知识让资源的存在变得无限Knowledge Makes the Existence of Resources Infinite
Brett： 知识是让资源的存在变得无限的东西。知识的创造是没有边界的。我们会不断创造更多的知识，并由此了解到更多、更多样的资源。
在《无穷的开始》(The Beginning of Infinity) 里有一个关于铕的绝妙寓言。戴维·多伊奇讲到大约 60 年前第一台彩色电视机开始制造时的情形。有一种阴极射线管，它把一束电子射向荧光屏。荧光屏上有这些像素点，三种颜色，其中一种是红色，而屏幕上的那些红色荧光粉里就填充着铕元素。
铕的有趣之处在于，当你给它通电、激发它时，它会发出这种红色的光。铕更特别的地方在于，它是元素周期表上唯一能做到这一点的元素，是唯一一种有这样的特性的化学物质。如果你向它发射电子，它就会发出彩色电视所需的红光。
人们计算过，地球上的铕只有一定的储量，而阴极射线管制造商正在迅速消耗这些铕。于是科学家们有了一个非常完备的数学理论：阴极射线管的数量是有限的，因此，我们的阴极射线管会用完。
从很狭隘的意义上说，确实如此：对任何一种特定资源来说，地球上的储量都是有限的。当然，外太空也有铕，你或许可以在那里开采，但更深层的要点是，如今已经没有人再用阴极射线管了。如今，彩色电视的整个概念与开采铕毫无关系。
我们都有了 LCD 屏幕、等离子屏幕，未来可能还会有某种与今天的技术完全无关的新东西出现。但我们仍然会有彩色电视或彩色屏幕。
这对我们所能想到的任何资源来说都是成立的。
如果你碰巧生活在非洲大草原上，你完全可以做出一个看似合理的马尔萨斯式计算：我们不能一直烧木头，因为最终所有森林都会被烧光。显然，我们会把木头用完。木头的数量是有限的。即使你能种出更多木头，最终木头的消耗量也会超过现有存量。而这就是人们针对煤炭、石油以及其他一切我们正在消耗的东西所提出的论点。
Naval： 即使是所谓的真空空间，也含有大量的物质和许多可以转化为能量的东西。资源是无限的，真正有限的是知识。
遗憾的是，人们在这里有一个悲观的假设：人类的创造力是有限的。而我认为，恰恰是那些没有建造过东西、没有从零创造出新事物的人，最能体会到这种局限。
Brett: Knowledge is the thing that makes the existence of resources infinite. The creation of knowledge is unbounded. We’re going to keep on creating more knowledge and, thereby, learning about more and different resources.
There’s this wonderful parable of europium in The Beginning of Infinity where David talks about when the first color television started to be manufactured about 60 years ago. There was a cathode ray tube type where you’d fire a stream of electrons at a phosphorescent screen. The phosphorescent screen would have these pixels, three different colors, one of which was red, and those red phosphors on the screen were filled with the element europium.
The interesting thing about europium is, when you put electricity through it, when you excite it, it glows with this red color. The extra-interesting thing about europium is that it is the only such element on the periodic table; it’s the only chemical that will do that. If you fire electrons at it, it will glow the red that you need to have for color television.
It was calculated that there’s only a certain amount of europium on the earth, and that amount of europium was quickly being consumed by cathode ray tube manufacturers. So the scientists had a perfectly robust mathematical theory about how the number of cathode ray tubes was finite; therefore, we’re going to run out of cathode ray tubes.
It’s true, in a very narrow sense, that for any given resource you’re going to have a finite amount on planet Earth. Of course, there’s going to be europium in outer space and you could probably mine it there, but the deeper point is that no one has cathode ray tubes anymore. The whole idea of color television has nothing to do with the extraction of europium these days.
We’ve all got LCD screens, we have plasma screens, and there will probably be something else coming in the future that will have absolutely nothing to do with the kind of technology we have today. But we’re still going to have color television or color screens.
This is true for absolutely any resource that we can think of.
You might very well make a perfectly good Malthusian calculation that we can’t keep on burning wood if you happen to be living on the African savanna, because eventually all of the forests are going to be burned down. Obviously, we’re going to run out of wood. There’s a finite amount of wood. Even if you can grow more wood, eventually the consumption of wood is going to outstrip the amount that’s there. And this is the argument that’s made for coal, oil, and everything else that we happen to be consuming.
Naval: Even so-called empty space has a lot of matter and a lot of things that could be converted into energy. There is no limit to the number of resources out there. There’s purely a limit to knowledge.
Unfortunately, there’s a pessimistic assumption here that people make that human creativity is bounded, and I think it’s the people who have not built things, who have not created new things from scratch, who seem to feel this the most.