Through
Dr. Calvin’s description of how good people adhere to the three rules of
Robotics on page 221 of “Evidence”, Isaac Asimov questions what it means to be
human. Byerley’s possible robot status
hardly matters when he is such a good “human being.” He looks like a human being, even being able
to eat an apple, and his work as district attorney has also only shown him to
be intelligent and capable. In the case where Byerley is proven to be a
robot, it should not make a big difference in the election because he is so
immensely qualified as a candidate. He
still perfectly mimics all of the qualities of people that define their
humanity.
Byerley makes being a robot the
same as being another religion or ethnicity, just another point of
discrimination. And people do
discriminate against him. Regardless of
his qualifications or personal character, Byerley will lose the election if he
is proven to be a robot. In the same way
that ideas like atheism have long been political suicide for modern day politicians
regardless of the candidate himself, Byerley’s career is threatened by an
aspect of his personal life that the general public has no real need to know.
Yet
Byerley’s character might in fact surpass that of humanity. Dr. Calvin suggests, “If a robot can be
created capable of being a civil executive, I think he would make the best one
possible.” (pg. 237) While values like
charity or diligence are things that humans may strive to achieve, people will
not always live up to those values.
Robots on the other hand will never falter because of the existence of
the Three Laws of Robotics. That kind of
perfection is something that could never be imitated by a human being. Does that fact separate Byerley and robots
like him as something not “human”, or does that just make them better humans
than humanity itself?
To me, "Evidence" seems to be using a science fiction setting to make a comment on human discrimination. Although the story is set in a future that is in many ways more advanced than our own, discrimination is present against robots, as they are treated as vastly lesser beings by the humans. Stephen Byerley would obviously be an excellent candidate for mayor, and is very well respected by the many people in the story. However, as soon as he is accused of being a robot, he immediately begins to lose the vast public support that he had.
ReplyDeleteClearly, as Dr. Calvin mentions, a robot would make an excellent public servant because of the three laws that he must follow. However, the public are incapable of seeing this because they are afraid of robots. I think the humans in Asimov’s short stories recognize that the robots are superior, and are afraid of afraid of them because of it. They therefore discriminate against robots, and especially robots in positions that humans want, such as politics, because they don’t want to admit that robots may be better than them at something. Overall, a robot mayor would, and may be in the story, a very helpful thing to the people, but as humans, we struggle to get past our insecurity and therefore choose to discriminate against them instead.