也是一只自由泳的小鸟
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep 翻译成仿生人会“梦见”电子羊合适吗？
毕竟 dream 也有梦想、向往的意思，我初看标题就理解成了这个意思。主人公始终想要一只羊，那么他思考仿生人是否也会想要电子羊也是很自然的事。作为一部模糊了仿生人与真人界限的作品，问仿生人做不做梦意义好像不大，有梦想才是人更重要的一个特质。文中还有最切题的这一段：
Do androids dream? Rick asked himself. Evidently; that’s why they occasionally kill their employers and flee here. A better life, without servitude.
这里 dream 的意思就更像 I have a dream 里的 dream 了。
读完这本书其实没有什么特别的感觉…很小的时候就觉得人类和机器人都是一样的，就看你愿意怎样定义“思想”了，我个人不觉得编程编出来的思想和人脑计算出来的思想有多大的差别。也可能是我本身对科幻题材不感冒，看得不多，唯一喜欢的只有 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy，其他的大部分都觉得是在无病呻吟&创造并解决一个不存在的问题。我没看过电影，不知道打斗场面会不会好，但是书里几乎完全没打斗，主角拿起激光枪打死了一个仿生人，又举起枪打死一个仿生人，再举起枪打死了一个仿生人，没了…书里一大部分是心理活动。
很久以前忘了是上课还是看科普书的时候提到人的情绪对人类的生活有重大且关键的意义，然而某些科幻作品会试图抹去人类的感情，认为没有情绪的人能更好地完成任务，其实这是全然错误的。
然后我才读的这本书，一读到开头的情绪调节器：原来说的是你啊！
主角的妻子在全书中除了等待主角回家、担忧主角、操心主角、给主角提供心理支撑之外好像没有什么功能，甚至还被出轨了，但我就挺喜欢她的，就因为她说：
“I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything.”
关于“没有情绪的人能更好地完成任务”这种错误看法，#HowEmotionsAreMade 里有这样一段：
The figure of the dispassionate judge, who renders emotionless decisions in strict accordance with the law, is an archetype in many societies. The law expects judges to be neutral, as emotion would presumably get in the way of fair decisions. “Good judges pride themselves on the rationality of their rulings and the suppression of their personal proclivities,” wrote the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “including most especially their emotions.
In some ways, a purely rational approach to legal decision-making sounds compelling and even noble, but as we’ve seen so far, the brain’s wiring doesn’t divide passion from reason. We needn’t work hard to poke holes in this argument; it comes with its own holes pre-drilled.
Let’s start with the idea that a judge can be dispassionate, which should beinterpreted as “having no affect*” (rather than “having no emotion”). This idea is a biological impossibility unless that person has suffered brain damage. As we discussed in chapter 4, no decision can ever be free of affect as long as loudmouthed body-budgeting circuitry is driving predictions throughout the brain.
Affectless decision-making from the bench is a fairy tale. Robert Jackson, another former Supreme Court justice, described “dispassionate judges” as “mythical beings” like “Santa Claus or Uncle Sam or Easter bunnies.” Direct scientific evidence shows him to be pretty much on target. Remember how judges’ impartiality was easily swayed in parole cases held right before lunchtime, when they attributed their unpleasant affect to the prisoner instead of to hunger (chapter 4)?
Common sense dictates that judges experience strong affect in the courtroom. How could they not? They hold people’s futures in their hands. Their working hours are filled with heinous crimes and grievously harmed victims.
*affect: affect is the general sense of feeling that you experience throughout each day, ranging from unpleasant to pleasant (called valence), and from idle to activated. Affect is a fundamental aspect of consciousness, it occurs in every moment (whether you're aware of it or not, even when you are completely still or asleep) because interoception occurs in every moment. Even a completely neutral feeling is affect. Scientists largely agree that affect is present from birth and that babies can feel and perceive pleasure and displeasure.
