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."
Naslov mog predavanja: "Neobičnije nego što možemo pretpostaviti. Čudnovatost nauke." "Neobičnije nego što možemo pretpostaviti" potiče od Dž.B.S. Holdejna, čuvenog biologa, koji je rekao, "Dakle, moje je uverenje da je univerzum ne samo neobičniji nego što pretpostavljamo, nego neobičniji nego što možemo pretpostaviti. Pretpostavljam da postoji više stvari na nebu i zemlji nego što zamišljamo, ili što možemo zamisliti, u okviru bilo koje filozofije." Ričard Fajnman je uporedio preciznost kvantne teorije -- eksperimentalnih predviđanja -- sa merenjem širine Severne Amerike sa greškom od širine jedne dlake. To znači da kvantna teorija mora biti tačna, u neku ruku. Pa ipak, pretpostavke koje kvantna teorija mora da usvoji da bi ostvarila ta predviđanja su tako tajanstvena da je čak i sam Fajnman bio podstaknut da kaže, "Ako mislite da razumete kvantnu teoriju, ne razumete 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.
Toliko je neobična da fizičari pribegavaju jednoj ili drugoj paradoksalnoj interpretaciji iste. Dejvid Dojč, koji drži predavanje ovde, u "Tkanju stvarnosti", pribegava interpretaciji kvantne teorije u vidu paralelnih univerzuma, iz razloga što najjača zamerka koja joj može biti upućena je da je nepotrebno rasipnička. Ona postulira ogroman i brzo rastući broj univerzuma koji postoje u paraleli -- međusobno izolovani osim u slučaju uskih prolaza sačinjenih od kvantnomehaničkih eksperimenata. To je Ričard Fajnmen.
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 Luis Volpert veruje da je neobičnost moderne fizike samo ekstreman primer. Nauka, nasuprot tehnologije, čini nasilje nad zdravim razumom. Svaki put kad popijete čašu vode, on iznosi, dobre su šanse da ćete uneti bar jedan molekul koji je prošao kroz bešiku Olivera Kromvela. (Smeh) To je samo elementarna teorija verovatnoće.
(Laughter)
Broj molekula koji sačinjava vodu potrebnu da se napuni čaša je daleko veći
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.
od broja čaša, ili bešika, koje možemo napuniti svom vodom ovoga sveta -- i, naravno, nema ničeg posebnog u vezi sa Kromvelom ili bešikama. Upravo ste udahnuli atom azota koji je prošao kroz desno plućno krilo trećeg iguanodona, posmatrano levo od visokog cikasa.
"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?"
"Neobičnije nego što možemo pretpostaviti." Šta je to što nas čini sposobnima da pretpostavimo bilo šta, i da li nam to govori bilo šta o tome šta smo u stanju da pretpostavimo? Da li postoje stvari o univerzumu koje će uvek biti izvan našeg poimanja, ali ne i izvan poimanja neke superiorne inteligencije? Da li postoje stvari o univerzumu koje su principijelno nepojmljive bilo kom umu, ma koliko superiorniji da je? Istorija nauke predstavlja dugu seriju žestokih, iznenadnih ideja, tokom koje su se naredne generacije morale izboriti i pomiriti sa narastajućom neobičnošću univerzuma. Danas smo toliko naviknuti na ideju da se Zemlja rotira -- umesto da se Sunce kreće preko neba -- da nam je teško da shvatimo kakva je to razorna intelektualna revolucija morala biti. Najzad, čini se očiglednim da je Zemlja velika i nepokretna, Sunce malo i pokretno. Ali vredi se setiti Vitgenštajnove napomene na ovu temu. "Reci mi," pitao je prijatelja, "zašto ljudi uvek kažu da je bilo prirodno za čoveka da pretpostavi da se Sunce kreće oko Zemlje, a ne da se Zemlja rotira?" Njegov prijatelj je odgovorio, "Pa, očigledno zato što izgleda kao da se Sunce kreće oko Zemlje." Vitgenštajn je odgovorio, "Pa, kako bi izgledalo kada bi izgledalo kao da se Zemlja rotira?" (Smeh)
(Laughter)
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.
Nauka nas je naučila, nasuprot intuicije, da su naizgled čvrste stvari, kao što su kristali i kamenje, zapravo skoro potpuno sačinjeni od praznog prostora. Poznati primer je da je jezgro atoma muva u sredini sportskog stadiona i da je susedni atom zapravo susedni sportski stadion. Dakle, čini se da je najčvršći, najizdržljiviji, najgušći kamen zapravo skoro ceo prazan prostor, prošaran sitnim česticama toliko razmaknutim da ne bi trebalo da se računaju. Zašto je onda kamenje izgledom i na dodir čvrsto i tvrdo i neprobojno? Kao evolutivni biolog rekao bih ovo: naši mozgovi su evoluirali da bi nam pomogli u preživljavanju u okviru reda veličina razmera i brzina u kojima naša tela funkcionišu. Nikada nismo evoluirali da se krećemo kroz svet atoma. Da jesmo, naši mozgovi bi verovatno opažali kamenje kao pune praznog prostora. Kamenje je na dodir tvrdo i neprobojno našim rukama upravo zato što objekti kao što su kamenje i ruke ne mogu da prolaze jedan kroz drugi. Stoga je našim mozgovima korisno da konstruišu ideje kao što su "čvrstoća" i "neprobojnost", zato što nam takve ideje pomažu da pokrećemo naša tela kroz svet srednjih razmera kroz koji se krećemo.
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.
Posmatrajući drugi kraj opsega, naši preci se nikad nisu kretali kroz svemir brzinama bliskim brzini svetlosti. Da jesu, naši mozgovi bi bili mnogo bolji u razumevanju Ajnštajna. Želim da imenom "Srednji Svet" nazovem okolinu srednjih razmera u kojoj smo evoluirali sposobnost da delamo -- nepovezano sa Srednjom Zemljom. Srednji Svet. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
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 Srednjeg Sveta, i to ograničava šta smo sposobni zamisliti. Intuitivno vam je lako poimanje ideja kao što je, kada se zec kreće svojevrsnom srednjom brzinom kojom se zečevi i ostali objekti Srednjeg Sveta kreću, i udari u drugi objekat Srednjeg Sveta, kao što je kamen, onesvestiće se.
May I introduce Major General Albert Stubblebine III, commander of military intelligence in 1983.
Hteo bih predstaviti majora generala Alberta Stablbajna III, komandira vojne obaveštajne službe 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 svoj zid u Arlingtonu u Virdžiniji i odlučio da uradi to. Ma koliko zastrašujuće loši izgledi bili, on će proći u susednu kancelariju. Ustao je i pomerio se ispred svog stola. Od čega su atomi uglavnom sačinjeni? pomislio je. Međuprostora. Zakoračio je. Od čega sam ja sačinjen? Od atoma. Ubrzao je korak, skoro do lakog trka. Od čega je zid sačinjen? Od atoma.
(Laughter)
'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?"
Sve što treba da uradim je da spojim međuprostor. Zatim je general Stablbajn jako lupio nosom zid svoje kancelarije. Stablbajn, koji je bio komandir 16 000 vojnika, je bio zbunjen svojim konstantnim neuspehom da prođe kroz zid. On je uveren da će ta sposobnost jednog dana biti uobičajen alat vojnog arsenala. Ko bi se usudio izazivati vojsku koja bi bila u stanju uraditi to? To je iz članka u Plejboju,
That's from an article in Playboy, which I was reading the other day.
koji sam čitao pre neki dan. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
Nemam razloga da sumnjam u njegovu istinitost; Plejboj sam čitao
I have every reason to think it's true; I was reading Playboy because I, myself, had an article in it.
zato što je objavio i moj članak. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
Nepotpomognutoj ljudskoj intuiciji obrazovanoj u Srednjem Svetu
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.
je teško da poveruje Galileu kada nam kaže da će težak i lak objekat, ako zanemarimo otpor vazduha, pasti na zemlju u istom trenutku. I to je zato što je u Srednjem Svetu otpor vazduha uvek prisutan. Da smo evoluirali u vakuumu, očekivali bismo da će oba pasti na zemlju istovremeno. Da smo bakterije, konstantno udarane toplotnim kretanjima molekula, bilo bi drugačije, ali mi, stanovnici Srednjeg Sveta, smo previše veliki da primetimo Braunovo kretanje. Na isti način gravitacija dominira našim životima dok smo skoro potpuno nesvesni sile površinskog napona. Mali insekt bi zamenio mesta ovim prioritetima.
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.
Stiv Grend -- na levoj strani slike, Daglas Adams je na desnoj -- Stiv Grend je u svojoj knjizi, "Nastajanje: život i kako ga stvoriti", izrazito oštar prema našoj zaokupljenosti samom materijom. Težimo mišljenju da su samo opipljive, materijalne stvari zapravo stvari uopšte. Talasi elektromagnetnih fluktuacija u vakuumu deluju nestvarno. Viktorijanci su mislili da talasi moraju biti talasi u nekom materijalnom medijumu -- etru. Ali nama je pomisao na stvarnu materiju utešna samo zato što smo evoluirali da preživimo u Srednjem Svetu, gde je pojam materije korisna zamisao. Vir, za Stiva Grenda, je stvar bazirana u realnosti koliko 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 pustinjskoj ravnici Tanzanije, u senci vulkana Ol Donjo Lengai, nalazi se dina od vulkanskog pepela. Divna stvar je to što se pokreće celom masom. Stručan naziv za to je barhan, i cela dina se kreće pustinjom ka zapadu brzinom od oko 17 metara godišnje. Stalno održavajući oblik polumeseca, kreće se u pravcu rogova. Ono što se dešava je da vetar nanosi pesak uz blažu padinu na drugoj strani, a zatim, kako zrno po zrno stiže do vrha strmine, ono stepenasto pada dole, u unutrašnjost "polumeseca", i tako se cela dina u obliku rogova kreće. Stiv Gren ukazuje na to da smo Vi i ja zapravo više nalik talasu nego nepromenljivoj stvari. On Vas poziva, čitaoca, da se "setite nekog događaja iz Vašeg detinjstva -- nečeg čega se sećate jasno, nečeg što možete videti, osetiti, možda čak i pomirisati, kao da ste zaista tamo. Naposletku, Vi ste zaista i bili tamo u to vreme, zar ne? Kako biste se inače sećali toga? A sada sledi najveće iznenađenje: Vi niste bili tamo. Nijedan atom koji je u Vašem telu danas nije bio tamo kada se taj događaj dogodio. Materija protiče od mesta do mesta i za trenutak se sjedinjuje čineći Vas. Šta god da ste, dakle, niste materija od koje ste sačinjeni. Ako se ne naježite od toga, čitajte iznova dok se to ne desi, veoma 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.
Stoga "zbilja" nije reč koju bismo trebali izgovarati sa običnim samopouzdanjem. Da neutrino ima mozak, koji je evoluirao u precima veličine neutrina, on bi rekao da je kamenje zbilja sačinjeno od praznog prostora. Mi imamo mozgove koji su evoluirali u precima srednje veličine koji se nisu mogli kretati kroz kamenje. "Zbilja" za životinju je ono što je njenom mozgu potrebno da bi pomoglo preživljavanju, i zato što različite vrste žive u različitim svetovima, postojaće veliko mnoštvo različitih zbilja. Ono realnog sveta što mi vidimo nije svet kakav zaista jeste već model sveta, sređen i podešen od strane naših čula, ali načinjen takvim da bi bio koristan za delanje u realnom svetu.
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 zavisi od vrste životinje koju predstavljamo. Životinji koja leti je potreban drugačiji model od one koja hoda, penje se ili pliva. Mozak majmuna mora imati program sposoban za predstavljanje trodimezionalnog sveta stabala i grana. Krtičin program za pravljenje modela njenog sveta će biti podesan za upotrebu u podzemlju. Mozgu gazivode uopšte nije potreban 3D program, budući da živi na površini bare, u pljosnatoj zemlji Edvina Abota.
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.
Razmišljao sam o tome da li slepi miševi mogu da detektuju boje svojim ušima. Model sveta potreban slepom mišu za kretanje u tri dimenzije i hvatanje insekata mora biti prilično sličan modelu sveta potrebnog bilo kojoj ptici koja leti, ptici koja leti danju kao što je lasta, za obavljanje iste vrste zadataka. Činjenica da se slepi miš koristi ehom u mrklom mraku da bi uneo trenutne vrednosti promenljivih u svoj model, dok lasta koristi svetlost, je od sporedne važnosti. Čak sam nagovestio da slepi miševi koriste percipirane nijanse, na primer crvenu i plavu, kao oznake, sopstvene oznake za neke korisne aspekte ehoa -- možda akustičku teksturu površina, krznenu ili glatku i tome slično, na isti način na koji laste, i mi, koristimo te percipirane nijanse -- crvenu i plavu itd. -- da označimo duge i kratke talasne dužine svetlosti. Ne postoji ništa inherentno što čini crvenu bojom duge talasne dužine.
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.
Poenta je da priroda modela zavisi od toga kako će biti korišten, a ne modalnošću uključenih čula. Dž.B.S. Holdejn je i sam rekao par stvari o životinjama čijim svetom dominira miris. Psi su u stanju da razlikuju dve veoma slične masne kiseline, izuzetno razređene: kaprilnu kiselinu i heksanoičnu kiselinu. Vidite, jedina razlika je da jedna ima dodatan par ugljenikovih atoma u svom lancu. Holdejn je smatrao da bi pas verovatno bio u stanju da poređa kiseline po njihovoj molekularnoj masi mirišući ih, kao što je čovek u stanju da složi više klavirskih žica po njihovim dužinama slušajući tonove koje proizvode. Postoji još jedna masna kiselina, dekanoična kiselina, koje je nalik na ostale dve, sem što ima još dva ugljenikova atoma. Možda pas koji se nikad nije susreo sa dekanoičnom kiselinom ne bi imao veći problem da zamisli njen miris nego što mi imamo da zamislimo trubu, recimo, koja svira ton za jedan viši nego što smo ikada čuli trubu kako svira. Možda psi i nosorozi i ostale životinje orjentisane na miris mirišu "u boji". Taj argument bi bio potpuno isti kao onaj za slepe miševe.
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.
Srednji Svet -- područje veličina i brzina u kojem se intuitivno osećamo udobno zahvaljujući evoluiranju unutar njega -- je pomalo nalik uskom opsegu elektromagnetnog spektra koji vidimo kao svetlo različitih boja. Slepi smo za sve frekvencije van tog opsega, osim ako koristimo instrumente kao pomoć. Srednji Svet je uski opseg realnosti koji mi smatramo za normalan, nasuprot čudnovatosti veoma malog, veoma velikog i veoma brzog. Mogli bismo napraviti sličnu skalu neverovatnih stvari; ništa nije potpuno nemoguće. Čuda su događaji koji su izuzetno neverovatni. Mermerna statua bi mogla da nam mahne svojom rukom; atomi koji čine njenu kristalnu rešetku ionako svi osciluju napred-nazad. Zato što ih ima veoma mnogo, i zato što nisu usaglašeni međusobno po pitanju prioritetnog pravca kretanja, mermer, kako ga vidimo u Srednjem Svetu, ostaje nepomičan. Ali atomi u ruci bi slučajno mogli da se pokrenu u istom pravcu u istom trenutku, i opet, i opet. U tom slučaju, ruka bi se pomerala i mi bismo je videli kako nam maše u Srednjem Svetu. Šanse da se to dogodi, naravno, su toliko male da ako biste počeli da pišete nule u trenutku nastanka univerzuma, ne biste napisali dovoljno nula ni do današnjeg dana.
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 Srednjem Svetu nas nije spremila za baratanje malo verovatnim događajima; ne živimo dovoljno dugo. U ogromnom prostranstvu astronomskog prostora i geološkog vremena, ono što se čini neverovatnim u Srednjem Svetu se može ispostaviti da je neizbežno. Jedan od načina da mislite o ovome je prebrojavanje planeta. Mi ne znamo koliko planeta zaista postoji u univerzumu, ali 10 na dvadeseti ili 100 milijardi milijardi je dobra procena. To nam daje dobar način da izrazimo našu procenu neverovatnosti života. Mogli bismo istaći neke od bitnih tačaka duž spektra neverovatnosti, koji može biti nalik elektromagnetskom spektru koji smo malopre spomenuli.
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 kojoj -- kada -- kada bi život mogao -- mislim, život bi mogao nastati jednom po planeti, mogao bi biti izuzetno uobičajen, ili bi mogao nastati jednom po zvezdi, ili jednom po galaksiji ili možda samo jednom u celom univerzumu, u kom slučaju bi to moralo biti ovde. I tamo negde bi postojala šansa da se žabac pretvori u princa i slične takve magične stvari. Ako je život nastao samo na jednoj planeti u celom univerzumu, ta planeta mora biti naša planeta, budući da upravo pričamo o tome. To znači da ako želimo da se poslužimo time, možemo uzeti kao pretpostavku hemijske procese u nastanku života koji imaju malu verovatnoću, oko jedan u 100 milijardi milijardi. Ne mislim da ćemo morati da se poslužimo time, zato što smatram da je život veoma uobičajena pojava u univerzumu. A kada kažem veoma uobičajena, to i dalje može da bude dovoljno retko da nijedno ostrvo života nikad ne otkrije drugo, što je tužna misao.
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 interpretirati "neobičnije nego što možemo pretpostaviti"? Neobičnije nego što u principu može biti pretpostavljeno, ili samo neobičnije nego što mi možemo da pretpostavimo, s obzirom na ograničenja evolutivnog učenja našeg mozga u Srednjem Svetu? Možemo li, treningom i vežbom, osloboditi sami sebe Srednjeg Sveta i postići neku vrstu intuitivnog, kao i matematičkog, razumevanja veoma malog i veoma velikog? Iskreno, ne znam odgovor. Pitam se da li bismo mogli pomoći sami sebi da razumemo, recimo, kvantnu teoriju, ako bi nam deca odrastala uz kompjuterske igre, počevši od ranog detinjstva, koje bi imale neku vrstu izmišljenog sveta gde kuglice prolaze kroz dva proreza na zaklonu, svet u kojem su čudna dešavanja kvantne mehanike uveličana kompjuterskim izmišljenim svetom, tako da postanu bliska na skali dešavanja Srednjeg Sveta. I, slično, relativistička kompjuterska igra u kojoj objekti na ekranu prikazuju Lorencovo skraćenje dužine, i tako dalje, da pokušamo da počnemo da razmišljamo na taj način -- da deca počnu da razmišljaju na taj način.
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."
Želeo bih da završim primenom ideje o Srednjem Svetu na našu percepciju jedni drugih. Većina naučnika danas smatra da je ispravna mehanička predstava uma: takvi smo kakvi smo zato što je naš mozak ispovezivan tako kako jeste; naši hormoni su takvi kakvi jesu. Bili bismo drugačiji, naše ličnosti bi bile drugačije, da su naša nervna anatomija i naša fiziološka hemija drugačije. Ali mi naučnici nismo dosledni. Da smo dosledni, naša reakcija na osobu koja se loše ponaša, na primer ubicu dece, bi trebala da bude nešto kao, ovaj primerak ima faličnu komponentu; potrebno ga je popraviti. To nije ono što kažemo. Ono što kažemo -- a tu uključujem i najoštrije zagovornike mehaničke predstave među nama, što sam verovatno i sam -- ono što kažemo je, "Zlo čudovište, zatvor je previše dobar za tebe." Još gore, tražimo osvetu, na taj način verovatno podstičući sledeću fazu u narastajućem krugu protiv-osveta, što primećujemo, naravno, po celom svetu današnjice. Ukratko, kada razmišljamo kao akademici, posmatramo ljude kao razrađene i komplikovane mašine, kao kompjutere ili automobile, ali kada se vratimo posmatranju stvari iz ljudske perspektive ponašamo se više kao Bazil Folti, koji je, sećamo se, razlupao svoj auto da bi ga naučio pameti kada ovaj nije hteo da se upali na sladokusačko veče. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
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 personifikujemo stvari kao što su automobili i kompjuteri je da kao što majmuni žive u svetu od drveta i krtice žive u podzemnom svetu i gazivode žive u pljosnatom svetu dominiranom površinskim naponom, mi živimo u društvenom svetu. Plivamo kroz more ljudi -- društvenoj verziji Srednjeg Sveta. Evoluirali smo tako da pokušavamo da predvidimo ponašanje drugih ljudi tako što smo postali brilijantni, intuitivni psiholozi. Tretiranje ljudi kao mašina možda jeste naučno i filozofski tačno, ali opterećuje i troši previše vremena ako želite da predvidite šta će ta osoba uraditi sledeće. Ekonomično korisni način da modelujemo osobu je da je tretiramo kao odlučno biće sa zacrtanim ciljevima, sa zadovoljstvima i bolovima, željama i namerama, osećajem krivice, dostojno prekora. Personifikacija i umetanje svesne namere je toliko brilijantno uspešan način za modelovanje ljudi da nije nikakvo čudo što isti program modelovanja često preuzima kontrolu kada pokušavamo da razmišljamo o entitetima za koje taj postupak nije adekvatan, kao Bazil Folti sa svojim autom ili kao milioni obmanutih ljudi sa univerzumom kao celinom. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
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 univerzum neobičniji nego što možemo pretpostaviti, da li je to samo zato što smo odabrani prirodnom selekcijom da pretpostavljamo samo ono što nam je trebalo da bismo preživeli pleistocensku epohu u Africi? Ili su naši mozgovi toliko sposobni proširenju i prilagođavanju da možemo da istreniramo sami sebe da promenimo tok sopstvene evolucije? Ili, naposletku, postoje li neke stvari u univerzumu toliko neobične da nikakva filozofija bića, koliko god božanskih, ne bi bila u stanju da ih zamisli?
Thank you very much.
Puno vam hvala.
(Applause)