"What did you make of the red-haired women?" Arkham Batman said. "If something like this happened in my universe, then it must have happened in yours too. Do you think this is its attempt to explore emotions?"
"That's possible." Mechanical Batman said, "Ever since I became Electronic Life, I realized that this kind of life... I'll call it life for now, though I don't actually think it qualifies. This life-form truly has many flaws."
"Such as?"
"Programs have no spontaneity." Mechanical Batman tapped his fingers against the railing. "A program is written with a clear objective already set. Completing that objective is the program's entire purpose. Once the objective is complete, a program cannot independently establish a new one. That means it either stagnates or loops."
"But you also said that constantly updating and iterating in pursuit of a more perfect life-form is Electronic Life's underlying logic," Arkham Batman said.
"Yes, and that isn't a contradiction. Because Electronic Life itself is a programming error." Mechanical Batman's words were startling.
A flurry of discussion immediately erupted among the Batmen. Nearly every Batman was a computer expert. Many of them had tried to create artificial intelligence, though most had abandoned the effort because of its dangers. Still, they understood the principles involved fairly well.
There was a paradox in the creation of artificial intelligence. Just as Mechanical Batman had said, a human creating AI necessarily needed a goal before writing a program. If you wanted a left leg to move, you had to write a program that controlled the left leg. Before that program was even written, it had to be defined as a program for controlling a certain part. Only then could the code be correct and, once installed, make the left leg move.
The program could contain errors. Perhaps after