Where you go in life will depend on how you see things and who and what you feel connected to (your family, your community, your country, mankind, the whole ecosystem, everything). You will have to decide to what extent you will put the interests of others above your own, and which others you will choose to do so for. That’s because you will regularly encounter situations that will force you to make such choices.
你的人生走向将取决于你如何看待事物以及你感觉与谁和什么有联系（你的家庭、你的社区、你的国家、人类、整个生态系统、一切）。你必须决定在多大程度上将他人的利益置于你自己的利益之上，以及你会选择为哪些人这样做。那是因为你经常会遇到迫使你做出这样选择的情况。

继续阅读 →

It is a great paradox that individually we are simultaneously everything and nothing. Through our own eyes, we are everything–e.g., when we die, the whole world disappears. So to most people (and to other species) dying is the worst thing possible, and it is of paramount importance that we have the best life possible. However, when we look down on ourselves through the eyes of nature we are of absolutely no significance. It is a reality that each one of us is only one of about seven billion of our species alive today and that our species is only one of about ten million species on our planet. Earth is just one of about 100 billion planets in our galaxy, which is just one of about two trillion galaxies in the universe. And our lifetimes are only about 1/3,000 of humanity’s existence, which itself is only 1/20,000 of the Earth’s existence. In other words, we are unbelievably tiny and short-lived and no matter what we accomplish, our impact will be insignificant. At the same time, we instinctually want to matter and to evolve, and we can matter a tiny bit–and it’s all those tiny bits that add up to drive the evolution of the universe.
这是一个巨大的悖论，就我们个人而言，我们同时是一切，又什么都不是。通过我们自己的眼睛，我们就是一切——例如，当我们死时，整个世界都消失了。因此，对于大多数人（以及其他物种）来说，死亡是最糟糕的事情，而我们拥有尽可能美好的生活至关重要。然而，当我们用自然的眼光看自己时，我们就毫无意义了。事实上，我们每个人都只是当今活着的大约七十亿物种中的一员，而且我们的物种也只是我们星球上大约一千万个物种中的一员。地球只是我们银河系中约 1000 亿颗行星之一，而银河系只是宇宙中约 2 万亿个星系之一。而我们的寿命大约只是人类存在的1/3,000，而人类本身也只是地球存在的1/20,000。换句话说，我们的渺小和短暂令人难以置信，无论我们取得什么成就，我们的影响都是微不足道的。与此同时，我们本能地想要发挥作用并进化，我们可以发挥一点点作用——正是所有这些微小的部分加起来推动了宇宙的进化。

继续阅读 →

Natural selection’s trial-and-error process allows improvement without anyone understanding or guiding it. The same can apply to how we learn. There are at least three kinds of learning that foster evolution: memory-based learning (storing the information that comes in through one’s conscious mind so that we can recall it later); subconscious learning (the knowledge we take away from our experiences that never enters our conscious minds, though it affects our decision making); and “learning” that occurs without thinking at all, such as the changes in DNA that encode a species’ adaptations. I used to think that memory-based, conscious learning was the most powerful, but I’ve since come to understand that it produces less rapid progress than experimentation and adaptation. To give you an example of how nature improves without thinking, just look at the struggle that mankind (with all its thinking) has experienced in trying to outsmart viruses (which don’t even have brains). Viruses are like brilliant chess opponents. By evolving quickly (combining different genetic material across different strains), they keep the smartest minds in the global health community busy thinking up countermoves to hold them off. Understanding that is especially helpful in an era when computers can run large numbers of simulations replicating the evolutionary process to help us see what works and what doesn’t.
自然选择的试错过程可以在没有任何人理解或指导的情况下进行改进。这同样适用于我们的学习方式。至少有三种学习方式可以促进进化： 基于记忆的学习（存储通过一个人的意识思维获得的信息，以便我们以后可以回忆起来）；潜意识学习（我们从经验中获取的知识永远不会进入我们的意识，尽管它会影响我们的决策）；以及完全无需思考即可发生的“学习”，例如编码物种适应能力的 DNA 变化。我曾经认为基于记忆的有意识的学习是最强大的，但后来我开始明白，它所产生的进步不如实验和适应那么快。为了给你一个例子来说明自然如何在不思考的情况下改进，只要看看人类（及其所有的思维）在试图智胜病毒（甚至没有大脑）时所经历的斗争即可。病毒就像出色的国际象棋对手。通过快速进化（结合不同菌株的不同遗传物质），它们让全球卫生界最聪明的人忙着想出对策来阻止它们。在计算机可以运行大量模拟来复制进化过程的时代，理解这一点尤其有用，可以帮助我们了解哪些有效，哪些无效。

继续阅读 →

Contribute to the whole and you will likely be rewarded. Natural selection leads to better qualities being retained and passed along (e.g., in better genes, better abilities to nurture others, better products, etc.). The result is a constant cycle of improvement for the whole.
为整体做出贡献，你可能会得到回报。自然选择会导致更好的品质被保留和传承（例如，更好的基因、更好的培育他人的能力、更好的产品等）。结果是整体不断改进的循环。

继续阅读 →

To give you a quick example of nature creating incentives that lead to individuals pursuing their own interests that result in the advancement of the whole, look at sex and natural selection. Nature gave us one hell of an incentive to have sex in the form of the great pleasure it provides, even though the purpose of having sex is to contribute to the advancement of the DNA. That way, we individually get what we want while contributing to the evolution of the whole.
为了给你一个简单的例子，说明大自然创造激励措施，导致个人追求自己的利益，从而导致整体的进步，看看性别和自然选择。尽管性行为的目的是为了促进 DNA 的进步，但大自然却以性行为带来的巨大愉悦为我们提供了极大的动力。这样，我们就可以单独得到我们想要的东西，同时为整体的进化做出贡献。

继续阅读 →

It is instinctually that way, which is why most of us feel the pull of it– in other words, we instinctively want to get better at things and have created and evolved technology to help us. History has shown that all species will either go extinct or evolve into other species, though with our limited time window that is hard for us to see. But we do know that what we call mankind was simply the result of DNA evolving into a new form about two hundred thousand years ago, and we know that mankind will certainly either go extinct or evolve into a higher state. I personally believe there is a good chance man will begin to evolve at an accelerating pace with the help of man-made technologies that can analyze vast amounts of data and “think” faster and better than we can. I wonder how many centuries it will take for us to evolve into a higher-level species that will be much closer to omniscience than we are now–if we don’t destroy ourselves first.
本能地就是这样，这就是为什么我们大多数人都会感受到它的吸引力——换句话说，我们本能地想要在事情上做得更好，并创造和发展了技术来帮助我们。历史表明，所有物种要么灭绝，要么进化成其他物种，尽管我们很难看到有限的时间窗口。但我们确实知道，我们所说的人类只是大约二十万年前DNA进化成新形式的结果，而且我们知道人类肯定要么灭绝，要么进化到更高的状态。我个人认为，在人造技术的帮助下，人类很有可能开始加速进化，这些技术可以分析大量数据，并比我们更快更好地“思考”。我想知道，如果我们不先毁灭自己，我们需要多少个世纪才能进化成比现在更接近全知的高级物种。

继续阅读 →

This evolutionary cycle is not just for people but for countries, companies, economies—for everything. And it is naturally self-correcting as a whole, though not necessarily for its parts. For example, if there is too much supply and waste in a market, prices will go down, companies will go out of business, and capacity will be reduced until the supply falls in line with the demand, at which time the cycle will start to move in the opposite direction. Similarly, if an economy turns bad enough, those responsible for running it will make the political and policy changes that are needed—or they will not survive, making room for their replacements to come along. These cycles are continuous and play out in logical ways—and they tend to be self-reinforcing.
这种进化周期不仅适用于人类，也适用于国家、公司、经济体——一切事物。作为一个整体，它自然会自我修正，尽管其部分不一定如此。例如，如果市场上供应过多且浪费过多，价格就会下降，公司就会倒闭，产能就会减少，直到供应与需求相符，此时循环就会开始向相反方向移动。同样，如果经济变得足够糟糕，那些负责管理经济的人就会做出必要的政治和政策改变，否则他们将无法生存，从而为继任者腾出空间。这些循环是连续的，并以合乎逻辑的方式展开——而且它们往往是自我强化的。

继续阅读 →

Everything from the smallest subatomic particle to the entire galaxy is evolving. While everything apparently dies or disappears in time, the truth is that it all just gets reconfigured in evolving forms. Remember that energy can’t be destroyed—it can only be reconfigured. So the same stuff is continuously falling apart and coalescing in different forms. The force behind that is evolution.
从最小的亚原子粒子到整个星系，一切都在不断演化。虽然一切显然都会随着时间的推移而死亡或消失，但事实是，一切都只是以不断演变的形式重新配置。请记住，能量无法被破坏——它只能被重新配置。因此，同样的东西不断地分解并以不同的形式合并。其背后的力量就是进化。

继续阅读 →

For example, if you come up with something the world values, you almost can’t help but be rewarded. Conversely, reality tends to penalize those people, species, and things that don’t work well and detract from evolution.
例如，如果你提出了世界所重视的东西，你几乎会情不自禁地获得奖励。相反，现实往往会惩罚那些表现不佳、阻碍进化的人、物种和事物。

继续阅读 →

It’s important not to let our biases stand in the way of our objectivity. To get good results, we need to be analytical rather than emotional.
重要的是不要让我们的偏见妨碍我们的客观性。为了获得好的结果，我们需要分析而不是情绪化。

继续阅读 →