CHAPTER XIX
Artificial Intelligence:
Prospects
"Almost" Situations and Subjunctives
AFTER READING Contrafactus, a friend said to me, "My uncle was almost
President of the U.S.!" "Really?" I said. "Sure," he replied, "he was skipper
of the PT 108." Oohn F. Kennedy was skipper of the PT 109.)
That is what Contrifactus is all about. In everyday thought, we are
constantly manufacturing mental variants on situations we face, ideas we
have, or events that happen, and we let some features stay exactly the same
while others "slip". What features do we let slip? What ones do we not even
consider letting slip? What events are perceived on some deep intuitive
level as being close relatives of ones which really happened? What do we
think "almost" happened or "could have" happened, even though it unam-
biguously did not? What alternative versions of events pop without any
conscious thought into our minds when we hear a story? Why do some
counterfactuals strike us as "less counterfactual" than other counterfactu-
als? After all, it is obvious that anything that didn't happen didn't happen.
There aren't degrees of "didn't-happen-ness". And the same goes for
"almost" situations. There are times when one plaintively says, "It almost
happened", and other times when one says the same thing, full of relief.
But the "almost" lies in the mind, not in the external facts.
Driving down a country road, you run into a swarm of bees. You don't
just duly take note of it; the whole situation is immediately placed in
perspective by a swarm of "replays" that crowd into your mind. Typically,
you think, "Sure am lucky my window wasn't open!"--or worse, the re-
verse: "Too bad my window wasn't closed!" "Lucky I wasn't on my bike!"
"Too bad I didn't come along five seconds earlier." Strange but possible
replays: "If that had been a deer, I could have been killed!" "I bet those
bees would have rather had a collision with a rosebush." Even stranger
replays: "Too bad those bees weren't dollar bills!" "Lucky ~hose bees
weren't made of cement!" "Too bad it wasn't just one bee instead of a
swarm." "Lucky I wasn't the swarm instead of being me." What slips
naturally and what doesn't-and why?
In a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine, the following excerpt
from the "Philadelphia Welcomat" was reprinted:!
If Leonardo da Vinci had been born a female the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel might never have been painted.Artificial Intelligence: Prospects 641