演講MP3+雙語文稿:經(jīng)過數(shù)十億年的單調之后，宇宙正在蘇醒

聽力課堂TED音頻欄目主要包括TED演講的音頻MP3及中英雙語文稿，供各位英語愛好者學習使用。本文主要內容為演講MP3+雙語文稿:經(jīng)過數(shù)十億年的單調之后，宇宙正在蘇醒，希望你會喜歡！

【演講者及介紹】David Deutsch

大衛(wèi)Deutsch。物理學家,作者。量子計算和量子信息理論的先驅大衛(wèi)·多伊奇(David Deutsch)現(xiàn)在試圖界定可能和不可能之間的界限。

【演講主題】經(jīng)過數(shù)十億年的單調之后，宇宙正在蘇醒

【中英文字幕】

翻譯者 Helen Chen 校對者Yanyan Hong

00:13

I'm thrilled to be talking to you by this high-tech method. Of all humans who have ever lived, the overwhelming majority would have found what we are doing here incomprehensible, unbelievable.

我很激動能通過這種 高科技的方法與大家交談，大多數(shù)曾生活在世上的人們 可能會覺得我們現(xiàn)在正在做的 是不可思議，且難以置信的。

00:28

Because, for thousands of centuries, in the dark time before the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, people had low expectations. For their lives, for their descendants' lives. Typically, they expected nothing significantly new or better to be achieved, ever. This pessimism famously appears in the Bible, in one of the few biblical passages with a named author. He's called Qohelet, he's an enigmatic chap. He wrote, "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there something of which it is said, 'Look, this is new.' No, that thing was already done in the ages that came before us."

因為，幾千個世紀以來，在科技革命和啟蒙運動到來之前 的黑暗時期，人們的期望值很低，不僅對他們自己，對他們后代的生活也是如此。通常，他們從未指望 實現(xiàn)任何新的或更好的成就。這種悲觀主義在《圣經(jīng)》中很有名，是圣經(jīng)中為數(shù)不多 的標注了作者的章節(jié)之一。這位神秘的家伙 叫庫赫萊特 (Qohelet)。他寫道，“過去的一切，便是將來，已行的事，后必再行； 日光之下并無新事。有沒有什么東西可以稱之為 ‘看！這是新的’嗎？ 沒有，那事在我們之前的 時代就已經(jīng)發(fā)生了。”

01:24

Qohelet was describing a world without novelty. By novelty I mean something new in Qohelet's sense, not merely something that's changed, but a significant change with lasting effects, where people really would say, "Look, this is new," and, preferably, "good." So, purely random changes aren't novelty. OK, Heraclitus did say a man can't step in the same river twice, because it's not the same river, he's not the same man. But if the river is changing randomly, it really is the same river.

庫赫萊特形容的是 一個沒有新奇的時代。創(chuàng)新在庫赫萊特看來是新事物，不僅僅是改變了的東西，而是一個有長遠影響的重大改變，對此人們會真心感嘆，“看啊，這是新的，”，且更傾向于認為這是“好”的。純粹的隨機改變并不新奇。赫拉克利特 (Herclitus) 曾說，一個人不能兩次踏進同一條河, 因為那不再是同一條河，他也不是同一個人了。但如果河流是隨機變化的，它依然是同一條河。

02:07

In contrast, if an idea in a mind spreads to other minds, and changes lives for generations, that is novelty. Human life without novelty is life without creativity, without progress. It's a static society, a zero-sum game. That was the living hell in which Qohelet lived. Like everyone, until a few centuries ago. It was hell, because for humans, suffering is intimately related to staticity. Because staticity isn't just frustrating. All sources of suffering -- famine, pandemics, incoming asteroids, and things like war and slavery, hurt people only until we have created the knowledge to prevent them.

相反，如果一個人的想法 傳播到很多人的心中，改變了幾代人的生活，那就叫做新鮮感。人類的生活若沒了新鮮感，就像生活沒了創(chuàng)新，不再進步，成為了一成不變的社會，零和的游戲。那就是庫赫萊特生活的地獄，和每個人一樣，直到幾個世紀前。這就是地獄，因為對于人類，受難和不變的社會是密切相關的。固化不止令人沮喪，所以受難的根源—— 饑荒，流行病，即將到來的小行星，以及像戰(zhàn)爭和奴隸制度這樣的事，只會傷害他人，直到我們 創(chuàng)造了阻止他們的辦法。

03:05

There's a story in Somerset Maugham's novel "Of Human Bondage" about an ancient sage who summarizes the entire history of mankind as, "He was born, he suffered and he died." And it goes on: "Life was insignificant and death without consequence." And indeed, the overwhelming majority of humans who have ever lived had lives of suffering and grueling labor, before dying young and in agony. And yes, in most generations nothing had any novel consequence for subsequent generations.

毛姆的書《人性的枷鎖》中的一個故事，講述了一位古時的圣人，他將人類的整個歷史總結為，“他出生了，“他受難了，和他死去了?！?他繼續(xù)寫道，“生無意義，死無后果?！?沒錯，絕大多數(shù)曾經(jīng) 在這世上生活過的人類 都在痛苦和勞動中掙扎，直到在痛苦中英年早逝。沒錯，大部分世代的人們，都未為后代帶來什么新奇的影響。

03:51

Nevertheless, when ancient people tried to explain their condition, they typically did so in grandiose cosmic terms. Which was the right thing to do, as it turns out. Even though their actual explanations, their myths, were largely false. Some tried to explain the grimness and monotony of their world in terms of an endless cosmic war between good and evil, in which humans were the battleground. Which neatly explained why their own experience was full of suffering, and why progress never happened. But it wasn't true.

可是，當古人試圖解釋他們的狀況時，他們通常用宏大的宇宙作為術語，沒想到他們的做法竟是正確的，雖然他們實際的解釋，他們的神話 大多都是虛構的。有些人曾試圖 用善惡之間無休止的宇宙戰(zhàn)爭 來解釋他們世界的冷酷和單調，而人類就是戰(zhàn)場。這也很好的說明了為什么 他們的經(jīng)歷充滿了煎熬，為什么社會一直沒有進步。但這不是真的。

04:36

Amazingly enough, all their conflict and suffering were just due to the way they processed ideas. Being satisfied with dogma, and just-so stories, rather than criticizing them and trying to guess better explanations of the world and of their own condition. Twentieth-century physics did create better explanations, but still in terms of a cosmic war. This time, the combatants were order and chaos, or entropy. That story does allow for hope for the future. But in another way, it's even bleaker than the ancient myths, because the villain, entropy, is preordained to have the final victory, when the inexorable laws of thermodynamics shut down all novelty with the so-called heat death of the universe.

令人驚奇的是，他們所有的沖突和煎熬 都是由于他們處理思想的方式。滿足于教義和編織的故事，而非去質疑它們，然后試圖對世界和他們 自己的狀況做出更好的解釋。二十世紀的物理學家 的確創(chuàng)造了更好的解釋，可依然是把宇宙戰(zhàn)爭作為依據(jù)。這一次，對陣雙方是 秩序和混亂，或無序。這個故事的確給予了 人們對未來的希望。但從另一方面來說，它也比古代神話還要凄涼，因為當伴隨著所謂的宇宙熱死亡，熱力學不可抗拒的定律 阻擋了一切新奇事物的發(fā)生時，反派，無序就注定 要取得最后的勝利。

05:39

Currently, there's a story of a local battle in that war, between sustainability, which is order, and wastefulness, which is chaos -- that's the contemporary take on good and evil, often with the added twist that humans are the evil, so we shouldn't even try to win. And recently, there have been tales of another cosmic war, between gravity, which collapses the universe, and dark energy, which finally shreds it. So this time, whichever of those cosmic forces wins, we lose.

目前，在那場戰(zhàn)爭中 有一個在可持續(xù)性，也就是秩序，與浪費，也就是混亂之間 的當?shù)囟窢幍墓适隆?這是當代人們對善與惡的理解，通常伴隨著人類是邪惡的念頭，所以我們根本不應該嘗試去戰(zhàn)勝。而最近，又出現(xiàn)了另一個宇宙戰(zhàn)爭的傳說，使宇宙瓦解的重力，與最終能把其撕裂 的暗能量之間的抗衡。所以，這次，無論哪一個宇宙勢力勝出 我們都會輸。

06:17

All those pessimistic accounts of the human condition contain some truth, but as prophecies, they're all misleading, and all for the same reason. None of them portrays humans as what we really are. As Jacob Bronowski said, "Man is not a figure in the landscape -- he is the shaper of the landscape." In other words, humans are not playthings of cosmic forces, we are users of cosmic forces. I'll say more about that in a moment, but first, what sorts of thing create novelty? Well, the beginning of the universe surely did.

所有那些對人類狀況的悲觀描述 都帶著一絲真諦，但就像預言，它們都是因為同一個 原因在誤導人們。沒有任何一條真正 展現(xiàn)了人類的本質。就像布魯諾維奇 （Jacob Bronowski）所說，“人類不是風景的一部分—— 而是它的創(chuàng)造者?！?換而言之，人類不是宇宙勢力的奴隸，而是它的使用者。稍后我會深入討論，但首先，什么樣的東西 創(chuàng)造了新事物？ 當然，宇宙的誕生功不可沒，

07:03

The big bang, nearly 14 billion years ago, created space, time and energy, everything physical. And then, immediately, what I call the first era of novelty, with the first atom, the first star, the first black hole, the first galaxy. But then, at some point, novelty vanished from the universe. Perhaps from as early as 12 or 13 billion years ago, right up to the present day, there's never been any new kind of astronomical object. There's only been what I call the great monotony. So, Qohelet was accidentally even more right about the universe beyond the Sun than he was about under the Sun. So long as the great monotony lasts, what has been out there really is what will be. And there is nothing out there of which it can truly be said, "Look, this is new."

大約 140 億年前的大爆炸 創(chuàng)造了時空，時間和能量，所有的物體。緊接著，在我稱之為第一個新世紀的時期，誕生了第一顆原子，第一顆行星，第一個黑洞，第一片星系?？墒?，在某個瞬間，宇宙中的創(chuàng)新之力消失了，也許是早在120 或 130 億年以前，直到今天，一直沒有什么新的天體誕生。我稱之為“大單調”。所以，庫赫萊特對太陽之外 的宇宙的認識，碰巧比他對太陽之下 的認識更正確。只要大單調還存在，那些存在的，將會一直在。也不會有別的新事物 可以被真正形容為 “看啊，這是新的”。

08:12

Nevertheless, at some point during the great monotony, there was an event -- inconsequential at the time, and even billions of years later, it had affected nothing beyond its home planet -- yet eventually, it could cause cosmically momentous novelty. That event was the origin of life: creating the first genetic knowledge, coding for biological adaptations, coding for novelty. On Earth, it utterly transformed the surface. Genes in the DNA of single-celled organisms put oxygen in the air, extracted CO2, put chalk and iron ore into the ground, hardly a cubic inch of the surface to some depth has remained unaffected by those genes. The Earth became, if not a novel place on the cosmic scale, certainly a weird one.

然而，在大單調的某一刻，有一個事件—— 當時沒有什么意義，而且甚至幾十億年之后，除了它的母星之外，它什么也沒有影響—— 可是最終，它可能會 引起大規(guī)模的創(chuàng)新。那事件就是生命的起源： 創(chuàng)造了第一個基因上的知識，讓生物開始學會適應，學會創(chuàng)新。在地球上，它徹底地改變了地球面貌，在單細胞生物 DNA 中的基因 將氧氣釋放到空中，吸取二氧化碳，將堊和鐵礦融到地里，幾乎每一寸土地 在某種程度上都被 那些基因影響了，就算地球沒在宇宙層面上 變成了一個新穎的地方，也至少是令人詫異的一個。

09:16

Just as an example, beyond Earth, only a few hundred different chemical substances have been detected. Presumably, there are some more in lifeless locations, but on Earth, evolution created billions of different chemicals. And then the first plants, animals, and then, in some ancestor species of ours, explanatory knowledge. For the first time in the universe, for all we know.

比如，在地球之外，只有幾百種不同的化學物質被發(fā)現(xiàn)，據(jù)猜測，大概在沒有 生命的地方還有更多，但在地球上，進化過程就造就了 幾億種化學物質。隨之出現(xiàn)了 第一棵植物，第一只動物，然后，在我們的一些祖先物種中，出現(xiàn)了解釋性知識的概念。據(jù)我們所知，這是宇宙中的首次。

09:48

Explanatory knowledge is the defining adaptation of our species. It differs from the nonexplanatory knowledge in DNA, for instance, by being universal. That is to say, whatever can be understood, can be understood through explanatory knowledge. And more, any physical process can be controlled by such knowledge, limited only by the laws of physics. And so, explanatory knowledge, too, has begun to transform the Earth's surface. And soon, the Earth will become the only known object in the universe that turns aside incoming asteroids instead of attracting them.

解釋性知識可以用來 定義我們物種的適應性，它不同于DNA中無法解釋的知識，例如，它是普遍存在的。也就是說，任何可以理解的東西，都可以通過解釋性知識理解。此外，任何物理的過程，都可以由這些知識控制，只受物理法則的限制。所以說，解釋性知識同樣也 開始改變了地球的面貌。不久之后，地球成為了 宇宙中我們唯一所知 能把小行星拒之門外，而非吸引它們碰撞的星球。

10:37

Qohelet was understandably misled by the painful slowness of progress in his day. Novelty in human life was still too rare, too gradual, to be noticed in one generation. And in the biosphere, the evolution of novel species was even slower. But both things were happening.

可以理解，庫赫萊特被 他所在時代艱難而遲緩 的發(fā)展所誤導了。人類生活中的新奇事物仍然太罕見，發(fā)展太緩慢，不可能在一代人的時間里被發(fā)掘。而在生物圈，新物種的進化需要更長時間，但兩件事情同時都發(fā)生了。

11:00

Now, why is there a great monotony in the universe at large, and what makes our planet buck that trend? Well, the universe at large is relatively simple. Stars are so simple that we can predict their behavior billions of years into the future, and retrodict how they formed billions of years ago. So why is the universe simple? Basically, it's because big, massive, powerful things strongly affect lesser things, and not vice versa. I call that the hierarchy rule. For example, when a comet hits the Sun, the Sun carries on just as before, but the comet is vaporized. For the same reason, big things are not much affected by small parts of themselves, i.e., by details. Which means that their overall behavior is simple. And since nothing very new can happen to things that remain simple, the hierarchy rule, by causing large-scale simplicity, has caused the great monotony. But, the saving grace is the hierarchy rule is not a law of nature. It just happens to have held so far in the universe, except here.

為什么宇宙中會有 如此大規(guī)模的單調？ 是什么讓我們的星球順從那個趨勢？ 宇宙之大，其實很簡單。行星也很簡單，我們可以推測未來數(shù)億年以后的樣子，也可以預測它們億年前如何形成。所以為什么宇宙如此簡單呢？ 基本上，這是因為巨大的、 強有力的事物強烈地影響著 較小的事物，反之則不然。我稱之為“等級制度”。比如，一個彗星撞上了太陽，太陽仍然會正常運轉，而那顆彗星卻會蒸發(fā)殆盡。同理，大的物體不會那么 容易受到小物體的影響，不容易受到細節(jié)影響。也就是說，它的整體行為 很簡單。既然沒有什么新鮮事會發(fā)生，它會一直很簡單，等級制度導致了大規(guī)模的簡單化，也導致了大單調。但是，令人耳目一新的是，等級制度并不是大自然的規(guī)律，是巧合讓它延續(xù)至今，除了這里。

12:32

In our biosphere, molecule-sized objects, genes, control vastly disproportionate resources. The first genes for photosynthesis, by causing their own proliferation, and then transforming the surface of the planet, have violated or reversed the hierarchy rule by the mind-blowing factor of 10 to the power 40. Explanatory knowledge is potentially far more powerful because of universality, and more rapidly created. When human knowledge has achieved a factor 10 to the 40, it will pretty much control the entire galaxy, and will be looking beyond.

在我們的生物圈，分子大小的物質，也就是基因，控制著大量不平行的資源，最早出現(xiàn)的掌管光合作用的基因 通過引起自身的增殖，然后改變地球表面，以令人吃驚的 10 的 40 次方的規(guī)模，已經(jīng)違背或扭轉了等級制度。解釋性知識由于其廣泛性和更迅速 的創(chuàng)造過程而具有更大的潛力。和創(chuàng)造得更快。當人的智慧增加到 10 的 40 次方，基本就有能力掌握整個星系，而且會進一步探索。

13:18

So humans, and any other explanation creators who may exist out there, are the ultimate agents of novelty for the universe. We are the reason and the means by which novelty and creativity, knowledge, progress, can have objective, large-scale physical effects. From the human perspective, the only alternative to that living hell of static societies is continual creation of new ideas, behaviors, new kinds of objects. This robot will soon be obsolete, because of new explanatory knowledge, progress.

所以，人類 和其他可能存在的解釋性創(chuàng)造者 是宇宙創(chuàng)新的最終代理人。我們是新事物產(chǎn)生的原因和方法，因為我們，新事物，創(chuàng)造力，知識，發(fā)展 得以對現(xiàn)實有客觀、大規(guī)模的影響。從人類的角度來說，去改變永恒不變的 地獄社會的唯一方法 便是不斷地創(chuàng)造新的思想，新的行為，新的事物。這個機器人很快就會過時，因為新的解釋性知識和我們的發(fā)展。

14:08

But from the cosmic perspective, explanatory knowledge is the nemesis of the hierarchy rule. It's the destroyer of the great monotony. So it's the creator of the next cosmological era, the Anthropocene. If one can speak of a cosmic war, it's not the one portrayed in those pessimistic stories. It's a war between monotony and novelty, between stasis and creativity. And in this war, our side is not destined to lose. If we choose to apply our unique capacity to create explanatory knowledge, we could win.

從宇宙的角度來說，解釋性知識 是等級制度建設的克星，它是大單調的終結者。因而它將是下一個 宇宙時代的創(chuàng)造者，人類世（Anthropocene）。如果有人可以為宇宙大戰(zhàn)說話的話，它不會是那些悲觀主義 故事中描繪的救世主，它是一場單調對抗創(chuàng)新的戰(zhàn)爭，一場停滯不前對抗創(chuàng)新改變的戰(zhàn)爭。在這場戰(zhàn)爭中，我們注定不會是失敗者，如果我們能選擇運用我們 獨特的能力來創(chuàng)造解釋性知識，我們就可以獲得勝利。

15:00

Thanks.

謝謝。

15:02

(Applause)

（鼓掌）