Jag vet, tekniskt bör detta vara en kommentar. Jag kan inte motstå en möjlighet att citera från en av favoritförfattarna, Clifford D. Simak.
Dessa utbyten är från Simaks Projekt Pope :
“The one question that must first occur to us is to ask ourselves if a
robot is capable of love. Of loyalty, yes; of responsibility, yes; of
logic, yes. But how about love? Can a robot actually love anyone or
anything at all? The robot has no spouse, no children, no kin of any
sort, no blood relatives. Love is a biological emotion. It should not
be expected of a robot, nor should a robot expect to experience it.
Because he has no one to love, a robot has no one to protect or care
for - he doesn’t even have to worry about himself. With minimal repair
and maintenance, he theoretically can live forever. He does not have
the specter of old age to worry over. He does not have to amass a
fortune to care for himself in his later years. In the way of personal
relationships, he actually has nothing at all. Which leaves a big hole
in his life, a lot of emptiness.”
“Perhaps,” said Tennyson, “he would not know about the emptiness. He
would not be aware that he is empty.”
“That might be true if robots lived entirely by themselves, if they
lived apart from biological beings. But they don’t; I don’t think they
can. They’re hung up on humans; they must have their humans. And all
these years, observing humans, they must realize, at least
subconsciously, what they are missing.”
“So you think,” said Tennyson, “that, lacking the ability and
opportunity to love, they turned to religion to fill the emptiness.
But that makes no great amount of sense; religion is based on love.”
“You forget,” said Decker, “that love is not the only factor
contributing to religion. There is faith as well. At times a very
dogged faith, and a robot is so constituted that he could operate a
long way on dogged faith alone. I would think that he could become,
with very little effort, a fanatic that would put to shame any human
zealot.”
och senare i en publik med dator-paven:
“You humans feel both love and hate,” said the Pope. “I can feel
neither of them. I think that’s one up for me and my fellow robots.
You have your dreams and I have mine, but my dream cannot be identical
with yours. You have the arts - music, painting, literature - and
while I am aware of these, while I recognize the function that they
serve and the pleasure to be gotten from them, I cannot respond to
them.”
“Holiness,” said Jill, “faith itself may be an art.”
“I do not doubt it,” said the Pope. “You may have put your finger on
an important consideration. Yet you cannot say that robots are lacking
in their faith and their hunger for the faith. It was that hunger
which built Vatican and has carried us through a thousand years of
searching for a more perfect faith. Could it be that there are many
varieties, not of faiths, but of perfect faiths, of truthful and solid
faiths?”
Kanske alla känsliga varelser behöver lite mysterium i sitt liv.