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For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Fallout universe, one of the common moral questions raised is whether synths "synthetic humanoids" or androids deserve human rights just as much as any other human does. Are synths self aware and feel true emotion, or is it just simulated programming?

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"So, are you a fan of the Fett?"

"Nah, I'm more of a Star Wars guy."

I'm not sure I agree with your opening gambit there - out of the five 'full' games in the canonical Fallout series, synths exist in only two - and in one of those two there are exactly two synths, who appear in a side story only. As such, it's pretty hard to claim it as a 'common' question.

However, that's not really the point of your thread, so I guess I digress. For me personally, I think it's as grey a subject as FO4 seems to portray it. There are arguments for and against, degrees of sentience, and conceptual difficulties to boot. The fact that there are synths which clearly aren't sentient and therefore clearly do not feel emotion only serves to make it harder to come to a conclusion or draw a line.

I think it partly boils down to a question of perception. How do we know we are sentient? How do we know other things aren't (I'm not going to delve into the discussion on the sentience of animals or lack thereof, but it's an arguably parallel discussion with a similar range of conclusions)? I think the answer is we don't really know for certain. I don't really know that anybody else in this forum is a sentient human. I just have to make a judgement based on their syntax and ability to process context to engage in dialogue. As such, perhaps sentience is really in the eye of the beholder...

With regards to the ability to feel true emotion - I'm gonna throw an interesting curveball just to further complicate the conversation - psychopaths do not. In fact, they cannot. Successful and high-functioning psychopaths learn to fake emotion appropriately in order to fit better into society - much the same as a synth could be programmed to. So is this really the marker to use? I think that an artificial intelligence that has achieved independent thought would deserve the right to live its own life. The difficulty is deciding how to determine when an AI has reached this point (also, I should add, just because it deserves that right doesn't mean we don't also deserve the right to terminate it with extreme prejudice when it decides to eradicate humanity. I'm looking at you, HAL/Skynet/Ultron).

Also, I should add, I haven't yet completed a FO4 playthrough, so I'd appreciate an avoidance of spoilers/use of spoiler tags for anything story related, thanks.

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I don't consider synths to be Fallout canon. They weren't introduced until Bethesda bought the rights and they weren't in Fallout 1 or 2. I find their existence not only completely unnecessary but within the Fallout universe's lore, completely unfathomable and possibly further, realistically impossible.

The idea behind Fallout's lore is that America never moved on from it's "Golden-Age" era (The 1950s), the Cold War era, nor rejected Tesla technology. While the technology in the Fallout universe was always slightly more advanced or sophisticated even compared to today's technology, there were/are only a few 'working' robots in the first two games: Robobrains, Sentry Bots, Eyebots and Mr. Handy. At most we had a "robotic" dog. We were always led to believe that the "robot" technology never advanced to anything more than rudimentary, let alone synthetic humanoids capable of feeling emotion. It literally is another tacked on gimmick by Bethesda to put their stamp on the Fallout universe. A.I. computers existed and are completely fathomable, on the other hand.

They've been pushing the 'Institution' since Fallout 3 and not once was it ever intriguing or remotely interesting. Completely out of place in the Fallout lore. Boring.

Bethesda makes great, sometimes breathtaking, immersive worlds for us to explore. They don't write good anything in terms of dialogue, story or lore. So.

In fact, in almost all post-apocalyptic stories, there aren't synthetic "sentient" androids at all. It's actually a common theme amoung them. The idea being we will destroy our current society long before we develop actual synthetic, borderline biological material mixed with A.I. sophisticated enough to develop emotions and feelings, or at least convince itself of those things.


To answer your question, though, I think the creation of such an A.I. in the first place is bordering on unethical, so I would be actually very conservative in my rationale on this one and say that I don't think they should exist at all. Once they do, then all bets are off. However, who are we to say they wouldn't deserve the same "human" rights as us if they were capable of feeling emotion on our level, however sophisticated an algorithm their programming may be?

This post has been edited by Dynamic Threads on 8th April 2016 22:00

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Dynamic Threads (Youtube)

I apologise in advance for what is going to be a largely digressive post.

DT, out of interest, have you played Fallout 4? I'm curious to know where your standpoint is rooted.

Quote (Dynamic Threads)

Bethesda makes great, sometimes breathtaking, immersive worlds for us to explore. They don't write good anything in terms of dialogue, story or lore. So.

I agree with you that a lot of things Bethesda do don't land as well as they should. I also agree with a sentiment you appear to imply but don't actually state, which is that Obsidian (the remnants of Interplay/Black Isle) make better Fallout games. My favourite in the series is hands-down New Vegas. There are definite flaws in the narrative and delivery of FO4, but this isn't the thread for that.

Quote (Dynamic Threads)

I don't consider synths to be Fallout canon. They weren't introduced until Bethesda bought the rights and they weren't in Fallout 1 or 2. I find their existence not only completely unnecessary but within the Fallout universe's lore, completely unfathomable and possibly further, realistically impossible.

The idea behind Fallout's lore is that America never moved on from it's "Golden-Age" era (The 1950s), the Cold War era, nor rejected Tesla technology. While the technology in the Fallout universe was always slightly more advanced or sophisticated even compared to today's technology, there were/are only a few 'working' robots in the first two games: Robobrains, Sentry Bots, Eyebots and Mr. Handy. At most we had a "robotic" dog. We were always led to believe that the "robot" technology never advanced to anything more than rudimentary, let alone synthetic humanoids capable of feeling emotion. It literally is another tacked on gimmick by Bethesda to put their stamp on the Fallout universe. A.I. computers existed and are completely fathomable, on the other hand.


In fact, in almost all post-apocalyptic stories, there aren't synthetic "sentient" androids at all. It's actually a common theme amoung them. The idea being we will destroy our current society long before we develop actual synthetic, borderline biological material mixed with A.I. sophisticated enough to develop emotions and feelings, or at least convince itself of those things.

Whilst I understand and largely agree with your summary of the Fallout background universe, I don't think you can discount synths as canon unless you refuse FO3 and FO4 as canon too - which would frankly be absurd, no matter what your feelings on their comparative merits to other games in the series. True, they aren't in previous games, but FO3 and FO4 are both set on the East Coast. The synths on FO3 are directly linked to the same origin as the synths in FO4, and whilst I haven't yet progressed far enough into the story to discover whether the explanation for such advanced technology is able to stand up (again, please, mask spoilers), I'm currently led to understand that the explanation will involve

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

200 years of additional R&D on top of pre-war tech.

As such, I think it is actually going to be completely plausible. Of course, you're completely free to disagree and to dislike the addition to the lore, but that's not the quite same as the black-and-white assertions of "completely unnecessary...completely unfathomable and possibly further, realistically impossible" which you have made here. It's also quite difficult to use other post-apocalyptic stories to support your arguments when most of these are based on an apocalypse hitting realistic society, not Fallout's divergent timeline. It's clear you're not a Bethesda fan, but your arguments are less reasoned than they are zealous.

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Quote (Dynamic Threads)

who are we to say they wouldn't deserve the same "human" rights as us if they were capable of feeling emotion on our level, however sophisticated an algorithm their programming may be?

However, all that aside, it does appear we at least agree on the ethical treatment of synths (once they exist, at least). So there's that.

This post has been edited by Stiltzkin on 9th April 2016 13:05

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I have not played FO4 yet, I haven't been able to afford a PS4 or new PC.

I'm aware that the Synths in FO3 are from the same origin as in FO4 but I doubt that explanation will be sufficient.

New Vegas is second only to Fallout 2, IMO. It was made by the same guys who made Fallout 2 and was basically the manifestation of the cancelled Van Buren game. F:NV would be canon in my eyes, but I still think Fallout 3 is more of a greatest hits compilation than an official game and even Bethesda have said as much; It was meant to reacquaint old fans and introduce new fans into the universe.

As far as 200+ years of R&D on top of whatever was left of society, okay I may be incredibly biased but I still hold my opinion until I play Fallout 4 so I guess I'm talking kind of out of my ass here, lol.



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Quote (chevleclair @ 21st March 2016 09:11)

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Fallout universe, one of the common moral questions raised is whether synths "synthetic humanoids" or androids deserve human rights just as much as any other human does. Are synths self aware and feel true emotion, or is it just simulated programming?

I think it's clear that the advanced synths in Fallout 4 are on the level of sentient beings, and deserve all the rights that would entail. Would their rights be the same as humans? Maybe or maybe not. There might be some differences, but they should have basic human rights.

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Praise Be To Helix!