August, 1982 -- a few weeks before I entered the fifth grade, I sat at the kitchen table eating a toasted cheese sandwich. My dad had just put a kettle of water on the stove to make a cup of Taster’s Choice, and as usual, I asked if I could mix it for him. Sure, why not was what he said. That’s what he always said. Then he went over to sit down at his spot at the table. On that particular night, it was just the two of us. My mom and sister were next door at Mrs. White’s house playing backgammon. Earlier in the day, my dad and I had gone to see the afternoon showing of Blade Runner at the Walnut Mall Theater. I was still riled up from it, and thought about my favorite scenes: the old guy getting his skull crushed in by Rutger Hauer… and Daryl Hannah doing back handsprings onto Harrison Ford’s shoulders. When the kettle started whistling, I turned the stove dial to the off position, and filled up the coffee cup my dad had prepared. I mixed it with a few turns of a spoon, took a little sip with my back to him, and walked it over to the table. As soon as my butt hit the chair, I blurted out a question.
“What do you know about robots dad?”
He chuckled softly and took a sip. When he set his cup down, he talked for a while about their history and current state of technical advancement. He mentioned a lot of stuff about factories, which aggravated me because I wanted to hear about lasers and bombs. A minute later, he told me a story about some small device he says his brother worked on while doing research for the navy that had something or other to do with the space shuttle. How it related, I have no idea. He just kept going on and on in that way. Sometimes, he’d talk about math and engineering, mentioning names of people I’d never heard of before, and how their blah-blah-blah impacted yada-yada-yada. I was starting to regret having asked the question in the first place, and just tuned out and stared at the salt and pepper shakers in the wooden napkin holder in front of me.
Then he said something like:
“<blah blah blah> laws of robotics.”
“Laws?” I asked.
“Yes.”… pause… “Well… according to Asimov.”
He looked over at me, anticipating my next question, and added this:
“Asimov was the founder of robot theory. A science fiction writer, and a quite capable scientist as well. According to him, there are three imperatives to which all robots must adhere. The laws constrain how robots go about their primary programming functions.”
He squinted and mashed up his eyebrows, calibrating the impact of his previous statements, before offering this course correction.
“Programming - what they do, what they’re designed for. Like taking care of babies or driving a car.”
“What about a robot that guards against intruders?” I suggested.
“Yes, exactly."“My dad’s voice became slightly more animated. “So, imagine a world, much like our own, inhabited by robots of varying purposes. Each one goes about its tasks, but once in awhile, robots with different purposes might bump into each other. For example, if a robot driving an ambulance were rushing to the hospital with a dying patient, and suddenly came to a narrow intersection where another robot was crossing with a baby in a stroller, what should happen?”
I thought about it for awhile, and said –
"I think the ambulance driver robot should move out of the way so the baby is safe."
It seemed so reasonable.
“Impossible.” my dad shot back. “Oncoming traffic prevents the robot from swerving out of the way.”
Jesus H. Christ, I could tell where this was going.
“Then the ambulance should slam on the brakes.” I added. But before I even finished that sentence, my dad was shaking his head from side to side.
"At the speed the ambulance is moving, it can’t stop in time. The ambulance can’t swerve or stop in time to avoid the baby."
I was getting a little pissed off to be honest.
"Can’t the robot with the baby move out of the way in time?"
This robot sounded like a total dipshit.
"Not in time. Robots of that model aren’t designed for quick acceleration."
Robots of that fucking model! I almost asked him if the baby in the stroller was a real baby, thinking that his hypothetical scenario had morphed into one of those awful brain teasers involving a murder, a puddle of water, and two witnesses. I resisted the urge. My dad wasn’t the type to string you along, and I hated asking dumb questions.
“Can the babysitter robot do anything?” I asked.
“Yes, and this is where the law of robotics comes into play. The first law states -- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
My dad went on...
“This compels the ambulance driving robot to get his dying patient to the hospital in time for doctors to attempt to save his life. And it compels the other robot to protect the baby so that no harm comes to it."
I worked it out in my head, and nodded once I accepted his reasons.
“Ok.” he continued. “So the second law states -- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. That law doesn’t really come into play in our example. But then there’s the third law -- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
That’s when he trailed off, and smiled at me. It was a goofy open mouthed, wide-eyed smile he’s make every time he wanted me to answer a tough question, and thought I was getting warmer.
“I don’t know. Maybe… maybe the –– hold on. Can’t the robot with the baby do something, like sacrifice –”
“Sacrifice itself! Yes! That’s what MUST happen. It’s the only logical recourse in this scenario. Both robots have interpreted events in the exact same way, and know exactly how things must play out. The robot with the baby knows without a doubt that since the other robot has not even attempted to slow down or swerve out of the way, it must be transporting a patient who absolutely must get to the hospital. And the ambulance driving robot knows without a doubt that the robot with the baby cannot allow it to die, and also knows that the other robot has already figured out the reason why the ambulance hasn’t slowed down. So…”
I was getting warm, I could tell.
“Maybe the robot with the baby pushes the stroller to someone on the sidewalk, and then… gets hit by the ambulance?”
“Exactly! And the reason why there’s a 100% chance that is what will happen is that both robots are controlled by the same underlying laws of robotics, which can never ever be superseded by any other programming. They are the immutable laws of robotics.”
I asked him what immutable meant, and he pulled one of his favorite moves. Instead of just telling me, he began a new story - the old tale within a tale approach to elaboration.
He asked me to imagine a pool playing robot
One that was capable of sinking any shot with 100% accuracy. OK, got it. But wait, this pool playing robot had collected enormous amounts of data on the physics of ball-to-ball collisions as well as ball-to-rail collisions, and was also an expert at striking the cue ball with the stick at various angles and speeds to apply different types of spin - English is what it’s properly called.
The robot could do things like…
Make the cue ball jump a ball, then travel backwards
Swerve around a ball, strike a second ball, then slow to a stop
Bring the ball airborne so that it struck the railing, ricocheted off, and hit a ball which would then sink, bounce off to hit another ball that would go on to sink, and come to a stop before scratching
This robot was basically unstoppable at pool. I remember the story of the pool playing robot because the idea of it as a real thing was a near carbon copy of a scene from one of my favorite movies: The Cat From Outer Space. I never even knew that my dad was aware of the existence of pool. And then he asked me a question.
"Why do you think the robot is so much better at pool than even the world’s best player?"
I was thinking of the best way to answer, but my dad didn’t even wait.
“It’s essentially infallible because it has a perfect understanding of all the factors that determine how the balls move. But beyond that, it has a near flawless capacity to control its own movements with the pool cue, allowing it to set the cue ball into motion in an exact and precise way each and every time.
When the robot wants to sink a ball into a pocket, all it has to do is trace a backward path of motion from the pocket to a ball-to-ball collision, and then it must effectuate that ball-to-ball collision. The thing that makes the robot so good is its knowledge of the laws of physics.
Things like acceleration and deceleration, angular momentum, vector-based collisions, and to a smaller extent friction. Does this all make sense?”
The crazy thing was, it did make sense to me, even though I had no idea what all that shit like angular momentum was. I was still thinking of the Disney movie The Cat From Outer Space. It was about a space alien who crash-landed on earth, but the thing is, the alien wasn’t a slimy green creature. It was an orange tabby cat with a glowing necklace that allowed it to telepathically talk to humans, and move objects with its mind.
The cat had to team up with Ken Berry in order to evade the military, and repair its flying saucer to get home. But along the way, it got mixed up in some kind of pool hustling scam, so it used the necklace to basically run the table, and then beat the crap out of the tough guys who wound up getting taken to the cleaners.
That pool hall scene was hilarious, and for sure, was the best part of the whole movie. As my dad went deeper into his robot analogy, I just kept replaying that scene from the movie, visualizing a bunch of red dotted lines to account for the cat’s telekinetic beams. I looked back up at my dad, solidly convinced that my intense movie inspired reverie managed to impart in me all the learning one might acquire in a prestigious four year engineering program.
“Yeah, it makes sense. The robot never misses because it knows exactly what’s going to happen before it even takes a shot. The balls all have to follow the rules.”
“That’s exactly it! Those rules are the laws of physics, and they’re immutable because they don’t ever change. Gravity, for example, isn’t going to work differently on tuesdays and thursdays. And the mass of the balls isn’t going to change from moment to moment.”
Precisely, I thought. I nodded to register my approval.
“Now, imagine that the pool table is the universe.” He paused to take a sip from his cup. “And the balls are the objects in it.”
“And we’re like the robot because we have science.” I added with a smile.
“No. God is like the robot. But unlike the robot, God is perfect, all powerful, and can never die. We are like the balls on the table. One of countless balls.”
He glanced over at me when he said that, gauging my reaction with his eyebrows, then continued.
“Obviously, the laws that govern our behavior are more complicated than the ones controlling pool balls, but these laws exist, and to a great extent are discoverable by us.”
I brought my hands up to crack my knuckles, and stared hard at the napkin holder in front of me. I was starting to get the sinking feeling that my make-believe engineering degree from just a moment ago had banged up into a hard and absolute limitation. The laws are discoverable by us.
“So God is playing pool with us?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. I would say that God created the game, racked up the balls, took a single shot, then put the stick away.”
Still not cool. Not in my mind.
“Kind of like the big bang?” I half-asked.
He laughed and said –
“Yeah, you could say that.”
After a long silence, my dad let out a yawn, and stood up from the table. Maybe he could see I was agitated because he walked over to the kitchen sink, and started fussing around with the faucet. I stared at the napkin holder on the table, and picked at the skin of my cuticles. My dad was rinsing out his coffee cup in the sink, and putting it in the dish rack. As he wiped his hands on the fronts of his pants, he added this:
"You and I are a lot more complex than pool balls. There’s something called free will. Come on buddy, let’s go to bed."
Later that night
Before closing my eyes, I prayed to God, and asked him to tell me if he was like the pool playing robot. He didn’t even have to answer in words. He could just send me a sign, like moving the closet door or making the moon flash off and on a few times. My dad’s explanation from earlier had all sorts of wheels spinning in my head. I mean, everything in the world is made from atoms right? Steel, wood, skin, water, airplanes, golf clubs and ice cream and dog shit and bullets. Everything. And if I recall correctly, every science book known to man shows atoms as spherical objects (aka: really teeny tiny pool balls). Jesus Christ, everything in the whole world, including me, my thoughts, and my current anxiety attack, is just a piece of a never-ending cosmic game of hungry hungry hippos with an infinite number of balls, and exactly zero players! My heart was beating so fast, I kicked my legs a few times to try to reset my body, thinking that maybe I could Fonzie myself into calming down. I looked over toward my bedroom door, and thought for a moment of slipping into bed with my parents. I held my breath, and stayed as quiet and still as I could manage. When I would do that, the stillness would actually acquire a type of high pitched ringing sound all its own that I found relaxing. In a minute or so, I was somewhat back to normal.
What was it that I said to my dad that he agreed with? The robot never misses because it knows exactly what’s going to happen before it even takes a shot. The balls all have to follow the rules. Do they really? I wondered if they could follow a different set of rules.
I didn’t have the words to sum up my despair, but the idea of everything there is, everything I’ll ever become, just… emanating from a single stupid collision of cosmic particles made me want to disappear into my blanket and surrender. I fell asleep that night, thinking that the whole universe was completely and totally rigged. I didn’t give a shit about whether God was like the pool player or not. I just didn’t want to be like the ball.