Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-39492511-20190807174432/@comment-32346149-20190817044630

OMG, people coming to faulty conclusions based on insufficient evidence on the RWBY forums? You don't say.

Hate to tell you, Wilfred, but you shouldn't even bother with these lunatics. I once tried to explain that there was no conclusive evidence that Summer Rose was dead, and I got viciously attacked from all angles for it. People (especially here on these forums) are unable to accept doubt. They jump to conclusions based on even a smidgen of a hint, and they never look back. It's sad.

The worst part about this issue in particular is that people are judging Penny's sentience based on her own behavior. Rule #1: Never trust the android. Just because it looks sentient, doesn't mean it is sentient. That's why sentience is such an interesting concept, and why the internet masses should be banned from talking about it. It's literally impossible to tell if a robot is sentient or not. Even if it demonstrates every aspect of human intellectual capacity in flying colors, it could all still be a program. But, of course, most people never even consider that. They just glance at it and go, "Well, it looks sentient, so it must be true.  Derrr"

And yeah, the whole "Penny has an aura, and auras need souls to work, therefore Penny has a soul" argument is just silly. 50 years ago, it was widely considered a fact that planes needed pilots to fly. These days we know that's not true. Penny's aura could just be the technological equivalent of a drone. Not really that hard to understand, but the people on these boards, man, there's a lot they don't understand.