Remove "by human beings" from Law 2

[UrsulaMejor]

reminder that changing it to be crew based would let the ai murder death kill nukies and wizards at round start while not letting them attack vampires and possibly changelings. would make things less fun and more confusing in a different direction.

[BenLubar]

This thread is about changing law 2, not law 1. Nukies and wizards would still be protected by the "no harm" law, and due to law 2 using the station's chain of command, nukies and wizards would be unaffected by this change.

[UrsulaMejor]

a not insignificant portion of the confusion and discussion in this thread is about both laws 1 and 2

[aft2001]

I agree with Enfaeutchie's point regarding how to make mutantraces being human feeling less confusing in-game, since honestly, a single gene changing your *species* makes no sense. Just have them all be a subspecies of Human.

Perhaps a health scanner could tell if a creature is 'Human'? For example, it would classify a Blob or Martian Ambassador as 'Alien', but a player skeleton or cow as 'Human'. Perhaps even just have this on inspect, maybe?

The only issue with the above solution are vampires and changelings. The simplest way to handle it is just have them be an exception, still stated as 'Human' within the scanner so they're not instantly found out (unless in horror form ofc), explaining that they are an alien species which mimics human appearances.

[UrsulaMejor]

the "single gene" thing is an in game abstraction for the purpose of making a fun video game; the lore and such follows from the desired gameplay surrounding who is and isn't human, not the other way around.

[Wisecrack34]

Perhaps a health scanner could tell if a creature is 'Human'? For example, it would classify a Blob or Martian Ambassador as 'Alien', but a player skeleton or cow as 'Human'. Perhaps even just have this on inspect, maybe?

The only issue with the above solution are vampires and changelings. The simplest way to handle it is just have them be an exception, still stated as 'Human' within the scanner so they're not instantly found out (unless in horror form ofc), explaining that they are an alien species which mimics human appearances.

I'd instead have it be a book that is available, with the text being copied to the wiki, stating which creatures are humans and which aren't.

[Superlagg]

I like to think of the laws as something designed expressly for and by humans, with exceptions added after the fact once all these weird aliens started showing up. It's an NT system, a modular piece of heavy machinery originally intended to serve and not-kill humans, especially NT employees. These non-humans, being part of NT, could be thought of as NT property, not human, but also not not-human, defined as holding rank and status despite their lack of humanity.

But the system isn't perfect. While it'll definitely listen to what a non-human head of staff says, as even the captain's bonsai tree holds significant rank, it's much less guaranteed to listen to an assistant or chef. Or something.

Also, hostile non-humans aren't NT property, and thus free to murder.

[Frank_Stein]

I think it should just be canon that they are all just mutated humans. While they may look like a roach, Skelton, cow, etc, their DNA still falls within the AI's margin of error.

A changeling doesn't have enough human DNA (yet) to register as human and a vampire is dead, and therefore no longer human and certainly not something that can be killed

[Mouse]

if the xbox's facial recognition can register a corgi as player 2 then NT's AI can look at a talking cow and go "yeah that's a human"


On a more serious note, from a lore perspective, coming up with a definition of human that actually covered all humans and only humans would be pretty damn difficult! I'm willing to bet that just about any definition you guys could propose would either result in some humans not being defined as human or some things that clearly aren't human are human.

The safest way, and probably the easiest, honestly, is to have an incredibly broad definition of what a human is as a baseline, one large enough that there are no false negatives, and then eliminate common false positives with additional definitions of what a human is not.

Humans do not turn into bats. Humans do not have probosces. Humans are not primarily composed of metal. Humans do not have prehensile tails. Humans do not have carnassials. Humans do not have wings.

Some things that NT was not aware of when the definitions were made will slip by and be considered human when they aren't, of course. But is there a particular reason to add whole new definitions to exclude talking cows, or humanoid roaches? Not really.

[Frank_Stein]

[Boxta]

This sums up this thread perfectly, but yeah make all mutations derivitives of human DNA, so that all mutant races are human, but things like lings and vamps dont have enough Humand DNA to quailfy, and vamps are dead so yeah

[GORE]

The original reason for the proposed change has been that there was a certain tediousness associated with playing an AI and reacting to players in a fitting way.
AIs are not forced to treat the not-so-human-humanoids as not-human. The rules on the wiki clearly state that killing a roach-player because of being a roach on the standard lawset is considered griefing.

I for one pick roach all the time in the hopes to spark some nice interaction between me and the stations computer once in a while. Rarely happens; but as such I see there no problem.

The current system works and the propossed change seems to only remove complexity which might play out in an interesting way and does not add to it.
It is already semi-optional. The same way the self-preservation law on synthetics is kinda optional.

[KikiMofo]

Diogenes is the original spaceman

[BenLubar]

Just to get us back on track:

This thread isn't about changing whether the AI is allowed to kill lizard people. It's about whether lizard people are included in the station's chain of command from the AI's perspective.

[Frank_Stein]

Yes is the answer, imo