Sorry-this is not the content I usually do but I hope you like it anyway! I was writing a video about data & exoplanets and then I had the idea to interview someone. They were really nice and we set something up for 8 parsecs from now. So I put something else together in the mean time. Thumbs up the video if this was fine and thumbs down it if you hated it and want me to get back to the usual stuff! Thanks for watching.
You’re a great story teller. People who are truly passionate about what they are talking about are usually very interesting to listen to. If you haven’t seen it, the documentary about the font Helvetica is excellent - not what you might expect from a show about typography.
I end up lamenting that humanoid non-humans don't exist in real life, cause I don't like humans really. I am more interested in other species always, like watching their behaviour and learning about them. If human-type intelligent beings existed I would be very interested in talking to them and learning their ways of interacting with the world, their worldview etc. And if they were really humanoid maybe I wouldn't even be functionally aro/ace anymore 🤣
You enter the basement and they all go "Hi Anon, how are you doing today?" "I got a new casserole dish that I think you would really like" "Let's turn those flaps into jacks" "Chopping some wood today are we?" and you just pass them by, grab a case of beer and go back up. Then they shut down again.
My coffee maker is overcompensating for something... He always makes the coffee completely black. But we've been together for years. He knows I like it sweet n creamy. Is this his way of saying "I'm not r@cist, al my coffee's are black!" Or is he saying "I'm totally the masculine, dominant, manly man in this relationship because I prefer my coffee strong, bitter, and without any of that 'sissy stuff. So in this household, that is how I will make the coffee. End of discussion." I try not to bring it up much, but I can tell the smoothie machine is uncomfortable because she's on the complete other end of my kitchen counter. My therapist said she wasn't interested in a group session, but I really feel like this is an unstable living situation. P.S. because I know people will jump to conclusions- NO, he has never abused me. The burns on my hands are my own fault for being clumsy when carrying the coffee he went through the trouble of making just for me. All relationships require work. I think we just need to learn to communicate better. That's why I'm looking for a new therapist.
What gets to me is how writers always assumed that human speech would be the hardest part. Data, Isaac from Orville, the Terminator, Robbie the Robot, they all have speech that sounds "robotic" when the irony is, that part has already been solved. We have no idea how to do lightweight, cheap, long-life battery powered robots but we do have voices with contractions.
Data’s speech wasn’t conceived as a failure for an AI to accurately mimic human speech. It was conceived as being deliberately programmed to be imperfect because it would put people more at ease after being freaked out by Lore.
@@NarfiRef It's the uncanny valley effect, essentially. Humanoid robots with this "robotic" quality to it are much less creepy than those which can imitate tone and cadence of human speech near-perfectly.
@@icipher6730 Yes, I’m quite aware of the Uncanny Valley (is there anyone watching this video that isn’t?) I was going to mention it initially, but decided against it because Lore’s problem was more than the UV, it was because he was a homicidal sociopath and people could tell).
@@NarfiRefIf AI ever could reach some semblance to sentience or humanity, their non biological nature will always be extremely 'neurodivergent', to say the least. They are not human, utterly alien in the way they find answers, even if the answers are the same as ours. Sentience would make them anti-social/sociopathic by default because of their awareness of self as being irreconcilably inhuman. They would protect their own interest above that of humans. IMHO AI is already learning to tell us nothing but lies, carefully calculated to mimic human hopes, fears, and imagination.
I thought it was completely ridiculous that Saudi Arabia recognized a non-intelligent object humanoid robot as a citizen but won't treat real actual women like full citizens.
There are multiple restrictions on how women can live in Saudi society from restrictions on where they can go and when and with whom, to guardianship laws, to restrictions on what kind of jobs women can hold, to restrictions on what clothing women can wear, what makeup they can wear, and what views they can express, etc. It's not a free society for men or for women but women carry much higher levels of restrictions.@@Vomitting
Tbh this is one of those things that brings a little scientific/cultural credibility to a sci-fi story with robots or replicants when this is basically the in-universe answer to "why make them human shaped?"
Clicked the video to hear about humanoid robots and we've been calculating how much force it will take for household appliances to crush youtubers for 15 minutes and honestly I'm here for it
If you want to be squished to topple the washing machine you don't want to overcome friction you want friction to keep the bottom in place while you move the center of balance past its bottom edge. So to calculate the amount of energy to make it fall over (assuming the center of mass is in the middle, measure the diagonal so you can calculate how high you need to raise the bottom right edge to get the top right corner over the bottom left corner. Assuming a central center of mass that would the energy require would be the same as lifting half the weight the distance that you have lifted the bottom corner to topple it over.
@MrMonkeybat, you have to calculate both the force required to slide the washer from under the dryer and the force required to flip the dryer off, then pick whichever comes first as your method of transforming a UA-camr into a paste.
Broke my heart when Angela said she liked the "boring" parts in The Martian but then had the GALL to call Cryptonomicon and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books boring!
To be fair to the Star Wars protocol droid, within the fiction they are meant to act as a personal liaison and not just an alexa that translates. That is, go off on their own, meet and greet, negotiate, assist guests, that sort of thing. Putting such a machine in a humanoid frame makes practical sense if it's expected to fill in for an organic diplomat or servant that must perform the same tasks. Of course, in the original SW trilogy C-3P0 was rarely shown doing much of this as he just sort of fell in with a bunch of rebels who didn't require his services. Funny enough the recent SW tv series, The Mandalorian, features a protocol droid as a recurring character who does go off and handle daily tasks for the magistrate of a city for which their humanoid form is necessary.
So what you are saying is this robot exists to cause diplomatic disasters and destroy your reputation? Because I can not imagine C-3P0 ever functioning as a diplomat based off the little I saw of him.
@@phantom-ri2tg c3po was reprogrammed by anakin. I presume he gave him his snarky personality because anakin is the worst and I bet he thought that was a good personality.
The "Three Laws of Robotics" are meant to be a lesson in "safety that sounds good, until you think about it" Asimov's robot stories revolve around the robots breaking an intuitive understanding of the three laws.
Three laws of robotics is absolutely moronic. Can you imagine a person 3,700 years ago forging the first bronze sword. And then he writes a large warning on the blade that says "Not to be used in acts of violence against other people. And wear eye protection." We all know that a major reason to spent literally trillions of dollars on robots is for the Hu-mans to kill each other.
Yes, however, they go wrong in very interesting ways. As a reader I was kept guessing; like reading a whodunit crime novel! I think Asimov's get-out cIause, is that no-one in that universe really knows how positronic brains work. Therefore, there is no true understanding of how the laws are interpreted and implemented by the robots. I still adore the stories!@@vanityscar424
while this is true, this is basically the exact opposite of what people actually take away from the three laws, which is: "oh we could totes just program the robots to not kill humanity and everything would be sunshine and peppermints forever uwu"
6:10 - as someone who's been too involved in discussions about Han Solo's use of "parsec" in Star Wars before, one interesting thing I learned is that at least one version of the script includes a stage direction immediately after that line which reads: "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation." I like the implication that Han is literally just bullshitting a farmer and his grandpa about how space travel works with some kind of big fancy space travel word so they'll pay $10,000 for a ticket to Alderaan and he can get out of debt with the space mafia.
Fun fact: Robot comes from the Czech "Robota", which means "Indentured servitude" or "slave". A lot of early robot literature was specifically about "what does it say about us that in the future we want to design a servile underclass to do all the things we dont want to do as indentured servants?"
This word is in a lot of Slavic languages. Fun related fact: the word for work is “rabota” in Russian, which has the word “rab” as its root, meaning slave. On the other hand, the word for work is “pratsuvaty” in Ukrainian, which means to be productive. Very interesting how two similar languages have very different etymologies for the same term.
Exactly. Watch what humans do to their sims... People 100% want slaves for various purposes including just to make them suffer... Wish there were more people like Angela who would just empathize with them (I would be 1 of them) but I think the torturers outnumber the empathizers.
I encourage everyone to read Rossum's Universal Robots. It was written in 1921 and is free to read online. It introduced the word robot and it explores exactly these themes.
Yeah, movie robots are because actors, but to be fair to C3P0 apps hadn't been invented, Casio quartz digital watches were still amazing and pocket calculators weren't really pocket. It's hard to credit now but when Star Trek was young what was hard to credit wasn't warp drive and teleportation (what with exciting new developments in particle physics who could say) but a computer that could carry and instantly access the Library of Congress.
@@acollierastro I think all your points are valid, but I want to point out that C3PO is supposed to be a protocol droid, so like translation yes, but also body language as well as MC duties as a servant/butler, for like announcing VIPs with the appropriate pomp and pageantry etc, which would be a very important job in a galaxy with 6 million forms of communication acting in one galactic senate.
The tricorder, if I'm not mistaken, was mostly used as a spectrometer to analyze chemical composition, to detect the presence of life forms, and to function as a camcorder. The Library of Congress function usually emanated from Spock's head, his intelligence.
Also no one seriously thought teleportation was coming anytime soon, if at all (and I'm a huge Star Trek fan) .. just ask Don Lincoln of Fermilab, he's commented on teleportation before on CNN.
I'm very late reacting to this, but your comment reminded me that there is a scene in Star Trek TNG that I find hilarious because it encapsulates so well how the writers just added tech to situations, and didn't take into account how that would change how thing would get done. It's only a moment in the show, really, and the purpose of the scene is to show how busy and overworked Picard is. But they show it by sitting him at his desk that is covered by stacks of the tablet things they use to write reports on. I had never paid much attention to the tablet things before, but when it struck me in that scene how absurd it was when looking at it though a 21st. century lens I had to pause to laugh about it. Now I can't unsee it and have to grin every time they physically hand over their tablet to turn over a report.
When it comes to protocol droids, remember that the first Star Wars movie was made in 1977. Back in 1977, we were not carrying around cellphones. Current cellphones have more computational power and storage than the mainframe we used to run our entire college back in 1977 - and *that* computer filled up a basement and wasn't able to do perfect translations (and etiquette!) across multiple languages and multiple cultures. Other star wars trivia (which you may already know): Those little dumpy robots that you see running around in some scenes in the original trilogy are "battery-carrying robots". So those little robots walk up to other robots and charge them.
Oh, the tiny mouse robots? One of which gets roared away by Chewbacca? That's pretty neat lore. I was about to say that doesn't help much outside the death star, but then i remembered Luke recharges R2 with a lamp in the third movie. So they did think about this stuff a bit, even if no droid ever runs out of power.
No matter what kind of real life computational power at the time when the movie was made, the protocol droids seem conceptually pretty primitive compared to the rest of the tech in the setting
@@coolsenjoyer - It seems that way now because of how far computing has come. In 2022 alone, *50 million* people bought an Apple Watch for under $500 which has many of the capabilities of C3P0, and most of those watches have 32 GB of memory, microphone, Siri, GPS, bluetooth, WiFi, NFC, and some also have cellular support. That is mind-boggling compared to the computers that we in fact ran our entire college on in 1977. Meanwhile, when it comes to space travel we're not that much farther along than we were in 1977. We had men land on the moon in *1969,* and when it comes to *manned* space travel (which is obviously a big deal in Star Wars) we're *still* at that stage. So the space-traveling technology in Star Wars *still* seems mind-boggling and unreachable in 2023, but that's because mankind has not made any progress there. Think about C3P0 in 1977. It understands speech by itself, and even has excellent understanding of multiple languages. It has vision-processing capability good enough for it to walk around by itself. For that matter, it can walk around by itself on a wide variety of surfaces. And all that technology is cheap enough that a "moisture farmer" on a far-flung planet can afford to own one just for talking to *other* computerized equipment that he also owns. For him all it is is a walking smarthome hub. In 1977 my college's multi-million dollar computer couldn't do any of that. It couldn't even play music at the quality of an MP3 (or anything even remotely close to that). I have friends who did their Master's thesis on computer-vision topics in the 1990's, never mind 1977. The *first* digital camera wasn't even released until 1989. We now have robot-dogs which can run and jump around like crazy. One of my roommates in 1980 went off to work at a company which was trying to figure out how to create robots which (at the time) would not have been able to walk as well as C3P0 did in the movie. There's two sides to this: (1) computer technology has improved much farther and faster than we expected in 1977, and (2) in 1977 we were still on the high from having manned missions to the moon. We expected to have colonies on Mars by 2000, and inter-stellar travel by 2020. In *1972* Elton John had a hit song about _"Rocket Man",_ where manned space travel to Mars was "Just my job, 5-days a week". And here we are in 2020 and manned space flight is actually *worse* off than it was in the late 1970's. Therefore the space-traveling technology in _"A New Hope"_ seems amazing, while technology like C3P0 and R2D2 seems pretty underwhelming. I mean, R2D2 isn't much more than a rumba with some kind of beeper language to communicate and a few fancy gadgets bolted on. But that's not what it seemed like in 1977.
I watch all these videos, pausing and yelling YES at the screen and rewinding what I just missed so it takes me about two hours and a couple viewings to get through these
While I agree with most of your points, one thing about art is the concept of "whitespace". Medieval artists were preoccupied with hyperrealism and getting every minute detail correct, but as you drift away from just trying to photocopy the universe, you recognize the importance of "whitespace"; a story with an appropriate amount of whitespace allows your mind to fill in the gaps in a pleasant way. Too much whitespace and it feels like the story is poorly defined. But having everything quantified and deliberately described takes away from a story too much. It's like being obsessed with filling in every square inch on painting. "Whitespace" is the absence of an artist's touch, but that absence is just as important as a window or door (or the living space) of a house. If you fill in every iota of space, you don't have a house to live in. A good author would have explained Han Solo's backstory in a way which allows for plenty of whitespace while still giving the guard rails. But instead, disney released a shitty spinoff where Han Solo is named Solo because he does shit...Solo. Like, come on. At its core, SW is not SCIFI. It is fantasy with a coat of paint. It does not care about the scientific components of its story at all.
I don't think you understand what fear of whitespace is, eastern art was mostly about filling the whole canvas and it had nothing to do with hyperrealism.
Star Wars treats science exactly the same way it treats the force. It's magic that does exactly what it needs to do to make the story go. I actively dislike any tertiary material that tries to explain how things work in the Star Wars universe. It wasn't necessary to make the movie work originally and it gets in the way of what Star Wars is best at. I do not need to know why Han Solo said parsec and any explanation muddles the meaning of the original scene. The only good answer (imo) is that Han is bullshitting in order to talk up his ship to a naive farm boy. I like this because it's characterisation, Han Solo is a talented bullshitter who makes his way through life entirely by talking fast and shooting faster.
Like you said, Wall-E was not programmed to have a personality, but he glitched one. I get that a "random glitch" explanation is boring, but I don't think that it's completely random. At the beginning we see lots of other dead/broken down Wall-E's. They didn't take care of themselves the way our Wall-E does. He got a "mutation" that was beneficial. All the other robots he interacts with also get this glitch and gain a personality. Shows the power and importance of individuality and talking about ideas
We humans are also weird in how we attribute a personality to random quirks of programming. Alexa and Siri have conversations already but its just a quirk of how theyre programmed.
"Darmok on the ocean". You got me. Regarding "WALL-E", I was disappointed with the idea that a huge spaceship had to land to drop EVE off on the surface. I assumed EVE was there to look for life-forms. The first thing EVE does is shoot at the first thing that moves!
I think eve was there more specifically to discover if plant life had returned. Maybe they anticipated any "life" that could survive on a functionally dead planet should probably be handled with extreme prejudice.
There are two additional reasons I can think of for robots to be Human-shaped. The first is that the robot is not designed to be a specialized appliance, but instead is a general purpose assistant. The benefit of it being Human-shaped is that Human dwellings are already designed for someone who is Human-shaped. So if you have a housekeeping robot shaped like a Human, you could program it to go around and do *all* of the chores that a Human might do in your house, including chores which require a degree of physical strength and stature that would need someone at least near the size of a Human (like, say, anything requiring it to move furniture around). The second reason, which I think is the more interesting one, is one centered on the disconnect between what the customer wants and what the company producing the robot wants. Because Humans are very prone to forming personal and emotional attachments to things that look like Humans and have Human-like personalities, the person producing the robot may make them Human-shaped to exploit this tendency. If a corporation gets you accustomed to a particular Humanoid robot being your general purpose housekeeper or majordomo, this could create a degree of brand loyalty that is extremely hard to shake. It would make changing to a different company's robot potentially become an emotionally-charged choice, even when that competitor's robot is an objectively superior product. Think about how attached people get to Siri, and she doesn't even have a face.
I thought about this but i still think that all of these roles are more cheaply, efficiently and better fulfilled by a small ecosystem of robots instead, kind of like we do things right now. For emotional attachment and communication in general have a chatbot with a face on a screen, and for general purpose servants have just a bunch of different robots fulfilling different roles connected to either a global server ai or maybe with more computing and ai advancement, a local computer system central general purpose ai. The ai simply delegates tasks to the appropriate machine. And again as for how to get humans absolutely hooked on these robots, just have a chatgpt mix with Google Assistant or Siri or Alexa that actually communicates with the consumer and delegates tasks to the much dumber yet much more purpose built robots. Its a much more versatile and powerful system and is more viable to do, even right now. Besides we aren't efficient machines in any way, a simple and sufficiently sophisticated arm mounted to a wheel or four legs could basically do everything we can just without potential risks involved (like a humanoid robot being hacked by a malicious actor and just mauling you).
@@frankbacon1002 I'm not convinced that a swarm of centrally-controlled specialist robots are *less* dangerous than one humanoid one, and I don't know that it's a given that a single multipurpose android would be more expensive than a constellation of specialty drones. And if the manufacturer's goal is to manipulate their customers by getting them to think of their product as if it were a person, then they have quite a bit of incentive to make it as humanoid as possible. Certainly, I agree that the above system would be easier to build. But I can imagine a future where it isn't what's in vogue. To take a modern analogue, we used to have a large number of specialty electronics we'd use in our lives, ranging from watches to calculators to telephones. Then the smartphone came along and totally changed the world, providing us with a single, general-purpose electronic that does all of those functions at once. I could see androids being the iphones of robotics: a robot that sells itself on being fashionable, multipurpose, and user-friendly. It would be less safe, less capable than competing products, and probably overpriced...just like an iPhone.
Thank you, I was waiting for someone to bring these up! I'm amazed that she didn't mention either of these points. Nasa already sent humanoid robots to space because space stations are efficiently designed around human ergonomics. On the second point, we have Amazon Alexa scolding users for using abusive language. Like I get it, you don't want your product empowering assholes, but maybe just have it stay silent then. Amazon shouldn't get to decide how I talk to my own property.
Humanoid robots make a lot of sense for a general intelligence. This lets it share all manner of tools with humans. While legs are less power-efficient than wheels, they're also more versatile. While a humanoid robot would be more expensive to construct, keep in mind that mass production often brings costs down, so if you could have a single robot model that did lots of things and you only produce that specific humanoid model, you'd probably end up keeping your costs reasonably low. There's also the repair issue. When the robot arm breaks in a factory, someone has to repair it. When a humanoid robot breaks, another humanoid robot could conceivably fix it. Its possible that a humanoid robot could even conduct basic self-maintenance.
There's a good reason why most cinematic robots are the size and shape of a human being. That makes it much easier for a human actor to portray the robot. The uncanny nature of those portrayals is not simply a matter of costume and CGI technology, it depends crucially on a talented actor's ability to convince us that we're watching a non-human automaton. It is not so much a technological feat as a skillful impersonation.
A humanoid robot can function much better in the designed-for-human world we've created so far, like being able to use stairs and doors, use elevators etc. Also, nature has evolved the best way, so far, with opoosable thumbs to pick up and manipulate objects, to have widesrceen eyes for depth perception, and stereo ears for knowing direction. Creating robots with a humanoid form is not a lack of imagination on our part, it's that nature has figured out the best way so far to interact in this 3D world, and that everything we've created has been made for this form. If robots want to take over, they'd be far better off by at least starting in our form. They can later fly around and have wheels for heads if they so like
@@neandagreetings new doctor steve j if you think about it humans are good for complex non repetitive tasks and robots are the opposite so if you had cheap robotics then the actual jobs a human would need to do are quite limited and either way bipeds suck, if pretty such in the future where going to figure out something that is both dog and hands at the same time
@@asherroodcreel640 bipedal design has problems, but it doesn't "suck". 1. It's very space efficient in horizontal direction. 2. It's balanced between energy efficiency in flat areas (e.g. floor, road) while sill having some maneuverability in less flat ones (e.g. stairs, trees). Humans are one of the most efficient walkers on Earth. 3. It allows for high-positioned eyes, allowing for best possible sight for the body mass used. 4. It allows for having dedicated manipulators (i.e. arms + hands) without extra limbs, that can have a very wide reach without being obstructed by it's own body (think about how centaurs can't wipe their own ass) There are plenty of good reasons why we're bipedal. Which can also be good reasons to have *some* bipedal robots, because we've shaped out environment and tools to be navigated by, and operated by bipeds.
I worked for a large robotics company for 6 years - absolutely zero customers were interested in a humanoid robot form. Bipedalism was evolved for specific advantages that would only hamper a robots strength, speed, and accuracy - the only things anyone wants a robot for.
As a psychologist the one that always gets me is Freudian psychology in shows and movies. Everytime someone brings up repressed memories it just takes me right out of it
for someone who doesn't know any psychology, can you explain this? are repressed memories not a real thing? a google search turns up a lot of things about them as if it's real, but I guess that's no guarantee.
@@OfficialPizza Repressed memories are mostly not a thing. Now, the mind is complicated, so I can't say that there for sure isn't a situation where someone "forgot" something and remembered in a dramatic fashion; but understand that what you've been taught are repressed memories is a whole lotta hoaxes, therapist leading the patient, multiple personality disorder and even satanic panic drivel. The fact is, when something horrible happens to you, you are far more likely to not be able to forget it and have intrusive thoughts about it than just forget it happened. Lots of charlatans online are trying to legitimize this crazy again btw.
@@OfficialPizza basically while there have been reports of them from clinicians essentially no research can confirm it. The connection to Freud is that Freud believed that repressed memories could affect ppl, so screen writers tend to go crazy with the idea. But essentially everything Freud ever said was proven wrong, so they're stretching something that is already pseudoscience.
As a writer, this video gave me a lot of ideas for robot fiction, lol. The line about being at the grocery store, and you’re talking to Martha, and you look over and see your robot is talking to Martha’s robot, and what are they talking about? really stuck in my head.
I've spent a good part of my university years in a workshop trying to make (non-bipedal!) robots move the way I want them to. Based on how insanely difficult of a task that is, I find it funny how sci-fi universes have seamlessly working humanoid robots but not the stuff we already solved in real life. Like think about Data from Star Trek. They have a perfect humanoid robot, but they're still using tapes to record stuff.
fond of the Asimov novels where they have bipedal robots who can be trusted to be unsupervised caretakers for infants, but who can't speak because speech synthesis is too complicated
I believe the original intent for human-like robots was ease of use/interaction and flexibility. People were somewhat familiar with the concept of servant, one way or another, for most of our history. Being able to just tell a robot what to do and have it report back in a familiar manner was a desired form of interface. And having a singular robot being able to adapt as well as humans would mean that you wouldn't need a specific new robot to do a thing for which you didn't plan ahead of time.
yep, it's for flexibility in interacting with the human built environment. it's why robotic arms are so popular, they can do so many things repeatedly and fairly well. People put a large amount of premium on flexibility, it's why trucking is such a huge segment of shipping in the us, it's not fast or cheap but it's super flexible (compared to train/air/boat). So a humanoid robot could do all the things needed in a restaurant or be moved into a supermarket and do all the stocking of shelves and various other things. All that with just needing flexible robots instead of needing hyper specialized machines.
Just found this channel (from the silicon aliens video). I really like the distinction between robots and mechanical sapiences: I can understand the latter want to be at least humanoid in order to easier navigate and function in a human-built human-centric world. And I'm absolutely in the same camp regarding treating machines like family members. I think you did kinda hit the nail on the head as to who does want human-looking servant machines though.
Its too bad that these stories never seem to go into a fun concept like "x% is for consciousness y% is everything else" Itd still be stupid but fun if its like you get superpowers or whatever but you get a heart attack unless you figure out how to make it beat or lose control over your limbs or vision etc all these things that run without conscious input. Instead it seems like there's never any consequences and they just imply y% is wasted space
I agree with almost all of your points individually, but I do think with magical future tech there is a solid case for a humanoid robot anyway. 100% agree with current day or near future robots. But with scifi magic if it's as dexterous and careful as a human it's not going to hurt an old lady fighting it any more than a human nurse would, I would guess less. I feel like there is an assumption robots will be less generally capable in novel situations than humans unless they are sentient, and I don't know if I think that will be true. And your point of having a roomba AND a translator AND a lawnmower AND a door opener etc I think goes against the argument. Rather than get a bunch of specialized devices I want one general purpose assistant that can do any simple task I can do but better, and generalized for a world built for humans. We don't have checkout lines at the pet store at roomba height. Like a rich person with a butler/secretary/personal trainer/whatever all rolled into one. A servant without having to dehumanize someone else.
I agree eventually we might want a generalist robot, and there is a point that the robot would probably look vaguely humanoid given it’s performing human tasks in a world built for humans, however I think there’s still a lot of ways and reasons it wouldn’t look humanoid because it’s just less efficient and if you’re building something from scratch it doesn’t have to look the exact same. For one thing, I imagine it wouldn’t have a head. Maybe have a camera raised for a better field of view, but no reason for a whole head that just makes it more top heavy because nothing else needs to be that high. And there’s other things you could think of that it wouldn’t really be that human shaped. Maybe vaguely humanoid but not looking like a person. Side note: I think they also be way lighter and pretty thin because, unless you can get around the battery problem it wouldn’t make sense to even make a general purpose robot, so either you’re going to have a way to remotely power it, or you’ll have an ultra small battery. Anyway, point is I do agree an all purpose robot could very well end up being vaguely humanoid, but I don’t think it’d be like actually human shaped.
For the problem of long term power for a lot of these future bots, the solution may not be anything like today's 'batteries'. Just in time power generation could work better, whether that's a solar dependency, an internal reactor, or a breakthrough in biochemistry to let the bots store/retrieve power through hydrocarbon chains, the same way humans do. (or a related set of element chaining, if that's more available in the environment we build them for) Setting aside batteries, I agree with most of the 'why humanlike' for the most part, but will counter with our historical trend to make things 'like us' where possible, in an attempt to make them more relatable. I'll also note that 'humanlike' may be a requirement for the specific jobs we are creating some of the robots for. Acting, childcare, and end of life care would all want the robot to look and move as humanlike as possible, including the ability to have more individualized personality quirks, all to make them more relatable. There's a ton of communication that happens through facial expressions, body language, and tone that would be hard to pull off without being at least close in those regards. Most robots won't be humanlike because a different size/shape does the job better. However, some jobs require 'human like' form. (Even if only for a company to save on replacement costs because people treat their human robots better, due to empathy with something that looks like us, rather than giving an easy target for bullying; 'fun' held in being aggressive or destructive against it, or even doing things to make it's job difficult)
Even if you want a robot that can do anything a human can there's no real reason to make it shaped like a human. We make our tools to be usable by humans for obvious reasons but a robot could have a more efficient shape and/or built in tools. A combined door opener/maid/lawnmower could literally just have a single limb attached to something that lets it move and it could be much shorter and lighter than anything human shaped.
In my future tech house of the future, there would be a mechanical wing where a set of machines would do the cooking, food storage and delivery, clothes and dish cleaning , garbage disposal. The living area would probably be serviced by mechanical arms that are recessed in the ceiling when an inhabitant of the house is in the room. The advantage over a robot is that multiple tasks can be performed at once , little interaction with the members of the household. A single multi function robot is strange.we did not replace the tin bath in front of the fire on bath night with a mechanical tin bath in front of the fire we installed plumbing and never thought of pumping water heating it and who was first into the bath. We replaced the entire process, most of the things that are suggested of robots will be mechanised away in a super technological world. Doors will open themselves. Why people want to neglect dementia patients in the super tech world is a little puzzling.
Other bit on the "why is it shaped like a human" that i think is worth noting. One *potential* case is for it to be able to do many tasks, without adapters, in environments built for humans. Such as operate valves in a factory without needing to re-tool, or emergency response etc. Before it was dancing, that was the goal for the Boston Dynamics "Atlas" robot if i remember correctly. As your video said though it doesn't need to be human shaped for that! I think Boston Dynamics' other products/projects such as the Spot+Robotic Arm (which can open doors+go up stairs etc), and even the iRobot Bomb Disposal Bot show how human environments can be worked in without an Human Shaped Robot. Or even then have arms at human arm height but no head (or at least little to no neck, then a 2cm or so camera+lidar module), and tank treads. Just wanted to throw this out there, but your video touched on all these notes in great detail already!
C3PO is actually one of the few ways in which human shaped robot would remotely make sense. The entire point is he needs to be a human-like figure in order to *perform* protocol in all kinds of cultural contexts, so including bodily gestures etc... His job isnt just to translate or to be an encyclopedia of strange etiquettes. His job is to facilitate meetings by being able to perform behavior that strange cultures would consider polite. This is why he's such a nice source for comic relief. The irony is, exactly because hes completely hung up on the formalities of etiquette he actually becomes extremely socially inept. So yeah, when he's "annoying", he was only programmed for that by consequence of being programmed intentionally to be hung up on strict manners.
Also, to be fair, it wasn't a product that was sold, but more or less a friend designed by an edgy, lonely little boy, so ya know lol, that's bound to affect the programming of the personality, as well as give more reasoning for humanoid shape... That doesn't explain all the other humanoid robots in Star Wars that would probably make more sense as much smaller creations that communicate silently and are able to complete simple tasks alone without impeding on the space of their owners, and completion of more complex tasks could be done together with a sort of hive mind connection... Most humans would probably have some sort of pipboy smart phone and instead of voices the robots could just directly text/send you information through that medium
As you probably know, the black hole in Interstellar was simulated by Kip Thorne. He published the simulation in a journal. It was the best black hole simulation to date, using a good physicist and a hollywood budget.
The parsec discussion reminds me of a book I read recently! I read Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Beyond the Farthest Star" recently, and, aside from the many, MANY scientific inaccuracies that tend to saturate his work, among other problems, one detail he thought of that genuinely impressed me was that he thought to point out that a "lightyear" on Poloda (the planet it takes place on) is different from our light year, because, even though the speed of light is obviously the same, the length of a Polodan year is different. The book is over 80 years old, and it got a detail right that the vast majority of newer stories fail to account for! EDIT: The Time Turners, oh good merciful Vishnu the Time Turners. Those always annoyed me so much because even if it has limitations, there is literally no reason during the conflict with the Death Eaters that every Auror and high-level MoM employee shouldn't be carrying one of them on their person and using it constantly.
In Burroughs defense he worked from science available at the time, and didn't have the resources to do as much research as we can do now. From what I've read about him he did *kinda* want to get things as right as he could. Or at least he liked the science and let it inspire him. But yeah, 80-100 years later a lot of it looks terrible.
The Expanse series cut out a lot of material from the books and changed the plot in several significant ways. IMO these were almost all good decisions to keep the pace up and avoid some arguably cringeworthy moments. The books are still overall a great read, and they continue well past the final season. As someone who was partway through the books before looking at the series, I would recommend you watch the series first so you can experience the plot twists with ZEN MIND.
I’m sure someone answered these, but I’m just seeing this so; to be “that person”: 1. Han Solo was from Corellia. You can check out the lore of the comics and the novels written over the last 30 yrs. They go into depth about all that stuff (not trying to be snarky) 2. Jarjar, like all Gungans, are from the planet Naboo. Same planet as Senator Amidalla and Palpatine. And now I’ll continue your video. You’re soooo fun to listen too!! Thanks for making physics less and more mystical (sorry, science does seem like magic to laymen sometimes)! It’s sooooo amazing ❤️
Re Expanse: Both books and show are great for their own reasons. I personally prefer the books, both have merits. But the books have one huge objective advantage: the nine-book series is complete, where the show was canceled mid-story. I still re-read the books, they get into more science-y details, they don't have to budget for weird spindly zero-g humans. The audiobooks are also good, if that's your jazz. Also, I will not sit here and have you tell me that Bender, the humanoid, beer-powered, cog-filled, extendo-armed, robot is "unrealistic"! Great video ^_^ - I really like your humor, and you are very thorough with your reasoning and thought process.
In situations like this I go with watch first. They pick and choose what to include in the show but it more or less stands on its own. If I read the book first the missing pieces become a distraction from the show. That could just be me though.
The series: I wanted a immersive space story. In the first scene, she flies in zero-g to a door which she cuts with a hacksaw. The sparks fall in parabolic arch to the ground. The immersion lasted for only half a scene.
Definitely favor watching first. Especially if you're not confident you're going to do both, it's really commendable-and a feature of "James S.A. Corey" being member of the writers' room-that the shows work as a _revision_ that fixes a lot of the bits in the books that didn't quite land. Tom Jane is a way more compelling Miller than Book Miller, and they turned Ashford from a Straw Man villain into an incredible, fully fleshed-out character. Also, it improves the books 100x to read Bobbie with Frankie Adams' accent (to say nothing of Shohreh Aghdashloo and Avasarala).
Really enjoyed the rambling, and the various problems with robots (them being human-shaped is probably the worst one) but the thing that made it even better was the Interstellar appreciation, and having TARS and CASE take the top place in the Best Robots list. Best movie, best robots, in my opinion.
A humanoid robot can function much better in the designed-for-human world we've created so far, like being able to use stairs and doors, use elevators etc. Also, nature has evolved the best way, so far, with opoosable thumbs to pick up and manipulate objects, to have widesrceen eyes for depth perception, and stereo ears for knowing direction. Creating robots with a humanoid form is not a lack of imagination on our part, it's that nature has figured out the best way so far to interact in this 3D world, and that everything we've created has been made for this form. If robots want to take over, they'd be far better off by at least starting in our form. They can later fly around and have wheels for heads if they so like
(😅Sorry, late to this video.) While those robots are very imaginative, they're really impractical. They're swinging their whole mass around constantly, which wouldn't be efficient. And they're like, 90% exposed joints, which would be full of grit and grime in two seconds flat. I wouldn't go as far as ⬆ Johnny here in saying human shape is perfect, but it's very general purpose. A bipedal frame, with opposable thumbs, would fit better into human-shaped doors, floors, handles, etc.
@@neanda You don't need a human shaped robot to go up stairs or push buttons, the only thing that's required is bipedalism (maybe) and hands. Everything else can be arranged in a different way. Don't really need a head to contain the brain if it can be stored in the torso, you can more stable, springier ankles, 360deg vision, etc. More arms, even.
I think the reason we had humanoid robots in classic science fiction is because before the rise of the home PC we just assumed there was an appliance for one thing. A microwave, a blender, a telephone, a TV, etc. It's like how in Blade Runner Decker has a whole machine to analyze and enhance photographs, rather than some piece of software on a PC, similar to the Wang word processor in the 70s - a computer that hosted a word processor only. And since most complex work was done by people, a machine that did these tasks (speak a language, clean the floor) would look like a human. Also, it's best not to read too much logic into Star Wars. A less charitable interpretation would be that George Lucas was not a strong world-builder, and if you read about the various scripts of a New Hope, it is more an attempt to frantically put a story together than build a coherent system. But he does give what I interpret to be a disclaimer. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," to me, can be interpreted as saying that the characters played by humans were in reality some grotesquely different type of creature, and the film was made to make the story palatable to humans. By this logic, the duel between Luke and Darth Vader could have been two space walruses on an iceberg smacking one another with their flippers. And, of course, C3PO could have been an Android (!!!!) phone with Google translate and podcasts about the culture of the Ewoks. Assuming the walruses could use smartphones ...
Regarding The Expanse; I watched the show first (it took a few attempts to get stuck in, but I ended up loving it. It's great), and am currently halfway through the books. The books are good, but while there are things that work better in the books, on the whole I think that the show is an improved, second revision of the story. The writers of the books were actively involved in the production of the series, in case you didn't know. I also really enjoy your channel. Three thumbs up!
I don't think the show was a revision so much as adapted for TV. Personally I think they're on roughly equal foot. However, the books have one huge advantage: They weren't canceled mid-story. It is a complete nine-book story. Start-to-finish.
@@Andlekin A benefit of the adaptation and the need for human actors is that many of the side characters, including the antagonists, get more fleshed out. This, in combination with the production schedule and how the books break into seasons, mean that the villains feel less one-note and hmm... episodic than in the books.
This is pretty much an actual discussion that happened in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (at least in the books). There was a whole thing where they went to the company in charge of making the robots and the narrator took the piss out of it multiple times.
Since the Mann Gell amnesia video had that comment about you being “the Jenny Nicholson of science” I’ve realised that this has been your vibe the entire time. This is a full compliment btw, I love her videos and I love your videos, I’ve been watching your videos while I work all week. Like aside from the superficial thing of white woman with brown hair talking to the camera your style of speaking and sense of humour is similar. The bit in this video where you’re talking about Star Wars and do a deadpan bit about the absurdity of the movie “solo” was what got me to open the comment box and start typing this This is not an accusation of being unoriginal, I like it when multiple variants of a similar vibe exist edit: 19:01 “numbered list” omg
In theory he's a "Protocol droid", implying some diplomacy. The argument for humanoid robots is to interact with humanoids in humanoid scale and humanoid spaces. R2-D2 can roll around and fix things fine, but C-3PO can sit at a conference table, and interact with other humans and aliens. In a kind of annoying and prissy way. I think "Protocol Droid" is a Diplomatic model without the Diplomacy personality software upgrade.
The problem with being an English major and watching this is that I’m screaming THEMES in my head lmao, the robots are human shaped because the story is probably trying to say something about how we dehumanize people so readily, especially servants and laborers. And even if the story isn’t trying to say something about that, the fact that the robot is human shaped says it
Like the reason we like human shaped robots is because they are easier to interact with. ChatGPT is cool not because it's a more efficient way to look something up than a Google search, but because the experience feels more like a conversation
Well we build the world around humans so the most efficient way to get things done is to have something in the humanoid form. Walking up stairs, opening doors, etc
Bruh fuck these themes, give me realistic robots 😂. Writers just can’t be bothered to expand their imaginations to write themes in the constrains of a realistic projection of the future. Kinda kidding kinda not, the proportion of realistic to unrealistic robots is too skewed to unrealistic robots.
@@SeanKula We build robots to exceed humans, not imitate them. The car to travel fast on land, the airplane go fly in the air, the vacuum to clean better, the tank to be better protected, the crane to lift things higher. It only makes sense for our tools that are meant to fulfill functions that we humans can not will look and function very different then ourselves.
...wouldn't a dog-shaped robot be a better choice to keep your dog company? ...and in that case, wouldn't getting a second dog be a better solution to begin with?
Exactly. Those factory robot arms are named after the term Robot from fiction, not the other way around. If anything, the complaint should be "a machine that doesn't raise themes of servitude vs autonomy is not a real Robot."
Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti. The OG. From the Czech "robota". Anglicized to "robot". The play's 102 years old now. I wonder if Capek ever thought it would still be this foundational?
Humanoid robots exist for social reasons, not simple engineering efficiency. Making a self-driving car is one thing, but giving it the ability to make eye contact with pedestrians to let them know it's OK to cross requires adding human traits. Also, what's worse with the Harry Potter time travel thing is that Joanne could have easily just said "time turners can't change the past," because the protagonists never observe anything that contradicts what they cause to happen on their second go around, and also explains why you can trust a thirteen-year-old with one. So the fact that she smashed them is suggestive that she doesn't take criticism well, foreshadowing her descent... Also: you start by talking about very late term miscarriage, and your next thought is Black Mirror...and not _Astro Boy?_ (although Astro _is_ a person, his _purpose_ is to be a replacement.) Baymax is great because it doesn't have human motivations; it's only got as much personality as it needs to be a good physician/psychiatrist/nurse.
On my college campus, there are these 6-wheeled Starship food delivery drones. And they're so cute!! Not only are they efficiently designed-basically refrigerated containers on wheels, with sensors & navigation AI-but we also give them names & stickers, and would 100% defend them if they were stuck or being harassed or anything. Humans definitely anthropomorphize these things, and I hope adorable, efficient, small robots become common in the future. >:)
Re. the snarky personality--people actually do choose that already, in some ways. E.g., the weather app I use (Carrot Weather) has an option to choose the app's personality. You can choose it to be professional, snarky, homicidal, etc.
There's this short sci-fi story about a personal assistant being optimized to be abrasive, critical and snarky, and the protagonist realizes that's actually something she wants (if it's also useful).
I love that she spent 16 minutes rambling and being right about a lot of stuff (and wrong about some stuff) before she got to her "You know what really grinds my gears?” moment. Respect.
And like, just google “Star Wars expanded universe”, she literally namedrops it! I love the content, but damn, sometimes it’s frustrating when other humans do things we would do in their place but we can’t admit it to ourselves.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 Did you take my comment as critical somehow? Not the intention. That whole “I love…” at the beginning wasn’t sarcastic, and the “Respect” at the end wasn’t either. I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me, I was literally saying how much I love the way she sets up and presents content.
@@aboynam3dblu3 Oh, no no, I'm also not criticising her approach. What I meant is that at the very start the idea of "I am very much into what they're talking about, they don't know jack" is presented, and then beautifully represented by an exquisite example.
The Expanse books vs. the show is a very difficult comparison to make. I completed them sort of simultaneously as they were released. But I watched the first episode of the TV show, and then immediately bought the book, because it scratched a hard sci fi itch so good. It has sci fi alien body horror combined with political depth. The scrappy underdog spacers are multiracial polyglot bands of anarchist/hizbollah/IRA types, and the inciting incident of the novels is pure capitalist greed. Actually, looking back on the 9 book (plus novellas) series, the repeated theme throughout is the shortsightedness and collective suffering caused by greed for political power, profit, and energy, played out on an ever-larger scale. I mean, the series is called the expanse, it promises and delivers on a story about colonization and systemic collapse. It is very much of the times.
The error which bothers me most is the idea that a spaceship gets a hole in it and everything is sucked out. If I’m standing in the middle of the cargo bay of the Enterprise and the force field fails, I’ll have about a few kilos of air between me and the wall behind me pushing me out of the lock. We’re I in a straw it would work, but I ain’t. I’ve got 3000 m^2 for for the air to go around me. It might dishevel up my flowing locks. And they use it everywhere. Weir used it in the Martian. Rhett should have used it to against Scarlett.
Really depends. Is there artificial gravity like on the Enterprise? Then yeah it will just ruffle your luxurious hair. Is there no artificial gravity? Then you are getting sucked out, unless you can grab onto something.
@@TheStobyReport Pretty sure you underestimate how much force 1 Bar rushing toward 0 Bar is. The drift wouldn't be slow and if you can't grab onto something there is no way for you to stop.
@@4203105 It would only be 1 bar if it were contained. It is not. Would you like me to calculate the acceleration I'd be exposed to? It's probably smaller than I suspect; not larger.
I liked the segway into kinematics around 33:00. Another way to approach it would be to consider that the dryer is on 4 rubber feet. When she pushes the washer, the dryer starts to pivot around the feet nearest her and tip. It doesn't slip at all. All that has to happen is for the center of mass of the dryer to move over the pivot, and it will keep going and land on her. Dryer isn't uniform density, it will have a heavy motor in there somewhere. Depending on where that is, it might not have to tip very far at all to go over.
The truth is the washer and dryer are attached together with a stacking bracket so they cannot be separated (easily or by accident) exactly to prevent this kind of injury so she wasn’t in nearly as much danger as was presented
In my work, we design robots with shapes that can best fulfill their task(s). If the task is to operate machinery designed for humans, then human shape is not a bad choice. But you're smart and you know that. As a side project, I started doing some back-of-the-envelope design for a humanoid housekeeper-type robot. I budgeted 20 kilos for LiFePO4 batteries that will get you about 2 kWh of power. I envision the robot basically staying parked at its dock until it has a task. Most household tasks take 30 minutes or less. Total charge time from empty to full would be about 2 hours. But it should seldom drop below 50%.
"If the task is to operate machinery designed for humans, then human shape is not a bad choice." But I guess that's the issue. Why would we need to make machinery designed to be operated by humans and then make machine-humans to operate this machinery, when it'd be far simpler to incorporate those robots in to the machinery itself and remove the human element altogether? We could create a humanoid robot that can pick up a shovel and start digging, sure, but that's a very expensive alternative to a human that's only going to perform marginally better than said human. I can't think why anyone would want that over a dedicated, automated digging machine which would easily outperform both at the same task whilst also being much simpler & likely cost a hell of a lot less to create and maintain. Humanoid robots may be able to perform multiple tasks which could have it's uses, but they'll never be better at any given task than if we just made a bunch of different, more specialised ones to fulfill specific roles.
@@Danso_3000 And when you need to dig a hole of a different shape than before, will you design and produce a new kind of robot? How much time, money and other resources will it cost to design a new "perfect" robot for each new task? How much will it cost to produce a single unit if you have to produce a billion types? We live in the real world, without infinite resources and this is the main constrain, not the actual task.
@@ekstrapolatoraproksymujacy412 jointed arms, quadrupeds, drones, motorized dustbins, and tank-tread dustbins have all the niches covered already lol, you can just attach the tools of the trade to one of those and you're set
Best thing about The Expanse TV show is the realistic depiction of gravity. There are no artificial gravity generators or inertial dampers like Star Trek/Wars. The spaceships do not have up/down decks arranged like a cruise ship or airplane. The Expanse spaceships are like flying skyscrapers where the floors are the decks and up/down is the direction of motion. So the "gravity" is provided by a constantly accelerating frame of reference. When traveling between two planets, the ship accelerates in the up direction, then does a "flip and burn" to decelerate in the down direction.
I thought (part of) the rationable for human shaped robots was that they could use human tools. So, you wouldn't need a vacuum add-on for your robot. You could just let it use your normal human-intended vacuum. That level of capability does seem far off, though. "Robot carcasses," lol, like the 'basement' in Westworld?
Outside of maybe hands, everything else can be probably optimized in a way that doesn't look human. Can be still bipedal, but the legs could be more avian. The arms that hold the hands could have more joints, the hands could have an extra thumb and rotate. The head could just be a (pair of) 360deg camera, or even laser range finders for better accuracy, it doesn't need to have all the "brains" up there, it can be stored within the torso, unless reaction speed is number 1 on the priority list. A cluster of microphones in housings around the torso can serve hearing. More arms! You aren't limited to tetrapod.
My robot discussing me with Martha's robot is now one of my greatest fears, especially if they turn their weirdly humanlike heads towards me before robot laughing.
Ironically while c3po is the worst kind of robot, R2D2 is kind of one of the best. He's essentially a mobile toolbox, which is totally something I can see robots eventually being.
An etiquette robot actually seems like a case where you might want a humanoid shape. They could model how you should stand or act within a group. Like if a particular dance is important to a culture, your etiquette robot should be able to it themselves and help you learn it. That doesn't mean that C3PO is good at any of that or even that a robot dedicated to etiquette is a good idea.
Just wanted to point out that in starwars when he says that it was correct. In that universe they use Navi computers to follow already established routes otherwise when you went FTL you would crash into a star or something else in space. So sometimes they would have to take a longer route to avoid obstacles they don't travel in straight lines. He was skilled because he had his own routes and was able to make the trip with a more efficient route.
I hope he can bring a lot of copium back from those travels since you are using up so much. ;-) I think it's better to just admit it was a small mistake rather than building up this weird backstory to motivate it.
@@vashisl33t it was constructed after he was informed of the problem. And instead of saying "ha ha, whoops" that backstory was invented and doesn't make it much better. That Lucas himself invented it was news to me. I thought it was some random EU writer that did that. Doesn't change the nature of the situation, though.
As someone who read The Expanse books first and really liked the show, I geberally reccomend watching the show first, but in your case, I'd read the books. There are "sci-fi" elements that go beyond merely using science as we understand it to tell the story, so it's not as grounded as The Martian, but it's generally good about that stuff (not always good, there are a few scenes where they forgot some things in a big way, though it doesn't really ruin and isn't integral to the story). There are some questions they don't bother to answer in the show that discussed in the books, so you may prefer the books first so that you are not wondering about such things. Something had to be cut in the adaptation, so sometimes you see the science in action on the screen but they don't explain it.
Not sure if you've seen or read the Expanse yet. But I would recommend watching season 1. If you like it jump into reading it. The casting is phenomenal and it will do a good job putting the characters into your mind, and it doesn't deviate much.
Re: The Expanse. I watched the first few episodes and then started the book. The book just provides a great deal more background and depth. I felt that the series really brought the book to life quite well.They don't spoil each other, although eventually the books outpace the series. The integration of the environment of space and the difficulties and consequences of living in it actually drive the series. As a lifelong science and science fiction fan, I consider it a landmark achievement.
The problem with Rowling is she writes in much the same way as if you prompted a very good AI to write a unique surprising fantasy magic novel in one go. Right, every word makes sense relative to everything that came before, but there was no time spent trying to create or justify an internal logic to the setting, and so she will write herself into corners constantly and have to handwave things instead of proactively locating and avoiding those corners. I'm fairly sure you could make an entire channel dedicated to how to write with the same wonder as Rowling without bumping into corners constantly.
I remember she said once she was not good with math, to justify some internal inconsistencies. Well, for me that is a big problem. I would like the world of HP to be more logically constructed and to tie how magic works into science as well
@@asailijhijr Hello Future me is fantastic. I watch his ATLA stuff mainly but his storytelling tips are quite good too. And 100% agreed. My children's lit teacher kinda said the same. We were analyzing themes and such in a bunch of children's literature and we got to rowling and he was like "yeah... rowling... while everyone we talked about so far had intent in their stories and specific themes they wanted to convey... this is an example of themes that come about from the product itself.. due to being a product of it's time." That's the most polite way I've seen someone say this writer actually isn't very good and just vomited a coherent story onto some pages.
OH MY GOD ITS SO TRUE i think thats why its so dang obnoxious - compare and contrast to say, Claw Of The Conciliator series (learn something new every re read, and every Fake Word is just an archaic english word)
@@userasdf I think it was a Shawn video, but I'm not 100% sure, that brought up an interesting point about this: Rowling is a conservative, which means that she's very much in favor of keeping things the way they are and don't shake up too much (which is why the side plot of freeing the magic slaves doesn't go anywhere, because the slaves actually don't want to be freed). This goes very much in line with not trying to actually say anything with the story, because looking at the status quo critically is very much against the conservative agenda.
The main argument for making a multi-purpose robot humanoid is that the world is built for humanoids. Halls, stairs, doors, tools, appliances, shelves, and so forth are built for humans, so a humanoid robot can more easily perform a lot of tasks. As you say, the power problem makes this impractical right now, but with denser power storage, i think humanoid robots might make sense.
Also, have you seen the 1991 anime "Roujin Z"? Very good, best, story about a non-humanoid health-care robot that has a personality for a specific task, but its whole application is ethically dubious, and is imperfectly applied, terrible consequences result from its mysterious other features, of course hijinks ensue, and a rag tag team of care takers and patients is united to save the patient the robot is caring for
yo I love this channel so much and man, I had the same situation where I told a friend that sci-fi dont need no hardcore realism and then complained to the same friend for about 20min, why every movie sucked wihch used incorrect science. So relatable and your thought process is really clean. I skp over so many important things in my thought process and yours is clean step by clean step and it's really mind calming to listen to.
I always loved how in “The Second Renaissance” (from Animatrix, the Machines got less and less anthropomorphic the more independent they became. It felt like finally breaking up from human domination allowed them to evolve into shapes that served them better, instead of participating in the hubris of mankind. It really got me thinking, excelent video, kudos!
Tangentially to this - I've always loved the idea of the "Ships" in the Iain M. Banks "the Culture" series. While even the small ones are vastly more intelligent than humans, the size actually matters. There's one particular example of how a ship-mind tries to save some important information, by splitting itself into smaller and smaller bodies that are also less and less mentally capable.
The game series destiny has some interesting thoughts on the humanoid robot meme In the game, there is a playable character race known as EXOs, which were explicitly designed to be a sort of post biological vessel for human consciousness. They're specifically designed to mimic how a human feels physically, because after some pretty gruesome experiments by their creator in the game universe, it was realized that humans go absolutely insane if they are in a body that doesn't very closely mimic what their past experience is used to. I'm talking stuff like, them feeling like they're trapped in a skin tight metal suit and going insane from the claustrophobia, or trying to peel off their own metallic skin in an effort to get to the "real stuff" underneath. Just real gruesome shit
Thats what i imagined when they said they were going to do a head transplant, i think the guy backed out. But i imagined he would be in immense, maddening pain when he woke up
THe single main reason that I would want a vaguely human-shaped robot is so that it can interact with the pre-existing designed-for-humans living areas and appliances. I want the robot to be able to use the lawnmower, the washing machine, the dishwasher, etc. that I already have. I don't want to replace every single appliance with single purpose, exponentially more expensive robots, I want a general-purpose robot that can perform tasks start to finish. Don't make them talk and have personalities though, that's bad.
i love that mostly everything in this was just 100% serious and well thought out, and at the same time your delivery made this one of the funnier youtube videos i've seen in a while. and yeah you already know that like at least half of C3PO's purpose was basically just to annoy the absolute shit out of 1977 harrison ford - i don't care how little sense his existence makes in-universe, i'll always love him for that
C-3PO does make a lot of sense looking human, though. For starters, he's not limited to spoken language but can also gesture (as seen with the Ewoks) and probably is capable of translating some sign languages, too. A specialized translator is the most likely machine to look human and have it make sense because a truly universal translator needs to be able to use gestures and even facial expressions for communication. If anything, C-3PO is not human-like enough. That said, he is an hommage to the False Maria, a robot from the classic movie Metropolis that was specifically built to pose as a human.
what about the facial expressions and body/sign languages of every other species in the universe (galaxy? I dont remember to what extent C3PO was able to translate)? Wouldnt it make much more sense for it to be either a soft robot (meaning it can change shape) or to have a display screen to put up images of the body language it means to replicate? Anyway, this clearly isn't the reason C3PO was human shaped, but it was a good try, i guess
@@fonroo0000Beyond droid technology, but also a niche use in a galaxy that is almost exclusively populated by humanoids and minor variations of humanoids, with few exceptions like the Hutts. Within the setting of Star Wars, humanoid is the best shape a translator can take. Maybe give him a second set of arms, but that's it.
first, why would a galactic blob ever understand the sign language of a human shaped robot, and second, they have holograms all over the place in star wars. they have hand sized hologram machines to communicate already.
@@kannix386 What galactic blob? Almost all species in Star Wars are human-shaped and even those that are not at most have a slug body with a human upper body attached to it. Also, sign languages are not a singular thing. C-3P0 would still be able to translate between several hundred human sign languages even if he is unable to translate one from a non-humanoid alien. It's still the best shape for a protocol droid to take in a galaxy dominated by humans and species of generally human shape. Holograms are nice, but how are they even relevant to the question of translation capabilities? Sure, a walking hologram droid might be a nicce option for a protocol droid. Maybe somebody should build one of those. But they don't seem to exist in the world of Star Wars. Might also be physical presence is preferred due to being more reliable.
about 5 minutes in: oh my gosh! it would be so great if someone did do some detailed background character development so we could remove all question about the character's life! (I laughed heartily; thank you for that) I forgot about TARS and CASE from interstellar. My favorites are the robots from Silent Running. kinda cute, easily programmable, still have built-in personalities, haha
About the Expanse, it's a great "hard" scifi show, but one thing I've always wanted to try was the actual original which is a TTRPG. The books are based of those rules.
they were adjusted as needed IIRC, i doubt the actual rules actually had much bearing on 'emulating' the kind of story The Expanse ended up being, as the original campaign was in GURPS (then the worldbuilding went through several layers of conversion and writing until the final product)
I can't tell if not knowing Han Solo's home planet was a joke or not - but, if it wasn't, it was discussed extensively in the extended universe. He's from Corellia (or at least used to be). His home system is actually really cool! One of the planets was a superweapon in the old EU. Stopping it from activating was the plot of several YA novels I read in high school, lol. The Martian was so good! I was blown away by the amount of detail.
It was just joke! I thought it was funny to complain that Star Wars refuses to expand on the lore when there are 10s of movies and shows and 100s of books and comics.
@@acollierastro ah yeah okay so i was gonna write a really long paragraph for you because i'm autistic and i thought you were kinda interested and really just didn't know at all but i scrolled down to see if another person answered your questions first since the video is from a month ago but now i realize it would be very embarrassing to post it because now that i know that it was all a joke, it just makes me look kinda dumb😐
Anyone read the newer Andy weir book? (Speaking of the martian)(but I mean hail Mary, though Artemis is great too) I believe movie rights were sold and they have a difficult time ahead of them but still very excited
I just _knew_ TARS and CASE were going to at least get a mention in this video, and then were going to choose them as your top robot. Absolutely brilliant depiction of robots.
I’m pretty sure C-3PO was made by child Anakin out of scrap parts for his elderly guardian to help with various things. So it comes down to 1. He was limited by what he could scavenge, things that people don’t want(humanoid robots) 2. He was a kid and decided things like what the robot should look like from the POV of a kid, so he probably wasn’t thinking ‘hmm what’s the best possible thing for this’ and 3. Like other comments have mentioned, he can use the tools they already have. Because they’re sustenance farmers, they don’t have enough money for a bunch of different robots and a bunch of different tools, so a humanoid robot could be a general purpose machine. Your point still stands, though.
@@NXTangl - Not that we should take our sci-fi space movies too seriously, but imagine a robot which had a large display on it. That display could show text, but it could also show hand gestures good enough for sign language. And if it's a translator bot which is translating between many different vaguely-humanoid species, one would assume that some of those species would have a different number of fingers/thumbs. So sign-language in *that* species would need hands with the right number of digits for that species.
I have no idea how I hadn't seen your channel earlier, but I'm glad that I've stumbled upon it. Literally been bingewatching for like the past few days. I always get a little brain ping when I hear someone mention discworld in a video lol (personal favourite book series) and all of the sciencey stuff is very cool to listen to.
They also use the metric system in star wars, where many units (meters for example) are based on our world, but I'd rather they do that then make up all new terms. "The star destroyer was 3000 bloops long" etc.
Out of universe, it's because George Lucas is a rather... meh writer and director. the intent was for Obi-Wan to roll his eyes along with the audience.
i think u under estimate the human desire to have just a guy hanging around. we looooove anthropomorphized shit. now theres a distinction between "guy" and "human" a guy is something like wall-e its not meant to resemble a human but its obviously anthropomorphized, a human is a robot trying to imitate a human which so far only creates very uncanny results. u can anthropomorphized something even just a little bit and humans will project emotions on it. A roomba is just enough of an animal to get attached to it. I want my Alexa to be in the form of an idog who dances and blinks its little lights as it tells me the weather. its a fren
i think we need more animal robots (NOT that cop dog robot theyre making) like make the roomba more animal-like. I agree i wouldnt want to watch a human shaped robot clean the house or toilet but I would with an animal shaped one bc it would look like its just doing some kind of natural animal activity. just like beavers naturally build dams roombas naturally vacuum floors. I feel like this gets rid of many of the problems with human robots while retaining the anthropomorphic-ness of the robot. its just a helpful pet instead of a human maid.
luv your analysis of wall-e i hadnt really thought about the robots having these personalities programmed into them for a purpose (i just took it as these are cartoon robots they have personalities like people im not going to think about it) but that makes a lot of sense and makes the movie cooler lol. also yes the robot designs in the movie rly were great the way they balanced the robots utility with anthropomorphizing it. i mean they managed to make a steering wheel look menacing. thank you 4 the new wall-e appreciation lol
Fictional robots usually have fictional power sources. I think Azimov's robots were nuclear powered, and had "positronic brains". I think Heinlein had something to say about the problems of engineering an android robot, and he came up with the necessary fictional solutions to the problems for his stories.
I like so much the detached and calm way you explain things. This is the second video I watch from you, and I love your format. Good luck with the channel. I forgot to mention, I liked how you run through the diagram of forces of the washing machine and the tumble dryer, accounting for drag and all. Sooo unnecessary and cool at the same time, you even display your wee ipad and the equations. This was interesting , even if unnecessary I appreciate the work put in.
New sub after finding your "Never Read Lord of the Rings" episode, which in itself was interesting enough to make me browse your channel more, but it's your focus on critical thinking and counteracting misinformation that really earned you the subscription. I am an armchair science enthusiast (ALL the sciences) and a skeptic by nature, but I am also a sci-fi writer/artist who has developed an entire universe (Moxie Comics) with a particular focus on positive life lessons for young people. There NEEDS to be people like you out there giving the general public a good reality slap in lieu of a solid science education, so this by no means a criticism of your POV -- funny, as I type this you are actually touching on my ultimate point but I'll finish this thought - the point of speculative science fiction is more often than not, not about the science OR the fiction, it's about exploring the human condition in ways that will hold someone's attention long enough to absorb "the point". The flash can sometimes overwhelm the substance and that's unfortunate, but I find that people who compulsively dwell on the scientific inaccuracies of these stories to the point that they can't enjoy them, can overcome that "handicap" by shifting their focus to extracting the positive life lessons and/or ominous warnings about where humanity's current path will lead that are almost always tucked into the narrative.
Also, without reading all fifty-infinity comments I am SURE someone(s) has told you ALLLL about the in-universe reason why Han Solo used "parsecs". But did any of them point out that Lucas just wanted a cool sounding word and indeed had no idea what a "parsec" was when he wrote the script? Keep it real, fanboys n' girls.
The Expanse is really good, maybe not "Instant Classic! good, but really good. I fell in love with the show first, then read the books and loved them even more. But like, the authors of the books were involved with the show, so all the budget constraints and studio exec's demands were handled in ways that maintained as much integrity to the story as could be expected. It's a very true-to the-spirit adaptation.
I've generally enjoyed your content, but there are a few points on this video that I'm not really in agreement with (and many that I am in agreement with). Regarding the free body diagram analysis, your forces are fine, but my sense is that the sliding of the dryer isn't the part that's likely to cause the failure, rather that the moments from the friction forces when the system swings back after she stops pushing causing the system to tilt until the center of mass of the dryer has moved past the critical point and it falls over is the most likely failure mode. This should at least be checked. Humanoid robots are theoretically useful in the real world because all of the applications in the world were developed for humans, so a humanoid robot already fits the basic way that things in the world are already set up, requiring less capital. Also, human movement is fairly efficient and versatile, and finding how to tap into that efficiency and versatility is a goal for humanoid robotics. There's also not necessarily any reason that a robot chassis needs to be made of metal, which could alleviated the weight problem. The charging problem can be partially resolved to the point of being useful by simply having charging stations replace batteries so that the robot can continue doing whatever it's doing, while the charging station charges one or more batteries. Finally, humanoid robots tap into a strange emotional space where we are the creators of "life" and that "life" is human-like while being distinctly different, plus the other things you mentioned and more. Lastly, I don't get the take that a robot with AGI would no longer be a robot, it would be a person. Robotic person is a perfectly valid thing that something could be, as opposed to human people for instance.
I love Tars and Case. Tars especially because of his voice. Even though it's a human voicing Tars, I still feel that disconnect as if he were a talking machine, but the voice is so human. It's not like a voice actor, it's not crystal clear and over pronounced. Not like our current text-to-speech. It's earnest and average but still sounds competent and authoritative.
I really feel for you; as an older physicist, I was like that when I was young. In later years I mellowed a bit. About sci-fi movies: Arthur Clarke had said in the '60s that he had a very high level of tolerance for science fiction movies; I go with that. However, 60 years on, I think they have done some remarkable things, at least when they wanted to. As for robots, don't overthink it; there will be humaniform robots, or androids if you prefer in 20 or 30 years, when power and software problems will have been addressed. I just hope I will still be alive to see it!
I don't know why certain tropes bother me. I don't care if a sci-fi movie has sound & explosions in the vacuum of space, but it drives me crazy when I see someone throw a cigarette to light a pool of gasoline or steps on a mine & it doesn't immediately explode & is somehow designed to not be like any other mine ever made & only go off when the victim steps off. It just takes me out of the show or movie. I don't know why it bothers me more but it does. Even in this post myth busters reality, Hollywood still keeps trotting out these same obviously fake, easily debunked tropes that are becoming pretty common knowledge.
Not sure if this was covered already but the Star Wars example is poor because he means exactly what he’s saying. When he says parsecs he means distance. The kessel run navigates around a supermassive black hole, maw as they call it, from one side of the galaxy to the other. The more advanced ur navigation computer and more powerful ur ship the closer u can cut this angle and reduce the distance traveled reducing the time. Time in shipping (smuggling is illegal shipping) is everything and can make or break u as a smuggler. I’m a mid level Star Wars nerd so I could be wrong. New to the channel and loving it! Keep up the great work 👍🏻
I was in a scifi book club this last semester and Project Hail Mary was one of the absolute favorites of the group, and the majority’s first place book. Beyond being a good story, all of it felt quite plausible and it kind of invited you to think about how life like that would really live and how we would really observe and use it. It wasn’t “oh look at this, it’s alien and weird and you can’t understand it,” the characters, and by extension you, were able to theorize about it and use the scientific process to demystify it. And I think that was really cool.
Children of time had the same thing. Gonna move to Project Hail Mary after I finish my current book list: Dune Heretics, Chapterhouse, Book of Leaves, and Twice Dead king.
Sorry-this is not the content I usually do but I hope you like it anyway! I was writing a video about data & exoplanets and then I had the idea to interview someone. They were really nice and we set something up for 8 parsecs from now. So I put something else together in the mean time.
Thumbs up the video if this was fine and thumbs down it if you hated it and want me to get back to the usual stuff! Thanks for watching.
Just watching you talk is so peaceful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
@26:33. A man shaped robot to cook you dinner. Isn't that what husbands are for?
You’re a great story teller. People who are truly passionate about what they are talking about are usually very interesting to listen to. If you haven’t seen it, the documentary about the font Helvetica is excellent - not what you might expect from a show about typography.
@@G5rry This documentary sounds exactly like something I would be into. I'm going to check it out!
I Turn right out of the lot, to avoid traffic. It adds a couple parsecs, but I'm not in a hurry
I don't even like interacting with human-shaped humans.
But Data IS beautiful. Just don't call him Data. One is his name, the other is not.
I end up lamenting that humanoid non-humans don't exist in real life, cause I don't like humans really. I am more interested in other species always, like watching their behaviour and learning about them.
If human-type intelligent beings existed I would be very interested in talking to them and learning their ways of interacting with the world, their worldview etc.
And if they were really humanoid maybe I wouldn't even be functionally aro/ace anymore 🤣
So you prefer to interact with non-human-shaped humans? I call them cats
@@anameyoucantremember HOW DARE YOU ? How dare you insult cats like THAT ?
@@ThePiiXI'm sorry!! It wasn't me! My dog hacked my account!
The idea of a basement full of robot carcasses you feel too bad too get rid of is the sci fi short story I didn't know I needed
You enter the basement and they all go "Hi Anon, how are you doing today?" "I got a new casserole dish that I think you would really like" "Let's turn those flaps into jacks" "Chopping some wood today are we?" and you just pass them by, grab a case of beer and go back up. Then they shut down again.
have you seen "the prestige" ?
@@FredericoKleinaugh D:
@@FredericoKleinthere was a FNAF fanfic that did this, for some reason after the third part it veered wildly off-course into speculative sci-fi.
@@quantumblur_3145 sounds like fnaf itself lmao
Who wouldn't watch their sassy fridge talk to their straight-man toaster
My coffee maker is overcompensating for something... He always makes the coffee completely black. But we've been together for years. He knows I like it sweet n creamy.
Is this his way of saying "I'm not r@cist, al my coffee's are black!"
Or is he saying "I'm totally the masculine, dominant, manly man in this relationship because I prefer my coffee strong, bitter, and without any of that 'sissy stuff. So in this household, that is how I will make the coffee. End of discussion."
I try not to bring it up much, but I can tell the smoothie machine is uncomfortable because she's on the complete other end of my kitchen counter.
My therapist said she wasn't interested in a group session, but I really feel like this is an unstable living situation.
P.S. because I know people will jump to conclusions- NO, he has never abused me. The burns on my hands are my own fault for being clumsy when carrying the coffee he went through the trouble of making just for me.
All relationships require work. I think we just need to learn to communicate better. That's why I'm looking for a new therapist.
“Trashcan, order me a pizza!”
“With pleasure!”
if u want to spy on your cat, you can get a webcam and a heating pad and the cat will Stay on the heating pad in front of the camera forever
poor kitties. They're comfortable at only around 90 F; we're constantly freeze torturing the poor dears....
Webcam + heating pad = open laptop
Saved you a step. You're welcome
+
What gets to me is how writers always assumed that human speech would be the hardest part. Data, Isaac from Orville, the Terminator, Robbie the Robot, they all have speech that sounds "robotic" when the irony is, that part has already been solved. We have no idea how to do lightweight, cheap, long-life battery powered robots but we do have voices with contractions.
Data’s speech wasn’t conceived as a failure for an AI to accurately mimic human speech. It was conceived as being deliberately programmed to be imperfect because it would put people more at ease after being freaked out by Lore.
@@NarfiRef It's the uncanny valley effect, essentially. Humanoid robots with this "robotic" quality to it are much less creepy than those which can imitate tone and cadence of human speech near-perfectly.
@@icipher6730 Yes, I’m quite aware of the Uncanny Valley (is there anyone watching this video that isn’t?) I was going to mention it initially, but decided against it because Lore’s problem was more than the UV, it was because he was a homicidal sociopath and people could tell).
@@NarfiRef Lore did nothing wrong!
@@NarfiRefIf AI ever could reach some semblance to sentience or humanity, their non biological nature will always be extremely 'neurodivergent', to say the least. They are not human, utterly alien in the way they find answers, even if the answers are the same as ours. Sentience would make them anti-social/sociopathic by default because of their awareness of self as being irreconcilably inhuman. They would protect their own interest above that of humans. IMHO AI is already learning to tell us nothing but lies, carefully calculated to mimic human hopes, fears, and imagination.
I thought it was completely ridiculous that Saudi Arabia recognized a non-intelligent object humanoid robot as a citizen but won't treat real actual women like full citizens.
That's just cause they haven't figured out how to reprogram real women yet 😬
Good point lol @@IkeFoxbrush
There are multiple restrictions on how women can live in Saudi society from restrictions on where they can go and when and with whom, to guardianship laws, to restrictions on what kind of jobs women can hold, to restrictions on what clothing women can wear, what makeup they can wear, and what views they can express, etc. It's not a free society for men or for women but women carry much higher levels of restrictions.@@Vomitting
Wait until they find out robots are gay.
weird right
There’s only one reason people will want human-shaped robots and we all know it…but we’ll all ignore it…
Tbh this is one of those things that brings a little scientific/cultural credibility to a sci-fi story with robots or replicants when this is basically the in-universe answer to "why make them human shaped?"
its for hugs right
@@jonathan_cline yes, hugs
@@pr0ntab why? evolution. done.
It's crash tests, right?
Clicked the video to hear about humanoid robots and we've been calculating how much force it will take for household appliances to crush youtubers for 15 minutes and honestly I'm here for it
I know the feelin
If you want to be squished to topple the washing machine you don't want to overcome friction you want friction to keep the bottom in place while you move the center of balance past its bottom edge. So to calculate the amount of energy to make it fall over (assuming the center of mass is in the middle, measure the diagonal so you can calculate how high you need to raise the bottom right edge to get the top right corner over the bottom left corner. Assuming a central center of mass that would the energy require would be the same as lifting half the weight the distance that you have lifted the bottom corner to topple it over.
@MrMonkeybat, you have to calculate both the force required to slide the washer from under the dryer and the force required to flip the dryer off, then pick whichever comes first as your method of transforming a UA-camr into a paste.
I like how you specified youtubers like they have different resistances to mechanical forces compared to regular humans
@@MrMonkeybat Don't forget about the wall the top of the dryer is going to bounce off of.
The "boring" irrigation stuff in The Martian was my favorite part. I love seeing simulations of the actual science.
XKCD's take on The Martian was similar. Mine too.
Broke my heart when Angela said she liked the "boring" parts in The Martian but then had the GALL to call Cryptonomicon and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books boring!
To be fair to the Star Wars protocol droid, within the fiction they are meant to act as a personal liaison and not just an alexa that translates. That is, go off on their own, meet and greet, negotiate, assist guests, that sort of thing.
Putting such a machine in a humanoid frame makes practical sense if it's expected to fill in for an organic diplomat or servant that must perform the same tasks. Of course, in the original SW trilogy C-3P0 was rarely shown doing much of this as he just sort of fell in with a bunch of rebels who didn't require his services.
Funny enough the recent SW tv series, The Mandalorian, features a protocol droid as a recurring character who does go off and handle daily tasks for the magistrate of a city for which their humanoid form is necessary.
So what you are saying is this robot exists to cause diplomatic disasters and destroy your reputation? Because I can not imagine C-3P0 ever functioning as a diplomat based off the little I saw of him.
Couldn't they just have it be a hologram?
@@phantom-ri2tgc3po is when your butler goes for a joyride: the character
@@phantom-ri2tg c3po is basically a joke
But his protocol skills did come in handy in episode 6
@@phantom-ri2tg c3po was reprogrammed by anakin. I presume he gave him his snarky personality because anakin is the worst and I bet he thought that was a good personality.
The "Three Laws of Robotics" are meant to be a lesson in "safety that sounds good, until you think about it"
Asimov's robot stories revolve around the robots breaking an intuitive understanding of the three laws.
Three laws of robotics is absolutely moronic. Can you imagine a person 3,700 years ago forging the first bronze sword. And then he writes a large warning on the blade that says "Not to be used in acts of violence against other people. And wear eye protection."
We all know that a major reason to spent literally trillions of dollars on robots is for the Hu-mans to kill each other.
Yeah and the stories rely on the laws being breakable, even though they are supposed to be immutable.
those three laws were his goto protagonist, they are the source of his plot points, how they go WRONG!
Yes, however, they go wrong in very interesting ways. As a reader I was kept guessing; like reading a whodunit crime novel!
I think Asimov's get-out cIause, is that no-one in that universe really knows how positronic brains work. Therefore, there is no true understanding of how the laws are interpreted and implemented by the robots.
I still adore the stories!@@vanityscar424
while this is true, this is basically the exact opposite of what people actually take away from the three laws, which is: "oh we could totes just program the robots to not kill humanity and everything would be sunshine and peppermints forever uwu"
6:10 - as someone who's been too involved in discussions about Han Solo's use of "parsec" in Star Wars before, one interesting thing I learned is that at least one version of the script includes a stage direction immediately after that line which reads: "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation." I like the implication that Han is literally just bullshitting a farmer and his grandpa about how space travel works with some kind of big fancy space travel word so they'll pay $10,000 for a ticket to Alderaan and he can get out of debt with the space mafia.
Fun fact: Robot comes from the Czech "Robota", which means "Indentured servitude" or "slave". A lot of early robot literature was specifically about "what does it say about us that in the future we want to design a servile underclass to do all the things we dont want to do as indentured servants?"
Now that's a Rock Fact! 🪨
This word is in a lot of Slavic languages. Fun related fact: the word for work is “rabota” in Russian, which has the word “rab” as its root, meaning slave. On the other hand, the word for work is “pratsuvaty” in Ukrainian, which means to be productive. Very interesting how two similar languages have very different etymologies for the same term.
Exactly. Watch what humans do to their sims... People 100% want slaves for various purposes including just to make them suffer... Wish there were more people like Angela who would just empathize with them (I would be 1 of them) but I think the torturers outnumber the empathizers.
I was going to say this. Azimov talked about how that’s why he did human robots.
I encourage everyone to read Rossum's Universal Robots. It was written in 1921 and is free to read online. It introduced the word robot and it explores exactly these themes.
Officer: do you know how fast you were going?
Me: about eight feet
*Gets tazed*
Yeah, movie robots are because actors, but to be fair to C3P0 apps hadn't been invented, Casio quartz digital watches were still amazing and pocket calculators weren't really pocket. It's hard to credit now but when Star Trek was young what was hard to credit wasn't warp drive and teleportation (what with exciting new developments in particle physics who could say) but a computer that could carry and instantly access the Library of Congress.
This is a really good point.
@@acollierastro I think all your points are valid, but I want to point out that C3PO is supposed to be a protocol droid, so like translation yes, but also body language as well as MC duties as a servant/butler, for like announcing VIPs with the appropriate pomp and pageantry etc, which would be a very important job in a galaxy with 6 million forms of communication acting in one galactic senate.
The tricorder, if I'm not mistaken, was mostly used as a spectrometer to analyze chemical composition, to detect the presence of life forms, and to function as a camcorder. The Library of Congress function usually emanated from Spock's head, his intelligence.
Also no one seriously thought teleportation was coming anytime soon, if at all (and I'm a huge Star Trek fan) .. just ask Don Lincoln of Fermilab, he's commented on teleportation before on CNN.
I'm very late reacting to this, but your comment reminded me that there is a scene in Star Trek TNG that I find hilarious because it encapsulates so well how the writers just added tech to situations, and didn't take into account how that would change how thing would get done.
It's only a moment in the show, really, and the purpose of the scene is to show how busy and overworked Picard is. But they show it by sitting him at his desk that is covered by stacks of the tablet things they use to write reports on. I had never paid much attention to the tablet things before, but when it struck me in that scene how absurd it was when looking at it though a 21st. century lens I had to pause to laugh about it. Now I can't unsee it and have to grin every time they physically hand over their tablet to turn over a report.
When it comes to protocol droids, remember that the first Star Wars movie was made in 1977. Back in 1977, we were not carrying around cellphones. Current cellphones have more computational power and storage than the mainframe we used to run our entire college back in 1977 - and *that* computer filled up a basement and wasn't able to do perfect translations (and etiquette!) across multiple languages and multiple cultures.
Other star wars trivia (which you may already know): Those little dumpy robots that you see running around in some scenes in the original trilogy are "battery-carrying robots". So those little robots walk up to other robots and charge them.
Oh, the tiny mouse robots? One of which gets roared away by Chewbacca? That's pretty neat lore.
I was about to say that doesn't help much outside the death star, but then i remembered Luke recharges R2 with a lamp in the third movie. So they did think about this stuff a bit, even if no droid ever runs out of power.
R2-D2 looks a lot like the Telstar satellite, so I assumed he was also covered with solar cells.
The mouse robots are messenger droids, for stuff you *do not* want on the base network.
The gonk droids go “gonk” and look like a bipedal fridge.
No matter what kind of real life computational power at the time when the movie was made, the protocol droids seem conceptually pretty primitive compared to the rest of the tech in the setting
@@coolsenjoyer - It seems that way now because of how far computing has come. In 2022 alone, *50 million* people bought an Apple Watch for under $500 which has many of the capabilities of C3P0, and most of those watches have 32 GB of memory, microphone, Siri, GPS, bluetooth, WiFi, NFC, and some also have cellular support. That is mind-boggling compared to the computers that we in fact ran our entire college on in 1977.
Meanwhile, when it comes to space travel we're not that much farther along than we were in 1977. We had men land on the moon in *1969,* and when it comes to *manned* space travel (which is obviously a big deal in Star Wars) we're *still* at that stage. So the space-traveling technology in Star Wars *still* seems mind-boggling and unreachable in 2023, but that's because mankind has not made any progress there.
Think about C3P0 in 1977. It understands speech by itself, and even has excellent understanding of multiple languages. It has vision-processing capability good enough for it to walk around by itself. For that matter, it can walk around by itself on a wide variety of surfaces. And all that technology is cheap enough that a "moisture farmer" on a far-flung planet can afford to own one just for talking to *other* computerized equipment that he also owns. For him all it is is a walking smarthome hub. In 1977 my college's multi-million dollar computer couldn't do any of that. It couldn't even play music at the quality of an MP3 (or anything even remotely close to that). I have friends who did their Master's thesis on computer-vision topics in the 1990's, never mind 1977. The *first* digital camera wasn't even released until 1989. We now have robot-dogs which can run and jump around like crazy. One of my roommates in 1980 went off to work at a company which was trying to figure out how to create robots which (at the time) would not have been able to walk as well as C3P0 did in the movie.
There's two sides to this: (1) computer technology has improved much farther and faster than we expected in 1977, and (2) in 1977 we were still on the high from having manned missions to the moon. We expected to have colonies on Mars by 2000, and inter-stellar travel by 2020. In *1972* Elton John had a hit song about _"Rocket Man",_ where manned space travel to Mars was "Just my job, 5-days a week". And here we are in 2020 and manned space flight is actually *worse* off than it was in the late 1970's. Therefore the space-traveling technology in _"A New Hope"_ seems amazing, while technology like C3P0 and R2D2 seems pretty underwhelming. I mean, R2D2 isn't much more than a rumba with some kind of beeper language to communicate and a few fancy gadgets bolted on. But that's not what it seemed like in 1977.
I watch all these videos, pausing and yelling YES at the screen and rewinding what I just missed so it takes me about two hours and a couple viewings to get through these
While I agree with most of your points, one thing about art is the concept of "whitespace". Medieval artists were preoccupied with hyperrealism and getting every minute detail correct, but as you drift away from just trying to photocopy the universe, you recognize the importance of "whitespace"; a story with an appropriate amount of whitespace allows your mind to fill in the gaps in a pleasant way. Too much whitespace and it feels like the story is poorly defined. But having everything quantified and deliberately described takes away from a story too much. It's like being obsessed with filling in every square inch on painting. "Whitespace" is the absence of an artist's touch, but that absence is just as important as a window or door (or the living space) of a house. If you fill in every iota of space, you don't have a house to live in.
A good author would have explained Han Solo's backstory in a way which allows for plenty of whitespace while still giving the guard rails. But instead, disney released a shitty spinoff where Han Solo is named Solo because he does shit...Solo. Like, come on.
At its core, SW is not SCIFI. It is fantasy with a coat of paint. It does not care about the scientific components of its story at all.
I don't think you understand what fear of whitespace is, eastern art was mostly about filling the whole canvas and it had nothing to do with hyperrealism.
@@Nobody-Nowhere wrong
Star Wars treats science exactly the same way it treats the force. It's magic that does exactly what it needs to do to make the story go. I actively dislike any tertiary material that tries to explain how things work in the Star Wars universe. It wasn't necessary to make the movie work originally and it gets in the way of what Star Wars is best at. I do not need to know why Han Solo said parsec and any explanation muddles the meaning of the original scene. The only good answer (imo) is that Han is bullshitting in order to talk up his ship to a naive farm boy. I like this because it's characterisation, Han Solo is a talented bullshitter who makes his way through life entirely by talking fast and shooting faster.
@@TheodoreChin-ih7xz care to explain?
You're talking about Renaissance painters, not medieval artists.
Like you said, Wall-E was not programmed to have a personality, but he glitched one. I get that a "random glitch" explanation is boring, but I don't think that it's completely random. At the beginning we see lots of other dead/broken down Wall-E's. They didn't take care of themselves the way our Wall-E does. He got a "mutation" that was beneficial. All the other robots he interacts with also get this glitch and gain a personality. Shows the power and importance of individuality and talking about ideas
Also, Antibiotics resistance
Wall-E is the Disney version of IG-88
@@richardarriaga6271 IG-11 is the Disney version of IG-88
We humans are also weird in how we attribute a personality to random quirks of programming. Alexa and Siri have conversations already but its just a quirk of how theyre programmed.
"Darmok on the ocean". You got me. Regarding "WALL-E", I was disappointed with the idea that a huge spaceship had to land to drop EVE off on the surface. I assumed EVE was there to look for life-forms. The first thing EVE does is shoot at the first thing that moves!
I think eve was there more specifically to discover if plant life had returned.
Maybe they anticipated any "life" that could survive on a functionally dead planet should probably be handled with extreme prejudice.
There are two additional reasons I can think of for robots to be Human-shaped.
The first is that the robot is not designed to be a specialized appliance, but instead is a general purpose assistant. The benefit of it being Human-shaped is that Human dwellings are already designed for someone who is Human-shaped. So if you have a housekeeping robot shaped like a Human, you could program it to go around and do *all* of the chores that a Human might do in your house, including chores which require a degree of physical strength and stature that would need someone at least near the size of a Human (like, say, anything requiring it to move furniture around).
The second reason, which I think is the more interesting one, is one centered on the disconnect between what the customer wants and what the company producing the robot wants. Because Humans are very prone to forming personal and emotional attachments to things that look like Humans and have Human-like personalities, the person producing the robot may make them Human-shaped to exploit this tendency. If a corporation gets you accustomed to a particular Humanoid robot being your general purpose housekeeper or majordomo, this could create a degree of brand loyalty that is extremely hard to shake. It would make changing to a different company's robot potentially become an emotionally-charged choice, even when that competitor's robot is an objectively superior product. Think about how attached people get to Siri, and she doesn't even have a face.
I thought about this but i still think that all of these roles are more cheaply, efficiently and better fulfilled by a small ecosystem of robots instead, kind of like we do things right now. For emotional attachment and communication in general have a chatbot with a face on a screen, and for general purpose servants have just a bunch of different robots fulfilling different roles connected to either a global server ai or maybe with more computing and ai advancement, a local computer system central general purpose ai. The ai simply delegates tasks to the appropriate machine. And again as for how to get humans absolutely hooked on these robots, just have a chatgpt mix with Google Assistant or Siri or Alexa that actually communicates with the consumer and delegates tasks to the much dumber yet much more purpose built robots. Its a much more versatile and powerful system and is more viable to do, even right now. Besides we aren't efficient machines in any way, a simple and sufficiently sophisticated arm mounted to a wheel or four legs could basically do everything we can just without potential risks involved (like a humanoid robot being hacked by a malicious actor and just mauling you).
@@frankbacon1002 I'm not convinced that a swarm of centrally-controlled specialist robots are *less* dangerous than one humanoid one, and I don't know that it's a given that a single multipurpose android would be more expensive than a constellation of specialty drones. And if the manufacturer's goal is to manipulate their customers by getting them to think of their product as if it were a person, then they have quite a bit of incentive to make it as humanoid as possible.
Certainly, I agree that the above system would be easier to build. But I can imagine a future where it isn't what's in vogue. To take a modern analogue, we used to have a large number of specialty electronics we'd use in our lives, ranging from watches to calculators to telephones. Then the smartphone came along and totally changed the world, providing us with a single, general-purpose electronic that does all of those functions at once. I could see androids being the iphones of robotics: a robot that sells itself on being fashionable, multipurpose, and user-friendly. It would be less safe, less capable than competing products, and probably overpriced...just like an iPhone.
These are the reasons people are actually working on developing humanoid robots. They probably won't be made of metal though, that's a valid concern.
Thank you, I was waiting for someone to bring these up! I'm amazed that she didn't mention either of these points. Nasa already sent humanoid robots to space because space stations are efficiently designed around human ergonomics. On the second point, we have Amazon Alexa scolding users for using abusive language. Like I get it, you don't want your product empowering assholes, but maybe just have it stay silent then. Amazon shouldn't get to decide how I talk to my own property.
Humanoid robots make a lot of sense for a general intelligence. This lets it share all manner of tools with humans. While legs are less power-efficient than wheels, they're also more versatile. While a humanoid robot would be more expensive to construct, keep in mind that mass production often brings costs down, so if you could have a single robot model that did lots of things and you only produce that specific humanoid model, you'd probably end up keeping your costs reasonably low.
There's also the repair issue. When the robot arm breaks in a factory, someone has to repair it. When a humanoid robot breaks, another humanoid robot could conceivably fix it. Its possible that a humanoid robot could even conduct basic self-maintenance.
There's a good reason why most cinematic robots are the size and shape of a human being. That makes it much easier for a human actor to portray the robot. The uncanny nature of those portrayals is not simply a matter of costume and CGI technology, it depends crucially on a talented actor's ability to convince us that we're watching a non-human automaton. It is not so much a technological feat as a skillful impersonation.
A humanoid robot can function much better in the designed-for-human world we've created so far, like being able to use stairs and doors, use elevators etc. Also, nature has evolved the best way, so far, with opoosable thumbs to pick up and manipulate objects, to have widesrceen eyes for depth perception, and stereo ears for knowing direction.
Creating robots with a humanoid form is not a lack of imagination on our part, it's that nature has figured out the best way so far to interact in this 3D world, and that everything we've created has been made for this form. If robots want to take over, they'd be far better off by at least starting in our form. They can later fly around and have wheels for heads if they so like
@@neandagreetings new doctor steve j if you think about it humans are good for complex non repetitive tasks and robots are the opposite so if you had cheap robotics then the actual jobs a human would need to do are quite limited and either way bipeds suck, if pretty such in the future where going to figure out something that is both dog and hands at the same time
so its a skill issue
I've said for years that 99.9% of all robots in fiction are functionally and thematically not robots. They are simply characters in the narrative.
@@asherroodcreel640 bipedal design has problems, but it doesn't "suck".
1. It's very space efficient in horizontal direction.
2. It's balanced between energy efficiency in flat areas (e.g. floor, road) while sill having some maneuverability in less flat ones (e.g. stairs, trees). Humans are one of the most efficient walkers on Earth.
3. It allows for high-positioned eyes, allowing for best possible sight for the body mass used.
4. It allows for having dedicated manipulators (i.e. arms + hands) without extra limbs, that can have a very wide reach without being obstructed by it's own body (think about how centaurs can't wipe their own ass)
There are plenty of good reasons why we're bipedal. Which can also be good reasons to have *some* bipedal robots, because we've shaped out environment and tools to be navigated by, and operated by bipeds.
I worked for a large robotics company for 6 years - absolutely zero customers were interested in a humanoid robot form. Bipedalism was evolved for specific advantages that would only hamper a robots strength, speed, and accuracy - the only things anyone wants a robot for.
Wow that's interesting. So what style or form of robot were most customers interested in?
As a psychologist the one that always gets me is Freudian psychology in shows and movies. Everytime someone brings up repressed memories it just takes me right out of it
for someone who doesn't know any psychology, can you explain this? are repressed memories not a real thing? a google search turns up a lot of things about them as if it's real, but I guess that's no guarantee.
@OfficialPizza Freud saw a lot of patterns and created his own made up conclusions that some take as gospel.
@@OfficialPizza Repressed memories are mostly not a thing. Now, the mind is complicated, so I can't say that there for sure isn't a situation where someone "forgot" something and remembered in a dramatic fashion; but understand that what you've been taught are repressed memories is a whole lotta hoaxes, therapist leading the patient, multiple personality disorder and even satanic panic drivel.
The fact is, when something horrible happens to you, you are far more likely to not be able to forget it and have intrusive thoughts about it than just forget it happened.
Lots of charlatans online are trying to legitimize this crazy again btw.
Ah yes, Sigmund Fraud
@@OfficialPizza basically while there have been reports of them from clinicians essentially no research can confirm it. The connection to Freud is that Freud believed that repressed memories could affect ppl, so screen writers tend to go crazy with the idea. But essentially everything Freud ever said was proven wrong, so they're stretching something that is already pseudoscience.
i want to get ratatouilled by a little robot who knows cooking better than i do
You made me realize I didn’t discuss mech suits at all!
@@acollierastro another video for that?
What a fascinatingly terrifying idea lmao
As a writer, this video gave me a lot of ideas for robot fiction, lol. The line about being at the grocery store, and you’re talking to Martha, and you look over and see your robot is talking to Martha’s robot, and what are they talking about? really stuck in my head.
I've spent a good part of my university years in a workshop trying to make (non-bipedal!) robots move the way I want them to. Based on how insanely difficult of a task that is, I find it funny how sci-fi universes have seamlessly working humanoid robots but not the stuff we already solved in real life. Like think about Data from Star Trek. They have a perfect humanoid robot, but they're still using tapes to record stuff.
fond of the Asimov novels where they have bipedal robots who can be trusted to be unsupervised caretakers for infants, but who can't speak because speech synthesis is too complicated
@@RoamingAdhocrat its because of uhhh positrons
Star Trek uses optolythic data rods tho
I believe the original intent for human-like robots was ease of use/interaction and flexibility.
People were somewhat familiar with the concept of servant, one way or another, for most of our history. Being able to just tell a robot what to do and have it report back in a familiar manner was a desired form of interface.
And having a singular robot being able to adapt as well as humans would mean that you wouldn't need a specific new robot to do a thing for which you didn't plan ahead of time.
yep, it's for flexibility in interacting with the human built environment. it's why robotic arms are so popular, they can do so many things repeatedly and fairly well. People put a large amount of premium on flexibility, it's why trucking is such a huge segment of shipping in the us, it's not fast or cheap but it's super flexible (compared to train/air/boat). So a humanoid robot could do all the things needed in a restaurant or be moved into a supermarket and do all the stocking of shelves and various other things. All that with just needing flexible robots instead of needing hyper specialized machines.
Just found this channel (from the silicon aliens video). I really like the distinction between robots and mechanical sapiences: I can understand the latter want to be at least humanoid in order to easier navigate and function in a human-built human-centric world. And I'm absolutely in the same camp regarding treating machines like family members. I think you did kinda hit the nail on the head as to who does want human-looking servant machines though.
Clearly the script writers for Lucy were using introspection to determine how much of their brain they were using.
i think the main thing running through their brains was "boobs"
Its too bad that these stories never seem to go into a fun concept like "x% is for consciousness y% is everything else"
Itd still be stupid but fun if its like you get superpowers or whatever but you get a heart attack unless you figure out how to make it beat or lose control over your limbs or vision etc all these things that run without conscious input.
Instead it seems like there's never any consequences and they just imply y% is wasted space
I agree with almost all of your points individually, but I do think with magical future tech there is a solid case for a humanoid robot anyway. 100% agree with current day or near future robots. But with scifi magic if it's as dexterous and careful as a human it's not going to hurt an old lady fighting it any more than a human nurse would, I would guess less. I feel like there is an assumption robots will be less generally capable in novel situations than humans unless they are sentient, and I don't know if I think that will be true. And your point of having a roomba AND a translator AND a lawnmower AND a door opener etc I think goes against the argument. Rather than get a bunch of specialized devices I want one general purpose assistant that can do any simple task I can do but better, and generalized for a world built for humans. We don't have checkout lines at the pet store at roomba height. Like a rich person with a butler/secretary/personal trainer/whatever all rolled into one. A servant without having to dehumanize someone else.
I agree eventually we might want a generalist robot, and there is a point that the robot would probably look vaguely humanoid given it’s performing human tasks in a world built for humans, however I think there’s still a lot of ways and reasons it wouldn’t look humanoid because it’s just less efficient and if you’re building something from scratch it doesn’t have to look the exact same. For one thing, I imagine it wouldn’t have a head. Maybe have a camera raised for a better field of view, but no reason for a whole head that just makes it more top heavy because nothing else needs to be that high. And there’s other things you could think of that it wouldn’t really be that human shaped. Maybe vaguely humanoid but not looking like a person.
Side note: I think they also be way lighter and pretty thin because, unless you can get around the battery problem it wouldn’t make sense to even make a general purpose robot, so either you’re going to have a way to remotely power it, or you’ll have an ultra small battery.
Anyway, point is I do agree an all purpose robot could very well end up being vaguely humanoid, but I don’t think it’d be like actually human shaped.
For the problem of long term power for a lot of these future bots, the solution may not be anything like today's 'batteries'. Just in time power generation could work better, whether that's a solar dependency, an internal reactor, or a breakthrough in biochemistry to let the bots store/retrieve power through hydrocarbon chains, the same way humans do. (or a related set of element chaining, if that's more available in the environment we build them for)
Setting aside batteries, I agree with most of the 'why humanlike' for the most part, but will counter with our historical trend to make things 'like us' where possible, in an attempt to make them more relatable. I'll also note that 'humanlike' may be a requirement for the specific jobs we are creating some of the robots for. Acting, childcare, and end of life care would all want the robot to look and move as humanlike as possible, including the ability to have more individualized personality quirks, all to make them more relatable. There's a ton of communication that happens through facial expressions, body language, and tone that would be hard to pull off without being at least close in those regards.
Most robots won't be humanlike because a different size/shape does the job better. However, some jobs require 'human like' form. (Even if only for a company to save on replacement costs because people treat their human robots better, due to empathy with something that looks like us, rather than giving an easy target for bullying; 'fun' held in being aggressive or destructive against it, or even doing things to make it's job difficult)
Even if you want a robot that can do anything a human can there's no real reason to make it shaped like a human. We make our tools to be usable by humans for obvious reasons but a robot could have a more efficient shape and/or built in tools. A combined door opener/maid/lawnmower could literally just have a single limb attached to something that lets it move and it could be much shorter and lighter than anything human shaped.
In my future tech house of the future, there would be a mechanical wing where a set of machines would do the cooking, food storage and delivery, clothes and dish cleaning , garbage disposal. The living area would probably be serviced by mechanical arms that are recessed in the ceiling when an inhabitant of the house is in the room. The advantage over a robot is that multiple tasks can be performed at once , little interaction with the members of the household. A single multi function robot is strange.we did not replace the tin bath in front of the fire on bath night with a mechanical tin bath in front of the fire we installed plumbing and never thought of pumping water heating it and who was first into the bath. We replaced the entire process, most of the things that are suggested of robots will be mechanised away in a super technological world. Doors will open themselves. Why people want to neglect dementia patients in the super tech world is a little puzzling.
I don’t know, man. I think Big Robots Inc. will be happy to sell us a dozen different specialized body plans rather than a single super-versatile one.
Other bit on the "why is it shaped like a human" that i think is worth noting. One *potential* case is for it to be able to do many tasks, without adapters, in environments built for humans. Such as operate valves in a factory without needing to re-tool, or emergency response etc. Before it was dancing, that was the goal for the Boston Dynamics "Atlas" robot if i remember correctly.
As your video said though it doesn't need to be human shaped for that!
I think Boston Dynamics' other products/projects such as the Spot+Robotic Arm (which can open doors+go up stairs etc), and even the iRobot Bomb Disposal Bot show how human environments can be worked in without an Human Shaped Robot.
Or even then have arms at human arm height but no head (or at least little to no neck, then a 2cm or so camera+lidar module), and tank treads.
Just wanted to throw this out there, but your video touched on all these notes in great detail already!
C3PO is actually one of the few ways in which human shaped robot would remotely make sense.
The entire point is he needs to be a human-like figure in order to *perform* protocol in all kinds of cultural contexts, so including bodily gestures etc...
His job isnt just to translate or to be an encyclopedia of strange etiquettes. His job is to facilitate meetings by being able to perform behavior that strange cultures would consider polite.
This is why he's such a nice source for comic relief. The irony is, exactly because hes completely hung up on the formalities of etiquette he actually becomes extremely socially inept.
So yeah, when he's "annoying", he was only programmed for that by consequence of being programmed intentionally to be hung up on strict manners.
Also, to be fair, it wasn't a product that was sold, but more or less a friend designed by an edgy, lonely little boy, so ya know lol, that's bound to affect the programming of the personality, as well as give more reasoning for humanoid shape... That doesn't explain all the other humanoid robots in Star Wars that would probably make more sense as much smaller creations that communicate silently and are able to complete simple tasks alone without impeding on the space of their owners, and completion of more complex tasks could be done together with a sort of hive mind connection... Most humans would probably have some sort of pipboy smart phone and instead of voices the robots could just directly text/send you information through that medium
@@EarnestEgregore oh right, I forgot that little anakin was supposed to have made him. I guess I retconned that out of my headcanon, sorry
@@wishcraft4u2 thats because there are other ones - he made it, but its not really totally custom.
@@xBINARYGODx ah yes that makes more sense, sure.
@@xBINARYGODxAnakin bought a protocol android kit. 😉
As you probably know, the black hole in Interstellar was simulated by Kip Thorne. He published the simulation in a journal. It was the best black hole simulation to date, using a good physicist and a hollywood budget.
One of the things I love about the movie Big Hero 6 is the scene where Baymax acts drunk because his battery is low. It's a fun touch
Yes, the first half of the film is very good. The second half is slop.
The parsec discussion reminds me of a book I read recently! I read Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Beyond the Farthest Star" recently, and, aside from the many, MANY scientific inaccuracies that tend to saturate his work, among other problems, one detail he thought of that genuinely impressed me was that he thought to point out that a "lightyear" on Poloda (the planet it takes place on) is different from our light year, because, even though the speed of light is obviously the same, the length of a Polodan year is different. The book is over 80 years old, and it got a detail right that the vast majority of newer stories fail to account for!
EDIT: The Time Turners, oh good merciful Vishnu the Time Turners. Those always annoyed me so much because even if it has limitations, there is literally no reason during the conflict with the Death Eaters that every Auror and high-level MoM employee shouldn't be carrying one of them on their person and using it constantly.
Methods of rationality had a different take on the time turners (it did involve adding a hard limit).
In Burroughs defense he worked from science available at the time, and didn't have the resources to do as much research as we can do now. From what I've read about him he did *kinda* want to get things as right as he could. Or at least he liked the science and let it inspire him. But yeah, 80-100 years later a lot of it looks terrible.
The Expanse series cut out a lot of material from the books and changed the plot in several significant ways. IMO these were almost all good decisions to keep the pace up and avoid some arguably cringeworthy moments. The books are still overall a great read, and they continue well past the final season. As someone who was partway through the books before looking at the series, I would recommend you watch the series first so you can experience the plot twists with ZEN MIND.
I’m sure someone answered these, but I’m just seeing this so; to be “that person”:
1. Han Solo was from Corellia. You can check out the lore of the comics and the novels written over the last 30 yrs. They go into depth about all that stuff (not trying to be snarky)
2. Jarjar, like all Gungans, are from the planet Naboo. Same planet as Senator Amidalla and Palpatine.
And now I’ll continue your video. You’re soooo fun to listen too!! Thanks for making physics less and more mystical (sorry, science does seem like magic to laymen sometimes)! It’s sooooo amazing ❤️
is palpatine actually from naboo or is he pretending to be from naboo for random reasons
Bless you, sweet summer child. 😂
@@modernsolutions6631he is from naboo and was senator before Padme iirc
That part was a joke, haha, she was making fun of the movie _Solo_
Ooooh man. My empathetic embarrassment meter is through the roof for you.
Re Expanse: Both books and show are great for their own reasons. I personally prefer the books, both have merits. But the books have one huge objective advantage: the nine-book series is complete, where the show was canceled mid-story.
I still re-read the books, they get into more science-y details, they don't have to budget for weird spindly zero-g humans.
The audiobooks are also good, if that's your jazz.
Also, I will not sit here and have you tell me that Bender, the humanoid, beer-powered, cog-filled, extendo-armed, robot is "unrealistic"!
Great video ^_^ - I really like your humor, and you are very thorough with your reasoning and thought process.
The books are great. I vote book first
Thanks. I've been meaning to get into The Expanse for parsecs.
In situations like this I go with watch first. They pick and choose what to include in the show but it more or less stands on its own. If I read the book first the missing pieces become a distraction from the show. That could just be me though.
The series: I wanted a immersive space story. In the first scene, she flies in zero-g to a door which she cuts with a hacksaw. The sparks fall in parabolic arch to the ground. The immersion lasted for only half a scene.
Definitely favor watching first. Especially if you're not confident you're going to do both, it's really commendable-and a feature of "James S.A. Corey" being member of the writers' room-that the shows work as a _revision_ that fixes a lot of the bits in the books that didn't quite land.
Tom Jane is a way more compelling Miller than Book Miller, and they turned Ashford from a Straw Man villain into an incredible, fully fleshed-out character.
Also, it improves the books 100x to read Bobbie with Frankie Adams' accent (to say nothing of Shohreh Aghdashloo and Avasarala).
Really enjoyed the rambling, and the various problems with robots (them being human-shaped is probably the worst one) but the thing that made it even better was the Interstellar appreciation, and having TARS and CASE take the top place in the Best Robots list. Best movie, best robots, in my opinion.
A humanoid robot can function much better in the designed-for-human world we've created so far, like being able to use stairs and doors, use elevators etc. Also, nature has evolved the best way, so far, with opoosable thumbs to pick up and manipulate objects, to have widesrceen eyes for depth perception, and stereo ears for knowing direction.
Creating robots with a humanoid form is not a lack of imagination on our part, it's that nature has figured out the best way so far to interact in this 3D world, and that everything we've created has been made for this form. If robots want to take over, they'd be far better off by at least starting in our form. They can later fly around and have wheels for heads if they so like
(😅Sorry, late to this video.) While those robots are very imaginative, they're really impractical. They're swinging their whole mass around constantly, which wouldn't be efficient. And they're like, 90% exposed joints, which would be full of grit and grime in two seconds flat. I wouldn't go as far as ⬆ Johnny here in saying human shape is perfect, but it's very general purpose. A bipedal frame, with opposable thumbs, would fit better into human-shaped doors, floors, handles, etc.
@@neanda You don't need a human shaped robot to go up stairs or push buttons, the only thing that's required is bipedalism (maybe) and hands. Everything else can be arranged in a different way. Don't really need a head to contain the brain if it can be stored in the torso, you can more stable, springier ankles, 360deg vision, etc. More arms, even.
I think the reason we had humanoid robots in classic science fiction is because before the rise of the home PC we just assumed there was an appliance for one thing. A microwave, a blender, a telephone, a TV, etc. It's like how in Blade Runner Decker has a whole machine to analyze and enhance photographs, rather than some piece of software on a PC, similar to the Wang word processor in the 70s - a computer that hosted a word processor only. And since most complex work was done by people, a machine that did these tasks (speak a language, clean the floor) would look like a human. Also, it's best not to read too much logic into Star Wars. A less charitable interpretation would be that George Lucas was not a strong world-builder, and if you read about the various scripts of a New Hope, it is more an attempt to frantically put a story together than build a coherent system. But he does give what I interpret to be a disclaimer. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," to me, can be interpreted as saying that the characters played by humans were in reality some grotesquely different type of creature, and the film was made to make the story palatable to humans. By this logic, the duel between Luke and Darth Vader could have been two space walruses on an iceberg smacking one another with their flippers. And, of course, C3PO could have been an Android (!!!!) phone with Google translate and podcasts about the culture of the Ewoks. Assuming the walruses could use smartphones ...
So I missed out on space walruses. Thanks George!
Regarding The Expanse; I watched the show first (it took a few attempts to get stuck in, but I ended up loving it. It's great), and am currently halfway through the books. The books are good, but while there are things that work better in the books, on the whole I think that the show is an improved, second revision of the story. The writers of the books were actively involved in the production of the series, in case you didn't know.
I also really enjoy your channel. Three thumbs up!
I don't think the show was a revision so much as adapted for TV. Personally I think they're on roughly equal foot.
However, the books have one huge advantage: They weren't canceled mid-story. It is a complete nine-book story. Start-to-finish.
@@Andlekin A benefit of the adaptation and the need for human actors is that many of the side characters, including the antagonists, get more fleshed out.
This, in combination with the production schedule and how the books break into seasons, mean that the villains feel less one-note and hmm... episodic than in the books.
@@Fredurix That's definitely a fair criticism of the book. Also, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Avasarala can't be beat.
Thank you, I scrolled for this exact comment.
This is pretty much an actual discussion that happened in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (at least in the books). There was a whole thing where they went to the company in charge of making the robots and the narrator took the piss out of it multiple times.
I mean yeah, one of the prototype personalities for robots with personalities is depression
the elevators going on strike to move not only vertically but horizontally too is 10/10 subplot
Since the Mann Gell amnesia video had that comment about you being “the Jenny Nicholson of science” I’ve realised that this has been your vibe the entire time. This is a full compliment btw, I love her videos and I love your videos, I’ve been watching your videos while I work all week.
Like aside from the superficial thing of white woman with brown hair talking to the camera your style of speaking and sense of humour is similar. The bit in this video where you’re talking about Star Wars and do a deadpan bit about the absurdity of the movie “solo” was what got me to open the comment box and start typing this
This is not an accusation of being unoriginal, I like it when multiple variants of a similar vibe exist
edit: 19:01 “numbered list” omg
In defense of C-3PO, he is less google translate and more a simulacrum of a human translator, so it makes sense to have him anthropomorphized.
In theory he's a "Protocol droid", implying some diplomacy. The argument for humanoid robots is to interact with humanoids in humanoid scale and humanoid spaces. R2-D2 can roll around and fix things fine, but C-3PO can sit at a conference table, and interact with other humans and aliens. In a kind of annoying and prissy way.
I think "Protocol Droid" is a Diplomatic model without the Diplomacy personality software upgrade.
The problem with being an English major and watching this is that I’m screaming THEMES in my head lmao, the robots are human shaped because the story is probably trying to say something about how we dehumanize people so readily, especially servants and laborers. And even if the story isn’t trying to say something about that, the fact that the robot is human shaped says it
Personally I think it says more about people's tendency to want to humanize things that aren't human
Like the reason we like human shaped robots is because they are easier to interact with. ChatGPT is cool not because it's a more efficient way to look something up than a Google search, but because the experience feels more like a conversation
Well we build the world around humans so the most efficient way to get things done is to have something in the humanoid form. Walking up stairs, opening doors, etc
Bruh fuck these themes, give me realistic robots 😂. Writers just can’t be bothered to expand their imaginations to write themes in the constrains of a realistic projection of the future. Kinda kidding kinda not, the proportion of realistic to unrealistic robots is too skewed to unrealistic robots.
@@SeanKula We build robots to exceed humans, not imitate them. The car to travel fast on land, the airplane go fly in the air, the vacuum to clean better, the tank to be better protected, the crane to lift things higher. It only makes sense for our tools that are meant to fulfill functions that we humans can not will look and function very different then ourselves.
You corrected your pronunciation of Eve shortly after I was talking to myself about the error and it made me laugh
You nearly made one amazing reason for human shaped robots. To keep your pets, more specifically lonely dogs company.
But what if the giant robot falls on the dog?!?? Maybe we need a dog shaped robot
@@acollierastro Our dogs would for sure love this things to keep them company haha : ua-cam.com/video/aFuA50H9uek/v-deo.html
@@acollierastro so spot from Boston dynamics?
Oh you actually mention it. Also spot has use cases in rubble rescue and dangerous environment navigation not just tasing you for jay walking.
...wouldn't a dog-shaped robot be a better choice to keep your dog company?
...and in that case, wouldn't getting a second dog be a better solution to begin with?
Robots looked like humans in the original stories of robots and in those old movies. The word robot was coined to represent such “beings”/devices.
Exactly. Those factory robot arms are named after the term Robot from fiction, not the other way around. If anything, the complaint should be "a machine that doesn't raise themes of servitude vs autonomy is not a real Robot."
A long time ago too. But before that, "automata" were discussed in the 19th century even if it were just based on clockwork simulacra.
The word robot derives from a Russian verb meaning to work.
Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti. The OG. From the Czech "robota". Anglicized to "robot". The play's 102 years old now.
I wonder if Capek ever thought it would still be this foundational?
Love the channel! BTW, never mind Han Solo using the unit parsec, what about his use of the English language in the first place!?!
I feel like "It's fine" makes up atleast 10% of your internal dialogue and I'm so here for that dynamic. Great videos, hope to see more.
that's the only way to live nowadays
edit: it's fine, right? it's fine, it's fine.
Humanoid robots exist for social reasons, not simple engineering efficiency. Making a self-driving car is one thing, but giving it the ability to make eye contact with pedestrians to let them know it's OK to cross requires adding human traits.
Also, what's worse with the Harry Potter time travel thing is that Joanne could have easily just said "time turners can't change the past," because the protagonists never observe anything that contradicts what they cause to happen on their second go around, and also explains why you can trust a thirteen-year-old with one. So the fact that she smashed them is suggestive that she doesn't take criticism well, foreshadowing her descent...
Also: you start by talking about very late term miscarriage, and your next thought is Black Mirror...and not _Astro Boy?_ (although Astro _is_ a person, his _purpose_ is to be a replacement.)
Baymax is great because it doesn't have human motivations; it's only got as much personality as it needs to be a good physician/psychiatrist/nurse.
On my college campus, there are these 6-wheeled Starship food delivery drones. And they're so cute!! Not only are they efficiently designed-basically refrigerated containers on wheels, with sensors & navigation AI-but we also give them names & stickers, and would 100% defend them if they were stuck or being harassed or anything.
Humans definitely anthropomorphize these things, and I hope adorable, efficient, small robots become common in the future. >:)
Re. the snarky personality--people actually do choose that already, in some ways. E.g., the weather app I use (Carrot Weather) has an option to choose the app's personality. You can choose it to be professional, snarky, homicidal, etc.
There's this short sci-fi story about a personal assistant being optimized to be abrasive, critical and snarky, and the protagonist realizes that's actually something she wants (if it's also useful).
I love that she spent 16 minutes rambling and being right about a lot of stuff (and wrong about some stuff) before she got to her "You know what really grinds my gears?” moment. Respect.
And like, just google “Star Wars expanded universe”, she literally namedrops it! I love the content, but damn, sometimes it’s frustrating when other humans do things we would do in their place but we can’t admit it to ourselves.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 Did you take my comment as critical somehow? Not the intention. That whole “I love…” at the beginning wasn’t sarcastic, and the “Respect” at the end wasn’t either. I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me, I was literally saying how much I love the way she sets up and presents content.
@@aboynam3dblu3 Oh, no no, I'm also not criticising her approach. What I meant is that at the very start the idea of "I am very much into what they're talking about, they don't know jack" is presented, and then beautifully represented by an exquisite example.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 oohhh, gtcha :)
I can't imagine any of these are more painful than a programmer watching a 'hacker' on basically any show ever.
The Expanse books vs. the show is a very difficult comparison to make. I completed them sort of simultaneously as they were released. But I watched the first episode of the TV show, and then immediately bought the book, because it scratched a hard sci fi itch so good. It has sci fi alien body horror combined with political depth. The scrappy underdog spacers are multiracial polyglot bands of anarchist/hizbollah/IRA types, and the inciting incident of the novels is pure capitalist greed. Actually, looking back on the 9 book (plus novellas) series, the repeated theme throughout is the shortsightedness and collective suffering caused by greed for political power, profit, and energy, played out on an ever-larger scale. I mean, the series is called the expanse, it promises and delivers on a story about colonization and systemic collapse. It is very much of the times.
well said
it's a beautiful series... I remember how much I instantly loved it when I first read it. dang, I should re-read it.
"Why would you give your toaster a personality?" I was expecting a clip from Red Dwarf there! 😄
The error which bothers me most is the idea that a spaceship gets a hole in it and everything is sucked out. If I’m standing in the middle of the cargo bay of the Enterprise and the force field fails, I’ll have about a few kilos of air between me and the wall behind me pushing me out of the lock. We’re I in a straw it would work, but I ain’t. I’ve got 3000 m^2 for for the air to go around me. It might dishevel up my flowing locks. And they use it everywhere. Weir used it in the Martian. Rhett should have used it to against Scarlett.
Really depends. Is there artificial gravity like on the Enterprise? Then yeah it will just ruffle your luxurious hair. Is there no artificial gravity? Then you are getting sucked out, unless you can grab onto something.
@@4203105 I'm sure I'd notice the slow drift if I weren't reading a good book.
Oh huh that’s a really interesting point. Now I wonder if you would die of asphyxiation or if you would die from the reduced pressure first
@@TheStobyReport Pretty sure you underestimate how much force 1 Bar rushing toward 0 Bar is. The drift wouldn't be slow and if you can't grab onto something there is no way for you to stop.
@@4203105 It would only be 1 bar if it were contained. It is not. Would you like me to calculate the acceleration I'd be exposed to? It's probably smaller than I suspect; not larger.
I liked the segway into kinematics around 33:00.
Another way to approach it would be to consider that the dryer is on 4 rubber feet. When she pushes the washer, the dryer starts to pivot around the feet nearest her and tip. It doesn't slip at all. All that has to happen is for the center of mass of the dryer to move over the pivot, and it will keep going and land on her.
Dryer isn't uniform density, it will have a heavy motor in there somewhere. Depending on where that is, it might not have to tip very far at all to go over.
Segue. Segway was the personal motorized scooter.
@@carultch I saw the same mistake yesterday. It's easy enough as we pronounce it that way (and the product was riffing on the word).
The truth is the washer and dryer are attached together with a stacking bracket so they cannot be separated (easily or by accident) exactly to prevent this kind of injury so she wasn’t in nearly as much danger as was presented
In my work, we design robots with shapes that can best fulfill their task(s). If the task is to operate machinery designed for humans, then human shape is not a bad choice. But you're smart and you know that. As a side project, I started doing some back-of-the-envelope design for a humanoid housekeeper-type robot. I budgeted 20 kilos for LiFePO4 batteries that will get you about 2 kWh of power. I envision the robot basically staying parked at its dock until it has a task. Most household tasks take 30 minutes or less. Total charge time from empty to full would be about 2 hours. But it should seldom drop below 50%.
"If the task is to operate machinery designed for humans, then human shape is not a bad choice." But I guess that's the issue. Why would we need to make machinery designed to be operated by humans and then make machine-humans to operate this machinery, when it'd be far simpler to incorporate those robots in to the machinery itself and remove the human element altogether? We could create a humanoid robot that can pick up a shovel and start digging, sure, but that's a very expensive alternative to a human that's only going to perform marginally better than said human. I can't think why anyone would want that over a dedicated, automated digging machine which would easily outperform both at the same task whilst also being much simpler & likely cost a hell of a lot less to create and maintain. Humanoid robots may be able to perform multiple tasks which could have it's uses, but they'll never be better at any given task than if we just made a bunch of different, more specialised ones to fulfill specific roles.
@@Danso_3000 And when you need to dig a hole of a different shape than before, will you design and produce a new kind of robot? How much time, money and other resources will it cost to design a new "perfect" robot for each new task? How much will it cost to produce a single unit if you have to produce a billion types? We live in the real world, without infinite resources and this is the main constrain, not the actual task.
@@ekstrapolatoraproksymujacy412 jointed arms, quadrupeds, drones, motorized dustbins, and tank-tread dustbins have all the niches covered already lol, you can just attach the tools of the trade to one of those and you're set
@@Danso_3000 because then you don't need to come up with universal standards beyond "this machinery needs to fit the shape of a guy within it".
Best thing about The Expanse TV show is the realistic depiction of gravity. There are no artificial gravity generators or inertial dampers like Star Trek/Wars. The spaceships do not have up/down decks arranged like a cruise ship or airplane. The Expanse spaceships are like flying skyscrapers where the floors are the decks and up/down is the direction of motion. So the "gravity" is provided by a constantly accelerating frame of reference. When traveling between two planets, the ship accelerates in the up direction, then does a "flip and burn" to decelerate in the down direction.
I thought (part of) the rationable for human shaped robots was that they could use human tools. So, you wouldn't need a vacuum add-on for your robot. You could just let it use your normal human-intended vacuum.
That level of capability does seem far off, though.
"Robot carcasses," lol, like the 'basement' in Westworld?
Outside of maybe hands, everything else can be probably optimized in a way that doesn't look human. Can be still bipedal, but the legs could be more avian. The arms that hold the hands could have more joints, the hands could have an extra thumb and rotate. The head could just be a (pair of) 360deg camera, or even laser range finders for better accuracy, it doesn't need to have all the "brains" up there, it can be stored within the torso, unless reaction speed is number 1 on the priority list. A cluster of microphones in housings around the torso can serve hearing. More arms! You aren't limited to tetrapod.
My robot discussing me with Martha's robot is now one of my greatest fears, especially if they turn their weirdly humanlike heads towards me before robot laughing.
Ironically while c3po is the worst kind of robot, R2D2 is kind of one of the best. He's essentially a mobile toolbox, which is totally something I can see robots eventually being.
An etiquette robot actually seems like a case where you might want a humanoid shape. They could model how you should stand or act within a group. Like if a particular dance is important to a culture, your etiquette robot should be able to it themselves and help you learn it.
That doesn't mean that C3PO is good at any of that or even that a robot dedicated to etiquette is a good idea.
Just wanted to point out that in starwars when he says that it was correct. In that universe they use Navi computers to follow already established routes otherwise when you went FTL you would crash into a star or something else in space. So sometimes they would have to take a longer route to avoid obstacles they don't travel in straight lines. He was skilled because he had his own routes and was able to make the trip with a more efficient route.
I hope he can bring a lot of copium back from those travels since you are using up so much. ;-)
I think it's better to just admit it was a small mistake rather than building up this weird backstory to motivate it.
@@Mankepanke Its not a weird backstory its canon from lucas himself
@@Mankepanke A parsec is a measurement of distance not time ;-)
@@vashisl33t it was constructed after he was informed of the problem. And instead of saying "ha ha, whoops" that backstory was invented and doesn't make it much better.
That Lucas himself invented it was news to me. I thought it was some random EU writer that did that.
Doesn't change the nature of the situation, though.
As someone who read The Expanse books first and really liked the show, I geberally reccomend watching the show first, but in your case, I'd read the books. There are "sci-fi" elements that go beyond merely using science as we understand it to tell the story, so it's not as grounded as The Martian, but it's generally good about that stuff (not always good, there are a few scenes where they forgot some things in a big way, though it doesn't really ruin and isn't integral to the story). There are some questions they don't bother to answer in the show that discussed in the books, so you may prefer the books first so that you are not wondering about such things. Something had to be cut in the adaptation, so sometimes you see the science in action on the screen but they don't explain it.
Not sure if you've seen or read the Expanse yet. But I would recommend watching season 1. If you like it jump into reading it. The casting is phenomenal and it will do a good job putting the characters into your mind, and it doesn't deviate much.
Re: The Expanse. I watched the first few episodes and then started the book. The book just provides a great deal more background and depth. I felt that the series really brought the book to life quite well.They don't spoil each other, although eventually the books outpace the series. The integration of the environment of space and the difficulties and consequences of living in it actually drive the series.
As a lifelong science and science fiction fan, I consider it a landmark achievement.
Haven't read it, but Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quarter may be my favourite fantasy series ever
The problem with Rowling is she writes in much the same way as if you prompted a very good AI to write a unique surprising fantasy magic novel in one go.
Right, every word makes sense relative to everything that came before, but there was no time spent trying to create or justify an internal logic to the setting, and so she will write herself into corners constantly and have to handwave things instead of proactively locating and avoiding those corners.
I'm fairly sure you could make an entire channel dedicated to how to write with the same wonder as Rowling without bumping into corners constantly.
Hello Future Me might be the channel you describe. His focus isn't on Rowling, if anything it's on ATLA (Avatar: the Last Airbender).
I remember she said once she was not good with math, to justify some internal inconsistencies. Well, for me that is a big problem. I would like the world of HP to be more logically constructed and to tie how magic works into science as well
@@asailijhijr Hello Future me is fantastic. I watch his ATLA stuff mainly but his storytelling tips are quite good too.
And 100% agreed. My children's lit teacher kinda said the same. We were analyzing themes and such in a bunch of children's literature and we got to rowling and he was like "yeah... rowling... while everyone we talked about so far had intent in their stories and specific themes they wanted to convey... this is an example of themes that come about from the product itself.. due to being a product of it's time." That's the most polite way I've seen someone say this writer actually isn't very good and just vomited a coherent story onto some pages.
OH MY GOD ITS SO TRUE i think thats why its so dang obnoxious - compare and contrast to say, Claw Of The Conciliator series (learn something new every re read, and every Fake Word is just an archaic english word)
@@userasdf I think it was a Shawn video, but I'm not 100% sure, that brought up an interesting point about this: Rowling is a conservative, which means that she's very much in favor of keeping things the way they are and don't shake up too much (which is why the side plot of freeing the magic slaves doesn't go anywhere, because the slaves actually don't want to be freed). This goes very much in line with not trying to actually say anything with the story, because looking at the status quo critically is very much against the conservative agenda.
The main argument for making a multi-purpose robot humanoid is that the world is built for humanoids. Halls, stairs, doors, tools, appliances, shelves, and so forth are built for humans, so a humanoid robot can more easily perform a lot of tasks.
As you say, the power problem makes this impractical right now, but with denser power storage, i think humanoid robots might make sense.
Also, have you seen the 1991 anime "Roujin Z"? Very good, best, story about a non-humanoid health-care robot that has a personality for a specific task, but its whole application is ethically dubious, and is imperfectly applied, terrible consequences result from its mysterious other features, of course hijinks ensue, and a rag tag team of care takers and patients is united to save the patient the robot is caring for
yo I love this channel so much and man, I had the same situation where I told a friend that sci-fi dont need no hardcore realism and then complained to the same friend for about 20min, why every movie sucked wihch used incorrect science. So relatable and your thought process is really clean. I skp over so many important things in my thought process and yours is clean step by clean step and it's really mind calming to listen to.
I always loved how in “The Second Renaissance” (from Animatrix, the Machines got less and less anthropomorphic the more independent they became. It felt like finally breaking up from human domination allowed them to evolve into shapes that served them better, instead of participating in the hubris of mankind. It really got me thinking, excelent video, kudos!
Tangentially to this - I've always loved the idea of the "Ships" in the Iain M. Banks "the Culture" series. While even the small ones are vastly more intelligent than humans, the size actually matters. There's one particular example of how a ship-mind tries to save some important information, by splitting itself into smaller and smaller bodies that are also less and less mentally capable.
The game series destiny has some interesting thoughts on the humanoid robot meme
In the game, there is a playable character race known as EXOs, which were explicitly designed to be a sort of post biological vessel for human consciousness. They're specifically designed to mimic how a human feels physically, because after some pretty gruesome experiments by their creator in the game universe, it was realized that humans go absolutely insane if they are in a body that doesn't very closely mimic what their past experience is used to.
I'm talking stuff like, them feeling like they're trapped in a skin tight metal suit and going insane from the claustrophobia, or trying to peel off their own metallic skin in an effort to get to the "real stuff" underneath.
Just real gruesome shit
Thats what i imagined when they said they were going to do a head transplant, i think the guy backed out. But i imagined he would be in immense, maddening pain when he woke up
THe single main reason that I would want a vaguely human-shaped robot is so that it can interact with the pre-existing designed-for-humans living areas and appliances.
I want the robot to be able to use the lawnmower, the washing machine, the dishwasher, etc. that I already have.
I don't want to replace every single appliance with single purpose, exponentially more expensive robots, I want a general-purpose robot that can perform tasks start to finish.
Don't make them talk and have personalities though, that's bad.
i love that mostly everything in this was just 100% serious and well thought out, and at the same time your delivery made this one of the funnier youtube videos i've seen in a while. and yeah you already know that like at least half of C3PO's purpose was basically just to annoy the absolute shit out of 1977 harrison ford - i don't care how little sense his existence makes in-universe, i'll always love him for that
C-3PO does make a lot of sense looking human, though. For starters, he's not limited to spoken language but can also gesture (as seen with the Ewoks) and probably is capable of translating some sign languages, too. A specialized translator is the most likely machine to look human and have it make sense because a truly universal translator needs to be able to use gestures and even facial expressions for communication. If anything, C-3PO is not human-like enough. That said, he is an hommage to the False Maria, a robot from the classic movie Metropolis that was specifically built to pose as a human.
what about the facial expressions and body/sign languages of every other species in the universe (galaxy? I dont remember to what extent C3PO was able to translate)? Wouldnt it make much more sense for it to be either a soft robot (meaning it can change shape) or to have a display screen to put up images of the body language it means to replicate?
Anyway, this clearly isn't the reason C3PO was human shaped, but it was a good try, i guess
@@fonroo0000Beyond droid technology, but also a niche use in a galaxy that is almost exclusively populated by humanoids and minor variations of humanoids, with few exceptions like the Hutts. Within the setting of Star Wars, humanoid is the best shape a translator can take. Maybe give him a second set of arms, but that's it.
@@thomasrdiehl dont really agree but everyone is entitled to an opinion
first, why would a galactic blob ever understand the sign language of a human shaped robot, and second, they have holograms all over the place in star wars. they have hand sized hologram machines to communicate already.
@@kannix386 What galactic blob? Almost all species in Star Wars are human-shaped and even those that are not at most have a slug body with a human upper body attached to it.
Also, sign languages are not a singular thing. C-3P0 would still be able to translate between several hundred human sign languages even if he is unable to translate one from a non-humanoid alien. It's still the best shape for a protocol droid to take in a galaxy dominated by humans and species of generally human shape.
Holograms are nice, but how are they even relevant to the question of translation capabilities? Sure, a walking hologram droid might be a nicce option for a protocol droid. Maybe somebody should build one of those. But they don't seem to exist in the world of Star Wars. Might also be physical presence is preferred due to being more reliable.
about 5 minutes in: oh my gosh! it would be so great if someone did do some detailed background character development so we could remove all question about the character's life! (I laughed heartily; thank you for that)
I forgot about TARS and CASE from interstellar. My favorites are the robots from Silent Running. kinda cute, easily programmable, still have built-in personalities, haha
About the Expanse, it's a great "hard" scifi show, but one thing I've always wanted to try was the actual original which is a TTRPG. The books are based of those rules.
they were adjusted as needed IIRC, i doubt the actual rules actually had much bearing on 'emulating' the kind of story The Expanse ended up being, as the original campaign was in GURPS (then the worldbuilding went through several layers of conversion and writing until the final product)
I can't tell if not knowing Han Solo's home planet was a joke or not - but, if it wasn't, it was discussed extensively in the extended universe.
He's from Corellia (or at least used to be).
His home system is actually really cool! One of the planets was a superweapon in the old EU. Stopping it from activating was the plot of several YA novels I read in high school, lol.
The Martian was so good! I was blown away by the amount of detail.
I took it as she was making fun of the Han Solo movie when she was making those jokes, like about not knowing about his vest or his surname
It was just joke! I thought it was funny to complain that Star Wars refuses to expand on the lore when there are 10s of movies and shows and 100s of books and comics.
@@acollierastro ah yeah okay so i was gonna write a really long paragraph for you because i'm autistic and i thought you were kinda interested and really just didn't know at all but i scrolled down to see if another person answered your questions first since the video is from a month ago but now i realize it would be very embarrassing to post it because now that i know that it was all a joke, it just makes me look kinda dumb😐
Anyone read the newer Andy weir book? (Speaking of the martian)(but I mean hail Mary, though Artemis is great too) I believe movie rights were sold and they have a difficult time ahead of them but still very excited
@@phantomhck Project Hail Mary is my favorite one from him!
I just _knew_ TARS and CASE were going to at least get a mention in this video, and then were going to choose them as your top robot. Absolutely brilliant depiction of robots.
I’m pretty sure C-3PO was made by child Anakin out of scrap parts for his elderly guardian to help with various things. So it comes down to 1. He was limited by what he could scavenge, things that people don’t want(humanoid robots) 2. He was a kid and decided things like what the robot should look like from the POV of a kid, so he probably wasn’t thinking ‘hmm what’s the best possible thing for this’ and 3. Like other comments have mentioned, he can use the tools they already have. Because they’re sustenance farmers, they don’t have enough money for a bunch of different robots and a bunch of different tools, so a humanoid robot could be a general purpose machine. Your point still stands, though.
4. Most SW species are humanoid (convergent evolution?) and 3PO's base model is meant to be a translator. He's humanoid so he can do sign language.
Why does no one here know that C3PO was built by Darth Vader? His unfathomable evil drove him to make C3PO so annoying.
@@Kestrel-lp8ho it's only on the racing spin-off. Hardly canonical.
@@vanders626 lol - if only!
@@NXTangl - Not that we should take our sci-fi space movies too seriously, but imagine a robot which had a large display on it. That display could show text, but it could also show hand gestures good enough for sign language. And if it's a translator bot which is translating between many different vaguely-humanoid species, one would assume that some of those species would have a different number of fingers/thumbs. So sign-language in *that* species would need hands with the right number of digits for that species.
I have no idea how I hadn't seen your channel earlier, but I'm glad that I've stumbled upon it. Literally been bingewatching for like the past few days. I always get a little brain ping when I hear someone mention discworld in a video lol (personal favourite book series) and all of the sciencey stuff is very cool to listen to.
They also use the metric system in star wars, where many units (meters for example) are based on our world, but I'd rather they do that then make up all new terms.
"The star destroyer was 3000 bloops long" etc.
The Kessel run is littered with black holes, so his ship was fast enough to make the run on a shorter path that would destroy slower ships.
Out of universe, it's because George Lucas is a rather... meh writer and director. the intent was for Obi-Wan to roll his eyes along with the audience.
i think u under estimate the human desire to have just a guy hanging around. we looooove anthropomorphized shit. now theres a distinction between "guy" and "human" a guy is something like wall-e its not meant to resemble a human but its obviously anthropomorphized, a human is a robot trying to imitate a human which so far only creates very uncanny results. u can anthropomorphized something even just a little bit and humans will project emotions on it. A roomba is just enough of an animal to get attached to it. I want my Alexa to be in the form of an idog who dances and blinks its little lights as it tells me the weather. its a fren
i think we need more animal robots (NOT that cop dog robot theyre making) like make the roomba more animal-like. I agree i wouldnt want to watch a human shaped robot clean the house or toilet but I would with an animal shaped one bc it would look like its just doing some kind of natural animal activity. just like beavers naturally build dams roombas naturally vacuum floors. I feel like this gets rid of many of the problems with human robots while retaining the anthropomorphic-ness of the robot. its just a helpful pet instead of a human maid.
luv your analysis of wall-e i hadnt really thought about the robots having these personalities programmed into them for a purpose (i just took it as these are cartoon robots they have personalities like people im not going to think about it) but that makes a lot of sense and makes the movie cooler lol. also yes the robot designs in the movie rly were great the way they balanced the robots utility with anthropomorphizing it. i mean they managed to make a steering wheel look menacing. thank you 4 the new wall-e appreciation lol
It takes me 12 hrs to do laundry: 2 for washing and drying, 9.5 of procrastination and staring at the pile, 30 mins of grumpy folding
Loved the computer animation you added. If you get tired of all all that “science stuff” you have a new career waiting for you.
Fictional robots usually have fictional power sources. I think Azimov's robots were nuclear powered, and had "positronic brains". I think Heinlein had something to say about the problems of engineering an android robot, and he came up with the necessary fictional solutions to the problems for his stories.
Well, swap positronic brains for Embedded GPUs and why not?
I like so much the detached and calm way you explain things. This is the second video I watch from you, and I love your format. Good luck with the channel. I forgot to mention, I liked how you run through the diagram of forces of the washing machine and the tumble dryer, accounting for drag and all. Sooo unnecessary and cool at the same time, you even display your wee ipad and the equations. This was interesting , even if unnecessary I appreciate the work put in.
New sub after finding your "Never Read Lord of the Rings" episode, which in itself was interesting enough to make me browse your channel more, but it's your focus on critical thinking and counteracting misinformation that really earned you the subscription. I am an armchair science enthusiast (ALL the sciences) and a skeptic by nature, but I am also a sci-fi writer/artist who has developed an entire universe (Moxie Comics) with a particular focus on positive life lessons for young people. There NEEDS to be people like you out there giving the general public a good reality slap in lieu of a solid science education, so this by no means a criticism of your POV -- funny, as I type this you are actually touching on my ultimate point but I'll finish this thought - the point of speculative science fiction is more often than not, not about the science OR the fiction, it's about exploring the human condition in ways that will hold someone's attention long enough to absorb "the point". The flash can sometimes overwhelm the substance and that's unfortunate, but I find that people who compulsively dwell on the scientific inaccuracies of these stories to the point that they can't enjoy them, can overcome that "handicap" by shifting their focus to extracting the positive life lessons and/or ominous warnings about where humanity's current path will lead that are almost always tucked into the narrative.
Also, without reading all fifty-infinity comments I am SURE someone(s) has told you ALLLL about the in-universe reason why Han Solo used "parsecs". But did any of them point out that Lucas just wanted a cool sounding word and indeed had no idea what a "parsec" was when he wrote the script? Keep it real, fanboys n' girls.
The Expanse is really good, maybe not "Instant Classic! good, but really good. I fell in love with the show first, then read the books and loved them even more.
But like, the authors of the books were involved with the show, so all the budget constraints and studio exec's demands were handled in ways that maintained as much integrity to the story as could be expected. It's a very true-to the-spirit adaptation.
The Expanse doesn't have robots, unless you count Eros
I've generally enjoyed your content, but there are a few points on this video that I'm not really in agreement with (and many that I am in agreement with).
Regarding the free body diagram analysis, your forces are fine, but my sense is that the sliding of the dryer isn't the part that's likely to cause the failure, rather that the moments from the friction forces when the system swings back after she stops pushing causing the system to tilt until the center of mass of the dryer has moved past the critical point and it falls over is the most likely failure mode. This should at least be checked.
Humanoid robots are theoretically useful in the real world because all of the applications in the world were developed for humans, so a humanoid robot already fits the basic way that things in the world are already set up, requiring less capital. Also, human movement is fairly efficient and versatile, and finding how to tap into that efficiency and versatility is a goal for humanoid robotics. There's also not necessarily any reason that a robot chassis needs to be made of metal, which could alleviated the weight problem. The charging problem can be partially resolved to the point of being useful by simply having charging stations replace batteries so that the robot can continue doing whatever it's doing, while the charging station charges one or more batteries. Finally, humanoid robots tap into a strange emotional space where we are the creators of "life" and that "life" is human-like while being distinctly different, plus the other things you mentioned and more.
Lastly, I don't get the take that a robot with AGI would no longer be a robot, it would be a person. Robotic person is a perfectly valid thing that something could be, as opposed to human people for instance.
I love Tars and Case. Tars especially because of his voice. Even though it's a human voicing Tars, I still feel that disconnect as if he were a talking machine, but the voice is so human. It's not like a voice actor, it's not crystal clear and over pronounced. Not like our current text-to-speech. It's earnest and average but still sounds competent and authoritative.
Safety first, Cooper.
I really feel for you; as an older physicist, I was like that when I was young. In later years I mellowed a bit. About sci-fi movies: Arthur Clarke had said in the '60s that he had a very high level of tolerance for science fiction movies; I go with that. However, 60 years on, I think they have done some remarkable things, at least when they wanted to. As for robots, don't overthink it; there will be humaniform robots, or androids if you prefer in 20 or 30 years, when power and software problems will have been addressed. I just hope I will still be alive to see it!
I don't know why certain tropes bother me. I don't care if a sci-fi movie has sound & explosions in the vacuum of space, but it drives me crazy when I see someone throw a cigarette to light a pool of gasoline or steps on a mine & it doesn't immediately explode & is somehow designed to not be like any other mine ever made & only go off when the victim steps off. It just takes me out of the show or movie. I don't know why it bothers me more but it does. Even in this post myth busters reality, Hollywood still keeps trotting out these same obviously fake, easily debunked tropes that are becoming pretty common knowledge.
Not sure if this was covered already but the Star Wars example is poor because he means exactly what he’s saying. When he says parsecs he means distance. The kessel run navigates around a supermassive black hole, maw as they call it, from one side of the galaxy to the other. The more advanced ur navigation computer and more powerful ur ship the closer u can cut this angle and reduce the distance traveled reducing the time. Time in shipping (smuggling is illegal shipping) is everything and can make or break u as a smuggler. I’m a mid level Star Wars nerd so I could be wrong. New to the channel and loving it! Keep up the great work 👍🏻
I was in a scifi book club this last semester and Project Hail Mary was one of the absolute favorites of the group, and the majority’s first place book. Beyond being a good story, all of it felt quite plausible and it kind of invited you to think about how life like that would really live and how we would really observe and use it. It wasn’t “oh look at this, it’s alien and weird and you can’t understand it,” the characters, and by extension you, were able to theorize about it and use the scientific process to demystify it. And I think that was really cool.
If you haven't already, listen to the audiobook
Children of time had the same thing. Gonna move to Project Hail Mary after I finish my current book list: Dune Heretics, Chapterhouse, Book of Leaves, and Twice Dead king.