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@jwcph @pluralistic Speaking of paperclip maximisers, I've long suspected that Asimov's true target with his Three Rules of Robotics wasn't robots per se but private enterprise.

It'd be ... interesting ... to have an incorporation statute which ... incorporated those rules of behaviour.

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@dredmorbius @jwcph @pluralistic

That is a very interesting idea...

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@dredmorbius @jwcph @pluralistic Asimov pointed out that someone - reference not to hand - had pointed out to him that his three laws were specialisations of general rules about tools.

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@dearlove Any more on that? In what sense?

(I've ... thoughts, but would prefer you fill in deets first.)

@jwcph @pluralistic

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@dredmorbius @jwcph @pluralistic Not easily. It's from a long ago memory, probably from his comments he used to put in some of his fiction collections, but possibly in one of his science essays. but the three laws converted to tools were something like 1. A tool must be safe, 2. A tool must be useful. 3. A tool must be durable. With the usual except clauses referring to earlier rules.

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@dearlove Thanks. That's a good start at least.

It's at least along the lines of what I had in mind as well.

@jwcph @pluralistic

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@dredmorbius @jwcph @pluralistic Let me know if you ever find the original and then build on it.

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@dredmorbius @jwcph @pluralistic Naah: I see it as a bright, probably autistic, Jewish kid from New York in the 1920s trying to wrap his head around the essential inhumanity of southern chattel slavery by rules-lawyering his way around it (and doing an embrace-and-extend on the then-clichéd "murderous robot" trope in Gernsback era SF).