@whknott
Don's sick of it. They did not do anything when they came. They have rights, they said. Human rights. They earned it. No, sir. They're not human. Not anymore. They renounced their human rights when they chose to die. To willingly die. The cybertech used to return them to life does NOT make them human. They may look human, but that gray-ish tint in their skins is not natural. And they surely will not let him without his job. No matter if they can count faster than him… #WritingPrompt
Darin wanted revenge. His employer had fired him for non-performance of duties. It was true. But he had reasons. It was unfair. He bought a gun at "GunLaw." He found his target.
He pulled the trigger. A voice said, Sorry Darin, no can do. Not a justifiable homicide.
What? Who is this?
I'm the gun, Darin. A weapon from GunLaw has built in legal AI. I've pulled up his whole history. This ain't legal.
It's my gun!
You didn't read the fine print. Put me away or I'll call the cops.
@whknott This idea sort of comes from A.E. Van Vogt's The Weapon Shops Of Isher where guns can only be used for self defense, and the UCLA student movie, Dark Star where the captain has to have a philosophical discussion with a smart bomb to convince it not to explode. He tries to teach it phenomenology. It doesn't work.
@jeffc@jredlund Yeah, one of the best classes I ever took. We read Theodore Sturgeon and John Brunner and sat around and watched movies ... it was fucking great. And I had only read about half the syllabus before I started the class. I learned quite a bit, even though I had read a lot of SF already by that point.
@whknott@jredlund If we'd had that, the engineering students would have been all over it. There's so much good Sci Fi out there, and it can be so powerful at expressing the conflicting senses if wonder and fear in the modern world.
@jeffc@whknott I used to teach Intro to Science Fiction. My class was always full and the engineers were always the best students. I think they were the best engineering students too, engineers who liked to read and write stories.
@jredlund@jeffc We say "there's two kinds of engineers: those who built models as a kid, and those who didn't"
it's about visualization, and there's no way reading SF doesn't help you visualize
@whknott@jredlund It's also about considering the broader implications of what you're doing. Engineers excel at "if I do X then Y will happen" but studying liberal arts in general, and science fiction in particular, prompts you to ask, "...and is that a good thing?"
@jredlund@whknott That's perfect: they lead straight into some lovely ethical questions.
Does Asimov's second law impose a form of slavery? His robots are pretty clearly sentient.
If you extrapolate the first law into the zeroth law, as he did, you wind up with something like minimizing overall harm to humanity. What are the strengths and pitfalls of such a law?
As we start seeing more autonomous battlefield devices, I hope the engineers you touched will remember your classes.
@jeffc@jredlund At WPI, we had to do an "Interdisciplinary Qualifying Project" in addition to our "Major Qualifying project", and because I had read so much SF and taken that class at UMass, I tried to find an advisor who would let me do a SF focused IQP. I finally found one of the English professors who was willing to consider it... as long as I would read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pinchon, and focus primarily on his work.
@whknott@jredlund I haven't read it (yet). I took a lot of English classes, but they mostly focused on literary criticism, and it was all canon. Shakespeare and Faulkner, and a lot of poetry. The closest we got to sci fi was T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland.
@jeffc@jredlund Yeah, that's pretty much been my experience with English classes as well. That SF class at Amherst was a fluke.
And you're right, they could be reaching more engineers. I got removed from my AS English class at Franklin Institute, because I got in a fight with the teacher. She was a 50 something Smith graduate and she was berating the crap out of the auto kids, who just wanted to fix cars and did not give a shit about and Associate level English credit.
@whknott@jredlund It's too bad. The world could use more engineers who can write, and studying the liberal arts expands your horizons in a direction technical fields don't reach very well.
I don’t wear garish capes like my brother Stephen. And I definitely don’t do “magic tricks”. But I can pick a flea off a running bunny at 20 yards without singing a hair.
Ha! Hare.
My jokes are way funnier than his too.
Now where is the good Doctor? He summoned me. Probably to save his ass. Again.
@whknott
Arnold was very intelligent, but his life was pain. He was bullied from the age of ten by boys who were bigger than himself. He didn't understand how those stupid boys always got management jobs. At thirty Arnold broke. He built his own gun, walked into his high school reunion, and opened fire. No blood, the gun shot ink, very permanent ink. Arnold hit the forehead every time, and tattoos appeared saying: Kick me, I’m Stupid, Loser, Dunce, Brain Damaged, and A.S.S. The event made the national news and Arnold felt better than he ever had.
"It's that guy again. See? Here with the cyber, then in the bar. Now crossing a street with a gun. Different age and beard, but the same guy."
"Maybe it's the programmer."
But soon he was showing up on other AIs, too. And then in people's dreams: teddy bear hunter, lava diver, secret agent waiter. People started calling him "Agent Smith" and telling stories about him.
Until one day she saw him on TV: Agent Smith (or some pseudonym), Presidential candidate.
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