#433 – 萨拉·沃克：生命的物理学、时间、复杂性及外星生命

而且进化过程，至少是达尔文式的进化过程，大多数进化过程，它们不是发生在个体层面，而是发生在种群层面。

And the evolutionary process, least at the Darwinian evolutionary process, most evolutionary processes, they don't happen at the level of individuals, they happen at the level of population.

所以，你又会遇到像我们之前讨论自我维持定义时的情况，就是说种群是活的，但个体不是，因为种群会进化，而个体不会。

So again, you would be saying something like what we saw with the self sustaining definition, which is that populations are alive, but individuals aren't because populations evolve and individuals don't.

而且显然，也许你活着是因为你的肠道微生物在进化，但莱克斯作为一个实体，按照经典的进化理论，现在并没有在进化。

And obviously, like, maybe you're alive because, you know, your gut microbiome is evolving, but Lex as an entity right now is not evolving by canonical theories of evolution.

在试图解释生命的组装理论中，进化的概念要宽泛得多。

In assembly theory, which is attempting to explain life, evolution is a much broader thing.

所以

So

那么在组装理论下，一个个体生物体也能进化吗？

So an an individual organism can evolve under assembly theory?

是的。

Yes.

你一直在构建你自己。

You're constructing yourself all the time.

组装理论讲的是构建，以及宇宙如何选择让事物存在。

Assembly theory is about construction and how the universe selects for things to exist.

如果你把所有东西重新定义，比如把种群看作一个活的有机体，那会怎样？

What if you reformulate everything like a population is a living organism?

那也没问题。

So That's fine too.

但这又回到了之前说的，我觉得所有这些定义，我们可以抠字眼。

But but this again gets back to so so I think what all of the you know, like we can nitpick at definitions.

我觉得这么做不是特别有用，但对我来说，这么做很有趣。

I don't think it's like incredibly helpful to do it, but the reason for for me It's fun.

很有趣。

Is fun.

真的很有趣。

It is really fun.

而且实际上，我确实觉得这有用，因为当你看到这些定义都站不住脚的时候，你要么得继续强行坚持你对生命的看法，要么就得承认这些定义之所以都失效，是有原因的。

And actually, I do I do think it's useful in the sense that when you see the way the ways that they all break down, you either have to keep forcing in your like sort of conception of life you want to have or you have to say all these definitions are breaking down for a reason.

也许我应该采用一个更宽泛的定义，把我觉得和生命有关的所有东西都包括进去。

Maybe I should adopt a more expansive definition that encompasses all the things that I think and our life.

所以对我来说，生命就是信息在时间和空间上组织物质的过程。

And so for me, I think life is the process of how information structures matter over time and space.

生命的一个例子就是，在一个星球上涌现出来的东西，它产生了一个开放式的、不断生成结构和增加复杂性的级联过程，这就是生命。

And an an example of life is what emerges on a planet and yields an open ended cascade of generation of structure and increasing complexity, and this is the thing that life is.

而任何个体都只是这些谱系中的一个特定实例，这些谱系在时间上是有结构的。

And any individual is just a particular instance of these lineages that are, you know, structured across time.

所以我们太关注这些个体了，它们只是这个更大因果结构中的短暂瞬间，而这个结构才是我们星球上真正的生命。

And so we focus so much on these individuals that are these short temporal moments in this larger causal structure that actually is the life on our planet.

我觉得这就是为什么这些定义会失效，因为它们不够普遍，不够通用，不够深刻，也不够抽象，无法真正捕捉到那种规律性。

And I think that's why these definitions break down because they're not general enough, they're not universal enough, they're not deep enough, they're not abstract enough to actually capture that regularity.

因为我们太关注那些短暂的东西了。

Because we're focused on those that little afarmeral thing

人类生命就是如此。

Fall is human life.

亚里士多德关注的是，重物因为像土所以下落，轻物因为像气所以漂浮。

Aristotle focusing on, you know, heavy things falling because they're earth like and, you know, things floating because they're air like.

这关注点就错了。

It's the wrong thing to focus on.

那如果我们只关注这么短的时间段，我们到底错过了什么？

So what what exactly are we missing by focusing on that such a short span of time?

我觉得我们错过了自己大部分的本质。

I think we're missing most of what we are.

最近我一直在思考这个问题，感受特别强烈。

So one of the issues I've been thinking about this all, like, really viscerally lately.

做理论物理挺奇怪的，因为我觉得它真的会改变你的大脑结构。

It's weird when you do theoretical physics because I think it, like, literally changes the structure of your brain.

你会用不同的方式看世界，尤其是当你试图构建新的抽象概念时。

And you see the world differently, especially when you're trying to build new abstractions.

你觉得作为理论物理学家，是不是很容易走火入魔，陷入疯狂？

Do you think it's possible if you're a theoretical physicist that like it's easy to fall off the cliff and go descend into madness?

我觉得你总是处在那个边缘，但作为科学家，努力严谨地做事，这能让你保持清醒。

I mean, I think you're always on the edge of it, but I think what is amazing about being a scientist, and trying to do things rigorously is it keeps your sanity.

所以如果我不是理论物理学家，我可能就不太正常了。

So I think if I wasn't a theoretical physicist, I would I would be probably not sane.

但它强迫你做到的是，你必须把自己放在火上烤，就像我脑海中的这些抽象概念必须真正对应现实，而且我必须一直去验证它们。

But what it forces you to do is hold the like, you have to hold yourself to the fire of like, these abstractions in my mind have to really correspond to reality and I have to really test that all the time.

所以我喜欢构建新的抽象概念，也喜欢去那些非常有创造力的空间，那些人们现在不认为是我们理解世界方式一部分的地方。

And so I love building new abstractions and I love going to those like incredibly creative, you know, spaces that people don't see as part of the way that we understand the world now.

但最终，我必须确保我从那个空间里拿出来的东西是真正有用的，并且真正与我之外的世界相关。

But ultimately, I have to make sure that whatever I'm pulling from that space is something that's really usable and really like relates to the world outside of me.

这就是科学。

That's what science is.

所以我们刚才在讨论，当我们只看一小段时间和一小片空间时，我们会错过什么。

So we were talking about what we're missing when we look at a small stretch of time and a small stretch of space.

问题在于，我们的感知进化成以某种方式看待现实。

So the issue is we evolve perception to see reality a certain way.

所以对我们来说，空间很重要，而时间感觉转瞬即逝。

So for us, space is really important and time feels fleeting.

而且，你知道，我职业生涯的大部分时间里，有一位非常棒的导师，保罗·戴维斯。

And I I, you know, I I had a really wonderful mentor, Paul Davies, most of my career.

保罗很了不起，因为他总是会给出一些像小种子一样的思维实验。

And Paul's amazing because he gives these like little seed thought experiments all the time.

比如，你知道，他以前经常问我一个问题，那是我做博士后的时候。

Like, you know, something he used to ask me all the time was when I was a postdoc.

这有点跑题，但就是，你知道，如果你考虑长远的未来之类的事情，宇宙中有多少部分可以被转化成技术。

This is kind of a random tangent, but was like, you know, how much of the universe be could be converted into technology if you were thinking about like, you know, long term futures and stuff like that.

这像是个奇怪的思维实验，但里面有很多深刻的东西。

And it's like a weird thought experiment, but like there's a lot of deep things there.

我确实经常思考，我们与现实互动的方式受限于我们进化出的特定结构，所以我们并没有看到一切。

And I do think a lot about the fact that we're really limited in our interactions with reality by the particular architectures that we evolved, And so we're not seeing everything.

事实上，我们的技术一直在告诉我们这一点，因为它让我们以新的方式看世界，基本上就是让我们能以原本不可能的方式去感知世界。

And in fact, our technology tells us this all the time because it allows us to see the world in new ways by basically allowing us to perceive the world in ways that we couldn't otherwise.

所以我想说的是，我觉得生命体其实非常庞大。

And so what I'm getting at with this is I think that living objects are actually huge.

它们可以说是宇宙中最大的结构之一，但它们的庞大不在于空间，而在于时间。

Like, they're some of the biggest structures in the universe, but they are not big in space, they are big in time.

而我们实际上无法察觉到这个特征。

And we actually can't resolve that feature.

我们平时并不会接触到它。

We don't interact with it on a regular basis.

所以我们把它们看作短暂存在的东西，有着很短的时钟时间，却看不到它们有多大。

So we see them as these fleeting things that have this really short temporal clock time without seeing how large they are.

我在这里说的时间，我觉得大家可以把它想象成因果结构。

When I'm saying time here, I really like the way that people could picture it is in terms of causal structure.

如果你想想宇宙的历史如何走到你这一步，并想象那整个历史就是你，那这就是我看待每一个生命体时脑海中的画面。

So if you think about the history of the universe to get to you and you imagine that that entire history is you, that is the the picture I have in my mind when I look at every living thing.

所以你每件事都有一条推文。

So you have a you have a tweet for everything.

你发过推文说“难道不是每个人吗？”

You tweeted Doesn't everyone?

你有很多富有诗意、深奥的推文。

You have a lot of poetic profound tweets.

谢谢。

Thank you.

这些推文像谜题一样，需要很长时间才能理解。

They're puzzles that take a long time to figure out.

嗯，你知道是什么吗？

Well, know what it is?

关键在于，这些推文难写是因为要把一个很深刻的想法压缩到很短的空间里，我非常喜欢做这种智力练习，因为我觉得这对我很有帮助。

The trick is, the reason they're hard to write is because it's compressing a very deep idea into a short amount of space, and I really like doing that intellectual exercise because I find it productive for me.

不过，这是一种非常有趣的压缩算法。

It's a very interesting kind of compression algorithm though.

我喜欢语言。

I like language.

我觉得玩起来真的很有意思。

I think it's really fun to play with.

我在想AI能不能把它解压出来。

I wonder if AI can decompress it.

那会很有趣。

That'd be interesting.

我

I

我很想试试这个，但我觉得我使用语言的方式有些非标准，而且我是故意这么做的，所以我很想知道AI会怎么理解它。

I would like to try this, but I think I use language in certain ways that are non canonical and I do it very purposefully, and it would be interesting to me how AI would interpret it.

你的推文对超级智能来说会是一个很好的图灵测试。

Your tweets would be a good Turing test for this for for superintelligence.

话说回来，你发过一条推文，说事物之所以看起来是涌现的，只是因为我们看不见时间。

Anyway, you tweeted that things only look emergent because we can't see time.

那如果我们能看见时间，世界会是什么样子？

So if we could see time, what would the world look like?

你是说你能看到某个物体经历的一切，每一个步骤，直到它成为现在这个样子，以及所有促成这种演变的相互作用。

You're saying you'll be able to see everything that an object has been, every step of the way that led to this current moment and all the interactions that required to make that evolution happen.

你会看到一条巨大的尾巴。

You would see this gigantic tail.

宇宙在时间维度上比在空间维度上要大得多。

The universe is far larger in time than it is in

空间。

space.

而这个星球是宇宙中最大的物体之一。

And this planet is one of the biggest things in the universe.

而且，越复杂的东西，就越大。

Also, the more complexity, the bigger.

所以，对。

So like, yeah.

技术圈。

Technosphere.

我觉得现代技术圈是我们在宇宙中已知的时间上最大的物体。

I think the the modern Technosphere is the largest object in time in the universe that we know about.

你说技术圈，具体指什么？

And when you say Technosphere, what do you mean?

我指的是这个星球上生命与技术的全球一体化。

I mean, the global integration of life and technology on this planet.

所以所有那些技术性的东西都是被创造出来的？

So all the things all the technological things were created?

但我不认为它们是分开的。

But I don't think of them as separate.

它们和产生它们的结构非常紧密地结合在一起。

They're, like, very integrated with the structure that generated them.

所以你可以想象时间在不断分叉，产生新的结构。

So you can almost imagine it like time is constantly bifurcating, and it's generating new structures.

这些新结构，你知道的，正在局部地构建未来。

And these new structures are, you know, locally constructing the future.

所以像你和我这样的人在时间上非常接近，因为我们没有在宇宙历史的早期就分道扬镳。

And so things like you and I are very close together in time because we didn't diverge like very early in the history universe.

那是很近期的事。

It's very recent.

我觉得这也是为什么我们能如此理解彼此，能有效沟通的原因之一。

And I think this is one of the reasons that we can understand each other so well and we can communicate effectively.

我可能能感受到你的一些感受，但你知道，其他生物在时间上更早地与我们分开了。

And I might have some sense of what it feels like to be you, but, you know, other organisms bifurcated from us in time earlier.

这其实就是系统发育的概念。

This is just the concept of phylogeny.

但如果你深入思考，真正把它看作产生生命的物理结构，并认真对待这一点，那么所有的因果关系仍然包含在我们今天观察到的物体中。

But if you take that deeper and you really think about that as the structure of the physics that generates life and you take that very seriously, all of that causation is is still bundled up in the objects we observe today.

所以，你和我在这个时间结构中是接近的，而且我们之所以如此接近，是因为我们真的很大，我们只是在嵌入我们体内的最近时刻才变得非常不同。

And so so you and I are are close in this temporal structure, but we're also and we're so close because we're really big, and we only are very different in sort of like the most recent moments in the time that's like embedded in us.

很难用语言来描述脑海中的画面。

It's hard to use words to visualize what's in minds.

我有时候真的很难做到这一点。

I have such a hard time with this sometimes.

我在来的路上其实就在想这个。

I'm like I like I actually was thinking on the way over here.

就像，你知道，你脑子里有画面，但很难用语言表达出来。

Was like I like, you know, you have pictures in your brain and then they're hard to put into words.

但我发现我总说我有画面，但其实不是画面，而是一种感觉。

But I realized I always say I have a visual, but it's not actually I have a visual that I have a feeling.

因为很多时候我其实没法在脑子里画出我所说的东西的画面，但有时候它们会先经过一个画面，然后才变成语言。

Because oftentimes I cannot actually draw a picture in my mind for the things that I say, but sometimes they go through a picture before they get to words.

但我喜欢用文字做实验，因为我觉得文字能帮助描绘画面。

But I like experimenting with words because I think they help paint pictures.

对。

Yes.

这又是一种压缩的感觉，你可以通过它来获取你脑海中那个更大画面的感知。

It's again some kind of compressed feeling that you can query to get a a sense of the bigger visualization that you have in mind.

这真的是一种很棒的压缩。

It's just a really nice compression.

但我觉得，这个物体包含了你现在看到的某个实体的所有历史信息，光是想象一下这个就挺酷的。

But I think the idea of this object that in it contains all the information about the history of an entity that you see now, just trying to visualize that is pretty cool.

当然，当你往回追溯几秒、几分钟，思维很快就会跟不上。

It's I mean, obviously, the mind breaks down quickly as you step seconds and minutes back in time.

确实。

But For sure.

我觉得它就是一个巨大的物体。

I I guess it's just a gigantic object

我们应该考虑的是这个。

We're supposed to be thinking about.

我也这么觉得。

I think so.

而且我觉得，这就是为什么我们人类有如此强的抽象能力，因为我们本身就很庞大，能回溯的空间也很大。

And I think this is one of the reasons that we have such an ability to abstract as humans because we are so gigantic that, like, the space that we can go back into is really large.

所以，你越抽象，就越深入那个空间。

So, like, the more abstract you're going, like, the deeper you're going in that space.

但那样的话，我们本质上不都是相连的吗？

But in that sense, aren't we fundamentally all connected?

是的。

Yes.

这就是为什么生命的定义不能是个体。

And this is why the the definition of life cannot be the individual.

必须是这些谱系，因为它们都相连，交织在一起，并且一直在交换部分。

It has to be these lineages because they're all connected, they're interwoven, and they're exchanging parts all the time.

所以也许这些谱系中有某些方面可以像生命一样，可以是特征，可以用组装理论来衡量，对。

So that maybe there's certain aspects of those lineages that can be lifelike, they can be characteristics, they can be measured like with the Assembly theory that Yeah.

或多或少是生命。

More or less life.

但它们都只是一个指尖，对。

But they're all just fingertips of a Yeah.

一个更大的物体的一部分。

Of a much bigger object.

我觉得生命是高维度的。

I think life is very high dimensional.

事实上，我认为你在某些维度上是活着的，而在其他维度上不是。

And in fact, I think you can be alive in some dimensions and and not in others.

比如，如果你能把你身上的所有因果关系投射到某些特征上，你知道，很少的因果关系就足够了，而且很少的历史。

Like, if you could if you could project all the causation that's in you in some in some features of you, know, you very little causation is required and, like, very little history.

而在某些特征上，需要很多。

And in some features, a lot is.

所以很难把这个真正高维、非常深的结构投射到我们能真正理解的事物上，然后说，这就是我们看到的那一个东西，因为它不是一个东西。

So it's quite difficult to take this really high dimensional, very deep structure and project it into things that we really can understand and say, like, this is the one thing that we're seeing because it's not one thing.

有趣的是我们现在谈论这个，我慢慢开始意识到，我服用死藤水之后看到的一件事，实际上仪式本身是四五个小时，但之后，你仍然在体验那种状态。

It's funny we're talking about this now, I'm slowly starting to realize One of the things I saw when I took Ayahuasca afterwards, actually so the actual ceremony is four or five hours, but afterwards, you're still riding whatever the thing that you're riding.

之后我有机会和一些朋友在森林里闲逛，随便聊聊。

And I got a chance to afterwards hang out with some friends and just shoot the shit in the, you know, in the forest.

然后我就能看到他们的脸。

And I get to see their faces.

他们的脸和头发上发生了一些有趣的变化。

And what was happening with their faces and their hair is I would get this interesting effect.

首先，一切都那么美，嗯。

First of all, everything was beautiful and Mhmm.

我对每个人都充满了爱。

And I just had so much love for everybody.

但我能看到他们过去的自己，就像在他们身后。

But I could see their past selves, like, behind them.

这是一种模糊效果，如果我这样动，刚才的脸还在那里，然后它们会这样飘在他们身后，产生一种很奇妙的效果。

It was this effect where I guess it's a blurring effect of where, like, if I move like this, the faces that were just there are still there, and it would just float like this, these behind them, which will create this incredible effect.

但换个角度想，这也是在可视化他们几秒钟前那个状态的一部分。

But it's also another way to think about that is I'm visualizing a little bit of that object, of the thing they wore just a few seconds ago.

这个效果挺酷的。

It's a cool little effect.

那太酷了。

That's very cool.

然后现在呢，这个效果不只是视觉上美，还多了一层深度，从物理学的角度看也很美，因为那是过去的自己。

And then now it's like giving it a bit more profundity to the effect that was just beautiful aesthetically, but it's also beautiful from a physics perspective because that is a past self.

我能稍微瞥见他们过去的模样，但如果你把这个想法推到极致，不只是几秒钟前，而是追溯到宇宙的起源，你大概就能看到……

I get a little glimpse at the past selves that they they were, but then you take that to its natural conclusion, not just a few seconds ago, but just to the beginning of the universe and you can probably get

追溯到那么多年以前。

to that Years.

沿着那条血脉一直追溯下去。

Get down that lineage.

想想我们每个人体内都有数十亿年的历史，真是不可思议。

It's crazy that there's billions of years inside all of us.

我们所有人都是。

All of us.

然后我们当然就连接起来了，对。

And then we connect, obviously Yeah.

就在不久前。

Not too not too long ago.

你刚才提到了技术圈，你还写道，这个星球上最有生命力的东西就是我们的技术圈。

You you mentioned just the Technosphere and you also wrote that the most alive thing in this planet is our Technosphere.

为什么我们创造的技术是一种生命形式？

Why is the technology we create a kind of life form?

你为什么把它看作生命？

Why do you why are you seeing it as life?

因为它有创造力，但显然是与我们共同创造的，不是独立于我们的，而且因为这种对生命的谱系视角。我经常把生命看作一种行星尺度的现象，因为那是所有因果关系在生物圈每个物体中捆绑的自然边界。

Because it's creative, but with us, obviously, like not independently of us and also because of this sort of lineage view of life and I I think about life often as a planetary scale phenomena because that's sort of the natural boundary for all of this causation that's bundled in every object in our biosphere.

所以对我来说，它只是我们星球上的生命在宇宙能产生的事物中推进到的当前边界。

And so for me, it's just sort of the current boundary of how far life on our planet has pushed into the things that our universe can generate.

所以它是最远的东西。

And so it's the furthest thing.

它是最大的东西。

It's the biggest thing.

而且我经常思考生命在不同尺度上的本质。

And I think a lot about the nature of life across different scales.

所以，你知道，我们体内的细胞是活的，我们也觉得自己是活的，但我们很少想到我们身处其中的社会也是活的，或者我们和我们的技术在地球上的全球性组织也是活的。

And so, you know, we have cells inside of us that are alive and we feel like we're alive, but we don't often think about the societies that we're embedded in as alive or a global scale organization of us and our technology on the planet as alive.

但我认为，如果你对生命的本质有更深入的理解——我认为这也是解决生命起源问题所必需的——那么你就必须把这些都包括进去。

But I think if you have this deeper view into the nature of life, which I think is necessary also to solve the origin of life, then you have to include those things.

所有尺度。

All of them.

所以你必须同时考虑生命在每一个尺度上的存在。

So you you have to simultaneously think about life at every single scale.

从行星尺度到细菌尺度。

The planetary and the bacteria level.

我认为解决生命问题的难点在于，你需要整合多少东西才能构建一个我们称之为生命的统一图景。

This is the hard thing about solving the problem of life, think, is how many things you have to integrate into building a sort of a a unified picture of this thing that we wanna call life.

而且我们很多物理学理论都是建立在发现深层规律的基础上，这些规律能解释非常广泛的现象。

And and a lot of our theories of physics are built on building deep regularities that explain a really broad class of phenomenon.

我觉得我们传统上并没有这样看待生命。

I think we haven't really traditionally thought about life that way.

但我觉得要回答那些最难的问题，比如在其他星球上寻找生命，或者生命的起源，你真的得从这个角度去想。

But I think to get it at some of these hardest questions like looking for life on other planets or the origin of life, you really have to think about it that way.

所以我大部分的专业工作就是试图了解这个星球上每一个可能是生命的东西，基本上什么都是，然后试着找出背后更深层的结构。

And so most of like my professional work is just trying to understand like every single thing on this planet that might be an example of life, which is pretty much everything, and then trying to figure out, like, what's the deeper structure underlying that.

薛定谔写道，生命物质虽然不违背目前已知的物理定律，但很可能涉及一些至今未知的物理定律。

Schrodinger wrote that living matter, while not alluding to laws of physics as established up to date, is likely to involve other laws of physics here thereto unknown.

所以对他来说，

So to him

我很喜欢那句话。

I love that quote.

他有一种感觉，就是在这背后有新的物理定律，可以解释我们称之为生命的这个东西。

There was a sense that at the bottom of this are new laws of physics that could explain this thing that we call life.

薛定谔确实尝试做了物理学家会做的事，那就是解释事物。

Sjordanjit really tried to do what physicists try to do, which is explain things.

他试图用非平衡物理学来解释生命，因为他觉得那是当时我们能给出的最好描述。

And he his attempt was to try to explain life in terms of non equilibrium physics because he thought that was the best description that we could generate at the time.

所以他确实提出了一个很有洞见的观点，就是预测DNA是一种非周期性晶体。

And so he did come up with something really insightful, which was to predict the structure of DNA as an aperiodic crystal.

这背后有个很精确的原因，因为那是唯一一种能编码足够信息来真正定义细胞的物理结构。

And that was for a very precise reason that, you know, that was the only kind of physical structure that could encode enough information to actually specify a cell.

他提出这个观点的时候，我们对基因有些了解，但对DNA及其实际结构还不清楚。

We knew some things about genes but not about DNA and its actual structure when he proposed that.

但在书里，他试图把生命解释为一种对抗熵增的过程。

But in the book, he tried to explain life as kind of going against entropy.

所以有些人把它称为薛定谔悖论，就是热力学第二定律存在的情况下，生命怎么能持续存在。

And so some people have talked about it as like Schrodinger's paradox, how can life persist when the second law of thermodynamics is there.

但在开放系统中，这其实不是什么大问题。

But in open systems, that's not so problematic.

真正的问题是，为什么生命能产生如此多的秩序？

And really the question is, why can life generate so much order?

而且我们还没有一个物理学理论能描述这个。

And we don't have a physics to describe that.

有趣的是，好几代物理学家都思考过这个问题。

And it's interesting, you know, generations of physicists have thought about this problem.

很多时候，就像人们快退休的时候，他们会说，哦，现在我可以研究生命了。

Oftentimes, it's like when people are retiring, they're like, oh, now I can work on life.

或者他们职业生涯更资深了，之前研究的是其他更传统的问题。

Or they're like more senior in their career and they worked on other more traditional problems.

物理学界仍然有很多人认为非平衡物理学能解释生命，但我觉得这不是正确的方向。

There's still a lot of impetus in the physics community to think that nonequilibrium physics will explain life, but I I think that's not the right approach.

我不认为最终关于生命本质的答案在那里，而且我也不觉得熵跟这个有多大关系，除非完全重新定义。

I don't think ultimately the solution to what life is is there and I don't really think entropy has much to do with it unless it's entirely reformulated.

嗯，因为你得解释有趣的秩序，复杂性是如何从原始汤中涌现出来的。

Well, because you have to explain how interesting order, how complexity emerges from the soup.

是的。

Yes.

从随机中产生。

From randomness.

从随机中产生。

From randomness.

物理学目前还做不到这一点。

Physics currently can't do that.

对。

No.

物理学甚至几乎没有承认宇宙在根本上是随机的。

Physics hardly even acknowledges that the universe is random at its base.

我们喜欢认为我们生活在一个确定性的宇宙里，一切都是确定的，但我认为这可能是我们书写物理定律的方式带来的一个副产品，自从牛顿发明了现代物理学，他对运动和引力的构想，他制定的定律有初始条件和固定的动力学规律。

We like to think we live in a deterministic universe and everything's deterministic, but I think that's probably, you know, an artifact of the way that we've written down laws of physics since Newton invented modern physics in his conception of motion and gravity which, you know, he he formulated laws that had initial conditions and fixed dynamical laws.

这已经成为人们思考宇宙运作方式的标准范式，即描述任何物理系统都需要初始条件和运动定律。

And that's been sort of become the standard canon of how people think the universe works and how we need to describe any physical system is with an initial condition and a law of motion.

而我认为这实际上并不是宇宙真正运作的方式。

And I think that's not actually the way the universe really works.

我觉得对于物理学家目前研究的那类系统来说，这是个很好的近似，但长远来看，在描述更基础层面的现实时，它会彻底失效。

I think it's a good approximation for the kind of systems that physicists have studied so far and I think it will radically fail in the long term at describing reality at its more basal levels.

我不是说存在一个基础层面。

I'm not I'm not saying there's a base.

我不认为现实有一个根基。

I don't think that reality has a ground.

我也不认为存在什么万有理论，但我觉得会有更好的理论，更有解释力的理论，而且我觉得我们能找到一种比现有物理定律解释更多东西的理论。

And I don't think there's a theory of everything, but I think there are better theories and I think there are more explanatory theories and I think we can get to something that explains much more than the current laws of physics do.

你说万有理论，是指那种包罗万象的理论吗？

When you say theory of everything, you mean, like, everything everything?

你知道，在现在的物理学里，谈论万有理论很流行。

You know, like, in in physics right now, it's really popular to talk about theories of everything.

弦理论就被认为是万有理论，因为它统一了量子力学和引力。

So string theory is supposed to be a theory of everything because it unifies quantum mechanics and gravity.

而且，你知道，每个人都有自己偏爱的万有理论。

And, you know, people have their different pet theories of everything.

说到万有理论的挑战，我特别喜欢大卫·克拉克尔的那句话：万有理论是除了那些进行理论化的事物之外，对一切事物的理论。

And and the challenge with the theory of everything, I really love this quote quote from David Krakauer, which is a theory of everything is a theory of everything except those things that theorize.

哦，你是说把观察者从其中移除？

Oh, you mean removing the observer from the thing?

但这也挺奇怪的，因为如果万有理论能解释一切，那它也应该能解释这个理论本身。

But it's also it's also weird because if a theory of everything explained everything, it should also explain the theory.

所以这个理论必须是递归的。

So the theory has to be recursive.

而我们的物理学理论没有一个是递归的。

And none of our theories of physics are recursive.

所以这真是个奇怪的概念。

So it's just a it's a it's a weird concept.

但要把观察者整合进一个理论里确实很难。

But it's very difficult to integrate the observer into a theory.

我不这么认为。

I don't think so.

我觉得你可以建立一个理论，承认自己是宇宙中的观察者。

I think you can build a theory acknowledging that you're an observer inside the universe.

但这样就不会变得递归了吗？

But it doesn't become recursive in that way?

有可能建立一个理论，接受这一点吗？

And that's possible to make a theory that's okay with that?

我觉得可以。

I think so.

我的意思是，我不认为总是会有悖论，你可以在元层次上再构建一个元层次。

I mean, I don't think there's always gonna be the paradox of another meta level you could build on the the meta level.

比如，如果你假设这是你的宇宙，而你是那个宇宙之外的观察者，你对那个宇宙有一些元描述，但然后你需要一个元描述来描述你描述那个宇宙的过程。

So like if you assume this is your universe and you're those observer outside of it, you have some meta description of that universe, but then you need a meta description of you describing that universe.

所以，你知道，这是我们作为宇宙内部观察者面临的最大挑战之一，也是为什么悖论出现在数学基础以及任何我们试图在系统中引入观察者或系统自我描述的地方。

So, you know, this is one of the biggest challenges that we face being observers inside our universe and also, you know, why the paradoxes and the foundations of mathematics and any place that we try to have observers in the system or a system describing itself show up.

但我认为有可能建立一个物理学，把这些东西内在地包含进去，而不让它们成为悖论或描述中有漏洞。

But I think it is possible to build a physics that builds in those things intrinsically without having them be paradoxical or have holes in the descriptions.

所以我经常思考的一个地方，可以给你一个更具体的例子，就是关于我们所说的“基本”这个概念的本质。

And so one one place I think about this quite a lot, which I think can give you sort of a more concrete example is is the nature of, like, what we call fundamental.

我们现在通常把“基本”定义为物质的最小不可分割单位。

So we typically define fundamental right now in terms of the smallest indivisible units of matter.

所以，我们得先定义清楚什么是物质。

So again, have to have a definition of what you think material is and matter is.

但现在，所谓的基本就是基本粒子。

But right now, the you know, what's fundamental are elementary particles.

我们认为它们是基本的，是因为我们无法再进一步拆分它们。

And we think they're fundamental because we can't break them apart further.

当然，我们有一些理论，比如弦理论，如果它们是对的，就会用更小的东西来取代我们目前对宇宙中最基本事物的描述。

And obviously, we have theories like string theory that if they're right, would replace the current description of what's the most fundamental thing in our universe by replacing with something smaller.

但我们无法验证这些理论，因为我们的技术有限。

But we can't get to those theories because we're technologically limited.

所以，如果你从历史的角度来看，随着像我们这样的物理系统对所处现实了解得更多，解释也在不断变化。我们曾经认为原子是最基本的，你知道，这个词的字面意思就是“不可分割”。

And so if you if you look at this from a historical perspective and you think about explanations changing as physical systems like us learn more about the reality in which they live, We once considered atoms to be the most fundamental thing, and, you know, it literally comes from the word indivisible.

然后我们意识到原子还有内部结构，因为我们造出了更好的技术，让我们能更好地“看到”这个世界，分辨出更小的特征。

And then we realized atoms had substructure because we built better technology which allowed us to quote unquote see the world better and resolve smaller features of it.

接着我们又造出了更好的技术，让我们能看到更小的结构，一直深入到标准模型的粒子。

And then we built even better technology, which allowed us to see even smaller structure and get down to the Standard Model particles.

我们觉得在更小的尺度上可能还有结构，但以现在的技术还到不了那一步。

And we think that there's might be structure below that, but we can't get there yet with our technology.

所以，我们现在物理学里说的“基本”，其实并不是真正的基本。

So what's fundamental, the way we talk about it in current physics is not actually fundamental.

它只是我们在宇宙中能观测到的边界，是我们用技术能看到的东西。

It's the boundaries of what we can observe in our universe, what we can see with our technology.

所以，如果你想建立一个关于我们自身、关于我们能观测到的宇宙内部的理论，而不是关于它的边界，你就得谈论宇宙中那些你确实能拆分成更小东西的物体。

And so if you wanna build a theory that's about us and about what what's inside the universe that we can observe, not what's at the boundary of it, you need to talk about objects that are in the universe that you can actually break apart to smaller things.

所以我觉得，真正基本的东西其实是那些被构造出来的物体。

So I think the things that are fundamental are actually the constructed objects.

它们才是真实存在的，而且你真正了解它们的性质，因为你知道宇宙是怎么构造它们的，因为你确实能把它们拆开。

They're the ones that really exist and you really understand their properties because you know how the universe constructed them because you can actually take them apart.

你可以理解构建它们的内在规律。

You can understand the intrinsic laws that built them.

但边界上的东西就只是边界，它们和我们一起演化，随着时间推移，我们会更多地了解那个结构。

But the things at the boundary are just at the boundary, they're evolving with us and we'll learn more about that structure as we go along.

但如果我们真的想讨论宇宙内部什么是基本的，我们就必须讨论那些传统上被认为是涌现的事物，但实际上它们只是时间中的结构，有因果历史构建了它们，而且，你知道，它们才是我们宇宙真正的内容。

But really if we want to talk about what's fundamental inside our universe, we have to talk about all these things that are traditionally considered emergent, but really just structures in time that have causal histories that constructed them and, you know, are really actually what our universe is about.

所以我们应该把构建方法本身视为基本的东西。

So we should focus on the construction methodology as the fundamental thing.

但你觉得宇宙的最小组成单元有没有一个底线？

But do you think there's a bottom to the the smallest possible thing that makes up the universe?

我看不到。

I don't see one.

而且你觉得这会花太长时间。

And you it'll take way too long.

找到那个底线比理解生命创造的机制还要花更长时间。

It'll take longer to find that than it will to understand the mechanism that created life.

我觉得也是。

I think so.

对我来说，现代物理学的前沿，新物理学的所在，不在于高能粒子物理。

I I think for me, the frontier in modern physics, where the new physics lies, is not in high energy particle physics.

也不在于量子引力。

It's not in quantum gravity.

也不在于那些传统上被看好的领域。

It's not in any of these sort of traditionally sold.

这将会是我们对现实本质最深刻的新见解。

This is gonna be the newest deepest insight we have into the nature of reality.

它将会在于研究生命和智能的问题，以及那些我们作为文明或文化正在经历的生存危机——我们正在经历一种存在性的创伤，因为我们发明了自己目前还无法理解的技术。

It is going to be in studying the problems of life and intelligence and the things that are sort of also our current existential crises as a civilization or a culture that's going through, you know, an existential trauma of inventing technologies that we don't understand right now.

那种存在性的创伤，以及我们感到的恐惧，担心技术可能会毁灭我们——我们这些有生命的、有智能的生物。

The existential trauma and the terror we feel that that technology might somehow destroy us, us meaning living, intelligent living organisms

然而我们甚至不明白那意味着什么。

Yet we don't understand what that even means.

不过，人类一直都对我们的技术感到害怕。

Well, humans have always been afraid of our technologies though.

所以这挺有意思的，每次我们发明出自己不理解的东西，都需要花点时间才能跟上它。

So it's kind of a fascinating thing that every time we invent something we don't understand, it takes us a little while to catch up with it.

我觉得部分原因也是，人类其实挺喜欢害怕的感觉。

I think also in part, humans kind of love being afraid.

我们喜欢被吓到。

We love being traumatized.

这挺奇怪的。

It's weird.

想学更多，然后当我们学到更多时，又被吓到了。

Wanna learn more, and then when we learn more, it traumatizes us.

你知道吗，我以前从没这么想过，但我觉得这就是我热爱我工作的原因之一，因为它总是让我感到震惊。

You know, I never thought about it this before, but I think this is one of the reasons I love what I do is because it traumatizes me all the time.

所以这真的很糟糕。

So it's really bad.

但我的意思是，我喜欢那种震惊感，就是突然意识到，以一种前所未有的方式去理解某件事。

But what I mean is, like, I love the shock of, like, realizing that, like, coming to understand something in a way that you never understood understood it it before.

前所未有。

Before.

我觉得，当我看到很多人面对新想法时的反应，他们似乎并不是天生就有那种感觉。

I think it seems to me when when I see a lot of the ways other people react to new ideas that they don't feel that way intrinsically.

但对我来说，这正是我从事这一行的原因。

But for me, that's like that's why I do what I do.

我热爱那种感觉。

I I love I love that feeling.

但你研究的主题本质上就是摧毁自我，因为你谈的是生命。

But you're also working on a topic where it's fundamentally ego destroying because you're talking about like life.

想到个体人类并不特殊，这让人感到谦卑。

It's humbling to think that we're not the individual human is not special.

而你正在非常直观地探索这一点。

And you're like very viscerally exploring that.

我就是在努力做到这一点，因为我觉得你得亲身去体验物理才能真正理解它，不过有个关于爱因斯坦的著名说法。

I'm trying to embody that because you I think you have to live the physics to understand it, but there's a great quote about Einstein.

我不知道这是不是真的，说他曾经说过，他能感觉到肚子里有一束光。

I don't know if this is true or not that he once said that he could feel like a beam in his belly.

但我觉得，你得好好想想这件事。

And I think but I think, like, you gotta think about it though.

就是说，如果你是一个深度思考者，你真的在深入思考现实的本质，而你自己又是你试图描述的那个现实的一部分，那你就能感受到它。

Like you're if you're a really deep thinker and you're really thinking about reality that deeply and you are part of the reality that you're trying to describe, like, feel it.

你真的能感受到它。

You really feel it.

这就是我刚才说的，你总是走在悬崖边上。

That's what I was saying about you're always, like, walking along the cliff.

如果你掉下去，就会陷入疯狂。

If you fall off, you're falling into madness.

对。

Yes.

就是不断地、不断地坠入疯狂。

It's a constant constant descent in the madness.

物理学家和疯狂之间最迷人的一点是，你根本不知道自己是不是已经掉下悬崖了。

The fascinating thing about physicists and madness is that you don't know if you've fallen off the cliff.

对，你确实不知道。

You know you don't know.

这就是最酷的地方。

That's that's the cool thing

关于这一点。

about that.

我得靠别人来告诉我。

I rely on other people to tell me.

其实这挺搞笑的，因为我经常跟学生聊这些，他们总担心自己会疯掉。

Actually, this is very funny because I like I have these conversations with my students often, like, they're worried about going crazy.

我得安慰他们，说他们之所以能保持清醒，其中一个原因就是去解决具体的问题。

Have to, like, reassure them that, like, one of the reasons they'll stay sane is by trying to work on concrete problems.

是发疯还是觉醒。

Going crazy or waking up.

我也不知道到底是哪一个。

I don't know which one which one it is.

那你觉得地球上生命的起源是什么？

So what do you think is the origin of life on Earth?

我们怎么才能有效地讨论这个问题呢？

And how can we talk about it in a productive way?

生命的起源就像是一个边界，宇宙只有在一个结构能够自我强化其存在时才能跨越它，这就是自我复制、自催化，也就是人们常说的那些东西。

The origin of life is like this boundary that the universe can only cross if a structure that emerges can reinforce its own existence, which is self reproduction, autocatalysis, things people traditionally talk about.

但它必须能够在这种化学中的随机性和量子世界中的随机性面前维持自己的存在。

But it has to be able to maintain its own existence against this sort of randomness that happens in chemistry and this randomness that happens in the quantum world.

从某种意义上说，这是一种确定性结构的出现，它说，我要存在，我要继续下去。

And like it's in some sense the emergence of like a deterministic structure that says, you know, I'm gonna exist and I'm gonna keep going.

但是，要确切地定义它真的很难。

But, you know, pinning that down is really hard.

我们在组装理论里有一些思考方式，我觉得挺严谨的。

We have ways of thinking about it in Assembly theory that I think are pretty rigorous.

而且我特别兴奋的一件事，就是尝试用组装理论的方式，真正量化生命起源发生的那个时刻。

And one of the things I'm really excited about is trying to actually quantify in an Assembly theoretic way when the origin of life happens.

但我脑子里基本的过程是这样的：一个系统，没有任何因果关联，没有物体之间的约束，基本上就是物体不会限制其他物体的存在，也不会促成或者允许其他物体的存在。

But the basic process I have in mind is like a system that has no causal contingency, no constraints of objects basically constraining the existence of other objects or forming or or allowing the existence of other objects.

这听起来很抽象，但你可以想想，比如没有催化剂，化学反应就不会发生；或者没有父母，婴儿就不会出生。

And so that sounds very abstract, but like you can just think of like a chemical reaction can't happen if there's not a catalyst, for example, or a baby can't be born if there wasn't a parent.

所以很多事情的发生，都需要大量的因果关联。

So there's a lot of causal contingency that's necessary for certain things to happen.

所以你想，这种无约束的随机系统，没有任何东西会强化其他事物的存在。

So you think about this sort of unconstrained random system, there's nothing that reinforces the existence of other things.

所以资源就在各种不同的结构中耗散掉了，没有哪个结构会再次出现，或者就算出现，它们也不会很复杂，如果它们数量很多的话。

So so the sort of resources just get washed out in all of these different structures and none of them exist again or they just, you know, they're they're not very complicated if they're in high abundance.

然后一些随机事件，让某些东西开始强化一小部分物体的存在。

And some random events allow some things to start reinforcing the existence of a small subset of objects.

如果它们能做到这一点，比如分子之间相互识别并催化某些反应，就会有一个转折点。除非你有一个自我强化的结构，能够维持自身的存在，否则它实际上无法跨越这个边界，在没有携带过去历史的情况下产生大量任何物体，并且维持那段历史的存在。

And if they can do that, you know, like just molecules basically recognizing each other and being able to catalyze certain reactions, there's this kind of transition point that happens where unless you get a self reinforcing structure, something that can maintain its own existence, it actually can't cross this boundary to make any objects in high abundance without having this sort of past history that it's carrying with us and maintaining the existence of that past history.

那个边界点，即物体除非带有历史中的选择否则无法存在的点，就是我们所说的原始生命。

And that boundary point where objects can't exist unless they have the selection in history in them is what we call the original life.

而几乎所有越过那个边界的东西，都在拼命抓住那些因果和因果结构，正是这些结构把它们带到了那里。

And pretty much everything beyond that boundary is holding on for dear life to all of the causation and causal structure that's basically put it there.

它在可能性空间中开辟道路，生成越来越多的结构，这时你就得到了进化级联的开放末端。

And it's carving its way through this possibility space into generating more and more structure and that's when you get the open end of cascade of evolution.

但那个边界点真的很难跨越，而且当你跨越它时，物体出现的方式也是极其迷人的动态过程，因为随着事物变得更复杂，组装指数会增加。

But that boundary point is really hard to cross and then what happens when you cross that boundary point and the way objects come into existence is also like really fascinating dynamics because, you know like as things become more complex, the assembly index increases.

我可以解释所有这些事情。

I can explain all these things.

抱歉。

Sorry.

你可以告诉我你想解释什么。

You can tell me what you want to explain.

我的意思是，解释一下，或者人们想听什么。

I mean, explain or or what people want will want to hear.

这个，抱歉。

This sorry.

我脑子里有一个非常清晰的画面，但真的很难用语言表达出来。

I have like a very vivid visual on my brain, and it's really hard to articulate it.

得把它转化成语言。

Gotta convert it to language.

我知道。

I know.

太难了。

It's so hard.

有时候从感觉到画面再到语言，这个过程真的很压抑。

It's not it's like it's going from like a feeling to a visual to language is so stifling sometimes.

必须得转化。

Have to convert it.

从语言到视觉，对。

From language to to a visual Yeah.

再到一种感觉。

To a feeling.

我觉得这行得通。

I think it's working.

希望如此。

I hope so.

我真的很喜欢那些自我强化的对象。

I really like the self reinforcing objects.

我的意思是，这——

I mean, this is

为了让我理解，创造大量同类对象的一种方式就是让它们自我强化。

Just so I understand, one way to create a lot of the same kind of object is make them self reinforcing.

是的。

Yes.

所以自我复制有它的特性。

So self reproduction has its property.

比如说，如果一个系统能自我复制，那它就能在时间中持续存在。

Like, if a system can make itself, then it can it can persist in time.

因为所有物体都会衰变，它们都有有限的寿命。

Because all objects decay, they all have a finite lifetime.

所以如果你能在自己消亡之前，在热力学第二定律把你消耗掉之前，或者不管人们认为会发生什么，复制出一个自己，那么那个结构就能在时间中延续下去。

So if you're able to make a copy of yourself before you die, before the second law eats you or whatever people think happens, then that structure can persist in time.

所以这是一种从随机汤中浮现出来的方式？

So that's a way to sort of emerge out of a random soup?

从随机汤的随机性中浮现出来。

Out of randomness of soup.

但能自我复制的东西非常罕见。

But things that can copy themselves are very rare.

非常罕见。

Very.

所以最终发生的是，你会得到一些结构，它们能让其他东西存在。

And so what ends up happening is that you get structures that enable the existence of other things

然后，不知怎么的，只有某些物体集合会形成封闭的结构，这些结构自我强化，让整个结构得以持续存在。

And then somehow only for some sets of objects, get closed structures that are self reinforcing and allow that entire structure to persist.

所以物体A强化了物体B的存在，但你知道，物体A可能会消亡。

So the one object a reinforces the existence of object b, but, you know, object a can die.

对。

Yep.

所以你得把这个循环闭合起来。

So you have to, like, close that loop.

所以这在统计上是非常不可能的，经典的那种。

So this is the classic very unlikely statistically,

但你知道，没错。

but, you know, that's Right.

所以你是说，还是有那么一点机会的。

Sufficiently it's so you're saying there's a chance.

这是一个概率问题，但一旦你解决了这个问题，一旦你闭环了，你就可以创造很多这样的物体。

Is a probability, and then but once you solve that, once you close the loop, you can create a lot of those objects.

我们想弄清楚的就是，哪些因果约束能够闭环。

And that's what we're trying to figure out is what are the causal constraints that close the loop.

有一个在文献中流传了很久的想法，最初由斯图尔特·考夫曼提出，对生命起源至关重要，叫做自催化集。

So there is this idea that's been in the literature for a really long time that was originally proposed by Stuart Kaufman as really critical to the origin life called the autocadillac set.

自催化集正是这个特性。

So autocadillac set is exactly this property.

我们有A生成B，B生成C，C生成A，这样就形成了一个封闭系统。

We have a makes b, b makes c, c makes a, and you get a closed system.

但自催化集理论的问题在于，它作为理论非常脆弱，需要很多临时假设，比如你必须假设功能。

But the problem with the theory of autocatalytic sets isn't incredibly brittle as a theory and it requires a lot of ad hoc assumptions like you have to assume function.

你必须说这个东西生成B。

You have to say this thing makes b.

这不是一个涌现属性，A和B之间的关联。

It's not an emergent property, the association between a and b.

所以我的想法要更宽泛一些。

And so the way I think about it is much more general.

如果你想想这些创造物体的历史，就像是这些历史的结构会以一种方式坍缩，使得这些东西都处于相同的因果结构中，而且那个因果结构实际上会自我循环，从而能够生成一些创造更高层次结构所需的东西。

If you think about these histories that make objects, it's it's kind of like the structure of the histories becomes collapses in such a way that these things are all in the same sort of causal structure, and that causal structure actually loops back on itself to be able to generate some of the things that make the higher level structures.

李在这方面有一个很漂亮的例子，就是钼。

Lee has a beautiful example of this actually in molybdenum.

这算是第一个非有机的自催化集合。

It's like the first non organic autocatalytic set.

它是一个自我复制的钼环。

It's a self reproducing molybdenum ring.

但就像钼，基本上如果你看看钼，它会形成一个巨大的钼环。

But it's like like molybdenum and and basically like if you look at the molybdenum, it makes a huge molybdenum ring.

我不太记得它具体有多大。

I don't remember exactly how big it is.

可能大概有150个钼原子之类的。

It might be like a 150 molybdenum atoms or something.

但如果你想想那个物体的构型空间，你知道，可能的分子数量是呈指数级增长的。

But if you think about the configuration space of that object, you know, it's exponentially large how many possible molecules.

那为什么整个系统会只专注于生成那一种结构呢？

So like why does the entire system collapse on just making that one structure?

如果你从钼原子开始，可能只是几个粘在一起的。

If you start from like, you know, molybdenum atoms that are maybe just like a couple of them stuck together.

所以他们在系统中看到的是有几个中间阶段。

And so what they see in this system is there's a few intermediate stages.

有一些随机事件，化学物质凑在一起，形成了这些结构。

So there's like some random events where the chemistry comes together, makes these structures.

然后一旦达到这个非常大的结构，它就变成了较小结构的模板，整个系统就自我强化了它的生产。

And then once you get to this very large one, it becomes a template for the smaller ones, then the whole system just reinforces its own production.

Lee是怎么发现这种钼的？

How did Lee find this molybdenum?

闭环。

Close loop.

如果我知道李的脑子是怎么运作的，我觉得我会更了解宇宙。

If I knew how Lee's brain work, I think I would understand more about the universe.

但是，我

But I

这不是算法发现。

This is not an algorithmic discovery.

这是

It's a

不，不是。

like No.

但是，我觉得这触及了他开始思考生命起源时的最深层根源。

But but you I think it goes to the deepest roots of like when he started thinking about origins of life.

所以，我，我的意思是，我不完全了解他的历史，但据他告诉我，他是从晶体学开始的。

So I like I I mean I don't know all his history, but like what he's told me is he started out in crystallography.

而且，你知道，有些关于化学结构的事情，人们往往视为理所当然，但他却对此深感困惑。

And you know, there are some things that he would just, you know, like people would just take for granted about chemical structures that he was like deeply perplexed perplexed about.

差不多吧。

About.

就是，为什么这些非常精细、非常复杂的结构在那些条件下这么容易就形成了？

Like, just like why are these like really intricate, really complex structures forming so easily under these conditions?

他对生命真的很感兴趣，但他就是从那个领域起步的。

And he was really interested in life, but he started in that field.

所以他一直带着这些来自看似完全没有生命、只是金属化学的系统的深刻见解，去思考生命的深层原理。

So he's just carried with him these sort of deep insights from these systems that seem like they're totally not alive and just like these metallic chemistries into actually thinking about the deep principles of life.

所以我觉得他早就对那种化学了解很多了，而且，你知道，组装理论也是他在思考这些系统如何运作时产生的。

So I think he already he already knew a lot about that chemistry, and he also, you know, assembly theory came from him thinking about how these systems work.

所以他对这个环是怎么回事有一些直觉。

So he had some intuition about what was going on with this ring.

钼可能就是那个能形成环的东西。

The molybdenum might be able to be the thing that makes a ring.

他们早就知道这些结构了，但他们不知道那个特定结构形成的机制是自催化反馈。

They knew about them for a long time, but they didn't know that the mechanism of why that particular structure form was autocatalytic feedback.

所以这就是他们在论文里搞明白的事情。

And so that's what they they figured out in this paper.

而且我确实觉得那篇论文揭示了生命起源转变的一些机制，因为你真正看到的是，生命的起源基本上就像是一个组合爆炸，可能的结构空间太大，根本没法穷尽，但你却看到它坍缩到这么一个小小的可能性空间里，这些结构互相强化，维持自身的存在。

And I actually think that paper is revealing some of the mechanism of the origin of life transition because really what you see, like the origin of life is basically like you should have a combinatorial explosion of the space of possible structures that are too large to exhaust and yet you see it collapse on this, you know, really small space of possibilities that's mutually reinforcing itself to keep existing.

这就是生命的起源。

That is the origin of life.

有一组结构导致了这种自催化反馈。

There's some set of structures that result in this auto catalytic feedback.

那是什么？

And is it what is it?

是极小极小极小的百分比吗？

Tiny tiny tiny tiny percent?

我觉得那是个很小的空间，但化学的世界非常大。

I think it's a small space, but chemistry is very large.

所以就像……

And so like

可能有很多这样的结构存在，但我们不知道。

There might be a lot of them out there, but we don't know.

其中有一个可能就是地球上生命的起源。

And one of them is the thing that probably started life on Earth.

没错。

That's right.

或者有很多很多个起点。

Or many many starts.

是的。

Yes.

而且可能还在不断发生。

And it keeps starting maybe.

我的意思是，在这种相变边界附近还会出现各种其他奇怪的性质。

I mean, there's also all kinds of other weird properties that happen around this kind of phase boundary.

所以我实验室里的另一个项目就是研究手性的起源，手性就是分子的一种性质，它们可以以镜像形式存在。

So this other project that I have in my lab is focused on the origin of chirality, which is, you know, thinking about so so chirality is this property of molecules that they can come in mirror image forms.

所以就像，手性这个词字面上就是手的意思。

So like just like chiral literally means hand.

所以你的左手和右手就是所谓的不能重叠的，因为如果你想把一个放在另一个上面，你实际上不能直接把它们叠在一起，这就是镜像的性质。

So your your left and right hand are what's called non superimposable because if you try to lay one on the other, you can't actually lay them directly on top of each other and that's the property of being a mirror image.

所以生命化学中有这样一个令人困惑的性质，没有人能真正充分解释，那就是蛋白质中所有的氨基酸都是左旋的，而RNA和DNA中所有的碱基都是右旋的。

So there's this sort of perplexing property of the chemistry life that no one's been able to really adequately explain that all of the amino acids in proteins are left handed and all of the bases in RNA and DNA are right handed.

然而，这些构建单元，氨基酸和核碱基的化学性质，对于左旋和右旋来说是一样的。

And yet the chemistry of these these building block units, amino acids, and nucleobases is the same for left and right handed.

所以你必须要有某种对称性破缺，从这些看起来完全等价的化学过程，到只有一种化学过程成为主导形式。

So you have to have, like, some kind of symmetry breaking where you go from these chemistries that seem entirely equivalent to only having one chemistry take over as the dominant form.

而且很长一段时间，我确实，实际上我博士就是研究手性起源的。

And for a long time, I had been really I actually did my Ph.

博士。

D.

研究手性起源。

On the origin of chirality.

我当时是把它当作物理学里的一个对称性破缺问题来研究的。

I was working on it as like a symmetry breaking problem in physics.

这就是我进入生命起源研究领域的起点。

This is how I got started in the origin of life.

后来我搁置了很久，因为我觉得这可能是生命起源里最无聊的问题之一，但现在我又回来了，因为我觉得这里面有很深刻的东西，跟可能性空间的组合爆炸有关。

And then I left it for a long time because I thought it was like one of the most boring problems in the origin of life, but I've come back to it because I think there's something really deep going on here related to this like combinatorial explosion of the space of possibilities.

但要说清楚这一点，手性这个特征一直是主要焦点，但人们往往理所当然地认为手性分子存在，也就是具有手性这种性质。

But just to to to get to that point, like this feature of this handedness has been the main focus, but people take for granted the existence of chiral molecules at all that the this property of of having a handedness.

他们只是觉得，这不过是化学的一个普遍特征。

And they just assume that, you know, like, it's just a generic feature of chemistry.

但如果你真的去看分子，去看化学空间，也就是所有可能分子的集合，然后看小分子，也就是那些重原子数少于大约7到11个的分子，这里的重原子指不是氢的原子，你会发现那个空间里几乎每个分子都是非手性的，也就是说没有手性中心。

But if you actually look at molecules, if you look at chemical space, which is like the space of all possible molecules that people can generate, and you look at small molecules, things that have less than about seven to 11 heavy atoms, so things that are not hydrogen, Almost every single molecule in that space is achiral, like doesn't have a chiral center.

就像勺子一样。

So it would be like a spoon.

勺子没有手性，它和它的镜像是一样的。

A spoon doesn't have a like it's the same as its mirror image.

它不像手那样，和镜像不一样。

It's not like a hand that's different than its mirror image.

但如果你到了这个临界点，超过这个边界，几乎每个分子都是手性的。

But if you get to like this threshold boundary above that boundary, almost every single molecule is chiral.

所以你从一个几乎没有什么东西有镜像形态的宇宙出发。

So you go from a universe where almost nothing has a mirror image form.

从没有镜像可能性的宇宙，到这个每个结构几乎都有镜像版本的宇宙。

There's no mirror image universe of possibilities to this one where every single structure has pretty much a mirror image version.

我们实验室一直在研究的是，生命起源的转变似乎就发生在你开始积累的时候。

And what we've been looking at in my lab is that it seems to be the case that the original life transition happens around the time when you start accumulating.

你把分子推到足够复杂，手性分子就很容易形成。

You you push your molecules to a large enough complexity that chiral molecules become very likely to form.

然后会有一连串的分子识别，手性分子之间能互相识别。

And then there's a cascade of molecular recognition where where chiral molecules can recognize each other.

接着就会出现这种自催化反馈，事情开始自我强化。

Then you get this sort of autocatalytic feedback and things self reinforcing.

那么，手性本身是一个有趣的特征，还是只是一个偶然？

So is chirality in itself an interesting feature or just an accident of

不。

No.

这是一个非常有趣的特征。

It's a super interesting feature.

我认为手性打破了时间上的对称性，而不是空间上的。

I think chirality breaks symmetry in time, not space.

所以我们通常把它看作是一种空间属性，比如左手和右手。

So we think of it as a space spatial property, like a left and right hand.

但如果我选择了左手，我基本上就为那个系统选择了未来的所有可能性，因为我基本上在那种分子与其化学宇宙中其他所有物体反应的方式之间做出了选择。

But if I choose the left hand, I'm basically choosing the future of that system for all time because I've basically made a choice between the ways that that molecule can now react with every other object in its chemical universe.

哦，我明白了。

Oh, I see.

所以当你制造一个分子，它本来可以有另一种形式，但原子组成完全相同，只是镜像异构体时，你实际上是在每次分裂可能性的宇宙。

And so you've you're actually like when you have the splitting of making a molecule that now has another form it could've had by the same exact atomic composition, but now it's just a mirror image isometry, you're basically splitting the universe of possibilities every time.

分成两个。

In two.

分成两个。

In two.

但分子可以有不止一个手性中心，而且那不是它们唯一能有的立体异构形式。

But molecules can have more than one chiral center and that's not the only stereosensometry that they can have.

所以这就是为什么紫杉醇能填满1.5个宇宙空间的原因之一。

So this is one of the reasons that Taxol fills 1.5 universes of space.

正是你在这些物体上做的所有这些空间排列，才让空间变得如此巨大。

It's all of these spatial permutations that you do on these objects that actually makes the space so huge.

所以，我要指出的这种手性转变的重点是，手性实际上是处于复杂化学空间的一个标志。

So the point of this this sort of chiral transition that I'm I'm pointing out is is chirality is actually signature of being in a complex chemical space.

而我们之所以认为它是化学的一个非常普遍的特征，而且确实很常见，是因为我们在地球上研究的大部分化学已经是生命的产物了。

And the fact that we we think it's a really generic feature of chemistry and it's really prevalent is because most of the chemistry we study on Earth is a product already of life.

这也与组装中的这种转变、可能性空间中的这种转变有关，因为我认为在这个边界上发生了一些非常根本的事情，你不需要深入化学空间太远，就能从时间深度、物体对称性深度（比如手性对称性）或组装结构的角度看到生命。

And it also has to do with this transition in assembly, this transition in possibility spaces because I I think there's something really fundamental going on at this boundary that you don't really need to go that far into chemical space if you can to actually see life in terms of this depth in time, this depth in in symmetries of objects in terms of like chiral symmetries or this assembly structure.

但要跨过这个边界，虽然它在那个空间里并不深，却需要生命。

But but getting past this boundary that's that's not very deep in that space requires life.

这真的是一个很奇怪的性质，而且很奇怪的是，化学中那么多突然的变化都发生在同一个尺度上。

It's a it's a really it's a really weird property and it's really weird that so many abrupt things happen in chemistry at that same scale.

那么，这会不会是地球进化史上最伟大的发明呢？

So would that be the the greatest invention ever made on Earth in its evolutionary history?

我真的很喜欢这种说法。

So I really like that formulation of it.

尼克·莱恩有一本书叫《生命的跃升》，他在书中列出了进化的十大发明。

Nick Lane has a book called Life Ascending, where he lists the 10 great inventions of evolution.

生命的起源排在第一位，然后是DNA，也就是编码所有生物遗传构造的遗传物质。

The origin of life being first, and DNA, the hereditary material that encodes the genetic constructions for all living organisms.

接着是光合作用，也就是让生物将阳光转化为化学能并产生氧气作为副产物的过程；然后是复杂细胞，也就是真核细胞，它们含有细胞核和细胞器，这些是从简单的细菌细胞演化而来的；还有有性生殖，也就是性繁殖；然后是运动，也就是移动的能力，这带来了捕食行为，也就是捕食者，

Then photosynthesis, the process that allows organisms to convert sunlight into chemical energy producing oxygen as a byproduct, the complex cell, eukaryotic cells, which contain a nucleus and organelles that rose from simple bacterial cells, sex, sexual reproduction, movement, so just the ability to move under which you have the predation, the predators,

以及生物在其中运动的能力。

and ability of living organisms in there.

那挺酷的。

That's cool.

我觉得运动包含了很多有趣的东西，比如捕食者和猎物的动态关系。

I think but a movement includes a lot of interesting stuff in there, like predator prey dynamic

虽然不想美化自然界的残酷，但这似乎很重要。

Which not to romanticize a nature's metal, that seems like an important one.

我不确定。

I don't know.

有捕食者和猎物，这在计算上是非常强大的。

It's such a computationally powerful thing to have a predator and prey.

嗯，生物吃其他活的东西效率更高，因为它们不用从头开始搞基础化学。

Well, it's efficient for things to eat other things that are already alive because they don't have to go all the way back to the base chemistry.

嗯，但也许我只是喜欢截止日期，但它确实制造了紧迫感。

Well, that but maybe I just like deadlines, but it creates an urgency.

你会被吃掉的。

You're gonna get eaten.

你得活下去。

You gotta live.

就是说，生存不只是对抗一个静止的环境。

Like, survival is not just the static environment you're battling against.

对，没错。

You're like Yeah.

你要对抗的那些危险也在不断进化。

The the the dangers against which you're trying to survive are also evolving.

这其实是探索可能性空间的一种快得多的方式。

This is just much faster way to explore the space of possibilities.

我其实觉得时间不多是一种恩赐。

I actually think it's a gift that we don't have much time.

是的。

Yes.

视觉，也就是看的能力。

Sight, the ability to see.

所以，感官生物、意识和死亡的不断复杂化。

So the increasing complexifying of sensory organisms, consciousness, and death.

程序性细胞死亡的概念。

The concept of programmed cell death.

这些都是发明。

These are all inventions.

一路发展而来的。

Along the line.

我喜欢用“发明”这个词来形容它们。

I like invention as a word for them.

我觉得这个词很贴切。

I think that's good.

你觉得哪些发明更有意思？

Which are the more interesting inventions to you?

生命的起源？

Origin of life?

因为你并没有在美化生命起源本身。

Because you kind of are not glorifying the origin of life itself.

这是一个过程，一个过程。

There's a there's a process.

我觉得生命起源是一个持续的过程。

Think the origin of life is a continual process.

这就是原因。

That's why.

我对第一次转变以及解决那个问题感兴趣，因为我觉得那是最难的，但我觉得它一直在发生。

I'm interested in the first transition and solving that problem because I think it's the hardest, but I think I think I think it's happening all the time.

当你回顾地球的历史时，有什么让你印象深刻的事情？

When you look back at the history of Earth, like, what are you impressed happened?

我喜欢把视觉看作一种发明，因为我觉得拥有感官知觉并试图理解世界——用人类中心的话来说——是生命的一个非常关键的特征。

I like sight as an invention because I think having sensory perception and trying to comprehend the world, to use anthropocentric terms, is like a really critical feature of life.

而且我也觉得有趣的是，视觉是如何随着时间变得越来越复杂的。

And I also it's interesting the way that sight has complexified over time.

所以，如果你想想生命的起源，那时候地球上没有任何东西能看见。

So like if you think at the origin of life, nothing on the planet could see.

所以，很长一段时间里，生命是没有视觉的。

So, like, for a long time, life had no sight.

然后，你知道，光子受体被发明出来了。

And then, you know, like, photon receptors were invented.

然后当多细胞生物进化时，那些细胞最终长成了眼睛，我们就有了多细胞的眼睛。

And then when multicellularity evolved, those cells eventually grew into eyes, and we had the multicellular eye.

然后有趣的是，当你到了社会，比如人类社会的阶段，我们发明了更先进的观察技术，比如望远镜和显微镜，这些让我们能看得更深入宇宙，或者看到更小的尺度。

And then it's interesting when you get to societies, like human societies, that we invent even better technologies of seeing like telescopes and microscopes, which allow us to see deeper into the universe or at smaller scales.

所以我觉得这真的很深刻，视觉改变了生命感知它所处现实的能力。

So I think I think that's pretty profound the way that sight has transformed the ability of life to literally see the reality in which it's existing in.

我觉得意识显然也非常引人入胜。

I think consciousness is also obviously deeply interesting.

我最近有点迷上了章鱼。

I've gotten kind of obsessed with, like, octopus.