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• 超级智能、顺从型AI、超人类主义、基督与超越：PayPal、Palantir联合创始人彼得·蒂尔2025年6月播客实录 | 中英文完整版精译（下篇）

  2026-02-03

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  书童按：本篇是彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）于2025年6月接受罗斯·多塔特（Ross Douthat）”有趣时代”（Interesting Times）播客采访实录。蒂尔是PayPal和Palantir的联合创始人，硅谷传奇投资人，唐纳德·特朗普和J.D.万斯政治生涯的早期资助者，亦是当代保守派知识分子中强调”反对共识”的极具影响力人物。本部分涉及超级智能、顺从型AI风险、超人类主义、基督教与超越、人类自由与神圣决定论，以及人类行动的空间等深刻议题。初稿采用Claude Opus4.5 API全篇翻译、中英混排、审阅修改，书童仅读了一遍并做简单批注，分上下篇两个部分发布，本篇为下篇，以飨诸君。

  

  乐观主义的困境

  The Optimism Problem

  彼得·蒂尔 你把这件事描绘得太乐观了。我嘛，还有那些人……（书童注：指上篇中罗斯所说”特朗普主义和民粹主义可以成为技术创新和经济活力的载体”）

  PETER THIEL You’re framing it really, really optimistically here. So I, well, the people.

  罗斯·多塔特 但我知道你是悲观的。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But I think, I know you’re pessimistic.

  彼得·蒂尔 当你把事情往乐观了说，其实就是在暗示这些人注定要失望、注定要失败，诸如此类。

  PETER THIEL When you frame it optimistically. You’re just saying these people are going to be disappointed and they’re just set up for failure and things like that.

  罗斯·多塔特 我只是说，人们确实表达了很多乐观情绪。埃隆·马斯克就很乐观——当然，他也流露出一些末日焦虑，比如预算赤字将如何毁灭我们所有人。但他进入了政府，他身边的人也进入了政府，他们的态度基本上是：我们和特朗普政府建立了合作关系，我们要追求技术上的伟大复兴。

  ROSS DOUTHAT I mean, people expressed a lot of optimism. That’s all I’m saying. Elon Musk expressed a lot of, I mean, he expressed some apocalyptic anxieties about how budget deficits were going to kill us all. But he came into government, and people around him came into government basically saying, we have a partnership with the Trump administration and we’re pursuing technological greatness.

  罗斯·多塔特 我认为他们是乐观的。而你的立场更加悲观，或者说更加现实。所以我想听的是你对现状的评估，而不是他们的看法。你觉得，特朗普2.0时代的民粹主义，看起来像是能够承载技术活力的载体吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT I think they were optimistic. And so you’re coming from a place of greater pessimism or realism. So what I’m asking for is your assessment of where we are, not their assessment. But do you think, does populism in Trump 2.0 look like a vehicle for technological dynamism to you?

  彼得·蒂尔 它仍然是目前最好的选择，而且是遥遥领先的那种。哈佛难道能靠继续因循守旧、做着五十年来毫无成效的同样事情来攻克痴呆症吗？

  PETER THIEL It’s still by far the best option we have. I don’t think. I don’t know. Is Harvard going to cure dementia by just puttering along, doing the same thing that hasn’t worked for 50 years?

  罗斯·多塔特 这不过是”反正不会更糟，不如放手一搏”的论调。但目前对民粹主义的批评恰恰是：硅谷与民粹主义者结成了联盟，可到头来，民众并不真正关心科学，他们不想在科学上花钱，他们想砍掉哈佛的经费，仅仅因为他们不喜欢哈佛。最终，你得不到硅谷想要的那种对未来的投资。这种批评是错的吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT That’s just a case for. It can’t get worse. Let’s do disruption. Right, but the critique of populism right now would be Silicon Valley made an alliance with the populists. But in the end, the populace don’t care about science. They don’t want to spend money on science. They want to kill funding to Harvard just because they don’t like Harvard. Right. And in the end, you’re not going to get the kind of investments in the future that Silicon Valley wanted. Is that wrong?

  科学的问题

  The Science Problem

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，但我们必须回到这个问题：科学在幕后究竟运转得怎么样？新政派们，不管他们有什么毛病，至少大力推动了科学——你给它拨款，你给科学家钱，你把规模做大。

  PETER THIEL Yeah, but it, we have to go back to this question of, you know, how well is this, is the science working in the background? This is where, you know, the New Dealers, whatever was wrong with them, you know, they pushed science hard and you funded it and you gave money to people and you scaled it.

  彼得·蒂尔 然而今天，如果有一个当代的爱因斯坦给白宫写信，那封信会在收发室石沉大海。曼哈顿计划在今天是不可想象的。当我们把某件事称为”登月计划”——就像拜登谈论癌症研究那样——在六十年代，”登月计划”意味着你真的会登上月球。而现在，”登月计划”意味着某种完全虚幻、永远不会实现的东西。”哦，这事儿得搞个登月计划才行”——这话的意思不是说我们需要一个阿波罗计划，而是说这事永远、永远不会发生。

  PETER THIEL And, you know, whereas today, if there was an equivalent of Einstein and he wrote a letter to the White House, it would get lost in the mailroom. And the Manhattan Project is unthinkable, you know, if we call something a moonshot, the way this is the way Biden talked about, let’s say, cancer research, a moonshot in the 60s still meant that you went to the moon. A moonshot now means something completely fictional that’s never going to happen. Oh, you need a moonshot for that. It’s not like we need an Apollo program. It means it’s never, ever going to happen.

  罗斯·多塔特 那么看起来你仍然处于这样一种模式——和硅谷其他一些人可能不同——对你来说，民粹主义的价值在于撕开面纱、戳破幻象。我们未必处于那个阶段，指望特朗普政府去建设新事物、去搞曼哈顿计划、去实现登月计划。更像是：民粹主义帮助我们看清，一切都是假的。

  ROSS DOUTHAT And so, but it seems like then you’re still in the mode of, for you, as opposed to maybe for some other people in Silicon Valley. The value of populism is in tearing away the veils and illusions. And we’re not necessarily in the stage where you’re looking to the Trump administration to, to build the new, to do the Manhattan Project, to do the moonshot. It’s more like populism helps us see that it was all fake.

  彼得·蒂尔 两者都要尝试，而且它们彼此紧密交织。核电正在去监管化，总有一天我们会重新开始建造新的核电站，或者设计更好的核电站，甚至是聚变反应堆。

  PETER THIEL You need to try to do both. And they are very entangled with each other. And I don’t know, there’s deregulation of nuclear power and at some point, at some point we’ll get back to building, you know, new nuclear power plants or better designed ones or maybe even fusion reactors.

  彼得·蒂尔 所以，是的，首先有一个去监管化的解构阶段，然后在某个时候你才真正开始建设。从某种意义上说，你是在清理战场。

  PETER THIEL And so, yes, there’s a deregulatory deconstructive part. And then at some point you actually get to construction and it’s all things like that. So, yeah, in some ways you’re clearing the field.

  政治的毒性

  The Toxicity of Politics

  罗斯·多塔特 然后，但你个人已经停止资助政客了。

  ROSS DOUTHAT And then, but you’ve personally stopped funding politicians.

  彼得·蒂尔 我在这件事上很矛盾。我认为它非常重要，但同时也极具毒性。所以我来回摇摆。

  PETER THIEL I am schizophrenic on this stuff. You know, I think it is incredibly important and it’s incredibly toxic. And so I go back and forth on it.

  罗斯·多塔特 对你个人来说极具毒性？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Incredibly toxic for you personally?

  彼得·蒂尔 对每个人都是，每个卷入其中的人都是。这是一个零和游戏，令人抓狂，而且在某种程度上，因为每个人——

  PETER THIEL For everybody, everybody who gets involved. It’s zero sum. It’s crazy, you know, and then it’s, and then in some ways, because everyone.

  罗斯·多塔特 恨你，把你和特朗普绑在一起。具体来说，对你个人而言，毒性体现在哪里？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Hates you and associates you with Trump. Like, what, how is it toxic for you personally?

  彼得·蒂尔 它有毒是因为那是一个零和世界。你能感受到其中的利害关系真的、真的很强，然后你——

  PETER THIEL It’s toxic because it’s in a zero sum world. You know, the stakes in it feel really, really high and you.

  罗斯·多塔特 最终树了很多以前没有的敌人。

  ROSS DOUTHAT End up having enemies you didn’t have before.

  火星的政治维度

  The Political Dimension of Mars

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，它对所有以不同方式卷入其中的人都有毒。”回到未来”有一个政治维度。这是我2024年与埃隆的一次对话。

  PETER THIEL Yeah, it’s toxic for all the people who get involved in different ways. There is a political dimension of getting back to the future. You can’t, you know, I don’t know. This is a conversation I had with Elon back in, you know, 2024, and we had all these, you know, conversations.

  彼得·蒂尔 我跟埃隆聊过”海上家园”这个话题。我说，如果特朗普没赢，我就想离开这个国家。埃隆说：”没地方可去。没地方可去。这里是唯一的选择。”你总是事后才想到该怎么反驳。

  PETER THIEL I had this, I had the seasteading version with Elon where I said, you know, if Trump doesn’t win. I want to just leave the country. And then Elon said, “There’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to go. This is the only.” And then, you know, you always think of the right arguments to make later.

  彼得·蒂尔 那是我们共进晚餐大约两小时后，我回到家才想到：”哇，埃隆，你已经不相信去火星这件事了。”2024年，这是埃隆停止相信火星的一年——不是把火星当作一个纯粹的科技项目，而是当作一个政治项目。火星本应是一个政治项目，是在建设一种替代方案。

  PETER THIEL And it was about two hours after we had dinner and I was home that I thought of, “Wow, Elon, you don’t believe in going to Mars anymore.” 2024. 2024 is the year where Elon stopped believing in Mars. Not as a silly science tech project, but as a political project. Mars was supposed to be a political project, was building an alternative.

  彼得·蒂尔 2024年，埃隆开始相信，如果你去了火星，社会主义的美国政府、觉醒的AI，都会跟着你到火星去。这要从我们牵线促成的德米斯（书童注：即德米斯·哈萨比斯，Deepmind创始人，AlphaGo、AlphaFold和Gemini的灵魂人物，诺贝尔化学奖得主）与埃隆那次会面说起。当时德米斯在做DeepMind。

  PETER THIEL And in 2024, Elon came to believe that if you went to Mars, you know, the socialist US Government, the Woke AI, it would follow you to Mars. It was the Demis meeting with Elon that we sort of brokered. He was doing DeepMind.

  罗斯·多塔特 那是一家AI公司。

  ROSS DOUTHAT This is an AI company.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的。大致的对话是这样的：德米斯告诉埃隆，”我正在做世界上最重要的项目，我在建造超人类AI。”然后埃隆回应：”好吧，我也在做世界上最重要的项目。我正在把人类变成一个跨行星物种。”

  PETER THIEL Yeah. This was the rough conversation was, you know, Demis tells Elon, “I’m working on the most important project in the world. I’m building a superhuman AI.” And Elon responds to Demis, “Well, I’m working on the most important project in the world. I am turning this into an interplanetary species.”

  彼得·蒂尔 然后德米斯说：”好吧，可我的AI能够跟着你到火星去。”然后埃隆沉默了。但在我对历史的叙述中，德米斯这句话用了好几年才真正触动埃隆。他直到2024年才消化这件事。

  PETER THIEL And then Demis said, “Well, you know, my AI will be able to follow you to Mars.” And then Elon sort of went quiet. But in my telling of the history, it took years for that to really hit Elon. It took him till 2024 to process it.

  罗斯·多塔特 但这并不意味着他不相信火星。这只是意味着他认定，必须先赢得关于预算赤字和觉醒主义的战斗，才能到达火星。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in Mars. It just means that he decided he had to win some kind of battle over budget deficits for wokeness to get to Mars.

  彼得·蒂尔 火星意味着什么？它是……是的……而且，再说一遍，它是……

  PETER THIEL What does Mars mean? Is it a. Yeah. Is it? And again, it’s.

  罗斯·多塔特 火星意味着什么？

  ROSS DOUTHAT What does Mars mean?

  彼得·蒂尔 它曾经是……它曾经是……它只是一个科学项目，还是……像一个……

  PETER THIEL Well, it was. It was. It’s. Is it. Is it just. Is it just a scientific project or is it. I don’t know, is it like a.

  罗斯·多塔特 一个新社会的愿景？

  ROSS DOUTHAT I don’t know, a vision of a new society?

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，海因莱因（书童注：美国硬科幻小说作家，与阿西莫夫与阿瑟·克拉克并成为科幻小说三巨头）式的愿景，成千上万的人生活在天堂里，都是埃隆·马斯克的后代。我不确定他是否具体化到了那种程度，但如果你把事情具体化，也许你就会意识到，火星本应不只是一个科学项目，它本应是一个政治项目。

  PETER THIEL Yeah, Heinlein, you know, populated by many, many people in paradise, descendants from Elon Musk. Well, I don’t know if it was concretized that. That specifically, but if you concretize things, then maybe you realize that Mars is supposed to be more than a science project. It’s supposed to be a political project.

  彼得·蒂尔 而当你把它具体化时，你就必须开始思考：好吧，觉醒的AI会跟着你去，社会主义政府也会跟着你去，那么也许你必须做一些不仅仅是去火星的事情。

  PETER THIEL And then when you concretize it, you have to start thinking through, well, the AI, the woke AI will follow you, the socialist government will follow you, and then maybe you have to do something other than just going to Mars.

  人工智能：进步还是停滞？

  AI: Progress or Stagnation?

  罗斯·多塔特 好的，说到”觉醒的AI”——如果我们仍处于停滞中的话——人工智能似乎是停滞的最大例外。这是一个取得了显著进步的领域，令许多人惊讶的进步。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Okay, so the Woke AI, artificial intelligence seems like one. If we’re still stagnant. It’s the biggest exception to stagnation. It’s the place where there’s been remarkable progress, surprising to many people, progress.

  罗斯·多塔特 我们刚才在谈政治。这也是特朗普政府在很大程度上满足AI投资者诉求的领域，无论是政府后退一步还是开展公私合作。所以这是一个进步——与政府参与并存的领域。而你是AI的投资者。你认为你在投资什么？

  ROSS DOUTHAT It’s also the place, we were just talking about politics. It’s the place where the Trump administration is, I think, to a large degree, giving AI investors a lot of what they wanted in terms of both stepping back and doing public private partnerships. So it’s a zone of progress and governmental engagement. And you are an investor in AI. What do you think you’re investing in?

  彼得·蒂尔 这个问题有很多层次。有一个问题我们可以提出来：我认为AI有多大？我的笨答案是：介于两者之间。它不只是一个噱头，但也不至于全面改变我们的社会。

  PETER THIEL Well, I don’t know. There’s sort of a lot of layers to this. So I do think, I know there’s one question we can frame is just how big, how big a thing do I think AI is? And I don’t know. My stupid answer is it’s somewhere. It’s more than a nothing burger, and it’s less than the total transformation of our society.

  彼得·蒂尔 我的估计是，它大致相当于九十年代末互联网的规模。我不确定它是否足以真正终结停滞，但也许足以催生一些伟大的公司。互联网可能让GDP增加了几个百分点，也许每年为GDP增长贡献1%，持续了十到十五年，对生产率有所贡献。这大致是我对AI的预期。

  PETER THIEL So my placeholder is that it’s roughly on the scale of the Internet in the late 90s, which is, you know, I’m not sure it’s enough to, to really end the stagnation. It might be enough to create some great companies. And, you know, the Internet added maybe a few points, percentage points to the GDP, maybe 1% to GDP growth every year for 10, 15 years. It adds some to productivity. And so that’s sort of roughly my placeholder for AI.

  彼得·蒂尔 AI是我们唯一拥有的东西。进步如此失衡，有点不太健康——这是我们唯一拥有的。我希望有更多维度的进步。我希望我们正在飞往火星。我希望我们正在攻克痴呆症。如果我们只有AI，我也接受。但它确实有风险，这项技术显然有危险。

  PETER THIEL It’s the only thing we have. It’s, it’s a little bit unhealthy that it’s so unbalanced. This is the only thing we have. I’d like to have more multidimensional progress. I’d like us to be going to Mars. I’d like us to be having cures for dementia. If all we have is AI, I will take it. There are risks with it. There are, obviously, there are dangers with this technology.

  超级智能问题

  The Superintelligence Question

  罗斯·多塔特 那么你是否对所谓的”超级智能级联理论”持怀疑态度？这种理论大致是说：如果AI成功了，它会变得极其聪明，以至于能在物质世界为我们带来进步——就是说，好吧，我们人类无法攻克痴呆症，无法弄清楚如何建造完美的工厂来制造飞往火星的火箭，但AI可以。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But then you are a skeptic of the, what you might call the sort of superintelligence cascade theory, which basically says that if AI succeeds, it gets so smart that it gives us the progress in the world of atoms, that it’s like, all right, we can’t cure dementia. We can’t figure out how to build the perfect factory that builds the rockets that go to Mars, but the AI can.

  罗斯·多塔特 在某个时刻，你跨过某个阈值，它不仅带来更多的数字进步，还带来其他六十四种形式的进步。听起来你不相信这一点，或者说你认为这不太可能。

  ROSS DOUTHAT And at a certain point, it just, you pass a certain threshold and it gives us not just more digital progress, but 64 other forms of progress. It sounds like you don’t believe that, or you think that’s less likely.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，我不确定智力是否真的是那个”门控因素”。

  PETER THIEL Yeah, I, I, I somehow don’t know if that’s been really the gating factor.

  罗斯·多塔特 “门控因素”是什么意思？

  ROSS DOUTHAT What does that mean, the gating factor?

  彼得·蒂尔 这可能是一种硅谷意识形态——也许以一种奇怪的方式，它更偏自由派而非保守派——但硅谷的人真的非常执着于智商，认为一切都与聪明人有关。如果你有更多聪明人，他们就会做出伟大的事情。

  PETER THIEL It’s probably a Silicon Valley ideology and maybe, maybe in a weird way it’s more liberal than a conservative thing, but people are really fixated on IQ in Silicon Valley and that it’s all about smart people. And if you have more smart people, they’ll do great things.

  彼得·蒂尔 而经济学中反智商的论点是：人们实际上越聪明，表现越差。他们不知道如何运用自己的聪明才智，或者我们的社会不知道如何用好他们，他们格格不入。这表明门控因素不是智商，而是我们社会深处存在的某些问题。

  PETER THIEL And then the economics anti IQ argument is that people actually do worse. The smarter they are, the worse they do. And they, you know, it’s just, they don’t know how to apply it, or our society doesn’t know what to do with them and they don’t fit in. And so that suggests that the gating factor isn’t IQ, but something, you know, that’s deeply wrong with our society.

  罗斯·多塔特 那这是智力本身的局限，还是人类超级智能所造就的那种人格类型的问题？我非常认同这种看法。当我在这个播客中与一位AI加速主义者对谈时，我就提出过这个观点：认为某些问题只要提高智力就能解决，这种想法是有问题的。

  ROSS DOUTHAT So is that a limit on intelligence or a problem of the sort of personality types human superintelligence creates? I mean, I’m very sympathetic to the idea and I made this case when I did an episode of this, of this podcast with a sort of AI accelerationist that just throwing, that certain problems can just be solved if you ramp up intelligence.

  罗斯·多塔特 就好像是：我们提高智力，然后砰，阿尔茨海默病解决了；我们提高智力，AI就能弄清楚一夜之间为你建造十亿个机器人的自动化流程。我是一个”智力怀疑论者”——我认为智力可能存在局限性。

  ROSS DOUTHAT It’s like, we ramp up intelligence and boom, Alzheimer’s is solved. We ramp up intelligence and the AI can, you know, figure out the automation process that builds you a billion robots overnight. I, I’m an intelligent skeptic in the sense I don’t think, yeah, I think you probably have limits.

  彼得·蒂尔 这很难证明，无论从哪个角度看都很难证明。

  PETER THIEL It’s, it’s, it’s hard to prove one way or it’s always hard to prove these things.

  罗斯·多塔特 但我，在我们拥有超级——

  ROSS DOUTHAT But I, until we have the super.

  彼得·蒂尔 智能之前，我赞同你的直觉，因为我认为我们已经有过很多聪明人，而事情因为其他原因陷入停滞。所以也许问题是无解的，这是悲观的观点。也许根本没有治愈痴呆症的方法，这是一个根本性的难题。没有治愈死亡的方法。也许这就是一个无解的问题，或者也许是文化因素在作祟。

  PETER THIEL Intelligence, I share your intuition because I think we’ve had a lot of smart people and things have been stuck for other reasons. And so maybe, maybe the problems are unsolvable, which is the pessimistic view. Maybe there is no cure for dementia at all and it’s a deeply unsolvable problem. There’s no cure for mortality. It’s. Maybe it’s an unsolvable problem or maybe it’s these cultural things.

  彼得·蒂尔 所以问题不在于个别聪明人，而在于这如何融入我们的社会。我们是否容忍异端的聪明人？也许你需要异端的聪明人去做疯狂的实验。而如果AI只是循规蹈矩地聪明——如果我们把”觉醒”定义为……好吧，”觉醒”这个词太意识形态化了，但如果你把它简单定义为”顺从主义”，那么这种聪明也许不是能产生变革的那种。

  PETER THIEL So it’s not, you know, it’s not the individually smart person, but it’s how this fits into our society. Do we tolerate heterodox smart people? Maybe it’s, maybe you need heterodox smart people to, you know, do, do crazy experiments. And, and, and if the, you know, if the AI is just conventionally smart, if it’s sort of, if we define wokeness. Again, wokeness is too ideological. But if you just define it as conformist, maybe that’s not the kind of smartness that’s going to make a difference.

  顺从型AI的风险

  The Risk of Conformist AI

  罗斯·多塔特 那么你是否担心这样一种可能的未来：AI本身变成了停滞主义的，它高度智能、具有创造力，但以一种顺从的方式？就像Netflix算法：它制作无限多”还行”的电影供人观看，产生无限多”还行”的想法，让很多人失业、被淘汰。但它不会……它以某种方式加深了停滞。这是你担心的吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT So do you fear then a plausible future where AI in a way becomes itself stagnationist, that it’s like highly intelligent, creative, in a conformist way? It’s like the Netflix algorithm. It makes infinite okay movies that people watch. It generates infinite okay ideas. It puts a bunch of people out of work and makes them obsolete. But it doesn’t. It like deepens stagnation in some way. Is that, Is that a fear?

  彼得·蒂尔 这——

  PETER THIEL It.

  罗斯·多塔特 就像人们只是外包——

  ROSS DOUTHAT It’s like people just outsource.

  彼得·蒂尔 这确实有可能。那当然是一种风险。但我最终的立场是：我们仍然应该尝试AI，而替代方案只是彻底的停滞。

  PETER THIEL It’s quite possible that that’s. That’s certainly a risk, but. But I guess. I guess where I end up is I still think we should be trying AI and that the alternative is just total stagnation.

  彼得·蒂尔 所以，是的，各种有趣的事情可能会发生。比如，也许军事领域的无人机与AI结合——好吧，这有点可怕，有点危险，有点反乌托邦，它会改变很多事情。但如果你没有AI，天哪，那就什么都没有了。

  PETER THIEL So, yeah, there’s sort of all sorts of interesting things can happen with, okay, maybe drones in a military context are combined with AI, and okay, this is kind of scary or dangerous or dystopian or it’s going to change things. But if you don’t have AI, wow, there’s just nothing going on.

  彼得·蒂尔 这个讨论在互联网领域也有类似的版本：互联网是否导致了更多顺从和更多觉醒？是的，它在很多方面没有带来自由意志主义者在1999年幻想的那种丰饶多元的思想爆发。但反事实地说，我会认为它仍然比没有互联网要好，如果没有互联网，也许会更糟。

  PETER THIEL And I don’t know, there’s like a version of this discussion on the Internet. Where did the Internet lead to more conformity and more wokeness. And yeah, there are all sorts of ways where it didn’t lead to quite the cornucopian, diverse explosion of ideas that libertarians fantasized about in 1999. But counterfactually, I would argue that it was still better than the alternative, that if we hadn’t had the Internet, maybe it would have been worse.

  彼得·蒂尔 AI更好，它比替代方案好。而替代方案就是什么都没有，因为停滞。看，停滞论的论点在这里得到强化：我们只谈论AI这个事实，我觉得，总是隐含地承认——如果没有AI，我们几乎处于完全停滞状态。

  PETER THIEL AI is better. It’s better than the alternative. And the alternative is nothing at all, because the sta. Look, here’s one place where the stagnationist arguments are still reinforced. The fact that we’re only talking about AI, I feel, is always an implicit acknowledgement that but for AI, we are in almost total stagnation.

  超人类主义与不朽

  Transhumanism and Immortality

  罗斯·多塔特 但AI世界里显然充满了这样的人，他们对这项技术的看法比你在这里表达的更加乌托邦式、更加变革性——不管你想怎么称呼它。而且你之前提到，现代世界曾经承诺激进的寿命延长，但现在不再承诺了。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But the world of AI is clearly filled with people who at the very least seem to have a more utopian, transformative, whatever word you want to call it, view of the technology than you’re expressing here, and you were mentioned earlier the idea that the modern world used to promise radical life extension and doesn’t anymore.

  罗斯·多塔特 在我看来很明显，许多深度参与人工智能的人将其视为一种超人类主义的机制，一种超越凡人肉身的途径——要么创造某种继承物种，要么实现某种心智与机器的融合。

  ROSS DOUTHAT It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a kind of mechanism for transhumanism, for transcendence of our mortal flesh and either some kind of creation of a successor species, or some kind of merger of mind and machine.

  罗斯·多塔特 你认为这只是无关紧要的幻想吗？还是只是炒作？你认为人们只是假装我们要建造一个机器上帝来融资？它是炒作？是妄想？还是你所担心的事情？我想你是希望人类能够延续下去的，对吧？你在犹豫……

  ROSS DOUTHAT And do you think that’s just all kind of irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are trying to raise money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine? God. Right. Is it, is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about? You. I think you, you would prefer the human race to endure. Right? You’re hesitating. Well, I, Yes.

  彼得·蒂尔 我不知道。我，我会……

  PETER THIEL I don’t know. I, I would, I would.

  罗斯·多塔特 这可是好长的犹豫。

  ROSS DOUTHAT This is a long hesitation.

  彼得·蒂尔 问题实在太多了。

  PETER THIEL There’s so many questions and pushes.

  罗斯·多塔特 人类应该生存下去吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Should the human race survive?

  彼得·蒂尔 是的。

  PETER THIEL Yes.

  罗斯·多塔特 好的。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Okay.

  彼得·蒂尔 但我也希望我们能从根本上解决这些问题。超人类主义的理想是一种激进的转变——把人类的自然身体转化为不朽的身体。

  PETER THIEL But, but I, I also would. I, I also would like us to, to radically solve these problems. And, and so, you know, it’s always. I don’t know, you know. Yeah. Transhumanism is this, you know, the ideal was this radical transformation where your human natural body gets transformed into an immortal body.

  彼得·蒂尔 有一个批评是针对，比如说，性别语境中的跨性别现象。异装癖是指换衣服、穿异性服装的人；变性人是指改变性器官的人。我们可以讨论那些手术效果如何，但我们想要的转变远不止于此。

  PETER THIEL And there’s a critique of, let’s say, the trans people in a sexual context or, I don’t know, transvestite is someone who changes their clothes and cross dresses, and a transsexual is someone where you change your, I don’t know, penis into a vagina. And we can then debate how well those surgeries work, but we want more transformation than that.

  彼得·蒂尔 批评不是说它奇怪、不自然。而是说，天哪，这也太微不足道了。我们想要的不只是换衣服或改变性器官。我们希望你能改变你的心脏、改变你的头脑、改变你的整个身体。而正统基督教对此的批评是，这些事情还不够深入——超人类主义只是改变身体，但你还需要转变灵魂，转变整个自我。

  PETER THIEL The critique is not that it’s weird and unnatural. It’s man, it’s so pathetically little. And okay, we want more than cross dressing or changing your sex organs. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body. And then orthodox Christianity, by the way, the critique orthodox Christianity has of this is these things don’t go far enough like that transhumanism is just changing your body, but you also need to transform your soul and you need to transform your whole self. And so.

  基督教与超越

  Christianity and Transcendence

  罗斯·多塔特 对，但另一方面……等等，等等，抱歉。我大体上同意我认为是你的信念：宗教应该是科学和科学进步观念的朋友。我认为任何关于神圣天意的观念都必须涵盖这样一个事实：我们已经进步了，取得了成就，做了我们祖先无法想象的事情。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right, but the other way. Wait, wait. Sorry. I generally agree with what I think is your belief that religion should be a friend to science and ideas of scientific progress. I think any idea of divine providence has to encompass the fact that we have progressed and achieved and done things that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors.

  罗斯·多塔特 但看起来，是的，基督教最终的承诺是：你通过上帝的恩典获得完美的身体和完美的灵魂。而那个试图靠一堆机器独自做到这一点的人，很可能最终沦为一个反乌托邦式的角色。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But it still also seems like, yeah, the promise of Christianity in the end is you get the perfected body and the perfected soul through God’s grace. And the person who tries to do it on their own with a bunch of machines is likely to end up as a dystopian character.

  彼得·蒂尔 好吧，让我们把这个说清楚，然后你可以——

  PETER THIEL Well, it’s. Let’s, let’s articulate this and you can.

  罗斯·多塔特 有一种异端形式的基督教，对吧，说的是另一回事。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Have a heretical form of Christianity. Right. That says something else.

  彼得·蒂尔 我不知道。我认为”自然”这个词在《旧约》中一次都没有出现过。在某种意义上，我理解的犹太-基督教启示就是关于超越自然，关于克服事物。

  PETER THIEL I don’t know. I think the word nature does not occur once in The Old Testament. And so if you, and there is a word in which, a sense in which the way I understand the Judeo Christian inspiration is it is about transcending nature. It is about overcoming things.

  彼得·蒂尔 你能说的最接近”自然”的东西是：人是堕落的。在基督教的意义上，自然的状态就是你一团糟。这是事实。但在某些方面，在上帝的帮助下，你应该超越它、克服它。然后如果人们——

  PETER THIEL And the closest thing you can say to nature is that people are fallen. And that that’s the natural thing in a Christian sense is that you’re messed up. And that’s true. But, you know, there’s some ways that, you know, with God’s help, you are supposed to transcend that and overcome that. And, but then people, if you just.

  罗斯·多塔特 在座的除外。在座的除外。大多数致力于建造假想中的机器上帝的人，并不认为他们是在与雅威、耶和华、万军之主合作。他们认为他们是在独自建造不朽。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Present company accepted. Present company accepted. Most of the people working to build the hypothetical machine God don’t think that they’re cooperating with Yahweh, Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts. They think that they’re building immortality on their own.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，没错。我们跳来跳去谈了很多事情。所以再说一遍，我的批评是：他们不够有雄心。（书童批：Peter Thiel想法真的是绝了）

  PETER THIEL Yeah, right. We’re jumping around a lot. A lot of things. So again, the critique I was saying is they’re not ambitious enough.

  罗斯·多塔特 对。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right.

  彼得·蒂尔 从基督教的角度看，这些人不够有雄心。那么我们就要问：他们有吗？

  PETER THIEL From a Christian point of view, these people are not ambitious enough. Now then we get into this question, well, are they?

  罗斯·多塔特 但他们在道德和精神层面不够有雄心。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But they’re not morally and spiritually ambitious enough.

  彼得·蒂尔 他们有吗？然后他们在身体层面还足够有雄心吗？他们甚至还真的是超人类主义者吗？天哪，人体冷冻这事儿，看起来像是1999年的复古玩意儿，现在没多少人在做了。所以他们在物理身体上不是超人类主义者。那么，好吧，也许不是人体冷冻，也许是”上传”——但那也不太对。我宁可保留我的身体，我不想只要一个模拟我的计算机程序。所以”上传”似乎比人体冷冻还退了一步。

  PETER THIEL And are they? And then are they still physically ambitious enough? And are they even still really transhumanists? And this is where, okay, you know, man, the cryonics thing, that seems like a retro thing from 1999, there isn’t that much of that going on. So they’re not transhumanists on a physical body. And then. Okay, well, maybe it’s not about cryonics. Maybe it’s about uploading, which. Okay, well, that’s not quite. I’d rather have my body. I don’t want just a computer program that simulates me. So that uploading seemed like a step down from cryonics.

  彼得·蒂尔 但即便如此，它也是对话的一部分。这就是为什么很难评判。我不想说他们全都在编造、全是假的，但我——

  PETER THIEL But then even that’s, you know, it’s part of the conversation. And this is where it gets very hard to score. And I don’t want to say they’re all making it up and it’s all fake, but I don’t.

  罗斯·多塔特 你认为有些是假的吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT You think some of it’s fake?

  彼得·蒂尔 我不认为是假的——”假的”暗示人们在撒谎。但我想说的是，这不是重心所在。

  PETER THIEL I don’t think it’s fake. Implies people are lying. But it’s. I want to say it’s not the center of gravity.

  罗斯·多塔特 是的。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Yeah.

  彼得·蒂尔 确实有一种”丰饶主义”的话语，一种乐观主义的话语。几周前我和埃隆有过一次对话，他说：”十年内美国将有十亿个人形机器人。”我说：”好吧，如果这是真的，你就不用担心预算赤字了，因为我们会有那么多增长，增长会解决这个问题。”然而，他仍然在担心预算赤字。这不能证明他不相信十亿机器人，但这表明也许他没有想透彻，或者他并不认为这在经济上会有那么大的变革性，或者这个预测的误差范围很大。

  PETER THIEL And so there is, yeah, there is a cornucopian language. There’s an optimistic language. A conversation I had with Elon a few weeks ago about this was, he said, “We’re going to have a billion humanoid robots in the US in 10 years.” And I said, “Well, if that’s true, you don’t need to worry about the budget deficits because we’re going to have so much growth. The growth will take care of this.” And then, well, he’s still worried about the budget deficits. And then this doesn’t prove that he doesn’t believe in the billion robots, but it suggests that maybe he hasn’t thought it through or that he doesn’t think it’s going to be as transformative economically, or that there are big error bars around it.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，这些事情在某种程度上没有被想透彻。如果要我批评硅谷，它总是不擅长理解技术的意义是什么。对话总是倾向于陷入这种微观的东西：AI的IQ-ELO分数是多少？你到底怎么定义AGI？我们陷入所有这些无穷无尽的技术辩论。但有很多处于中间层次的问题对我来说似乎非常重要，比如：它对预算赤字意味着什么？对经济意味着什么？对地缘政治意味着什么？

  PETER THIEL But, yeah, there’s some way in which these things are not quite thought through. If I had to give a critique of Silicon Valley, it’s always bad at what the meaning of tech is. And the conversations, they tend to go into this microscopic thing where it’s okay, it’s like, what are the IQ ELO scores of the AI? And exactly how do you define AGI? And we get into all these endless technical debates, and there are a lot of questions that are at an intermediate level of meaning that seem to me to be very important, which is like, what does it mean for the budget deficit? What does it mean for the economy? What does it mean for geopolitics?

  彼得·蒂尔 我们最近有过一次对话——你和我——讨论的是AI是否改变了中国入侵台湾的算计。如果我们正处于加速的AI革命中，在军事上，中国是否正在落后？也许乐观地看，这威慑了中国，因为他们实际上已经输了。而悲观地看，这反而加速了他们的行动，因为他们知道”现在不动手就永远没机会了”——如果现在不拿下台湾，他们将被远远甩在后面。无论如何，这是相当重要的问题，却没有被想清楚。我们不思考AI对地缘政治意味着什么，不思考它对宏观经济意味着什么。这些才是我希望我们更多探讨的问题。

  PETER THIEL One of the conversations we had recently, you and I had, was does it change the calculus for China invading Taiwan, where if we have an accelerating AI revolution, the military, is China falling behind? Maybe on the optimistic side, it deters China because they’ve effectively lost. And on the pessimistic side, it accelerates them because they know it’s now or never. If they don’t grab Taiwan now, they will fall behind. And either way, this is a pretty important thing. It’s not thought through. We don’t think about what AI means for geopolitics. We don’t think about what it means for the macro economy. And those are the kinds of questions I’d want us to push more.

  敌基督与存在风险

  The Antichrist and Existential Risk

  罗斯·多塔特 还有一个非常宏观的问题是你感兴趣的，这会稍微拉一下宗教这根线。你最近一直在做关于”敌基督”概念的演讲，这是一个基督教概念，一个末世概念。它对你意味着什么？什么是敌基督？

  ROSS DOUTHAT There’s also a very macroscopic question that you’re interested in that, you know, will pull on the religion thread a little bit here. You have been giving talks recently about the concept of the Antichrist, which is a Christian concept, an apocalyptic concept. What does that mean to you? What is the Antichrist?

  彼得·蒂尔 我们有多少时间？

  PETER THIEL How much time do we have?

  罗斯·多塔特 你想谈多久敌基督，我们就有多少时间。

  ROSS DOUTHAT We’ve got as long, as much time as you have to talk about the Antichrist.

  彼得·蒂尔 好吧，我可以谈，但我们时间快到了。

  PETER THIEL All right, well, I have a. I could talk about, but we’re near.

  罗斯·多塔特 我的意思是——

  ROSS DOUTHAT I mean.

  彼得·蒂尔 不，我认为总有一个问题：我们如何阐述这些存在风险，我们面临的这些挑战？它们都被框定为那种失控的反乌托邦科幻场景。有核战争的风险，有环境灾难的风险，也许是气候变化这样具体的东西——虽然我们还提出了很多其他的。有生物武器的风险，有各种不同的科幻场景。AI显然也有某些类型的风险。但我一直在想，如果我们要用”存在风险”这个框架来讨论问题，也许我们也应该谈谈另一种”坏奇点”的风险——我会把它描述为”一个世界的极权国家”。

  PETER THIEL But no, I think there’s always a question, you know, how do we articulate, you know, some of these existential risks, some of the challenges we have, and they’re all framed this sort of runaway dystopian science text. There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster, maybe something specific like climate change. Although there are lots of other ones we come up with. There’s a risk of, you know, bioweapons, you have all the different sci fi scenarios. Obviously there are certain types of risks with AI, but I always think that if we’re going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one world totalitarian state.

  彼得·蒂尔 因为我要说的是，人们对所有这些存在风险的默认政治解决方案是”世界治理”。对核武器怎么办？我们有一个有实权的联合国来控制它们，由一个国际政治秩序管辖。类似的逻辑也适用于AI：我们需要全球算力治理，需要一个世界政府来控制所有计算机，记录每一次按键，以确保人们不会编写出危险的AI。我一直在想，这是不是才出虎穴，又入狼窝。

  PETER THIEL Because I would say the political solution, the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one world governance. You know, what do you do about nuclear weapons? We have a United Nations with real teeth that controls them and they’re controlled by an international political order. And then something like this is also what do we do about AI? And we need global compute governance. We need a one world government to control all the computers, log every single keystroke to make sure people don’t program a dangerous AI. And I’ve been wondering whether that’s sort of going from the frying pan into the fire.

  彼得·蒂尔 所以无神论的哲学框架是”一个世界或毁灭”——那是美国科学家联盟在四十年代末制作的一部短片，开头是一颗核弹炸毁世界。显然你需要一个世界政府来阻止它。一个世界或毁灭。而基督教的框架，在某种程度上是同一个问题，是”敌基督还是末日大战？”你要么有敌基督的一世界国家，要么我们正梦游般走向末日大战。”一个世界或毁灭”和”敌基督或末日大战”在某个层面上是同一个问题。

  PETER THIEL And so the atheist philosophical framing is “one world or none.” That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late 40s, starts with a nuclear bomb blowing up the world. And obviously you need a one world government to stop it. One world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is “Antichrist or Armageddon?” You have the one world state of the Antichrist or we’re sleepwalking towards Armageddon. One world or none. Antichrist or Armageddon on one level are the same question.

  彼得·蒂尔 关于这个话题我有很多想法，但有一个问题是——这是所有那些敌基督书籍中的情节漏洞——敌基督是如何接管世界的？他发表这些恶魔般的催眠演讲，人们就上当了。所以这是一个情节漏洞，一个魔鬼论式的解释。

  PETER THIEL Now I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but sort of one question is, and this was a plot hole in all these Antichrist books people wrote, how does the Antichrist take over the world? He gives these demonic hypnotic speeches and people just fall for it. And so it’s this plot hole. It’s this daemonium explanation.

  罗斯·多塔特 完全是，这不可信。

  ROSS DOUTHAT It’s totally, it’s implausible.

  彼得·蒂尔 这是一个非常不可信的情节漏洞。但我认为我们对这个漏洞有了一个答案。敌基督接管世界的方式是：你不停地谈论末日大战，不停地谈论存在风险。这就是你说需要监管的东西。这与十七、十八世纪培根式科学的图景相反——在那个图景中，敌基督是某个邪恶的技术天才、邪恶的科学家，发明一台机器来接管世界。人们对那种场景已经太害怕了。

  PETER THIEL It’s a very implausible plot hole. But I think we have an answer to this plot hole. The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop. And this is what you need to regulate. It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.

  彼得·蒂尔 在我们的世界里，有政治共鸣的东西恰恰相反。有政治共鸣的是”我们需要停止科学”，我们需要对此说”停”。在十七世纪，我可以想象一个奇爱博士、爱德华·泰勒类型的人接管世界。在我们的世界里，更有可能的是格雷塔·通贝里。

  PETER THIEL In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. It is the thing that has political resonance is we need to stop science. We need to just say stop to this. And this is where, yeah, I don’t know. In the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller type person taking over the world. In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.

  现代敌基督：通过恐惧进行控制

  The Modern Antichrist: Control Through Fear

  罗斯·多塔特 好的。我想在这两个选项之间提出一个折中的看法。过去，对敌基督的合理恐惧是某种技术巫师。而现在合理的恐惧是某个承诺控制技术、使其安全、并引入一种从你的角度来看是普遍停滞的未来的人。对吧。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Okay. I want to suggest a middle ground between those two options. It used to be that the reasonable fear of the Antichrist was a kind of wizard of technology. And now the reasonable fear is someone who promises to control technology, make it safe, and sort of usher in what, from your point of view would be a kind of universal stagnation. Right.

  彼得·蒂尔 好吧，那更像是我对它会如何发生的描述。

  PETER THIEL Well, that’s more my description of how it would happen.

  罗斯·多塔特 对。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right.

  彼得·蒂尔 所以我认为人们仍然对十七世纪式的敌基督心存恐惧。我们仍然害怕奇爱博士。

  PETER THIEL So I think people still have a fear of a 17th century Antichrist. We’re still scared of Dr. Strangelove.

  罗斯·多塔特 对。但你是说真正的敌基督会利用那种恐惧，说：”你必须跟我来，才能避免天网，避免终结者，避免核末日大战。”

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right. But you’re saying the real Antichrist would play on that fear and say, “You must come with me to avoid Skynet, to avoid the Terminator, to avoid nuclear Armageddon.”

  彼得·蒂尔 是的。

  PETER THIEL Yes.

  罗斯·多塔特 我的观点是，看看现在的世界，你需要某种新型的技术进步来使那种恐惧具体化。对。如果世界相信AI即将毁灭所有人，我可以相信世界会转向某个承诺和平与监管的人。对。但我认为要到达那个点，你需要其中一个加速主义末日场景开始上演。对。要得到你所说的”和平与安全”敌基督，你需要更多的技术进步。

  ROSS DOUTHAT And I guess my view would be looking at the world right now, that you would need a certain kind of novel technological progress to make that fear concrete. Right. So I can buy that the world could turn to someone who promised peace and regulation if the world became convinced that AI was about to destroy everybody. Right. But I think to get to that point, you need one of the accelerationist apocalyptic scenarios to start to play out. Right. To get your peace and safety Antichrist, you need more technological progress.

  罗斯·多塔特 就像二十世纪极权主义的关键失败之一是它有一个知识问题——它无法知道世界各地正在发生什么。对。所以你需要AI或其他什么东西来帮助”和平与安全”的极权统治。所以你不认为——本质上——你最坏的情况需要涉及某种进步的爆发，然后被驯服并用来强加停滞的极权主义吗？你不能只是从我们现在的位置直接到达那里。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Like one of the key failures of totalitarianism in the 20th century was it had a problem of knowledge. It couldn’t know what was going on all over in the world. Right. So you need the AI or whatever else to be capable of helping the peace and safety, totalitarian rule. So don’t you think you need, essentially you need your worst case scenario to involve some burst of progress that is then tamed and used to impose stagnant totalitarianism? You can’t just get there from where we are right now.

  罗斯·多塔特 好吧，它可以——就像格雷塔·通贝里在地中海的一艘船上抗议以色列那样。我只是不认为，在缺乏加速变化和对全面灾难的真正恐惧的情况下，现在对AI的安全承诺、对技术的安全承诺、甚至对气候变化的安全承诺能成为强大的、普遍的号召力。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Well, it can, like Greta Thunberg’s on a boat in the Mediterranean, like, you know, like protesting Israel, like the. I just don’t see the promise of safety from AI, safety from tech, safety, even safety from climate change right now as a powerful, universal rallying cry. Absent accelerating change and real fear of total catastrophe.

  彼得·蒂尔 我是说，这些事情很难评判。但我认为环保主义相当强大。我不知道它是否强大到足以创建一个一世界极权国家，但天哪，它确实——

  PETER THIEL I mean, these things are so hard to score. But I think environmentalism’s pretty powerful. I don’t know if it’s absolutely powerful enough to create a one world totalitarian state, but man, it is.

  罗斯·多塔特 我认为它目前的形式还不够。

  ROSS DOUTHAT I think it is not in its current form.

  彼得·蒂尔 我想说它是欧洲人仍然相信的唯一东西。他们对绿色事业的信仰超过了对伊斯兰沙里亚法的信仰，也超过了对中国共产主义极权接管的信仰。而”未来”——一个看起来与现在不同的未来——在欧洲能提供的选项只有三个：绿色、沙里亚和极权共产主义国家。而绿色的那个，在一个衰落、腐朽的地方，是迄今为止最强的。

  PETER THIEL It is, I want to say it’s the only thing people still believe in in Europe. Like, you know, they believe in the green thing more than Islamic Sharia law or more than in, you know, the Chinese communist totalitarian takeover. And the future is an idea of a future that looks different from the present. The only three on offer in Europe are green Sharia and you know, the totalitarian communist state. And the green one is by far the strongest in a declining, decaying.

  罗斯·多塔特 那是一个在世界上已不是主导力量的欧洲。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Europe that is not a dominant player in the world.

  彼得·蒂尔 它总是在一个具体语境下，对吧？我们有一段非常复杂的核技术历史。我们确实没有到达一个极权的一世界国家。但到了1970年代，停滞的一个解释是：技术的失控进步已经变得非常可怕。培根式科学在洛斯阿拉莫斯终结了——它在那里结束了，我们不想再有更多了。

  PETER THIEL It’s always in a context, right? And then I would, you know, I don’t know, you know, we had this really complicated history with the way nuclear technology worked. And you know, we, okay, we didn’t. Yeah, we didn’t really get to, you know, a totalitarian one world state. But you know, by the 1970s, one account of the stagnation is that the runaway progress of technology had gotten very scary and that, you know, Baconian science, it ended at Los Alamos and then it was okay, it ended there and we didn’t want to have any more.

  彼得·蒂尔 当查尔斯·曼森在六十年代末服用LSD并开始杀人时，他在LSD上看到的、学到的是：你可以像陀思妥耶夫斯基笔下的反英雄一样，”一切皆被允许”。当然，不是每个人都变成了查尔斯·曼森。但在我对历史的叙述中，每个人都变得和查尔斯·曼森一样疯狂。

  PETER THIEL And you know, when Charles Manson took LSD in the late 60s and started murdering people, what he saw on LSD, what he learned was that you could be like Dostoyevsky, an anti hero in Dostoyevsky and everything was permitted. And of course, not everyone became Charles Manson but Charles Hellingson. But in my telling of the history, everyone became as deranged as Charles Manson.

  罗斯·多塔特 但查尔斯·曼森并没有成为敌基督并接管世界。对，我只是——我们正以末世论收尾。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But Charles Manson did not become the Antichrist and take over the world. Right, I’m just. We’re ending in the apocalyptic.

  彼得·蒂尔 不，但我对1970年代历史的叙述是：嬉皮士确实赢了。我们在1969年7月登上了月球，伍德斯托克三周后开始。事后看来，那就是进步停止、嬉皮士获胜的时刻。是的，它不是字面上的查尔斯·曼森。

  PETER THIEL No, but my telling of the history of the 1970s is the hippies did win and they landed, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later. And with a benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress stopped and the hippies won. And yeah, it was not literally Charles, man.

  建造控制工具的讽刺

  The Irony of Building the Tools of Control

  罗斯·多塔特 好的，但你在退却。我想以敌基督收尾。而且你在退却，你说，好的，环保主义已经是支持停滞的了等等。好，让我们同意所有这些，但我们现在并没有生活在敌基督的统治下。我们只是停滞了。对。而你假设地平线上可能有更糟糕的东西，会使停滞永久化，会被恐惧驱动。而我在说，要发生这种情况，必须有某种类似于洛斯阿拉莫斯的技术进步爆发，让人们感到害怕。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Okay, but you’re retreating. You’re just. I want to stay with the Antichrist just to end. Right, because. And you’re retreating, you’re saying, okay, you know, environmentalism is already pro stagnation and so on. Okay, let’s agree with all that, but we’re not living under, we’re not living under the Antichrist right now. We’re just stagnant. Right. And you’re positing that something worse could be on the horizon that would make stagnation permanent, that would be driven by fear. And I’m suggesting that for that to happen, there would have to be some burst of technological progress that was akin to Los Alamos that people are afraid of.

  罗斯·多塔特 我想这是我对你非常具体的问题，对吧——你是AI的投资者，你深度投资于Palantir，投资于军事技术、监控技术、战争技术等等。对吧？而当你给我讲一个关于敌基督掌权、利用对技术变革的恐惧来对世界强加秩序的故事时，我觉得那个敌基督很可能会使用你正在建造的工具，对吧？

  ROSS DOUTHAT And I guess this is my very specific question for you, right, is that you’re an investor in AI you’re deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology and technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on. Right? And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to sort of impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would be, maybe be using the tools that you were building, right?

  罗斯·多塔特 敌基督不会说：”太好了，我们不会再有任何技术进步了。但我真的很喜欢Palantir迄今为止所做的。”对吧。我是说，这不是一个担忧吗？历史的讽刺不会是：那个公开担心敌基督的人，反而意外地加速了他或她的到来？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like, “Great, you know, we’re not going to have any more technological progress. But I really like what Palantir has done so far.” Right. I mean, isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the, you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?

  彼得·蒂尔 听着，有各种不同的场景。我显然不认为那是我正在做的。

  PETER THIEL Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.

  停滞的敌基督

  The Antichrist of Stagnation

  罗斯·多塔特 说清楚，我也不认为那是你正在做的。我只是好奇：你如何让一个世界愿意服从永久的威权统治？

  ROSS DOUTHAT I mean, to be clear, I don’t think that’s what you’re doing either. I’m just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule.

  彼得·蒂尔 好吧，再说一遍，有不同的程度我们可以描述。但这真的那么荒谬吗？——我刚才告诉你的，作为对停滞的一个广泛解释——整个世界已经屈服于五十年的”和平与安全主义”了？这出自帖撒罗尼迦前书5:3。敌基督的口号就是”和平与安全”。而我们已经臣服于它了。

  PETER THIEL Well, but again, there are these different gradations of this we can describe. But is this so preposterous, what I’ve just told you as a broad account of the stagnation that the entire world has submitted for 50 years to “Peace and Safetyism”? This is 1 Thessalonians 5:3. The slogan of the Antichrist is “peace and safety.” And we’ve submitted to it.

  彼得·蒂尔 FDA不仅监管美国的药物，而且事实上监管着全世界的药物，因为世界其他地方都听从FDA。核管理委员会有效地监管着世界各地的核电站。你不能设计一个模块化核反应堆然后在阿根廷建造它——他们不会信任阿根廷的监管机构，他们会听从美国。

  PETER THIEL The FDA regulates not just drugs in the US but de facto in the whole world, because the rest of the world defers to the FDA. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission effectively regulates nuclear power plants all over the world. People, you can’t design a modular nuclear reactor and just build it in Argentina. They won’t trust the Argentinian regulators. They’re going to defer to the US.

  彼得·蒂尔 所以这至少是一个关于为什么我们有五十年停滞的问题。一个答案是我们的点子用完了。另一个答案是文化上发生了什么，不再允许这样做了。而文化答案可以是自下而上的——人类某种程度上转变成了一种更顺从的物种；也可以至少部分是自上而下的——有这套政府机器被改造成了停滞装置。

  PETER THIEL So it is at least a question about why we’ve had 50 years of stagnation and one answer is we ran out of ideas. The other answer is that something happened culturally where it wasn’t allowed. And then the cultural answer can be sort of a bottom up answer, that it was just some transformation of humanity into this sort of more docile kind of a species or it can be at least partially top down that there is this machinery of government that got changed into this stagnation thing.

  彼得·蒂尔 我认为像核电这样的东西本应是二十一世纪的能源，而它不知何故在全球范围内被叫停了。

  PETER THIEL I think something like nuclear power was supposed to be the power of the 21st century and it somehow has gotten off ramped all over the world on a worldwide basis.

  罗斯·多塔特 所以从某种意义上说，按照你的叙述，我们已经生活在敌基督的温和统治下了。你认为上帝在掌控历史吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT So in a sense we’re already living under a moderate rule of the Antichrist. In that telling. Do you think God is in control of history?

  人类自由与神圣决定论

  Human Freedom vs. Divine Determinism

  彼得·蒂尔 我认为人类自由和人类选择总是有其空间的。这些事情并非绝对预定。

  PETER THIEL I think there’s always room for human freedom and human choice. These things are not absolutely predetermined one way or another.

  罗斯·多塔特 对吧？但上帝不会让我们永远处于一个温和的、适度的停滞主义敌基督的统治之下，对吧？那不可能是故事的结局，对吧？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right? But God wouldn’t leave us forever under the rule of a mild, moderate stagnationist Antichrist, right? That can’t be how the story ends, right?

  彼得·蒂尔 把太多因果归于上帝总是个问题。我可以给你引用不同的圣经经文。约翰福音15:25，基督说”他们无故恨我”。所以，所有迫害基督的人都没有理由、没有原因。

  PETER THIEL Attributing too much causation to God is always a problem. You know, I don’t know, there are different Bible verses I can give you. But I’ll give you John 15:25 where Christ says “they hated me without cause.” And so it’s all these people that are persecuting Christ have no reason, no cause for why they’re persecuting Christ.

  彼得·蒂尔 如果我们把这解释为一个关于终极因果的经文，他们就会说”我迫害基督是因为上帝让我这样做，上帝在主宰一切”。而基督教的观点是反加尔文主义的：上帝并不在历史背后操控，上帝并没有在主导一切。如果你说上帝在主导一切，那么上帝就是——

  PETER THIEL And if we interpret this as a ultimate causation verse, they want to say I’m persecuting because God caused me to do this. God is causing everything. And the Christian view is anti-Calvinist. God is not behind history. God is not causing everything. If you say God’s causing everything, then God is—

  罗斯·多塔特 但等等，上帝是——

  ROSS DOUTHAT But wait, but God is—

  彼得·蒂尔 你在拿上帝当替罪羊。

  PETER THIEL You’re scapegoating God.

  罗斯·多塔特 但上帝在……好吧，上帝在耶稣基督进入历史这件事的背后，因为上帝不会坐视我们困在一个停滞的、颓废的罗马帝国里。对吧？所以在某个时刻，上帝会介入。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But God is behind—okay, but God is behind Jesus Christ entering history because God was not going to leave us in a stagnationist, decadent Roman Empire. Right? So at some point, at some point God is going to step in.

  彼得·蒂尔 我没那么加尔文主义。

  PETER THIEL I am not that Calvinist.

  罗斯·多塔特 但那不是加尔文主义，那只是基督教。上帝不会让我们永远盯着屏幕、被格雷塔·通贝里训斥。对吧？他不会抛弃我们，任由我们遭受那种命运。

  ROSS DOUTHAT And that’s not Calvinism though, that’s just Christianity. God will not leave us eternally staring into screens and being lectured by Greta Thunberg. Right? He will not abandon us to that fate.

  人类行动的空间

  The Scope for Human Action

  彼得·蒂尔 人类行动、人类自由有很大的空间。如果我认为这些事情是决定论的，那你还不如干脆躺平接受。狮子来了，你就做做瑜伽、虔诚地冥想，然后坐等狮子把你吃掉。我不认为那是你该做的。

  PETER THIEL There is a great deal of scope for human action, for human freedom. If I thought these things were deterministic, you might as well maybe just accept it. The lions are coming. You should just have some yoga and prayerful meditation and wait while the lions eat you up. And I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to do.

  罗斯·多塔特 不，我同意。在这个基调上，我只是想保持希望：在试图抵抗敌基督、运用你的人类自由时，你应该抱有成功的希望。对。

  ROSS DOUTHAT No, I agree with that. And I think on that note, I’m just trying to be hopeful and suggesting that, you know, in trying to resist the Antichrist, using your human freedom, you should have hope that you’ll succeed. Right.

  彼得·蒂尔 在这一点上我们可以达成共识。

  PETER THIEL We can agree on that.

  罗斯·多塔特 好的。彼得·蒂尔，感谢你的参与。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Good. Peter Thiel, thank you for joining me.

  彼得·蒂尔 谢谢。

  PETER THIEL Thank you.

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• 技术停滞、回到未来、风险承担 | PayPal、Palantir联合创始人彼得·蒂尔2025年6月播客实录 | 中英文完整版精译 （上篇）

  2026-02-03

  LZN

  podcast

  thinking

  书童按：本篇是彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）于2025年6月接受罗斯·多塔特（Ross Douthat）”有趣时代”（Interesting Times）播客采访实录。蒂尔是PayPal和Palantir的联合创始人，硅谷传奇投资人，唐纳德·特朗普和J.D.万斯政治生涯的早期资助者，亦是当代保守派知识分子中强调”反对共识”的极具影响力人物。其采访涉及技术停滞论、增长与环保的辩证、《回到未来》测试、医学研究中的风险承担、政治风险投资等深刻议题，言论犀利，思路深邃。初稿采用Claude API机器翻译及排版，书童仅做简单校对及批注，将分上下篇两个部分发布，以飨诸君。

  

  彼得·蒂尔：人工智能、火星与不朽——我们的梦够大吗？ | 罗斯·多塔特"有趣时代"播客

  Peter Thiel: A.I., Mars and Immortality: Are We Dreaming Big Enough? | Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

  技术停滞论

  The Case for Technological Stagnation

  罗斯·多塔特 硅谷是否过于野心勃勃？我们更应该担忧世界末日还是发展停滞？为什么世界上最成功的投资者之一会担心反基督的降临？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Is Silicon Valley recklessly ambitious? What should we fear more, Armageddon or stagnation? Why is one of the world’s most successful investors worrying about the Antichrist?

  罗斯·多塔特 我今天的嘉宾是PayPal和Palantir的联合创始人，也是唐纳德·特朗普和J.D.万斯政治生涯的早期资助者。彼得·蒂尔是科技右翼的核心人物，以资助各种保守派和逆流而上的思想著称。今天我们要谈的是他自己的想法，因为尽管身为亿万富翁略有劣势，但有充分理由证明他是过去20年最具影响力的右翼知识分子。彼得·蒂尔，欢迎来到”有趣时代”。

  ROSS DOUTHAT My guest today is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and an early investor in the political careers of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Peter Thiel is the original tech right power player, well known for funding a range of conservative and simply contrarian ideas. But we’re going to talk about his own ideas because despite the slight handicap of being a billionaire, there’s a good case that he’s the most influential right wing intellectual of the last 20 years. Peter Thiel, welcome to Interesting Times.

  彼得·蒂尔 感谢邀请。

  PETER THIEL Thanks for having me.

  罗斯·多塔特 非常欢迎。感谢你来到这里。我想先让你回忆大约13或14年前的事情。你为保守派杂志《国家评论》写了一篇名为《未来的终结》的文章。文章的基本论点是，那种充满活力、节奏快、瞬息万变的现代世界，实际上并没有人们所想的那么充满活力。

  ROSS DOUTHAT You’re very welcome. Thanks for being here. So I want to start by taking you back in time about 13 or 14 years. You wrote an essay for National Review, the conservative magazine called “The End of the Future.” And basically the argument in that essay was that the dynamic, fast-paced, ever-changing modern world was just not nearly as dynamic as people thought.

  罗斯·多塔特 实际上我们进入了一个技术停滞的时期。数字生活是一个突破，但并没有达到人们期望的那样巨大。归根结底，世界基本上陷在里面。你并不是唯一提出这种论断的人，但你向来是最有力支持这一论断的人，因为你是在数字革命中致富的硅谷人。所以我很好奇，在2025年，你认为这种判断仍然成立吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT And that actually we entered a period of technological stagnation. That sort of digital life was a breakthrough, but not as big a breakthrough as people had hoped. And that sort of the world was kind of stuck, basically. And you weren’t the only person to make arguments like this, but it had a special potency coming from you because you were a Silicon Valley insider who had gotten rich in the digital revolution. So I’m curious, in 2025, right, do you think that diagnosis still holds?

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，我仍然大体上相信停滞论。它从来不是一个绝对的论断。所谓的主张并不是说我们完全绝对地陷入泥潭。某种程度上，这是一个关于速度放缓的论断——速度并没有降为零，但你看从1750年到1970年……（分明更快）

  PETER THIEL Yes, I still broadly believe in the stagnation thesis. It was never an absolute thesis. So the claim was not that we were absolutely completely stuck. It was in some ways a claim about that the velocity had slowed, it wasn’t zero, but that we were, I don’t know, from 1750 to 1970.

  彼得·蒂尔 两百多年是加速变化的时期，我们不断地、无情地前进。轮船更快了，铁路更快了，汽车更快了，飞机更快了。这在协和式客机和阿波罗登月任务时达到顶点，之后在各种层面上事情都放慢了。

  PETER THIEL Two hundred plus years were periods of accelerating change where we’re relentlessly, we’re moving faster. The ships were faster, the railroads were faster, the cars were faster, the planes were faster. It culminates in the Concorde and the Apollo missions and then that in all sorts of dimensions things had slowed.

  彼得·蒂尔 我们一直（仅仅）在数字世界例外。所以我们有计算机、软件、互联网和移动互联网。而且在过去10-15年里，我们有了加密货币和人工智能革命，我认为这在某种意义上确实很重大。但问题是，它是否足以让我们真正摆脱这种普遍的停滞感？

  PETER THIEL There was, you know, I always made an exception for the world of bits. So we had, you know, computers and software and Internet and mobile Internet. And then, you know, the last 10, 15 years you had crypto and the AI revolution, which I think is, is, is in some sense pretty big. But, but the question is, you know, is it enough to, to really get out of this, this generalized sense of stagnation?

  彼得·蒂尔 这里有一个认识论的问题，你可以从《回到未来》那篇文章（书童注：指2011年1月20日Peter Thiel受National Review邀约采访的通稿）谈起。我们怎么知道自己是处于停滞还是加速之中？因为晚期现代性的特征之一就是人们过度专业化。如果你没有花半辈子研究弦理论，你怎么敢说我们在物理学上没有取得进步？量子计算机呢？癌症研究和生物技术以及所有这些领域呢？而且你还得给这些事情分配权重——比如癌症研究的进步与弦理论的进步，该如何比较？所以从理论上说，这是一个极其、极其难以把握的问题。正因为它太难回答，我们只能依赖越来越窄的专家群体各自守护自己的领地，而这本身就值得质疑。所以是的，我认为我们大体上仍然处在一个相当停滞的世界里。但并非完全停滞。

  PETER THIEL And there’s an epistemological question you can start with on the, you know, the, the “Back to the Future” essays. How do we even, how do we even know whether we’re in stagnation or acceleration? Because one of the features of late modernity is that people are hyper specialized. And so, you know, you know, can you say that we’re not making progress in physics unless you’ve devoted half your life to studying string theory? Or what about quantum computers or what about cancer research and biotech and sort of all these verticals and then how much does progress in cancer count versus string theory? And so you have to give weightings to all these things. So in theory, it’s an extremely, extremely difficult question to get a handle of because, yeah, the fact that it’s so hard to answer that we have ever narrower groups of guardians guarding themselves is itself cause for skepticism. And so, yes, I think broadly we’re in this world that’s still pretty stuck. It’s not absolutely stuck.

  《回到未来》测试

  The Back to the Future Test

  罗斯·多塔特 是的，你提到了《回到未来》（书童注：罗伯特·泽米吉斯于1985年导演的科幻电影，非常值得一看），我们刚刚给孩子们看了原版《回到未来》，就是第一部，有迈克尔·J·福克斯的那部，当然就像……

  ROSS DOUTHAT Yeah, you mentioned “Back to the Future” and we just showed our kids the original “Back to the Future,” the first one with Michael J. Fox, and of course it was like.

  彼得·蒂尔 从1955到1985，回了30年。然后《回到未来2》是，我想是从1985到2015，这距今已经过去十年了。那就是有飞行汽车的地方。而2015年的未来与现实截然不同。

  PETER THIEL 1955 to 1985, 30 years back. And then the “Back to the Future Two” was I think 1985 to 2015, which is now a decade in the past. And that’s where you had flying cars. And the 2015 future is wildly divergent.

  罗斯·多塔特 与美国不同。2015年的未来中确实有比夫·坦能（《回到未来》中的虚构人物）似的唐纳德·特朗普作为掌权任务，所以有一定的预见性。但是，最明显的事情就是建筑环境看起来多么不同。

  ROSS DOUTHAT From the United States. The 2015 future did have Biff Tannen as a Donald Trump-like figure in some kind of power. So it had some kind of prescience. But yeah, the big noticeable thing is just how different the built environment looks.

  罗斯·多塔特 所以关于停滞论最有力的论据之一就是，如果你把某人从历史的各个时间点放进一台时间机器里，如果他们离开了1860年或——

  ROSS DOUTHAT And so one of the strongest cases for stagnation that I’ve heard is that, yeah, if you put someone in a time machine from various points, they would recognize themselves to be in a completely different world if they left 1860 or.

  彼得·蒂尔 从1890年到1970年，如果你活了这80年，那大概就是你的一辈子。

  PETER THIEL 1890 to 1970, if you lived, those are the 80 years of your lifetime, something like that.

  罗斯·多塔特 但对于我的孩子们来说，即使他们是2025年的孩子，回头看1985年，就像汽车稍微有些不同，没有人有手机，但世界看起来基本上是一样的。所以这是一种非统计学的，但这是常识性的理解。

  ROSS DOUTHAT But the world just to my kids, even, you know, as children of 2025, looking at 1985, it’s like the cars are a little different and no one has phones, but the world seems fairly similar. So that’s a kind of, that’s a kind of non-statistical. But that’s the common sense. It’s a common sense understanding.

  罗斯·多塔特 但是，有什么东西可以让你相信我们正在经历一个起飞期？仅仅是经济增长吗？是生产率增长？你在看哪些停滞与活力的数据？

  ROSS DOUTHAT But are there like, what, what would convince you that we were living through a period of takeoff? Is it just economic growth? Is it productivity growth? Like what are, are there numbers for stagnation versus dynamism that you look at?

  彼得·蒂尔 当然，经济数据就是，你的生活水平与父母相比如何？比如说，如果你是一个30岁的千禧一代，你与你的父母——你的婴儿潮一代父母在30岁时相比，他们当时怎么样？

  PETER THIEL Sure, it would be well, the economic number would just be how, you know, what are your living standards compared to your parents? You know, if you’re a 30-year-old millennial or you know, how are you doing versus when your parent, your boomer parents were 30 years old, how did they do at the time?

  彼得·蒂尔 还有一些知识层面的问题，我们取得了多少突破？

  PETER THIEL There are intellectual questions, how much, you know, how many breakthroughs are we having?

  彼得·蒂尔 我们怎么量化这些事情？从事研究的回报是多少？从事科学或学术研究的回报确实在递减。也许这就是为什么其中许多领域给人一种反社会型的马尔萨斯式机构的感觉——因为你必须向某个领域投入越来越多的资源，才能获得同样的回报。到了某个临界点，人们就放弃了，整个体系便会崩溃。

  PETER THIEL How do we quantify these things? Like, what are the returns of going into research? There certainly are diminishing returns to going into science or going into academia generally. And then maybe this is why so much of it feels like this sociopathic Malthusian kind of an institution, because you have to throw more and more and more at something to get the same returns. And at some point people give up and the thing collapses.

  反增长的环保论据

  The Environmental Argument Against Growth

  罗斯·多塔特 好的，我们就接上这个话题吧。为什么我们应该想要增长和活力？因为正如你在一些论据中指出的那样，在西方世界的1970年代——大约是你认为事情放慢、开始停滞的时候——发生了一种文化变化，人们对增长的成本变得非常焦虑——尤其是环境成本。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Well, right, so let’s pick up on that. Why should we want growth and dynamism? Because as you’ve pointed out in some of your arguments on the subject, right, there is a kind of cultural change that happens in the Western world in the 1970s, around the time you think things slow down, start to stagnate, where people become very anxious about the costs of growth, the environmental costs above all.

  罗斯·多塔特 而这个想法就是你最终会形成一种广泛共享的观点，即我们已经足够富有了，如果我们试图过度致富，地球将无法支持我们，会产生各种退化，我们应该满足于现在的状态。那么这个论点哪里出了问题？

  ROSS DOUTHAT And the idea being you end up with a widely shared perspective that we’re sort of rich enough and if we try too hard to get that much richer, the planet won’t be able to support us, we’ll have degradation of various kinds, and we should be content with where we are. So what’s wrong with that argument?

  彼得·蒂尔 好吧，我认为停滞的发生有其深层原因。这里总有三个问题。你问历史上发生了什么，还有一个问题是应该采取什么措施。但中间还有一个问题：为什么会发生？——人们的想法枯竭了。我认为在一定程度上，机构退化了，变得厌恶风险，还有我们可以描述的那些文化变迁。

  PETER THIEL Well, I think there are deep reasons the stagnation happens. So there are always three questions. You ask about history, what actually happened, and there’s a question, get to what should be done about it. But there’s also this intermediate question, why did it happen? People ran out of ideas. I think to some extent the institutions degraded and became risk averse and sort of these cultural transformations we can describe.

  彼得·蒂尔 但我也认为在一定程度上，人们对未来有一些非常合理的担忧。如果我们继续加速进步，我们是否会加速走向环境末日或核末日，诸如此类？

  PETER THIEL But then I think to some extent also people had some very legitimate worries about the future. Where if we continue to have accelerating progress, were you accelerating towards environmental apocalypse or nuclear apocalypse or things like that?

  彼得·蒂尔 但我认为，如果我们找不到回到未来的方式，社会就会——怎么说呢——瓦解，运转不下去。中产阶级，我对中产阶级的定义是那些期望子女比自己过得更好的人。当这种期望崩塌时，我们便不再是一个中产阶级社会。

  PETER THIEL But I think if we don’t find a way back to the future, I do think the society, I don’t know, it unravels, it doesn’t work. The middle class, I would define the middle class as the people who expect their kids to do better than themselves. And when that expectation collapses, we no longer have a middle class society.

  彼得·蒂尔 也许有某种方式可以拥有一个静态且停滞的封建社会，或者也许有某种方式可以转向某种完全不同的社会，但这不是西方世界、也不是美国在其前200年中运作的方式。

  PETER THIEL And maybe there’s, maybe there’s some way you can have a feudal society in which things are always static and stuck or Maybe there’s some way you can shift to some radically different society, but it’s not the way the Western world, it’s not the way the United States has functioned for the first 200 years of its existence.

  罗斯·多塔特 所以你认为普通人最终不会接受停滞，他们会起来反叛，并在叛乱过程中把周围的一切拉垮？

  ROSS DOUTHAT So you think that ordinary people won’t accept stagnation in the end, it’s that they will rebel and sort of pull things down around them in the course of that rebellion.

  彼得·蒂尔 他们可能会反叛，或者我们的制度就行不通了。我们的制度中（经济）增长是一切的预设条件。

  PETER THIEL You know, they may rebel or our institutions don’t work. You know, all of our institutions are predicated on growth.

  罗斯·多塔特 确实如此。我们的预算当然预设了增长。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right. Our budgets are certainly predicated on growth.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的。比如对比里根和奥巴马——里根代表的是消费主义式的资本主义，这本身就是矛盾修辞。就是说，你靠借钱消费，作为资本家你不存钱，反而借钱。奥巴马则代表低税社会主义，和里根的消费主义式资本主义一样自相矛盾。

  PETER THIEL Yeah. If you say, I don’t know, Reagan and Obama, you know, Reagan was, was sort of consumer capitalism, which is oxymoronic. It was, you know, you borrowed, you don’t save money as a capitalist. You borrow money. And Obama was low tax socialism just as oxymoronic as the consumerist capitalism of Reagan.

  彼得·蒂尔 而且我喜欢低税社会主义远胜于高税社会主义。但我担心它不可持续。在某个时刻，要么税率会上涨，要么社会主义会终结。所以它是深层不稳定的。这就是为什么人们不乐观。他们不认为我们已经到达了某种稳定的——格雷塔（书童注：瑞典激进环保主义者）式的未来。也许那可以行得通。

  PETER THIEL And I like low tax socialism way better than high tax socialism. But I worry that it’s not sustainable. At some point, either the taxes go up or the socialism ends. So it’s, it’s, it’s deeply, deeply unstable. And that’s, that’s why people are, they’re not optimistic. They, they don’t think we’ve hit some stable, you know, the Greta future. Maybe it can work.

  罗斯·多塔特 这是指格雷塔·通贝里。为了清楚说明，这是对环保活动人士格雷塔·通贝里的引用，她以反气候变化抗议而闻名，在你看来，她代表着一种反增长、实际上是威权主义的、环保主义主导的未来的象征。

  ROSS DOUTHAT This is the Greta Thunberg. Just to be clear, that’s a reference to Greta Thunberg, the activist best known for anti-climate change protests, who to you, I would say represents a kind of symbol of a kind of anti-growth, effectively authoritarian, environmentalist dominated future.

  彼得·蒂尔 当然。但我们还没走到那一步。我们还没走到那一步。如果你——

  PETER THIEL Sure. But we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. You know, it would be, it’d be like a very, very different society if you, if you, if you, if you.

  罗斯·多塔特 真正生活在一种去增长的——你知道——小斯堪的纳维亚式的村落中。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Actually lived in a kind of degrowth, you know, small Scandinavian villages.

  彼得·蒂尔 我不确定它是否像朝鲜，但它一定是极度压迫人的。

  PETER THIEL I’m not sure it would be North Korea, but it would be, it would be super oppressive.

  危机寻求的危险

  The Danger of Crisis-Seeking

  罗斯·多塔特 有一件事始终让我印象深刻：当社会弥漫着停滞感、衰败感——借用我偏爱的那个词——你会发现一些人开始渴望危机。渴望某个时刻的到来，让他们可以彻底将社会从当前的轨道转向另一条道路。

  ROSS DOUTHAT One thing that’s always struck me is that when you have this sense of stagnation, a sense of decadence. Right. To use, to, to use a word that I, I like to use for it in, in a society, you then also have people who end up being kind of eager for a crisis. Right. Eager for a moment to come along where, you know, they can, they can radically redirect society from the path it’s on.

  罗斯·多塔特 因为我倾向于认为，在富裕社会中，当财富积累到一定程度，人们会变得非常安逸，厌恶风险，而要从衰败中走向某种新事物确实很难——没有危机就很难做到。对我来说，最典型的例子是9·11事件之后，外交政策保守派中弥漫着一种观念：我们此前一直深陷衰败与停滞，现在是我们觉醒并发动新十字军、重塑世界的时候了。显然那个结果非常糟糕。但类似的思潮——

  ROSS DOUTHAT Because I tend to think that in rich societies you hit a certain level of wealth, people become very comfortable, they become risk averse, and it’s just hard, it’s hard to get out of decadence into something, into something new without a crisis. So the original example for me was after September 11, there was this whole mentality among foreign policy conservatives that we had been decadent and stagnant and now is our time to, you know, wake up and launch a new crusade and remake the world. And obviously that ended very badly. But something similar it was, it was.

  彼得·蒂尔 小布什直接告诉人们去购物就好了。

  PETER THIEL Bush 43 just told people to go shopping right away.

  罗斯·多塔特 所以对他们来说并没有反衰败。

  ROSS DOUTHAT So it wasn’t anti-decadent for them.

  彼得·蒂尔 大部分情况下是这样。所以你看，也许在一些新保守派外交政策圈子里，有人在”角色扮演”以试图走出衰败。但最主流的态度是小布什告诉人们——你们继续去购物吧。

  PETER THIEL For the most part. So you, there was, there was, maybe there was some neocon foreign policy enclave in which people were larping as a way to get out of decadence. But the, the dominant thing was Bush 43, people telling people just to go shopping.

  罗斯·多塔特 那么，为了逃脱衰败，你愿意承担多大的风险？似乎这里确实存在一种危险，那就是想要反衰败的人必须承受大量风险。他们必须说，看，你们有这个好的、稳定的、舒适的社会，但猜猜呢？我们希望打一场仗，或者制造一场危机，又或者完全重组政府等等。他们必须倾向于冒险。

  ROSS DOUTHAT So what risks should you be willing to take to escape decadence? It does seem like there’s a danger here where the people who want to be anti-decadent have to take on a lot of risk. They have to say, look, you’ve got this nice, stable, comfortable society, but guess what? We’d like to have a war or a crisis or a total reorganization of government and so on. They have to lean into, into danger. Right.

  彼得·蒂尔 我不知道我能否给你一个精确的答案，但我的方向性回答是——多得多，我们应该承担更多风险。我们应该做得更多，而且我不知道，我可以举例说明所有这些不同的领域。

  PETER THIEL I don’t know if I have to answer, you know, I don’t know if I’ve give you a precise answer, but my directional answer is a lot more, we should take a lot more risk. We should be doing a lot more and I don’t know, I can go through all these different verticals.

  彼得·蒂尔 比如说，如果我们看生物技术，像痴呆症、阿尔茨海默症这种疾病，我们在40到50年间几乎没有任何进展。人们完全困在β淀粉样蛋白上。显然行不通。这只是某种愚蠢的勾当，人们只是在互相强化。所以是的，我们在这个方面确实需要承担更多风险。

  PETER THIEL It’s, you know, if we, if we look at biotech, something like dementia, Alzheimer’s, we’ve made zero progress in 40 to 50 years. People are completely stuck on beta amyloids. It’s obviously not working. It’s just some kind of a stupid racket where the people are just reinforcing themselves. And so, yes, we need to take way more risk in that department.

  医学研究中的风险

  Taking Risks in Medical Research

  罗斯·多塔特 好吧，我想问一件具体的事情，让我们保持具体，我想在这个例子上再停留一下，问一下好的，说”我们需要在抗衰老研究中承担更多风险”到底意味着什么？这是意味着FDA必须后退，说任何人只要有治疗阿尔茨海默症的新疗法就可以直接在开放市场上销售吗？医学领域中的风险究竟是什么样子的？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Well, I want to ask, to keep us in the concrete, I want to stay with that example for a minute and ask, okay, what does that mean saying we need to take more risks in anti-aging research? Does it mean that the FDA has to step back and say anyone who has a new treatment for Alzheimer’s can, you know, go ahead and sell it on the open market? Like, what is, what is, what is risk in the medical space look like?

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，你确实会承担更多风险。如果你有某种致命疾病，你可能可以承受更多的风险。研究人员也可以承受更多的风险。

  PETER THIEL Yeah, you would take a lot more risk. You know, if you have some fatal disease, there probably are a lot more risks you can take. There are a lot more risks the researchers can take.

  彼得·蒂尔 从文化层面想象一下，那就像早期现代时期，那时人们确实认为我们会治愈疾病。他们认为我们会实现根本性的延长寿命、甚至不朽。这是早期现代的项目，是弗朗西斯·培根、孔多塞的信条。也许这反基督教，也许是基督教竞争的下游产物。如果基督教承诺了你肉体的复活，那么科学就必须承诺同样的事情才能成功。

  PETER THIEL Culturally, what I imagine it looks like is early modernity where people, yeah, they thought we would cure diseases. They thought we would have radical life extension, immortality. That was part of the project of early modernity. It was Francis Bacon, Condorcet. And maybe it was anti Christian, maybe it was downstream of Christianity was competitive. If Christ, if Christianity promised you a physical resurrection, you know, science was not going to succeed unless it promised you the exact same thing.

  彼得·蒂尔 我不知道。我记得1999年、2000年，那时我在经营PayPal，我的联合创始人之一卢克·诺塞克（Luke Nosek）对Alcor和人体冷冻学很感兴趣，他认为人们应该在死后冷冻自己。有一天我们带着整个公司去参加了一个”冷冻派对”——你知道，就像特百惠派对一样。在冷冻派对上人们推销冷冻保单。

  PETER THIEL But I don’t know. I remember 1999, 2000, when I was running PayPal, one of my co founders, Luke Nosek, he was into Alcor and cryonics and people should freeze themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a “freezing party.” You know, Tupperware party. People sell Tupperware policies at a freezing party.

  罗斯·多塔特 他们出售的——只是头部会被冷冻吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT They sell their. Was it just your heads what was going to be frozen?

  彼得·蒂尔 你可以选择全身或者只有头部。

  PETER THIEL You could get a full body or just the head?

  罗斯·多塔特 只冷冻头部比较便宜。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Just the head was cheaper.

  彼得·蒂尔 当点阵打印机出故障、冷冻保单打不出来的时候，场面确实挺诡异的。但回想起来，这仍然是技术停滞的一个缩影。

  PETER THIEL It was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn’t quite work and so the freezing policies couldn’t be printed out. But in retrospect, this was still technological stagnation once again.

  罗斯·多塔特 确实。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Right.

  彼得·蒂尔 但这也是衰落的一个症候。在1999年，这并不是主流观点，但仍然存在一种边缘的婴儿潮一代的信念——他们仍然相信自己可以永生。而他们是最后一代这样想的人。我一向反感婴儿潮一代，但也许我们连这种边缘的婴儿潮式自恋都失去了——至少那时还有几个婴儿潮一代相信科学能治愈他们所有的疾病。今天没有哪个千禧一代还相信这种事了。

  PETER THIEL But it’s also a symptom of the decline, because in 1999, this was not a mainstream view, but there were still a fringe boomer view where they still believed they could live forever. And that was the last generation. So I’m always anti boomer, but maybe there’s something we’ve lost even in this fringe boomer narcissism, where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure all their diseases. No one who’s a millennial believes that anymore.

  政治风险投资

  Political Venture Capitalism

  罗斯·多塔特 我认为还有一些人相信另一种不朽——现在，我认为对人工智能的痴迷有一部分与超越极限的特定愿景有关。在问你这个之前，我想先问你一些关于政治的事情。

  ROSS DOUTHAT I think there are some people who believe in a different kind of immortality, though. Right now, I think part of the fascination with AI is connected to a specific vision of transcending limits. And I’m going to ask you about that after I ask you about politics.

  罗斯·多塔特 因为你最初关于停滞的论断——主要关于技术和经济——中让我印象深刻的事情之一是，它可以被应用到很广泛的领域。而当你写那篇文章时，你对海洋家园感兴趣——本质上就是建造独立于僵化的西方世界的新政治体。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Because one of the striking things I thought about your original argument on stagnation, which was mostly about technology and the economy, was that it could be applied to a pretty wide range of things. And at the time you were writing that essay, you were interested in seasteading this ideas of essentially building new polities independent of the sclerotic Western world.

  罗斯·多塔特 但后来你在2010年代做了一个转变。你是少数——也许是唯一——硅谷中最显眼的唐纳德·特朗普支持者。2016年，你支持了几个经过仔细筛选的共和党参议院候选人。其中一个现在成为了美国副总统。而我作为观察者的看法是，你基本上是在做政治风险投资。你在说，这里有一些可能改变政治现状的颠覆性代理人，值得承受一定风险。你是这么想的吗？

  ROSS DOUTHAT But then you made a pivot in the 2010s. So you were one of the few prominent, maybe the only prominent Silicon Valley supporter of Donald Trump. In 2016, you supported a few sort of carefully selected Republican Senate candidates. One of them is now the Vice President of the United States. And my view as an observer of what you were doing was that you were basically being a kind of venture capitalist for politics. Right. You were saying, here are some disruptive agents who might change the political status quo and it’s worth a certain kind of risk here. Is that how you thought about?

  彼得·蒂尔 当然。这有多重考量。一方面是——我们希望让泰坦尼克号避开它正驶向的冰山，或者换个比喻——真正地通过政治途径让社会改变航向。

  PETER THIEL Sure. There were all sorts of levels. I mean, one level was, yeah, was these hopes that we could redirect the Titanic from the iceberg was heading to, or whatever the metaphor is, you know, really change course as a society through political piece.

  彼得·蒂尔 也许更窄的、更聚焦的愿望是，我们也许至少可以让这个话题被谈论起来。当特朗普说”让美国再次伟大”时，好的，这是一个正面的、乐观的、有雄心的议程，还是仅仅是对我们现在所处状态的非常悲观的评估——我们不再是一个伟大的国家？

  PETER THIEL Maybe a narrower, a much narrower aspiration was that we could maybe at least have a conversation about this. When someone like Trump said, “make America great again,” okay, is that a positive, optimistic, ambitious agenda, or is it merely a very pessimistic assessment of where we are, that we are no longer a great country?

  彼得·蒂尔 我对特朗普能做出什么积极贡献并没有太大期望，但我认为，至少在一百年来第一次，我们有了一个不再给我们灌输那种甜腻虚伪的布什式废话的共和党人。这并不等同于进步，但我们至少可以开始对话了。

  PETER THIEL And I didn’t have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way, but I thought, at least for the first time in a hundred years, we had a Republican who was not giving us this syrupy Bush nonsense. And that was not the same as progress, but we could at least have a conversation.

  彼得·蒂尔 回顾过去，这简直是一种荒谬的幻想。我在2016年有这两个想法，而且你往往会有一些想法恰好在你潜意识中。但我当时有的两个想法是——第一，如果特朗普输了，没有人会因为我支持特朗普而生气。第二，我认为他有50%的获胜机会。（书童注：注意这两个想法，构成了一个严格遵循塔勒布“反脆弱”的杠铃策略）

  PETER THIEL In retrospect, this was a preposterous fantasy. I had these two thoughts in 2016, and you often have these ideas that are just below the level of your sort of consciousness. But the two thoughts I had that I wasn’t able to combine was, number one, you know, nobody would be mad at me for supporting Trump if he lost. And number two, I thought he had a 50-50 chance of winning.

  罗斯·多塔特 如果他输了为什么没有人会生气？

  ROSS DOUTHAT Why would nobody be mad at you if he lost?

  彼得·蒂尔 这实在太古怪了，而且也不会真有什么影响。

  PETER THIEL It would just be such a weird thing and it wouldn’t really matter.

  罗斯·多塔特 好的。

  ROSS DOUTHAT Okay.

  彼得·蒂尔 然后我认为，他有50%的获胜机会，因为问题是深层的，停滞令人沮丧。然后我的幻想就是——如果他赢了，我们就能开始这个对话。而现实是人们还没准备好。

  PETER THIEL And then I thought, you know, he had more. He had, I thought he had a 50-50 chance because the problems were deep and the stagnation was frustrating. And then the fantasy I had was, yeah, if he won, we could have this conversation. And the reality was people weren’t ready for it.

  彼得·蒂尔 而现在，也许到了2025年，特朗普崛起十年之后，我们终于可以进行这场对话了。当然你不是那种僵化的左翼人士，Ross。但这——

  PETER THIEL And then, you know, maybe we’ve progressed to the point where we can have this conversation at this point in 2025, a decade after Trump. And of course, you’re not a zombie left wing person, Ross. But it’s, this is.

  罗斯·多塔特 我被叫过很多名字，很多名字。

  ROSS DOUTHAT I’ve been called many things, many things.

  彼得·蒂尔 我愿意接受任何进步。

  PETER THIEL I’ll take whatever progress I can get.

  停滞对话

  The Stagnation Conversation

  罗斯·多塔特 从你的角度来说。假设有两层。一层是社会需要颠覆，需要风险。特朗普就是颠覆，特朗普就是风险。第二层是特朗普愿意说一些关于美国衰退的真话。

  ROSS DOUTHAT So from your perspective of. So let’s say there’s two layers, right? There’s sort of a basic sense of, you know, this society needs disruption. It needs risk. Trump is disruption. Trump is risk. And the second level is Trump is actually willing to say things that are true about American decline. Right.

  罗斯·多塔特 那么你觉得你作为一个投资者、风险投资家，在特朗普的第一届任期中有没有获得什么？特朗普在第一届任期中做了什么让你觉得是反衰败或者反停滞的？如果答案是什么都没有的话，也可以。

  ROSS DOUTHAT So do you feel like you as an investor, as a venture capitalist, got anything out of the first Trump term? Like what did Trump do in his first term that you felt was anti decadent or anti stagnation? If anything, maybe the answer is nothing.

  彼得·蒂尔 好吧，我认为——我认为它比我想要的花了更长时间，也更慢。但我们确实取得一定进展：很多人认为出了问题。而这在2012、2013、2014年就不是我在进行的对话了。

  PETER THIEL Well, I think we, I think it took longer and it was slower than I would have liked. But we have gotten to the place where a lot of people think something’s gone wrong. And that was not the conversation I was having in 2012, 2013, 2014.

  彼得·蒂尔 我在2012年和Eric Schmidt进行了一场辩论，在2013年和Marc Andreessen进行了辩论，在2014年和Bezos也进行了辩论。我站在”存在停滞问题”这一侧。而他们三个人都是”一切进展良好”的版本。我认为至少这三个人——在不同程度上——已经更新了，调整了，（整个）硅谷——调整了。

  PETER THIEL I had a debate with Eric Schmidt in 2012 and Marc Andreessen in 2013 and Bezos in 2014. I was on the “There’s a stagnation problem.” And all three of them were versions of “everything’s going great.” I think at least those three people have, to varying degrees, updated and adjusted Silicon Valley’s. Adjusted.

  罗斯·多塔特 硅谷——尽管比”调整”更多——硅谷很大一部分——

  ROSS DOUTHAT Silicon Valley, though, has more than adjusted a big part of Silicon.

  彼得·蒂尔 在停滞问题上。确实。

  PETER THIEL Valley on the stagnation. Right.

  罗斯·多塔特 在停滞问题上。但然后硅谷的很大一部分在2024年选择了特朗普（一边），包括显然最著名的伊隆·马斯克。

  ROSS DOUTHAT On the stagnation. But then a big part of Silicon Valley ended up going in for Trump in 2024, including obviously, most famously, Elon Musk.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，在我的叙事框架中，这与停滞问题深度相连。当然，这些事情总是超级复杂的。我的解读是——而且我非常不愿意代表所有这些人发言——但比如像扎克伯格或Facebook Meta，在某种程度上，我不认为他很意识形态化。他并没有真正深入思考过这些问题。

  PETER THIEL Yeah, this is deeply linked to the stagnation issue in my telling. I mean, these things are always super complicated, but my telling is, you know, I don’t, and again, I’m so hesitant to speak for all these people, but, you know, someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook Meta, and, you know, in some ways, I don’t think he was, he’s very ideological. He didn’t think this stuff necessarily through that much.

  彼得·蒂尔 默认的做法就是当一个自由派，而且一直以来的逻辑都是——如果自由主义不起作用，你该怎么办？年复一年，答案都是：加大力度。你不断加大剂量，花数亿美元，完全走”觉醒”路线，结果所有人都恨你。到了某个时刻你不得不想——好吧，也许这条路走不通。

  PETER THIEL It was the default was to be liberal and it was always what, you know, if the liberalism isn’t working, what do you do? And for year after year after year, it was, you do more. You know, if something doesn’t work, you just need to do more of it. And you up the dose, and you up the dose and you spend hundreds of millions of dollars and you go completely woke and everybody hates you. And at some point it’s like, okay, maybe this isn’t working.

  罗斯·多塔特 所以他们转变了方向。

  ROSS DOUTHAT So they pivot.

  彼得·蒂尔 是的，这不是一种亲特朗普的事情。

  PETER THIEL Yes, it’s not a pro Trump thing.

  罗斯·多塔特 这不是亲特朗普的事情，但确实，无论是在公开还是私下的对话中，都有一种感觉——在2024年——也许在2016年还不是这样，那时候Peter是唯一的支持者——但现在到了2024年，特朗普主义和民粹主义可以成为技术创新和经济活力的载体，等等。

  ROSS DOUTHAT It’s not a pro Trump thing, but it is, you know, just both in public and private conversations, it is a kind of sense that Trumpism and populism in 2024, maybe not in 2016, when Peter was out there as the lone supporter. But now in 2024, they can be a vehicle for technological innovation, economic dynamism and so on.

  （上篇完）

  Read All

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• 与外星人进行贸易，应该用什么货币？

  2026-02-02

  LZN

  finance

  thinking

  “Tales and golden histories/Of heaven and its mysteries./Thus ye live on high, and then/On the earth ye live again;”——John Keats, “Ode” Aug.—Dec. 1818

  “是金色的历史和掌故/把天庭的秘密一一吐露。/呵,就这样,你们住在天空,/但在地面你们也生存;”——济慈，《诗颂（穆旦·译）》 1818年8-12月

  〇 赎金

  你上一次仰望银河，让那璀璨星光，穿透你此生无法跨越的空间距离，突破你视网膜神经元的冲动阈值，抵达你的视觉中枢，在你的新皮质与边缘系统之间，激荡起恢宏无垠的存在性惊叹，是在五岁、十岁，或者从未体验这样的幸运？

  创造一个没有城市灯光的黑夜，挑选一个新月或残月的日子吧——在旷野中，仰望银河。

  你是否曾经或目前依然去憧憬，人类与外星文明第一次接触，是怎样的美妙浪漫与激动人心？

  但是哦，人类与外星文明，若真的发生第一次接触，很可能，既不美妙，更不浪漫。

  你一定记得，《阿凡达》系列电影中，人类同潘多拉星球的纳美人（Na’vi）之间充满血腥暴力的冲突模式吧。

  很不幸，血腥和暴力，很可能是星际文明“第一次接触”的事实；而美妙与浪漫，则更多存在于幻想之中。

  一方是掌握星际航行、机械化军队、基因工程，被垄断资本主义（资源开发管理局，Resources Development Administration，RDA）支配，视自然为资源，征服、开采、破坏、军事化、科技至上的星际殖民者——人类。

  另一方，则是依然处在石器–新石器时代的科技水平，采用弓弩，骑乘飞龙（竟然还不会喷火），氏族制、崇拜Eywa（类似盖亚的大地之母）、只为生存而狩猎的原始部落。

  星际殖民者，开采室温超导体“难得素（Unobtainium）”，猎杀“图鲲（Tulkun）”取其永生“仙露（Amrita）”，抑或通过基因编辑制造混种人阿凡达，以更好适应潘多拉星球充满二氧化碳和硫化氢的大气，更好开采资源，转化为企业利润。

  碍手碍脚的土著纳美人，消灭掉，有何不妥？

  一个文明一直在点亮科技树上的节点，而对另一个尚未点亮某个节点、甚至从未涉猎科技树的文明而言，无异于目睹异族释放的强大魔法。

  把今天的智能手机，拿回100年前，演示给1920年代的人类，问他们，像不像魔法？

  **警告：插图后有微量剧透**

  

  “Show me how to make thunder!（教我怎么制造雷鸣！）”纳美人灰烬族女祭司对上校低声请求，眼睛发亮，难掩兴奋。

  人类的枪械，被灰烬族视为召唤雷霆的神力，他们完全不像其他纳美人——排斥天空人的科技——“死的，无灵魂的，破坏平衡的”。

  一部分人首先解放思想，接受新事物，开始与天空人合作，进而整个种群被分化、消灭、最终同化。

  卡梅隆不止一次在采访中提到：

  “Avatar is a science fiction retelling of the history of North and South America in the early colonial period.(《阿凡达》是对北美和南美早期殖民时期历史的科幻再讲述。)”

  而人类叛变者——杰克·萨利（Jake Sully）的故事模板，则与1990年电影《Dances with Wolves（与狼共舞）》非常相似：受伤的白人士兵被印第安部落接纳，学会他们的生活，爱上部落女子，最终为部落而战。

  我们不妨回到真实的历史：当15世纪末，欧洲人第一次大规模登陆美洲，遇到原住民时，已经在遗传上分离了大约2万到3万年的人类种群，再一次接触。

  隔绝万年的人类文明，再一次接触时，无不充斥血腥暴力，这自然成为人类同外星文明第一次接触的隐喻。

  我们不妨看下贾雷德·戴蒙德在《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》中，如何描述两三万年以来，被大洋隔绝的两支人类种族，第一次接触的情景：

  在随后发生的欧洲人与美洲土著的关系中最富戏剧性的时刻,是印加帝国皇帝阿塔瓦尔帕与西班牙征服者弗兰西斯科·皮萨罗于1532年11月16日在秘鲁高原城市卡哈马卡的第一次相遇。

  阿塔瓦尔帕是新大陆最大、最先进国家的专制君主,而皮萨罗则代表欧洲最强大国家的君主神圣罗马帝国皇帝查理五世(也叫西班牙国王查理一世)。

  皮萨罗率领一群由168名西班牙士兵组成的乌合之众,来到了一个陌生的地方,对当地的居民毫无了解,与距离最近的西班牙人(在北面1000英里的巴拿马)完全失去了联系,也根本无法得到及时的增援。

  阿塔瓦尔帕身处拥有数百万臣民的帝国的中心,他在不久前与其他印第安人作战中取得胜利的8万之众的军队团团护卫着他。

  尽管如此,在这两位领导人见面后不到几分钟,皮萨罗就俘虏了阿塔瓦尔帕。皮萨罗接着把他的俘虏关押了8个月,同时勒索历史上最高的一笔赎金以换取释放他的承诺。

  这笔赎金是黄金,足够装满一间长22英尺、宽17英尺、高超过8英尺的房间。但在赎金交付后,皮萨罗却违背自己的诺言,把阿塔瓦尔帕处死了。

  穿越长达两三万年时空，被大洋彻底隔绝的人类文明，再一次接触时，双方竟然都能够理解、认可、接纳，装满一屋子黄金所代表的无与伦比的价值。

  装满这间与你家客厅相当的——长22英尺（6.7米）、宽17英尺（5.2米）、高8英尺（2.4米）房间的黄金，总重量约为1,636吨，相当于5,259万金衡盎司，约占人类目前已开采黄金总量的0.7%。

  以2026年1月30日纽约现货黄金收盘价每盎司5,150美元计算，其总价值高达2,708亿美元。

  如果这个抢劫杀人、十恶不赦的西班牙征服者混蛋皮萨罗，带着那装满一客厅的黄金，穿越时空来到今天，根据Bloomberg截至2026年1月31日的实时富豪榜单数据，他将是全球第三富豪，仅次于马斯克和谷歌创始人之一的拉里·佩奇。

  而无论是另一位谷歌创始人谢尔盖·布林，还是亚马逊的杰夫·贝佐斯，抑或英伟达的黄仁勋甚至股神巴菲特，都被他远远甩在身后。

  

  约翰·埃弗里特·米莱斯所绘《皮萨罗攻占秘鲁印加王》，1846年

  拿出任意一个现代发明，无论是电灯、电话，还是火车、飞机，更不必说智能手机与互联网，都足以让这个15世纪的恶棍皮萨罗惊叹神奇魔法。

  但是，即使经历了指数级爆发的科技革命，人类已经能够在1平方毫米面积上雕刻出数亿枚晶体管的大规模集成电路，已经发射火箭脱离地心引力登陆月球又即将登陆火星，已经窥探通用人工智能黎明曙光的2026年，这混蛋皮萨罗勒索并撕票抢来的一客厅黄金，依然稳如磐石般贮藏了无与伦比的巨大财富。

  从苏美尔文明到古埃及，从罗马帝国到大明王朝，哪怕隔绝两三万年之久的印加文明和欧洲列强，哪怕经历四次技术革命至今的2026年，无论地理位置、语言文化还是科技水平，几乎所有智人种族，都不约而同选择了元素周期表中排位第79号的金属，作为最珍贵的价值贮藏。

  一 失金

  让我们再次把时钟拨到1971年8月15日。

  这天晚上，第37任美国总统尼克松，西装笔挺，手持讲稿，在电视讲话中夸夸其谈：

  “I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interest of the United States.” “我已指示康纳利部长暂时中止美元兑换黄金或其他储备资产，除非在符合货币稳定和美国最佳利益的金额和条件下。”

  

  尼克松当晚的电视讲话，可以在Youtube上找到完整视频。

  1944年，二战接近尾声的时候，美国召集44个国家在新罕布什尔州的布雷顿森林开会，商讨战后秩序，并确立了以美元为中心的国际货币体系。

  其核心规则很简单:35美元兑换1盎司黄金，其他国家货币则与美元挂钩。

  曾经，黄金犹如定海神针，牢牢支撑着绿背纸钞的信用。而1971年8月15日之后，美国背信弃义，关闭黄金兑换窗口。这个无耻举动，史称”尼克松冲击”。

  自此，布雷顿森林体系事实上已然瓦解。

  曾经的35美元，能够兑换1金衡盎司（约31.1g）黄金。

  曾经一张100美元纸钞，重约1.05克，但承诺兑换约88.8克黄金。

  让我们记住这个比率，再算一笔账。

  截至2025年12月，美国M2货币供应量达到了22.4万亿美元。假如把这些钱，全部印成100美元的纸钞——那就是…235万吨的——纸！

  而人类有史以来开采的黄金总量呢？根据世界黄金协会的数据，大约是21.26万吨。

  要知道，1971年的美钞，全部以100美元面额付印，也不过只是全球黄金总重量的1/88。

  50多年后的今天，全部美元付印100美元面额纸钞的重量，竟然达到了黄金总量的十倍还多！

  荒天下之大谬！

  二 点金

  古代炼金术士，对点石成金孜孜以求，直到被现代物理学宣判死刑——痴人说梦。

  黄金，金，Au，原子序数79，原子量196.9。根据现代天体物理学，金这种重元素，只有在极端条件下才能形成。最主要的来源，是可谓惊天地泣鬼神的中子星碰撞。

  

  中子星碰撞过程中产生的引力波——时空涟漪。

  想象一下，两颗质量约为太阳1.4倍、半径却只有十几公里的中子星——电子被压缩进原子核——形成中子简并态的两只质量怪兽——以接近光速相撞。

  还记得那个经典的科普类比么：“一茶匙中子星物质，重达数亿吨甚至10亿吨”。

  如此极端的质量集中在如此有限的空间，这两只密度怪兽相撞瞬间，温度将达数十亿度——产生所谓的”快中子俘获过程”(r-process)。

  在这个过程中，大量中子被轻元素疯狂吸收，最终形成金、铂等重元素。

  然而，在元素丰度曲线上，快中子俘获会在“魔数”（中子壳层闭合）左偏处形成丰度高峰，即原子量A=195附近，主要产物是铂(Pt)和铱(Ir)。

  金的原子量约为197。它恰好位于A=195峰值的“下坡路”上。尽管金会受益于r-过程的强力合成，但丰度并不很高。

  2017年,人类直接观测到中子星合并时产生的引力波——再次验证爱因斯坦百年前提出的猜想。科学家估算，这一次碰撞，产生了相当于300个地球质量的黄金。

  听起来似乎很多?

  可这种碰撞，在整个宇宙中，属于小概率事件。

  根据中国科学院紫金山天文台的研究，即使是最乐观的估计，中子星碰撞的频率之低，完全不能解释目前观测到的地球上和银河系中的黄金丰度。

  我们银河系盘的金元素丰度，可能是“局部富集”的结果，但依然被地球人视为稀有和珍贵的金属——而宇宙整体中的金元素，有可能更加贫瘠。

  无论如何，金的形成，都需要宇宙级的暴力美学——但依然不足以解释银河系中的丰度。

  至于想要人工合成金？大型粒子对撞机可以办到的，但是产量呢，要数一下小数点后几个零哦。

  三 掘金

  你知道吗？地核中的金子，足够铺满地球表面几米的厚度。

  金是亲铁元素（siderophile），地球形成早期大部分沉入地核，因此在地壳中极度贫乏。

  那我们到地核中掘金，总可以了吧！

  想法可嘉，但完全没有可行性。

  2026年的今天，SpaceX计划发射无人星舰到火星测试着陆，2030年左右，开始往火星发快递。

  根据SpaceX官网估算，单次货运到火星表面的成本，为10万美元/公斤。

  火星都可以登陆，钻地岂不是小菜一碟？

  很不幸，人类目前，仅仅可以通过深海钻井，钻探到距离地表6-10km深的地幔上层，其成本达10–50亿美元。

  深度超过12–15km，岩石因高温高压变成像融化塑料一样的半流动形态，钻孔会自动闭合。

  完全没有技术，而成本更没办法估计了。地核嘛，距离地表2900公里哦。

  

  让我们开阔思路，向马斯克学习，放眼太阳系。

  我们都知道，在火星和木星之间，有一条小行星带。

  可怜的小行星带，它们其实是一颗从未形成的行星。

  太阳育行星八子，最霸道者，非木星莫属。

  木星强大的引力扰动，使得这颗本应形成的行星，将自己大部分物质，要么抛洒到外太空，要么跌入内行星带，最终留下不足原始质量1%的无数碎片，胎死腹中。

  那里的数百万颗小行星，其中有一类M型（金属型）小行星，主要由金属构成：铁、镍、钴，当然，还有丰度远高于地球地壳的铂、金等贵金属。

  2023年10月13日，NASA使用SpaceX的猎鹰重型火箭，发射了Psyche探测器，计划在2029年抵达小行星16 Psyche。

  

  小行星16 Psyche是主小行星带中最大、最独特的M型小行星之一。

  这颗小行星宽约200公里，主要由镍和铁组成。科学家估算，如果开采这颗小行星的金属，以地球上目前的大宗商品价格来计算，其价值约为1万亿亿美元（对！你没看错，是1后面跟着16个零）。

  一颗直径仅1公里的M型小行星，质量约20亿吨，其中大约包含750吨铂、7500吨黄金。

  这只是一颗小行星而已哦，小行星带，这颗胎死腹中的行星，是木星送给地球人的礼物——露天且富集的矿场。

  NASA在2013年的报告中明确指出：当前的任务成本动辄数亿甚至数十亿美元，想要开采小行星矿场并运回地球销售——没可能。

  马斯克的星舰，设计目标是每次发射能将100吨以上的载荷送入近地轨道（LEO），而且可以完全重复使用。

  这意味着,发射成本未来很可能降低到每公斤几十美元，甚至更低。

  2022年,一家叫AstroForge的初创公司在美国加州成立，目标就是小行星采矿。他们早已预订了SpaceX的猎鹰九号火箭，并于2025年发射探测器飞跃近地金属小行星，但不幸通信失败。

  今年，他们计划更加复杂的任务：登陆一颗近地金属小行星。探测器将使用磁性对接（magnets）附着在金属小行星表面，携带传感器测量铂族金属含量、小行星地质合金组成。

  

  AstroForge公司主页banner

  当然，这只是第一步。真正实现商业化开采,可能还需要……20年或者更久？没有人知道哈。

  当人类能够从小行星上开采黄金，黄金依然稀缺吗？

  四 订金

  如果你持有任何形式的黄金投资，请先忘记上一章末尾这么扎心的问题，跟随书童，回到文章的主题。

  1964年，苏联天文学家尼古拉·卡尔达肖夫，提出了一个衡量文明发展水平的尺度：I型文明能够利用其母星的全部能量；II型文明能够利用其母恒星的全部能量；III型文明则能够掌控整个星系的能量。

  概念简单，分型有力，理解轻松，广为流传。

  人类目前？大约处于0.73型水平，连利用整个地球能量的能力——I型——都没达到。

  如果宇宙中存在高等智慧生命，并且能够实现星际旅行，那么它们至少应该达到I型至II型文明的水平。

  那么它们的生存环境，究竟与地球，有多么的不同？

  答案或许让读者感到寡淡乏味：很可能与地球类似。

  尼克·莱恩在《生命进化的跃升》中详细论证：生命最可能诞生于液态水存在的环境——那意味着类地行星、宜居带、与地球相似的温度和压强。

  因为复杂的生命形式，需要稳定的化学环境。蛋白质这种大型分子机器，需要液态水、适宜的温度、合适的大气压。太冷了，化学反应停滞；太热了，大分子结构崩解。

  而水则是极其特殊的溶剂，其极性使得复杂生物化学反应成为可能。

  停停停，谁说生命大分子，一定要靠蛋白质和DNA的？

  不要这么没有想象力嘛！科幻作家们，早就畅想了高温熔岩中穿行的硅基生命，以及寒冷液氨中蓬勃的氨基生命的存在。

  真实宇宙中，熔岩星球与冰霜星球可是广泛存在的：距离地球约50光年的55 Cancri e，它距离母星如此之近，表面温度高达2000°C以上，大气中飘浮着硅酸盐液滴（岩浆滴）形成的云，天空下的是岩浆雨。

  

  天空布满岩浆云，下岩浆雨的55 Cancri e艺术想象图

  你能想象，在液态硅酸盐的滚烫洪流中，诞生出类似蛋白质或DNA这样精密的大分子机器么？

  如果不使用碳链做骨架的话，硅氧烷（Siloxanes）长链似乎可行。但是呢，硅氧烷长链太硬，没有蛋白质那么长袖善舞，身轻如燕。

  靠硅氧烷长链建构的生物（熔岩石头人？），尽管可能非常长寿，但伴随着极慢的代谢速度、很少可利用的分子种类、也难以形成类比地球真核生物如此复杂的结构。

  此外，在地球的熔岩环境下，并没有发现哪怕最简单的硅基生命存在。

  至于冰霜星球，不必搜寻那么远啦，太阳系中，有多个天体被冰封。可是已知系外行星中，没有任何一个天体被确认拥有纯液氨（NH₃）海洋。

  木卫二就是一个拥有液态水海洋——但是很可能混合了氨从而大幅降低冰点的星球，其海洋在低温下依然保持液态。这类海洋常被称作“氨水海洋”或“含氨地下海洋”。

  

  木卫二，又称“欧罗巴”，比月球稍小，主要由硅酸盐岩石构成，并具有水冰地壳，还有稀薄氧气构成的大气层，但地表气压仅0.1微帕斯卡。但冰下海洋中，或许有生命存在。

  你看，太阳系中，水都是普遍存在的呢。

  虽然液氨可以作为溶剂，但其化学性质与水有很大不同。液氨的极性较低，导致其溶解能力有限，难以支持复杂的生物化学反应。此外，低温环境会显著降低分子运动速率，进一步限制了生命过程的效率和复杂性。

  如果存在以氨为环境溶剂的生命，它们将仍依赖碳基长链的骨架，身体或许呈粘稠、胶状、油脂状，行动迟缓，像活着的果冻/沥青（寒冰史莱姆？），呼吸和代谢基于氨的化学反应，则代谢废物很难排出，常以固体形式积累，身体会逐渐“结痂”。

  无论是熔岩石头人，还是寒冰史莱姆，在地球与太阳系中相似的环境下，似乎都还没有被观测到。

  要知道，地球环境下——流着碳基的蜜与水溶液的奶——如此富足之地——从原核生物到真核生物的进化，都是一次极端不可能的偶然事件。

  所以，如果宇宙中真的存在能够发展出星际文明的智慧生命，它们大概率和我们一样，起源于温和的宜居带中的类地行星，演化路径同样锁死在——碳基的蜜+水溶液的奶——如此单一的模式上。

  好，那让我们放飞想象：假设这支外星文明，早于人类数百万年觉醒，已经跨越到卡尔达肖夫II型文明。

  II型文明的标志性工程，就是科幻中赫赫有名的”戴森球”——包裹整颗恒星的巨型结构，捕获恒星辐射的全部能量。

  这个1960年，由物理学家弗里曼·戴森提出的概念，至今仍是搜寻地外智慧文明（SETI计划）的重要观测目标。

  

  回到上一章最后抛出的扎心问题，我们在此，不妨转化为一个更高层次的灵魂拷问：一个能够建造戴森球的卡尔达肖夫II型文明，对它们而言，黄金还稀缺么？

  答案很可能是：依然稀缺，但会因技术革命（如开采小行星）而被反复重定价。

  首先，请回忆前文——金的形成，需要中子星碰撞这样的宇宙级暴力事件——而这种事件频率，在尚且不能解释我们所处地球上高丰度金元素的情况下，人类依然把黄金视为稀缺与珍贵的象征。

  其次，金是亲铁元素。任何类地行星形成早期，金都会随着铁镍沉入核心。II型文明的母星，当然也不例外。

  当然，II型文明可以开采小行星带。但是，他们的母行星，也同样有木星这种撕扯自己兄弟姐妹胚胎的巨兽行星么？

  显然，这样的外星文明，同样会发现，黄金这种元素，各种奇特的属性——不会氧化,不会腐蚀,延展性极好,色泽恒久。最重要的——宇宙中极其稀缺。

  如果有一天，人类真的与外星文明建立贸易，那么他们是否会接受，第79号元素作为贸易合同的支付订金呢？

  让我们姑且忘记，星际文明的第一次接触时，那既不美妙，也不浪漫的可能性吧。

  五 藏金

  最后，从金融学的角度，该如何理解黄金的价值呢？

  答案是：我们可以将黄金视为一种零息、永续、且无交易对手风险的债券。

  啥玩意儿，说点人话。

  让我们拆开来细说。

  首先，什么是债券？债券本质上就是欠条，是一种承诺：借款人承诺在未来某个时间，向出借人支付本金和利息（若含）。

  黄金当然不产生利息，Okay——“零息”，解释完毕。

  但黄金永远不会到期。“永续”，又解释完了。

  更重要的是，你手握欠条，到期借款人还本付息，皆大欢喜。

  但是，若你的交易对手——借款人违约呢？

  而黄金，并不依赖于任何机构或个人的信用——”无交易对手风险”，全解释完了。

  但你依然需要相信：支配宇宙的物理定律。

  这是黄金最核心的价值。

  巴菲特从不买黄金，因为他讨厌黄金的零息，他推崇股票——“生产性资产”。

  股票，企业股权，拥有索取企业经营利润的权力，但同样承受着企业的经营风险。

  美股指数基金，长期当然跑赢了黄金价格涨幅；但是，你信不信，同样长期来看，美股至少90%的上市公司股票，并没有跑赢黄金涨幅。

  这么吊诡的事情，让书童另起一篇文章讨论。

  现金是什么？同样是一张欠条，一张主权国家的中央银行，给你打的欠条。

  是欠条，当然有利息啦，不过这个利息，咳咳，长期来看，是个负的哦。

  只有黄金，什么都不承诺，什么都不生产，但也什么都不需要。

  在人类历史上，每一次大危机，每一次信用崩溃，每一次货币体系重建，黄金都会重新回到舞台中央。

  法币天然会贬值，黄金天然是货币。

  它就在那里,闪闪发光,不增不减。

  黄金，是宇宙的诺言，是宇宙天然的价值尺度。

  祝福你，此生都能够继续珍藏与欣赏，这份对宇宙充满期待和幻想的能力。

  

  (完)

  如果你对书童曾经写过的一篇关于黄金的小短文也感兴趣：

  • 王冠的重量

  法律信息与披露

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