2015年 河海大学研究生英语一 Unit 14 To Err Is Human(2)

The lower animals do not have this splendid freedom. They are limited, most of them, to absolute infallibility. Cats, for all their good side, never make mistakes. I have never seen a maladroit, clumsy, or blundering cat. Dogs are sometimes fallible, occasionally able to make charming minor mistakes, but they get this way by trying to mimic their masters. Fish are flawless in everything they do. Individual cells in a tissue are mindless machines, perfect in their performance, as absolutely inhuman as bees.

低等点的动物不具有这种非凡的自由。它们中大多数，被无错误所限制。就其好的一面来说，猫是从不犯错的。我从来没见过一个不机敏的、笨拙的或者浮躁的猫。狗时常是易犯错的，偶尔会犯些可爱的小错误，但也是模仿主人时学到的。鱼做的每件事都是完美的。组织中的每个细胞是无意识的机器，表现是完美

河海大学,研究生英语,期末复习,课文翻译,中英文对照

的，像蜜蜂一样绝对无人性。

We should have this in mind as we become dependent on more complex computers for the arrangement of our affairs. Give the computers their heads, I say; let them go their way. If we can learn to do this, turning our heads to one side and wincing while the work proceeds, the possibilities for the future of mankind, and computer kind, are limitless. Your average good computer can make calculations in an instant which would take a lifetime of slide rules for any of us. Think of what we could gain from the near infinity of precise, machine-made miscomputation which is now so easily within our grasp. We could begin the solving of some of our hardest problems. How, for instance, should we go about organizing ourselves for social living on a planetary scale, now that we have become, as a plain fact of life, a single community? We can assume, as a working hypothesis, that all the right ways of doing this are unworkable. What we need, then, for moving ahead, is a set of wrong alternatives much longer and more interesting than the short list of mistaken courses that any of us can think up right now. We need, in fact, an infinite list, and when it is printed out we need the computer to turn on itself and select, at random, the next way to go. If it is a big enough mistake, we could find ourselves on a new level, stunned, out in the clear, ready to move again.

正因为我们变得更加依赖更为复杂的电脑来安排我们的日常事务，我们应该在心中牢记这一点。我主张让电脑有思想，自行其事。如果我们学会这么做，当计算机工作时，我们视而不见、退居一旁，那么人类及计算机的未来可能会前途无量。一台普通的好电脑瞬间便能计算出我们任何人用计算尺毕生才能得出的结论。想一想我们能从这几乎无限精确而又如此容易掌握的机器计算错误中有何收获。我们可以开始解决一些最棘手的问题。譬如说，既然我们事实上已经成为地球村，那么如何在世界范围内着手规划社会生活?作为一种可行的假设，我们不妨认为能做到这点的左右正确方法都行不通。那么，我们前进中所需要的就是一系列错误的选择，这比我们眼下所能想出的错误路线的单子要长得多，也有趣得多。事实上，我们需要一份无限长的单子，当它被打印出来时，我们需要电脑自行工作并随机地选择下一步骤。如果这是一个足够大的错误的话，那么我们就会吃惊地发现自己站在一望无垠的新水平线上，又准备前进了。