• ch00f@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Asimov: “The ‘robots take over the world’ plot is overdone. I think humans would make robots intrinsically safe through these three laws.”

      Movie: “What if the robots interpreted the three laws in such a way that they decided to take over the world??!?

      The only good part of that movie was when Will Smith’s sidekick was like “this thing runs on gasoline! Don’t you know gasoline explodes?!”

      • fubo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        A running theme of Asimov’s Robot stories is that the Three Laws are inadequate. Robots that aren’t smart and insightful enough keep melting down their positronic brains when they reach contradictions or are placed in irreconcilable situations. Eventually Daneel and Giskard come up with the Zeroth Law; and if I recall correctly they only manage that because Daneel is humaniform and Giskard is telepathic.

        spoiler

        And the robots do take over, eventually!

        • ch00f@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There were flaws, yes, but they never rose to the level of attempting to destroy humanity that I recall. We had a sort of plot armor in that Asimov wasn’t interested in writing that kind of story.

          I’m getting this from a forward he wrote for one of the robot book compilations.

          • fubo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Oh, sure, the robots never want to destroy and replace humanity, but they do end up taking quite a lot of control of humanity’s future.

          • hansl
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            1 year ago

            Wasn’t the last I, Robot story about how the robots directly the world’s politics decide that we were living better and longer lives without technology and brought the world back to medieval level of tech?

        • ch00f@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Flaws or interesting interpretations of them, but he rarely if ever approached the “robots destroy humanity” trope even if it was technically possible in his universe because he thought it was boring.

        • hansl
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          1 year ago

          Yeah it’s more about whatever safe guards you put life will find a way to twist them.

    • SpicaNucifera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Imagine if they did an anthology series… /drooling

      For now I’ve got Pluto to look forward to.

    • dystop@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know what you’re talking about, there has never been a movie adaptation of the book! Never!

            • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              ST didn’t succeed in it’s day, it just retroactively got a cult following from people who didn’t read the book.

              • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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                1 year ago

                And it didn’t succeed at showing the only part of the book that mattered, power armored space marines with shoulder nuke launchers!

                If it was a good criticism of Heinlein’s weirdo militarism it’d have been another thing, but the most damning criticisms of it are made up because Verhoeven couldn’t be bothered to finish reading a short novel.

                • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  See the thing is that Heinlein wrote about a lot of different societies, some of which are completely antithetical to the militaristic selective democracy in ST.

                  People often say “oh this author thinks this or that” but if multiple of their works contradict how can you tell what is and isn’t their personal views?

                  That being said, yeah most of what Verhoeven “criticized” wasn’t even in the novel, there was no propaganda because they didn’t actually want people to enlist lol if only he’d made it to the second chapter where the anti-recruiter gave his spiel about the military industrial complex and it’s continuing growth due to the benefits tied to service…

                  I think Heinlein was actually much more against militarism than people give him credit for, hell he wrote “if this goes on-” about half a century before the problem became acute, he saw the religious authoritarianism from the US right wing coming miles away. I can’t imagine he wasn’t also critiquing our GI bill system of service for education, and the increasing dependency of military contractors on our economy with the novel.

                  Was RAH a weird dude? Absolutely. I think people are too quick to judge his personal values and beliefs based on one novel out of dozens of conflicting ideologies. Hell go read “beyond this horizon”, the good guys are communists and run an automated economy with no standing army lol try and make that fit with the society of Troopers.

                  • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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                    1 year ago

                    Starship Troopers is a bit different in that most critics agree it was Heinlein describing his own thoughts on the matter, particularly because he was angry about Eisenhower’s suspension of nuclear testing.

                    I agree you should be careful about conflating a depicted society with the author’s personal beliefs though, especially for an author who has such a long career and clearly changed his views during it.