541. 我们为何停止了进步 | 彼得·蒂尔

所以，这个关于是否存在真正进步的问题？

So this question of, you know, is there really progress?

我们过去走得更快。

We used to move faster.

过去五十年里，我们在物理速度上已经停止了加速。

We've stopped moving faster physically the last fifty years.

我们感觉自己正处在一个末日时代。

We feel like we are in an apocalyptic age.

科学和技术有一个层面。

There is a dimension of science and technology.

它有一个黑暗的维度，你知道，这可能是人类为自己设下的陷阱。

It has a dark dimension and it's, you know, it's a trap that humanity may be setting for itself.

许多早期的科学工作是在修道院中进行的，后来这些修道院演变成了大学。

Much of the early science was done in the monasteries that turned into universities.

你可以将此视为科学革命根基的实证，至少是基督教衍生出的分支。

You can think about that as concrete evidence of the underpinning of much of the scientific revolution in terms of at least the offshoots of Christianity.

但我认为那里还有更深层的东西。

But I think there's something deeper there.

推动它的不仅仅是神学形而上学，还有一种类似基督教人类学的东西。

It wasn't just the theological metaphysics that that drove it, but something like the Christian anthropology.

好的。

Okay.

那我们来深入探讨一下。

So let's delve into this a little bit.

今天我有机会与彼得·蒂尔坐下来交谈，蒂尔先生最著名的身份是他在创建PayPal中所扮演的角色，但他长期以来一直是一位精明的投资者。

So I had the opportunity to sit down with Peter Thiel today, and and mister Thiel is probably most famous for the role that he played in establishing PayPal, but he's been a canny investor for a very long period of time.

我们实际上并没有过多谈论商业方面的实际问题。

And we didn't actually talk much about practicalities on the business side.

我们主要讨论了文化转型的性质，因为他的思考方向往往朝向这方面。

We mostly talked about the nature of cultural transfer transformation because his thought tends in that direction.

他是一个富有哲学倾向的人。

He's a philosophically inclined person.

我们的讨论深入探讨了彼得的一个基本观点：自上世纪六十年代以来，物质世界（而非数字世界）的进步已显著放缓，这其中有着深刻的原因。

And our discussion really walks through one of one of Peter's fundamental propositions is that progress in the material world and not the digital world, let's say, has slowed substantively since maybe the nineteen sixties, and that there are deep reasons for that.

其中一部分原因是对科学探索的末日式恐惧。

Some of it is apocalyptic fear of the scientific endeavor.

另一部分则是类似嬉皮士般渴望向内探索的倾向。

Some of it is this hippie like desire to look inside.

还有一部分则是逃避到抽象世界中。

Some of it is escape into a world of abstraction.

因此，他阐述了自己的社会变革理论，该理论深受对低层次模仿性嫉妒所驱动的地位游戏的怀疑影响，我认为这种怀疑非常明智。

And so he outlined his theory of social transformation, which is also deeply influenced by a skepticism about what low level mimetic envy predicated status games, which I think has been a very wise target of skepticism.

我们回顾了他对过去几百年社会与技术变革的思考，重点集中在最近六十年，并开始勾勒出一种可能缓解这种虚无主义病理与普遍忧郁的形而上学框架。

We walked through his thoughts on social and technological transformation over a couple of hundred years concentrating more on the last sixty and also began to flesh out a metaphysics that might ameliorate some of that nihilistic pathology and malaise.

这使我们至少能够开始探讨：一个社会和个体心灵要保持健康，甚至避免走向极权主义和灾难，需要哪些形而上学的预设。

And that enabled us to at least begin a discussion about what metaphysical presuppositions are necessary for a society and a psyche to remain, well, not only healthy, but non totalitarian and catastrophic.

所以，请加入我们的讨论。

So join us for that.

我们上次交谈是在ARC通过远程进行的，你当时说了一些颇具争议的观点。

So the last time we spoke was by distance at ARC, and you said a number of things there that were provocative.

其中有一个观点，我特别想进一步探讨。

And one in particular that I wanted to follow-up on.

它让我感到惊讶，尽管我认为我理解你为什么这么说。

It surprised me, although I think I understand why you said it.

你对当前我们取得的进步速度持怀疑态度。

You're dubious about the rate of progress, so to speak, that we're making now.

你似乎觉得——我不想替你说话——最有创新性的时代或许已经过去，或者至少是暂时的。

You feel you seem to feel, I don't want to put words in your mouth, that the most innovative times are perhaps behind us or at least temporary or so.

因此，我很想知道，过去一年我们在大型语言模型领域看到了原则性的革命性进展，我们的设备也变得越来越复杂。

And so I'm I'm I'm curious about we've seen these revolutionary steps forward in principle on the large language model front in the last year, and our gadgetry is becoming much more sophisticated.

机器人技术取得了巨大进步。

There's tremendous advancements in robotics.

那么，你如何定义科学和技术进步的量化标准？为什么你对这些进步的效益或速度持怀疑态度？

And so how do you conceptualize quantifying progress, scientific and technological, and why are you skeptical about the benefits or the rate?

嗯，是的，关于这一点，我过去近二十年来一直谈论过各种变体，当然，这其中涉及许多非常复杂的测量问题。

Well, yeah, there are variations of this that I've talked about for close to two decades at this point, and of course, there are all sorts of very complicated measurement problems.

那么，我们该如何将人工智能的进步与痴呆症研究的停滞、阿尔茨海默病的治愈进展缓慢相比较呢？

So how do we compare progress in AI with, let's say, lack of progress in dementia research, curing Alzheimer's?

所有这些不同方式，都涉及如何权衡各种不同的因素。

And so all these different complicated ways of how you weight all these different things.

但过去有一种感觉，即西方世界正处于一个科学和技术快速进步的时代，多个领域都在齐头并进。

But there was a sense that the West, the Western world was in this fast era of scientific technological progress where it was advancing on many, many different fronts.

某种程度上，这种趋势始于文艺复兴、早期启蒙运动，即17、18世纪，随后在19世纪和20世纪上半叶以重要方式加速发展。

And in some ways, it started picking up in the Renaissance, early enlightenment, seventeenth, eighteenth centuries, and then probably in important ways accelerated in the nineteenth, first half of the twentieth.

但在我看来，过去大约五十年，也许从1970年左右开始，这种进步已经放缓，这可以被视为一个转折点。

And then in some ways, I believe it's slowed down over the last fifty or so years, maybe 1970 or so is an inflection point one could cite.

这并不意味着进步完全停止了。

It doesn't mean it's stopped altogether.

我常常用一种方式来总结：我们在比特的世界里持续取得进展。

One way I've often summarized it is that we've continued to have progress in the world of bits.

计算机、软件、互联网、移动互联网，也许是加密货币，现在是人工智能。

Computers, software, internet, mobile internet, maybe crypto, now AI.

但在原子世界中的进展却少得多。

But there's been much less progress in the world of atoms.

如果你想想大学环境，大多数工程和科学学科都更多地涉及我们所处的物理物质世界。

If you think about university setting, most of the engineering and scientific subjects had to do more with this physical material world in which we're embedded.

我在20世纪80年代末就读于斯坦福大学，1989届毕业，当时这一点并不明显，但回过头来看，几乎所有属于原子世界的事物都是不值得选择的领域。

And I was an undergraduate at Stanford in the late 1980s, class of 'eighty nine, and it wasn't quite obvious at the time, but in retrospect, almost anything that was in the world of atoms would have been a bad field to go into.

物理学、化学、机械工程，当然还有航空宇航工程、核工程，人们早在20世纪80年代就知道这些领域已经式微了。

Physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, certainly aero astro engineering, nuclear engineering people already knew was kind of outlawed and over by the 1980s.

你或许还能选择电气工程，那是用于半导体的原子领域。

You could still maybe do electrical engineering, which was the atoms that were used for semiconductors.

基本上，唯一一个对人们来说会非常成功的STEM领域是计算机科学，而它当时只是一个边缘的、近乎虚假的领域，因为我一直有个矛盾：当人们说支持科学时，我表示赞同，但当人们使用‘科学’这个词时，我又持怀疑态度。

Basically the only STEM field that going to be a really successful field for people to go into was computer science, which was this marginal, almost fake field because I always have this rift where when people use I'm in favor of science, but I'm skeptical when people use the word science.

所以社会科学、政治学、气候科学被称作‘科学’，是因为那些人有自卑情结，内心深处其实明白：这些根本不是真正严谨的科学领域。

So social science, political science, climate science are called science by people who have an inferiority complex and say deep down, no, they're not really rigorous scientific fields.

在计算机科学的早期，情况也是如此。

Something like this was true of computer science in the original day.

当时，那些数学不够好、无法进入数学、物理或电气工程领域的人，被淘汰后进入了计算机科学。

It was people who were too dumb at math to be in mathematics or physics or electrical engineering, and they flunked out into computer science.

奇怪的是，这个领域竟然成功了，并且产生了相当大的影响。

Weirdly, this was a field that worked and it had a decent amount of impact.

随后，它在人们创建一些非凡公司方面取得了成功。

Then it worked on the scale of people building some fantastic companies.

当我们从工业时代过渡到信息时代时，确实发生了一些重要的文化和社会变革。

There were certainly some important cultural and social transformations that we had as we moved from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.

我不知道它在广泛的经济福祉层面是否真的取得了很好的效果。

I don't know if it's worked that well on, let's say, broad economic level of well-being.

所以，即使以人们的物质福祉来衡量，美国千禧一代在很多方面可能还不如他们的婴儿潮一代父母。

So even if you measure it in terms of material well-being for people, the millennial generation in The US is probably in a lot of ways not even doing as well as their baby boomer parents.

这是我们首次经历这种经济停滞甚至明显衰退。

It's the first time we've had this sort of economic stagnation or even outright decline.

再次说明，天真的观点会认为，所有这些进步 somehow 转化为更成功的经济。

Again, the naive view would be that all this progress somehow translates into a more successful economy.

这并不是衡量事物的唯一方式，但却是相对直接的方式；当这种转化没有发生时，我的结论是，也许这些进步并没有积累到那么多。

It's not the only way to measure things, but it's sort of a straightforward way to measure things, then when it doesn't translate, my conclusion is maybe it hasn't added up to as much.

顺便说一下，要进行这场辩论甚至弄清楚发生了什么非常困难，原因之一是晚期现代性的一个特征——与早期现代性不同——是过度专业化，我们拥有越来越狭窄的专家群体，他们只精通自己的领域，比如癌症专家告诉我们，五年内就能治愈癌症。

One of the reasons it's very hard, by the way, to have this debate and even figure out what's going on is because one of the features of late modernity, unlike early modernity, is hyper specialization, and we have ever narrower group of experts who are experts in their field, so the cancer specialists tell us they will cure cancer in five years.

他们已经这样说了五十年，而弦理论家则声称自己是世界上最聪明的人，而要从各自领域内部评估这些学科却非常困难，这就像亚当·斯密提出的针厂概念：一百个人在针厂各司其职，而我们可以把晚期现代性看作是‘针厂的加强版’。

They've been telling us that for the last fifty, and then the string theorists tell us they're the smartest people in the world, and it's very hard to evaluate these fields on their own terms, which is It's like Adam Smith had this concept of the pin factory where you had 100 different people working in a pin factory and you can think of late modernity as the pin factory on steroids.

我们如此高度专业化，以至于很难对整体形成清晰的图景。

We're so hyper specialized, it's extremely hard to have a picture of the whole.

因此，这个问题——你知道的，究竟有没有真正的进步？

And so this question of, you know, is there really progress?

还是根本没有？

Is there not?

这个问题很难回答，但我想，如果用经济指标来衡量，就会感觉到一种放缓的趋势。

It's kind of a hard one to get at, but I think if you measure it in economic terms, there's a slowed sense.

如果你用一种直觉的方式来衡量，比如我们看看癌症、超音速航空等各种不同领域。

If you measure it in the intuitive thing where, okay, we'll just look at a bunch of different fields like cancer, supersonic aviation, just all these different ways.

过去这些领域发展得更快。

Used to move faster.

从1500年起，每个十年我们都在加速前进。

We moved faster every decade from 1500 on.

更快的帆船、更快的铁路、更快的汽车、更快的飞机。

Was faster sailing boats and faster railroads, faster cars, faster planes.

过去五十年里，我们在物理速度上已经停止了进步。

We've stopped moving faster physically the last fifty years.

所以这是一个维度。

So that's one dimension.

因此，有一种常识性的观点认为我们陷入了停滞。

So there's a common sense way that we have stagnation.

除了经济上的衡量方式，我还有一个政治上的直觉：也许当你有一些被禁止讨论的禁忌想法时，我的捷径就是怀疑它们恰恰是正确的。

There is an economic way to measure it, then there's probably always a political intuition I have on this too, is that perhaps if you have ideas that are taboo that you're not allowed to discuss, my shortcut is to suspect they're simply correct.

我经常举的例子是斯坦福大学的鲍勃·劳夫林教授。

And so the example I always give is Professor Bob Laughlin, who's a Stanford physics professor.

我想大概是1998年，他获得了诺贝尔物理学奖，并产生了严重的错觉，认为自己得了诺奖后终于获得了学术自由，可以谈论任何想谈的话题。

I think around 1998, he gets a Nobel Prize in Physics and he suffers from the extreme delusion that now that he has a Nobel Prize, he finally has academic freedom and can talk about whatever he would like to talk about.

科学领域中有很多非常禁忌的话题。

There are all sorts of areas that are very taboo in the sciences.

你质疑达尔文主义、干细胞研究或气候变化。

You question Darwinism or question stem cell research or question climate change.

这些都是非常危险的领域，但他选了一个比以上三个还要危险得多的话题。

These are very dangerous areas, but he picked one that's even more dangerous than any of those three.

他认为，大多数所谓的科学家本质上是在从政府那里窃取资金，从事边缘欺诈性的科研，这些研究都是渐进式的，毫无价值。

He believed that most of the so called scientists were basically stealing money from the government, engaging in borderline fraudulent science, it was incrementalist, not worth much.

他的研究重点是高温超导。

His area of focus was high temperature superconductivity.

他曾告诉我，那个领域大约写了五万篇论文，但其中只有大约25篇真正推动了科学进展。

He told me at one point there were maybe 50,000 papers written in that area and maybe 25 out of 50,000 had actually advanced the science at all.

我甚至不需要告诉你，这不仅仅是复制危机这么抽象的问题。

I don't even need to tell you how the, It was not just the abstract replication crisis.

他一开始就在点名批评一些人。

He started by talking about naming people.

这个人偷了钱，那个人是骗子。

This person has stole money and this person is a fraud.

我甚至不需要告诉你这部电影是怎么结束的。

I I don't even need to tell you how that movie ended.

他很快就被取消了资助，他的学生再也拿不到博士学位了。

He promptly got defunded, his students couldn't get PhDs anymore.

因此，我的怀疑诠释学是：如果你有一个像科学停滞这样的观点，一说出来就被取消平台，那这个观点我们就应该认真对待。

Then my hermeneutic of suspicion is if you have an idea like stagnation in science, which immediately gets you de platformed, that's an idea we should take very seriously.

这就是我对这个问题的政治直觉。

So that's the political intuition I have on this.

所以我还有一些其他类似的观点，我们一直被卡住了。

So I have a few of these different ideas that we've been a lot more stuck.

这并不意味着完全没有进展。

It doesn't mean that there's been zero progress.

这并不意味着我们取得的进展都是完全良好的。

It doesn't mean that the progress we've had has been uniformly good.

这也不意味着人们对有限进展的担忧是毫无根据的。

It doesn't mean that people's fears about the limited progress we have are unjustified either.

也许所有这些因素实际上共同解释了为何会出现停滞。

Maybe all these things are actually part of the explanation for why the stagnation has happened.

现在，有一个更困难的问题，那就是我们可以描述的一些文化变迁，至少与我们所处的时代同时发生并存在关联。

Now, there's a much harder question, then there's sort of our cultural transformations that one can describe that at least coincided with us and were correlated.

它们有多大的因果性总是难以说清，但如果我们把阿波罗登月计划视为最后一次伟大的科技工程，那么1969年7月，我们登上了月球，三周后伍德斯托克音乐节开始了。

How causal they were is always hard to say, but if we sort of think of, you know, the Apollo space program as this last great, you know, technological scientific project, there's some sense where July 1969, where we landed on the moon and Woodstock started three weeks later.

以 hindsight 的眼光来看，某种程度上，那正是技术进步停止、嬉皮士接管国家的时刻。

And with benefit of hindsight, in some sense, that's when progress, technological progress stopped and the hippies took over the country.

你可以用多种方式来描述它，但某种程度上，你可以将其视为从探索外部世界转向探索内在世界的转变。

And you can describe it in many ways, but in some ways you can describe it as a shift from outer space, from exploring the world outside of us to inner space.

而且还有各种各样的转变。

And there were sort of you know, all these different transformations.

比如，我会说，瑜伽和冥想。

There was a, you know, and I would describe, you know, yoga, meditation.

我会说，致幻药物。

I would describe, you know, psychedelic drugs.

我会说，不知道，宅在地下室玩电子游戏的厌女者。

I would describe, you know, I don't know, incels playing video games in basements.

你知道，还有这种令人惊叹的、或许是持续的原子化现象，以及对身份政治的自我沉溺。

You know, there was all this incredible, this maybe continued atomization, the navel gazing, you know, of identity politics in a way.

你知道，人们常常把马克思主义和文化马克思主义混为一谈。

You know, you could that, you know, people often lump for example, they often lump Marxism and cultural Marxism together.

在我的说法中，它们是相反的，因为马克思主义至少主要关注外部的客观物质经济现实，而文化马克思主义则像是从阿波罗计划转向伍德斯托克，转向了内在世界。

In my telling, these opposites because Marxism at least was primarily concerned about the outside objective material economic realities, and then cultural Marxism was like the shift from Apollo to Woodstock where you just went into the sort of interior world.

你不再思考外部世界了。

You no longer were thinking about this outside world.

在某些方面，你停止了对经济增长和基本经济繁荣的追问。

And in some ways, you stopped asking these questions about economic growth and basic economic prosperity.

而这也恰好与这些方面的进展停滞相吻合。

And then that coincided also with this lack of progress in these things.

因此，我认为所有这些文化转变都与这一转变同时发生。

So I think there were all these kinds of cultural transformations that coincided with this shift.

人们常常问，这种停滞为什么会发生。

Think people often ask why this stagnation happened.

你同意这一点，当然人们可以对发生的程度有不同看法，但如果你认同我，认为进步确实放缓了，某种程度上，奇点可能更存在于过去而非未来。

You agree with this, and of course people can disagree how much it happened, but if you agree with me that there's been a slowing down of progress, that in some sense the singularity was maybe more in the past than in the future.

你总会问这些问题：为什么会发生？

And you always have these questions, why did it happen?

我的敷衍答案总是：为什么的问题是多重原因决定的，可能是我们的社会变得规避风险，或者过于女性化，也可能是监管和官僚主义过多——这是我作为自由意志主义者的直觉。

And my cop out answer is always that why questions are overdetermined and it could be sort of our society became risk averse or too feminized, or you could say that there was too much regulation and bureaucracy, which is sort of a libertarian intuition I have.

但我逐渐认为，其中一个更重要的因素是，许多人觉得科学和技术相当危险。

But I've come to think that one of the bigger factors was the sense that a lot of the science and technology was quite dangerous.

它至少在军事背景下具有双重用途的特性。

It had a, at least in a military context, had a dual use character.

这在18世纪末、19世纪就已经开始加速了，比如拿破仑战争、柯尔特上校发明左轮手枪、阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔发明炸药，而第一次世界大战则成为一个转折点，那种天真的进步叙事被严重削弱，某种程度上，培根式的科学计划在黑格尔的意义上终结了——它在洛斯阿拉莫斯制造核武器时达到了顶峰，也宣告了终结。

This was, I mean, was already some relentless acceleration of this stuff in the late eighteenth, nineteenth centuries, you know, Napoleonic Wars, colonel Colt with the revolver, Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite, you know, World War I, you know, was sort of a breakpoint where, you know, the sort of naive progressive narrative really got undercut, and and then somehow you can you can say that the sort of Baconian science project in some sense ended, were ended in the Hegelian sense as both culminated and terminated at Los Alamos with the building of nuclear weapons.

然后，尽管并不完全准确，但我的说法是，社会花了大约二十五年才真正内化了核武器的存在。

And then, again, it doesn't work perfectly, but my telling would be that it took maybe a quarter century for nuclear weapons to really get internalized by society.

到了20世纪70年代，人们开始意识到：我们不想再继续在外部世界制造越来越多的热核炸弹。

And then by the 1970s, you know, the energy was, you know, we don't want to be doing this outside world where we're going to build ever more thermonuclear bombs.

我们想要的是在火人节上，伴随着迷幻药物，寻求解脱。

We want to be, you know, peacing out at Burning Man with psychedelic drugs.

我们想要通过环保主义回归自然，或者逃避现实。

We want to we want to, you know or you or you escape back to nature through environmentalism.

我们想要生活在一个不变的世界里，而不是充满变化的世界，因为变化的世界带有末日般的维度。

You know, we are, you know, we want to be in a world not of change, but of stasis because a world of change has this apocalyptic dimension.

变化就是变得更糟。

Change is change for the worse.

这就是1970年代所体现的那种感觉。

That's the that's the sense that gets, you know, encapsulated in 1970s.

有一种观点认为，进步主义的科学应该按下暂停键。

There's there's a way that the progressive version of science, try to put the pause button on it.

那些仍被允许存在的领域，恰恰是最缺乏活力的。

The places where it's still allowed, can say are the most inert.

因此，从某种意义上说，数字世界被视为极其沉寂，因为你用它并不制造炸弹或武器。

So in a way, the world of bits was seen as incredibly inert because you're not building bombs, you're not building weapons with it.

当然，即便在数字世界中，互联网上的某些想法偶尔也会转化为现实。

Then of course, even there, there's some sort of way in which the ideas on the Internet, maybe they do translate into reality every now and then.

推特或X上发生的事，并不总停留在那里。

What happens on Twitter or X doesn't always stay there.

大多数时候它确实停留在网上，所以感觉像是一场极其愤怒而激烈的对话，但偶尔它还是会映射到现实世界。

Most of the time it stays there, so it feels like it's this extremely angry, intense conversation, but every now and then it still translates to the real world.

所以，你可以认为互联网被允许存在，是因为它某种程度上是一个安全的空间。

So the internet you could say was allowed because it was sort of a safe space.

这是一个能够控制暴力的地方。

It a place where the sort of violence could be contained.

但即便在那里，人们可能也觉得它还是太过分了。

And then even there, probably not totally, even there people felt it was maybe too much.

但没错，晚期现代性的末日背景中，每一次微侵犯都有可能升级为末日，而再次强调，我不喜欢这种停滞和规避风险的态度，但其中有一部分我觉得是可以理解的。

But yes, the apocalyptic background of late modernity where every microaggression has the potential to escalate to Armageddon is And in the again, I don't like the stagnation and the risk aversion and all these responses, but there's there's a part of it that I think is understandable.

所以经过你的澄清，听上去像是——请纠正我是否理解错了——你正在努力解释我们当前所处的位置，以及它与战后时期，甚至启蒙运动到战后时期的差异：事情已经发生了根本性的变化。

So it sounds to me now that you've clarified that, it sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that what you're grappling with is more of an attempt to account for where we are now and how it's different from, let's say, the postwar period or maybe even the enlightenment to the postwar Like, things have shifted radically.

听上去你所描述的是什么？

And it sounds to me like what you're outlining is a what?

这更像是试图刻画这种转变的性质，而不仅仅是否认进步存在的观念。

It's an attempt to characterize the nature of that shift, perhaps even more than an attempt to deny the idea that there's any progress.

你自己在阐述观点时也说过，衡量进步非常困难，但不可否认的是，许多事情已经发生了巨大变化，我们如今的位置与十年前，更不用说三十年前，已经截然不同。

You said yourself when you were laying out your argument that it's very difficult to measure progress, but it's also undeniable that many, many things have shifted, and we're not where we were, let's say, well, ten years ago probably, and certainly not thirty years ago.

嗯，我会说，我们总体上进步得比以前慢多了，是的，一百年前是这样。

Well, I would say we are broadly progressing more slowly than we were one Yeah, hundred okay.

这些年，我们在某些方面仍在进步。

Years We are still progressing in some dimensions.

它们可能仍然太快、太令人恐惧，但与1913年、第一次世界大战前的世界相比，最大的变化在于，我们感觉自己正处在一个末日时代，科学与技术具有某种黑暗面，人类可能正在为自己设下陷阱。

They're maybe still too fast and too scary for people, but the big thing that has shifted vis a vis, let's say the world of 1913, pre World War I, is that we feel like we are in an apocalyptic age, that there is a dimension of science and technology that it has a dark dimension and it's a trap that humanity may be setting for itself.

我不喜欢格蕾塔，也不喜欢完全的预防原则，但她提出的‘我们只有一个地球’这一观点并非完全错误。

And I don't like Greta and I don't like the full precautionary principle, but her argument that we have just one planet isn't entirely wrong.

因此，你将这一变化部分视为对进步理念——即先前的假设——的转变。

So you see this shift in part as a shift from the ethos of progress, the prior assumption

是的，但我不想把它抽象得太过分。

Yeah, but I of don't wanna abstract it too much.

实际上，这是发生的具体进步的性质。

It is actually, it's the specific nature of the progress that happened.

我们拥有了热核武器。

It is we got thermonuclear weapons.

是的，没错。

Yeah, right.

我们有足够的能力影响环境。

We are powerful enough to affect the environment.

我不确定二氧化碳是不是最重要的因素，但很可能有很多方面会以非常激进的方式影响环境。

I'm not sure whether, you know, carbon dioxide's the most important dimension, but there are probably a lot of dimensions where the environment can be impacted in very radical ways.

我们很可能能够制造出非常危险的生物武器。

We can probably build very dangerous bioweapons.

也许这正是武汉实验室里发生的事情。

Maybe that's even what was going on in the Wuhan lab.

人工智能的某些方面可能具有暴力性和极大的危险性，你不必相信那些奇怪的设想，比如某种完全脱离实体的超级智能会杀死地球上每一个人，但将它与武器技术自然结合的方式确实令人不安。

There are dimensions of AI that are, you know, potentially violent and very dangerous and you don't have to necessarily believe the all these sort of weird pictures where it's this super intelligence that's somehow completely disembodied and is going to kill every last human being on the planet, but there are natural ways to combine it with weapons technology that feel unsettling.

令人不安。

Unsettling.

一个简单的例子是我们有这种无人机技术。

A simple example is that we this drone technology.

这种新技术在俄罗斯与乌克兰的冲突中崭露头角。

That's a new form of technology that's come to the fore in the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.

但人类操作员可能会被干扰。

And you have a human in the loop, but the human can get jammed.

因此，自然的解决方案是在无人机上部署人工智能，将它们转变为更自主的武器系统，而且

And so the natural fix is to put AI on the drones and turn these into more autonomous weapon systems, and

这似乎是不可避免的。

that's Seems inevitable.

这看起来像是合乎逻辑的自然做法，即使我作为一个科技支持者，也不得不承认，这让我感到有些不安。

That seems like the natural logical thing to do, and then even I as a pro tech person have to say I find that somewhat unsettling.

让我把这些列出来。

So let me lay these out.

好的。

The Okay.

让我再梳理并总结一下这些观点。

So let me lay these ideas out again and summarize.

你之前提到的一个线索是，我们同时讨论两个。

So one of the threads that you were developing was, let we'll do two at the same time.

其中一个观点是，就物理现实而言，科学进程在你看来可能在20世纪60年代达到了顶峰。

One was that the scientific process in terms of physical reality, maybe in your view peaked in the 1960s.

然后你可以想象，你大致提出了两个可能的原因。

And then you could imagine that there you you kinda outlined two maybe reasons for that.

一个是担心这种技术带来的末日后果，以及转向各种形式的抽象。

One was fear of the apocalyptic consequences of that technology and an escape into various forms of abstraction.

这些抽象中有些是心理层面的，比如内在探索，但也有一些是逃向数字抽象。

Like so some of those abstractions were psychological abstractions, inner journeys, but some of it also was escape into digital abstraction.

然后你还指出，数字领域的探索途径仍然开放。

And then you also made a case that the avenue for exploration in the digital realm was still open.

因此，也许我们可以理解这一点。

And so maybe we could we could understand this.

所以，这个，还有

So And this and then

以及数字领域。

and the digital realm.

而在某些方面，这些逃离完全是彻底的逃离。

And then in some ways, these escape sworn full escapes.

所以人工智能，是的，它似乎只关乎比特，而非原子。

So AI, yeah, that's a It seems to be just about bits, not atoms.

但如果你将它与无人机结合，人工智能就又回到了物理世界。

But then if you combine it with a drone, the AI comes back to the physical wheels.

是的。

Yeah.

好吧，我们稍后再回到这个重叠问题。

Well, we can We'll get back to that, back to the overlap.

但你可以想象，科学方法产生了技术后果的爆炸性增长。

But so you could imagine that, okay, so the scientific approach, the method produced an explosion of technological consequences.

其中许多在物理世界中产生了巨大影响。

Many of them were dramatic in the physical world.

对此也出现了反弹。

There was kickbacks against that.

其中一种反作用是末日论的元素。

One of the kickbacks was the apocalyptic element.

另一种则是对灵性的背离，你可以说。

The other was the turn away from spirituality, you might say.

但与此同时，任何革命之后总会产生一种对立面，那就是事物以各种奇怪的方式被繁文缛节缠住。

But then there was also the counterposition that always develops in any after ever any revolution is that things get tangled up in red tape in weird ways.

比如，科学方面，我刚去过乌兹别克斯坦，嗯。

Like, the scientific I was just in Uzbekistan, you know Mhmm.

他们在过去五年里建立了一个相当先进的工业经济。

And they developed a pretty sophisticated industrial economy in the last five years.

他们能实现这一点的部分原因是因为没有任何阻碍。

And part of the reason that they could do that was because there was nothing in the way.

对吧？

Right?

因为乌兹别克斯坦在共产主义崩溃后，几乎没有任何阻碍激进创业的障碍。

Because Uzbekistan was kind of devoid of impediments to radical entrepreneurial ship in the aftermath of the communist default.

现在你可以想象，在一段相当长的时间里，科学方法如此强大，以至于不断引发革命，而法律和官僚体系却跟不上它的步伐。

Now you could imagine that for a good time, the scientific method was so powerful that it was producing revolutions nonstop, and the legal and bureaucratic frameworks were lagging it.

到了二十世纪七十年代，这些体系奇迹般地赶了上来，这使得数字领域仍然保持开放。

And so they caught up quite remarkably by the nineteen seventies, and that left the digital space still open.

而这是一个近乎无拘无束的空间。

And it is kind of a free for all space.

是的。

Yeah.

但你讲述这个故事的方式，让它显得太过永恒和不变了。

But but the way the way you're telling the story, this is it has too much of this timeless and eternal character.

这似乎总是会发生的事情。

This is just what always happens

是啊，这正是我在思考的问题。

Yeah, well, is what I'm wondering.

而我想讲述的故事则更具一次性与世界历史性的特征：曾经有许多发明，人们找到了治愈疾病的方法。

Whereas the story I want to tell has more of a one time and world historical character to it, where it is There were lots of inventions where people figure out cures for diseases.

这并没有说：好吧，我们现在得退一步，减少治愈的疾病数量。

That didn't say, Okay, now we have to take a step back and cure fewer diseases.

相反，它鼓励你加倍努力，做得更多。

That actually encourages you to double down on that and do even more.

或者我们有这么多在工厂里取代人类的机器。

Or we have all these machines that replace humans in factories.

是的，这有一些负面影响，工业革命带来了劳工问题和大量污染，但总体而言，好处大于坏处。

And yeah, there's some downsides to it and there are labor problems with the industrial revolution and there's a lot of pollution, but on the whole, the good outweighs Okay.

在维多利亚时代，并没有出现大规模的监管反制运动。

The And there was no big regulatory counter movement in Victoria.

好吧，让我来做一个

Okay, let me make a

反例，然后

counter And then, example

但当我们谈到热核武器时，它就具有完全不同的性质了。

for but then we get to something like thermonuclear weapons and that specifically has a very different character.

它有着完全不同的性质。

It has a really different character.

而且可能在20世纪50年代和60年代，婴儿潮一代长大时，从小接触的是苏斯博士的作品，而不是冒险故事，这改变了儿童教育。

And probably, I don't know, by the 1950s and 1960s, baby boomers get You're a kid, you get brought up on Doctor.

它改变了我们塑造和培养人类的方式，并导致了一种社会，在这种社会中，科学和技术不再拥有以往那种明确的地位。

Seuss and not on adventure stories and it changes childhood education.

这引发了一个有趣的宏观历史问题：科学和技术在多大程度上与西方的基督教纠缠在一起？它们是否曾被视作一种赞美，即鼓励人们理解上帝的创造，从而成为一种实现方式？

It changes the way we form and develop human beings, and it leads to a society where science and technology no longer have quite a There's former always sort of an interesting big picture history question of how much science and technology, you know, were they how they were entangled with Christianity in the West and were they sort of somehow they entangled, but was it meant as a compliment where, you know, you're sort of encouraged to understand God's creation, and this is sort of a way that it's a fulfillment

进一步发展。

Furtherance.

这种进一步的发展是目的所在，还是它意在取代宗教，成为无需上帝即可在地上建造天堂的另一种途径？

Of a furtherance of this, or was it meant to be a substitute where it was an alternate way to build heaven on earth requiring God.

大幅延长寿命是早期现代工程的重要组成部分。

A radical life extension was sort of an important part of the early modern project.

本杰明·富兰克林、孔多塞等人都认为，人类的生命或许可以无限延长。

Benjamin Franklin, Condorcet, all these people thought that you could perhaps indefinitely prolong human life.

所以我认为，早期现代性并不是唯一的原因。

And so I think early modernity, it wasn't the only thing.

当时发生了许多复杂的事情，但其中很多带有反圣经的色彩；你可以说，17世纪和18世纪的科学家们——再次强调，我认为像弗朗西斯·培根这样的人应当被解读为彻底的唯物主义无神论者，因为我们不再需要宗教，因为它阻碍了这美妙的科学进步。

There were a lot of complicated things going on, but a lot of it sort of an anti biblical valence, and you could say that seventeenth and eighteenth century scientists, you know, and again, this is where I think someone like Francis Bacon needs to be interpreted as a hardcore materialist atheist, and it is, we stop need religion because it's slowing down this wonderful scientific progress.

最近我跟不少人讨论过培根这个话题，他们都认为：不，不，这不可能是对的。

And then I've had this Bacon discussion with a number of people lately, and they all think, No, no, that's can't be right.

培根只是一个有些异端的基督徒。

Bacon was just this somewhat heterodox Christian.

而在我们所处的晚期现代性中——再次说明，要描述当前的文化状况很复杂——但如今，是无神论自由派人士在反对科学。

And because in late modernity where we find ourselves, and again, it's complicated to describe what's going on culturally, but in late modernity, it's the atheist liberals that are anti science at this point.

所以，如果你想到理查德·道金斯的绝望。

So if you think about Richard Dawkins' despair.

是的。

Yeah.

你必须把理查德·道金斯看作是早期现代性的代表。

You have to think of Richard Dawkins as a representative of early modernity.

他就像1789年之前的活化石。

He's like a fossil from before 1789.

他是启蒙运动的最后一位代表。

He's the last of the enlightenment.

他是最后的活化石，来自1789年之前，而格蕾塔则更代表了好莱坞无神论自由派的全部特征。

He's the last He's a fossil from before 1789, and Greta is more representative, or you everything about the Hollywood atheist liberals.

这些电影讲的都是技术失灵的故事。

The movies are all about technology that doesn't work.

这很可怕。

It's scary.

因此，在晚期现代性中，反基督教的论点是这样构建的：没错，是上帝的错，但这次是因为上帝一开始就把我们置于这个危险的计划之中，就像《创世纪》里的那些话一样。

And so to the extent, the way the anti Christian argument gets made in late modernity is that it's, yeah, it's God's fault, but this time it's God's fault for putting us on this whole dangerous project in the first place, and it's like, yeah, it's like the lines in Genesis.

你们要统治大地，于是在十七、十八世纪，人们责备基督教的上帝阻碍了科学与技术的进步。

You shall have dominion over the earth, and so in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, you know, the Christian God was blamed for slowing down the scientific technological project.

而在二十和二十一世纪，基督教的上帝却被责备为加速了这一进程、启动了它、并持续推动它前进。

In the twentieth and twenty first century, the Christian God gets blamed for speeding it up, starting it, speeding up, keeping it going.

所以不变的是，基督教的上帝总是被责怪。

So the invariant is the Christian God always gets blamed.

但这种完全相反的事实告诉我们，这种观念是如何发生转变的，这一点非常有趣。

But the fact that it's the exact opposite tells us something very interesting about how this is this is transformed.

这很有趣。

Now that's interesting.

那么，你提出的观点是，两种截然相反的论点都在推动尼采所说的‘上帝之死’，对吧？

Well, so you're making point that two opposite arguments are making that are both directed towards furthering Nietzsche's death of God, let's say.

那么这就引出了一个问题：什么是

So then that begs the question, what's

好吧，我唯一要指出的是，我们在科学和技术方面所处的位置，与十七、十八世纪已经大不相同了。

Well, the actual the only point I'll make is that we're we're, again, in a we're in a very different place with science and technology than we were in the seventeenth, eighteenth century.

在十七、十八世纪，我不认为人们会说：‘是的，我们会取得所有这些进步，但也会遇到很多抵制，然后会被监管。’

Seventeenth, eighteenth century, I don't think people would have said, Yeah, we're going make all this progress and there's going to be a lot of pushback and it'll get regulated.

我想当时的观念是：我们会取得巨大进步，这会非常好，从而进一步加速，甚至彻底击垮宗教，让我们能走得更快、更好，并产生一种不断解体、加速的效应。

I know the thought was we'll make a lot of progress and it'll be so good that it will actually then accelerate and it it'll smash religion even more and then we can go even faster and it'll go even better and it's going have this sort of unraveling accelerating effect.

而在二十世纪和二十一世纪，我们却提出了相反的观点，认为这个项目中有一些事情已经有点失控了。

And then in the twentieth, twenty first century, we make the opposite argument as there are some things in this project that have gone somewhat haywire.

好的。

Okay.

那么，让我们暂时回到宗教这条线索上。

So let's pick up on the religious thread for a moment.

我一直试图理解所谓的基督教欧洲与科学时代兴起之间的关系。

I've been trying to understand the relationship between Christian Europe, let's say, and the dawn of the scientific age for a long time.

所以让我为你梳理一下我的想法，然后我再回到你刚才说的内容。

And so let me outline something for you, and then I'll turn back to exactly what you said.

在我看来，许多早期的科学工作都是在修道院中进行的，后来这些修道院演变成了大学。

So it seems to me I mean, much of the early science was done in the monasteries that turned into universities.

因此，从基督教经由修道院到大学，确实存在一条清晰的脉络。

And so there's certainly a trail from Christianity through the monasteries to the universities.

因此，你可以将此视为基督教至少在其分支中为科学革命奠定基础的切实证据。

And so you can you can think about that as concrete evidence of the underpinning of much of the scientific revolution in terms of at least the offshoots of Christianity.

但我认为那里还有更深层的东西。

But I think there's something deeper there.

因此，我曾试图向道金斯等人阐述这一点，尤其是他在自称是文化基督徒之后。

And so I've I've tried to make this case with Dawkins, for example, not least after he called himself a cultural Christian.

在我看来，要使科学作为一个有动力的事业启动，必须做出一些非科学的假设。

So it seems to me that for science to get going as a motivational project, there are some assumptions you have to make that aren't scientific.

因此，在游戏开始之前，存在一些公理。

So there are axioms before the game gets going.

我认为这些是基于信仰的公理。

And I think they're faith based axioms.

其中之一是，宇宙是可理解的，它能够被人类心智所理解，而对这种可理解性的勤勉探究会带来知识的积累，包括实践性和概念性的知识，而且这种知识的积累是好的。

One is that the cosmos is intelligible, that it's intelligible to the human mind, and that diligent investigation of that intelligibility produces an increment in knowledge, both practical, both conceptual and practical, and that that increment in knowledge is good.

但或许还有一种更深层的预设，即如果知识追求的目标仍被包含在类似基督教基本精神的东西中，那么渐进的知识才是好的。

But then there's a there's maybe a deeper presumption, which is that incremental knowledge can be good if the point of the knowledge pursuit remains encapsulated in something like the underlying Christian ethos.

然后我会说，这种联系在某种程度上出现了断裂，也许培根是一个转折点，在此之后，人们对科学事业依赖这些形而上学预设的做法提出了质疑。

And then I would say that fractures in a way, perhaps Bacon's a turning point where the reliance on of the scientific endeavor on these metaphysical presuppositions is questioned.

或者当我向道金斯提出这个论点时，他只是挥了挥手，说他的科学背后没有任何形而上学的假设。

Or like when I presented Dawkins with that argument, he just waved his hands over, and he said he doesn't have any metaphysical assumptions underlying his brand of science.

但但我想，这正是更激进的启蒙运动法国革命派所认为的，即：不。

But but and I think that that is what the more radical enlightenment French revolution types thought is that, no.

我们已经摆脱了潜在的宗教伦理。

We've escaped from the underlying religious ethos.

好吧。

Okay.

问题在于，在我看来，这可能与这种末世论的反弹有关：一旦你脱离了支撑知识与进步本身定义的底层伦理，科学事业中的卢西弗式元素就会变得极其突出。

The problem with that is, it seems to me, and I think this might have to do with this apocalyptic kickback, is that once you unmoor yourself from the underlying ethos, which is even the ethos that defines what constitutes knowledge and progress itself, then the Luciferian element of the scientific endeavor can begin to loom extremely large.

好吧，让我们从早期现代历史开始，我一直是个坚定的吉拉德主义者——这位伟大的思想家、知识分子，某种程度上是基督教博学者，我在20世纪80年代末到90年代在斯坦福大学跟随他学习，对他影响极大。

Well, again, let's let's let's start with the, you know, the early the early modern history, and I'm always a sort of hardcore Girardian, this great thinker, intellectual, sort of, in some ways, Christian polymath that I studied under Stanford in the late '80s, '90s and influenced me tremendously.

你知道，这些都属于非常复杂的知识史问题，但你的叙述中有一个奇怪的直觉是：你会说，我们不仅在基督教中，也在伊斯兰教和犹太教中拥有以律法为中心的一神论传统，如果说科学革命之所以在基督教世界兴起而不在伊斯兰世界出现，是因为基督教特有的某种东西，那或许不只是形而上学或神学形而上学在起作用，而是某种类似基督教人类学的东西。

And you know, these things are, again, very complicated intellectual history questions, but certainly one intuition that's odd about your telling would be that you would say that, you know, we had sort of a law centered monotheistic tradition also in Islam, also in Judaism, and if we say there was something about Christianity that where this really came and was not in the Islamic world that you got the scientific revolution, for example, it's just that maybe it wasn't just the metaphysics, not just the theological metaphysics that drove it, but something like the Christian anthropology.

吉拉德常喜欢说，当人们过于关注《圣经》中关于上帝的教导时，也一定存在一些它关于我们自身的启示

Girard was fond of always saying that when people focus too much on the Bible on what it tells us about God, there must also be something it tells us about

关于人。

About man.

关于人。

About man.

是的，好吧。

Yeah, okay.

当然，吉拉尔的直觉是，有一个关于暴力和替罪羊的重大问题，在某种程度上，犹太教和基督教讲的是同一个故事。

And certainly the Girardian intuition is that one of the things is always that there's this really big problem of violence and scapegoating, and that in some ways, some sense Judaism and then Christianity, it's the same story.

这是同一个牺牲的故事，但不是从暴力群体的视角讲述的。

It's the same story of sacrifice, but it's told not from the point of view of the violent community.

而是从无辜受害者的视角讲述的，这种方式开启了一种渐进的、动态的启示，导致了一种逐渐的解构；当你不再相信替罪羊时，你就被迫寻找其他解释，这其中包括科学。

It's told from the point of view of the innocent victim, and there's a certain way where it sets in process this gradual this dynamic revelation that has that leads to a sort of gradual unraveling, and there are and as you stop believing in scapegoats, you're forced to come up with other explanations, and that includes science.

例如，你可以问：为什么女巫审判会结束？

So for example, you can ask why did the witchcraft trials come to an end?

无神论的科学解释是我们有了科学，证明了巫术是不可能的，但我不认为这一点在2025年已被证实，因为我们并非无所不知。

And the atheist scientific explanation is we got science to prove that witchcraft is impossible, and I don't think that's even been proven in 2025 because we don't know everything.

也许这门技艺已经失传了。

Maybe it's a lost art that's been lost.

也许你可以去一家书店，

Maybe you can go to a bookstore in

伯克利，但你很难买到一本关于如何制造安慰剂效应或魔法的书。

Berkeley, There's not a lot of buy a book on how to be a a placebo effect in magic.

但吉拉德提出的另一种解释是，巫术审判之所以结束，是因为人们在某个时刻意识到，这种集体替罪羊行为在某种程度上类似于基督之死。

But then the Girardian alternate story of why the witchcraft trials ended were that at some point people realized that this sort of collective scapegoating in some ways was like a version of the death of Christ.

女巫并不像基督那样绝对无辜，但她们相对无辜。

The witches were not absolutely innocent like Christ, but they were relatively innocent.

这是一个陷入疯狂的社群。

It was a community that went crazy.

一旦你意识到女巫是无辜的，或者至少是相对无辜的，你就会迫使自己去寻找自然的解释。

And then once you know that the witches are innocent or are relatively innocent, then then you steal yourself and force yourself to find natural explanations.

你知道，如果你不再认为是犹太人在中世纪毒害了水井，那么最终

You know, if you don't think that it was, you know, I don't know, the Jews that poisoned the wells in the Middle Ages, know, eventually

一些恶魔或者

Some devils or

最终，在塞勒姆女巫审判期间，周日有这些相互竞争的布道，最初的版本是说，是的，这些女性并没有与魔鬼缔约，但后来由于审判结束后很快就被重新建构，人们很快意识到他们集体失去了理智。

Eventually, or this was during the Salem witch trials, there were these You you had these competing sermons on Sundays, and the initial ones were sort of that, yeah, the the these women weren't hadn't made a pact with the devil, but then the way it got reconstructed because it was right afterwards that the witchcraft trials ended, and people sort of realized pretty fast they'd kind of collectively lost their minds.

而另一种说法是，魔鬼已经渗透了整个社区，控制了塞勒姆的每一个人。

And the alternate one was, you know, the devil had entered the whole community and had possessed all of Salem.

这些就是审判结束后你所作的布道。

And those were the sermons you gave in the aftermath, the witchcraft trials.

在这种背景下，也许科学也是一种方式，让你强迫自己寻找自然的解释。

And then in that sort of a context, you know, maybe science was also a way to find You can steal yourself to find natural explanations.

当你处于一种原始状态时，替罪羊总是某种解释。

When you're in an archaic thing, scapegoating is always an explanation.

是这个人干的。

It's a, This person did this.

是那个人干的。

That person did this.

是那个人的错。

It's that person's fault.

当你认为这些解释行不通时，也许你不得不转向科学——这里有多种不同的线索可以强调，但我不禁要问：究竟是基督教教义中的什么独特之处促成了这一点？

And when you say those explanations won't do, maybe you're forced to So scientific there are all these different threads one can stress, but wonder if that was I also you have to always ask this question, what was specific about Christian message that really enabled this?

我认为，犹太背景在学术上极为深厚，我不知道，如果你比较中世纪时期犹太教对《圣经》的理解和阅读能力与基督教经院哲学家的水平，前者甚至更胜一筹。

I I think the There was a way the Jewish context was extremely learned and people I don't know, if you compare the Talmudic abilities already in the Middle Ages to understand the Bible, to read it, it was as good or better than anything that the Christian scholastics were doing.

但不知为何，它从未真正让社会整体转向另一种思维方式。

But somehow it never really got a part of society to orient in this other way.

但再次强调，这显然是一段复杂的历史。

But again, it's it's you know, it's obviously a complicated history.

你提到的一点非常有趣，那就是基督教的兴起摧毁了异教世界，这真是一个巨大的谜团。

Well, so one of the things you pointed out there that's very interesting is that Christianity the rise of Christianity destroyed the pagan world, and that's a great mystery.

但这一转变的认识论后果之一，就是神灵不再普遍存在这一观念必须消失。

But one of the epistemological consequences of that was the notion that deities weren't widespread.

这种观念必须彻底消亡。

That that that idea had to disappear.

你知道吗？

You know?

罗马人有他们拱门的神。

The Romans had gods for their archways.

对吧？

Right?

所以当时有一种观念，认为存在一些无形的灵体，可以说，它们在幕后运作，很容易被解释为因果机制。

So there was an idea that there were invisible spirits, so to speak, that were operating behind the scenes that were could easily be interpreted as causal mechanisms.

但你也可以想象，我还在试图将这一点与我从荣格那里学到的内容结合起来。

But you can imagine then I'm also trying to integrate this with what I learned from Jung.

你可以想象，当世界在异教层面去神圣化时，你刚才描述的那种解释方式就不再站得住脚了。

You can imagine that as the world's desacralized at the pagan level and the kinds of interpretations that you just described are no longer tenable.

对吧？

Right?

这些无形的实体，那些运作中的个性，已经不再起作用了。

There are these invisible agencies, some of the personalities that are operating that isn't working anymore.

这一切都被汇聚成一个一神论的神，而魔法则从世界中被抽离了。

That gets all aggregated into a monotheistic deity, and the magic gets pulled out of the world.

你看，荣格也指出，随着基督教革命的展开，炼金术的神话开始广泛传播，并逐渐形成一种观念：物质世界中潜藏着具有救赎力量的奥秘。

See, Jung Jung also pointed out that as the Christian revolution transpired, the alchemical mythology started to become widespread and that there was a idea that developed that there were mysteries lurking in the material world that had redemptive capacity.

因此，你可以想象，当精灵从世界中被移除后，你已经提到过这种怀疑。

And so you could imagine that as the spirits are taken out of the world, the suspicion you already said this.

那种认为存在其他因果力量的怀疑，开始在至少那些处于前沿思想的人的想象中显现出来。

The suspicion that there are other causal forces at work starts to make itself manifest in at least the imaginations of people who are on the cutting edge.

因此，我在想，这是否是基督教战胜异教世界的必然结果？

And so I wonder if that's a is that a inevitable consequence of the victory of Christianity over the pagan world?

因为世界被去神圣化，仅仅是因为所有神圣之物都被统一到了一个单一的形象中。

Because it gets desacralized merely because the everything that's divine gets united into a single figure.

我认为卡尔·马克思 somewhere 曾说过，所有的社会批判都始于对宗教的批判。

I think it was somewhere in Karl Marx where he says that, you know, all social criticism starts with a criticism of religion.

而基督教的补充部分，我总是会说，耶稣基督是第一个真正这样做的人，开启了整个过程——你几乎可以认为，他是在质疑社会制度和宗教制度，以某种方式解构它们。

And then the Christian addendum, I would always say, was that Mark Jesus Christ was the first person to actually do that really and started that whole process where you can think so much of it was calling into question the social institutions, the religious institutions, you know, in a way deconstructing them.

这一点某种意义上是真实的，我觉得。

And there's something about this that is, you know, I think is true.

我觉得它有一种解体的特性。

I think there is something about it that has an unraveling character.

我认为我们回不去了。

And I don't think you can go back.

一旦这些异教机构被解构，我们就无法回到它们了，也许众神会被重新定义为恶魔或心理社会现象。

We can't go back to these pagan institutions once they have been deconstructed and maybe the gods get recharacterized as demons or psychosocial phenomena.

或者，是无意识的显现。

Or yeah, unconscious manifestations.

但是

But

这听起来并不像你真正把宙斯重新带回古代希腊普通人所理解的那种方式。

that doesn't sound like the way you really bring Zeus back into the way it would have been, you know, understood by, you know, the average person in ancient Greece or something like that.

但没错，我觉得，另一个维度是，比如吉拉德，他结合了文学与人类学，但吉拉德始终带有心理学维度，他的心理学直觉是，人类的模仿性非常深刻、非常重要，却一直被忽视，你甚至可以说，我认为这是亚里士多德的观点。

But yeah, I think, you know, there's a, one of the other dimensions that, I mean, Girard, it was sort of this combination of literature and anthropology, but also there was always a psychological dimension to Girard, and the psychological intuition in Girard is that there's something about human beings being imitative that's very deep, very important, very underexplored and it is that you have something like, I believe it's an Aristotle.

人类与其他动物的区别在于其更强的模仿能力。

Man differs from the other animals in his greater aptitude for imitation.

是的，这在我们和其他动物之间是一个巨大的差异。

Yeah, it's a huge difference between us and other animals.

然后你可以说，当然，达尔文主义认为我们最接近的亲戚是猿类。

And then you could say this is, and of course Darwinism says our closest relatives are the apes.

而猿类确实会模仿，它们会模仿。

And the apes, they ape, they imitate.

所以我们与猿类的区别在于，我们比猿类更像猿类。

And so we differ from the apes being more ape like than the apes.

如果你把亚里士多德和达尔文的观点结合起来，这在某种程度上是非常奇怪的。

If you sort of combine the Aristotelian and the Darwinian one, that's kind of a very, very strange thing in a way.

而模仿的好处在于，这是文化得以传承的方式。

And then the problem, the good thing about imitation is this is how culture gets transmitted.

这就是你学习语言的方式。

This is how you learn language.