sigh Ok, sure. Then change the term "free will" to "fribdorch" and define "fribdorch" as "the quality indistinguishable from free will people exhibit".
But that's as far as I'll go in terms of entertaining your post, because I never claimed elementals didn't have free will, I said we shouldn't assume they do. It's up to your DM.
In the vast majority of fantasy settings, due to fribdorch, if you take 2 people (not humans - e.g. this will apply to elves) and put them in identical circumstances, they will behave differently. If you do the same thing with 2 elementals of the same kind (e.g. 2 earth elementals), they will behave identically, due to lacking fribdorch.
If you have two genetically identical sentients, who have lives that are identical in every detail, who experience the exact same choice at the exact same point in their lives - will they choose the same, or will they choose differently? Will they even be able to choose differently? That ... is the real question we're working with here.
Call it fribdorch if you like. And it's totally valid to not have any interest in this debate - I studied philosophy at university, so I should know.
So in essence we have no sure-fire way to determine whether we have free will or not. But like I said, the overall consensus is that ... no, propably we don't have free will. Basically, to form any kind of solid argument for free will, we need to assume it arises from something other than the raw, physical matter from which we're made - and those sorts of arguments just don't hold water. Basically, eventually you'll have to resort to a variation of 'a wizard did it'.
TLDR, point being, using free will as the foundation of your argument is ... not solid ground under your feet.
It's not like I disagree with you - but this is a discussion of how imaginary monsters act in an imaginary situation, and such esoteric considerations as philosophy actually have more relevance here than in real life ... not less.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
A basic social media algorthm has an understanding of several languages and has a working intelligence of at least 6 and for more than you or I if we include the ability to factor higher level calculus.
Intelligence does not equal "sentience".
Most fantasy novels do not depict elementals as having souls or interacting with people except to take orders. They are constructs of the natural world.
By that logic worrying about using them being slavery is a little akin to worrying you are enslaving your computer when you play MOHA. It just would not make sense!
Now some more powerful elements are very intelligent but they are not going to allow you to place them in a ship's engine and if you do they will probably break out eventually.
If you have two genetically identical sentients, who have lives that are identical in every detail, who experience the exact same choice at the exact same point in their lives - will they choose the same, or will they choose differently? Will they even be able to choose differently? That ... is the real question we're working with here.
Not really. Grass is sentient.
The real question we're working with here boils down to two questions:
Mentally speaking, how many elementals of a given kind are there? (In other words, do they have individuality?)
If the answer to question 1 is 1 (all fire elementals are mentally identical in every respect), can that 1 elemental pass a Turing test?
Call it fribdorch if you like. And it's totally valid to not have any interest in this debate - I studied philosophy at university, so I should know.
I don't have any interest in the question "Do humans really have free will?" for the same reason I have no interest in "Do you and I see the same green or a different green?". All possible answers to the question lead to the same conclusion, so I don't really care enough to ask it. Regardless of whether humans genuinely have free will, we have to act in every possible respect as if they do.
So in essence we have no sure-fire way to determine whether we have free will or not. But like I said, the overall consensus is that ... no, propably we don't have free will. Basically, to form any kind of solid argument for free will, we need to assume it arises from something other than the raw, physical matter from which we're made - and those sorts of arguments just don't hold water. Basically, eventually you'll have to resort to a variation of 'a wizard did it'.
False. You're stipulating that something made from raw, physical matter can't contain randomness, on a forum for a game based on the assumption that it can.
TLDR, point being, using free will as the foundation of your argument is ... not solid ground under your feet.
It is, because the DM can just decide what has free will and what doesn't.
It's not like I disagree with you - but this is a discussion of how imaginary monsters act in an imaginary situation, and such esoteric considerations as philosophy actually have more relevance here than in real life ... not less.
Agreed. Which is why it's so important not to just assume a fire elemental is mentally similar to a sophont.
So in essence we have no sure-fire way to determine whether we have free will or not. But like I said, the overall consensus is that ... no, propably we don't have free will. Basically, to form any kind of solid argument for free will, we need to assume it arises from something other than the raw, physical matter from which we're made - and those sorts of arguments just don't hold water. Basically, eventually you'll have to resort to a variation of 'a wizard did it'.
False. You're stipulating that something made from raw, physical matter can't contain randomness, on a forum for a game based on the assumption that it can.
"I refuse to believe that God throws dice with the Universe" - - Albert Einstein when speaking to Oppenheimer on why Quantum Theory had to be false even though it was (and is) probably the best theorem in Physics in making predictions regarding the actions of matter in the real world.
If you wish for an argument regarding "chaos" inherent in the nature of the universe then you look no further than Quantum Uncertainty. Therefor whether your source is the Bible or the "Science" it seems Free Will is a thing!
However, it seems sentience means something other than I thought it did. English is my 2nd language, so I'll go check a dictionary.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
However, it seems sentience means something other than I thought it did. English is my 2nd language, so I'll go check a dictionary.
The problem is that there isn't really a word for the quality people are discussing, at least in English. Sentience strictly means the ability to feel, but it can also be (and often is) used to mean the quality that I think everyone is driving at, which, if you'll excuse the religious terminology, is having a soul. The different terms being used describe qualities associated with having a soul (the ability to choose, to feel, is not an automaton that slavishly follows only that which the laws of physics demands, etc), but don't necessarily encapsulate the whole nature of a having a soul or exclusively either (I can design a robot that "feels", but that doesn't mean that it's anything other than a particularly complex arrangement of atoms that alters configuration in a mandated response to its environment).
This is really off topic for a D&D forum, but I felt it important to point that out, since you seemed unconfident in understanding the terms being used. I think we need to return to the bounds of talking about elementals.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
However, it seems sentience means something other than I thought it did. English is my 2nd language, so I'll go check a dictionary.
The problem is that there isn't really a word for the quality people are discussing, at least in English. Sentience strictly means the ability to feel, but it can also be (and often is) used to mean the quality that I think everyone is driving at, which, if you'll excuse the religious terminology, is having a soul. The different terms being used describe qualities associated with having a soul (the ability to choose, to feel, is not an automaton that slavishly follows only that which the laws of physics demands, etc), but don't necessarily encapsulate the whole nature of a having a soul or exclusively either (I can design a robot that "feels", but that doesn't mean that it's anything other than a particularly complex arrangement of atoms that alters configuration in a mandated response to its environment).
This is really off topic for a D&D forum, but I felt it important to point that out, since you seemed unconfident in understanding the terms being used. I think we need to return to the bounds of talking about elementals.
The term you are looking for is best described as "Agency" I think. Does the thing or creature involved have the ability to make a "Choice". This is related very much to feelings but it involves processes other than feeling.
The best way to think of it is this "You can maximize your profit in US Dollar by simply following an algorithm, a set of instructions to determine the level of sales that will get you the most money. You can even have an algorithm that creates an algorithm.
However, determining what colors to offer the product, what cultures (this is not just national based, the group of gamers that play DND can be considered a culture) to cater to, etc. these are all decisions that are so basic that one cannot program the choice into the system. It requires something with agency, the ability to decide what it would like to do.
To bring it back to the discussion is an elemental forced to bond with a ship a slave one asks one simple question:
Does that elemental have Agency. If you put the elemental in the ship and don't lock it there, can the elemental on its own choose to lift it, cannot choose to leave the ship or is it going to do what it is doing because that is what an elemental does in the confines of the situation. Much as water will fall to earth as rain when it cools and combines enough not to be dissolved in the air anymore. Is the water elemental just more complex rain or can it choose what it does. That would I think answer that question and it is philosophical in nature meaning it is because it is and we cannot define it by science.
Agency is a result of having a soul, not the quality of having one. If you removed my ability to control my body and perhaps took over control for yourself (although that second part isn't a necessary part of the thought experiment), you'd remove my agency, but I'd still have a soul; I, me, what boils down to my essence (as opposed to my body, my physical extension of that will) would still exist, and yet have no agency. However, I don't think you can have agency without a soul, which is what you're probably thinking of.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I would think that elementals are extremely long lived. Measured in 10's of millions of years. So borrowing one of them for a hundred years would seem like a burp to them. They may never even notice in the long run.
Thus if they are sentient or not is immaterial. They just do not notice you. A simple greeting could take a thousand years.
Or you can create a whole normal speed elemental society with various grades of elemental intelligence you could make deals with.
This is really off topic for a D&D forum, but I felt it important to point that out, since you seemed unconfident in understanding the terms being used. I think we need to return to the bounds of talking about elementals.
I have to say I think it's extremely on topic. Otherwise, all discussions are off-topic, unless they're specifically rules related. That would leave the forum, and the game, entirely in the hands of the munchkins - and I do feel the rest of us are robustly in the majority? I think so.
So a somewhat tangential discussion about the ... agency, is it? ... the agency of elementals is - to me at least - wildly more relevant than a discussion of the highest damage build for a multiclass level 10 character.
I would say (relevant to posts above) that elementals aren't alive in any meaningful sense. They don't eat, they sleep or starve, they don't reproduce. They are intelligent in so far as they have understanding - but they are fire creatures on a fire plane, they don't have anything relevant to use their intelligence for. It's just something that's there, in the stats.
But they exist basically forever until destroyed by adventurers. And that means that ... compared to doodling about on a fire plane forever doing basically nothing, serving even for thousands of years at an egg boiler might seem as thrilling as a bungee jump to us mortals. I don't think slavery is necessary. I think if you offer an elemental some sort of break from the eternal boredom of their usual existance, they'd jump at the opportunity.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
In Eberron (to my knowledge) they power airships using air elementals for bouyancy or fire elementals for hot air, or something of the like. But elementals are intelligent creatures; they have least 6 intelligence and a common language they speak, and they're neutral, not evil.
There must be more qualifiers than Intelligence to create distinction between humans and not-humans. I mean, by your logic, Intelligent AI could also be subject to slave labor conversations. That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down. The entire point of high level robotics is to do the menial tasks that humans shouldn't or can't do - they aren't subject to concerns about working hours, heat, exhaustion, lack of food, emotional and mental well being, etc.
In Eberron (to my knowledge) they power airships using air elementals for bouyancy or fire elementals for hot air, or something of the like. But elementals are intelligent creatures; they have least 6 intelligence and a common language they speak, and they're neutral, not evil.
There must be more qualifiers than Intelligence to create distinction between humans and not-humans. I mean, by your logic, Intelligent AI could also be subject to slave labor conversations. That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down. The entire point of high level robotics is to do the menial tasks that humans shouldn't or can't do - they aren't subject to concerns about working hours, heat, exhaustion, lack of food, emotional and mental well being, etc.
that and its been stated multiple times, even if they are sentient, that they are totally different from us to the point where they dont care where they are, or under whose command they literally just want to interact with their element
In Eberron (to my knowledge) they power airships using air elementals for bouyancy or fire elementals for hot air, or something of the like. But elementals are intelligent creatures; they have least 6 intelligence and a common language they speak, and they're neutral, not evil.
There must be more qualifiers than Intelligence to create distinction between humans and not-humans. I mean, by your logic, Intelligent AI could also be subject to slave labor conversations. That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down. The entire point of high level robotics is to do the menial tasks that humans shouldn't or can't do - they aren't subject to concerns about working hours, heat, exhaustion, lack of food, emotional and mental well being, etc.
that and its been stated multiple times, even if they are sentient, that they are totally different from us to the point where they dont care where they are, or under whose command they literally just want to interact with their element
If they literally just want to interact with their element, that and only that, on what grounds do you argue their being sentient? By that logic, all non-inert substances are sentient.
I mean, im not saying they are, nor am I arguing as such, im just restating something
Some elementals are fairly intelligent. In my opinion, it would be ethical if the elemental agreed to it. Also, if they’re enjoying themselves by setting things on fire, I think that would be ok. Maybe make the engine room nice and comfy.
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“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”
If you have two genetically identical sentients, who have lives that are identical in every detail, who experience the exact same choice at the exact same point in their lives - will they choose the same, or will they choose differently? Will they even be able to choose differently? That ... is the real question we're working with here.
Not really. Grass is sentient.
The real question we're working with here boils down to two questions:
Mentally speaking, how many elementals of a given kind are there? (In other words, do they have individuality?)
If the answer to question 1 is 1 (all fire elementals are mentally identical in every respect), can that 1 elemental pass a Turing test?
Call it fribdorch if you like. And it's totally valid to not have any interest in this debate - I studied philosophy at university, so I should know.
I don't have any interest in the question "Do humans really have free will?" for the same reason I have no interest in "Do you and I see the same green or a different green?". All possible answers to the question lead to the same conclusion, so I don't really care enough to ask it. Regardless of whether humans genuinely have free will, we have to act in every possible respect as if they do.
So in essence we have no sure-fire way to determine whether we have free will or not. But like I said, the overall consensus is that ... no, propably we don't have free will. Basically, to form any kind of solid argument for free will, we need to assume it arises from something other than the raw, physical matter from which we're made - and those sorts of arguments just don't hold water. Basically, eventually you'll have to resort to a variation of 'a wizard did it'.
False. You're stipulating that something made from raw, physical matter can't contain randomness, on a forum for a game based on the assumption that it can.
TLDR, point being, using free will as the foundation of your argument is ... not solid ground under your feet.
It is, because the DM can just decide what has free will and what doesn't.
It's not like I disagree with you - but this is a discussion of how imaginary monsters act in an imaginary situation, and such esoteric considerations as philosophy actually have more relevance here than in real life ... not less.
Agreed. Which is why it's so important not to just assume a fire elemental is mentally similar to a sophont.
Grass is not sentient. Theoretically, sentience is an awareness of your own existence and your effect on reality. Grass does not have that.
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“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”
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If you have two genetically identical sentients, who have lives that are identical in every detail, who experience the exact same choice at the exact same point in their lives - will they choose the same, or will they choose differently? Will they even be able to choose differently? That ... is the real question we're working with here.
Call it fribdorch if you like. And it's totally valid to not have any interest in this debate - I studied philosophy at university, so I should know.
So in essence we have no sure-fire way to determine whether we have free will or not. But like I said, the overall consensus is that ... no, propably we don't have free will. Basically, to form any kind of solid argument for free will, we need to assume it arises from something other than the raw, physical matter from which we're made - and those sorts of arguments just don't hold water. Basically, eventually you'll have to resort to a variation of 'a wizard did it'.
TLDR, point being, using free will as the foundation of your argument is ... not solid ground under your feet.
It's not like I disagree with you - but this is a discussion of how imaginary monsters act in an imaginary situation, and such esoteric considerations as philosophy actually have more relevance here than in real life ... not less.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
A basic social media algorthm has an understanding of several languages and has a working intelligence of at least 6 and for more than you or I if we include the ability to factor higher level calculus.
Intelligence does not equal "sentience".
Most fantasy novels do not depict elementals as having souls or interacting with people except to take orders. They are constructs of the natural world.
By that logic worrying about using them being slavery is a little akin to worrying you are enslaving your computer when you play MOHA. It just would not make sense!
Now some more powerful elements are very intelligent but they are not going to allow you to place them in a ship's engine and if you do they will probably break out eventually.
Not really. Grass is sentient.
The real question we're working with here boils down to two questions:
I don't have any interest in the question "Do humans really have free will?" for the same reason I have no interest in "Do you and I see the same green or a different green?". All possible answers to the question lead to the same conclusion, so I don't really care enough to ask it. Regardless of whether humans genuinely have free will, we have to act in every possible respect as if they do.
False. You're stipulating that something made from raw, physical matter can't contain randomness, on a forum for a game based on the assumption that it can.
Here is an example, to the best of human knowledge, of observable randomness in something made out of matter.
It is, because the DM can just decide what has free will and what doesn't.
Agreed. Which is why it's so important not to just assume a fire elemental is mentally similar to a sophont.
Randomness is not free will.
However, it seems sentience means something other than I thought it did. English is my 2nd language, so I'll go check a dictionary.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
The problem is that there isn't really a word for the quality people are discussing, at least in English. Sentience strictly means the ability to feel, but it can also be (and often is) used to mean the quality that I think everyone is driving at, which, if you'll excuse the religious terminology, is having a soul. The different terms being used describe qualities associated with having a soul (the ability to choose, to feel, is not an automaton that slavishly follows only that which the laws of physics demands, etc), but don't necessarily encapsulate the whole nature of a having a soul or exclusively either (I can design a robot that "feels", but that doesn't mean that it's anything other than a particularly complex arrangement of atoms that alters configuration in a mandated response to its environment).
This is really off topic for a D&D forum, but I felt it important to point that out, since you seemed unconfident in understanding the terms being used. I think we need to return to the bounds of talking about elementals.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The term you are looking for is best described as "Agency" I think.
Does the thing or creature involved have the ability to make a "Choice". This is related very much to feelings but it involves processes other than feeling.
The best way to think of it is this "You can maximize your profit in US Dollar by simply following an algorithm, a set of instructions to determine the level of sales that will get you the most money. You can even have an algorithm that creates an algorithm.
However, determining what colors to offer the product, what cultures (this is not just national based, the group of gamers that play DND can be considered a culture) to cater to, etc. these are all decisions that are so basic that one cannot program the choice into the system. It requires something with agency, the ability to decide what it would like to do.
To bring it back to the discussion is an elemental forced to bond with a ship a slave one asks one simple question:
Does that elemental have Agency. If you put the elemental in the ship and don't lock it there, can the elemental on its own choose to lift it, cannot choose to leave the ship or is it going to do what it is doing because that is what an elemental does in the confines of the situation. Much as water will fall to earth as rain when it cools and combines enough not to be dissolved in the air anymore. Is the water elemental just more complex rain or can it choose what it does. That would I think answer that question and it is philosophical in nature meaning it is because it is and we cannot define it by science.
Agency is a result of having a soul, not the quality of having one. If you removed my ability to control my body and perhaps took over control for yourself (although that second part isn't a necessary part of the thought experiment), you'd remove my agency, but I'd still have a soul; I, me, what boils down to my essence (as opposed to my body, my physical extension of that will) would still exist, and yet have no agency. However, I don't think you can have agency without a soul, which is what you're probably thinking of.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I would think that elementals are extremely long lived. Measured in 10's of millions of years. So borrowing one of them for a hundred years would seem like a burp to them. They may never even notice in the long run.
Thus if they are sentient or not is immaterial. They just do not notice you. A simple greeting could take a thousand years.
Or you can create a whole normal speed elemental society with various grades of elemental intelligence you could make deals with.
I have to say I think it's extremely on topic. Otherwise, all discussions are off-topic, unless they're specifically rules related. That would leave the forum, and the game, entirely in the hands of the munchkins - and I do feel the rest of us are robustly in the majority? I think so.
So a somewhat tangential discussion about the ... agency, is it? ... the agency of elementals is - to me at least - wildly more relevant than a discussion of the highest damage build for a multiclass level 10 character.
I would say (relevant to posts above) that elementals aren't alive in any meaningful sense. They don't eat, they sleep or starve, they don't reproduce. They are intelligent in so far as they have understanding - but they are fire creatures on a fire plane, they don't have anything relevant to use their intelligence for. It's just something that's there, in the stats.
But they exist basically forever until destroyed by adventurers. And that means that ... compared to doodling about on a fire plane forever doing basically nothing, serving even for thousands of years at an egg boiler might seem as thrilling as a bungee jump to us mortals. I don't think slavery is necessary. I think if you offer an elemental some sort of break from the eternal boredom of their usual existance, they'd jump at the opportunity.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
There must be more qualifiers than Intelligence to create distinction between humans and not-humans. I mean, by your logic, Intelligent AI could also be subject to slave labor conversations. That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down. The entire point of high level robotics is to do the menial tasks that humans shouldn't or can't do - they aren't subject to concerns about working hours, heat, exhaustion, lack of food, emotional and mental well being, etc.
All things Lich - DM tips, tricks, and other creative shenanigans
that and its been stated multiple times, even if they are sentient, that they are totally different from us to the point where they dont care where they are, or under whose command they literally just want to interact with their element
I mean, im not saying they are, nor am I arguing as such, im just restating something
Some elementals are fairly intelligent. In my opinion, it would be ethical if the elemental agreed to it. Also, if they’re enjoying themselves by setting things on fire, I think that would be ok. Maybe make the engine room nice and comfy.
“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”
Grass is not sentient. Theoretically, sentience is an awareness of your own existence and your effect on reality. Grass does not have that.
“Magic is distilled laziness. Put that on my gravestone.”