Robots

David Stockhoff · 28 Mar 2012, 22:20 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:20:55 -0400
Subject: (urth) Robots
In-Reply-To: <CAJ8=rtjXV9YcmTQREe+x-5=RqUMh911zrBnjQ=WKxSGC6V2iVA at mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAJ8=rtjXV9YcmTQREe+x-5=RqUMh911zrBnjQ=WKxSGC6V2iVA at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4F738EC7.1020207 at verizon.net>

On 3/28/2012 1:11 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>> Without having read the story (though I will), I want to comment that the
>> "moral robot" has been around at least since Asimov's "3 laws," which
>> basically hardwired robots to be MORE moral than humans.  Naturally they
>> represent the kind of rational and dispassionate morality that we humans,
>> for a few hundred years at least, were imagined to aspire to.
> More to the point, the Three Laws of Robotics are designed to make
> Asimovian robots the perfect slaves, and thus a coded way of talking
> about the situation of minority persons in general and blacks in particular
> at a time when you couldn't openly talk about that stuff in popular fiction.
> (If you have any doubt about this, note how hostile humans refer to a
> robot as "boy.") Reading Asimov's early robot stories with this in mind
> opens a whole world of social commentary right there on the surface.
Yes, the double-standard regarding murder is especially ironic in that 
light. I don't actually recall that use of "boy"---but then I wouldn't, 
would I.

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