去年，在一篇关于机场拾金案的文章里，我表述了对“什么是法律？”这个问题的看法：

从根本上讲，法律的功能，在于为生活于社会的人们提供一个可预期的人际环境；在此环境下，人们可以相信：他们对未来所抱有的合理期待，不会被他人的行为所打破；同时，他们也可以相信：如果他们的行为打破了别人的合理期待，其后果会得到矫正，而自己还可能受到惩罚。因而，判定一项行为为非法的标准便 是：行为人是否可以在事先合理的预期到，该行为将会打破他人的合理期待。

人的预期，和对此预期是否合理的判断，都是非常主观的，况且，这样的判断发生在千变万化的现实情境中，这就很难用明确的条文来细致的规定各种情境下的各种预期是否合理；对此困难，普通法的做法是借助普通人的常识理性，由随机选取的当地居民所组成的陪审团，来判定双方的预期是否合理；特别是当案件涉及一种全新的情境时，陪审团的作用便更加必要，它可以避免法官的个人偏见；而随着常识理性的不断重复运用，一些情境下的判断便逐渐被积累和总结下来，一般化为实体法规则；此时，法官的专业判断力和已有的实体法规则，作用便优于陪审团，在这里，法官实际上是在代表历次陪审团判定中所蕴涵的精神。

我把这种观点称为“保护合理预期原则”，但是，该原则有一个困难，即：当双方的预期看上去都很合理，而一方的行为却给另一方造成了伤害，那该怎么办？逻辑上，这显然是可能的。

我最初思考这个问题是在阅读霍姆斯的《普通法》时，当时假想了这样一个案例：在某个人迹罕至的荒弃小镇上，有个废旧谷仓，某日，其旧主人回到谷仓，要从屋顶取些木料用，在他取木料的过程中，随手将一些木头扔到谷仓旁边的小路上，不幸，砸中一位过路牧人的脑袋，造成重伤。

这里，对于谷仓主，他可以合理的预期，荒废已久的小路上不会有人经过，而对于牧人，他同样可以合理的预期，荒废已久的谷仓顶上不会扔下木头。

当时我没想出答案，唯一能说的是，这对双方都近乎于天灾，要么就平分损失吧？

昨天读到一本霍姆斯文集（《霍姆斯读本：论文与公共演讲选集》）里一篇非常精要的文章“法律的道路”（特此推荐），其中霍姆斯谈到了上面的困难，他用的是另一个案例，虽然这个案例并不能解决我的假想案例中的困难，但对于“两个合理预期相互冲突”这种情况，却给出了部分解决方案，案例如下：

某甲诉某乙非法侵入其土地，而乙举证证明他过去20年来一直公开使用这条路，并据此声称他拥有通行权，而甲则争辩说他将一份许可证授予了一个他有理由认为是被告代理人的人，因而乙过去的通行是在他授权之下的，而不是一项基于事实而获得的权利。

按霍姆斯的观点，应判乙胜诉，理由是（我的解读，未必与其本意完全相符），当两种合理预期相冲突时，优先保护实际实施占有的那一方的预期，或者更进一步：当权利状态不明确，且依其他原则无法明确时，按不转移实际控制的原则加以明确；采用这一原则是为了尽可能减少动荡和冲突。

霍姆斯是在谈论诉讼时效性是引出这个话题的，但在他看来，时效性这个词在此具有误导性，掩盖了此类案件处理方式背后的真正法理，如上可见，这里的原则其实跟时间没有多大关系。

这段论述，如同该篇文章其他部分一样，非常精彩，再次提升了我对霍姆斯的敬仰之情。

此文另一个亮点是，我发现，波斯纳法经济学分析的基本出发点，其实在这里已经看得出苗头。

我不太喜欢“多中心”（Polycentric）这个词，“多”和“中心”听上去有点自相矛盾的，所以我还是用“无中心”这个词，或许用“无主权”更好。

索马里这样的无中心习惯法系统并不新鲜，令人称奇的只是它在当代索马里还能运行的这么好，实际上，给我的印象是，它与日耳曼习惯法非常相似，这可能提示了此类系统在人类某个时期曾普遍流行。

有两点相似性特别值得引起注意：

1）民法为纲：基本原则是对损害之补偿，而非惩罚，整个法律基本等同于民法，刑法是后来随主权而产生，由于主权将整个社会的安宁视为自己的利益，用普通法的话说就是“国王的安宁”（peace of the King），犯罪不仅侵犯当事人利益，也侵犯了国王利益，于是才引入刑法。

在此之前，盎格鲁-撒克逊习惯法（乃至各种日耳曼习惯法）都已补偿原则处理杀人和人身伤害，每个人按身份有不同价格的偿命金，我记得撒克逊国王的偿命金好像是400磅，普通人大概一千多马克。

2）法律救济是一种商品：法律不是天赐的，也不是主权者恩赐的，而是由特定的供应商为特定的顾客提供的边界明确的服务商品，因而也不是无限的，既然这是一种交易，那么只有当各方都认可交易规则、接受交易条件、并决定参与交易时，它才对他们有效。

从这一原则出发，你就不必对“逐出法外”感到惊奇了，对于无中心习惯法，这并不是什么特别的事情，就像你没有购买某种保险，或者未按时续交保费，保险公司便拒绝继续为你承保，是很自然的事。

逐出法外甚至在早期普通法里仍有保留，叫outlaw，在盎格鲁-撒克逊习惯法（我相信其他日耳曼习惯法类似）里俗称狼头（Wolf's Head），意思是人人得而猎之：

In the common law of England, a "Writ of Outlawry" declared the subject to be "Caput gerat lupinum" (that is, "Let his be a wolf's head"), and it followed not only that, since the subject was no longer human, he had no legal rights, but also that he could be killed on sight as if a wolf or wild animal. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the law to protect himself if needed, such as from mob justice, and could be robbed or even murdered with impunity.

无中心习惯法是考察人类自发秩序的极佳对象，关于该主题我几年前曾推荐过两本书，一本是人类学家弗雷德里克·巴特的《斯瓦特巴坦人的政治过程：一个社会人类学研究的范例》，是对巴基斯坦邻近阿富汗的斯瓦特山谷（即目前塔利班主要基地所在区域）部落区政治结构和社会秩序的研究，和许多人类学名著一样，这也是一个博士课题的成果。

另一本是法学家罗伯特·埃里克森的《无需法律的秩序：邻人如何解决纠纷》（按其内容，更恰当的书名是无需政府的法律），研究了加州牧区居民之间如何遵循习惯法处理纠纷。

 

最近读到一本好书：《公共物品与私人社区》（Public Goods and Private Communities），从理论到实例说明了大小社区如何在没有政府的条件下实现自我管理和公共物品供给，作者[[Fred E. Foldvary]]在经济学界是个另类，即便在新制度经济学领域也是如此，他为亨利·乔治（[[Henry George]]）的单一土地税（[[land value tax|Single Land Tax]]）思想构建了一个基于新制度经济学的理论基础，从而将乔治的土改社会主义改造成了无政府主义，并自封为乔治无政府主义（[[geoanarchism]]），颇有戏剧性。 Foldvary 24岁从伯克利毕业，46岁（1992年）才从[[George Mason University|乔治·梅森]]拿到博士（我发现答辩委员会中一位是边际革命的两作者之一[[Tyler Cowen]]），现在是圣克拉拉的讲师，还没混上教授，看来无政府主义者要当上教授不容易。 数了数，我喜欢的牛人中没当上教授的还真不少，Trivers已经介绍过了，偶像[[Richard Dawkins]]也差不多，25岁（1966年）拿到牛津博士，次年开始当助教，1976年[[The Selfish Gene]]一炮成名时还是讲师，直到1990年才升为[[Reader_(academic_rank)|Reader]]（介于高级讲师和教授之间），后来微软的Office之父[[Charles Simonyi]]实在看不下去，1995年掏钱在牛津专门为Dawkins捐了个教座（[[Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science]]），总算混上教授。 另一个是凡勃伦（[[Thorstein Veblen]]），看模样就没教授相，邋里邋遢，被一个个大学轮番扫地出门，下面这段文字摘自其大作《有闲阶级论》中译本所配作者小传：

凡勃伦1857年生于威斯康星州的一个挪威移民家庭的小农场。他生长在威斯康星州与明尼苏达州的乡村。他的父母重视教育，鞭策孩子们出人头地和不断接受更高的教育。在卡尔顿学院，凡勃伦跟随约翰·贝茨·克拉克学习经济学，克拉克最先阐明了收入分配的边际生产力理论（参见克拉克）。接着凡勃伦又到约翰斯·霍普金斯学院师从查尔斯·皮尔斯（Charles Peirce）学习哲学，皮尔斯是举世闻名的哲学家和美国实用主义的创始人。在约翰斯·霍普金斯学院期间，他还师从美国经济学会的创立者、杰出的经济学家——理查德·伊利（Richard Ely）研修政治经济学。尽管拥有如此显赫的老师，凡勃伦还是对约翰斯·霍普金斯学院非常不满，因而转学至耶鲁大学。在那儿他跟随社会达尔文主义者（Social Darwinist）威廉·格雷厄姆·萨姆纳（William Graham Sumner）研究哲学，并于1884年获得了哲学博士学位。 由于糟糕的哲学家就业市场，凡勃伦无法找到一个哲学方面的教职。以后的七年，他独自在埋头苦读中度过，终于他决定改行；因此他进入康奈尔大学学习经济学。一年后，凡勃伦和他在康奈尔的导师J·劳伦斯·劳克林（J. Laurence Laughlin）一起来到芝加哥大学。在此他执教 14年，尽管他写了两部非常成功、赢得评论界赞誉的著作（凡勃伦，1899，1904），发表了无数的文章，并编辑了享有盛名的《政治经济杂志》（[[Journal of Political Economy]]），但从未晋升至助理教授之上。 离开芝加哥之后，凡勃伦经常在大学行政管理层的“激励”下，不停地从一个学校到另一个学校找工作。他的部分问题是他与年轻的女学生及教员们的妻子发生暧昧关系，另一个问题是他的刻薄的批评——尤其是对学术界及其他经济学家的批评——使他难以与同事们接近。更麻烦的是他从不关心诸如全系会议、参加班级活动、上班时间以及打分等这些学院仪式。他通常在不考虑学生学习质量的情况下给他所有的学生都打个“C”。最后凡勃伦老师出了问题。据多夫曼（Dorfman，1934）所述，凡勃伦在课上“喃喃自语，神思恍惚，经常跑题。结果他的班级人数越来越少；有一个班最后只剩下一个人……” 凡勃伦的离奇的生活方式也非常出名。多夫曼（1934）报道说，凡勃伦用盒子布置他的住所，并将这些盒子当做桌椅使用。他强烈反对整理床铺之类的世俗的家务琐事，认为是浪费时间。脏盘子被堆在盆里，直到没有干净的碟子为止，然后再用水管冲洗。据迪金斯（Diggins，1978）讲述，凡勃伦20世纪初在密苏里大学任教时，住在一个朋友家的地下室里，并通过地下室的窗户进进出出。

马尔萨斯的《人口原理》一直被我吹捧为头号经济学经典，而其中最重要的思想是在第十八章，是极少数我会反复阅读的bible级文献，就我接触的范围而言，极少有人领会了该章的洞见，达尔文是这极少数之一。

人类困苦不堪地生活着，经常处于贫困状态，且几乎毫无希望在这个世界上达到尽善尽美的境界，人类生活的这样一幅图景，似乎会使人不可避免地把希望寄托在来世上。与此同时，在我们前面考察的那些自然法则的作用下，人类又必然会受到各种各样的诱惑，由此而使世界显得象通常人们所认为的那样，似乎是考验和磨练人的品格与意志的学校，以使人进入较高级的幸福状态。但我希望人们能谅解我，我要对人类在这世界上的处境提出一种与此有所不同的看法，在我看来，我的这种看法更加符合我们所观察到的各种自然现象，更加与我们有关全能的、仁慈的、先知先觉的造物主的观念相一致。

如果我们对人的理解力抱适当的怀疑态度，并正当地感觉到我们无法完全理解我们所看到的一切事物的原因，如果我们怀着感激之情为照射进我们心灵的每一道光线而欢呼，而当没有光线时认为黑暗是来自我们心灵的内部而不是外部，如果我们对造物主的最高智慧谦卑地表示敬意，认为他的“思想高于我们的思想”，“犹如天空高悬于大地之上”，那么我希望人们不要把这看作是对人的智力的无谓滥用，试图“证明上帝为人作出的安排是正当的”。

不过，在我们试图以自己微薄之力“发现尽善尽美的上帝”时，我们的推理应该是由自然推论至自然的上帝，而不是由上帝推论至自然，这一点似乎是绝对必需的。一旦我们不是尽力去说明事物现在的这种样子，而只是一味询问为什么某些事物不是另外一种样子，我们的推理就会无所适从，陷入极其荒谬、极其幼稚可笑的境地，我们在了解神意方面的全部进展就会停止，甚至为此而作出的探究也不再是对人脑的有益训练。我们总是单纯而幼稚地想象造物主具有无穷大的力量。这一观念太大，太叫人无法理解了，每当思考它时，人的头脑便被弄得混乱不堪。由于带有这种观念，我们往往想象上帝能创造出无数生存物，其数目之多犹如整个无限的空间所能容纳的点，所有生存物都不会遭受痛苦的折磨，都很完美，都具有出众的美德与智慧，都能享受到最高级的快乐。但当我们的目光离开这种虚无缥缈的梦幻境界，转向我们唯一能看清上帝面目的大自然这本书时，我们看到的则是绵延不绝的有感觉的生物，它们显然产生于大量的物质微粒，在这个世界上要经历长期的、有时是痛苦的过程，但其中许多在这一过程结束之前，肯定会具有很高的才能，拥有强大的力量，从而能处于某种较高级的状态。既然如此，难道我们不应根据我们实际所看到的存在物纠正我们对万能的上帝所抱的看法吗？除了根据已被创造出来的天地万物之外，我们又能根据什么来品评造物主呢？倘若我们不想贬抑上帝的仁慈而吹捧上帝的力量，我们就应得出结论说，即使是伟大的造物主，尽管其力量无比巨大，也仍需要一定的过程，需要一定的时间（至少是我们所认为的时间），才能创造出符合其崇高目标、具有高尚精神品质的人。

如果认为人处于受磨难的境地，那似乎意味着，人在未来到这个世界以前就已存在，而这是与婴儿期的人所表现出来的样子不一致的，同时又使人怀疑上帝是否有先见之明，而这是与我们有关上帝的观念相矛盾的。所以，正如我在前面一个注释中所暗示的，我宁愿将这个世界和在这个世界上的生活看作是上帝安排的一伟大过程，其目的不是为了使人遭受磨难，而是为了创造和形成人的精神。若要唤醒死气沉沉、浑沌无序的物质，使其成为精神，若要使地上的尘埃升华为灵魂，若要使泥土迸发出耀眼的火花，这一过程是必不可少的。倘若这样来看待这一问题，则可以把人在生活中得到各种印象和受到各种刺激看作是造物主的手通过一般法则在起作用，怠惰的存在物通过与上帝接触而被唤醒，具有活力，得以享受较高级的事物。人类所犯的原罪，就是混沌的物质的麻木与腐败，而人可以说正是从混沌的物质中诞生的。

考察精神究竟是与物质不同的实体，抑或仅仅是物质的较为精致的表现形态，是毫无用处的。这一问题最后很可能仅仅是名词之争。精神无论是由物质形成的还是由任何其他实体形成的，从本质上说仍是精神。我们根据经验知道，灵魂与肉体是非常紧密地联系在一起的，所有迹象似乎都表明，它们是自从婴儿期起一同成长起来的。很少有人认为，每个婴儿都具有健全而完整的精神，只不过在人生的头２０年，身体的各个器官软弱无力、缺少感觉，精神未能起作用。人们都倾向于认为，上帝既是肉体的创造者又是精神的创造者，肉体和精神是同时形成，同时发展的，因而如果设想上帝在不断用物质创造精神，而人在生活中不断得到各种印象便是创造精神的过程，如果这种设想是符合自然现象的，那也就不会与理性相悖，不会与天启相悖。从事这样的工作肯定是与造物主的最高属性相称的。

这样来看待人类在地球上的处境，完全是有理由的，因为根据我们对精神的性质的那少许了解，通过仔细考察会发现，我们周围的现象以及人类生活的各种事件，似乎都是特意安排来达到那一伟大目标的，特别是因为，根据这一假设，我们甚至可以运用我们自身有限的理解力来解释生活中那许多艰难困苦与坎坷不平，爱怨天尤人的人正是为此而经常埋怨自然之神的。

精神的最初重大觉醒，似乎产生于肉体方面的需要。正是肉体方面的需要，最先刺激了婴儿的大脑，使其进行有感觉的活动，而原初物质却具有非常大的惰性，以致如果不通过特定刺激方式产生出同样强有力的其他需要，那就似乎仍要有肉体需要的刺激来保持已唤起的活动不中断。如果不是饥饿和寒冷把野蛮人从麻木状态中唤醒，他们会永远躺在树下打盹。他们不得不尽力获取食物、为自己建立栖身之所，以免受饥饿和寒冷之苦，为此而作出的努力便造就了他们身体各部分的官能，使其处于不断的运动状态，而如果不必为此作出努力，他们就会陷入无精打采的懒散状态。根据我们对人脑结构的了解，如果广大人民群众没有肉体需要，从而不被刺激去作出努力，则我们与其说有理由认为他们会由于拥有闲暇时间而跻身于哲学家的行列，还不如说有理由认为他们会由于缺少刺激而沦为野蛮人。物产最丰富的国家，其居民的智力不见得最敏捷。需要是发明之母这句话是很有道理的。人脑进行的一些最崇高的努力，就是出于满足肉体的需要。肉体需要常为诗人的想象力插上翅膀，使历史学家的创作进入旺盛期，使哲学家的研究更为深刻。虽然毫无疑问，现在有许多优秀人物，其大脑已在各种知识和社会同情心的刺激下变得非常发达，即使不复存在肉体刺激，也不会重新陷于无精打采的状态，但是，几乎可以肯定地说，广大人民群众如果没有肉体刺激，则会陷于普遍而致命的麻木不仁状态，未来改善的萌芽便会消灭殆尽。

根据我的记忆，洛克曾说过，主要是避免痛苦而不是追求幸福刺激了人们在生活中采取行动。我们想获得某种快乐时，只有等到对这种快乐思考了很久，以致没有这种快乐而感到痛苦不安时，才会采取行动以得到这种快乐。避恶趋善似乎是人类的神圣职责，而这个世界似乎是特意安排来提供机会让人不懈地做这种努力的，正是通过这种努力，通过这种刺激，才产生了精神。如果洛克的观点是正确的，如果我们有充足的理由认为洛克的观点是正确的，那么恶对于促使人类作出努力似乎就是必不可少的，而作出努力对于产生精神显然也是必不可少的。

为了维持生命而对食物产生的需要，也许要比肉体或精神的任何其他需要在更大的程度上促使人类作出努力。上帝下了这样的命令，在人类尚未向地球表面投入大量劳动和才智以前，地球不得向人类提供食物。就人类的理解力来说，种子与产生于种子的草木之间没有任何可以想象的联系。毫无疑问，造物主无需借助于我们称之为种子的那一丁点物质，甚或无需借助于人类的劳动和照管，就能使各种植物生长，供其创造物使用。耕地、除草、收割、播种等项劳动，肯定不是帮助上帝来进行创造的，而是上帝规定的先决条件，只有满足了这些先决条件人类才能享受生活的幸福，借此促使人类积极行动，按理性的要求塑造精神。

为了经常不断地刺激人类，为了敦促人类精心耕种土地以促使上帝的神圣构想得以实现，上帝已下了这样的命令：人口的增长将远远快于食物的增长。毫无疑问，正如前文所指出的，这个一般法则产生了许多局部的恶，但稍稍思考一下，我们也许会看得很清楚，这个法则产生的善远远超过了恶。要使人不懈地努力，似乎得有很强的刺激才行，而要给人的努力指引方向，使人类具有推理能力，上帝的所作所为必须符合一般法则。自然法则的固定不变，或者相同的原因总是会产生相同的结果，是人类推理能力的基础，如果在正常情况下经常可以看到上帝的力量，或者更确切地说，如果上帝经常改变其意志（其实，我们在所见到的每片草叶上都可以看到上帝的力量），致使人类不能肯定其努力是否会带来预期的结果，那么人体各器官的功能也许很快会陷入普遍而致命的麻痹状态，甚至连人类的肉体需要也不再能刺激人类积极努力。正是由于自然法则保持不变，农民才勤奋劳作、深谋远虑，工匠才不知疲倦地运用其技巧，医生和解剖学家才熟练地搞研究，自然哲学家才仔细观察和耐心考察。人类运用智力所取得的所有最伟大、最辉煌的成就，都仰赖于自然法则的固定不变。

所以，就连对我们的理解力来说，自然法则保持不变的理由也是显而易见的，因此，如果我们回过头来看人口原理，看一看人类的真实面目，认识到除非被需要所逼迫，人类总是惰性很大的，懒散的，厌恶劳动的（毫无疑问，按照我们幼稚的幻想来谈论人类可以成为什么样子，是极其愚蠢的），那么，我们就可以断言，若不是人口增殖能力大于生活资料的增长力，这个世界就不会有人居住了。这不断刺激人类去耕种土地，倘若受到如此强烈的刺激，土地的耕种仍进行得很缓慢，我们就完全可以得出这样的结论：比这轻的刺激是不会起作用的。即便经常受到这种刺激，物产丰富地区的野蛮人也要经过很长一段时间才从事畜牧业或农业。假如人口和食物按相同比率增长，人类很可能永远也不会脱离野蛮状态。但假设一个亚历山大、一个凯撒、一个帖木儿或一场流血革命可以把本来人口稠密的地球弄得人烟稀少，致使造物主的伟大计划落空。而且一场瘟疫的影响可以持续几个世纪之久，一场大地震可以使一个地区永远荒无人烟。这种人类的恶行或自然灾害是一般法则带来的局部的恶，人口增长法则可以阻止它们妨碍造物主实现其崇高的目标。在人口增长法则的作用下，地球上的人民总是会与生活资料的数量不相上下，这一法则是一种强大的刺激因素，不断促使人类去进一步耕种土地，使土地能养活更多的人口。但这一法则在产生上述明显符合上帝意图的结果时，不可能不带来局部的恶。除非人口原理根据各国的具体情况而发生变化（这不仅与我们有关自然法则的一般经验相抵触，而且甚至还与人类的理性相矛盾，在人类的理性看来，要形成理智，一般法则是绝对不可少的），否则很显然，既然人口原理在勤劳的帮助下能在短短几年中使富饶地区人烟稠密，它必然也会使早已有人居住的国家陷于贫困。

然而，从各方面来看，人口法则所带来的那些公认的困难，很可能会促进而不是阻碍达到上帝的一般目的。这些困难会刺激人们作出普遍的努力，有助于造成无限多样的处境和印象，而这从整体上说是有利于精神的发展的。当然，太大的刺激或太小的刺激，太穷或太富，很可能同样不利于精神的发展。处于中产阶级的地位似乎对智力的发展最为有利，但想要全体社会成员都成为中产阶级却是违反自然的。地球上温带地区似乎最有利于人类发挥其精力与体力，但不可能整个地球都是温带。由于只有一个太阳温暖和照耀着地球，因而在物质法则的作用下，有些地方必然永远覆盖着冰雪，另一些地方则必然永远炽热炎炎。每一块平放的物质，必然有上面和下面，不可能所有物质微粒都在中间。对于木材商来说，栎树最有价值的部分既不是树根也不是树枝，但树根和树枝对于人们所需要的中间部分即树干的存在却是绝对不可少的。木材商不能指望栎树没有树根或树枝而生长，但是，如果他发明了一种栽种方法，能使树干长得较大，树根和树枝长得较小，那他尽力推广使用这一方法就没有什么不对。

同样，虽然我们不能指望消除社会中的贫富现象，但是如果我们能找到一种政治制度，能借以减少两个极端的人数，增加中产阶级的人数，则我们无疑就有义务采用这种制度。不过，正象栎树的情况那样，大量减少树根和树枝必然会减少输往树干的树液，与此相同，在社会中，减少两极的人数超过一定限度，就必然会减弱整个中产阶级生气勃勃的活力，而这种活力正是中产阶级智力最发达的原因所在。如果谁也不想在社会的阶梯上往上爬，谁也不担心会从社会的阶梯上摔落下来，如果勤劳得不到奖励，懒惰得不到惩罚，中产阶级就肯定不是现在这种样子了。讨论这一问题时，我们显然应着眼于全人类，而不是着眼于个别人。毫无疑问，现在有许多富有才智的人，而且从概率上说也应该有许多富有才智的人，因为已有那么多的人早已由于受到特殊的刺激而焕发了活力，无需再经常受狭隘动机的驱使来保持活力。但如果我们回想一下各种有用的发现、有价值的著作以及人类作出的其他值得称道的努力，我想我们会发现，人们作这种努力大都是出于影响许多人的狭隘动机，而不是出于影响少数人的高尚动机。

闲暇对于人类来说无疑是非常宝贵的，但就人类现在的这种样子来说，闲暇很可能将给大多数人带来恶而不是善。人们常常发现，弟弟往往要比哥哥更加富有才能，但却不能认为弟弟一般说来天生就具有较高的才能。如果说实际上有什么可以观察到的差别的话，那也只能是不同的处境所造成的差别。对于弟弟来说，付出努力和积极活动一般是绝对不可少的，而对于哥哥来说，则可以按自己的意愿行事。

生活上的困难有助于使人具有才能，这一点即使从日常经验上看也会使人深信不疑。男人必须为养家糊口而付出努力，由此而唤醒了他们身体的一些机能，否则这些机能会永远处于休眠状态，而且人们常看到，每当形势发生新的特殊变化时，总会造就出一些富有才智的人来应付新形势带来的困难。

Avner Greif，斯坦福教授，制度经济学家，找东西时很偶然的发现了他，看了几篇论文，立刻抓住了我，直觉上他摸对了门路，上当当一找，作品居然已经有中译本（又是中信出的，表扬一下），目录很吸引人，这里是一小部分：

第3章　合同执行的私序制度：马格里布商人联盟
3.1　商业、海外代理人与效率
3.2　承诺问题和以声誉为基础的社群执行机制
3.3　模型：代理人的承诺问题和多边惩罚策略
3.4　马格里布商人联盟：理论证据和间接证据
3.5　结束语
附录
第4章　在政府的掠夺之手中保护产权：商人行会
4.1 承诺问题和商人行会的作用
4.2　正式模型
4.3　结束语
第5章　内生制度与博弈分析
5.1　制度化规则、制度和均衡
5.2　博弈论与内生制度的建模
5.3　社会性和规范性行为的制度扩展
5.4　合法性和制度起源
5.5　总结性评述

长期以来，（在我眼中），经济史始终是经济学家的耻辱之地，他们在历史分析上几乎毫无建树，完全抓瞎（今天还跟子旸聊起这个问题），经济学家的理论在经济史家中基本没人理，直接漠视（除了马尔萨斯，而马尔萨斯在经济学家中基本没人理，呵呵）。

无论如何这是个大失败，就好比生理学家的理论如果在进化生物学家中没人理，那该多尴尬啊，Douglass North算是说出了点道道，可怜也就那么一点点，相对于经济史的曲折漫长、经济形态的复杂多样，也太单薄了点。

这么说不是褒史家贬学家，实际上这是他们共同的失败，经济史家没有理论可依靠，自己也没发展出什么理论，经济史学还处于杂乱描述的状态，看不出有什么一致的框架来容纳汗牛充栋的材料。

Greif让我看到一点希望，但愿他能成功，好在才54岁，看好他在5年10年内拿诺奖。

西奥迪尼在《影响力》第三章里提到一个案例：说的是AB两国交战，A国战俘被送到C国战俘营，后者对战俘实施了系统化洗脑，让战俘们相信并自愿发表声明，说A国的参战如何不正当，A国的社会和制度如何不好，而C国的又是如何如何好，洗脑非常成功，战俘甚至会把军事机密说出来，还相互揭发逃跑计划。

考证了一下，A、B、C分别是美国、北朝鲜和中国，在我们这些曾经接受过洗脑的人看来，战俘营洗脑计划的巨大成功是可以预料的结果，执行者原本就是此道高手，他们是靠这个吃饭的，但美国人没有这方面经验，对此结果大惊失色，于是组织了一个心理调查组进行全面调查，想弄清楚怎么回事，结果发现，洗脑术的奥妙在于：从极其细微、看似无伤大雅的小事情上得到让步，比如让他说出“美国并不是十全十美的”这句话，然后进一步诱导他说出“美国社会哪些方面不够完美”，最终可以把他培养成一个美国社会的批判和攻击者。

其中最重要的技巧是，每一步一定要让他留下书面记录，比如诱导他在家信中写出这些话（以提高信被寄达的希望作为诱饵），然后在精心选摘之后公布出来，让他的同伴们听到，对他构成一种印象，这样一来，不仅他无法否认这种印象，更奇妙的是，他会自动成为自己的这一新形象的忠实维护者，为维护这一形象，他会心甘情愿提供更多证实和强化这一形象的材料。

洗脑手段中最有效的是组织有奖征文比赛，凡是动笔写下某些观点、评价和立场的人，多半会成为这些观念越来越坚定的信奉者和辩护者，现在这一手段显然已被普及到各个领域，成为宝洁等品牌商家建立品牌忠诚度的常规武器。

我没查到美军心理调查组组长Henry Segal博士的资料，但查到了该小组首席调查官Edgar Schein，是MIT斯隆商学院教授，从年龄看，当时大概是在做博士后研究，后来成了组织发展学的专家，他的著作清单：

Brainwashing and Totalitarianization in Modern Society (1959)

Coercive Persuasion: A socio-psychological analysis of the "brainwashing" of American civilian prisoners by the Chinese Communists (1961), W. W. Norton (publishers)

Organizational Psychology (1980) ISBN 0-13-641332-3

Organizational Culture and Leadership (1985) ISBN 1-55542-487-2

Process Consultation Revisited (1999) ISBN 0-201-34596-X

前两本大概就是战俘研究的结果，有兴趣可以找来看看，如果说奥威尔的《动物庄园》是洗脑术的科幻版，那么Schein的就是现实版了，应该更有价值。

 

三年前，我在《观念的进化》一文中，把时尚用做了我的观念进化模型的一个实例（另一个是宗教），我把时尚描述为对身份识别符号的模仿与反模仿之间的一种不断升级的军备竞赛（arm race）：

5. 时尚，另一种宗教？

时尚的生成和流行过程，是宗教之外的又一个观念自组织的典范，从发生机制上看，它与宗教十分相似，所以，把时尚称做一种现代宗教，不算太离谱。

富与贫、贵与贱、博学与无知、高雅与粗鲁、悠闲与劳碌，人的这些差异，常常会影响他们在对消费品和生活方式的选择，这种差别在某些方面——比如服饰、住宅、随身物品、交通工具等——表现得特别明显，当这些差距逐渐拉开而变得易于辨认时，人们就会通过其中最明显的某几种差异来识别一个人的贫富等级、地位高低、教育程度，甚至生活经历和职业。而一旦人们意识到这一点，常常又会反过来刻意的明确这些差异，状况相近的人们会有意识的调整他们的消费品和生活方式，不约而同的向那些最易于识别的款式和品质靠拢聚集，最终，整个社会围绕着几种典型消费品，自动形成一个层次分明的栅格状结构，这一分层化的自组织过程就叫时尚。

如果仅仅看到上面的分层结构，那就没有抓住时尚的精妙之处，时尚之所以如此激动人心，重要的是它的结构是在不断运动变化之中保持的。当层次结构日益显现或者已然明朗时，那些面临着为选择某个将要厕身其中的阶层而作决定的人，常常会将目光投向他们的“上”方，选择一个包括了许多条件优于自己的人的阶层。这种向上靠的倾向使得每个阶层中那些财富地位等条件最优的人的生活方式成为被模仿的对象。然而，一旦这些被模仿对象意识到与自己同处一个阶层的，多数是条件比自己差的人，这一发现会让他们感到恼火。

为了摆脱与乡巴佬为伍的屈辱感，这些被模仿者只好不断地花样翻新，以便与模仿者拉开距离，而后者一旦发现新花样已经成为时尚，总是精神抖擞地奋起直追，就在这你追我赶之中，时尚的浪潮涌动起来了，一波又一波的潮涌中，追逐的双方都兴致盎然，乐此不疲，劲头丝毫不亚于热忱的宗教信徒。每一波时尚的浪潮，都将一组关于消费和生活方式的新观念，从最初的一小撮人那里，逐级向下，传播到几个阶层甚至整个社会。

正如权力在宗教传播中——因为“价值C”的缘故——曾起到巨大的推动作用，商业力量在时尚流行中——也因为同样的缘故——起到了类似的也许是大得多的推动作用。消费品的经营者首先去努力发现、识别出（甚至制造出）那些最能代表身份的东西，通过自己的产品加以明确化、符号化，然后向那些热衷于向上靠的时尚追逐者们推销这些符号；等这一波浪潮渐趋平静，他们又转过头来，告诉那些“领潮者”，这些旧东西已经显得太俗气了，不再配得上你的高贵身份，该换换花样了，于是另一波浪潮开始了。

最近读到Steven Pinker在HOW THE MIND WORKS一书中对时尚作了类似的阐述，相见恨晚：

Veblen proposed that the psychology of prestige was driven by three "pecuniary canons of taste": conspicuous leisure, conspicuous consumption, and conspicuous waste. Status symbols are flaunted and coveted not necessarily because they are useful or attractive (pebbles, daisies, and pigeons are quite beautiful, as we rediscover when they delight young children), but often because they are so rare, wasteful, or pointless that only the wealthy can afford them. They include clothing that is too delicate, bulky, constricting, or stain-prone to work in, objects too fragile for casual use or made from unobtainable materials, functionless objects made with prodigious labor, decorations that consume energy, and pale skin in lands where the plebeians work in the fields and suntans in lands where they work indoors. The logic is: You can't see all my wealth and earning power (my bank account, my lands, all my allies and flunkeys), but you can see my gold bathroom fixtures. No one could afford them without wealth to spare, therefore you know I am wealthy.

Conspicuous consumption is counterintuitive because squandering wealth can only reduce it, bringing the squanderer down to the level of his or her rivals. But it works when other people's esteem is useful enough to pay for and when not all the wealth or earning power is sacrificed. If I have a hundred dollars and you have forty, I can give away fifty, but you can't; I will impress others and still be richer than you. The principle has been confirmed from an unlikely source, evolutionary biology. Biologists since Darwin had been puzzled by displays like the peacock's tail, which impresses the peahen but consumes nutrients, hinders movement, and attracts predators. The biologist Amotz Zahavi proposed that the displays evolved because they were handicaps. Only the healthiest animals could afford them, and females choose the healthiest birds to mate with. Theoretical biologists were initially skeptical, but one of them, Alan Grafen, later proved that the theory was sound.

Conspicuous consumption works when only the richest can afford luxuries. When the class structure loosens, or sumptuous goods (or good imitations) become widely available, the upper middle class can emulate the upper class, the middle class can emulate the upper middle class, and so on down the ladder. The upper class cannot very well stand by as they begin to resemble the hoi polloi; they must adopt a new look. But then the look is emulated once again by the upper middle class and begins to trickle down again, prompting the upper class to leap to yet a different look, and so on. The result is fashion. The chaotic cycles of style, in which the chic look of one decade becomes dowdy or slutty, nerdy or foppish in the next, has been explained as a conspiracy of clothing makers, an expression of nationalism, a reflection of the economy, and much else. But Quentin Bell, in his classic analysis of fashion, On Human Finery, showed that only one explanation works: people follow the rule, "Try to look like the people above you; if you're at the top, try to look different from the people below you."

（摘自Steven Pinker: HOW THE MIND WORKS,p.500）

该项权利保障了你的承诺和契约的可信度，Steven Pinker写道：

Paradoxical tactics also enter into the logic of promises. A promise can secure a favor only when the beneficiary of the promise has good reason to believe it will be carried out. The promiser is thus in a better position when the beneficiary knows that the promiser is bound by his promise. The law gives companies the right to sue and the right to be sued. The right to be sued? What kind of "right" is that? It is a right that confers the power to make a promise: to enter into contracts, borrow money, and engage in business with someone who might be harmed as a result. Similarly, the law that empowers banks to foreclose on a mortgage makes it worth the bank's while to grant the mortgage, and so, paradoxically, benefits the borrower. In some societies, Schelling notes, eunuchs got the best jobs because of what they could not do. How does a hostage persuade his kidnapper not to kill him to prevent him from identifying the kidnapper in court? One option is to deliberately blind himself. A better one is to confess to a shameful secret that the kidnapper can use as blackmail. If he has no'shameful secret, he can create one by having the kidnapper photograph him in some unspeakably degrading act.

其中太监的例子太有想象力了——太监的机会建立在其不能做某些事的基础上，呵呵，说得妙。

那些号称要保护购房者免遭贪婪的银行家抢走房子的政治家们，正是利用公众经常在这一点上犯糊涂，而大肆忽悠，赢取政治收益。

对于寻求信用支持的人来说，最坏的情况就是，他找不到任何可以让别人相信他的抵押方法，赌天咒、发毒誓，远远比不上强大的外部约束。

摆脱这种困境的一种方法是：将自己置于死地，然后向对方说：瞧，我根本没有退路，所以你可以相信我。有些男人求爱的时候好像喜欢用这一招，因为男人可以用来抵押的东西毕竟不多，而女人，极度稀缺的卵子本身就是很好的抵押品。

关于承诺或威胁的可信度在博弈中的重要性，Pinker还举了一个漂亮的例子：

Protesters attempt to block the construction of a nuclear power plant by lying down on the railroad tracks leading to the site. The engineer, being reasonable, has no choice but to stop the train. The railroad company counters by telling the engineer to set the throttle so that the train moves very slowly and then to jump out of the train and walk beside it. The protesters must scramble. Next time the protesters handcuff themselves to the tracks; the engineer does not dare leave the train. But the protesters must be certain the engineer sees them in enough time to stop. The company assigns the next train to a nearsighted engineer.

我最初对自由意志这个问题发生兴趣是在看约翰·埃克尔斯的《脑的进化：自我意识的创生》时，去年，Matt Ridley的Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters（《基因组：一个物种的23章自传》）一书再次激起我的兴趣，该书第22章谈论了这个问题，新浪读书上有该书的节译本，其中包括了第22章的译文。下面是该章原文：（注：关于“休谟之叉”一词究竟指什么，好像有不同说法，所以我暂时放弃这一术语）

CHROMOSOME 2 2  Free Will

Hume's fork: Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the result of random events, in which case we are not responsible for them.
                     Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy

As this book is being completed, a few months before the end of a millennium, there comes news of a momentous announcement. At the Sanger Centre, near Cambridge - the laboratory which leads the world in reading the human genome - the complete sequence of chromosome 22 is finished. All 15.5 million 'words' (or so - the exact length depends on the repeat sequences, which vary greatly) in the twenty-second chapter of the human autobiography have been read and written down in English letters: 47 million As, Cs, Gs and Ts.

Near the tip of the long arm of chromosome 22 there lies a massive and complicated gene, pregnant with significance, known as HFW. It has fourteen exons, which together spell out a text more than 6,000 letters long. That text is severely edited after tran­scription by the strange process of RNA splicing to produce a highly complicated protein that is expressed only in a small part of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. The function of the protein is, generalising horribly, to endow human beings with free will. Without HFW, we would have no free will.

The preceding paragraph is fictional. There is no HFW gene on chromosome 22 nor on any other. After twenty-two chapters of relentless truth, I just felt like deceiving you. I cracked under the strain of being a non-fiction writer and could no longer resist the temptation to make something up.

But who am 'I'? The I who, overcome by a silly impulse, decided to write a fictional paragraph? I am a biological creature put together by my genes. They prescribed my shape, gave me five fingers on each hand and thirty-two teeth in my mouth, laid down my capacity for language, and defined about half of my intellectual capacity. When I remember something, it is they that do it for me, switching on the CREB system to store the memory. They built me a brain and delegated responsibility for day-to-day duties to it. They also gave me the distinct impression that I am free to make up my own mind about how to behave. Simple introspection tells me there is nothing that I cannot help myself doing. There is equally nothing that says that I must do one thing and not something else. I am quite capable of jumping in my car and driving to Edinburgh right now and for no other reason than that I want to, or of making up a whole paragraph of fiction. I am a free agent, equipped with free will.

Where did this free will come from? It plainly could not have come from my genes, or else it would not be free will. The answer, according to many, is that it came from society, culture and nurture. According to this reasoning, freedom equals the parts of our natures not determined by our genes, a sort of flower that blooms after our genes have done their tyrannical worst. We can rise above our genetic determinism and grasp that mystic flower, freedom.

There has been a long tradition among a certain kind of science writer to say that the world of biology is divided into people who believe in genetic determinism and people who believe in freedom. Yet these same writers have rejected genetic determinism only by establishing other forms of biological determinism in its place - the determinism of parental influence or social conditioning. It is odd that so many writers who defend human dignity against the tyranny of our genes seem happy to accept the tyranny of our surroundings. I was once criticised in print for allegedly saying (which I had not) that all behaviour is genetically determined. The writer went on to give an example of how behaviour was not genetic: it was well known that child abusers were generally abused themselves as children and this was the cause of their later behaviour. It did not seem to occur to him that this was just as deterministic and a far more heartless and prejudicial condemnation of people who had suffered enough than anything I had said. He was arguing that the children of child abusers were likely to become child abusers and there was little they could do about it. It did not occur to him that he was applying a double standard: demanding rigorous proof for genetic explanations of behaviour while easily accepting social ones.

The crude distinction between genes as implacable programmers of a Calvinist predestination and the environment as the home of liberal free will is a fallacy. One of the most powerful environmental sculptors of character and ability is the sum of conditions in the womb, about which you can do nothing. As I argued in the chapter on chromosome 6, some of the genes for intellectual ability are probably genes for appetite rather than aptitude: they set their pos­sessor on a course of willing learning. The same result can be achieved by an inspiring teacher. Nature, in other words, can be much more malleable than nurture.

Aldous Huxley's Brave new world, written at the height of eugenic enthusiasm in the 1920s, presents a terrifying world of uniform, coerced control in which there is no individuality. Each person meekly and willingly accepts his or her place in a caste system - alphas to epsilons - and obediently does the tasks and enjoys the recreations that society expects of him or her. The very phrase 'brave new world' has come to mean such a dystopia brought into being by central control and advanced science working hand­in-hand.

It therefore comes as something of a surprise to read the book and discover that there is virtually nothing about eugenics in it. Alphas and epsilons are not bred, but are produced by chemical adjustment in artificial wombs followed by Pavlovian conditioning and brainwashing, then sustained in adulthood by opiate-like drugs. In other words, this dystopia owes nothing to nature and everything to nurture. It is an environmental, not a genetic, hell. Everybody's fate is determined, but by their controlled environment, not their genes. It is indeed biological determinism, but not genetic determin­ism. Aldous Huxley's genius was to recognise how hellish a world in which nurture prevailed would actually be. Indeed, it is hard to tell whether the extreme genetic determinists who ruled Germany in the 1930s caused more suffering than the extreme environmental determinists who ruled Russia at the same time. All we can be sure of is that both extremes were horrible.

Fortunately we are spectacularly resistant to brainwashing. No matter how hard their parents or their politicians tell them that smoking is bad for them, young people still take it up. Indeed, it is precisely because grown-ups lecture them about it that it seems so appealing. We are genetically endowed with a tendency to be bloody-minded towards authority, especially in our teens, to guard our own innate character against dictators, teachers, abusing step­parents or government advertising campaigns.

Besides, we now know that virtually all the evidence purporting to show how parental influences shape our character is deeply flawed. There is indeed a correlation between abusing children and having been abused as a child, but it can be entirely accounted for by inherited personality traits. The children of abusers inherit their persecutor's characteristics. Properly controlled for this effect, studies leave no room for nurture determinism at all. The step­children of abusers, for instance, do not become abusers.1
The same, remarkably, is true of virtually every standard social nostrum you have ever heard. Criminals rear criminals. Divorcees rear divorcers. Problem parents rear problem children. Obese parents rear obese children. Having subscribed to all of these assertions during a long career of writing psychology textbooks, Judith Rich Harris suddenly began questioning them a few years ago. What she discovered appalled her. Because virtually no studies had controlled for heritability, there was no proof of causation at all in any study. Not even lip service was being paid to this omission: correlation was being routinely presented as causation. Yet in each case, from behaviour genetics studies, there was new, strong evi­dence against what Rich Harris calls 'the nurture assumption'. Studies of the divorce rate of twins, for example, reveal that genetics accounts for about half of the variation in divorce rate, non-shared environmental factors for another half and shared home environ­ment for nothing at all.1 In other words, you are no more likely to divorce if reared in a broken home than the average - unless your biological parents divorced. Studies of criminal records of adoptees in Denmark revealed a strong correlation with the criminal record of the biological parent and a very small correlation with the criminal record of the adopting parent — and even that vanished when con­trolled for peer-group effects, whereby the adopting parents were found to live in more, or less, criminal neighbourhoods according to whether they themselves were criminals.

Indeed, it is now clear that children probably have more non­genetic effect on parents than vice versa. As I argued in the chapter on chromosomes X and Y, it used to be conventional wisdom that distant fathers and over-protective mothers turn sons gay. It is now considered much more likely to be the reverse: perceiving that a son is not fully interested in masculine concerns, the father retreats; the mother compensates by being overprotective. Likewise, it is true that autistic children often have cold mothers; but this is an effect, not a cause: the mother, exhausted and dispirited by years of unre­warding attempts to break through to an autistic child, eventually gives up trying.

Rich Harris has systematically demolished the dogma that has lain, unchallenged, beneath twentieth-century social science: the assump­tion that parents shape the personality and culture of their children. In Sigmund Freud's psychology, John Watson's behaviourism and Margaret Mead's anthropology, nurture-determinism by parents was never tested, only assumed. Yet the evidence, from twin studies, from the children of immigrants and from adoption studies, is now staring us in the face: people get their personalities from their genes and from their peers, not from their parents.1

In the 1970s, after the publication of E .O. Wilson's book Sociobiol­ogy, there was a vigorous counter-attack against the idea of genetic influences on behaviour led by Wilson's Harvard colleagues, Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould. Their favourite slogan, used as a tide for one of Lewontin's books, was uncompromisingly dogmatic: 'Not in our genes!' It was at the time still just a plausible hypothesis to assert that genetic influences on behaviour were slight or non­existent. After twenty-five years of studies in behavioural genetics, that view is no longer tenable. Genes do influence behaviour.
Yet even after these discoveries, environment is still massively important - probably in total more important than genes in nearly all behaviours. But a remarkably small part in environmental influ­ence is played by parental influence. This is not to deny that parents matter, or that children could do without them. Indeed, as Rich Harris observes, it is absurd to argue otherwise. Parents shape the home environment and a happy home environment is a good thing in its own right. You do not have to believe that happiness determines personality to agree that it is a good thing to have. But children do not seem to let the home environment influence their personality outside the home, nor to let it influence their personality in later life as an adult. Rich Harris makes the vital observation that we all keep the public and private zones of our lives separate and we do not necessarily take the lessons or the personality from one to the other. We easily 'code-switch' between them. Thus we acquire the language (in the case of immigrants) or accent of our peers, not our parents, for use in the rest of our lives. Culture is transmitted autonomously from each children's peer group to the next and not from parent to child - which is why, for example, the move towards greater adult sexual equality has had zero effect on willing sexual segregation in the playground. As every parent knows, children prefer to imitate peers than parents. Psychology, like sociology and anthropology, has been dominated by those with a strong antipathy to genetic explanations; it can no longer sustain such ignorance.2
My point is not to rehearse the nature-nurture debate, which I explored in the chapter on chromosome 6, but to draw attention to the fact that even if the nurture assumption had proved true, it would not have reduced determinism one iota. As it is, by stressing the powerful influence that conformity to a peer group can have on personality, Rich Harris lays bare just how much more alarming social determinism is than genetic. It is brainwashing. Far from leaving room for free will, it rather diminishes it. A child who expresses her own (partly genetic) personality in defiance of her parents' or her siblings' pressures is at least obeying endogenous causality, not somebody else's.

So there is no escape from determinism by appealing to socialisa­tion. Either effects have causes or they do not. If I am timid because of something that happened to me when I was young, that event is no less deterministic than a gene for timidity. The greater mistake is not to equate determinism with genes, but to mistake determinism for inevitability. Said the three authors of Not in our genes, Steven Rose, Leon Kamin and Richard Lewontin, 'To the biological determinists the old credo "You can't change human nature" is the alpha and omega of the human condition.' But this equation - determinism equals fatalism — is so well understood to be a fallacy that it is hard to find the straw men that the three critics indict.3
The reason the equation of determinism with fatalism is a fallacy is as follows. Suppose you are ill, but you reason that there is no point in calling the doctor because either you will recover, or you won't: in either case, a doctor is superfluous. But this overlooks the possibility that your recovery or lack thereof could be caused by your calling the doctor, or failure to do so. It follows that determin­ism implies nothing about what you can or cannot do. Determinism looks backwards to the causes of the present state, not forward to the consequences.

Yet the myth persists that genetic determinism is a more implac­able kind of fate than social determinism. As James Watson has put it, 'We talk about gene therapy as if it can change someone's fate, but you can also change someone's fate if you pay off their credit card.' The whole point of genetic knowledge is to remedy genetic defects with (mostly non-genetic) interventions. Far from the dis­coveries of genetic mutations leading to fatalism, I have already cited many examples where they have led to redoubled efforts to ameliorate their effects. As I pointed out in the chapter on chromo­some 6, when dyslexia was belatedly recognised as a real, and possibly genetic, condition, the response of parents, teachers and govern­ments was not fatalistic. Nobody said that because it was a genetic condition dyslexia was therefore incurable and from now on children diagnosed with dyslexia would be allowed to remain illiterate. Quite the reverse happened: remedial education for dyslexics was developed, with impressive results. Likewise, as I argued in the chapter on chromosome 11, even psychotherapists have found gen­etic explanations of shyness helpful in curing it. By reassuring shy people that their shyness is innate and 'real', it somehow helps them overcome it.
Nor does it make sense to argue that biological determinism threatens the case for political freedom. As Sam Brittan has argued, 'the opposite of freedom is coercion, not determinism.'4 We cherish political freedom because it allows us freedom of personal self­determination, not the other way around. Though we pay lip service to our love of free will, when the chips are down we cling to determinism to save us. In February 1994 an American named Stephen Mobley was convicted of the murder of a pizza-shop man­ager, John Collins, and sentenced to death. Appealing to have the sentence reduced to life imprisonment, his lawyers offered a genetic defence. Mobley came, they said, from a long pedigree of crooks and criminals. He probably killed Collins because his genes made him do it. 'He' was not responsible; he was a genetically determined automaton.

It to be thought that he had none. So does every criminal who uses the defence of insanity or diminished responsibility. So does every jealous spouse who uses the defence of temporary insanity or justifiable rage after murdering an unfaithful partner. So does the unfaithful partner when justifying the infidelity. So does every tycoon who uses the excuse of Alzheimer's disease when accused of fraud against his shareholders. So indeed does a child in the playground who says that his friend made him do it. So does each one of us when we willingly go along with a subtle suggestion from the therapist that we should blame our parents for our present unhappiness. So does a politician who blames social conditions for the crime rate in an area. So does an economist when he asserts that consumers are utility maximisers. So does a biographer when he tries to explain how his subject's character was forged by formative experiences. So does everybody who consults a horoscope. In every case there is a willing, happy and grateful embracing of determinism. Far from loving free will, we seem to be a species that positively leaps to surrender it whenever we can.5

Full responsibility for one's actions is a necessary fiction without which the law would flounder, but it is a fiction all the same. To the extent that you act in character you are responsible for your actions; yet acting in character is merely expressing the many deter­minisms that caused your character. David Hume found himself impaled on this dilemma, subsequently named Hume's fork. Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are random, in which case we are not responsible for them. In either case, common sense is outraged and society impossible to organise.

Christianity has wrestled with these issues for two millennia and theologians of other stripes for much longer. God, almost by defin­ition, seems to deny free will or He would not be omnipotent. Yet Christianity in particular has striven to preserve a concept of free will because, without it, human beings cannot be held accountable for their actions. Without accountability, sin is a mockery and Hell a damnable injustice from a just God. The modern Christian consensus is that God has implanted free will in us, so that we have a choice of living virtuously or in sin.

Several prominent evolutionary biologists have recently argued that religious belief is an expression of a universal human instinct — that there is in some sense a group of genes for believing in God or gods. (One neuroscientist even claims to have found a dedicated neural module in the temporal lobes of the brain that is bigger or more active in religious believers; hyper-religiosity is a feature of some types of temporal-lobe epilepsy.) A religious instinct may be no more than a by-product of an instinctive superstition to assume that all events, even thunderstorms, have wilful causes. Such a super­stition could have been useful in the Stone Age. When a boulder rolls down the hill and nearly crushes you, it is less dangerous to subscribe to the conspiracy theory that it was pushed by somebody than to assume it was an accident. Our very language is larded with intentionality. I wrote earlier that my genes built me and delegated responsibility to my brain. My genes did nothing of the sort. It all just happened.

E. O. Wilson even argues, in his book Consilience,6 that morality is the codified expression of our instincts, and that what is right is indeed - despite the naturalistic fallacy — derived from what comes naturally. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that belief in a god, being natural, is therefore correct. Yet Wilson himself was reared a devout Baptist and is now an agnostic, so he has rebelled against a deterministic instinct. Likewise, Steven Pinker, by remaining childless while subscribing to the theory of the selfish gene, has told his selfish genes to 'go jump in a lake'.

So even determinists can escape determinism. We have a paradox. Unless our behaviour is random, then it is determined. If it is determined, then it is not free. And yet we feel, and demonstrably are, free. Charles Darwin described free will as a delusion caused by our inability to analyse our own motives. Modern Darwinists such as Robert Trivers have even argued that deceiving ourselves about such matters is itself an evolved adaptation. Pinker has called free will 'an idealisation of human beings that makes the ethics game playable'. The writer Rita Carter calls it an illusion hard-wired into the mind. The philosopher Tony Ingram calls free will something that we assume other people have — we seem to have an inbuilt bias to ascribe free will to everybody and everything about us, from recalcitrant outboard motors to recalcitrant children equipped with our genes.

I would like to think that we can get a little closer to resolving the paradox than that. Recall that, when discussing chromosome 10, I described how the stress response consists of genes at the whim of the social environment, not vice versa. If genes can affect behaviour and behaviour can affect genes, then the causality is circu­lar. And in a system of circular feedbacks, hugely unpredictable results can follow from simple deterministic processes.

This kind of notion goes under the name of chaos theory. Much as I hate to admit it, the physicists have got there first. Pierre-Simon de LaPlace, the great French mathematician of the eighteenth cen­tury, once mused that if, as a good Newtonian, he could know the positions and the motions of every atom in the universe, he could predict the future. Or rather, he suspected that he could not know the future, but he wondered why not. It is fashionable to say that the answer lies at the subatomic level, where we now know that there are quantum-mechanical events that are only statistically pre­dictable and the world is not made of Newtonian billiard balls. But that is not much help because Newtonian physics is actually a pretty good description of events at the scale at which we live and nobody seriously believes that we rely, for our free will, on the probabilistic scaffolding of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. To put the reason bluntly: in deciding to write this chapter this afternoon, my brain did not play dice. To act randomly is not the same thing as to act freely — in fact, quite the reverse.8

Chaos theory provides a better answer to LaPlace. Unlike quantum physics, it does not rest on chance. Chaotic systems, as defined by mathematicians, are determined, not random. But the theory holds that even if you know all the determining factors in a system, you may not be able to predict the course it will take, because of the way different causes can interact with each other. Even simply deter­mined systems can behave chaotically. They do so partly because of reflexivity, whereby one action affects the starting conditions of the next action, so small effects become larger causes. The trajectory of the stock market index, the future of the weather and the 'fractal geometry' of a coastline are all chaotic systems: in each case, the broad outline or course of events is predictable, but the precise details are not. We know it will be colder in winter than summer, but we cannot tell whether it will snow next Christmas Day.
Human behaviour shares these characteristics. Stress can alter the expression of genes, which can affect the response to stress and so on. Human behaviour is therefore unpredictable in the short term, but broadly predictable in the long term. Thus at any instant in the day, I can choose not to consume a meal. I am free not to eat. But over the course of the day it is almost a certainty that I will eat. The timing of my meal may depend on many things — my hunger (partly dictated by my genes), the weather (chaotically determined by myriad external factors), or somebody else's decision to ask me out to lunch (he being a deterministic being over whom I have no control). This interaction of genetic and external influences makes my behaviour unpredictable, but not undetermined. In the gap between those words lies freedom.

We can never escape from determinism, but we can make a distinction between good determinisms and bad ones - free ones and unfree ones. Suppose that I am sitting in the laboratory of Shin Shimojo at the California Institute of Technology and he is at this very moment prodding with an electrode a part of my brain some­where close to the anterior cingulate sulcus. Since the control of 'voluntary' movement is in this general area, he might be responsible for me making a movement that would, to me, have all the appear­ance of volition. Asked why I had moved my arm, I would almost certainly reply with conviction that it was a voluntary decision. Professor Shimojo would know better (I hasten to add that this is still a thought experiment suggested to me by Shimojo, not a real one). It was not the fact that my movement was determined that contradicted my illusion of freedom; it was the fact that it was determined from outside by somebody else.
The philosopher A. J. Ayer put it this way:9

If I suffered from a compulsive neurosis, so that I got up and walked across the room, whether I wanted to or not, or if I did so because somebody else compelled me, then I should not be acting freely. But if I do it now, I shall be acting freely, just because these conditions do not obtain; and the fact that my action may nevertheless have a cause is, from this point of view, irrelevant.
A psychologist of twins, Lyndon Eaves, has made a similar point:10
Freedom is the ability to stand up and transcend the limitations of the environment. That capacity is something that natural selection has placed in us, because it's adaptive ... If you're going to be pushed around, would you rather be pushed around by your environment, which is not you, or by your genes, which in some sense is who you are.

Freedom lies in expressing your own determinism, not somebody else's. It is not the determinism that makes a difference, but the ownership. If freedom is what we prefer, then it is preferable to be determined by forces that originate in ourselves and not in others. Part of our revulsion at cloning originates in the fear that what is uniquely ours could be shared by another. The single-minded obses­sion of the genes to do the determining in their own body is our strongest bulwark against loss of freedom to external causes. Do you begin to see why I facetiously flirted with the idea of a gene for free will? A gene for free will would not be such a paradox because it would locate the source of our behaviour inside us, where others cannot get at it. Of course, there is no single gene, but instead there is something infinitely more uplifting and magnificent: a whole human nature, flexibly preordained in our chromosomes and idio­syncratic to each of us. Everybody has a unique and different, endogenous nature. A self.

若以奥数成绩衡量，中国学生所受的科学教育不可谓差，而美国学生可能要倒数了，但我的判断却仍然是：中国的科学教育极其失败，而美国的科学教育仍属一流。

差别在于哲学。科学是一套独特的思考、说话和交流方式，奥数考100分，并不意味着你已经学会用科学的方法来思考和说话了。

在英美科学家的著作里，你常常可以看到大段大段文字阐述他们的哲学和方法论基础，波普、卡尔纳普、库恩的名字和术语随处可见，而在中国学者的作品里，你最多只能听到一些前罗素哲学家的警句妙言。

对于没有起码了解科学方法论的人来说，阅读科学新闻和看明星八卦没有区别，除了满足一点好奇心和获得一点遐想空间之外，我看不出对改进他们的思考有任何益处；我经常在朋友之间宣扬的一个观点是：对大众来说，科学就是另一种迷信，也只能是一种迷信。

所以，至少在中国，最需要普及的，是科学哲学。

如果你有足够的时间，我会贪婪凶恶的推荐从休谟、罗素、维特根斯坦、波普、库恩、拉卡托斯直到奎因，但很少人有这样的时间和耐心，所以，我建议，如果只打算读一本科学哲学著作，就读这本吧。

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