异星真理：寻找与外星智慧共享的普遍原则
本文提出“异星真理”概念——除数学与物理定律外，所有智能生命可能共享的普遍真理，如实验验证、练习提升、奥卡姆剃刀等。作者认为这一思路可作为探求真理的靶标，并与Erdős的“上帝之书”类比。文中还提及AI可能成为身边的异星智能，但强调哲学的目标是用异星真理作指引，而非精确界定其边界。适合对哲学、认知论及跨学科基础原理感兴趣的读者。
October 2022 If there were intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, they'd share certain truths in common with us. The truths of mathematics would be the same, because they're true by definition. Ditto for the truths of physics; the mass of a carbon atom would be the same on their planet. But I think we'd share other truths with aliens besides the truths of math and physics, and that it would be worthwhile to think about what these might be.
2022年10月 如果宇宙中其他地方存在智能生命，它们会与我们共享某些真理。数学的真理是相同的，因为它们由定义成立。物理的真理也一样；碳原子的质量在它们的星球上也是相同的。但我认为，除了数学和物理的真理，我们还会与外星人共享其他真理，思考这些可能是什么是值得的。
For example, I think we'd share the principle that a controlled experiment testing some hypothesis entitles us to have proportionally increased belief in it. It seems fairly likely, too, that it would be true for aliens that one can get better at something by practicing. We'd probably share Occam's razor. There doesn't seem anything specifically human about any of these ideas.
例如，我认为我们会共享这样一个原则：针对某个假设进行的受控实验，让我们有理由按比例增加对该假设的信念。同样，似乎很有可能对外星人来说，通过练习可以变得更好这一事实也成立。我们可能共享奥卡姆剃刀。这些想法似乎都没有什么特别人类的地方。
We can only guess, of course. We can't say for sure what forms intelligent life might take. Nor is it my goal here to explore that question, interesting though it is. The point of the idea of alien truth is not that it gives us a way to speculate about what forms intelligent life might take, but that it gives us a threshold, or more precisely a target, for truth. If you're trying to find the most general truths short of those of math or physics, then presumably they'll be those we'd share in common with other forms of intelligent life.
当然，我们只能猜测。我们不能确定智能生命可能采取什么形式。我在这里的目标也不是探索那个问题，尽管它很有趣。外星真理这个想法的要点不在于它提供了推测智能生命可能形式的方式，而在于它给了我们一个真理的阈值，或者更准确地说，一个目标。如果你试图寻找数学或物理之外的最一般真理，那么它们很可能就是那些我们会与其他智能生命形式共享的真理。
Alien truth will work best as a heuristic if we err on the side of generosity. If an idea might plausibly be relevant to aliens, that's enough. Justice, for example. I wouldn't want to bet that all intelligent beings would understand the concept of justice, but I wouldn't want to bet against it either.
如果我们偏于宽容，外星真理作为一种启发式方法将发挥最佳效果。如果一个想法很可能与外星人相关，那就够了。例如，正义。我不愿打赌所有智能生命都会理解正义的概念，但也不愿打赌它们不理解。
The idea of alien truth is related to Erdos's idea of God's book. He used to describe a particularly good proof as being in God's book, the implication being (a) that a sufficiently good proof was more discovered than invented, and (b) that its goodness would be universally recognized. If there's such a thing as alien truth, then there's more in God's book than math.
外星真理的概念与埃尔德什的“上帝之书”思想有关。他常把特别好的证明描述为在上帝之书中，这意味着（a）足够好的证明更多是被发现而非发明，（b）其优良性会被普遍认可。如果存在外星真理这样的东西，那么上帝之书里就不只有数学了。
What should we call the search for alien truth? The obvious choice is "philosophy." Whatever else philosophy includes, it should probably include this. I'm fairly sure Aristotle would have thought so. One could even make the case that the search for alien truth is, if not an accurate description of philosophy, a good definition for it. I.e. that it's what people who call themselves philosophers should be doing, whether or not they currently are. But I'm not wedded to that; doing it is what matters, not what we call it.
我们该把对外星真理的探索称为什么？显而易见的选择是“哲学”。无论哲学还包括什么，它很可能应该包括这个。我很确定亚里士多德会这么认为。甚至可以论证，对外星真理的探索即使不是哲学的准确描述，也是一个很好的定义。也就是说，这是自称哲学家的人应该做的事情，无论他们目前是否在做。但我并不坚持这一点；做这件事才是重要的，称它为什么并不重要。
We may one day have something like alien life among us in the form of AIs. And that may in turn allow us to be precise about what truths an intelligent being would have to share with us. We might find, for example, that it's impossible to create something we'd consider intelligent that doesn't use Occam's razor. We might one day even be able to prove that. But though this sort of research would be very interesting, it's not necessary for our purposes, or even the same field; the goal of philosophy, if we're going to call it that, would be to see what ideas we come up with using alien truth as a target, not to say precisely where the threshold of it is. Those two questions might one day converge, but they'll converge from quite different directions, and till they do, it would be too constraining to restrict ourselves to thinking only about things we're certain would be alien truths. Especially since this will probably be one of those areas where the best guesses turn out to be surprisingly close to optimal. (Let's see if that one does.)
我们或许有一天会拥有类似外星生命的东西，以人工智能的形式存在于我们中间。而这反过来可能让我们精确地知道一个智能生命必须与我们共享哪些真理。例如，我们可能会发现，不可能创造出我们认为智能却不使用奥卡姆剃刀的东西。有一天我们甚至可能证明这一点。但是，尽管这类研究非常有趣，对于我们的目的来说却并不必要，甚至属于不同的领域；哲学的目标（如果我们这么称呼的话）是看我们能用外星真理作为目标想出什么想法，而不是精确地说出它的阈值在哪里。这两个问题或许有一天会汇合，但它们将从截然不同的方向汇合，而在那之前，将自己的思维限制在肯定属于外星真理的事情上会过于束缚。尤其是这可能是这样一个领域：最好的猜测结果惊人地接近最优。（看看这个猜测是否如此。）
Whatever we call it, the attempt to discover alien truths would be a worthwhile undertaking. And curiously enough, that is itself probably an alien truth.
无论我们叫它什么，试图发现外星真理都是一项值得的事业。而且奇怪的是，这本身很可能就是一个外星真理。
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Greg Brockman, Patrick Collison, Robert Morris, and Michael Nielsen for reading drafts of this.
感谢 Trevor Blackwell、Greg Brockman、Patrick Collison、Robert Morris 和 Michael Nielsen 对本文初稿的审阅。