“Asimov contributed greatly in the sense that he put up a straw man to get the debate going on robotics,” Arkin said. “But it’s not a basis for morality. He created [the Three Laws] deliberately with gaps so you could have some interesting stories.”
Even without the Three Laws, there’s plenty in today’s debate over battlefield robotics to keep novelists and philosophers busy: Is it immoral to wage robotic war on humans? How many civilian casualties are acceptable when a robot is doing the fighting? If a killer robot goes haywire, who (or what) goes before the war-crimes tribunal?
Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.
Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.
Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.
Well, if anyone can do it, it seems like the Turks should be able to.
As some of you have heard (it seems to be the main news now on cable), Florida had a massive power outage today. It didn’t affect me, except indirectly.
About quarter after one, I heard a little click from my UPS, which usually indicates a power drop, but we didn’t lose power, and even a computer that wasn’t on a UPS didn’t seem to have a problem. But I noticed shortly afterward that I had no internet connection. The DSL modem lights were all working fine, but I couldn’t connect, even after repeated resets. I ended up being on the phone with AT&T for over an hour, and they finally got things working again. They told me that somehow (somehow?) my authentication had gotten screwed up, and that they had rejiggered (or some other technical term) the lines to get it working again. They didn’t believe that it had anything to do with the power outage–that it was just coincidence. I’m skeptical.
Obama doesn’t want to be called a liberal. Even though his positions seem to be uniformly “liberal” (used here in the modern, statist sense, not the classical sense).
JIM LEHRER: Do you think he successfully painted Dukakis as a liberal?
MS. STEELMAN: Oh, no, the beauty of last night was that he didn’t have to paint at all. Dukakis clearly painted himself as a liberal. His responses were right down the liberal line, every one of them. That was the thing that most of us inside the Bush campaign found most remarkable is that he didn’t even try to move to the center. George Bush, on the other hand, I think has shown himself as a very moderate candidate, a very conservative candidate at the same time, conservative on the issues where the American people believe the Reagan Administration has been successful, interest rates, inflation, economy, and moving forward on other issues where the American people clearly believe we need to have some answers like child care and others. And we think it was a very good debate because we didn’t paint anything. There was no image making. Dukakis is a liberal and it showed. Bush is very much in the mainstream of American values and American opinion. And that showed.