Inside Universe 25

那是1958年，在美国马里兰州乡下的一座农场里。

It's 1958 on a farm in rural Maryland in The USA.

在一个大型改造谷仓内，有一位科学家叫约翰·B。

Inside a huge converted barn, a scientist named John B.

卡尔霍恩正蹲在一个巨大的围栏边墙上，里面满是老鼠。

Calhoun is perched on the perimeter wall of an enormous enclosure teeming with rats.

他边观察边做笔记。

He's watching and taking notes.

他开了一个洞，好从上面俯视这群老鼠。

He cuts a hole so he can look down at this rat population.

他拍录像、拍照片，然后让老鼠群体自由繁衍。

He films, he takes photographs, and he allows his population to grow.

他非常了解老鼠，而且算过这些围栏足够容纳大约50只老鼠舒适生活。

Knows a lot about rats, and he's calculated that there's room in these enclosures for around 50 of them to live comfortably.

但里面的数量已经不止这些了。

But there's more than that in here.

他把老鼠数量稳定在八十只，稍微有点太多了，生活不太舒服，然后他观察会发生什么。

He's keeping the population steady at 80, slightly too many for comfort, And he's seeing what happens.

卡尔霍恩开始注意到老鼠中出现了一些异常行为。

Calhoun started to notice a number of aberrant behaviors among the rats.

极端暴力、性行为异常、母性关怀的缺失，

Extreme violence, sexual deviance, the breakdown of maternal care,

各种有点可怕的行为都出现了。

all sorts of somewhat horrifying behaviors that showed up.

可怕、让人不安，你知道，挺意外的。

Horrifying, disturbing, you know, surprising.

这里真的变得非常残酷。

It really becomes a very brutal environment.

这个奇怪实验后来成为现代科学史上最有争议和最有影响力的实验之一，影响到了生态学、心理学、社会学、城市规划等领域，也挑战了我们对于人类该如何共处的理解。

This bizarre experiment was to become one of the most provocative and influential experiments in modern scientific history, sending ripples into the fields of ecology, psychology, sociology, urban planning, and challenging our understanding of how to live together as human beings.

但在1958年的这个时候，他的老鼠们过的是很糟糕的日子。

But at this point, in 1958, his rats are having what can only be described as a really bad time.

他把这描述成老鼠的乌托邦，但后来，正如他所说，变成了地狱。

He describes this as a rat utopia, but it becomes, as he later describes, hell.

你是怎么第一次接触到卡尔霍恩的？

How did you first come across Calhoun?

就是说，你最早是在哪里看到他的研究的？

Like, where did you first encounter his work?

我是在读博士的时候接触到他的研究的。

I came across his work when I was really studying for my PhD.

有一项研究反复出现，那就是约翰·B·卡尔霍恩的老鼠实验。

One study kept popping up, and that was a study of rats by John b Calhoun.

这位是伦敦玛丽女王大学的埃德·拉姆斯登。

This is Ed Ramsden from Queen Mary University in London.

为什么他们老是提到那个老鼠研究？

Why were they continuously referring to the study of rats?

所以我就很好奇。

So I was intrigued.

而且，你知道吗，当你开始看这项研究的时候，它真的非常吸引人。

And, you know, when you begin to look at the study, it is fascinating.

约翰·B·卡尔霍恩，朋友们叫他杰克，出生在田纳西州农村的一个小镇上。

John b Calhoun, or Jack to his friends, is born in a small town in rural Tennessee.

他是个安静、喜欢户外活动的孩子。

He's a quiet, outdoorsy child.

他收集鸟蛋，还在后院养了泥龟。

He collects bird's eggs and keeps terrapins in his backyard.

他确实是个鸟类专家，擅长观察、捕捉和给鸟上环标，正是这些技能让他不断获得奖学金。

He really is an expert bird spotter, trapper, bird bander, and it's those skills that keep getting him scholarships.

他工作极其努力，全身心投入改善人类生活，但他是个非常紧张的人。

He worked extremely long hours and was absolutely dedicated to improving the lives of humanity, but he was an extremely intense person.

卡尔霍恩第一次接触那些后来让他出名的动物是在1939年。

Calhoun's first experience with the animals which would one day make his name is in 1939.

巴尔的摩市有严重的鼠患，于是雇了这位擅长捕鼠的年轻生态学家，来帮助他们想办法消灭老鼠。

The city of Baltimore has a serious rat problem and hires this bright young ecologist with a knack for animal trapping to help them get a handle on how to exterminate them.

他全身心投入到老鼠的世界里，发现了一种极其聪明的小动物，其社会关系比他预想的要复杂得多。

He throws himself headlong into the rat world, and he discovers a fiercely intelligent little animal whose social relationships were much more complex than he was expecting.

巴尔的摩的项目结束了，但卡尔霍恩并没有就此罢手。

The project in Baltimore wraps up, but Calhoun is not done with the rat.

他想更深入地研究，找到一种方法，在比巴尔的摩肮脏的地下室更自然的环境中观察它们。

He wants to go deeper to find a way to observe them in a more naturalistic setting than the grotty basements of urban Baltimore.

于是他开始了他的第一个大型实验。

So he sets up his first big experiment.

他问一位拥有土地的邻居，能否在那里进行一个小实验。

He asked a neighbor who owns the land if he could carry out a little experiment.

我想那位邻居以为只是搭几个小笼子。

And I think the neighbor, he thought it was gonna be like a little few hutches.

结果他建了一个四分之一英亩的围场。

He sets up a quarter acre pen.

这个巨大的围场周围有电网，还有一个20英尺高的观察塔，让卡尔霍恩像神一样俯瞰他的杰作。

This enormous enclosure is surrounded by an electric fence with a 20 foot high observation tower for Calhoun to keep an eye, godlike, on his creation below.

他给它们提供了食物和垫料。

He provided them with food, with bedding.

他打造了一个后来被他称为老鼠的伊甸园，或者说是一个老鼠乌托邦的地方。

He really creates what he later describes as a sort of Garden of Eden for rats or a rat utopia.

当然，他可以观察这些老鼠，毕竟它们是夜行性动物。

So he could watch the rats, of course, nocturnal animals.

他借来了一副夜视仪，这在当时是非常新潮的设备。

He borrowed a pair of night vision goggles, very new thing.

他留下了极其详尽的日志。

He had extremely detailed log books.

我的意思是，细节丰富到了惊人的程度，对吧？

I mean, it's an extraordinary level of detail, isn't it?

你知道的，每一只老鼠都有名字和编号。

You know, every single rat was known and numbered.

发生的每一次打斗都被记录在案。

Every single fight that happened was logged.

我都能想象他戴着那副夜视镜，整天待在那座塔里的样子。

I can just imagine him spending his days in this tower with his night vision goggles on.

对研究人员来说，这也许是一种挺孤独的体验。

Quite an isolating experience maybe for a researcher.

我，我觉得是这样。

I I think so.

对。

Yeah.

当时关于人口增长的认识，很大程度上来自18世纪经济学家托马斯·马尔萨斯的研究。

The understanding about population growth at the time was largely derived from the work of the eighteenth century economist Thomas Malthus.

他的理论是，动物种群的数量会随着资源的多少呈现出相当可预测的兴盛和崩溃周期。

His theory was that animal populations follow fairly predictable boom and bust cycles based on the availability of resources.

动物大量繁殖，呈指数级增长，直到食物耗尽，然后一大批死去，之后周期又重新开始。

Animals breed prolifically, expand exponentially until the food runs out, and then a bunch of them die off, and the cycle starts anew.

卡尔洪估计他那四分之一英亩、食物和水源源不断的围栏，原本可以养活大约5000只老鼠，但实际上从来没有到这个数字。

Calhoun figures that his quarter acre pen with an infinite supply of food and water could have supported a population of around 5,000 rats, but it never gets near that number.

最高也就几百只。

It tops out at a couple of 100.

这就是他想弄明白的地方。

This is what he's trying to understand.

为什么种群数量没有像许多马尔萨斯主义者所担心的那样，持续地、呈指数级增长呢？

Why did the population not expand continuously, exponentially as many Malthusians would have feared?

这并非因为存在天敌捕食。

It wasn't predation.

不是天气的原因。

It wasn't weather.

很明显，是他们社会内部出现了某种崩溃，导致他们无法继续增加数量。

It clearly was something that was breaking down in their society that restricted them from developing their numbers further.

这就把我们带回了二十世纪五十年代末马里兰州乡下的一间谷仓，以及那个让约翰·卡尔霍恩的研究进入公众视野的奇特实验。

And so this brings us back to the barn in rural Maryland at the end of the nineteen fifties and the bizarre experiment which was to launch Calhoun's work into the public consciousness.

目的是试图观察这种社会秩序的瓦解，正是这种秩序将老鼠的数量维持在可持续的水平。

The goal, to try and observe this breakdown in social order, which keeps the rat numbers at sustainable levels.

他让种群数量增长到80只。

He allows the population to grow to 80.

如果有80只，它们本来可以在每个围栏里摊开住20只，那样会有点挤，但还不至于太糟糕。

With 80, they could have spread out at 20 per pen, which would make things a bit uncomfortable, but not ridiculously so.

但事情并没有这样发展。

But this isn't what happens.

要理解这个原本舒适的鼠类乌托邦为何会陷入极端的暴力，你得先了解一下这个围栏的设计。

To understand why this cozy rat utopia descends into abject violence, you've got to understand a little bit about the design of the enclosure.

围栏被分成四个隔间，之间有斜坡连接，方便老鼠来回走动。

It's divided into four chambers with ramps to get from one to the next.

两端的隔间很快就被一只优势雄性老鼠和它的雌性群体占据，它们在那里基本过着安生的生活。

The two end chambers are quickly occupied by a dominant male and his harem of females who live there largely in peace.

但这意味着其他大约60只老鼠，全都挤在剩下的两个围栏里。

But that means that the rest of the population, some 60 or so rats, are crowded into the other two pens.

而在那些地方，鼠群的行为开始真正瓦解。

And in those spaces, the behavior of the population really begins to break down.

老鼠平常单独做的事情，比如吃东西或者梳理毛发，现在都不可避免地变成了社交活动，老鼠们也变得条件反射了。

Activities which a rat would usually do on its own, like feeding or grooming, are now inescapably social activities, and the rats become conditioned.

没过多久，它们除非旁边有其他老鼠，要不然根本不吃东西。

Pretty soon, they won't eat at all unless another rat is close by.

所以他有几张特别震撼的照片，两个饮水嘴紧挨着。

So he has these really striking pictures of two water droppers right next to one another.

一个完全空着，另一个挤满了老鼠。

One is completely empty and the other is crowded with animals.

那些老鼠互相咬，都拼命想挤到同一个水嘴那儿去。

And the animals are biting each other and they're all trying to get to the same water dropper.

因为它们都挤在一起，暴力冲突不断爆发。

And because they're all together, there are continuous outbursts of violence.

它们咬得很深，有些老鼠甚至被咬死了。

They're really biting deep to the point that some of the animals are killed.

还有同类相食的情况。

There's cannibalism.

死亡率飙升，但动物们仍然挤在一起。

The mortality rate soars, and yet the animals continue to cluster together.

有些雄性老鼠的交配行为严重紊乱，会爬跨未发情的雌鼠、其他雄鼠、幼鼠，什么都行。

Some of the males have deeply disturbed mating behavior, mounting females who aren't in heat, other males, juveniles, anything.

雌鼠照顾幼崽的能力越来越差。

The females become less and less able to look after their young.

它们筑巢粗糙，或者根本不筑巢，或者把幼崽遗弃在围栏地上等死。

They build shoddy nests or no nests at all or abandon their pups to die on the enclosure floor.

有些动物则完全退出了这个充满性和暴力的世界。

And some animals withdraw completely from this world of sex and violence.

它们躲到最高的巢箱里，把自己藏起来。

Retreating to the highest nesting boxes, they hide themselves away.

它们不打架，从不交配，也不与其他老鼠互动。

They don't fight, never mate, don't interact with other rats at all.

卡尔霍恩诗意地称这些老鼠为“梦游者”。

Poetically, Calhoun calls these ones the somnambulists, the sleepwalkers.

卡尔霍恩给这一系列怪异行为起了个名字，包括暴力、交配紊乱以及遗弃幼崽。

Calhoun gives a name to this suite of weird behaviors, the violence, disordered mating, and the abandonment of young.

他称之为‘行为沉沦’。

He calls it the behavioral sink.

行为沉沦。

The behavioral sink.

‘行为沉沦’指的是因拥挤而加剧的病态行为。

The behavioral sink captures an exacerbation of pathological behavior that is the result of crowding.

他故意用这个词，就是想让大家产生负面的联想。

He wants us to have negative connotations when he describes it.

一提到“沉沦”这个词，大家想到的不只是道德上的堕落，还有那种肮脏不堪的状态。

When you think of the word sink, you think of moral, not just physical squalor.

所以你会联想到水池、坑洞、废物或者下水道之类的东西。

So you think of a pool, a pit, a waste, a drain.

你觉得，是不是从很早开始，他就把自己的研究当作人类社会的一个隐喻来看待了？

Do you think, even at this early stage, he was already thinking of his work as an analogy for human societies?

我觉得是这样。

I think so.

他用了一些像“少年犯”和“虐待儿童”这样的词来描述老鼠对待幼崽的方式。

He is using language like, you know, juvenile delinquent and child abuse in the way that he describes the treatment of rats towards their pups.

所以这确实是为了让你联想到人类。

So it really is designed to make you think of human beings.

问题是，在卡尔霍恩工作的那个年代，过度拥挤开始成为一个热门话题。

The thing is, at the time Calhoun is working, overcrowding is beginning to become something of a hot button topic.

1930年，全世界大约有20亿人。

There were around 2,000,000,000 people in the world in 1930.

到1950年代末，这个数字接近30亿，人口统计学家开始对看起来呈指数上升的曲线感到紧张。

By the late nineteen fifties, it was approaching 3,000,000,000, and demographers began to be nervous about what looked like an exponential upward curve.

各种预测纷至沓来。

Predictions flooded in.

他们认为，到70年代中期，地球上会再增加10亿人。

Another billion people on Earth by the mid seventies, they thought.

到2000年，可能达到六十亿甚至七十亿。

Six, maybe 7,000,000,000 by the year 2000.

人们担心人类会耗尽资源。

There's a fear that human beings are just going to outstrip resources.

人口学家在卡尔霍恩的实验中看到了社会心理崩溃的清晰指标，许多人认为这是拥挤导致的。

Demographers saw in Calhoun a really clear measure of psychosocial breakdown as a consequence many thought of crowding.

卡尔霍恩把他的实验写成文章发表在《科学美国人》上，效果非常好，用今天的话说，就是火了。

Calhoun writes up his experiment for Scientific American, and it goes well, in today's parlance, we'd say it goes viral.

他的论文成为心理学史上被引用最广的文章之一。

His paper becomes one of the most widely cited articles in the history of psychology.

高密度居住被明确地与高犯罪率、青少年犯罪甚至精神病院入院率联系在一起，“行为沉沦”成了美国城市道德堕落的战斗口号。

High density living is explicitly linked to high crime rates, juvenile delinquency, even admission to mental hospitals, and behavioral sink becomes a rallying cry for the moral rot at the heart of American cities.

在20世纪60年代末，人口争论从学术界蔓延开来，大举进入了公众意识。

In the late nineteen sixties, the population debate escapes from the world of academia and enters the public consciousness in a big way.

导火索之一是一本由夫妻搭档保罗和安妮·埃利希合著的书。

One of the triggers is a book written by husband and wife team Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

他是斯坦福大学的生物学教授，她是堪萨斯大学的生态学家。

He is a Stanford professor of biology, she an ecologist at the University of Kansas.

他们引用卡尔霍恩的研究，描绘了一幅灾难性的未来图景：人口过剩、饥荒、疾病和社会动荡，最终，正如他们所称，走向毁灭的竞赛。

Citing Calhoun's work, they paint a picture of a catastrophic future, an overpopulated world, famine, disease, and social upheaval, and eventually, as they called it, the race to oblivion.

这本书叫《人口炸弹》。

It was called the population bomb.

销量超过两百万册。

It sold over 2,000,000 copies.

在六十年代和七十年代，社会陷入了全面的人口恐慌。

Society in the nineteen sixties and seventies was embroiled in a full scale population panic.

当时有不少书籍、电影等，都遵循马尔萨斯的预测，认为人口呈指数增长，将超过食物供应。

There were quite a few books and movies and things that followed this Malthusian prediction that population was growing exponentially, and it was going to outstrip food supply.

这种观点在科幻作品中反复出现。

And this keeps coming up over and over in science fiction.

梅琳达·米尔斯是牛津大学人口学与人口健康教授。

Melinda Mills is a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford.

你知道，我一直是个喜欢反乌托邦科幻的人，我想这可能也是我进入人口学领域的原因。

You know, I've always been someone that's into dystopian science fiction, and think that's probably how I got into demography as well too.

那时候，查尔顿·赫斯顿主演了《绿色食品》。

Around that time, you had Charlton Heston starring in, Soylent Green.

你知道，当时设定在2022年。

You know, we were in the year 2022.

那时候人口过剩、气候过热、资源枯竭，人类甚至开始吃由死人回收制成的薄饼。

We were overpopulated, overheated, resource depleted, and humans had moved to actually eating wafers that were recycled actually from dead humans.

给没看过《绿色食品》的人剧透一下。

Spoiler alert to people who haven't seen Soylent Green.

是的。

Yes.

哦，抱歉。

Oh, sorry.

是的。

Yes.

没看过的朋友请注意，有剧透哦。

Spoiler alert if you haven't seen it yet.

现在人口学家对增长问题怎么看？

How do demographers feel about growth now?

大家像六七十年代那样担心人口增长吗？

Are we still worried about it in the same way that we were in the sixties and seventies?

嗯，这其实挺有意思的。

Well, it's really interesting.

所以每隔几年，我们就会因为不同的原因陷入这种人口恐慌。

So we get this panic, this population panic every few years for different reasons.

时不时就会冒出一些像‘人口炸弹’那样的歇斯底里言论。

There's this hysterias like the population bomb that come out every once in a while.

但现在的情况是，大家担心低生育率会导致人类灭绝。

But, you know, what we have now is that low fertility is going to result in us going extinct.

几年前埃隆·马斯克发推说，人口崩溃对文明构成的风险比全球变暖还要大。

Elon Musk tweeted a few years ago that population collapse is a risk to civilization, you know, bigger risk than global warming.

我是说，问题有多严重？

I mean, how bad is

问题有多严重？

the problem?

各国对本国生育率下降有多担忧？

How worried are countries about their drinking birth rates?

去年，韩国政府因低生育率宣布国家进入紧急状态。

So last year, the South Korean government declared a national emergency over low fertility rates.

在欧洲，比如匈牙利，最近生育率一直很低。

So in Europe, there's been recently, for example, in Hungary, they've had very low fertility.

所以奥尔班政府出台了很多鼓励生育的政策。

So they have a lot of pronatalist policies, from Orban's government.

但总的来说，这些政策效果不佳。

But generally, those haven't been working.

而且，这确实是整个欧洲面临的一个现实问题。

And I mean, it's a real issue across Europe.

根据联合国的预测，人口增长正在放缓，预计会趋于平稳，并在本世纪晚些时候最终出现逆转。

According to UN predictions, growth is slowing and projected to flatten and eventually reverse later this century.

但目前，人口仍然在增长。

But for now, it's still rising.

撒哈拉以南非洲、尼日利亚、印度的人口数量仍处于高位。

There's still high population levels in Sub Saharan Africa, Nigeria, India.

在卡尔霍恩的实验中，他提出了行为沉沦的概念。

In Calhoun's experiments, he saw this idea of behavioral sinks.

他担心社会的崩溃，

He was concerned about the collapse of society,

你知道，就是所有社会规范的彻底消失。

you know, the the eradication of all societal norms.

我的意思是，在人类社会中，我想这可能会表现为犯罪率上升之类的现象。

I mean, in the human world, I suppose this would translate to high crime, for example.

人口统计学家会担心这些问题吗？

Is that something that demographers are worried about?

对。

Yeah.

所以卡尔霍恩，他从中得到的结论很有意思。

So Calhoun, it was interesting what he drew from his experiments.

我觉得他说的那个“沉沦”其实讲的是环境贫乏，当人们在密集的现代城市里缺少有刺激的环境，或者感到疏离的时候。

I think the sink that he talked about, it was really about, context deprivation when people don't have a stimulating environment or they feel alienated in dense modern cities.

所以真正的主要机制是经济方面的。

So really the main mechanism there is economic.

住房是个很大的问题。

Housing is a really big issue.

就业也是个很大的问题。

Employment is a big issue.

所以并不只是人口密度本身的问题。

So it's not population density per se.

人口过密，其实关乎的是消费。

Overpopulation, it's actually about consumption.

一个美国人一个月的能源消耗量，相当于一个印度人一年的消耗量。

An average American consumes the same amount of energy in one month than an average Indian does in one year.

从卡尔霍恩等人的研究中衍生出的那种人口末日论，有趣的一点在于，他本人其实完全不信这一套。

The curious thing about the population doomism which emerged from the work of Calhoun and others is that himself didn't subscribe to it at all.

他一向乐观，认为他的老鼠实验为我们提供了一个契机，让我们能在为时已晚之前重新思考当下的生活方式。

Ever the optimist, he believed his rat research was offering us an opportunity to rethink how we live now before it's too late.

他支持改善精神病院物理设计的项目，以便给患者更多的隐私空间，还曾在一桩备受关注的监狱拥挤案件中以专家证人身份出庭作证。

He supports projects improving the physical design of mental institutions to give patients more privacy, and he testifies in court as an expert witness in a high profile case about overcrowding in prisons.

他积极反对贫民窟清理政策，因为这种政策往往把居民赶走，却很少考虑他们最终的去向。

He campaigns against the policy of slum clearances, which often displace the inhabitants with little regard for where they end up.

与此同时，在学术界，研究人员仍然热衷于探究他在老鼠身上的研究结果是否真的适用于人类世界。

Meanwhile, back in the world of academia, researchers are still keen to find out whether his work on rats really translates into the human world.

其中一位是加州大学的社会生态学家，名叫丹·斯托克斯。

Among them is a social ecologist at the University of California called Dan Stokels.

我觉得这项研究非常有说服力，我开始思考，在这种高密度环境中生活的人类，是否也会出现类似老鼠群体中观察到的那些负面行为。

I thought the work was pretty powerful, and I began to wonder whether the kinds of negative behaviors that observed in this rat colony would also be typical of humans living in highly dense environments.

如今，丹是加州大学社会生态学院的荣休校长教授。

Today, Dan is chancellor's professor emeritus at the University of California in the school of social ecology.

早在六十年代初，他对那些关于高密度居住的悲观预言持怀疑态度。

Back in the early nineteen sixties, he was skeptical about the doom laden prophecies about high density living.

我也想到，密度往往是人们想要的。

It occurred to me also that density was often desirable.

比如说，人们喜欢人多的热闹派对，或者喜欢去看体育比赛、足球赛或橄榄球赛，那里人山人海，有一种兴奋感。

For example, people like highly dense crowded parties, or they like to go to athletic games, soccer matches, or football games where there are a lot of people, and there's a kind of excitement around that.

所以我开始思考密度和拥挤之间的区别。密度是指单位空间里有很多人这种物理状态，而拥挤是一种心理感受，我觉得那是一种更负面的主观状态，人们觉得自己没有足够空间去做需要做的事。

So I began to think about distinction between density and crowding, where density is the physical condition of a large number of people per unit space, and how that was different than the psychological sense of crowding, which I viewed as a more negative subjective state where people felt that they didn't have enough space for what they needed to do.

丹在六十年代末做自己的实验时，发现这种区别确实存在。

When Dan did his own lab experiments back in the late sixties, he found this distinction bore out.

他把几组学生聚在一起，有的挤在小房间里，有的分散在大房间里，然后让他们做任务。

He got groups of students together, either packed into a small room or more spread out in a larger one, and then he made them do tasks.

房间的大小似乎不太影响人们的舒适感，除非他把他们放到一个棘手的社交场景中。

The size of the room didn't seem to make much difference to people's comfort levels unless he put them in a tricky social situation.

被要求互相竞争的参与者无论房间大小都报告感到拥挤，但在较小的房间里这种负面影响被放大了。

Participants who were made to compete with each other reported feeling crowded in both rooms no matter the size, but the negative impact was magnified in the smaller room.

当处于更加负面或压力大的社交情境时，他们表达出了更强的拥挤感和负面反应。

When you had a more negative or taxing social situation, they were the ones expressing higher feelings of crowding and negative reactions to it.

对。

Right.

你提到负面反应，我想问的是，拥挤的心理影响是什么？

And when you say negative reactions, I mean, what are the psychological effects of crowding?

有些研究表明，当人们处于高密度环境时，他们会感受到主观拥挤带来的烦恼，表现出更多的烦躁、易怒和攻击倾向。

Well, some studies have shown that when people are in highly dense situations, they feel that annoyance of subjective crowding, do manifest more irritation, irritability, aggressive tendencies.

但我觉得，如果要重现老鼠实验中的严重效应，在人类研究中我没看到这种情况。

But I think in terms of trying to replicate the severe effects that found in the rats, I don't see that in the human research.

大约在那时，斯坦福心理学家乔纳森·弗里德曼出版了一本有影响力的书，叫《拥挤与行为：高密度生活的心理学》。

Around this time, the Stanford psychologist Jonathan Friedman brought out an influential book called crowding and behavior, the psychology of high density living.

他认为密度本身并不会对人产生负面影响，而是其他消极因素，比如贫困或缺乏隐私，才是导致负面行为和攻击性的原因。

He suggested that density did not have negative effects on people, but rather it was the other kinds of negative situations such as poverty or lack of privacy, which accounted for negative behaviors, aggression.

如果你控制了住房质量，或者给人们更多隐私，这些密度带来的影响就会消失。

And if you controlled for quality of housing or you gave people more privacy, these effects of density would go away.

以前，想避免拥挤感，只要关上家门就行了。

Avoiding the feeling of crowding used to be as simple as shutting your front door.

但如今，丹说还有其他方式会让我们感到被挤占，而这些方式更难逃避。

But today, Dan says there are other ways we can end up feeling crowded out, ways that are harder for us to escape.

人们正在应对超负荷的数字刺激和网络信息轰炸。

People are managing an overload of digital stimulation and cyber messaging.

这会让人即使在自己身边的主要环境里，也感到不安。

Can make people feel less secure even in their immediate primary environments.

天哪。

Gosh.

这真的太有意思了。

That's so interesting.

我以前真没想过，面对24小时不停滚动播出的新闻或者社交媒体，那种应接不暇的感觉。

I'd never really thought about the kind of overwhelm that you get when faced with constant twenty four hour rolling news or or social media

是的。

Yes.

这可能是某种过度拥挤的产物。

Could be a product of a kind of an overcrowding.

这是一种通过设备产生的间接拥挤感。

It's kind of a vicarious crowding through their devices.

需要处理的信息量实在太大了。

There's just much more volume of information to process.

卡尔霍恩自己的实验室工作并没有放慢脚步。

Calhoun's own lab work isn't slowing down.

到了六十年代末，他从老鼠换成了小鼠，体型更小的动物，这样他就能在啮齿类动物的宇宙里塞进更多。

By the late sixties, he switched from rats to mice, smaller animals, so he can fit more of them into his rodent universes.

最著名的就是宇宙25号。

The most famous one is Universe 25.

在这里，他表现得非常有野心。

Here he's being really ambitious.

我是说，在他之前的所有研究中，他都在某个时间点中断了研究。

I mean, in all his previous studies, he's interrupted the studies at a certain point.

所以他没有让一个种群从最初播种一直运行到终点。

So he hasn't let a population run from the first seeding to their endpoint.

这就是他对宇宙25号所做的。

So this is what he does with Universe 25.

它看起来确实像那个科幻空间。

It really does look like this science fiction space.

我是说，它看起来有点像《银翼杀手》那种感觉。

I mean, it looks a bit sort of a Braid Runner kind of thing.

他在围栏的侧面建了这些墙，非常高，是它们的家。

He's he's got these walls up the sides of the pen, which are very high, are the homes.

所以它们看起来像是给老鼠住的小公寓楼。

So they look like little apartment buildings for mice.

而且，他再次称之为啮齿动物的乌托邦。

And again, he calls it rodent utopia.

随着条件越来越拥挤，他目睹了行为沉沦的出现，也就是小鼠社会秩序的崩溃。

As conditions get more crowded, he witnesses the emergence of a behavioral sink, the breakdown of the mouse social order.

母鼠对幼崽的照顾变得不规律。

Maternal care becomes erratic.

能活到成年的幼鼠寥寥无几。

Very few pups make it to adulthood at all.

但正是那些在混乱、拥挤、暴力动荡中活下来的幼鼠，卡尔霍恩对它们越来越着迷。

But the pups that did survive in this chaotic, crowded, violent turmoil, it was these animals that Calhoun became increasingly fascinated with.

它们看起来健康状况非常好。

They look like they're in really healthy condition.

它们的皮毛很漂亮。

They've got beautiful coats.

它们看起来吃得非常好。

They look very well fed.

但他认为，这是因为它们已经不再真正按照老鼠的行为方式来活了。

But this, he argues, is because they've stopped effectively behaving as mice.

这些被动又冷漠的动物，他之前诗意地称作“梦游者”，现在又给了它们更花哨的名字。

The passive apathetic animals that he poetically described as somnambulists in his previous paper here get an even more fanciful name.

他管它们叫“美丽的那群”。

He calls them the beautiful ones.

它们不争地盘、不争领地、不争雌性，也不争食物。

They don't compete with one another for space, for territory, for females, for food.

没有任何打斗。

There's no fighting.

它们几乎彻底退出了所有互动。

There's almost complete withdrawal.

最终，“宇宙25号”的出生率降到了零。

Eventually, the birth rate in Universe 25 drops to zero.

所有正处于繁殖年纪的老鼠，都变成了这些漂亮的空壳。

All the breeding age mice are now these beautiful empty vessels.

它们只是吃、睡、舔毛，其他什么都不干。

They eat, they sleep, and they groom and do very little else.

他觉得这有点像，嗯，其实是发育停滞了。

He thinks they're sort of it's it's an arrested development, really.

它们表现得好像还是很小很小的老鼠。

They behave as if they're still very, very young mice.

它们活得很舒服，但不繁殖，最终会慢慢灭绝。

They exist very comfortably, but they don't reproduce and they will eventually just die out.

最后一只老鼠，我记得是在1972年12月死的，这事还上了《纽约时报》。

The last, I think, mouse dies in December 1972, and this is actually reported in the New York Times.

他们给最后那只老鼠发了个小小的讣告。

They have a little death notice for the for the last the last mouse.

它死的时候相当于老鼠的108岁，差不多那样。

Who died at a mouse equivalent age of, I think, like, 108, something like that.

108岁。

108.

对。

Yeah.

对。

Yeah.

宇宙25号再次登上了新闻头条。

Universe '25 made headlines again.

《时代》杂志来采访，拍下了一张如今已成为经典的合影：他骄傲地站在他的宇宙中心，白色的小老鼠在他脚边跑来跑去。

Time Magazine came to interview and took a now iconic photo of him standing proudly in the middle of his universe, little white mice running over his feet.

他的工作至今仍激起涟漪，并不断启发着新的研究。

His work is still making ripples and inspiring research to this day.

我读卡尔霍恩的论文时，确实觉得那些内容很有意思。

When I read Calhoun's papers, I mean, I I found them really interesting.

我是说，他当时无疑做了开拓性的工作。

I mean, there's no doubt that he did groundbreaking work at the time.

对吧？

Right?

这真的很有意思。

It's really interesting stuff.

我觉得我们做的工作为思考密度的影响提供了新的视角。

And I think the work that we did was offering fresh perspective to thinking about the effects of density.

我叫奥利弗·宋，是加州大学心理学系的助理教授。

So my name is Oliver Sung, and I'm an assistant professor in psychology at the University of California.

我实际上借鉴了动物行为学的观点，并将其应用于思考人类的社会行为。

I actually draw upon ideas from animal behavior and apply to thinking about human social behavior.

奥利弗自己做过关于人口密度心理影响的研究。

Oliver's done his own research into the psychological effects of population density.

几年前，他研究了进化生态学中的一个概念，叫做生活史理论。

A couple of years ago, he was investigating a concept in evolutionary ecology called life history theory.

生活史理论的基本前提是，对所有生物来说，时间和精力都是有限的。

The very fundamental premise of life history theory is that for all organisms, time and energy is limited.

生物需要弄清楚如何最好地生存和繁殖。

Organisms need to figure out how to best survive and reproduce.

生物可以选择快节奏或慢节奏的生活方式。

Organisms can live life fast or slow.

快节奏的生命史策略就是快速成长、马上繁殖，尽量多生孩子。

A fast life history looks like grow quickly, breed immediately, and have as many babies as possible.

不是所有孩子都能活下来，不过没关系，因为你会生更多。

Not all of them will survive, but that's okay because you'll just have more.

而另一个极端，慢节奏的生活策略讲究的是投入。

At the other end of the spectrum, a slow life strategy is all about investment.

慢慢长大，一路积累资源。

Grow up slowly, accruing resources along the way.

只生少数几个孩子，然后投入所有资源去养育他们。

Have just a few babies and invest all those resources in raising them.

我觉得有个很好的说法，就是重质不重量。

I think a nice way of putting it is that it's it's a focus on quality over quantity.

生命史理论这个概念也用来分析物种内部个体之间的差异。

The concept of life history theory is also used to tease out the differences between individuals within a species.

比如有些老鼠的生活方式可能要比其他老鼠更慢。

Some rats, for example, might live slower than others.

在行为生态学领域，人口密度较高的环境往往更倾向于慢速生活策略。

And in the field of behavioral ecology, a more densely populated environment tends to favor a slower life strategy.

你其实在蜥蜴和鱼类身上也能看到类似的模式。

You actually see kind of similar patterns in lizards, in fish.

对吧？

Right?

而我的研究实际上就是想看看这在人类身上是否也会出现。

And what my research was actually really simply trying to see if this actually would show up in humans too.

奥利弗和他的团队收集了世界各国的数据，确实在人类中发现了这种相关性。

Oliver and his team compiled data from countries all over the world, and they did indeed find a correlation in humans.

生活在更密集环境中的人确实生育更少，并且更倾向于在教育、培训和职业发展上投入更多。

People living in more dense conditions do have fewer children and tend to invest more in things like education, training, and building a career.

总的来说，你会看到一个相当一致的模式。

In general, you see a pretty consistent pattern.

即使我们把城市化因素考虑进去，人口密度本身仍然与较慢的生活史相关。

Population density itself is still associated with a slower life history even after we take urbanization into account.

但具体是怎么起作用的呢？

But how does this actually work?

夫妻们肯定不会因为下载了人口密度数据，才决定要不要生孩子。

Couples certainly aren't downloading demographic data about population density before they decide whether or not to have kids.

所以奥利弗认为，背后一定有更微妙的因素在起作用，是我们心理深处的某种机制，在潜意识里推动我们选择更快或更慢的生活节奏。

So Oliver thought, there must be something more subtle at play, something deep in our psychology that nudges us subconsciously, faster, or slower.

我们当时很好奇：能不能仅仅通过告知人们周围环境变得拥挤，就让他们暂时进入这种更慢的生活模式？

We were curious, like, could we actually activate this slower life history in people, even just momentarily, with information that the environment around them is getting more crowded?

他做了两项研究。

He did two studies.

在第一项研究中，参与者需要阅读一篇关于人口增长问题的新闻报道。

In the first, participants had to read a newspaper article reporting on the problem of a growing population.

在第二项研究中，他们只是让参与者坐着听扬声器里播放的人群嘈杂声。

In the second, they just made them sit and listen to crowd noise played in on a speaker.

然后我们让他们回答一些问题，这些问题涉及他们生活史的各个方面。

Then we had them respond to some questions that got at, you know, various aspects of their life history.

比如说，他们会不会想组建家庭？

Like, you know, would they want to start a family?

他们想生几个孩子呢？

You know, how many children do they wanna have?

就是这样之类的问题。

Stuff like that.

他们还问了一些问题，想看看他们的想法有多面向未来。

They also asked them questions to see how future oriented their thinking was.

比如，其中有个问题是，你愿意现在拿100美元，还是愿意等一个月拿150美元？

So for example, like, one of the questions kind of goes like, would you prefer a $100 today, or would you be willing to wait for a $150, like, you know, a month from now?

如果人们选第二种选项，愿意等更大的金额，那就说明他们在想着未来。

So if people choose the second option, they are willing to wait for the larger amount of money, that shows that they are thinking about the future.

那些听了人群噪音或读了文章的人，报告说想要更少的情感伴侣和更少的孩子，而且更倾向于选择以后拿更多的钱。

Participants who listened to the crowd or read the article reported wanting fewer romantic partners and fewer children, and they more often opted to take the larger sum of money further down the road.

他们的思维方式已经转向为未来做打算了。

Their thinking had been shifted towards investing in their future.

我觉得我的研究大概表明，可能存在某种自我调节的心理机制。

I think what my research sort of suggests is that perhaps there is some sort of self regulation psychology.

在人口密集的环境中，你会看到人们生的孩子越来越少，然后人口密度可能会下降。

In dense environments, you start seeing people having fewer and fewer kids, and then you might see density go down.

谁知道呢？

Who knows?

对吧？

Right?

这跟卡尔霍恩的“行为沉沦”理论完全是相反的叙事，不是吗？

I mean, this is quite a counter narrative to the idea of, you know, Calhoun's behavioral sink, isn't it?

确实，描绘出来的画面非常不同。

I mean, so the picture that gets painted is really quite different.

它把人们看作非常主动的行动者。

It sees people as, you know, very active agents.

他们专注于提升自己，培养技能、能力和知识。

They're focusing on building themselves, their skills and abilities and knowledge.

就像卡尔霍恩实验里的一些老鼠，身体完全健康，但它们就是拒绝进行任何社交互动。

Like some rats in Calhoun's experiments were completely healthy, but they just refused to engage in any social interaction.

那些就是所谓的被动‘梦游者’，也就是我们说的‘美丽的一代’。

These were the passive sleepwalker rats, the somnambulists, the beautiful ones.

也许其中一些老鼠其实是在试图放缓自己的生活节奏，以便更好地提升自身能力。

Maybe some of those rats were actually trying to sort of slowing their life history to actually build their abilities.

不过，当然啦，卡尔霍恩的实验存在一个问题，

But, of course, the problem here is that in Calhoun's experiments,

当时并没有

there wasn't a

太多机会，你知道的，让老鼠们去建造什么东西。

lot of maybe opportunity, you know, for the rats to build anything.

所以我觉得，用这种生命史视角来思考密度带来的影响，能带来一些很有趣的见解。

And so I I I think there are some interesting insights to kind of, like, applying this life history approach thinking about the the effects of density.

卡尔洪在七十年代进行的最后一批啮齿动物实验，不再聚焦于识别过度拥挤的问题，而是转向寻找解决方案。

Calhoun's final rodent experiments in the nineteen seventies move away from identifying the problems of overpopulation and move instead towards solutions.

他想展示的是，通过更好的设计，其实可以解决很多拥挤带来的问题。

He wants to show how you can actually solve a lot of these problems with crowding with better design.

他创造了最后一个宇宙。

He creates one final universe.

这次他又回到了老鼠身上。

He's back on the rats this time.

他控制它们的去向和互动对象，并给它们布置任务，鼓励合作。

He controls where they go and who they interact with and gives them tasks which encourage cooperation.

所以这些动物必须一起完成某些任务才能得到水。

So the animals would have to do certain things in order to get water together.

所以他在动物之间建立一种利他意识。

So he's building a sense of altruism among the animals.

所以这个想法是，如果你控制好空间，设计得更好，你就能在拥挤的环境中创造出更小、更有韧性的社区。

So the idea is that if you control the space, design it better, you can actually create smaller, more resilient communities within a crowded environment.

最后，当然，以典型的卡尔霍恩风格，他宣称自己创造了超级老鼠。

And in the end, of course, in typical Calhoun style, he declares he's created super rats.

它们在高人口密度下不会遇到同样的问题，所以暴力行为少得多。

They don't suffer the same problems when it comes to higher population density, so there's much less violence.

所以他认为，如果我们能对老鼠做到这一点，那么，你知道，这些就是我们人类需要思考的想法。

So he thinks if we can do that with rats, then, you know, these are sort of ideas that we need to think about for human beings.

有意思的是，他的工作描绘了社会崩溃的灾难性情景，反而比提出解决方案的工作更出名。

It's interesting that his work that paints a sort of catastrophic picture of a potential societal collapse is more well known and more famous than the work that proposes solutions.

对。

Yeah.

这让他一直很困扰。

That always bothered him.

很多人利用他的研究说，人类会被彻底毁灭。

A lot of people were using his work and saying, oh, the human race is gonna be just completely destroyed.

他总是责备他们说，你们必须保持乐观。

He was always chastising them saying, you have to remain optimistic.

我们是非常适应环境的物种，如果能更有效地设计，很多问题都是可以解决的。

We're an extremely adaptable species, and if we could somehow design more effectively, we could solve a lot of these problems.

我们需要哲学家、思想家、政策制定者、设计师、建筑师一起合作，来解决世界的问题。

We needed philosophers, thinkers, policymakers, designers, architects to come together and solve the world's problems.

反正他是这么想的。

That's what he thought anyway.