The Acceleration of Addictiveness
July 2010 What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors.
2010 年 7 月 烈性酒、香烟、海洛因和快克的共同点是，它们都是较不易成瘾的前体物质的浓缩形式。
Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are.
我们所说的大多数（如果不是全部）令人上瘾的东西都是如此。
And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating.
可怕的是，创造它们的过程正在加速。
We wouldn't want to stop it.
我们不想阻止它。
It's the same process that cures diseases: technological progress.
这与治愈疾病的过程相同：技术进步。
Technological progress means
技术进步意味着
making things do more of what we want.
让事情更多地按照我们的意愿去做。
When the thing we want is something we want to want, we consider technological progress good.
当我们想要的东西是我们想要的东西时，我们认为技术进步是好的。
If some new technique makes solar cells x% more efficient, that seems strictly better.
如果某种新技术使太阳能电池的效率提高 x%，那看起来确实更好。
When progress concentrates something we don't want to want — when it transforms opium into heroin — it seems bad.
当进步集中在我们不想要的东西上时——当它把鸦片变成海洛因时——这似乎很糟糕。
But it's the same process at work.
但在工作中也是同样的过程。
[ 1 ] No one doubts this process is accelerating, which means increasing
[ 1 ] 没有人怀疑这一进程正在加速，这意味着增加
numbers of things we like will be transformed into things we like too much.
许多我们喜欢的东西会变成我们太喜欢的东西。
[ 2 ] As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much.
[ 2 ] 据我所知，没有什么词可以形容我们太喜欢的东西。
The closest is the colloquial sense of "addictive." That usage has become increasingly common during my lifetime.
最接近的是口语中的“上瘾”。在我的一生中，这种用法变得越来越普遍。
And it's clear why: there are an increasing number of things we need it for.
原因很明显：我们需要它做的事情越来越多。
At the extreme end of the spectrum are crack and meth.
处于最极端的是破解和甲基苯丙胺。
Food has been
食物已
transformed by a combination of factory farming and innovations in food processing into something with way more immediate bang for the buck, and you can see the results in any town in America.
通过工厂化农业和食品加工创新的结合，将其转变为一种更立竿见影的经济效益，你可以在美国的任何城镇看到结果。
Checkers and solitaire have been replaced by World of Warcraft and FarmVille.
跳棋和纸牌已被《魔兽世界》和《FarmVille》取代。
TV has become much more engaging, and even so it can't compete with Facebook.
电视变得越来越有吸引力，但即便如此它也无法与 Facebook 竞争。
The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago.
与 40 年前相比，这个世界更容易让人上瘾。
And unless
除非
the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40.
产生这些东西的技术进步的形式与一般技术进步受到不同的法则的约束，未来 40 年世界将比过去 40 年更容易上瘾。
The next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things.
未来40年将会给我们带来一些美好的事情。
I don't mean to imply they're all to be avoided.
我并不是说它们都应该被避免。
Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without.
酒精是一种危险的药物，但我宁愿生活在有酒的世界里，也不愿生活在没有酒的世界里。
Most people can coexist with alcohol; but you have to be careful.
大多数人可以与酒精共存；但你必须小心。
More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about.
我们喜欢的事情越多，就意味着我们必须小心的事情也就越多。
Most people won't, unfortunately.
不幸的是，大多数人不会。
Which means that as the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart.
这意味着，随着世界变得越来越让人上瘾，人们过上正常生活的两种感觉将越来越疏远。
One sense of "normal" is statistically normal: what everyone else does.
“正常”的一种感觉是统计上的正常：其他人所做的事情。
The other is the sense we mean when we talk about the normal operating range of a
另一种是当我们谈论正常工作范围时所指的含义。
piece of machinery: what works best.
一台机器：什么效果最好。
These two senses are already quite far apart.
这两种感觉已经相距甚远了。
Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US.
在美国大部分地区，试图过上好生活的人似乎已经显得异常节制了。
That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced.
这种现象只会变得更加明显。
You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
从现在开始，你可能可以把它当作一条经验法则：如果人们不认为你很奇怪，那么你就生活得很糟糕。
Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things.
社会最终会开发出针对令人上瘾的新事物的抗体。
I've seen that happen with cigarettes.
我见过香烟也发生过这种情况。
When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population.
当香烟首次出现时，它们以传染病的方式在以前与世隔绝的人群中传播。
Smoking rapidly became a (statistically) normal thing.
吸烟很快就成为一件（统计上）正常的事情。
There were ashtrays everywhere.
到处都有烟灰缸。
We had ashtrays in our house when I was a kid, even though neither of my parents smoked.
当我还是个孩子的时候，我们家里就有烟灰缸，尽管我的父母都不抽烟。
You had to for guests.
为了客人你必须这样做。
As knowledge spread about the dangers of smoking, customs changed.
随着有关吸烟危害的知识传播，习俗发生了变化。
In the last 20 years, smoking has been transformed from something that seemed totally normal into a rather seedy habit: from something movie stars did in publicity shots to something small huddles of addicts do outside the doors of office buildings.
在过去的 20 年里，吸烟已经从看似完全正常的事情变成了一种相当肮脏的习惯：从电影明星在宣传镜头中吸烟的行为，到一小群瘾君子在办公楼门外吸烟的行为。
A lot of the change was due to legislation, of course, but the legislation couldn't have happened if customs hadn't already changed.
当然，很多变化是由于立法造成的，但如果习俗没有发生变化，立法就不可能发生。
It took a while though—on the order of 100 years.
但这花了一段时间——大约 100 年。
And unless the
并且除非
rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us.
如果社会抗体的进化速度能够与技术进步摆脱新瘾的加速速度相匹配，我们将越来越无法依赖海关来保护我们。
[ 3
[ 3