TED学院 | 为什么总有人能那么无私？（音频-视频-文稿）

中英对照翻译

There's a man out there, somewhere, who looks a little bit like the actor Idris Elba, or at least he did 20 years ago. I don't know anything else about him, except that he once saved my life by putting his own life in danger. This man ran across four lanes of freeway traffic in the middle of the night to bring me back to safety after a car accident that could have killed me. And the whole thing left me really shaken up, obviously, but it also left me with this kind of burning, gnawing need to understand why he did it, what forces within him caused him to make the choice that I owe my life to, to risk his own life to save the life of a stranger? In other words, what are the causes of his or anybody else's capacity for altruism?

某个地方，有这样一个人，长得有点儿像演员伊德瑞斯·艾尔巴，好吧，至少20年前很像。我对这个人一无所知，除了他曾经冒着生命危险，救过我一命。午夜时分，这个人在高速车道上横穿了四个车道，将我从致命车祸现场带回了安全地带。这一切显然把我吓坏了，但这件事也给我留下了一个强烈的念头：我想知道他为什么这么做，是什么驱使了他做出这样的决定，为了救一个陌生人不惜以生命为代价，足以让我欠他一条命？换而言之，是什么铸就了他和其他人的强烈利他心理？

But first let me tell you what happened. That night, I was 19 years old and driving back to my home in Tacoma, Washington, down the Interstate 5 freeway, when a little dog darted out in front of my car. And I did exactly what you're not supposed to do, which is swerve to avoid it. And I discovered why you're not supposed to do that. I hit the dog anyways, and that sent the car into a fishtail, and then a spin across the freeway, until finally it wound up in the fast lane of the freeway faced backwards into oncoming traffic and then the engine died.

但首先让我告诉你们具体发生了什么。在事故发生的那个晚上，我当时19岁，当时我正开车，行驶在5号州际公路上，准备回华盛顿州塔科马市的家。一只小狗冲到了我的车前。然后我做了绝不该在高速上做的一件事情，就是急转方向去躲避这只狗。然而我很快就明白了为什么这样做是错误的。我还是不可避免地撞上了那只狗，导致车辆开始甩尾，在高速公路上急速旋转，直到最后停在了高速上最内侧的快车道上，车头朝后面对着来车的方向，而且发动机也坏了。

And I was sure in that moment that I was about to die too, but I didn't because of the actions of that one brave man who must have made the decision within a fraction of a second of seeing my stranded car to pull over and run across four lanes of freeway traffic in the dark to save my life. And then after he got my car working again and got me back to safety and made sure I was going to be all right, he drove off again. He never even told me his name, and I'm pretty sure I forgot to say thank you.

我当时以为自己死定了，但结果我没有，就是因为那个勇敢的陌生人，在看见我和车处于困境中的瞬间，做出的一个决定，那就是靠边停车，在黑暗中跑着穿过了四个高速车道只为救我的命。在他帮助我修复我的车，将我送至安全位置，并确保我会没事后，就默默地开车走了。他甚至没告诉我他叫什么，而且我确信，我甚至忘记了说一句谢谢。

So before I go any further, I really want to take a moment to stop and say thank you to that stranger.

所以在我继续说下去之前，我想利用这个机会向那位陌生人说一句谢谢。

I tell you all of this because the events of that night changed the course of my life to some degree. I became a psychology researcher, and I've devoted my work to understanding the human capacity to care for others. Where does it come from, and how does it develop, and what are the extreme forms that it can take? These questions are really important to understanding basic aspects of human social nature.

我告诉你们这些是因为那晚发生的事改变了我人生的轨迹。我成为了一名心理学研究者，我致力于了解人类关心他人的能力，这种能力从哪里来，又是怎样形成与发展的？它最极端的形态会是怎样的？这些问题是理解人类的社会属性的关键。

A lot of people, and this includes everybody from philosophers and economists to ordinary people believe that human nature is fundamentally selfish, that we're only ever really motivated by our own welfare. But if that's true, why do some people, like the stranger who rescued me, do selfless things, like helping other people at enormous risk and cost to themselves? Answering this question requires exploring the roots of extraordinary acts of altruism, and what might make people who engage in such acts different than other people. But until recently, very little work on this topic had been done.

很多人，包括哲学家，经济学家，还有普通人，都认为人的天性是自私的，我们永远只会被利己的事所激励。但如果那是真的，为什么总有 一些人会像救我的那个陌生人一样，做着如此无私且利他的事情，比如冒着极大的代价和风险去帮助别人？要回答这个问题，我们要挖掘这些极端利他行为的本质，以及是什么导致了这些人做出与他人不同的行为。但直到现在，有关课题的研究仍然十分有限。

The actions of the man who rescued me meet the most stringent definition of altruism, which is a voluntary, costly behavior motivated by the desire to help another individual. So it's a selfless act intended to benefit only the other. What could possibly explain an action like that? One answer is compassion, obviously, which is a key driver of altruism. But then the question becomes, why do some people seem to have more of it than others? And the answer may be that the brains of highly altruistic people are different in fundamental ways.

我的救命恩人的行为已经能够达到“无私”中最狭隘且苛刻的定义了，也就是必须要是完全自愿的、有代价的行为，并且是被想帮助他人的心理所驱动的。即这是一个完全利他行为。用什么能够解释这种行为呢？一种解释是怜悯之心，显然，这是无私的几个关键来源之一。接着这个问题转变为：为什么有些人会比其他人的怜悯之心更强呢？答案也许是，那些有高度怜悯心的人的大脑构造可能与普通人有根本性区别。

But to figure out how, I actually started from the opposite end, with psychopaths. A common approach to understanding basic aspects of human nature, like the desire to help other people, is to study people in whom that desire is missing, and psychopaths are exactly such a group. Psychopathy is a developmental disorder with strongly genetic origins, and it results in a personality that's cold and uncaring and a tendency to engage in antisocial and sometimes very violent behavior.

想知道到底如何不同，我实际上从精神病患者开始，来逆向思考这个问题。想要了解人类本性的某一方面时，例如想要了解人们帮助他人的欲望时，一个普遍的方式就是从缺失这种欲望的人入手进行研究。精神病患者正是这样的群体之一。精神病是一种高级别的神经错乱，并且与基因有着很强的关联性，由此带来冷漠无情的性格特征，并且有着反社会倾向，甚至暴力倾向。

Once my colleagues and I at the National Institute of Mental Health conducted some of the first ever brain imaging research of psychopathic adolescents, and our findings, and the findings of other researchers now, have shown that people who are psychopathic pretty reliably exhibit three characteristics. First, although they're not generally insensitive to other people's emotions, they are insensitive to signs that other people are in distress. And in particular, they have difficulty recognizing fearful facial expressions like this one. And fearful expressions convey urgent need and emotional distress, and they usually elicit compassion and a desire to help in people who see them, so it makes sense that people who tend to lack compassion also tend to be insensitive to these cues.

我和我的同事们曾在国家心理健康研究中心，进行了首次针对青少年精神病患者的脑成像研究， 我们，以及后来其他研究者们的发现都一致表明，精神病患者的大脑会呈现出三种特性。首先，他们并不是普遍不能识别所有的人类情感，但是他们的确不能感知到他人正处于悲伤或痛苦中。尤其是，他们对于害怕这种面部神情存在理解障碍，比如这个。害怕的神情同时会传达出迫切需要帮助和情感上的悲痛，而这些会引诱出目击者的怜悯之心和想去帮助的欲望，所以那些趋于缺少怜悯之心的人，同时也趋向于对这些神情表现出不敏感。

The part of the brain that's the most important for recognizing fearful expressions is called the amygdala. There are very rare cases of people who lack amygdalas completely, and they're profoundly impaired in recognizing fearful expressions. And whereas healthy adults and children usually show big spikes in amygdala activity when they look at fearful expressions, psychopaths' amygdalas are underreactive to these expressions. Sometimes they don't react at all, which may be why they have trouble detecting these cues. Finally, psychopaths' amygdalas are smaller than average by about 18 or 20 percent.

杏仁核是人类大脑中负责识别痛苦的面部表情的最重要的部分。只有极少的人完全缺失杏仁核，他们对识别痛苦的神情存在严重障碍。当看到害怕的神情时，健康成年人与儿童的杏仁核会反应活跃，精神病患者的杏仁核则处于非活跃状态，有时候它们根本毫无反应。这也许解释了为什么他们无法识别那些表情。最后，精神病患者的杏仁核的大小比平均水平小18%-20%。

So all of these findings are reliable and robust, and they're very interesting. But remember that my main interest is not understanding why people don't care about others. It's understanding why they do. So the real question is, could extraordinary altruism, which is the opposite of psychopathy in terms of compassion and the desire to help other people, emerge from a brain that is also the opposite of psychopathy? A sort of antipsychopathic brain, better able to recognize other people's fear, an amygdala that's more reactive to this expression and maybe larger than average as well?

所有的这些发现都是可靠而确凿的，也是十分有趣的。但要记得我主要的兴趣不是想弄明白为什么有的人不关心他人，而是为什么有的人会关心。所以真正的问题是，拥有非凡的利他主义的人，也就是在同情心和帮助他人的想法上与精神病患者完全相反的一群人，他们是否在大脑构造中也与精神病患者的大脑完全相反？是否拥有一种“反精神错乱型大脑”，能够更加易于识别他人的恐惧，并且有着更活跃且体积更大的杏仁核？

As my research has now shown, all three things are true. And we discovered this by testing a population of truly extraordinary altruists. These are people who have given one of their own kidneys to a complete stranger. So these are people who have volunteered to undergo major surgery so that one of their own healthy kidneys can be removed and transplanted into a very ill stranger that they've never met and may never meet. 'Why would anybody do this?' is a very common question. And the answer may be that the brains of these extraordinary altruists have certain special characteristics.

我的研究已经证实了我们的猜想，上述三点都是存在的。我们的发现基于对一批真正的极端利他主义者的测试。他们会将自己的肾脏捐赠给一个完全陌生的人，也就是说他们完全自愿地承受一个大型外科手术来移除自己身上一个健康的肾脏，捐给一个从未见过，甚至也永远不会相见的陌生人。也许许多人都想问“谁会想做这样的事啊？”。而答案很可能是那些极端利他主义者的大脑有他们的独特之处。

They are better at recognizing other people's fear. They're literally better at detecting when somebody else is in distress. This may be in part because their amygdala is more reactive to these expressions. And remember, this is the same part of the brain that we found was underreactive in people who are psychopathic. And finally, their amygdalas are larger than average as well, by about eight percent. So together, what these data suggest is the existence of something like a caring continuum in the world that's anchored at the one end by people who are highly psychopathic, and at the other by people who are very compassionate and driven to acts of extreme altruism.

他们擅长识别他人的恐惧。他们确确实实更能察觉处在悲痛中的人。这种行为部分源于他们的杏仁核会对这些表情做出更活跃的反应。但要记得，我们发现神经病患者的大脑在同一区域，是处于非活动状态的。最后，利他者的杏仁核也要比平均水平大，大百分之八左右。总的来说，最终这些实验数据都表明了，这世界上有一种关爱衡量轴，一个极端就是精神高度错乱，处于另一个极端的人则非常具有同情心，总是被极度利他的精神驱使着。

But I should add that what makes extraordinary altruists so different is not just that they're more compassionate than average. They are, but what's even more unusual about them is that they're compassionate and altruistic not just towards people who are in their own innermost circle of friends and family. Right? Because to have compassion for people that you love and identify with is not extraordinary. Truly extraordinary altruists' compassion extends way beyond that circle, even beyond their wider circle of acquaintances to people who are outside their social circle altogether, total strangers, just like the man who rescued me.

但我应该继续补充的是，极端利他主义者之所以如此，并非仅仅因为他们的同情心高于平均水平。他们确实是有很强的同情心，但令他们更不同寻常的是他们的同情和无私并不只是针对他熟知的核心圈子里人，对吗？因为对自己爱的人无私并不能使你与众不同。真正非凡的利他主义者的恻隐之心远远超过那个圆圈，甚至超出他们的社交圈和任何认识的人，甚至完全是陌生人，就像救我的那个人一样。

And I've had the opportunity now to ask a lot of altruistic kidney donors how it is that they manage to generate such a wide circle of compassion that they were willing to give a complete stranger their kidney. And I found it's a really difficult question for them to answer.

如今我有机会去询问很多无私的肾脏捐赠者，问他们是如何建立一个如此广阔的怜悯圈，以至于愿意给完全陌生的人捐赠肾脏。然而我发现，他们不知道怎么回答这个问题。

I say, 'How is it that you're willing to do this thing when so many other people don't? You're one of fewer than 2,000 Americans who has ever given a kidney to a stranger. What is it that makes you so special?'

我说，“为什么你愿意去做大多数人都不愿意做的事情呢？你属于美国不到两千人的肾脏捐赠者之一，是什么让你如此特别？”

And what do they say?

你知道他们说了什么吗？

They say, 'Nothing. There's nothing special about me. I'm just the same as everybody else.'

他们说，“没什么，我没有什么不同，我跟所有人都一样。”

And I think that's actually a really telling answer, because it suggests that the circles of these altruists don't look like this, they look more like this. They have no center. These altruists literally don't think of themselves as being at the center of anything, as being better or more inherently important than anybody else. When I asked one altruist why donating her kidney made sense to her, she said, 'Because it's not about me.' Another said, 'I'm not different. I'm not unique. Your study here is going to find out that I'm just the same as you.'

其实我觉得这恰恰是个很说明问题的回答，因为这说明利他主义者的圆不是这样画的，而是这样的。它们是没有圆心的。这些无私的人从来就不以自己为中心来思考问题，不觉得自己比其他人更重要。当我问利他主义者为什么捐赠肾脏时，她说，“因为这对他们更重要。”另一个人说，“我没有什么不同。我并不特别。你的研究最终只能发现我跟你完全一样”。

I think the best description for this amazing lack of self-centeredness is humility, which is that quality that in the words of St. Augustine makes men as angels. And why is that? It's because if there's no center of your circle, there can be no inner rings or outer rings, nobody who is more or less worthy of your care and compassion than anybody else. And I think that this is what really distinguishes extraordinary altruists from the average person.

我觉得对这些神奇的缺乏自我中心意识的行为，最好的解释是谦虚。正如奥古斯丁所说的，谦虚让人如同天使。这是为什么？因为如果你的圆圈没有中心，那就没有内圆和外圆的区别，所有人在你眼中都是同等的，都值得怜悯和关心。我相信这一点是真正将非凡的利他主义者与大众区分开来的地方。

But I also think that this is a view of the world that's attainable by many and maybe even most people. And I think this because at the societal level, expansions of altruism and compassion are already happening everywhere. The psychologist Steven Pinker and others have shown that all around the world people are becoming less and less accepting of suffering in ever-widening circles of others, which has led to declines of all kinds of cruelty and violence, from animal abuse to domestic violence to capital punishment. And it's led to increases in all kinds of altruism.

其实我认为这样一种世界观是绝大多数人能够接受和拥有的。而且由于社会发展的程度，无私与怜悯之心已经在各处扩张。心理学家史迪芬·平克以及很多研究者都表明，全世界范围内的人都越来越不能接受其他人承受痛苦，而这个圈子还在不断扩大。这也就导致人们拒绝任何方式的残迫与暴力，从虐待动物到家庭暴力，再到死刑。各种无私心都在增长。

A hundred years ago, people would have thought it was ludicrous how normal and ordinary it is for people to donate their blood and bone marrow to complete strangers today. Is it possible that a hundred years from now people will think that donating a kidney to a stranger is just as normal and ordinary as we think donating blood and bone marrow is today? Maybe.

一百年前，人们会认为把对陌生人的无偿献血和骨髓捐献视为一种平常事，是绝不可能的。但一百年后，人们是否会将捐赠肾脏，视为再也正常不过的事呢？就像今天的无偿献血与捐献骨髓一样。也许会的。

So what's at the root of all these amazing changes? In part it seems to be increases in wealth and standards of living. As societies become wealthier and better off, people seem to turn their focus of attention outward, and as a result, all kinds of altruism towards strangers increases, from volunteering to charitable donations and even altruistic kidney donations.

所以到底是为什么会发生这些改变呢？其中部分原因是，生活水平与富裕水平的提升。因为社会变得更富裕且更好，看起来人们关切的焦点会向外部转移，由此，针对陌生人的无私之心也会增加，从自愿帮助到慷慨捐赠，甚至到肾脏捐赠。

But all of these changes also yield a strange and paradoxical result, which is that even as the world is becoming a better and more humane place, which it is, there's a very common perception that it's becoming worse and more cruel, which it's not. And I don't know exactly why this is, but I think it may be that we now just know so much more about the suffering of strangers in distant places, and so we now care a lot more about the suffering of those distant strangers.

但这些改变同样得出一个矛盾的结果，尽管这世界变得越来越有爱心，的确是这样，同时有一种声音说这个世界在变得更糟糕，更残忍，但这不是事实。我并不确切地知道这种声音的由来，但我想这也许是由于现在人们能够了解到更多远距离的新闻，而且我们更在意受难的人，尽管这些事并未发生在我们身边。

But what's clear is the kinds of changes we're seeing show that the roots of altruism and compassion are just as much a part of human nature as cruelty and violence, maybe even more so, and while some people do seem to be inherently more sensitive to the suffering of distant others, I really believe that the ability to remove oneself from the center of the circle and expand the circle of compassion outward to include even strangers is within reach for almost everyone.

但我们可以确定的是，我们看到这些变化表明了利他主义和怜悯之心的根源都是人性，如同残忍和暴戾的人性一样，甚至程度更深，同时部分群体对在遥远的地方受难的人生来敏感，我确信摆脱以自我为中心的思考方式，扩充自己的怜悯之心，关心更多的陌生人，对于大部分的人来说都是触手可及的。

Thank you.

谢谢。

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