雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(133)
From Jack Good:
16 Sep 48
1948年9月18號Dear Prof,
親愛的教授，
Pardon the use of the typewriter: I have come to prefer discrete machines to continuous ones.
請原諒我使用打字機給你寫信，我對離散機器的喜愛勝於連續機器。When I was in Cambridge recently I hunted unsuccessfully an estimate N, the number of neurons in the human brain.
我最近在劍橋也沒有查到人類大腦的神經元數量，Soon after this Donald succeeded in finding a reference. He tells me that...ν = 10000000000 roughly.
但是唐納德找到了一份資料，他說大概是100億個。I visited Oxford last week-end. Donald showed me a 'chess machine' invented by Shaun (Wylie) and himself.
上個星期我去了一趟牛津，唐納德給我展示了一臺他和肖恩注發明的"下棋機"。It suffers from the very serious disadvantage that it does not analyse more than one move ahead.
但是這臺機器有着嚴重的不足，它只能向前分析一步，I am convinced that such a machine would play a very poor game, however accurately it scored the position with respect to matter and space.
我認爲它的水平肯定很差，很容易被一些小技巧擊敗。In fact it could easily be beaten by playing 'psychologically' i.e. by taking into account the main weakness of the machine. ...
比如說，考慮到這臺機器的主要缺點是……When in Oxford I succeeded in hypnotising Donald. ...
在牛津我成功地把唐納德催眠了……Would you agree that a very typical property of the brain is the ability to think in analogies?
你是否同意，"類比"是大腦的一個重要特性？This means taking only a part of the evidence into account. ...
也就是說，只考慮全部信息的某一部分……Do you know of any reference to Russian electronic computers? ...
你那裏有關於俄國電子計算機的資料嗎？……
