Ross Douthat on Why Religion Makes More Sense Than You Think (Ep. 233)
Thank you to a listener who sponsored this transcript in memory of their grandfather, Daniel Grace, who “lived and encouraged a life of patient learning and listening.”
感谢一位听众赞助了这份文字记录，以纪念他们的祖父丹尼尔·格雷斯（Daniel Grace），他“过着并鼓励耐心学习和倾听的生活”。
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
Today, I am here live and in person with Ross Douthat.
今天，我在这里与罗斯·杜塔特进行现场直播。
Ross is arguably the best columnist in the world.
罗斯可以说是世界上最好的专栏作家。
He has many excellent books, and he has a new book, which I’m a big fan of, called Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.
他有很多优秀的书籍，他有一本新书，我是它的忠实粉丝，书名叫《相信：为什么每个人都应该有宗教信仰》。
Perhaps today, my soul is on the line.
或许今天，我的灵魂已经岌岌可危了。
I know.
我知道。
It’s very high stakes.
这是非常高的风险。
This is the highest-stakes conversation we’ve ever had.
这是我们进行过的风险最高的对话。
If I fail, my punishment will be —
如果我失败了，我的惩罚将是 ——
How about your soul?
你的灵魂呢？
No, yes, there’re eternal stakes.
不，是的，有永恒的赌注。
Once, when I was a much younger man, I was dragooned into debating Christopher Hitchens on a beach in Nantucket.
有一次，当我还年轻的时候，我被迫在楠塔基特岛的海滩上与克里斯托弗·希钦斯辩论。
I was substituting for Andrew Sullivan.
我是安德鲁·沙利文的替补。
Who won?
谁赢了？
Hitchens.
希钦斯。
It was an absolute rout.
这是一场彻底的溃败。
That’s too strong.
这太强了。
It was a rout.
这是一场溃败。
He was at the peak of his powers, and maybe I had not yet come into my full powers.
他正处于力量的顶峰，而我也许还没有发挥出全部力量。
I don’t know, I can tell myself that.
我不知道，我可以告诉自己。
Afterwards, I was convinced that I had added a hundred years in purgatory to my allotment for those failures.
后来，我确信我为那些失败而在炼狱里又加了一百年。
So, we’ll see how this goes.
那么，我们将看看情况如何。
In your theology, does converting me win you points?
在你的神学中，改变我会为你赢得分数吗？
It’s not really a Catholic view, is it?
这并不是真正的天主教观点，不是吗？
No. No, it’s not.
不，不，不是。
Probably no toaster oven, but you don’t want to—
可能没有烤箱，但你不想——
It’s not going to lose you points.
它不会让你失去分数。
It’s not going to lose me points.
这不会让我丢分。
Let’s put it that way, yes.
这么说吧，是的。
Maybe indulgence-style, it might compensate for some failings in other areas.
也许是放纵式的，它可能会弥补其他方面的一些缺陷。
There’re probably people who have been alienated from the truth about existence because they disliked something I said or did.
可能有人因为不喜欢我所说或所做的事情而疏远了存在的真相。
Every day is a new chance to make up for those failings.
每一天都是弥补这些缺陷的新机会。
On what it means to be religious
关于宗教意味着什么
I have a basic question about, what does it mean to be religious?
我有一个基本问题，宗教信仰意味着什么？
Let’s say I believe in the simulation hypothesis, which comes from Nick Bostrom.
假设我相信来自 Nick Bostrom 的模拟假设。
Robin Hanson has cited it.
罗宾汉森引用了它。
The notion that, if we can make a lot of simulations, there’s a pretty good chance we are ourselves living in one.
一种观念是，如果我们能够进行大量的模拟，那么我们自己就很有可能生活在其中。
How does believing in the simulation argument differ from being religious?
相信模拟论证与信奉宗教有何不同？
Outside the sphere of normal life, how do we distinguish what we might call a god from what we might call — I don’t know — whoever created the simulation?
在正常生活的范围之外，我们如何区分我们所谓的上帝和我们所谓的“——”我不知道——“无论是谁创造了模拟？”
I think, functionally, the simulation hypothesis is doing some of the work of a polytheistic or Gnostic religion, where whoever is running the simulation, the version of advanced consciousness that is capable of effectively creating and sustaining our world and presumably however many trillions of others they have running inside their simulator — that entity is not the creator god of classical theism.
我认为，从功能上来说，模拟假说正在做多神教或诺斯替教的一些工作，无论是谁运行模拟，高级意识的版本都能够有效地创造和维持我们的世界，并且可能无论他们在模拟器中运行着多少万亿的其他世界，这个实体都不是古典有神论的造物主。
It’s not the God of Christianity, but I think it’s reasonable to describe, again, this hypothetical simulation runner as a small-g god, certainly.
它不是基督教的上帝，但我认为再次将这个假设的模拟跑步者描述为小重力神是合理的。
You could regard it as the way that Gnostics regarded the demiurge, the intermediate spiritual power that created this world and was responsible for all its misery and woe.
你可以将其视为诺斯替教徒看待造物主的方式，造物主是创造这个世界并对其所有痛苦和祸患负责的中间精神力量。
The Gnostics would say, “Therefore, you need to get past that demiurge and escape to the higher level where the true God waits, who actually created the whole thing, the whole shebang.” Maybe they would say, “He didn’t create the whole shebang.” I don’t want to overstate my familiarity with the intricacies of Gnosticism.
诺斯替教徒会说：“因此，你需要超越那个造物主，逃到更高的层次，真正的上帝在那里等待着，他实际上创造了整个事物，整个shebang。”也许他们会说，“他并没有创造整个shebang。”我不想夸大我对诺斯替主义错综复杂的熟悉程度。
Or you could be a kind of polytheist.
或者你可能是一个多神论者。
There are forms of polytheism that are arguably compatible with an ultimate monotheism.
多神教的某些形式可以说与最终的一神教是兼容的。
You could say, “Okay, there may be an absolute god beyond the simulators.” I would say, if you could convince me of the simulation hypothesis, I would still say there probably has to be a god beyond the simulators.
你可以说，“好吧，模拟器之外可能还有一个绝对的神。”我想说的是，如果你能让我相信模拟假设，我仍然会说除了模拟器之外可能还有一个上帝。
But the simulators themselves are in the position of gods to us.
但模拟器本身对我们来说就是神的地位。
I guess where I would say that view crosses over from analysis to religion is the point at which you start trying to figure out what is your relationship to the simulators.
我想我想说的观点从分析到宗教的交叉点是你开始试图弄清楚你与模拟器的关系是什么的时候。
Should you have one?
你应该拥有一个吗？
I think you probably should.
我想你可能应该这样做。
If you actually believe you’re in a simulation, you should try and figure out, what do the simulators want from you?
如果你真的相信自己处于模拟之中，那么你应该尝试弄清楚，模拟器想从你这里得到什么？
Do they have your best interests at heart?
他们是否把您的最大利益放在心上？
If you think they do, then you should be trying to bring yourself into alignment, if you will, with whatever they have in mind.
如果你认为他们这样做，那么你应该努力让自己与他们的想法保持一致（如果你愿意的话）。
If you think they don’t, then I would suggest trying to send up prayers to whatever powers might be out there that could rescue you from the simulators’ hands.
如果你认为他们没有，那么我建议你尝试向任何可能存在的力量祈祷，以将你从模拟器的手中解救出来。
Either way, I think the simulation hypothesis is, in effect, an acknowledgment that there’s no escape from religious questions.
不管怎样，我认为模拟假设实际上是承认宗教问题是无法回避的。
I think the failure of the hypothesizers, maybe, is not fully taking seriously the implication that we might be the playthings of secondary gods.
我认为假设者的失败也许是没有充分认真对待我们可能是次级神的玩物这一暗示。
You sound surprisingly close to the demiurge hypothesis.
你听起来出人意料地接近造物主假说。
Clearly, you believe creation is possible, and you don’t dismiss Bayesian reasoning.
显然，你相信创造是可能的，并且你不会忽视贝叶斯推理。
How much weight you give it is an open question.
你给它多少权重是一个悬而未决的问题。
Why not think there are multiple layers of God?
为什么不认为上帝有多层呢？
What we think of as God is just part of the chain.
我们所认为的上帝只是链条的一部分。
In Bayesian terms, if a god created us, well, some being could have created that god.
用贝叶斯的术语来说，如果一个神创造了我们，那么，某个存在就可能创造了那个神。
Why aren’t you led to that as a view with pretty high probability?
为什么你不以相当高的概率得出这样的观点呢？
I’m led to the view with pretty high probability that there are intermediate powers between us and whatever you want to call God.
我很可能认为在我们和任何你想称之为上帝的东西之间存在着中间力量。
But the more you make the chain complicated, it can stretch in both directions.
但链条越复杂，它就会向两个方向延伸。
Well, it can stretch in the direction you’re saying, where we would eventually become gods ourselves.
嗯，它可以朝着你所说的方向延伸，我们最终会成为神。
The Christian God is a demiurge.
基督教的上帝是一位造物主。
There’s some higher god who created that and maybe many other gods.
有一些更高的神创造了它，也许还有许多其他神。
It seems once you even consider the logic of the simulation hypothesis, you become fairly agnostic about the true nature of the ultimate god.
似乎一旦你考虑了模拟假设的逻辑，你就会对终极神的真实本质变得相当不可知。
Right.
正确的。
I think the weakness of the simulation hypothesis is that we don’t have any actual evidence for it.
我认为模拟假设的弱点在于我们没有任何实际证据。
It’s incredibly speculative, and it assumes a capacity of what you might call subcreation that is completely speculative and not in evidence.
这是令人难以置信的推测，并且它假设了一种你可能称之为再创造的能力，这种能力完全是推测性的，并且没有证据。
I wouldn’t dismiss the simulation hypothesis any more than I would dismiss the various multiversal hypotheses that have ended up substituting in at least some intelligent people’s minds for what I think of as the rather more obvious likelihood that the old-fashioned religious worldview is correct.
我不会驳回模拟假设，就像我不会驳回各种多元假设一样，这些假设最终在至少一些聪明人的头脑中取代了我认为老式宗教世界观正确的更明显的可能性。
I don’t dismiss them out of hand, but I think you are in the position of multiplying hypotheses, multiplying speculations.
我不会立即驳回它们，但我认为你处于增加假设、增加猜测的境地。
In the life that we have, a certain parsimony is probably wiser.
在我们的生活中，一定程度的节俭可能是更明智的。
We have access to one pretty big, complicated, interesting, varied world.
我们可以进入一个相当大、复杂、有趣、多样化的世界。
That world appears, I would say, to have been fashioned for a reason.
我想说，这个世界的形成是有原因的。
That reason appears to include us.
这个原因似乎也包括我们。
There appears, from spiritual experiences, to be intermediate powers and then probably some sort of higher power.
从精神体验来看，似乎存在中等力量，然后可能存在某种更高的力量。
I think working with all of that, rather than adding on six levels of speculation about further chains that we can’t see, is probably the better part of valor.
我认为，与所有这些一起工作，而不是增加对我们看不到的进一步链条的六个层次的猜测，可能是勇气的更好部分。
But surely, it’s odd to, say, not dismiss the Trinity, not dismiss the intermediate elf beings, and then invoke Occam’s razor, right?
但肯定的是，不排除三位一体，不排除中级精灵存在，然后援引奥卡姆剃刀，这很奇怪，对吧？
You could just be a Muslim.
你可能只是一个穆斯林。
There’s one God indivisible.
神只有一位，不可分割。
That’s that.
就是这样。
Or be a Unitarian.
或者成为一位一神论者。
But your Occam’s razor has to incorporate the religious phenomena as we experience them, or I would say that it has to.
但是你的奥卡姆剃刀必须将我们所经历的宗教现象纳入其中，或者我会说它必须如此。
First of all, I do think that the parsimony of the hardcore deist or Unitarian or anti-supernaturalist Muslim — the kind who don’t have any traffic with jinn and things of that nature — that kind of parsimony is plausible enough.
首先，我确实认为，铁杆自然神论者、一神论者或反超自然主义穆斯林的节俭——“那些与精灵和类似性质的事物没有任何往来的人”——这种节俭是足够合理的。
It’s certainly more plausible than hard materialism.
这当然比硬物质主义更合理。
If given the option, I would choose that over the worldview of Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, but I don’t think it adequately encompasses the terrain of actual religious and spiritual experiences that people have.
如果可以选择，我会选择理查德·道金斯或丹尼尔·丹尼特的世界观，但我认为它没有充分涵盖人们实际的宗教和精神体验的领域。
That, I think, is a crucial reason for the persistence of religion even in an allegedly disenchanted age.
我认为，即使在一个所谓的幻灭时代，宗教仍然存在的一个关键原因。
It’s obviously the point of origin for most of the world’s religions.
显然，这是世界上大多数宗教的起源点。
Most of the world’s major religions make some kind of accommodation — even when they are monotheistic — to the idea of intermediate powers.
世界上大多数主要宗教都对中间势力的观念做出了某种程度的迁就——即使它们是一神论的。
I think it’s useful to think about counterfactuals.
我认为思考反事实是有用的。
If we lived in a world where every religious experience was the kind of religious experience where you just had a sense of oneness and deep connection with a singular being who seemed responsible for existence — people have such experiences.
如果我们生活在这样一个世界，每一种宗教体验都是一种宗教体验，在这种体验中，你只是与一个似乎对存在负责的单一存在有一种一体感和深刻的联系——人们就会有这样的体验。
If that were the only kind of experience you had, that anyone had, or that 99 percent of religious experiences fit that pattern, then yes, parsimony, I think, would suggest whatever might be out there, there’s not just probably one God, but that God is probably the only higher power concerned with us with whom we might be in relationship.
如果这是你、任何人都拥有的唯一一种体验，或者 99% 的宗教体验都符合这种模式，那么，是的，我认为，节俭会表明，无论存在什么，可能不仅有一位上帝，而且上帝可能是与我们可能有关系的唯一更高的力量。
In the event, though, there’s a much wider range of spiritual experiences.
但最终，会有更广泛的精神体验。
There does seem to be a realm of powers that, again, you could classify them with the small-g god.
似乎确实有一个力量领域，你可以将它们与小克神归为一类。
You could classify them as Christians would, usually, in angelic and demonic terms.
你可以像基督徒通常用天使和恶魔的术语一样对它们进行分类。
Yes, I think both the variation and the consistency in religious experience — there’s a lot of variation, but then there’s a certain consistency of the kinds of variations across cultures.
是的，我认为宗教体验的变化和一致性 ——存在很多变化，但跨文化的变化类型存在一定的一致性。
You want something that I think explains that, and the theory that explains that is that there is some sort of hierarchy.
我认为你想要一些可以解释这一点的东西，而解释这一点的理论是存在某种层次结构。
We’re not just alone with the one true God.
我们不仅仅与独一真神单独相处。
This gets us to the part of your book where you discuss me.
这让我们进入了你书中讨论我的部分。
I’m never quite sure how one settles on a particular religious belief.
我从来不太确定一个人如何确定一种特定的宗教信仰。
If I go to Sri Lanka, the children of Hindus tend to be Hindu.
如果我去斯里兰卡，印度教徒的孩子往往是印度教徒。
The children of Buddhists tend to be Buddhists, Muslims, some Christians even.
佛教徒的孩子往往是佛教徒、穆斯林，甚至有些基督徒。
That is the way of things.
事情就是这样。
That makes me very suspicious about our particularist intuitions.
这让我对我们的特殊直觉非常怀疑。
If you just showed up and said, “Tyler, I will save your soul.
如果你只是出现并说：“泰勒，我会拯救你的灵魂。
You should be a deist,” we’d have a very different conversation.
你应该是一个自然神论者，”我们的谈话会非常不同。
But when someone puts forward a very specific claim, I just don’t trust their specific intuitions.
但当有人提出非常具体的主张时，我只是不相信他们的具体直觉。
They seem so tied to society, conformist pressures, family, what they learned as a kid.
他们似乎与社会、墨守成规的压力、家庭以及小时候学到的东西紧密相连。
I just think we should look at all of Sri Lanka and figure, “Hey, these people ended up where they did because of how they grew up.” That’s fine.
我只是认为我们应该看看整个斯里兰卡并思考，“嘿，这些人最终因为他们的成长方式而走到了现在的位置。”没关系。
It’s maybe good for social cohesion, but then move on to just thinking about it more abstractly.
这可能有利于社会凝聚力，但接下来我们可以更抽象地思考它。
Why is that wrong?
为什么这是错误的？
Well, right.
嗯，对。
This is where I’ve been saying to some of my religious friends that this is my most liberal book in a certain way, in that I go a certain distance with that argument.
在这里，我一直对我的一些宗教朋友说，从某种程度上来说，这是我最自由的书，因为我与这个论点保持着一定的距离。
I do think that the diversity of religious traditions strongly suggests that some form of connection to God is available in a lot of different places.
我确实认为宗教传统的多样性强烈表明，在许多不同的地方都存在某种形式的与上帝的联系。
This is the official teaching of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church.
这是后梵蒂冈二世天主教会的官方教义。
It’s not some radical, controversial opinion, but it is on the liberal side of potential theological interpretations.
这不是什么激进的、有争议的观点，但它是潜在神学解释的自由派一边。
Absent any other indication of what kind of religion you should be, what sort of religious perspective you should have, a default to the one that works in your culture is, I think, by no means, crazy.
如果没有任何其他迹象表明你应该信奉哪种宗教，你应该拥有什么样的宗教观点，我认为默认在你的文化中起作用的宗教观点绝不是疯狂的。
I guess my question for you — as you know, since you read my responses — is, what to you makes religion distinct from other forms of knowledge, belief, and belonging?
我想我要问你的问题是——你知道，因为你读了我的回答，你认为宗教与其他形式的知识、信仰和归属感有何不同？
Because everything that you just said about religious belief obviously applies to politics.
因为你刚才所说的关于宗教信仰的一切显然都适用于政治。
But much less.
但少得多。
Much less?
少了很多吗？
Much less to politics.
更不用说政治了。
Religion seems far more heritable.
宗教似乎更具遗传性。
Does it?
是吗？
But even if it were the same, I would sooner conclude we should be more agnostic about many things than conclude we should be less agnostic about religion.
但即使是一样的，我也更愿意得出我们应该对许多事情更加不可知论的结论，而不是得出我们应该对宗教不那么不可知论的结论。
Certainly, but you are a professional arguer.
当然可以，但你是一个专业的辩论者。
You take strong views on all kinds of questions.
你对各种问题都有强烈的看法。
You are a trained economist who takes all kinds of strongly held views on economics that are hotly contested by, maybe not equally intelligent, but almost as intelligent rivals who have different views.
你是一位训练有素的经济学家，对经济学持有各种强烈的观点，这些观点受到激烈争论，这些观点可能不是同样聪明，但几乎是聪明的对手，他们有不同的观点。
You could say, well, once you reach the heights of economic theory, at that point, you’re dealing with people who .
你可以说，好吧，一旦你达到了经济理论的高度，到那时，你正在和这样的人打交道。
.
。
.
。
No one has inherited Keynesianism from their parents, and so on.
没有人从父母那里继承了凯恩斯主义，等等。
You should be able to trust the choices that you versus Paul Krugman and so on have made.
你应该能够相信你与保罗·克鲁格曼等人所做的选择。
Well, maybe, but there are all kinds of other ways in which your economic views are conditioned.
嗯，也许吧，但是还有各种各样的其他方式来影响你的经济观点。
They’re presumably conditioned by —
他们的条件大概是 ——
I’m just consistent.
我只是保持一致。
Right, but it just seems to me that there’s a tendency to place religion in this special category and say, “Okay, it’s inherited.
是的，但在我看来，有一种倾向将宗教归为这个特殊类别，并说：“好吧，它是遗传的。
It’s culturally contingent.
这是文化上的偶然。
Therefore, it’s silly to have arguments about this belief versus that belief.” But people change religions all the time, right?
因此，对这种信念与那种信念进行争论是愚蠢的。”但人们总是在改变宗教信仰，对吗？
New religions come into being because of conversion.
新的宗教因皈依而产生。
People change their minds because of argument.
人们会因为争论而改变想法。
It’s not like we don’t have tons of examples of this.
我们并不是没有大量这样的例子。
I feel like it should be possible to balance a certain respect for the reality that there’s religious diversity for a reason.
我觉得应该可以平衡对现实的尊重，即宗教多样性是有原因的。
There are hard questions that you’re not going to argue your way to a singular answer, but also say the argument is worth having, and maybe you or I can make progress on some of our own views on those questions, right?
有些难题你不会通过争论得到一个单一的答案，但也要说这个争论是值得的，也许你或我可以在我们自己对这些问题的一些观点上取得进展，对吗？
But your response saying, “Well, everyone else, including Tyler Cowen, has these weird inconsistencies.” While I agree, I don’t see how that gets you to religious faith.
但你的回答是：“嗯，其他人，包括泰勒·考恩，都有这些奇怪的不一致之处。”虽然我同意，但我不明白这如何让你走向宗教信仰。
It might get you to some kind of Bayesian deism.
它可能会让你了解某种贝叶斯自然神论。
Sorry, which inconsistency?
抱歉，哪个不一致？
Everyone has a weird inconsistency.
每个人都有一种奇怪的矛盾。
Well, everyone is influenced by the views of their parents on all kinds of things.
嗯，每个人都会受到父母对各种事情的看法的影响。
The soap I use actually is still the same soap my grandmother used when I was a kid.
我用的肥皂实际上还是我小时候祖母用的肥皂。
That’s probably related, right?
这可能是相关的，对吧？
It’s arguably irrational.
这可以说是不合理的。
No doubt, it’s true.
毫无疑问，这是真的。
But saying that happens everywhere — I don’t see how it gets you to religious faith.
但说这种事随处可见 —— 我不明白它是如何让你走向宗教信仰的。
I just think at best, it gets you to some kind of probabilistic deism.
我只是认为最好的情况是，它会让你达到某种概率自然神论。
Well, I guess the argument in the book is that you can get beyond probabilistic deism into what I would characterize as maybe probabilistic supernaturalism.
嗯，我想这本书的论点是，你可以超越概率自然神论，进入我所描述的概率超自然主义。
I don’t know exactly the right term.
我不知道正确的术语。
I use the term religion, as you said at the outset, as obviously a contested term.
正如您一开始所说的，我使用“宗教”一词，这显然是一个有争议的术语。
People argue about what constitutes a religion, but I think you can get somewhat probabilistically to the view that not just that deism is true but that there is a fundamental order to the cosmos in which human beings have an important or significant role to play.
人们争论宗教的构成，但我认为你可以从概率上得出这样的观点：不仅自然神论是正确的，而且宇宙存在一个基本秩序，人类在其中可以发挥重要或显着的作用。
There are divine or supernatural impingements on our reality that seem significant in various ways.
我们的现实中存在着神圣或超自然的冲击，这些冲击在各个方面似乎都很重要。
You probably have a soul that is related to your body but distinct in some way.
你可能有一个与你的身体相关但在某些方面有所不同的灵魂。
There’s probably life after death.
死后很可能还有生命。
I would say — and people can read the book and agree or disagree — but I think that there’s a preponderance of evidence in favor of most of those claims.
我想说的是“人们可以阅读这本书并同意或不同意”但我认为有大量证据支持其中的大多数主张。
Now, I agree that even going that far, quite a bit past deism, doesn’t get you to a particular religious decision.
现在，我同意，即使走那么远，远远超过自然神论，也不会让你做出特定的宗教决定。
There, I have some explanations at the end of the book about why I’m a Christian and why I think the choice to believe in, let’s just say, the significance of Jesus’s life and death and resurrection seems like a rational sequel to those initially rational ideas.
在那里，我在书的结尾有一些解释，解释了为什么我是基督徒，以及为什么我认为选择相信耶稣的生、死和复活的意义，似乎是那些最初理性想法的理性续集。
But I think there’s absolutely a reason why religious believers talk in terms of relationship.
但我认为宗教信徒谈论关系绝对是有原因的。
On the one hand, you’re seeking not just a theory of God but a relationship with him, or them if you prefer, but also in terms of divine grace.
一方面，你不仅寻求上帝的理论，而且寻求与他或他们（如果你愿意的话）的关系，而且还寻求神圣恩典。
The relationship runs both ways.
这种关系是双向的。
To some degree, it has to be up to the higher order of existence what your relationship to that order might be.
在某种程度上，它必须取决于更高的存在秩序，你与该秩序的关系可能是什么。
But what I’m trying to suggest is, I think there’s a broader and thicker foundation for seeking that relationship than many intelligent people right now seem to think.
但我想说的是，我认为寻求这种关系的基础比现在许多聪明人想象的更广泛、更深厚。
On consciousness and the soul
关于意识和灵魂
Does it worry you that when many people take psychedelics, they feel spirituality, religion, the presence of God, the supernatural?
当许多人服用迷幻药时，他们会感受到灵性、宗教、上帝的存在和超自然现象，你是否担心这一点？
It’s obviously a natural cause.
这显然是一个自然原因。
Why?
为什么？
Why is it obviously a natural cause?
为什么这显然是自然原因？
Well, it could be that God is intervening every time someone takes LSD and giving you visions, but it just seems it’s the operation of the drug and that there can be quite naturalistic reasons why people feel religion, the presence of God, the supernatural, and it’s not, in a way, that mysterious or linked to an actual deity.
好吧，每次有人服用迷幻药并给你幻觉时，上帝可能都会介入，但这似乎只是药物的作用，而且可能有相当自然的原因让人们感到宗教、上帝的存在、超自然的感觉，在某种程度上，它并不是那么神秘或与真正的神有关。
I don’t think that that’s true.
我认为那不是真的。
What is the naturalistic explanation?
自然主义的解释是什么？
I think it’s quite clear that taking a psychedelic drug does something to the normal operation of your brain that changes your conscious experience of reality.
我认为很明显，服用迷幻药会对大脑的正常运作产生影响，从而改变你对现实的意识体验。
I don’t think we have any kind of demonstrable proof of why the particular ingredients in ayahuasca yield consistent seeming encounters with a particular kind of being.
我认为我们没有任何明显的证据来证明死藤水中的特定成分为何会与特定类型的存在产生一致的表面接触。
I would be shocked if neuroscience didn’t figure that out, right?
如果神经科学没有弄清楚这一点，我会感到震惊，对吧？
I don’t pretend.
我不假装。
You would be?
你会是吗？
Absolutely.
绝对地。
It seems to me that neuroscience needs to have some theory of how normal human consciousness operates before it can have a coherent theory of how abnormal human consciousness operates.
在我看来，神经科学需要先有一些关于正常人类意识如何运作的理论，然后才能对异常人类意识如何运作有一个连贯的理论。
Look, if the religious world picture is correct, again, broadly speaking, then whatever the self is, whatever the soul is, it obviously exists in some sort of dynamic relationship to its body, its brain, its chemistry, its bloodstream, all of that, right?
看，如果宗教世界的图景是正确的，那么，无论自我是什么，无论灵魂是什么，它显然都存在于与其身体、大脑、化学物质、血液等等的某种动态关系中，对吗？
But the fact that you’re more likely to have a supernatural experience when you shake up that material substrate, I don’t think, tells you anything about the actual nature of what you’re encountering.
但我认为，当你动摇物质基础时，你更有可能获得超自然的体验，这一事实并不能告诉你任何关于你所遇到的事情的真实本质。
If you think of, first of all, hermits in the desert who go out into the desert and mortify their flesh, or Native Americans on a spirit quest, and so on — these are traditional religious practices that, even absent psychedelic drugs, have always taken as a given that the default experience of the world is natural and material.
首先，如果你想到沙漠中的隐士，他们走进沙漠，禁锢自己的肉体，或者美洲原住民进行精神追求，等等——这些都是传统的宗教习俗，即使没有迷幻药物，它们也始终被视为理所当然，即世界的默认体验是自然的和物质的。
If you want to have a supernatural experience, you need to shake up the natural substrate a little bit.
如果你想有超自然的体验，你需要稍微动一下自然基质。
I don’t think that ingesting drugs that shake up how your brain works is necessarily any different.
我不认为服用改变大脑工作方式的药物有什么不同。
Again, I understand that this seems like an outlandish conception.
我再次明白这似乎是一个奇怪的想法。
I think in the end, it is the religious conception.
我想归根结底还是宗教观念。
The religious conception is that your mind’s coexistence with your brain effectively reduces your mind’s capacities to enable it to operate normally in physical reality, and that shaking up the brain — there’s no necessary reason why that wouldn’t open the mind’s capacities a little bit more.
宗教观念认为，你的心智与大脑的共存有效地降低了你的心智在物理现实中正常运作的能力，并且震动了大脑 ——没有必要的理由说这不会让心智的能力进一步开放一点。
Monkeys can’t do this in your view, but do monkeys have a soul?
在你看来猴子做不到这一点，但是猴子有灵魂吗？
Tree shrews?
树鼩？
I think we should be somewhat agnostic about —
我认为我们应该对 有些不可知论——
Trilobites don’t have a soul.
三叶虫没有灵魂。
Trilobites.
三叶虫。
Well, I mean —
嗯，我的意思是 ——
There’s some day of transition.
总有一天会发生转变。
That to me seems very weird.
这对我来说似乎很奇怪。
For a long time, everything operates according to quantum mechanics and Einstein and Newton.
长期以来，一切都按照量子力学、爱因斯坦和牛顿运行。
Then one day, there’s a monkey or a tree shrew.
然后有一天，出现了一只猴子或一只树鼩。
That animal eats a magic banana and is somehow infused with free will or a soul or the ability to contemplate the deity, but it’s still subject to all the same physical laws.
该动物吃了一根神奇的香蕉，并以某种方式注入了自由意志或灵魂或思考神的能力，但它仍然受到所有相同的物理定律的约束。
It would be very odd to me.
这对我来说会很奇怪。
It’s like Descartes’s interaction problem, how one day is different from the next.
这就像笛卡尔的互动问题，一天与一天有何不同。
Look, what does the day look like when the trilobite becomes the God-perceiving human?
看看，当三叶虫变成感知上帝的人类时，日子会是什么样子？
What’s the critical event in the middle?
这中间的关键事件是什么？
I don’t know what the critical event is in the middle.
不知道这中间的关键事件是什么。
I don’t think we have any kind of access to that.
我认为我们没有任何途径获得这一点。
Even in principle, like if someone believed in a fairy world that we can’t access, you could be skeptical.
即使在原则上，就像如果有人相信我们无法进入的童话世界一样，你也可能会持怀疑态度。
You mean a multiverse or simulation hypothesis?
你是说多元宇宙还是模拟假设？
Say like a multiverse.
说得像多元宇宙一样。
Something like that, yes.
类似的事情，是的。
Something like that.
类似的事情。
Right.
正确的。
There’s no interaction problem to explain.
没有交互问题需要解释。
Whereas, when someone thinks that a godlike being is interfering all the time with the principles of quantum mechanics — it’s not impossible.
然而，当有人认为神一样的存在一直在干扰量子力学原理时——这并非不可能。
It just seems, to me, very strange.
对我来说，这似乎很奇怪。
Don’t the principles of quantum mechanics under one perfectly reasonable interpretation suggest that for physical reality to exist at all, some sort of consciousness has to be constantly performing an act of perception to collapse possibilities into reality?
在一种完全合理的解释下，量子力学原理难道不表明，为了使物理现实存在，某种意识必须不断地执行感知行为，以将可能性瓦解为现实吗？
It seems to me that —
在我看来 ——
No, it’s not how I interpret quantum mechanics.
不，这不是我解释量子力学的方式。
How do you interpret quantum mechanics?
您如何解释量子力学？
We can go deep.
我们可以深入。
I don’t think we understand what measurement means in the theory, but it doesn’t have to be a subjectively conscious mind.
我认为我们不明白测量在理论上意味着什么，但它不一定是主观意识的。
We don’t all have to be Bishop Berkeley — that you need God to prevent everything from popping out of existence because God is perceiving it all, all the time.
我们不必都成为伯克利主教——你需要上帝来阻止一切突然消失，因为上帝一直在感知这一切。
Right, but don’t you think that’s a somewhat commonsensical — however anti-materialist — interpretation of what seems to be going on at the deepest level of reality?
是的，但你不认为这有点常识性——然而反唯物主义——对现实最深层似乎正在发生的事情的解释吗？
I don’t know what it means — the deepest level of reality.
我不知道这意味着什么——现实的最深层次。
I don’t know that —
我不知道 ——
I won’t say the deepest level.
最深层次我就不说了。
At the quantum level of reality, it seems, as far as we can see with our perception, that in order to go from contingency to reality, you need an observer.
在现实的量子层面，就我们的感知而言，似乎为了从偶然性走向现实，你需要一个观察者。
You need measurement.
你需要测量。
How do you get measurement without consciousness?
如何在无意识的情况下进行测量？
What does measurement even mean absent consciousness?
测量甚至意味着意识缺失是什么？
Electrons bump into each other, something.
电子互相碰撞，某种东西。
You don’t need consciousness.
你不需要意识。
If you had a measuring stick in there, that would collapse —
如果你在那里放一根量尺，它就会塌陷 ——
Who puts the measuring stick in there?
谁把量尺放在那里？
Humans, but when they’re not watching, the wave function still collapses, right?
人类，但是当他们不看的时候，波函数仍然会塌缩，对吧？
But does it?
但确实如此吗？
The measuring stick says it does.
测量尺说确实如此。
We made the measuring stick.
我们制作了量尺。
We’re not watching.
我们不看。
You don’t need subjective consciousness.
你不需要主观意识。
You need some process of resolution.
你需要一些解决过程。
I deny that you can have a measuring stick without a process of consciousness.
我否认你可以在没有意识过程的情况下拥有一把量尺。
The measuring stick without a process of consciousness is itself just a ruler.
没有意识过程的量尺本身只是一把尺子。
Absent your consciousness, a ruler is a collection of atoms and molecules cut out of a tree with some markings on it.
在你没有意识的情况下，尺子是从树上切下来的原子和分子的集合，上面有一些标记。
In order for the ruler to be an instrument of measurement, you, Tyler Cowen, have to be perceiving it and be conscious of it.
为了让尺子成为一种测量工具，你，泰勒·考恩，必须感知它并意识到它。
I think the ruler suffices.
我觉得统治者就足够了。
No, you can’t say the ruler suffices.
不，你不能说统治者就足够了。
Look, I want to go back to your prior question, which, I think, is a fundamentally difficult question.
听着，我想回到你之前的问题，我认为这是一个根本上困难的问题。
We do not know what constitutes the transition from non-conscious life to conscious life.
我们不知道什么构成了从无意识生活到有意识生活的过渡。
Now, we also don’t know exactly what constitutes the transition from non-life to life.
现在，我们也不知道究竟是什么构成了从非生命到生命的转变。
We have some difficulties figuring that out as well.
我们在弄清楚这一点上也遇到了一些困难。
We were having a conversation about difficulties in the Christian interpretation of the human person.
我们正在讨论基督教对人的解释中的困难。
I think the interaction between what we know at the moment or understand at the moment about evolution in human origins and the traditional Christian account of the fall, that there are some real points of tension in there that Christianity has not figured out a perfectly satisfying resolution of.
我认为我们目前所知道或理解的人类起源进化论与传统基督教对堕落的解释之间的相互作用，存在着一些真正的紧张点，基督教尚未找到一个完全令人满意的解决方案。
That would be a different kind of book than this one.
那将是一本与这本书不同的书。
There is an interesting argument there, but it’s an interesting argument precisely because it takes place in a larger context, where we have good reasons to take the supernaturalism of the human mind very, very seriously.
这里有一个有趣的论点，但这是一个有趣的论点，因为它发生在一个更大的背景下，我们有充分的理由非常非常认真地对待人类心灵的超自然主义。
It’s a mystery not just because the Christians don’t have a full account of it, because the materialists don’t have an account of it at all, because there is no satisfying materialist account at the moment of what consciousness is, why we experience it the way we do, and so on.
这是一个谜，不仅因为基督徒没有对它有完整的解释，因为唯物主义者根本没有对它的解释，因为目前对于意识是什么、为什么我们以我们的方式体验它等等还没有令人满意的唯物主义解释。
Nor is there a satisfying account — now, I’m going to circle us back to the measurement problem — of why our consciousness is capable of all this successful measurement at all.
也没有一个令人满意的解释——“现在，我要让我们回到测量问题”——解释为什么我们的意识能够进行所有这些成功的测量。
The difficulty for the materialist isn’t just that you have this fine-tuned universe that, in its basic structure, seems to have been jerry-rigged for our emergence.
对于唯物主义者来说，困难不仅仅在于你拥有这个经过微调的宇宙，其基本结构似乎是为了我们的出现而做的。
It’s not just that problem, which the materialist tries to solve by positing an infinity of invisible worlds that are supposed to be more compelling than fairyland.
这不仅仅是这个问题，唯物主义者试图通过设定无限的无形世界来解决这个问题，这些世界被认为比仙境更引人注目。
Not sure why.
不知道为什么。
The further problem — it goes down to us, but then it goes back up because human consciousness has turned out to be really good at not just figuring out how to survive on the African savannah, but figuring out how to plumb the deepest secrets of the physical laws of the universe.
进一步的问题——它归结于我们，但随后它又回到了我们的身上，因为事实证明，人类意识不仅擅长弄清楚如何在非洲大草原上生存，而且善于弄清楚如何探索宇宙物理定律最深层的秘密。
We’ve figured out something about quantum mechanics, something about this deep structure of the universe that is very peculiar in a narrative where it’s trilobite brains giving way to monkey brains.
我们已经弄清楚了一些关于量子力学的东西，一些关于宇宙深层结构的东西，这在三叶虫大脑让位于猴子大脑的叙述中非常奇特。
Put it this way: If it seems incredibly unlikely that the universe should be fine-tuned in a way that allows for the development of conscious life, it seems to me even more unlikely that that conscious life would then work its way back up to understand the secrets of the universe in full.
这么说吧：如果宇宙似乎不太可能以一种允许有意识生命发展的方式进行微调，那么在我看来，有意识生命更不可能重新回到完全理解宇宙的秘密。
I think I’m closer to the Colin McGinn view that we’re just not smart enough to understand consciousness.
我想我更接近科林·麦金的观点，即我们只是不够聪明，无法理解意识。
It’s a puzzle.
这是一个谜题。
It should make us more agnostic about many things, but it’s not an excuse to go multiply all these other entities.
它应该让我们对很多事情更加不可知，但这并不是增加所有其他实体的借口。
The entity involved — no one is multiplying entities when it comes to explaining consciousness.
所涉及的实体——在解释意识时，没有人会增加实体。
They are simply describing the entity that is Tyler Cowen and that is Ross Douthat, that you have immediate access to, more immediate access than to anything else in the world.
他们只是简单地描述泰勒·考恩（Tyler Cowen）和罗斯·杜塔特（Ross Douthat）这个实体，你可以立即访问，比世界上任何其他东西都更直接的访问。
I think most of my decisions are made without my awareness.
我认为我的大部分决定都是在我不知情的情况下做出的。
What I feel is my consciousness is some kind of blip or epiphenomenon.
我的感觉是我的意识是某种昙花一现或附带现象。
Skating on the surface of that, there’s a lot of evidence.
从表面上看，有很多证据。
This is where I don’t really believe you.
这就是我不太相信你的地方。
I think, certainly, that if you’re driving through Arlington, Virginia, there is a set of unconscious things that your body does out of habit as you drive around that you are not self-consciously doing.
当然，我认为，如果你开车穿过弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿，当你开车时，你的身体会出于习惯而做一系列无意识的事情，而这些事情并不是你有意识地做的。
Certainly, there’re lots of things.
当然，还有很多事情。
You are a mind in some kind of dynamic relationship to a brain and body.
你是一个与大脑和身体有着某种动态关系的心灵。
There’re plenty of things going on that your consciousness is not responsible for.
有很多事情的发生并不是你的意识造成的。
But you write books, do you not?
但你写书，不是吗？
You host podcasts, do you not?
您主持播客，不是吗？
Some part of me does, yes.
我的某些部分确实如此，是的。
Most of it happens beneath the surface, and I’m not aware of the decisions I’m making.
大部分事情都发生在表面之下，我不知道自己正在做出的决定。
There’s an ex post reconstruction of it that makes me feel like I’m in control, but I don’t think I am very much, if at all.
这是一种事后重建，让我感觉自己处于控制之中，但我不认为我控制得很好，如果有的话。
Don’t you think you’ve maybe just imbibed a bit too much of the materialist spirit of the age?
你不觉得你可能吸收了太多这个时代的唯物主义精神吗？
I don’t even call it materialist.
我什至不称其为唯物主义。
I want to give you credit.
我想给你信用。
I think you write your own books.
我认为你写自己的书。
I think Tyler Cowen, with some assistance, obviously, from angels on one shoulder, demons on the other, maybe some fairies thrown in.
我认为泰勒·考恩显然需要一些帮助，一肩是天使，另一肩是恶魔，也许还有一些仙女。
I want to give you credit for actual existence.
我想赞扬你的真实存在。
The aggregate Tyler Cowen gets the credit.
总体而言，泰勒·考恩 (Tyler Cowen) 获得了荣誉。
I don’t think that this theory of the mind as aggregation actually does justice to the direct experience of being a human being.
我认为这种将心灵作为聚合的理论实际上并不能公正地对待作为人类的直接体验。
On the religious implications of alien life
论外星生命的宗教含义
If there are many alien beings on other planets — as I would say now seems likely, whether or not they’ve ever come here — does that make Jesus Christ less important?
如果其他星球上有许多外星人 ——正如我现在所说的，无论他们是否曾经来到过这里，这似乎是有可能的——这是否会让耶稣基督变得不那么重要？
Why does it seem likely?
为什么看起来有可能？
We keep on discovering more planets that appear possibly habitable.
我们不断发现更多可能适合居住的行星。
We don’t know what’s on them, but it’s certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets, so we should be raising our probability.
我们不知道它们上面有什么，但它肯定比我们没有发现任何此类行星的可能性更大，所以我们应该提高我们的概率。
It’s a big place out there.
这是一个很大的地方。
I would be shocked if there was not other meaningful life in the universe.
如果宇宙中没有其他有意义的生命，我会感到震惊。
I would also be somewhat surprised.
我也会有些惊讶。
I do think that the Fermi question still seems to hold, even given lots of life-friendly or seemingly life-friendly planets.
我确实认为费米问题似乎仍然成立，即使有很多适合生命或看似适合生命的行星。
The silence of the cosmos seems quite odd if, at the very least, there are lots of starfaring species out there capable of sending messages into the deep.
宇宙的寂静似乎很奇怪，至少，那里有许多星际物种能够向深处发送信息。
You might think that we are among the first, in which case, we seem fairly special, or you might think that there are just very, very few, in which case, I think, we seem fairly special again.
你可能认为我们是第一批，在这种情况下，我们看起来相当特别，或者你可能认为只有非常非常少，在这种情况下，我认为，我们又显得相当特别。
I think it’s unlikely —
我觉得不太可能 ——
They destroyed themselves would be my guess.
我猜他们会毁了自己。
They destroyed themselves and left no signals tracing their way through space?
他们毁灭了自己，并且没有留下任何信号来追踪他们在太空中的踪迹？
The speed of light is a tough one.
光速是一个艰难的速度。
Maybe we’re somewhat early.
也许我们还早一些。
I agree it’s a puzzle.
我同意这是一个谜题。
I don’t find it insuperable.
我不认为这是不可克服的。
Just to go back to your question, I think that the question for the Christian, given the existence of other beings with our kind of consciousness in the galaxy, would be, what is their apparent relationship to God?
回到你的问题，我认为，鉴于银河系中存在具有我们这种意识的其他生物，我认为基督徒的问题是，他们与上帝的明显关系是什么？
This is where the Christian doctrine of the fall is useful.
这就是基督教的堕落教义有用的地方。
The presumption would have to be that either there was some role for Jesus in their existence, and maybe we’re the vehicle for that.
假设必须是，要么耶稣在他们的存在中扮演了某种角色，也许我们就是这个角色的载体。
There are fun science-fiction novels where the Jesuits send missionaries to other planets.
有一些有趣的科幻小说讲述耶稣会士派遣传教士到其他星球。
I think you could imagine a scenario where the Catholic Church would very quickly try and recruit some missionaries to evangelize an alien species.
我想你可以想象这样一个场景：天主教会很快就会尝试招募一些传教士来向外星物种传福音。
Or you could have the scenario that you get in Christian science-fiction novelists.
或者你可能会遇到基督教科幻小说家中的场景。
You get a little bit of it in Madeleine L’Engle.
你可以在玛德琳·恩格尔身上看到一点。
You get it in C.S.
你可以在 C.S. 中得到它。
Lewis’s The Space Trilogy, where there are other species in the universe that are made in the image of God, maybe, and they have not fallen, and we have.
刘易斯的《太空三部曲》中，宇宙中也许还有按照上帝形象创造的其他物种，但它们并没有堕落，而我们却堕落了。
We are alienated from God in some profound way that other species might not be.
我们以某种深刻的方式与上帝疏远，而其他物种可能不会。
Those, I think, would be the two reasonable moves that a Christian might make, confronted with some form of extraterrestrial life.
我认为，面对某种形式的外星生命，基督徒可能会采取这两个合理的行动。
I do think, though, again, that the silence that we are faced with suggests that something more is going on than just, life is commonplace, it’s all over, and we haven’t run into it yet.
不过，我确实认为，我们所面临的沉默表明，除了生活很平常、一切都结束了之外，还有更多的事情正在发生，而我们还没有遇到它。
I think it either has to be quite rare or to be .
我认为这种情况要么非常罕见，要么确实如此。
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in both the Lewis and the L’Engle novels, there’s a kind of supernatural blockade on planet Earth because we fell, right?
在刘易斯和恩格尔的小说中，地球上有一种超自然的封锁，因为我们堕落了，对吗？
People who believe, I guess, UAPs, as we’re now supposed to call the UFOs, people who believe that those are actual visitors from other worlds — they have to believe in a non-supernatural version of that.
我想，那些相信UAP（我们现在应该称之为UFO）的人，那些相信这些是来自其他世界的真正访客的人——他们必须相信这种说法的非超自然版本。
They have to believe that there’s some management of Earth’s knowledge of the galaxy going on to explain why there are all these crafts zipping around but we’ve never heard a radio signal from deep space.
他们必须相信，地球对银河系的了解正在进行一些管理，以解释为什么所有这些飞船在周围飞驰，但我们从未听到过来自深空的无线电信号。
You could imagine a more supernaturalist version of that hypothesis, I suppose.
我想你可以想象这个假设的一个更超自然的版本。
If you’re weighing those probabilities that UAPs are alien drone probes —
如果你正在权衡 UAP 是外星无人机探测器的可能性 ——
Oh boy.
噢，孩子。
— versus angels and demons, what do you bring to bear on trying to figure that out?
——与天使和恶魔相比，你会用什么来试图解决这个问题？
COWEN: Because even I would say this: UAPs have increased my probability that there’s a God because there are not many explanations for them.
COWEN：因为即使我也会这么说：UAP 增加了我相信上帝存在的可能性，因为对它们的解释并不多。
There’s China.
有中国。
There’s Russia.
有俄罗斯。
There’s craft of our own.
我们有自己的手艺。
There’s alien drone probes.
有外星无人机探测器。
There’s what you could call broadly supernatural.
这就是你可以称之为广义超自然的东西。
So, there’re five explanations.
所以，有五种解释。
Yes.
是的。
That’s one of the five?
这是五个之一吗？
So, it’s upped my p.
所以，它提高了我的p。
The moves that people make is to say that they’re interdimensional, that this is the —
人们所做的动作是在表明他们是跨维度的，这就是 ——
I don’t know what that means, though.
但我不知道这意味着什么。
I also don’t know.
我也不知道。
I don’t know how you distinguish that from essentially supernaturalist explanations.
我不知道你如何将其与本质上超自然主义的解释区分开来。
If you had asked me, five to ten years ago, my basic view about UFOs, I didn’t have strong views about them, but I would’ve said that most of what I’d read in the literature about personal encounters with supposed extraterrestrials seemed to line up reasonably well with pre-modern accounts of encounters with angels, demons, and maybe especially fairies.
如果你在五到十年前问我对不明飞行物的基本看法，我对它们没有强烈的看法，但我会说，我在文献中读到的关于与所谓的外星人的个人遭遇的大部分内容似乎与前现代与天使、恶魔，也许尤其是仙女的遭遇相当吻合。
This is an argument that the ufologist, Jacques Vallee, made early in the UFO many decades ago, that if you compare an account of an alien abduction to an Irishman’s tale of being abducted by the Unseelie Court, there’re a lot of interesting similarities.
这是不明飞行物学家雅克·瓦利（Jacques Vallee）几十年前在不明飞行物早期提出的一个论点，如果你将外星人绑架的描述与爱尔兰人被 Unseelie 法庭绑架的故事进行比较，就会发现有很多有趣的相似之处。
There are two conclusions you could draw from that.
您可以从中得出两个结论。
You could say, well, there’s this union unconscious that human beings have that grants us these weird dream-like experiences, and in modern times, we attribute them to aliens, and we used to attribute them to fairies.
你可以说，嗯，人类拥有的这种无意识的联合赋予了我们这些奇怪的梦幻般的体验，而在现代，我们将它们归因于外星人，我们过去将它们归因于仙女。
Or you could be more of a supernaturalist and say there are beings out there who like to — pardon my language — fuck with us.
或者你可以更像是一个超自然主义者，并说外面有一些生物喜欢“——”请原谅我的语言“——”他妈的我们。
They do it in different ways in different times and places.
他们在不同的时间和地点以不同的方式做这件事。
That seems to me to be the straightforward reading of the data on individual encounters, abductions, encounters, that stuff.
在我看来，这似乎是对个人遭遇、绑架、遭遇等数据的直接阅读。
I honestly don’t know what to make of the craft-zipping-around stuff.
老实说，我不知道如何看待这些随处可见的工艺品。
That’s part of why it’s interesting.
这就是它有趣的部分原因。
I have difficulty fitting it into a non-supernaturalist paradigm.
我很难将其融入非超自然主义范式。
I think you can.
我想你可以。
You can say the best argument would be, these are extraterrestrial drones sent from deep space or from some observation base deep under the oceans if we’re going to get really kooky.
你可以说最好的论点是，如果我们真的要变得很奇怪的话，这些是从深空或海底深处的某个观测基地发射的外星无人机。
This is what you’d expect from an advanced civilization many light years away.
这就是你对许多光年之外的先进文明的期望。
They can’t travel to every planet that has life on it, so they have some drones keeping an eye on things.
他们无法前往每一个有生命的星球，所以他们有一些无人机来监视事物。
I guess you could make that argument.
我想你可以提出这个论点。
If you make that argument, then you have to separate that from all the kind of paranormal UFO abduction stuff and say, “Well, these are just separate things.
如果你提出这个论点，那么你必须将其与所有超自然不明飞行物绑架事件区分开来，并说：“好吧，这些只是不同的事情。
One belongs to the realm of religious, supernatural, Jungian experience, and one is literal aliens visiting us.”
一种属于宗教、超自然、荣格经验的领域，另一种是名副其实的外星人来访。”
I find that’s unsatisfying.
我觉得这并不令人满意。
I feel if they aren’t Chinese drones, if they aren’t native earth tech .
我觉得如果它们不是中国无人机，如果它们不是本土地球技术。
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I don’t know if it’s probabilistic reasoning or not.
我不知道这是否是概率推理。
My mind wants there to be a connection between weird abduction stories and Navy pilot sightings.
我的想法是奇怪的绑架故事和海军飞行员的目击事件之间存在联系。
I guess it’s a case where I find the subject quite interesting, but I don’t want to make any kind of commitment because I think we just conspicuously lack evidence.
我想在这个案例中，我发现这个主题非常有趣，但我不想做出任何形式的承诺，因为我认为我们明显缺乏证据。
I think there’s a contingent of Christian and religious interpreters of this stuff who say, “Look, it’s probably demonic.” It’s basically how the old gods of paganism, who are really demons, get back in.
我认为有一群基督教和宗教解释者会说：“看，这可能是恶魔。”这基本上就是异教的旧神，他们真正的恶魔，如何卷土重来。
Instead of pretending to be angels of light, they pretend to be ETs of light, and so on.
他们不是假装是光之天使，而是假装是光之外星人，等等。
If you had my friend Rod Dreher on, who writes a lot about mystical issues and has lately started writing about UAPs — he’s very interested in that argument.
如果你有我的朋友 Rod Dreher，他写了很多关于神秘问题的文章，并且最近开始写关于 UAP 的文章，他对这个论点非常感兴趣。
I think, were that the case, it would be quite striking and strange that there would be actual craft of some kind involved.
我认为，如果是这样的话，那么涉及到某种实际的工艺将会是相当惊人和奇怪的。
Certainly, a kind of departure from what we know about supernatural interventions otherwise, an escalation that would be strange.
当然，这与我们对超自然干预的了解有所不同，否则这种升级就会很奇怪。
Also, if I were, let’s say, a Syrian demi-demon trying to get worshipers back after all these thousands of years, I don’t understand the end game, of sending a bunch of crafts zipping around to freak out Navy pilots.
另外，如果我是，比方说，一个叙利亚半恶魔，在几千年后试图让崇拜者回来，我不明白最终的游戏，派出一堆飞船飞来飞去吓坏海军飞行员。
I don’t know what’s the plan there.
我不知道那里有什么计划。
I’m trying to be resolutely open-minded.
我正在努力保持开放的心态。
In general, you weigh personal testimony higher than I do.
总的来说，你对个人证词的重视程度比我高。
Let me see if you can talk me into it a bit.
让我看看你能否说服我一下。
Something is recorded in data sensors and confirmed across multiple sensors.
数据传感器中记录了某些内容，并通过多个传感器进行确认。
Maybe I don’t know what it is, but I’ll believe there’s something there.
也许我不知道那是什么，但我相信那里有东西。
But if people say X, Y, and Z — there’re all sorts of religions neither you nor I would sign onto, and plenty of humans who will assert, insist that there’s direct evidence for that particular religion.
但如果人们说 X、Y 和 Z —— 有各种各样的宗教，你和我都不会认同，而且很多人会断言、坚持认为存在该特定宗教的直接证据。
The story of Joseph Smith, the plates from LDS would be one example, but there’re plenty of religions that don’t even exist anymore, where there’re very particular stories that people have attested to.
约瑟夫·史密斯的故事、摩门教徒的盘子就是一个例子，但有很多宗教甚至已经不存在了，其中有一些非常特殊的故事被人们证实。
We really do dismiss them in the numbers of the tens of millions or maybe even billions.
我们确实忽视了数以千万甚至数十亿的数字。
So, if we’re willing to dismiss all those stories, isn’t David Hume right?
那么，如果我们愿意驳回所有这些故事，大卫·休谟不是对吗？
We should not dismiss the stories, but they’re not going to budge us out of a more commonsensical worldview.
我们不应该忽视这些故事，但它们不会让我们放弃更常识性的世界观。
Yes.
是的。
I don’t dismiss all of those stories.
我并不否认所有这些故事。
I guess that’s part of my strong departure from Humean assumptions.
我想这是我强烈背离休谟假设的一部分。
I think that certainly there are fakes and frauds and charlatans in religion, and there are people who are just sincerely mistaken, who think that they had a religious experience when really, they have a diagnosis or they should get a diagnosis of some form of mental illness or insanity.
我认为宗教中肯定存在虚假、欺诈和江湖骗子，有些人只是真诚地犯了错误，他们认为自己有宗教经历，而实际上，他们有某种形式的精神疾病或精神错乱的诊断或应该得到诊断。
At the same time, I think that the wide range of attested spiritual, just frankly bizarre experiences that human beings have — of which, UFO encounters are a subset — that, again, has familiar antecedents going back millennia — I think we should take those seriously and have a theory of what they are that is more complex than fraud meets insanity meets delusion.
与此同时，我认为人类所拥有的各种已被证实的精神上的、坦率地说奇异的经历——“其中，不明飞行物的遭遇只是其中的一个子集——”同样，它有可以追溯到几千年前的熟悉的前因——“我认为我们应该认真对待这些，并有一个比欺诈与疯狂与妄想更复杂的理论。
Part of this is just knowing people who’ve had those kinds of experiences, reading a lot about those kinds of experiences — not just in my own tradition, but in other religious traditions.
其中一部分就是认识有过此类经历的人，阅读大量有关此类经历的文章——不仅在我自己的传统中，而且在其他宗教传统中。
I think that they correspond to something real, even if the interpretation that people give to them is wrong or deluded or misguided.
我认为它们对应于真实的事物，即使人们给予它们的解释是错误的、被欺骗的或被误导的。
I don’t think that Joseph Smith was in fact chosen by God to restore the lost truths about Jesus Christ, polygamy, and the ancient civilizations of the New World.
我不认为约瑟夫·史密斯实际上是被上帝选中来恢复有关耶稣基督、一夫多妻制和新世界古代文明的失落真理的。
I don’t think that’s true.
我认为那不是真的。
Do I think that Joseph Smith didn’t have some weird supernatural encounter?
我是否认为约瑟·史密斯没有遇到过一些奇怪的超自然遭遇？
I’m less confident about saying that.
我对此不太有信心。
The same would go .
同样的事情也会发生。
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I don’t think that Muhammad is the Seal of the Prophets.
我不认为穆罕默德是先知的印记。
Do I think that Muhammad either hallucinated or made it all up?
我认为穆罕默德这一切是幻觉还是编造的？
Again, I’m certainly much less confident than you would be in saying that.
再说一遍，我肯定比你更没有信心这么说。
I do not —
我不 —
It’s almost an Islamic doctrine you’re holding.
这几乎就是你所持有的伊斯兰教义。
There are these various tiers of prophets, and they’re imperfectly right, but they’re getting at the divine.
先知有不同的层次，他们的观点并不完全正确，但他们都在追求神圣。
On experiences with the supernatural
关于超自然现象的经历
Yes.
是的。
I think any coherent theory of supernatural experience — given what you can encounter just by reading William James — has to say either there’re infinite realms of deception out there .
我认为任何连贯的超自然体验理论——考虑到你通过阅读威廉·詹姆斯就能遇到的东西——都必须说，要么存在着无限的欺骗领域。
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This is something that some religious believers would say.
这是一些宗教信徒会说的。
There’s one subset of totally authentic, trustworthy religious experiences, and then there’s a vast realm where it’s all demonic deception.
其中一部分是完全真实、值得信赖的宗教体验，而另一部分则是恶魔般的欺骗。
Or you have to say that there’s just a range of ways in which people encounter God and the supernatural that do get filtered through cultural assumptions and through — I don’t want to say imperfect prophets — let’s just say imperfect human beings.
或者你不得不说，人们遇到上帝和超自然现象的方式有很多种，这些方式确实通过文化假设和“——我不想说不完美的先知”——“让我们只说不完美的人类”来过滤。
And that helps yield the diversity of religions in the world today.
这有助于当今世界宗教的多样性。
But you can also see patterns in those things like near-death experiences.
但你也可以看到诸如濒死体验之类的事情的模式。
The range — there is cross-cultural variation in near-death experiences.
范围 — 濒死体验存在跨文化差异。
If you have a near-death experience as a Tibetan Buddhist, you are more likely to see the Buddha.
如果你作为一名藏传佛教徒有过濒死体验，你就更有可能看到佛陀。
If you have a near-death experience as a Catholic, you’re more likely to maybe see an archangel or a Catholic saint or something.
如果你作为天主教徒有过濒死体验，你更有可能看到大天使或天主教圣人或其他什么。
But at the same time, there are some pretty clear commonalities to suggest that people in Tibet and people in Indiana are having the same kind of experience when they die and are resuscitated and report the lights, the tunnel, all the strange things associated with those experiences.
但与此同时，有一些非常明显的共同点表明，西藏人和印第安纳州的人们在死后复活时有同样的经历，并报告了灯光、隧道以及与这些经历相关的所有奇怪的事情。
Yes, there’s a challenge here, obviously, for any kind of dogmatic religion.
是的，显然，任何教条宗教都面临着挑战。
You do have to figure out, “Okay, why is there this consistency but also this variation?” But there’s also a challenge for the Humeans to say, “Well, we’re just writing off this fairly consistent cross-cultural realm of human experience because it’s all supposed to be myth and hallucination?” The people who have these experiences are not generally the kinds of people who you would describe as prone to hallucination and insanity.
你必须弄清楚，“好吧，为什么会有这种一致性，但也有这种变化？”但休谟主义者也面临着一个挑战：“好吧，我们只是注销人类经验中这种相当一致的跨文化领域，因为这一切都应该是神话和幻觉？”有这些经历的人通常不是你所描述的容易出现幻觉和精神错乱的人。
There are of course cases, but that’s not the norm.
当然有案例，但这不是常态。
On the Humean point — if you go back and read Hume, he doesn’t exactly say this, but you really have the strong impression that Hume thinks that once you get rid of established religious authorities and the universal teachings of antique stories from the Bible, that a big swath of supernatural stuff will just go away.
关于休谟观点——如果你回去读休谟，他并没有完全这么说，但你确实有一个强烈的印象，休谟认为，一旦你摆脱了既定的宗教权威和圣经中古老故事的普遍教义，一大堆超自然的东西就会消失。
Now, he says humans still —
现在，他说人类仍然 ——
And that’s wrong, right?
那是错误的，对吧？
Right.
正确的。
Humans still have this propensity toward the marvelous — I think that’s the phrase he uses.
人类仍然对奇妙的事情有这种倾向——我想这就是他用的短语。
I don’t think he’d be surprised by some persistence, but I think the original Humean theory is, most people believe in the supernatural because someone has taught them about it at church.
我不认为他会对某些坚持感到惊讶，但我认为最初的休谟理论是，大多数人相信超自然现象，因为有人在教堂教过他们。
There are these legends handed down from misty antiquity.
这些传说是从遥远的远古流传下来的。
I think we just know that that’s not true.
我想我们只知道那不是真的。
That’s not what’s going on.
事实并非如此。
That’s, I think, one of the multiple places where atheist skeptics and materialists have some prior updating to do about what we’ve learned over the last 200 years about what life is like under allegedly disenchanted conditions.
我认为，这是无神论怀疑论者和唯物主义者事先更新我们在过去 200 年来所学到的关于所谓的幻灭条件下的生活是什么样子的地方之一。
Doesn’t it worry you that for all of these instances of the supernatural, there’s never enough evidence accumulated to convince actual scientists?
对于所有这些超自然现象，没有积累足够的证据来说服真正的科学家，你难道不担心吗？
No one has captured an elf, as far as I know.
据我所知，还没有人捕获过精灵。
You could switch the topic to some other instance of the supernatural, but there’s plenty of testimony of elves.
你可以把话题转到其他一些超自然现象上，但有很多精灵的证词。
Yes.
是的。
I worry though a little about .
我有点担心。
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。
.
。
The assumption of supernatural experience, I would say, is .
我想说的是，超自然经验的假设是。
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。
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。
Let’s say there’re two ways in which it could manifest itself, just to massively simplify it.
假设它有两种表现方式，只是为了大大简化它。
You could say it manifests itself through some kind of reaching in, where a higher power — God, angel, demon, whatever — is operating in human reality.
你可以说它通过某种方式显现出来，一种更高的力量——上帝、天使、恶魔等等——正在人类现实中运作。
Or you could say it relates to some native gift, the idea that some people have psychic powers, and so on.
或者你可以说它与某些天生的天赋有关，即某些人具有心灵力量的想法，等等。
In the first case, you are pretty clearly dealing with wills and intentions and intentionality and choices that are essentially the equivalent of human will and intentionality and choices and so on.
在第一种情况下，你非常清楚地处理意志、意图、意向性和选择，这些本质上相当于人类的意志、意向性和选择等等。
Saying, “Well, we should be able to consistently predict when someone will be possessed by a demon or something and under the right laboratory conditions.” It’s like saying, “Well, we should consistently predict when two people are going to fall in love under the right laboratory conditions.”
说：“好吧，我们应该能够在适当的实验室条件下一致地预测某人何时会被恶魔或其他东西附身。”这就像说：“好吧，我们应该在正确的实验室条件下一致地预测两个人何时会坠入爱河。”
Again, the hardest core materialist might say eventually we should.
同样，最顽固的核心唯物主义者可能会说我们最终应该这样做。
We should be able to get it, to see what’s happening in their brains when these two people are going to fall in love.
我们应该能够得到它，看看当这两个人即将坠入爱河时，他们的大脑中会发生什么。
But in practical terms, science hits a limit when certain kinds of human agency enter the picture.
但实际上，当某些类型的人类机构介入时，科学就会达到极限。
I don’t see why it wouldn’t hit a similar limit.
我不明白为什么它不会达到类似的限制。
I don’t see why you would imagine that you could devise a laboratory system for reliably conjuring the supernatural.
我不明白为什么你会想象你可以设计一个实验室系统来可靠地召唤超自然现象。
On the second case —
对于第二种情况 ——
You don’t have to conjure it, but there’s no way to measure it reliably?
你不必想象它，但没有办法可靠地测量它？
What do you mean by —
你说的是什么意思 —
Just whatever it would take.
不惜一切代价。
The editors of Science and Nature, whoever they may be — I suspect they don’t believe in what you believe in.
《科学》和《自然》的编辑，无论他们是谁 —— 我怀疑他们不相信你所相信的东西。
Whatever it would take to convince them.
无论如何都要说服他们。
We have no tools that will bring them along.
我们没有工具可以带他们一起去。
It’s at some odd margin of being quite non-legible.
它的字迹有些奇怪，难以辨认。
It’s that way on purpose to test us?
这是故意这样考验我们吗？
Or it just turned out that way?
或者结果就是这样？
It seems like a weird —
好像很奇怪 ——
I think it has to be that way on purpose in order for the basic coherence of physical existence to obtain.
我认为为了获得物理存在的基本连贯性，必须有目的地这样做。
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。
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I think, actually, the scientist’s point originally that you can’t do science if you can always assert that an angel is responsible for moving a planet around — I think that is a decent enough explanation of why you wouldn’t expect constant predictable operation of supernatural forces in the world.
我认为，实际上，科学家最初的观点是，如果你总能断言天使负责移动行星，那么你就不能做科学——我认为这是一个足够体面的解释，说明为什么你不会期望世界上超自然力量持续可预测的运作。
I think that there are also reasons to think, for instance, with psychic phenomena .
我认为也有理由思考，例如，思考心理现象。
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。
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。
Thanks in part to the CIA’s interest in it, this has been subject to a lot of quasi-scientific scrutiny over long periods of time.
部分由于中央情报局对此感兴趣，长期以来，这一直受到大量准科学的审查。
You can find people who have done studies that technically stand up to the rigors of scientific expectations that seem to prove the existence of some kind of psi, some kind of paranormal ability.
你可以找到一些人，他们所做的研究在技术上经得起科学预期的严格要求，这些研究似乎证明了某种 psi、某种超自然能力的存在。
But then you enter into the replication crisis and you have competing studies and recreations of those studies.
但随后你就会陷入复制危机，你会面临相互竞争的研究以及这些研究的再创造。
I don’t want to rule out, in fact, the possibility that, if more scientists set aside their materialist presumptions, you wouldn’t be able to get better data.
事实上，我不想排除这样一种可能性：如果更多的科学家抛开他们的唯物主义假设，你将无法获得更好的数据。
But I think it would have to be data about characteristics of human beings rather than characteristics of angels and demons.
但我认为它必须是关于人类特征的数据，而不是天使和恶魔的特征。
I think the latter is inherently inaccessible to the tools that we use for modern science.
我认为后者本质上是我们用于现代科学的工具无法获得的。
Whereas I do think it’s reasonable to say if people are psychic, maybe we should be able to design a set of experiments that offers clearer indications in that direction.
虽然我确实认为说人是否具有通灵能力是合理的，但也许我们应该能够设计一组实验，在这个方向上提供更清晰的指示。
I quote Freeman Dyson in the book as a maverick polymath, scientific genius, and he was a believer in psychic phenomena.
我在书中引用弗里曼·戴森的话说，他是一位特立独行的博学者、科学天才，而且他是心灵现象的信徒。
His argument was basically that if you read about the cases where people have these kinds of experiences, they’re similar to cases of bursts of artistic creativity or things, again, that are very hard to predict and measure scientifically.
他的论点基本上是，如果你读到人们拥有此类经历的案例，它们类似于艺术创造力爆发或事物的案例，同样，这是很难科学预测和衡量的。
They happen under periods of great physical or personal duress.
它们发生在身体或个人承受巨大压力的时期。
They happen around the death of a loved one.
它们发生在亲人去世前后。
They happen in inherently eccentric circumstances that seem to — again, if these capacities existed — be the things that generated those capacities, which again, creates some problems for laboratory measurement, I would say.
它们发生在本质上古怪的环境中，这些环境似乎“再次，如果这些能力存在”，就是产生这些能力的事物，我想说，这又给实验室测量带来了一些问题。
But this gets back to my interaction set of worries.
但这又回到了我对互动的一系列担忧。
People report seeing and hearing angels and demons, right?
人们报告说看到和听到了天使和恶魔，对吗？
But there’s not an MP3 file or a photo where you would , “Oh, here we go.” That’s very odd to me.
但没有 MP3 文件或照片可以让您说：“哦，我们开始了。”这对我来说很奇怪。
It’s not logically impossible.
这在逻辑上并非不可能。
It just seems highly unlikely.
这似乎不太可能。
None of them seem to have held up.
他们似乎都没有坚持下来。
What kind of evidence would convince you?
什么样的证据能让你信服？
Catholics always go for this one —
天主教徒总是追求这个 —
I can hear Winston Churchill on YouTube, right?
我可以在 YouTube 上听到温斯顿·丘吉尔的声音，对吧？
There’s the miracle of the sun at Fatima in the early part of the 20th century that did happen in front of a large number of witnesses.
20世纪初，法蒂玛的太阳奇迹确实在众多目击者面前发生过。
There are powerful newspaper accounts, including, I think, in The New York Times.
有一些强有力的报纸报道，我认为包括《纽约时报》。
There’s a reason that it’s been hotly debated ever since, but whatever it was, it was something that clearly — had there been video cameras there — something would’ve been perceived.
从那以后，它一直受到激烈争论，这是有原因的，但无论它是什么，它显然是“如果那里有摄像机”的话，就会被感知到的东西。
There’s a similar case in Egypt involving an apparition of the Virgin Mary where there’s footage and so on.
埃及也有类似的案例，涉及圣母玛利亚的显现，里面有录像等等。
What would be, I guess, convincing to you?
我想什么才能让你信服呢？
If I presented you tomorrow with a video of the Archangel Michael walking through the halls of George Mason, wielding a sword, you would assume that it was AI-generated at this point, right?
如果我明天向您展示一段大天使迈克尔挥舞着剑穿过乔治梅森大学大厅的视频，您会认为它是人工智能生成的，对吗？
I would bring it to someone, and I could find out.
我会把它带给某人，我就能找到答案。
But at some point soon, you won’t be able to find out —
但很快的某个时刻，你将无法发现 ——
Sure, but I still could —
当然可以，但我仍然可以 ——
— if you’re right about the progress of AI.
— 如果你对人工智能进展的看法是正确的。
That there’s not one to date makes me much more skeptical.
迄今为止还没有一个让我更加怀疑。
Right.
正确的。
You want God to —
你希望上帝 ——
The testimony, but in reproducible form that can be verified.
证词，但以可复制的形式进行验证。
It just seems odd that it never turns out that way.
事情从来没有变成那样，这似乎很奇怪。
Did you read Carlos Eire’s book, They Flew?
你读过卡洛斯·艾尔的书《他们飞走了》吗？
No.
不。
It’s worth reading, I would say.
我想说，这本书值得一读。
It’s a book about levitation in the 1500s and 1600s, Reformation and Counter-Reformation era.
这是一本关于 1500 年代和 1600 年代、宗教改革和反宗教改革时代的悬浮的书。
Levitation by various saints and yes, I’d be curious what you think about that book.
各种圣人的悬浮，是的，我很好奇你对这本书的看法。
There were no cameras, obviously, in the early 1600s.
显然，1600 年代早期还没有相机。
Eire’s argument is that, by any normal evidentiary standard in terms of collective witnesses and consistencies of witnesses and so on, these stories of levitation would seem to pass muster.
艾尔的论点是，按照任何正常的证据标准，如集体证人和证人的一致性等，这些悬浮故事似乎都通过了审查。
You have to be operating there in the realm, not just of personal delusion, but of mass delusion.
你必须在这个领域中运作，不仅是个人的妄想，而且是大众的妄想。
In the contemporary world, yes, there hasn’t been a claim of levitation in the Catholic church since, I believe, a nun who was involved with the French resistance in the 1930s and ’40s, and there was photography then.
是的，在当代世界，自从一位修女在 20 世纪 30 年代和 40 年代参与法国抵抗运动以来，天主教堂就再没有提出过悬浮的说法，而且当时就有了摄影。
It’s fair to say, “Shouldn’t we have a photograph?” However, if I presented you with a photograph from the 1940s of a levitating nun, I don’t think you’d be convinced of it.
公平地说，“我们不应该拍一张照片吗？”然而，如果我向您展示一张 20 世纪 40 年代的悬浮修女照片，我认为您不会相信。
Well, I would have people look into it for me.
好吧，我会让人们帮我调查一下。
It would be grainy and so on.
它会是颗粒状的等等。
You want video —
你想要视频 —
The best that can be delivered.
能交付的最好的。
You want the best video.
您想要最好的视频。
Yes.
是的。
I don’t think, for the more extreme forms of supernaturalism, that’s a completely unfair request, but we’ll see what we get over the next 50 to 100 years.
我不认为，对于更极端形式的超自然主义来说，这是一个完全不公平的要求，但我们会在接下来的 50 到 100 年里看看我们会得到什么。
You’ve already updated your priors about UFOs based on video evidence, right?
你已经根据视频证据更新了你对不明飞行物的了解，对吗？
Sure, absolutely.
当然，绝对。
All right.
好的。
And my priors on God, for that matter.
就此而言，还有我对上帝的先验。
We’ll come back to the video.
我们将回到视频。
I’m not inflexible here.
我在这里并不僵化。
I think we can revisit the video evidence question.
我认为我们可以重新审视视频证据问题。
We only have a rather short number of decades of widely available video technology, which also has happened to be a period of peak arid secularism.
我们广泛使用的视频技术只有短短几十年的时间，而这也恰好是世俗主义的顶峰时期。
I want to say that I think generalizing from that to a universal point that you could never have video evidence may be a little bit of a leap, and we should give it a few more decades, and see what surfaces.
我想说的是，我认为从这一点概括到一个普遍的观点，即你永远不可能拥有视频证据，可能有点跨越，我们应该再给它几十年，看看会出现什么。
On the Antichrist and spiritual intermediaries
关于敌基督者和精神中介
What do you think of Peter Thiel’s fascination with the Antichrist?
您如何看待彼得·蒂尔对反基督者的迷恋？
I think Peter is more apocalyptic —
我认为彼得更具世界末日意义 ——
Than you are.
比你是。
— than I am, yes.
— 比我，是的。
Not enough intermediaries in his story, so all the stakes are on the table at once, so to speak.
他的故事中没有足够的中间人，所以可以这么说，所有的赌注都同时摆在桌面上。
I think it’s more that the threat of the Antichrist .
我认为这不仅仅是敌基督者的威胁。
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I think he’s going to maybe elaborate his theories of the Antichrist at some point in the future.
我认为他可能会在未来的某个时候详细阐述他的反基督理论。
On video most likely.
最有可能是在视频上。
DOUTHAT: On video, most likely, yes.
DOUTHAT：在视频上，很可能是的。
I think that what we’ve seen so far, I would say, in the 21st century — take the Antichrist to be some comprehensive global rule by a singular power dedicated to a false view of reality.
我认为，我想说的是，在 21 世纪，我们迄今为止所看到的——将敌基督者视为一种致力于对现实的错误看法的单一力量的全面全球统治。
I don’t know if that’s how he’d define it, but let’s say that might be how I define it.
我不知道他是否会这么定义，但我可以说这可能是我的定义。
I think we’ve tended to see brief flares of forces and powers that resemble that, that then quickly collapse under pressure from competing forces, other forces, and so on.
我认为我们往往会看到类似的力量和权力的短暂爆发，然后在竞争力量、其他力量等的压力下迅速崩溃。
In 2008, Barack Obama was, for six months, the most popular man in the world, not just in the US.
2008年，巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)连续六个月成为世界上最受欢迎的人，而不仅仅是在美国。
He could have been elected president of the world.
他本来可以当选世界总统。
You could say, in that moment, you could see how one incredibly charismatic individual could dominate the world in a mass media age.
你可以说，在那一刻，你可以看到一个极具魅力的人如何能够在大众媒体时代主宰世界。
But six months into his presidency, Obama was back to being a normal politician with normal enemies, totally unpopular in various ways, and so on.
但就任总统六个月后，奥巴马又回到了一个正常的政治家，有着正常的敌人，在各种方面完全不受欢迎等等。
Again, to take an example that I know Peter’s been very concerned about, the alignment of big tech companies with control over the internet, with woke ideology and its hostility to free speech and its ideological fantasies.
再举一个我知道彼得非常关心的例子，大型科技公司与互联网的控制权、觉醒的意识形态以及对言论自由和意识形态幻想的敌意结盟。
You could say, okay, that’s not an individual, but it’s a system, a system of interlocking directorates, a cathedral — the Yarvin phrase — from which we can’t escape.
你可以说，好吧，那不是一个个体，但它是一个系统，一个环环相扣的董事会系统，一个大教堂 ——“雅文短语”—— 我们无法逃脱。
But it seems like we can escape from that right now.
但现在看来我们可以摆脱这种情况。
The true rule of the woke cathedral where no dissent was brooked — what did it last for?
苏醒的大教堂的真正规则是不容许任何异议————它能持续下去是为了什么？
Six years?
六年？
Yes, and Donald Trump was president for a couple of those years.
是的，唐纳德·特朗普当了几年总统。
I think to be an Antichrist fearer, you need to fear some power not yet fully in evidence.
我认为作为一个反基督的恐惧者，你需要害怕一些尚未完全显现的力量。
That power, if you want it to be non-supernatural, could be whatever — the machine-god view of AI.
如果你希望它是非超自然的，那么这种力量可以是任何东西——人工智能的机器神观点。
I think if you take a maximalist doomer view of strong AI, then that’s effectively a theory of the Antichrist.
我认为，如果你对强人工智能采取极端主义的厄运观点，那么这实际上是一种反基督理论。
You could go back to our early discussion about the Sumerian gods returning and using the guise of aliens or something to enthrall us all.
你可以回到我们早期的讨论，关于苏美尔众神回归并利用外星人或其他东西来迷惑我们所有人。
That could be a theory of the Antichrist.
这可能是敌基督的理论。
But those are theories of things not in evidence to me in the year of our Lord 2025, so I worry less about the Antichrist today than I did at various points recently.
但这些理论在我们的主 2025 年对我来说并没有证据，所以我今天对敌基督的担心比最近不同时候要少。
Should Peter just be an Opus Dei Catholic?
彼得应该只是主业团的天主教徒吗？
He’s right-leaning.
他是右倾的。
He doesn’t quite seem a Lutheran to me.
在我看来，他不太像是路德教徒。
Peter should be a Catholic.
彼得应该是天主教徒。
I don’t know if he should join Opus Dei.
我不知道他是否应该加入主业会。
I think it’s okay.
我觉得没关系。
I’m not in Opus Dei.
我不在主业团。
I think it’s okay to be a normal Catholic.
我认为做一个普通的天主教徒就可以了。
Are they not normal Catholics?
他们不是普通的天主教徒吗？
I don’t even know.
我什至不知道。
I may have said this to you before, but one of the curious things about being a conservative Catholic who writes for The New York Times, is that people have an idea that you are the most intense Catholic who ever lived or something like that, which of course, ultimately, we should all be seeking — to be saints and so on.
我以前可能对你说过这样的话，但作为一名为《纽约时报》撰稿的保守派天主教徒，令人好奇的事情之一是，人们认为你是有史以来最虔诚的天主教徒或类似的东西，当然，最终，我们都应该寻求“成为圣人”等等。
But in practice, I try and go to mass on Sundays.
但实际上，我尝试在周日去参加弥撒。
I try to go to confession.
我试着去忏悔。
I try and lead a serious Catholic life, but I’m not .
我尝试过一种严肃的天主教生活，但我没有。
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.
。
I think it’s possible to have that be your destination rather than saying, “Okay, you need this more intense order, this more intense subculture,” or anything like that.
我认为这可能是你的目的地，而不是说，“好吧，你需要这种更强烈的秩序，这种更强烈的亚文化”或类似的话。
I think it’s sufficient to say, “Peter should convert to Catholicism and attend mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and go to confession.” I think that’s enough.
我认为这样说就足够了：“彼得应该皈依天主教，并在周日和义务圣日参加弥撒，并去忏悔。”我认为这就足够了。
Catholicism in Mexico is pretty friendly to this idea of intermediaries, but in the United States, it’s pretty suspicious.
墨西哥的天主教对这种中间人的想法相当友好，但在美国，却相当可疑。
Does that make you uncomfortable being an American Catholic?
作为一名美国天主教徒，这会让你感到不舒服吗？
There’re other ways you could be a Catholic, but you strike me, actually, as not that much of an American Catholic.
你可以通过其他方式成为一名天主教徒，但事实上，你让我觉得你并不是一个美国天主教徒。
I don’t doubt your sincerity in your state of view.
我不怀疑你的诚意。
The thing is, you seem not to fit.
问题是，你似乎不适合。
The thing is, I’m interested in the intermediaries as a, I guess you could say, would-be analyst of what is actually going on in reality.
问题是，我对中介机构感兴趣，我想你可以说，作为现实中实际发生的事情的潜在分析师。
I’m interested in what is going on in reality.
我对现实中发生的事情感兴趣。
I think these intermediary spiritual experiences are part of reality, and they’re interesting, and they have a place in any argument for why one should be religious.
我认为这些中间的精神体验是现实的一部分，它们很有趣，并且在任何关于为什么一个人应该信仰宗教的争论中都占有一席之地。
In my everyday life, I’m not out there performing exorcisms.
在我的日常生活中，我不会去那里驱魔。
I don’t take ayahuasca.
我不吃死藤水。
I think there’s a prurient interest in intermediary spiritual powers that is forbidden to Christians, certainly to Catholics.
我认为基督徒，尤其是天主教徒，对中介精神力量有一种淫荡的兴趣，这是被禁止的。
You’re not supposed to be trying to contact the spirits of the dead or doing divination or these kinds of things.
你不应该试图联系死者的灵魂或进行占卜或诸如此类的事情。
I feel like I’m comfortable enough.
我觉得我已经足够舒服了。
I think you could say that one, Mexican Catholicism is part of American Catholicism now, to some degree.
我想你可以说，墨西哥天主教现在在某种程度上是美国天主教的一部分。
But I think it’s okay to say Mexican Catholicism maybe captures the totality of existence more completely than suburban American Catholicism without necessarily wanting to spend all of your time in that zone, especially because that zone .
但我认为可以说墨西哥天主教可能比美国郊区的天主教更完整地捕捉到了存在的整体性，而不必想把所有的时间都花在那个区域，特别是因为那个区域。
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The Mexican example is actually a good example of where you would say that temptations come in because Mexico has a whole zone of quasi-Catholic, para-Catholic folk religion, where you’re attending mass, but you’re also making deals with Santa Muerte.
墨西哥的例子实际上是一个很好的例子，你会说诱惑之所以出现，是因为墨西哥有一整片准天主教、准天主教民间宗教区，你在那里参加弥撒，但你也与死亡圣神做交易。
You’ll talk to priests who work in that territory who will say that they feel like their parishioners are going to mass one moment and making deals with minor demons the next, and that’s not what you’re supposed to do at all.
你会和在该地区工作的牧师交谈，他们会说他们觉得他们的教区居民前一刻正在聚集，后一刻就与小恶魔做交易，而这根本不是你应该做的。
Does the ex cathedra doctrine make sense to you concerning the pope?
关于教皇，前大教堂学说对你来说有意义吗？
I would say I have more questions about the nature and limits of papal authority today than I did 10 or 15 years ago, before the age of Pope Francis.
我想说，今天我对教皇权威的性质和限制的疑问比 10 或 15 年前、即教皇方济各时代之前更多。
I think it makes sense that, if there is a God, and if the second person of the Trinity came to Earth to suffer and die for your sins and mine, and if there was a church established that was supposed to carry that revelation forward throughout history, that institution would be protected in some way from the most serious forms of error.
我认为这是有道理的，如果有一位上帝，如果三位一体中的第二位来到地球上为你和我的罪受苦和死亡，如果建立了一个教会来在整个历史中传播这一启示，那么这个机构就会以某种方式受到保护，免受最严重形式的错误的影响。
In that sense, yes, some version of infallibility makes sense to me.
从这个意义上说，是的，某些版本的绝对正确对我来说是有意义的。
I think the parameters of what could and couldn’t be considered infallible are a little bit shaky at the moment.
我认为什么可以被认为是绝对正确的，什么不能被认为是绝对正确的参数目前有点不稳定。
So, maybe the pope shouldn’t get to decide when he’s speaking ex cathedra.
所以，也许教皇不应该在他发表前大教堂讲话时做出决定。
The pope, yes.
教皇，是的。
This is the thing.
就是这样。
Again, the Francis era has raised all of these debates.
方济各时代再次引发了所有这些争论。
Just as Protestants run into difficulty arguing about what the authority of scripture actually delivers, Catholics run into difficulty arguing about where the specific lines are of when and when not the pope is speaking infallibly.
正如新教徒在争论圣经的权威实际上传达了什么方面遇到了困难一样，天主教徒也遇到了争论教皇在什么时候和什么时候没有无误地讲话的具体台词在哪里的困难。
I’d say when the pope defines a dogma of the church infallibly, like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or something like that, I think that has a useful clarity.
我想说，当教皇无误地定义教会的教义时，例如圣母无染原罪的教义或类似的东西，我认为这是一个有用的清晰度。
I think on questions of morality, yes, the historical record gets a little murkier.
我认为在道德问题上，是的，历史记录变得有点模糊。
On writing fantasy novels
论奇幻小说的写作
What have been the inspirations behind your fantasy novel?
您的奇幻小说背后的灵感来源是什么？
Online and free, The Falcon’s Children.
在线且免费的《猎鹰之子》。
Yes, online, serialized on Substack.
是的，在线，在 Substack 上连载。
Free for now, though once I get through two-thirds of it, I think I need to paywall and see how many people are actually interested.
目前免费，但一旦我读完三分之二，我想我需要付费墙，看看有多少人真正感兴趣。
COWEN: Hold the throngs back.
COWEN：阻止人群。
That’s right.
这是正确的。
Hold the throngs back.
阻止人群。
It’s a combination of things.
这是多种因素的结合。
First, I was a Tolkien and sub-Tolkien nerd in high school.
首先，我在高中时是一个托尔金和亚托尔金书呆子。
One of the lines is that people either become a conservative by reading Atlas Shrugged first or by reading Lord of the Rings first.
其中一条是，人们要么先读《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》，要么先读《指环王》，从而成为保守派。
I was Lord of the Rings.
我是指环王。
I always liked fantasy as a genre, just as a reader and something to play around in.
我一直喜欢奇幻作为一种类型，就像一个读者和一些可以玩的东西。
I wrote a very bad fantasy novel in high school, and then I started another one in my 20s and abandoned it.
我在高中时写了一本非常糟糕的奇幻小说，然后我在 20 多岁时开始写另一本，然后放弃了。
Then, when I was ill with Lyme disease for a while, I guess it was four or five years ago, and I did this, I went back to that novel.
然后，当我患莱姆病一段时间时，我想那是四五年前的事了，我这样做了，我又回到了那本小说。
One of the things about, at least the kind of illness I had was that it was a very physicalized illness in which my consciousness felt somewhat imprisoned in my body.
其中一件事，至少是我所患的疾病是一种非常身体化的疾病，在这种疾病中，我的意识感觉有点被囚禁在我的身体里。
I was looking for things that my consciousness could do while feeling imprisoned, and trying to write fiction again seemed like one of them.
我一直在寻找我的意识在被囚禁的同时可以做的事情，而再次尝试写小说似乎就是其中之一。
I went back to it and took the stuff I had from my 20s and worked through it again.
我又重新开始，把我 20 多岁时的东西重新复习一遍。
Then I have various high-flown theories about why fantasy is an interesting genre that connect to many of the things we’ve been talking about here that fantasy occupies.
然后我有各种夸张的理论来解释为什么奇幻是一种有趣的类型，这些理论与我们在这里讨论的奇幻所占据的许多事物有关。
It’s very interested in the transition from an enchanted world to a disenchanted world.
它对从魔法世界到幻灭世界的转变非常感兴趣。
From pre-modernity into modernity.
从前现代性进入现代性。
This is as true of George R.
乔治·R·布什 (George R.
R.
R。
Martin’s novels as it is of Tolkien.
马丁的小说就像托尔金的小说一样。
This is the recurring question that fantasy is navigating.
这是奇幻作品中反复出现的问题。
Has magic disappeared?
魔法消失了吗？
Is magic coming back?
魔法又回来了吗？
Is it about to disappear?
难道它就要消失了吗？
These kinds of things.
诸如此类的事情。
I think that aspect of fantasy is timely for our psychedelic and UFO-haunted moment.
我认为幻想的这一方面对于我们迷幻和不明飞行物出没的时刻来说是及时的。
And finally, in terms of actually publishing it, obviously, my intention was to write it and sell the rights to HBO and retire from newspaper-column writing and provide for all of my many children that way.
最后，就实际出版而言，显然，我的意图是写完它并将版权出售给 HBO，然后退出报纸专栏写作，并以这种方式养活我所有的孩子。
That has not happened, but I decided to put it out there in part .
这并没有发生，但我决定把它的一部分放在那里。
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。
You have this — it’s you, right?
你有这个 —— 是你，对吧？
You have the line about, you should be writing for the AI, right?
你说过，你应该为人工智能写作，对吗？
Of course.
当然。
If so much of the future is going to be — maybe this isn’t how you’d put it — but so much of the future is going to be AI reading the internet and doing things with the internet, you want to put your work out there.
如果未来的大部分内容都是“——”也许这不是你所说的“——”但是未来的大部分内容将是人工智能阅读互联网并利用互联网做事，那么你想把你的工作放在那里。
When you say things like that, I think to myself that that might be true of my columns.
当你这么说时，我心里想，我的专栏可能也是如此。
Maybe I’m writing my columns for the AI.
也许我正在为人工智能撰写专栏。
But I have a different view with fiction and creativity, which is, well, I don’t fully believe that AI is going to be capable of human-level creative writing, but on the off chance that it is, I’d like to get my own writing out there before that moment arrives, right?
但我对小说和创造力有不同的看法，也就是说，我并不完全相信人工智能能够进行人类水平的创造性写作，但如果有机会，我想在那一刻到来之前把自己的作品写出来，对吗？
I’m quite curious —
我很好奇 ——
Well, it’s capable of some kind —
嗯，它有某种能力 ——
At shorter lengths, at least.
至少在较短的长度上。
Well, right.
嗯，对。
But is AI capable of finishing A Song of Ice and Fire to the satisfaction of George R.R.
但人工智能能否让乔治·R·R·乔治满意地完成《冰与火之歌》？
Martin’s fans?
马丁的粉丝？
Not yet.
还没有。
If it will be, then at some future point, the world will be absolutely flooded with works of art that have no actual human consciousness behind them.
如果是这样，那么在未来的某个时刻，世界将完全充斥着背后没有实际人类意识的艺术作品。
I think works of art that have a human consciousness behind them are inherently better, no matter what our descendants might think about the subject.
我认为背后有人类意识的艺术作品本质上更好，无论我们的后代如何看待这个主题。
So, I thought since I have this novel written, I should put it into the world.
所以，我想，既然我写了这本小说，我就应该把它放到这个世界上。
Without an HBO serialization deal, that is what I’m doing.
如果没有 HBO 的连载协议，这就是我正在做的事情。
My readers wanted me to ask you, how’s your health going?
我的读者希望我问您，您的健康状况如何？
It’s much, much, much better than how it was when I was at my worst.
这比我最糟糕的时候好多了。
You reach a certain point with recovery from a chronic illness where you’re always telling people you’re 90 percent or 92 percent without .
当您从慢性疾病中恢复到一定程度时，您总是告诉人们您 90% 或 92% 没有这种病。
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it’s asymptotic to recovery.
它是渐近恢复的。
You’re always approaching 100 percent and never quite getting there, but I feel like I am still making progress towards full health.
你总是接近 100%，但从未完全达到目标，但我觉得我仍在朝着完全健康的方向取得进展。
In practice, what tends to happen is that I feel about 97 percent well until I get some other illness, and then some of my old symptoms come back.
实际上，经常发生的情况是，我感觉 97% 左右都很好，直到我得了其他疾病，然后我的一些旧症状又回来了。
I slipped back.
我又溜了回来。
Unfortunately, we have a lot of illnesses that run through our house because we have a lot of kids.
不幸的是，因为我们有很多孩子，所以我们家里有很多疾病。
I slipped back a fair amount, which is to say, there’s still something in my system that my body has mostly suppressed, but that recurs.
我向后退了相当多的距离，也就是说，我的系统中仍然有一些东西被我的身体大部分抑制了，但这种情况又复发了。
Generally, I’m obviously in a much better place than I was at my worst and also in a better place than I was when I finished the book about having Lyme disease.
一般来说，我的处境显然比我最糟糕的时候要好得多，也比我读完关于莱姆病的书时的处境要好。
Last two questions.
最后两个问题。
First, your father wrote a poem about you.
首先，你父亲写了一首关于你的诗。
It’s called “The Hold.” It’s about you as a kid.
它被称为“保留”。这是关于你小时候的事。
Do you like it?
你喜欢它？
I love all of my father’s poetry.
我喜欢我父亲的所有诗歌。
My father has a new book of poetry coming out, in fact, in just a few months.
事实上，我父亲的一本新诗集几个月后就出版了。
Before the last question, just to again reiterate: the new Ross Douthat book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.
在最后一个问题之前，再次重申一下：罗斯·杜塔特的新书《相信：为什么每个人都应该有宗教信仰》。
Excellent, great, wonderful book.
优秀，伟大，精彩的书。
I very much enjoyed reading it.
我非常喜欢读它。
And once I could, I read it right away.
一旦可以，我就立即阅读。
Last question — what will you do next?
最后一个问题 — 你接下来要做什么？
In part, it probably depends on internal questions at The Times and playing around with different day-job possibilities.
在某种程度上，这可能取决于《纽约时报》的内部问题以及不同日常工作的可能性。
I think one interesting question raised by the age of the internet is not just whether we’re transitioning to a future where we’re just writing for the AIs, but also the shift from the written word back to oral culture in different ways.
我认为互联网时代提出的一个有趣的问题不仅是我们是否正在过渡到只为人工智能写作的未来，而且还包括以不同方式从书面文字回到口头文化的转变。
We have a podcast at the Times.
我们在《泰晤士报》有一个播客。
I prefer the written word to oral culture.
与口头文化相比，我更喜欢书面文字。
I prefer reading greatly to listening to podcasts.
与听播客相比，我更喜欢阅读。
I read transcripts of your podcasts —
我读了你的播客的文字记录 —
So do I.
我也一样。
— rather than listening to them.
——而不是听他们的。
I’m trying to accept the reality that ours is going to be a more oral culture.
我试图接受这样一个现实：我们的文化将更加口头化。
I’m doing my substack of the fantasy novel.
我正在做我的奇幻小说子集。
I’m reading the chapters.
我正在读章节。
I’m not just publishing them.
我不只是出版它们。
I’m trying to think about that zone.
我正在尝试思考那个区域。
If I acquired a really large number of readers for the fantasy novel, I would just go ahead and straightforwardly write the sequel.
如果我的奇幻小说真的拥有大量读者，我就会直接写续集。
I think that there’s also a — it might not be a book, but a project to be written that’s a bit different from the telian , Antichrist view of our future.
我认为还有一个——它可能不是一本书，而是一个要写的项目，它与特利安、反基督对我们未来的看法有点不同。
It’s a bit more optimistic but treats the current moment as a kind of bottleneck in a way.
它有点乐观，但在某种程度上将当前时刻视为一种瓶颈。
As you know, I’m somewhat obsessed with demographic decline and collapsing birth rates, and so on.
如你所知，我有点痴迷于人口下降和出生率下降等等。
I think it’s interesting to think about 21st-century culture — internet culture in particular — as a culture that’s going to kill off a lot of not just long-standing institutions; maybe entire countries may simply disappear.
我认为思考 21 世纪文化 ——尤其是互联网文化—— 作为一种文化，它不仅会消灭许多长期存在的机构，而且会消灭许多机构，这是很有趣的。也许整个国家可能就会消失。
But other forms and other forces are going to come through the bottleneck and create whatever world exists on the far side.
但其他形式和其他力量将突破瓶颈，创造出远方存在的任何世界。
That’s an interesting question too.
这也是一个有趣的问题。
I’m also looking forward to having — in the wake of this book — some more straightforward arguments about why my friends should practice a religion.
我也期待着“在这本书之后”能够有一些更直接的论据来解释为什么我的朋友应该信奉宗教。
Ross, thank you very much.
罗斯，非常感谢你。
Thank you, Tyler.
谢谢你，泰勒。
It was a pleasure, as always.
一如既往，我很高兴。
I’ll work on the video evidence.
我会研究视频证据。
Photo Credit: Abigail Douthat ©
照片来源：Abigail Douthat ©