Neal Stephenson on History, Spycraft, and American-Soviet Parallels (Ep. 226)
Thank you to a listener for sponsoring this transcript in dedication to their late grandmother, Charlotte Shapiro.
感谢一位听众赞助这份文字记录，以纪念他们已故的祖母夏洛特·夏皮罗。
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
This is my second conversation with Neal Stephenson, who needs no introduction, but do let me tell you about Neal’s new book, Polostan, which I read an advanced copy of.
这是我与尼尔·史蒂芬森的第二次对话，他不需要介绍，但请让我告诉你尼尔的新书《波洛斯坦》，我读过这本书的高级副本。
It’s a very different kind of book.
这是一本非常不同的书。
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I very much liked it.
我不确定会发生什么，但我非常喜欢它。
The real test of this is, when the book ends, are you sad that it wasn’t longer?
真正的考验是，当这本书结束时，你是否会因为它不再更长而感到悲伤？
I was sad that it wasn’t longer, and I will be pre-ordering parts two, three, and whatever else comes.
我很遗憾它不再更长了，我将预订第二部分、第三部分以及其他任何内容。
Neal, welcome.
尼尔，欢迎。
Good to be back.
很高兴回来。
How is it that you think about why you sometimes switch from showing us the future to illustrating the past?
您如何看待为什么有时会从向我们展示未来转向展示过去？
For me, it’s a continuum.
对我来说，这是一个连续体。
All of my science fiction-y books have had callbacks to historical themes, some more than others.
我所有的科幻小说都有对历史主题的回调，有些比其他主题更多。
I’ve always enjoyed history.
我一直很喜欢历史。
When I’ve had the opportunity to write historical fiction, I’ve greatly enjoyed it.
当我有机会写历史小说时，我非常享受它。
It’s been a while since I went there, and it was like going home almost, being able to go back and work in a historical setting again.
我已经有一段时间没去那里了，感觉就像回家一样，能够再次回到历史环境中工作。
Sometimes I think that when the present and future are changing most rapidly, that’s when we need to write about the past, that it’s easier to speculate about the future when nothing’s happening.
有时我想，当现在和未来变化最快的时候，就是我们需要写下过去的时候，当什么都没有发生的时候，更容易推测未来。
It’s interesting that we’re in a weird situation now, where I think that people’s formal education in history is probably at an all-time low, and yet, there are all of these new ways of learning about history that didn’t exist 50 years ago.
有趣的是，我们现在处于一个奇怪的境地，我认为人们接受的正规历史教育可能处于历史最低水平，然而，却有这些 50 年前不存在的学习历史的新方法。
There are podcasts and YouTube videos and so on that you can sink your teeth into if you decide that you’re interested in some particular era of history.
如果您决定对历史上的某个特定时代感兴趣，可以尝试一下播客和 YouTube 视频等。
I think that more and more, what we have now is autodidacts out there who, on their own time, not at school but during their leisure time, have decided to become history geeks.
我认为，我们现在有越来越多的自学者，他们在自己的时间，不是在学校，而是在闲暇时间，决定成为历史极客。
Why is this book called Polostan?
为什么这本书叫《波洛斯坦》？
The name is explained toward the very end of the book.
这个名字在书的最后有解释。
There’s a funny thing about book titles today, which is that they need to be searchable.
今天的书名有一个有趣的事情，那就是它们需要可搜索。
They need to be uniquely searchable.
它们需要具有独特的可搜索性。
I’ve had the experience a few times in the last decade or two of proposing a title for a book, and the publisher coming back saying, “That’s an awesome title.
在过去的一两年里，我有过几次这样的经历：为一本书提出一个书名，而出版商回来后说：“这是一个很棒的书名。
We’d love to use it, but it’s not going to work when people begin typing it into a search engine.”
我们很想使用它，但当人们开始在搜索引擎中输入它时，它就不起作用了。”
Now, the trend is towards finding things that will auto-complete pretty quickly.
现在的趋势是寻找能够快速自动完成的事情。
Polostan is a word that emerges.
Polostan 是一个出现的词。
It’s a joke that one of the characters makes toward the end of the book, but it’s a reference to the fact that the sport of polo enters into the storyline in a few different contexts.
这是一个角色在书的结尾开的一个玩笑，但它指的是马球运动在几个不同的背景下进入故事情节的事实。
On the psychological makeup of spies
间谍的心理构成
How many spies do you think psychologically are just totally screwed up?
你认为有多少间谍在心理上完全搞砸了？
Are all of them screwed up?
他们都搞砸了吗？
Or can you be a normal spy the way you might be a normal grocer?
或者你能像普通杂货商一样成为一名普通间谍吗？
I suspect that it begins to screw you up over time.
我怀疑随着时间的推移，它会开始把你搞砸。
You might go in normal, but it takes a big psychological toll to be trying to maintain multiple identities and always worrying about divulging information.
你可能会表现得很正常，但试图保持多重身份并总是担心泄露信息会造成很大的心理损失。
It’s just not a natural way for people to live.
这不是人们自然的生活方式。
From what I can tell, looking at espionage in the era of, say, the Second World War, the best spies were completely unexceptional people.
据我所知，纵观二战时期的间谍活动，最好的间谍完全是普通人。
That’s probably still true today.
今天可能仍然如此。
You don’t want James Bond.
你不想要詹姆斯·邦德。
You don’t want the femme fatale kind of character who’s going to stand out.
你不想要那种会脱颖而出的蛇蝎美人角色。
You want somebody who just disappears into the background.
你想要一个消失在背景中的人。
That’s the kind of people that they like to recruit.
这就是他们喜欢招募的人。
You want psychological compartmentalization?
你想要心理划分吗？
People who suppress emotions?
压抑情绪的人？
I guess so, yes.
我想是的，是的。
I think that it’s easiest when you don’t have to lie, when the role that you’re playing is reasonably close to who you really are, I guess, unless you’re a total sociopath.
我认为，当你不必撒谎时，当你扮演的角色相当接近你的真实身份时，这是最容易的，我想，除非你是一个彻底的反社会者。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
Spies might be total sociopaths, right?
间谍可能是彻头彻尾的反社会者，对吧？
Yes.
是的。
There’s some reasonable percentage of sociopaths out there, and you’re going to do something as a sociopath.
社会上有一定比例的反社会人格者，而你将作为反社会人格者做一些事情。
Maybe spy is it.
也许间谍就是这样。
Yes.
是的。
I don’t know if there’s a Myers-Briggs category for that, but maybe that’s what they look for.
我不知道是否有迈尔斯-布里格斯类别，但也许这就是他们所寻找的。
I heard a story once that there was a phase — I don’t know if it was in the ’70s or ’80s — where there had been some leaks from compromised people in the American intelligence world.
我曾经听过一个故事，说有一个阶段——“我不知道是在 70 年代还是 80 年代”——美国情报界有一些泄密者的泄密事件。
So, they started trying to hire real straight-arrow types who just had no blemishes or perceived blemishes anywhere on their record that could be used to compromise them or blackmail them.
因此，他们开始尝试雇用真正的正直型人，他们的记录中没有任何可以用来危害他们或勒索他们的瑕疵或明显的瑕疵。
They ended up with such pure, innocent characters that the Brits started withholding information because they couldn’t stand having to deal with these small-town naive people who were being sent their way by the Americans.
他们最终变得如此纯洁、天真，以至于英国人开始隐瞒信息，因为他们无法忍受与这些被美国人送来的小镇天真人打交道。
I don’t know if it’s true, but good story.
我不知道这是不是真的，但故事不错。
I’m not saying Mormons are naive, but I’m told the CIA has a disproportionate share of Mormons, which makes sense, right?
我并不是说摩门教徒天真，但我听说中央情报局拥有不成比例的摩门教徒，这是有道理的，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
That’s where you would go to find such people.
那就是你去寻找这样的人的地方。
If we run through different counterfactuals, the secrets of the atom bomb, which do, of course, leak out to the Soviet Union, but how contingent was that?
如果我们经历不同的反事实，原子弹的秘密当然会泄露给苏联，但这有多大的偶然性呢？
Can you easily imagine a lot of very different futures where we just can hoard that secret for 10 years or more?
你能轻易想象出许多截然不同的未来吗？我们可以将这个秘密隐藏 10 年或更长时间？
Or do you think it inevitably was just going to happen?
或者你认为这不可避免地会发生？
There’s some debate as to how important that leakage really was.
关于泄漏到底有多重要存在一些争论。
At the time, it seems like a horrendous failure to have let that information go.
当时，放弃这些信息似乎是一个可怕的失败。
How long would it have taken the Soviets to duplicate that effort based on available information?
根据现有信息，苏联需要多长时间才能重复这一努力？
I don’t think it would have taken a lot longer.
我认为这不会花费更长的时间。
Their incentive to build a bomb was too great.
他们制造炸弹的动机太大了。
Particularly, if you’re willing to settle for the gun-style of a bomb as opposed to the implosion device, that’s a pretty simple object.
特别是，如果你愿意接受枪式炸弹而不是内爆装置，那么这是一个非常简单的物体。
It could just be they had multiple decent spies.
可能只是他们有多个像样的间谍。
If we had stopped the ones who carried the secrets, if there were 20 others waiting in the wings, then it’s not that contingent at all.
如果我们阻止了那些携带秘密的人，如果还有另外 20 个人在伺机而动，那么事情就根本不是那么偶然了。
Yes.
是的。
How do you think about AI secrets?
您如何看待人工智能的秘密？
Do you think those are bound to flow out, or it’s contingent?
您认为这些是必然会流出的，还是偶然的？
You mean like trade secrets or proprietary software that’s in AI systems?
你的意思是人工智能系统中的商业秘密或专有软件？
Or some people would say it’s the weights, the data.
或者有些人会说是权重、数据。
There are different opinions as to what the secrets are, but there’s something in there that not everyone has.
对于秘密是什么，有不同的看法，但其中有些东西并不是每个人都知道。
Right.
正确的。
The way you get those weights is by running these big training sessions that are incredibly expensive.
获得这些重量的方法是进行这些非常昂贵的大型训练课程。
I haven’t actually thought about it before, but I would imagine that if you’ve spent billions of dollars to get a set of weights, that you’re going to try to hang onto that.
我之前实际上并没有考虑过这个问题，但我想如果你花了数十亿美元买了一组权重，你会尝试坚持下去。
On the logistics of faking one’s own death
关于假死的后勤工作
How effectively could you stage your own death?
你能如何有效地上演自己的死亡？
You.
你。
Say you really want to do it, and you’re willing to do it.
说你真的想做这件事，并且你愿意这样做。
To fake it or to actually —
假装还是真的 ——
Fake it, but everyone thinks it’s real.
假的，但大家都以为是真的。
I read about it in the papers.
我在报纸上读到了这件事。
“Neal is gone.” I nod my head, I weep, and then I forget about it.
“尼尔走了。”我点点头，哭了，然后就忘记了。
I don’t mean I forget about you, but you understand what I’m saying.
我并不是说我忘记了你，而是你明白我在说什么。
Wait, there’s not that many circumstances under which all physical traces of someone can be obliterated.
等等，没有多少情况可以抹掉一个人的所有身体痕迹。
That’s a fairly hard thing to do.
这是一件相当困难的事情。
It would have been easier a hundred years ago, but now we’ve got cameras everywhere, and we’ve got DNA testing and other ways to prove or to disprove that somebody’s actually dead.
一百年前这会更容易，但现在我们到处都有摄像头，我们有 DNA 测试和其他方法来证明或反驳某人实际上已经死亡。
I guess it would have to be something like a plane crash into the ocean.
我猜这一定是飞机坠入大海之类的事情。
But then how do you survive it?
但那么你如何生存呢？
Oh, yes.
哦是的。
Okay.
好的。
To kill yourself is one thing, but to pretend you’ve killed yourself and stay alive seems harder.
自杀是一回事，但假装自杀并活着似乎更难。
You could parachute out if it was a small plane, not a jet airline full of people, but a single-seater.
如果是一架小型飞机，而不是满载乘客的喷气式飞机，而是一架单座飞机，你可以跳伞。
I guess that might work.
我想这可能有用。
So, hire a private plane, have it crash, parachute out into somewhere where you —
所以，租一架私人飞机，让它坠毁，然后跳伞到某个地方，在那里你 ——
You’re witnessed getting into the plane and taking off, but then there’s no way to recover the evidence for some reason.
你被目睹进入飞机并起飞，但由于某种原因无法恢复证据。
It’s pretty hard to do.
这很难做到。
If someone really wanted to, if they were just determined to go and find the .
如果有人真的想要，如果他们决心去寻找。
.
。
.
。
You see the efforts that people have gone to to go down to the Titanic.
你可以看到人们为了登上泰坦尼克号而付出的努力。
Well, if you can go find that thing and check it out with a submarine, then it’s pretty hard to really find a place that can’t be accessed in that way.
好吧，如果你能找到那个东西并用潜水艇检查它，那么就很难真正找到一个无法通过这种方式进入的地方。
Do you still write your novels in longhand on legal pads?
你还在用便笺簿手写小说吗？
Not on legal pads, but I do write them in longhand, yes.
不是写在便笺簿上，但我确实是手写的，是的。
I buy this fancy paper from Italy.
我从意大利买了这种精美的纸张。
I had this idea that if I bought fancy paper, I’d use less of it.
我有这样的想法：如果我买了高档纸，我就会少用它。
I’d be more conservative.
我会更保守。
I don’t think that worked because even fancy paper doesn’t cost very much, and I like opening the package too much.
我认为这不起作用，因为即使是精美的纸张也不会花费很多，而且我太喜欢打开包装了。
It comes in a nice package with the wax seal on it.
它有一个漂亮的包装，上面有蜡封。
How does longhand improve your thinking or writing process compared to, say, typing?
与打字相比，手写如何改善你的思维或写作过程？
I can type really fast, so it’s easy to just .
我打字速度非常快，所以很容易就可以。
.
。
.
。
Keyboard goes burrrrr, where stuff gets put down on the screen almost as fast as ideas are coming into my head, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
键盘发出嗡嗡声，东西被放到屏幕上的速度几乎与我脑海中出现想法的速度一样快，这不一定是一件好事。
It’s valuable for a sentence to be lodged in the buffer for a little while because it’s really easy to improve it or even just to get rid of it while it’s between your ears.
对于一个句子来说，在缓冲区中停留一段时间是很有价值的，因为当它在你的耳朵之间时，很容易改进它，甚至只是摆脱它。
As soon as you put it down on the screen, even though it is editable and all that, it takes on a kind of permanence.
一旦你把它放在屏幕上，即使它是可编辑的，它也会呈现出一种永久性。
It requires more effort to go back and fix it.
需要付出更多的努力才能回去修复它。
I think that the first-draft quality is better.
我认为初稿质量更好。
It’s also just faster to edit on paper.
在纸上编辑也更快。
I can just draw a box around a paragraph and put a big X through it or cross out a word or write something in.
我可以在一个段落周围画一个框，然后在里面画一个大X，或者划掉一个单词，或者写一些东西。
It just takes longer to do all of those things if you’re screwing around with a mouse or whatever.
如果你用鼠标或其他什么东西搞砸的话，那么完成所有这些事情就需要更长的时间。
On Soviet communism
论苏联共产主义
Now, you must have spent a lot of time thinking about communism over the last few years.
现在，过去几年你一定花了很多时间思考共产主义。
Why is it, in your view — having come to grips with the topic — that so many American intellectuals became infatuated with Stalinism?
在您看来，为什么这么多美国知识分子迷恋斯大林主义？
Not just agnostic, but positively enthusiastic.
不仅不可知论，而且积极热情。
This often survived their visits to the Soviet Union.
这通常在他们访问苏联后仍然存在。
How did that happen?
这是怎么发生的？
Are we just, as humans, deranged beings?
作为人类，我们只是精神错乱的生物吗？
I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that the main character in Polostan is a daughter of a Russian dad and an American woman who are both very involved in leftist politics in the late teens, early ’20s.
我认为说《波洛斯坦》的主角是一位俄罗斯父亲的女儿和一位美国女性的女儿，他们都在十几岁、二十出头的时候积极参与左翼政治，我认为这并不算剧透。
There were a lot of, not just Americans, but Westerners in general, who went to the Soviet Union in those years because they thought that this was an opportunity to build something great.
那些年，不仅是美国人，还有很多西方人都去了苏联，因为他们认为这是一个创造伟大事物的机会。
This was obviously before Stalinism and all that, but even then, there were all kinds of bad stuff going on.
这显然是在斯大林主义和所有这些之前，但即使在那时，也有各种各样的坏事发生。
The Cheka, the precursor of the KGB, was coming into power and doing bad things.
克格勃的前身契卡正在上台并做坏事。
If you had the eyes to see it, you could see that this was going in a bad direction, but a lot of those people did not want to see the bad side of things and closed their eyes to it.
如果你有眼睛看到它，你可以看到事情正在朝着不好的方向发展，但很多人不想看到事情不好的一面，对此视而不见。
There’s a great book by Malcolm Muggeridge.
马尔科姆·马格里奇有一本很棒的书。
I think it’s called Winter in Moscow, which he wrote in, I think, 1933.
我想这本书的名字叫《莫斯科的冬天》，我想是他在 1933 年写的。
It’s fictionalized, but it’s a thinly veiled account of these kinds of people in Moscow in the early ’30s.
这是虚构的，但却是对 30 年代初莫斯科这类人的毫不掩饰的描述。
Muggeridge has been there, and he knows bad things are happening.
马格里奇一直在那里，他知道不好的事情正在发生。
He knows about the man-made famine in Ukraine, probably knows about a lot of other things.
他知道乌克兰的人为饥荒，可能还知道很多其他事情。
He’s depicting these Western expats who just refuse to acknowledge any downside to the revolution.
他描绘的是这些西方侨民，他们拒绝承认革命的任何负面影响。
There are plenty of stories like that from that era.
那个时代类似的故事还有很多。
I don’t know if it means that we’re deranged.
我不知道这是否意味着我们精神错乱了。
I think we want to see nice things happen in the world.
我认为我们希望看到世界上发生美好的事情。
If we’ve decided that there’s a particular political movement or ideology that’s going to make nice things happen, then it’s a little too easy for us to deceive ourselves about the downside of such movements.
如果我们认为某种特定的政治运动或意识形态能够让美好的事情发生，那么我们就很容易在此类运动的缺点方面欺骗自己。
What is it about the Soviet Union that you have ended up most admiring?
您最欣赏苏联的什么？
Most admiring?
最欣赏？
Most admiring, right, because you’ve spent a lot of time studying it, reading about it, thinking about it.
最令人钦佩，对吧，因为你花了很多时间研究它、阅读它、思考它。
Well, they make really good rockets.
嗯，他们制造的火箭非常好。
If you’re in the rocket business, their ability to make high-performing rocket engines and so on is pretty astounding.
如果你从事火箭行业，他们制造高性能火箭发动机等的能力是相当惊人的。
The amazing thing that they did in the ’30s, which is the period I’m focusing on, was to yank this backward country forward from the 19th century into the 20th century by building this huge industrial base at breakneck speed.
他们在20世纪30年代（也就是我所关注的时期）所做的令人惊奇的事情就是通过以极快的速度建设这个巨大的工业基地，将这个落后的国家从19世纪拉进20世纪。
In the course of doing that, they did a lot of terrible things.
在这样做的过程中，他们做了很多可怕的事情。
When I say that it’s admirable, I’m just referring to, “Oh, look, they built a big steel mill.” I’m not taking into account the body count.
当我说这令人钦佩时，我只是指，“哦，看，他们建造了一个大钢厂。”我没有考虑死亡人数。
It strikes me that it was a reasonably favorable environment for enabling strong women, and I’m not sure exactly why, but I do see that in the data.
让我印象深刻的是，这是一个对坚强女性有利的环境，我不确定具体原因，但我确实在数据中看到了这一点。
Yes, they were pretty serious about equal rights for women.
是的，他们非常重视女性的平等权利。
I think that was maybe a big part of why a lot of Western leftists thought it was a great place, because there really were a lot of women getting better education, becoming doctors, getting roles in the military.
我认为这可能是许多西方左翼人士认为这是一个好地方的一个重要原因，因为确实有很多女性接受了更好的教育，成为医生，在军队中担任职务。
It was easier to get things like abortions or to get a divorce.
堕胎或离婚之类的事情更容易发生。
So, they did put their money where their mouth was as far as women’s rights were concerned.
所以，就妇女权利而言，他们确实把钱花在了嘴上。
To get into the headspace or the feel of writing about the Soviet Union of that time, are there specific things you do?
为了进入关于当时苏联的写作的顶空或感觉，你做了什么具体的事情吗？
You put on Prokofiev, or you open Doctor Zhivago, or what?
你放普罗科菲耶夫，或者你放《日瓦戈医生》，或者什么？
How does that work for you?
这对你有什么作用？
Or you just do it?
还是你就这么做？
I like to find first-person accounts.
我喜欢寻找第一人称帐户。
I like to look at pictures to the iconography of the Soviet Union.
我喜欢看苏联肖像的图片。
There are various people who went there in the ’20s and ’30s and wrote memoirs, Americans who wrote memoirs describing their experiences there.
有很多人在20世纪20年代和30年代去过那里并写了回忆录，美国人写了回忆录来描述他们在那里的经历。
And because they were written at the time before people knew about Stalinism and the excesses of Stalinism, it’s written without a full premonition of how bad things were going to get.
而且因为它们是在人们了解斯大林主义和斯大林主义的过度行为之前写的，所以它是在没有完全预感到事情会变得多么糟糕的情况下写的。
In particular, there’s an account of an American engineer who went and worked at this huge steel mill at Magnitogorsk in the ’30s and helped them build that.
特别是，有一位美国工程师在 30 年代前往马格尼托哥尔斯克这座大型钢铁厂工作并帮助他们建造了该工厂。
He’s got a memoir telling about just his day-to-day experiences of working with these people, the good and the bad mixed together.
他有一本回忆录，讲述了他与这些人一起工作的日常经历，好的和坏的都混合在一起。
Is there much in Soviet fiction that you admire?
苏联小说中有很多你欣赏的地方吗？
Man, I don’t know if I’ve ever read a single word of Soviet fiction.
伙计，我不知道我是否读过苏联小说的一个字。
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, I’m doing a whole podcast on it.
瓦西里·格罗斯曼（Vasily Grossman），《生命与命运》，我正在做一个完整的播客。
That’s a great novel.
那是一本很棒的小说。
There’s some Soviet science fiction like Tarkovsky, which ended up turning into the movie Stalker.
有一些苏联科幻小说，比如塔可夫斯基，最终变成了电影《潜行者》。
From Poland, Stanisław Lem.
来自波兰，斯坦尼斯瓦夫·莱姆。
Probably you know Solaris.
也许您了解 Solaris。
He’s very good.
他非常好。
Yes.
是的。
I’m sure I know that one.
我确信我认识那个人。
It’s slim pickings, I think, overall.
我认为，总体而言，这是一个很小的选择。
Do you think there were other American fiction writers who’ve succeeded in capturing something of the Soviet experience?
您认为还有其他美国小说作家成功地捕捉到了苏联的经验吗？
I think of Norman Mailer’s Oswald book, which I think is quite good.
我想到了诺曼·梅勒的奥斯瓦尔德的书，我认为这本书相当不错。
It’s going to be my favorite Norman Mailer.
这将是我最喜欢的诺曼·梅勒。
Not many examples, but I like what you did with it.
例子不多，但我喜欢你用它所做的事情。
Oh, thanks.
哦，谢谢。
Thanks.
谢谢。
I was just listening to The Rest Is History podcast about the Kennedy assassination, and they do a segment on the Oswald stint in the Soviet Union.
我刚刚在听关于肯尼迪遇刺事件的“其余就是历史”播客，他们做了一个关于奥斯瓦尔德在苏联任职的片段。
DeLillo writes about it too.
德里罗也写过相关内容。
But no, I’m sure it exists, but I’m too poorly read to know about it.
但不，我确信它存在，但我读书太少，不知道它。
When I was 19, I visited Gary, Indiana, which, of course, is now a while ago.
当我 19 岁的时候，我访问了印第安纳州的加里，当然，那已经是很久以前的事了。
It was more up and running than it is now.
它比现在更加正常和运行。
Ever since then, I had this dream to visit Magnitogorsk.
从那时起，我就有了去马格尼托哥尔斯克的梦想。
Really?
真的吗？
Do you, like me, also want to go there, or is this somewhere you want to stay away from?
你是否也和我一样想去那里，或者这是你想要远离的地方？
Assuming you could go safely, forget about the current war and the like.
假设你可以安全离开，忘记当前的战争之类的事情吧。
Yes, if I could go safely, it would be interesting to see, for sure.
是的，如果我能安全前往，那肯定会很有趣。
But obviously, I’m not setting foot in Russia anytime soon.
但显然，我不会很快踏足俄罗斯。
The story, for those who don’t know it, is that Stalin said, “I want the world’s biggest steel mill,” and at the time, it was Gary, Indiana.
对于那些不知道的人来说，这个故事是斯大林说的，“我想要世界上最大的钢铁厂”，当时，它是印第安纳州的加里。
So they just got the numbers on Gary, Indiana, and increased them by, I don’t know, 10 percent, and started working on this huge steel mill in this place called Magnitogorsk, which means magnetic mountain, which is in the Urals out in the middle of nowhere and called magnetic mountain because it’s an incredibly rich load of iron ore.
所以他们刚刚获得了印第安纳州加里的数据，然后将其增加了（我不知道）10%，并开始在这个叫马格尼托哥尔斯克的地方建造一座巨大的钢厂，马格尼托哥尔斯克的意思是磁力山，它位于乌拉尔山脉的偏僻地带，之所以被称为磁力山是因为它的铁矿石含量极其丰富。
In a pretty short time, they built this giant steel-mill complex, which still exists, and the city has grown up around it.
在很短的时间内，他们建造了这座巨大的钢铁厂综合体，至今仍然存在，城市也在它周围发展起来。
I imagine that a lot of what made it interesting in 1933 is probably gone now.
我想 1933 年它的许多有趣之处现在可能都消失了。
But I did go to Volgograd once, which got a few things in common with Magnitogorsk, I guess, the former Stalingrad.
但我确实去过伏尔加格勒一次，我猜那与马格尼托哥尔斯克，即前斯大林格勒有一些共同点。
I don’t know Russia well, but some part of me feels that the Soviet Union and America had more in common in the 1930s than they ever had before or have had since.
我不太了解俄罗斯，但我内心深处感觉苏联和美国在 20 世纪 30 年代的共同点比以往任何时候都多。
Does that make sense to you at all?
这对你来说有意义吗？
What is that something?
那是什么东西？
Yes, I think it does.
是的，我认为确实如此。
I’ve actually got one of my characters in the book — he talks about this a little bit because, in both cases, there’s one part of the country — in the United States, it’s basically everything from Chicago to the Atlantic — which is densely populated and urbanized and lots of industry.
事实上，我在书中提到了我的一个角色——他稍微谈到了这一点，因为在这两种情况下，都有一个国家的一部分——在美国，它基本上是从芝加哥到大西洋的一切——人口稠密、城市化和大量工业。
In the Soviet Union, obviously, that’s the western part of the country.
显然，在苏联，那是该国的西部地区。
Then there’s this huge hinterland which is mostly empty.
还有这个巨大的腹地，大部分都是空的。
It’s got indigenous people.
这里有原住民。
It’s got a history of those people being poorly treated by the cosmopolitan, industrialized dominant culture, and it’s a vast open resource-extraction zone to feed the industrial beast.
历史上，这些人一直受到国际化、工业化主导文化的恶劣对待，而且这里是一个巨大的开放资源开采区，可以养活工业巨兽。
So, it’s got that in common.
所以，它有共同点。
I do think that there are some ways in which those two countries understood each other at the time.
我确实认为这两个国家当时在某些方面相互理解。
I think there was some of that thinking when Americans would come and visit and try to get involved in building the Soviet Union.
我认为当美国人来访问并尝试参与苏联建设时，会有一些这样的想法。
There’s some common obsession to industrialize, to urbanize.
人们普遍痴迷于工业化、城市化。
The working class is quite vocal, in very different ways but in both places.
工人阶级在两个地方都以非常不同的方式大声疾呼。
At the same time, idealizing the wide-open spaces, the wilderness, the idea of the frontier.
同时，将广阔的空间、荒野和边疆的想法理想化。
It’s both of those things going at once.
这两件事同时发生。
I have some questions about other issues in tech.
我对技术方面的其他问题有一些疑问。
Sure.
当然。
On augmented reality
关于增强现实
Augmented reality — it’s gotten a lot of attention lately.
增强现实 ——它最近引起了很多关注。
There’s Meta’s Orion product, which is forthcoming at some pace, Apple Vision Pro with the second version on the way.
Meta 的 Orion 产品即将推出，Apple Vision Pro 的第二个版本也即将推出。
What do you think of these?
你觉得这些怎么样？
Are we getting somewhere, or is it still stuck?
我们是否有所进展，或者仍然陷入困境？
I think we got somewhere with Magic Leap a few years ago.
我想我们几年前就通过 Magic Leap 取得了一些进展。
I think these products are all doing similar things.
我认为这些产品都在做类似的事情。
The only thing I am interested in hearing about is how many billions of dollars these companies are putting into the development of content to run on these devices, because nobody’s going to use them or want them unless there’s a reason to put them on, a reason to use them.
我唯一感兴趣的是这些公司投入了多少数十亿美元来开发在这些设备上运行的内容，因为没有人会使用它们或想要它们，除非有理由穿上它们，有理由使用它们。
Making content for an augmented reality device is very difficult.
为增强现实设备制作内容非常困难。
You take ordinary game development — that’s no picnic in and of itself.
进行普通的游戏开发 ——这本身就不是一件轻松的事。
That requires a lot of smart people with specialized skill sets.
这需要大量具有专业技能的聪明人。
VR is a whole step above that in terms of its level of difficulty, and AR is way beyond VR because there are so many other factors that you have to take into account in order to make content that actually takes advantage of what AR can do.
就难度而言，VR 比 VR 高出整整一步，而 AR 则远远超出 VR，因为为了制作真正利用 AR 功能的内容，您必须考虑许多其他因素。
My general sense is that the kinds of people who invest in building this hardware — they’re very comfortable building hardware.
我的总体感觉是，投资构建这种硬件的人 ——他们非常乐于构建硬件。
They’re not comfortable investing in content plays, and they have this mentality of, if we build it, they will come.
他们不愿意投资内容游戏，他们有这样的心态：如果我们打造它，他们就会来。
If we provide the hardware, then creators are just going to somehow jump out of the woodwork and build cool applications that run on this hardware.
如果我们提供硬件，那么创作者就会以某种方式跳出木制品并构建在该硬件上运行的酷应用程序。
I think that Magic Leap did a really good job of supporting a bunch of different creative teams making content for that device, but they still could have used more.
我认为 Magic Leap 在支持一群不同的创意团队为该设备制作内容方面做得非常好，但他们仍然可以使用更多。
So far, both of those companies have got programs to try to encourage people to build content, but I think they’re still relying on other investors too much to somehow come in and start writing checks and supporting developers.
到目前为止，这两家公司都有计划试图鼓励人们构建内容，但我认为他们仍然过于依赖其他投资者，无法以某种方式介入并开始写支票并支持开发人员。
It takes years and millions and millions of dollars to make anything at all that’s worth seeing on one of these.
需要花费数年时间和数百万美元才能在其中任何一个上做出任何值得一看的东西。
So, where do you find the investors willing to write those checks?
那么，您在哪里可以找到愿意开出这些支票的投资者呢？
What do you think of the daily uses of AR?
您如何看待 AR 的日常使用？
Let’s say I don’t want to watch a movie on Apple Vision Pro, but I want to walk around at a party, and it will tell me the names of all these people I’ve met before, but I don’t remember their names, and it tells me who they are.
假设我不想在 Apple Vision Pro 上看电影，但我想在聚会上走动，它会告诉我以前见过的所有这些人的名字，但我不记得他们的名字，它会告诉我他们是谁。
Now, this might violate privacy for some people, but will that be popular?
现在，这可能会侵犯某些人的隐私，但这会流行吗？
Will there be, oh, I take it into Whole Foods, and it just points me to what’s on sale or what’s good that day — is that going to work?
会不会，哦，我把它带到全食超市，它只会向我指出当天有什么特价商品或什么好东西 ——这会起作用吗？
The thing is, Tyler, that those two applications that you just described are things that we were talking about 10 years ago at Magic Leap, and they were old ideas then.
Tyler，问题是，你刚才描述的这两个应用程序是我们 10 年前在 Magic Leap 讨论过的东西，当时它们是旧想法。
I’m not cracking on you for having old ideas.
我并不是因为你有旧的想法而责备你。
But I’m just saying, what is it about this space, that with probably hundreds of billions by this point that have been poured into building these systems and the zillions of person-years, that we’re still talking about the party name-finder application?
但我只是说，这个领域到底是什么？到目前为止，已经投入了数千亿美元来构建这些系统，并投入了无数人年，我们还在谈论政党名称查找应用程序吗？
Don’t LLMs make all the difference?
难道 LLM 就没有什么区别吗？
That would be the change.
这就是改变。
LLMs at a quality level are quite recent, and I can talk to it; it can talk back to me.
质量水平的法学硕士是最近才获得的，我可以与之交谈；它可以跟我说话。
That’s now virtually seamless.
现在几乎是无缝的。
Isn’t that going to mean it’s all going to work?
这不是意味着一切都会顺利吗？
It becomes the operating system for your AR.
它成为你的 AR 的操作系统。
It can work, and it does work, and it’s very promising.
它可以发挥作用，而且确实有效，而且非常有前途。
I’m working on a project with that right now, but there’s no obvious organic connection between that and AR particularly.
我现在正在做一个项目，但它和 AR 之间没有明显的有机联系。
If I want to build an application that uses LLMs or any other kind of cool technology that’s come along, again, I’ve got to think about the numbers.
如果我想构建一个使用法学硕士或任何其他类型的酷技术的应用程序，我必须再次考虑数字。
I’ve got to think about, okay, I’m going to have to employ X number of programmers for X years.
我必须考虑一下，好吧，我将不得不雇用 X 名程序员 X 年。
Here’s how much it’s going to cost.
这是要花多少钱。
The investors supporting this project are going to want to get paid back.
支持该项目的投资者将希望得到回报。
Now, how many people own AR headsets?
现在，有多少人拥有 AR 耳机？
Okay, like a few thousand?
好吧，大概几千吧？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
Is that tiny group of people going to actually generate enough revenue that the investors who bankrolled this whole project are going to get paid back?
那一小群人是否真的会产生足够的收入，使为整个项目提供资金的投资者能够得到回报？
Well, regardless of what your answer is to that question, it’s definitely the case that there are billions of people — literally billions with a b — who have access to phones, pads, laptops, flat screen technology.
好吧，不管你对这个问题的答案是什么，确实有数十亿人 ——实际上是数十亿人 ——他们可以使用手机、平板电脑、笔记本电脑、平板屏幕技术。
That market is so much more enormous that the economic considerations force you, as a developer, to make whatever you’re making — you got to make it run on phones and iPads and all of that stuff.
这个市场是如此巨大，以至于经济方面的考虑迫使你，作为一名开发者，无论你正在做什么，你都必须让它在手机和 iPad 以及所有这些东西上运行。
If you do that, then you might also have the same thing ported to an AR device, but the market and the revenue that you get out of your application is going to be completely dominated by the version of it that runs on ordinary flat-screen devices.
如果你这样做，那么你也可能将同样的东西移植到 AR 设备上，但你从应用程序中获得的市场和收入将完全由在普通平板设备上运行的版本主导。
Are social media being replaced by group chats?
社交媒体是否会被群聊所取代？
And if so, is that good or bad?
如果是这样，那是好是坏？
Group chats like Discord or Slack — that kind of thing?
像 Discord 或 Slack 这样的群聊——诸如此类？
Or WhatsApp.
或WhatsApp。
Often small groups, occasionally large.
通常是小群，偶尔也有大群。
People talk about issues of the world.
人们谈论世界问题。
It’s private in a way Twitter never has been.
它是 Twitter 从未有过的私密性。
It seems to me those are much more influential.
在我看来，这些更有影响力。
Does that make you feel better about social media or the same?
这会让你对社交媒体感觉更好吗？
It’s hard to feel worse about social media.
很难对社交媒体感到更糟糕。
I do think that anything that gets you out of the glare of the big social media platforms and that de-risks it — if you have the feeling that you’re talking amongst friends, among people that you know, you don’t have to be as guarded.
我确实认为，任何能让你摆脱大型社交媒体平台的关注并降低风险的事情 ——如果你感觉自己是在朋友之间、在你认识的人之间交谈，你就不必那么谨慎。
You don’t have to spend as much time fending off bots and dealing with just complete asinine bullshit that comes at you so thick and fast on Twitter or other kind of open platforms.
你不必花费太多时间来抵御机器人，也不必处理 Twitter 或其他开放平台上如此密集而快速地向你袭来的愚蠢胡言乱语。
Does it matter much that it seems, today in the United States, there’s so much more surveillance than, say, 10 years ago?
今天在美国，监控似乎比十年前多得多，这重要吗？
People don’t seem to feel that it matters.
人们似乎并不觉得这很重要。
I may have my own opinions, but people are just amazingly willing to put devices in their homes, to keep them on 24/7 surveillance, to listen to every sound that they make and track them with cameras, and they’re on the internet all the time.
我可能有自己的观点，但人们非常愿意在家里放置设备，让他们接受 24/7 的监控，聆听他们发出的每一个声音并用摄像头跟踪他们，而且他们一直在互联网上。
I guess we haven’t yet seen a huge disaster resulting from that.
我想我们还没有看到由此造成的巨大灾难。
We haven’t yet seen a .
我们还没有看到。
.
。
.
。
Well, I don’t know, I guess I’m giving a Western perspective here, but it does seem that we got a couple of decades’ head start before the authoritarian, totalitarian countries of the world figured out how to make use of the internet.
好吧，我不知道，我想我在这里给出的是西方的观点，但在世界上的独裁、极权国家弄清楚如何利用互联网之前，我们确实领先了几十年。
The internet was open everywhere, and now it’s not.
互联网曾经无处不在，但现在却不再开放。
Now, China and Russia and North Korea have ways of walling off their internet and controlling what goes in and out of the country information-wise.
现在，中国、俄罗斯和朝鲜都有办法隔离他们的互联网，并以信息方式控制进出该国的信息。
In like manner, they’re making use of the surveillance capabilities of technology that we’ve naively provided them with.
同样，他们正在利用我们天真地为他们提供的技术监视功能。
I think there have been bad consequences, obviously, in those countries for dissidents or anybody who runs afoul of the authorities.
我认为，显然，这些国家的持不同政见者或任何与当局发生冲突的人都遭受了不良后果。
If that stuff is happening here, I guess I haven’t heard about it yet.
如果这种事情发生在这里，我想我还没有听说过。
It doesn’t seem to matter yet.
看来还没有什么关系。
Your writing seems to influence actual technologists.
您的写作似乎影响了实际的技术人员。
Does that make you nervous at all?
这会让你紧张吗？
Do you feel some kind of moral nervousness every time you sit down to handwrite something out?
每次你坐下来手写一些东西时，你是否会感到某种道德上的紧张？
Like, “Oh my goodness, what’s this going to cause in the world?” Or you just go ahead and write blithely and try to write something that’s interesting?
就像，“天哪，这会给世界带来什么？”或者你只是继续愉快地写作并尝试写一些有趣的东西？
You probably write something that’s reasonably balanced in terms of pros and cons and that is rooted in some kind of basic understanding of the technology, and then let the chips fall where they may.
你可能会写一些在优点和缺点方面相当平衡的东西，并且植根于对技术的某种基本理解，然后让芯片落在他们可能的地方。
The most recent book of that type that I’ve written was Termination Shock, which is about solar-radiation management, solar geoengineering.
我最近写的这一类型的书是《终止冲击》，它是关于太阳辐射管理、太阳地球工程的。
I feel like I went to some effort to present a balanced approach there and to present arguments on both sides and to show why some people would think it was great and other people would hate it.
我觉得我付出了一些努力来提出一种平衡的方法，并提出双方的论点，并表明为什么有些人会认为它很棒，而另一些人会讨厌它。
My feeling is that if I do that, then no one can say I’m presenting a propagandistic, one-sided view of the issue, and people are then free to make up their own minds as to what position they want to take.
我的感觉是，如果我这样做，那么没有人会说我对这个问题提出了一种宣传性的、片面的观点，人们就可以自由地决定他们想要采取什么立场。
On AI
论人工智能
In what year do you think we will first see a novel co-authored by a human and an AI, where the AI does more than just some basic research, but actually writes a fair amount of the novel, and that the novel is at least as good as what a talented human could accomplish?
你认为我们会在哪一年第一次看到人类和人工智能共同创作的小说，其中人工智能不仅仅做一些基础研究，而且实际上写了相当多的小说，并且这部小说至少与有才华的人类一样好？
Something close to that has probably happened already.
类似的事情可能已经发生了。
I’m sure it’s happened.
我确信这已经发生了。
So, your question boils down to a critical judgment as to quality.
因此，您的问题归结为对质量的批判性判断。
My position on this, which I put out in a Substack a couple of weeks ago, is that the real purpose of art and the reason we like art is because it exposes us to a very dense package of micro decisions that have been made by the artist.
我几周前在子堆栈中提出的立场是，艺术的真正目的以及我们喜欢艺术的原因是因为它让我们接触到艺术家做出的一系列非常密集的微观决定。
As such, we’re engaged in a communion with that artist.
因此，我们正在与那位艺术家进行交流。
What makes it interesting is that connection.
有趣的是这种联系。
It may be to a living writer, or it may be to a sculptor who died 2,500 years ago, but in either case, we’re making a human-to-human connection.
它可能是一位在世的作家，也可能是一位 2500 年前去世的雕塑家，但无论哪种情况，我们都在建立人与人之间的联系。
If we know that we’re reading something or experiencing a work of art that was just generated by an algorithm, then that element of human connection isn’t there anymore.
如果我们知道我们正在阅读的东西或正在体验的艺术品只是由算法生成的，那么人类联系的元素就不再存在了。
Furthermore, we know that for every one such book or image or whatever, a million more could be generated just by launching a Python script, basically.
此外，我们知道，对于每一本书或图像或其他任何东西，基本上只需启动 Python 脚本就可以生成一百万本。
Familiarity, the law of supply and demand takes over at that point.
熟悉的供给和需求法则在那时就占据了主导地位。
If there’s an infinite supply of this stuff, then its value drops to zero.
如果这种东西的供应无限，那么它的价值就会降至零。
Even if such a book reads pretty well as a novel, I don’t think people are going to be interested in it.
即使这样的书作为小说读起来很好，我认为人们不会对它感兴趣。
But they may not know it was partly written by an AI or fully written by an AI, right?
但他们可能不知道它是部分由人工智能编写或完全由人工智能编写的，对吗？
That’s an interesting thought experiment.
这是一个有趣的思想实验。
It’s trying to craft a lie and claim that there was a human who wrote it and create a fake fan club or whatever.
它试图编造一个谎言，声称这是一个人写的，并创建了一个假粉丝俱乐部或其他什么。
I guess that’s possible.
我想这是可能的。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
Personally, I’m just not interested in it.
就我个人而言，我只是对此不感兴趣。
I have too many books on my shelf that I haven’t read yet that were written by humans.
我的书架上有太多人类写的书我还没读过。
What, for you, is the biggest weakness or flaw in current LLMs?
对您来说，当前法学硕士最大的弱点或缺陷是什么？
They don’t yet seem to have an understanding of spatial relations and just basic logical relationships that exist between things in the real world.
他们似乎还不了解空间关系，只了解现实世界中事物之间存在的基本逻辑关系。
There are a million examples of this on the internet.
互联网上有一百万个这样的例子。
There are people on Twitter who delight in posting the results.
Twitter 上有人很高兴发布结果。
Ask an LLM to do an arithmetic problem, and it’ll give you the wrong answer in a very convincing and confident way.
要求法学硕士做一道算术题，它会以非常令人信服和自信的方式给你错误的答案。
They don’t know their own limitations in that sense.
从这个意义上来说，他们不知道自己的局限性。
The LLM should say, “Oh, that looks like a math problem, and I suck at math.
法学硕士应该说：“哦，这看起来像一个数学问题，而我数学很烂。
I can’t give you the right answer.
我无法给你正确的答案。
You should get your calculator out.” But they don’t do that.
你应该把计算器拿出来。”但他们不这样做。
They just confidently give you the wrong answer.
他们只是自信地给你错误的答案。
Do you think we can use robots and robotic data to, in essence, teach LLMs about spatial relations?
您认为我们可以使用机器人和机器人数据从本质上讲授法学硕士关于空间关系的知识吗？
The robot will learn spatial relations going through the world, right?
机器人将学习穿越世界的空间关系，对吗？
Oh, you bumped into a tree, you need to stop.
哦，你撞到了一棵树，你需要停下来。
And this all gets fed into the LLM.
这一切都会被纳入法学硕士课程。
Then we have them make videos, and we grade the videos and do reinforcement learning on how good the videos are.
然后我们让他们制作视频，我们对视频进行评分，并对视频的好坏进行强化学习。
Can’t we, in less than five years, have AIs that are just awesomely good at that?
难道我们不能在不到五年的时间里拥有非常擅长这方面的人工智能吗？
We have a terminology issue to talk about here, which is LLMs — I don’t think that an LLM, per se, is the right architecture to use to solve that problem.
我们在这里要讨论一个术语问题，即法学硕士 —— 我认为法学硕士本身并不是解决该问题的正确架构。
I’m sure that you can train some kind of AI on that kind of dataset.
我确信你可以在这种数据集上训练某种人工智能。
And in fact, we know that this is happening with, say, self-driving cars, where you can use, let’s say, a game engine to create an imaginary city with imaginary roads, and then you can generate the videos from the car’s point of view of what it would look like to drive around that city.
事实上，我们知道这种情况正在发生在自动驾驶汽车上，你可以使用游戏引擎来创建一个具有假想道路的假想城市，然后你可以从汽车的角度生成在该城市周围行驶的视频。
You can generate that video dataset way more cheaply and rapidly than if you had to physically go out in a car with a camera on it and drive around in the car.
与您必须亲自驾驶装有摄像头的汽车外出并开车四处行驶相比，您可以更便宜、更快速地生成视频数据集。
You can definitely feed huge amounts of synthetic data to an AI system and help it learn that way.
你绝对可以向人工智能系统提供大量的合成数据，并帮助它以这种方式学习。
It’s a different brain from a large language model, per se.
本质上，它是一个与大型语言模型不同的大脑。
I have a long question from a reader, which I’ll paraphrase.
一位读者向我提出了一个很长的问题，我将对其进行解释。
It basically says, “You seem to be better at predicting the future than almost anyone else, and you’ve done this in a wide variety of areas.
它基本上是说，“你似乎比几乎任何人都更擅长预测未来，而且你在很多领域都做到了这一点。
What’s your self-awareness as to how this has been possible?”
你对这件事如何成为可能有什么自我意识？”
I think there’s a scattershot phenomenon going on, where a science fiction book might include a large number of hypothetical inventions, and the ones that are in there might be described somewhat vaguely.
我认为存在一种漫无目的的现象，一本科幻小说可能包含大量假设的发明，而其中的发明可能描述得有些模糊。
A bunch of those might never get realized, but people very generously tend to forget about those.
其中很多可能永远不会实现，但人们非常慷慨地往往会忘记这些。
They give the writer, the novelist, a free pass, and they only take into account the ones that seem to have come true.
他们给了作家、小说家一张免费通行证，他们只考虑那些似乎已经实现的事情。
There’s also some generosity there in that the description of the invention might be a little wishy-washy, a little vague.
也有一些慷慨之处在于，对发明的描述可能有点软弱、有点模糊。
Then later on, when a somewhat similar real invention gets made, someone’s nice enough to say that the science fiction writer invented this.
后来，当一个有点类似的真实发明被创造出来时，有人好心地说这是科幻小说作家发明的。
Say the primer from Diamond Age — do you feel we have that now or soon with large language models?
比如说《钻石时代》中的入门书——你觉得我们现在还是很快就会拥有大型语言模型？
They will teach you almost anything, right?
他们几乎会教你任何东西，对吗？
Not how to make a bomb, but anything scientific, anything legitimate.
不是如何制造炸弹，而是任何科学的、合法的东西。
They’ll give you multiple-choice questions.
他们会给你多项选择题。
They’ll grade them for you.
他们会为你评分。
They’re not perfect, but is that, in fact, what you meant?
它们并不完美，但事实上，这是您的意思吗？
There are a bunch of different elements that have to come together to make something that would work like the primer in The Diamond Age, and you just described one of them, which we can now get with LLMs.
有许多不同的元素必须组合在一起才能形成像《钻石时代》中的入门读物一样的东西，您刚刚描述了其中一个，我们现在可以通过法学硕士获得。
Another part of it is, how do you create that special relationship between the learner and the object, the book?
另一部分是，如何在学习者和物体（书本）之间建立这种特殊的关系？
Somehow, it’s just not as compelling to go on the internet and pull up a large language model and ask it to teach you something.
不知何故，在互联网上拉出一个大型语言模型并要求它教你一些东西并不那么有吸引力。
You can do it, for sure, but you don’t see a lot of people that I know of using it that way.
你当然可以做到这一点，但据我所知，你没有看到很多人以这种方式使用它。
What you need is to productize that, I think, to use a really crass word.
我认为，你需要的是把它产品化，用一个非常粗俗的词来说。
Package it in a way that a kid or somebody could pick up an object and open it to the next page and see what they needed to see that day, tailored for their learning style.
将其包装成这样，孩子或某人可以拿起一个物体并将其打开到下一页，看看他们当天需要看到什么，这是根据他们的学习风格量身定制的。
I don’t know if people are working on that or not.
我不知道人们是否正在为此努力。
Probably they’re working on it.
也许他们正在努力。
Could you imagine that we have a near future where artificial general intelligence comes — AGI — and that, basically, people don’t much notice or care, and the world just continues, and some people have these big doses of extra IQ in their pocket at a low price, but the world doesn’t change that much?
你能想象在不久的将来，通用人工智能到来 — AGI — 基本上，人们不会太注意或关心，世界只是继续下去，有些人以低廉的价格拥有大量额外的智商，但世界并没有改变那么多？
Sure.
当然。
That sounds like a promising place to begin a science fiction novel, Tyler.
泰勒，这听起来像是一个很有希望开始科幻小说的地方。
You should work on that.
你应该在这方面努力。
I like it.
我喜欢它。
I don’t know how important IQ really is.
我不知道智商到底有多重要。
To your earlier question about, are we all depraved?
对于你之前的问题，我们都是堕落的吗？
Lots of people with high IQs fell for ridiculous bullshit during the 20th century and are falling for it today.
许多高智商的人在 20 世纪都被荒谬的废话所迷惑，今天仍然如此。
Getting access to even more IQ in a pocket or whatever doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere in dealing with practical, real-world decision-making.
获得更高的智商或其他东西并不一定能让你在处理实际的、现实世界的决策方面取得任何进展。
What do you think then is scarce?
那你觉得什么是稀缺的呢？
Is it kindness?
是善良吗？
Is it common sense?
这是常识吗？
Is it being more skeptical?
是不是更加怀疑了？
What’s the one thing we really do need more of if the marginal value of extra IQ is iffy?
如果额外智商的边际价值不确定，那么我们真正需要更多的一件事是什么？
Kindness sounds great.
善良听起来很棒。
But it might be somewhat cheap in supply, right?
但它的供应可能有点便宜，对吧？
Like, oh, everyone’s kind, but we don’t do much about it.
就像，哦，每个人都很友善，但我们对此没有做太多事情。
Seven weeks later, there are still babies in Africa with malaria.
七周后，非洲仍有婴儿患有疟疾。
Yes.
是的。
A lot of the people — going back to our earlier topic — who were involved in terrible political movements in the 20th century and now, probably did so in the belief that they were ultimately being kind, that they were trying to improve the world somehow.
许多人——“回到我们之前的话题”——在 20 世纪和现在卷入了可怕的政治运动，他们这样做可能是因为相信他们最终是善良的，他们正在努力以某种方式改善世界。
There’s a level of self-deception that can creep in that can make kind people, paradoxically, very dangerous.
矛盾的是，一定程度的自欺欺人会让善良的人变得非常危险。
Do you think readers enjoy reading scenes of torture?
您认为读者喜欢阅读酷刑场面吗？
Enjoy in a broad sense of the term.
广义上的享受。
I don’t know if enjoy is precisely the right word.
我不知道“享受”这个词是否准确。
One of my favorite writers is Joe Abercrombie, who writes fantasy novels.
我最喜欢的作家之一是乔·阿伯克龙比，他写奇幻小说。
One of the main characters in his whole cycle of novels is a professional torturer.
他整部小说的主角之一是一名职业酷刑者。
The trick that Joe manages to achieve is that he depicts this guy doing horrific things, but he ends up being a really interesting character, and you almost end up rooting for him in a strange way.
乔设法实现的技巧是，他描绘了这个人做可怕的事情，但他最终成为一个非常有趣的角色，你几乎最终以一种奇怪的方式支持他。
There’s a whole field of what’s called body horror, which some writers like to work with, that’s somehow fascinating to people.
有一个叫做“身体恐怖”的领域，一些作家喜欢与之合作，这对人们来说有点着迷。
We all have bodies.
我们都有身体。
We all know things can go wrong with our bodies.
我们都知道我们的身体可能会出现问题。
This shows up from time to time in fiction.
这在小说中时常出现。
I think that if you’re going to depict it, the key thing is to do it in a way that doesn’t appeal to the worst parts of the readers’ human nature.
我认为如果你要描述它，关键是要以一种不吸引读者人性中最糟糕部分的方式来描述它。
Do you like the TV show The Americans?
你喜欢电视剧《美国人》吗？
Haven’t seen it.
没见过。
Which, by the way, has had a whole bunch of torture scenes in it.
顺便说一下，其中有很多酷刑场景。
Oh, okay.
哦好的。
Haven’t seen it.
没见过。
You should watch it.
你应该注意它。
I think it’s very good, and some parts of it are not unrelated to themes in your book.
我觉得写得很好，而且有些内容和你书中的主题不无关系。
Well, that’s why, Tyler, I vaguely know what it’s about.
好吧，这就是为什么，泰勒，我隐约知道它是关于什么的。
If I’m working on a project of my own, I actively avoid trying to see other fictional treatments of the same or similar subject matter.
如果我正在从事自己的项目，我会积极避免尝试看到相同或相似主题的其他虚构处理方式。
Did you go see the movie Oppenheimer?
你去看电影《奥本海默》了吗？
I did.
我做到了。
What do you think?
你怎么认为？
I would have liked to see more about making the bomb and less about his bureaucratic troubles getting his security clearance renewed.
我希望更多地了解制造炸弹的情况，而不是了解他在更新安全许可方面遇到的官僚麻烦。
I guess I see why that makes for us a certain kind of drama that plays well on screen, but it’s not what I went there for.
我想我明白为什么这为我们创造了一种在银幕上表现良好的戏剧，但这不是我去那里的目的。
Last question — not asking for any spoilers, but on the cover of Polostan — which, again, I liked very much — it says “Volume One of Bomb Light,” which is going to be some series.
最后一个问题 ——不要求剧透，但在《波洛斯坦》的封面上——我再次非常喜欢它——上面写着“炸弹之光第一卷”，这将是一个系列。
Without giving it away, is there anything you can tell us about where this is headed?
在不透露任何信息的情况下，您能告诉我们这件事的发展方向吗？
Yes.
是的。
You can guess from the name of the series that it’s going to relate to the bomb, eventually.
从该系列的名称中你可以猜测它最终会与炸弹有关。
What I’ve became aware of, starting about 10 years ago, is that in the 10 years or so leading up to the building of the first atomic bomb, there were all kinds of really interesting stuff going on in the world of physics.
从大约 10 年前开始，我开始意识到，在制造第一颗原子弹之前的 10 年左右的时间里，物理世界中发生了各种非常有趣的事情。
The neutron wasn’t even discovered until 1932.
直到 1932 年，中子才被发现。
Within living memory, there were all kinds of physics experiments underway during the 1930s, where people like Fermi and the Curies, Compton, Millikan, Rutherford, Chadwick were solving the mysteries of pursuing this detective story of how does the universe work, using very comparatively simple experiments.
在人们的记忆中，20世纪30年代各种各样的物理实验正在进行中，像费米和居里夫妇、康普顿、密立根、卢瑟福、查德威克这样的人正在用非常相对简单的实验来解开这个关于宇宙如何运作的侦探故事的谜团。
Just deductive reasoning.
只是演绎推理。
Trailing just on the coattails of that, you’ve got people in the world of military, the government, and so on beginning to understand that this is going to be really important.
受此影响，军队、政府等领域的人们开始认识到这将非常重要。
They don’t necessarily know that the bomb is going to be possible that early, but they know it’s important.
他们不一定知道炸弹会那么早制造出来，但他们知道这很重要。
And so all kinds of weird stuff begins to happen that is understood only by a few people in the world, but people who are in the know understand that it’s really important.
因此，各种奇怪的事情开始发生，世界上只有少数人能理解，但知情者明白这非常重要。
To me, there’s all kinds of fodder in that situation for storytelling, for novel writing.
对我来说，在这种情况下有各种各样的素材可以用来讲故事、写小说。
This one really gets going in about 1932.
这件事真正开始发生在 1932 年左右。
Polostan — it ends in early 1934.
《波洛斯坦》——结束于 1934 年初。
It features one of the main characters of the series, a young woman who I mentioned before, who is half-Russian, half-American.
它的主角是该系列的主角之一，我之前提到过的一位年轻女子，她有一半俄罗斯血统，一半美国人血统。
The next book in the series is going to focus more on a different character who’s introduced in this book, but we don’t see much of him.
该系列的下一本书将更多地关注本书中介绍的另一个角色，但我们很少看到他。
Then there’s a third book planned that’ll be based around a different character, and eventually, all this comes together in the 1940s.
然后计划写第三本书，以不同的角色为基础，最终，所有这些都在 20 世纪 40 年代汇集在一起。
Along the way, we see the development of what’s going on in the world of physics, but we also see what’s happening in parallel with that, with the rise of the Nazis and Stalinism, the Spanish Civil War, everything else that’s happening in the world during that decade.
一路走来，我们看到了物理学世界正在发生的事情的发展，但我们也看到了与之平行发生的事情，纳粹和斯大林主义的崛起，西班牙内战，以及这十年间世界上发生的一切。
Neal Stephenson, thank you very much.
尼尔·史蒂芬森，非常感谢你。
My pleasure.
我的荣幸。
Thanks for having me on your program again.
感谢您再次邀请我参加您的节目。