少年马斯克的人生难题：宇宙从何而来？为何存在？

2023-10-30 23:10

Existential crisis 存在主义危机

When Musk was young, his mother started taking him to Sunday school at the local Anglican Church, where she was a teacher. It did not go well. She would tell her class stories from the Bible, and he would question them. “What do you mean, the waters parted?” he asked. “That’s not possible.” When she told the story of Jesus feeding the crowd with loaves and fishes, he countered that things cannot materialize out of nothing. Having been baptized, he was expected to take communion, but he began questioning that as well. “I took the blood and body of Christ, which is weird when you’re a kid,” he says. “I said, ‘What the hell is this? Is this a weird metaphor for cannibalism?’ ” Maye decided to let Elon stay home and read on Sunday mornings.
马斯克小的时候，母亲开始带他去当地圣公会教堂上主日学，她是那里的老师。但情况并不顺利。她会给全班讲《圣经》里的故事，而他会质疑这些故事。他问 "水分开是什么意思？""这不可能"当她讲到耶稣用饼和鱼喂饱众人的故事时，他反驳说，事物不可能无中生有。在接受洗礼后，他本应领受圣餐，但他也开始质疑这一点。"他说："我接受了基督的血和身体，这在你还是个孩子的时候很奇怪。"我说，'这到底是什么？这是吃人肉的奇怪隐喻吗？"梅伊决定让埃隆留在家里，在周日早上读书。

His father, who was more God-fearing, told Elon that there were things that could not be known through our limited senses and minds. “There are no atheist pilots,” he would say, and Elon would add, “There are no atheists at exam time.” But Elon came to believe early on that science could explain things and so there was no need to conjure upa Creator or a deity that would intervene in our lives.
他的父亲更敬畏上帝，他告诉埃隆，有些事情是无法通过我们有限的感官和思维来了解的。他说 "没有无神论的飞行员"，埃隆则补充说 "考试时没有无神论者"。但伊隆很早就开始相信，科学可以解释一切，因此没有必要创造一个造物主或神灵来干预我们的生活。

When he reached his teens, it began to gnaw at him that something was missing. Both the religious and the scientific explanations of existence, he says, did not address the really big questions, such as Where did the universe come from, and why does it exist? Physics could teach everything about the universe except why. That led to what he calls his adolescent existential crisis. “I began trying to figure out what the meaning of life and the universe was,” he says. “And I got real depressed about it, like maybe life may have no meaning.”
当他长到十几岁时，他开始觉得缺少了点什么。他说，宗教和科学对存在的解释都没有解决真正的大问题，比如宇宙从何而来，为什么会存在？物理学可以教给人们关于宇宙的一切，除了为什么。这导致了他所谓的青春期生存危机。"我开始试图找出生命和宇宙的意义所在，"他说。"我为此感到非常沮丧，就像生命可能没有意义一样"。

Like a good bookworm, he addressed these questions through reading. At first, he made the typical mistake of angsty adolescents and read existential philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Schopenhauer. This had the effect of turning confusion into despair. “I do not recommend reading Nietzsche as a teenager,” he says.
像一个好书虫一样，他通过阅读来解决这些问题。起初，他犯了一个典型的青春期焦虑症患者的错误，阅读了尼采、海德格尔和叔本华等存在主义哲学家的著作。结果，迷茫变成了绝望。"他说："我不建议青少年读尼采。

Fortunately, he was saved by science fiction, that wellspring of wisdom for game-playing kids with intellects on hyperdrive. He plowed through the entire sci-fi section in his school and local libraries, then pushed the librarians to order more.
幸运的是，科幻小说拯救了他，那是智力超常的游戏少年的智慧源泉。他翻遍了学校和当地图书馆的整个科幻区，然后催促图书管理员订购更多的科幻小说。

One of his favorites was Robert Heinlein’sThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, a novel about a lunar penal colony. It is managed by a supercomputer, nicknamed Mike, that is able to acquire self-awareness and a sense of humor. The computer sacrifices its life during a rebellion at the penal colony. The book explores an issuethat would become central to Musk’s life: Will artificial intelligence develop in ways that benefit and protect humanity, or will machines develop intentions of their own and become a threat to humans?
他的最爱之一是罗伯特-海因莱因（Robert Heinlein）的《月亮是个严厉的情妇》（The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress），这是一本关于月球刑罚殖民地的小说。殖民地由一台绰号为 "迈克 "的超级计算机管理，这台计算机具有自我意识和幽默感。在一次殖民地叛乱中，这台计算机牺牲了自己的生命。这本书探讨了一个将成为马斯克生活核心的问题：人工智能会以造福和保护人类的方式发展，还是机器会发展出自己的意图并对人类构成威胁？

That topic is central to what became another of his favorites, Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. The tales formulatelaws of robotics that are designed to make sure robots do not get out of control. In the final scene of his 1985 novelRobots and Empire, Asimov expounds the most fundamental of these rules, dubbed the ZerothLaw: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” The heroes of Asimov’s Foundation series of books develop a plan to send settlers to distant regions of the galaxy to preserve human consciousness in the face of an impending dark age.
艾萨克-阿西莫夫（Isaac Asimov）的机器人故事成为他的另一个最爱，而这个主题正是故事的核心。这些故事制定了机器人法则，旨在确保机器人不会失控。在 1985 年出版的小说《机器人与帝国》的最后一幕中，阿西莫夫阐述了这些规则中最基本的一条，即 "第四法则"："机器人不得伤害人类，或因不作为而让人类受到伤害"。阿西莫夫的《基金会》系列丛书的主人公们制定了一项计划，向银河系的遥远地区派遣移民，在即将到来的黑暗时代保护人类的意识。

More than thirty years later, Musk unleasheda random tweet about how these ideas motivated his quest to make humans a space-faring species and to harness artificial intelligence to be at the service of humans: “Foundation Series & Zeroth Law are fundamental to creation of SpaceX.”
三十多年后，马斯克在推特上随手发布了一条推文，讲述了这些想法是如何激励他追求让人类成为航天物种，并利用人工智能为人类服务："基础系列和零律是创建 SpaceX 的根本"。