博越提车要等多久:可怕的读心术

读心术

The terrible truth

可怕的真相

Technology can now see what people are thinking. Be afraid

现在，科技能看到人们在想些什么。小心点！

DOUGLAS ADAMS, the late lamented author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, dreamed up many comic creations. One of his greatest was the Babel fish. This interstellar ichthyoid neatly disposed of a problem all science-fiction authors have: how to let alien species talk to one another. It did so by acting as a mind-reader that translated thoughts between different races and cultures. Universal communication did not, unfortunately, lead to universal harmony. As Adams put it, “The poor Babel fish has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”

令人怀念的《银河系漫游指南》作者道格拉斯·亚当斯(DOUGLAS ADAMS)幻想出过很多漫画创作。其最伟大的创作之一是宝贝鱼(Babel fish)。这条星际间穿行的鱼漂亮地解决了所有科幻作家的问题：如何让不同外星物种交流？它的解决方式是使用转换不同种族、文化之间的思想的读心术。不幸的是，宇宙间的交流并没有带来宇宙间的和谐共处。正如亚当斯所说：“可怜的宝贝鱼，比起历史上出现过的其他任何创造物，导致了更多更血腥的战争”

For the moment, mind-reading is still science fiction. But that may not be true for much longer. Several lines of inquiry (see article) are converging on the idea that the neurological activity of the brain can be decoded directly, and people’s thoughts revealed without being spoken.

读心术暂时还只是科幻作品。但不久的将来就不见得如此了。几则研究（详见此链接）共同发现，大脑的神经活动能够被直接解码，人们的思想无需言语就能被解读。

Just imagine the potential benefits. Such a development would allow both the fit and the disabled to operate machines merely by choosing what they want those machines to do. It would permit the profoundly handicapped—those paralysed by conditions such as motor-neuron disease and cerebral palsy—to communicate more easily than is now possible even with the text-based speech engines used by the likes of Stephen Hawking. It might unlock the mental prisons of people apparently in comas, who nevertheless show some signs of neural activity. For the able-bodied, it could allow workers to dictate documents silently to computers simply by thinking about what they want to say. The most profound implication, however, is that it would abolish the ability to lie.

先想想可能的好处。这项发展能让正常人和残疾人想让机器做什么，就让机器做什么。这将让诸如运动神经元疾病或脑中风的严重的残疾人能比现在更好地进行交流，甚至使用类似史蒂芬·霍金所用的基于文字的语言引擎。这能将昏迷中的人带出心灵囚牢，毕竟他们大脑有神经活动的迹象。至于正常人，这将使工作者通过想他们要说的，就能安静地想电脑输入文档。然而，最意义重大的潜力是这项技术可能可以抹杀谎言。

Who could object to that? Thou shalt not bear false witness. Tell the truth, and shame the Devil. Transparency, management-speak for honesty, is put forward as the answer to most of today’s ills. But the truth of the matter—honestly—is that this would lead to disaster, for lying is at the heart of civilisation.

谁能反对呢？你不要被假象所蒙蔽！说实话吧，可耻的撒旦！透明度——诚实的官方语言——被当成了时下所有病症的解决方式。 但是诚实地说，事实的真相是这将会导致大灾难——因为谎言是文明的核心。

People are not the only creatures who lie. Species from squids to chimpanzees have been caught doing it from time to time. But only Homo sapiens has turned lying into an art. Call it diplomacy, public relations or simple good manners: lying is one of the things that makes the world go round.

人类不是唯一会撒谎的生物。从低等的鱿鱼到高等的黑猩猩，不同物种时不时被抓到过在撒谎。但是只有人类将撒谎化为一种艺术，称之为外交、公共关系或者简单地称之为礼节：谎言是让地球正常运转

Minds matter

心灵很重要

The occasional untruth makes domestic life possible (“Of course your bum doesn’t look big in that”), is essential in the office (“Don’t worry, everybody’s behind you on this one”), and forms a crucial part of parenting (“It didn’t matter that you forgot your words and your costume fell off. You were wonderful”). Politics might be more entertaining without lies—“The prime minister has my full support” would be translated as, “If that half-wit persists in this insane course we’ll all be out on our ears”—but a party system would be hard to sustain without the semblance of loyalty that dishonesty permits.

偶尔的谎言使得家庭生活成为可能（“当然，你的屁股看起来没那么大”），又是职场精华（“别着急，这个项目所有人都在你后面”），还是教养子女的重要部分（“你忘记了单词，或者衣服掉下来了，这些都没关系。你是最棒的！”）。如果没有谎言，政治可能更加有趣：“我全力支持首相”的言下之意可能是“如果那个笨蛋坚持这种疯狂举动，我们都得卷铺盖滚蛋。”——但是如果没有表面上的忠诚，党政系统将很难维持。

The truly scary prospect, however, is the effect mind-reading would have on relations between the state and the individual. In a world in which the authorities could divine people’s thoughts, speaking truth to power would no longer be brave: it would be unavoidable.

然而，真正让人提醒吊胆的是读心术对国家和个人之间关系的影响。在一个当权者能知道人们想法的世界中，向当权者说出直言事实将会是不可避免的，而不再是有没有勇气的问题。

Information technology already means that physical privacy has become a scarce commodity. Websites track your interests and purchases. Mobile phones give away your location. Video cameras record what you are up to. Lose mental privacy as well, and there really will be nowhere to hide.