:35 GMT
I am pretty good with computers but I won't feel bad for smashing up one that's in the way.
Alternate answer: the cows were smart robots
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Post by Mr Pitchfork on May 5, 2010 23:26:25 GMT
I am pretty good with computers but I won't feel bad for smashing up one that's in the way. Alternate answer: the cows were smart robots Both Guard Robot and Cow Robots have souls. This has been made very apparent. Jack knew it too once. This has been made rather apparent. Now Jack has gone crazy. This has also been made totally apparent.
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blue
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by blue on May 5, 2010 23:39:16 GMT
Annie smushes a bug with a soul to talk to a psycopomp. Where is the psychopomp of robots?
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Post by Mishmash on May 5, 2010 23:43:32 GMT
This comic sure is chock-full of moral ambiguity, huh?
(That is what makes it so good!)
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Post by Mezzaphor on May 5, 2010 23:45:34 GMT
Annie smushes a bug with a soul to talk to a psycopomp. Where is the psychopomp of robots? There is none.
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blue
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by blue on May 5, 2010 23:59:28 GMT
Yeah I'd imagine only things that are alive or could be killed have them.
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Post by Mr Pitchfork on May 6, 2010 20:44:23 GMT
Tom did say that robots have souls. He spent an entire chapter showing that they are alive.
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blue
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by blue on May 7, 2010 2:05:22 GMT
I missed that post and that chapter! I will take your word for it. But since there is no psycopomp and no robot ghosts I will go ahead and assume that robot souls are recycled and "killing" them does nothing.
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Post by Mezzaphor on May 7, 2010 2:20:29 GMT
Robots can be destroyed, permanently, which is pretty much the same thing as killing them (unless we're going to make up some new, soul-centric definition of "alive" and "kill"). The fact that there is no psychopomp for robots implies that robots have no souls, but does not prove it: it's also possible that the Guides are just behind the times, and the robots' souls have been left to puzzle through the afterlife by themselves. (However, in such a case, one would expect to see a lot of lost robots ghosts, so the fact that we haven't encountered any of those could be evidence against this.)
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blue
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by blue on May 7, 2010 2:39:55 GMT
I don't know so much about these "new" definitions, but typically the only things that are "alive" have biological functions and when they are "killed" those stop because they are "dead".
If you don't want to add exceptions for non-biological things with souls, which you seem to concede that robots probably don't have, then I don't know how you think that they are a thing that could be "killed" instead of "broken".
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Post by Mr Pitchfork on May 7, 2010 8:12:33 GMT
"Kill" usually applies to something that is animated. "Broken" usually applies to something that is stationary. In any case, the chapters detailing the robot societies do show that the robots really are as alive as we are, relevant implications in other chapters show the same thing, and Tom's Formspring answer that says something along the lines of "Aren't piles of meat and bone capable of forming souls?" shows that robots can at least have souls, which supplements the implications that they do. I think the psychopomps are racist against robots. Muut called the Thousand Eyes "electrical appliances", which may extend to all robots. It may be that the birds have incredibly simple brains and cannot form souls, making them just electrical appliances, though.
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