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  • An ant is pretty stupid.

    一隻螞蟻是談不上聰明的。

  • It doesn't have much of a brain, no will, no plan,

    牠沒什麼腦子,沒有意志,也沒有規劃的能力。

  • and yet, many ants together are smart.

    但是許多螞蟻聚在一起後,卻能展現智能:

  • An ant colony can construct complex structures.

    一個蟻群可以建構出複雜的蟻穴結構,

  • Some colonies keep farms of fungi, others take care of cattle. They can wage war or defend themselves.

    有些螞蟻負責真菌農場,

  • How is this possible?

    其他的則照管蚜蟲牧場,

  • How can a bunch of stupid things do smart things together?

    牠們還可以發動戰爭或是自我防衛。

  • This phenomenon is called emergence,

    這怎麼可能?

  • and it's one of the most fascinating and mysterious features of our universe.

    聚在一起的一堆傻瓜怎麼能做出那麼聰明的舉動?

  • In a nutshell, it describes small things forming bigger things that have different properties than the sum of their parts.

    這種現象稱之為【湧現(emergence)】,

  • Emergence is complexity arising from simplicity, and emergence is everywhere.

    而它是我們宇宙中最迷人與神秘的特色之一。

  • [Intro]

    簡言之,它描述一些小東西在聚成較大的事物後,

  • Water has vastly different properties to the molecules that make it up, like the concept of wetness.

    卻能呈現出「1加1大於2」的特性。

  • Take wet fabric, If you zoom in far enough, there is no wetness.

    湧現是一種由簡而繁的複雜性,而且它無所不在。

  • There are just molecules sitting in the spaces between the atoms of the cloth.

    液態水有著與水分子截然不同的性質,

  • Wetness is an emerging property of water.

    比如"濕潤"的概念。

  • Something new only created by a lot of individual interactions between water molecules.

    拿塊濕布來看,

  • And this is sort of it. Many things interact under a certain set of rules, creating something above and beyond themselves.

    如果你用足夠倍率的顯微鏡來看的話,

  • It turns out that more is different.

    會發現根本沒有所謂"濕潤"這回事。

  • This different property is itself a new thing, and that new thing can couple with other new things to repeat the process.

    水分子只不過是分散在布料原子間的空隙中而已。

  • You can imagine this as layers stacked upon each other every, layer made from more complex parts.

    "濕潤"是水的一種湧現性質。

  • Atoms form molecules.

    某種由許多水分子個體之間互動所創造的新事物。

  • Molecules form proteins.

    這就是一個例子。

  • Proteins make up cells.

    許多個體在某些規則下的互動,

  • Cells make up organs.

    而創造出能超越自身集體的事物。

  • Organs form individuals.

    結果發現群體愈大,就愈不一樣。

  • Individuals form societies.

    這種不一樣的特性本身就是一個新東西,

  • But how can something be more than the sum of its parts?

    而這個新東西可以跟其他的新東西結合起來,

  • How do ants form the sort of cloudy entity that is a colony? By following a ruleset that produces order through chaos.

    再次重複"湧現"過程。

  • For example, let's look at how an ant colony distributes jobs.

    你可以想像成是一層疊上一層,越疊上去就越複雜。

  • Let's assume that a colony shall have 25% workers, 25% caretakers,

    原子組成分子

  • 25% soldiers and 25% gatherers.

    分子組成蛋白質

  • Ants communicate their current job via chemicals. For example, the worker ant constantly secretes chemicals that say: "I'm a worker".

    蛋白質組成細胞

  • When ants meet other ants, they smell each other to gather information, telling each other their job and what they're doing.

    細胞組成器官

  • Both keep track of who they met in the past.

    器官組成個體

  • Now, imagine an anteater kills most of the gatherers. If this isn't fixed quickly, the colony will starve.

    個體形成社會

  • Many worker ants need to switch jobs, but how do you tell this to thousands of them?

    但是事物怎麼可能超過它們個體的總合呢?

  • Simple. You don't.

    螞蟻是如何組成一個被稱為"蟻群"的虛幻實體?

  • Our worker ant will still meet and smell other ants, but it will encounter almost no gatherers at all.

    那是藉由遵循從混沌中產生秩序的規則集。

  • It counts too few gatherers, until it reaches a critical point, and then it changes its job.

    舉例來說,

  • The worker becomes a gatherer. Other ants will do the same, until after a while there are enough gatherers again.

    讓我們來看看蟻群如何分配工作?

  • The balance is restored all by itself.

    讓我們假設蟻群中應該有25%是工蟻,

  • The actions and interactions of an individual are random. You can't plan which ant will encounter which other ant.

    25%是看護蟻,

  • But the simple set of rules is so elegant that a colony's many operations emerge as a consequence.

    25%是兵蟻,還有25%是採集蟻

  • On an even more fundamental level, hundreds of millions of complicated molecules interact to maintain a robust and amazing structure.

    螞蟻利用化學物質來宣示牠們目前的角色。

  • A being with vastly different properties than the sum of its dead parts emerges.

    例如,工蟻會不斷分泌化學物質說:我是工蟻

  • The smallest unit of life: a cell.

    當螞蟻們彼此相遇的時候,

  • We still don't have a clear definition of what living things are, we just know they emerge from things that are not alive.

    牠們會相互嗅聞來取得信息,

  • Cells combine and cooperate. They specialize and respond to one another,

    彼此告知牠們的角色及工作。

  • and over time, we develop into complex organisms with remarkable capacities.

    雙方都會保留過去的資訊交換記錄。

  • Your arms and legs and heart are an incredibly complex and complicated system made of trillions of individual stupid things...

    現在,假設食蟻獸吃掉了大部分的採集蟻,

  • ...and yet we breathe, digest and watch YouTube videos.

    如果蟻群不及時應對,那麼牠們將會陷入飢荒。

  • How do your cells know what to do?

    必須要讓許多工蟻轉換工作,

  • Think of the pacemaker cells in your heart.

    但是你要如何才能告知數以千計的工蟻?

  • Billions of them need to send out an impulse just at the right moment to collectively create a heartbeat.

    答案很簡單,你並不需要那麼做!

  • Our cells exchange chemical information with their neighbor cells to see what they're up to, and then decide what to do.

    我們的工蟻會持續地與其他螞蟻交會以及彼此嗅聞,

  • If it's among a lot of cells that are working on the same task, it will start working on that task as well, and sync up with them.

    但是牠們會幾乎完全碰不到採集蟻。

  • There is no master mind giving commands. Just single units communicating with their neighbors, and acting according to the feedback they get.

    當牠們對採集蟻的計數小於一個臨界點時,

  • What about our most important part? What is the thing that asks these kinds of questions?

    牠們就會進行轉職。

  • Is our consciousness then an emergent property of the cells in our brain?

    工蟻會轉職為採集蟻。

  • This question is too big and important, it deserves a video of its own.

    其他螞蟻的行為模式也都一樣,

  • Some things that emerge are hard to define. You can't touch an ant colony, only its parts.

    直到採集蟻的數量再次足夠為止。

  • It has neither brain nor face, nor body.

    完全靠自己恢復平衡。

  • And yet the colony interacts with the world.

    個體的行動與互動都是隨機的,

  • Just like colonies emerge from ants, things emerge from humans, like Nations.

    你無法規劃讓哪隻螞蟻一定能遇見另外哪隻螞蟻。

  • What actually is a nation, is it its population?

    但是這些簡單的規則集是如此簡潔,

  • Is it its institutions, its symbols like its flag, colours or anthems?

    以至於蟻群的許多行動都是湧現的結果。

  • The physical things it makes like cities, the territory it occupies?

    在更基礎的原子層級上來看,

  • All of these things are fluid.

    那是由數以百萬計的複雜分子相互作用,

  • Populations change and are replaced.

    得以維持一個強大而驚人的结構。

  • Institutions come and go, cities can be constructed and abandoned.

    得到的特性,比由無生命的單元總成的湧現還更不同。

  • Borders have changed all the time for most of history, and symbols get replaced by new symbols.

    生命的最小單位,

  • A nation has no face, no brain, no body.

    "細胞"

  • Are nations not real, then? Of course they are, just like ant colonies, nations interact with the world.

    我們對於"什麼是有生命的事物"還沒有一個明確定義,

  • They can change landscapes, wage wars, grow or decline, and they can stop existing.

    我們只知道它們是從沒有生命的事物中湧現出來的。

  • But they only exist because of a lot of humans interacting with each other.

    細胞會相互結合並且合作。

  • But not just nations. All the complex structures that surround us emerge from us.

    它們會分化並且相互呼應,

  • Even if we don't intend to, we are constantly creating.

    隨著時間過去,

  • Communities, companies, cities, societies.

    我們發展成具有非凡能力的複雜生物體。

  • All of these things are entities that have fundamentally different properties and abilities than the pretty stupid apes they emerged from.

    你的手,腳以及心臟,是極其複雜精密的系統,

  • We don't know why any of this happens.

    由數以兆計的無智個體所組成。

  • We just observe it, and it seems to be a fundamental property of our universe.

    但我們可以呼吸,

  • It may be the most beautiful and wonderous property of our universe.

    可以消化食物,

  • [Outro]

    還能看YouTube影片。

An ant is pretty stupid.

一隻螞蟻是談不上聰明的。

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