特别广播英语第 212 课：The Computer and The Poet 计算机与诗人-2

It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. 怀特里德说，对事实进行分析需要非凡的头脑。

The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced. 计算机能够提供正确的数字，但如果不作判断，这个数字可能毫无意义。

To the extent, then, that man fails to distinguish between the intermediate operations of electronic intelligence and the ultimate responsibilities of human decision, the computer could prove a digression. 因而，在人类不能区分电子智力的中间运算与人的决定的最终责任的情况下，计算机可能被证明是一种节外生枝。

It could obscure man's awareness of the need to come to terms with himself. 它可能模糊人类满足自身条件的意识。

It may foster the illusion that he is asking fundamental questions when actually he is asking only functional ones. 它可能使人产生错觉，当他实际上只是在问功能的问题时，却认为他在问基本的问题。

It may be regarded as a substitute for intelligence instead of an extension of it. It may promote undue confidence in concrete answers. 它可能被认为是智力的替代物，而不是智力的延伸。它可能使人过分相信具体答案。

"If we begin with certainties," Bacon said, "we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient with them, we shall end in certainties." 培根说："如果我们肯定开始，就会以疑惑结束；如果我们以疑惑开始，并且耐心处之，我们就会以肯定结束。"

The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it. 计算机懂得如何克服错误，但在我们得意忘形地为此欢呼之前，我们不妨思考一下人类的处境之所以出现巨大的进步是因为人类受到错误的挑战而且总是不停的思考、探索，直到找到的更好的处理方法。

"Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," Ferris Greenslet wrote, "You can keep your sterile truth for yourself." "给我一个内容丰富的错误，充满希望的种子，包含自我更正，"费里斯·格林里特道，"你可以把贫瘠的真理留给自己。"

The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better use of the answers. 对计算机技术最大的、唯一的要求不是提高速度、扩大容量、延长记忆或减小体积，而是要提出更好的问题，更好地利用其答案。