In 1999, the futurist Ray Kurzweil published a book entitled The Age of Spiritual Machines. He looked forward to a future in which the “human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems?.?.?.?and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality.”1999年，未来学家雷?库兹韦尔(Ray Kurzweil)编写的一本叫作《机器之心》(The Age of Spiritual Machines)的书出版发行了。在他所期望的未来，“人类及其建构的计算技术将需要解决问题古老的问题……并将需要转变丧生的本质。”Mr Kurzweil is now an executive at Google, one of whose co-founders, Larry Page, launched a start-up, Calico, in 2013 with the aim of harnessing advanced technologies that will enable people to “lead longer and healthier lives”.库兹韦尔现在是谷歌(Google)的一名高管。

2013年，谷歌创始人之一拉里?佩奇(Larry page)创立了一家初创企业Calico，其宗旨是利用先进设备技术，让人们需要“更加长寿、更加身体健康”。Others go even further. Aubrey de Grey, co-founder of Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, a research centre, believes that ageing is just an engineering problem. Technological progress, he maintains, will eventually enable human beings to achieve what he calls “life extension escape velocity”.有一些人的目标更加远大。研究机构Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence的牵头创始人奥布里?德格雷(Aubrey de Grey)指出，凋亡只是一个工程问题。

他指出，科技进步最后将让人类以求超过他所说的“寿命缩短的逃逸速度”。As for Mr Kurzweil, earlier this year he announced that he had “set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion-fold by merging with the intelligence we have created”. In this “transhumanist” vision, once we turn ourselves into “spiritual machines”, we will be able to live forever.至于库兹韦尔，今年早些时候，他宣告他“把2045年确认为超过‘奇点’的时间，到那时我们将通过与我们建构的智能结合，让我们的实际智慧强化10亿倍”。

在这种“超强人类主义”的远景中，一旦我们变为了“有灵魂的机器”(spiritual machines)，我们就能总有一天活下去。Although mortality denial is currently fashionable in Silicon Valley, it is not new. On the contrary, it is one of the most successful products ever designed and has been on the market for millennia.尽管在硅谷，“坚称丧生”(mortality denial)现在是个时髦词汇，但它并不新鲜。忽略，它是有史以来设计过的最顺利的产品之一，早已经常出现在市场几千年了。

Because human beings are the only animals to have evolved an explicit, consciously experienced insight into their own finitude, there is a robust and enduring demand for this particular psychological sleight of hand. Unfortunately, death is not just something the Chinese have invented to make America less competitive. Empirical evidence and rational argument converge on the simple, sobering fact that all of us will eventually disappear for good — sooner or later, more or less gracefully, and with more or less suffering.因为人类是唯一一种早已对自身局限性构成了具体的、心态的了解的动物，所以人类对这种类似的心理把戏具有强劲且长久的市场需求。意外的是，丧生并非只是中国人发明者出来让美国减少竞争力的东西。

经验证据和理性辩论都指向一个非常简单、发人深省的事实：我们所有人最后都将永久性消失，或早或晚，或较为飘逸或不那么飘逸，或较为伤痛或不那么苦难。It is hard to face this fact in an intellectually honest manner. Human beings have a problem that no creature before them had: the human cognitive self-model explicitly tells its user that everybody dies, thereby creating a toxic form of self-knowledge, a deep existential wound. My emotional deep structure tells me there is something that must never happen, while rational thought tells me that the ultimate accident is inevitable. Religion was an early-stage adaptation to this neurocomputational bug.我们很难真诚地面对这个事实。

人类面临的问题是在人类之前任何生物都没遇上过的：人类理解的自我模型具体告诉他它的使用者，所有人都会杀，从而建构了一种危害的自我理解形式，一个深深的牵涉到轮回的伤口。我内心的情感告诉他我，有些事情总有一天会再次发生，而理性思维告诉他我，最后的车祸是不可避免的。宗教是对这种神经计算缺失的早期适应环境。Aiding and abetting human self-deception in ingenious and sophisticated ways is therefore a lucrative business.因此，用独有且简单的方式来协助和鼓动人类自我愚弄是一门有利可图的做生意。

In its most primitive form, represented by organised religion down the centuries, mortality denial has consisted in just that — simple, outright denial. In the religious perspective, the good news is that all of this is not true — the dead will be resurrected. You are loved and accepted by an omnipresent divine being. And if you manage to accept yourself as accepted, you will finally be able to feel at home in a strange and hostile world, reacquainting yourself with the early childhood emotion of security.具有最完整的形式，以许多世纪以来的有的组织宗教为代表，坚称丧生的要点在于非常简单、完全的坚称。从宗教的角度来说，好消息是一切都不是知道，病死的人将复活。有一位无处不在的神在爱人着你并拒绝接受你。如果你拒绝接受被神所拒绝接受的自己，你最后将需要在一个陌生且敌对的世界中应付自如，新的体验儿时那种安全感。

The gospel of alternative facts comes in many different flavours and varieties. In organised self-deception, there are levels of sophistication. For example, a Buddhist may claim that she does not even want to be reborn, that her highest goal is to liberate herself from the cycle of death and rebirth. If things don’t work out with nirvanic giga-bingo in this life, then, unfortunately, something in you is forced to survive death.这种替代事实的教义多种多样。在有的组织的自我愚弄中，复杂程度各有不同。

例如，佛教徒有可能指出，她甚至想重生，她的最低目标是让自己挣脱丧生与重生的循环。如果此生未能如愿转入极乐世界，那么意外的是，你身体中的一些东西将会丧生。Other versions of denial involve tying your self-esteem to your tribe or nation. You can stabilise your sense of self-worth by being a good communist, a pious Catholic or by becoming a complacent secular humanist — all you need is a set of values that you can live up to and a mutually reinforcing community of believers.其他坚称丧生的版本还包括把你的自尊心与你所属的部落或国家联系在一起。

你可以通过沦为一个杰出的共产主义者、一个笃信的天主教徒或沦为一个洋洋得意的尘世人文主义者取得自我价值感觉。你必须的是一套你能遵从的价值观以及一个互相促进的信徒群体。

Others strive for symbolic immortality by seeking to make a genuine and lasting contribution to science, philosophy or culture. Imagine writing a book that will be read centuries after your death, or composing a piece of music or creating art that will be admired by thousands long after your physical body has shrivelled and perished.还有一些人通过谋求为科学、哲学或文化作出确实长久的贡献，希望取得具备象征意义的永生。例如，写出一部在你死后几百年仍被读者的著作，或者创作一首音乐或一件艺术品，在你的躯体灰飞烟灭很幸之后仍将被数千人赞颂。

Silicon Valley tech evangelism and transhumanism are merely the latest forms of culturally evolved self-deception. They present us with a new metaphysical placebo for existential palliative care. Will we upload ourselves into virtual reality? Perhaps a benevolent superintelligence can help us break through into a life beyond all suffering? Could the church of the technological singularity be right in proclaiming that immortality is nearer than we think?硅谷的科技宣教和超强人类主义只是在文化上有所演化的自我愚弄的近期形式。他们为牵涉到人类不存在的姑息疗法带给新的超自然的安慰剂。我们否不会把我们自己带进虚拟现实？也许，一种愿意的超级智能可以协助我们挣脱所有伤痛？技术奇点学说声称永生比我们想象的更加将近，这否准确？It is tempting to dismiss scientifically inspired presentiments of immortality as arrant nonsense, but we should not underestimate the way ideas like transhumanism speak powerfully to our unconscious need for delusion. This is not only a new religion that does without God and churches — it also is a marketing strategy for new technology. A novel form of cross-promotion and co-branding, tech evangelism really aims at a deeper and more efficient penetration into the digital marketplace by offering mortality denial in the same package.我们很更容易将受到科学灵感的永生预感斥为胡说八道，但我们不不应高估超强人类主义之类的点子有力的证明了我们潜意识中是必须幻觉的。

这不仅是一种没上帝和教堂的新宗教，也是一种推展新的科技的营销战略。科技宣教是一种新型的交叉推展和品牌牵头，确实的目的是通过明确提出某种程度纸盒的驳斥丧生之说道，更加了解、更加有效地渗透到数字市场。

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