I’m going to get to the bottom of this damnable bot using my name. It causes me pain each time I scroll into the comments. I think my most recent mistake was updating my email, thinking the account alone would prevent my username from being available… Let’s try this now. Hopefully next comment section will be sans one bot using my name…
I’m not sure that would accomplish anything. I could remove the old email from the gravitar account, but then that image I uploaded to it just… goes away? I’ve attached a *new* email to the gravitar account, and originally set that one up for the CAD account, but swapped it back to the old one when I realized using a different email defeats the purpose of trying to stop the bot from using it. Here’s hoping that having the email that the bot is trying to use assigned to me, a registered user, will stop it. We’ll see on Friday’s… Read more »
R77
2 years ago
*ouch* point made.
…and …
Man what a nice story build up. I was wondering where the Deathblood arc was leading to. Nice!
By that logic, any murderer that didn’t consider their victims people would also not be murderers. in fact lots of murders do consider their victims subhuman. Not great logic bud.
Sadly, that is exactly how movements like Esoteric Nazism work 🙁 . They don’t consider their targets of hatred “people” and thus feel they should get away from consequences.
Lots of people see others as sub human or not even human, that doesn’t give them carte blanche to murder freely.
if nothing else, Zeke was showing signs of humanity, and was a borderline case, if it was publicly known there’d be a huge court proceeding to define whether or not they fit the criteria for life and whether or not it could be euthanised without repurcussion.
Thing is, the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Our current line is “Human is what biologically counts as human, as in, can mate and produce offspring with humans, or is descended from someone who can”. Dumb definition, but that’s the line biology uses to separate species from one another. In the real world, this line suits us fairly well so far. Some kinds of fiction like to test the boundaries of this line. Common tropes here are “This synthetic life form is, technically, not even life (as in, consists only of inanimate matter), but thinks like a human. Should… Read more »
Do you eat meat? Then you are using the sentience-rule. Do you have an enslaved, captive animal at home (meaning a pet)? Then you are using the sentience-rule. Do you put up mouse traps or other devices that kill pests? Then you are using the sentience-rule. As long as you don’t value any kind of life on this planet as exactly the same as the life of a human, you are drawing a line. Any kind of line-drawing is inherently fuzzy and wrong in detail. Because we are talking about a spectrum, and not about finite points. For example: What… Read more »
Zeke is easily at least as valuable as a dog, especially since he responds the same way to abuse. I wouldn’t want to be the one to choose, but Zeke is also more valuable than any one dog just for being a completely unique technological achievement.
“Dumb definition, but that’s the line biology uses to separate species from one another.”
Except it doesn’t
Look up a Cama, a camal/llama hybrid, they are fully fertile and capable of reproducing (unlike many other hybrids) and they aren’t even the same animal, let alone species
You’re saying that he’s potentially not sentient, but also attributing potential intentions. Are toddlers sentient? They have little more than rudimentary responses to basic stimuli and have no sense of self or motivation. Yet any one of them could grow up to be the worst dictator in history. Any one of them could also grow up to believe that the best way of dealing with the problems of the world is to simply shoot anyone who they don’t like or want to blame for social issues, just like Deathblood. Should we install some equivalent of a kill-switch on all toddlers… Read more »
Woah. You got downvoted pretty heavily for making a very good point. It’s all too easy to see Zeke as human because the fictional comic has written him that way, but that’s all projection. I’ve discussed this subject with quite a few people, and something amazingly interesting and inconsistent always happens. Everyone always agrees eventually than an AI sufficiently advanced enough to truly develop unique behaviour through learning, for lack of a better term “transcending” their code, ought to be afforded the same human rights because their behaviour is indistinguishable from that of humans at that point. Yet simultaneously they… Read more »
Man, what is with these comment sections. any comment that does a bit of critical thinking gets downvoted. I’ve never seen a more hatefull comment section than on CAD. It’s like people here downvote any post that isn’t 100% in line with their own thoughts.
Yeah, that’s the thing with fan-sections. If people are too much of a fan-boy, they can’t see past what they are a fan of. They love Zeke (which I totally get), so anyone arguing against his position feels to them like pissing all over the character. I tried to show in the beginning of the post, that I am not critiquing the comic or the characters (which are great, otherwise I wouldn’t be checking for new comics almost daily for 15 years). I’m talking about the real-world application. It’s the same with other media: I love Iron Man, but if… Read more »
A lot of comments talk about Zeke being human, but it does not seem to be the point. Is it not the reverse? The plot asking if we are empathetic enough to respect the life of any being, even non-human, Empathy being a defining trait for “Humanity” in a lot of works talking about morality. If you are empathetic only to humans it is easy to dehumanize anything and anybody for an easy justification. That is where the numerous real life and atrocious exemples enter the scene. And yes the reverse is true, if Zeke looked like a potato communicating… Read more »
When did the slavery era end. Still happening all over the world… including here in the good old USA. Now yes, the sex slave trade is illegal, but it still is happening.
The ONLY point I will say in this defense (because it is simply HORRIBLE), is that from a strict modern legalistic standpoint, it’s accurate. I remember hearing about a trick question in a law school exam about charging someone with murder for killing Flipper. The answer was “Not Guilty because murder is the unlawful death of a PERSON.”
If you want to go for strict legalistic standpoints, you should probably use them more accurately. You’re correct that murder does require a person, but that still implies relying on the law’s definitions of a person. (And whether Zeke does fall under that, and/or if the law should be updated for beings like him), However, Teocali’s statement went way beyond that (and into far uglier realms), suggesting that killing wouldn’t be murder as long as the murderer simply doesn’t consider the victim a person. That’s wrong in all aspects, as even in the ‘needs to be person for murder’ reasoning,… Read more »
The thing is that he didn’t need to use the killswitch. He clearly had the power to turn things on or off. This could be automated the same way as the kill switch. Cross the line and turn off body or other.
It was the equivalent of a business exploding a bomb in their servers when they misbehave. Instead you could turn the servers off, restart them, restart the programs, limit authorisation and much more. With ZK there were plenty of options to choose from, but only the killswitch was considered.
All things made of grow & dividing cells, including individual cells, are life. But to take nourishment from a kill is what redeems the violence of Nature. Had Scott downloaded all of Zeke’s mind into another computer -which was established as impossible because the software was constantly changing- then he would have the excuse of “eating” Zeke. Even then, he ought to be fired for unofficial vandalism of store property (they confiscated Zeke from a super-villain and don’t have an actual legal claim) and assault. As is, Scott can’t even claim he was transferring Zeke to a more secure containment… Read more »
damn you’re getting a lot of hate for this line, lol
however, you’re not completely wrong, Scott might not see Zeke as a people, and so is not a murderer. But he is being judged by his peer, Ethan, who does consider Zeke a person.
Same wtih the court of law
Scott not seeing Zeke as a person only means Scott doesn’t think of himself as a murderer. It doesn’t really change anything about whether he actually would be one.
Don’t confuse ‘If it isn’t a person, killing them isn’t murder’ with ‘It’s not murder if you doesn’t think of them as a person’. Only the first one is technically valid (though it does rely on actually confirming they aren’t a person first), the latter is basically claiming you can’t be a criminal as long as you don’t think you are.
I’m sympathetic to Scott because of his trauma and because I recognize the cultural difficulty humanity would face in accepting an artificial sentience as a person, but no, “not seeing someone as a person” does -not- justify killing them. What the actual f is wrong with you. Do you type with your white hood on, or do you only wear it to rallies?
The worst part is this type of mentality has been so normalized that the white hood is no longer needed.
Think about every police killing. The first line of defense is that the person killed by the police was guilty of something, therefore not human, therefore not murder.
Ya know, this was the exact excuse that humans used to kill infants under 2, slaves, neurodivergent peeps, women, foreigners, etc. “We don’t see them as people, so it is totally ok.” -Andrew Jackson, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, etc. (probably).
I don’t think the argument here is that Scott doesn’t see Zeke as a person and so he isn’t a murderer. Rather he might be a murderer but he isn’t a complete lost cause like Death Blood. That he really messed up, and he was wrong, but maybe he can come back and fix it. He ‘might’ be a murderer, but he isn’t Death Blood.
You’re getting a lot of flak so I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a second and give you at least the benefit of the doubt. First, to avoid any confusion, let me make clear what I am NOT saying: I am NOT saying that whether or not somebody is a person is up to the personal persective of a would-be killer. It is not that subjective and it is not that arbitrary. However, once we’ve acknowledged that, we also need to check what is *actually the case* regarding a victim’s personhood, in this particular case, Zeke’s. The question before… Read more »
Thanks for the write-up. I tried to do something similar, but I couldn’t get the point across. There is a line (and needs to be a line) that separates beings, to which the human rights apply, and beings, where it doesn’t. In legal practice, the line includes all humans that are old enough to not qualify for abortion any more. Since the rule “humans are worth protecting, but other animals are not” is unsatisfying, it prompts the next question: “Why? What qualifies humans for human rights?”. And here we get terms like sentience or free will. These terms are arbitrary… Read more »
I’m certain Deathblood uses the same rationalization. So did the English, Spanish and Portuguese when dealing with indigenous people. It’s the (unintentional) implication of the MAGA movement– that liberals aren’t “real Americans”, and don’t deserve protection.
Boy I hope people who think like you aren’t in charge if we ever meet actual aliens. Greedy/hateful people will always skew that definition to favor whatever profits them. “They weren’t ‘people’ so dissection/experimentation/stealing their technology is _fine_.”
Careful people here are the same ones that would cry if their smart phone died but not shed a tear and laugh watching someone being stupid get eaten by a shark.
Boy I hope people who think like you aren’t in charge if we ever meet actual aliens. Greedy/hateful people will always skew that definition to favor whatever profits them.
I love that I didn’t see this coming, but it’s so obvious looking back.
GUNnibal
2 years ago
Yeah, point made, but can I just ask… why is there a sphincter on the wall behind Scott? I know that quite a few people would call me a bit of an asshole after what happened, I just didn’t think he’d be that self-conscious about it.
“The painting is representation of how I can touch my sphincter…. but how I can never really feel it anymore.”
Merida
2 years ago
Guess Ethan learned how to punch.
Gonfrask
2 years ago
In that case it was quite clear that the gang members were more than predisposed to cause harm later, even when killing the same guy more than one time show no real effect.
Ok Ethan…and what did you do? Followed Blood and kill him?
Or he went through a series of rapid deaths (which we already know he remembers and experiences fully) while people he was trying to protect get murdered in a more permanent way as he is completely helpless to do anything. This following the incident in which his friend attempted to murder his friend who he was attempting to protect and had made progress in rehabilitating. I’m pretty sure that would put some mental strain on a person.
Absolutely. Those gang members were definitely not “hypothetically” going to cause harm later. They were definitely going to. Deathblood still wasn’t wrong about them.
Which just makes Scott worse by comparison. Kinda hope Ethan gets to throw that in Scott’s face.
I’ve been on the other side of such comments during the Deathblood comics and the “discussion” on whether or not he was right but I have to point out in this case that one needs to make a distinction between the guilt and the punishment. Deathblood may have been wrong about the death penalty for any crime he thought was severe enough, but he was not wrong regarding predictions of the criminal gang’s behaviour in terms of guilt. In fact, real life law enforcement acts upon the very same premise: that if you don’t stop a pattern of criminal behaviour… Read more »
Our police cannot actually stop people for commiting future crimes. They only arrest people for things they actually did. In this case possession of narcotics is a crime. Attempted murder is a crime. Neither deserves the death penalty without a trial.
I agree that neither deserve the death penalty without a trial so let’s seperate the issue of extrajudiciary punishment from the issue of guilt. If you believe that the police cannot actually stop people from committing future crimes, what exactly, do you think, incarceration does to their ability to commit the crimes they have been committing? If you go to prison for 20 years for armed robbery, it’s a rather quaint notion to claim that this doesn’t prevent them from committing armed robbery for the next 20 years. What exactly do you think the incarceration is even for? It’s punishment,… Read more »
add: generally these kind folk will never see killing others as “wrong”, no matter how much you wish for peaceful redemption
James Rye
2 years ago
Tbf though, Deathblood kills actively while Scott had put in a passive kill-switch that only Not-Zeke could activate by triggering its trigger. Not much difference but a tiny difference.
Another day on the internet, another “to be fair” that isn’t even remotely fair. That phrase is a truly great indicator of “total BS incoming”
In this case: there’s no difference at all. You called it “passive” but there’s nothing passive about Scott’s actions. He intentionally set a trap with the intent that ZK dies if he triggers it. That’s very much active.
Sure. There’s also a difference between being stabbed to death and being strangled to death, but it doesn’t matter so much to the dead person. Let’s turn your statement into a thought experiment: imagine two cases. In the first case, we have what happened in the comic: Scott put a bomb in that Zeke triggered by leaving the room, which Zeke was unaware of. In the second case, Scott triggers an exploding device the second he’s aware that Zeke has left the room. Can you argue an objective difference in responsibility, using notions of causality and free will, and the… Read more »
The murderbots were remote controlled by the Master and their speech was the Master speaking. Iirc they had some automatic behavior and orders coded, but they couldn’t make their own decisions like Zeke can.
Not quite the same thing. The other robots actually were just non-sentient remote-controlled tools. Zeke was explicitly stated to be different in that he actually is capable of thinking for himself.
Those robots were actively harming civilians and putting people in danger, plus they weren’t actually sentient. They were remotely controlled by the The Weeb. ZK is the first truly sentient robot the group encountered, and presumably the first to be created in universe period. If destroying the other robots is the same as murder, then every time someone steps on or breaks a remote controlled car or plane, or drone, that woudl constitute murder as well by that logic.
Read again. They were not harming people, just their smartphones/tablets. They were specifically out to destroy tech, not harm people. And that was enough of an offence to kill them. And now that killer (Ethan destroyed 11 of them on-screen) implies that Scott’s a killer, because he destroyed one Murderbot, who repeatedly stated he wanted to wipe out all of humanity.
Also, where did it say that they were really not sentient? You guys are claiming that Zeke is sentient, and also he was remote controlled first.
Where’s the evidence, that the other murderbots weren’t sentient underneath their remote control?
Evidence that they were harming people: https://cad-comic.com/comic/analog-and-d-pad-01-10/ (Issue 1, page 10, in case link doesn’t work) Even if you are happy to ignore the obvious problems and pretend destroying the tech isn’t already harmful in itself (physical wounds really aren’t the only way people can be harmed), the robots tried to kill people that got in the way of destroying tech. You’re correct that their primary goal was to destroy tech, but you can’t deny they were harming people in the process. (And no, giving someone a choice of ‘your laptop or your life’ does not count as not harming… Read more »
I learned yesterday that brannigan is a real english word. Meaning a violent argument.
no thanks nintendo
2 years ago
I believe this is where the kids say GOT ‘EEEEM!!!
Amosho
2 years ago
Oh damn… Shots fired!
Jack0r
2 years ago
Apparently, even Ethan doesn’t see this so cut and dry (at least he didn’t).
Back in this comic https://cad-comic.com/comic/analog-and-d-pad-01-26/ he was just all-to-happy to blow up one of Zekes cousins.
That one was also capable of speech and seemed about as sentient as Zeke looks.
Actually, in the whole of Issue 1, Ethan kills 11 robots, while Lucas kills 5 (counting only on-screen kills), for the offence of destroying a few smartphones and a tablet PC.
At the time, I don’t believe the level of sentience possessed by Zeke had yet been determined. Further on, I believe it’s also determined that Zeke is unique compared to the other robots, in that his programming indicates true sentience.
While I’m one of the folks more sympathetic to Scott, given the moral complexity of the subject matter and his own personal trauma, you’re using their then-ignorance of sentience as indicator of hypocrisy. It’s a poor argument, and you should be embarrassed for making it.
In the panel I linked, Ethan detonated the leader of the murderbots, not even knowing that he really was a robot and not a human. It’s clearly implied that he thought the leaderbot was human. So killing a human because he destroyed smartphones seems to be ok, for most people here, but destroying a robot because he threatens to wipe out all of humanity is fair game? Also, how does anyone know he’s sentient? Because his programming is more complex than what Scott understands? Because he claims to? Modern chatbots can also claim to be sentient, and their machine learning… Read more »
Out of curiosity, did you also read that page you linked? Because you seem to have missed the following panels where shocked Lucas makes it pretty clear that Ethan’s actions were not ok, it was just lucky that it was only a non-sentient robot that time.
That is true, but that does not change anything about Ethan’s state of mind at the time he exploded the robot.
Banjo
2 years ago
Ethan just comitted a murder of his own with that comment.
Damion
2 years ago
Proving once again that while Ethan is a huge goofus, and quite possibly 109% bonkers from SPPTSD (Super Powered Post Traumatic Stress Dickery), he’s neither an idiot nor unethical.
I -love- this rewrite.
Jedi
2 years ago
I really like how deep the words are that Ethan figured out in his daily 7 seconds of sanity. Love how that comic improved over 20 years.
Kaitensatsuma
2 years ago
BOOM goes the dynamite.
The guy
2 years ago
Funny how Ethan went from dummy punchline to rhetorical genius.
PhobosRising
2 years ago
Ah, I see a few saw Bicentennial Man and thought “You should shut down your computer at least once a week”.
Freewheel
2 years ago
Ouch. I felt that from here.
ShonaSoF
2 years ago
Ooof. Hopefully this drives the point home for Scott. There’s a far too much of that mentality in the world today. Hating on people for assumptions of intent or hypothetical harm.
ShonaSoF
2 years ago
I’m seeing so many people here still trying to defend Scott with arguments of Zeke not really being self-determinate, or questioning if Zeke is even truly intelligent. Basically a lot of ‘what if…’ arguments. Are toddlers sentient? They have little more than rudimentary responses to basic stimuli and have no sense of self or motivation. Yet any one of them could grow up to be the worst dictator in history. Any toddler could also grow up to believe that the best way of dealing with the problems of the world is to simply shoot anyone who they don’t like or… Read more »
Last edited 2 years ago by ShonaSoF
Number51x
2 years ago
GOD, I felt the heat from that through my screen!
Verdiekus
2 years ago
Wow… yeesh.
Alpha-00
2 years ago
I kinda missed this arc, and after resuming reading, I cannot help but think about one thing. Would Ethan stood up to Deathblood if those gangsters killed Lucas before his very eyes? Or just some innocent passerby, who stumbled upon their operation. Because they kinda proved their willingness to kill anyone in their way. And not just kill. Execute helpless person. He is extremely forgiving of his own murders, but from perspective of those whom he forgives, they are pulling the trigger (or killing him otherwise) with assumption that he won’t get up and will stay dead. I’m really interested… Read more »
I feel Ethan did stand up to DB and there WERE real consequences from the encounter. He was killed several times, including by Deathblood, I’d assume. That along with his perceived failure _on top_ of what happened with Scott and Zeke? Ethan needs a therapist to help prevent PTSD issues, not to ‘prove himself’. he did what he could and handled himself surprisingly well.
Probably yes, given what we’ve seen from him so far. He already stood up against Deathblood for the violent criminals as things were, and Ethan doesn’t seem so naive that he considered them innocent. He just didn’t think murdering them was a justifiable punishment. (He just wanted them arrested and properly sentenced).
Ethan is shown to have some clear moral principles (like murder not being acceptable). and it feels a bit presumptuous (not to mention insulting) to immediately speculate about how quickly he’d abandon those should the situation arrive.
Pyre
2 years ago
Well, this is already starting well…..
Foxhood
2 years ago
This feels like the start to either a deep heart to heart conversation.
Or the start of the burning of a bridge… with napalm…
lordrahmo
2 years ago
This burn is so hard its contributing to global warming
Rolando
2 years ago
This represents a real life, ages-old debate. One that’s nigh-impossible to solve.
And not just ‘cos there’s plenty of incorrect attitudes muddying it all up. Extremism, corruption, irrationality, hubris, bias, etc.
But also because, even if you get rid of all those mistakes (a miracle in itself)… It’s inherently dificult. To the extreme.
I mean, can you come up with a sure-fire way to create a totally fair and well-balanced justice system? When NOTHING you do will EVER please enough people for long enough?
24
Uhh the burn.
That wasn’t a burn… that was an incineration!
You might say that Ethan chopped his legs right out from under him….
That was low, man, very low.
Some might say wheelchair low.
I can’t stand those kind of jokes
Well played, sir.
We’re on a roll,I see…
w0w what great dea1, I make sure I w0rk on PC(Computer PC)
If she needs more money I can put her in contact with a Nigerian prince who wants to give all his money away.
I’m going to get to the bottom of this damnable bot using my name. It causes me pain each time I scroll into the comments. I think my most recent mistake was updating my email, thinking the account alone would prevent my username from being available… Let’s try this now. Hopefully next comment section will be sans one bot using my name…
You need to change the email with gravitar
I’m not sure that would accomplish anything. I could remove the old email from the gravitar account, but then that image I uploaded to it just… goes away? I’ve attached a *new* email to the gravitar account, and originally set that one up for the CAD account, but swapped it back to the old one when I realized using a different email defeats the purpose of trying to stop the bot from using it. Here’s hoping that having the email that the bot is trying to use assigned to me, a registered user, will stop it. We’ll see on Friday’s… Read more »
*ouch* point made.
…and …
Man what a nice story build up. I was wondering where the Deathblood arc was leading to. Nice!
What point? Scott hasn’t killed any people that we know of.
He intended to kill someone. I don’t think failing at a murder makes this point any less apt.
The point is, Scoot didn’t see Zeke as a people, so, no, he is not a murderer
By that logic, any murderer that didn’t consider their victims people would also not be murderers. in fact lots of murders do consider their victims subhuman. Not great logic bud.
Sadly, that is exactly how movements like Esoteric Nazism work 🙁 . They don’t consider their targets of hatred “people” and thus feel they should get away from consequences.
And the modern pro-choice/pro-abortion movement shows that the same logic is alive and well even in “civilized” society.
Or when every time we close a game, we kill the people and world inside it? Not the best examples from the commenter you replied to you, indeed.
That’s a dangerous line of reasoning.
Lots of people see others as sub human or not even human, that doesn’t give them carte blanche to murder freely.
if nothing else, Zeke was showing signs of humanity, and was a borderline case, if it was publicly known there’d be a huge court proceeding to define whether or not they fit the criteria for life and whether or not it could be euthanised without repurcussion.
didn’t see deathblood tying into this so soon.
hitler didnt see the jews as people either … same with slavers during the slavery era … this is “DANGEROUS” teritory you just wanderd into
Thing is, the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Our current line is “Human is what biologically counts as human, as in, can mate and produce offspring with humans, or is descended from someone who can”. Dumb definition, but that’s the line biology uses to separate species from one another. In the real world, this line suits us fairly well so far. Some kinds of fiction like to test the boundaries of this line. Common tropes here are “This synthetic life form is, technically, not even life (as in, consists only of inanimate matter), but thinks like a human. Should… Read more »
So as long as it is not human, signs of sentience and sapience be damned, you can kill it?
Babies in a womb?
Do you eat meat? Then you are using the sentience-rule. Do you have an enslaved, captive animal at home (meaning a pet)? Then you are using the sentience-rule. Do you put up mouse traps or other devices that kill pests? Then you are using the sentience-rule. As long as you don’t value any kind of life on this planet as exactly the same as the life of a human, you are drawing a line. Any kind of line-drawing is inherently fuzzy and wrong in detail. Because we are talking about a spectrum, and not about finite points. For example: What… Read more »
Zeke is easily at least as valuable as a dog, especially since he responds the same way to abuse. I wouldn’t want to be the one to choose, but Zeke is also more valuable than any one dog just for being a completely unique technological achievement.
Current AI gets nowhere close to what Zeke can do. I may not be able to define where the line is but I’m quite confident Zeke is over it.
“Dumb definition, but that’s the line biology uses to separate species from one another.”
Except it doesn’t
Look up a Cama, a camal/llama hybrid, they are fully fertile and capable of reproducing (unlike many other hybrids) and they aren’t even the same animal, let alone species
You’re saying that he’s potentially not sentient, but also attributing potential intentions. Are toddlers sentient? They have little more than rudimentary responses to basic stimuli and have no sense of self or motivation. Yet any one of them could grow up to be the worst dictator in history. Any one of them could also grow up to believe that the best way of dealing with the problems of the world is to simply shoot anyone who they don’t like or want to blame for social issues, just like Deathblood. Should we install some equivalent of a kill-switch on all toddlers… Read more »
Can’t exactly compare the two. Zeke had a humanity genocide planned. A killswitch in such circumstance is valid.
Woah. You got downvoted pretty heavily for making a very good point. It’s all too easy to see Zeke as human because the fictional comic has written him that way, but that’s all projection. I’ve discussed this subject with quite a few people, and something amazingly interesting and inconsistent always happens. Everyone always agrees eventually than an AI sufficiently advanced enough to truly develop unique behaviour through learning, for lack of a better term “transcending” their code, ought to be afforded the same human rights because their behaviour is indistinguishable from that of humans at that point. Yet simultaneously they… Read more »
Man, what is with these comment sections. any comment that does a bit of critical thinking gets downvoted. I’ve never seen a more hatefull comment section than on CAD. It’s like people here downvote any post that isn’t 100% in line with their own thoughts.
Yeah, that’s the thing with fan-sections. If people are too much of a fan-boy, they can’t see past what they are a fan of. They love Zeke (which I totally get), so anyone arguing against his position feels to them like pissing all over the character. I tried to show in the beginning of the post, that I am not critiquing the comic or the characters (which are great, otherwise I wouldn’t be checking for new comics almost daily for 15 years). I’m talking about the real-world application. It’s the same with other media: I love Iron Man, but if… Read more »
I don’t know how tapping the “didn’t like this comment” button is hateful exactly? It’s a loose indication of the opinions of the chat, not an attack.
A lot of comments talk about Zeke being human, but it does not seem to be the point. Is it not the reverse? The plot asking if we are empathetic enough to respect the life of any being, even non-human, Empathy being a defining trait for “Humanity” in a lot of works talking about morality. If you are empathetic only to humans it is easy to dehumanize anything and anybody for an easy justification. That is where the numerous real life and atrocious exemples enter the scene. And yes the reverse is true, if Zeke looked like a potato communicating… Read more »
When did the slavery era end. Still happening all over the world… including here in the good old USA. Now yes, the sex slave trade is illegal, but it still is happening.
There it is: the worst take I’ll see on the internet today.
Nice to get it out of the way first thing in the morning, I guess…?
I don’t see you as a human since you’re obviously a sociopath. Should I be allowed to strike you down where you stand?
Why hello Emet Selch! I didn’t know you read CAD too! 😀
“I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be murder if I kill you.” – Emet Selch, FFXIV
Seriously dude, really examine that line of thought. Really fucking hard. Seriously. ._.
That’s soooooo not how that works.
The ONLY point I will say in this defense (because it is simply HORRIBLE), is that from a strict modern legalistic standpoint, it’s accurate. I remember hearing about a trick question in a law school exam about charging someone with murder for killing Flipper. The answer was “Not Guilty because murder is the unlawful death of a PERSON.”
Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right.
If you want to go for strict legalistic standpoints, you should probably use them more accurately. You’re correct that murder does require a person, but that still implies relying on the law’s definitions of a person. (And whether Zeke does fall under that, and/or if the law should be updated for beings like him), However, Teocali’s statement went way beyond that (and into far uglier realms), suggesting that killing wouldn’t be murder as long as the murderer simply doesn’t consider the victim a person. That’s wrong in all aspects, as even in the ‘needs to be person for murder’ reasoning,… Read more »
I DID say his take was horrible, did I not?
Not guilty of muder perhaps, but still guilty of crimes
The thing is that he didn’t need to use the killswitch. He clearly had the power to turn things on or off. This could be automated the same way as the kill switch. Cross the line and turn off body or other.
It was the equivalent of a business exploding a bomb in their servers when they misbehave. Instead you could turn the servers off, restart them, restart the programs, limit authorisation and much more. With ZK there were plenty of options to choose from, but only the killswitch was considered.
zeke isnt a people! he is a walking xbox. you cant murder a computer 🙂
Yeah, he’s not the first to decide that a living thing wasnt “people” and that’s not an excuse, not even close
So, you don’t eat meat, I guess?
Or plants? Aren’t plants living things as well?
All things made of grow & dividing cells, including individual cells, are life. But to take nourishment from a kill is what redeems the violence of Nature. Had Scott downloaded all of Zeke’s mind into another computer -which was established as impossible because the software was constantly changing- then he would have the excuse of “eating” Zeke. Even then, he ought to be fired for unofficial vandalism of store property (they confiscated Zeke from a super-villain and don’t have an actual legal claim) and assault. As is, Scott can’t even claim he was transferring Zeke to a more secure containment… Read more »
I don’t see you as human so…
damn you’re getting a lot of hate for this line, lol
however, you’re not completely wrong, Scott might not see Zeke as a people, and so is not a murderer. But he is being judged by his peer, Ethan, who does consider Zeke a person.
Same wtih the court of law
Scott not seeing Zeke as a person only means Scott doesn’t think of himself as a murderer. It doesn’t really change anything about whether he actually would be one.
Don’t confuse ‘If it isn’t a person, killing them isn’t murder’ with ‘It’s not murder if you doesn’t think of them as a person’. Only the first one is technically valid (though it does rely on actually confirming they aren’t a person first), the latter is basically claiming you can’t be a criminal as long as you don’t think you are.
I’m sympathetic to Scott because of his trauma and because I recognize the cultural difficulty humanity would face in accepting an artificial sentience as a person, but no, “not seeing someone as a person” does -not- justify killing them. What the actual f is wrong with you. Do you type with your white hood on, or do you only wear it to rallies?
The worst part is this type of mentality has been so normalized that the white hood is no longer needed.
Think about every police killing. The first line of defense is that the person killed by the police was guilty of something, therefore not human, therefore not murder.
And white supremacists don’t see black people as people either, but as property. So we just gonna let them slide when they kill someone?
Cool motive, still murder.
Ya know, this was the exact excuse that humans used to kill infants under 2, slaves, neurodivergent peeps, women, foreigners, etc. “We don’t see them as people, so it is totally ok.” -Andrew Jackson, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, etc. (probably).
glad to see youre a supporter of peta and their pet killing spree
I don’t think the argument here is that Scott doesn’t see Zeke as a person and so he isn’t a murderer. Rather he might be a murderer but he isn’t a complete lost cause like Death Blood. That he really messed up, and he was wrong, but maybe he can come back and fix it. He ‘might’ be a murderer, but he isn’t Death Blood.
So many historical atrocities must be okay to you then, because the people who committed them did not see their victims as “people…”
You’re getting a lot of flak so I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a second and give you at least the benefit of the doubt. First, to avoid any confusion, let me make clear what I am NOT saying: I am NOT saying that whether or not somebody is a person is up to the personal persective of a would-be killer. It is not that subjective and it is not that arbitrary. However, once we’ve acknowledged that, we also need to check what is *actually the case* regarding a victim’s personhood, in this particular case, Zeke’s. The question before… Read more »
Thanks for the write-up. I tried to do something similar, but I couldn’t get the point across. There is a line (and needs to be a line) that separates beings, to which the human rights apply, and beings, where it doesn’t. In legal practice, the line includes all humans that are old enough to not qualify for abortion any more. Since the rule “humans are worth protecting, but other animals are not” is unsatisfying, it prompts the next question: “Why? What qualifies humans for human rights?”. And here we get terms like sentience or free will. These terms are arbitrary… Read more »
I’m certain Deathblood uses the same rationalization. So did the English, Spanish and Portuguese when dealing with indigenous people. It’s the (unintentional) implication of the MAGA movement– that liberals aren’t “real Americans”, and don’t deserve protection.
There’s also a right to life/abortion argument in here somewhere.
Let’s see if the mods are brave enough to let this comment post.
Oh, Hell, I got fucking downvoted to hell…
I forgot a part in my sentence. I wanted to say “so, no, in his mind, he is not a murderer
Re-Cap:
https://cad-comic.com/comic/deposited-p7/
https://cad-comic.com/comic/deposited-p8/
https://cad-comic.com/comic/deposited-p9/
Boy I hope people who think like you aren’t in charge if we ever meet actual aliens. Greedy/hateful people will always skew that definition to favor whatever profits them. “They weren’t ‘people’ so dissection/experimentation/stealing their technology is _fine_.”
Careful people here are the same ones that would cry if their smart phone died but not shed a tear and laugh watching someone being stupid get eaten by a shark.
Jokes on you – I’d only cry that I couldn’t get it on my dead smart phone.
Talk about whooosh
Uhh…well then, that’s not where I expected this to go, but he makes a very strong point there, doesn’t he?
Don’t think so. I think the key point in the future of this conversation would be the definition of “people”
BuT hItLeR!!!!!
Godwin’s Law has hereby been invoked.
3 comments in.
Wow.
1) That was sarcasm, genius. Werent the alternating caps a clue?
2) superkamimarvin Godwinned 7 hours ago.
Ya… using sarcasm when talking about genocide is ALWAYS the way to go.
i love the logic that invoking godwin’s law has the same effect on an argument that kicking someone in the balls has on a boxing match
Intelligent sentient life-form able to communicate very clearly?
Boy I hope people who think like you aren’t in charge if we ever meet actual aliens. Greedy/hateful people will always skew that definition to favor whatever profits them.
If scott didn’t think Zeke was a person at all he would have just popped that button and felt zero remorse.
Even his admission that “this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen” means he is at least giving Zeke some sliver of humanity.
I love that I didn’t see this coming, but it’s so obvious looking back.
Yeah, point made, but can I just ask… why is there a sphincter on the wall behind Scott? I know that quite a few people would call me a bit of an asshole after what happened, I just didn’t think he’d be that self-conscious about it.
“The painting is representation of how I can touch my sphincter…. but how I can never really feel it anymore.”
Guess Ethan learned how to punch.
In that case it was quite clear that the gang members were more than predisposed to cause harm later, even when killing the same guy more than one time show no real effect.
Ok Ethan…and what did you do? Followed Blood and kill him?
Uh, no. Because not killing people is Ethan’s point here.
I hope it is. But Ethan looks so broken…that moment when the hero moral code fall apart…
I’m really intrigued for potential flashbacks
Or he went through a series of rapid deaths (which we already know he remembers and experiences fully) while people he was trying to protect get murdered in a more permanent way as he is completely helpless to do anything. This following the incident in which his friend attempted to murder his friend who he was attempting to protect and had made progress in rehabilitating. I’m pretty sure that would put some mental strain on a person.
Absolutely. Those gang members were definitely not “hypothetically” going to cause harm later. They were definitely going to. Deathblood still wasn’t wrong about them.
Which just makes Scott worse by comparison. Kinda hope Ethan gets to throw that in Scott’s face.
Death penalty is barbaric by itself, but mass murdering vigilante is even worse.
I’ve been on the other side of such comments during the Deathblood comics and the “discussion” on whether or not he was right but I have to point out in this case that one needs to make a distinction between the guilt and the punishment. Deathblood may have been wrong about the death penalty for any crime he thought was severe enough, but he was not wrong regarding predictions of the criminal gang’s behaviour in terms of guilt. In fact, real life law enforcement acts upon the very same premise: that if you don’t stop a pattern of criminal behaviour… Read more »
Our police cannot actually stop people for commiting future crimes. They only arrest people for things they actually did. In this case possession of narcotics is a crime. Attempted murder is a crime. Neither deserves the death penalty without a trial.
I agree that neither deserve the death penalty without a trial so let’s seperate the issue of extrajudiciary punishment from the issue of guilt. If you believe that the police cannot actually stop people from committing future crimes, what exactly, do you think, incarceration does to their ability to commit the crimes they have been committing? If you go to prison for 20 years for armed robbery, it’s a rather quaint notion to claim that this doesn’t prevent them from committing armed robbery for the next 20 years. What exactly do you think the incarceration is even for? It’s punishment,… Read more »
then again, there be some so far in killing intent that killing them prevents mass killing from happening
add: generally these kind folk will never see killing others as “wrong”, no matter how much you wish for peaceful redemption
Tbf though, Deathblood kills actively while Scott had put in a passive kill-switch that only Not-Zeke could activate by triggering its trigger. Not much difference but a tiny difference.
Also good start to a heartfelt open talk, lol.
Not really a difference at all, when the “person” doesn’t know they can trigger it.
Another day on the internet, another “to be fair” that isn’t even remotely fair. That phrase is a truly great indicator of “total BS incoming”
In this case: there’s no difference at all. You called it “passive” but there’s nothing passive about Scott’s actions. He intentionally set a trap with the intent that ZK dies if he triggers it. That’s very much active.
Sure. There’s also a difference between being stabbed to death and being strangled to death, but it doesn’t matter so much to the dead person. Let’s turn your statement into a thought experiment: imagine two cases. In the first case, we have what happened in the comic: Scott put a bomb in that Zeke triggered by leaving the room, which Zeke was unaware of. In the second case, Scott triggers an exploding device the second he’s aware that Zeke has left the room. Can you argue an objective difference in responsibility, using notions of causality and free will, and the… Read more »
Insert “emotional damage” meme here.
Technically, Scott hasn’t murdered anybody.
He sure tried to (accepting that Zeke is a “person”, and thus can be murdered, but that’s clearly the case in this universe).
Is it? Destroying the other murderbots in the beginning was totally fine. Only Ethan spent a lot of time with Zeke did he see him as a person.
The murderbots were remote controlled by the Master and their speech was the Master speaking. Iirc they had some automatic behavior and orders coded, but they couldn’t make their own decisions like Zeke can.
Not quite the same thing. The other robots actually were just non-sentient remote-controlled tools. Zeke was explicitly stated to be different in that he actually is capable of thinking for himself.
Those robots were actively harming civilians and putting people in danger, plus they weren’t actually sentient. They were remotely controlled by the The Weeb. ZK is the first truly sentient robot the group encountered, and presumably the first to be created in universe period. If destroying the other robots is the same as murder, then every time someone steps on or breaks a remote controlled car or plane, or drone, that woudl constitute murder as well by that logic.
Read again. They were not harming people, just their smartphones/tablets. They were specifically out to destroy tech, not harm people. And that was enough of an offence to kill them. And now that killer (Ethan destroyed 11 of them on-screen) implies that Scott’s a killer, because he destroyed one Murderbot, who repeatedly stated he wanted to wipe out all of humanity.
Also, where did it say that they were really not sentient? You guys are claiming that Zeke is sentient, and also he was remote controlled first.
Where’s the evidence, that the other murderbots weren’t sentient underneath their remote control?
Evidence that they were harming people: https://cad-comic.com/comic/analog-and-d-pad-01-10/ (Issue 1, page 10, in case link doesn’t work) Even if you are happy to ignore the obvious problems and pretend destroying the tech isn’t already harmful in itself (physical wounds really aren’t the only way people can be harmed), the robots tried to kill people that got in the way of destroying tech. You’re correct that their primary goal was to destroy tech, but you can’t deny they were harming people in the process. (And no, giving someone a choice of ‘your laptop or your life’ does not count as not harming… Read more »
It is said multiple times that those first bots were just drones being remote controlled by the master, and Zeke was never remote controlled.
Also, nice callout to Futurama with the Title.
Brannigan, begin again.
♫ A name that a shame never has been connected with ♫
I learned yesterday that brannigan is a real english word. Meaning a violent argument.
I believe this is where the kids say GOT ‘EEEEM!!!
Oh damn… Shots fired!
Apparently, even Ethan doesn’t see this so cut and dry (at least he didn’t).
Back in this comic https://cad-comic.com/comic/analog-and-d-pad-01-26/ he was just all-to-happy to blow up one of Zekes cousins.
That one was also capable of speech and seemed about as sentient as Zeke looks.
Actually, in the whole of Issue 1, Ethan kills 11 robots, while Lucas kills 5 (counting only on-screen kills), for the offence of destroying a few smartphones and a tablet PC.
I don’t think that robot was really capable of speech, that was just the Master talking through it on a microphone.
At the time, I don’t believe the level of sentience possessed by Zeke had yet been determined. Further on, I believe it’s also determined that Zeke is unique compared to the other robots, in that his programming indicates true sentience.
While I’m one of the folks more sympathetic to Scott, given the moral complexity of the subject matter and his own personal trauma, you’re using their then-ignorance of sentience as indicator of hypocrisy. It’s a poor argument, and you should be embarrassed for making it.
In the panel I linked, Ethan detonated the leader of the murderbots, not even knowing that he really was a robot and not a human. It’s clearly implied that he thought the leaderbot was human. So killing a human because he destroyed smartphones seems to be ok, for most people here, but destroying a robot because he threatens to wipe out all of humanity is fair game? Also, how does anyone know he’s sentient? Because his programming is more complex than what Scott understands? Because he claims to? Modern chatbots can also claim to be sentient, and their machine learning… Read more »
Out of curiosity, did you also read that page you linked? Because you seem to have missed the following panels where shocked Lucas makes it pretty clear that Ethan’s actions were not ok, it was just lucky that it was only a non-sentient robot that time.
That is true, but that does not change anything about Ethan’s state of mind at the time he exploded the robot.
Ethan just comitted a murder of his own with that comment.
Proving once again that while Ethan is a huge goofus, and quite possibly 109% bonkers from SPPTSD (Super Powered Post Traumatic Stress Dickery), he’s neither an idiot nor unethical.
I -love- this rewrite.
I really like how deep the words are that Ethan figured out in his daily 7 seconds of sanity. Love how that comic improved over 20 years.
BOOM goes the dynamite.
Funny how Ethan went from dummy punchline to rhetorical genius.
Ah, I see a few saw Bicentennial Man and thought “You should shut down your computer at least once a week”.
Ouch. I felt that from here.
Ooof. Hopefully this drives the point home for Scott. There’s a far too much of that mentality in the world today. Hating on people for assumptions of intent or hypothetical harm.
I’m seeing so many people here still trying to defend Scott with arguments of Zeke not really being self-determinate, or questioning if Zeke is even truly intelligent. Basically a lot of ‘what if…’ arguments. Are toddlers sentient? They have little more than rudimentary responses to basic stimuli and have no sense of self or motivation. Yet any one of them could grow up to be the worst dictator in history. Any toddler could also grow up to believe that the best way of dealing with the problems of the world is to simply shoot anyone who they don’t like or… Read more »
GOD, I felt the heat from that through my screen!
Wow… yeesh.
I kinda missed this arc, and after resuming reading, I cannot help but think about one thing. Would Ethan stood up to Deathblood if those gangsters killed Lucas before his very eyes? Or just some innocent passerby, who stumbled upon their operation. Because they kinda proved their willingness to kill anyone in their way. And not just kill. Execute helpless person. He is extremely forgiving of his own murders, but from perspective of those whom he forgives, they are pulling the trigger (or killing him otherwise) with assumption that he won’t get up and will stay dead. I’m really interested… Read more »
Ethan isn’t the type to style himself Judge, Jury, and Executioner.
I feel Ethan did stand up to DB and there WERE real consequences from the encounter. He was killed several times, including by Deathblood, I’d assume. That along with his perceived failure _on top_ of what happened with Scott and Zeke? Ethan needs a therapist to help prevent PTSD issues, not to ‘prove himself’. he did what he could and handled himself surprisingly well.
Probably yes, given what we’ve seen from him so far. He already stood up against Deathblood for the violent criminals as things were, and Ethan doesn’t seem so naive that he considered them innocent. He just didn’t think murdering them was a justifiable punishment. (He just wanted them arrested and properly sentenced).
Ethan is shown to have some clear moral principles (like murder not being acceptable). and it feels a bit presumptuous (not to mention insulting) to immediately speculate about how quickly he’d abandon those should the situation arrive.
Well, this is already starting well…..
This feels like the start to either a deep heart to heart conversation.
Or the start of the burning of a bridge… with napalm…
This burn is so hard its contributing to global warming
This represents a real life, ages-old debate. One that’s nigh-impossible to solve.
And not just ‘cos there’s plenty of incorrect attitudes muddying it all up. Extremism, corruption, irrationality, hubris, bias, etc.
But also because, even if you get rid of all those mistakes (a miracle in itself)… It’s inherently dificult. To the extreme.
I mean, can you come up with a sure-fire way to create a totally fair and well-balanced justice system? When NOTHING you do will EVER please enough people for long enough?