Strings Of Madness

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One thing to consider here is how we're using the word "person". I'm using it to describe an individual organism with enough intelligence to possess a sense of self, communicate with others of its kind or even other species, and engage in social practices like teaching skills to a younger generation or making art. You're using it to describe an organism that could perform all the necessary tasks to be a citizen of modern society, and neither of us are wrong, at least colloquially. Someone who is better at linguistics than me can come in here with the specific technical language surrounding sapience and personhood.

The reason I cut my definition so broadly is that like you, I agree that all humans are people by default, but there are many humans who have even greater communication barriers with humanity at large than the minions do. For instance:

-People with cognitive and physical disabilities that greatly impair communication

- Children, who will be able to participate soon but not right now

- People who are so socially isolated they can't function outside of their very narrow social circle (so they need some help adapting to society at large)

- People that don't have any problems communicating, but whom some assholes will argue are not people for the sake of maintaining the social status quo (we're all familiar with the -isms here)

These are also all people who are THE MOST VULNERABLE in society and I try to center my personal policies on "what could we be doing that would be good/safe/just/helpful for EVERYONE?"

By putting the "oh for sure a person" line out at "Orca" (and being willing to entertain arguments that extend that line even further) I'm keeping my mind open about how radically different a person could be from me and still be a person, and thinking about what can be done to ensure justice for this person. That's more self-maintainence than anything else, but you see where I'm coming from.

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I think your concept of "a person is someone who could participate in civil society" is a very good one too, and goes hand in hand with mine, because it raises the questions of "Is it really feasible for this person to participate in civil society? If not, what can we do to include them? And if meaningfully including them is not possible at this time (Orcas) how do we do right by them?"

I think that in the future, it's entirely possible that advances in physical and social technology will enable us to communicate effectively with Orcas, and that the Orcas of today and the future are more than intelligent enough to understand the concepts of Encroachment, Liability and Lawyers, and will sue the shit out of everyone for what we've done to the oceans.

Personally, I'm looking forward to that day.

Since we don't have that technology yet, but can recognize Orcas as people, it's on us to sue the shit out of data centers and the state of Washington (among others) on their behalf and put the money towards giving them the chance to reach that future.

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Referring to small text on the original post though: are Minions "people" in the sense that they can and should be included in the "people" section of someone's Tomadachi life game?

Admittedly, I am more familiar with whale biology than the Tomadachi and Minions franchises, but from what snippets I recall: in-universe, Minions meet both my standard of basic sentience AND yours of being able to participate in civil society and thus putting them in the "people" section of Miitopia would be appropriate.

However, in our universe, Minions are entirely fictional, so they're philosophical constructs and not alive, so they're not people at all.