变焦和对焦
It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I’m staring at someone’s barbecue grill. I didn’t intend or expect to spend my Saturday examining a stranger’s Char-Griller, but here I am, taking a picture of the grill while the presumptive owner asks me just what exactly I’m doing.
我是星期六的下午，我凝视着某人的烧烤架。 我本来没有打算也不想在星期六度过一个陌生人的Char-Griller，但是我在这里，在烤架上拍照，而店主则问我我到底在做什么。
If I was being honest, I would tell him, “Sir, a smartphone app called Randonautica sent me here, to your grill, in order to figure out if this cooking instrument has some greater cosmic significance to me. You see,” I’d tell him, “this app randomly generates coordinates to check out, and then you go check them out. For whatever reason, this time, the app chose the exact location of your grill, and that’s why I’m taking a picture of your grill, trying to figure out exactly what the grill means to me.”
如果我说实话，我会告诉他：“先生，一个名为Randonautica的智能手机应用程序将我送到了您的烤架上，以便弄清楚这种烹饪工具对我是否具有更大的宇宙意义。 您会看到，“我会告诉他”，该应用程序会随机生成要检出的坐标，然后您便将其检出。 出于某种原因，这次，应用程序选择了烤架的确切位置，这就是为什么我要为您的烤架拍照，试图弄清楚烤架对我的意义。”
Instead, I waved my hand meekly and headed off to go visit my next randomly generated set of coordinates.
取而代之的是，我温柔地挥了挥手，然后出发去探视我的下一个随机生成的坐标集。
This is, more or less, the experience I’ve had over the past month using Randonautica, a smartphone app that bills itself as “the world’s first quantumly generated Choose Your Own Adventure reality game.”
这或多或少是我过去一个月使用智能手机应用程序Randonautica的体验，该应用程序自称为“世界上第一个量子生成的“选择自己的冒险”现实游戏”。
Randonautica is the brainchild of Joshua Lengfelder, a first-time app developer and active Reddit user. (Multiple interview requests sent to Randonautica’s press contact were not returned.)
Randonautica是Joshua Lengfelder(最初的应用程序开发人员和活跃的Reddit用户)的创意。 (未发送给Randonautica新闻联系人的多次采访请求。)
A little over a year ago, Lengfelder posted a Telegram-based chatbot he had developed to the r/DimensionJumping subreddit. The Fatum Project, he called it, was his attempt to “research unknown spaces outside predetermined probability-tunnels of the holistic world.” With the help of donations and community volunteers, Lengfelder released Randonautica, a standalone app for iOS and Android, in February.
一年多以前，Lengfelder发布了他开发的基于Telegram的聊天机器人，用于r / DimensionJumping subreddit。 他称之为 “ Fatum项目”， 这是他的尝试“研究整体世界预定概率隧道之外的未知空间”。 在捐赠和社区志愿者的帮助下，Lengfelder于2月发布了Randonautica，这是一个适用于iOS和Android的独立应用程序。
The premise of the app is straightforward: You give Randonautica your location, and Randonautica uses a random number generator to find a random location. You head to that location, you see what you see, and you’re encouraged to share your experience on the Randonautica subreddit or on Twitter. And unlike other slick apps du jour, Randonautica looks and feels refreshingly home-brewed.
该应用程序的前提很简单：您给Randonautica您的位置，Randonautica使用随机数生成器查找随机位置。 您前往该位置，看到了什么，并鼓励您在Randonautica subreddit或Twitter上分享您的经验。 与其他出色的应用程序不同，Randonautica看起来和感觉都让人耳目一新。
The Fatum Project, he called it, was his attempt to “research unknown spaces outside predetermined probability-tunnels of the holistic world.”
他称Fatum项目为“尝试研究整体世界中预定概率隧道之外的未知空间”的尝试。
But underneath that simple premise lies a complicated theory — and what Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech, calls a practical application of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Theoretically speaking, by going to the randomized locations pinpointed by Randonautica, you are also creating an alternate universe in which one version of you does not visit that random spot. In other words, by leaving your fate to the randomized numbers in an app, you’re splitting the trajectory of the universe. Sounds ambitious. In practice, you’re just going to a random spot on the sidewalk where there just happens to be a grill.
但是在这个简单前提下却是一个复杂的理论-加州理工学院的理论物理学家肖恩·卡洛尔(Sean Carroll)称其为量子力学的多世界解释的实际应用。 从理论上讲，通过转到Randonautica所确定的随机位置，您还将创建一个替代宇宙，其中您的一个版本不访问该随机点。 换句话说，通过将命运留给应用程序中的随机数，您可以拆分宇宙的轨迹。 听起来雄心勃勃。 实际上，您只是去人行道上的一个随机位置，那里恰好有一个烤架。
Randonautica seems perfectly matched for our current pandemic reality: Since we can’t go where we want to, why not try an app that might show us some cool things right under our noses? Maybe that’s why Randonautica has seen a huge surge in new users over the past few months — subscribers to r/randonauts went from just under 14,000 in April to over 105,000 by July according to Subreddit Stats, a third-party Reddit metrics platform.
Randonautica似乎与我们当前的大流行现实完全匹配：既然我们不能走到我们想要去的地方，为什么不试试一个可能向我们展示一些很酷的东西的应用程序呢？ 也许这就是为什么Randonautica在过去几个月中看到新用户激增的原因-第三方Reddit指标平台Subreddit Stats的数据显示， r / randonauts的用户从4月份的不到14,000增至7月的105,000以上。
In April, the subreddit saw just a handful of posts chronicling “Randonauting” discoveries over a week. Today, there are hundreds of people posting their “reports” to the subreddit every day.
在4月份，subreddit上只有很少的帖子记录了一周的“ Randonauting”发现。 如今，每天都有数百人将其“报告”发布到subreddit。
Most Randonautica adventures resembled mine: Some users found themselves stumbling upon calming vistas while others happened upon fridges, abandoned furniture, and all kinds of graffiti. In my own travels, I’ve found a giant metal plate covering up a hole on a bridge, an empty parking lot, some old railroad ties — objects I’d otherwise overlook but now have a newfound appreciation for.
大多数Randonautica冒险很像我的：有些用户发现自己跌倒在 平静 的景色 ，而其他发生在冰箱 ， 废弃 家具 ，和所有 种类的的涂鸦 。 在我自己的旅行中，我发现了一块巨大的金属板，它覆盖了桥上的一个洞，一个空旷的停车场，一些旧的铁路绑带，这些东西本来可以忽略但现在有了新的发现。
“I find places where no one else is; places where I can think about anything I feel like thinking about. Where I’m no longer boxed in,” Jorge Soderberg, a regular Randonautica user, told me over Discord. “Beyond the barriers of cultural pressure, there exists these curious bubbles of reality. Places where no one has gone before under the same circumstances. Liminal zones not yet explored but deeply rich in meaning, but only if you have the eyes to see it.”
“我找到了没有其他人的地方； 我可以考虑任何想想的地方。 Randonautica的常规用户Jorge Soderberg通过Discord告诉我。 “除了文化压力的障碍之外，还存在着这些奇怪的现实泡沫。 在相同情况下没有人去过的地方。 边缘区域尚未探索，但含义十分丰富，但前提是您有眼睛可以看到。
In some ways, Randonauting is just a more-structured, app-mediated version of going for a walk to clear your head.
在某些方面，Randonauting只是结构更清晰，应用程序介导的版本，它可以散散步以清醒头脑。
But Randonauts are reporting bizarre coincidences too. In recent days, users have posted about the app’s uncanny ability to bring them to rainbows and pretty flowers, rediscover an old cemetery where they used to smoke weed, and even reveal the lost location of their great grandmother’s old house. This eerie sense of coincidence, however, is all by design.
但是Randonauts也报告了奇怪的巧合。 最近几天，用户发布了有关该应用程序不可思议的功能，这些功能可将其带到彩虹和美丽的花朵上 ，重新发现他们以前抽过杂草的老公墓 ，甚至揭示曾祖母的老房子的丢失位置。 然而，这种诡异的巧合感完全是设计使然。
As you dig into Randonautica, it’s hard not to get a sense that the app wants to be something more than just an idle curiosity. Yes, it’s an app that just generates a random point to visit, but it also suggests an almost-mystical significance to that random point.
当您深入研究Randonautica时，很难不感到该应用程序不只是一种好奇心。 是的，它只是一个生成随机访问点的应用程序，但是它也暗示了对该随机点的意义几乎是神秘的。
It does this by first throwing a lot of terminology around, such as “quantum generation,” “entropy source,” “z-score,” and “power.” The app labels destinations into three categories: “attractors,” or points with a high concentration of randomly generated points; “voids,” or points with a low concentration of randomly generated points; and “anomalies,” which are the strongest voids and attractors in your area. Randonautica implies that, somehow, there’s a pattern to this randomness — something shaping it, guiding it. And this is where Randonautica plays a clever little trick on its users, suggesting that they, actually, are the ones influencing the randomness.
为此，它首先抛出了很多术语，例如“量子产生”，“熵源”，“ z得分”和“功率”。 该应用程序将目的地标记为三类：“吸引人”或随机生成的点的高度集中的点； “空隙”或随机生成的点的浓度低的点； 和“异常”，它们是您所在地区最强的空隙和吸引子。 Randonautica暗示，某种程度上，这种随机性存在着一种模式-塑造它，引导它。 这就是Randonautica对用户发挥巧妙技巧的地方，表明他们实际上是在影响随机性的人。
Users have posted about the app’s uncanny ability to bring them to rainbows and pretty flowers, rediscover an old cemetery where they used to smoke weed, and even reveal the lost location of their great grandmother’s old house.
用户已经发布了有关该应用程序不可思议的功能的信息，这些功能可将它们带到彩虹和美丽的花朵上，重新发现曾经用来抽大麻的老墓地，甚至揭露曾祖母遗失房屋的位置。
The app also asks you to “set your intention” — to think about what you’d like to see at this random point. Based on the Randonaut subreddit, users’ intentions can be as broad as “calm” or “beauty” or as specific as “weed” and “dog.” The “theory” behind this “intention-setting” — based on a widely criticized and now-defunct parapsychology lab at Princeton — is that the human mind can influence randomness and thus manifest whatever it is you’re thinking about.
该应用程序还要求您“设定您的意图”-考虑您想要在这个随机点看到的内容。 根据Randonaut subreddit，用户的意图可以广泛到“平静”或“美丽”，也可以具体到“杂草”和“狗”。 这种“意图设定”背后的“理论”-基于普林斯顿一个广受批评且现已不存在的超心理学实验室 -的依据是，人的思想可以影响随机性，从而体现出您的想法。
“This is where I get off the train,” says Carroll. “You should not believe that your intentions or your desires, your hopes and dreams, have any influence whatsoever over quantum mechanical measurement outcomes.”
“这就是我下车的地方，”卡洛尔说。 “您不应该相信自己的意图或欲望，希望和梦想对量子力学测量结果有任何影响。”
Still, day after day, the most popular posts on r/randonauts are ones of people finding incredible coincidences. Someone set their intention to “lost key” and allegedly found a hotel keycard. Another set “money” and allegedly found a pile of coins. The intention-setting feature of Randonautica has recently caught on with teens on TikTok, who have turned it into a sort of new-age Ouija board by setting their “intention” to something scary and then inevitably finding something creepy. The most notable case is a pair of Seattle teens who claimed last month that Randonautica led them to human remains.
尽管如此，日复一日，关于R / randonauts的最受欢迎的帖子还是那些发现令人难以置信的巧合的人。 有人将他们的意图设为“丢失钥匙”，并据称找到了酒店钥匙卡 。 另一套“钱”据称发现了一堆硬币 。 Randonautica的意图设定功能最近在TikTok上引起了青少年的注意，他们通过将其“意图”设置为令人恐惧的东西，然后不可避免地发现令人毛骨悚然的方式，将其转变为一种新时代的Ouija面板。 最著名的案例是一对西雅图少年，他们上个月声称Randonautica 带领他们找到了人类遗骸 。
Motivations of anonymous posters trying to score internet points and teens trying to freak each other out aside, it’s hard not to fall down the rabbit hole that Randonautica clearly wants you to stumble into.
试图为互联网得分打分的匿名海报的动机，以及试图将对方吓到对方的青少年的动机，很难不掉下Randonautica显然希望您绊倒的兔子洞。
Of course, there’s a far simpler and much more believable explanation for all the coincidences of Randonautica: It’s all in your head.
当然，对于Randonautica的所有巧合，有一个更简单，更可信的解释：这一切都在您的脑海中。
Humans are extremely good at identifying patterns, explains Adam Bear, a cognitive psychologist at Havard’s Moral Psychology Research Lab. Like horoscopes or clouds in the sky, we’ve evolved to see something in everything. In 2008, science writer Michael Shermer coined the term “patternicity” for this cognitive quirk.
哈佛道德心理学研究实验室的认知心理学家亚当·贝尔解释说，人类非常擅长识别模式。 就像星座或天空中的云一样，我们已经进化为可以看到所有事物。 2008年，科学作家迈克尔·舍默(Michael Shermer )为这一认知怪癖创造了 “模式性” 一词 。
“Our brains are belief engines: evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature,” Shermer writes. “The problem is that we are very poor at estimating such probabilities, so the cost of believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind is relatively low compared with the opposite. Thus, there would have been a beneficial selection for believing that most patterns are real.”
“我们的大脑是信念引擎：进化的模式识别机器，将点连接起来，并从我们认为我们在自然界中看到的模式中创造出意义，” Shermer写道 。 “问题在于，我们对此类概率的估计非常差，因此与之相反，认为风中草沙沙作响是危险的掠食者的成本相对较低。 因此，如果相信大多数模式都是真实的，那将是一个有益的选择。”
“I do sympathize with and am in favor of, you know, injecting a little randomness into our lives in the sense that it might lead you somewhere where you might not otherwise go,” says Carroll. “But there’s no reason to be mystical about it. It’s just the laws of physics that work.”
卡罗尔说：“我确实同情并赞成在我们的生活中注入一点随机性，因为这可能会导致您进入原本不会去的地方。” “但是没有理由对此感到神秘。 只是物理学定律起作用。”
Randonauting, in and of itself, can be a fun, worthwhile experience. There’s something to be said for just going to a random spot and seeing what you find. But the world isn’t bending to your mind. It’s the other way around.
Randonauting本身可以是一个有趣且值得的体验。 只是说说要去一个随机的地方，看看你发现了什么，这是有话要说的。 但是，世界并没有让您弯腰。 相反。
翻译自: https://onezero.medium.com/inside-randonautica-the-app-leading-zoomers-to-discover-rainbows-dead-bodies-and-hidden-804a3da32719
变焦和对焦