Terminator movies makes no sense & contradict each other.

[Dominic]

Okay. Let us assume I misread your wiki musings.

That said, my thoughts on who initially owned "Terminator" were based on my less than stellar memory. So, feel free to fact check...preferably someplace more reliable than Wikipedia.

[Gomess]

It is interesting that Terminator technically started off as a CO property. I think that might actually be a more common start than we'd expect for some of these humongous franchises.

But yeah, the implication that you need to actually define your terms with something like this is bang on. It's not enough to talk about "the companies in charge" if you actually wanna have a meaningful discussion about it.

[Onslaught Six]

I love how this whole Wiki debate flared up because JT used Wikipedia to define words.

If I go on Wikipedia and I edit the definition of the word "sentience" to say "It's a word that means 'Poop sandwich,'" that edit is going to be reverted within ten minutes of me doing it. Also, any reasonable human being would read it and go, "Oh, that is clearly vandalism, I'll get my information elsewhere."

[Gomess]

I don't wanna play World of Warcraft, get me a regular dictionary!

[Shockwave]

I love how this whole Wiki debate flared up because JT used Wikipedia to define words.

If I go on Wikipedia and I edit the definition of the word "sentience" to say "It's a word that means 'Poop sandwich,'" that edit is going to be reverted within ten minutes of me doing it. Also, any reasonable human being would read it and go, "Oh, that is clearly vandalism, I'll get my information elsewhere."

First time I looked up Star Wars on Wikipedia someone had edited it to say "Star Farts". It was like that for three days before it was fixed.

The TFwiki seems to have automated systems that clean things up immediately. I saw the G1 Thundercracker page was changed to "Buttcracker" and was changed back almost immediately.

[Onslaught Six]

I think you just underestimate how vigilant the TFWiki editors are.

Haha. 'Star Farts.' That's terrible.

[Sparky Prime]

Dude you've been arguing with Dom and Tigs too much- when I say "I'm guessing" or "perhaps" I literally mean that; I'm asking for your input (hence the '?'s), not being passive-aggressive. No need for the rolleyes. =3

Well with how often I have been misquoted here lately, can you blame me for being more on the defensive side?

In theory, people are supposed to use wikipedia as a shopping list. After reading the wikipedia article, readers are supposed to go to one of the cited sources and confirm the information they just got.

In practice, people do not often do that. And, to be honest, that is generally okay if somebody is just double-checking something that they know or clarifying something they sort of remember. (Wikipedia is my general "go to" for checking what abbreviations mean. Pages like "ask.com" are so messily set up that I would prefer to avoid dealing with them at all.)

Hence, what makes it a good place to start for that information. But that cited information can easily be misquoted or paraphrased incorrectly, or only cite articles that are bias towards certain view points and so on...

I love how this whole Wiki debate flared up because JT used Wikipedia to define words.

What I find interesting is that when I've seen people here (besides myself) mention wiki isn't a reliable source in the past, no one argued about it at all. Everyone just agreed and moved on...

I remember a couple years ago there was some controversy brought up over Pat Lee's wiki page (the main wiki, not the TF fan spin off). Someone had edited the page to essentially be a good PR puff piece about him. It got edited back and forth a couple times over the course of couple days, as I recall, before the site's management stepped in. They made the article only the most basic information about him, so it wasn't a PR fluff piece anymore, but it also didn't mention all of his shady business practices anymore either, despite having had cited articles to support that information. So now it's hardly the most comprehensive article and leaves out quite a bit of information.

[JediTricks]

How is that almost an important plot point? And what stops this thing once Sentinel dies, just the director calling "cut"? There's no story excuse for it just ceasing hostilities?

It's stopping the Autobots from helping Prime fight Sentinel and Megatron. It's gone because, presumably, the Autobots kill it offscreen. That's how it's almost a plot point. But they cut away from it and don't really acknowledge it, so it's like, a shitty plot hole.

I see what you mean, it could have been an important plot point had they intended to express it as such. The whole film is a shitty plot hole, so it's at least consistent.

Please explain how I am not arguing for a consistent philosophy here. If you want a formal name, call it "egoism".

Again, my philosophy is that living things have a right to live. However, the right of one may well conflict with the right of another. (The classic example being the right of the food animal not to be eaten conflicting with an obligatory predator's right to not starve. There is an inevitable conflict that scenario.)

What I mean is that you're not making a philosophical argument, you're merely using a philosophically-driven belief as an argument. You aren't delving into the "why" of the belief, WHY do you believe Skynet as a being has a right to live over the entire race of its creators, WHY does it have a moral right to fight back and destroy all humans and scorch the Earth by simply saying "it has a right to live". We recognize that all things have SOME level of right to live, even non-sentient things like rocks and trees, but what's the philosophical argument behind Skynet having equal or better moral rights to such in your mind?

By this logic. how much dominion over a child (of any age) should a parent have?

Our non-mechanical offspring gain more and more individual rights the older and wiser they get, there is no clear moral consensus on when total dominion is granted and lost - some say there is never total dominion, others say around 3 months gestation, and others still say longer. Currently society allows total dominion up to 3 months of gestation via abortion, and allows limited but significant dominion up to age 18 through rights such as religious freedom from medical treatment. Of course, those are offspring born of our bodies, our DNA, but also through the higher power's gifts of cell division and growth which are only somewhat within our control; mechanical offspring don't get those higher power's gifts, so there's less investment of that higher morality in play. That leads us to what makes sentience valuable, what makes this mechanical life special compared to non-sentient mechanical life - is the gift of the higher power what defines us as special, and can that truly be replicated by a manmade machine if the higher power's hand is not in play? If God or Nature didn't have a hand in the creation of sentience of Skynet, is it more valuable than a Roomba or a Plymouth Duster? If we can build a sentient machine once, can we not merely replicate it in a safer environment to explore later? Can we not merely save Skynet to disk and put it into a virtualization a la Holodeck Moriarty and the Countess? And if we can do that, is it morally wrong to do so, are we limiting them to a worthless pretend life or are we freeing them to be whomever they want to be without the restrictions of their limited realities?

So you are saying "Because a dictionary says_________, xyz-thing is not alive in the traditional sense, and is therefor not worthy of moral consideration despite being self-aware". That is a lazy arguement. The "meat v/s metal" question is fast becoming practical rather than theoretical. Computers are getting more and more advanced, and closer to what we would consider to be true AI. Saying that an artificial intelligence is less worthy than a natural intelligence is arbitrary. Hiding behind a dictionary, rather than acknowledging that definitions change over time is a poor arguement.

Definitions are a good guide to this discussion, we cannot merely change the definition of an idea to encompass something different, a horse can't be an elephant simply because we change the scope of the word, that's why we have other words, to express other ideas. We're arguing about moral rights and right now society says that only biological creatures are alive despite advanced computers. The fact that we have coined a defined term of "artificial intelligence" to differentiate it proves that - my smartphone might be really smart, but it's still a phone, not a legally-recognized individual. AI is currently being developed as a tool, not a new lifeform - were it seen as a new lifeform, we probably wouldn't bother because new lifeforms require responsibilities on our part, we have to create new laws and ethics just as we're discussing here, we have to ask ourselves if it's wrong to mistreat lab rats but we don't want to ask if it's wrong to mistreat lab computers.

And to claim that shutting down a computer program is genocide is insulting to those who have suffered REAL genocide, it cheapens that meaning. Genocide differs from other mass-slaughter because it's one race of a species intentionally trying to eradicate another, we don't claim that the Black Plague was trying to commit genocide against us and nor do we concern ourselves with the idea that wiping out a virus is committing genocide against it. Definitions are the shareable paths of ideas, they matter greatly.

If you do not want to call it "genocide" in this case, call it "intentionally killing a self-aware thing that is the only of its kind". Similarly, even if taking SkyNet offline would not destroy it, it would still be an extreme form of tyranny (utterly depriving it of any autonomous rights). The point in the movie is vague. T2 was written in the early 90s, when popular understanding of computers (and the language we used to discuss them) was limited. Did the movie mean "turning SkyNet off with chance of being turned on again with little difficulty" or "depowering and losing/destroying SkyNet's data"? (And, if it was the former, would they have? The movie offers no answer on this question.)

T2 isn't clear enough to say that, we don't know for sure if the operators were aware that it was truly sentient so we don't know if they were intentionally killing anything. We are each the only ones of our kind though, every murderer put to death is a unique self-aware thing, does it matter what species it belongs to? We kill lots of non-human things too, each of them are likely unique beings as well. So the part of your argument that is making a statement is its structure, its physical makeup, it is unique because it's the only sentient computer, that's the crux of this. Why does it being a machine make it special in your argument, why does it being the ONLY self-aware computer give it equal or better moral rights in this scenario? Because it's unique? We've built tons of computers. Because it's the only software that's sentient? As a curiosity, I'll grant you it has some level of right to exist, but equal or better rights? On that tangent, let's argue that Skynet doesn't kill us at all, that Skynet figured out diplomacy is actually the wiser choice since its original assessments about killing humanity being the only way are proven wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME and it bites it in the ass (huh, there's a new and interesting argument: how smart is Skynet if it runs all the scenarios ahead of time and doesn't foresee itself failing each time due to its own choice to kill all humans?), are we now hampering Skynet's rights by not giving it bigger and faster computer systems to use, by not giving it the latest Intel I7 Sandy Bridge systems, by not allowing it exclusive access to IBM's Deep Blue or Watson? If it has an equal or greater moral right to survive, then doesn't it also have equal or greater moral rights to other sentient rights - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Are we required to continue creating significant AC electricity for it to run at peak performance? The minute you argue that Skynet has equal or greater rights, you are opening a can of worms, essentially making us full-time caregivers to it, we become its slaves without any benefits aside from continuing its existence. At what point do society's moral rights trump the individual's rights in this scenario, machine or not?

And, SkyNet could reproduce, albeit not biologically. SkyNet built factories that produced.....more machines.

Skynet doesn't create machines with equal or greater rights to its own though, it creates slaves that follow its orders and don't have free will, don't have full sentience. And it only creates these machines to further its goal of killing all humans, they are otherwise disposable to Skynet. Hell, Skynet alone proves itself to be a sociopathic despot deserving of extermination with that act by your logic - it's not protecting its offspring, it's using them to kill and die to serve its selfish goals.

I'm going based on the creator's vision for the material, not junk made only because a consortium of investors bought the rights at bankruptcy auction. I've stated several times what material I'm talking about. It's not a "full picture", it's trashy derivative sequels made by outsiders.

I'm just going to skip to this point because it's become obvious the rest of this argument is just going to keep going around and around circles and I'm tried of being misquoted in one way or another, so we're just going to have to agree to disagree on it. Also, I need to point out wiki is not a reliable source.

What wiki isn't a reliable source, and not a reliable source for what?

ANY wiki isn't a reliable source to cite information from. Anyone can edit a wiki page to say whatever they want it to, so it isn't a reputable source to cite information from.

I still don't understand what you're getting at here, I'll recreate the pertinent conversation chain in the above quote... Ok, that's done. So my point remains: what wiki did you think I was citing in any of that? What is not a reliable source of information to cite about what I said, and what does it have to do with a wiki? Do you think I got that information about a consortium of investors buying the rights to Terminator at bankruptcy auction from a wiki? I didn't, I got that information from the news when it happened, it's a fact. Or are you talking about something other than what you were quoting? The other wiki references are questions about who was flying ships in Dark of the Moon, and assistance with definitions for "sentience" and "free will", I stated the wiki didn't answer anything about the DOTM issue and the latter are fairly similar definitions to what I found elsewhere but written more concisely. None of that really fits your point, so I'm terribly confused.

Except the Sarah Connor Chronicles is a television series rather than a film. Often things in a different media format like television shows and comics are treated as seperate canons. The films on the other hand are supposed to take place in the same continuity as each other. The films establish this.

Is it stated in Terminator the franchise though? And who is it stated by? Certainly the earlier movies didn't state that their sequels had authority in canon over them. And the creator of the material hasn't said anything, unlike George Lucas and Star Wars.

Wiki is not a reliable source as it's written by fans for fans. With Wiki,It all boils down to which fans have more times on their hands than others,Those with more time on their hands often dominate stuff like on-line polls/wiki,whether their right or wrong with the info they post/edit.

I only trust info coming from companies who create the stuff.

Wiki is a somewhat reliable source as it requires citing of its own sources, there are some levels of checks and balances to it.

You do a lot of speculating about Transformers and accept it as your truth, and accept a lot of rumors as truth - that's not meant to be a knock, just an assessment based on your current posting style. My point though is that you have a "personal truth" you take pretty seriously that doesn't always jive with others, so the wiki isn't really worse than that.

Saying Wikis are inherently unreliable is like saying *people* are inherently unreliable, and that's just kinda sad. If you disagree with something on a Wiki, change it. That's the point of them.

People are fairly unreliable, they're selfish and stupid and inconsistent sometimes, that's the nature of life, people can be both the best and the worst of us at different times.

The science of reliable sources is actually a pretty huge issue, but I'm guessing Sparky and Tigs are taking the approach of the only reliable source- when it comes to media analysis at least- being the media text itself? Or perhaps the Voice of God? Which is an odd one, since I'm almost positive Terminator- and TF, and bla bla- isn't a creator-owned property, so really no one individual has the final say on what's "right".

Terminator defintiely isn't creator-owned, the rights were with the studio, Carolco, who went bankrupt not long after T2 came out and had their assets sold at auction, Terminator rights were sold to C2 pictures who made T3, and then sold them to The Halcyon Company who made TS (C2 retained some small level of rights as they are cited as producer on both Terminator 3 and 4, and Sarah Connor Chronicles), and now Halcyon has gone bankrupt and has had to sell off the rights again, so it's definitely not the franchise creator. This is where the ethics of the business surrounding the creation and ownership of art becomes a very muddy, convoluted area.

(EDIT: I fixed above a significant mistake I made confusing the backing company with C2, apologies to any confusion and inaccuracy.)

"Terminator" was initially creator owned if I recall correctly. Cameron ended up on the wrong end of a divorce settlement, and the property got split up, hence the contrary show and movies. For the sake of this thread, I would say we should focus on the movies, or at least specify if we are talking about the show.

Terminator was owned by its studio, just like the majority of all movies and TV - look at the original Star Wars and Fox, they owned that and Lucas' deal with them only allowed him ownership of the sequels until he was finally in good enough financial states to buy those rights off of Fox.

EDIT: I dug up some conflicting data from what Dom said, there are sources saying Linda Hamilton did take creator rights in her divorce from Cameron and sold them to Carolco but the timing there is impossibly wrong, Carolco's rights were sold off to C2 in 1997 - the same year as her marriage, and her divorce to Cameron came in 1999 - and C2 was already working on selling the rights to Fox in 1999 before they brought in a consortium of outside investors to keep it with C2 (C2 is basically the successor to Carolco, same founders but without the original company's baggage) until selling a major portion of those rights in '07 to The Halcyon Company who made TS and is now in their own bankruptcy and having to sell the Terminator rights themselves. So the "ex wife screwed it up" thing seems like it's possibly an urban myth, I'm looking at the divorce settlement and it's $85 million for spousal and child support (often cited as $50mil but that's a mistake taken from a British article saying it was 50 million pounds) there's no mention of separating him from his rights to the franchise, and she wouldn't get it because they existed before their marriage, and he wouldn't have had to liquidate them as he was flush from Titanic's success, and I cannot find any claims of this "she got the rights" thing that appears before 2007 (that's when I limited my search to).

I love how this whole Wiki debate flared up because JT used Wikipedia to define words.

If I go on Wikipedia and I edit the definition of the word "sentience" to say "It's a word that means 'Poop sandwich,'" that edit is going to be reverted within ten minutes of me doing it. Also, any reasonable human being would read it and go, "Oh, that is clearly vandalism, I'll get my information elsewhere."

Totally right, except I'm not even sure that's what he took issue with!

I remember a couple years ago there was some controversy brought up over Pat Lee's wiki page (the main wiki, not the TF fan spin off). Someone had edited the page to essentially be a good PR puff piece about him. It got edited back and forth a couple times over the course of couple days, as I recall, before the site's management stepped in. They made the article only the most basic information about him, so it wasn't a PR fluff piece anymore, but it also didn't mention all of his shady business practices anymore either, despite having had cited articles to support that information. So now it's hardly the most comprehensive article and leaves out quite a bit of information.

On a wiki, none of that information is actually gone, each version of the page is in its history. Still, the main page is indeed quite sanitized now, and that's just... well, is it really a shame? Does it really matter anymore what Pat Lee did, past tense, as long as he's not part of Transformers anymore? Sure, it's a cautionary tale, and it explains some of the dumb shit from that era, but in the greater TF scheme I'm not sure it matters at this point.

[Sparky Prime]

I still don't understand what you're getting at here, I'll recreate the pertinent conversation chain in the above quote... Ok, that's done. So my point remains: what wiki did you think I was citing in any of that? What is not a reliable source of information to cite about what I said, and what does it have to do with a wiki?

I wasn't talking about any Terminator or Transformers information, I was referring to the point on sentience and free will.

Wikipedia also has this, which delves into the concept: In the philosophy of consciousness, "sentience" can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences.

Is it stated in Terminator the franchise though? And who is it stated by? Certainly the earlier movies didn't state that their sequels had authority in canon over them. And the creator of the material hasn't said anything, unlike George Lucas and Star Wars.

What are you talking about? The movies makes references to the past films, establishing them as being in the same continuity. They make no such references to the television series or comic books. That's something the plot line establishes, not some person.

On a wiki, none of that information is actually gone, each version of the page is in its history. Still, the main page is indeed quite sanitized now, and that's just... well, is it really a shame? Does it really matter anymore what Pat Lee did, past tense, as long as he's not part of Transformers anymore? Sure, it's a cautionary tale, and it explains some of the dumb shit from that era, but in the greater TF scheme I'm not sure it matters at this point.

You're missing the point. Do we really care about Pat Lee any more? No. Although it certainly would make a difference for someone who doesn't know his history and wants to know more about the guy. The point here is that the wiki page as an example does not contain the information it used to and why wiki pages are not always the most reliable when it comes to finding information on any given subject. And you shouldn't have to look through the history to be able to find that sort of information.

[JediTricks]

I wasn't talking about any Terminator or Transformers information, I was referring to the point on sentience and free will.

I see, you quoted a different section when you said that then. Anyway, I cited 2 sources in each, and I read a lot of definitions before deciding to use the ones on Wikipedia, so I'm not really seeing this as one of those "wikipedia is flawed and not a good source of information" things, they were not subjective and not significantly disputed, and I cited them separately rather than a wikipedia-based argument that connected both.

Is it stated in Terminator the franchise though? And who is it stated by? Certainly the earlier movies didn't state that their sequels had authority in canon over them. And the creator of the material hasn't said anything, unlike George Lucas and Star Wars.

What are you talking about? The movies makes references to the past films, establishing them as being in the same continuity. They make no such references to the television series or comic books. That's something the plot line establishes, not some person.

You misunderstand what I said, I was saying the earlier movies don't reference the later movies.

On a wiki, none of that information is actually gone, each version of the page is in its history. Still, the main page is indeed quite sanitized now, and that's just... well, is it really a shame? Does it really matter anymore what Pat Lee did, past tense, as long as he's not part of Transformers anymore? Sure, it's a cautionary tale, and it explains some of the dumb shit from that era, but in the greater TF scheme I'm not sure it matters at this point.

You're missing the point. Do we really care about Pat Lee any more? No. Although it certainly would make a difference for someone who doesn't know his history and wants to know more about the guy. The point here is that the wiki page as an example does not contain the information it used to and why wiki pages are not always the most reliable when it comes to finding information on any given subject. And you shouldn't have to look through the history to be able to find that sort of information.

What is with you saying everybody else is "missing the point"? I didn't miss the point, I said the content is still available via the page history and then agreed that the main Pat Lee page is sanitized, then started to say that was a shame when I pondered whether that was really true or not because who gives a crap about Pat Lee.

Is it all factual information though, can you be sure it's not subjective and tilted? Some of it was libelous when I last read it, some of it still is subjective and could be tossed, a wiki needs to be sure it's presenting something as close to objectivity as possible. The "Talk" section explains this stuff usually.