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Good News Is Unplanned 好事无须规划 作者：Ronald Bailey @ 2015-10-30

译者：尼克基得慢（@尼克基得慢）

校对：Drunkplane（@Drunkplane-zny）

来源：Reason， https://reason.com/archives/2015/10/30/good-news-is-unplanned Incremental, bottom-up, trial-and-error innovation yields moral progress, superior technologies, and greater wealth. Top-down mandates from centralized authorities are more likely to produce ethical disasters, technological stagnation, and persistent poverty. "Bad news is man-made, top-down, purposed stuff, imposed on history," Matt Ridley writes in The Evolution of Everything . "Good news is accidental, unplanned, emergent stuff that gradually evolves."

缓慢增长的、自下而上的、试错式的创新，产生了道德的进步、先进的技术和更多的财富。来自中央权威、自上而下的命令，最容易造成道德灾难、技术停滞和持续贫穷。“坏事都是人为的、自上而下的、刻意设计、故意强加给历史的东西，” Matt Ridley在《万物之进化》中写道。“好事都是意外的、未经计划的、缓慢进化的偶然事件。”

Ridley, a British journalist who has written extensively about science, economics, and technological progress, begins by explaining the fundamentals of biological evolution by natural selection: Biological complexity evolves through random mutation followed by non-random survival. Ridley then argues that the Darwinian process is a "special theory of evolution" that is embedded in a more "general theory of evolution that applies to much more than biology."

Ridley是一位广泛涉猎科学、经济学和技术进步的英国记者，在本书开头就解释了生物经由自然选择而进化的基础：生物的复杂性来自随机变异和紧随其后的非随机的适者生存。然后Ridley提出，达尔文过程（Darwinian process）只是一个特殊的进化理论，它包含在一个不止适用于生物学的更一般的进化论之中。

Decentralized evolution by trial and error, Ridley argues, is the chief way improvements have emerged in all sorts of human endeavor, including "morality, the economy, culture, language, technology, cities, firms, education, history, law, government, God, money, and society." As the 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson argued, these phenomena are the result of human action, but not of human design. By book's end, Ridley has adeptly dismantled all forms of creationism, divine and Progressive.

Ridley认为，通过试错而实现的分散进化是人类各种事业实现进步的主要途径，包括“道德、经济、文化、语言、技术、城市、公司、教育、历史、法律、政府、上帝、金钱和社会。”如18世纪苏格兰哲学家Adam Ferguson所说，这些现象都是人类行为的结果，而不是人类设计的结果。到书的结尾，Ridley已手法娴熟地拆解了所有类型的创造论，无论是诉诸神灵的还是进步主义的版本。

Consider the evolution of culture. More and more, cultural anthropologists have come to accept the view that—to quote a recent paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences —"human cultural groups have all the key attributes of a Darwinian evolutionary system." As Ridley explains, "Our habits and our institutions, from language to cities, are constantly changing, and the mechanism of change turns out to be surprisingly Darwinian: it is gradual, undirected, mutational, inexorable, combinatorial, selective and in some vague sense progressive."

不妨考虑一下文化的进化。越来越多的文化人类学家已经接受“人类文化群体具有达尔文进化系统所有的关键特征”——这一表述引自《行为与脑科学》上最近的一篇论文。Ridley解释道，“从语言到城市，我们的习性和制度都在不断变化，而令人吃惊的是，这些变化的原理被证明是达尔文式的：它是渐进的，无预定方向的，突变的，无情的，组合的，选择性的，并且在某种意义上是进步的。”

One example: the institution of marriage. As our hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved into herders and farmers, polygamy became more common, since some men could now accumulate the resources needed to support and defend more than one woman and their progeny. However, polygamy has a big downside: Male sexual competition produces lots of violence. While some 80 percent of the distinct cultures identified by anthropologists still sanction polygamy, monogamy is by far now the most common form of marriage. Why?

举个例子：婚姻制度。随着我们狩猎采集的祖先演变成牧民和农民，一夫多妻制变得更常见，因为此时一些男性已能够积累起足够的资源来养活、守护多位女性及其后代。然而，一夫多妻制有个重大缺陷：男性性竞争会产生诸多暴力。尽管在已被人类学家辨明的不同文化中，约80%仍然实行一夫多妻制，但是到现在，一夫一妻制已经成了最常见的婚姻形式。为什么？

The University of British Columbia anthropologist Joseph Henrich and his colleagues argue that societies that adopted normative monogamy increased their social solidarity and trust thus enhancing "the competitive success of the polities, nations and religions that adopted this cultural package." The upshot is that in the modern world, cultures where polygamy still thrives tend to be marginalized, poor, and violent.

英属哥伦比亚大学的人类学家Joseph Henrich和他同事们认为，接受标准一夫一妻制的社会提高了社会的团结和信任，因此增加了“接受一夫一妻制这一文化一揽子方案的政治组织、国家和宗教的竞争成功率。”最终结果就是在当今世界，一夫多妻制仍盛行的文化多是被边缘化的、贫穷的和充满暴力的。

Henrich and his colleagues also speculate that "the peculiar institutions of monogamous marriage may help explain why democratic ideals and notions of equality and human rights first emerged in the West." This egalitarian impulse, interestingly, may behind the evolving inclination toward including same-sex unions in the institution of marriage.

Henrich和他同事们推断，“一夫一妻的婚姻制度也可能有助于解释为何民主的典范和平等与人权的概念首先出现在西方。”有趣的是，这种平等主义的冲动或许隐藏在这样一种进化倾向背后，即向包括同性结合的婚姻制度的进化。

What about the evolution of economics? Prior to the 18th century, top-down extraction of wealth by elites from hapless serfs and peasants was the nearly universal form of economic and political organization among settled societies. The result was persistent and pervasive poverty.

那么经济的进化呢？18世纪以前，精英阶层对于不幸的奴隶和农民自上而下的财富压榨几乎是所有稳定社会普遍的经济和政治组织形式。结果是持续和普遍的贫穷。

As the University of Groningen economist Angus Maddison has shown, economic growth proceeded at the stately pace of less than 0.1 percent per year in Western Europe for more than 18 centuries, rising in constant dollars from $425 per year in AD 1 to $1,200 in 1820. Towards the end of that period, a socioeconomic mutation—market liberalism—arose in Britain and the Netherlands.

正如格罗宁根（Groningen）大学经济学家Angus Maddison所展示的，在长达18个世纪的时间里，西欧的经济增长都稳定在每年0.1%以下，以不变价美元计，从公元元年的425美元涨到了1820年的1200美元。到了这段时期的末尾，一个社会经济的巨变———市场自由主义——在英国和荷兰出现了。

As it spread around the world, the mutation proved highly advantageous to the societies that accepted some degree of it, enabling them to prosper. This "great enrichment," as the University of Illinois at Chicago economist Deidre McCloskey calls it, boosted average incomes 10- to 20-fold in those countries where the mutation took hold.

随着它传遍全世界，这一突变被证明对于那些多少接受了它的社会非常有利，让他们变得繁荣。这次“财富大爆发”（伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校经济学家Deidre McCloskey语）使得发生突变的国家人均收入翻了10到20倍。

Ridley cites the economists Nick Hanauer and Eric Beinhocker, who assert that unfettered commerce is "best understood as an evolutionary system, constantly creating and trying out new solutions to problems in a similar way to how evolution works in nature. Some solutions are 'fitter' than others. The fittest survive and propagate. The unfit die."

Ridley引用了经济学家Nick Hanauer 和 Eric Beinhocker的观点，他们认为最好将自由商业“理解为一个像自然进化那样不断创造、并发明出解决问题之新方法的系统。有些方法比其他方法更能“适应环境”。最适应环境的存活并增殖。不适应的就灭亡。”

The consequence of competition is constant innovation, which the economist Joseph Schumpeter neatly summarized as "creative destruction." After accounting for the contributions of labor and capital, economist Robert Solow calculated that nearly 90 percent of the improvements in living standards are due to technological progress.

竞争的结果就是不断的创新，经济学家Joseph Schumpeter将其巧妙地总结为“创造性破坏”。在算上人力和资本的因素后，经济学家Robert Solow计算得出，生活水平的提高中约90%归功于技术进步。

How about technological evolution? "Biology and technology in the end boil down to systems of information...and both evolve by trial and error," writes Ridley. "Technology is in a sense a continuation of biological evolution—an imposition of informational order on a random world."

技术进化又是如何呢？“生物和技术归根结底都是一些信息系统……而且都通过试错来进化，”Ridley写道。“技术在某种意义上是生物进化的延续——一种随机世界中信息秩序的排列。”

Every technology is built by recombining earlier technologies. Ridley makes the arresting but persuasive claim that, far more often than not, "scientific breakthroughs are the effect, not the cause, of technological change." In other words, technologists' tools are what enable basic researchers uncover nature's secrets.

每种技术都建立在对早前技术的重新组合之上。Ridley做出了吸引眼球但又有说服力的论断，认为多数情况下，“科学突破是技术变革的产物，而不是成因。”换言之，技术专家的工具使得基础研究人员解开自然的奥秘。

One modest example is the invention of the microscope in the 1590s by the Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Jansen. Another is the automated gene sequencer introduced by Applied Biosystems in 1987, which ultimately made the discoveries of the Human Genome Project feasible.

一个客观的例子就是1590年代由荷兰镜片制造商Zacharias Jansen发明的显微镜。另一个例子是1987年由Applied Biosystems公司引进的自动基因测序机，最终使得人类基因组计划变得可行。

Ridley also suggests that scientific central planning, especially in the form of public funding of research, poses problems. In 2015, for example, the Institute for International Economics found that research and development in "the business sector had high social returns, and hence contributed to growth, but there was no evidence in this analysis of positive effects from government R&D."

Ridley还认为，对科学的中央计划会制造问题，尤其是以公共财政资助研究这种形式。比如说，国际经济研究所在2015年发现，商业部门的研发“有着较高的社会回报，而且因此促进了经济增长，但是该项分析中没有证据表明政府研发存在积极影响。”

It would be really surprising if government R&D did not help give birth to some technological breakthroughs—nuclear power and the Internet leap to mind. Still, a 2014 paper published in PLoS Medicine estimated that 85 percent of public research resources are wasted.

如果说政府研发对于一些技术突破——毫无帮助，这肯定会让人非常吃惊——有人会想到核能和互联网这样的例子。然而，一篇发表在2014年《 PLoS Medicine 》 杂志上的论文估计，有85%的公共研究资源是被浪费掉的。

What's more, a 2015 study in PLoS Biology alarmingly suggested that half of all preclinical research is irreproducible. Replication and cumulative knowledge production are cornerstones of the scientific progress. This means that in U.S. that about $28 billion in annual public biomedical research funding, arguably, is squandered.

更有甚者，发表于《 PLoS Biology 》的一项研究惊人地表明，一半的前临床研究都是不可重复的。重复和可累计知识的生产是科学发展的基石。这意味着美国每年的公共生物医药研究资金中，约有280亿美元可认为被浪费了。

And then there is the evolution of government. States emerged from protection rackets in which a gang monopolizing violence demanded payment of goods and services—taxes—in exchange for promises to defend local farmers and artisans from predation by rival gangs. "Tudor monarchs and the Taliban are cut from exactly the same cloth," summarizes Ridley.

然后是政府的进化。国家脱胎于暴力垄断集团的保护网机制，他们承诺保护当地农民和工匠免受竞争团伙的侵害，作为交换他们要求受保护者支付货物或服务——即税收。“都铎王朝的国王和塔利班都是一个模子刻出来的，”Ridley总结道。

But two to three centuries ago, the fractured polities of Western Europe provided an open, speculative space where novel ideas about property rights, free trade, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and limits on government could mutate and grow. Where those bottom-up conceptual mutations took hold, technological innovation sped forward, incomes rose, and civil liberties were recognized.

但是两三个世纪以前，西欧支离破碎的政体结构为有关财产权、自由贸易、宗教自由、出版自由、限制政府等新思想提供了开放的探索空间，让这些创新理念得以变化和生长。哪里发生了这些自下而上的观念突变，哪里的技术创新就会加速，收入增长，公民自由得到承认。

Once established, liberal societies are veritable evolution machines that frenetically generate new mutations and swiftly recombine them to produce a vast array of new products, services, and social institutions that enable ever more people to flourish. So far liberal societies are outcompeting—in the sense of being richer and more appealing—those polities that are closer to the original protection rackets.

自由社会一旦建成，它就成了一架真正的进化机器，疯狂地产生新突变，并迅速将突变重新结合生产出一系列新产品、新服务和新机构，使得更多人获益。到目前为止，在变得更富裕和更吸引人这方面，自由社会完胜那些更接近最初保护网机制的政体。

“Perhaps," Ridley hopefully suggests, "the state is now evolving steadily towards benign and gentle virtue." He adds, "Perhaps not." In support of evolving benignity is the fact that the ratio of countries rated as free by Freedom House increased from 29 percent in 1973 to 47 percent in 2007.

“或许，”Ridley满怀希望地认为，“国家正在向着善意和温良的美德稳步进化着。”他补充道，“也可能不是这样。”支持良性进化的一个事实是，被自由之家（Freedom House）评定为自由国家的比例已经由1973年的29%增长到2007年的47%。

Since then the spread of liberty has faltered. Ridley notes that "creationism in government shows no signs of fading." Communism and fascism are examples of man-made top-down creationism that produced plenty of bad-news history in the last century.

但自那之后，自由的传播已缓滞不前。Ridley提到“关于政府的创世论没有衰退的迹象。”共产主义和法西斯主义便是人为的自上而下的创世论，导致了上世纪的诸多历史惨剧。

Biological evolution has no end goals; those creatures that survive reproduce. Presumably the sorts of cultural, economic, technological, and governmental evolution described by Ridley also do not have end goals. What survives, replicates. It is not impossible that some future cultural mutation might arise and outcompete market liberalism. Yet as a constant novelty-generating dynamo, market liberalism has pretty good chance of staying ahead of mutations that tend in more authoritarian directions.

生物进化没有终极目标；存活的生物繁殖不息。也许Ridley所描述的各种文化、经济、技术和政府进化也都没有终极目标。得以存留的就不断复制。未来出现一些文化突变并胜过市场自由主义也不是不可能。然而作为一个持久的创新发动机，市场自由主义很可能继续领先于那些倾向于专制的突变体。

There is another way to think of the developments that are the result of human action, but not of human design. Human beings, through a long process of trial and error (mostly error), are slowly discovering our own given natures. We chance upon habits, institutions, moralities that increasingly incline our inborn predilections toward promoting human flourishing.

还有另一种方式来思考那些由人类的行为而不是人类的设计所导致的发展。经过长时间的试错过程（大部分是错误的），人类正在慢慢发现自己的天性。我们有幸恰好发现了一些习性、制度和德性，它们越来越倾向于推动我们的先天偏好向着促进人类繁荣的方向发展。 Flourishing does not mean sheer biological reproduction. After all, it is those societies in which the market liberalism mutation took hold earliest that have the lowest fertility rates. Flourishing means something like the pursuit and enjoyment of more meaningful lives.

繁荣并不意味着单纯的生物繁殖。毕竟，出生率最低的正是那些最早抓住市场自由主义这一变异的社会。繁荣意味着追求并享受更有意义的人生。

As Ridley concludes, "It is a fair bet that the twenty-first century will be dominated mostly by shocks of bad news, but will experience mostly invisible progress of good things. Incremental, inexorable, inevitable changes will bring us material and spiritual improvements that will make the lives of our grandchildren wealthier, healthier, happier, cleverer, kinder, freer, more peaceful, and more equal—almost entirely as a serendipitous by-product of cultural evolution."

Ridley总结道，“很可能21世纪会被坏消息带来的震惊所笼罩，但是也会经历美好事物近乎无形的进步。”渐进的、不可阻挡的、无可避免的改变，会带给我们物质和精神的进步，使得我们孙辈的生活更富足、更健康、更幸福、更明智、更友善、更自由、更和平且更平等——这几乎全都是文化进化的偶然副产物。” Ronald Bailey is a science correspondent at Reason magazine and author of The End of Doom (July 2015).

Ronald Bailey是《Reason》杂志的科学通讯记者，也是《末日终结》一书（2015年七月）的作者。

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