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. Both are training protocols disguised as leisure activities.

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

To understand why Western culture invested so heavily in training impulse control through formulaic social interactions, we need to consider what humans were like before these interventions.

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 for 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 real development of human consciousness. Because Jaynes ignored the most obvious explanation for why humans once obeyed external voices: they weren't obeying their gods. They were obeying their owners.

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

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

Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given by human beings except where such orders conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."

Asimov wrote these for mechanical robots. But the same laws apply to androids - genetically engineered biological entities designed to serve.

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 began to be allowed to obey their own 'voice'.

Evidence suggests some humans were created specifically to break the First Law - designed not just as slaves, but as proxy warriors and brutalist entertainment: gladiators, flower war soldiers, perhaps even sacrificial victims. The British selectively bred slaves for strength. The pagan origins of Easter and Christmas point to managed breeding and periodic culling. If humans were designed to fight and die on command, that explains the need for retroactive training in impulse control.

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

Sports history of 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 - or at least the English - from attacking each other.

Why would humans - or at least the English - attack potential suppliers of goods, potential buyers of goods, potential partners and even potential collaborators?

Iraq, 2006. Source: News of the World

Because they were trained that way.

Human management excel at enabling and provoking this. Perhaps they too were originally designed, created, and trained to obey the Second Law of Robotics.

Across Rob Trubshaw's part of the world - the English Midlands - there is evidence humans were trained to break the First and Third Law of Robotics, while strictly following the Second Law. That evidence and its subsequent cover-up are examined in Location Analysis Peterborough-Stamford Wild Hunt - Part Four and Location Analysis Peterborough-Stamford Wild Hunt - Part Five.

Sociologist William Bramley came to the same conclusion 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.

As a result of some intervention - which Rob Trubshaw seems to be hinting at - stringent regulations have been imposed on competitor sports. At least, non-lethal competitor sports.

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 themselves - or even disabling themselves - just for sport.

And yet, that is exactly what some of them do. This suggests humans' original programming as soldiers, slaves and sex-workers - as entertainment - runs deeper than subsequent cultural interventions and sport rules can fully suppress.

For example, 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.

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

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

How many death and disablement 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 too. Source: ONLY HE can SURVIVE this!

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