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作者:Eric Michael Johnson @ 2014-12-30
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值)
来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/article/20003131/
Why do we choose to cooperate and how can we promote greater cooperation in world affairs? These are the questions that Robert Axelrod has pursued for more than 40 years. His career has been an interdisciplinary exploration that has encompassed mathematics, political science, and evolutionary biology. Now, his signature achievements in the areas of game theory and complex systems have earned him the highest scientific honor that the United States can bestow: the National Medal of Science.
我们为何选择合作?我们如何在世界事务中推进更大程度的合作?这些都是Robert Axelrod追问了40多年的问题。他的整个职业生涯都致力于跨学科研究,涉及数学、政治科学与进化生物学。如今,他在博弈论和复杂系统领域的标志性成就使他获得了美国可授予的最高科学荣誉:国家科学奖章。
I first encountered Axelrod’s work during my graduate studies working with great apes. His suggestion that cooperation could evolve as an adaptive strategy was an inspiration for me in a field still dominated by the view that selfish interests were the primary driver of evolution. After several years of watching bonobos – one of our closest evolutionary relatives – as they peacefully shared their resources with groupmates and avoided violence at all costs, I was eager for an alternative explanation.
我第一次接触Axelrod的著作,还是在研究生阶段研究类人猿的时候。他提出,合作有可能发展为一种适应策略。当时我所在的领域仍被自利乃进化的基本驱动这一观点所主导,而他的观点对我深有启发。我那时已对人类的进化近亲之一倭黑猩猩进行了好几年观察,发现它们与群体成员和平共享资源,不惜代价避免暴力,所以我特别渴望看到一种替代解释。
Axelrod’s publications with the celebrated evolutionary biologist William Hamilton had put the study of cooperation on a new foundation. What’s more, his application of this work to political science offered the potential for an evolutionary framework that could help reduce violence and encourage mutual aid between nations and peoples.
Axelrod和知名进化生物学家William Hamilton的共同作品已为研究合作奠定了新的基础。不仅如此,在将这一成果应用于政治科学之后,他还提出了一种进化论框架的潜在可能,该框架将有助于在国家与民族之间减少暴力、鼓励合作。
Axelrod first pursued a degree in mathematics before receiving his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 1969. After brief stints working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s failed presidential campaign that pledged to end the Vietnam War, Axelrod taught at UC Berkeley before becoming a professor of Political Science and Public Policy at The University of Michigan.
Axelrod先获得了数学学位,1969年又获得耶鲁大学政治学博士学位。他曾在国防部长办公室以及参议员尤金·麦卡锡誓将结束越战的失败的总统竞选中短暂工作。此后,Axelrod任教于加州大学伯克利分校,后来成为密歇根大学的政治科学与公共政策教授。
It was Axelrod’s work with computer simulations involving the Prisoner’s Dilemma game that launched his scientific career. In the game, two people who committed a crime are arrested and each is placed in solitary confinement for interrogation. If one betrays the other, the first goes free while the second is sentenced to three years in prison. If they both betray one another, they each receive two years. But if they both keep silent, they receive the minimum penalty of one year each. Under this scenario, the best individual strategy would be to betray the other. However, in actual trials, people were much more likely to cooperate than would be expected under the assumption of rational self-interest. Cooperation and altruism seem to be innate characteristics of the human species.
Axelrod对“囚徒困境”博弈的计算机模拟工作开启了他的科学事业。在此类博弈中,两个被捕的罪犯被分别单独拘禁,接受审问。如果其中一个出卖另一个,那么前者就能得到自由,而后者将被处以3年牢狱。如果两人都出卖彼此,那么将各获2年牢狱。但是,如果两人都保持沉默,他们得到的就都是最轻惩罚,即1年牢狱。在这种情形中,最佳的个人策略是背叛同伙。但是,在现实审判中,较之依据理性自私假设得出的预期,人们合作的可能性要大得多。合作和利他似乎是人类的一种天性。
Axelrod has been able to extend his model of cooperation from animals in nature, down to cancer cells, and up to conflicts involving rival superpowers. His books include The Evolution of Cooperation, The Complexity of Cooperation, and Harnessing Complexity. He has been published in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,World Politics, and the Journal of Peace Research. During his extensive career, his work on cooperation has been cited more than 9,000 times by researchers across academic disciplines.
Axelrod已将其合作模型大为拓展,从自然界的动物向下延伸至癌细胞,向上延伸至对立强权之间的冲突。其著作包括《合作的进化》、《合作的复杂性》和《驾驭复杂性》,并曾在《科学》、《自然》、《美国国家科学院院刊》、《世界政治》与《和平研究杂志》等期刊上发表论文。在漫长的学术生涯中,他关于合作的研究已被各个学科的研究者引用过9000多次。
It was my distinct honor to talk with Professor Axelrod last week from his current position in the U.S. State Department. In our discussion, he reflected on his work with evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, how cooperation can be promoted within groups, and what this ultimately means for a planet caught in the thrall of competing national powers.
上周,我无比荣幸地与目前在美国国务院就职的Axelrod教授进行了交谈。在谈话中,他回顾了他与进化生物学家William Hamilton的著作,并思考了团体内部如何促进合作以及这对一个深受国际竞争困扰的星球最终意味着什么。
Eric Michael Johnson: To begin with, I would like to talk with you about your work with the evolutionary biologist William Hamilton. In my opinion, this was a model of interdisciplinary collaboration that enriched both fields. How did you end up working with him?
Eric Michael Johnson(以下简称J):首先,我想和你谈谈你与进化生物学家William Hamilton合著的著作。我认为,这是本跨学科合作的典范,对两个领域均很有促进。你是如何同他建立合作的?
Robert Axelrod: I approached him because I thought that my work on the Prisoner’s Dilemma would have applications to biology. First I got in touch with Richard Dawkins and it was he who suggested Bill Hamilton who, at the time, was visiting The University of Michigan where I was. I didn’t even know he was there.
Robert Axelrod(以下简称A):我去找他,是因为我觉得我对囚徒困境的研究可能在生物学上得以应用。首先我是跟Richard Dawkins接触,是他推荐的Bill Hamilton。Hamilton当时正访问我所在的密歇根大学。那时候我甚至都不知道他就在那儿。
When I looked him up and told him about my basic idea, he thought it was quite interesting. As you know, before he died of course, he was a world-class evolutionary biologist most noted for showing that animals often cooperate when they are closely related to each other. But my suggestion was a different idea: that cooperation could also be based on reciprocity.
当我找到他,把我的基本想法跟他一说,他觉得特别有意思。你当然知道,他生前曾是世界级的进化生物学家,特别是以指出亲缘关系密切的动物之间经常进行合作这一点而出名。不过我提出的是个不同的想法:合作也可能基于互惠。
To my delight, Bill immediately saw the value of this approach and he thought we could develop some useful applications for biology. He had already used game theory in some of his work, although he didn’t regard himself as a game theorist. We decided to write an article for Science, which is probably the world’s leading scientific journal.
令我高兴的是,Bill立马看出这一方法的价值,并且认为我们可以在生物学上提出一些有益的应用。他此前已在自己的一些研究中用过博弈论,尽管他并不自视为一个博弈理论家。我们决定给《自然》写篇文章,那大概是世界上最好的科学杂志。
Bill was able to bring the relevance to biology and speak directly to evolutionary biologists in a way that I could not and I brought the original theory. Then we worked out some of the elaborations together. We were really fortunate in that, not only was the article accepted, it was chosen as the best article of the year in Science magazine. It certainly gave my later work a mark of scientific credibility.
Bill把生物学引入进来,并且以一种我做不到的方式直接与进化生物学家对话,而我提供的则是原创理论。然后我们共同把某些细节阐述部分解决了。我们运气很好,文章不仅被采用了,还被选为《科学》杂志的年度最佳论文。这当然给我以后的工作提供了科学可信性。
Johnson: What is one of your fondest memories of working with Hamilton? Can you paint a scene of how one of your collaboration sessions played out?
J:关于你和Hamilton的合作,你最愉快的记忆是什么?你能描绘一下你们进行合作的场景吗?
Axelrod: One of the characteristics I remember about him is that when we were talking about an idea he might suddenly stop and think very deeply about it. I learned to keep quiet and let him ponder. Many times he would come up with a really interesting next step. Of course, sometimes he would come up with something completely different because he had given up pondering the topic at hand and his mind had gone off in some other direction. I could never tell which it would be. It was a lot of fun.
A:我记得他有个特点,就是当我们在讨论一个想法时,他可能会突然停下来,陷入深思。我后来学会在这时候保持安静,让他沉思。好多时候,他会想出一个特别有意思的下一步措施。当然,有时候他也会想出一个完全不同的东西,因为他已没在思考我们手头的事,思想早已离题到别的方向去了。我永远没法预知到底会如何。这很有意思。
Johnson: You were both so generous with one another in how you described your work together. For example, Hamilton wrote in his autobiography that your collaboration added to his own biological insights. Would you say that it also added to your own perspective on political science?
J:在描述你们之间的合作时,你们俩对彼此都非常慷慨大度。比如,Hamilton在他的自传中就说,你们的合作增加了他自己对生物学的理解。你觉得这一合作也拓宽了你自己对政治科学的视角吗?
Axelrod: It certainly gave me a deeper sense of the fundamentals that we were studying. It wasn’t something specific like trench warfare, which was one of my examples. I saw that this model could be applied in many different places. For example, as you may know, I later developed another application related to this work as it had to do with cooperation among cancer cells. The same thing happened for him and, several years later, he came up with another idea that he wanted to try out on me related to parasites.
A:这当然让我对我们当时正研究的基本原理有了更深的理解。它不是堑壕战这么具体的东西,堑壕战是我那时使用的案例之一。我领会到,这个模型能应用于许多不同的地方。比如,如你所知的,我后来论述了与该项研究有关的另外一个应用,涉及癌细胞之间的合作。对他而言,事情也是如此。数年之后,他提出了另外一个与寄生物有关的想法,想要征求我的看法。
Johnson: This would have been your joint paper on the origin of sex.
J:这应该就是你们关于性别起源的合作论文了。
Axelrod: Yes, his idea was quite amazing. You see, at the time we did not have a good explanation for the fact that almost all large animals and plants reproduce sexually. This was a serious puzzle because it meant that only half of adults – the females – could reproduce. This is a huge cost in evolutionary terms, so there must be something very valuable about it. The fact that sex is so universal means it must be something that large animals and plants have in common.
A:对,他的想法确实神奇。你知道,对于几乎所有大型动植物都采用有性繁殖一事,我们当时并没有一个好的解释。这是个很重要的谜题,因为它意味着只有半数的成年个体,即雌性,能进行繁殖。从进化的角度来看,这是个巨大的代价,所以必定对应特别大的价值。而由于性别的存在是那么普遍,这种价值必定是大型动植物所共有的。
Bill’s idea for what they have in common was the need to resist parasites. Parasites evolved to mimic our cells so that our immune system wouldn’t attack them. As a result, they can evolve around thirty times faster than we can since their generation time is so short. If you were to reproduce asexually it would mean you’d have an offspring that was almost identical to you, so the parasites that are adapted to you would also be adapted to your offspring. However, by reproducing sexually our offspring are quite different from us. Therefore, the parasites have to start all over. Bill’s idea was that sexual reproduction is an adaptation to resist parasites. It is just a brilliant idea.
Bill认为这是为了抵抗寄生物。寄生物进化得能够模拟我们的细胞,使自己不受免疫系统的攻击。结果是,它们的进化速度比我们快30倍,因为它们的世代时长特别短。如果你进行无性繁殖,那就意味着你的后代将跟你几乎一模一样,那么适应了你的寄生物将同样适应你的后代。而有性繁殖使后代与我们大为不同。因此,寄生物得从头开始进化适应。Bill的看法就是,有性繁殖是为抵抗寄生物而产生的一种适应。这真是个绝妙的想法。
Johnson: How did you end up coauthoring the paper with him?
J:你是如何跟他合写这篇论文的?
Axelrod: He said to me that he didn’t have a way of modeling this concept because it inherently involved many genes and, in the formal model, you could only add two or three different genes before the whole thing got too complicated with all of the interaction effects. I used a technique that John Holland at University of Michigan had developed called the genetic algorithm. This was a computer simulation of the genetics and allowed us to handle dozens of genes in one simulation.
A:他告诉我他找不到方法为这个概念建模,因为它本身涉及许多基因。而在正式的模型中你只能加入两到三个不同的基因,再多就会由于交互作用变得过于复杂。我使用了一种叫做遗传算法的技术,是由密歇根大学的John Holland开发的。这是对基因的一种计算机模拟,一次模拟能处理好几十个基因。
This was just what we needed and we developed a simulation to demonstrate that this idea, at least in principle, was viable. It was a lot of fun to first have one idea of mine that I took to Bill only to have him come back with an idea of his own that I helped do simulations on.
我们就需要这个。我们建模展示了这一想法至少在理论上是可行的。这事确实很有意思,之前是我拿着一个想法去找Bill,结果促使他提出了一个他自己的想法,然后他又来找我帮忙对这个想法进行模拟。
Johnson: So it was a meeting of complementary minds. You would build on one another’s ideas and inspiration.
J:这就是头脑的互补。你们互相发展对方的观点和灵感。
Axelrod: Right. I remember he said in his memoirs that we were both quite serious about aesthetics. We like simple theories and want to get to the fundamentals of things. We both had a background in mathematical modeling and game theory so, even though we came from different disciplines, we had some important things in common.
A:对。我记得他在回忆录里说我们俩都非常看重美感。我们都喜欢简单的理论,渴望获得事物的基本原理。我们都曾接受过数学建模和博弈论的训练,所以尽管我们属于不同的学科,但在许多重要方面有共同点。
In addition, I had been fascinated with evolution ever since high school and had taken it quite seriously. I thought a lot about evolutionary biology although I certainly was not a professional. But it meant that he and I could communicate well together because I knew many of the basics in a way that political scientists wouldn’t normally be expected to.
除此之外,自高中时起我就一直对进化很是着迷,也很重视。我经常思考进化生物学的问题,当然我肯定不是这方面的专家。但这意味着我和他之间能够很好地交流,因为我知道很多政治科学家通常不会知道的基础知识。
Another thing that he mentioned in his memoirs is that neither one of us had any need to one up the other or establish who had made the biggest contribution. There was never any need to be overly modest just out of the sake of politeness, which I think is common in Britain and something Bill was used to from his time at Oxford. He was simply a delight to work with.
他在回忆录中还提到另外一件事,就是我们都没想要压过对方或者要论谁的功劳大。我们也从未觉得有必要出于礼貌的考虑而表现的过分谦虚,这一点我想在英国很普遍,而Bill自其牛津时代起就已习惯如此。与他合作真的非常愉快。
Robert Axelrod访谈录
National Medal of Science Awarded To Political Scientist Robert Axelrod
政治学家Robert Axelrod获颁国家科学奖章
作者:Eric Michael Johnson @ 2014-12-30
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值)
来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/article/20003131/
Why do we choose to cooperate and how can we promote greater cooperation in world affairs? These are the questions that Robert Axelrod has pursued for more than 40 years. His career has been an interdisciplinary exploration that has encompassed mathematics, political science, and evolutionary biology. Now, his signature achievements in the areas of game theory and complex systems have earned him the highest scientific honor that the United States can bestow: the National Medal of Science.
我们为何选择合作?我们如何在世界事务中推进更大程度的合作?这些都是Robert Axelrod追问了40多年的问题。他的整个职业生涯都致力于跨学科研究,涉及数学、政治科学与进化生物学。如今,他在博弈论和复杂系统领域的标志性成就使他获得了美国可授予的最高科学荣誉:国家科学奖章。
I first encountered Axelrod’s work during my graduate studies working with great apes. His suggestion that cooperation could evolve as an adaptive strategy was an inspiration for me in a field still dominated by the view that selfish interests were the primary driver of evolution. After several years of watching bonobos – one of our closest evolutionary relatives – as they peacefully shared their resources with groupmates and avoided violence at all costs, I was eager for an alternative explanation.
我第一次接触Axelrod的著作,还是在研究生阶段研究类人猿的时候。他提出,合作有可能发展为一种适应策略。当时我所在的领域仍被自利乃进化的基本驱动这一观点所主导,而他的观点对我深有启发。我那时已对人类的进化近亲之一倭黑猩猩进行了好几年观察,发现它们与群体成员和平共享资源,不惜代价避免暴力,所以我特别渴望看到一种替代解释。
Axelrod’s publications with the celebrated evolutionary biologist William Hamilton had put the study of cooperation on a new foundation. What’s more, his application of this work to political science offered the potential for an evolutionary framework that could help reduce violence and encourage mutual aid between nations and peoples.
Axelrod和知名进化生物学家William Hamilton的共同作品已为研究合作奠定了新的基础。不仅如此,在将这一成果应用于政治科学之后,他还提出了一种进化论框架的潜在可能,该框架将有助于在国家与民族之间减少暴力、鼓励合作。
Axelrod first pursued a degree in mathematics before receiving his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 1969. After brief stints working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s failed presidential campaign that pledged to end the Vietnam War, Axelrod taught at UC Berkeley before becoming a professor of Political Science and Public Policy at The University of Michigan.
Axelrod先获得了数学学位,1969年又获得耶鲁大学政治学博士学位。他曾在国防部长办公室以及参议员尤金·麦卡锡誓将结束越战的失败的总统竞选中短暂工作。此后,Axelrod任教于加州大学伯克利分校,后来成为密歇根大学的政治科学与公共政策教授。
It was Axelrod’s work with computer simulations involving the Prisoner’s Dilemma game that launched his scientific career. In the game, two people who committed a crime are arrested and each is placed in solitary confinement for interrogation. If one betrays the other, the first goes free while the second is sentenced to three years in prison. If they both betray one another, they each receive two years. But if they both keep silent, they receive the minimum penalty of one year each. Under this scenario, the best individual strategy would be to betray the other. However, in actual trials, people were much more likely to cooperate than would be expected under the assumption of rational self-interest. Cooperation and altruism seem to be innate characteristics of the human species.
Axelrod对“囚徒困境”博弈的计算机模拟工作开启了他的科学事业。在此类博弈中,两个被捕的罪犯被分别单独拘禁,接受审问。如果其中一个出卖另一个,那么前者就能得到自由,而后者将被处以3年牢狱。如果两人都出卖彼此,那么将各获2年牢狱。但是,如果两人都保持沉默,他们得到的就都是最轻惩罚,即1年牢狱。在这种情形中,最佳的个人策略是背叛同伙。但是,在现实审判中,较之依据理性自私假设得出的预期,人们合作的可能性要大得多。合作和利他似乎是人类的一种天性。
Axelrod has been able to extend his model of cooperation from animals in nature, down to cancer cells, and up to conflicts involving rival superpowers. His books include The Evolution of Cooperation, The Complexity of Cooperation, and Harnessing Complexity. He has been published in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,World Politics, and the Journal of Peace Research. During his extensive career, his work on cooperation has been cited more than 9,000 times by researchers across academic disciplines.
Axelrod已将其合作模型大为拓展,从自然界的动物向下延伸至癌细胞,向上延伸至对立强权之间的冲突。其著作包括《合作的进化》、《合作的复杂性》和《驾驭复杂性》,并曾在《科学》、《自然》、《美国国家科学院院刊》、《世界政治》与《和平研究杂志》等期刊上发表论文。在漫长的学术生涯中,他关于合作的研究已被各个学科的研究者引用过9000多次。
It was my distinct honor to talk with Professor Axelrod last week from his current position in the U.S. State Department. In our discussion, he reflected on his work with evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, how cooperation can be promoted within groups, and what this ultimately means for a planet caught in the thrall of competing national powers.
上周,我无比荣幸地与目前在美国国务院就职的Axelrod教授进行了交谈。在谈话中,他回顾了他与进化生物学家William Hamilton的著作,并思考了团体内部如何促进合作以及这对一个深受国际竞争困扰的星球最终意味着什么。
“复杂系统研究中心” 的创始成员,摄于1980年代。
从左至右:Michael D. Cohen, Robert Axelrod, William Hamilton, Arthur Burks, John Holland, Rick Riolo, Michael Savageau, and Carl Simon.
图片蒙密歇根大学福特公共政策学院惠赐
Eric Michael Johnson: To begin with, I would like to talk with you about your work with the evolutionary biologist William Hamilton. In my opinion, this was a model of interdisciplinary collaboration that enriched both fields. How did you end up working with him?
Eric Michael Johnson(以下简称J):首先,我想和你谈谈你与进化生物学家William Hamilton合著的著作。我认为,这是本跨学科合作的典范,对两个领域均很有促进。你是如何同他建立合作的?
Robert Axelrod: I approached him because I thought that my work on the Prisoner’s Dilemma would have applications to biology. First I got in touch with Richard Dawkins and it was he who suggested Bill Hamilton who, at the time, was visiting The University of Michigan where I was. I didn’t even know he was there.
Robert Axelrod(以下简称A):我去找他,是因为我觉得我对囚徒困境的研究可能在生物学上得以应用。首先我是跟Richard Dawkins接触,是他推荐的Bill Hamilton。Hamilton当时正访问我所在的密歇根大学。那时候我甚至都不知道他就在那儿。
When I looked him up and told him about my basic idea, he thought it was quite interesting. As you know, before he died of course, he was a world-class evolutionary biologist most noted for showing that animals often cooperate when they are closely related to each other. But my suggestion was a different idea: that cooperation could also be based on reciprocity.
当我找到他,把我的基本想法跟他一说,他觉得特别有意思。你当然知道,他生前曾是世界级的进化生物学家,特别是以指出亲缘关系密切的动物之间经常进行合作这一点而出名。不过我提出的是个不同的想法:合作也可能基于互惠。
To my delight, Bill immediately saw the value of this approach and he thought we could develop some useful applications for biology. He had already used game theory in some of his work, although he didn’t regard himself as a game theorist. We decided to write an article for Science, which is probably the world’s leading scientific journal.
令我高兴的是,Bill立马看出这一方法的价值,并且认为我们可以在生物学上提出一些有益的应用。他此前已在自己的一些研究中用过博弈论,尽管他并不自视为一个博弈理论家。我们决定给《自然》写篇文章,那大概是世界上最好的科学杂志。
Bill was able to bring the relevance to biology and speak directly to evolutionary biologists in a way that I could not and I brought the original theory. Then we worked out some of the elaborations together. We were really fortunate in that, not only was the article accepted, it was chosen as the best article of the year in Science magazine. It certainly gave my later work a mark of scientific credibility.
Bill把生物学引入进来,并且以一种我做不到的方式直接与进化生物学家对话,而我提供的则是原创理论。然后我们共同把某些细节阐述部分解决了。我们运气很好,文章不仅被采用了,还被选为《科学》杂志的年度最佳论文。这当然给我以后的工作提供了科学可信性。
Johnson: What is one of your fondest memories of working with Hamilton? Can you paint a scene of how one of your collaboration sessions played out?
J:关于你和Hamilton的合作,你最愉快的记忆是什么?你能描绘一下你们进行合作的场景吗?
Axelrod: One of the characteristics I remember about him is that when we were talking about an idea he might suddenly stop and think very deeply about it. I learned to keep quiet and let him ponder. Many times he would come up with a really interesting next step. Of course, sometimes he would come up with something completely different because he had given up pondering the topic at hand and his mind had gone off in some other direction. I could never tell which it would be. It was a lot of fun.
A:我记得他有个特点,就是当我们在讨论一个想法时,他可能会突然停下来,陷入深思。我后来学会在这时候保持安静,让他沉思。好多时候,他会想出一个特别有意思的下一步措施。当然,有时候他也会想出一个完全不同的东西,因为他已没在思考我们手头的事,思想早已离题到别的方向去了。我永远没法预知到底会如何。这很有意思。
Johnson: You were both so generous with one another in how you described your work together. For example, Hamilton wrote in his autobiography that your collaboration added to his own biological insights. Would you say that it also added to your own perspective on political science?
J:在描述你们之间的合作时,你们俩对彼此都非常慷慨大度。比如,Hamilton在他的自传中就说,你们的合作增加了他自己对生物学的理解。你觉得这一合作也拓宽了你自己对政治科学的视角吗?
Axelrod: It certainly gave me a deeper sense of the fundamentals that we were studying. It wasn’t something specific like trench warfare, which was one of my examples. I saw that this model could be applied in many different places. For example, as you may know, I later developed another application related to this work as it had to do with cooperation among cancer cells. The same thing happened for him and, several years later, he came up with another idea that he wanted to try out on me related to parasites.
A:这当然让我对我们当时正研究的基本原理有了更深的理解。它不是堑壕战这么具体的东西,堑壕战是我那时使用的案例之一。我领会到,这个模型能应用于许多不同的地方。比如,如你所知的,我后来论述了与该项研究有关的另外一个应用,涉及癌细胞之间的合作。对他而言,事情也是如此。数年之后,他提出了另外一个与寄生物有关的想法,想要征求我的看法。
Johnson: This would have been your joint paper on the origin of sex.
J:这应该就是你们关于性别起源的合作论文了。
Axelrod: Yes, his idea was quite amazing. You see, at the time we did not have a good explanation for the fact that almost all large animals and plants reproduce sexually. This was a serious puzzle because it meant that only half of adults – the females – could reproduce. This is a huge cost in evolutionary terms, so there must be something very valuable about it. The fact that sex is so universal means it must be something that large animals and plants have in common.
A:对,他的想法确实神奇。你知道,对于几乎所有大型动植物都采用有性繁殖一事,我们当时并没有一个好的解释。这是个很重要的谜题,因为它意味着只有半数的成年个体,即雌性,能进行繁殖。从进化的角度来看,这是个巨大的代价,所以必定对应特别大的价值。而由于性别的存在是那么普遍,这种价值必定是大型动植物所共有的。
Bill’s idea for what they have in common was the need to resist parasites. Parasites evolved to mimic our cells so that our immune system wouldn’t attack them. As a result, they can evolve around thirty times faster than we can since their generation time is so short. If you were to reproduce asexually it would mean you’d have an offspring that was almost identical to you, so the parasites that are adapted to you would also be adapted to your offspring. However, by reproducing sexually our offspring are quite different from us. Therefore, the parasites have to start all over. Bill’s idea was that sexual reproduction is an adaptation to resist parasites. It is just a brilliant idea.
Bill认为这是为了抵抗寄生物。寄生物进化得能够模拟我们的细胞,使自己不受免疫系统的攻击。结果是,它们的进化速度比我们快30倍,因为它们的世代时长特别短。如果你进行无性繁殖,那就意味着你的后代将跟你几乎一模一样,那么适应了你的寄生物将同样适应你的后代。而有性繁殖使后代与我们大为不同。因此,寄生物得从头开始进化适应。Bill的看法就是,有性繁殖是为抵抗寄生物而产生的一种适应。这真是个绝妙的想法。
Johnson: How did you end up coauthoring the paper with him?
J:你是如何跟他合写这篇论文的?
Axelrod: He said to me that he didn’t have a way of modeling this concept because it inherently involved many genes and, in the formal model, you could only add two or three different genes before the whole thing got too complicated with all of the interaction effects. I used a technique that John Holland at University of Michigan had developed called the genetic algorithm. This was a computer simulation of the genetics and allowed us to handle dozens of genes in one simulation.
A:他告诉我他找不到方法为这个概念建模,因为它本身涉及许多基因。而在正式的模型中你只能加入两到三个不同的基因,再多就会由于交互作用变得过于复杂。我使用了一种叫做遗传算法的技术,是由密歇根大学的John Holland开发的。这是对基因的一种计算机模拟,一次模拟能处理好几十个基因。
This was just what we needed and we developed a simulation to demonstrate that this idea, at least in principle, was viable. It was a lot of fun to first have one idea of mine that I took to Bill only to have him come back with an idea of his own that I helped do simulations on.
我们就需要这个。我们建模展示了这一想法至少在理论上是可行的。这事确实很有意思,之前是我拿着一个想法去找Bill,结果促使他提出了一个他自己的想法,然后他又来找我帮忙对这个想法进行模拟。
Johnson: So it was a meeting of complementary minds. You would build on one another’s ideas and inspiration.
J:这就是头脑的互补。你们互相发展对方的观点和灵感。
Axelrod: Right. I remember he said in his memoirs that we were both quite serious about aesthetics. We like simple theories and want to get to the fundamentals of things. We both had a background in mathematical modeling and game theory so, even though we came from different disciplines, we had some important things in common.
A:对。我记得他在回忆录里说我们俩都非常看重美感。我们都喜欢简单的理论,渴望获得事物的基本原理。我们都曾接受过数学建模和博弈论的训练,所以尽管我们属于不同的学科,但在许多重要方面有共同点。
In addition, I had been fascinated with evolution ever since high school and had taken it quite seriously. I thought a lot about evolutionary biology although I certainly was not a professional. But it meant that he and I could communicate well together because I knew many of the basics in a way that political scientists wouldn’t normally be expected to.
除此之外,自高中时起我就一直对进化很是着迷,也很重视。我经常思考进化生物学的问题,当然我肯定不是这方面的专家。但这意味着我和他之间能够很好地交流,因为我知道很多政治科学家通常不会知道的基础知识。
Another thing that he mentioned in his memoirs is that neither one of us had any need to one up the other or establish who had made the biggest contribution. There was never any need to be overly modest just out of the sake of politeness, which I think is common in Britain and something Bill was used to from his time at Oxford. He was simply a delight to work with.
他在回忆录中还提到另外一件事,就是我们都没想要压过对方或者要论谁的功劳大。我们也从未觉得有必要出于礼貌的考虑而表现的过分谦虚,这一点我想在英国很普遍,而Bill自其牛津时代起就已习惯如此。与他合作真的非常愉快。