I had a consulting contract I shared with a colleague who's as different from me as two people can possibly be. 我跟一名同事共同，负责一项咨询业务，我跟他是截然不同的两个人。 First, his name is Tom. Mine isn't. 首先，他叫汤姆。我不叫汤
We recognize them in relation to corporations. 我们还认同他们像个企业 And corporations are very like religions in many ways, except they're right down at the bottom of the pyramid of needs. 公司企业和宗教有些相似之处，不过企
Now, already you may be saying of yourself, "I'm not intriguing. 也许你们会评价自己，“我不是个有趣的人。 I am the 46th most boring person in the Western Hemisphere." 我在西半球最无趣排行榜上排第46名。” Or you may say of y
I actually brought this up with my wife. 我也跟我的老婆提起过这件事， She's a musical instrument maker, and she does a lot of wood carving for a living. 她是一位乐器制造家，也把制作木雕当成一种职业。 So I asked her, "Could you,
What an intriguing group of individuals you are ... to a psychologist. 你们是多么有趣的一群人啊……当然，是对心理学家而言。 I've had the opportunity over the last couple of days 在过去几天里，我有机会 of listening in on some of your
So to test it, we did the following experiment. First, we took the story and played it backwards. 我们用以下的实验来测试。我们先将故事倒过来播放， And that preserved many of the original auditory features, but removed the me
So, some combustible material there. 让我提出一些争议性的问题 Whether in this audience or people elsewhere in the world, 这里有某些人，或现在在世界上别的角落 hearing some of this, may well be doing the screaming-with-rage thing, a
In fact, most of us do, 事实上，我们大多数也会拒绝 whether we're atheist or theist or anywhere in between or beyond, for that matter, 无论我们是无神论者或有神论者，或中间派或超越二者，就此而言 what drives us is that, despite our doubts an
And we believe that these responses in higher-order areas are induced or become similar across listeners 我们认为，听众这些相似的大脑高层次区块反应， because of the meaning conveyed by the speaker, and not by words or soun
Existential risk -- the second big problem. 存在风险——第二个重大问题。 Existential risk is a threat to human survival, or to the long-term potential of our species. 存在风险是对人类生存，或对整个人类种群的长远潜能的一种威胁。 Now, why do I sa
When my children were small and we heard the sound of the war, 我的孩子们还很小时，每当我们听到战争的声音 I used to tell them that they were fireworks. 我都会告诉他们，那是烟火。 Now they are older, they understand. 但他们现在长大了，他们懂了。 I d
I was thinking about all the ways I'd already screwed my life up. 我在考虑以前把我的生活毁了的各种方式。 Who the hell was I to go to New York City and pretend to be a writer? 那个要去纽约装作是一位作家的我到底是谁？ Who was I? 我是谁？ I&#
Writing biography is a strange thing to do. 撰写传记是一件不可思议的事情 It's a journey into the foreign territory of somebody else's life, 记下别人的一生就如异国旅程一样 a journey, an exploration that can take you places
Imagine a species that just didn't have this neural machinery for processing music. 假设有这样一个物种，它们刚好没有能够处理音乐的神经装置。 And they would just stare at us with bafflement 当我们花时间聆听一曲美妙的演奏时， when we spend tim
In effect, they are the infidels. 实际上，他们才是异教徒 Like fundamentalists of all religious stripes, they have no questions, only answers. 像所有不同宗教的原教旨主义者一样，他们没有发问问题，只有答案 They found the perfect antidote to tho
And the problem of how to go about this is quite obvious. 至于要如何做的问题，也是相当简单明了。 It's not like Plato woke up one day and then he wrote, 但我的意思并非，比如，柏拉图有一天突然醒来说， "Hello, I'm Plato, and as of t
But part of the reason 但另一方面的原因 and that's the reason why we have ethical ground for pursuing these 即从人类的本质上看，它们也是很有价值的， is that they're also intrinsically valuable. 这也是为什么我们拥有追求这些特质的道德基础。 It&
In fact, the endurance of religion as a lens through which most people view moral questions 事实上，在许久以来，宗教成为人们关注道德的角度 has separated most moral talk from real questions of human and animal suffering. 让所有
The whole time he was talking to me, 整个谈话期间 I sat there smiling and nodding like a numb idiot, 我麻木的像个傻子。 with my arms crossed over my chest, 双手交叉在胸前， while nothing, nothing, nothing came out of my thr
Alright, where are we going with this? 那好，我们现在进展如何呢？ What I'm going to tell you next, 我接下来要告诉你们的， as a lifelong researcher, represents a dream of mine. 作为一个终身的研究人员，代表了我的一个梦想。 I can't say that&
