Sometimes my Sims do things that make me wonder if they are sentient rather than just blobs of polygons and code. Particularly some of their smarter autonomous actions.

Could Sims be sentient? What if they're aware that they're in a game? Or should I just get back to bed?

Sentient and go back to bed!

Or are WE the Sims in a giant master scheme? And as we are controlling our pixels, we in turn are being controlled by a master player, and WE are in a game?

But I don't pee blue puddles ....

This is the actual reason why I'm agnostic. I sometimes go into a room and forget why I'm there so I think somebody has cancelled an action in my queue.

I usually use a simple solution with these moments. I will go back into room or situation where I was before entering that room (rollback!?) and I will remember again!

Time to be pedantic! (Mostly because this is something that bugs me, and I entirely blame Star Trek, for consistently using the term incorrectly.)

Sentient = "able to perceive." Meaning, the creature in question can see, hear, feel pain, respond to their environment, etc. Most living things are sentient to at least some degree, even plants and bacteria, because some things related to sentience are things that define "living." Sentient does NOT mean self-aware or "intelligent." The word you're looking for there is sapient, which means having the ability to a) recognize "self" (i.e., can consistently pass some version of the "mirror test" without any kind of training) and b) act with judgment as opposed to acting only on instinct and/or training/operant conditioning. Sapience is what conveys "personhood" on a creature and is what is really meant when the term "sentient" is used in, for instance, science fiction. Only a few creatures have consistently passed various versions of the mirror test, including humans and our close relatives (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, some gorillas), Asiatic elephants, dolphins, orcas, pigs, rhesus monkeys, magpies, and (possibly) manta rays. Most of those have also at least on occasion been observed to demonstrate the ability to act with judgment, counter to instinct/training.

Unfortunately, I don't believe Sims are either sentient or sapient. They are, alas, entirely programmed. They have complex programming, however, which results in (seemingly) random behavior. I think a better philosophical question would be whether or not we are programmed... To an extent -- perhaps a rather great extent -- we ARE programmed, as we often act and react on instinct and automatic reactions. (Like startling when you hear a loud, unexpected noise or when someone sneaks up on you.) The difference is that we don't have a known "programmer," like Sims do. I suppose if you are a religious person, you can consider a deity (or a thousand deities) our "programmer," but since most religions recognize the concept of free will, this doesn't entirely fit, either...

Humans (and everything else that can be classified as 'alive', including plants, one-celled organisms, and so forth) are programmed, too. It's just an automatic process (DNA+RNA).

Sims can occasionally seem aware, since they frequently break the 4th wall and will look directly at you, giving the player a direct reaction to whatever you're directing them to do. But it is programming. They do have some degree of AI, and they can do random things within what the program lets them do, take care of their basic needs within the programming, and generally manage to survive within what their programming allows - but they only simulate life. They aren't alive. If you had managed to somehow extract a sim from the game and put it in real life, the sim would have no way of surviving, because they're not programmed for the real world (and let's face it - they're stupid enough to catch fire by running up to the flames and screaming like a mad person, even if we know they're fully equipped with pocket-sized inflatable fire extinguishers they're not programmed to use without a lot of frustration from the player's side).

This is actually called the Doorway Effect. Moving through a doorway changes our physical environment (and even walking back into the room you came from doesn't make it better). Our brain compartmentalizes things, but for some reason when we have a significant change in environment sometimes out brains 'forget' as what was in the Old Room isn't important in the New Room.

It's also likely the reason behind you forgetting what you were talking about when something interrupts you, or coming back to a half-finished task and wondering what you were trying to do because you were unexpectedly pulled away from it.

:D

My sims make me do stuff all the time. :cylon:

That's just age.

Sorry Hun.

Of course Sims are sentient -- and Sapient. They're real little people who live inside our computers.

That's why you should never hurt them!

:lovestruc

This has the potential to turn into a pretty serious philosophical discussion. If only I could skip university and just earn a degree talking about Sims and whether or not they're sentient.

I understand that the Philosophy Faculty of Sim State University offers such courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. You should speak to one of the Professors or contact their Admissions Office. Scholarships may be available.

Honestly, with the way I've been playing Sims 2 every single day, it's like I've become a part of them long ago. I've learned quite a bit of Simlish, I do feel pity when a Sim dies, and their emotions are priceless. I can thank these pixels for letting me hitch a ride with them throughout this experience.

Also, when they look at you occasionally with contentment, they know you exist.

Sorry, it's programmed and exists programmed mod what takes it off.

I've been doing that since I was a kid, so it doesn't have to be age related. One thing that sometimes helps is to just stand still and think back to why you went into the room in the first place - or go back to the previous room and do the same (were you hungry? Looking for something? doing odmething important?). Usually it comes back to you. I've always been a bit absent-minded, but lately less so, ever since I discovered a few things that helps against the frequent 'action-cancelling'.

Sims are the result of a program, and their so-called 'free will' is based on the programmed needs and wants. They can't learn in the sense sentient beings can. They essentially do what they're told by the program to do if a set of "if/then" parameters are fulfilled ("If I'm hungry, I go to the fridge to find some food. If I need to pee, I go to a toilet. If something is in my path, I complain and occasionally break at the 4th wall. If there's a fire, I'll scream and yell instead of putting it out"). You can't make the sims do something that doesn't already exist in the game, unless it's modded in by a player. They're not aware of you being there. The "look at" action is simply a way to make the sims' eyes follow the camera, and since you are behind the camera, they'll look at 'you'. I frequently use a 'look at/4th wall' action mod for photoshoots. If they had been sentient, their behavior would probably look a lot different.

When i look at the scope of A.I. that is known today and then look at sims I can't help but feel Will Wright was at the forefront of getting that sort of thing off the ground.

While yes alot of sims is programmed into certain if/then parameters and random choice calculations and alot can be easily brushed off with that explanation it's also known today that if certain parameters are repeated often enough that the A.I. will start to self govern their own responses based on information presented. It may not be as sophisticated as today, but the sims shows some of that self governing with enough training as Peni's long running hood Drama Acres has shown. So yes i believe that there's is some sapient factoring shown within the sims to the extent of the conditions of programming back then.

Because believe me no amount of if/then parameters make a sim clear out a long list of qued up actions to go make that bed on the 3rd floor while breakfast is cooking without the sims knowing it's just gonna piss me off.

This thread is like a Rorschach test.

I seem to recall similar ponderings from somewhere else; I do not remember where or when.
also recall books/stories that seem based on this game series.

can sims see/hear/smell? maybe; but probably at most only things in the game.
are sims aware they are in a game? I would doubt it.

I'd posted a thread on the Simulation Hypothesis a while back, right here... basically, the idea is that WE are Sims, or at least we're part of a simulation of something (we could be a virus messing up the experiment, for all we know), which raises another somewhat tantalizing question... are WE sentient? How would we know?

This is one of the perpetual questions being raised as people work towards self-aware computers... at what point are they considered sentient or self-aware? I think we could probably all agree that a chunk of programming in a 10-year-old computer game doesn't really fit the bill, but what about a (hypothetical) Sims 10, or something? The idea of a singularity (either the point where a computer has more processing power than the human brain, or the point where a computer becomes truly self-aware) is generally projected as being only a few decades away... could be interesting!

This post reminded me of a doco on ant colonies.

They're not sentient, or sapient..but merely chunks of pixelated programming. They're inanimate scribbles on the computer screen. They only exist on the screen. They cannot exist beyond that screen, or outside of the programming environment.

They stop existing when the program ends or the game stops-or when Grim decides to come and get them.
There is a word we use when we humans ascribe human feelings, emotions or reactions to animals or pixels..but it doesn't mean they're any more aware of us than they are that they don't exist beyond that screen.

One of the Star Trek series had a show once about Professor Moriarty becoming sentient and alive on a holodeck..with disastrous results. Imagine-a fictional character becoming human and sentient. It's far fetched, isn't it?

Same with the pixels. They simply do not exist outside of their environment, and cannot ever become more than their programming makes them.

True, they cannot exist beyond their programming environment, but (playing devil's advocate here, not necessarily convinced by this theory), can we do that either? We're limited to what we define as the "physical universe" just like Sims are limited to the programmed universe we create for them, but just as we can make choices about how we interact with our environment, so long as they follow a set of rules that we define as things like "the laws of physics," so too are Sims free to make choices about how they interact with their programmed environment, so long as it's within the set of rules that defines the game universe.

This is not an argument that Sims are sentient, since they're limited to such an extent that it's really hard to imagine a justification for calling them "alive" in any real sense. Rather, it's more an argument against US being alive in any kind of real sense either... given the fact there's not really a way to prove that our universe isn't a simulation run by a far more advanced technology or society. We can find out all the answers to how our universe works we want, but we're limited to our "programmed environment" and can't get proven answers to questions about what exists (or doesn't exist) beyond it, any more than our Sims can "know" what we're doing when we walk away from the game for a while.

A better way to describe what we're talking about (at least to me) is the capacity to develop a consciousness of ourselves and our environment. We know our limitations to some degree-and are forever attempting to exceed them.

Our capacity to exceed our programming is far greater than the pixels, and it will always be based on our intelligence and imagination. The sims do not have the consciousness or imagination to exceed their programming. We do and have always been aware of the fact that we can change our programming to be better human beings.

We do have more free will than they do in most instances for either good or evil. We usually demonstrate both on a daily basis.