最常回放片段：焦虑只是一种预测！改写旧故事，建立情感安全感

预测大脑这个概念，我基本上只从你这里听说过。

The predictive brain is this idea that I only pretty much know from you.

我之前从未听说过。

I'd never heard it before.

当我们说预测大脑时，那是什么意思？

When we say the predictive brain, what does that mean?

那它又是什么意思呢？

And what does it not mean?

当你过着日常生活的时候。

So when you are living your everyday life.

对，就像现在这样。

Yeah, like right now.

就像现在这样。

Like right now.

所以现在，我猜我正在对你说话，你正在感知我说的话，然后对此做出反应。

So right now, I'm guessing that I'm saying things to you, and you're perceiving what I'm saying, and then you're reacting to it.

对你来说感觉是这样的，对吧？

That's how it feels to you, right?

是的。

Yes.

好的。

Okay.

对我来说感觉也是这样。

And that's how it feels to me, too.

所以我们感知，然后做出反应。

So we sense, and then we react.

这是大多数人在世界上体验自我的方式。

That's the way most people experience themselves in the world.

但实际上，这并非底层发生的真相。

That's not actually what's happening under the hood.

真正发生的是你的大脑并非在被动反应。

Really what's happening is that your brain is not reacting.

它是在预测。

It's predicting.

这意味着如果我们现在暂停时间，冻结时间，你的大脑会处于某种状态，并会回忆与当前状态相似的过往经历，以此预测下一步行动——就在接下来的瞬间。

And what that means is if we were to stop time right now, just freeze time, your brain would be in a state and it would be remembering past experiences that are similar to this state as a way of predicting what to do next, like literally in the next moment.

你的眼睛该移动吗？

Should your eyes move?

你的心率该加快吗？

Should your heart rate go up?

你的呼吸该改变吗？

Should your breathing change?

你的血管该扩张还是收缩？

Should your blood vessels dilate or should they constrict?

你该准备站起来吗？

Should you prepare to stand?

动作。

Movements.

这些动作，为动作所做的准备，那些信号的直接复制品会成为对

And these movements, the preparation for movement, literal copies of those signals become predictions for what

你将看到、听到、闻到、尝到以及

you will see and hear and smell and taste and

那些思考和感受的预测。

those think and feel.

因此在底层机制中，你的大脑正在预测接下来应该采取什么动作，并因此预测你会因这些动作体验到什么。

So under the hood, your brain is predicting what movements it should engage in next, and as a consequence, what you will experience because of those movements.

所以你是先行动，然后才感知。

So you act first and then you sense.

你不是先感知再反应。

You don't sense and then react.

你预测行动，然后才感知。

You predict action, and then you sense.

那么给我举个例子说明我的大脑是如何先预测再采取行动的。

So give me an example which brings this to light of how my brain is predicting and then taking action.

好的。

Okay.

现在，你和我正在进行对话。

So right now, you and I are having a conversation.

我在说话，你在听。

And I'm speaking and you're listening.

而你大脑中真实发生的是：基于无数次听语言的重复经历，你的大脑正在预测，确切地说是在预测我将说出的每一个单词

And what's really happening in your brain is that based on many gazillion repetitions of listening to language, your brain is predicting, literally predicting, every single word that will come out of my

好的，没问题。

Yeah, okay.

如果我没说'嘴巴'，而是说'身体其他发出声音的孔洞'，那该有多令人惊讶啊。

And how surprising would it have been if I didn't say mouth, I said some other orifice of my body that words were coming out of.

那确实会相当令人惊讶。

That would have been pretty surprising.

因为你的大脑正在预测这一点。

Because your brain is predicting that.

你的大脑总是在预测。

Your brain is always predicting.

并在预测错误时进行修正。

And it's correcting those predictions when they're incorrect.

我有一段视频，经常在给科学家或普通观众演讲时播放。

And I have this video that I often show when I'm giving a talk to scientists or to civilians.

演讲时，我会创造一个情境，让他们能预测某些事，并感受到预测不仅仅是抽象的思维活动。

I'm giving a talk, and it creates a situation where they can predict something and they can feel that a prediction is not just this abstract kind of thought.

你的大脑实际上正在改变自身感觉神经元的放电模式，以预判即将到来的感官刺激。

Your brain is literally changing the firing of its own sensory neurons to anticipate incoming sensations.

所以你会在实际感知到信号之前，就开始感受到这些感觉。

So you start to feel these sensations before the signals actually arrive for you to perceive them.

在世界给你这些信号之前，你就已经开始产生体验了。

You start to have the experience before the world gives you those signals.

我记得在您的书里——也可能是在别处——读到过关于口渴的例子。

I've read, I think it was in your book, but it might have been elsewhere, about the example of being thirsty.

是的。

Yes.

那么当你喝水时，假设你非常口渴，喝了一大杯水，什么时候你不再感到口渴？

So when you drink, so say you're super thirsty and you drink a big glass of water, when do you stop being thirsty?

几乎是立刻。

Almost immediately.

但实际上，水需要二十分钟才能被吸收进入血液，并传送到大脑，告诉大脑你不再需要水分。

But actually, it takes twenty minutes for that water to be absorbed into your bloodstream and make its way to the brain to tell the brain that you are no longer in need of fluid.

因为在数百万次的机会中，你已经学会某些当前的动作和感官信号会导致那种心理状态。

Because across millions of opportunities, you have learned that certain movements now and certain sensory signals now will result in that mental state.

或者再举一个例子。

Or here's another example.

现在，请一直看着我。

So right now, keep your eyes on me.

你正看着我。

You're looking right at me.

在你的脑海中，我要你想象一个麦金托什苹果，不是电脑，而是一个真正的水果。

And in your mind's eye, I want you to imagine a Macintosh apple, like not a computer, but like an actual piece of fruit.

好的。

Okay.

你能做到吗？

Can you do it?

能。

Yeah.

你能看到它吗？

Can you see it?

是的。

Yeah.

它是什么颜色的？

What color is it?

绿色的。

Green.

好的。

Okay.

它有任何红色部分吗？

Does it have any red?

没有。

No.

好的。

Okay.

所以这是个青苹果？

So it's a Granny Smith apple?

是的。

Yeah.

好的。

Okay.

它尝起来什么味道？

What does it taste like?

想象一下抓住它，咬下去，听到苹果清脆的声响。

Imagine grabbing it, biting into it, hearing the crunch of the apple.

尝起来是什么味道？

What does it taste like?

像是甜甜的

It's like sweet

苹果。

apple.

可能带点微酸？

Like a little tart maybe?

对，对。

Yeah, yeah.

是啊。

Yeah.

它多汁吗？

Is it juicy?

非常多汁。

It's very juicy.

好的，没问题。

Yeah, okay.

所以如果我现在想象你的大脑，我会看到与视觉皮层神经活动相关的信号变化，尽管你面前并没有苹果。

So if I were imaging your brain right now, what I would see is I would see changes in the signal that is related to neural activity in your visual cortex, even though there is no apple in front of you.

我还会观察到听觉皮层的活动变化，尽管你实际上并没有听到咔嚓声。

And I would see a change in activity in your auditory cortex, even though you didn't really hear the crunch.

我也在流口水。

My mouth was watering as well.

而且你正在流口水。

And your mouth is watering.

事实上，每次你坐下来吃饭时，大脑都会指示唾液腺分泌更多唾液，为进食和消化食物做准备。

And in fact, every time you sit down for a meal, your brain directs your saliva glands to produce more saliva to prepare you to eat and digest the food.

所以这通常在你坐下来吃饭前就已经发生了。

So that usually happens in advance of even sitting down to a meal.

这些都是预测。

That is all prediction.

所有这些都表明你的大脑正在为即将发生的事情做准备，因为预测和纠正比被动应对世界是更高效的神经系统运作方式，实际上适用于任何系统。

All of that is your brain preparing itself for what's coming, because predicting and correcting is a much more efficient way to run a nervous system, really any system, than reacting to the world.

这是另一个例子。

Here's another example.

你喝咖啡吗？

Do you drink coffee?

是的。

Yes.

好的。

Okay.

你每天都会在同一时间喝咖啡吗？

Do you drink coffee every day at the same time?

通常是的。

Usually, yeah.

好的。

Okay.

你是那种如果错过固定时间喝咖啡就会头痛的人吗？

And are you one of these people that if you miss having coffee at that time, you get a headache?

我是说，以前确实发生过这种情况，嗯，

I mean, it's happened before, Well,

我曾经是个咖啡成瘾者。

I used to be a person who drank a lot of coffee.

我热爱咖啡，但现在戒掉了。

And I love coffee, but I don't drink it anymore.

但以前我确实很依赖，每天固定时间都要喝。

But I loved it, and I drank it always at the same time every day.

如果到点没喝，就会剧烈头痛。

And if I didn't drink it, at that time of day, would get a massive headache.

这其实和所有药物原理相同——任何影响生理机能的物质，定期摄入都会让大脑产生依赖。

And the reason why, and this is true really of every medicine you take, anything which affects your physiology, if you do it on a regular basis, your brain will come to expect it.

具体来说，咖啡因含有让全身血管收缩的化学物质。

And what that means, come to expect it, is that coffee has chemicals in it that will constrict your blood vessels everywhere.

但大脑会努力维持血流稳定均衡。

But in the brain, the brain is attempting to the blood flow pretty constant and even.

如果你每天8点准时喝咖啡让血管收缩，那么7:55左右（具体时间不确定）大脑就会预先扩张血管来抵消收缩效应。

And so if every day at 08:00 in the morning you're drinking something that's going to constrict your blood vessels, then at 07:55 approximately, I don't know the exact timing, but a little bit before eight your brain will dilate the blood vessels in preparation for that constriction so they remain constant.

这时候如果没摄入咖啡因，血管就会过度扩张导致剧烈头痛。

And if you don't drink that substance, then you have this big dilation and you get a very, very bad headache.

就在你刚才说话时，我突然想到，我以为你会谈到有时候我设了闹钟，却总在闹钟响前五分钟就醒来。

I was just wondering then about as you were talking, I thought you were going to talk about how sometimes when I set an alarm, I seem to wake up like five minutes before the alarm.

是的，没错。

Yeah, sure.

这是个例子。

That's an example.

再举个例子：锻炼。

Here's another example: exercise.

明白吗？

Okay?

如果你想网球打得更好，想跑一英里更快，你会怎么做？

If you want to play tennis better, if you want to run a faster mile, what do you do?

训练。

Train.

训练。

Train.

然后你一遍又一遍地重复同样的动作。

And you do the same thing over and over and over and over again.

你会变得更好更快。

And you get better and faster.

消耗的卡路里也会减少。

And you burn fewer calories.

你的效率会越来越高。

You get more efficient.

为什么？

Why?

你的大脑预测得非常准确。

Your brain's predicting really well.

这就是所谓的肌肉记忆。

That's what muscle memory is.

它并不是字面意义上储存在肌肉中的记忆。

It's not literally a memory in your muscles.

它是储存在你大脑中的记忆。

It's a memory in your brain.

你的大脑控制着你的肌肉。

Your brain is controlling your muscles.

因此，如果你反复练习同一组动作，你会变得非常高效，因为你的大脑能做出更好的预测。

And so, if you practice the same set of movements over and over and over again, you just get really efficient at them because your brain is able to predict better.

如果你是为了变得更健康或减肥而锻炼的人，对吧？

Now, if you're somebody who's exercising because you want to become healthier or you want to lose weight, right?

你不想反复练习相同的运动，因为效率提高后消耗的卡路里会减少。

You don't want to practice the same exercise over and over and over again because you will be burning fewer calories because you're being efficient.

这就是目标，对吧？

That's the goal, right?

所以相反，你应该做间歇训练，对吧？

So instead, you do interval training, right?

如果有人每隔三十秒就喊你做不同的动作，而你无法预测是什么动作，你的大脑就会做出预测。

If somebody's calling out to you every thirty seconds a different set of movements and you can't predict what they are, then your brain will make a prediction.

这会是错误的。

It'll be wrong.

你将不得不进行调整。

You'll have to adjust.

因此你最终会消耗更多卡路里，导致自身失衡，我们称之为异稳态。

And so you end up burning more calories, and you end up throwing yourself out of balance, which we call allostasis.

于是你变得失调，然后你的大脑必须努力让自己重新恢复平衡。

So you become dysregulated, and then your brain has to work to get itself back in again.

所以这是一种不同类型的锻炼。

And so that's a different kind of workout.

这两种不同的锻炼方式完全基于这样一个事实：有时你需要能够更好地预测。

These two different kinds of workouts are completely predicated on the fact that sometimes you want to be able to predict better.

有时你需要能够打破自己的状态并快速恢复平衡。

Sometimes you want to be able to disrupt yourself and get back into the pocket quickly.

基本上，你正在学习如何接受预测误差——那些你未能预测到的信号——并适应它们。

So basically, you're learning how to take in prediction error, signals you didn't predict, and adjust to them.

这对创伤本质以及抑郁症、焦虑症等其他心理健康疾病意味着什么？

What does this say about the nature of trauma and other mental health illnesses like depression, anxiety, etcetera?

因为这是否意味着我的预测系统出现了故障？

Because is this a misfiring of my predictions?

我这么说是因为预测依赖于过去发生的事情并形成模式，就像一个模式识别系统。

I say this because predictions reliant on something happening in the past and forming a pattern, like a pattern recognition system.

如果我成长过程中存在某些模式，而现在已经不再适用。

If I grew up and there were certain patterns that are now not the case.

假设我从小每次有男人走进房间，他就会打我。

So if I grew up and every time a man walked into the room, he hit me.

现在我35岁了，当有男人走进房间时，我的大脑仍会产生同样的预期反应。

And now when a man walks into the room and I'm 35 years old, I'm getting that same sort of prediction in my brain.

比如，我对男性产生了恐惧。

So I've got a fear of men, for example.

这是否在某种程度上解释了童年创伤为何如此难以摆脱，以及为何成年后我们有时会陷入功能失调的生活？

Does this somewhat explain childhood trauma and why it's so hard to shake and why as adults we can sometimes have dysfunctional lives?

我认为，从普遍原则来说，是的。

I would say, as a general principle, yes.

你知道，细节决定成败，对吧？这里面有很多复杂因素。

There are a lot of, you know, the devil is in the details, right?

不过没错，确实如此。

But yeah, sure.

创伤并不是发生在你身上的客观事件。

So trauma is not something that happens in the world to you.

你经历的一切都是记忆中的过去与感官当下的结合体。

Everything you experience is a combination of the remembered past and the sensory present.

可能会发生负面事件：比如遭遇地震、亲近的人离世、自己遭遇不幸，或是受到某种伤害。

So there could be an adverse event that occurs: you're in an earthquake someone dies who's close to you something bad happens to you Someone hurts you in some way.

有些负面事件对你而言并非创伤，因为你没有调用过往经验将其解读为创伤。

There could be an adverse event that is not traumatic to you because you're not using past experiences to make sense of it as a trauma.

反过来说，对别人稀松平常的经历，可能因为关联到你某些非常痛苦的记忆而成为你的创伤。

On the other hand, something that could be like an everyday experience to somebody else, to you, it links to a set of memories that are very traumatic, were very traumatic.

那些事件造成了极大的心理创伤。

Those events were very traumatic.

因此对你而言，这就是一种创伤。

And so to you, it is a trauma.

所以创伤并非世界上客观存在的事物。

So trauma is not an objective thing in the world.

它也不完全存在于你的脑海中。

It's also not all in your head.

创伤是过去发生在你身上的事与当下正在发生的事之间关系的属性。

The trauma is a property of the relation between what has happened to you in the past and what is occurring in the present.

举个例子来说。

So, here's an example.

有位在埃默里大学工作的人类学家，她研究多种不同文化中的人群，也研究不同文化中的创伤现象。

There's an anthropologist who works at Emory University, and she studies people in a lot of different cultures, and she studies trauma in a lot of different cultures.

她曾写过一篇关于名叫玛丽亚的年轻少女的案例研究。

And there was this one girl that she wrote about a case study of a girl named Maria who was a young adolescent girl.

玛丽亚生活的文化中，男性对女性动手动脚更为常见。

And she lived in a culture where it was more normative for men to be very physical with women and girls.

在我们的文化中，我们会称这种行为为身体虐待。

So in our culture, we would say it's physical abuse.

但在她的文化里，这只是男性的惯常行为。

But in her culture, this is just what men did.

所以她的继父经常打她耳光。

So her stepfather would slap her around.

她不喜欢这样，但也没有表现出任何创伤的迹象。

And she didn't like it, but she didn't show any sign of trauma.

她对此的理解是，男人都是混蛋。

The way she made sense of it was that men are just assholes.

这完全是一种'这不关我的事'的态度。

It was very much a, This is not about me.

这是他们的问题。

This is about them.

虽然不愉快，但她睡得还行。

It's not pleasant, but she slept Okay.

她在学校的成绩也还可以。

Her grades were Okay in school.

她有朋友。

She had friends.

她完全没有表现出任何创伤的迹象。

She didn't have any signs of trauma at all.

后来她看了奥普拉的节目。

Then she watched Oprah.

听到那些女性谈论她们遭受男友、父亲或丈夫身体虐待的经历。

And she heard all of these women talk about having been the subject of physical abuse from their boyfriends or their fathers or their husbands.

她发现这些女性描述的身体状况与她自己的处境有相似之处。

And she recognized the similarity in the physical circumstances of these women's descriptions and her physical circumstances.

她还注意到她们表现出创伤的症状。

And she also observed them experiencing symptoms of trauma.

突然间，她开始难以入睡。

And all of a sudden, she started to have difficulty sleeping.

她的成绩下降了。

And her grades dropped.

她难以集中注意力。

And she had trouble concentrating.

她变得社交退缩。

And she became socially withdrawn.

她理解意义的方式，如果你将肢体动作视为行为，她对这些行为赋予了不同的意义。

Her way of making meaning, her way of if you think about physical movements as actions, she made different meaning of those actions.

她经历了之前未曾有过的创伤。

And she experienced trauma where she didn't before.

如果你相信存在一个客观世界，在那里，你知道

Now, if you're somebody who believes that there is an objective world out there where, you know

因果关系。

Cause and effect.

是的，她体内确实存在某种潜在的创伤，之前没有显现，但后来被触发了。

Yeah, that really there was some kind of latent trauma in her, and she didn't experience it before, but then it was triggered.

你可以编造一个完整的故事来解释，人们确实经常这样做。

You could tell a whole story like that, and people do tell whole stories like that.

但最有力的科学证据表明事实并非如此。

But that's not what the best scientific evidence suggests is happening.

实际情况是：那些肢体动作本身并没有改变。

What's happening is that the physical movements were the same.

那些动作的心理体验是不同的。

The psychological experience of those movements was different.

因为体验是感官当下、物理当下和记忆过去的结合。

Because experience is a combination of the sensory present, the physical present, and the remembered past.

你需要这两者才能拥有某种特定的体验。

And you need both in order to have a particular kind of experience.

所以描述玛丽亚轨迹发生的变化就是：她将某些事体验为物理生活的不幸一面，然后这变成了关于她个人的事。

So the way to describe what happened to Maria's trajectory was that she experienced something as an unfortunate aspect of physical life, and then it became about her.

这不再是某个人在做坏事，而是因为她的身份，这个人正在对她做坏事。

It became something not this person was doing something bad, but this person was doing something bad to her because of who she is.

她还通过观看奥普拉的节目和其他方式被教导应该如何回应这种情况

And she was also shown how she should be responding to that by watching Oprah's show and watching these other

对。

Right.

个体

Individuals

以某种方式回应

responding in a certain

所以这变成了关于她个人的事，而不仅仅是她继父是个混蛋。

So it became about her as a person, not just about her stepfather was an asshole.

如果你仔细想想，在我们的文化中，当人们因创伤接受治疗时，我们实际上是在尝试扭转这种叙事。

And if you think about it, what we do in this culture when people go into therapy for trauma, right, is we're attempting to actually reverse the narrative.

所以我们试图教会人们，当创伤性事件发生在他们身上时——我想明确表达我的意思——

So we try to teach people that when something traumatic happens to them, and I want to be really clear what I'm saying, right?

我并不是说当人们经历创伤时，那是他们的错。

I'm not saying that when people experience trauma, it's their fault.

我绝不是在说他们要对发生在自己身上的事负责。

I'm not in any way saying they're culpable for what's happened to them.

但有时候在生活中，你有责任去改变某些事，不是因为该受责备，而是因为你是唯一能做到的人。

But sometimes in life, you are responsible for changing something, not because you're to blame, but because you're the only person who can.

这份责任落在了你身上。

The responsibility falls to you.

因此，在这种文化中，我们试图教导经历过创伤的人，他们可以用另一种方式去体验那些发生在过去的身体事件。

And so, in this culture, we try to teach people who've experienced trauma that they can experience those physical events that happened to them in the past in some other way.

当他们这样做时，就不再感到受创伤了。

And when they do, they no longer feel traumatized anymore.

我的思维有点被颠覆了，原因有很多，因为这种认为是我们赋予过去事件意义的想法，真是一种范式转变。

My mind's a little bit blown for a number of different reasons, because it's a real paradigm shift to think that we are giving meaning to the thing that happened in our past.

有时候这种意义来自于观察别人赋予它的意义。

Sometimes that meaning is coming from watching other people give it meaning.

而我们正在继承那种意义

And we're inheriting that meaning that

哦，是的。

Oh, yes.

这被称为文化传承。

That's called cultural inheritance.

就像一种传染。

It's like a contagion.

原来有一种古老的进化理论。

So it turns out that there's one kind of old evolutionary theory.

对吧？

Right?

这被称为现代综合理论，认为遗传实际上是通过基因进行的。

This is called the modern synthesis, where inheritance is really your genes.

无论你继承什么，都是通过基因传递的，然后自然选择会筛选某些基因模式而非其他。

Whatever you inherit, you inherit by your genes, and then natural selection chooses some gene patterns and not others.

这就是遗传在代际间运作的真正方式。

And that's really how inheritance works across generations.

大多数进化生物学家已不再坚持这一观点，因为在很大程度上，遗传方式多种多样。

Most evolutionary biologists don't hold to that view anymore because, for the most part, there are many, many ways to inherit things.

我们通常认为的遗传，其实更多是所谓的表观遗传，这意味着它并不真正涉及DNA。

And a lot of what we think of as inheritance is really more what's called epigenetic, meaning it doesn't really involve DNA very much.

我想说的是，我喜欢这样表述：我们拥有需要后天培养的天性。

And I would say, the way I like to say it is that we have the kinds of nature that requires a nurture.

我们拥有这样的基因——需要经历才能在大脑中形成任何连接。

We have the kind of genes that require experience before anything is wired into our brains.

我们的大多数特征都是这样形成的。

And most of our characteristics work that way.

仅靠基因就能决定的特征非常少。

Very few characteristics work just by genes alone.

在典型神经发育过程中，你出生时大脑尚未发育完全。

What always happens in a neurotypical brain is that you're born with your brain incomplete.

对吧？

Right?

我们说，成年人的大脑是与它的世界相连的。

An adult brain has, we say that it's wired to its world.

这个世界包括你自己的身体。

That world includes your own body.

婴儿的大脑并非缩小版的成人大脑。

A baby's brain is not a miniature adult brain.

它是一个等待来自世界和自身身体连接指令的大脑。

It's a brain that's waiting for wiring instructions from the world and from its own body.

所以你的大脑连接方式让你能够通过两只眼睛之间的精确距离来看世界。

So your brain is wired for you to see out of eyes that are the exact distance of your eyes from each other.

如果以某种神奇的方式，我们能把你的大脑移植到别人的头骨里，你也无法通过那个头骨看东西。

If somehow, magically, we could transplant your brain into somebody else's skull, you would not be able to see out of that skull.

你无法通过那双眼睛看东西，因为它们的位置不对。

You would not be able to see out of those eyes because they're not in the right place.

你用耳朵听声音。

You hear with ears.

你的听觉能力来自于由你耳朵形状塑造的信号。

Your ability to hear comes from signals that are shaped by the shape of your ear.

所以你的大脑是专门通过这些耳朵来听声音的。

So your brain is wired to hear out of these ears.

不是任何耳朵，而是这对耳朵。

Not any ears, these ears.

同样地，婴儿时期你会被教导理解肢体信号的含义。

Similarly, as a baby, you are taught the meanings of physical signals.

你会学习如何理解这些事情。

You're taught how to make sense of these things.

这被称为文化传承。

That's called cultural inheritance.

许多我们认为大脑天生具备的东西，实际上是代代相传的文化遗产。

Many things that we think of as hardwired into the brain are actually culturally inherited across generations.

这就是人类在特定环境中生存的方式。

That's how people survive in a particular environment.

就像在18、19世纪，探险家们前往南极洲或其他地方时，往往很快就会丧命。

So like in the 1800s and 1900s, when explorers would go off and they would go off to Antarctica or here or there, and they would very quickly die.

因纽特人却能在那里生活。

The Inuit lived there.

他们生活得非常好。

They lived perfectly fine.

因为他们继承了世代相传的文化知识。

Well, because they had culturally inherited knowledge.

我们总是在互相传递知识。

We're always transmitting knowledge to each other.

这些知识成为我们自身预测的素材。

And that knowledge becomes fodder for our own predictions.

所以你的预测不仅仅来自个人经验。

So your predictions don't just come from your personal experience.

它们还来自于你看电视、与客人交谈、阅读书籍、观看电影。

They also come from you watching television, you talking to guests, you reading books, watching movies.

此外，你的大脑和大多数人类大脑一样，能做一件非常神奇的事，那就是你可以将过去的经验片段以全新的方式组合起来，从而利用过去去体验你从未经历过的新事物。

Also, your brain, like most human brains, can do something really fantastic, which is you can take bits and pieces of past experience and put them together in a brand new way so that you can use the past to experience something new that you've never experienced before.

你刚才提到治疗师试图让你以不同的方式思考过去。

You talked a second ago about therapists try and make you think about the past differently.

但我确实认为，在我们的文化、社会和社交媒体中，存在一种潜在的信念，即如果某件事发生在你身上，几乎就像这种弗洛伊德式的观点——如果这件事发生在你身上，这就决定了你会成为什么样的人。

But I do think there's an underlying belief in our culture and society and on social media that if something happened to you, almost like this Freudian approach of if this happened to you, this is who you become.

我在圣诞节期间读了那本《被讨厌的勇气》，它在很大程度上深刻地改变了我的观点，因为它帮助我理解了这一点。

And I was reading that book, The Courage to be Disliked Over Christmas, and it kind of it changed my view on this quite profoundly in an important way because it helped me to understand.

我认为它基本上说的是，发生在我们身上的事并不会塑造我们是谁。

I think it basically says that what happens to us doesn't create who we are.

我们利用发生在自己身上的事情，并赋予其意义，这进而决定了我们的行为。

We use what happened to us and we apply meaning to it, which then determines the behavior we have.

最有趣的是，这意味着我对自己持有的许多信念——我自认为是谁、我的身份认同，以及由此产生的日常行为方式，无论它们是高效还是低效，实际上都只是我为过往经历赋予意义而做出的选择。

And really interestingly in that, it means that many of the beliefs I have about myself, who I say I am, my identity, and therefore, like the ways that I behave every day, whether they're productive or unproductive, are actually just choices I've made to apply meaning to the past.

这样说有道理吗？

Does that make sense?

完全有道理。

It's it completely makes sense.

这真的非常深刻，我不知道现在听的人是否理解我所说的。

And this is really this is such like a profound I don't know if the whoever's listening now understands what I'm saying here.

但我们在对话开始时说过，你一生都以为自己是个木偶，被发生在你身上的事、你的身份所控制。

But we said at the start of this conversation, you go through life thinking you're a puppet, and you're being controlled by what happened to you, who you are, your identity.

但是，实际上，你的身份只是你赋予过去以服务于当下目的的意义建构，就像书里说的那样？

But, actually, your identity is just this this construction of meaning that you've given to the past to serve your purpose now, as it says in the book?

是的。

Yes.

我会用稍微不同的方式表述，但核心意思是一样的。

I would say it slightly differently, but the message is the same.

我认为在感官当下，对吧，有视觉、听觉、嗅觉，还有你体内正在发生的一些事情，对吧？

I think there are, in the sensory present, right, there are sights, there are sounds, there are smells, some stuff's going on inside your own body, right?

这些信号正在传向你的大脑。

And these signals are going to your brain.

它们本身并不具备心理意义。

They have no inherent psychological meaning.

它们本身并不具备情感意义。

They have no inherent emotional meaning.

它们本身并不具备精神意义。

They have no inherent mental meaning.

赋予它们意义的是你过去的记忆。

What gives them meaning are your memories from the past.

你是一个意义创造者。

You are a meaning maker.

意义不是像词典定义那样的一组特征。

Meaning isn't a set of features like a dictionary definition.

所以这个杯子的意义不在于它是金属制成的。

So the meaning of this cup isn't that it's made of metal.

我是说，我们当然可以讨论那些特性。

I mean, we certainly can talk about those features.

但这个杯子此刻的意义在于我如何使用它。

But the meaning of this cup in this moment is what I do with it.

所以它可以是一个饮水容器。

So it could be a vessel for drinking.

它可以是一件武器。

It could be a weapon.

它可以是一个花瓶。

It could be a flower holder.

它可以是一个量杯。

It could be a measuring cup.

器皿的意义在于我当下如何使用它。

The meaning of the vessel is what I do with it in the moment.

那就是它的意义。

That's its meaning.

因此器皿的意义并不在器皿本身。

And so the meaning of the vessel isn't in the vessel.

它也不仅存在于我的脑海中。

And it's also not only in my head.

意义在于这种交互关系。

The meaning is the transaction.

它是这个器皿、这个物体的特征与我大脑中产生行为的信号之间的关系。

It's the relationship between the features of this vessel, this object, and the signals in my brain which are creating my actions.

事实上，即使这是一个固体物体的事实，固体性这一属性并不存在于物体本身。

In fact, even the fact that this is a solid object, the property of solidity is not in the object.

这是因为我拥有某种特定类型的身体和特征，才让我将其体验为固体。

It's because I have a body of a certain type with certain features that makes me experience this as solid.

固体性既不存在于我体内，也不存在于物体中。

The solidity isn't in me, and it's not in the object.

它存在于两者之间的关系里。

It's in the relationship between the two.

这意味着你所经历的一切都部分源自你自己的创造。

That means everything you experience is partly of your own making.

你对此没有主观能动感，因为它发生得太快——就在我们说话时它正在自动发生。

You don't have a sense of agency about it because it happens really It's happening automatically now as we're talking.

它的发生速度比你眨眼还要快。

It's happening faster than you can blink your eyes.

但它仍在持续发生着。

But it's still happening.

这意味着即使你没有主观能动感，你仍部分掌控着——也因此要对正在形成的意义负责。

And that means if you are partly, even though you don't have a sense of agency, you are partly in control and also therefore responsible for the meaning that is being made.

正如我们对话开始时所说，我作为科学传播者的目标是让人们明白：他们对生活拥有更多掌控权。

And when I said at the outset of our conversation that my goal as a science communicator was to try to explain to people that they have more control over their lives.

他们在任何时刻对自己身份的掌控力，都远比自认为的要多——我要赋予他们更多生活自主权。

They have more control over who they are in any given moment than they think they do to give them more agency in their lives.

这正是我想表达的意思。

This is exactly what I mean.

你并没有一个持久不变的身份认同。

You don't have an enduring identity.

你是谁取决于你行动时的那个瞬间。

You are who you are in the moment of your action.

而行动是记忆中的过去（即大脑用来预测未来时自动快速组合的内容）与感官当下体验的结合。

And actions are a combination of the remembered past, so stuff your brain is using to predict that your brain's assembling super automatically, and the sensory present.

所以如果你想改变自我、改变感受、改变对他人的影响，你有几个选择。

So if you want to change who you are, you want to change what you feel, you want to change what your impact is on someone else, you have a couple of choices.

你可以尝试回溯过去，改变已发生事件的意义，这样你会形成不同的记忆，在未来做出不同的预测。

You can try to go back into the past and change the meaning of what's happened before so that you'll remember differently, you'll predict differently in the future.

这就是心理治疗的原理。

That's what psychotherapy is.

这就是凌晨两点与朋友那些走心对话的意义所在。

That's what heartfelt conversations at 02:00 in the morning are with your friends or whatever.

这真的非常困难。

That's really hard shit.

效果并不总是理想。

It doesn't always work so well.

但你能做的另一件事是：如果你意识到当下所有经历都将成为未来预测的种子，那么现在就可以刻意为自己创造新体验。

The other thing that you can do, though, is if you realize that whatever you experience now becomes the seeds for predictions later, then you can invest in creating new experiences quite deliberately for yourself now.

你可以接触新思想。

You can expose yourself to new ideas.

你可以接触与你不同的人。

You can expose yourself to people who are different than you.

你可以像练习任何技能一样，练习培养特定的体验。

You can practice cultivating particular experiences like you would practice any skill.

你当下学习的任何新概念、经历的新体验，只要加以练习，未来就会变成自动的预测。

And any new concepts you learn, new experiences you have, in the moment, if you practice them, they become automatic predictions in the future.

那么让我拿这个例子试试，比如我手中这个银杯。

So let me take that and try and apply it to this example of this silver cup in my hand.

心理疗法会试图追溯过去，向我解释为什么这其实不是用来喝水的，它可能有其他用途。

So psychotherapy would try and go back into the past and explain to me why this actually isn't something I should drink out of and that it could be other things.

而你所说的另一种方法是：如果我现在去拿些花插进去，就是在为未来创造新的预测，因为我在当下建立了一个新模式——这实际上是个插花的花瓶。

Whereas what you're saying is another approach is if I go and get some flowers right now and I put them in there, I'm creating a new prediction for the future because I've created a new pattern in the present of this actually being a vase for flowers.

我可以开始建立一个新的认知模式：像这样的银杯不只是用来喝水的。

And I can start to create a new pattern that silver cups like this one aren't just for drinking out of.

它们也可以作为插花的花瓶。

They are also vases for flowers.

正是如此。

Exactly.