My title: "Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science." "Queerer than we can suppose" comes from J.B.S. Haldane, the famous biologist, who said, "Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy." Richard Feynman compared the accuracy of quantum theories -- experimental predictions -- to specifying the width of North America to within one hair's breadth of accuracy. This means that quantum theory has got to be, in some sense, true. Yet the assumptions that quantum theory needs to make in order to deliver those predictions are so mysterious that even Feynman himself was moved to remark, "If you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory."
Moj naslov: "Čudnije no što možemo pretpostaviti - čudnovatost znanosti" "Čudnije no što možemo pretpostaviti" citat je slavnog biologa J. B. S. Haldanea, koji je izjavio "Slutim da svemir nije samo čudniji no što pretpostavljamo, već je čudniji nego što uopće možemo pretpostaviti. Slutim da postoji više stvari na nebu i zemlji nego što filozofija zamišlja, ili uopće može zamisliti." Richard Feynman usporedio je preciznost kvantnih teorija - eksperimentalnih predviđanja - s određivanjem širine S. Amerike s odstupanjem od širine jedne vlasi. To znači da kvantna teorija mora u neku ruku biti istinita. Ali pretpostavke koje kvantna teorija mora imati kako bi dostavila ta predviđanja su toliko tajanstvene da su navele samog Feynmana da izjavi, "Ako mislite da razumijete kvantnu teoriju, ne razumijete kvantnu teoriju."
It's so queer that physicists resort to one or another paradoxical interpretation of it. David Deutsch, who's talking here, in "The Fabric of Reality," embraces the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, because the worst that you can say about it is that it's preposterously wasteful. It postulates a vast and rapidly growing number of universes existing in parallel, mutually undetectable, except through the narrow porthole of quantum mechanical experiments. And that's Richard Feynman.
Teorija je toliko čudna da fizičari pribjegavaju različitim paradoksalnim interpretacijama. David Deutsch, koji izlaže ovdje, u "Tkanju stvarnosti", prihvaća interpretaciju o mnoštvu svjetova, jer najgore što možete reći o njoj jest da je besmisleno rastrošna. Ona postulira ogroman i rastući broj paralelnih svemira koji su međusobno nevidljivi, osim kroz uski prozorčić eksperimenata kvantne mehanike. To je Richard Feynman.
The biologist Lewis Wolpert believes that the queerness of modern physics is just an extreme example. Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense. Every time you drink a glass of water, he points out, the odds are that you will imbibe at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell. (Laughter) It's just elementary probability theory.
Biolog Lewis Wolpert vjeruje da je čudnovatost moderne fizike samo ekstremni primjer. Znanost, za razliku od tehnologije, nasilno pobija zdrav razum. Svaki put kad popijete čašu vode, primjećuje Wolpert, postoji vjerojatnost da ćete popiti barem jednu molekulu koja je prošla kroz mjehur Olivera Cromwella. (Smijeh) To je elementarna teorija vjerojatnosti.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
The number of molecules per glassful is hugely greater than the number of glassfuls, or bladdersful, in the world. And of course, there's nothing special about Cromwell or bladders -- you have just breathed in a nitrogen atom that passed through the right lung of the third iguanodon to the left of the tall cycad tree.
Broj molekula u jednoj čaši je mnogo veći od broja čaša, ili mjehura u svijetu. Naravno, nema ništa posebno u Cromwellu ili mjehurima - upravo ste udahnuli atom dušika koji je prošao kroz desno plućno krilo trećeg iguanodona s lijeve strane visokog drveta cikade.
"Queerer than we can suppose." What is it that makes us capable of supposing anything, and does this tell us anything about what we can suppose? Are there things about the universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, but not beyond the grasp of some superior intelligence? Are there things about the universe that are, in principle, ungraspable by any mind, however superior? The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe. We're now so used to the idea that the Earth spins, rather than the Sun moves across the sky, it's hard for us to realize what a shattering mental revolution that must have been. After all, it seems obvious that the Earth is large and motionless, the Sun, small and mobile. But it's worth recalling Wittgenstein's remark on the subject: "Tell me," he asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the Sun went 'round the Earth, rather than that the Earth was rotating?" And his friend replied, "Well, obviously, because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
"Čudnije no što pretpostavljamo." Što nas to čini sposobnima da pretpostavimo bilo što, i može li nam to reći išta o tome što uopće možemo pretpostaviti? Postoje stvari u vezi svemira koje će zauvijek ostati izvan našeg poimanja, ali ne i izvan poimanja neke više inteligencije? Postoje li stvari u vezi svemira koje po definiciji ne može pojmiti nijedan um, ma kako superioran? Povijest znanosti je jedan dugi niz nasilnih umnih oluja, dok se sukcesivne generacije pokušavaju pomiriti sa sve većom čudnovatosti svemira. Danas smo toliko navikli na ideju da se Zemlja okreće, a ne da se Sunce kreće po nebu. Teško nam je razumjeti kakva je potresna mentalna revolucija to bila. Naposljetku, čini se očitim da je Zemlja golema i nepomična, a Sunce malo i pokretno. Ali vrijedi se prisjetiti Wittgensteinovog komentara. "Reci mi," pitao je prijatelja, "zašto ljudi uvijek kažu da je bilo prirodno pretpostaviti da se Sunce okreće oko Zemlje, umjesto da se Zemlja okreće?" Prijatelj je odvratio: "Pa, očito zato što naprosto izgleda kao da se Sunce okreće oko Zemlje." Wittgenstein je odvratio: "Pa, kako bi izgledalo da izgleda kao da se Zemlja okreće?"
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things, like crystals and rocks, are really almost entirely composed of empty space. And the familiar illustration is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium, and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. So it would seem the hardest, solidest, densest rock is really almost entirely empty space, broken only by tiny particles so widely spaced they shouldn't count. Why, then, do rocks look and feel solid and hard and impenetrable? As an evolutionary biologist, I'd say this: our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude, of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms. If we had, our brains probably would perceive rocks as full of empty space. Rocks feel hard and impenetrable to our hands, precisely because objects like rocks and hands cannot penetrate each other. It's therefore useful for our brains to construct notions like "solidity" and "impenetrability," because such notions help us to navigate our bodies through the middle-sized world in which we have to navigate.
Znanost nas je naučila, protivno svakoj intuiciji, da se naizgled čvrste stvari, poput kristala i stijena, sastoje gotovo u potpunosti od praznog prostora. Poznata ilustracija je atomska jezgra kao muha usred sportskog stadiona, a idući atom je u idućem sportskom stadionu. Dakle, čini se da je najtvrđi, najsolidniji, najgušći kamen zapravo gotovo u potpunosti prazan prostor, isprekidan samo sićušnim česticama toliko razdvojenim da se ni ne računaju. Zašto onda vidimo i osjećamo kamen kao čvrst, tvrd i neprobojan? Kao evolucijski biolog, rekao bih ovo: naši mozgovi su se razvili da nam pomognu preživjeti unutar redova dimenzija, veličina i brzina u kojima operiraju naša tijela. Nikad se nismo razvili da navigiramo svijet atoma. Da jesmo, naši bi mozgovi vjerojatno vidjeli kamen kao pun praznog prostora. Kamenje se čini tvrdo i neprobojno našim rukama upravo zato što objekti poput kamenja i ruku ne mogu prodrijeti jedni u druge. Stoga je korisno za naše mozgove da konstruiraju koncepte poput "čvrstoće" i "neprobojnosti" jer nam ti koncepti pomažu da se krećemo svojim tijelima kroz svijet srednje veličine kroz koji se moramo kretati.
Moving to the other end of the scale, our ancestors never had to navigate through the cosmos at speeds close to the speed of light. If they had, our brains would be much better at understanding Einstein. I want to give the name "Middle World" to the medium-scaled environment in which we've evolved the ability to take act -- nothing to do with "Middle Earth" -- Middle World.
Kad prijeđemo na drugu stranu skale, naši preci nikad nisu morali navigirati kroz kozmos brzinama bliskim brzini svjetlosti. Da jesu, naši mozgovi bi mnogo bolje razumjeli Einsteina. Želim dati ime "Međusvijet" srednje velikoj okolini u kojoj smo razvili sposobnost djelovanja - to nema nikakve veze s Međuzemljem - Međusvijet.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
We are evolved denizens of Middle World, and that limits what we are capable of imagining. We find it intuitively easy to grasp ideas like, when a rabbit moves at the sort of medium velocity at which rabbits and other Middle World objects move, and hits another Middle World object like a rock, it knocks itself out.
Mi smo evoluirani stanovnici Međusvijeta i to ograničava našu sposobnost zamišljanja. Intuitivno zahvaćamo ideje kao, kad se zec kreće srednjom brzinom kojom se zečevi i ostale stvari u Međusvijetu kreću, i zaleti se u drugu stvar u Međusvijetu, poput kamena, to ga ošamuti.
May I introduce Major General Albert Stubblebine III, commander of military intelligence in 1983.
Predstavljam vam generala bojnika Alberta Stubblebinea III., zapovjednika vojnog obavještavanja 1983.
"...[He] stared at his wall in Arlington, Virginia, and decided to do it. As frightening as the prospect was, he was going into the next office. He stood up and moved out from behind his desk. 'What is the atom mostly made of?' he thought, 'Space.' He started walking. 'What am I mostly made of? Atoms.' He quickened his pace, almost to a jog now. 'What is the wall mostly made of?'
"Zurio je u zid svog ureda u Arlingtonu u Virginiji i odlučio to napraviti. Iako je to bilo zastrašujuće, otići će u susjedni ured. Ustao je i odmaknuo se od radnog stola." "Od čega se sastoji atom?" pomislio je, "Od prostora." Počeo je hodati. "Od čega se ja sastojim? Od atoma." Ubrzao je korak, gotovo potrčao. "Od čega se zid sastoji?"
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
'Atoms!' All I have to do is merge the spaces. Then, General Stubblebine banged his nose hard on the wall of his office. Stubblebine, who commanded 16,000 soldiers, was confounded by his continual failure to walk through the wall. He has no doubt that this ability will one day be a common tool in the military arsenal. Who would screw around with an army that could do that?"
"Atoma!" Naprosto moram stopiti prazne prostore. I tada je general bojnik Stubblebine udario nosom o zid svog ureda. Stubblebine, koji je zapovijedao 16 000 vojnika, nije mogao shvatiti zašto ne može proći kroz zid. Ne sumnja da će ta sposobnost jednog dana biti uobičajeno sredstvo u vojnom arsenalu. Tko bi se bakćao s vojskom koja to može napraviti?"
That's from an article in Playboy, which I was reading the other day.
To je iz članka u Playboyju, koji sam čitao neki dan.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
I have every reason to think it's true; I was reading Playboy because I, myself, had an article in it.
Opravdano mislim da je članak istinit, čitao sam Playboy jer sam i sam imao članak u njemu.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Unaided human intuition, schooled in Middle World, finds it hard to believe Galileo when he tells us a heavy object and a light object, air friction aside, would hit the ground at the same instant. And that's because in Middle World, air friction is always there. If we'd evolved in a vacuum, we would expect them to hit the ground simultaneously. If we were bacteria, constantly buffeted by thermal movements of molecules, it would be different. But we Middle-Worlders are too big to notice Brownian motion. In the same way, our lives are dominated by gravity, but are almost oblivious to the force of surface tension. A small insect would reverse these priorities.
Ljudska intuicija, školovana u Međusvijetu, teško će povjerovati Galileu kad joj kaže da će teški i laki objekt, ako zanemarimo otpor zraka, udariti o tlo u istom trenutku. To je zato što je u Međusvijetu otpor zraka uvijek prisutan. Da smo se razvili u vakuumu, očekivali bismo da će istovremeno udariti o tlo. Da smo bakterije i da nas stalno bubetaju termalna kretanja molekula, bilo bi drukčije. Ali mi iz Međusvijeta smo preveliki da primijetimo Brownovo gibanje. Isto tako, našim životima dominira gravitacija, ali gotovo ni ne primjećujemo silu površinske napetosti. Za sićušnog insekta bi važnost toga dvoga bila obrnuta.
Steve Grand -- he's the one on the left, Douglas Adams is on the right. Steve Grand, in his book, "Creation: Life and How to Make It," is positively scathing about our preoccupation with matter itself. We have this tendency to think that only solid, material things are really things at all. Waves of electromagnetic fluctuation in a vacuum seem unreal. Victorians thought the waves had to be waves in some material medium: the ether. But we find real matter comforting only because we've evolved to survive in Middle World, where matter is a useful fiction. A whirlpool, for Steve Grand, is a thing with just as much reality as a rock.
Steve Grand - on je onaj slijeva, Doulgas Adams je zdesna. Steve Grand u svojoj knjizi "Stvaranje: život i kako ga stvoriti" nemilosrdno osuđuje našu zaokupljenost materijom. Skloni smo misliti da su samo čvrste, materijalne stvari stvarno stvari. Fluktuacija elektromagnetskih valova u vakuumu čini se nečim nestvarnim. Viktorijanci su smatrali da su valovi valovi u nekom materijalnom mediju: u eteru. Ali stvarna materija nas umiruje jer smo se razvili za preživljavanje u Međusvijetu, u kojem je materija korisna fikcija. Vir je za Stevea Granda jednako stvaran kao i kamen.
In a desert plain in Tanzania, in the shadow of the volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai, there's a dune made of volcanic ash. The beautiful thing is that it moves bodily. It's what's technically known as a "barchan," and the entire dune walks across the desert in a westerly direction at a speed of about 17 meters per year. It retains its crescent shape and moves in the direction of the horns. What happens is that the wind blows the sand up the shallow slope on the other side, and then, as each sand grain hits the top of the ridge, it cascades down on the inside of the crescent, and so the whole horn-shaped dune moves. Steve Grand points out that you and I are, ourselves, more like a wave than a permanent thing. He invites us, the reader, to think of an experience from your childhood, something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: You weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.
U pustinji u Tanzaniji, u sjeni vulkana Ol Doinyo Lengai, postoji dina vulkanskog pepela. Najljepša stvar o njoj je da se fizički kreće. To se tehnički naziva "barchan", i čitava dina pomiče se po pustinji u smjeru zapada brzinom od otprilike 17 metara godišnje. Zadržava svoj polumjesečasti oblik i kreće se u smjeru svojih vrhova. Vjetar podiže pijesak uz blagu kosinu na drugu stranu, i kako svako zrnce pijeska dođe na vrh brijega, slijeva se u unutrašnjost polumjeseca, i tako se cijela rogata dina kreće. Steve Grand podsjeća da smo i vi i ja sličniji valu, nego trajnoj stvari. Poziva nas čitatelje da pomislimo na iskustvo iz djetinjstva, nešto čega se jasno sjećate, nešto što možete vidjeti, osjetiti, možda i namirisati, kao da ste stvarno tamo. Naposljetku, jednom ste i bili tamo, niste li? Kako biste se inače sjećali? Ali evo iznenađenja: niste bili tamo. Nijedan jedini atom iz vašeg današnjeg tijela nije bio tamo kad se to dogodilo. Materija teče od mjesta do mjesta i samo se na trenutak spoji u vas. Što god da jeste, stoga, niste tvar od koje ste napravljeni. Ako od toga ne osjetite jezu, pročitajte to opet dok je ne osjetite, jer je važno.
So "really" isn't a word that we should use with simple confidence. If a neutrino had a brain, which it evolved in neutrino-sized ancestors, it would say that rocks really do consist of empty space. We have brains that evolved in medium-sized ancestors which couldn't walk through rocks. "Really," for an animal, is whatever its brain needs it to be in order to assist its survival. And because different species live in different worlds, there will be a discomforting variety of "reallys." What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished world, but a model of the world, regulated and adjusted by sense data, but constructed so it's useful for dealing with the real world.
Dakle, "stvarno" nije riječ koju bismo trebali samopouzdano upotrebljavati. Da neutrino ima mozak, koji se razvio u njegovim precima veličine neutrina, rekao bi da se kamenje stvarno sastoji od praznog prostora. Imamo mozgove koji su se razvili u precima srednje veličine koji nisu mogli prolaziti kroz kamenje. "Stvarno", za životinju, jest što god njezin mozak treba kako bi joj pomogao da preživi. I zato što različite vrste žive u različitim svjetovima, postoji uznemirujuće mnogo "stvarnosti". Ono što vidimo od stvarnog svijeta nije zapravo svijet, već model svijeta, reguliran i podešen osjetilnim podacima, ali konstruiran kako bi poslužio nošenju sa stvarnim svijetom.
The nature of the model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of model from a walking, climbing or swimming animal. A monkey's brain must have software capable of simulating a three-dimensional world of branches and trunks. A mole's software for constructing models of its world will be customized for underground use. A water strider's brain doesn't need 3D software at all, since it lives on the surface of the pond, in an Edwin Abbott flatland.
Priroda modela ovisi o tome koja ste životinja. Leteća životinja treba drugačiji model od životinje koja hoda, penje se ili pliva. Majmunov mozak mora imati softver koji može simulirati trodimenzionalni svijet grana i debla. Krtičin softver za konstruiranje modela njezinog svijeta bit će prilagođen za upotrebu u podzemlju. Mozak barske skakalice uopće ne treba trodimenzionalni softver jer ona živi na površini bare, kao u noveli "Flatland" Edwina Abbota.
I've speculated that bats may see color with their ears. The world model that a bat needs in order to navigate through three dimensions catching insects must be pretty similar to the world model that any flying bird -- a day-flying bird like a swallow -- needs to perform the same kind of tasks. The fact that the bat uses echoes in pitch darkness to input the current variables to its model, while the swallow uses light, is incidental. Bats, I've even suggested, use perceived hues, such as red and blue, as labels, internal labels, for some useful aspect of echoes -- perhaps the acoustic texture of surfaces, furry or smooth and so on -- in the same way as swallows or indeed, we, use those perceived hues -- redness and blueness, etc. -- to label long and short wavelengths of light. There's nothing inherent about red that makes it long wavelength.
Spekulirao sam da šišmiši možda vide boje ušima. Model svijeta koji šišmiš treba kako bi navigirao kroz tri dimenzije u lovu na kukce mora da je vrlo sličan onom koji ptica letačica, dnevna letačica poput lastavice - treba kako bi izvodila slične zadatke. Činjenica da se šišmiši služe odjecima u mrklom mraku kako bi učitali trenutne varijable u svoj model, a lastavice za istu stvar koriste svjetlost, je sporedna. Šišmiši, predložio sam, koriste vidljive nijanse, poput crvene i plave, kao etikete, unutarnje etikete, za neke korisne aspekte odjeka - možda za akustičku teksturu površine, za razliku dlakavo/glatko, i slično, na isti način na koji lastavice, ili mi, koristimo te vidljive nijanse - crvenilo, plavetnilo, itd. - da obilježimo duge i kratke valne duljine svjetlosti. Nema ništa inheretno u crvenoj što bi je činilo dugom valnom duljinom.
The point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used, rather than by the sensory modality involved. J.B.S. Haldane himself had something to say about animals whose world is dominated by smell. Dogs can distinguish two very similar fatty acids, extremely diluted: caprylic acid and caproic acid. The only difference, you see, is that one has an extra pair of carbon atoms in the chain. Haldane guesses that a dog would probably be able to place the acids in the order of their molecular weights by their smells, just as a man could place a number of piano wires in the order of their lengths by means of their notes. Now, there's another fatty acid, capric acid, which is just like the other two, except that it has two more carbon atoms. A dog that had never met capric acid would, perhaps, have no more trouble imagining its smell than we would have trouble imagining a trumpet, say, playing one note higher than we've heard a trumpet play before. Perhaps dogs and rhinos and other smell-oriented animals smell in color. And the argument would be exactly the same as for the bats.
Poanta je da je priroda modela određena načinom korištenja modela, a ne senzornim modalitetom koji uključuje. J. B. S. Haldane je isto imao nešto za reći o životinjama čijim svijetom dominira miris. Psi mogu razlikovati dvije vrlo slične masne kiseline, u vrlo razrijeđenom obliku, kaprilnu i kaproičnu kiselinu. Jedina razlika među njima jest da jedna ima dodatni par ugljikovih atoma u lancu. Haldane nagađa da pas vjerojatno može rasporediti kiseline po njihovoj molekularnoj težini pomoću mirisa, kao što čovjek može rasporediti žice klavira različite dužine pomoću nota koje proizvode. Postoji još jedna masna kiselina, kaprinska kiselina, koja je ista kao i ove dvije, samo što ima dodatna dva ugljikova atoma. Pas koji se nikad nije susreo s kaprinskom kiselinom možda ne bi imao više problema sa zamišljanjem njezinog mirisa nego što bismo mi imali sa zamišljanjem trube koja svira notu više od svih truba koje smo dosad čuli. Možda psi i nosorozi i druge životinje vođene mirisom mirišu u boji. Argument bi bio jednak kao i za šišmiše.
Middle World -- the range of sizes and speeds which we have evolved to feel intuitively comfortable with -- is a bit like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see as light of various colors. We're blind to all frequencies outside that, unless we use instruments to help us. Middle World is the narrow range of reality which we judge to be normal, as opposed to the queerness of the very small, the very large and the very fast. We could make a similar scale of improbabilities; nothing is totally impossible. Miracles are just events that are extremely improbable. A marble statue could wave its hand at us; the atoms that make up its crystalline structure are all vibrating back and forth anyway. Because there are so many of them, and because there's no agreement among them in their preferred direction of movement, the marble, as we see it in Middle World, stays rock steady. But the atoms in the hand could all just happen to move the same way at the same time, and again and again. In this case, the hand would move, and we'd see it waving at us in Middle World. The odds against it, of course, are so great that if you set out writing zeros at the time of the origin of the universe, you still would not have written enough zeros to this day.
Međusvijet - raspon veličina i brzina za koje smo se razvili da ih prepoznajemo - nalikuje uskom rasponu elektromagnetskog spektra koji mi vidimo kao svjetlo različitih boja. Ne vidimo nijednu frekvenciju izvan tog raspona, osim uz pomoć instrumenata. Međusvijet je uski raspon stvarnosti koji smatramo normalnim, u usporedbi s čudnovatosti vrlo malog, vrlo velikog i vrlo brzog. Mogli bismo napraviti sličnu skalu nevjerojatnosti; ništa nije skroz nemoguće. Čuda su samo događaji koji su iznimno malo vjerojatni. Mramorni kip bi nam mogao mahnuti, atomi koji čine njegovu kristaličnu strukturu ionako neprestano titraju amo-tamo. Zato što ih ima toliko puno, i zato što ne postoji slaganje među njima što se tiče njihovog smjera kretanja, mramor, kako ga mi vidimo u Međusvijetu, ostaje nepomičan. Ali atomi u kipovoj ruci bi se svi mogli pokrenuti u istom smjeru u isto vrijeme, pa opet i opet. Tada bi se ruka pokrenula i vidjeli bismo kako nam maše u Međusvijetu. Vjerojatnost za to, naravno, je toliko mala da kad biste počeli pisati nule u vrijeme postanka svemira, do danas ne biste napisali dovoljno nula.
Evolution in Middle World has not equipped us to handle very improbable events; we don't live long enough. In the vastness of astronomical space and geological time, that which seems impossible in Middle World might turn out to be inevitable. One way to think about that is by counting planets. We don't know how many planets there are in the universe, but a good estimate is about 10 to the 20, or 100 billion billion. And that gives us a nice way to express our estimate of life's improbability. We could make some sort of landmark points along a spectrum of improbability, which might look like the electromagnetic spectrum we just looked at.
Evolucija u Međusvijetu nije nas opremila za nošenje s malo vjerojatnim događajima; ne živimo dovoljno dugo za to. U nepreglednosti astronomskog prostora i geološkog vremena, ono što se čini nemoguće u Međusvijetu možda će ispasti neminovno. Jedan način da razmišljate o tome je da brojite planete. Ne znamo koliko planeta postoji u svemiru, ali dobra procjena je 10 na 20-tu, ili 100 milijardi milijardi. A to nam daje dobar način da izrazimo procjenu nevjerojatnosti života. Mogli bismo označiti neke orijentire na spektru nevjerojatnosti, koji bi mogao nalikovati elektromagnetskom spektru koji smo upravo vidjeli.
If life has arisen only once on any -- life could originate once per planet, could be extremely common or it could originate once per star or once per galaxy or maybe only once in the entire universe, in which case it would have to be here. And somewhere up there would be the chance that a frog would turn into a prince, and similar magical things like that. If life has arisen on only one planet in the entire universe, that planet has to be our planet, because here we are talking about it. And that means that if we want to avail ourselves of it, we're allowed to postulate chemical events in the origin of life which have a probability as low as one in 100 billion billion. I don't think we shall have to avail ourselves of that, because I suspect that life is quite common in the universe. And when I say quite common, it could still be so rare that no one island of life ever encounters another, which is a sad thought.
Da je život nastao samo jednom na bilo kojem - život bi se mogao pojaviti jedanput po planetu, mogao bi biti vrlo uobičajen, ili bi se mogao pojaviti jedanput za svaku zvijezdu, ili za svaku galaksiju, ili možda jedanput za čitavi svemir, a u tom bi slučaju morao biti ovdje. I u jednom od tih života postojala bi šansa da se žaba pretvori u princa i druge takve magične stvari. Ako je život nastao na samo jednom planetu u cijelom svemiru, taj planet mora biti naš planet, jer smo upravo ovdje i pričamo o njemu. A to znači da, ako to želimo iskoristiti, možemo postulirati kemijske događaje prilikom postanka života čija je vjerojatnost vrlo niska, jednom u 100 milijardi milijarda. Ne mislim da ćemo se morati koristiti time, jer slutim da je život prilično česta pojava u svemiru. A kad kažem prilično česta, i dalje bi mogao biti toliko rijedak da nijedna oaza života nikad ne susretne drugu, što je vrlo tužna pomisao.
How shall we interpret "queerer than we can suppose?" Queerer than can in principle be supposed, or just queerer than we can suppose, given the limitations of our brain's evolutionary apprenticeship in Middle World? Could we, by training and practice, emancipate ourselves from Middle World and achieve some sort of intuitive as well as mathematical understanding of the very small and the very large? I genuinely don't know the answer. I wonder whether we might help ourselves to understand, say, quantum theory, if we brought up children to play computer games beginning in early childhood, which had a make-believe world of balls going through two slits on a screen, a world in which the strange goings-on of quantum mechanics were enlarged by the computer's make-believe, so that they became familiar on the Middle-World scale of the stream. And similarly, a relativistic computer game, in which objects on the screen manifest the Lorentz contraction, and so on, to try to get ourselves -- to get children into the way of thinking about it.
Kako protumačiti "čudnije no što možemo pretpostaviti"? Čudnije negoli se u principu može pretpostaviti, ili samo čudnije nego što mi možemo pretpostaviti, zbog ograničenja evolucijskog naukovanja našeg mozga u Međusvijetu? Bismo li se uz vježbu i iskustvo mogli osloboditi Međusvijeta i postići neku vrst intuitivnog, a ne samo matematičkog, razumijevanja vrlo malog i vrlo velikog? Zaista ne znam odgovor na to pitanje. Pitam se bi li nam olakšalo razumijevanje, recimo, kvantne teorije, kad bismo odgajali djecu da igraju računalne igre od ranog djetinjstva, u kojima izmišljene loptice prolaze kroz dva proreza na zaslonu, svijet u kojem bi čudna odvijanja kvantne mehanike bila uvećana računalnim prividom, kako bi postala bliska na međusvjetskoj veličini zaslona. Slično tome, relativistička računalna igrica, u kojoj objekti na zaslonu prikazuju Lorentzovu kontrakciju, itd., kako bismo naveli sebe i svoju djecu na takav način razmišljanja.
I want to end by applying the idea of Middle World to our perceptions of each other. Most scientists today subscribe to a mechanistic view of the mind: we're the way we are because our brains are wired up as they are, our hormones are the way they are. We'd be different, our characters would be different, if our neuro-anatomy and our physiological chemistry were different. But we scientists are inconsistent. If we were consistent, our response to a misbehaving person, like a child-murderer, should be something like: this unit has a faulty component; it needs repairing. That's not what we say. What we say -- and I include the most austerely mechanistic among us, which is probably me -- what we say is, "Vile monster, prison is too good for you." Or worse, we seek revenge, in all probability thereby triggering the next phase in an escalating cycle of counter-revenge, which we see, of course, all over the world today. In short, when we're thinking like academics, we regard people as elaborate and complicated machines, like computers or cars. But when we revert to being human, we behave more like Basil Fawlty, who, we remember, thrashed his car to teach it a lesson, when it wouldn't start on "Gourmet Night."
Želio bih završiti s primjenom ideje Međusvijeta na našu percepciju jedni drugih. Većina znanstvenika danas mehanistički pristupaju umu: mi smo takvi kakvi jesmo jer su nam mozgovi ustrojeni tako kako jesu, naši hormoni su takvi kakvi jesu. Bili bismo drukčiji, naš karakter bi bio drukčiji, da su nam neuroanatomija i fiziološka kemija drukčije. Ali mi znanstvenici smo nedosljedni. Kad bismo bili dosljedni, naš odgovor lošoj osobi, poput ubojice djece, trebao bi biti nešto kao: ova jedinica ima neispravnu komponentu, treba popravak. Ali ne kažemo to. Kažemo - i to vrijedi i za najuvjerenijeg mehanista među nama, a to sam vjerojatno ja - kažemo, "Odurno čudovište, zatvor je predobar za tebe." Ili još gore, tražimo osvetu, čime vjerojatno pokrećemo sljedeću fazu u eskalirajućem ciklusu protuosvete, što, naravno, danas vidimo posvuda po svijetu. Ukratko, kad razmišljamo kao akademici, promatramo ljude kao složene strojeve, poput računala ili automobila. Ali kad razmišljamo kao ljudi, ponašamo se više kao Basil Fawlty, koji je, sjećamo se, slupao auto da ga nauči lekciju kad se nije palio u epizodi "Gurmanska noć."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
The reason we personify things like cars and computers is that just as monkeys live in an arboreal world and moles live in an underground world and water striders live in a surface tension-dominated flatland, we live in a social world. We swim through a sea of people -- a social version of Middle World. We are evolved to second-guess the behavior of others by becoming brilliant, intuitive psychologists. Treating people as machines may be scientifically and philosophically accurate, but it's a cumbersome waste of time if you want to guess what this person is going to do next. The economically useful way to model a person is to treat him as a purposeful, goal-seeking agent with pleasures and pains, desires and intentions, guilt, blame-worthiness. Personification and the imputing of intentional purpose is such a brilliantly successful way to model humans, it's hardly surprising the same modeling software often seizes control when we're trying to think about entities for which it's not appropriate, like Basil Fawlty with his car or like millions of deluded people, with the universe as a whole.
Razlog zašto personificiramo stvari poput auta ili računala, jest zato što, kao što majmuni žive u svijetu grana i krtice u podzemlju i barske skakalice na ravnoj površini kojom vlada napetost, mi živimo u socijalnom svijetu. Plivamo kroz more ljudi - socijalna verzija Međusvijeta. Razvili smo se da preispitujemo ponašanje drugih tako što smo postali briljantni intuitivni psiholozi. Tretiranje ljudi kao strojeva možda je znanstveno i filozofski točno, ali je naporni gubitak vremena ako hoćete pogoditi što će osoba sljedeće napraviti. Ekonomski učinkovit način modeliranja osobe je da je tretiramo kao svrhovitog agenta koji ima cilj, koji ima užitke i boli, želje i namjere, koji osjeća krivnju i zavređuje krivnju. Personifikacija i učitavanje svrhovite namjere je toliko briljantno uspješan način modeliranja ljudi da ne iznenađuje da taj isti softver za modeliranje često preuzme kontrolu kad pokušavamo misliti o bićima za koje taj softver nije prikladan, kao Basil Fawlty sa svojim autom, ili kao milijuni zabludjelih ljudi s čitavim svemirom.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
If the universe is queerer than we can suppose, is it just because we've been naturally selected to suppose only what we needed to suppose in order to survive in the Pleistocene of Africa? Or are our brains so versatile and expandable that we can train ourselves to break out of the box of our evolution? Or finally, are there some things in the universe so queer that no philosophy of beings, however godlike, could dream them?
Ako je svemir čudniji nego što možemo pretpostaviti, je li takav samo zato što smo prirodno selektirani da pretpostavljamo samo ono što moramo pretpostavljati kako bismo preživjeli u pleistocenu u Africi? Ili su naši mozgovi tako svestrani i rastezljivi da možemo uvježbati sami sebe da iskočimo iz naše evolucijske ladice? Ili, konačno, postoje li neke stvari u svemiru toliko čudne da nema filozofije bića, ma kako bogolikih, koja ih može zamisliti?
Thank you very much.
Hvala vam puno.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)