| Title | The Pathetic Fallacy |
| Message Text | Okay, I'm transcribing The Pathetic Fallacy: CHAPPELL: Quiet, please. (SEVEN SECONDS SILENCE) CHAPPELL: Quiet, please. (MUSIC ... THEME ... FADE FOR) ANNOUNCER: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents \"Quiet, Please!\" which is written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and which features Ernest Chappell. \"Quiet, Please!\" for tonight is called \"The Pathetic Fallacy.\" (MUSIC ... THEME ... END) QUINN: I had very little to do with it, really. I don't even know how it works. No, I'll take that back. I do know how it works in general. But the details -- nobody but the old gentleman knows them. And I sometimes wonder if he does, really. You see, after all, it's merely a differential integrator. Everybody knows what a differential integrator is, of course. But this one is the most complicated and versatile one that's ever been built. What you see here is only the outer shell of the thing. You see, all the walls of this room are covered with banks of jacks and relays and these electronic glow tubes. And up there are sequence analyzers with multiple [dimewave?] selectors. These are the precepts all along here and the master control is at the desk there in the center. Ah, but that's not all. Ah, not by a long shot. The actual machine is behind those walls. Three rooms full of tubes and motors and stroboscopes and several thousand miles of wiring and, uh, some devices that are not public property yet. The machine took six years to build. And a total of eighty-one expert technicians were employed continuously during that time. So, you can understand that any one man knows very little of the actual construction of this, er, giant mechanical brain. Oh, that's just what it is. A mechanical electronic brain capable of performing mathematical tasks far beyond the comprehension of the human brain. Now, are there any questions before we proceed? SANDY BURNS: Uh, yes. I've got a question, Mr. Quinn. Does this machine really think? QUINN: No, Mister, uh ... ? SANDY BURNS: Burns. Sandy Burns. The Daily News. QUINN: Well, Mr. Burns, you may tell the readers of the - (condescendingly) Daily News - that the machine does not think. It is a purely mechanical device, although a most complicated one. SANDY BURNS: But you called it a brain. QUINN: I was merely indulging in the pathetic fallacy, Mr. Burns. SANDY BURNS: Oh. ALICE KING: All right, what IS the pathetic fallacy, Mr. Quinn? QUINN: It's a philosophical concept of John Ruskin, Miss, uh ...? ALICE KING: Alice King. QUINN: A philosophical concept, Miss Alice King, which derives from the imputation of human qualities or emotions to an inanimate thing. Uh, a figure of speech, let us say. ALICE KING: I don't get it. QUINN: It is quite common in literature, Miss King. A poet speaks of the angry sea, the cruel wind, and so on. ALICE KING: Ohhh. Oh, I get it. Do you get it, Sandy? SANDY BURNS: Yeah. I guess so. QUINN: Good. Are there any other questions? SANDY BURNS: No. Go ahead. Unless somebody else has a question. ALICE KING: I have. What's the machine good for? QUINN: That is not as easy to answer as you might think, Miss Alice King. I think that if I'd point out that it is capable of solving the most abstruse mathematical equation in an amazingly short time, you may have an idea of its value to science and industry. ALICE KING: How fast? QUINN: What? ALICE KING: How fast does it work? QUINN: Well, here is an example in this folder. SOUND: (FUMBLES with folder.) QUINN: This solution covers thirty-six pages. The machine produced this solution in - uh, let me look - sixteen minutes. ALICE KING: That IS pretty fast. QUINN: Exceptionally fast -- when one considers that, without the machine, it would take twenty expert mathematicians working together for something like ten years to arrive at the same solution. So, you see--? ALICE KING: Oh. Well, um, I've got one more question, Mr. Quinn, if you don't mind. QUINN: Go right ahead. ALICE KING: How do you know this answer's right? QUINN: What? Why, of course it's right. ALICE KING: Sure. But how do you know? QUINN: Why, er-- Why, that question has never come up before. ALICE KING: Yes, but if this machine is such a dinger, as you say it is, oughtn't you to be sure that it adds things up right? QUINN: Oh, it does. Oh, it does, I assure you. ALICE KING: This answer to the problem you've got there -- how do you know it's right until twenty mathematicians work ten years to do it over again? QUINN: Why, that's ridiculous. ALICE KING: It isn't ridiculous. SANDY BURNS: I'll tell you what's ridiculous to me, Mr. Quinn. Just the same as it is to Alice. I think it's absurd for a bunch of great, big, high-powered scientists building a gadget like this and then taking its word for everything without question. QUINN: I'm - I'm afraid you haven't the proper scientific approach, Mr. Burns. SANDY BURNS: Oh, that's right, I haven't. But, listen here, suppose you've got a great big scientific formula or whatever you call it and let's say a big bridge or something depends on some kind of calculation that takes twenty minutes to do. QUINN: Yes? SANDY BURNS: Well, what if the machine made an error of just one number? Wouldn't that error be multiplied a million times and the-- QUINN: You see, Mr. Burns? I said you didn't have the scientific approach. We took that very fact into consideration. And the operation of the machine has been checked at every stage. ALICE KING: How? QUINN: By starting with the simplest possible mathematical problems. Now, if you'll just move a little closer, I'll demonstrate. We will progress from a simple \"two plus two\" on through the multiplication of seven or eight digit numbers through raising a number to a three digit power, through algebra-- ALICE KING: Go on, let's see. QUINN: Very well. \"Two plus two\" is our first problem which will be solved electronically in one millionth of a second. Now, the problem is set up here. SOUND: (Two keys are PUNCHED.) QUINN: Hm. And when I flip this button, the result appears on the transparent screen up there. Now, watch. \"Two plus two.\" SOUND: (Machine CLICKS.) QUINN: \"Two plus two are four.\" You see? ALICE KING: (dryly) You turn around and look at the screen, Mr. Quinn. QUINN: What? ALICE KING: Says \"five\" up there. (MUSIC ... ) |
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| Submission Date | Sep 06, 2003 |