Science Fiction Trivia

[cim]

Well, the lack of suggestions for that one rules out the Shockwave Rider question I was going to ask...

Something a little more well-known, then: what aspect of machine function can be tested with a slide rule, a stop watch, and a set of questions, in about fifteen minutes. (Obviously, lots of things; this is something which is not to a lay person obviously testable in that way)

[Zieman]

If the machine is really a machine?

Like is the machine a robot or human...

[cim]

No, not that.

[JazHaz]

The Turing test?

Ninja'd. Ignore me lol.

[aegidian]

Something a little more well-known, then: what aspect of machine function can be tested with a slide rule, a stop watch, and a set of questions, in about fifteen minutes. (Obviously, lots of things; this is something which is not to a lay person obviously testable in that way)

Location of a weather sounding balloon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_hor ... _technique

[cim]

Interesting, but no, not that either.

Clue: a (different) simple test for the property Zieman suggested had been applied to the same machine earlier in the story, and had shown that it was indeed a machine.

[NigelJK]

This is a reverse Voigt test from 'Do Andriods ...', and in the back of my mind has Asimov plastered all over it. Trying to remember the book name ...

I'll go for I,Robot for now.

[cim]

Oh, getting close... but what property is being tested?

[NigelJK]

I'm guessing 'Human-ness'

[NigelJK]

So it might be one of the later Asimov books - The rest of the robots.

[Rxke]

empathy, surely?

[cim]

No, not humanness. At the point this test was being applied the machine was unambiguously known to be a machine. What was being tested is something some machines have and some do not. No humans have this property, and so would fail this indirect test for it, but could pass a more direct and unsubtle test for it if they chose to.

[NigelJK]

Having just re-read the the question:
emotions?

[Disembodied]

Whether or not the machine obeys the First Law of Robotics?

[cim]

Whether or not the machine obeys the First Law of Robotics?

Exactly correct.
Over to you.