Could you compare the relationship between a toaster and Ash 2X3ZB9CY to that between an amoeba and a human?
People are really excited to have toasters (microwaves,TVs, even computers). That makes sense, there might not be much opposition to “utilising” amoebas. But on the biological side, we use things much higher up the percieved amoeba-human spectrum: chickens, cows, sheep, pigs. We don’t even just use them, but consume them! We even use some of the closest things to human on this spectrum: we test things on chimpanzees. And while it is true that there is some opposition, these practices still have widespread support among large parts of society and are normalised.
Likewise on the android side, in Netrunner-land some deliberately shun such “progress” and protest groups lobby for clone and bioroid rights in a parallel with real life vegetarians and animal rights activists respectively.
It seems entirely an reasonable extrapolation of the present to me!
A couple people have touched on it already, but it’s pretty important to distinguish the meaning of “clone” in the real world from their mean in-universe here.
In real life a clone is (or would be) just a regular organism that has copied DNA. They have the same characteristics and -imporatntly- life cycle as their predecessor, so for example a human clone would start out as a baby and would obviously have to be considered its own person with a completely distinct and unique life.
In android “clone” is colloquially used to refer to jinteki’s brand of heavily engineered human-like organisms. They do not go through a natural human life-cycle, emerging as “adult” workers and pre-programmed with specific skillsets and engineered to have particular physical features or abilities.
My view would be that as they are still conscious, sentient beings (this being a primary feature of Jinteki’s product) that they are still people, but I think it;'s fair to say that the case is no more clear cut than that for bioroids (who are also sentient, conscious beings that likely deserve the rights of personhood).
Clones are androids and shouldn’t vote, because after all Jinteki could just program them to all vote for a certain candidate. It’s not that they don’t deserve rights, it’s just that it causes too many problems.
All very well said, though I’d quibble very slightly with your terminology. Jinteki’s clones are clones in the real-life technical sense; an initial stock of cells is engineered, and its progeny are cloned (and artificially matured, programmed, customized, etc.) from it. The parent cells might or might not end up having the same lifecycle as their offspring (depending on details that I don’t think we’ve been provided), but they could, having never actually been human in the first place.
Although yeah, when people on the streets of NA mention “clones,” they’re obviously talking about the unique variety of clone covered by Jinteki’s various patents.
Okay, so what if they only count as three-fifths of a citizen? I kid, but really…that’s a pretty trivial problem. India wouldn’t be considering suffrage if it weren’t.
If you think that allowing people to remain property is the only (or even the best) solution, I think you’re not trying hard enough.
An even more disturbing thought is that Jinteki could mass-produce a huge number of clones with a lifespan of a few days, just enough to be taught what to vote for and carry out the vote, after which they promptly return to be recycled by the good people of Jinteki. This would undermine the entire democratic system, as a company could dole out millions of votes as it pleases, which would in turn affect the agendas of politicians.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the long-lived, more sentient clones. Companion clones, labour clones, the entire Nisei line. Do we have to now make a distinction between clone and clone? All clones no doubt have some level of self-awareness, but they serve different purposes. So where do we draw the line.
Who will check? Remember, all Jinteki needs to do is cut a deal with NBN, and suddenly their legion of disposable voters have extensive personal histories, birth certificates, passports… anything you need.
Is there something in the lore that explains why we don’t see more brain taped (natural born) people? Is it an engineering problem or a legal problem that stops jinteki/HB from programming regular folks?
The reason I ask is that seems like you can allow clones/bioroids to vote with a reasonable limitation on suffrage to prohibit any person who has been brain taped.
It’s an engineering problem. Or was, rather…that’s actually exactly why the Chronos Protocol is such a big deal. It used to be that you couldn’t write over a mature brain, but Harding and Ibarra found a way to selectively imprint memories onto existing neural structures. Humanity is…pretty screwed.
In the isolated thought experiment of ANR mass cloning and democracy, clones absolutely shouldn’t be allowed to vote if the system was in any way “fair.” Outside of companion or rare zero-sum clones, most clones out there do belong as property to Jinteki due to how engineered they are.
But in the big picture of the ANR universe with brain-taping, Chronos Protocol, NBN’s psychographics and media tools, Runners themselves, and everything else, democracy is a fucked concept anyway. Giving clones rights in ANR India just makes another battlefield, where soon after you’ll see clones picked off the street and tortured, reverse engineered, or subverted to messing with future votes. Might as well give them rights, YOLO, it was already screwed regardless.
I’m curious what sort of Clone ecosystem sparked India to start this conversation - was it a higher amount of companion or legacy zero-sum family clones?
First, I can’t find where I read this, but I believe androids make up something like 1% of the population, if that. So worries about massive voter blocs or absurdly expensive fraud attempts are not a cause for concern. Second, despite their conditioning, we know for a fact that clones don’t all see things the same way.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that the technology and society proceed to a point where these are both false, and you have a society of 70% Tenma Mk-9s all thinking in lockstep. How is it unfair to allow them to participate in the political process? We need to discount the preferences of the majority because they they might all have identical perspectives? The point of democracy is to represent everyone’s interests, not to fetishize the swing voter’s caprices (har har).
I mean, I can see the argument if you think their conditioning is tantamount to brainwashing or that they aren’t cognitively able to form and critically assess political opinions. Neither of these is the case, however–and frankly, both seem suspiciously reactionary and should automatically be treated with skepticism. Even, so worst case scenario is we have to come up with some kind of political Gibson-Akamatsu test.
To answer your last question, I can’t find anything about why India in particular. We know that it was a grassroots thing, and from the Business First insert it sounds like androids may be treated especially badly, but the only hint we’re given of any unique cultural situation is the suggestion that Ekata finds the android situation uncomfortably reminiscent of the caste system. And for what it’s worth, Brazil has already emancipated its androids (though I don’t know whether they’re allowed to vote).
The largest fear appears to be that HAAS or Jinteki have an unknown level of influence on their mass-market products. When those ‘products’ are given rights to vote, what danger does that pose to Democracy? I can imagine a scenario where Jinteki requires all their clones to come in for ‘necessary maintenance’ just before an election. Such actions could easily influence a vote that is close. If this ballot stuffing is for sale…
Despite this threat, it appears Jinteki is fighting tooth and nail against clone rights. This points to a significant likelihood of ungentle and draconian methods being used with clones behind the scenes at Jinteki. At the very least, clones with the rights of personhood suddenly have many more avenues for disputes and claims. Jinteki loses a huge measure of control, and clones become employees rather than property. This would be disastrous to their bottom line, so it’s no wonder Jinteki opposes the measure.
As an aside, I sincerely appreciate the Stimhack community for the opportunity to have these type of heady discussions, alongside the insightful and in depth game analysis.
This may be true, but no one is talking about the level of influence NBN has on their mass-market products. I feel like NBN could swing a vote much better than Jinteki or HB.
Interesting historical perspective for the word “robot”. It comes from Karl Chapek’s play Rossum’s Universal Robots. In the play he describes them as replacements for human laborers. Although the word robot has come to mean a non organic mechanical construct, in R.U.R. The robots are bio-engineered, having factory produced organs, bones, nerves, and skin.
So while I think that our modern sensibilities would not think of clones as robots, the idea of “organic robots” (so to speak) has existed in Scifi for a while.
PS: clones are robots, AND they’re people. And so are Bioroids.
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