Here's a question that matters.
這裡有個重要的問題,
[Is it ethical to evolve the human body?]
(改造人體是否符合道德?)
Because we're beginning to get all the tools together to evolve ourselves. And we can evolve bacteria and we can evolve plants and we can evolve animals, and we're now reaching a point where we really have to ask, is it really ethical and do we want to evolve human beings? And as you're thinking about that, let me talk about that in the context of prosthetics, prosthetics past, present, future.
因為我們已經開始利用各種工具 來改造自己的身體。 我們可以改造細菌、 我們可以改造植物, 我們還可以改造動物; 但是在此時,我們必須要自問: 我們真的想要改造人類嗎? 而這是否符合道德? 當你在思考這個問題時, 讓我先從「義肢」方面 來談這個話題, 包括義肢的過去、現在、未來。
So this is the iron hand that belonged to one of the German counts. Loved to fight, lost his arm in one of these battles. No problem, he just made a suit of armor, put it on, perfect prosthetic. That's where the concept of ruling with an iron fist comes from.
這支鐵製手臂 是屬於一位德國伯爵的。 好戰的他,在一次戰爭中 失去了一隻手臂, 不過沒關係, 他製作了一套鎧甲, 穿上它, 就是個完美的義肢了。 這就是「鐵腕統治」概念的由來。
And of course these prosthetics have been getting more and more useful, more and more modern. You can hold soft-boiled eggs. You can have all types of controls, and as you're thinking about that, there are wonderful people like Hugh Herr who have been building absolutely extraordinary prosthetics. So the wonderful Aimee Mullins will go out and say, how tall do I want to be tonight? Or Hugh will say what type of cliff do I want to climb? Or does somebody want to run a marathon, or does somebody want to ballroom dance? And as you adapt these things, the interesting thing about prosthetics is they've been coming inside the body. So these external prosthetics have now become artificial knees. They've become artificial hips. And then they've evolved further to become not just nice to have but essential to have.
當然,這些義肢也越來越好用, 越來越現代化了。 你可以用它拿起半熟的水煮蛋。 你可以任意地操控義肢, 而當你正在這麼想時, 像休‧賀爾教授這樣了不起的人, 已經製作出令人讚嘆的義肢。 好到讓艾美.姆林絲 可以在出門前說: 「今晚我想要變成多高呢?」 或是讓賀爾教授可以說: 「這次我想攀登哪一種峭壁呢?」 或「有人想穿上義肢跑馬拉松嗎?」 「有人想穿上義肢跳國標舞嗎?」 而當你還在適應這些改變的時候, 更有趣的事情是, 義肢已經進入人體內了。 所以這些原本在人體外的義肢 現在成為人工關節, 成為人造的大腿骨。 然後,它們又更加進化, 不只成為人類的好幫手。 現在更成為必需品了。
So when you're talking about a heart pacemaker as a prosthetic, you're talking about something that isn't just, "I'm missing my leg," it's, "if I don't have this, I can die." And at that point, a prosthetic becomes a symbiotic relationship with the human body.
所以當你提到: 「心律調節器是義肢的一種,」 代表的意義已經不只是像 「我少了一條腿 」那樣, 而是:「如果沒有它,我會死。 」 此時,義肢和人體 形成了一種共生的關係。
And four of the smartest people that I've ever met -- Ed Boyden, Hugh Herr, Joe Jacobson, Bob Lander -- are working on a Center for Extreme Bionics. And the interesting thing of what you're seeing here is these prosthetics now get integrated into the bone. They get integrated into the skin. They get integrated into the muscle. And one of the other sides of Ed is he's been thinking about how to connect the brain using light or other mechanisms directly to things like these prosthetics. And if you can do that, then you can begin changing fundamental aspects of humanity. So how quickly you react to something depends on the diameter of a nerve. And of course, if you have nerves that are external or prosthetic, say with light or liquid metal, then you can increase that diameter and you could even increase it theoretically to the point where, as long as you could see the muzzle flash, you could step out of the way of a bullet. Those are the order of magnitude of changes you're talking about.
我所見過最聰明的人當中, 有四個人── 埃德.博伊登、休.賀爾、 喬伊.雅各布森、鮑伯.蘭-- 他們都任職於 「極致仿生研究中心」。 你們現在可以看到 一件有趣的事情: 現在義肢已經整合到骨骼當中, 整合到皮膚當中, 甚至整合到肌肉當中。 另一方面,埃德也開始思考: 如何利用光線或其他機制 將大腦和義肢 直接進行連結。 如果你能夠做到這點, 那麼你就可以開始 改變人類的基本構造了。 你對事物的反應速度 取決於神經的直徑, 當然,如果你有體外神經或是義肢, 比如說,利用光線或是液態金屬, 你可以增加神經的直徑, 根據理論,我們甚至可以 提升反應速度, 到當你一看見槍口火光, 就可以躲開子彈。 這就是我們所謂的 級數的改變了。
This is a fourth sort of level of prosthetics. These are Phonak hearing aids, and the reason why these are so interesting is because they cross the threshold from where prosthetics are something for somebody who is "disabled" and they become something that somebody who is "normal" might want to actually have, because what this prosthetic does, which is really interesting, is not only does it help you hear, you can focus your hearing, so it can hear the conversation going on over there. You can have superhearing. You can have hearing in 360 degrees. You can have white noise. You can record, and oh, by the way, they also put a phone into this. So this functions as your hearing aid and also as your phone. And at that point, somebody might actually want to have a prosthetic voluntarily.
這是屬於第四等級的義肢。 這些是峰力公司製造的助聽器, 而它們讓人非常感興趣的原因是, 它們跨出了 義肢是給「殘疾」人士使用的門檻, 它們變成了「正常人」 也會想用的東西, 因為這個助聽器能做的事 真的很有趣。 它不僅僅能夠幫助你聽見聲音, 還能幫助你專注聆聽, 所以你能夠聽到遠處的對話。 你可以擁有超強的聽力。 你可以聽到所有角度的聲音。 你可以聽到白噪音。 你可以用它錄音。 順便一提,它們還有手機的功能。 所以它不僅是助聽器, 也是你的手機。 到那個時候,有些人很可能 會自願去裝義肢了。
All of these thousands of loosely connected little pieces are coming together, and it's about time we ask the question, how do we want to evolve human beings over the next century or two? And for that we turn to a great philosopher who was a very smart man despite being a Yankee fan.
這些成千上萬的 看似不相關的小零件, 正在整合當中, 所以是時候,我們要問: 在一、二個世紀內, 我們想如何改造人類? 針對這個問題, 我們向一位偉大的哲學家求助, 他是非常聰明的人, 雖然是個洋基球迷。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And Yogi Berra used to say, of course, that it's very tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
約吉.貝拉說, 預測不是一件簡單的事情, 特別是關於未來的預測。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So instead of making a prediction about the future to begin with, let's take what's happening in the present with people like Tony Atala, who is redesigning 30-some-odd organs. And maybe the ultimate prosthetic isn't having something external, titanium. Maybe the ultimate prosthetic is take your own gene code, remake your own body parts, because that's a whole lot more effective than any kind of a prosthetic. But while you're at it, then you can take the work of Craig Venter and Ham Smith. And one of the things that we've been doing is trying to figure out how to reprogram cells. And if you can reprogram a cell, then you can change the cells in those organs. So if you can change the cells in those organs, maybe you make those organs more radiation-resistant. Maybe you make them absorb more oxygen. Maybe you make them more efficient to filter out stuff that you don't want in your body.
所以,我們從開始就不先預測未來, 讓我們看看當下發生在 托尼.阿塔拉身上的事, 他正在重新設計 30 多個的器官。 也許終極義肢已經不需要 金屬鈦這種外來的材料。 也許終極義肢會用你自己的基因代碼, 重新製造你身體的一些部分, 因為那比任何一種義肢的效果都要好。 順便,你也可以看看 克雷格.文特爾 和翰姆.史密斯的作品。 我們一直以來想要做的事情之一, 就是找出重新編碼細胞的方法。 如果你可以重新編碼細胞, 你就可以改變器官內的細胞。 所以,如果你可以改變 器官內的細胞, 也許你就能讓那些器官 更能抵抗輻射。 也許你就能使它們 吸收更多的氧氣。 也許你使它們更有效率地 過濾出你體內不需要的物質。
And over the last few weeks, George Church has been in the news a lot because he's been talking about taking one of these programmable cells and inserting an entire human genome into that cell. And once you can insert an entire human genome into a cell, then you begin to ask the question, would you want to enhance any of that genome? Do you want to enhance a human body? How would you want to enhance a human body? Where is it ethical to enhance a human body and where is it not ethical to enhance a human body? And all of a sudden, what we're doing is we've got this multidimensional chess board where we can change human genetics by using viruses to attack things like AIDS, or we can change the gene code through gene therapy to do away with some hereditary diseases, or we can change the environment, and change the expression of those genes in the epigenome and pass that on to the next generations. And all of a sudden, it's not just one little bit, it's all these stacked little bits that allow you to take little portions of it until all the portions coming together lead you to something that's very different.
過去幾個禮拜, 喬治.丘奇經常上新聞。 因為他一直在談論一種 可編碼的細胞, 以及把整個人類基因組, 插入那個細胞的事。 一旦你能夠將整個 人類基因組插入細胞當中, 你就會開始問這樣的問題: 你要強化哪些基因呢? 你想要強化人體嗎? 你想怎樣強化人體呢? 那些部分的強化是合乎道德的? 而那些部位是不合乎道德的? 突然之間,我們正在做的, 好像是在一盤多度空間的棋盤, 在那裡我們可以透過病毒 來改變人類的基因, 以攻擊愛滋這樣的疾病; 或者透過基因療法改變基因的序列, 來去除一些遺傳疾病; 或者,我們可以改變環境, 以及改變表觀基因組的基因; 然後傳給後代。 突然間,這些不再是 一點點微小的改變, 而是全部的一點一滴累積起來, 你可選擇一些小部分, 然後將選擇的部分集合起來, 你就變得非常不同了。
And a lot of people are very scared by this stuff. And it does sound scary, and there are risks to this stuff. So why in the world would you ever want to do this stuff? Why would we really want to alter the human body in a fundamental way?
很多人對此感到害怕。 這聽起來確實很恐怖,也有風險。 為什麼我們還是想要這麼做呢? 為什麼我們想要 從基本上改變人體呢?
The answer lies in part with Lord Rees, astronomer royal of Great Britain. And one of his favorite sayings is the universe is 100 percent malevolent. So what does that mean? It means if you take any one of your bodies at random, drop it anywhere in the universe, drop it in space, you die. Drop it on the Sun, you die. Drop it on the surface of Mercury, you die. Drop it near a supernova, you die. But fortunately, it's only about 80 percent effective.
提供我們部分答案的 是里斯男爵, 英國皇家天文學家, 他最喜歡說的一句話就是: 宇宙是百分之百惡劣的環境。 這句話是什麽意思? 意思就是,如果從人類當中 隨機選出一位, 把他丟到宇宙的任何一個地方, 丟到外太空,你就會死。 丟到太陽上,你就會死。 丟到水星表面上,你也會死。 丟到超新星附近,還是死。 但還好,這句話 只有 80% 是正確的。
So as a great physicist once said, there's these little upstream eddies of biology that create order in this rapid torrent of entropy. So as the universe dissipates energy, there's these upstream eddies that create biological order. Now, the problem with eddies is, they tend to disappear. They shift. They move in rivers. And because of that, when an eddy shifts, when the Earth becomes a snowball, when the Earth becomes very hot, when the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, when you have supervolcanoes, when you have solar flares, when you have potentially extinction-level events like the next election --
一位偉大的物理學家曾說過, 在生物界,小小的上游漩渦, 在混沌的熵流中創造了致序。 就在宇宙分散能量的同時, 這些上游漩渦創造了生物的秩序。 然而,漩渦的問題是, 它們會消失, 它們轉向,在河中移動。 因此,當有漩渦移動的時候, 當地球變成雪球的時候, 或是變得炙熱的時候, 當地球被小行星撞擊的時候, 當超級火山爆發的時候, 當太陽耀斑爆發的時候, 當我們遇到潛在的毀滅事件的時候, 比如下屆總統選舉——
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
then all of a sudden, you can have periodic extinctions. And by the way, that's happened five times on Earth, and therefore it is very likely that the human species on Earth is going to go extinct someday. Not next week, not next month, maybe in November, but maybe 10,000 years after that. As you're thinking of the consequence of that, if you believe that extinctions are common and natural and normal and occur periodically, it becomes a moral imperative to diversify our species.
突然間,我們就會遇到 周期性的地球大滅絕。 順便提一下,這在地球上 已經發生過五次了, 因此,人類有朝一日 很有可能在地球上消失。 不是下禮拜, 不是下個月, 也許就在 11 月, 也許是那之後的一萬年。 一旦考慮到人類滅絕的後果, 如果你相信大滅絕是常見且自然的, 正常的而且會周期性地發生, 那麼,將我們的物種多樣化 在道德上就變得勢在必行了。
And it becomes a moral imperative because it's going to be really hard to live on Mars if we don't fundamentally modify the human body. Right? You go from one cell, mom and dad coming together to make one cell, in a cascade to 10 trillion cells. We don't know, if you change the gravity substantially, if the same thing will happen to create your body. We do know that if you expose our bodies as they currently are to a lot of radiation, we will die. So as you're thinking of that, you have to really redesign things just to get to Mars. Forget about the moons of Neptune or Jupiter.
它成為道德上的必要性的原因是, 因為如果我們不從基本上改善人體, 人類在火星上很難生存。 對嗎? 我們都來自一個細胞, 由父母結合所產生的細胞, 經由分裂變成了 10 兆個細胞。 我們不敢確定當引力有巨大變化時, 相同的過程是否還會 在我們的體內發生。 目前我們能確定的是, 如果你將自己的身體 暴露在強輻射下, 我們就會死。 所以當你在想這些時, 光是去火星, 我們就得重新設計人體。 更不用說去海王星或木星了。
And to borrow from Nikolai Kardashev, let's think about life in a series of scales. So Life One civilization is a civilization that begins to alter his or her looks. And we've been doing that for thousands of years. You've got tummy tucks and you've got this and you've got that. You alter your looks, and I'm told that not all of those alterations take place for medical reasons.
借用一下尼古拉·卡爾達肖夫的話 (前蘇聯天體物理學家), 讓我們將生命想成是一系列的文明, 在一級生命文明當中 人類可以改變長相。 我們已經這樣做了數千年了。 你可以做腹部整形, 整整這兒,整整那兒。 你能改變你的外觀,我聽人家說 不是所有的整形都與醫療有關。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Seems odd.
好像有點怪。
A Life Two civilization is a different civilization. A Life Two civilization alters fundamental aspects of the body. So you put human growth hormone in, the person grows taller, or you put x in and the person gets fatter or loses metabolism or does a whole series of things, but you're altering the functions in a fundamental way.
二級生命文明就不同了。 二級生命文明可以改變 身體的基本特徵。 你可以注射生長激素, 使人長的更高, 或者使用某種藥物, 讓人變胖或降低新陳代謝, 或者進行一系列的改變, 但你已經在基本上改變 人體的功能了。
To become an intrasolar civilization, we're going to have to create a Life Three civilization, and that looks very different from what we've got here. Maybe you splice in Deinococcus radiodurans so that the cells can resplice after a lot of exposure to radiation. Maybe you breathe by having oxygen flow through your blood instead of through your lungs. But you're talking about really radical redesigns, and one of the interesting things that's happened in the last decade is we've discovered a whole lot of planets out there. And some of them may be Earth-like. The problem is, if we ever want to get to these planets, the fastest human objects -- Juno and Voyager and the rest of this stuff -- take tens of thousands of years to get from here to the nearest solar system. So if you want to start exploring beaches somewhere else, or you want to see two-sun sunsets, then you're talking about something that is very different, because you have to change the timescale and the body of humans in ways which may be absolutely unrecognizable. And that's a Life Four civilization.
要成為太陽系內的文明, 我們必須創造出三級生命文明, 這跟我們現在的世界完全不同。 也許你會被植入 「抗輻射奇異球菌」, 讓細胞暴露在大量輻射 之後仍可重新結合。 也許你的呼吸是由氧氣 直接進入血液當中, 而不是肺中。 但是我們正在說的 是完全徹底的重新設計, 在過去十年間 發生了一件有趣的事情, 就是我們在宇宙中 發現了很多的行星。 其中有些可能很像地球。 問題是,如果我們想要 到達那些行星, 最快的人造飛行器—— 朱諾號和航海家太空船, 還有其它類似的東西—— 也要花個數萬年, 才能到達離我們最近的恒星系。 所以,如果你想在 其他星球的海灘上散步, 或者想要看到兩個太陽的日落, 那麼你在談的是非常不同的, 因為你必須以完全超乎想像的程度, 改變時間的維度和人體的構造。 這就是四級生命文明。
Now, we can't even begin to imagine what that might look like, but we're beginning to get glimpses of instruments that might take us even that far. And let me give you two examples.
雖然我們無法想像 我們會變成什麽樣子, 但是我們已經能稍微瞥見 可以把我們帶往那種地方的設備了。 我給各位舉兩個例子:
So this is the wonderful Floyd Romesberg, and one of the things that Floyd's been doing is he's been playing with the basic chemistry of life. So all life on this planet is made in ATCGs, the four letters of DNA. All bacteria, all plants, all animals, all humans, all cows, everything else. And what Floyd did is he changed out two of those base pairs, so it's ATXY. And that means that you now have a parallel system to make life, to make babies, to reproduce, to evolve, that doesn't mate with most things on Earth or in fact maybe with nothing on Earth. Maybe you make plants that are immune to all bacteria. Maybe you make plants that are immune to all viruses. But why is that so interesting? It means that we are not a unique solution. It means you can create alternate chemistries to us that could be chemistries adaptable to a very different planet that could create life and heredity.
這位是我們出色的 弗洛伊德·瑞姆斯伯格, 弗洛伊德一直在做的一件事就是 研究基礎生命化學。 地球上所有生命都由 DNA 的 四個字母 ATCG 所組成, 所有的細菌、植物、 動物、人類、牛, 每一樣都由 ATCG 組成。 弗洛伊德做的研究就是 改變其中的兩組鹼基對, 變成 ATXY 的組合。 意思就是,你也有一個 可以創造生命的平行系統, 你可以造出小生命、 可以繁殖、進化, 但不能與地球上大多數的生命配對, 或者說地球上根本沒有生物可配對。 也許你可以製造出 對所有細菌免疫的植物。 也許你能製造出 對所有病毒免疫的植物。 為什麼這讓人感興趣呢? 這意味著,人類不是 唯一的解決方案。 也就是說,你能夠在我們體內 造出不同的化學成分, 以能夠適應不同星球上的生活, 我們仍然能創造生命、繁衍後代。
The second experiment, or the other implication of this experiment, is that all of you, all life is based on 20 amino acids. If you don't substitute two amino acids, if you don't say ATXY, if you say ATCG + XY, then you go from 20 building blocks to 172, and all of a sudden you've got 172 building blocks of amino acids to build life-forms in very different shapes.
第二個實驗, 或者說是這個實驗的另一個含義, 就是我們所有人,所有的生命 都是由 20 種氨基酸所組成。 如果你不替換其中兩個, 比如,你不用 ATXY, 而是用 ATCG + XY, 那麼,你就能夠從 20 種 氨基酸增長到 172 種, 突然間,我們就有了 172 種 基礎氨基酸的模型, 可以建造出完全不同的生命形式。
The second experiment to think about is a really weird experiment that's been taking place in China. So this guy has been transplanting hundreds of mouse heads. Right? And why is that an interesting experiment? Well, think of the first heart transplants. One of the things they used to do is they used to bring in the wife or the daughter of the donor so the donee could tell the doctors, "Do you recognize this person? Do you love this person? Do you feel anything for this person?" We laugh about that today. We laugh because we know the heart is a muscle, but for hundreds of thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years, "I gave her my heart. She took my heart. She broke my heart." We thought this was emotion and we thought maybe emotions were transplanted with the heart. Nope.
第二個實驗,是在中國做的, 一個非常詭異的實驗。 這傢伙已經換植過 上百隻老鼠的頭了。 是不是? 為什麽這是個有趣的實驗呢? 回想一下,當第一顆心臟被移植時。 醫生以前常做一件事, 就是把器官捐贈者的 太太或女兒叫過來, 然後醫生問被捐贈的人, 「你認識這個人嗎?你愛她嗎? 你看到她,有什麼感覺呢?」 今天,我們會把這當笑話看。 我們笑的原因,是因為我們知道 心臟只是一塊肌肉, 但是,在幾百、幾千或幾萬年前, 「我把心獻給了她, 她偷走了我的心,她讓我心碎。」 我們把心臟當成情感的來源, 我們以為情感會跟隨心臟 一同被移植,但並沒有。
So how about the brain? Two possible outcomes to this experiment. If you can get a mouse that is functional, then you can see, is the new brain a blank slate? And boy, does that have implications. Second option: the new mouse recognizes Minnie Mouse. The new mouse remembers what it's afraid of, remembers how to navigate the maze, and if that is true, then you can transplant memory and consciousness. And then the really interesting question is, if you can transplant this, is the only input-output mechanism this down here? Or could you transplant that consciousness into something that would be very different, that would last in space, that would last tens of thousands of years, that would be a completely redesigned body that could hold consciousness for a long, long period of time?
但如果是換成大腦呢? 這實驗有兩種可能的結果。 如果你拿一隻老鼠來, 仍活著的, 那你就能觀察到, 牠的新大腦是否一片空白? 還是,這個大腦還有原有的意識? 第二個選擇: 新的老鼠還記得牠的戀愛對象。 新的老鼠還記得牠害怕什麽, 記得如何走出迷宮, 若是果真如此, 你就能夠移植你的記憶和意識。 然後就引發一個有趣的問題, 如果你可以移植這個, 那是人體唯一 對於頭以下的身體的輸出輸入機制, 或者說,我們能否將意識轉入到一個 完全不同的東西裡? 讓它能夠在宇宙中長遠留存, 留存數萬年? 那會是一個重新設計的身體, 可以將意識留存一段很長的時間嗎?
And let's come back to the first question: Why would you ever want to do that? Well, I'll tell you why. Because this is the ultimate selfie.
讓我們重新回到第一個問題: 到底為什麼我們想要這麼做呢? 好吧,讓我來告訴你原因。 因為這張是我們的終極自拍照。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
This is taken from six billion miles away, and that's Earth. And that's all of us. And if that little thing goes, all of humanity goes. And the reason you want to alter the human body is because you eventually want a picture that says, that's us, and that's us, and that's us, because that's the way humanity survives long-term extinction. And that's the reason why it turns out it's actually unethical not to evolve the human body even though it can be scary, even though it can be challenging, but it's what's going to allow us to explore, live and get to places we can't even dream of today, but which our great-great-great-great- grandchildren might someday.
從六十億英哩的外太空拍的, 那是地球。 我們全部人就這麼個小白點。 如果那個小白點不見了, 人類就不見了。 我們之所以想要改造人體, 是因為我們最終想要 在一張照片寫著, 這是我們,這是我們, 這也是我們, 因為這是人類延續生命 避免被滅絕的方法。 這就是為什麼, 不進化人體才是真的不道德, 即使進化可能很可怕, 即使進化可能很困難, 但進化可以讓我們探索、生存, 到達當今無法想像的地方, 但也許我們的曾曾曾曾孫子 有朝一日才能辦到。
Thank you very much.
非常感謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)