"A robot? Not me!" said the moron.

More and more I'm beginning to get a clue as to how many of my response are simply imprinted in me without much conscious thought. All you really need to figure that out is one good fight with your significant other, as you both manage to push all the same buttons and watch the responses you know were coming. Always easier to see in others, of course...

I, Robot:

"...there is nothing new about the robot theory of biology. The Sufis and yogis knew about it centuries before Pavlov, or even before Mark Twain wrote his stunningly prescient essay 'Man, A Machine.' Nonetheless, it is so patently offensive to human narcissism that almost everybody recoils from it 'as the devil would from holy water.'

(Incidentally, you can get a quick estimate of a person's intelligence by asking them how much of themselves is robotic. Those who say "not at all" or "less than 50%" are hopeless imbeciles, always. The few who say "about 99%" are worth talking to; they are quite intelligent. Dr. Leary, who is the freest human being I have ever known, estimates that he is 99.9999% robot.)

...In short, the process of acculturalization is itself a brainwashing process.

Thus, the Samoan lives inside an imprinted Samoan reality; the German inside a German reality; an American inside an American reality. That's why a crowd of Americans are immediately recognizable in a street full of Turks or Hindus or even in a street of Englishmen or Irish. The naive chauvinism of the traveler who says "all foreigners are crazy" is actually quite valid; indeed, foreigners are crazy; the chauvinist merely lacks the insight to realize that his imprint group is crazy, too."