She is doing behavioral science. A science that isn't fully there when it comes to the natural sciences.
Now, within the behavioral science we have a case called loss aversion. This explains how a loss is felt twice as much as a gain. If GladDos were to give us the cake we wouldn't feel it as much as if we don't get the cake. We indeed know that the cake is not a lie as seen in the epilogue.
What are we doing? We are playing Portal. We are playing a video game. What is important for a video game? To convey a lasting emotion? How do we convey that? We we juice it up twice as much with the loss aversion. The princess is not in another castle. She is in no castle at all.
Don't you see? It's brilliant. Why is it brilliant? Because it worked. The lying cake spread like wildfire and became a meme that increased sales. Sales? Another part of behavioral science. Economics. Don't you see?
Where does that put GladDos. Can we truly trust her? Can we trust behaviorism? We don't really know where to put her. We are in the doubt of the unknown that instills dread. We don't hate her. We don't know her. We just fear her.
What other meme comes to mind in the loss aversion? Well the comic Loss (Ctrl+Alt+Del).
Same deal there.
What keeps us on this God forsaken website? It's the sense of loss.
Now could the loss aversion be a fluke? Does one successful loss aversion experiment garner 100 failed ones? Well yes. Of course it does. The loss aversion wills itsel