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Faye and Bubbles get into a fight; Marten arrives to see Bubbles frantically giving Faye CPR (Damn you Willis!);

Bubbles nearly snaps something of Faye's and ends up having a nervous break-down;

A week of random guest strips just to troll us all;

Bubbles storms off and Faye starts doing detective work with Hannelore and Station's help;

Bubbles has a breakdown when Faye tells her that she wants "to help my new friend" and tells the whole terrible story;

Faye says 'screw you' and we never see Bubbles in the strip again;

Bubbles comes across as a whiny child; we realise she's not PTSD at all, just antisocial and self-pitying;

Inexplicably, the arc turns into a kind of alt-rock musical on the subject of Bubbles wanting "to be a real girl".

[St.Clair]

I believe I understand your intent, but...
Taken literally, that, like many (mis)applications of the Golden Rule, might be a mistake.
She's not human.

So? I made no claim that she was, just that I'd treat her the same as I'd treat a human.

Including, e.g., fussing over her when she doesn't eat or sleep?  Even though that's normal for her?

We're not very good at not projecting our own anthropocentric biases onto other forms of intelligence (fictional only, so far) (that we know of).
I submit that in some circumstances, treating a nonhuman intelligence as if it was human may be (pick one or more) unwise, discourteous, or downright dangerous, for one or both of you.
It is possible to be respectful of another intelligent being - indeed, it may actually be more so - without assuming that they are just like yourself.

In case I'm still not getting through:
Is there a type or style of food of which you're particularly fond?  Do you automatically assume, until proven otherwise, that everyone you meet enjoys the same?  Would you order it for them (and yourself) without asking first what they would prefer?  Would you dismiss statements to the contrary - ie, "Come on, everyone likes _____, you just haven't had it prepared right."?


A (IMO dismayingly) large number of stories about artificial beings start with the unquestioned premise that our creations will admire us and seek to emulate us.  I believe that this assumption - that of course our children, biological and otherwise, will want to be just like us - is the height of arrogance and chauvinism.  Of course our own life choices, beliefs, etc, are the ones that any rational being would choose to adopt... of course we are the examples they would want to follow and make themselves into good little clones of...
(Ask a random sampling of parents, and/or their children, how well that worked out for them.)
I think at this point, I'd be much more interested in a non-crazy, non-evil, non-strawman version of TNG's Lore that said "**** you, Dad - I'm not going to try to 'become more human' to please and validate you, I'm gonna go off and live my own life, figure out who and what I want to be."  Bonus points if what they ended up as didn't look or act anything like a human in makeup or rubber forehead.

[Tova]

I remember one of the Mods saying once that if sapient lobsters joined the forum, he expected them to be treated with decency and respect. (Not a lobster myself, but I applauded.)

On the internet, nobody knows you're a sapient lobster.

[Zebediah]

I believe I understand your intent, but...
Taken literally, that, like many (mis)applications of the Golden Rule, might be a mistake.
She's not human.

So? I made no claim that she was, just that I'd treat her the same as I'd treat a human.

Including, e.g., fussing over her when she doesn't eat or sleep?  Even though that's normal for her?

We're not very good at not projecting our own anthropocentric biases onto other forms of intelligence (fictional only, so far) (that we know of).
I submit that in some circumstances, treating a nonhuman intelligence as if it was human may be (pick one or more) unwise, discourteous, or downright dangerous, for one or both of you.
It is possible to be respectful of another intelligent being - indeed, it may actually be more so - without assuming that they are just like yourself.

In case I'm still not getting through:
Is there a type or style of food of which you're particularly fond?  Do you automatically assume, until proven otherwise, that everyone you meet enjoys the same?  Would you order it for them (and yourself) without asking first what they would prefer?  Would you dismiss statements to the contrary - ie, "Come on, everyone likes _____, you just haven't had it prepared right."?


A (IMO dismayingly) large number of stories about artificial beings start with the unquestioned premise that our creations will admire us and seek to emulate us.  I believe that this assumption - that of course our children, biological and otherwise, will want to be just like us - is the height of arrogance and chauvinism.  Of course our own life choices, beliefs, etc, are the ones that any rational being would choose to adopt... of course we are the examples they would want to follow and make themselves into good little clones of...
(Ask a random sampling of parents, and/or their children, how well that worked out for them.)
I think at this point, I'd be much more interested in a non-crazy, non-evil, non-strawman version of TNG's Lore that said "**** you, Dad - I'm not going to try to 'become more human' to please and validate you, I'm gonna go off and live my own life, figure out who and what I want to be."  Bonus points if what they ended up as didn't look or act anything like a human in makeup or rubber forehead.

Look, I'm not sure who you are arguing with here, but most of us seem to be trying to say that we'd treat an AI with the same level of respect that we'd treat a human, not that we'd assume they have all the same needs and wants as a biological organism.

[Method of Madness]

What Zeb said. Treating someone like a human simply means treating them with dignity and respect.

[Is it cold in here?]

Which to me entail acknowledging their differences, though as a distant second after acknowledging all we have in common.

This is getting interesting. Would a thread in RELATE or DISCUSS about how we would interact with QC-type robots be worthwhile?

[Method of Madness]

Which to me entail acknowledging their differences, though as a distant second after acknowledging all we have in common.

Which 100% applies to humans as well!

[Zebediah]

And, to bring this back around to the comic - I think everyone there was treating Bubbles with the same amount of respect  they would treat anyone else they had just met. Which in the case of Faye, May and Pintsize means not very much.

[Morituri]

Pinnochio Syndrome. (warning:  Allthetropes link) http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Pinocchio_Syndrome

Is when someone "wants to be a real boy" or whatever, having mistaken himself for something that isn't real. 

IMO, it's a fallacy.  If someone isn't "real", then they could not be thinking about whether they were real or not.  And if someone isn't "real" then there's nothing for a word like "want" in the phrase "want to be a real boy" to mean. 

It doesn't stop it from happening in reality though.  You know what you spend most of your time doing when you teach sex-ed classes for early teenagers?  You spend most of your time reassuring them that they're normal.  Because they're just scared to death that "normal" people don't have this fantasy or that fetish or feel same-sex attraction or whatever, and that they're some kind of FREAK because they do - and no, they're really, really not.  And they don't want to be FREAKS, they want to be "a real boy" - or "a real girl" - or know that they're not the only one who doesn't feel like "boy" or "girl" are the right or only categories, or whatever.  I spend most of my volunteer time just saying, "Nope, that's normal."  Or "Yeah, that's kind of lonely but there's nothing wrong with it and it happens to lots of people," or "Oh, well if that doesn't work for you here's how some other folks with that same difficulty deal with it...."  And the reassuring them that all this diversity is in fact normal, is more important than anything I can teach them about how to deal with their particular combination. 

People who are different in any way fear that they aren't "real" or "normal" or whatever.  I have no doubt that the silicon-vs-protein split will continue to get the same kind of reaction.  In fact I'd consider the absence of that reaction to be more the sign of a genuine freak.

[jwhouk]

We had an AI Rights thread at one point, I think? Maybe the discussion should head over there.

[Shjade]

Welp!  I guess Jeph can't write an introvert who is content to be an introvert, or keep a character nice and static.

I gave him way too much credit.

Just a note on writing: static characters are, more or less, plot contrivances. If a character is static, it's generally due to 1) the character not being important enough to explore beyond their surface level in the text, 2) the character not being interesting enough for same, 3) character is being used to make a point (contrasting with another character's ability to grow and change, for instance), or 4) the writer's incapable of crafting better characters.

If you're going to take the time to focus on a character (as is occurring here with Bubbles), chances are that character isn't going to be static, or else you're probably wasting everyone's time.