人类进化历程之下一个版本

伤我心太深

人类进化的下一次大飞跃可能源于开发亘古以来人类的大脑，而非类似基因工程或人工智能这样的新领域。

Humans, Version 3.0

马克·常逸梓

Where are we humans going, as a species? If science fiction is any guide, we will genetically evolve like in X-Men, become genetically engineered as in Gattaca, or become cybernetically enhanced like General Grievous in Star Wars.

作为一个物种，人类何去何从？按照科幻小说的说法，我们会基因进化，像《X战警》里面那样，或基因被改造，像《变种异煞》（Gattaca，又名《千钧一发》）里面那样，或变成半机器人，像《星球大战》里的格雷沃斯将军。

All of these may well be part of the story of our future, but I’m not holding my breath. The first of these—natural selection—is impracticably slow, and there’s a plausible case to be made that natural selection has all but stopped acting on us.

我们的未来也许会有这样的故事，不过我不以为然。第一种情况根本不可能，自然选择的过程太缓慢了，不可能到那种地步，况且，似乎有理由相信，自然选择对人类基本不起作用了。

Genetic engineering could engender marked changes in us, but it requires a scientific bridge between genotypes—an organism’s genetic blueprints—and phenotypes, which are the organisms themselves and their suite of abilities. A sufficiently sophisticated bridge between these extremes is nowhere in sight.

基因工程可以令我们改头换面，但必须在基因型和表现型之间建立起科学的纽带，基因型就是生物体的遗传蓝图，表现型就是生物体本身及其能力的组合。足以衔接这两极之间的精细复杂的纽带依然遥遥无期。

And machine-enhancement is part of our world even today, manifesting in the smartphones and desktop computers most of us rely on each day. Such devices will continue to further empower us in the future, but serious hardware additions to our brains will not be forthcoming until we figure out how to build human-level artificial intelligences (and meld them to our neurons), something that will require cracking the mind’s deepest mysteries. I have argued that we’re centuries or more away from that.

至于增强人类能力的机器今天已经是我们这个世界的一部分。我们大多数人每天依赖的智能手机和台式电脑就是其表现形式。这类设备未来会使我们愈发强大，但真要把硬件植入我们的大脑还早着呢，除非人工智接近人的水平（还要能融合到我们的神经元里），前提是破解大脑最深奥的秘密。我认为，那是几百年以后甚至更遥远的事。

Simply put, none of these scenarios are plausible for the immediate future. If there is something next, some imminently arriving transformative development for human capabilities, then the key will not be improved genes or cortical plug-ins. But what other way forward could humans possibly have? With genetic and cyborg enhancement off the table for many years, it would seem we are presently stuck as-is, sans upgrades.

简言之，这样的情形近期都不可能发生。如果有什么会马上促使人类的能力突飞猛进的话，也肯定不是基因改良或在大脑皮层植入插件。人类还有别的进化之路吗？排除多年不谈的基因改良和增强人类能力的机器，好像我们现在陷于停滞、不再进化升级了。

There is, however, another avenue for human evolution, one mostly unappreciated in both science and fiction. It is this unheralded mechanism that will usher in the next stage of human, giving future people exquisite powers we do not currently possess, powers worthy of natural selection itself. And, importantly, it doesn’t require us to transform into cyborgs or bio-engineered lab rats. It merely relies on our natural bodies and brains functioning as they have for millions of years.

不过，人类进化另有途径，只不过并不受科学界和小说界的赏识。正是这一无人喝彩的途径将引领未来人类的历史，赋予未来人类超乎寻常的力量，这种力量是我们现在不具备的，是自然选择本身赋予的力量。重要的是，我们不必变成半机器人或生物工程的试验品。一切都依赖于我们自然的身体和大脑按照数百万年以来的方式发挥机能。

This mystery mechanism of human transformation is neuronal recycling, coined by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, wherein the brain’s innate capabilities are harnessed for altogether novel functions.

这一人类质变的神秘途径就是神经元循环，这一术语由神经学家斯坦尼斯拉斯·德阿纳（Stanislas Dehaene）首次提出，指利用大脑的先天能力开发全新的机能。

This view of the future of humankind is grounded in an appreciation of the biologically innate powers bestowed upon us by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This deep respect for our powers is sometimes lacking in the sciences, where many are taught to believe that our brains and bodies are taped-together, far-from-optimal kluges. In this view, natural selection is so riddled by accidents and saddled with developmental constraints that the resultant biological hardware and software should be described as a “just good enough” solution rather than as a “fine-tuned machine.”

人类这一未来前景的基础是，挖掘亿万年进化赋予我们的与生俱来的力量。科学有时缺乏对我们这种力量的由衷尊重，它教人们相信，我们的大脑和身体不过是拼凑在一起，远非最优组合系统。这种观点认为，自然选择过程意外百出、充满发展性约束，结果生物的硬软件搭配仅仅是“足够好”，而非一部“精细校准的机器”。

So it is no wonder that, when many envisage the future, they posit that human invention—whether via genetic engineering or cybernetic AI-related enhancement—will be able to out-do what evolution gave us, and so bootstrap our species to a new level. This rampant overoptimism about the power of human invention is also found among many of those expecting salvation through a technological singularity, and among those who fancy that the Web may some day become smart.

所以也难怪，许多人遥想未来时都认定，人类的发明，无论是通过基因工程或与人工智能控制的机器，能够超越进化所赋予我们的，能够引导我们这一物种到达新的高度。这种对人类发明力量过于乐观的看法泛滥成灾，不乏许多指望奇妙科技救赎人类的人，还有幻想有朝一日网络智能化的人。

The root of these misconceptions is the radical underappreciation of the design engineered by natural selection into the powers implemented by our bodies and brains, something central to my 2009 book, The Vision Revolution. For example, optical illusions (such as the Hering) are not examples of the brain’s poor hardware design, but, rather, consequences of intricate evolutionary software for generating perceptions that correct for neural latencies in normal circumstances. And our peculiar variety of color vision, with two of our sensory cones having sensitivity to nearly the same part of the spectrum, is not an accidental mutation that merely stuck around, but, rather, appear to function with the signature of hemoglobin physiology in mind, so as to detect the color signals primates display on their faces and rumps.

谬误的根源在于大大低估了自然选择设计在我们身体和大脑里的力量，这正是我2009年的著作《视觉大革命》（The Vision Revolution）的核心思想。例如，视错觉（如黑林错觉）不是大脑硬件设计有缺陷的表现，而是复杂的进化软件为了纠正正常情况下的神经延迟而生成的知觉。我们特有的各种色彩视觉用两种视锥细胞就能感知几乎所有的可见色彩，这不是偶发的突变，相反，它与大脑中血红蛋白生理机能特征共同作用，以观测灵长类动物面部和臀部的颜色信号。

These and other inborn capabilities we take for granted are not kluges, they’re not “good enough,” and they’re more than merely smart. They’re astronomically brilliant in comparison to anything humans are likely to invent for millennia.

这一切和其他我们想当然的与生俱来的能力并非是拼凑在一起的，并非只是“足够好”，它们何止是智能。未来几千年，不论人类的发明多么辉煌，和它们相比，不过是璀璨星河中的些微星光。

Neuronal recycling exploits this wellspring of potent powers. If one wants to get a human brain to do task Y despite it not having evolved to efficiently carry out task Y, then a key point is not to forcefully twist the brain to do Y. Like all animal brains, human brains are not general-purpose universal learning machines, but, instead, are intricately structured suites of instincts optimized for the environments in which they evolved. To harness our brains, we want to let the brain’s brilliant mechanisms run as intended—i.e., not to be twisted. Rather, the strategy is to twist Y into a shape that the brain does know how to process.

神经元循环就是要利用这些潜能之源。如果想让人的大脑完成任务Y，但人脑尚未进化到足以完成任务Y，那么关键的一点就是不要强行扭曲大脑去完成Y。和所有动物大脑一样，人类的大脑不是通用学习机器，相反，它是错综复杂的有序本能组合，最适应其所进化的环境。要开发我们的大脑，我们就要让大脑出色的机制按要求运行，也就是说，不要扭曲它。相反，要运用策略把任务Y转化为大脑能够处理的形式。

But how do I know this is feasible? This tactic may use the immensely powerful gifts that natural selection gave us, but what if harnessing these powers is currently far beyond us? How do we find the right innate power for any given task? And how are we to know how to adapt that task so as to be just right for the human brain’s inflexible mechanisms?

但我怎么知道这样可行呢？这种方式可以利用自然选择所给我们的无比强大的天赋，然而，假如开发这些力量目前还远非我们所及又怎么办？我们如何发现适合特定任务的天赋力量？我们怎么知道如何转化任务，使之恰到好处地适合人类固有的大脑机制呢？

I don’t want to pretend that answers to these questions are easy—they are not. Nevertheless, there is a very good reason to be optimistic that the next stage of human will come via the form of adaptive harnessing, rather than direct technological enhancement: It has already happened.

我不想假装这些问题的答案很容易——它们不容易。不过，有很好的理由乐观，人类的下一阶段将通过适应性开发，而不是直接提升技术的形式到来：它已经发生了。

We have already been transformed via harnessing beyond what we once were. We’re already Human 2.0, not the Human 1.0, or Homo sapiens, that natural selection made us. We Human 2.0’s have, among many powers, three that are central to who we take ourselves to be today: writing, speech, and music (the latter perhaps being the pinnacle of the arts). Yet these three capabilities, despite having all the hallmarks of design, were not a result of natural selection, nor were they the result of genetic engineering or cybernetic enhancement to our brains. Instead, and as I argue in both The Vision Revolution and my forthcoming Harnessed, these are powers we acquired by virtue of harnessing, or neuronal recycling.

通过开发出我们以往没有的能力，我们已经经历过转型。我们已经是人类的2.0版本，而不是人类的1.0版本，或称作智人，即自然选择结果的人。我们2.0版的人类拥有许多力量，其中三种是我们之所以成为今天自己的核心力量：文字、语言和音乐（后者也许是艺术的顶峰）。然而，尽管这三种能力都有的设计印记，但都不是自然选择的结果，也不是对我们大脑进行基因改良或添加控制设备的结果。相反，正如我在《视觉大革命》和我即将出版的《开发大脑》中所说，这些都是我们凭借开发大脑，或者说神经元循环所获得的力量。

In this transition from Human 1.0 to 2.0, we didn’t directly do the harnessing. Rather, it was an emergent, evolutionary property of our behavior, our nascent culture, that bent and shaped writing to be right for our visual system, speech just so for our auditory system, and music a match for our auditory and evocative mechanisms.

在1.0至2.0版本的过渡过程中，我们没有直接开发大脑。相反，它是我们的行为和新文化自然进化的产物，我们的行为和新文化造就了适合我们视觉系统的文字，适合我们听觉系统的语言，匹配我们听觉和唤起机制的音乐。

And culture’s trick? It was to shape these artifacts to look and sound like things from our natural environment, just what our sensory systems evolved to expertly accommodate. There are characteristic sorts of contour conglomerations occurring among opaque objects strewn about in three dimensions (like our natural Earthly habitats), and writing systems have come to employ many of these naturally common conglomerations rather than the naturally uncommon ones. Sounds in nature, in particular among the solid objects that are most responsible for meaningful environmental auditory stimuli, follow signature patterns, and speech also follows these patterns, both in its fundamental phoneme building blocks and in how phonemes combine into morphemes and words. And we humans, when we move and behave, make sounds having a characteristic animalistic signature, something we surely have specialized auditory mechanisms for sensing and processing; music is replete with these characteristic sonic signatures of animal movements, harnessing our auditory mechanisms that evolved for recognizing the actions of other large mobile creatures like ourselves.

文化干扰的作用呢？它塑造这些人造事物，使其外观和声音都像是自然环境的产物，恰好能和我们进化的知觉系统完全一致。立体形式分布的不透明物体之间都有一定特征类型的轮廓（如我们在地球上的自然栖息地），书写系统就是利用了很多常见的自然形状而不是那些不常见的自然形状。自然界的声音，特别固体间的声音，构成了大部分有意义的环境听觉刺激，有着特定的模式，语言也遵循这些模式，基本的音素构造模块和音素到词素再到词汇的构造过程都遵循这些模式。而我们人类的运动和行为发出的声音也有特定的物种特征，我们特别的听觉机制肯定可以感知并处理它们；音乐就充斥着这些动物运动的特殊声音特征，开发我们的听觉机制，这一机制就是从识别像我们这样的大型动物运动的声音进化而来。

Culture’s trick, I have argued in my research, was to harness by mimicking nature. This “nature-harnessing” was the route by which these three kernels of Human 2.0 made their way into Human 1.0 brains never designed for them.

我的研究认为，文化干扰就是通过模拟自然开发大脑。通过这种“自然开发”的路线，2.0版人类的三项核心能力进入了1.0版人类的大脑，原本他们并不具备这些能力。

The road to Human 3.0 and beyond will, I believe, be largely due to ever more instances of this kind of harnessing. And although we cannot easily anticipate the new powers we will thereby gain, we should not underestimate the potential magnitude of the possible changes. After all, the change from Human 1.0 to 2.0 is nothing short of universe-rattling: It transformed a clever ape into a world-ruling technological philosopher.

我认为，进化到3.0版人类及其更高版本的路线很大程度上要依靠更多的这类开发。虽然我们无法轻易预测我们将因此获得什么样的新力量，我们不应低估这一可能变化的巨大潜力。毕竟，人类从1.0版到2.0版的进化震撼了宇宙：聪明的猿人进化成了掌控世界的技术达人。

Although the step from Human 1.0 to 2.0 was via cultural selection, not via explicit human designers, does the transformation to Human 3.0 need to be entirely due to a process like cultural evolution, or might we have any hope of purposely guiding our transformation? When considering our future, that’s probably the most relevant question we should be asking ourselves.

尽管人类从1.0版迈向2.0版是文化选择而非人类有意识自我设计的结果，人类进化到3.0版是否也完全要由这样的文化进化来完成，还是我们有望有目的地引导进化过程？思考我们未来之际，这也许是我们最应该扪心自问的重大问题。

I am optimistic that we may be able to explicitly design nature-harnessing technologies in the near future, now that we have begun to break open the nature-harnessing technologies cultural selection has built thus far. One of my reasons for optimism is that nature-harnessing technologies (like writing, speech, and music) must mimic fundamental ecological features in nature, and that is a much easier task for scientists to tackle than emulating the exhorbitantly complex mechanisms of the brain.

我乐观估计，既然我们已经开始突破文化选择迄今所赋予我们的自然开发技术，我们可能会在不久的将来直接设计这些技术。我乐观的原因之一就是，自然开发技术（如文字、语言和音乐）必须模仿自然界基本的生态特征，比起模拟大脑极端复杂的机制，科学家应付这个任务容易多了。

And nature-harnessing may be an apt description of emerging technological practices, such as the film industry’s ongoing struggle to better design the 3D experience to tap into the evolved functions of binocular vision, the gaming industry’s attempts to “gameify” certain tasks (exemplified in the work of Jane McGonigal), or the drive within robotics for more emotionally expressive faces (such as the child robot of Minoru Asada).

自然开发也许是对新兴技术实践贴切的描述，比如影视界不断努力设计更好的3D体验，挖掘进化了的双眼视觉功能，游戏行业在尝试“游戏化”某些任务（以简·麦克哥尼加尔（Jane McGonigal）的工作为代表），机器人科学力图制造表情传神的面部（如浅田稔（Minoru Asada）制造的儿童机器人）。

Admittedly, none of these sound remotely as revolutionary as writing, speech, or music, but it can be difficult to envision what these developments can become once they more perfectly harness our exquisite biological instincts. (Even writing was, for centuries, used mostly for religious and governmental book-keeping purposes—only relatively recently has the impact of the written word expanded to revolutionize the lives of average humans.)

诚然，这些和文字、语言以及音乐相比，谈不上的革命性，不过，一旦它们能更加完美地驾驭我们精湛的生物本能，很难想象会发展到何种地步。（几个世纪以来，文字也不过主要用于宗教和政府档案——只是最近，文字的影响才扩大到彻底改变普通人的生活。）

The point is, most science fiction gets all this wrong. While the future may be radically “futuristic,” with our descendants having breathtaking powers we cannot fathom, it probably won’t be because they evolved into something new, or were genetically modified, or had AI-chip enhancements. Those powerful beings will simply be humans, like you and I. But they’ll have been nature-harnessed in ways we cannot anticipate, the magic latent within each of us used for new, brilliant Human 3.0 capabilities.

问题是，大多数科幻都搞错了。虽然未来可能非常的“未来”，我们的后代会拥有我们无法想象的惊人力量，但那不太可能是他们进化成某种新人类，或者改良基因，或者植入人工智能芯片。他们很强大，但还是人类，和你我并无两样。但他们经过自然开发，用我们无法预知的方式，用潜藏在我们每个人体内的魔力，开发出新奇、卓越的3.0版人类功能。