SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I usually think of androids as being robots in human form, usually using a combination of organic and mechanical technology. I think of a character like Commander Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Dick’s depiction of androids in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” is quite different than what I’ve come to understand through other science fiction sources. Dick’s androids are so much like humans that they can only be distinguished by testing their bone marrow. Despite the similarities, they can only live four years because their cells can’t regenerate. Dick doesn’t go into detail about the technology used to create androids, so we can speculate all we want. How do you think are androids made?

I remember my first reading of "Do Androids...", I had a hard time getting over the human/robot android thing. I kept thinking...wouldn't it be easier to just carry around a mobile x-ray or some kind of magnet or something? It took a while for me to realize he is talking about a completely organic being, somehow bio-engineered to be almost identical to humans. They just have to figure out this "empathy" thing and fix their cellular regeneration and voila!

Since I'm a fan of Battlestar Gallactica (both old and new), and Star Trek, I'd have to say I've seen all kinds of artificial life forms.

The official definition of an android is "an automaton in the form of a human being" and a robot is "a machine that resembles a human and does mechanical, routine tasks on command." Ironically, we come full circle with the definition of automaton: "a mechanical figure or contrivance constructed to act as if by its own motive power; robot."

The author made androids (constructed by humans for humans) so similar to humans, that detecting them became extremely difficult. This caused internal conflict with the protagonist so much so that he even began to wonder if he was an android himself.

How are they made? The author doesn't give us much insight into the technology. Since they are or seem to be completely organic, I'd surmise they are grown, almost like clones.

My guess is they are grown in tanks from cell cultures. That would make them clones, in fact.
Here's an interesting question: let's posit the cell cultures are originally of human origin, with human DNA, albeit changed in a very small but all-important way. Are these beings, in fact, human? And if so, would they possess souls, assuming of course, that souls exist.

****"OLD MAN'S WAR" BY JOHN SCALZI SPOILERS******



Leslie, I was thinking along those lines myself. Actually, what I got to thinking about was John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" and "The Ghost Brigades." I think the androids are probably very much like the special forces soldiers in Scalzi's world. The Ghost Brigades were made up of people who were cloned from dead people. They had no memories, but were implanted with Brain Pals that got them up to speed on being human very quickly. Even though they were born looking like they were in their twenties, they were really just kids with a lot of data in adult bodies. Their social behavior was the behavior of children, not adults. I suspect that Dick's androids are very similar and that accounts for much of their lack of empathy. Children generally have to be taught how to be empathetic. "Don't bite Susie. How would you feel if Susie bit you?"

They also remind me of one of the stories in Cloud Atlas, in which organically engineered slaves are forced to run the corporate controlled future society, while the "purebloods" sit back and get fat. Society also treats them in a very similar manner as they do in "Do Androids..".

I was about to drop a huge data dump about the MERCERISM global-empathy 'religion' that Deckard and the other 'androids' strive to connect with...

But then it was evident. The answer to the question, "What exactly is an android?" became so clear. And I'm stunned it hasn't dawned on me before. Maybe it was that opening mood-enhancer sequence.

The androids in the book are the ultimate metaphor of marriage (or wife, at least, as Dick had so many of them). Or maybe Dick was the android in his books about global marital bliss? See, no-one really knows which side they're on in a Dick book, not even the writer.

Discuss?

Are we talking about not knowing what side the androids are on or the wives are on in PKD novels? LOL

Becuase I've found in PKD novels that the female characters aren't exactly the most well rounded and portrayed of characters. It seems a lot of times they come across as very shrill or nagging. The one big exception is the female character in Scanner Darkly, whose name eludes me at the moment.

Mike - Would you elaborate on your idea that the androids are a metaphor for marriage?

The only way I can come up with to interpret that is that the androids and humans are unable to relate to each other 100% - the androids in the end can't experience the same empathy etc. that the humans can - and so they will never completely understand each other. Perhaps that might reflect PKD's own views, if he was married so many times?

This is complete speculative hogwash, by the way, because I have no idea what you really meant by your statement. :)

ah yes everything is complete speculative hogwash as the great man is no longer around to interrogate... "What are women and why do men have wives?" would have been a better title for my polemic maybe?

it's that "we'll never understand them" aspect of the non-Mercerism implicit in the android, that not being able to just 'get it'.

:)

Bunny Watson I agree with Sandi by the way, the androids lack empathy because they only live to be four years old, not enough time to develop it.

I would disagree ... at least partially; current theories hold that by 12 months a human infant should have some basic form of empathy and that by 24 months will actually display the fundamental behaviors relating to empathy.

In 2001, Dr. Douglas Olsen (PhD) outlined a proposed empathic maturity model of three stages.

Stage One (1): is empathy which is based upon concrete similiarities (such as physical appearance); it is the most primative form of empathy and is not generally found in adults. It is conceivable that machines could be programmed to mimick this stage.

Stage Two (2): is empathy based upon conforming behavioral similiarities. There is no empathy with respect to consequences of specific behaviors. This stage is typically reinforced quite young through the application of consequences toward non-conforming behaviors.

This appears to be the stage targeted by the empathy test profiled in the story, where it illustrates androids as incapable of anticipating appropriate (emotive) reactions to the specified senarios formed by or within a behavioral context. In other words, robots are do not have a behavioral motive in common with humans (logical verses emotive/irrational is implied).

Stage Three (3): is empathy based upon being. This is where you can evoke an empathic response despite non-conforming behaviors even while understanding and perhaps accepting the consequences of these behaviors. Presumably this stage is not universal even among humans, so that an empathy test at this stage would be problematic.

But...we aren't discussing reality. If PKD did intend to imply this empathy theory about the androids, I think it is certainly reasonable to believe that children are lacking in a certain amount of empathy.

Bunny Watson As anyone who has met a two or three year old will tell you, they bite each other, they pull the tails of animals and stick fingers in their eyes, and they will quite happily knock down their siblings and walk on them to get to an iceepop.

So do adults ... empathy is not something that is continually operating in any human. We have the ability to regulate when and how we used it (e.g. there are voluntary components to empathy).

The most widely accepted definition only requires you to be able to take the perspective of an other ... to understand their point of view. It doesn't guarantee that you will actually behave the same way as the other.

Empathy denotes, at a phenomenological level of description, a sense of similarity between the feelings one experiences and those expressed by others. This sharing of the feelings of another person does not necessarily imply that one will act or even feel impelled to act in a supportive or sympathetic way.

ref: The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy by Jean Decety p.1

Bunny Watson any case the so called empathy test is fairly (and I think its intentional on PDK's part) nonsensical.

I am not so sure about that actually ... although I have not yet finished, PKD appears to be using stereotypical boundaries to define a characters humanness. While the mechanics of his empathy test might be flawed, the concept of using something like it may not be ... in that humans have certain empathic characteristics not shared be other primates, much less other animals.

Of course, there are humans who are highly deficient in empathic responses ... sociopaths are one such population that would have been known to PKD; he may or may not have been aware of such deficiencies found with autism (I don't yet know where he is going with his chickenhead concept).

As an aside ... I have seen advanced the belief that developing/improving empathy can be a central theme in addiction recovery programs; another post indicated that PDK had a few issues there, so that might be why he used that particular concept.

I think it probably comes down to the simple truth (or what I'm assuming to be a truth?) that empathy is natural vs mechanical, conditioned perhaps but not programmable. Humans have the capacity to learn it even in isolation, but a machine can't.

What interests me more is the superiority complex. Here you have these rebel androids blending in with humans, getting jobs and living, and they're hunted down and "retired". If they can't feel like humans can, this is okay, but more to the point, if the empathy test fails, you can no longer guiltlessly retire androids, but, maybe, have to acknowledge their right to live. As long as they don't feel, they can still be classified as machines and treated as such. But the idea of a machine living a human's life, that is unconscionable - an insult, and a threat. I can't help but feel sympathy for the androids, even for the electric sheep.

is DADOES the first 'modern zombie' novel? I say this because it's implied (half way through the book) that maybe the whole world is androids. Their proof that they're not androids is Mercerism (or empathy). But that 'communal lifebuoy' might just be a download portal of the latest world view, with a pretty Mercer screensaver.

nothing is real/trustable in a Philip K Dick book.

Mike, I'd agree that nothing is demonstrably real in this book. However, if we don't assume that some of the text describes real events, we have little to talk about.

Jumping back a bit, the notion of intelligent, social beings with no empathy seems unlikely to me. In humans, identification with the needs and wants of others is a necessary part of daily life--even for the totally self-centered. Given that the Rosen people are trying to create androids that blend in, wouldn't it make sense to use the same sort of empathy machinery? In fact, the whole android R&D process seems ridiculous. If easily controlled, intelligent humanoids are what's required, why not start with a human and doctor it until the right level of submissiveness is obtained?

Thomas,
we're on a collision course for an off-topic Jeffrey Dahmer conversation if we're not careful.

:)

I am fairly new to Sci-Fi reading.. so I haven't come across androids a lot. But I would think they would have to be grown somehow to totally mimic a human.

ARGH! This book won't leave me alone. Every time I think I know an answer to something, another possibility rears its ugly head.

I think the androids may actually be clones. Maybe the reason Pris originally introduces herself as Rachael Rosen is because both she and Rachael (who is identical to her) are both clones of a real human Rachael Rosen. There would undoubtedly be some DNA tweak to make them mature to adulthood very quickly. That tweak would be the reason they only live 4 years and why it takes a bone marrow test to determine definitively if they are androids.

I can't believe that none of you knew there was an attempt to robotically resurrect Philip K Dick as an android - the back kof his skull being exposed sorta gives it away.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fkE6RBlfbXA
this PKD-droid don't do empathy yet.