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[Tack]

I thought machine spirits were entirely mechanical. After all, fragments supposedly exist in bolters and terminator armor, and I couldn't see you fitting some human organic parts in there amongst all of the actual useful operational stuff.

I always imagined Machine spirits as being this galactic network of wirelessly linked AI. Now that the network has fallen, they're all fragmented and a little bit dumb.
Hence why all of the rituals and stuff are needed to make them work properly.

[nenjin]

There's always been a bit of a disconnect on their position about machine spirits. The reason servitors have a human brain is because AI is bad in the 40k universe (an idea they shamelessly ripped off of Dune.) You need a human brain in a servitor to make basic calculations and respond to inputs so you don't have to have an AI do it.

Right, but then what about the machine spirit of a cogitator? There can't be a human brain in every console on the ship's bridge.

So there's a human brain in the computer core a starship, that is half brain and half AI, that runs most of the ships functions. Still making sense, kind of.

But what about the machine spirit or war spirit of, say, Space Marine power armor? The brain of a space marine doesn't run the calculations for their power armor, or monitor and control the armor's life support system. There's no chunk of a human brain in the suits power pack (at least not that I've ever read.)

So in that sense, there is AI in the world, running some basic, invisible tasks.

And that's totally setting apart the machine/war spirit of something like a bolter. The boltgun has no electronic or computerized parts (unless you count the machine spirit that manages its targeter.) Yet the Mechanicus believe that every piece of machinery has some part of the spirit of the Omnissiah. So even a bolter has some level of sentience.

There's basically a breakdown of logic between AI and magical mystical spirits which act like AI but aren't. But that's pretty much par for the course for 40k.

[Kot]

Right, but then what about the machine spirit of a cogitator? There can't be a human brain in every console on the ship's bridge.

It's WH40k.
There can be human brain in every damn console, personal computer, washing machine and toaster in the whole Galaxy. Humans are that expendable.

[Ghazkull]

Actually a machine spirit is simply the comptuer program running on those things.

We are not talking about sentient AI. Or even half-sentient AI.

We are talking about the motorcycle not working because its screen and program showing that the tank is empty.
So the Tech-Priests see this and interpret it as the Machine Spirit being discontent and that the Ritual of Prometheum Restoration has to be fulfilled while speaking all the proper incantations.

So why all that crap? Simple. If you have a bunch of easantry from some Feudal World or Feral World becoming Tech-Priests who have never even seen a motorcylce nor know why it would need Prometheum/Fuel to work, you make it all easier(or rather faster) by telling them there is an angry magic spirit in that motorcycle that demands the proper rituals or the motorcycle won't work.

So you give them their instructions as magic-spells/incantations/rhymes so they know what to do (~first you have to open the ritual guzzling hatch, then bring forth the canister with the sanctified oils those marked by the three, but not those marked by two or one~ etc) and suddenly even some abckward peasant who has no understanding of technology can at least refuel and do basic maintenance on your motorcycle.

However over the thousands of years some of those peasanty got into the upper mechanicus -> thus machine religion.

Anyway the machine spirit in a bolter is usually its mechanics and when it stops working one has to speak the incantations. The same goes for basic vehicles.
When we get to something more complex like artillery and land raiders and stuff there are advanced computer programs and diagnostics in them. Which when you are some backward peasant may seem alive but really is nothing more than the diagnostics program telling the operator that he should please remove the ork head from the motor block before it melts into the cylinders.

Then when we get to Titans and Star-Ships we propably can talk about A.I or something like a non-sentient quasi-AI (think mass effect ship computers). Now remember those things usually are hundreds if not thousands of years old. In those years it may very well be that any inhibitors for the shipboard computer may have been damaged. It may have been that some dolt sprayed sacred unguents unto the processor causing it to fuck up badly, in any case those things behave like spirits because after hundreds of thousands of years of being worshipped and some damaged circuits they propably think that they are.

[RedKing]

Not to mention that treating sufficiently complex technology as magical/supernatural is an idea as old as technology. Hell, I've even done it. I used to have a desktop 386 where the sound wouldn't work unless I inserted the sound card AFTER the PC had booted up. Why?? I have no freakin' idea. But it worked. So it was like a little ritual I did after booting the PC. I used to joke I was going to get a chicken foot to wave at the computer while I did it.

For most people (even educated people), they don't need to understand how it works, as long as it works. And if they find a way to fix it, even if that way doesn't make sense, they'll go with it.

[GiglameshDespair]

I thought machine spirits were entirely mechanical. After all, fragments supposedly exist in bolters and terminator armor, and I couldn't see you fitting some human organic parts in there amongst all of the actual useful operational stuff.

"I can't fight today, brother-captain, my gun has a headache."

[Urist McScoopbeard]

"Do you have a note from your Tech-marine?"

[Kot]

It's actually all of those explanations. Indeed, Mechanicus do interpret stuff as Machine Spirits, but I am 100% sure that there are brains in jars in this and that some older things have quasi-AIs or even full-AIs...
Because you can't exactly explain Land Raider fending off Ork assault by sacred whatever sprayed over processor causing it to fuck up.

Also, suprisingly, the Mechanicus do have very high knowledge in some fields, their problem is that in other fields their level of knowledge is on medieval levels. After all, they do run bunch of robot armies around and they're apparently smart enough to program them and stuff. It's only that they cover up both their knowledge and the medieval understanding with religion that everyone thinks they're bunch of metallic idiots cockslapping buttons. And, if anything, even that is an huge achievement considering what they had to go through.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Just look at servitors. The same kind of biotechnology is prevalent across the imperium. Even servo-skulls, which by definition have a "rudimentary machine spirit" are pretty advanced tech.

[nenjin]

Now someone just needs to explain how you can fit a whole brain into a boltgun.

[Kot]

Theoretically, you could, but yeah that's stupid. Considering that Space Marine armour and Boltguns were more or less made by the Emperor, he proably included some regular electronics inside. The stuff about brains in jars is more about modified vehicles and Machine Spirits of stuff like production lines and other civilian stuff.
Also, AFAIK, brains of animals are used in those if the task is pretty simple and repetetive because you can trained it to do that apparently.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Now someone just needs to explain how you can fit a whole brain into a boltgun.

In the case of the SPACE MARINE boltgun, the regular human-sized variant lacks both the machine spirit and special bolts of it's larger cousin, the machine spirit consists of a targeting computer for self-guided explosive ammunition (the bolts) and an ammunition counter I believe.

[nenjin]

I'd rather go with "GWS fluff doesn't make sense because making sense isn't GRMDRK" and leave it at that.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I mean... that's how the fluff explains it so, ya.

[Jopax]

Also bolters have that electronic trigger thingy which locks it from shooting if the proper user isn't wielding it. The suit sends the biometric data to the gun trough the grip and it decides if it wants to shoot or not.