So, here we are, four weeks without a proper post and today I have an actual idea for a post and, what's more, the time to deliver it. Well, hopefully. For this week's ramble I'm going to present a half thought experiment / half metaphor to you.
Suppose a humanoid robot, that is undistinguishable from a real, squidgy human. Let's call him (or, more accurately, it) Arty, the artificial human. Everything Arty does is a perfectly logical result of his programming and he also has the power to think in a completely logical manner without this affecting his behaviour. So Arty will act like a normal human, as this is how he is programmed. Yet humans often act irrationally (unless you're an economist, it which case you believe everyone is perfectly logical. But whatever) and Arty knows this. Yet his programming is impossible for him to override, so he must act in a completely pointless way.
So, you've probably got the metaphor now, and I've ran out of time.
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