生命物理学 第4集：集体的物理学

跟踪单个蚂蚁时，你不禁觉得它们是地球上最愚蠢的生物。

Following around individual ants, you can't help but feel these are the stupidest creatures on Earth.

它们就是做一些疯狂、疯狂的事情。

They they do just crazy, crazy things.

你知道吗？

You know?

你给

You give

它们一大瓶食物，它们却偏偏绕开不去吃。

them big vials of food, they just wander away from them.

现在回想起来，我明白了它们的智慧。

In retrospect, I now see their genius.

但当时，我惊讶于它们竟然连寻找食物这种显而易见的事都做不好。

But at the time, I I was I was amazed at their lack of ability to do obvious things to find food.

来自圣塔菲研究所，这里是复杂性。

From the Santa Fe Institute, this is Complexity.

我是克里斯·肯佩斯。

I'm Chris Kempes.

我是阿巴·艾利·菲博。

And I'm Abha Eli Phoboo.

到目前为止，本季我们已经探讨了很多内容。

So far in this season, we've covered a lot of ground.

我们研究了进化、生物圈，甚至宇宙中生命的根本限制。

We've looked at the fundamental constraints on evolution, the biosphere, and even life out in the universe.

但今天，我们将焦点转向我们自身。

But today, we're going to turn the focus onto ourselves.

是的。

Yes.

今天，我们将与我的两位研究合作与群体的同事一起探讨人类社会。

Today we're looking at human societies with two of my colleagues who study cooperation and collectives.

但尽管本期内容主要关于城市和社会，我们的嘉宾中只有一位会真正谈论与人类相关的研究。

But even though today's episode is really about cities and societies, only one of our guests is actually going to talk about research with humans.

对。

Right.

当你仔细想想，对于像我这样受过物理学训练的研究者来说，研究人类是最具挑战性的事情之一。

And when you think about it, it's striking that for researchers like me who are trained in physics, studying humans is one of the hardest things you can do.

物理学家们乐于研究太空、黑洞，甚至推测那些我们一生中永远无法亲眼见到的事物。

Physicists are happy to look at space and black holes and theorize about things that we will never ever see in our own lifetimes.

但人类呢？

But humans?

人类太难了。

Humans are too hard.

他们太复杂、太不可预测了。

They're too complicated and unpredictable.

对。

Right.

我们会在本季稍后探讨这种现象背后的原因。

And we'll get into why this dynamic exists later on in the season.

但我应该指出，克里斯，你实际上也在一定程度上研究人类。

But I should point out that Chris, you actually do study humans to some extent.

你研究城市、社会、公司和生物体。

You look at cities, societies, companies, and organisms.

是的，我确实研究。

Yeah, I do.

而且这很复杂。

And it's complicated.

我合作的一位研究人员是黄惠珍。

One of the researchers I work with is Hyejin Youn.

我们研究过监管规律。

We've worked on the laws of regulation.

这听起来真的很枯燥。

This seems really boring.

对吧？

Right?

但如果你仔细想想，所有复杂的适应性系统都必须协调和管理它们的功能。

But if you think about it, all complex adaptive systems have to coordinate and manage their functions.

这是至关重要的，我们将在本集后面讨论这一点。

This is essential, and we'll talk about this later in the episode.

首先，让我们听听海珍的说法。

First, let's hear from Hyejin.

我叫海珍·尤恩。

My name is Hyejin Youn.

我是圣塔菲研究所的外部教员。

I'm external faculty at SFI.

海珍是西北大学凯洛格管理学院的教授，同时也是西北大学复杂科学研究所的核心教员。

Hyejin is a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and she's also core faculty of the Northwestern Complexity Science Institute.

她认为自己有点与众不同。

She considers herself to be a bit of an oddity.

她受过物理学家的训练，但却在商学院工作。

She's a physicist by training, but she works at a business school.

从传统的意义上说，我的职业轨迹在定量和STEM领域到定性领域之间有着显著的转变。

In a conventional sense, curvature of my trajectory is pretty significant from quantitative and STEM based all the way to qualitative.

我的系是商学院中最具定性色彩的部门之一。

My department is one of the most qualitative even in business school.

所以我认为这就是我的有趣事实。

So I think that that would be my fun fact.

所以你是一个奇怪的事实。

So you are a strange fact.

我自己。

Myself.

是的。

Yeah.

对。

Yeah.

但对于海珍来说，这条道路并非偶然。

But for Hyejin, this path wasn't random.

事实上，她倾向于认为世界上很少有事情是随机的。

In fact, she's inclined to think that very little about the world is random.

你童年时有没有某个时刻，让你第一次对科学产生兴趣？

Do you have a moment in your childhood that where you really remember first being interested in science?

哦，好的。

Oh, okay.

我应该在这里非常坦诚吗？

Should I be very honest here?

当然。

Absolutely.

只要你不介意再听一遍。

As

只要你不介意再听一遍。

long as you don't mind hearing it back.

说实话，许多拥有令人鼓舞的职业轨迹的人总是说，当我年轻时，我有一个非凡的愿景，我一直想成为某种人。

To be honest, a lot of people who have a very inspiring career trajectory always say that, oh, when I was young, I had this incredible vision and I always wanted to be something.

但对我来说，并不是我来自韩国的一个小镇。

But for me, was not like I came from this small town in Korea.

我的意思不是美国意义上的小镇，而是韩国意义上的小镇，亚洲意义上的小镇。

I mean, it's not small town in American sense, but in Korean sense, it's small town, Asian sense is small town.

我不知道自己是否能成为学者，因为我是家里第一个完成四年制大学教育的人。

I didn't know whether I could become academic because I'm the first person who graduated four year full education university.

我至今仍是整个大家庭中唯一获得博士学位的人。

I'm still the only one who got PhD in my entire extended family.

起初，惠珍对科学并没有太大兴趣。

Hyejin wasn't really interested in science at first.

她实际上想画画和绘画。

She actually wanted to draw and paint.

但有一天，她在电视上看到关于一所科学高中的报道。

But one day she saw something on TV about a science high school.

这所学校由韩国政府资助。

It was funded by the Korean government.

如果她被录取了，就可以免费入学，并且跳过最后一年。

And if she got in, she could go for free and skip the last year.

进入高中后，海珍逐渐对物理产生了兴趣，但

Once she got to high school, Hyejin gravitated toward physics, but

并不是我对物理有什么明确的愿景。

It's not that I had a vision for physics.

我只是顺着一条路走，嗯，后来我上了大学，那也是一所完全由政府资助的大学，目的是让我们的国家再次富强。

Just, like, followed a trail that is, yeah, then like I came to my university, which is also a fully government funded university to make our country wealthier again.

有些人根本没有愿景，因为他们从未有机会看到外面有什么样的可能性。

Some people just don't have a vision because they didn't have an opportunity to see what's out there to become what.

这实际上与我的一项研究相关，我试图理解世界的结构，而‘相邻可能’并非对每个人都是平等分布的。

This actually connects to my study, one of the study that I try to understand the structure of the world and the adjacent possible is not equally distributed for everyone.

有些人拥有的‘相邻可能’与其他人不同，因此他们能成为的样子也不同。

Some people just have a different set of adjacent possible to become something.

换句话说，那种‘你可以成长为任何你想成为的人，做任何你想做的事’的想法。

In other words, the idea that you can grow up to be anything or do anything.

这并不总是成立，至少对许多人来说不是这样。

That's not always true, at least not for many people.

我们的环境决定了哪些道路对我们开放。

Our circumstances determine which paths are available to us.

海珍研究城市的发展以及从中产生的创新。

Hyejin studies the growth of cities and the innovations that arise from them.

她说，这种观点也适用于她的工作。

And she says this outlook applies to her work too.

这是我们节目的一个熟悉主题。

It's a familiar theme of our show.

当您仔细观察时，那些看似随机和混乱的现象其实遵循着一些基本的规律。

What often seems random and chaotic is when you look a little closer, following big fundamental rules.

在第一部分中，我们将看到这些规律如何塑造我们所生活的社会。

And in part one, we'll see how those rules shape the societies we live in.

第一部分：城市有什么特别之处？

Part one: What's so special about cities?

在深入探讨海珍对城市的研究之前，让我们先回想一下生物圈，特别是树木。

Before we get into Hyejin's work on cities, let's think back to the biosphere for a moment, and in particular, trees.

即使是像红杉这样的大树，其高度也有限制，因为向上生长是在与重力抗争。

Even some of the biggest trees like sequoias have limits to their size because growing upward is a fight against gravity.

当达到一定高度时，这种权衡就不再值得了。

And at a certain height, the trade off just isn't worth it.

所以，这是一个限制因素。

So that's one limit.

但即使树木不能无限向上生长，它仍然可以向外扩展。

But even if a tree can't grow up forever, it can still grow out.

但如果我们考虑向外生长，这同样伴随着权衡。

But if we think about growing out, that comes with trade offs too.

树木必须从树干将养分和水分输送到枝条的末端。

The tree has to deliver nutrients and water from its trunk all the way to the ends of its branches.

而这需要力量。

And that takes force.

重力在这里也同样起作用，但还有其他因素在发挥作用，比如水的黏性以及植物细胞如何吸收各种物质。

Gravity applies here too, but there are other things coming into play like the viscosity of water and how the plant cells absorb everything.

因此，我们也没有能够无限向外生长的树木。

And so we don't have trees that can grow infinitely out either.

当从较小的树木扩展到巨大的树木时，这些因素都会以规律且可预测的方式产生影响。

As you scale from small trees to huge ones, each of these factors exerts influence in regular, predictable patterns.

而这些模式，正如我们之前所说，并不是线性的。

And those patterns are, as we've said before, not linear.

好的。

Okay.

那么让我们来看看这与城市有何关联。

So let's look at how this connects to cities.

社会作为一种结构，

Society as a structure,

包括物理和认知、社会、经济结构。

physical and cognitive, social, economic structure.

这种结构无处不在，而且这种结构并不是随机的。

The structure is everywhere and this structure is not random.

我们常常浪漫化偶然的相遇和意外的幸运，但我不确定所谓的随机究竟有多少是真正随机的。

We romanticize the random encounter and the serendipity, But I don't know how much random is really random.

这让我想到，城市其实具有一种内在的发展轨迹。

So that actually brought me think that city has some trajectory.

城市既可以向上发展，也可以向外扩张。

Cities can also grow up and they can grow out.

因此，如果人口翻倍，并不意味着道路、图书馆或杂货店的数量也必须翻倍。

So if the population doubles, that doesn't necessarily mean that the number of roads will double too, or the number of libraries or grocery stores.

这里同样存在规模法则在发挥作用。

There are scaling laws at play here too.

到目前为止，我们只讨论了诸如高度、密度和寿命等具体的物理特征。

And so far, we've only been talking about literal physical characteristics like height and density and lifespan.

但海珍说，这些规模法则也能塑造更抽象的结果。

But Hyejin says the scaling laws can also shape more abstract outcomes.

社会经济属性，如犯罪率、创意产出和财富创造，似乎随着城市规模呈超线性增长，而基础设施则不然。

Socioeconomic properties like crime rate, creative productions and wealth production seems to super linearly scale with a city size as opposed to infrastructure.

对于创新、犯罪和财富等概念，有多种不同的定义方式，多到我们无法在一期播客中详尽探讨。

There are many different ways to define things like innovation, crime, and wealth, more than we could get into in just one podcast episode.

关于创新，Hyejin 和其他圣塔菲研究所的研究人员特别选择研究商业专利，这些专利意味着新技术、产品或服务的诞生。

For innovation, Hyejin and other SFI researchers have chosen specifically to look at business patents, which imply the creation of some new technology, product, or service.

随着城市人口的增长，这些专利数量以超线性方式——即不成比例地快速——增加。

These increase super linearly, as in disproportionately fast, as a city's population grows.

因此，我会参考一些区域科学和城市规模研究，这些研究表明，专利活动的产出会随着城市规模呈超线性增长。

So I would rely on a few studies, regional science and also urban scaling studies, that show there is a super linear production of patent activity as a function of city size.

因此，当人口翻倍时，实证数据显示，人均专利活动增加15%。

So double the size of the population, empirics shows 15% more patent activity per capita.

实际上，这15%或更多的专利活动增幅，恰好与犯罪活动的增幅相同。

Actually this 15% or more of the patent activity is exactly the same amount that you expect from crime activity.

所以，人均专利活动增加15%，人均犯罪活动也增加15%。

So you have a 15% more of a patent activity per capita, also 15% more of crime activity per capita.

当社区形成时，有一些有趣的现象正在发生。

So something interesting is happening when communities form.

无论是好的方面还是坏的方面，所产生的东西都超过了各部分之和。

What's being created is more than the sum of its parts in both good and bad ways.

可能正是那种促使创新增加的特殊因素，也在影响犯罪率的上升，而且它们的增长速率遵循着与动植物相同的标度律曲线。

It's possible that whatever special sauce is making innovation increase is also influencing the increase in crime, and the rates at which they scale up follow a curve in the same way that plants and animals are bound by the scaling laws.

但就像生物圈一样，每个环境的独特性意味着有些城市并不能完美地符合这些曲线。

But like the biosphere, idiosyncrasies in each environment means that some cities don't adhere perfectly to these curves.

好的。

Okay.

问题是这样的。

Here is the thing.

我尽量谨慎地阐述城市这种动态，因为人们总会说：‘不过，有些案例并不符合标度规律。’

I I try to be very cautious to present this dynamic of the city because people will just say, oh, there are cases that don't work for the scaling though.

其中一个例子是洛斯阿拉莫斯。

One of the examples is Los Alamos.

有些人会说，是的，洛斯阿拉莫斯规模很小，却产生了非常显著的创新成果。

Like some people will say, yeah, Los Alamos is so small and yet they produce a very much innovative outcome.

是的。

Yeah.

我觉得你提到的洛斯阿拉莫斯很有趣，这个小镇如今因为《奥本海默》这部电影而广为人知，这引出了一个非常有意思的观点。

And I think, you know, the thing you mentioned about Los Alamos, which is a famous town that everyone knows about now because of the new Oppenheimer movie, that brings up a a very interesting point.

它并不是一种自然状态。

It's not a natural state.

这也带出了我们一直担忧的问题：究竟该如何衡量规模？

It also brings up this thing that you and I worry about all the time, which is how do you actually measure size?

如果你以居住人口数量来衡量洛斯阿拉莫斯，它确实非常小。

And so if you measure Los Alamos by number of people who live there, it's very small.

但如果你以政府投入的总资金来衡量，它的规模就非常大了，对吧？

If you measure it by total number of government dollars spent, it's very high, right?

我的意思是，如果只看这个小镇的联邦政府资金投入，它简直是一座巨城。

I mean, it's a huge city if you just do federal dollars in that town.

这在某种程度上解释了为什么会出现这么多创新，尽管那里的人口不多，但政府却投入了巨额资金。

And that sort of, I think, explains some of the innovation because even though there are not so many people there, the government is spending huge amounts of money.

即使一个小型城市没有获得大量资金投入，它仍然可能产生创新成果。

And even if a small city isn't given a huge injection of money, it can still produce innovative outcomes.

在小城市中发生这种情况的可能性较低，而在大城市中则更有可能。

It's just less likely to happen in a small city and more likely in a big one.

我想强调另一个因素。

There is another factor I want to emphasize here.

新颖性不应被误解为创新。

The novelty should not be misunderstood with innovation.

因此，创新不仅需要新颖的想法，还需要产生影响。

So innovation requires not only novelty, novel idea, but also impact.

要产生影响，就需要某种社会结构、经济社会结构，以及支持你的想法传播、扩散并在社会和经济体系中实施的资本。

So to make an impact, it requires some social structure, socioeconomic structure, the capital to support your idea to propagate and diffuse and implement it in the society and economic systems.

如果你身处一座小城市，即使你有一个非常好的想法，也可能无法有效传播，或者无法与其他人的想法和基础设施协同，因为你与更大的系统脱节，难以产生重大影响。

And if you are in a small city, even if you may have a very good idea, you may not be able to propagate or you may not be able to align with other people's idea and infrastructure because you are disconnected to the larger system to make a good impact.

因此，有太多因素让大城市占据优势。

So there are so many things are going on that give the larger cities premium.

目前，我们正在使用Zoom以及像Riverside这样的功能。

So at the moment, we currently have Zoom and features like Riverside, which we're currently using.

但如果我们进入元宇宙，能够将你的虚拟形象投射到一个虚拟的协作环境中，这种情况还会成立吗？

But what if we were to go into the metaverse and you had the possibility of projecting your virtual self into a collaborative environment, which is virtual, would that still hold true?

哦，这是个非常好的问题。

Oh, that's a very good question.

这始终取决于技术的水平，能否为我们提供多种带宽的沟通渠道。

It always depends on the level of technology to enable us to communicate with many different bandwidth communication channels.

沟通不仅仅是我的言语表达。

So communication is not just my verbal statement.

沟通涉及多种信息传递的渠道。

Communication involves many different channels for information transfer.

所以不仅仅是我在说话，还包括我的眼神移动、手势，以及你的手势，这些共同作用，将信息从我的大脑重构并传递到你的大脑。

So it's not only just me talking, but also like my eye movement, my gestures, and your gestures that actually come together to restructure the information to be transferred from my mind to your mind.

现在回到这个问题，Zoom极大地扩展了沟通的带宽，使得交流变得更加容易，传递的知识也更多，但还不足以传递那些并未被良好编码的隐性知识。

And now coming back to the question, Zoom actually expanded the communication bandwidth so much that it's actually easier to communicate and the transferred knowledge, but it's not enough to transfer the testing knowledge that is not really codified well.

所以，谈到元宇宙，关键在于元宇宙能让我们多大程度上重新捕捉到从说话者到听者、或从听者到说话者之间所需传递的所有信息。

So metaverse coming to the metaverse, it depends on the, like, how much metaverse can allow us to recapture all the information to be transferred from the speakers to listener or listener to the speakers.

我认为这才是主要因素。

I think that's the main factor.

在技术尚未能弥合物理距离之前——即使未来能做到——城市仍然是催生新创意的重要场所。

Until technology manages to bridge physical distance, if it ever does, cities are important places to foster new creations.

尽管美国商业文化热衷于崇拜个人天才，

And as much as American business culture loves to idolize individual visionaries,

我们常常在创新研究和商业文献中颂扬个人的主动决策。

We often celebrate it and individuals' agentic decisions, we often emphasize in innovation literature and the business literature.

但这并不是关于某个人突然想出一个了不起的点子。

But it's not really about one person coming up with an incredible idea.

而是关于他们所处的社区结构，各种想法的交汇，以及在特定历史时刻某种事物得以兴起。

It's about the structure of the communities they're in, the ideas coming together, something taking hold because of a particular moment in history.

实证证据表明，我们经常发现多个发明者独立提出了完全相同的想法，这样的例子比比皆是。

Empirical evidence is that we find multiple inventors coming up with the exactly same idea and examples are abundant.

一个著名的例子是华莱士和达尔文，他们都提出了完全相同的想法，但达尔文获得了更多的赞誉。

One example, like famous example is Wallace versus Darwin, who came up with the exactly same idea and yet Darwin had more credit.

牛顿和莱布尼茨也各自独立提出了非常相似的微积分思想，只是形式不同。

Newton versus Leipniz who had very similar idea calculus in a different form.

但似乎有大量案例表明，人们会在同一时间提出相同的想法。

But it seems like there are numerous cases to show that people come up with the same idea at the same time.

这似乎意味着，某个特定想法出现的时机已经成熟。

It seems like time is ripe to come up with a certain idea.

这意味着个体的独特性变得不那么重要。

And that means individuality becomes less important.

在创新方面，集体性、以及朝向某种动态或特定路径的结构变得更加重要。

It's more like collective, the structure toward a certain dynamic or certain pathway becomes more important when it comes to innovation.

因为归根结底，你或许能提出一个非常疯狂的想法，但最终被社会采纳、进一步发展并实现的，总是取决于特定的历史路径。

Because at the end of the day, you can come up with a really crazy idea, but what idea is picked up by society and make more development and to implement the society is always path dependent.

所以存在某种路径，它 somehow 赋予了自身生命力。

So there is some pathway that actually somehow takes on its own life.

Hyejin 继续研究她所说的创新路径。

Hyejin is continuing to study what she calls the innovation pathway.

我们世界中这种随着时间积累而成的整体结构，最终催生了重要的突破性发明，这在某种意义上是一个相当激进的观点。

This overall structure in our world that builds over time and results in important groundbreaking inventions, which in a sense is a pretty radical idea.

它引发了诸如个体人物是否真的能改变历史进程之类的问题。

It raises questions like whether or not individual people really change the course of history.

集体以个体人类或生物无法做到的方式推动了知识的边界。

Collectives push the edges of knowledge in a way that individual people or organisms just don't.

在第二部分，我们将研究其他类型的集体，比如蚂蚁和免疫系统，看看它们能否教给我们一些关于新颖性的道理。

In part two, we'll look at some other types of collectives, ants and the immune system, and see if they can teach us a thing or two about novelty.

第二部分：如何探索。

Part two, how to explore.

我的名字是梅兰妮·莫西斯。

My name is Melanie Moses.

我是新墨西哥大学计算机科学系的教授，同时也是圣塔菲研究所的外部教员。

I am a professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico and also external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

我还在新墨西哥大学兼任生物学教职。

And I have a secondary appointment in biology at UNM.

梅兰妮还研究生物体如何交流，特别是集体智能。

Melanie also studies how organisms communicate, in particular, collective intelligence.

她的大部分工作集中在机器人系统、免疫系统和蚂蚁上。

Much of her work has focused on robotic systems, immune systems, and ants.

我研究过的一个课题是蚂蚁如何觅食，特别是我们新墨西哥地区大量存在的沙漠收获蚁。

One of the things I've studied is how ants forage for seeds, the desert harvester ants that we have here in abundance in New Mexico.

在攻读博士学位期间，我花了几年时间在沙漠中追踪这些蚂蚁，这种体验非常超现实——你聚焦于一只小小的、仅一厘米长的蚂蚁，而周围是广阔无垠的沙漠。

And I spent a couple of years during my PhD following these ants around in the desert, which is a very surreal experience of, you know, you zoom in, you're focused on this tiny little centimeter long ant in a big wide open vast desert.

有时你会因为过于专注于这些蚂蚁而迷失方向。

And sometimes you kind of lose track of where you are because you're so focused on these ants.

在追踪它们的过程中，我研究它们是因为我对集体智能感兴趣，想知道蚁群如何做出出色的集体决策来觅食。

And following them around, I studied them because I was interested in collective intelligence and how the colony would, you know, make excellent collective decisions about foraging for food.

蚂蚁以一些非常巧妙的方式相互交流。

Ants communicate with each other in some pretty ingenious ways.

蚂蚁的交流通常表现为它们释放信息素的方式。

So ant communication is often characterized by the way that they lay pheromones.

但这并不是蚂蚁交流的全部方式。

This is not all of how ants communicate.

但许多种类的蚂蚁都会这样做。

But an ant will many species of ants.

当一只蚂蚁发现食物时，它会叼起食物，返回巢穴，并沿途留下一条信息素轨迹——这是一种会随时间蒸发的化学物质。

When an individual ant discovers an item of food, it will pick up that item of food, return to the nest, and lay a pheromone trail, just a chemical that evaporates over time.

当另一只蚂蚁发现这条信息素轨迹时，它会做出选择：是跟随这条轨迹，还是不跟随？

And when another ant discovers that pheromone, it will make a choice, do I follow that pheromone trail or not?

如果这只蚂蚁到达一堆种子并叼起一颗种子返回，同时也留下信息素，那么这条信息素轨迹就会因为越来越多的蚂蚁而得到加强。

And if that ant gets to a pile of seeds and picks up a seed and returns and also lays a pheromone trail, the pheromone is reinforced by more and more ants.

这是一种强大的正反馈机制，会吸引越来越多的蚂蚁聚集到大量食物周围，直到食物被耗尽。

It's a great positive feedback that attracts more and more ants to a big pile of food until the food is gone.

一旦食物被吃光，跟随信息素轨迹的蚂蚁到达后会发现没有食物可收集，因此不会再强化这条信息素轨迹。

And once the food is gone, ants that follow the pheromone trail will get there, there'll be no food to pick up, so it won't reinforce the pheromone trail.

这是一种化学信号，会随着时间逐渐挥发。

It's a chemical signal, so it'll evaporate over time.

这使得信息素轨迹在不需要时能够自然消失。

And that really enables the trail to disappear when it's not needed.

因此，信息素轨迹可以被看作是一张指向种子位置的路径地图。

And so the pheromone trail can be thought of as sort of a set of trails as a map to the location of seeds.

整个系统其实非常聪明，但单个蚂蚁的行为并不总是符合我们的预期。

The system as a whole is really clever, but individual ants don't always behave the way we think they should.

追踪单个蚂蚁时，你不禁会觉得它们是地球上最愚蠢的生物。

Following around individual ants, you can't help but feel these are the stupidest creatures on Earth.

它们真的会做出一些疯狂到极点的事情。

They they do just crazy, crazy things.

你知道，你

You know, you

给他们大瓶的食物，他们却会漫无目的地离开。

give them big vials of food, they just wander away from them.

所以，观察蚂蚁的行为——这原本是我的想法——我觉得这是集体智能的理想模型。

So observing ant behavior as, you know, which was my idea is, oh, this is the ideal model for collective intelligence.

我在写论文的大部分时间里，都对这些蚂蚁的愚蠢感到沮丧。

And I spent most of my dissertation feeling frustrated with the stupidity of these ants.

现在回头来看，我终于明白了它们的智慧。

In retrospect, I now see their genius.

但当时，我惊讶于它们连寻找食物这种显而易见的事都做不好。

But at the time, I I was I was amazed at their lack of ability to do obvious things to find food.

梅兰妮和她的团队给单个蚂蚁的背部染色，以便更容易追踪它们的行动。

Melanie and her team dyed the backs of individual ants so they could track their movements more easily.

一旦染色后，它们就更容易在沙漠中直接跟踪了，那里是塞维利亚国家野生动物保护区。

So once they were dyed, they were a little bit easier to just literally follow around the desert, where this was at the Sevilla National Wildlife Refuge.

那里有一个长期生态研究站点。

There's a long term ecological research site there.

作为研究的一部分，团队会在不同数量和位置放置种子堆，然后观察蚂蚁觅食。

As part of research, the team would place piles of seeds in various amounts and locations and then watch the ants forage.

有一天，他们在蚁巢附近放了一大堆，共256粒种子。

One day, they placed a huge pile, two fifty six seeds, very close to the nest.

一只蚂蚁在种子被放置后的几分钟内就发现了它。

One ant discovered it very early on within a couple of minutes of placing it.

我们标记了这只蚂蚁，它独自来回于种子和蚁巢之间，一共跑了256次。

And that one ant we marked, and it went back and forth from the seeds to the nest and the seeds to the nest 256 times all by herself.

而其他蚂蚁只是四处游荡，完全不帮她。

And the other ants just wandered around completely not helping her.

所以，你知道，我当时觉得，这正是我所认为的惊人集体行为的模型。

And so, you know, I I was like, this is my model for, you know, incredible collective behavior.

而它们却把她一个人丢下，让她独自收集这些种子。

And they're just they've left her, you know, all on her own to collect these seeds.

它们根本没找到多少东西。

They weren't finding much.

它们在四处游荡。

They were wandering.

这看起来完全不像一种有效的集体行为。

This really seems like the opposite of a functional collective.

只有一只蚂蚁在干活，其他蚂蚁都没帮她。

One ant just did all the work and no one helped her.

当一只蚂蚁，就像这位可怜的梅兰妮观察到的那样，发现了食物，其他蚂蚁各自都需要做出选择。

When one ant, like this poor aunt Melanie observed, finds food, the other ants each need to make a choice.

它们可以选择也去那个食物源，利用已知的信息，或者继续寻找，去探索。

They can either go to that food source too, to exploit what's known, or to keep searching, to explore.

这真正让我深刻意识到，它们天生就被设定为去探索新事物，即使已经有明显的信息表明那里有食物。

This was what really sort of drove home to me, this idea that they are wired to explore for new things, even when there's obvious information that there's something there.

如果蚂蚁决定利用已知信息，它就可以跟随信息素轨迹，被引导到食物堆。

If the ant decides to exploit known information, it can follow that pheromone trail and get led to the pile of food.

它决定四处游荡。

It decides to wander off.

从某种意义上说，这是有意识地选择探索而非利用。

It's intentionally, in some sense, exploring rather than exploiting.

这种探索实际上对整个群体的益处远超我们的想象。

This exploration is actually far more beneficial for the collective group than we might think.

大多数外出探索的蚂蚁并不会找到任何东西。

Most of the ants that go off and explore won't find anything.

如果它们不是群体的一部分，它们就无法生存。

And if they weren't part of the group, they wouldn't survive.

但因为它们属于一个集体，所以能够承担风险。

But because they're part of a collective, they can take risks.

其中一只蚂蚁会获得巨大的回报。

One of them will get a big payoff.

所以这种探索是合作中非常重要的一部分，对吧？

So that sort of exploration is a really important part of cooperation, right?

整个集体能够持续下去，正是因为它有能力探索并失败。

The ability to explore and fail that the whole collective continues on.

我认为，在它们的进化历史中，这种随机搜索实际上被优化为发现新食物的最佳方式。

I think over their evolutionary history, that random search was in fact tuned to be the ideal way to search to really continue to discover new food.

所以，这其实是一个关键的抉择点，也就是对信息素做出反应的时刻，对吧？

And so really, it's that sort of that choice point, right, where there's a response to the pheromone.

答案是：我要跟随它，还是不跟随？

The answer is, do I follow it or do I not?

而不跟随这种信息素的可能性比我预期的要高得多，但我认为，从长远来看，这对这些蚁群来说是非常理想的。

And the likelihood of not following that pheromone was much higher than I would have expected, but I think quite optimal in the long run for these ant colonies.

所以梅兰妮对蚂蚁行为有深入的了解。

So Melanie has some in-depth knowledge about ant behavior.

但当她刚开始职业生涯时，并没有打算研究蚂蚁。

But when she first started her career, she didn't plan on studying ants.

所以我走的路，我想，大概和这些蚂蚁走的路类似——当时我觉得这不太明智，但现在回过头看，也许那些选择其实不错。

So I took, I would say, maybe the same sort of meandering path that these ants took that I thought was ill advised at the time, but now I think in retrospect, maybe they were a good idea.

她本科时学的是计算机科学。

She studied computer science as an undergrad.

但大学毕业之后，她没有去办公室工作，而是去了哥斯达黎加待了六个月。

But after college, instead of going to work in an office, she moved to Costa Rica for six months.

正是在那里，在雨林中生活时，她对蚂蚁产生了浓厚兴趣。

It was there, living in the rainforest, that she became fascinated with ants.

那里的雨林里有很多切叶蚁。

There are lots of leafcutters in the rainforest there.

因此，我对它们如何构建网络化社会产生了兴趣，同时也对人类如何做同样的事情感到好奇。

So I became interested in understanding how they built networked societies, and I was interested in the parallel for for how we did the same.

我最初非常感兴趣的是研究人类的合作行为，但很明显，这是一件非常难以研究的事情。

I initially was very interested in studying human cooperation, and it was clear that that's a very hard thing to study.

首先，从后勤角度来说。

One, just logistically.

你无法像在蚂蚁身上撒染色粉末并追踪它们那样，对人类做同样的事，尽管现在人们或许会用手机数据做类似的事情。

You can study ants in what you can't put dyed powder on humans and follow them around, although people do maybe analogous things with cell phone data now.

但人类要复杂得多，也更难理解，他们有着太多相互冲突的动机。

But humans are so much more complex and so much more complicated and they have so many conflicting motivations.

我实际上非常感兴趣于寻找更简单的系统，以揭示在对所有合作者都有利的方式下，合作所面临的基本限制。

I was actually very interested in finding simpler systems where we might sort of uncover what are the fundamental constraints on cooperating in ways that are beneficial for all of the cooperators.

我特别关注搜索类问题。

I was particularly interested in search questions.

我认为我现在在机器人、蚁群和免疫系统中研究的许多问题，本质上都是关于一群个体如何在长时间内有效搜索，从而利用庞大的群体同时进行探索新事物和利用已有信息的能力。

I think a lot of the things that I study now in robotics, ant colonies, immune systems are really questions of how do collections of agents effectively search over long time periods so that they're leveraging, you know, having a large population that's able to both explore for new things and exploit known information.

梅兰妮认为，这些蚂蚁研究同样适用于人类合作，甚至适用于所有合作群体。

And Melanie thinks these ant studies do apply to human cooperation too, and potentially all cooperative groups.

正如我们在第一部分中学到的，沟通与合作对人类创新至关重要。

As we learned in part one, communication and cooperation are really important for human innovation.

海珍和许多其他研究者认为，城市和社会的底层结构并非随机，城市产生的创新也未必是随机的。

Hyejin and many other researchers would say that the structures underlying cities and societies are not random, and the innovations that come out of cities are not necessarily random either.

但即使整体结构是确定的，梅兰妮仍认为随机探索是通往新颖发现和创意的关键要素。

But even if the overall structure is set, Melanie still sees random exploration as a crucial ingredient in the path to novel discoveries and ideas.

那些看似愚蠢的蚂蚁，实际上比我原先以为的要聪明一些。

The apparently stupid ants were actually a little smarter than I might have given them credit for.

这种随机性至关重要。

That randomness is incredibly important.

你有一大群合作的个体。

You have a large group of cooperating agents.

其中一个巨大的优势是，每个个体都可以朝不同的方向前进。

One of the great benefits is that every agent can go off in a different direction.

对于蚂蚁来说，这可是字面意义上的，对吧？

With ants, that's literal, right?

它们可以朝景观中的不同方向出发，去寻找那些还没人发现的下一堆食物。

They can go off in a different direction on the landscape to search for, you know, that next pile of food that no one has yet discovered.

我认为在更抽象的意义上也是如此。

I think that's also true in a more abstract sense.

如果你想想人类，也就是探索知识的前沿。

You If think about humans, you know, exploring the frontiers of knowledge.

我认为我逐渐明白的一个概念是，人类非常擅长利用其他人的信息。

And I think that one concept that I've come to is that humans are very good at exploiting other human information.

我们非常擅长模仿他人已经做过的事情。

We're very good at copying what others have done.

我认为在社会层面，我们实际上可能不太擅长探索和发现全新的东西。

And I think we've actually maybe socially are less good at exploring and finding brand new things.

蚂蚁并不是唯一比人类更擅长探索的生物。

Ants aren't the only ones who are better at exploring than humans.

在我们自己的身体内部，免疫系统经过优化，能够进行探索以寻找病原体。

Within our own bodies, our immune systems are fine tuned to explore in order to find pathogens.

特别是T细胞，我认为新冠之后，人们对T细胞的了解比以前多得多。

Particularly T cells, which I think post COVID people are now much more familiar with T cells than they used to be.

它们的行为非常像蚂蚁觅食。

They behave very much like ants foraging for food.

它们是搜索者，能够杀死病毒感染的细胞。

They are searchers who are able to kill virally infected cells.

因此，我们将它们视为一种寻找感染细胞并予以清除的搜索群体。

And so we thought of them as sort of this kind of swarm of searchers that were looking for infected cells to kill.

它们的大部分搜索也是随机的。

Much of their search is also random.

通过类比这些蚂蚁系统，我们正在探索这种随机性实际上可能是适应性的可能性。

And by analogy with these ant systems, you know, we sort of are exploring the possibility that that randomness is in fact adaptive.

如果T细胞直接朝着病毒感染细胞的源头移动，它们就会错过那些已经扩散到远处的病毒。

If the T cells followed paths directly to sources of virally infected cells, they would miss virus that had spread far away.

因此，这再次体现了探索与利用之间的权衡原则——对于任何给定的搜索问题，这个权衡可能比你想象的更偏向于探索。

So it's again sort of the same principle that the explore exploit trade off is maybe much more tilted toward explore than you might think for any given search problem.

是的。

Yeah.

我觉得你所说的非常有趣，尤其是在发现和应对病原体这一最关键的挑战上，一旦出错，你就会死亡。

I think it's really interesting that you're saying, you know, for the most critical problem, discovering pathogens and dealing with them, if you get that wrong, you're dead.

对吧？

Right?

我的意思是，这是指数级增长。

I mean, it's exponential growth.

一切都在飞速发生。

Everything's happening very fast.

如果你错过了什么，那就是个大问题。

And if you miss something, it's a real problem.

所以你说，即使在最关键的情况下，你仍然更倾向于探索而非利用。

And so you're saying even in the most critical situation, you still are more tuned on explore than exploit.

即使在生死攸关的时候，你也会用随机性来探索。

So even when it's life or death, you use randomness to explore.

我认为这充分说明了探索有多么根本和重要。

And I think that really illustrates that there's something deep about how essential it is to explore.

是的，这说得非常好，也正好解释了为什么我们认为T细胞的搜索方式如此有趣，对吧？

Yeah, that's very well put and very much, you know, why we thought that T cell search is so interesting, right?

因为这时间极其紧迫。

Because it is so time critical.

你必须做对。

You need to get it right.

你知道，如果有一个大面积的感染区域，就需要大量的T细胞在那里。

You know, if there's a large infected area, you need lots of T cells there.

T细胞可以杀死，你知道的， handful 的细胞。

T cells can kill, you know, a handful of cells.

所以在感染更严重的地方，你需要更多的T细胞。

And so you need more T cells in places where there's more infection.

所以确实存在某种招募机制，但这种随机性——去寻找远离其他感染区域的微小感染点——也同样至关重要。

So there is some aspect of recruitment, but this randomness to go look for that little spot of infection that's far away from the other infection is also critically important.

所以你的意思是，我们应该花更多时间、投入更多资源，鼓励人们去从事随机的、看似无关的、疯狂的事情，以加速发现吗？

So are you saying that we should spend more time, spend more resources encouraging people to go off and do random, seemingly unrelated, crazy things just to sort of speed up discovery?

是的，我认为这会是我给NSF等资助机构的建议。

Yeah, I think that would be my advice to funding agencies like NSF.

我认为，随着时间推移，资助机构变得越来越保守。

I think that over time, the funding agencies have become more conservative.

下一步工作、绘制下一个基因组、发现某个特定蛋白质的功能，这些都有明显的回报。

There are obvious wins for doing the next step, for mapping the next genome, for discovering the function of some particular protein.

但全新的事物，我认为风险相当大。

But radical new things, I think, are quite risky.

大多数都不会成功。

Most of them won't work.

因此，我认为我们应该从这些蚂蚁身上学到一个重要教训。

And so I do think that that's an important lesson that we should learn from these ants.

探索本身具有很大价值，即使大部分探索都以失败告终。

There's a lot of value in exploration, even when most of that exploration fails.

所以，是的，我认为我们自诩非常富有创新精神，但也许我们并不完全配得上这份赞誉。

And so, yeah, I think we give ourselves credit for being extremely innovative, and maybe we don't quite deserve all that credit.

如果我们回望城市和社会，以及Hyejin所做的部分研究，就会明白，当更多人聚集在一起时，探索和失败的机会增多，同时也能获得惠及所有人的巨大回报。

If we think back to cities and societies and some of the work Hyejin's done, it makes sense that when you get more people together, there are more opportunities to explore and fail, or to explore and get a huge payout that benefits everyone.

还记得Hyejin之前说过什么吗？

And remember what Hyejin said earlier?

创新不仅仅关乎新颖性。

Innovation isn't just about novelty.

因此，创新不仅需要新颖性，还需要影响力。

So innovation requires not only novelty, novel idea, but also impact.

要产生影响，就需要某种社会结构、经济社会结构，以及资本来支持你的想法在社会和经济体系中传播、扩散和实施。

So to make an impact, it requires some social structure, socioeconomic structure, the capital to support your idea to propagate and diffuse and implement it in the society and economic systems.

但增长是有代价的。

But growing comes with a price.

在第三部分，我们将了解这个代价是什么。

In part three, we'll learn what that price is.

这是第三部分：集体的成本。

This is part three, the cost of the collective.

在这档节目中，我们讨论过许多潜在的生活法则，比如规模定律、繁殖以及寄生虫的存在，仅举几例。

On this show, we've talked about many potential rules of life, like the scaling laws, reproduction, and the presence of parasites, just to name a few.

Hyejin 为这个列表增加了另一条：监管功能，即某种能够维持一切有序的管理系统。

Hyejin's adding another one to the list, regulatory functions, as in some sort of management system that keeps everything in check.

监管是一个有趣的术语，从社会科学家到物理学家和自然科学家，不同领域的人对它的理解和反应可能截然不同；对自然科学家和工程师而言，监管是一种有益的手段，用以调节系统，使其健康运行。

Regulation is an interesting term and can be perceived differently and reacted differently from social scientists all the way to physics and natural scientists in a sense that regulation for natural scientists and engineers is a kind of good thing to regulate system to make healthy function.

但监管也带有限制和约束你自由意志与个性的含义。

But regulation also has a connotation that restrict and constrain your free will and your individuality.

取决于

Depending

根据你的观点，监管可能是你的理想，也可能近乎一个脏词。

on your views, regulation could be your ideal, or it could be something close to a dirty word.

但无论你怎么看待，有一点是明确的：每个系统都需要它。

But no matter how you look at it, one thing that's clear about regulation is every system needs it.

我可以用‘监管’这个词，也可以用任何一种机制来描述，这种机制将个体、细胞、神经系统、城市中的人或公司员工组织起来，使其协同运作，而这需要监管。

I could use the word regulation or I could use the word any kind of like mechanism that put the individual or cells or nerve system or people in the city or employees in a company together to function and to make a coherent function requires regulation.

我们称之为监管。

We call it regulation.

海珍和来自圣塔菲研究所的一群研究者考察了人们在维基百科上的协作方式。

Hyejin and a team of researchers from SFI looked at the way people collaborate on Wikipedia.

个体以某种方式聚集在一起，通过这一媒介贡献出连贯的知识体系，他们彼此并不熟悉，却跨越了不同的知识背景，怀着善意共同协作。

Individuals somehow come together to contribute the coherent knowledge structure without knowing each other that much through this medium with a goodwill across different spectrum of knowledge background.

为了在维基百科上创建连贯的结构和文章，规范自然地出现了。

And in order to create coherent structures and articles in Wikipedia, regulation naturally emerges.

这种形成连贯成果的过程中涉及哪些成本？

What are the costs involved in this becoming coherent output?

他们必须彼此交流。

They have to talk to each other.

他们必须相互核对。

They have to check with each other.

有些人必须惩罚那些行为不当的人。

Some people have to punish other people who misbehave.

即使这是一个非常扁平的平台，你也需要管理员的活跃参与。

And even if it is a really flat platform, you also need administrators activity.

最终，你仍然需要规则。

You also need the rules in the end.

归根结底，即使是一个自愿系统，你也需要一些官僚体系。

You also need some bureaucratic systems at the end of the day, even if it is a voluntary system.