Reality seems to be diametrically opposed to human comprehension

现实似乎与人类的理解截然相反

Theodore Greenbaum
Essayist, Fiction Writer, Occasional Humorist

作者：西奥多 · 格林鲍姆
散文家，小说作家，偶尔的幽默作家

It’s generally assumed that physics provides us with obxtive truths about reality. The general consensus seems to be that we are slowly but surely figuring things out, getting gradually closer and closer to understanding everything there is to know about the universe, and all of reality may someday be understood through the unbiased lens of a perfect, obxtively truthful “Theory of Everything.”
This optimistic outlook, unfortunately, is completely unfounded. There is no obxtively truthful way of describing reality on a fundamental level, and there never can be.

人们普遍认为，物理学为我们提供了关于现实的客观真理。普遍的共识似乎是，我们正在缓慢但肯定地弄清楚事情，逐渐接近理解宇宙中的一切，所有的现实有朝一日可能会通过一个完美的、客观真实的 "万物理论 "来理解。
不幸的是，这种乐观的前景是完全没有根据的，从根本上来说，根不不可能有客观真实的方式来描述现实，也永远不可能有。

To understand why, we could start by examining language, the ways we communicate our knowledge. All of human language is wrought from metaphor and is inherently non-obxtive. There is no sentence in any language which is not modified in some sense by an individual’s experiential bias or by the presence or absence of contextual information, which itself will be rooted in further metaphors and require explanation ad infinitum. If I write, “Donald Trump sure is a smart guy!” the reader would obviously need to know whether I am being ironic or sincere. The meaning of the sentence is modified by the bias of the reader, and by their individual perception of bias within the speaker. A sentence like “Hope is the thing with feathers” will undoubtedly produce a different image in the mind of anyone who reads it.

为了理解其中的原因，我们可以从研究语言开始，也就是我们交流知识的方式。人类所有的语言都是由隐喻（比喻说法）塑造出来的，本质上是非客观的。在任何语言中，没有哪个句子在某种意义上没有被个人的经验偏见或语境信息的存在或缺失所修改，而这些信息本身将植根于进一步的隐喻，并需要无限的解释。
如果我写道：“唐纳德 · 特朗普肯定是个聪明人!”读者显然需要知道我是在讽刺还是真诚的赞扬特朗普的聪明，一句话的含义被读者的偏见，以及他们对说话人内在偏见的个人看法所改变。像“希望就像插上了羽毛”这样的句子无疑会在读者的脑海中产生不同的印象。

Obviously, the language of modern physics is not so deliberately subjective, but it is subjective nonetheless. A common statement like “all the information about a particle is encoded in its wave function” cannot be verified or falsified without completing the impossible task of extricating it from a strictly metaphorical understanding. Physicists can alleviate these ambiguities to a certain extent with the use of additional sentences which specify their intended meanings, but so long as they use language to make these specifications, there will always be further specifications to make. We can make a definition approximate obxtivity by avoiding theoretical and physical descxtions entirely, recounting only the strict details of experimental observation, but even within these details rhetorical ambiguities will arise.

显然，现代物理学的语言并不那么刻意主观，但它仍然是主观的，像”关于一个粒子的所有信息都编码在其波函数中”这样的常见说法，如果不完成把它从严格的比喻性理解中解脱出来这一不可能完成的任务，就不能被验证或证伪。
物理学家可以通过使用额外的句子来明确它们的含义，在一定程度上缓解这些含糊不清的情况，但是只要他们使用语言来进行说明，总会有进一步的说明要做，我们可以通过完全避免理论和物理描述，只叙述实验观察的严格细节，来给客观性下一个近似的定义，但即使在这些细节中，也会出现修辞上的歧义。

The only form of human language which admits no subjectivity is mathematics, which may suggest that mathematics is the route by which we can make obxtive physical statements. Trouble arises, however, when we try to assign meaning to these mathematical statements and connect them to the phenomena they are meant to describe. Take Schr?dinger’s equation for example. We might say that it is an obxtive statement because the mathematical rules are well defined and the equation will function in the same manner for any mathematician, but as soon as we apply meaning to the equation and say that it describes quantum probability or a particle’s wave-function, we immediately enter once again into the realm of subjectivity and metaphor. This fundamental problem in asserting meaning in mathematics is what led Albert Einstein to write, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

人类语言中唯一不承认主观性的形式是数学，这可能表明数学是我们作出客观物理陈述的途径。然而，当我们试图赋予这些数学陈述以意义，并将它们与它们所要描述的现象联系起来时，麻烦就出现了。
以薛定谔方程为例，我们可以说这是一个客观的陈述，因为其数学规则定义得很好，方程式对任何数学家来说都会以同样的方式起作用，但是一旦我们把方程式的意义应用到方程式上，说它描述了量子概率或粒子的波函数，我们立刻又进入了陷入了主观性和隐喻的领域，阿尔伯特 · 爱因斯坦写道: “就数学定律指向现实而言，它们是不确定的，如果它们是确定的，它们便不指向现实。”

A “Theory of Everything” must necessarily walk a line between mathematical code divorced from theory and metaphorical creation story divorced from certitude. The only way to accurately and completely describe the universe without recourse to metaphor would be to literally write the equation for the universe, to write a code which could circumvent all ambiguity and, using nothing but mathematical law, reproduce the entire universe with fidelity.

一个 "万物理论 "必须在脱离理论的数学代码和脱离确定性的隐喻性创造故事之间做出选择，准确而完整地描述宇宙的唯一方法，就是直接写出宇宙的方程式，写出一个能避免所有模糊性的代码，只用数学定律，精确地再现整个宇宙。

To some, this may not seem all that far-fetched. Many people subscribe to the idea that our universe is an elaborate computer simulation. Even Neil deGrasse Tyson has argued that it’s a strong possibility. The notion that we may be living in “The Matrix,” so to speak, has been bolstered by rapid advancements in computer technology, an increasingly digitized world, and an unerring faith in human scientific ingenuity.

对一些人来说，这看起来并不是那么遥不可及，许多人赞同我们的宇宙是一个复杂的计算机模拟。
甚至连奈尔·德葛拉司·泰森都认为这种可能性很大，电脑技术的飞速发展、日益数字化的世界，以及对人类科学创造力的坚定信念，都支持了我们可能生活在“黑客帝国”中的观点。

I am not quite so optimistic. We have every reason to believe that the universe is infinitely expansive, infinitely complex, and eternal in duration, but even if none of these statements were true, there would still be no computer or simulation that could run the “code” or “program” of the universe, nor any brain that could comprehend it, because there could never be a computer or thinking machine with more RAM than the reality it exists within. One cannot fit the entire universe into a computer which exists in that universe, and even if a computer with infinite processing power did exist, we would still have to write a code which could somehow reproduce the infinite complexity of our physical reality.

我可没那么乐观，我们有充分的理由相信宇宙是无限膨胀的，无限复杂的，并且在持续时间上是永恒的，但是即使这些陈述都不是真的，仍然没有计算机或者模拟可以运行宇宙的“代码”或者“程序”，也没有任何大脑可以理解它，因为不可能有一台计算机或者思考机器拥有比它所存在的现实更多的内存，一个人无法把整个宇宙装进一台存在于宇宙中的计算机，即使一台拥有无限处理能力的计算机确实存在，我们仍然需要编写代码，以某种方式重现我们物理现实的无限复杂性。

And it’s not just a problem of complexity. Complexity, perhaps, could be overcome on an infinite time scale. The problem is that the universe isn’t just really big and really complicated — it’s fundamentally incompatible with human comprehension.

而且这不仅仅是一个复杂性的问题，或许，复杂性可以在无限的时间尺度上被克服，问题在于，宇宙不仅非常庞大和复杂，而且根本不符合人类的理解。

All of human understanding is, by necessity, rooted in dichotomies. The concept of hot necessitates a cold counterpart, just as black necessitates a white counterpart. In the same manner that computers store and process information using digital codes of ones and zeros, our brains store and process information using individual neurons which alternate between states of rest or excitation. Our entire capacity for thought and knowledge is determined by this binary state of individual neurons, and we are predisposed to think in dualities. It is completely beyond our mental capacity to envision any system of language or understanding which could exist without duality. A language without duality would not be a language. It would be an infinite homonym.

人类的所有理解，必然地，根植于二分法之中，热的概念需要一个冷的对应物，正如黑色需要一个白色对应物。
就像计算机使用1和0的数字代码来存储和处理信息一样，我们的大脑使用单个神经元来存储和处理信息，这些神经元在静止状态和兴奋状态之间交替，我们的整个思维和知识的能力是由单个神经元的二元状态决定的，我们倾向于二元性思维——这完全超出了我们的精神能力去想象任何没有双重性的语言或理解系统，没有二元性的语言不会是一种语言，否则它将是“无限”的同义词。

Reality, on a fundamental level, possesses no black and white dichotomy by which we could come to understand it. We have been raised to believe there is a fundamental distinction between space and matter. Space is a big sea of nothingness with bits of somethingness flying through it like billiard balls. But this is demonstrably false.
If General Relativity taught us anything, it’s that space — far from being void, vacuum, or merely the nothingness that somethingness moves around in — is in fact an energetic, dynamic field. Space itself is a medium, and it is the mediator of gravitational force.

从根本上讲，现实不存在我们可以用来理解它的黑白二分法，我们从小就被教育要相信空间和物质之间有着根本的区别，太空是一片虚无的大海，有些东西像台球一样从中飞过，但这显然是错误的。
如果说广义相对论教会了我们什么的话，那就是空间远远不是虚无、真空，或者仅仅是某种物质在其中运动的虚无——空间实际上是一个充满活力的、动态的领域，空间本身是一种媒介，是引力的媒介。

If quantum physics has taught us anything, it’s that matter — far from being indivisible building blocks of substance hurtling through a void —is really distributed across space and behaves according to mysterious wave dynamics. Particles are impossible to pin down and capture at a single, substantive point.

如果说量子物理学教会了我们什么的话，那就是物质——远非不可分割的物质在空间中飞驰的构件——实际上是分布在空间中的，并且根据神秘的波动力学表现出来，粒子是不可能在一个单一的、实质性的点上被固定和捕获的。

The “obxts” which we have thought of as “matter” are not merely raisins embedded in a bread loaf of nothingness — they are fluctuations in an omnipresent field. There is no fundamental distinction between space and matter, and thus there is no inherent dichotomy through which we may divide, conquer, and properly understand our universe.

我们认为是“物质”的“物体”不仅仅是镶嵌在虚无的面包里的葡萄干，它们是一个无所不在的场中的波动，空间和物质之间没有根本的区别，因此也不存在内在的二分法，我们可以通过它来划分、征服和正确理解我们的宇宙。

Take the electron, for example. An electron is supposedly a “point particle” or a “discreet packet of energy,” but what does that even mean? We must imagine it, evidently, as either a dimensionless non-obxt or as a little baggie of abstract force. In either case, if we had a perfect microscope with which to zoom into an electron, we would expect to find nothing solid — just “energy” or “empty space,” which are just abstractions. The same is true with protons and neutrons, the “elementary particles” making up the nucleus. It was discovered that protons and neutrons are like small nuclei themselves: they are composed of quarks, which lix together in an atom-like structure.

以电子为例，一个电子被认为是一个“点粒子”或“分散的能量包”，但这究竟意味着什么呢？显然，我们必须把它想象成一个无量纲的非物体，或者一小袋抽象的力，不管是哪种情况，如果我们有一台完美的显微镜，可以用来放大电子，我们可能会发现其并非某种固体——只是“能量”或“空白空间”，这些都是抽象的东西，构成原子核的“基本粒子”——质子和中子也是如此，人们发现质子和中子本身就像小原子核： 它们是由夸克组成的，夸克以类似原子的结构连接在一起。

Based on the developing trend, the quarks, too, are predominantly empty space, perhaps punctuated by some other, “more elementary” particle that has yet to be discovered. Inside these “more elementary” particles, the same rule would apply: there’s a whole lot of empty space, dotted here and there by even smaller particles, and these smaller particles will just be a whole lot of empty space with even smaller particles inside them, and so on to infinity. There is no reason to believe that we will ever find a chunk of elementary matter. No matter how far we zoom, we will never find an indivisible Lego brick or a cosmic billiard ball.

基于这种发展趋势，夸克也主要是空无一物的空间，也许还有其他一些尚未被发现的“更基本的”粒子，在这些“更基本的”粒子中，同样的规则也适用： 有大量的空间，点缀着更小的粒子，而这些更小的粒子又是一大片空间，里面有更小的粒子，以此类推，直到无穷大，我们没有理由相信我们会发现基本物质，无论我们走多远，我们永远不会找到一块不可分割的乐高积木或者一个宇宙台球。

Even if it requires a millennia of advancements in microscope or particle accelerator technology, physicists will eventually have to embrace the fact that matter and energy, whatever they may be, are not housed within indivisible particles but distributed everywhere. There is no such thing as a fundamental particle, just as there is no such thing as empty space.

即使这需要显微镜或粒子加速器技术上千年的进步，物理学家们最终也不得不接受这样一个事实：物质和能量，不管它们是什么，并不存在于不可分割的粒子中，而是分布在各个地方，根本不存在所谓的基本粒子，就像根本不存在所谓的真空一样。

A famous koan asks us, “You can make the sound of two hands clapping. Now what is the sound of one hand?” If matter does not consist of little billiard balls whizzing around through “empty space,” then this truth must reinforce our certainty that the universe, on its most fundamental level, is inherently immune to human understanding.
The “oneness” of the universe is impossible for our duality-based intellect to grapple with in any meaningful way. Even if we had the perfect super computer — an intellect so advanced it could handle more bytes of data than there are “particles” in the universe — it would never be able to represent our reality with true fidelity, because of that baffling oneness.

一个著名的公案（ 注：koan，禅宗术语，心印，公案）问我们: “ 你可以发出两只手拍打的声音，那一只手的声音是什么?” 如果物质不是由在“虚空”中呼啸而过的小台球组成的，那么这个事实必定会加强我们的确定性，即宇宙在其最基本的层面上，本质上是无法被人类理解的。
宇宙的“一体性”对于我们以二元性为基础的智慧生物来说是不可能以任何有意义的方式来处理的，因为这种令人困惑的统一性，即使我们拥有一台完美的、先进到可以处理的数据字节比宇宙中的“粒子”还多超级计算机，也永远不可能真实地反映我们的现实。

We know that reality is not nothing. It is not a 0. We know it is not a homogeneous something. It is not a 1. We know it is not a mixture of something and nothing — it is not a string of 1’s and 0’s. It’s somewhere in between something and nothing, in a state that logical systems will never be able to approach.
As another famous koan tells us: between “is” and “is not” is the dwelling place of those who know.

我们知道现实不是虚无，它不是0，我们也知道它不是同质的东西，不是1，我们还知道它也不是有和无的混合物——它不是一串1和0，它介于有和无之间，处于逻辑系统永远无法接近的状态。
正如另一个著名的公案告诉我们的： 在“是”和“不是”之间是知者的居所。