Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence (Ep. 14 - Live at Mason)

On the economics of irregular verbs

不规则动词的经济学

Some verbs are regular — you conjugate them with an -ed — others are irregular.

有些动词是规则的 —— 你可以将它们与-ed 结合起来—— 其他动词是不规则的。

You don’t say getted.

你不说得到。

You say got.

你说得到了。

How computationally efficient is that process?

该过程的计算效率如何？

Why do we have 165 or so quirky exceptions like stride, strode; come, came; sing, sang; go, went; and so on?

为什么我们有大约 165 个奇怪的异常，比如 stride, strode;来了，来了；唱歌，唱歌；走，去；等等？

It just seems that there could be no rhyme or reason behind hit.

似乎命中背后没有任何韵律或理由。

I think it’s just a consequence of the fact that we memorize words, and that’s one of the two mechanisms behind language.

我认为这只是我们记忆单词这一事实的结果，而这是语言背后的两种机制之一。

We store by brute force, rote memory, arbitrary pairings between a sound and a meaning.

我们通过暴力、死记硬背、声音和含义之间的任意配对来存储。

The word duck doesn’t look like a duck or walk like a duck or quack like a duck, but I can use it to get you to think the thought of a duck because we and everyone in this room has memorized a pairing between that sound and that meaning.

鸭子这个词看起来不像鸭子，走路不像鸭子，也不像鸭子嘎嘎叫，但我可以用它让你想到鸭子，因为我们和这个房间里的每个人都记住了这个声音和那个含义之间的配对。

We don’t just blurt out words but we also combine them into phrases and sentences using rules that allow you to predict theme or compute the meaning of a combination from the meaning of the parts and the way that they are arranged.

我们不仅会脱口而出单词，还会使用规则将它们组合成短语和句子，这些规则允许您根据各部分的含义及其排列方式来预测主题或计算组合的含义。

Those are the two mechanisms that make language possible.

这些是使语言成为可能的两种机制。

But there are some kinds of meanings where they can compete over which system expresses a particular concept.

但在某些意义上，它们可以竞争哪个系统表达特定的概念。

In the case of regularity or irregularity, we have two different ways of conveying the concept “an action that took place in the past,” or in the case of plurals like mouse, mice and rat, rats, two ways of talking about more than one thing.

在规律性或不规则性的情况下，我们有两种不同的方式来表达“过去发生的动作”的概念，或者在复数的情况下，例如 mouse，mice 和rat，rats，有两种方式谈论不止一件事。

We can memorize a more or less independent word to convey the idea like struck or sang, or we can apply an algorithm to say something in the past tense — add -ed to the end — and then we get walk, walked.

我们可以记住一个或多或少独立的单词来表达像“strike”或“sang”这样的想法，或者我们可以应用一种算法来用过去时态来表达某些内容 — 在末尾添加-ed — 然后我们就可以走，走。

Because of the peculiarities of the history of a language, you can have that labor divided between the rule system — the algorithmic system — and the memory system, and it’s the tension between those two systems that gives rise to a lot of the quirkiness of language, including English irregular verbs.

由于语言历史的特殊性，你可以在规则系统 —算法系统 — 和记忆系统之间分配工作，正是这两个系统之间的紧张关系导致了语言的许多怪异之处，包括英语不规则动词。

The reason for that is — I might even invoke Darwin more than Hayek — namely that in the generation-to-generation transmission process of an irregular verb, an irregular verb has to be memorized because, by definition, there is no rule behind it.

原因是：“我什至可能更多地援引达尔文而不是哈耶克”，即在不规则动词的代代相传过程中，不规则动词必须被记住，因为根据定义，它背后没有规则。

The only way you know that the past tense of come is came is that you hear everyone else use came.

你知道 come 的过去式是 come 的唯一方法是你听到其他人都使用 come。

Since memory thrives on frequency — the more often you hear something, the better you remember it — if any verb declines in frequency (and verbs become more or less fashionable for all kinds of reasons), then you could have a generation that never successfully masters it.

由于记忆力随着频率的增加而增强——“你听到某件事的次数越多，你就记住它越好”——如果任何动词的频率下降（并且动词由于各种原因变得或多或少变得流行），那么你的一代人可能永远无法成功掌握它。

They’ll default to the all-purpose add -ed rule, and then the verb will go from irregular to regular for that generation and all subsequent generations.

他们将默认使用通用的 add -ed 规则，然后该代以及所有后续代的动词将从不规则变为规则。

You’ve got an erosion of the stock of irregular verbs as they get filtered through the minds of children memorizing them, where it’s the less-frequent ones that tend to fall out of the language.

当不规则动词在孩子们记忆中被过滤时，它们的储备就会受到侵蚀，而那些不太常见的动词往往会从语言中消失。

They actually fit the phonological template for a standard word in the language, the kind of sound that you would use for a nickname or a common word.

它们实际上符合该语言中标准单词的语音模板，即您用于昵称或常用单词的声音类型。

They are more euphonious because they aren’t assembled in a kludgy way from the verb stem and this bit of detritus hanging on the end, this -ed, this suffix, which is serviceable — it allows you to convey a message — but it makes the sound of the word itself a bit clunky.

它们听起来更悦耳，因为它们不是以一种笨拙的方式从动词词干组装起来的，也没有挂在末尾的一点碎屑，这个-ed，这个后缀，这是有用的 ——“它可以让你传达一个信息”—— 但它让这个词本身的声音有点笨拙。

There are almost unpronounceable regular words like sixths or edited where, because you’re sticking an extra bit on the end of a word, you’re actually messing up the nice contour of a standard word in the language.

有一些几乎无法发音的常规单词，例如“sixs”或“edited where”，因为您在单词末尾添加了额外的位，所以实际上弄乱了该语言中标准单词的优美轮廓。

That’s another one of the tensions that over the course of the history of a language will shape the balance of regular and irregular forms.

这是语言历史进程中形成规则形式和不规则形式平衡的另一种张力。

That is Hayekian in the sense that no one planned the language to be optimal in satisfying one criterion.

这是哈耶克式的，因为没有人计划语言在满足某一标准方面是最佳的。

There are tradeoffs.

有一些权衡。

There are multiple tugs, pushes, and pulls.

有多种拖、推、拉动作。

As millions of speakers make little adjustments, as they use the language, as kids learn the language, the language itself spontaneously evolves with some balance.

当数以百万计的说话者几乎没有做出任何调整时，当他们使用语言时，当孩子们学习语言时，语言本身会自发地以某种平衡的方式发展。

One property of human memory is: you hear things a lot, they stick in memory better.

人类记忆的一个特性是：你听到的东西越多，它们就越容易记住。

Another one is: if it’s similar to other things that are well memorized, it can parasitize the memory strength of something nearby in phonological space.

另一种是：如果它与其他记忆良好的事物相似，它可以在语音空间中寄生附近事物的记忆强度。

Occasionally, there will be analogies.

偶尔也会有类比。

People will coin new verbs, sometimes in a jocular way.

人们会创造新的动词，有时是以一种幽默的方式。

You’re invited to a party: “Spice are welcome,” instead of spouses.

你被邀请参加一个聚会：“欢迎香料”，而不是配偶。

It’s a little bit jocular.

这有点搞笑。

Sometimes these things can catch on, and that was the case for snuck, where originally it was considered kind of cutesy — like spice as the plural of spouse.

有时这些东西会流行起来，snuck 就是这种情况，最初它被认为是一种可爱的东西——就像配偶复数形式的香料一样。

In fact, people who are older than about 70 or 75 still think that it’s slang, whereas people younger don’t see what the fuss is about.

事实上，70 或 75 岁以上的人仍然认为这是俚语，而年轻人则不明白有什么大惊小怪的。

One distinction that is vanishing that I think is sad is the three-way distinction in verbs like sink, sank, sunk; stink, stank, stunk; shrink, shrank, shrunk; where the shrank and the stank are giving way to their participle forms shrunk and stunk.

我认为令人悲伤的一个正在消失的区别是动词的三向区别，例如“sink”、“senk”、“sunk”；恶臭，恶臭，恶臭；缩小，缩小，缩小；其中“shrink”和“stunk”被它们的分词形式“shrink and stunk”所取代。

It’s nice to have that three‑way distinction.

能有这种三向区别真是太好了。

English conjugation is already so depauperate, so degenerate, that it’s nice to preserve what distinctions we have.

英语的词形变化已经如此贫乏、如此堕落，保留我们所拥有的区别是件好事。

On Chomsky and universal grammar

论乔姆斯基和普遍语法

Noam Chomsky’s idea of a universal grammar, which is somehow built into the structures of the human mind: in its early years there seemed to be a promise of some very definite accounting of what that structure would be.

诺姆·乔姆斯基的普遍语法思想以某种方式内置于人类思维的结构中：在其早期，人们似乎承诺对这种结构进行某种非常明确的解释。

After a while it seemed to collapse into this very general idea of recursion, which to me as an economist seems almost tautological.

一段时间后，它似乎陷入了这种非常普遍的递归概念，对于我作为一名经济学家来说，这几乎是同义反复。

If I came away from this debate and then I read people writing within popular science: “Today language is a number of different capacities brought together.

如果我结束这场辩论，然后我读到人们在科普领域所写的文章：“今天的语言是多种不同能力的结合。

They’re independent and just combined with our ability to divine meaning from others.” Could it be the case that Chomsky’s hypothesis was simply wrong?

它们是独立的，只是与我们从他人那里解读意义的能力结合在一起。”难道乔姆斯基的假设根本就是错误的吗？

2016, I know your books, but what’s your take on that today?

2016 年，我知道你的书，但今天你对此有何看法？

Linguistics is an eccentric field in some ways partly because it was so polarized by a charismatic figure and his opponents that it didn’t proceed in the ordinary direction of making the theory more precise, more testable.

语言学在某些方面是一个古怪的领域，部分原因是它被一个有魅力的人物和他的对手所两极分化，以至于它没有朝着使理论更精确、更可测试的正常方向发展。

With that caveat in mind, I think there is such a thing as, you can call it “universal grammar” in the following sense: that the child is biased to analyze the speech that he or she hears in particular ways.

考虑到这一点，我认为存在这样一种情况，你可以在以下意义上将其称为“通用语法”：孩子倾向于以特定方式分析他或她听到的言语。

It does not simply record sentences verbatim.

它不只是逐字记录句子。

That’s the memory half of the language system, but the algorithmic or computational or rule‑governed half tries to pull out combinatorial rules from the speech stream.

这是语言系统的记忆部分，但算法或计算或规则管理的一半试图从语音流中提取组合规则。

There are certain kinds of rules and elements that a child is keyed to look for.

孩子需要寻找某些类型的规则和元素。

That set of abilities would be what I would call (if I used the term) universal grammar.

这组能力就是我所说的（如果我使用这个术语的话）通用语法。

There are commonalities across the world’s languages that come from the fact that language is created anew every generation by the minds of the children who construct it out of the data that they get from their parents and peers.

世界上的语言有一些共同点，因为语言是每一代人根据从父母和同龄人那里获得的数据而重新创造的。

On the theory of mind

关于心智理论

A Conversation with Jonathan Haidt

与乔纳森·海特的对话

On morality, politics, disgust, free speech on campus, LSD, antiparsimonialism, and why economists set all the…medium.com

关于道德、政治、厌恶、校园言论自由、LSD、反节俭主义，以及为什么经济学家设定了所有这些……medium.com

If I understand him correctly, in our political discourse different modules take over.

如果我理解正确的话，在我们的政治话语中，不同的模块将占据主导地位。

It’s almost not integrated with the rest of your brain.

它几乎没有与你大脑的其他部分整合。

What’s your take on how unified cognition is?

您对统一认知有何看法？

To what extent, say, are political discourse ruled by independent modules, or is that not how you think about it?

比如说，政治话语在多大程度上是由独立模块统治的，或者你不是这么想的？

You have evolutionary psychologists proposing the metaphor of the mind as a Swiss Army knife.

进化心理学家提出将心灵比喻为一把瑞士军刀。

Now it’s more like a smartphone with a bunch of different apps.

现在它更像是带有一堆不同应用程序的智能手机。

These can all be opposed to a view of the mind that would have a theory of everything, that there’s just one principle.

这些都可以与一种思想观点相对立，这种思想拥有万有理论，即只有一个原则。

“It’s all Bayesian statistics” or “it’s just the law of operant conditioning.”

“这都是贝叶斯统计”或“这只是操作条件反射定律”。

The problem with the module metaphor is some of them are snap-in components with very limited channels of communication between them.

模块隐喻的问题在于，其中一些是嵌入式组件，它们之间的通信渠道非常有限。

I think that’s too strong, but I think it is reasonable to say that there are different faculties, to use an old‑fashioned word.

我认为这太过分了，但我认为用一个老式的词来说，有不同的能力是合理的。

To choose a different metaphor, I think it may have been Chomsky who proposed that the mind is like a biological system made out of organs and tissues.

如果选择一个不同的比喻，我认为可能是乔姆斯基提出的，心灵就像一个由器官和组织组成的生物系统。

When I was in high school I was taught, for example, that the blood was an organ.

例如，当我在高中时，我被教导血液是一个器官。

Now the blood, of course, suffuses all of our tissues.

当然，现在血液充满了我们所有的组织。

You can’t draw a dotted line around it.

你不能在它周围画虚线。

It’s not like the rump roast and the flank steak at the supermarket cow display.

它不像超市牛展示区的烤臀肉和侧腹牛排。

Likewise the mind can have a specialization, and structure, and different components, without them literally being independent.

同样，心灵可以有专门化、结构和不同的组成部分，但它们实际上并不是独立的。

I would agree with Jon Haidt that there are different mindsets — there are different faculties, there are different ways in which we can analyze the same set of events — and that a lot of political disagreement consists of what frame of mind — if you want, what module — you use to analyze a particular issue.

我同意乔恩·海特的观点，即有不同的心态 ——“我们有不同的能力，有不同的方式来分析同一组事件”—— 许多政治分歧包括什么心态 —— 如果你愿意，用什么模块 —— 你用来分析特定问题。

You’ve got to acknowledge the complexity, the multiplicity of the mind even if you don’t subscribe to the strict metaphor of modules.

即使你不认同模块的严格隐喻，你也必须承认思想的复杂性和多样性。

We have this sense of self, however difficult it may be to describe or study scientifically, and that evolved.

无论科学地描述或研究多么困难，我们都有这种自我意识，而且这种自我意识是不断进化的。

You’re a Darwinian.

你是达尔文主义者。

Where does that come from?

这是从哪里来的？

Why is it there?

为什么它在那里？

I think those are two different questions.

我认为这是两个不同的问题。

Of course, we don’t know it and that may be the key.

当然，我们不知道，但这可能是关键。

The philosophical problem of sentience or qualia or (sometimes called) the hard problem of consciousness I think might ultimately be a quirk of our own way of analyzing the world — that is, the mind reflecting on itself is naturally going to be puzzled by some aspects of itself.

我认为，感知或感受性的哲学问题或（有时称为）意识的难题最终可能是我们分析世界的方式的一个怪癖——也就是说，反思自身的心灵自然会对自身的某些方面感到困惑。

We know from neuroscience that there is no aspect of consciousness that does not have some physical correlate.

我们从神经科学中知道，意识的任何方面都与物理相关。

There’s no ESP.

没有ESP。

There’s no life after death.

死后没有生命。

There’s no mysterious action at a distance.

远处不存在神秘的动作。

It’s all information-processing and neurons.

这都是信息处理和神经元。

Why it should feel like something to me to be that network of neurons, I don’t think we have a satisfying answer to.

为什么我觉得神经元网络应该是某种东西，我认为我们没有一个令人满意的答案。

It may not be a scientific puzzle at all.

这可能根本不是一个科学难题。

There are some philosophers who claim that it just isn’t a coherent intellectual question at all, Dan Dennett being the most famous.

有些哲学家声称这根本不是一个连贯的智力问题，其中最著名的是丹·丹尼特。

For some people this is a kind of escape hatch from materialism and a way to bring back some notion of the soul.

对于某些人来说，这是摆脱物质主义的一种出口，也是一种带回灵魂概念的方式。

The problem there is that you’d expect the mind to have some kind of nonmaterial powers, which it does not have.

问题在于，你期望心灵拥有某种非物质的力量，但它却没有。

I tend to gravitate toward a view that sometimes has been credited to David Hume — Colin McGinn is the contemporary philosopher who has made it most prominent — sometimes I think misleadingly called “mysterianism.”

我倾向于倾向于一种有时被认为是大卫·休谟（David Hume）的观点——“科林·麦金（Colin McGinn）是当代哲学家，他使这一观点最为突出”——有时我认为这种观点被称为“神秘主义”，具有误导性。

Tom Nagel in his seminal article, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (whose title captures the essence of the problem), speculated in that article along the lines that I’m suggesting: namely, there may just be some facts about the universe that are true, and we’ll never be satisfied that we intuitively understand them.

汤姆·内格尔（Tom Nagel）在他的开创性文章“成为一只蝙蝠是什么感觉？” （其标题抓住了问题的本质），在那篇文章中按照我建议的思路进行推测：也就是说，可能只是有一些关于宇宙的事实是真实的，我们永远不会满足于我们直观地理解它们。

Not because there is some mystery in the sense of undiscovered scientific principle, but just that our very way of grasping reality might make certain things puzzling to us.

并不是因为未发现的科学原理有什么神秘之处，而是因为我们理解现实的方式可能会让某些事情让我们感到困惑。

Even though we know at a more explicit cognitive level that they’re true.

尽管我们在更明确的认知层面上知道它们是真实的。

A heap of neurons that registers the environment, that organizes the information, acts on it, including a model of itself: from my point of view, it feels like something.

一堆记录环境、组织信息、作用于环境的神经元，包括它自己的模型：从我的角度来看，它感觉像是某种东西。

Why that should be true?

为什么这应该是真的？

I don’t know.

我不知道。

Again, here I am inside me and almost by definition there are going to be some things about the view of me inside me that the me doing the view is not going to be able to articulate because the part that would do the articulating is part of the me trying to explain it.

再说一次，我在我的内心，几乎按照定义，我内心的观点会有一些事情，而做这个观点的我将无法清楚地表达出来，因为进行表达的部分是我试图解释它的一部分。

There may be some aspects where our best science will give us a characterization and we’ll always scratch our head as we appreciate that it’s true, but it never feels totally satisfying.

也许在某些方面，我们最好的科学会给我们一个表征，当我们意识到这是真的时，我们总是会摸不着头脑，但它永远不会让人感到完全满意。

I think there are some cases where human intuition hits a wall and this is one of them.

我认为在某些情况下，人类的直觉会碰壁，这就是其中之一。

The nature of time.

时间的本质。

What could have been before the Big Bang, if that was the beginning of everything.

如果大爆炸是一切的开始的话，那么在大爆炸之前会发生什么。

How can the universe either be finite or infinite?

宇宙怎么可能是有限的或无限的？

There’s no reason to think that every aspect of reality will be intuitive.

没有理由认为现实的每个方面都是直观的。

It may be so complex that it might be like the weather taken to several higher degrees.

它可能非常复杂，就像天气变得更高了一些。

In theory perhaps Laplace’s demon would be able to tell us what each of us will do next.

从理论上讲，也许拉普拉斯恶魔能够告诉我们每个人下一步会做什么。

Some things that are true in theory are so mind‑bogglingly complicated that they may as well not be true in theory.

有些理论上正确的事情复杂得令人难以置信，以至于它们在理论上也可能不正确。

Yeah, I don’t think there’s any miracle that goes on in the brain when we make a decision.

是的，我不认为当我们做出决定时大脑中会发生任何奇迹。

In that sense, we’re determined.

从这个意义上说，我们有决心。

On the other hand there is so much unpredictability, nonlinearity that for all intents and purposes we’re not determined.

另一方面，存在如此多的不可预测性和非线性，以至于我们无法确定所有的意图和目的。

On the essential Steven Pinker

论重要的史蒂文·平克

Let me try to give you my account of what I’ve taken away, which I’m sure is not the same as yours, but it’s a way of prompting you to tell us your view of the underlying unity in all of the things you did.

让我试着向你描述我所带走的东西，我确信这与你的不一样，但这是一种促使你告诉我们你对你所做的所有事情的基本统一的看法的一种方式。

I see you as very often trying to stake out a midway position.

我发现你经常试图采取中间立场。

If there are people out there, say like the blank-slate theorists, who don’t see much structure to the natural world or the social world or the linguistic world, then you reject that.

如果有人，比如白板理论家，看不到自然世界、社会世界或语言世界的太多结构，那么你就会拒绝这一点。

Then on the other hand there are people who postulate too much structure.

另一方面，有些人假设了太多的结构。

And (at least early) Chomsky would be an example there.

（至少在早期）乔姆斯基就是一个例子。

You’re trying to create some kind of intermediate position where there’s room for reason to operate, but within laws of nature.

你试图创造某种中间立场，在那里有理性运作的空间，但在自然法则之内。

You’re trying to rearticulate this modern 21st- and 20th-century vision of what does the Enlightenment mean for now, and how might we apply Enlightenment kinds of reasoning across all the different areas you’ve written on.

您试图重新阐明这种 21 世纪和 20 世纪的现代愿景，即启蒙运动目前意味着什么，以及我们如何将启蒙运动类型的推理应用于您所写的所有不同领域。

Then figuring out, shown in all these books, what are the methodological prerequisites for that.

然后找出所有这些书中所示的方法论先决条件是什么。

It’s levels at which we’re willing to talk about structure, and levels at which we’re not willing to talk about structure; and you staking out this intermediate — what you might call voluntarist — pro‑reason, pro‑science position.

这是我们愿意谈论结构的级别，也是我们不愿意谈论结构的级别；然后你就表明了这个中间立场——你可以称之为唯意志主义——支持理性、支持科学的立场。

That’s what I took away from the whole corpus of Steven Pinker.

这就是我从史蒂文·平克的整个语料库中得到的东西。

Tell me, what is your take on that?

告诉我，你对此有何看法？

On the other hand, I do believe in the Enlightenment vision that by understanding our world, that the world is intelligible, that we can understand it.

另一方面，我确实相信启蒙运动的愿景，即通过理解我们的世界，世界是可理解的，我们可以理解它。

That progress in understanding and therefore progress in rational action are possible.

理解上的进步以及理性行动上的进步是可能的。

Including, pointedly, ourselves.

明确地包括我们自己。

I do believe in the Enlightenment vision that by understanding our world, that the world is intelligible, that we can understand it.

我确实相信启蒙运动的愿景，即通过理解我们的世界，世界是可理解的，我们可以理解它。

That progress in understanding and therefore progress in rational action are possible.

理解上的进步以及理性行动上的进步是可能的。

Including, pointedly, ourselves.

明确地包括我们自己。

That is, there is such a thing as human nature.

也就是说，存在人性这样的东西。

It can be studied scientifically the way other phenomena are studied.

它可以像研究其他现象一样进行科学研究。

That it’s good to understand human nature because then we can discount, when necessary, illusions that are quirks of our own makeup.

了解人性是有好处的，因为这样我们就可以在必要时打消我们自己的怪癖所带来的幻想。

That we can understand what it is that gives humans fulfillment and satisfaction and pleasure, what are the resources that we have to work with in improving a political system.

我们能够理解是什么给人类带来满足、满足和快乐，我们在改善政治体系时必须使用哪些资源。

I also think that often — going back to finding a middle ground — the middle ground isn’t finding, say, the arithmetic mean between the two extremes.

我还认为，通常 ——“回到寻找中间立场”—— 中间立场并不是找到两个极端之间的算术平均值。

But rather it’s trying to go down a level of more finer-grain causal mechanisms underneath the phenomena.

相反，它试图在现象背后探究更细粒度的因果机制。

To state a position that may not look like either of the original extremes, because it’s more precise.

陈述一个可能看起来不像最初的极端的立场，因为它更精确。

In the case of language, for example, I’ve always been bored by the idea of “is language innate or is it learned.” It’s neither.

例如，就语言而言，我一直对“语言是天生的还是后天习得的”这个想法感到厌烦。两者都不是。

It’s not halfway in between because that doesn’t give you any insight either.

它不是介于两者之间，因为这也不会给你任何洞察力。

Rather there is an innate structure that does the learning, because learning doesn’t happen by magic.

相反，有一种与生俱来的结构来进行学习，因为学习不会凭空发生。

There has to be something in place that does the learning.

必须有一些东西可以进行学习。

Let’s characterize the nature of the learning mechanism in terms of its information-processing abilities.

让我们从信息处理能力的角度来描述学习机制的本质。

What is its computational architecture, as the computer scientists say?

正如计算机科学家所说，它的计算架构是什么？

Once you have that, that is the solution to the nature-nurture problem; namely, what’s innate is an ability to learn.

一旦你做到了这一点，那就是解决先天与后天问题的方法。也就是说，学习的能力是与生俱来的。

Since any mechanism does some things well and some things not so well, that gives you insight as to what and how we learn.

由于任何机制都有些事情做得很好，有些事情做得不太好，这让你深入了解我们学习什么以及如何学习。

That makes irrelevant the question of “is it innate or is it learned?” There is something that’s innate, but the innate stuff allows us to learn.

这就使得“它是天生的还是后天习得的”这个问题变得无关紧要了。有些东西是与生俱来的，但与生俱来的东西让我们能够学习。

It gets beneath a dichotomy into something that I like to think is more intellectually satisfying.

它在二分法之下变成了我认为在智力上更令人满意的东西。

On the limits of reason

论理性的限度

When we hit upon these various (you might call them) antinomies — What does consciousness really mean?

当我们遇到这些不同的（你可以称之为）矛盾时 —— 意识的真正含义是什么？

Is the world really free?

世界真的自由吗？

How do we think about time?

我们如何看待时间？

— you’re quite willing to pull a Kantian or Wittgensteinian move and say, “Well, it all collapses into contradiction.

— 你很愿意采取康德式或维特根斯坦式的做法并说：“好吧，这一切都陷入了矛盾。

Colin McGinn, that’s knowledge forever denied to us.” Then there’s this other sphere in which reason operates quite well.

科林·麦金，我们永远无法获得这些知识。”然后还有另一个领域，理性在其中运作得很好。

I tend to think of that more as a continuum: if we can’t understand some truly fundamental things, the problems in our thinking will bleed into everything we try to analyze.

我倾向于将其视为一个连续体：如果我们不能理解一些真正基本的事情，我们思维中的问题就会渗透到我们试图分析的一切中。

I tend to think of reason as being fairly weak.

我倾向于认为理性相当弱。

Maybe I’m more Hayekian in this way than you are: people being ruled by their passions, as David Hume might have thought.

也许在这方面我比你更倾向于哈耶克：人们被自己的激情所统治，正如大卫·休谟可能认为的那样。

In this sense I’m more skeptical about the Enlightenment.

从这个意义上说，我对启蒙运动更加持怀疑态度。

What can you say to talk me out of this skepticism and back into the truly Pinkerian view?

你能用什么话来说服我摆脱这种怀疑并回到真正的平克主义观点呢？

Number two, Hume — even though he was a very insightful psychologist and he emphasized that humans are subject to all kinds of irrational passions and biases and so on — one of the reasons that he did philosophy was to expose some of those fallacies, the better that we should be able to work around them.

第二，休谟——尽管他是一位非常有洞察力的心理学家，他强调人类会受到各种非理性激情和偏见等的影响——他研究哲学的原因之一就是揭露其中一些谬误，以便我们能够更好地解决它们。

His argument about reason being a slave to the passions was not so much a psychological claim that people will lose self‑control and they’ll let their emotions get the better of them.

他关于理性是激情的奴隶的论点与其说是一种心理学主张，不如说是人们会失去自我控制，他们会让自己的情绪战胜自己。

He’s partly making a conceptual point that the ability to go from A to B using reason doesn’t tell you what the B should be.

他在一定程度上提出了一个概念性的观点，即使用理性从 A 到 B 的能力并不能告诉你 B 应该是什么。

That there’s a logical distinction between goals on the one hand or desires and beliefs.

一方面，目标与欲望和信念之间存在逻辑区别。

That you can’t through a chain of deduction identify what you ought to aim for.

你无法通过一系列的推论来确定你应该达到的目标。

That’s just a category mistake.

这只是一个类别错误。

That’s different from the psychological claim that people are permanently irrational.

这与人们永远不理性的心理学主张不同。

People can be made more rational, I think he would say, and I would say — by the act of what we’re doing now, that is, exploring implications of ideas; by science, that is, by taking your beliefs and allowing reality to refute them or not; and historically, even though it’s true that people do all kinds of crazy things, subject to all kinds of irrational prejudices, passions, and so on.

我想他会说，我会说，通过我们现在正在做的事情，即探索思想的含义，人们可以变得更加理性；通过科学，也就是说，通过接受你的信念并允许现实反驳它们或不反驳它们；从历史上看，尽管人们确实会做各种疯狂的事情，受到各种非理性的偏见、激情等的影响。

On the other hand, some bad ideas get dropped by the wayside.

另一方面，一些糟糕的想法会被半途而废。

Not necessarily quickly, not necessarily absolutely, but we don’t have human sacrifice anymore.

不一定很快，也不一定绝对，但我们不再需要活人献祭了。

We don’t throw virgins into volcanoes to get better weather.

我们不会为了获得更好的天气而将处女扔进火山。

We don’t have too many hereditary monarchies anymore.

我们不再有太多的世袭君主制。

In both the progress of science — and I really do believe there is such a thing as scientific progress.

在科学的进步中——而且我确实相信存在科学进步这样的事情。

We see it in the fruits of technology, but we also see it just in the depth and satisfying nature of scientific explanation.

我们在技术成果中看到了它，但我们也从科学解释的深度和令人满意的性质中看到了它。

Not linearly and not inexorably, but in progress in so many dimensions of human life.

不是线性的，也不是无情的，而是在人类生活的许多方面不断进步。

I’ve documented the historical declines of violence.

我记录了暴力的历史下降。

As an economist, you know that we’ve gotten a lot wealthier and life has gotten better.

作为一名经济学家，你知道我们变得更加富有，生活也变得更好。

In many ways we live longer, we’re healthier, we have more breadth of experience.

从很多方面来说，我们的寿命更长、更健康、经验更丰富。

These are all, I would say, fruits of the Enlightenment, despite the fact that as products of evolution we’ve got a lot of irrational quirks baked into us.

我想说，这些都是启蒙运动的成果，尽管事实上，作为进化的产物，我们体内有很多非理性的怪癖。

Fortunately, and this gets us back to, say, modularity or specialization, we don’t only have irrational passions.

幸运的是，这让我们回到了模块化或专业化，我们不仅有非理性的热情。

We do have this big frontal cortex grafted onto a brain which now and again can override our passions.

我们确实将这个巨大的额叶皮层移植到了大脑上，它时不时地会压倒我们的激情。

We can exert self‑control.

我们可以发挥自我控制力。

We can count to 10.

我们可以数到10。

We can save for a rainy day.

我们可以存钱以备不时之需。

We can hold our horses.

我们可以牵住我们的马。

Not uniformly, not always reliably, but enough that it’s something that we could celebrate and try to encourage.

并不统一，并不总是可靠，但足以让我们可以庆祝并鼓励它。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

Likewise, the grammatical structure of African American English vernacular, as linguists call it, black English, Ebonics, there’s really nothing inherently to choose between the rules in black English vernacular and any other English vernacular.

同样，非裔美国英语白话的语法结构，正如语言学家所说的，黑人英语，Ebonics，在黑人英语白话和任何其他英语白话的规则之间实际上没有什么本质上可以选择的。

There I’m also a relativist.

我也是一个相对主义者。

On the other hand when it comes to what dialect we should use in formal essays, in the academic literature, and in the New York Times, it’s good to have a standard.

另一方面，当谈到我们应该在正式论文、学术文献和《纽约时报》中使用什么方言时，最好有一个标准。

The standard could have been black English if history had run differently.

如果历史以不同的方式发展的话，标准可能是黑人英语。

It doesn’t happen to be.

事实并非如此。

It’s good that we all settle on a standard to maximize communication and efficiency and certain aesthetic judgments.

很高兴我们都制定了一个标准，以最大限度地提高沟通和效率以及某些审美判断。

The standardization is a good thing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one standard is objectively better than another.

标准化是一件好事，但这并不一定意味着一个标准客观上优于另一个标准。

The idea that the rational actor and models derived from it are obsolete because humans make certain irrational choices, have certain rules of thumb that can’t be normatively defended — those aren’t necessarily incompatible, because even though every individual human brain might have its quirks and be irrational, it is possible for a collective enterprise that works by certain rules to have a kind of rationality that none of the individual minds has.

理性行动者和由此衍生的模型已经过时了，因为人类会做出某些非理性选择，有某些无法得到规范辩护的经验法则——这些并不一定是不相容的，因为即使每个人的大脑可能都有其怪癖并且是非理性的，但一个按照某些规则运作的集体企业有可能拥有一种个人思想所不具备的理性。

Also it’s possible because we’re corrigible, because the mind is many parts.

这也是可能的，因为我们是可以纠正的，因为头脑是由很多部分组成的。

We can override some of our biases and instincts either though confrontations with reality, through education, through debate.

我们可以通过与现实的对抗、通过教育、通过辩论来克服我们的一些偏见和本能。

We do know even that people who are experienced in market transactions, for example, don’t fall for the kinds of fallacies that behavioral economists are so fond of pointing out.

例如，我们确实知道，即使是在市场交易方面经验丰富的人也不会陷入行为经济学家如此喜欢指出的那种谬论。

You really can’t turn a person into a money pump, even though in the lab I can set up a demo that shows people can be intransitive in their preferences.

你真的不能把一个人变成一个金钱泵，尽管在实验室里我可以设置一个演示来表明人们可以不及物地表达自己的偏好。

You actually put a person in a situation where there’s real money at stake, and all of a sudden they’re not so irrational.

你实际上把一个人置于一个真正的金钱处于危险之中的境地，突然间他们就不再那么不理性了。

The passive voice in writing.

写作中的被动语态。

Another rule of style, aside from avoiding the passive, is start the sentence with the given information, the topic.

除了避免被动语态之外，另一条风格规则是以给定的信息（即主题）开始句子。

End the sentence with the new information, the focus.

用新信息、焦点来结束句子。

If you’re already talking about something that is done to, then that’s the logical way to begin the next sentence, and the passive voice makes that possible.

如果你已经在谈论已完成的某件事，那么这就是开始下一个句子的合乎逻辑的方式，而被动语态使这成为可能。

If I’m saying, “Look at that mime in the park.

如果我说：“看看公园里的那个哑剧。

He’s being pelted with zucchini,” then since I’ve already called your attention to the mime, now I want to add information about him.

他被扔了西葫芦，”既然我已经引起你对哑剧的注意，现在我想添加有关他的信息。

If he happens to be the brunt of an action then the passive voice is the way to begin the next sentence with him, as opposed to saying “some people are throwing zucchini at him,” where he gets put at the focus of the sentence, which is the best place to introduce new information.

如果他碰巧是某个动作的首当其冲，那么被动语态就是与他一起开始下一个句子的方式，而不是说“有些人向他扔西葫芦”，这样他就成为句子的焦点，这是引入新信息的最佳位置。

In fact, as I point out in The Sense of Style, the two most famous style guides in the English language, namely Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, both accidentally use the passive in the very sentence in which they say “don’t use the passive.”

事实上，正如我在《风格的感觉》中指出的，两本最著名的英语语言风格指南，即奥威尔的《政治与英语语言》和斯特伦克和怀特的《风格的要素》，都无意中在他们所说的“不要使用被动语态”的句子中使用了被动语态。

You duplicate that two‑dimensional array of light with pigment or LEDs and you can fool the perceiver into thinking that he’s seeing the actual thing.

你用颜料或 LED 复制二维光阵列，你可以欺骗感知者，让他们以为他看到的是真实的东西。

That is then in tension with the fact that the photograph itself is a splash of geometric and colored patches.

这与照片本身是几何和彩色斑块的事实产生了紧张关系。

The challenge of photography is to both convey a sense of something out there, but also for that two‑dimensional patch to itself be an aesthetically pleasing object.

摄影的挑战在于既要传达某种事物的感觉，又要让二维斑块本身成为一个美观的物体。

As a photographer, I’m always cognizant of what will that two‑dimensional patchwork of color look like and what is it a photograph of.

作为一名摄影师，我总是清楚二维的色彩拼凑会是什么样子，以及它是一张什么照片。

On the future of peace

关于和平的未来

They could buy something, some kind of explosive.

他们可以买一些东西，某种炸药。

It would cost them $10,000.

他们将花费 10,000 美元。

How long would it take before someone actually did this?

需要多长时间才能有人真正做到这一点？

How to project that into the future is a separate set of questions.

如何将其预测到未来是一组单独的问题。

There are many unknowns that I’m not arrogant enough to know the answer to.

有很多未知数，我还没有傲慢到知道答案。

It’s something that we could debate.

这是我们可以争论的事情。

We could explore them.

我们可以探索它们。

I am not an optimist in the sense of saying, “Well, let’s just extrapolate the curves in the future without asking questions like that.”

我并不是一个乐观主义者，我会说：“好吧，让我们推断未来的曲线，而不用问这样的问题。”

It’s hard for me to think of exceptions to that trend.

我很难想到这种趋势的例外情况。

If I expect economic growth to continue, I expect we’ll get in a world in some way a bit like my $10,000 question, “How long would it take?” I worry that will happen a few times.

如果我期望经济持续增长，我预计我们会进入一个有点像我的 10,000 美元问题的世界：“需要多长时间？”我担心这种情况会发生几次。

Then we will cycle into some fairly significant form of disorder.

然后我们就会陷入某种相当严重的混乱状态。

That’s my default prediction.

这是我的默认预测。

I don’t quite mean to prophesize it, but I take that to be what one normally would expect.

我并不是有意预言这一点，但我认为这是人们通常所期望的。

I’m happy for you to talk me out of that.

我很高兴你能说服我不要这么做。

What’s the weakest premise in the chain I’ve given you?

我给你的链条中最薄弱的前提是什么？

It is not necessarily true that there will be a $10,000 nuclear weapon.

不一定会有 10,000 美元的核武器。

I’m not an expert on nuclear proliferation, but my reading is that you still need the thousands of centrifuges and so on.

我不是核扩散方面的专家，但我的理解是，你仍然需要数千台离心机等等。

That’s one, at least, topic to explore.

这至少是一个值得探索的话题。

Again, I’m not an optimist in saying, “Oh, relax, it will never happen.” On the other hand, I think it’s too easy to be a pessimist and to say that I can imagine bad things, therefore they are certain.

再说一遍，我并不是一个乐观主义者，不会说“哦，放松，这永远不会发生。”另一方面，我认为成为一个悲观主义者并说我可以想象坏事，因此它们是确定的，这太容易了。

Which I think has been a default in a lot of our discourse.

我认为这在我们的很多谈话中都是默认的。

The other is how much of desire is there for that kind of destruction?

另一个问题是，人们对这种破坏的渴望有多大？

The rate-limiting step on terrorist destruction is how many people think that it’s a good idea to cause a lot of damage for no particular reason.

恐怖分子破坏的速度限制步骤是有多少人认为无特殊原因造成大量破坏是个好主意。

There could be Tsarnaev brothers in this audience and there could be a pressure cooker that would blow up in the next few minutes.

听众中可能有察尔纳耶夫兄弟，也可能有一个高压锅在接下来的几分钟内爆炸。

I don’t think there will be.

我认为不会有。

But clearly there’s no technological or economic impediment to that.

但显然这不存在技术或经济障碍。

The amount of violence that we see is not limited by costs of technology.

我们看到的暴力数量并不受技术成本的限制。

It’s limited by the number of people who think that it would be a good idea to blow a lot of stuff up for no reason other than attracting publicity.

它受到认为除了吸引公众关注之外没有任何理由炸掉很多东西是个好主意的人数量的限制。

There are certain kinds of violence that are so pointless that no one really wants to do it.

有些暴力行为毫无意义，以至于没有人真正愿意这样做。

One of the reasons that we’ve gone now more than 70 years without a nuclear weapon being used in war is that they’re just not terribly useful as weapons to accomplish anything.

我们已经 70 多年没有在战争中使用核武器的原因之一是，它们作为武器并没有多大用处。

They’re useful to deter an existential threat and all-out invasion.

它们对于阻止生存威胁和全面入侵很有用。

That’s presumably why North Korea wants them.

这大概就是朝鲜想要它们的原因。

But they haven’t been used on the battlefield because leaving a huge radioactive crater is just not a very coherent war goal.

但它们还没有在战场上使用，因为留下一个巨大的放射性弹坑并不是一个非常连贯的战争目标。

You could imagine some apocalyptic cult where destruction for its own sake is so desirable that they would do anything possible.

你可以想象一些世界末日邪教，为了破坏本身而进行破坏是如此令人向往，以至于他们会做任何可能的事情。

We don’t know how many people like that there are.

我们不知道有多少这样的人。

I don’t know the answer.

我不知道答案。

On the Fermi Paradox and existential threats

论费米悖论和生存威胁

The universe seems oddly quiet, at least our corner of it.

宇宙似乎出奇地安静，至少我们所在的角落是如此。

That’s not a surprise if you think that civilizations tend to destroy themselves once energy becomes cheap enough, but otherwise if one is relatively optimistic as a default, where are they, to pose Fermi’s question to you?

如果你认为一旦能源变得足够便宜，文明就会自我毁灭，这并不奇怪，但除此之外，如果人们相对乐观地默认，那么向你提出费米问题的文明在哪里？

Again, I’m not willing to prophecy that it will continue.

再说一次，我不愿意预言它会继续下去。

But war is a pretty stupid thing to do.

但战争是一件相当愚蠢的事情。

You blow a lot of stuff up.

你炸毁了很多东西。

You kill people.

你杀人。

You don’t end up with anything that you couldn’t have gotten from some other means.

你最终不会得到任何通过其他方式无法得到的东西。

As soon as you become too belligerent, you give other people an incentive to destroy you.

一旦你变得过于好战，别人就会有动力摧毁你。

That may not be avoidable in Hobbesian anarchy, but if you can have some kind of system either of world government or of a functional equivalent like international norms in the United Nations and a set of expectations, then everyone could live a lot better if you aren’t all living by the sword.

在霍布斯式的无政府状态下，这可能是无法避免的，但如果你能拥有某种世界政府体系或类似联合国国际规范和一系列期望的功能体系，那么每个人都可以生活得更好，如果你们不是都生活在剑下。

It’s just as plausible to me that as civilizations advance, rather than having more and more destructive wars, they could continue the trend that we’ve been on since World War II and they eventually make war obsolete.

对我来说，同样合理的是，随着文明的进步，它们不会发生越来越多的破坏性战争，而是会继续我们自二战以来一直存在的趋势，并最终使战争变得过时。

That’s another plausible trajectory.

这是另一个看似合理的轨迹。

Indeed, the idea that the worst aspects of this particular primate — namely, we evolved in such a way that we are too quick to anger, too quick to defend our dominance — that that’s the only way for intelligence to evolve I think is parochial.

事实上，认为这种特殊灵长类动物最糟糕的方面——即我们进化得太快发怒，太快捍卫我们的统治地位——我认为这是智力进化的唯一方式，这种想法是狭隘的。

It’s saying that what we see in Homo sapiens is the only way that intelligent beings can come into existence.

这就是说，我们在智人身上看到的东西是智慧生物存在的唯一途径。

I don’t think we should be constrained by that.

我认为我们不应该受此限制。

Great apes?

类人猿？

It depends.

这取决于。

It just depends on the race between poaching and habitat destruction on the one hand, and conservation and ecotourism on the other.

它一方面取决于偷猎和栖息地破坏之间的竞争，另一方面取决于保护和生态旅游之间的竞争。

I don’t think they have to.

我认为他们不必这样做。

They could, but I don’t think they have to.

他们可以，但我认为他们不必这样做。

On TV shows

在电视节目中

I liked Hill Street Blues.

我喜欢希尔街布鲁斯。

I don’t even know if that’s available on streaming.

我什至不知道这是否可以在流媒体上播放。

I like Cheers.

我喜欢干杯。

As you can see, I haven’t done a lot of TV watching recently.

正如你所看到的，我最近看电视的次数不多。

Most academics I think secretly watch TV as a guilty pleasure and then deny it.

我认为大多数学者都把看电视视为一种罪恶的乐趣，然后又否认这一点。

I’m the other way around.

我恰恰相反。

I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, and I feel like I ought to watch more.

我不看太多电视，但我觉得我应该看更多。

On CRISPR

关于CRISPR

Does that worry you, or does that get you excited that we’re going to have smarter, better people?

这会让你担心吗？还是因为我们将拥有更聪明、更好的员工而感到兴奋？

Now more and more I appreciate that even traits that have a heavy genetic component, which most traits do, the genetic influence is distributed over thousands and thousands of genes, each of which increment or decrement the trait by a smidgen, and many of which have a mixture of positive and negative effects.

现在，我越来越认识到，即使是具有大量遗传成分的性状（大多数性状都是如此），遗传影响也分布在成千上万个基因上，每个基因都会稍微增加或减少性状，其中许多基因具有积极和消极影响的混合体。

The idea that you’ll put in the gene for musical ability in your child just turns out to be factually incorrect.

事实证明，将音乐能力基因植入孩子的想法是错误的。

That’s not the way genes work.

这不是基因的工作方式。

I’m rooted enough in what we know about behavioral genetics to think that these science-fiction scenarios are not particularly productive.

我对行为遗传学的了解足够深入，认为这些科幻小说中的场景并不是特别有效。

It’s probably a scenario that we’re not going to have to worry about just because it’s too complicated, especially since every time you monkey with a gene you are taking some chance that something will go wrong.

我们可能不必担心这种情况，因为它太复杂了，特别是因为每次你对基因进行胡闹时，你都会冒一些出问题的机会。

Admittedly CRISPR‑Cas9 has become extraordinarily accurate.

无可否认，CRISPR-Cas9 已经变得异常准确。

But if you’re talking about changing 1,000 genes in your offspring, or 10,000 genes, we’re so risk‑averse in genetic manipulation even when it comes to our tomatoes.

但如果你谈论的是改变你后代的 1,000 个基因，或者 10,000 个基因，那么即使涉及到我们的西红柿，我们也会在基因操作方面规避风险。

People won’t eat a tomato if it’s genetically modified.

如果西红柿是转基因的，人们就不会吃它。

The idea that you’re going to take that kind of risk with your children — I think it’s extraordinary unlikely that we’ll get there from here.

你要和你的孩子一起冒这种风险的想法——我认为我们从这里实现这一点的可能性非常小。

Do you want me to speculate about the science-fiction scenario in which we do?

你想让我推测一下我们所做的科幻小说场景吗？

Q&A

问答

With international connectivity caused by the Internet, do you think that we are on track for more linguistic homogeneity?

随着互联网带来的国际连通性，您认为我们是否正在走向更加语言同质化的轨道？

I don’t think it will result in everyone speaking English.

我不认为这会导致每个人都说英语。

Even under the most dire predictions, say 90 percent of languages go extinct, that leaves 600.

即使按照最可怕的预测，即 90% 的语言会灭绝，也只剩下 600 种语言。

No one is going to be giving up Spanish or Hindi or Russian or Chinese any time soon.

短期内没有人会放弃西班牙语、印地语、俄语或汉语。

In fact, the growth of translation software and of national media — combined with old‑fashioned national pride and just the inertia of growing up with a language and feeling more comfortable in it — means that we’re not going to have a single language driving out all the others.

事实上，翻译软件和国家媒体的发展 ——再加上老式的民族自豪感，以及与一种语言一起成长并在其中感觉更舒服的惯性——意味着我们不会有一种语言排斥所有其他语言。

Do you believe that mankind has the ability to get prophetic dreams, like Joseph in the Bible?

你相信人类有能力像圣经中的约瑟一样得到预言性的梦吗？

Do you believe that we can act on those prophetic dreams?

你相信我们能够实现那些预言性的梦想吗？

I did psychiatry, so I’m interested in your answer from that perspective.

我学的是精神病学，所以我对你从这个角度的回答感兴趣。

There seems to be modern versions of that, where to abolish gender binaries, we’re going to abandon pronouns and so forth.

似乎有现代版本，为了废除性别二元论，我们将放弃代词等等。

You work on a university so you’re probably familiar with a lot of this.

您在一所大学工作，因此您可能对此很熟悉。

I’d like your opinion on some of these strategies for advancing social change through abandoning certain languages and certain words and forms of language.

我想了解您对通过放弃某些语言、某些词语和语言形式来推进社会变革的一些策略的看法。

But it’s easier to do it with what linguists call open-class vocabulary items, nouns and verbs, than with closed-class or grammatical items like pronouns.

但使用语言学家所说的开放类词汇项、名词和动词，比使用代词等封闭类或语法项更容易。

Since the ’70s, there have been a number of proposals to introduce a gender‑neutral pronoun into the English language, so that we wouldn’t have to say he or she, or the clumsy he or she.

自 70 年代以来，出现了许多建议，希望在英语中引入中性代词，这样我们就不必说 he 或 she，或者笨拙的 he 或 she。

None of them have caught on.

但他们都没有流行起来。

Language doesn’t change in terms of its — it does change, but not quickly, and usually not by deliberate engineering when it comes to things like articles, pronouns, past tense and plural markers, and so on.

语言不会改变它的本身——它确实会改变，但不会很快，而且当涉及冠词、代词、过去时和复数标记等时，通常不是通过刻意的工程改变。

There’ll be just a natural resistance.

只会有一种自然的阻力。

They’re learned early.

他们很早就学会了。

They are highly frequent.

它们出现的频率很高。

They are distributed across millions of people conversing with one another.

它们分布在数百万人中，相互交谈。

I don’t think we have to worry about that changing too, too quickly.

我认为我们不必担心这种变化太快。

But, sure, there are more respectful and less respectful ways of referring to people.

但是，当然，有更尊重和不太尊重的称呼方式。

We’ve seen those change, and they’ll probably continue to change.

我们已经看到了这些变化，而且可能会继续变化。

What I call the euphemism treadmill refers to the fact that the reason there often is a cycling is that the change in attitudes that you want to affect by changing the language will meet resistance in terms of the rest of our psychology.

我所谓的委婉跑步机指的是这样一个事实，即经常出现循环的原因是，你想通过改变语言来影响态度的改变会遇到我们其他心理方面的阻力。

I don’t think it’s true that language determines your attitudes and beliefs, although it can push against them.

我认为语言并不能决定你的态度和信仰，尽管它可以推动它们。

As long as there’s still some kind of negative connotation to an entity, then changing the label for it will just result in the new label picking up the emotional aura of the concept rather than the other way around.

只要一个实体仍然存在某种负面含义，那么改变它的标签只会导致新标签拾取该概念的情感光环，而不是相反。

As long as there is prejudice against African Americans where the connotation is not as positive as you’d like it to be, there will be the urge to find a new label that has not yet absorbed the taint of the existing one.

只要对非裔美国人存在偏见，而且其含义并不像你希望的那样积极，就会有寻找一个尚未吸收现有标签污点的新标签的冲动。

African American I think took over pretty quickly sometime in the 1990s.

我认为非洲裔美国人在 20 世纪 90 年代的某个时候很快就占据了主导地位。

I think Jesse Jackson was the force behind it.

我认为杰西·杰克逊是其背后的力量。

We have gone now for more than 20-something years without a replacement of that, which might be a reflection of the fact that prejudice against African Americans is declining.

我们已经有二十多年没有更换它了，这可能反映了对非裔美国人的偏见正在减少的事实。

In other cases like Asian replacing Oriental, that stayed put, possibly because there was less prejudice against Asian people and there wasn’t a need to find a fresh replacement for that.

在其他情况下，例如亚洲人取代东方人，这种情况保持不变，可能是因为对亚洲人的偏见较少，并且不需要找到新的替代者。

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has shown that, for example, if you Google for various racist or sexist terms that are used in jokes, you get a pretty good barometer of racism that people may not be willing to admit to in public.

塞思·斯蒂芬斯·大卫维茨（Seth Stephens-Davidowitz）表示，例如，如果你在谷歌上搜索笑话中使用的各种种族主义或性别歧视术语，你会得到一个很好的种族主义晴雨表，人们可能不愿意在公开场合承认这一点。

If you do that, you don’t see a sudden U‑turn in the popularity of racist jokes in the last, say, six months.

如果你这样做，你就不会看到过去（比如六个月）种族主义笑话的受欢迎程度突然发生转变。

I think it is more a question of people who kept their attitudes to themselves now feeling that they’re allowed to get away with it, that some of the taboos have been broken.

我认为这更多的是那些对自己保持态度的人现在感觉他们可以逃脱惩罚，一些禁忌已经被打破了。

Whether they will reassert themselves with the decline of Trump, we don’t know.

我们不知道他们是否会随着特朗普的衰落而重新崛起。

I kind of hope so.

我有点希望如此。

I think there is a benign taboo against overtly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic language.

我认为对于公然的种族主义、厌恶女性和恐同的语言存在着良性的禁忌。

There are ugly attitudes, and there always will be: there is a benevolent hypocrisy and taboo where there are certain things that you just don’t say in public because that does legitimate them.

丑陋的态度是有的，而且永远都会有：有一种仁慈的虚伪和禁忌，有些事情你只是不会在公共场合说，因为这确实使它们合法化。

They can be threatened.

他们可能会受到威胁。

We saw that with taboo words for sexuality starting in the ’60s.

我们从 20 世纪 60 年代开始就在性禁忌词汇中看到了这一点。

Words that you could not say in print or on the airwaves are now common.

无法在印刷品或广播中说出的话语现在很常见。

That could happen with racist and homophobic terms.

种族主义和恐同术语可能会发生这种情况。

I hope not.

我希望不会。

Too early to tell.

还为时过早。

I think that since our species lives on information, information is the ultimate trade good because it is a nonrivaled good.

我认为，由于我们的物种以信息为生，信息是最终的贸易商品，因为它是一种无与伦比的商品。

You can share it with someone else without being deprived of it yourself.

您可以与其他人分享，而您自己也不会被剥夺。

It can be multiplied, and that makes it the ideal medium of reciprocity, conferring a large benefit to someone else at a small cost to oneself.

它可以成倍增加，这使其成为理想的互惠媒介，以自己较小的成本为他人带来巨大利益。

It lubricates the kind of cooperation that is hyperdeveloped in humans.

它促进了人类高度发达的合作。

It’s also, I think, tied in with the fact that we’re a technological species, that we live by our wits, by our know‑how.

我认为，这也与我们是一个技术物种这一事实有关，我们靠智慧和专业知识生活。

That with language, if you make a discovery, you can spare other people from having to remake that discovery.

有了语言，如果你有了一个发现，你就可以让其他人不必重复这个发现。

You can pool innovations that are invented across a huge catchment area.

您可以汇集在广阔的流域内发明的创新成果。

I don’t, though, endorse a version of linguistic determinism associated with Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir, according to which we can only think thoughts for which there are words in our language.

不过，我并不赞同与本杰明·沃尔夫和爱德华·萨皮尔有关的语言决定论，根据这种观点，我们只能思考在我们的语言中存在单词的思想。

If that were true, then you’d have to ask how did language originate in the first place.

如果这是真的，那么你就必须问语言最初是如何起源的。

It wasn’t given to us by Martians.

它不是火星人给我们的。

We developed language because we had ideas that existed prior to our being able to articulate them, for which we coined words.

我们之所以发展出语言，是因为我们在能够表达出来之前就已经有了一些想法，为此我们创造了单词。

Language is always changing.

语言总是在变化。

Again, this gets back to Hayek’s notion of spontaneous order and distributed intelligence.

这又回到了哈耶克的自发秩序和分布式智能的概念。

Even though any given language is an exquisite system for conveying complex thoughts, it was never designed by a committee.

尽管任何特定的语言都是传达复杂思想的精致系统，但它从来都不是由委员会设计的。

It emerged because millions of people had ideas that they struggled to express.

它的出现是因为数百万人有他们难以表达的想法。

They would coin a bit of jargon.

他们会创造一些行话。

They would invent a circumlocution.

他们会发明一种迂回说法。

It would go viral.

它会像病毒一样传播开来。

It would become entrenched as part of the language.

它将成为语言的一部分，根深蒂固。

Languages, of course, are always continuing that cycle.

当然，语言总是在延续这个循环。

Our language is different from the language of the Founders, which is different from the language of Shakespeare.

我们的语言不同于开国元勋的语言，也不同于莎士比亚的语言。

The fact that we’re always adding to the language, we’re losing bits of the language, as we talked about in the case of irregular verbs, shows that it isn’t itself the medium of thought.

事实上，我们总是在向语言添加内容，但我们正在失去语言的一些部分，正如我们在不规则动词的情况下所讨论的那样，这表明它本身并不是思维的媒介。

You can always invent a circumlocution if your language doesn’t have a preexisting word.

如果你的语言没有预先存在的单词，你总是可以发明一种迂回说法。

A lot of the brain is devoted to forms of thinking that are not just trading in words, not just assembling words.

大脑的很多部分都致力于思考的形式，这些思维形式不仅仅是文字交易，也不仅仅是文字组合。

I think Whorf went too far, but there’s no doubt that language is an inherent part of what makes us unusual as a species.

我认为沃尔夫太过分了，但毫无疑问，语言是我们作为一个物种与众不同的固有部分。

There are some aspects of birdsong that are combinatorial, but birdsong has no semantics.

鸟鸣的某些方面是组合的，但鸟鸣没有语义。

That is, the calls don’t mean anything.

也就是说，这些电话没有任何意义。

You can have some kinds of primate calls where maybe if you have two of them they’re in one order, versus not the other.

你可能会听到某些灵长类动物的叫声，如果你有两种叫声，那么它们可能是按一种顺序排列的，而不是另一种。

There are different circumstances in which the primates utter them.

灵长类动物在不同的情况下会说出这些话。

I think it’s different enough from human grammatical language to say that it really is unique.

我认为它与人类的语法语言有足够的不同，可以说它确实是独一无二的。

I’m much more less aggressive than my ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago were.

与几万年前的祖先相比，我的攻击性要小得多。

Do you agree with the theory of group selection?

你同意群体选择理论吗？

Think E.

认为E。

O.

奥。

Wilson or Jonathan Haidt.

威尔逊或乔纳森·海特。

Do you think that’s a correct response to what we were talking about?

您认为这是对我们所讨论内容的正确回应吗？

No, I don’t think that there is a Darwinian process of differential survival of replicators that applies to groups in the way that it applies to genes.

不，我不认为存在复制基因差异生存的达尔文过程，它适用于群体，就像适用于基因一样。

I think it’s a bad analogy.

我认为这是一个糟糕的类比。

You referred specifically to the case of violence.

你特别提到了暴力案件。

A frequently asked question that I get is, Are we literally evolving to become less violent in the biologist sense, that genes that encourage violence are becoming less common in the gene pool?

我经常被问到的一个问题是，从生物学家的角度来看，我们真的在进化中变得不那么暴力吗？鼓励暴力的基因在基因库中变得越来越不常见？

I doubt it, but I can’t rule it out.

我对此表示怀疑，但也不能排除这一点。

A fellow economist, Gregory Clark, argued that in Europe between the Middle Ages and the present, in a process that I actually wrote about in terms of the quite spectacular declines in rates of violence, he speculated might have been helped along by a genetic change.

一位经济学家格雷戈里·克拉克（Gregory Clark）认为，在中世纪至今的欧洲，在我所写的暴力发生率大幅下降的过程中，他推测可能是基因变化的帮助。

I’m a little more skeptical, but I can’t rule it out.

我有点怀疑，但我不能排除这种可能性。

The reason that I’m skeptical is that you can see declines of violence that take place on time scales that couldn’t possibly be due to Darwinian natural selection.

我持怀疑态度的原因是，你可以看到暴力的减少在时间尺度上发生，这不可能是由于达尔文自然选择造成的。

For example, the fact that Germany went from the world’s most militaristic culture to the world’s most pacifist culture in pretty much a generation, or that the American homicide rate fell in half in eight years.

例如，德国在几乎一代人的时间里从世界上最军国主义的文化变成了世界上最和平主义的文化，或者美国的凶杀率在八年内下降了一半。

There you didn’t have a turnover in generations that occurred long enough for it to be a genetic change.

在那里，世代更替的时间不够长，不足以构成基因变化。

We know that the overt violent behavior can change really, really quickly.

我们知道，公开的暴力行为可以非常非常快地改变。

That just means that we don’t need to invoke a genetic change for reductions of similar magnitude that we see in history.

这只是意味着我们不需要通过基因改变来实现历史上类似程度的减少。

As we go forward and culture continues to conjoin across different continents, are we heading towards a global super‑fashion, or are the cultural meanings of fashion too embodied and are we going to maintain different circles of fashion still?

随着我们前进，不同大陆的文化不断融合，我们是否正在走向全球超级时尚，或者时尚的文化意义是否过于体现，我们是否仍将维持不同的时尚圈子？

Or, for that matter, in elite fashion as well.

或者，就此而言，在精英时尚中也是如此。

It’s actually quite astonishing what percentage of male elites wear neckties and jackets not too different from this.

事实上，令人惊讶的是，有多少比例的男性精英穿着与此相差无几的领带和夹克。

It is surprising why there’s such a reduction in diversity of fashion.

令人惊讶的是为什么时尚的多样性如此减少。

At the same time as that, you have this globalization.

与此同时，全球化也随之而来。

There’s also a churning over time.

随着时间的推移，也会出现翻腾。

There is an interesting theory with an analogy from biology, biological evolution, of frequency‑dependent selection.

有一个有趣的理论与生物学、生物进化和频率依赖选择进行类比。

This goes back to the art historian Quentin Bell, who in turn was influenced by Thorstein Veblen.

这可以追溯到艺术史学家昆汀·贝尔，他又受到托尔斯坦·凡勃伦的影响。

That in the competition for status, in differentiating yourself as an elite, from the hoi polloi or the rabble, you want a look that’s different enough that distinguishes you.

在地位的竞争中，在将自己与平民或乌合之众区分开来的过程中，你需要一种足够不同的外观来让你与众不同。

In Veblen’s day that took the form of sumptuosity.

在凡勃伦时代，这表现为奢华。

That is, fine fabrics and tailored suits that were unfakeable enough that you were broadcasting the information that “I can afford things that you can’t, and you can’t fake them.”

也就是说，精美的面料和量身定制的西装足够无法伪造，以至于你在传播这样的信息：“我买得起你买不起的东西，而且你无法伪造它们。”

With advances in clothing manufacture and everything manufacture, with everything becoming cheaper, you can’t differentiate yourself through sumptuosity and riches.

随着服装制造和一切制造的进步，一切都变得更便宜，你无法通过奢华和财富来脱颖而出。

Also, because of democratization and informalization, it’s kind of tacky to look like you belong in a Donald Trump hotel.

此外，由于民主化和非正式化，看起来你属于唐纳德·特朗普酒店有点俗气。

When everyone has long hair, you show up with a crew cut, or vice versa.

当每个人都有长发时，你就会留着平头，反之亦然。

When everyone has fat lapels, you have skinny lapels.

当每个人都有肥翻领时，你就有瘦翻领。

Or long skirt length, or short skirt length.

或长裙长，或短裙长。

People who have some claim to already being in the elite will then reinforce it with an unusual look, which then trickles down.

那些自称已经属于精英阶层的人会用一种不寻常的外表来强化这种观念，然后这种观念就会慢慢渗透下去。

When it starts to be sold in Target, then the elite have to jump to yet another look.

当它开始在 Target 出售时，精英们就不得不转向另一种外观。

So you get a kind of churning.

所以你会感到一种翻腾。

This is unlike language in that it may not have a semiotics, in the sense that there’s a lot of commentary on fashion, on what are you trying to communicate by your long hair, your short hair, your fat lapels, your skinny lapels — and the answer may be nothing.

这与语言不同，因为它可能没有符号学，从某种意义上说，有很多关于时尚的评论，关于你想通过你的长发、短发、肥翻领、瘦翻领来传达什么——而答案可能是什么都没有。

That is, all you’re communicating is “It’s different from what you’re wearing, and I’m getting away with it.”

也就是说，你所传达的只是“这和你穿的不一样，我不会这么做。”

First off, in China generally it’s recognized that infants, long before they can do the labials or fricatives, and do ba or ma, they get the tone correct.

首先，在中国，人们普遍认为婴儿早在会发唇音、擦音、“ba”或“ma”之前就已经掌握了正确的声调。

Speech pathologists generally in China for five- and six‑, seven‑year‑olds, they correct for the ba, and the consonants or the vowels; very, very seldom or almost never for the tones.

中国的言语病理学家通常针对五岁、六岁、七岁的孩子，纠正“ba”、辅音或元音；非常非常很少或几乎从不使用音调。

Paradoxically, the US government State Department and the intelligence agencies spend a tremendous amount of money putting people through two‑year, intensive programs in Chinese.

矛盾的是，美国国务院和情报机构花费巨额资金让人们接受为期两年的强化中文课程。

The thing that maybe one person in a thousand gets are the tones, the thing that every Chinese infant automatically gets and never forgets, in a sense encoded in indelibly.

也许千分之一的人会听到的东西就是声调，每个中国婴儿都会自然而然地获得并且永远不会忘记的东西，从某种意义上说，这是不可磨灭的。

Do you think that, in a sense, at some point at five, or six, or seven there is a modular capability, a neurological capability to hear, mimic, and reproduce?

你是否认为，从某种意义上说，在五岁、六岁或七岁的某个时刻，存在一种模块化的能力，一种听觉、模仿和再现的神经能力？

That, in a sense, gets shut off in some way around the age of 15, 20?

从某种意义上说，这种感觉在 15、20 岁左右就会以某种方式被关闭？

For the State Department and the intelligence agencies, the median age for beginning Chinese is 35 or 36.

对于国务院和情报机构来说，开始学习汉语的平均年龄是 35 岁或 36 岁。

A quixotic venture, to say the least.

至少可以说，这是一次不切实际的冒险。

Often people who are perfectly articulate and fluent in a second language will give themselves away by their accent because the mastery of the accent seems to be more dependent on being of tender age when you acquire it than, say, syntax or vocabulary.

通常，那些能够完美表达和流利使用第二语言的人会通过他们的口音暴露自己，因为对口音的掌握似乎更依赖于你掌握口音时的年龄，而不是语法或词汇。

For that matter, for vocabulary there is no critical period.

就此而言，词汇没有关键期。

We learn new words all our lives, including names for people and places.

我们一生都在学习新单词，包括人名和地名。

Syntax may be somewhere in between.

语法可能介于两者之间。

In fact, I have a paper that’s in one of these interminable cycles of revision and review, doing plea‑bargaining with journal referees to please publish our paper, which suggests, as you speculate, that when it comes to grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, probably the beginning of the end for mastery comes in the teenage years.

事实上，我有一篇论文正处于这些无休止的修改和审查周期中，与期刊审稿人进行辩诉交易以请求发表我们的论文，这表明，正如你推测的那样，当涉及到语法、句法和词汇时，掌握的终结可能会在青少年时期开始。

That something happens starting around the age of 15 or so that makes it harder to achieve native mastery if that’s when you begin to learn a language.

从 15 岁左右开始，如果你开始学习一门语言，就会变得更难掌握母语。

In general, younger is better.

一般来说，越年轻越好。

Of course, there are 6,000 languages.

当然，有6000种语言。

You don’t necessarily know when you have a child if they’re going to grow up to be a Chinese diplomat or do business in China, so you don’t know if it’s Chinese that you should start them with early, or some other language.

当你有了孩子时，你不一定知道他们长大后是否会成为一名中国外交官或在中国做生意，所以你不知道你应该尽早让他们学习中文，还是其他语言。

That, of course, might change.

当然，这种情况可能会改变。

But in general, there is a benefit to starting early.

但总的来说，早点开始是有好处的。

No one has identified a particular change in the plasticity of the brain that explains it.

没有人发现大脑可塑性的特定变化可以解释这一现象。

There probably is one, but we’re just ignorant of what, if anything, changes in the brain that makes it harder to learn a language to native levels of mastery if you begin too late.

可能有一个，但我们只是不知道大脑中的哪些变化（如果有的话）会导致如果你开始得太晚，就很难将语言学习到母语水平。

Many of your other books I think also could be described in that way.

我认为你的许多其他书籍也可以这样描述。

The smartest people in the world who think about the subjects the most are just deeply misguided.

世界上最聪明、对这些问题思考最多的人都被深深地误导了。

What do you think is going wrong there, and more generally, what is wrong with academia that there’s so few Steven Pinkers out there?

你认为那里出了什么问题，更一般地说，学术界出了什么问题，以至于史蒂文·平克（Steven Pinkers）如此之少？

Ideally, what we want is an arena in which the rules of the game make it so that no matter how emotionally tied you are to your belief, if it’s wrong, it’ll be shown to be wrong and it’ll just be too embarrassing to hold on to it or at least for other people to hold on to it indefinitely.

理想情况下，我们想要的是一个游戏规则所规定的舞台，这样无论你在情感上与你的信念有多么紧密的联系，如果它是错误的，它就会被证明是错误的，而坚持它或至少让其他人无限期地坚持它会太尴尬。

That’s what I consider to be the ideal of what science is all about, and intellectual discourse in general.

我认为这就是科学的理想，也是一般知识分子话语的理想。

When it works, how to make it work better, are really good questions.

当它发挥作用时，如何使其更好地发挥作用，这确实是一个很好的问题。

Certainly, there are disturbing signs that the process in some ways is getting worse.

当然，有一些令人不安的迹象表明，这一过程在某些方面正在变得更糟。

I see Greg Lukianoff is here, the director of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which does a brilliant job in combating some of the restrictions on free speech that we’re seeing in university campuses, which would be a paradigm case of going in the wrong direction in terms of setting up rules that allow the truth to come out in the long term.

我看到格雷格·卢基安诺夫（Greg Lukianoff）在这里，他是个人教育权利基金会的主任，该基金会在打击我们在大学校园中看到的一些言论自由限制方面做得非常出色，从长远来看，这将是在制定允许真相大白的规则方面走向错误方向的典型案例。

I’m hoping that naming and shaming and arguments will give free speech a greater foothold in academia.

我希望点名、羞辱和争论能让言论自由在学术界获得更大的立足点。

The fact that academia is not the only arena in which debates are held, that we also have think tanks and we also have a press.

事实上，学术界并不是唯一进行辩论的舞台，我们也有智囊团，我们也有媒体。

We also have the Internet.

我们也有互联网。

How we could set up the rules so that despite all of the quirks of human nature — such as intellectual tribalism — are overcome in our collective arena of discourses is, I think, an absolutely vital question, and I just don’t know the answer because we’re seeing at the same time — there was the hope 20 years ago that the Internet would break down the institutional barriers to the best ideas emerging.

我认为，我们如何制定规则，以便在我们的集体话语舞台上克服人性的所有怪癖——比如知识部落主义——是一个绝对重要的问题，我只是不知道答案，因为我们同时看到——20年前，人们希望互联网能够打破阻碍最佳创意出现的制度障碍。

It hasn’t worked out that way so far because we have the festering of conspiracy theories and all kinds of kooky beliefs that somehow the Internet has not driven out, but if anything has created space for.

到目前为止，事情还没有这样发展，因为我们的阴谋论和各种古怪的信仰都在溃烂，互联网还没有将它们驱逐出去，但如果说有什么东西创造了空间的话。

How we as a broader culture can tilt the rules or the norms of the expectations so that if you believe something that’s false, eventually you’ll be embarrassed about it, I wish I knew.

我希望我知道，作为一种更广泛的文化，我们如何能够改变规则或期望规范，以便如果你相信一些错误的东西，最终你会为此感到尴尬。

But that’s obviously what we ought to be striving for.

但这显然是我们应该努力的目标。