09.为镶嵌细工点赞／IN PRAISE OF MARQUETRY

［09］为镶嵌细工点赞／IN PRAISE OF MARQUETRY

......试图维持原状者，常常以“简化”作为论据：我们如何管理声音本身的复杂性和它带来的骚动呢？两者有本质差异，却又能混合成了一场混沌。 …who, to preserve the old state of things, have recourse toan argument that appeals to simplicity: How can we manage the complexity of the voice and its brouhaha, which is disparate and composite, a disorder?

是这样的。 Here's how.

鱼被网捕捉想要逃离，但越是挣扎越是被困住。苍蝇，振动自己的翅膀，被更牢固地囚禁在蜘蛛网中；登山者在岩壁上遇到危险，越是太急躁的试图解开缠绕住的绳索就会扭结的更严重。 Caught by a net,a fish tries to swim away, but more it wriggles to get free, the more it get ensnared; flies, by vibrating their wings, become imprisoned in the spider's web; mountaineers, meeting on a rock face and confronted with danger, mix up their ropes even more if they try to disentangle them too quickly.

管理员有时颁布一些指令以期减少混乱，但麻烦反而更交杂，像是登山者那样。 Administrators sometimes issue guidelines to reduce administrative complexity, but they thereby multiply it, imitating the alpinists.

难道复杂性是一种，任何简化它的尝试都会使它进一步复杂化的状态吗？ Is complexity a state of things in which any attempt to simplify it complicates it further?

林云帆：“复杂性是一种任何简化它的尝试都会使它进一步复杂化的状态”。喜欢这句话。为了简化某个生产过程，工厂要投放可能一百倍的精力与资本优化它的流程与该环节。理想的简化是，经历了复杂的改变后使得改变后的状态优于改变后的状态，但究竟效果如何，难以定论；当然，还有很多不理想的，完全是自找苦吃、鱼死网破。从这一点来说，简化永远属于未来，不属于现在。

我们如何分析它呢？ How can we analyze this?

通过因素数目是否增长，个体是否分化，关系是否倍增，以及轨迹是否交叉。图形理论和计算机科学能够处理这些交叉的网络图，这种方式拓扑学上称之为单形。 Through the growth of the number of elements, their individual differentiation, the multiplication of their relations, and the intersections of their trajectories. Graph theory and computer science deal with these figures of crossed networks, which topology calls asimplex.

在科学史上，复杂性的出现标志着你利用了不适当的方法，意味着需要改变范式。 In the history of the sciences, the appearance of complexity was a sign that you had utilized an inadequate method and needed to change your paradigm.

然而，正是这种相互联系的多样性，构成我们社会的特征：个人主义、个人或群体的需求以及网站的流动性。 It is this type of connected multiplicity, however, that characterizes our societies, which lie at the intersection of individualism, the demands of persons or groups, and the mobility of sites.

如今，每个人都试图编织出自己的单形，并不断游移在别人的单形之中。 Today, everyone weaves their own simplexes, and move about in others.

就是刚才，拇指姑娘正在一个混合交错的空间中游移，这个空间就像迷宫，还要出现万花筒一般的马赛克色彩。 Just now, Thumbelina was moving about in a space that was mixed and striped…in a labyrinth, before a mosaic of kaleidoscopic colors.

自由属于每个人，要求他们有自由的双手和空间，所以没有人认为民主的这种要求应该简化。 Freedom belongs to every individual and demands that they have free hands and elbow room, and no one thinks this requirement of democracy should be simplified.

事实上，简单的社会导致弱肉强食的动物等级：金字塔形的结构，只能有一个顶点和宽阔的基座。 Indeed, simple societies lead to animal hierarchies, subject to the law of the strongest: a pyramidal body with a single summit and a wide base.

林云帆：“这个空间就像迷宫，还要出现万花筒一般的马赛克色彩”，说的应该是图形时代，被数码掌控的图像。这个时空里，人们依旧用着传统的思路生活。所以民主许诺了某种自由，这是最基本的一点，这种自由没有具体表述，但一旦越界，大众绝不原谅。故而如今的民主，即使依赖大量的繁文缛节的程序去保证，大众也是很矛盾、不敢踢开这些程序。

但愿复杂性最终能激增！然而，这也是要付出代价的：排队等候的时间会越来越长；行政繁文缛节会增加；街道上会出现拥堵，法律越发难以解释并削弱自由。 May complexity proliferate, finally! Yet it comes at a cost: waiting lines multiply and become longer; administrative red tape increases; there is congestion in the streets, and difficulties in interpreting sophisticated laws, whose density in fact diminishes freedom.

我们得到多少就付出多少。 We always pay in the currency we earn.

更重要的是，这种成本又被视为权力的来源之一。 Moreover, this cost appears to be one of the sources of power.

这是公民怀疑他们的代表不想减少上述复杂性的原因之一。 It is one reason citizens suspect that their representatives have no desire to reduce these complications.

他们无数的指令可能给人的印象是他们想要减少它，但是复杂度成倍增加，就像网中捕获的鱼一样。 Their numerous directives may give the impression they want to reduce it, but instead the complexity is multiplied, like fish caught in a net.

林云帆：曾有说法，人们愿意让渡自由，来换回自由。当一个权力机器能保证参与者想要保护的那一部分自由，参与者就会认可它的主导和控制地位，甚至默许它某种程度的侵犯。当然，参与者们依旧保持着警惕。一旦权力机器成为暴政机器，人们会引发革命，各种形式的，来创造新的机器压制它。历史已经无数次上演这样的情节，但我相信，这种重复会不断持续下去。