Rob Wiblin interviews Tyler on <em>Stubborn Attachments</em> (BONUS)

Today’s episode of Conversations with Tyler is, in fact, a conversation with Tyler with myself as the victim.

今天的这集《与泰勒对话》实际上是我作为受害者与泰勒的对话。

And we have here to interview me, Robert Wiblin, who is one of the interviewers I most respect, and indeed, envy.

我们在这里采访我，罗伯特·威布林，他是我最尊敬、甚至最羡慕的采访者之一。

Thanks so much.

非常感谢。

It’s a real privilege to be able to interview you.

能够采访您真是我的荣幸。

I think you’ve had, perhaps, more influence on me than any other writer.

我认为你对我的影响可能比任何其他作家都大。

I’m sure I spent thousands of hours reading Marginal Revolution over the last 10 or 12 years.

我确信在过去的 10 或 12 年里我花了数千个小时阅读《边际革命》。

Thank you.

谢谢。

In fact, I think it was reading Marginal Revolution that prompted me to switch into studying economics when I was an undergraduate, so you’ve had a pretty substantial influence on my career.

事实上，我认为正是阅读《边际革命》促使我在本科时转而学习经济学，所以你对我的职业生涯产生了相当大的影响。

Or at least you sped it up.

或者至少你加快了速度。

I have started a new project called Emergent Ventures, which is a new approach to philanthropy.

我启动了一个名为 Emergent Ventures 的新项目，这是一种新的慈善方式。

The idea of Emergent Ventures is to create a philanthropic fund which will support projects that are maybe too weird or too small or too foreign or have results that are too hard to measure to be accepted by other major foundations.

Emergent Ventures 的想法是创建一个慈善基金，该基金将支持那些可能太怪异、太小或太外国的项目，或者其结果难以衡量而无法被其他主要基金会接受的项目。

What are the key selection criteria that you’re going to use to judge who gets the money and who doesn’t?

您将使用哪些关键选择标准来判断谁能拿到钱，谁不能？

It should be people who are smart, have good values, really believe in what they’re doing, and have been at it for some while.

应该是那些聪明、有良好价值观、真正相信自己正在做的事情并且已经从事了一段时间的人。

But also, just that they’re doing something unusual that will be falling into the nooks and crannies.

但同时，他们正在做一些不寻常的事情，而这些事情会落入角落和缝隙。

So you’re really going hard on the neglectedness criteria.

所以你真的很努力地遵守被忽视的标准。

That’s correct.

这是正确的。

And overall, people, where we feel we can change or alter the trajectory of their careers or speed it up, is something we’re looking at quite closely.

总的来说，我们正在密切关注那些我们认为可以改变或改变他们的职业轨迹或加速其职业轨迹的人。

I think, in the effective altruism community, we tend to give top priority to making sure that people are working on a really pressing problem, a problem that has a really huge scale that plausibly you can solve, and also that it’s neglected by other people.

我认为，在有效的利他主义社区中，我们倾向于优先考虑确保人们正在解决一个真正紧迫的问题，一个规模非常大的问题，你似乎可以解决，而且它被其他人忽视了。

If you talk to venture capitalists in the Bay Area, where we’re chatting, they tend to focus much more on the person than the project.

如果你与我们正在聊天的湾区的风险投资家交谈，他们往往更关注个人而不是项目。

And throughout your career, how much has doing good guided your choice of what to work on?

在您的整个职业生涯中，行善在多大程度上指导了您选择工作内容？

Very little.

很少。

I’m quite a selfish person, I think, and I enjoy pursuing my own curiosity.

我认为我是一个很自私的人，我喜欢追求自己的好奇心。

Part of me at the meta level hopes that does some good, but I don’t think altruism is really, for me, a fundamental driving force.

在元层面上，我的一部分希望这能带来一些好处，但我认为利他主义对我来说并不是真正的基本驱动力。

I enjoy absorbing information and communicating it to other people.

我喜欢吸收信息并将其传达给其他人。

And that’s, for me, what is fun.

对我来说，这就是有趣的事情。

It’s interesting how much good people can do incidentally.

有趣的是，人们可以顺便做很多好事。

All right, let’s move on to the book, Stubborn Attachments, which I guess is coming out in .

好吧，让我们继续看《顽固的附件》这本书，我猜这本书即将出版。

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October 16th.

10 月 16 日。

This is a really fascinating book because it covers many issues that I’ve been thinking about for the last 15 or 20 years that I think people should spend a lot more time thinking about, like time.

这是一本非常有趣的书，因为它涵盖了我过去 15 或 20 年来一直在思考的许多问题，我认为人们应该花更多的时间思考这些问题，比如时间。

How should we think about the long-term future?

我们应该如何思考长远的未来？

How should we be aggregating welfare and outcomes between different people?

我们应该如何汇总不同人之间的福利和结果？

Should we be following rules or just considering every case individually?

我们应该遵循规则还是单独考虑每个案例？

How should we deal with the massive uncertainty about the effects of our actions?

我们应该如何应对我们行动的影响的巨大不确定性？

Should we respect human rights?

我们应该尊重人权吗？

And how much should we defer to common sense morality versus thinking things through for ourselves?

我们应该在多大程度上尊重常识道德，而不是自己思考问题？

The underlying message of the book is simply, we’re capable of making rational judgments about what is better for society.

这本书的基本信息很简单，我们有能力对什么对社会更好做出理性判断。

In my own discipline, economics, there’s a long-standing thread of skepticism about that.

在我自己的经济学学科中，长期以来对此持怀疑态度。

Kenneth Arrow developed an impossibility theorem.

肯尼斯·阿罗提出了一个不可能定理。

There are a lot of results that imply you can’t say much about what’s actually better.

有很多结果表明你无法说出什么实际上更好。

If I had to pick out 50 words from the book that summarized it, I would choose this quote from page 32, which is, “We can already see that three key questions should be elevated in their political and philosophical importance.

如果我必须从书中选出 50 个词来概括它，我会选择第 32 页的这句话，即：“我们已经可以看到，三个关键问题的政治和哲学重要性应该得到提升。

Namely: number one, what can we do to boost the rate of economic growth?

即：第一，我们能做些什么来提高经济增长率？

Number two, what can we do to make civilization more stable?

第二，我们可以做些什么来让文明更加稳定？

And number three, how should we deal with environmental problems?”

第三，我们应该如何应对环境问题？”

Absolutely.

绝对地。

Let’s talk about a couple of the key ideas.

让我们谈谈几个关键想法。

One is the Crusonia plant and compounding growth.

一是Crusonia植物和复合生长。

What would you talk about there in the book?

你会在书中谈论什么？

The Crusonia plant is a somewhat obscure reference.

克鲁索尼亚植物是一个有点模糊的参考。

It’s taken from the works of Frank Knight, University of Chicago economist.

它取自芝加哥大学经济学家弗兰克·奈特的著作。

Knight postulated there was such a thing as a Crusonia plant.

奈特推测有一种叫做克鲁索尼亚植物的东西。

It was a hypothetical.

这是一个假设。

It would simply keep on growing forever, so it would be of very high value.

它会永远持续增长，因此具有非常高的价值。

It’s like an apple tree.

它就像一棵苹果树。

Seeds fall.

种子掉落。

You get more apples.

你会得到更多的苹果。

Those seeds, in turn, get you more apple trees, and so on and so on.

这些种子反过来又会给你带来更多的苹果树，等等。

Why do you think the economy grows in this way where shocks or improvements seem to be permanent or at least semipermanent?

您认为为什么经济会以这种方式增长，而冲击或改善似乎是永久性的或至少是半永久性的？

People generate new ideas, and most new ideas don’t disappear.

人们会产生新的想法，而大多数新想法不会消失。

You can lose a new idea or have a Dark Ages.

你可能会失去一个新想法或陷入黑暗时代。

But if you have good institutions, you build upon those new ideas.

但如果你有良好的机构，你就会以这些新想法为基础。

Also, you can have increases in labor, supply, and capital.

此外，劳动力、供应和资本也会增加。

Think of those as some key sources of economic growth.

将这些视为经济增长的一些关键来源。

I remember when I studied time series econometrics, we would sometimes look at series of GDP, and you could sometimes see that they were unit root, which is to say, at least in some cases, it would seem like they had a unit root — which is to say that any shocks to GDP seemed to be permanent.

我记得当我学习时间序列计量经济学时，我们有时会看GDP序列，有时你可以看到它们是单位根，也就是说，至少在某些情况下，它们看起来像是有一个单位根 ——​​也就是说，对GDP的任何冲击似乎都是永久性的。

And we seem to see in the data that countries that have done well several hundred years ago — that has persistent effects, even ranging up through today.

我们似乎从数据中看到，那些在几百年前表现良好的国家，其影响具有持续性，甚至持续到今天。

There’s even one paper suggesting how well a region was doing in the year 500 has predictive power for how well it’s doing today.

甚至有一篇论文表明，一个地区在 500 年前的表现如何可以预测该地区今天的表现。

And that’s probably not only economic or financial issues, but also cultural.

这可能不仅仅是经济或金融问题，还有文化问题。

Absolutely.

绝对地。

I think of culture as one of the keys behind economic growth in fact.

事实上，我认为文化是经济增长背后的关键之一。

Some listeners might be listening to this and thinking, “Well, yeah, it might be the case that if we grow GDP today, this will also increase GDP in a thousand years time.

一些听众可能会听到这个并想，“嗯，是的，如果我们今天增长 GDP，那么一千年后 GDP 也会增长。

But I don’t really care about a thousand years in the future.” What would you say to try to convince them that a thousand years in the future does have important moral significance?

但我并不真正关心一千年后的未来。”你会说什么来试图让他们相信未来一千年确实具有重要的道德意义？

Well, imagine our ancestors sitting around, say, a thousand years ago, saying they didn’t care very much about us.

好吧，想象一下，比如说，一千年前，我们的祖先坐在那里，说他们不太关心我们。

And they were willing to accept a growth rate, say, a percentage point lower than what has been the case for the last thousand years.

他们愿意接受比过去一千年低一个百分点的增长率。

Why do you think that the long-term future Earth, after you and I have ended our natural lives, why could that be very valuable, all of that?

为什么你认为，在你我结束了我们的自然生命之后，长远的未来地球，为什么会非常有价值，所有这一切？

The future Earth can support so much wealth, so much diversity, so much prosperity, liberty, aesthetic values, whatever we hold dear, our carrying capacity for doing more of that by having more productivity, better governance, better institutions.

未来的地球可以支持如此多的财富、如此多的多样性、如此多的繁荣、自由、审美价值观，无论我们珍视什么，我们通过拥有更高的生产力、更好的治理和更好的机构来实现更多这些目标的承载能力。

There’s so many possibilities out there in the future.

未来有很多可能性。

We just need to actually bring them about.

我们只需要真正实现它们即可。

If you had to take for granted the expected number of future humans that might live in the future, could the cost be very small?

如果你必须理所当然地认为未来可能生活的未来人类的预期数量，那么成本会非常小吗？

We could go extinct very soon.

我们可能很快就会灭绝。

Or it could be very large if we lasted a very long time.

或者，如果我们持续很长时间，它可能会非常大。

Would you want to venture a guess for the expected value?

您想大胆猜测一下预期值吗？

Is it trillions, trillions of trillions?

是万亿、万亿万亿吗？

I’d rather have a pocket calculator.

我宁愿有一个袖珍计算器。

I do think population will stabilize and start to decline, though probably not by very much.

我确实认为人口将会稳定并开始下降，尽管幅度可能不会很大。

If you take Earth with, say, an average of 10 billion people lasting for centuries, but not lasting for 50,000 years, and do the calculations, you’d get at my modal prediction.

如果你以平均有 100 亿人口的地球为例，持续几个世纪，但不会持续 5 万年，然后进行计算，你就会得到我的模态预测。

But there’s many more of them than there is of us.

但他们的人数比我们多得多。

That’s right.

这是正确的。

Do you think that quality of life will also go up, with high probability?

您认为生活质量也会提高吗？可能性很大吗？

Not forever, but for the foreseeable future.

不是永远，而是在可预见的未来。

We’re in the period right now.

我们现在正处于这个时期。

We’re doing more to improve living standards than the world ever has before.

我们为提高生活水平所做的努力比世界以往任何时候都多。

That will have big ups and downs, but I don’t see why it has to stop.

这将会有很大的起伏，但我不明白为什么它必须停止。

What about people who say, “I don’t care about welfare that much, I care about other things.” Do you think this argument for long termism goes through for them as well?

那些说“我不太关心福利，我关心其他事情”的人呢？您认为这种长期主义的论点也适用于他们吗？

I think it does.

我认为确实如此。

I have some early books, some of them on the arts, that argue wealth is good for aesthetic values.

我有一些早期的书籍，其中一些是关于艺术的，认为财富有利于审美价值。

It depends what other values people care about, but wealth supports many different opportunities.

这取决于人们关心什么其他价值观，但财富支持许多不同的机会。

Do you think, like me, that there’s a chance that a future technology could make human life just a hundred or a thousand times better than it is for people today?

您是否像我一样认为未来的技术有可能使人类的生活比今天的人们好一百倍或一千倍？

I don’t know that we have a meaningful metric for saying that, but I suppose I don’t think that’s possible.

我不知道我们有一个有意义的衡量标准来表达这一点，但我想我认为这是不可能的。

I think we can make it twice as good and quite a bit longer, but I don’t think it will be inconceivable to what we can imagine now.

我认为我们可以让它的质量提高一倍，时间更长一些，但我不认为这对我们现在的想象来说是不可想象的。

What about if we imagined that we find a way for people to take the best, most enjoyable drugs that they can take today without having negative effects on their brain in the long term?

如果我们想象我们找到一种方法，让人们服用他们今天可以服用的最好、最令人愉快的药物，而从长远来看不会对他们的大脑产生负面影响，会怎样呢？

It seems like that could result in a life that’s 10 times better than what people typically experience today, at least in some narrow sense.

看起来，这可能会带来比人们今天通常经历的生活好十倍的生活，至少在某种狭义上是这样。

I think if you’re a pluralist, that life is maybe not better at all.

我认为如果你是一个多元化的人，生活可能一点也没有更好。

It has more pleasure, but these other plural values seem to be weaker because you’re pursuing only pleasure.

它有更多的快乐，但其他多元价值观似乎较弱，因为你只追求快乐。

So that may be a dystopian scenario for a true pluralist.

因此，对于真正的多元主义者来说，这可能是一个反乌托邦的场景。

Yeah, I suppose.

是的，我想。

Well maybe we could push it out in that way on all of these margins.

好吧，也许我们可以在所有这些边缘上以这种方式推出它。

You get many different things, but we do that much more efficiently.

您会得到很多不同的东西，但我们做得更有效。

Some people specialize in drug taking, I’m fine with that if it’s not harmful, but I don’t want the whole world to become lotus eaters.

有些人专门吸毒，只要无害我就可以接受，但我不想让全世界都成为食莲者。

A lot of economists and people from finance are used to applying discount rates, which causes them to think that, once you’re a hundred years out, consequences don’t seem to matter that much.

许多经济学家和金融界人士习惯于应用贴现率，这使他们认为，一旦一百年后，后果似乎就不那么重要了。

I guess if they applied that backwards, it would mean that Tutankhamen thousands of years ago was perhaps, individually, more important than everyone who’s alive today.

我想如果他们倒过来应用这一点，那就意味着数千年前的图坦卡蒙可能比今天活着的每个人都更重要。

Discount rates are very useful for many purposes, especially if you’re looking at a small project done in a single firm and you’re trying to estimate how valuable to you is a cash flow, say, 20 or 30 years from now.

折扣率对于许多目的都非常有用，特别是当您正在研究由一家公司完成的小型项目，并且您正在尝试估计现金流对您的价值（例如 20 或 30 年后）时。

You have this neat example of what if people were able to travel close to the speed of light and how this even sharpens the counterintuitiveness of using a discount rate.

你有一个很好的例子，说明如果人们能够以接近光速旅行会发生什么，以及这如何加剧使用贴现率的反直觉。

Do you want to describe that example?

你想描述一下这个例子吗？

If one accepts Einstein’s theories of relativity — which do seem to be true, albeit incomplete — as you approach the speed of light, the whole universe, to you, becomes like a frozen block of space time that, in a sense, you can watch or observe from the outside.

如果一个人接受爱因斯坦的相对论——“它似乎是正确的，尽管不完整”——当你接近光速时，整个宇宙对你来说，就像一块冻结的时空，从某种意义上说，你可以从外部观察或观察。

As far as I know, there’s almost no moral philosophers who support discounting purely the welfare of people in the future.

据我所知，几乎没有道德哲学家支持纯粹对未来人们的福利进行折扣。

But then a lot of people throughout society, I guess influenced by economics, don’t share that view.

但社会上很多人，我想是受到经济的影响，并不认同这种观点。

Philosophers and economists should be shouting about it much more.

哲学家和经济学家应该对此大声疾呼。

I think some of the problem is a political one.

我认为部分问题是政治问题。

I find it relatively easy to convince a lot of philosophers the moral rate of time discount should be zero, but relatively hard to get them to accept the practical implications of that, namely, that ongoing economic growth is a very, very positive thing — say, more important than redistributing income.

我发现让很多哲学家相信时间折扣的道德率应该为零相对容易，但要让他们接受这一点的实际含义则相对困难，即持续的经济增长是一件非常非常积极的事情——也就是说，比收入再分配更重要。

If people aren’t convinced by this argument .

如果人们不相信这个论点。

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You were just pointing out to me that there’s a new book published called Time Biases.

你刚刚向我指出有一本新书出版了，名叫《时间偏差》。

Have you managed to read that yet?

你读到了吗？

I’ve read about half of it.

我读了大约一半。

It’s quite good.

非常好。

It’s by Meghan Sullivan.

这是梅根·沙利文的作品。

She’s a philosopher at Notre Dame.

她是巴黎圣母院的哲学家。

She spends a lot of time talking about a paradox I don’t consider much, which is how much you should discount the past.

她花了很多时间谈论一个我没有考虑太多的悖论，那就是你应该对过去打折扣多少。

You then go on to point out that, if we’re very concerned about the long term, and we have the option of creating economic growth, this potentially allows us to sidestep some of the aggregation puzzles that have really worried philosophers and economists.

然后你继续指出，如果我们非常关心长期，并且我们可以选择创造经济增长，这可能会让我们回避一些真正让哲学家和经济学家担心的聚合难题。

What was your argument there?

你在那里的论点是什么？

The classic aggregation puzzle in economics is simply there’s a policy — some people are better off, some people are worse off.

经济学中经典的聚合难题就是有一个政策——“有些人的境况更好，有些人的境况更糟”。

How can you possibly judge if the policy is worth doing?

你如何判断这项政策是否值得实施？

There are hardly any what we, as economists, call Pareto improvements, policy changes that make virtually everyone better off.

作为经济学家，几乎没有任何我们所说的帕累托改进或政策变化可以使几乎每个人的生活变得更好。

Okay.

好的。

You then go on to argue that, against the things that some people have said, wealth actually does lead to happiness.

然后你继续论证，与某些人所说的相反，财富实际上确实会带来幸福。

So we’re not just creating wealth for its own sake, but actually it’s going to increase welfare.

因此，我们不仅仅是为了财富本身而创造财富，而且实际上它会增加福利。

What’s the case for that?

这是什么情况呢？

If you look at the data within nations across classes of income or wealth, wealthier people are simply much happier than poorer people.

如果你看看不同收入或财富阶层的国家内的数据，就会发现富裕的人比贫穷的人幸福得多。

There is a partial paradox: When you look at data across nations, you find a lot of poorer countries where people report they’re pretty happy.

这里存在一个部分悖论：当你查看各国数据时，你会发现许多较贫穷的国家的人们表示他们非常幸福。

But I think what’s going on there, often, is they’re just using words differently.

但我认为，通常情况下，他们只是使用不同的词语。

I’m not entirely sure how to interpret that well-being literature.

我不太确定如何解释那些关于幸福的文献。

It seems potentially still an open question just how much wealth increases happiness today.

如今，财富能在多大程度上增加幸福感，这似乎仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。

But I feel like you almost didn’t make the strongest argument that you could make here, which is that, even if increasing GDP or wealth today doesn’t make people happier now, at some point in the future, it will, once we use that wealth and that greater knowledge to figure out new technologies that can turn our wealth into welfare.

但我觉得你几乎没有提出你可以在这里提出的最有力的论点，那就是，即使今天增加GDP或财富并不能让人们现在更幸福，在未来的某个时候，一旦我们利用这些财富和更多的知识来找出可以将我们的财富转化为福利的新技术，它就会使人们更幸福。

Oh, of course.

哦，当然。

But also, even wealthier countries today, even if you don’t think the money makes us happier, we buy more exports from poorer countries.

而且，即使是当今较富裕的国家，即使你认为金钱不会让我们更快乐，我们也会从较贫穷的国家购买更多的出口产品。

So the growth of China, India, many parts of the world has relied on the wealthy countries having so much to spend and having technologies to transfer.

因此，中国、印度和世界许多地区的增长依赖于富裕国家拥有大量可支出和可转让技术。

And people in those countries are clearly much better off because of the economic growth they’ve had lately.

由于最近的经济增长，这些国家的人民的生活显然要好得多。

This is a slight aside, but many people, I think, have this intuition that rich countries are harming poor countries, on balance, by absorbing investment or the smartest people from them.

这是一个稍微题外话，但我认为，很多人都有这样的直觉，即富裕国家通过吸收投资或吸收最聪明的人才，总体上正在伤害贫穷国家。

But I, and I think you, believe that poorer countries benefit a lot from having richer countries on the earth with them.

但我，我想你也相信，较贫穷的国家会因地球上较富裕的国家的存在而受益匪浅。

Do you want to make the case for that?

你想证明这一点吗？

There’s very strong evidence of positive complementarities, a lot of it coming from technology transfer — using medicines or electricity, just general production techniques, management being transferred to poorer economies.

有非常有力的证据表明积极的互补性，其中很多来自技术转让——使用药物或电力，只是一般生产技术，管理转移到较贫穷的经济体。

In the book, you also speak up in favor of rules over deciding how to act based on each individual situation.

在书中，您还公开支持制定规则，而不是根据具体情况决定如何采取行动。

What’s your argument there?

你的论点是什么？

There’s a long-standing paradox in philosophy about rule utilitarianism versus act utilitarianism.

关于规则功利主义与行为功利主义，哲学中存在着一个长期存在的悖论。

So if you follow a rule, when should you deviate from the rule?

那么，如果你遵循规则，那么什么时候你应该偏离规则呢？

And I point out the rule of maximizing sustainable economic growth.

我还指出了最大化可持续经济增长的规则。

There’re just very high costs from deviating from that rule.

偏离该规则的成本非常高。

So if you simply adopt the attitude, “We’re not going to deviate from this rule.

因此，如果你只是采取这样的态度，“我们不会偏离这条规则。

We’re going to stick with the rule,” you’re better off.

我们将遵守规则，”你会过得更好。

I don’t quite understand that.

我不太明白这一点。

Is that just because you might make mistakes each time you’re trying to reassess whether you want to follow the rule of maximizing economic growth?

这仅仅是因为每次你试图重新评估是否要遵循经济增长最大化的规则时都可能会犯错误吗？

Or is there something more fundamental going on here?

或者这里发生了一些更根本的事情？

Each time you deviate from the rule of maximizing economic growth, you’re costing the more distant future, really, an enormous amount of resources.

每当你偏离经济增长最大化的规则时，你就会在更遥远的未来付出代价，实际上是大量的资源。

So it’s a very high price.

所以这是一个非常高的价格。

My argument is just a way of making vivid, “How high is the cost of deviating from the rule?”

我的论点只是为了生动地说明“偏离规则的成本有多高？”

But if it is so important for welfare to increase economic growth, won’t act utilitarianism also endorse that same behavior?

但如果福利对于促进经济增长如此重要，那么行为功利主义难道不会支持同样的行为吗？

It may very well.

可能会很好。

There may be this broader consilience of act and rule utilitarianism.

行为和规则功利主义可能存在更广泛的一致性。

But thinking of it in terms of a rule we’re bound to follow, I think .

但我认为，从我们必须遵守的规则来看。

.

。

.

。

It won’t cost that much at all.

根本不会花那么多钱。

Right, yeah.

对，是的。

Yeah, maybe the reverse.

是的，也许相反。

Okay.

好的。

That’s very close.

那非常接近了。

I would say respect for human rights.

我想说的是尊重人权。

The human rights may or may not always be defined by the nonaggression principle.

人权不一定总是由互不侵犯原则来定义。

I think, for the most part, they are.

我认为，在大多数情况下，他们是。

Yeah, we haven’t talked about human rights yet.

是的，我们还没有谈论人权。

What’s your case in favor of human rights?

您支持人权的理由是什么？

Almost all of the book is focused on the consequentialist arguments for growth and thinking about the more distant future.

本书几乎全部内容都集中在结果主义对增长的论证以及对更遥远未来的思考上。

But I add in a caveat, which I don’t discuss at length, and that is I think there are some things you simply ought not to do, even if it would boost long-term economic growth.

但我要补充一点，我没有详细讨论这一点，那就是我认为有些事情你根本不应该做，即使它会促进长期经济增长。

So what fundamentally is the philosophical argument in favor of human rights?

那么支持人权的哲学论据从根本上来说是什么呢？

It’s intuitionist, I think, that there are simply some acts that are so horrible, a person who doesn’t see them is horrible.

我认为，这是直觉主义的，有些行为是如此可怕，一个看不到它们的人是可怕的。

It would be hard to have further discourse with them.

很难再与他们进行进一步的交谈。

What are some occasions when your conception of human rights comes apart from the nonaggression principle?

您的人权观念在哪些情况下与互不侵犯原则背道而驰？

Because most of the examples I think you give in the book are cases where you’re using violence against someone.

因为我认为你在书中给出的大多数例子都是对某人使用暴力的案例。

There might be cases where you’re letting people die.

在某些情况下，你可能会让人们死去。

And by letting them die, you’re not committing formal libertarian aggression against them, but they might have a human right that you’re, in some way, obliged to help them.

让他们死去，你并不是对他们进行正式的自由主义侵略，但他们可能拥有一项人权，你在某种程度上有义务帮助他们。

I leave that as an open question, but I don’t think we should be restricted to formal libertarian aggression as our only conception of human rights.

我将此作为一个悬而未决的问题，但我认为我们不应该局限于正式的自由主义侵略作为我们唯一的人权概念。

You also talk about the extraordinary level of uncertainty about the future and how even quite trivial acts that we take could potentially change the entire course of history.

您还谈到了未来的巨大不确定性，以及我们采取的即使是非常微不足道的行为也可能改变整个历史进程。

And indeed, it might be probable that they change the course of history.

事实上，它们很可能改变历史的进程。

Do you want to explain the case there?

你想解释一下那里的情况吗？

There’s an old Ray Bradbury short story about backwards time travel.

雷·布拉德伯里（Ray Bradbury）有一篇关于时光倒流的古老短篇小说。

You go back in time, you step on one butterfly, and the whole later history of the world changes.

你回到过去，踩到一只蝴蝶，整个后来的世界历史就会改变。

This reminded me pretty strongly of the nonidentity problem from Derek Parfit, who you once wrote a paper with about discounting rates.

这让我强烈地想起了德里克·帕菲特（Derek Parfit）的非同一性问题，你曾经和他一起写过一篇关于贴现率的论文。

Do you want to describe the nonidentity problem?

您想描述一下非同一性问题吗？

Derek Parfit, in his 1984 book, Reasons and Persons, had an example that, say, you would bury nuclear waste, and several generations from now, the waste would, say, kill millions of people.

德里克·帕菲特 (Derek Parfit) 在其 1984 年出版的《理性与人物》一书中举了一个例子，如果你掩埋核废料，那么几代人之后，这些废料就会杀死数百万人。

I guess many people have something like this intuition that, yeah, if you change the identities of people in the future, such that you can’t see any correspondence between them in the two different scenarios, then perhaps it doesn’t matter exactly what you do because there’s no significant person you can identify who’s worse off.

我想很多人都有这样的直觉，是的，如果你在未来改变人们的身份，这样你就看不到他们在两种不同场景中的任何对应关系，那么也许你做什么并不重要，因为没有重要的人可以让你识别出谁的情况更糟。

Do you think this is a very strong counterargument to those views?

您认为这是对这些观点的强有力的反驳吗？

Here’s a tension I think that we all have to face up to.

我认为这是我们都必须面对的紧张局势。

Parfit talks about something called the person-affecting principle.

帕菲特谈到了一种叫做“影响人的原则”的东西。

How does your action affect some particular person?

你的行为如何影响某个特定的人？

I think I slightly messed up the explanation of the person-affecting issue there.

我想我稍微搞乱了对影响人的问题的解释。

Because often, what’s going on is people want to say, “If you change the number of people in the future, that can’t necessarily be good or bad because there’s no specific individual in both cases who is worse off or better off.

因为通常情况下，人们想说的是，“如果你改变未来的人口数量，这不一定是好事或坏事，因为在这两种情况下，没有特定的个人的情况变得更糟或更好。

The people who exist in one scenario are not in the other.

存在于一种场景中的人并不存在于另一种场景中。

They’re only there in one case, so you can’t say that they have a higher welfare than a specific person in the other scenario.”

他们只在一种情况下存在，所以你不能说他们比另一种情况下的特定人有更高的福利。”

Subject to rights constraints.

受权利限制。

Yes.

是的。

Do you think there’s any plausible alternative to doing that?

您认为有任何可行的替代方案吗？

I think the most plausible alternative to my view is simply to say the actual time horizon is not very long, that maybe in an extreme case, either the world will end soon or history will start collapsing and run in reverse.

我认为对我的观点最合理的替代方案就是简单地说，实际的时间跨度不是很长，也许在极端的情况下，要么世界很快就会终结，要么历史将开始崩溃并倒转。

So there is no grand, glorious future that has a heavy weight in the calculation.

因此，没有什么宏伟、辉煌的未来值得计算。

And thus, we’re always dealing with the here and now, a quite pessimistic view.

因此，我们总是以一种相当悲观的观点来看待此时此地。

Yeah.

是的。

In the seminar room, it seems like economists and sometimes philosophers are not willing to aggregate welfare across people.

在研讨室里，经济学家、有时甚至是哲学家似乎不愿意汇总人们的福利。

If one person’s worse off then someone else, you just won’t be able to say whether, overall, the situation is better.

如果一个人的境况比其他人更糟，你就无法判断总体情况是否更好。

But then it seems like in everyday life, when they’re making calls about what should a group of people do, they’re always willing to aggregate.

但在日常生活中，当他们打电话询问一群人应该做什么时，他们总是愿意聚集在一起。

Absolutely.

绝对地。

That’s the immediate argument that they’ll always turn to.

这是他们总是会转向的直接论点。

What do you think’s going on there?

你认为那里发生了什么？

We’re always willing to choose a restaurant, right?

我们总是愿意选择一家餐厅，对吗？

Even if it’s not the first choice of all people.

即使这不是所有人的第一选择。

And the aggregations we make when looking at economic growth are often quite large differences in income.

我们在考虑经济增长时所做的汇总往往是收入差异相当大。

But I think there’s a fear amongst a lot of philosophers that if you’re too willing to aggregate, utilitarianism becomes too strong and they don’t like all of the consequences of that decision.

但我认为很多哲学家都担心，如果你太愿意聚集，功利主义就会变得太强大，他们不喜欢这个决定的所有后果。

Something that’s even stranger about that argument, to me, is that, if one person is made better off in a scenario and someone else is made worse off, it’s not the case that it’s forbidden to do the thing where one person was made worse off.

对我来说，这个论点更奇怪的是，如果一个人的境况变得更好，而另一个人的境况变得更糟，那么并不是说禁止做使一个人的境况变得更糟的事情。

It simply makes it incommensurable with the other scenario.

它只是使它与其他场景无法通约。

Sure.

当然。

It’s always instructive to look at how people behave as parents or maybe how they vote in a department when they’re dealing with their colleagues.

看看人们作为父母的行为方式，或者他们在与同事打交道时如何在部门中投票，总是很有启发性的。

And they’re some form of consequentialist in all those cases.

在所有这些情况下，他们都是某种形式的结果主义者。

If you take the intuitions they’re using in these smaller decisions and just build them up onto a larger scale, I think the logic of consequentialism is very, very hard to escape.

如果你利用他们在这些较小的决策中使用的直觉，并将它们建立在更大的范围上，我认为结果主义的逻辑是非常非常难以逃脱的。

Yeah, it’s a somewhat boring moral vision where we’re just prohibited from doing a bunch of stuff, and then doesn’t really have much more to say.

是的，这是一个有点无聊的道德愿景，我们只是被禁止做一堆事情，然后就没有什么可说的了。

That’s right.

这是正确的。

Let’s move on a bit from the stuff where we see things basically the same to some areas where we have a somewhat different view.

让我们从我们认为基本相同的事物转向一些我们有不同观点的领域。

Great.

伟大的。

In the book, and, I guess, here so far, you’ve been focusing overwhelmingly on the importance of increasing economic growth, kind of getting to a better future faster.

在这本书中，我想到目前为止，您一直在重点关注提高经济增长的重要性，以更快地实现更美好的未来。

When we’re talking about growth here, we might imagine time on the X axis and welfare being generated in the universe on the Y axis, and you want to increase that faster.

当我们在这里谈论增长时，我们可能会想象 X 轴上的时间和 Y 轴上宇宙中产生的福利，并且您希望更快地增加它。

Well, keep in mind the core recipe is the rate of sustainable economic growth.

好吧，请记住核心秘诀是可持续经济增长率。

If it’s going to go to zero, you’re knocked out of the box.

如果它会变为零，你就会被淘汰出局。

So you’re maximizing across both of those dimensions, and I think, empirically, there are a large class of cases where more growth and more stability come together.

因此，你要在这两个维度上实现最大化，我认为，从经验来看，有很多案例可以实现更多的增长和更多的稳定性。

Okay, that’s answering some of my questions.

好的，这回答了我的一些问题。

Because in the book, you write, “Policies that prioritize growth at breakneck speed are frequently stable.

因为你在书中写道：“优先考虑高速增长的政策通常是稳定的。

The average civilization endured only 400 years, and this number appears to be declining.

文明的平均寿命只有 400 年，而且这个数字似乎正在下降。

Our path in the future requires a tightrope act, balancing progress and stability along the way.

未来的道路需要走钢丝，一路走来平衡进步与稳定。

And we should believe that the end of the world is a terrible event, even if that collapse comes in the very distant future.

我们应该相信世界末日是一个可怕的事件，即使崩溃发生在遥远的未来。

Similarly, the continual persistence of civilization 300 years from now is much better than having no further civilization at that time.”

同样，300年后文明的持续存在也比当时没有文明要好得多。”

Richard Posner was one of the first books on this.

理查德·波斯纳（Richard Posner）是最早讨论这一问题的书籍之一。

When Posner’s book came out, I immediately started doing a lot of editing on mine.

当波斯纳的书出版时，我立即开始对我的书进行大量编辑。

You and many other people in the effective altruism movement have written on existential risk, and I endorse most of that.

你和有效利他主义运动中的许多其他人都写过关于存在风险的文章，我赞同其中的大部分内容。

But just at the margin, it seemed to me growth was underestimated.

但在我看来，就边际而言，增长似乎被低估了。

Do you think that still applies today?

您认为这句话今天仍然适用吗？

If the Unites States stopped growing, I feel a lot of free countries in the world would collapse or be taken over, or they would become unfree.

如果美国停止增长，我觉得世界上许多自由国家都会崩溃或被接管，或者变得不自由。

If we grow at a very low rate, our budget will explode It will cut back on our discretionary spending, our ability to advance science to protect the world against an asteroid coming.

如果我们以非常低的速度增长，我们的预算就会爆炸，这将削减我们的可自由支配支出，以及我们推进科学发展以保护世界免受小行星撞击的能力。

So, yes I absolutely think it applies today.

所以，是的，我绝对认为它今天也适用。

I think I agree that if the US stops growing that would be very bad, principally because of the cultural and political effects that that would have and perhaps that we’ve started to see over the last five years.

我想我同意，如果美国停止增长，那将是非常糟糕的，主要是因为这会产生文化和政治影响，也许我们在过去五年里已经开始看到这种影响。

You’re talking about going from 4 to 8 percent.

你说的是从 4% 增加到 8%。

You may or may not think that’s stabilizing, but the actual reality is, we’re in the midst of one of our most wonderful labor market recoveries, there’s been a big fiscal stimulus.

你可能认为也可能不认为这是稳定的，但实际情况是，我们正处于劳动力市场最美妙的复苏之一，出台了大规模的财政刺激措施。

And year on year, we’re doing 2.7 percent, which is very poor compared to our past performance.

与去年同期相比，我们的增长率为 2.7%，与我们过去的表现相比非常差。

Inasmuch as you’re focused on economic growth in order to increase sustainability, it seems like a slightly odd focus, at least for an individual to take, if they wanted to increase sustainability because there are already such strong incentives that many people face to try to grow the economy because they earn money from it.

既然你专注于经济增长以提高可持续性，那么如果他们想要提高可持续性，那么至少对于个人而言，这似乎是一个有点奇怪的焦点，因为已经有如此强烈的激励措施让许多人面临着尝试发展经济的机会，因为他们可以从中赚钱。

They earn either labor income or returns from starting a business.

他们要么赚取劳动收入，要么通过创业获得回报。

It depends on the person and what kinds of talents they have.

这取决于人以及他们拥有什么样的才能。

But as I argued in my earlier book, The Complacent Class, there now seem to be so many people who are simply satisficers.

但正如我在之前的著作《自满阶层》中所指出的，现在似乎有很多人只是满足者。

They’re not very interested in innovating or even participating in a dynamic economy, and they just try to do well enough.

他们对创新甚至参与充满活力的经济不太感兴趣，他们只是想做得足够好。

It seems like another technology that you might be very interested in that could have big effects on the trajectory of human civilization, and potentially avoid extinction — although it also could be very negative — would be the capacity to redesign human motivation and our personalities through genetic engineering.

您可能会非常感兴趣的另一项技术似乎可以对人类文明的轨迹产生重大影响，并有可能避免灭绝——尽管它也可能非常负面——通过基因工程重新设计人类动机和个性的能力。

We could potentially select our children such that they are, say, very pacifist, such that they don’t want to kill one another.

我们可能会选择我们的孩子，让他们非常和平主义者，这样他们就不想互相残杀。

I don’t think we know yet how genetic engineering will affect existential risk or even long-term growth.

我认为我们还不知道基因工程将如何影响生存风险甚至长期增长。

We don’t, at the moment, as you know, have the capabilities really to do that.

如您所知，目前我们还没有真正做到这一点的能力。

As we develop them — if we do — we might have a better idea, but I think most people should be deeply agnostic and also somewhat worried about genetic engineering.

当我们开发它们时——“如果我们这样做了”——我们可能会有更好的想法，但我认为大多数人应该非常不可知论，并且对基因工程也有些担心。

I guess you would think that, as that technology gets closer, it would be important to have people thinking about, “How do you regulate that?

我想你可能会认为，随着这项技术越来越接近，让人们思考“你如何监管它？

How do we make it applied well rather than badly?” That kind of thing.

我们怎样才能让它应用得好而不是应用得不好？”那种事。

Of course we should think about that, but I’m not sure we’ll succeed in regulating it very well.

我们当然应该考虑这一点，但我不确定我们能否成功地对其进行很好的监管。

There are many countries.

有很多国家。

Parents, I think, are willing to go to other countries.

我认为父母愿意去其他国家。

There will be black market versions of the technologies.

这些技术将会有黑市版本。

Yeah, you’re always just pushing on the margin, trying to make it a bit more likely that we’ll use it in good ways and a bit less likely that we use it in bad ways.

是的，你总是在边缘化，试图让我们更有可能以好的方式使用它，而不太可能以坏的方式使用它。

Yeah, sure.

是的，当然。

Are there any technologies that you can foresee over the next few hundred years that you think could end up being very important or could put humanity on a different trajectory, in the same way that perhaps nuclear weapons could have done that during the 20th century?

您是否可以预见，在接下来的几百年里，有哪些技术可能会变得非常重要，或者可能使人类走上不同的轨道，就像核武器在 20 世纪可能做到的那样？

I think changing the nature of human beings.

我认为改变人类的本质。

You mentioned genetic engineering, but also just drugs.

你提到了基因工程，但也只是药物。

The opioid epidemic has grown much more rapidly than almost anyone had expected.

阿片类药物流行的增长速度比几乎任何人的预期都要快得多。

We had long periods of time of technological stagnation in drugs because many of them were illegal, but that also means there’s a kind of low-hanging fruit.

我们在药品领域经历了很长一段时间的技术停滞，因为其中许多都是非法的，但这也意味着有一种唾手可得的成果。

If we’re able to design better and better addicting substances, drugs or, perhaps, computer games or whatever else, it’s kind of the case that the Mormons will inherit the earth, or whoever is most resistant to those temptations and still wants to have children, even despite the fact that they can just shoot up on heroin.

如果我们能够设计出越来越好的成瘾物质、毒品，或者电脑游戏或其他任何东西，那么摩门教徒将继承地球，或者任何最能抵抗这些诱惑并且仍然想要孩子的人，即使他们可能会吸食海洛因。

That’s right, so I try to encourage the productive people I know at the margin to be more Mormon, right?

是的，所以我尝试鼓励我认识的边缘人士变得更加摩门教，对吗？

You mean have more children?

你的意思是多生几个孩子吗？

Well, that too.

嗯，那也是。

Or avoid drugs?

或者避免吸毒？

Avoid addictive substances of the wrong kind.

避免使用错误种类的成瘾物质。

Work, too, is an addictive substance, right?

工作也是一种会上瘾的物质，对吗？

It seems like there’s a difficult tightrope here because we both want people to, in the short run, focus on growth and improving civilization and so on.

这里似乎有一条困难的钢丝，因为我们都希望人们在短期内专注于增长和改善文明等。

But then we don’t want to lock in this value that it’s bad to experience pleasure because ultimately, we want to cash it out in something, which could involve using heroin or some much better future form of heroin.

但我们不想锁定这种价值观，即体验快乐是不好的，因为最终我们想把它兑现成某种东西，这可能涉及使用海洛因或某种未来更好形式的海洛因。

If you could have better drugs, but they didn’t destroy people, and they became the new intermediate incentive, like, “Innovate a new product, become a millionaire, and then you can afford to buy this truly wonderful drug that will be great on Sundays and won’t hurt your productivity.” That seems unlikely, but who knows?

如果你可以有更好的药物，但它们不会摧毁人，它们就会成为新的中间激励，比如，“创新一种新产品，成为百万富翁，然后你就可以买得起这种真正美妙的药物，它在周日会很棒，而且不会损害你的生产力。”这似乎不太可能，但谁知道呢？

What is your vision for the long-term future?

您对未来的长期愿景是什么？

Do you see it as we’re going to have growth and then some kind of plateau?

您是否认为我们会出现增长，然后进入某种平稳期？

Or going to go up and down?

还是要上上下下？

Or will it just continue rising forever?

或者它会永远继续上涨吗？

I don’t think the rate of growth will rise forever.

我不认为增长率会永远上升。

My view of economic history is that growth comes in spurts.

我对经济史的看法是增长是井喷式的。

It’s not an evenly managed process, though it was for part of the post–World War II era.

尽管这是二战后时代的一部分，但这并不是一个均匀管理的过程。

I was thinking less about growth and more thinking of just the absolute level of the economy or welfare in the universe, in the future.

我较少考虑增长，而更多地考虑未来宇宙中经济或福利的绝对水平。

Do you think at some point it’s just going to level off because we’ll have done everything we can?

你是否认为在某个时刻，情况会趋于平稳，因为我们已经竭尽全力了？

We’ll have grabbed all of the matter we can access, and we’ll have figured out the best configuration for it to produce value.

我们将抓住我们可以访问的所有内容，并且我们将找到让它产生价值的最佳配置。

And at that point, it’s just a matter of milking it for as long as we can.

到那时，我们只需尽可能长时间地榨取它即可。

No, I think the world will end before that happens.

不，我认为在那之前世界就会终结。

Why do you think that we won’t leave the galaxy?

你为什么认为我们不会离开银河系？

And also, even if you think that that’s improbable, just given the fact that almost all of the potential value that we can generate is outside of this galaxy because that’s where most of the matter energy is.

而且，即使你认为这不太可能，但考虑到我们可以产生的几乎所有潜在价值都在这个星系之外，因为那是大部分物质能量所在的地方。

Shouldn’t we be pretty focused on that possible scenario where, in fact, we do leave the galaxy?

我们难道不应该非常关注我们确实离开银河系的可能情况吗？

I see the recurrence of war in human history so frequently, and I’m not completely convinced by Steven Pinker.

我经常看到人类历史上战争的重演，但我并不完全相信史蒂文·平克的观点。

I agree with Steven Pinker, that the chance of a very violent war indeed has gone down and is going down, maybe every year, but the tail risk is still there.

我同意史蒂文·平克的观点，即发生一场非常暴力的战争的可能性确实已经下降，而且可能每年都在下降，但尾部风险仍然存在。

And if you let the clock tick out for a long enough period of time, at some point it will happen.

如果你让时钟滴答作响足够长的时间，在某个时刻它就会发生。

What do you think is the probability that neither humans nor some kind of successor species exists in a hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years?

你认为一百年、一千年或一万年内人类或某种后继物种都不存在的概率是多少？

A hundred years, I think it’s extremely small.

一百年，我觉得是非常小的。

It would be whatever is the small chance of some kind of galactic catastrophe, very small.

无论如何，发生某种银河灾难的可能性很小，非常小。

If you’re saying that there’s a high probability that humans will still be around in a hundred years, I guess that suggests that you think that’s a very low annual risk of nuclear war?

如果你说一百年后人类仍然存在的可能性很高，我想这表明你认为每年发生核战争的风险非常低？

Why is that?

这是为什么？

I’m not sure what you mean by very low.

我不确定你所说的非常低是什么意思。

I think it’s below 1 percent.

我认为这个比例低于百分之一。

Yeah, I think so too.

是的，我也这么认为。

I don’t know if that counts as very low, but again, it’s going to happen sooner or later.

我不知道这是否算很低，但同样，这种情况迟早会发生。

And how stable is it if you just trade one nuke back and forth, two countries?

如果两个国家来回交换一枚核武器，稳定性如何？

We don’t know, right?

我们不知道，对吧？

It’s never happened.

这从来没有发生过。

I think the chance that that happens within 30 years is easily, say, 5 percent?

我认为 30 年内发生这种情况的可能性很容易，比如 5%？

Someone came to me, and they were asking for advice, as they sometimes do, on what can they do to improve the long-term future?

有人来找我，就像他们有时所做的那样，寻求建议，询问如何才能改善长远的未来？

They were deciding between increasing economic growth and, say, working to prevent a nuclear war or great power war between the U.S. and China.

他们正在做出选择，要么加快经济增长，要么努力防止中美之间爆发核战争或大国战争。

I definitely recommend people working on lowering the risk of nuclear war.

我绝对建议人们致力于降低核战争的风险。

One of my dissertation advisors was Thomas Schelling who, of course, is the classic theorist of nuclear war.

我的论文导师之一是托马斯·谢林，他当然是核战争的经典理论家。

Nuclear weapons, to me, are always the number one issue.

对我来说，核武器始终是首要问题。

It seems like, given what you’re saying, that it’s likely that humans will go extinct before we manage to escape from this galaxy, or maybe even from the solar system.

鉴于你所说的，在我们设法逃离这个星系，甚至逃离太阳系之前，人类很可能就会灭绝。

And that the reason for this is that, primarily, we’re going to be unable to coordinate between countries and individuals to prevent conflict that would destroy us.

其原因主要在于，我们将无法在国家和个人之间进行协调，以防止可能毁灭我们的冲突。

Maybe.

或许。

That may not be an issue that’s good for a book, of course.

当然，这对于一本书来说可能不是一个好问题。

Some issues you write about but not necessarily in book form.

您写的一些问题不一定以书的形式出现。

I guess I viewed the invention of nuclear weapons as perhaps the most important moment in human history.

我想我认为核武器的发明也许是人类历史上最重要的时刻。

Just look at around that time .

看看那个时间左右就知道了。

.

。

.

。

I hope it ends up not being the most important moment in human history.

我希望这最终不会成为人类历史上最重要的时刻。

Fingers crossed.

手指交叉。

Around that time, say, during the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s, the Soviet Union under Stalin had incredibly fast economic growth.

大约在那个时候，比如说，在20世纪30年代、40年代和50年代，斯大林领导下的苏联实现了令人难以置信的快速经济增长。

People were moving from farms to factories.

人们从农场搬到工厂。

The Soviet Union was becoming substantially more powerful and a stronger military power and developing the ability to, in the future, build nuclear weapons of its own.

苏联正在变得更加强大，军事力量更加强大，并发展了未来建造自己核武器的能力。

Of course, it should have concerned us, but on net, it was obviously a huge plus because the Soviets stopped the Nazis.

当然，它应该让我们担心，但在网上，这显然是一个巨大的优势，因为苏联阻止了纳粹。

But keep in mind also, my wife and daughter were born in the Soviet Union and grew up in a wealthier society.

但也要记住，我的妻子和女儿出生在苏联，在一个富裕的社会长大。

My father-in-law, who still lives with us — he was alive during the time of Stalin, and his life was better.

我的岳父，现在还和我们住在一起——他还活着，在斯大林时代，他的生活还好一些。

He’s still alive today because Soviets had a higher rate of economic growth.

他今天还活着，因为苏联的经济增长率更高。

I feel like, ex post, it definitely looks good, but at the point where the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons, I might have said, looking back, I wish that it had not become wealthy that quickly.

我觉得，事后看来，这确实看起来不错，但在苏联获得核武器的时候，我可能会说，回想起来，我希望它没有那么快变得富有。

Because now we have a nuclear standoff, and in 1948 or 1949, you don’t know how stabilized that situation was going to be.

因为现在我们处于核对峙状态，而在 1948 年或 1949 年，你不知道当时的局势会有多稳定。

Looking forward you might think there’s really a very substantial probability of humanity destroying itself during the Cold War.

展望未来，你可能会认为人类在冷战期间毁灭自己的可能性确实很大。

I don’t think we understand stability and nuclear weapons very well.

我认为我们不太了解稳定和核武器。

Do keep in mind the two times they’ve actually been used is when only one country had them.

请记住，它们实际使用的两次是只有一个国家拥有它们的时候。

It doesn’t mean we have a fully general theory there.

这并不意味着我们有一个完全通用的理论。

There’s this interesting thing that, if you think that the risk of extinction is extremely low, though nonzero, then you should place extremely high value on the future because it is an expectation it’s going to last a very long time, and we have a high chance of colonizing a significant fraction of the universe, so that saves an argument for long termism.

有一件有趣的事情是，如果你认为灭绝的风险极低，尽管非零，那么你应该对未来给予极高的重视，因为这是一种预期，它会持续很长一段时间，而且我们很有可能殖民宇宙的很大一部分，这样就可以避免长期主义的争论。

Yes.

是的。

Do you have any thoughts on that?

您对此有什么想法吗？

Let’s imagine it were the case that somehow we actually knew that, if we could construct hobbit society, but with people being taller, say, the world would not end.

让我们想象一下这样的情况：不知何故，我们实际上知道，如果我们能够构建霍比特人社会，但随着人们变得更高，比如说，世界就不会终结。

And if we don’t construct hobbit society, the world will end, say, through nuclear weapons.

如果我们不建设霍比特人社会，世界就会因为核武器而终结。

Let’s say we knew that or we thought 70 percent chance that’s likely to be true.

假设我们知道这一点，或者我们认为这有 70% 的可能性是真的。

Perhaps if I had to summarize my overall world view in just one quote, it would be this quote from E.

也许如果我必须用一句话来概括我的整体世界观，那就是 E. 的这句话。

O.

奥。

Wilson: “The real problem with humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

威尔逊：“人类真正的问题在于：我们拥有旧石器时代的情感、中世纪的制度和上帝般的技术。

And it is terrifically dangerous.”

而且这是非常危险的。”

I’m more optimistic than Wilson and perhaps you.

我比威尔逊（也许还有你）更乐观。

He refers to medieval institutions, but in most countries institutions are much better than that.

他指的是中世纪的机构，但在大多数国家，机构比这要好得多。

What are the good medieval institutions that stuck around?

哪些中世纪的优秀机构仍然存在？

Like parliament of Iceland?

比如冰岛议会？

Oxford, where you’ve been?

牛津，你去过哪里？

I suppose Cambridge?

我猜是剑桥？

Maybe a few other schools, but we’ve built so much since then.

也许还有其他几所学校，但从那时起我们已经建造了很多学校。

I don’t mean technology.

我指的不是技术。

I mean quality institutions with feedback and accountability.

我指的是具有反馈和问责制的优质机构。

Yeah, so medieval institutions is perhaps and exaggeration.

是的，所以中世纪的制度也许有些夸张。

But do you think .

但你认为吗？

.

。

.

。

But it’s a significant exaggeration, right?

但这太夸张了，对吧？

Okay, I think it’s the case that probably political institutions and our decision-making capacity isn’t improving as quickly as our technological capabilities.

好吧，我认为情况可能是政治机构和我们的决策能力的进步不如我们的技术能力的进步快。

And I wish it were the other way around that our wisdom and prudence and ability to make decisions that are not risky was maybe moving faster than our technology.

我希望情况恰恰相反，我们的智慧、谨慎以及做出无风险决策的能力可能比我们的技术发展得更快。

But see, I see it the other way around.

但你看，我的看法恰恰相反。

If you look at data on economic growth, you see huge productivity improvements: China, India, basically free-riding on existing technologies, not usually making them better.

如果你看一下经济增长的数据，你会看到生产率的巨大提高：中国、印度基本上是搭便车现有技术，而不是让它们变得更好。

It’s just managing companies better, having better incentives in companies.

只是更好地管理公司，对公司有更好的激励。

We’re both big fans of Philip Tetlock and his work .

我们都是 Philip Tetlock 和他的作品的忠实粉丝。

.

。

.

。

Sure, me too.

当然，我也是。

.

。

.

。

.

。

in superforecasting.

在超级预测中。

I think it’s among the most important work on social science and some of the most impressive and interesting work that’s ever been done.

我认为这是社会科学领域最重要的工作之一，也是迄今为止最令人印象深刻和最有趣的工作之一。

Do you think it would be valuable to get much more effort going into improving decision-making in that form?

您认为投入更多精力来改进这种形式的决策是否有价值？

Rather than perhaps working on science and technology otherwise?

而不是从事科学技术方面的工作？

Do you think we underinvest, sometimes, in social science relative to technical sciences?

您是否认为有时我们对社会科学相对于技术科学的投资不足？

I think we underinvest in particular kinds of social science.

我认为我们对特定类型的社会科学投资不足。

Too many social scientists are overly specialized.

太多的社会科学家过于专业化。

They don’t read outside their disciplines.

他们不会阅读自己学科之外的内容。

They don’t have the incentives to do something the world, as a whole, will find useful.

他们没有动力去做对整个世界来说有用的事情。

Tetlock is a wonderful, shining counterexample to that.

Tetlock 是一个精彩而闪亮的反例。

Let’s take a step back in time, back to 1900.

让我们把时间倒回到1900年。

I imagine that, if you were alive then, you would say that the risk of human extinction in the next hundred years would be fairly low.

我想，如果你当时还活着，你会说，未来百年人类灭绝的风险相当低。

The possibility that worries me the most is simply an equivalent amount of power being more portable.

最让我担心的可能性就是等量的电量变得更加便携。

I don’t think it has to be a new technology.

我认为这不一定是一项新技术。

It certainly might be, but simply the cost of a nuclear weapon or something like it being much cheaper.

当然有可能，但只是核武器或类似武器的成本便宜得多。

Bio weapons — they’re very hard to carry around and deploy, but you can quite readily imagine that becoming easier.

生物武器——它们很难携带和部署，但你可以很容易地想象这会变得更容易。

It seems to me those are likely outcomes.

在我看来，这些都是可能的结果。

I think that’s fair, but it seems like over time, as our technology gets better, the number of people and the amount of expertise and the amount of security that you would need in order to pull off an operation like that is going down and down and down.

我认为这是公平的，但随着时间的推移，随着我们的技术变得更好，完成这样的操作所需的人员数量、专业知识和安全程度正在不断下降。

Eventually, it could end up being a handful of people or even a single individual, and perhaps breakthroughs in biology are the most likely cause of that.

最终，它可能会变成少数人甚至一个人，而生物学的突破也许是最有可能的原因。

I think it will go up over the next century, I don’t think it’s going up right now.

我认为它会在下个世纪上升，但我认为现在不会上升。

Let’s say that humans do continue for thousands, perhaps millions of years, but for some reason, we decide to never leave Earth.

假设人类确实存在了数千年，甚至数百万年，但由于某种原因，我们决定永远不会离开地球。

So we don’t use the resources that are available elsewhere.

因此，我们不使用其他地方可用的资源。

Which would be my prediction, by the way.

顺便说一下，这就是我的预测。

Okay.

好的。

I think space is overrated.

我认为空间被高估了。

Okay.

好的。

It seems that, in your view, that should be a horrific tragedy, that almost all the value that humanity could have created had been lost in that case.

看来，在你看来，这应该是一场可怕的悲剧，人类本来可以创造的价值几乎都在这种情况下丧失了。

Space is hard, right?

太空很难，对吧？

I’m not so sure, but go on.

我不太确定，但继续吧。

It’s far, there are severe physical strains your subject to while you’re being transported, communication back and forth takes a very long time under plausible scenarios limited by the speed of light.

距离很远，在运输过程中，您的拍摄对象会承受严重的身体压力，在受光速限制的合理情况下，来回通信需要很长时间。

And what’s really out there?

那里到底是什么？

Maybe there are exoplanets, but when you have to construct atmosphere, there’s a risk diversification argument for doing it.

也许存在系外行星，但当你必须建造大气层时，这样做就有分散风险的理由。

It seems you’re okay with the idea that we can turn more matter and more energy into more value.

您似乎同意我们可以将更多物质和更多能量转化为更多价值的想法。

So what is it?

那么它是什么？

Five times by 10 to the 22 stars out there in the accessible universe at the moment?

5 乘以 10 到目前可到达宇宙中的 22 颗恒星？

Literally, as the galaxies recede, it’s declining by about a billionth per year.

从字面上看，随着星系的后退，它每年减少约十亿分之一。

Oh, I’m upset about it, I’m just not very optimistic.

哦，我对此感到不安，我只是不太乐观。

If you put me in the legislature, I’ll vote to increase funding for space exploration.

如果你让我进入立法机构，我会投票支持增加太空探索的资金。

But relative — especially in the Bay Area — relative to other people I speak to in this kind of fringe group of intellectuals who think about space, I’m more pessimistic than just about all of them.

但相对——尤其是在湾区——相对于我在这类思考太空的边缘知识分子群体中交谈过的其他人，我比他们所有人都更加悲观。

But it does seem like no matter how hard we go on Earth, at some point we’ll have found the best configuration we can make for all of the matter and the energy that we can harvest here.

但似乎无论我们在地球上多么努力，在某个时刻，我们都会找到我们可以为这里可以收获的所有物质和能量做出的最佳配置。

And then in order to continue growing and avoid a plateau, which is terrible in your view, the only path is to go out.

然后，为了继续成长并避免停滞不前（在你看来这是可怕的），唯一的出路就是走出去。

I’m never going to vote no on that, but just some cautionary notes: There is a history of imperialism, where mostly European societies have grown and taken over other parts of the globe, and they did not in every way do maximum good, to say the least.

我永远不会对此投反对票，但只是提出一些警告：有一段帝国主义的历史，大多数欧洲社会都在其中发展并占领了全球其他地区，至少可以说，它们并没有在所有方面都做出最大的好处。

I worry about how we might treat societies we encounter.

我担心我们会如何对待我们遇到的社会。

We also may draw attention to ourselves as a target or a threat.

我们也可能将自己视为目标或威胁。

It seems like, to make this view stable, you’re thinking that the probability of extinction is high, such that you’re pretty confident we’ll never go to space, but it’s not high enough that the overwhelmingly important thing is to work on extinction right now.

看起来，为了使这种观点稳定，你认为灭绝的可能性很高，以至于你非常有信心我们永远不会进入太空，但它还不够高，以至于现在最重要的事情是解决灭绝问题。

Or maybe you do think what we should do is lower the risk of a catastrophe, but the best way to do that is via increasing the growth rate.

或者也许你确实认为我们应该做的是降低灾难的风险，但最好的方法是提高增长率。

Yes, and let’s say your modal scenario is everything ends in 10 thousand years.

是的，假设你的模态场景是一切在一万年后结束。

That’s still a long enough time horizon where the long-term results of higher growth now are very significantly positive for billions of humans.

这仍然是一个足够长的时间范围，现在高速增长的长期结果对数十亿人来说是非常积极的。

That will play the dominant role in a moral calculus.

这将在道德计算中发挥主导作用。

Why do you think that we couldn’t develop kind of self-replicating probes?

你认为为什么我们不能开发出一种自我复制的探针？

I agree that humans are not going to travel to other galaxies — that’s way too hard.

我同意人类不会前往其他星系 ——这太难了。

But at some point, we should be able to create intelligence that somewhat resembles humans — or might even be better than humans — in some form that’s easier to transport through space on computers or whatever the future example of computers is.

但在某种程度上，我们应该能够创造出某种类似于人类的智能——或者甚至可能比人类更好——以某种形式更容易在计算机或任何未来的计算机示例上通过空间传输。

We don’t see self-replicating probes from other parts of the universe.

我们没有看到来自宇宙其他部分的自我复制探测器。

Now maybe we are those self-replicating probes, in some way, right?

现在也许我们在某种程度上就是那些自我复制的探针，对吗？

We were superseded.

我们被取代了。

But the fact that we don’t, in an obvious way, see them, to me strengthens the case for pessimism.

但对我来说，我们并没有以明显的方式看到它们，这一事实强化了悲观主义的理由。

Yeah, but you probably have read this paper that came out of the Future of Humanity Institute.

是的，但您可能已经阅读过人类未来研究所发表的这篇论文。

Yes, the Fermi Paradox is not nearly as absolute as people used to think, but it’s still an issue.

是的，费米悖论并不像人们过去想象的那么绝对，但这仍然是一个问题。

You still should update, in Bayesian terms, that you don’t see the aliens.

用贝叶斯的术语来说，你仍然应该更新你没有看到外星人。

Yeah, I agree that’s worrying, but because we have these alternative explanations that we might just be the one chance event where life began, I still had some hope that we’ll get there, we’ll be the first ones to colonize at least this part of the universe.

是的，我同意这令人担忧，但因为我们有这些替代的解释，我们可能只是生命开始的唯一偶然事件，我仍然有一些希望，我们会到达那里，我们将成为第一批至少在宇宙的这一部分殖民的人。

I’m going to vote with you, that’s all I can say for now.

我要和你一起投票，这就是我现在能说的。

Cool.

凉爽的。

You’re in favor of markets and kind of liberal governance but I see two arguments here that might justify an alternative approach.

你赞成市场和某种自由主义治理，但我在这里看到两个论点可能证明另一种方法是合理的。

One is, you’re in favor of faster economic growth.

一是，你赞成更快的经济增长。

Essentially, planned economies in the past have been able to reinvest a much larger fraction of GDP and future growth just building more factories rather than producing consumer goods than market economies have been able to.

从本质上讲，与市场经济相比，过去的计划经济能够将更大比例的GDP和未来增长进行再投资，只是建造更多工厂而不是生产消费品。

We need to become more concrete, but the wealthiest societies in today’s world are, for the most part, the freest ones.

我们需要变得更加具体，但当今世界最富裕的社会在很大程度上是最自由的社会。

There’s no guarantee that will always hold, but I think that’s an argument for some kind of liberal freedom.

不能保证这永远成立，但我认为这是某种自由主义的论据。

We don’t want to give up the benefits of market, absolutely, but, I guess you’d be fairly happy if the United States spent quite a lot more in science and technology research and perhaps the government built lots more infrastructure?

我们绝对不想放弃市场的好处，但是，我想如果美国在科技研究上投入更多，也许政府建造更多基础设施，你会相当高兴？

I would spend much more on science and technology.

我会在科学和技术上花费更多。

When you say infrastructure, I want to disaggregate, but there are certainly plenty of things I would be willing to spend more on.

当你说到基础设施时，我想分解一下，但肯定有很多东西我愿意花更多的钱。

Yeah, I’m with you.

是的，我和你在一起。

Perhaps another argument for lower liberalism would be — you’re saying that, basically, you think there’s a high chance that humans are going to drive themselves to extinction.

也许支持低级自由主义的另一个论点是“——”你是说，基本上，你认为人类很有可能将自己逼向灭绝。

The reason is a lack of coordination in conflict .

原因是冲突中缺乏协调。

.

。

.

。

And cheap energy.

还有廉价能源。

Okay, and cheap energy.

好吧，而且能源便宜。

Too much power in the hands of people and the ability to destroy one another.

人们手中的权力太多，并且有能力互相摧毁。

This is a very severe problem.

这是一个非常严重的问题。

Perhaps, in order to solve that problem, we should be willing to have a world government.

也许，为了解决这个问题，我们应该愿意建立一个世界政府。

Kind of run towards a singleton, as Nick Bostrom calls it, which would be like having one decision-making process that is able to control everyone else, prevent conflicts.

正如尼克·博斯特罗姆（Nick Bostrom）所说，有点像单身人士，这就像拥有一个能够控制其他人、防止冲突的决策过程。

It’s hard enough to get the European Union to stay together, and those countries have so much commonality of interest.

让欧盟保持团结已经够难的了，而且这些国家有着如此多的共同利益。

I expect some further nations, after Brexit, to peel off over time.

我预计，随着时间的推移，英国脱欧后，更多的国家将会退出。

Try to get Southeast Asia to agree even to a local ASEAN being much stronger, being an EU-like phenomenon — simply impossible.

试图让东南亚同意让当地的东盟变得更加强大，成为一种类似欧盟的现象——根本不可能。

It’s a recipe for creating conflict.

这是制造冲突的良方。

But can you imagine that, perhaps, we convince many people of this kind of long termist framework.

但你能想象吗，也许我们让很多人相信这种长期主义框架。

They share our belief that extinction is very possible and will be a terrible catastrophe.

他们和我们一样相信灭绝是很有可能的，而且将是一场可怕的灾难。

So they’re willing to make many concessions perhaps.

所以他们也许愿意做出很多让步。

There’s already a great deal of international cooperation on nuclear weapons.

核武器方面已经开展了大量国际合作。

Right now, we’re trying to manage the North Korean situation.

目前，我们正在努力控制朝鲜局势。

Cooperation is highly imperfect, but it’s remarkable how much is there.

合作非常不完美，但合作程度却令人瞩目。

When the Soviet Union was collapsing and there were possibly loose nuclear weapons, there was a good deal of international cooperation to deal with that problem.

当苏联解体并且可能出现核武器时，有大量的国际合作来解决这个问题。

We’ve been talking a lot about the possibility of a nuclear apocalypse here, and that is a somewhat trickier one to figure out how to solve.

我们在这里谈论了很多关于核灾难的可能性，而解决这一问题是一个比较棘手的问题。

But you bring up climate change, where it seems like it’s a lot more tractable.

但你提到了气候变化，它似乎更容易处理。

Oh, absolutely.

哦，绝对是。

I think, the last few years, a lot of those technologies have made more rapid progress than I would have thought — like electric cars, like fracking.

我认为，在过去的几年里，许多技术的进步比我想象的要快——比如电动汽车，比如水力压裂。

Just the interest in China in cutting back on their air pollution, solar, nuclear.

只是中国对减少空气污染、太阳能、核能的兴趣。

Some of it’s still on the drawing board, but I think they really intend to do it and probably will.

其中一些仍处于设计阶段，但我认为他们确实打算这么做，而且很可能会这样做。

Are there any other technologies that you’re excited about because they differentially improve civilizational stability?

还有其他让您感到兴奋的技术吗，因为它们可以显着提高文明的稳定性？

Well, everyone talks about batteries, but I often feel batteries are a mixed blessing.

好吧，每个人都在谈论电池，但我常常觉得电池是一件喜忧参半的事情。

Batteries, of course, would make it much easier to have green energy, but batteries also ease the decentralized storage of power and carrying around of destructive power.

当然，电池将使绿色能源变得更加容易，但电池也简化了电力的分散存储和破坏性能量的携带。

It seems like the most important technology, from your point of view, might be the ability to surveil people so that we can prevent any group from using really concentrated energy to end human civilization, but also the social technology then to regulate that such that it doesn’t lead to totalitarianism.

从你的角度来看，最重要的技术似乎可能是监视人们的能力，以便我们可以防止任何团体使用真正集中的能量来结束人类文明，而且社会技术也可以对其进行监管，以免导致极权主义。

Do you think research into something like that could be very valuable?

您认为对此类事情的研究非常有价值吗？

I worry a great deal about surveillance, which, of course, has proceeded most rapidly in China.

我非常担心监视，当然，监视在中国进展得最快。

If surveillance really would make us safer, that would be an argument for it.

如果监视真的能让我们更安全，那就有理由支持它。

But surveillance tends to corrupt your rulers, and it tends to increase the returns to being in charge.

但监视往往会腐蚀你的统治者，并且往往会增加掌权的回报。

I think, over time, it increases the chances of, say, a coup d’état or political instability in China.

我认为，随着时间的推移，它会增加中国发生政变或政治不稳定的可能性。

I think I’m with you.

我想我和你在一起。

I’m not sure whether more surveillance or less surveillance is better right now.

我不确定现在是加强监视还是减少监视更好。

But it seems like finding better ways to govern surveillance, given that we’re probably going to have quite a lot of it, so that it doesn’t lead to these negative political outcomes, could be an extremely important research question that more think tanks should be looking into.

但鉴于我们可能会拥有相当多的监控，因此似乎找到更好的方法来管理监控，这样它就不会导致这些负面的政治结果，这可能是一个极其重要的研究问题，更多的智库应该研究这一问题。

Yes, and it’s quite possibly true that the gains in surveillance we’ve had so far are what have limited some of the potential sequel attacks to 9/11.

是的，而且很可能确实如此，我们迄今为止在监视方面取得的成果限制了 9/11 的一些潜在的后续攻击。

We can’t know that for sure as outsiders, but many people suggest this is probably the case.

作为局外人，我们无法确定这一点，但许多人认为情况可能就是如此。

In terms of ways that humanity might end, we’ve got nuclear war, just a great power war between the US and China, even setting aside nuclear weapons.

就人类可能终结的方式而言，我们有核战争，只是美国和中国之间的大国战争，甚至搁置核武器。

We’ve got climate change, and I guess, where we’re both concerned about, new technologies that would really concentrate energy that would allow a lot of destructive power.

我们已经面临气候变化，我想，我们都关心的是新技术，这些新技术将真正集中能量，从而产生很大的破坏力。

Well, that may happen in China.

嗯，这可能会发生在中国。

One scenario is the Chinese government will simply clamp down on opposition through surveillance, and that will be stable for a very long period of time.

一种情况是中国政府简单地通过监视来打压反对派，这将在很长一段时间内保持稳定。

That might make society in China worse, but I don’t see why it’s destabilizing, even if it’s undesirable.

这可能会让中国社会变得更糟，但我不明白为什么它会破坏稳定，即使这是不可取的。

Oh, no, I don’t think it would be destabilizing.

哦，不，我不认为这会破坏稳定。

The problem is it would be very stable, but bad.

问题是它会非常稳定，但很糟糕。

We would still lose most of the value because, perhaps, we’ve locked in a bunch of negative or neutral moral values.

我们仍然会失去大部分价值，因为也许我们已经锁定了一堆消极或中立的道德价值观。

That’s one of my big worries for the forthcoming future.

这是我对未来的最大担忧之一。

You mentioned climate change.

你提到了气候变化。

I don’t think it’s an existential risk; I do think the expected costs are maybe higher than most people want to admit, but the notion that it would wipe out human civilization as we know it, you would need a very extreme scenario.

我不认为这是一个存在的风险；我确实认为预期的成本可能比大多数人愿意承认的要高，但它会消灭我们所知道的人类文明的想法，你需要一个非常极端的场景。

I don’t think that’s very likely.

我认为这不太可能。

I agree with you.

我同意你的看法。

Yeah, I think it’s unlikely that climate change could lead to extinction.

是的，我认为气候变化不太可能导致灭绝。

I mean, maybe it could lead to significant loss of life.

我的意思是，也许这可能会导致重大人员伤亡。

One possible way it could go is that it turns out to be the temperature increases much more than we expect, so we get more like 6 to 9 degrees of warming.

一种可能的情况是，温度升高的幅度比我们预期的要大得多，所以我们的气温可能会升高 6 到 9 度。

This sets us back economically, which triggers a negative cascade of consequences.

这使我们在经济上倒退，引发一系列负面后果。

Sure.

当然。

That’s the most worrisome scenario.

这是最令人担忧的情况。

Keep in mind that regular air pollution — and I don’t mean carbon-based — just air pollution, right now it kills 6 to 7 million people a year.

请记住，常规空气污染 ——我指的不是碳基污染——只是空气污染，目前它每年导致 6 到 700 万人死亡。

Obviously, a large number.

显然，数量很大。

Now, some of those are older people, are frail people.

现在，其中一些是老年人，是体弱多病的人。

They might have died soon anyway, but still, it’s a number hardly anyone talks about.

无论如何，他们可能很快就会死去，但仍然是一个很少有人谈论的数字。

Yeah, or just the tail that we’ve totally mismeasured how it’s going to affect the climate.

是的，或者只是我们完全错误地衡量了它将如何影响气候。

I think this is relatively unlikely, but perhaps is still worth having some people worry about.

我认为这种情况相对不太可能发生，但也许仍然值得一些人担心。

Or we could do bad geoengineering and make the world too cold.

或者我们可能会做糟糕的地球工程，让世界变得太冷。

Okay, let’s move on to some other things in the book that I wasn’t entirely convinced by.

好吧，让我们继续讨论书中其他一些我不完全相信的事情。

You make the argument in one of the chapters that, even though our actions seem to have very large and morally significant effects in the long run, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have incredibly onerous moral duties.

您在其中一章中提出论点，尽管我们的行为从长远来看似乎具有非常大且具有道德意义的影响，但这并不一定意味着我们有极其繁重的道德责任。

We don’t necessarily have to set aside all of our projects in order to maximize the growth rate of GDP or improve civilizational stability.

我们不一定要为了最大化 GDP 增长率或提高文明稳定性而搁置所有项目。

What’s your case, there?

你的情况是什么？

Well, I do think you have an obligation to act in accordance with maximizing the growth rate of GDP, but given how human beings are built, that’s mostly going to involve leading a pretty selfish life: trying to earn more, having a family, raising your children well.

嗯，我确实认为你有义务按照最大化 GDP 增长率采取行动，但考虑到人类的构造方式，这主要涉及过一种相当自私的生活：努力赚更多的钱，建立一个家庭，好好抚养你的孩子。

It’s close to in sync with common-sense morality, which to me is a plus of my argument.

它与常识性道德接近同步，这对我来说是我的论点的一个优点。

What it’s telling you to do doesn’t sound so crazy.

它告诉你要做的事情听起来并不那么疯狂。

Yeah, okay.

是啊，好吧。

It seems like, given your framework of long-termism, the moral consequences of our actions are much larger than what most people think when they’re only thinking about the short-term effects of their actions.

考虑到你的长期主义框架，我们行为的道德后果似乎比大多数人只考虑其行为的短期影响时所想象的要大得多。

In that sense, the moral consequences should bear on us more than they otherwise do.

从这个意义上说，道德后果对我们的影响应该比其他情况更大。

It’s very tricky, though.

但这非常棘手。

If you go around telling people, “Everything you do is going to change the whole world,” they’re going to get pissed off at you.

如果你到处告诉人们，“你所做的一切都会改变整个世界”，他们会生你的气。

They’re going to tune you out, so there’s a Straussian undercurrent in the book.

他们会把你拒之门外，所以书中有一股施特劳斯式的暗流。

The long term is really important, but people still need to focus to some extent on the short term to get to the long term.

长期确实很重要，但人们仍然需要在某种程度上关注短期才能实现长期。

They can only handle so much computationally.

他们只能处理这么多的计算。

On the view that increasing GDP is a very important thing for people to do — among the most valuable things that they could do — do you think that people who are taking holidays, for example, or people who just aren’t starting a business that would grow as much as possible, or perhaps people who could go work in think tanks and do economic reform that would increase GDP much more than what they’re doing right now, would you at least .

鉴于增加 GDP 对人们来说是一件非常重要的事情 —— 他们可以做的最有价值的事情之一 ——你是否认为那些正在度假的人，或者那些只是没有开办一家能够尽可能增长的企业的人，或者也许那些可以在智囊团工作并进行经济改革的人，这些改革将比他们现在所做的更多地增加 GDP，你至少会认为吗？

.

。

.

。

Absolutely, and I try to encourage them all the time.

当然，我一直在努力鼓励他们。

I try to hire them into think tanks, research centers.

我尝试聘请他们进入智囊团、研究中心。

It’s one of my goals in the more practical side of my life, so absolutely.

这是我生活中更实际的目标之一，所以绝对是这样。

Let’s say it were the case that the best way to increase growth or to increase civilizational stability was to give very large amounts of money or to give away most of the income that you had to very poor people who could earn a greater rate of return.

假设在这种情况下，促进经济增长或提高文明稳定性的最佳方式是提供大量资金或将大部分收入捐献给能够获得更高回报率的贫困人口。

Would you advocate for people doing that?

你会提倡人们这样做吗？

Absolutely.

绝对地。

I’m a big fan of private philanthropy.

我是私人慈善事业的忠实粉丝。

There are quite a few very wealthy people who have pledged to give away most of their fortune.

有不少非常富有的人承诺捐出大部分财产。

I’m a big advocate of that.

我是这一点的大力倡导者。

I’m not sure they’re all giving it away in the right manner, and maybe they do have an obligation to think more critically about how they’re giving it.

我不确定他们是否都以正确的方式给予它，也许他们确实有义务更批判性地思考他们如何给予它。

Another argument you make is that you want to have a strong grounding for human rights, but it seems like, on this long-termist framework, it’s possible that the consequences of actions could be so vast that it would dominate any rights concerns.

你提出的另一个论点是，你希望为人权奠定坚实的基础，但在这个长期主义框架下，行动的后果可能会如此巨大，以至于它会主导任何权利问题。

Well, let’s give a concrete example.

好吧，我们举一个具体的例子。

Right now, in the northwestern part of China, the Chinese government is creating camps and detaining large numbers of people, by some estimates up to a million.

目前，中国政府正在中国西北部建立营地并拘留大量人员，据估计多达一百万人。

But let’s say you believed that.

但假设你相信这一点。

There are gross violations of human rights.

存在严重侵犯人权的情况。

When there’s this deep uncertainty about the future, you’re not comparing directly — well, detaining all these people versus the brighter, richer future.

当未来存在这种深深的不确定性时，你就不会直接比较——好吧，拘留所有这些人与更光明、更富裕的未来。

It’s like a lottery ticket, and the lottery ticket is so uncertain, it’s easier to respect the human rights.

这就像一张彩票，而彩票的不确定性越大，就越容易尊重人权。

Yeah, but it seems like you’ve got massive uncertainty on both sides of the ledger here when you’re comparing the thing where you violate human rights but you get some massive GDP gain versus the case where you don’t and you don’t get the GDP gain.

是的，但当你比较侵犯人权但获得巨额 GDP 收益与不侵犯人权却没有获得 GDP 收益的情况时，账本双方都存在巨大的不确定性。

Again, if you think there’s any case for deontology at all, there’s not an argument deontology can wield to overturn the consequentialist conclusion in consequentialist terms.

再说一次，如果你认为道义论有任何理由，那么道义论就没有任何论据可以用来推翻后果论的结论。

You’re just stuck with, “Don’t do it.”

你只是被困住了，“不要这样做。”

I wasn’t sure whether to challenge you on this because I think, actually, it is good to promote the idea of human rights and to lock those into law.

我不确定是否要在这个问题上挑战你，因为我认为，实际上，促进人权理念并将其纳入法律是件好事。

I fully admit I punt on the human rights issue.

我完全承认我在人权问题上下了赌注。

The book is about growth.

这本书是关于成长的。

I just want to reassure people, “You don’t have to go crazy and become an evil person to maximize growth.” But it would require another book, actually, a much longer one, and a lot of books should be organized around just one idea, one key idea.

我只是想让人们放心，“你不必发疯，成为一个邪恶的人，才能最大限度地成长。”但这需要另一本书，实际上是一本更长的书，而且很多书应该围绕一个想法、一个关键想法来组织。

In the book, you say that you’re in favor of moral pluralism.

在书中，你说你赞成道德多元化。

So, there’s many different things that are morally valuable, and trading off between them might be hard.

因此，有许多不同的事物在道德上都有价值，并且在它们之间进行权衡可能很困难。

One thing that you mention is that you think that great art potentially has intrinsic moral value, regardless of the effects that it has on people’s conscious states.

你提到的一件事是，你认为伟大的艺术潜在地具有内在的道德价值，无论它对人们的意识状态有什么影响。

It seems to me it would be better.

在我看来，这样会更好。

There’s more intrinsic value of some kind, but I would stress, none of the arguments in the book depend on that.

某种形式有更多的内在价值，但我要强调的是，书中的所有论点都不依赖于此。

It’s just another part of the bundle that might count as a positive.

这只是捆绑包中可能算作积极因素的另一部分。

Yeah.

是的。

Given that, really, all you can know is your own conscious states, how do you get this knowledge that art is intrinsically valuable, given that you can’t perceive the art directly?

事实上，你所能知道的只是你自己的意识状态，既然你无法直接感知艺术，你如何获得艺术内在价值的知识呢？

It seems to me there is something valuable about humanity reaching its highest potential, say, through the works of classical music or some of the greatest painters, that is not strictly reduceable to the number of people paying money for it or enjoying it at any point in time.

在我看来，人类发挥其最高潜力的一些有价值的东西，例如，通过古典音乐或一些最伟大的画家的作品，这并不能严格减少到在任何时间点为之付费或享受它的人数。

At some points in time, that number may be zero.

在某些时间点，这个数字可能为零。

Yeah, I agree that’s absolutely not directly from the book in general.

是的，我同意这绝对不是直接来自这本书。

I thought that you might say that the planet case is not so useful because it lacks the achievement aspect because it just arose through erosion or something rather than through anyone actually accomplishing anything, and it’s the accomplishment that you’re valuing.

我想你可能会说行星案例没有那么有用，因为它缺乏成就方面，因为它只是通过侵蚀或其他东西产生的，而不是通过任何人实际完成任何事情而产生的，而这是你所重视的成就。

Well, both, but if there are beautiful natural structures, as there are, there may be intrinsic value to the natural beauty above and beyond who is able to see them at any point in time.

好吧，两者都有，但如果存在美丽的自然结构，正如存在的那样，自然美可能具有超越任何人在任何时间都能看到它们的内在价值。

Do you worry about this reliance on intuitions about the value of particular things?

您是否担心这种对特定事物价值的依赖直觉？

Or how we are to respond to particular cases is vulnerable to evolutionary debunking arguments that .

或者我们如何应对特定情况很容易受到进化论揭穿的论点的影响。

.

。

.

。

It’s like, we think that streams are particularly beautiful or fertile lands look particularly beautiful.

就像我们认为溪流特别美丽，或者肥沃的土地看起来特别美丽。

Philosophers often overuse ethical intuitionism.

哲学家常常过度使用伦理直觉主义。

Sometimes I’ll read a Philosophy and Public Affairs piece, and I’m always wishing they would write down axioms and argue for or against the axioms, but here’s one comparison they make, and then another.

有时我会读一篇哲学和公共事务的文章，我总是希望他们能写下公理并支持或反对这些公理，但这是他们所做的一个比较，然后是另一个比较。

Yeah.

是的。

There’s this big trade-off in philosophy between having a simple theory, a parsimonious theory that only has a few pieces, and then being able to match the common-sense intuitions we have about every case or about every claim.

在哲学中，有一个简单的理论（只有几个部分的简约理论）与我们对每个案例或每个主张的常识性直觉相匹配之间存在着巨大的权衡。

I’m a little closer to common sense than you are.

我比你更接近常识。

It may not have much metaphysical standing, morally speaking, but the world is ruled by common sense.

从道德上来说，它可能没有太多形而上学的地位，但世界是由常识统治的。

People behave in accord with common sense, so it’s probably counterproductive to stray too far from common sense.

人们的行为符合常识，因此偏离常识太远可能会适得其反。

In this book, the influence of the philosopher Derek Parfit is clearly really vast.

在这本书中，哲学家德里克·帕菲特的影响显然是巨大的。

What do you think Parfit was most wrong about, and what do you think he was most right about that’s unappreciated today?

你认为帕菲特在哪些方面最错误，而在今天却不受重视的方面，你认为他最正确的是什么？

Not too long before he died, Parfit gave a talk.

帕菲特去世前不久，发表了一次演讲。

I think it’s still on YouTube.

我想它还在 YouTube 上。

I think it was at Oxford.

我记得那是在牛津。

It was on effective altruism.

这是有效的利他主义。

He spoke maybe for 90 minutes, and he never once mentioned economic growth, never talked about gains in emerging economies, never mentioned China.

他的演讲大约有90分钟，他从未提及经济增长，从未提及新兴经济体的收益，从未提及中国。

Yeah, he was hugely influential on me and a lot of other people.

是的，他对我和其他很多人都产生了巨大的影响。

It’s a real shame he’s not with us anymore.

他不再和我们在一起真是太遗憾了。

Who do you see as his kind of philosophical successors?

您认为谁是他的哲学继承者？

Because I think of Nick Bostrom at the Future of Humanity Institute.

因为我想到了人类未来研究所的尼克·博斯特罗姆。

Perhaps Nick Beckstead, who wrote this great dissertation on the overwhelming importance of shaping the long-term future.

也许是尼克·贝克斯特德（Nick Beckstead），他写了这篇关于塑造长期未来的压倒性重要性的伟大论文。

Are there other people who you think we should now look to in lieu of Parfit?

您认为我们现在应该寻找其他人来代替帕菲特吗？

I’m big fans of the two Nicks you mentioned.

我是你提到的两个尼克斯队的忠实粉丝。

I don’t think of them as substitutes for Parfit; I think they’re doing something quite different.

我不认为它们可以替代帕菲特；我认为它们是帕菲特的替代品。我认为他们正在做一些完全不同的事情。

To me, also.

对我来说也是。

That should not have had as much influence as it has had, though it’s a wonderful book.

尽管这是一本很棒的书，但这本不应该产生如此大的影响。

You learn a lot from it, and Rawls was a very impressive figure.

你可以从中学到很多东西，罗尔斯是一个非常令人印象深刻的人物。

Yeah.

是的。

Harsanyi had, I think, a much better version of the veil of ignorance argument that advocated in favor of something like total utilitarianism.

我认为，哈萨尼对无知之幕论有一个更好的版本，主张完全功利主义。

And then, I feel, it was ruined by Rawls.

然后，我觉得，它被罗尔斯毁了。

But Rawls’s theory, it turned out, was much more popular and got a lot more play.

但事实证明，罗尔斯的理论更受欢迎，也得到了更多的应用。

I agree.

我同意。

I don’t favor either veil of ignorance, but Rawls was at Harvard.

我不赞成任何一种无知之幕，但罗尔斯在哈佛。

Rawls was a professional philosopher.

罗尔斯是一位职业哲学家。

He was connected in the right way.

他以正确的方式联系在一起。

His book came along at the right time, when people wanted a rationale for a particular kind of social democracy.

他的书问世恰逢其时，当时人们想要为某种特定的社会民主主义找到理由。

What’s the most likely way that the worldview that you’re presenting in Stubborn Attachments would be fundamentally wrong?

你在《顽固的依恋》中所呈现的世界观最有可能从根本上错误的方式是什么？

If the pessimistic scenario is correct.

如果悲观的情景是正确的。

History is cyclical, we’re going to undergo some kind of retrograde process.

历史是循环的，我们将经历某种倒退的过程。

There will be some future — we’re not all going to die, but the amount of value in that future is not high enough for the option of continued growth through the future to be the dominant one deciding what it is we should do.

会有一些未来——我们不会都死，但未来的价值还不够高，不足以让未来持续增长的选择成为决定我们应该做什么的主导选择。

There’s a pretty good chance that’s correct and I’m wrong.

很有可能这是正确的，而我是错的。

Let’s work to make that false.

让我们努力让这一切变得错误。

What would Tyrone have to say about the book?

蒂龙对这本书有什么想说的？

Well, I think Tyrone would endorse the pessimistic view, that the future is not so grand and glorious.

嗯，我认为蒂龙会赞同悲观的观点，认为未来并不那么宏伟和辉煌。

It doesn’t have the moral power I attribute to it, and that we just ought to have more of a kind of Nietzschean scramble for the here and now, and there is no final adjudicator of these clashing values.

它没有我所赋予的道德力量，我们只是应该对此时此地有更多的尼采式的争夺，而且这些冲突的价值观没有最终的裁决者。

Maybe we can get him on the 80,000 Hours Podcast sometime.

也许我们可以找个时间让他参加 80,000 小时播客。

I agree, but let me make another argument against myself, and that’s the Pascal’s Wager argument.

我同意，但让我再提出一个反对自己的论点，这就是帕斯卡赌注论点。

Let’s say sustained growth has a value approaching infinity, but the chance we can ever get there — it’s not 10 percent, it’s like 1 percent.

假设持续增长的价值接近无穷大，但我们实现这一目标的机会 ——不是 10%，而是 1%。

I have an episode with the philosopher Amanda Askell where we talk about problems with infinite ethics and Pascal’s Wager, which perhaps can stick up a link to.

我和哲学家阿曼达·阿斯克尔有一集，我们讨论无限伦理和帕斯卡赌注的问题，也许可以贴个链接。

It raises a lot of issues that we don’t really have time for.

它提出了很多我们没有时间处理的问题。

Really?

真的吗？

And how does it work?

它是如何运作的？

Am I free to pass?

我可以自由通过吗？

Yeah.

是的。

I know I’m metaphysically free to pass, but won’t it disgrace me to pass on one of them?

我知道我在形而上学上可以自由地传递，但传递其中一个不会让我感到羞耻吗？

All right.

好的。

Chinese moral values.

中国人的道德价值观。

Well, that’s a big thing, Chinese moral values.

嗯，这是一件大事，中国人的道德价值观。

If what you mean is that China, as a nation, has invested a lot in infrastructure, that’s gone very well for them.

如果你的意思是中国作为一个国家在基础设施方面投入了大量资金，那么这对他们来说非常好。

The deep state.

深层状态。

You mean how much it exists or how much I like it?

你的意思是它存在多少或者我有多喜欢它？

How good it is, yeah.

多么好啊，是啊。

I don’t believe in a conspiratorial notion of the deep state.

我不相信深层政府的阴谋论。

Now, is it true that there are people, say, in the Washington area who work for intelligence agencies, who have outcomes they wish to come about, and sometimes leak strategically to the media to help those outcomes come about?

现在，是否真的有人，比如说，在华盛顿地区为情报机构工作，他们有他们希望实现的结果，有时会战略性地向媒体泄露信息以帮助实现这些结果？

Or they might even trade intelligence to other people to shift at the margin political maneuvering?

或者他们甚至可能与其他人交换情报以改变政治策略？

Tristan da Cunha.

特里斯坦·达库尼亚.

Who?

WHO？

The island between South America and Africa.

南美洲和非洲之间的岛屿。

I think it has the smallest permanent population of any island.

我认为它是所有岛屿中常住人口最少的。

Since I didn’t know about it, it must be underrated.

因为我不知道，所以它肯定被低估了。

I’ve never been there, of course.

当然，我从来没有去过那里。

NATO.

北约。

NATO has been underrated for a long time.

北约长期以来一直被低估。

It’s why it has frayed.

这就是它磨损的原因。

Putin took deliberate pokes at NATO, and indeed beat down NATO’s credibility by seizing or disrupting various parts of territory that were not in NATO, but NATO might have done more about.

普京故意攻击北约，实际上通过夺取或扰乱北约以外的各个领土来打击北约的信誉，但北约可能会做得更多。

Intersectionality.

交叉性。

Intersectionality is grossly underrated by people on the right.

右翼人士严重低估了交叉性。

Intersectionality I take to be the notion that if you’re a member of more than one either minority group or group that’s discriminated against, your multiple membership in discriminated groups creates problems for you in a potentially nonlinear fashion.

我认为交叉性是这样一种观念：如果你是多个少数群体或受歧视群体的成员，那么你在受歧视群体中的多重身份会以一种潜在的非线性方式给你带来问题。

Guamanian cuisine.

关岛美食。

I’ve never had Guamanian cuisine.

我从来没有吃过关岛菜。

There’s a restaurant in San Francisco closing, I’m told, in two weeks that serves Guamanian cuisine.

有人告诉我，旧金山有一家供应关岛美食的餐厅将在两周内关门。

And I’ve never been to Guam.

而且我从来没有去过关岛。

It’s not that high on my list of places to go.

在我要去的地方清单上，它并不是那么靠前。

So it’s probably underrated, right?

所以它可能被低估了，对吧？

Because most cuisine is pretty good if you get the right cook.

因为如果你找到合适的厨师，大多数菜肴都会非常美味。

Gary Cohn.

加里·科恩.

You mean who was in the Trump administration?

你是说特朗普政府中有哪些人？

Yeah.

是的。

I don’t know.

我不知道。

In general, if you worked for the Trump administration early on, you might have had the notion you can do a lot to make things better.

总的来说，如果你很早就为特朗普政府工作过，你可能会有这样的想法：你可以做很多事情来让事情变得更好。

And I respected that choice when people made it.

当人们做出选择时，我尊重他们的选择。

Choosing to pass on questions in overrated and underrated.

选择传递高估和低估的问题。

More people should answer underrated, overrated rather than pass because you’re not expected to give a final answer.

更多的人应该回答被低估、高估而不是通过，因为你不需要给出最终答案。

It’s understood it’s all about Bayesian updating and what small piece of wisdom can you bring to bear on what others know.

据了解，这一切都与贝叶斯更新有关，以及您可以将哪些小智慧运用到其他人所知道的事情上。

So the idea that you can’t give some perfect answer, or you only want to talk about your specialty, I think that’s a cop out.

因此，如果你无法给出完美的答案，或者你只想谈论你的专长，我认为这是一种逃避。

No on in real life behaves that way.

现实生活中没有人会这样做。

I guess, yeah.

我想是的。

I find overrated and underrated somewhat frustrating at times because I feel like most things are just appropriately rated.

我发现有时被高估和低估有点令人沮丧，因为我觉得大多数事情都得到了适当的评价。

The market is generally right.

市场总体来说是对的。

But people very rarely defer to that.

但人们很少遵守这一点。

Guests almost never say that things are appropriately rated.

客人几乎从不说事物得到了适当的评价。

Do you think we should at least say appropriately rated more often?

您认为我们至少应该更频繁地说适当的评级吗？

Once you consider diversity of opinion, arguably, nothing is appropriately rated, right?

一旦你考虑到意见的多样性，可以说，没有什么是适当的，对吗？

Someone rates it appropriately.

有人给予适当的评价。

It depends whether you’re asking an objective or subjective question.

这取决于你问的是客观问题还是主观问题。

It’s ambiguous.

这是模棱两可的。

Right.

正确的。

But you always have the option of threading out who overrates and underrates it.

但你总是可以选择排除谁高估或低估它。

And I try to do that in some of my answers.

我尝试在一些答案中做到这一点。

Some things .

有些事情。

.

。

.

。

unemployment insurance, is that appropriately rated?

失业保险，这个等级合适吗？

Maybe that is.

也许是这样。

But for the most part, there’s more you can say.

但在大多数情况下，你还可以说更多。

Yeah, all right.

是的，好吧。

Being an intellectual dilettante.

做一个知识分子的业余爱好者。

It’s begging the question to call it a dilettante.

称其为业余爱好者是有问题的。

I think academia is not producing enough generalists who produce information that a broader well-educated, intelligent public can consume.

我认为学术界没有培养出足够多的通才，他们所提供的信息可供更广泛的受过良好教育、聪明的公众可以消费。

If someone wants to call them dilettantes, fine.

如果有人想称他们为业余爱好者，那好吧。

But I would say underrated.

但我想说的是被低估了。

Okay.

好的。

So I guess being a generalist, underrated.

所以我想作为一个多面手，被低估了。

Underrated.

被低估了。

But of course, I am a generalist.

但当然，我是一个多面手。

So am I.

我也是。

But a generalist is also a specialist.

但通才也是专家。

I sometimes say I specialize in being a generalist.

我有时会说我专长于成为一名多面手。

And it’s a specialty, too.

这也是一个专业。

It’s not different from specializing.

这和专攻没什么区别。

You’re just specializing in different things.

你只是专注于不同的事情。

Okay.

好的。

Let’s push on to some questions that aren’t about the book.

让我们继续讨论一些与本书无关的问题。

What are one or two of the most important things that individuals could do to raise economic growth, in your view?

您认为，个人可以做哪些一两件最重要的事情来促进经济增长？

Listeners, especially.

尤其是听众。

I think most people are actually pretty good at knowing their weaknesses.

我认为大多数人实际上很善于了解自己的弱点。

They’re often not very good at knowing their talents and strengths.

他们通常不太了解自己的才能和优势。

And I include highly successful people.

我也包括非常成功的人士。

You ask them to account for their success, and they’ll resort to a bunch of cliches, which are probably true, but not really getting at exactly what they are good at.

你要求他们解释自己的成功，他们会诉诸一堆陈词滥调，这些陈词滥调可能是正确的，但并没有真正了解他们所擅长的事情。

What are one or two of the most impactful things that individuals listening might be able to do to improve civilizational stability and resilience, make humanity last for longer?

倾听者可能能够做的最有影响力的一两件事是什么，可以提高文明的稳定性和复原力，使人类持续更长时间？

Other than increasing the growth rate.

除了提高增长率之外。

Well, they can vote wisely, of course.

好吧，他们当然可以明智地投票。

Innovate more in their careers — not an option for everyone, but for many people.

在职业生涯中进行更多创新 ——虽然不是每个人的选择，但对很多人来说是这样。

In terms of abuse of substances, just stop doing them, right?

就滥用药物而言，停止这样做吧？

Even if they know their own use is stable, to set an example for others, create a global norm.

即使他们知道自己的使用是稳定的，也要为他人树立榜样，创造全球规范。

And take common sense morality pretty seriously.

并非常认真地对待常识道德。

So you think alcoholism increases the risk of human extinction materially?

那么您认为酗酒会实质上增加人类灭绝的风险吗？

I would say it lowers our rate of economic growth, lowers the rate of innovation.

我想说它降低了我们的经济增长率，降低了创新率。

In the long run, we’re much worse off.

从长远来看，我们的处境会更糟。

So indirectly, that leads to a somewhat higher chance of the future collapsing.

因此间接地导致未来崩溃的可能性更高。

I don’t think directly it’s going to have that effect.

我不认为它会直接产生这种效果。

Because given how much conflict between China and the US looms as an existential risk within the foreseeable future, what about doing things like increasing immigration between those countries?

因为考虑到中美之间的冲突在可预见的未来将成为一种生存风险，那么增加这些国家之间的移民等措施又如何呢？

Trying to bring lots of Chinese people into the United States to make it less likely that they’ll fight?

试图让大量中国人进入美国以减少他们打架的可能性？

Or running scholarships to get the elite to move between those two countries so they’re all friends and they’re less likely to want to go to war?

或者提供奖学金让精英在这两个国家之间流动，这样他们都是朋友并且不太可能想要发动战争？

I favor both of those policies.

我赞成这两项政策。

I’m not sure we know how they will affect existential risk or the risk of a conflict.

我不确定我们是否知道它们将如何影响生存风险或冲突风险。

We’ve had many, many Chinese come to the United States.

我们有很多很多中国人来到美国。

Many have gone back to China.

许多人已经回到中国。

I’m not sure they advocate for on-net policies that lower risk, maybe because they’re more educated.

我不确定他们是否提倡降低风险的网上政策，也许是因为他们受过更多教育。

So one option is migrants come here and they go back, and they talk about how nice the United States is in some ways.

因此，一种选择是移民来到这里然后回去，他们谈论美国在某些方面是多么的好。

Or at least they feel some relationship with us so it’s not such a distant place.

或者至少他们觉得与我们有某种关系，所以这不是一个遥远的地方。

I don’t think that would affect the calculus of the Chinese government very much.

我认为这不会对中国政府的算计产生太大影响。

If it came to a major war, I think they would be willing to make sacrifices like that.

如果真有大战的话，我想他们是愿意做出这样的牺牲的。

But I don’t think the Chinese government thinks at all about attacking the United States.

但我认为中国政府根本没有想过攻击美国。

What about becoming a peace activist or something who advocates that the South China Sea is just not worth destroying the world over?

成为一名和平活动家或主张南海不值得摧毁世界的人怎么样？

Advocates just being very reluctant to have any significant war with a major power?

主张只是非常不愿意与大国发生任何重大战争？

Well, the Chinese have already had their way in the South China Sea.

嗯，中国人已经在南海得逞了。

We may have arrived at that outcome, whether we wanted it or not.

无论我们是否愿意，我们可能已经达到了这个结果。

Do you think a lot of listeners should potentially go join Philip Tetlock’s research agenda as a way of having more foresight about the problems we’ll face and how we might solve them?

您是否认为很多听众应该加入菲利普·泰洛克的研究议程，作为对我们将面临的问题以及我们如何解决这些问题有更多预见的一种方式？

The people who have the talents where they can contribute to Tetlock’s work, absolutely.

那些有才华的人绝对可以为 Tetlock 的工作做出贡献。

Speaking of Tetlock, are there any really important questions in economics or social science that .

说到 Tetlock，经济学或社会科学中是否有任何真正重要的问题。

.

。

.

。

What would be your top three questions that you’d love to see get more attention?

您最希望得到更多关注的三个问题是什么？

Well, what’s the single question is hard to say.

好吧，单一问题是什么很难说。

But in general, the role of what is sometimes called culture.

但总的来说，有时被称为文化的作用。

What is culture?

什么是文化？

How does environment matter?

环境有多重要？

I’m sure you know the twin studies where you have identical twins separated at birth, and they grow up in two separate environments and they seem to turn out more or less the same.

我相信你知道双胞胎研究，其中有同卵双胞胎在出生时就被分开，他们在两个不同的环境中长大，而且看起来或多或少是一样的。

That’s suggesting some kinds of environmental differences don’t matter.

这表明某些环境差异并不重要。

If the whole economics discipline came around to our view of having a deep concern for long-term future, what neglected topics do you think they might spend a lot more time on?

如果整个经济学学科都同意我们对长期未来深切关注的观点，您认为他们可能会在哪些被忽视的话题上花费更多时间？

I don’t think economists are the main problem.

我不认为经济学家是主要问题。

I would like to see more economists speak to the public.

我希望看到更多的经济学家向公众发表演讲。

It’s not really a single issue, but just take what they know and present it more often in digestible form and take greater care to take in a broader set of inputs from others.

这实际上并不是一个单一的问题，而只是采用他们所知道的内容，并以易于理解的形式更频繁地呈现它，并更加谨慎地吸收其他人更广泛的意见。

I do get that would involve them working harder, but we’ve already decided that’s their moral obligation.

我确实知道这会让他们更加努力地工作，但我们已经决定这是他们的道德义务。

So I’m happy to lecture them about that.

所以我很高兴向他们讲授这一点。

What fraction of academics, if they were going to try to do as much good as possible, would significantly change their research agenda?

如果学者们想要尽可能多地做好事，那么有多少比例的学者会显着改变他们的研究议程？

Well, they all would change it.

好吧，他们都会改变它。

Significantly is a tricky word.

显着是一个棘手的词。

I think a lot of schools–people should not do research at all and should devote more attention to teaching.

我认为很多学校——人们根本不应该做研究，而应该更多地关注教学。

That would probably be the single biggest change.

这可能是最大的变化。

So they would significantly change their agenda by abolishing it.

因此，他们将通过废除它来显着改变他们的议程。

That has to be a significant change, right?

这一定是一个重大的改变，对吧？

Go from K to zero in percentage terms.

以百分比形式从 K 到零。

It’s a big change.

这是一个很大的变化。

How do you know if you’re the kind of person who should do teaching or focus on teaching?

你怎么知道你是那种应该从事教学工作或者专注于教学的人？

I think most people actually already know.

我想大多数人实际上已经知道了。

But there are incentive structures where a lot of schools who should not be requiring publications for tenure are requiring it.

但是，存在激励结构，许多本来不应该要求发表终身教职的学校却要求这样做。

And people trod through the motions of doing their dutiful seven publications in lower-tier journals.

人们在低级期刊上尽职尽责地发表了七篇文章。

I think they know that system’s screwed up.

我想他们知道这个系统已经搞砸了。

How likely is it the case that the most important thing to track is not the global economic growth rate, but rather the relative growth rate of countries that have the best moral values versus those that have relatively worse moral values?

最重要的追踪指标不是全球经济增长率，而是道德价值观最佳国家与道德价值观相对较差国家的相对增长率，这种情况有多大可能？

That it’s a more Manichean vision of a future where the right people have to have power and influence.

这是一个更加摩尼教式的未来愿景，合适的人必须拥有权力和影响力。

It’s a very good question.

这是一个非常好的问题。

I don’t think we can say which countries have the best moral values.

我认为我们不能说哪些国家拥有最好的道德价值观。

A lot of people will tell you that’s the United States, but our longer-run history is a pretty brutal one, and we’ve treated a lot of disadvantaged groups very badly.

很多人会告诉你那是美国，但我们的长期历史是相当残酷的，我们对待很多弱势群体非常糟糕。

Do you think that people overstate or understate the differences both morally and otherwise between people in different countries?

您认为人们夸大还是低估了不同国家人民之间道德和其他方面的差异？

I think they overstate the differences.

我认为他们夸大了差异。

Most people are selfish in a wide variety of situations.

大多数人在很多情况下都是自私的。

And their environments change — they can be much better or much worse.

他们的环境也会发生变化——他们可能会变得更好，也可能会变得更糟。

But to really say these are the bad people, I’m pretty reluctant to do that.

但要真正说这些人是坏人，我很不愿意这样做。

So we should be more willing to defer and just give a free berth to other countries and less interest in conflict to contain them.

因此，我们应该更愿意推迟，只给其他国家一个自由的席位，而不是为了遏制它们而对冲突感兴趣。

Well, I don’t think that follows.

嗯，我不认为接下来会这样。

I guess I agree with what you’re saying, but the mere fact that the ordinary citizens in some country might be better than it seems doesn’t itself mean we shouldn’t intervene.

我想我同意你的说法，但某些国家的普通公民可能比看起来更好这一事实本身并不意味着我们不应该干预。

Looking back from today, people often say that one of the most important things in the 21st century was that the United States developed nuclear weapons before the Nazis did, and it could be of very great long-term significance that the US developed nuclear weapons first and then the Soviet Union next, rather than some other group of countries.

今天回想起来，人们常说，21世纪最重要的事情之一就是美国先于纳粹研制出核武器，而美国先研制出核武器，然后是苏联，而不是其他一些国家，可能具有非常重大的长远意义。

There’s a very good chance that matters.

有一个非常重要的机会。

And as you know, China and, actually, also Russia are experimenting pretty furiously with many new kinds of weapons, cyber weapons.

正如你所知，中国，实际上还有俄罗斯，正在疯狂地试验许多新型武器，网络武器。

The United States is probably ahead of them in most cases.

在大多数情况下，美国可能领先于他们。

I’m not even sure we always want the United States to be ahead.

我什至不确定我们是否总是希望美国领先。

Expand on that.

就此展开。

If you take, say, cyber weapons, we don’t know how much damage they can do.

比如说，如果你携带网络武器，我们不知道它们会造成多大的伤害。

But it could be that some weaker, but “more evil” countries having more powerful cyber weapons could bring about a sense of balance.

但一些较弱但“更邪恶”的国家拥有更强大的网络武器可能会带来一种平衡感。

It seems more likely that it would be destabilizing to have a more multipower world, with lots of different actors because any one conflict can be extremely dangerous, and you’ve got more connections between the different actors that matter.

更有可能的是，拥有一个更多权力的世界，有许多不同的参与者，会破坏稳定，因为任何一场冲突都可能极其危险，而且重要的不同参与者之间有更多的联系。

But you might be more robust.

但你可能会更坚强。

So the old story is two polarities of power versus many, and then the two looks pretty stable, right?

所以老故事是两种权力对立的对立，然后两者看起来相当稳定，对吧？

Deterrents.

威慑。

USA, USSR.

美国、苏联。

The world seems more resilient today in that it’s richer.

今天的世界似乎更加富有弹性，因为它更加富裕。

We can lose a lot of GDP without starving.

我们可以损失大量GDP而不会挨饿。

On the other hand, it seems less stable, less resilient because we’re all interconnected such that a disaster anywhere, like a disease, can spread everywhere very quickly, and there’s nowhere that’s protected from it.

另一方面，它似乎不太稳定，弹性也较差，因为我们都是相互联系的，任何地方的灾难，比如疾病，都可以很快地传播到各地，而且没有任何地方可以免受它的影响。

If you could start off with there being two separate planets operating independently and half the population on each, that would be better.

如果一开始就有两个独立的行星独立运行，每个行星上有一半的人口，那就更好了。

But given where we’re at, I don’t think there’s a way for that divorce to go amicably.

但考虑到我们目前的处境，我认为没有办法让离婚顺利进行。

Yeah, we’ve had a few nemeses, but it’s unclear whether the risk is greater or lower.

是的，我们有一些敌人，但尚不清楚风险是更大还是更低。

Right.

正确的。

It might be lower.

可能会更低。

Could be.

可能是。

How has the economics profession directly and significantly improved the lives of people on Earth over the last 75 years?

在过去 75 年里，经济学专业如何直接、显着地改善了地球上人们的生活？

What are the most important breakthroughs?

最重要的突破是什么？

Public health is the biggest breakthrough.

公共卫生是最大的突破。

By no means is it all or even mostly economists.

绝不是经济学家的全部，甚至大部分也不是。

But economists and economic ways of thinking have played a big role in allocating resources.

但经济学家和经济思维方式在资源配置方面发挥了很大作用。

You mentioned earlier the fact that particulate matter from coal and cars kills way more people than we imagine — or that most people think — and causes all kinds of other health issues.

您之前提到过，煤炭和汽车产生的颗粒物造成的死亡人数比我们想象的要多得多（或者大多数人认为的），并会导致各种其他健康问题。

Most people don’t care.

大多数人不在乎。

Most people don’t know about it.

大多数人都不知道。

It’s not a politically divisive issue where there’s one side motivated to do a great deal for it.

这不是一个政治分歧问题，一方有动力为此做很多事情。

Uber ran roughshod over laws all over the place, but in the process, increased GDP a lot.

Uber到处践踏法律，但在这个过程中，GDP增长了很多。

On balance, should we think that Uber is good or bad?

总的来说，我们应该认为 Uber 是好还是坏？

Of course it’s good, right?

当然很好，对吧？

And we use it.

我们使用它。

If Uber had had to ask permission, it might never have happened.

如果 Uber 必须征求许可，这可能永远不会发生。

It might have been, “Oh, you can do 1,000 trial vehicles, and 20 years later, we’ll revisit this.”

它可能是，“哦，你可以做 1,000 辆试验车，20 年后，我们会重新考虑这个。”

Don’t you worry that there could be significant downsides for reducing respect for the rule of law and that kind of institution?

您不担心减少对法治和此类机构的尊重可能会带来重大负面影响吗？

Well, as I understand what Uber did in the United States, it was not against the law.

嗯，据我了解 Uber 在美国的做法并不违法。

Simply no one had thought to write a law banning ride sharing because it hadn’t occurred to people.

根本没有人想到要制定一部禁止拼车的法律，因为人们没有想到这一点。

Yeah.

是的。

When local governments ban just ordinary economic activity, do you think people have any reason to follow those laws if they can get away with it?

当地方政府只是禁止普通的经济活动时，您认为如果人们可以逃脱惩罚，他们还有理由遵守这些法律吗？

Or are those laws just unjust and, in fact, they don’t give us any reasons for action?

或者这些法律只是不公正，事实上，它们没有给我们任何采取行动的理由？

The laws are unjust, but I don’t, in general, advocate people breaking the law.

法律是不公正的，但总的来说，我并不提倡人们违法。

I think they should work to change laws.

我认为他们应该努力改变法律。

There are some laws where the rights infringement on individuals is so great, you are justified in actually rebelling against the law.

有些法律对个人的权利侵犯是如此之大，你实际上有理由反抗法律。

But opening a taco truck isn’t as severe as that.

但开一辆墨西哥卷饼卡车并没有那么严重。

Correct.

正确的。

So if taco trucks are banned in a city and that’s a bad law, as it usually is, that everyone goes rogue, I think, has some negative long-run consequences.

因此，如果一个城市禁止墨西哥卷饼卡车，这是一项糟糕的法律，就像通常的情况一样，我认为每个人都会变得流氓，从而产生一些负面的长期后果。

So I don’t think that’s the best strategy.

所以我认为这不是最好的策略。

Arguably, immigration restrictions are the greatest human rights violation or among the greatest human rights violations.

可以说，移民限制是最严重的侵犯人权行为，或者是最严重的侵犯人权行为之一。

Should, then, people be willing to violate immigration law if they can get away with it?

那么，如果人们能够逃脱惩罚，他们是否应该愿意违反移民法呢？

Well, there’s different layers of immigration law.

嗯，移民法有不同的层次。

There’s the law that’s on the books, and that’s not the law which anyone intends.

书本上有法律，但这不是任何人想要的法律。

So the law’s put on the books with the understanding that there will be a certain level of illegal immigration, and this is desired and tolerated.

因此，法律在制定时就明确了将会有一定程度的非法移民，这是人们所希望和容忍的。

All right.

好的。

Let’s talk about animals for a moment.

我们先来谈谈动物吧。

You almost certainly think it’s wrong to cause animals to suffer.

你几乎肯定认为让动物受苦是错误的。

No. I don’t think suffering, per se .

不，我不认为痛苦本身。

.

。

.

。

All else equal?

其他都平等吗？

I don’t think all else can be equal.

我不认为其他一切都可以平等。

I think it’s wrong to raise animals in factory farms and design large-scale efficient institutions to torture them.

我认为在工厂化农场饲养动物并设计大规模高效的机构来折磨它们是错误的。

I would say that’s wrong.

我想说这是错误的。

Okay, but you think the suffering that we’re causing animals systematically in farms is wrong?

好吧，但你认为我们在农场系统地给动物造成的痛苦是错误的吗？

Absolutely.

绝对地。

At least intelligent animals.

至少是有智慧的动物。

So in light of that, is abstaining from eating meat a more moral diet, all else equal?

那么鉴于此，在其他条件相同的情况下，不吃肉是一种更道德的饮食吗？

Sure, yeah.

当然，是的。

And it helps with climate change.

它有助于应对气候变化。

If humanity continues for another thousand years, do you think we’ll take significant steps to improve the welfare of wild animals?

如果人类再延续一千年，您认为我们会采取重大措施来改善野生动物的福利吗？

A thousand years is a hard time horizon for forecasting.

一千年对于预测来说是一个困难的时间范围。

I don’t see it on any horizon that I can imagine.

在我能想象的任何地平线上我都看不到它。

I think humans are programmed to kill and eat animals and that we’re programmed to see that it’s not that wrong.

我认为人类生来就会杀死和吃动物，而且我们生来就知道这并没有那么错误。

The sociological concentration of vegans and vegetarians is quite striking.

纯素食者和素食者的社会学集中度相当惊人。

And even most of them actually eat meat, no matter what they may claim.

甚至他们中的大多数人实际上都吃肉，无论他们如何声称。

So my best guess is it won’t change for a very long time, if ever.

所以我最好的猜测是，如果有的话，它在很长一段时间内都不会改变。

Over time, if economic growth continues, we’ll be fabulously wealthy by that point in time.

随着时间的推移，如果经济持续增长，到那时我们将变得非常富有。

So we’ll be able to afford doing even things that we have weak inclinations to do.

因此，我们甚至有能力做那些我们不太愿意做的事情。

Or we might also have either much better philosophy — ideas might have changed, ideology might have changed.

或者我们也可能有更好的哲学——思想可能已经改变，意识形态可能已经改变。

No. I think people are programmed to enjoy meat.

不，我认为人们生来就喜欢吃肉。

And that biology is stronger than the changes you mentioned.

这种生物学比你提到的变化更强大。

Again, a long enough time horizon, all sorts of things can change.

同样，在足够长的时间范围内，各种事情都可能发生变化。

If we simply invent something better than meat, right?

如果我们只是发明比肉更好的东西，对吧？

Of course, people will change for selfish reasons, and at some point, that may well happen.

当然，人们会出于自私的原因而改变，并且在某些时候，这种情况很可能会发生。

But I think you have to get to that point.

但我认为你必须达到这一点。

I’ll be shocked for us to still be eating animals the way that we produce them now in a couple hundred years because I suspect that we’ll produce meat in a much more efficient way that doesn’t involve torturing animals.

如果我们在几百年后仍然以现在生产动物的方式吃动物，我会感到震惊，因为我怀疑我们会以一种更有效的方式生产肉类，而不涉及折磨动物。

That’s certainly possibly true.

这当然可能是真的。

But the ventures I hear about going on now seem, to me, quite overrated.

但在我看来，我现在听说的那些正在进行的冒险活动似乎被高估了。

And I don’t think they’re really close to catching on.

而且我认为他们还没有真正流行起来。

But in the long run, you think there’s a good chance they will.

但从长远来看，你认为他们很有可能会这样做。

Over some very long run, yes.

从长远来看，是的。

Yeah, yeah.

是啊是啊。

But setting aside the meat thing, it seems like there’s two questions here.

但撇开肉的事情不谈，这里似乎有两个问题。

One thing would be that, yes, we want to eat meat, and we’ll be eating meat in some form regardless.

有一件事是，是的，我们想吃肉，无论如何我们都会以某种形式吃肉。

I don’t think we will.

我认为我们不会。

We engineer nature somewhat right now: We manage deer populations.

我们现在对自然进行了一些改造：我们管理鹿群。

You might keep coyotes out of a national park.

您可以将土狼排除在国家公园之外。

As we get richer, we’ll do more of it, but again, I think we’re largely indifferent to what I’m calling nature.

随着我们变得更富有，我们会做更多的事情，但我再次认为，我们对我所说的自然基本上漠不关心。

But it seems like on your view, you should think that, while we don’t know what the correct moral trade-off is between humans and animals, there is a correct moral trade-off.

但在你看来，你应该认为，虽然我们不知道人类和动物之间正确的道德权衡是什么，但存在正确的道德权衡。

It’s just very hard to figure out what it is.

很难弄清楚它是什么。

I’m not sure what we would make reference to to make that trade-off.

我不确定我们会参考什么来进行权衡。

There’s some intuitionism, like gratuitous cruelty to animals — even not very intelligent ones — people seem to think is bad.

有一些直觉主义，比如无缘无故地虐待动物 ——“即使是不太聪明的动物”——人们似乎认为这是不好的。

That’s easy enough to buy into.

这很容易购买。

But you support interpersonal aggregation across humans.

但你支持人类之间的人际聚合。

Then it just seems like there should be a similar principle — though more difficult to apply in practice — that would apply to a chimpanzee and a human?

那么似乎应该有一个类似的原则——尽管在实践中应用起来更困难——适用于黑猩猩和人类？

We’re very far from knowing what is.

我们还远远不知道到底是什么。

But chimpanzees are pretty close to humans.

但黑猩猩与人类非常接近。

That strikes me as quite possible.

我觉得这很有可能。

But if you’re talking about bees and humans .

但如果你谈论的是蜜蜂和人类。

.

。

.

。

What if another billion bees can exist, but one human has to have ongoing problems with migraine headaches?

如果另外十亿只蜜蜂可以存在，但一个人必须患有偏头痛，该怎么办？

My best guess is we will never have a way of really solving that question using ethics.

我最好的猜测是，我们永远无法用道德来真正解决这个问题。

Yeah.

是的。

I agree that the practical problem gets very severe when you’re comparing humans and insects.

我同意，当你比较人类和昆虫时，实际问题会变得非常严重。

But I think, in principle, the solution follows the same kind of process as when you’re comparing humans and other humans and chimps.

但我认为，原则上，解决方案遵循与比较人类和其他人类和黑猩猩时相同的过程。

I’m not sure the practical problem is different from the conceptual problem.

我不确定实际问题与概念问题是否不同。

I think it’s a conceptual problem, not a practical one.

我认为这是一个概念问题，而不是实际问题。

We could hook up all the measurements to those bees we want, and at the end of the day, whether a billion of them is worth a migraine headache for a human .

我们可以将所有测量结果与我们想要的蜜蜂联系起来，最终确定十亿只蜜蜂是否值得让人类感到偏头痛。

.

。

.

。

But you say you’re a moral realist.

但你说你是一个道德现实主义者。

Shouldn’t there be an answer then?

那不应该有答案吗？

I don’t think there’s an answer to every question under moral realism.

我认为道德现实主义下的每个问题都没有答案。

Is it possible that murdering nonhuman animals might be morally prohibited in the same way that, because of human rights, it’s morally prohibited to murder another human?

谋杀非人类动物是否可能在道德上受到禁止，就像出于人权的原因，在道德上禁止谋杀另一个人一样？

Oh, of course.

哦，当然。

Even if that’s unlikely, and it sounds like you think it might not be that unlikely just because of moral uncertainty.

即使这不太可能，而且听起来你认为仅仅因为道德不确定性，这可能并不是那么不可能。

Because it might be morally prohibited and might just be really terrible, we should abstain from murdering animals.

因为这可能在道德上是被禁止的，而且可能真的很可怕，所以我们应该避免杀害动物。

As much as we can.

尽我们所能。

Yes.

是的。

All right, let’s talk about discourse more broadly.

好吧，让我们更广泛地讨论一下话语。

In general, when writing, your approach seems to be to canvas many different considerations without feeling a strong need to really settle any issue definitively or take a really strong stance or stick with one topic at great length.

一般来说，在写作时，你的方法似乎是考虑许多不同的考虑因素，而不强烈需要真正明确地解决任何问题或采取真正强硬的立场或长时间坚持一个主题。

It’s my comparative advantage.

这是我的比较优势。

If I’m saying more people should be generalists, more will be doing that.

如果我说更多的人应该成为通才，那么就会有更多的人这样做。

But I would also stress the arguments in this book and my other books — I typically address a lot of the points at greater length in journal articles or subsequent blog posts or responses to reviews or even in podcasts like this one.

但我也会强调这本书和我的其他书中的论点 —— 我通常会在期刊文章或后续博客文章或评论回复甚至像这样的播客中更详细地阐述许多观点。

When I interviewed Tetlock, he said that it’s good not to publicly commit to what your sincere views are because then, it makes you much more flexible.

当我采访泰特洛克时，他说，最好不要公开承诺你的真诚观点，因为那样会让你更加灵活。

You don’t feel like there’s any loss of face when you seem to change your views.

当你似乎改变观点时，你不会觉得有任何丢脸的感觉。

Do you think that that’s something that you do?

你认为那是你所做的事吗？

No. I try to put out a great number of views on the table but be very willing to revise them.

不。我试图提出大量的观点，但也非常愿意修改它们。

So if I put forward a view, it is a sincere view.

所以如果我提出一个观点，那是一个真诚的观点。

Then to show people later on you’re changing your mind is one of the valuable things you can communicate, maybe more valuable than the view itself.

然后向人们展示你正在改变主意是你可以传达的有价值的事情之一，也许比观点本身更有价值。

It seems like with perhaps effective altruism and cryptocurrency, in one case, you were positive about effective altruism, then became more negative about it once other people had appreciated its virtues.

似乎对于有效的利他主义和加密货币来说，在一种情况下，你对有效的利他主义持积极态度，但一旦其他人意识到它的优点，你就会变得更加消极。

Right.

正确的。

The important thing is to say, “Now this is maybe overrated.” With crypto, when people were talking about how great it was, you said it was bad, and then vice versa.

重要的是要说：“现在这可能被高估了。”对于加密货币，当人们谈论它有多么伟大时，你说它很糟糕，然后反之亦然。

Do you see that role where you want to push in the direction that you think people’s views ought to change?

您是否认为您希望推动这个角色朝着您认为人们的观点应该改变的方向发展？

Yes.

是的。

And you see what people are saying and what points are missing, and that’s where you can add the most value.

你会看到人们在说什么以及缺少哪些要点，这就是你可以增加最大价值的地方。

People sometimes will think you’ve changed your mind more than you have, but so be it.

人们有时会认为你改变主意的程度比实际情况要大，但也只能这样了。

Just emphasizing a different side of the same view.

只是强调同一观点的不同侧面。

Yeah.

是的。

Why do you allow comments on Marginal Revolution?

为什么允许对《边际革命》发表评论？

It seems like you’re putting all this effort into putting up a huge audience, and then random people can hijack it and get very large numbers of your readers to read whatever random thing they put in.

看起来你付出了所有的努力来吸引大量的读者，然后随机的人可以劫持它并让大量的读者阅读他们放入的任何随机内容。

Well, anyone who reads the comments does so voluntarily.

好吧，任何阅读评论的人都是自愿这样做的。

Some of the comments are quite good.

有些评论说得还不错。

Many are bad.

很多都是不好的。

But the comments create context for the post.

但这些评论为这篇文章创造了背景。

I love writing a post where I just tell the person where my mind is at, and I really don’t give them any background.

我喜欢写一篇文章，我只是告诉人们我的想法，而且我真的不给他们任何背景。

Yeah.

是的。

I feel like it’s a self-control issue for me here, where I always read the comments even though I feel like I’m being harmed while I’m doing it.

我觉得这对我来说是一个自我控制问题，我总是阅读评论，尽管我觉得自己在这样做时受到了伤害。

Or at least on reflection.

或者至少反思一下。

But maybe they are useful to you, right?

但也许它们对你有用，对吧？

Yeah, but maybe I was wrong about what I think I want I want.

是的，但也许我对自己想要的东西的看法是错误的。

If you have the self-control to work in a non-profit, 80,000 Hours, that does all this good and you follow the obligation for your maximally do-gooding career, probably your decision on reading the comments is also the right one.

如果你有自我控制能力，可以在非营利组织“80,000 小时”中工作，这会带来所有这些好处，并且你遵守最大限度地行善事业的义务，那么你阅读评论的决定可能也是正确的。

It doesn’t mean everyone should read the comments.

这并不意味着每个人都应该阅读评论。

Most people don’t.

大多数人都没有。

Yeah.

是的。

the Atlantic had comments until, I think, six months ago, and then they shut it down because they’re saying these are too low-quality.

我想，《大西洋月刊》直到六个月前才发表评论，然后他们将其关闭，因为他们说这些内容质量太低。

But theirs were just worthless, right?

但他们的东西毫无价值，对吧？

I don’t think it gave people any context.

我认为它没有给人们任何背景。

Their articles — they’re written like mainstream media articles.

他们的文章 ——他们写得像主流媒体文章。

They start off with an anecdote, and they give you all this context.

他们以一则轶事开始，并向您提供所有背景信息。

And readers like me are maybe bored until paragraph 17.

像我这样的读者可能会在第 17 段之前感到无聊。

“Ah, here’s the part I didn’t know.”

“啊，这是我不知道的部分。”

Yeah.

是的。

It was just odd that I would always read those comments, even though I thought they’re bad.

奇怪的是我总是会读这些评论，尽管我认为它们很糟糕。

And I was so glad when they took that option away from me.

当他们从我手中夺走这个选择时，我感到非常高兴。

Well, I’m an employee of George Mason University, so there are a lot of matters where my university speaks for the university.

嗯，我是乔治梅森大学的员工，所以很多事情都是我的大学代表大学。

They do not, in any way, censor or limit what I say.

他们不会以任何方式审查或限制我所说的内容。

But it feels, to me, appropriate that I should let them be the spokesperson for all sorts of things that happen on campus.

但对我来说，让他们成为校园里发生的各种事情的代言人是合适的。

Do you ever shy away from controversial topics, not spend capital that you want to reserve for other, more important issues?

您是否曾经回避过有争议的话题，而不将您想保留的资金用于其他更重要的问题？

Oh sure, but usually those same topics — I’m bored with them.

哦，当然，但通常都是同样的话题 —— 我对它们感到厌倦。

There’s a lot of social justice issues people cover in great, great detail.

人们非常详细地讨论了很多社会正义问题。

Like how wrong or not wrong was the latest thing Trump did or said people cover in great detail.

就像特朗普最近所做的或所说的事情有多么错误或没有错误一样，人们对此进行了详细报道。

Obviously, that’s important.

显然，这很重要。

He’s president.

他是总统。

Do you have a worry that you shy away from important topics, perhaps because they’re not intellectually challenging enough in that way?

您是否担心自己会回避重要的话题，也许是因为它们在智力上没有足够的挑战性？

Of course.

当然。

I’m pretty selfish, but I do cover a lot of topics.

我很自私，但我确实涵盖了很多话题。

It’s possible I’ve written about more topics than any economist who’s ever lived.

我所写的主题可能比有史以来任何一位经济学家都多。

If the charge against me is, I’m not doing enough topics, I might be guilty, but surely there are better criticisms of me than that one, right?

如果对我的指控是，我做的话题不够多，我可能有罪，但肯定还有比这个更好的批评，对吧？

Right.

正确的。

Let’s say that you were a little bit more altruistic, you were a bit more willing to sacrifice your welfare to do some more good.

假设你更无私一点，你更愿意牺牲自己的福利去做更多的好事。

What would be one of the most efficient changes you could make in your life to do that?

为此，您一生中可以做出的最有效的改变之一是什么？

Well one possibility, we don’t know, would be for me to take one topic and devote my whole life to it.

好吧，我们不知道，一种可能性是我选择一个主题并将一生奉献给它。

Peter Singer’s a version of that.

彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）就是其中的一个版本。

He’s more than one topic, but it’s kind of all in one direction, and he’s had a lot of impact by repeating the same message over and over in different forums, different ways.

他的话题不止一个，但都是朝着一个方向，他通过在不同的论坛上以不同的方式一遍又一遍地重复同一信息，产生了很大的影响。

I’ve heard that some academics find it frustrating that you’re very famous and you’ve done that by addressing the public directly rather than going through papers and Econometrica.

我听说一些学者感到沮丧，因为你非常出名，而且你是通过直接向公众讲话而不是通过论文和计量经济学来做到这一点。

Do you think that more academics should copy your example?

您认为更多的学者应该效仿您的例子吗？

Well, there are different ways you can view what my example is.

好吧，您可以通过不同的方式查看我的示例。

I’ve spent more than 20 years of my career, almost all my energy, publishing papers in journals.

我把20多年的职业生涯、几乎所有的精力都花在了在期刊上发表论文上。

I have five or six papers in top three journals.

我在前三名期刊上有五六篇论文。

People may or may not agree with those papers, but I’m very glad I did that training and have that background.

人们可能同意也可能不同意这些论文，但我很高兴我接受了这些培训并拥有这样的背景。

But it seems like most of your fame came later.

但你的名声似乎大多是后来才出现的。

Sure.

当然。

It’s a different kind of fame.

这是一种不同的名声。

I would say to people who want to be public intellectuals to do some version of something rigorous early on for quite a few years.

我会对那些想成为公共知识分子的人说，要在相当长的几年里尽早做一些严格的事情。

If you can, I recommend that.

如果可以的话，我推荐这样做。

I don’t recommend that people try to avoid it, but situations will differ.

我不建议人们试图避免它，但情况会有所不同。

Some people, they’re just bad at school.

有些人，他们只是在学校表现不好。

They don’t even have a college degree.

他们甚至没有大学学位。

They can be significant public intellectuals.

他们可以成为重要的公共知识分子。

In terms of people who are extremely good at providing valuable links to read, I think there’s you and maybe Denis Dutton, who did Arts & Letters Daily?

就那些非常擅长提供有价值的阅读链接的人而言，我认为有你，也许还有《艺术与文学日报》的丹尼斯·达顿(Denis Dutton)？

I think that’s his name.

我想这就是他的名字。

Correct.

正确的。

Who else would you put on that list as really good sources for good content for year after year after year?

您还会将谁列入该名单，作为年复一年优质内容的真正良好来源？

Robert Cottrell, who runs The Browser, and he is The Browser.

罗伯特·科特雷尔（Robert Cottrell）是“浏览器”的运营者，他就是“浏览器”。

A lot of people love The Browser.

很多人喜欢浏览器。

I don’t think as many people know, it’s this one person, Bob Cottrell.

我想很多人都不知道，这个人就是鲍勃·科特雷尔（Bob Cottrell）。

Very, very nice man.

非常非常好的一个人。

Brilliant.

杰出的。

Widely read, deeply read.

广读、深读。

Super underrated, I would say.

我想说，超级被低估了。

He’s who comes to mind.

我想到的就是他。

It seems like, standing at that nexus between what people read and what you want them to read, it gives you, actually, substantial influence.

看起来，站在人们阅读的内容和你希望他们阅读的内容之间的联系上，它实际上会给你带来巨大的影响力。

Why don’t more people try to get that kind of power by becoming someone who people refer to to figure out what to read?

为什么没有更多的人尝试通过成为人们参考的人来确定该读什么来获得这种力量呢？

I was just wondering this last night.

昨晚我只是想知道这个问题。

It seems to me there’s market room for very good .

在我看来，非常好的产品还有市场空间。

.

。

.

。

They don’t have to quite literally be blogs, but blog-like entities, also podcasts.

它们不一定是字面上的博客，而是类似博客的实体，也是播客。

Some media companies are clearing out of the podcast space.

一些媒体公司正在退出播客领域。

That may or may not make money, but it’s a great way to reach people.

这可能会赚钱，也可能不会赚钱，但这是接触人们的好方法。

Maybe it’s the demands on those who do it are just really quite high, and it’s tough.

也许是对做这件事的人的要求真的很高，而且很艰难。

Independently wealthy or something to afford it.

独立富裕或负担得起的东西。

Even if you’re independently wealthy, you need to invest a lot of years of compound learning and stick with it.

即使你独立富裕，你也需要投入多年的复合学习并坚持下去。

Then, if you’re talented, maybe you could earn more money doing something else.

然后，如果你有才华，也许你可以做其他事情赚更多的钱。

I’m surprised how few people do it.

我很惊讶很少有人这样做。

Actually, I still can’t figure this out.

其实这个问题我还是想不通。

It’s a market cap.

这是一个市值。

Do you have a hypothesis?

你有一个假设吗？

No, I guess I just .

不，我想我只是。

.

。

.

。

You do a version of it yourself.

你自己做一个版本。

I do this to some extent, so I’m not sure why there isn’t more competition, but please don’t join in and compete with us.

我在某种程度上这样做，所以我不确定为什么没有更多的竞争，但请不要加入并与我们竞争。

I try all the more.

我更加努力。

I think the best way to go about keeping epistemic humility is to try to write out the arguments of the side you disagree with it.

我认为保持认知谦逊的最好方法是尝试写出你不同意的一方的论点。

In part, I use Marginal Revolution as a vehicle for that.

在某种程度上，我使用《边际革命》作为实现这一目标的工具。

It’s a selfish use for me.

这对我来说是一种自私的用途。

I think from memory in Superforecasting, that was perhaps the most important characteristic for making accurate forecasts, was that you had gone through the step of arguing actively for the other side.

我觉得《超级预测》里的记忆中，做出准确预测最重要的特征可能就是你经历了积极为对方辩护的步骤。

Right.

正确的。

From the one that you already believed.

来自你已经相信的那个。

Yeah.

是的。

Another post that you wrote in the past that really stuck with me to this day, is to say that people don’t want to acknowledge the messiness of life and decision-making, that, when they’re asked a question like, “Why are you doing what you’re doing today?” they give us this neat narrative where it’s like it seems inevitable that they ended up where they are.

你过去写的另一篇文章至今仍让我印象深刻，它是说人们不想承认生活和决策的混乱，当他们被问到“你为什么要做今天所做的事情？”之类的问题时，他们不想承认这一点。他们给了我们一个简洁的叙述，似乎他们最终不可避免地走到了现在的位置。

We’re overly invested in narratives.

我们过度投入于叙事。

That’s the theme of my TED Talk, but narratives are also impossible to avoid, so we’re always living with this contradiction.

这是我 TED 演讲的主题，但叙事也是不可避免的，所以我们总是生活在这种矛盾之中。

Then economists have this dual problem.

那么经济学家就会面临这个双重问题。

They have simple theories, and the world’s always more complex.

他们的理论很简单，而世界总是更加复杂。

If we received a message from aliens, what do you think are the chances that it would be designed to disable us as a competitive civilization in the race to colonize the universe?

如果我们收到来自外星人的信息，你认为它被设计成使我们在殖民宇宙的竞赛中成为一个有竞争力的文明的可能性有多大？

I would assume that aliens have some kind of decentralized society and a lot of different kinds of messages are being sent out, as indeed would be the case from planet Earth.

我认为外星人有某种分散的社会，并且正在发送许多不同类型的信息，就像地球上的情况一样。

It seems like on your view, that actually shouldn’t be the case because all of the decentralized ones will destroy themselves.

在你看来，实际上不应该是这样，因为所有去中心化的都会自我毁灭。

I would think the decentralized ones would be more robust, if you look at the most robust societies today.

如果你看看当今最强大的社会，我认为去中心化的社会会更加强大。

North Korea is highly centralized.

朝鲜是高度集权的。

I suspect it’s not very robust.

我怀疑它不是很稳健。

If the aliens have spread to other planets, if they’re able to reach us with messages, they’ll have some technology.

如果外星人已经扩散到其他星球，如果他们能够向我们传达信息，他们就会拥有一些技术。

Odds are, the message is intended to raise the status of some group within alien society, and it will be pretty harmless.

很有可能，这条信息的目的是提高外星社会中某些群体的地位，而且它是相当无害的。

You don’t think that, even with fullness of maturity of technology and these aliens hypothetically have probably colonized a large part of the universe, that they’ll still be playing status games, that that will still be a big part of their activity?

你不认为，即使技术已经完全成熟，并且假设这些外星人可能已经殖民了宇宙的很大一部分，他们仍然会玩地位游戏，这仍然是他们活动的重要组成部分？

That’s what motivates them to colonize the universe, right?

这就是他们殖民宇宙的动力，对吗？

Something has to.

有些事必须如此。

What about just moral values, ideology?

那么道德价值观、意识形态呢？

They want to generate value by getting matter and compiling it the way they think is best.

他们希望通过获取物质并按照他们认为最好的方式进行编译来创造价值。

Well, it’s overdetermined as it is with humans, right?

嗯，就像人类一样，它是过度决定的，对吧？

Incentives are always going to matter.

激励措施总是很重要。

Status incentives are not the only one, but if you have decentralized incentives, you’re going to have money and status and just propagation of ideology mattering, and then the broadcasters will tend to be those overinvested in messages.

地位激励并不是唯一的激励措施，但如果你有分散的激励措施，你就会拥有金钱和地位，并且意识形态的传播也很重要，然后广播公司往往会过度投资于信息。

Yeah.

是的。

The message to me is slightly reassuring.

这个消息让我稍微放心了一些。

It’s kind of like the knock on the door as opposed to the bullet in the back of the head.

这有点像敲门声，而不是后脑勺的子弹。

It seems like you’re pretty skeptical of a world government appearing anytime soon.

看来你对世界政府​​很快就会出现持怀疑态度。

Absolutely.

绝对地。

Absolutely, so am I.

绝对的，我也是。

But it also seems like there’s a long-term trend, as Robin Hanson has pointed out, towards more greater and greater concentration, that the units of governance are getting larger progressively over time, from villages now to enormous countries.

但正如罗宾·汉森（Robin Hanson）指出的那样，似乎还存在一种长期趋势，即越来越集中，治理单位随着时间的推移而逐渐扩大，从现在的村庄到大国。

I think you’re always going to have rival blocs of some kind because the notion of having unity and no enemy doesn’t seem like a stable equilibrium to me.

我认为你总是会遇到某种形式的敌对集团，因为团结且没有敌人的概念对我来说似乎并不是一个稳定的平衡。

Although both Scotland and Catalonia wanted to do that in part because then they would still be part of this broader EU in their view — that would give them many of the benefits of being part of a large state.

尽管苏格兰和加泰罗尼亚都希望这样做，部分原因是在他们看来，那样他们仍然是这个更广泛的欧盟的一部分——这将给他们带来作为一个大国的一部分所带来的许多好处。

But the EU itself probably will become less powerful over the next 10 years as you have, say, parts of Eastern Europe not following all the strictures.

但欧盟本身的力量在未来十年内可能会变得不那么强大，因为东欧部分地区不遵守所有限制。

And to keep itself together, it’ll be more of a thing on paper.

为了保持团结，这将更多地是在纸上谈兵。

I could see that going either way.

我可以看到这两种情况都会发生。

It seems like .

看起来像。

.

。

.

。

Either way, but to think there’s some trend toward more and more centralization .

不管怎样，但要认为存在着越来越集中化的趋势。

.

。

.

。

Not necessarily.

未必。

Yeah, not necessarily.

是的，不一定。

But you think there’s some chance that we’ll end up with big…

但你认为我们最终有可能得到大……

like the UN or some successor group or a hegemon of multiple different countries joining together, having a lot of power.

就像联合国或某个后继集团或多个不同国家联合起来的霸权，拥有很大的权力。

That’s a possible future?

这是一个可能的未来吗？

Possible future, but it’s not my modal prediction.

可能的未来，但这不是我的模态预测。

If the United States could double its rate of economic growth in exchange for adopting, wholesale, Chinese moral values, is that something that they ought to do?

如果美国能够以双倍的经济增长率来换取全面采用中国的道德价值观，这是他们应该做的事情吗？

Well again, what are Chinese moral values?

那么，中国人的道德价值观是什么？

Most Chinese moral values are the same as American moral values.

大多数中国人的道德价值观与美国的道德价值观相同。

So it sounds like yes is the answer.

所以听起来答案是肯定的。

Are there some ways in which they’re making good decisions and we’re not?

是不是在某些方面他们能做出正确的决定而我们却不能？

Absolutely, but we have a more responsive, flexible system.

当然，但我们有一个反应更灵敏、更灵活的系统。

I don’t want the Chinese system of government in the United States.

我不希望美国采用中国的政府制度。

I think it would destroy us, even if it’s doing okay for them.

我认为这会毁了我们，即使这对他们来说还不错。

Chinese values, lock, stock and barrel, I say absolutely no.

中国人的价值观，锁、枪托和枪管，我说绝对不。

Yes.

是的。

That seems like a really important point to me.

这对我来说似乎非常重要。

I guess though, we’re slightly returning toward the conversation we were having earlier.

但我想，我们正在稍微回到之前的对话。

Well mostly they do.

嗯，大多数情况下他们都是这样做的。

But it’s these unlikely events that can arise through miscalculations.

但正是这些不太可能发生的事件可能因误算而发生。

So you still struggle over things at the margin.

所以你仍然在边缘的事情上挣扎。

In part, precisely because things are peaceful, you feel you can struggle at the margin.

在某种程度上，正是因为一切都很平静，你觉得自己可以在边缘挣扎。

Yeah.

是的。

What do you think is more likely to destroy civilization?

你认为什么更有可能毁灭文明？

An accidental use of nuclear weapons or deliberate use of nuclear weapons?

意外使用核武器还是故意使用核武器？

Accidental means some kind of false alarm.

意外意味着某种误报。

Some kind of false alarm.

某种误报。

It might even be partially justified, but not what you want to have happen.

它甚至可能是部分合理的，但不是您希望发生的事情。

Second-strike capability often means giving commanders some autonomy, and that’s dangerous.

二次打击能力通常意味着给予指挥官一定的自主权，这是危险的。

They probably have substantial autonomy today in most of these countries.

今天，他们在大多数国家中可能拥有很大的自治权。

We’re not even sure how much, if only because of imperfect systems.

我们甚至不确定有多少，哪怕只是因为系统不完善。

Autonomous commanders making risky decisions, and maybe some are good, but some will turn out to be very bad.

自治指挥官做出冒险的决定，也许有些是好的，但有些会变得非常糟糕。

That, to me, seems a lot more likely than mad, evil leaders pressing buttons and screaming, “Die you enemy pigs.”

在我看来，这似乎比疯狂、邪恶的领导人按下按钮并尖叫“去死吧，你们这些敌人的猪”更有可能。

Do you have a favorite nuclear near-miss story?

你有最喜欢的核事故故事吗？

Well, there’s the stories we know about.

嗯，这是我们所知道的故事。

The Soviet commander who aborted the return launch, and it turned out to be a mistake.

苏联指挥官中止了返航发射，结果证明这是一个错误。

The Cuban missile crisis, of course.

当然是古巴导弹危机。

We’ve come closer than we ought to have a few times, and how much those systems are improved, I don’t personally know, but I would take such improvements to be a major priority.

我们已经有几次比我们应该有的目标更接近了，这些系统改进了多少，我个人不知道，但我会把这些改进作为一个主要优先事项。

Both of us agree that it’s pretty unlikely that climate change is going to lead to human extinction or even probably a collapse of civilization.

我们都同意，气候变化不太可能导致人类灭绝，甚至可能导致文明崩溃。

I think we’d be screwed.

我想我们会完蛋的。

I think the greatest risk of climate change, even the less drastic scenarios, is our own response to it.

我认为气候变化的最大风险，即使是不太严重的情况，也是我们自己对它的反应。

In the London report, I think they estimate 3 to 4 percent of global GDP is lost through climate change, and they are not denialists.

在伦敦报告中，我认为他们估计全球 GDP 的 3% 到 4% 因气候变化而损失，而且他们并不是否认者。

That strikes me as oddly low.

这让我觉得奇怪地低。

Do you think that, in the next hundred years, there’s any chance that we’ll mine asteroids and use their resources on it?

你认为在接下来的一百年里，我们有可能开采小行星并利用其资源吗？

I don’t feel I have the expertise to answer that question, but I don’t know of any reason why we couldn’t.

我觉得我没有专业知识来回答这个问题，但我不知道为什么我们不能回答这个问题。

Interesting.

有趣的。

Okay.

好的。

It doesn’t sound like a high-value activity to me, but I don’t know what’s on the asteroids.

对我来说，这听起来不像是一项高价值的活动，但我不知道小行星上有什么。

I’m not sure how much we know.

我不确定我们知道多少。

It’s a scenario that I haven’t read much about.

这是一个我没有读过太多内容的场景。

I’ve read several engineering-oriented papers that say that colonizing other planets is a relatively straightforward thing technologically speaking.

我读过几篇以工程为导向的论文，这些论文说从技术角度来说，殖民其他行星是一件相对简单的事情。

Not right now, but it’s very foreseeable that we’ll have the technology to do that in future.

现在还不行，但可以预见的是，我们将来将拥有做到这一点的技术。

What do you think is the chances that those papers would convince you that we might go to space?

你认为这些论文让你相信我们可能进入太空的可能性有多大？

If the question is, will we have a colony on Mars, I would bet yes.

如果问题是，我们会在火星上建立殖民地吗？我敢打赌是的。

If the question is, will Mars become a populated planet and civilization in some way akin to Earth, I would bet no.

如果问题是，火星会以某种类似于地球的方式成为一个人口稠密的星球和文明，我打赌不会。

If we ever do develop a kind of machine intelligence that’s similar to humans, wouldn’t that make it a lot easier to go to space and potentially colonize places very far away?

如果我们真的开发出一种类似于人类的机器智能，那不是会让我们更容易进入太空并有可能在很远的地方殖民吗？

So the scenario is that we send AI, and AI carries genetic material and terraforms?

那么场景是我们发送AI，AI携带遗传物质和地形？

No, no, there’s no need to reconstitute humans.

不不，没有必要改造人类。

It’s just that the life that travels there is a technological one — on silicon or whatever is the future equivalent of silicon.

只是在那里传播的生命是一种技术生命——在硅或任何未来与硅相当的东西上。

Humans don’t go, but intelligence does leave the solar system.

人类没有离开太阳系，但智慧确实离开了太阳系。

I wouldn’t think of that as life.

我不会认为那是生活。

We could send really good cash registers to Jupiter and Saturn right now.

我们现在就可以向木星和土星发送非常好的收银机。

Actually, we do sometimes.

事实上，我们有时也会这样做。

I’m fine with doing it, but I don’t think it is necessarily self-aware.

我这样做很好，但我认为这不一定是自我意识。

Okay.

好的。

You think it’s not possible for computers in some configuration to be self-aware the way that .

您认为某些配置下的计算机不可能以这种方式具有自我意识。

.

。

.

。

It must be possible because you and I are computers, and we’re self-aware.

这一定是可能的，因为你和我都是计算机，而且我们有自我意识。

But it seems to me very far away, and the directions AI is moving in, where it’s had a lot of success, are very powerful cash registers, which is wonderful but not self-aware.

但在我看来，这似乎很遥远，人工智能正在发展的方向（它已经取得了很大的成功）是非常强大的收银机，这很棒，但没有自我意识。

Yeah.

是的。

I agree that the current technology isn’t going to produce self-awareness, but it seems to me there’s some chance in the next couple of hundred years we’ll have computers that are both as smart as humans — maybe more so — and that there’s at least a good reason to think that they might have conscious experiences the way that humans do.

我同意当前的技术不会产生自我意识，但在我看来，在接下来的几百年里，我们有可能拥有像人类一样聪明的计算机——“也许更聪明”——而且至少有一个充分的理由认为它们可能像人类一样拥有有意识的体验。

But if you think materials really matter, and I do, it could be self-aware entities have to be biological in some sense, and that thus, they’re going to be relatively fragile.

但如果你认为材料真的很重要，我也这么认为，那么可能是有自我意识的实体在某种意义上必须是生物的，因此，它们将相对脆弱。

We know how to build more human beings.

我们知道如何培养更多的人。

It’s even a pretty fun technology, doesn’t cost that much.

这甚至是一项非常有趣的技术，而且成本并不高。

It seems like you were saying just a minute ago that humans are conscious because there’re computers.

好像你刚刚才说人类有意识是因为有计算机。

So it seems like it should be, in principle, possible, but in as much as we can do computations on some other system, don’t you think there’s a good chance that they would feel something?

所以原则上来说这应该是可能的，但只要我们可以在其他系统上进行计算，您不认为他们很有可能感受到某些东西吗？

I just suspect the materials really matter, and biological materials have some properties that silicon and metal don’t.

我只是怀疑材料确实很重要，而生物材料具有硅和金属所没有的一些特性。

And we have plenty of biological computers — we’ll do wonderful things enhancing them, like we’ve already done.

我们拥有大量的生物计算机——我们将做一些奇妙的事情来增强它们，就像我们已经做的那样。

Okay, yeah.

好吧，是的。

Some kind of Panspermia.

某种有生源论。

Right.

正确的。

What mood do we feel too little?

我们感觉什么心情太少了？

And what stimulus could be used to induce it?

可以用什么刺激来诱发它？

We feel too little tolerance, and the fact that you can see what other people think on Twitter makes you downgrade the other side more than you ought to.

我们觉得宽容度太低，事实上，你可以在 Twitter 上看到其他人的想法，这会让你比你应该做的更严重地降低对方的评级。

We feel too much frustration and too much that “Oh, now I see what’s really wrong with the other side.” That’s the mood that’s become a lot more common in the last five years, and it’s dangerous.

我们感到太多的挫败感和太多的“哦，现在我明白对方到底出了什么问题”。这种情绪在过去五年中变得更加普遍，而且很危险。

I agree.

我同意。

Which conspiracy theory is most likely to be true?

哪种阴谋论最有可能是真的？

I think almost all of them are false.

我认为几乎所有这些都是假的。

I blogged once, the notion that some major sporting events might be fixed for reasons related to betting and corruption.

我曾经写过一篇博客，认为一些重大体育赛事可能会因与博彩和腐败相关的原因而被固定。

I don’t know if that even counts as a conspiracy theory, but it’s some kind of conspiracy.

我不知道这算不算阴谋论，但它确实是某种阴谋。

I would be surprised if that were not more true than we realize, but that’s a pretty minor-league — forgive the pun — conspiracy.

如果这不是比我们意识到的更真实的话，我会感到惊讶，但这是一个相当小联盟的 ——“请原谅双关语”—— 阴谋。

You think that there’s many plural values.

你认为有很多复数值。

Is it nonetheless possible that the best future would involve just maxing out on one of those values because it’s more efficient to produce that value than the other ones?

尽管如此，最好的未来是否有可能只涉及最大化其中一个价值，因为产生该价值比其他价值更有效？

You can get more bang for buck?

你能得到更多的钱吗？

I think that’s possible.

我认为这是可能的。

That value would just be numbers.

该值只是数字。

It could be there are limits on how much better we can make lives at some margin.

在某种程度上，我们能让生活变得更好的程度可能是有限的。

People can only get so happy, even with some kind of biological genetic engineering, and then we just max out on lives.

即使有某种生物基因工程，人们也只能变得如此快乐，然后我们就可以最大限度地享受生活。

I think at some point that’s how it will be.

我认为在某些时候事情就会如此。

Do you think that calling the repugnant conclusion the repugnant conclusion, kind of begged the question, and in fact, it’s maybe not as repugnant as people think?

你是否认为将令人反感的结论称为令人反感的结论有点回避了这个问题，事实上，它可能并不像人们想象的那么令人反感？

I don’t think Parfit, in naming it the repugnant conclusion, was himself begging the question.

我不认为帕菲特将其命名为令人反感的结论，他自己并不是在回避这个问题。

He was trying to draw people’s attention to it with a vivid word.

他试图用生动的词语来引起人们的注意。

I think he fully well understood it might not be repugnant.

我想他完全明白这可能并不令人反感。

Yeah.

是的。

I feel like a weakness of the repugnant conclusion kind of thought experiment is that it ties together multiple issues.

我觉得令人反感的结论类型的思想实验的弱点在于它将多个问题联系在一起。

One thing that people don’t like about it is the blandness of it, the stability of the welfare that people have in that world.

人们不喜欢它的一件事是它的平淡，人们在那个世界所拥有的福利的稳定性。

That’s right.

这是正确的。

We have intuitions across a lot of different features of the utility distribution, and some of them, I suspect, are implanted in us in a false way and not really valid for moral theory.

我们对效用分布的许多不同特征都有直觉，我怀疑其中一些直觉是以错误的方式植入我们体内的，对于道德理论来说并不真正有效。

I suspect another problem there is that people worry whenever their welfare is too close to zero because they feel that it’s going to go negative, and negative experiences weigh very heavily on people’s minds.

我怀疑另一个问题是，每当他们的福利太接近于零时，人们就会担心，因为他们觉得福利会变得消极，而消极的经历会严重影响人们的思想。

If they were certain that it would be positive, maybe people’s intuitions would go a bit differently.

如果他们确定这是积极的，也许人们的直觉会有所不同。

Even understanding what’s the zero point that defines what’s a positive or negative utility.

甚至了解什么是定义正效用或负效用的零点。

Thinking on that, to me, is very backward.

对我来说，这样的想法是非常落后的。

Do you think it will be possible to make a stable coin cryptocurrency?

您认为有可能制作一种稳定币加密货币吗？

Possible is always a tricky word.

可能永远是一个棘手的词。

Possible, yes, desirable, no. Speculative pegs tend to be broken.

可能，是，理想，否。投机挂钩往往会被打破。

I don’t understand the value of a stable cryptocurrency.

我不明白稳定的加密货币的价值。

Why not just use dollars?

为什么不直接使用美元呢？

In Venezuela, maybe does it solve that use case.

在委内瑞拉，也许它可以解决这个用例。

It will be a very valuable product in economies that are completely tanking.

在完全陷入困境的经济体中，这将是一种非常有价值的产品。

It’s not the best business model there.

这不是最好的商业模式。

Can’t they just use dollars?

他们不能只使用美元吗？

Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama use dollars.

厄瓜多尔、萨尔瓦多和巴拿马使用美元。

It works fine for them.

这对他们来说效果很好。

It’s harder to track, I guess, would be the argument.

我想，这更难追踪，这就是争论的焦点。

Those countries often try to prohibit dollarization.

这些国家经常试图禁止美元化​​。

But it’s all black market anyway in Venezuela.

但无论如何，委内瑞拉都是黑市。

Maybe some people are sent to jail for black market crimes, but I don’t think using the dollar is the main political risk there.

也许有些人因黑市犯罪而被送进监狱，但我不认为使用美元是那里的主要政治风险。

All right.

好的。

If you want to finish with perhaps one stirring message for people to go out and improve the long-term future, what would you say?

如果您想以一条激动人心的信息来结束，鼓励人们走出去，改善长期的未来，您会说什么？

Don’t look for stirring messages.

不要寻找激动人心的消息。

Think about things more than once.

不止一次地思考事情。

Thank you for listening to the podcast.

感谢您收听播客。

And if I have a stirring message, it’s continue to follow the career of Robert Wiblin.

如果我有一个激动人心的信息，那就是继续关注罗伯特·维布林的职业生涯。

I’m very grateful to him for all the time and energy he’s put into being the interviewer in Conversations with Tyler.

我非常感谢他在《与泰勒对话》中作为采访者投入的所有时间和精力。

Yeah.

是的。

The book is Stubborn Attachments?

这本书是执着执着吗？

Stubborn Attachments, published by Stripe Press.

顽固的附件，由 Stripe Press 出版。

The subtitle is A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals.

副标题是“自由、繁荣和负责任的个人社会的愿景”。

It deals with the most important problems of our time, in my view.

在我看来，它涉及我们这个时代最重要的问题。

And it is what I really think.

这就是我的真实想法。

Absolutely.

绝对地。

People should go out and buy it.

人们应该出去购买。

Thank you very much.

非常感谢。

Thanks so much Tyler.

非常感谢泰勒。