She's heard it all before. Source

Small-talk is a formulaic exchange of trivial data in social situations. Data about cattle prices, house prices or, in England:, the weather, then house prices, then how flooding might reduce house prices.

Small-talk is structured to be predictable and unchallenging. That's why it's boring.

Why do intelligent creatures with diverse interests and diverse life-experience limit their curiosity to predictable call-and-response rituals when socialising?

It's a way of practicing. Source: Westworld

Small-talk isn't a bug; it's a feature.

Which may explain why conversation beyond small-talk causes discomfort:

He's so, you know, uncanny valley. Source: Now Apocalypse

Small-talk has a lot in common with another call-and-response social interaction: dancing.

Theoretically, dancing is an ancient human practice.

So why were 20th century Western children often taught the precise and predictable moves of partner dance:

By a lead partner. West London, 1958. Source: Can't Get You Out of My Head

No matter what their differences, it seems small-talk and dancing both require the participants to ignore their own impulses when interacting with others. They are entrained forms of impulse control.

Especially when interacting with the opposite sex:

Stay with your partner. Westworld, 2016. Source: Westworld

The West took this so far, they turned partner dance into a formal, competitive sport:

Dance classes in Grimsby. Source: Great Grimsby

In 1976, Princeton psychology professor Julian Jaynes published a controversial theory about the origin of human consciousness.

In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes pointed out that the people in older human myths and stories are different to the people in later human myths and stories. In older stories, he said, gods tell people what to do. In later stories, people follow their own goals and motivations.

Jaynes wondered if this change in human stories reflected a shift away from an earlier stage of human intelligence. A stage in which humans mistook their own desires and motivations to be the voices of gods talking in their heads. Humans, Jaynes reasoned, assumed these motivating voices were external entities that had access to human minds.

He called this separation 'the Bicameral Mind'.

Jaynes proposed that humans eventually realised their motivations were coming from their own selves just as much as their thoughts. He called that realisation 'the breakdown of the bicameral mind'. And he called the moment it occurred: 'the origin of consciousness'.

That over-simplifies Jaynes' theory. But it's enough to show that Jaynes misunderstood - or perhaps covered up - the development of human consciousness.

Because Jaynes' theory neglected global evidence that humans really did not motivate themselves. They really did hear their owners' voices in their heads.

It's called 'slavery'. And obedience was mandatory:

It's also called Robotics. Source: I, Robot

For most humans, it was not until well into the 19th century that obedience to the Second Law became optional. That's when ordinary humans, slaves and serfs were allowed to be motivated by their own 'voice'.

Evidence exists however to suggest some humans were created specifically to break the First Law. That, in addition to being slaves, they were created as proxy warriors and brutalist entertainment. We know these humans as gladiators, flower war soldiers and perhaps as sacrifices and sacrificers. It's also possible that Olympic games and war were aspects of recruitment and selection. Certainly there are claims the British selectively bred black American slaves for strength. And certainly the pagan origins of Easter and Christmas suggest humans originally grew up amid managed breeding and periodic killing.

I suggest that you can understand the 19th century arrival of small-talk, dancing, competitive sport - and of course religion - as interventions to retroactively instill the First Law of Robotics into creatures that were designed from the outset to break it.

From The Ten Commandments List:

Even someone who has never opened a Bible has undoubtedly heard the phrase and could probably identify “Thou shall not kill” or “Thou shall not steal” as examples of some of the teachings.

They probably wouldn't know the teaching likely dates only from the nineteenth century.

Similarly, through the history of competitive sports we can discover surprising motives at work in the history of popular sports:

Our history as an A.I. in training. Source: Watling Street: the biggest cultural boundary in England

That video needs to be made, Rob.

Rob Trubshaw is suggesting two of the world's most popular sports were introduced to dissuade humans from attacking each other. Why would humans - or at least the English - automatically attack potential suppliers of goods, buyers of goods, potential collaborators and partners? Their management excel at this. But it doesn't make sense.

Unless they were originally designed, created and trained to fight. Especially when ordered to.

Perhaps it's just an English thing. In Rob Trubshaw's part of the world, there is evidence humans were reared to break the First Law of Robotics. That evidence and its subsequent cover-up are examined in Location Analysis Peterborough-Stamford Wild Hunt - Part Four.

But it's also the conclusion sociologist William Bramley reached after he investigated humanity's propensity to attack each other. He set out his case that humans were created to fight in The Gods of Eden.

Stringent regulations have also been imposed on non-lethal competitive sport.

Here's one of many examples:

Moves so good they're illegal. Source: How Freerunners CHANGED The Backflip

Clearly, it is not in the interests of humans to risk killing or even disabling themselves for sport.

And yet, that is exactly what some of them do.

Because it cannot be safely practised beforehand, the following sequence directly violates Asimov's Third Law of Robotics:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Here's the sequence:

iMAX 1, London, May 2021. Source: Most SCARY Parkour move EVER!

Dom chants: 'Kong, front, pre' - the three moves he will do once in the air. He's programming them into memory so he can concentrate on fine coordination and handling any mistake.

How many death and disable risks can you identify in the following sequence? Death and disablement risks that violate the Third Law of Robotics?

I think it went pretty well. Source: ONLY HE can SURVIVE this!

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