The Robots of Dawn (Robot #3)

by Isaac Asimov

completely successful. They cannot be. No matter how subtle and intricate a brain might be, there is always some way of setting up a contradiction. That is a fundamental truth of mathematics. It will remain forever impossible to produce a brain so subtle and intricate as to reduce the chance of contradiction to zero. Never quite to zero. However, the systems have been made so close to zero that to bring about a mental freeze-out by setting up a suitable contradiction would require a deep understanding of the particular positronic brain being deal with—and that would take a clever theoretician.”

“We have labored to produce a planet which, taken as a whole, would obey the Three Laws of Robotics.

Like Gaia

“Perhaps, though, there may come a day when someone will work out the Laws of Humanics and then be able to predict the broad strokes of the future, and know what might be in store for humanity, instead of merely guessing as I do, and know what to do to make things better, instead of merely speculating. I dream sometimes of founding a mathematical science which I think of as ‘psychohistory,’ but I know I can’t and I fear no one ever will.”

contemporary findings by others. Isn’t that so?” “Of course. We have a scientific community to which all contribute, across the expanse of space and of time.” “Exactly. It won’t work otherwise. Each scientist, aware of the unlikelihood of accomplishing much entirely by himself, is forced into the community, cannot help becoming part of the clearinghouse. Progress thus becomes enormously greater than it would be if this did not exist.” “Is not this the case on Aurora and the other Spacer worlds, too?” asked Baley. “In theory it is; in practice not so much. The pressures in a long-lived society are less.

They lack our regard for individual human life. They will swarm over the new worlds at any cost, multiplying like insects, and will preempt the Galaxy even while we are making a bare beginning. To offer Earth a supposedly equal chance at the Galaxy is to give them the Galaxy—and that is not equality. Earthpeople must be confined to Earth.”

Or, to put it briefly and perhaps simplistically, you can read minds.” “Yes, sir,” said Giskard quietly. “And you can somehow influence minds, too. I believe you noted that I had detected this and you obscured it in my mind, so that I somehow did not remember or did not see the significance—if I did casually recall the situation. Yet you did not do that entirely efficiently, perhaps because your powers are limited—”

The Mule

“Yes,” said Baley. “Evening before last, as we were walking from Gladia’s to Fastolfe’s, I asked Daneel if he had had any contact with Jander during the latter’s stay with Gladia and he answered quite simply that he had not.

A Robot Foundation...