The Robots of Dawn (Robot #3)

by Isaac Asimov

Suppose, in her Solarian way, she was ashamed.”

“No one enjoys being ashamed—and she might have blamed Jander for it, in the rather unreasonable way people have of seeking to attribute to others the blame for unpleasantness that is clearly their own fault.”

“There might have been times when Gladia, who has a shortfused temper, might have burst into tears, let us say, and upbraided Jander for being the source of her shame and her misery. It might not have lasted long and she might ...

Jander have clearly gotten the idea that he was actually the source of her...

“And might this not have meant to Jander that if he continued the relationship, he would make her miserable, and that if he ended the relationship, he would make her miserable. Whatever he did, he would be breaking the First Law and, unable to act in any way without such a violation, he could only find refuge in not acting at all—and so went into mental freeze-out. —Do you remember the story you told me earlier today of the legendary mind-reading robot who was driven into stasis by that robotics pioneer?” “By Susan Calvin, yes. I see! You model your scenario on that old legend. Very ingenious, Mr. Baley, but it won’t work.” “Why not? When you said only you could bring about a ment...

“Let’s suppose that the story about Susan Calvin and the mind-reading robot is not merely a totally fictitious legend. Let’s take it seriously. There would still be no parallel between that story and the Jander situation. In the case of Susan Calvin, we would be dealing with an incredibly primitive robot, one that today would not even achieve the status of a toy. It could deal only qualitatively with suc...

“Any modern robot—any robot of the last century—would weigh such matters quantitatively. Which of the two situations, A or not-A, would create the most misery? The robot would come to a rapid decision and opt for minimum misery. The chance that he would judge the two mutually exclusive alternatives to produce precisely equal quantities of misery is small and, even if that should turn out to be the case, the modern robot is supplied with a randomization...

a completely unpredictable way and then follows that unquestioningly. He does not go...

“In the case of the humaniform positronic brain, there is a way of sidetracking the randomization factor that depends entirely on the way in which that brain is constructed. Even if you know the basic theory, it is a very difficult and long-sustained process to so lead the robot down the garden path, so to speak, by a skillful succession of questions and orders as to finally induce the mental freeze-out. It is unthinkable that it be done by accident and the mere existence of an apparent contradiction as that produced by simultaneous love and shame could not do the trick without the most careful quantitative adjustment under the most unusual conditions. —Which leaves us, as I keep saying, with indeterministic chance as the only possible way in which it happened.”

“But your enemies will insist that your own guilt is the more likely. —Could we not, in our turn, insist that Jander was brought to mental freeze-out by the conflict brought on by Gladia’s love and shame? Would this not sound plausible? And would it not win public opinion to your side?” Fastolfe frowned. “Mr. Baley, you are too eager. Think about it seriously. If we were to try to get out of our dilemma in this rather dishonest fashion, what would be the consequence? I say nothing of the shame and misery it would bring to Gladia, who would suffer not only the loss of Jander but the feeling that she herself had brought about that loss if, in fact, she had really felt and had somehow revealed her shame. I would not want to do that, but let us put that to one side, if we can. Consider, instead, that my enemies would say that I had loaned her Jander precisely to bring about what had happened. I would have done it, they would say, in order to develop a method for mental freeze-out in humaniform robots while escaping all apparent responsibility myself. We would be worse off than we are now, for I would not only be accused of being an underhanded intriguer, as I am now, but, in addition, of having behaved monstrously toward an unsuspecting woman whom I had pretended to befriend, something I have so far been spared.”

“Daneel, does it disturb you when a human being tells a lie?” “I am aware that human beings lie on occasion, Partner Elijah. Sometimes, a lie might be useful or even mandatory. My feeling about a lie depends upon the liar, the occasion, and the reason.” “Can you always tell when a human being lies?” “No, Partner Elijah.” “Does it seem to you that Dr. Fastolfe often lies?” “It has never seemed to me that Dr. Fastolfe has told a lie.” “Even in connection with Jander’s death?” “As far as I can tell, he tells the truth in every respect.” “Perhaps he has instructed you to say that—were I to ask?” “He has not, Partner Elijah.” “But perhaps he instructed you to say that, too—” He paused. Again—of what use was it to cross-examine a robot? And in this particular case, he was inviting infinite regression.

the political repercussions of Jander’s death lead to the exploration and settlement of the new worlds by robots, Dr. Fastolfe believes that this will be catastrophic for Aurora and humanity.

I see no harm in having humaniform robots doing the work. I am here at the Institute, in fact, to make that possible.

“Eos is the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn, as Aurora is the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn.”

‘psychohistory.’

is a matter of Earth. If I fail, then along with the grievous loss to Dr. Fastolfe and to myself, there would be an end for any hope Earthpeople might have to move out of Earth and into the Galaxy generally.

Giskard

“No, sir, but studying minds as I do, I can tell dimly that there are laws that govern human behavior

The human laws

They may be statistical in nature, so that they might not be fruitfully expressed except when dealing with huge populations. They may be very loosely binding, so that they might not make sense unless those huge populations are unaware of the operation of those laws.”

“Tell me, Giskard, is this what Dr. Fastolfe refers to as the future science of ‘psychohistory’?”

“Yes, sir. I have gently inserted it into his mind, in order that the process of working it out begin. It will be needed someday, now that the existence of the Spacer worlds as a long-lived robotized culture is coming to an end and a new wave of human exp...

it is, from this point on, Earth itself that is the true World of the Dawn.”