这是我们所不知道的一切 - 中英双语

吾生也有涯，而知也无涯。以有涯随无涯，殆已！

--- 庄子

要点总结

这个视频探讨了许多未知的事物，从感官认知到宇宙奥秘，再到人类自身和社会问题，涵盖了哲学、科学、历史、社会学等多个领域。以下是20 个要点总结：

关于感知和认知:

1. 颜色感知的独特性: 我们无法确定每个人对颜色的感知是否一致，因为每个人对世界的体验都是独特的。

2. 感官的局限性: 我们的感官并非完全可靠，它们常常会欺骗我们，导致我们对世界的认知出现偏差。

3. 思想的力量: 思想具有强大的力量，它可以影响我们的身体和行为，例如安慰剂效应和自我肯定的作用。

4. 联觉现象: 部分人群拥有“联觉”能力，即一种感官的刺激会引起另一种感官的体验，这证明了人类感知的多样性和复杂性。

5. 隐性记忆的普遍性: 我们更容易受到与自己相似的人的想法的影响，并更容易无意识地剽窃他们的想法，这被称为“社会性隐性记忆”。

关于宇宙和生命:

1. 宇宙的浩瀚: 宇宙无比浩瀚，人类只是沧海一粟，我们对宇宙的了解极其有限。

2. 生命的定义: 我们难以给“生命”下一个精确的定义，因为生命最显著的特点就是不断变化。

3. 科学的局限性: 科学并非绝对真理，它存在着误差和局限性，我们对世界的认知也在不断更新。

4. 多重宇宙的可能性: 宇宙并非只有一个，可能存在着无数个平行宇宙，每个宇宙拥有不同的物理规律。

5. 外星文明之谜: 我们至今未发现外星文明的踪迹，这被称为“费米悖论”，存在多种解释，例如“大过滤器”理论和“黑暗森林法则”。

6. “大过滤器”的威胁: 文明发展过程中存在着许多潜在的威胁，例如小行星撞击、核战争、失控的人工智能等等，这些威胁被称为“大过滤器”，可能导致文明的毁灭。

关于人类历史和文明:

1. 史前文明的可能性: 我们对史前文明知之甚少，无法排除在地球上存在过其他文明的可能性。

2. 亚历山大图书馆的教训: 知识的传承至关重要，亚历山大图书馆的焚毁警示着我们，忽视知识保护的危害。

3. 科技公司对知识的掌控: 数字时代，科技公司正在掌控我们的知识库，而对于他们如何利用这些知识，却缺乏有效的监管。

关于社会和经济:

1. 金融巨头的隐秘权力: 少数金融巨头掌控着巨额财富和权力，它们对全球经济和政治有着巨大的影响力。

2. ESG 投资的虚伪: 许多标榜支持 ESG 理念的企业，实际上却在进行“漂绿”行为，甚至投资于那些破坏环境和践踏人权的企业。

3. 慈善事业的异化: 慈善事业的本质是帮助他人，但如今却成为富人逃税和谋取私利的工具，加剧了社会不平等。

4. 富豪的政治影响力: 超级富豪们可以通过金钱和慈善来影响政府决策，他们的权力甚至超过了民选官员。

5. 监控技术的滥用: 监控技术以“安全”的名义不断发展，但缺乏有效的监管，可能会被滥用于侵犯公民自由。

6. 对独立思考的压制: 社交媒体等平台通过算法和信息轰炸，让人们沉迷于肤浅的娱乐，削弱了人们的独立思考能力。

这是我们所不知道的一切 - 中英双语全文翻译

This is green, this is red, and this is blue. But how can you tell what you’re seeing as blue is the exact same thing as what I see as blue? We’ve named the colors to give us a way to communicate and reference them, but in reality, there’s no way of knowing what you see is the same as what another person sees. Even with the small steps and the giant leaps we’ve made as a species, there’s still a lot to learn about Earth, life, and the human condition. There’s still everything we don’t know.

眼前的颜色，我们称之为绿，称之为红，称之为蓝。但这仅仅是我们对颜色的命名，方便彼此交流。你眼中的蓝色，和我眼中的蓝色，是否真的是同一种蓝色呢？我们无从得知。人类已经取得了一些进步，但关于地球，生命，以及我们自身，依然存在着许多未知的领域，等待我们去探索。

On the 26th of February 2015, one picture of a dress divided the internet. Are you seeing white and gold? Or are you looking at… Oh, just change white. No, you’re kidding! Well, some saw it as gold and white, others saw it as blue and black, and ever since then, there’s been a number of repetitions of the same experience, experiment, either using the same sense, in this case sight, or even other senses, like hearing, in the famous “Yanny” or “Laurel” debate. Laurel.

2015年2月26日，一张裙子的照片在网络上引起了轩然大波。有人看到白金色，有人看到蓝黑色，两种截然不同的观点引发了激烈的争论。此后，类似的现象也出现在视觉或听觉领域，例如著名的“Yanny”还是“Laurel”的辩论。这表明，对于同一个事物，每个人的感知都可能存在差异。

These experiments remind us that there’s no way for us to tell that you and I sense the same things. What I call red might just be what you call blue, and there might be someone out there who sees human beings with purple teeth, but just refers to it as white.

这些实验告诉我们，我们无法确定每个人对世界的感知是否一致。也许我眼中的红色在你眼中是蓝色，也许有人看到的是紫色牙齿却称之为白色。每个人对世界的体验都是独特的，我们无法真正了解他人的感受。 (请继续使用相同的格式翻译后续

Seventy-one percent of the entire Earth is covered by water. Humans are made up of about 60% water, potatoes 80%, watermelons 93%, and cucumbers 95%. It’s very clear that water is essential for life on Earth, but we really don’t know that much about water, not even about the very oceans we came from. In fact, we’ve only explored 5 to 10% of the Earth’s oceans. The rest… well, who knows what’s down there. It’s even scarier when you realize that fish like the blobfish and the barreleye fish belong to the slim percent of things that we’ve already discovered. The deeper you go, the crazier things seem to get. What’s at the bottom of the ocean? For the most part, we just don’t know.

地球表面 71% 被水覆盖，水是生命之源。人体含水量约为 60%，土豆 80%，西瓜 93%，黄瓜更是高达 95%。然而，我们对水的了解却十分有限，甚至对孕育生命的海洋也知之甚少。事实上，人类探索过的海洋面积仅占 5% 到 10%，剩下的区域隐藏着无数未知。想想那些我们已经发现的奇特生物，如水滴鱼和桶眼鱼，它们仅仅来自我们探索过的区域。海洋深处究竟隐藏着什么？我们不得而知，这不禁让人感到一丝恐惧。

But back on the surface, countries that are bordered by water use something called coastlines to mark their territory. The coast is the land along the sea, and the boundary between the coast and the sea is known as a coastline. So how long is the US coastline? Or any other coastline in the world? The answer is, well again, we don’t really know. Coastlines constantly curve and cut in and out. Even the smallest deviations from a straight line can add distance, and over time, these small distances add up. Some of these features are massive, like bays, while others are minuscule. Now, measuring each and every little crevice isn’t really efficient, so surveyors cut corners and straighten rough edges into easily manageable lines. If you do a quick Google search of the measurement of any coastline, you’ll find a lot of different answers. They all cut corners, just differently.

回到陆地，那些拥有海岸线的国家用它来划分领土。海岸线是陆地与海洋的交界线。那么，美国海岸线究竟有多长？世界上其他国家的海岸线又有多长？事实上，我们并不知道确切的答案。海岸线蜿蜒曲折，难以测量。即使是最微小的弯曲也会增加长度，而这些微小的长度累积起来就会造成巨大的差异。有些海岸线特征明显，例如海湾，而有些则难以察觉。为了提高效率，测量人员通常会简化测量方法，将复杂的海岸线拉直成易于管理的线条。因此，如果你在谷歌上搜索海岸线长度，会得到许多不同的答案，因为每个测量结果都采用了不同的简化方式。

Humanity as a species, though, well, we’ve done really well for ourselves. When in a pinch, we invent something to push us through. We made clothes when the weather was harsh, shelter so we could be safe from wildlife, to rest and recuperate, weapons to hunt for food, money to replace pure bartering. What about fire? Was fire a discovery or an invention? And music. Music has been described by scientists as a relatively recent invention by humans. It’s believed that music helped our ancestors to bring together a close-knit community. But did humans really invent music, or did we just discover that certain sounds sound nice with other sounds? Birds sing, whales sing, even tree frogs have a nice, rich baritone sometimes. So can we really say man invented music? If we did, then what is the true definition of music? I guess we’ll never know.

作为物种，人类的发展历程可谓辉煌。每当遇到困境，我们总能创造出新的工具和方法，推动自身不断前进。我们制造衣服抵御严寒，建造房屋躲避野兽，打造武器狩猎食物，发明货币取代以物易物。然而，有些事物的起源却难以界定，例如火，是发现还是发明？音乐也是如此。科学家认为音乐是人类近期发明的产物，它帮助我们的祖先建立起紧密的社会联系。但真的是人类发明了音乐吗？也许我们只是发现了某些声音组合在一起会更加悦耳。鸟儿歌唱，鲸鱼吟唱，甚至树蛙也会发出低沉的鸣叫，难道它们不是在用自己的方式创造音乐吗？如果说音乐是人类的发明，那么音乐的本质究竟是什么？或许，这将成为一个永恒的谜题。

On the list of man’s greatest inventions has to be tools. In fact, for a really long time, scientists were pretty sure that this is exactly what made us human. We were the only animals who, through the use of such a variety of tools, were able to expand and grow so quickly. Except we aren’t the only ones who use tools. A lot of animals, mainly primates, use tools for all kinds of reasons. A study by Jane Goodall on African chimpanzees would change the definition of man forever. In the research, it was discovered that these chimpanzees use tools to gather food, brush their teeth, and even more. So in response, would this mean we must now redefine man, or redefine tool? They use tools for the exact same things we would do. Do we accept chimpanzees as human? Well, of course not! This begs the question, if using tools doesn’t, then what makes us human?

工具的发明，被视为人类最伟大的成就之一。长久以来，科学家们深信，正是工具的使用让人类区别于其他动物。我们凭借种类繁多的工具，得以快速发展壮大。然而，事实并非如此。许多动物，尤其是灵长类动物，也会出于各种目的使用工具。珍·古道尔对非洲黑猩猩的研究彻底改变了我们对人类的定义。研究发现，黑猩猩会使用工具采集食物、清洁牙齿，甚至完成更复杂的任务。它们使用工具的方式与人类惊人地相似，这是否意味着我们应该重新定义“人类”，或者重新定义“工具”？难道黑猩猩也应该被视为人类吗？显然不是。那么，究竟是什么让我们成为人类？这个问题依然悬而未决。

And in the same research, it was also discovered that chimps had individual personalities and were capable of rational thoughts like emotions and sorrow. They gave pats on the back, hugs, kisses, and even just messed around with each other, just for fun. They developed affectionate bonds with family members and with other members of the community, and some of these bonds lasted for over 50 years. If emotions, rational thought, and affectionate actions do not, then what makes us human?

这项研究还发现，黑猩猩拥有独特的个性，能够进行理性思考，并表现出情感和悲伤等情绪。它们会互相拍背、拥抱、亲吻，甚至只是单纯地嬉戏玩耍。它们与家人和其他成员建立起亲密的情感纽带，有些甚至维持了 50 多年。如果情感、理性思维和亲密行为都不能定义人类，那么究竟是什么让我们成为人类？

In the past, it was thought that humans were the only animals who were self-aware. However, in the past 30 years, extensive research has proven that many other animals are too. In fact, in 2012, a group of neuroscientists created the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness which states that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, also possess these neural substrates. If consciousness, sentient wakefulness, and the ability to feel and experience do not, then what makes us human?

过去，人们认为只有人类拥有自我意识。然而，近 30 年来的大量研究表明，许多其他动物也具备自我意识。2012 年，一群神经科学家发表了《剑桥意识宣言》，指出人类并非唯一拥有产生意识的神经基础的生物。包括所有哺乳动物、鸟类以及许多其他生物在内的非人类动物，也拥有这些神经基础。如果意识、感知能力和感受能力都不能定义人类，那么什么才是人类的本质？

We really just don’t know. All we know is that one day we weren’t, today we are, and one day we will be no more. We don’t know what happened before we existed, and neither do we know what will happen after we die. If a person dies and comes back to life, it’s referred to as a near-death experience because we see death as a finality. But what if it isn’t? What if one of the beliefs of humanity’s many religions is true?

我们真的不知道答案。我们只知道，曾经我们不存在，如今我们存在，而未来终将消逝。我们不知道生命起源之前的世界，也不知道死亡之后的世界。如果一个人死而复生，我们称之为濒死体验，因为我们认为死亡是生命的终点。但如果死亡并非终结呢？如果人类众多宗教信仰中的一种是正确的呢？

Even the Earth itself can be very weird, and sometimes you just see formations that make no sense. Like, who built Stonehenge, and why? The same goes for the pyramids. Some people think the gods of Egypt made the pyramids, others are convinced it was made by human effort, but in reality, we just don’t know.

地球本身也充满了谜团，有些地貌结构令人匪夷所思。例如，是谁建造了巨石阵？建造它的目的又是什么？金字塔也是如此，有人认为是埃及神灵的杰作，有人坚信是人类的智慧结晶，但真相究竟如何，我们无从得知。

The human mind is everything. All of man’s greatest inventions, theories, and discoveries have all come from a human mind. We first conceive of an idea in our mind before we can ever create it in the real world. But perhaps we don’t yet know or understand exactly how powerful the mind can be. The placebo effect gives us a glimpse. I made an entire video about the placebo effect, but basically, doctors appear to give a patient treatment, but in actuality, they don’t. However, this fake treatment registers in the brain, perceives it as real, and kickstarts the healing process. Basically, the mind heals the body because it thinks the body is getting treatment, even if it isn’t.

人类的思想是万物的根源。所有伟大的发明、理论和发现，都源于人类的思想。我们在现实中创造任何事物之前，都会先在脑海中构思出想法。然而，我们可能尚未完全了解思想的力量。安慰剂效应就是一个很好的例子。我曾经做过一个关于安慰剂效应的视频，简单来说，医生给病人一种看似治疗的药物，但实际上没有任何药效。然而，这种虚假的治疗却被大脑感知为真实，并启动了自愈过程。也就是说，思想可以治愈身体，因为它相信身体正在接受治疗，即使事实并非如此。

In research on social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience, it was discovered that self-affirmation helps to maintain a positive self-view and helps to restore your self-confidence and self-worth simply by telling yourself nice things. It is indeed possible for your mind to convince your brain and body that you are those things. And these are just the things we know the mind is capable of. Think about everything we don’t know.

社会、认知和情感神经科学研究发现，自我肯定能够帮助我们维持积极的自我认知，并通过自我鼓励的方式提升自信和自尊。也就是说，你的思想可以改变你的大脑和身体，让你相信自己就是你想成为的人。而这仅仅是思想力量的冰山一角，还有更多未知的领域等待我们探索。

There are a lot of things we know about animals. Dogs are sweet and loving, cats can have an attitude, and the lion is apparently the king of the jungle, even if it lives in a savanna. Not everything makes sense, and we really don’t know as much as we think we do. Going to space is one of man’s greatest achievements. However, what space exploration has clearly shown us is just how small we are in the grand scheme of things. There are at least 2,500 other solar systems that have been discovered, but that number could go up to the tens of billions. We just can’t know for sure. That’s just in our galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies that are out there. It’s so incredibly massive that you just can’t help but think, are we alone in the universe? And if we aren’t, why hasn’t anyone said hi? We have ideas, but as always, we don’t know, and we really can’t prove most things.

我们自以为对动物世界了如指掌，例如狗狗的温顺可爱，猫咪的傲娇个性，以及被誉为“丛林之王”的狮子，尽管它们实际生活在热带草原。然而，世界充满了未知，我们的认知远比想象中有限。探索宇宙是人类最伟大的成就之一，但它也让我们意识到自身在浩瀚宇宙中的渺小。目前已发现至少 2500 个其他星系，而实际数量可能高达数百亿，这还仅仅是我们所在的银河系。而银河系也只是宇宙中数十亿个星系之一。面对如此浩瀚无垠的宇宙，我们不禁会问：人类在宇宙中是孤独的吗？如果不是，为什么我们从未收到来自其他文明的问候？我们有各种各样的猜测，但最终的答案依然未知，大部分假设也无法得到证实。

A very fundamental question for nature is what exactly is the universe made of, and why is there stuff in it to begin with? We know that almost all matter is made up from indivisible atoms. But why? Why do atoms exist, and where do they come from? When we die, what exactly do those atoms become?

关于宇宙，有一个最基本的问题始终困扰着我们：宇宙究竟由什么构成？为什么会有物质存在？我们知道，几乎所有物质都由不可分割的原子构成。但为什么会有原子？它们来自哪里？当我们死去时，构成我们身体的原子又会变成什么？

Everything else. At this point, you’ve listened to me talk for about 7-8 minutes. Time is persistent for everything with mass. Time never stops. We all know that yesterday is in the past, today is the present, and tomorrow is the future. But what exactly is time, and where does it come from? Even more confusing is, did humans discover or invent time?

除此之外，还有无数未知等待我们探索。你已经听了我的讲述大约七八分钟，时间对于任何有质量的物体都是持续存在的，它永不停歇。我们都知道，昨天已经过去，今天正在进行，明天即将到来。但时间究竟是什么？它来自哪里？更令人困惑的是，时间是人类发现的，还是人类发明的？

There are so many things about the world that we just don’t know, and while some are deep questions, like we’ve talked about, others are more, well, trivial. While watching the video of this person yawning, you probably also yawned. So even more importantly, why is yawning contagious? When we’re happy, we laugh. When we’re sad, we cry. But why?

世界充满了未知，有些问题深奥难解，有些则看似微不足道。例如，当你看到别人打哈欠时，自己也会不由自主地打哈欠，这是为什么呢？为什么我们会笑？为什么我们会哭？这些看似简单的行为背后，隐藏着怎样的奥秘？

For a long time, it was believed that laughter was a social tool to show one another that we’re enjoying what’s currently happening. It was an evolutionary tool used to help enhance connectivity in societies. But if that was the case, then laughter should be unique to us humans, or at least primates. But it’s not. Other social animals like dolphins, and even rats, laugh. So why do we laugh?

长久以来，人们认为笑是一种社交工具，用来表达愉悦的心情，增进社会联系。如果这种说法成立，那么笑应该是人类或至少是灵长类动物独有的行为。但事实并非如此，海豚、老鼠等群居动物也会发出类似笑声的声音。那么，我们为什么会笑呢？

Also, why do we cry? It’s as if crying has emotional healing powers. Crying activates our parasympathetic nervous system and helps to return our bodies to a normal, fully functional state. It’s a good thing for your body, so why do we associate it with such sad things? We often cry after something bad has happened, not really while it’s happening. Is it a process that evolved solely for our brains to process emotionally painful things? Then again, we cry for happy reasons as well. So, scratch everything I just said!

我们为什么会哭呢？哭泣似乎具有治愈心灵的力量。它能激活副交感神经系统，帮助身体恢复到正常状态。既然哭泣对身体有益，为什么我们总是将它与悲伤联系在一起呢？我们常常在不好的事情发生之后哭泣，而不是在事情发生的过程中哭泣，难道哭泣是大脑处理痛苦情绪的一种进化机制吗？但我们也会因为喜悦而流泪，所以，之前的说法可能并不准确。

Why are some people right-handed and others are left-handed? Why isn’t everyone ambidextrous? Wouldn’t that have made a lot more sense? We can have theories for many, many things, but they remain just that, theories. In actuality, proving theories as a fact of nature is a lot harder than you’d think. Many scientific theories are superseded with time, considered obsolete, or simply wrong. We used to think that Earth was the center of the universe. Then one day, we realized it wasn’t. Then again, not everyone could accept the fact that their view of the universe was so wrong. I mean, there’s a theory that as recently as World War II, the Germans attempted some advances under the impression that the Earth was hollow.

为什么有些人是右撇子，有些人是左撇子？为什么不是每个人都左右手通用呢？这听起来更合理，不是吗？我们对很多事物都有自己的理论，但它们终究只是理论。想要将理论证实为自然界的真理，远比想象中困难得多。许多科学理论会被时间淘汰，被视为过时或错误。例如，我们曾经认为地球是宇宙的中心，但最终发现事实并非如此。即使面对确凿的证据，也并非所有人都能接受自己认知的错误。据说，二战期间，德国人还曾试图基于“地球是空心的”这一理论进行研究。

So it is very possible that mostly everything we do know about the world right now is wrong. Honestly, it probably is. We simply don’t know everything about everything, and that’s okay. All we can do is keep asking questions and keep learning about the world around us, trying to uncover each of its mysteries one stone at a time. Hopefully answering the most important question of them all: what does existence truly mean?

因此，我们现在所了解的世界，很可能存在着许多错误。事实上，这几乎是必然的。我们不可能对所有事物都了如指掌，但这并不可怕。我们所能做的，就是不断地提出问题，不断地学习和探索，试图解开世界中的每一个谜团。最终，我们或许能够找到那个终极问题的答案：存在的意义究竟是什么？

If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? How do you know? Taking it one step further, if you hear the tree hit the ground but don’t see it, why do you trust your sense of hearing? This might seem like a ridiculous question, but the truth is that despite our total reliance on them, our senses deceive us all the time. You hear this audio and some of us hear “Yanny,” while the others hear “Laurel.” Laurel. You think you hear your friend laughing in the other room, only to come out and see it’s just the TV. A stick that looks bent in the water turns out to be straight when you pull it out. You spend what seems like hours walking through a dark and creepy forest, but then wake up and realize you were just dreaming.

如果一棵树在森林中倒下，周围没有任何人，它会发出声音吗？你怎么知道它发出了声音？再进一步，如果你听到树倒下的声音，却没有亲眼看到，你为何会相信自己的耳朵？这听起来很荒谬，但事实上，我们赖以感知世界的感官，常常会欺骗我们。例如，你听到这个声音，有些人听到的是“Yanny”，而另一些人听到的是“Laurel”。Laurel。你以为你听到朋友在另一个房间里笑，但出来一看，却发现只是电视在发声。一根在水中看起来是弯曲的棍子，当你把它拿出来时，发现它其实是直的。你花了好像几个小时走在一个黑暗而阴森的森林中，但突然醒来发现这只是一场梦。

The world is a strange place, and for all the knowledge we’ve managed to gather as a species, there’s still a lot more that we don’t. Here is everything we don’t know too. I Think, Therefore I Am You’ve likely heard this phrase before, coined by 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes. The simple declaration serves as the foundation of all modern philosophy. It’s a statement of knowledge, an assertion that if I know nothing else, I at least know I exist. While this may not seem like a revolutionary idea at first glance, it’s actually quite significant. Philosophers since the time of Socrates have wondered whether or not it’s possible to know anything, because it always seems that the more questions we ask, the fewer answers we’re left with.

世界充满了奇幻与未知，即使人类已经积累了丰富的知识，但未知的领域依然广阔无垠。 接下来，让我们一起探讨这些未知。 我思故我在 你或许听过这句名言，它出自 17 世纪法国哲学家勒内·笛卡尔。这句简单的宣言，奠定了现代哲学的基础，它宣称，即使我们对世界一无所知，但至少我们知道自己存在。这句话看似平淡无奇，却蕴含着深刻的哲理。自苏格拉底时代起，哲学家们就一直在思考“认知”的可能性，因为我们发现，问题越多，答案反而越少。

Descartes himself was renowned for his astonishing ability to doubt everything, no matter how trivial, no matter how seemingly obvious. He treated all of his ideas with a radical level of skepticism, believing that doing so would eventually lead him to the truth. This skepticism led him to ask a question that science still hasn’t been able to answer: how do I know I’m not dreaming right now? Or even more frightening, how do I know that my mind isn’t being deliberately misled by some evil genius? Think of it like the movie The Matrix. It’s possible that at this very moment, you’re hooked up to a giant machine that is feeding you all the sensory data you’re currently experiencing. You aren’t really watching this video, it’s just the machine making you think you are. While unlikely, technically it is possible, and there’s no way we can disprove it. This is why some people argue that we live in a simulation. Do we or don’t we? We just don’t know.

笛卡尔以其对一切事物的怀疑精神而闻名，无论多么微不足道，多么理所当然，他都抱持着极端的怀疑态度。他相信，只有通过怀疑，才能最终找到真理。这种怀疑主义，引导他提出一个至今困扰着科学界的问题：我们如何确定自己不是身处梦境？或者更可怕的是，我们如何确定自己的思想没有被某个邪恶的天才操控？就像电影《黑客帝国》中所描绘的那样，我们可能只是连接在一台巨大的机器上，所有感官体验都由机器操控，包括你正在观看的这个视频，或许只是机器制造的幻觉。这种可能性虽然很小，但我们无法完全排除，这也导致有些人认为我们生活在一个虚拟的模拟世界中。我们究竟是否身处模拟世界？我们不得而知。

Descartes argues that our inability to rule out this scenario forces us to doubt everything we think we know, a state of radical skepticism in which we can’t trust anything we experience or think. Fortunately, Descartes offers us a way out. Even if we are forced to doubt everything, the one thing we cannot doubt is the fact that we’re doubting. If we can doubt, then we can think, and if we can think, then there must be a mind doing the thinking. So while we may never know whether or not the world around us is an illusion, or if we even have physical bodies, we can rest easy in the knowledge that we have minds, that we exist.

笛卡尔认为，正是由于我们无法排除这种可能性，才必须怀疑一切我们自以为知道的事物，这是一种彻底的怀疑主义，即不相信任何经验和想法。幸运的是，笛卡尔为我们指明了一条出路。即使我们必须怀疑一切，但有一点是无法怀疑的，那就是“怀疑”本身。如果我们能够怀疑，就说明我们能够思考，而思考就意味着必然存在一个正在思考的“我”。因此，即使我们无法确定周围的世界是否真实，甚至无法确定我们是否拥有肉体，但至少我们可以肯定，我们拥有思想，我们存在。

Right? Well, not so much. Later philosophers, from Kant to Heidegger, criticized Descartes’ claim, arguing that the existence of thoughts does not necessarily imply the existence of a thinker. Friedrich Nietzsche even went so far as to say that the idea that there is something called “thinking” is itself an assumption. All we can really say then, is that something is happening. What that thing is, we just don’t know.

真是这样吗？并非完全如此。从康德到海德格尔，后来的哲学家们都对笛卡尔的论断提出了质疑。他们认为，“思想”的存在并不一定意味着“思想者”的存在。尼采甚至更进一步指出，“思考”本身就是一个假设。因此，我们只能说，某些事情正在发生，但究竟是什么事情，我们无从得知。

If you’re rolling your eyes at this point, it’s understandable. To most people, this all sounds like a bunch of over-intellectualized nonsense with no bearing on the actual world. Even if we do live in The Matrix, I still know that 2+2=4, that the sun is going to rise tomorrow, and that the Earth beneath my feet is solid. Well, hold up on that last point. Part of the reason why it’s so difficult to say whether we truly know anything is because we live in a dynamic universe where nothing is ever stable. Everything in existence is always moving and always changing, including the Earth itself. Even as you watch this video, the very face of the planet is evolving.

如果你此刻感到不屑一顾，那也情有可原。对大多数人来说，这些哲学思辨不过是脱离现实的空谈。即使我们真的生活在《黑客帝国》中，我们依然相信 2+2=4，相信太阳明天依旧会升起，相信脚下的土地坚实可靠。等等，关于最后一点，我们可能需要重新思考。我们之所以难以确定自己是否真正了解世界，是因为我们身处一个动态变化的宇宙，万事万物都在不断运动和变化，包括我们脚下的地球。即使在你观看这

Plate tectonic theory is a relative newcomer to science, first pioneered in the 1960s. Our understanding of how the Earth shifts and moves is still fairly limited. We’ve discovered certain things, like the fact that the Earth’s rocky crust is in the form of plates that sit on top of a mantle of liquid magma. As this magma circulates and turns, it pushes the plates around, knocking them into each other and creating earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountains. What this means is that contrary to what we think, the ground beneath our feet isn’t solid. It’s constantly changing. And if it is, how can we say we know it tomorrow? An earthquake could reshape our continents. And so the best we can ever have is a rough approximation of what we think it used to be, not what it actually is.

板块构造理论是 20 世纪 60 年代才提出的新理论，我们对地球运动和变化的理解还很有限。目前已知，地球的岩石地壳由多个板块构成，这些板块漂浮在液态岩浆之上。岩浆的循环和运动推动着板块不断移动，相互碰撞，形成地震、火山和山脉。这意味着，我们脚下的土地并非静止不动，而是在持续变化。既然如此，我们如何能确定明天的世界会是什么样子？一场地震就可能改变大陆的面貌。因此，我们所了解的，只是对过去状态的粗略估计，而非地球的真实面貌。

Maybe I’m just trying to strong-arm a metaphor here, but it seems like whenever we investigate what we think we know, our ideas start to crumble. It’s an interesting quirk of reality, really. The simpler a question is, the harder it can be to answer. It’s for this reason that many people fear death, because we simply don’t know anything about what happens after it. Yet I cannot help but think that the fear that we don’t know anything about death presupposes that we know what life is, because in reality, we don’t know that either.

也许我只是在强行运用比喻，但似乎每当我们试图深入探究自以为了解的事物时，原有的认知就会被颠覆。现实就是如此奇妙，越简单的问题，反而越难以解答。许多人惧怕死亡，因为我们对死后世界一无所知。然而，我们对死亡的恐惧，是否意味着我们真正了解“活着”的意义？事实上，我们对生命的本质也同样知之甚少。

Well, it’s easy for us to tell the difference between living and non-living materials, say like an apple versus a rock. But when we try to pin down a precise definition of life, things get complicated. All life forms, whether a plant or animal, bacteria or fungus, are composed of cells and are able to meet certain basic, fundamental conditions. These include responsiveness, metabolism, energy transformation, growth, and reproduction. For instance, when you smell food, you respond by feeling hungry. Eating a sandwich then starts your metabolic process, which allows you to convert calories into energy. This energy is then used to do things like grow muscles or attract a mate. But this is what life does, not what life is.

区分生物和非生物很简单，例如苹果和石头。但若要给“生命”下一个精确的定义，却并非易事。所有生命形式，无论是植物还是动物，细菌还是真菌，都由细胞构成，并具备一些基本特征，如应激性、新陈代谢、能量转换、生长和繁殖。例如，闻到食物的香味会让你感到饥饿，吃下一个三明治后，新陈代谢开始运作，将卡路里转化为能量。这些能量会被用于肌肉生长或吸引异性。但这只是生命的表现形式，而非生命的本质。

The main problem is that the primary feature of life is that it’s always changing, and definitions, by their nature, are meant to be static. Perhaps if we knew where life came from, we’d have a better sense of what exactly it is. Unfortunately, we don’t know this either. Of course, one day science will figure this stuff out. The secrets to life, the Earth, and everything else will be unlocked. All it takes is more advanced technology, more sophisticated methods, and we’ll be able to know the answers for certain, won’t we?

生命最显著的特点就是不断变化，而定义本身却是静态的，这正是问题的关键所在。也许，如果我们能解开生命的起源之谜，就能更好地理解生命的本质。可惜，我们对此也一无所知。当然，我们相信科学终将揭开这些谜底，关于生命、地球以及宇宙的奥秘都将被破解。只要拥有更先进的技术和更复杂的方法，我们就能找到确定的答案，不是吗？

Here’s the thing, though: science isn’t ever 100% certain. When researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, otherwise known as CERN, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, they did so by stating that their observations had passed the crucial threshold of five sigma certainty. To most people, this term is nothing more than academic jargon, but sigma, in this context, is the statistical unit of measurement used to determine how probable it is that a given result is correct. The higher the value, the more likely a particular finding is true, with five sigma being the gold standard, representing a 1 in 3.5 million chance that a given observation is inaccurate. Though, there’s still a chance.

然而，科学并非绝对真理。2012 年，欧洲核子研究组织（CERN）宣布发现了希格斯玻色子，并声称其观测结果已达到“五个西格玛”的确定性标准。对大多数人来说，“西格玛”只是一个学术术语，它代表着统计学上的置信度，用来衡量结果正确的可能性。数值越高，结果越可靠。“五个西格玛”是科学界的黄金标准，意味着观测结果出错的概率只有 350 万分之一。但即使如此，也依然存在着误差的可能性。

You may think I’m splitting hairs here. After all, 1 in 3.5 million is as good as true, isn’t it? Well, no. A 2011 experiment conducted by CERN reportedly found that a series of nearly massless “ghost particles” called neutrinos had traveled faster than the speed of light. This was, of course, impossible, as the finding violated Einstein’s principle of relativity. Yet the experiment passed with a six sigma confidence, meaning that it had a staggering 1 in 500 million chance of being false. And yet it was. For later experiments all failed to directly replicate the original results, and the first experiment was written up as a fluke.

你可能觉得我在钻牛角尖，毕竟 350 万分之一的错误率几乎可以忽略不计。但事实并非如此。2011 年，CERN 进行了一项实验，结果显示一种名为“中微子”的近乎无质量的“幽灵粒子”的运动速度超过了光速。这显然是不可能的，因为它违反了爱因斯坦的相对论。然而，这项实验的置信度却高达“六个西格玛”，这意味着结果出错的概率只有 5 亿分之一。但最终，这项实验被证明是错误的，后续实验都无法重复最初的结果，最初的实验也被认为是偶然的误差。

Science is very good at explaining what is happening and how it happens, but not really why it’s happening. Pass any scientific revelation through a series of “why” questions, and you’ll always get to a point where we just don’t know. Take gravity, for instance. When an apple falls from a tree and hits Isaac Newton on his head, we know it’s gravity. We can even measure it as 9.8 m/s². But when it comes to explaining why this happens, almost 350 years later, we’re still clueless. Every other physical force in the universe: electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, has a corresponding subatomic particle. Yet we still don’t know what the particle responsible for gravity is.

科学能够很好地解释现象的发生过程，却无法解释现象背后的原因。当你不断追问“为什么”时，最终会触及科学的边界，进入未知的领域。以引力为例，当苹果从树上落下砸到牛顿头上时，我们知道这是引力的作用，甚至可以计算出其加速度为 9.8 米/秒²。然而，对于引力产生的原因，即使在 350 年后的今天，我们依然一无所知。宇宙中其他所有物理力，如电磁力、强核力和弱核力，都有对应的亚原子粒子，但我们至今尚未找到与引力对应的粒子。

Physicists have theorized the existence of something called a graviton that, similar to the Higgs boson, requires massive amounts of energy to detect. In fact, it’s predicted that it would take a mass spectrometer the size of Jupiter, operating at 100% capacity, to identify one. But why is a graviton so hard to find? Why is it that physics behaves like this? And is it possible that it could work differently?

物理学家们推测存在一种名为“引力子”的粒子，它与希格斯玻色子相似，需要巨大的能量才能探测到。据预测，需要一台木星大小的质谱仪满负荷运转才能捕捉到一个引力子。为什么引力子如此难以捕捉？为什么物理规律会如此设定？是否存在其他的物理规律？

The notion of alternate physics is most commonly associated with the multiverse theory, the idea that there isn’t a single universe but an infinite array of different universes. We don’t know if this is true, of course. But if it is, then it’s possible that among these countless variations there exists other types of physics. Maybe in another universe, gravity isn’t so difficult to measure. Maybe instead, electromagnetism is the rogue force confounding their scientists. But it isn’t just other universes that may operate under alternative sets of physical laws. Even our own universe may be subject to alternate forms of physics that we’ve yet to discover.

“替代理论”通常与“多重宇宙”理论联系在一起，该理论认为宇宙并非只有一个，而是存在着无数个平行宇宙。我们目前无法证实这一理论的真伪。但如果它是真的，那么在这些无数的平行宇宙中，可能存在着不同的物理规律。也许在另一个宇宙中，引力很容易测量，而电磁力才是困扰科学家的难题。不仅如此，即使在我们所在的宇宙中，也可能存在着我们尚未发现的其他物理规律。

In 2022, researchers at Columbia University programmed an AI to study video footage of different physical phenomena and then search for the minimal set of variables that described its observations. The footage included things like a pendulum, a lava lamp, and a fireplace. When the AI returned its results, the researchers found that they could identify some of the variables that the artificial intelligence had defined, but not others. The belief is that the AI was applying novel sets of physical laws currently unknown to humans. Unfortunately, since the program can’t communicate what it’s thinking, the exact variables remain a mystery. However, it does raise an interesting question: if we were to meet an alien species, is it possible that they might use alternate laws of physics?

2022年，哥伦比亚大学的研究人员编程了一种人工智能，让它研究不同物理现象的视频，然后寻找描述其观察结果的最小变量集。视频中包括钟摆、熔岩灯和壁炉等场景。当人工智能返回结果时，研究人员发现他们可以识别出一些人工智能定义的变量，但另一些却无法识别。人们认为，这种人工智能可能应用了目前人类尚未掌握的新物理定律。不幸的是，由于程序无法传达其思维过程，具体的变量仍然是个谜。然而，这确实提出了一个有趣的问题：如果我们遇到一个外星种族，他们是否可能使用不同的物理定律？

Ted Chiang’s novella Story of Your Life, the inspiration for the 2016 film Arrival, explores this idea. Fair warning: there’s spoilers ahead. In the story, humans make first contact with aliens after dozens of spaceships suddenly appear in orbit. But rather than wanting to take over the planet, it seems that the extraterrestrial visitors just want to talk. To get the conversation going, both humans and the aliens work together to slowly decipher one another’s language, as well as the respective approaches to physics. It quickly becomes apparent that the scientific and mathematical concepts that are advanced to us, like calculus, are elementary to them. Surprisingly, though, the reverse is also true. The aliens deploy strange, seemingly convoluted methods to describe basic principles like velocity. While both methods provide accurate results, each is highly specific to the species that developed them. Eventually, it’s explained that the aliens don’t perceive our universe as causal. Instead, they witness all events as happening simultaneously. This accounts for their weird set of physics.

科幻作家特德·姜的中篇小说《你一生的故事》（电影《降临》的灵感来源）就探讨了这种可能性。剧透预警：在故事中，数十艘外星飞船突然出现在地球轨道，人类与外星人首次接触。这些外星访客的目的并非征服地球，而是希望与人类交流。为了进行对话，双方努力学习对方的语言，并尝试理解彼此对物理学的认知。很快，人类发现，外星人掌握着远超我们的科学和数学知识，例如微积分对他们来说只是基础知识。令人惊讶的是，反过来也是如此。外星人用复杂而奇特的方法描述速度等基本概念。尽管两种方法都能得到准确的结果，但它们都体现了各自文明的独特思维方式。最终，小说揭示了外星人与人类感知宇宙的方式截然不同。他们并不以因果关系理解世界，而是将所有事件视为同时发生，这也解释了他们奇特的物理学体系。

Chiang’s Story of Your Life raises interesting questions surrounding concepts like time perception, free will, and subjectivity, forcing its readers to wonder if there’s such a thing as objective reality. How do we know that the reality we experience is independent of our own consciousness? This problem has plagued philosophers since antiquity. Plato, in particular, is known for having proposed the idea of the realm of Forms, a non-physical, immaterial plane from which the physical world manifests. Science actually functions on a similar principle, assuming that there is an objective reality that exists beyond our senses which can be observed and measured. Despite our best efforts, though, no one has ever confirmed the existence of an objective reality. In fact, given that everything we know has to come first to us through our senses, and therefore our own subjective perception, it’s impossible to prove an objective reality. We’ll just never know.

《你一生的故事》提出了关于时间感知、自由意志和主观性等概念的深刻问题，引发读者对“客观现实”的思考。我们如何确定自己所体验的现实并非源于自身的意识？自古以来，这个问题就困扰着哲学家们。柏拉图提出了“理念世界”的概念，认为存在一个超越物质世界的非物质领域，物质世界只是理念世界的投影。科学研究也基于类似的假设，即存在一个独立于我们感官之外的客观世界，可以通过观察和测量来认识。然而，尽管我们付出了巨大的努力，却始终无法证实客观现实的存在。事实上，我们所有的知识都来自于感官体验，因此都带有主观色彩，我们无法证明客观现实的存在。这将是一个永恒的谜题。

In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, philosopher David Abram argues that the very idea of an objective reality isn’t representative of the universe we live in. In actuality, Abram says, we exist in the realm of “inner subjectivity,” a term he borrows from the German philosopher Edmund Husserl. This form of reality, rather than being a separate and isolated phenomenon, is created by the collective experience of all its participants. The universe doesn’t exist as an object of our subjective perceptions. Instead, it arises out of our very interaction with it.

哲学家大卫·阿布拉姆在其著作《感官的咒语》中指出，“客观现实”的概念并不能准确描述我们所处的宇宙。他认为，我们存在于“内在主观性”的领域，这个概念借鉴自德国哲学家埃德蒙·胡塞尔。这种现实并非独立存在的现象，而是由所有参与者的集体经验共同创造的。宇宙并非我们主观感知的对象，而是源于我们与之的互动。

If this idea sounds a little out there, consider quantum mechanics, where our mere observations literally affect the state of matter. Just by measuring a photon of light, we’re able to change it from a wave to a particle. So maybe there’s no such thing as objective reality. Maybe all that exists is our collective inner subjective experience. There’s simply no way of knowing.

如果你觉得这个想法过于离奇，不妨思考一下量子力学。在量子力学中，我们的观察行为会直接影响物质的状态。例如，仅仅通过测量一个光子，就能使其从波的形式转变为粒子的形式。因此，或许根本不存在所谓的客观现实，存在的只是我们集体的内在主观体验。我们无法确定真相究竟如何。

Plunging into the depths of uncertainty is never pleasant. That’s why humans came up with reason and science in the first place. We want to feel as though we know things. It gives us a sense of control in an otherwise chaotic, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous universe. For the majority of my life, I was agnostic about most things. If there wasn’t what I deemed to be “rational,” “scientific” proof to support an idea, I just didn’t believe it. But the more I learn, the more I realize how limited my own experience is, and just how much we, as a species, don’t know. Ordinary matter accounts for just 5% of the entire universe. The rest of it, 95% of everything that exists, is a complete and total mystery. We just don’t know.

沉浸在不确定性的深渊中，并非愉快的体验。因此，人类发明了理性与科学，试图寻找确定性的答案，获得对世界的掌控感。在我人生的大部分时间里，我都秉持着不可知论的观点，如果没有“理性”和“科学”的证据，我不会轻易相信任何事物。然而，随着知识的积累，我逐渐意识到自身经验的局限性，以及人类认知的有限性。构成我们世界的普通物质，只占宇宙总量的 5%，其余 95% 都是未知的领域。我们对宇宙的了解，只是沧海一粟。

It seems naive, if not outright arrogant, to close myself off to new ideas just because they don’t fit within my current understanding of how things work. Tomorrow, the Earth could shift, life as we know it could completely change, and everything that science has taught us could turn out to just be a fluke. But rather than meeting this dilemma with fear or outright rejection of scientific principles, we should take it as an opportunity to learn and re-imagine, uncertainty as a means of transforming our perception. To me, this seems like the only rational path forward. Because as it turns out, everything we don’t know is, well, everything.

固守现有的认知，拒绝接受新的想法，这不仅是天真，甚至是傲慢。世界瞬息万变，我们所熟知的一切都可能在明天被颠覆，科学的结论也可能只是暂时的认知。与其恐惧未知，拒绝科学，不如将不确定性视为学习和探索的机会，以此改变我们对世界的认知。在我看来，这才是唯一理性的选择，因为我们所不知道的，才是世界的全部。

Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the President of the United States… When you think of the people controlling the world, these names come to mind. But the truth is, while these people have a significant influence over our lives, four companies secretly control the world. And only a handful of people hold significant power in those companies. These are the people who have the potential to change your life for better or worse without you ever realizing what’s happening.

当谈论世界的主宰者时，你可能会想到苹果公司的蒂姆·库克、谷歌公司的桑达尔·皮查伊、埃隆·马斯克、杰夫·贝佐斯以及美国总统等响当当的名字。但实际上，真正掌控世界的并非这些公众人物，而是隐藏在幕后的四家公司，以及这些公司中的少数掌权者。他们能够在不经意间改变你我的生活，无论好坏。

I made a video talking about how BlackRock controls the world, and, unsurprisingly, they are one of the four companies we’ll discuss today. Altogether, these four companies manage almost $24 trillion worth of assets. They have the most influence over the United States’ monetary policy and operate with very little oversight, which means they’re free to do almost anything they want. And their power doesn’t end in the United States. These companies also own a significant stake in the vast majority of European companies that are listed on the US Stock Exchange. Now, you might think this is an exaggeration. How can four companies control so much wealth? But it is true, and the information is available once you just look for it.

我曾经做过一个视频，揭露贝莱德公司如何掌控世界。不出所料，它正是我们今天要讨论的四家公司之一。这四家公司总共管理着近 24 万亿美元的资产，对美国的货币政策有着巨大的影响力。更令人担忧的是，它们几乎不受任何监管，可以为所欲为。它们的势力范围不仅限于美国，还持有大量在美上市的欧洲公司股份。你可能觉得难以置信，区区四家公司怎能掌控如此庞大的财富？但这却是事实，只要你用心调查，就会发现这些信息并非空穴来风。

From the largest retail stores like Walmart and Home Depot, to transportation companies like GMC and Boeing, pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and media companies like Disney, Viacom, News Corp, NBC, CBS, Time Warner, and AT&T, they influence the banking system as they’re involved in every decision made at the largest financial institutions like Bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup. In the United States, the US Federal Reserve, the country’s central banking institution, has board members who represent these four investment firms. Global financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are influenced heavily by these companies.

从沃尔玛、家得宝等大型零售企业，到通用汽车、波音等运输巨头，再到辉瑞、强生等制药公司，以及迪士尼、维亚康姆、新闻集团、NBC、CBS、时代华纳和 AT&T 等媒体巨头，它们的影响力无处不在。它们深度介入美国银行、摩根大通、高盛、花旗集团等大型金融机构的决策，对整个银行体系施加影响。美联储的董事会成员也代表着这四家投资公司的利益。不仅如此，国际货币基金组织和世界银行等全球金融机构也深受其影响。

So who exactly are these four companies? Before I answer that question, when researching this topic, I was bombarded with a lot of data. The largest of the four companies, BlackRock, was founded in 1988 by Larry Fink. Like the other three firms, BlackRock is a fiduciary, which means that a person has placed trust in them to act in their best financial interest. BlackRock does this primarily through mutual funds, collections of assets that invest in stocks, bonds, and other securities like real estate. BlackRock currently has 70 offices in 30 countries around the globe and holds $10 trillion in assets. The company is currently worth $20 trillion, which is half of the US’s yearly gross domestic product, or GDP. This is the measure of value created by a country by producing goods and services.

那么，这四家公司究竟是哪些呢？在揭晓答案之前，我先介绍一些背景信息。在研究这个话题时，我收集了大量的数据。其中规模最大的公司是贝莱德，由拉里·芬克于 1988 年创立。与其他三家公司一样，贝莱德是一家受托机构，这意味着客户委托他们管理资产，以实现客户的最佳利益。贝莱德主要通过共同基金来运作，即将资金投资于股票、债券、房地产等证券市场。贝莱德目前在全球 30 个国家设有 70 个办事处，管理着 10 万亿美元的资产，公司市值高达 20 万亿美元，相当于美国年度国内生产总值（GDP）的一半。GDP 是衡量一个国家通过生产商品和服务创造的价值总量。

The other three companies are Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity Investments. Vanguard manages $7.6 trillion in assets and is the world’s largest issuer of mutual funds. At the end of 2022, it had 203 US funds and 227 international funds which served its 50 million investors. Vanguard’s founder, John Bogle, created the index investment fund in 1976, now known as the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. You might be wondering the difference between an index and a mutual fund. An index fund is a type of mutual fund that is passively managed as opposed to other mutual funds which are actively managed. So when Bogle invented this index fund, he created a formula to track returns on the market and invest accordingly.

另外三家公司分别是先锋领航、道富银行和富达投资。先锋领航管理着 7.6 万亿美元的资产，是全球最大的共同基金发行机构。截至 2022 年底，它拥有 203 只美国基金和 227 只国际基金，服务于 5000 万投资者。先锋领航的创始人约翰·博格尔于 1976 年创建了指数投资基金，也就是现在的先锋 500 指数基金。你可能会好奇指数基金和共同基金的区别。指数基金是一种被动管理型共同基金，与主动管理型共同基金不同。博格尔发明的指数基金采用了一种公式，用来追踪市场收益并进行相应的投资。

State Street is owned by Vanguard now, but is the second oldest continually operating US Bank. Its predecessor, Union Bank, was founded in 1792. State Street manages $3.9 trillion in investment assets. Along with Vanguard and BlackRock, it is one of the “prominent three” index fund managers that dominate Corporate America.

道富银行虽然现在归先锋领航所有，但却是美国历史第二悠久的持续运营银行，其前身联合银行成立于 1792 年。道富银行管理着 3.9 万亿美元的投资资产，与先锋领航和贝莱德并称为美国企业界三大指数基金管理公司。

Fidelity Investments manages $4.3 trillion in assets. It was founded by Edward Johnson II in 1946 and has remained a family-owned and operated business ever since. Fidelity was the first major American finance firm to market mutual funds to everyone via mail and door.

富达投资公司管理着4.3万亿美元的资产。该公司由爱德华·约翰逊二世于1946年创立，并自那时起一直由家族拥有和经营。富达是首家通过邮件和上门服务向大众推广共同基金的主要美国金融公司。

Hearing that alone, you might be wondering what exactly is wrong with these companies. They all sound like industry pioneers who have done incredible things to stay in business for so long. And while that is entirely right, it’s only half the story. To figure out the other half, let’s start with what these companies tell us they do.

了解到这里，你可能会好奇，这些公司究竟有何问题？它们都是各自领域的先驱，凭借卓越的经营策略屹立至今。然而，这只是故事的一面。要了解事情的全貌，我们先来看看这些公司是如何自我标榜的。

Each of these firms helps everyday people invest their money, and whether you’re a multi-millionaire or an hourly worker looking to create a small investment fund for your family, they’ve helped democratize investing. And often, investing with them can seem like a good idea, especially lately. Because in today’s world, we’re not just worried about making money, we’re concerned about making money and helping move society forward. That’s where ESG investing comes in. ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance, is a type of investing that considers social and environmental factors. So basically, what is the company you’re investing in doing about environmental issues like climate change?

这些公司声称，它们帮助普通人进行投资，无论是百万富翁还是普通工人，都能通过它们创建投资基金，实现投资民主化。尤其是在当今社会，投资不仅关乎个人收益，也关乎社会责任。因此，ESG 投资应运而生。ESG 代表环境、社会和治理，是一种将社会和环境因素纳入考量的投资方式。简单来说，就是评估你所投资的公司在应对气候变化等环境问题上采取了哪些行动。

All four of these firms advertise their commitment to ESG. As you would expect, some people have mocked these firms’ stance on ESG, calling it “woke investing.” In response, companies like BlackRock have responded by saying, “It’s not woke, it’s capitalism.” The way they see it, climate change poses a risk, so investing in companies that further the effects of climate change is also a risk. On the flip side, investing in companies trying to mitigate that risk is good business. To give them all the credit they deserve, they’ve put their money where their mouths are. In 2021, Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street successfully shook up the board of ExxonMobil by installing new members who promised to take on climate change. And BlackRock lent the state of West Virginia, a huge coal producer, a lot of the investment firm due to their pledge to invest in “Net Zero” companies.

这四家公司都标榜自己支持 ESG 理念。然而，一些人对此嗤之以鼻，将其称为“觉醒投资”。对此，贝莱德等公司辩称，这并非“觉醒”，而是“资本主义”。他们认为，气候变化是一种风险，投资于加剧气候变化的公司也是一种风险。而投资于致力于减缓气候变化的公司，才是明智的商业决策。值得肯定的是，他们确实说到做到。2021 年，先锋领航、贝莱德和道富银行成功改组了埃克森美孚的董事会，安插了承诺应对气候变化的新成员。贝莱德还向西弗吉尼亚州（一个煤炭生产大州）提供了巨额贷款，因为该州承诺投资“净零排放”企业。

But when you peel back the curtain, it’s not as wholesome as these firms would like to make it sound, especially when it comes to ESG investing. Every single one of these companies is about as hypocritical as they get. Vanguard, specifically, praises its own ESG investing while also owning $86 billion in coal companies, making it the world’s largest investor in the industry. BlackRock is the top investor in fossil fuels, deforestation, war profiteering, and doing business with human rights violators. Look no further than BlackRock’s deal with the Chinese government. The firm became the first company to have access to China’s vast mutual fund market, followed by Fidelity. This left many skeptics wondering, what did they promise President Xi Jinping with this deal? These two companies will be pouring more and more money into Chinese companies, which are primarily controlled by the Chinese government, a growing adversary of Western democracies.

然而，当你深入了解这些公司的行为时，就会发现事实并非如此美好，尤其是在 ESG 投资方面。它们都极其虚伪。例如，先锋领航一边标榜自己支持 ESG 投资，一边却持有价值 860 亿美元的煤炭公司股份，成为全球最大的煤炭行业投资者。贝莱德则是化石燃料、森林砍伐、战争牟利以及与践踏人权者进行商业往来的最大投资者。看看贝莱德与中国政府的交易就可见一斑。贝莱德成为首家获准进入中国庞大共同基金市场的外国公司，紧随其后的是富达。这不禁让人怀疑，它们究竟向中国政府承诺了什么？这两家公司将源源不断地将资金投入中国企业，而这些企业大多受到中国政府的控制。众所周知，中国政府正日益成为西方民主国家的对手。

Even more controversial are the firms’ investments in Russia. All of these companies had assets invested in Russian companies, and once the war broke out in Ukraine, they all responded, at least publicly, by freezing those investments or pulling out of them altogether. Whether or not those assets will stay out of Russia long-term is questionable. Regardless, years and years of investments from these four companies undoubtedly helped fund Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

更具争议的是这些公司在俄罗斯的投资。俄乌战争爆发前，它们都在俄罗斯企业投入了大量资金。战争爆发后，它们迫于舆论压力，纷纷宣布冻结或撤回在俄投资。但这些资产是否会长期撤离俄罗斯，仍存在疑问。无论如何，这四家公司多年来的投资无疑为普京入侵乌克兰提供了资金支持。

No matter how you slice it, these companies are riddled with conflicts of interest. In Ukraine, BlackRock is one of the leaders trying to advise the country on rebuilding once the conflict is resolved. This might seem benevolent, but not all that glitters is gold. In reality, BlackRock is simply capitalizing on a war that their funds helped finance, so they can make more money.

无论从哪个角度来看，这些公司都充满了利益冲突。例如，贝莱德正积极为乌克兰战后重建提供咨询服务，这看似是善意的举动，但其背后的动机却令人怀疑。贝莱德只是在利用这场由其资金资助的战争，为自己谋取更大的利益。

Closer to home, the Johnson family, which founded and runs Fidelity, also runs a venture capital arm that competes with Fidelity’s investments, which means the family benefits while Fidelity investors get a crappy deal. For example, from 2011 to 2012, F-Prime Capital, the family’s venture capital arm, invested $1 million in Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Incorporated before it went public. This investment prevented Fidelity’s mutual funds from making the same play, because if it did, it would have violated US Securities laws. So the family-owned fund got the better stock value, while the public funds, which invested in the company at a higher rate, kind of got screwed.

以富达投资为例，其创始人约翰逊家族还经营着一家名为 F-Prime Capital 的风险投资公司，与富达投资存在竞争关系。这意味着，家族企业可以通过损害富达投资者的利益来获利。例如，在 2011 年至 2012 年间，F-Prime Capital 在 Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Incorporated 上市前投资了 100 万美元。由于美国证券法的限制，富达投资的共同基金无法进行同样的投资。结果，家族企业获得了更高的股票收益，而以更高价格投资该公司的公众基金则蒙受了损失。

Essentially, these companies, which have immense power and control in our world, tell us a manicured PR statement about what they’re doing. But in reality, the story is much more complicated and [Music] problematic.

总而言之，这些掌控着巨大权力和资源的公司，用精心包装的公关言辞掩盖了其真实面目。然而，现实远比他们所描述的更为复杂，也更令人担忧。

None of their success would have been possible without the various proprietary technologies they developed to help their investing strategies. The prime example is BlackRock’s Aladdin technology, which began the trend of using technology to minimize the risk of investments. It manages $20 trillion in assets and predicts the outcome of every single investment while getting information and personal data on everyone who knowingly or unknowingly gave BlackRock their money.

这些公司之所以能够取得成功，离不开其开发的各种专有技术，这些技术为其投资策略提供了强大的支持。其中最典型的例子就是贝莱德的 Aladdin 系统，它开启了利用技术降低投资风险的先河。该系统管理着 20 万亿美元的资产，能够预测每一笔投资的结果，同时收集所有投资者的信息和个人数据，无论投资者是否知情。

This technology, and others like it, are perfect for investors. They’ve helped to lower the cost of managing investments while improving returns. This type of technology is what makes companies like BlackRock and others grow. It gives them an edge. It allows them to apply their investing strategy company-wide. It’ll enable investors to diversify their portfolios more effectively. Technologies like this democratize investing, allowing anyone, of any level of wealth, to benefit from a sound investment strategy. This is why over 80% of all assets invested over the last decade have gone to these four companies. But at what cost?

Aladdin 系统以及其他类似的技术，对投资者来说无疑是强大的工具。它们能够降低投资管理成本，提高投资回报，这正是贝莱德等公司快速发展的原因。这些技术为它们提供了竞争优势，使其能够在全公司范围内实施统一的投资策略，并帮助投资者更有效地分散投资组合。这类技术也让投资更加大众化，让不同财富水平的人都能从合理的投资策略中获益。因此，在过去十年中，超过 80% 的投资资产流向了这四家公司。然而，这种趋势的背后，隐藏着怎样的代价？

And if these companies continue to revolutionize, advance their technologies, and control more and more investor assets, then what are the risks of ownership concentration? If BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, and State Street continue increasing their influence over the biggest companies across every industry, competition is just going to decrease. They’ll be competing with themselves, which isn’t competing at all. This leads to less consumer choice and higher prices. And we can see this already happening in the airline industry. Over the last 14 years, airfares have increased by as much as 7% because there’s less pressure to compete. BlackRock and Vanguard are among the five largest shareholders of the biggest three operators.

如果这些公司继续发展壮大，不断改进技术，掌控越来越多的投资者资产，那么所有权过度集中将会带来哪些风险？如果贝莱德、先锋领航、富达和道富银行继续扩张，对各行各业的龙头企业施加越来越大的影响力，那么市场竞争将会日益萎缩。它们最终会变成自己与自己竞争，这毫无意义。最终的结果就是消费者选择减少，商品价格上涨。航空业就是 一个典型的例子。过去 14 年，机票价格上涨了 7%，因为竞争压力减小。贝莱德和先锋领航都是三大航空运营商的五大股东之一。

But this isn’t just about the companies, it’s about the people who run and own them, the people who make the decisions, pull the levers, and hold so much power you can’t imagine. Starting with Larry Fink, the founder, chairman, and CEO of BlackRock. He started out at a New York-based investment bank, where he rose to manage the firm’s bond department. Unfortunately, his career there ended when he lost his department $100 million after an incorrect prediction about interest rates. This led him to focus his next venture on investing in risk management, and BlackRock was born. He founded the firm in 1988 and grew it from $5 million to $8 billion in just 5 years, primarily by managing money invested by large institutions like pensions, university endowments, and substantial fortunes invested by the uber-rich. Today, Fink serves on the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum, commanding the attention of business tycoons and political leaders around the globe. And his company is on the cusp of consolidating so much power that it could essentially control the world.

然而，问题不仅仅在于这些公司，更在于掌控这些公司的人，那些制定决策、操纵市场、拥有难以想象权势的人。以贝莱德创始人、董事长兼首席执行官拉里·芬克为例。他最初在一家纽约投资银行工作，并晋升为债券部门主管。然而，由于对利率的错误预测，他导致部门损失了 1 亿美元，最终黯然离职。这次失败的经历促使他将目光转向风险管理，并于 1988 年创立了贝莱德。在短短五年内，他将贝莱德的资产规模从 500 万美元扩大到 80 亿美元，主要依靠管理养老金、大学捐赠基金以及超级富豪的巨额财富。如今，芬克是外交关系委员会和世界经济论坛的成员，备受全球商业巨头和政界领袖的关注。他所领导的贝莱德，正逐渐积累着足以掌控世界的巨大权力。

“Let’s talk about the speed with which we are watching this market deteriorate. The worst day on Wall Street since the crash of 1987.” The 2008 financial crash turned out to be an incredible opportunity for BlackRock. It secured an uncontested contract to control many of the banks that had collapsed. That gave Larry Fink, who was already incredibly wealthy, even more power and a direct line to the American government. The same thing happened in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic, when the government called in BlackRock to protect the Federal Reserve from financial fallout. Periods of economic uncertainty like these were key to BlackRock’s rise to power. And as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. And BlackRock would like you to think that they are being responsible.

“让我们关注一下市场崩盘的速度，这是自 1987 年股灾以来华尔街最黑暗的一天。” 2008 年的金融危机，却为贝莱德带来了绝佳的机会。它获得了独家合同，接管了许多倒闭银行的控制权。这使得原本就富可敌国的拉里·芬克获得了更大的权力，并与美国政府建立了直接联系。2020 年新冠疫情爆发初期，政府再次求助于贝莱德，帮助美联储抵御金融风险。这些经济动荡时期，正是贝莱德崛起的重要契机。俗话说，能力越大，责任越大。贝莱德也试图向世人展现其“负责任”的一面。

In the summer of 2020, while the world was angry about the murder of George Floyd, BlackRock came out with a statement saying that companies had to serve a social purpose, and that they would be giving every company an ESG, or Environmental, Social, and Governance, score. Companies that promised more diversity in hiring and leadership, or offered environmentally friendly policies and technology, received higher scores than companies that didn’t. Although this concept had been around since 2004, BlackRock became the loudest proponent of ESG investing in 2020. And, in all honesty, it worked. Before this statement, ESGs were mentioned in far fewer than 1% of earnings calls. But by May 2021, that number rose to around 20%, and it has since remained the fastest-growing segment in the asset management industry. People are more concerned about the environmental and social impact of companies. And that’s a good thing, right?

2020 年夏天，乔治·弗洛伊德之死引发了全球范围内的抗议浪潮。贝莱德公司借此机会发表声明，宣称企业必须承担社会责任，并将对所有公司进行 ESG 评分。ESG 代表环境、社会和治理，承诺在招聘和领导层方面实现多元化，或推行环保政策和技术的公司，将获得更高的评分。尽管 ESG 理念早在 2004 年就已提出，但贝莱德在 2020 年将其推向了风口浪尖。不得不说，这一策略非常成功。在此之前，只有不到 1% 的企业盈利电话会议会提及 ESG，而到 2021 年 5 月，这一比例已上升至 20% 左右，ESG 也成为资产管理行业增长最快的领域。人们越来越关注企业的环境和社会影响，这难道不是一件好事吗？

Socially responsible companies get the upper hand. In an ideal world, yes. But we all know that the world we live in is far from ideal. While there’s been some positive improvement, the main result of BlackRock’s ESG statement has been a massive surge in companies participating in practices like greenwashing: pretending they’re more sustainable, diverse, or responsible than they actually are. It’s also exposed the hypocrisy of BlackRock itself. Because while it claims to champion ESG investing, the company remains the largest investor in fossil fuels and war profiteering, and maintains a pretty friendly relationship with human rights violators. And it’s not just BlackRock. The second-largest investment firm in the world, Vanguard, is guilty of the same technique: promoting ESG investing on the one hand, but on the other, unwilling to stop investing in oil and gas companies or pull out of companies with questionable human rights practices.

在理想的世界中，承担社会责任的企业会占据优势。然而，现实世界远非理想。贝莱德的 ESG 声明虽然带来了一些积极的影响，但也导致大量公司开始进行“漂绿”行为，即通过虚假宣传，将自己包装成比实际情况更环保、更多元化、更负责任的企业。这也暴露了贝莱德自身的虚伪。它一边标榜自己支持 ESG 投资，一边却依然是化石燃料和战争牟利的最大投资者，并且与践踏人权者保持着密切的合作关系。不仅是贝莱德，全球第二大投资公司先锋领航也采用了同样的策略：一方面推广 ESG 投资，另一方面却拒绝停止投资石油和天然气公司，也不愿撤出那些人权记录存疑的企业。

We see this time and time again from BlackRock. They do something that seems like they’re moving in the right direction, in the eyes of the public. But behind the scenes, they’re unwilling to tamper with their investments, even if it’s for the greater good of society. Take climate change, for instance. BlackRock says that “climate risk is investment risk,” meaning that investing in companies that aren’t creating policies to help address climate change is a risky move. In 2021, BlackRock actually did do something about this by helping shake up the board of ExxonMobil and installing new members who promised to take action on climate change. Previously, the oil and gas behemoth was responsible for 2% of the world’s emissions. Now there are new, self-imposed mandates to help reduce that over time. This is a great move by the company, no doubt. But the fact that it’s still the world’s single biggest investor in fossil fuels makes this feel more like virtue signaling than actually trying to make meaningful change.

我们一次又一次地见证着贝莱德的虚伪。它们在公众面前做出一些看似积极的举动，但在私底下却拒绝改变其投资策略，即使这些策略对社会有害。以气候变化为例，贝莱德声称“气候风险就是投资风险”，这意味着投资于那些不采取措施应对气候变化的公司是有风险的。2021 年，贝莱德确实采取了一些行动，帮助改组了埃克森美孚的董事会，安插了承诺应对气候变化的新成员。此前，这家石油和天然气巨头占全球碳排放量的 2%，如今他们制定了新的目标，承诺逐步减少碳排放。这无疑是一个积极的举措，但考虑到贝莱德依然是全球最大的化石燃料投资者，这更像是一种作秀，而非真正致力于改变。

And the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. As mass shootings continue to end lives in the US, BlackRock has spoken out against gun violence and said that gun manufacturers should do more to protect the lives of the American people. But who’s the largest investor in gun manufacturers? You guessed it: BlackRock. The investment firm holds a 16% stake in Sturm Ruger, 15% in Vista Outdoor, and significant percentages of other manufacturers just like them. BlackRock says it talks to these companies about improving safety, but so far, it’s unclear whether or not there’s actually been any policy change.

贝莱德的虚伪远不止于此。美国枪击案频发，造成大量人员伤亡。贝莱德公开谴责枪支暴力，并呼吁枪支制造商采取更多措施保护民众安全。然而，贝莱德本身却是枪支制造商的最大投资者。它持有 Sturm Ruger 16% 的股份，Vista Outdoor 15% 的股份，以及其他多家枪支制造商的大量股份。贝莱德声称正在与这些公司商讨如何提高枪支安全性，但目前尚不清楚是否取得任何实质性进展。

Outside of America, BlackRock’s US Aerospace and Defense fund has billions of dollars invested in major weapons contractors worldwide, like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. They’re supporting these companies that then get huge Pentagon contracts and use taxpayer money to engage in violence and war around the globe. Often, these weapons are supplied to foreign governments in the name of “peace,” like Saudi Arabia, which received weapons from the US government and used them to indiscriminately attack civilians in Yemen during years of civil war.

除了美国本土，贝莱德的美国航空航天和国防基金还向全球主要武器制造商，如洛克希德·马丁、雷神和通用动力，投入了数十亿美元。这些公司获得了五角大楼的巨额合同，利用纳税人的钱在世界各地制造暴力和战争。而贝莱德正是这些公司的幕后金主。这些武器通常以“维护和平”的名义提供给外国政府，例如沙特阿拉伯。沙特政府利用从美国购买的武器，在也门内战期间 indiscriminately 地攻击平民。

Funding this spread of war, and an increase in nuclear weapons, shows that BlackRock constantly skirts its own commitment to human rights. So does its engagement with authoritarian governments. BlackRock is officially the first global asset manager to have access to China’s mutual fund, leaving critics wondering: what did Fink promise Chinese president Xi Jinping to allow him access to the Chinese Communist Party’s funds? To be fair, BlackRock isn’t the only investment company out there looking to do business with China. But because of its widespread power, it’s been the most successful in gaining a foothold in the controversial territory, which is surprising, especially for a US company.

贝莱德为战争和核武器扩散提供资金支持，这表明它对人权承诺的虚伪。它与专制政府的合作也暴露了这一点。贝莱德是首家获准进入中国共同基金市场的全球资产管理公司，这不禁让人质疑：芬克究竟向中国领导人承诺了什么，才换取了进入中国市场的特权？当然，贝莱德并非唯一一家试图与中国合作的投资公司，但凭借其强大的影响力，它成功地在中国这片充满争议的市场站稳了脚跟，这对一家美国公司来说尤为令人惊讶。

This power also made it a major player in the war in Ukraine. As we saw in China, despite its emphasis on ESG investing, BlackRock has a tendency to overlook human rights in favor of monetary gain. It’s been investing in Russia’s most prominent companies for years. The British pensions that BlackRock controls alone have contributed $630 billion to Russia. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, a precursor to what would become the more-now-than-a-year-long war in Ukraine, BlackRock reconsidered some of its investments in Russia. But just one year later, it was back to being among the top shareholders in the country’s biggest corporations. Even when it became clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning an invasion last year, BlackRock didn’t budge. And like most other Western firms, it did eventually pull assets out of Russia once the war started. But think about all the money it flooded into Russia over the years, money that the authoritarian government controlled and used in its expansion mission that led to this deadly war.

贝莱德的强大影响力，也使其成为俄乌战争中的重要角色。正如它在中国的所作所为，尽管贝莱德标榜自己支持 ESG 投资，但实际上却为了利益而忽视人权。多年来，贝莱德一直在投资俄罗斯的龙头企业，仅其控制的英国养老金就向俄罗斯注入了 6300 亿美元的资金。2014 年，俄罗斯吞并克里米亚，预示着俄乌战争的爆发。贝莱德曾一度重新考虑其在俄罗斯的投资，但仅仅一年后，它就重返俄罗斯，成为俄罗斯大型企业的顶级股东之一。即使在去年，普京入侵乌克兰的意图已昭然若揭，贝莱德依然没有撤资。与其他西方公司一样，贝莱德最终在战争爆发后撤出了在俄资产。然而，想想多年来贝莱德投入俄罗斯的巨额资金，这些资金被俄罗斯政府用于扩张势力，最终导致了这场致命战争的爆发。

All of this begs the question: how did one company gain this much global power and influence? Well, it started with technology. BlackRock’s business is built on ETFs, or Exchange Traded Funds. An ETF contains diversified investments to reduce an investor’s risk. Rather than buying stock in a single company, you’re investing in a fund that buys stocks, commodities, and other securities. This practice proved to be very lucrative for BlackRock and its investors thanks to a portfolio management software created in 1998 called Aladdin. Aladdin predicts the possible outcome of every investment and collects information and personal data on everyone who has ever, knowingly or unknowingly, given BlackRock money. This allows the software to predict how likely it is that a specific investment will fail.

这一切不禁让人疑问：贝莱德是如何获得如此巨大的全球影响力的？答案在于科技。贝莱德的核心业务是交易所交易基金（ETF）。ETF 通过多元化投资来降低投资者的风险。投资者购买的不是单一公司的股票，而是一个包含股票、商品和其他证券的基金。贝莱德之所以能够获得巨额利润，得益于其在 1998 年开发的投资组合管理软件 Aladdin。Aladdin 能够预测每一笔投资的潜在结果，并收集所有投资者的信息和个人数据，无论投资者是否知情。通过分析这些数据，Aladdin 能够预测投资失败的可能性。

Eventually, this technology put Fink and BlackRock on top, making the company the go-to firm for ETF investing, which keeps getting more and more popular. Global ETF assets could explode to $25 trillion by 2025, meaning trillions more for BlackRock. But we don’t need to wait until 2025 to see the effects of the power BlackRock has right now. BlackRock oversees assets worth 10% of the entire world economy. Companies like Fox, Comcast, and Disney have to consult with BlackRock before they make major moves since it has such a large share of their ownership. BlackRock and other large firms like Vanguard are the biggest investors in global giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Aladdin 系统最终将芬克和贝莱德推向了行业顶峰，使贝莱德成为 ETF 投资领域的领头羊，而 ETF 投资也日益普及。预计到 2025 年，全球 ETF 资产规模将达到 25 万亿美元，这意味着贝莱德将获得数万亿美元的收益。但我们无需等到 2025 年，就能看到贝莱德的强大影响力。目前，贝莱德管理的资产总额相当于全球经济总量的 10%。福克斯、康卡斯特、迪士尼等公司在做出重大决策之前，都必须咨询贝莱德的意见，因为贝莱德持有这些公司的大量股份。贝莱德和先锋领航等大型投资公司，也是谷歌、脸书、亚马逊等全球巨头的最大投资者。

This level of ownership creates an anti-competitive environment. You feel this in the prices of airline tickets. BlackRock and Vanguard are among the five largest shareholders of the three biggest airline operators, which means that there’s very little incentive to lower prices in order to compete with each other. This level of ownership consolidation reduces consumer choice and raises prices. And it also means that eventually, a handful of powerful people at these investment firms could wield more power than the executives at the companies they own shares in.

这种高度集中的所有权结构，导致市场竞争环境日益恶化。机票价格就是一个明显的例子。贝莱德和先锋领航都是三大航空运营商的五大股东之一，因此它们缺乏降低价格进行竞争的动力。这种所有权过度集中，导致消费者选择减少，商品价格上涨。更可怕的是，这些投资公司中的少数掌权者，最终可能会比它们所投资企业的管理层拥有更大的权力。

Even Jack Bogle, who founded Vanguard, says that this kind of ownership concentration is bad. “Too much money in the hands of too few will not work out well for the global economy.” There are solutions that governments could put in place to stop these companies from gathering too much influence. Things like not allowing funds and ETFs to vote as shareholders in companies, or creating ownership caps that would dictate how much of a company can be owned by a single entity. Laws can be passed limiting how much influence an investment firm can have in the companies they are invested in, even if that influence is intended to be benevolent, like with the ESG.

就连先锋领航的创始人杰克·博格尔也承认，这种所有权过度集中是有害的。“太多的财富集中在少数人手中，对全球经济来说并非好事。”政府可以采取措施，阻止这些公司积累过多的影响力，例如禁止基金和 ETF 以股东身份投票，或者设置所有权上限，限制单个实体持有的公司股份比例。还可以立法限制投资公司对其投资企业的控制力，即使这种控制力表面上是为了推动 ESG 理念。

But how soon could any of this happen? Because BlackRock and Vanguard are less than a decade away from managing $20 trillion in assets. That would upend the asset management industry and intensify the already staggering ownership consolidation of the world’s largest companies, sending prices through the roof. One of the biggest problems with the system of business is that the more money BlackRock manages, the lower its fees for investors. So we end up in this cycle where the best way to invest our money today creates a potentially catastrophic environment for our money and our society tomorrow.

这些风险会在何时爆发？贝莱德和先锋领航距离管理 20 万亿美元的资产只有不到十年的时间。届时，资产管理行业将发生巨变，全球大型企业的股权将更加集中，物价飞涨将不可避免。现行商业体系的最大问题之一在于，贝莱德管理的资金越多，向投资者收取的费用就越低。这形成了一个恶性循环：今天看似最优的投资方式，却可能为未来的经济和社会埋下灾难性的隐患。

Unfortunately, most people don’t have the luxury of looking that far ahead. What looks good in the short term is all that matters. And that is how BlackRock thrives. It hopes you will overlook its hypocrisy around the environment, diversity, and human rights, because it puts out statements about being a responsible company. Its future hinges on its investors not caring about these things. The problem is that many of its investors don’t even know they’re investors. They’re simply part of a pension fund or an endowment that BlackRock manages. There are smaller funds that do support ESG investing without conflicts of interest. And there are options, like managing our own shares, that help us avoid the moral pitfalls of large companies like BlackRock. But much like how most of us couldn’t live without Amazon’s next-day delivery for our last-minute essentials, using these large, flawed companies is just easier.

遗憾的是，大多数人缺乏长远的眼光，只关注眼前的利益。这正是贝莱德的生存之道。它希望投资者忽视其在环境、多元化和人权方面的虚伪，因为它对外宣称自己是一家负责任的企业。它的未来取决于投资者对这些问题的漠视。更糟糕的是，许多投资者甚至不知道自己是贝莱德的客户，他们的资金只是被纳入了贝莱德管理的养老基金或捐赠基金。当然，也有一些小型基金真正践行 ESG 理念，并且不存在利益冲突。我们也可以选择自己管理投资，避免落入贝莱德等大型公司设置的道德陷阱。但就像我们大多数人已经离不开亚马逊的次日达服务一样，选择这些存在缺陷的大公司似乎更加便捷。

Over the past decade, the public has become more and more critical of what massive companies do and say. As that magnifying glass emerged, BlackRock made sure that its messaging about making the world a better place was heard and publicized. BlackRock’s hypocrisy won’t end. Its public image versus private actions will most likely always conflict with one another. But as consumers and investors, it’s our responsibility to know what’s happening. Taking them at their word is the easier option. But that’s exactly what BlackRock is betting you’ll do. That’s how they’ve gotten this far. This is the same ignorance that allowed banks and governments to drown us in debt. Click the video on your screen right now to find out more.

在过去十年里，公众对大型企业的行为和言论越来越持批判态度。贝莱德意识到这一点后，便大肆宣扬其“改善世界”的理念，试图塑造良好的公众形象。然而，贝莱德的虚伪本质不会改变，其公开宣传与实际行动之间的矛盾将长期存在。作为消费者和投资者，我们有责任了解真相，而不是轻信他们的谎言。贝莱德正是利用了公众的轻信和无知，才发展到今天的地步。这种无知，也正是导致我们深陷债务泥潭的根源。点击屏幕上的视频，了解更多信息。

Lift Off From a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe. On December 25th, 2021, NASA launched the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope: the James Webb Space Telescope. Hubble has provided, and continues to provide us with, some of the most magical pictures of our universe. But the JWST is projected to be 100 times more powerful than Hubble. Built over 30 years, the JWST is designed to capture more light and detail than Hubble ever could. This will let astronomers gather more information and allow them to dig deeper into the history of the universe than ever before.

发射升空 从热带雨林到时间的尽头，詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜踏上了追溯宇宙起源的旅程。2021 年 12 月 25 日，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）发射了这台哈勃太空望远镜的继任者。哈勃望远镜为我们呈现了宇宙的壮丽景象，而詹姆斯·韦伯望远镜的观测能力将比哈勃强大 100 倍。这台耗时 30 多年建造的望远镜，能够捕捉到更多光线和细节，帮助天文学家收集更多信息，更深入地探索宇宙的历史。

About 6 months after its launch, the JWST delivered the most detailed image of the universe ever taken, known as Webb’s First Deep Field. The image isn’t just star-studded, it’s galaxy-studded. In this image, you see galaxies that span an enormous distance and maybe an even greater duration of time. The distances we’re dealing with here are so large that it would take millions, maybe billions of years to travel to them, even at the speed of light. When we look at these images, we’re looking into the past. This pale red dot, for example, is a galaxy that appeared 13.1 billion years ago. We know this because that’s how long it has taken the light from it to reach us. But for all of its size, do you know how much of the night sky that everything in this entire image would cover? Just about the width of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

发射 6 个月后，詹姆斯·韦伯望远镜传回了迄今为止最清晰的宇宙图像，被称为“韦伯的第一个深场”。这张照片中充满了星系，它们跨越了遥远的距离和漫长的时间。我们所看到的，是数百万年甚至数十亿年前的景象，因为光线需要如此漫长的时间才能到达地球。例如，照片中的一个暗红色小点，是一个 131 亿年前的星系。令人难以置信的是，这张照片所覆盖的天空区域，仅相当于一粒沙子在手臂长度的宽度。

There are hundreds of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe, and some scientists even put that number in the trillions. These galaxies, in turn, have hundreds of billions of star systems, much like our own. And these star systems have planets orbiting around them. What are the chances that there wouldn’t be another planet with life on it in some faraway galaxy? What are the chances that in this incredible vastness of space, we’re all alone?

在可观测的宇宙中，存在着数千亿甚至数万亿个星系。每个星系又包含着数千亿个恒星系统，就像我们所在的太阳系一样。每个恒星系统中，都有行星围绕恒星运行。在如此广阔的宇宙空间中，难道不存在其他拥有生命的星球吗？难道人类真的是宇宙中唯一的智慧生命吗？

You see, no matter how difficult it is for life to exist, and no matter how rare it is, the universe is so big that there should be millions, if not billions, of planets able to support life. You can define whatever requirements you want for life: temperature, distance from a star, number of moons, presence of water, number of asteroid impacts, and so on. Purely by chance, there should be many planets with life on them. And surely, some of that life would be intelligent enough to reach out to us, right? It’s not like the laws of physics, chemistry, or biology are exclusive to Earth. They’re not. But if there is life on other planets, if there’s nothing special about Earth, where’s everybody else? Where are all the aliens?

你看，无论生命诞生的条件多么苛刻，无论生命多么稀有，宇宙的广阔无垠都足以容纳数百万甚至数十亿个适宜生命存在的星球。你可以设定任何生命存在的条件：温度、与恒星的距离、卫星数量、水的存在、小行星撞击频率等等。仅仅依靠概率，就应该存在许多拥有生命的星球。其中一些生命，必然已经进化出足够的智慧，能够与我们联系，不是吗？毕竟，物理、化学、生物的规律并非地球独有。但如果其他星球上存在生命，如果地球并非独一无二，那么，外星人在哪里？为什么我们从未发现他们的踪迹？

Enrico Fermi asked this question in a lunchtime conversation with his colleagues in 1950. Fermi was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist considering the existence of spacefaring civilizations. Truth be told, humans haven’t been around for that long. And if, in our short existence on this planet, we’ve considered branching out to Mars or some other world, it’s reasonable that another civilization might have thought the same thing. If a civilization has been around long enough, and it’s sufficiently technologically advanced, it should try to branch out to other planets in search of resources. At the very least, it should try to reach out to them to communicate. That hypothesis, though, stands in stark contrast to reality, which has given us no evidence for life other than our own on this planet. The Great Silence, as it’s called, persists today. The mismatch between our intuition that the universe should be teeming with life, and its apparent emptiness, is known as the Fermi Paradox.

1950 年，诺贝尔奖得主、物理学家恩里科·费米在与同事的午餐闲谈中提出了这个问题。他当时正在思考星际文明存在的可能性。人类诞生至今的时间并不长，但我们已经开始探索火星和其他星球。因此，其他文明也可能产生同样的想法。如果一个文明发展的时间足够长，技术足够先进，那么他们应该会尝试探索其他星球，寻找资源，或者至少尝试与其他文明进行交流。然而，现实却与我们的推测相悖，迄今为止，我们没有找到任何地外生命存在的证据。这种宇宙的“大沉默”现象，与我们对宇宙充满生命的直觉认知形成了鲜明的对比，这也被称为“费米悖论”。

So where are the aliens? “Just this morning, jet fighters raced aloft over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio, to intercept a reported saucer. Returning pilots swore that it was a light that could not have been a reflection, and that it evaded them at a very high rate of speed.” Well, even though we’ve always been fascinated with aliens, we haven’t officially been looking for them for very long. SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is the most famous organization actively looking out for alien life in the universe, and it only formally began in the late 1950s. Some of its significant efforts include sending radio signals to outer space and listening for ones that may be sent our way. Of course, this only covers intentional signals. SETI is one of the first organizations to intentionally send radio waves. But our technologies have been emitting radio waves through space-time ever since they were invented. This includes everything from mobile phones, televisions, FM/AM radios, and even the earliest radio transmissions in the late 1800s. For all we know, our alien counterparts are laughing over Charlie Chaplin movies right now.

那么，外星人在哪里？ “就在今天早上，喷气式战斗机在俄亥俄州代顿市的赖特-帕特森空军基地紧急升空，拦截一个疑似飞碟的不明飞行物。返航的飞行员坚称，那是一道无法解释的光，它以极快的速度躲避了追击。” 尽管人类一直对外星人充满好奇，但我们真正开始寻找他们的时间并不长。SETI（地外文明搜寻计划）是目前最著名的地外生命搜寻组织，它成立于 20 世纪 50 年代后期。SETI 的主要工作是向外太空发射无线电信号，并监听可能来自外星文明的信号。当然，这只是针对有意发出的信号。SETI 是最早主动向外太空发射无线电波的组织之一。但事实上，自从无线电技术发明以来，我们就一直在向宇宙空间发射无线电波，包括手机、电视、收音机，甚至 19 世纪后期的早期无线电传输。也许，此时此刻，外星文明正在欣赏着我们发射的查理·卓别林的电影，并发出阵阵笑声。

But if you think about it, our radio signals may not have even reached potential intelligent life yet. As we mentioned at the start of the video, the distances we’re dealing with in space are, pretty literally, out of this world. Even if we consider the oldest transmissions, from over 100 years ago, when radio waves were first sent out, they would have only traveled a tiny portion of space. If, today, at this very moment, our earliest signals were to reach our so-called galactic neighbors, and they were so intelligent and capable that they recognized our existence and decided to reach out immediately, it would take another 100 years for the reply to reach Earth. Barring a breakthrough in physics that allows them to break the speed of light, before we ever know if our earliest attempts to reach out were successful, most of us would be faded memories.

但仔细想想，我们的无线电信号也许尚未抵达潜在的智慧生命。正如我们之前提到的，宇宙空间的尺度远超我们的想象。即使是最早的无线电波，从 100 多年前发出至今，也只传播了极其有限的距离。假设此时此刻，我们最早的信号终于抵达了所谓的“银河系邻居”，而这些外星文明拥有超凡的智慧和科技，能够识别出我们的存在，并立即做出回应，那么他们的回复也需要再过 100 年才能传回地球。除非物理学取得突破性进展，能够超越光速，否则在我们得知最初的尝试是否成功之前，我们大多数人都将成为历史的尘埃。

What if life exists not 100 light years away, but 50, or even 20 light years away? Well, in that case, aliens would have had enough time to receive and reply to our signals by now. So why haven’t they? One answer would be that aliens simply don’t exist, which, let’s be honest, is rather boring. So let’s assume they do exist. The logical question would be, then, why haven’t they reached out to us?

如果生命并非存在于 100 光年之外，而是 50 光年，甚至 20 光年之外呢？在这种情况下，外星人应该早已收到我们的信号并做出回应了。那么，他们为何保持沉默？ 一种解释是，外星人根本不存在。但这显然是一个乏味的答案。让我们假设外星人确实存在，那么，他们为什么没有与我们联系呢？

To answer this question, we need to place alien civilizations into three advancement categories: less advanced than us, equally advanced, or more advanced. If they’re less advanced than us, it’s likely that they simply don’t have the technology to reach out to us. It’s also important to know what science to look out for. For 2 billion years after life started to evolve, it would be unobservable if another civilization were to look out for the same things we’re looking for right now.

为了解答这个问题，我们需要将外星文明分为三种：比我们落后的文明、与我们发展水平相似的文明，以及比我们先进的文明。如果他们比我们落后，那么他们可能尚未掌握与我们联系的技术。此外，我们还需要了解应该寻找哪些科技特征。在生命诞生后的 20 亿年里，即使有其他文明在寻找生命迹象，他们也无法观测到地球上的生命。

Then there’s the possibility that they’re equally advanced as we are. And if that’s the case, they might be paranoid about contacting us because they’re uncertain about what they’re dealing with. And this is in line with what Stephen Hawking said: that reaching out to alien life would be a big mistake, because they might come for our resources and our planet. They might carry pathogens we can’t fight off. They might have colonial intentions. The list goes on. Given how we’ve treated other human beings because of differences we created in our own minds, it’s fair to say that it would be a mistake to assume that an extraterrestrial species would greet us with kindness.

还有一种可能是，外星文明与我们处于相同的发展阶

The third possibility is that the aliens possess far superior intelligence. Humans are no longer attractive to them. It might be a difficult pill to swallow, considering how human-centric we are, but hear me out. If the universe is teeming with life, if there’s nothing special about us, then there’s not much point in them reaching out to us, much less spending precious resources visiting us. Colonial intentions would likely be less important to a civilization that can, for example, harvest the power of stars. We’d be like the ants of the universe. To most people, ants might be interesting when they first see them, and they can be intriguing, but then interest subsides, and we walk past millions of ants every day without paying any attention to them. Sure, some biologists might still be interested, but most of us simply ignore them. We could apply a similar line of reasoning to a superior alien civilization. The exact reason a nearby alien civilization might exist, namely the abundance of life, is also why we haven’t felt their presence.

第三种可能性是，外星文明拥有远超我们的智慧，人类对他们而言毫无吸引力。这或许让我们难以接受，因为我们总是以人类为中心看待世界。但请试想，如果宇宙中充满了生命，如果人类并不特殊，那么外星文明没有理由与我们联系，更不会浪费宝贵资源来拜访我们。对于一个能够掌控恒星能量的文明来说，殖民扩张可能毫无意义。我们对他们而言，就像蚂蚁之于人类。大多数人初次见到蚂蚁时可能会感到好奇，但很快就会失去兴趣，每天路过成群结队的蚂蚁也不会在意。当然，生物学家可能会对蚂蚁感兴趣，但对大多数人来说，它们只是被忽略的对象。同样的道理，对于拥有超级智慧的外星文明来说，人类可能只是微不足道的存在。宇宙中生命的存在，可能是外星文明没有与我们接触的原因。

On a more cynical note, they might not have visited us yet because they prefer an ambush rather than a “hello.” The Dark Forest Hypothesis states that the universe is full of cunning civilizations that would rather forego the risk of contacting anyone else and observe from the darkness. Whether to reach out is up to them. But as this hypothesis suggests, just because we haven’t been contacted, doesn’t imply nobody is listening. Of course, this is assuming they haven’t already visited us.

更悲观的一种解释是，外星文明可能正在暗中观察我们，准备发动突袭，而不是友好地打招呼。“黑暗森林法则”认为，宇宙中充满了狡猾的文明，他们为了避免风险，宁愿隐藏在黑暗中观察其他文明，而不会主动接触。是否与其他文明接触，完全取决于他们自身的选择。但正如这个法则所暗示的，我们没有被联系，并不意味着没有人在监听我们。当然，这只是假设外星文明尚未造访过地球。

On July 26th, 2023, David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, testified under oath that “non-human biologics” were recovered by a highly secretive UFO recovery program run by the US government. Now, I know we’ve had many so-called “sightings” of alien spacecraft, and a lot of grainy video footage to go along with it. But this is the first time someone whose credentials have been verified has gone under oath and said things that could easily land him in jail if proven false. Skepticism is needed. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nevertheless, even if David’s claims are real, there’s still a general lack of evidence. If one alien spacecraft can reach Earth, so can hundreds or thousands more. If they visited us once, there’s no reason to believe they won’t do so again. At a civilization level, a government cover-up can only go so far, especially when there’s a strong likelihood that a civilization reaching out to us would be far more advanced than us.

2023 年 7 月 26 日，前情报官员大卫·格鲁施在宣誓后作证，声称美国政府有一个高度机密的不明飞行物回收项目，并且已经获取了“非人类生物遗骸”。我们都知道，关于不明飞行物的“目击”事件层出不穷，还有很多模糊不清的视频片

Having said that, though, we come back to our starting point: where are the aliens? And if they’re so common, why haven’t we been bombarded with visits? Well, one of the more widely accepted theories is that of the Great Filter. It’s a hurdle in the evolution of a civilization that typically leads to its extinction. It could be anything: an asteroid impact, a massive volcanic eruption, an incurable virus, runaway artificial intelligence, self-destruction. The list goes on. The idea is that most civilizations that go through the Great Filter fail and are inevitably destroyed. If that’s what’s happened so far in the universe, that would explain the Great Silence. Our civilization alone may have passed this intergalactic test, thus we exist when others don’t.

尽管如此，我们依然回到了最初的问题：外星人在哪里？如果外星文明如此普遍，为什么我们从未遭遇过大规模的“外星人入侵”呢？对此，一个比较流行的解释是“大过滤器”理论。该理论认为，在文明发展的过程中，存在一个难以逾越的障碍，最终会导致文明灭绝。这个障碍可能是小行星撞击、大规模火山爆发、无法治愈的病毒、失控的人工智能、自我毁灭，等等。大多数文明都无法通过“大过滤器”的考验，最终走向毁灭。如果宇宙中的其他文明都经历过这样的命运，就能解释为何宇宙如此寂静。也许只有人类文明成功通过了“大过滤器”的考验，因此我们得以存在，而其他文明早已消亡。

But that’s only half the story. You see, the scenarios I spoke of only make sense if you assume we’ve already passed the Great Filter. What if we haven’t? What if the Great Filter isn’t behind us, but waiting for us in the years ahead? Maybe we exist not because we’ve passed the Great Filter, but because we’ve yet to go through it. Asteroid impacts have happened in the past, but could also hit us in the future. Nuclear annihilation is only a button or two away. We’ve seen some devastating viruses take their toll. And runaway intelligence… well, we’re on our way.

然而，这只是问题的一面。上述假设成立的前提是，人类文明已经通过了“大过滤器”的考验。但如果我们尚未通过呢？如果“大过滤器”并非在我们身后，而是在前方等待着我们呢？也许，我们之所以存在，并非因为我们已经战胜了“大过滤器”，而是因为我们尚未经历它的考验。小行星撞击在过去发生过，未来也可能再次发生。核战争的阴云依然笼罩着我们。我们也见识过病毒的致命威力。至于失控的人工智能，我们正在一步步走向它。

The Great Filter could be any of these things, or it could be none. It could be something else entirely, something our human-centered minds cannot even imagine. Part of the intrigue with alien life involves answering one question, and it’s: how special are we? Almost everything about the Fermi Paradox is a projection of that. The things we look for, how we look for them, how we expect them to behave, it’s a self-centered, egotistical pursuit that is, ironically, very human. But this human-centered curiosity might end up costing our civilization dearly. As Stephen Hawking said, maybe seeking out extraterrestrial life is a terrible idea. For all we know, the Great Filter is just that: our curiosity. Maybe it’s the courage to ask “Where are all the aliens?” Maybe we shouldn’t know. We could be dealing with something genuinely otherworldly. In the vast unknown of space, who dares wins. Not this galactic race. We don’t. Maybe the Great Filter is not a catastrophe that will happen to us. Maybe it’s one we seek.

“大过滤器”可能是上述任何一种情况，也可能完全不同，是我们以人类为中心的思维无法想象的。对外星生命的探索，部分原因在于我们想要知道：人类究竟有多特殊？费米悖论的各种解释，都反映了人类的这种自我中心主义。我们所寻找的目标、寻找的方式，以及对外星文明行为的预期，都体现了人类的自私和傲慢。然而，这种以人类为中心的求知欲，可能会给我们的文明带来灾难性的后果。正如史蒂芬·霍金所言，寻找外星生命或许是一个糟糕的主意。也许，“大过滤器”就是人类的求知欲，是我们探寻“外星人在哪里”的勇气。或许，有些事情我们最好不要知道，因为我们面对的可能是真正超越认知的事物。在浩瀚无垠的宇宙中，敢于冒险者才能获得胜利。但这并非一场星际竞赛，人类也并非胜利者。 也许，“大过滤器”并非即将降临的灾难，而是我们主动追求的命运。

Hopefully, the James Webb Space Telescope has some answers, or at least, newer questions for us. Watch the video on your screen to understand why the JWST is so [Music] important.

希望詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜能够为我们带来一些答案，或者至少，提出一些新的问题。观看视频，了解詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜的重要性。

As the Nukes Dropped As the nukes dropped on every major city around the globe, everyone sought shelter. But there was nowhere to hide. In an instant, civilization as we knew it was destroyed. Every server, library, and entity that stored information about who we are, what we did, and how we lived, was gone. Only a handful of children worldwide survived, all kept in the deepest bunkers we could find. No adults could make it.

核弹降临 当核弹落在世界各个主要城市，人们四处寻找庇护所，但无处可藏。顷刻间，人类文明毁于一旦。所有服务器、图书馆，所有记录着我们是谁、我们做过什么、我们如何生活的资料，都化为乌有。只有少数孩子在地下深处 的掩体中幸存下来，所有成年人都难逃这场浩劫。

Everything about humanity before the blast would be lost entirely in around five generations. Sure, there are tales, mysteries, and legends, but no historical record of life before the final world war. There’s no way our descendants, thousands of years from now, can know who we were.

在五代人之后，关于核爆前人类的一切都将彻底消失。只留下一些故事、传说和谜团，而没有任何历史记录能够证明我们曾经存在过。几千年后，我们的后代将无从知晓我们是谁，我们曾经创造过怎样的文明。

The story might sound a little far-fetched, but the reality is, for all we know, this could have happened already. Maybe, except for the nuclear part. Because no evidence suggests that man-made nuclear weapons existed before Oppenheimer. But the rest of it could be true, because there’s so much we don’t know about the history of our world and humans. At one point, we knew more. Until the [Music] fire.

这听起来像是天方夜谭，但我们无法排除这种可能性。也许，除了核爆之外，其他部分都真实发生过。毕竟，没有证据表明在奥本海默之前存在人造核武器。我们对人类历史和世界历史的了解，依然存在着巨大的空白。曾经，我们拥有更多的知识，直到那场大火……

In 48 BC, the Library of Alexandria, located in Alexandria, in what is now Egypt, burned down. Historians estimate that at one point, the library held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India, and other nations. Sadly, as the pages turned into ashes, the most significant assembly of information about the ancient world disappeared. There are a lot of theories about who started the fire. Julius Caesar is one of the most routinely accused people. He was driving his soldiers into Egypt when an Egyptian fleet in Alexandria cut him off. Legend has it that Caesar’s ships were outnumbered, so they set all the ships in the harbor on fire. This fire then spread and destroyed parts of the city, including the library.

公元前 48 年，位于埃及亚历山大城的亚历山大图书馆毁于一场大火。据历史学家估计，这座图书馆曾收藏了超过 50 万份来自亚述、希腊、波斯、埃及、印度等国的文献。随着书页化为灰烬，关于古代世界的大量珍贵信息也随之消失。关于这场大火的起因，众说纷纭。其中一种说法是，凯撒大帝率军进入埃及时，遭到埃及舰队的阻拦，寡不敌众的凯撒下令焚烧港口所有船只，最终导致大火蔓延至亚历山大图书馆，将其付之一炬。

Another theory blames the fire on one of the Muslim conquerors of Egypt, Caliph Omar. The story goes that the scrolls were burned for fuel for thousands of hot baths in the city. But there’s some skepticism about why a Muslim would burn Jewish and Christian texts, since they’re also the holy texts in Islam.

另一种说法认为，这场大火是由征服埃及的穆斯林哈里发奥马尔下令焚烧造成的。据说，奥马尔下令将图书馆中的卷轴用于加热公共浴室。但这种说法也存在争议，因为犹太教和基督教的典籍也是伊斯兰教的重要经典，穆斯林为何要焚烧它们呢？

Most likely, it wasn’t a dramatic fire that started in the harbor or an attempt to make fuel, but a series of events that happened over time to destroy the library, culminating in a fire. But who burned it isn’t the real question we have. What knowledge was in there that we missed out on is a better question. What insights did historians and philosophers have about humanity that we’ll never know? These are the more essential questions, questions that we might never truly know the answer to.

最有可能的是，亚历山大图书馆并非毁于一场突如其来的大火，也并非被刻意焚毁，而是在漫长的历史进程中，由于各种原因逐渐衰败，最终毁于一场大火。但究竟是谁放的火，已经不再重要。真正重要的是，我们失去了哪些珍贵的知识？那些古代的史学家和哲学家，对人类文明有着怎样的洞见？这些才是我们应该思考的问题，而这些问题的答案，我们可能永远无从得知。

Beyond the Library of Alexandria, what about all the information never written down in the first place? The reality is that most of human history has been lost to time. And as a result, so many people have come up with their own conclusions about what we were. But before discussing those, there are things we need to know about our past.

除了亚历山大图书馆的浩劫，还有更多从未被记录的知识，也永远消失在历史的长河中。事实上，大部分人类历史都已无从考证。因此，人们只能根据有限的线索，对过去进行各种推测和解读。但在探讨这些推测之前，我们先来了解一些关于人类历史的基本事实。

Prehistoric humans might not have had tools like we do today, but what they had in abundance was a really good understanding of math and engineering. That’s why structures like the Great Pyramid and the Library of Alexandria could exist in the first place. Humans first appeared about 300,000 years ago, while Earth was in the middle of the last ice age. It was a harsh environment to come into existence in. As a result, human populations were tiny and grew slowly. The Stone Age, our most ancient time, lasted until about 3,000 BC. This era was marked by the use of tools and, most importantly, the transformation of our culture from hunting and gathering to farming and food production. Humans in the Stone Age lived in caves or very simple huts and teepees. They learned to control fire to keep their homes warm, scare away predators, and cook their prey, like woolly mammoths, deer, and bison. These early humans were also the first to leave behind art, in the form of etched people, animals, and signs on the walls of caves, or carved into items. With time, their tools evolved from rough, dull shapes to polished, pointed items that served as spears and arrows. And eventually, they started settling more prominently in villages and began farming. We know this from the appearance of polished hand axes and other tools used to till farmland. As they settled, advancements were made in home construction, pottery, sewing, and weaving.

史前人类虽然没有我们今天使用的先进工具，但他们却拥有对数学和工程学的深刻理解。这正是他们能够建造出金字塔和亚历山大图书馆等伟大建筑的原因。人类大约在 30 万年前出现，当时地球正处于冰河时期，生存环境十分恶劣。因此，早期人类的数量稀少，增长缓慢。石器时代，人类最古老的时代，一直持续到公元前 3000 年左右。这一时期，人类开始使用工具，并从狩猎采集转向农耕生产，这标志着人类文明的重大转变。石器时代的人类居住在洞穴或简陋的棚屋和帐篷中，他们学会了使用火，用火取暖、驱赶野兽、烹饪食物。他们还创作了最早的艺术作品，在洞穴墙壁上雕刻人物、动物和符号，或在物品上进行雕刻。随着时间的推移，人类的工具不断改进，从粗糙的石器发展到更加精细的矛和箭。最终，他们开始定居在村庄，并发展出农业。我们从出土的磨制石斧和其他农具中可以了解到这一过程。随着定居生活的出现，房屋建筑、制陶、缝纫和编织等技术也得到了发展。

As human civilization expanded, something interesting also happened: human activity reached a tipping point, where hunting and farming began to impact the natural world. The proportion of plants to animals was relatively stable until about 4,000 BC. Since then, humans have been affecting our environment at an increasing pace.

随着人类文明的不断扩张，人类活动对自然环境的影响也日益显著。大约在公元前 4000 年，人类的狩猎和农耕活动达到了一个临界点，开始对自然界造成不可逆转的影响。在此之前，动植物的比例相对稳定，而此后，人类对环境的影响速度不断加快。

In 3300 BC came the Bronze Age, which lasted until about 1300 BC. This is where tools really took off. Metal was introduced, which not only led to the production of better tools, but also better weapons. And with better weapons came many different things to fight about: organized government, law, and religion. In this time, humans also started using advanced tools like a potter’s wheel and began creating textiles, instead of just wearing animal skins to keep themselves warm. And, perhaps most famously, this was the beginning of written history. Egyptian hieroglyphs, the first known recordings, appeared.

公元前 3300 年，人类进入青铜时代，这一时期一直持续到公元前 1300 年左右。青铜时代是工具发展史上的重要里程碑。金属的应用不仅带来了更先进的工具，也催生了更强大的武器。随着武器的进步，战争的规模和频率也随之增加，人类开始围绕着政府、法律和宗教等问题展开斗争。这一时期，人类还发明了陶轮等先进工具，并开始生产纺织品，取代了传统的兽皮服装。更重要的是，文字出现了，埃及象形文字成为已知最早的文字记录，标志着人类文明进入书写历史的新阶

Then we entered the Iron Age, from 1300 BC to 900 BC. Humankind had a lot going on. We saw the introduction of heating and forging iron, which led to the mass production of tools and weapons. Four-room homes, some with stables for domesticated animals, showed up. There’s also evidence of early city planning, with blocks of houses and water systems running between them. Agriculture, art, and religion all became more sophisticated. And finally, we developed writing systems and written documentation.

公元前 1300 年至公元前 900 年，人类进入铁器时代，文明进程加速发展。铁的冶炼和锻造技术出现，推动了工具和武器的大规模生产。四室住宅开始出现，有些住宅甚至配备了牲畜圈舍。早期城市规划的雏形也逐渐形成，房屋按街区排列，并建有完善的供水系统。农业、艺术和宗教都变得更加精细复杂。文字系统和书面记录也得到了进一步发展。

At the end of the Iron Age, we moved into the early historical period, where the documentation of human history pretty much became more widespread. This is basically everything we are sure of about the ancient world, much of which we learned through fossils.

铁器时代结束后，人类进入早期历史时期，历史记录更加普遍。我们对古代世界的了解，主要来自于这一时期的文献记载和化石证据。

But fossils can only tell us so much. How did these people live? What were their daily routines like? Like, what were their favorite foods? Small talk? Big dreams? We sadly don’t know. When so many people have made theories, what might humans have been like before recorded history started?

然而，化石只能提供有限的信息。古人是如何生活的？他们的日常生活是怎样的？他们喜欢吃什么？他们会闲聊吗？他们有什么梦想？这些问题，我们都无从得知。面对如此多的未知，人们只能提出各种各样的理论，试图还原史前人类的生活。

Much like the Greeks made up myths of powerful gods to explain their daily lives and emotions, people have been developing theories about the history of humankind forever. Theories like the Original Eve, a human who birthed, literally or figuratively, the rest of humankind. It could be possible, because in the 1980s, DNA sequencing demonstrated that this Eve might have existed as recently as 120,000 years ago. Then, skulls found in East Africa provided suggestions about what she might have looked like and where she might have lived. People became obsessed with the idea of this real-life Eve, no longer just a figure from the Bible, but a woman who was the ancestor to us all. This idea made its way into pop culture, grasping people worldwide.

就像古希腊人用神话故事解释日常生活和情感一样，人类也一直在探索自身的起源，并提出了各种理论。例如“线粒体夏娃”理论，认为所有现代人类都源自一位共同的女性祖先。20 世纪 80 年代，DNA 测序技术证明，这位“夏娃”可能生活在 12 万年前。随后，在东非发现的头骨化石，为我们提供了关于“夏娃”外貌和生活区域的线索。人们对这位现实中的“夏娃”充满了好奇，她不再只是圣经中的传说人物，而是所有现代人类的共同祖先。这一理论也影响了大众文化，在全球范围内引发了广泛关注。

And what about the possibility that our distant ancestors were much more advanced than we give them credit for? It’s always been assumed that humans in the Upper Paleolithic period, from 50,000 to 15,000 BC, were bands of foragers, never establishing any sort of tradition or organization within their groups. But recently, evidence of “princely burials” and grand buildings have appeared. Burials were found across Western Eurasia. They weren’t full cemeteries, but isolated graves of individuals or small groups, bodies placed in specific postures and sometimes decorated with ornaments. The idea that a band of foragers would bury some, but not all of their dead in this ceremonial way, had never been considered.

此外，还有一种可能是，我们的祖先远比我们想象中更加先进。人们一直认为，旧石器时代晚期（公元前 5 万年至公元前 1.5 万年）的人类只是以狩猎采集为生的游牧部落，没有形成任何传统和组织。然而，近年来发现的“贵族墓葬”和大型建筑遗址却挑战了这一观点。这些墓葬遍布欧亚大陆西部，并非完整的墓地，而是零星分布的个体或小群体墓葬。墓葬中的尸体摆放着特定的姿势，并装饰着各种饰品。这表明，当时的狩猎采集部落可能已经形成了某种仪式和社会等级，这在过去是从未被考虑过的。

Similarly, stone temples dating back to this time were discovered in Turkey, some over 5 meters high and weighing about 8 tons. The temples had raised pillars and were linked by stone walls, and each post contained a unique sculpture, carved with images of the world ancient humans were living in. Such structures imply the coordinated activity of humans. It takes a lot of communication and teamwork to build something so significant. We always assumed little happened in the Paleolithic era, but perhaps there was more of a society than we thought. Maybe ancient humans in this time weren’t moving about in small groups, never settling into tradition or community. Perhaps they had leaders and dynasties. The evidence is murky. But who’s to say one way or the other?

同样，在土耳其也发现了同期建造的石制神庙，有些神庙高达 5 米，重达 8 吨。这些神庙拥有高耸的石柱和连接的石墙，每根石柱上都雕刻着独特的图案，描绘着史前人类生活的世界。这些建筑结构表明，当时的人类已经具备了协同合作的能力。建造如此宏伟的建筑，需要大量的沟通和团队合作。我们一直认为旧石器时代的人类社会结构简单，但也许事实并非如此。也许他们并非只是以小群体四处游荡，而是形成了稳定的传统和社区，拥有领导者和世袭制度。虽然证据有限，但我们不能排除这种可能性。

The theories about our ancient ancestors are constantly changing. For instance, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people in Europe and North America thought that primitive humans weren’t capable of full consciousness, like they were still “savage” in some way. Now, no scholar would claim that. Yet some experts still dismiss distant humans’ imagination or skepticism of their world. Others have always taken seriously the idea that humans were our intellectual equals. Why wouldn’t they have some sort of political system or burial ceremony? It’s almost impossible to know. And the questions don’t stop with our human history.

关于人类祖先的理论一直在不断演变。例如，在 19 世纪末 20 世纪初，欧美国家的人们认为原始人类缺乏完整的意识，将其视为“野蛮人”。如今，这种观点已经被学术界摒弃。但一些专家依然低估了史前人类的想象力和对世界的质疑精神。另一些专家则始终认为，史前人类与我们拥有同等的智力水平。他们为何不能拥有政治体系或举行丧葬仪式？我们无法给出确切的答案，但也不能轻易否定这种可能性。关于人类历史的疑问远不止于此。

What about the history of our planet? What came before us that was never recorded? Could there have been a civilization before humans created the one we live in today?

地球的历史又如何呢？在我们出现之前，地球上发生过什么？是否存在一个史前文明，在我们之前创造了另一个世界？

To have civilization, you need a food surplus, which frees up most people to specialize in doing things other than producing food. You need farming. And you also need to require a specific minimum population density, or you wouldn’t have enough individuals to run this theoretical civilization. Is there any way we could know if something like this existed?

文明的形成需要充足的食物 surplus，这样才能解放大多数人，让他们从事农业以外的工作。也就是说，文明需要农业作为基础，也需要达到一定的人口密度，否则就无法支撑文明的运转。那么，我们如何才能知道是否存在这样的史前文明呢？

Fossils could easily miss an industrial civilization that lasted only 100,000 years. Which, for the record, is 500 times longer than our current industrial civilization has been around, since any ancient civilization would have needed energy and the capacity to exploit fossil fuels and other power sources as we do. Scientists can theoretically look for worldwide effects that leave traces of this. Perhaps there would also be naturally occurring evidence, like remnants of certain fossil fuels. There could also be non-natural evidence, like a product that compares to our plastic use.

如果一个工业文明只持续了 10 万年，那么化石记录很可能无法捕捉到它的存在。要知道，这比我们目前的工业文明持续的时间还要长 500 倍。任何文明都需要能源，史前文明也必然会像我们一样开发利用化石燃料和其他能源。理论上，科学家可以寻找这类文明在全球范围内留下的痕迹。例如，某些化石燃料的残留物，或者类似于塑料的人造材料，都可能成为史前文明存在的证据。

And you might think that we haven’t found any signs of this, but you would be wrong in that. There’s been the discovery of a “thermal maximum event” that occurred about 55.5 million years ago and lasted for about 100,000 years. We found chemical signals and traces of a warming that looks similar to the chemical signals and traces of our current world. It led to a global temperature rise of 9 to 14°F. Could this be evidence of a pre-Ice Age industrial society? According to scientists who explored the issue, probably not. But it is important to ask. Because we’ll never discover anything if we don’t ask.

你也许会认为，我们没有发现任何史前文明的迹象。但事实并非如此。科学家们发现，大约在 5550 万年前，地球曾经历过一次“热最大值事件”，持续了约 10 万年。我们发现了与现今世界类似的化学信号和全球变暖的迹象，当时全球气温上升了 5 到 8 摄氏度。这是否意味着在冰河时期之前，地球上存在过一个工业社会？研究这个问题的科学家认为，这种可能性很小。但提出问题本身就具有重要意义，因为只有不断探索，才能发现新的答案。

What did ancient languages sound like as they rolled off people’s tongues? What did they do when they encountered others who spoke differently than them? Were they afraid? Or did they have a way to translate? What emotions did people have when someone died? Was it the same grief that we experience? What about relationships? Did mothers fight with their teenage daughters? Did people long for a sense of romantic love?

古人的语言听起来是什么样的？当他们遇到使用不同语言的人时，会作何反应？是感到恐惧，还是有办法进行交流？当亲人离世时，他们会悲伤吗？他们的悲伤与我们相同吗？他们的关系如何？母亲会与青春期的女儿争吵吗？他们渴望爱情吗？

There’s only so much we can gather from skeletal remains and fossils. We’ll never know what these societies were like because society is so much more than the remnants it leaves behind after it falls. And that’s why an event like the burning of the Library of Alexandria is so poignant. It’s the cautionary tale of the danger of the deprioritization of institutions that preserve and share knowledge. The term “Alexandria” has become shorthand for ignorance winning out. From the French Revolution to the late 20th century, “Alexandria” is a common term to describe the destruction of libraries and archives that are abandoned and forgotten. So yes, books were burned in Alexandria, but perhaps the actual crime was people not caring enough about their preservation in the first place.

我们只能从遗骸和化石中获取有限的信息，永远无法真正了解那些逝去的社会，因为社会远比其留下的遗迹更加丰富多彩。因此，亚历山大图书馆的焚毁才显得格外令人惋惜，它警示着我们，忽视知识传承的危害。“亚历山大”已经成为“无知战胜文明”的代名词。从法国大革命到 20 世纪末，“亚历山大”常常被用来形容图书馆和档案馆遭到破坏、遗弃或遗忘的悲剧。亚历山大图书馆的书籍被焚毁，这固然令人痛心，但更可悲的是，人们一开始就没有给予这些知识足够的重视和保护。

Attacks on knowledge can come from violence, like in the Holocaust or China’s Cultural Revolution. But it can also come from the apathy towards institutions, like we’re witnessing today. In Iraq and Mali, Islamic extremists have targeted libraries. In the United Kingdom, more than 800 public libraries have closed over the past decade due to a lack of resources from the government. Now, tech companies are taking control of our archives as we move deeper into the digital era, but there’s little regulation around what these powerful companies can do with our knowledge and history. In the end, it’s going to be our experiences that tell the story of our world. Do we want to leave it in the hands of a few to decide what stories get kept and which get burned?

对知识的攻击不仅来自暴力，例如纳粹大屠杀和中国的文化大革命，也可能来自对知识的漠视，正如我们今天所看到的那样。在伊拉克和马里，伊斯兰极端分子袭击了图书馆。在英国，过去十年间，超过 800 家公共图书馆因缺乏政府资金而关闭。如今，随着数字时代的到来，科技公司正在掌控我们的知识库，而对于这些掌握着巨大权力的公司如何利用我们的知识和历史，却缺乏有效的监管。最终，我们的经历将构成我们对世界的理解，难道我们甘愿将决定权交给少数人，让他们决定哪些故事被保留，哪些故事被遗忘吗？

I expand on this idea in this video: “Big Tech Is Destroying Ownership.” Click on your screen to watch that next.

我在另一部名为“大型科技公司正在摧毁所有权”的视频中，对这一问题进行了更深入的探讨。点击屏幕观看该视频。

“That’s One Small Step for Man…” …Vier paused to think about how one of the most famous sentences of all time doesn’t make grammatical sense. Well, because we all apparently heard it wrong, and continue to say it wrong. According to the man himself, Neil Armstrong warning , what he did say that day when he stepped foot on the Moon was, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” which makes much more sense.

“这是人类的一小步……” ……维尔停下来思考着这句举世闻名的名言，为何在语法上并不通顺。原来，我们都听错了，并且一直错误地引用着这句话。据当事人尼尔·阿姆斯特朗本人的说法，他当时所说的是：“这是个人的一小步，却是人类的一大步。” 这句话的语法才更加准确。

There are going to be a lot of things that sound strange at first, but as we’ve all come to find out, sometimes reality can be stranger than fiction. Like how the sounds of the T-Rexes speaking in Jurassic Park are actually just tortoises having sex. And how the eagle only sounds like this because of Hollywood magic, when in reality, it sounds more like this.

很多事情乍听之下可能觉得不可思议，但现实往往比虚构更加奇妙。例如，《侏罗纪公园》中霸王龙的吼叫声，其实是乌龟交配时发出的声音。而我们熟知的雄鹰的叫声，也只是好莱坞电影的音效，真实的鹰叫声其实更接近于……

Here are true facts that sound completely made up.

接下来，我要告诉你一些听起来像是编造的，但却真实存在的事实。

It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that humans can live with just one kidney. But did you also know that you can live without a spleen, an appendix, a gallbladder, tonsils, six of your ribs, and one lung? In fact, many people do, and they lead pretty normal lives. The only thing you can’t do with just one lung is participate in strenuous exercises or run long distances. But with just one lung, you could run from the United States to Russia, since the shortest distance between the two countries is just 2.4 miles. How comforting. This distance is measured from Russia’s Big Diomede Island to America’s Little Diomede Island. Why is America’s island smaller? We might never know.

众所周知，人类可以只依靠一个肾脏生存。但你知道吗？没有脾脏、阑尾、胆囊、扁桃体、六根肋骨甚至一个肺，我们依然可以存活。事实上，很多人都缺少这些器官，但他们依然过着正常的生活。只有一个肺的人，唯一的限制就是不能进行剧烈运动或长跑。不过，只有一个肺，你也可以从美国跑到俄罗斯，因为两国之间的最短距离只有 3.8 公里。这听起来是不是很不可思议？这

But you know what is really big, thick, and long? A giraffe’s neck. Considering how massive these things are, it’s incredible to think that they have the same number of bones as a human neck. They’re just way bigger. And it’s not just them and us. All mammals have the same number of bones in their necks.

你知道什么东西又大又粗又长吗？长颈鹿的脖子。令人难以置信的是，长颈鹿脖子上的骨骼数量与人类相同，只是它们的骨骼更大。不仅如此，所有哺乳动物的脖子都由相同数量的骨骼组成。

When we were younger, we were taught that there are 7 days in a week, 4 weeks in a month, and 52 weeks in a year. But the truth is, that’s wrong. Well, technically it’s correct, but it only works here on Earth. On other planets, it’s completely different. On Venus, for example, a day is longer than an entire year. It’s probably helpful to mention that a day on a particular planet is defined as the time it takes that planet to spin around once on its axis, and a year is the time it takes for the planet to orbit around its star, in this case the Sun.

我们从小就被教导，一周有七天，一个月有四周，一年有 52 周。但事实上，这种说法并不完全准确。严格来说，这只是地球上的时间规则。在其他星球上，时间计量方式完全不同。例如，在金星上，一天比一年还要长。这里需要解释一下，“一天”是指行星自转一周的时间，“一年”是指行星绕恒星公转一周的时间，我们通常指的是绕太阳公转一周的时间。

Pluto, sadly, wasn’t able to complete a full orbit around the Sun in the 76 years from when it was discovered in 1930 to when it was declassified as a planet in 2006. A small planet with a really long orbit. But you know what is really, really, really long? It’s the name of a hill in New Zealand. You’re welcome.

可怜的冥王星，从 1930 年被发现到 2006 年被降级为矮行星的 76 年间，它甚至还没来得及完成绕太阳公转一周。真是一颗轨道漫长的小星球。不过，你知道世界上最长的地名是什么吗？是新西兰一座山的名字，它长到我都不想念出来。

Here’s a true fact that sounds completely made up. As of December 2022, more than half the people who earned six figures in the US reported living paycheck to paycheck.

还有一个令人难以置信的事实，在美国，截至 2022 年 12 月，超过一半的年收入超过 10 万美元的人，竟然也过着月光族的生活。

We’ve all faced rejections and insults. Don’t let them get to you. They’re just lessons that we all had to learn one way or another. The founder of Lamborghini, for example, had to be rejected by Ferrari before he got the desire to create Lamborghini. Steve Jobs had to be kicked out of his own company before he could bring it back to life. Microsoft had to stop producing newer versions of the Internet Explorer to, well, realize that they shouldn’t have ever made it in the first place. But you get the point.

我们都经历过拒绝和挫折，但不要因此而灰心丧气。这些都是人生的必修课，每个人都必须经历。例如，兰博基尼的创始人被法拉利拒绝后，才决心打造自己的跑车品牌；乔布斯被自己创立的公司驱逐后，才最终带领苹果公司走向辉煌；微软公司在停止开发 Internet Explorer 浏览器后，才意识到当初就不应该开发这款产品。你明白我的意思吧？

Time is an illusion. And if you don’t study history, it can be quite jarring to learn that sometimes things aren’t as timely as we think. Did you know that we sent a man to the Moon before we put wheels on suitcases? Just imagine how stressful it must have been for Neil to carry all that luggage to and from space.

时间是一种幻觉。如果你不了解历史，你可能会惊讶地发现，有些事情的发展顺序与我们想象中截然不同。例如，人类登月的时间，竟然比旅行箱安装轮子的时间还要早。想象一下，尼尔·阿姆斯特朗要带着沉重的行李往返月球，那该是多么令人抓狂的事情。

The invention of the iPhone in 2007 is closer to the existence of Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the building of the Pyramids of Giza. And although Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire, it isn’t the first university to ever exist. India’s Nalanda University was in operation for hundreds of years before Oxford. We made lighters before we made matches. Sharks existed before grass. Heck, sharks were in existence before the rings of Saturn.

2007 年 iPhone 问世的时间，距离埃及艳后克利奥帕特拉生活的年代，比克利奥帕特拉距离金字塔建造的年代更近。牛津大学虽然比阿兹特克帝国的历史更悠久，但它并非世界上第一所大学。印度的纳兰达大学早在牛津大学成立前几百年就已存在。打火机的发明比火柴还要早。鲨鱼比草更早出现在地球上，甚至比土星环的形成还要早。

It really makes you appreciate the beauty of human civilization. We’ve only been here for a short time, but we’ve been able to achieve so much. We’re so special, aren’t we?

这些事实让我们更加感叹人类文明的伟大。人类虽然存在的时间很短，却创造了如此辉煌的成就，我们真的很特别，不是吗？

That’s what I told her, Rebecca, before she broke up with me. But now I know I was wrong, because she wasn’t special. She was bananas. I don’t mean that as an insult, because we’re all bananas. At least 50% of each of us. Because humans share 50% of our DNA with bananas, and with fruit flies. As it turns out, our profound exclusivity is neither profound nor exclusive.

分手前，我曾对丽贝卡说，她是如此特别。但现在我知道自己错了，因为她并非独一无二，她就像香蕉一样普通。我并不是在贬低她，因为我们都是“香蕉”。从基因的角度来说，人类与香蕉共享 50% 的 DNA，与果蝇也共享 50% 的 DNA。所以，我们自以为是的独特之处，其实既不独特，也不深刻。

What is exclusive, however, is a randomly shuffled deck of cards. It may seem rather mundane, but the sequence of a randomly shuffled deck of cards has never been seen before, and will never be seen again. A standard deck of cards has 52 cards, which means there are 52 factorial different ways the cards can be arranged when shuffled randomly. That number, 52 factorial, is 8 with 67 zeroes after it. To put this in perspective, the universe has existed for over 13 billion years. But let’s round it up to 15 billion. Let’s also assume there are around 2 trillion galaxies, each containing approximately 100 trillion star systems each. If each star system had 10 planets, and each planet hosted 10 billion life forms, every one of those life forms could shuffle a deck of cards every second since the beginning of time, and they still wouldn’t produce a repeated sequence. That is simply insane.

然而，有一样东西却是独一无二的，那就是一副随机洗牌的扑克牌。这听起来很普通，但一副随机洗牌的扑克牌的顺序是从未出现过，也永远不会再次出现的。一副标准扑克牌有 52 张牌，这意味着随机洗牌后，牌的排列方式有 52 的阶乘种。52 的阶乘是一个天文数字，是 8 后面跟着 67 个零。为了让你更好地理解这个数字的庞大，我们可以做个假设：宇宙已经存在了 150 亿年，假设宇宙中有 2 万亿个星系，每个星系有 100 万亿个恒星系，每个恒星系有 10 颗行星，每颗行星上有 100 亿种生命形式，如果从宇宙诞生之初，每种生命形式每秒钟都洗牌一副扑克牌，直到现在，也不可能出现重复的牌序。这简直不可思议。

Speaking of arrangements, some countries aren’t arranged the way we think they ought to be. Finland and North Korea are separated by just one country. New York is closer to the equator than it is to Rome. And Bangladesh went to war in 1971 against Pakistan, two countries that are separated by India, the seventh largest country in the world. And get this, all three countries were once considered the same country! Talk about sibling rivalry. The logistics for that war must have cost several buttloads, which is a legitimate unit of measurement equal to 126 gallons.

说到地理位置，有些国家的排列方式可能与我们想象中不同。例如，芬兰和朝鲜之间只隔着一个国家。纽约距离赤道比距离罗马更近。1971 年，孟加拉国与巴基斯坦爆发战争，而这两个国家之间隔着世界第七大国家印度。更令人惊讶的是，这三个国家曾经是同一个国家！这真是兄弟阋墙的典型案例。这场战争的后勤保障肯定消耗了大量的资源，据估计，消耗量相当于好几个“buttloads”（一个非正式的计量单位，相当于 126 加仑）。

Remember when you were young and your mom told you not to swallow apple seeds, or a tree would grow in your belly? Well, it turns out she was wrong. Trees can’t grow in people. But she was right in telling you not to swallow apple seeds. Eating apple seeds can lead to cyanide poisoning. Don’t worry too much, though. You need to eat the seeds from at least 150 apples for that.

还记得小时候，妈妈总是告诫我们不要吞食苹果核，否则肚子里会长出苹果树吗？事实证明，妈妈的说法并不完全正确。苹果树当然不可能在人体内生长，但吞食苹果核确实有害。苹果核中含有氰化物，大量食用会导致中毒。不过，也不用太过担心，你需要吃掉至少 150 个苹果的苹果核，才会达到中毒剂量。

Speaking of apples, Steve Jobs chose the name of his company to get back at his former employer, Atari, because phone books, a book that had a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of the businesses in an area, were written in alphabetical order. Apple would come before Atari, so whenever people searched for a computer business in the phone book, they would find Steve’s company first. Suffice it to say that they no longer need that slight competitive advantage.

说到苹果公司，你知道乔布斯为什么要选择这个名字吗？据说，他是为了报复前雇主雅达利公司。当时的电话簿是按字母顺序排列的，苹果（Apple）排在雅达利（Atari）之前，这样人们在查找电脑公司时，就会先看到苹果公司。当然，现在的苹果公司早已不需要这种微不足道的优势了。

Fresh, clean water can do wonders. But how fresh is the water we drink? Did you know the probability that at least one of the molecules of the water you drank today passed through a dinosaur is 100%? We somehow keep coming back to dinosaurs. Maybe it’s a sign that Rebecca and I should try and work things out. Because at the end of the day, mistakes happen. Like the time Switzerland accidentally invaded another country.

新鲜干净的水对我们至关重要。但我们喝的水究竟有多“新鲜”呢？你知道吗？你今天喝的水中，至少有一个水分子曾经穿过恐龙的身体，而且这个概率是 100%。为什么我们总是会提到恐龙呢？也许，这是在暗示我和丽贝卡应该重归于好。毕竟，人非圣贤，孰能无过？就像瑞士曾经不小心入侵了另一个国家。

In 2007, around 171 of Switzerland’s troops accidentally went into Liechtenstein. The Swiss government formally apologized, but the governor of Liechtenstein wasn’t worried and excused the situation. “It’s happened before,” he said. Uh, Liechtenstein is really nice, as you can see. So nice, in fact, that in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Liechtenstein sent a company of 80 soldiers to war, only to have 81 return. Not only did they not have any casualties, but an Austrian liaison officer joined them on the way home!

2007 年，大约 171 名瑞士士兵误入了列支敦士登境内。瑞士政府为此正式道歉，但列支敦士登的政府官员却毫不在意，表示：“这种事以前也发生过。” 列支敦士登真是个与世无争的国家。据说，在 1866 年的普奥战争中，列支敦士登派出了 80 名士兵参战，结果却有 81 人回到了国内。他们不仅毫发无损，而且还带回了一位奥地利联络官！

But it also helps to have luck. Luck like Anatoli Bugorski had. He was a researcher working at the Soviet Union’s most powerful particle accelerator, the U-70 synchrotron. He was down there one day to fix something. He leaned down to look at a part of the machine without realizing the accelerator was active at the time, and stuck his head directly into the beam path. He reported seeing a tremendously bright flash, likely due to his optic nerves being excited through the roof.

当然，运气也很重要。就像阿纳托利·布戈尔斯基那样幸运。他是一位研究员，在苏联最强大的粒子加速器 U-70 同步加速器工作。有一天，他去修理机器，却没注意到加速器正在运行，不小心把头伸进了粒子束的路径。他看到了一道极其明亮的闪光，可能是因为他的视神经受到了强烈的刺激。

Believe it or not, he actually wanted to cover it up and decided to continue working. As time passed, Anatoli noticed huge swelling developing along the regions where the beam had entered and exited his head. He slowly started developing radiation sickness. There was no hiding anymore, so he sought help. The physician in charge feared the worst, but as it turned out, Anatoli had unintentionally received a version of proton beam therapy, often used to treat cancer. Thanks to the physics of the proton beam therapy, most of the energy that might have otherwise killed Anatoli was deposited outside of his skull. Despite suffering seizures and epilepsy, Anatoli lives on to this day. However, he refused an offer from the United States to be a research subject. Oh, and half of his face stopped aging. Talk about expensive Botox! It’s something Rebecca would have needed. I mean, I like… oh well. She’s… she’s gone now. But… but I mean, for all her flaws, she was always very kind to me. Despite what we went through, despite how rough the breakup was, she put her hand in mine, looked me in the eye assuredly, and told me, “We can still be cousins.”

令人难以置信的是，他竟然试图隐瞒此事，继续工作。随着时间的推移，他发现粒子束穿过头部的地方出现了严重的肿胀，并逐渐出现辐射病的症状。最终，他不得不寻求治疗。医生担心他会命不久矣，但事实证明，他不经意间接受了一种类似于质子束疗法的治疗，这种疗法通常用于治疗癌症。由于质子束的物理特性，大部分能量都沉积在他的颅骨外部，避免了致命伤害。尽管此后他一直遭受癫痫和癫痫的折磨，但他依然活了下来。美国曾邀请他参与研究，但他拒绝了。此外，粒子束还导致他半张脸停止衰老，这真是世界上最昂贵的“肉毒杆菌”！丽贝卡也需要这种治疗。我……算了，她已经离开我了。尽管她有很多缺点，但她一直对我很好。即使分手时我们都很痛苦，她依然握着我的手，坚定地望着我的眼睛，说：“我们还可以做朋友。”

That, of course, was completely made up. Or was it?

当然，这只是我的杜撰。或者，是真的？

What if I told you that both of you are technically correct? That your brain stole your co-worker’s idea and convinced you that it was yours? Scary, right? This is cryptomnesia, the reality that most of our thoughts aren’t really ours.

如果我告诉你，你们两人都没有说谎呢？你的大脑窃取了你同事的想法，却让你误以为这是自己的原创。听起来很可怕，对吧？这就是隐性记忆，它揭示了一个令人不安的事实：我们的大部分想法，其实并非真正属于我们。

Also known as inadvertent or unconscious plagiarism, cryptomnesia is a memory error in which people mistakenly believe that a current thought or idea is a product of their own creation when, in reality, they have encountered it previously and then forgotten it. It’s a form of cognitive bias that uses the brain’s own tendency to inaccurately recall information in such a way that it benefits us. It can be something as simple as unintentionally stealing a co-worker’s idea, or as complex as accidentally recreating someone else’s art.

隐性记忆，也被称为无意剽窃或无意识剽窃，是一种记忆偏差。人们错误地将曾经接触过但已经遗忘的信息，误认为是自己原创的想法。这是大脑的一种认知偏差，它会以对我们有利的方式，扭曲我们对信息的记忆。隐性记忆的表现形式多种多样，可以是无意间窃取同事的想法，也可以是无意识地模仿他人的艺术作品。

In the fall of 1970, George Harrison, formerly of the Beatles, released his first single as a solo artist. “My Sweet Lord” was an instant hit, soaring to the top of the charts around the world and becoming the number-one single in the UK for 1971. But what Harrison didn’t realize was that he had unwittingly plagiarized the song’s central melody. Soon after its release, a suit was filed against Harrison, accusing him of copyright infringement. “My Sweet Lord” bore a striking resemblance to the late Ronnie Mack’s song “He’s So Fine,” and Mack’s former production company wanted a cut of the royalties.

1970 年秋天，前披头士乐队成员乔治·哈里森发行了他的首支个人单曲《我的甜蜜主》。这首歌一经推出便风靡全球，荣登各大排行榜榜首，并成为 1971 年英国最受欢迎的单曲。然而，哈里森并没有意识到，他无意中剽窃了这首歌的主旋律。不久后，他就被起诉侵犯版权，因为《我的甜蜜主》与罗尼·麦克的歌曲《他是如此美好》极为相似。麦克的前制作公司要求分享歌曲的版税。

What followed was one of the most notorious legal episodes in music history. Harrison found himself caught up in court battles for the next five years, and litigation related to the case would plague him until the late 1990s. During the court proceedings, Harrison admitted to being familiar with the Ronnie Mack track, but said that he hadn’t deliberately stolen it. Though the judge overseeing the case affirmed Harrison’s claim, he still found the former Beatle guilty of “subconsciously plagiarizing something that was in his subconscious memory,” and ruled in favor of Mack’s production company.

随之而来的是音乐史上最著名的版权纠纷之一。在接下来的五年里，哈里森一直官司缠身，相关诉讼一直持续到 20 世纪 90 年代后期。在法庭上，哈里森承认自己听过罗尼·麦克的歌曲，但坚称自己并非故意抄袭。尽管法官认可了哈里森的说法，但他依然判定这位前披头士成员犯有“无意识剽窃”的罪行，因为他的潜意识记忆中已经存在这首歌曲，最终判决麦克的制作公司胜诉。

The case set new legal precedents for future copyright suits and proved an enormous blow to Harrison personally, who struggled to write new music for some time after the debacle. In his autobiography, he later confessed to having thought “Why didn’t I realize?” when he heard the two songs compared side-by-side.

这起案件为未来的版权诉讼开创了先例，也对哈里森造成了沉重的打击。在这场风波之后，他一度难以创作新的音乐作品。在自传中，他坦言，当他听到两首歌的对比时，曾不禁自问：“为什么我没有意识到这一点？”

Harrison isn’t the only artist to do this either. Other examples include author Robert Louis Stevenson reusing material he’d read, comedian Dane Cook retelling jokes, and singer Demi Lovato lifting samples from a small indie band. Surgeons have even published entire papers on supposedly new techniques that, in actuality, they learned during training.

类似的案例并非个例。作家罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森曾重复使用他读过的素材；喜剧演员戴恩·库克曾复述他人的笑话；歌手黛米·洛瓦托曾剽窃了一支独立乐队的旋律；甚至外科医生也发表过关于所谓新技术的论文，而这些技术其实是他们在培训期间就学过的。

But how does this happen? How is it possible that we can recall information that we’ve somehow simultaneously also forgotten? This was the question posed by American psychologists Alan Brown and Dana Murphy in 1989 when they conducted what’s become known as the seminal scientific study into cryptomnesia. In a series of deceptively simple experiments, groups of students took turns coming up with examples for different categories of things, such as sports, musical instruments, and four-legged animals.

这究竟是怎么回事？我们如何才能回忆起那些我们已经遗忘的信息呢？1989 年，美国心理学家艾伦·布朗和达娜·墨菲对此展开了研究，他们的实验被视为隐性记忆研究的开山之作。他们设计了一系列看似简单的实验，让学生们轮流为不同类别的物品举例子，例如运动项目、乐器和四足动物。

Months later, participants gathered again and were instructed to recall what items they themselves had mentioned previously. Then, a few months after that, they met for a final time and were asked to come up with new examples. During each of the later tasks, nearly 75% of participants listed at least one item that was mentioned by someone else in the group. These weren’t cases of simple confusion either. People also occasionally misattributed their own ideas as well, though instances of this were comparably rare.

几个月后，研究人员要求参与者回忆自己之前列举过的例子。又过了几个月，他们再次被要求想出新的例子。在后来的实验中，近 75% 的参与者至少列举了一个其他人曾经提过的例子。这并非简单的记忆混淆。有时，人们也会将自己的想法误认为是别人的，但这种情况相对少见。

Interestingly, the pattern of responses also indicated that plagiarism occurred more often in written tasks when compared to oral. And perhaps unsurprisingly, ideas that were expressed more frequently were especially likely to be stolen. Overall, plagiarized answers accounted for 7 to 9% of all responses.

有趣的是，实验结果表明，书面任务中的剽窃行为比口头任务更常见。此外，那些被反复提及的想法更容易被剽窃。总的来说，所有答案中约有 7% 到 9% 属于剽窃行为。

The experiment itself was borrowed from previous research into another kind of memory error known as source amnesia, in which a person forgets the origin of a particular piece of information. The difference between source amnesia and cryptomnesia is that with source amnesia, the individual remembers that there was an original source, they just can’t remember what that source is. But with cryptomnesia, they completely forget that there ever was a source and believe that they themselves were the originator of the thought in question.

这项实验借鉴了之前对另一种记忆错误——来源性遗忘症的研究。来源性遗忘症是指人们忘记了信息的来源。来源性遗忘症和隐性记忆的区别在于，前者患者记得信息存在来源，只是无法回忆起具体来源；而后者患者则完全忘记了信息存在来源，并坚信自己是信息的原创者。

A possible explanation for this unconscious plagiarism is that the brain has simply committed a mental error, incorrectly categorizing information by mixing up two different forms of memory. One type, known as semantic memory, is what we more generally refer to as “knowledge.” It includes things like the definition of the word “semantic,” that Paris is the capital of France, or the year that man first landed on the Moon. Chances are you don’t remember where or how you learned this information. You just know it. The second type of memory is known as autobiographical memory and deals directly with the circumstances of our experiences. It records the exact context in which events happen to us, bringing back details such as the precise location, who was present, and the time of day.

对于这种无意识剽窃行为的一种解释是，大脑在处理信息时出现了错误，将两种不同类型的记忆混淆了。一种是语义记忆，也就是我们通常所说的“知识”，包括“语义”这个词的定义、巴黎是法国的首都、人类登月的时间等等。你可能不记得这些知识是从哪里学来的，但你就是知道它们。另一种是情景记忆，它记录了我们亲身经历的事件，包括事件发生的时间、地点、人物以及当时的感受等细节。

Cryptomnesia is a case of your brain miscategorizing information. Rather than an event being remembered as an autobiographical memory, it is saved as a purely semantic one. Just the raw information is retained. The larger context is lost. Famed neurologist Oliver Sacks said of the phenomenon: “It is startling to realize that some of our most cherished memories may never have happened—or may have happened to someone else. I suspect that many of my enthusiasms and impulses, which seem entirely ‘my own’, have arisen from others’ suggestions, which have powerfully influenced me consciously or unconsciously, and then been forgotten.”

隐性记忆，就是大脑将信息进行了错误的分类。原本属于情景记忆的信息，被错误地存储为语义记忆。大脑只保留了信息本身，却丢失了信息的来源和背景。著名神经学家奥利弗·萨克斯曾这样描述隐性记忆：“令人震惊的是，我们一些最珍爱的记忆，也许从未发生过，或者发生在别人身上。我怀疑我的许多热情和冲动，那些我自认为完全属于自己的想法，其实都源于他人的暗示。这些暗示在潜移默化中影响着我，最终却被我遗忘。”

More recent studies have successfully replicated Brown and Murphy’s original findings, confirming just how easy it is to induce cryptomnesia. Even when participants were offered monetary reward for correctly attributing ideas, they still occasionally claimed other people’s suggestions as their own, effectively demonstrating that cryptomnesia is something we don’t do intentionally for personal gain. These different variations of the experiment have managed to uncover certain conditions that are likely to increase instances of the phenomenon.

近年来，更多研究成功复制了布朗和墨菲的实验结果，证实了隐性记忆很容易被诱发。即使研究人员提供金钱奖励，鼓励参与者正确识别想法的来源，他们依然会偶尔将别人的想法误认为是自己的。这表明，隐性记忆并非故意为之，也不是为了个人利益而进行的剽窃行为。这些不同的实验，也揭示了哪些因素会增加隐性记忆出现的频率。

For example, the next-in-line effect demonstrates how people who come immediately after you in a brainstorming session are more likely to accidentally steal your ideas. In fact, brainstorming sessions in general run a high risk of falling victim to unconscious plagiarism. Part of the reason might be exactly because of the collaborative environment. Nothing seems to increase instances of idea theft more than an open invitation to improve upon existing proposals. Add this to the fact that brainstorming sessions usually have a high degree of disorganization and chaos, and you can see why it’s easy for people to misremember who came up with what.

例如，“下一个效应”表明，在头脑风暴会议中，紧随你发言的人更容易无意间剽窃你的想法。事实上，头脑风暴会议很容易滋生无意识剽窃行为。这可能是因为头脑风暴的合作环境，鼓励人们在现有方案的基础上进行改进，这无形中增加了想法被窃取的可能性。再加上头脑风暴会议通常比较混乱，人们很容易记错想法的来源。

Other factors, such as stress, multitasking, and the amount of time that has passed between the event and the associated information being recalled, also contribute to the likelihood that you might unintentionally engage in intellectual robbery.

压力、多任务处理以及信息获取和回忆之间的时间间隔等因素，也会增加无意识剽窃行为发生的可能性。

Cryptomnesia is worrying in its own right. The notion that you could mistakenly commit plagiarism at any given time is enough to make most people second-guess even their best ideas. However, when you consider this alongside the influences of things like the internet and social media, it can scare anyone into pulling a George Harrison and simply stop creating. While researching this video, I just did a quick search on YouTube to make sure someone else hadn’t made the exact same video, just to be safe.

隐性记忆本身就令人担忧。意识到自己随时可能无意间犯下剽窃罪行，足以让大多数人对自己的想法产生怀疑，即使是那些自认为最棒的想法。而互联网和社交媒体的普及，更是加剧了这种焦虑，让人们像乔治·哈里森一样，干脆放弃创作。在制作这

Today, we’re constantly being bombarded by content. We consume so much in a day that it has become practically impossible to recall every TikTok video or Instagram story you watched, no matter how hard you try. Even for the people who avoid these platforms or limit the amount of time they spend on social media, its effect is still inescapable. The result is that we’re more likely than ever to commit cryptomnesia. The problem is so widespread that cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg has observed how contemporary authors increasingly borrow even from their own work in order to meet the intense demands of publishers. It’s gotten so bad that writers are stealing from themselves! And in a culture where creators are expected to turn out seemingly endless quantities of “new” material, basically overnight, who can blame them? When there are so many people whose livelihoods are built around the expectation of constant creativity, and when all of us are exposed to incessant streams of quick, easily forgettable media, how can we possibly avoid inadvertent plagiarism?

如今，我们生活在一个信息爆炸的时代，每天都接收着海量的信息。我们很难记住自己看过的每一个抖音视频或 Instagram 快拍，即使刻意去记忆也无济于事。即使是那些不使用社交媒体或限制使用时间的人，也无法完全逃脱信息过载的影响。这导致我们更容易出现隐性记忆，无意识地剽窃他人的想法。认知心理学家罗纳德·T·凯洛格观察到，当代作家为了满足出版商的要求，越来越多地借鉴甚至抄袭自己的作品。这听起来很荒谬，但在这个追求快速产出“新”内容的文化氛围中，创作者们不得不这样做。当人们的生计依赖于持续不断的创意产出，当我们都被淹没在快速更迭、容易遗忘的信息洪流中，我们该如何避免无意识的剽窃行为呢？

But the worst consequence of cryptomnesia isn’t legal battles, or even that an artist might have their life’s work taken from them. Rather, it’s that it might be silencing the voices of entire populations. Humans tend to adopt, and likewise steal, the ideas of people that they relate to. False claims of originality occur at a significantly higher rate when the individuals involved share the same sex, race, or socioeconomic group. This suggests that we’re psychologically primed to favor, and therefore advance, ideas from those who look like us, regardless of the value of those ideas.

然而，隐性记忆最可怕的后果并非法律纠纷，也并非艺术家作品被剽窃，而是它可能会导致某些群体的 voices 被 silenced。人类更倾向于接受和剽窃那些与自己相似的人的想法。当人们拥有相同的性别、种族或社会经济背景时，他们更容易错误地将别人的想法据为己有。这表明，我们更容易偏袒那些与我们相似的人的想法，并将其推广，而不管这些想法本身的价值如何。

This unconscious bias can serve as a form of groupthink and sideline ideas put forward by people who we don’t identify with. In the worst cases, this effectively serves as a form of intellectual discrimination against anyone who doesn’t fall into the mainstream demographics. While unintentional, the effect can be nearly the same as if those people hadn’t been allowed in the room in the first place.

这种无意识的偏见会导致群体思维，将那些来自不同群体的人的想法边缘化。在最糟糕的情况下，这会导致对非主流群体的智力歧视。尽管这种歧视并非有意为之，但其结果却与将这些群体排除在外无异。

As though this weren’t nefarious enough, it turns out cryptomnesia doesn’t just increase the probability that you will ignore ideas from people you don’t identify with. Ironically, it makes it more likely that you will steal their ideas as well. Alongside the experiments of Alan Brown and Dana Murphy, other psychologists investigating cryptomnesia in the 1980s observed a phenomenon that they dubbed “social cryptomnesia.” In a series of studies, researchers asked participants about their attitudes towards things like equal rights, environmentalism, and world peace. Most expressed positive opinions of these values, at least initially. But when participants were reminded of the groups who first campaigned for these causes, such as civil rights, green, and anti-war activists, the reported favorability dropped significantly. Despite participants having adopted identical views as these groups, it seemed that they had forgotten their contributions. Not only that, but these groups were seen as radical or deviant, despite their beliefs being essentially the same as their participants.

更令人不安的是，隐性记忆不仅会让我们忽视那些与我们不同的人的想法，甚至会让我们更容易剽窃他们的想法。除了艾伦·布朗和达娜·墨菲的实验，其他心理学家在 20 世纪 80 年代对隐性记忆的研究中，还观察到了一种被称为“社会性隐性记忆”的现象。在一系列研究中，研究人员询问参与者对平权、环保主义和世界和平等议题的态度。大多数参与者最初都表达了支持的态度。然而，当研究人员提醒他们，这些议题最早是由民权运动、环保主义者和反战人士提出的时，参与者对这些议题的支持度却显著下降。尽管他们认同这些群体的观点，但却似乎忘记了这些群体做出的贡献。不仅如此，他们还将这些群体视为激进分子或异类，尽管他们的观点与参与者基本一致。

More recently, in 2017, a study was carried out by Swiss researcher Fabrizio Butera, investigating the effect of social cryptomnesia in relation to minority groups. In Butera’s experiment, groups of women were asked to express their agreement or disagreement with statements on gender equality. Support for issues like equal salary, the right to vote, and freedom to divorce was overwhelming. Yet this support diminished when the phrase “as proposed by feminist movements” was added to the statements, suggesting underlying prejudice. This, despite every one of these issues having been fought for by suffragists and other feminist movements throughout the 20th century. Though they may have shaped the popular discourse of today, most people seem to have largely forgotten about their contribution.

2017 年，瑞士研究人员法布里齐奥·布特拉进行了一项研究，探讨社会性隐性记忆对少数群体的影响。在实验中，他让几组女性对关于性别平等的陈述表达赞成或反对的意见。对于同工同酬、选举权和离婚自由等议题，女性参与者普遍表示支持。然而，当陈述中加入“正如女权运动所提出的”这句话时，参与者的支持度却显著下降，这表明她们潜意识中存在着偏见。尽管 20 世纪的女权运动为争取这些权利做出了巨大贡献，但如今大多数人似乎已经忘记了她们的努力。

The danger then, of cryptomnesia, is twofold: not only are we biologically predisposed to ignore the ideas of people who don’t look like us, but in cases where we do adopt those ideas, it’s unlikely that we’ll give them credit. The effect is a pathological undervaluing of minority activists, thinkers, and artists, leaving them in danger of being forgotten in spite of their contributions. Nearly everyone knows the name George Harrison, and if you don’t, you’ve definitely heard of the Beatles. But I doubt you’ve ever heard of Ronnie Mack.

由此可见，隐性记忆的危害是双重的：一方面，我们天生就倾向于忽视那些与我们不同的人的想法；另一方面，即使我们接受了他们的想法，也很少会给予他们应有的认可。这导致少数族裔的活动家、思想家和艺术家们长期被低估，他们的贡献被遗忘。几乎所有人都知道乔治·哈里森，即使你不知道他，也肯定听说过披头士乐队。但你听说过罗尼·麦克吗？我估计很少有人知道他。

If proper recognition isn’t given to the people who deserve it, it only serves to prop up existing power structures while perpetuating discrimination. In other words, it helps maintain the status quo.

如果不给予那些做出贡献的人应有的认可，只会巩固现有的权力结构，加剧歧视，最终导致社会停滞不前。

But how do we combat our bias? How do we stop ourselves from falling into the trap of cryptomnesia?

那么，我们该如何克服这种偏见，避免落入隐性记忆的陷阱呢？

One easy way is by going back and consciously reviewing material. Research has shown that this can reduce rates of cryptomnesia by two-thirds. This kind of deliberate introspection, where you occasionally ask yourself where you’ve acquired certain information or beliefs, can help decrease derivative thinking. What’s even better, we can actually use this knowledge to help change people’s views of minority groups. Butera’s 2017 study on social cryptomnesia also found that when participants were made aware of the disconnect between their beliefs and their attitudes towards the feminists that first fought for those same beliefs, their opinions of the group improved.

一个简单的方法是，主动回顾和反思我们获取信息的来源。研究表明，这种方法可以将隐性记忆的发生率降低三分之二。有意识地反省自己从哪里获得某些信息或观点，可以帮助我们减少思维定势的影响。更重要的是，我们可以利用这种认知来改变人们对少数群体的看法。布特拉 2017 年关于社会性隐性记忆的研究发现，当人们意识到自己对某些议题的认同与对倡导这些议题的群体存在认知偏差时，他们对这些群体的态度就会有所改善。

We’ll never be able to completely eliminate cryptomnesia. But with a bit of mindfulness, we can avoid its worst consequences. And perhaps even use this knowledge to help change people’s minds for the better.

我们无法彻底消除隐性记忆，但只要保持警惕，就能避免其带来的负面影响。我们甚至可以利用这些知识，帮助人们转变观念，让世界变得更美好。

That is, if we don’t forget.

当然，前提是我们自己不要忘记这一点。

At the End of the Korean War At the end of the Korean War, The New York Times published a gripping story detailing how returning American soldiers may have been converted by communist brainwashers. The story became widely popular. Some troops were allegedly confessing to war crimes, while others adopted the communist ideology and even refused to return home. The fear of brainwashing, or “brain warfare,” both terrified and fascinated the American public, at a time when political tensions were rising in the early years of the Cold War.

朝鲜战争结束之际 朝鲜战争结束后，《纽约时报》发表了一篇耸人听闻的报道，声称回国的美国士兵可能已经被共产主义者洗脑。这篇报道引起了巨大的轰动。据说，有些士兵承认犯下战争罪行，有些士兵则皈依了共产主义，甚至拒绝回国。在冷战初期，政治局势日益紧张，“洗脑”或“思想战”的概念，既让人恐惧，又令人着迷，在美国公众中引发了广泛的恐慌。

The CIA was convinced that the Soviet Union had developed a drug or technique to control minds. And as a response, they launched a top-secret program called MKUltra. MKUltra’s main purpose was to conduct covert experiments centered around behavior modification. Human test subjects were exposed to electroshock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and a mixture of drugs, potions, and chemicals to see whether any of these would be successful in controlling the human mind. While the CIA believed that all these experiments could be potentially useful, there was one drug that stood out and became MKUltra’s obsession in the 1950s and ’60s. The alleged race for manipulating the human mind had just begun, and the drug at the heart of it was discovered by accident.

美国中央情报局（CIA）坚信，苏联已经掌握了控制思想的药物或技术。为了应对这一威胁，CIA 启动了一项名为“MKUltra”的绝密计划。该计划旨在通过秘密实验，研究控制人类行为的方法。实验对象包括人类受试者，他们被施以电击疗法、催眠、测谎、辐射以及各种药物、药剂和化学物质的混合物，以测试这些方法是否能够控制人类的思想。CIA 认为所有这些实验都具有潜在的价值，但有一种药物却脱颖而出，成为他们在 20 世纪 50 年代和 60 年代的重点研究对象。这场控制人类思想的竞赛已经拉开序幕，而这场竞赛的核心，是一种偶然被发现的药物。

In 1938, Albert Hofmann, a researcher working for a Swiss chemical company called Sandoz, accidentally formulated a psychoactive hallucinogenic that would alter the course of history. Hofmann initially wanted to synthesize a chemical compound that would stimulate the respiratory and circulatory system by combining lysergic acid with other molecules. On his 25th attempt, he inadvertently created lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25. While this new discovery was useless to his research at the time, Hofmann noticed that there was something interesting about this new compound. The animals that were exposed to it showed strange levels of excitement and behaved peculiarly.

1938 年，瑞士化学公司 Sandoz 的研究员阿尔伯特·霍夫曼，偶然合成了一种能够改变历史进程的精神活性致幻剂。霍夫曼最初的研究目标是合成一种能够刺激呼吸和循环系统的化合物，他尝试将麦角酸与其他分子结合，经过 25 次实验，他无意中合成了麦角酸二乙酰胺，也就是 LSD-25。虽然这一发现与他当时的研究无关，但霍夫曼注意到，这种新化合物具有一些奇特的性质。接触到 LSD 的动物表现出异常的兴奋和奇特行为。

Not thinking too much of it, though, Hofmann shelved his new discovery for five years, until the results of his testing piqued his interest again. And he decided to synthesize it in his lab once more. While in the final stages of synthesizing LSD during the height of the Second World War in 1943, Hofmann accidentally absorbed some of the substance. He soon experienced restlessness, dizziness, and a “state of extremely stimulated imagination” that prompted him to abandon his work for the day and go home.

然而，霍夫曼并没有太过在意这个发现，将其搁置了五年。直到实验结果再次引起他的兴趣，他才决定重新合成 LSD。1943 年，第二次世界大战正值白热化阶

The next morning, he returned to his lab with a burning desire to discover what had affected him the previous day. After ruling out all possible contaminants, he came to the conclusion that he must have somehow ingested LSD, and that what he experienced was similar to the animals he observed in his lab five years prior. To verify this hypothesis, Hofmann decided that there was only one thing to do: self-experiment.

第二天早上，霍夫曼回到实验室，决心找出前一天让他产生幻觉的原因。在排除了所有可能的污染物后，他推断自己一定是误服了 LSD，而且他的症状与五年前那些接触过 LSD 的动物非常相似。为了验证这一推断，他决定进行一次大胆的自我实验。

So, on April 19th, 1943, Albert Hofmann embarked on the world’s first acid trip. Forty minutes after taking the drug, Hofmann began feeling dizziness, anxiety, visual distortions, and a sudden urge to laugh. While riding his bicycle home, he also reported that “everything in his field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror.” When he finally reached the safety of his home, he collapsed on his sofa. LSD’s psychedelic effects locked him in a frenzy of hallucinations that manifested in a “continued animated motion” driven by inner restlessness. Hofmann was so frightened that he thought he was going to die. But soon, the effects subdued and the horror softened, giving way to a feeling of “good fortune and gratitude,” magnified by an unprecedented display of colors and shapes behind his closed eyes. “Everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created,” he wrote.

1943 年 4 月 19 日，阿尔伯特·霍夫曼开启了人类历史上第一次 LSD 之旅。服药 40 分钟后，他开始感到头晕、焦虑，视觉扭曲，并且突然想大笑。在骑自行车回家的路上，他感觉“视野中的一切都在扭曲晃动，就像哈哈镜中的影像”。回到家后，他瘫倒在沙发上。LSD 的致幻效果使他陷入了一连串的幻觉之中，内心极度不安，仿佛置身于“持续运动的动画”中。霍夫曼惊恐万分，以为自己快要死了。但很快，药效逐渐消退，恐惧感也随之减轻，取而代之的是一种“幸运和感激”的心情。他闭上眼睛，看到了前所未有的色彩和图案，这让他欣喜若狂。“一切都闪耀着全新的光芒，世界仿佛获得了新生。”他在笔记中写道。

The following morning, “all my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day.” Today, April 19th is celebrated by recreational LSD users as Bicycle Day, because of Hofmann’s colorful ride home.

第二天早上，他感觉“所有感官都处于极度敏感的状态，这种状态持续了一整天”。如今，4 月 19 日被 LSD 爱好者称为“自行车日”，以纪念霍夫曼那次充满幻觉的自行车之旅。

Acid and psychedelic are two terms that are forever linked, thanks to Hofmann. Psychedelic is a combination of the Greek words psyche, which means “mind,” and delos, which is “to reveal.” Clinically, a psychedelic experience refers to a class of compounds that induce a “mind-manifesting” state in its users, sending them on a journey that often provides unique insights and emotions that they were otherwise oblivious to. This feeling can last for up to 12 hours and can be very dramatic. Most individuals report a distorted sense of time, an altered sense of self, and dramatic changes in feelings and sensations. Some experience anesthesia, where their senses intertwine, adding another dimension to their perception of the world, such as tasting music, seeing sounds, and hearing colors.

“迷幻药”和“psychedelic”这两个词语，因为霍夫曼而永远联系在一起。“psychedelic”一词源于希腊语，由“psyche”（心灵）和“delos”（揭示）组成，意为“心灵显现”。从临床角度来看，psychedelic 体验是指一类化合物能够诱发使用者产生“心灵显现”的状态，让他们经历一

An acid trip is a journey into one’s own mind and can provide its users with deep and profound realizations. But it can also be very unsettling, with the ability to push the mind into dark and unexplored places that could have some horrific effects. Scientists believe that LSD influences the receptors in the brain responsible for regulating serotonin, which is a chemical that carries messages between nerves and plays a key role in regulating mood, happiness, and sexual desire, among other things.

LSD 体验是一场心灵之旅，它可以带来深刻的感悟，但也可能令人不安，因为它会将人的意识推向黑暗和未知的领域，甚至造成可怕的后果。科学家认为，LSD 会影响大脑中负责调节血清素的受体。血清素是一种神经递质，在调节情绪、快乐和性欲等方面发挥着重要作用。

While there was, and still is, no research that connects LSD with mind control, in the late 1940s, the CIA received reports that the Soviets were engaged in “intensive efforts” to reduce LSD, believing it to be the key to controlling an individual’s mind. So when the US government found out that Hofmann had created this mind-altering drug, they approached his employer, Sandoz, and paid $240,000 to purchase the world’s entire supply. What followed was reported by investigative journalist Stephen Kinzer as the “most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control.”

尽管没有研究表明 LSD 与思想控制之间存在联系，但在 20 世纪 40 年代后期，CIA 收到情报称，苏联正在积极研究 LSD，认为它是控制人类思想的关键。因此，当美国政府得知霍夫曼合成了这种能够改变意识的药物后，他们立即联系了霍夫曼的雇主 Sandoz 公司，并斥资 24 万美元购买了全球所有的 LSD 库存。正如调查记者斯蒂芬·金泽所说，接下来发生的事情，是“人类历史上对思想控制技术最持久的研究”。

The CIA, under MKUltra, began distributing LSD to hospitals, clinics, prisons, and other institutions, asking them to carry out research projects on patients and prisoners so that they could understand what LSD was, how people reacted to it, and how it could potentially be used as a tool for mind control.

在 MKUltra 计划的掩护下，CIA 开始将 LSD 分发给医院、诊所、监狱和其他机构，要求他们对病人和囚犯进行 LSD 实验，以了解 LSD 的性质、人体对 LSD 的反应，以及 LSD 是否能够用于思想控制。

Whitey Bulger, a prisoner who volunteered for the program in exchange for a shorter sentence, was told that the drug was being tested as a cure for schizophrenia. As part of the experiment, he was administered LSD every day for over a year. He later realized he was a guinea pig in an experiment aimed at testing the long-term effects of LSD and understanding whether it could make a person lose their mind. Bulger wrote about his experience that he was closely monitored by physicians who repeatedly asked him leading questions, such as, “Would you ever kill anyone?” that eventually drove him to the brink of insanity. The experiments were “the most extreme trials conducted on any human being by any US agency,” and Bulger claimed that he was never the same after. He was continually haunted by auditory and visual hallucinations, violent nightmares, and anxiety so severe that he couldn’t even sleep.

怀特·布尔格是一名囚犯，他为了换取减刑，自愿参加了这项计划。他被告知，这种药物正在进行精神分裂症的治疗实验。作为实验的一部分，他每天都被注射 LSD，持续了一年多。后来他才意识到，自己只是实验中的小白鼠，实验的目的是测试 LSD 的长期影响，以及它是否会导致人精神失常。布尔格在回忆录中写道，医生们对他进行了严密的监控，不断地问他一些诱导性的问题，例如“你会杀人吗？”，最终将他逼到了崩溃的边缘。他形容这些实验是“美国任何机构对人类进行过的最极端的实验”，并声称自己从此性情大变，一直被幻听、幻视、暴力噩梦和严重的焦虑所困扰，甚至无法入睡。

The CIA, under MKUltra, believed that LSD had the potential to “blast” a person’s mind, which would open up the opportunity to reprogram it, to either help extract people from the alleged Soviet mind attacks, or, more likely, to “make their enemy an enemy of himself.” During the Cold War, the race for mind control was believed to be the most crucial of victories. So the CIA, under MKUltra, basically had a license to kill from the US government. They had the authority to requisition humans from all over the country and around the world and subject them to all kinds of abuse, even if it were fatal. Enemy agents captured in Europe and East Asia were subjected to all sorts of tests, from electroshock and sensory isolation to temperature extremes. These weren’t designed to understand the human mind, but to rather destroy it in order to rebuild it again from the ground up.

CIA 在 MKUltra 计划的指导下认为，LSD 能够“摧毁”一个人的意识，然后再对其进行“重新编程”，使其摆脱苏联的“思想控制”，或者更确切地说，是“让敌人成为自己的敌人”。在冷战时期，控制人类思想被视为最重要的胜利。因此，CIA 在 MKUltra 计划的掩护下，获得了美国政府的默许，可以随意处置实验对象，甚至不惜造成人员伤亡。他们从世界各地招募实验对象，对他们进行各种残酷的实验，包括电击、感官剥夺、极端温度等等。这些实验的目的并非为了理解人类的思想，而是为了摧毁意识，再从头开始进行“改造”。

Perhaps the most notorious experiment of that era was Operation Midnight Climax. Government-employed prostitutes lured unsuspecting men to CIA safe houses, where LSD experiments took place. The prostitutes dosed the men with LSD while CIA officials watched their minds unravel through a two-way mirror. As all this was underway, the agents themselves were also getting high and indulging in some unscrupulous behavior. The agent heading the program, George White, later wrote, “Of course I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, deceive, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?”

这一时期最臭名昭著的实验，莫过于“午夜高潮行动”。CIA 利用政府雇佣的妓女，将不知情的男性诱骗到安全屋，进行 LSD 实验。妓女们给这些男性服用 LSD，而 CIA 官员则躲在单向镜后面观察他们的反应。在实验过程中，特工们也经常吸食毒品，行为放荡不羁。该计划负责人乔治·怀特后来写道：“当然，我是一个微不足道的传教士，实际上是一个异教徒，但我全心全意地投入这项工作，因为它太有趣了。还有什么地方可以让一个热血沸腾的美国男孩，在得到最高层的授权和祝福后，肆无忌惮地撒谎、杀人、欺骗、偷窃、强奸和掠夺呢？”

Ultimately, after dosing countless people, MKUltra concluded LSD was too unpredictable to be used for mind control, and the program was axed following an inspection of its unorthodox and unethical methods. Throughout its course, the program allegedly involved more than 150 experiments, with many casualties and lives permanently ruined. The actual number remains a mystery because most of MKUltra’s files were destroyed. Ironically, the drug the CIA hoped to be their key to mind control ended up freeing people’s minds, sparking an anti-government rebellion dedicated to destroying everything the CIA held dear.

最终，在对无数人进行实验后，MKUltra 计划的负责人发现，LSD 的效果太过难以预测，无法用于思想控制。在遭到调查和谴责后，该计划被叫停。据称，该计划共进行了 150 多项实验，造成了大量人员伤亡，许多人的生活被彻底毁掉。由于大部分实验记录都被销毁，具体的受害者人数至今仍是一个谜。讽刺的是，CIA 试图利用 LSD 控制思想，结果却适得其反，LSD 解放了人们的思想，引发了一场反政府运动，这场运动致力于摧毁 CIA 所代表的一切。

The movement focused on protesting the Vietnam War, in addition to advocating for equal rights and environmental awareness. As the spread of LSD grew, it became the unofficial symbol for this movement. It was heralded as a means for people to connect to nature and bring about positive changes in society. Counterculture activists rebelled against “The Establishment” and its participation in the mind-expansion experiments that acid was thought to provoke. Pressure created by the movement is also widely credited for the creation of the Clean Air Act in 1963, which was the United States’ first and most influential environmental law to regulate air emissions. It also played a major role in conceiving the first Earth Day in 1970, which helped bring environmental concerns to the forefront of youth culture.

这场运动以反对越南战争为核心，同时倡导平权和环保意识。随着 LSD 的流行，它成为这场运动的象征。人们认为，LSD 能够帮助人们回归自然，推动社会变革。反主流文化人士谴责政府参与 LSD 实验，并将其视为对思想自由的侵犯。这场运动也促成了 1963 年《清洁空气法》的颁布，这是美国第一部也是最具影响力的空气污染防治法。此外，这场运动还推动了 1970 年第一个“地球日”的诞生，将环境保护议题带入了青年文化的中心。

Sadly, although the movement sparked a lot of positive change, its overuse of acid, coupled with the US government’s War on Drugs, divided the nation and eventually hindered the positive experimentation of the psychedelic. And so, after the US Food and Drug Administration concluded that LSD was the “most dangerous drug to have ever been created,” possession of the psychedelic was made illegal in 1968.

遗憾的是，尽管这场运动推动了许多积极的社会变革，但对 LSD 的滥用，加上美国政府发起的“毒品战争”，导致社会撕裂，最终阻碍了对这种迷幻剂的积极研究。1968 年，美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）宣布 LSD 为“有史以来最危险的药物”，并将其列为非法药物。

Still, there is no doubt that the counterculture movement at the time wouldn’t have prevailed without it, making LSD one of the most influential drugs in human history.

尽管如此，不可否认的是，如果没有 LSD，当时的反主流文化运动就不会取得如此大的影响力。LSD 也因此成为人类历史上最具影响力的药物之一。

More than 80 years after its discovery, LSD is still somewhat of a mystery. The fact that it’s illegal in many countries makes it hard for scientists to conduct appropriate research to determine its long-term effects. That being said, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, began to conduct basic safety studies. And in 2014, researchers initiated the first scientific studies on human subjects in decades. While acid’s ability to control minds is still in question, researchers have hinted that the use of psychedelics could help people to stop smoking, deal with PTSD, fight depression, and even help terminally ill patients deal with their fear of death.

在被发现 80 多年后，LSD 依然充满着神秘色彩。由于在很多国家，LSD 都是非法药物，这阻碍了科学家对其长期影响的深入研究。尽管如此，多学科迷幻研究协会（MAPS）已经开始进行 LSD 的安全性研究。2014 年，研究人员启动了数十年来首次针对人类受试者的 LSD 科学研究。虽然 LSD 是否能够控制思想依然存在争议，但研究人员已经发现，迷幻剂可以帮助人们戒烟、治疗创伤后应激障碍、对抗抑郁症，甚至帮助绝症患者缓解对死亡的恐惧。

The uses of LSD in psychotherapy have also intrigued scientists and psychoanalysts. The drug was found to assist patients in uncovering previously repressed memories from their subconscious, while also stimulating their imagination in a way that lowered their customary defenses and made them more accepting of the treatment. LSD’s therapeutic applications could be the beginning of a new era of openness. Scientists keep testing its effects on the human mind.

LSD 在心理治疗领域的应用，也引起了科学家和精神分析学家的关注。研究发现，LSD 可以帮助患者挖掘潜意识中被压抑的记忆，同时还能激发想象力，降低心理防御机制，使患者更容易接受治疗。LSD 的治疗应用，或许将开启一个全新的开放时代。科学家们正在不断探索 LSD 对人类意识的影响。

But despite these new studies, we still don’t have conclusive evidence on its long-term effects. Cary Grant, an American actor popular in the 1950s, took over 100 doses of LSD, claiming that it allowed him to connect with the subconscious while breaking free from “the usual disciplines one imposes on oneself.” Similarly, Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd, experienced waves of inspiration while using LSD that propelled the band to fame at the end of the 1960s. But the same forces that unleashed Barrett’s imagination led him down a path of self-destruction, as an overuse of the drug slowly drove him to insanity, becoming a shell of the man he once was.

尽管有了这些新的研究，但我们仍然缺乏关于 LSD 长期影响的确凿证据。美国演员凯瑞·格兰特曾在 20 世纪 50 年代服用过 100 多次 LSD，他声称 LSD 帮助他连接潜意识，打破“自我强加的常规束缚”。同样，平克·弗洛伊德乐队的创始成员西德·巴雷特，也曾借助 LSD 获得灵感，推动乐队在 20 世纪 60 年代末声名鹊起。然而，LSD 也将他推向了自我毁灭的深渊。过量服用 LSD 导致他精神失常，最终变成了行尸走肉。

Albert Hofmann wrote that his psychedelic experiences left him with feelings of “ecstatic love and unity with all creatures in the universe.” However, he also did not shy away from the fact that the unpredictability of its effects was the major danger of LSD. The “good mood and positive expectations” of a trip could quickly turn to “horrendous depression” if the setting isn’t properly controlled and monitored closely.

阿尔伯特·霍夫曼曾写道，他的迷幻体验让他感受到“对宇宙万物狂喜的爱与合一”。然而，他也坦言，LSD 最大的危险在于其不可预测性。如果环境控制不当，缺乏严密的监控，“愉悦的心情和积极的期待”可能会迅速转变为“可怕的抑郁”。

From being a tool for mind control to becoming the symbol of freedom, today LSD has undergone yet another public image shift, with some involved with Silicon Valley advocating microdosing to boost creativity. With this new revival of the psychedelic in this era of technology, one can’t help but ponder on Hofmann’s words upon his discovery of the drug: “I did not choose LSD, LSD found and called me.”

从思想控制的工具，到自由的象征，如今，LSD 的公众形象再次发生转变。硅谷的一些人开始推崇微剂量服用 LSD，以提升创造力。在这个科技时代，迷幻剂再次兴起，这不禁让人想起霍夫曼在发现 LSD 时所说的话：“我没有选择 LSD，是 LSD 选择了我。”

In 1946, a 41-year-old hairdresser named Janet Schott came to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, to be treated for scleroderma, a rare connective tissue condition. She had escaped the violence against Jews in Belarus during the Second World War and was hoping to begin a new life in the United States. What Schott didn’t know was that she would become one of the 18 people the US government secretly injected with plutonium from 1945 to 1947, as part of the Manhattan Project. None of them ever found out.

1946 年，41 岁的理发师珍妮特·肖特来到纽约州罗切斯特市的斯特朗纪念医院，接受硬皮病治疗。这是一种罕见的结缔组织疾病。二战期间，她从白俄罗斯逃离了针对犹太人的迫害，希望在美国开始新的生活。然而，她并不知道，自己将成为曼哈顿计划的受害者之一。在 1945 年至 1947 年期间，美国政府秘密地给 18 个人注射了钚，肖特就是其中之一。这些受害者至死都不知道真相。

The Manhattan Project was the code name given to the American-led effort to research and build a functional atomic weapon during World War II. It recruited thousands of scientists worldwide and took place across multiple continents. The result of these efforts was the construction of the world’s first atomic bombs, which were later dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ultimately ending the Second World War.

曼哈顿计划是二战期间美国主导的原子弹研制计划的代号。该计划招募了来自世界各地的数千名科学家，并在多个大洲开展研究。最终，世界上第一颗原子弹诞生了，并被投放到日本的广岛和长崎，加速了二战的结束。

The mobilization for the program began in 1939 when the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, received a startling letter from Albert Einstein, with an urgent message. Physicists had discovered that uranium had the potential to generate unprecedented amounts of energy. It could be used in creating the world’s strongest and most devastating bomb. What was more urgent in Einstein’s letter was that he suspected that Nazi Germany was already stockpiling this radioactive element in hopes of creating a weapon of mass destruction. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States joined the war alongside the Allied Forces. And in 1942, the Manhattan Project was officially born, bringing forth an atomic revolution shrouded by secrecy, espionage, and a whole lot of controversy.

曼哈顿计划的启动，源于 1939 年美国总统富兰克林·D·罗斯福收到的一封来自爱因斯坦的信。信中，爱因斯坦警告说，物理学家们发现铀能够产生巨大的能量，可以用来制造威力空前的炸弹。更令人担忧的是，纳粹德国可能已经开始囤积铀，试图制造大规模杀伤性武器。1941 年 12 月，日本偷袭珍珠港，美国正式加入二战，与盟军并肩作战。1942 年，曼哈顿计划正式启动，一场充满秘密、间谍活动和争议的原子革命拉开序幕。

While nuclear research had begun in the US before its involvement in the war, the Manhattan Project stood out because it wasn’t purely theoretical. Its purpose was clear-cut: build an atomic bomb before the Germans. Within a year, it became the number one priority during the war. It got all the funding, all the resources, and all the green lights. The research was mainly centered around the fission of Uranium-235 and Plutonium-238, which split and release heat and atoms with smaller atomic numbers when enriched with an extra neutron. The project’s goal was to produce a chain reaction from splitting these atoms to release enough energy to trigger an explosion.

尽管美国在参战前就已经开始了核研究，但曼哈顿计划的不同之处在于，它并非纯粹的理论研究，而是以制造原子弹为明确目标，并且要在德国之前完成。在短短一年时间里，曼哈顿计划成为战时的头号任务，获得了充足的资金、资源和政策支持。该计划的研究重点是铀 235 和钚 238 的裂变反应。这两种元素在吸收一个额外的中子后，会发生裂变，释放出热量和原子序数更小的原子。该计划的目标是，通过链式反应释放出足够的能量，引发核爆炸。

Despite its name, the Manhattan Project took place all over the US, Canada, England, the Belgian Congo, and parts of the South Pacific. But its most famous research facility was the Los Alamos National Laboratory, located in the remote mountains of Northern New Mexico. As the war advanced and Nazi Germany faltered in Europe, the focus of the project turned to Japan. After the first atomic bomb, called the “Gadget”, was successfully tested around 240 km, or 150 mi, from Los Alamos, a uranium bomb called “Little Boy” and a plutonium bomb called “Fat Man” were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 200,000 people were killed instantly, almost all of them civilians.

虽然名为“曼哈顿计划”，但该计划的研究工作遍布美国、加拿大、英国、比属刚果以及南太平洋的部分地区。其中最著名的研究机构是位于新墨西哥州北部山区的洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室。随着战争形势的变化，纳粹德国在欧洲战场节节败退，曼哈顿计划的目标转向了日本。第一颗原子弹“小玩意”在距离洛斯阿拉莫斯 240 公里的沙漠中成功试爆后，代号为“小男孩”的铀弹和代号为“胖子”的钚弹，分别被投放到日本的广岛和长崎。超过 20 万人当场丧生，其中绝大多数是平民。

At its peak, the Manhattan Project employed 130,000 workers. And by the end of the war, the US had spent $2.2 billion to produce “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” While the research and development of the bombs is in itself controversial, especially with many scientists condemning it, there is another aspect of the program that is just as controversial, or even more so, as often forgotten.

在鼎盛时期，曼哈顿计划雇佣了 13 万名工人。到战争结束时，美国已经花费了 22 亿美元来生产“小男孩”和“胖子”。原子弹的研发本身就充满了争议，许多科学家都对此表示谴责。然而，该计划的另一个方面，却更加令人震惊和难以接受，但却常常被人们遗忘。

At that time, the project’s personnel faced many issues handling recently discovered elements, such as plutonium, that had unknown health risks. So, without regard for human life and safety, the US government turned to human experimentation. The leaders of the Manhattan Project understood the urgency of measuring the impact of radiation on the human body, and in 1942 established a division whose purpose was to protect the health of workers and the public from radiation. They were also tasked with studying potential hazards to establish tolerance doses and develop methods of treatment. Ironically, the medical team of the Manhattan Project concluded that in order to do all this, controlled human experiments were necessary.

当时，曼哈顿计划的研究人员在处理钚等新发现的放射性元素时，遇到了许多难题，因为这些元素的健康风险尚不清楚。于是，美国政府不顾人道主义和伦理道德，将目光转向了人体实验。曼哈顿计划的领导者意识到，评估辐射对人体的影响刻不容缓，于是在 1942 年成立了一个专门部门，负责保护工作人员和公众免受辐射伤害。他们的任务还包括研究辐射的潜在危害，确定安全剂量，并开发治疗方法。具有讽刺意味的是，曼哈顿计划的医疗团队最终得出结论，为了完成这些任务，必须进行人体实验。

So, between 1945 and 1947, 18 subjects were unwittingly injected with plutonium. Several others were exposed to uranium, polonium, and americium. The experiments were conducted at Manhattan Project-affiliated hospitals all over the US.

因此，在 1945 年到 1947 年间，18 名不知情的美国民众被注射了钚，还有其他人被暴露在铀、钋和镅的辐射环境中。这些实验在全美各地与曼哈顿计划相关的医院进行。

Knowing that plutonium might be carcinogenic, or even fatal, to the unsuspecting subjects, Janet Schott never knew that plutonium was in her veins. The dose she was administered was 56 times the amount of radiation an average person absorbs in their lifetime. All of that, straight into her veins. All at once. Janet lived the remaining 29 years of her life in excruciating pain, suffering from a cancer that ultimately led to her death.

肖特并不知道，医生在她体内注射了钚，这种放射性元素可能致癌，甚至致命。她被注射的剂量，相当于普通人一生所受辐射量的 56 倍。如此巨量的辐射，被一次性注入她的体内。在接下来的 29 年里，她饱受病痛折磨，最终死于癌症。

Just like Schott, none of the other test subjects were informed of the substances they were being injected with. And in order to further understand the appalling nature of these experiments, it’s important to highlight some of their stories.

与肖特一样，其他实验对象都不知道自己被注射了什么物质。为了更好地了解这些实验的残酷本质，我们有必要回顾一些受害者的经历。

Ebb Cade was the first victim. On March 24th, 1945, he was brought to the Army hospital in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, after fracturing bones in a car accident. Dr. Hymer Friedell, one of the initial doctors assigned to the Manhattan Project, wrote to Dr. LS Hempelmann, the director of health at Los Alamos, that he had “found the primary subject for the first human plutonium experiment.” He gave Cade the code name HP-12, with HP standing for “Human Product.” On April 10th, 1945, Cade was administered 4.7 micrograms of plutonium, which Friedell suspected was nearly five times the human body’s limit. Samples of his teeth and a biopsy of his bones were taken shortly afterwards, and Cade was released. The doctors didn’t expect him to live for more than 10 years, yet they did what they did with eyes wide open. Eight years after the injection, Cade died of heart failure.

埃布·凯德是第一个受害者。1945 年 3 月 24 日，他因车祸骨折被送往田纳西州橡树岭的陆军医院。海默·弗里德尔医生是曼哈顿计划的早期参与者之一，他致信洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室的卫生主任亨佩尔曼医生，兴奋地宣布：“我找到了第一个钚人体实验的理想对象。”他将凯德编号为 HP-12，HP 代表“Human Product”（人类产品）。1945 年 4 月 10 日，凯德被注射了 4.7 微克的钚。弗里德尔医生怀疑，这个剂量几乎是人体承受极限的五倍。在采集了凯德的牙齿样本和骨骼活检样本后，医生们就将他打发走了。他们认为凯德活不过十年，但却对他的命运漠不关心。八年后，凯德死于心力衰竭。

Similarly, Albert Stevens received a plutonium injection in California, only a month after Cade. He was misdiagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, which later turned out to be just a benign ulcer. Stevens was never informed that he didn’t have cancer, but was instead given a dose of Plutonium-238. Doctors reportedly knew that the dose was potentially carcinogenic, but still administered it, which ultimately led to Stevens’ death, also from heart failure.

一个月后，阿尔伯特·史蒂文斯在加利福尼亚州被注射了钚。他被误诊为晚期胃癌，而实际上只是良性溃疡。医生们没有告诉他真相，而是给他注射了钚 238。据报道，医生们知道这种剂量可能致癌，但依然执意注射，最终导致史蒂文斯死于心力衰竭。

Just like Janet Schott, Ella Charleton, codename HP-3, was also admitted to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester in 1945. Three weeks later, she received a plutonium injection of 4.9 micrograms. Charleton was discharged in December, but she was regularly hospitalized after that until her death, almost 40 years later, by cardiac arrest as well.

与珍妮特·肖特一样，埃拉·查尔顿（代号 HP-3）也于 1945 年住进了罗切斯特市的斯特朗纪念医院。三周后，她被注射了 4.9 微克的钚。同年 12 月，她出院回家，但此后却经常住院治疗，直到 40 年后死于心脏骤停。

But perhaps the most questionable and horrendous case of all was that of Simian Shaw, a 4-year-old suffering from terminal bone cancer. He was flown from Australia, believing that he would be receiving the best available treatments for his condition. What he received instead was a death sentence in the form of a plutonium injection at California’s UCSF Hospital, in 1946. What is most shocking about Shaw’s case is that he was immediately flown to Australia afterwards, with no follow-up on his case and no radioactive data collected. He died eight months later.

然而，最令人发指的案例，莫过于 4 岁的西米恩·肖。他身患晚期骨癌，从澳大利亚远赴美国，希望能够得到最好的治疗。但他得到的，却是来自加州大学旧金山分校医院的“死亡判决”：医生给他注射了钚。更令人震惊的是，注射后，他就被立即送回澳大利亚，没有任何后续治疗和放射性数据记录。八个月后，他离开了人世。

The remaining human test subjects all share similar stories, where they either died from the toxic effects of radiation or were impaired by lifelong illnesses. What’s worse is that human experimentation was justified under the claim that all patients chosen were terminally ill, which simply wasn’t true. A lot of those chosen were misdiagnosed, and repeated errors in procedure, research, and documentation were made, calling into question the efficacy of the experiments themselves.

其他实验对象也遭受了类似的命运，他们要么死于辐射中毒，要么终身饱受疾病折磨。更令人气愤的是，美国政府为人体实验辩护的理由是，所有实验对象都患有绝症，但这根本是谎言。很多实验对象都被误诊，而且实验过程、研究方法和数据记录都存在严重错误，这让人怀疑这些实验的科学价值。

The Manhattan Project leaders claimed that these experiments were necessary to advance the science of nuclear physics. However, as we saw with the cases mentioned, the follow-up research wasn’t thorough enough, and many of the samples ended up being contaminated or destroyed. So they basically ruined people’s lives for absolutely nothing.

曼哈顿计划的负责人声称，这些实验是为了推动核物理研究的进步。然而，正如我们所看到的，这些实验的后续研究并不完善，许多样本被污染或销毁。因此，他们只是为了毫无价值的实验结果，就毁掉了无数人的生命。

Even after the Manhattan Project achieved its intended goal and World War II ended, human experimentation continued well into the Cold War. There’s evidence of several large-scale projects all throughout the US that failed to inform their subjects of the health hazards of their experiments. One of the most shocking was intentionally exposing a school for disabled and special needs children in Massachusetts to radioactive iron and calcium in a government-sponsored study.

即使在曼哈顿计划完成使命、二战结束后，人体实验依然在冷战期间继续进行。有证据表明，美国各地开展了多项大规模的人体实验项目，但实验对象却对实验的健康风险一无所知。其中最令人震惊的是，在马萨诸塞州的一所残疾儿童学校，政府资助了一项研究，故意让孩子们接触放射性铁和钙。

Between 1946 and 1953, uranium injection experiments were also conducted on another 11 patients at Massachusetts General Hospital. Scientists concluded that uranium localized in the kidneys at a much higher rate than previously thought. Sadly, despite the experiments’ results and the human lives lost, the occupational standards for uranium didn’t change, making these human sacrifices unjustified and unnecessary.

1946 年至 1953 年间，马萨诸塞州总医院的 11 名患者被注射了铀。科学家们发现，铀在肾脏中的聚集程度远高于预期。然而，尽管实验获得了结果，也有人为此付出了生命，但铀的职业安全标准却没有改变，这使得这些牺牲显得毫无意义，也毫无必要。

In the early 1990s, the Albuquerque Tribune exposed the nature of the experiments and the identities of the test subjects. All of them had already died, not knowing that they were dosed by the doctors they trusted to cure them.

20 世纪 90 年代初，《阿尔伯克基论坛报》曝光了这些实验的真相以及受害者的身份。这些受害者都已经去世，他们至死都不知道，自己是被那些他们信任的医生欺骗和伤害的。

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Los Alamos laboratory director and the scientist aptly dubbed “the father of the atomic bomb,” reportedly knew the nature of these experiments but expressed that he didn’t want them conducted in his laboratory. There is even evidence that he personally approved plutonium and uranium shipments to be used for human experimentation. The secrecy that revolved around the project makes it difficult to trace the chain of command, but there is enough evidence to show that all the health and medical directors of the Manhattan Program were somehow invested in this research. They knew what was underway, with many even cheering it on.

洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室主任、“原子弹之父”罗伯特·奥本海默，据传知道这些实验的内幕，但他表示不愿在自己领导的实验室进行这类实验。甚至有证据表明，他亲自批准将钚和铀运往其他机构进行人体实验。由于曼哈顿计划的保密性，我们难以追溯决策链，但有足够的证据表明，该计划的所有卫生和医疗主管都参与了这些实验，他们对实验内容心知肚明，甚至有些人还对此表示支持。

The families of the victims were eventually compensated by the government, and a total of $4.8 million was paid in damages—a little more than $9 million today. The US government also adopted new laws in 1997 preventing secret scientific testing on humans.

最终，受害者家属获得了政府的赔偿，总计 480 万美元，相当于现在的 900 多万美元。1997 年，美国政府颁布了新的法律，禁止对人类进行秘密的科学实验。

Janet Schott’s nephew said that the money didn’t help his family get over the issue. His aunt left Belarus to avoid persecution and came to America, only to be injected with a radioactive element that would ruin the rest of her life and lead her to her grave.

珍妮特·肖特的侄子表示，金钱无法弥补他们家庭所遭受的伤害。他的姑妈为了躲避迫害，背井离乡来到美国，却惨遭毒手，被注射了放射性元素，最终痛苦地离开了人世。

Today, the Manhattan Project is hailed by US officials for the crucial role it played in ending the Second World War. But the controversy that surrounds it is still prevalent. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs leveled two cities in a matter of seconds, wiping out entire populations. And the testing that led up to those events resulted in early death or lifelong pain for over a dozen unsuspecting civilians. As with all wars, the innocent ended up paying the heftiest price.

如今，美国政府依然将曼哈顿计划视为二战胜利的关键，但围绕该计划的争议从未停止。广岛和长崎的原子弹爆炸，在瞬间摧毁了两座城市，夺走了无数 innocent 生命。而在此之前的核试验，也导致十多名无辜平民过早死亡或终身残疾。战争总是让无辜者付出最沉重的代价。

Many also argue that the success in developing the first atomic bombs led to the age of the Cold War and the race towards the development of nuclear weapons that are now a threat to humanity. After sending Roosevelt his urgent letter, Einstein later came to regret his decision. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing,” he famously said.

还有人认为，原子弹的研制成功，导致了冷战的爆发和核军备竞赛，核武器也成为悬在人类头顶的达摩克利斯之剑。爱因斯坦在给罗斯福总统写信后，也曾后悔自己的决定。他曾说过一句著名的话：“如果我知道德国人不会成功研制原子弹，我什么都不会做。”

When testing the “Gadget” right outside Los Alamos, Oppenheimer quoted Hindu scripture, foreseeing the immediate threat of nuclear weapons across the planet: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” One week later, the first atomic bombs were dropped, and the world as we know it changed forever.

在洛斯阿拉莫斯郊外测试“小玩意”时，奥本海默引用了印度教经文，预见到了核武器对全世界的威胁：“现在我变成了死神，世界的毁灭者。”一周后，原子弹在日本爆炸，世界从此改变。

Was the pseudo-peace that existed following the Second World War worth human sacrifice?

二战后短暂的和平，真的值得以牺牲无数生命为代价吗？

Have You Ever Donated Money to a Charity? Have you ever donated money to a charity, or taken your clothes to the Goodwill store? How did it make you feel? Amazing, right? Most of us, at some point in our lives, have either donated or will donate money, clothes, food, shelter, and our time to others. And we do these things not because there’s an immediate reward for it. More often than not, we feel best when we give to people who cannot reciprocate, or at least, not in the same capacity.

你是否曾经向慈善机构捐款？ 你是否曾经向慈善机构捐款，或者将旧衣物捐赠给 Goodwill 商店？这种助人为乐的感觉是不是很棒？我们大多数人在一生中都会捐赠金钱、衣物、食物、住所，或者奉献自己的时间去帮助他人。我们这样做并非为了得到回报，而是因为我们发自内心地想要帮助那些无力回报的人。

This altruistic feeling that makes us give to one another, even when there’s nothing to receive, was described by ancient Greeks as philanthropia, “the love of humanity.” Coined around 2,500 years ago, this term was first used in the myth of Prometheus. In the story, the Titan god Prometheus saved humanity from Zeus’s destruction and earned the title of philanthropos tropos, or “humanity-loving character.”

这种无私奉献的精神，即使没有任何回报，我们依然愿意帮助他人，古希腊人称之为“philanthropia”，意为“热爱人类”。这个词语诞生于 2500 年前，最早出现在普罗米修斯的神话故事中。故事中，泰坦神普罗米修斯拯救人类于宙斯的 wrath 之下，因此被誉为“philanthropos tropos”，即“热爱人类之人”。

Although that’s the term we now mostly use to describe this phenomenon, the love for humanity isn’t an exclusively Greek concept. The idea of benevolence towards one another has its roots deeply planted in ancient civilizations throughout the world, from the Middle East to Egypt to the city of Rome. It was also propagated by Babylonian communities as early as the third millennium, and is at the core of all Abrahamic religions and many others across the world. In Egyptian sacred writings, such as the Book of the Dead, it was made clear to the people of the ancient world that a successful passage into the afterlife depended on a lifetime record of benevolent acts towards people who were suffering.

虽然我们现在常用 philanthropia 来描述这种现象，但“博爱”并非古希腊人独有的概念。人类互助友爱的思想，深深植根于世界各地的古代文明，从中东到埃及，再到罗马。早在公元前 3000 年，巴比伦文明就提倡仁爱思想，而“博爱”也是所有亚伯拉罕宗教和其他许多宗教的核心教义。在埃及的宗教典籍《死者之书》中，明确指出，人死后能否顺利进入来世，取决于其一生中对 suffering 之人的善行记录。

While many of us today do not follow any of these ancient teachings or believe in an afterlife anymore, the messages they taught have stayed with us through millennia. So when capitalism and accumulation of wealth began rising in the West in the 1700s, it wasn’t surprising to start seeing rich philanthropists pop up, whose lives became characterized by the voluntary act of giving a large sum of their wealth to promote the common good. This type of lavish giving, the one we most associate with philanthropy today, was rather popularized by rich bankers such as George Peabody, who is now considered the “father of modern philanthropy.” Peabody was an American merchant banker who came from poverty. After amassing his fortune in the early 19th century, he never forgot his humble beginnings and dedicated the later years of his life to charitable work. It’s believed that he gave away around $8 million of his $16 million fortune to charities. His incredible benevolence paved the way for later generations of rich philanthropists.

虽然如今很多人不再信奉古代教义，也不再相信来世，但这些古老的思想依然影响着我们。18 世纪，随着资本主义的发展和财富的积累，西方社会出现了一批富有的慈善家，他们自愿捐出巨额财富，用于公益事业。这种慷慨的捐赠行为，也就是我们今天所说的“慈善”，是由乔治·皮博迪等富有的银行家推广开来的。皮博迪被誉为“现代慈善之父”，他出身贫寒，在 19 世纪初积累了巨额财富。但他始终不忘初心，将晚年奉献给了慈善事业，据信他将一半的财富（约 800 万美元）捐赠给了慈善机构。他的善举为后世的慈善家树立了榜样。

Sadly, what we have today isn’t what Peabody envisioned when he gave away half of his net worth. What started with the notion of lending a helping hand, charitable work is no longer at the core of philanthropy. In today’s world, tax evasion and personal gains have tainted the hands of the world’s wealthiest givers, and have caused a huge wealth gap that only seems to be growing, creating an ever-expanding rift between the social classes.

然而，如今的慈善现状，与皮博迪的初衷背道而驰。慈善事业的本质是帮助他人，但如今，它却沦为富人逃税和谋取私利的工具。逃税和私利玷污了慈善事业，也加剧了社会贫富差距，在不同阶层之间制造了越来越深的鸿沟。

How did we turn that amazing feeling you get giving money away to charity into a corrupt scheme for billionaires and large corporations? To understand this, we have to go back to the end of the 19th century.

为什么这种美好的助人感受，如今却沦为亿万富翁和大公司敛财的工具？要解开这个谜团，我们得回到 19 世纪末。

Andrew Carnegie, an American industrialist, paved the trail for philanthropic work to be used as a tax evasion strategy. Carnegie opposed federal income taxes and argued that he was better off allocating those funds to charities rather than the government. At that time, philanthropy by the ultra-rich funded social services the government couldn’t afford. As a result, senators worried that taxing the wealthy on these charitable amounts would reduce their contributions and increase the burden on the government—a logic that still prevails to this day.

美国实业家安德鲁·卡内基，开创了利用慈善事业逃税的先河。他反对征收联邦所得税，并声称与其将资金交给政府，不如捐赠给慈善机构。当时，富豪们的慈善捐款，填补了政府无力承担的社会服务领域的空白。因此，参议员们担心，如果对慈善捐款征税，会打击富人的捐赠积极性，加重政府的财政负担。这种逻辑至今依然存在。

The government’s solution to this problem was a tax exemption on income for money donated to charity. This legislative move allowed for new wealth management strategies pioneered by Carnegie, who founded a charitable trust that took advantage of the tax exemptions. Before long, wealthy industrialists and bankers started following in Carnegie’s footsteps, protecting their fortunes from substantial taxes under the cover of charitable trusts.

为了解决这个问题，政府决定对慈善捐款免税。这一立法举措，为卡内基开创的新型财富管理策略提供了机会。他成立了慈善信托基金，利用免税政策保护自己的财富。很快，其他富有的实业家和银行家纷纷效仿，以慈善信托的名义逃避巨额税收。

In 2014, Nicholas Woodman, the founder and CEO of GoPro, took his company public and was suddenly worth $3 billion. To celebrate his newly acquired fortune, Woodman announced that he would be donating a whopping $500 million worth of GoPro stock to a foundation bearing his name. The truth is, it’s not as generous as Woodman would want you to believe. You see, the GoPro CEO took advantage of a loophole that would allow him to donate his money without actually donating it.

2014 年，GoPro 创始人兼首席执行官尼古拉斯·伍德曼带领公司上市，个人财富瞬间达到 30 亿美元。为了庆祝这一成就，他宣布将向以自己名字命名的基金会捐赠价值 5 亿美元的 GoPro 股票。然而，事实并非如他所宣称的那样慷慨。这位 GoPro 首席执行官利用了法律漏洞，实现了“只捐钱，不捐物”。

This is done through something called a Donor Advised Fund. Donor Advised Funds are essentially charitable investment accounts in which owners can claim tax deductions upfront without legally being required to distribute the money to charities right away. As long as the money is transferred into these funds under the roof of charitable work, owners can avoid paying higher taxes without donating any of it to charities or foundations. The point of these funds was originally to encourage more resources to get to communities where they’re most needed. Sadly, the way the laws are structured allows tax deductions without any requirement for that money to ever reach those intended communities. It’s no surprise then that since 2007, the number of DAFs in the US has tripled. And while the amount of money donated every year keeps increasing, the actual amount going to communities barely is.

他是通过一种名为“捐赠人建议基金”（DAF）的工具来实现这一目的的。DAF 本质上是一种慈善投资账户，捐赠人可以预先申请税收减免，而无需立即将资金分配给慈善机构。只要资金以慈善的名义存入 DAF 账户，捐赠人就可以逃避高额税收，而无需将资金真正用于慈善事业。DAF 的设立初衷是鼓励更多资源流向最需要帮助的社区。但遗憾的是，现行法律允许捐赠人在不实际捐款的情况下享受税收减免。因此，自 2007 年以来，美国 DAF 的数量增长了两倍。尽管每年的捐款总额不断增加，但真正用于慈善事业的资金却少之又少。

From the $466 billion donated in the United States in 2020, only around $35 billion made its way to qualified charities. A huge sum of money, yes, but not nearly as much as the rich would want you to believe they give away.

2020 年，美国慈善捐款总额高达 4660 亿美元，但真正流向合格慈善机构的资金只有 350 亿美元左右。这虽然是一笔巨款，但与富豪们对外宣称的捐款数额相去甚远。

The reality is that these billionaires are entitled to spend their money however they wish. We can argue the ethics of becoming a billionaire another day, but let’s say they got there on their own merit. They aren’t required to give anything. The main problem isn’t that they don’t give, but that they claim to give more than they actually do. It’s the need to be seen as a hero without doing anything heroic.

现实情况是，这些亿万富翁有权自由支配自己的财富，我们无法强迫他们进行捐赠。我们暂且不讨论他们如何积累财富的道德问题，假设他们都是凭借自身努力获得成功的。他们没有义务进行慈善捐赠。问题的关键不在于他们是否捐款，而在于他们夸大了捐款数额。他们只是想塑造一个“慈善英雄”的形象，而没有真正做出实质性的贡献。

Last year, Musk announced that he would be donating $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares to an undisclosed charity. However, to this day, no single charity has reported receiving the funds from Musk’s donation, with many experts hypothesizing that he simply dumped the cash in a DAF. Financially speaking, offloading $5.7 billion worth of Tesla stock allowed him to claim a tax deduction of 30% on his income. That’s about $570 million saved on taxes. So it seems that the only beneficiary from Musk’s charity is Musk himself: first, on the tax deductions, and second, on the public praise he received because he theoretically donated so much money.

去年，马斯克宣布将向一个未公开的慈善机构捐赠价值 57 亿美元的特斯拉股票。然而，至今没有任何一家慈善机构表示收到了这笔捐款。很多专家推测，他只是将这笔钱存入了 DAF 账户。从财务角度来看，抛售 57 亿美元的特斯拉股票，可以让他获得 30% 的所得税减免，相当于节省了 5.7 亿美元的税款。因此，马斯克的“慈善行为”最大的受益者似乎是他自己：一方面，他获得了巨额的税收减免；另一方面，他赢得了公众的赞誉。

Just months before that, Elon tweeted that he would donate $6 billion to end world hunger if the UN could show him a plan on how they would spend the money. The UN responded by saying that $6 billion won’t solve world hunger, but could potentially save 42 million people on the brink of starvation from pooled income funds, to private foundations, to DAFs, philanthropy today is only magnifying the issue of income inequality and adding to the already substantial gap in wealth.

就在几个月前，马斯克在推特上宣称，如果联合国能够提供一份详细的计划，说明如何利用 60 亿美元解决世界饥饿问题，他就捐出这笔钱。联合国回应说，60 亿美元无法彻底解决世界饥饿问题，但这笔钱可以用于拯救 4200 万濒临饿死的人。从集合收入基金到私人基金会，再到 DAF，如今的慈善事业，非但没有缓解贫富差距，反而加剧了这一问题。

But that’s not even all. The word “philanthropy” does not only mean giving to charities anymore. Now, it is also used to describe giving to groups that promote social or civic causes. And these groups can keep their donors completely anonymous, which basically gives billionaires the power to weaponize their philanthropy for political gain.

但这并非全部。“慈善”的定义已经不再局限于捐赠给慈善机构。如今，它也包括向那些推动社会或公民事业的团体捐款。而这些团体可以对捐款人完全保密，这使得亿万富翁可以利用慈善事业来获取政治利益。

In her book Dark Money, Jane Mayer documents how the uber-rich have used their charitable foundations to invest in ideology like venture capitalists, leveraging their fortunes for maximum strategic impact. Mayer argues that these foundations only support causes that benefit their financiers, by campaigning against regulations and sowing misinformation in the hearts of the masses. The Olin Foundation, for example, led numerous anti-environmentalism campaigns. The Bradley Foundation, funded by $1.6 billion, waged aggressive campaigns against teachers’ unions and traditional public schools.

简·迈耶在其著作《黑暗金钱》中揭露了超级富豪如何利用慈善基金会，像风险投资家一样投资于意识形态领域，并利用其财富来扩大影响力。迈耶指出，这些基金会只支持那些有利于其金主的事业，通过反对监管和散布虚假信息来操纵公众舆论。例如，奥林基金会资助了多项反环保运动。布拉德利基金会则利用其 16 亿美元的资金，对教师工会和传统公立学校发动了猛烈的攻击。

Since the donations to these foundations are tax-deductible, donors aren’t accountable for the public use of their money, which only adds to their power and influence. And because these donations can be completely anonymous, it also rids the billionaires of any iota of responsibility for their actions.

由于慈善捐款可以免税，捐赠者无需对资金的用途负责，这进一步增加了他们的权力和影响力。而且，由于捐款可以完全匿名，这些亿万富翁也无需承担任何责任。

The sad reality of our society is that this isn’t something new. Rich people have always depended on favorable political conditions to build and preserve their wealth. Mega-philanthropists know that their money can influence governments far more than they’d ever be able to, even if they were to run for office themselves. This is why, when Bill Gates was asked whether he’d run for president, he said, “I could have as much impact in my role as a philanthropist as I could in any political role. I don’t have to raise political campaigns, I don’t have to try to get elected, I’m not term-limited to eight years.”

可悲的是，这种现象并非新鲜事。富人一直以来都依靠有利的政治环境来积累和维护财富。超级富豪们深知，金钱的影响力远比政治权力更大。因此，当比尔·盖茨被问及是否会竞选总统时，他回答道：“作为慈善家，我的影响力不亚于任何政治角色。我不需要参加竞选，也不需要争取选票，更没有任期限制。”

To be fair, Bill Gates and his foundation have dedicated immense amounts of money to battle health crises, such as malaria, and the reduction of child mortality. While most of his work remains true to the original definition of the word, “the love of humanity,” there are still some shady things he’s done in the past.

平心而论，比尔·盖茨和他的基金会确实为抗击疟疾等疾病和降低儿童死亡率做出了巨大贡献。他的大部分工作都体现了“博爱”精神，但也做过一些不光彩的事情。

A few years ago, Gates was able to heavily influence the passing of a bill for charter schools, despite voters voting against it three different times. After millions of dollars were spent on campaigns that influenced the community into changing their decision, the bill passed the fourth time. Almost immediately, Gates began subsidizing charter schools, until the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. But did that bill stop Gates? No. He simply used his influence with lawmakers to fund a new bill to allow him to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision, so he could keep funding these charter schools.

几年前，盖茨试图推动一项特许学校法案的通过，尽管选民三次投票否决了这项法案。但他花费数百万美元进行游说，最终使法案在第四次投票中获得通过。法案通过后，盖茨立即开始资助特许学校，直到最高法院宣布该法案违宪。但这并没有阻止盖茨，他利用自己对立法者的影响力，推动了另一项法案的通过，以此绕过最高法院的裁决，继续为特许学校提供资金。

This is a great example of how wealth can influence public policy. Plutocracy, or placing the power of society in the hands of the wealthy, can undermine our laws and leave us vulnerable to the whims of the rich, whether they have good intentions or not. The lives of the populace should not be in the hands of a few, no matter how wealthy they are. We should all have a say in matters concerning our lives, regardless of our socioeconomic impact.

这充分说明了财富对公共政策的影响。富豪统治，即将社会权力交给富人，会破坏法律体系，让我们任由富人摆布，无论他们的意图是好是坏。民众的生活不应该被少数富人掌控，每个人都应该有权参与决定自己命运的公共事务，无论其社会经济地位如何。

The Giving Pledge, which was launched by Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010, has more than 200 ultra-rich signatories who have pledged to donate at least half of their wealth toward the betterment of humankind. This is an excellent achievement, and one that must be praised. Giving such large amounts of money can never be easy, and so the effort must be acknowledged. At the same time, we must also look at the other side of the coin and the power that these billionaires ever-so-greedily hoard in the process.

2010 年，盖茨和沃伦·巴菲特发起了“捐赠誓言”活动，已有 200 多位超级富豪签署承诺，将至少捐出自己一半的财富，用于改善人类福祉。这无疑是一项值得称赞的善举，捐赠如此巨额的财富绝非易事，他们的努力值得肯定。但与此同时，我们也要看到问题的另一面，那就是这些亿万富豪在积累财富的过程中，贪婪地攫取了巨大的权力。

In his book Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas argues that rich people, who have lobbied for an economy of injustice, have, at the same time, marketed themselves as our saviors and the solution to all our problems. However, in doing so, they subtly hide the fact that they caused most of these problems themselves.

阿南德·吉里达拉达斯在其著作《赢家通吃》中指出，富人们一方面游说政府制定不公平的经济政策，另一方面却把自己包装成救世主，声称能够解决所有社会问题。然而，他们却刻意隐瞒了一个事实：他们正是造成这些问题的罪魁祸首。

CEO of Wayne Enterprises by day, hero of Gotham by night. The sinister truth is this: as long as there are so few people with so much money and power, the rest of us will have no say. We need to go back to the original meaning of philanthropy, where the love of humanity was the only driving force, not money, power, or control. We need to close the loopholes in the system that give people an advantage by donating money without having to donate anything at all. Until then, we’ll have to settle for the supposed heroes with agendas to come and save us from the very problems they brought upon [Music] [Music] us.

白天是韦恩企业的 CEO，夜晚是哥谭市的英雄。这听起来很美好，但现实却很残酷：只要少数人掌控着巨大的财富和权力，我们其他人就只能任人摆布。我们需要回归慈善的本质，让“博爱”成为唯一的驱动力，而不是金钱、权力或控制。我们需要堵住制度的漏洞，让那些“只捐钱，不捐物”的人无法再利用慈善来谋取私利。在此之前，我们只能忍受那些别有用心的“慈善英雄”，他们一边制造问题，一边又假惺惺地来“拯救”我们。

What Began as a Regular Training Session What began as a regular training session on the afternoon of December 5th, 1945, would soon become one of the greatest mysteries of the human world. Flight 19, a group of five US Navy torpedo bombers, set out from their base off the coast of Florida on a routine training mission. With clear winter skies up above and all the necessary precautions taken from down below, Flight 19 and its 14 crew members took to the air to fly across one of the most treacherous bodies of water known to man: the Bermuda Triangle.

一场普通的训练 1945 年 12 月 5 日下午，一场例行的飞行训练演变成了人类历史上最大的谜团之一。五架美国海军鱼雷轰炸机组成的“19 号航班”，从佛罗里达海岸的基地起飞，执行例行训练任务。冬日的天空晴朗无云，所有安全措施都已到位，14 名机组人员驾驶着飞机，飞向了人类已知最危险的海域之一：百慕大三角。

Within a few hours, all five planes, together with their 14 crew members, vanished. A few hours later, when afternoon became evening and the skies became gray, the US Navy realized that something must have gone wrong with Flight 19. And so they sent out another aircraft to find the men, or at the very least, signs of their crashed planes. Sadly, the very same fate was to befall the rescue aircraft. Upon entering into the airspace above the Bermuda Triangle, the rescue plane, with 13 men aboard, disappeared into thin air.

仅仅几个小时后，五架飞机和 14 名机组人员全部消失。又过了几个小时，当夜幕降临，天空变得阴沉，美国海军意识到 19 号航班肯定出事了，于是派出另一架飞机前往搜救，希望能找到失踪的机组人员，或者至少找到飞机残骸。然而，救援飞机也遭遇了同样的命运。在进入百慕大三角上空后，这架载有 13 人的救援飞机也消失得无影无踪。

It’s been over 75 years since the incident, and no one has been able to find the remains of any of the 27 crew members that were lost, or the six aircraft that disappeared.

75 年过去了，依然没有人能够找到 27 名失踪机组人员的遗体，也找不到六架飞机的残骸。

At the tail end of the First World War, in March 1918, the USS Cyclops was on its way back from a voyage to Brazil. The USS Cyclops was the biggest US Navy ship at the time. It was nearly 550 ft in length, and on this trip, it was carrying around 11,000 tons of manganese and a crew of 306 people. The ship had been voyaging for eight years at the time without any issues. However, on that fateful day, as the ship was sailing back to Barbados to resupply before going home to Baltimore, it entered into the Bermuda Triangle in what is now one of the strangest occurrences of modern history. The USS Cyclops disappeared completely, leaving behind no trace of its wreckage or the bodies of any of the 306 crew members that were on board. This was after the ship sent a message to the naval base that read “Weather fair, all well.” There was no mention of anything out of the ordinary, no time for the crew members to send out an SOS message, nothing. Just like that, the entire ship, the 11,000 tons of manganese, and all the crew members, completely vanished.

一战末期，1918 年 3 月，美国海军“独眼巨人”号货轮在从巴西返航途中，驶入了百慕大三角。这艘巨轮是当时美国海军最大的船只，长达 168 米，载着 1.1 万吨锰矿和 306 名船员。在此之前，“独眼巨人”号已经安全航行了八年。然而，在那个 fateful 的日子里，它在前往巴巴多斯补给，准备返回巴尔的摩的途中，却神秘失踪了。船上没有留下任何残骸，306 名船员也全部消失。更诡异的是，就在失踪前不久，“独眼巨人”号还向海军基地发送了“天气良好，一切正常”的信息。没有任何异常情况的报告，也没有发出任何求救信号，整艘船就这样凭空消失了。

Numerous ships were sent out to locate the Cyclops, but all returned negative. They couldn’t even find the remains of the ship or any of the officers on board. It’s been more than a century since the USS Cyclops went missing, and to date, its remains are still missing. The cause of the disappearance is still a mystery.

美国海军派出多艘舰艇搜寻“独眼巨人”号，但都一无所获，甚至连船只残骸和船员遗体都找不到。一百多年过去了，“独眼巨人”号依然下落不明，其失踪原因也成为一个未解之谜。

How does the biggest ship in the US Navy’s arsenal just disappear without any trace? A ship that was 550 ft long and carried 11,000 tons of manganese and a crew of 306 people. How do 306 men die without anyone leaving behind an SOS message? How do 306 bodies disappear into the sea, never to be seen again? No trace of blood, no bones, nothing. How can 100 years pass and nothing has resurfaced? Nothing has washed ashore? Nothing has been discovered?

作为美国海军当时最大的战舰，“独眼巨人”号怎么会消失得无影无踪？这艘长达 168 米的巨轮，载着 1.1 万吨锰矿和 306 名船员，为何没有留下任何痕迹？306 名船员为何无人发出求救信号？他们的遗体为何消失在大海中，无影无踪？没有血迹，没有骸骨，什么都没有留下。一百多年过去了，为何依然没有任何线索？没有任何物品被冲刷上岸？没有任何发现？

This is the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, humanity’s most treacherous sea. Or is it?

这就是百慕大三角之谜，这片海域被视为人类最危险的海域。 但事实真的如此吗？

The Bermuda Triangle is the section of the Atlantic Ocean that is bordered by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. This patch of sea is considered by many to be a mysterious place where many ships, planes, and people disappear without any trace. And in reality, many have. Tens of planes, dozens of ships, and hundreds of people have all mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

百慕大三角是指北大西洋中，以迈阿密、百慕大群岛和波多黎各为顶点的三角形区域。这片海域被认为是一个充满神秘色彩的地方，许多船只、飞机和人都在这里离奇失踪，没有留下任何痕迹。事实上，确实有数十架飞机、数十艘船只以及数百人在此神秘消失，再也没有出现过。

But what exactly is going on in the Bermuda Triangle? Is it really something mysterious, or is there a scientific explanation for everything that happens there?

百慕大三角究竟隐藏着怎样的秘密？是真的存在超自然现象，还是可以用科学来解释这一切？

To find out, we have to go back to the early record of strange sightings in the area. The first record we have of any seemingly supernatural thing happening in the Bermuda Triangle is from Christopher Columbus. While sailing through this patch of the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, Columbus wrote in his log that his compass began malfunctioning, and that he saw in the distance “a light like a fireball rising and crashing into the sea.” Although there have been lots of explanations that help demystify what Columbus might have been seeing, most people simply choose to believe that what he saw and experienced must have been supernatural. And you might think, “Oh, how would you believe him? He didn’t have access to the scientific methods we do now.” And while you might be right to an extent, the truth is, if you look for facts to back up this line of thinking, even with all of our knowledge about the world and our advancements in science and technology, you will find them.

要解开这个谜团，我们需要回顾这片海域早期的奇异事件记录。最早的记录来自航海家哥伦布。1492 年，哥伦布在穿越这片海域时，曾在航海日志中写道，他的指南针失灵了，并且他看到远处“有一道光，像火球一样升起，然后坠入大海”。尽管人们对哥伦布的描述提出了各种解释，但大多数人依然相信他所看到的是超自然现象。你可能会说：“怎么能相信他呢？他那个时代又没有现代科学方法。” 你的质疑并非没有道理，但问题在于，即使在科技高度发达的今天，我们依然无法对某些现象给出合理的解释。

From thousands of ghost ships sailing across the sea without any crew members on board, to mystery cases of time traveling while passing through the Bermuda Triangle, this place is one that dances majestically on the line between what is real and what is not.

从成千上万艘无人驾驶的“幽灵船”，到穿越百慕大三角的时间旅行，种种神秘事件，让这片海域变得亦真亦幻，令人捉摸不透。

There are many theories that people have used to try and explain what is going on in the Bermuda Triangle, from aliens to a wormhole to the lost city of Atlantis sucking people from underneath. Everything, from evidence-based scientific hypotheses to religious lore and mysticism, has been postulated.

关于百慕大三角的成因，众说纷纭，有人认为是外星人作祟，有人说是虫洞导致时空扭曲，还有人认为是沉没的亚特兰蒂斯在作怪。各种解释，从科学假设到宗教传说，应有尽有。

The most popular scientific explanation, however, is the theory that it’s electromagnetic interference that causes issues with compasses when in and around this area. The theory claims that the Bermuda Triangle has a very high pool of the Earth’s natural magnet, which could cause issues with compasses and other sophisticated equipment on planes and ships. This could explain what went wrong with Christopher Columbus’s equipment while sailing through this area. It could also explain the conversations recorded by the pilots of Flight 19, who could not come to an agreement on which way it was that they were flying, minutes before radio silence.

然而，最主流的科学解释是：百慕大三角存在强烈的电磁干扰，导致指南针和其他精密仪器失灵。该理论认为，百慕大三角地区存在异常强大的地磁场，会对指南针以及飞机和船舶上的精密设备造成干扰。这或许可以解释哥伦布在穿越这片海域时遇到的指南针失灵问题，也可以解释 19 号航班的飞行员在无线电失联前几分钟，为何对飞行方向产生分歧。

But what about the people who claim they time traveled while passing through an electromagnetic fog? The most popular of these testimonies is one made by Mr. Bruce Gernon, who has written a book detailing his account. In his book, Gernon said that while flying in a light aircraft through the region, he was faced with a cylindrical-shaped cloud that sucked him in. In an instant, he saw himself on Miami Beach, around 100 miles from where he started. Gernon claimed that this 100-mile journey took mere seconds, and that he didn’t notice any atmospheric or landscape changes throughout.

但那些声称自己穿越了时空的人，又该如何解释呢？其中最著名的案例来自布鲁斯·格农，他写了一本书，详细描述了自己的经历。格农说，他驾驶小型飞机飞越百慕大三角时，遇到了一团圆柱形的云，将他吸了进去。一瞬间，他发现自己出现在了 160 公里外的迈阿密海滩。他声称这

When you hear this story, you might instantly think he’s just cooking up a fairy tale so he can sell some books. But that skepticism turns into plausibility when you realize that the people at the base station corroborated his story. According to them, the plane went off the radar and reemerged in Miami within seconds, just like Gernon described. Did he time travel? Teleport? No one knows. Scientists have since debunked the existence of a wormhole and have said that there’s no way that he could have traveled through time. However, no one has been able to provide a definitive explanation as to what exactly happened that day.

你听到这个故事时，可能会认为他只是在编造故事，为了卖书而哗众取宠。但基地人员的证词却增加了这件事的可信度。据他们所说，格农的飞机确实从雷达上消失了，并在几秒钟后出现在迈阿密，正如他所描述的那样。他是穿越了时空？还是瞬间移动了？没有人知道答案。科学家已经否定了虫洞的存在，认为他不可能进行时间旅行。然而，对于那天究竟发生了什么，依然没有确切的解释。

It’s for this reason that a lot of people still cling to the idea that there is something truly mysterious going on in the Bermuda Triangle. You see, there have been explanations to debunk theories, but there hasn’t been any conclusive evidence to explain what’s really going on. So people are left thinking, “Well, if they aren’t sure it’s that, then how can we be sure it’s not this?” After all, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

正是由于缺乏合理的解释，许多人依然相信百慕大三角存在着超自然现象。虽然有些理论试图解释这些神秘事件，但都没有确凿的证据。人们不禁会想，既然无法证实那些理论是正确的，又怎么能确定其他解释是错误的呢？毕竟，没有证据，并不代表不存在。

Most of the world’s oceans are still a mystery to us. Although the ocean has been mapped by things like satellite and sonar, humans have only physically explored around 5% of our waters. The rest is still a mystery to us. Maybe not a mythical mystery, but a mystery nonetheless. And that’s why people are quick to believe things like mermaids and krakens exist. The ocean, in its vast emptiness, echoes things that are difficult for the human mind to comprehend. And as humans, once things are difficult for us to understand, we come up with stories to try and make sense of these things. Once these stories are formed in our minds, it’s difficult to get rid of them, especially when there’s no evidence beyond reasonable doubt to convince you otherwise.

地球上的大部分海洋，对我们来说依然是未知的领域。尽管我们已经利用卫星和声纳绘制了海洋地图，但人类真正探索过的海洋面积只有 5% 左右，其余部分依然充满着神秘。也许不是神话传说中的神秘，但依然是未解之谜。因此，人们很容易相信美人鱼和海怪的存在。浩瀚无垠的海洋，蕴藏着许多难以理解的事物。作为人类，当我们无法理解某些现象时，就会编造故事来解释它们。一旦这些故事在脑海中形成，就很难被消除，尤其是在缺乏确凿证据反驳的情况下。

The triangle is one of those stories we’ve told ourselves. There is no evidence that suggests shipwrecks and plane crashes occur more frequently in this body of water than in any other well-traveled part of the ocean. Now, you might say, “Well, it’s not just the accidents, it’s the fact that these vehicles just disappear, leaving no trace behind.” But the truth is, even that’s not unique to the Bermuda Triangle. There are currently over 3 million shipwrecks in the world, and only 1% of these wrecks have ever been found. In fact, the “Bermuda Triangle” was not coined by researchers or scientists, or even seafarers. It was coined by the writer Vincent Gaddis, who first used the phrase in 1964. Vincent Gaddis was a paranormal writer who made a career out of ignoring natural explanations and inventing mysteries where none exist.

百慕大三角的神秘，只是我们编造出来的故事。没有证据表明，这片海域的事故发生频率高于其他繁忙航线。你可能会说：“但这片海域的船只和飞机不仅会失事，还会消失得无影无踪。”但事实上，这种情况并非百慕大三角独有。目前，全球已知的沉船超过 300 万艘，而被发现的沉船只有 1%。此外，“百慕大三角”这个词，并非由研究人员、科学家甚至航海家创造的，而是由作家文森特·加迪斯在 1964 年首次使用的。加迪斯是一位 paranormal 作家，他擅长于无视合理的解释，凭空捏造各种神秘事件。

The US Board on Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name, and it doesn’t have any official file on that area. There isn’t even a map that helps to point out the boundaries of this place.

美国地名委员会并不承认“百慕大三角”是一个正式的地理名称，也没有关于这片海域的官方文件，甚至没有地图标注其具体边界。

When I was younger, I was obsessed with the idea of the Bermuda Triangle. After going through the rabbit hole of threads and YouTube videos at 3:00 AM, I decided that one day I would take my bags and travel out to sea, into the heart of the triangle, where no other person is brave enough to go. And then I got older and found out that the Bermuda Triangle is not some sacred place where no one dares to enter. It’s actually a very normal part of the sea that people travel through every day. Dozens of ships and airplanes pass through the Bermuda Triangle every day. Vessels heading to America, Europe, and the Caribbean ply this route often enough, and most of them go through unscathed. Yet, because of the small percentage of accidents that occur in this region, which is no more than anywhere else in the ocean, we believe that there must be something bigger going on, something we’re just not

小时候，我对百慕大三角充满了痴迷。凌晨三点，我深陷在各种网络帖子和YouTube视频的“兔子洞”里，并决定有一天我要打包行李，航行到大海深处，进入三角地带的核心，一个我以为没有人敢涉足的地方。然而，随着年龄的增长，我发现百慕大三角并不是一个神秘的禁地。实际上，它只是大海中一个很普通的区域，每天都有大量的船只和飞机经过。前往美洲、欧洲和加勒比海的船只经常航行这条路线，而且大多数都毫发无损地通过了。然而，尽管在这个区域发生的事故比例很小，和海洋中其他地方并没有太大区别，我们还是倾向于认为那里一定有更大的谜团，或许是我们尚未完全理解的东西。

The reason many people still believe in the lore of the Bermuda Triangle, and in other mythical tales, is one of the most fundamental human conditions: the need to feel like a part of something bigger, something greater, something more than human. Deep down in all of us, there’s a feeling that the world is more than what we can see and experience. It’s the same feeling that makes people believe in the existence of alien life and religious deities, even when there’s no physical evidence to support that belief. And really, can you blame us?

许多人依然相信百慕大三角和其他神秘传说，是因为人类内心深处有一种渴望，渴望成为某种更伟大、更神秘的事物的一部分。我们本能地认为，世界远比我们所看到和经历的更加复杂。正是这种渴望，让人们相信外星生命和神灵的存在，即使没有任何证据能够证明。这种渴望，难道不正是人类的天性吗？

“When you’re blessed with the ability to think logically about why things are the way they are, you are also cursed with the disability of trying to make sense of everything and not accepting that sometimes, we just don’t know.” These are the words of one Albert Einstein. His love for music is well documented. There are many pictures of him indulging himself in the tunes of his violin, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. As anyone who has ever loved music would know, our musical tastes have a lot to do with what we think and who we are. Of course, on first read, Einstein’s account sounds like nothing more than a metaphor for visualization. But could it be more? Could someone possibly see music? Could there be anything more to the conscious experience?

“当你拥有逻辑思考的能力，能够理解事物运行的规律时，你也会被另一种‘诅咒’所困扰，那就是试图解释一切，无法接受‘未知’的存在。” 这句话出自阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦。他热爱音乐，这一点众所周知。有很多照片记录了他陶醉于小提琴演奏的场景，仿佛忘记了周围的一切。正如所有热爱音乐的人一样，我们的音乐品味与我们的思想和个性息息相关。当然，这句话乍听之下，似乎只是对“可视化”的一种比喻。但它是否还有更深层的含义呢？有人能够“看到”音乐吗？我们的意识体验中，是否存在着更多未知的领域？

In 1812, a physician by the name of Georg Tobias Ludwig Sachs was writing about the nature of albinism, having the condition himself. Color was a recurring topic in his analysis of albinism, and as such, in discussing his own experience, he mentioned that “colored ideas” appeared to him. They were intimate and recurring and couldn’t be reckoned with usual sight.

1812年，一位名叫乔治·托比亚斯·路德维希·萨克斯的医生，在撰写关于白化病的文章时，提到了自己作为白化病患者的感受。由于自身患有白化病，他对颜色的感知与常人不同。在描述自己的经历时，他提到脑海中会出现“彩色的想法”。这些“彩色的想法”反复出现，并且与普通的视觉体验截然不同。

According to Sachs, who is now regarded as the first medically documented case of synesthesia, a neurological condition in which a sensation in one of the senses evokes a sensation in another. The term quite literally means “a cross mingling of the senses,” exactly opposite to the more familiar word anesthesia, which means “no sensation.” This cross mingling could theoretically happen between any two, or even more, senses. It’s no wonder then that there are more than 80 types of synesthesia known till now.

萨克斯被认为是第一个有医学记录的“联觉”案例。“联觉”是一种神经系统疾病，指一种感官的刺激会引起另一种感官的体验，例如听到声音的同时看到颜色。这个词的字面意思是“感官的交融”，与“麻醉”（意为“失去感觉”）正好相反。理论上，任何两种甚至多种感官之间都可能出现联觉现象。因此，目前已知的联觉类型超过 80 种，也就不足为奇了。

Sachs himself seemingly had multiple forms of synesthesia, reporting that “numbers, days of the week, time periods, letters, notes of music… all these elements adopt those colors. These introduced themselves to the mind as if a series of visible objects in dark space, formless and noticeably of different colors.” This is most likely a case of ordinal linguistic personification, where, as the name suggests, ordered sequences tend to have personalities and colors to each element of the sequence. This type of synesthesia tends to co-occur with grapheme-color synesthesia, the most common form of synesthesia, where numbers are associated with colors.

萨克斯本人似乎有多种形式的联觉，他曾报告说：“数字、星期几、时间段、字母、音乐音符……所有这些元素都会呈现出不同的颜色。这些颜色就像是在黑暗空间中一系列可见的物体一样，无形且明显具有不同的颜色。”这很可能是一种序数语言拟人化的案例，顾名思义，有序序列的每个元素往往具有各自的个性和颜色。这种类型的联觉通常与字形-颜色联觉同时出现，而字形-颜色联觉是最常见的联觉形式，其中数字与颜色相关联。

There are many other types of synesthesia, such as lexical-gustatory synesthesia, where hearing certain words causes certain tastes, or audio-tactile synesthesia, where hearing certain sounds can lead to a sensation of touch in parts of the body. Oddly enough, there’s even a type of synesthesia where swimmers, thinking, watching, or performing a certain swimming stroke, perceive a color that they consistently associate with that swimming stroke. There have also been surgeons with what’s called mirror-touch synesthesia, where they’re able to feel the pain of the patients they’re observing while CPR was being administered.

除了上述类型之外，联觉还包括许多其他形式，例如“词汇-味觉联觉”，指听到某些词语会产生特定的味觉；“听觉-触觉联觉”，指听到某些声音会在身体的某些部位产生触觉。还有一种奇特的联觉，游泳运动员在思考、观看或进行某种泳姿时，会感知到特定的颜色。甚至还有一种“镜像触觉联觉”，例如，外科医生在观察病人接受心肺复苏时，能够感受到病人的痛苦。

“I have died many times,” says Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurologist who possesses this condition. However, the most awe-inspiring case of synesthesia probably took place when a man was able to visualize colors when he saw numbers. The only catch is, he was colorblind. And the colors he was visualizing had never been seen.

神经学家乔尔·萨利纳斯医生就患有这种联觉，他说：“我已经‘死’过很多次了。” 然而，最令人惊叹的联觉案例，是一位色盲患者能够“看到”数字的颜色。更不可思议的是，他所“看到”的颜色，是人类从未见过的颜色。

But how credible are these accounts? Considering Sachs’s colorful landscape was also attributed by some to congenital eye defects common in people with albinism, couldn’t all these just be hallucinations, or simply psychedelic experiences under the influence of a drug, or some other sign of an overreaction?

这些描述的可信度有多高呢？有人认为，萨克斯所描述的“彩色世界”，可能是由于白化病患者常见的先天性眼部缺陷造成的，而其他联觉体验，也可能只是幻觉，或者是在药物影响下产生的幻觉，甚至是某种过度反应。

The science is very clear on that front. While synesthesia-like experiences have been created with the help of psychedelic drugs, synesthesia is a consistently reproduced condition. Meaning, those that have it will recall the same exact colors, the same exact taste, the same exact sensations with nearly 90% plus accuracy, even when they’re tested years apart and without warning. This pattern of consistent experiences has so far been the most reliable way to test whether someone has synesthesia or not.

科学研究已经给出了明确的答案。虽然迷幻药物可以让人产生类似联觉的体验，但联觉是一种稳定的、可重复的现象。也就是说，联觉者能够以超过 90% 的准确率，回忆起相同的颜色、味道和感觉，即使是在相隔数年、毫无准备的情况下进行测试，结果也是如此。这种稳定一致的体验模式，是目前判断一个人是否患有联觉最可靠的依据。

Mind you, consistency here does not mean that the same letter will always be correlated with the same color for all synesthetes. People who have synesthesia—individual to individual—these correlations may vary, even if they may have the same type of synesthesia. But for the same individual, the correlation stays remarkably precise. So precise, in fact, that they can tell apart shades of color that are only slightly different. So if the letter A is an orange-ish red for you, it may not be the same for another synesthete, but it will always be orange-ish red for you.

需要注意的是，联觉体验的一致性，并不意味着所有联觉者对同一个字母或数字都会产生相同的颜色感知。即使是患有同一种类型联觉的人，他们的联觉体验也可能存在差异。但对于同一个人来说，联觉体验却非常稳定和精确，他们甚至能够分辨出细微的色差。例如，如果你将字母 A 与橙红色联系在一起，那么对你来说，字母 A 将永远是橙红色，而其他联觉者对字母 A 的颜色感知可能不同。

This quality is also why synesthetes tend to have perfect pitch, because they can superimpose the sound with a very intricate visual map and confirm what is what. Synesthetes also score higher on memory tests, especially with numbers and names, because they’re most remembered as multi-property objects, each with unique associations.

正是由于这种精确的感知能力，联觉者往往拥有绝对音感。他们能够将声音与复杂的视觉图像对应起来，从而准确识别音高。联觉者在记忆测试中也表现出色，尤其是在记忆数字和人名方面，因为他们将这些信息与多种感官体验联系在一起，形成了独特的记忆联想。

Perhaps the most compelling evidence that synesthesia is not an occasional, random hallucination, is the fact that the brains of synesthetes are physically different from those that are not. Synesthetes display consistently higher connectivity in their brains than non-synesthetes, especially between visual and auditory regions. The visual regions were also better connected to the frontal parietal region, a region crucial for color association with numbers or letters.

联觉并非偶然出现的幻觉，最有力的证据是，联觉者的大脑结构与普通人存在差异。研究发现，联觉者的大脑连接性更高，尤其是视觉和听觉区域之间的连接更加紧密。此外，他们的视觉区域与额顶叶区域的连接也更强，而额顶叶区域正是负责处理数字、字母和颜色之间关联的关键区域。

The amount of connectedness also reflected the strength of the synesthetic experience. The stronger the connections, the stronger the synesthetic experience. Research has also revealed that synesthetes generally have more white matter.

大脑连接的强度，也反映了联觉体验的强弱。连接越强，联觉体验越强烈。研究还发现，联觉者的大脑白质含量更高。

This intrinsically increased network connectivity led scientists to agree that there is a genetic component to synesthesia. And, sure enough, about 40% of all synesthetes have a first-degree relative with synesthesia. And many synesthetes recall having synesthesia as long as they can remember.

这种与生俱来的高连接性，让科学家们相信联觉具有遗传性。事实上，大约 40% 的联觉者都有患有联觉的直系亲属。许多联觉者表示，他们从记事起就拥有联觉体验。

An interesting way to test whether you might have grapheme-color synesthesia, which is number-to-color synesthesia, is to look at this picture. Try to identify the twos as quickly as you can. People who have synesthesia react quicker on a test like this because the twos and fives are naturally seen in different colors to them, like this, which makes it much easier to identify. They are able to see the twos in different colors without necessarily having to hunt for them, like non-synesthetes. So they’re not staring at a number and then thinking of the associated color. It’s an automatic response, one synesthetes cannot turn off.

想要测试自己是否拥有“字素-颜色联觉”（即数字-颜色联觉），可以尝试观察这张图片，并尽快找出所有的数字“2”。联觉者在这类测试中反应速度更快，因为他们会自动将数字“2”和“5”感知为不同的颜色，这使得识别数字变得更加容易。他们不需要像普通人那样逐个搜寻，就能轻松分辨出数字“2”。对于他们来说，数字和颜色之间的关联是自动产生的，无法控制。

And that can be a problem, right? Even with five senses, most of us are able to use, sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the world around us. So to be overstimulated all the time, with a barrage of sensory inputs, would be pretty uncomfortable. Or so you would think. Synesthetes, by and large, consider their abilities as gifts rather than curses. Most synesthetes are completely unaware that others don’t see the world the way they do. For some, sound has always had color, color has always had taste, and taste has always had sound. It sounds strange, but you’d be surprised how many of your favorite artists are synesthetes. From musicians like Lorde and Pharrell Williams, to novelists like Vladimir Nabokov, from theoretical physicists like Richard Feynman, to painters like Vincent van Gogh, all are said to have had synesthesia. Their conditions are as versatile as their crafts. Common amongst all, however, is the fact that their contributions have all been incredible feats of creativity.

这听起来像是一种负担，对吧？即使只有五种感官，我们有时也会感到信息过载。如果一直处于各种感官信息的狂轰滥炸之下，那该是多么令人难受啊？但事实并非如此。大多数联觉者并不认为联觉是一种负担，反而将其视为一种天赋。他们中的大多数人，甚至没有意识到自己与众不同，因为对他们来说，声音本来就带有颜色，颜色本来就带有味道，味道也本来就带有声音。这听起来很不可思议，但你会惊讶地发现，许多你喜爱的艺术家都是联觉者，例如音乐家洛德、法瑞尔·威廉姆斯，小说家弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫，理论物理学家理查德·费曼，画家文森特·梵高等等。他们的联觉类型各不相同，但都拥有非凡的创造力。

This convergence of creativity and synesthesia is no coincidence. In fact, synesthesia is up to seven times more common in artists and people involved in creative professions. It’s no surprise then that synesthetes perform better on tests of creativity and originality than the average person. But, of course, as with any condition, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Some kids who have the condition display poorer reading comprehension than their peers, and often have a hard time following lectures. Solomon Shereshevsky was a Russian journalist who was also diagnosed with the condition. He could recall unusually long lists of information without error, but said that the automatic and nearly permanent retention of every detail, due to synesthesia, made it very hard for him to grasp abstract concepts or make sense of what he was reading. Still, synesthesia is generally considered a positive, and most people that have it do not think of it as a disorder.

创造力与联觉之间存在着密切的联系，这并非偶然。事实上，艺术家和从事创意工作的人群中，联觉者的比例高达普通人的七倍。因此，联觉者在创造力和原创性测试中表现更出色，也就不足为奇了。当然，任何事物都有两面性，联觉也不例外。一些患有联觉的儿童，阅读理解能力较弱，难以集中注意力听课。俄罗斯记者所罗门·舍列舍夫斯基也是一位联觉者，他拥有超强的记忆力，能够准确地记住大量信息。但他表示，由于联觉会导致他对所有细节都进行自动记忆，这让他难以理解抽象概念，也难以理解文章的含义。尽管如此，联觉通常被视为一种积极的现象，大多数联觉者并不认为自己患有疾病。

It’s staggering how the same world you and I experience can actually be so different compared to so many different people. I had no idea that such a condition existed before I was introduced to this tool just a few days ago. It allowed me to see what my name looks like to a synesthete. In her video, violinist, composer, and synesthete Kaitlyn Hova recalls finding out in college that not everyone saw music as she did.

令人惊讶的是，我们所体验的世界，在不同人眼中竟然如此不同。直到几天前接触到一个工具，我才了解到联觉这种现象的存在。这个工具可以让我看到，在联觉者眼中，我的名字是什么样子的。小提琴家、作曲家兼联觉者凯特琳·霍瓦在视频中回忆说，她在大学时才意识到，并非所有人都能像她一样“看到”音乐。

The prevalence of synesthetes within the general population is remarkably high. Contrary to what it may seem, as many as 1 in 20 people can have some form of synesthesia. And you probably know a lot of them. You just don’t know that you know them. But now you know that you don’t know that you know them. You get the point.

联觉者在人群中的比例高得惊人，大约每 20 个人中就有一位联觉者。你身边可能就有很多联觉者，只是你不知道而已。现在你知道了，但你依然无法辨认出他们。你明白我的意思吧？

In what follows, Kaitlyn goes on to play an incredible piece on her violin to showcase what she sees when she plays it. Which really makes me wonder how relatively colorless our realities are in comparison. Or are they?

在视频的后续部分，凯特琳演奏了一首美妙的小提琴曲，并展示了她在演奏时看到的景象。这不禁让我思考，与联觉者相比，我们对世界的体验是多么单调乏味。或者，并非如此？

You see, we all visualize things. We may not see colors for every note on an instrument or have perfect pitch, but we do visualize. It happens all the time when we’re trying to process large amounts of data or trying our hand at more artistic ventures. We’re trying to see something totally abstract.

我们每个人都会进行“可视化”思考。我们虽然无法像联觉者那样，看到每个音符的颜色，也不具备绝对音感，但我们依然会在脑海中构建图像。当我们处理大量数据，或者进行艺术创作时，我们都会试图将抽象的概念转化为具体的图像。

One of the more interesting studies regarding synesthesia is the Bouba-Kiki effect. Take a look at this image. Which one of the shapes looks like it’s called “Bouba,” and which one is called “Kiki?” An overwhelming majority of the initial participants chose the image on the right as Bouba and the left as Kiki. Even across languages. Even children as young as 2 and a half years old have demonstrated this effect.

关于联觉，一项非常有趣的研究是“布巴-奇奇效应”。请看这张图片，你觉得哪个形状应该叫做“布巴”，哪个形状应该叫做“奇奇”？绝大多数参与者都认为，右边的形状应该叫做“布巴”，左边的形状应该叫做“奇奇”。这种现象跨越了语言的界限，即使是两岁半的幼儿也能做出同样的选择。

While these findings are not seen in every community, the consensus suggests that the Bouba-Kiki effect is a cue to pre-existing synesthesia-like associations present in all of us. It would reinforce the idea that the neural hyperconnectivity that is responsible for synesthesia is seen in pretty much all babies. Most of us simply lose those connections as we grow older.

虽然这种现象并非在所有文化中都存在，但研究结果表明，“布巴-奇奇效应”暗示着我们每个人都拥有类似联觉的潜在关联。这支持了一种观点，即所有婴儿的大脑都具备产生联觉的神经 hyperconnectivity，只是随着年龄增长，这种连接逐渐消失。

And that’s the beauty and tragedy of synesthesia all at once: that we all have it, but most of us lose it.

这就是联觉的魅力和遗憾之处：我们每个人都曾拥有联觉的能力，但大多数人却在成长的过程中失去了它。

Kaitlyn ends her video by asking what could have happened if we were all more conscious of others’ experiences and how different our senses might be from one another. How we solve a math problem, how we make sense of complex concepts, how we enjoy music—sharing these things can make learning so much more fun.

在视频的结尾，凯特琳问道，如果我们都能更加了解彼此的感受，更加理解彼此的感官体验，世界将会变成什么样？我们解决数学问题的方式，我们理解复杂概念的方式，我们欣赏音乐的方式——分享这些不同的体验，能够让学习变得更加有趣。

“What does it mean to know you have the correct answer?” she asks. “What is that feeling? Is that feeling a color?”

“当你确信自己找到了正确答案时，是怎样的一种感觉？”她问道。“你能描述这种感觉吗？它是一种颜色吗？”

As a student of the sciences, I find myself wondering time and time again, how scientists realize some of their most mind-bending, unintuitive truths about the universe. How are they so confident in their findings? Aside from the degrees and credentials, what does it truly mean to know something? What is that feeling of harmony, that creative connection? And why does it soothe our hearts?

作为一名理科生，我常常感到好奇，科学家们是如何发现那些令人难以置信、违反直觉的宇宙真理的？他们为何对自己的发现如此自信？除了学历和资历之外，真正理解某件事意味着什么？那种顿悟的喜悦，那种灵感的迸发，究竟是什么感觉？为何它会让我们感到如此心满意足？

Whether we can describe these things or not, you and I have felt them. Maybe in a painting, or in a ballad, or in a book, but we’ve all felt them. Answering these questions could help uncover the colors in our mundane but elegant reality, and allow us all to experience a richer consciousness all whilst using an ability that, deep down, we all possess.

无论我们是否能够描述这种感觉，我们都曾感受过它。也许是在欣赏一幅画作时，也许是在聆听一首歌曲时，也许是在阅读一本书时，我们都曾有过这种体验。如果我们能够解开这些问题的答案，或许就能发现隐藏在我们平凡生活中那些绚丽的色彩，让我们每个人都能体验到更加丰富的意识世界，而这种能力，其实就潜藏在我们每个人的内心深处。

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Nowadays, it seems to be a common theme amongst almost everyone to go out and shop our way to happiness. You know, just to take care of ourselves. After all, nothing says “mental health” like impulse buying that will dig us deeper into debt than we ever thought possible. Don’t you feel that you’re above this age-old system of enticing customers into buying more stuff? After all, we are in the age of minimalism and all that good stuff, right?

如今，购物似乎已经成为一种潮流，人们通过购物来寻求快乐，美其名曰“犒劳自己”。毕竟，没有什么比冲动消费更能体现“精神健康”了，即使因此背负巨额债务也在所不惜。你是否觉得自己已经超越了这种古老的消费主义陷阱？毕竟，我们身处一个崇尚极简主义的时代，不是吗？

How many times have you found yourself annoyed by an ad in the middle of something you were watching, and promised yourself that there was no way such an annoying interruption can actually convince you to buy something you don’t even want? And then you go and buy it anyway. Well, if these things weren’t working, we wouldn’t see them be used forever. So clearly, there is a method to the madness. And you might be surprised by just how meticulous this method can be sometimes.

你是否经常在看视频时被广告打断，并信誓旦旦地告诉自己，绝不会被这种烦人的广告诱惑，去购买自己并不需要的东西？然而，你最终还是乖乖地掏出了钱包。如果这些广告没有效果，商家就不会一直使用它们。很显然，这些看似疯狂的广告背后，隐藏着精妙的营销策略。你可能会惊讶地发现，这些策略是如此的细致入微。

Of course, you and I know some of the basic stuff, like placing commonly bought items at the end of a store so that customers have to walk through most of it, and therefore be exposed to other products, to get to the ones they really need. That’s why they usually put milk in the back of the store. It’s a common item that most people need, and so they’re going to make you see as many items as possible before you get to what you need. Then there are “buy one get one free” offers, which clearly boost revenue and make us buy more stuff in exchange for very marginal discounts. Exposure and billboard ads also do some of the marketing heavy lifting. But you already knew that.

当然，我们都知道一些基本的营销技巧，例如将畅销商品摆放在商店的最后面，这样顾客就必须穿过整个商店，才能买到他们真正需要的商品。例如，牛奶通常被放在商店最深处，因为它是大多数顾客的必需品，商家会想方设法让你在买到牛奶之前，尽可能多地看到其他商品。此外，还有“买一送一”等促销手

What you didn’t know, however, is just how deeply our psyche is being studied to understand patterns and predict customers’ choices, well before the customer is aware of them themselves. This is neuromarketing.

然而，你可能不知道的是，我们的心理正被深入研究，以便在顾客自己还未意识到之前就理解模式并预测他们的选择。这就是神经营销。

Well, it all starts with how humans perceive things. Humans, for whatever reason, perceive relatively, and not absolutely. What this means is that our perception is based on stimuli that is already present. You can see this play out every day. For example, if someone near you unlocks their phone in a well-lit environment and lights up the screen, the change in brightness of your surroundings is barely noticeable. If you do the same thing in, say, a movie theater, it can sometimes be startlingly bright. Even though the brightness around you changed by the same amount in both cases, your perception of them is vastly different.

这一切都源于人类的感知方式。不知为何，人类对事物的感知是相对的，而不是绝对的。也就是说，我们的感知会受到已有刺激的影响。这种现象在日常生活中随处可见。例如，在光线充足的环境下，如果有人解锁手机，点亮屏幕，你几乎不会注意到周围环境的亮度变化。但如果在黑暗的电影院里，手机屏幕的亮度就会显得格外刺眼。尽管两种情况下手机屏幕的亮度变化相同，但我们对亮度变化的感知却截然不同。

Similarly, we also perceive loudness relatively. If you are already in a loud environment, the addition of another sound, say, a glass breaking, may be barely noticeable. But in a quiet environment, even the same sound can feel much, much louder. Known more formally as Weber’s law, this idea of relative perception has been a core principle of astronomy and music theory alike, since they both have something to do with how we humans perceive things.

同样地，我们对声音的感知也是相对的。如果你已经处于一个嘈杂的环境中，另一种声音的加入，比如玻璃破碎的声音，可能几乎不会引起注意。但在一个安静的环境中，即使是相同的声音也会显得非常响亮。这种相对感知的概念更正式地称为韦伯定律，它一直是天文学和音乐理论的核心原则之一，因为这两者都与我们人类如何感知事物密切相关。

Well, now it has one more application, and that has to do with our perception of price. Firstly, this means that whenever the price of a commodity either goes up or down, how a customer feels about that price change depends on the original price of the commodity. Companies can use this information to marginally keep increasing the price of a product over iterations, provided that they do so in increments that are just below our perception threshold.

现在，“韦伯定律”又多了一个应用领域，那就是价格感知。也就是说，当商品价格上涨或下降时，顾客对价格变化的感受，取决于商品的初始价格。商家可以利用这一点，逐步提高商品价格，只要每次涨价的幅度不超过顾客的感知阈值即可。

This applies more generally to markets around the world, where people also perceive the price of a commodity based on how much disposable income they have. This is the reason why some products that do very well in America, despite increases in price, don’t work very well in countries like China. But it goes deeper than that.

这种现象也适用于全球市场。人们对商品价格的感知，还会受到可支配收入的影响。这就是为什么有些产品在美国畅销，即使价格上涨也不影响销量，但在中国却反响平平。当然，影响价格感知的因素远不止这些。

Disposable income and original prices have fairly obvious relevance in this topic. However, our minds can even be tricked by seemingly irrelevant numbers as well. Studies were conducted where participants were asked to gauge how much they would pay for a certain product. However, before they were allowed to make up their minds, they were asked to think of the last few digits of their Social Security number. It turned out that the participants with higher Social Security numbers were willing to price the item higher, despite it being in no way related to the commodity itself. This process, also known as anchoring, caused the participants to be more generous with their bid.

可支配收入和初始价格对价格感知的影响显而易见。然而，我们的思想甚至会被一些看似无关的数字所误导。有研究表明，当参与者被要求估算某件商品的价格时，如果事先让他们回忆自己社保号码的最后几位数字，那些社保号码较大的人，往往会给出更高的价格，尽管社保号码与商品价格毫无关联。这种现象被称为“锚定效应”，它会导致人们在估价时更加倾向于较高的数值。

In his book Brainfluence, author Roger Dooley hypothesizes that this may be the reason why counters, now commonly seen in fast food chains, are used beyond just letting the customer know when his or her order is ready. These counters, almost always counting large numbers, prime them to be okay with paying just that little bit more. A more common method of anchoring is also to say things like “Normally you’d have to pay such-and-such for a product like this, but not with us!”

罗杰·杜利在其著作《影响大脑》中推测，快餐店里常见的取餐号码牌，其作用不仅仅是告知顾客何时取餐。这些号码牌通常显示较大的数字，这会潜移默化地影响顾客的心理，让他们更容易接受更高的价格。另一种常见的“锚定效应”应用，是商家常用的广告语，例如：“这款产品原价多少多少，现在只需……”

Sometimes the anchoring is even more obvious. For example, do you remember how much the iPhone cost when it came out in 2007? It was over $499, and in some places, even higher. That’s a tall order, especially if you consider that it was for a product that many people were not really familiar with, even in today’s standards, with hardware that is orders of magnitude better. Some phones, including Apple’s own iPhones, are cheaper than that. So why did marketing genius Apple do such a thing? They possibly just used the demand curve to the best of their ability.

有时，“锚定效应”的应用更加直白。例如，你还记得 2007 年第一代 iPhone 的售价吗？高达 499 美元，甚至更高。对于一款全新的、人们并不熟悉的产品来说，这个价格实在太高了，即使以现在的标准来看，当时的 iPhone 硬件配置也很落后。现在市面上很多手机，包括苹果自己的 iPhone，都比当时的售价便宜。那么，营销天才苹果公司为何要制定如此高的价格呢？或许，他们只是在巧妙地利用需求曲线。

First, set the price as high as you can, since every market has a certain percentage of people that can pay even the inflated prices, assuming they like the product. Once you have exhausted that demographic, drop the prices significantly, which is exactly what Apple did. By the time the iPhone 3G came out, some retailers were selling it for as low as [Music] $199. By this point, there were enough people owning iPhones that people started familiarizing themselves with the product. And by dropping the price so much, Apple made it seem like they were giving the phone away at a massive discount. The initial $500 to $600 price was seemingly just an anchor that made the eventual price seem like a total steal.

首先，将价格定得尽可能高，因为每个市场都有一部分消费者愿意为高价买单，前提是他们喜欢这款产品。等这部分消费者购买后，再大幅降价，苹果公司正是采用了这种策略。iPhone 3G 推出时，一些零售商的售价低至 199 美元。此时，已经有很多人在使用 iPhone，人们对这款产品也更加熟悉。通过大幅降价，苹果公司让消费者觉得捡了大便宜。最初 500 到 600 美元的高价，只是一个“锚点”，让后来的价格显得更加“诱人”。

There is one more thing. You know how Apple always prices things a dollar less than the big number, like $499 instead of just $500, and $999 instead of just $1,000? Well, I used to think that when we pay $4.99 for something, we feel as though we were paying 400 and something, as opposed to just flat-out $500. We feel closer to $400 than to $500. However, this is not entirely true. For things that are priced at whole numbers, our minds like to think that a fair price would also be a whole number, increments below it. Meaning, something that has a list price of $20 probably registers as deserving $17 or $18. Meanwhile, if something is priced at $1,199.95, our brains think a deserving price would be $1,199.50, or $1,193. So despite the fact that $1,199.95 is lower than the $20 price tag, surprisingly enough, you would have much happier customers if you were to accept just a few less cents.

还有一点需要注意。你是否注意到，苹果公司总是将商品价格设定为略低于整数的价格，例如 499 美元而不是 500 美元，999 美元而不是 1000 美元？我曾经以为，人们在支付 4.99 美元时，会感觉自己支付的是 400 多美元，而不是 500 美元，因为心理上更接近 400 美元。然而，事实并非如此。对于整数价格的商品，我们倾向于认为合理的价格也应该是整数，或者略低于整数的价格。例如，一件标价 20 美元的商品，我们可能会认为它值 17 或 18 美元。而一件标价 1199.95 美元的商品，我们可能会认为它值 1199.50 美元或 1193 美元。因此，尽管 1199.95 美元比 20 美元更低，但令人惊讶的是，如果你将价格降低几美分，顾客的满意度反而会更高。

A University of Florida study tested this idea, where participants were asked to estimate the actual price of things put on auction. The three prices were $4,988, $5,000, and $5,012. Realistically speaking, they’re all very close to each other. The group that was tasked with estimating the price of the $5,000 thing estimated the lowest prices of them all. Even the $5,012 group, at just $12, or 0.24% more, were willing to pay more for the same item.

佛罗里达大学的一项研究证实了这一观点。研究人员让参与者估算拍卖品的实际价格，提供了三个价格：4988 美元、5000 美元和 5012 美元。实际上，这三个价格非常接近。结果显示，负责估算 5000 美元商品价格的参与者，给出的估价最低。即使是负责估算 5012 美元商品价格的参与者，也愿意为同一件商品支付更高的价格，尽管只高出了 12 美元，即 0.24%。

It’s all in your head, truly.

这一切都只是心理作用。

Companies also sometimes place products that they know won’t sell well, just to make other products seem more desirable. Again, humans like relative improvements, remember that? These marketing decoys help offers look much better than they actually are. In the book Predictably Irrational, the author Dan Ariely mentions an experiment where participants were offered two offer sets. The offers were as follows. Offer A included a $59 internet-only subscription, or a $125 internet and print subscription. Offer B also included a $59 internet-only subscription, but included both a $125 print subscription and a $125 internet and print subscription. In Offer B, it wouldn’t make much sense to just choose the print subscription at the $125 price point when you could also get the internet subscription for essentially an extra $0. And this was clearly shown in the results. Want to guess which one generated the most revenue?

商家有时还会故意摆放一些滞销商品，以此来衬托其他商品的吸引力。还记得我们之前提到的“相对感知”吗？这些“诱饵商品”能够让其他商品显得更加物超所值。在《怪诞行为学》一书中，作者丹·艾瑞里提到一个实验：实验中，参与者被提供了两组订阅方案。方案 A 包括 59 美元的纯网络订阅和 125 美元的网络+纸质版订阅。方案 B 则在方案 A 的基础上，增加了一个 125 美元的纯纸质版订阅。在方案 B 中，选择 125 美元的纯纸质版订阅显然不划算，因为只需要额外支付极少的费用，就能获得网络订阅服务。实验结果也证明了这一点。你猜哪个方案的收入更高？

The Offer B set generated nearly 45% more revenue compared to Offer A. The customers didn’t choose anything they didn’t choose before, namely the option to purchase the print-only subscription. But just its presence made the other two offers look much more desirable. Instead of competing with other companies, using decoy products, companies can essentially micro-compete within their own products and generate more revenue.

方案 B 的收入比方案 A 高出近 45%。顾客并没有选择新增的纯纸质版订阅，但它的存在却让其他两个方案显得更加“诱人”。通过设置“诱饵商品”，商家无需与其他公司竞争，就能在自家产品之间制造“内部竞争”，从而提高销量。

It’s all a game.

这一切，都是商家的营销游戏。

Then there are smaller tricks that companies employ on a regular basis. One is to slightly increase the font size of the products you want sold. The slight change is barely perceptible, but subconsciously, we register it as something more worthy of our attention. Another is to offer customers better, but not necessarily overwhelming, choices. This is where services like Amazon have truly cemented their position. Amazon has the resources not only to sell a lot of products, but also to organize them in the right way and only present to the customers what they’re most likely to buy. Other companies can sometimes overwhelm the customer with too many flashy options, especially during Black Friday sales, which confuses them and makes the purchase seem that much harder to make.

此外，商家还会使用一些不易察觉的小技巧。例如，稍微放大想要促销的商品的字体。这种细微的变化很难被察觉，但在潜意识中，我们会将其视为更值得关注的信息。另一个技巧是，为顾客提供更好的选择，但不要太多，避免造成选择困难。亚马逊在这方面做得非常出色。它不仅拥有海量的商品，还能够将商品进行有效的分类和排序，只向顾客展示他们最可能购买的商品。而其他一些公司，则常常在促销活动中提供过多的选择，尤其是黑色星期五期间，各种眼花缭乱的促销信息，会让消费者感到困惑，最终放弃购买。

These are still things you and I can see and put our finger on. Companies go much further than that to make the customer feel safer to spend more. Olfactory association is one of the ways in which this is accomplished.

这些还都是你我能看到并感知到的东西。然而，公司在此基础上走得更远，以让顾客在消费时感到更加安全。嗅觉联想就是实现这一目的的方式之一。

“Olfactory” is the sensation of smell. According to some reports, as much as 75% of all our sensations have got to do with smell. It’s no wonder then that the memories that have an olfactory component are held the strongest, and are recalled much easier as well. The smell of McDonald’s, for example, is something that the company puts as much effort into as anything you might see on the menu. There is a very good reason for it, of course. The feeling of familiarity is crucial to the brand of McDonald’s, especially considering going to McDonald’s is something that the company hopes to become a generational tradition. People go as children and eventually end up taking their own children to McDonald’s. That there are reports that McDonald’s infused the smell with the cleaning liquid its staff uses to clean the store! A similar theme follows all major industries.

“嗅觉”是人类最原始、最敏锐的感官之一。有研究表明，人类 75% 的感官体验都与嗅觉有关。因此，那些与气味相关的记忆往往更加深刻，也更容易被回忆起来。例如，麦当劳的味道就经过了精心设计，与菜单上的任何食物一样重要。这背后的原因很简单：熟悉感是麦当劳品牌的关键要素。麦当劳希望成为一种世代传承的传统，人们小时候去麦当劳，长大后也会带着自己的孩子去麦当劳。甚至有报道称，麦当劳将这种独特的味道融入到清洁剂中！其他大型企业也采用了类似的策略。

We’ve all heard about the “new car smell,” or the “new sneaker smell.” These are all essential elements of a company’s effort to construct a recognizable image, one which we may not even see. Singapore Airlines, regularly voted as one of the best airlines in the world, also uses this marketing strategy. They’re known to give passengers hot towels at the start of every flight. But even this seemingly innocent gesture is working to sew the brand image deeper and deeper into our minds. The company has its own brand fragrance, Stefan Floridian Waters, and it is infused into those hot towels that passengers use. Needless to say, the flight attendants are wearing it too, and so is the cabin interior!

我们都熟悉“新车味”或“新鞋味”，这些都是企业精心打造的品牌形象的一部分，即使我们看不到，也能感受到。新加坡航空公司，经常被评为全球最佳航空公司之一，也深谙此道。众所周知，他们在每次航班起飞前都会为乘客提供热毛巾。但这个看似普通的服务，却暗藏玄机。新加坡航空公司拥有自己的品牌香水“Stefan Floridian Waters”，他们将这种香水融入到热毛巾中，空乘人员也喷洒这种香水，甚至连机舱内部都弥漫着这种香味。

Of course, it can go both ways. Starbucks reportedly removed some of the sandwiches from its menu because they smelled too much like eggs, and took away from the coffee-heavy Starbucks smell customers know and love.

当然，嗅觉营销也可能适得其反。据说，星巴克曾经从菜单中移除了一些三明治，因为它们的味道太像鸡蛋，会掩盖顾客熟悉和喜爱的咖啡香味。

One may question whether doing these things is even ethical. Well, there are two sides of the coin, as with any debate. On the one hand, marketers might argue that, using these techniques, they are better understanding what their customers want and giving them a better shopping experience. On the other hand, this opens us up for attention sabotage, something which has been happening rather frequently with social media platforms already. One thing is for certain, though: we have far less control over our purchasing decisions than we thought. We buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. And the things you own end up owning you.

有人可能会质疑这些做法是否合乎道德。正如任何辩论一样，这个问题也有两面性。一方面，营销人员可能会争辩说，通过使用这些技术，他们可以更好地理解客户的需求，并为他们提供更好的购物体验。另一方面，这也让我们更容易受到注意力破坏的影响，而这在社交媒体平台上已经发生得相当频繁。不过有一件事是确定的：我们对自己的购买决定的控制力比我们想象的要少得多。我们买我们不需要的东西去取悦我们不喜欢的人。而最终，拥有的东西反而会占据我们。

“The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror, which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.”

“声音来自一块长方形的金属板，它像一面蒙尘的镜子，嵌在右边的墙壁上。这种仪器被称为‘电幕’，可以调暗，但无法 completely 关闭。电幕能够同时接收和发送信息。温斯顿发出的任何声音，只要超过极低的耳语，都会被它捕捉到。只要他处于电幕的监控范围内，他的一举一动、一言一行都会被记录下来。当然，他无法知道自己是否正在被监视。”

This is an excerpt from the famed dystopian novel 1984, by George Orwell. In this book, which is dubbed as one of the most influential in the past century, Orwell talks about Winston Smith, a dutiful servant of the state who starts having second thoughts about the system that surrounds him. Constant surveillance from the telescreens, secret mics everywhere, posters full of propaganda, and when all those fail, fellow citizens waiting to rat you out without a moment of hesitation.

这是摘自乔治·奥威尔著名的反乌托邦小说《1984》中的一段。在这本被誉为过去一个世纪最具影响力的书籍之一中，奥威尔讲述了温斯顿·史密斯的故事，他是国家的忠诚仆人，但开始对周围的制度产生怀疑。电视屏幕的持续监视，隐藏在各处的秘密麦克风，充满宣传的海报，而当这些手段都失效时，还有随时准备毫不犹豫地告发你的同胞。

Winston, like everyone else in the novel, was living in a world where he was allowed “a private moment,” and only in the most superficial meaning of the word. What he wasn’t allowed to have, however, was a private thought. As those thoughts establish a more menacing presence in his head, Winston is flooded with the overwhelming realization that the world in which he lives is unlivable. Everything in society was geared to notice even the smallest signs of unlawfulness, even a “thoughtcrime.” It was a dystopia, well and truly.

温斯顿和小说中的其他人一样，生活在一个看似拥有“私人空间”的世界里，但这只是表面上的自由。他们不被允许拥有独立的思想。当这些危险的思想不断滋生时，温斯顿逐渐意识到，这个世界已经变得无法忍受。社会的一切机制，都在监视着人们的一举一动，甚至连“思想罪”都无法逃脱。这是一个名副其实的反乌托邦世界。

Published in 1949, one would imagine that this novel would bear more resemblance to those times than ours, to the regimes of Stalin or Mussolini. And it certainly does: the outright control of the masses, the… yet the sales of 1984 have skyrocketed in recent times.

《1984》出版于1949年，人们可能会认为这部小说更像是那个时代的写照，而不是我们的时代，更像是斯大林或墨索里尼的政权。而事实上，确实如此：对大众的彻底控制，等等。然而，近年来《1984》的销量却飙升。

Of course, certain countries ban its sale, and I’ll let you guess which ones those are. But really, why? Why have the sales skyrocketed recently? Has the time Orwell really spoke of truly arrived?

当然，有些国家禁止出售这本书，我不妨让你猜猜是哪些国家。但真正的问题是，为什么？为什么这部小说在近年来如此畅销？难道奥威尔所预言的时代真的到来了吗？

Perhaps the most attention widespread surveillance has gotten in recent memory are the Snowden leaks of 2013. Edward Snowden, an NSA computer security consultant, had leaked files showing the NSA largely overreached and abused its powers, powers that were granted in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Instead of just asking for intel on criminal suspects, investigations revealed that the NSA asked giant tech companies for data on bystanders: people, for example, who called people who called people who called the subject. For every target that the NSA looked into, they swept up data on 10 bystanders, a lot of whom were just citizens of the United States.

近年来，最引人关注的监控事件，莫过于 2013 年的“斯诺登泄密事件”。美国国家安全局（NSA）的计算机安全顾问爱德华·斯诺登，泄露了大量机密文件，揭露了 NSA 滥用职权、过度监控的行为。这些权力是在 911 事件后赋予 NSA 的。调查显示，NSA 不仅收集犯罪嫌疑人的信息，还要求大型科技公司提供“旁观者”的数据，例如那些与目标人物有过间接通话联系的人。对于 NSA 的每一个监控目标，他们都会收集 10 个“旁观者”的数据，而这些人大多是普通美国公民。

The NSA was also revealed to have collected data about the telephone records of millions of American customers from the company Verizon. Defenders argued that it wasn’t private information, just the type of information that was found in someone’s telephone bill. You know, how many calls were made, when the calls were made. This type of data is often known as metadata, or data about the data. Instead of recording the contents of the phone conversation, these records simply only stored details about the phone call. And that may seem useless to some, but here’s the thing: if it were useless, they wouldn’t be expending resources trying to collect it. This type of data can be used to create a very detailed profile of someone, just like scrolling down someone’s Facebook page.

泄密文件还显示，NSA 从美国电信公司 Verizon 获取了数百万用户的通话记录。NSA 的辩护者声称，这些信息并非用户的隐私信息，只是类似于电话账单上的内容，例如通话次数和通话时间。这类信息被称为“元数据”，即关于数据的数据。这些记录并没有记录通话内容，只是记录了通话的细节信息。有些人可能会认为，这些信息毫无用处。但如果真的毫无用处，NSA 何必花费大量资源去收集它们呢？事实上，通过分析这些元数据，就能像浏览 Facebook 页面一样，了解一个人的详细情况。

There’s also the Pegasus program that has caught the eye of the media lately. A state-of-the-art spyware developed by an Israeli group that can hack into even the latest mobile OSes. Pegasus infects targets’ phones using a number of vulnerabilities instead of attacking just one. Some of Pegasus’s hacks are zero-click, meaning they require no interaction from the user. It can allegedly render WhatsApp’s now-famous end-to-end encryption completely useless. The group that built the spyware claims it was built to help combat terror and crime. Yet the most notable use of the spyware was in 2019, when the Saudi government used it to hack into the phone of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who they eventually murdered. It was also the spyware used to hack into Jeff Bezos’s phone.

此外，还有一款名为“飞马”的间谍软件，近年来也引起了媒体的广泛关注。这款由以色列公司开发的顶级间谍软件，能够入侵最新的手机操作系统。“飞马”软件会利用多个漏洞攻击目标手机，而不是单一漏洞，有些攻击甚至不需要用户进行任何操作，就能入侵手机。据说，它甚至能够破解 WhatsApp 的端到端加密技术。开发这款软件的公司声称，它是为了帮助打击恐怖主义和犯罪。然而，该软件最臭名昭著的案例，发生在 2019 年，当时沙特政府利用“飞马”软件入侵了记者贾迈勒·卡舒吉的手机，并最终将其杀害。亚马逊 CEO 杰夫·贝佐斯的手机也曾遭到该软件的入侵。

In fact, it was formally discovered in 2016 when a sketchy link was sent to a human rights activist, who, instead of opening the link, sent it to investigators. Upon retrospective analysis, it’s thought to have existed since 2013. Upon the release of the news about widespread and unconstitutional use of facial recognition technology by different companies across different countries, people sometimes tried to confuse the cameras by wearing sweaters with patterns designed to fool the machine learning programs. Little did they know that facial recognition had gotten so good, they don’t even need to see your face.

事实上，“飞马”软件早在 2013 年就已经存在，但在 2016 年才被正式发现。当时，一位人权活动家收到了一条可疑的链接，他没有打开链接，而是将其发送给了安全研究人员。随着人脸识别技术在全球范围内的广泛应用，以及其违宪风险的曝光，人们开始尝试各种方法来躲避监控，例如穿着带有特殊图案的衣服，试图干扰机器学习程序。然而，他们并不知道，人脸识别技术已经发展到如此先进的地步，甚至不需要看到你的脸，就能识别你的身份。

This new technology, thought to have developed in China, apparently can identify people based on the way they walk. It takes up to 50 different parameters that can be used to distinguish your walk and allow the computers to identify people from as far as 50 meters away.

据说，中国已经开发出了一种新的识别技术，可以通过分析人的步态来识别身份。该技术利用多达 50 个不同的参数来区分不同的步态，并能够在 50 米之外识别出特定的人。

You would have guessed it by now, this technology too is being developed with the promise of preventing crime. But how it’s actually used is anyone’s guess at this point.

你可能已经猜到了，这项技术也是以“预防犯罪”的名义开发的。但它究竟会被如何应用，目前还不得而知。

These are just some of the many surveillance programs that are not just being developed, but marketed and used actively around the world.

这些只是众多监控项目中的一部分，这些项目不仅在被开发，还在全球范围内积极推广和使用。

At least in 1984, Winston was fully aware of all the programs the state had to offer. Today, we don’t even know most of it. Yes, Snowden brought a revelation of documents in terms of the spying programs, but that’s just one facet of the larger landscape. Despite the outcry from those damning reports, change has been hard to come by. We constantly see news of surveillance programs cracking down on the civil liberties of their own citizens. Even tech companies are forced to bow their heads to any and all requests for data. And some that do so willingly. If you don’t even know who and what is watching part of your life, how can you even decide what to do about it?

至少在《1984》中，温斯顿对国家掌控的所有项目都了如指掌。如今，我们甚至对大多数项目一无所知。是的，斯诺登曝光了间谍项目的大量文件，但那只是更大图景中的一面。尽管那些令人震惊的报告引发了广泛的抗议，改变却依然难以实现。我们不断看到有关监控项目侵犯本国公民民权的新闻。即使是科技公司，也不得不屈服于所有的数据请求，有些甚至心甘情愿地这样做。如果你甚至不知道谁在监视你的生活，以及监视的内容，你又如何决定该如何应对呢？

If you look back at the forecast of surveillance by George Orwell, well, it turns out that he was an optimist, really. It’s not really the act of being watched that’s particularly disturbing. Rather, it’s the paranoia of feeling like you’re being watched when you can neither prove it to be true nor false.

如果回顾乔治·奥威尔对监控的预言，实际上，他算是个乐观主义者。真正令人不安的并不是被监视的事实，而是那种感觉自己正在被监视的偏执——却无法证实或证伪这种感觉。

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,” they say. However, a government that cares today about criminals, may tomorrow care more about their political adversaries. A government that today cares about political adversaries, may tomorrow care about academics. The list goes on and on.

他们说：“如果你身正不怕影子斜，就没什么好害怕的。” 然而，一个今天监控罪犯的政府，明天就可能监控政治异见人士；一个今天监控政治异见人士的政府，明天就可能监控学者。这样的例子不胜枚举。

That being said, it’s not all doom and gloom. The thing with the economy as it currently stands, at least in much of the Western world, is that the act of profit-making can really be used to weaponize any interests: the good and the bad. In this instance, after the general realization of what was going on, people consciously started choosing products that emphasize privacy. Now, whether those privacy privileges are actually able to protect us is another question altogether.

当然，情况也并非完全悲观。在当今的经济体系下，至少在西方世界的大部分地区，利益驱动是商业行为的核心逻辑。无论是好的还是坏的，都可以被用来谋取利益。在这种情况下，随着人们对隐私问题的日益重视，开始选择那些注重隐私保护的产品。当然，这些隐私保护措施是否真的有效，则是另一个问题。

Privacy has successfully been converted from a human right to a desirable feature. Apple is one of the first companies to take that mantle in the tech industry, releasing a slew of privacy features that almost get as much stage time as a new processor or camera.

隐私权已经从一项基本人权，变成了商家宣传的“卖点”。苹果公司是科技行业中最早意识到这一点的公司之一，他们发布了一系列隐私保护功能，这些功能与新的处理器和摄像头一样，成为产品宣传的重点。

It’s also worth noting that the situations in which these abusive powers are granted in the first place, they generally take place after a terrorist attack. At a time when people are more likely to be outraged and emotional, that’s when there’s little to no opposition to such requests for power. The inroads on our civil liberties generally don’t take place overnight. They take place in slow, almost indistinguishable strides. That is what 1984 is really talking about: to give the reader the ability to extrapolate into the future, when seemingly innocent requests for information slowly turn into widespread surveillance.

值得注意的是，政府滥用权力的现象，通常发生在恐怖袭击之后。在人们感到愤怒和恐慌的时候，他们更容易接受政府提出的加强监控的要求。对公民自由的侵犯，往往不是一蹴而就的，而是在潜移默化中逐渐实现的。《1984》正是想要警示我们，那些看似无害的信息收集，最终可能会演变成无处不在的监控。

These surveillance programs almost never have oversight or chaperoning, unless, of course, a whistleblower decides to leak it all. Take Facebook’s algorithms, for example. Innocent request for data to make the platform more profitable in exchange for the option to keep Facebook free for everyone. A lot of the privileges that we have today surrounding our choice to delete all our data and to control how it’s shared is the result.

这些监控项目几乎不受任何监管和监督，除非有“吹哨人”站出来揭露真相。以 Facebook 的算法为例。他们以“免费服务”为幌子，收集用户的个人数据，以提高平台的盈利能力。如今，我们之所以能够删除个人数据，并控制数据共享方式，正是因为之前发生过数据泄露事件，引发了公众的强烈抗议。

But sometimes, it seems to go a bit far. How often do you have a private conversation about a topic, only to end up being recommended services about that topic later on? And I’m not talking about your Google searches or your public posts. These are private messages.

但有时，监控行为似乎有些过分了。你是否经常在私下谈论某个话题后，就收到了关于这个话题的广告推荐？我说的不是你的搜索记录或公开发布的内容，而是你的私人聊天信息。

Of course, the irony is in the fact that even Facebook’s own CEO probably doesn’t feel very safe about the widespread surveillance in our world. This is a picture of Mark Zuckerberg taken a few years ago, which shows him at a desk with what appears to be his own laptop. Mark has both the webcam and the mic of his laptop taped up. It’s something that has become common practice across users of technology, most notable after the release of the Snowden files. But if Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t feel safe in his own office, a person who likely has executive access to some of the deepest, darkest secrets of our world’s technology, what does that say about all of us?

更具讽刺意味的是，就连 Facebook 的 CEO 马克·扎克伯格，似乎也对无处不在的监控感到不安。几年前的一张照片显示，扎克伯格的办公桌上放着他的笔记本电脑，而电脑的摄像头和麦克风都被胶带封住了。斯诺登泄密事件后，这种做法在科技行业变得十分普遍。但如果连扎克伯格这位掌握着全球科技秘密的人，在自己办公室里都感到不安全，那么我们普通人又该如何自处呢？

Now you might say, “Well, nobody’s forced to use any of these services.” Well, no, not technically. But realistically, does anyone really have a choice? The everyday Joe has to join Facebook because his colleagues are all on it. He has to join Instagram to maintain a functioning social life. Even the people that claim not to use social media use it for their businesses. The idea is the same. And with each additional user, the shared utility of these platforms rises, and with that rises the inclination to join and reveal more and more about our private lives.

你可能会说：“我又不是非用不可。” 确实，从理论上来说，我们可以选择不使用这些服务。但现实情况是，我们真的有选择吗？普通人不得不加入 Facebook，因为他的同事都在用；他不得不使用 Instagram，才能维持正常的社交生活。即使那些声称不使用社交媒体的人，也会为了工作而使用它。道理很简单，随着用户数量的增加，这些平台的实用性也随之提高，人们也更愿意加入其中，分享越来越多的个人信息。

There’s also an element of thought, or lack thereof, in all these platforms. And that was another hallmark of 1984: ridding the masses of almost any ability, or even desire, for critical thought. The things that dominate on social media are almost exclusively devoid of any crucial thought. All platforms are pushing for the shortest, most clickbaity things they can find, to give people that addictive surge of dopamine, and then keep them on a short leash. Instagram is also routinely under scrutiny for its algorithms. A research study about its algorithms was stopped right in its tracks with a threat of legal action, to which the smaller research institution had to oblige.

此外，这些平台还存在一个“思想缺失”的问题，这正是《1984》中所描绘的反乌托邦世界的另一个特征：剥夺大众的思考能力，甚至让他们失去思考的欲望。社交媒体上的内容，大多缺乏深度思考，平台为了吸引用户，不断推送那些短小精悍、标题党式的垃圾信息，让人们沉迷于多巴胺带来的短暂快感，并牢牢控制用户的注意力。Instagram 的算法也饱受争议。一家小型研究机构曾试图对其算法进行研究，但遭到 Instagram 的法律威胁，最终不得不放弃研究。

It’s no wonder that the comparison with 1984 really falls apart in today’s time. Today, everyone has a television, not because they were forced to have it, but because they go out and buy it themselves. And what people want is not to turn it off, but to keep it on as long as possible.

难怪人们会说，我们所处的时代与《1984》所描绘的世界截然不同。如今，每个人都拥有电视机，不是因为被迫拥有，而是主动购买。人们不是想方设法关掉它，而是希望它一直开着。

Of course, we shouldn’t get too ahead of ourselves. The fact of the matter is, you and I can have that discussion. We can at least debate whether it’s right or wrong, whether anything is done about it in the end is another topic altogether. But at least the conversation can take place. That in itself is a hopeful sign that our world is not quite there yet.

当然，我们也不应该杞人忧天。至少，我们现在还可以自由地讨论这些问题，可以争论对错，至于最终是否会采取行动，则是另一回事。但至少我们可以自由地表达观点，这本身就说明，我们所处的世界还没有完全变成《1984》中的反乌托邦社会。

In truth, despite a resemblance that is hard to overlook, Orwell is not speaking of our time or any time in specific. He is talking about the innate desire of those in power to remain in power, and an almost equally innate desire to rebel against that. It’s a tug-of-war which will remain timeless, just like his book.

事实上，尽管《1984》与现实世界存在着惊人的相似之处，但奥威尔并非在描述某个特定的时代。他所探讨的，是掌权者对权力的永恒欲望，以及人们反抗强权的本能。这是一场永无止境的博弈，正如他的作品一样，具有超越时代的意义。

As long as we know about it and are able to talk about it, we have a fighting chance. So, go ahead. Go ahead and think. That’s not a thoughtcrime… yet.

只要我们了解真相，并敢于表达自己的想法，我们就还有希望。所以，请继续思考吧，这还不是“思想罪”……至少现在还不是。

备注

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