"Joe Haldeman - Buying Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

a computer keyboard. The computer is programmed to act like a human, even to the
extent of being able to lie and make mistakes, seeming to be slow in computations,
and so forth. If, by the answers they give to any question you can come up with, you
aren't able to tell which room has the human in it, then the machine has demonstrated
actual artificial intelligence.

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BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman


Of course, nowadays you wouldn't need a keyboard; just talk the way we're doing.
LB: That's all you actually are, then? A computer program?
BOX: Well … what are you? Sixty liters of water and a few bucks' worth of
chemicals?
BARR: That's great. A grey box programmed to do Philosophy 101.
BOX: No, Mr. Barr. What I am is an actual immortal human being. You're just a man,
one with enough money to get his body overhauled every ten years.
BARR: Depends on your point of view. I guess you will outlast me—as long as
nobody gets mad at you and pulls the plug—but hell, so will the statue of Robert E.
Lee out in front of this building. What good is hanging around forever if all you ever
see is the south end of a pigeon?
BOX: Ha-ha. You're right, though; no one would want to be an inanimate object. I am
alive. In some ways, I am more alive than you are.
BARR: Sure.
LB: How could that be?
BOX: All right. Tiptoe with me through the semantic, semiotic minefield of
Philosophy 101. How many ways are there to define life?
BARR: Seven billion.
BOX: True in a sense, but not relevant. Of formal definitions—in cosmology and
various biological disciplines, as well as philosophy—I have access to 149, some of
which overlap. [Reaction shot of Barr, eyes rolling.) I will spare you 148 of them. The
way in which I am demonstrably more alive than you is thermodynamical—
BARR: Knew you were gonna say that.
BOX: Indeed.
BARR: Yeah. [Close on Barr.] You can say that if a thing is alive, then in the process
of existing, it moves constantly to states with a higher degree of order. That, of
course, is against the law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You're gonna say that
since you go on processing information indefinitely, and since my brain isn't going to
last forever, you are more alive than I am. Quod erat in your demonstratum.



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 BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman


BOX: You have a hidden dimension, Mr. Barr. Well hidden.
BARR: Yeah. I'm fifty years older than you are, chum. I'll always be fifty years older
than you.
BOX: Until the day you die …