Peter Thiel on Political Theology (Ep. 210)

Thanks to a listener who sponsored this transcript “in the memory of Eileen Thompson, my deceased aunt who, I believe, would have liked Mercatus and your mission very much.”

感谢一位听众赞助了这份文字记录，“为了纪念艾琳·汤普森，我已故的阿姨，我相信她会非常喜欢麦卡图斯和你的使命。”

It’s our world, and I think there is some way that we have to try to integrate all these different facets of our life to try to make progress, and that’s what political philosophy does.

这是我们的世界，我认为我们必须通过某种方式尝试整合生活中的所有这些不同方面才能取得进步，这就是政治哲学所做的。

That’s what political theology does.

这就是政治神学的作用。

The reasons these sorts of things were abandoned, I think maybe it already was the Enlightenment abandoned it from — one type of reason it was abandoned was because it’s too hard to figure this stuff out, or it’s just a fool’s errand.

这类东西被遗弃的原因，我想也许是启蒙运动已经把它遗弃了—— 它被遗弃的一个原因是因为它太难弄清楚了，或者这只是一个傻瓜的差事。

I’m inclined to think the other reason was, it was often deemed as too dangerous, too divisive.

我倾向于认为另一个原因是，它经常被认为太危险、太分裂。

You’re not supposed to have debates about religion.

你不应该就宗教进行辩论。

We settled that in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia.

1648 年，我们通过《威斯特伐利亚条约》解决了这个问题。

We’re just going to forget about it and not talk about these things.

我们只会忘记它，不再谈论这些事情。

I think that might have been a reasonable compromise in the 18th century.

我认为这在 18 世纪可能是一个合理的妥协。

It’s my view that when you fast-forward to the 21st century, it’s maybe more dangerous not to think about things, and it’s again more dangerous for us to become ever smaller cogs in an ever bigger machine, all of Adam Smith’s pin factory.

我认为，当你快进到 21 世纪时，不去思考事情可能会更危险，而对于我们来说，成为一台更大的机器（所有亚当·斯密的大头针工厂）中的更小的齿轮也更危险。

The political dimension on it — just to say one thing on that is, there’s always a question, if we’re trying to figure out something about the whole, about our whole world, do you start on a human scale?

它的政治维度 ——只想说一件事，那就是，总是有一个问题，如果我们试图弄清楚关于整个、关于我们整个世界的某些事情，你是否从人类的尺度开始？

Or do you start on a microscopic, telescopic, atomic, or cosmic scale?

或者从微观、望远镜、原子或宇宙尺度开始？

There’s probably some way these things are related, but the political theology, political philosophy debate, our frame — I think this was also a Socratic idea — we start with a turn to common sense, human, the world around us, questions about politics, economics, society, culture, and that’s actually this important way to get access.

这些事情可能有某种关联，但是政治神学、政治哲学辩论、我们的框架 ——我认为这也是苏格拉底式的思想 ——我们首先转向常识、人类、我们周围的世界，关于政治、经济、社会、文化的问题，这实际上是进入的重要途径。

There’s some deep link between the university and the universe.

大学和宇宙之间存在着某种深刻的联系。

There’s some deep link between the failing multiversity and the crazed multiverse.

失败的多元大学和疯狂的多元宇宙之间存在着某种深刻的联系。

The political orientation I have is, you’re never going to solve these things.

我的政治倾向是，你永远无法解决这些问题。

You have to start with the university or whatever that’s gone wrong if you’re ever going to make sense of the universe, and there’s some analog to that that motivates all of these things.

如果你想要理解宇宙，你就必须从大学或者任何出了问题的地方开始，并且有一些类似的东西可以激发所有这些事情。

On the political theology of Peter Thiel

论彼得·泰尔的政治神学

The notion that we don’t know anything about heaven — it also means you can’t really be spiritual.

我们对天堂一无所知——这也意味着你不可能真正有灵性。

That’s also a kind of arrogation.

这也是一种傲慢。

Isn’t the consistent Peter Thiel really a Calvinist thinker?

始终如一的彼得·泰尔难道不是加尔文主义思想家吗？

Calvinism is quite concrete.

加尔文主义是相当具体的。

It’s quite serious.

这是相当严重的。

It takes governance and authority very literally.

它非常注重治理和权威。

Why aren’t you just a Calvinist?

为什么你不只是加尔文主义者？

I would say a Girardian anthropological frame is that there is this deep link between gods and scapegoats, and we have these scapegoats we turn into gods.

我想说，吉拉德人类学框架是，神与替罪羊之间存在着深刻的联系，而我们把这些替罪羊变成了神。

We project our violence onto them, and this is what archaic religion does.

我们将暴力投射到他们身上，这就是古老宗教的做法。

This is, in some ways, what atheist liberalism does.

在某些方面，这就是无神论自由主义所做的。

You blame everything on Mr. God.

你把一切都归咎于上帝先生。

Isn’t Calvinism just an extreme form of scapegoating, where Mr. God did everything, he determined everything?

加尔文主义难道不是一种极端形式的替罪羊吗？上帝先生做了一切，他决定了一切？

He’s why you’re wearing that blue jacket, and everything you did wrong — it’s all Mr. God’s fault.

他就是你穿着那件蓝色夹克的原因，而你做错的一切 ——都是上帝先生的错。

We should be deeply distrustful of scapegoating Mr. God for everything like that.

我们应该深深地怀疑上帝先生会为类似的事情充当替罪羊。

That’s an anthropological argument against Calvinism.

这是反对加尔文主义的人类学论证。

Then the intellectual reason I’m not Calvinist is that I think we should be trying to make sense of the world.

那么我不是加尔文主义者的理智原因是我认为我们应该努力理解世界。

If you’re so depraved that you can’t even think, which is, I think, a core Calvinist thing, we shouldn’t be having a conversation.

如果你堕落到无法思考，我认为这是加尔文主义的核心内容，那么我们就不应该进行对话。

If I were a real Calvinist, we wouldn’t even be able to have a conversation here.

如果我是一个真正的加尔文主义者，我们甚至无法在这里交谈。

There’s a Thomistic distinction between the intellect and the will, and the medievals believed in the power of the intellect, the weakness of the will.

智力和意志之间存在托马斯主义的区别，中世纪人相信智力的力量，而意志的弱点。

The moderns — it’s in some ways reversed.

现代人——在某些方面是相反的。

If you take an effective altruist, East Bay rationalist — these people, they’re much closer to Calvinism.

如果你选择一位有效的利他主义者、东湾理性主义者——这些人，他们更接近加尔文主义。

They claim to be rationalists, but if you’re in a rationalist Bible study equivalent, and the outward-facing thing is that you’re rational and you’re pure and you’re thinking, the inward-facing thing — it’s all just spaghetti code.

他们自称是理性主义者，但如果你处于理性主义的圣经学习中，而外向的东西是你是理性的、你是纯洁的、你在思考，那么内向的东西 —— 这一切都只是意大利面条代码。

You can never be right about anything.

你永远不可能对任何事情都是正确的。

Maybe you can be a little bit less wrong.

也许你可以少犯一点错误。

So, I’m against both Calvinism and so-called rationalism.

所以，我既反对加尔文主义，也反对所谓的理性主义。

I grew up as a Lutheran.

我从小就是路德教徒。

There are probably all these things that are problematic about Luther; there are things that were good about him.

路德可能有所有这些问题；他有一些优点。

But I think the one part of it that — if we judge him by the standards of the 16th century, I think the Reformation had to come from the outside.

但我认为其中的一部分是——如果我们以 16 世纪的标准来评判他，我认为宗教改革必须来自外部。

It was not actually possible for it to start from within.

实际上不可能从内部开始。

There is a way that the Lutheran piece — it was the less globally centralized church.

从某种程度上来说，路德教会的作品——它是全球集权程度较低的教会。

It was going to be a less centralized church, and there’s probably still some part of the Protestant political project that lines up more closely with a libertarian view.

这将是一个不太集中的教会，而且新教政治计划的某些部分可能与自由主义观点更加一致。

On the Old Testament

论旧约

All the extremely progressive forms of higher criticism, things like this in the 19th century, they were all deeply anti-Semitic.

所有极端进步的高级批评形式，比如19世纪的这样的事情，它们都是深深的反犹太主义。

I think if you’re too progressive, you end up becoming an anti-Semite.

我认为如果你太进步，你最终会成为反犹太主义者。

Then you have to somehow say there’s some progress, but the Girardian intuition I would have is, it’s just always this reversal in perspective, where the Bible takes things from the side of the victim.

然后你必须以某种方式说有一些进展，但我的吉拉德直觉是，这总是观点的逆转，圣经从受害者的角度看待事情。

It’s already in the book of Genesis, where it’s the story of Cain and Abel.

这已经在《创世记》中记载了，该隐和亚伯的故事。

The founding of the first city in the history of the world is a parallel but opposite story to the story of Romulus and Remus, the founding of the greatest city, where the Romulus and Remus story is told from the point of view of Romulus.

世界历史上第一座城市的建立与最伟大城市的建立罗慕路斯和雷穆斯的故事是平行但相反的故事，其中罗慕路斯和雷穆斯的故事是从罗慕路斯的角度讲述的。

The Cain and Abel story is told from the point of view of Abel.

该隐和亚伯的故事是从亚伯的角度讲述的。

Or the Israelites coming out of Egypt — that would normally be told from the point of view of the Egyptians, where you had these troublemakers and we got rid of them.

或者以色列人从埃及出来——通常会从埃及人的角度来讲述，那里有这些麻烦制造者，我们消灭了他们。

You have this inversion of perspectives throughout the Old Testament, I would say.

我想说，整个旧约圣经都有这种观点的倒置。

I think Christianity — probably, it is much worse than Islam or Judaism on this because Islam and Judaism — it would be inconceivable that you could murder God in the form of a person.

我认为基督教——可能在这方面比伊斯兰教或犹太教糟糕得多，因为伊斯兰教和犹太教——你无法想象以人的形式谋杀上帝。

If someone claimed to be God, and he got killed, that would just prove that he’s not God.

如果有人自称是神，而他被杀了，那只能证明他不是神。

The original sin, the violence, in some sense, is far greater in a Christian context, but then there is some way that we’re all part of that matrix.

从某种意义上说，原罪、暴力在基督教背景下要严重得多，但在某种程度上，我们都是这个矩阵的一部分。

You need to have forgiveness.

你需要宽恕。

If you want to maybe outline three rough possibilities, there’s this hard-to-define Christian in-between one, which is, the history’s terrible and it’s awful, but we need to try to find a way to forgive people.

如果你想概括出三种粗略的可能性，那就是介于两者之间的一种难以定义的基督教，那就是，历史是可怕的，而且是可怕的，但我们需要尝试找到一种方法来宽恕人们。

Then there is, let’s say, a woke version, where the history’s terrible, but we’re going to forget about the forgiveness part.

然后，比如说，一个觉醒的版本，其中的历史是可怕的，但我们会忘记宽恕的部分。

Then there is maybe a right-wing Nietzschean, Bronze Age Pervert alternative, which is, we’re going to forget about the history.

然后也许还有一个右翼尼采、青铜时代变态的替代方案，那就是，我们将忘记历史。

It’s oppressive.

这很压抑。

I’m sick of this guilt trip and don’t want to hear anything more about the history.

我厌倦了这次内疚之旅，不想再听到任何关于这段历史的事情。

Somehow the in-between Christian one, I think, is the most tenable, even though there are all sorts of tensions in that.

不知何故，我认为介于两者之间的基督教信仰是最站得住脚的，尽管其中存在各种各样的紧张关系。

A Christian division that I suggested at the Harvard talk was that it’s okay to say you’re a victim.

我在哈佛演讲中提出的基督教分歧是，说你是受害者是可以的。

It’s okay to do these things up to a certain point.

做这些事情到一定程度是可以的。

You can’t say that you’re a greater victim than Christ.

你不能说你是比基督更大的受害者。

Once you do that, you’ve probably lost perspective.

一旦你这样做了，你可能就会失去观点。

On the resurgence of Carl Schmitt

卡尔·施密特的复兴

But the thing that I think is interesting, dangerous about looking at the Weimar thinkers, somehow, it was in the aftermath of World War I.

但我认为观察魏玛思想家的事情很有趣，也很危险，不知何故，这是在第一次世界大战之后。

Germany had lost.

德国输了。

You couldn’t go back to the throne and altar, the empire of the Hapsburgs.

你无法回到哈布斯堡王朝的王座和祭坛。

You didn’t really want to go forward with liberal democracy.

你并不是真的想推进自由民主。

There were all these people who had these fairly deep critiques.

所有这些人都提出了相当深刻的批评。

In some ways, it was going back to these questions of political theology, political philosophy that had been whitewashed and set aside since the Enlightenment.

在某种程度上，它又回到了自启蒙运动以来就被粉饰和搁置的政治神学、政治哲学问题。

Again, there were things about it that were dangerous.

再说一遍，其中有些事情是危险的。

One way to think of the Weimar period was, it’s like the dwarves in Moria where they dwelled too deep, and finally, they awakened the nameless terror of the Balrog.

一种思考魏玛时期的方式是，就像莫瑞亚的矮人，他们居住得太深，最终唤醒了炎魔的无名恐怖。

I don’t think we’re ever in a cyclical world, but there are certainly certain parallels in the US in the 2020s to Germany in the 1920s, where liberalism is exhausted.

我不认为我们曾经处于一个周期性的世界，但 2020 年代的美国与 1920 年代的德国肯定有某些相似之处，那里的自由主义已经耗尽。

One suspects the democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted and that we have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window.

人们怀疑民主，无论这意味着什么，已经疲惫不堪，我们必须在奥弗顿窗口之外提出一些问题。

If you ask what does the millionaire and the general and the priest — what do they actually have in common?

如果你问百万富翁、将军和牧师 —— 他们实际上有什么共同点？

We just imagine these three people are seated at a dinner table, and they’re having dinner.

我们只是想象这三个人坐在餐桌旁，正在吃晚饭。

What do they actually talk about?

他们实际上在谈论什么？

It’s really hard to come up with an answer.

确实很难给出答案。

Yet the coalition worked incredibly well, and the answer I submit that they have in common is they’re anti-communist, and they have a common enemy.

然而，这个联盟运作得非常好，我提出的答案是他们的共同点是他们都是反共产主义的，他们有一个共同的敌人。

That was incredibly powerful.

那真是太强大了。

It was, in some ways, my formative political idea as a teenager — junior high school, high school, late ’70s, early ’80s — was anti-communism.

从某些方面来说，我青少年时期（初中、高中，70 年代末、80 年代初）形成的政治理念是反共产主义。

Then there was a way that when the Berlin Wall came down in ’89, this seemingly incredibly powerful political constellation disintegrated.

然后，当 89 年柏林墙倒塌时，这个看似极其强大的政治星座就瓦解了。

There’s a natural Schmittian analysis of this.

对此有一个自然的施密特分析。

That’s where I find Schmitt quite powerful as a thinker.

这就是我发现施密特作为一个思想家非常强大的地方。

The place where it probably tends to always go haywire is, there’s always a question whether politics is like a market.

政治是否像市场一样的问题总是存在，这可能是它总是容易失控的地方。

Or is it a thing where, if you understand it better, it works better?

或者说，如果你更好地理解它，它的效果会更好吗？

Or is it something like a scapegoating machine, where the scapegoating machine only works if you don’t look into the sausage-making factory?

或者它是像替罪羊机器一样的东西，只有当你不调查香肠制造厂时，替罪羊机器才会起作用？

If you say, “We’re having a lot of conflicts in our village, and we have to find some random elderly woman and accuse her of witchcraft, so that will achieve some psychosocial unity as a village,” this sort of thing doesn’t really work if you’re that self-aware.

如果你说，“我们村里有很多冲突，我们必须随机找一些老妇人，指控她施行巫术，这样才能实现村里的心理社会团结”，如果你有那么大的自我意识，这种事情就不会真正起作用。

Schmitt, in a way, had this optimistic Enlightenment rationality to it, where if we just describe politics as the arbitrary division of the world into friends and enemies, then this will somehow strengthen the political.

在某种程度上，施密特有这种乐观的启蒙理性，如果我们只是将政治描述为将世界任意划分为朋友和敌人，那么这会在某种程度上强化政治。

It probably, actually, in some ways accelerated its disintegration instead.

事实上，它可能在某些方面反而加速了它的瓦解。

If you look at Thucydides, where it’s this great period of peace that leads to this great war between Athens and Sparta.

如果你看看修昔底德，就会发现正是这段伟大的和平时期导致了雅典和斯巴达之间的这场伟大战争。

So the Periclean age somehow then gives way to this great conflict.

因此，伯里克利时代不知何故让位给了这场巨大的冲突。

Then people came back to studying Thucydides right after World War I because there were some certain parallels.

第一次世界大战结束后，人们又重新开始研究修昔底德，因为两者之间有一些相似之处。

A hundred years of peace between the Napoleonic Wars, and then it led to this great conflict, but there’s nothing particular in the history.

拿破仑战争之间有一百年的和平，然后导致了这场巨大的冲突，但历史上并没有什么特别的。

None of the details matter in Thucydides.

对于修昔底德来说，所有细节都不重要。

He makes up all the speeches and so on.

所有的演讲稿都是他编的。

You contrast this with something like the Book of Daniel in the Bible, where it’s a succession of four kingdoms, and it is a one-time world history where everything that happens is unique, not to be repeated.

你可以将其与《圣经》中的《但以理书》之类的内容进行对比，其中有四个王国的连续，这是一部一次性的世界历史，其中发生的一切都是独一无二的，不能重复。

There’s a sense in which I would say the real first historian was Daniel, and Thucydides isn’t even close.

从某种意义上说，我会说真正的第一位历史学家是但以理，而修昔底德与他相差甚远。

We talked off the set a little bit about, well, what about the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire?

我们在片场外聊了一点，罗马帝国和神圣罗马帝国怎么样？

Isn’t the European Union sort of like the Roman Empire?

欧盟是不是有点像罗马帝国？

My response is, well, we have nuclear weapons today, and they didn’t have those, even in 1900.

我的回答是，好吧，我们今天拥有核武器，而他们即使在 1900 年也没有核武器。

Even just on the science and tech arc, things are so different, and I would not trivialize the importance of science and technology.

即使只是在科学和技术方面，情况也是如此不同，我不会轻视科学和技术的重要性。

On whether we’re in a new age of millenarian thought

关于我们是否处于千禧年思想的新时代

There certainly are fears people have about bioweapons.

人们当然对生物武器有恐惧。

We can ask what really happened with the Wuhan lab.

我们可以问问武汉实验室究竟发生了什么。

There are apocalyptic fears around AI that I think deserve to be taken seriously.

我认为人工智能周围存在着世界末日般的恐惧，值得认真对待。

Yes, if it’s millenarian or apocalyptic, it has a very, very different feel.

是的，如果它是千禧年或世界末日，它会有一种非常非常不同的感觉。

It’s sort of an apocalyptic violence that comes from a purely human source.

这是一种纯粹来自人类的世界末日暴力。

It’s not really being orchestrated by God.

这并不是真正由上帝精心安排的。

One of the points that René Girard always liked to make was that, in the Catholic Church — it was, I think, during the Advent season — you’d often have these sermons on the end times, the terrible things that happened at the end of the world.

雷内·吉拉德总是喜欢提出的观点之一是，在天主教堂中——“我认为，在降临节期间”——你经常会听到关于末日的布道，关于世界末日发生的可怕事情。

In Girard’s telling, the Church stopped those sermons after 1945 because people needed to be reassured that the nuclear weapons had nothing to do with Armageddon or fire and brimstone or anything like this, even though, of course, there were all these slight mythic elements.

按照吉拉德的说法，教会在 1945 年之后停止了这些布道，因为需要让人们放心，核武器与世界末日或火与硫磺或类似的事情无关，尽管当然，其中存在所有这些轻微的神话元素。

The first nuclear test was called Trinity, or you named it after all these Greek gods: Saturn, Jupiter, Zeus, whatever.

第一次核试验被称为“三位一体”，或者以所有希腊诸神命名：土星、朱庇特、宙斯等等。

If we, again, talk about all these existential risks today — nuclear weapons, climate change, biotech, nanotech, killer robots, the AI that’s going to turn everyone into a paperclip or whatever — I always think you should at least include one more kind of existential risk if we’re going to throw it in.

如果我们今天再次谈论所有这些存在风险 ——核武器、气候变化、生物技术、纳米技术、杀手机器人、将把每个人变成回形针或其他什么的人工智能—— 我总是认为，如果我们要把它放进去的话，你至少应该包括另一种存在风险。

In my mind, one other existential risk is a one-world totalitarian government.

在我看来，另一种存在风险是单一世界的极权政府。

I find that at least as scary as the others.

我发现这至少和其他人一样可怕。

There are elements of that that I think are very true.

我认为其中有些内容是非常真实的。

If I’ve had to do my anti-millenarian frame, or maybe it’s not a pro-tech argument — this is sort of an anti-anti-tech argument — is that if we, again, talk about all these existential risks today — nuclear weapons, climate change, biotech, nanotech, killer robots, the AI that’s going to turn everyone into a paperclip or whatever — I always think you should at least include one more kind of existential risk if we’re going to throw it in.

如果我必须做我的反千禧年框架，或者也许这不是一个支持科技的论点 —— 这是一种反反技术的论点 —— 如果我们今天再次谈论所有这些存在的风险 —— 核武器、气候变化、生物技术、纳米技术、杀手机器人、将把每个人变成回形针的人工智能或其他什么 —— 我总是认为你应该如果我们要把它放进去的话，至少还包括另一种存在风险。

In my mind, one other existential risk is a one-world totalitarian government.

在我看来，另一种存在风险是单一世界的极权政府。

I find that at least as scary as the others.

我发现这至少和其他人一样可怕。

In a biblical eschatological context, you’re supposed to worry about Armageddon.

在圣经末世论的背景下，你应该担心世界末日。

You’re also supposed to worry about the Antichrist.

你还应该担心敌基督者。

Maybe you’re supposed to worry more about the Antichrist because the Antichrist comes first.

也许你应该更多地担心敌基督，因为敌基督是第一位的。

So, if we’re going to find a pathway through this apocalyptic age, you have to navigate between the Scylla of all these existential risks and the Charybdis of this political totalitarian catastrophe.

因此，如果我们要找到一条穿越这个世界末日时代的道路，你就必须在所有这些存在风险的“Scylla”和这场政治极权主义灾难的“Charybdis”之间导航。

If I had to do a more literary version on this, it’s very hard to write a literary account of the Antichrist.

如果我必须对此做一个更具文学性的版本，那么写一篇关于反基督者的文学描述是非常困难的。

The two good Antichrist books that were written, the two best fictional ones in my mind, were pre-World War I.

两本优秀的反基督书籍，我心目中最好的两本小说，都是在第一次世界大战之前写的。

There was a 1908 Robert Hugh Benson, sort of a Catholic book, Lord of the World.

罗伯特·休·本森 (Robert Hugh Benson) 于 1908 年出版了一本天主教书籍《世界之主》。

There was a 1900 one by Solovyov, War, Progress, and the End of History.

索洛维约夫 (Solovyov) 于 1900 年出版了一本《战争、进步和历史的终结》。

They both had these accounts of this future totalitarian world dictator who took over the whole world.

他们都有关于这位未来的极权主义世界独裁者接管整个世界的描述。

Both of them — it’s kind of a daemonium ex machina.

两者都 ——有点像机械恶魔。

It’s really unclear how the Antichrist takes over.

目前还不清楚敌基督是如何接管的。

It gives these hypnotic speeches, and no one can remember a word he says, but they all just sell their souls for no apparent good reason whatsoever, and he just takes over the world.

它给出了这些催眠般的演讲，没有人能记住他说的一个字，但他们都没有任何明显的理由出卖了自己的灵魂，而他就接管了世界。

It seems to me that if one were to try to write a novel like this post-1945, it’s very straightforward.

在我看来，如果一个人想要写一部像 1945 年后这样的小说，那是非常简单的。

It’d be like One World or None.

这就像一个世界或没有。

This was a short film by the nuclear scientists after 1945.

这是1945年后核科学家拍摄的短片。

If we don’t give nuclear weapons to the one-world government, it’s going to blow up the whole world.

如果我们不向单一世界政府提供核武器，它就会炸毁整个世界。

Basically, the literary version would be that the Antichrist comes to power by constantly talking about Armageddon and constantly telling us scary millenarian stories.

基本上，文学版本是，敌基督者通过不断谈论世界末日并不断向我们讲述可怕的千禧年故事来掌权。

That’s my complicated, nuanced answer.

这是我复杂而微妙的答案。

There’s a lot of truth to these existential risks.

这些存在的风险有很多道理。

I don’t want to completely dismiss them, but that’s also how we’re going to get this totalitarian state.

我不想完全否认它们，但这也是我们将如何获得这个极权国家的原因。

There are all these versions of this I can go down, but do you want to worry about Dr. Strangelove or Greta?

我可以记下所有这些版本，但你想担心奇爱博士还是格蕾塔？

It seems like Dr. Strangelove’s more dangerous, but if everyone’s going to have to ride a bicycle, that’s not just going to happen on its own.

看起来《奇爱博士》更危险，但如果每个人都必须骑自行车，那这不会单独发生。

That requires some real, real enforcement of this stuff.

这需要对这些东西进行真正的、真正的执行。

There’s a short Bostrom essay from 2019 on how to stop all the AI risks, and it’s basically, maybe we can change the culture so that nobody will have heterodox ideas anymore.

Bostrom 在 2019 年发表了一篇关于如何阻止所有人工智能风险的短文，基本上是，也许我们可以改变文化，这样就没有人会再有非正统的想法了。

A few different ideas like this, but then what you really need is really effective global government and really effective policing, and you have to have some global compute governance.

像这样的一些不同的想法，但你真正需要的是真正有效的全球政府和真正有效的治安，而且你必须有一些全球计算治理。

That sounds to me at least as scary as the AI.

在我看来，这至少和人工智能一样可怕。

It seems that we’ve gone far more in the peace-and-safety direction than the global-chaos direction.

看来我们在和平与安全的方向上走得比在全球混乱的方向上走得要远得多。

I think it’s hard to even have an illegal Swiss bank account, and that’s a really modest way.

我认为拥有一个非法的瑞士银行账户都很难，而且这是一种非常温和的方式。

It’s hard to exit.

很难退出。

It’s much harder to exit the United States than it was 20, 30 years ago.

与 20、30 年前相比，离开美国要困难得多。

On the problem with muddling through

关于得过且过的问题

Of course, if we think about the globalization project of the post–Cold War period where, in some sense, globalization just happens, there’s going to be more movement of goods and people and ideas and money, and we’re going to become this more peaceful, better-integrated world.

当然，如果我们考虑一下冷战后时期的全球化项目，从某种意义上说，全球化刚刚发生，将会有更多的商品、人员、思想和金钱的流动，我们将成为一个更加和平、更加一体化的世界。

You don’t need to sweat the details.

你不需要担心细节。

We’re just going to muddle through.

我们只是得过且过。

Then, in my telling, there were a lot of things around that story that went very haywire.

然后，在我的讲述中，这个故事的很多事情都变得非常混乱。

One simple version is, the US-China thing hasn’t quite worked the way Fukuyama and all these people envisioned it back in 1989.

一个简单的版本是，美中关系并没有完全按照福山和所有这些人 1989 年设想的方式进行。

I think one could have figured this out much earlier if we had not been told, “You’re just going to muddle through.” The alarm bells would’ve gone off much sooner.

我认为，如果我们没有被告知“你只是得过且过”，人们可能会更早地明白这一点。警钟会更早响起。

Maybe globalization is leading towards a neoliberal paradise.

也许全球化正在通向新自由主义天堂。

Maybe it’s leading to the totalitarian state of the Antichrist.

也许这会导致反基督者的极权主义国家。

Let’s say it’s not a very empirical argument, but if someone like you didn’t ask questions about muddling through, I’d be so much — like an optimistic boomer libertarian like you stop asking questions about muddling through, I’d be so much more assured, so much more hopeful.

假设这不是一个非常实证的论点，但如果像你这样的人不问关于得过且过的问题，我就会像你一样乐观的婴儿潮一代自由主义者，不再问关于得过且过的问题，我会更加放心，更加充满希望。

One of my chapters in the Zero to One book was, “You are not a lottery ticket.” The basic advice is, if you’re an investor and you can just think, “Okay, I’m just muddling through as an investor here.

我在《零到一》书中的一章是“你不是一张彩票”。基本的建议是，如果你是一名投资者，你可以这样想：“好吧，我只是作为一名投资者得过且过。

I have no idea what to invest in.

我不知道该投资什么。

There are all these people.

都有这些人。

I can’t pay attention to any of them.

我无法关注他们中的任何一个。

I’m just going to write checks to everyone, make them go away.

我只是要给每个人写支票，让他们走开。

I’m just going to set up a desk somewhere here on South Beach, and I’m going to give a check to everyone who comes up to the desk, or not everybody.

我打算在南海滩的某个地方设立一张桌子，然后我会给每个走到桌子前的人（或者不是每个人）一张支票。

It’s just some writing lottery tickets.”

这只是写彩票而已。”

That’s just a formula for losing all your money.

这只是一个让你损失所有钱的公式。

The place where I react so violently to the muddling through — again, we’re just not thinking.

我对这种得过且过的反应如此强烈——再次，我们只是没有思考。

It can be Calvinist.

它可以是加尔文主义者。

It can be rationalist.

它可以是理性主义的。

It’s anti-intellectual.

这是反智的。

It’s not thinking about things.

它不是在思考事情。

Again, the Schmittian view is, there were all these different things that played the role of the katechon at various points in time.

同样，施密特的观点是，所有这些不同的东西在不同的时间点都扮演着家长的角色。

If you’re not supposed to immanentize the eschaton, you’re also not supposed to immanentize the katechon.

如果你不应该使末世内在化，那么你也不应该使凯特顿内在化。

If you identify too much as one thing, that can go very wrong, if you think of the katechon as the thing that restrains the one-world state or that restrains the Antichrist.

如果你把太多的东西视为一件事，如果你认为凯特孔是限制单一世界国家或限制敌基督者的东西，那可能会出错。

Anything that’s the opposite — this is a Girardian cut — is always going to be mimetically entangled.

任何相反的东西——“这是吉拉德切割”——总是会被模仿地纠缠在一起。

It’s going to have this parallelism.

它将具有这种并行性。

There’s always a risk that the katechon becomes the Antichrist.

儿歌者总是有成为反基督者的风险。

The proto-Antichrist was Nero.

最初的敌基督者是尼禄。

Claudius, the good emperor, was the katechon.

克劳狄斯，一位善良的皇帝，是一位可爱的男孩。

He was restraining Nero, but then at some point, yes, Nero’s the opposite of Claudius, but they’re both Roman emperors.

他在限制尼禄，但在某些时候，是的，尼禄与克劳狄斯相反，但他们都是罗马皇帝。

Or you could say that in the middle of the 20th century, from let’s say, 1949 to 1989, I would identify the katechon as anti-communism.

或者你可以说，在 20 世纪中叶，比如说 1949 年到 1989 年，我会把家庭教师视为反共产主义。

I would identify communism as the ideology of the Antichrist in the 20th century.

我将共产主义视为20世纪敌基督的意识形态。

What stopped communism was not .

阻止共产主义的并不是。

.

。

.

。

The United States couldn’t have done it.

美国不可能做到这一点。

It was not just one country.

这不仅仅是一个国家。

It was not some libertarian debating society.

这不是某个自由主义辩论社团。

Something was pretty violent, pretty hard to morally justify, not really that Christian, but it had this unifying effect.

有些东西相当暴力，很难在道德上辩护，不是真正的基督教，但它有这种统一的效果。

The way it morphed — 1989 — something like anti-communism morphs into neoliberalism.

它的演变方式是——《1989》——类似反共产主义的东西演变成新自由主义。

Well, if you’re anti-communist, you’re not aspiring for world control.

好吧，如果你反共，你就不会渴望控制世界。

You’re just trying to stop the communists from getting world control.

你只是想阻止共产党控制世界。

Once you’ve defeated the communists, what are you supposed to do?

一旦你打败了共产党，你应该做什么？

Maybe you can just go home and forget about all of what you did.

也许你可以回家并忘记你所做的一切。

But in practice, these things have a tendency to perpetuate themselves.

但在实践中，这些事情有自我延续的趋势。

Bush 41 — anti-communism became the new world order, and we’re now going to just govern the world in the name of anti-communism.

Bush 41 — 反共成为新的世界秩序，我们现在将以反共的名义统治世界。

There’s something about it that’s always misleading.

它的某些东西总是会产生误导。

Or even what I said about the Antichrist in this apocalyptic thing.

或者甚至是我在这个世界末日事件中所说的关于敌基督者的内容。

Doesn’t the Antichrist just come to power by acting as a katechon?

敌基督不就是靠扮演小男孩而上台的吗？

This is what Greta says she’s doing.

这就是格蕾塔所说的她正在做的事情。

She is the katechon stopping climate change.

她是阻止气候变化的儿科医生。

It’s a somewhat useful concept, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on it.

这是一个有点有用的概念，但我不会太重视它。

Girard liked to always say that Christ was the first political atheist because on the level of the political order, if you say Christ says that he’s the Son of God, son of the Father, there’s a way you can go into Trinitarian metaphysics.

吉拉德总是喜欢说基督是第一个政治无神论者，因为在政治秩序的层面上，如果你说基督说他是上帝的儿子，天父的儿子，那么你就可以进入三位一体形而上学。

But the political interpretation of this is that Caesar Augustus, the son of the divinized Caesar — somehow that’s not exactly the Son of God, and that the Roman Empire is not simply divinely ordained.

但对此的政治解释是，凯撒·奥古斯都，神化凯撒的儿子——不知何故，他并不完全是上帝的儿子，罗马帝国也不仅仅是神授的。

Then that somehow opens a space for a less unitary system that takes many, many centuries to develop or something like this.

然后，这会以某种方式为一个不太单一的系统打开一个空间，这个系统需要很多很多世纪才能发展或类似的东西。

I think of even Ayn Rand as a pretty good Christian in this way.

从这方面来说，我认为就连艾因·兰德（Ayn Rand）也是一个很好的基督徒。

I know that would be a really scandalous thing to say.

我知道这样说确实是一件可耻的事情。

On the Shakespearean political vision

论莎士比亚的政治愿景

The contrast I always frame is that the way I understand Shakespeare is always in contrast with someone like Karl Marx, where Marx believed that people had battles over differences that mattered.

我总是形成的对比是，我对莎士比亚的理解总是与卡尔·马克思这样的人形成鲜明对比，马克思相信人们会为重要的差异而进行斗争。

It was the different classes, and they had objectively different interests, and this is what led to the intensity of the struggle.

正是阶级不同，客观上有不同的利益，才导致了斗争的激烈。

There’s something in Shakespeare that’s sort of proto-Girardian or very mimetic, where people have conflicts when they .

莎士比亚的作品中有些东西有点原始吉拉德式的，或者非常模仿，人们在发生冲突时会发生冲突。

.

。

.

。

The conflicts are the most intense when they don’t differ at all.

当他们完全没有分歧时，冲突是最激烈的。

It’s the opening line of Romeo and Juliet.

这是《罗密欧与朱丽叶》的开场白。

It’s the Capulets versus Montagues, two houses “alike in dignity.” They’re identical, and that’s why they hate each other so much.

这是凯普莱特家族与蒙太古家族的对决，两个家族“在尊严上是相似的”。他们是相同的，这就是他们如此讨厌对方的原因。

Or I think it’s at the end of Hamlet, where Hamlet says to be truly great, you must take everything for an eggshell because an average person would fight over things that mattered, but a truly great person would fight over things as ephemerral as honor or an eggshell or something like this.

或者我认为是在《哈姆雷特》的结尾，哈姆雷特说，真正伟大的人必须把一切都当成蛋壳，因为普通人会为重要的事情而奋斗，但真正伟大的人会为荣誉、蛋壳之类的短暂事物而奋斗。

Of course, Hamlet’s problems — he doesn’t really believe all the insane revenge drama he’s supposed to be in.

当然，哈姆雷特的问题是——他并不真正相信他应该参与的所有疯狂复仇戏剧。

I think there is probably a place where I would say yes, Shakespeare would probably be very distrustful of extreme ideological differences today.

我想可能有一个地方我会说是的，莎士比亚今天可能非常不信任极端的意识形态差异。

That would probably in some ways also be a kind of political atheist.

在某些方面，这可能也是一种政治无神论者。

Then of course, the crazy literal reenactment of it was John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln in 1865, where Booth was a Shakespearean actor, and then it was “Sic semper tyrannis,” was what he said.

当然，疯狂的字面重演是 1865 年约翰·威尔克斯·布斯 (John Wilkes Booth) 拍摄亚伯拉罕·林肯 (Abraham Lincoln)，布斯是一位莎士比亚剧演员，然后他说，这就是“Sic semper tyrannis”。

He thought he was reenacting the Brutus-Caesar thing.

他认为他正在重演布鲁图斯-凯撒的事情。

You can look at the 1838 Lincoln speech, the Young Men’s Lyceum address, where Lincoln portrays himself in a somewhat coded way as sort of a proto-Caesar, and he tells the audience there are people in this country who wouldn’t be happy to be .

你可以看一下 1838 年林肯在青年学院的演讲，林肯以某种隐晦的方式将自己描绘成凯撒的原型，他告诉观众这个国家有些人不愿意成为凯撒。

.

。

.

。

Some people are really ambitious, but no one could be like a founder because that was in the past, and the most you can now be is a president.

有些人确实雄心勃勃，但没有人能像创始人那样，因为那是过去的事了，现在最多只能成为总裁。

But there are people for whom being president is not enough, and there are some people who, if you didn’t stop them, they would keep going until they enslaved all the white people or freed all the slaves.

但对有些人来说，当总统是不够的，有些人，如果你不阻止他们，他们会继续下去，直到奴役所有白人或释放所有奴隶。

Lincoln was talking about himself and saying that he has the ambition to be like a Caesar or a Napoleon or something like this.

林肯在谈论自己，说他有志向成为凯撒或拿破仑之类的人。

It’s a bit of a roundabout answer.

这是一个有点迂回的答案。

Yes, there are ways we can see it as a cycle, but surely that’s what we want to transcend.

是的，我们可以通过多种方式将其视为一个循环，但这肯定是我们想要超越的。

It was a bad idea for Brutus to think he was reenacting the Caesar thing, and somehow there was something about the John Wilkes Booth story that’s pretty sad too.

对于布鲁图斯来说，认为他正在重演凯撒的事情是一个坏主意，不知何故，约翰·威尔克斯·布斯的故事也有一些非常悲伤的东西。

On AI

论人工智能

My intuition would be it’s going to be quite the opposite, where it seems much worse for the math people than the word people.

我的直觉是，情况将完全相反，对于数学人来说，这似乎比“人”这个词更糟糕。

What people have told me is that they think within three to five years, the AI models will be able to solve all the US Math Olympiad problems.

人们告诉我，他们认为在三到五年内，人工智能模型将能够解决美国数学奥林匹克竞赛的所有问题。

That would shift things quite a bit.

这会让事情发生很大的变化。

There’s a longer history I always have on the math versus verbal riff.

我对数学与语言即兴演奏有着悠久的历史。

If you ask, “When did our society bias to testing people more for math ability?” I believe it was during the French Revolution because it was believed that verbal ability ran in families.

如果你问：“我们的社会什么时候开始倾向于更多地测试人们的数学能力？”我相信那是在法国大革命期间，因为人们相信语言能力是在家庭中遗传的。

Math ability was distributed in this idiot savant way throughout the population.

数学能力以这种白痴专家的方式分布在整个人群中。

If we prioritized math ability, it had this meritocratic but also egalitarian effect on society.

如果我们优先考虑数学能力，它就会对社会产生精英主义和平等主义的影响。

Then, I think, by the time you get to the Soviet Union, Soviet Communism in the 20th century, where you give a number theorist or chess grandmaster a medal — which was always a part I was somewhat sympathetic to in the Soviet Union — maybe it’s actually just a control mechanism, where the math people are singularly clueless.

然后，我想，当你到了苏联，20世纪的苏联共产主义，你给一个数论家或国际象棋大师一枚奖章 ——这一直是我在苏联有点同情的一部分—— 也许它实际上只是一种控制机制，数学家对此一无所知。

They don’t understand anything, but if we put them on a pedestal, and we tell everyone else you need to be like the math person, then it’s actually a way to control.

他们什么都不懂，但如果我们把他们奉为神明，告诉其他人你需要像数学家一样，那么这实际上是一种控制方式。

Or the chess grandmaster doesn’t understand anything about the world.

或者国际象棋大师根本不懂这个世界。

That’s a way to really control things.

这是一种真正控制事物的方法。

If I fast-forwarded to, let’s say, Silicon Valley in the early 21st century, it’s way too biased toward the math people.

如果我快进到 21 世纪初的硅谷，那就太偏向数学人了。

I don’t know if it’s a French Revolution thing or a Russian-Straussian, secret-cabal, control thing where you have to prioritize it.

我不知道这是法国大革命的事情还是俄罗斯施特劳斯式的秘密阴谋集团控制的事情，你必须优先考虑它。

That’s the thing that seems deeply unstable, and that’s what I would bet on getting reversed, where it’s like the place where math ability — it’s the thing that’s the test for everything.

这就是看起来非常不稳定的东西，这就是我打赌会逆转的地方，就像数学能力 ——它是对一切的考验。

It’s like if you want to go to medical school, okay, we weed people out through physics and calculus, and I’m not sure that’s really correlated with your dexterity as a neurosurgeon.

这就像如果你想去医学院，好吧，我们通过物理和微积分淘汰人，我不确定这是否真的与你作为神经外科医生的灵巧程度相关。

I don’t really want someone operating on my brain to be doing prime number factorizations in their head while they’re operating on my brain, or something like that.

我真的不希望对我的大脑进行操作的人在对我的大脑进行操作时在他们的头脑中进行素数分解，或者类似的事情。

In the late ’80s, early ’90s, I had a chess bias because I was a pretty good chess player.

在八十年代末、九十年代初，我对国际象棋有偏见，因为我是一个相当好的棋手。

And so my chess bias was, you should just test everyone on chess ability, and that should be the gating factor.

所以我的国际象棋偏见是，你应该测试每个人的国际象棋能力，这应该是门控因素。

Why even do math?

为什么还要做数学？

Why not just chess?

为什么不只是下棋呢？

That got undermined by the computers in 1997.

1997 年，这一点被计算机破坏了。

Isn’t that what’s going to happen to math?

这不是数学会发生的事情吗？

And isn’t that a long-overdue rebalancing of our society?

这难道不是我们社会早就该进行的再平衡吗？

One of the things that I’m still probably a little bit uncomfortable about is that it seems to lead to these incredible returns to scale.

我可能仍然有点不舒服的一件事是，它似乎会带来令人难以置信的规模回报。

Man, I thought San Francisco had at least committed suicide, and we could move on from San Francisco.

伙计，我以为旧金山至少自杀了，我们可以离开旧金山继续前进。

But returns to scale on AI are so big that maybe even San Francisco will survive with the AI revolution.

但人工智能的规模回报是如此之大，甚至可能旧金山也能在人工智能革命中幸存下来。

There are benefits to this, but it also leads to this set of centralization questions.

这样做有好处，但也导致了一系列中心化问题。

Or the geopolitical question: If it is as big a technology as you and I think it is, what is it going to do to the China-US rivalry?

或者地缘政治问题：如果它像你和我认为的那样是一项重要的技术，它会对中美竞争产生什么影响？

I think there’s an intuition that the effective altruists are not just fifth columnists on the part of the CCP where they’re trying to sabotage us, but where they actually, simply are doing what the CCP wants, which is actually to stop the LLMs and that’s very disruptive.

我认为有一种直觉，有效的利他主义者不仅仅是中共方面试图破坏我们的第五专栏作家，而且他们实际上只是在做中共想要的事情，这实际上是阻止法学硕士，这是非常具有破坏性的。

Then, to the extent that the second one, that it probably helps the US more than China, is that actually massively destabilizing, where China was this low-volatility plan to victory where they were just going to slowly beat the Western world.

然后，就第二点而言，它可能对美国比对中国更有帮助，这实际上会严重破坏稳定，而中国正是通过这种低波动性计划取得胜利，而他们只是要慢慢击败西方世界。

If you now have this volatility-increasing technology that China cannot match, does that just accelerate China’s timetable?

如果你现在拥有中国无法比拟的这种增加波动性的技术，这是否只会加快中国的时间表？

And does China become like Russia, where you’re ultimately going to lose, and maybe you have to invade Taiwan in the next year or two, and you can’t wait for another decade?

中国是否会变得像俄罗斯一样，你最终会失败，也许你必须在未来一两年内入侵台湾，而你不能再等十年？

We now have time for questions.

我们现在有时间提问。

Q&A

问答

On the other hand, I think it probably is still, if you’re just thinking of it as a one-time way to get money outside of the control of a particular government, it’s probably still extremely good for that.

另一方面，我认为它可能仍然是，如果你只是将其视为一种在特定政府控制之外获取资金的一次性方式，那么它可能仍然非常好。

But yes, there’s probably just some kind of a rationality where if you had one modality of governance, if it’s the best that would make for the best possible world, you should have that everywhere.

但是，是的，可能存在某种合理性，如果你有一种治理方式，如果它是最好的方式，可以创造最好的世界，那么你应该在任何地方都有这种方式。

It’s only if you have some very deep concerns about maybe human nature or the people who run the government or things like that, you start to second-guess that.

只有当你对人性或政府管理人员或类似的事情有一些非常深刻的担忧时，你才会开始重新猜测。

They’re probably both somehow pretty optimistic about human nature.

他们可能都对人性相当乐观。

One of Girard’s books was I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.

吉拉德的一本书是《我看到撒旦像闪电一样坠落》。

To see Satan is to see Satan fall, so the only time Satan appears in the Bible is at the very end of the world.

看到撒旦就看到撒旦堕落，所以撒旦在圣经中唯一一次出现是在世界的尽头。

Every other time, it’s been he’s talking to God or he is talking to Christ in the desert, but no human being ever sees Satan simply because to see Satan is to see Satan fall.

每一次，他都是在与上帝交谈，或者在沙漠中与基督交谈，但没有人会仅仅因为看到撒旦就看到撒旦的堕落而看到撒旦。

There’s the libertarian.

有自由主义者。

Another libertarian cut on Christianity is that when Christ is tempted in the desert, and Satan says, “Just worship me, and you can have all these kingdoms in the world,” it’s somehow saying that all the governments are more satanic than divinely ordained.

自由主义者对基督教的另一个看法是，当基督在沙漠中受到诱惑时，撒旦说：“只要崇拜我，你就可以拥有世界上所有这些王国。”这在某种程度上是在说所有的政府都比神命定的更加邪恶。

People don’t understand that.

人们不明白这一点。

They think governments are somehow divinely ordained.

他们认为政府在某种程度上是神圣注定的。

So, once you see how satanic the government is, how satanic taxes are, other things besides the governments do, it will have this unraveling effect.

所以，一旦你看到政府有多么邪恶，税收有多么邪恶，以及政府所做的其他事情，就会产生这种瓦解的效果。

There’s always a riff I have on this, where we look at Star Trek or the world of 1968.

当我们回顾《星际迷航》或 1968 年的世界时，我总是会对此进行即兴发挥。

People also thought 2001: A Space Odyssey.

人们还想到了《2001：太空漫游》。

IBM is how you’re going to have one big supercomputer that’s going to run the planet or the Planet Beta.

IBM 帮助您拥有一台运行整个地球或 Beta 星球的大型超级计算机。

One of the early Star Trek episodes, where there’s one big supercomputer that runs the planet, and the inhabitants are these docile robot-like people who’ve been living peacefully but uneventfully for 8,000 years.

《星际迷航》早期剧集之一，有一台大型超级计算机在运行这个星球，居民是这些温顺的机器人一样的人，他们平静而平静地生活了 8000 年。

And then of course, as always, the Star Trek people don’t follow the Prime Directive and blow up the computer and then leave the planet.

当然，一如既往，《星际迷航》的人们不会遵循最高指导原则，炸毁计算机，然后离开地球。

The future of the computer age in the late ’60s was highly centralized, and by the late ’90s was very decentralized.

20 世纪 60 年代末计算机时代的未来是高度中心化的，而到了 90 年代末则是非常去中心化的。

By the late 2010s, maybe crypto excepted, it again seemed to be pushing back to centralization.

到 2010 年代末，也许加密货币除外，它似乎再次推回中心化。

My intuition is these things are not absolutely written in stone, and it’s up to us to work on making the technologies, having to push it one way or the other.

我的直觉是，这些事情并不是绝对一成不变的，我们应该努力开发这些技术，以某种方式推动它。

It’s not quite that predetermined.

这并不是预先确定的。

I had some kind of a quarter-life crisis in my mid-20s.

我在二十多岁的时候经历过某种四分之一人生危机。

Unclear what to do, but somehow, you have to try to avoid the worst mimetic entanglements, the worst forms of mimetic competition possible.

不清楚该怎么做，但不知何故，你必须尽力避免最糟糕的模仿纠缠，最糟糕的模仿竞争形式。

I don’t think psychology really works.

我不认为心理学真的有用。

I don’t think awareness of these things is quite the way to do it, but there was some part of that that was very important for me.

我不认为意识到这些事情是做到这一点的正确方法，但其中的某些部分对我来说非常重要。

I can’t give people a formula of what to do.

我无法给人们一个该怎么做的公式。

It’s something like, you should think for yourself and figure it out.

就像，你应该自己思考并找出答案。

Then if I try to scale that, it’s like some kind of Mao’s Little Red Book or something you’re producing, and it’s quite the opposite.

然后，如果我尝试扩大规模，它就像某种毛泽东的红宝书或你正在制作的东西，而事实恰恰相反。

Another level of it is like a completely ineffective book where the arguments didn’t matter.

它的另一个层面就像一本完全无效的书，其中的论点并不重要。

What drove these things somehow was on a very different level.

在某种程度上推动这些​​事情的因素是在一个非常不同的层面上。

If we think about the woke corporation in Silicon Valley, it seems unhealthy if a company is leaning too much into the DEI narratives.

如果我们考虑一下硅谷觉醒的公司，如果一家公司过于倾向于 DEI 叙事，那似乎是不健康的。

There probably are Machiavellian ways where this can also work, where it just distracts people.

也许有一些马基雅维利式的方法也可以发挥作用，但它只会分散人们的注意力。

Walmart was the proto-woke company in the 2000s.

沃尔玛是 2000 年代的一家初创公司。

They were constantly being attacked by the labor unions because they weren’t paying their workers enough.

他们经常受到工会的攻击，因为他们没有支付足够的工资给工人。

They could pay their workers more or they could rebrand themselves as a green, environmentally friendly company.

他们可以向工人支付更高的工资，或者将自己重塑为绿色、环保的公司。

That turned out to be a very cheap way to split up the left-wing anti-Walmart coalition.

事实证明，这是分裂左翼反沃尔玛联盟的一种非常廉价的方式。

That was a version of it as this capitalist conspiracy against it.

这是资本主义反对它的阴谋的一个版本。

There are cases where that can work and cases where it can go wrong.

在某些情况下这可行，但在某些情况下可能会出错。

For the most part, I think that it’s just a distraction from more important things.

在大多数情况下，我认为这只是分散了对更重要事情的注意力。

There’s one level on which I find the issues very silly.

在某个层面上，我发现这些问题非常愚蠢。

There’s another level where it’s evil because it’s stopping us from paying attention to more important things.

在另一个层面上，它是邪恶的，因为它阻止我们关注更重要的事情。

It’s things like the economy, science and tech, or even these broader religious questions that we’ve talked about today.

包括经济、科学和技术，甚至我们今天讨论的更广泛的宗教问题。

People always talk about it in terms of cultural Marxism.

人们总是用文化马克思主义来谈论它。

I think a real Marxist would be much preferable to a diversity person.

我认为真正的马克思主义者比多元化的人更可取。

Rosa Luxemburg, who’s this crazed communist from the early 20th century — I think one of the things she said was that there can be nobody more revolutionary than a factory worker, that nobody can be more revolutionary than a proletarian.

罗莎·卢森堡，这位 20 世纪初的疯狂共产主义者 ——我认为她所说的其中一件事是，没有人比工厂工人更革命，没有人比无产阶级更革命。

A diversity officer in a university or corporation — what would Rosa Luxemburg think of this?

大学或公司的多元化官员 ——罗莎·卢森堡对此有何看法？

It would be in the same category as a bank robber or a prostitute, as someone who’s just an extremely corrupt form of crony capitalism.

它与银行抢劫犯或妓女属于同一类别，是裙带资本主义的极端腐败形式。

Maybe it’s less complementary, more a game of substitution.

也许这不是互补，而是替代游戏。

Even if you could convince me of that, I’m still in favor of the AI because my default is, muddling through isn’t good.

即使你能让我相信这一点，我仍然支持人工智能，因为我的默认是，得过且过是不好的。

My default is, the default is really bad.

我的默认是，默认非常糟糕。

You don’t get to muddle through with Greta on her bicycle.

你不能和骑着自行车的格蕾塔混日子。

The definition of technology — in the 1960s, technology meant computers, but it also meant new medicines, and it meant spaceships and supersonic planes and the Green Revolution in agriculture.

技术的定义 ——在20世纪60年代，技术意味着计算机，但它也意味着新药，还意味着宇宙飞船和超音速飞机以及农业的绿色革命。

Then, at some point, technology today just means IT.

那么，在某些时候，今天的技术就仅仅意味着 IT。

Maybe we’re going to narrow it even further to AI.

也许我们会进一步将范围缩小到人工智能。

And it seems to be that this narrowing is a manifestation of the centralizing stagnation that we should be trying to get out of.

这种缩小似乎是我们应该努力摆脱的集权停滞的表现。

I think the tech — again, somehow, we’re in a very different place from what people were focused on even two, two-and-a-half years ago, but two-and-a-half years ago, there was much more of a crypto story.

我认为科技——不知何故，我们正处于一个与两年半前人们关注的非常不同的地方，但两年半前，有更多的加密故事。

Crypto is a decentralizing technology, but also the companies that were doing crypto were decentralized.

加密货币是一种去中心化技术，但从事加密货币业务的公司也是去中心化的。

Not just in the US — there’s a decent number of them outside the US.

不仅在美国——在美国以外也有相当多的人。

If crypto was going to be a big part of the future tech story, that would have been a naturally decentralizing from Silicon Valley narrative.

如果加密货币将成为未来科技故事的重要组成部分，那么这将是硅谷叙事的自然去中心化。

Silicon Valley had really missed out on the crypto thing in a relative sense.

从相对意义上来说，硅谷确实错过了加密货币。

Then consumer internet — a lot of this happened in Silicon Valley for all sorts of complicated reasons.

然后是消费者互联网——由于各种复杂的原因，很多这样的事情发生在硅谷。

It’s supposed to get rid of the tyranny of place, but it all happened in one place.

它本应摆脱地方的专制，但这一切都发生在一个地方。

Then the AI piece seems to be even more centralized in Silicon Valley.

那么人工智能领域似乎更加集中在硅谷。

Again, if we say that the next decade or two decades are just going to be doubling down on AI, that probably suggests that San Francisco and Silicon Valley will maintain or even gain power.

同样，如果我们说未来十年或二十年将加倍投入人工智能，这可能表明旧金山和硅谷将保持甚至获得权力。

If we say globalization, some global world order is the final synthesis, is globalization as it’s described today just a superposition of a slightly unstable global market but no global government?

如果我们说全球化，某种全球世界秩序是最终的综合体，那么今天所描述的全球化是否只是一个稍微不稳定的全球市场而不是全球政府的叠加？

And then, can that really be maintained?

那么，这样的状态真的能维持吗？

So, yes, I think there probably are some paradoxes in my picture of a desirable world order that one could unpack some more.

所以，是的，我认为我所描绘的理想世界秩序中可能存在一些悖论，人们可以进一步解开这些悖论。

Yes, if we have too concrete a picture of exactly what the world order looks like, that’s probably really bad.

是的，如果我们对世界秩序的具体情况有过于具体的了解，那可能真的很糟糕。

The worry in Miami is, have we really escaped the Georgist disaster?

迈阿密的担忧是，我们真的逃脱了乔治派的灾难吗？

That is San Francisco, that is New York, that is London, where even though there’s been a tremendous increase in GDP, it’s not good if 100 percent of it gets captured by slum lords or something like that.

那是旧金山，那是纽约，那是伦敦，虽然GDP有了巨大的增长，但是如果100%被贫民窟地主什么的占领了那就不好了。

I would go to more the political questions than the metaphysical ones.

我会更多地讨论政治问题而不是形而上学问题。

Probably, the risk danger is that there’s something about it that telescopes even more the consensus, truth, wisdom of crowds.

也许，危险在于它有一些东西可以进一步凝聚群体的共识、真理和智慧。

I think probably all the models will tell you that there’s no particular religion that’s more true than any other one.

我想可能所有的模型都会告诉你，没有任何特定的宗教比任何其他宗教更真实。

Then is that really what the models generate, or has that been hardwired in?

那么这真的是模型生成的吗，还是已经被硬连线了？

Those are the questions I’d be more curious about.

这些是我更好奇的问题。

Event photos credit: Rodrigo Varela

活动照片来源：Rodrigo Varela