29. 你如何知道何时该放弃？

我为什么要做这个？嗨，我是安吉拉·达克沃斯。

Why am I doing this? Hey. I'm Angela Duckworth.

我是史蒂文·杜布纳。

I'm Steven Dubner.

你正在收听的是《没有愚蠢的问题》。

And you're listening to no stupid questions.

今天节目的话题是：如何知道何时该放弃？

Today on the show, how do you know when it's time to quit?

我热爱赌博。上周我输了10万美元。

I love to gamble. I've lost a $100,000 the last week.

还有，为什么成功如此难以预测？

Also, why is it so hard to predict success?

我很遗憾地告诉你，你的小男孩注定要失败。

I'm sorry to say this, but your little boy is doomed.

他吃了棉花糖，结果会变成个傻瓜。安吉拉·达克沃斯，我今天的问题可以概括为坚持与放弃的对决。毅力。什么是

He ate the marshmallow, and he's gonna be an idiot. Angela Duckworth, my question today could be summarized as grit versus quit. Grit. What's

这个？这就是答案。

that? That's the answer.

好吧，那就算了。不过让我解释一下。如果你多少相信沉没成本谬误——即认为在糟糕的事情上继续投入金钱、时间或其他资源是不明智的——那么你也必须承认，比大多数人更频繁地放弃某些事情其实是明智之举。但几十年来，甚至几个世纪以来，我们一直被灌输放弃是道德失败的观点。

Alright. Never mind then. Let me explain, though. So if you believe even a little bit in the sunk cost fallacy, the idea that it's bad to throw good money after bad or good time or any other resource after bad, then you also have to believe it's a good idea to quit things more often than a lot of people are willing to quit. But we've been preached to for decades, maybe centuries, that quitting is a moral failure.

诸如'放弃者永不成功，成功者永不放弃'这类说法。但在《魔鬼经济学》中，我们实际上论证了放弃的积极面。事实上，十年前我们制作的首期广播节目就叫做《放弃的益处》。我们提出：你每在一件事上投入一小时、一美元或一个脑细胞，就意味着你放弃了将这些资源用于其他可能让生活更美好的事情的机会——只要你不再纠结于沉没成本，只要你允许自己放弃。达克沃斯教授，您以倡导毅力的力量而闻名，正如您著作副标题所言'热情与坚持的力量'。

A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits, and all that. But at Freakonomics, we've actually argued for the upside of quitting. In fact, one of the very first radio shows we made ten years ago was called the upside of quitting. And we argued that for every hour or dollar or brain cell you spend on something, you're giving up the opportunity to spend that hour or dollar brain cell on something else, something that might make your life better, if only you weren't so worried about the sunk cost, if only you could allow yourself to quit. Now, professor Duckworth, you are known to advocate the power of grit, as the subtitle of your book puts it, the power of passion and perseverance.

这听起来简直像是一份反对放弃的宣言。但我相信即使您也会同意，并非所有情况都适合坚持。对于那些（包括我在内）不断面临坚持与放弃这一看似不可调和边界的人们来说——比如我正在做某件想成功、想坚持的事，但又觉得或许该尝试其他选择——该如何判断何时该放弃，何时该调动毅力呢？

That practically sounds to me like an anti quitting manifesto. But I'm sure that even you would agree that it's unwise to persevere in every case. So for all the people out there, and this includes me, who are constantly coming up to this seemingly irreconcilable boundary of grit and quit. Like, there's something I'm doing that I want to succeed at, I want to persevere, but I also think maybe there's a point at which I need to try something else. How do you know when to quit and when to engage your grit?

我同意这不仅是偶尔的困境，而是经常发生的选择：是继续我的专业还是转行？甚至包括我是否该继续读床头那本不太喜欢的书，还是换本新的。首先我要说，是的——

I agree that this is not just an occasional dilemma. It's a frequent occurrence. Do I stay in my major, or do I switch? And even do I keep reading this book that I have on my bed stand, or should I switch to a new one because I don't really like this book so much. I wanna start by saying, yes.

绝对存在放弃才是正确选择的情况。真正的难题在于如何判断你处于哪种情境？就像那首乡村歌曲唱的——是肯尼·罗杰斯吗？'知道何时该收手'。

There are absolutely circumstances under which quitting is the right thing to do. And then the real trick here is how do you know which circumstance you're in? Like, the country music song. Was it Kenny Rogers? No No one one to to fold fold him.

他们。所以我认为关键在于机会成本，正如你所提到的。在任何特定时刻，你正在做的事情，以及因为你在做这件事而没做的所有其他事情。关键在于，我能否判断自己是否处于这样一种情况：有一条未被选择的路其实更好？它更顺畅。

Them. So I think the crux of it is opportunity cost, which you alluded to. At any given point in time, there's what you're doing, and there's everything else that you're not doing because you're doing what you're doing. The trick will be, can I figure out whether I'm in a circumstance where there's a road not taken that's just better? It's smoother.

它能更快地带我去想去的地方，过程也更愉快。我认为之所以有那么多关于不要放弃的格言，以及我的研究大量聚焦于坚持心理的原因在于，有时候那条未被选择的路、你想转换的轨道之所以吸引人，并非因为它客观上更好，而是因为它在短期内客观上更容易。

It gets me where I wanna go faster. It's more pleasant. And I think the reason why there are all these aphorisms about not giving up and maybe why so much of my research has focused on the psychology of staying the course is that sometimes the road not taken, the track that you wanna switch to is appealing not because it is objectively better, but because it's objectively easier just in the short run.

确实。比如我现在是八年级学生，学业很难。我宁愿直接放弃，就这样。

Sure. Like, I'm an eighth grader, and school is hard. I would rather stop, period.

是啊。比如，我再也不学数学了，这不适合我。

Yeah. Like, I'm not gonna do math anymore. It's not for me.

那么我们来谈谈衡量标准。因为我常想，对于许多在放弃与坚持间挣扎的人，我们似乎更多基于直觉和情感做判断，而非衡量实际进展。我认为衡量已取得的进步相对容易，而衡量机会成本则非常困难——这或许正是人们不考虑机会成本的原因，因为它显得过于抽象。所以我很好奇你如何调和这一点。

So let's talk about measurement. Because I've often thought that for many people who think about quitting versus persevering, I feel like we make judgments based on a lot of gut and emotion as opposed to measuring your progress. I think it's a lot easier to measure how far you've come and really hard to measure opportunity cost, which is I think why people don't consider opportunity cost because it feels very abstract. So I'm curious how you could reconcile that.

是的。我认为你有个直觉：如果我们能以某种相对精确的方式，量化当前所做之事与可能转换之事之间的价值差异，这个问题就能迎刃而解。

Yeah. So I think you have this intuition that if we were able to account for, in some reasonably precise way, the value of what we're doing versus what we could switch to, then we would have this problem solved.

呃，我并非暗示这总是很容易。具体来说——你提到有人换专业的情况，但也可能是继续学业、留任工作、留在军队与否这类抉择。

Well, I don't mean to imply that it's always so easy. I mean, let's put it in specific terms. You mentioned someone changing their major, but it could be staying in school or staying in a job or staying in the military versus not.

让我想想。那时我在麦肯锡已经工作了十一个月。

Let's see. I was in my eleventh month at McKinsey.

我还以为你要说怀孕十一个月呢。

I thought you were gonna say of pregnancy.

因为我是个追求卓越的人。所以我在麦肯锡的第十一个月——虽然那已经是很久以前的事了——但我知道自己不会长期从事这份管理咨询工作。不过，入职不到一年就辞职确实让我觉得有点荒谬。于是我面临这个抉择：是留还是走？而对我来说，决定性的转折点是我现任丈夫的求婚。

Because I'm an overachiever. So I was in my eleventh month at McKinsey, which was a long time ago in my life, but I knew I wasn't gonna be in this management consulting role for long. But it did feel to me like a absurd thing to quit even within a year of actually landing there. And so I had this question, should I stay or should I go? And for me, the precipitating event was getting proposed to by my now husband.

所以你是说，他把你从管理咨询的职业生涯中拯救出来了？

So he rescued you from a life of management consulting, you're saying?

嗯，因为在纽约维持两套公寓实在超出我们的经济能力。现在婚姻在即，我们需要整合资源。我不再那么需要麦肯锡的高薪了，这样我们靠一份麦肯锡薪水也能生活——他当时也在麦肯锡工作。

Well, because two apartments in New York is really a lot more than we could afford. So now marriage is on the horizon, consolidating. I don't need the McKinsey salary so much anymore. So now we can go down to one McKinsey salary. He was also at McKinsey.

而我未选择的另一条路，是去纽约公立学校当老师。所以我面临的选择是：要么在麦肯锡干不满一年就离职（因为新学期要开始了），要么坚持做完这一年？这就是我的两难处境，但我毫不犹豫地去找了主管沟通。对我而言，在不同事物间切换有时很难，我可能也会犯沉没成本谬误。

And my road not taken, my alternative was to be a teacher in the New York City public schools. So I had the choice of not even finishing a year at McKinsey and then taking a job because it was beginning of the school year, or should I stick it out? So that was my dilemma, and I didn't hesitate at all. I went and spoke to my manager. And I think that for me, the ability to switch from one thing to another is sometimes hard, and sometimes I probably commit the sunk cost fallacy.

但在那个情况下，我完全没有感到纠结。我没有那种'也许该有始有终'的犹豫。

But in that case, I really didn't feel tortured at all. I wasn't like, oh, maybe I should finish what I began.

好吧。所以你算是被保释了，这帮助做出了决定。很多人在做感觉像是改变人生的决定时，并没有那种清晰的警钟响起。

Okay. So you kinda got bailed out, which aided the decision. Many people, when they're making what feels like a life altering decision, don't have that clarion bell ring.

他们没有信号事件。

They don't have a signal event.

听着。我为你高兴，但我要说，这让这个决定少了一些折磨人的成分。但让我回到为什么这种决定，我认为，会折磨这么多人。你在那里待了十一个月，你说辞职会感觉很荒谬。你这是什么意思？

Look. I'm happy for you, but it does make it a little bit less of a tortured decision, I would say. But let me get back to why this kind of decision, I think, does torture so many people. You've been there eleven months, and you said it would have felt absurd to quit. What do you mean by that?

是因为某种羞耻感吗？

Was it shame somehow?

嗯，让我把这个映射到一些社会科学研究上。人们真的很喜欢那些数量上感觉有闭合感的东西。比如马拉松选手，他们会非常努力地争取三小时完成，而不是三小时零一分钟。当你查看马拉松的完成时间时，会发现有一群人明显是拼尽全力在某个感觉像是一个设定的时间段内完成。对我来说，在某种程度上，我觉得一年比十一个月更好，就我人生的这一章而言。

Well, let me map this onto some social science research. People really like things that are in quantities that feel like there's closure. So marathon runners, for example, will really push themselves to get a three hour time versus a three zero one time. When you look at marathon finish times, there's this spike of people who obviously just push through to finish, you know, within a certain period that felt like a set. To me, at some level, I felt like a year was better than eleven months in terms of this chapter in my life.

显然，我对这一点并没有那么强烈的感觉，以至于我愿意留下来然后继续。但我认为这是其中的一部分原因。我也感到有点义务感，因为我会让其他人失望。我认为这实际上是人们坚持的原因之一。在管理文献中，这有时被称为沉没成本谬误。

I obviously didn't feel so strong about it that I was willing to stay and then top off. But I think that was part of it. I also felt a little bit of obligation in the sense that I was going to disappoint other people. And I think this is actually one of the reasons why people commit. It's sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy in the management literature.

这通常被称为承诺升级。决定人们是继续还是改变方向的一个因素是他们认为其他人会对他们的决定有多失望。

It's often called escalation of commitment. And one of the factors that determines whether people keep going versus switch course is how disappointed they think other people will be in their decision.

所以我理解那些高估沉没成本的人。你会想，我已经做这件事一段时间了，因此半途而废或至少不再多给些时间就显得很愚蠢。这种想法很自然，我认为不考虑已投入的成本确实不明智。但我们需要更善于考虑机会成本。我不太喜欢你用麦肯锡和婚姻举例的原因在于，婚姻本就是你可能会选择的另一条道路。

So I empathize with people who overvalue sunk cost. You think, I've been doing this for a while, and therefore, it'd be silly to not see it through or at least to give it more time. That is natural, and I think it is indeed foolish to not consider what you have already invested. But I think that we need to get better at considering opportunity cost. So the reason I don't love your example with McKinsey and marriage is because marriage was a separate avenue that you were probably going to go down.

因此，当这个具体选择出现时，就给了你做自己更倾向之事的机会。

And so the concrete appearance of that then afforded you the opportunity to do what you would have preferred to do.

因为它太明显了。我同意。我女儿露西就有过这样的经历。露西当时在学中提琴，她现在17岁，我不记得她刚开始学琴的具体年龄，可能是七八岁。

Because it was so obvious. I agree. Here's one that happened to my daughter, Lucy. So Lucy was playing viola. She's now 17, and I don't know when she was first playing viola, maybe seven or eight.

她一直学习中提琴、上课，参加学校乐团，后来又加入社区乐团。至少在我看来——我想最终她也意识到——拉中提琴对她来说并不那么有趣。她并不热爱，全靠自律坚持练习。过去几年我每年都劝她放弃。

So she's playing viola and taking lessons, and then she's in the school orchestra, and then she's in the community orchestra. It became increasingly clear, at least to me, and I think eventually to her, that viola wasn't that fun for her. She didn't love it. She used a lot of self discipline to do all that practice. And every year for the last few years, I tried to get her to quit.

我说：只要你放弃这个乐器，我就给你钱。

I was like, I will pay you to quit this instrument.

你真的提出付钱让女儿放弃？这算是虎妈的反面教材吧？

You literally offered to pay your daughter to quit? That is what's the opposite of a tiger mom?

我不确定。但她当时很生我的气，没有接受提议。可以说她当时陷入了某种形式的沉没成本谬误。

I don't know. But she was really annoyed at me and didn't take me up on my offer. So she was you could argue committing a version of the sunk cost fallacy.

你认为她坚持继续的背后是什么在驱使？

What do you think was operating behind her need to continue?

我认为对她来说，可能有两个原因。一是她有一位非常喜欢的优秀老师。有时候，当我们喜欢所做事情的一部分而非全部时，就很难放弃。你会想，等等，这部分我不想放弃。

I think for her, there were probably two things. One is she had a great teacher who she really liked. And I think sometimes when we like parts of what we're doing but not everything, it makes it really hard to leave. You're like, oh, but wait. I don't wanna give up this part.

第二个原因我认为更重要，那就是她感到一种浪费感。她会想，等等，你是说我花了这么多年时间学习这该死的乐器，占据了我年轻时光的很大一部分，现在却要停下来？所以我认为，很多人不敢放弃就是因为这种浪费感。

The second reason I think was even bigger, and that was she felt a sense of waste. She was like, wait a second. You're saying that I've played this goddamn instrument for years, a significant portion of my young life, and now I'm gonna stop. So I think the thing that holds a lot of people back from quitting is the sense of waste.

那么有没有办法在这里做些精简和指导？有没有一些内外在的明显迹象，可以建议人们留意，以决定是坚持还是放弃？

So is there any way to be reductive and a little bit prescriptive here? Are there any telltale signs, internal or external, that you can advise people look out for to figure out whether to stick it out or to quit?

你可以问自己一个问题：我为什么要做这件事？如果露西曾自问：我为什么要这么做？为什么要拉中提琴？

One question that you could ask yourself is, why am I doing this? If Lucy had asked herself, why am I doing this? Why am I playing viola?

她会怎么回答？

She would have said what?

实际上我问过她，她说因为这对上大学有帮助。我当时就觉得，这不是个好答案。相信我，除非你真的喜欢并且非常擅长，否则靠中提琴是进不了大学的。我认为问她'我为什么要做这件事'这个问题很重要。

Well, I asked her that actually, and she was like, because it's gonna help me get into college. And I was like, not a great answer. Trust me. You're not gonna get into college on the viola unless you really enjoy and get really great. I think asking her a question, why am I doing this?

那么第二个问题就是，我还能做些什么来达到同样的目的？

And then a second question would be, what else could I do that would achieve that same end?

她本可以学口琴，那会更独特，而且可能真的有助于她进入大学。

She could have taken up harmonica, which is much more distinctive and probably actually would have helped get into college.

是啊，那样肯定能让你被录取。故事的后续是她确实放弃了，我也不用付她钱。然后她把那些时间投入到其他事情上，比如烘焙和一些她真正更想做的事，但她之前觉得这些不是一个想进名校的孩子应该做的事。

Yeah. That is gonna get you in. The epilogue to the story is that she did quit, and I didn't have to pay her. And then she directed her energy in those hours to other things, like baking and things that she actually wanted to do much more, but didn't feel like they were the sort of thing you're supposed to do when you're a kid who wants to get into a selective school.

在这方面，你书的副标题——激情与毅力的力量，我觉得很贴切。因为如果没有激情，或者你是为了其他目标而做，那么即使你得到了回报，也不会那么有意义。我得说，我也放弃过一些重要的事。

In that regard, the subtitle of your book, the power of passion and perseverance, I think is relevant. Because if the passion isn't there, and if you're doing it for a different set of goals, then you can see how the payoff, even if you get it, isn't as meaningful. I will say this. I've quit some big things.

说到音乐，你会认为音乐是其中之一吗？

Would you consider music one of them, speaking of music?

是的。我年轻的时候，有几件事是我非常非常喜欢做的，一有机会就会去做。运动是其中之一。说实话，如果我15、16岁时足够优秀能成为职业棒球大联盟球员，我可能就去做那个了。但我没那么优秀，所以那条路就放弃了。

Yeah. So when I was younger, there were a few things that I really loved loved loved to do and would do at any opportunity. Play sports was one. And, honestly, if I had been good enough to be a Major League Baseball player when I was 15 or 16, I probably would have done that. I wasn't, so that fell by the wayside.

但我确实玩过音乐，而且相当不错。大学时我参与的乐队最终拿到了唱片合约，搬到了纽约，走上了那条路。长话短说，我决定那基本上不是我想要的生活，但那是一个非常非常非常艰难的决定，因为乐队里其他三个人是我最好的朋友。他们是我唯一经常相处的人。我们住在一起。

But I did play music, and I was pretty good. And the band that I was involved in in college, we ended up getting a record deal, moving to New York, and pursuing that path. And to make a long story short, I decided that that was essentially not the life that I wanted, but it was a very, very, very difficult decision because the three other guys in the band were my best friends. They were the only people I spent any time with at all. We lived together.

就像同时和三个人结了婚。经过两年的思考，我逐渐意识到，尽管我热爱这份工作，但这终究不是我想要的未来。最终让我下定决心离职的方法，是想象如果生活改变、如果我辞职了会是什么感觉。早晨醒来会是怎样的心情？接下来的日子、下个月我会如何度过？

It was like being married to three people. And so my reckoning evolved over two years where I was increasingly thinking that as much as I loved it, this was not the future that I ultimately wanted. But the only way I finally got to quitting was to visualize what it would feel like if my life were different, if I had quit. What would it feel like to wake up in the morning? What would I be doing to spend that next day, that next month, and so on?

我清楚地看到——天啊，我会非常想念这里，想念同事们，但我眼前浮现的是更快乐的生活。一旦看清这点，我就知道该做决定了。后来每当我想放弃什么时（比如在《纽约时报》工作期间，刚入职时觉得这简直是人生巅峰，但几年后发觉这里存在诸多不足），我都会再次使用这个想象法。

And I was able to see that, wow, I would really miss it, I would miss them, but I just saw a happier life in front of me. And once I saw that, I thought, Okay, that's enough for me to make the decision. And subsequently, later in life, whenever I've wanted to quit something like, I worked at the New York Times, which when I arrived there, thought, oh my gosh, it won't ever get any better than this. But after a few years, I was like, this place is kinda suboptimal in a number of ways. And so I used that trick again.

我不得不告诉自己：现在我要写自己的书或文章，打电话约访时，不能再自称'《纽约时报》的史蒂芬·杜伯纳'了。因为这些身份标签——无论是中提琴演奏、工作、配偶还是攻读的学位——都已成为我们自我认知的一部分。

I had to say to myself, okay. I'm working on my own book or my own article, and I call someone that I want to interview, and I can't say, hey. This is Steven Dubner from the New York Times. Like because that becomes part of your identification. All these things that we do, whether viola or your job or your spouse or the degree you're working on, they become part of who you are.

但当我能够情感化地想象那种生活场景——虽然不完美但切实可行时，我就有了勇气继续前行并辞职。

But again, when I was able to emotionally visualize what that would be, and that it wouldn't be perfect, but it was doable, I was able to get on with it and quit.

所以你是在脑海中构建了那条未走之路？你不仅快速抽象地权衡机会成本，更生动设想了现有选择的后果及其替代方案。就像罗伯特·弗罗斯特诗中那样，尽力看清第一条路在灌木丛中的拐弯处，然后选择另一条？

So what you were able to do was mentally create the road not taken. You were able to not have opportunity cost to speed this abstraction, but actually to vividly imagine not only what you were doing and what it would lead to, but an alternative. Is that right? Were you able to, you know, in the Robert Frost poem, look down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth, then take the other?

基本准确，除了'生动'这个词。说实话这很难——要知道我平时缺乏想象力，凭空构想场景对我来说很吃力。

I would say that's about accurate except for the word vividly, because it's really hard. Look. I'm not a very imaginative person generally. I have a hard time conjuring scenes out of thin air.

你毕竟不是J·K·罗琳。

You're not JK Rowling.

这更像是一种情感上的想象，比如，哦，我会感到有点失落，会感到有点孤独，会感到有点绝望，但你知道吗？我会利用这种绝望更加努力地工作。这就是我如何达到那种状态的。不过，还有一个我认为相关的技巧，我很好奇你对它的看法。几年前我们在研究关于放弃的积极面时，这实际上是一个经济学论点，指出有些成本可能是坏的，而机会成本通常被忽视。

It was more of an emotional visualization, like, oh, I'll feel a little bereft, I'll feel a little bit lonely, I'll feel a little bit desperate, but you know what? I'll use that desperation to work even harder. And so that was how I got there. But then there's another trick that I think is related, and I'm curious to know what you think of it. So when we were working on this argument years ago about the upside of quitting, and it really was an economic argument saying that some costs can be bad and opportunity cost is usually overlooked.

于是史蒂夫·莱维特审视了这个关于放弃的论点，他建立了一个名为‘怪诞经济学实验’的网站，邀请任何面临艰难抉择的人参与，我们会为他们抛一枚虚拟硬币。如果你选择正面代表放弃，那么当硬币显示正面时，你就应该停止。然后他的实验是在几个月后实际测量这些人是否放弃了以及他们的感受。最终，他发现那些想放弃但缺乏勇气的人，如果硬币告诉他们‘是’并且他们照做了，六个月后他们会更快乐。所以，用抛硬币作为一种情感上的想象，看看你的生活会是什么样子，一旦硬币显示正面，如果你感到解脱，那是一个非常好的信号。

So Steve Levitt took a look at this argument about quitting, and he'd set up a website called Freakonomics Experiments where we would invite anyone who had a really difficult decision to make, and we would flip a virtual coin for them. And if you had said heads quit, then if it came up heads, you were supposed to stop. And then his experiment was to actually measure out over months whether the people did quit or didn't and how they felt. And, ultimately, he found that people who wanted to, but didn't have the courage to, if the coin told them yes and they did it, they were happier six months down the road. So using the coin flip as the sort of emotional visualization of what your life can look like, once the coin comes up heads, if you feel relief, that's a really good indicator.

我想这就是丹尼·卡尼曼和一些其他判断与决策专家所说的。他们说，自己抛硬币。真正关键的是，当你看到硬币显示正面时，你的感受如何。如果你心想，哦，不。我要一直抛硬币直到出现反面，那就说明了一些问题。

I think that's what Danny Kahneman and maybe some other judgment and decision making experts say. They say flip your own coin. And, really, the telling thing is how do you feel when you see that it came up heads. And if you're like, oh, no. I'm gonna keep flipping the coin until I get tails, then that tells you something.

我猜有些人知道自己想做什么，但他们需要勇气去做。而另一些人则非常优柔寡断，他们只是不知道放弃还是坚持对他们来说是正确的选择。

My guess is that some people know what they want to do, but they need the courage to do it. And other people are really indecisive. They just don't know whether it's the right thing to do for them to quit or to stay the course.

你能告诉我们心理学对于放弃与坚持的心理效应有什么见解吗？

Can you tell us anything about what psychology has to say about the psychological effects of quitting versus sticking something out?

是的。嗯，我之所以了解这一点，是因为有一项关于坚韧的人的研究。这是一项在实验室进行的研究。参与者进来后，他们接受了坚韧度测试。因此，科学家们可以较为精确地判断谁更坚韧，谁不那么坚韧。

Yeah. Well, one of the reasons why I know about this is because there was a study of gritty people. This was a study that was done in a lab. Participants came in, and they took the grit scale. And so the scientists could, with some precision, say who was grittier and who was less gritty.

然后，他们给参与者一系列无解的字母组合。这项研究的巧妙之处在于，这些无解的字母组合与一些极其困难的字母组合混在一起。在这个实验中，你可以选择跳过继续，或者你可以坚持一个谜题，尽情地钻研它。而研究中那些更坚韧的人倾向于在那些无解的字母组合上坚持很久，远超过有益的程度。当然，这实际上并无益处。

And then they gave them a series of unsolvable anagrams. And the trick in this study was that the unsolvable anagrams are kinda mixed up with just really, really hard anagrams. And you could, in this experiment, pass and keep going, or you could stick with one puzzle and just work on it to your heart's content. And the grittier people in this study tended to perseverate on the impossible anagrams far past the point where it was advantageous. Of course, it wasn't advantageous.

他们简直不可理喻。

They were impossible.

perseverate是什么意思？

What does perseverate mean?

perseverate这个词很有意思，因为它有临床定义。基本上指的是你以不适应的方式坚持某事。所以perseverance听起来是正面的，用‘坚韧’形容就很积极，但说成‘固执’就变负面了。而perseveration本质上是明知有害还坚持。

Perseverate is interesting because it has a clinical definition. It basically means when you persevere in a maladaptive way. So perseverance sounds good. It sounds good when you call it endurance, but it sounds bad when you call it stubbornness. And perseveration is essentially sticking with things when it's bad for you.

比如我爱赌博，上周输了10万美元，这也算perseverating吗？

So I love to gamble. I've lost a $100,000 last week. That's perseverating?

这属于perseverating。就像有人吵架时，对方早就不听甚至离开房间了，你还在不停讲道理。我父亲总这样——双手拍着桌子说教，其实屋里早就没人了。

That's perseverating or, like, somebody's having an argument with another person, and you're long past the point in the discussion where the other person's listening or even in the same room. They may have left, and you're just, you know, making your point. My dad used to do this all time. He'd bang the table with both hands. And, like, everyone would have literally left the room, and he's still making an argument.

这就是perseveration。研究中那些坚毅的人会过度坚持解题。由于实验允许跳过无解谜题，科学家得以证明这种坚持是次优行为。

So that's perseveration. And in that study, gritty individuals went too long, worked too hard, if you will. And because there was the opportunity to pass on the impossible puzzles, the scientists were able to say this was suboptimal behavior.

但不得不说，越是讨论‘放弃与坚持的界限’，越觉得这个问题复杂。因为每个证明坚持可贵的故事或数据背后，都有案例显示：若不停止无效行为（无论是糟糕的感情、工作还是想法），就永远无法开始有效的新尝试。

I have to say though, the more we talk and the more I think about this border between quit and grit, the more difficult I feel the problem is. Because for every story or even dataset that shows that perseverance is incredibly valuable, There's another one that shows that if you don't stop doing the thing that's not working, that you'll never get on to the thing that is working, whether it's bad relationship, a bad job, just a bad idea.

当你提到关系时，这段时间里我一直在想，最贴切的比喻就是约会和婚姻。就像，我该不该和你分手？如果分手了，也许余生都会孤独一人。也许我的标准不切实际。但反过来说，我也可能永远被你束缚。

When you said relationship, this whole time, I was thinking the perfect analogy here is dating and marriage. Like, do I break up with you or not? If I break up with you, maybe I'll be alone for the rest of my life. Maybe my standards are unrealistic. Then again, I could be stuck with you forever.

我必须说，就我自己的约会史而言，我从未遇到过这种问题。我和大多数男人约会不超过一个月。我就会想，哦，我们不会结婚的。下一个。

I have to say of my own dating history, I never had this problem. I didn't date many guys more than a month. I was like, oh, we're not getting married. Next.

你这不叫约会，更像是在试镜。

You weren't so much dating as auditioning.

我觉得我就是。我是在试镜丈夫。一旦明确——通常三十天内就能看清——这段关系不会有幸福结局，我就立刻把他们淘汰出局。

I think I was. I was auditioning husbands. And as soon as it became clear, which it usually did within thirty days, that this was not gonna be a happily ever after, I just ejected them.

不得不说，我现在相当自鸣得意，因为我竟然让这位毅力女神承认放弃是件很棒的事。

I have to say, I feel pretty self satisfied right now because I have led the mistress of grit to acknowledge that quitting is awesome.

你确实做到了，不是吗？史蒂文，我得说有时候就该及时止损。

You did, didn't you? I have to say, Steven, sometimes it's time to fold them.

《无蠢问题》后续内容：史蒂文和安吉拉将探讨是否有可能预测招聘成效、事业成就以及恋爱关系的成功概率。

Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Steven and Angela discuss whether it's possible to forecast success in hiring and achievement and in romantic relationships.

我刚和一对新婚的年轻夫妇坐下来聊天，他们当时非常兴奋。

I just sat down with this young couple who had gotten married, and they were all excited.

你打破了他们对未来幸福的幻想？好吧，

You disabuse them of their future happiness? Alright,

史蒂文，我有个问题想问你。

Steven. I have a question for you.

尽管问。

Hit me.

作为一个研究成功的科学家，我惊讶地发现预测谁将取得成就或某人一生中会发生什么事简直难到荒谬。比如在美国的婚姻中，你们站在圣坛前，许下终身誓言时，肯定不会想着这段关系会失败。然而，这些婚姻有一半以离婚收场。

I am astonished as a scientist who studies success at how ridiculously hard it is to predict who's gonna be accomplished or what's gonna happen to somebody in their life. For example, marriages in The United States, you're at the altar. You make lifelong vows. You're certainly not thinking this isn't gonna work out. Well, half of those marriages end in divorce.

许多大学里超过半数的教授无法获得终身教职。招聘时人们预期被雇用者会表现出色，成为你期望的一切，但结果往往并非如此。所以预测人生成功是否如我所想的这般困难？

Half or more of professors in many universities don't get tenure. There's a prediction when you hire someone that they're gonna work out, and they're gonna be everything that you want or expect them to be, and then they don't. So is it as hard as I think to predict success in life?

我认为你举的例子可能彼此间有些矛盾，因为其中一个是供需关系问题。对吧？

So I do think your examples might be a little bit at contrast with each other, because one is a supply and demand issue. Right?

那是哪一种情况？是指婚姻还是指教授职位？

Which one is that? Is that marriage or is that professorship?

如果所有结婚的人都保持婚姻状态，那并不会扰乱任何平衡。

If everybody who gets married stays married, that doesn't disrupt any equilibrium.

你周围只是有很多已婚夫妇而已。

You just have a lot of married couples around.

但如果你是一所大学，你雇佣所有这些教授的全部原因就是为了找出优秀的并淘汰不合格的。所以，是的，你说得对。成功难以预测，但如果只有50%的人获得终身教职，在我看来这并不代表我们无法预测。假设你雇佣了100位教授，在入职前根据他们获得终身教职的可能性进行评级，然后你得向我证明七年后，你的评级与他们实际表现之间毫无关联。那才会让我相信那所大学在预测谁会是优秀人才方面糟糕透顶。

But if you're a university, there are whole reason you're hiring all these professors so you can find the good ones and throw out the bad ones. So, yes, you're right. It's hard to predict success, but if only 50% are getting tenured, that's not to me an indication of our inability to predict it. Let's say you hire a 100 professors, and you grade them before coming in on their likelihood of getting tenure, and then you'd have to show me that seven years later, there's no correlation between how you graded them and how they did. That would persuade me that that university is terrible at predicting who will be good.

好吧，算是吧。婚姻和获得终身教职并不相同，尽管统计数字同样是50%。是的，它们是不同的。

Well, okay. Yes and no. So, you know, marriage isn't the same thing as getting tenure even though the statistics are still 50%. Yes. They're different.

但我可以扩展这些50%的统计数据。我认为在很多公司里，半数销售人员甚至六个月后就不在那里了，这绝对是事实。而在所有这些情况下——婚姻、大学聘请教授或大公司招聘销售人员——没有人签订这些合同时会认为它不会成功。在所有情况下，每个人都相当乐观地认为我们会在一起一段时间。否则，我就不会在你身上投资。

But I could expand these 50% statistics. I think it's absolutely the case in many companies that half of the salespeople are not there even, like, six months later. And in all these cases, marriage, university hiring professors, or a big company hiring salespeople, nobody enters into these contracts thinking it's not gonna work out. In all these cases, everyone's pretty optimistic that we're gonna be together for a while. Otherwise, I wouldn't invest in you.

好吧。我可能不同意你的结论，因为很多雇佣员工的公司，他们并不一定期望甚至希望那些员工待上十年，而且很多员工也不期望或想要长期留在某个地方。但话虽如此，我完全同意你的观点，即人类确实不擅长预测。我的意思是，如果这是核心问题，那我完全站在你这边。我们和许多其他人一样，试图审视关于预测的证据。

Okay. So I may quarrel with your conclusion because a lot of companies that hire employees, again, they're not necessarily expecting or even wanting those employees to stay for ten years, and a lot of employees are not expecting or wanting to stay somewhere. But that said, I agree with you entirely that humans are really bad at predicting. I mean, if that's the central question, I'm totally on board with you there. We, along with many other people, have tried to interrogate the evidence on prediction.

多年前我们曾做过一个专题叫‘预测的荒谬性’，我们观察了四个领域的专家：股市、地缘政治、玉米产量与价格，以及NFL橄榄球比赛预测。结果发现，在每种情况下，那些被认为最专业的人士的准确率基本上和随机猜测差不多。

So we did a piece years and years ago called the folly of prediction, and we looked at experts in four different areas, stock markets, geopolitics, corn yields, and prices, and the NFL football predictions. And it turned out that in each case, the people who are supposed to be the best were basically no better than chance.

让我再补充些更令人沮丧的证据。如果你看社会科学领域的纵向研究——通常社会科学家会先测量一系列早期指标，比如童年智商、社会经济地位、自控力等。然后等待数年，看能否预测这些孩子16岁或更晚时的状况。但可预测的变异比例低得惊人，即便在那些动用大量测量工具、将研究对象置于显微镜下的最佳研究中也是如此。

And let me just pile on with more depressing evidence. So if you look at longitudinal research and social science so usually what social scientists do is they measure a bunch of things early in time, like childhood IQ or socioeconomic status, self control. And then you wait around, and you see if you can predict what happens to this kid when they're 16 or later. And the amount of variation, the percentage of variance that you can predict is shockingly low. I mean, even in the best studies where you have this huge battery of measures, you really have people under the microscope.

在大多数这类研究中，你甚至无法预测10%的变异，这意味着大量人生结果是无法解释的。

In most of these studies, you can't predict even 10% of the variation, and that's a lot of unexplained life outcomes.

我明白其中的弊端。弊端很明显——如果能预测哪些因素能让人更成功，就能多往那些方向努力，这我完全理解。但另一方面，我认为这也有些积极意义，它让人意识到人生与成功的多因素复杂性。想想看，高社会经济地位确实能给大多数人带来优势。

So I see the downside of that. The downside is pretty obvious, which is if you can predict what helps make more people more successful, then you can do more of that. So I totally get that. On the other hand, I think there is a bit of an upside for that, which is it gives you an appreciation of how multifactorial life and success are. So if you think about it, high SES, high socioeconomic status definitely gives most people a boost.

但看看构成成功人生的其他要素：健康、机遇...

But just look at all the other elements that go into a successful life. There's health. There's opportunity.

幽默感。我是认真的。

Sense of humor. I'm not kidding.

没错。运气、自律，这些都可能产生影响。虽然我能理解人们渴望找到单一变量的吸引力，但这也让我有些沮丧，因为这更像是一种程序化的世界观，而非承认世界运作的方式——至少对人类而言——从来就难以预测，未来很可能依然如此。

Yeah. Luck, discipline. There are all these things that can happen. So the idea that you could isolate a variable, while to me, I understand the appeal of it. I also get a little depressed by it because it feels more like a programmatic way to look at the world as opposed to acknowledging that the way the world has always worked and probably always will, at least for humans, is not very predictable.

我是说，作为一名社会科学家，我希望我们能做得更好。但我记得十几岁时，我痴迷于阅读神话。你还记得潘多拉魔盒的传说吗？

I mean, as a social scientist, I wish we could do better. But I remember when I was a teenager, I was a big fan of reading myths. Do you remember the myth of Pandora's box?

记得。

I do.

你可能记得，当潘多拉在她不该打开的盒子上重新盖上盖子时，唯一被关住的是预知未来的能力。这曾被视作人类唯一的救赎——如果潘多拉释放了它，我们都将陷入万劫不复。少年时的我总想不通：为什么？无法预知未来为何是件好事？如今多了几十年人生阅历后，我觉得你说得对——如果我们能通过一个棉花糖测试就断言某个四岁孩子的命运，能对家长说'很遗憾，你儿子没救了'...

So you might remember the one thing that Pandora, when she snapped the lid back on the box that she wasn't supposed to open, it was the knowledge of the future. And that was supposed to be the one salvation of humanity that if Pandora had let that out, then we would all be doomed. And I remember thinking as a teenager, I was like, why? Why is it so good not to be able to predict the future? And now with a few more decades of wisdom, I think you have a good point, which is that if we could foretell someone's destiny from how long they could wait for a marshmallow in a single test, and we could say to some parent of a four year old that, like, oh, I'm sorry to say this, but your little boy is doomed.

他吃了棉花糖，这辈子注定是个蠢货。

He ate the marshmallow, and he's gonna be an idiot.

那就别攒大学学费了。所以未知或许真是种恩赐。这种不确定性恰恰说明人生并非简单公式，从毅力到经济地位，没有任何单一因素能决定命运。

Don't start saving for college. So maybe there is some blessing, but I do think just not knowing is fascinating. And it does imply that life isn't simple and that there's never one factor, even grit or economic status, that is going to foretell your destiny.

你知道心理学家约翰·戈特曼吗？了解他关于婚姻的研究吗？

Do you know the psychologist John Gottman? Do know his work on marriage?

我知道他的研究，我是他的忠实拥趸。

I know his work. I'm a big fan.

你尊重他的研究吗？

Do you respect his research?

是的。我不是这方面的专家，而且我知道他做的很多研究样本量并不大。他有个小型爱情实验室之类的。

I do. I'm not an expert in it, and I know that a lot of the research that he does is not, like, huge sample sizes. And, you know, I think he has, like, a little love lab.

算是婚姻研究所之类的机构吧。

Kind of a marriage institute or whatnot.

对。你进去后坐在沙发上和配偶争吵，他会录像记录。每个科学项目都有其优缺点，但我是约翰·古特曼的粉丝。

Yeah. And you come in, and you, like, sit on a couch, and you have an argument with your spouse, and then he videotapes you. I mean, every scientific program has its strengths and weaknesses. But, yeah, I'm a fan of John Gutman.

他声称拥有大量数据表明，婚姻中某些因素能强烈预测离婚。比如性行为频率，更多性行为未必使婚姻更成功。争吵次数也与离婚率无关。但他指出，争吵后的和解方式与低离婚率高度相关，这观点很有趣。

So he claims that he's got a lot of data that shows that there are certain things in a marriage that are strongly predictive of divorce. So for instance, the amount of sex you have, having more sex does not necessarily lead to a more successful marriage. Yes. He argues that the amount of arguments you have, the number of arguments you have is not necessarily correlated with a higher rate of divorce. But he does say that one thing that correlates well with a low rate of divorce is how you make up after arguments, how you reconcile, which I thought is really interesting.

虽然不确定可信度，但这启示我们：传统预测指标可能很愚蠢。若争吵后的和解真是成功婚姻的预测指标，其合理性在于它关注的是动态过程而非单一数据点，我认为这确实有用。

Again, I don't know how much to believe it, but I think what it points to is that when we are trying to make predictions generally, we're kinda looking at stupid metrics. But if you think about it, if reconciliation from an argument is a legitimate predictor of success, The reason to me it makes sense is because it understands kind of a process as opposed to one metric or one moment in time, and I can see that being truly useful.

没错。如果只盯着某个瞬间，我们可能找错方向。最近我刚接触一对新婚的年轻夫妇，两个很优秀的人，他们对婚姻充满期待。

Yeah. We might be looking in the wrong direction if we're just honing in on one snapshot. You know, I just sat down actually with this young couple, two beautiful people who'd gotten married, and they were all excited.

你剥夺了他们未来的幸福？

You disabused them of their future happiness?

我得说这有点让人沮丧，因为我在想，比如，我希望在我嫁给现在的丈夫时知道些什么？我希望这不会太扫兴，但我想告诉他们的是，当你和某人结婚时，你预想着美好的未来，满心期待幸福，而且你经常如此，所以你很擅长这样。但学会如何一起面对不快乐，学会如何争吵，这是一项真正的技能。我并不擅长这个，你知道，我们已经结婚二十年了。当我生我丈夫的气时，由于我们很少练习吵架的技巧，这些事常常会拖上好几天，这有点荒谬。

I have to say it was a little bit of a downer because I was thinking, like, what do I wish I knew when I had married my wonderful husband? And I hope it wasn't too much of a downer, but I did wanna share with them that when you get married to someone and you're predicting this rosy future, you have all this, like, fantastic expectation of being happy, and you are often, so you're kind of good at that. But it's a real skill to learn how to be unhappy together, to learn how to argue. I am not very good at it, and, you know, we've been at it for twenty years. When I get mad at my husband, since we have so little practice and skill at fighting, often these things can drag on for days, and that's kind of ridiculous.

我正在努力做得更好，我真的把这看作一项技能，就像打网球一样。这就是我想给这对夫妇的建议。不要指望这是自然而然的事。你会变得更好的。

I'm trying to do better, and I'm really thinking of it as a skill, like playing tennis. And this is the advice I was trying to give this couple. Don't expect that this comes naturally. You'll get better.

所以我要帮你一个忙。我想下次见到你们俩在一起时，我要做的就是我会说点什么

So I'm gonna do you a favor. I think that the next time I see the two of you together, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to say something

让我们吵一架。

To make us have an argument.

引发一场争吵，一场非常非常激烈的争吵，因为我想让你们多练习这个。等我们一结束这里，我就会让你们写下一些可能会引发争吵的事情，然后我会打电话给杰森。你们会有一场前所未有的争吵，但和解会很棒，你们可以之后感谢我。

That causes a fight, a really, really bad argument, because I want you to have more practice with that. And as soon as we finish here, I'm gonna ask you to write down a list of things that you think would perhaps prompt, and then I'm gonna call up Jason. And you'll have the biggest fight ever, but the reconciliation will be awesome, and you can thank me later.

接下来休息后，我们将对今天的谈话进行事实核查。现在是对今天谈话的事实核查。安吉拉用罗伯特·弗罗斯特的著名诗歌《未选择的路》来帮助想象两条可能的人生道路，其中一条比另一条更令人向往，这个比喻自1916年诗歌创作以来，一直被艺术家、作家和广告主管们所利用。然而，《纽约时报书评》的诗歌专栏作家大卫·奥尔写道，引用，这首诗不是对‘我能行’个人主义的致敬。它是关于我们在构建自己生活故事时所进行的自我欺骗的评论。

Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's conversation. And now here's a fact check of today's conversations. Angela uses the famous Robert Frost poem, A Road Not Taken, to help visualize two possible life paths, one more desirable than the other, a metaphor that has been exploited by artists, authors, and advertising executives since the poem was written in 1916. However, David Orr, the poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, writes that, quote, the poem isn't a salute to can do individualism. It's a commentary on the self deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.

他指出，诗中叙述者声称自己的选择带来全然不同的结果，仅仅是因为——引用原话——'这是我们为了安慰或责备自己时惯用的说辞，通过假定现状源于自主选择，而非被他人决定或偶然分配的结果'。随后安吉拉提及潘多拉魔盒的神话，称打开容器后内部仅剩预知未来的能力，这一说法有误。根据希腊神话，魔盒开启释放的是疾病、死亡等灾祸，盒底留存的是希望而非预知力。

He says the speaker of the poem claims that his decision made all the difference only because, quote, this is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices as opposed to what was chosen for us or allotted to us by chance. Later, Angela references the myth of Pandora's box and says that after opening the container, the only thing left inside was the knowledge of the future. This is incorrect. According to the Greek myth, the opening of the box released tragedies like sickness and death. Hope, not prescience, was the only thing that remained.

安吉拉可能将潘多拉与卡珊德拉神话混淆了。后者因拒绝阿波罗的求爱而被诅咒获得预知未来的能力。事实核查完毕。《没有愚蠢的问题》由Freakonomics Radio与Stitcher联合制作，本期节目由我——丽贝卡·李·道格拉斯制作，隶属于Freakonomics广播网。

Angela may have been confusing Pandora with the myth of Cassandra, who was cursed with the knowledge of future events after refusing Apollo's romantic advances. That's it for the fact check. No Stupid Questions is produced by Freakonomics Radio and Stitcher. This episode was produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. No stupid questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network.

制作团队包括艾莉森·克雷格洛、格雷格·里彭、马克·麦克卢斯基和詹姆斯·福斯特，实习生是艾玛·特雷尔。主题曲《And She Was》来自Talking Heads乐队，特别鸣谢大卫·伯恩与华纳查普尔音乐公司。如有问题欲提交后续节目，请发送邮件至nsq@Freakonomics.com。

Our staff includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippon, Mark McCluskey, and James Foster. Our intern is Emma Terrell. Our theme song is and she was by talking heads. Special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chappell Music. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to nsq@Freakonomics.com.

若您听到史蒂文或安吉拉提及某项研究、专家或书籍并想深入了解，可访问freakonomics.com/nsq，我们整理了节目中所有重要参考文献的链接。感谢收听。

And if you heard Steven or Angela reference a study, an expert, or a book that you'd like to learn more about, you can check out freakonomics.com/nsq, where we link to all of the major references that you heard here today. Thanks for listening.

这是什么说法？'手头的一个负担抵得上灌木丛里的两个'？

What is it? A burden in the hand is worth two in the bush?

你说得好像这是什么生僻谚语。原句应该是'一鸟在手...'对吧？这个我们倒是听说过。

You say that as though it's some obscure phrase. What is the phrase? A bird at the yes. We've heard of that.

Freakonomics广播网——万物隐藏的真相。

The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

缝合者。

Stitcher.