【双语】TED演讲：你说的话透露了你未来的精神状态

最英语 2024-01-09

来源：TED

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We have historical records that allow us to know how the ancient Greeks dressed, how they lived, how they fought, but how did they think?

我们有历史纪录可循，可以让我们知道古希腊人如何穿着、如何生活、如何打仗，但他们如何思考呢？

One natural idea is that the deepest aspects of human thought our ability to imagine, to be conscious, to dream, have always been the same.有一个很自然的方法就是，去探索人类最深层的想法，比如我们的想象力、自觉力、梦想力，是否是一样的。

Another possibility is that the social transformations that have shaped our culture may have also changed the structural columns of human thought.另一种可能是，去探索造就我们文化的社会变革，这些变革也许就是，改变人类想法的主要因素。

We may all have different opinions about this. Actually, it's a long-standing philosophical debate. But is this question even amenable to science?对这一点，大家或许有不同的看法。实际上，这是一个存在已久的哲学辩论。究竟这个问题是否可以，经由科学来处理？

Here I'd like to propose that in the same way we can reconstruct how the ancient Greek cities looked just based on a few bricks,我的建议是，如同仅藉由一些砖头，我们得以重建希腊古都的外貌，也可用同样的方式，

that the writings of a culture are the archaeological records, the fossils, of human thought.藉由一些文化作品、建筑历史、化石，来了解人类的想法。

And in fact, doing some form of psychological analysis of some of the most ancient books of human culture,而实际上，因为做了一些人类古老文化书籍的心理分析，

Julian Jaynes came up in the '70s with a very wild and radical hypothesis: that only 3,000 years ago, humans were what today we would call schizophrenics.裘利安·杰尼斯在70年代发表了一个相当大胆激进的假说：他说，3000年前的人类，是我们现在俗称的“精神分裂症患者”。

And he made this claim based on the fact that the first humans described in these books behaved consistently, in different traditions and in different places of the world,他会如此主张的原因是，在世界各地不同的传统及地方，这些书籍里面所描述的人类行为似乎不约而同地都会服从，

as if they were hearing and obeying voices that they perceived as coming from the Gods, or from the muses what today we would call hallucinations.他们认为是从神祗那边传来的声音。而如今，我们会称之为幻听或幻觉。

And only then, as time went on, they began to recognize that they were the creators, the owners of these inner voices.随着时间的洗礼，他们开始认知到，那些声音是他们自己创造的，他们就是那些内在声音的主人。

And with this, they gained introspection: the ability to think about their own thoughts.有了这样的认知，他们学会了自省：一种反思自己想法的能力。

So Jaynes's theory is that consciousness, at least in the way we perceive it today, where we feel that we are the pilots of our own existence -- is a quite recent cultural development.所以杰尼斯对“意识”的理论就是，至少现今我们觉察到“意识”、感受到我们自己就是，人生导师的体悟是相当近代的文化发展。

And this theory is quite spectacular, but it has an obvious problem which is that it's built on just a few and very specific examples.这理论相当特别，但它有一个很明显的问题就是，它是建立在极少又特定的案例上。

So the question is whether the theory that introspection built up in human history only about 3,000 years ago can be examined in a quantitative and objective manner.所以问题是，3000年来人类才建立起，自省能力的这个理论，是否可以经得起“量化”且“客观”的考验。

And the problem of how to go about this is quite obvious. It's not like Plato woke up one day and then he wrote, "Hello, I'm Plato, and as of today, I have a fully introspective consciousness."至于要如何做的问题，也是相当简单明了。但我的意思并非，比如，柏拉图有一天突然醒来说，“哈啰！我是柏拉图，我今天，拥有完整的自省意识了” 那样的简单而已。

And this tells us actually what is the essence of the problem. We need to find the emergence of a concept that's never said.而这告诉我们，我们要找出，问题的本质为何。我们必须找到从来没有被谈论过的概念。

The word introspection does not appear a single time in the books we want to analyze.在这些书本中从未出现过一次“自省”这个字。

So our way to solve this is to build the space of words. This is a huge space that contains all words in such a way that the distance between any two of them is indicative of how closely related they are.所以为了解决这个问题，我们要建立一个文字的空间。在这个大空间里，包含了相当多的字，用这种方式可以量测出两个字彼此之间的关联性程度。

So for instance, you want the words "dog" and "cat" to be very close together, but the words "grapefruit" and "logarithm" to be very far away.举个例子，你会想，“狗”、“猫” 应该是比较有关联性的，但“葡萄柚”和“对数” 就没甚么关联了。

And this has to be true for any two words within the space. And there are different ways that we can construct the space of words.而在这个空间里的任何两个字，都必须是可以被量测出来的。而我们有很多方式可以建立起这些字的空间架构。

One is just asking the experts, a bit like we do with dictionaries.方法一是只要请教专家就行了，有点类似查字典。

Another possibility is following the simple assumption that when two words are related, they tend to appear in the same sentences, in the same paragraphs, in the same documents, more often than would be expected just by pure chance.另一个可行的方法是，当两个字出现关联性时，去追踪它们的预设状况，它们可能会出现在同一句、同一段落、或同一文件中，多于“偶然”地出现。

And this simple hypothesis, this simple method, with some computational tricks that have to do with the fact that this is a very complex and high-dimensional space, turns out to be quite effective.在这个简单的前提下，这个单纯且带有运算技巧的方法必须好用，而这个复杂且高维度的空间，事后证明，相当有效。

And just to give you a flavor of how well this works, this is the result we get when we analyze this for some familiar words.向各位介绍一下它多有效，我们分析了一些经常用到的字。

And you can see first that words automatically organize into semantic neighborhoods.首先你可以看到，这些词汇会自动地归纳成语义相近的相邻群组，

So you get the fruits, the body parts, the computer parts, the scientific terms and so on. The algorithm also identifies that we organize concepts in a hierarchy.所以你可看到，水果跟身体部位，计算机与科学字汇等等。算法也可以把我们要整理的概念分门别类出来。

So for instance, you can see that the scientific terms break down into two subcategories of the astronomic and the physics terms. And then there are very fine things.举个例子，你可以看到，科学的字汇被拆解成两个子类，分别是太空与物理的词汇。然后你会发现一件好玩的事，

For instance, the word astronomy, which seems a bit bizarre where it is, is actually exactly where it should be, between what it is, an actual science, and between what it describes, the astronomical terms.举个例子，“天文学”这个词汇，它应该摆的位置与它现在的位置好像不太相符，它现在介于真实科学与天文学之间，偏向科学的位置，而它自己却是一个天文学的字汇。

And we could go on and on with this.我们可以持续寻找其它类似的情况。

Actually, if you stare at this for a while, and you just build random trajectories, you will see that it actually feels a bit like doing poetry.实际上，如果你盯着这些字一阵子，然后随机搭配连结一下这些字，你会觉得好像自己在吟诗。

And this is because, in a way, walking in this space is like walking in the mind.那是因为在某种程度上，在这些空间字汇里漫游就像是在脑海中吟诗一样。

And the last thing is that this algorithm also identifies what are our intuitions, of which words should lead in the neighborhood of introspection.最后，算法也能辨识出人类的直觉字汇，并归纳到内省的相邻字汇中。

So for instance, words such as "self," "guilt," "reason," "emotion," are very close to "introspection," but other words, such as "red," "football," "candle," "banana," are just very far away.举个例子，像是自我、内疚、理由、情绪与内省相关的字汇非常接近，但其它的字，像是红色、足球、蜡烛、香蕉就差很远了。

And so once we've built the space, the question of the history of introspection, or of the history of any concept which before could seem abstract and somehow vague, becomes concrete, becomes amenable to quantitative science.所以一旦我们建立起这样的词汇空间，有关于内省的历史，有关与任何概念的历史，以前被认为是抽象或是有点模糊的字汇，都可以变成扎扎实实可以被量化的科学。

All that we have to do is take the books, we digitize them, and we take this stream of words as a trajectory and project them into the space, and then we ask whether this trajectory spends significant time circling closely to the concept of introspection.而我们要做的就是，拿起这些书把它们数字化，然后把这些字像子弹一样射到这些字汇空间里面，然后我们问计算机，这些字汇所行经的轨迹花了多少的时间才达到内省概念的字汇中。

And with this, we could analyze the history of introspection in the ancient Greek tradition, for which we have the best available written record.有了这些数据，我们就可以分析古希腊传统中有关于内省的历史，因为有着最完整的文字记录。

So what we did is we took all the books, we just ordered them by time for each book we take the words and we project them to the space, and then we ask for each word how close it is to introspection, and we just average that.所以，我们先把这些书按照时间排列，然后把这些字投射到字汇空间里面，然后我们问计算机这些字与内省有多少的相关性，再把它们平均起来。

And then we ask whether, as time goes on and on, these books get closer, and closer and closer to the concept of introspection. And this is exactly what happens in the ancient Greek tradition.然后，我们不断地问计算机问题，这些书就会越来越接近内省的概念。而这正是古希腊所发生的事。

So you can see that for the oldest books in the Homeric tradition, there is a small increase with books getting closer to introspection.各位可以看到在荷马时代最古老的书籍，与内省的相关性只有一点点。

But about four centuries before Christ, this starts ramping up very rapidly to an almost five-fold increase of books getting closer, and closer and closer to the concept of introspection.但约在公元前400年左右，它快速成长了五倍，这些书与内省的概念越来越接近。

And one of the nice things about this is that now we can ask whether this is also true in a different, independent tradition.最棒的是，我们可以问计算机在不同的、独立的传统文化中，是否也有一样的现象。

So we just ran this same analysis on the Judeo-Christian tradition, and we got virtually the same pattern.所以，我们用同样的方法分析了传统犹太基督教的书籍，也得到了类似的趋势。

Again, you see a small increase for the oldest books in the Old Testament, and then it increases much more rapidly in the new books of the New Testament.在最古老的旧约圣经中，你可以看到它缓慢地增加，之后在新约圣经中，它快速地增长。

And then we get the peak of introspection in "The Confessions of Saint Augustine," about four centuries after Christ.大约公元400年，圣奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》中，内省达到了最高峰。

And this was very important, because Saint Augustine had been recognized by scholars, philologists, historians, as one of the founders of introspection.这个方法相当重要，因为圣奥古斯丁已经被多位学者、心理学家、历史学家公认为是内省的创始人之一。

Actually, some believe him to be the father of modern psychology.有些人认为他是现代心理学之父。

So our algorithm, which has the virtue of being quantitative, of being objective, and of course of being extremely fast, it just runs in a fraction of a second can capture some of the most important conclusions of this long tradition of investigation.所以，我们算法的优点不仅可以量化，而且客观，当然速度也相当快，几秒就可以跑完，并捕捉到若使用传统方法必须费长时间调查才能抓到的一些重点。

And this is in a way one of the beauties of science, which is that now this idea can be translated and generalized to a whole lot of different domains.这也是科学美好的地方，它可以可以解读、归纳这想法，然后广泛应用在许多不同的领域上。

So in the same way that we asked about the past of human consciousness,我们用计算机来分析过去的自我意识发展的方法，

maybe the most challenging question we can pose to ourselves is whether this can tell us something about the future of our own consciousness.或许是最具挑战性的问题，是不是也可以告诉我们自我意识的未来趋向呢？

To put it more precisely, whether the words we say today can tell us something of where our minds will be in a few days, in a few months or a few years from now.更精确地说，我们现在说的话，是否可以告诉我们接下来的几天、几个月或几年后，我们的心智会达到什么样的情况。

And in the same way many of us are now wearing sensors that detect our heart rate, our respiration, our genes, on the hopes that this may help us prevent diseases,同样的方式，我们现在很多人都使用穿戴式侦测器，可以侦测我们的心跳、呼吸、基因，让我们可以预防疾病的发生，

we can ask whether monitoring and analyzing the words we speak, we tweet, we email, we write, can tell us ahead of time whether something may go wrong with our minds.我们是否已可以藉由侦测分析我们所说的话、推的文、邮寄的信、写的文字，来提前告诉我们，我们的心智可能要发生问题了？

And with Guillermo Cecchi, who has been my brother in this adventure, we took on this task. And we did so by analyzing the recorded speech of 34 young people who were at a high risk of developing schizophrenia.我跟我的兄弟，吉列尔莫·切基，扛起了这项任务。我们纪录分析了34位年轻人的谈话。他们过去曾经是罹患精神分裂症的高风险族群。

And so what we did is, we measured speech at day one, and then we asked whether the properties of the speech could predict, within a window of almost three years, the future development of psychosis.我们测量了他们第一天的谈话，然后问计算机，从他们的话中是否可以预测出，未来三年内，他们会不会精神错乱。

But despite our hopes, we got failure after failure. There was just not enough information in semantics to predict the future organization of the mind.但我们大失所望，一次又一次的失败。因为没有足够的语义信息来预测未来的心智发展。

It was good enough to distinguish between a group of schizophrenics and a control group, a bit like we had done for the ancient texts, but not to predict the future onset of psychosis.它在分辨精神病患及控制组上已经有足够的能力，因为这有点像我们之前做古文字的分析，但没办法预测未来精神错乱的发病。

But then we realized that maybe the most important thing was not so much what they were saying, but how they were saying it.但是后来我们意识到，也许最重要的不是他们在说什么，而是他们怎么说。

More specifically, it was nothing which semantic neighborhoods the words were, but how far and fast they jumped from one semantic neighborhood to the other one.进一步来说，单词在哪个语义邻里不重要，重要的是它们从一个语义邻域跳到另一语义邻域时，跳得有多远多块。

And so we came up with this which we term semantic coherence, which essentially measures the persistence of speech within one semantic topic within one semantic category.因此，我们提出了这一度量，我们称之为语义连贯性，它从本质上衡量一种语义类别中一个语义主题内语音的持续性。

And it turned out to be that for this group of 34 people, the algorithm based on semantic coherence could predict, with 100 percent accuracy, who developed psychosis and who will not.结果显示，刚刚的34位年轻人，透过这个语义连贯性算法，预测谁会精神错乱的正确率达到百分之百。And this was something that could not be achieved not even close with all the other existing clinical measures.目前临床上所有测量方式都无法达到或接近这个数字。And I remember vividly, while I was working on this, I was sitting at my computer and I saw a bunch of tweets by Polo, Polo had been my first student back in Buenos Aires, and at the time he was living in New York.在我做这项研究的时候，清楚地记得一件事，当时我坐在计算机前面，看到保罗传了一堆信息给我，他是之前我回到布宜诺斯艾利斯的第一个学生，当时他住在纽约。And there was something in this tweets, I could not tell exactly what because nothing was said explicitly, but I got this strong hunch, this strong intuition, that something was going wrong.我发现讯息不太对劲，虽然我讲不出个所以然来，因为他写得不清不楚，但我有一个强烈的直觉，一定是出事了。So I picked up the phone, and I called Polo, and in fact he was not feeling well.所以，我打电话给保罗，没错，他当时感觉不太舒服。And this simple fact, that reading in between the lines, I could sense, through words, his feelings, was a simple, but very effective way to help.用这样一个单纯的辨认方式，从他的字里行间，我可以隐约感受到他的感觉，并在第一时间有效地帮助他。What I tell you today is that we're getting close to understanding how we can convert this intuition that we all have, that we all share, into an algorithm.今天我要告诉各位的是，我们已经越来越能理解如何把我们共有的直觉转换成算法。And in doing so, we may be seeing in the future a very different form of mental health, based on objective, quantitative and automated analysis of the words we write, of the words we say.经由这样做，未来我们也许可以看到一种全然不同的心理健康模式，而且是基于一种客观、量化的方式来自动分析出我们所写的字、我们所说的话。Gracias.谢谢。

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