释放你的创造力

这里是《隐性思维》。

This is Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡尔·维丹塔。

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

几个世纪以来，艺术家和作家们一直在努力理解那种让灵感诞生的神秘力量。

Across centuries, artists and writers have tried to make sense of the mysterious force that brings ideas to life.

古希腊人把缪斯想象成一个实实在在的灵体，一位在诗人耳畔低语的女神。

The ancient Greeks imagined the muse as a literal spirit, a whispering goddess who breathed inspiration into the poet's ear.

文艺复兴时期的画家们通过仪式和祈祷来讨好她，而浪漫派诗人则在风暴、山巅和月光下的漫步中寻找她的踪影。

Renaissance painters courted her through ritual and prayer, while Romantic poets looked for her in storms, mountain peaks, and moonlit walks.

如今，心理学研究发现，古人所说的神启，其实只是大脑在自由运转。

Now psychological research is discovering that what the ancients called divine inspiration is really the brain at play.

当我们放松时——比如洗澡、叠衣服、望着窗外发呆——大脑就会进入一种自发联想的状态。

When we are relaxed, taking a shower, folding laundry, staring out a window, our minds slip into a pattern of spontaneous association.

神经元在大脑的不同区域之间激活，把旧记忆和模糊的想法连接起来。

Neurons fire across disparate brain regions, linking old memories with half formed ideas.

然后，一个灵感突然冒了出来。

Then suddenly, an insight bubbles up.

这感觉像是上天赐予的礼物，但实际上，它只是我们潜意识的产物。

It feels like a gift from the heavens, but it's really the product of our own unconscious minds.

本周《隐性思维》节目，以及《隐性思维Plus》的配套故事，将探讨创造力的源头，以及如何找到内心的灵感。

This week on Hidden Brain and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, the origins of creativity and how to find the muse within.

当我们思考创意如何产生时，通常会想象那是专注投入的时刻。

When we think about how creative work unfolds, we usually imagine it happening in moments of intense focus.

一位画家站在画布前，一位科学家透过显微镜观察。

A painter standing before his canvas, a scientist peering into her microscope.

但研究显示，我们最有原创性的想法，往往不是在全神贯注时出现的。

But research shows that many of our most original ideas do not appear when we are concentrating hard.

它们是在我们走神的时候出现的——开车时、洗澡时，或者只是呆呆地望着远方。

They arrive when our minds wander, when we're driving, showering, or staring into space.

阿普·迪克斯特胡伊斯是一位心理学家，最近刚从荷兰奈梅亨拉德堡德大学退休。

Ap Dijksterhuis is a psychologist who recently retired from Rackbout University Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

他研究灵感和创造力的来源。

He studies the origins of inspiration and creativity.

阿普·迪克斯特胡伊斯，欢迎来到《隐藏的思维》。

Ap Dijksterhuis, welcome to Hidden Brain.

谢谢。

Thank you.

阿普，你熟悉弗里德里希·奥古斯特·凯库勒的故事吧？他是1829年出生的德国化学家。

Ap, you're familiar with the story of Friedrich August Kekule, a German chemist born in 1829.

他一生最重要的研究课题是什么？

What was the great research project of his life?

凯库勒当时在研究分子结构，那是19世纪60年代最顶尖的化学家都在攻关的问题。

Kekule was working on the structure of molecules that was in the 1860s, the most famous chemists did.

那时候，有些分子结构已经搞清楚了。

And some of the structures were known by then.

我们已经知道水和氧气的结构是什么样子了。

We knew what water looked like or oxygen.

但凯库勒研究的是更复杂的分子。

But Kekule was working on more complex molecules.

这些复杂的分子通常都跟碳有关，碳原子会形成很长的链，对吧？

So these complex molecules often were related to carbon and how carbon molecules took the form of long chains, right?

是的。

Yeah.

对，没错。

Yeah, exactly.

他当时正在研究一种叫苯的物质，那是原油的组成部分。

And he was he was, I think, the time working on what what they called benzene, which is part of crude oil.

他为此花了很长时间。

And he he was working on it for quite a while.

一直搞不清楚这个分子的结构。

He couldn't figure out the structure of that molecule.

他反复琢磨，一遍又一遍地想，越想越深入。

And at some point, he thought about it, he thought about it, and he thought about it even more.

然后他在壁炉前打起了瞌睡，睡着了。

And then he he dozed off in front of his fireplace, and he fell asleep.

在梦里，他突然看见一条蛇咬住了自己的尾巴。

And in his dream, he suddenly saw a snake biting its own tail.

他惊醒过来，瞬间明白苯分子的结构是个环状的。

And he woke up startled, and he suddenly knew that benzene had the shape of a ring.

换句话说，这些碳分子原本被认为是长链，但他睡觉时得到的灵感是，这条长链 somehow 回绕起来，形成了一个环。

So in other words, these carbon molecules had these long chains, but the insight that he got while he was sleeping was that this long chain in some way circled back on itself and formed a ring.

是的。

Yeah.

就是在梦里发生的，那在当时是完全全新的想法。

That was exactly in a dream, and that was at the time completely new.

从来没人想到过这一点。

Nobody had thought about it.

他从梦中惊醒，梦里是那条蛇，却突然意识到这居然解决了他的难题，一定特别震撼。

He must have been very startled to have woken up from this dream with this dream of a snake and realized that in some ways it had solved his problem.

他震惊了。

He was shocked.

是的。

Yeah.

他自己也感到震惊。

He was shocked himself.

他当然特别兴奋，因为立刻意识到这不只是个梦，而是答案。

And he, of course, elated because he immediately realized that it was not just a dream, that it was the solution.

他肯定也兴奋得不得了。

He must have been euphoric as well.

这个发现几年后，一位法国科学家兼数学家亨利·庞加莱，正在研究一种叫融合函数的问题。

So some years after that discovery, a French scientist and mathematician, Henri Poincare, was working on a problem related to what are known as fusion functions.

和凯库勒一样，他也卡住了。

Again, like Kekule, he found himself stumped?

对。

Yeah.

庞加莱做了各种各样的事情。

Poincare did all kinds of different things.

他几乎称得上是一位全才型科学家，其中一项工作就是研究富克斯方程，他在这方面钻研了七八年。

He was really almost a universal scientist, but one of the things he did was indeed Fuxian equations that there he worked on, I think, for seven or eight years already.

他取得了一些进展，但始终卡在一个大难题上，怎么也解不开。

And he made some progress, but there was a a big puzzle that he couldn't he couldn't solve.

有一天他没去上班，正在乡下做点别的事，刚踏上一辆公交车。

Then at a day where he wasn't going to work, he he was in the countryside doing something completely different, and he stepped on a bus.

就在他踩上公交车的那一刻，几乎是同一瞬间，他突然看到了答案。

And the moment he stepped on the bus, almost the exact millisecond, he saw the solution.

他就是知道，答案就在那儿。

He just knew it.

这感觉像是凭空冒出来的，但他清楚地知道答案是什么。

And it felt like it came out of nowhere, but he knew the solution.

有意思的是，在凯库勒和庞加莱的故事里，答案似乎都是轻而易举地浮现出来的。

One of the striking things was, in both the Kekule story as well as in the Poincare story, the answer seemed to come almost effortlessly.

是的

Yeah.

如果你有过那种突如其来的灵感或顿悟，就会觉得它好像是凭空冒出来的。

If you have one of those sudden flashes of insight or inspiration, it feels like it comes out of nowhere.

长期以来，人们都认为这些灵感来自神明。

And for a long time, people believed these insights came from God.

在古希腊时代，古希腊哲学家们觉得灵感来自九位缪斯女神。

Or in the old Greek days, the time of the old Greek philosophers, they thought it came from Muses, nine goddesses.

而庞加莱很可能是第一个明确指出：其实这来自你的大脑，只是它发生在大脑中你无法直接触及的某个角落。

And Poincare was probably the first one who explicitly said, you know, it came from your brain, but it's in an area of your brain where you just can't reach.

在某个时刻，你就会突然获得这种顿悟。

At a certain point, you have this sudden flash of insight.

庞加莱曾写下他顿悟的经历。

Anri Poincare wrote about his epiphany.

我觉得，直接听听他怎么说，会很有启发。

And it's, I think, instructive to listen to his words directly.

他描述自己上了公交车。

He describes getting on this bus.

他写道：我们登上了一辆马车，要去某个地方。

And he writes, We entered an omnibus to go someplace or other.

就在我踩上车梯的那一刻，这个想法突然冒了出来，之前脑子里根本没有任何线索预示它会出现——我用来定义融合函数的变换，竟然和欧几里得几何的变换完全一样。

At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the fusion functions were identical with those of Euclidean geometry.

我并没有去验证这个想法。

I did not verify the idea.

当时我刚坐下，正接着之前没说完的对话，根本没时间细想，但我就是百分百确信它是对的。

I should not have had time as upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty.

所以，这种顿悟的另一个特点就是，它们不仅突如其来，而且一出现，你就觉得它肯定是对的，毫无怀疑的余地。

So this is another quality of these epiphanies, Op, which is that they not only come to us out of the blue, but when they come to us, we feel like we have absolute certainty that they must be right.

是的。

Yeah.

突如其来的灵感，各有各的奇妙之处。

The sudden burst of inspirations are wonderful in different ways.

其中之一是，当科学家产生这些想法时，他们确实会感到无比确信。

One of them is indeed if scientists have these ideas, they yes, they feel absolutely right.

有些人把这种顿悟的时刻形容为一种爱。

And some people describe these moments of insight basically as love.

它同时会给你带来巨大的能量。

They give you a lot of energy at the same time.

第三点是，这种感觉几乎像魔法一样。

And the third thing is that it feels almost magical.

所以你会觉得非得做点什么不可。

And that's why you feel forced to do something with it.

你不可能经历了一次如此美妙的顿悟，却说：算了，接下来三天我先不管它。

You can't have a wonderful moment of insight and then say, oh, but I'm gonna ignore it for the for the forthcoming three days.

我怎么可能突然转头去做完全不同的事呢。

I just you know, I'm I'm now gonna do something completely different.

这根本不可能。

That's impossible.

我知道，经历了这件事之后，昂利·庞加莱改变了他工作的方式。

I understand that after this experience, Anri Poincare changed the way he worked.

具体是怎么改的呢？

How so up?

他到底做了什么？

What did he do?

庞加莱说，既然我的潜意识能处理数学问题，那就得给它时间。

Well, Poincare said, okay, if my unconscious works on mathematical problems, should give it time.

于是他开始每天只工作四小时，上午两小时，下午两小时，有意识地投入工作。

So what he started to do is he worked only four hours a day, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, at least in a conscious way.

他每天有意识地工作四小时，其余时间则相信潜意识会继续琢磨他正在解决的问题。

He worked in a conscious way four hours a day, and the rest of the day, he assumed that his unconscious would work on on the problems he was working on.

你讲了一个关于科学家劳伦斯·布拉格的精彩故事。

You tell a wonderful story involving the scientist Lawrence Bragg.

他究竟是谁？平时是怎么安排时间的？

Who was he up, and how did he spend his time?

劳伦斯·布拉格是有史以来最年轻的诺贝尔奖得主，我想他到现在还是。

Lawrence Bragg was the youngest Nobel Prize winner ever, and I think he still is.

他得奖的时候才二十五六岁，拿的是物理学奖。

He won he was 25 or 26 when he won the Nobel Prize in physics.

他每周会抽出一天，专门去园艺，而不是待在实验室里。

And what he did, he had one day a week where he chose to to go gardening rather than than working in his lab.

当然，大家觉得他那时其实是在潜意识里琢磨科学问题。

And the assumption, of course, is that he was working on his scientific problems unconsciously.

特别有意思的是，据说他在伦敦给一位老太太打理花园，而老太太根本不知道自己请的园丁是位名人。

And what is especially in music, the story is that he was tending the garden of an elderly lady in London who didn't even know that she had this very famous gardener.

这种情况一直持续到有一天，一位朋友来访，她正站在窗前望着外面的花园。

So until and it lasted until one of her friends came, and she stood there in front of the window looking outside in the garden.

朋友对她说：‘亲爱的，你知不知道，给你剪篱笆的这位先生，就是诺贝尔奖得主劳伦斯·布拉格？’

And she said, my dear, do you realize that the Nobel laureate, sir Lawrence Bragg, is actually pruning your hedges?

在此之前，她完全没意识到，自己请的竟是世界上最出名的园丁。

Before that, she she didn't have an idea that she she probably had the most famous gardener.

但他确实相信，有时候做点完全不同的事非常重要。

But, yeah, he really believed in the importance of sometimes doing something completely different.

几个世纪以来，我们一直听人说，灵感是突然降临的，像是神明赐予的一道火花，或是一阵突如其来的恩典。

For centuries, we've been told stories about inspiration as something that visits us, a spark from the gods, a sudden gust of grace.

如今，科学发现，这道火花其实早已在我们内心燃烧。

Science is now finding that the spark is already burning inside us.

我们可以通过一些方法，为这火花添柴加氧。

And there are things we can do to give the spark oxygen.

回来之后，我们聊聊大脑是如何产生原创想法的。

When we come back, how the brain comes up with original ideas.

您正在收听《隐藏的思维》。

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

我是 Shankar Vedantam。

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

这是《隐藏的思维》。

This is Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡尔·维丹塔。

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

我记得很多年前读过珀西·比希·雪莱的一首诗。

I remember reading a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley many years ago.

在《致理智美》这首诗里，他谈到灵感的本质，写道：‘你突然的影子降临在我身上。’

In Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, which is partly about the nature of inspiration, he writes, sudden, thy shadow fell on me.

我惊叫起来，双手紧握，欣喜若狂。

I shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy.

认为灵感突如其来、不可预测、无法掌控，这种想法由来已久。

This idea that inspiration comes out of nowhere, that it is unpredictable, untamable, this is a very old idea.

阿普·迪克斯特胡伊斯是一位研究灵感与创造力科学的心理学家。

Ap Dijksterhuis is a psychologist who studies the science of inspiration and creativity.

阿普，你的研究中一个特别引人入胜的观点是，大脑即使在我们注意力转移后，依然能继续处理问题。

Ap, one of the most intriguing ideas in your work is that you have found that the brain has the capacity to continue to work on problems even when our attention has turned to other things.

这到底是怎么发生的？

How does this happen?

我们大多数人以为，只要专心解决问题，就能靠专注把问题解决掉。

Most of us think that we focus on problems, and then we solve those problems because we're focused on them.

医生。

Doctor.

我曾经写过一本关于心理学的儿童读物，把思考比作一头鲸鱼。

Once wrote children's book about psychology, and I compared thinking to a whale.

你知道，鲸鱼有时候会浮出水面，但大多数时候它其实一直在水下游动。

You know, a whale sometimes surfaces, but most of the time, a whale is actually underwater, and it still continues to swim.

思考也是这样。

And thinking is like that.

如果我们给自己设定了重要的目标，或者在处理一件特别重要的事，我们会在专注的时候想它，但即使没在想的时候——比如在看电影、做别的事——大脑依然在默默处理这个问题。

If we set ourselves important goals or if we work on something that we find very important, we think about it when we pay attention to it, but also when we don't pay attention to it, when we're doing something completely different, like watching a movie, Our brain continues to work on that important problem.

对于灵感、创造力和解决问题来说，这一点特别关键。

For things such as inspiration and creativity and problem solving, this is extremely important.

某种程度上，这和《隐藏的思维》项目的核心观点非常契合：尽管我们总觉得脑子里发生的一切都是有意识的，但其实有很大一部分心理活动，我们根本察觉不到。

In some ways, I think this dovetails really nicely with the central idea of the Hidden Brain Project, which is that even as we feel like everything that happens in our minds happens at a conscious level, significant amounts of what happened in our minds, in fact, are hidden from us.

这就是‘潜意识’这个词的由来。

That's the origin of the term hidden brain.

你其实想说的是，创造力也是如此——有时候，那些我们没注意到的事情，就在底下悄悄发生。

And then really what you're saying is that the same thing happens with creativity, that in some ways left to itself, that there are things that happen under the surface that we're not aware of.

我特别喜欢你用鲸鱼作比喻，它大部分时间都藏在水下，偶尔才浮出水面换口气。

And I love that metaphor of the whale that spends most of its time underwater and then surfaces now and again to take a breath of air.

是的。

Yeah.

对。

Yeah.

没错。

Yeah.

我第一次听《潜意识》这个节目，纯粹是因为名字吸引了我，‘潜意识’这个词让我很感兴趣。

I think the first episode of Hidden Brain I ever listened to was simply because of the title, because of the name Hidden Brain.

我当时就想，这不就是我在研究的东西吗？

I thought this is what I'm working on.

是的。

Yeah.

这非常相似。

It's very much comparable.

研究人员使用脑部扫描设备，观察了大脑在不同任务之间切换时的状态。

Researchers using brain scanning equipment have monitored the brain while it shifts from task to task.

这类研究发现了大脑运作的哪些特点？

What have such studies discovered about how the brain works up?

当我们开始研究人们无意识思考这一概念时——我们称之为无意识思考——我们给参与者提供了关于阿姆斯特丹四套公寓的信息。

Well, when we started to study the idea that people think unconsciously, that's the way we call it, what we did is we gave information about four different apartments in the city of Amsterdam.

那时候我正在阿姆斯特丹大学工作。

That was this was at the time where I was working at the University of Amsterdam.

我们给学生们提供了关于四套公寓的详细信息，并确保其中一套明显更吸引人。

We gave students information about four different departments, and we made sure that one apartment was more attractive than the others.

但他们收到的信息量非常大。

But they got a lot of information.

要弄清楚这事儿还真不简单。

It wasn't all that easy to figure it out.

我们对参与者说：挑出最好的那套公寓。

And we said to these participants, choose the best apartment.

我们分了两组人。

And we had two groups.

第一组直接看完信息，然后就做了选择。

The first group simply read the information and they chose.

第二组也看了同样的信息。

And the second group, they read the information.

但我们让他们过一会儿再选。

We told them to choose later on.

之后，他们先被安排做了一个简单的字谜游戏，分散一下注意力。

And first, they were distracted with a word puzzle, something simple.

几分钟后，我们才问他们最喜欢哪套公寓。

Then just a few minutes later, they were asked their favorite apartment.

他们的表现比其他组好得多。

And they performed much better than the other groups.

所以，如果你给自己几分钟时间，让潜意识去想想，做出来的决定会更好。

So if you give yourself a couple of minutes to unconsciously think about something, you make better decisions.

我们又增加了一个第三组，告诉人们在看完公寓信息后，可以完全忘记这些信息。

And we added a third group where we said to, after people read the information about the apartments, we said, well, you can forget about the information about the of the apartments.

我们不会问你任何关于它的内容。

We're not gonna ask you anything about it.

然后他们还是做字谜，之后我们有点狠，说：不好意思，我们还是希望你选一个最好的公寓。

And then they still got the word puzzles, and then we it's a bit mean, but we said, okay, sorry, but we do want you to choose the best apartment.

他们又失败了。

And they failed again.

在第二阶段，其他研究者发现，当人们阅读公寓信息时，大脑中某些区域会活跃起来。

And in the second stage, other researchers showed that when people read the information about the apartments, certain brain areas become active.

他们在心里琢磨着这些公寓。

They're thinking about the apartments.

当你设定一个目标，打算稍后做选择，同时做这些字谜时，大脑中负责处理公寓信息的区域仍在持续工作。

And then when you set a goal to later make a choice, and you do these word puzzles, then the brain area still continues to work on the apartments.

当你告诉人们可以忽略公寓的信息，我们不会用它来提问时，那个特定脑区的活动就停止了。

When you tell people you can forget about the information of the apartments, we're not gonna use it, the brain activity in that particular area stops.

这真是太有意思了。

So this is fascinating.

你发现的是，当人们被要求集中精力思考一个问题、专注寻找答案时，他们的表现反而不如那些先专注问题、然后去做点别的分散注意力的事、再回头处理问题的人。

What you're finding is that when you tell people to focus on a problem and to focus exclusively on the problem and come up with an answer, in some ways they do worse than people who are asked first to focus on the problem and then do something else that's a little distracting and then return to the problem.

但那些被要求专注问题后就彻底放下问题的人，表现还不如那些被安排了干扰任务的人。

But the people who are told to focus on the problem and then forget about the problem, they in fact do not do as well as the people who are given the distraction task.

换句话说，先专注一个问题，再短暂地分散一下注意力，是让潜意识继续思考问题的好方法。

In other words, focusing on something and being distracted for a little while is a great way to get your unconscious mind to continue to think about the problem.

医生。

Doctor.

没错，正是这样。

Yeah, exactly.

你只需要有动力，或者给自己定个目标就行。

And the only thing you need is motivation, or you set yourself a goal.

比如说，你跟伴侣聊了聊，觉得今天是周四。

So let's say you talk to your partner and you think about it's now Thursday.

你对自己说，好吧，咱们来一次城市短途旅行吧。

You tell yourself, okay, we're going to make a city trip.

但得先决定去哪个城市。

But you have to decide which city you want to visit.

然后你决定，咱们别再纠结了，就定在周日晚上一起吃晚饭的时候做决定。

And then you say, okay, we're not going to talk about it for too much any longer, but let's say we, on Sunday evening, when we have dinner together, we're gonna make a decision.

从那一刻起，你就把任务交给了潜意识，或者说你大脑里那个不为人知的部分，让它在接下来两三天里默默帮你思考。

From that moment on, you give your unconscious mind or your your hidden brain, you give them you give a job to do, and it will think it will think about it unconsciously for the for the two, three days until Sunday.

这样一来，到周日的时候，你更有可能知道自己真正想选哪个地方。

And that and you increase the chances that you actually know what you want by Sunday.

不过，有些目标还是更适合用清醒的头脑来处理。

Now there are some goals that, in fact, are best left to the conscious mind.

比如你在评估房贷，或者翻手册修家电的时候，有些事情还是得靠认真思考才能解决，光靠直觉反而不行。

So if you're evaluating potential mortgages, for example, or you're consulting a manual to fix an appliance, there are domains where, in fact, thinking about the problem is better than not thinking about the problem.

对。

Yeah.

其实我们可以把事情分成三类。

You can actually distinguish between three categories.

有一类是潜意识总会自动处理的，比如日常习惯、生存本能，或者强烈的情感相关的事。

There are things that our unconscious will always think about, and these have to do with basic routines or with also with survival or things that are very much based on emotions.

就拿爱情来说吧。

You can think about love.

这些事，你的大脑——至少对大多数人来说——不用刻意去想，它自己就会琢磨。

You know, these are things that, you know, your mind, or your mind to serve most people anyway, will work on naturally.

还有一类是创意、灵感，或者科学难题这类，只有当你主动设定目标时，大脑才会去想，它不会自动启动。

Then there's things, creativity, inspiration, scientific problems, for instance, where your mind can think about if you set yourself goals, but it's not it doesn't do so naturally.

你得自己有这个意愿才行。

You have to want it.

你得给自己设定目标。

You have to set yourself goals.

还有第三类，就是你刚才提到的那些。

And then there's a third category, and that's what you are referring to.

比如房贷、养老金，从你内心良知的角度看，这些不过是现代人自找的麻烦，你的潜意识根本不会去管这些，你知道吧？

These are like mortgages or pension plans or from the perspective of your own conscience, this is just a lot of modern nonsense that it's not gonna it's not going to think about, you know?

所以，没错，如果你得在这些领域做决定——当然，现代生活中我们有时不得不做这类决定——那就得靠清醒的、有意识地仔细思考。

So you so, yeah, if if you have to make decisions in that domain, and, of course, in modern life, we sometimes have to make such decisions, you have to do it with a lot of conscious thought.

是的。

Yeah.

潜意识不会替你做这些事。

The unconscious is not gonna do it for you.

我们来看看潜意识思维的一些特点，为什么它能如此富有创造力。

Let's take a look at some of the qualities of unconscious thinking that can make it so generative.

你说潜意识的思维容量很大，能容纳的信息比有意识的思考多得多。

You say that unconscious thought processes are capacious and can hold more information than conscious thoughts can hold.

为什么会这样呢，

Why would this be the case,

这其实是因为大脑的容量非常大，而意识的容量却很有限。

It's simply a consequence of the of the enormous capacity of our brain and the rather limited capacity of consciousness.

意识确实是个了不起的能力。

Consciousness is one wonderful quality.

它非常精准。

It's very precise.

比如我可以问你，14乘以17等于多少？

You know, I could ask you, what's 14 times 17?

你可以用计算器算。

And you can use a calculator.

但如果你不用计算器，意识也能在几秒内算出来。

But if you don't use a calculator, your consciousness can solve this within a few seconds.

而潜意识却做不到——你可能花六个星期解一个字谜，还是想不出答案。

The unconscious will never solve you can solve word puzzles for six weeks, and you still don't know the answer.

所以这就是意识的奇妙之处。

So that's the wonderful thing about consciousness.

但潜意识拥有巨大的处理能力，比如当你需要决定是否买房，或者在几套房子之间做选择时。

But the unconscious has this vast capacity where, let's say, make you have to make a decision to buy a house or not, or even to choose between various houses.

要做出这样的决定，你需要处理的信息量真的非常庞大。

The amount of information you have to process in order to reach such a decision is really enormous.

结果发现，这类事情潜意识比意识更擅长处理。

And this is a it turns out this is something that the unconscious is much better at than consciousness.

某种程度上，我觉得你是在说，意识就像一束聚光灯。

In some ways, I think what you're saying is that the conscious mind functions almost like a spotlight.

它专注于某一件事，并能非常清晰地照亮它。

It basically focuses on something and is able to illuminate that thing very well.

而潜意识的范围可能更广。

And the unconscious mind has perhaps a wider aperture.

它更像是一个泛光灯，能照亮更广阔的区域。

It basically, it's floodlight that is covering a much larger terrain.

没错，就是这样。

That's exactly what it is.

对，就是这样。

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

这也让无意识在某种程度上更自由、更联想丰富，也更有创造力，你知道吧？

And that also makes the unconscious more wild and associative in a way, and in a sense, also more creative, you know?

如果你无意识地思考一个问题，有时候会冒出一些完全出乎意料、甚至很疯狂的想法。

If think about something unconsciously, you come up with things sometimes at least that are quite unexpected, and yeah, wild.

而有意识的思考呢，没错，就像一束聚光灯。

And consciousness on the other hand, yeah, exactly, it's a spotlight.

它非常精准。

It's very precise.

通常不是最富有冒险精神的思维方式，但胜在精准。

It's not the most adventurous thinking usually, but it's precise.

你还提到，无意识的思维过程能触及我们记忆深处。

You also say that unconscious thought processes can draw on the deep recesses of our memory.

说说这些记忆是怎么提升我们的创造力的。

Talk about how such memories might enrich our creativity up.

我觉得，当你无意识地思考时，它所调动的信息几乎是无限的，几乎什么都能用上，包括童年的回忆。

Well, I think what happens is if you think unconsciously, yes, it's almost unlimited in when it comes to the information your unconscious uses, and it can involve basically everything, you know, including childhood memories.

我觉得这正是为什么科学家或艺术家一旦启用无意识，就会更有创造力。

And I think that's one of the reasons that if scientists or artists, if they engage their unconscious, they are much more creative.

他们会想出一些完全出人意料的东西。

They come up with things that are very much unexpected.

他们会把原本毫不相关的事物联系在一起。

They associate things with each other that are that are usually not associated.

你曾经做过一个实验，让参与者写下他们能想到的所有以字母A开头的荷兰城市名。

You once ran an experiment where you asked people to write down the names of as many Dutch cities as they could think of that began with the letter A.

跟我讲讲这个实验，你发现了什么？

Tell me about this experiment and what you found.

这个实验是这样的，嗯。

That's an experiment where yeah.

我找了两组人。

I I had two groups.

第一组，我直接让他们说出荷兰所有以字母A开头的城市和村庄。

So one group, I simply asked, name as much cities and villages starting with the letter a in The Netherlands.

第二组，我告诉他们：待会儿你们要列出以A开头的城市或村庄，不过我们先做点别的事。

And the other group, I said, you know, later I want you to list as many cities or villages with the letter A, but we're first going to do something else.

然后他们花了几分钟做文字拼图，目的是让他们在潜意识里继续想着那些以A开头的地方。

And again, they engaged in a few minutes in solving word puzzles, with the idea that they would think unconsciously about these cities and villages with the letter A.

就数量而言，两组人列出的城市和村庄总数是一样的。

And in terms of the sheer number they came up with, the number of villages and cities, it was the same between the two groups.

但那些有意识思考的人，想出来的都是些显而易见的地方，比如阿姆斯特丹或者大城市。

But people who thought consciously came up with the more obvious choices, like Amsterdam or the bigger cities.

而那些先做拼图、在潜意识里思考的人，想出的是一些更特别、更冷门的村庄，有些我压根儿没听说过。

And people who thought unconsciously, who were doing the word puzzles first, they came up with much more, you could say, unusual, you know, villages that some of them I had never even heard of.

你还提到，潜意识处理信息时，不太关注具体细节，更偏向把握整体要点。

You also say that unconscious thought processes don't engage in concrete details as much as the essence or the gist of the information at hand.

某种程度上，这和聚光灯与泛光灯的比喻有关——无意识思维更擅长把握事物的整体感觉，而不是精确记住大量细节。

And in some ways, is related to the spotlight versus floodlight metaphor, which is, again, you're trying the unconscious mind is involved in sort of capturing the general feel of something, not necessarily the precise contours of many things.

对。

Yeah.

核心要点。

The gist.

用这个词来形容最贴切不过了。

That's probably the single best word to describe it.

当你有意识地思考时，你会特别关注信息的具体表述。

So if you think about something consciously, you focus on also on the precise wording of information.

而当你无意识地思考时，你关注的是整体脉络，比如背后的核心特质。

If you think about something unconsciously, yeah, you look at the gist about what are the underlying traits.

我们做过一些实验，比如让参与者形成对一个虚构人物的印象，我们会提供各种行为信息，比如他喜欢看报纸，经常迟到。

We done experiments, for instance, where people have to form an impression of a hypothetical person, You describe this person with all kinds of behavioral information, like he likes to read newspapers, he's usually very late.

之后问他们记住了什么，会发现有意识思考的人对具体细节记得更清楚，比如看报纸这件事。

And if you then later ask people what they remember about the person, you see that people who thought about it consciously have much better memory for the concrete information, reading the newspaper, for instance.

而那些无意识思考的人，能感受到背后的核心特质。

And people who thought about it unconsciously, they have a feeling for what the underlying trait is.

一个人是健忘、杂乱，还是特别聪明？无意识更关注事物背后的深层含义。

Is somebody forgetful or chaotic or maybe very intelligent or so you the unconscious is more about the underlying meaning of things.

就像我们之前提到的安德里·潘卡雷，他谈到自己登上公交车那一刻的顿悟，其实是把两个来自完全不同领域的想法融合在了一起。

In the example we talked about earlier with Andri Pankare, you know, he talks about how the insight that he eventually had as he stepped onto this bus was an insight that allowed him to combine two ideas that in fact came from very different places.

谈谈无意识思维如何让各种不同的想法和经历以新颖的方式交织融合。

Talk about the idea that unconscious thought processes allow diverse ideas and experiences to mingle and combine in novel ways.

是的。

Yeah.

我觉得这也是无意识思维能够做到的一件事。

I think that that is also one of the things unconscious thought is capable of doing.

比如说，甚至童年的记忆，也可能参与这样的无意识过程。

You know, for instance, even childhood memories can can be part of such an unconscious thought process.

这几乎就是创造力的定义——把原本毫不相关的东西组合在一起。

And it's almost like a definition of creativity that that you combine things that aren't usually combined.

这一点，我们的潜意识比有意识地仔细思考时做得更好。

And this is something our our unconscious is known to be better at than if we think about something very consciously, very attentively.

某种程度上，这也说明了潜意识的思维是关联性的。

And in some ways, this then connects with the idea that unconscious thought processes are going to be associative.

也就是说，一件事引出另一件事，童年的记忆可能和工作中的事产生交集，而这些又可能和你看的一场体育比赛联系起来。

In other words, one thing leads to the next and something from your childhood might intersect with something that happens in your workplace, which might intersect with something that you see in a sports game.

而有意识的思维则更集中、更收敛。

Whereas conscious thought processes are going be more focused and convergent.

你可以看到，有意识的思考会让我们系统性地沿着一条路走下去，但潜意识的思考呢，它可能带我们走进死胡同，但也正因如此，它能产生意想不到的连接，激发创造力。

And so you can see how conscious thinking can lead us very systematically down a path, whereas unconscious thinking, you know, it can lead us into, you know, dead ends and blind alleys, but it can also produce these unexpected connections that can lead to creativity.

对。

Yeah.

首先，它会把你带得更深，就像有些科学家说的那样，陷入泥潭。

First, it leads you deeper into the mire, as sometimes scientists say.

但最终，没错，它往往通过最不寻常的联想和组合，带你找到真正的解决方案。

But but in the end, yeah, it it often leads you to to the real solutions by using the most unusual associations and combinations.

对。

Yeah.

无意识思维的一个惊人能力是，它似乎能直接生成完整而完美的答案。

One remarkable capacity of unconscious thought processes is that they seem to generate seemingly complete and perfect answers.

当庞加莱做出他的发现时，他说，我当时有一种绝对的把握。

When Poincare basically made his discovery, he said, you know, I felt a perfect certainty.

后来他回到家，为了心安，还是把结果验证了一遍。

And he says later when he got home, for conscience's sake, I verified the result.

换句话说，他其实早就知道答案是对的。

In other words, he said, I knew the result was correct already.

但还是得走个过场，确认一下。

But just to go through the motions, I had to verify it.

为什么会这样呢？

Why would that be the case?

你认为，为什么无意识思维能得出更完整的答案？

Why would unconscious thought processes come up with more complete answers, do you think of?

这个我们其实并不清楚。

Well, we don't really know.

而且很遗憾，潜意识并不是总能发挥作用。

And the unconscious doesn't do it all the time, unfortunately.

它只是偶尔才会这样。

It only does so occasionally.

但当你的潜意识突然给出一个问题的答案时，有时候会完美得惊人。

But when your unconscious comes up with a solution to something, occasionally it's just perfect.

这时候意识完全没有干扰。

There's no interference of consciousness.

它就像是真理以最纯粹的方式直接浮现。

It's just sort of truth arriving in its purest form.

这种现象在很多领域都能看到，不只是在科学里。

And you see it in many, many different areas, not just in science.

如果你看看流行音乐，就会发现，那些创作得最快的歌曲，往往也最出名。

And if you look at popular music, what you see is that if you look at bands or musicians, the song that is written most rapidly is also the most famous.

诗歌也是同样的道理。

And with poetry, it's the same thing.

其实很多最好的诗，都是在五到十分钟内写成的。

Know, some of the best poems were written in five or ten minutes.

毕加索画画的时候，一旦感觉自己想得太多、太刻意，就会立刻停下来。

And Picasso, when he painted, he would immediately stop if he felt that he was thinking about it too much, he was thinking consciously.

创作必须得是自然而然发生的。

It would just have to be it would have to occur naturally to him.

如果那种自然的状态消失了，他就干脆不画了。

And if it didn't occur naturally anymore, he would just stop.

所以，潜意识确实能带来一些非常纯粹、非常美妙的东西。

So, yeah, there's something about the unconscious that it that it can come up with something that is very pure, very beautiful.

可惜不是每天都有，但偶尔会遇上。

Unfortunately, not every day, but it occasionally happens.

对。

Yeah.

你提到过歌手兼词曲作者苏珊娜·薇嘉的故事，她写过一首非常著名的歌，也是灵光一现写出来的。

You described the story of the singer and songwriter Suzanne Vega, who wrote a very famous song that also came to her in a flash.

这首歌叫什么名字？

What song was this?

她当时是怎么发生的？

Describe what happened to her up.

这首歌叫《卢卡》。

This this is Luca.

对。

Yeah.

就是她的那首《卢卡》。

It's her song, Luca.

我记得在荷兰电视台看过一部关于她的纪录片，她给采访者看了写《卢卡》时的歌词，就一张纸。

I remember watching a documentary about her on Dutch television, and she showed her interviewer the lyrics she wrote for Luca, and it was just a piece of paper that she showed.

她说，这是我第一次写这首歌，当时一个字都没改过。

And she said, this is when I you know, the first time I wrote it, and there were nothing was crossed out.

就那么突然出现了。

It was just there.

歌词仿佛直接出现在她脑海里，她只是把它们写下来而已。

She she the lyrics just basically appeared to her, and she only had to write them down.

其实这种情况并不少见。

And this is actually not too unusual.

很多音乐人都有一两首这样的歌，而且通常都是他们最出名的作品。

A lot of musicians have one or two of such songs, and they're usually their most famous.

艾米·麦克唐纳的《这就是生活》只用了十五分钟左右就写完了。

Amy MacDonald wrote, this is the life in about fifteen minutes.

这首歌《卢卡》讲的是儿童虐待。

Now the song Luca is about child abuse.

它描述了一个小男孩，很可能被照顾他的人伤害的故事。

It describes a story of a young boy who basically is being harmed presumably by his caretakers.

苏珊娜·维加后来说，这首歌某种程度上是自传性的，其实写的就是她自己。

And Suzanne Vega later said that in some ways the song was autobiographical, that she was writing about herself.

这又是一个例子，说明一个人的音乐天赋与童年经历交织在一起，创造出一种从一开始就很完整的作品。

And here again is an example of someone's musical abilities and talents intersecting with their own childhood experiences and coming up with something that almost feels complete from the get go.

是的。

Yeah.

这真是个绝佳的例子，那种灵感突然出现，美妙又纯粹，真的让人惊叹。

It's a wonderful example of of, yeah, an idea that is suddenly there, and it's beautiful, and it's pure, and it's yeah.

它已经完整了。

It's finished.

你明白吗？

You know?

她几乎不用再做什么改动。

She didn't have to do much about it.

我觉得歌词和旋律都是在几分钟内就成型的。

I think it was both the lyrics and the music were there within minutes.

是的。

Yeah.

这真是一个绝佳的例子，说明潜意识能创造出多么了不起的东西。

It's a wonderful a wonderful example of what your what a what a creative unconscious can come up with.

我明白，志愿者们曾经被给过一些谜题或问题，这些题要么靠逻辑分析解决，要么靠灵光一现。

I understand that, volunteers were presented once with riddles or problems that could be solved either through analysis or by sudden insight.

这些具体是什么样的问题？实验的结果又是什么？

What kind of problems were these, and what was the outcome of the experiment up?

这在上世纪八十年代的认知心理学里是个传统，当时人们想研究顿悟型问题。

This is a tradition in cognitive psychology in the 1980s where people wanted to see they wanted to study inside problems.

举个例子，大概是这样的。

And one example is I think it goes like this.

来，听个谜题。

So, here's a riddle.

每天，睡莲的覆盖面积都会翻倍，夏天刚开始时，湖面上只有一片莲叶。

Every day, water lilies double the surface area they occupy, and at the start of the summer, there's only one lily leaf in the lake.

到了第六十天，整个湖面就被完全盖满了。

After sixty days, the entire water surface is covered.

湖面一半被睡莲覆盖是在哪一天？

On which day was the lake half covered with water lilies?

如果你听到这样的谜题，你的意识往往会直接算：第一天一片，第二天两片，第三天四片，但这样下去根本解不出来。

Now, if you hear such a riddle, your conscious mind is inclined to just say, okay, so we start with one lily, and then the next day, there's two, and then the third day, there's four, and then you but this is not gonna get you anywhere.

你需要的是顿悟。

And what you need is insight.

你需要那种突然的灵光一现，真正看懂这个谜题，而这种时刻通常只有当你先退一步，比如出去散个步的时候才会出现。

You need this sudden flash where you understand the riddle, and this usually occurs to you only when you take a little distance first, and maybe even, you know, go and take a walk or something.

然后你才恍然大悟：既然第六十天湖面完全被盖满，而睡莲每天数量翻倍，那显然前一天——也就是第五十九天——就是一半被覆盖的时候。

And then you realize, well, okay, if after sixty days the lake is fully covered, and the number of leaves doubles every day, then of course, half covered means it's the day before the last day, it's on day 59.

如果你答对了，答案往往会突然蹦出来。

And if the right answer comes to you, it comes in a sort of a flash.

它从来不会在你死磕、刻意分析的时候出现。

It never comes when you approach it very analytically or consciously.

我喜欢这个谜题的一点是，它实际上要求我们换个角度去想问题。

One of the things I like about that puzzle is that in some ways it requires us to actually turn the problem on its head.

换句话说，你不是从第一天开始算，说第一天有一朵睡莲，第二天有两朵，以此类推，而是从最后一天倒着推。

So in other words, instead of starting from day one and saying, okay, day one, there's one lily, day two, there's two, and so forth, you actually start from the end.

你就说，好，第60天，湖面已经全被盖满了。

And you say, okay, day 60, the lake is full.

然后倒着推，湖面什么时候是一半被覆盖的？

And now working backwards, when was the lake half full?

某种程度上，你这是把问题翻了个个儿。

And in some ways, it's you're turning the problem on its head.

当你把问题翻过来想，它反而变得特别简单。

And when you turn the problem on its head, the problem actually becomes easy.

是的。

Yeah.

而通过倒过来想来理解这个问题，其实就已经是答案了，因为一旦你明白了，就会发现它其实特别简单。

And then understanding the problem by turning it on its head is already the solution because then you once you know it, you know, it's it's actually incredibly simple.

是的。

Yeah.