I have a wager going with my husband right now. He bet me that the average person can recite Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics. I know you haven’t heard of them. No one has. I certainly hadn’t before my husband told them to me (and, oh, has he told them to me). But my husband believes that Jay Leno, while Jay walking, could stop a man on the street and ask him to state the three laws, and if that man couldn’t, viewers like you and me would laugh disdainfully at the man’s ignorance and comment sadly on how this is why Chinese students are purportedly overtaking their U.S. counterparts.
I now know Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics. The knowledge depresses me a little. I’m not saying I was cool before I knew them, but definitely my coolness stock has plummeted with this knowledge. Since nerds like company, I’ll tell you the three laws so that anyone reading this will be stripped of any remaining vestiges of coolness. The laws are:
1. A robot cannot injure a human or allow a human to be harmed.
2. A robot must obey any orders that humans give it—unless this conflicts with the first law.
3. A robot must protect itself—unless this conflicts with the first or second law.
My husband likes to wax philosophic about the moral implications of these laws—as if they are something to analyze, like a Jane Austen novel (which is definitely worthy of extensive discussion and analysis). What if someone is about to kill another human, and the only way the robot can protect the victim is by killing the potential murderer, my husband asks, wide eyed with seriousness. Can the robot kill the criminal without violating the first law—or must the robot kill him in order to fulfill the first law? I know. You already lost interest in this paragraph. So did I.
My husband sometimes wonders if he’s a robot. Excuse me. He wonders if he’s an android—because an android is a robot built to resemble a human. (See what I mean? I’m utterly uncool now.) It sounds ridiculous, but it’s hard to convince my husband that he’s not a robot. If he were an android, he argues, he would think he was human. He would have human childhood memories implanted in his brain.
Further, he’s never killed anyone. He obeys laws. He’s never purposefully injured himself.
Those laws actually fit me, too. In fact, they fit all of the people I know. So we’re all robots, my husband answers. The disturbing part is that most people wouldn’t like that. Even in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the androids were sad when they found out they weren’t really human. (I know! I just casually dropped in a sci-fi reference, but I’m a lost cause at this point, anyway.) My husband, however, isn’t at all bothered by his conviction that he and possibly all of our acquaintances are androids. He delights in it. He wants to be an android, and when I try (unsuccessfully) to convince him that’s ridiculous, he gets a little sad. So I guess it’s fine. He can be an android if he wants to be.
Actually, I lied a little bit in that last paragraph. My husband doesn’t believe we’re all androids—What a silly thought that would be. His claim is that he is the only robot, a distinction he doesn’t want to share with anyone else. He’s sort of like Tigger, who purports to be the only member of a new species of animal, when, really, isn’t he just a tiger? Or maybe he’s like Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear, who obstinately believes he’s a real astronaut, denying he’s a toy even when Woody hits him and his little head squeaks. Still, it was a little sad when Buzz realized he was just a toy and not an astronaut on special assignment sent to scout alien planets. And I guess no one really wants Tigger to admit he’s just a tiger and stop being so Tigger-like. So I let my husband believe he’s a robot. It seems to make him happy.
I don’t really want to be married to an android, but on the plus side, since I’m pretty sure I’m a human, he has to obey everything I tell him to do. I think I’m beginning to like that Isaac Asimov after all. Maybe instead of sci-fi writing, he should have gone into marriage counseling.
I now know Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics. The knowledge depresses me a little. I’m not saying I was cool before I knew them, but definitely my coolness stock has plummeted with this knowledge. Since nerds like company, I’ll tell you the three laws so that anyone reading this will be stripped of any remaining vestiges of coolness. The laws are:
1. A robot cannot injure a human or allow a human to be harmed.
2. A robot must obey any orders that humans give it—unless this conflicts with the first law.
3. A robot must protect itself—unless this conflicts with the first or second law.
My husband likes to wax philosophic about the moral implications of these laws—as if they are something to analyze, like a Jane Austen novel (which is definitely worthy of extensive discussion and analysis). What if someone is about to kill another human, and the only way the robot can protect the victim is by killing the potential murderer, my husband asks, wide eyed with seriousness. Can the robot kill the criminal without violating the first law—or must the robot kill him in order to fulfill the first law? I know. You already lost interest in this paragraph. So did I.
My husband sometimes wonders if he’s a robot. Excuse me. He wonders if he’s an android—because an android is a robot built to resemble a human. (See what I mean? I’m utterly uncool now.) It sounds ridiculous, but it’s hard to convince my husband that he’s not a robot. If he were an android, he argues, he would think he was human. He would have human childhood memories implanted in his brain.
Further, he’s never killed anyone. He obeys laws. He’s never purposefully injured himself.
Those laws actually fit me, too. In fact, they fit all of the people I know. So we’re all robots, my husband answers. The disturbing part is that most people wouldn’t like that. Even in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the androids were sad when they found out they weren’t really human. (I know! I just casually dropped in a sci-fi reference, but I’m a lost cause at this point, anyway.) My husband, however, isn’t at all bothered by his conviction that he and possibly all of our acquaintances are androids. He delights in it. He wants to be an android, and when I try (unsuccessfully) to convince him that’s ridiculous, he gets a little sad. So I guess it’s fine. He can be an android if he wants to be.
Actually, I lied a little bit in that last paragraph. My husband doesn’t believe we’re all androids—What a silly thought that would be. His claim is that he is the only robot, a distinction he doesn’t want to share with anyone else. He’s sort of like Tigger, who purports to be the only member of a new species of animal, when, really, isn’t he just a tiger? Or maybe he’s like Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear, who obstinately believes he’s a real astronaut, denying he’s a toy even when Woody hits him and his little head squeaks. Still, it was a little sad when Buzz realized he was just a toy and not an astronaut on special assignment sent to scout alien planets. And I guess no one really wants Tigger to admit he’s just a tiger and stop being so Tigger-like. So I let my husband believe he’s a robot. It seems to make him happy.
I don’t really want to be married to an android, but on the plus side, since I’m pretty sure I’m a human, he has to obey everything I tell him to do. I think I’m beginning to like that Isaac Asimov after all. Maybe instead of sci-fi writing, he should have gone into marriage counseling.
