Anyone else want to save the Real Shaun?

[jjb54]

Ya - bottom line: The Institute Quests - all of them, pretty much sucked. That's why I blew them to hell. I hated the plot lines. I also hate STRONG and refuse to rescue him and the other guy period. They can just stay there. :) As for Curie, I ' go through it ', the Quest - and then I send her to the most far away settlement that I can.

[zrovektor]

 

Within the lore of the game I can't see why Dr Amari couldn't simply have transferred Shaun's mind into a Synth body. After all he makes the things it wouldn't even need to be memory wiped first.

 

The problem with that is that you'd have a copy of Shaun's mind, but it won't be Shaun. For lack of a better term, the brain is pretty much the seat of the soul for humans, and you could have very easily dying real Shaun and Mind Copy Synth Shaun having a conversation. This is also why I REALLY don't like Currie's quest to get a Synth body as there's no way to really tell is the new Currie is actually the Currie we met in Vault 81 or if the new Currie is actually Glory's supposedly brain dead friend with a new set of memories.

 

While I suppose it's possible for a machine to cut and paste its consciousness into a new form, I'm pretty sure that you can't do that with humans. Thus the need for a brain transplant.

 

The human mind is still just a machine, be it organic or otherwise. In reality, there is no you or me. There is just a particular chemical soup that influences how we each behave. Likewise, memories have been proven to be unstable structures that are actually changed every time we access them. That is fine with things like mathematics or physics which will confirm or disprove a particular remembrance, but that trip to the beach? First kiss? Whatever your memories of life moments, they're probably heavily colored at best and outright fabrications at worst. Sorry to get so in depth about it, but it's kind of a fascinating subject to me. Anyway, It really all depends on if you believe in a soul or not. Not trying to step on any toes.

[charwo]

The belief in the soul really colors your notion of synths and machine intelligence in Fallout.

 

While it's very clear that some robots don't have anything like a soul (the sentry-bots) there are others that make a strong case for the machine soul, especially Codsworth, who definitely has his own notions of morality, and Whitechapel Charlie, who even sends you on missions no one him to do. There are borderline cases (RL-3 comes to mind but also everything in the Sink from Old World Blues) where it's hard to tell simulated personality from real personality, but if you don't believe in machine soul (or souls in general) there's no reason to oppose synth slavery, whereas opposing human slavery has an important self defense component.

 

It's a question that Bethesda doesn't seem to want to answer properly, because they don't give Institute any evidence that it's just simulated personality that drives synth bodies. FOr instance, if they built a synth with a Mr. Handy personality, in that it sounded exactly like a standard Mr. Handy, you'd have a stronger case. The Institute however flatly denies the reality of emergent behavior even from simulated personalities (particularly Curie, but even Codsworth). A real and considered answer from Father on the subject would help his case immensely, as is it sounds like they know true AI is sapient and they deny it simply out of selfish and biased motives.

Speaking of which, I'd KILL for a good conversation with Father about emergent behavior about and including the Ms. Nanny version of Curie.

[RattleAndGrind]

I have no second thoughts about letting the adult Shaun perish.

 

The child in the memory of the PC is that of a babe in arms. The aged ten Synth-Shaun and the old man claiming to be Shaun (no verifiable proof is ever provided) are strangers who may have some tenuous connection to the babe in the PCs memory. So to the PC, the death is that of a stranger; just another old man who may or may not be an older version of the babe he remembers.

 

And yes, I left the Synth-Shaun behind and he got out anyway.