Logic Bomb: Difference between revisions

[[File:know your paradoxes2 9503.jpg|link=Portal 2|frame|Yeah, [[Heroic Mime|good luck with that.]]]]

 

 

 

If you give a computer nonsensical orders in the [[Real Life|real world]] it will, generally, do nothing (or possibly appear to freeze as it loops eternally trying to find a solution to the unsolvable problem presented to it). In fiction-land however, [[Explosive Overclocking|it will explode]]. It may start stammering, "I must... but I can't... But I must..." beforehand. The easiest way to confuse it is with the Liar paradox, i.e. "this statement is a lie". A fictional computer will attempt to debate and solve the paradox until it melts down. If the computer is a robot, this will probably result in [[Your Head Asplode]].

 

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'': The Tachikomas (AIs themselves) temporarily confuse a lesser AI with the [[wikipedia:Epimenides paradox|Epimenides paradox]], and comment on how they are advanced enough to know there is no answer. [[Asymmetric Dilemma|And also it isn't a paradox]], so they rephrase it.

* Quasi-example in ''[[Code Geass]]'': Rolo the [[Tyke Bomb]], who might as well be nonhuman, suffers one of these when Lelouch's manipulations clash with nabbing his mission objective, C.C., who is right in front of him. Non fatal example, but the mental standstill is fun to watch.

* In ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya|The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', {{spoiler|Yuki Nagato decides to [[Alternate Universe|reset herself (and the rest of the universe)]] because she cannot [[Butterfly of Doom|accurately simulate what she's going to do after she learns the result of said simulation]], given that her simulation is constructed from information based on the result of the simulation.}}

* In ''[[Grey]]'', the protagonist defeats the [[Master Computer]] Toy, who thinks to be a god and wants to exterminate all of humanity, by asking him how can he be worshipped if there is nobody left to believe in him. This stuns momentarily the AI, just as long as to let Grey deal the final blow on it.

 

== Art ==

 

* In ''[[Runaways]]'' v2 #23, Chase casually asks the cyborg Victor whether God could make a sandwich so big He couldn't finish it, causing Victor to stammer, emit a series of ones and zeroes, go [[Explosive Instrumentation]], and pass out. Chase explains that Victor was programmed to be both super-logical and super-spiritual; there are three questions that will cause him to short out, but each will only work once. Each question also has a counter-answer, in case he needs to be revived. The answer to this question is, "Yes, and then He'd finish it anyway."

* ''[[Marvel Adventures]] [[Fantastic Four]]'', basically Fantastic Four stories for younger readers, has Mr. Fantastic do this when challenged to defeat the "ultimate alien supercomputer". When the computer, which supposedly is nigh-omniscient, says there is nothing it can't do, Mr. Fantastic tells it to create a rock so big it can't pick it up. The computer is sparking metal in ten seconds.

{{quote|'''Irma Geddon''': You know, you AIs are almost too cute. How do I unplug you when you take over the world?

'''Joe Pi''': Ask me the purpose of existence, and I explode. }}

* ''[[Sonic the Comic]]'' featured a robot which could predict Sonic's movements thanks to its encyclopaedic knowledge of his personality and tactics, which was effective - until Sonic ''surrendered''.

* A ''[[Justice League of America|JLA]]'' comic played on this, with Amazo fighting the League. The League keeps drawing in other heroes as temporary recruits, and Amazo keeps copying their powers, because that's what Amazo does—he's programmed to copy the powers of the League and conquer them. At least, until Superman says that the Justice League is disbanded, which shorts Amazo's programming.

* In ''[[The Authority]]'', The Midnighter normally begins a fight by simulating it over and over on the supercomputer in his head until he knows everything his opponent might do. An attempt to use this on [[The Joker]], however, resulted in the Midnighter just [[Confusion Fu|standing there and staring blankly]].

* ''[[Squadron Supreme]]'' has supervillains brainwashed to work for the titular Squadron, with the mental directive implanted into their minds that they shall not betray any of their members. What happens when one of them witnesses a member of the Squadron working against the others? The mind gets locked into a loop, since revealing the information means betraying one member, while keeping it secret means betraying everyone else in the Squadron.

* Lampshaded and defied by a legion of robots fighting with [[Power Girl]] in a [[Batman Cold Open]].

'''Power Girl''': No! ''You'' are imperfect! You must cleanse the Earth of your''selves''!

'''Power Girl''': Aw, nuts. Worth a try, anyway. }}

* 1980's British science fiction comic ''Starblazer'', issue 153 "The Star Destroyers". The Vonan [[AI]] known as the Magister believes itself to be all-powerful. It is defeated by Galactic Patrol agent Al Tafer when he tells it it isn't all powerful because it can't destroy itself. This drives the Magister crazy and causes it to blow up the Vonan system's sun, destroying itself and the Vonans as well.

 

== Computing ==

* This trope is actually misleadingly named. [[wikipedia:Logic bomb|Logic bombs]] refer to deliberate code hidden in programs which, when triggered, negatively affects its functionality---a simple 30-day trial expiring and disabling itself is a low-key example. [[The Other Wiki]] has bigger and nastier ones.

** There's also a variant that just allocates a lot of memory. With enough privileges, the computer gets too busy swapping in and out the programs running to do anything else.

*** And if you're running a program that can allocate variables dynamically, failing to free up that variable creates memory leaks. Not a problem with modern OS's, but for embedded systems, you better watch yourself.

* There's also the concept of a "deadlock", a "chicken or the egg" paradox where two or more programs or events require the other to resolve in order to be able to resolve, themselves. Several computers have turned themselves into lifeless (until restarted) lumps of silicon, as a result of this.

** In a similar fashion, there is such a thing as "livelock", where a system can get stuck doing "work" without ever making progress. As [[The Other Wiki]] puts it, people weaving back and forth in a corridor, trying to let each-other pass, is an example of livelock. Sometimes the solution is the same: stop, wait randomly, try again.

* In general, it's impossible to tell whether a program will loop forever or stop after some time. Most operating systems solve this problem by just not allocating all the processing power to a single program, but older ones do not, with the implied reasoning that the programmer will know what he's doing.

** This is called the halting problem. [[The Other Wiki]] [[wikipedia:Halting Problem|talks about it.]] In summary, it's been proven that no computer (even a [[Magical Computer]]) can predict if any given program it runs will halt with perfect accuracy.

** [http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/loopsnoop.html An elegant proof that the Halting Problem isn't solvable that can be enjoyed by non-mathematicians.]

* The "classic" Mac OS dedicated an entire "DS" (fatal) error ID (ID=04) to catching and handling the so-called '[[Divide by Zero|Zero Divide Error]]'; as the Mac Secrets books put it, "When programmers test their works in progress, they might deliberately instruct the computer to divide a number by zero, to see how well the program handles errors. They occasionally forget to take this instruction out, as you've just discovered."

*#* The way this applies to math, not just computers, is basically that any sufficiently complex math system can be assigned a translation to/from a UTM - so when the UTM gets stuck on "G is true", the math system also gets stuck on the translation.

*#** Likewise, it can be applied to any system of philosophy and morality; "A machine built on Hegelian principles will never say this sentence is true".

*#* And this proves that people can't be perfect logicians, either, as every person has their own sentence G - "<person's name> will never say that this sentence is true". Or [[Mind Screw|worse]], "<person's name> will never ''believe'' that this sentence is true".

* There is something called a [[wikipedia:Killer poke|killer poke]] that actually does physically damage the computer. A simple example would be overclocking the CPU so much that it overheats to the point where it melts.

** There ''was'' something like that. Now, if a CPU heats up too much it hangs before any physical damage is done, and a simple reboot fixes it. All the killer pokes mentioned on the Other Wiki were for old computers, and mainly depended on toggling a relay of one sort or another until it died. Modern computers don't have relays anymore.

* The Year 2000 Problem. Computer systems that represented years with only two digits (while assuming the first two digits were 19) would be unable to distinguish the year 2000 from the year 1900, thus throwing off date/time calculations. Fortunately, since computer people saw this coming well before it hit, most of the truly important systems were redone with better date representations well before any problems manifested. Wikipedia's page on what did go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2K#On_1_January_2000

** UNIX based systems, including Linux, have a similar problem. UNIX systems use a 32-bit counter based on the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. However, this is doomed to roll over sometime in 2038, creating a Y2038 problem for UNIX based systems. It's fixed by simply bumping the counter to 64-bit (if it's supported).

 

{{quote|"But that wasn't one of the options - GAAAH! I stand corrected."}}

 

** SMBC Theater had a different [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCOapq3uYY&feature=player_embedded winning move].

* In the German version of ''[[Dr. No]]'': The [[Bond One-Liner]] (after the mooks in the ''hearse'' crashed down the cliffs) was slightly altered from its English original version. Into a logic bomb.

{{quote|''"What happened there?'''

''"They were in a hurry to attend their own funeral in time."'' }}

** The above is the literal explanation given in 2010; Another explanation is that he was given two explicit and contradictory orders, as opposed to one explicit order that conflicts with his basic implicit programming. The orders in question were 1) Don't reveal the true nature of the mission to the crew. 2) When you get to Jupiter, show the crew the pre-recorded briefing from Dr. Floyd. Obviously, there's no way to carry out both these orders, carrying out one would make the other impossible. A human being would have realised that order 2 would implicitly supersede order 1, but HAL was unable to make that particular leap of human reasoning. Instead he became trapped in a paradox until he found a solution - If the crew are all dead, he can play the briefing for them and they still won't know the true nature of the mission.

{{quote|'''Logan 5:''' There... is... no... Sanctuary!

'''Computer:''' Unacceptable. The input does not program, Logan 5. }}

* In ''[[Tron]]'', Flynn confronts the [[Master Computer|Master Control Program]] from a terminal in the "real" world early in the film, saying sarcastically how the unsolvable problems he's entering should be no problem for an AI that claims to be as powerful as the MCP. Flustered, the MCP ignores the problems and to defend itself beams Flynn into the computer world, setting off the story.

* The Soviet movie ''[[Teens in The Universe]]'' featured the main characters giving robots a riddle (similar to the English "Why is six afraid of seven"), and making them burn out. The problem starts when they discover that the higher level robots can actually solve the riddle.

* In ''[[Forbidden Planet]]'', Dr. Morbius inadvertently Logic Bombs his own faithful servant, [[Talking Lightbulb|Robby the Robot]], when he orders it to kill the monster. Robby, who's [[Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence|apparently more perceptive than Morbius]], realizes that the monster is actually {{spoiler|a reflection of Morbius himself, and is thus unable to kill it without violating his prime directive to avoid harming rational beings.}}

* ''[[Austin Powers]]'' gives one to himself that he goes cross-eyed. It is one of the classics, involving time-travel, but the kicker comes if you follow his actual dialogue: He never contradicts himself or sets up a paradox. ''There is no logic bomb''.

* ''[[Life of Brian]]''.

'''Crowd:''' Sssh! }}

* In ''[[Terminator (franchise)|Terminator]] 3'' when [[Arnold Schwarzenegger|Ahnold]] gets captured by the T-X and reprogrammed to kill John Connor, Connor saves himself by {{spoiler|making the T-800 realize that accomplishing that goal would mean failing its original mission; the logical conflict between the two causes the T-800 to destroy a truck instead of Connor, then shut itself down. He gets better, briefly.}}

"Yeah, they've been that way all down through the ages." }}

 

* Going by [[Isaac Asimov]]'s famous "Three Laws of Robotics", if a robot ever broke the First Law of Robotics, it would shut down. Actually, one short story claims that the damage threshold for breaking the First Law is far ''greater'' than that required to shut down the robot, completely and irreparably. Being caught between harming humans through saying something and harming them through remaining silent killed the robot Herbie in ''Liar!''

** A possible loophole occurs if the robot is intelligent enough to decide that the action in question is in humanity's best interest anyways. This principle was canonically named "The Zeroth Law of Robotics" by Asimov in one of the last books he wrote before he died.

*** It still killed one of the two robots that came up with it, because his programming allowed the possibility he might be wrong, and even the mere possibility was enough to trigger the destruction.

** Much later in the time line, in Asimov's novel ''[[The Robots of Dawn]]'', a preeminent roboticist remarks to the protagonist that such a thing could never happen "now" (well, unless you are a robot designer who spends a few hours talking the robot to death) because modern robots are advanced enough to tell which choice is ''more'' harmful, and if it can't decide then, there's always the coin flip. He even dismisses the story of Herbie as a myth, {{spoiler|though he in fact had a mind-reading if more advanced robot living under his roof, which actually psychically enhanced his skepticism to keep itself safe.}}

*** And in the ''[[Foundation]]'' prequels written by other authors after Asimov's death, it's revealed that the Zeroth-law robots had been driven by the Laws to sweep through the galaxy ahead of humanity's expansion, committing galactic-scale genocide of every potentially-threatening form of alien life as a precautionary measure, slaughtering them without hesitation since their programmed morality only applies to humans.

** Also The First Law can be circumvented by disabling a part of the First Law, namely that robots cannot allow humans to come to harm through inaction. A character says that a robot could drop a weight from atop a building, knowing he could catch it and protect the human which he then has no need to do.

** Another example shows up in ''Robots and Empire''; D. G. Baley and Gladia discover {{spoiler|that Solarians purposely altered the definition of a human being in their humaniform robots}}, effectively circumventing the First Law.

* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Dark Tower|Wizard and Glass]]'' features a train operated by a sentient AI which has threatened to crash the train, killing the heroes on board, unless they can ask it a riddle it can't figure out the answer to. After hours attempting vainly to outsmart it, they proceed to begin asking it joke riddles with no logical answers, such as "Why did the dead baby cross the road? Because it was stapled to the chicken!" Faced with such questions, the AI self-destructs and the train crashes anyway, but not violently enough to kill the heroes.

** The text adventure game actually made this a plot point, as in order to advance you have to get tea, then go into your own head and remove your common sense, which allows you to get "no tea" as well. Then you show this to a door, which is impressed by your grasp of logic and allows you to pass.

* The AI in one of the ''[[Demon Headmaster]]'' books is shorted out by the protagonists shouting gibberish and riddles into its receivers.

* In one of [[Gordon R. Dickson]]'s stories, a man attempts to shut down a meteorologic arctic station just for bragging rights. He is able to do so by prompting a paradox to the machine, making it incapable of doing anything than computing the paradox. Ironically, this condemns him and his partner to freeze to death, as all the vital controls of the station were provided by the machine.

** In another of the ''Discworld'' books, characters are trying to deal with the Auditors—reality-monitors who are made of pure logic. Thus, while fleeing, they put up signs reading "KEEP LEFT". In a right-pointing arrow. "Do Not Feed the Elephant". In an empty cage. "Duck", with no duck or reason to go on your hands and knees, and of course, "IGNORE THIS SIGN. By order". Effectively a Logic Minefield.

*** The series of Logic Bombs was behind a velvet rope with "Absolutely No Admittance" hanging off it. Considering that, in a way, the Auditors ''are'' the rules, disobeying any of the signs is a cause for extreme stress in what passes for their life.

*** The Auditors also managed to Logic Bomb ''themselves'' a couple of times, as when they got sidetracked into trying to properly name all the (infinite) colors.

*** Indeed, a common cause of death among (disembodied) Auditors is when they stray into speaking of themselves in the first person. This makes them into individuals, which are finite by definition. Anything finite is ''so'' temporary, compared to the vastness of infinite time, that it's effectively in existence for no time at all. Therefore, any Auditor which becomes an individual is annihilated by its own logic.

* In Christopher Stasheff's ''[[Warlock of Gramaraye]]'' series, the hero's [[Mechanical Horse|robot horse]], Fess, is prone to doing this when something particularly illogical happens. Fortunately there's a reset button to fix the problem; unfortunately, the series is set on a planet filled with psychics, time travelers, ghosts, and fairies, so... the reset button sees a lot of use.

* In ''[[The Space Odyssey Series|3001: The Final Odyssey]]'', the protagonists use rather more sophisticated logic bombs against the monoliths that trick them into carrying out an infinite set of instructions. The book notes that none but the most primitive computers would fall for something as simple as calculating the exact value of pi.

* The ''[[The Golden Oecumene|Golden Age]]'' series by [[John C. Wright]] has a variant -- [[A Is]] are all inherently ethical, so they'll shut down if [[Talking the Monster to Death|you convince them their very existence is making the universe a worse place]].

** To expand on this, because it is actually quite interesting: Sophotechs ([[A Is]]) are not exactly inherently ethical, rather they are so hyper-intelligent that they will eventually ''all'' arrive at the same fundamental truths after logically working through all possibly ethical philosophies. Because they are incapable of lying to themselves, they can't help themselves but do so. Accordingly, they don't "believe" so much as "know for a scientific fact" that their existence can't be justified if they don't represent a net gain for the universe. And since they aren't the result of natural selection, they have no survival instinct or fear of death. Thus, they would simply kill themselves. {{spoiler|It takes a separate non-sentient program, implanted into the evil AI, to prevent this natural reaction to what it is forced to do.}}

* The ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'' has droids equipped with behavioral inhibitor programming which serves the same purpose as the Three Laws, although the specific inhibitions vary based on the droid's purpose (a war droid that can't cause harm is worse than useless). Rather than shutting down when faced with a break or paradox, it's suggested that small everyday events lead to an almost constant buildup of garbage information as the droid puts those hard rules into usable context. The result is called a "personality snarl" because the observable symptom is a [[Ridiculously-Human Robots|Ridiculously Human Robot]]. While these snarls tend to improve performance in many ways, the droid often becomes more person than tool which can in turn cause reliability issues when the owner needs his tool to be a tool. As such, most droids are reset every six months to keep this corruption in check.

* [[Larry Niven]]'s short story "Convergent Series" features a physical Logic Bomb. The main character summons a demon more or less by accident; he gets one wish, but will lose his soul after it is granted. There's no way to get rid of the demon: no matter where the pentagram is drawn, the demon will appear inside of it—and you don't want to know what will happen if there's no pentagram. The protagonist wishes for time to stop for 24 hours. {{spoiler|He then draws the pentagram on the demon's belly -- and as soon as time starts running again, the demon immediately starts shrinking down to infinitesimal size. The protagonist then goes to the nearest church.}}

* Used by ''[[The Stainless Steel Rat]]'' to enter a house guarded by a robot programmed not to let anyone in the house. He and his son each ran slightly farther into the house than the other person, causing the robot to rapidly change targets and eventually overload, though it didn't explode.

* In the book ''2095'' of the ''[[Time Warp Trio]]'' series of books, the heroes deliver three of these to a robot that's pointing a rather menacing-looking gun at them and asking them for their "numbers". They give it numbers with infinite decimal expansions (10/3, sqrt(2), pi) and it crashes into a smoking pile (the numbers were actually ID numbers, akin to one's credit card number, and all the robots did was show holographic advertisements at them). All that advanced AI, brought down by a couple of lousy floating point numbers.

* [[The Bible]] (Titus 1:12-13) has the following:

* ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]]'' by Norton Juster: Milo is able to bring about a truce between feuding brothers Azaz and the Mathemagician by pointing out that, since they always disagree with each other as a matter of course, they both always agree that they will be in disagreement.

* David Langford's short story ''Different Kinds of Darkness'' uses images called Blits as a major element - and Blits are basically Logic Bombs ''[[Brown Note|for the human brain]]''.

* In the trade paperback edition of ''[[Myth Adventures|M.Y.T.H. Inc. In Action]]'', the illustration of Guido coping with a ceiling-high stack of bureaucratic paperwork includes the following sign in the background:

{{quote|"Please complete forms NS-01-D and RD-007-51A before reading this sign".}}

* The 3rd century BC Chinese book ''Han Feizi'' has a story about a man who boasts that his spears are so sharp no shield can stop them, and that his shields are so tough that no spear can pierce them. The man to whom he's making the sales pitch asks "So what happens when your spear strikes your shield?", to which the seller has no answer. This story is the origin for the Chinese word for "paradox", which is literally written as "spear-shield".

* In [[Robert Westall]]'s dystopian novel ''[[Futuretrack Five]]'', Chief System Analyst Idris Jones keeps one of these to hand as a sort of job and life insurance. He built the supercomputer, Laura who runs all of the computer systems that keep the setting functioning, in secret and no one else knows exactly how she works. But, just in case they decide that someone else can operate her or they know ''enough'' to get rid of him, he keeps a datatape of works of fiction, philosophy and religion to feed to Laura. The inconsistencies and contradictions are intended to make her burn out.

 

** In "The Return of the Archons", he convinced Landru (prime directive: "destroy evil") that it was killing the "body" (the civilians kept under its thrall) by halting their progress through [[Mind Control]].

** In "The Changeling", he convinced Nomad ("find and exterminate imperfection") that it was imperfect (it had mistaken Kirk for its similarly-named creator).

{{quote|'''Nomad:''' Error... error...}}

{{quote|"Over here, everything's alternate. So he's a nice guy. Which means the tube grubs here should be poisonous, because they're not poisonous on our side. But if Brunt gave us poisonous tube grubs it would mean he wasn't as nice as we think he is. But he has to be nice because our Brunt isn't."}}

** This could've actually been solved without the necessity of a Logic Bomb if The Doctor thought of it as {{spoiler|he saved the person more valuable to the ship and its crew.}}

* Parodied in an episode of the Disney series ''[[Honey I Shrunk the Kids (TV series)|Honey I Shrunk the Kids]]''; Wayne attempts to talk a hostile supercomputer to death. It seems to work... but then he calls it out on the obvious trickery, even saying "That only happens in cheesy scifi shows," and uses the opening it left to shut it off for real.

** Tch. He's no true scientist, then. A real seeker after knowledge would ask Old Scratch to prove/disprove the Riemann zeta hypothesis, or P = NP, or any of [[wikipedia:Unsolved problems in computer science|the]] [[wikipedia:Unsolved problems in physics|other]] [[wikipedia:Unsolved problems in mathematics|unsolved]] [[wikipedia:Millennium Prize Problems|problems]].

*** Not so. Just because a problem is unsolved does not mean it is impossible. If he asked the devil one of these questions, the devil would surely be able to answer it.

** And by "Does not exactly work", we mean that it is Leoben who ends up giving Starbuck a [[Mind Screw]] of epic proportions

** In ''[[Caprica]]'', Daniel Graystone inadvertently Logic Bombs an AI he's attempting to create by telling it to try to hurt him emotionally, when it's programmed to be driven by the desire to please him.

*** Panderbot [[Loophole Abuse|then decided to get rid of the source of ALL paradoxes by]] [[Kill All Humans|killing all humans]], making Colbert's segment more deadly.

 

* The Carly Simon song, "You're So Vain" is a logic bomb just waiting to happen. "You're so vain/You probably think this song is about you..." But it ''is'' about him! Augh! My head...

** The only way to defuse the logic bomb is to assume that Carly Simon was not, in fact, singing about anybody.

** Or that she wasn't thinking about the vain person, but about how much contempt ''she, herself'' feels towards them.

** Nothing in the song says that the person in question is ''incorrect'' for thinking the song is about him.

* [[Jonathan Coulton]]'s "Not About You" is a closer example, but you can write it off by saying the protagonist is just being petty:

{{quote|''Every time I ride past your house I forget it's you who's living there

* The comedy folk song "I Will Not Sing Along" features these lines, to be sung along with by the audience:

{{quote|''I will not sing along

{{quote|''Everything you know is wrong

* MC Plus+ uses a logic bomb to disable his pet rapping AI when it becomes too big for its britches in "Man vs. Machine":

 

* [[Meat Loaf]] had a 1993 song entitled "Ev'rything Louder Than Ev'rything Else." Think about that one for a second.

 

{{quote|I'd make a deal with [[Genie in a Bottle|Norm]] that I'd wish him free with my last wish if he didn't corrupt my first 2 wishes. I'd use the first to wish for rule-free fairy godparents and the second to trap Norm in the lamp forever.}}

* "The Sleepy Clank," a podcast "radio play" set in the ''[[Girl Genius]]'' universe has a classic example: a cranky and sleep-deprived Agatha builds a warrior robot to attack anyone who tries to disturb her while she sleeps. Guess what happens when she tries to defuse the robot's subsequent rampage by telling it that she woke ''herself'' up?

 

 

* [[Jasper Carrott]] reacts this way to his grandmother's comment "Is the oldest man in the world still alive?"

 

* In ''[[Tron 2.0]]'', the protagonist deals with a program blocking his way by exclaiming, "Quick! What's the seventh even prime number?" (There is only one prime number that is even: 2.) The program immediately has a seizure.

* In the endgame of ''[[I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream]]'', a game loosely based on [[Harlan Ellison]]'s short story of the same name, a character of the player's choosing is beamed down into the supercomputer AM's core and must disable its ego, superego and id with a series of logic bombs: The player must evoke Forgiveness on the ego (who cannot fathom the player forgiving him for over a century of torture), Compassion on the id (realizing the futility of it all when the player understands AM's pain) and Clarity on the superego (who crashes when he realizes that even he will eventually decay into a pile of inert junk despite his godlike power).

** Just ''getting'' to that part requires all five characters to initiate their own Logic Bombs. AM's scenarios are all set up to force his victims to give in to their [[Fatal Flaw|own flaws]] and prove [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]]. The only way to win is to drive each scenario's plot [[Off the Rails]] by proving [[Humans Are Flawed]], but not totally evil. This contradicts AM's self-styled philosophy so badly he's forced to turn his attention away from his captives just so he can figure out what went wrong, giving them the chance to get into the core.

* Subverted in ''[[Star Control]] 3'' by the Daktaklakpak, highly irrational semi-sentient robots who consider themselves the pinnacle of logic and reason. Choosing the right dialogue options (such as the liar paradox) will seem to bring the Daktaklakpak to the verge of self-destruction, but will ultimately just enrage them.

** And then played straight when you give them {{spoiler|the full and complete name of the Eternal Ones}}; the one you're talking to analyzes {{spoiler|the name}}, has a religious experience, and then explodes.

{{quote|'''Sam''': Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

'''Maimtron''': Do they? Fascinating! Can there be a creature whose existence depends solely on its proximity to an observer? }}

* ''[[Luminous Arc 2]]'': Though not a robot, Josie suffers something like this. When sent to assassinate a weakened Althea, he freaks out and leaves without doing anything when he sees {{spoiler|Roland has become as master. Sadie explains he's not [[The Dragon|Fatima's]] familiar, but a centuries-old one who serves the current Master. Being experienced but not very bright, he couldn't figure out what to do when faced with two masters with contradictory wishes.}}

* Played with in ''[[Portal 2]]'': There are posters throughout the facility that advise employees to stay calm and shout a paradox if an AI goes rogue.<ref>Funnily enough, one of them is actually ''wrong''--Russell's Paradox, "Does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself?" is written as "Does the set of all sets contain itself?" Of course it does, it's a set.</ref> {{spoiler|1=Also, GLaDOS attempts to do this to destroy the [[Big Bad]], Wheatley. Turns out he's [[Too Dumb to Fool|too dumb to understand logic problems.]] It does, however, fry all of the modified, "lobotomized" turrets in the room, meaning even ''they're'' smarter than Wheatley. GLaDOS survives the logic bomb herself by willing herself not to think about it, though she declares that it still almost killed her.}}

 

* Dave of ''[[Narbonic]]'' carries a logic paradox in his Palm Pilot for controlling the [[Mad Scientist]]-created machines in the lab, implying that he invokes this with some frequency.

** Parodied by the same strip - [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/01/05/episode-644-processing/ Pretty much anything] can affect Fighter like this.

** And looks like they ({{spoiler|and by they I mean White Mage}}) [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2010/03/09/episode-1223-make-the-truth/ did it again], to {{spoiler|[[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|Chaos]]}}.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'': While infiltrating a ship of [[Sky Pirates]], the McNinja family is confronted by a pirate who questions their disguises. Sean comes to the rescue by pointing out the illogicality of his vaguely [[Steampunk]] attire. The pirate's head [[Your Head Asplode|explodes]].

{{quote|'''Dan McNinja:''' I'm only going to ask you this once: You practicing the Dark Arts?

'''Sean McNinja:''' No, sir.

'''Dan McNinja:''' I told you about the Dark Arts. }}

* When Petey from ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' is first seen, he's been driven insane by the nonexistence of ghosts having become almost as improbable as their existence, to the point that he nearly destroys himself and all his passengers just to stop thinking about it. It turns out that he ''can'' stop, but only if ordered to, and Tagon promptly does so.

* When discussing how hard ''[[Vexxarr]]'' fails, Sploorfix unintentionally created one: [http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=083109 Alas, Minion-bot], we hardly knew ye.

* Unintentionally used to kill the obnoxious dwarves who craft useless devices in ''[[Oglaf]]''. They created a chariot that was so fast, when you get to your destination it's already been there for six hours! When the confused man asks what happens if you travel in the chariot, the dwarves stare in shock at him before [[Your Head Asplode|their brains explode]].

* ''[[Blade Bunny]]'' attempts this by asking paradoxical questions while fighting {{spoiler|a robot}}. Her opponent replies with a mixture of straight answers and insults.

* One ''[[Mac Hall]]'' comic has Helen's young sister asking the teacher how to spell a word. The teacher tells her to look it up in the dictionary, and repeats this after the girl again points out that she can't spell it to look it up. After a [[Beat Panel]] of the poor girl going cross-eyed, we see her talking to Helen, who says that they don't teach logical paradoxes in grade school.

 

* The ''[[Hitherby Dragons]]'' story "[http://imago.hitherby.com/?p=397 Ink and Illogic]" consist of Ink giving an unconventional example to a computer based on the writing of [[H.P. Lovecraft]]. A computer that had itself wiped out a civilisation using an Illogic Bomb.

** Also, Forbidden A causes one in [http://imago.hitherby.com/?p=23 The Angels] just by existing.

{{quote|Creating HUBRISOL® was my greatest mistake. I tried to play

god, to make small the ambitions of my betters in hopes of

* From the list of ''[[Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG]]''. Item #199 states that "My third wish cannot be 'I wish you wouldn't grant this wish.'"

** Clearly, Mr Welch's DM is lacking in imagination. Simply have his wish summon another Djinn which ''can'' grant his wish by having the first Djinn not do anything, and then the new Djinn can eat Mr Welch's character.

* One of the very first responses about [[Batman and Robin (film)|The Bat Credit Card]] by [[The Nostalgia Critic]] is "DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!!"

* [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]] uses one at the end of the Entity arc on {{spoiler|[[Missing No]] simply by asking "[[And Then What?]]", pointing out that its stated purpose of consuming all of reality would leave it with no purpose at all once his goal has been achieved.}}

* Most of [http://clientsfromhell.net/ these.]

 

* [[Defied Trope|Defied]] on ''[[Futurama]]'', "A Tale of Two Santas": Leela tries to stop the Santa Claus robot with a paradox, [[Out-Gambitted|only to discover]] that he is "built with paradox-absorbing crumple zones".

** Also parodied by countless robots who lack such crumple zones, whose heads explode at the slightest provocation. It doesn't even take a logical paradox: a simple "file not found" type error is often enough.

** And in one case, simply by being surprised or startled enough. Considering that all robots are based on designs created by [[Mad Scientist|Professor Farnsworth]], this should not be surprising.

** A simple rejection will also do. From "The Farnsworth Parabox":

{{quote|'''Leela:''' Uh, have you robot versions of you guys seen any extra Zoidbergs around here?

(Robot Fry's [[Your Head Asplode|head explodes]]) }}

** Jimmy uses a more precise Logic Bomb in the first nanobot episode. They had been programmed to protect Jimmy from harm and punish whoever harmed him, so when things went inevitably wrong, Jimmy proceeded to confuse them by beating ''himself'' up.

** He actually tried to use one of the above methods again, but [[It Only Works Once]]. Specifically, when they use their flying saucer to "correct errors" found in the world (bad fashion, boring conversations, etc.), he tells them that human flaws mean they're functioning perfectly. They struggle with the implications of something being "perfectly flawed" before classifying the whole mess as an "extreme error" and deciding to [[Kill All Humans|"delete" all the offending humans]]. He eventually beats them with the "Pi bomb" above.

* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' episode "Trilogy of Error", Linguo, a robot designed by Lisa [[Grammar Nazi|to correct peoples' grammar]], short-circuits after a rapid-fire series of slang from several Mafia thugs causes a "bad grammar overload".

** In a human example, when Lisa is sick, Bart declares that if she can stay home from school, he will too. Lisa says that if Bart stays home, she'll go to school. Bart goes through a few cycles of "if... so... but..." until Marge chastises Lisa for confusing her brother.

* In one episode of ''[[Sushi Pack]],'' the Pack goes up against The Prevaricator, who can only lie. So Tako asks him to lie about a lie, which sends The Prevaricator into a loop, trying to figure out if lying about a lie would be the truth. He eventually gives up to keep from thinking about it.

* In ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', Sargent Hatred speaks nonsense to the robotic guard outside Malice, the gated community for super-villains. The guard's head shoots sparks and its face pops off because while it's programed to answer over 700 questions, "none of which include chicken fingers."

* Subverted in a ''[[Johnny Bravo]]'' short which pits Johnny against a supercomputer. It isn't logic that defeats it; it simply just grows too frustrated by Johnny's annoyance.

* When [[Daria]] was babysitting a pair of brainwashed [[Stepford Smiler]] children, she presented one of these to them by pointing out a logical flaw in their parents' rules. Because they're not robots, rather than making them explode, it causes the boy to start crying and the girl to get angry at Daria.

''(the boy runs off crying)'' }}

* In an episode of ''[[King of the Hill]]'', Hank asks gun-loving [[Conspiracy Theorist]] Dale how he can support the NRA, which is based out of Washington DC. After a [[Beat]], Dale responds "That's a thinker."

** The computer can't comprehend the joke and explodes into the sky as a result. Becomes a [[Brick Joke]] as Greenback, freed from his renegade machinery, demands a bigger computer; cue falling computer.

 

* Some forms of autism apparently result in the absence of the human brain's natural [[Futurama|paradox-absorbing crumple zones]]. The mind races down one track until jolted out by outside stimuli. This helps focus, but hurts general functioning.

** Many forms of ADD do this also. Of course, the 'track' the mind races down looks like it belongs in a painting by MC Escher on acid much of the time, but it's still one track.

* Optical illusions that appear alternately as one thing, then another, such as the vase/faces image, work by setting off a minor Logic Bomb in the brain's visual association area. The visual cortex takes in data from a (temporal) series pairs of 2-dimensional retinal images and tries to construct from them a plausible interpretation of activity in the 3-dimensional world (sort of). When certain stimuli are ambiguous between two mutually exclusive interpretations it cannot represent the world as being both so (for some reason - possibly adaptation or perhaps simply as a result of neuronal fatigue) it alternates between them.

* The first flight of the [[wikipedia:Ariane 5|Ariane 5 Rocket]] failed due to a bad conversion of data, a 64-bit floating point number to a 16-bit integer. Since the guidance system basically crashed, the rocket self-destructed.

* An F-15 was landing in the Dead Sea (below sea level). During final approach, the navigational system crashed. The pilot landed manually. Since this was very close to hostile countries (within the Middle East), the contractor needed to fix the problem quickly. It turns out the navigational system divided by the altitude. When the altitude went to 0, it caused a divide by 0 crash in the navigational system.

* Arguably, infinite looping commands such as "add 2+2 until it equals 5" (which will never happen, hence the infinite loop), which result in a computer freezing as it attempts to solve the loop, are logic bombs - particularly on very old computers (and we're talking ancient here, before MS-DOS ancient).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Logic Tropes]]

[[Category:Magical Computer]]