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by tenpies 2392 days ago
There was furor over Trump wanting two scoops of ice cream instead of one[1]. I believe that in a post-Trump world, the American President will just never eat as far as the public knows. All meal-related meetings will be held behind closed doors, with not even a peep as to what was on the menu. All President-related meals will henceforth be national secrets revealed only to those with top security clearances. The White House kitchen will be treated with a similar secrecy as Area 51.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEahmx0Btw
2 comments
chongli 2392 days ago
President will just never eat as far as the public knows

If the president never eats in public, how do we know they’re not a robot? This was a major plot point in the Asimov short story Evidence. The character went to extreme lengths to avoid being seen eating (and turned out to be a robot in the end).

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Mountain_Skies 2392 days ago
Baby Alive has been able to eat since the early 1970s. Pretty sure robopresident could find a place to internally store consumed food until returning to its maintenance pod.
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yorwba 2392 days ago
Robots have been able to fake eating since de Vaucanson's mechanical duck in 1739: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck
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wutbrodo 2392 days ago
In the story above, the candidate is capable of eating (and does so in front of one of the roboticist main characters). She points out, as you do, that it would be trivial to store food internally for later disposal
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orf 2392 days ago
You’re assuming that robots otherwise indistinguishable from humans couldn’t manage to develop any system to temporarily ingest food or liquid?

How do you know anyone isn’t a robot who can fake eat?

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chongli 2392 days ago
How do you know anyone isn’t a robot who can fake eat?

This is the premise of the short story. The robot politician pretends to eat in order to trick his opponents who are trying to out him as a robot by proving he can’t eat.

Spoilers: they then try to trick the robot into violating the three laws of robotics. He ends up tricking his opponents by having another robot attack him, letting him freely defend himself when he otherwise wouldn’t be able to (since robots can’t harm humans).

It’s a fantastic story. Well worth the read. My description doesn’t do it justice.

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bigred100 2392 days ago
This jogged my memory—they did the same with Obama and Dijon mustard. I don’t think it’s unique to Trump.
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