What You (Want to)* Want

November 2022 Since I was about 9 I've been puzzled by the apparent contradiction between being made of matter that behaves in a predictable way, and the feeling that I could choose to do whatever I wanted.

2022 年 11 月 自从我大约 9 岁起，我就一直对由行为可预测的物质组成与我可以选择做任何我想做的事情之间的明显矛盾感到困惑。

At the time I had a self-interested motive for exploring the question.

当时我是出于一己私利的动机来探讨这个问题的。

At that age (like most succeeding ages) I was always in trouble with the authorities, and it seemed to me that there might possibly be

在那个年纪（就像大多数随后的年龄一样），我总是与当局发生麻烦，在我看来，可能有

some way to get out of trouble by arguing that I wasn't responsible for my actions.

通过争论我不对自己的行为负责来摆脱麻烦。

I gradually lost hope of that, but the puzzle remained: How do you reconcile being a machine made of matter with the feeling that you're free to choose what you do?

我逐渐对此失去了希望，但谜题仍然存在：你如何调和作为一台由物质组成的机器与你可以自由选择你做什么的感觉？

[ 1 ] The best way to explain the answer may be to start with a slightly wrong version, and then fix it.

[1]解释答案的最好方法可能是从一个稍微错误的版本开始，然后修复它。

The wrong version is: You can do what you want, but you can't want what you want.

错误的版本是：你可以做你想做的事，但你不能想要你想要的东西。

Yes, you can control

是的，你可以控制

what you do, but you'll do what you want, and you can't control that.

你会做什么，但你会做你想做的事，而你无法控制它。

The reason this is mistaken is that people do sometimes change what they want.

这种观点是错误的，因为人们有时确实会改变他们想要的东西。

People who don't want to want something — drug addicts, for example — can sometimes make themselves stop wanting it.

那些不想想要某样东西的人——例如吸毒者——有时可以让自己不再想要它。

And people who want to want something — who want to like classical music, or broccoli — sometimes succeed.

那些想要某种东西的人——那些想要喜欢古典音乐或西兰花的人——有时会成功。

So we modify our initial statement: You can do what you want, but

所以我们修改最初的声明：你可以做你想做的事，但是

you can't want to want what you want.

你不可能想要你想要的东西。

That's still not quite true.

这仍然不完全正确。

It's possible to change what you want to want.

改变你想要的东西是可能的。

I can imagine someone saying "I decided to stop wanting to like classical music." But we're getting closer to the truth.

我可以想象有人说“我决定不再喜欢古典音乐”。但我们正在接近真相。

It's rare for people to change what they want to want, and the more "want to"s we add, the rarer it gets.

人们很少会改变自己想要的东西，而且我们添加的“想要”越多，这种情况就越罕见。

We can get arbitrarily close to a true statement by adding more "want

我们可以通过添加更多“想要”来任意接近真实的陈述

to"s in much the same way we can get arbitrarily close to 1 by adding more 9s to a string of 9s following a decimal point.

与我们可以通过在小数点后面的一串 9 中添加更多 9 来任意接近 1 的方式一样。

In practice three or four "want to"s must surely be enough.

实际上，三到四个“想要”肯定就足够了。

It's hard even to envision what it would mean to change what you want to want to want to want, let alone actually do it.

甚至很难想象改变你想要的东西意味着什么，更不用说真正去做了。

So one way to express the correct answer is to use a regular expression.

因此表达正确答案的一种方法是使用正则表达式。

You can do what you want, but there's some statement

你可以做你想做的事，但有一些声明

of the form "you can't (want to)* want what you want" that's true.

“你不能（想要）*想要你想要的东西”，这是真的。

Ultimately you get back to a want that you don't control.

最终你又回到了你无法控制的欲望。

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