We already know that the Federation seems to struggle when it comes to things that are non-humanoid, and non-organic, especially if they originated from Federation technology.

But we also see that there are progressive elements. Both the Doctor and Data have a fairly healthy heaping of support, once some form of personhood was established for them.

But does that attitude extend to non-organics that the Federation isn't familiar with?

For the other side, Federation attitudes towards Data, the Voyager's EMH, and the ExoComps weren't all that favourable. Both the EMH and the ExoComp's burgeoning sapience were treated as simple malfunctions, that could be resolved be constant factory resets, or in the case of the ExoComps, lobotomisation/resetting of their control circuitry, effectively killing the ExoComp, and putting the Doctor back to a blank slate (in theory).

There have been some documented cases where the Federation meets some mechanical beings, which were treated as sapient beings in their own right, but does that treatment extend to other non-organic beings? Or do you have to be "acceptable" as a humanoid to be treated as one?

Hello everyone,

There has been a lot of new traffic to Lemmy in the past few weeks due to the turmoil at Reddit. A lot of you may be Reddit refugees, like I am, and are missing their old favorite subs right about now.

I think it's more important than ever for regular users to step up and take an active role in rebuilding their communities, and I wasn't sure that things would ever get going unless somebody stepped up to the plate and made the effort, and I didn't want to wait around for someone else to take the initiative when I already had a strong desire to see this sort of content brought over to Lemmy.

Now that the first step has been taken, I'm inviting others who might be interested in building or managing this community to join me in making this the best version of asksciencefiction possible.

I have never been affiliated with /r/asksciencefiction or even been a moderator at reddit before. Preferably, I would like to hand off ownership of this community to somebody who has a strong desire to build and grow the community and enforce the rules. If that sounds like something you are interested in, please don't hesitate to send me a private message.

Thank you!