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View Poll Results: G1 Animal Sidekick Transformers - what level of cognition? | |||
Fully-Sentient |
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7 | 41.18% |
Semi-Sentient |
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2 | 11.76% |
Drone |
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0 | 0% |
Depends on the individual |
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1 | 5.88% |
Depends on the continuity |
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2 | 11.76% |
Cassettes are but Action Master Partners aren't |
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5 | 29.41% |
Voters: 17. You may not vote on this poll |
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#21
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Why can't the Actionmaster partners (beast, vehicles, weapons, backpacks, etc) be like Roller, in that they are a part of the person they were created for/from, and have the transcendental sentience from that person... as in they think/act as if they are another limb, and even feel each other's pain.
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#22
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Being an extension of the primary Transformer wouldn't make them at all sentient/sapient -- at best they'd be artificially intelligent. These components are like an extension of that Transformer's body or mind - kinda like the avatars from James Cameron's Avatar film. Pretenders can feel pain if their Shell is damaged (if anything the pain is amplified); a weakness exploited by Thunderwing when he blasted Bumblebee's shell, knocking 'Bee unconscious without even having to touch him. Likewise Carnivac was rendered temporarily unconscious due to the overwhelming pain he felt when he sacrificed his Pretender shell; and the fact that Carnivac was willing to endanger his shell like that indicates that there's no moral issues arising from the shell possessing any level of sentience (after all, not even Decepticon Target/Head/Powermasters will wantonly sacrifice their sapient Nebulan partners).
Roller and Combat Deck are essentially 'drones' for Optimus Prime, with Optimus Prime himself being the primary Transformer possessing sapience/sentience. Evidence that might suggest a lack of sentience in Optimus Prime's secondary components include: + The original tech specs describes the cab/robot as the "brain centre," suggesting that he is the sentient/sapient module. + Optimus Prime's G1 TFU profile states that "the Optimus module is by far the most important component of the trio. Although he could survive without the other two, they could not survive without him." + In "More Than Meets The Eye Part 3," Megatron destroys Combat Deck's artillery robot with a blast from his fusion cannon. Optimus Prime just shrugs it off and keeps fighting. He doesn't show any emotional reaction to it at all, either at the time or later on. Optimus Prime didn't even flinch when it happened! Either the pain feedback must've been reduced (so like the reverse of what happens with Pretenders), or he's just incredibly good at shrugging off paint ("'Tis but a flesh wound!") + In the IDWverse, Optimus Prime was able to transfer his consciousness into Combat Deck temporarily, and then transferred it back into the cab/robot component again. + eHobby retconned Roller as having originally been a non-sentient industrial droid known as Barrelroller which Orion Pax used as an electromagnetic lifter. Ditto in the Wings universe. + Nobody ever cares where Combat Deck and Roller bugger off to when Optimus Prime is in robot mode! They could back roll into a ditch and noone would check. ![]() So yeah, if Action Master Partners are going to be autonomous components like Combat Deck and Roller, then I'd say that they'd be artificially intelligent but non-sentient/sapient modules. It'd suck if an Action Master felt pain from damage dealt to their partner... (e.g. if Attack Copter or Gatoraider were damaged, would Over-Run and Krok feel their pain?). Having said that, there's at least one arguably 2 pieces of canonical evidence I can think of that might suggest the contrary about Optimus Prime: 1) In "Attack of the Autobots," the Autobots had to attach attitude exchangers to all of Optimus Prime's components, not just the Prime module. Does this mean that Prime's consciousness is spread among his three components? If so that would contradict the events of MTMTE#3 (of course, the G1 cartoon is chock full of continuity contradictions ![]() ![]() Or this: http://www.scaryforkids.com/pics/kru...e-clown-14.jpg ![]() 2) In the IDWverse, Orion Pax knew another Autobot called Roller. But whether that Autobot became Optimus Prime's Roller or if he was just an Autobot who coincidentally has the same name as Optimus Prime's scout component (or maybe Prime named his scout car after him as a tribute?) is unknown. There's nothing to say that an Action Master partner can't be fully sapient... but there just doesn't seem to be sufficient evidence to state that they are. |
#23
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Soundwave's cassettes are horcruxes - every time he kills an Autobot he puts part of his spark in another cassette.
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#24
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#25
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If an artificial intelligence were to become sentient/sapient, this would also raise a whole host of ethical/moral questions - which is most likely why Star Wars Droids are routinely memory wiped. Namely, would that artificially intelligent and now sapient entity be entitled to rights as other sapient beings? This is a question that Isaac Asimov explored in "The Positronic Man" (adapted into the film "The Bicentennial Man") and "I, Robot." In Star Wars, if a Droid were to become sentient/sapient, then continuing to treat them as property would become slavery. While slavery does exist in the Star Wars universe, it's generally abhorred by the "good" characters, yet nobody cares about the 'enslavement' of Droids. Our hero Luke Skywalker and his family happily owned and purchased Droids to work on their farm, and installed restraining bolts to prevent them from fleeing (Artoo was able to bugger off to find Obi-Wan Kenobi because he deceived Luke into removing his bolt - again, part of the higher level A.I. shown by this Droid due to his lack of memory erasure). But I would argue that despite everything that Artoo's been through, while he may be sentient, I don't think he's sapient. Artoo's the one character that's witnessed the entire saga from beginning to end - from when Anakin was slave boy to his rise as a Jedi to his fall as a Sith. If he were sapient, surely he would've figured some things out and mentioned it to Luke! ("Dude, I think Vader's your father, cos check this out...") ![]() ![]() |
#26
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#27
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Ok, so what do we classify 'Bob' (Sunstreakers sidekick in IDW) as? Sentient? Semi-Sentient? Drone? Pet? Wildlife?
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#28
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Fully sapient being posing as a pet-drone... like Nibbler.
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#29
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Spotlight Hoist mild spoiler alert
Bob can dream! |
#30
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Wingthing just got a line then sent on a mission in Regen 93! Sentient I say!
(Hell, it was more lines than Laserbeak & Buzzsaw got combined in the G1 Western Cartoon!) However TFwiki disagree's with me: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wingthing Last edited by BigTransformerTrev; 29th July 2013 at 01:23 PM. |
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