寫在前面

原視頻來自 TED Summit 講座 Juan Enriquez: What will humans look like in 100 years?, June 2016甜刻，字幕 (subtitle) 參考自官方網(wǎng)站。

注：本文在字幕基礎(chǔ)上會有一些筆者個人的筆記伦糯，而且字幕會根據(jù)筆者聽記和具體課程內(nèi)容進行修改悬钳，如有錯誤敬請告知骚露。

Introduction: We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals -- futurist Juan Enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, Enriquez sorts out the ethics associated with evolving humans and imagines the ways we'll have to transform our own bodies if we hope to explore and live in places other than Earth.

導言: 我們可以讓細菌和動植物進化趾代，那么使人體進化呢冀瓦？“人體進化是否合乎倫理伴奥？”未來學家 Juan Enriquez 帶著這樣的疑問，在本次演講中羅列了從中世紀時期的修復學到當下的神經(jīng)工程學與遺傳學所運用的技術(shù)翼闽，為觀眾們梳理了其中與人體進化相關(guān)的倫理學問題拾徙，并對未來想在地球以外的地方生活的人類會如何改造身體進行了設(shè)想。

Video 1

本節(jié)共 1 小節(jié)肄程，時長 01:50锣吼。

• Here's a question that matters. ["Is it ethical to evolve the human body?"]
• Right? Because we're beginning to get all the tools together to evolve ourselves.
• And we can evolve bacteria and we can evolve plants and we can evolve animals,
• and we're now reaching a point where we really have to ask, is it really ethical and do we want to evolve human beings?
• And as you're thinking about that, let me talk about that in the context of prosthetics, prosthetics past, present, future.

prosthetics /prɑ?s?θet?ks/ pl. 假肢 n. 修復學、修補學蓝厌，一種外科分支玄叠，研究假肢相關(guān)的內(nèi)容

• 此處第四條中的 point 疑似有誤，音頻里出現(xiàn)的似乎是 flat拓提，但官方字幕和課程里的文本使用了 point读恃。

• So this is the iron hand that belonged to one of the German counts.
• Loved to fight, lost his arm in one of these battles.
• No problem, he just made a suit of armor, put it on, perfect prosthetic.
• That's where the concept of ruling with an iron fist comes from.

count n. 總數(shù)，總量 v. 統(tǒng)計，清點寺惫；包括
rule with an iron fist 實行鐵腕統(tǒng)治

• And of course these prosthetics have been getting more and more useful, more and more modern. You can hold soft-boiled eggs.
• You can have all types of controls, and as you're thinking about that,
• there are wonderful people like Hugh Herr who've been building absolutely extraordinary prosthetics.
• So the wonderful Aimee Mullins will go out and say, how tall do I want to be tonight?
• Or Hugh'll say what type of cliff do I want to climb?
• Or does somebody want to run a marathon, or does somebody want to ballroom dance?
• And as you adapt these things, the interesting thing about prosthetics is they've been coming inside the body.
• So these external prosthetics have now become artificial knees. They've become artificial hips.
• And then they've evolved further to become not just nice to have but essential to have.

soft-boiled egg 半熟的水煮蛋
ballroom dance 交誼舞 ballroom n. 舞廳疹吃，跳舞場
adapt v. (使) 適應；改編 adopt v. 采用西雀，正式通過萨驶；收養(yǎng)，領(lǐng)養(yǎng) adept adj. 擅長的艇肴，嫻熟的
hip n. 臀部腔呜；野薔薇果 adj. 時髦的，熟悉時尚的

• 此處第四條中提到的 Aimee Mullins 是一名殘奧會短跑冠軍再悼、作家核畴。

• So when you're talking about a heart pacemaker as a prosthetic,
• you're talking about something that isn't just, "I'm missing my leg," it's, "if I don't have this, I can die."
• And at that point, a prosthetic becomes a symbiotic relationship with the human body.

heart pacemaker 心臟起搏器

• 此處第三條中的 symbiotic relationship 表示共生關(guān)系，可以具體細分為 mutualism (互利共生), commensalism (偏利共生), parasitism (寄生) 等等冲九。

Video 2

本節(jié)共 2 小節(jié)谤草，時長 04:04。

• And four of the smartest people that I've ever met -- Ed Boyden, Hugh Herr, Joe Jacobson, Bob Lander -- are working on a Center for Extreme Bionics.
• And the interesting thing of what you're seeing here is these prosthetics now get integrated into the bone; they get integrated into the skin; they get integrated into the muscle.
• And one of the other sides of Ed is he's been thinking about how to connect the brain using light or other mechanisms directly to things like these prosthetics.
• And if you can do that, then you can begin changing fundamental aspects of humanity.
• So how quickly you react to something depends on the diameter of a nerve.
• And of course, if you have nerves that are external or prosthetic, say with light or liquid metal,
• then you can increase that diameter. You could even increase it theoretically to the point where,
• as long as you could see the muzzle flash, you could step out of the way of a bullet.
• Those are the order of magnitude of changes you're talking about.

bionics n. 仿生學莺奸；生物機械學
fundamental adj. 根本的丑孩，十分重大的；基本的憾筏，不能再分的
muzzle flash 開槍時槍口處閃現(xiàn)的火光 muzzle n. 動物的口鼻處嚎杨；給動物戴的口套；槍口氧腰，炮口 v. 給 ... 帶上口套枫浙；阻止 ... 的言論
bullet /?b?l?t/ n. 子彈，彈丸
order of magnitude 數(shù)量級

• This is a fourth sort of level of prosthetics. These are Phonak hearing aids,
• and the reason why these are so interesting is because they cross the threshold from where prosthetics are something for somebody who is "disabled"
• and they become something that somebody who is "normal" might want to actually have,
• because what this prosthetic does, which is really interesting, is not only does it help you hear,
• you can focus your hearing, so it can hear the conversation going on over there.
• You can have superhearing, you can have hearing in 360 degrees, you can have white noise, you can record, and oh, by the way, they also put a phone into this.
• So this functions as your hearing aid and also as your phone.
• And at that point, somebody might actually want to have a prosthetic voluntarily.

• 此處第一條中的 Phonak 是一家瑞士公司古拴，主要研制各類助聽器箩帚。
• 此處第二條是口語化的非正式表達，在正式表達里黄痪，the reason is 后面的部分不能用連詞 because 引導紧帕，但可以使用 that 引導的表語從句。
• 此處第二條中的 "disabled" 在講座中用手勢代表了雙引號桅打；此處第三條中的 "normal" 在講座中的讀法為 quote and quote, normal是嗜。

• All these thousands of loosely connected little pieces are coming together,
• and it's about time we ask the question, how do we want to evolve human beings over the next century or two?
• And for that, we turn to a great philosopher [Yogi Berra]
• who was a very smart man despite being a Yankee fan.
• And Yogi Berra used to say, of course, that it's very tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

• 此處第四條中的 Yankee 指一只棒球隊伍 New York Yankees。這支隊伍的帽徽是疊寫的 NY挺尾，如下圖鹅搪。??
  
  picture from wikipedia

• So instead of making a prediction about the future to begin with, let's take what's happening in the present with people like Tony Atala,
• who is redesigning 30-some-odd organs.
• And maybe the ultimate prosthetic isn't having something external, titanium. Maybe the ultimate prosthetic is taking your own gene code,
• remake your own body parts, because that's a whole lot more effective than any kind of a prosthetic.
• But while you're at it, then you can take the work of Craig Venter and Ham Smith.
• And one of the things that we've been doing is trying to figure out how to reprogram cells.
• And if you can reprogram a cell, then you can change the cells in those organs.
• So if you can change the cells in those organs, maybe you make those organs more radiation-resistant; maybe you make them absorb more oxygen; maybe you make them more efficient to filter out stuff that you don't want in your body.

titanium /t??te?ni?m/ n. 鈦
gene n. 基因
absorb /?b?z??rb/ v. 吸收，吸入遭铺；同化丽柿；理解恢准，掌握

• 此處第一條中 Tony 是 Anthony 的簡稱；此處第五條中的 Ham 是 Hamilton 的簡稱甫题。
• 數(shù)字-some-odd 表示比該數(shù)字多一點馁筐，例如此處第二條中的 30-some-odd 表示 30 余個。

• And over the last few weeks, George Church has been in the news a lot
• because he's been talking about taking one of these programmable cells and inserting an entire human genome into that cell.
• And once you can insert an entire human genome into a cell, then you begin to ask the question, "Would you want to enhance any of that genome?
• Do you want to enhance a human body?
• How would you want to enhance a human body?
• Where is it ethical to enhance a human body and where is it not ethical to enhance a human body?"
• And all of a sudden, what we're doing is we've got this multidimensional chessboard
• where we can change human genetics by using viruses to attack things like AIDS,
• or we can change the gene code through gene therapy to do away with some hereditary diseases, or we can change the environment,
• and change the expression of those genes in the epigenome and pass that on to the next generations.
• And all of a sudden, it's not just one little bit, it's all these stacked little bits
• that allow you to take little portions of it until all the portions coming together lead you to something that's very different.

genome n. 基因組坠非，染色體組 genetics n. 遺傳學
do away with 消除敏沉，廢除，終止
hereditary adj. 遺傳性的麻顶；世襲的赦抖，有世襲身份的 heredity n. 遺傳過程舱卡；遺傳特征

• 此處第八條中的 AIDS 指 Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (獲得性免疫缺陷綜合征)辅肾，音譯為艾滋病。
• 此處第十條中的 epigenome 指表觀基因組轮锥，它能記錄生物體 DNA 與組蛋白的一系列化學變化矫钓，影響染色體結(jié)構(gòu)以及基因作用，并且它具有遺傳能力舍杜，可以被環(huán)境因素動態(tài)更改新娜，例如環(huán)境導致的遺傳性疾病就和其有關(guān)。

Video 3

本節(jié)共 2 小節(jié)既绩，時長 04:44概龄。

• And a lot of people are very scared by this stuff.
• And it does sound scary, and there are risks to this stuff.
• So why in the world would you ever want to do this stuff?
• Why would we really want to alter the human body in a fundamental way?
• The answer lies in part with Lord Rees, astronomer royal of Great Britain.
• And one of his favorite sayings is the universe is 100 percent malevolent.
• So what does that mean? It means if you take any one of your bodies at random, drop it anywhere in the universe, drop it in space, you die.
• Drop it on the Sun, you die; drop it on the surface of Mercury, you die; drop it near a supernova, you die.
• But fortunately, it's only about 80 percent effective.

malevolent /m??lev?l?nt/ adj. 充滿惡意的，心腸狠毒的 benevolent /b??nev?l?nt/ adj. 仁慈憐憫的饲握，樂善好施的
supernova /?su?p?rno?v?/ n. 超新星私杜，某些恒星在演化接近末期時經(jīng)歷的一種劇烈爆炸 (注: 它是事件，不是物體)

• 此處第五條中的 Great Britain 指 Kingdom of Great Britain (大不列顛王國)救欧，其與北愛爾蘭構(gòu)成聯(lián)合王國衰粹，即英國。

• So as a great physicist once said, there's these little upstream eddies of biology that create order in this rapid torrent of entropy.
• So as the universe dissipates energy, there's these upstream eddies that create biological order.
• Now, the problem with eddies is, they tend to disappear -- they shift; they move in rivers.
• And because of that, when an eddy shifts, when the Earth becomes a snowball, when the Earth becomes very hot, when the Earth gets hit by an asteroid,
• when you have supervolcanoes, when you have solar flares,
• when you have potentially extinction-level events like the next election,
• then all of a sudden, you can have periodic extinctions.
• And by the way, that's happened five times on Earth,
• and therefore it is very likely that the human species on Earth is going to go extinct someday.
• Not next week, not next month, maybe in November, but maybe 10,000 years after that.

torrent n. 湍流笆怠，激流铝耻，洪流；迸發(fā)蹬刷，連發(fā)瓢捉，狂潮
entropy /?entr?pi/ n. 混亂無序的狀態(tài)；(熱力學) 熵办成，體系混亂程度的度量 trophy /?tro?fi/ n. 獎杯泡态，獎品；紀念品诈火，戰(zhàn)利品
dissipate /?d?s?pe?t/ v. (使) 消散兽赁，驅(qū)散并慢慢消失状答；揮霍
solar flare 太陽耀斑 solar wind 太陽風 sunspot n. 太陽黑子

• 此處第一條和第二條中的 there's + 復數(shù)名詞 是口語化的非正式表達，雖然一些語言學家認為這種表達是合理的刀崖，但是不建議在正式表達中使用惊科。順帶一提，there're 算是 there are 和 there were 的縮寫亮钦，在正式表達中也不建議使用馆截。
• 此處第六條中的 the next election 和第十條中的 November 都是指 2016 年舉行的美國第 58 屆總統(tǒng)選舉（每四年選舉一次），選舉初步結(jié)果（全民投票）在當年的 11 月揭曉蜂莉，隨后會產(chǎn)生代表在同年 12 月按照全民投票的意向進行實際投票蜡娶。一般來說，初步結(jié)果可以代表最終結(jié)果映穗，除非出現(xiàn)不可抗力導致無法上任窖张。

• As you're thinking of the consequence of that,
• if you believe that extinctions are common and natural and normal and occur periodically,
• it becomes a moral imperative to diversify our species.
• And it becomes a moral imperative because
• it's going to be really hard to live on Mars if we don't fundamentally modify the human body. Right?
• You go from one cell, mom and dad coming together to make one cell, in a cascade to 10 trillion cells.
• We don't know, if you change the gravity substantially, if the same thing will happen to create your body.
• We do know that if you expose our bodies as they currently are to a lot of radiation, we will die.
• So as you're thinking of that, you have to really redesign things just to get to Mars.
• Forget about the moons of Neptune or Jupiter.

moral imperative 道德準則 imperative n. 重要緊急的事，命令蚁滋；必要的事宿接，需要；規(guī)則辕录；祈使語氣 adj. 迫切的睦霎，緊急的；必要的走诞，不可避免的副女，勢在必行的；命令的蚣旱，專橫的碑幅；祈使的
cascade n. (尤指一連串瀑布中的一支) 小瀑布；傾瀉 v. 如瀑布般下落姻锁，傾瀉而出
substantially adv. 充分地枕赵，極其，相當巨大地位隶；實質(zhì)上拷窜；大體上，基本上，總的來說
moon n. 行星的天然衛(wèi)星；月亮 Neptune n. 海王星 Jupiter n. 木星

• And to borrow from Nikolai Kardashev, let's think about life in a series of scales.
• So Life One civilization is a civilization that begins to alter his or her looks.
• And we've been doing that for thousands of years.
• You know, you've got tummy tucks and you've got this and you've got that.
• You've altered, you know, your looks, and I'm told that not all of those alterations take place for medical reasons.
• Seems odd.

borrow /?b??ro?/ v. 借入
tummy tuck (非正式) 腹部整形手術(shù)暇昂，即 abdominoplasty

• 此處第一條中提到的 Nikolai Kardashev 是一名俄國天體物理學家 (1932-2019)， 他設(shè)計了一套度量體系 Kardashev scale 通過能夠利用的功率來區(qū)分宇宙中文明發(fā)展的等級懊昨，其中一級文明能夠使用一顆行星上其母星 (恒星) 對其輻射的全部能量 (例如太陽輻射到地球的能量)，二級文明能夠使用一顆恒星輻射的全部能量 (例如太陽系中的能量)春宣，三級文明能夠使用一個恒星系輻射的全部能量 (例如銀河系中的能量)酵颁，這和本篇講座里提到的 Life N civilization 略有不同嫉你，不能對標。

• A Life Two civilization is a different civilization.
• A Life Two civilization alters fundamental aspects of the body.
• So you put human growth hormone in and the person grows taller, or you put X in and the person gets fatter or loses metabolism or does a whole series of things,
• but you're altering the functions in a fundamental way.

• To become an intrasolar civilization, we're going to have to create a Life Three civilization,
• and that looks very different from what we've got here.
• Maybe you splice in Deinococcus radiodurans so that the cells can resplice after a lot of exposure to radiation.
• Maybe you breathe by having oxygen flow through your blood instead of through your lungs.

intrasolar adj. 太陽系以內(nèi)的 extrasolar adj. 太陽系以外的
splice v. 粘接躏惋，膠接幽污，鉸接，捻接 slice v. 把 ... 切成薄片 split v. (使) 分裂簿姨，(使) 分開

• 此處第三條中的 Deinococcus radiodurans 指抗輻射奇異球菌距误，其對輻射有極強的抵抗能力。

• But you're talking about really radical redesigns,
• and one of the interesting things that's happened in the last decade is we've discovered a whole lot of planets out there.
• And some of them may be Earth-like.
• The problem is if we ever want to get to these planets, the fastest human objects,
• Juno and Voyager and the rest of this stuff, take tens of thousands of years to get from here to the nearest solar system.
• So if you want to start exploring beaches somewhere else,
• or you want to see two-sun sunsets, then you're talking about something that is very different,
• because you have to change the timescale and the body of humans in ways which may be absolutely unrecognizable.
• And that's a Life Four civilization.

radical adj. 根本的扁位；徹底的准潭；激進的 n. 方根；根式域仇；自由基

• 此處第二條中的 that's 是錯誤表達 (可能讀起來比較順口)刑然，正確的表達應該是 that've。
• 此處第五條中的 Juno 指朱諾號木星探測器殉簸，Voyager 指兩顆旅行者號外層星系空間探測器闰集。

Video 4

本節(jié)共 2 小節(jié)，時長 04:46般卑。

• Now, we can't even begin to imagine what that might look like, but we're beginning to get glimpses of instruments that might take us even that far.
• And let me give you two examples. So this is the wonderful Floyd Romesberg,
• and one of the things that Floyd's been doing is he's been playing with the basic chemistry of life.
• So all life on this planet is made in ATCGs, the four letters of DNA.
• All bacteria, all plants, all animals, all humans, all cows, and everything else.
• And what Floyd did is he changed out two of those base pairs, so it's ATXY.
• And that means that you now have a parallel system to make life, to make babies, to reproduce, to evolve,
• that doesn't mate with most things on Earth or in fact maybe with nothing on Earth.
• Maybe you make plants that are immune to all bacteria; maybe you make plants that are immune to all viruses.
• But why is that so interesting? It means that we are not a unique solution.
• It means you can create alternate chemistries to us that could be chemistries adaptable to a very different planet that could create life and heredity.

instrument n. 手段，促成某事的人或物爽雄；儀器蝠检，工具，器械挚瘟；樂器
chemistry n. 物質(zhì)的化學組成叹谁； 化學，化學過程乘盖；兩人間的某種強烈關(guān)系

• 此處第四條中的 is made in 是不恰當?shù)谋磉_ (據(jù)說母語者偶爾會用錯搭配 ... 但他們能立刻搞懂含義)焰檩，個人認為恰當?shù)谋磉_應該是 is made up of。以下是部分介詞搭配的辨析：
  • 材料：be made of 強調(diào)制作過程沒有改變原材料的形式 (成品中還能分離出原材料)订框，be made from 強調(diào)材料到成品產(chǎn)生了不可逆的變化 (例如化學反應析苫，再例如制作后無法恢復如初)，be made out of 強調(diào)材料從某一種形式轉(zhuǎn)化成另一種形式穿扳，be made up of 強調(diào)多種事物的組合構(gòu)成了整體衩侥。
  • 狀態(tài)：be made by 強調(diào)制作的執(zhí)行者，be made in 強調(diào)制作的環(huán)境 (例如時間矛物、地點)茫死，be made for 強調(diào)制作的目的。
  • 其他：be made with 用于表達制作 (尤指食物) 時所用到的 (尤指主要的) 成分履羞、工序等等 (可以是抽象事物)峦萎，此時可以只列舉一部分信息屡久，另外如果要包含非抽象的成分，通常制作的物品需要是多種成分混合爱榔。

• The second experiment, or the other implication of this experiment, is that all of you, all life is based on 20 amino acids.
• If you don't substitute two amino acids -- if you don't say ATXY -- if you say ATCG plus XY, then you go from 20 building blocks to 172,
• and all of a sudden you've got 172 building blocks of amino acids to build life-forms in very different shapes.

amino acid 氨基酸

• The second experiment to think about is a really weird experiment that's been taking place in China.
• So this guy has been transplanting hundreds of mouse heads. Right?
• And why is that an interesting experiment?
• Well, think of the first heart transplants.
• One of the things they used to do is they used to bring in the wife or the daughter of the donor
• so the donee could tell the doctors, "Do you recognize this person? Do you love this person? Do you feel anything for this person?"
• We laugh about that today.
• We laugh because we know the heart is a muscle, but for hundreds of thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years,
• "I gave her my heart. She took my heart. She broke my heart." We thought this was emotion
• and we thought maybe emotions were transplanted with the heart. Nope.

• So how about the brain? Two possible outcomes to this experiment.
• If you can get a mouse that is functional, then you can see, is the new brain a blank slate?
• And boy, does that have implications?
• Second option: the new mouse recognizes Minnie Mouse.
• The new mouse remembers what it's afraid of, remembers how to navigate the maze,
• and if that is true, then you can transplant memory and consciousness.
• And then the really interesting question is, if you can transplant this, is the only input-output mechanism this down here?
• Or could you transplant that consciousness into something that would be very different,
• that would last in space, that would last tens of thousands of years, that would be a completely redesigned body that could hold consciousness for a long, long period of time?

blank slate 白板涂身，空白的石板
mechanism n. 機制，體制搓蚪，結(jié)構(gòu)方式蛤售；機械裝置，機械部件

• 此處第四條中的 Minnie Mouse 原意是米妮老鼠妒潭，是一位卡通人物悴能，這里比喻為戀愛對象。
• 此處第七條中的 this 為疑問句中的賓語成分雳灾。

• And let's come back to the first question: "Why would you ever want to do that?"
• Well, I'll tell you why -- because this is the ultimate selfie.
• This is taken from six billion miles away, and that's Earth.
• And that's all of us. And if that little thing goes, all of humanity goes.
• And the reason why you want to alter the human body is because you eventually want a picture that says,
• "That's us, and that's us, and that's us." Because that's the way humanity survives long-term extinction.
• And that's the reason why it turns out it's actually unethical not to evolve the human body
• even though it can be scary, even though it can be challenging,
• but it's what's going to allow us to explore, live and get to places we can't even dream of today,
• but which our great-great-great-great-grandchildren might someday.
• Thank you very much.

• 此處第四條是口語化的非正式表達漠酿，在正式表達里，the reason is 后面的部分不能用連詞 because 引導谎亩，但可以使用 that 引導的表語從句炒嘲。
• 此處第十條中的 great- 指 ... 的孩子，例如 great-grandchild 指曾孫 (孫的孩子)匈庭，great-great-grandchild 指玄孫 (曾孫的孩子)夫凸，great-great-great-grandchild 指來孫 (玄孫的孩子)，great-great-great-great-grandchild 指晜孫 (kūn sūn, 來孫的孩子)阱持。

Grammar & Speaking

malicious adj. 懷有惡意的夭拌，惡毒的
apathetic adj. 冷漠的，淡漠的衷咽，無動于衷的鸽扁，缺乏興趣的 indifferent adj. 不感興趣的，漠不關(guān)心的镶骗；平庸的桶现，一般的；中立的鼎姊，不分化的

灑灑水啦～