I want to try and persuade you that there are reasons why we should be optimistic in general. And that’s a very difficult thing to do today because we are confronting tremendous problems in this world. Things like global climate change, which seem almost impossible to solve, or social inequality, which seems endemic and difficult to eliminate. The scale of these problems though is even more reason why we should be optimistic. Because what we know is that in the past, every great and difficult thing that has been accomplished, every breakthrough, has in fact required a very strong sense of optimism that it was possible. Think of the first airplanes. It’s hard enough to create something good and great deliberately and with intention. And it’s no guarantee, just because we believe something will happen that it will happen, but we do know that unless we believe that something can happen, it’s not going to happen inadvertently by itself. And so it becomes really important that we imagine a world that we want, that we imagine solutions we want and believe that we can make them happen. And that belief in making something impossible happen is what has shaped our future so far.
我想要試著說服各位 總體來說我們應該要 保持樂觀的原因。 現今,要做到這一點很不容易, 因為我們要面對 這個世界上相當重大的問題。 比如, 看似幾乎無法解決的全球氣候變遷, 或者似乎很普遍的社會不平等, 也很難消除。 不過,正是因為這些問題這麼大, 我們更該保持樂觀。 因為, 我們知道,在過去, 所有偉大且困難的成就, 所有的突破, 事實上, 都需要 抱持很強的樂觀觀念, 相信有可能做到。 想想最早的飛機。 要刻意且有意圖地 去創造很好很棒的東西 就已經相當不容易了。 而且還…… 無法保證,並不是我們 相信會發生就一定會發生。 但我們確實知道, 除非我們相信某件事會發生, 不然它不可能自己不經意地發生。 因此, 非常重要的是,我們要去想像 我們想要什麼樣的世界, 什麼樣的解決方案,並相信 我們能實現它們。 相信能讓 不可能的事情發生,這種信念正是
So our own history has been basically shaped by optimists, and if we want to shape the future, we need to be optimistic. That world that we’re shaping is not a world that’s perfect. It’s not perfection, there’s no lack of problems, there’s no absence of bad things. It is totally not utopia. It’s what I would call pro-topia: a world in which things are a little bit better. And that sense of optimism is a perspective where we expect the world to yield a little bit more good than bad, to have a few more reasons to hope than to fear. And optimism definitely is not just a sunny temperament, a kind of a blindness to the realities of the world's problems or some kind of Pollyanna self-delusion. Instead, optimism is based on the fact of historical progress, that if we transcend anecdote and look at data in a scientific, rational way, that we can see that the evidence says that on average, on a global scale over time, over the last 500 years, there has been incremental improvement over time.
至今為我們打造未來的推手。 所以我們自己的歷史 基本上就是由樂觀的人所創造的。 如果我們想要打造未來, 我們就得樂觀。 我們打造的世界並不完美。 它不會完美無缺, 不會沒有不好的地方。 完全不是烏托邦, 我稱之為進托邦, 事物稍微好一點的世界。 而那種樂觀觀念 表示我們期望 世界上所產生的好比壞更多一點點, 能心懷希望的理由 比恐懼的理由多一些些。 而且樂觀絕對不只是陽光性格, 也不是盲目不見世上問題的現實, 或者某種樂天的自我欺騙。 樂觀所根據的是 歷史進展上的事實: 如果我們能跳脫軼事, 用科學、理性的方式來看資料, 我們就能發現,證據指出, 從全球的角度來看, 平均而言,隨時間, 在過去五百年間, 隨時間,一直都有 漸進式的改善在發生。
If it’s real then why don’t we see more of it? Why are so many people pessimistic? And I think there are three reasons why. One is that most of what progress is about is about what does not happen. It’s about all the things that could have happened that didn’t happen today. It’s about the two-year-old child who did not die of smallpox. It’s about the family farmers whose year of surplus food was not stolen by raiders. They don't make the headlines.
若是真的,為何沒看到更多? 為何有這麼多人悲觀? 我認為原因有三個。 第一, 大部分的進展,都與 「沒有發生的事」有關, 和本來可能發生 但現今卻沒有發生的事有關。 比如兩歲孩子沒有因為天花而死。 比如個體農場的小農 一整年剩餘的食物 沒有被掠劫者給偷走。 這些事不會上頭條。
And the second reason is that bad things happen faster than good things. Good things take time. When we are compressing our news cycle to the last five minutes and the next five minutes, all the things that have changed in the last five minutes are kind of bad stuff because good stuff takes longer. If we were to make newspapers and websites to be updated every 100 years, we’d have a very different set of headlines.
第二個原因是 壞事發生的速度比好事快。 好事要花時間。 當我們把新聞循環壓縮到只有 過去五分鐘和接下來五分鐘, 在過去五分鐘之內有所 改變的一切大概都是壞事。 因為好事需要更長的時間。 如果我們能把 報紙及網站改成每一百年更新一次, 頭條就會很不一樣了。
The third reason is that because societies that are capable of creating just a few percent more good than they destroy every year, if you have a society that’s capable of making just a few percent more than it destroys, then over time, that few percent is compounded. And that is what civilization is. So that one percent, few percent, is almost invisible in the noise of the 49-percent crap and destruction around it. So we don’t see it unless we turn around and look back into the past.
第三個原因是因為 社會能夠創造出的 好事能比他們每年毀滅的一切 多出幾個百分點, 如果社會能夠創造的 比起它所摧毀的還要多出 幾個百分點, 那麼,隨時間, 那幾個百分點就會加成。 那就是文明。 所以, 那一個、幾個百分點 因為被百分之四十九的鳥事 和毀滅所產生的噪音圍繞, 會很難被看見。 所以我們看不見, 除非我們轉身去看過去。
So it’s possible that after 500 years of progress, it could stop tomorrow. But it’s unlikely and very, very probable that that long-term trend will continue, at least for the rest of your lives. So this optimism makes us realists in aligning ourselves with this long history of historical progress. And that’s the first reason we should be optimistic.
所以,是有可能, 在五百年的進步之後, 明天就停滯了。 但機率仍然不高, 且那長期的趨勢非常非常 有可能會持續下去, 至少在你這輩子都還會持續。 所以,這種樂觀會讓 我們成為務實的人, 認同過去這段漫長的進展史。 那就是我們應該要 保持樂觀的第一個原因。
And the second reason is that civilization is a mechanism to make these improvements that relies on the fact that we’re optimistically trusting others. We have total strangers that we can collaborate, and that collaboration allows us to make things beyond ourselves that are bigger than just what we can do. That requires trust, and trust is a type of optimism. But in addition to kind of cooperating with the eight billion total strangers on this planet accomplishing great things, we can also trust future generations. The billions of people yet unborn into the future. Right now, today, we are benefiting from the work of previous generations who undergone to create infrastructure -- roads canals, skyscrapers, telephone networks -- that we are now enjoying. In fact, we may be enjoying more benefits than they have back in the past when they began. So they have been acting as good ancestors for us, and sometimes even sacrificing what could have been immediate yields and benefits and postponing them until future generations. We also want to be good ancestors, and being good ancestors trying to move benefits to the future generations is an act of optimism. One, because we believe that there will be future generations, and two, because we are willing to sacrifice immediate gains in order to postpone -- have more gains into the future -- that investment. Being a good ancestor enables us to actually accomplish things not just beyond what we can do individually in the present, but what we can do over time.
第二個原因是 文明是一種改善的機制, 而其基礎就是我們能 樂觀地相信他人。 我們能和完全陌生的人合作, 而那樣的合作能讓我們做到 超越我們能力範圍的事, 比我們能做的事還大。 那就需要信任,而信任是一種樂觀。 但,除了 和地球上八十億完全 陌生的人合作來成就大事, 我們也能信任未來的世代。 未來才會出生的數十億人。 現今,我們就受惠於 先前世代的努力, 他們費心費力建造了 我們現在享用的基礎設施—— 道路、運河、摩天大樓、電話網路。 事實上,我們所享用的好處 可能比他們一開始時都還要多。 他們一直為了我們扮演好的祖先, 有時甚至犧牲本來可以 立即得到的好處和益處, 而將它們留給未來的世代。 我們也想扮演好的祖先, 而扮演好的祖先 並試著把益處轉移給未來世代 就是樂觀的舉動。 第一,因為我們相信還會 有未來的世代。 第二,因為我們願意犧牲 當下的收穫,以延遲—— 讓未來有更多收穫—— 那種投資。 扮演好的祖先,讓我們 能夠真正去達成不只是 現在個人能做到的目標, 還有隨時間我們能做到的目標。
So when we trust the future, one of the things that we are understanding is that future generations not only have better living standards because of progress, but they also have more capability to solve problems because there’s more knowledge and because they have better tools. And so we can trust that. We can trust the fact that in the future, future generations will be able to solve problems that we cannot solve ourselves. So that means that we should be optimistic not because we believe that our problems are smaller than we thought. We should be optimistic because we believe that our capacity to solve problems is greater than we thought. So that’s a second reason to be optimistic.
所以, 當我們能相信未來, 我們可以知道,未來的世代 不僅因為進步而有 比較好的生活水平, 他們也更有能力可以解決問題, 因為有更多知識, 也因為他們有更好的工具。 我們能相信那一點, 我們能相信,在未來, 未來世代 可以解決我們自己無法解決的問題。 那就表示,我們應該樂觀, 原因並不是因為 我們相信我們的問題 比我們所想的更小。 我們應該要樂觀,是因為我們相信 我們解決問題的能力 比我們所想的更好。 那是應該樂觀的第二個原因。
The third one has to do with problems which are really disguised as opportunities. OK, so optimists don’t shun problems. Optimism is about embracing problems, because it’s problems that make solutions and solutions that make problems. So I believe that most of the problems we have today are generated by the solutions of the past. And the great one is this climate change. The solution in the past was artificial power -- “Where do we get it?” “OK, here it is.” But now it makes the problem now. That means that today, most of the solutions that we have will be generating the problems of the future. And there will be more problems because new solutions create many more problems. In the same way, when science answers a question, that answer will generate two or three new questions -- things that we didn’t even know we didn’t know. And so, in a peculiar way, science is expanding our ignorance faster than our knowledge.
第三個原因和問題有關, 問題其實會偽裝成機會。 所以樂觀的人不會閃避問題。 樂觀就是要擁抱問題, 因為,問題造成了解決方案, 解決方案造成了問題。 所以, 我相信,現今我們大部分的問題 是由過去的解決方案所產生的。 氣候變遷就是很明顯的例子。 過去的解決方案就是 人造電力——「要從哪裡得到?」 「好,有了。」 但現在就造成了問題。 那就表示現今 我們大部分的解決方案 會在未來產生問題。 且將來會有更多問題, 因為新的解決方案 會創造出更多問題。 同樣的道理,當科學解答了問題時, 那個答案會產生出 兩、三個新問題—— 我們根本不知道我們不知道的事。 所以,科學以很奇特的方式, 讓我們的無知擴展得比知識還快。
So we have an unlimited pool of questions and problems. But problems don’t impede progress. Problems are the conduit of progress. No problems, no progress. That is why I reject utopia, because there are no problems there. So even bad things that happen are basically possibilities that yield new solutions and better opportunities. So in that way, problems are unlimited. There is no limit for improvement. So we can improve ourselves in all directions.
所以,我們的問題庫是無窮無盡的。 但問題並不會阻礙進步。 問題是進步的導管。 沒有問題,就沒有進步。 那就是為什麼我排拒烏托邦, 因為那裡沒有問題。 所以,發生的壞事,基本上 也仍然是一些可能性, 可以產生新的解決方案 和更好的機會。 就那方面來說,問題是無限的。 改善是沒有極限的。 我們可以朝各種方向改善我們自己。
So we have a choice about optimism. It’s not a temperament. No matter what your temperament is you can still choose to be optimistic. And gigantic problems require gigantic optimism. We have a moral obligation to be optimistic, because when we’re optimistic, we can shape the future, we can become better ancestors, we can expand our reach -- create things bigger than ourselves. And we can be a realist in aligning ourselves with this long arc of history and embracing problems as opportunities. With optimism, we can use it as a power to kind of create the future that we want. This is the way.
所以樂觀我們有選擇。 它不是性格。 不論你是什麼性格, 你都可以選擇樂觀。 而龐大的問題需要龐大的樂觀。 樂觀是我們的道德義務, 因為當我們樂觀時, 我們就能塑造未來, 我們可以成為更好的祖先, 我們可以擴展我們豐富的—— 讓我們的創造能超越個人。 我們可以成為務實的人, 順著歷史漫長的弧線走下去, 並把問題視為機會,擁抱它們。 有了樂觀, 我們可以把它當作一種力量, 用來創造我們想要的未來。 就是這麼做。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)