Greedo

Some things:
ofcourse, droids are not human and I never said that, but if you can think on your one and can speak you are a 'person' none the less. If you still kill them it is wrong, only in defence can that be justified.
To give a rude example:
When it was WOII, who was the bad guy? Hitler or the soldiers or everybody?
It's not because there is one rotten fruit the others are rotten too.
The soldiers (in SW the stormtroopers) just carrie out orders and do not have any politic influence. So are they also bad?

The Western thing: ok, but I think you make a link between Lucas and the other guy. But making the Jedicode was than a big mistake.
See Revange of the Jedi => Return of the Jedi

Those Battle Droids were NOT sentient. That was part of the point. They were just hardware; walking gun carriers. If they were full realised independant beings, they wouldn't need the central computer on the control ship to stay functional. If anything was sentient, that computer was, and even that is doubtful.

That WWII question is incredibly complex and tricky and could occupy us all day. However, the major point is, again, that that is a real-life example. This is not real life, it is a story- a KID'S story- and such complex moral issues can be ignored, like, as I say, they can be in Robin Hood, King Arthur, Jason and the Argonauts, and so on.

Again I don't agree.
We ALL need are to life, right?
Does that make us all hardware?

Not at all, but that is an entirely irrelevant example. That computer was not providing their sustenance, it was actually making their decisions for them. Because they were incapable of decision, because they were NOT sentient.

The entire point of those droids is that they were NOT alive. Living droids have their own brains.

Even if yuou do consider the basic function they had as 'life' (and in that case you should be darn careful about turning off your PC as it was little more advanced than amodern day computer programme), then you STILL should not fret, as all the possible brainpower in the droids was in that computer, not the droids themselves, which are just shells. All you were doing is destroying terminals of that computer.

As it is, they blew the lot in the end, of course, but that was in self-defence. And in any case, those droids don;t even approach sentience; you should be far more worried about the service droids (like the one from the start, though it wasn't on that ship) and, of course, the Neimodians.

"Captain, take them to camp 4"
"Roger, Roger"

Good thing the computer decided that on his own!
Why that discussion when you take a decission alone?

Simple. The computer relays all signals to the yellow command droids, who then sub-route it to the troopers.

In any case, GL wanted to give them droids an amusing quality to them., which is impossible if they are silent. But the basic design of the droids is that they can be killed without guilt and without blood, thus saving GL a lot of trouble.

You don't have to see them as just robots, they are puppets to the Trade Federation.
OK. there is no blood. But you still killed a 'thing' that can speak and do things, wich I think is a pretty close definition of a human

Seriously they are no more sentient than your PC, as opposed to people like C3-P0. They made them like that precisely to try and avoid this sort of dilemma.

WOW!! You have a super computer!! Mine can't speak, move or shoot!!
They are not human but they can feel pain (the d'oh! after the force push)
So they see, feel, and think.
The computer they destroy is just what they need to life, like air to us.

No, it gave them their programming. Their equivalent of air is power, which they still had, it was just useless. That 'd'oh' was just an amusement; could have been a malfunction.

Those droids in no way pass for human. They would fail a Turing test and do not come close to true sentuence.

And that comment about computers was pretty silly. SENTIENCE wise they are no more advanced than a PC; obviously their programming is better.

Besdies you are arguing directly against the direction of the film. As presented, the droids are non-living objects you can kill without remorse.

There are robots that assemble cars. I would hardly call them human.
There are robots that assemble other robots, I would still not call them humanoid. They can't think, have no emotions. They just carry out what their programme tells them. Just things that move, like a toy car.

Thanks Queeq.

Exactly. They are no different in basic principle to assembly robots.

Heck, I even saw robots teaching another robot how to use it's wheels. Still, it's just a little machine without consciousness. It just does what it's programmed to do.

There are different robots.

There are robots that assemble cars. I would hardly call them human.
There are robots that assemble other robots, I would still not call them humanoid. They can't think, have no emotions.

They don't have the technolegy to become independent. Like us millenias ago, we didn't had the technolegy to stay at one place. We had to move all the time. That's what we missed than, what those robots missed are the software (=inventions) to do something else, heck, they don't have legs!

The whole point was ectually from the first time that even if you kill a droid it's murder because robots and humans do the same things. If YOU don't call it a murder, ok, but if you killed a robot you can also kill a droid and don't feel sorry for it.

Robot, droid, whatever. It has no consciousness. There is no loss other than economical. Mere hardware, the contents is just data than can be stored, copied etc.
So no, you can't be sorry for it as a person. And those battle droids certainly didn't do anything by themselves, they just performed battle duties in the way they were programmed. No individuality, once you pull the switch they're gone. Mere scrap metal.

It really is a very odd thing you are arguing for there, Yerssot. GL goes to al,l the trouble of building an enemy that has no consciousness so you can destroy it without guilt and you STILL call it murder. Very odd indeed.

The droids have no brain! They have virtually no independant capacity; all they do have is the ability to execute a programme, just like a modern day PC, but in a more sophisticated (but still mass-produced) mobile shell.

I man, do you feel sorry when they blow up the AAT's? Because the only difference between the droids and the tanks they were in is that the tanks need a driver- same principle as the droids needing programming by the Central Computer on the control ship. They could put voice units on the tanks if they wanted, but why bother?

They are just war machines. Walking and talking does not sentience make; it is far more fundamental than that.

Guess I'm a pacifist.

The droids have no brain! They have virtually no independant capacity; all they do have is the ability to execute a programme, just like a modern day PC, but in a more sophisticated (but still mass-produced) mobile shell.

So what is it different than from a brain?

I man, do you feel sorry when they blow up the AAT's?
No, they can't see, feel or anything. They don't resamble humans by a long shot.

No individuality, once you pull the switch they're gone. Mere scrap metal.

Once you shoot someone trough the head he is gone, mere scrap bones, see the point?

No I don't Yerssot, because you can turn a droid like that back on again, and it will be back to its same, completely unsentient self.

It is utterly different from a brain in the same way a computer programme is nothing like a brain! Just some binary instructions, entirely identical to those car-building robots we mentioned earlier, or this messageboard programme we are hysing now. It's just a combat programme. More complex, but fundmantally similar.

You rule out the AAT's as being like the droids because they are not like humans. Well, true, but except for looks and speech neither are the battledroifs, and the ability to see or mimic speech does NOT make you sentient; we can do both today with machines. In fact, we can make machines that can fire weapons, responding to simple instructions. They are so, so, SO far from being alive- just like those droids- that a comparision between them and truly sentient beings is beyond laughable.

Just some binary instructions, entirely identical to those car-building robots we mentioned earlier, or this messageboard programme we are hysing now. It's just a combat programme. More complex, but fundmantally similar.

Because they work binary they are not good enough to resemble droids?

but except for looks and speech neither are the battledroifs
???? killing animals is murder, they look and have speech

Sorry, I don;t understand your first comment.

As to the second, I'm not sure what you are getting at there either. I just meant the only way in which battledroids resemble humans is looks and speech, which is a long way from them being alive. In fact, it has no bearing on how alive they are at all.