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."
我的講題:「比我們所能想像的更離奇: 科學的不可思議」 「比我們所能想像的更離奇」 引自著名生物學家霍爾登 (J. B. S. Haldane) 他說道: 「我的個人猜想是, 宇宙不僅比我們想的離奇, 而是比我們"能想"的更離奇。 我估計天地間的事物 比任何學說曾設想/能設想的還要多。」 費曼 形容量子理論之精確性 - 實驗測準 - 相當於釐定北美洲之跨度時 誤差不逾一絲毫髮. 意思是量子理論應該於某種意義上屬實 然而, 量子理論在得出該推論前 所需之假設卻又是如許深奧 以致於費曼亦不禁指出: 「若您以為自己懂量子理論, 您其實並不懂量子理論。」
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.
真奇怪,物理學家作闡述的時候, 竟都訴諸於這樣那樣的之悖論。 於此演說「現實結構」之 David Deutsch, 擁護籍以闡釋量子理論的「多宇宙論」, 因為, 對此您充其量 只能數落其為浪費無度 它假設有極多數目激增之宇宙 它們同時並存 - 並且除了通過一個量子機動實驗之窄小孔道外 互不察覺。 那是 Richard Feynman 之見解.
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.
生物學家 Lewis Wolpert 相信現代物理之奇怪 只是一個極端例子。 科學, 有異於(純)技術, 確實有違常理。 他指出, 每當您喝一杯水, 您同時亦可能飲下 一個曾流過 Oliver Cromwell 膀胱之水分子。 這純粹是基本可能性.
(Laughter)
每杯水的水分子量, 數目遠遠大於
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.
世上杯量與膀胱量之數 再說,Crornwell 和 (他的) 膀胱當然都沒啥特別。 您剛剛吸入的一個氮原子 曾從第三頭禽龍的右肺 轉到蘇鐵高樹上那頭的左肺去。
"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?"
「比我們所能想像的更離奇」 是什麼讓我們能作「猜想」呢? 這說明了我們 [能猜想出甚麼] 來嗎? 宇宙中可有什麼事物 是永遠在我們掌握之外, 卻不在某些更高智能 的掌握之外? 宇宙中可有什麼事物 是, 原則上, 無論多高明的智慧 亦無從掌握的呢? 科學歷史是一系列悠長的 劇烈腦震盪 (集思廣益), 後繼的新生代 已逐漸接受宇宙中 確有愈來愈多的離奇不解。 現在我們都已太清楚是地球繞著太陽在轉 並非太陽於天空中劃過 - 對此,我們實在難於理解 (當時) 會是一種多震撼的思想革命啊. 畢竟, 表面上明明是地球大喇喇地待著 而小小的太陽在移動。 值得玩味的是 Wittgenstein 論及此題目時所說過的話: 「告訴我, 」他問一個朋友, 「為何人們總說, 日繞地轉是人的自然構想 而非地繞日轉呢? 他的朋友答說:「這個嗎, 看來明明就是 太陽繞著地球在轉喔。」 Wittgenstein 答道: 「呃,若『看來像是地球在轉』 會是如何呢? (眾笑)♫
(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.
科學讓我們曉得, 雖則與直覺相悖, 但那些表面上堅實的的物體, 比如水晶和石頭 確是幾乎全由空間所構成。 最熟悉的一種解說是: 一個原子的核 就好比大球場中間的一隻小蒼蠅 而次一枚原子, 已遠在另一個大球場. 故此, 看來堅實緊密之石塊 原來幾乎完全是由細小微粒所分隔之空間, 其間距是如此疏遠, 以至都可忽略不計. 這樣說來, 為何石塊看著摸著又是那麼堅硬不透呢? 作為一個演化生物學家, 我會這麼說: 我們的腦袋是按如何 有助於我們於某個大小及速度的範圍內 活動而演化。我們並未變成 可於原子世界中漫游♫ 若有的話, 我們的腦袋可能會將石頭理解為 空空洞洞。石頭在我們的手裡感覺堅實不透 正正由於像石頭和手等物體 互不穿透。才能讓 我們的腦袋構想出「堅實」和「不透」之觀念. 因為這些觀念讓我們的身體能夠 於身處的「中世度」裡活動。
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.
移向於尺度的另一端, 則我們的祖先根本無須 以近光高速作宇航, 若他們有必要的話, 我們的頭腦就 更好明白愛因斯坦了。 我想以「中世度」 稱呼這中階環境 - 於其中我們已演化出生活能力。 這跟「中土大陸」無關. 是 「中世度」. (哄笑)
(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.
我們乃經演化入籍「中世度」的僑民, 這限制了 我們想像所及, 直覺上您會覺得很容易 掌握觀念如: 當兔子以 「一般免子和其他中世度物體運動之速度」 走動 然後跟中世度裡另一個物體如石頭碰上的話, 它將被撞倒昏掉。
May I introduce Major General Albert Stubblebine III, commander of military intelligence in 1983.
讓我介紹一下史達柏拜恩三世少將 1983年之軍事情報指揮官
"...[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?'
他於維吉尼亞州的阿靈頓,盯著自己房牆,並決定要幹上了 有多驚人, 可想而知 - 他要穿越至隔壁辦公室呢. 他站起, 從檯後走出來 「原子主要由啥構成?」 他在想,「是空間」. 他開始行動,「我主要由啥構成?」,「是原子」 他加快腳步, 幾乎在小跑了. 「這牆主要由啥構成?」,「也不就是原子嘛」.
(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?"
「我只需將所有空間融合。」 就這樣, 少將狠狠地讓鼻子扣上辦公室的牆去 史達柏拜恩, 一個萬六士兵之統帥, 為總是穿不過牆而困感不已 他毫不懷疑有一天這將成為軍火庫裡一件普通武器 誰敢跟會這個 (穿牆過壁) 的軍隊過不去? 這是《花花公子》一篇文章
That's from an article in Playboy, which I was reading the other day.
我前兩天看時讀到的。 (哄笑)®
(Laughter)
我有充份理由相信此文之真確性; 我那天翻《花花公子》
I have every reason to think it's true; I was reading Playboy because I, myself, had an article in it.
因為裡頭登了我自己的一篇文。 (哄笑)
(Laughter)
在「中世度」裡練就之人類直覺, 若無其他協助
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.
難以相信伽理略所言: 若撇除磨擦阻抗, 下墜物不論輕重 都會同時觸地。 那是因為於「中世度」裡, 空氣阻力經常存在. 倘若我們是乃於真空中演化過來, 就(自然)會預期 它們於同一刻觸地。 又假若我們是 不斷讓粒子熱動流撞擊的細菌 情況就不一樣了, 但我們這些「中世度」住民太大了, 難以察見布朗(微粒子)運動。 同樣地, 我們的生活受引力支配 卻又幾乎對表面張力眊然不察。 一隻小昆蟲卻會將這先後倒序。
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 - 左邊的那位 右邊的那位是 Douglas Adams -- Steve Grand 在他的書 《創造: 生命和如何創生》中, 嚴厲抨擊 我們對事物本身總是先入為主. 我們傾向只將硬梆梆的物質視為 僅有實體。 於真空中跌宕起伏的電磁波 卻顯得不實在。 維多利亞時期的人總認為波必須載存於某種物質介體裡 - 以太。 但我們對實物感到惬意是因為 我們是經過演化變成適合於「中間世界」存活, (在裡面)「物體」是很管用之設想 對史提夫.格蘭特來說, 一股漩渦 有著跟
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.
坦尚尼亞沙漠平原上一塊石塊的同等實在。 於倫蓋火山 (Ol Doinyo Lengai) 之陰影下有個火山灰形成之小丘 優美的是它整體移動著 那正是正式稱作「新月丘」的, 整個山丘 向西方橫越沙漠 速度是每年17公尺。 它維持著其弦月形態並向著(非洲之)角移動。 事實是,風會將沙吹過 沙丘另一端的淺坡, 接著 每顆到挺達山脊的沙粒, 就會流瀉注入山丘之內 整號角形山丘就是這樣一直往前走。 史提夫指出, 你我本身 就更像一個浪, 而不是一個恒長不變的東西 他邀請我們, 讀者, 去回想 一段童年體驗, 某些您清晰記得, 某些您能見得, 能觸及, 甚至可嗅到, 好比您此刻正處身其中的情況。 說來, 您確曾身處其中嚒? 若不, 您是如何記起? 我要向您投彈了: 您當時並不在場! 在事件發生時, 您身上的所有原子不曾出現於當下。物質流徙 並暫時聚合形成「您」而已。 故此, 無論您現在是什麽, 都不再是 組成那之前的您的「餡料」了。 若這還不讓您毛管直豎, 多讀一遍直至您看懂吧, 因為實在太重要了!
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.
所以,且別隨便說出 「事實上」 這詞 假若一顆微中子有 一個由微中子祖先演化而來之腦袋, 它會說石頭 「事實上」由「空間」所構成 我們卻是有由「中形祖先」演化而來的腦袋, 無法從石頭穿過去 對於動物來說, 所謂「真實」 就是其按腦袋所要求, 的維生指涉 由於不動物種生活於不同(大小領域)世界之中, 確有某些「現實」並不讓我們感到愜意。 我們所見之現實世界並非原型 而是一個透過調適感知數據而建構, 並賴以有效處理現實之模式。
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.
模式之性質取決於我們是那一種動物 飛翔的動物需要一種 有異於走動、爬動或游動物種的模式 猿猴的腦必須有軟體 模擬樹枝樹幹的三度空間 鼴鼠建構其世界的軟體 當然是為「地底應用」而量身訂做的 水黽的腦袋完全無需3D軟體, 因為牠只於生活於 Edwin Abbott 平原的湖面上
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.
我曾推想蝙蝠或許能以聽覺分辨顏色 蝙蝠賴以活動往來, 捕食昆蟲的世界模式 必然跟飛鳥的世界模式頗相近, 一隻於日間飛行的鳥如麻雀, 亦要 做同樣的工夫 蝙蝠於漆黑中利用回聲 以輸入當下之變數 麻雀則用光, 兩者皆偶發 我甚至提出, 蝙蝠利用意識到的色彩, 像紅和藍 作標記, 作部分回聲可用處的「內標」 - 例如平面的「聲質」、 毛狀、平滑...等等。 麻雀, 以至我們亦確實以同樣方法 去感識顏色 - 紅彩, 藍彩...以此類推 - 為長短光波作標記。 紅色並無任何拜必須為長光波之本質
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.
要點是模式之性質取決於 其被如何應用, 而非其感官形態. 霍爾登有些 關於那些被嗅覺支配其世界之動物的見解: 即使經過極端稀釋, 狗隻仍能分辨兩種極接近之脂肪酸: 辛酸和已酸。 唯一分野, 是兩者其一。 (分子)鍊上多出一對碳分子。 霍爾登估計狗隻以嗅覺, 將兩種酸 按其分子重量依次排序, 正如一個人將一組琴弦 按其音高排好長短次序。 現在, 再有另一種叫癸酸 跟前兩種基本上一樣, 只是多出兩個碳分子。 一頭狗即若從未碰過癸酸, 亦能 想像出其氣味, 情況不會難於我們 聽過吹號後想像 吹出比剛聽過的高一個音。 或許狗隻犀牛和其他氣味主導的動物 是在嗅「色」。 這樣說來理論就 就跟蝙蝠的情況無異了。
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.
我們經演化適應之中間世界 - 其範圍裡的大小和速度 有點像我們於窄幅電磁譜上 將光看成不同顏色 除非借助儀器, 否則譜外頻率我們根本就看不到。 我們將中間世界裡的片面現實認定為正常 超小/超巨和超速世界的一切 則相對看成詭異。 我們可以為「不可能性」作個類似量度 沒有甚麼是完全不可能的。 奇蹟可說成是「極端不可能的事件」而矣。 一個石像可能正在向我們招手 - 組成其 晶體結構的原子確是在前後顛動 由於數量極多, 其中又並沒一致之 作用方向, 之所以我們眼見的 是「中間世界」裡一尊穩坐著的石像。 可其手裡的原子卻正 同時照樣反覆在移動。 按此, 手會有動作, 我們會看到它向我們揮動。 但在「中間世界」裡跟這相悖之種種是如許不計其數, 多得好比您由宇宙起始一刻開始畫 0 到此時此刻 您還沒有畫上足夠的 0 那樣多。
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.
於中間世界裡的演化並沒有裝備我們去處理 極度不可能的情境; 我們根本活得不夠久。 於巨大無垠之天際和時空裡 那些於「中間世界」看來不可能的 可都變得理所當然了。 考量這個的一個方法是點數星星. 我們不知道宇宙中確實總共有多小行星, 合理估計是10的20次方, 或一億萬億顆. 這可算是我們對於生命之「不可能性」 一個不錯的表述。 這可能會於看來像電磁波譜 的「不可能性譜表」 上 留下某些記號吧。
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.
若生命只曾冒起一次 我意思是, 生命若於每顆行星都冒起一次 則可算是極尋常, 但若生命的出現乃每顆恆星, 或每個星系, 甚或整個宇宙的單一事件, 則我們相信正正身處其中。而天上某處 青蛙可變成王子 種種類似奇事都可以發生 若生命於整個宇宙中只曾於一個行星冒起 那行星就是我們的地球, 因為我們正在此討論其事 ! 意思是若我們作如是想 則我們大可就生命起始之化學情狀作出假設 其可能性低於億萬億分之一 我並不認為我們該這樣做 因為我估計宇宙中生機處處 我雖說普遍, 但一個生命島跟另一個遇上的機會 卻仍是極其稀有的。 這想起來真有點悲傷
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.
「比我們能想像的更離奇」該如何詮釋呢? 比「基本上能想像的」離奇, 或「比我們有限的大腦所能想像的更奇」 (我們經演化所得「中間世界」大腦) 我們可通過訓練和實習 擺脫中間世界之囿限, 而獲取對「極少和極大」之某些直覺的, 甚或數學算計的理解麼? 我真的不知道答案。 我懷疑我們是否可幫助自己瞭解, 譬如說, 量子理論, 方法是以從少培養孩子玩一些 有波波穿梭於裡二維虛擬世界的電腦遊戲 其中量子力學的種種奇怪活動 於電腦的虛擬世界中被放大 於是他們(即使)於中間世界的流程上亦逐漸(對量子微世道)熟悉起來。 同樣地, 一個於屏幕上展示「勞侖茲收縮變換」的 「相對論」電玩, 依此類推, 以嘗試將我們引帶至該種思考方式 - 領帶孩子進入(積極)思考的路徑上
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."
我想將 「中間世界」的觀點 應用於我們的相互觀照上 現時大部分科學家都認同理智乃機械性的看法: 我們的所有舉措思路, 都早已鋪設於我們的腦袋中 我們(體內)的荷爾蒙亦不外如是(種種化學激素) 我們的神經結構或生理化學若有所不同, 我們就是不一樣的人, 有不一樣的性格了. 但我們科學家並不一致, 若是的話, 那我們對一個, 譬如謀殺兒童犯的反應, 就應該像是, 這單位有個壞掉了的部件, 要修理處置了。 我們並不這樣說。 我們是說 - 我將我們當中持最嚴肅機械論的包括在內, 那個大可能正是我本人 - 我們會說的是, 「惡魔, 監禁實在太便宜你了」 甚或更糟, 我們會圖謀報復, 以致極可能觸發 下一波的升級循環報復, 這種現象於當今世界觸目皆是。 簡言之, 當我們像學者一樣地思考時, 我們將人看成精密複雜的機體, 像電腦和汽車一樣, 但當我們恢復人性立場時 我們就變得更像 Basil Fawlty, 我們都記得 他在《美食夜》—片裡, 將開不動的車子砸了 為要給它一個教訓 ! (哄笑)
(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.
我們之所以將車和電腦等物件擬人化 就正如猴子活在樹上 鼴鼠活於地下 大水黽活在受制於表面張力的一種平面 (指水面) 我們則活在社區, 於人海中游過 - 一種群居模式的中間世界 因著總要猜度其它人的行為表現 我們都演化成精明而深具具覺的心理專家。 將人看作機械 或許於科學及哲理而言俱屬正確, 但這將讓要推想人家下一步將幹啥的事兒 變得費時之極. 要將一個人扼要定位 是視之為一個具目的, 有所求, 有喜有悲, 有想望, 罪疚, 可責性, 人格化及歸因於有意圖 是描模人類的妙法, 難怪同一個想像方式 經常於我們設想不相容實體 如 [巴素和他的車] 時就作主導了 [千百萬惑民相對於這宇宙] 亦如是. (哄笑)
(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?
若宇宙真的是比我們能想像的更離奇詭異, 那只是因為我們是經由物競天擇所變成 只利便我們於「更新世時期」 的非洲存活 的需要作想像? 還是我們的腦袋實在太靈太活以至我們可 可訓練自己突破演化的框框? 又或, 最後, 宇宙中可有些甚麼是離奇到 任何人, 無論多神, 其思想亦無從想像?
Thank you very much.
謝謝各位。
(Applause)