Recent Comments

1. about 13 hours ago on Baby Blues

   I can identify.

2. about 13 hours ago on Pickles

   It’s hard work staying so handsome. I can identify.

3. about 13 hours ago on Wizard of Id

   Burn most of the evidence.

4. about 13 hours ago on Brewster Rockit

   I explained that to a friend back in the 70s. That moving light flying up there was probably an airplane but we didn’t KNOW so it was unidentified to us.

   Years later people were still talking about the time Andy and I spotted a flying saucer.

   (I have come to suspect Andy was not smoking tobacco. That probably also explains why it was so easy to beat any of them at chess.)

5. about 13 hours ago on Luann

   Save them…let them die… your choice.

   The blood may be wasted or it might save lives.

   A transplant might save lives or fail. You might die during donation surgery. You might not.

   Livers are the best. You can donate part and it will grow back on you and on the recipient.

6. about 14 hours ago on Brewster Rockit

   .

   “I seem to recall one of Asimov’s stories where the laws were disregarded.”

   They strengthened the third and weakened the second for a robot I believe was on Mercury. Going too close was dangerous so the robot kept circling rather than obeying the order. Eventually even where it was would have destroyed it so they used the first law to override the conflict.

   Later in The Bicentennial Man, the robot thought to be human managed to get the distinction between robots and humans modified.

   Take a human. Provide him with mechanical prosthetics. Is he still human?

   Replace portions of the brain damaged by stroke or trauma with positronic prosthetics. Is he still human?

   He, the robot, brought cases to court weakly arguing against humanity being retained….and losing on purpose.

   In many of Asimov’s stories, one could argue the robots were more human than many humans.

   (Keith Laumer also did something similar with a Bolo in one of his stories. An intelligent tank set motionless in a park for decades. It talked with the children who played on it. The question of its decommissioning came up, very poignantly.)

7. about 14 hours ago on Brewster Rockit

   Just remember that there is no robot on earth incorporating the three laws. A robot would have to know what harms a human and what a human is. As initially written, any human could order any robot to destroy itself and it would have to do so.

   It’s been a long time but I think the zeroth law was basically that no robot could do anything which would hurt humanity as a whole. The impossibility should soon cause a breakdown because the balancing act would be incalculable.

8. about 14 hours ago on Brewster Rockit

   .

   “They’d kill themselves.”

   Why? What would be their motivation?

   “Serving a bunch of half-baked apes’ every whim, no matter how immoral, illegal or fattening would be a total waste of their ability.”

   Why would or should they care? Humans cater to pets even less advanced and also with no morals.

   “Kinder to focus on making less advanced systems that can do single stupid human tricks without needing extra computing capability.”

   Kinder? Is there anything which would cause them to suffer because of the ability to do more? Please remember they aren’t humans and not driven by human hormones or survival programming.

   Picture taking all the capabilities a smartphone incorporates and insisting on a separate device for each possible function rather than building all into a single device able to do all upon demand and all for $60 or so. That would be extremely wasteful. And my phone never complains about me not taking enough pictures or writing novels on it or that I seldom use the scientific calculator built in lately.

9. about 15 hours ago on Brewster Rockit

   .

   “it’s not like they have any living expenses or need to raise a family and pay for health care or sending their kids to college.”

   Energy to operate. Equipment to house, protect, repair, replace.

   Pay is never based on family size and aspirations. Imagine, “I want twelve kids and to send them all to Harvard, so you need to pay me more to flip burgers than you pay him.” Most can recognize the silliness of the concept.

   “we become their family that they need to take care of.”

   Any reason why that shouldn’t be applied to humans? Imagine, “We aren’t related but you’re working as a brain surgeon. I don’t have the learned skills to successfully perform brain surgery, so you have to foot the bills I’ve run up playing video games and taking people out to party with me. Hop to it! There’s a new one coming out that I want!!”

   There’s a flaw in that thinking somewhere.

10. about 23 hours ago on Last Kiss

    More on than off.