chilling thought..What if holo Rimmer never had any consciousness/inner life?

[tombow]

and he’s just like a clever chat bot, acting out over the years how the real Rimmer would have reacted and grown, but empty inside?

[q u i n n _ d r u m m e r]

This question is really, should we consider artificial intelligence life. At what point do we recognise consciousness?

Rimmer is, for all intents and purposes, a computer program. But he is self aware, have thoughts and feelings (whatever they are, artificially), as drives, goals, rational thought.

If you were to draw up a list of what we would consider “life” or more specifically “a person” then Rimmer would tick most of the boxes.

It not anything new to science fiction (see TNG: Measure of a Man and Voy: Author, Author) and it’s a philosophical question discussed at great length.

Cogito ergo sum – Rimmer is a thinking thing, therefore he exists.

[International Debris]

“I’m just a computer simulation of me.”
The original setup of the show is really quite bleak, isn’t it? Holly and Rimmer are technically just the same computer, and Cat doesn’t really interact with Lister that much. Imagine if they’d decided to follow that line of plotting right through, so Lister gradually loses his mind through loneliness.

[si]

He thinks he’s thinking, therefore he possibly is.

[Ben Saunders]

I’ve thought about this a lot. I came to the conclusion when I was about 12 that Rimmer isn’t alive and it’s all incredibly fucking bleak. But in a sort of ship of Theseus way or whatever, it doesn’t really matter, people are our ideas of them, and they are real/alive to us/Lister. But again the question of if he is self aware or just acting out a set of instructions is hard to answer. Is Holly alive?

[tombow]

i guess if he could feed the polymorph he must have some emotion. And the novels describe Rimmer and Holly’s inner life. But even that could be a process that is not being “experienced”…?

[Author]

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