How many Creationists do we have in the room? Probably none. I think we're all Darwinians. And yet many Darwinians are anxious, a little uneasy -- would like to see some limits on just how far the Darwinism goes. It's all right. You know spiderwebs? Sure, they are products of evolution. The World Wide Web? Not so sure. Beaver dams, yes. Hoover Dam, no. What do they think it is that prevents the products of human ingenuity from being themselves, fruits of the tree of life, and hence, in some sense, obeying evolutionary rules? And yet people are interestingly resistant to the idea of applying evolutionary thinking to thinking -- to our thinking.
我们这儿有多少神创论者? 可能没有。我估计都是达尔文主义者。 可是很多达尔文主义者都有点急切不安, 想看看达尔文主义的极限,看它到底能走多远。 没问题 你知道蜘蛛网吗?当然了,这是进化来的。 万维网呢?不太确定。 海狸窝,是。胡佛大坝,不是。 是什么让他们认为 人的智慧不是生命之树的果实 因而在某种意义上,不遵守进化的法则呢? 人们很有趣地抵制这个想法: 抵制把进化论应用到“思维”--我们的思维--上。
And so I'm going to talk a little bit about that, keeping in mind that we have a lot on the program here. So you're out in the woods, or you're out in the pasture, and you see this ant crawling up this blade of grass. It climbs up to the top, and it falls, and it climbs, and it falls, and it climbs -- trying to stay at the very top of the blade of grass. What is this ant doing? What is this in aid of? What goals is this ant trying to achieve by climbing this blade of grass? What's in it for the ant? And the answer is: nothing. There's nothing in it for the ant. Well then, why is it doing this? Is it just a fluke? Yeah, it's just a fluke. It's a lancet fluke. It's a little brain worm. It's a parasitic brain worm that has to get into the stomach of a sheep or a cow in order to continue its life cycle. Salmon swim upstream to get to their spawning grounds, and lancet flukes commandeer a passing ant, crawl into its brain, and drive it up a blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle. So there's nothing in it for the ant. The ant's brain has been hijacked by a parasite that infects the brain, inducing suicidal behavior. Pretty scary.
我将对此发表些看法 同时提醒自己,节目上还有很多其他的内容呢。 设想一下你现在身处森林里,或者在田园中 你看见一只蚂蚁正爬上一片草叶 它爬到顶上,又落下来 然后又爬到顶,又落下来,然后又爬—— 总想停留在草叶的最尖端 它在干吗?它想做什么? 试图爬到草的尖端,想达到什么目的? 那里对于蚂蚁而言有什么呢? 答案是:什么也没有。对于蚂蚁,那里什么也没有 那为什么要这么做呢? 它只是侥幸吗? 是的,它只是个侥幸。它叫枝双腔吸虫。 是个在大脑里的小虫子 这种大脑里的虫子,要钻进羊或者牛的腹部 来继续自己的生命周期 三文鱼逆流而上而到达卵场 枝双腔吸虫霸占一只路过的蚂蚁 爬进它的大脑,像驾着越野车一样使它爬上草叶的顶端, 所以对于蚂蚁来说,那里一无所有 这蚂蚁的大脑,被寄生虫劫持了 继而产生了自杀行为 相当可怕
Well, does anything like that happen with human beings? This is all on behalf of a cause other than one's own genetic fitness, of course. Well, it may already have occurred to you that Islam means "surrender," or "submission of self-interest to the will of Allah." Well, it's ideas -- not worms -- that hijack our brains. Now, am I saying that a sizable minority of the world's population has had their brain hijacked by parasitic ideas? No, it's worse than that. Most people have. (Laughter) There are a lot of ideas to die for. Freedom, if you're from New Hampshire. (Laughter) Justice. Truth. Communism. Many people have laid down their lives for communism, and many have laid down their lives for capitalism. And many for Catholicism. And many for Islam. These are just a few of the ideas that are to die for. They're infectious.
那么,类似的事情发生在人类身上吗? 当然,这完全不以某人的基因适应性的名义 你可能已经猜到了 “伊斯兰”的意思,是“投降”,或者“自我利益服从于真主的意志” 劫持我们大脑的,是思想,不是虫子 那我是不是说,世界人口的一小部分 大脑已经被寄生思想劫持了呢? 不是。比这还糟。 “大部分人”都已经被劫持了 (笑声) 让人献身的思想有很多 自由--如果你来自新罕布什尔 (笑声) 正义,真理,共产主义 很多人为共产主义而死掉了 也很多为了资本主义而死掉了 很多为天主教献身,也很多为伊斯兰教 这只是一小部分使人献身的思想 它们都具传染性
Yesterday, Amory Lovins spoke about "infectious repititis." It was a term of abuse, in effect. This is unthinking engineering. Well, most of the cultural spread that goes on is not brilliant, new, out-of-the-box thinking. It's "infectious repetitis," and we might as well try to have a theory of what's going on when that happens so that we can understand the conditions of infection. Hosts work hard to spread these ideas to others. I myself am a philosopher, and one of our occupational hazards is that people ask us what the meaning of life is. And you have to have a bumper sticker, you know. You have to have a statement. So, this is mine.
昨天,阿莫锐·陆文斯(Amory Lovins)提到了"传染性的复制" 那其实是个贬义词。 这是未经思考的工程设计。 大部分文化的传播, 并不是伟大、崭新、拿来就用的思想。 只是传染性的复制。 或许有一套解释它的理论 让人能理解传染所需的条件。 寄主努力传播思想给他人。 我自己是一个哲学家。我们这个行业的公害之一 就是总被问到生命的意义是什么 你必须得有个保险杠贴纸 你知道,某种宣言式的东西 我的是这个
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it. Most of us -- now that the "Me Decade" is well in the past -- now we actually do this. One set of ideas or another have simply replaced our biological imperatives in our own lives. This is what our summum bonum is. It's not maximizing the number of grandchildren we have. Now, this is a profound biological effect. It's the subordination of genetic interest to other interests. And no other species does anything at all like it.
幸福的秘密在于:寻找某种比你更重要的东西 并把生命投入其中 我们中的大多数--“‘我’的时代”已经过去了-- 是这样做的 这样或者那样的一套理论 取代了我们生命中的、生物学上的使命 此乃我们的最高价值之所在 而非最大化我们的儿孙数 请注意,这是个意义深刻的生物学效应 这是基因利益对其他利益的服从 而且没有任何其他物种这么做
Well, how are we going to think about this? It is, on the one hand, a biological effect, and a very large one. Unmistakable. Now, what theories do we want to use to look at this? Well, many theories. But how could something tie them together? The idea of replicating ideas; ideas that replicate by passing from brain to brain. Richard Dawkins, whom you'll be hearing later in the day, invented the term "memes," and put forward the first really clear and vivid version of this idea in his book "The Selfish Gene." Now here am I talking about his idea. Well, you see, it's not his. Yes -- he started it. But it's everybody's idea now. And he's not responsible for what I say about memes. I'm responsible for what I say about memes.
我们对此应该作何感想? 一方面,这是生物学上的效应,很大的一个。 毫无疑问。 我们用什么理论来探查它呢? 有很多的理论。但什么才能使他们得到统一? 那就是“复制思想”这个主意 即那些在大脑之间传递而得到复制的思想 今天晚些时候你们会听理查德·道金斯(Richard Dawkins)的演讲。他发明了“模因”这个词 并第一次清晰生动阐释地解释了“模因” 就在他《自私的基因》这本书里 我在这里说说他的思想 当然,你也知道,现在这已经不是他的了。尽管他创造了它 现在,它属于所有人 他不为我说的负责 我负责
Actually, I think we're all responsible for not just the intended effects of our ideas, but for their likely misuses. So it is important, I think, to Richard, and to me, that these ideas not be abused and misused. They're very easy to misuse. That's why they're dangerous. And it's just about a full-time job trying to prevent people who are scared of these ideas from caricaturing them and then running off to one dire purpose or another. So we have to keep plugging away, trying to correct the misapprehensions so that only the benign and useful variants of our ideas continue to spread. But it is a problem. We don't have much time, and I'm going to go over just a little bit of this and cut out, because there's a lot of other things that are going to be said.
事实上,我认为我们都要为其负责 不仅仅为我们思想意图达到的效果 还要为对它们潜在的错误使用负责 所以我想,对我和理查德(道金斯)而言,很重要的事 就是确保这些想法不被误用或者滥用 它们很容易被误用。这也是它们的危险之处 这几乎是一份全职工作 来防止害怕这些想法的人 去讽刺这些思想,然后跑去做一件又一件可怕的事 所以我们必须坚持不懈地 不断试图矫正各种误解 确保只有思想中有用的、无害的部分得到传播 但这是个问题。 我们的时间不多了,所以我就说一点点,然后打住 因为还有很多其他的内容
So let me just point out: memes are like viruses. That's what Richard said, back in '93. And you might think, "Well, how can that be? I mean, a virus is -- you know, it's stuff! What's a meme made of?" Yesterday, Negroponte was talking about viral telecommunications but -- what's a virus? A virus is a string of nucleic acid with attitude. (Laughter) That is, there is something about it that tends to make it replicate better than the competition does. And that's what a meme is. It's an information packet with attitude. What's a meme made of? What are bits made of, Mom? Not silicon. They're made of information, and can be carried in any physical medium. What's a word made of? Sometimes when people say, "Do memes exist?" I say, "Well, do words exist? Are they in your ontology?" If they are, words are memes that can be pronounced.
我想说的是:模因就像病毒 这是理查德在93年说的 你可能在想:这怎么可能? 你知道,病毒是个“东西”!模因是什么构成的呢? 昨天,尼葛洛庞帝提到了病毒电子通讯 但什么是病毒? 病毒是一串有态度的核酸 (笑声) 也就是说,它有某种东西 这东西使它在复制的比赛中脱颖而出 这也就是模因;有态度的一包信息 模因是由什么构成的?“妈妈,比特是由什么构成的?” 反正不是硅 他们是信息构成的,载体可以是任何物理媒介 单词是什么构成的? 有时候人们说:“模因存在吗?” 我说:“单词存在吗?它们在你的本体论里吗?” 如果在,单词就是可以发音的模因
Then there's all the other memes that can't be pronounced. There are different species of memes. Remember the Shakers? Gift to be simple? Simple, beautiful furniture? And, of course, they're basically extinct now. And one of the reasons is that among the creed of Shaker-dom is that one should be celibate. Not just the priests. Everybody. Well, it's not so surprising that they've gone extinct. (Laughter) But in fact that's not why they went extinct. They survived as long as they did at a time when the social safety nets weren't there. And there were lots of widows and orphans, people like that, who needed a foster home. And so they had a ready supply of converts. And they could keep it going. And, in principle, it could've gone on forever, with perfect celibacy on the part of the hosts. The idea being passed on through proselytizing, instead of through the gene line.
那么也有其他不能发音的模因 它们是模因中的不同物种 还记得震教徒吗?天赋简朴? 漂亮而简单的家具? 当然了,他们基本上已经灭绝了。 其中的一个原因是,他们的信条当中, 有一条求要独身。 不光是牧师,所有人都要。 它们灭绝也就不奇怪了(笑声) 事实上,这不是他们消失的原因。 他们维持了很久。 那时候还没有社会保障制度, 有很多的鳏寡和孤儿, 这些需要收容的人。 所以他们有个皈依信徒的供应链。 这样他们就不会绝迹。 理论上说,他们可以永远这样下去, 尽管寄主们都是独身的。 思想通过皈依得到传递, 而不是基因线。
So the ideas can live on in spite of the fact that they're not being passed on genetically. A meme can flourish in spite of having a negative impact on genetic fitness. After all, the meme for Shaker-dom was essentially a sterilizing parasite. There are other parasites that do this -- which render the host sterile. It's part of their plan. They don't have to have minds to have a plan.
所以思想可以一直传播下去, 尽管并没有通过基因。 纵使模因对生物基因的适合度有负面影响, 毕竟震教徒们的模因本质上是令人绝育的寄生虫 有很多这种让寄主不育的寄生虫 它们的计划就是如此 它们不需要心灵来做计划
I'm just going to draw your attention to just one of the many implications of the memetic perspective, which I recommend. I've not time to go into more of it. In Jared Diamond's wonderful book, "Guns, Germs and Steel," he talks about how it was germs, more than guns and steel, that conquered the new hemisphere -- the Western hemisphere -- that conquered the rest of the world. When European explorers and travelers spread out, they brought with them the germs that they had become essentially immune to, that they had learned how to tolerate over hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of years, of living with domesticated animals who were the sources of those pathogens. And they just wiped out -- these pathogens just wiped out the native people, who had no immunity to them at all.
我只指出模因视角的许多含义里面, 我所推荐的一个。 我没时间讲多些 在贾雷德·戴蒙德《枪炮,细菌和钢铁》这本奇书中 他谈到为什么是细菌,而不是枪炮和钢铁 征服了新半球--也就是西半球 然后西半球又征服了世界的其他部分。 当欧洲的探险家和旅行者们分散出去 他们也随身带去了 他们已经形成免疫的细菌 他们已经可以相安无事了 成百上千年来, 他们同带有病原体的驯养的动物们一起生存 然后它们--那些病原体们--彻底摧毁了原住民们 因为原住民对它们毫无免疫力
And we're doing it again. We're doing it this time with toxic ideas. Yesterday, a number of people -- Nicholas Negroponte and others -- spoke about all the wonderful things that are happening when our ideas get spread out, thanks to all the new technology all over the world. And I agree. It is largely wonderful. Largely wonderful. But among all those ideas that inevitably flow out into the whole world thanks to our technology, are a lot of toxic ideas. Now, this has been realized for some time. Sayyid Qutb is one of the founding fathers of fanatical Islam, one of the ideologues that inspired Osama bin Laden. "One has only to glance at its press films, fashion shows, beauty contests, ballrooms, wine bars and broadcasting stations." Memes.
现在我们又在做同样的事 这次我们用的是有毒的思想。 昨天,尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝等人 说到了这些奇妙的事情 这些当思想得到传播时发生的事 这要归功于世界范围内的新科学技术 这一点,我同意。绝大部分都是美妙的。绝大部分。 可是,当它们无可避免,传遍世界时 也夹带着有毒思想--同样归功于我们的科技。 这已经发生一段时间了 萨伊德·库(Sayyid Qutb)是狂热伊斯兰教的创始人之一 也是奥萨马·本拉登的灵感源泉之一 “看看新闻、电影、时装表演、选美比赛 舞会大厅、葡萄酒吧和广播电台”。模因。
These memes are spreading around the world and they are wiping out whole cultures. They are wiping out languages. They are wiping out traditions and practices. And it's not our fault, anymore than it's our fault when our germs lay waste to people that haven't developed the immunity. We have an immunity to all of the junk that lies around the edges of our culture. We're a free society, so we let pornography and all these things -- we shrug them off. They're like a mild cold. They're not a big deal for us. But we should recognize that for many people in the world, they are a big deal. And we should be very alert to this. As we spread our education and our technology, one of the things that we are doing is we're the vectors of memes that are correctly viewed by the hosts of many other memes as a dire threat to their favorite memes -- the memes that they are prepared to die for.
模因正遍及世界 整个儿地消灭文化 消灭语言 消灭传统和习俗。 这不能怪我们,正如我们的细菌摧毁原住民 也不是我们的错 对自己文化边缘的各种破烂货,我们都有免疫 我们是自由的社会,色情这些东西,我们也不在乎 就像感冒发烧一样 没什么大不了 但我们应当意识到,对于世界上很多人 这可是至关重要的 我们应该保持警惕 传播科技、教育时 我们成了模因的媒介生物 其他寄主正确地视我们为敌 他们模因的可怕敌人 他们最爱的、为之献身的模因
Well now, how are we going to tell the good memes from the bad memes? That is not the job of the science of memetics. Memetics is morally neutral. And so it should be. This is not the place for hate and anger. If you've had a friend who's died of AIDS, then you hate HIV. But the way to deal with that is to do science, and understand how it spreads and why in a morally neutral perspective.
如何区分模因的好坏呢? 这并不是模因学的工作 模因学在道德上是中性的。并且理应如此。 这里没有爱恨。 若朋友死于艾滋病,你会恨HIV 但对付病毒的,是科学 从中立的角度,探究病毒为何、如何传播
Get the facts. Work out the implications. There's plenty of room for moral passion once we've got the facts and can figure out the best thing to do. And, as with germs, the trick is not to try to annihilate them. You will never annihilate the germs. What you can do, however, is foster public health measures and the like that will encourage the evolution of avirulence. That will encourage the spread of relatively benign mutations of the most toxic varieties. That's all the time I have, so thank you very much for your attention.
实事求是 探明含义 有了事实,道德情感自然有发挥的空间 然后再决定应该做什么 对于细菌,秘诀在于,不要试图消灭它们 你永远消灭不了细菌 你能做的,就是加强公共卫生之类的措施 鼓励病原性的进化 鼓励毒性最强的变种 进行良性的变异 我的时间就这么多 非常感谢你们的关注