 November 2020 2020年11月 There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet. 有些工作如果不與同事有不同的想法，你就無法做好。例如，要成為一名成功的科學家，僅僅正確是不夠的。你的想法必須既正確又新穎。你不能發表別人已經知道的事情的論文。你需要說出其他人還沒有意識到的事情。 The same is true for investors. It's not enough for a public market investor to predict correctly how a company will do. If a lot of other people make the same prediction, the stock price will already reflect it, and there's no room to make money. The only valuable insights are the ones most other investors don't share. 對於投資者來說也是如此。對於公開市場投資人來說，僅僅正確預測一家公司的表現是不夠的。如果很多人都做出同樣的預測，股價就已經反映出來了，就沒有賺錢的空間了。唯一有價值的見解是大多數其他投資者不分享的見解。 You see this pattern with startup founders too. You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea, but that you know isn't — like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent airbeds on strangers' floors. 你在新創公司創辦人身上也會看到這種模式。你不想創辦一家新創公司去做每個人都認為是個好主意的事情，或是已經有其他公司在這樣做了。你必須做一些在大多數人看來是個壞主意的事情，但你知道這不是一個壞主意——比如為幾千名業餘愛好者使用的小型計算機編寫軟體，或者創建一個網站讓人們在陌生人身上租用充氣床。 Ditto for essayists. An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new. 對於散文家來說也是如此。一篇告訴人們他們已經知道的事情的文章會很無聊。你必須告訴他們一些新的東西。 But this pattern isn't universal. In fact, it doesn't hold for most kinds of work. In most kinds of work — to be an administrator, for example — all you need is the first half. All you need is to be right. It's not essential that everyone else be wrong. 但這種模式並不普遍。事實上，它不適用於大多數類型的工作。在大多數工作中——例如成為管理員——你所需要的只是前半部分。你所需要的只是正確的。不一定其他人都錯。 There's room for a little novelty in most kinds of work, but in practice there's a fairly sharp distinction between the kinds of work where it's essential to be independent-minded, and the kinds where it's not. 大多數類型的工作都有一點新穎的空間，但實際上，需要獨立思想的工作類型和不需要獨立思想的工作類型之間存在相當明顯的區別。 I wish someone had told me about this distinction when I was a kid, because it's one of the most important things to think about when you're deciding what kind of work you want to do. Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? I suspect most people's unconscious mind will answer that question before their conscious mind has a chance to. I know mine does. 我希望當我還是個孩子的時候有人告訴我這個區別，因為當你決定你想做什麼樣的工作時，這是需要考慮的最重要的事情之一。你想做那種只有與其他人不同的思維才能獲勝的工作嗎？我懷疑大多數人的潛意識會在他們的意識有機會回答之前回答這個問題。我知道我的也是這樣。 Independent-mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture. Which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent-minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional-minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research. 獨立思想似乎更多的是一種天生的問題，而不是後天的培養。這意味著如果你選擇了錯誤的工作類型，你就會不開心。如果你天生具有獨立思想，那麼你會發現擔任中階管理人員很令人沮喪。如果你天生思想保守，那麼當你試圖進行原創性研究時，你就會遇到逆風。 One difficulty here, though, is that people are often mistaken about where they fall on the spectrum from conventional- to independent-minded. Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. And in any case, it genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers'. And the independent-minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. [1] 然而，這裡的一個困難是，人們常常錯誤地判斷自己屬於傳統型到獨立型的範疇。思想傳統的人不喜歡認為自己思想傳統。無論如何，他們真的感覺好像他們對一切都有自己的決定。他們的信仰與同齡人相同，這只是一個巧合。同時，思想獨立的人往往意識不到他們的想法與傳統想法有多麼不同，至少在他們公開表達這些想法之前是如此。 [1] By the time they reach adulthood, most people know roughly how smart they are (in the narrow sense of ability to solve pre-set problems), because they're constantly being tested and ranked according to it. But schools generally ignore independent-mindedness, except to the extent they try to suppress it. So we don't get anything like the same kind of feedback about how independent-minded we are. 當他們成年時，大多數人都大致知道自己有多聰明（狹義上是解決預設問題的能力），因為他們不斷地接受測試並根據聰明程度進行排名。但學校通常會忽視獨立思想，除非他們試圖壓制它。因此，我們沒有得到任何關於我們的獨立思想的類似回饋。 There may even be a phenomenon like Dunning-Kruger at work, where the most conventional-minded people are confident that they're independent-minded, while the genuinely independent-minded worry they might not be independent-minded enough. 工作中甚至可能出現鄧寧-克魯格這樣的現象，最傳統的人自信自己有獨立的思想，而真正有獨立思想的人則擔心自己可能不夠獨立。 Can you make yourself more independent-minded? I think so. This quality may be largely inborn, but there seem to be ways to magnify it, or at least not to suppress it. 你能讓自己變得更獨立嗎？我想是的。這種品質可能在很大程度上是與生俱來的，但似乎有辦法放大它，或至少不壓制它。 One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It's hard to be a conformist if you don't know what you're supposed to conform to. Though again, it may be that such people already are independent-minded. A conventional-minded person would probably feel anxious not knowing what other people thought, and make more effort to find out. 最有效的技巧之一是大多數書呆子無意中採用的技巧：只是為了減少對傳統信念的了解。如果你不知道自己該遵守什麼，就很難成為一個墨守成規的人。不過，這些人可能已經有獨立思想了。一個思想傳統的人可能會因為不知道別人的想法而感到焦慮，並付出更多努力去了解。 It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you're surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you'll have the opposite experience: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more. 你周圍的人很重要。如果你周圍都是思想傳統的人，就會限制你可以表達的想法，反過來又會限制你擁有的想法。但如果你身邊都是有獨立思想的人，你就會有相反的體驗：聽到別人說出令人驚訝的事情會鼓勵你去思考更多。 Because the independent-minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional-minded people, they tend to self-segregate once they have a chance to. The problem with high school is that they haven't yet had a chance to. Plus high school tends to be an inward-looking little world whose inhabitants lack confidence, both of which magnify the forces of conformism. So high school is often a bad time for the independent-minded. But there is some advantage even here: it teaches you what to avoid. If you later find yourself in a situation that makes you think "this is like high school," you know you should get out. [2] 因為思想獨立的人覺得被思想傳統的人包圍感到不舒服，所以一旦有機會，就會傾向於自我隔離。高中的問題是他們還沒有機會。另外，高中往往是個內向的小世界，裡面的居民缺乏自信，這兩者都放大了因循守舊的力量。因此，對於有獨立思想的人來說，高中往往是一段糟糕的時光。但即使在這裡也有一些優點：它告訴你應該避免什麼。如果你後來發現自己處於一種讓你覺得「這就像高中」的境地，你就知道你應該離開。 [2] Another place where the independent- and conventional-minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent-minded; otherwise the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent-minded ones, so as the company grows, the original spirit of independent-mindedness is inevitably diluted. This causes all kinds of problems besides the obvious one that the company starts to suck. One of the strangest is that the founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees. [3] 另一個將獨立思維與傳統思維結合在一起的地方是成功的新創公司。創辦人和早期員工幾乎總是具有獨立思想；否則啟動不會成功。但保守的人遠遠多於獨立的人，所以隨著公司的發展，原有的獨立精神不可避免地被淡化。除了公司開始陷入困境之外，這還會導致各種各樣的問題。最奇怪的事情之一是，創辦人發現自己能夠更自由地與其他公司的創辦人交談，而不是與自己的員工交談。 [3] Fortunately you don't have to spend all your time with independent-minded people. It's enough to have one or two you can talk to regularly. And once you find them, they're usually as eager to talk as you are; they need you too. Although universities no longer have the kind of monopoly they used to have on education, good universities are still an excellent way to meet independent-minded people. Most students will still be conventional-minded, but you'll at least find clumps of independent-minded ones, rather than the near zero you may have found in high school. 幸運的是，你不必把所有的時間都花在有獨立思想的人身上。有一兩個你可以經常交談的人就足夠了。一旦你找到他們，他們通常會像你一樣渴望交談；他們也需要你。儘管大學不再像以前那樣壟斷教育，但優秀的大學仍然是結識有獨立思想的人的絕佳途徑。大多數學生仍然具有傳統思想，但你至少會發現一群具有獨立思想的學生，而不是你在高中時發現的幾乎為零的學生。 It also works to go in the other direction: as well as cultivating a small collection of independent-minded friends, to try to meet as many different types of people as you can. It will decrease the influence of your immediate peers if you have several other groups of peers. Plus if you're part of several different worlds, you can often import ideas from one to another. 它也可以朝另一個方向發展：培養一小群獨立思想的朋友，並嘗試結識盡可能多的不同類型的人。如果你還有其他幾組同儕，這會降低你直接同儕的影響力。另外，如果您屬於幾個不同的世界，您通常可以將想法從一個世界匯入到另一個世界。 But by different types of people, I don't mean demographically different. For this technique to work, they have to think differently. So while it's an excellent idea to go and visit other countries, you can probably find people who think differently right around the corner. When I meet someone who knows a lot about something unusual (which includes practically everyone, if you dig deep enough), I try to learn what they know that other people don't. There are almost always surprises here. It's a good way to make conversation when you meet strangers, but I don't do it to make conversation. I really want to know. 但我所說的不同類型的人並不是指人口統計上的不同。為了讓這種技術發揮作用，他們必須以不同的方式思考。因此，雖然去訪問其他國家是個好主意，但您很可能會在拐角處發現有不同想法的人。當我遇到一個對不尋常的事情了解很多的人（如果你挖掘得足夠深入，幾乎包括每個人），我會嘗試了解他們知道而其他人不知道的事情。這裡幾乎總是有驚喜。當你遇到陌生人時，這是一種很好的交談方式，但我這樣做並不是為了交談。我真的很想知道。 You can expand the source of influences in time as well as space, by reading history. When I read history I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past. How did things look to them? This is hard to do, but worth the effort for the same reason it's worth travelling far to triangulate a point. 透過閱讀歷史，你可以在時間和空間上擴大影響的來源。當我閱讀歷史時，我不僅僅是為了了解發生了什麼，而是為了嘗試了解生活在過去的人們的想法。他們覺得事情怎麼樣？這很難做到，但值得付出努力，因為同樣值得長途跋涉來對一個點進行三角測量。 You can also take more explicit measures to prevent yourself from automatically adopting conventional opinions. The most general is to cultivate an attitude of skepticism. When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself "Is that true?" Don't say it out loud. I'm not suggesting that you impose on everyone who talks to you the burden of proving what they say, but rather that you take upon yourself the burden of evaluating what they say. 你也可以採取更明確的措施來防止自己自動採取傳統觀點。最普遍的是培養懷疑態度。當你聽到有人說話時，停下來問自己“這是真的嗎？”不要大聲說出來。我並不是建議你讓每個與你交談的人都承擔證明他們所說內容的責任，而是讓你自己承擔起評估他們所說內容的責任。 Treat it as a puzzle. You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong. See if you can guess which. The end goal is not to find flaws in the things you're told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. So this game should be an exciting quest for novelty, not a boring protocol for intellectual hygiene. And you'll be surprised, when you start asking "Is this true?", how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you're more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few. 把它當作一個謎題。你知道一些被接受的想法後來會被證明是錯的。看看你能不能猜出是哪個。最終的目標不是找出你被告知的事情的缺陷，而是找到被缺陷所掩蓋的新想法。所以這個遊戲應該是一個令人興奮的新奇追求，而不是一個無聊的智力衛生協議。當你開始問「這是真的嗎？」時，你會驚訝地發現答案往往不是立即肯定的。如果你有想像力，你更有可能有太多的線索需要追踪，而不是太少的線索。 More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. Some of the most powerful influences are implicit. How do you even notice these? By standing back and watching how other people get their ideas. 更一般地說，你的目標應該是不要讓任何事情未經審查就進入你的頭腦，而且事情並不總是以陳述的形式進入你的頭腦。一些最強大的影響是隱性的。你怎麼注意到這些？透過退後一步，觀察其他人如何獲得他們的想法。 When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves. The most obvious are in fashion: you notice a few people wearing a certain kind of shirt, and then more and more, until half the people around you are wearing the same shirt. You may not care much what you wear, but there are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those. Not just because you want sovereignty over your own thoughts, but because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking. [4] 當你站在足夠遠的地方時，你可以看到想法像波浪一樣在人群中傳播。最明顯的是時尚界：你注意到有些人穿著某種襯衫，然後越來越多，直到你周圍一半的人穿著同樣的襯衫。你可能不太在乎自己穿什麼，但知性時尚也是有的，你絕對不想參與其中。不僅是因為你想要掌控自己的想法，還因為不流行的想法很可能會帶來有趣的結果。尋找未被發現的想法的最佳地點是沒有人在尋找的地方。 [4] To go beyond this general advice, we need to look at the internal structure of independent-mindedness — at the individual muscles we need to exercise, as it were. It seems to me that it has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity. 為了超越這個一般建議，我們需要看看獨立思想的內在結構──可以說是我們需要鍛鍊的個別肌肉。在我看來，它包含三個組成部分：對真理的挑剔、拒絕被告知要思考什麼、好奇心。 Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief. For most people, degree of belief rushes unexamined toward the extremes: the unlikely becomes impossible, and the probable becomes certain. [5] To the independent-minded, this seems unpardonably sloppy. They're willing to have anything in their heads, from highly speculative hypotheses to (apparent) tautologies, but on subjects they care about, everything has to be labelled with a carefully considered degree of belief. [6] 對真理的挑剔不僅僅意味著不相信錯誤的事情。這意味著要小心信念的程度。對大多數人來說，信念的程度未經檢驗就會走向極端：不可能的事情變得不可能，而可能的事情變得確定。 [5] 對於有獨立思想的人來說，這似乎是不可原諒的草率。他們願意在頭腦中存有任何東西，從高度推測性的假設到（明顯的）同義反复，但在他們關心的主題上，一切都必須貼上經過仔細考慮的信念程度的標籤。 [6] The independent-minded thus have a horror of ideologies, which require one to accept a whole collection of beliefs at once, and to treat them as articles of faith. To an independent-minded person that would seem revolting, just as it would seem to someone fastidious about food to take a bite of a submarine sandwich filled with a large variety of ingredients of indeterminate age and provenance. 因此，思想獨立的人對意識形態感到恐懼，因為意識形態要求一個人立即接受一整套信仰，並將它們視為信仰文章。對於一個思想獨立的人來說，這似乎是令人反感的，就像對於一個對食物挑剔的人來說，咬一口充滿了各種不確定年齡和來源的成分的潛艇三明治一樣。 Without this fastidiousness about truth, you can't be truly independent-minded. It's not enough just to have resistance to being told what to think. Those kind of people reject conventional ideas only to replace them with the most random conspiracy theories. And since these conspiracy theories have often been manufactured to capture them, they end up being less independent-minded than ordinary people, because they're subject to a much more exacting master than mere convention. [7] 如果沒有這種對真理的挑剔，你就不可能真正有獨立的思想。僅僅抵制被告知要思考什麼是不夠的。這類人拒絕傳統觀念，只是用最隨意的陰謀論取而代之。由於這些陰謀論常常是為了捕捉他們而製造的，因此他們最終不像普通人那樣具有獨立思想，因為他們受到一個比單純的慣例更加嚴格的主人的約束。 [7] Can you increase your fastidiousness about truth? I would think so. In my experience, merely thinking about something you're fastidious about causes that fastidiousness to grow. If so, this is one of those rare virtues we can have more of merely by wanting it. And if it's like other forms of fastidiousness, it should also be possible to encourage in children. I certainly got a strong dose of it from my father. [8] 你能增加對真理的挑剔嗎？我也這麼認為。根據我的經驗，光是思考你所挑剔的事情就會導致這種挑剔的增加。如果是這樣，這就是我們只需想要就能擁有的稀有美德之一。如果它像其他形式的挑剔一樣，也應該可以鼓勵孩子。我確實從我父親那裡得到了一劑強效的藥物。 [8] The second component of independent-mindedness, resistance to being told what to think, is the most visible of the three. But even this is often misunderstood. The big mistake people make about it is to think of it as a merely negative quality. The language we use reinforces that idea. You're unconventional. You don't care what other people think. But it's not just a kind of immunity. In the most independent-minded people, the desire not to be told what to think is a positive force. It's not mere skepticism, but an active delight in ideas that subvert the conventional wisdom, the more counterintuitive the better. 獨立思想的第二個組成部分，即拒絕被告知要思考什麼，是這三個組成部分中最明顯的。但即便如此，也常被誤解。人們對此犯的最大錯誤是認為它只是一種負面的品質。我們使用的語言強化了這個想法。你很不傳統。你不在乎別人怎麼想。但這不僅僅是一種免疫力。對於最有獨立思想的人來說，不被告知想法的願望是一種積極的力量。這不僅僅是懷疑，而是對顛覆傳統智慧的想法的積極喜悅，越違反直覺越好。 Some of the most novel ideas seemed at the time almost like practical jokes. Think how often your reaction to a novel idea is to laugh. I don't think it's because novel ideas are funny per se, but because novelty and humor share a certain kind of surprisingness. But while not identical, the two are close enough that there is a definite correlation between having a sense of humor and being independent-minded — just as there is between being humorless and being conventional-minded. [9] 一些最新穎的想法在當時看起來幾乎就像惡作劇。想想你對新奇想法的反應有多少次是大笑。我不認為這是因為新奇的想法本身很有趣，而是因為新奇和幽默都有某種令人驚訝的地方。雖然兩者並不完全相同，但兩者足夠接近，具有幽默感和思想獨立之間存在明確的相關性，就像缺乏幽默感和思想傳統之間存在明確的相關性一樣。 [9] I don't think we can significantly increase our resistance to being told what to think. It seems the most innate of the three components of independent-mindedness; people who have this quality as adults usually showed all too visible signs of it as children. But if we can't increase our resistance to being told what to think, we can at least shore it up, by surrounding ourselves with other independent-minded people. 我不認為我們可以顯著增加對被告知要思考什麼的抵制。它似乎是獨立思想的三個組成部分中最與生俱來的。成年後具有這種品質的人，在孩童時期通常會表現出非常明顯的跡象。但如果我們不能增加對被告知要思考什麼的抵制，我們至少可以透過讓其他有獨立思想的人包圍我們來支撐它。 The third component of independent-mindedness, curiosity, may be the most interesting. To the extent that we can give a brief answer to the question of where novel ideas come from, it's curiosity. That's what people are usually feeling before having them. 獨立思想的第三個組成部分，即好奇心，可能是最有趣的。在某種程度上，我們可以對新穎想法從何而來的問題做出簡短的回答，那就是好奇心。這就是人們在擁有它們之前通常會有的感覺。 In my experience, independent-mindedness and curiosity predict one another perfectly. Everyone I know who's independent-minded is deeply curious, and everyone I know who's conventional-minded isn't. Except, curiously, children. All small children are curious. Perhaps the reason is that even the conventional-minded have to be curious in the beginning, in order to learn what the conventions are. Whereas the independent-minded are the gluttons of curiosity, who keep eating even after they're full. [10] 根據我的經驗，獨立思想和好奇心是完美的一對。我認識的每個思想獨立的人都非常好奇，而我認識的每個思想傳統的人則不然。奇怪的是，除了孩子們。所有小孩子都很好奇。也許原因是，即使是傳統思維的人一開始也必須保持好奇心，才能了解傳統是什麼。而思想獨立的人則是好奇的人，他們吃飽了還繼續吃東西。 [10] The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it. 獨立思想的三個組成部分協同作用：對真理的挑剔和拒絕被告知要思考什麼，會在你的大腦中留下空間，而好奇心會發現新的想法來填補它。 Interestingly, the three components can substitute for one another in much the same way muscles can. If you're sufficiently fastidious about truth, you don't need to be as resistant to being told what to think, because fastidiousness alone will create sufficient gaps in your knowledge. And either one can compensate for curiosity, because if you create enough space in your brain, your discomfort at the resulting vacuum will add force to your curiosity. Or curiosity can compensate for them: if you're sufficiently curious, you don't need to clear space in your brain, because the new ideas you discover will push out the conventional ones you acquired by default. 有趣的是，這三個組成部分可以像肌肉一樣相互替代。如果你對真理夠挑剔，你就不需要那麼抗拒被告知要思考什麼，因為光是挑剔就會在你的知識中造成足夠的差距。任何一種都可以補償好奇心，因為如果你在大腦中創造出足夠的空間，你對由此產生的真空的不適感就會增加你的好奇心。或者好奇心可以彌補它們：如果你有足夠的好奇心，你就不需要清理大腦中的空間，因為你發現的新想法將取代你預設獲得的傳統想法。 Because the components of independent-mindedness are so interchangeable, you can have them to varying degrees and still get the same result. So there is not just a single model of independent-mindedness. Some independent-minded people are openly subversive, and others are quietly curious. They all know the secret handshake though. 因為獨立思想的組成部分是可以互換的，所以你可以在不同程度上擁有它們，但仍然會得到相同的結果。因此，獨立思想並非只有單一的模型。有些思想獨立的人公然顛覆，有些人則默默好奇。但他們都知道秘密握手。 Is there a way to cultivate curiosity? To start with, you want to avoid situations that suppress it. How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something. 有沒有辦法培養好奇心？首先，你要避免抑制它的情況。您目前所做的工作在多大程度上激發了您的好奇心？如果答案是“不多”，也許你應該改變一些東西。 The most important active step you can take to cultivate your curiosity is probably to seek out the topics that engage it. Few adults are equally curious about everything, and it doesn't seem as if you can choose which topics interest you. So it's up to you to find them. Or invent them, if necessary. 培養好奇心可以採取的最重要的積極步驟可能是尋找與之相關的主題。很少有成年人對所有事情都同樣好奇，而且你似乎無法選擇自己感興趣的主題。因此，找到它們取決於您。或者如果有必要的話，發明它們。 Another way to increase your curiosity is to indulge it, by investigating things you're interested in. Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions. 增加好奇心的另一種方法是透過研究你感興趣的事物來放縱它。問題會引發更多問題。 Curiosity seems to be more individual than fastidiousness about truth or resistance to being told what to think. To the degree people have the latter two, they're usually pretty general, whereas different people can be curious about very different things. So perhaps curiosity is the compass here. Perhaps, if your goal is to discover novel ideas, your motto should not be "do what you love" so much as "do what you're curious about." 好奇心似乎比對真理的挑剔或拒絕被告知要思考的事情更具個性化。就人們擁有後兩者的程度而言，它們通常相當普遍，而不同的人可能會對非常不同的事物感到好奇。所以也許好奇心就是這裡的指南針。也許，如果你的目標是發現新奇的想法，你的座右銘不應該是“做你喜歡的事”，而應該是“做你好奇的事”。 Notes 筆記 [1] One convenient consequence of the fact that no one identifies as conventional-minded is that you can say what you like about conventional-minded people without getting in too much trouble. When I wrote "The Four Quadrants of Conformism" I expected a firestorm of rage from the aggressively conventional-minded, but in fact it was quite muted. They sensed that there was something about the essay that they disliked intensely, but they had a hard time finding a specific passage to pin it on. [1] 沒有人認為自己是思想傳統的人這一事實的一個便利後果是，你可以對思想傳統的人說你喜歡的話，而不會陷入太多麻煩。當我寫《從眾主義的四個像限》時，我預期那些激進的傳統思想者會爆發出一場憤怒的風暴，但事實上，它是相當平靜的。他們感覺到這篇文章中有一些他們非常不喜歡的地方，但他們很難找到一個具體的段落來說明這一點。 [2] When I ask myself what in my life is like high school, the answer is Twitter. It's not just full of conventional-minded people, as anything its size will inevitably be, but subject to violent storms of conventional-mindedness that remind me of descriptions of Jupiter. But while it probably is a net loss to spend time there, it has at least made me think more about the distinction between independent- and conventional-mindedness, which I probably wouldn't have done otherwise. [2] 當我問自己高中生活是什麼樣子時，答案是 Twitter。它不僅充滿了傳統思想的人（任何其規模的事物都不可避免地如此），而且還受到傳統思想的猛烈風暴的影響，這讓我想起了對木星的描述。但是，雖然花時間在那裡可能是一種淨損失，但它至少讓我更多地思考獨立思維和傳統思維之間的區別，否則我可能不會這樣做。 [3] The decrease in independent-mindedness in growing startups is still an open problem, but there may be solutions. [3] 成長中的新創企業獨立思想的下降仍然是一個懸而未決的問題，但可能有解決方案。 Founders can delay the problem by making a conscious effort only to hire independent-minded people. Which of course also has the ancillary benefit that they have better ideas. 創辦人可以透過有意識地只僱用具有獨立思想的人來推遲問題的解決。當然，這還有一個附帶的好處，那就是他們有更好的想法。 Another possible solution is to create policies that somehow disrupt the force of conformism, much as control rods slow chain reactions, so that the conventional-minded aren't as dangerous. The physical separation of Lockheed's Skunk Works may have had this as a side benefit. Recent examples suggest employee forums like Slack may not be an unmitigated good. 另一個可能的解決方案是製定政策，以某種方式瓦解因循守舊的力量，就像控制棒減緩連鎖反應一樣，這樣傳統思想就不會那麼危險。洛克希德臭鼬工廠的物理分離可能有一個附帶好處。最近的例子表明，像 Slack 這樣的員工論壇可能不是一個十足的好東西。 The most radical solution would be to grow revenues without growing the company. You think hiring that junior PR person will be cheap, compared to a programmer, but what will be the effect on the average level of independent-mindedness in your company? (The growth in staff relative to faculty seems to have had a similar effect on universities.) Perhaps the rule about outsourcing work that's not your "core competency" should be augmented by one about outsourcing work done by people who'd ruin your culture as employees. 最根本的解決方案是在不發展公司的情況下增加收入。您認為與程式設計師相比，僱用初級公關人員會便宜，但這會對您公司的獨立思想平均值產生什麼影響？ （相對於教師的員工數量的增長似乎對大學也產生了類似的影響。）也許關於不是你的「核心能力」的外包工作的規則應該透過關於那些會破壞你的文化的人所做的外包工作的規則來增強。 Some investment firms already seem to be able to grow revenues without growing the number of employees. Automation plus the ever increasing articulation of the "tech stack" suggest this may one day be possible for product companies. 一些投資公司似乎已經能夠在不增加員工數量的情況下增加收入。自動化加上「技術堆疊」的日益清晰表明，有一天這對產品公司來說可能是可能的。 [4] There are intellectual fashions in every field, but their influence varies. One of the reasons politics, for example, tends to be boring is that it's so extremely subject to them. The threshold for having opinions about politics is much lower than the one for having opinions about set theory. So while there are some ideas in politics, in practice they tend to be swamped by waves of intellectual fashion. [4] 每個領域都有知識分子時尚，但其影響力各不相同。例如，政治往往變得無聊的原因之一是它非常受政治因素的影響。對政治發表意見的門檻比對集合論發表意見的門檻要低得多。因此，雖然政治上有一些想法，但在實踐中它們往往會被知識時尚的浪潮所淹沒。 [5] The conventional-minded are often fooled by the strength of their opinions into believing that they're independent-minded. But strong convictions are not a sign of independent-mindedness. Rather the opposite. [5] 思想傳統的人常常被他們的觀點所愚弄，相信他們是獨立思想的。但堅定的信念並不代表獨立思想。相反。 [6] Fastidiousness about truth doesn't imply that an independent-minded person won't be dishonest, but that he won't be deluded. It's sort of like the definition of a gentleman as someone who is never unintentionally rude. [6] 講究真理，並不是說一個有獨立思想的人不會不誠實，而是說他不會被欺騙。這有點像是紳士的定義，就是永遠不會無意識地粗魯的人。 [7] You see this especially among political extremists. They think themselves nonconformists, but actually they're niche conformists. Their opinions may be different from the average person's, but they are often more influenced by their peers' opinions than the average person's are. [7] 你尤其可以在政治極端分子中看到這一點。他們認為自己是不墨守成規的人，但其實他們是小眾墨守成規的人。他們的觀點可能與一般人不同，但他們往往比一般人更容易受到同儕觀點的影響。 [8] If we broaden the concept of fastidiousness about truth so that it excludes pandering, bogusness, and pomposity as well as falsehood in the strict sense, our model of independent-mindedness can expand further into the arts. [8] 如果我們擴大對真理的挑剔概念，使其排除迎合、虛假、浮誇以及嚴格意義上的虛假，我們的獨立思想模式就可以進一步擴展到藝術領域。 [9] This correlation is far from perfect, though. Gödel and Dirac don't seem to have been very strong in the humor department. But someone who is both "neurotypical" and humorless is very likely to be conventional-minded. [9] 不過，這種相關性還遠遠稱不上完美。哥德爾和狄拉克在幽默方面似乎不是很強。但既「神經質」又缺乏幽默感的人很可能思想傳統。 [10] Exception: gossip. Almost everyone is curious about gossip. [10] 例外：八卦。幾乎每個人都對八卦感到好奇。 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Harj Taggar, and Peter Thiel for reading drafts of this. 感謝 Trevor Blackwell、Paul Buchheit、Patrick Collison、Jessica Livingston、Robert Morris、Harj Taggar 和 Peter Thiel 閱讀本文的草稿。 |
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