知识使资源的存在变得无限

知识是让资源存在变得无限的东西。

Knowledge is the thing that makes the existence of resources infinite.

知识的创造是无边无际的。

The creation of knowledge is unbounded.

我们将不断创造更多的知识，从而了解越来越多的不同资源。

We're just gonna keep on creating more knowledge and thereby learning about more and different resources.

在《无限》开头有一个关于铕的精彩寓言，大卫提到大约六十年前，当第一台彩色电视机开始制造时，它们是阴极射线管类型的，通过电子束轰击荧光屏，而荧光屏上有三个不同颜色的像素，其中之一是红色。

There's this wonderful parable of Europium in the beginning of Infinity where David talks about sixty years ago or so when the first colour television started to be manufactured, they were cathode ray tube type where you'd fire a stream of electrons at a phosphorescent screen, and the phosphorescent screen have these pixels, three different colours, one of which was red.

屏幕上的这些红色荧光粉是由元素铕填充的。

And those red phosphors on the screen were filled with the element europium.

关于铕的有趣之处在于，当电流通过它、使其被激发时，它会发出红色的光。

And the interesting thing about europium is when you put electricity through it, when you excite it, it glows with this red color.

关于铕更令人惊讶的是，它是元素周期表中唯一具有这种特性的元素。

And the extra interesting thing about europium is that it is the only such element on the periodic table.

它是唯一一种能产生这种效果的化学物质。

It's the only chemical that will do that.

如果你向它发射电子，它就会发出彩色电视所需的红色光。

If you fire electrons at it, it will glow the red that you need to have colour television.

现在，人们计算出地球上铕的含量是有限的，而这些铕正被阴极射线管的制造迅速消耗。

Now, it was calculated that there's only a certain amount of europium on the earth, and that amount of europium was quickly being consumed by cathode ray tube manufacture.

因此，科学家们拥有一个非常严谨的数学理论，认为阴极射线管的数量是有限的。

So the scientists had a perfectly robust mathematical theory about how the number of cathode ray tubes was finite.

所以，他们终将耗尽阴极射线管。

Therefore, they're gonna run out of cathode ray tubes.

从非常狭义的角度来看，对于任何一种资源，地球上的储量确实是有限的。

And it's true in a very narrow sense that for any given resource, you're going to have a finite amount on planet Earth.

当然，太空中也有铕，你或许可以在那里开采。

Of course, there's gonna be europium in outer space, and you could probably mine it there.

但更深层的要点是，现在没有人再使用阴极射线管了。

But the deeper point is no one has cathode ray tubes anymore.

如今，彩色电视的概念与铕的激发完全无关了。

The whole idea of colour television has nothing to do with the excitation of europium these days.

我们都有液晶屏幕。

We've all got LCD screens.

我们还有等离子屏幕。

We have plasma screens.

未来可能还会出现其他新技术，它们与今天的技术完全无关，但我们依然会有彩色电视或彩色屏幕。

And there'll probably be something else coming in the future as well that will have absolutely nothing to do with the technology we have today, but we're still going to have color television or color screens.

这一点适用于我们能想到的任何资源。

And this is true for absolutely any resource that we can think of.

如果你恰好生活在非洲大草原上，你可能会做出一个非常合理的马尔萨斯式计算：我们不能无限地烧木头，因为最终所有的森林都会被烧光。

You might very well make a perfectly good Malthusian calculation that we can't keep on burning wood if you happen to be living on the African Savannah because eventually all the forests are gonna be burned down.

显然，我们会用完木材。

Obviously, we're gonna run out of wood.

木材的数量是有限的。

There's a finite amount of wood.

即使你能种植更多的木材，木材的消耗最终也会超过其供应量。

Even if you can grow more wood, eventually the consumption of wood is going to outstrip the amount that's there.

这也是人们对于煤炭、石油以及我们所消耗的其他一切资源所提出的论点。

And this is the argument that's made for coal, oil, and everything else that we happen to be consuming.

即使是所谓的虚空，也包含大量物质和可转化为能量的东西。

Even so called empty space has a lot of matter and a lot of things that could be converted into energy.

外界的资源数量是没有极限的。

There is no limit to the amount of resources out there.

真正有限的只有知识。

There's purely a limit to knowledge.

不幸的是，不幸的是，这里存在一种悲观的假设，即人类的创造力是有限的。

And unfortunately, unfortunately, there's a pessimistic assumption here that people make that human creativity is bounded.

我认为，这种感受最强烈的是那些自己从未创造过任何东西、从未从零开始构建过事物的人。

And I think it's the people who themselves have not built things, who have not created new things from scratch, who seem to feel this the most.