Artificial Intelligence and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 'What is the fundamental question of Life, the Universe, and everything?'

What happens when we let artificial intelligence process the pentalogy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by English writer Douglas Adams and ask it: "What is the fundamental question of Life, the Universe, and everything?"

1. “Well, there is no God, only his work, which you can find in his stories of the creation and destruction of the world.

2. That’s a good question. Really good! It explains the fundamental things. It explains how the Earth got there, how to do all sorts of things, and also some minor matters regarding the geometry of the Sun.
   “I think that’s the most fundamental question,” Arthur called out from a distance. The Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic was working its magic even on the unconscious brain. “What is it?” Think of all the mathematical functions, the most powerful and sophisticated ones. The world is like a rabbit with three heads. It cannot know its own worth, or even the worth of its neighbour.”

3. “It is the most fundamental question in the life sciences,” said the old man. He sighed.
   “Yes, it is,” said Arthur. “Yes, it is indeed the most fundamental question of mathematics. The larger the square root of the number of people in the universe, the more complicated the great question of Bang Bang becomes, the simpler and easier it is to understand the whole picture than the sum of everything else. So it’s simpler and easier to understand the whole picture.
   “What’s so hard about that?”
   `Simple. You have to multiply it by four and then by the number of people in the universe.

“What question has the answer 42?”

1. “I’m afraid we have the answer,” said Arthur.
   “OK,” said Ford. “Let’s go.”
   And he jumped out of the window.

2. “I don’t know, Miss Universe,” the woman suddenly said.
   You seem to be in a good mood.
   She put on her face and said, “I’m not here to draw conclusions. I’m here to answer your question. So: You have remarkable results!”

3. Shall we leave it to your judgement?
   “Will it be able to?” Arthur asked, “could it be?”
   “Tell me,” said Ford Prefect.
   “I expect it,” said the computer.
   “I expect a good question,” said Arthur.
   “Yes,” said the computer and vanished again.
   Arthur, panicking, tried to solve the problem until a voice answered.
   “Look again,” said the voice.
   The answer was there. The answer was “yes” or “no”.
   Arthur and Ford looked at each other, confused.
   “Is there anyone with a gun?” said Arthur.
   “No,” said Ford, “there isn’t.”

I don’t know how many algorithms the original author uses, but even if it’s far from perfect, it shows remarkable imagination and a good dose of earthy black humour :)

When I ask the computer how not to succumb to panic, it advises me to seek the right person and warns against parallelism with the Vogons. I think about this for a while and conclude that if I’m dissatisfied in my corporate job, it will have a lot to do with parallelism with the Vogons.

At other times, the computer says that to avoid panic, it’s enough to hate the system. Or, for example, that being in a panic actually makes life incredibly happy – that it’s the most amazing and greatest run in the universe :)

For such a young algorithm, I think these are not bad arguments at all, what do you say?