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We hate Robots because we can't hate Children
6 x 5 / 9 x 3 = 10, not 15, Keith.
And in my opinion, our culture's fears about robots and thinking computers is sublimated fear about our children. Both are things that adults have to teach the rules about how to live in our world, and both have the opportunity to turn those teachings against us.
We're not allowed to say "I'm scared that we're teaching children to want their own things, and understand technologies that we older people don't, and we tell them to change the world to make it a better place, but what if the future that the children build isn't what we want?"
So instead we talk about thinking, conscious robots (a metal man instead of a straw man?). We can beat up on robots, and we can make sure that we talk about all the good things in this world that the robots are going to obliviously not understand and destroy. We can destroy the robots, and talk about how inhuman they are, without discussing the monstrous nature of toddlers or the pure evil of middle school girls.
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