永生夢的新傳播者

In 1999, the futurist Ray Kurzweil published a book entitled The Age of Spiritual Machines. He looked forward to a future in which the “human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems?.?.?.?and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality.”

1999年，未來學家雷?庫茲韋爾(Ray Kurzweil)撰寫的一本叫做《機器之心》(The Age of Spiritual Machines)的書出版了。在他所期待的未來，“人類及其創造的計算技術將能夠解決古老的問題……並將能夠改變死亡的本質。”

Mr Kurzweil is now an executive at Google, one of whose co-founders, Larry Page, launched a start-up, Calico, in 2013 with the aim of harnessing advanced technologies that will enable people to “lead longer and healthier lives”.

庫茲韋爾現在是谷歌(Google)的一名高管。2013年，谷歌創始人之一拉里?佩奇(Larry page)創辦了一家初創企業Calico，其宗旨是利用先進技術，讓人們能夠“更長壽、更健康”。

Others go even further. Aubrey de Grey, co-founder of Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, a research centre, believes that ageing is just an engineering problem. Technological progress, he maintains, will eventually enable human beings to achieve what he calls “life extension escape velocity”.

有一些人的目標更爲遠大。研究機構Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence的聯合創始人奧布里?德格雷(Aubrey de Grey)認爲，衰老只是一個工程問題。他認爲，科技進步最終將讓人類得以達到他所說的“壽命延長的逃逸速度”。

As for Mr Kurzweil, earlier this year he announced that he had “set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion-fold by merging with the intelligence we have created”. In this “transhumanist” vision, once we turn ourselves into “spiritual machines”, we will be able to live forever.

至於庫茲韋爾，今年早些時候，他宣佈他“把2045年確定爲達到‘奇點’的時間，到那時我們將通過與我們創造的智能相結合，讓我們的實際智慧增強10億倍”。在這種“超人類主義”的遠景中，一旦我們變成了“有靈魂的機器”(spiritual machines)，我們就能永遠活下去。

Although mortality denial is currently fashionable in Silicon Valley, it is not new. On the contrary, it is one of the most successful products ever designed and has been on the market for millennia.

儘管在硅谷，“否認死亡”(mortality denial)現在是個時髦詞彙，但它並不新鮮。相反，它是有史以來設計過的最成功的產品之一，已經出現在市場幾千年了。

Because human beings are the only animals to have evolved an explicit, consciously experienced insight into their own finitude, there is a robust and enduring demand for this particular psychological sleight of hand. Unfortunately, death is not just something the Chinese have invented to make America less competitive. Empirical evidence and rational argument converge on the simple, sobering fact that all of us will eventually disappear for good — sooner or later, more or less gracefully, and with more or less suffering.

因爲人類是唯一一種已經對自身侷限性形成了明確的、自覺的認識的動物，所以人類對這種特殊的心理把戲有着強大且持久的需求。不幸的是，死亡並非只是中國人發明出來讓美國降低競爭力的東西。經驗證據和理性辯論都指向一個簡單、發人深省的事實：我們所有人最終都將永久性消失，或早或晚，或比較瀟灑或不那麼瀟灑，或比較痛苦或不那麼受苦。

It is hard to face this fact in an intellectually honest manner. Human beings have a problem that no creature before them had: the human cognitive self-model explicitly tells its user that everybody dies, thereby creating a toxic form of self-knowledge, a deep existential wound. My emotional deep structure tells me there is something that must never happen, while rational thought tells me that the ultimate accident is inevitable. Religion was an early-stage adaptation to this neurocomputational bug.

我們很難坦誠地面對這個事實。人類面對的問題是在人類之前任何生物都沒有遇到過的：人類認知的自我模型明確告訴它的使用者，所有人都會死，從而創造了一種有害的自我認知形式，一個深深的關乎生死的傷口。我內心的情感告訴我，有些事情永遠不會發生，而理性思維告訴我，最終的意外是不可避免的。宗教是對這種神經計算缺陷的早期適應。

Aiding and abetting human self-deception in ingenious and sophisticated ways is therefore a lucrative business.

因此，用獨創且複雜的方式來幫助和煽動人類自我欺騙是一門有利可圖的生意。

In its most primitive form, represented by organised religion down the centuries, mortality denial has consisted in just that — simple, outright denial. In the religious perspective, the good news is that all of this is not true — the dead will be resurrected. You are loved and accepted by an omnipresent divine being. And if you manage to accept yourself as accepted, you will finally be able to feel at home in a strange and hostile world, reacquainting yourself with the early childhood emotion of security.

有着最原始的形式，以許多世紀以來的有組織宗教爲代表，否認死亡的要點在於簡單、徹底的否認。從宗教的角度來說，好消息是一切都不是真的，死去的人將復活。有一位無處不在的神在愛着你並接受你。如果你接受被神所接受的自己，你最終將能夠在一個陌生且敵對的世界中應付自如，重新體驗兒時那種安全感。

The gospel of alternative facts comes in many different flavours and varieties. In organised self-deception, there are levels of sophistication. For example, a Buddhist may claim that she does not even want to be reborn, that her highest goal is to liberate herself from the cycle of death and rebirth. If things don’t work out with nirvanic giga-bingo in this life, then, unfortunately, something in you is forced to survive death.

這種替代事實的教義多種多樣。在有組織的自我欺騙中，複雜程度各有不同。例如，佛教徒可能認爲，她甚至不想重生，她的最高目標是讓自己擺脫死亡與重生的循環。如果此生未能如願進入極樂世界，那麼不幸的是，你身體中的一些東西將不會死亡。

Other versions of denial involve tying your self-esteem to your tribe or nation. You can stabilise your sense of self-worth by being a good communist, a pious Catholic or by becoming a complacent secular humanist — all you need is a set of values that you can live up to and a mutually reinforcing community of believers.

其他否認死亡的版本包括把你的自尊與你所屬的部落或國家聯繫在一起。你可以通過成爲一個優秀的共產主義者、一個虔誠的天主教徒或成爲一個洋洋得意的俗世人文主義者獲得自我價值感。你需要的是一套你能遵守的價值觀以及一個互相促進的信徒羣體。

Others strive for symbolic immortality by seeking to make a genuine and lasting contribution to science, philosophy or culture. Imagine writing a book that will be read centuries after your death, or composing a piece of music or creating art that will be admired by thousands long after your physical body has shrivelled and perished.

還有一些人通過尋求爲科學、哲學或文化做出真正持久的貢獻，努力獲得具有象徵意義的永生。例如，寫一部在你死後幾百年仍被閱讀的著作，或者創作一首音樂或一件藝術品，在你的軀體灰飛煙滅很久之後仍將被數千人稱頌。

Silicon Valley tech evangelism and transhumanism are merely the latest forms of culturally evolved self-deception. They present us with a new metaphysical placebo for existential palliative care. Will we upload ourselves into virtual reality? Perhaps a benevolent superintelligence can help us break through into a life beyond all suffering? Could the church of the technological singularity be right in proclaiming that immortality is nearer than we think?

硅谷的科技傳道和超人類主義只是在文化上有所進化的自我欺騙的最新形式。他們爲關乎人類存在的姑息療法帶來新的超自然的安慰劑。我們是否會把我們自己帶入虛擬現實？或許，一種善意的超級智能可以幫助我們擺脫所有痛苦？技術奇點學說宣稱永生比我們想象的更近，這是否正確？

It is tempting to dismiss scientifically inspired presentiments of immortality as arrant nonsense, but we should not underestimate the way ideas like transhumanism speak powerfully to our unconscious need for delusion. This is not only a new religion that does without God and churches — it also is a marketing strategy for new technology. A novel form of cross-promotion and co-branding, tech evangelism really aims at a deeper and more efficient penetration into the digital marketplace by offering mortality denial in the same package.

我們很容易將受到科學啓發的永生預感斥爲胡說八道，但我們不應低估超人類主義之類的想法有力的證明了我們潛意識中是需要幻覺的。這不僅是一種沒有上帝和教堂的新宗教，也是一種推廣新科技的營銷戰略。科技傳道是一種新型的交叉推廣和品牌聯合，真正的目的是通過提出同樣包裝的否定死亡之說，更深入、更有效地滲透到數字市場。

The writer is a fellow in the Gutenberg Research College at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz

本文作者是德國美因茨約翰內斯古滕貝格大學(Johannes Gutenberg University)古滕貝格研究學院(Gutenberg Research College)研究員