William MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Moral Progress, and Cultural Innovation (Ep. 156)
Hello, everyone.
大家好。
Welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
欢迎回到与泰勒对话。
Today I’m here with Will MacAskill, who is one of the most important and influential philosophers, period.
今天我和威尔·麦克阿斯基尔在一起，他是最重要、最有影响力的哲学家之一。
August 16 is the publication date of his new and excellent book, What We Owe the Future.
8 月 16 日是他的优秀新书《未来我们欠什么》的出版日期。
Will, most of all, is known for being a leader, perhaps the intellectual leader, of the effective altruism movement.
最重要的是，威尔因作为有效利他主义运动的领导者（也许是知识分子领导者）而闻名。
Will, welcome.
威尔，欢迎。
Thanks so much for having me on.
非常感谢您邀请我参加。
Of all the inefficient things, which is the one you love most?
在所有低效的事情中，你最喜欢哪一件？
Of all the inefficient things?
所有低效率的事情？
There are some amazing examples of inefficient charities that I love, in the sense that they give me pleasure to think about.
有一些我喜欢的低效慈善机构的惊人例子，因为它们让我很高兴思考。
One of my favorites is a charity called ScotsCare, which was set up in the early 17th century.
我最喜欢的慈善机构之一是 ScotsCare，它成立于 17 世纪初。
It’s called the Charity for Scots in London, and it’s dedicated to help Scottish people in poverty in London.
它被称为伦敦苏格兰慈善机构，致力于帮助伦敦的贫困苏格兰人。
You might think that’s a pretty strange aim, but it made more sense when the charity was set up in the early 17th century.
您可能会认为这是一个相当奇怪的目标，但当该慈善机构于 17 世纪初成立时，它就更有意义了。
There was just recently the personal union of England and Scotland.
英格兰和苏格兰最近才建立了联合体。
There was migration from Scotland to London, so Scottish people were poor immigrants.
有从苏格兰到伦敦的移民，所以苏格兰人是贫穷的移民。
It made sense for it to be a charity.
它成为慈善机构是有道理的。
Four hundred years on, perhaps it doesn’t make quite as much sense.
四百年过去了，也许它已经不再那么有意义了。
I like it partly — especially given that London is pretty affluent, especially compared to many areas of Scotland — I like it as an example of what gets called the “dead hand problem” in philanthropy, where the founding of nonprofits can have a very specific mission, and that mission can become increasingly absurd over time.
我部分地喜欢它——尤其是考虑到伦敦相当富裕，尤其是与苏格兰的许多地区相比——我喜欢它作为慈善事业中所谓“死手问题”的一个例子，非营利组织的成立可以有一个非常具体的使命，而随着时间的推移，这个使命可能会变得越来越荒谬。
I think it’s a good and heartening lesson for people who are trying to do good, looking into the future, too.
我认为对于那些努力做好事、展望未来的人来说，这是一个很好的、令人振奋的教训。
You want to have aims that can be sufficiently flexible that, as the environment or things change, they still keep making sense.
你希望目标足够灵活，随着环境或事物的变化，它们仍然有意义。
Does liking the inefficient mean that you are a pluralist and not a utilitarian?
喜欢低效是否意味着你是一个多元主义者而不是一个功利主义者？
Well, I think I’m neither a pluralist nor a utilitarian.
嗯，我认为我既不是多元主义者，也不是功利主义者。
A pluralist is someone who thinks that there are many sources of moral reasons.
多元主义者认为道德原因有多种来源。
A utilitarian thinks there’s only one.
功利主义者认为只有一个。
I say I’m not a utilitarian because — though it’s the view I’m most inclined to argue for in seminar rooms because I think it’s most underappreciated by the academy — I think we should have some degree of belief in a variety of moral views and take a compromise between them.
我说我不是一个功利主义者，因为 —— 虽然这是我最倾向于在研讨室里争论的观点，因为我认为它最不受学院的重视 —— 我认为我们应该对各种道德观点有一定程度的信仰，并在它们之间采取妥协。
But that is pluralism, right?
但这就是多元化，对吗？
No. Pluralism would be saying, “There is one true moral view, and that view says there are multiple competing sources of reasons.” Whereas —
不。多元主义会说，“有一种真正的道德观点，而这种观点认为存在多种相互竞争的理由来源。”鉴于 —
The true moral view can be a probabilistic assemblage of the different things you think might matter.
真正的道德观可以是你认为可能重要的不同事物的概率组合。
If you go just a little bit more meta with pluralism, it encompasses what you think.
如果你对多元主义多一点元，它就包含了你的想法。
Yes, that is my view, and it ends up looking very similar to what is known as pluralism because I end up paying attention to different sorts of moral reasons.
是的，这就是我的观点，它最终看起来与所谓的多元化非常相似，因为我最终关注不同类型的道德原因。
But I think that the actual moral truth might be quite simple, whereas the pluralist, in terms of first-order moral theorizing rather than the meta theorizing that I’m proposing, says that moral reality might be really very complex or messy.
但我认为实际的道德真理可能非常简单，而多元主义者，从我提出的一阶道德理论而不是元理论的角度来看，道德现实可能真的非常复杂或混乱。
If we’re assessing the well-being of nonhuman animals, should we use preference utilitarianism or hedonistic utilitarianism?
如果我们评估非人类动物的福祉，我们应该使用偏好功利主义还是享乐功利主义？
Because it will make a big difference.
因为这会带来很大的不同。
We’re not sure all these animals are happy.
我们不确定所有这些动物都快乐。
They may live lives of terror, but we’re pretty sure they want to stay alive.
他们可能过着恐怖的生活，但我们很确定他们想活下去。
It makes a huge difference.
这有很大的不同。
I think the arguments for hedonism as a theory of well-being, where that saying that well-being consists only in conscious experiences — positive ones contribute positively, negative conscious experiences contribute negatively — I think the arguments for that as a theory of well-being and the theory of what’s good are very strong.
我认为把享乐主义作为一种幸福理论的论据，其中所说的幸福只在于意识体验 ——“积极的意识体验产生积极的影响，消极的意识体验产生消极的影响”——我认为作为一种幸福理论和善的理论的论据非常有力。
It does mean that when you look to the lives of animals in the wild, my view is it’s just very nonobvious whether those lives are good or not.
这确实意味着，当你观察野生动物的生活时，我的观点是，这些生活是否美好是非常不明显的。
That’s me being a little bit more optimistic than other people that have looked into this, but the optimism is mainly drawing from just lack of — I think we know very little about the conscious lives of fish, let alone invertebrates.
我比其他研究过这个问题的人要乐观一些，但乐观主要是因为缺乏 —— 我认为我们对鱼类的有意识生活知之甚少，更不用说无脊椎动物了。
But yes, if you have a preference satisfaction view, then I think the world looks a lot better because beings, in general, want to keep living.
但是，是的，如果你有偏好满足的观点，那么我认为世界看起来要好得多，因为总的来说，生物想要继续生活。
Actually, when we look to the future as well, I think if you assess how good is the future going to be on a hedonist view, well, maybe it’s quite fragile.
事实上，当我们展望未来时，我认为如果你以享乐主义的观点来评估未来有多好，那么，也许它是相当脆弱的。
You could imagine lots of future ways that civilization could go, where they just don’t care about consciousness at all, or perhaps the beings that will, are not conscious.
你可以想象文明未来的许多发展方向，他们根本不关心意识，或者可能会关心的生物没有意识。
But probably, beings in the future will have preferences, and those preferences will be being satisfied.
但很可能，未来的生命会有偏好，而这些偏好将会得到满足。
So, in general, moral reality looks a lot more rosy, I think, if you’re a preference satisfactionist.
所以，总的来说，我认为，如果你是一个偏好满足主义者，道德现实看起来会更加美好。
But it’s possible, say, in your view, that human beings should spend a lot of their time and resources going around destroying nature, since it might have negative net expected utility value.
但在你看来，人类可能应该花费大量时间和资源来破坏自然，因为它的净预期效用价值可能为负。
I think it’s a possible implication.
我认为这是一个可能的暗示。
I think it’d be very unlikely to be the best thing we could be doing because once —
我认为这不太可能是我们能做的最好的事情，因为一旦 -
But there’s a lot of nature.
但这里有很多自然风光。
We have very effective bombs, weapons.
我们拥有非常有效的炸弹和武器。
We could develop animal-killing weapons if we set our minds to it.
如果我们下定决心，我们就可以开发出杀死动物的武器。
That’s right.
这是正确的。
There’s a lot of nature, but there’s far more future.
大自然有很多，但未来还有更多。
If we’re willing to take philosophical reasoning far enough, where we’d be seriously considering removing nature, then you should be taking much more seriously the fact that we can have this enormous impact over our long-run future.
如果我们愿意进行足够深入的哲学推理，认真考虑消除自然，那么你应该更加认真地对待我们可以对我们的长期未来产生巨大影响的事实。
I will caveat and say I really don’t know whether animals in the wild have lives that are good or bad.
我要警告的是，我真的不知道野生动物的生活是好还是坏。
When you look at the world as a whole, it gets incredibly determined by, where’s the cut-off for conscious experiences?
当你把世界看成一个整体时，它会被难以置信地决定于，意识体验的界限在哪里？
Because is it, are ants conscious?
因为，蚂蚁有意识吗？
They have an awful lot of the total neuron count of animals in the wild.
它们的神经元总数占野生动物的数量之多。
If they are, do they have lives that are good or not?
如果是的话，他们的生活是好是坏？
I’m like, “I have no idea.” COWEN: I worry a bit this is verging into the absurd, and I’m aware that word is a bit question-begging.
我想，“我不知道。” COWEN：我有点担心这会变得荒谬，而且我知道这个词有点引人质疑。
But if we think about the individual level — like what do you, Will, value?
但如果我们考虑个人层面——比如威尔，你看重什么？
— you value, in part, the inefficient.
— 你在某种程度上看重低效率。
It’s very hard to give people just pure utilitarian advice, because they’re necessarily partial.
很难给人们纯粹的功利性建议，因为他们必然是片面的。
At the big macro level — like the whole world of nature versus humans, ethics of the infinite, and so on — it also seems to me utilitarianism doesn’t perform that well.
在宏观层面上——比如整个自然世界与人类、无限的伦理等等——在我看来，功利主义的表现也并不那么好。
The utilitarian part of our calculations — isn’t that only a mid-scale theory?
我们计算中的功利部分 ——这难道不是一个中等规模的理论吗？
You can ask, does rent control work?
你可能会问，房租管制有用吗？
Are tariffs good?
关税好不好？
Utilitarianism is fine there, but otherwise, it just doesn’t make sense.
功利主义在那里很好，但除此之外，它就没有意义。
Okay.
好的。
There is what we might call the train to crazy town.
这就是我们所说的开往疯狂小镇的火车。
We have all these starting moral intuitions.
我们有所有这些起始的道德直觉。
What I see as the project of moral philosophy is reconciling them, using theory and careful reasoning to make moral progress, which often involves creating simpler and explanatorily powerful theories that move away from your commonsense intuitions.
我认为道德哲学的项目是调和它们，利用理论和仔细的推理来实现道德进步，这通常涉及创建更简单且解释性强大的理论，远离你的常识直觉。
Then the question is, how far are we willing to move?
那么问题来了，我们愿意走多远？
Very difficult methodological question.
非常困难的方法论问题。
You brought up infinite ethics.
你培养了无限的道德。
That is something where I certainly, in practice, do not bite that bullet or follow that implication — where, for the listeners, the argument is, “Okay, the utilitarian wants to maximize the good,” understanding that’s total well-being.
在实践中，我当然不会咬紧牙关或遵循这种暗示——对于听众来说，论点是“好吧，功利主义者想要最大化善”，理解这就是整体幸福。
Now, perhaps in my book, I argue there’s enormous amounts of value at stake when we consider the long term, so we should reduce the risk of extinction and promote good values so that we make the most of that, make the most of all value in the long term.
现在，也许在我的书中，我认为，当我们考虑长期时，存在巨大的价值，因此我们应该减少灭绝的风险并推广良好的价值观，以便我们充分利用这一点，从长远来看，充分利用所有价值。
However, someone could expand the pie and say, “Well, that’s just piddling finite amounts of value.
然而，有人可能会扩大蛋糕并说：“好吧，这只是在浪费有限的价值。
What about the possibility of creating infinite amounts of value?
创造无限价值的可能性又如何呢？
Because religious traditions say that one can create infinite amounts of value, that heaven is infinitely good.
因为宗教传统说，一个人可以创造无限的价值，天堂无限美好。
And you’re a good Bayesian.
你是一个很好的贝叶斯主义者。
You don’t have credence zero in the idea of there being a God that could produce infinite amounts of value.”
对于存在一位可以创造无限价值的上帝这一想法，你的信任度为零。”
I would say, “No, I don’t.” If so, well, tiny — even if I put it one in a trillion that there’s such a God, multiply one in a trillion by infinite positive value, then that overall expectation is infinitely great, and that’s what we should be focusing on.
我会说：“不，我不。”如果是这样，嗯，很小——即使我把有这样一位上帝的万亿分之一说成是，将万亿分之一乘以无限正值，那么总体期望是无限大的，这就是我们应该关注的。
I will acknowledge, I get off the train to crazy town before I’m at that point.
我承认，在那之前我就下了开往疯狂小镇的火车。
There is —
有 —
But why not get off the train a bit earlier and just say, well, the utilitarian part of our calculations — it’s embedded within a particular social context, like, how do we arrange certain affairs of society?
但为什么不早点下车，然后说，好吧，我们计算中的功利部分 ——它嵌入到特定的社会背景中，比如，我们如何安排某些社会事务？
But if you try to shrink it down to too small — how should you live your life — or to too large — how do we deal with infinite ethics on all of nature — that it just doesn’t work.
但如果你试图把它缩小到太小——“你应该如何生活”——“或者太大”——“我们如何处理所有自然的无限道德”——那就行不通了。
It has to stay embedded in this context.
它必须嵌入这种背景下。
Universal domain as an assumption doesn’t really work anywhere, so why should it work for the utilitarian part of our ethics?
普遍领域作为一种假设实际上在任何地方都不起作用，那么为什么它应该适用于我们道德的功利部分呢？
Get off the train at stop 2, not stop 17.
在第 2 站下车，而不是第 17 站。
Stop 17.
站 17。
I agree, there’s a hard choice there, and certainly, as someone who takes action in the real world as well, it’s very notable to me how much you end up just infusing your action with commonsense moral reasoning.
我同意，这是一个艰难的选择，当然，作为一个也在现实世界中采取行动的人，对我来说非常值得注意的是，你最终只是将常识道德推理融入你的行动中。
It’s always unclear — is that on sophisticated consequentialist grounds?
总是不清楚 ——这是基于复杂的结果主义基础吗？
Or is it just that one is acting pluralistically?
或者只是一个人的行为是多元化的？
I think you should take it on a case-by-case basis.
我认为你应该根据具体情况来对待。
I think that, actually, the issue of wild-animal suffering sounds completely wild when you first — no pun intended — completely wild when you first hear it.
我认为，事实上，当你第一次听到野生动物受苦的问题时，它听起来完全是疯狂的——“没有双关语”——当你第一次听到它时，它完全是疯狂的。
But I think it’s not that many steps away from commonsense moral reasoning.
但我认为这与常识性的道德推理相差并不远。
I don’t have a pet; my friends have pets.
我没有宠物；我的朋友有宠物。
They care greatly about the lives of their pets.
他们非常关心宠物的生活。
That’s in their well-being.
这就是他们的福祉。
That’s just a very standard, commonsense moral view.
这只是一种非常标准、常识性的道德观点。
Then next — does that well-being of your pet change?
那么接下来 — 你的宠物的健康状况会改变吗？
Does the moral worth of a creature change whether it happens to be your pet or is born in the wild?
一个生物的道德价值是否会改变，无论它是你的宠物还是在野外出生？
I think there’s a good argument for thinking “no.” Then the question of, “Well, if you think it’s good to invest in resources to improve the well-being of your pets, then yes, maybe it’s good to invest resources in improving the well-being of animals in the wild.”
我认为思考“不”是有充分理由的。然后是这样的问题：“好吧，如果您认为投资资源来改善宠物的福祉是件好事，那么是的，也许投资资源来改善野生动物的福祉是件好事。”
Then, I think the reaction that people have, which is like, “This is just so crazy” — partly, it’s not really thinking about it, but partly also, it’s just worries about interfering with nature having negative backfiring consequences, and I think those arguments are just good.
然后，我认为人们的反应是，“这太疯狂了” ——部分原因是，他们并没有真正考虑过这个问题，但部分原因是，他们只是担心干扰自然会产生负面的适得其反的后果，我认为这些论点很好。
Maybe you think, “Oh, predation is bad, so we’re going to stop predators.” But then that leads to other, worse consequences.
也许你会想，“哦，捕食是不好的，所以我们要阻止捕食者。”但这会导致其他更糟糕的后果。
I think it is true that you’re dealing with an environment that we don’t fully understand.
我认为你确实面临着一个我们并不完全理解的环境。
From the wild-animal–suffering perspective, it may be very pro more research, more thinking about this.
从野生动物遭受苦难的角度来看，更多的研究、更多的思考可能是非常有利的。
I’d be pretty wary of just paving over the jungle because, on the basis of our very nonrobust evaluation, we think that animal lives are, on average, negative.
我对在丛林中铺路非常谨慎，因为根据我们非常不可靠的评估，我们认为动物的平均生命是负面的。
Let me ask you the question I asked Sam Bankman-Fried.
让我问你我问萨姆·班克曼-弗里德的问题。
Let’s say we take the known world of living beings, however large that may be, and the demon offers us a bet.
假设我们采用已知的生物世界，无论它有多大，恶魔向我们提出了一个赌注。
We can double that world with probability 51 percent, but with 49 percent, it all goes away and disappears, and everything’s gone.
我们可以以 51% 的概率将这个世界翻倍，但如果有 49% 的概率，一切都会消失，一切都消失了。
Now, in expected value terms, that’s a good bet, right?
现在，从预期价值的角度来看，这是一个不错的选择，对吧？
Should we do that?
我们应该这样做吗？
Sam said yes.
萨姆说是的。
He’s like, “I’m going to bite that bullet.
他就像是，“我会咬紧牙关。
I want to bite this bullet,” he said.
我想咬紧牙关，”他说。
What’s your view?
你的看法是什么？
One first thing is, we’ve got to carefully state the question.
首先，我们必须仔细陈述问题。
If you’re just giving me a doubling of the world as it is, well, I think, again, almost all value is in the future.
如果你只是给我一个两倍的世界，那么，我想，几乎所有的价值都在未来。
It’s to come.
它即将到来。
Instead, the thought experiment should perhaps be —
相反，思想实验也许应该是 ——
Well, that doubles too, right?
好吧，那也翻倍了，对吧？
The future is going to double, everything.
未来一切都会翻倍。
Okay, good.
好的，很好。
Spell it out all carefully, but it’s a double-or-nothing bet at 51 percent odds.
仔细拼写一下，但这是一个双倍或全无的赌注，赔率为 51%。
Yes.
是的。
I say, no way should you do it.
我说，你绝对不应该这样做。
Yes.
是的。
I also admit, intuitively, I have very rapid diminishing returns to value.
我还承认，直觉上我的价值收益递减非常快。
So, intuitively, I think that you take a galaxy, and it’s full of bliss, best possible galaxy — 50/50 for that versus all accessible galaxies are flourishing, and so on.
所以，直觉上，我认为你有一个星系，它充满了幸福，最好的星系 —— 50/50，因为与所有可到达的星系相比，它都在蓬勃发展，等等。
There’s 20 billion of them, and I’m like, “Nope, don’t want to take that bet.”
他们有 200 亿，我想，“不，不想打这个赌。”
I also think that there are issues for expected value theory, in general.
我还认为，总体而言，期望值理论存在一些问题。
It comes in, in particular, with low probabilities of large amounts of value.
特别是，它产生大量价值的可能性很低。
Sure.
当然。
Pascal’s wager.
帕斯卡的赌注。
Pascal’s wager.
帕斯卡的赌注。
St. Petersburg paradox.
圣彼得堡悖论。
Exactly, yes.
没错，是的。
We’re getting into all sorts of messes there.
我们在那里陷入了各种各样的混乱。
Then, in this case, it’s not an example of very low probabilities, very large amounts of value.
那么，在这种情况下，这并不是一个概率非常低、价值非常大的例子。
Then your view would have to argue that, “Well, the future, as it is, is like close to the upper bound of value,” in order to make sense of the idea that you shouldn’t flip 50/50.
那么你的观点就必须辩称，“嗯，未来，事实上，就像接近价值的上限”，以便理解你不应该翻转 50/50 的想法。
I think, actually, that position would be pretty hard to defend, is my guess.
我认为，实际上，我的猜测是，这个立场很难捍卫。
My thought is that, probably, within a situation where any view you say ends up having pretty bad, implausible consequences.
我的想法是，在这种情况下，你所说的任何观点最终都会产生非常糟糕的、令人难以置信的后果。
Your response sounds very ad hoc to me.
你的回答对我来说听起来很特别。
Why not just say, in matters of the very large, utilitarian kinds of moral reasoning just don’t apply.
为什么不直接说，在非常大的问题上，功利主义的道德推理根本不适用。
They’re always embedded in some degree of partiality.
他们总是带有某种程度的偏见。
The 51 percent–49 percent bet is not great for our partiality toward ourselves, and we just can’t go there.
51% 到 49% 的赌注对于我们对自己的偏爱来说并不好，我们就是不能这么做。
It’s not that there’s some other theory that’s going to tie up all the conundrums in a nice bundle, but simply that there are limits to moral reasoning, and we cannot fully transcend the notion of being partial because moral reasoning is embedded in that context of being partial about some things.
并不是说有其他理论可以将所有难题捆绑在一起，而只是道德推理存在局限性，我们无法完全超越偏颇的概念，因为道德推理植根于对某些事物偏执的背景中。
I think we should be more ambitious than that with our moral reasoning.
我认为我们应该在道德推理上更加雄心勃勃。
I think, if we did moral reasoning many times in the past that we’re simply saying, “Look, there are many of these different considerations.
我认为，如果我们过去多次进行道德推理，我们只是说：“看，有很多不同的考虑因素。
It’s all pluralist at some point.
在某些时候，一切都是多元化的。
Even though I can’t give it a good argument, the utilitarian-esque reasoning seems so compelling when you’re talking about saving one life versus ten.” And we think, “Oh, clearly the ten is more important, including 50/50 chance of saving ten lives versus one.”
尽管我无法给出一个很好的论据，但当你谈论拯救一条生命而不是十条生命时，功利主义式的推理似乎非常引人注目。”我们认为，“哦，显然十个更重要，包括拯救十个生命与拯救一个生命的机会是 50/50。”
It’s like, okay, you should go with the math.
就像，好吧，你应该继续数学。
Over time that would save more lives.
随着时间的推移，这将拯救更多的生命。
Then you say, “Oh, no, at some scale that sort of reasoning breaks.” That’s what seems ad hoc to me.
然后你说，“哦，不，在某种程度上，这种推理是错误的。”这对我来说似乎是特别的。
If you’re saying, “Oh, well, these arguments are pushing you in a certain direction,” but then at some scale — what exactly is the scale?
如果你说，“哦，好吧，这些论点正在把你推向某个方向”，但在某种程度上 —— 这个规模到底是什么？
Is it a thousand lives?
是千条命吗？
A million lives?
百万条生命？
A billion lives?
十亿条生命？
It seems like nothing qualitatively different has happened.
It seems like nothing qualitatively different has happened.
Whereas the thing that I want to say is a qualitative difference, something to do with when we’re juggling probability against value.
而我想说的是质的差异，当我们在概率与价值之间进行权衡时，它会有所不同。
That’s where maybe the pure just multiplication .
这可能就是纯粹的乘法的地方。
.
。
.
。
Or there’s something going wrong with expected value theory, and I can constrain the issues to that.
或者期望值理论出了问题，我可以将问题限制于此。
Whereas if I’m just saying, in general, when the scales get big, develop utilitarian-esque reasoning — that seems unmotivated to me.
Whereas if I’m just saying, in general, when the scales get big, develop utilitarian-esque reasoning — that seems unmotivated to me.
I don’t think it’s just probabilistic questions.
我认为这不仅仅是概率问题。
You’re very familiar with the repugnant conclusion.
你对这个令人反感的结论非常熟悉。
Yes.
是的。
You know we haven’t solved it.
你知道我们还没有解决这个问题。
There’s nothing probabilistic there.
那里没有任何概率。
It just seems to be another case where, when you stretch the limits far enough, nothing works, and that you have Pascal’s wager, the 51/49 gamble, the repugnant conclusion, many other paradoxes in moral philosophy — they all seem to kick in.
这似乎是另一种情况，当你把限制延伸得足够远时，什么都不起作用，而你有帕斯卡的赌注、51/49的赌博、令人反感的结论、道德哲学中的许多其他悖论 ——它们似乎都起作用了。
In my view, that’s not an accident.
在我看来，这并非偶然。
There’s no reason to, ad hoc, try to address every one.
没有理由临时尝试解决每一个问题。
We just need to downgrade where we think a certain kind of consequentialist reasoning could apply.
We just need to downgrade where we think a certain kind of consequentialist reasoning could apply.
Okay.
好的。
I think these paradoxes show something much more thoroughgoing than an issue for consequentialism.
I think these paradoxes show something much more thoroughgoing than an issue for consequentialism.
Also, just briefly on the 51/49: Because of the pluralism that I talked about — although, again, it’s meta pluralism — of putting weight on many different model views, I would at least need the probabilities to be quite a bit wider in order to take the gamble because, again, the kind of best problem was —
另外，简单介绍一下 51/49：由于我谈到的多元主义 ——尽管，它又是元多元主义 ——重视许多不同的模型观点，我至少需要更宽的概率才能进行赌博，因为同样，最好的问题是 ——
I can give you 90/10.
我可以给你 90/10。
You can give me 90/10.
你可以给我90/10。
I’ll give you 90/10, but we play it 200 times, right?
I’ll give you 90/10, but we play it 200 times, right?
Yes, exactly.
是的，完全正确。
We’re still in a lot of trouble.
我们仍然遇到很多麻烦。
Yes, I was wanting to clarify that for the listeners.
是的，我想向听众澄清这一点。
I didn’t say it earlier because I was quite aware that you could pull me back with just, “Okay, give me some probability or something.” Then I think it starts to get more defensible.
我之所以没有早说，是因为我很清楚你只需说“好吧，给我一些概率之类的东西”就可以把我拉回来。然后我认为它开始变得更有说服力。
Anyway, so there are these paradoxes, so take the paradoxes of population ethics.
Anyway, so there are these paradoxes, so take the paradoxes of population ethics.
Again, for the listeners, any view that you have in population ethics has extremely unintuitive implications.
Again, for the listeners, any view that you have in population ethics has extremely unintuitive implications.
That’s actually been formally proven.
这实际上已被正式证明。
The repugnant conclusion is the idea that a world consisting of a very, very, very, very large number of beings, all with lives just barely above zero, just barely worth living — because it has more aggregate well-being, is better than 10 trillion lives of wonderful bliss.
令人反感的结论是这样的想法：一个由非常、非常、非常、非常多的生物组成的世界，所有生命都勉强高于零，几乎不值得活下去——因为它有更多的总体福祉，这比 10 万亿个幸福的生命要好。
It turns out, actually, that’s like, in my view, the least bad of the bullets that you have to bite within population ethics.
It turns out, actually, that’s like, in my view, the least bad of the bullets that you have to bite within population ethics.
Sometimes this is taken as a problem for consequentialism.
Sometimes this is taken as a problem for consequentialism.
That’s what you’re suggesting.
这就是你的建议。
But every moral view has to have a view on population ethics.
But every moral view has to have a view on population ethics.
Every moral view has to decide under what conditions should we think it’s a good thing to bring a new flourishing life into existence, not just consequentialist moral views.
每一种道德观点都必须决定在什么条件下我们应该认为带来新的繁荣生活是一件好事，而不仅仅是结果主义的道德观点。
The view you’d have to be promoting is something much more thoroughgoing, which is just that there are limits to moral reasoning, perhaps that we should be okay with just inconsistent moral views.
你必须提倡的观点是更彻底的观点，这只是道德推理是有限度的，也许我们应该接受不一致的道德观点。
I’m not quite sure exactly what your view would be there, but it’s not just that we have to throw consequentialism out of the way.
我不太确定你的观点是什么，但这不仅仅是我们必须抛弃结果主义。
It’s like we actually have to throw moral consistency out the window, or something.
It’s like we actually have to throw moral consistency out the window, or something.
Should the EA movement be anti-abortion?
EA 运动应该反对堕胎吗？
I don’t think so.
我不这么认为。
Why not?
为什么不呢？
If you look at hedonistic utility, if you have more people who are not at repugnant conclusion margins, you’d have somewhat more people, not that many more, right?
如果你考虑享乐主义效用，如果你有更多的人没有达到令人反感的结论边缘，你就会有更多的人，而不是更多，对吗？
I think a few things.
我想有几件事。
The first is, if you think that it’s good to have more happy, flourishing people — and I think if people have sufficiently good lives, then that’s true.
第一个是，如果你认为拥有更多快乐、繁荣的人是件好事 ——而且我认为如果人们拥有足够好的生活，那么这是真的。
I argue for that in What We Owe the Future.
我在《我们欠未来什么》中对此进行了论证。
Then, by far, by overwhelming amounts, the focus should be on how many people might exist in the future rather than now, where perhaps you have a really good fertility program, and you can increase the world population by 10 percent.
然后，到目前为止，重点应该放在未来而不是现在可能存在多少人，也许你有一个非常好的生育计划，你可以将世界人口增加 10%。
That’s like an extra billion people or so.
这相当于额外增加了十亿左右的人口。
But the loss of future life and future very good life if we go extinct — that’s being measured in the trillions upon trillions of lives.
但是，如果我们灭绝的话，未来生命和未来美好生活的丧失——这是以数万亿条生命来衡量的。
The question of just how many people should be alive today is really driven by, how would that impact the long-term flourishing of humanity?
The question of just how many people should be alive today is really driven by, how would that impact the long-term flourishing of humanity?
That being said, like all things considered, I think there’s this norm, there’s this idea at the moment that it’s bad to have kids because of the carbon footprint.
话虽这么说，就像考虑到的所有事情一样，我认为存在这种规范，目前有这样一种想法，因为碳足迹，生孩子是不好的。
I think that only looks at one side of the ledger.
I think that only looks at one side of the ledger.
Yes, people emit carbon dioxide, and that has negative effects, but they also do a lot of good things.
是的，人们排放二氧化碳，这会产生负面影响，但他们也做了很多好事。
They innovate, and there’s an intrinsic benefit too.
They innovate, and there’s an intrinsic benefit too.
They have happy lives.
他们过着幸福的生活。
Well, if you can bring up people to live good lives, then they will flourish, and that’s making the world better.
Well, if you can bring up people to live good lives, then they will flourish, and that’s making the world better.
They also might be moral changemakers, and so on.
他们也可能是道德变革者，等等。
But then, the question — even suppose you think, “Okay, yes, larger family sizes are good,” the best way of achieving that — it would seem very unlikely, to me, that banning abortion, or more like very heavily restricting women’s reproductive rights, is the best way of going about that.
但是，问题是——即使你认为，“好吧，是的，家庭规模越大越好”，这是实现这一目标的最佳方式——对我来说，禁止堕胎，或者更像是严格限制女性的生育权利，似乎不太可能是实现这一目标的最佳方式。
It doesn’t have to be the best way of achieving that.
It doesn’t have to be the best way of achieving that.
It might be this 37th-best way, but if it were still positive expected utility value — at least in your framework, you’re fine with subsidizing births, right?
这可能是第 37 种最佳方式，但如果它仍然具有正的预期效用价值 ——至少在你的框架内，你就可以接受补贴生育，对吗？
That seems like that.
看起来是这样的。
So, taxing nonbirth just seems to be the opposite of that.
因此，对非出生者征税似乎与此相反。
It’s like the dual.
就好像双标一样。
Again, you’ve got to fully take into account different moral perspectives, where, in the same way, I think it’s good for people to donate to charity.
同样，你必须充分考虑到不同的道德观点，同样，我认为人们向慈善机构捐款是有好处的。
I think that makes the world a better place.
我认为这让世界变得更加美好。
Having that view is a far cry from saying, therefore, we should go and lock people up who don’t donate to charity.
持有这种观点与说相去甚远，因此，我们应该去把那些不向慈善机构捐款的人关起来。
That could easily be very bad, counterproductive.
这很容易变得非常糟糕，适得其反。
I think that, probably, very similar could be said about early-stage abortion, for example.
例如，我认为早期堕胎的情况可能非常相似。
If there are smart sentient space aliens out there, say, in pretty large numbers, should we then worry much less about existential risk on earth?
如果那里存在大量有智慧、有感知能力的外星人，那么我们是否应该少担心地球上的生存风险？
Someone will continue the tradition.
会有人继续这个传统。
Maybe they don’t love Beethoven, but eh, 400 years from now maybe people won’t anyway.
也许他们不喜欢贝多芬，但是，400 年后也许人们也不会喜欢。
It’s a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
Among people I know, views are divided on, “Should you think that a human-originating future is going to be better than an alien-originating civilization?” My honest view is more like it’s a toss-up.
在我认识的人中，人们的观点存在分歧：“你是否应该认为源自人类的未来会比源自外星的文明更好？”我的诚实观点更像是一个折腾。
I don’t see a particular reason for thinking that a civilization that comes from human beings is going to be much greater in value than from aliens.
我看不出有什么特别的理由认为来自人类的文明会比来自外星人的文明更有价值。
Whether this undermines existential risk, though, is dependent very crucially on whether we actually expect aliens to come and build a flourishing civilization.
然而，这是否会削弱存在风险，很大程度上取决于我们是否真的期望外星人到来并建立一个繁荣的文明。
I think the best guess from the Fermi paradox — that is the paradox that we don’t, in fact, see advanced intelligent life — is that, probably, we’re just alone, at least in a very, very large section of space.
我认为从费米悖论（即我们实际上没有看到先进的智慧生命的悖论）中得出的最好猜测是，我们可能只是孤独的，至少在非常非常大的空间中是这样。
So, as an empirical fact, I think it’s really quite likely that if humanity dies off, no one else will take our place to build some flourishing civilization.
因此，作为一项经验事实，我认为如果人类消亡，很可能没有其他人会取代我们建立繁荣的文明。
Just contingent on the space aliens being out there, if someone asked me to bet, “Well, which side in the war would Will MacAskill fight on?” I would bet 1,000 to 1 you’d fight for the humans.
只要外星人在那里，如果有人让我打赌，“那么，麦克阿斯基尔会在战争中站在哪一边？”我以 1,000 比 1 打赌你会为人类而战。
But in your moral theory, the humans being better than the aliens — it’s a toss-up.
但在你们的道德理论中，人类比外星人更好——这是一个难以抉择的问题。
This notion that you can’t actually escape some preexisting degree of partiality in the normative framework seems to resurface.
这种“你实际上无法逃避规范框架中预先存在的某种程度的偏袒”的观念似乎再次浮出水面。
I think you want to have it both ways, unless you feel my bet on you to fight for the humans is wrong.
我认为你想两全其美，除非你觉得我打赌你为人类而战是错误的。
Is there really a 50 percent chance you’ll fight for the aliens?
你真的有 50% 的机会为外星人而战吗？
Here’s the argument.
这是论点。
I have two moral perspectives that I’m putting some weight on.
我有两个道德观点值得重视。
One says aliens have as good a chance of producing a great civilization as humans do.
有人说，外星人有机会像人类一样创造伟大的文明。
The second is the more partial view which would weight humans above aliens.
第二种是更片面的观点，认为人类高于外星人。
If I’m putting weight on both of them, which again I think we should — I don’t think you should be super confident in any one model worldview — then that will favor, to some extent, the humans.
如果我对两者都重视，我认为我们应该 —— 我认为你不应该对任何一种模型世界观超级有信心 ——那么这在某种程度上有利于人类。
I think it would be a mistake to favor the humans by 10,000 to 1, supposing you could do some very risky thing that could wipe out both.
我认为，假设你可以做一些非常冒险的事情来消灭两者，那么以 10,000 比 1 的比例向人类倾斜将是一个错误。
It’s a 50/50 chance of wiping out both aliens and humans, but 50 percent chance of saving the humans, and that increases your odds of humanity surviving.
消灭外星人和人类的几率是 50/50，但拯救人类的几率是 50%，这会增加人类生存的几率。
Then I’m like, “No, don’t do that thing.” But would I give some extra weight to human-originating civilization, all things considered?
然后我说，“不，不要做那件事。”但考虑到所有因素，我会额外重视人类起源的文明吗？
Then, yes.
那么，是的。
Now, you’re super influential.
现在，你的影响力非常大。
I’d say you’re one of the five most influential philosophers in the world, which is great.
我想说你是世界上最有影响力的五位哲学家之一，这很棒。
Does that mean you should personally give up having children?
这是否意味着您个人应该放弃生孩子？
Wow.
哇。
What a great question.
多么好的问题啊。
I want you to, to be clear, but I’m asking what you think.
我希望你说清楚，但我想问的是你的想法。
Obviously something I’ve thought deeply about, and I do want to say that people, in general, should make their own reproductive choices.
显然，这是我深入思考过的事情，而且我确实想说，一般来说，人们应该做出自己的生殖选择。
In my own case, it is pretty striking that I am now engaged in all of these projects that bring me very large amounts of meaning.
就我自己而言，令人惊讶的是我现在参与的所有这些项目都给我带来了很多意义。
Then, when I think about, would I have the reason that many people, I think, are drawn to having kids — to have additional meaning in their lives — it’s not something that appeals to me, like really motivates me.
然后，当我思考时，我是否有理由认为许多人都被生孩子所吸引——“让他们的生活具有额外的意义”——这不是吸引我的东西，也不是真正激励我的东西。
I think I do have this extra responsibility when thinking about major decisions in my life, like, if I have kids, what is the impact of that on the world?
我认为在考虑人生中的重大决定时，我确实有这种额外的责任，比如，如果我有孩子，这会对世界产生什么影响？
On the one hand, it would take time away from other things I could be doing.
一方面，这会占用我可以做的其他事情的时间。
On the other hand, perhaps it’s good.
从另一方面来说，也许这也不错。
I do think it’s good to have a family.
我确实认为有一个家庭是件好事。
Perhaps that’s a good signaling thing.
也许这是一个很好的信号。
I do think those are relevant considerations.
我确实认为这些都是相关的考虑因素。
In my own case, it’s at least, having a family is never something I’ve been particularly drawn to or excited about, so it’s currently not my plan.
至少就我自己而言，拥有一个家庭从来都不是我特别感兴趣或兴奋的事情，所以目前这不是我的计划。
I think the fact that that will help me do more good in the world is a benefit, too.
我认为这将帮助我在世界上做更多的好事，这也是一个好处。
Here’s a very simple, practical question.
这是一个非常简单、实用的问题。
Let’s say I’m a skilled lawyer, and I’m more or less a generalist.
假设我是一名熟练的律师，而且我或多或少是一名多面手。
I could do a lot of different things, and I want to do some pro bono work for effective altruism.
我可以做很多不同的事情，我想做一些无偿的工作以实现有效的利他主义。
What should I actually do?
我实际上应该做什么？
If you’re a skilled lawyer?
如果您是一名熟练的律师？
Skilled lawyer in the United States.
美国资深律师。
Then I think there’re two obvious options.
那么我认为有两个明显的选择。
There are volunteering opportunities like high impact nonprofits, both within the effective altruism organizations or organizations we recommend, like Malaria Consortium, Deworm the World.
在有效的利他主义组织或我们推荐的组织（如疟疾联盟、驱虫世界）中，有诸如高影响力非营利组织之类的志愿服务机会。
The alternative is to work overtime and donate the profits as well, and that can be —
另一种选择是加班，并将利润也捐出去，这可以是 ——
I could sue someone.
我可以起诉某人。
I don’t have to do malaria work, or GiveWell, or bed nets.
我不必做疟疾工作、GiveWell 或蚊帐。
I’m a lawyer.
我是一名律师。
I could try to change laws by suing people.
我可以尝试通过起诉人们来改变法律。
I have this special leverage.
我有这个特殊的杠杆作用。
Oh, yes.
哦是的。
What should I target?
我应该瞄准什么？
I think people potentially doing dangerous biotechnology research, things that could have large negative externalities.
我认为人们可能从事危险的生物技术研究，这些研究可能会产生巨大的负外部性。
I don’t know about the law there.
我不知道那里的法律。
People who are patent trolls seem like that’s particularly harmful, it seems to me, like slowing down innovation.
在我看来，专利流氓似乎特别有害，就像放慢创新速度一样。
Perhaps legal work there could be very helpful as well.
也许那里的法律工作也很有帮助。
I’m curious — this is a little bit more theoretical and depends on the nature of the lawyer.
我很好奇——这有点理论化，取决于律师的性质。
It’s plausible to me that at some point in our lifetimes, there will be a world government set up.
对我来说，在我们有生之年的某个时刻，世界政府将会成立，这是合理的。
That world government will have a constitution.
那个世界政府将有一部宪法。
The forming of the Constitution of the United States was enormously impactful from a very long-term perspective, and yet it was done over the course of about four months.
从长远来看，美国宪法的制定具有巨大影响，但它是在大约四个月的时间内完成的。
We can think in terms of these plastic moments that have a real impact over the future.
我们可以考虑这些对未来产生真正影响的塑料时刻。
I think that whoever’s writing the constitution of the world government — that is going to be a very influential moment.
我认为无论是谁起草世界政府宪法——这都将是一个非常有影响力的时刻。
You could be one of the weird lawyers who are working on this that no one is currently working on, but will turn out to be very impactful if it did occur over the next century.
你可能是正在研究目前无人研究的奇怪律师之一，但如果它确实在下个世纪发生，将会产生非常大的影响。
You have a PhD from Oxford, right?
你有牛津大学的博士学位，对吧？
That’s right.
这是正确的。
Given how much innovation comes out of top schools, why is it crazy to make big donations to them?
鉴于顶尖学校有如此多的创新成果，为什么向它们提供大笔捐款是疯狂的呢？
I see EA people criticize this fairly often, like, “Oh, don’t give your money to Harvard.
我看到 EA 的人经常批评这一点，比如，“哦，不要把钱捐给哈佛。
Give it to bed nets.” But given the power of innovation, including your own — Peter Singer has been connected to all these schools.
把它交给蚊帐。”但考虑到创新的力量，包括你自己的——彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）已经与所有这些学校都有联系。
Why not make big donations to top universities?
为什么不向顶尖大学捐款呢？
I think two things.
我认为有两件事。
One is the standard line of criticism of donations to big universities — among charitable gifts, I don’t really think that’s one of the ones we should be criticizing for being enormously ineffective, compared to ScotsCare or things that are promoting the opera or something, or the US Golf Society.
其中之一是批评向大型大学捐款的标准路线——在慈善捐赠中，我真的不认为这是我们应该批评的那些极其无效的捐赠之一，与 ScotsCare 或推广歌剧或其他东西的机构或美国高尔夫协会相比。
On the other hand, if I’m going to promote research, I think a generic gift to Harvard is going to look pretty unlevered.
另一方面，如果我要促进研究，我认为给哈佛的通用礼物看起来会相当无杠杆。
I don’t think universities are, in general, in a great state in terms of how they can promote research compared to, say, independent research-focused organizations.
总体而言，我认为与独立的研究型组织相比，大学在促进研究方面的状况并不理想。
In particular, when you’re donating to these universities with these enormous existing endowments, looking at what, in principle, happens there, where maybe even you’re trying to target the donation to some focused thing.
特别是，当你用这些巨大的现有捐赠基金向这些大学捐款时，看看原则上会发生什么，甚至你可能试图将捐款瞄准一些有针对性的事情。
Now, sometimes that can work, and then it’s good.
现在，有时这会起作用，然后就很好了。
We have funded a bunch of things — research institutes at major universities, including Oxford.
我们资助了很多主要大学的研究机构，包括牛津大学。
But if you’re just giving a generic gift, then probably you’re just giving to Harvard as a whole.
但如果你只是赠送一份普通的礼物，那么你可能只是给了整个哈佛。
That’s fine.
没关系。
I do think universities produce enormous amounts of value, but probably you’re missing out on an opportunity to do something more focused that pays off sooner, as well.
我确实认为大学创造了巨大的价值，但你可能错过了一个机会，可以做一些更专注、更快获得回报的事情。
Well, take gifts to the opera, which you mentioned.
好吧，给你提到的歌剧送礼物吧。
Why should we not build monuments to what has been our greatest and most profound creations, just to show people, “We did this.
为什么我们不应该为我们最伟大、最深刻的创造建造纪念碑，只是为了向人们展示“我们做到了这一点。
This is really important.
这真的很重要。
We still think it’s important.” It’s a kind of elitism, but nonetheless, isn’t it important to keep those traditions alive and highly visible?
我们仍然认为这很重要。”这是一种精英主义，但尽管如此，保持这些传统的活力和高度可见不是很重要吗？
Yes, it could be important.
是的，这可能很重要。
Is it going to pass the benefit-cost test?
它能通过效益成本测试吗？
I’m open to anything.
我对任何事情都持开放态度。
You’ve got to just show me the numbers, ultimately.
最终你必须向我展示数字。
I would guess —
我猜 ——
But there are not going to be numbers, right?
但不会有数字，对吗？
We’re just guessing.
我们只是猜测。
While you hear Beethoven in the symphony, do you do something great 30 years later?
当你在交响乐中听到贝多芬的声音时，30年后你会做出一些伟大的事情吗？
We’re not going to have an RCT on that, right?
我们不会对此进行随机对照试验，对吧？
We’re not going to have an RCT, but you can still at least say, “At best, this message will reach this many people.
我们不会进行随机对照试验，但你至少仍然可以说，“最多，这个信息会传达给这么多人。
At best, this message reaching people will, let’s say, increase the impact of their lives by a certain percentage.” Then you could at least get an upper bound, where you think, “With the most optimistic assumptions, how much benefit would be created by this extra run of the opera?” My strong guess would be that, even with those optimistic assumptions, it would not look comparable to other good things that one could be doing.
最好的情况是，这条信息传达到人们手中最多只能将他们的生活影响增加一定比例。”然后你至少可以得到一个上限，你会想，“在最乐观的假设下，这部额外的歌剧会创造多少效益？”我强烈的猜测是，即使有这些乐观的假设，它看起来也无法与人们可以做的其他好事相比。
But it’s like Parfit’s paradoxes in moral arithmetic.
但这就像帕菲特在道德算术中的悖论。
The single action doesn’t seem that important.
单一的动作似乎并不那么重要。
If you’re a single marksman in a firing squad, well, you didn’t kill the person, but in a way you still did.
如果你是行刑队中的一名神枪手，那么，你并没有杀死那个人，但在某种程度上你仍然做到了。
No single performance of a great opera is really going to matter much in my view.
在我看来，一部伟大歌剧的单场演出并没有多大意义。
But the fact that we have a network of operas performing The Magic Flute, Fidelio, keeping alive these 18th, 19th century ideals of liberty, freedom, the Masonic temple, glorious music, the importance of the exalted and the divine — that seems to me intuitively a super-high return, though I don’t ever think I’ll be able to measure it.
但事实是，我们有一个演出《魔笛》、《费德里奥》的歌剧网络，使这些 18、19 世纪的自由理想、自由、共济会寺庙、辉煌的音乐、崇高和神圣的重要性——在我看来，直观上似乎是一个超高的回报，尽管我不认为我能够衡量它。
I actually think that if you think that even in expectation, your additional project, let’s say one of the opera, is not making a difference, then that actually suggests that this class of projects is being overfunded.
事实上，我认为，如果你认为即使在预期中，你的额外项目（比方说其中一个歌剧）也没有产生影响，那么这实际上表明此类项目资金过剩。
You should just take that at face value.
你应该只看表面的意思。
The value doesn’t get inherited from the fact that it already has done a lot of good.
这种价值并不是因为它已经做了很多好事而继承的。
Take another example of voting, let’s say.
再举一个投票的例子。
There’s an evil candidate and a good candidate, we’ll suppose.
我们假设有一个邪恶的候选人和一个好的候选人。
Should I vote in the election?
我应该在选举中投票吗？
If I think, “Oh, maybe, actually, it could go either way,” then I think often the answer is “yes” because there’s some chance that your vote will be decisive.
如果我想，“哦，也许，实际上，这两种情况都可能发生”，那么我认为答案通常是“是”，因为你的投票有可能是决定性的。
That’s worth enormous amounts of value.
这是价值巨大的。
If, however, it’s already 95 percent towards the good candidate in terms of votes, and you’re just absolutely sure that voting for the good candidate will not make a difference, then I think the main argument, and by far the main argument, is undermined because it’s already over-determined that this good thing is going to happen, and so you adding your extra weight is not making the world any better.
然而，如果就选票而言，已经有 95% 的人投向了好候选人，而你绝对确定投票给好候选人不会产生任何影响，那么我认为主要论点，而且到目前为止的主要论点，就被削弱了，因为已经过度确定了这件好事将会发生，所以你增加额外的权重并不会让世界变得更好。
How should it matter for our moral calculations if we think we might be living in a simulation?
如果我们认为自己可能生活在模拟中，那么我们的道德计算又有何影响呢？
I think it potentially matters in a lot of ways.
我认为这在很多方面都可能很重要。
It gets into what seems like esoteric topics in decision theory.
它涉及决策理论中看似深奥的话题。
Two different views of decision theory: causal decision theory and non-causal decision theory.
决策论的两种不同观点：因果决策论和非因果决策论。
Causal decision theory says, “I should care about what I cause.” If so, then, if I’m living in a simulation, the argument for taking the very long-term future seriously gets a massive penalty, at least, because those people in the future who are simulating us, who are interested in how did things go down at this crucial moment in history when human-level artificial intelligence gets built, and so on — once they’ve got that information, it’s much less likely that they’re going to keep simulating things.
因果决策理论说：“我应该关心我造成的事情。”如果是这样，那么，如果我生活在模拟中，那么认真对待非常长期的未来的论点至少会受到巨大的惩罚，因为那些未来模拟我们的人，他们对在人类水平的人工智能建立时这个历史关键时刻事情是如何发生的感兴趣，等等——一旦他们获得了这些信息，他们就不太可能继续模拟事物。
Things would get a lot more boring, and computation is expensive.
事情会变得更加无聊，而且计算成本也很高。
So, if we’re living in a simulation, the future is probably going to be a lot shorter, and therefore, the causal impact of my actions is much lower.
所以，如果我们生活在模拟中，未来可能会短得多，因此，我的行为的因果影响要低得多。
If, however, you’ve got non-causal decision theory, where I don’t take into account just the causal effects of my actions, but also, what evidence do I get about how other people will behave, then I should think, “Well, even if I’m in a simulation, if I do such-and-such a thing, that is also giving the evidence that the Will who is in the real world, the non-simulated Will, with all of this important huge consequences in front of him, he will do such-and-such an action too.” So, for non-causal decision theory, it makes much less of a difference.
然而，如果你有非因果决策理论，我不只考虑我的行为的因果影响，而且，我得到了关于其他人将如何行为的证据，那么我应该想，“好吧，即使我在模拟中，如果我做了这样那样的事情，那也证明了现实世界中的意志，非模拟的意志，在他面前有所有这些重要的巨大后果，他会做还有这样那样的动作。”因此，对于非因果决策理论来说，它的影响要小得多。
Now, I’m someone who tends to prefer causal decision theory, so I guess I think two things.
现在，我是一个倾向于因果决策理论的人，所以我想我有两件事。
One, if we’re in a simulation, all bets are off because who knows now what implications you’re having.
第一，如果我们处于模拟中，那么所有的赌注都会被取消，因为现在谁知道你会产生什么影响。
Secondly, maybe you also are much more likely to favor near-term actions rather than long-term actions because helping the simulated suffering person now, well, that’s a good thing that you’re doing.
其次，也许你也更有可能支持短期行动而不是长期行动，因为现在帮助模拟的受苦者，嗯，这是你正在做的一件好事。
Trying to positively impact the long-term future is not something that will actually occur because the simulation is likely to get shut off.
试图对长期未来产生积极影响的事情实际上不会发生，因为模拟可能会被关闭。
Couldn’t it be this convex returns to time that the simulation might be likely to run for much longer, at least in terms of subjective time?
难道不是这种凸时间回报使得模拟可能会运行更长时间，至少在主观时间方面？
Then, if all we have is the so-called real physical universe, and you should care about the long run much more, but there’s this insuperable epistemic problem — you don’t know what the simulators want or even people in other simulations.
那么，如果我们拥有的只是所谓的真实物理宇宙，那么你应该更加关心长期，但存在一个无法克服的认知问题 - 你不知道模拟器想要什么，甚至不知道其他模拟中的人想要什么。
There’s quite possibly lots and lots and lots of them, so you’re paralyzed for this other reason, just you don’t know anything.
很可能有很多很多，所以你因为这个其他原因而瘫痪，只是你什么都不知道。
What you want seems to now be smaller than if it’s just us, Mars, and Venus.
你现在想要的似乎比只有我们、火星和金星要小。
Yes.
是的。
I think that’s pretty plausible if you’re in a simulation that is just, like I said, all bets are off and we don’t really know.
我认为，如果你处于一个模拟中，就像我说的那样，所有的赌注都已结束，而我们真的不知道，那么这是相当合理的。
Maybe that means that no matter how confident you are that you’re in a simulation, you should act as if you’re not, because 99 percent you’re in a simulation — it’s like nihilism.
也许这意味着，无论你对自己在模拟中有多自信，你都应该表现得好像你没有在模拟中一样，因为 99% 的人都在模拟中——这就像虚无主义。
It’s like, “Well, who knows what the impact of any of our actions are?” One percent that you’re not in a simulation, and then you just do the kind of things that seem best.
就像，“好吧，谁知道我们的任何行为会产生什么影响？”百分之一的人不在模拟中，然后你就做看起来最好的事情。
On this issue of, “Oh, maybe it’s convex,” maybe the simulation goes even longer — that’s in this category of things that, again, feel to me like they’re low but also extremely speculative probabilities that feel like crazy town.
在这个问题上，“哦，也许它是凸的”，也许模拟会持续更长的时间 - 在这一类事情中，我再次感觉它们的概率很低，但也具有极高的投机概率，感觉就像疯狂的小镇。
It’s not just the simulation ones.
这不仅仅是模拟的。
There are other thoughts you might have.
您可能还有其他想法。
We’ve mentioned infinite ethics as well.
我们也提到了无限的道德。
Other thoughts you might have that would lead to even more value in the future but seem extremely implausible.
您可能有的其他想法可能会在未来带来更多价值，但似乎极其难以置信。
Here’s another one, which is, you are in favor of speeding up economic growth because that has many benefits for not just now, but many centuries to come.
还有一个，那就是，你赞成加快经济增长，因为这不仅对现在而且对未来的许多世纪都有很多好处。
My response to that would be, well, at some point, economic growth would plateau, maybe not in a few centuries, but certainly by 10,000 years’ time.
我对此的回应是，在某个时候，经济增长将趋于稳定，也许不会在几个世纪内，但肯定会在一万年后。
We can’t just keep growing.
我们不能只是不断成长。
The more important thing is to either change the values that guide the future or ensure that we have a future at all because that’s a difference that really persists for all time.
更重要的是要么改变指导未来的价值观，要么确保我们拥有未来，因为这是一个真正永远存在的差异。
Here’s a response you could make, Tyler, which is, we shouldn’t be confident, we shouldn’t be certain, not 100 percent certain that economic growth will plateau.
泰勒，你可以做出这样的回应，那就是，我们不应该有信心，我们不应该确定，不能百分百确定经济增长将趋于稳定。
Maybe it just keeps going forever and ever and ever until 100 trillion years, when the last stars burn out.
也许它会永远持续下去，直到 100 万亿年，最后一颗恒星燃尽为止。
What’s more, that’s where all the value is, because if economic growth can keep going for so long, then that’s huge amounts of value, way more than if we merely get a few thousand years of growth.
更重要的是，这就是所有的价值所在，因为如果经济增长能够持续这么长时间，那么这就是巨大的价值，远远超过我们仅仅获得几千年的增长。
My response to that is, man, this just seems like super brittle, low probability because it seems so implausible to me that we could get hundreds of trillions of years in technological progress and improving well-being.
我对此的回应是，伙计，这似乎非常脆弱，可能性很低，因为对我来说，我们可以在技术进步和改善福祉方面获得数百万亿年的时间，这似乎难以置信。
So, I have to admit —
所以，我不得不承认 ——
What about the simple response that higher economic growth today gives you better institutions, and that also serves to minimize existential risk.
简单的反应怎么样？今天更高的经济增长给你带来了更好的制度，这也有助于最大限度地减少存在风险。
Look at the countries with poor growth records.
看看那些增长记录不佳的国家。
None of them seem to have the institutions to fight off a real threat to humanity, right?
他们似乎都没有机构来对抗对人类的真正威胁，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
They’re just a simple argument for growth being a priority?
它们只是增长优先的简单论点？
Yes.
是的。
Different argument.
不同的说法。
Then I would focus less on growth per se.
然后我就会减少对增长本身的关注。
But there is something that I do buy, and at some margin, I think it is what we should be doing, and I’ve done a bit of it so far, which is, just like, okay, it’s hard to predict the future.
但我确实买了一些东西，在某种程度上，我认为这是我们应该做的事情，到目前为止我已经做了一些，就像，好吧，很难预测未来。
We’re going to get lots of unexpected events.
我们会遇到很多意想不到的事件。
There are some things that just correlate, well, we’re onto a good thing, like improved technologically delivering growth, good institutions, democracy, liberalism, more cooperation, higher trust in societies — these are just genetically good — and innovation.
有些事情是相互关联的，嗯，我们正在做一件好事，比如改善技术带来的增长、良好的制度、民主、自由主义、更多的合作、对社会更高的信任——这些都是基因上的好处——以及创新。
From the sheer track record of how helpful these have been over the last 200 years, let’s just keep pushing on that.
从过去 200 年来这些技术的巨大帮助来看，让我们继续推动这一目标。
That’s the kind of view that I think I’m most sympathetic to in terms of the moral-progress studies worldview because I do think that’s good for the long-term future.
在道德进步研究的世界观方面，我认为我最同情这种观点，因为我确实认为这对长期的未来有利。
It’s like, can you beat the market?
就像，你能打败市场吗？
I think probably we can, actually, but at some margin, that’s what I think long-termism turns into.
我认为实际上我们可能可以，但在某种程度上，我认为长期主义就会变成这样。
It looks more common sense-y, like building a flourishing society.
它看起来更符合常识，就像建设一个繁荣的社会。
Now, I’m going to use the word hinge-y to describe the quality of living in a time that is highly influential, where that influence may very well persist for a long period of time.
现在，我将使用“hinge-y”这个词来描述一个具有高度影响力的时代的生活质量，这种影响很可能会持续很长一段时间。
Do people in their own eras know when they are living in especially hinge-y eras?
在他们自己的时代，人们是否知道他们什么时候生活在一个特别关键的时代？
Or are they clueless?
还是他们无知？
I think we know a lot more now than we did in the past.
我认为我们现在比过去了解得多。
I think people in the past would’ve been pretty clueless.
我想以前的人一定是很无知的。
They didn’t have a good sense of how long .
他们不太清楚要持续多久。
.
。
.
。
The fact that the universe is so truly enormous, so big, and yet uninhabited, is actually a very recent idea, like a little over 100 years that we’ve really appreciated that.
宇宙确实如此巨大，如此巨大，但却无人居住，这一事实实际上是一个非常新的想法，大约一百多年前我们才真正认识到这一点。
So, people in previous times may have thought that they were living in extraordinarily hinge-y times.
所以，以前的人们可能会认为他们生活在一个非常不稳定的时代。
The early Christians — extraordinarily hinge-y time.
早期基督徒——一个极其关键的时代。
Kingdom was going to come in one or two generations.
天国将在一两代人之后到来。
COWEN: It was, I would say.
COWEN：我想说的是。
Oh, you think they were right and we’ve just been lucky?
哦，你认为他们是对的，我们只是运气好？
No, but Christianity has proven extremely important, and it’s still with us, right?
不，但事实证明基督教极其重要，而且它仍然与我们同在，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
It’s the foundation for Western prosperity.
这是西方繁荣的基础。
Yes, actually, I do agree they were a very hinge-y time, just not for the reasons they thought.
是的，实际上，我确实同意那是一个非常关键的时期，只是原因并非他们想象的那样。
That gets to the epistemic problem.
这就涉及到认知问题了。
Do people ever know?
人们知道吗？
Like people in 1720 — how many of them were sitting around saying, “We’re on the cusp of an Industrial Revolution”?
就像 1720 年的人们一样，有多少人坐在那儿说：“我们正处于工业革命的风口浪尖”？
That was a hinge-y event.
那是一个非常重要的事件。
I’m not saying no one knew, but —
我并不是说没人知道，但是 ——
The Founding Fathers were aware.
开国元勋们都知道。
John Adams has this great quote of the lasting importance that we build the institutions of America correctly because they may well not wear out for thousands of years.
约翰·亚当斯（John Adams）有一句伟大的名言，指出我们正确建立美国的制度具有持久的重要性，因为它们很可能在数千年里都不会磨损。
If they’re built incorrectly, then they will not return — except by accident — to the right path.
如果它们建造不正确，那么它们将不会返回 — 除非意外 — 回到正确的路径。
So, I think they actually did seem pretty aware of the importance of what they were doing.
所以，我认为他们实际上似乎非常清楚他们正在做的事情的重要性。
I think two things.
我认为有两件事。
One, I think this should give us a lot of humbleness or humility in terms of taking actions today.
第一，我认为这应该让我们在今天采取行动时感到非常谦虚或谦虚。
It’s perfectly plausible to me, maybe even more likely than not, that in a hundred years’ time, people would look back and say, “Oh, wow, these are the people they cared about, AI and worried about bio weapons,” in the same way as I look back at John Stuart Mill at the end of the 19th century, who was fighting for future generations by trying to keep coal in the ground because he thought that we were going to run out of coal very quickly and that would impoverish future generations.
对我来说，这是完全合理的，甚至更有可能的是，一百年后，人们回顾过去会说，“哦，哇，这些是他们关心的人，人工智能和担心生物武器，”就像我回顾 19 世纪末的约翰·斯图尔特·米尔一样，他通过试图将煤炭留在地下来为子孙后代而战，因为他认为我们很快就会耗尽煤炭，这将使子孙后代陷入贫困。
I think that’s actually quite likely.
我认为这实际上很有可能。
I think that gives a good argument for trying to do much more robustly good actions or trying to build up the resources that will be very useful in a hundred years’ time.
我认为这为尝试采取更强有力的良好行动或尝试建立一百年后非常有用的资源提供了一个很好的论据。
Increasing the number of impartially concerned and altruistically motivated and carefully reasoning thinkers, for example.
例如，增加公正关心、利他动机和仔细推理的思想家的数量。
But I also think we have much better evidence than those people in the past.
但我也认为我们比过去的人有更好的证据。
We have a much better understanding of physics, a better understanding of social science, of probability, even of ethics, and I think that gives us —
我们对物理学有了更好的理解，对社会科学、概率甚至伦理学有了更好的理解，我认为这让我们 ——
But say, foreign policy.
但要说的是外交政策。
We can’t predict anything.
我们无法预测任何事情。
I don’t know anyone good at predicting foreign policy outcomes.
我不知道有谁擅长预测外交政策结果。
Those are maybe the most important issues in the world.
这些可能是世界上最重要的问题。
If we can’t predict foreign policy two years out, how well can we understand our own hinge-yness?
如果我们无法预测两年后的外交政策，我们如何理解我们自己的枢纽性？
Here’s a general argument for thinking that we’re at least plausibly at a very influential time, and I think this argument works.
这是一个普遍的论点，认为我们至少似乎正处于一个非常有影响力的时代，我认为这个论点是有效的。
I don’t think it means we’re at the most influential time.
我不认为这意味着我们正处于最有影响力的时期。
That’s a substantially harder argument to make.
这是一个更难提出的论点。
It’s just that the rate of technological progress is very high compared to history, and also very high compared to what must happen in the future.
只是技术进步的速度与历史相比非常高，与未来必然发生的情况相比也非常高。
The argument is just that if we had economic growth of 2 percent per year for 10,000 years, then we would be producing 10 to the 87 world’s worth of economic output.
争论的焦点是，如果我们的经济增长率持续 10,000 年每年 2%，那么我们的经济产出将相当于世界经济产出的 10 到 87。
That doesn’t seem .
看来不是。
.
。
.
。
We’d be producing that.
我们会生产那个。
There are 10 to the 67 atoms within 10,000 light-years.
10000光年之内有10到67个原子。
So, we would be producing about a trillion trillion current civilization’s worth of economic output for every atom within 10,000 years.
因此，我们将在 10,000 年内为每个原子创造相当于当前文明价值 1 万亿万亿美元的经济产出。
That just seems like, okay, that can’t happen.
看起来，好吧，这不可能发生。
Technologically delivered economic growth is going to have to decrease when we look to the future.
展望未来，技术带来的经济增长将不得不放缓。
That actually suggests we’re living at a time of unusually high technological change.
这实际上表明我们生活在一个技术变革异常激烈的时代。
This is actually a very tiny window.
这实际上是一个非常小的窗口。
It’s only been like 200 years that we’ve gotten anything close to this level of tech progress.
我们只用了大约 200 年的时间就取得了接近这一水平的技术进步。
Ten thousand years is also a very tiny window compared to hundreds of thousands of years that we’ve been around so far, and the millions, billions, or trillions of years we could be around in the future.
与我们迄今为止存在的数十万年以及未来可能存在的数百万年、数十亿年或数万亿年相比，一万年也是一个非常小的窗口。
That just seems like a really pretty good reason for thinking, okay, there’s at least a decent probability for thinking we’re at an unusually hinge-y time.
这似乎是一个非常好的理由，让我们思考，好吧，至少有相当大的可能性认为我们正处于一个异常关键的时刻。
Again, maybe not the most influential time, but something that’s pretty distinctive if you tell the story of the whole of civilization, not just the past, also the future.
再说一次，也许不是最有影响力的时代，但如果你讲述整个文明的故事，不仅仅是过去，还有未来，那就非常独特了。
Now, on this question, I’m looking for a sociological answer.
现在，对于这个问题，我正在寻找社会学的答案。
It’s really striking to me how many very smart young people right now are attracted to the effective altruism movement, I think way more than a lot of outsiders realize.
让我惊讶的是，现在有这么多非常聪明的年轻人被有效的利他主义运动所吸引，我认为比很多局外人意识到的要多。
I’m sure you’ve seen this.
我相信你已经看过这个了。
Why is that the case?
为什么会这样呢？
The mere fact that you all might be correct, I do not consider a satisfactory answer, to be clear, because in general, it’s not the case that the correct movements are always attracting the smartest people.
澄清一下，仅凭你们可能都是正确的这一事实，我并不认为这是一个令人满意的答案，因为一般来说，正确的行动并不总是能吸引最聪明的人。
Why is this happening now?
为什么现在会发生这种情况？
I was absolutely going to say, well, maybe we’ve just got the best arguments.
我绝对想说，好吧，也许我们刚刚有了最好的论据。
Okay, fine, I’ve got to give an entirely sociological explanation.
好吧，好吧，我必须给出一个完全社会学的解释。
One is, I think there just was an untapped market of altruistically minded people.
一是，我认为还有一个尚未开发的市场，里面有一群有利他主义思想的人。
I think that especially this kind of effective altruism is much broader than consequentialism, but consequentialism-flavored ethical views correlate with being very high educationally performing.
我认为，尤其是这种有效的利他主义比结果主义要广泛得多，但结果主义风格的伦理观点与非常高的教育表现相关。
I think it’s also the case that something that correlates with being high educationally performing is just being secure about your material needs, whether that’s because you come from a better family, but also because your career prospect is looking pretty good.
我认为，与高学历相关的事情就是对你的物质需求有保障，无论是因为你来自一个更好的家庭，还是因为你的职业前景看起来相当不错。
I think of altruism like a luxury good.
我认为利他主义就像一种奢侈品。
The more secure you are, the more you can focus on that.
你越安全，你就越能专注于此。
One thing is, we’ve tapped into this market that I think wasn’t otherwise being tapped into.
有一件事是，我们已经进入了这个我认为原本没有被进入的市场。
Then a second thing I could say is that the topics are just very intellectually interesting and a very unusual intersection of intellectually interesting and extremely impactful and important for one’s own life, and in fact, how the world should be.
然后我要说的第二件事是，这些主题在智力上非常有趣，并且是智力上有趣的非常不寻常的交集，对一个人自己的生活以及事实上的世界应该是什么样子非常有影响力和重要。
You’re making arguments about paradoxes in population ethics and moral philosophy, and the resolution there is really going to make a difference to what you should do.
你正在就人口伦理和道德哲学中的悖论进行争论，而那里的解决方案确实会对你应该做的事情产生影响。
Perhaps that’s more attractive to the nerds of the world, too.
也许这对世界上的书呆子也更有吸引力。
Let me make a sociological observation of my own.
让我做一个我自己的社会学观察。
If I think about making the world a better place, I think so much about so many things being downstream from culture, that we need to think about culture.
如果我考虑让世界变得更美好，我会考虑很多文化下游的事情，因此我们需要考虑文化。
This is quite a messy topic.
这是一个相当混乱的话题。
It’s not easily amenable to what you might call optimization kinds of reasoning.
它不容易适应你所谓的优化推理。
Then, when I hear EA discussions, they seem very often to be about optimization — so many chats online or in person, like how many chickens are worth a cow, the bed net versus the anti-malaria program.
然后，当我听到 EA 的讨论时，他们似乎经常讨论优化 ——很多在线或面对面的聊天，比如多少只鸡值一头牛、蚊帐与抗疟疾计划。
I often think that this is maybe my biggest difference with EA — that EA has the wrong emphasis, pushing people into the optimization discussions when it should be more about improving the quality of institutions and management everywhere in a way that depends on culture, which is this harder thing to manage.
我常常想，这可能是我与 EA 最大的区别——EA 的重点是错误的，它把人们推向优化讨论，而实际上它应该更多地以依赖于文化的方式提高各地机构和管理的质量，而这是更难管理的事情。
This may even get back to subsidizing Mozart’s Magic Flute.
这甚至可能会用来补贴莫扎特的魔笛。
There’s something about the sociology of EA that strongly encourages, especially online, what I would call the optimization mindset.
EA 的社会学中有一些东西强烈鼓励我所说的优化心态，尤其是在网上。
What’s your response to that?
您对此有何回应？
I think I’m going to surprise you and agree with you, Tyler.
我想我会让你感到惊讶并同意你的观点，泰勒。
I’m not sure it’s about optimization, but here’s a certain critique that one could make of EA, in general or traditionally.
我不确定这是否与优化有关，但这里有一个人们可以对 EA 进行一般或传统批评的批评。
It’s like, hey, you have a bunch of nerds.
就像，嘿，你们有一群书呆子。
You have a bunch of STEM people.
你们有一群 STEM 人员。
The way your brains work will be inclined to focus on technology or technological fixes and not on mushy things, like institutions and culture, but they’re super important.
你的大脑工作方式将倾向于关注技术或技术修复，而不是那些糊涂的东西，比如制度和文化，但它们非常重要。
I, at least, think that that criticism has a lot going for that.
至少我认为这种批评有很大的道理。
I don’t want to wholesale endorse it because often, you just can have technological fixes to what are even sociological problems, where the risk of an engineered pandemic killing hundreds of millions of people.
我不想全面认可它，因为通常情况下，你可以通过技术来解决甚至是社会学问题，在这些问题上，一场精心设计的流行病会导致数亿人死亡。
That is, in part, a sociological or political problem because it’s going to be an individual that builds it and does it.
这在某种程度上是一个社会学或政治问题，因为它将由个人来建造和实施。
We could just solve it with technology, though — early warning detection systems, far UVC lighting that sterilizes wounds.
不过，我们可以通过技术来解决这个问题——预警检测系统、对伤口进行消毒的远紫外线照明。
There doesn’t need to be a match between political or sociological problems and political or cultural responses.
政治或社会学问题与政治或文化反应之间不需要匹配。
But I do think that culture is just enormously important.
但我确实认为文化非常重要。
That’s something I’ve changed my view on and appreciated a lot over the last few years, just as I started to learn more about history, about the cultural evolution literature, about Joseph Henrich’s work and our understanding of humanity as a species.
在过去的几年里，当我开始更多地了解历史、文化进化文献、约瑟夫·亨利奇的作品以及我们对人类作为一个物种的理解时，我的看法发生了很大的改变，并对此感到非常欣赏。
Actually, one of my favorite and most underrated articles is by Nathan Nunn.
事实上，我最喜欢和最被低估的文章之一是内森·纳恩 (Nathan Nunn) 写的。
It’s called “History as Evolution,” which I think is extremely good.
它的名字叫《历史作为进化》，我认为这非常好。
Yes.
是的。
Actually, my understanding of human beings — rather than homo economicus, which are mainly motivated by self-interest; you understand that in terms of income — at least when you’re looking at a much broader scale, I think we’re much more like homo culturalis, where people have a view of how the world should be, and they go out and try to make that vision happen.
事实上，我对人类的理解——而不是经济人，主要是出于自身利益的动机；你明白，就收入而言——至少当你着眼于更广泛的范围时，我认为我们更像是文化同质，人们对世界应该如何发展有自己的看法，并且他们走出去并努力实现这一愿景。
I think that can have hard-to-measure and very long-run but important effects.
我认为这可能会产生难以衡量的、长期但重要的影响。
I actually see effective altruism, as a whole, as cultural innovation.
实际上，我将有效的利他主义作为一个整体视为文化创新。
It’s creating this new subculture, a culture of people who are impartial and altruistically motivated, extremely concerned about the truth and having accurate beliefs.
它正在创造这种新的亚文化，一种公正、无私、极其关心真相并拥有准确信念的文化。
That is a way in which I think effective altruism could have a big impact, in the same way as the scientific revolution was primarily a cultural revolution — I shouldn’t use that term — primarily a revolution in culture, where people suddenly started innovating, and they started to think in a certain way.
我认为有效的利他主义可以在这种方式中产生巨大的影响，就像科学革命主要是一场文化革命一样——我不应该使用这个词——主要是一场文化革命，人们突然开始创新，他们开始以某种方式思考。
It’s was like, “Oh, we can do experiments, and we can test things, and we can tinker.” I actually see effective altruism as a cultural innovation that could drive great moral progress in the future.
就像，“哦，我们可以做实验，我们可以测试东西，我们可以修补。”事实上，我认为有效的利他主义是一种文化创新，可以推动未来道德的巨大进步。
Then, should we be doing more in terms of cultural change?
那么，我们是否应该在文化变革方面做更多的事情？
One thing I’ll say is, people are doing quite a lot of it — myself promoting concern for future generations in this book, What We Owe the Future, is doing that.
我要说的一件事是，人们正在做很多这样的事情——我自己在这本书《我们欠未来什么》中提倡对子孙后代的关心，就是这样做的。
An awful lot of people are going to promote cultural change around attitudes to non-human animals.
很多人将围绕对非人类动物的态度推动文化变革。
It is hard to measure, but I think there’s a very big difference between having an optimization mindset — do the best — and having a mindset that’s like, “Therefore, we always need to be able to measure what we’re doing and have some metric that we’re optimizing towards.” That latter thing, I think, is a bit of a straw man against EA.
这很难衡量，但我认为拥有优化心态 — 做到最好 — 与拥有这样的心态“因此，我们总是需要能够衡量我们正在做的事情，并有一些我们正在优化的指标。”我认为，后者有点像对抗 EA 的稻草人。
Will the EA movement avoid Conquest’s Second Law, namely that institutions not explicitly designed to be right-wing end up becoming left-wing?
EA运动是否会避免征服第二定律，即那些没有明确设计为右翼的机构最终会变成左翼？
It’s happened to all these major foundations: Rockefeller, Ford, Pew.
所有这些主要基金会都发生过这种情况：洛克菲勒、福特、皮尤。
You can go all the way down the list.
您可以一直查看列表中的所有内容。
Whether you like that or not, it seems to be an empirical regularity.
不管你喜欢与否，这似乎是一种经验规律。
Will it happen to EA?
EA会发生这种事吗？
Yes, I’d be curious about what the underlying mechanism is for those other foundations.
是的，我很好奇其他基金会的基本机制是什么。
It’s not something I know about.
这不是我知道的事情。
It’s interesting that if you look at the demographics and political views of people in effective altruism, even though we’ve really not been selecting for that at all, we’ve been selecting for people who care about things like, does it make sense to spend your money to pay for bed nets to save lives in poor countries?
有趣的是，如果你看看有效利他主义的人们的人口统计和政治观点，即使我们实际上根本没有选择这一点，我们一直在选择那些关心诸如“在贫穷国家花钱购买蚊帐来拯救生命”之类的事情的人是否有意义？
That’s certainly not a politically hot-button issue.
这当然不是一个政治热点问题。
There does tend to be a pretty systematic tendency towards being very socially liberal and being economically moderate or something.
确实存在一种非常系统的倾向，即社会上非常自由、经济上很温和等等。
There’s still obviously a range on both of those cases, but there certainly is a particular tendency.
这两种情况显然仍然存在一定的范围，但肯定存在一种特殊的趋势。
My guess is that that’s the bigger factor.
我的猜测是这是更重要的因素。
Like inertia would keep effective altruism broadly in that category.
就像惯性一样，有效的利他主义也广泛地属于这一类别。
But perhaps you could convince me otherwise if I understood what’s the mechanism by which these other foundations are shifting left-wing.
但如果我了解这些其他基金会向左翼转变的机制是什么，也许你可以说服我。
For our final segment, do you have time for a quick round of underrated versus overrated?
对于我们的最后一部分，您有时间快速进行一轮被低估与高估的比较吗？
Of course.
当然。
Okay.
好的。
Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher — overrated or underrated?
哲学家伯克利主教——被高估还是被低估？
Underrated because idealism, in general, I think, is underrated as a metaphysical view.
我认为，总体而言，理想主义作为一种形而上学观点被低估，因此被低估了。
And that’s related to thinking we might be living in a simulation or not.
这与我们是否生活在模拟中的想法有关。
Yes.
是的。
In general, the fact that it’s our experiences that we have direct awareness of and the idea that maybe there’s no external world.
一般来说，我们直接意识到的是我们的经历，并且认为可能不存在外部世界。
I think there’s more on the table than maybe more than philosophers give it credit for.
我认为摆在桌面上的东西可能比哲学家们认为的还要多。
You’re from Scotland.
你来自苏格兰。
Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments as a book — over- or underrated?
亚当·斯密的《道德情操论》作为一本书——被高估还是低估？
I’ll have to confess, I haven’t read it.
我必须承认，我还没有读过。
My guess is that it’s underrated because, from people I know and respect — they think of it very highly.
我的猜测是它被低估了，因为我认识和尊敬的人认为它非常高。
Quine, the philosopher — over- or underrated?
哲学家蒯因——被高估还是低估？
Overrated, I’m afraid.
恐怕被高估了。
Why?
为什么？
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” for example, is his most famous article.
例如，“经验主义的两个教条”是他最著名的文章。
There’s the analytic–synthetic distinction: views that are true in virtue of meaning, views that are true empirically.
这里有分析与综合的区别：观点在意义上是正确的，观点在经验上是正确的。
He’s like, “I don’t believe in this distinction.” His argument is just, “Well, can you define what it means for something to be true in virtue of meaning?”
他说：“我不相信这种区别。”他的论点只是，“那么，你能根据意义来定义某件事为真的意味着什么吗？”
He’s like, “This definition is circular.
他说：“这个定义是循环的。
This definition is circular.” I don’t think it’s a very good argument.
这个定义是循环的。”我认为这不是一个很好的论点。
I think you can clearly have positions that involve primitive concepts without being able to define them in non-circular terms.
我认为你可以清楚地拥有涉及原始概念的立场，而无法用非循环术语来定义它们。
That’s regarded as one of the great papers of analytic philosophy over the last century.
这被认为是上个世纪分析哲学最伟大的论文之一。
I think the arguments are pretty weak.
我认为这些论据相当薄弱。
Then, more generally, he has this tendency of writing these articles, where the arguments aren’t very good, but he ends with some vivid picture or metaphor, and people don’t really understand the arguments because they’re often quite technical, but then really like the metaphor and people think, “Oh, he’s great.”
然后，更一般地说，他有写这些文章的倾向，其中的论点不是很好，但他以一些生动的图片或隐喻结尾，人们并不真正理解这些论点，因为它们通常非常技术性，但随后真的很喜欢这个隐喻，人们会想，“哦，他很棒。”
Buildering — overrated or underrated?
建筑 — 被高估还是被低估？
And you need to tell us what it is.
你需要告诉我们它是什么。
Buildering is also known as urban climbing.
建筑也被称为城市攀登。
It’s where you just basically climb buildings in urban environments.
您基本上可以在城市环境中攀爬建筑物。
It’s something I used to do as a younger man.
这是我年轻时经常做的事情。
It is very dangerous, so I’m going to say it’s overrated.
这是非常危险的，所以我想说它被高估了。
In the book, I talk about how I nearly killed myself doing that.
在书中，我谈到了我是如何这样做差点自杀的。
A lesson from that, too, with long-term future of humanity.
这也是人类长远未来的一个教训。
Thus, we need to worry about existential risk.
因此，我们需要担心存在风险。
Exactly.
确切地。
Last question to close this out.
最后一个问题来结束这个问题。
What is it you will do next?
接下来你会做什么？
Just to remind our readers, What We Owe the Future, Will’s new book — excellent.
只是为了提醒我们的读者，我们欠未来什么，威尔的新书 —— 非常棒。
One of the most important books of the year.
年度最重要的书籍之一。
Will is one of the most influential and important philosophers in the world.
威尔是世界上最有影响力和最重要的哲学家之一。
Please, do buy it and read it.
请购买并阅读它。
But tell us also, what will you do next?
但也请告诉我们，你接下来要做什么？
Thanks so much, Tyler.
非常感谢，泰勒。
I have a few options on the table.
我有几个选择。
I’ve been helping Sam Bankman-Fried launch his foundation, the Future Fund, which has been going well.
我一直在帮助山姆·班克曼-弗里德创立他的基金会“未来基金”，进展顺利。
We’ve been able to move a lot of money, about $140 million this year.
我们已经转移了大量资金，今年约为 1.4 亿美元。
Possibly, I will keep working more on that.
也许，我会继续在这方面做更多的工作。
That’s one option.
这是一种选择。
Second is just doubling down on books and promotion of ideas.
其次是加倍投入书籍和推广思想。
That’s what I truly love.
这就是我真正热爱的。
I enjoy having back and forth with people like yourself.
我喜欢和像你这样的人来回交流。
There’s plenty more.
还有更多。
I’d be interested in writing another book that’s kind of a follow-up to Doing Good Better, that is really explaining what is the effect of an altruism community, and actually taking an introduction into that that’s less from abstract principles and arguments, and more just via what, actually, the people in that community — what they’re doing.
我有兴趣写另一本书，它是《做得更好》的后续作品，它真正解释了利他主义社区的影响是什么，并且实际上不是从抽象的原则和论据中进行介绍，而是更多地通过实际上该社区中的人们 ——他们正在做的事情来进行介绍。
Then a final option that I consider is some new college or university.
然后我考虑的最后一个选择是一些新的学院或大学。
Really trying to take some of the brightest people from all around the world, especially in countries where very bright, promising, morally motivated people are being missed.
确实想从世界各地招募一些最聪明的人，特别是在那些非常聪明、有前途、有道德动机的人被遗漏的国家。
You could be extremely intellectually talented in rural India, and maybe you can make your way out, but it’s a challenge, at least.
在印度农村，你可能非常有智力天赋，也许你可以走出去，但这至少是一个挑战。
Then, just trying to give the very best all-round education possible, hiring people who are dedicated as teachers rather than having their attention split between research and teaching, which is the standard university model.
然后，只是尽力提供尽可能最好的全面教育，聘请敬业的教师，而不是将注意力分散在研究和教学上，这是标准的大学模式。
Also, using certain techniques that we have discovered that aren’t very widely used within education, to try and accelerate people’s learning as fast as possible.
此外，使用我们发现的某些在教育领域并未广泛使用的技术来尝试尽可能快地加速人们的学习。
If that worked well in this one instance, then perhaps it could become a much wider idea.
如果这在这个例子中效果很好，那么也许它可以成为一个更广泛的想法。
Will MacAskill, congratulations again on the book, and thank you very much.
威尔·麦克阿斯基尔，再次祝贺这本书的问世，并非常感谢你。
Thank you so much, Tyler.
非常感谢你，泰勒。