What's expected of us - Ted Chiang

来自: 游真(@undoZen) 2010-05-01 01:11:54

What’s expected of us

It’s a tough choice…

Ted Chiang

This is a warning. Please read carefully.

By now you’ve probably seen a Predictor; millions of them have been sold by the time you’re reading this. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a small device, like a remote for opening your car door. Its only features are a button and a big green LED. The light flashes if you press the button. Specifically, the light flashes one second before you press the button.

Most people say that when they first try it, it feels like they’re playing a strange game, one where the goal is to press the button after seeing the flash, and it’s easy to play. But when you try to break the rules, you find that you can’t. If you try to press the button without having seen a flash, the flash immediately appears, and no matter how fast you move, you never push the button until a second has elapsed. If you wait for the flash, intending to keep from pressing the button afterwards, the flash never appears. No matter what you do, the light always precedes the button press. There’s no way to fool a Predictor.

The heart of each Predictor is a circuit with a negative time delay — it sends a signal back in time. The full implications of the technology will become apparent later, when negative delays of greater than a second are achieved, but that’s not what this warning is about. The immediate problem is that Predictors demonstrate that there’s no such thing as free will.

There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion, some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic. Most people agree these arguments are irrefutable, but no one ever really accepts the conclusion. The experience of having free will is too powerful for an argument to overrule. What it takes is a demonstration, and that’s what a Predictor provides.

Typically, a person plays with a Predictor compulsively for several days, showing it to friends, trying various schemes to outwit the device. The person may appear to lose interest in it, but no one can forget what it means — over the following weeks, the implications of an immutable future sink in. Some people, realizing that their choices don’t matter, refuse to make any choices at all. Like a legion of Bartleby the Scriveners, they no longer engage in spontaneous action. Eventually, a third of those who play with a Predictor must be hospitalized because they won’t feed themselves. The end state is akinetic mutism, a kind of waking coma.

They’ll track motion with their eyes, and change position occasionally, but nothing more. The ability to move remains, but the motivation is gone.

Before people started playing with Predictors, akinetic mutism was very rare, a result of damage to the anterior cingulate region of the brain. Now it spreads like a cognitive plague. People used to speculate about a thought that destroys the thinker, some unspeakable lovecraftian horror, or a Godel sentence that crashes the human logical system. It turns out that the disabling thought is one that we’ve all encountered: the idea that free will doesn’t exist. It just wasn’t harmful until you believed it.

Doctors try arguing with the patients while they still respond to conversation. We had all been living happy, active lives before, they reason, and we hadn’t had free will then either. Why should anything change? “No action you took last month was any more freely chosen than one you take today,” a doctor might say. “You can still behave that way now.” The patients invariably respond, “But now I know.” And some of them never say anything again.

Some will argue that the fact the Predictor causes this change in behaviour means that we do have free will. An automaton cannot become discouraged, only a free-thinking entity can. The fact that some individuals descend into akinetic mutism whereas others do not just highlights the importance of making a choice.

Unfortunately, such reasoning is faulty: every form of behaviour is compatible with determinism. One dynamic system might fall into a basin of attraction and wind up at a fixed point, whereas another exhibits chaotic behaviour indefinitely, but both are completely deterministic.

I’m transmitting this warning to you from just over a year in your future: it’s the first lengthy message received when circuits with negative delays in the megasecond range are used to build communication devices.

Other messages will follow, addressing other issues. My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know that they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

And yet I know that, because free will is an illusion, it’s all predetermined who will descend into akinetic mutism and who won’t. There’s nothing anyone can do about it — you can’t choose the effect the Predictor has on you. Some of you will succumb and some of you won’t, and my sending this warning won’t alter those proportions. So why did I do it?

Because I had no choice.

以下是我的译文

还有什么可指望

这真是一个难题...

作者：特德·蒋 翻译：游真UZEN

这是一个警告。请仔细阅读。

现在你可能已经看到预测器了，当你阅读本文时这东西已经售出了上百万个。如果你还没见过这种东西，它其实就是一个小装置，有点像汽车的遥控钥匙。上面只有一个按钮和一个绿色的 LED 灯。按下按钮，灯光闪烁。特别的是，灯光会在你按下按钮前一秒钟闪烁。

大多数人表示，当他们第一次尝试这东西，就像是在玩一种奇怪的游戏，其规则就是在看到灯闪之后按下按钮——很容易的游戏。但是如果你想打破规则，你就会发现你根本做不到。如果你想在看到闪光前就按下按钮，灯会立刻闪现，并且不管你动作多快，你都不可能在闪光后的一秒内按到按钮。而如果你等着闪光，想等到闪光之后不去碰按钮，那光就永远也不会闪现。不管你怎么做，闪光总会在按下按钮前出现。绝无任何例外。

预测器的核心是一个负向时间延迟器——它会把信号传送到过去。等负向延时技术突破秒级达到更高程度的时候，该技术的重大影响将会变得很明显。但这并非本警告的重点。当前最直接的问题是，预测器向人们展示了：所谓自由意志这样的东西根本就不存在。

实际上一直以来就有类似的理论，有基于物理学的，也有基于纯粹逻辑的，而大多数人也都承认这些论点无可辩驳，但从来没有人真正接受这样的理论。我们拥有自由意志这一感觉本身就能强有力地把这些论证通通推翻。这一理论的证明需要的是切实的演示，而预测器带来的正是这个。

通常，一个人会花好几天时间完全沉迷于预测器，向朋友们展示，尝试各种计划以胜过这设备。慢慢地这人就会对预测器失去兴趣，但没人能忘记这东西表现出来的意义——几个星期后，未来之不可变更这一沉重的事实将慢慢潜入心底。一些人，明白了他们的自主意识并不重要，因此而拒绝再做任何抉择。像巴特斯克里文纳斯军团一样，他们不再从事任何自发的行动。最终，三分之一玩过预测器的人必须住院，因为他们不愿意再喂食自己。直到最终演变为运动不能性缄默症，就像是一种清醒的昏迷。

他们的眼睛会跟着眼前的景物移动，偶尔变换个姿势，但仅此而已。移动的能力依然存在，但动力已经消失。

在人们接触到预测器以前，运动不能性缄默症非常罕见，它是前扣带脑区域损坏的结果。而现在它就像一种认知功能瘟疫一样在蔓延。人们过去就推测存在着某种特定想法能摧毁人的思考能力，例如某种难以言说的洛夫克拉夫特式恐怖故事，或是能让人类的逻辑系统毁于一旦的哥德尔式语句。而到头来原来给人致命打击的这种想法我们都遇到过，即：自由意志并不存在。但除非你相信它，否则这个念头不会给你带来任何伤害。

医生们试着在病人还未完全丧失交谈动力的时候与他们争论：在这之前，我们一直都快乐而积极地生活着——他们如此据理力争——那时候我们也同样没有自由意志可言，而现在又能有任何不同吗？“一个月前的你做任何事都并不比现在的你更自由，”医生会这样说，“你仍然可以继续如此行动。”而病人却总是回答：“可是现在我知道了。”并且其中一些人从此再也不说一句话了。

有些人认为，事实上，预测器会导致行为改变这一点本身就证明了我们是有自由意志的。一个机器人不可能被打击而丧失动力，只有具有自由意志的人才会。一些人陷入了运动不能性缄默症而另一些人却没有，这正凸显了主动行事的重要性。

但不幸的是，这样的理由也是错的，因为各种行为都与宿命论相符。一个动力系统可能在某处开始保持稳定，也可能永远展现出混沌的变化，但两者都是完全确定的。

我是从一年后的未来向你传送此条警告的——这是用微秒级负向延时器组建的高级通信器所发送的第一条消息。

其他消息将会紧随其后，指出其他问题。我想传达的信息是这样的：假装你有自由意志。假装你的决定能对未来有重要影响，哪怕你知道事实并非如此。事实并不重要——重要的是你的信念，相信谎言是避免陷入清醒的昏迷的唯一方法。现在，文明的基础在于自我欺骗——或许它一直就是这样。

然而我知道，因为自由意志是一种幻像，谁终将陷入运动不能性缄默症而谁又不会，这也都是注定的。任何人都无法改变这一点——你无法选择预测器对你产生的影响。你们中有些人终会屈服，有些人则不会，我的警告对此毫无影响。那我何苦还发送此警告？

因为我别无选择。