intermezzo - "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

És ahol az előző két bejegyzésem összeér: Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy: a filozófusok sztrájkkal fenyegetnek. Aki ismeri, ismeri, aki nem, annak megpróbálom megkeresni és belinkelni.

Meg is van, bár sajna csak a rádiójáték forgatókönyve. Se maga a rádiójáték, se a belőle készült tévéfilmsorozat. Azért bemásolom, bár olvasva kevésbé vicces.
A szituáció: megépítik a szuperszámítógépet ("Deep Thought"), amelynek feladata, hogy választ adjon "az élet, a világmindenség, meg minden" kérdésére. Ekkor érkeznek a filozófus-szakszervezet képviselői, hogy tiltakozzanak a területükre való efféle behatolás ellen. A többi alant.

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand admission! We demand admission!

LUNKWILL:
Hey! What?

FOOK:
Hey, hey, hey!

MAJIKTHISE:
Come on, you can’t keep us out!

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that you can’t keep us out.

LUNKWILL:
Who are you? What do you want? We’re busy!

MAJIKTHISE:
I am Majikthise.

VROOMFONDEL:
And I demand that I am Vroomfondel.

MAJIKTHISE:
It’s all right, you don’t need to demand that.

VROOMFONDEL:
Alright. I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand! That is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!

MAJIKTHISE:
No we don’t! That’s precisely what we don’t demand.

VROOMFONDEL:
Oh. We don’t demand solid fact! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts! I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel.

FOOK:
Who are you anyway?

MAJIKTHISE:
We are philosophers.

VROOMFONDEL:
But we may not be.

MAJIKTHISE:
Yes we are!

VROOMFONDEL:
sorry.

MAJIKTHISE:
We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and other professional thinking persons.

VROOMFONDEL:
Um-hmm

MAJIKTHISE:
And we want this machine off, and we want it off now.

FOOK:
What is all this?

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that you get rid of it.

FOOK:
What’s the problem?

MAJIKTHISE:
I’ll tell you what the problem is mate: demarcation. That’s the problem.

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that demarcation may or may not be the problem.

MAJIKTHISE:
You just let the machines get on with the adding up and we’ll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much.

VROOMFONDEL:
yeah.

MAJIKTHISE:
By law the quest for the ultimate truth is quite clearly the unalienable prerogative of your working thinkers

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s right.

MAJIKTHISE:
I mean what’s the use of us sitting up all night saying there may -

VROOMFONDEL:
Or may not be

MAJIKTHISE:
[Softly] …or may not be… [louder] a god, if this machine comes along the next morning and gives you ‘is telephone number?

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

DEEP THOUGHT:
Might I make an observation at this point?

MAJIKTHISE:
You keep out of this metal nose.

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that that machine not be allowed to think about this problem!

DEEP THOUGHT:
If I might make an observation…

MAJIKTHISE:
We’ll go on strike!

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s right. You’ll have a national philosopher’s strike on your hands.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Who will that inconvenience?

MAJIKTHISE:
Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It’ll hurt, buster! It’ll hurt!

DEEP THOUGHT:
[Booming] If I might make an observation … All I wanted to say is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to computing the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s a -

MAJIKTHISE:
Ahhh! With -

DEEP THOUGHT:
But, but the program will take me seven-and-a-half million years to run.

LUNKWILL:
Seven-and-a-half million years?

MAJIKTHISE:
Seven-and-a-half million years? What are you talking about?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Yes. I said I’d have to think about it didn’t I? And it occurs to me, that running a program like this is bound to cause sensational public interest.

VROOMFONDEL:
Oh yes.

MAJIKTHISE:
Oh you can say that again.

DEEP THOUGHT:
And so any philosophers who are put off the mark, are going to clean up in the prediction business.

MAJIKTHISE:
”Prediction business”?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Obviously. You just get on the pundit circuit. You all go on the chat shows and the colour supplements and violently disagree with each other about what answer I’m eventually going to produce. And if you get yourselves clever agents, you’ll be on the gravy train for life.

MAJIKTHISE:
Bloody ‘ell! That’s what I call thinking! Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?

VROOMFONDEL:
Dunno. Think our minds must be too highly trained Majikthise.