利他主义如何运作

这是iHeart播客。

This is an iHeart podcast.

百分百真人制作。

Guaranteed human.

5月2日，星期六。

Saturday, May 2.

国家最著名的明星将齐聚德克萨斯州奥斯汀，参加由Capital One冠名的2026年iHeart乡村音乐节。

Country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas at our twenty twenty six iHeart country festival presented by Capital One.

门票现已开售。

Tickets are on sale now.

赶紧在ticketmaster.com抢购，售完即止。

Get yours before they sell out at ticketmaster.com.

网址是ticketmaster.com。

That's ticketmaster.com.

当种族隔离还是法律时，一位神秘的黑人俱乐部老板查理·菲茨杰拉德有自己的规矩。

When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his own rules.

白天实行种族隔离，夜晚却实现融合。

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

就像踏入了另一个世界。

It was like stepping in another world.

他是个商人吗？

Was he a businessman?

是个罪犯吗？

A criminal?

是个英雄吗？

A hero?

查理是权力的典范。

Charlie was an example of power

这种权力最终必须将他摧毁。

that had to crush him.

《查理之地》，来自Atlas Obscura和Myrtle Beach旅游局。

Charlie's Place from Atlas Obscura and Visit Myrtle Beach.

在iHeartRadio应用、Apple Podcasts或您收听播客的任何平台收听《Charlie's Place》。

Listen to Charlie's Place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

本节目由焕然一新的2012款凯美瑞赞助播出。

Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

它已经准备好了。

It's ready.

你准备好了吗？

Are you?

欢迎收听来自HowStuffWorks.com的《你该知道的事》。

Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworks.com.

你正在变得越来越聪明。

You're getting smarter.

嗨。

Hi.

欢迎来到本播客。

And welcome to the podcast.

我是乔什·克拉克，这里是howstuffworks.com的撰稿人。

I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at howstuffworks.com.

和我在一起的是总编辑卡迪丝·吉布森。

With me is trustee editrix, Candice Gibson.

卡迪丝，今天我们聊什么？

Candice, what are we talking about today?

问题是，是否存在真正无私的行为？

The question is, is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act?

你认为呢？

And what do you think?

真的存在吗？

Is there?

我不知道。

I don't know.

我对这个问题还拿不定主意，但我最喜爱的电视剧之一《弗兰奇》有一集正好探讨了这个问题。

I'm sort of on the fence about this one, but one of my favorite sitcoms of all time, France, had an episode in which they sought to answer the question.

这一集叫《菲比讨厌PBS》。

And this episode was called the one where Phoebe hates PBS.

是的。

Mhmm.

第五季，我记得。

Season five, I remember.

没错。

Exactly.

为了让你跟上剧情，她刚生下了她哥哥的三胞胎。

And just to bring you up to speed, she had just given birth to her brother's triplets.

乔伊说这不算真正无私的行为，因为这么做让她感觉很好。

And Joey said that wasn't really an unselfish thing to do because it made her feel so good.

于是她开始寻找一种对别人有益、但对自己毫无好处的事情。

So she sets out to find something that is good for someone else, but not good for her in any way.

但她卡住了。

And she's stumped.

最后，她决定让一只蜜蜂蜇她，因为这样能让那只蜜蜂在其他蜜蜂面前显得很酷。

And finally, she decides to let a bee sting her because it'll help the bee look cool in front of his bee friends.

但其实这招根本没用。

Like, that that didn't work though.

对吧？

Right?

不对。

No.

因为那只蜜蜂死了。

Because the bee died.

是的。

Yeah.

所以，在节目快结束时，她决定向PBS做捐赠承诺。

So finally, toward the end of the show, she decides that she is going to make a pledge to PBS.

杰瑞正在接受捐赠，当他收到菲比的捐赠时，他竟然能上电视了。

And Jerry is taking pledges, and when he receives Phoebe's, he actually gets to be on TV.

这对他有好处，但计划失败了，因为菲比感觉很好。

And that does something good for him, and the plan is foiled because Phoebe feels great.

是的。

Yeah.

所以她的利他行为被毁了。

So So her altruistic act is ruined.

不。

No.

所以在一部大约三十分钟的情景喜剧中，这个问题都没能得到解答，但几个世纪以来人们已经提出了一些更深刻的见解。

So in the span of about, what, a thirty minute sitcom, that question couldn't be answered, but there have been some deeper perspectives throughout the centuries.

是的。

Yeah.

我相信你已经知道了，但菲比和乔伊所进行的，是一场延续了几个世纪的哲学辩论。

And I'm sure you already know this, but what Phoebe and Joey were engaged in is a, centuries old philosophical debate.

是否存在真正无私的行为或利他行为？

Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act or an altruistic act?

我们大概应该快速定义一下。

And we should probably define that real quick.

利他主义是指为了他人的利益而做出某种自我牺牲的行为。

Altruism is performing some self sacrificing act for the benefit of another person.

够清楚了。

Clear enough.

如果只是这样，我们根本不会展开这场讨论。

I don't think we'd be even having this discussion if that was it.

但这里有一个前提，是由哲学家伊曼努尔·康德提出的，他喜欢颠覆常规。

But there's one caveat, to that and, which was posed by philosopher philosopher Immanuel Kant who liked to shake things up.

那就是，做出无私行为的人不能从中获得任何回报。

And that was that the person performing the the unselfish act can't get anything out of it.

我们说的不只是有形的东西。

And we're not just talking about tangible things.

我们说的是那种无形的温暖感。

We're talking about the intangible warm fuzzies.

好的。

Sure.

好的。

Sure.

现在，这种你刚才描述的‘温暖感’已经被证明确实对我们人类产生影响。

Now, this has already been shown to actually have an effect on us humans, these warm fuzzies you just described.

通过核磁共振成像设备，我们发现，仅仅通过捐赠给慈善机构，大脑中的愉悦中心和奖励中心就会释放内啡肽，让我们在给予金钱时感受到的快乐，丝毫不亚于接受金钱时。

And using MRI machines, we we've seen that by at least donating to charity, the pleasure center, the reward center in our brain sets off a flow of endorphins, and we feel just as good giving out money as we do receiving money.

因此，显然存在这种‘温暖感’，这在某种程度上支持了康德的观点——即不存在真正利他的行为，但进化论也同样支持这一点。

So clearly, there are warm fuzzies, kind of supports Kant's idea that there is no such thing as an altruistic act, but so too does evolution.

对吧？

Right?

是的。

Yeah.

在自然界中，对此也有几种不同的观点。

So in the natural world, there's also a couple of perspectives on this.

从植物的角度来看，我们有一棵树。

And we look at something from the flora side, we have a tree.

当树在秋天落叶时，实际上它是在为根部提供一层保暖的保护层，以便在冬季存活，并在天气变暖时重新生长。

And when the tree sheds its leaves in the fall, essentially, what it's doing is it's providing a cushion of warmth to protect its roots throughout the winter so that it can regenerate again when there's warmer weather.

因此，它是在为后代延续自身。

So it's propagating itself for future generations.

嗯。

Mhmm.

你也可以这么说，一位母亲在面对逆境时保护自己的孩子，也是如此。

And you could say the same holds true for a mother who protects her child in the in the face of adversity too.

她也在保护自己的血脉。

She's also trying to protect her lineage.

但同样，你知道，无论是树还是母亲，它们都能得到回报。

But again, you know, both of these things, the tree and the mother, they get something in return.

树获得了更长的寿命。

The tree gets longer life.

母亲得到的是孩子的爱与忠诚。

The mother gets the love and loyalty of her child.

让我问你一个问题。

Well, let me ask you this.

如果母亲看到自己的孩子在街上即将被一辆18轮大卡车撞上，她冲出去把孩子推开，自己却被撞了，会发生什么？

What happens if the mother sees her child in the street about to be hit by an 18 wheeler, runs out, pushes her child out of the way, and is hit herself?

她从这件事里得不到任何回报，对吧？

She's not getting anything out of that, is she?

嗯，我不确定。

Well, I don't know.

我想在那种情况下，你其实是在触及宗教层面，积累善行以换取来世和最终审判的福报，对吧？

I guess at that point, you're sort of tapping into religion and and storing up good deeds for the afterlife and final judgment, aren't you?

我想是这样。

I I guess so.

这是一种看待问题的方式

That's one way to look at

它。

it.

不过，这可能是个留到以后再讨论的问题，我们现在得谈谈乔什最喜欢的哲学家——埃米尔·涂尔干。

That might be a question for another day though, and we have to talk about Josh's favorite philosopher, Emile Durkheim.

涂尔干是个相当深奥的人物。

Now Durkheim was, he was a pretty heady fellow.

他觉得，利他主义只不过是一种用来控制人们的社交建构。

He, he had the impression that, altruism was merely, a social construct that was used to control people.

如果我们只是为了钱就到处互相刺杀，而不是去工作或借钱，社会就会崩溃。

It basically if if we just all went around stabbing one another because we needed money, rather than just going out and working for it or borrowing it, society would fall apart.

对涂尔干来说，我们社会正常运转所必需的，就是某种类似利他主义、为更大利益而自我牺牲的东西。

To Durkheim, one of the things we have to have to function as a society is something like altruism, self sacrifice for the greater good.

但涂尔干的观点让我们所有人看起来都像傻瓜——我们不断做出自我牺牲的行为，而在他的视角下，从中获益的人其实并没有真正获益。

But Durkheim's view kind of, makes us all look a little bit like, dopes actually, like we're performing all these self sacrificial acts and under his view, the person who's benefiting from it isn't really benefiting from it.

这一切都是为了社会，这大概是关于利他主义最令人沮丧的看法了。

It's really all for society, which is about as depressing a view of altruism as as can be.

所以很明显，哲学家、社会学家和进化论者又一次把那种温暖的感觉搞砸了，对吧？

So clearly, once again, the philosophers, sociologists, and evolutionists have really screwed up the warm fuzzies, haven't they?

他们确实搞砸了。

They really have.

他们试图剥离这个问题的核心，但归根结底，一切都是一样的。

They're trying to take the the heart out of the issue, but, you know, at the end of the day, it's all the same.

如果你为别人做了一件好事，恰好自己也感到开心，我觉得这完全没问题。

If you do something nice for someone else and you happen to feel good in return, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all.

实际上，我同意你的看法。

I I think I agree with you actually.

好了，坎迪斯和我要去干点别的，不会为了钱去刺伤任何人，我们会自己践行利他行为。

Well, Candace and I are going to go, not stab anyone for money, so we'll be performing our own altruistic acts.

别忘了去howstuffworks.com阅读《是否存在真正无私的行为》。

Be sure to read, is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act on howstuffworks.com.

如需了解更多关于此话题以及成千上万其他内容，请访问howstuffworks.com。

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

让我们知道你的想法

Let us know what

发送邮件至 podcast@howstuffworks.com

you think.

发送邮件至 podcast@howstuffworks.com

Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.

本节目由焕然一新的2012款凯美瑞倾情呈现

Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

它已经准备好了

It's ready.

你准备好了吗？

Are you?

当种族隔离还是法律时，一位神秘的黑人俱乐部老板查理·菲茨杰拉德有自己的

When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his

规矩

own rules.

白天实行种族隔离，晚上却实现融合。

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

就像踏入了另一个世界。

It was like stepping in another world.

他是个商人吗？

Was he a businessman?

是个罪犯吗？

A criminal?

是个英雄吗？

A hero?

查理是权力的典范。

Charlie was an example of power.

他们必须摧毁他。

They had to crush him.

查理之地，来自Atlas Obscura和Myrtle Beach旅游局。

Charlie's Place from Atlas Obscura and Visit Myrtle Beach.

在 iHeartRadio 应用、Apple 播客或您收听播客的任何平台收听《Charlie's Place》。

Listen to Charlie's Place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

5 月 2 日星期六，乡村音乐界最耀眼的明星们将齐聚德克萨斯州奥斯汀，参加由 Capital One 赞助的 2026 年 iHeart 乡村音乐节。

Saturday, May 2, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas at our twenty twenty six iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One.

门票现已开售。

Tickets are on sale now.

请尽快在 ticketmaster.com 购票，售完即止。

Get yours before they sell out at ticketmaster.com.

网址是 ticketmaster.com。

That's ticketmaster.com.

这是 iHeart 播客。

This is an iHeart podcast.

百分百真人制作。

Guaranteed human.