We've made the world too complicated
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我们把世界弄得太复杂了。我写这篇文章时用着永远无法完全理解的技术，住在一栋有些房间我永远进不去的楼里，生活在由我无法掌控的法律支配的国家。我们清醒的大部分时间，乃至整个人生，都被压缩进一个抽象的世界。一走出门，就是城市的人行道，两旁停着丑陋的金属怪物，我像漂在陌生人海洋里。
我们的世界充斥着对环境的破坏、操控、腐败与伤害。这让我们承受着一种连自己都觉察不到的压力——下颌微微紧绷，呼吸变浅，血压稳步上升。我们的内心始终弥漫着无声的困惑：这个世界讲不通。它一直都是这样，所以我们甚至不知道还有别的存在方式。
在关于 Demis Hassabis 和 Google Deepmind 的纪录片 The Thinking Game 中，呈现了一种世界观：AGI 能为人类最大的问题提供最佳解决方案，是技术的终极救世主。我觉得我们很会自我说服，相信自己在做有益的事，朝着诚实的目标努力：参与社会、发现新知、推动新的计划与项目。看到操纵他人如此容易，我们也理所当然地把自己当成构建现实的大师。
说实话，我常常想在铰链处把笔记本电脑一掰两半，想把手机扔进海里，想走出学校或办公室，从此不再回头。我想永远不再用钱支付，不再读任何文字。但那样会把你推向孤独，把你变成疯子。这样的念头很糟，是在美化"原始"生活方式。不，我们现在才是原始的。
我们学得越多，破坏似乎越跟着而来。讽刺的是，如果没有那些帮助我们回望的工具，我们或许永远不会意识到这一点——至少我们被这样引导去相信。我们对是非的直觉仿佛在很小的时候就离开了我。我曾想做很多事：创造伟大的艺术，制造伟大的机器，解决重要的问题。也许我们能给世界最大的礼物，就是尽量少做。看鸟儿，感受风和水在手心里，除此之外什么也不做。饿了就吃，快乐就笑，空虚就哭。也许这也是我们能给自己的最大馈赠。
We've made the world too complicated. I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand in a building with rooms I can never enter, living in a country dictated by laws I can't control. We spend the majority of our waking hours and lives in an abstract world of compressed life. The moment I walk through my door I'm in a zoning area on a city-owned sidewalk, flanked by ugly metallic monsters, floating through a sea of strangers.
Our world is an explosion of environmental harm, manipulation, corruption, and damage to everything around us. This puts us all under a stress we can't consciously notice. Manifesting in the slight clenching our jaws, thinning of our breath, steady incline of our blood pressure. There's a spirit of silent confusion in our mind at all times. The world doesn't make sense. It's always been this way, so we don't even know another way to exist.
In the documentary The Thinking Game about Demis Hassabis and Google Deepmind, we are presented with the worldview that AGI offers the best solution to humanity's biggest problems. The ultimate savior from technology. I think we do a very good job at convincing ourselves that we are doing good things, working towards honest goals. Participating in society, discovering new truths, implementing new plans and projects. Seeing how easy it is to manipulate others, it makes sense that we are the masters of constructing realities around ourselves as well.
Honestly, I've wanted to snap my laptop right at the hinge so many times. To throw my phone into the sea. I've wanted to walk out of my school or office and never return. I want to never pay with money or read a written word again. But to do so would leave you alone and a lunatic. These thoughts are bad. These thoughts are aggrandizing "primitive" ways. No. We are primitive now.
The more we learn, the more destruction seems to follow. The sick irony is that we would never have understood this without tools that help us look back, or so we are led to believe. Our internal intuition about right and wrong seems to leave us at an early age. I used to want to do many things. Make great art, build great machines, solve important issues. Maybe our greatest gift to the world is to do as little as possible. To look at the birds, feel the wind and the water in our own hands, and ... nothing more. Eat when we are hungry, laugh when we are happy, cry when we are empty. And maybe that is the greatest gift to ourselves as well.
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人类理解宇宙的能力源于一连串极不可能的进化事件，这反过来赋予智慧生命一种责任——去探索并认识存在本身，而不是浪费这份稀有的礼物。需要强调的是，这种责任适用于人类整体，而不必然要求每个个体都承担全部义务。
进化通过选择机制在组合系统中自然地产生越来越多的功能性信息，使得智能和复杂性成为自然法则的必然结果，而非偶然的产物。自大爆炸以来，功能性信息的比特数一直在增加。
把理解宇宙当作义务的并非只有人类，本质上属于广义的智慧生命。这项使命可以通过机器人探测器或其他形式的人工智能来实现；居住在某处并不比观察和理解那里的事物更为重要。
现代的复杂性带来持续的适应压力：我们必须不断、频繁地重新适应自己创造的环境。与前现代人世代在相似环境中成长不同，加速的变化几乎成了焦虑的定义。
为长期抽象目标服务的工作往往令人感到不完整、难以理解或无法掌控；与之相对的本地即时性工作（如烘焙、修理）反馈回路短、满足感直接，因为它们是在为真实的人解决具体问题。
现代社会之所以显得格外复杂，是因为物质条件变化的速度超过了代际间能力传递的速度。虽然所有物质条件本身都具有复杂性，但不适感源于我们被置于一个超出适应能力、持续演化的系统中。
必须区分为了满足人类需求而存在的必要复杂性（例如医疗系统）与某些为特定利益故意制造的、不必要的复杂性。后者的设计往往是为了阻碍比较或转移责任，而非真正服务消费者。
自然界为大脑的进化提供了阶梯，而现代社会充满分心，使得"什么都不做"的冲动成为一种自然反应。但这种回避并非健康的平衡，它往往接近抑郁的状态。
人类文明自始至终都包含超出个人理解能力的复杂性——从无法掌控的古代法规到普通人无法制造的进口武器。专业化是文明的基石，随着知识不断扩展，博学者变得越来越不可能。
觉得一切都太复杂是一种反复出现的代际体验：老一辈常怀念他们口中的"简单时代"，而那些伴随当下复杂性成长起来的人则觉得这些事情并不难。
讨论揭示了一个张力：一方面承认复杂性是存在的固有特征，另一方面质疑现代人类所制造的系统是否已经超过了某个最佳阈值。部分参与者认为复杂性本身并不新鲜，引用自然系统、古代文明和历史技术来说明个人同样难以理解的事物；另一些人则区分了自然复杂性（要求适应）与人为管理的复杂性（常常要求服从）。对话还探讨了"不堪重负"的感觉是否源于加速变化造成的认知过载、代际视角的转变，或是现代系统在理解和控制方面使个体产生了真正的疏离。有人主张通过回归自然和练习正念来接受并寻找平衡，另一些人则认为问题在于那些为制度利益而非人类福祉制造不必要复杂性的结构性选择。 • Humanity's capacity to understand the universe arose from an improbable chain of evolutionary events, creating an obligation for intelligent life to explore and comprehend existence rather than waste this rare gift, though this duty applies to humanity collectively rather than obligating every individual.
• Evolution naturally produces increasing functional information through selection in combinatorial systems, making intelligence and complexity probable outcomes of natural laws rather than coincidental accidents, with the number of functional bits increasing since the big bang.
• The obligation to understand the universe belongs to intelligent life broadly, not exclusively to humanity, and could be fulfilled through robotic explorers or other forms of created intelligence, with habitation being less important than the act of seeing and comprehending.
• Modern complexity creates a feeling of constant adaptation where people must re-adapt hourly to their self-generated environment, unlike pre-modern humans who grew up in the same world as their grandparents, with this accelerating change being almost the definition of anxiety.
• Work that serves long-term abstract ends creates incompleteness and a sense of not understanding or controlling systems, unlike immediate local work like baking or repair where the feedback loop closes quickly and satisfaction comes from solving tangible problems for real people.
• Complexity in modern society stems from material conditions that change faster than competence can be transmitted across generations, and while all material conditions are complex, the discomfort comes from inhabiting systems that evolve beyond our ability to adapt.
• There is a crucial distinction between necessary complexity that serves human needs and unnecessary complexity deliberately created to benefit specific interests, such as health insurance systems designed to prevent direct comparison rather than serve consumers.
• The natural world provides a ramp of information that brains evolved to navigate, while modern society fills every moment with distraction, making the impulse to do nothing a natural reaction but not a healthy balance since it edges toward depression.
• Human civilization has always involved complexity beyond individual comprehension, from ancient laws people didn't control to imported weapons they couldn't make, with specialization being the foundation of civilization and polymathy becoming impossible as knowledge expands.
• The feeling that everything is too complicated is a recurring generational experience where older minds hark back to simpler times that were equally complex, with today's complexity seeming simple to fresh minds that grew up alongside it.
The discussion reveals a tension between recognizing complexity as an inherent feature of existence and questioning whether modern human-made systems have exceeded some optimal threshold. Several participants argue that complexity itself is not new, pointing to natural systems, ancient civilizations, and historical technologies that were equally incomprehensible to individuals. Others distinguish between complexity encountered in nature, which asks for adaptation, and complexity administered through human systems, which often demands submission. The conversation also explores whether the feeling of being overwhelmed stems from cognitive overload in an accelerating world, generational perspective shifts, or a genuine qualitative difference in how modern systems alienate individuals from understanding and controlling their environment. While some advocate for acceptance and finding balance through nature and mindfulness, others suggest the problem lies in specific structural choices that create unnecessary complexity for institutional benefit rather than human flourishing.