When
Musk was young, his mother started taking him to Sunday school at the
local Anglican Church, where she was a teacher. It did not go well. She
would tell her class stories from the Bible, and he would question them.
“What do you mean, the waters parted?” he asked. “That’s not possible.” When she told the story of Jesus feeding the crowd with loaves and fishes, he countered that things cannot materialize out of nothing. Having been baptized, he was expected to take communion, but he began questioning that as well. “I took the blood and body of Christ, which is weird when you’re a kid,” he says. “I said, ‘What the hell is this? Is this a weird metaphor for cannibalism?’ ” Maye decided to let Elon stay home and read on Sunday mornings.
馬斯克小的時候，母親開始帶他去當地聖公會教堂上主日學，她是那裡的老師。但情況並不順利。她會給全班講《聖經》裡的故事，而他會質疑這些故事。他問

"水分開是什麼意思？""這不可能"當她講到耶穌用餅和魚餵飽眾人的故事時，他反駁說，事物不可能無中生有。在接受洗禮後，他本應領受聖餐，但他也開始質疑這一點。"他說："我接受了基督的血和身體，這在你還是個孩子的時候很奇怪。"我說，'這到底是什麼？這是吃人肉的奇怪隱喻嗎？"梅伊決定讓埃隆留在家裡，在週日早上讀書。

His
father, who was more God-fearing, told Elon that there were things that
could not be known through our limited senses and minds. “There are no atheist
pilots,” he would say, and Elon would add, “There are no atheists at
exam time.” But Elon came to believe early on that science could explain
things and so there was no need to conjure upa Creator or a deity that would intervene in our lives.
他的父親更敬畏上帝，他告訴埃隆，有些事情是無法透過我們有限的感官和思維來了解的。他說 "沒有無神論的飛行員"，埃隆則補充說 "考試時沒有無神論者"。但伊隆很早就開始相信，科學可以解釋一切，因此沒有必要創造一個造物主或神靈來干預我們的生活。

When he reached his teens, it began to gnaw at him that something was missing. Both the religious and the scientific explanations of existence, he says, did not address
the really big questions, such as Where did the universe come from, and
why does it exist? Physics could teach everything about the universe
except why. That led to what he calls his adolescent existential crisis. “I began trying to figure out what the meaning of life and the universe was,” he says. “And I got real depressed about it, like maybe life may have no meaning.”
當他長到十幾歲時，他開始覺得缺少了點什麼。他說，宗教和科學對存在的解釋都沒有解決真正的大問題，比如宇宙從何而來，為什麼會存在？物理學可以教給人們關於宇宙的一切，除了為什麼。這導致了他所謂的青春期生存危機。"我開始試圖找出生命和宇宙的意義所在，"他說。"我為此感到非常沮喪，就像生命可能沒有意義一樣"。

Like a good bookworm,
he addressed these questions through reading. At first, he made the
typical mistake of angsty adolescents and read existential philosophers,
such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Schopenhauer. This had the effect of
turning confusion into despair. “I do not recommend reading Nietzsche as
a teenager,” he says.
像一個好書蟲一樣，他透過閱讀來解決這些問題。起初，他犯了一個典型的青春期焦慮症患者的錯誤，閱讀了尼采、海德格爾和叔本華等存在主義哲學家的著作。結果，迷茫變成了絕望。"他說："我不建議青少年讀尼采。

Fortunately, he was saved by science fiction, that wellspring of wisdom for game-playing kids with intellects on hyperdrive. He plowed through the entire sci-fi section in his school and local libraries, then pushed the librarians to order more.
幸運的是，科幻小說拯救了他，那是智力超常的遊戲少年的智慧源泉。他翻遍了學校和當地圖書館的整個科幻區，然後催促圖書管理員訂購更多的科幻小說。

One of his favorites was Robert Heinlein’sThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, a novel about a lunar penal colony. It is managed by a supercomputer, nicknamed Mike, that is able to acquire self-awareness and a sense of humor. The computer sacrifices its life during a rebellion at the penal colony. The book explores an issuethat
would become central to Musk’s life: Will artificial intelligence
develop in ways that benefit and protect humanity, or will machines
develop intentions of their own and become a threat to humans?
他的最愛之一是羅伯特-海因萊因（Robert
Heinlein）的《月亮是個嚴厲的情婦》（The Moon Is a Harsh
Mistress），這是一本關於月球刑罰殖民地的小說。殖民地由一臺綽號為 "邁克
"的超級計算機管理，這臺計算機具有自我意識和幽默感。在一次殖民地叛亂中，這臺計算機犧牲了自己的生命。這本書探討了一個將成為馬斯克生活核心的問題：人工智慧會以造福和保護人類的方式發展，還是機器會發展出自己的意圖並對人類構成威脅？

That topic is central to what became another of his favorites, Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. The tales formulatelaws of robotics that are designed to make sure robots do not get out of control. In the final scene of his 1985 novelRobots and Empire, Asimov expounds the most fundamental of these rules, dubbed the ZerothLaw: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, through inaction,
allow humanity to come to harm.” The heroes of
Asimov’s Foundation series of books develop a plan to send settlers to
distant regions of the galaxy to preserve human consciousness in the
face of an impending dark age.
艾薩克-阿西莫夫（Isaac
Asimov）的機器人故事成為他的另一個最愛，而這個主題正是故事的核心。這些故事制定了機器人法則，旨在確保機器人不會失控。在 1985
年出版的小說《機器人與帝國》的最後一幕中，阿西莫夫闡述了這些規則中最基本的一條，即
"第四法則"："機器人不得傷害人類，或因不作為而讓人類受到傷害"。阿西莫夫的《基金會》系列叢書的主人公們制定了一項計劃，向銀河系的遙遠地區派遣移民，在即將到來的黑暗時代保護人類的意識。

unleashed

random

quest

space-faring

harness

at the service of

fundamental

三十多年後，馬斯克在推特上隨手釋出了一條推文，講述了這些想法是如何激勵他追求讓人類成為航天物種，並利用人工智慧為人類服務："基礎系列和零律是建立 SpaceX 的根本"。