保罗·格雷厄姆：少给自己贴标签

我今天终于明白为什么政治和宗教总会引发毫无意义的讨论。通常来说，网络论坛上任何涉及宗教的言论都会演变成宗教争论。为什么？为什么这种情况会发生在宗教话题而非JavaScript或烘焙等论坛常见话题上？关键在于宗教的特殊性——人们认为发表宗教观点不需要任何专业资质。

I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions. As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with JavaScript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums? What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it.

他们只需要有坚定信仰就够了，而任何人都能拥有信仰。关于JavaScript的争论永远不会像宗教争论那样迅速升级，因为人们觉得必须达到某种专业门槛才能发表技术观点。但在宗教领域，人人都自诩专家。这时我突然意识到——政治同样存在这个问题。

All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No threat about JavaScript will grow as fast as one about religion because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion, everyone's an expert. Then it struck me. This is the problem with politics too.

政治和宗教一样，都是表达观点无需专业门槛的话题。你只需要有强烈信念。宗教和政治是否存在某种共性导致了这种相似性？一种可能的解释是：它们讨论的都是没有明确答案的问题，因此人们的观点不会受到事实的反驳。

Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions. Do religion and politics have something in common that explains this similarity? One possible explanation is that they deal with questions that have no definite answers. So there's no back pressure on people's opinions.

既然无法证明谁对谁错，所有观点都显得同样合理。意识到这点后，每个人都肆意发表意见。但这并不正确。某些政治问题确实存在明确答案，比如新政策的成本核算。但即便是最精确的政治议题，最终也会陷入与模糊议题相同的困境。

Since no one can be proven wrong, every opinion is equally valid. And sensing this, everyone lets fly with theirs. But this isn't true. There are certainly some political questions that have definite answers, like how much a new government policy will cost. But the more precise political questions suffer the same fate as the vaguer ones.

我认为宗教和政治的共同点在于它们已成为人们身份认同的一部分，而人们永远无法就身份认同相关议题进行建设性辩论。从定义上说，这类讨论必然带有派系色彩。哪些话题会触发身份认同取决于参与者而非话题本身。例如讨论涉及当事国民众的现代战役很容易演变成政治争论，但讨论青铜时代的战役就未必——没人知道该站哪边。

I think what religion politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition, they're partisan. Which topics engage people's identity depends on the people, not the topic. For example, a discussion about a battle that included citizens of one or more of the countries involved would probably degenerate into a political argument. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the bronze age probably wouldn't no one would know what side to be on.

所以问题根源不在政治本身，而在于身份认同。当人们说讨论已沦为宗教战争时，实际意思是讨论正被身份认同驱动。由于触发点取决于人而非话题，因此不能因为某个问题容易引发宗教战争就断定它没有答案。比如编程语言的优劣比较常演变成门派之争，因为很多程序员以X语言或Y语言程序员自居。这有时会让人误以为所有语言都一样好——显然这个结论是错误的。

So it's not politics that's the source of the trouble, but identity. When people say a discussion has degenerated into a religious war, what they really mean is that it has started to be driven mostly by people's identities. Because the point at which this happens depends on the people rather than the topic, it's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must have no answer. For example, the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war because so many programmers identify as x programmers or y programmers. This sometimes leads people to conclude the question must be unanswerable that all languages are equally good.

显然这是谬误。人类创造的其他事物都存在优劣之分，编程语言怎么可能成为例外？事实上，只要排除那些带着身份认同发言的人，关于编程语言优劣的讨论完全可以富有成效。更广泛地说，只有当话题不触及参与者身份认同时，才可能进行建设性讨论。

Obviously, that's false. Anything else people make can be well or badly designed. Why should this be uniquely impossible for programming languages? And indeed, you can have a fruitful discussion about the relative merits of programming languages so long as you exclude people who respond from identity. More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants.

政治与宗教之所以成为雷区，是因为它们牵涉到太多人的身份认同，但原则上你仍可与某些人展开有益对话。而有些看似无害的话题——比如福特与雪佛兰皮卡孰优孰劣——反而可能在某些人面前触雷。该理论最引人入胜之处在于，若其成立，不仅能解释该避免何种讨论，更揭示了孕育更好思想的路径：当人们无法清晰思考已成为其身份认同一部分的事物时，在同等条件下，最佳策略就是尽量减少自我认同的标签。阅读本文的多数人本已相当宽容，但比'自认x但包容y'更高阶的，是根本不以x自居。你给自己贴的标签越多，它们就越会让你变得愚蠢。

What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people's identities, but you could, in principle, have a useful conversation about them with some people. And there are other topics that might seem harmless, like the relative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks that you couldn't safely talk about with others. The most intriguing thing about this theory, if it's right, is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible. Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant, but there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y, not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.