斯蒂芬·霍金：我们地球最危险的时刻到了

英国脱欧与特朗普当选，

搅动了世界，搅乱了人心。

智者霍金坐不住了，他断言：

我们正处于人类发展史上最危险的时刻！

目前我们只有一个地球可依，

我们需要共同合作来保护它。

为此——

需要破除各国内和各国间的各种壁垒，

而不是筑起壁垒；

鉴于资源越来越集中于少数人，

我们需要更高程度地学会分享；

鼓励全球范围的发展，

人们的未来就在自己的故土；

精英们吸取过去一年的教训，

尤其是学会要有一定的谦卑。

天之道，损有余而补不足，

人之道，损不足而补有余。

人们企图把自己与宇宙割裂开来，

凭借强力，想用天下人为自己的奢靡垫背。

地球最危险的时刻，

最需要我们保持谦卑，

放下自以为是的自己，

才可以得到一个和谐的世界！

地球最危险的时刻，

昭示万物一体之真善美，

回到天人合一可持续发展的轨道上来！

——王育琨记

【清波杂记按：英国著名科学家斯蒂芬·霍金最近对英国脱欧、美国选出川普总统的现象发表了自己的意见。目前流传的题为《不谈科学、只论生存》的中译有些地方背离原意。这里提供一份比较贴近原意的译文。】

我们地球最危险的时刻到了

斯蒂芬·霍金

2016-12-01

作为一个在剑桥工作的理论物理学家，我生活在一个非常有特权的泡泡中。剑桥是不同凡响的城，世界上优秀大学之一的所在地。剑桥城内的科学圈子就更罕有了，我在二十多岁时就入了这个圈子。

在这个圈内，有一小团与我共事的国际理论物理学家。他们有时可能难免自视为人尖。此外，我的书一带来的名声以及我的病带来的隔绝，我觉得我的象牙塔越来越高。

那么，最近在美英两国发生明显的反精英现象，不用说，也是对着我来的，没有例外。英国选民决定退出欧盟，美国公众拥护川普为下届总统，这两件事不管我们怎么看，在评论者的心目中，无疑是那些感到被领导抛弃的人们的怒吼。

看来大家都认为，这是一个被遗忘者说话的时刻，为拒绝各方专家与精英的意见和指导而发声。

我也丝毫不能幸免。在英国脱欧公投前，我警告说，脱离欧盟会损害英国的科研，对脱欧每投一张赞成票就是倒退一步。选民们，起码是相当一部分选民，对政界领袖、工会人士、艺术家、科学家、商界人士以及各界名流的劝言置若罔闻；他们对我也一样，毫不理会。

现在的关键问题是，精英们如何对应。这比这两项投票的结果重要得多。难道我们接下来应该把选民的表决作为不分青红皂白的粗俗的民粹主义的发泄而加以排斥、试图规避或限制选民的抉择吗？我要论证，这会是大错特错的。

选民这种抉择的背后是对于全球化和越来越快的技术变革所带来的经济后果的关切，这是绝对可以理解的。工厂自动化已经缩减了传统制造业的工作岗位，人工智能的兴起看来会把这种岗位削减深深地扩展到中产阶级，只留下那些最具看护性、创造性或监管性的职业。

这会在全世界加剧已经在扩大的不平等。互联网及其派生的平台使得一小撮人只要雇佣极少的人就能获得巨额的利润。这是不可避免的，是一种进步，然而对社会是破坏性的。

我们应该把金融风暴与此联系起来看。金融风暴深刻昭示：在金融界工作的极少数人可以获得暴利，而我们大众却要为他们的成功背书，被他们的贪欲所忽悠而买单。两者合在一起，使我们生活在一个经济不平等不是在缩小而是在扩大的世界。对于许多人来说，不仅生活水平无法保障，就连谋生的能力也丧失了。他们寻求脱欧和川普所可能代表的新政，就不足为怪了。

还有一个情况就是互联网和社交媒介在全球的扩散也产生了一个意外的后果：这类不平等比过去更加赤裸裸地展现了。对我来说，能够使用高科技进行交流是一种解放，一件正面的事情。否则，多年来我就无法继续工作了。

但是这也意味着，对于任何人来说，无论有多穷，只要能用上一部手机，世界上最发达的国家中最富有的人的生活都暴露无遗。既然在黑非洲拥有手机比用上清洁水源要容易，这又预示着我们这个日益拥挤的地球上几乎每个人都逃脱不了这种不平等。

后果显而易见：乡下穷人怀抱希望，蜂拥到城市来，充塞贫民窟。常常是发现 Instagram     【一种分享图像和视频的平台】上的天堂不存在，于是就到海外寻求，加入不断膨胀的经济移民大军，希冀更好的生活。移民所到之处，基础设施和经济承受了新的需求压力，动摇了当地的包容性，给政治上的民粹主义火上浇油。

这对于我来说，真正迫切的--比史上任何时候都迫切--是我们人类需要同舟共济。我们面临着严峻的环境挑战：气候变迁，粮食生产，人口过多，物种萎缩，疾病传布，海洋酸化。

这些都加在一起向我们提示：我们正处于人类发展史上最危险的时刻。我们现在掌握了可以毁灭我们所赖以生存的地球的技术，却没有开发出逃避这一灾难的能力。也许再过几百年我们能移民于外星，但是目前我们只有一个地球可依，我们需要共同合作来保护它。

要做到这一点，就需要破除各国内和各国间的各种壁垒，而不是筑起壁垒。全世界的领导人只有认识到在这方面他们失败了、目前仍在多处继续失败，我们才有可能去这样做。鉴于资源越来越集中于少数人，我们需要学会分享，其程度应比目前高得多。

鉴于不仅是工作岗位在消失，产业也在整体地消失，我们必须帮助人们重新培训以适应新的时代，并在经济上给予支持。如果国家和地区招架不住当前的移民潮，我们必须多劳一些，鼓励全球范围的发展，只有这样才能使千百万移民认识到他们的未来就在自己的故土。

这是我们能够做到的。对于我们人类，我极端地乐观。但是这需要从伦敦到哈佛、从剑桥到好莱坞的精英们吸取过去一年的教训。尤其是学会要有一定的谦卑。

【译自英国《卫报》】

【附录】英文原文

This is the most dangerous time for our planet

Stephen Hawking

As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centred around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific community that I became part of in my 20s is even more rarefied.

And within that scientific community, the small group of international theoretical physicists with whom I have spent my working life might sometimes be tempted to regard themselves as the pinnacle. In addition to this, with the celebrity that has come with my books, and the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller.

So the recent apparent rejection of the elites in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone. Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next president, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt they had been abandoned by their leaders.

It was, everyone seems to agree, the moment when the forgotten spoke, finding their voices to reject the advice and guidance of experts and the elite everywhere.

I am no exception to this rule. I warned before the Brexit vote that it would damage scientific research in Britain, that a vote to leave would be a step backward, and the electorate – or at least a sufficiently significant proportion of it – took no more notice of me than any of the other political leaders, trade unionists, artists, scientists, businessmen and celebrities who all gave the same unheeded advice to the rest of the country.

What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we, in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.

The concerns underlying these votes about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological changeare absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.

This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.

We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.

It is also the case that another unintended consequence of the global spread of the internet and social media is that the stark nature of these inequalities is far more apparent than it has been in the past. For me, the ability to use technology to communicate has been a liberating and positive experience. Without it, I would not have been able to continue working these many years past.

But it also means that the lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of the world are agonisingly visible to anyone, however poor, who has access to a phone. And since there are now more people with a telephone than access to clean water in sub-Saharan Africa, this will shortly mean nearly everyone on our increasingly crowded planet will not be able to escape the inequality.

The consequences of this are plain to see: the rural poor flock to cities, to shanty towns, driven by hope. And then often, finding that the Instagram nirvana is not available there, they seek it overseas, joining the ever greater numbers of economic migrants in search of a better life. These migrants in turn place new demands on the infrastructures and economies of the countries in which they arrive, undermining tolerance and further fuelling political populism.

For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.

Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it. Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amid the stars, but right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it.

To do that, we need to break down, not build up, barriers within and between nations. If we are to stand a chance of doing that, the world’s leaders need to acknowledge that they have failed and are failing the many. With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present.

With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to retrain for a new world and support them financially while they do so. If communities and economies cannot cope with current levels of migration, we must do more to encourage global development, as that is the only way that the migratory millions will be persuaded to seek their future at home.

We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.

来源：清波杂记

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