Spring is always the most listless semester in my teaching gig. Energy is low, weather is good, and class attendance basically collapses once the beer gardens open in mid-April. One weeknight not long ago, I was feeling uninspired to teach one of my more droopy classes, and remembered my robot doubles concept from many years ago:
Let’s say that everyone had (or could easily purchase, at least) a robot double that looks almost exactly like you and has about 70% of your mental capabilities. You could send your Robo off to take care of minor errands for you (say, picking up a package from the post office) and be pretty confident that he/she would be up for the task. There would probably be legalese written into many social transactions that forbid people from sending their Robos on their behalf and maybe even ‘No Robos’ stickers on certain storefronts (the DMV, for instance), but for the most part you could be confident that nobody would notice the switch.
But the question would be whether you would dare to send your Robo off to deal with more complex and critical tasks. I imagine people getting busted periodically for sending their Robo to work for them while they stayed home and slept in. In extreme cases, faltering marriages would collapse when one already-jaded partner detected that their husband or wife had sent their Robo home to deal with them so they could sit in a bar or have an affair. The Robo problem would crop up especially in school– I can almost imagine certain students of mine trying to pass off deficient robotic doubles of themselves if they had the chance. But then again, they also might notice that the person teaching them was, in fact, a Robo. The real question would be whether our Robos would be capable of detecting other Robos, and if so whether they would inform their Humans, or whether they would instead form a tacit alliance to keep it a secret among themselves.
I traveled to Las Vegas this past weekend and played in a World Series of Poker tournament. One hears a lot about the “Main Event,” but they have fifty-odd other smaller tournaments, and the whole production turns the convention center annex to the Rio Hotel and Casino into a sort of Poker Nirvana for almost two solid months in June and July. Or, to put it another way, a “degenerates’ convention.” The scene was truly surreal: multiple airport hanger-sized rooms, all filled with hundreds of poker tables, and, incessantly, the eerie clatter of a million poker chips in thousands of anxious hands, occasionally punctuated by triumphant/enraged shouts. The prize money for each of these tournaments is significant: in the one I played in, first place won $650,000, so life-altering consequences await at the turn of a card. (Of course, the vast majority of the entrants get nothing other than the thrill of participation.)
It always warms my heart to read about Eng and Chang Bunker, aka the 
A few years ago, I got really into reading accounts of extreme adventures and explorations. There’s something comforting about sitting in the warmth of your living room while other people haplessly freeze to death, fall of cliffs, catch on fire, have their