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Thornescape t1_j9bn8dn wrote

One of the major points of the story is that she wrestles with the ethics of tweaking the personality. If she had no hesitations about changing the personality, she would have "programmed" him to do whatever she wanted.

That's pretty much the main point of the entire short story.

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Kopaka-Nuva OP t1_j9btiso wrote

She does do some thinking about it, which is good and kept me from passing even harsher judgement. But as you say, she wrestles with the ethics of how much she should tweak the personality--not so much the fact that she is playing God by getting involved in fabricating a soul in the first place. And in the end, she feels justified in doing so.

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Thornescape t1_j9bui0c wrote

Please bear in mind that she has no choice about creating this construct. She is literally in prison and forced to do it. This is not at all the same as Frankenstein. She isn't making this construct for giggles. She is being oppressed by an immoral regime, and she has a chance to make that immoral regime better.

She makes extremely subtle tweaks to hopefully make the construct a better person, and wrestles continually with the issue.

Personally, if someone was making a construct of me to recreate me, I would personally prefer if they would make me a better person. Sounds awesome. Please include a better sense of humour!

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Kopaka-Nuva OP t1_j9c3ioj wrote

You're definitely right that the two stories can't be compared one-to-one. Shai has very little agency because of her circumstances, and she never would have attempted to do something so insane on her own initiative. But what bothers me is that the narrative focuses much more on how she's creating a great work of art than examining moral questions it implicitly raises. She questions how much she should change him (which is constrained by the practical limitation that the fake soul won't work if she changes it too much), but the question of whether or not it's moral to create a fake soul at all is barely addressed--only the self-righteous members of the oppressive regime really feel that way, and they hypocritically ignore their moral compunctions in favor of political convenience.

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