Name: 【TED】丹-丹內特：可愛、性感、甜蜜、有趣（Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny）。 (【TED】Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny (Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny))
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T07:25:48.000Z
Duration: 7 min 46 s

I'm going around the world giving talks about Darwin,

譯者: Shiau Han Li 審譯者: Michelle Fan

我在世界各地與大家討論達爾文

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.

"In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer;

我把最愛的一段評論分享給各位

so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system,

「據此理論，『無知』為萬物之始

that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine,

it is not requisite to know how to make it.

舉例而言，『要製造一台完美的機器

This proposition will be found on careful examination to express,

其實並不需要了解製造方法。』

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."

在於肯定『無知』，視其為難得之物

Exactly. Exactly. And it is a strange inversion.

可取代『全知』，輔創新之念於大成」

A creationist pamphlet has this wonderful page in it:

的確 這個理論確實背離一般常理

神造世界論者的傳單上可能會問

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."

A-ha! I mean, it really is a strange inversion of reasoning.

如果你都回答「有」，請舉例詳細說明

You would have thought it stands to reason

哈！這就是我所謂違常的逆向推理

that design requires an intelligent designer.

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.

不過今天解釋的是其他逆向推理

It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet.

乍聽時一樣難懂，不過同等重要

Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy.

And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny.

我們喜歡嬰兒，因為他們很可愛

This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.

還有，笑話引人發噱是因為好笑

Let's start with sweet. Our sweet tooth is basically an evolved sugar detector,

達爾文解釋 這些推論都倒果為因

because sugar is high energy, and it's just been wired up to the preferer,

喜愛甜食是因為人對糖分很敏感

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."

There's nothing intrinsically sweet about honey.

If you looked at glucose molecules till you were blind,

即使你死盯著葡萄糖的分子結構

You have to look in our brains to understand why they're sweet.

So if you think first there was sweetness,

如果你先假定，甜食中有甜的成分

you've got it backwards; that's just wrong. It's the other way round.

我們的大腦演化成喜歡這種成分

Sweetness was born with the wiring which evolved.

And there's nothing intrinsically sexy about these young ladies.

And it's a good thing that there isn't, because if there were,

Now you might think, ah, there's a solution: hallucinations.

黑猩猩怎麼願意跟伴侶交配呢？

That would be one way of doing it, but there's a quicker way.

Just wire the chimps up to love that look,

這是一個方法；但還有一個更快的

Over six million years, we and the chimps evolved our different ways.

演化至今，人跟黑猩猩已大不相同

If we hadn't, then probably this would be the height of sexiness.

Our sweet tooth is an evolved and instinctual preference for high-energy food.

若我們也沒有，那或許這才是性感

我們喜歡甜食，是因為它的高能量

Chocolate cake is a supernormal stimulus.

巧克力蛋糕是種超乎尋常的刺激

who did his famous experiments with gulls,

where he found that that orange spot on the gull's beak --

the gull chicks would peck at it even harder.

如果變大一點或顏色更鮮豔一點

It was a hyperstimulus for them, and they loved it.

它對小海鷗而言是個強烈的刺激

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.

還有很多東西是超乎尋常的刺激

And there's even supernormal stimuli for cuteness. Here's a pretty good example.

It's important that we love babies, and that we not be put off by, say, messy diapers.

有些會引發可愛的感覺 舉個例子

So babies have to attract our affection and our nurturing, and they do.

嬰兒必須討喜，所以即使弄髒尿布

And, by the way, a recent study shows that mothers

我們也不會因為這樣就不愛他們

prefer the smell of the dirty diapers of their own baby.

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 we would find --

we would think, oh my goodness, do I ever want to hug that.

你可能會想「天啊！我才不要抱他」

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.

最後 好笑的感覺 其實原理一樣

And I won't be able to say too much about it.

不過難解釋、也不明顯，所以放最後

But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think, what hard job that has to be done --

而且我所知有限，能說的也不多

it's dirty work, somebody's got to do it --

但從進化的角度思考，什麼該先做

is so important to give us such a powerful, inbuilt reward for it when we succeed.

打樁的工作一定最難 但非做不可

Now, I think we've found the answer -- I and a few of my colleagues.

因為一旦成功 貢獻是超乎想像的

It's a neural system that's wired up to reward the brain

現在，我與幾個同事已經有了答案

完成麻煩工作後應給予自己獎勵

我們對於這種反應的標準解釋是

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.

And what we're doing is we're using humor as a sort of neuroscientific 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 --

現在不好笑....噢！現在好笑多了！

in this way, we can actually learn something

如果轉回來一點...現在又不好笑了