德意志档案 III

确切地说，我们越是试图总结我认为在《现实的构造》与《无穷的开始》中极为清晰的学术体系时，当向人们解释这些内容时——正如波普所言——你明白的，无论如何表述都难免被误解。今天我在推特上看到有人声称你说过，还加了引号，说‘波普证明人工智能无法实现超级智能’。你知道，我当时的反应是——他根本不会用这种措辞。首先你就不该依赖波普的权威性，他根本不会说‘证明’这种话。

On exactly that, the fact that the more that we summarise what I think is an exceedingly clear body of work in the fabric of reality in the beginning of infinity, when nonetheless you explain it to people, as Poppa says, you know, it's impossible to speak in such a way as to not be misunderstood. I was just reading today on Twitter, someone claiming that you have said, quoting you, and they've put it in quote marks, you have apparently said, Poppa proves AI can't be super intelligent. And, you know, I sort of respond, you know, he never even speaks in those terms. You wouldn't rely upon the authority of Poppa to begin with. He wouldn't say prove.

这又是一个例证，当你向外传播思想时，就像你说的，那些试图理解你世界观的人形成的同心圆里，误解会不断叠加。不知道你对此怎么看？你是否说过类似‘波普证明了’这样的话？顺便说，这还是出自一位记者之口，我觉得还算是比较受尊敬的记者。

So it's just another example that you go out there. And as you say, these concentric circles of people that you bring in to trying to understand your worldview, the misconceptions compound. I don't know what you think about that. Have you said anything like papa proves that and this was from a journalist, by the way. I think a reasonably respected journalist was saying this.

不，当然没有。就像你说的，一旦看到有人声称‘证明了’什么，首先就该问——用什么证明的？这不可能是波普的风格，也不会是我的风格。

No. Of course not. So as you say, I mean, as soon as you see a claim that somebody has proved something, you know, proved it from what? This isn't gonna be Popper. It isn't going to be me.

我证明的是如果量子理论成立，那么物理学中的图灵猜想就成立。这才是证明能做的事。要证明关于通用人工智能的事本质上是不可能的，因为我们还没有通用人工智能的理论。你无法对无法定义的事物进行证明。况且这类事情本就不该用‘证明’来讨论。

I've proved that if quantum theory is true, then the Turing conjecture is true in physics. You know, that's what you can do with the proof. Proving something about AGI is inherently impossible if we don't have a theory of AGI. That, you know, you can't prove something about something that you can't define. And anyway, proof isn't what these kind of things are about.

这类事情应该用论证来解决。而且我不记得波普具体说过关于人工智能的话，那个年代还没有这个概念。

These kind of things are about argument. And Popper, I can't recall Popper specifically saying anything about AI. It wasn't a thing in those days.

‘证明’这个词我们之前谈话没讨论过，但确实经常听到人们使用，比如‘某某已被证明’，仿佛这就与我们提出的可错性知识概念形成了对比。难道一旦某件事被‘证明’，就能刻在石头上永世不变吗？‘证明’这个概念是否与我们其他可错知识处于不同层级？因为对普通大众而言，听起来确实如此。

This word proof is something we haven't talked about during our conversations, but you do hear it deployed quite often, you know. Such and such has been proved as if to say this stands in contrast to our notion of conjectural knowledge or fallibility. After all, once something has been proved, can't we carve it into stone and there it sits for all time? Is the notion of proof on a different level to the rest of our conjectural knowledge? Because it sounds, I think, to the typical layperson, as if it is.

不，并非如此。正如我常说的，数学与其他领域的区别不在于获取知识的方式，而在于研究对象本身。数学研究的是必然真理。所以当我们在数学领域有所发现时，实际上是在对必然真理提出猜想——我们猜想某些已定义的内容属于必然真理。

Yeah, well it isn't. The difference between mathematics and other fields, as I've often said, is not in the way we find knowledge about them, but in the subject matter. The subject matter of mathematics is necessary truth. So when we make a discovery in mathematics, we're making a conjecture about what is necessary truth. So we're making a conjecture that something or other that we have defined is a necessary truth.

但在我们头脑中构建数学、计算机科学、心理学或物理知识的方式并无不同，从认识论角度来看它们都是相同的。

But there isn't a difference in the way we create knowledge in our minds about mathematics or computer science or psychology or physics. They're all the same epistemologically.

我想稍微探讨一下的话题——如果允许我暂时转换话题——是关于创造力的。我知道这个概念定义模糊，是我们尚未完全掌握的。昨天在AirChat上，我与人交谈时提到：只要存在创造力的空间，就存在自由意志的空间，因为我们不知道创造力从何而来。这让你能基于自己的创造性理论自由发挥。我当时强调，真正的创造力不是来自观察，不是归纳推理，不是我们已知如何运行的算法，也不仅仅是元素的简单混合。

One topic that I kind of want to get into a little bit, if I can switch for a moment, is the topic of creativity. And I know that it's very poorly defined and something that we don't quite have a grasp of. And on AirChat yesterday, I was talking to people and I made some comment about as long as you have room for creativity, you have room for free will, because we don't know where creativity comes from. And so that, you know, allows you to have this freedom of operation based on your creative theories. I was making the point that true creativity is not from observation, it's not from induction, it's not from some algorithm that we know yet how to run, and it's not just mixing things together.

立刻有人回应说：能否举例说明你所说的这种创造力？我想在人们听来，当我们讨论这种创造力时，他们觉得纯粹是指爱因斯坦式的科学创造力。而我们使用的某些例子太过遥远，导致人们误以为我们在讨论科学发现而非创造力。于是大多数人会不自觉地陷入这个误区，认为创造力就是观察或重组。

And immediately the response was someone said, well, can you give me some examples of this creativity you're talking about? Right? So I think to people, they feel like when we talk about this form of creativity, we're just talking purely about scientific creativity like Einstein. And I think some of these examples that we use are so far out there that people think, well, they're not talking about creativity, they're talking about scientific discovery, which is not what they're talking about. And so most people seem to automatically fall into this trap that creativity is observation or recombination.

我在想，我们是否能探讨创造力的本质，举些更接地气的现实案例，一劳永逸地破除'创造力就是重组'的观念。你已出色地证明它不是观察所得，但重组这个比喻总是卷土重来——坦白说，这要归因于像史蒂夫·乔布斯这样的权威人士，他曾断言创造力就是把事物混合起来。这句话你在所有励志海报上都能看到。

And I wonder if we can just explore what creativity is, some real world examples that are just more down to earth, and just kind of, I'd love to once and for all put to bed this idea that it's a recombination. I think you've done a great job showing that it's not observation. But I think the recombination metaphor keeps coming back. Frankly, because of authorities like Steve Jobs who authoritatively said creativity is just mixing things together. And that's a quote you find on posters everywhere.

是的，问题只出在'仅仅'这个词上。就像我昨天说的，这就好比说人类'仅仅'是原子。从不存在原子之外的魔法成分这个角度说，我们确实'只是'原子，但这不意味着我们'仅仅'是原子。如果对比一千年前和今天的北美，曼哈顿岛的今昔巨变，若不诉诸创造力就无法解释。

Yeah. Well, it's only the word just that is false there. So like I said yesterday, you know, it it's like saying humans are just atoms. We are just atoms in the sense that there isn't any magic thing in addition to atoms that makes us, but that's not to say that we are just atoms. If you take a snapshot of North America a thousand years ago and then take another snapshot today, the difference between the look of Manhattan Island then and now cannot be explained without invoking creativity.

唯有创造力能造就这一切。自然过程永远无法产生摩天大楼这样的存在。要解释曼哈顿岛上发生的现象，就必须引入创造力。但马上会有人要求：请指出具体的创造力。我可以聚焦某个建筑师——他的老式绘图板、纸张、直尺、圆规和他的大脑——用显微镜来检视这些元素。

Nothing but creativity could have produced that. There are no natural processes that will ever produce something like a skyscraper. So to explain the phenomenon that happened on Manhattan Island, you need to invoke creativity. But now somebody will say, now point to some creativity. And I can zoom down on a particular architect with his old fashioned, draftsman's board and his paper and his ruler and his compass and his brain, and I can examine those with a microscope.

接着会有人追问：创造力究竟发生在哪个环节？那位建筑师的哪些行为具有创造性，而非仅仅是原子的运动？或者说，是否只是汇集了前人的想法？如果所有想法都只是旧有观念的重新组合，那么摩天大楼的创新性就与我们祖先敲击石块的时代毫无二致。但事实并非如此——他们不曾也不能建造摩天大楼，而我们能且做到了。

And, somebody will ask me, well, at which point did creativity happen? What was creative about what that architect did that was not just atoms and, if you like, bringing together ideas that had happened before? Well, if all our ideas are just recombinations of ideas that have happened before, then there's nothing new about the skyscraper that wasn't already there when our ancestors were banging rocks together. But there is. They didn't and couldn't build skyscrapers, and we can and do.

至少我做不到，但人类这个物种可以。

At least I can't, but the human species can.

另一方会说，确实，你不能直接从敲打石头跳到建造摩天大楼，但他们从敲打石头开始，逐渐学会如何塑造石头、制造工具，然后将建造工具和挖掘等知识重新组合。这整个过程就像一步步的重组，几乎像是一个进化过程。

The other side, they'll say, well, yeah, you can't go straight from banging rocks to skyscrapers, but they went from banging rocks to figure out how to shape rocks, to build tools, then they recombined that knowledge of building tools and digging and so on and so forth. So it was just all it was step by step recombination, almost like an evolutionary process.

然而，进化过程也不仅仅是重组。它还包括变异和选择。所以这其实是同一回事。如果你观察恐龙连续几代的DNA，它们最终变成了鸟类，其中每一步本身并不具有进化意义，但整个序列却是。如果说翼龙的设计已经存在于非飞行恐龙的DNA中，或者说翼龙只是恐龙体内不同事物的组合，那就太荒谬了。

Well, an evolutionary process is also not just recombination. It's variation and selection. So again, it's it's the same thing. If you look at the DNA of successive generations of, you know, dinosaurs and they turned into birds, each one of those steps is not evolutionary, and yet the whole sequence is. But it would be absurd to say that the design of a pterodactyl was already in the DNA of nonflying dinosaurs or that the pterodactyl is just a combination of different things that were in the dinosaurs.

这根本不成立。翼龙的功能在其进化之前根本不存在，过去也从未出现过，既不存在于恐龙中，也不存在于作为恐龙祖先的单细胞生物中。它完全不存在。直到恐龙谱系中进化出飞行能力时，它才首次出现。

It's just not true. The pterodactyl functionality was nowhere until it evolved, And it wasn't anywhere in the past, not in the dinosaurs and not in the single celled organisms that were the ancestors of dinosaurs. It just wasn't there. It was new when the ability to fly evolved in the lineage of dinosaurs.

在翼龙的案例中，发生了一次或一系列随机突变，结果证明这些突变对该基因组合具有适应性。是的。而这些突变本质上是盲目的。它们要么是断裂的DNA链，要么就是全新的DNA链。没错。

In the pterodactyl case, there was one or a series of random mutations that turned out to be adaptive for that set of genes. Yes. And those mutations were essentially blind. They were broken DNA strands or just new DNA strands. Yeah.

而在人类案例中，情况并不完全相同。我们正在探索的搜索空间更大，并且我们以更快的速度在其中搜索以实现这些创造性飞跃。这是你的直觉吗？背后是否有任何学习或知识支撑？我并不试图解决创造力如何运作的问题。

And in the human case, that's not quite what's happening. The search space we're going through is larger, and we're searching through it faster to make these creative leaps. Is that an intuition that you have? Is there any learning or knowledge behind that? I'm not trying to solve the problem of how creativity works.

我知道这是个未解之谜，但例如，是否可以说人类正在更快地缩小搜索空间，因为我们所做的'创造性突变'（姑且这么称呼）并非随机，而是更具方向性。或者它们可能是随机的，但随机性存在于我们的大脑中，而我们能如此迅速地筛选它们，无需在现实世界中实施，从而可能更快地缩小搜索空间。我们的进程更快吗？如果是，为什么？它不仅仅是更快，

I know that's an unsolved problem, but for example, could one say that humans are narrowing the search space faster because the creative mutations, to coin a term, that we're making are not random, they are more directed. Or perhaps they're random, but they're random in our minds and we cut through them so fast without having to implement them in the real world that perhaps we narrow the search space faster. Is our process faster? And if so, why? It's not only faster,

它具有解释性，这意味着因其解释性特质，它能够跨越知识空间中无法逐步跨越的鸿沟。因此，进化不仅慢上数百万倍，其本质差异还在于：它只能以突变形式进行微小推测，且仅能逐步改进事物。所以，要演化出翼龙翅膀，必须先有肢体或存在某种可逐步转化为翅膀的结构——每个微观变化都必须保证生物体仍能存活。这就是为什么我们不能指望生物进化——再以我最爱的例子来说——演化出偏转小行星的系统。因为不存在渐进式的问题情境：偏转小行星所需的能量消耗...毕竟小行星撞击每数百万年才发生一次，无法形成进化压力。

it is explanatory, which means that because it's explanatory, it means it can leap over gaps in the knowledge space that couldn't be traversed incrementally. So evolution is not only millions of times slower, it's inherently different in that not only can it only make small conjectures that are in the form of mutations, but it can only improve on things incrementally. So you can only make, you know, pterodactyl wings if you previously had limbs or if you previously had something that could be incrementally changed into wings such that every microscopic change was still viable as an organism. So that's why we can't expect biological evolution to, my favorite example again, to evolve a system for deflecting asteroids. That is because there is no incremental problem situation where the expenditure of energy or whatever to deflect I mean, you know, the asteroid hit is once every few million years, and it cannot exert evolutionary pressure.

简而言之，人类提出的创造性猜想因其解释性本质，能跨越整个概念空间，在任何两个想法或状态间建立联系。而生物进化则受限于物理世界约束和生物体自身能力。

So basically, the creative guesses that humans make, because they're explanatory in nature, they can leap through the entire idea space and form interconnections between any two ideas or any two states. Whereas biological has to traverse through the physical world limitations and what the organism is capable of right

是的。它必须在存活状态下完成这种跨越，整个过程中生物体都必须保持存活。而如果你想设计新型飞机，比如提议将尾翼改为单一结构而非带机翼的部件——这个想法我一句话就能说完。

now. Yes. And it has to traverse it while staying alive. Has to be a viable organism all the way through. Whereas if you want a new design of aeroplane and you say maybe it would be better to have the tail plane as a single object rather than this thing with wings, then, you know, I've just said that in one sentence.

如果这是个好主意，航空工程师可以对此提出批评。但要逐步实现这个改变，可能会造出一系列根本飞不起来的飞机。

And if that's a good idea, it could be criticized by an aeronautical engineer and so on. But to make that change incrementally will probably produce a whole series of airplanes that won't fly.

那么这是否源于我们思维的普遍性？能在脑海中模拟任何系统，因此能将任意部分相互关联？

So is this a consequence of being universal in nature? We can model any system in our head and therefore we can connect any part of it to any other part of it?

没错。这就是'普遍性'的真正含义：我们能触及任何想法，并评判其优劣。航空工程师不必测试每个突发奇想的飞机设计——比如某天上班路上突发奇想：机翼或许该用纸来做。

Yes. I mean, that's what really what we mean by being universal. We can get to any idea and criticize it for whether it is a good idea or not. So the aeronautical engineer doesn't have to test every single airplane that in his wild ideas, you know, maybe has a wild idea driving to work one day that maybe wings should be made of paper.

从这个角度看，生物系统就像高度专注的模拟计算机，运行着某种单一算法。而我们头脑中的虚拟思维更像可编程的数字计算机。

So in that sense, the biological system is a highly focused analog computer that's running sort of a single algorithm. And the virtual in our head is more like a digital programmable computer.

DNA系统完全是数字化的。这种渐进式的变化并非连续性的。一次突变仍是一个量子级别的差异。如果差异小于一个碱基对，整个DNA就会解体。如果你试图用葡萄糖替代腺嘌呤，那整个结构就完全无法作为DNA运作。

So the DNA system is entirely digital. This incremental thing is not a continuous change. So one mutation is still a quantum difference. If you had a difference that involved less than one base pair, then the whole DNA would fall apart. If you try to replace adenine by glucose, then the whole thing wouldn't work as DNA at all.

尽管我们说进化是渐进发生的，但它是通过离散的步骤逐步进行的。因此，思维和生物进化都是以离散步骤发生的。不过生物进化是通过非常微小的步骤发生的，这些步骤是无设计的。所以没有设计者来设计下一个突变，它是随机的。

Although we speak of evolution as happening incrementally, it's incrementally in discrete steps. So both thinking and biological evolution happen in discrete steps. Biological evolution happens though in very small steps, which are undesigned. So there's no designer that designs the next mutation. It's random.

令我震惊的是，SETI项目正在寻找生物标志物。他们在那里寻找生物学证据。但你用诗意的语言描述了这个想法：此刻宇宙中有数十亿颗小行星正在撞击数十亿颗行星。但这里可能是唯一一个地方，如果从另一颗行星用望远镜指向我们，你会看到小行星的垂降。这将是一个智能存在的迹象。

It strikes me that the SETI project is looking for biomarkers. They're out there searching for evidence of biology. But the way you've poetically framed this idea of, well, are billions of asteroids out there right now across the universe crashing into billions of planets right now. But here might be the one place where if you had the telescope pointed from another planet towards us, you would see the rappelling of asteroids. This would be an indication of intelligence.

没有其他解释。没有生物学解释。没有随机机会。没有魔法。一定是解释性的创造力在起作用。

There's no other explanation. There's no biological explanation. There's no random chance. There's no magic. It must be explanatory creativity that does that thing.

之前谈到曼哈顿，地球上到处都有岩石被侵蚀，不可避免地受到风化、雨水等的侵蚀。但在某些地方，世界各地的城市里，有一些岩石——我们称之为建筑——它们没有被这样侵蚀，或者说即使有，它们也在不断被解释性知识修复。这就引入了知识作为弹性信息的概念，它是甚至比岩石更持久的东西。只要我们能够继续生存，我们所拥有的知识就会继续存在，比宇宙中最长久存在的事物更持久。

And talking about Manhattan before, everywhere across the earth are rocks being eroded and inevitably being eroded by weathering and rain and whatever. But in some places, the cities of the world, there are rocks, call them buildings, which are not being so eroded or insofar as they are, they're being constantly repaired again by explanatory knowledge. And so that introduces this idea of knowledge as resilient information, the very thing that will outlive even the rocks. So long as we can continue to survive, then the knowledge that we have will continue to survive, outlasting the longest existing things in the cosmos.

是的。说得非常好。顺便说一句，莎士比亚在他的十四行诗中也表达了同样的意思。'此物长存，此物赋予生命。'所以他说他的十四行诗会比任何东西都更持久，他是对的。

Yes. Very nicely put. And Shakespeare, by the way, also said the same thing in his sonnet news. Long lives this, and this gives life to be. So he's saying that his sonnet will outlive anything, and he's right.

没错。我能否将你比作夏日

Right. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day

是的。

Yeah.

你如此美丽，是的。或如此温婉，是的。那真是绝妙的一句。是的。

In thou art so fair Yes. Or so temperate. Yes. That that was a great one. Yeah.

是的。我是说，如果你读过雪莱的那首《奥西曼提亚斯》，就会发现它们很相似。是的。艺术家的构想比帝国与君王更经久不衰。

Yeah. I mean It's also similar to Ozymandias, if you read that one by Shelley. Yeah. Where it's the artist's conception that survives the empire and the kings.

没错。而且知识承载的信息确实比任何实体物件都更具韧性，这是不争的事实。

Yes. Exactly. And and it's simply literally true that knowledge laden information is more resilient than any physical object.

暂且不谈个人问题，这是否意味着传播思想比养育后代更有意义？

So not to get personal for a moment, but is this an argument for spreading your ideas rather than having children?

正如大卫·弗里德曼所说，如果世界值得拯救，就该有利可图地拯救它。我更倾向于认为：如果世界值得拯救，就该有趣地拯救它。

Well, as David Friedman says, if the world is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit. And I would generalize that. It's if the world is worth saving, it's worth saving with fun.

你之前略提过AGI，或者说与其创造AGI，不如让人们将来将大脑上传到计算机。如果意识存在于计算机中，运行着相同的程序，那便是生命，是心智，是人格的定义。这引发了各种有趣的悖论与情境，格雷格·伊根等科幻作家都探讨过。若将此意识复制十亿次会怎样？若将其关闭又会如何？

So I think you've talked a little bit about AGI or or rather than creating an AGI or just people uploading their brains into a computer in the future. And if their minds are in the computer, if same software is running, then that is a living being, that is a mind, that is the definition of a person. And this brings up all sorts of interesting paradoxes and situations which many sci fi authors, including Greg Egan, have explored. What if you were to replicate this mind a billion times? What if you were to shut it down?

如果以慢动作回放会怎样？如果暂停又会如何？我想我们离实现这些还很远，可能非常遥远。尼尔·斯蒂芬森在他的书《坠落》中也讨论过这个问题。克隆技术也即将到来。

What if you were to run it back in slow motion? What if you were to pause it? And I think I don't know how far we are from that, probably still quite far. Neal Stephenson also talked about it in his book, The Fall. There's also cloning coming up.

我是说，人们现在已经能成功克隆狗了。克隆人类只是时间问题。你认为这会导致人口数量走向何方？理论上，我们是否能在硅基载体上运行近乎无限的人口？这是否会带来更猛烈的创造力爆发？

I mean, people are now successfully cloning dogs. It's only a matter of time before we're cloning humans. Where do you think this leads in terms of the number of people? I mean, in theory, couldn't we have then infinite people or close to infinite people running in a silicon substrate? And does this lead to even more of an explosion of creativity?

确实会。我认为类似情况将会发生，但你把问题和机遇都夸大了。我们绝不能像AI界人士那样认为算力是免费的。当你复制一个AGI时，就是在制作它的精确副本。要么在同一台计算机上运行——这样每个副本只能分到一半内存和处理器周期；要么转移到另一台计算机——这样原计算机理应归AGI所有，否则它连自己的身体都没有，就成了奴隶。

Yes, it would. And I think something like that will happen, but I think it's somewhat exaggerating both the problem and the opportunity. I think we mustn't think of compute as being free as the AI people call it. When you duplicate an AGI, you make an exact copy of it. Either you run it in the same computer, in which case there's only half the amount of memory available for each of them and only half the number of processor cycles, or you move them into a different computer, in which case the original computer is presumably the property of the AGI because otherwise it's a slave if it doesn't even own its own body.

所以如果它要复制到另一台计算机，就必须有人购买那台设备。它或许能赚钱给自己买新电脑，但这改变不了硬件层面的事实：它现在拥有的硬件是之前的两倍，而这远非无限。要知道我们有数十亿台电脑，但没有10^21台电脑。总有一天会有，但到那时这个数量也会显得微不足道。是的，如果新增人口还想创造更多人口，确实存在巨大的额外创造力潜力。

So if it's gonna copy itself into another computer, somebody has to buy that. It might earn the money to buy itself another computer, but that doesn't change the fact that hardware wise, it's now owning twice as much hardware as it did before, and there's no infinity about this. You know, we have billions of computers, but we don't have sextillions of computers. One day we will, but one day that will seem not very much either. So, yes, there's a huge potential for additional creativity with additional people if additional people want to make even more people.

某种程度上这会发生。但不会是大爆炸式的。不像某个梗图被人发明后立刻传遍全球十亿人。如果这个'梗'是AGI，它会想要生存。

And to some extent, that will happen. But it's not gonna be an explosion. It's not like a meme which somebody invents and then immediately goes to a billion people around the world. It's not like that. If the meme is an AGI, then it will want to live.

它会希望将自己的创造力用于解决喜欢的问题，为此必须购买资源。现有的梗图只需占用下载者几美分价值的内存，但这些人也不会永久保存——可能一两年后卖掉电脑就没了。但大量内存仍需要花钱，其他硬件同样需要成本。

It will want to have its creativity harnessed towards some problem that it likes to solve, and it will have to buy the resources to do that with. You know, the existing memes, they buy tiny fraction of a of a dollar's worth of memory of of each of the people who download it. But even those people don't keep it forever. Those people might keep it for a year or two until they sell their computer or something. But for large amounts of memory, they still cost money and other hardware also cost money.

现在还有另一个问题。我的观点是：既没你想象的那么美好，也没那么糟糕。假设你复制了十亿个自己，就会产生每个副本是否该有一票投票权，还是共享一票的问题。'一人一票'制度已良好运行了几百年，未来必须调整。但我觉得这没什么大不了。

Now there is the other problem. So that's me saying it's not as great as you make out, but it's also not as bad as you make out because these problems with supposing you make a billion copies of you, there'll be the problem of whether each of them should have one vote or whether they should share one vote between them. And, you know, the institution of one person, one vote has served us well for a couple of hundred years. That's going to have to be modified. But I think there's no big deal about this.

我们社会中已经有很多人没有投票权，比如尚未获得公民身份的移民、儿童和临时居住的外国人。但我们处理得很好，我们设法保障所有这些人的基本人权。当然，我并不是说现行制度对这些群体而言是完美的。

We we already have lots of people in society that don't have the vote, like immigrants before they get citizenship and children and foreigners living temporarily. And we manage. We manage to give all those people human rights. Yeah. I'm not saying the system is perfect for all those types of people.

对有投票权的人来说制度同样不完美。但我认为调整财产制度和政治制度来容纳人工通用智能不会是大问题。只要有些许善意，这些问题都能解决。

It's not perfect for people with the vote either. But I think it won't be a big problem to tweak the institutions of property and of politics to accommodate AGIs. You know, with a bit of goodwill, that can all be solved.

你提到当世界上还存在大量未被开发的儿童智力时，人们却在寻找或试图创造AGI——这些儿童大多一生都受到压制，无法充分发挥创造力或自由表达。你在'认真对待儿童'的哲学中讨论过这个问题。对于这些观点存在些肤浅的反驳，现在让我提出些更深刻的反对意见——或者说至少是我的反对意见，或许只是我自诩深刻罢了。

So you mentioned children were searching or trying to create AGIs when they have all this untapped intelligence already on the planet in the form of children who are mostly coerced through their lives and not allowed to be as creative or freely expressive as they could otherwise be. And you've talked about this in the philosophy of taking children seriously. There are unsophisticated objections to those. Let me throw out what I think are sophisticated objections. Or at least my objections, maybe just calling myself sophisticated.

第一个反对意见是——我想你可能会同意——某些行为具有不可逆的性质。比如杀人、使人怀孕或被怀孕。其中有些行为我们也会阻止成年人实施，比如阻止谋杀或自杀。但儿童可能无法完全理解某些后果，比如无保护性行为导致怀孕、他们眼中的轻微犯罪行为，或是吸食芬太尼等强效成瘾药物后引发的他们尚未准备好应对的状况。

The first objection would be that, and I think you would probably agree on this, is that there are certain actions which are irreversible in nature. For example, you kill somebody or you get somebody pregnant or they get you pregnant. And some of these you would stop an adult from doing as well. You would stop an adult from committing murder or suicide. But at the same time, a child may not understand the consequences, the full consequences of, for example, unprotected sex leading to pregnancy, or committing a, what they think is a small crime, or taking a very addictive drug, like a fentanyl or something, which may then unlock something that they're not quite used to or ready to handle.

因此一类反对意见就是：我要阻止孩子接触芬太尼等硬性毒品，因为他们尚未建立抵抗力。我可以尝试说服，但若他们执意尝试，我就必须强制阻止。另一类相关反对意见涉及大脑可塑性——如果他们不在幼年学习数学、钢琴、语言或规范阅读，后期掌握这些技能会困难得多。

So, you know, one class of objections would be, well, I want to stop my kid from taking fentanyl or doing a hard drug because they have not yet developed the resistance to it. And I can try and talk them out of it, but if they're going to take it anyway, then I have to forcibly stop them. That is one set of objections. The other, which is related is around brain plasticity. So if they don't learn maths and piano at an early age, or language or proper reading, then it's going to be much harder for them to acquire that skill later on.

我们知道其中某些基础技能若不及早掌握，就会永远关闭某些发展路径。确实存在20岁学小提琴或15岁学数学的天才例外，但难道不应该说对普通孩子而言，早期打好基础才能为将来在这些领域的自由探索和创造提供可能吗？

And we know that some of these skills are so fundamental that if you don't pick them up early on, they close off entire avenues. And yes, there are exceptions of geniuses who pick up the violin at the age of 20 or pick up math at the age of 15 or whatever. But isn't there an argument to be made that for the average child, you want them to learn fundamentals at an early age, so that then they have the freedom to explore and be creative in those domains later?

我认为还可以补充说有些灾难很难挽回。你提到的每个危险案例——其实我们还能列举无数——但有趣的是，你举的例子恰恰是我们现行社会中 notorious 的问题。在这个视'用强制力阻止儿童行为'为理所当然的社会里，有些情况下甚至对成年人使用无限强制力也是合法的。但许多成年人被允许——甚至是法律保障的权利——儿童却被禁止的事，现行制度并未奏效。你提到这些正是因为它们是目前安排下众所周知的弊病。

I think we could add disasters is very difficult to come back from. Now every single one of the dangers that you actually mentioned, you were there, we could mention an infinite number, but it's interesting that the ones you actually mentioned are notorious problems in our society, in present day society, in society where it's taken for granted that you can use unlimited force to prevent children from doing things to themselves. In some cases, it's legal to use unlimited force to prevent an adult doing them. But many of the things adults are allowed to do, and not just allowed to do, a legally protected right to do and children don't, and it doesn't work. The reason you mentioned them is that they are notorious problems now with the present arrangements.

因此，要将此作为反对认真对待儿童、将儿童视为独立个体的理由，你必须额外提出一个理论——将人当作人对待反而会加剧问题而非改善。当前我们面对的现实是：一方面社会动用强制手段阻止儿童接触毒品，另一方面仍有成千上万的儿童吸毒，其中部分人遭受不可逆转的伤害。我认为预防这类问题的核心在于知识。

So in order to make this an objection to taking children seriously and, you know, treating children as people. You have to have an additional theory that treating people as people makes these problems worse rather than better. So you have, at the moment, a population of children and a society that is focused on preventing them from taking drugs by force. And yet thousands, millions of them take drugs, and some of them suffer irreversible consequences. So I think preventing this is a matter of knowledge.

所有恶行都源于认知的匮乏。当你无法说服某人时，背后必有原因。人们常说儿童极易轻信，却又对我的话充耳不闻——这个讽刺性说法同时包含了儿童既无限轻信又无限抗拒的两面性。但事实并非如此。

All evils are due to lack of knowledge. When you're unable to persuade somebody of something, there's a reason for that. It's not that people are inherently I make the joke that that people say that children are so gullible that they won't listen to a word I say. The stereotype involves them being infinitely gullible on the one hand and and infinitely resistant to argument on the other hand and often in the same breath, like in my joke. And it's not true.

儿童具有普适性。更重要的是，他们不同于人工通用智能（AGI），不是普通的普适性存在，而是正在努力融入我们文化的普适性个体。而我们的文化，正是我们所知最优秀的体系。

Children are universal. And what's more, they're not like AGIs. They're not just any old universal thing. They're a universal thing that is trying to integrate itself into our culture. Our culture is the best thing we know of.

未能成功融入文化将导致灾难，这种现象在现行制度下屡见不鲜——尽管社会全力阻止，仍有人最终沦为罪犯。我们已知的是：要阻止下一代吸毒、成为恐怖分子等行为，仅靠教师或成年人的单方面创造性思维是不够的。学习必须是接受者自身的创造性行为，无论儿童或成人，这是人类获取知识的唯一途径。而现行制度不仅阻碍行动，更重要的是压制创造力本身——例如教育体系首要灌输服从性，其次强制灌输现有理论。

It's a disaster not to successfully integrate oneself into it, and it happens all the time today, now, under existing arrangements, that people end up being criminals despite the entire weight of society being directed towards preventing them from becoming criminals. Now one thing that we know is that the creativity to prevent the next generation from, you know, taking drugs or becoming terrorists or or whatever cannot be creativity just exerted in the minds of the teacher, of of society, of the adult. Learning has to be a creative act in the mind of the recipient. Always, children, adults, that's the only way that anyone ever learns anything, by exerting their creativity. And existing arrangements not only thwart the actions, but much more important, they are directed towards suppressing the creativity itself by, for example, making the education system inculcate obedience, first of all, and secondly, by making it inculcate existing theories.

若成功让全民接受现有理论并保持服从，社会将永远停滞不前。更糟糕的是，当前社会的进步恰恰依赖于人们的创造力——他们能在重重阻碍中开辟道路。但如果我们培养出不具创造力的一代，社会将陷入静止状态，最终引发灾难。

So if you successfully inculcated existing theories and obedience in the whole population, you couldn't possibly get anything better than the existing population. So no improvement could ever happen. But it would be worse because the people in present society are creative. They managed to weave their way through this thicket of, thwarting that is trying to make them not make progress, and they do make progress anyway. But if we succeeded in making a generation that didn't do that, then at best, we'd have staticity, and the staticity will eventually be disastrous.

我并非主张通过行政命令解放儿童，这不可能一蹴而就，就像无法强行让对科学不感兴趣的街头路人具备科学创造力。这如同试图编程出叛逆人格，本质不可行。但我们可以将儿童从社会制度中解放——这些制度公开宣称的两个目标正是培养服从性和复制现有理论。

I'm not saying that emancipating children is something that can be done by fiat. It can't be done overnight by just saying we're going to do it any more than we can instill scientific creativity in a person in the street who is not interested in science. That's not known. That's that's like arbitrarily programming somebody to be disobedient, know, and it's inherently impossible. But to emancipate children from the institutions of society that are admittedly, openly designed to do those two things, namely create obedience and to replicate existing theories, that we can do.

这个方法已被验证可行。现实中已有人在实践。多数反对学校教育的家长并未真正质疑其认识论基础，他们仍信奉所谓的'知识水桶理论'或'心智水桶论'，只是认为学校往孩子脑子里灌输了错误内容，而他们想灌输正确内容罢了。

That it is known how to do. You know, there are people who do it. Most of the parents who object to school do not really object to the underlying epistemology of school. They still believe what Papa called the bucket theory of knowledge or the bucket theory of the mind. They only think that the school has been pouring bad stuff into their children and they want to pour good stuff into their children.

而我主张的是给予孩子们接触任何他们想吸收的事物的机会，但‘吸收’这个比喻并不恰当，因为知识是由他们内部主动构建的。

Whereas what I advocate is to give children access to whatever they want to pour into themselves, and pouring is the wrong metaphor because they create it internally.

所以你的模式更接近‘非学校教育’而非‘家庭教育’，因为家庭教育试图在家复制学校的模式。

So in your model it's closer to an unschooling than a homeschooling, because homeschooling is attempting to replicate the school in a home context.

是的。

Yes.

非学校教育可能是这样：这里有图书馆，有你的乐器，有接触其他孩子的机会，然后由你选择。

Unschooling might be, here's a library, here's your musical instruments, here's your access to other kids, and you choose.

嗯，是的。不过这种‘提供机会’本身并非机械过程。它需要思考，比如孩子们可能想要什么、喜欢什么、想了解什么、需要警惕什么。这是一个持续的互动过程，而非放任不管。是去除强制，而非去除互动。

Well, yes. Although this giving access is itself not a mechanical process. It involves thinking, you know, what might the children want, you know, what might they like, what might they want to know, what might they want to be warned of. It's a continual interaction, not a hands off thing. It's coercion off, not interaction off.

只是我所倡导的互动不以服从为目的，也不指向任何我认为‘重要’的特定内容——比如我觉得量子理论很重要，但我认为无权强迫任何人学习它，即便这对他们大有裨益。我不认为这是我想与他人建立的关系，也不认为...

It's just that the interaction that I advocate is not directed towards obedience and is not directed towards any particular thing that I think, you know, I think quantum theory is important. I don't think I have the right to force anybody to learn it even if I think it would benefit them greatly. I don't think that's a relationship I want to have with somebody, and I don't think it's a

这在总体上是什么好事。那关于‘大脑更具可塑性’的论点呢？

good thing overall. What about the argument that brains are more plastic?

是的，那是你的第二个论点。首先，考虑到现有的教育模式——正如我所说——是明确设计来通过让所有人拥有相同思想而浪费所有可塑性的，这相当讽刺。学校宣传说，我们会让你的孩子全拿A。换句话说，我们要让你的孩子全都一个样。

Yeah. That was your second argument. Well, first of all, it's rather ironic given that the existing pattern of education, as I say, is explicitly designed to waste all that plasticity by making everybody have the same ideas. Schools advertise saying, you know, we're gonna make your children all get a's. So in other words, we're gonna make your children all alike.

假设有一所理念优良的学校，它的宣传语会是：我们将让你的孩子与众不同。我们要让他们变得超乎你想象的独特。所有校友彼此间都截然不同。当然，我们也希望并期待他们尽管差异巨大，但都能成为善良的人。

And let's say, imagine a school with a good ethos. It would be advertising, we're going to make your children all different. We're gonna make them more different than you can imagine. All our alumni are radically different people from each other. Of course, you know, we also think, hope, expect that they will all be nice people despite being radically different from each other.

这种可塑性概念——可能会让正在收听的教育家和神经科学家感到不安——让人联想到硬件的概念。我不知道你对此怎么看，据说生命早期存在一个黄金窗口期，如果那时不学习语言或数学，窗口就会关闭。与之对应的镜像说法是：老狗学不会新把戏。一端是学习的黄金机会，另一端则对你关闭了学习之门。我个人对此有固定答案，但文化层面的答案似乎是大脑在持续衰退。

This plasticity notion, and this will likely upset our educationalists who might be listening and neuroscientists who might be listening, evokes the notion of hardware. So I don't know what you think about this, that there is this golden window supposedly early on in life where, unless you get taught the language or unless you get taught the mathematics, then the window closes. And the parallel or the mirror image of this is you can't teach an old dog new tricks. So at one end is the golden opportunity for learning and the other end, the learning is closed off from you. Now I've got my own stock answer of this, but the cultural answer seems to be it is brain decay that goes on.

你最初拥有海绵般的大脑，但到最后，学习新事物的希望几乎完全丧失。你怎么看？

You start out with a brain that is a sponge, and by the end, all hope is almost lost to you to learn anything new. What do you think about that?

其实我并不了解大脑运作的真相，也不认为神经科学家就清楚。但我不排斥大脑硬件在年轻时更高效的观点，只是觉得这与任何事都无关。我曾读到‘老狗学不会新把戏’完全是无稽之谈——老狗和小狗学习新技能的能力其实相当。

Well, don't know the fact of the matter about how the brain works, and I don't think neuroscientists do either. But I'm not hostile to the idea that the hardware of a brain works better when one is young. I just don't think it's relevant to anything. I read somewhere that it's totally not true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Old dogs are are just as able to learn new tricks as young dogs.

但那是狗，而我们本来就和狗不同。我认为狗学把戏不能类比人类学数学，这是两回事。托马斯·萨斯说他们应该走进大学里不同建筑的不同门去讨论这些。不同的人本就不同。

So, you know but that's dogs, and I don't think we are like dogs anyway in the first place. And I don't think that dogs learning tricks is a good metaphor for humans learning mathematics. It's a different thing. Thomas Sass says that they should walk in different doors into different buildings in the university to discuss those things. Different people are different.

有人热爱学习语言。你可以在网上找到他们，他们的能力让我震惊。有人学拉丁语，但不止是课堂式拉丁语，而是真实使用过的拉丁语。如何还原真实口语？这是历史学中极其精深的领域，他们能研究出古人真实的说话方式。我看过一个视频，有人用古典拉丁语在罗马与神父交谈，测试对方能否听懂。

There are people who like to learn languages. You can find them on the Internet, and I'm flabbergasted by what they can do, you know, and there there are people who learn Latin, but not just learn Latin, they learn realistic Latin not as it's taught in Latin lessons, but how it was actually spoken. How do you find out how it was actually spoken? Well, this is a tremendous sophisticated branch of history where they can actually learn a lot about how people used to speak. And I saw a video of a guy walking around Rome talking to priests in classical Latin and to see if they would understand him.

他们对他似懂非懂，然后，当意识到发生了什么时，他们会问‘发生了什么？’而他则用中世纪教会拉丁语回答自己的行为。比如他会说‘我在做实验’，他们才能理解。但他用的是正宗中世纪教会拉丁口音，而他们用的是现代教会拉丁口音。还有些人精通多种语言，说得像母语者一样地道。

And they kind of half understood him, and then, you know, when they realized what was happening, they would say, you know, what's happening? And and then he would reply in medieval church Latin what he was doing. You know, he'd be saying, you know, I'm doing an experiment, and then they would understand him. But he had the right medieval church Latin accent, and they have the present day church Latin accent. And there are also people who learn lots of languages and speak it like a native.

完全无法与母语者区分。为什么这类人如此稀少？其实我不想刻意追求。如果打个响指就能实现，我当然愿意。但我不像对待英语那样对其他语言投入同等热情。顺便说，人们其实一直在学习自己的母语。

Can't be distinguished from a native. So why are those people so rare? Well, I don't want to do it. If I could do it by snapping my fingers, I definitely would, But I'm not sufficiently interested to engage with other languages to the extent that I engage with English. By the way, another thing is that people are constantly learning their own language, their native language.

如果对交流感兴趣，人就会持续学习。没有两个人的英语完全相同。因此交流时——这也是为什么父亲总说‘你不可能说话不被理解’——部分原因在于每个人的英语都不同。每个人对‘思想’、‘自由’、‘理念’、‘理论’和‘创造力’这些词的理解都不同。

And if one is interested in communication, one is doing that all the time. No two people speak the same English. Therefore communicating one of the reasons that papa says, you know, you can't speak so that it's impossible not to be understood. One of the reasons for that is that everybody speaks a different English. Everybody means a different thing by the word thought or freedom and an idea and theory and creativity.

每个人的理解都不同。即使在精密科学领域，每个物理学家对‘流形’的概念也有不同认知。他们的理解虽有足够重叠能顺畅交流（有时非常顺畅），但从未完美契合，有时连基本交流都困难——尽管他们表面上接受过相同的学术训练。每个物理学家都不同，面临不同的问题情境，对‘物理学是什么’持有不同见解。

Everybody means something different. Even within the exact sciences, you know, every physicist has a different conception of what a manifold is. They overlap enough to be able to communicate well, very well sometimes, never perfectly, and sometimes they find it hard to communicate even imperfectly, even though they have ostensibly gone through the same learning process. But every physicist is different. Every physicist has different problem situation, has a different set of ideas that they think of as what physics is, and they differ from each other.

若要合作，他们常需努力理解彼此的语义。至于神经可塑性，如果大脑因硬件原因在年轻时确实运作更快、记忆更易形成，我看不出这能改变什么。你可能希望某人拥有弹钢琴的直觉，但那是你的愿望。他们可能并不想要，况且世上有无数种别人希望他们掌握的技能，这根本不可能实现。

So if they want to work together, they often have to work at understanding what each other mean. Now plasticity, if it's true that the the brain sort of works faster or whatever, lays down memories more easily or something when one is young for hardware reasons, I don't see how that changes anything. You might want a person to have an intuitive knowledge of piano playing, but that's what you want. That may not be what they want, and there's an infinite number of things that somebody might want them to be proficient at. And it's impossible.

没有人能精通社会认为儿童应该掌握的所有技能。

There is no one who is proficient at all the things that society thinks children should grow up proficient at.

根据你的研究，我的推论是：作为终身学习机器，我们既吸收好思想，也沾染坏思想，特别是反理性的文化基因。比如学习中（尤其是学校经历）让我们对尝试感到羞耻的糟糕体验。因此新生儿基本不受这些反理性基因束缚，他们尝试一切，经历幼年期时仍保持着极佳的学习状态。

My conjecture following on from your own work was that because we are little learning machines throughout our lives, we're learning the good ideas, but we're also picking up bad ideas as well, and in particular, anti rational memes. All the ways in which we might be embarrassed about trying to learn the bad experiences we have while learning, especially at school. And so therefore, you know, the newborn baby is unencumbered largely by any of these anti rational memes. They're just trying out everything and they go through infancy. They're still very good.

但当你上小学时，如果接受的是传统教育，你可能已经受过几次惩罚。于是你的学习能力变得越来越差，直到我们大多数人成年后，对学习都有了一些糟糕的经历。而到了生命尽头时，你只是厌倦了学习，因为你把它与惩罚联系在一起，或与尴尬、羞耻联系在一起。这至少能部分解释这种现象吗？

But by the time you get to primary school, you've been punished a couple of times, perhaps if you're going through the traditional schooling. So your capacity to learn gets worse and worse and worse until by the time most of us are adults, we've had some bad experiences with learning. And by the, towards the end of your life, you're just, you're tired of learning because you've, you associate it with punishments or you associate it with embarrassment or shame. Could this also be at least part of the explanation?

有可能，听起来也合理，我喜欢这个理论，因为从政治角度它支持了我希望人们做的事。但你知道，如果这不是真的，如果可塑性理论或其他理论才是真的，我也不会感到惊讶。我认为这并不重要。顺便说一句，你提到小孩子因犯错受罚，在小学阶段步步受阻。但别忘了有些孩子并未被吓退，他们轻松度过了这一切。

It could be and it sounds plausible and I like the theory because as it were politically it backs up what I would have people do. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't true and if the plasticity theory is true or if some other theory is true. I don't think it's relevant. And by the way, you speak of young children being punished for making mistakes and, you know, being thwarted at every step in elementary school. And you've got to remember that there are children who aren't put off, who just sail through all that.

尽管被迫学习令他们厌烦的东西，尽管经历这些，他们和其他人一样承受着这些——而你将其归因于他们学习能力越来越差。但有些人不受影响，至少在他们喜欢的领域不受影响。比如莫扎特，童年时被迫像表演猴一样为观众演出赚钱，受尽虐待。然而他比同时代任何人都更精通音乐，并且持续进步——我们能看到他的作品在他三十多岁去世前变得越来越好。

And despite being coerced and forced to learn things that they bore them and despite all that, they go through the same thing that everyone else does to which you attribute the fact that they're getting slower and slower at learning. And yet there are some people who it doesn't affect or at least it doesn't affect them in the areas that they like. So Mozart, for example, was treated horribly as a child, forced to perform like a performing monkey for audiences, for money, and so on. And yet, he learned music better than anyone else in the world in his day. And he continued to learn, like we can see, that his works are getting better and better over time before he died in his thirties.

无论外部强制与大脑缺乏可塑性等因素之间是什么关系，我认为这些都不重要，同辈压力什么的都不是重点。我们应该让教育更自由的原因，不是这能培养出很多天才——虽然据我所知或许可以。正如你知道的，这又是一件我无法确定的事。可能会有这种效果。

Whatever the relationship is between external coercion and brain lack of plasticity and so on, I think those are not the important things, peer pressure and whatever. The reason we should make education more liberal is not that it will create a lot of geniuses. I mean, it might for all I know. I mean, as you know, that that's another that's another one of the things I don't know. It could do.

但这不是这么做的原因。这么做的原因是儿童也是人，而让社会更易于进步的几个抓手之一就是让它更自由。所以我们应当让临终者在生命最后一天也能享有自由——不是因为我们觉得他们可能在最后一天想出绝妙主意，而是因为他们作为人本应享有权利。

But that's not the reason for doing it. The reason for doing it is that children are people, and some of the few handles we have on making a society that is amenable to progress is making it freer. So we should make it freer for people who are on their deathbed and are gonna die in the next day. And it's not because we think they might have a brilliant idea during the next day. It's because they are people and have rights.

他们有权以自然残酷力量留给他们的任何方式绽放——对儿童来说，就是以自然赋予他们的可塑性大脑等条件允许的任何方式成长。我突然想到：如果这种可塑性没被教育过程劫持，就认为它没被利用，这种想法是错误的。它正在被利用。进化怎么可能浪费这种能力？

They have the right to flourish in whatever way is left open to them by the grim forces of nature, or in the case of young children, whatever is made open to them by the medevolent forces of nature that, give them plastic mines or whatever. Who knows? Like, another thing that just occurs to me, it's a mistake to think that if this plasticity isn't being hijacked by some education process, that it's not being used. It is being used. I mean, why would evolution, like, waste it?

它正以个体认为对自己最有利的方式被利用。当然，他们对'什么最有利'的猜想会充满错误，但成年人的猜想也是如此。我们所有猜想都充满错误。建立促进知识增长的制度，与按预定配方培养人的制度截然不同——事实上恰恰相反。

It's being used in a way that the individuals think will be best for them. Of course, their conjectures about what is best for them are gonna be full of errors, but so are adults' conjectures. All our conjectures are full of errors. Making institutions that tend to facilitate the growth of knowledge is not the same. In fact, it's the opposite of making institutions that produce people to a predefined recipe.

正如你在推特上所说，布雷特，每个认为某件事物有益的人，都会以‘所有孩子都应该被迫学习这个’的形式表达出来。如果把所有这些加起来，恐怕需要几辈子才能学完。

As you've tweeted, think, Brett, everybody who has an idea that something or other is good, they express it in the form, all children should be forced to learn this thing. If you add up all those things, it will take several lifetimes.

是啊，我觉得这很值得玩味。无论当下流行什么话题，我们总会陷入这种风潮——比如现在该强迫孩子们学习营养学了，这极其重要。最近又兴起了社会正义教育。几乎每年都有历史课程的争论。

Yeah, I find it remarkable. Whatever the topic du jour happens to be, you know, we go through these fads of, well, now let's force nutrition onto the children. That's extremely important. And the social justice is one that's coming out recently. Almost every year there's the history wars.

就像在问：我们要‘吃’哪个版本的历史？实际上课程内容从未真正删减过，可能有所调整但从未取消。还有国家之间关于谁的数学教学大纲更好的地盘之争。我想年轻人总是渴望效仿他们敬佩的人。

It's like, what version of history are we going to eat? And nothing's ever taken away from the curriculum, really. Modified perhaps, but not eliminated. Then there are these turf wars between certainly nations about who has the best mathematics syllabus and that kind of thing. I suppose one thing that young people are ever eager to do is to emulate people they admire, of course.

所以我认为有很多年轻人，特别是敬佩像你这样的人，他们会想‘我希望自己能做那样的事，能为之做出贡献’。年轻人该如何追求这个目标呢？你肯定不愿规定具体课程，可能只会说‘做你喜欢的事’，但除了‘随性而为’之外，能否给出更具体的建议？

And so I think there are a number of people out there, young, who would admire, especially yourself, and they would think, I would like to be able to do that thing. I would like to be able to contribute to that thing. What would be a way in which a young person could pursue that? You wouldn't want to prescribe a syllabus and you might very well just say, just pursue what's fun, but is there anything more concrete that you could hang on that rather than just do what you like almost?

‘做你喜欢的事’这种建议完全没用——除非有人阻止，否则人们本来就在做喜欢的事。但如果你不了解他们的具体困境，也确实无话可说。没有放之四海皆准的建议。如果你看了迈克尔·法拉第的纪录片并想成为那样的人，那是个起点。但首先要明白：你无法复制法拉第的环境，也没必要复制。

Yeah, well, do what you like is totally not helpful because the person is already doing what they like unless someone's stopping them. But there's also nothing you can say if you know nothing about their problem situation. So there's there's no generic thing you can advise someone to do. If you've watched a documentary about Michael Faraday and you think that's the kind of person I want to be, well, then, okay, that's a starting point. Then we can talk about, first, the fact that you can't reproduce Michael Faraday's environment and you wouldn't want to.

那么法拉第的本质是什么？他在英国皇家研究所地下室有个实验室，成天摆弄电气设备。这算是个开端，但你可能没资金自建实验室。

So, you know, what is it about Michael Faraday? Okay. Well, Michael Faraday had a laboratory in the basement of the Royal Institution, and they would fiddle around with electrical things. Well, okay. That's the beginning, but, you know, you may not have enough money to set up your own laboratory.

其实刚开始捣鼓东西并不需要多少钱。我现在假想一个不存在的对象来给建议，反正不会害人。如果谈话往这个方向发展，我会说：油管上有很多视频，展示人们摆弄的正是你说感兴趣的东西。

Actually, if you're starting out fiddling with things, it doesn't really take money. I'm imagining a nonexistent person here and giving them advice. I think that's alright because I'm not gonna harm anybody. But I would say if the conversation went that way, I would be saying, well, there are lots of YouTube videos showing people messing about with the very things that you have just said you like messing about. Okay.

所以观看那些视频。如果视频中有你不理解的内容，就去请教他人。如今有了互联网，这变得特别容易，但即使在互联网出现之前，你知道，休·埃弗雷特12岁时曾给爱因斯坦写过信，而爱因斯坦回了一封非常友善的信。毫无疑问，这激励了埃弗雷特。你在探索物理的过程中并不需要爱因斯坦时刻关注着你。

So watch those videos. If there's something in a video that you don't understand, ask somebody. Now that we have the Internet, it's particularly easy, but even before the Internet, you know, there's Hugh Everett wrote a letter to Einstein when he was 12 years old, and Einstein wrote a very nice letter back. And no doubt, it inspired Everett. And you don't need the full attention of Einstein throughout your exploration of physics.

你只需要在遇到适合向爱因斯坦请教的问题时才需要他，这种情况并不常见。但当这种情况发生时，如今要找到能完美解答你问题的人远比过去容易得多。而且人们确实这么做。有人写信向我提问，我也尽力回答尽可能多的问题。你与某人互动越多，就越能理解他们的问题情境，也越能给出建议：如果是我处于那种情境，我会观看这个、阅读那个、咨询某人，或者找个不受打扰的地方尝试这个方法。

You only need it when you encounter a problem that is suitable for asking Einstein, which doesn't happen all that often. But when it does, today, it is far far easier to ask the perfect person who is the perfect person to answer your question. And people do that. People write to me asking questions, and I try to answer as many as I can as well as I can. So the more you interact with somebody, the more you can appreciate their problem situation and the more you can say, well, if I was in that problem situation, I would, you know, watch this or read this or ask this person or sequester yourself somewhere where you won't be disturbed and try this.

我还有一个问题，你对于儿童、人类、思维和自由的深刻乐观观点似乎源于我们作为'普遍解释者'的理解——即任何人都能产生任何思想并拥有无限创造力。这似乎与现代遗传学的研究发现有些矛盾，后者认为基因的影响大于后天培养。不过这里我们讨论的不是先天与后天，而是创造力与天性。那么一个人的思想和命运有多少是由天性决定的，又有多少取决于自身创造力？这与那些双胞胎研究结果是否矛盾？那些研究显示同卵双胞胎即使出生后被分开抚养，人生结局仍大致相似。

Another question I had, it seems like your deeply optimistic viewpoint about children and people and minds and freedom comes from the understanding that we're universal explainers, and so anyone is capable of any thought and any amount of creativity. This seems to fly a little bit in the face of modern sciences finding in genetics, and saying that, well, genes seem to account for more than nurture, so to speak. Although in this case, we're not talking about nature or nurture, we're talking about creativity versus nature. So how much of a person's thoughts and destiny are determined by nature versus their own creativity? And doesn't this fly in the face of all these twin studies that show that you separate these identical twins at birth and their outcomes are roughly similar in life regardless of what circumstances they grew up in?

好吧，这又不止一个问题，但让我先回答第二个。双胞胎研究只有在你已经相信思维的'容器理论'或机械式思考理论时才具有说服力。问题的核心是：你思想的内容更多由DNA决定，还是更多由他人对你的行为决定？除了外界对你造成的伤害，你思想的主要内容是由你自己创造的。

Well, okay. That's again more than one question, but let let me answer the second one first now. Twin studies are only persuasive if you already believe the bucket theory of the mind or the the mechanical theory of how thinking works. So the idea is is the content of your thoughts determined more by the content of your DNA or more by what people do to you? Apart from harm that is done to you, the main content of your thought is created by you.

你为什么打开电视观看那部关于法拉第的纪录片？谁知道呢？你的DNA里并没有编码你会在某天观看某部纪录片，你的成长环境——比如是否被允许随时吃冰淇淋——也没有灌输你这个行为。这是你的基因与环境共同作用下产生的不可预测结果。但关键在于随后发生的事：你思考了它，并创造了新事物。

Why did you switch on the TV and watch that documentary about Faraday? Well, who knows? It's not encoded in your DNA that you will, on a particular day, watch a particular documentary, nor was it inculcated in you by your environment, by whether you were allowed to eat ice cream whenever you like or not. It's an unpredictable feature of your genes and environment that end up at a certain place. But then the important thing that happens is that you think about that and you create a new thing.

如果你受那部纪录片启发想要成为法拉第那样的人，这不是纪录片对你的作用。这部纪录片被上百万人观看，对其他人要么毫无影响，要么——可以说——产生了不同影响。对你产生的效果是由你自己创造的。如果你这样理解人类思维，那么两个长相相似但在相同文化中被不同人教育的个体存在思维相似性就完全不奇怪。那些从未看过电视和法拉第纪录片的人，其思维自然会与看过的人不同。

And if you are inspired by that documentary to try to be like Faraday, then it's not the documentary that has done this to you. The documentary was seen by another million people, and it had no effect on any of them, or it had a different shall we say, it had a different effect on all of them. The effect on you was created by you. So if you have this view of what human thought is, then it's totally unsurprising that two people who look alike but are educated by different people in the same culture are going to have similarities in their thoughts. The ones who never had a TV and never watched a Faraday documentary are gonna have different thoughts from the ones who did.

也可能相反。也许正是没看过电视纪录片的人对法拉第产生了兴趣。如果他们相似，那是因为相似长相的人往往会受到相似对待。那些相信后天培养而非先天禀赋的人总有种否认这一点的倾向。他们会说：好吧，那这要怎么解释呢？

Or maybe not. Maybe it's the one who didn't watch the TV documentary who becomes interested in Faraday. And if they're similar, it's because people who look alike are treated in a similar way. There's a sort of compulsion to deny this among people who believe in nurture rather than nature. Know, they say, okay, well, how would it affect it?

我不知道。但长相相似的人会获得相似特质，这并不奇怪。

I don't know. But it's not surprising that there are ways in which people who look alike acquire similar attributes.

你之前讨论时指出的浅显例子是，比如那些出现在杂志封面的漂亮人物，显然会受到特定对待。如果有一对这样的双胞胎，两个模特般的人，他们会受到某种对待。而另一对可能不那么吸引人的双胞胎则会受到不同对待。这就是那种现象的简单表现方式。

The trivial way that you've pointed out yourself when talking about this is if, you know, the beautiful people, the people who appear on the front of magazines, are obviously going to be treated in a certain way. If you have twins like that, know, these two model like people, they're going be treated in one way. These other two twins that maybe aren't quite so attractive going to be treated in a different way. That's a trivial way in which that kind of thing

是的，不仅是外貌，行为也是。有些行为是天生的，比如婴儿微笑、眨眼、以特定方式看人做某事或听声音。这些初始行为会随着婴儿解决问题而改变，但也会被周围解决问题的成年人注意到。如果他们看到婴儿做了认可的事，反应会与看到不认可或漠不关心的事不同。如果看到某种天生行为特别出色或危险，他们也会相应改变反应，这会给婴儿制造新的问题情境。我曾与迈克尔·洛克伍德争论这点，他说如果婴儿有更强的模式识别硬件——就像我们有面部识别硬件——也许我们也有模式识别硬件。我不知道。

Yeah, can and not only appearance but behaviour. So there are inborn behaviours, like babies smiling or babies blinking or babies looking in a certain way at a person doing a certain thing or listening to a sound in a certain way and those initial behaviours are changed by the baby in solving their problems, but also they are noticed by adults in the environment who are solving their problems. And if they see the baby doing something that they approve of, they will behave differently to if they see the baby doing things that they don't approve of or are indifferent to or and if if they see a thing that is really great or really dangerous or, you know, really, something, which is an inborn behavior, they will behave differently accordingly, and this will create a new problem situation for the baby. I was once having this very argument with Michael Lockwood, and, he was saying, well, if the baby has more hardware for pattern matching than another, you know, we have hardware for facial recognition, so maybe we have hardware for pattern matching. I don't know.

或许确实有。所以模式识别硬件更强的婴儿在玩叠彩色积木时表现可能不同，这样的婴儿比硬件较差的更可能成为数学家。我说：没错，我不能说这不会发生。虽然与我们争论的无关，但确实可能。

Maybe we do. And so maybe a baby that has better hardware for pattern matching will behave differently when they get colored blocks to put one on top of the other, and so maybe such a baby would be more likely to become a mathematician than a baby that hasn't got such good pattern matching hardware. So I said, yeah. I can't say that won't happen. It's got nothing to do with what we are arguing about, but it could happen.

但我要指出另一种可能：模式识别能力更强的婴儿更爱玩积木，反而更容易让父母担心他不去户外花园玩耍。如果他们认为孩子有自闭倾向或过分沉迷积木，会强迫他外出活动。结果可能是模式识别能力较弱的孩子，由于这种对待方式最终成了数学家。

But let me just point out that what could also happen is that the baby with better pattern matching hardware who is more likely to play with the wooden blocks is more likely to make his parents worried that he's not playing outside in the garden and frolicking in the grass. And so they if they think he's autistic or something and is too much attached to his blocks, they will try to make him go out and play outside. And so it's the one who has less pattern matching ability who will, as a result of his treatment, end up being a mathematician.

我小时候总被——不算强迫，但总是被唠叨要多出去玩、少看书。因为我总在看随手拿到的杂志书籍什么的。他们就说：出去！出去和朋友玩！晒晒太阳！而我饮食极差，基本就躲在阴暗的室内看书，趁没人时偷吃冰箱里最糟糕的东西。

I was always, not forced, but I was always harassed when I was a kid to go out and play more and stop reading. Because I was in random useless magazines and books and whatever happened to be lying around. It's like, go outside, go outside, play with your friends, get some sun, go out, go out. And I had the most horrible diet, I was basically just living indoors in the dark and reading and eating the most horrible things in the fridge when nobody was

除了最后一点，其他我都感同身受。要知道，饮食口味这事...确实，各有所好嘛。

looking. Well, can empathize with all of that except the last thing, you know, eat to his own is is Yeah. His motto.

你是一位思维非常严谨的人，我认为你在提出主张时非常谨慎。但我好奇你是否有一些目前缺乏充分依据和证据的猜想，就像是说，如果有无数个大卫·多伊奇或无限时间，你最终会去探索这些猜想。我很想了解你是否持有这类猜想。我知道你正在研究构造理论，也许你已经投身于最关心的那个方向了，但还有其他领域吗？比如薛定谔写过《生命是什么》的论文，人们也一直在探讨意识问题，这也是一个方向。

You're a very rigorous thinker, and I think you're very careful in the claims that you make. But I wonder if you have conjectures about things that don't really have much basis and evidence at the moment, but it's just sort of like, if there were infinite David Deutsches or infinite time, you would end up pursuing these conjectures. So I just love to, you know, understand if you have any such conjectures. I know you're pursuing constructor theory, so maybe you're already doing the one you really care about, but are there others? So for example, Schrodinger had his What is Life paper, you know, people have always been wrestling with consciousness, that's another one.

我们讨论过创造力，另一个方向可能是：如果你想在硅基和AGI领域建立矿场，会朝什么方向发展？我想知道你是否有些天马行空的猜想——我们可以事先声明这些猜想毫无根据或依据极少。它们只是些若有更多时间和资源时，你会去追逐的创造性火花。

We talked about creativity, another one could be what direction would you go in if you were trying to build mines in silicon and AGI? I'm wondering if you have any fanciful conjectures, which we will disclaim as saying, no, no, there's no basis for this or very little basis for this. It is just simply a creative spark that you would pursue if you had more time and more resources.

确实有很多这样的想法。正如你所知，我认为AGI的实现不会靠堆砌大量算力来达成。它应该能像人类一样借助AI来协助自己。我猜如果知道方法，今天就能在电脑上写出AGI程序——可惜我不知道怎么做。

Yeah, there are many such things. As you know, think that AGI, when it is attained, will not be attained by throwing masses of computer power at it. I think it will be able to use AIs to help it just as humans do. But my guess is if I knew how, I could write the program on my computer today, there would be an AGI. But I just don't know how.

不过我确实有些可能不靠谱的疯狂想法：如果有无限时间，我会转向Mathematica编写程序，看看能创造出什么，用创意而非算力来突破。顺便说，这让我对那些监管AGI的提案很警惕——如果AGI并不需要庞大算力，这些规定反而会阻止我用个人电脑研究想做的项目。关于创造力，我另一个疯狂想法是：如果在自动化音乐创作时不强求模仿古典风格，比如创作莫扎特式新曲时，能取得更好效果。如果莫扎特在世，他的新杰作绝不会是AI从其旧作中合成的产物，而会是充满创意的全新作品。

But I do have some wild ideas that probably won't be true, that if I had infinite time, I would be switching to Mathematica, and I'd be writing some of those programs and see what happens and and sort of throw creativity at it rather than throw computer power at it. By the way, that makes me rather wary of these proposals to regulate AGI because if AGI doesn't need actually all this huge computer power, then those regulations would prevent me using my own computer for the thing I want to work on, and that's one thing. So with creativity, I think that the another of my wild ideas is that that you could do much better at automating music, at making, say, new Mozart things if you didn't insist that they were like the old ones. Like, you know, if if Mozart was alive, his next great work would not be within the space that an AI can synthesize from all his existing works. It would be new in a creative way.

所以我想说，应该编写能推测问题情境的程序：莫扎特当时试图实现什么？他那种让旋律与各种要素完美契合的惊人能力从何而来？比如当我即兴吹口哨或用钢琴乱弹时，很快就会陷入无法继续的困境——因为下一个音符会很难听。要让旋律动听，就得回头修改前面的部分。

So I would want to say, make a computer program that conjectures what the problem situation is. What is it that Mozart was trying to do? Why is it that he has this amazing ability to make a tune that sort of meshes with all sorts of other considerations and that ends up working. Like, if I try and, say, whistle a tune with random notes or play random notes on the piano, I'm very quickly going to get into a situation where I can't go on because the next thing is gonna sound bad. I mean, there isn't in order to make it sound good, I'd have to go back and change something earlier.

尝试这样做的AI会像ChatGPT那样回溯修正其对经典作品优点的理解。但我不想创作与经典作品同质化的内容，而是想孕育新思想。回到莫扎特的真实案例：如果他写出让人惊叹'这次他超越了自己'的作品，人们仍能认出这是莫扎特，但又能辨识出突破性。这就是创造力——就像牛顿匿名提交最速降线解时，有人一看就说'这肯定是牛顿'。

So an AI trying to do this would be able to do like ChatGPT and go back earlier and correct its theory of what it is about the existing works that's good. But I don't want to write something that's like that's good in the same sense as the existing works. I want to create a new idea, which probably, you know, if we go back to the real case, if Mozart wrote something that people said, wow, you know, he's really excelled himself this time, I think the thing he produced would be recognizably Mozart, but also recognizably different. And I think that's creativity. You know, when Newton submitted his solution of the brokistochrone problem anonymously, one of those people said, just, oh, well, it's Newton.

我们通过狮子的爪印就能认出它。但关键是：他给出了前所未有的新证明。另外我认为...哦，在谈这个模式前，正如我在书中所说，如果历史学家聚焦于'乐观主义的历史'，就能获得大量历史认知。可惜历史学界缺乏这个概念，所以从未关注过这个方向。

You know? We recognize the lion by his claw. Well, yeah, you're recognizing him by his claw, but he's produced a new proof that nobody had ever seen before. So another thing is I think the pattern oh, well, before I say the pattern, as I say in my book, I think there's a tremendous amount of knowledge of history to be obtained by historians if they focus on the history of optimism. I think, you know, historians haven't had this concept, so they haven't, like, directed their attention.

我想佛罗伦萨和古雅典某种程度上是由乐观主义驱动的。不过，你知道，我对历史了解不多，我也推测还有许多不那么引人注目的案例也是如此。

I guess that Florence and ancient Athens were sort of powered by optimism. But I, you know, I I don't know much about history, and I also conjecture that there are many other cases that are not as spectacular that were also like that.

所以最后还有个话题想和你探讨，虽然我还没完全想清楚，但我会勾勒个大致的范围。你已经尽可能多地研究了科学和世界，达到了个人能力的极限。但似乎这一切的核心存在一个根本谜题——存在本身。这个谜题几乎无解，或许通过建构性理论能解开，但多数人会说'为何存在万物'本身就是个永恒的谜。

So there's one final topic I've been wanting to discuss with you, but I don't even have it well formed, but I'll throw out a few boundaries around it. You've studied science and the world as much as you can, as much as any one person can. But it seems that there's a central mystery at the heart of it all, is existence itself. And it, that one seems almost insoluble. Perhaps it is, perhaps it's soluble by constructive theory, but most people I think would say that there is just a mystery of why is there anything at all?

我们为何存在？有些人会从意识角度切入，认为这是以意识为中心的观点——意识即一切。牛津有位叫鲁伯特·斯皮拉的知名国际演说家，他现在在美国巡演。

Why do we even exist? And then there's some people who go down the consciousness route and say, well, it's a consciousness centric view. Consciousness is all that exists. There is a guy here who lives in Oxford, actually, Rupert Spira, who's gotten quite famous. He's a global speaker.

我妻子昨天听你讲话时正在和他交谈。他是那种所谓的'开悟者'，看破了独立自我的虚妄，活在宇宙意识中，永远显得很快乐。他说我们都只是神性存在的一部分，科学执着于细节研究却错过了要义，忽略了意识与觉知的核心奥秘，应该认识到我们同属一个整体觉知。随着人生阅历增长，你对这些有何见解或信念？你如何思考这个话题？

He's actually doing a tour in The US right now. And my wife actually just went to yesterday while I was talking to you, she was talking to him. And he is one of these quote unquote enlightened people where he is seen through the falseness of the separate self, lives in universal consciousness, seems very happy all the time, says that we're all just part of God's being, and that science sort of misses the whole point by exploring all the details, but they miss the central mystery of consciousness and awareness, and should realize that we are all one single awareness. As you've gotten along in life, have you developed any understandings, beliefs, or thoughts? How do you even approach this topic or subject?

这些对你来说有趣吗？灵性、宗教、你的犹太传统、科学——它们如何交汇？在你世界观中这一切意味着什么？

Is it interesting to you? Spirituality, religion, your own Jewish history, science? Where do these intersect? What is all this stuff in your view of the world?

我认为必须放弃追求终极解释。当人们谈论'存在之谜'时，如果真能知道我们本质为何，探索就应止步。理解世界带来的乐趣将离你远去，因为那时你已知道终极目的。

Well, I think it's important to give up on the idea of ultimate explanation. So often when people say, you know, the mystery of existence, what is existence? You know, what are we ultimately? Well, if there was such a thing as knowing what we are ultimately, then you'd have to stop after that. The further delights from understanding the world would be close to you because you'd know what your ultimate purpose is.

但说科学只关注细节完全错误。科学关注各类宏观图景——科学已发现生命本质，终有一天也会揭示意识本质。那些认为进入某种愉悦心境就是理解意识的人，才是执着细节而忽视全局，不理解背景的。这让我想起费曼那个视频，他艺术家朋友说他没领会花朵的精髓。

However, I think it's totally untrue that science just looks at the details. Science looks at the big picture of every kind like science has discovered what is life. One day, science will discover what is consciousness. And people who think that consciousness is that you understand consciousness when you get into a certain state of mind that makes you happy, they are the ones that are focusing on details and not understanding the big picture, not understanding the context, someone who has understood. This reminds me of that video that Feynman made about his art friend who tells him he's missing what's important about a flower.

他基本上是在说，不。我和这个人一样能欣赏花朵，但他无法理解我所欣赏的。这是一种错误的刻板印象，认为科学只关注细节、机械或无关紧要的事物，却从不触及事物的本质。他们真正想表达的是，科学在发现新事物时会揭示问题。从宏观角度看，相比一百年前，尤其是与犹太教、基督教、佛教等伟大宗教创立时期相比，我们现在对自身身份和存在意义有了更深刻的认识。

And he's he's basically says, no. I can appreciate the flower as much as this guy, but he can't appreciate what I can appreciate. And that's a kind of false stereotype that science only looks at details or science only looks at the mechanical or science only looks at the meaningless things and never gets around to looking at the the meaning of things. What they're really pointing to is that science uncovers problems as, when it discovers something new. And just in in the big picture, we know a lot more about who and what we are and why than we did a hundred years ago and certainly than we did at the time of the founding of the great religions, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and so on.

他们受限于甚至不知道太阳是什么。他们误以为世界仅由一颗行星构成。实际上，就连现在的环保主义者——我昨天很高兴看到他们说想接触自然——他们所谓的自然只是指某颗行星表面的某些区域。但自然本身并无这类偏见。

They were hampered by the fact that they didn't even know what the sun is. They were hampered by the fact that they were confusing the world with one planet. And in fact, environmentalists today, I'm just happy to see yesterday that environmentalists say that they they want to get in touch with nature. And by nature, they mean certain regions on the surface of one planet. But nature doesn't know about those prejudices.

自然存在于所有星球，而对我们这颗星球而言，重要的不是草地田野，而是人类。确实存在许多神秘主义和宗教世界观，其中一些确实捕捉到了人类处境的某些方面，至少能以有限的方式让人快乐。不同宗教都能做到这点。

Nature exists on all planets, and the important thing about this planet is us, not the grass and the fields. So, yeah, there are many mystical and religious worldviews. Some of them do capture something about the human condition in that they can make people happy, at least, you know, in a limited way. They can make some people happy some of the time. And, you know, different religions can do this.

你那位牛津朋友或许认为自己和美国圣经地带围坐唱《Kumbaya》的人拥有相同认知——那些人总是面带微笑，自以为掌握了真理，他也这么认为。某种程度上他们确实有所得，因为能让人快乐。但二十世纪初有位伟大棋手说过这样一句话：

And your Oxford friend may or may not think that he has the same knowledge as the people in the bible belt of The US who sit around in a circle and sing Kumbaya, but they are also smiling all the time. And they think that they've got it, and he thinks that he's got it. And to some extent, they must have something because they can make people happy. But there's this quote in one of the great chess players of the early twentieth century. It goes like this.

象棋如同音乐与爱情，拥有使人快乐的力量。好吧，这话有几分道理，其中包含着重要真相。但他并未真正理解快乐、人性或实现快乐的方法。

Chess, like music, like love, has the power to make men happy. Okay. He's got a sliver of truth there. There is an important truth in there. But he hasn't actually understood happiness or men or how to achieve anything in in the way of making men happy.

他只是触及了皮毛，我不认为那位棋手觉得这是终极真理。但唱《Kumbaya》的人和你提到的那位，却自以为掌握了关于此事的全部、最终真理——他们显然没有。

He's just got a sliver of truth and I don't think the chess player thought of this as being the truth. But the Kumbaya people and maybe your person think that they've got the truth, the whole truth, the final truth about this and they definitely haven't.

有趣的是在Air Chat上，布雷特和我曾与人讨论。有个批判理性主义聚会，他们建了个群想讨论这个理论。我和布雷特都对加入任何有名称的群体感到不适，突然就觉得——现在要争论这个群体的核心教条是什么了。

It's funny because on Air Chat, Brett and I were having a conversation with some people. There was a critical rationalist meetup, and they created an Air Chat group where they wanted to talk critical rationalism. And I think both Brett and I were very uncomfortable participating in any group with a name. Just sort of suddenly felt like this. Now there's the argument of what is the central dogma of this group.

可爱的人们，世界上需要更多这样美好的人。但问题在于，所有自由思想都源于个体。一旦形成群体，群体就必须达成共识以维系团结。于是群体凝聚力就成为了首要现象，而非追求真理。

Lovely people, wonderful people need more of them in the world. But the problem is that all free thinking comes from the individual. And the moment you make a group, then the group has to have agreements to stick together. And so group cohesiveness becomes the overriding phenomenon rather than looking for truth.

我完全同意。非常感谢你。

I couldn't agree more. Well, thank you

太感谢了，大卫。你慷慨地付出了这么多时间。

so much, David. You've been incredibly generous with your time.