TED英語演講：可愛,性感,甜,搞笑

為什麼寶寶可愛? 為什麼蛋糕甜美? 哲學家Dan Dennett有你不會期望的答案，因為他分享了可愛，甜美和性感的東西進化的違反直覺的推理。下面是小編為大家收集關於TED英語演講：可愛,性感,甜,搞笑，歡迎借鑑參考。

Cute, sexy, sweet, funny

演講者：Dan Dennett

| 中英對照演講稿 |

I’m going around the world giving talks about Darwin, and usually what I’m talking about 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.

我經常在世界各地做關於達爾文的演講，一般我都要講到的是達爾文奇怪的“反向邏輯”。這個“頭銜”，這個名詞，來自於一個批評，一個早先的批評。我喜歡這篇文章，很樂意給大家念一下。

"In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. This proposition will be found on careful examination to express, 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 lute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in the achievements of creative skill."

這個我們要探討的理論之中，“全然無知”變成了創造者;那麼讓我們清楚闡明這個理論體系的根本原則，那就是，在製造一個完美的機器之前，完全沒有必要知道如何來製造它。這種說法被建立在詳盡的研究之上來傳達這個理論的要義，也傳達了達爾文先生的全部意思;他用這樣一種奇怪的“反向邏輯”似乎認為“絕對的無知”完全有資格取代“絕對的智慧”來完成需要創造性技能的工作。

Exactly. Exactly. And it is a strange inversion. A creationist pamphlet has this wonderful page in it: "TestTwo: 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."

可不是嘛!可不是嘛!這真是一個奇怪的“反向”。一位上帝論者的小冊子上有這樣一頁非常精彩：測驗二 你知道任何一棟建築沒有它的建設者?有，沒有 你知道有任何一副畫沒有它的繪畫者?有，沒有 你知道有任何一輛小汽車沒有它的製造者麼?有，沒有 如果你在任一問題中答“有”，給出其細節。

A-ha! I mean, it really is a strange inversion of reasoning. You would have thought it stands to reason that design requires an intelligent designer. But Darwin shows that it’s just false.

啊哈!我說，這可真是一個奇怪的“反向邏輯”啊!你可能覺得這種說法站得住腳：那就是但凡設計都需要一個智慧的設計者。可達爾文證明，那是錯誤的。

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. It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet. Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy. We adore babies because they’re so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny.

但是今天，我要談的是達爾文的另一個奇怪的“反向邏輯”。它乍眼看來也是一樣莫名其妙，但從某種程度上說，它也是一樣重要。說我們喜歡巧克力是因為它很甜，似乎說得過去。小夥子們迷這樣的姑娘，因為她們很性感。我們寵愛這樣的嬰兒，因為他們是那麼可愛。當然，我們還喜歡笑話，因為它們搞笑。

This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why. Let’s start with sweet. Our sweet tooth is basically an evolved sugar detector, because sugar is high energy, and it’s just been wired up to the preferer, 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."

但這都是倒因為果的邏輯。達爾文會告訴我們為什麼。從甜開始吧，我們饞甜的，其實是一種進化出來的糖探測器。因為糖是高熱量的，所以它就被大腦強化為我們的一項偏愛。簡單來講，這就是為什麼我們喜歡糖。蜜是甜的，因為我們喜歡它，而不是“我們喜歡蜜，因為它是甜的。”

There’s nothing intrinsically sweet about honey. If you looked at glucose molecules till you were blind, you wouldn’t see why they tasted sweet. You have to look in our brains to understand why they’re sweet. So if you think first there was sweetness, and then we evolved to like sweetness, you’ve got it backwards;that’s just wrong. It’s the other way round. Sweetness was born with the wiring which evolved.

蜂蜜內在沒有任何所謂的甜。哪怕我們盯著葡萄糖，看到雙眼失明我們也沒法看出來為什麼它們是甜的。你必須要從我們大腦中來理解為什麼它們甜。所以如果你認為首先有了甜，然後我們進化成了喜歡甜，那你就搞反了：這是錯的。應該是倒過來。甜的出現是和大腦裡那個溝回的進化一起發生的。

And there’s nothing intrinsically sexy about these young ladies. And it’s a good thing that there isn’t, because if there were, then Mother Nature would have a problem: How on earth do you get chimps to mate? Now you might think, ah, there’s a solution: hallucinations.

這些年輕小姐們也沒有什麼內在的性感。而且沒有是件好事，因為假如真的有了我們的自然之母就要有麻煩了：我可怎麼讓這些猩猩們交配啊?現在你也許在想。啊哈!我有一招：性幻想!-_-!

That would be one way of doing it, but there’s a quicker way. Just wire the chimps up to love that look, and apparently they do. That’s all there is to six million years, we and the chimps evolved our different ways. We became bald-bodied, oddly enough; for one reason or another, they didn’t. If we hadn’t, then probably this would be the height of sexiness.

這也許是個辦法，但還有一招更快。就是讓猩猩們的大腦產生個溝回，愛上那個樣子。而且顯然，它們愛上了。就是這麼回事。 過了六百萬年，我們和猩猩進化成了不同的樣子。 我們變得身軀無毛，有夠奇怪的; 而由於某種原因，它們沒有 如果我們也沒有的話，那麼可能這個就變成了絕頂性感了。

Our sweet tooth is an evolved and instinctual preference for high-energy food. It wasn’t designed for chocolate cake. Chocolate cake is a supernormal stimulus. The term is owed to NikoTinbergen, who did his famous experiments with gulls, where he found that that orange spot on the gull’s beak -- if he made a bigger, oranger spot the gullchicks would peck at it even harder.

我們饞甜東西是一種進化出來的內在偏愛，偏愛高熱量食物。那不是針對巧克力蛋糕而設計的。巧克力蛋糕是一個超常刺激。這個詞是尼古拉斯·丁伯根(Niko Tinbergen)提出來的。他做了他出名的海鷗實驗他發現了海鷗喙上的橘點——如果他把這個點放大，染得更橘那麼小海鷗就會更猛烈地啄它。

It was a hyperstimulus for them, and they loved it. What we see with, say, chocolate cake 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.

這對它們來說是興奮的刺激，它們狂愛這個。對於我們而言，比方說，巧克力蛋糕就是一個超常刺激，它扭曲了我們腦內溝回的本意。有很多很多的超常刺激，巧克力蛋糕是一個。有很多對於性感的超常刺激。

And there's even supernormal stimuli for cuteness. Here’s a pretty good example. It’s important that we love babies, andthat we not be put off by, say, messy diapers. So babies have to attract our affection and our nurturing, and they do.

甚至有對於可愛的超常刺激，這就有一個很好的例子。喜歡嬰兒對於我們來講很重要，這樣我們就不會因為某些麻煩——比如說髒尿布——而嫌棄他們。因此嬰兒必須要吸引我們的愛意和撫養，他們確實做到了。

And, by the way, a recent study shows that mothers prefer the smell of the dirty diapers of their own baby. So nature works on many levels here. 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 wewould find -- we would think, oh my goodness, do I ever want to hug that. This is the strange inversion.

另外順便說一句，最近一個研究表明媽媽們都更喜歡聞自己孩子的髒尿布。可見自然在不同的層次上起著作用。但現在，如果嬰兒們不再像他們現在的樣子，而是看上去這樣。這就是我們覺得可愛的樣子，這就會使我們想“哦，天哪!我可真想抱抱啊!”這是一個奇怪的“反向邏輯”

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. And I won’t be able to say too much about it. But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think,what hard job that has to be done -- it’s dirty work, somebody’s got to do it-- is so important to give us such a powerful, in built reward for it when we succeed.

那麼現在，最後關於可笑。我的答案是，一樣的故事，是個一樣的故事。這個比較難懂，不太顯而易見，所以我把它留到最後。而且我今天也不會講太多這個。你必須從進化的角度來想，你得想，什麼困難的活必須被完成——這是一個髒活，而且必須有人來完成它——以至於當我們完成的時候，給我們一個強烈的內在獎勵那麼重要。

Now, I think we've found the answer -- I and a few of my ’s a neural system that’s wired up to reward the brain for doing a grubby clerical job. Our bumper sticker for this view is that this is the joy of debugging. 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.

現在，我想我們有答案了，我和幾位我的同事。這是一種為了獎勵大腦完成了某項骯髒的事務性工作而產生的神經反應體系。我們關於這個觀點的招牌說法就是這是排除故障的快感。現在我沒時間來把這個展開講了，但我得說，只有某幾種“排除故障”能夠獲得這種快感。

And what we’re doing is we’re using humor as a sort of neuro scientific 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 -- in thisway, we can actually learn something about the architecture of the brain, the functional architecture of the brain.

我們現在所做的，就是把幽默感作為一種神經科學的探針，通過幽默的開關，通過調整笑話——“這個不搞笑了……哦，現在這個有意思……”“現在我們調整一點……現在又不搞笑了”——通過這種方式，我們事實上能學到一些關於大腦構造的知識，關於大腦的功能性構造。

Matthew Hurley is the first author of call it the Hurley Model. He’s a computer scientist, Reginald Adams a psychologist,and there I am, and we’re putting this together into a book. Thank you very much.

馬修·赫爾利(Matthew Hurley)是這本書的第一作者，我們稱這個為赫爾利模型(Hurley Model)。他是個電腦科學家，雷金納德·亞當斯(Reginald Adams)一位心理學家，然後就是我。我們正在把這些寫進一本書裡。謝謝大家!