So if the Institute could make robotic synths falsify thought processes by copying the brainwave patterns of formerly living people to such a high degree that you would think that he was a person

why is it beyond you that they did the same thing with the mass produced goop people that are made in like ~two minutes?

That would, in fact, make effective clones and (near) perfect copies of potentially hundreds of people.

Entitled to all the rights, privileges, and duties of the people they're copies of.

For example, if the theory of you being a Synth copy of Shaun's father/mother he created was true then you would no different from the actual father/mother other than the fact you're a cyborg if the copy was good enough.

We already have this already an issue in Fallout with Sentient Deathclaws.

Uplifted animals which are as intelligent as humans but manifestly not-human. Super Mutants and Ghouls are, for lack of a better term, subraces of humanity but Deathclaws are basically talking Dolphins or Ape-Lizards.

And they seem like fairly nice people.

The Sentient Deathclaws are, by their nature, Sentient and seem to be rather pleasant people too.

The "emotions" simply indicate that it is operating in a new body with a different set of needs and rules. 3rd gen synths are made of flesh and bones and nerves so the feedback systems for good, bad, danger....etc. are different. That doesn't mean that what it feels are human emotions. And storing data better doesn't equate consciousness......a computer hard drive stores data better than a human brain but that doesn't make it a human being.

That's not true and I already went over why you are wrong in another thread. But, per usual, you didn't answer my question.

If they already proved that they could fool you with robotic brains, why do you think goop brains (that still have robotic components!) are different beyond having goop in them as well as robotics?

If that is your definition, then humans don't have it either. Both drugs and damage to the central nervous system can modify personality, reasoning, even "shut them down".

Consciousness is the ability to think, anolyze data, and draw conclusions from it which then decisions are made from.

John Henry Eden is alive, sentient, and thinking even if he's a psychotic malfunctioning computer.

I don't think they're different at all, which is why all are sentient.

The bottom line is quite clear.....robots are robots. Helpful ones without institute kill protocols like Nick and Curie are ok while the ones that have destructive protocols that are dangerous to humans are not ok and need to be shut down.

If doubt exists it is ok to shut down a computer.....it is not human.

But nick is literally just a copy. He tells you that himself. Everything about him is built on a dead man's brainwaves which are keyed to mathematical algorithms that tell him how Nick Valentine would react when stimuli become apparent.

And like the chemicals in our brain, those neurons when stimulated produce emotional feelings--the kind of thing we'd dub consciousness. It is the great wonder of life a bunch of chemicals, glands, and electrons create all the wonders experienced by the human soul.

Nick is, in fact, just a copy of Nick Valentine which is kind of his big issue because he's a copy who has not only outlived the original Nick Valentine but is much-much older and has more accumulated life-experiences than the original ever did.

He's a mental clone.

Which is still a person. A separate person, yes, but still a person.

I wonder if Elder Maxson would give Nick Valentine a "pardon" by classifying him as a robot rather than a Synth.

I wonder how insulted Nick would be by that.

I do think it's the kind of thing Maxson would do in a BOS ending.

The same can be said about humans, there are a hell of a lot of very bad people and most of the time it is not OK to just kill them. This topic is so ambiguous that there is no correct answer. You lean further one way and I lean further another. In my opinion if a machine has consciousness, sentience, and sapience, all of the qualities that make humans what we are, then it is not OK to kill them, same as it is not OK to kill people because they are intelligent sentient beings.

Nick wouldn't be anything....it might convincingly emulate its best approximation of what the real Nick might express but nothing else.

How can you know that? How do I know your emotions are real?

I wasn't manufactured in a lab, I wasn't programmed to have the emotions I do and I don't kill/erase memories/shut down when someone recites a combination of letters, numbers and words.

Except, essentially, Danse finds out he was and still is exactly the same as before.

In the Commonwealth, you can find out that above statement is not true and it changes nothing.

Yes, but prove to ME that your emotions are real? How can anyone know the exact state of someone elses emotions. Are you saying human emotions are the only real emotions, everything else is false emotions? What makes a copied emotion, less than the original?

Except you don't know what nasty protocols are hidden in its code......maybe one day someone accidentally says something that activates the murder everything protocol or he's programmed to act when certain conditions are met. For the safety of all it is probably better to turn it off.

A doll from a store might say "mama" when touched but that does not make it a baby nor does it mean it understands the word or its meaning and associations.

Agreed, I never suggested a doll had emotions. But you made a very clear and definite claim that Nick's emotions were not real, I simply asked how you know they are not real, how do I know yours are?