九阳股份2016年销售额:你们这些永远愚蠢的人类啊！

That life ruled the world for 2 billion years, and then about 1.5 billion years ago, a new kind of life emerged. These were the eukaryotic cells. They were a little bit different kind of cell from bacteria. And actually the kind of cells we are made of. And again, these organisms that were eukaryotes were single-celled, so even 1.5 billion years ago, we still just had single-celled organisms on earth. But it was a new kind of life.

这种生命在统治地球20亿年之后，也就是到大概15亿年前，一种新的生命诞生了。它们叫做真核细胞。它们和细菌有些小小的区别，实际上我们人类就是来源于这些细胞。这些真核组织仍然是单细胞，所以直到15亿年前，地球上也只单细胞组织存在。但是它是一种全新的生命。

It was another 500 million years before we had anything like a multicellular organism, and it was another 500 million years after that before we had anything really very interesting. So, about 500 million years ago, the plants and the animals started to evolve. And I think everybody would agree that this was a major event in the history of the world, because, for the first time, we had complex organisms.

又5亿年，出现了多细胞组织，再5亿年，才出现了真正让人感兴趣的东西。所以，大约在5亿年前，植物和动物开始进化了。我想所有人都会同意这是历史上的重大事件，因为我们头一次拥有了复杂的组织体。

After about 500 million years ago, things like the plants evolved, the fish evolved, lizards and snakes, dinosaurs, birds, and eventually mammals. And then it was really just six or seven million years ago, within the mammals, that the lineage that we now call the hominins arose. And they would be direct descendants of us. And then, within that lineage that arose about six or seven million years ago, it was only about 200,000 years ago that humans finally evolved.

5亿年前，事物纷纷进化，植物，鱼类，蜥蜴和蛇类，恐龙，鸟类，直到哺乳类。直到6,7百万年前，和我们有血缘关系的所谓的原始人出现了。我们应该是他们的后裔。但直到20万年前，在6,7百万年前就出现原始人以后，人类终于开始进化。

And so, this is really just 99.99 percent of the way through the history of this planet, humans finally arose. But in that 0.01 percent of life on earth, we've utterly changed the planet. And the reason is that, with the arrival of humans 200,000 years ago, a new kind of evolution was created. The old genetical evolution that had ruled for 3.8 billion years now had a competitor, and that new kind of evolution was ideas.

至此，我们已经经历了这个星球99.99%的历史，人类终于出现。但是就在那剩下的0.01%的生命存续的历史中，我们彻底的改变了这个星球。这是因为，随着人类在20万年前的降临，一种新的进化出现了。旧有的那种已经统治地球380万年的基因进化现在出现了一个竞争者，那就是思想。

It was a true form of evolution, because now ideas could arise, and they could jump from mind to mind, without genes having to change. So, populations of humans could adapt at the level of ideas. Ideas could accumulate. We call this cumulative cultural adaptation. And so, cultural complexity could emerge and arise orders and orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution.

这是一种真正意义上的进化，因为思想可以产生，并且在个体之间转移，而不需要改变基因。因此，人类可以接受各种思想，思想也可以汇总起来。我们称之为文化适应。也因此，文化复杂性的产生和发展要大大的超过基因的进化。

Now, I think most of us take that utterly for granted, but it has completely rewritten the way life evolves on this planet because, with the arrival of our species, everything changed. Now, a single species, using its idea evolution, that could proceed apace independently of genes, was able to adapt to nearly every environment on earth, and spread around the world where no other species had done that. All other species are limited to places on earth that their genes adapt them to. But we were able to adapt at the level of our cultures to every place on earth.

我想大部分人都会觉得这些是理所应当，但是这其实完全重写了这个星球上生命进化的方式，随着人类的降临，一切都改变了。现在，一个物种，利用它思想的进化，就可以在不依靠基因的情况下飞速运转，适应地球上的一切环境并且遍布整个世界，没有其它物种能够做到这点。所有的其他物种只能生活在他们基因已经适应了的地方。但是人类能够将自己的文化适应于地球上所有地方。

A lot of that sounds familiar to us. But what's hidden in there is this idea of idea evolution. And if it seems easy to us, it shouldn't, because no other species on earth has been capable of doing it. And I'm including in this our recent ancestors.

这些大部分对我们来说的都很熟悉。但是在这背后潜藏的却是思想的进化。这看起来也许很简单，但实际上却不是。因为地球上的其它物种没办法做到，包括我们的远祖。

If we go back in our lineage 2 million years or so, there was a species known as homo erectus. Homo erectus is an upright ape that lived on the African savannah. It could make tools, but they were very limited tools, and those tools, the archaeological record tells us, didn't change for about 1.5 million years. That is, until about the time they went extinct. That is, they made the same tools over and over and over again, without any real changes to them.

如果我们回到2百万年前，有个物种叫做直立猿人。直立猿人是一种站立着的猿类，生活在非洲大草原上。它们可以制造工具，但仅限于一些最简单的工具，而且据考古学证据，这些工具在150万年间，直到这些直立猿人快要灭绝都没有改变。也就是说，它们不断的重复制造那些工具，但没有任何根本的变化。

If we move forward in time a little bit, it's not even clear that our very close cousins that we know are related to us 99.5 or 99.6 percent in the sequences of their genes, the Neanderthals, it's not even clear that they had what we call idea evolution. Sure enough, their tools that they made were more complex than our tools. But the 300,000 or so years that they spent in Europe, their toolkit barely changed. So there's very little evolution going on.

如果再将时间推后，和我们在基因上有99.5%到99.6%相似的穴居人制造着更加复杂的工具，但是却不知道它们是否具有思想进化。在它们在欧陆上生活的30万年间，它们的工具也几乎没有变化，所以进化也非常有限。

So there's something really very special about this new species, humans, that arose and invented this new kind of evolution, based on ideas. And so it's useful for us to ask, what is it about humans that distinguishes them? It must have been a tiny genetic difference between us and the Neanderthals because, as I said, we're so closely related to them genetically, a tiny genetic difference that had a vast cultural potential.

That difference is something that anthropologists and archaeologists call social learning. It's a very difficult concept to define, but when we talk about it, all of us humans know what it means. And it seems to be the case that only humans have the capacity to learn complex new or novel behaviors, simply by watching and imitating others. And there seems to be a second component to it, which is that we seem to be able to get inside the minds of other people who are doing things in front of us, and understand why it is they're doing those things. These two things together, we call social learning.

这种区别被人类学家和考古学家称为“社会习得”。这是一种很难定义的概念，但当我们谈论起它时，所有人都明白它的含义。就是说只有人类有能力通过观察和模仿学习全新的行为，另一个要素则是通过他人的所作所为了解他人的内心，了解他人之所以这样做的原因。这两者的综合就被称为“社会习得”。

Many people respond that, oh, of course the other animals can do social learning, because we know that the chimpanzees can imitate each other, and we see all sorts of learning in animals like dolphins and the other monkeys, and so on. But the key point about social learning is that this minor difference between us and the other species forms an unbridgeable gap between us and them. Because, whereas all of the other animals can pick up the odd behavior by having their attention called to something, only humans seem to be able to select, among a range of alternatives, the best one, and then to build on that alternative, and to adapt it, and to improve upon it. And so, our cultures cumulatively adapt, whereas all other animals seem to do the same thing over and over and over again.

也许有人会这样回应，其它的动物也可以做到“社会习得”，我们知道大猩猩就可以互相模仿，我们也看到其它诸如海豚和猴子在种群内的习得。但核心问题却是，人类与其它物种在社会习得上的细小差别，却造成了天壤之别。因为尽管所有的其它动物都可以因为某些引起它们注意的事物而作出某些举动，但只有人类有能力在一定范围之内选择最佳的一个，以此为基础，适应并且改进这种行动。也正因为如此，我们的文化可以进行累积的适应，而其他动物看起来只能不断的重复做着同样的事情。

Even though other animals can learn, and they can even learn in social situations, only humans seem to be able to put these things together and do real social learning. And that has led to this idea evolution. What's a tiny difference between us genetically has opened up an unbridgeable gap, because only humans have been able to achieve this cumulative cultural adaptation.

就算其他动物可以习得，甚至可以通过不同的社会条件习得，只有人类能够将事物综合起来做到真正的社会习得。由此也导致了思想的进化。咫尺天涯，只有人类才能够做到文化累积适应。

One way to put this in perspective is to say that you can bring a chimpanzee home to your house, and you can teach it to wash dishes, but it will just as happily wash a clean dish as a dirty dish, because it's washing dishes to be rewarded with a banana. Whereas, with humans, we understand why we're washing dishes, and we would never wash a clean one. And that seems to be the difference. It unleashes this cumulative cultural adaptation in us.

具体来说，你可以带一只猩猩回家，教它洗碗，它即会去洗脏碗，也会去洗净碗，因为通过洗碗它能得到香蕉。而人类则懂得为什么要洗碗，我们也不会去洗干净的碗，这就是差别，而这个差别也造成了我们的文化积累性适应。

I'm interested in this because I think this capacity for social learning, which we associate with our intelligence, has actually sculpted us in ways that we would have never anticipated. And I want to talk about two of those ways that I think it has sculpted us. One of the ways has to do with our creativity, and the other has to do with the nature of our intelligence as social animals.

我对此感兴趣是因为这种与我们智能有关的社会习得的能力能够从我们预料不到的方向塑造我们。我想提到其中的两个侧面，创造力以及作为社会动物的智能。

One of the first things to be aware of when talking about social learning is that it plays the same role within our societies, acting on ideas, as natural selection plays within populations of genes. Natural selection is a way of sorting among a range of genetic alternatives, and finding the best one. Social learning is a way of sifting among a range of alternative options or ideas, and choosing the best one of those. And so, we see a direct comparison between social learning driving idea evolution, by selecting the best ideas --we copy people that we think are successful, we copy good ideas, and we try to improve upon them -- and natural selection, driving genetic evolution within societies, or within populations.

当谈起社会习得时它在人类社会中扮演的角色就如同自然选择在人类基因中扮演的角色一样。自然选择（物竞天择）是在一些列基因当中选择最佳的一个。而社会习得就是在一系列的选择和思想之中，选择最佳的一个。也因为如此，我们可以看到在社会习得中，我们会效仿那些我们认为成功的人，我们承袭那些好的思想，并且试图改进，而在自然选择中，基因则不断地进化。

I think this analogy needs to be taken very seriously, because just as natural selection has acted on genetic populations, and sculpted them, we'll see how social learning has acted on human populations and sculpted them.

我想这个类比需要更加仔细严肃的进行，因为自然选择作用在遗传群体中，形塑它们。而社会习得则作用在人类群体中，同样形塑人类。

What do I mean by "sculpted them"? Well, I mean that it's changed the way we are. And here's one reason why. If we think that humans have evolved as social learners, we might be surprised to find out that being social learners has made us less intelligent than we might like to think we are. And here's the reason why.

什么是“形塑”？我的意思是它改变了我们本来的面貌。如果我们认为人类已经进化成为社会习得者，我们也许会因为发现成为社会习得者让我们变得比预想到的更笨而感到吃惊。以下就是原因。

If I'm living in a population of people, and I can observe those people, and see what they're doing, seeing what innovations they're coming up with, I can choose among the best of those ideas, without having to go through the process of innovation myself. So, for example, if I'm trying to make a better spear, I really have no idea how to make that better spear. But if I notice that somebody else in my society has made a very good spear, I can simply copy him without having to understand why.

如果我生活在一个人类的群落，我可以观察他人，看看他们在做什么，看看他们有什么发明创造，我可以在最好的想法中选择，而不用自己去完成整个创新的过程。所以，举例来说，我想要做一个更好的矛，但是我却不知道该怎样做。这时如果我知道某人已经做出一个很好的矛，我就可以轻松的复制他的做法而不一定要理解为什么如此做。

What this means is that social learning may have set up a situation in humans where, over the last 200,000 years or so, we have been selected to be very, very good at copying other people, rather than innovating on our own. We like to think we're a highly inventive, innovative species. But social learning means that most of us can make use of what other people do, and not have to invest the time and energy in innovation ourselves.

这就意味着社会习得在过去的20万年间，也许创造了一个人们更愿意去选择复制那些美好发明，而非自己去发明的环境。我们以为我们是善于发明的物种，但实际上社会习得只是意味着绝大多数人只能效仿他人已经制造的事物，而不是投入精力和时间去发明事物。

Now, why wouldn't we want to do that? Why wouldn't we want to innovate on our own? Well, innovation is difficult. It takes time. It takes energy. Most of the things we try to do, we get wrong. And so, if we can survey, if we can sift among a range of alternatives of people in our population, and choose the best one that's going at any particular moment, we don't have to pay the costs of innovation, the time and energy ourselves. And so, we may have had strong selection in our past to be followers, to be copiers, rather than innovators.

为什么我们不愿意去这么做？为什么我们不愿意去投身发明？这个，发明太难了，还需要时间和精力。绝大多数我们尝试去做的事情都只得到错误的结果。也正因为如此，如果我们能够去调查，去筛选他人的成果，选择当下最好的，我们就不必花费自己的时间和精力去发明。我们也就变得更善于成为过去的追随者，复制者，而不是发明者。

This gives us a whole new slant on what it means to be human, and I think, in many ways, it might fit with some things that we realize are true about ourselves when we really look inside ourselves. We can all think of things that have made a difference in the history of life. The first hand axe, the first spear, the first bow and arrow, and so on. And we can ask ourselves, how many of us have had an idea that would have changed humanity? And I think most of us would say, well, that sets the bar rather high. I haven't had an idea that would change humanity. So let's lower the bar a little bit and say, how many of us have had an idea that maybe just influenced others around us, something that others would want to copy? And I think even then, very few of us can say there have been very many things we've invented that others would want to copy.

这给了我们一个对于人类的全新的看法，而且我想，从各个层面来说，这也许才是更真实的人类。我们可以想到在生命的历史长河中事物的改变，第一只手工斧，第一杆矛，第一把弓与弓箭，等等等等。但是如果我们问我们自己，有多少人曾经想过怎样改变人性？我想大部分人会说，这个，标准实在太高了。连我都不知道怎样能够改变人性。那么让我们降低点标准，有多少人想过仅仅是影响我们身边的人，做些值得让人效仿的事儿？就算如此我估计也只有很少的一部分人能够说我创造了很多能让他人效仿的事。

This says to us that social evolution may have sculpted us not to be innovators and creators as much as to be copiers, because this extremely efficient process that social learning allows us to do, of sifting among a range of alternatives, means that most of us can get by drawing on the inventions of others.

这告诉我们社会进化并没有把我们形塑成为发明者，创造者，而更多的是效仿者。社会习得带来的极度简便实惠的过程允许我们从众多的选择中筛选，意味着绝大多数人都会将他人的发明中直接吸收利用。

Now, why do I talk about this? It sounds like it could be a somewhat dry subject, that maybe most of us are copiers or followers rather than innovators. And what we want to do is imagine that our history over the last 200,000 years has been a history of slowly and slowly and slowly living in larger and larger and larger groups.

Early on in our history, it's thought that most of us lived in bands of maybe five to 25 people, and that bands formed bands of bands that we might call tribes. And maybe tribes were 150 people or so on. And then tribes gave way to chiefdoms that might have been thousands of people. And chiefdoms eventually gave way to nation-states that might have been tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people. And so, our evolutionary history has been one of living in larger and larger and larger social groups.

最早，绝大多数人类生活在拥有5到25名成员的家族中，家族不断汇聚形成拥有150名成员的部落，而部落又汇聚成数千人的酋帮。酋帮最后则汇聚成人数数以千万计的民族国家。我们的进化史就是不断地生活在越来越大的社会群落中。

What I want to suggest is that that evolutionary history will have selected for less and less and less innovation in individuals, because a little bit of innovation goes a long way. If we imagine that there's some small probability that someone is a creator or an innovator, and the rest of us are followers, we can see that one or two people in a band is enough for the rest of us to copy, and so we can get on fine. And, because social learning is so efficient and so rapid, we don't need all to be innovators. We can copy the best innovations, and all of us benefit from those.

我所要说的就是，这种进化的历史只会带来越来越少的发明个体，因为这看起来更有利。如果我们想象一下，成员中有一个创造者或者发明者，其余都是追随者，我们会认为这一两个人对于家族来说完全足够去效仿，我们能够过得不错。并且，因为社会习得非常有效和便捷，我们不需要全都成为发明者。我们只需要效仿那些最好的发明，然后从中获利就可以了。

But now let's move to a slightly larger social group. Do we need more innovators in a larger social group? Well, no. The answer is, we probably don't. We probably don't need as many as we need in a band. Because in a small band, we need a few innovators to get by. We have to have enough new ideas coming along. But in a larger group, a small number of people will do. We don't have to scale it up. We don't have to have 50 innovators where we had five in the band, if we move up to a tribe. We can still get by with those three or four or five innovators, because all of us in that larger social group can take advantage of their innovations.

但是如果我们拥有了一个大一些的社会群落，我们需要更多的发明者么？这个，不。答案也许是我们不需要。我们也许并不需要比在家族中更多的发明者。在一个小家族中，我们需要一些发明者过活。我们必须有足够的新思想产生。但是在一个大一些的群落，一小部分人也就可以如此做到。我们并不需要按比例增加。我们不需要当在家族中有5个发明这时，成为部落则需要50个。只要有3,4或者5个发明者，我们就仍然能够过活，我们所有生活在更大一些的社会群落中的人就能够从他们的发明中获益了。

And here we can see a very prominent role for language. Language is the way we exchange ideas. And our eyes allow us to see innovations and language allows us to exchange ideas. And language can operate in a larger society, just as efficiently as it can operate in a small society. It can jump across that society in an instant.

这里语言的作用就凸现了出来。语言是交流思想的工具。我们的眼神允许我们看到发明我们的语言则允许我们交换思想。不单如此，语言可以在有效地在更大的社会中运转就像在小一些的社会中所做到的一样。它还可以迅速的跨越社会。

You can see where I'm going. As our societies get larger and larger, there's no need, in fact, there's even less of a need for any one of us to be an innovator, whereas there is a great advantage for most of us to be copiers, or followers. And so, a real worry is that our capacity for social learning, which is responsible for all of our cumulative cultural adaptation, all of the things we see around us in our everyday lives, has actually promoted a species that isn't so good at innovation. It allows us to reflect on ourselves a little bit and say, maybe we're not as creative and as imaginative and as innovative as we thought we were, but extraordinarily good at copying and following.

现在你应该明白我在说什么了。当我们的社会变的越来越庞大，我们实际上就不再需要，甚至更不需要我们任何人去成为发明者，因为成为效仿者和追随者看起来更有利。也正因如此，真正的担心是我们社会习得的能力，那种能够对积累性文化适应作出回应的能力，那种能够对我们日常所经历的事物同样做出回应的能力，实际上却让我们更加不善于发明。这让我们可以反思我们自己并且说，也许我们并不如我们想象中般那么富于想象力和创造性，只是非常善于效仿和追随而已。

If we apply this to our everyday lives and we ask ourselves, do we know the answers to the most important questions in our lives? Should you buy a particular house? What mortgage product should you have? Should you buy a particular car? Who should you marry? What sort of job should you take? What kind of activities should you do? What kind of holidays should you take? We don't know the answers to most of those things. And if we really were the deeply intelligent and imaginative and innovative species that we thought we were, we might know the answers to those things.

我们可以在日常的生活中扪心自问，我们知道那些对我们人生来说重要问题的答案吗？你应该买哪个房子？应该选择哪种房贷？选哪种车？娶谁又或嫁给谁？应该有什么样的工作？做什么样的活动？怎样度假？大部分事情的答案我们并不知晓。如果我们真的拥有我们想象中的那种高级智能，并且是充满创造力和想象力的物种，那我们也许应该知道这些事情的答案。

And if we ask ourselves how it is we come across the answers, or acquire the answers to many of those questions, most of us realize that we do what everybody else is doing. This herd instinct, I think, might be an extremely fundamental part of our psychology that was perhaps an unexpected and unintended, you might say, byproduct of our capacity for social learning, that we're very, very good at being followers rather than leaders. A small number of leaders or innovators or creative people is enough for our societies to get by.

如果我们问我们自己我们如何得到以上问题的答案，或者获取其他问题的答案，绝大多数人会意识到我们只做其他人都在做的事情。这种从众心理，我想，也许是心理学中最基础的部分，也也许是社会习得最出乎意料的副产品。我们的社会只需要一小撮领袖，发明家或者有创造力的人就足以过活了。

Now, the reason this might be interesting is that, as the world becomes more and more connected, as the Internet connects us and wires us all up, we can see that the long-term consequences of this is that humanity is moving in a direction where we need fewer and fewer and fewer innovative people, because now an innovation that you have somewhere on one corner of the earth can instantly travel to another corner of the earth, in a way that it would have never been possible to do 10 years ago, 50 years ago, 500 years ago, and so on. And so, we might see that there has been this tendency for our psychology and our humanity to be less and less innovative, at a time when, in fact, we may need to be more and more innovative, if we're going to be able to survive the vast numbers of people on this earth.

这个话题之所以引人注目是在于，当今世界已经随着网络的出现越来越紧密的连接在一起。从长远来看我们只需要越来越少的发明人才，因为当今任何一项在地球任一角落的发明可以迅速的传递到世界的另一端，而这在10年前，50年前，500年前根本无法做到。而结果就是，在一个如果我们想要在这个人越来越多的地球上生存就需要越来越多的创造力的时候，创造力变的越来越枯竭。

That's one consequence of social learning, that it has sculpted us to be very shrewd and intelligent at copying, but perhaps less shrewd at innovation and creativity than we'd like to think. Few of us are as creative as we'd like to think we are. I think that's been one perhaps unexpected consequence of social learning.

这就是社会习得的后果之一，它将我们形塑的在效仿时非常聪明，而在发明和创造时则不如我们想象中的出色。很少人如我们想象般具有创造力。我想这也许就是社会习得出乎预料的后果之一。

Another side of social learning I've been thinking about - it's a bit abstract, but I think it's a fascinating one -goes back again to this analogy between natural selection, acting on genetic variation, and social learning, acting on variation in ideas. And any evolutionary process like that has to have both a sorting mechanism, natural selection, and what you might call a generative mechanism, a mechanism that can create variety.

我也在想社会习得的另一面，也许有些抽象，不过我认为也充满吸引力。回到开头的那个与自然选择的类比。任何进化过程都必须拥有整理的机制，这在自然选择中，我们称为衍生机制，一种创造多样性的机制。

We all know what that mechanism is in genes. We call it mutation, and we know that from parents to offspring, genes can change, genes can mutate. And that creates the variety that natural selection acts on. And one of the most remarkable stories of nature is that natural selection, acting on this mindlessly-generated genetic variation, is able to find the best solution among many, and successively add those solutions, one on top of the other. And through this extraordinarily simple and mindless process, create things of unimaginable complexity. Things like our cells, eyes and brains and hearts, and livers, and so on. Things of unimaginable complexity, that we don't even understand and none of us could design. But they were designed by natural selection.

我们都知道基因的这种机制是什么，我们称之为突变。我们都知道从父母到子女，基因可以改变，可以突变。这种多样性的创造就是自然选择所起到的作用。而最令人震惊的是，自然选择，通过无意识的基因衍生变化，可以在众多的可能中找到最好的一个，并且成功的将此加诸在其他之上。并且通过这种极其简单无意识的过程，创造难以想象的复杂事物，诸如我们的细胞，眼睛，大脑，心脏，还有生命，等等等等。事物难以想象的复杂程度让我们根本无法想的清楚，也没有人能够设计。但是自然选择偏偏做到了。

Now let's take this analogy of a mindless process and take - there's a parallel between social learning driving evolution at the idea level and natural selection driving evolution at the genetic level - and ask what it means for the generative mechanism in our brains.

现在让我们运用这个无意识过程的类比来看一看对于我们大脑来说这种衍生机制意味着什么。

Well, where do ideas come from? For social learning to be a sorting process that has varieties to act on, we have to have a variety of ideas. And where do those new ideas come from?

思想从何而来？对于社会习得的这样一个对多样性进行整理的过程来说，我们首先得有多种多样的思想。那么新思想又从何而来呢？

The idea that I've been thinking about, that I think is worth contemplating about our own minds is what is the generative mechanism? If we do have any creativity at all and we are innovative in some ways, what's the nature of that generative mechanism for creating new ideas?

值得我们深思的是对于我们的思想来说，衍生机制究竟是什么？如果我们果真有那么点创造力并且能够在一定程度上发明创造，衍生机制是怎样创造新思想的？

This is a question that's been asked for decades. What is the nature of the creative process? Where do ideas come from? And let's go back to genetic evolution and remember that, there, the generative mechanism is random mutation.

这是一个被探索了数十年的问题。创造过程的性质是什么？思想从何而来？让我们回到基因进化并且记住，在那里衍生机制是随机突变。

Now, what do we think the generative mechanism is for idea evolution? Do we think it's random mutation of some sort, of ideas? Well, all of us think that it's better than that. All of us think that somehow we can come up with good ideas in our minds. And whereas natural selection has to act on random variation, social learning must be acting on directed variation. We know what direction we're going.

那对于思想进化中的衍生机制呢？我们可以认为思想也是随机突变的吗？这个，所有人都认为应该比这个强。所有人都认为我们可以想出好的主意。随机突变作用于自然选择，有指向的变化则作用于社会习得。我们知道我们想要的方向。

But, we can go back to our earlier discussion of social learning, and ask the question, well, if you were designing a new hand axe, or a new spear, or a new bow and a new arrow, would you really know how to make a spear fly better? Would you really know how to make a bow a better bow? Would you really know how to shape an arrowhead so that it penetrated its prey better? And I think most of us realize that we probably don't know the answers to those questions. And that suggests to us that maybe our own creative process rests on a generative mechanism that isn't very much better than random itself.

但是，如果我们回到早些对社会习得的讨论，并且问一些问题，诸如：当你在设计新的手斧，矛，弓或者箭的时候，你真的知道怎样能够让矛飞得更好吗？你真的知道怎样做出更好的弓吗？你真的知道怎样打磨箭头能够更好地刺入猎物的体内吗？我觉得大部分我们都不知道。这也就告诉我们我们的衍生机制并不比随机选择高明多少。

And I want to go further, and suggest that our mechanism for generating ideas maybe couldn't even be much better than random itself. And this really gives us a different view of ourselves as intelligent organisms. Rather than thinking that we know the answers to everything, could it be the case that the mechanism that our brain uses for coming up with new ideas is a little bit like the mechanism that our genes use for coming up with new genetic variance, which is to randomly mutate ideas that we have, or to randomly mutate genes that we have.

我更想说的是，我们生产思想的机制甚至根本就不比随机选择来得更好。这也更让我们对自己作为智能物种有种不同的认识。与其说我们知道事情的答案，倒不如说我们大脑产生新思想的机制倒有点像我们产生新基因的模式，随机的突变新思想，就像随机突变新基因一样。

Now, it sounds incredible. It sounds insane. It sounds mad. Because we think of ourselves as so intelligent. But when we really ask ourselves about the nature of any evolutionary process, we have to ask ourselves whether it could be any better than random, because in fact, random might be the best strategy.

这听起来不可思议，甚至是疯狂。因为我们认为我们是如此的智能。但是当我们真正问我们自己，在进化的过程中，真的有任何的方式能够好过随机进行吗？而实际上，随机也许是最好的方法。

Genes could never possibly know how to mutate themselves, because they could never anticipate the direction the world was going. No gene knows that we're having global warming at the moment. No gene knew 200,000 years ago that humans were going to evolve culture. Well, the best strategy for any exploratory mechanism, when we don't know the nature of the processes we're exploring, is to throw out random attempts at understanding that field or that space we're trying to explore.

基因永远不知道怎样自我突变，因为它们永远无法预测这个世界将会变成什么样子。没有基因知道现在全球暖化，也没有基因在20万年前知道人类的文化开始进化。那么，当我们不知道我们正在探索的过程的性质时，最好的策略就是在那个我们试图探索的空间或者领域随机的尝试。

And I want to suggest that the creative process inside our brains, which relies on social learning, that creative process itself never could have possibly anticipated where we were going as human beings. It couldn't have anticipated 200,000 years ago that, you know, a mere 200,000 years later, we'd have space shuttles and iPods and microwave ovens.

所以我也认为我们大脑中的依赖于社会习得的创造过程根本不可能预测到人类会变成什么样。它在20万年前不能预测到仅仅20万年后，我们有空间飞船，iPod，以及微波炉。

What I want to suggest is that any process of evolution that relies on exploring an unknown space, such as genes or such as our neurons exploring the unknown space in our brains, and trying to create connections in our brains, and such as our brain's trying to come up with new ideas that explore the space of alternatives that will lead us to what we call creativity in our social world, might be very close to random.

我想说的是，这些依赖于探索未知空间的进化的过程，诸如基因或者神经元在开发我们大脑中的未知区域，试图在脑内创造连接；又或者我们的大脑试图产生新的思想探索未知的可能从而引领我们产生在现实世界中的创造力的过程，大约都非常接近于随机。

We know they're random in the genetic case. We think they're random in the case of neurons exploring connections in our brain. And I want to suggest that our own creative process might be pretty close to random itself. And that our brains might be whirring around at a subconscious level, creating ideas over and over and over again, and part of our subconscious mind is testing those ideas. And the ones that leak into our consciousness might feel like they're well-formed, but they might have sorted through literally a random array of ideas before they got to our consciousness.

我们知道基因的随机突变。我想在神经元探索大脑中的连接时同样是随机的。那么我想说我们的创造性过程也许也非常近似于随机。我们的大脑也许在潜意识层面飞速运转，不断的创造思想，我们潜意识的一部分不断地测试这些思想。有那么一些进入我们意识之中的看起来条理清晰，但实际上也许已经在我们的潜意识中已经经过了随机的整理。

Karl Popper famously said the way we differ from other animals is that our hypotheses die in our stead; rather than going out and actually having to try out things, and maybe dying as a result, we can test out ideas in our minds. But what I want to suggest is that the generative process itself might be pretty close to random.

波普尔曾经说过我们和其他动物的不同是我们可以在思想中模拟死亡，与其真的尝试某些可能致命的事情，我们会在我们的思想中首先检测这些看法。但是我想说的是衍生的过程也许更近似于随机。

Putting these two things together has lots of implications for where we're going as societies. As I say, as our societies get bigger, and rely more and more on the Internet, fewer and fewer of us have to be very good at these creative and imaginative processes. And so, humanity might be moving towards becoming more docile, more oriented towards following, copying others, prone to fads, prone to going down blind alleys, because part of our evolutionary history that we could have never anticipated was leading us towards making use of the small number of other innovations that people come up with, rather than having to produce them ourselves.

将上面这两者结合起来可以看到我们的社会是如何运作的。就像我说的，当我们的社会变得越来越庞大，越来越依赖网络，我们就越来越不需要擅长创造和想象。也因此人性也许会变的越来越驯服，越来越趋于追随，效仿他人。趋向流行，趋向盲从。我们无法预测的进化史引领我们更趋向于利用少部分人的发明创造，而不是自我去进行那些创造。

The interesting thing with Facebook is that, with 500 to 800 million of us connected around the world, it sort of devalues information and devalues knowledge. And this isn't the comment of some reactionary who doesn't like Facebook, but it's rather the comment of someone who realizes that knowledge and new ideas are extraordinarily hard to come by. And as we're more and more connected to each other, there's more and more to copy. We realize the value in copying, and so that's what we do.

Facebook值得注意的地方就在于，全世界有5亿到8亿人通过它相互联系，但它却充斥着无用的信息和知识。这不是那些反对Facebook人的评论，而是那些真正注意到新知识和新想法真的很难由此而来的人的看法。当我们越来越彼此联系，我们就越来越喜欢效仿。我们看到价值的趋同，这就是我们正在做的。

And we seek out that information in cheaper and cheaper ways. We go up on Google, we go up on Facebook, see who's doing what to whom. We go up on Google and find out the answers to things. And what that's telling us is that knowledge and new ideas are cheap. And it's playing into a set of predispositions that we have been selected to have anyway, to be copiers and to be followers. But at no time in history has it been easier to do that than now. And Facebook is encouraging that.

我们不断地通过更廉价的方式获得信息。我们上Google，上Facebook，看到某些人在为其他人做些什么。我们上Google寻找事物的答案。而通过这种方式得到的知识和新思想也是廉价的。而这也就形成了一整套的让我们成为效仿者以及追随者的倾向系统。在历史上还从没有如此便捷可以这样做，但Facebook正在鼓励这种趋势。

And then, as corporations grow … and we can see corporations as sort of microcosms of societies … as corporations grow and acquire the ability to acquire other corporations, a similar thing is happening, is that, rather than corporations wanting to spend the time and the energy to create new ideas, they want to simply acquire other companies, so that they can have their new ideas. And that just tells us again how precious these ideas are, and the lengths to which people will go to acquire those ideas.

然后，随着那些组织的成长，我们可以看到就如同社会一般，组织成长然后吞并其他组织，同样的事情发生了，它们更想直接占有其它公司和被人的想法，而不是花时间和精力来创造新的思想。这只能提供给我们原有的观念，以及我们能够获得哪些观念的时间。

A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we've seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers.

一个微小的观念可以维持很长一段时间，而网络则使之更成为可能。有可能发生的是我们将会被那些庞然大物所驯服，诸如Facebook以及网络。我们被它们驯服是因为我们越来越不需要创新者就可以过活。这在历史上从没出现过，效仿者也许比发明者过的更好成为可能。因为发明实在太过困难。我担心的是我们正在朝那个方向走去，成为越来越温顺的效仿者。

But, these ideas, I think, are received with incredulity, because humans like to think of themselves as highly shrewd and intelligent and innovative people. But I think what we have to realize is that it's even possible that, as I say, the generative mechanisms we have for coming up with new ideas are no better than random.

And a really fascinating idea itself is to consider that even the great people in history whom we associate with great ideas might be no more than we expect by chance. I'll explain that. Einstein was once asked about his intelligence and he said, "I'm no more intelligent than the next guy. I'm just more curious." Now, we can grant Einstein that little indulgence, because we think he was a pretty clever guy.

But let's take him at his word and say, what does curiosity mean? Well, maybe curiosity means trying out all sorts of ideas in your mind. Maybe curiosity is a passion for trying out ideas. Maybe Einstein's ideas were just as random as everybody else's, but he kept persisting at them.

不过让我们再看看他所说的，好奇是什么意思？也许好奇指的是尝试你脑袋中所有的想法。也许好奇是尝试想法的热情。也许爱因斯坦的想法也如同其它人一样是随机产生的，而他只不过不断的尝试他们。

And if we say that everybody has some tiny probability of being the next Einstein, and we look at a billion people, there will be somebody who just by chance is the next Einstein. And so, we might even wonder if the people in our history and in our lives that we say are the great innovators really are more innovative, or are just lucky.

如果我们说所有人都有微弱的可能成为下一个爱因斯坦，然后我们在数十亿人中寻找下一个也许可以成为爱因斯坦的人。我们也许想要知道这个人到底是有多具有创新性还是只是因为幸运。

Now, the evolutionary argument is that our populations have always supported a small number of truly innovative people, and they're somehow different from the rest of us. But it might even be the case that that small number of innovators just got lucky. And this is something that I think very few people will accept. They'll receive it with incredulity. But I like to think of it as what I call social learning and, maybe, the possibility that we are infinitely stupid.

现在，进化的理论告诉我们我们总在支持这一小部分真正具有创新性的人，而这些人的确与其他的人有所不同。但是实际上的情况也许仅仅是因为这一小撮创新者仅仅是因为运气好。我想这个观点也许没什么人能接受的了。人们会质疑这个看法。但是我却想说这就我所说的社会习得，或者更应该叫做永无止境的愚蠢。