Monday, July 30, 2018

Brain the Size of a Planet

If you aren’t familiar with Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” then let me introduce you to Marvin the Paranoid Android:

Marvin is a robot with a “brain the size of a planet,” and is programmed with the ability to experience emotions. This is a problem for him because he is frustrated with the menial tasks he is assigned, and because he is so smart, they are all menial tasks, even the computationally difficult ones. As Wikipedia puts it so well, the “true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect.” Marvin is bored, depressed, and sulky (although, having some familiarity with paranoia, I wouldn’t say that Marvin meets that diagnosis particularly well).



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