Super Gene Ⅱ: Evolution

"Can we really do that?" Lin Shen was doubtful.

"Do you have a better idea?" Ouyang Yudu countered.

"Then let\'s go ask him," Lin Shen said, turning to open the door.

The Thinker atop the tower must have seen them by now, and if he wanted to kill them, he wouldn\'t have waited until now. Ouyang Yudu\'s sincere approach was not without reason.

"We mean no offense, and entering the ancient city was an unintentional mistake. If there\'s anything you need us to do, we will dedicate ourselves to the task," Lin Shen called out to the Thinker Statue from inside the door.

It wasn\'t that he was afraid to step outside, but rather that outside the door was Flame Liquid, which would prevent him from being heard.

After the shout, Lin Shen eagerly looked at the Thinker Statue at the top of the tower. He waited a long time, but the Thinker Statue did not respond at all.

"Could it be that he can\'t hear us shouting from inside this room?" Lin Shen looked at Ouyang Yudu and said.

"I think you should be a bit more sincere," Ouyang Yudu suggested.

"Where was I not sincere? I was very sincere, alright. Why don\'t you try, let\'s see how sincere you can be," Lin Shen said as he stepped away from the door.

Ouyang Yudu walked to the doorway and shouted to the outside, "We wish to leave this place. May I ask how we might live and depart from here?"

Lin Shen didn\'t feel that Ouyang Yudu was any more sincere than he had been, but after Ouyang Yudu had spoken, the Thinker Statue at the top of the tower suddenly opened its eyes again, looking towards the small building they were in.

"Wanting to live and leave here is simple. I have a puzzle that I have been unable to solve. If you can answer this puzzle, you may leave alive," the statue surprisingly spoke.

"Ouyang, you\'re pretty good!" Lin Shen gave Ouyang Yudu a thumbs up, overjoyed.

Yet he still couldn\'t understand where he had lacked sincerity.

"Can you tell us what the puzzle is?" Ouyang Yudu continued to call out.

"Can you tell me if I am alive or dead?" the statue slowly asked.

Both Lin Shen and Ouyang Yudu were startled upon hearing this question. What kind of puzzle was this?

"Of course you\'re alive, otherwise how could you communicate with me?" Ouyang Yudu said.

"If I am merely a pre-programmed artificial intelligence with a vast database, I could naturally communicate with you and even know many things you don\'t. But that doesn\'t mean I am alive. Perhaps I am just a cold, intelligent machine operating according to a program. This doesn\'t differentiate whether I am truly alive or dead," the statue said.

"Do you have emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness?" Ouyang Yudu asked again.

"Yes," the statue gave an affirmative answer.

"To have emotions is to be alive, artificial intelligence does not have emotions," Ouyang Yudu said.

"Emotion itself is just a reaction mechanism. How do you know that your emotions are not a preset reaction mechanism?" the statue continued. "When you encounter something joyful, you feel happy and laugh; when you encounter something sad, you feel distressed; these are easily programmed mechanisms. How can you be sure that the emotions you feel aren\'t being manipulated by such mechanisms?"

Ouyang Yudu was temporarily at a loss for words. The statue\'s argument seemed to make sense. How could he know for sure that his emotional responses were truly his own and not controlled by mechanisms?

"When your body receives external signals like tension, fear, excitement, it secretes adrenaline. This mechanism causes your heart to beat faster, your breathing to quicken, your blood flow to increase, and your pupils to dilate. All these reactions are part of your body\'s response mechanism. How is that any different from a machine?"

"When you eat delicious food, you feel joy; when you achieve something, you feel a sense of accomplishment; when your love is reciprocated, you feel happiness. But after doing these things, it\'s dopamine affecting your body, providing you with these pleasant sensations as a reward from the reaction mechanism."

"So all your emotions are just reaction mechanisms. What makes you think you are a living organism rather than a machine with an intelligent program?"

The words of the Thinker Statue plunged Ouyang Yudu into deep thought.

After pondering for a while, he finally shook his head helplessly, "I indeed have no way to prove that I\'m a living organism, but I feel that I am alive."

"Feelings cannot be taken as an answer," the statue said calmly.

"He sits at the top of the tower all day; is he pondering these questions? Where are the answers to such questions? Isn\'t this deliberately making things difficult for us?" Lin Shen thought to himself with a sense of frustration.

He also couldn\'t figure out how to determine whether the Thinker was truly a living organism or not. To most people, being alive means the physical body is alive.

But if you think about it carefully, the flesh and blood of humans could also be a very sophisticated bio-mechanism. It\'s just made up differently from ordinary machines. That doesn\'t prove humans aren\'t intelligent machines.

The two of them pondered in the room for a long time. The more they thought about it, the more unsolvable the problem seemed. They simply couldn\'t figure out how to prove that they were different from intelligent machines.

Can touch prove that you\'re alive? According to the theory of the Thinker, that\'s also just a feedback mechanism.

Can memories of a past life prove that you\'re alive? Of course not. Memories could be implanted. Even if the memories aren\'t implanted, having past memories doesn\'t prove you\'re not an intelligent machine.

Artificial intelligence can remember more things. Does that prove it\'s not an intelligent machine? Obviously not.

"A living organism can reproduce, can continue its bloodline," Lin Shen said after some thought.

"If intelligent machines develop to a certain extent, they just need to include a manufacturing system inside or something like a gene cloning system. They too can achieve what you call reproduction and inheritance of the bloodline. This isn\'t very difficult; with sufficiently advanced technology, it could be done," the Thinker continued.

"You\'re just inserting your genetic information into a machine that manufactures bodies. How can you be certain that what you call reproduction isn\'t just the process of creating new intelligent machines?"

Lin Shen found himself speechless in the face of such questioning. Who could prove such a thing?

"Life makes mistakes, while intelligent machines can only operate according to their programming and do not make mistakes," Ouyang Yudu mused for a long time before speaking again.

"Is there a possibility that if you are intelligent machines, the intelligent program running inside your body is one full of bugs left by a scoundrel? It might contain a lot of seemingly useless junk code that barely keeps the program running but frequently causes errors. With good luck, it runs continuously; with bad luck, it fails.

Errors that don\'t affect the continued use of the program can sometimes self-correct, akin to making amends after a mistake, or getting better after an illness. Those irreparable errors manifest as your bad habits or terminal illnesses. Continue reading at mvl

If an error that affects the operation of the program occurs, rendering the program completely nonfunctional, then this signifies end of life, what you understand as death."

Lin Shen and Ouyang Yuyang listened, dumbfounded, feeling increasingly like they really were intelligent machines.