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诺贝尔奖得主认为科学系统能提供人生经验

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky.

"The benefits from science as they show up in our daily lives are just enormous...but I want to try and argue that right now science can do something for us, give us a kind of hope that goes beyond just those benefits." Paul Romer. He shared the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Romer spoke¹ April 9th at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. at an event honoring 10 U.S. Nobel and Kavli Prize Laureates.

"Now, there's nobody who's got benefits as direct and immediate² as Jim." Jim Allison, who was also there, and who shared the 2018 Nobel in Physiology³ or Medicine for his work that led to new drugs against cancer. 

"You know when you can show there are people alive now because of the discovery you've made, that just trumps⁴ everything. Most of us create benefits in an indirect way and they come in small steps, so they're harder to perceive." Romer then cited William Nordhaus, with whom he shared the 2018 Economics prize.

"Bill has this beautiful paper that measures a particular type of benefit, which is asking how much light in lumen hours can somebody get from an hour's worth of work. And roughly speaking from, say, the beginning of the Neolithic⁵ Revolution up to, say, the time of the founding of the National Academy..." That's about 12,500 years ago to 1863. "...that went up by a factor of 20. You know, people just bump into things, they discover things, so 20 times more light."

But from the time of the founding of the academy until now it's gone up by a factor of 20,000. So one hour of work translates into 20,000 more lumen hours of light that it did just in the time since this institution was founded. So those benefits are just huge, and by the way, it's the system of science that made those very rapid ones possible, not just curiosity, not just random⁶ search."

"So, they're huge benefits, but right now I think there's more anxiety about how we're going to interact with each other as people than there is about just can we keep having more material benefits. And here I think science is maybe even more important. Because it's a very unusual community of people. It draws on people from all backgrounds, from all over the world, and unites us in kind of a common purpose...and we get things done because we insist on things like truth and honesty, and we can trust each other because of that insistence⁷. And we welcome people into that community if you're willing to live by those norms. And we ask you to leave, or we don't pay any attention to you if you don't live by those norms."

"And the goal is really one of offering benefits that can be shared by everybody...so if you think about kind of like the hope for humanity, science is a model of just what we can accomplish, but who we can be, and how we can be with each other."

For Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是史蒂夫·米尔斯基。

“正如在我们的日常生活中所显现的那样，科学带来了巨大的益处，但我想尝试证明的是，现在科学可以为我们做些事情，可以给我们带来超越这些益处的希望。”2018年诺贝尔经济学奖获奖者之一保罗·罗默说到。4月9日，位于华盛顿特区的美国国家科学院为诺贝尔奖和卡夫里奖的10名美国获奖者举行表彰活动，罗默出席该活动并发表了讲话。

“现在，没有人能像吉姆那样直接且即时地获得好处。”吉姆·艾利森当时也在活动现场，他凭借新型抗癌药的研究而获得2018年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖。

“当你能证明有人因为你的发现而存活下来时，这感觉胜过一切。我们大多数人都通过间接方式创造利益，而且这些利益是一点一点到来的，所以很难被察觉。”罗默随后引用了威廉·诺德豪斯的论文，诺德豪斯与他共享了2018年诺贝尔经济学奖。

“比尔写了这篇衡量特定类型利益的优秀论文，探索一个人工作一小时能得到多少流明的光。粗略地讲，从新石器时代革命开始到美国国家科学院成立......”也就是大约从12500年前到1863年。“光的流明时增长了20倍。人们碰到东西，发现东西，所以光增加了20倍。”

“但从美国国家科学院成立至今，光的流明时已增长了2万倍。因此，一小时工作转化成2万多光的流明时，而这是在美国国家科学院成立以来这么短的时间内做到的。因此，这些益处非常大，顺便说一下，是科学系统让这种快速增长成为可能，而不仅是因为好奇和随机搜索。”

“因此，这些是巨大的益处，但我认为，现在令人们更焦虑的是我们作为人类要如何互动，而不是我们能否继续获得更多物质利益。我认为科学可能更加重要。因为这是一个不同寻常的社群。科学吸引了来自不同背景、世界各地的人们，用一个共同目标将我们团结在一起，我们能解决事情，是因为我们坚持真理和诚信，因为这种坚持我们能彼此信任。如果你愿意遵守这些准则，那我们欢迎你们加入这个社区。但如果你不遵守这些准则，那我们会要求你离开，或是不去关注你。”

我们的目标是所有人都能分享这些益处。因此，如果你会考虑人类的希望这种事情，那科学不仅是我们能实现的模范，还是我们能成为的榜样，以及我们与他人相处方式的范例。

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是史蒂夫·米尔斯基。