Dec 10 2021
知识创造无限资源
我们将不断创造新知识和新资源
Knowledge Makes the Existence of Resources Infinite
We’re going to keep creating new knowledge and new resources
布雷特： 知识是使资源无限存在的东西。知识的创造是无限的。我们将继续创造更多的知识，从而学习创造更多不同的资源。
Brett: Knowledge is the thing that makes the existence of resources infinite. The creation of knowledge is unbounded. We’re going to keep on creating more knowledge and, thereby, learning about more and different resources.
《无限的开始》中有一个关于铕的奇妙寓言，大卫谈到了大约 60 年前第一台彩色电视机开始制造时，有一种阴极射线管，你可以向荧光屏幕发射电子流。荧光屏会有这些像素，三种不同的颜色，其中一种是红色，屏幕上的那些红色荧光粉充满了铕元素。
There’s this wonderful parable of europium in The Beginning of Infinity where David talks about when the first color television started to be manufactured about 60 years ago. There was a cathode ray tube type where you’d fire a stream of electrons at a phosphorescent screen. The phosphorescent screen would have these pixels, three different colors, one of which was red, and those red phosphors on the screen were filled with the element europium.
铕的有趣之处在，当你通电时，当你触发它时，它会发出这种红色的光。铕特别有趣的地方在于它是元素周期表上唯一的这种元素;它是唯一能做到这一点的化学物。如果你向它通电，它会发出彩色电视所需的红色光。
The interesting thing about europium is, when you put electricity through it, when you excite it, it glows with this red color. The extra-interesting thing about europium is that it is the only such element on the periodic table; it’s the only chemical that will do that. If you fire electrons at it, it will glow the red that you need to have for color television.
据计算，地球上只有一定数量的铕，而阴极射线管制造商很快就会消耗完这些有限的铕。因此，科学家们有一个明确的测量数据显示阴极射线管的数量是有限的;因此，我们将消耗完阴极射线管。
It was calculated that there’s only a certain amount of europium on the earth, and that amount of europium was quickly being consumed by cathode ray tube manufacturers. So the scientists had a perfectly robust mathematical theory about how the number of cathode ray tubes was finite; therefore, we’re going to run out of cathode ray tubes.
确实，从非常狭义的意义上讲，对于任何的资源，它在地球上的总量都是有限的。当然，外太空会有铕，你可能会在那里开采它，但更深层次的思考是，没有人再需要阴极射线管了。当下，彩色电视跟铕的提取无关。
It’s true, in a very narrow sense, that for any given resource you’re going to have a finite amount on planet Earth. Of course, there’s going to be europium in outer space and you could probably mine it there, but the deeper point is that no one has cathode ray tubes anymore. The whole idea of color television has nothing to do with the extraction of europium these days.
我们都有 LCD 屏幕，我们有等离子屏幕，未来可能会出现有其他东西，它们跟我们今天拥有的技术完全无关。但我们依然会有彩色电视或彩色屏幕。
We’ve all got LCD screens, we have plasma screens, and there will probably be something else coming in the future that will have absolutely nothing to do with the kind of technology we have today. But we’re still going to have color television or color screens.
对于我们能想到的任何资源来说，就是这么回事。
This is true for absolutely any resource that we can think of.
你很可能会做出一个非常好的马尔萨斯式计算，如果你碰巧生活在非洲稀树草原上，我们就不能继续烧木头，因为所有的森林都会被烧毁。显然，我们的木材将耗尽，木材的数量是有限的，虽然可以种植更多的木材，但木材的消耗量也会超过存在量。这就是对煤炭、石油和我们消耗的所有其他资源的争议。
You might very well make a perfectly good Malthusian calculation that we can’t keep on burning wood if you happen to be living on the African savanna, because eventually all of the forests are going to be burned down. Obviously, we’re going to run out of wood. There’s a finite amount of wood. Even if you can grow more wood, eventually the consumption of wood is going to outstrip the amount that’s there. And this is the argument that’s made for coal, oil, and everything else that we happen to be consuming.
纳瓦尔： 即使是所谓的空旷空间也有很多物质和很多东西可以转化为能量。那里的资源是无限，但知识是有限的。
Naval: Even so-called empty space has a lot of matter and a lot of things that could be converted into energy. There is no limit to the number of resources out there. There’s purely a limit to knowledge.
不幸的是，这里有一个悲观的假设，人们认为人类的创造力是有限的。我认为那些没有建造东西、没有创造过新事物的人，似乎最能感受到这一点。
Unfortunately, there’s a pessimistic assumption here that people make that human creativity is bounded, and I think it’s the people who have not built things, who have not created new things from scratch, who seem to feel this the most.
马丽：宇宙是无限的，让我们尽情地异想天开、凭着自己的天赋异禀，去创造自己的infinite无限小宇宙、在宇宙中飞天遁地、尽情探索、畅游 ，其实你了不起~
We’re walking in the air
We’re floating in the moonlit sky
The people far below are sleeping as we fly
We’re holding very tight
I’m riding in the midnight blue
I’m finding I can fly so high above with you
