Home › Forums › Ganymede & Titan Forum › chilling thought..What if holo Rimmer never had any consciousness/inner life? Search for: This topic has 5 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 10 months ago by tombow. Scroll to bottom Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) Author Posts March 16, 2019 at 9:33 am #246046 tombowParticipant 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? March 16, 2019 at 11:58 am #246050 q u i n n _ d r u m m e rParticipant 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. March 16, 2019 at 12:42 pm #246051 International DebrisParticipant “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. March 16, 2019 at 4:52 pm #246056 siParticipant He thinks he’s thinking, therefore he possibly is. March 17, 2019 at 12:04 am #246112 Ben SaundersParticipant 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? March 17, 2019 at 12:16 am #246113 tombowParticipant 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 Posts Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) Scroll to top • Scroll to Recent Forum Posts You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Log In Username: Password: Keep me signed in Log In