合集：竞技场中

欢迎回到Naval播客。我从Naval去年的推特中挑选了一些内容，我们接下来会逐一讨论。其实这是我的第一个问题。你告诉我你从Eric Jorgensen那里提前拿到了关于埃隆的书。书里有什么令人惊讶的内容吗？

Welcome back to the Naval podcast. I've pulled out some tweets from Naval's Twitter from the last year, and we're just gonna go through them. Here's actually my first question. You told me that you got a early copy of the Elon book from Eric Jorgensen. Anything surprising in there?

我才读了大约20%。这本书真的很棒。完全是埃隆用他自己的话讲述，我认为最引人注目的是贯穿全书的独立自主、主观能动性和紧迫感。我觉得读这些内容未必能学到一步一步的流程。你无法复制他的方法。

I'm only about 20% of the way through. It's really good. It's just Elon in his own words, and I think what's striking is just the sense of independence, agency, and urgency that just runs throughout the whole thing. I don't think you necessarily learn a step by step process by reading these things. You can't emulate his process.

这是为他量身定制的。是为SpaceX设计的。是为特斯拉设计的。具有特定背景。但看到他如何不让任何事物阻挡自己、如何狂热地质疑一切、以及他如何强调速度和迭代、毫不拖泥带水的执行力，确实非常鼓舞人心。

It's designed for him. It's designed for SpaceX. He's designed for Tesla. It's contextual. But it's very inspiring just to see how he doesn't let anything stand in his way, how maniacal he is about questioning everything, and how he just emphasizes speed and iteration and no nonsense execution.

这让人想立刻行动起来，在自己的公司里实践同样的理念。对我来说，好书就该如此。如果我听史蒂夫·乔布斯的演讲，会激励我变得更好。如果我读埃隆关于执行力的内容，会促使我更高效地执行。然后我会找到自己的方式。

And so that just makes you wanna get up and run and do the same thing with your company. And to me, that's what the good books do. If I listen to a Steve Jobs speech, it makes me want to be better. If I read Elon on how he executes, it makes me want to execute better. And then I'll figure out my own way.

具体细节未必适用，但更重要的是，我认为这种激励才是驱动力。

The details don't necessarily map, but more importantly, I think just the inspiration is what drives.

是啊，这很有趣。因为人们确实视你为精神导师，这很明显，但同时你也确实提出了一些人们实际遵循的原则。

Yeah. That's pretty interesting because I think people look to you as inspirational, yes, obviously, but also laying out principles that people actually do follow.

我把原则保持在高层面和不完整的状态，部分原因是这样听起来更好也更容易记住，但也是因为这样更具普适性。关于'如何致富'内容的一个问题是，人们在推特上用140或280个字符向我提出非常具体的问题，而我根本没有足够的背景信息来回答。这些都需要具体情境。这就是我喜欢Air Chat和Clubhouse的原因。

I keep my principles high level and incomplete partially because it just sounds better and it's easier to remember, but also just because it's more applicable. One of the problems I have with the how to get rich content is people ask me highly specific questions on Twitter in a 140 or 280 characters, and I just don't have enough context to respond. These things require context. That's why I liked Air Chat. That's why I like Clubhouse.

这就是为什么我过去做Periscope直播时喜欢口语化的交流方式。当人们问我问题时，我可以反过来追问他们。他们能继续提问，我们可以层层深入，试图触及问题的核心，然后我就能根据已知信息说：'如果我是你，我会这样做。'但多数情况下这些都需要具体情境，很难直接套用他人的细节。

That's why I like spoken format back when I used to do Periscopes. When people would ask me a question, then I could ask a follow-up question back to them. They could ask me another question. We could dig through and try to get to the meat of what they were asking, and then I could say, well, given the information that I have, if I were in your shoes, I would do the following thing. But most of these situations are highly contextual, so it's hard to copy details from other people.

真正适用的是原则本身。因此我始终保持宏观层面的表达。事实上，我认为作者埃里克·乔根森做得很好，他把那些值得引用的片段提炼出来，形成独立句子。比如他从埃隆的工作中提取推文内容。不过我也说不准。

It's the principles that apply. And so that is why I keep my stuff very high level. And in fact, I think Eric Jorgensen, the author, has done a good job of trying to break out the little quotable bits and put them in their own standalone sentences. So he's pulling tweets out of Elon's work. But I don't know.

我只是坚持自己的风格。埃隆有他的方式。他以自己的方法激励他人，或许我也在用我的方式启发某些人。我从他身上获得灵感。

I just do my style. Elon does his. He inspires in his own way. Maybe I inspire someone in my own way. I get inspired by him.

我从他人身上汲取灵感。灵感无处不在。但说到执行层面，你必须亲力亲为。人生就是竞技场，唯有实践出真知。

I get inspired by others. Inspiration all the way down. But when it comes to execution, you gotta do it yourself. Life is lived in the arena. You only learn by doing.

如果不付诸行动，你学到的都过于笼统抽象，最终只会变成贺卡上的格言。你不知道何时何地适用这些道理。这类通用原则和建议大多不是数学公式。同一个'富有'可能指代不同概念，'财富'、'爱'或'幸福'这些词也是如此。

And if you're not doing, then all the learning you're picking up is too general and too abstract, then it truly is hallmark aphorisms. You don't know what applies where and when. And a lot of this kind of general principles and advice is not mathematics. Sometimes you're using the word rich to mean one thing, other times you use it to mean another thing. Same with the word wealth, same with the word love or happiness.

这些都是多义词。所以这不是精确的数学定义，你无法像编写计算机程序那样形成固定剧本。关键在于理解它们的适用情境。

These are overloaded terms. So this is not mathematics. These are not precise definitions. You can't form a playbook out of them that you can just follow like a computer. Instead, you have to understand what context to apply them in.

正确的学习方式是真正动手实践。当你在实践中领悟到某些方法时，再去对照我的推文、德文著作、叔本华的文章或网络观点，就会恍然大悟：'原来那人说的是这个普遍原理。'我知道该在类似情境中运用它——不是机械照搬，而是作为再次遇到这种情况时的启发式参考。从理性思考开始，逐步培养判断力。当判断力足够精炼时，它就变成了品味、直觉或本能反应，这就是你行事的依据。

So the right way to learn is to actually go do something, and then when you're doing it, you figure something out about how it should be done, then you can go and look at something I tweeted or something you read in Deutsch or something you read in Schopenhauer or something you saw online and say, oh, that's what that guy meant. That's a general principle he's talking about. And I know to apply it in situations like this, not mechanically, not a 100% of the time, but as a helpful heuristic for when I encounter this situation again. You start with reasoning, and then you build up your judgment. And then when your judgment is sufficiently refined, it just becomes taste or intuition or gut feel, and that's what you operate on.

但你必须从具体事物入手。如果从普遍性出发并停留在普遍层面，只阅读原理、格言和年鉴之类的书籍，你就会像那些上过大学、受过过度教育却迷失方向的人。他们总在错误的地方应用知识。就像纳西姆·塔勒布所说的'高学历蠢货'（IYIs）。

But you have to start from the specific. If you start from the general and stay at the level of the general, just reading books of principles and aphorisms and almanacs and so on, you're gonna be like that person that went to university, overeducated, but they're lost. They try to apply things in the wrong places. What Nassim Taleb calls the intellectual yet idiots, IYIs.

我本想引用的一条推文正是6月3日那条：获取知识很容易，难的是知道何时应用。这就是为什么真正的学习都在实践中。生活是在竞技场中展开的。

One of the tweets I was going to bring up is exactly that from June 3, acquiring knowledge is easy, the hard part is knowing what to apply and when. That's why all true learning is on the job. Life is lived in the arena.

我喜欢那条推文。其实原本只想发'生活是在竞技场中展开的'就完事。我本可以就此打住，但觉得需要稍作解释。因为'竞技场中的人'是句名言，我想从我的角度稍作展开。这是我不断领悟到的道理。

I like that tweet. Actually, just wanted to tweet life is lived in the arena, and that was it. I wanna just drop it right there, but I felt like I had to explain just a little bit more. Because the man in the arena is a famous quote, so I wanted to unpack a little bit from my direction. But this is a realization that I keep having over and over.

我最近又创立了一家公司。这是个非常困难的项目，公司名字就叫'不可能公司'（Impossible Inc）。有趣的是，这让我陷入了疯狂的学习状态——并非消极的被迫，而是获得了久违的学习热情。

I recently started another company. It's a very difficult project. In fact, the name of the company is the Impossible company. It's called Impossible Inc. What's interesting is that it's driven me into a frenzy of learning, and not necessarily even motivated in a negative way, but I'm more inspired to learn than I have been in a long time.

所以我发现自己更频繁地追问Grock和ChatTPT，读更多书，听更多技术类播客，进行更多头脑风暴。整个人的思维都更活跃了。

So I find myself interrogating Grock and ChatTPT a lot more. I find myself reading more books. I find myself listening to more technical podcasts. I find myself brainstorming a lot more. I'm just more mentally active.

我甚至愿意在投资之外接触更多公司，因为能从中学到东西。保持活跃状态会自然激发学习欲望，而且不会感到枯燥或导致倦怠。我认为实践会催生学习欲望，进而促进学习——当然实践过程本身也是学习。而单纯为学而学，很快就会变得空洞。

I'm even willing to meet more companies aside investing because I'm learning from them. And just being active makes me want to naturally learn more, and not in a way that it's unfun or caused me to burn out. So I think doing leads to the desire to learn, and therefore to learning. And of course, there's the learning from the doing itself. Whereas I think if you're purely learning for learning's sake, it gets empty after a little while.

动机完全不同。我们是生物机械体，走动时大脑运转更快——按理说节能状态下应该更慢，但事实并非如此。最好的头脑风暴往往发生在边走边谈时，而非坐着交谈。所以我曾尝试'行走播客'这种形式，因为我确实在行走交谈时思维更敏捷。同理，我认为实践与学习相辅相成。

The motivation isn't the same. We're biomechanical creatures. My brain works faster when I'm walking around, and you would think no energy conservation should work slower, but it's not the case. Some of the best brainstorming is when you're walking and talking, not just sitting and talking, which is why for a while I tried to hack the walking podcast thing, because I really enjoy walking and talking, and my brain works better. And so the same way, I think doing and learning go hand in hand.

因此，如果你想学习，那就去做。就像生活中大多数有趣而困难的事情一样，解决方案是间接的。这是‘如何致富’推文风暴的一部分——要致富，你不能直接追求金钱。或许你会喜欢银行家那种方式。但如果你在创造有价值的东西，运用杠杆，承担责任，并应用你的专业知识，金钱会作为副产品自然而来，你会创造出伟大的产品，将自我产品化，让财富随之产生。

And so if you want to learn, do. Like in most interesting difficult things in life, the solution is indirect. That was part of the how to get rich tweet storm, which is if you wanna get rich, you don't directly just go for the money. I suppose you could like a bankster. But if you're building something of value, and you're using leverage, and you're taking accountability, and you're applying your specific knowledge, you're gonna make money as a byproduct, and you're gonna create great products, gonna productize yourself, and create money as a byproduct.

同理，如果你想快乐，就要淡化自我，投入高心流活动或能让你忘我的活动，快乐自然随之而来。顺便说一句，这在追求异性时也适用。你不能走过去直接说‘我想和你上床’来吸引女性——这行不通。地位追求也是如此。

The same way, if you wanna be happy, you minimize yourself, and you engage in high flow activities or engage in activities that take you out of your own self, and you end up with happiness. By the way, this is true in seduction as well. You don't seduce a woman by walking up and saying, I wanna sleep with you. That's not how it works. Same with status.

公然追求地位恰恰暴露低地位。追逐地位是低地位行为，因为这首先就揭示了你在地位层级中的低下位置。并非所有事情都需要间接追求，许多事最适合直接行动。如果我想开车，我就上车直接开。

The overt pursuit of status signals low status. It's a low status behavior to chase status because it reveals you as being lower in the status hierarchy in the first place. It's not the fact that everything has to be pursued indirectly. Many things are best pursued directly. If I want to drive a car, I get in and I drive the car.

如果我想写作，就坐下来直接写。但那些本质上具有竞争性，或对我们显得难以捉摸的事物，部分原因在于它们恰恰是那些最适合间接追求的东西。从4月2日起，当你真正为自己工作时，你将不再有爱好、周末和假期，但也不再有‘工作’这个概念。这就是为自己工作的悖论——每位创业者或自由职业者都深有体会：当你开始为自己工作，本质上就牺牲了工作与生活的平衡，模糊了两者的界限。

If I want to write something, then just sit down and write something. But the things that are either competitive in nature, or they seem elusive to us, Part of the reason for that is that those are the remaining things that are best pursued indirectly. From April 2, when you truly work for yourself, you won't have hobbies, you won't have weekends, and you won't have vacations, but you won't have work either. This is the paradox of working for yourself, which every entrepreneur or every self employed person is familiar with, which is that when you start working for yourself, you basically sacrifice this work life balance thing. You sacrifice this work life distinction.

不再有朝九晚五，不再有办公室，没有人指挥你该做什么，也没有现成的剧本可循。但同时，你也没有‘关机’的选项。

There's no more nine to five. There's no more office. There's no one who's telling you what to do. There's no playbook to follow. At the same time, there's nothing to turn off.

你无法关机。你就是事业本身，你就是产品，你就是工作，你就是这个存在实体，你在乎这一切。

You can't turn it off. You are the business. You are the product. You are the work. You are the entity, and you care.

如果你在做真正属于你的事，你会极度投入。所以你无法停止，这就是创业者的诅咒。但创业者的优势在于：如果你的方向正确，动机纯粹，与对的人用对的方式做事，且能放下未达目标的压力（这确实很难），那么这一切就不像在工作。这才是最高效的状态——你只以产出论成败，只需对自己设定的标准负责。

If you're doing something that's truly yours, you care very deeply. So you can't turn it off, and that's the curse of the entrepreneur. But the benefit of the entrepreneur is that if you're doing it right, if you're doing it for the right reasons, with the right people, in the right way, and if you can set aside the stress of not hitting your goals, which is real and hard to set aside, then it doesn't feel like work. That's when you're most productive. You're basically only measured on your output, and you're only held up to the bar that you raise for yourself.

因此，这会让人感到极度振奋和自由，这也是我很久以前说过‘尝过自由的滋味会让你无法再被雇佣’的原因。这正是那种自由的滋味，它让你在传统朝九晚五、按部就班、有老板管束的意义上‘无法被雇佣’。但一旦你挣脱了这种束缚，一旦你走过了没有安全网、没有老板、没有固定工作的钢丝绳——顺带一提，这种情况甚至可能发生在初创公司或小团队中，只要你足够自我驱动——在普通人眼中看似巨大的劣势：没有周末、没有假期、没有休息时间、没有工作与生活的平衡，对你而言却成了常态。

So it can be extremely exhilarating and freeing, and this is why I said a long time ago that a taste of freedom can make you unemployable. And so this is exactly that taste of freedom. It makes you unemployable in the classic sense of nine to five and following the playbook and having a boss. But once you have broken out of that, once you've walked the tightrope without a net, without a boss, without a job and by the way, this can even happen in startups, in a small team where you're just very self motivated. You get what look like huge negatives to the average person that you don't have weekends, you don't have vacations, and you don't have time off, you don't have work life balance.

但与此同时，当你工作时，那感觉并不像在工作。这是你极度渴望去做的事，本身就是回报。归根结底，我认为这是一扇单向门——一旦人们体验过与自己关心的事、喜欢的人共事，并以自我驱动的方式工作，他们就‘无法被雇佣’了。他们再也无法回到有经理、有老板、有打卡、朝九晚五的常规工作，无法接受‘这周某天必须出现在某张办公桌前，某时段必须通勤’的生活。

But at the same time, when you are working, it doesn't feel like work. It's something that you're highly motivated to do, and that's the reward. And net net, I do think this is a one way door. I think once people experience working on something that they care about with people that they really like in a way they're self motivated, they're unemployable. They can't go back to a normal job with a manager and a boss and a check-in and nine to five and, you know, show up this day, this week, sit in this desk, commute at this time.

我认为这条推文还有层隐含的意图。开头说‘当你真正为自己工作时’，大多数人会理解为‘自己做老板’。但我的另一种解读是：你的劳动是在表达真实的自我，这是一种自我实现。而要认清这一点并不容易。

I think there's a hidden meaning in the tweet too, which I'm guessing is intentional. It starts off with when you truly work for yourself, which I'm guessing most people are gonna take that to mean you're your own boss. But the other way that I read it is that you are working for yourself, so your labor is in expression of who and what you are. It's self expression. And that's not an easy thing to figure out.

我始终认为，每个人都应该找到自己最独特、最符合本真的能力所在——这能带来真实感、专属知识、竞争优势和不可替代性，然后全力投入其中。有时你只有真正去做才能发现它。这就是在竞技场中生活：唯有通过行动，在各种困境中历练，你才会发现自己的专属知识——要么自己意识到‘我能解决别人觉得棘手的事’，要么由他人点破。

I ultimately think that everyone should be figuring out what it is that they uniquely do best that aligns with who they are fundamentally, and that gives them authenticity, that brings them specific knowledge, that gives them competitive advantage, that makes them irreplaceable, and they should just lean into that. And sometimes you don't know what that is until you do it. So this is life lived in the arena. You're not going to know your own specific knowledge until you act, until you act in a variety of difficult situations. And then you will either realize, oh, I managed to navigate through these things that other people would have had a hard time with, or someone else will point at you.

他们会说：‘你的超能力似乎是X’。我有个多次创业的朋友，他未必最聪明或技术最强（虽然极其勤奋），但我总注意到：他最有胆识。

They'll say, hey, your superpower seems to be x. I have a friend who has been an entrepreneur a bunch of times, and what I always notice about him is that he may not necessarily be the most clever or the most technical, and he's very hardworking. That's why I don't wanna say he's in the hardworking. He's actually super hardworking. But what I do notice is he's the most courageous.

他根本不在乎阻碍，没有什么能击垮他。他总是笑着应对一切。放在一百年前，人们会说：‘他是最勇敢的人——’

So he just does not care what's in the way. Nothing gets him down. He's always laughing or smiling. He's always moving through it. And this is the kind of guy that a hundred years ago, you would have said, oh, he's the most courageous.

‘去冲锋陷阵再合适不过’。而在创业语境下，他就是那种能持续撞销售南墙的人：打几百个电话直到一个人说‘好’。哪怕399次拒绝换来1次同意，他也满足，然后就能开始迭代学习。这就是他的专属知识。

Go charge that machine gun nest. He would have been good for that. But in an entrepreneurship context, he's the one who can keep beating his head against the sales wall and just calling hundreds of people until finally one person says yes. So he'll call 400 people and get three ninety nine nos, and he's fine with one yes, and that's enough, then he can start iterating and learning from there. So that's his specific knowledge.

这就是知识。它是一种能力，让他知道自己对此感到自在。他愿意追求另一边的结果，这就是一种超能力。现在，如果他能够进一步发展这种能力，或者将其与其他事物结合，甚至只是在需要的地方应用它，这就会让他变得难以替代。通过行动和实践，你会找到属于自己的特定知识。

It is knowledge. It's a capability that he knows that he's okay with it. There's an outcome on the other side that he's willing to go for, and that's a superpower. Now, maybe if he can develop that a little further or combine it with something else or maybe even just apply it where it's needed, that makes him somewhat irreplaceable. And so you find your specific knowledge through action, by doing.

当你为自己工作时，你也会自然而然地选择那些与你个人特质和特定知识相契合的方式来做事。以营销为例，营销是一个开放性问题。人们尝试用不同方式解决营销问题：有人制作视频，有人写作或发推文，有人直接举着广告牌站在街头，还有人通过广交朋友举办派对来口碑传播。

And when you are working for yourself, you will also naturally tend to pick things and do things in a way that aligns with who you are and what your specific knowledge is. For example, if you look at marketing, marketing is an open problem. People try to solve marketing in different ways. Some people will create videos, some people will write or tweet, Some people will literally stand outside with a sandwich board. Some people will go make a whole bunch of friends and just throw parties and spread by word-of-mouth.

对你的业务而言，其中某种方式可能远胜其他。但最重要的是选择与你喜好相符的事业。比如我常遇到朋友提议：'嘿，我们一起做播客吧'，而我会反问：'你是真的非常喜欢说话吗？'

Now it may be the case that for your business, one of those is much better than others. But the most important thing is picking a business that is congruent with whichever one you like to do. So for example, I have a lot of friends approach me and say, hey. Let's start a podcast together. And I'm like, do you genuinely enjoy talking a lot?

因为如果不喜欢，你不仅无法享受播客制作过程，更难以做到最好。他们只是为了营销而勉强尝试，录了两三期后就会放弃——首先就是因为缺乏对播客的热情。

Because if you don't, you're not gonna enjoy the process of podcasting. You're not gonna be the best at it. They're just trying to market. And so they start a podcast to do two or three episodes, and then eventually they drop off. They drop off because, firstly, they don't enjoy podcasting.

我说的不是一般的喜欢，而是极度热爱。要想做到顶尖，你必须痴迷到近乎偏执的程度。这些人录了几期后，听众就能明显感觉到：提问者只是机械发问，根本乐在其中，就像在播客里不停看手表般心不在焉。而乔·罗根则截然不同，他完全沉浸其中。

I don't mean, like, enjoy a little bit. You have to enjoy it a lot. If you're gonna be the top at it, you have to be almost psychopathic at the level at which you enjoy the thing. And so they'll record a few episodes, and then their readers or their listeners will pick up on, actually, this person's just asking a bunch of questions and doesn't seem to really enjoy it and is doing the podcast equivalent of looking at their watch. Whereas someone like Joe Rogan, he's so immersed.

他如此热衷于与播客里那些怪咖交谈，即使没有观众也会坚持。事实上他在无人问津时就开始了——当年独自在Ustream深夜直播时就是如此。他能成为顶级播客绝非偶然。做营销时，你要发挥自己的特定知识和个人特质：如果热爱表达，就尝试播客；

He's so into talking to all these weird people that he has on his podcast that the guy would be doing it even if he had no audience. And he was doing it when he had no audience, when he was on Ustream with just him and live streaming late at night on one random website. It's no coincidence he's the top podcaster. So when you're marketing, you want to lean into your specific knowledge and into yourself. If you enjoy talking, then try podcasting.

若偏爱对话式交流，可以试试Twitter Spaces这类实时语音平台；如果钟情写作，长文选Substack，短文用X平台；若是鸿篇巨制的爱好者，不妨写系列博客最终集结成书。

Maybe you enjoy talking in a more conversational tone, in which case you try a live network like a Twitter Spaces. Maybe you enjoy writing. If you like long form writing, Substack. If you like short form writing, x. If you like really long form writing, then maybe a bunch of blog posts that turn into a book.

如果你喜欢制作视频，或许你会使用最新的人工智能模型，制作一些视频并添加覆盖层。但你必须做对你来说非常自然的事情。其中的诀窍在于选择一个与你天性完美契合的行业，或者选择该行业中的某个角色，或是找到合适的联合创始人。这是个适配问题，也是个匹配问题。

If you enjoy making videos, then maybe you use one of the latest AI models, and you make some video, and you overlay onto it. But you have to do what is very natural to you. And part of the trick is picking a business where the thing that is natural to you lines up nicely, nicely, or picking a role within that business, or picking a cofounder in that business. It is a fit problem. It is a matching problem.

好消息是，在现代社会，机会是无限的。人群是无限的，平台是无限的，媒体形式是无限的。有无穷无尽的选择摆在面前。

The good news is in the modern world, there are unlimited opportunities. There are unlimited people. There are unlimited venues. There are unlimited forms of media. There's just an unlimited set of things to choose from.

那么如何找到你真正擅长的事情？你要尝试所有可能性，之所以要尝试所有，是因为你要付诸行动。你要置身竞技场中，努力攻克和解决问题。第一次尝试时，你可能会做一大堆并不享受的事情。

So how are you going to find the thing that you're really good at? You're gonna try everything, and you're gonna try everything because you're going to do. You're gonna be in the arena. You're be trying to tackle and solve problems. So the first time you do it, you might do a whole bunch of things you don't enjoy doing.

你可能做得不好。但最终你会聚焦于真正喜欢的事情，并找到那个契合点。我们过去讨论过如何成为所在领域的顶尖——不断重新定义你的事业直到实现这个目标。Akira还为此创作了歌曲。

You may not do them well. But eventually, you'll hone down on the thing that you really like to do, and then you'll hopefully find that fit. We talked about in the past how become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true. And Akira made a song out of it.

黎明Akira（愿上帝保佑他），我认为这完全正确。你要成为所在领域的世界最佳，但要不断重新定义这个领域直到实现目标。而重新定义唯一有效的方式是通过迭代过程，通过实践。所以你需要那个胡萝卜，需要那面旗帜，需要终点的奖励来推动你前进，你需要持续迭代。

Akira the dawn, God bless him. And I think that's absolutely true. You wanna be the best in the world at what you do, but keep redefining what you do until that's true. And the only way that redefining is going to work is through the process of iteration, through doing. So you need that carrot, you need that flag, you need that reward at the end to pull you forward into doing, and you need to iterate.

迭代不等于重复。迭代不是机械的。不是一万小时，而是一万次迭代。不是时间投入，而是学习循环。

And iterate does not mean repetition. Iterate is not mechanical. It's not ten thousand hours, it's 10,000 iterations. It's not time spent. It's learning loops.

迭代意味着：你采取行动，然后停下来，暂停并反思。评估效果优劣后进行调整，再尝试其他方法。接着再次暂停、反思、评估效果，继续调整尝试。这就是迭代的过程，也是学习的过程。

And what iteration means is you do something, and then you stop, and you pause, and you reflect. You see how well that worked or did not work, then you change it, then you try something else. Then you pause, reflect, see how well it did, and then you change it, and you try something else. And that's the process of iteration. And that's the process of learning.

所有学习系统都是这样运作的。进化就是迭代的过程，包含变异、复制和选择。淘汰那些无效的部分。这在技术和发明中同样适用——你会创新，创造新技术，然后尝试推广，要么在市场中存活，要么被淘汰。正如大卫·多伊奇在探索合理解释时所言，这确实是真理。

And all learning systems work this way. So evolution is iteration, where there's mutation, there's replication, and then there's selection. You cut out the stuff that didn't work. This is true in technology and invention, where you will innovate, you'll create a new technology, and then you try to scale it, and either survive in the marketplace or it'll get cut out. This is true, as David Deutsch talks about in the search for good explanations.

你提出一个猜想，这个猜想会接受批判，然后剔除无效的部分。这才是真正的科学方法。关键在于发现适合自己的自然之道，通过在竞技场中生活、高能动性、不断迭代直到领悟，最终成为世界顶尖——而这本质上就是做真实的自己。

You make a conjecture, that conjecture is subject to criticism, and then the stuff that doesn't work is weeded out. And this is the true scientific method. It is all about finding what is natural for yourself and doing it by living life in the arena, high agency, process of iteration until you figure it out, and then you're the best of the world at it, and it is just being yourself.

我们再来讨论一条推文，我初次看到时就喜欢，可能还转发了。人们转发往往是遇到那些自己尚未找到表达方式、但内心早已明白的观点——当它从隐性变为显性时，人们就会觉得'必须转发'。这条发布于1月17日的推文说：'把一切归咎于自己，以保持能动性。'我的理解是：对一切负责，正是在承担责任的过程中，你创造并保留了解决问题的能动性。如果你对问题没有责任，就永远无法解决它。

Let's talk about one more tweet, which I liked when I first saw it, or I might have retweeted it. I think people retweet things when they see something that they haven't figured out how to say yet, but they knew in their head, but it's just implicit, it hadn't been made explicit, I think that's when people are like, I need to retweet this. So this one was January 17, blame yourself for everything and preserve your agency. From my end, it's like, take responsibility for everything and in the process of taking responsibility for something, you create and preserve the agency to go solve that problem. If you're not responsible for the problem, there's no way for you to fix the problem.

针对你提到的'似曾相识但表达更佳'这点，爱默生就精于此道。他总能用优美方式表述——你会惊呼'这正是我所想所感，却不知如何表达'。他的说法是：'在每部天才作品中，我们都能认出自己曾否定的念头，它们带着某种疏离的威严回到我们身边。'我太爱这句话了。

Just to address your point of how it was something you already knew, but phrased in a way that you liked, Emerson did this all the time. He would phrase things in a beautiful way and you would oh, that's exactly what I was thinking and feeling, but I didn't know how to articulate it. And the way he put it was he said, in every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. And I just love that line.

这也是我在推特上努力实践的：用有趣的方式讲述真理。不仅要真实有趣，还必须蕴含真实的情感分量——必须是最近真正触动我、对我重要的内容。否则就是在造假。我从不会刻意构思推文。

It's what I try to do with Twitter, which is I try to say something true, but in an interesting way. And not only just true and interesting way to say it, but also it has to be something that really has emotional heft behind it. It has to have struck me recently and been important to me. Otherwise, I'm just faking it. I don't sit around trying to think up tweets to write.

更多是当某事发生、情感上触动我时，我会以特定方式整合它。我会验证：这是真的吗？如果觉得在当前关注背景下基本属实，又能用便于记忆的方式表达，就会发布。对理解者来说，这并非新鲜事。

It's more that something happens to me, something affects me emotionally, and then I synthesize it in a certain way. I test it. I'm like, is this true? And if I feel like it's true or mostly true or true in the context that I care about, and if I can say it in some way that'll help me stick in my mind, then I just send it out there. And it's nothing new for the people who get it.

若表达无趣，就成了陈词滥调；若听众耳熟能详，也是陈词滥调。但若表达新颖，就可能唤醒重要记忆，或将他们的具体知识转化为更普遍的认知。这个过程对我很有益，希望他人亦然。关于这条具体推文，我注意到人们总爱愤世嫉俗，比如声称'所有财富都被银行家之流窃取'，或说裙带资本家、寡头们是窃贼。

If it's not said in an interesting way, then it's a cliche. If they've heard it too much, it's a cliche. But if it's said in an interesting way, then it may remind them of something that was important, or it might convert their specific knowledge or might be a hook for converting their specific knowledge into more general knowledge in their own minds. So I find that process useful for myself, and hopefully others do too. Now, for this specific tweet, I just noticed this tendency where people are very cynical, and they'll say, all the wealth is stolen, for example, by banksters and the like, or crony capitalists, or what have you, or just outright thieves or oligarchs.

如果你曾是罪犯，你就无法在这个世界崛起；如果你是穷孩子，你就无法在这个世界崛起；如果你属于这个种族或民族，出生在那个国家，或是身患残疾、失明等，你就无法在这个世界崛起。问题在于，是的，世界上确实存在真正的障碍。这不是一个公平的竞技场，公平只存在于孩子的想象中，现实中无处可寻。

You can't rise up in this world if you're ex. You can't rise up in this world if you're a poor kid. You can't rise up in this world if you are from this race or ethnicity, if you were born in that country, or if you're lame or crippled or blind or what have you. And the problem with this is that, yes, there are real hindrances in the world. It is not a level playing field, and fair is something that only exists in a child's imagination and cannot be pinned down in any real way.

但世界并非全靠运气。事实上，你知道这点，因为在你的生活中，有些行为确实带来了好结果。你也知道如果当初没做那些事，就不会有那些好结果。所以你完全能够改变局面，这不全是运气。

But the world is not entirely luck. In fact, you know that because in your own life, there are things that you have done that have led to good outcomes. And you know that if you had not done that thing, it would not have led to that good outcome. So you can absolutely move the needle. And it's not all luck.

特别是当你谈论的时间跨度越长，活动强度越大，迭代次数越多，投入的思考和选择越多，运气的作用就越小。它会逐渐淡出视野。举个简单例子——虽然大多数人可能不爱听，因为他们不在硅谷——但二十年前我在硅谷遇到的每一个聪明人，每一个，那些年轻有为的，如今个个都成功了。每一个都是。我想不出例外。

And especially the longer the time frame you're talking about, the more intense the activity, the more iteration you take, and the more thinking and choice you apply into it, the less luck matters. It recedes into the distance. To give you a simple example, which most people won't love because they're not in Silicon Valley, but every brilliant person I met in Silicon Valley twenty years ago, every single one, the young brilliant ones, every single one is successful. Every single one. I cannot think of an exception.

我本应该回头给他们的才华做个排名。顺便说，这就是Y Combinator大规模在做的事。对吧？多棒的机制。所以这确实有效。

I should have gone back and just indexed them all based on their brilliance. By the way, that's what Y Combinator does at scale. Right? What a great mechanism. So it works.

如果人们坚持二十年，这方法就有效。你可能会说：说得轻巧，老兄，那是硅谷人的特权。但这里没人天生就在硅谷，他们都是搬来的。他们搬来是因为想和聪明人为伍，想成为高能动性的人。

If people stick at it for twenty years, it works. Now you might say, easy for you to say, man, that's for the people in Silicon Valley. No one was born here. They all moved here. They moved here because they wanted to be where the other smart kids were and because they wanted to be high agency.

所以主观能动性确实有效，但如果你计较时间长短，你会失望的。你会过早放弃。所以你需要更高层次的动力。这就是为什么埃隆要去火星，为什么山姆要发明AGI，为什么五十年前的八十年代，史蒂夫·乔布斯就想要造一本大小的电脑——他当时说的就是iPad。

So agency does work, but if you're keeping track of the time period, you're gonna be disappointed. You'll give up too soon. So you need a higher motivator. That's why Elon goes to Mars, and that's why Sam wants to invent AGI, and that's why Steve Jobs wanted to build fifty years ago, in the eighties, he was talking about building a computer that would fit in a book. He was talking about the iPad.

正是这些长远愿景支撑着你度过漫长岁月，真正建成你想建造的东西，到达你想去的地方。愤世嫉俗的信念会自我实现，悲观信念就像你骑着摩托车却盯着本应避开的砖墙——你会不知不觉就撞上去。所以你必须保持自己的主观能动性。

So it's these very long visions that sustain you over the long periods of time to actually build the thing you wanna build and get to where you wanna get. So a cynical be belief is self fulfilling. A pessimistic belief is like you're driving the motorcycle, but you're looking at the brick wall that you're supposed to turn away from. You will turn into the brick wall without even realizing it. So you have to preserve your agency.

你生来就拥有能动性。孩子们具有高度的能动性，他们会去争取自己想要的东西。如果他们想要什么，看到了就会去拿。你必须保持这种能动性。

You're born with agency. Children are high agency. They go get what they want. If they want something, they see it, they go get it. You have to preserve your agency.

你必须保持自己能改变事物的信念。你必须对发生在自己身上的一切坏事负责。这是一种心态，或许有些自欺，但非常利己。事实上，如果你能更进一步，把发生在自己身上的所有好事都归功于运气，可能也会有所帮助。

You have to preserve your belief that you can change things. You have to take responsibility for everything bad that happens to you. And this is a mindset. Maybe it's a little fake, but it's very self serving. And in fact, if you can go the extra mile and just attribute everything good that happens to you to luck, that might be helpful too.

但在某种程度上，真相非常重要。你不想自欺欺人。根据我的观察，事实是那些非常努力、全心投入、不放弃并在足够长的时间尺度上对结果负责的人，最终都会在他们专注的领域取得成功。每个成功案例都明白这一点。理查德·费曼曾说，他并非天才。

But at some level, truth is very important. You don't wanna fake it. From what I have observed, the truth of the matter is people who work very hard and apply themselves and don't give up and take responsibility for the outcomes on a long enough time scale end up succeeding in whatever they are focused on. And every success case knows this. Richard Feynman used to say that he wasn't a genius.

他只是一个全心投入并非常努力的男孩。是的，他显然非常聪明，但那是必要条件，而非充分条件。我们都知道那种聪明但懒惰的人的刻板印象。我喜欢调侃我所有的朋友，包括尼维，我注意到这些人的一个问题就是，你们的实际表现远低于潜力。

He was just a boy who applied himself and worked really hard. Yeah. He was very smart, obviously, but that was necessary, but not sufficient. We all know the trope of the smart lazy guy. And I like to harass all of my friends, including Nivi, that one of the problems I noticed with these guys, you're just operating way below potential.

你的潜力比你现在的水平高得多。你必须将其中一部分转化为动能。讽刺的是，这会提升你的潜力，因为我们不是静态的生物，而是动态的。你会通过实践学到更多。

Your potential is so much higher than where you are. You have to apply some of that into kinetic. And ironically, that will raise your potential because we're not static creatures. We're dynamic creatures, and you will learn more. You will learn by doing.

所以别再找借口了，直接上场吧。

So just stop making excuses and get in the ring.

你也喜欢叔本华。你从叔本华那里学到了什么，或者他的作品中有没有什么让你感到意外的内容？

You also like Schopenhauer. What have you learned from Schopenhauer, or is there anything surprising in his work?

哦，叔本华并不适合所有人，而且有许多不同的叔本华。他著述颇丰，你可以读他那些晦涩的哲学著作，比如《作为意志和表象的世界》，那是写给其他哲学家看的；或者读他更实用的作品，比如关于存在之虚妄的论述。他是历史上少数敢于直抒己见的作家，只写自己确信的真理。虽然未必总是正确，但从不欺瞒读者，这种特质跃然纸上。

Oh, Schopenhauer is not for everybody, and there are many different Schopenhauer's. Like, he wrote quite a bit, and you could read his more obscure philosophical texts like The World Is Will an Idea, where he was writing for other philosophers, or you could read his more practical stuff like on the vanity of existence. He was one of the few people in history who wrote unflinchingly. He wrote what he believed to be true. He wasn't always correct, but he never lied to you, and that comes across.

他对事物的思考极为深刻。不太在意他人评价，只确信笔下所写皆为真理。行文也毫无矫饰，从不堆砌华丽辞藻。

He thought about things very deeply. He didn't care that much what people thought of him. All he knew was what I'm writing down, I know to be true. He also didn't put on any errors. He didn't use fancy language.

他无意取悦读者。人们称他为悲观主义者，我认为这有失公允。虽然其世界观可被解读为悲观，但我只在想直面残酷真相时读他。叔本华对我的独特意义在于：他彻底解放了我的本真。

He didn't try to impress you. People call him a pessimist. I don't think that's entirely fair. I think his worldview could be interpreted as pessimistic, but I just read him when I wanna read a harsh dose of truth. What Schopenhauer did uniquely for me is that he gave me complete permission to be me.

他完全漠视大众观点，对平庸思维的鄙夷显露无遗。虽然我未必认同这点——我比他更信奉平等主义——但他确实赋予你做自己的勇气。若你擅长某事，不必羞怯，坦然承认这份才能。

He just did not care at all what the masses thought, and his disdain for common thinking comes out. Now I don't necessarily share that. I'm a little bit more of a egalitarian than he was, but he really gives you permission to be yourself. So if you're good at something, don't be shy about it. Accept that you're good at something.

这对我曾是难题，因为我们都渴望合群。想在群体中融洽相处，就不能太过突出。俗话说'枪打出头鸟'。但若要成就非凡，就必须在某些方面押注自己。若你在某领域出类拔萃，就需要承认这份卓越——至少努力做到不因他人看法而动摇。

And that was hard for me because we all wanna get along. If you wanna get along in a group, you don't wanna stand out too much. You know, it's the old line that tall poppy gets cut. But if you're going to do anything exceptional, you do have to bet on yourself in some way. And if you're exceptional at something, that does require you acknowledging that you're exceptional at it, or at least trying to be and not worrying about what other people think.

但也不能自欺欺人。在投资界，总会遇到自称天赋异禀却认知失调的人。不，自我宣称的卓越不算数。真正的卓越需要他人认可——当然你母亲的评价除外。

You don't wanna be delusional either. Anyone who's been in the investing business is constantly hit by people who say, I'm so great at something, and they're a little delusional. No. You don't get to say you're exceptional at something. Other people get to say you're exceptional at something, and your mom doesn't count.

来自他人的反馈通常是虚假的。奖项是假的。评论家是假的。亲友的赞美也是假的。他们或许试图真诚，但淹没在虚妄的汪洋中，你终究得不到真实的反馈。

Feedback from other people is usually fake. Awards are fake. Critics are fake. Kudos from your friends and family are fake. They might try to be genuine, but it's lost in such a sea of fakeness that you're not going to get real feedback.

真实的反馈来自自然界中的自由市场。物理学是残酷的——你的产品要么能用，要么不能用。自由市场也是残酷的——人们要么购买，要么不买。

Real feedback comes from free markets in nature. Physics is harsh. Either your product worked or it didn't. Free markets are harsh. Either people buy it or they don't.

但来自他人的反馈是虚假的。你无法从群体中获得好的反馈，因为群体只是在试图维持和谐。个人追求真理，群体追求共识。一个不和谐的群体会分崩离析。

But feedback from other people is fake. You can't get good feedback from groups because groups are just trying to get along. Individuals search for truth. Groups search for consensus. A group that doesn't get along decoheres.

它会瓦解。群体越大，你能从中获得的有价值反馈就越少。你不应该过度依赖来自母亲、朋友、家人的反馈，甚至不应该依赖颁奖典礼和评奖体系。如果你的公司以登上杂志封面或赢得行业奖项为目标，那你就失败了。你需要的是客户。

It falls apart. And the larger the group, the less good feedback you're gonna get from it. You don't want to necessarily rely on feedback from your mom, or your friends, or your family, or even from award ceremonies and award systems. If you're optimizing your company to end up on the cover of a magazine, or to win an industry award, you're failing. You need customers.

这才是真实的反馈。你需要来自自然的反馈——你的火箭发射成功了吗？无人机飞起来了吗？3D打印机是否在预期时间、成本预算内，以规定精度完成了打印？

That's your real feedback. You need feedback from nature. Did your rocket launch? Did your drone fly? Did your three d printer print the object within the tolerances that it was supposed to, and the time it was supposed to, and the cost budget that it was supposed to.

自我欺骗很容易。被他人蒙蔽也很容易。但你永远无法欺骗大自然。

It's very easy to fool yourself. It's very easy to be fooled by others. It is impossible to fool mother nature.

与叔本华不同，你是一位工业哲学家，就像工业设计师。你的哲学是为大众设计的。和推特上的其他人一样，我们进行哲学思考是为了广泛传播。人们建议你阅读经典著作，读亚里士多德、利希滕斯坦等所谓伟大哲学家的作品。我几乎读过所有那些东西，但从中获得的启发寥寥无几。

Unlike Schopenhauer, you're an industrial philosopher, like an industrial designer. Your philosophy is designed for the masses. Like everybody else on Twitter, we're philosophizing for wide adoption. People suggest you read the great books, read Aristotle and Litkenstein and all the supposedly great philosophers. I've read almost all that stuff, and I've gotten very little value from it.

真正让我受益的反而是推特上像你这样的人的哲学思考。如果有人想读哲学，我会直接建议他们跳过传统哲学，去读大卫·多伊奇的作品。

Where I have gotten value is the philosophizing of people on Twitter, like you. Anybody who wants to read philosophy, I would just tell them to skip it and go read David Deutsch.

你说得没错。我完全无法忍受你提到的那些哲学家，连柏拉图我也不喜欢。其他哲学著作我都是草草翻阅就放下了，因为它们总是在细枝末节上纠缠晦涩的论点，试图构建包罗万象的世界理论。就连叔本华也难逃这个窠臼。

You're not wrong. I can't stand any of the philosophers you talked about. I don't like Plato either. Every other piece of philosophy I picked up and put down relatively quickly because they're just making very obscure arguments over minutiae and trying to come up with all encompassing theories of the world. Even Schopenhauer falls into that trap.

当他试图与其他哲学家对话时，表现最为糟糕。我欣赏的是他的短篇随笔——那几乎像是他在推特上发的推文。他若生在当代定能称霸推特圈，因为他的思想密度极高，论证缜密，善用精炼的案例和比喻。

When he tries to talk to other philosophers, he's at his worst. When I like him is in his shorter essays. That's where he almost writes like he's on Twitter. He would have dominated Twitter. He has high density of ideas, very well thought through, good minimal examples and analogies.

随便读一段就能让你思考一小时。多亏读了他的作品，我现在更会写作、更擅思考，也更懂识人。不过他写于十九世纪初期，一旦涉及科学、医学或政治话题就明显过时了，那些内容早已不适用。

You can pick it up, read one paragraph, and you're thinking for the next hour. I think of a better writer, a better thinker, and a better judge of people and character, thanks to what I read from him. Now he's writing from the early part of the nineteenth century. Whenever he wanders into topics that are scientific or medical or political, he's obviously off base. That stuff doesn't apply anymore.

但他笔下的人性洞察却历久弥新。关于人性的论述，我推荐阅读林迪效应筛选出的古籍——那些经受住时间考验的著作。若想掌握实用技能来谋生，就该追逐前沿知识，虽然这类知识时效性强淘汰也快。这两种选择都很合理。

But when he's writing about human nature, that is timeless. When it comes to anything about human nature, I say go read the Linde books, the older books, the ones that have survived the test of time. But if you want to develop specific knowledge, get paid for it, do something useful, then you wanna stay on the bleeding edge. That knowledge is going to be more timely and obsolete more quickly. Those two make sense.

我无法理解的是去读那些既非林迪效应筛选、又不涉及人性主题的陈旧读物。我也不愿碰知识密度低的书，比如历史著作。虽然我喜欢威尔·杜兰特的《历史的教训》——那是他12卷本文明史的精要，但我不会去啃那套巨著，毕竟我已读过不少历史书。

What doesn't make sense to me is just reading stuff that's not Lindy or that's not about human nature, but is old. I also shy away from stuff that's low density in the learnings, like history books. I like the Lessons of History by Will Durant because it's a summarization of the story of civilization, which was his large 12 volume series. But I'm not gonna go read the 12 volume series. I've read plenty of history.

我知道他引用这些内容的背景，所以不会盲目接受他的宏观概念。但现阶段的我只想阅读高密度作品，你可以称之为'抖音症候群'或'推特世代'，但这其实是对生命的尊重——我们已掌握大量数据和知识，

I know that he's referring to these kinds of things, so I'm not just taking his word for it on high level concept. But at the same time, at this point in my life, I want to read high density works. You can call it the TikTok disease or the Twitter generation, but it's also just being respectful of our time. We already have a lot of data. We have some knowledge.

现在需要的是智慧，是能与我们脑中已有信息相联结的通用原则。我们确实该读高密度作品，而我认为叔本华就是典范。我钟爱的作家都思想密集，比如多伊奇的作品就充满洞见。

Now we want wisdom. Now we want the generalized principles that we can attach to all of the other information we already have in our minds. We do wanna read high density work, but I would argue that Schopenhauer is very high density work. All my favorite authors are very high density. Deutsch is extremely high density.

博尔赫斯的作品信息密度极高。特德·姜的作品信息密度极高。早期的尼尔·斯蒂芬森作品信息密度也极高。后来他开始追求高产、高密度、全方位的高标准。但最优秀的作家都尊重读者的时间，叔本华的作品也完全符合这一特点。

Borges is very high density. Ted Chiang is very high density. The old Neil Stevenson was very high density. Then he just cut high volume, high density, high everything. But the best authors respect the reader's time, and Schopenhauer is very much in that vein.

关于知识哲学（即认识论）的前沿研究，你基本上可以跳过所有内容直接阅读大卫·多伊奇。

For the state of the art on the philosophy of knowledge, which people call epistemology, you can basically skip everything and jump straight to David Deutsch.

我认为没错。如果只想了解认识论，读大卫·多伊奇就够了，句号。不过对某些人来说，了解历史背景、反对观点和他的思想渊源会更有帮助。那些根深蒂固的知识理论——比如确证的真信念理论或归纳知识论——不仅通过学校教育，更通过日常经验深刻影响着我们。归纳法看起来理应奏效。

I think that's right. If you just wanna know epistemology, read David Deutsch, full stop. That said, for some people, it helps to know the history, the counterarguments, where he's coming from. The existing theories of knowledge, like the justified true belief theory or the inductive theory of knowledge, these are so deeply embedded into us both by school learning, but also by everyday experience. Induction seems like it should work.

你每天看到太阳升起，就认为明天太阳也会升起。这似乎是常识。太多人相信这个了，如果你直接读多伊奇，会看到他驳斥这些观点，但你自己可能缺乏扎实的理论基础。于是你可能会觉得存在反例。我多年前第一次读多伊奇时就没完全理解。

You watch the sun rise every day, the sun is gonna rise tomorrow. That just seems like common sense. So many people believe in that, that if you just read Deutsch, you would see him shooting down these things, but you yourself would not have those things in solid footing. So you might imagine some counterexample exists. When I first read Deutsch a long time ago, I didn't quite get it.

我当时把它当作普通物理学家的著作来读。我以同等的思考时间与尊重态度阅读保罗·戴维斯、卡洛·罗韦利和大卫·多伊奇。后来发现我错了——多伊奇的思想层次要深刻得多。他的各种理论相互连贯，构成了一个各部分相互强化的完整世界观。

I treated it just like any other book that any other physic had written. So I would read Paul Davies, and I would read Carlo Rovelli, I would read Deutsch, and I would treat them the same level of contemplation, time, and respect. It turned out I was wrong. It turned out that Deutsch was actually operating at a much deeper level. He had a lot of different theories that coherently hung together, and they create a world philosophy where all the pieces reinforce each other.

先读其他人的著作或许有帮助，不必直接跳过多伊奇，但我肯定会建议从他开始。如果存疑，可以再读其他人的作品，然后重新研读多伊奇。这时你就能看出他如何回应那些问题。多伊奇本人会推荐你读波普尔，声称自己只是在复述波普尔的观点。

It might help to read others and not just skip to Deutsch, but I would definitely start with Deutsch. Then if you're not sure about it, I would read some of the others, and then I'll come back to Deutsch and try again. And then you'll see how he addresses those issues. Deutsch himself would refer you to Popper. He would say, oh, I'm just repeating Popper.

这并不完全准确。我觉得波普尔的作品更难接近、更难读懂、文风也更晦涩。不过大卫·多伊奇和布雷特·霍尔可能会反对我的看法，他们认为波普尔的文字非常清晰，而我却觉得艰深难懂。

Not quite true. I find Popper much less approach approachable, much harder to read, much less clear of a writer. Although, I think here, both Deutsch and Brett Hall would disagree with me. They find Popper very lucid. I find him very difficult to read.

不知为何，我觉得德义志的著作更容易读懂。或许是因为波普尔花了更多时间阐述核心观点。波普尔是为哲学家写作，而德义志不是为哲学家写作，他甚至不是为科学家写作。

For whatever reason, I find Deutsch easier to read. Maybe because Popper spent a lot more time elucidating core points. Popper was writing for philosophers. Deutsch is not writing for philosophers. Deutsch is not even writing for scientists.

德义志也不是为你写作。我感觉他是在为自己写作——只是在阐明自己的思想体系如何环环相扣。我也不认为仅阅读认识论部分就能获得德义志思想的全部价值，尽管那确实是所有人应该入门的起点，即《无限起源》的前三章。

Deutsch is not writing for you. I get the feeling Deutsch is writing for himself. He's just elucidating his own thoughts and how they all connect together. I also don't think you're gonna get maximal value out of Deutsch just reading the epistemology, although that is absolutely where everybody should start. That's the first three chapters at the beginning of infinity.

讽刺的是，《无限起源》开头几章和结尾几章反而是最浅显易懂的。中间部分涉及量子计算、量子物理、进化论等内容，读起来很吃力。我认为读者在这里容易卡壳，倒不一定需要数理背景，但至少要熟悉科学概念和原理。而且他在为多重宇宙理论强力辩护，这对大多数人来说太超前了——他们根本不关心量子力学的观察者坍缩理论。

Ironically, in the beginning of Infinity, the first few chapters and the last few chapters are the easiest and the most accessible. The middle is a slog because that goes into quantum computation, quantum physics, evolution, etcetera. That's where I think people struggle because it does require not necessarily a mathematical or scientific background, but at least a comfort level with scientific concepts and principles. And he's making a strong argument for the multiverse, which most people don't have a dog in that fight. They haven't thought that far ahead.

通过通读德义志的著作，我看到了他理论体系的自洽性——每个环节都相互关联。他提出量子计算理论，将丘奇-图灵猜想扩展为丘奇-图灵-德义志猜想时，其实是为了找到证伪自己多重宇宙理论的方法，而这个理论本身正是量子物理理论。

They're not wedded to the observer collapse theory of quantum mechanics because they don't really care about quantum mechanics. It doesn't impact their everyday life. What I got out of reading all of Deutsch was I got to see how his theory all hangs together. Every piece touches upon and relies upon another piece. He actually came up with the theory of quantum computation and extended the Church Turing conjecture into the Church Turing Deutsch conjecture when he was trying to come up with a way to falsify his theory of the multiverse, which was a quantum physics theory.

为此他必须发明量子计算，因为要设计证伪多重宇宙的实验，他需要在脑海中模拟一个通用人工智能（AGI），进入这个AGI的大脑思考：如果AGI在观察某物，会发生波函数坍缩吗？但观测必须在大脑内部进行。那么如何进入量子AGI的大脑？我们连量子计算机都还没有。

And to do that, he had to invent quantum computation, because to invent the experiment for how to falsify the multiverse theory, he had to, in his mind, imagine an AGI and get inside the AGI's brain and say if that AGI is observing something, does it collapse? But now it needs to be inside the brain. Well, how do I get inside the brain of a quantum AGI? How do you even create a quantum AGI? We don't have quantum computers.

于是量子计算机成为必要。他由此提出量子计算理论，开创了整个量子计算领域。这个例子完美展现了量子物理与量子计算的共生关系。我认为跨学科阅读德义志的著作很有裨益。

Okay. We need quantum computers. So he came out with the theory of quantum computation, and that launched the field of quantum computing. That's an example of how quantum physics and quantum computing are inextricably linked. I think reading Deutsch across all the different disciplines is very useful.

即便当他讨论进化论中的手段与目的理论时，也会直接切入认识论、猜想与批判的领域。这远远超越了他对财富的定义——即你能实现的物理转换集合。这种定义同时涵盖资本与知识，并清晰表明知识才是更重要的组成部分。这些洞见完全可以应用于商业领域和个人生活，既适用于国家财富，也适用于个人财富。

Even when he talks about means and mean theory, that comes from evolution, but crosses over straight into epistemology and conjecture and criticism. And it reaches far beyond his definition of wealth, the set of physical transformations that you can affect. That takes into account both capital and knowledge, and it clearly shows that knowledge is a bigger component. And then that can be brought into business and applied into your everyday life. It can apply to the wealth of nations, and it can apply to the wealth of individuals.

因此存在许多相互关联的部分。优秀作家的作品具有极高的密度与互联性，其本质是分形的——你会在自身准备就绪的层次上邂逅知识。不必完全理解，这正是学习的本质。你初读时可能掌握20%，重读时达到25%。

So there are a lot of parts that interconnect together. Good writers write with such high density and interconnectedness that their works are fractal in nature, you will meet the knowledge at the level at which you are ready to receive it. You don't have to understand it all. This is the nature of learning. You read it, you got 20% of it, then you go back through it, you got 25% of it.

如果你同时收听布雷特·霍尔的播客，现在能理解28%。接着使用Grock或ChatGPT提问，深入钻研某些部分，就能掌握31%。所有知识都是作者与观察者/读者之间的对话，双方必须达到特定层次才能吸收。当你准备好接收不同片段时自会获得，但无论处于何种水平，只要能够交流并阅读语言，就总能有所收获。他指出优秀的解释难以被篡改。

You listen to one of Brett Hall's podcasts alongside, now you got 28 of it. Now you go to Grock or ChatGPT, you ask us some questions, you dig in on some part, now you got 31% of it. All knowledge is a communication between the author and the observer or the reader, and you both have to be at a certain level to absorb. When you're ready to receive different pieces, you will receive different pieces, but you'll always get something out of it, no matter what level you're at, as long as you can even just communicate and read the language. He says that good explanations are hard to vary.

当你回顾一个精妙的解释时会感叹：这怎么可能有其他形式？这就是唯一可行的方案。所有部件以相互制约的方式严丝合缝，最终产生意想不到的涌现特性、复杂性或能解释一切的结果。这不仅适用于精妙解释，也适用于产品开发。

So when you look back on a good explanation, you say, well, how could it have been otherwise? This is the only way this thing could have worked. All these different parts fit together and constrain each other in such a way that there's now some emergent property or some complexity or some outcome that you didn't expect, some explanation that neatly explains everything. That doesn't just apply to good explanations. It applies to product development.

优秀产品同样难以改动。看看iPhone这个光滑完美的艺术品——自初代以来其形态基本未变：整块触摸屏、嵌入式电池、完美贴合口袋的流线设计，堪称个人便携计算机的柏拉图式理想。这样的产品难以变更。

Good products are hard to vary. Go look at the iPhone, this smooth, perfect, beautiful jewel. The form factor hasn't really changed that much since the original one. It's all around the single screen, the multi touch embedding the battery, making it fit into your pocket, making it smooth and sliding in your hand, essentially creating the platonic ideal of the truly personal pocketable computer. So that product is hard to vary.

苹果及其竞争对手历经16代iPhone都未能实质改变其形态。虽能升级组件提升性能，但核心形态始终难以突破。正如圣埃克苏佩里那句名言：飞机机翼的完美不在于无可添加，而在于无可删减。

Both Apple and its competitors have tried to vary it across 16 generations of iPhone, and they haven't been able to materially vary it. They've been able to improve the components and improve some of the underlying capabilities, but, materially, the form factor is hard to vary. They designed the right thing. There's the famous saying, I think, from Antoine de Saint Exupery, where he says, the airplane wing is perfect not because there's nothing left to add, but because there's nothing left to take away. That airplane wing is hard to vary.

当我们设计出理想的火星飞船时，我敢打赌在未来很长时间里——无论是整体架构还是细节设计——都难以变更，除非出现突破性技术。就像内燃机的基本设计在电池技术成熟前难以改变，而如今的电动车同样难以改进。事实上已有设计师抱怨现代社会产品日趋同质化——这是Instagram的锅吗？

When we figure out the proper design of the spacecraft to get to Mars, I will bet you that both at a high level and in the details for quite a long time, that thing will be hard to vary until there's some breakthrough technology. The basic internal combustion engine design was hard to vary until we got batteries good enough, and then we created the electric car. And now the electric car is hard to vary. In fact, there's a complaint now among some designers that in modern society, products and objects are starting to look all the same. Is that because of Instagram?

原因何在？至少汽车领域，它们都经过风洞测试——这是最高效的设计方案。流线型外观的趋同，正是因为所有厂商都在寻找空气阻力最小的形态。这种设计若想保持效率，确实难以做出差异化改动。

Why is that? Well, at least in the car case, they all look like they've been through a wind tunnel design because that is the most efficient design. The reason they all look swoopy and streamlined is because they're all going through a wind tunnel, they're trying to find the thing that cuts through the air with minimal resistance. And so they do all end up looking the same because that design is hard to vary without losing efficiency.

我们都看过SpaceX火箭猛禽发动机的照片。如果你观察各个迭代版本，会发现它们从易于修改逐渐变得难以修改，因为最新版本几乎没有多少可以随意调整的部件。早期版本有无数可调节的零件——厚度、宽度、材料等等。而当前版本几乎没留下任何可供操作的部件。

We've all seen the pictures of the Raptor engine for the SpaceX rockets. And if you look at the various iterations, they go from easy to vary to hard to vary because the most recent version just doesn't have that many parts that you can fool around with. The earlier versions have a million different parts where you could change the thickness of it, the width of it, the material, and so on. The current version barely has any parts left for you to do anything with.

复杂性理论中有个观点：当你在自然界中发现一个复杂系统在运作时，它通常是由一个非常简单的系统或事物经过反复迭代产生的。最近我们在AI研究中就看到了这种现象——只需将越来越庞大的数据输入简单算法，它们就会持续变得更聪明。而反向操作往往效果不佳。

There's a theory on complexity theory that whenever you find a complex system working in nature, it's usually the output of a very simple system or thing that was iterated over and over. We're seeing this lately in AI research. You're just taking very simple algorithms and dumping more and more data into them. They keep getting smarter. What doesn't work as well is the reverse.

当你设计出非常复杂的系统，再试图构建大型可运行系统时，它往往会崩溃——因为系统过于复杂。因此优秀的产品设计需要不断迭代，直到找到真正有效的简单方案。通常你会先添加许多不必要的元素，然后再回头从这些噪音中重新提炼出简洁的本质。个人电脑领域就是明证——Mac操作系统至今仍比iOS难用得多。

When you design a very complex system, and then you try to make a functioning large system out of that, it just falls apart. There's too much complexity in it. So a lot of product design is iterating on your own designs until you find the simple thing that works. And often, you've added stuff around it that you don't need, and then you have to go back and extract the simplicity back out of the noise. You can see this in personal computing, where Mac OS is still quite a bit harder to use than iOS.

iOS更接近操作系统的柏拉图理想形态，虽然基于大语言模型、能用自然语言交互的操作系统可能更接近这个理想。但最终要实现规模化，你必须做减法。猛禽发动机就是典范——当你确认有效方案后，就能识别冗余部分进行删减。这正是马斯克的核心原则之一：在优化系统之前——那应该是最后步骤——首先要做的是质疑需求本身。

IOS is closer to the platonic ideal of an operating system, Although an LLM based operating system might be even closer speaking in natural language, eventually, you have to remove things to get them to scale. And the Raptor engine is an example of that. As you figure out what works, then you realize what's unnecessary, and you can remove parts. And this is one of Musk's great driving principles, where he basically says, before you optimize a system, that's among the last things that you do. Before you start trying to figure out how to make something more efficient, The first thing you do is you question the requirements.

你会问：这个需求为什么存在？约根森新书提到的'埃隆方法'指出：首先要追溯需求的源头个体，而非提出需求的部门。需求必须源自具体个人——是谁提出了这个需求？你要回头问：你真的需要这个吗？

You're like, why does the requirement even exist? One of the Elon methods in Jorgensen's new book is you first go and you've tracked down the requirement, and not which department came up with the requirement. The requirement has to come from an individual. Who's the individual who said, this is what I want? You go back and say, do you really need this?

你要剔除这个需求。当清除所有非必要需求后，剩下的核心需求就变少了。接着你开始精简部件，在满足绝对必要需求的前提下尽可能减少零件数量。完成这些之后，或许才该考虑优化问题——比如如何最高效地制造这个部件并安装在正确位置。

You eliminate the requirement. And then once you've eliminated the requirements that are unnecessary, then you have a smaller number of requirements. Now you have parts, and you try to get rid of as many parts as you can to fulfill the requirements that are absolutely necessary. And then after that, maybe then you start thinking about optimization. And now you're trying to figure out how can I manufacture this part and fit it in the right place most efficiently?

最后阶段才会考虑成本效益和规模经济等问题。将伟大产品从零到一打造出来最关键的人物，通常是能在大脑中构建完整问题图景的创始人——他们能做出权衡取舍，理解每个组件存在的理由。他们不必亲自设计每个部件或了解制造细节，但必须能判断'这个零件为什么在这里'——如果移除A部件，BCD等部件会受什么影响，相关需求和考量会如何变化。这种对产品的全局观才是核心。

And then finally, you might get into cost efficiencies and economies of scale and those sorts of things. The most critical person to take a great product from zero to one is the single person, usually the founder, who can hold the entire problem in their head and make the trade offs and understand why each component is where it is. And they don't necessarily need to be the person designing each component, manufacturing, or knowing all the ins and outs, but they do need to be able to understand why is this piece here. And if part a gets removed, then what happens to parts b, c, d, e, and their requirements and considerations. It's that holistic view of the whole product.

你会在猛禽发动机设计中看到这一点。埃隆举的例子我觉得很好，他当时想提高特斯拉电池上玻璃纤维垫的生产效率。于是他去了那条耗时过长的生产线，放下睡袋，直接驻扎在那里。他们试图优化给电池粘贴玻璃纤维垫的机器人，想更高效地固定或加快生产线速度，最终成功了。

You'll see this in the Raptor engine design. The example that Elon gives that I thought was a good one, he was trying to get these fiberglass mats on top of the Tesla batteries produced more efficiently. So he went to the line where it was taking too long, put his sleeping bag down, and he just stayed at the line. And they tried to optimize the robot that was gluing the fiberglass mats to the batteries. They were trying to attach them more efficiently or speed up that line, and they did.

他们设法改进了一些，但速度仍然慢得令人沮丧。最后他问：为什么要有这个要求？为什么要在电池上放玻璃纤维垫？电池组的人说其实是为了降噪。所以得去找噪声与振动团队沟通。

They managed to improve it a bit, but it was still frustratingly slow. And finally, he said, why is this requirement here? Why are we putting fiberglass mats on top of the batteries? The battery guy said it's actually because of noise reduction. So you gotta go talk to the noise and vibration team.

于是他找到噪声与振动团队，问为什么需要这些垫子？噪声振动问题是什么？结果对方说：不，根本没有。

So he goes to the noise and vibration team. He's like, why do we have these mats here? What is the noise and vibration issue? And they're like, no. No.

根本不存在噪声振动问题。放垫子是因为发热问题——电池会起火。于是他又回去问电池组：我们真的需要这个吗？他们也说：不需要。

There's no noise and vibration issue. They're there because of heat. The battery catches fire. And then it goes back to the battery to be like, do we need this? And they're like, no.

这里不存在火灾隐患，也不是隔热问题。这个设计已经过时了。原本每个团队都按自己接受过的安全测试方式操作——他们曾通过安装麦克风监测噪音来测试，最终认定不需要这个设计。

There's not a fire issue here. It's not a heat protection issue. That's obsolete. It's a noise and vibration issue. They had each been doing things the way they were trained to do and the way things had been tested it for safety, and they tested it by putting microphones on there and tracking the noise, and they decided they didn't need it.

于是他们取消了这个部件。在非常复杂的系统和设计中，这种情况经常发生。有趣的是，人们都说我是通才，这其实是他们逃避成为专家的说辞。但真正应该追求的是成为博学者——这种通才能掌握每个专业至少80%的核心，从而做出明智的权衡。

And so they eliminated the part. This happens a lot with very complex systems and complex designs. It's funny. Everybody says I'm a generalist, which is their way of copying out on being a specialist. But really what you wanna be is a polymath, which is a generalist who can pick up every specialty at least to the eighty twenty level so they can make smart trade offs.

我建议人们这样获得博学者能力——成为能掌握任何专业的通才：如果你要学习或上学，就去研究那些最具普适性的理论。

The way that I suggest people gain that polymath capability, being a generalist that can pick up any specialty, is if you are going to study something, if you are going to go to school, study the theories that have the most reach.

我会进一步总结并直接说：学习物理。一旦你学习物理，你就是在研究现实如何运作。如果你有扎实的物理基础，你可以掌握电气工程、计算机科学、材料科学、统计与概率，甚至数学——因为这些都包含其中，都是应用。我遇到的几乎所有领域最优秀的人都有物理背景。如果你没有物理背景，别哭。

I would summarize that further and just say study physics. Once you study physics, you're studying how reality works. And if you have a great background in physics, you can pick up electrical engineering, can pick up computer science, you can pick up material science, you can pick up statistics and probability, you can pick up mathematics because it's part of it, it's applied. The best people that I've met in almost any field have a physics background. If you don't have a physics background, don't cry.

我的物理背景很失败。你仍可以通过其他途径达到目标，但物理训练你与现实互动，它如此严苛，能击碎你所有美好的谬误。而如果你在社会科学领域，你可以持有各种古怪的信念。即使你掌握了社会科学中使用的深奥数学，你可能只有10%的真知，却拥有90%的谬误。物理的好消息是，你可以学习相当基础的物理。

I have a failed physics background. You can still get there the other ways, but physics trains you to interact with reality, and it is so unforgiving that it beats all the nice falsities out of you. Whereas if you're somewhere in social science, you can have all kinds of cuckoo beliefs. Even if you pick up some of the abtruse mathematics they use in social sciences, you may have 10% real knowledge, but you may have 90% false knowledge. The good news about physics is you can learn pretty basic physics.

你不必深入钻研夸克和量子物理等领域。只需从基础的小球滚斜坡开始，这实际上就是很好的背景知识。但我认为任何STEM学科都值得学习。如果你已错过选择学习方向的机会，那就与人合作。实际上，最优秀的人未必只学物理。

You don't have to go all the way deep into quarks and quantum physics and so on. You can just go with basic balls rolling down a slope, and it's actually a good backgrounder. But I think any of the STEM disciplines are worth studying. Now if you don't have the choice of what to study and you're already past that, just team up with people. Actually, the best people don't necessarily even just study physics.

他们是动手实践者。他们是建造者。他们不断创造东西。实践者总是处于知识前沿，因为他们总在用最新工具和零件打造酷炫事物。比如在无人机成为军用装备前就自制竞速无人机的人，或在机器人军用化前就制造格斗机器人的人，又或是因不满足于在学校使用电脑而组装个人电脑的人。

They're tinkerers. They're builders. They're building things. The tinkerers are always at the edge of knowledge because they're always using the latest tools and the latest parts to build the cool things. So it's the guy building the racing drone before drones are a military thing, or the guy building the fighting robots before robots are a military thing, or the person putting to the the personal computer because they want the computer in their home and they're not satisfied going to school and using the computer there.

这些人最透彻地理解事物，也是知识进步最快的推动者。

These are the people who understand things the best and they're advancing knowledge the fastest.