Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 August 7

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August 7

Human race

If the human race felt no emotions, would civilisation have developed to the stage it is at now? Why or why not? Clover345 (talk) 00:52, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Please read the introduction to this reference desk above, especially the sentence that says "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." If that sentence in general, or any specific words within it, are confusing to you, let us know and we can provide references to definitions of those words that may help you understand it better. --Jayron32 01:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the above. However I also think the answer is very obviously no. For one, I doubt it's even possible to feel "no emotions", even psychopaths feel emotions, just differently no "normal" people. No one would be motivated to do anything without emotions. Vespine (talk) 01:51, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps have a good read of Emotions, might clear it up for you. Vespine (talk) 01:52, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I refute both of your statements by pointing to your computer. It has no emotions, and it is clearly doing something. --Bowlhover (talk) 01:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe that refutes anything, whatever computers do/did they didn't "build" our civilization. Can we build (or have we already built) computers that could possibly grow our civilization from THIS point, that's an argument you could have; Could we have got THIS far? That's the question I'm answering with a definite "no". 04:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

And just one more point, a computer these days clearly does not have any motivations or desires of its own, any computer that IS capable of making a decision is programmed with the motivations or desires of the programmer / designer. IF we one day create a computer that does actually possess its own motivations and desires, it's quite possibly sufficient to say that computer has emotions, though how you would actually work out IF that was true, might not be possible, see Philosophical zombie Vespine (talk) 04:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

• I'm unhatting this, because even if the question is speculative, it can be answered in a non-speculative way, by pointing to relevant literature. One particularly relevant item is a book by Antonio Damasio called Descartes' Error. He covers the neuroscience of emotion (such as it is), and argues that emotion plays an essential role in human decision-making. There are several aspects of the book I'm not keen on, but it does directly address this question. Looie496 (talk) 02:27, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes we'd call ourselves Vulcans though. --DHeyward (talk) 18:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

"Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion." Hegel, Philosophy of History, III § 26 John Z (talk) 18:42, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Vulcans are not emotionless, they simply have a high level of control over their emotions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Biodiversity of suburban gardens vs farm fields

Quite a while ago, I'm sure I read the abstract of a research paper that said suburban gardens had generally higher biodiversity than intensively farmed fields. I can't remember the details though, and I haven't been able to find it again. Did this research ever really happen, or am I misremembering some rant I once read on a blog? 129.67.119.181 (talk) 13:08, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

This claim is generally true, for most common interpretations of 'suburban garden', 'biodiversity', and 'intensive farming.'

However, there are lots of complicating details. For starters, how is diversity quantified? Alpha diversity, beta diversity, and gamma diversity are a few metrics, but we also have things like evenness and other diversity indices that could be considered. Also we have to consider whether we are thinking of "total diversity" of all present taxa (soil microbes, insects, birds, plants, etc), or perhaps we are just interested in e.g. plant diversity.

So, if you consider e.g. a field of roundup ready corn, doused with insecticides and herbicides, compared to a small plot of mixed veggies grown organically (and in the same biome), the latter will almost surely have higher total species richness per area. However, if the "intensive farming" happens to be organic, and a good habitat for insects and birds (e.g. some forms of permaculture), then the monoculture of plants may well have higher total or insect diversity than a small mixed veggie plot that has been treated with sevin. The organic 'monoculture' could even have higher plant diversity, if the weed richness is high, and the home garden has been thoroughly weeded.

As for the specific research article, I don't think I know specifically what you are talking about, but here are several articles that address similar issues: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

If you're interested in these issues in general, you may also like to read about Integrated_pest_management, agroecosystems, and Ecological_effects_of_biodiversity#Effects_on_community_productivity. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I expect it was a joke, but just to avoid misleading anyone, the technical meaning of "almost surely", as explained by the linked article, is not the same as the informal meaning in SemanticMantis's comments. The probability of a of a lower species richness for the organic farm may be small, but it is not zero. --Trovatore (talk) 03:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Meh, I thought I qualified the claim sufficiently to make it mostly true in the technical sense, if perhaps hyperbolic. I did also think it was a humorous claim. I suppose you could argue that "almost surely" should never be applied to anything in the real world, and reserved for formal abstract systems, but that's a debate for a different day... Still, my intent was not to mislead, so your clarification is useful. Also good to know someone's paying attention :) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:52, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I see no reason a priori why there cannot be a real-world event that is possible yet has probability 0. However I cannot think of an example of such an event. --Trovatore (talk) 17:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Here is a link to a BBC News story about this subject, and here is the Sheffield University project referred to in the BBC story. DuncanHill (talk) 17:26, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Automatic, non-poisonous mosquito deterrent

I'm getting a bit tired of mosquitoes waking me up at night. We have door and window screens that work pretty well, but barriers like that can never be totally effective because sometimes we need to open them. Also tried a poison vaporiser thing that plugs into a power socket, and it works 100% but the gas gives me a headache and a sore throat. It can't be exactly healthy....

Is there any automatic, reliable, non-poisonous-to-people way of either killing mosquitoes, or making them want to leave a particular room? What about the blue-light fly killers that restaurants have in their kitchens - do those work on mozzies? 129.67.119.181 (talk) 13:15, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

The Dynatrap DT2000 XL may be just the ticket, if it's a "worth $200" sort of problem.

I generally use this kind of mosquito coil, and don't mind the smell, but your nose may be different. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:26, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

If you'll pardon a slightly random tangent, I have a column with the same sort of name (TSK-G3000_SWXL). Guess it's all marketing anyway, regardless of the audience. (+)H₃N-Protein\Chemist-CO₂(-) 14:55, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

No problem, but personally, I don't think I've ever been so confused by that many different words at once. I can honestly say I've never seen such a fair price on TSKgel SWxl Top-Off for SWxl/QC-PAK. If I ever need one/some, I'll keep you in mind. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

There is actually an accredited American Mosquito Control Association with some useful information (for example, the "ultrasonic mosquito replants" don't work)   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 16:26, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

If they are only a problem at night, you might consider mosquito netting for your bed. That's a very old, non-toxic solution. StuRat (talk) 16:36, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

You might consider Citronella oil, (or plant lemon grass near the door and/or windows) but dogs don't like it (and may be toxic for them) -otherwise it seems to be safe and effective (see article and refs); however, the smell alerts everyone to the fact that you have a mosquito problem; and some people find the odor annoying [e.g.:71.20.250.51 (talk) 00:24, 8 August 2014 (UTC)]. Note that in the UK, the control freaks are uncertain, so they banned Citronella for this purpose. —Or, if you prefer "licorice-mint scented foliage" you could plant some Texas Hummingbird Mint (a.k.a. "Mosquito Plant")   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 01:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The linked HSE article makes it clear that the HSE did not ban citronella, but rather that citronella producers chose not to supply evidence that it is effective and safe. And one can still legally buy, sell, or use citronella products, however they must not be marketed as a biocide - because the manufacturers have not supplied evidence that such use is safe and effective. DuncanHill (talk) 17:47, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

OK, here's a new thing to be irritated about (new to me, anyway). The linked citronella oil article says that citronella is considered a biopesticide by the United States EPA. But it doesn't kill anything! It just repels.

To me, if it doesn't kill, it's not an -icide of any sort. But the various articles I just clicked through on such topics make no mention that -icides have to kill. Is this linguistic shift really complete? Who let this happen?

By the way, our drowning article is also flat wrong in the first sentence. If you didn't die, you didn't drown. --Trovatore (talk) 18:52, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

That is why I worded thus: "...for this purpose" —It can still be sold as "perfume" or whatever. -Although we are drifting off-topic (mosquito deterrent), , I believe there is something on WebMD relating to citronella oil used to treat athlete's foot fungus, presumably as a -cide (as in "fungus killer"), but I currently don't have time to cite sources.  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 21:21, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Mosquito control should always start outside. There are things like abandoned tires and stagnant pools on man-made trails that can breed them in great numbers, which you can reasonably destroy. Mosquitoes don't travel all that far after hatching, so eliminating nearby hazards can really pay off. Wnt (talk) 01:05, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Not really viable in cities though, where most if not all the surrounding area is someone else's property. It only takes one lazy resident or negligent landlord... 95.246.128.149 (talk) 14:04, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, there are rules on nuisances though, and not many people really want their mosquitoes if asked, and if they can't be asked (abandoned) they can't complain... I wish we had a knowledge base on this sort of issue somewhere, but I can't believe there aren't options. Wnt (talk) 09:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Antagonistic interactions

Another editor above has said "it is well known that there is an antagonistic interaction between pain and substances that induce global anesthesia. It's particularly clear in the case of opiates such as morphine: doses that induce stupor of unconsciousness in most people might not substantially impair alertness in somebody in severe pain. It also holds for alcohol -- but it should be noted that even though pain improves alertness and arousal in somebody who has consumed alcohol, it doesn't improve motor control or decision-making." Could anyone provide any reliable references for this? Particularly for what mechanisms are involved? Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 13:23, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

In old times before the ether surgeons would give patients alcohol and then cut the tissue. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

This question involves "decision making" and "judgement" which pain, opiates, alcohol, and alertness all affect in different ways. 104.128.96.117 (talk) 09:39, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Mythbusters did at least one relevant experiment; I seem to remember that Adam was measurably less drunk after Jamie slapped him. (Perhaps someone else remembers the episode better than I do.) —Tamfang (talk) 03:50, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

dog sense of taste

It's well known that the dog's sense of smell is far greater than that of humans. In humans, smell and taste are closely intertwined (see http://www.entnet.org/content/smell-taste). Would it be true, then, that dogs also have much greater sense of smell than humans? --Halcatalyst (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

There is a good answer to your question here:

“ Humans win the sensitivity contest for taste, with around 9000 taste buds as compared with only 1700 for the dog. ”

—Stanley Coren, Ph.D (April 19, 2011). "How Good Is Your Dog's Sense of Taste?". Psychology Today : Canine Corner. Psychological Enterprises Ltd.   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 17:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Yep their sense of taste is fairly basic, smell does the job of checking the food out and then they just want to gulp it down quick-- you don't see them savoring their food. By the way as far as smell is concerned [6] says elephants have twice as many genes for smell as dogs, I'm also a bit surprised that humans seem to have more than the monkeys and apes they tested. Dmcq (talk) 17:43, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! Makes a great deal of sense (no pun intended). --Halcatalyst (talk) 21:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

But isn't the sense of smell a large aspect of taste? I am curious as to how that plays into it. Justin15w (talk) 14:41, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, in the relevant areas of science, taste refers purely to those sensations which are delivered on the tastebuds. Flavour is the thing we often mean when we casually refer to taste, and that is a combination of taste and smell (and often things like Pungency ("hotness") as well). Your experience of flavour also depends on your psychological expectations based on what it looks like, and on mouthfeel. When a manufacturer wants to change the taste of a food, they change the proportions of things like sweeteners, salty ingredients, fat, monosodium glutamate, caffeine, and such like. When manufacturers want to change the flavour of a food, they change the flavourings they add, which typically alter the smell of a food. Skittle (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

What test?

Hi, I've taken some statistics classes in my time but long since forgotten most anything useful... I've some ecological data, recorded at a number of sites. Each site is a single row of data: name, a binary (A/B) classification, and the remaining columns are a specific measurement for each of a number of species. I'd hypothesise that the B sites have lower values for this measurement. These measurements are not normally distributed, and the two groups are of different sizes (there are more A sites than B). I considered e.g. taking the mean of the rows and using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, but I wondered if there were any tests that would gain power from/allow me to compare the two sets of rows directly (rather than collapsing each into a single row). Thanks! 82.13.241.56 (talk) 19:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Without more info, I would guess that the counts are Poisson distributed. There exist tests to compare means of Poisson distributed variables, e.g., Tests for Two Poisson Means. --Mark viking (talk) 19:32, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

We have articles: Wilcoxon signed-rank test & Poisson distribution, which might refresh you memory. Further inquiries might get better results over at the mathematics desk. —71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:36, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Sci fi vs real science

How much of the science in Star Trek is actually scientifically plausible (I.e. Not flawed in some way)? Ignoring the fictional life forms. I'm referring more to the engineering, science and technology of the universe, starships etc. 94.14.151.66 (talk) 22:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

The article: Technology in Star Trek is rather skimpy, but the 'Further reading' section has several sources on the subject.   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 23:05, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

For one thing, teleportation and faster-than-light travel are scientifically implausible (violating the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the special relativity theory, respectively). 24.5.122.13 (talk) 02:27, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Also food replicators, upright deck artificial "gravity generators," and everything about "subspace" is as implausible as transporters (or any other form of mass teleportation). 104.128.96.117 (talk) 09:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I believe some form of food replicators are possible now. That is, a machine can include raw ingredients and produce the requested food by combining them together. For example, a pizza machine could add the requested toppings, or a smoothie machine could blend the requested ingredients. Now, replicating a turkey isn't possible now, although perhaps we could grow some Quorn around an artificial bone and call it turkey. Also, food replicators could be tailored to each person's nutritional needs. For example, a menstruating woman might get extra iron added to her food to replace the iron lost in blood. StuRat (talk) 14:05, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

There are 3D printers for food already. These could be considered to be a crude first step toward a food replicator. It's not a stretch to imagine eventually being able to "print" a steak or a chicken leg from meat cells that were grown in a vat.--Srleffler (talk) 02:05, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Although it wouldn't violate any physical laws per se, manned interstellar travel at even sub-light speeds still looks vastly out of reach technologically for the foreseeable future. See Interstellar travel#Challenges. Red Act (talk) 03:46, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Not really. The Star Trek sleeper ships such as Khan Noonien Singh's SS Botany Bay and in The Emissary are completely plausible with current technology, except for the fact that they had implausible means of artificial gravity. 104.128.96.117 (talk) 09:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, for starters, as the sleeper ship article you linked to says, "There is currently no known technology that allows for long-term suspended animation of humans." Red Act (talk) 13:24, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Still plausible per e.g. recent advances in cryopreservation. 104.128.96.117 (talk) 08:43, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Almost everything about FTL in the show is bogus, and sometimes not even wrong. This includes not only the ships (which travel at the Speed of Plot), but torpedo munitions, transporters (they include a "Heisenberg compensator" component, which is a major conflict with the uncertainty principle), and subspace communications (which generate "chicken vs. egg" issues in a moving frame of reference).

Chemistry and metallurgy are way off, too. For starters, it's highly unlikely that even one element not yet discovered is stable enough to observe visually, and it's unlikely that there are any elements beyond 180.

About the alien life forms, even if they are of common origin, it is quite a stretch that all of these evolve into near-human beings. It's even more silly that those are genetically compatible. ST:TOS is sometimes called ST:KFETM (Star Trek: Kirk fucks everything that moves), TNG gets RFETM (Riker), and DS9, well, ST:HIF (Humanity is fucked).

I am not so sure. A lot of fish look like a lot of completely unrelated fish. Why not hominids for animals gaining space-fairing capability too? The closest competitors on Earth for such capabilities were the lizards that evolved into birds (some parrots and pigeons are very smart, but they can't take selfies with a camera) and octopuses, which can use tools but have very poor communication skills. 104.128.96.117 (talk) 09:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The similarities are just too striking.

Certain similarities are very plausible: a brain somewhere near the mouth would make sense, to save on neural mass and transmission lag. Sensory organs near the mouth make sense, too, and with "larger" lifeforms, a head containing these three will probably develop; moving the head to look around, rather than the entire body, saves time and energy.

Animals on a solid surface will probably have one to six legs; six are easy to use, but large animals have fewer, which are more demanding of the brain (which will still come out ahead with large animals, because the weight penalty of the brain does not increase with size). For more height and carrying capacity (or flight), two legs are even better than four, but even more difficult to use. Some four-legged animals move more on two than on four legs, too. Many kangaroos move around with "one" leg; they don't move their legs independently when bunny-hopping. So we can expect many alien races to have a head and two or four legs; however, most Star Trek species are extremely similar. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 05:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

But most of that pales in comparison to Star Trek engineering. They have "manual" controls which need power; they can't even open the average door without redirecting power to it. Used as a plot device, but utterly stupid. Also, control panels of death.

Star Trek is not the "Science in name only" end of the sci-fi hardness scale, but it can see it on a sunny day. And still a better love story than Twilight. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 07:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Are real life scientists currently researching ways around Heisenberg uncertainty and special relativity? And can someone explain in simple terms how Heisenberg makes teleportation impossible? 94.14.151.66 (talk) 11:40, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I believe transporters are possible, although they will take on a slightly different form. In ST, the person's atoms are disassembled, sent to the target, then reassembled there. This is somehow even possible with no transporter pad at the destination. In reality, a scan of the body would be done, at high enough resolution to see each atom, then the information would be sent to the target location, where a transporter pad would be assemble a copy of that person, atom by atom, from raw materials (we can currently assemble DNA like this). The assembly is the trickiest part, as you have to keep liquids in place, keep air out, etc., during the assembly process, which probably means it needs to be extremely fast, which would generate lots of heat. Or perhaps once we figure out how to make cryogenics work in humans, we can slowly assemble a frozen human, then thaw them out and give them CPR to revive them. The original would then have to be destroyed, or else you've cloned a person and copied over his memories. Think Like a Dinosaur (The Outer Limits) had an excellent treatment of the moral issues, although they avoided getting into the details of the assembly process by having that take part in an unseen location. They did send the information faster than the speed of light, too. StuRat (talk) 13:57, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It has been pointed out that teleportation of living things would require knowing not only information about each atom, but also the quantum state of every subatomic particle (or at least the electrons) simultaneously, since those are critical for the function of living things. It would be less than useful to be duplicated at a remote location without memories or consciousness. I'm not sure how much data that represents, but it's orders of magnitude higher than atomic-level resolution. Acroterion (talk) 14:33, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

One of the points which Star Trek actually mentions; bulk transport cane be done using "molecular resolution", but to teleport personnel, they need "quantum resolution". - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 05:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there are more than a few hurdles there. My guess is that, if meaningful teleportation is ever possible, it will be in a form completely unlike that and/or be completely unrecognizable with current science. Perhaps some kind of worm-hole creating machine. Something like that is only impossible (i.e. outside our realm of understanding), while ST teleportation is wildly improbable to ever be feasible (i.e. understood, but completely beyond us technologically). Matt Deres (talk) 15:18, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

One rough bandwidth and power calculation is found here [7], and it doesn't even address quantum states, which would have to be measured within the bounds of Planck time to be accurate. I don't see transporter technology as it is described by Star Trek as practical: it will require a completely different method that doesn't involve making a quantum-state catalog. Acroterion (talk) 15:31, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The shuttle craft seemed quite plausible to me, at least those without warp drive. Indeed, I would expect more use of shuttle craft in our future, to transport people, supplies, and equipment between ships. Currently a lot of EVA is used to do that, or the main ships dock together. Shuttles that land on planets with Earthlike gravity and take off again would require a much more efficient energy and propulsion source than current fuels. Perhaps a matter/antimatter reactor accelerating particles (ship waste, atmospheric molecules, etc.) to the speed of light would give them that ability. Of course, such a shuttle would be rather dangerous, should it have an antimatter breach. Even the light speed matter stream would destroy whatever it hits. So, I'd only use this to explore uninhabited planets (which, unlike in ST, seems to be almost all of them). StuRat (talk) 14:27, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Supposedly, the reason Roddenberry came up with the matter transporter was to avoid having to use the shuttle all the time, i.e. to speed up the story. By the 23rd century, they had developed the transporter sufficiently as to avoid the kind of glitches seen in The Fly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:46, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Small craft are an important part of any navy; they would indeed see a lot of use. For short stints, even fusion-powered shuttlecraft would be extremely useful. The capabilities of small craft are particularly ill-defined in ST, too. Sometimes they are just shuttles, and sometimes they seem to occupy the niche of big vessels. ST:DS9 and VOY (trans-warp shuttlecraft!) had some ugly inconsistencies about shuttles.

Sadly, StarTrek screws up even the simplest of stuff. We had a discussion a few weeks ago about the communicator badges...even though we have the technology right now to make a badge that would act as a voice-dialling cellphone - the ones in StarTrek are flat out impossible for a variety of stupid reasons that could easily have been fixed if the script-writers had taken the time to think through how they'd have to work. They also fail badly in predicting technology even a couple of years ahead of the show itself. In one episode when someone wishes to give the captain a big stack of work to do ("crew reports" or something), they'll hand him a pile of things that look and act like a circa 1990's PDA's or tablets. That's not bad for a show premiering in 1987 when the first commercial realization of such a thing arguably wasn't really around until the Apple Newton in 1992. But the idea of transferring data by handing someone a tablet computer rather than sending the data to a tablet that they already have...and needing one of them for every chunk of data you need to impart seems ludicrous in light of how these things are actually used.

It's actually hard to find ANY piece of tech in the StarTrek universe that's remotely plausible...they are either utterly impossible from a science perspective - or kinda useless when compared with what we actually have. It's hard to imagine why com-badges don't have cameras in them - or why a simple radio transmission fails to carry even a voice signal in situations where their transporters can get a lock on someone to beam them out. If the badge can send detectable position information - then why not morse code? SteveBaker (talk) 17:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

One of the problems with Star Trek, from a narrative perspective, is that if the technology actually worked as well as you described, it'd suffer from "superman syndrome". One of the things that makes Superman the most boring of all superheros is that he's almost literally invincible. Without the possibility of failure, the story has no narrative tension, and thus has nothing entertaining about it. They literally had to invent Kryptonite as a plot device (almost a decade after the character was created) just to make the stories interesting. With Star Trek, it may not be that the script-writers make all the stupid science mistakes you note because they don't understand it; they do it because they have to "kryptonite" their technology to add interest to their stories. Perfect science where everything works may annoy people who expect perfection because they understand the science, and have a problem with suspension of disbelief with science-related topics, but from a narrative perspective, it makes sense. Asimov, for example, understood this with his three laws of robotics. He invents these ironclad behavioral principles about how robots are supposed to behave, and then proceeds to violate those laws in every story. Why? Because it's in the violation of the laws that the stories are interesting, if everything worked perfectly, there's no story there. In Star Trek, we can scream at the TV "If all that shit worked right (i.e. followed the rules of science and engineering that we all understand), the characters wouldn't get into all this stupid trouble!!!!" The problem is "stupid trouble" is what makes the story worth watching in the first place. --Jayron32 21:02, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of Asimov's violations of the three laws? I just flipped through my copy of 'I, Robot' and I'm pretty sure every story contains an apparent contradiction or violation, but the conflicts are almost universally resolved by the engineers understanding how the interaction between following the laws exactly cause unexpected robot behavior. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. There was also a new Outer Limits episode (Resurrection) that posed an interesting dilemma for the robots. They all worked according the the laws, but then the people went and killed themselves off via biological weapons, leaving the robots without purpose. They split into two factions, one of which argued that their duty to serve man was discharged, now that mankind no longer existed, and they should find their own purpose, with the other faction dedicated to first finding cures for the bioweapons and then cloning dead people to bring them back. StuRat (talk) 23:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Even if Superman can't die, he can certainly fail, because he cares about things and people other than himself. You not only don't need self-interest to make drama, it doesn't even make for very good drama. Superman stories are boring because writers don't like killing off sympathetic secondary characters and because he's been in 75 years' worth of comics and the writers run out of ideas, neither of which has anything to do with him personally. (And because many of the writers just aren't very good.)

And as SemanticMantis said, I, Robot was only interesting because the robots didn't ever violate the three laws. Asimov was basically a mystery writer who happened to use a science-fiction setting for many (not all) of his stories. Every story in I, Robot is a puzzle of the form "how does this robot behavior, which seems obviously inconsistent with the three laws, actually follow from them?" -- BenRG (talk) 00:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Not all of the robots in I, Robot followed the three laws. Little Lost Robot featured a robot with a modified first law (permitting it to passively let a human come to harm), and Runaround had a robot with a strengthened third law, permitting it to ignore some orders that would cause damage to it. --Carnildo (talk) 02:27, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Aside from those two stories about robots with subtly tweaked laws, Asimov is trying to demonstrate how, even with three seemingly well-thought-out laws - each being *perfectly* obeyed, things can still go horribly wrong. But Asimov is a little 'off' in places too. A robot vacuum cleaner who was truly following "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." - would immediately seek to discover whether there was some human somewhere whom it might (by inaction) allow to die. If it could pick up an audio feed from your TV set, it would likely head off to Africa at full speed in an attempt to do something to help with the Ebola outbreak...because even the smallest chance of being able to avoid a human dying would be of higher 'potential' than vacuuming some lazy human's carpet. Robots that truly followed those laws would be entirely useless. In a car factory, it would only be a matter of time before one of the robots got to hear of a fatal car crash someplace and deduce that NOT making any more cars is the only way to obey the first law. Your entire factory would be shut down within days of turning it on.

So, yeah - the stories are about failure of the technology - what makes them clever is that they are showing how a fully perfect implementation of a seemingly reasonable set of rules can result in failure of a device to meet expectations.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:28, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

One more detail (the reason one of the shows exists, no less): a single vessel stranded in the Delta Quadrant will never out-tech the rest of the Federation. Sure, they could meet a lot of new species (does that sound like the ST:TOS intro?) but with one ship, they could never put all the new technology they see to good use.

Actually, the writers wrote one episode where reality ensued: they found an extremely long-ranged teleporter tech (yeah, teleporters again, so much for "reality"...) which could teleport them to the Alpha Quadrant (where the Federation is) in a single bound. When they tried to connect it to their power grid, they almost blew the warp core. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:18, 11 August 2014 (UTC)