Is The Blight Sentient/conscious?

[Starfox00000]

- = READ THIS BEFORE YOU VOTE! = -


OK, i was on irc. We were talking about gpgarrettboast's op3 story. It became apparent that some people didnt thing the blight was conscious. This was a shock because I though it was obvious that the blight was infact sentient. So we proceded to argue. I had evidence and quotes and was just  told that they were all metaphors and that i was stupid and couldn't "interpert" the story [read]. So Im starting this poll. Heres some of the evidence I have, I would include evidence against my point of view from the irc chat, but there is no quotes, just  one argument against this is that it just keeps growing and cant control that. But thats just metabolism - its like asking you to stop your cells using sugar. Its not possible.


Quotes from the plymouth campaign ending move:

"we reamin behind, the last teanets of a world no longer fit for human habitation"
"our biological computing elements will meld with the microbe and become one with it"

"the planet itself will become one mind with vast powers of thought"

I though that last one was crystal clear, but apparently its not.

More evidence:

"Got work to do, Emma," he said without looking into the camera. "Have a good trip. Me, I'm going to see what a computer the size of a planet looks like."

"a computer the size of a planet" - that should put a nail in this argument all by itself

the blight was melded with the savants when the hot lab exploded and had the savants integrated thats why the blight is sentient. heres a quote:

"Wu passed her the ClipCom.  As she studied it, Calvin explained.  "We've been going over some of the protein analyses from the traps.  Most of it's garbled, but this seems reliable enough.  I've triple-checked it."
Wu still looked puzzled.  "That protein looks familiar somehow."
Emma nodded.  "It should.  It's used in the logic core of every Savant computer."

The savants do think, they are not just computers like the one your viewing this on. they have their own ideas. I would quote the whole thing here proving this, but its too big. If you want to read it, its the first part of ch. 10 in the plymouth story. heres a snippet:

[emma] "Do you use such overhead for the generation of other self-initiated ideas?"
[kraft, a savant computer] "Yes."

heres another quote: "She studied the featureless cube of the Savant, and was somehow sure it was Kraft.  It escaped.  Kraft programmed the Repair Vehicle to come and get it, and it escaped."

If you still think that the savants are just computers, read the second part (section seperated by the ###) of the ply campaign chapter 12.

Point is, that the savants are sentient and they join with the blight while infected, and that the blight is sentient. I have some quote from the last parts fo the plymouth story that pretty much nail that on the head here:

"The Link was shattered before conclusive results were generated, but before that, we discovered that the Blight provided a medium into which our biological components could be merged and endlessly replicated.  The Savants there would be destroyed, but part of their being was incorporated into the Blight's biomass, where it could replicate through the deep rocks, organize anew, and be reborn."

"The Savants are becoming part of the Blight, using it to replicate?"

"When our functioning has ended, we can join with the New World.  Now, our thoughts are contained in the form you call 'Savants,' but these forms are limited, finite, and fragile.  As part of the Blight we will grow to encompass the world you have made for us.  We will organize and form a new mind in the deep rocks.  Our thoughts will expand a trillion-fold."

The savants are infected, join with the blight and add to its collective conscious. But their not savants anymore. their just the blight - one big mind.

So thats my take on it that the blight is sentient and not just a bacteria. i though that was obvious but i guess not. So all of you that read this (long post i know :heh:)
need to vote! make your voice heard!

[dm-horus]

Well that pretty much shut my mouth. I have to say, the concept is utterly ridiculous, but its in the story. That makes it canon and if true and accurate, means the blight is capable of assembling itself into thinking components.

Just remember: the blight microbes themselves are not intelligent, but they are able to assemble savant-esque biological computers which ARE intelligent.

Now that Ive read through this, Im actually liking the idea of a microbe faction. Im currently thinking up some possibilities.

[omagaalpha]

never thought about it that savent part blight and that it became  sentient. which lead to did the savant infact cause explosion that start this whole thing in first place.

[Betaray]

bravo, nice job fox, I couldnt have done it better myself lol

[Freeza-CII]

The blight is no more intellegent then a lan cable.  All the blight seems to really do is linking the savants through one biological medium.  The Savants are the true intelligents the blight is just a componet.  Just because my hand is connected to my brain doesnt mean my hand is intellegent.

The blight is not intelligent but the savants are and there new componet just happens to work with there hardware.  and the blight will spread through out the planets crust making the medium bigger and bigger.  The bigger brain.  Because it seems that through those quotes the savants seem to think with there bio componets and the blight just happens to fit in so nicely.  This makes it a ever growing componet in which the savants use as a brain.  But that brain will not work with out the interface to the savants hardware.
 

[Sl0vi]

I never understood why people have so much against this idea, it's a sciencefiction game/story afterall. It will never make 100% sense Besides, as Starfox has made pretty clear, it is in the story.

[Sirbomber]

I say probably. But I think that, if it/they/whatever are, it's pretty obvious they aren't evil and out to kill the humans, as some would have us think.

[Freeza-CII]

they might have a grudge against humans for not taking them with hehehe being cast aside and useless.

[Betaray]

"When our functioning has ended, we can join with the New World.  Now, our thoughts are contained in the form you call 'Savants,' but these forms are limited, finite, and fragile.  As part of the Blight we will grow to encompass the world you have made for us.  We will organize and form a new mind in the deep rocks.  Our thoughts will expand a trillion-fold."
She shook her head, barely able to comprehend.  The Savants actually believed that humans had created the Blight for them to transform New Terra into a perfect world, for Savants, not humans."

no, I would say if anything they would be grateful

[Freeza-CII]

Hey you never know what they will think once they have a conplete set of emotions and free range of thought

[CK9]

Wish I had been on the chat at the time, could have backed you up.  The Outpost 2 dev team always intended the blight to have som sentience.  The original storyline of Outpost 3 included 2 new colonies: New Haven and the Blight.  I think I have the webpage on this computer, I'll post it here if I find it.

[Starfox00000]

The blight is no more intellegent then a lan cable.  All the blight seems to really do is linking the savants through one biological medium.  The Savants are the true intelligents the blight is just a componet.  Just because my hand is connected to my brain doesnt mean my hand is intellegent.

The blight is not intelligent but the savants are and there new componet just happens to work with there hardware.  and the blight will spread through out the planets crust making the medium bigger and bigger.  The bigger brain.  Because it seems that through those quotes the savants seem to think with there bio componets and the blight just happens to fit in so nicely.  This makes it a ever growing componet in which the savants use as a brain.  But that brain will not work with out the interface to the savants hardware.

But the savants are destroyed by the blight and integrated. theres no savant left after they get eaten by the blight. When they get infected they are incorperated, and become part of the blight; theres no distinction between savant and blight  anymore, theres just the blight. If the blight breakes down things to elements there is no more "savants hardware", unless the savant is made up completely of elements, and like i said before, savants use protiens which are far from elements lol.

Thx for voting pplz!  (thumbsup)  i didnt think thered be 10 votes in a day esp. w/o me telling anyone about the thread (it was late ok?  :yawn:  lol)

[Gagagigo3]

If i read this i am certainly that the blight can think, but if it disintegrate [or something  :whistle: ] things then the computer is ''death'' :x:
So that means the blight cant think, but if they absorb knowledge [like the X in Metroid Fusion :heh:  :heh:  :heh: ] they can think but...whatever (...)  :yawn:  :stop:

[james239]

I think the root of the question here is how you define sentient, if you define it as self-awareness and capable of complex and original thought, then the blight seems to be sentient. If you define it as a naturally developed awareness (through evolution or whatever floats your boat), then the blight would not be sentient, because the savants were built by humans, and so they are simply fancy computer programs.

[TRIX Rabbit]

the blight can "think" on a small level because each microbe "cell" can hold either a positive (1) or a negative (0) charge. therefore, they are like computers, only they have no efficent way of processing that "code" (logic gates, etc)
 

[BlackBox]

My feeling is, the blight is not sentient or conscious in any manner, depending on what exactly is meant by 'sentient'.

A few possible meanings of 'sentient':
- Can sense (can see / feel / taste / whatever)
- Can suffer (pain)
- Has self-awareness

If you go with the meaning 'can sense' then, yes, it is probably true that the blight can sense _something_. But that doesn't imply that it's capable of high level thinking present in humans (conscious thought implies ability to reason / act with judgement as well as being sentient; not likely that the blight is able to reason. At least not in a 'wild' state as it is in the environment).

Also consider that its primary purpose is to break oxygen bonds (to create an oxygenated atmosphere). This isn't very complex and many bacteria / protists are capable of this (photosynthesis; oxygen is removed from the glucose molecule). Under the 'sensory' meaning of sentience again these same protists would be defined as sentient; many have light sensing organelles to steer it toward lighted areas.

Not sure if anyone here has heard of the 'mouse robots' that plans are available for on the internet. They follow a light source, but yet contain no digital circuitry whatsoever (IR LEDs are reverse-biased to allow them to detect light. This controls an LM324 amplifier which supplies power to one of two motors). Blight doesn't appear to be much different. Given an input, it attempts to find an output.

Given this, blight could be seen as a simple neural net. It can learn, but it cannot think for itself. In the case of the Savants the inputs are created by electronic and optical devices. Savants could potentially use the Blight as a sort of parallel-processing mechanism, but the Blight cannot do this itself (the Savant boptronic computer is sourcing Blight as a means to perform more complex computations).

For a more concrete example that more of us can understand, think of a standard PC. Although the CPU itself might be the part of the machine that performs calculations, controls I/O to devices etc, it can't do stuff for itself. It must have a program fed into it in order to be able to do any useful work. (Anything that the CPU does is the result of data in the instruction stream coming into the CPU telling it what to do). In the case of computer startup this 'input' comes from the BIOS chip. When the 'power' button is pushed the CPU does not just suddenly 'spring to life'. A few things happen (a very simplified overview):

1. The PSU reports a 'power good' signal to the motherboard; which causes the motherboard to stop sending a reset signal to the microprocessor, causing it to begin decoding instructions;
2. Data is fed from the ROM BIOS to the CPU instruction decoder. The BIOS is nothing more than a program which tells the processor what to do with device A, device B, etc.
3. Data is retrieved from the boot device (hard drive) only because the code contained in the BIOS chip causes the processor to input data from the hard drive controller..

Process continues and the OS is loaded. Again, at no time is the computer ever sentient. The inputs are given by at first, the BIOS, and later the instructions stored on the hard drive which make up the core of the operating system.

The same is with the blight. It cannot think for itself but it can 'process' input instructions / stimuli and produce an output. In this way a Savant computer could harness this neural network created by the Blight, and use it to do useful work.

A bit lengthy, but I hope I made my point clear.

[Starfox00000]

Given this, blight could be seen as a simple neural net. It can learn, but it cannot think for itself. In the case of the Savants the inputs are created by electronic and optical devices. Savants could potentially use the Blight as a sort of parallel-processing mechanism, but the Blight cannot do this itself (the Savant boptronic computer is sourcing Blight as a means to perform more complex computations).

The same is with the blight. It cannot think for itself but it can 'process' input instructions / stimuli and produce an output. In this way a Savant computer could harness this neural network created by the Blight, and use it to do useful work.
 

The savants are destoryed and broken down by the blight. the savants cease to exist as savant computers. Their "soul" (for lack of a better word) is incorperated into the blight, all physical part are destoryed.

"The pod looked fragile, but Frost assured her it would be heat-shielded enough to preserve the Savant's biological components during reentry.  Its mechanical parts would be destroyed on impact, but that was of no concern."

Frost's mechanical part are going to be distoyed but thats not an issue, becuase they would just be destoyed anyways by the blight.

"our biological computing elements will meld with the microbe and become one with it"

"the Blight provided a medium into which our biological components could be merged and endlessly replicated."

they will become *one* with it; they are *merged*; theres no savant left after the blight gets to them, just the blight.

And the blight CAN think for itself, just like the savants can:

[emma] "Do you use such overhead for the generation of other self-initiated ideas?"
[kraft, a savant computer] "Yes."

Infact, whence they become part of the blight they have the abilities of abstract though.

[savant computers talking to each other from ply ch. 12]
"They live in the abstract world outside thought.  The Creators are more powerful than we.  They control the abstract world where we are helpless without them.  They cannot perish.  If they needed this thing, they would have assigned it."

"The Creators have made for us a world where we can be reborn beyond those limitations,..."

The blight can think for itself, if not stop itself from growing (that would require it to control it's cells metabolism, something not even ppl can do). It will remember the colonists, and help them.

"We will dream of you.  We will dream for you.  We will send you our dreams as our gift."

When was the last time you computer gave you a gift of its own free will?  

[Highlander]

Since English is not my first language, I kinda miss out on he point of this discussion.

Fox, what do you mean by Sentient ?

- Do you believe the Blight to be a selfaware being, capable of developing abstract thoughts ?

[Betaray]

that's exactly what he is saying, since the savants were sentient, and capable of abstract thought, and the blight is a savant, just on a much larger scale

[Eddy-B]

I did not "- = READ THIS BEFORE YOU VOTE! = -" but i voted "NO" rite away: OP2 is a computer game, it harbers no sentient life inside it. Even if it portrays a reallife situation/storyline. sorry

[Highlander]

Betaray, the Blight isn't a Savant. The Blight just contains some of the same biological components as the savants do ?

[Betaray]

the biological elements of the savants were the parts that made them sentient, all the rest was peripheral, sensors, screens, network systems, all that

when it gets fused into the blight, its biological medium removes any reliance on the physical parts
 

[Sirbomber]

I did not "- = READ THIS BEFORE YOU VOTE! = -" but i voted "NO" rite away: OP2 is a computer game, it harbers no sentient life inside it. Even if it portrays a reallife situation/storyline. sorry

Somebody needs to smack you for saying that Eddy-B. I expect better from you.  <_<  

[BlackBox]

And the blight CAN think for itself, just like the savants can:

[emma] "Do you use such overhead for the generation of other self-initiated ideas?"
[kraft, a savant computer] "Yes."

That quote doesn't mean that the blight can think for itself. The computer can harness the blight as nothing more than a computing platform in my eyes.

Ever thought of those projects like SETI@home or Folding@home? It's the same idea.

The program itself doesn't generate new work units, but it can 'solve' them in some way. The work unit is downloaded from the master server, processed, and then sent back to the server again.

Thus the server controls / mediates everything -- I think it's the same way with the blight. The blight on its own is not intelligent, it needs to be controlled / given work to do by the Savants.

As for the whole thing with the savant 'becoming one' with the blight, I think one way that could explained is if you think of the blight as a drug. i.e. to the Savants computational capacity is the perfect drug and they can't get enough of it.

Thus once they begin interacting with the blight they cannot stop (because the blight allows them to work on more complex problems because it provides the savant computer with raw power to do the problems).

Maybe another way to think of it is like a computer virus; i.e. the blight creates weird output values which 'confuse' the savant computer, thus making it impossible to do 'normal' tasks; or if you think of it biologically the blight 'infects' the biological component in the savant; i.e. DNA modifications so humans will no longer pre-empt the computers' tasks. And in the case of this type of modification it's not something to be fixed by just wiping the hard drive or something (i.e. you can't run a program to magically restore it). You would have to replace the biological 'core' of the computer.

Am I making sense now ?

[Starfox00000]

Since English is not my first language, I kinda miss out on he point of this discussion.

Fox, what do you mean by Sentient ?

- Do you believe the Blight to be a selfaware being, capable of developing abstract thoughts ?

-other post-

Betaray, the Blight isn't a Savant. The Blight just contains some of the same biological components as the savants do ?

yes to both of the highlander