主题：【原创】炮打工业党：《论工业社会及其未来》 -- 万年看客

THE FUTURE

未来

171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decade and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities.

171，然而，假设工业社会经过未来几十年确实幸存下来并最终排除了故障，因而实现了平稳运转，它又会是一个什么样的体系呢?我们将考虑几种可能性

172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

172.首先，让我们假定计算机科学家成功地开发出了智能机器，这些机器无论做什么事都比人类强。在这种情况下，大概所有工作都会由巨大的、高度组织化的机器系统去做，而不再需要任何人类的努力。有两种情况可能发生。一种是允许机器在没有人类监督的情况下自已做出所有的决策，另一种是人类保留对于机器的控制。

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

173，如果我们允许机器自己做出所有的决策，就无法对其结果进行揣度，因为不可能猜测此类机器的行为。我们只想指出，人类的命运那时就全凭机器发落了。人们也许会反驳，人类决不会愚蠢到把全部权力都交给机器。但我们既不是说人类会有意将权力交给机器，也不是说机器会存心夺权。我们实际上说的是，人类可能会轻易地让自己滑落到一个完全依赖机器的位置，滑落到不能做出任何实际选择，只能接受机器的所有决策的地步。随着社会及其面临的问题变得越来越复杂，而机器变得越来越聪明，人们会让机器替他们做更多的决策。仅仅是因为机器做出的决策会比人的决策带来更好的结果。最后，第二阶段将会来临，在这个阶段，维持体系运行所必需的决策已变得如此之复杂。以至于人类已无能力明智地进行决策。在这一阶段，机器实质上已处于控制地位。人们已不能把机器关上，因为他们已如此地依赖于机器，关上它们就等于是自杀

174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car of his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

171.另一方面，也可能人类还能保持对机器的控制。在这种情况下，一般人也许可以控制他自己的私人机器，如他自己的汽车或私人计算机，但对于大型机器系统的控制权将落入一小群精英之手——就像今天一样，但有两点不同。由于技术的改进，精英对于大众的控制能力将会极大提高，因为人不再必需工作，大众就成为了多余的人，成为了体系的无用负担。如果精英集团失去了怜悯心，他们完全可以决定灭绝人类大众。如果他们有些人情味，他们也可以使用宣传或其他心理学或生物学技术降低出生率，直至人类大众自行消亡，让这个世界由精英们独占。或者，如果精英集团是由软心肠的自由派人士组成的，他们也可以为剩余的人类种族扮演好牧人的角色。他们将注意保证每个人的生理需求都得到满足，每一个孩子都在心理十分健康的条件下被抚养成人，每一个人都有一项有益于健康的癖好来打发日子，每一个可能会变得不满的人都会接受治疗以治愈其“疾病”。当然，生活是如此没有目的，以致于人们都不得不经过生物学的或心理学的重新设计改造，以去除他们对于权力过程的需求，或使他们的权力欲“升华”为无害的癖好。这些经过改造的人们也许能在这样一个社会中生活得平和愉快，但他们决不会自由。他们将被贬低到家畜的地位。

175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that I can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the system. We can imagine into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige an power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.

175，再假设计算机科学家们没有能够在开发人工智能方面取得成功，因此人的工作还是必要的。即使如此，机器也将承担越来越多的简单工作，而低能力的工人将越来越过剩（正如我们所见，这种事已经发生了。许多人很难或根本找不到工作，因为他们由于智力或心理原因而不能达到在现今体系内有用就必须达到的训练水平）对于那些找到工作的人，要求会越来越高。他们将需要越来越多的训练，越来越强的能力，他们将不得不越来越可靠、越来越规矩、越来越驯顺，因为他们将越来越像巨型有机体的细胞。他们的任务将越来越专门化，囚而他们的工作在某种意义上也将越来越脱离真实世界，仅集中于现实的一块小碎片。体系将使用一切可以使用的心理学或生物学手段来设计制造人类，使之驯顺，使之具有体系要求的能力，使之将权力欲“升华”为某些专门化的任务。但是这样一个社会的人民将不得不驯顺。这一陈述是有条件的。如果可以找到某种方法，能将竞争性导向服务于体系需求的轨道，那么社会也许会发现竞争性是有用的。我们可以想像这徉一个未来社会，生活于其间的人没完没了地为了声望和权力而竞争，但是只有少数人能够爬上独占真正权力的顶点（参见163段末尾）。这是一个极其令人反胃的世界，因为在这个世界当中，一个人满足权力需求的唯一方式就是将众多他人排挤到一边并剥夺他们满足权力需求的机会。

176. Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service of industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people will would spend their time shinning each others shoes, driving each other around inn taxicab, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

176，我们还可以想像某种把若干个上述可能性结合起来的场景。例如，机器可能接管大部分具有真正重要性的工作，但人类则仍旧还能在相对不那么重要的工作上面忙活。例如有人建议，大力发展服务业可以给人类提供工作机会。这样人们就可以把时间花在互相擦皮鞋上面，可以用出租车带着彼此到处瞎转，互相为对方做手工艺品，互相给对方端盘子，等等。人类如果最终以这样的方式结局，那对于我们来说也实在是太可怜了，而且我们怀疑有多少人会觉得这样的无意义的忙碌等同于充实的生活。他们会去寻找危险的其他渲泄途径（毒品、犯罪、邪教、仇恨群体等），除非他们经过生物学或心理学的设计改造后适应了这种生活方式

177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable that the ones we've just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the "bourgeois" type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.

177，不用说，上述场景尚未穷尽所有可能性。它们只是表明了我们看来似乎最可能的结局。然而，我们无法想像比上述情况更好而又似乎可能的场景。极其可能的情况是，如果工业技术体系能够度过未来40-100年而幸存下来，那时它将会发展出某些一般特征：个人（至少是那些“小资产阶级”类型的人，他们被整合进体系并维持其运转，因而也掌握了全部权力）空前地依赖大型组织，空前地“社会化”，他们的身心品质在相当程度上（很可能是极大程度上）是设计改造的结果，而不是机缘（或上帝意志，或其他什么）的结果；野生自然所能留下的部分只是为了科学研究而保留的一些残余，这些残余将由科学家监视与管理（因而也算不上真正野生）。从长远看（比如几个世纪以后），无论是人类，还是任何其他重要的有机体，都不会像我们今天所知道的那样存在下去，因为只要你一开始通过遗传工程改造有机体，就没有理由在某一个特定点上停下来，因此改造多半会继下去去，直至人类和其他有机体彻底改观。

178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human begins a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically and psychological. If man is not adjust to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long an painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely that the latter.

17 8，无论还有另外什么情况，有一点是肯定的：技术给人类创造了一个新的物质和社会环境。这个环境与人类通过自然选择而在生理上和心理上适应了的所有各类环境都极为不同。如果人类不能通过人为的重新设计改造而适应这一新环境，那么就得通过自然选择的痛苦过程去适应它，前者的可能性要比后者大得多

179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

179，更好的办法是把这个腐朽的体系整个扔进垃圾堆，并勇敢地承受其后果。