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  • In every second, of every day, you have to decide between action and inaction.

  • We're all tangled up in a web of cause and effect and so every choice you make has gravity

  • and pulls us towards one of two futures: one that is more heavenly or one that is more

  • hellish; one that is more utopian versus one that is more dystopian.

  • It's human nature to dream about utopia: a place better than here.

  • We dream about what our lives could be, and some of us dream bigger, about what the world

  • could be.

  • One thing's certain, there's always a place that exists outside of space and time, it's

  • better than here, and it's where we want to go.

  • But all things come with a price tag, and you have to decide whether you're willing

  • to pay the cost.

  • In some sense, your life is defined by the costs you're willing to pay.

  • A better world exists, and it demands payment; so, what are you willing to sacrifice?

  • In his story *The Monkey's Paw,* William Jacobs writes about a man who acquires a magical

  • monkey paw that will grant him three wishes.

  • Much to his dismay, the man finds out that each wish comes with an unintended side effect.

  • When the man wishes for 200 pounds, he receives itas compensation for the death of his

  • son.

  • When he wishes for his son to come back to life, he doesas an undead being.

  • Fate demands a price and if the man would not voluntarily choose his sacrifice, it would

  • have to be decided for him.

  • The residents of Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World* live in a technologically advanced

  • utopia: they're happy, healthy, and youthful.

  • They don't fear death.

  • When their time comes, they go in peace.

  • Class hierarchies exist but everyone has been psychologically conditioned to love their

  • place within them.

  • Babies are genetically engineered.

  • Residents of this utopia have no attachments to one another.

  • In the words of one character, “everyone belongs to everyone”.

  • Everyone has multiple sexual partners, and orgies are commonplace.

  • If at any point in time a resident feels down, they can take a drug called Soma to uplift

  • their mood.

  • Soma brings on feelings of euphoria — *with no downsides*.

  • In order to maintain the utopia's ideals ofcommunity, identity, and stability",

  • residents have to make a heavy sacrifice.

  • They give up their individuality, art, religion, love, and, ultimately, their freedom of choice.

  • Utopian thinking isn't just confined to literature.

  • The 20th century saw the rise of many charismatic leaders claiming to know the way to Eden but,

  • wherever they were leading us, the cost was too high.

  • In some ways, we were like the man with the monkey paw: we wanted the benefits of utopia,

  • without the responsibility of bearing the costs.

  • But fate demands a price, and when we gave up our responsibility, we gave up our individuality

  • and, eventually, our humanity.

  • Despite these negative examples, I do believe utopia is possible.

  • In his recent book *Enlightenment Now*, Steven Pinker documents all of the positive changes

  • the world has undergone since the Enlightenment.

  • For example, average life expectancy has increased from 30 years of age, in the 1750s, to 70

  • years of age worldwide [3].

  • Deaths due to malaria have declined by 60% from 2000 to 2015 [3].

  • Worldwide rates of extreme poverty have been declining since the 1800s [3].

  • All of these are what I would call positive-sum games: win-win situations for humanity as

  • a whole.

  • I think the important questions to ask are how many of these positive-sum games could

  • we play, how much better could the world ultimately get, and how do we continue down this path?

  • At the same time, how do we avoid traveling down some of the paths we already went down

  • in the 20th century?

  • You can think about the world at different levels of analysis.

  • The highest level might be something like universal.

  • The levels that follow thatin descending orderare the planet, the country, the

  • community, the family, and, lastly, the individual.

  • The lower levels are all nested within the higher levels which means that all levels

  • are interconnected.

  • The individual affects the family, which affects the community, and so on.

  • The opposite is also true.

  • The problem with conceptualizing utopia is that it gets created at the higher levels

  • such as the country or the planet.

  • By starting at the higher levels, we force all the lower levels to mesh with it.

  • Anything, *or anyone*, that fails to harmonize with the highest level is seen as unfit for

  • utopia and must be removed.

  • This type of utopia always devolves into a totalitarian dystopia.

  • In design, we call this a *top-down approach*: the highest ideal is generated and all of

  • the lower levels are adjusted to meet that ideal.

  • A top-down approach will always succumb to evolutionary pressures because a static and

  • constant ideal can't survive in a dynamic and evolving world.

  • The opposite of a top-down approach is a *bottom-up approach*.

  • Instead of starting at the highest, you start at the lowest level of analysis possible.

  • In our case, this would be the individual.

  • You start by creating a simple set of rules that govern the individual and allow the system

  • to self-organize.

  • From individualscommunities, cities, and nations emerge.

  • Bottom-up systems harmonize well with nature because they can evolve and adapt.

  • In fact, evolution is a bottom-up system: it's governed by rules of survival and reproduction

  • [4].

  • YouTube is also a bottom-up system: it analyzes our behavior and evolves based on how we interact

  • with it.

  • The algorithms of today are more than mere technology: they're alive and YouTube is an

  • evolving ecosystem.

  • Bottom-up systems are partly unpredictable; we don't know what the YouTube homepage

  • will look like in a year from now, let alone life on Earth in 1000 years.

  • *It's impossible to predict what an emergent utopia would look like.*

  • Of course, I'm oversimplifying a bit here.

  • Many systems are a mix of top-down and bottom-up elements.

  • With that said, are there a minimum number of rules that, if an individual were to enact

  • them, would allow a better world to emerge?

  • The philosopher David Hume famously pointed out that it's difficult to determine the

  • way the world *should* be based on the way the world *is:* this is known as the *Is-Ought

  • problem*.

  • Science gives us a description of how the world is and philosophy gives us a prescription

  • for how we ought to act.

  • Our ability to successfully cooperate depends on how much overlap there is between our philosophies.

  • For example, let's say that I own a restaurant and you want to come in for a meal.

  • We both believe that a restaurant ought to serve its customers food in a timely, friendly,

  • and fair manner.

  • We also believe that a customer ought to come in and be respectful of the owners, the restaurant,

  • and the other customers.

  • This can be a very good reciprocal relationship for the both of us.

  • But if I believe that I ought to maximize my profits at the expense of customer service,

  • a conflict will arise between us.

  • What you and I believe about how people should act in restaurants is what historian Yuval

  • Harari would call a *fiction* [5].

  • We all believe in a set of complex fictions that allow us to cooperate at an impressive

  • levelrelative to other species.

  • Some notable fictions we may believe are human rights, democracy, capitalism, and money.

  • Money becomes more than mere paper when everyone believes in the fiction that gives it value.

  • Society can function smoothly because of our ability to believe in fictions.

  • The degree to which a utopia is even possible is dependent on our ability to construct a

  • fiction that is universally agreeable.

  • So we're looking for a set of rules, or a fiction, that an individual could live by

  • that would bring the best possible world about.

  • In other words, we're talking about morality or ethics.

  • Everyone has their own opinion about the best fiction to live byand they should.

  • If you buy my argument so far, then you understand that everyone should have, and share, their

  • own fictions so that the best cultural fiction can emerge.

  • And just as individuals and cultures evolve, so too will the fictions they hold: preserve

  • what works and discard what doesn't.

  • If there's one abstract rule that an individual could live by that I believe would allow utopia

  • to emerge, it's the belief in the *importance of playing positive-sum games*.

  • This means that each individual *intends* to act in a way that is simultaneously best

  • for them *and* everyone around them.

  • The society that emerges from these individuals would be one that is self-improving and respects

  • the potential within each individual.

  • Members of that society never try to win at the expense of one another or, in other words,

  • play *zero-sum games*.

  • If we wanted to create a flying machine, how could we do it?

  • Our best bet would likely be to collect a large set of species that could already fly

  • and determine the principles that unite them.

  • By discovering the principles of flight, we could successfully produce an infinite variation

  • of machines that could fly.

  • Could we do the same thing with morality?

  • Could we study our history and determine a set of fictions that would allow us to identify

  • and successfully play positive-sum games?

  • In his book *Enlightenment Now*, Steven Pinker compiles an enormous amount of data that shows

  • how the world has improved on several important measures such as health, longevity, wealth,

  • inequality, human rights, and so forth [3].

  • He claims that the fictions that allowed us to successfully play these positive-sum games

  • were science, reason and humanism and, quite frankly, I think he makes a pretty good case.

  • I said earlier that fate demands a price.

  • So, what's the price we must pay for a better world?

  • It requires that each individual remain *adaptable*, and be willing to give up on old and comfortable

  • fictions for unfamiliar yet better ones.

  • It requires enough *discipline* to carefully estimate the probabilistic outcomes of each

  • action based on past experienceto take carefully calculated steps forward.

  • But, above all else, it requires *courage*.

  • The courage to lose in the short term so that the individual, or their children, or their

  • community can gain in the long term.

  • The courage to be open and to deal with bad players in the hopes of finding good players

  • for positive-sum games.

  • Maybe utopia isn't a place we can *be* but, rather, it's a place we can always choose

  • to *go*.

  • We can only approach it but never quite make itlike a line trending towards an asymptote.

  • Utopia doesn't exist in the brain of one person, or group, to bring about but, rather,

  • *it emerges* from our collective interactions

  • with one another as individuals.

In every second, of every day, you have to decide between action and inaction.

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烏托邦一定是荒誕的嗎?烏托邦是可能的嗎? (Is Utopia Always Dystopia? Is Utopia Possible?)

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    Catarina 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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