Chris Anderson: So Robert spent the last few years think about how weird human behavior is, and how inadequate most of our language trying to explain it is. And it's very exciting to hear him explain some of the thinking behind it in public for the first time. Over to you now, Robert Sapolsky.
克里斯·安德森(CA): 罗伯特最近几年 在探索人类的行为到底有多奇怪, 以及我们大多数语言 所尝试的解释有多么的不足。 能听他第一次在公开场合 解释一些其后的观点 是非常令人兴奋的。 现在有请,罗伯特·萨波尔斯基。
(Applause)
(掌声)
Robert Sapolsky: Thank you. The fantasy always runs something like this. I've overpowered his elite guard, burst into his secret bunker with my machine gun ready. He lunges for his Luger. I knock it out of his hand. He lunges for his cyanide pill. I knock that out of his hand. He snarls, comes at me with otherworldly strength. We grapple, we fight, I manage to pin him down and put on handcuffs. "Adolf Hitler," I say, "I arrest you for crimes against humanity."
RS:谢谢。 心理幻想通常是这样的: 我已经用我的枪 制服了他的精英部队 攻入了他的堡垒 他抓起鲁格手枪, 我打掉他的手枪, 他拿起氰化物毒丸, 我又把它们打掉。 他咆哮着, 用吃奶的力气向我冲过来。 我们扭打,我们厮杀, 我终于把他撂倒, 给他戴上手铐。 “阿道夫·希特勒,”我说, “我以反人类罪逮捕你。”
Here's where the Medal of Honor version of the fantasy ends and the imagery darkens. What would I do if I had Hitler? It's not hard to imagine once I allow myself. Sever his spine at the neck. Take out his eyes with a blunt instrument. Puncture his eardrums. Cut out his tongue. Leave him alive on a respirator, tube-fed, not able to speak or move or see or hear, just to feel, and then inject him with something cancerous that's going to fester and pustulate until every cell in his body is screaming in agony, until every second feels like an eternity in hell. That's what I would do to Hitler.
荣誉勋章版本的幻想就此处结束, 你也缓过神来了。 如果我真的抓到了希特勒, 我会怎么做? 一旦我允许自己开始想象 就很难停下来, 拧断他的脖子、 用钝刀挖出他的眼睛、 刺穿他的耳膜、切掉他的舌头 让他靠呼吸器和导管活着, 不能说话不能动, 看不见也听不见,就这么活着, 然后给他注射致癌物, 让他溃烂化脓, 直到他身体的每一个细胞 都在极度痛苦中尖叫, 直到每一秒都像活在地狱中一样。 那就是我会对希特勒做的。
I've had this fantasy since I was a kid, still do sometimes, and when I do, my heart speeds up -- all these plans for the most evil, wicked soul in history. But there's a problem, which is I don't actually believe in souls or evil, and I think wicked belongs in a musical. But there's some people I would like to see killed, but I'm against the death penalty. But I like schlocky violent movies, but I'm for strict gun control. But then there was a time I was at a laser tag place, and I had such a good time hiding in a corner shooting at people. In other words, I'm your basic confused human when it comes to violence.
我从小时候就开始有这个幻想, 现在也偶尔有, 当我这样想时,我的心跳加快—— 所有这一切都是为了除掉这个 千古罪人 但是有一个问题, 我实际上并不相信灵魂或魔鬼, 我觉得那些坏蛋只是音乐剧里的形象 有时候我想亲眼看到某些人死去 但我又反对死刑。 我喜欢蹩脚的暴力电影, 但我又支持严格控枪。 然后有一次我去玩激光枪, 躲在角落里射击别人 我觉得好过瘾。 换句话说,当涉及暴力时, 我的人格基本就混乱了
Now, as a species, we obviously have problems with violence. We use shower heads to deliver poison gas, letters with anthrax, airplanes as weapons, mass rape as a military strategy. We're a miserably violent species. But there's a complication, which is we don't hate violence, we hate the wrong kind. And when it's the right kind, we cheer it on, we hand out medals, we vote for, we mate with our champions of it. When it's the right kind of violence, we love it. And there's another complication, which is, in addition to us being this miserably violent species, we're also this extraordinarily altruistic, compassionate one.
作为人类这样一个物种, 我们显然有暴力的问题。 我们用淋浴头输送毒气, 让信件里夹带炭疽, 把飞机当作武器, 把大规模强奸作为军事战略。 我们真是一个可悲的暴力物种。 但是复杂的是, 我们讨厌的不是暴力本身, 我们讨厌的是那些有弊端的暴力。 如果是正确的暴力, 我们欢呼雀跃, 我们为他们颁发奖牌, 为他投票,与冠军亲热。 所以如果是所谓正确的暴力, 我们就赞同它。 还有另外一个复杂的情况, 我们除了是可悲的暴力物种之外, 同时也是极其无私的, 富有同情心的物种。
So how do you make sense of the biology of our best behaviors, our worst ones and all of those ambiguously in between?
那么,该如何用生物学合理解释 最好的行为、最差的行为以及 两者之间的所有模糊行为?
Now, for starters, what's totally boring is understanding the motoric aspects of the behavior. Your brain tells your spine, tells your muscles to do something or other, and hooray, you've behaved. What's hard is understanding the meaning of the behavior, because in some settings, pulling a trigger is an appalling act; in others, it's heroically self-sacrificial. In some settings, putting your hand one someone else's is deeply compassionate. In others, it's a deep betrayal. The challenge is to understand the biology of the context of our behaviors, and that's real tough.
首先, 理解行为的肌肉运动是最无聊的。 你的大脑告诉脊椎,告诉肌肉, 去做这个或那个, 好嘞,动作完成。 难点在于,理解行为的意义, 因为在某些场景中, 扣扳机是令人作呕的动作; 而在另一些场合中, 它就代表英勇地自我牺牲。 在某些情况下,把你的手放在别人身上 是深深的同情。 在另一些情况中, 却是一个深刻的背叛。 难点就在于要理解 我们行为背后的生物学, 这才是真正的难的地方。
One thing that's clear, though, is you're not going to get anywhere if you think there's going to be the brain region or the hormone or the gene or the childhood experience or the evolutionary mechanism that explains everything. Instead, every bit of behavior has multiple levels of causality.
不过,有一点很清楚, 如果你认为某个大脑区域、某种激素、 某个基因、特定童年经历 或某个进化机制就能解释一切的话, 你不会弄明白这些行为的。 相反,每个小小的行为都有 多层次的因果关系。
Let's look at an example. You have a gun. There's a crisis going on: rioting, violence, people running around. A stranger is running at you in an agitated state -- you can't quite tell if the expression is frightened, threatening, angry -- holding something that kind of looks like a handgun. You're not sure. The stranger comes running at you and you pull the trigger. And it turns out that thing in this person's hand was a cell phone.
我们来看一个例子。 你手里有枪, 当前正发生危险 动乱,暴力,人们到处跑。 一个陌生人向你跑来, 情绪激动—— 你说不清楚那表情是 害怕、还是威胁、还是愤怒—— 反正那人手里拿着的好象是手枪 你还不能确定。 你一看那人冲你跑了过来 你就扣了扳机。 最后却发现,这个人的手里 是一部手机。
So we asked this biological question: what was going on that caused this behavior? What caused this behavior? And this is a multitude of questions.
所以我问一个生物学问题: 这一连串的行为发生时 你身体里的究竟发生了什么? 是什么导致了这种行为? 这其实是一个复杂的问题。
We start. What was going on in your brain one second before you pulled that trigger? And this brings us into the realm of a brain region called the amygdala. The amygdala, which is central to violence, central to fear, initiates volleys of cascades that produce pulling of a trigger. What was the level of activity in your amygdala one second before?
我们开始。 在拉动扳机的前一秒钟, 你的大脑里发生了什么? 这就要说到 被称为杏仁核的大脑区域。 杏仁核是产生暴力恐惧的控制中心, 它启动一系列反应 从而产生了扣扳机的动作。 那么扣扳机前一秒 杏仁核的活动级别是多少?
But to understand that, we have to step back a little bit. What was going on in the environment seconds to minutes before that impacted the amygdala? Now, obviously, the sights, the sounds of the rioting, that was pertinent. But in addition, you're more likely to mistake a cell phone for a handgun if that stranger was male and large and of a different race. Furthermore, if you're in pain, if you're hungry, if you're exhausted, your frontal cortex is not going to work as well, part of the brain whose job it is to get to the amygdala in time saying, "Are you really sure that's a gun there?"
但如果要理解它, 我们又必须再讲点别的 数秒至数分钟之前, 周围的环境里发生了什么 影响了杏仁核? 显然,暴乱的景象、声音 都是与之有关系。 但除此之外, 如果这个陌生人是男性, 而且身材高大 和你还不是一个种族的 那你把手机误认成手枪的几率 就会更大。 此外,如果你正疼痛, 饥饿,疲惫不堪, 你的前额叶皮质也会停止工作。 前额叶皮质是大脑的一部分, 它的作用是及时联系杏仁核并问: “你真的确定那是枪吗?”
But we need to step further back. Now we have to look at hours to days before, and with this, we have entered the realm of hormones. For example, testosterone, where regardless of your sex, if you have elevated testosterone levels in your blood, you're more likely to think a face with a neutral expression is instead looking threatening. Elevated testosterone levels, elevated levels of stress hormones, and your amygdala is going to be more active and your frontal cortex will be more sluggish.
现在我们往这之前看 看看几天前或几小时前发生了什么 这样我们说到激素了。 例如,睾酮, 无论你是什么性别, 如果你血液中的睾酮水平高, 那么你更有可能 把一张表情中性的面孔 当成有威胁性的。 当睾酮水平升高、 应激激素水平升高, 杏仁核会更加活跃, 前额叶皮质则会更迟钝。
Pushing back further, weeks to months before, where's the relevance there? This is the realm of neural plasticity, the fact that your brain can change in response to experience, and if your previous months have been filled with stress and trauma, your amygdala will have enlarged. The neurons will have become more excitable, your frontal cortex would have atrophied, all relevant to what happens in that one second.
退回到数周至数月之前, 那时候与现在有什么联系呢? 这就要说到神经可塑性领域了, 大脑会根据于经历的变化而改变, 如果你之前几个月的生活 充满压力和创伤, 你的杏仁核就会扩大。 神经元会变得更加容易兴奋, 前额叶皮质也就会萎缩了, 这些都与那一秒钟内 发生的事情相关。
But we push back even more, back years, back, for example, to your adolescence. Now, the central fact of the adolescent brain is all of it is going full blast except the frontal cortex, which is still half-baked. It doesn't fully mature until you're around 25. And thus, adolescence and early adulthood are the years where environment and experience sculpt your frontal cortex into the version you're going to have as an adult in that critical moment.
但是,我们再多往前看几年的话 例如,回到你的青春期。 青春期大脑的各部分功能 都十分的活跃 除了前额叶皮质, 前额叶皮质还是半成熟。 它到25岁左右才能完全成熟。 因此,青春期和成年早期这样的关键阶段 塑造并决定了 你将来拥有什么样的前额叶皮质。
But pushing back even further, even further back to childhood and fetal life and all the different versions that that could come in. Now, obviously, that's the time that your brain is being constructed, and that's important, but in addition, experience during those times produce what are called epigenetic changes, permanent, in some cases, permanently activating certain genes, turning off others. And as an example of this, if as a fetus you were exposed to a lot of stress hormones through your mother, epigenetics is going to produce your amygdala in adulthood as a more excitable form, and you're going to have elevated stress hormone levels.
但再退一步想想, 甚至可以退到童年和胎儿时期, 以及可能会导致的各种情况。 显然,那是大脑的逐渐成熟的阶段, 是很重要的阶段, 但另外,那些时期的经历 产生所谓的表观遗传变化, 某些情况下是永久的变化, 永久地激活某些基因, 关闭另一些基因。 比如说 如果胎儿时期通过母亲 接触了许多压力激素, 表观遗传会使成年时期的杏仁核 塑造成更容易兴奋的形式, 你的应激激素水平会比较高。
But pushing even further back, back to when you were just a fetus, back to when all you were was a collection of genes. Now, genes are really important to all of this, but critically, genes don't determine anything, because genes work differently in different environments. Key example here: there's a variant of a gene called MAO-A, and if you have that variant, you are far more likely to commit antisocial violence if, and only if, you were abused as a child. Genes and environment interact, and what's happening in that one second before you pull that trigger reflects your lifetime of those gene-environment interactions.
但是远一点讲, 当你只是一个胎儿, 只是一堆基因的阶段。 基因对于所有这些都是非常重要的, 但是,基因不能确定任何东西, 因为基因在不同的环境中工作方式不同。 一个重要的例子: 有一个称为MAO-α的基因变体, 如果你有这种变体, 并且在小时候受到虐待 那么你极有可能做出 反社会的暴力行为。 基因和环境相互作用, 在扣扳机的前一秒钟内发生的事 反映了你基因与环境 一直以来的相互作用。
Now, remarkably enough, we've got to push even further back now, back centuries. What were your ancestors up to. And if, for example, they were nomadic pastoralists, they were pastoralists, people living in deserts or grasslands with their herds of camels, cows, goats, odds are they would have invented what's called a culture of honor filled with warrior classes, retributive violence, clan vendettas, and amazingly, centuries later, that would still be influencing the values with which you were raised.
现在,我们再往前退 退回到几个世纪前。 看看你的祖先经历了什么。 如果他们是游牧民族, 他们是牧民, 生活在沙漠或草原上, 有骆驼、牛群、羊群, 他们很可能会创造出所谓的 荣誉文化, 充满战士阶层、 报复性暴力、氏族纷争, 令人惊讶的是,几个世纪以后, 这仍影响着你成长的价值观。
But we've got to push even further back, back millions of years, because if we're talking about genes, implicitly we're now talking about the evolution of genes. And what you see is, for example, patterns across different primate species. Some of them have evolved for extremely low levels of aggression, others have evolved in the opposite direction, and floating there in between by every measure are humans, once again this confused, barely defined species that has all these potentials to go one way or the other.
我们再往前说 回到数百万年前, 因为如果我们要讨论基因, 显然我们要谈谈基因的演变情况。 而你所看到的就是,例如, 不同灵长类动物的生存模式。 有些进化成的侵略性非常低, 另一些则相反, 而处于两者之间的就是人类, 所以这种混乱的、几乎无法定义的物种 有潜力向任何一个方向发展。
So what has this gotten us to? Basically, what we're seeing here is, if you want to understand a behavior, whether it's an appalling one, a wondrous one, or confusedly in between, if you want to understand that, you've got take into account what happened a second before to a million years before, everything in between.
那这对我们的影响是什么呢? 基本到目前为止我们都明白的了 如果你想了解一个行为, 无论是一个可怕的行为、 奇妙的行为、 还是两者之间的行为, 只要你想要理解这样的行为 就必须考虑这个行为前一秒到 前一百万年, 以及这中间发生的一切。
So what can we conclude at this point? Officially, it's complicated. Wow, that's really helpful. It's complicated, and you'd better be real careful, real cautious before you conclude you know what causes a behavior, especially if it's a behavior you're judging harshly.
那么我们现在可以得出什么结论呢? 正式的说:这很复杂。 嗯,这句话确实很有用。 这很复杂, 在你断定是什么导致一个行为之前, 你最好小心再小心 特别是一个你要严肃判决的行为。
Now, to me, the single most important point about all of this is one having to do with change. Every bit of biology I have mentioned here can change in different circumstances. For example, ecosystems change. Thousands of years ago, the Sahara was a lush grassland. Cultures change. In the 17th century, the most terrifying people in Europe were the Swedes, rampaging all over the place. This is what the Swedish military does now. They haven't had a war in 200 years. Most importantly, brains change. Neurons grow new processes. Circuits disconnect. Everything in the brain changes, and out of this come extraordinary examples of human change.
对我来说,所有这一切最重要的一点 就是改变。 我在这提到的有关于生物学的每一点, 其实都可以在不同情况下改变。 例如,生态系统会变。 数千年前,撒哈拉沙漠是一片绿洲。 文化会变。 17世纪,欧洲最可怕的人是瑞典人, 到处行凶。 而瑞典军队现在是这样的。 他们已经200年没有战争了。 最重要的是, 大脑会变。 神经元有新的进程。 回路会断开, 大脑中的一切都会发生变化, 所以就会出现人类变化非凡。
First one: this is a man named John Newton, a British theologian who played a central role in the abolition of slavery from the British Empire in the early 1800s. And amazingly, this man spent decades as a younger man as the captain of a slave ship, and then as an investor in slavery, growing rich from this. And then something changed. Something changed in him, something that Newton himself celebrated in the thing that he's most famous for, a hymn that he wrote: "Amazing Grace."
第一个: 这是一位名叫约翰·牛顿的人, 英国神学家, 十九世纪初在 大英帝国废除奴隶制活动中 发挥了核心作用。 令人惊讶的是, 这个人年轻时的数十年 是奴隶船的船长, 然后是奴隶制的投资人, 由此发家。 然后事情变了。 他发生了变化, 牛顿自己在他最著名的成就—— 他写的赞美诗《天赐恩宠》 庆祝了这变化。
This is a man named Zenji Abe on the morning of December 6, 1941, about to lead a squadron of Japanese bombers to attack Pearl Harbor. And this is the same man 50 years later to the day hugging a man who survived the attack on the ground. And as an old man, Zenji Abe came to a collection of Pearl Harbor survivors at a ceremony there and in halting English apologized for what he had done as a young man.
这是安倍善治, 在1941年12月6日早晨, 他即将带领一个日本轰炸机中队 攻击珍珠港。 这是他50年之后, 拥抱一个从当时的地面袭击中 幸存的男人。 而作为一个老人, 安倍善治来到珍珠港幸存者集会, 在那里的仪式中, 用断断续续的英语 为自己年轻时的行为道歉。
Now, it doesn't always require decades. Sometimes, extraordinary change could happen in just hours. Consider the World War I Christmas truce of 1914. The powers that be had negotiated a brief truce so that soldiers could go out, collect bodies from no-man's-land in between the trench lines. And soon British and German soldiers were doing that, and then helping each other carry bodies, and then helping each other dig graves in the frozen ground, and then praying together, and then having Christmas together and exchanging gifts, and by the next day, they were playing soccer together and exchanging addresses so they could meet after the war. That truce kept going until the officers had to arrive and said, "We will shoot you unless you go back to trying to kill each other." And all it took here was hours for these men to develop a completely new category of "us," all of us in the trenches here on both sides, dying for no damn reason, and who is a "them," those faceless powers behind the lines who were using them as pawns.
当然,并不总是需要几十年那么长。 有时,惊人的变化可能会在 短短几个小时内发生。 想想1914年的第一次世界大战 圣诞休战。 几方达成了短暂停战, 让士兵们可以出去, 从战壕之间的无人区捡回尸体。 英国和德国的士兵 很快就开始去捡尸体, 然后他们帮助对方抬尸体, 然后帮助对方在冰冻的地面上挖坟坑, 然后一起祷告, 然后一起过圣诞,交换礼物, 第二天,他们一起踢足球, 交换地址,以便战后能够相见。 这样的停战一直持续到军官必须到场, 提出:“如果再不回到战壕,向对方厮杀, 就向你们开枪。” 总共只用了几个小时, 这些人发展出对“我们” 的全新定义—— 双方的战壕里,我们所有人, 都在没有任何理由地死掉, 还有谁是“他们”—— 战线后方的那些无耻的政权, 那些用我们做棋子的人。
And sometimes, change can occur in seconds. Probably the most horrifying event in the Vietnam War was the My Lai Massacre. A brigade of American soldiers went into an undefended village full of civilians and killed between 350 and 500 of them, mass-raped women and children, mutilated bodies. It was appalling. It was appalling because it occurred, because the government denied it, because the US government eventually did nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and appalling because it almost certainly was not a singular event. This man, Hugh Thompson, this is the man who stopped the My Lai Massacre. He was piloting a helicopter gunship, landed there, got out and saw American soldiers shooting babies, shooting old women, figured out what was going on, and he then took his helicopter and did something that undid his lifetime of conditioning as to who is an "us" and who is a "them." He landed his helicopter in between some surviving villagers and American soldiers and he trained his machine guns on his fellow Americans, and said, "If you don't stop the killing, I will mow you down."
有时,改变可以在几秒钟内发生。 可能在越战中最恐怖的事件 是美莱村屠杀。 一队美军士兵 进入一个没有防御的村庄,全是平民, 杀了350至500平民, 大规模强奸妇女和儿童, 分尸 这令人震惊。 因为发生了这样的事件,政府否认, 美国政府最终只象征性地略加惩罚, 这骇人听闻,因为它绝对不是个案。 这个人,休斯·汤普森, 这是阻止美莱村屠杀的人。 他当时驾驶一架武装直升机, 降落在那里,走出来, 看见美军士兵射杀婴儿, 射杀老妇人, 明白了怎么回事之后 他驾驶自己的直升机, 作出了一个举动, 推翻了他终身训练所得的定义 谁是“我们”,谁是“他们”。 他将直升机降落在 幸存的村民和美国士兵之间, 把机枪对准他的同胞美国人, 说出:“如果不停止杀戮, 我就扫了你们。”
Now, these people are no more special than any of us. Same neurons, same neurochemicals, same biology. What we're left with here is this inevitable cliche: "Those who don't study history are destined to repeat it." What we have here is the opposite of it. Those who don't study the history of extraordinary human change, those who don't study the biology of what can transform us from our worst to our best behaviors, those who don't do this are destined not to be able to repeat these incandescent, magnificent moments.
这些人不比我们任何人特殊。 相同的神经元,相同的神经化学物质, 相同的生物系统。 我们被教导这样陈词滥调: “不学习历史的人注定要重复历史。” 但今天在这里 我们在这里学到的与之相反。 那些不学习人类非凡的变化史的人, 那些不学习让我们转变、 将我们从最坏行为变成最好行为 的生物科学的人, 那些不学习这些的人, 注定不能重复这些辉煌灿烂的时刻。
So thank you.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
(掌声)
CA: Talks that really give you a new mental model about something, those are some of my favorite TED Talks, and we just got one. Robert, thank you so much for that. Good luck with the book. That was amazing, and we're going to try and get you to come here in person one year. Thank you so much.
CA:真正带给你新的思维模式的演讲, 是我最喜欢的TED演讲, 我们刚听到的就是其中一个。 罗伯特,非常感谢你。祝这本书大卖。 演讲太棒了, 我们将努力找机会请你亲自到这里来。 非常感谢。
RS: Thank you. Thank you all.
RS:谢谢,谢谢你们。