Prejudice is a disease of men’s minds. It is infectious. The cause and development of the disease are about as follows: Deprive someone of something he deeply needs, such as affection, food, or opportunity. In this way hurt him, make him resentful, hostile; but prevent him from expressing his resentments in a reasonable way, giving him instead false outlets, such as other people to hurt, myths to believe, hostile behavior patterns to imitate. He will then break out with prejudices as if they were measles. The process of curing the disease of prejudice is about as follows: Make friends with the patient; win his trust. Encourage him to pour out his half-forgotten hates. Help him to talk them over freely, by means of questions but not criticisms, until finally the patient achieves insight, sees through his former prejudices, and drops them. In these days prejudice is a cardinal problem of society. It is perhaps conservative to say that a chief present requirement for the survival of human society—with the atom bomb, bacterial warfare, guided missiles, etc., near at hand—is cure of prejudice and its consequences, irrational and unrestrained hate. Narrow Point of View A narrow point of view regarding what is desirable or good is the third obstacle to rational control over robot machines. What do we mean by this? Our point of view as a two-year-old is based on pure self-interest. If we see a toy, we grab it. There is no prejudice about this; it is entirely natural—for two-year-olds. As we grow older, our point of view concerning what is good or desirable rapidly broadens: we think of others and their advantage besides our own. For example, we may become interested in a conservation program to conserve birds, or soil, or forests, and our point of view expands, embraces these objectives, which become part of our personality and loyalties. Unfortunately, it seems to be true that the expanding point of view, the expanding loyalties, of most people as they grow up are arrested somewhere along the line of: self, family, neighborhood, community, section of country, nation. An honorable exception is the scientists’ old and fine tradition of world-wide unity and loyalty in the search for objective truth. Now the problem of rational control over robot machines and other parts of the new technology is no respecter of national boundaries. To be solved it requires a world-wide point of view, a loyalty to human society and its best interests, a social point of view.