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今天先来几句引言。
Couple of quotes to start with today.
第一个来自作曲家伦纳德·伯恩斯坦，他说：要成就大事，需要两样东西——一个计划，和一点时间不够。
First one comes from the composer Leonard Bernstein who said, to achieve great things, two things are needed, a plan and not quite enough time.
第二个引言来自一位叫赫伯特·西蒙的人，他说：这是一个广为流传的误解，但即便人人相信，它依然是个神话。
And here's the second quote from a man named Herbert Simon, who said, it is a myth, widely believed, but not less mythical for that.
人们在最自由的时候，创造力也最强。
The people are most creative when they are most free.
赫伯特·西蒙可不是等闲之辈。
Herbert Simon was no dummy.
他是诺贝尔经济学奖得主，也是认知心理学和人工智能领域的先驱。
He was a Nobel laureate in economics, and a pioneer of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.
他这话，确实说到了点子上。
And the man was definitely onto something there.
他的这句话成了美国记者兼作家大卫·爱泼斯坦新书的基础。
His quote is the basis for a book by US journalist and author David Epstein.
大卫是畅销书《范围：通才在专业世界中的胜利》的作者。
David is the author of the bestselling book, Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
现在，他又写了一本与前作相呼应的书，探讨人们为何在绝对自由的环境下反而难以激发创造力。
And now David's written something that's something like a partner to that book on why and how people do not thrive creatively in conditions of total freedom.
事实上，真相可能恰恰相反。
In fact, it may be that just the opposite is true.
今天我们拥有的自由和选择权，远超任何一代祖先，市场也不断提供越来越多的选择。
We live today with vastly more freedom and freedom of choice than our ancestors ever did, and the market's always there, offering us more and more and more options.
但大量研究显示，选择过多反而让我们更焦虑、更不知所措，创造力也更低。
But it turns out there's plenty of research to tell us all that choice is actually making us more anxious, more overwhelmed, and less creative.
不是更有创造力，而是更少创造力。
Not more creative, less creative.
真正能让你获得自由的，反而是限制你的选择。
And it's narrowing your options that can truly set you free.
大卫·艾普斯坦这本颇具争议的书叫《框内思维：限制如何让我们更优秀》。
David Epstein's provocative book is called Inside the Box, How Constraints Make Us Better.
你好，大卫。
Hello, David.
嗨。
Hi.
谢谢你能邀请我。
Thank you for having me.
你在书里开头讲了一个亲身经历。
You start your book with this personal story.
是关于你小时候对体育的痴迷。
It was about your boyhood obsession with sports.
你小时候对美式橄榄球、棒球这类运动有多着迷？
How obsessed were you as a kid with American sports like, you know, gridiron football and baseball and the like?
简直到了每天早上都会醒来看同一个半小时的体育新闻节目，同一个节目连播两遍，一字不差，就为了把所有内容都记下来。
Oh, so much so that I would wake up to watch the same half hour sports news program, the literal same one, played twice in a row, identically, just so that I could attempt to, you know, know everything that was going on.
所以我每天一醒就躺在沙发上，把同一个体育新闻节目连着看两遍，就为了把所有体育资讯都记下来。
So I'd literally wake up and lay down on the couch to watch the same thing play twice in a row, just to get all the sports news.
那你自己平时都玩什么运动？
And what kind of sport were you playing yourself?
橄榄球、篮球、棒球，有时候一天之内全都要玩一遍。
Football, American football, basketball, baseball, sometimes all three on on one day, those.
那后来你的投掷手臂怎么了？
But then what happened to your throwing arm?
我以前投球力量特别大，八年级的时候，快上高中了，有一次在校园里打橄榄球，我使出全力把球扔到球场另一头，结果在随势挥臂时手臂突然断了。
I had a strong throwing arm, and in eighth grade, so just before high school, I was playing quarterback in a game of schoolyard football and threw the ball as hard as I could all the way to the other end of the field, and my arm snapped on the follow through.
没人撞到我。
Nobody hit me.
我也没撞到任何东西。
I didn't hit anything.
我的手臂就像螺旋一样断了。
My arm snapped in a spiral.
我们永远也不知道原因。
We'll never know why.
医生猜测可能是骨头本身有点脆弱，但一断掉，所有证据就都没了。
The doctors thought maybe there was some kind of bone weakness, but once it broke, all the evidence was gone.
整个手臂完全脱开了，所以我转肩膀的时候，会感觉自己的手在根本不存在的地方。
And it was totally separated, so I was, like, turning my shoulder and would feel my phantom hand somewhere where it wasn't.
那真是个挺可怕的伤。
So it was a pretty gruesome injury.
天哪。
Oh, God.
是啊，那段日子确实很难熬。
And I had to have yeah, it was it was rough.
我得把整条胳膊从肩膀到手掌都绑在身上，戴着石膏，紧紧固定在躯干上，持续了好几个月。
And I had to have my arm, strapped to my torso for several months, from shoulder all the way to my hand, wearing a cast and and strapped to my torso.
那之后，我有一段时间彻底告别了运动。
So that was the end of sports for for a while for me.
而且实际上，我被禁止参加任何接触性运动超过一年。
And I I was barred from contact sports for over a year, actually.
那对你的学业有什么影响？
And what did this mean for your schoolwork?
那时候我根本对学习提不起兴趣，说夸张点，我就是完全懒得学。
So at the time, I was not I I would say that I was aggressively uninterested in school at that time.
我上学主要就是为了上体育课。
The main reason I went was for for gym class.
但后来发生了一件挺有意思的事。
But a funny thing happened.
比如我当时上法语课，那是我最讨厌的课。
So a good example of it was I I had French class at the time, which is my least favorite class.
每周我们都要考试或者小测，内容是听一段母语者说的法语录音，旁边有一份带空格的文本稿。
And the way we would have tests every week or quizzes were we had to listen to recording of a native French speaker, and we had a worksheet that had a transcript of what they were saying, but it had blanks or gaps.
我们要仔细听，把听到的词填进空格里。
And we had to listen well enough to catch the words and fill in the blanks with those words.
我平时在这上面也就中等水平。
And I was mediocre at this normally.
后来我的右手臂被绑在胸口，那就彻底没戏了。
Now once I had my arm, my right hand strapped to my torso, I didn't stand a chance.
一开始我想，算了，这事儿我不干了，但父母和学校都不答应。
And so instead of even trying well, at first, said, I'm just not doing this, and then that was not acceptable to my parents or to the school.
于是我决定把所有单词都背下来。
So I decided that I would try to memorize all of the words.
这听起来倒是个有意思的挑战——反正写不快，我就先死记硬背，等听完再用左手慢慢把答案一个一个写上去。
It sounded like an interesting challenge because I couldn't write fast enough to keep up, just memorize them, then I would go back at the end and slowly write them in with my left hand.
你背单词有什么诀窍吗？
And what was your technique for memorization?
我开始听单词的时候，把它们跟自己熟悉的体育项目联系起来。
I started listening to the words and attaching them to sports things that I knew about.
其实就是用了些记忆法。
So I using mnemonic devices.
那时候我根本不懂那是什么意思，但现在我明白了——就是把你特别在意、特别熟悉的东西，和那个词联系起来。
I didn't know what that meant at the time, but now I do, where you take something that's really salient to you, something you really care about, and you find a way to relate it to that word.
这招让我记住了所有单词，后来我参加考试时，能把所有内容都背下来，再慢慢用左手一个字一个字写出来，每次都拿满分。
And that helped me remember all the words, and I started scoring perfects on these exams where I would just memorize everything and then go back and slowly write it down.
之后我就把这方法用在了所有课程里。
And then I started using this in every class.
到现在，我还能用它来记住长达一小时的演讲稿里的每一个字。
And today, I use it to memorize every word of hour long keynote talks.
这件事过去三十年后，大概二十五年之后，我偶然读到一项史上最著名的记忆研究，讲的是一个大学生，从只能记住七个随机数字，进步到能记住八十位，他用的也是同样的方法。
And thirty years after this happened to me, I came across maybe twenty twenty five years later, I came across one of the most famous studies on memory research ever done, and it involved a college student going from being able to memorize seven random digits to being able to memorize 80, and he did the same thing.
他被训练使用与体育相关的记忆联结。
He was he was coached to use sports related mnemonics.
原来，我们记忆的极限，真的可以通过这种策略突破——而我这方法，当初只是因为胳膊断了，自己摸索出来的。
And so it turns out that our the limits of our our memory can be exceeded with this with this kind of strategy that I developed organically for my broken arm.
那你对你那条断得这么惨的胳膊，现在有多感激呢？
So how grateful are you for that hideously broken arm you you had?
那你从这件事中学到了什么？
And what what lessons have you drawn from this?
说实话，现在回想起来，我真的很感激，因为这不仅让我掌握了最实用的学习方法。
I mean, in in retrospect, very grateful, because not not only did it give me the most useful academic tool that I have.
对吧？
Right?
现在我做演讲的时候，别人总问我是不是有照相机一样的记忆力，因为我语速快，记东西又快又多，读过的所有内容都能记下来。
Today, I give a talk, people ask if I have a photographic memory, because I'm I move very quickly, and I memorize things, and I memorize lots of things I read and all those all that.
但同时也因为那一年我不能参加接触性运动，只好去尝试别的体育活动，于是我就开始练田径跑步。
But it also because I couldn't play contact sports for a year, it forced me to start exploring other physical activities, and I started running track.
结果我发现，自己居然在跑步上有天赋，完全没意识到，后来进了大学继续跑，还成了校纪录保持者，专攻一百米。
And it turned out I had a talent that I didn't know anything about, and I ended up running track at university and becoming a university record holder, as an eight 100 meter runner.
要不是因为那次受伤，我根本不会去碰这事儿，对吧？
And I never would have explored that if I hadn't been know?
所以从长远来看，它反而延长了我的运动生涯。
So it actually extended my athletic career in the long term.
我在大学时跑步，毕业后也一直跑。
I ran in college and then after college.
我觉得这正体现了那些有用的限制所能带来的关键作用——它逼着我去尝试和探索，而这些是我原本根本不会去做的。
And so I think it it it did one of those really important things that useful constraints can do, which is it forced me to experiment and explore in ways that I never would have otherwise.
这是否说明，人的心理如果没有遇到阻碍，就会一直沿着老路走下去？
Is there something there about the human psyche that would just keep traveling along the same road unless it meets a constraint that forces it to go around.
而正是绕开这些限制，才激发了创造力，而不是一路顺畅地从起点直达终点？
And is it the going around that constraint that leads to creativity, rather than the smooth run from here to there?
这个说法真是特别贴切。
That's actually a wonderful way to put it.
认知科学家丹尼尔·威林厄姆曾说过，你可能以为大脑天生是用来思考的，但实际上，它更倾向于尽量避免思考，因为思考太费能量了。
So as the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham has written, you're you may think that your brain is made for thinking, but it's actually made for preventing you from having to think whenever possible because thinking is energetically costly.
我们天生就追求省力和偷懒，能不动脑就不动脑。
So we are wired for convenience and laziness whenever possible.
所以，只要有一条现成的、阻力最小的路摆在面前，我们就会不自觉地选它。
And so when there is that easy road that you can reach for or what cognitive scientists call the path of least resistance, that's where you will go.
所以如果你想充分探索，这直接关系到创造力——如果你想做些不同且新颖的事，你就得堵住那条最方便、最熟悉的路。
And so if you want to explore sufficiently, and this relates directly to creativity, if you want to do something different and new, you basically need to block that most convenient, most familiar path.
所以最快提升创造力的方法，就是阻止那些最顺手就做的事。
So the quickest way to become more creative is to to block the thing that comes most easily.
认为创造力需要绝对自由，这是一个根深蒂固的误解，我以前也这么想，直到我和朋友斯科特·史蒂文斯聊过，他是在澳大利亚广播电台做《雷区》节目的，他说：不，不，不，创造力其实需要限制。
This idea that creativity needs absolute freedom is a very profoundly and deeply held myth, and I think I used to hold it myself until a conversation with a friend of mine, Scott Stevens, who does the minefield on Radio National here in Australia, said, no, no, no, no, creativity actually needs constraint.
我这才意识到他说得对。
And I realized that he was right.
但这个误解确实非常深刻，一旦被打破，真的会让人震惊。
But it is a profound and deeply held myth and quite a quite a shocking one to have it overturned.
比如俄罗斯西伯利亚的科学家德米特里·门捷列夫，据说他是在梦里取得了一项重大科学突破。
One example you've got of that is Russian Siberian scientist named Dmitry Mendeleev, who was said to have made a major scientific breakthrough in a dream.
不过在那之前，先跟我说说，你和大家从小听到的那个关于他发现过程的动人传说是什么？
So tell me first of all, though, about the inspiring myth that you and everyone else were told about his discovery.
是的。
Yes.
我上大学化学课时学到的是，门捷列夫在1869年冬天，正试图把所有化学元素——也就是宇宙的基本组成单元——按顺序排列。
The one that I learned in college chemistry was that Mendeleev, in the winter of eighteen sixty nine, was trying to put all the chemical elements, or the building blocks of the universe, in order.
他为此拼命工作，连续三个晚上几乎没合眼。
And he was laboring at this, and over three nights, he barely slept.
最后实在撑不住了，他睡着了，进入了人类历史上最具影响力的短暂小憩：他梦见元素们在跳舞，然后自动拼成了一个网格。
And he couldn't stay awake any longer, and he fell asleep and drifted off into the most impactful nap in human history, where he saw the elements sort of dancing around, and they snapped together in a grid.
当你沿着这个网格移动时，元素的化学和物理性质会周期性地重复出现，这就是为什么它叫元素周期表。
And as you moved across the grid, the chemical and physical properties of the elements repeated periodically, which is why it's called the periodic table.
这可不只是教室墙上挂的海报。
And this isn't just a poster that hangs in classrooms.
它实际上指引了人们去寻找新材料，也推动了对原子的探索。
It actually showed us where to look for new materials and motivated the search for atoms.
所以它真的彻底改变了世界。
So it it really changed the world.
这就是我当年学到的故事，也是皇家学会一直传颂的版本。
And so that that's the that's the story that I learned and and that, you know, the Royal Society of Scientists has celebrated.
马修·沃克在他的畅销巨著《我们为什么要睡觉》中说，这是人类自由梦境力量的终极证明。
Matthew Walker, in his in his mega bestselling book, Why We Sleep, calls it the ultimate proof of the the power of our free dreaming brains.
你知道吗？美国一家著名的床垫公司还拿这个故事来做广告，这就是流传的说法。
You know, a famous mattress company here in The US has used it in their marketing, so that that's the story.
是的。
Right.
这其实是个传说。
That's the myth.
那真正发生的是什么？
What really happened?
他发现元素周期表的真相到底是什么？
What's the real story behind his discovery of the periodic table?
对。
Yeah.
门捷列夫当时签了合同，要写一套两卷本的化学入门教材，但第一卷只写进了当时已知的63种元素中的8种。
So Mendeleev had a book contract to write a two volume intro to chemistry textbook, and he had only gotten eight of the then 63 known elements into volume one.
所以他得把剩下的五十五个元素放进第二卷。
And so he had to get the other 55 into volume two.
他确实有这个任务。
He had that.
还有客户在催稿。
He also had a customer prod.
他教的是初学者，内容必须让人能看懂。
He was he was teaching beginners, so it had to make sense.
他根本不是在找自然界的规律。
And so he was not looking for a law of nature.
他只是想找到一种方法，把教材剩下的部分整理清楚。
He was looking for a way to organize the remaining volume of his textbook.
他意识到，再一个元素一个元素地往下写，时间跟篇幅都不够了。
And so he realized he was he didn't have enough space or time left to keep going one element at a time.
于是他开始寻找那些性质相似、可以归为一类的元素。
So he started looking for families that he could describe together with similar properties.
在这么做的过程中，他偶然开始尝试各种不同的排列方式。
And in doing that, he stumbled he started experimenting with different arrangements.
同样是这个限制，引导他展开了富有成效的探索，也正是在这个过程中，他发现了一些彼此相似的元素组，并据此整理出了元素周期表。
Again, the constraint led him into this productive exploration, and that's where he realized that there were these groups that were analogous to one another, and and he organized a periodic table.
一旦他发现了这个规律，他就深信不疑，觉得这一定是自然界的法则，于是故意留出空位，说：‘新元素就该在这里被发现’——后来果然被证实了。
And and he was so sure once he stumbled on it, he was so sure that it was a law of nature that he actually left gaps and said, This is where we're going to find new elements, and that was proven true.
大卫，听你这么说，我突然想到那个关于艾萨克·牛顿的著名故事：传说他看到窗外苹果掉下来，就凭直觉悟出了万有引力定律。
As you're telling me this, David, it's made me think that, you know, there's that famous story of Isaac Newton, who was intuited the laws of gravity, according to the myth, by looking an apple fall from a tree outside of his window.
但正如你所说，他之所以能发现这么多东西，包括光的本质，真正的原因其实是那场席卷剑桥的瘟疫。
But as you say that, the real reason why he was able to find all this stuff and the nature of light and so on was because of the plague, the plague that came to Cambridge.
他没法去大学，只能待在乡下的家里，一待就是好几个月。
I mean, he couldn't go into uni and had to stay in his home on the farm for months at a time.
我刚刚才想到，这其实也是一种限制，而不是那种突然的、梦幻般的瞬间——比如看到苹果从树上掉下来。
I just that that thought just occurred to me, another constraint there rather than this sudden kind of dream like moment of watching the apple fall from the tree.
所以，德米特里·门捷列夫根本不是在跳出框框思考。
So so he's not he wasn't thinking outside the box at all, Dmitry Mendeleev here.
完全不是。
Absolutely not.
我的意思是，他当时面临层层叠叠的限制。
I mean, there were layers and layers of constraints he was working under.
他有个截止日期。
He had this deadline.
他还有空间上的限制。
He had this space constraint.
而且他本质上是在解决一个客户问题：无论采用什么方案，都得让初学者能看懂。
And he had essentially this customer problem, which was that whatever scheme he picked, it had to be sensible to beginners.
所以是一层又一层的限制，逼着他用一种历史上前所未有的方式去思考。
So it was like layer after layer of constraint that forced him to think in a way that that essentially nobody had in history before that.
这就把我们带到了今天——身处一个选项泛滥的世界，一个选项接着一个选项，市场不断推出新选择，因为这正是我们声称自己想要的。
So this leads us to where we are today, chucked up in a world of options, where we have option after option after option, and the market keeps bringing us more options, more options, cause that's what we say we apparently want.
但话又说回来。
But Mhmm.
你发现过多的选择对人的心理会造成什么影响吗？
What have you found that the is the psychological toll of an excess of choice?
理论上，人们总说他们想要更多选择、更多选项。
In the abstract, people always report that they want more choice and more options.
不仅人们这么说，就连新古典经济学理论也把人假设成理性个体，认为我们理应追求更多选择，因为这样能帮我们做出更好的决定。
And and not only not only what people report, but but, you know, neoclassical economic theory, like, humans are modeled in such a way, the rational actor model of humans, that we actually should always want more choice, that it will lead us to better decisions.
但事实证明，人的心理并不是这样运作的。
But it turns out that's not how our psychology works.
实际上，我们根本没法应对随时随地都能接触到所有选项的情况。
And in fact, we are not equipped to have access to everything everywhere all the time.
选择越多，反而会以多种方式让我们不堪重负。
And the more choices can overwhelm us in a number of different ways.
设计师们都知道一个叫希克定律的现象：当你给人们超过几个选项时，做决定的时间会变长，甚至更可能干脆放弃选择、直接退出。
So there's something known as Hick's Law that designers know, which is when you give people, you know, more than just a few options, it it increases the amount of time it takes them to make a decision and makes it more likely they won't make a decision at all, that they'll just back out.
而且，自从工业革命以来，消费者面临的选择数量被放大了上亿倍。
And also, when when choice sets are really large because consumer choice, since the industrial revolution, is multiplied by a 100,000,000 fold.
所以我们能买的东西，选择数量增长了上亿倍，而财富只增加了大约四百倍。
So our our options for things we can buy, whereas wealth is only multiplied by about 400 fold.
不好意思，大卫。
Sorry sorry, David.
你说上亿倍，是随口夸张一下，还是真的这么算的？
When you say a 100,000,000 fold, is this just, like, fun fun exaggeration, or do you mean literally
不是。
by the No.
不是。
No.
牛津大学一位教授做过实际测算，他特别研究了纽约、伦敦这些富裕城市里的消费者，发现相比工业革命之前，我们能买到的商品种类增加了上亿倍，但财富只增长了四百倍左右。
An Oxford professor measured this as the literal this was he was looking he was looking particularly at consumers in, like, wealthy wealthy urban cities, you know, places like New York and London and things like that, that compared to prior to the industrial revolution, there's a 100,000,000 fold more choice in things that you can purchase, whereas there's only 400 times more wealth.
所以选择的爆炸式增长，远远超过了实际财富的增长。
So the proliferation of choice dwarfed the actual growth in wealth.
当选择太多的时候，不管选了什么，人们往往都更难感到满意。
And when choice sets get really big, people tend to be less satisfied no matter what choice they make.
我来举个例子，可能有点反直觉。
So let me give you an example that might be a little counterintuitive.
这和无限滚动有关——现在我们随时能接触到海量的娱乐选择，但人们却变得越来越无聊。
It's related to this, where since the introduction of infinite scrolling, right, when we can have just a gazillion options for entertainment in the moment, people have been getting progressively more bored.
科学家们发现这个现象非常反直觉。
And scientists very counterintuitive.
对吧？
Right?
从经济学模型来看，这根本说不通。
This makes no sense from an economic model perspective.
但为了搞清楚原因，科学家们做了实验：他们随机把人分成两组，一组可以从中挑选20个视频中的任意一个，另一组只能看这20个视频里的其中一个。
But scientists who are trying to figure out why this might be ran experiments where, for example, they randomized people either to have a set of 20 videos that they could choose from, whatever they wanted, or randomized them to have only one video from that same set of 20.
结果发现，能选20个视频的人反而更无聊。
And the people who had access to the 20 were more bored.
原因可能是，只要想到还有更好的选择，我们的大脑就会不断做比较，这种念头本身就会削弱我们正在做的事带来的满足感。
And the the thinking is that just the idea that there's something else better like, our brains are a comparison engine, and just the idea that there's something else better they could be doing undermines the experience of whatever it is that they actually chose.
所以这其实只是我们心理的一种表现：表面上看，选择越多似乎总是越好，但往往反而让我们更不满足。
And so it's it's just a a function of our psychology that more choice often it seems always better in the abstract, but often makes us less satisfied.
所以你的意思是，主动排除一些选项，反而能让人更高效、更快乐？
So there there is this thought then that ruling out options can actually make you more productive and and and happier as well.
你能说说那位匈牙利心理学家吗？名字我实在念不出来，正是他的研究让我开始思考排除选项这件事。
Tell me about the Hungarian psychologist, whose name I can't possibly pronounce, led you to this thought about ruling out options here.
是的。
Yeah.
米哈里·契克森米哈赖。
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
他最出名的是提出了‘心流’这个概念，用来形容人全神贯注做一件事时的状态。
And he's he's most famous for coining the term flow to describe the experience of immersion in an activity.
比如艺术家或运动员，沉浸其中时连时间都忘了。
You know, an artist or an athlete being, like, losing track of time while they're immersed in something.
他研究心流时，有一个常被忽略的发现：当人们不再不断试探其他选择，反而更容易感到满足，也更容易进入心流状态。
And one of the overlooked aspects of his work, in including in writing about flow, was that people were more likely to be satisfied and more likely to reach that state when they stopped exploring their options.
正如他所说，你完全可以站在那儿纠结自己该做什么，但只要你选定了某件事，下定决心去做，就不会再浪费精力去琢磨该怎么生活，而是开始真正地生活。
So as he would say, you know, you can stand around wondering what it is you should be doing, But when you just pick something and commit to it and do it, you stop spending all this energy wondering how to live, and you start spending it living instead.
他从各个角度研究过这个问题，比如艺术家选择创作内容时，他做过实验，不是说‘你想画什么就画什么’，而是规定‘你只能用这三样东西来创作’。
And he looked at this from everything from an artist choosing what to do, where he ran these experiments where instead of saying, you know, paint whatever you want, he'd say, you have to use these three objects and paint something.
人们一旦被逼着做出决定，就更容易进入心流状态——从艺术创作，一直到婚姻，他都提到过：当人们真正做出选择并承诺下去时，就不会再总想着‘拐角处会不会有更好的’，而是把精力用在过好当下，也因此更容易感到满足。
And people would achieve that flow state more quickly when they were forced to just decide on something, all the way to marriage, where he wrote about how when people commit, if they do commit by their own choice, they stop spending all their energy wondering what might be around the corner, and they spend that living instead and end up more likely to be satisfied.
你在书里讲了一个特别精彩的警示故事。
You've got this really amazing cautionary tale in your book.
这个故事讲的是上世纪八十年代出现的一家硅谷初创公司，叫General Magic。
This is the story of a Silicon Valley startup company called General Magic that appeared sometime in the nineteen eighties.
首先，你能解释一下，为什么这家叫General Magic的公司刚一出现，就引发了这么大的关注和投资热情吗？
Now, to begin with, just can you explain why this company, General Magic, generated so much excitement and and investor interest right at the outset?
是的。
Yes.
在那之前，General Magic是硅谷历史上第一家所谓的‘概念型IPO’公司。
So General Magic, to that point of excitement, was the first so called concept IPO in Silicon Valley history.
他们仅仅凭着一个想法，连产品都还没有，就上市了。
They had such an incredible vision that they went public just with an idea, not with a product.
这家公司由三位前苹果员工创立，其中两人设计了最初的苹果麦金塔电脑，另一位是首席执行官马克·帕拉特，是个不折不扣的远见者。
And so it was started by three former Apple employees, two of whom had designed the original Apple Macintosh, and the other, who would be the CEO, a guy named Mark Parat, who was an absolute visionary.
他在苹果的工作就是预见个人计算之后的下一个方向。
His job at Apple had been seeing what was coming next after personal computing.
顺便说一句，在做调查时，我读过他1976年在斯坦福写的博士论文。
And by the way, in reporting, I read his PhD dissertation written for Stanford in 1976.
论文第一页，他就首次提出了‘信息经济’这个概念。
And on the first page, he coins the term information economy.
读起来让人毛骨悚然，因为他早就看透了未来的发展。
And it is eerie to read, because he saw what was coming.
他看到的不只是技术的潜力，还有虚假信息、贫富差距加剧这些隐患。
Not just the promise of technology, but problems with misinformation, with rising inequality, all these things.
他真的预见了未来。
I mean, he saw the future.
1989年，他用一本红色皮革封面的笔记本，画了一个细长的玻璃矩形，没有突出的按钮，屏幕上是几个矩形的应用图标，还标注了‘Remotaphone pewter’。
And in 1989, in a red leather notebook, he drew a thin glass rectangle with no protruding buttons and a touchscreen with rectangular apps on it and with a label, Remotaphone pewter.
对吧？
Right?
这东西本打算同时充当电脑、娱乐中心、自动取款机，各种功能都有。
This was going to be a computer, an entertainment center, an ATM, all these things.
那时候，万维网根本还不存在。
The the web did not exist yet.
对吧？
Right?
在我们国家，至少在美国，只有15%的家庭拥有电脑，而他却已经在画iPhone了。
In this country, at least in The United States, 15% of households even had a computer, and here he was basically drawing the iPhone.
如果你今天看到这幅草图，真的会以为它就是iPhone。
And, you would think actually, if you saw the drawing today, you would think it is the iPhone.
简直一模一样。
It looks exactly like it.
所以这个愿景太惊人了，吸引了硅谷最顶尖的一批人才加入他的团队。
So the vision was so incredible that it drew the who's who of talent in Silicon Valley to him, to this team.
于是资金源源不断地涌来。
So money poured in.
全球各大通信科技公司都纷纷加入，提供支持，投资了数以百万计的资金。
All the biggest communications technology companies around the world came on board to help, you know, invested millions.
他们组建了一个庞大的联盟，大到开会前必须由反垄断律师先列出所有不能讨论的内容。
They formed this huge alliance that was so big that their meetings had to start with antitrust lawyer listing all the things they weren't allowed to talk about.
当时的热情简直高涨到极点。
The excitement was incredible.
我的意思是，他们几乎能做成任何事。
I mean, they they could do anything.
他们有了一个绝妙的点子。
So they've got this killer idea.
还请来了世界上最好的人才来参与这个项目。
They bring in some of the world's best people to work on it.
这想法超前了将近二十年，某种程度上可能会带来问题。
It's almost twenty years ahead of its time, which, you know, might be problematic in some degree.
对。
Mhmm.
这个计划哪儿会出岔子呢？
What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
戴夫，这计划哪儿会出问题？
Dave, what could possibly go wrong?
是的。
Yeah.
当时马克·佩拉特说，他们之所以能这么快筹到这么多钱，就是为了给工程师打造一个天堂，让他们能自由地探索和创造，唯一的限制就是他们的想象力。
You know, Mark Peratt said at the time, the reason he raised so much money so quickly was to make heaven for engineers, where they were free to play and create, limited only by their imagination.
人还能奢求什么呢？
What more could anyone want?
他说。
He said.
我觉得答案反而是自由少了，因为他们什么事都能做。
And and I think the answer was less freedom, because they could do anything.
他们不受预算限制。
They weren't limited by budgets.
也不受人才限制。
They weren't limited by talent.
甚至连截止日期都没怎么约束他们。
They weren't even really limited by deadlines.
正因为他们什么事都能做，所以真的什么都做了。
And because they could do anything, they did do anything.
这些聪明人冒出的每一个好点子，他们立马就去干。
These every good idea that these brilliant people had, they started doing it.
项目越扩越大
And the project grew
越来越大。
and grew.
他们到底往这个项目里加了些什么东西啊？
Like, What what kind of things were they tacking onto this this project?
我给你举个例子吧，我觉得最能说明问题的是工程师史蒂夫·珀尔曼的那段访谈。
Look, let let me give you an example of, like, what I think was the emblematic interview here with a with an engineer named Steve Pearlman.
史蒂夫·珀尔曼当时负责为这款个人通讯设备开发日历功能。
So Steve Pearlman had been in charge of writing a calendar function for this personal communicator.
他写了个从1904年到2096年的版本，然后就提交了。
And he wrote it to go from '19 o four to 2096 and checked it in.
对吧？
Right?
他觉得自己已经完工了。
And he thinks he's done.
结果有个团队负责人找上门来，跟他说：史蒂夫，说不定有人会开发历史类应用。
And then one of the team leaders comes to him and says, Steve, somebody might write historical apps.
你得把范围再扩大一点。
You gotta make this thing bigger.
再扩大一点。
Make it make it bigger.
于是他又打开代码，改成从公元元年一直支持到未来。
And so he he opens it up and writes it to go from year one to the future.
对吧？
Right?
提交之后，他以为这次总算完了。
Checks it in, thinks he's done.
结果另一组人来找他，说：史蒂夫，你干嘛把时间跟宗教纪年绑在一起？
Then another team comes to him and says, Steve, why are you tying it into an arbitrary religious context?
你得让系统往前推得更远。
You've got to make this thing go back harder.
所以他再次修改，说这次直接从宇宙大爆炸开始，一直支持到未来。
So he opens it up again and writes it he said and writes it to go from the big bang to the future.
对吧？
Right?
日历功能。
The calendar function.
结果花了好几个月，要是当初只做1904到2096年，四行代码就搞定。
And so it ends up taking months when it would have been four lines of code if they left it at nineteen o four to 2096.
但凡有人提个主意，说能让东西更酷、更大，他们就全照做。
But every idea that someone had that could make something cooler and bigger, they did it.
他们把客户定义成‘普通老百姓’，可到底谁是‘普通老百姓’，他们自己也说不清，所以根本没针对具体问题去解决。
And they they, you know, they they defined their customer as Joe Sixpack, and they never really defined who that was, so they didn't really have the constraints of of a particular problem that they were solving for a particular person.
结果就是，他们不断加人、开新办公室、堆功能。
And it just could not they added more people and more offices and more features.
两年后，公司上市，股价翻倍，可产品其实已经一文不值。
And, you know, two years after this explosive IPO, when it went public and the stock price doubled, it was basically worthless.
产品刚推出的时候，价格就贵得离谱。
That when the product came out, it was expensive.
还配了本两百页的用户手册，因为功能实在太多。
It came with a 200 page user manual because it had so many features.
人们根本搞不懂怎么用，结果彻底失败了。
People weren't able to really figure it out, and so it ended up being an absolute disaster.
你注意到没有，当你回看皮克斯——现在是迪士尼的一部分——制作第一部《玩具总动员》的方式时，你就找到了完成大型项目的更好方法。
You've found a much better way to complete a major project when you looked at the way the animation company, the movie company, Pixar, now part of Disney, produced the first Toy Story movie.
1995年推出的这部影片，美得让人惊叹。
Wonderful, lovely, gorgeous film in 1995.
这是第一部全电脑动画长片。
And this was the first full length computer animated movie.
是的。
Yeah.
当年这部电影上映的时候，真是轰动一时，我还记得清楚。
I remember what a thing it was when that came out.
那会儿还是九十年代初。
And this is the early nineties.
他们拍《玩具总动员》的时候，到底面临哪些限制？
What constraints were they up against when they're trying to make Toy Story?
是的。
Yeah.
我的意思是，各种计算上的限制。
I mean, all sorts of computing constraints.
他们当时在开发技术的同时，也和通用魔法公司一样，有着二十年后的长远愿景，这也是我觉得把两者并列来看特别有意思的原因。
And so they they were developing they had their twenty year ahead vision at the same time as General Magic, which is one of the reasons why I thought it was interesting to use them in parallel.
当我跟联合创始人埃德·卡特穆尔交流时，他觉得自己的职责就是为创意设定边界。
And when I spent time with the cofounder, Ed Catmull, I mean, he viewed his job as constraining creative vision.
他们会精确估算出需要渲染的像素数量，然后说：现在还太早了。
They would estimate down to the number of pixels that they thought they had to animate and say, it's too early.
我们做不到。
We can't do it.
计算能力还不够。
The computing power isn't there.
所以他们不得不找到更高效的动画方法。
And so they had to find more efficient ways to animate.
正是由于计算资源有限，他们才开发出了这款名为 RenderMan 的软件，至今仍在顶级电影制作中广泛使用。
And everything all of the limited computing resources led them to develop this software called RenderMan that is still being used today in cutting edge films.
因为必须在低算力环境下开发，他们不得不设计出一种高度模块化、可扩展的系统。
And because they had to build it for low computing power, it forced them to build this kind of modular system that was really scalable.
资源和算力的限制，迫使他们极度自律，明确优先级，这一点是通用魔力公司做不到的。
And so everything, limited resources, limited computing power, forced them to be incredibly disciplined and to clarify their priorities in a way that General Magic didn't.
即便后来他们成功了，你可能会觉得皮克斯这样的地方，充满天马行空的创意，我以前也是这么想的。
And then even once they became successful, the whole place like, you think of Pixar, or I did anyway, as this place of unfettered imagination.
但事实上，那里充满了各种限制。
But in fact, it's a place of very many fetters.
埃德总是跟我讲他们那些规矩。
Like, Ed was always telling me about all their rules.
他跟我提过皮克斯一个叫‘完美阴影便士’的问题——导演或艺术家可能会沉迷于画面背景里一个观众根本注意不到的细节，比如一枚硬币的阴影处理。
So he told me about something they called the beautifully shaded penny problem at Pixar, where directors or artists might start obsessing over a little detail in the background of a shot that the audience might never notice, like the shading on a penny.
他们会花大量时间打磨这种细节，就像通用魔力公司那样，为了控制这种浪费，他们想出了一个办法：用魔术贴把冰棒棍贴在板子上，每根冰棒棍代表一个动画师一周的工作量。
And they would work on it, you know, for like, the calendar thing had the General Magic, where they would just so to solve that problem, they came up with a system where they would Velcro popsicle sticks onto a board, and each popsicle stick represented the amount of work that one animator could do in a week.
如果导演还想继续渲染那枚硬币，就得从其他需要动画的角色身上挪走一些冰棒棍。
And if a director wanted to keep animating that penny, then they had to start taking popsicle sticks away from some other character that needed to be animated.
把这种取舍可视化，让限制变得看得见，问题一下子就解决了。
And so making those trade offs visual, making the constraint visible, instantly solved that problem.
他们一直在寻找方法，让那些极具创造力的人清楚地看到限制，从而把精力引导到正确的地方。
And they were constantly looking for ways to to to make constraints clear to very creative people so they could channel their energy in the right direction.
这在某种程度上让我想到阿波罗十三号任务，就是那次失败的登月任务，真的特别糟糕。
This, in some ways, reminds me of what happened to World Apollo thirteen, you know, the disastrous moon mission that went awry Absolutely.
当时他们面临一个巨大的技术难题，却只能用胶带、回形针，还有毯子之类的东西来解决。
Where they had this huge problem, huge technological problem, and they had to fix it with, I don't know, like, with gaffer tape, paper clips, and a blanket or something like that.
他们只能就地取材，手头有什么就用什么，最后真的做到了。
And they they had to do whatever the instruments they had in hand, and they did.
他们成功了。
They succeeded in that.
你觉得这种思维方式，和那个情况有相似之处吗？
Do you see a kind a kind of a parallel to to that kind of mindset, if you like?
没错。
Absolutely.
不仅如此，NASA在后来的项目中也经常这么做，毕竟这并不是唯一一次——当然，那次特别惊险，因为关系到人命。
And not only that, but when NASA has done that over time, because that's not the only instance where I mean, was a particularly dramatic one, of course, because there were lives on the line.
但他们总是把这类经验总结下来，应用到后续的工作中。
But they have often incorporated those lessons into their work going forward.
有个叫埃德·霍夫曼的人，我认识他很多年了，他是NASA第一位首席知识官。
So the guy named Ed Hoffman, who who I've known for a long time, he was the first what's called chief knowledge officer at NASA.
说白了，就是负责组织学习的心理学专家。
That's basically a psychologist who's in charge of organizational learning.
他读这本书的时候说，得跟你讲讲一个叫‘El Cross’的任务，当时工程师们拿到的时间和预算都只有一半。
And when he's reading the book, he said, I have to tell you about this mission called El Cross, where the engineers ended up with about half the time and half the budget that they wanted.
那他们是怎么做的？
So what did they do?
首先，他们抱怨了一通。
Well, first, they complained.
然后有个人说，你看。
And then one of them said, look.
如果我们反正都要把这事做成，那我们会怎么干？
If we were going to get this done anyway, how would we do it?
这句话立刻让他们进入了你之前说的那种解决问题的状态，就像阿波罗十三号那样。
And immediately, that snapped them into that problem solving mode that you were talking about, like in Apollo thirteen.
因为预算少了、时间紧，他们借用了军用坦克的成像设备，把纳斯卡赛车的发动机温度传感器拆下来，最终造出了确认月球上有水的探测器。
And so because their budget was lower and their time was less, they borrowed imaging equipment from army tanks, and they took engine temperature sensors right out of NASCAR and created the probe that confirmed water on the moon.
后来，这种方法就成了他们工作流程的一部分，但要不是被逼着走了一条非主流的路，他们根本想不到这个办法。
Then that became a part of their work process going forward, but they never would have found it if they hadn't been forced off the path of least resistance.
你的书里讲过一个特别精彩的故事，关于天才爵士钢琴家基思·贾瑞特，他去德国巡演，打算在科隆现场录制一张专辑，结果那次演出差点没办成。
There's a wonderful story in your book about the gifted jazz pianist, Keith Jarrett, who went to Germany to as part of a tour to record a live concert album, which came out of recorded in the German city of Cologne that almost didn't happen.
给我讲讲那场演出吧。
Tell me about that concert.
是的。
Yes.
那是1975年的事。
This was in 1975.
他当时正进行一场密集的全球巡演，科隆这场演出是由一位名叫维拉·布兰德斯的少女组织的，她之前只办过一些小型音乐会，这次是她的重头戏。
He was on this whirlwind world tour, And the stop in Cologne was organized by a young woman, a teenager named Vera Brandes, who had been promoting some small concerts, and this was her big one.
她把科隆歌剧院的票全卖光了，因为贾雷特当时已经成了国际巨星。
She sold out the Opera House in Cologne for this concert for Jared because he was becoming this international star.
贾雷特提前几小时到了现场，按了几下琴键，直接说演出取消。
And Jared shows up at the venue, and he's famously prickly.
他这个人特别挑剔，只要听见相机快门声，立马就停演。
Like, he would stop a concert if he heard a camera click.
就是这么个难搞的人。
This prickly guy.
结果他一试琴，当场宣布演出作罢。
So he shows up at the venue hours early, presses a few keys on the piano, and says concert's off.
维拉·布兰德斯急得团团转，原来送来的钢琴根本不对。
And Vera Brandis is freaking out, and it turns out that the wrong piano had been delivered.
找对了人，却送错了钢琴。
Right company, wrong piano.
那架钢琴不仅琴槌的毛毡都磨平了，高音区听起来像铁皮一样，而且尺寸也比他想要的小。
And the piano, not only were the felt hammers worn out, so so the upper register of the piano sounded tinny, The piano was smaller than the one he wanted.
键数也比他订的那台少。
It had fewer keys than the piano that he had ordered.
于是他说：演出取消。
And so he says, Concert's off.
她急得团团转。
She scrambles.
后来他开车要走时，她冲上去拦住车，苦苦哀求他无论如何还是演一场。
Eventually, when he's driving away in a car, she she runs up, stops the car, and basically begs him to perform anyway.
不知为什么，也许是因为她是个着急的小姑娘，他最终答应了。
And for whatever reason, you know, maybe because she was, like, a teenager in distress, he decides to do it.
几个小时后，他又回来了。
And he comes back in a few hours.
他们尽力把钢琴调到能用的状态。
They try to get the piano in decent shape.
但他没法多用高音区，因为那部分声音怪怪的。
And he can't use the upper register much because it sounds funny.
钢琴太小，撑不起整个空间，所以他只好集中在中音区演奏。
The piano's not big enough to fill the space, so so he he sticks to the middle register.
左手能活动的空间也很有限，低音区也有问题，于是他用左手反复弹奏一些节奏型，右手则在上面即兴发挥。
With his left hand, he has sort of so little space to use because there are problems with the lower register as well, that he starts doing these repetitive patterns with his left hand and improvising over them with his right.
他还用脚踩踏板打拍子，制造节奏感来让声音更响，就这样即兴演奏了一个小时。
And he's banging his foot against the pedal to to make a percussive element to to make it louder, and he improvises like that for an hour.
演完就走了，再没想过这件事。
He he leaves, doesn't think about it again.
这一小时的即兴演奏，观众完全被迷住了，特别喜欢。
And this this hour long improvisation, you know, the crowd is absolutely wrapped and loves it.
时长太长，电台没法播，但唱片店的员工开始偷偷放它。
And it's too long to be played on the radio, but employees at record stores start playing it.
听到的人全都问：这是什么曲子？
And everyone who hears it starts asking, what is that?
这张专辑卖了又卖，卖了上千万张，最终成了有史以来最畅销的独奏钢琴专辑。
And it sells and sells millions of copies and until it becomes the best selling solo piano album of all time.
正如他后来所说，这架不完美的钢琴逼着我做了些本来根本不会去尝试的事。
And as he later said, this imperfect piano just forced me to do something that I just would not have tried otherwise.
我在想，这种模式在即兴喜剧里是怎么运作的？比如即兴表演这种形式。
I'm just wondering how you think this works with something like improv comedy, like improvisational comedy.
在澳大利亚有个叫‘剧场体育’的东西，不知道你们美国有没有，完全是即兴发挥的。
Like, there's a thing in Australia, I don't know if you've had in The US theater sports, where it's entirely improvisational.
但那里头是有规则的。
But there's rules.
规则其实非常明确。
There's actually really strong rules.
有人会给出三个元素，让你根据这些来即兴创作。
So someone will say, create this based on this, this, and this.
你对即兴喜剧这类事情是怎么看的？
How does your thinking run with things like improvisational comedy?
你知道吗，确实有一位研究创造力的学者叫基思·索耶，他写过很多关于即兴表演的东西。
You know, yeah, there's actually a creativity researcher named Keith Sawyer who writes extensively about improv.
他其中一个主要观点是，如果你想让即兴表演效果好，反而应该给搭档设定具体的限制，越具体越好。
And one of his main points is that if you want it to work well, you actually want to give your partner constraints in the form of being as specific as possible.
他会说，别光说‘看啊’。
So he'll say, you know, instead of saying, oh, look.
你得说，你搭档面前有一把X-3000型毁灭射线枪。
There's a gun to your improv partner.
你得说，看啊，
You say, oh, look.
那是一把X-3000型毁灭射线枪。
There's the x 3,000 destroyer ray gun.
你给的细节越多，他们就越有抓手，因为人其实很难应对完全开放的选择。
And the more specifics you can give them, the more that gives them to to grab onto because we actually don't do that well with completely open choice.
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你需要被引导到一个明确的方向上。
You need to be channeled down a direction.
这一点不仅体现在他对即兴喜剧的研究中，也体现在艺术和机械发明的研究里——如果你告诉别人只能从一百个零件里挑二十个来制作一件家具，而不是说你可以用全部一百个零件随便造，结果往往会更好。
And that shows up, you know, not only in his research on improv, but in research on artistic and mechanical inventions where people will do better if you say you have to use these 20 pieces from a set of a 100, and you have to make a piece of furniture, versus if you say, can use all a 100 and make whatever you want.
这被称为《绿鸡蛋和火腿》效应。
This is called the Green Eggs and Ham effect.
这可是个苏斯博士的引用。
Now, that's a Doctor.
对吧？
Seuss reference, isn't it?
是的。
Yes.
没错。
Yes.
所以这个说法是源自苏斯博士的
And so it's a reference to the fact that Doctor.
苏斯博士打赌说自己能用仅50个单词写一本儿童读物，结果他真做到了。
Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet that he couldn't write a children's book using only 50 words, which, of course, he did.
这种限制逼着他去琢磨自己那种活泼的节奏，因为他没法靠堆词来展开。
And that forced him to experiment with his rollicking rhythm because he couldn't be expansive with words.
在苏斯博士看来，当时的儿童文学大多太死板、太无聊了。
For doctor Seuss, children's literature was incredibly literal and very boring, for the most part.
有人给了他一份儿童常用词表，问他能不能用其中大约200个词写一本书。
And he was asked he was given a vocabulary list for kids and asked if he could write a book using only about 200 words from the list.
他一看那张表，就急了，因为里面形容词少得可怜。
And he looks at the list, and he gets exasperated because there's very few adjectives.
于是他跟妻子开了个精妙的玩笑。
So he makes this this fine, Susian comment to his wife.
他说，这就像想做肉桂卷却连肉桂都没有。
He says it's like trying to make a strudel without any strudels.
然后他一摊手，说：算了，你猜怎么着？
And then he then he throws up his hands and says, you know what?
我就挑列表上前两个押韵的词，写本书得了。
I'm just gonna take the first two rhyming words on the list and write a book.
前两个押韵的词是‘cat’和‘hat’，之后的事就成了文学史的一部分。
And the first two rhyming words were cat and hat, and the rest is literary history.
正是这个限制逼着他发展出那种活泼的节奏，因为他没法在词汇上多做发挥，只能靠节奏来创新。
But it it that's what forced him to develop this rollicking rhythm because he couldn't really be creative with the words themselves, so he had to focus on rhythm.
我小时候有孩子，应该说他们还小的时候，我给他们读苏斯博士的书，突然想起好多内容，都是我小时候就熟悉的。
You know, when I had kids my kids were little, I should say, and I was reading Doctor Seuss to them, I just remembered so much of it from my own childhood.
简直都不用看书，我都能背出来。
It was almost like I didn't have to read the book at all.
我特别惊讶，这些文字的节奏和韵律怎么就那么自然地刻在我脑子里了。
I was kind of astonished by how how easily and well that the rhythm and the music of the text just had stuck in my mind.
如果让人自由发挥，画他们想象中的外星生命，会发生什么？
Tell me what happens when people are asked to draw alien life forms with no restrictions at all.
随便画，你想外星人长什么样就画成什么样。
Just draw an alien based on whatever you want that alien to be.
大多数人画的都挺无聊的。
They draw boring things for the most part.
画的基本上就是地球上的动物，或者稍加改动的人类形象。
They draw things that look like animals on Earth, essentially, or humans with a little modification.
画的都是些特别熟悉的东西，如果你不知道他们在画外星人，根本就会以为只是某种你已知动物的小小变形。
They they draw things that are very familiar, and if you didn't know they were drawing aliens, like, you would just think they were a little modification of some animal that you already recognized, basically.
那如果你给他们一些限制呢？
And then when you give them constraints?
对。
Yeah.
他们立刻变得更有创意了。
They become instantly more creative.
哪怕你只是简单地告诉他们，画一个外星人，但要重点考虑它是怎么获取食物的，或者干脆提醒他们，别忘了画出它移动的方式。
And e even if you just tell them simple things like draw an alien, but focus on how it acquires food, Or or even just, like, remember to draw some mechanism by which it can move.
只要给人们一个具体的关注点，他们画出来的东西就会突然变得有创意得多。
Like, giving people some specific thing to focus on, suddenly, they draw things that are much more much more creative.
本来画得无聊的人，一给限制条件，立马就画出有意思的东西了。
Like, it instantly takes people that drew something boring in the first condition to and and they make something interesting in the next.
我觉得你书里最有趣、最有力量的一个观点，就是通用设计的原则。
One of the most interesting and powerful ideas in your book, I think, is the principle of universal design.
能不能解释一下，这个原则是怎么应用在美国陆军士兵的防弹衣设计上的？
Now, please explain how this was applied to the body armor that was being created for soldiers in the United States Army.
通用设计这个概念，源自上世纪六十年代的残障人士权利运动。
Universal design is a concept that grew out of the disability rights movement in the nineteen sixties.
它的核心是，无论你设计的是公共空间、产品还是别的什么，只要围绕最受限的用户来设计——比如老人、小孩、体型高大或矮小的人、宠物，或者有残障的人——最终做出的东西反而会更适合所有人，因为这些受限用户面临的问题，往往只是其他人日常问题的极端版本。
And the idea is that when you focus your design, whether this is design of public spaces or or products or or whatever, when you design around the most constrained user, so that could be someone who's old or young or big or small or pets or people with disabilities, you will typically end up making something that's better for everyone because those challenges that those constrained users have are typically just more extreme versions of challenges that many, many other people have.
比如，当初为轮椅设计的坡道，结果对所有人都更方便了。
So things like, you know, curb cuts that were made for wheelchairs turned out to be better for everybody.
说到防弹衣，我当年和美国陆军一起研究这个，大约十年前，女性第一次被允许进入美军的近战部队，也就是真正上前线的单位。
In the context of body armor, I was exploring this with the US Army, where about ten years ago was the first time that women were allowed in what's called the close combat force in The United States, know, kind of the front lines, essentially.
但那时候根本就没有适合她们身材的防弹衣。
And there was no real body armor that fit them.
自从越南战争以来，防弹衣就越来越重了，尤其是在中东的战场上，碎片和简易爆炸装置到处都是，士兵随时可能受伤。
So body armor had been getting heavier since Vietnam, especially in in wars in The Middle East where there's shrapnel and improvised explosive devices, people and could be injured anywhere.
他们不断加装防弹衣，结果很多士兵背的防弹装备超过了一百磅，有些甚至达到四五十公斤，还有更重的。
They just kept adding and adding and adding body armor until many soldiers were carrying more than a 100 pounds of body armor, forty, fifty kilos, in in some cases, even more than that.
为了给这些女兵设计出合身的防弹衣，他们意识到不能再这样下去了。
So in order to make armor that could fit some of these women, they realized that they couldn't do that anymore.
你总不能让士兵背着六十公斤的防弹衣，再加上枪支和各种装备，根本没法行动。
You know, you couldn't have 60 kilos of body armor when it was laden down with other things like guns and equipment and stuff like that.
于是设计团队开始以女兵的身体结构为基准重新设计。
And so the design team started building around women.
他们说，好吧，
And they said, okay.
得做出可调节的装备，让士兵能自由组合不同部件，因为女性的体型和男性不一样。
We're gonna have to make adjustable equipment so they can mix and match pieces because women are built differently.
还得去掉一些不必要的部分，减轻整体重量。
And we're gonna have to take away certain spots so that it's not overly heavy.
他们甚至在颈甲后部设计了一个凹槽，方便发髻放进去。
They even put, like, a notch in the back of the neck protector so that a hair bun could fit into it.
但你知道吗？
But you know what?
结果发现，不管有没有发髻，所有人都希望躺着的时候能抬头。
It turned out that everyone wants to be able to raise their head when they're lying on the ground, not only people with hair buns.
大家也都希望去掉肩部的一些护甲，因为很多人根本就在拼命扯掉它，就为了能顺利端枪。
And everyone wanted some of that armor removed from their shoulders so they could they were people were trying to rip it off anyway just so they could shoulder a rifle.
这套原本只为占战斗部队不到2%的女性设计的防弹衣，最后却被大量男性使用，多到他们不得不改口叫它‘中性款’，否则有些男兵根本不愿意穿——毕竟知道这是为女性设计的，心里过不去。
And so this body armor that was made with 2%, and women are less than 2% of the close combat force, it was made for them, Turned out to be used by tons of the men, so much so, they had to start calling it unisex just to get enough men to use it, because some men didn't want to use it if it was, you know, knowing that it had been designed for women.
所以，这套为受限最多的人群设计的装备，反而让整个部队的大多数人都受益了，这就是通用设计的真正意义。
And so this thing that was designed for users with with the most constraints, in some sense, ended up being better for a for a much larger portion of the force, and that's how universal design works.
通用设计可以跟之前那种理念形成对比，那种理念其实是个误区，就是所谓‘平均用户’的概念。
So universal design can be set against the previous principle that had been operating there, which is kind of like a fallacy, which is the idea of the average user.
当设计只考虑所谓的‘平均用户’，而不是所有可能需要它的人时，问题到底出在哪里？
How do things go wrong when they're designed with a quote, unquote average user in mind, as opposed to absolutely everyone who might need it?
是的
Yeah.
问题在于根本不存在所谓的平均用户，这方面有很多非常明显的例子。
The problem is there kind of is no average user, and so there's some really dramatic examples of this.
没错。
Right.
回到军事领域，早期喷气式飞机刚普及的时候，发生过很多事故。
When going back to the military, there was a time when jet planes were first proliferating, and there were a lot of accidents happening with them.
美国空军一开始把责任归咎于飞行员。
And the US Air Force, they started blaming that I'm pilot air at first.
后来他们请了一位年轻少尉来分析这些新型战斗机的驾驶舱设计。
And then they hired this young lieutenant to do an analysis of these new cockpits in jet planes.
这些驾驶舱原本是按照所谓‘平均飞行员’的体型尺寸设计的。
And the cockpits had been designed around the average pilot, you know, average measurement, body measurements.
这位年轻少尉去测量了飞行员的身体数据后发现，哪怕只看三个基本指标——身高、肩宽、大腿围之类的——居然没有一个人在所有这三个指标上都落在中间30%的范围内。
And what this young lieutenant found when he went and started measuring pilots was that if you took only three basic measurements, you know, height, shoulder breadth, and thigh circumference or something like that, basically, nobody, even in just those three measurements, was even in the middle 30 percentiles on all of them.
所以教训就是，他们为‘平均飞行员’设计的驾驶舱，实际上等于谁都不适合，因为根本不存在拥有这些标准尺寸的人。
And so the the lesson was that having designed a cockpit for the average pilot, they had designed it for nobody because there was literally nobody who had those measurements.
因此，解决方案当然是让座椅和控制装置可以调节。
And so the solution was, of course, to make it adjustable.
但在设计史上，这种围绕‘平均值’做设计的做法其实很常见，结果往往没人能用得舒服。
But that's kind of typical in design history of when something is designed around average measurements.
它通常根本没法真正满足任何一个人的需求。
It tends not really to actually work for anybody.
你有个例子，是Cuisinart这家厨房用品公司的马克·哈里森，他为残障人士重新设计了食物料理机，加了大按钮和粗把手，看起来反而更直观、更顺手。
You've got the example of a guy called Mark Harrison who worked for Cuisinart, the the kitchen goods company, and he redesigned their food processor for people with disabilities, which created these food processors with big chunky buttons and large handles that were kind of cool in a way, and they sort of suddenly looked more intuitive to be able to use.
结果这些产品卖得特别好，因为大家都特别喜欢。
And they they sold so many more of these these products because people love them so much.
这说明，从一开始就给自己定个约束：别为‘平均用户’设计，而要为所有人设计。
So this comes from setting yourself the constraint, but right at the outset of making a product not for an average user, but for absolutely everyone.
但这不正说明，从产品一开始就要做好规划，而不是像General Magic的初代iPad那样，事后才去修补吗？
But doesn't this stress the importance of planning right at the outset, rather than trying to patch it up later as the General Magic Primitive iPad was trying to do?
是的。
Yeah.
我也这么觉得。
I think so.
哈里森有为残障人士设计产品的经验。
Harrison had experience in designing for people with disabilities.
所以他把同样的设计理念用在了Cuisinart食品加工机上——就像你说的，按钮大而醒目，字体清晰，手柄宽大好握。
And so he brought that same those same lessons over to designing the Cuisinart food processor where it was, look, like you said, chunky buttons, easy to read letters, handles that were large and easy to grip.
也就是说，他直接把为残障人士设计时的经验用在这里了——在动手设计产品之前，首先要真正理解用户。
So, I mean, he was taking stuff straight out of his lessons with people with disability where where the first thing you do before you design the product is you understand the user.
而General Magic恰恰没做到这一点。
That's what General Magic didn't do.
对吧？
Right?
他们说目标用户是普通大众，可根本没人说得清这到底是谁。
They said our user is Joe Sixpack, and nobody had any idea who that was.
所以我采访了几十位前General Magic的员工，大约四分之三的人都说，他们根本搞不清哪些事不该做。
And so I interviewed dozens of former General Magic employees, and about three quarters of them said, I just couldn't figure out what not to do.
对吧？
Right?
因为他们根本不知道自己的用户是谁。
Because they didn't know who their user was.
对Harrison来说，设计的第一步是想清楚：用户是谁？关注的是人，而不是产品。
So for Harrison, the process starts with who who are the people thinking about the person, the user, not the product?
设计界有句名言：人们要的不是四分之一英寸的电钻。
There's this famous saying in design that people don't want a quarter inch drill.
他们要的是墙上一个四分之一英寸的洞。
They want a quarter inch hole in the wall.
所以别光想着做个多酷的产品，得想清楚用户真正需要什么，以用户为中心去设计，而不是只做自己觉得酷的东西。
So not to focus on the cool thing you could make, but on what is it they want and understanding the user and doing user centered design instead of just making a product you think is cool.
你刚才提到的另一个设计原则是：别光顾着开始，要学着收尾。
So here's another constraint principle you mentioned, and it's this, which is stop starting and start finishing.
你见过这种做法吗？
Have you seen that applied?
是的。
Yeah.
这其实是个简单却非常有力的原则。我后来读了很多组织行为学的文献，还亲自去了一些公司考察。
This is such a simple but powerful rule, And it it it turns out that and I was reading a lot of organizational behavior literature and then visiting some organizations myself.
结果发现，让人效率低下、容易沮丧的最快方式，就是同时手头活儿太多。
And that one of the quickest ways that people can do poor work and get frustrated and become unproductive is to have too much work in process at once.
我写过一家公司，专门为客户定制工业齿轮箱。
There was one organization I was writing about that designed custom gearboxes for industry.
每个齿轮箱都是完全定制的，但他们的工作越来越出问题。
So every single gearbox was totally custom made, And their work was becoming problematic.
员工们开始烦躁，交货周期跟不上，各种指标都完不成。
Like, people were getting frustrated, and they weren't getting they weren't meeting their quotas and all this stuff.
后来他们意识到，问题出在那个只有15个人的设计团队——负责画齿轮箱图纸的设计师，整天被各种事情打断，根本没法专注。
And they they realized that they had a problem in this tiny 15 person design office where the designers who had to make the plans for the gearbox were being fragmented all day.
你知道吗，他们当时同时进行的项目超过五十个，整天都在不同项目之间来回切换。
You know, they'd have more than 50 projects going at once, and so they'd be toggling between projects all day long.
这种频繁的多任务处理让他们特别沮丧，因为我们现在都知道，多任务处理其实会让你压力更大，严重拖慢工作效率。
And that multitasking or switching was just it was making them incredibly frustrated, because we know that multitasking actually makes you now we know it makes you more stressed, and was terrible for their productivity.
于是他们推行了这条规则：别再新开项目，先把手头的做完。
And so they implemented that rule, stop starting, start finishing.
他们规定，没完成当前的设计之前，绝对不能开始新的设计。
And they so they were not allowed to start a new design until the one they were already working on was finished.
仅仅靠这条规则，让他们专注在一件事上，设计产出量直接翻了三倍。
And it basically tripled the amount of designs they actually got out the door just by implementing that rule that made them focus on the one thing at a time.
这就引出了现代人最头疼的问题——多任务处理。
This leads us to the hateful modern problem of multitasking.
当你从一件事切换到另一件事，比如你正在工作，突然邮件来了，短信也来了，你得马上回，因为大家都希望立刻得到回复，这事要处理，那事也要处理，你的思路就这样不断被打断。
When you switch from one thing to another, like, you know, you you work, but then the email comes in or a text message comes in, you gotta respond to it now because everyone wants to reply now, when you gotta do this, when you gotta do that, and it kind of constantly interrupts your train of thought.
在当今这个充满干扰的世界里，你脑子里被这些持续不断的信息轰炸堵住了什么？
What's being clogged up in your mind as you're attending to this constant onslaught of distractions that keeps assaulting us in the modern world?
这真的对所有事情都很不利，因为你根本没法真正同时做多件事。
It's really bad for everything because you you can't actually multitask.
我的意思是，像走路和说话这种事，你确实可以同时进行。
I mean, you can in the sense that you can walk and talk at the same time.
你可以一边做自动化的事，一边做需要动脑的事。
So you can do things that are automatic and then something that involves cognitive engagement at the same time.
但说到大家通常理解的多任务处理——也就是同时处理多个需要动脑的任务，那是根本做不到的。
But in terms of the multitasking, most people think about where it's multiple things that require cognitive engagement, you actually can't do it.
你只能放下一个，再去处理另一个。
You have to drop.
你只是在不同任务之间来回切换，而每次切换，大脑都得放下一套思维模式，再启动另一套。
You just have to toggle between the tasks, and that requires your brain to to drop one set of rules and activate another.
这个过程其实分两步走。
So it happens in two steps.
当你这么做的时候，会引发好几件事。
And there are a few things that happen when you do this.
首先，这会大幅提升你的压力水平。
First of all, it ramps up your stress levels.
现在我们可以通过心率变异性来测量，这是衡量压力的一个可靠指标。
So this is now measured by heart rate variability, which is a good marker of stress.
我们清楚，你切换得越频繁，压力就越高。
We know the more times you're doing this toggling and the higher frequency, the higher your stress level.
还有一些初步研究显示，这可能影响免疫功能，但其中存在不少问题。
There's even some emerging evidence it can affect immune function, but there are number of problems with it.
心理学家格洛丽亚·马克是研究这种我们人人都在经历的分心状态的领军人物。
It's a psychologist Gloria Mark, who's been a leader in studying this kind of distracted mode that we're all in.
她把大脑比作一块白板，每次切换任务，就像把白板擦干净，但总会留下一些痕迹，就像白板笔的残留物，干扰下一项任务。
She describes the brain as like a whiteboard and where every time you switch, you erase the whiteboard, but there's a residue still there, you know, like that marker residue on a whiteboard that interferes with the next thing.
你切换得越多，残留就越多，而这些残留只有在你睡觉或休息时才会彻底清除。
And the more times you do it, the more residue there is, and that residue doesn't go away until you get to sleep or take a break, basically.
所以，你实际上是在严重干扰自己的认知能力，表现得就像智商被扣掉了不少分一样。
And so you're interfering with your own cognitive ability to the point where you'll behave essentially as if you have lost IQ points.
所以你切换得越多，效率就越低，压力也越大。
So you'll be less productive, and you'll be more stressed the more you toggle.
从她的研究来看，最让人担忧的是这一点。
And the scariest thing, I would say, from her research, from Doctor.
马克博士已经研究职场人士二十多年了。
Mark so she's been studying people at work for about twenty five years.
她刚开始研究的时候，人们平均每三分钟切换一次任务。
And when she started, people were toggling tasks about every three minutes on average.
到了2012年，平均间隔缩短到75秒。
By 2012, it was every 75 seconds.
到2022年，已经缩短到每45秒一次。
By 2022, it was every 45 seconds.
我觉得过去几年里这个频率基本稳定了，可能我们暂时就处在这个水平。
And I think it's plateaued there the last few years, so may maybe that's where we are for a while.
我不确定。
I don't know.
但她发现，如果你一整天都被通知、别人打扰，或者各种事情打断，然后你心想，好吧。
But she found that if you decide you know, if you're interrupted by notifications or other people or whatever all day long, and then you say, okay.
现在我得专心了。
But now I need to focus.
我把这些都收起来。
I'm gonna put this stuff away.
但你还是会不自觉地被杂念打断，频率就跟平时习惯了的一样——好像我们脑子里有个分心的仪表盘，一旦定型了，就总想保持那个节奏。
You will self interrupt with intrusive thoughts at the rate to which you've become accustomed, as if we have this internal distraction barometer that once trained, wants to maintain a certain cadence.
所以就像马克斯博士说的，如果你不主动安排自己的注意力，那它就会被算法替你安排。
And so as doctor Marx says, if you're not structuring your attention these days, it's being structured for you by algorithms.
因此她强烈建议学会把工作集中处理。
And so she highly recommends learning how to batch your work.
她发现，人们平均每天会打开邮箱大约80次。
So she finds that people check email on average about 80 different times a day.
这不是80封邮件，而是80次来回切换的动作。
That's not 80 emails, 80 different toggles to check.
如果你能把这些事压缩成一天里一到三次，或者最多五次集中处理，该回的邮件照样回，但别来回切换八十次，只切换三到五次，效率会更高，压力也会小很多。
And if you can instead condense that into one or three or five different blocks throughout the day, answer the same number of emails if you need to, but not toggle 80 times and only toggle three or five times, you'll be more productive, and your stress will be lower.
了解到这些之后，你的工作方式有什么改变吗？
How has finding out all this stuff changed the way you work?
大卫，这些发现有没有改变你的工作方式？
Has it changed the way you work, David?
我前两本书写的时候，本来写了原稿的一倍半，最后还得大删大改，因为一开始就没把要做什么想清楚。
Oh, I mean, with my first two books, I wrote a 150% of a book, and then had to cut back to get a book because I had not defined well enough what I was doing in the first place.
所以这次，我听了托尼·费德尔的建议，就是我们之前聊过的那家通用魔力公司的前员工，他后来成了限制条件的狂热推崇者。
So for one thing, this time around, I took the advice of the guy named Tony Fidel, who had worked at General Magic that we talked about, and he's he became a zealot for constraints.
他创办智能恒温器公司Nest的时候，强迫团队先在一个实物盒子里面做原型，连包装都得先设计好，因为这样能逼我们理清优先级。
So, like, when he went on to cofound the smart thermostat company Nest, he forced his team to work inside a literal box where he had them prototype the packaging before the product, because this will force us to clarify our priorities.
因为如果东西装不进这个盒子，那就说明现在不是重点。
Because if it doesn't fit on this box, it's not a priority right now.
他还告诉我，就像他对创业者说的那样：在动手之前，先写好你打算做的产品的新闻稿。
And he told me, as he tells entrepreneurs, to write the press release for what I was trying to do before I start the project.
我其实特别不喜欢做这个练习，但它真的特别有帮助。
And I I very much didn't like doing that exercise, but it was incredibly useful.
它逼着我问自己：我到底想解决什么问题？
It forced me to say, what problem am addressing?
在动笔之前，我就得想清楚，我到底想写给谁看？
What what reader do I think I'm reaching before I even started?
这对我的帮助真的太大了。
And that was incredibly valuable for me.
从项目一开始，到强迫自己只用一页纸列提纲——这又逼着我彻底理清优先级，再到我安排工作日的方式：就像我刚才说的，把一天分成几块，每天只查几次邮件，每块时间专注做一件事，做完再换下一项。
So all the way from the beginning of the project, up to forcing myself to outline it on one page and one page only, with a which, again, forced ruthless clarification of priorities, up to the way I structure my workday, where I I do what I just described, where I block my workday so that I'm only checking email a few times a day, ending in a block, and then I'm working on the next thing, that I'm only doing that for that block.
每天工作的最后一项，我叫它‘海明威策略’。
And then for the last thing of my workday, my last act, I call the Hemingway strategy.
你知道，欧内斯特·海明威总会在写到一半的时候停笔，这样第二天一坐下来就知道从哪儿接着写。
You know, Ernest Hemingway would stop writing in the middle of a sentence so that he knew exactly where to pick up the next day.
所以我每天最后一件事，就是写下第二天要优先做的那件事，不然我一放松就会刷手机或者回邮件。
And so for my last act every day, I write down the important thing that I'm going to start with the next day, Because if not, then I'll drift to my feeds or my inbox.
这里有个心理效应叫‘单纯紧急效应’，人们往往会优先处理那些感觉紧急的任务，比如回复邮件，而不是去做那些其实重要得多的事，哪怕后者从客观上看是更合理的时间利用方式。
And there's something this psychological effect called the mere urgency effect, where people will prioritize they'll they'll do urgent tasks that feel urgent, like replying to an email, over things that are much more important, even if that's objectively a better use of time.
所以我每天下班前，都会把第二天要做的最重要的事定下来，这也就是我每天第一个时间块的安排，不管前一天我确定了什么。
So I end my workday by establishing the important thing I'm going to start the next day with, and that's always my first block of every day, whatever I identify the previous day.
最近我采访了维基百科的创始人吉米·威尔士，他说的很多观点都跟你现在讲的很契合。
Recently, interviewed Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and he said a lot of things that jive with what you're telling me now.
他说，他当初创办维基百科时，第一次尝试彻底失败了，原本计划让专家来撰写所有内容，结果搞得一团糟。
He said when he founded Wikipedia, he'd he'd a disastrous first attempt at coming up with an online encyclopedia where experts were gonna write everything.
所以它必须非常开放，在一端要极其开放，但在另一端则要受到严格的限制，而那个受限的一端基本上就是最初设定的核心。
So it had to be very open, very, very open at one end, but very tightly constrained at the other, and that that other end was pretty much what was right at the beginning.
他说，维基百科刚起步的时候，是由五大支柱来定义的。
He said Wikipedia, when it started out, was defined by five pillars, he said.
其中一点就是明确了它的定位。
One was that defined it what it was.
维基百科就是一部百科全书。
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
第一条就是这个。
That was number one.
第二条，维基百科要保持中立的视角。
Number two, Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
第三条，维基百科的内容是免费的，任何人都可以使用、编辑和传播。
Three, Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute.
第五条，维基百科没有死板的规则。
And five, fifth rule was Wikipedia has no firm rules.
但他坐在那儿说，关键是要有一个强大、清晰、共同的目标。
But he sat there, he said, like a strong, clear, shared purpose.
他说，我们要做这个，而不是那个。
And he said, we're gonna be this and not that.
最后他说，信任就是这样建立起来的。
And in the end, he said, this is how trust was built.
对。
Yeah.
这跟你们刚才说的相符吗？
Does that sit with what you're talking about here?
实际上，我在书里提到过一些维基百科对自己规则的研究。
I mean, in fact, in the book, I I mentioned some of Wikipedia's some research on Wikipedia's own rules.
你刚才提到了其中一条，就是中立观点。
So you mentioned one of them, NPOV, neutral point of view.
还有一项很有趣的研究，是关于维基百科上那些有争议话题的文章，比如气候变化、种族主义之类的。
And there was this fascinating research on Wikipedia that looked at articles on controversial topics, you know, climate change, racism, things like that.
这些话题会吸引背景截然不同的编辑参与，因为大家的看法往往非常对立，但正是这种多样性反而让文章变得更优质。
The controversial topics that would draw really diverse contributors, right, because people have very polarized views, that diversity would actually make the articles better.
对吧？
Right?
但在像X这样的平台上，不同观点往往只会演变成互相争吵。
That's certainly not the case on things like x, where diverse viewpoints just end up in people yelling at each other.
他们发现，维基百科上的这些多元群体首先受到一个限制：如果你要写某个话题，只能在一个页面上进行，所以大家必须聚在一起。
And that what they found was that these diverse groups on Wikipedia first of all, they were constrained because they all if you wanted to write about that topic, there's only one page for it, so you have to meet there.
而且这些多元化的团队经常会引用维基百科的规则，比如中立观点，或者不进行原创研究——也就是说，维基百科只收录经过可靠来源发表的内容，而不是个人意见。
And the diverse teams would very frequently invoke the Wikipedia rules, like neutral point of view or like no original research, which means that Wikipedia is for finding things that are published by verifiable sources, not for your own opinions.
所以，这些明确的规范，再加上所有人都必须在同一片空间里互动，反而催生了最优质的条目。这些研究者指出，维基百科成功地利用了多元群体辩论的潜力，而这种能力，在当今世界大部分地方都极其稀缺。
And so having these very clear norms and only one sandbox where the people have to play in actually led to the to the best articles, which is fascinating because these researchers said, look, Wikipedia successfully harnessed the promise of diverse groups arguing, and and that is something that I think is in very short supply in most of the world.
确实如此。
Yeah.
毫无疑问。
Big time.
你说到这儿，我突然想到马斯克对X平台的设想，就是想让大家想说什么就说什么。
I'm just just mindful as you're saying that of Elon Musk's idea for x now, is that say whatever you like.
随时随地，想说什么就说什么。
Say whatever you like all the time.
但维基百科之所以成功、受尊重，正是因为它的底线是文明礼貌，这一点明文规定，也人人期待，这本身不就是一种约束吗？
But Wikipedia is successful and respected because it has the constraint of civility, and that's stated and it's expected of people, which is a form of constraint in itself, isn't it?
完全正确。
Absolutely.
这是一个非常重要的社会规范，我觉得在美国，我们正在削弱它，这真的很成问题。
It's a really important social norm, and I think it's really problematic that we're undermining it in The United States.
我一开始提到过诺贝尔奖得主赫伯特·西蒙，他说‘人越自由就越有创造力’这个想法完全是彻头彻尾的谬论。
I mentioned the Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon right at the start, who said the idea that people are most creative when they are most free is an absolute and total myth.
他也是一个特别擅长破除迷思的人，比如人们常说的‘人都是理性行动者’这种观点。
He was also a great debunker, you say, of the idea that people I love this that people are rational actors.
这种想法在经济学家当中特别受欢迎。
This is a really idea beloved of economists.
他们认为人是理性行动者，会据此做出选择。
People are rational actors and we make our choices accordingly.
确实如此。
Yeah.
他获得诺贝尔奖的一个重要原因，就是反驳了这种观点，证明人类根本不符合‘我们能全面评估所有选择，然后选出最优解’这个假设。
I mean, one of the things the main things he won the Nobel Prize for was undermining that idea and showing that that humans do not conform to that idea that that we have all these choices.
我们并不会理性地权衡每一个选项，再挑出最好的那个。
We evaluate them all rationally, then we pick the best one.
因为我们实际上认知能力有限，很难准确预测自己选择的结果，包括这些选择会让我们有什么样的感受。
Because in fact, we have limited cognitive capacity, and we have an inability to really predict a lot of the outcomes of our choices, including how we will feel about them.
所以我们只能退而求其次，找一个够好的方案。
And so instead, we have to settle for good enough.
于是他创造了‘满足型决策’这个词，是‘满意’和‘足够’的结合。
So he coined this term satisficing, which is a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice.
意思就是，接受一个够好的结果，而不是追求最好。
And it means settling for good enough.
他还自称是个无可救药的满足型决策者。
And he called himself an incorrigible satisficer.
他每次只戴一顶贝雷帽，而且总是从同一家店买，穿同样的袜子。
So he wore one beret at a time, always from the same store, same kind of socks.
他每天早餐都吃一样的饭，同一个房子住了四十六年。
He ate the same meal for breakfast every day, lived in the same house for forty six years.
他曾告诉女儿，一个人只需要三套衣服：一套穿着，一套挂在衣柜里随时能换，一套在洗。
He said he told his daughter, one needs three sets of clothing, one on one's back, one in the closet ready to wear, and one in the wash.
从他描述自己生活的方式来看，你几乎会觉得他是个没什么野心的人，可他偏偏拿下了计算机科学、心理学和经济学领域的最高奖项。
And from from the way he described his life, you'd almost think that he's a man of low ambition if he hadn't won the highest award in computer science, psychology, and economics.
但他其实是主动节省认知资源，把精力留给真正重要的事，通过减少生活中大多数选择的数量和选项来做到这一点。
But he was proactively saving cognitive bandwidth for things that mattered by reducing the number of decisions and the and the amount of options that he had in most of his life.
这会不会让我们想到那句老话：追求完美反而会毁掉好的结果？
Does this bring us to that old nostrum about the dangers of making the perfect the enemy of the good?
他就是众多对‘完美是好的敌人’这句话有自己的解读的人之一，我觉得这话完全正确。
That was he was one of many people who gave his own spin on that line that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and I think that's absolutely true.
而且我觉得，相比以往，这句话现在显得更加深刻，因为有越来越多的证据支持这一点。
And I think that's more profound in a way than ever because there's all this evidence.
我们的大脑天生就是比较的机器。
Our brains are comparison engines.
我们会拿自己和别人比较。
We compare ourselves to other people.
也会拿自己和人生中本可能发生的其他情况作比较。
We compare ourselves to counterfactuals of our own life.
这从来都不是件容易的事，但以前只跟邻居或城里的人比较，总比现在跟全世界网友比要轻松些。
That was never an easy thing to grapple with, but probably easier when it was just the people in your neighborhood or even the people in your city versus the entire world on the Internet.
所以现在网上这种追求极致、心理学上叫‘最大化’的冲动，因为网红的影响，变得无处不在，这对我们的心理其实很不利——因为我们太容易拿自己跟‘可能更好的生活’比，反而忽略了眼前已经够好的部分。
So this drive to optimize or what psychologists would call maximize that I think is all over the Internet now, thanks to influencers, is really psychologically bad for us, because it's very easy for us to always compare to what else could be, and to lose focus on on what is good enough.
不过我觉得，大多数人，至少我时不时也会这样，其实人人都会。
Though I think most of us, certainly I do every once in a while, think everyone does this.
你就是会抱怨几句。
You sort of bitch and moan.
当你状态不好、对生活里的各种责任感到厌烦时，就会忍不住发发牢骚。
One bitches and moans about the obligations one might have in one's life when, you know, we're not in a good good space with all that sort of stuff.
但我不确定我们到底有几分真心这么想，毕竟这些研究告诉我们，生活中的责任其实有着强大的正面力量。
And I don't know how often we really mean that, because what does this research tell us about the power of actually having obligations in our lives?
我觉得最简单来说，人要想过得好，离不开一张密集的、相互承担义务的关系网。
I think the simplest way I can say it is that human thriving requires a dense network of reciprocal obligations.
你对别人负有责任，别人也对你负有责任。
So you owe things to other people.
彼此都依赖着对方，有事都会找对方帮忙。
They're counting on you for things, and and you're counting on them.
这其实可以追溯到法国社会学先驱埃米尔·涂尔干，十九世纪政府刚开始统计数据时，他做过一项著名的自杀研究，发现不出所料，当一个国家经济下滑时，自杀率会上升。
And this goes back to, I mean, Emile Durkheim, the pioneering French sociologist, who, in the nineteenth century, when governments first started keeping statistics, did this famous study of suicide, where he found that, expectedly, when the economic fortunes of a country turned down, there was more death by suicide.
但当经济快速好转，把人们从原本熟悉的生活节奏中抽离出来时，自杀率反而也上升了。
But when they turned up, if it was really fast and it unmoored people from the things they were used to, then suicide also increased.
这可以说是开创了后来一系列研究，证明义务感才是真正赋予人生意义的关键。
And this was kind of the beginning of this whole body of work that found that obligation is really what gives meaning to people's lives.
它让人更少焦虑、更少抑郁，也更不容易走上自杀这条路。
It makes them less likely to be anxious and depressed, less likely to die by suicide.
我觉得这一点在当下尤其重要，因为我们每个人的生活正变得越来越孤立。
And I think, again, that's especially profound now in this time where there's so much individualization of our lives.
我记得扎克伯格刚提出元宇宙概念的时候，说我们以后都会活在一个虚拟世界里。
Like, I remember Mark Zuckerberg first when he first talked about the metaverse, you know, this virtual world that we were all gonna live in.
天哪。
Oh, god.
是的。
Yes.
他说，这会很棒。
He'd say, it's gonna be great.
我们都将生活在一个完全为你量身定制的宇宙里。
We're all you're you're gonna live in a universe tailored uniquely for you.
结果呢，心理学家会把这种状态称为一种地狱。
And it turns out that psychology would, like, call that a version of hell.
你其实更应该活在这样一个世界里——别人不断给你添麻烦，因为这才是赋予生活意义的关键。
You actually wanna be living in this world where other people are inconveniencing you constantly because that's what adds meaning to your life.
这真是精彩的观点。
That's fantastic stuff.
有一套想法是说，限制反而能让人更高效、更有创造力，也可能让人更满足、更快乐。
Something about this set of ideas that constraints make us work better more creatively and probably make us more content and happier.
光是静下心来想想这些观点，我就感觉好多了。
I found the just sitting with these ideas made me feel quite good.
知道这些之后，心里反而轻松了不少。
This is kind of a relief in knowing these things, think.
大卫，你有这种感觉吗？
Do you feel that, David?
我觉得我自己有追求完美的倾向。
I should say that I think I have maximizing tendencies.
这跟知足型正好相反。
That's the opposite of satisficer.
追求完美的人总想把所有选项都比较一遍，但在心理学里，这通常不是好事。
So maximizer is someone who does want to evaluate all these options, and and it's almost always a bad thing to be in psychology.
追求完美的人往往对自己的决定更不满意，对生活也更不快乐，更容易后悔，也更倾向于选择可逆的选项，结果反而让自己难以真正下定决心。
So maximizers tend to be less happy with their decisions, less happy with their lives, more prone to regret, more likely to choose reversible decisions, even though it just prevents them from committing one way or another.
我觉得了解这些之后，我开始学会让自己知足了——事先定好一个够好的标准，达到之后就不再纠结了。
And I think learning all this has helped me do some of my own satisfying, where ahead of time, say, here's what's good enough, and once I reach that, I'm stopping with this decision.
我发现这样做真的挺有帮助的，虽然不能说有多暖心，但确实让我变得更满足了。
And and I found that to be just, I don't wanna say heartwarming, but it has made me a more satisfied person.
大卫，和你聊天真是太有意思了。
David, it's been fascinating speaking with you.
这些观点都特别反直觉，太棒了。
This is such a fabulous set of counterintuitive ideas.
和你讨论这些想法真的非常愉快。
It's been so enjoyable to speak with you about them.
非常感谢你。
Thank you so much.
我才该说这完全是我的荣幸。
The pleasure is totally mine.
我真的很享受这次对话。
I really enjoyed this.
大卫·爱泼斯坦的书叫《盒子里的智慧：限制如何让我们更好》。
David Epstein's book is called Inside the Box, How Constraints Make Us Better.
今天与大卫·爱泼斯坦的对话，是在加迪加尔人的土地上进行的。
Today's conversation with David David Epstein was made on the lands of the Gadigal people.
制片人是詹妮弗·利克。
Producer was Jennifer Leake.
执行制片人是尼古拉·哈里森。
Executive producer is Nicola Harrison.
我是理查德·费德勒。
I'm Richard Feidler.
感谢收听。
Thanks for listening.
ABC 听播客。
ABC Listen.
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Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.
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