TED英語(yǔ)演講：可愛(ài),性感,甜,搞笑
為什么寶寶可愛(ài)? 為什么蛋糕甜美? 哲學(xué)家Dan Dennett有你不會(huì)期望的答案，因?yàn)樗窒砹丝蓯?ài)，甜美和性感的東西進(jìn)化的違反直覺(jué)的推理。下面是小編為大家收集關(guān)于TED英語(yǔ)演講：可愛(ài),性感,甜,搞笑，歡迎借鑒參考。
Cute, sexy, sweet, funny
演講者：Dan Dennett
| 中英對(duì)照演講稿 |
I’m going around the world giving talks about Darwin, and usually what I’m talking about is Darwin’s strange inversion of reasoning. Now that title, that phrase, comes from a critic, an early critic, and this is a passage that I just love, and would like to read for you.
我經(jīng)常在世界各地做關(guān)于達(dá)爾文的演講，一般我都要講到的是達(dá)爾文奇怪的“反向邏輯”。這個(gè)“頭銜”，這個(gè)名詞，來(lái)自于一個(gè)批評(píng)，一個(gè)早先的批評(píng)。我喜歡這篇文章，很樂(lè)意給大家念一下。
"In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. This proposition will be found on careful examination to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin’s meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think.Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in the achievements of creative skill."
這個(gè)我們要探討的理論之中，“全然無(wú)知”變成了創(chuàng)造者;那么讓我們清楚闡明這個(gè)理論體系的根本原則，那就是，在制造一個(gè)完美的機(jī)器之前，完全沒(méi)有必要知道如何來(lái)制造它。這種說(shuō)法被建立在詳盡的研究之上來(lái)傳達(dá)這個(gè)理論的要義，也傳達(dá)了達(dá)爾文先生的全部意思;他用這樣一種奇怪的“反向邏輯”似乎認(rèn)為“絕對(duì)的無(wú)知”完全有資格取代“絕對(duì)的智慧”來(lái)完成需要?jiǎng)?chuàng)造性技能的工作。
Exactly. Exactly. And it is a strange inversion. A creationist pamphlet has this wonderful page in it: "TestTwo: Do you know of any building that didn’t have a builder? Yes/No. Do you know of any painting that didn’t have a painter? Yes/No. Do you know of any car that didn’t have a maker? Yes/No. If you answered 'Yes' for any of the above,give details."
可不是嘛!可不是嘛!這真是一個(gè)奇怪的“反向”。一位上帝論者的小冊(cè)子上有這樣一頁(yè)非常精彩：測(cè)驗(yàn)二 你知道任何一棟建筑沒(méi)有它的建設(shè)者?有，沒(méi)有 你知道有任何一副畫(huà)沒(méi)有它的繪畫(huà)者?有，沒(méi)有 你知道有任何一輛小汽車(chē)沒(méi)有它的制造者么?有，沒(méi)有 如果你在任一問(wèn)題中答“有”，給出其細(xì)節(jié)。
A-ha! I mean, it really is a strange inversion of reasoning. You would have thought it stands to reason that design requires an intelligent designer. But Darwin shows that it’s just false.
啊哈!我說(shuō)，這可真是一個(gè)奇怪的“反向邏輯”啊!你可能覺(jué)得這種說(shuō)法站得住腳：那就是但凡設(shè)計(jì)都需要一個(gè)智慧的設(shè)計(jì)者。可達(dá)爾文證明，那是錯(cuò)誤的。
Today, though, I’m going to talk about Darwin’s other strange inversion, which is equally puzzling at first, but in some ways just as important. It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet. Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy. We adore babies because they’re so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny.
但是今天，我要談的是達(dá)爾文的另一個(gè)奇怪的“反向邏輯”。它乍眼看來(lái)也是一樣莫名其妙，但從某種程度上說(shuō)，它也是一樣重要。說(shuō)我們喜歡巧克力是因?yàn)樗芴穑坪跽f(shuō)得過(guò)去。小伙子們迷這樣的姑娘，因?yàn)樗齻兒苄愿?。我們寵?ài)這樣的嬰兒，因?yàn)樗麄兪悄敲纯蓯?ài)。當(dāng)然，我們還喜歡笑話，因?yàn)樗鼈兏阈Α?/p>
This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why. Let’s start with sweet. Our sweet tooth is basically an evolved sugar detector, because sugar is high energy, and it’s just been wired up to the preferer, to put it very crudely, and that’s why we like sugar. Honey is sweet because we like it, not "we like it because honey is sweet."
但這都是倒因?yàn)楣倪壿嫛＿_(dá)爾文會(huì)告訴我們?yōu)槭裁?。從甜開(kāi)始吧，我們饞甜的，其實(shí)是一種進(jìn)化出來(lái)的糖探測(cè)器。因?yàn)樘鞘歉邿崃康?，所以它就被大腦強(qiáng)化為我們的一項(xiàng)偏愛(ài)。簡(jiǎn)單來(lái)講，這就是為什么我們喜歡糖。蜜是甜的，因?yàn)槲覀兿矚g它，而不是“我們喜歡蜜，因?yàn)樗翘鸬摹?rdquo;
There’s nothing intrinsically sweet about honey. If you looked at glucose molecules till you were blind, you wouldn’t see why they tasted sweet. You have to look in our brains to understand why they’re sweet. So if you think first there was sweetness, and then we evolved to like sweetness, you’ve got it backwards;that’s just wrong. It’s the other way round. Sweetness was born with the wiring which evolved.
蜂蜜內(nèi)在沒(méi)有任何所謂的甜。哪怕我們盯著葡萄糖，看到雙眼失明我們也沒(méi)法看出來(lái)為什么它們是甜的。你必須要從我們大腦中來(lái)理解為什么它們甜。所以如果你認(rèn)為首先有了甜，然后我們進(jìn)化成了喜歡甜，那你就搞反了：這是錯(cuò)的。應(yīng)該是倒過(guò)來(lái)。甜的出現(xiàn)是和大腦里那個(gè)溝回的進(jìn)化一起發(fā)生的。
And there’s nothing intrinsically sexy about these young ladies. And it’s a good thing that there isn’t, because if there were, then Mother Nature would have a problem: How on earth do you get chimps to mate? Now you might think, ah, there’s a solution: hallucinations.
這些年輕小姐們也沒(méi)有什么內(nèi)在的性感。而且沒(méi)有是件好事，因?yàn)榧偃缯娴挠辛宋覀兊淖匀恢妇鸵新闊┝耍何铱稍趺醋屵@些猩猩們交配啊?現(xiàn)在你也許在想。啊哈!我有一招：性幻想!-_-!
That would be one way of doing it, but there’s a quicker way. Just wire the chimps up to love that look, and apparently they do. That’s all there is to it.Over six million years, we and the chimps evolved our different ways. We became bald-bodied, oddly enough; for one reason or another, they didn’t. If we hadn’t, then probably this would be the height of sexiness.
這也許是個(gè)辦法，但還有一招更快。就是讓猩猩們的大腦產(chǎn)生個(gè)溝回，愛(ài)上那個(gè)樣子。而且顯然，它們愛(ài)上了。就是這么回事。 過(guò)了六百萬(wàn)年，我們和猩猩進(jìn)化成了不同的樣子。 我們變得身軀無(wú)毛，有夠奇怪的; 而由于某種原因，它們沒(méi)有 如果我們也沒(méi)有的話，那么可能這個(gè)就變成了絕頂性感了。
Our sweet tooth is an evolved and instinctual preference for high-energy food. It wasn’t designed for chocolate cake. Chocolate cake is a supernormal stimulus. The term is owed to NikoTinbergen, who did his famous experiments with gulls, where he found that that orange spot on the gull’s beak -- if he made a bigger, oranger spot the gullchicks would peck at it even harder.
我們饞甜東西是一種進(jìn)化出來(lái)的內(nèi)在偏愛(ài)，偏愛(ài)高熱量食物。那不是針對(duì)巧克力蛋糕而設(shè)計(jì)的。巧克力蛋糕是一個(gè)超常刺激。這個(gè)詞是尼古拉斯·丁伯根(Niko Tinbergen)提出來(lái)的。他做了他出名的海鷗實(shí)驗(yàn)他發(fā)現(xiàn)了海鷗喙上的橘點(diǎn)——如果他把這個(gè)點(diǎn)放大，染得更橘那么小海鷗就會(huì)更猛烈地啄它。
It was a hyperstimulus for them, and they loved it. What we see with, say, chocolate cake is it’s a supernormal stimulus to tweak our design wiring. And there are lots of supernormal stimuli;chocolate cake is one. There's lots of supernormal stimuli for sexiness.
這對(duì)它們來(lái)說(shuō)是興奮的刺激，它們狂愛(ài)這個(gè)。對(duì)于我們而言，比方說(shuō)，巧克力蛋糕就是一個(gè)超常刺激，它扭曲了我們腦內(nèi)溝回的本意。有很多很多的超常刺激，巧克力蛋糕是一個(gè)。有很多對(duì)于性感的超常刺激。
And there's even supernormal stimuli for cuteness. Here’s a pretty good example. It’s important that we love babies, andthat we not be put off by, say, messy diapers. So babies have to attract our affection and our nurturing, and they do.
甚至有對(duì)于可愛(ài)的超常刺激，這就有一個(gè)很好的例子。喜歡嬰兒對(duì)于我們來(lái)講很重要，這樣我們就不會(huì)因?yàn)槟承┞闊?mdash;—比如說(shuō)臟尿布——而嫌棄他們。因此嬰兒必須要吸引我們的愛(ài)意和撫養(yǎng)，他們確實(shí)做到了。
And, by the way, a recent study shows that mothers prefer the smell of the dirty diapers of their own baby. So nature works on many levels here. But now, if babies didn’t look the way they do -- if babies looked like this, that’s what we would find adorable, that’s what wewould find -- we would think, oh my goodness, do I ever want to hug that. This is the strange inversion.
另外順便說(shuō)一句，最近一個(gè)研究表明媽媽們都更喜歡聞自己孩子的臟尿布。可見(jiàn)自然在不同的層次上起著作用。但現(xiàn)在，如果嬰兒們不再像他們現(xiàn)在的樣子，而是看上去這樣。這就是我們覺(jué)得可愛(ài)的樣子，這就會(huì)使我們想“哦，天哪!我可真想抱抱啊!”這是一個(gè)奇怪的“反向邏輯”
Well now, finally what about funny. My answer is, it’s the same story, the same story. This is the hard one, the one that isn’t obvious. That’s why I leave it to the end. And I won’t be able to say too much about it. But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think,what hard job that has to be done -- it’s dirty work, somebody’s got to do it-- is so important to give us such a powerful, in built reward for it when we succeed.
那么現(xiàn)在，最后關(guān)于可笑。我的答案是，一樣的故事，是個(gè)一樣的故事。這個(gè)比較難懂，不太顯而易見(jiàn)，所以我把它留到最后。而且我今天也不會(huì)講太多這個(gè)。你必須從進(jìn)化的角度來(lái)想，你得想，什么困難的活必須被完成——這是一個(gè)臟活，而且必須有人來(lái)完成它——以至于當(dāng)我們完成的時(shí)候，給我們一個(gè)強(qiáng)烈的內(nèi)在獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)那么重要。
Now, I think we've found the answer -- I and a few of my colleagues.It’s a neural system that’s wired up to reward the brain for doing a grubby clerical job. Our bumper sticker for this view is that this is the joy of debugging. Now I’m not going to have time to spell it all out, but I’ll just say that only some kinds of debugging get the reward.
現(xiàn)在，我想我們有答案了，我和幾位我的同事。這是一種為了獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)大腦完成了某項(xiàng)骯臟的事務(wù)性工作而產(chǎn)生的神經(jīng)反應(yīng)體系。我們關(guān)于這個(gè)觀點(diǎn)的招牌說(shuō)法就是這是排除故障的快感。現(xiàn)在我沒(méi)時(shí)間來(lái)把這個(gè)展開(kāi)講了，但我得說(shuō)，只有某幾種“排除故障”能夠獲得這種快感。
And what we’re doing is we’re using humor as a sort of neuro scientific probe by switching humor on and off, by turning the knob on a joke -- now it’s not funny ... oh, now it’s funnier ... now we’ll turn a little bit more ... now it’s not funny -- in thisway, we can actually learn something about the architecture of the brain, the functional architecture of the brain.
我們現(xiàn)在所做的，就是把幽默感作為一種神經(jīng)科學(xué)的探針，通過(guò)幽默的開(kāi)關(guān)，通過(guò)調(diào)整笑話——“這個(gè)不搞笑了……哦，現(xiàn)在這個(gè)有意思……”“現(xiàn)在我們調(diào)整一點(diǎn)……現(xiàn)在又不搞笑了”——通過(guò)這種方式，我們事實(shí)上能學(xué)到一些關(guān)于大腦構(gòu)造的知識(shí)，關(guān)于大腦的功能性構(gòu)造。
Matthew Hurley is the first author of this.We call it the Hurley Model. He’s a computer scientist, Reginald Adams a psychologist,and there I am, and we’re putting this together into a book. Thank you very much.
馬修·赫爾利(Matthew Hurley)是這本書(shū)的第一作者，我們稱(chēng)這個(gè)為赫爾利模型(Hurley Model)。他是個(gè)計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)家，雷金納德·亞當(dāng)斯(Reginald Adams)一位心理學(xué)家，然后就是我。我們正在把這些寫(xiě)進(jìn)一本書(shū)里。謝謝大家!
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