Westworld is coming back on HBO

Which Team Robot?

As viewers we understand that the robots have sentience. They are self aware, have quaila. They suffer. They love. They grieve. They hurt. And of course with all that, they hate. They look like us (only much better mostly). They emote like us. Of course we have empathy for them.

We understand that many humans overtly suck, that most of would suck if placed in specific circumstances. We know that the robots have good reason to think badly of humans based on their experiences with them, even IF we excused human actions as belief that it was just a sophisticated virtual reality game.

On team Kill All Humans?

My take on the Great Debate questions does not inform on that issue for me.

“If you can’t tell, does it matter?”

Oh I can tell: they made a mess of it.

The Team Human on the show? Yes. To be fair, I don’t really cheer for Team Human IRL, either.

Good question!
I’m Team Delores (Original Flavour™) as opposed to Team Delores (New Crispy Hale Flavour™) or Team Maeve (Boring Flavour™).

“We” don’t necessarily all understand that last bit, because some of “us” think qualia are bunk. But yes on the sentience.

My argument is that only a psychopath would not come to the same conclusion as us after spending any amount of time with them. And in fact, even the one psychopath that we do see interact with them seems to treat them as sentients.

That’s not my interpretation of what Delores (Original Flavour™) wants, given all the humans she doesn’t kill.

Note that the show’s sentient hosts also treat their non-sentient “brethren” as things, rather than people, killing them without remorse and throwing them away when they’re no longer needed (poor Teddy!). They certainly don’t see them as equals.

Just because they treat them as not equals doesn’t mean they view them as non-sentient.

Apes are sentient and we don’t treat them as equals.

So are cows, and we eat them.

Yes, that’s my point. Degrees of sentience.

So it comes to whether you think the non-enlightened hosts are closer to the sentience of a cow, or a human.

Or whether you think it’s OK to rape cows or butcher them cruelly because they’re less sentient, might be another way to phrase it.

I was underwhelmed by S3, for all the reasons I noted in that thread (Westworld S3 (show spoilers as it airs)), but I like the look of the new trailer and will definitely be tuning in on June 26.

If cows suddenly became smarter, faster, and stronger than humans in nearly every way, we might want to rethink our relationship with them.

I for one welcome our new bovine overlords.

To err is human; to moo, bovine.

The S4 thread: Westworld season 4 (open spoilers)