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From: "Alice K. Turner"Subject: Re: (urth) robot desires -- Jonas tells a joke Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 21:55:23 -0400 Mused mantis: > In the joke that Jonas tells, a woman interviews three sailors to find out > what each one wants the most. The first says power, the second says > (social) polish, and the third says love. > > The woman laughs and says that they are all robots. The first sailor says > that is true, and he can see how she figured it out from the first two > answers, since power and polish are things all robots look for, but he > couldn't figure out how she detected a robot in the third answer. [snip] > Now this joke does a number of things. It establishes a hierarchy, almost > like Mazlow's [sp?] hierarchy (which starts with food, then shelter, etc.), > but for robots: "power" becomes "food" in addition to "recognized > authority" (because robots run on energy); "polish" becomes "physical > appearance" in addition to "social graces" (because the robots have skins > that shine -- the Tin Woodman becomes nickle-plated on his elevation, and > he is always getting polished, getting new accessories, etc.); but what is > "love" in robot terms? > > Well, in addition to that answer, love is also love, and something which > some (perhaps not all) robots can desire. But aren't you forgetting that the TW desired love too, as well as polish--his first desire was a heart, to love but also to be loved. And he became Emperor of the Winkies, so he got power too. Mark, Edward !IV was 6'3" and "broad-breasted," a giant of his time. Richard III at probably about the norm, 5'7" or so, would have been dwarfed. Also, just curious, does Smart own a cat? -alga --