人類會(huì)因Google而更聰明嗎？ --譯言網(wǎng)譯文

?人類會(huì)因Google而更聰明嗎？ 這是一篇關(guān)于互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代人類認(rèn)識(shí)問(wèn)題的“哲學(xué)級(jí)”文章。文章的命題是：人類可能因?yàn)樽约喊l(fā)明的各種機(jī)電設(shè)備而令自己的天然機(jī)能退化，但是這些機(jī)電設(shè)備恰好是人體及大腦的延伸，所以象Google之類的人類發(fā)明，最終只能讓人類更聰明、更進(jìn)步，因?yàn)槿四X善于與周?chē)�的一切融合為一體。 流量計(jì)費(fèi)買(mǎi)斷標(biāo)簽： google 互聯(lián)網(wǎng) 心理 哲學(xué) 大腦 猴子 頭腦 外腦 江天夢(mèng) 翻譯于：2009-02-06 03:17:51 | 已有 1156 人閱讀過(guò)此文 對(duì)照 [+] 進(jìn)入原文頁(yè)面 How Google Is Making Us Smarter     Our minds are under attack. At least that’s what I keep hearing these days. Thumbing away at our text messages, we are becoming illiterate. (Or is that illiter8?) Blogs make us coarse, YouTube makes us shallow. Last summer the cover of The Atlantic posed a question: “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” Inside the magazine, author Nicholas Carr argued that the Internet is damaging our brains, robbing us of our memories and deep thoughts. “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world,” he wrote, “it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”     I have a hard time taking these Cassandras of the Computer Age seriously. For one thing, they are much more interested in our fears than in the facts. In his new book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, the English linguist David Crystal demonstrates that many of the dire warnings about texting are little more than urban legends. Texting doesn’t lead to bad spelling, he finds. In fact, Crystal writes, “texting actually improves your literacy, as it gives you more practice in reading and writing.”     More significantly, the ominous warnings feed on a popular misconception of how the mind works. We tend to think of the mind as separated from the world; we imagine information trickling into our senses and reaching our isolated minds, which then turn that information into a detailed picture of reality. The Internet and iPhones seem to be crashing the gate of the mind, taking over its natural work and leaving it to wither away to a mental stump. As plausible as this picture may seem, it does a bad job of explaining a lot of recent scientific research. In fact, the mind appears to be adapted for reaching out from our heads and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.     This concept of the extended mind was first raised in 1998, right around the time Google was born, by two philosophers, Andy Clark, now at the University of Edinburgh, and David Chalmers, now at the Australian National University. In the journal Analysis, they published a short essay called “The Extended Mind” in which they asked a simple question: “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” Most people might answer, “At the skull.” But Clark and Chalmers set out to convince their readers that the mind is not simply the product of the neurons in our brains, locked away behind a wall of bone. Rather, they argued that the mind is something more: a system made up of the brain plus parts of its environment.     Clark and Chalmers asked their readers to imagine a woman named Inga. Inga hears from a friend that there’s an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. She decides to go see it. She thinks for a moment, recalls that the museum is on 53rd Street, and starts walking that way. She accesses her belief that MOMA is on 53rd Street from its storage place in her brain’s memory network. Now imagine a man named Otto, who has Alzheimer’s. His memory is faulty, and so he keeps with him a notebook in which he writes down important details. Like Inga, Otto hears about the museum exhibit. Since he can’t access the address in his brain, he looks it up in his notebook and then heads off in the same direction as Inga.     In the view of Clark and Chalmers, Inga’s brain-based memory and Otto’s notebook are fundamentally the same. Inga’s mind just happens to access information stored away in her brain, while Otto’s mind draws on information stored in his notebook. The notebook, in other words, is part of his extended mind. It doesn’t make any difference that Otto keeps his notebook tucked away much of the time. After all, Inga tucks the memory of MOMA’s address out of her conscious awareness most of the time too. Clark and Chalmers concluded that real people are actually more like Otto than like Inga: We all have minds that extend out into our environments.     Eleven years later, this argument continues to trigger fierce debate among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. There is no doubt that the extended mind is a weird concept. One reason it seems so strange is that our minds feel as if they are really totally self-contained. We innately believe, for example, that as we walk down a street, we are continuously filming a detailed movie of our surroundings and using that mental movie to decide what to do next. But like many beliefs we have about ourselves, this movie is an illusion. Our awareness is, in fact, remarkably narrow.     One of the most spectacular demonstrations of how oblivious we can be was carried out by psychologists Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois and Christopher Chabris at Harvard University. They asked people to watch a video of students weaving around each other and passing a basketball. Half the students wore white shirts, the other half black. The subjects had to keep track of how many times the ball was passed by members of one of the teams. In the middle of the game, a gorilla (rather, a student in a gorilla costume) sauntered through the scene. Many subjects later reported that they never saw the gorilla; their brains discarded it as extraneous.     Inside our heads, instead of making a perfect replica of the world, we focus our attention on tiny snippets, darting our eyes from point to point. We extract only the information we need for whatever task is at hand, whether we’re sorting the laundry or climbing a mountain.     We use strikingly little information in the process. Dana Ballard, a computer scientist at the University of Texas, developed a computer game to measure just how little. He showed his subjects a pattern of colored blocks in the upper left-hand corner of the computer monitor. He then had them build a similar pattern of blocks in the lower left-hand corner. To do so, the players used a mouse to grab blocks, one by one, from a collection on the right-hand side of the screen. As the players looked from the original model to the collection of blocks to their own growing pattern, Ballard tracked their eye movements. He found that players looked at the model at the upper left before they picked up a block, and then again afterward. His experiments suggest that in each glance, the players were storing only a single piece of information. The first time they noted a block’s color. The second time they noted its position in the model. Instead of keeping a detailed picture of the blocks in mind, people extracted just tiny scraps of information on a need-to-know basis.     Clark argues that Ballard’s subjects made the pattern of blocks part of their extended mind. It became a store of knowledge they could dip into, an external repository of information. It was as if Inga did not actually recall the address of MOMA but only the page in her notebook where she had written it down. Our memory holds a great deal of information. But the extended mind moves swiftly between outside and inside sources, showing little regard for where its information comes from.     Our minds do more than take in information, of course. They also make decisions and send out commands—and those commands certainly don’t stay inside the mind. In the block-building game, for example, some commands go to neurons in the hand in order to move the computer mouse. But our brains don’t make a perfect mental replica of our hands and the mouse and the table in order to calculate where the mouse needs to go. Our hands and eyes constantly send signals to the brain, and that feedback alters the signals coming back out. Hand, eye, and brain are part of the same system.     What’s even more remarkable about our brains is that they actually search for new things to make part of this feedback system. Imagine you are poking a stick into an animal’s burrow. As you poke away, you are aware of what the far end of the stick is touching, not the end you’re holding in your hand. This kind of extended sensation appears to be the result of a reorganization of the brain. Scientists have found that when test monkeys spent five minutes learning how to use a rake, some of the neurons in their hands began behaving in a new way. They began to fire in response to stimuli at the end of the rake, not on the monkey’s hand. Other neurons, in the brain, respond to things that appear to lie within arm’s reach. Training the monkeys to use the rakes caused these neurons to change—reacting to objects lying within rake’s reach rather than arm’s reach.     The eagerness with which the brain merges with tools has made it possible to create some stunning mind-machine interfaces. For instance, Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University and his colleagues put electrodes in the brains of monkeys to link them to a robot arm. The monkeys quickly learned how to move the arm around with pure thought; their neurons reorganized, establishing a new feedback loop between brain and robot arm.     Humans are proving just as good at this merger of mind and machine. The U.S. Navy has developed a flight suit for helicopter pilots that delivers little puffs of air on the side of the pilot’s body as his helicopter tilts in that direction. The pilot responds to the puffs by tilting away from them, and the suit passes those signals on to the helicopter’s steering controls. Pilots who train with this system can learn to fly blindfolded or to carry out complex maneuvers, such as holding the helicopter in a stationary hover. The helicopter becomes, in effect, part of the pilot’s body, linked back to his or her mind.     Results like these, Clark argues, reveal a mind that is constantly seeking to extend itself, to grab on to new tools it has never experienced before and merge with them. Some people may be horrified by how passionately people are taking to their laptops and GPS trackers. But to Clark it would be surprising if we didn’t. We are, in Clark’s words, “natural-born cyborgs.”     The extended mind theory doesn’t just change the way we think about the mind. It also changes how we judge what’s good and bad about today’s mind-altering technologies. There’s nothing unnatural about relying on the Internet—Google and all—for information. After all, we are constantly consulting the world around us like a kind of visual Wikipedia. Nor is there anything bad about our brains’ being altered by these new technologies, any more than there is something bad about a monkey’s brain changing as it learns how to play with a rake.     Neuroscientists will soon be able to offer fresh ways to enhance our brains, whether with drugs or with implants. To say that these are immoral because they defile our true selves—our isolated, distinct minds—is to ignore biology. Our minds already extend out into the environment, and the changes we make to the environment already alter our minds.     That doesn’t mean we must approve of every possible extension of the mind, and even good extensions will have some drawbacks. Socrates worried that writing would make people forgetful and unwise. Sure enough, writing did rob us of some gifts, such as the ability to recite epic poems like The Iliad from memory. But it also created a much larger pool of knowledge from which people could draw, a pool that has continued to expand (or, dare we say, continued to extend?).     There’s no point in trying to hack apart the connections between the inside and the outside of the mind. Instead we ought to focus on managing and improving those connections. For instance, we need more powerful ways to filter the information we get online, so that we don’t get a mass case of distractibility. Some people may fear that trying to fine-tune the brain-Internet connection is an impossible task. But if we’ve learned anything since Clark and Chalmers published “The Extended Mind,” it’s not to underestimate the mind’s ability to adapt to the changing world.     我們的頭腦正受到某種攻擊。這種說(shuō)法不知是否屬實(shí)，但如今我倒經(jīng)常聽(tīng)到這樣的說(shuō)法：不停地發(fā)送短信，使我們?cè)絹?lái)越像個(gè)文盲（或者說(shuō)，像個(gè)WM？——此處原文為illiter8，即illiterate的短信寫(xiě)法變體，譯者按照功能對(duì)等的原則加以處理）。博客使我們粗俗，YouTube令我們膚淺。去年夏天，《大西洋》雜志在其封面上赫然寫(xiě)著一個(gè)問(wèn)題：“Google讓我們?cè)絹?lái)越愚蠢？”文章作者尼古拉斯·卡爾在這份雜志中提出一個(gè)觀點(diǎn)，認(rèn)為互聯(lián)網(wǎng)破壞著我們的大腦，搶奪了我們的記憶與深刻思想。他寫(xiě)道：“一旦我們對(duì)世界的理解（過(guò)程）離不開(kāi)電腦的插足，那么我們自己的（天然）智能就會(huì)被擠壓成單薄的人工智能�！�     要認(rèn)真對(duì)待計(jì)算機(jī)時(shí)代的這種卡桑德拉式預(yù)言，我也很不容易，因?yàn)榇祟愵A(yù)言往往罔顧事實(shí)，危言聳聽(tīng)。而英國(guó)語(yǔ)言學(xué)家大衛(wèi)·克里斯托爾在他的新作《Textng：The Gr8 Db8》（即：Texting: The Great Debate <短信大論戰(zhàn)>——還是借用信息時(shí)代的“流行語(yǔ)”寫(xiě)法——譯者注）列舉了大量實(shí)例，說(shuō)明人們把短信（的“不規(guī)范”寫(xiě)法）視為洪水猛獸，也不外是一種市民式的傳言而已。該書(shū)作者發(fā)現(xiàn)，編寫(xiě)短信并不會(huì)導(dǎo)致書(shū)寫(xiě)水平的退步。相反，他寫(xiě)道：“編寫(xiě)短信能夠?qū)崒?shí)在在地提高人們的文化水平，因?yàn)榘l(fā)短信可以給人們提供更多的閱讀與寫(xiě)作練習(xí)。”     更為顯而易見(jiàn)的是，這些危言聳聽(tīng)的警告之所以有市場(chǎng)，正是利用了人們對(duì)大腦思考機(jī)制的普遍誤解。我們總以為頭腦是與外部世界相脫離的，還以為信息如涓涓細(xì)流一點(diǎn)一點(diǎn)地滲入我們的感覺(jué)而最后到達(dá)我們那個(gè)思想孤島，然后就在這座孤島上呈現(xiàn)出一幅細(xì)致逼真的現(xiàn)實(shí)畫(huà)卷。我們還以為，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和iPhone好象正在摧毀我們的思想大門(mén)、徹底控制了大腦的天然機(jī)能，最后任大腦萎縮成一個(gè)沒(méi)用的智力殘?bào)w。這種想法就象那幅圖畫(huà)一樣，好象是真的，卻解釋不了最近所取得的科學(xué)研究成果。實(shí)際上，人們的思想似乎已經(jīng)學(xué)會(huì)了掙脫腦袋的束縛，學(xué)會(huì)了怎么去建設(shè)世界，包括制造各種機(jī)器即人類的“外腦”。     外腦概念是兩位哲學(xué)家于1998年首次提出來(lái)的，也就是在Google誕生的前后。這兩位哲學(xué)家，一位叫安迪·克拉克，現(xiàn)在愛(ài)丁堡大學(xué)，另一位叫大衛(wèi)·查爾莫斯，現(xiàn)在澳大利亞民族大學(xué)。他們倆在《分析》雜志上發(fā)表一篇短文，題目就叫做《外腦》，就在這篇文章里，他們提出了一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單的問(wèn)題：“思想的終點(diǎn)在哪里？人腦之外的那個(gè)世界的起點(diǎn)又在何處？”對(duì)于這個(gè)問(wèn)題，多數(shù)人都會(huì)回答說(shuō)“就在腦殼里”�？墒强死�克和查爾莫斯的回答令讀者折服，那就是，思想并非僅僅是大腦里面那些神經(jīng)元的產(chǎn)物，并不是被封閉在腦殼里面的一座孤島。思想的概念要更為廣泛，它是一個(gè)系統(tǒng)，是由人腦和人腦周?chē)�的部分環(huán)境構(gòu)成的一個(gè)系統(tǒng)。     克拉克和查爾莫斯請(qǐng)讀者去想象一下：有一名女子名叫印加，印加從朋友那里聽(tīng)說(shuō)現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)博物館正在舉辦一個(gè)展覽，她決定去看看。她想了一會(huì)兒，終于想起來(lái)，博物館就在53號(hào)大道上，就開(kāi)始朝那個(gè)方向走去。印加能想起來(lái)現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)博物館位于53號(hào)大道，就等于她進(jìn)入了她大腦記憶系統(tǒng)的某個(gè)信息存放區(qū)域了。現(xiàn)在再想象一下，還有一個(gè)男子名叫奧托，可是他得了阿茲海默癥。由于他的記憶區(qū)出了問(wèn)題，他只好隨身攜帶一本筆記本，里面記錄了很多重要內(nèi)容。和印加一樣，奧托也聽(tīng)說(shuō)了博物館的那個(gè)展覽，可是由于他無(wú)法進(jìn)入大腦的記憶系統(tǒng)中，他只能查閱筆記本，從而和印加一樣朝同一個(gè)方向走去。     克拉克和查爾莫斯的觀點(diǎn)是，印加這種以人腦為基礎(chǔ)的記憶功能與奧托的筆記本在本質(zhì)上是完全一樣的。印加的頭腦恰好能接觸到儲(chǔ)存在她大腦中那些信息，而奧托則從儲(chǔ)存在筆記本的內(nèi)容中提取信息。換句話說(shuō)，這個(gè)筆記本就是奧托延伸出來(lái)的大腦的一部分。至于奧托是否在大部分時(shí)間里把這本筆記本丟在一邊不管，則關(guān)系不大。而印加在大部分時(shí)間里也是把關(guān)于現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)博物館的地址信息藏在她的意識(shí)里不管的�？死�克和查爾莫斯的結(jié)論是，其實(shí)現(xiàn)實(shí)中的人們更像奧托，而不像印加：我們也有這樣一個(gè)延伸到環(huán)境中去的頭腦。     十一年后，這個(gè)論點(diǎn)還在引起哲學(xué)家、心理學(xué)家及神經(jīng)科學(xué)家的劇烈爭(zhēng)論。毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)，所謂“外腦”，確是一個(gè)匪夷所思的概念。之所以讓人覺(jué)得匪夷所思，理由之一就是我們自己的頭腦以為自己處在一種完全封閉的狀態(tài)。比如說(shuō)，我們與生俱來(lái)的認(rèn)識(shí)是：當(dāng)我們?cè)诖蠼稚献咧�的時(shí)候，我們就象一臺(tái)攝像機(jī)一樣，一刻不停的把身邊的一切詳細(xì)攝錄下來(lái)，然后再運(yùn)用所拍攝到的“精神影片”來(lái)判斷下一步該做什么（該往何處走）。但是，就像我們對(duì)自己形成的各種認(rèn)識(shí)一樣，這個(gè)影片其實(shí)是一種幻覺(jué)，我們的意識(shí)視野實(shí)際上是很狹小的。     伊利諾伊斯大學(xué)的丹尼爾·西蒙斯及哈佛大學(xué)的克里斯托夫·查伯利斯兩位心理學(xué)家所設(shè)計(jì)的那個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)，最能清晰地說(shuō)明我們有多么“有眼無(wú)珠”。在實(shí)驗(yàn)中，兩位學(xué)者請(qǐng)人們觀看一段錄像，錄像里有學(xué)生在交叉跑動(dòng)傳遞籃球，學(xué)生中有一半穿著白色襯衫，另一半穿的是黑色的。受測(cè)試者的任務(wù)是緊盯住其中一隊(duì)，統(tǒng)計(jì)該隊(duì)總共傳遞了多少次籃球。就在比賽進(jìn)行到半程的時(shí)候，賽場(chǎng)上突然闖進(jìn)一頭黑猩猩（原來(lái)是一個(gè)穿著猩猩衣服的學(xué)生），然后在里面大搖大擺地隨便走動(dòng)著。結(jié)果表明：很多受試者事后對(duì)比賽進(jìn)行回憶的時(shí)候，都說(shuō)沒(méi)看見(jiàn)那頭黑猩猩。原來(lái)，他們的大腦早就把這一切拋進(jìn)九霄云外了。     在我們的大腦中，我們并非把世界的一切準(zhǔn)確無(wú)誤地復(fù)制下來(lái)，只能把注意力放在一些雞毛蒜皮的小事上，我們的視線也只能對(duì)事物進(jìn)行點(diǎn)對(duì)點(diǎn)式的掃描。我們只能根據(jù)手頭上要做的事務(wù)去獲取所需的信息，而不管這些事物是對(duì)要洗的衣物進(jìn)行分類，還是去攀登山峰。     在上述過(guò)程中，我們對(duì)信息的捕捉能力簡(jiǎn)直低得嚇人。德州大學(xué)計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)家丹納·巴拉德就開(kāi)發(fā)了一種電腦游戲，可用于測(cè)驗(yàn)這種能力的高低。首先，他讓受測(cè)者記住顯示器左上方顯示的、構(gòu)成一定圖案的彩色積木，然后要求受試者盡量在顯示器的左下角組合出所看到的積木圖案來(lái)。參加這一游戲的人可用鼠標(biāo)從屏幕右邊一塊塊地抓取積木。在玩游戲者的視線從模型轉(zhuǎn)移到他們自己正在組裝的圖案的過(guò)程中，巴拉德就一直在跟蹤著他們眼球的動(dòng)態(tài)。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，玩游戲的人總是先看好原始圖案左上方的一塊，然后才開(kāi)始抓取相應(yīng)的積木，接下去就這么按順序一個(gè)一個(gè)抓下去。巴拉德的實(shí)驗(yàn)表明，游戲者每看一眼，都只能記住單一的信息碎片：第一眼只是記住積木的顏色，第二眼才是記住積木在原始圖案中的位置。人們并沒(méi)有在頭腦中記住積木的詳細(xì)情形，而是根據(jù)需要，一次只捕捉一丁點(diǎn)信息。     克拉克的觀點(diǎn)是，接受巴拉德試驗(yàn)的人實(shí)際上已把那些積木的組合方式變成他們的外腦，這個(gè)外腦就成為接受試驗(yàn)者可以不斷挖掘的知識(shí)儲(chǔ)備庫(kù)，是信息的外部呼吸系統(tǒng)。這就好像印加實(shí)際上并沒(méi)能想起來(lái)現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)博物館的位置一樣，真正給予她記憶的那些信息其實(shí)早已存放在她腦子里的那個(gè)筆記本的某一頁(yè)上。人腦的記憶區(qū)里存放著大量信息，而外腦則能夠在內(nèi)、外兩個(gè)資源庫(kù)之間進(jìn)行快速轉(zhuǎn)換，而并不太在意這些信息來(lái)自何處。     當(dāng)然，人腦并不僅僅是一個(gè)接受信息的裝置而已，它還有決策和發(fā)布命令的功能——而這些命令當(dāng)然不是存放在大腦中的。例如，在積木游戲中，為了移動(dòng)電腦鼠標(biāo)，有些指令是發(fā)送到手臂的神經(jīng)元上的。可是，（在上述過(guò)程中），大腦是無(wú)法先把雙手的動(dòng)作、鼠標(biāo)的走向及整個(gè)游戲進(jìn)程表原原本本復(fù)制下來(lái)再去計(jì)算鼠標(biāo)到底該怎么走才合適的。我們的雙手和眼睛不停地把各種信號(hào)送給大腦，但是反饋?zhàn)饔脮?huì)對(duì)發(fā)送回來(lái)的信號(hào)進(jìn)行修改。于是，手、眼、大腦實(shí)際上是同一個(gè)系統(tǒng)的組成部分。     人腦還有一個(gè)更加特別之處，那就是它會(huì)對(duì)一些新事物進(jìn)行搜索，然后把這些新事物變成反饋系統(tǒng)的組成部分。大家不妨設(shè)想一下這樣的情景：將一根枝條插進(jìn)動(dòng)物的洞穴里。在往里插的過(guò)程中，你在意的只是枝條的遠(yuǎn)端能夠觸碰到什么東西，而不是你抓在手里這一端如何如何。這種感覺(jué)的延伸似乎正是大腦認(rèn)知過(guò)程的結(jié)果�？茖W(xué)家通過(guò)猴子學(xué)習(xí)過(guò)程的實(shí)驗(yàn)，已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)一種現(xiàn)象：在猴子用五分鐘去學(xué)習(xí)如何使用釘耙的時(shí)候，猴子手臂神經(jīng)元的行為方式就會(huì)是全新的。這些神經(jīng)元會(huì)對(duì)釘耙的遠(yuǎn)端所感受到的刺激物做出反射式放電，而對(duì)猴子手里抓著的這一端則沒(méi)有反射。而（猴子）腦子里的其它神經(jīng)元?jiǎng)t只對(duì)猴子的手臂夠得著的范圍內(nèi)的事物有反射作用。讓猴子接受釘耙使用訓(xùn)練的過(guò)程會(huì)改變神經(jīng)元的反射方式，即神經(jīng)元變成能夠?qū)︶敯覊虻弥�的范圍�?nèi)的事物有反射，而不是對(duì)手臂夠得著的范圍內(nèi)的事物有反射。     人腦與外部工具之間相結(jié)合十分緊密，使得人腦與機(jī)器之間建立某種不可思議的協(xié)同界面成為可能。例如，杜克大學(xué)的米吉爾·尼克勒利斯和他的同事就做了這么一個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)：他們把電極安裝在猴子大腦里，再連接到機(jī)器人手上，結(jié)果猴子很快據(jù)學(xué)會(huì)單純用意念去控制機(jī)械手的本領(lǐng)。猴子的神經(jīng)元形成了新的協(xié)同結(jié)構(gòu)，從而在大腦和機(jī)械手之間形成了新的反饋環(huán)。     現(xiàn)已證明，人類在建立這種大腦-機(jī)器緊密聯(lián)系方面的本領(lǐng)也不差。美國(guó)海軍已經(jīng)為直升機(jī)飛行員開(kāi)發(fā)出一種新的飛行服，這種飛行服可以在飛機(jī)傾斜時(shí)給飛行員身體的同向傾斜一側(cè)傳送一種微弱的氣流，而飛行員只要讓身體坐正，就可以對(duì)這一氣流做出反應(yīng)，這種身體反應(yīng)又能夠反過(guò)來(lái)把信號(hào)傳送到直升機(jī)方向操縱桿上。經(jīng)過(guò)訓(xùn)練而能熟練操作這種系統(tǒng)的飛行員就可以實(shí)現(xiàn)盲飛，或者進(jìn)行某種復(fù)雜的飛行動(dòng)作，例如讓直升機(jī)穩(wěn)定地停定在半空中。這時(shí)候，直升機(jī)實(shí)際上已變成飛行員身體的一部分，連接在飛行員的大腦上了。     克拉克認(rèn)為，這些實(shí)驗(yàn)結(jié)果揭示了一個(gè)事實(shí)，即人腦總是在想方設(shè)法去延伸自己，去掌握人腦以前從未接觸過(guò)的各種新工具，并與這些新工具融合為一體。人們對(duì)手提電腦和GPS定位儀的熱衷程度讓另外一些人覺(jué)得很可怕，可是對(duì)于克拉克來(lái)說(shuō)，不熱衷才真正讓他覺(jué)得可怕，因?yàn)橛每死�克的話說(shuō)，人們對(duì)機(jī)電設(shè)備的依賴完全是一種天然的需要。     外腦理論所改變的并不僅僅是我們對(duì)自己大腦的想法，還能改變我們對(duì)今天各種能改變我們思想的技術(shù)的好壞所作出的評(píng)判�，F(xiàn)在看來(lái)，今天我們?yōu)楂@取信息而對(duì)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)——不管是Google還是其他——的依賴就一點(diǎn)都不奇怪了。說(shuō)到底，我們不是一直就像在查詢一個(gè)看到見(jiàn)摸得著的維基百科那樣在了解這個(gè)世界么？這些新技術(shù)對(duì)人腦的改變也不會(huì)有任何壞處，就像猴子的大腦因猴子學(xué)會(huì)如何使用釘耙而發(fā)生了改變一樣，有什么不好呢？     神經(jīng)科學(xué)家很快就會(huì)為提高人腦的技能而發(fā)明出各種新方法的，不管用藥物的辦法還是用植入（芯片）的辦法，一定會(huì)有辦法的。如果說(shuō)這么做不道德，因?yàn)檫@樣就等于違背了我們真正的自己，也就是違背了我們那個(gè)孤立的、獨(dú)特的頭腦，那么這種說(shuō)法就是罔顧生物學(xué)原理了。我們的頭腦早已延伸到外部環(huán)境里去了，而我們對(duì)環(huán)境造成的改變也早已反過(guò)來(lái)改變著我們的頭腦。     這也并不是說(shuō)，我們必須把人腦技能的方方面面都提高到無(wú)以復(fù)加的程度，也不是說(shuō)，再好的腦力延伸總有其反面作用。蘇格拉底不是曾經(jīng)擔(dān)心過(guò)：書(shū)寫(xiě)會(huì)使人健忘，使人糊涂嗎？書(shū)寫(xiě)確實(shí)剝奪了人們的某些天賦，比如背誦如《伊利亞特》這樣的史詩(shī)�？墒�，書(shū)寫(xiě)不也同時(shí)為人類開(kāi)辟了一個(gè)廣闊得多的學(xué)識(shí)天地么？有了這片新的知識(shí)天地，人們才得以從中吸取知識(shí)，而這個(gè)知識(shí)天地一直都處于不斷擴(kuò)展之中（是否也可以大膽地說(shuō)，處在不斷地延伸之中？）。     任何企圖斬?cái)嗳四X內(nèi)部與外界聯(lián)系的做法都是毫無(wú)意義的，相反，我們也許應(yīng)該把精力集中在如何管理和增進(jìn)這些聯(lián)系方面上。例如，我們就應(yīng)該下大力氣，想辦法使我們從網(wǎng)絡(luò)上獲取的信息得到過(guò)濾，使我們不會(huì)出現(xiàn)被集體誤導(dǎo)的情形�？赡苡腥藭�(huì)認(rèn)為，想要對(duì)人腦與互聯(lián)網(wǎng)業(yè)已形成的聯(lián)系加以微調(diào)，是完全不可能的事情。但是，假如從克拉克和查爾莫斯發(fā)表的那篇《外腦》文章開(kāi)始，我們就已經(jīng)學(xué)到某些知識(shí)，那么我們就不會(huì)低估人腦對(duì)這個(gè)變化著的世界的適應(yīng)能力了。     （江天夢(mèng) 譯自The Discovery Magazine）

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