公共地悲剧中英对照

公地的悲剧Tragedy of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Commons 公地的悲剧

by Garrett Hardin, 1968

Published in Science, December 13, 1968

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York (1) concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are ... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation."

J.B. Wiesner和H.F. York在一篇关于核子战争前景的发人深省文章结尾时说：「武器竞赛的双方都是…面对持续增强的军事力量和持续减弱的国家安全。深思之下，我们的专业意见认为这困局没有技术性的解决办法。如果大国只是在科学和科技这方面找寻解决办法，结果只会令情况恶化。」

I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.

希望各位不要集中注意文章的主题（核武世界的国家安全），而是要留意作者的结论，即是问题没有技术性的解决办法。专业和半通俗科学期刊的评论，差不多都隐喻评论的问题是有技术性的解决办法。技术性解决办法可以定义为只要改变自然科学的技术，无需或只是稍为改变人的道德价值或概念。

In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome. Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes courage to assert that a desired technical solution is not possible. Wiesner and York exhibited this courage; publishing in a science journal, they insisted that the solution to the problem was not to be found in the natural sciences. They cautiously qualified their statement with the phrase, "It is our considered professional judgment. . . ." Whether they were right or not is not the concern of the present article. Rather, the concern here is with the important concept of a class of human problems which can be called "no technical solution problems," and, more specifically, with the identification and discussion of one of these. It is easy to show that the class is not a null class.

我们现在一般都欢迎有技术性解决办法（以前并非如此）。因为以前的预言往往失准，要有莫大勇气才会断言没有预期的技术性解决办法。Wiesner和York表现出勇气，在科学期刊发表文章，坚持问题不能在自然科学找到解决办法。他们小心翼翼为声明加上以下的批注：「深思之下，我们的专业意见…。」本文所关注的。不是他们是否正确，而是一个重要的观点：有一组关乎人的问题可以称为「没有技术性解决办法的问题」，或是更明确地说：认定和讨论这些

问题是其中之一。

Recall the game of tick-tack-toe. Consider the problem, "How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?" It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another way, there is no "technical solution" to the problem. I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word "win." I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can drug him; or I can falsify the records. Every way in which I "win" involves, in some sense, an abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly abandon the game--refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.)

要表明这类问题不是空号很容易。还记得划井游戏。想一想：「我如何赢划井游戏？」假设（依照赛局理论的惯例）我的对手是个中能手，大家都知道我不可能赢。换句话说，问题没有「技术性解决办法」。要赢，我只能把「赢」的意义根本改掉。我可以打对方的头，可以弄虚作假。每一种我要「赢」的方法，都是某种意义上放弃了我们认知了解的游戏。（我当然可以公开放弃—不玩。大多数成年人都这样。）

The class of "No technical solution problems" has members. My thesis is that the "population problem," as conventionally conceived, is a member of this class. How it is conventionally conceived needs some comment. It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing any of the privileges they now enjoy. They think that farming the seas or developing new strains of wheat will solve the problem--technologically. I try to show here that the solution they seek cannot be found. The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe.

「没有技术性解决办法的问题」有其它的命题。我的论题：大家惯常认知的「人口问题」是这样的命题。要说明一下大家是怎样惯常认知的。持平的说，大多数人为人口问题苦恼，要找出方法避免人口过多的邪恶，但不放弃他们正在享受的特权。他们以为海洋养殖或发明小麦新品种会解决问题—从技术方面。我尝试证明他们不能找到解决办法。人口问题正如要赢划井游戏，不能技术性解决。

What Shall We Maximize? 我们要最大化什么？

Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow "geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease. Is ours a finite world?

如马尔萨斯所言，人口自然地以「几何级数」增加，或是我们现在的说法是函数增加。在一个有限的世界，这即是说世界物品的人均份额必然减少。我们的世界是否有限？

A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite; or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite. "Space" is no escape (2).

一个中肯的抗辩说法：世界是无限的，或是我们不知道世界不是无限。但是，从实际问题角度来看以后几代人和可见的科技，有一点很清楚，如果我们不是实时假设陆上人类可用的世界是有限的，我们会大大增加人类的痛苦。「太空」不是逃生门。