Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
I thought I had been more involved in that discussion than ~Unsung was. [grin]
The description of Three Laws-Compliant is weak for not establishing clear boundaries/relations with other tropes. The description of Morality Chip is terrible due to Example as a Thesis.
My distinction is as follows:
- 3LC is when an artificial intelligence (biological or mechanical) is programmed with ethics referencing Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
- MC is when an artificial intelligence (biological or mechanical) is programmed with any ethics.
^ Ah, you're right. I'd mostly been responding directly to Unsung lately, which made me mix things up a bit.
At the same time, MC's description mentions how the Morality Chip's removal is frequently a plot point, which is not true of my TLP, while the Three Laws are "built in" to the robots and not easily removed or altered, which is how I currently envision the basic version of "Incapable of Disobeying".
The "ethics" issue and connections (or lack of) to Asimov aren't really an issue one way or another, to my mind. You may be right that Three Laws-Compliant is weak for establishing a relationship to another trope, but in this instance I sincerely believe Morality Chip is even weaker.
Would Restraining Bolt be a possible compromise? It would require a change to the laconic, if not the description, but could work better overall. The ideas behind it and here are similar, though RB isn't as wide-scale as this trope is meant to be and this trope is meant primarily as a behavior changing without the Power Limiter aspect of RB
Edited by sgamer82If I'm understanding your question correctly, because it's part of the reason why I think it's weaker.
For the sake of being on the same page, here's my understanding of the tropes in question:
- Three Laws-Compliant: Robots programmed with Asimov's three laws of robotics, or variations of, and how that affects the stories they're included in.
- Morality Chip: A device placed in a robot to affect/control its behavior, which when featured in stories also features the problems caused by their removal or disabling.
- Restraining Bolt: A device placed in a robot or living creature to restrict their behavior and/or powers.
In both the cases of Morality Chip and Restraining Bolt, their effects end upon their removal or disabling. Incapable of Disobeying doesn't include that caveat, as the rules are "baked in" the way the Three Laws are, which is a large part of why they were my first choice of comparison.
The effect of Three Laws-Compliant also ends upon their removal or disabling. It's tautological to say these tropes are no longer in effect if the cause of the trope is removed. Isaac Asimov wrote several stories where engineers made modifications to the Laws of Robotics, including causing the robot to operate outside of the laws; "Little Lost Robot", "Robot Dreams", and "Lenny", for example. Then there's several works officially licensed in The 'Verse that build workarounds for the Laws, such as the "upload link" in the film I, Robot.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.^ Seconding the above, and also, the Three Laws aren't "baked in" to any greater degree — they're subject to the same removal, disabling, or overriding as Morality Chip. You're reading something extra into Three Laws-Compliant that I don't see ever being actually stated, and by that same token, a lot of the examples on your TLP could and are sometimes capable of being "overridden", the control broken or simply handed off to a different master. But I think whether or not that actually happens in a given story is beyond the scope of this trope.
You're also focusing on the Morality Chip as an actual physical chip, but it isn't, necessarily — the holographic Doctor's "ethical subroutines" on Star Trek: Voyager, for example, are code rather than a device. They can be overridden, or overwritten, without anything necessarily being physically removed from the ship's computers.
Edited by UnsungMaybe I'm not understanding Three Laws-Compliant properly, then. Still, the discussion on the TLP side seems fine with Restraining Bolt so it's all moot at this point unless there's an issue with the use of Three Laws-Compliant in the description, though there the comparison can get a bit more detailed than a laconic without having to go into too much detail, so I think the comparison there is apt.
What would you suggest then? In that case the comparison seems clear enough.
"much like how Three-Laws Compliant robots can not take any action that violates the Three Laws of Robotics, these characters can not take any action that violates their specific laws"
That is exactly the trope as I originally envisioned it, and the Three Laws made, to my mind, a convenient shorthand to demonstrate it. The goal isn't an exact 1:1 comparison, nor is it intended as one. It's a quick and straightforward way for anyone who reads the description to get the basic idea of what the trope is aiming for.
If you want to use Morality Chip or Restraining Bolt there, how would you phrase it to achieve the same comparison?
I think having a trope to look to for comparison would help, but would it be better to leave a trope out entirely and say something in the vein of "just like for a robot can not disobey its programming"?
To be honest, I'm no longer sure what the issue even is anymore beyond semantics and/or disliking the use of Asimov in the description. I had a trope idea, I tried to use what seemed to be a good trope to compare it to, and you two seem more focused on that than the trope itself which, again in complete sincerity, is leaving me just a bit frustrated. Especially since there doesn't seem to be any disagreement that there is a trope here.
Edited by sgamer82There's some suggestions on your draft thread to make this trope a Super-Trope to Morality Chip, which would mean the comparison is redundant. I figure as Draft Sponsor, that's your decision. Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Trope Decay makes sense. I think, just to sidestep the whole thing, I'll leave a comparative trope out entirely and just say something like "just how a robot can not take actions that violate its programming".
As mentioned in the thread, I haven't really decided on a Super trope or Sub trope or anything one way or another. I was thinking nail down this trope first, then see where things fall.

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place for this, but my other ideas, the "Is This An Example?" and "Improving work and creator page descriptions" threads, didn't seem appropriate either since this is for help with a trope that does not actually exist yet.
Anywho, I'm working on a TLP draft and I think an extra/outside opinion might be needed to settle a detail for it. The TLP is tentatively titled "Incapable of Disobeying
", and the premise is living creatures under a rule or set of rules that they are, as the name suggests, incapable of disobeying even if they wanted to. With this in mind, for the laconic I wrote "When living creatures are Three Laws-Compliant", as the way robots are influenced by the Three-Laws of Robotics struck me as the clearest and quickest comparison to what was going on.
There's since been some back and forth between myself and another troper, Unsung, about whether Morality Chip would be a better comparison trope than Three Laws-Compliant. I don't personally agree, and honestly feel this back-and-forth is derailing the example collection. At the same time, I'm not so wedded to the idea that I'm against changing it if there's a consensus, which right now there isn't.
So I'd like to request an outside/neutral opinion on whether Morality Chip or Three Laws-Compliant is a better comparison trope to get the idea of Incapable of Disobeying across.
Thank you in advance.