(Circus music) [Ted N' Ed's Carnival] [John Lloyd's Inventory of the Invisible] [Adapted from a TEDTalk given by John Lloyd in 2009] June Cohen: Our next speaker has spent his whole career eliciting that sense of wonder. Please welcome John Lloyd. (Applause) [Hall of Mirrors] The question is, "What is invisible?" There's more of it than you think, actually. Everything, I would say -- everything that matters -- Except every thing, and except matter. We can see matter but we can't see what's the matter. We can see the stars and the planets but we can't see what holds them apart, or what draws them together. With matter as with people, we see only the skin of things, we can't see into the engine room, we can't see what makes people tick, at least not without difficulty, and the closer we look at anything, the more it disappears. In fact, if you look really closely at stuff, if you look at the basic substructure of matter, there isn't anything there. Electrons disappear in a kind of fuzz, and there is only energy. One of the interesting things about invisibility is, the things that we can's see, we also can't understand. Gravity is one thing that we can't see, and which we don't understand. It's the least understood of all the four fundamental forces, and the weakest, and nobody really knows what it is or why it's there. For what it's worth, Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist who ever lived, he thought Jesus came to Earth specifically to operate the levers of gravity. That's what he thought he was there for. So, bright guy, could be wrong on that one, I don't know. (Laughter) Consciousness. I see all your faces; I've no idea what any of you are thinking. Isn't that amazing? Isn't it incredible that we can't read each other's minds, when we can touch each other, taste each other, perhaps, if we get close enough, but we can't read each other's minds. I find that quite astonishing. In the Sufi faith, this great Middle Eastern religion which some claim is the root of all religions, Sufi masters are all telepaths, so they say, but their main exercise of telepathy is to send out powerful signals to the rest of us that it doesn't exist. So that's why we don't think it exists; the Sufi masters working on us. In the question of consciousness and artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence has really, like the study of consciousness, gotten nowhere, we have no idea how consciousness works. Not only have they not created artificial intelligence, they haven't yet created artificial stupidity. (Laughter) The laws of physics: invisible, eternal, omnipresent, all powerful. Remind you of anyone? Interesting. I'm, as you can guess, not a materialist, I'm an immaterialist. And I've found a very useful new word -- ignostic. Okay? I'm an ignostic. [God?] I refuse to be drawn on the question on whether God exists until somebody properly defines the terms. Another thing we can't see is the human genome. And this is increasingly peculiar, because about 20 years ago when they started delving into the genome, they thought it would probably contain around 100 thousand genes. Every year since, it's been revised downwards. We now think there are likely to be just over 20 thousand genes in the human genome. This is extraordinary, because rice -- get this -- rice is known to have 38 thousand genes. Potatoes have 48 chromosomes, two more than people, and the same as a gorilla. (Laughter) You can't see these things, but they are very strange. The stars by day, I always think that's fascinating. The universe disappears. The more light there is, the less you can see. Time. Nobody can see time. I don't know if you know this. There's a big movement in modern physics to decide that time doesn't really exist, because it's too inconvenient for the figures. It's much easier if it's not really there. You can't see the future, obviously, and you can't see the past, except in your memory. One of the interesting things about the past is you particularly can't see -- my son asked me this the other day, "Dad, can you remember what I was like when I was two? And I said, "Yes." He said, "Why can't I?" Isn't that extraordinary? You cannot remember what happened to you earlier than the age of two or three. Which is great news for psychoanalysts, because otherwise they'd be out of a job. Because that's where all the stuff happens (Laughter) that makes you who you are. Another thing you can't see is the grid on which we hang. This is fascinating. You probably know, some of you, that cells are continually renewed. Skin flakes off, hairs grow, nails, that kind of stuff -- but every cell in your body is replaced at some point. Taste buds, every ten days or so. Livers and internal organs take a bit longer. Spine takes several years. But at the end of seven years, not one cell in your body remains from what was there seven years ago. The question is: who then are we? What are we? What is this thing that we hang on? That is actually us? Atoms, can't see them. Nobody ever will. They're smaller than the wavelength of light. Gas, can't see that. Interesting, somebody mentioned 1600 recently. Gas was invented in 1600 by a Dutch chemist called van Helmont. It's said to be the most successful ever invention of a word by a known individual. Quite good. He also invented a word called "blas," meaning astral radiation. Didn't catch on, unfortunately. (Laughter) But well done, him. Light -- you can't see light. When it's dark, in a vacuum, if a person shines a beam of light straight across your eyes, you won't see it. Slightly technical, some physicists will disagree with this. But it's odd that you can't see the beam of light, you can only see what it hits. Electricity, can't see that. Don't let anyone tell you they understand electricity, they don't. Nobody knows what it is. (Laughter) You probably think the electrons in an electric wire move instantaneously down a wire, don't you, at the speed of light, when you turn the light on, they don't. Electrons bumble down the wire, about the speed of spreading honey, they say. Galaxies -- hundred billion of them, estimated in the universe. Hundred billion. How many can we see? Five. Five, out of a hundred billion galaxies, with the naked eye. And one of them is quite difficult to see, unless you've got very good eyesight. Radio waves. There's another thing. Heinrich Hertz, when he discovered radio waves, in 1887, he called them radio waves because they radiated. Somebody said to him, "What's the point of these, Heinrich? What's the point of these radio waves that you've found?" And he said, "Well, I've no idea, but I guess somebody will find a use for them someday. The biggest thing that's invisible to us is what we don't know. It is incredible how little we know. Thomas Edison once said, "We don't know one percent of one millionth about anything." And I've come to the conclusion -- because you ask this other question: "What's another thing we can't see?" The point, most of us. What's the point? The point -- what I've got it down to is there are only two questions really worth asking. "Why are we here?", and "What should we do about it while we are?" To help you, I've got two things to leave you with, from two great philosophers, perhaps two of the greatest philosopher thinkers of the 20th century. One a mathematician and engineer, and the other a poet. The first is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said, "I don't know why we are here, but I am pretty sure it's not in order to enjoy ourselves." (Laughter) He was a cheerful bastard, wasn't he? (Laughter) And secondly, and lastly, W.H. Auden, one of my favorite poets, who said, "We are here on Earth to help others. What the others are here for, I've no idea." (Laughter) (Applause) (Circus music) [Get your souvenir photo here!] [Continue your journey into the unknown!] (Circus music)
(音樂) [Ted N' Ed 的嘉年華會;每日開放 – 開放一整天;Yew Chube Common – Google 高速道路入口] [John Lloyd 隱形物的清單] [改編自 2009 年John Lloyd 的TED 演說] 我們接下來的講者已經用他一整個 職業生涯探索這種奇妙的感覺, 請歡迎 John Lloyd。(掌聲) 問題是: 什麼是那不可見之物? 事實上,在你可以想見的之外 還存在許多物質。 一切,我會說,一切有關的物質, 除了每個物質,以及,除了物質。 我們可以看到問題, 但我們不能看到關聯著這問題的是什麼, 我們可以可以見到恒星與行星, 但我們看不到是什麽使它們互相分隔, 或者是什麼吸引它們在一起。 物質如同人類,我們只能看到表像, 我們不能進入引擎室,我們看不到 關聯著人一舉一動之物是什麽, 至少,這很困難, 當我們愈是近看所有一切, 這一切消失地愈多。 事實上,如果你真的密切注視一物, 如果你看看物質的基本構造, 那兒空無一物。電子會消失,只剩下能量。 關於隱形之物的趣事 就是,我們若無法看到 我們便無從理解。 重力即是如此,我們看不到它, 我們對它便一無所悉, 它是所有四種基本力中最神秘的、 也是最弱的,並沒有人真正 知道它是什麼,或者它為何如此。 信不信由你,最偉大的科學家以撒·牛頓爵士認為 耶穌就是特地為了 操縱重力杠杆而來到地球的。 那是他認為他在那兒的原因。 所以,聰明的傢伙,可能 也會出錯,我不知道。(笑聲) 意識。我看到你們的臉 , 卻不知道你們在想什麼。 我們無法讀取對方的心思, 那不是很棒、很妙的事嗎? 我們可以彼此接觸,嗯,或者, 品嘗彼此,在我們很接近彼此的時候, 但我們仍然無法閱讀對方的想法。 我覺得這相當奇特。 在蘇菲的信仰中,在這個偉大的、 被認為是所有宗教的根的中東宗教中, 蘇菲的所有大師們都熟稔讀心術,於是他們說, 他們主要行使的心靈感應能力 是發出強而有力的信號, 對我們剩下的所有不存在的人, 這就是為什麼我們不覺得它存在; 我們不覺得蘇菲派大師對我們曾經做過努力。 關於意識和人工智慧技術的問題, 人工智慧真的就如同意識的研究, 我們毫無進展,我們仍然 不知道意識是如何運作的, 他們不僅沒有創建人工智慧, 他們也還沒造出人工愚蠢。 物理定律: 隱形之物,永恆,無所不在,無上至高的力量。 這讓你想起誰嗎? 有趣。如同你所猜到的,我不是 唯物主義者,我是一個非唯物主義者, 而且我發現一個非常有用的新詞:不可知論者 (ignostic)。好嗎?我是不可知論者,[神?] 在有人正確地定義這個術語前, 我拒絕牽扯任何關於上帝存在與否的問題。 我們不能看到的另一件事,是人類基因組。 這變得越來越奇怪,因為大約 20 年前 當他們開始探究基因圖譜時, 他們以為它可能會包含 大約 10 萬個基因。打從那時開始, 每年它都被調低。現在我們認為, 在人類基因組中,可能恰恰包含了 二萬多一點點的基因。 這是相當非凡的,因為稻米,看看這, 我們已知稻米含有三萬八千個基因, 馬鈴薯:馬鈴薯擁有 48 對染色體,比人多兩個, 但和一隻大猩猩相同。(笑聲) 你無法看到這些東西,但它們都很奇怪。 白天的星星,我總為之著迷。 宇宙會消失。你看到的光越多, 你能夠見到的物質卻越少。 時間。沒有人能夠看到時間。 我不知道是否你知道這點。現代物理學家 — — 有個現代物理學中的大運動 確定時間並不真的存在, 因為它對數字來說太不方便了。 如果它並不真的存在,這便容易多了。 很明顯,你見不到未來, 你也看不到過去,除了在你的記憶之中。 關於過去的一個很有趣的事情之一, 就是你特別看不見 — — 有天,我兒子問我說: 爸爸, 你還記得我兩歲時是什麼樣子嗎? 我說我記得。他問,為什麼我不能呢? 這難道不奇特嗎?你無法 記得在你兩三歲之前所發生的事, 這對精神分析師們來說是個好消息, 因為,倘若真如此,他們會失去工作。 因為那正是讓你成為你的時刻, 所有事物發生的時候 [笑]。 另一件你們看不到的 是我們所依附的網格。 這很令人著迷。你可能知道, 你們一些人當中的細胞不斷會更新。 皮膚剝落,毛髮生長,指甲,這種東西 — — 但在你的身體裡的每個細胞 在某些時候將會被替換 味蕾,每隔十天左右換一次, 肝臟和其他內部器官的時間略長。 脊椎會需要幾年時間, 但七年後,在你的身體裡,沒有一個細胞 仍然和七年前一樣。 問題是: 然後我們又是誰呢? 我們是什麼?那維繫著我們的東西是什麼? 這實際上是我們嗎? 原子,我們看不到它們。 沒人看得到。它們比光的波長小得多。 瓦斯,我們看不到。這很有趣, 最近,在1600 年時有人提到它, 瓦斯是由荷蘭化學家 范•海爾蒙特在1600 年所發明的, 它被認為是最成功的 一個已知的個人所發明的字。 非常不錯。他還發明了一個 叫 blas 的字,意思是星的輻射。 不幸的是,沒抓到神韻。(笑聲) 但他做得好。光 — — 你不能看見光。 在黑暗的情況下,在真空中, 如果一個人在你的眼前 閃耀一束光,你看不到它。 更技術性地說,有些物理學家不會贊同這。 不過奇怪的是,你不能看見這束光, 你只能看到它所擊中的東西。 電力,你們看不到。別讓人 告訴你他們瞭解電力了,他們不。 沒有人知道它是什麼。(笑聲)你們可能認為, 當你打開燈時,電子在電線中 以光的速度瞬間移動,不是嗎? 不。他們說,電子遲緩如蜂蜜流淌。 銀河。他們估計宇宙有一千億個星系。一千億。 我們可以看到的有幾個?五個。 一千億星系中的五個,用肉眼。 而其中一個是很難看得到的, 除非你有很好的視力。 無線電波。還有一件事。海因裡希 · 赫茲, 當他在 1887 年發現無線電波時, 他把它們稱為無線電波,因為它們以輻射樣貌傳遞。 有人對他說,嗯,海因裡希,這有什麼用處? 這些你所發現的無線電波有啥用途? 他說,嗯,我也不知道,但我猜 有一天會有人知道怎麼使用它們。 我們所看不到的最大的東西 是那些我們所不知道的事物。 我們所知甚少,這真是令人難以置信。 湯瑪斯 · 愛迪生曾說過, 我們只知道任何百萬事物之中的 1%。 我的結論是 — — 因為你問了另一個問題: 有什麼其他物質是我們所看不到的呢? 重點,我們大多數人。什麼是這重點? 重點 — — 我把它縮減到只剩 兩個真的值得我們探究的問題。 為什麼我們在這兒?以及, 我們在這兒時應當做些什麽? 為了幫助你們,我從兩個偉大的 哲學家那兒,汲取兩個東西留給你們, 他們也許是兩個二十世紀 最偉大的哲學家或思想家, 一位是數學家與工程師,另一位是詩人。 第一位是路德維希•維根斯坦 (Ludwig Wittgenstein)。他說, 我不知道為什麼我們在這兒,但我確信的是, 我們在這兒不是為了享樂的。 他真是一個性格開朗的混蛋,不是嗎?(笑聲) 第二,也是最後一個,是威斯坦•休•奥登 (W.H. Auden),他是我最喜歡的詩人之一。 他說,我們在地球上是爲了幫助他人。 至於其他人在這兒的原因是啥,我不知道。 [來這兒合影留念!繼續你未知的旅程!]