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The Right Kind of Stubborn

July 2024 2024 年 7 月份

Successful people tend to be persistent. New ideas often don't work at first, but they're not deterred. They keep trying and eventually find something that does.
成功的人通常非常堅持。新的想法一開始往往不會成功,但他們不會因此而氣餒。他們持續嘗試,最終會找到有效的解決方案。


Mere obstinacy, on the other hand, is a recipe for failure. Obstinate people are so annoying. They won't listen. They beat their heads against a wall and get nowhere.
然而,我的固執只會導致失敗。固執的人非常令人厭煩,他們不願意聆聽,總是撞牆卻毫無進展。


But is there any real difference between these two cases? Are persistent and obstinate people actually behaving differently? Or are they doing the same thing, and we just label them later as persistent or obstinate depending on whether they turned out to be right or not?
但這兩種情況之間真的有實質的差異嗎?堅持和固執的人在行為上真的有不同嗎?還是他們所做的事情其實是相同的,只是我們根據他們是否最終正確來標籤他們為堅持或固執?


If that's the only difference then there's nothing to be learned from the distinction. Telling someone to be persistent rather than obstinate would just be telling them to be right rather than wrong, and they already know that. Whereas if persistence and obstinacy are actually different kinds of behavior, it would be worthwhile to tease them apart. [1]
如果這是唯一的區別,那麼就沒有什麼可以從中學到的。告訴某人要堅持而不是固執,只是在告訴他們要對而不是錯,而這一點他們已經明白了。相對而言,如果堅持和固執實際上是不同的行為,那麼將它們區分開來是有意義的。


I've talked to a lot of determined people, and it seems to me that they're different kinds of behavior. I've often walked away from a conversation thinking either "Wow, that guy is determined" or "Damn, that guy is stubborn," and I don't think I'm just talking about whether they seemed right or not. That's part of it, but not all of it.
我跟許多堅定的人交談過,對我來說,他們的行為似乎各有不同。我經常在一次對話後思考「哇,那個人真堅定」或「真是的,那個人真固執」,我不認為我只是評價他們是否正確。這只是其中一部分,並不是全部。


There's something annoying about the obstinate that's not simply due to being mistaken. They won't listen. And that's not true of all determined people. I can't think of anyone more determined than the Collison brothers, and when you point out a problem to them, they not only listen, but listen with an almost predatory intensity. Is there a hole in the bottom of their boat? Probably not, but if there is, they want to know about it.
固執的人身上有些令人厭煩的特質,並不僅僅是因為他們的錯誤。他們不會聽取意見,而這並不適用於所有堅定的人。我想不出比科利森兄弟更堅定的人,當你向他們指出問題時,他們不僅會聽,還會以幾乎是掠食者般的強烈專注來聽。船底有洞嗎?可能沒有,但如果有,他們會想知道。


It's the same with most successful people. They're never more engaged than when you disagree with them. Whereas the obstinate don't want to hear you. When you point out problems, their eyes glaze over, and their replies sound like ideologues talking about matters of doctrine. [2]
大多數成功人士都是這樣的。當你與他們意見不合時,他們的參與感會達到巔峰。而固執的人則不願意聽取你的意見。當你指出問題時,他們的眼神會變得呆滯,回應聽起來就像是意識形態者在討論教條。


The reason the persistent and the obstinate seem similar is that they're both hard to stop. But they're hard to stop in different senses. The persistent are like boats whose engines can't be throttled back. The obstinate are like boats whose rudders can't be turned. [3]
持續和固執之所以看起來相似,是因為它們都很難被阻止,但它們的難以停止卻有不同的含義。持續的人就像無法減速的船隻,而固執的人則像無法轉向的船隻。[3]


In the degenerate case they're indistinguishable: when there's only one way to solve a problem, your only choice is whether to give up or not, and persistence and obstinacy both say no. This is presumably why the two are so often conflated in popular culture. It assumes simple problems. But as problems get more complicated, we can see the difference between them. The persistent are much more attached to points high in the decision tree than to minor ones lower down, while the obstinate spray "don't give up" indiscriminately over the whole tree.
在退化的情況下,它們是無法區分的:當解決問題只有一種方法時,你唯一的選擇就是放棄或不放棄,而堅持和固執都會選擇不放棄。這大概就是為什麼這兩者在流行文化中經常被混淆。這種情況假設問題是簡單的。然而,隨著問題變得更加複雜,我們可以清楚地看到它們之間的區別。堅持的人對於決策樹中較高的選項更為依戀,而對於較低的次要選項則不然;而固執的人則隨意地在整個樹上散播「不要放棄」的口號。


The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.
堅持不懈的人專注於目標,而固執的人則執著於他們對如何達成目標的看法。


Worse still, that means they'll tend to be attached to their first ideas about how to solve a problem, even though these are the least informed by the experience of working on it. So the obstinate aren't merely attached to details, but disproportionately likely to be attached to wrong ones.
更糟的是,這意味著他們往往會固守對解決問題的第一個想法,即使這些想法最少受到實際經驗的影響。因此,固執的人不僅僅是對細節的堅持,更是對錯誤細節的堅持。




Why are they like this? Why are the obstinate obstinate? One possibility is that they're overwhelmed. They're not very capable. They take on a hard problem. They're immediately in over their head. So they grab onto ideas the way someone on the deck of a rolling ship might grab onto the nearest handhold.
他們為什麼會這樣?為什麼固執的人會這麼固執?一個可能的原因是他們感到不堪重負。他們的能力有限,面對困難的問題時,立刻就感到無法應對。因此,他們就像在搖晃的船甲板上抓住最近的把手一樣,緊緊抓住某些想法。


That was my initial theory, but on examination it doesn't hold up. If being obstinate were simply a consequence of being in over one's head, you could make persistent people become obstinate by making them solve harder problems. But that's not what happens. If you handed the Collisons an extremely hard problem to solve, they wouldn't become obstinate. If anything they'd become less obstinate. They'd know they had to be open to anything.
這是我最初的理論,但經過檢驗後發現並不成立。如果固執只是因為無法應對而產生的結果,那麼你可以通過讓堅持不懈的人解決更難的問題來使他們變得固執。但事實並非如此。如果你給 Collisons 一個極其困難的問題,他們不會變得固執。相反,他們會變得更不固執,因為他們知道必須對任何事情保持開放。


Similarly, if obstinacy were caused by the situation, the obstinate would stop being obstinate when solving easier problems. But they don't. And if obstinacy isn't caused by the situation, it must come from within. It must be a feature of one's personality.
同樣地,如果固執是由環境造成的,那麼在解決更簡單的問題時,固執的人應該會停止固執。但事實上,他們並沒有這樣做。如果固執不是由環境造成的,那麼它必然源自內心,這應該是個性的一個特徵。


Obstinacy is a reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas. This is not identical with stupidity, but they're closely related. A reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas becomes a sort of induced stupidity as contrary evidence mounts. And obstinacy is a form of not giving up that's easily practiced by the stupid. You don't have to consider complicated tradeoffs; you just dig in your heels. It even works, up to a point.
固執是一種對改變自己想法的本能抵抗。這並不等同於愚蠢,但二者密切相關。隨著相反證據的增加,對改變自己想法的本能抵抗會變成一種誘發的愚蠢。而固執是一種不輕言放棄的表現,愚蠢的人也很容易做到。你不需要考慮複雜的權衡,只需堅持自己的立場。這在某種程度上是有效的。


The fact that obstinacy works for simple problems is an important clue. Persistence and obstinacy aren't opposites. The relationship between them is more like the relationship between the two kinds of respiration we can do: aerobic respiration, and the anaerobic respiration we inherited from our most distant ancestors. Anaerobic respiration is a more primitive process, but it has its uses. When you leap suddenly away from a threat, that's what you're using.
固執對於簡單問題有效的事實是一個重要的線索。堅持和固執並不是對立的,它們之間的關係更像是我們可以進行的兩種呼吸方式:有氧呼吸和從最遠的祖先那裡繼承的厭氧呼吸。雖然厭氧呼吸是一種更原始的過程,但它有其用途。當你突然跳開以躲避威脅時,正是使用了這種方式。


The optimal amount of obstinacy is not zero. It can be good if your initial reaction to a setback is an unthinking "I won't give up," because this helps prevent panic. But unthinking only gets you so far. The further someone is toward the obstinate end of the continuum, the less likely they are to succeed in solving hard problems. [4]
最佳的固執程度並非為零。如果你對挫折的初始反應是無意識地說「我不會放棄」,這可能是有益的,因為這有助於防止恐慌。然而,無意識的反應只能帶你走到某個程度。越是偏向固執的一端,成功解決困難問題的可能性就越低。[4]




Obstinacy is a simple thing. Animals have it. But persistence turns out to have a fairly complicated internal structure.
固執是一件簡單的事,動物們都有這種特質;然而,堅持卻有著相當複雜的內在結構。


One thing that distinguishes the persistent is their energy. At the risk of putting too much weight on words, they persist rather than merely resisting. They keep trying things. Which means the persistent must also be imaginative. To keep trying things, you have to keep thinking of things to try.
一個區分堅持者的特點是他們的精力。雖然這樣說可能有些過於強調,但他們是持續堅持,而不僅僅是抵抗。他們不斷嘗試各種方法。這也意味著堅持者必須具備想像力。要不斷嘗試,就必須不斷思考新的嘗試方式。


Energy and imagination make a wonderful combination. Each gets the best out of the other. Energy creates demand for the ideas produced by imagination, which thus produces more, and imagination gives energy somewhere to go. [5]
能量與想像力的結合是美妙的。兩者相互激發,讓彼此發揮出最佳表現。能量為想像力所創造的想法帶來需求,進而促進更多創造,而想像力則為能量指引了方向。


Merely having energy and imagination is quite rare. But to solve hard problems you need three more qualities: resilience, good judgement, and a focus on some kind of goal.
僅僅擁有精力和想像力是相當罕見的。然而,要解決困難的問題,你還需要三種特質:韌性、良好的判斷力,以及對某個目標的專注。


Resilience means not having one's morale destroyed by setbacks. Setbacks are inevitable once problems reach a certain size, so if you can't bounce back from them, you can only do good work on a small scale. But resilience is not the same as obstinacy. Resilience means setbacks can't change your morale, not that they can't change your mind.
韌性意味著不會因為挫折而摧毀自己的士氣。當問題達到一定規模時,挫折是不可避免的,因此如果你無法從中恢復,你只能在小範圍內做好工作。然而,韌性並不等同於固執。韌性意味著挫折無法改變你的士氣,但這並不代表它們無法改變你的想法。


Indeed, persistence often requires that one change one's mind. That's where good judgement comes in. The persistent are quite rational. They focus on expected value. It's this, not recklessness, that lets them work on things that are unlikely to succeed.
確實,堅持往往需要改變自己的想法,這正是良好判斷力的重要性所在。堅持不懈的人非常理性,他們專注於預期的價值。正是這種理性,而非魯莽,使他們能夠投入那些不太可能成功的事物。


There is one point at which the persistent are often irrational though: at the very top of the decision tree. When they choose between two problems of roughly equal expected value, the choice usually comes down to personal preference. Indeed, they'll often classify projects into deliberately wide bands of expected value in order to ensure that the one they want to work on still qualifies.
有一個時刻,持久者常常會顯得不理性,那就是在決策樹的最上層。當他們在兩個預期價值大致相等的問題之間做選擇時,這個選擇通常取決於個人的偏好。事實上,他們經常會將項目劃分為故意寬泛的預期價值範疇,以確保他們想要參與的項目仍然符合條件。


Empirically this doesn't seem to be a problem. It's ok to be irrational near the top of the decision tree. One reason is that we humans will work harder on a problem we love. But there's another more subtle factor involved as well: our preferences among problems aren't random. When we love a problem that other people don't, it's often because we've unconsciously noticed that it's more important than they realize.
根據經驗,這似乎並不是一個問題。在決策樹的頂端,非理性是可以接受的。一個原因是我們人類會在自己喜愛的問題上更加努力。但還有另一個更微妙的因素:我們對問題的偏好並不是隨機的。當我們喜愛一個其他人不喜歡的問題時,往往是因為我們無意識地察覺到它比他們所認識的更為重要。


Which leads to our fifth quality: there needs to be some overall goal. If you're like me you began, as a kid, merely with the desire to do something great. In theory that should be the most powerful motivator of all, since it includes everything that could possibly be done. But in practice it's not much use, precisely because it includes too much. It doesn't tell you what to do at this moment.
這引出了我們的第五個特質:需要有一個整體目標。如果你和我一樣,從小就渴望做一些偉大的事情。理論上,這應該是最強大的動力,因為它涵蓋了所有可能的選擇。但在實際操作中,這並不太有用,正因為它涵蓋的範圍太廣。它並沒有告訴你此刻應該做什麼。


So in practice your energy and imagination and resilience and good judgement have to be directed toward some fairly specific goal. Not too specific, or you might miss a great discovery adjacent to what you're searching for, but not too general, or it won't work to motivate you. [6]
因此,在實踐中,你的精力、想像力、韌性和良好的判斷力必須朝著一些相對具體的目標努力。目標不宜過於具體,否則可能會錯過與你所尋找的相近的偉大發現;但也不應過於籠統,否則將無法激勵你。


When you look at the internal structure of persistence, it doesn't resemble obstinacy at all. It's so much more complex. Five distinct qualities — energy, imagination, resilience, good judgement, and focus on a goal — combine to produce a phenomenon that seems a bit like obstinacy in the sense that it causes you not to give up. But the way you don't give up is completely different. Instead of merely resisting change, you're driven toward a goal by energy and resilience, through paths discovered by imagination and optimized by judgement. You'll give way on any point low down in the decision tree, if its expected value drops sufficiently, but energy and resilience keep pushing you toward whatever you chose higher up.
當你觀察持久性的內部結構時,你會發現它根本不像固執,而是要複雜得多。五種不同的特質——能量、想像力、韌性、良好的判斷力和對目標的專注——共同作用,產生一種現象,似乎有點像固執,因為它讓你不輕言放棄。但你不放棄的方式卻截然不同。你不是單純地抵抗變化,而是受到能量和韌性的驅動,朝著目標前進,沿著想像力所發現的路徑,並由判斷力進行優化。如果某個決策樹中較低的選項的預期價值下降到足夠低的程度,你會在任何一點上讓步,但能量和韌性會不斷推動你朝著更高層次上所選擇的方向前進。


Considering what it's made of, it's not surprising that the right kind of stubbornness is so much rarer than the wrong kind, or that it gets so much better results. Anyone can do obstinacy. Indeed, kids and drunks and fools are best at it. Whereas very few people have enough of all five of the qualities that produce the right kind of stubbornness, but when they do the results are magical.
考慮到其成分,正確的固執比錯誤的固執稀有得多,並且能帶來更好的結果,這並不令人驚訝。任何人都能表現出固執,事實上,孩子、醉漢和傻瓜最擅長這一點。然而,擁有產生正確固執所需的五種品質的人卻非常少,但當他們具備這些品質時,結果是神奇的。








Notes 記錄

[1] I'm going to use "persistent" for the good kind of stubborn and "obstinate" for the bad kind, but I can't claim I'm simply following current usage. Conventional opinion barely distinguishes between good and bad kinds of stubbornness, and usage is correspondingly promiscuous. I could have invented a new word for the good kind, but it seemed better just to stretch "persistent."
我打算用「持久」來形容好的固執,用「倔強」來形容壞的固執,但我無法聲稱自己只是遵循當前的用法。傳統觀點幾乎無法區分好壞兩種固執,而用法也相對混亂。我本可以為好的固執創造一個新詞,但我覺得直接延伸「持久」會更好。


[2] There are some domains where one can succeed by being obstinate. Some political leaders have been notorious for it. But it won't work in situations where you have to pass external tests. And indeed the political leaders who are famous for being obstinate are famous for getting power, not for using it well.
在某些領域中,固執可以帶來成功。一些政治領袖因此而聲名狼藉。然而,在需要通過外部考驗的情況下,這種做法是無效的。事實上,那些以固執著稱的政治領袖,往往是因為獲得權力而聞名,而非善用權力。


[3] There will be some resistance to turning the rudder of a persistent person, because there's some cost to changing direction.
對於一個堅持不懈的人來說,轉動舵會面臨一些阻力,因為改變方向是需要付出代價的。


[4] The obstinate do sometimes succeed in solving hard problems. One way is through luck: like the stopped clock that's right twice a day, they seize onto some arbitrary idea, and it turns out to be right. Another is when their obstinacy cancels out some other form of error. For example, if a leader has overcautious subordinates, their estimates of the probability of success will always be off in the same direction. So if he mindlessly says "push ahead regardless" in every borderline case, he'll usually turn out to be right.
固執的人有時確實能成功解決困難的問題。一種方法是依賴運氣:就像停擺的時鐘一天會正確兩次,他們抓住某個隨意的想法,結果發現是正確的。另一種情況是他們的固執抵消了其他形式的錯誤。例如,如果一位領導者的下屬過於謹慎,他們對成功概率的估計總是會朝著同一方向偏差。因此,如果他在每一個邊緣案例中無腦地說「不顧一切地推進」,他通常會是對的。


[5] If you stop there, at just energy and imagination, you get the conventional caricature of an artist or poet.
如果你僅僅停留在能量和想像力上,你就會得到藝術家或詩人的傳統刻板印象。


[6] Start by erring on the small side. If you're inexperienced you'll inevitably err on one side or the other, and if you err on the side of making the goal too broad, you won't get anywhere. Whereas if you err on the small side you'll at least be moving forward. Then, once you're moving, you expand the goal.
從小處著手。如果你缺乏經驗,必然會在某一方面犯錯;如果你把目標設定得過於寬泛,就無法取得進展。相對而言,如果你從小目標開始,至少能夠向前邁進。然後,一旦你開始行動,就可以逐步擴大目標。




Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Jackie McDonough, Courtenay Pipkin, Harj Taggar, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this.
感謝特雷弗·布萊克威爾、傑西卡·利文斯頓、傑基·麥克多諾、考特尼·皮普金、哈爾吉·塔格和加里·譚對這份草稿的閱讀。