silly-jellyghoty: Oh! I have read that book! I forgot the name of the short story but my favourite o
silly-jellyghoty:Oh! I have read that book! I forgot the name of the short story but my favourite one was exactly that on the picture.The thing went: there was a mining colony on the planet Mercury that send one robot to fetch the ore or something but the robot didn’t return. When they checked on it, they found it running in a circle. Just that. Running around and doing nothing else. The thing was, the robot was real expensive so as a part of the protocol, it had strenghtened 3rd law of robotics installed and that was the problem. You see, to listen to the order to fetch the thing (2nd law) which happened to be surrounded (or in or what, i forgot) by a molten metal it would break itself (strenghtened 3rd law) so it couldn’t get neither closer nor further from the metal puddle because that would mean either going against the order or damaging itself. So it was just running around in circles. That’s quite a great metaphor for mental dilema of any kind if you ask me.Yeah, anyway. Turns out that the only way how to break the loop it was stuck in (i forgot why but it refused to listen to any additional orders about abborting its original mission), one of astronauts had to physicaly haul his ass to that robot and put his life into danger or being burned alive for robot’s 1st law to kick in in order to return to the base with the astronaut. However, despite seemingly happy end to this, the thing is one robot got damaged beyond repair in the process - it was the one that got the astronaut to the pool, old and slow model, but still perfectly functional.So the story had not one but 2 points:1) when facing an unresolvable dilema, it’s alright to be dependant on an outside help. Things happen. Just because one person can’t solve it on their own it doesn’t mean there is no solution whatsover2) every problem has a solution but all of them come with a price - some with a possibility to go both well and horribly wrong, some with a certainity of a bad outcome. Weight the profit with your risks and loses and chose wisely -- source link
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