在飞机上看一本天文学的基础理论书，也许是太过入迷，不知道旁边的小孩也一直紧盯我的屏幕，忽然，他问：为什么你的书里，天体照片好多都写着是电脑合成的？所以这些星星的照片都是假的吗？合成的啊，那肯定是假的，有真的照片吗？
我说，对，都是合成的。天王星海王星的蓝色，冥王与冥卫的红色，都要在地面合成，但它们都是真实的。
他很不高兴，义正言辞：“怎么可能？都写着电脑合成的，怎么可能是真的？”
我起飞的城市在下雨，几千米以上的高空却万里晴空。即便如此，我看不到任何行星。我距离陆地如此遥远，却依然无法触碰任何星辰。这个想法出来的瞬间，我感受到巨大的荒谬。
天空本来就什么都没有。
什么都看不到。当人们谈论“这是电脑合成”时，潜台词是什么？
虚假、手段、ai、科技……
科学的本质却不是为了提供一具冰冷的尸体来让人们解剖学习，是要刺破我们那些被称之为“常识”的思维牢笼。
眼见为实。
我们总是有这样的倾向，并将肉眼的捕捉等同于“真实”。
如果宇宙的光只用380-780左右纳米的波长对我们说话，那它几乎是失语的。
人类什么都看不到，这意味着所有人类几乎是盲人。
一些望远镜的传感器只记录光子，一些还要通过别的滤镜分批多次曝光，最后数字合成。那些光，人类的肉眼本来就看不见，当它们被转译成人类视觉可见的伪色后，有了我们脑海里的颜色。
这些合成照片让我想到康德提出的“物自身”与“现象”。人类企图用科学去跨越自身的生物学限制，无限接近宇宙的“物自身”。
但这个小孩的问话反而让我想到：我们在生活里执着看到的那些“真相”与“常识”，到底有多少是被我们自身经验、文化还有防御机制“合成”后的伪色照片？
照片是合成的，就肯定是假的，我只想看到真的。
我反复咀嚼这句话。
我们应该用怎样的思维去冲破肉身的束缚？
第一次使用理性思维至今，我始终求知若渴。无论他人的责难……还是自我的反省……都不曾改变这上帝赐予我的天性。他一定有自己的考量；他也一定知道，我曾经祈求过他收回这智慧之光，只要留下一小部分，让我得以遵循他的律法即可。
——胡安娜·伊内斯·德·拉·克鲁斯给普埃布拉主教的回信（1691）。
进而，我又有了新的问题——我的脑海里总是有很多问题，我看到一句话，好像这句话里的每个词我都能提出不同的问题，我的笔记本里记录了满满的问题，有时候甚至多于我正看的书本身。我很好奇，我很想知道——
这些行星通过转译变成了我们可以看到的颜色和模样，那这就是它们本来的颜色和模样吗？但是一旦它被转译成了我们可以看到的颜色和模样，是不是本身就已经不是它们原本的样子了，因为它们的真相我们是看不见的，才需要转译？
他说他只想看到真实的。
如果换个语境，我大概不会有任何思想波动。
但假设真的派“旅行者”去拍冥王星背面，人类永远都看不到“真相”，因为那里没有人类可以感知的可见光，人类能看到的，只有纯粹的黑。
黑色与空洞，就是真实的，但是真相吗？
真相却是：天体并不拥有rgb光，只有电磁波的波长，波还有粒子、光子的密度。而颜色，只是电磁波和人类视锥细胞、枕叶视觉皮层共同编造的幻觉。
如果我们只去看可见光，宇宙也许很无趣。
转译反而成了唯一一种将宇宙本就拥有的，但人类由于生物学缺陷无法接收的真实信息，等比平移到了人类的感知频段。
个人的感受就是真实的，但是真相吗？
人类从未直接看见世界，也从未直接触碰过他人，只有被自身生物结构翻译后的割裂——
视觉是接收器、大脑是解码器、意识是转译系统，很多时候，甚至连接收、解码、转译的芯片都不一样。
人类对于“真实”的执念，可能本来也就建立在种种误解之上。我们以为肉眼直视、身心感受就是“真实”，但人类生活里绝大多数的真实，都已经是层层转译后的单一结果。
比如，记忆、语言、文化、情绪，连防御机制也是，甚至连愤怒、矜持，人们谈论的“我的原则”，很多时候也只是恐惧的转译。
那在人类的观测之外，还会存在一个原本的、不以人为意志改变的客观模样吗？
我想到了“求真”，甚至求证我生活环境中从小到大接受到的“常识”，因为这句话确实是“常识”，古典唯物主义的常识，我们从小课本里学的“真理”。
我没得到我想要的答案，最多只是：这就是常识；本来就是这样；我们的教授就是这样教的；如果这不是真理，那还能是什么呢？你的问题太愚蠢了……
Contack里的Ellie Arroway，被教授说愚蠢时，莫过于就是这种心情。
我太想知道真相，所以不想停下。在这短短的时间里，我尝试寻找答案，但我只找到了“幻觉”。
人类根深蒂固的执念，赖以生存的幻觉。
有一瞬间，我忽然觉得连“求真”本身都变成了一种幻觉。
淡蓝色的天，忽然就变成了淡蓝色的玻璃，这些玻璃又在气流对飞机的扰动下，机身剧烈的抖动下，忽然碎裂，碎成下方连绵起伏的云。如果那些云，真的是由玻璃构成的呢？！
飞行的噪音再次涌入，我从幻觉里清醒。
那“求真”是什么呢？为了找到那个永远的黑色与空洞吗？终会有一天，穷尽人类的智慧，我们会发现真相不过是连光也无法逃逸的虚无，是人类肉体无法逾越的束缚。因为从演化人类学的角度来看，人类的感觉并不是为了追求宇宙终极真相而设计的，而是为了在地球上活下去而设计的，宇宙的真相对于人类肉体来说可能只是一场致死的辐射，或是绝对的死寂。
我此刻在说明的“真实”又是什么呢？是执着于寻找一个“最真实的、未经任何修饰和妥协的自我”或者“绝对的真相”？
天体照片必须依靠转译才能显形，人类的意识本身甚至都必须通过语言、艺术、甚至符号来转译。
执念、幻觉、虚假。
就像小孩得出的结论一样。
但正如我一贯的思维习惯，当我解构到最后，发现世界只是一片虚无时，我就开始给它加载意义了——是的，“存在”毫无意义，所以我成为主宰，给生命赋予任何意义。
在那一瞬间，生命完全属于我，且是抛弃世俗的“理所应当”、对规则与惯性的委曲求全。
那些颜色，虽然不是客观世界本就存在的产物，却也不是人类主观世界的捏造，它是电磁波和人类意识碰撞刹那引发的大爆炸。
我不否认“求真”是一场执念与幻觉。因为在为了驳倒我自己的这短短时间内，我觉得这种执着于未经修饰的绝对真相，就像在寻找一个没有说过话，也没有穿过衣服，不会使用任何工具的“纯粹人类”。或者我们也可以叫他：生物标本。
人类本来就无法触及所谓的“the real”，每个人都只活在语言构成的“象征”里，很多时候语言甚至无法表达出最基础的喜怒哀乐。
那“真相”岂不是等同于幻觉？如果把“真”定义成名词，可能确实是幻觉，但如果理解成一个动词，它就变成了一个索求的动态过程。它的终极目的不是一个看得见摸得着的具体地点，找到终极法则就可以躺下睡觉，是要不断戳破当下的盲区。
对科学的、宗教的、哲学的、思维的……包括此时此刻的。
我在写下这些文字时、我在创造世界时，都是在通过文字转译我脑海中那个无法言说的巨大世界，文字虽然不等同于那个真实的世界，但创作就因此是幻觉吗？
但我觉得，正是因为我脑海里那个宏大的宇宙无法直接降临这个世界，文学的转译才成了它在这个低维世界唯一的真实。
那真的是我经历过的、唯一的、最真实的震撼。
文学不是现实，音乐不是情绪，颜色不是宇宙。但它们依然可以无限逼近某种不可言说之物。
于是科学把电磁波转译成颜色，音乐把情绪转译成频率与振动，哲学把混乱转译成逻辑。
那那些关于行星的合成照片，都会是假的吗？
还想到一个很有意思的问题：“假”的对立面就是“真”吗？
就像希腊哲学中的Aletheia：去蔽。但真理的反义词却不是谎言，而是忘却、遮蔽。
我想做的，能做的，只是不断转译潮汐锁定的另一头，并无限接近它。
飞机落地的瞬间，无数手机信息提示音响起来了，在等待下飞机的这短短几分钟里，还有一些此起彼伏的短视频音乐、极其快速的ai配音解说。
我现在只能拿着手机，站在飞机拥挤狭窄的过道上打下这些文字。
在过去的几千年里，尽管个体之间有差异，但因共同的生物基因与文化，转译系统是大致类似的，所以管同一种波长叫蓝色，另一种更长的叫红色，这种共享的“伪色照片”，构成了社会契约。
但科技在强行分化人类的转译系统。
算法根据每个人的防御机制与兴趣定制合成每个人眼中的现实社会。量身定制一些只符合用户个人恐惧、偏好和偏见的“现实”，这种分化让人们退化到安全的孤岛里，但人们在孤岛里看到的东西，又是同一套ai配音、剥离复杂因果的二元对立、同质化的情绪刺激源，类似的恐惧、类似的吵闹，一样谈论他人的财富与生活，他人的容貌与面具。
系统分化，认知却又趋同。极致的个性化，带来极致的同质化。甚至一下找不到什么词语来形容这样的状态……
他们瞳孔里倒映的星空是什么颜色？姹紫嫣红，还是虚无？
-
最后，我第一次观察了我的思维逻辑线。
1. 从飞机上一个小孩问天体照片的真假，触发了我对“眼见为实”这个常识的怀疑。
2.由人类只能看到狭窄范围的可见光，推导出“人类在宇宙近乎盲人”的生理局限。
3.为了打破局限，我知道天文学家必须通过一些非可见光滤镜捕捉信息，再数字合成照片。
4.于是我开始审视天体本身，在遇到“白矮星”这个名词的时候，我在想，是什么让这种星体没有坍缩成黑洞？（虽然想了，但是因为跟这篇文章没关系所以没写。）
5.电子简并压。这个理论的基础是泡利不相容原理。
第一次认真查这个原理，想到了一山不容二虎，却发现这是一种社会学拟人化偏差，把人类社会的竞争、权力迷恋套用在了微观粒子上……
嗯，这些跟这篇文章也没有关系了，因为我找到了新的疑问，我要去研究新的资料了！
——
While reading a foundational astronomy book on a plane, I was perhaps too engrossed to notice that the child next to me had been staring at my screen. Suddenly, he asked: “Why does it say that so many celestial photos in your book are computer-generated? So are these pictures of stars all fake? If they’re generated, they must be fake. Are there any real photos?”
I replied, “Yes, they are all synthesized. The blue of Uranus and Neptune, the red of Pluto and its moon Charon—they all have to be synthesized on Earth, but they are real.”
He was quite displeased and stated righteously, “How is that possible? It says ‘computer-generated’ right there, so how can they be real?”
It was raining in the city I took off from, yet thousands of meters above, the sky was perfectly clear. Even so, I couldn’t see a single planet. I was so far from the land, yet still utterly unable to touch any stars. The moment this thought arose, I felt a profound sense of absurdity.
There is nothing in the sky to begin with.
Nothing can be seen. When people talk about “computer-generated,” what is the subtext?
Falsehood, manipulation, AI, technology…
However, the essence of science is not to provide a cold corpse for people to dissect and study; it is to pierce through the cognitive cages we call “common sense.”
Seeing is believing.
We always have this tendency, equating what the naked eye captures with “reality.”
If the light of the universe only spoke to us in wavelengths between roughly 380 and 780 nanometers, it would be practically mute.
Humans can see almost nothing, which means all of humanity is virtually blind.
Some telescope sensors only record photons; others require multiple exposures through different filters before final digital synthesis. That light is inherently invisible to the human eye. Only when it is translated into false colors visible to human vision does it take on the hues we picture in our minds.
These synthesized photos remind me of Kant’s concepts of the “thing-in-itself” and “phenomenon.” Humanity attempts to use science to transcend its own biological limitations, moving infinitely closer to the universe’s “thing-in-itself.”
But the child’s question instead made me wonder: of the “truths” and “common sense” we so stubbornly perceive in our daily lives, how much is actually a false-color photograph “synthesized” by our own experiences, cultures, and defense mechanisms?
If the photo is generated, it must be fake; I only want to see what is real.
I chewed over this sentence repeatedly.
What kind of mindset should we use to break through the constraints of the flesh?
Since the first time I employed rational thought, I have constantly thirsted for knowledge. Neither the reproaches of others… nor my own self-reflection… have ever altered this nature bestowed upon me by God. He must have His own considerations; and He must also know that I once prayed for Him to take back this light of intellect, leaving only a small portion, just enough for me to follow His laws. — Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Reply to the Bishop of Puebla (1691).
Subsequently, I formed new questions—my mind is always full of questions. When I see a sentence, it feels as though I can ask a different question about every single word within it. My notebooks are filled to the brim with questions, sometimes even more than the content of the books I am reading. I am curious; I desperately want to know—
Through translation, these planets become the colors and shapes we can see, but are those their original colors and shapes? Yet, once translated into something we can perceive, doesn’t that inherently mean they are no longer in their original state? After all, it is exactly because their true form is invisible to us that they require translation in the first place, isn’t it?
He said he only wanted to see what is real.
Had the context been different, I probably wouldn’t have had any intellectual reaction.
But suppose we really sent Voyager to photograph the dark side of Pluto; humanity would never see the “truth” because there is no visible light there that humans can perceive. All humans would see is pure blackness.
Blackness and emptiness are real, but are they the truth?
The truth is: celestial bodies do not possess RGB light; they only have electromagnetic wavelengths, as well as the densities of waves, particles, and photons. Color is merely an illusion co-fabricated by electromagnetic waves, human cone cells, and the occipital visual cortex.
If we only looked at visible light, the universe would perhaps be quite dull.
Translation, conversely, becomes the only way to proportionally shift the true information inherent in the universe—which humans cannot receive due to biological flaws—into the human perceptual frequency.
Personal feeling is real, but is it the truth?
Humans have never directly seen the world, nor have we ever directly touched another person. There is only the fragmentation left after being translated by our own biological structures—
Vision is the receiver, the brain is the decoder, and consciousness is the translation system. Often, even the chips used for receiving, decoding, and translating are entirely different.
Humanity’s obsession with “reality” might inherently be built upon various misunderstandings. We assume that looking with the naked eye and feeling with our body and mind constitutes “reality,” yet the vast majority of realities in human life are already the singular outcomes of layer upon layer of translation.
For instance: memory, language, culture, emotion, and even defense mechanisms. Even anger, reserve, and what people refer to as “my principles” are often nothing more than the translation of fear.
Does an original, objective state exist beyond human observation, unalterable by human will?
I thought of the “pursuit of truth,” and even of verifying the “common sense” I had received from childhood in my environment, because this statement truly is “common sense”—the common sense of classical materialism, the “truth” we learn from textbooks as children.
I never received the answers I wanted; at most, I got: This is common sense; it has always been this way; this is how our professors taught us; if this isn’t the truth, what else could it be? Your question is too stupid…
When Ellie Arroway in Contact was called stupid by her professor, her feelings could have been nothing short of this.
I want to know the truth too desperately, so I do not want to stop. In this brief span of time, I tried to find an answer, but all I found was “illusion.”
Humanity’s deep-rooted obsession, the illusion upon which we rely to survive.
For a moment, I suddenly felt that even the “pursuit of truth” itself had become an illusion.
The pale blue sky suddenly transformed into pale blue glass. Under the disturbance of air currents against the plane and the violent shaking of the fuselage, this glass suddenly shattered, breaking into the rolling clouds below. What if those clouds really were made of glass?!
The noise of the flight rushed back in, waking me from the hallucination.
Then what is the “pursuit of truth”? Is it to find that eternal blackness and emptiness? One day, after exhausting all human wisdom, we will discover that the truth is nothing more than a void from which not even light can escape—a constraint that the human physical body cannot transcend. Because, from the perspective of evolutionary anthropology, human senses were not designed to pursue the ultimate truth of the universe; they were designed for survival on Earth. The truth of the universe, to the human body, might simply be lethal radiation or absolute dead silence.
So what is the “reality” I am explaining at this moment? Is it an obsession with finding a “truest, completely unembellished, and uncompromising self” or an “absolute truth”?
Celestial photos must rely on translation to become visible; human consciousness itself must be translated through language, art, and even symbols.
Obsession, illusion, falsehood.
Exactly like the conclusion drawn by the child.
Yet, true to my usual habit of thought, when I deconstruct everything to the very end and find that the world is merely a void, I begin to imbue it with meaning—yes, “existence” is meaningless, so I become the sovereign, endowing life with whatever meaning I choose.
In that instant, life belongs entirely to me, casting aside the worldly “matters of course” and the compromises made to rules and inertia.
Those colors, although not products inherently existing in the objective world, are also not fabrications of the subjective human mind; they are the Big Bang triggered at the exact moment electromagnetic waves collide with human consciousness.
I do not deny that the “pursuit of truth” is an obsession and an illusion. For within the brief time spent trying to refute myself, I felt that this fixation on an unembellished, absolute truth is like searching for a “pure human” who has never spoken, never worn clothes, and cannot use any tools. Or, we could simply call them: a biological specimen.
Humanity is inherently incapable of touching the so-called “real.” Everyone merely lives within the “symbols” constructed by language, and often, language cannot even express the most fundamental joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness.
Does that mean “truth” equates to illusion? If we define “truth” as a noun, it might indeed be an illusion. But if understood as a verb, it transforms into a dynamic process of seeking. Its ultimate goal is not a tangible, visible destination where one can simply lie down and sleep after finding the ultimate law; it is the continuous piercing through of present blind spots.
The blind spots of science, religion, philosophy, thought… including those of this very moment.
When I write down these words, when I create worlds, I am always translating through text that ineffable, colossal world within my mind. Though the text is not equivalent to that real world, does that make the act of creation an illusion?
However, I feel that precisely because that grand universe in my mind cannot directly descend upon this world, literary translation becomes its only reality in this lower-dimensional realm.
That is genuinely the only, and the most authentic, profound shock I have ever experienced.
Literature is not reality, music is not emotion, and color is not the universe. Yet they can still infinitely approach something that is unspeakable.
Thus, science translates electromagnetic waves into color, music translates emotion into frequency and vibration, and philosophy translates chaos into logic.
So, are all those synthesized photos of planets really fake?
It also brings to mind an intriguing question: is the opposite of “fake” necessarily “real”?
Just like the Greek philosophical concept of Aletheia: unconcealment. The antonym of truth is not a lie, but rather oblivion and concealment.
What I want to do, and what I can do, is simply to continuously translate the other side of the tidal lock, approaching it infinitely.
The moment the plane landed, countless phone notification sounds rang out. In the brief few minutes waiting to disembark, there were also overlapping short-video music tracks and extremely fast-paced AI voiceovers.
Now, I can only stand in the crowded, narrow aisle of the airplane, holding my phone and typing out these words.
Over the past few millennia, despite differences among individuals, our shared biological genes and culture have meant that our translation systems are roughly similar. Therefore, we call one wavelength “blue” and another longer one “red.” These shared “false-color photographs” formed a social contract.
But technology is forcibly splintering humanity’s translation system.
Algorithms custom-synthesize the social reality in everyone’s eyes based on their individual defense mechanisms and interests. They tailor-make “realities” that cater exclusively to users’ personal fears, preferences, and biases. This polarization causes people to regress into safe, isolated islands. Yet, what people see on these islands is the exact same set of AI voiceovers, binary oppositions stripped of complex causality, and homogenized sources of emotional stimulation. Similar fears, similar noise, equally gossiping about the wealth and lives of others, the appearances and masks of others.
Systems splinter, yet cognition converges. Extreme personalization brings about extreme homogenization. I cannot even immediately find the words to describe such a state…
What color is the starry sky reflected in their pupils? A brilliant kaleidoscope of colors, or just a void?
Finally, for the first time, I observed my own logical line of thought.
A child on a plane asking about the authenticity of celestial photos triggered my skepticism regarding the common sense notion that “seeing is believing.”
From the fact that humans can only see a narrow range of visible light, I deduced the physiological limitation that “humans are practically blind in the universe.”
To break through this limitation, I knew astronomers had to capture information through non-visible light filters and then digitally synthesize the photos.
Consequently, I began to examine the celestial bodies themselves. Upon encountering the term “white dwarf,” I wondered: what prevents this kind of star from collapsing into a black hole? (Although I thought about this, I didn’t write it down because it was unrelated to this essay.)
Electron degeneracy pressure. The foundation of this theory is the Pauli exclusion principle.
Looking up this principle seriously for the first time, I thought of the saying “two tigers cannot share one mountain,” only to realize that this is a sociological anthropomorphic bias—projecting the competition and power obsession of human society onto subatomic particles…
Well, these have nothing to do with this essay anymore either, because I have found new questions, and I am off to study new materials!