[extropy-chat] DAY AFTER TOMORROW meets Asimov

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> On Sun, 30 May 2004, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> >about the robots amok, I don't see that either. While it wasn't at
> the
> >forefront in his novels, his robots did, in fact, send ships all
> over
> >the galaxy committing genocide via terraforming against any number
> of
> >intelligent alien races, which is why in the Foundation series only
> >humans inhabit the galaxy. Daneel was no saint, nor were his
> comrades.
> >Their zeroeth rule only resulted in the rationalization of the
> deaths
> >of trillions of intelligent alien beings, who were judged not
> 'human'
> >only because they didn't have the look of homo sapiens.
> 
> There isn't any like that in any book written by Asimov! Only in the
> End
> of the Eternity, it is suggested that a special timeline was selected
> for
> the humans where they would evolve faster than the aliens, and thus
> colonize worlds before them. There's one world that the robots helped
> destroy (the Earth...), but everything was set up by humans.

On the contrary, in Robots of Dawn, the issue of the murder being
investigated was tied into the debate among the spacers on Aurora
whether to explore space as humans, or simply send out robots to go
find worlds and terraform them for human occupation. Suggest you read
it again.

While it didn't deal with the possible genocide of alien species
explicitly, the terraforming proposal was there and the results are
logically derived.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                         -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/