In the Arena

Welcome back to the Naval Podcast. I've pulled out some tweets from Naval's Twitter from the last year, and we're just going to go through them.

欢迎回到 Naval Podcast。我从 Naval 过去一年的 Twitter 里挑了一些推,我们就一条一条聊过去。

Here's actually my first question. You told me that you got an early copy of the Elon book from Eric Jorgenson. Anything surprising in there?

先问第一个问题。你跟我说你从 Eric Jorgenson 那拿到了一本 Elon 新书的样书。里面有什么让你意外的地方?

I'm only about 20% of the way through. It's really good.

我才读到 20% 左右。非常好。

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.

基本就是 Elon 自己讲自己。最打到我的,是贯穿全书的那种独立、agency 和紧迫感。

I don't think you necessarily learn a step-by-step process by reading these things; you can't emulate his process. It's designed for him. It's designed for SpaceX, it's designed for Tesla.

读这种书你不会学到一套可以照抄的流程;你也不可能复制他的流程。那是为他量身定制的——为 SpaceX、为 Tesla 量身定制的。

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.

高度依赖语境。但你光是看着他怎么不让任何东西挡路、怎么疯狂地质疑一切、怎么强调速度 + 迭代 + 不废话的执行——就已经非常激励人了。

And so that just makes you want to get up and run and do the same thing with your company. And to me, that's what the good books do.

你看完就想立刻起身跑回去把自己的公司做成那样。对我来说,好书做的就是这件事。

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.

听 Steve Jobs 的演讲我会想做得更好。读 Elon 怎么执行,我会想自己执行得更好——细节我会自己摸出来。

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

细节未必对得上号;但更重要的是——驱动你的其实就是激励本身。

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.

有意思——因为大家把你也当成激励的来源,这点没错;但同时大家也会真的按你给出的原则去做。

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.

我的原则都故意停在高层 + 不完整。一方面这样更顺耳、更好记;另一方面也更通用。

One of the problems I have with the How to Get Rich content is people ask me highly specific questions on Twitter in 140 or 280 characters, and I just don't have enough context to respond.

我做 How to Get Rich 那一系列时遇到的麻烦就是:大家在 Twitter 上用 140 或 280 个字问我特别具体的问题,而我没有足够的上下文回答。

These things require context. That's why I liked Airchat. That's why I liked Clubhouse. That's why I liked spoken format.

这种事需要上下文。这就是我为什么喜欢 Airchat、喜欢 Clubhouse、喜欢语音形式。

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 and they could ask me another question and we could dig through and try to get to the meat of what they were asking.

我以前做 Periscope 直播的时候,有人提问,我可以反问、他再答、我再问,一层一层挖下去,挖到他真正想问的那块肉。

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. It's the principles that apply.

然后我才能说「基于我现在拿到的信息,如果我是你,我会这么做」。但绝大多数情况都高度依赖语境,你抄别人的细节抄不来。能套用的只有原则。

And so that is why I keep my stuff very high level.

所以我故意把我的东西都停在高层。

And in fact, I think Eric Jorgenson, 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 is pulling tweets out of Elon's work.

顺便说一句,我觉得作者 Eric Jorgenson 做得很好的一件事是:他把可摘录的句子拎出来,做成独立的金句。某种意义上他是在从 Elon 的工作里「挖推文」。

But I don't know. I just do my style. Elon does his; he inspires in his own way. Maybe I inspire someone in my own way.

我也说不上来。我就用我的方式。Elon 用他的方式激励别人,我可能用我的方式激励别人。

I get inspired by him. I get inspired by others—inspiration all the way down.

我被他激励,我被别人激励——激励层层向下。

But when it comes to execution, you've got to do it yourself.

但执行这件事,你必须自己来。

Life is lived in the arena. You only learn by doing.

生活活在竞技场里。你只能通过做来学。

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.

如果你不在做,那你学到的东西就全都太空、太抽象——彻底沦为贺卡上的格言。你不知道哪条适用在哪、什么时候适用。

And a lot of this kind of general principles and advice is not mathematics.

很多这种「通用原则 / 建议」并不是数学。

Sometimes you're using the word rich to mean one thing. Other times you're using it to mean another thing. Same with the word wealth. Same with the word love or happiness. These are overloaded terms. So this is not mathematics.

rich 这个词有时指的是这个意思,有时指的是那个意思。wealth 一样。love、happiness 都一样——这些都是过载的词。所以这不是数学。

These are not precise definitions. You can't form a playbook out of them that you can just follow like a computer.

这些不是精确定义。你不能拿它们拼一个能像电脑那样照执行的 playbook。

Instead, you have to understand what context to apply them in. So the right way to learn is to actually go do something, and when you're doing it, you figure something out about how it should be done.

你必须理解每条原则适用的语境。所以正确的学法是:先去做,在做的过程里你自然会想清楚某件事应该怎么做。

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 the general principle he's talking about. And I know to apply it in situations like this, not mechanically, not 100% of the time, but as a helpful heuristic for when I encounter this situation again."

然后你回头去看我发的某条推、或你在 Deutsch 那读到的什么、或在 Schopenhauer 那读到的什么、或网上看到的某句话,你会突然反应过来:「哦,他说的是这个意思。这就是他讲的那条通用原则。我知道在这种情境里可以套用——不是机械地用,也不是 100% 套,而是作为一条 heuristic,下次再碰到类似情况的时候有用。」

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. But you have to start from the specific.

你先靠推理,慢慢攒判断。判断攒到足够细之后,它就变成了 taste、直觉、gut feel——你后面靠这个干活。但起点必须是具体的事。

If you start from the general, and stay at the level of the general—and just read books of principles and aphorisms and almanacs and so on—you're going to be like that person that went to university: overeducated, but they're lost. They try to apply things in the wrong places.

如果你从一般出发,然后一直停在一般的层次——只读原则书、格言书、年鉴之类的——你就会变成那种上过大学但其实迷路的人:教育过度,但找不到方向。他们会把原则套到错的地方。

What Nassim Taleb calls the Intellectual Yet Idiots, IYIs.

也就是 Nassim Taleb 说的 Intellectual Yet Idiots(IYI,有学历的傻子)。

One of the tweets I was going to bring up is exactly that. From June 3rd:

我准备拎出来的一条推就正好是这个。6 月 3 日那条:

"Acquiring knowledge is easy, the hard part is knowing what to apply and when.

「获取知识很容易,难的是知道什么时候用什么。

That's why all true learning is 'on the job.'

所以所有真正的学习都发生在「干活的过程中」。

Life is lived in the arena."

生活活在竞技场里。」

I like that tweet.

我喜欢那条推。

Actually, I just wanted to tweet, "Life is lived in the arena" and that was it. I wanted to 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.

其实我本来只想发一句「Life is lived in the arena」,就这一句、扔在那。但我觉得需要稍微解释一下,因为「The Man in the Arena」本身就是名句,我想从我自己的角度展开一点。

But this is a realization that I keep having over and over.

但这是一个我反反复复不停意识到的事。

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.

我最近又开了一家公司。这是个很难的项目——公司名字就叫 The Impossible Company,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.

有意思的是,它把我推进了一种「疯狂学习」的状态——不是被压力推的那种,而是很久没有过的、想学东西的冲动。

So I find myself interrogating Grok and ChatGPT 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.

我发现自己在 Grok 和 ChatGPT 上拷问得多了,书读得多了,技术 podcast 听得多了,brainstorm 得多了——脑子整体活跃度上来了。

I'm even willing to meet more companies outside of investing because I'm learning from them.

我现在甚至愿意见更多 investing 之外的公司,因为我能从它们身上学到东西。

And just being active makes me want to naturally learn more and not in a way that it's unfun or causes me to burn out.

光是「活跃」本身就让我自然地想学更多——而且不是那种不开心、会让人 burnout 的方式。

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. The motivation isn't the same.

所以我觉得做 → 带出想学的渴望 → 带出真正的学。当然,做本身也在让你学。反过来纯为学而学,过一阵子就会发空——动力不一样。

We're biomechanical creatures. My brain works faster when I'm walking around. And you would think, "No, energy conservation—it should work slower," but it's not the case.

我们是 biomechanical 的生物。我走路的时候大脑反而转得更快。你可能会觉得「不对,从能量守恒来说应该转得更慢」,但事实不是。

Some of the best brainstorming is when you are walking and talking, not just sitting and talking.

最好的一些 brainstorm 是在边走边聊里发生的,不是坐着聊。

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. And so if you want to learn, do.

所以我之前折腾过一阵「边走边录 podcast」——因为我真的很享受边走边讲,而且脑子更好用。同样的道理:做和学是手拉手的。所以——想学,就去做。

Like in most interesting, difficult things in life, the solution is indirect.

在生活里那些最有趣、最难的事上,解法多半是绕着走的。

That was part of the How to Get Rich tweetstorm, which is, if you want to get rich, you don't directly just go for the money.

这也是 How to Get Rich 系列推里的一条:你想变富,不要直接奔着钱去。

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 going to make money as a byproduct.

你当然也可以像金融骗子那样直接奔钱——但如果你是在创造价值、用杠杆、扛 accountability、运用自己的 specific knowledge,钱会作为副产品自动来。

And you're going to create great products, going to productize yourself and create money as a byproduct.

你会做出好产品,把自己产品化,把钱作为副产品做出来。

The same way, if you want to 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.

幸福同理:你「小化」自己,投入高 flow 活动、或那些让你跳出自己的活动——幸福就来了。

By the way, this is true in seduction as well. You don't seduce a woman by walking up and saying, "I want to sleep with you." That's not how it works.

顺便说,这条在「勾引 / seduction」上也成立。你不会走过去对一个女人说「我想跟你上床」,这不是这么用的。

Same with status. 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.

地位也一样。明着追地位本身就是低地位的信号——是低地位的行为,因为它暴露了你本来就在地位等级里更低的位置。

It's not the fact that everything has to be pursued indirectly. Many things are best pursued directly.

倒也不是所有东西都要绕着追。很多事最好就是直接干。

If I want to drive a car, I get in and I drive the car. If I want to write something, then I just sit down and write something.

我想开车,就上车开。我想写东西,就坐下来写。

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.

但那些「本质上是竞争性的」或「看起来抓不到」的事——之所以剩下来,部分原因正是它们是最适合绕着追的事。

From April 2nd: "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."

4 月 2 日那条:「当你真正为自己干活的时候,你没有爱好、没有周末、没有假期——但你也不再有『工作』。」

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.

这是所有创业者、所有自雇者都熟悉的「为自己干」的悖论:你一旦开始为自己干,基本就把所谓的 work-life balance 给牺牲掉了。

You sacrifice this work-life distinction. 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.

你牺牲了「工作 vs. 生活」这个区分。没有九点到五点了,没有办公室了,没有人告诉你做什么,没有 playbook 可以照着抄。

At the same time, there's nothing to turn off. 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.

但同时,你也关不了机——你关不掉。你就是这个生意,你就是这个产品,你就是这份工作,你就是那个实体,而你在乎。

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.

如果你做的是真正属于你的事,你会在乎得很深,所以你关不掉——这是创业者的诅咒。

But the benefit of the entrepreneur is that if you're doing it right, if you're doing it for the right reasons or 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.

但创业者的红利是:如果你方向对、动机对、人对、方式对——再加上你能把「目标没达成」的那种压力放一放(那种压力是真的,而且很难放下)——这件事就不会让你觉得是在「上班」。

And that's when you're most productive. You are basically only measured on your output. And you're only held up to the bar that you raised for yourself. So it can be extremely exhilarating and freeing.

那时候你产出最高。你只被产出衡量,只被你自己定的那条线衡量。所以这件事可以非常 exhilarating、非常自由。

And this is why I said a long time ago that a taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

这就是为什么 很久以前我说过——尝过一口自由的人,就再也雇不动了。

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.

这就是那一口自由。它让你在传统意义上变得「雇不动」——那种九点到五点、跟着 playbook、有 boss 的工作。

But once you have broken out of that, once you've walked the tight rope 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.

但你一旦从里面跳出来,一旦你在没有安全网、没有 boss、没有工作的状态下走过那根钢丝——顺便说,在小团队的创业里,只要你足够自驱,这种感觉一样会发生。

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.

在普通人眼里你拿到的是一堆负面:没周末、没假期、没下班、没 work-life balance。

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.

但与此同时,你在干活的时候不觉得是上班——这是一件你高度自驱去做的事——这就是回报。

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.

整体看,我认为这是一扇单向门。一旦你体验过——在乎的事 + 喜欢的人 + 自驱的方式——你就再也雇不动了。

They can't go back to a normal job with a manager and a boss and check-ins and nine-to-five and "Show up this day, this week, sit in this desk, commute at this time."

你回不去那种「有 manager、有 boss、有 check-in、九点到五点、『今天来、这周来、坐这张桌、这个点通勤』」的常规岗位。

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 going to take that to mean "You're your own boss."

我觉得这条推还有一层隐含意思,我猜是故意的。它开头是 "When you truly work for yourself"——大多数人会理解成「你是自己的 boss」。

But the other way that I read it is that you are working for yourself.

但我另一种读法是:你是在为「你自己」干活。

So your labor is an expression of who and what you are. It's self-expression. And that's not an easy thing to figure out.

也就是说,你的劳动是你这个人是谁、是什么的一种表达——是自我表达。这件事不容易想清楚。

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.

我最终的看法是:每个人都应该去搞清楚自己最擅长什么——那件跟自己根本上一致的事,能带来真实感、specific knowledge、竞争优势、不可替代性的事。

And they should just lean into that. And sometimes you don't know what that is until you do it.

找到了就 all in。问题是,这件事在你真做之前往往看不到。

So this is life lived in the arena. You are not going to know your own specific knowledge until you act and until you act in a variety of difficult situations.

这就是「生活在竞技场里」。你必须真正行动、而且要在各种困难情境里行动,才会知道自己的 specific knowledge 是什么。

And then you'll either realize, "Oh, I managed to navigate these things that other people would've had a hard time with," or someone else will point out to you. They'll say, "Hey, your superpower seems to be X."

然后要么是你自己反应过来「哦,这些事别人会很头大,而我居然走过来了」,要么是别人替你点出来「嘿,你的超能力好像是 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 is very hardworking, that's why I don't want to say he isn't hardworking. He's actually super hardworking.

我有个朋友连续创业。我观察他一直注意到的是:他不算最聪明、不算最技术——他其实非常努力,我得说清楚他不是不努力,他超努力。

But what I do notice is he's the most courageous.

但我真正注意到的是——他是我见过最勇敢的人。

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.

他就是不管什么挡在路上。什么都打不垮他。他永远在笑、永远在前进。

And this is the kind of guy that a hundred years ago you would've said, "Oh, he's the most courageous. Go charge that machine gun nest."

这种人放在一百年前,你会说「哦,他最勇敢——去冲那个机枪堡。」

He would've 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.

他在那种活儿上会很合适。但在创业的语境里,他是那个会用脑袋撞销售这堵墙、给几百个人打电话直到有一个人说 yes 的人。

So he'll call 400 people and get 399 nos. And he's fine with one "Yes." And that's enough.

他打 400 个电话、收 399 个 no——只要一个 yes 他就高兴。一个就够了。

Then he can start iterating and learning from there. So that's his specific knowledge. It is knowledge. It's a capability that he knows that he's okay with it.

然后他从那个 yes 开始迭代、学习。这就是他的 specific knowledge——确实是 knowledge,是一种他知道自己扛得住的能力。

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.

对面有一个他愿意为之去的结果——这就是超能力。再深耕一点、或跟别的能力组合、或哪怕只是用在对的地方,就让他变得有点不可替代。

And so you find your specific knowledge through action—by doing—and when you are working for yourself, you'll also naturally tend to pick things and do things in a way that aligns with who you are and what your specific knowledge is.

所以你是通过行动——通过做——找到自己的 specific knowledge。而当你为自己干活时,你也自然会用与你这个人、与你的 specific knowledge 一致的方式去选、去做。

For example, if you look at marketing, marketing is an open problem. People try to solve marketing in different ways.

比如营销——营销是一个开放问题,大家用各种方式去解。

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.

有的人做视频,有的人写文章、发推,有的人真的就拿块「三明治板」站在街上,还有人就疯狂结交朋友、办派对、靠口口相传扩散。

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? Do you genuinely enjoy talking a lot?"

对你的生意来说,可能某一种确实更好——但最重要的事是:你选的生意要跟你「喜欢哪一种」对得上。比如我有一堆朋友来找我说「嘿,我们一起做个 podcast 吧」。我会反问:「你真的享受讲话吗?你真的享受讲一堆话吗?」

Because if you don't, you're not going to enjoy the process of podcasting. You're not going to be the best at it.

因为如果你不享受,你就不会喜欢做 podcast 这件事的过程,也成不了里面的顶尖。

And they're just trying to market. And so they start a podcast, they do two or three episodes, and then eventually they drop off.

他们其实只是想做营销。所以开了个 podcast、录两三期、就慢慢就没下文了。

And they drop off because, first, they don't enjoy podcasting. I don't mean enjoy a little bit, you have to enjoy it a lot. If you're going to be the top at it, you have to be almost psychopathic level at which you enjoy the thing.

他们之所以做不下去,首先是不享受。这里说的「享受」不是一点点喜欢——你必须非常喜欢。要做到顶尖,你对这件事的喜爱程度几乎要到病态的级别。

And so they'll record a few episodes and then their readers or their listeners will pick up on, "Actually this person is just asking a bunch of questions, kind of flat-faced and doesn't seem to really enjoy it, and is doing the podcast equivalent of looking at their watch."

所以他们录了几期之后,听众一下子就感受到了:「这人就是在问一堆问题,表情木木的,不像真喜欢——他在 podcast 上做的事相当于『看手表』。」

Whereas someone like Joe Rogan—he's so immersed—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.

反过来你看 Joe Rogan——他完全沉浸在里面、痴迷于跟他 podcast 上各种古怪的人聊天。这家伙就算没听众也会做——他确实在没有听众的时候就在做了:在 Ustream 上、一个随机网站、深夜一个人直播。

So 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.

所以他做到 podcast 顶流不是偶然。所以做营销的时候,你要靠近你的 specific knowledge、靠近你自己。

If you enjoy talking, then try podcasting. Maybe you enjoy talking in a more conversational tone, in which case you try a live network, like Twitter Spaces.

如果你喜欢说话,试 podcast。如果你喜欢更像对话的语气,试 live 网络,比如 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.

如果你喜欢写,长文就 Substack;短文就 X;超长文就一堆博客组合成书。

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.

如果你喜欢做视频,可能就用最新的 AI 模型生成视频再叠层。

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 or picking a role within that business or picking a co-founder in that business. It is a fit problem. It is a matching problem.

你必须做对自己来说「自然」的事。窍门一部分在于:选一个能让你的天然倾向对上号的生意,或者在那个生意里选一个对的角色、选一个对的联合创始人。这是一个 fit 的问题、匹配的问题。

And the good news is in the modern world, there are unlimited opportunities.

好消息是,在现代世界里,机会是无限的。

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.

无限多的人、无限多的场域、无限多的媒体形式——你能选的东西无穷多。

So how are you going to find the thing that you're really good at? You're going to try everything and you're going to try everything because you're going to do. You're going to be in the arena. You're going to be trying to tackle and solve problems.

那你要怎么找到自己真正擅长的那件事?——把所有都试一遍。而你能「全试一遍」是因为你在做、你在竞技场里、你在尝试解题。

So the first time you do it, you might do a whole bunch of things you don't enjoy doing, and you may not do them well, but eventually you'll hone down on the thing that you really like to do and then you hopefully find that fit.

所以第一次做的时候,你可能会做一大堆不喜欢、做得也不好的事;但最终你会收敛到那件你真正喜欢的事,然后(顺利的话)你就找到了那个 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. Akira the Don, God bless him.

我们以前讲过:「在你做的那件事上做到世界第一。不断重新定义你做的是什么,直到这句话成立。」Akira the Don 还把它做成了一首 歌——感谢这哥们。

And I think that's absolutely true. You want to be the best in the world at what you do, but keep redefining what you do until that's true.

这一条我觉得绝对是对的。你要做到世界第一,但要不停「重新定义你做的是什么」,直到这句话成立。

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.

而这个「重新定义」唯一能成立的方式,是通过迭代、通过做。所以你需要那根胡萝卜、那面旗。

You need that reward at the end to pull you forward into doing, and you need to iterate. And iterate does not mean repetition. Iterate is not mechanical. It's not 10,000 hours, it's 10,000 iterations. It's not time spent. It's learning loops.

你需要那个终点的奖励,把你拉进「做」里;然后你必须迭代。迭代不是重复,不是机械。不是 1 万小时,是 1 万次迭代——不是花了多少时间,是学习循环跑了多少次。

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.

迭代的意思是:你做一件事,然后停下来、暂停、反思,看那次有效还是没效。然后你改,再试。

Then you pause, reflect, see how well it did. Then you change it and you try something else. And that's the process of iteration, and that's the process of learning. And all learning systems work this way.

再暂停、反思、看效果,再改、再试——这就是迭代,就是学习。所有学习系统都按这个结构运转。

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.

进化就是一种迭代:突变 → 复制 → 选择,把不工作的剪掉。

This is true in technology and invention where you'll innovate, you'll create a new technology and then you'll try to scale it and either survive in the marketplace or it'll get cut out.

技术和发明也是这样:创新出新技术 → 试着规模化 → 要么在市场里活下来、要么被剔除。

This is true as David Deutsch talks about in the search for good explanations. 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.

这也是 David Deutsch 讲的「寻找好解释」的过程:你提出一个 conjecture,这个 conjecture 接受批判,工作不下去的就被淘汰。这才是真正的科学方法。

It's 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 are the best in the world at "it," and "it" is just being yourself.

说到底就是找到对你自己来说自然的那件事,然后在竞技场里、高 agency、不断迭代,直到你想清楚——然后你就在那件事上做到世界第一,而那件事就是「做你自己」。

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.

再聊一条我当时一看就喜欢的推——可能我还转了。我觉得大家会去转一条推,是因为看到了一种他们脑子里有、但还没想出来怎么说的东西——隐性的、还没被显性化的东西。

I think that's when people are like, "I need to retweet this."

这种时刻人们就会想:「我必须转这一条。」

So this one was January 17: "Blame yourself for everything, and preserve your agency."

这条是 1 月 17 日那条:「凡事先怪自己,保留你的 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.

我的理解是:对每件事都担责,在「担责」这个动作里,你创造并保留了去解决它的 agency。如果你不对这件事负责,你也就没法修它。

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 say, "Oh, that's exactly what I was thinking and feeling, but I didn't know how to articulate it."

回应一下你刚才的点——「我已经知道,只是被人说漂亮了」。Emerson 一直在做这件事。他会用美得不行的方式把一件事讲出来,你看完会说:「对,这就是我心里想的、心里感受到的,但我之前不会说。」

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. It's what I try to do with Twitter, which is I try to say something true, but in an interesting way.

他原话是:「在每一件天才之作里,我们都会认出自己被舍弃过的想法;它们以一种『被异化的庄严』回到我们面前。」我超爱这句。我在 Twitter 上也尝试做这件事——讲真的事,但以一种有意思的方式讲。

And not only is this a 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.

不只是「真 + 有意思」,背后还得有 emotional heft——它必须是最近真的击中过我、对我重要过的事。否则就是装。

I don't sit around trying to think up tweets to write. It's more that something happens to me, something affects me emotionally, and then I synthesize it in a certain way.

我不会坐下来「想要发一条推」。更多是有什么事发生在我身上、情绪上推了我一下,然后我以某种方式把它合成出来。

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.

我会自我检验——「这是真的吗?」如果我觉得它真,或大体真,或在我关心的语境里真——而且我能找到一种说法让它在我脑子里挂住——我就发出来。对懂的人来说,这本身没什么新意。

If it's not said in an interesting way, then it's a cliché, or if they've heard it too much, it's a cliché.

如果说得不有趣,它就是陈词;听腻了,也是陈词。

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.

但如果说得有趣,它可能会让他们想起重要的事——或者把他们的 specific knowledge 翻译过来——或者作为一个钩子,帮他们把 specific knowledge 在自己脑子里转成更通用的知识。

So I find that process useful for myself and hopefully others do too. Now, for the 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.

这个过程对我自己有用,希望对别人也有用。回到这条推本身——我注意到一种倾向:人们非常 cynical,会说「所有财富都是偷来的」——是金融骗子、关系户资本家、彻头彻尾的小偷或寡头偷的之类的。

"You can't rise up in this world if you're X."

「如果你是 X,你在这个世界爬不上去。」

"You can't rise up in this world if you're a poor kid."

「如果你是穷孩子,你爬不上去。」

"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 are lame or crippled or blind," or what have you.

「如果你是某个种族 / 民族、生在某个国家、瘸腿、瘫痪、瞎了——你爬不上去。」诸如此类。

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.

问题在于:世界上确实有真实的障碍,场地确实不是平的;「公平」只存在于小孩子的想象里,在现实中无法被具体定义。

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.

但这个世界也不完全靠运气。证据就在你自己的生活里——你做过某些事,带来了好结果;你也清楚,如果你没做那件事,那个好结果就不会发生。

So you can absolutely move the needle, and it's not all luck. And especially the longer the timeframe 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.

所以你完全可以撬动结果,这不全是运气。而且,时间尺度越长、活动越密集、迭代次数越多、越多思考和选择投进去——运气的权重就越小,远到看不见。

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 20 years ago, every single one, the young brilliant ones, every single one is successful. Every single one. I cannot think of an exception.

举个例子,大多数人会不爱听,因为他们不在 Silicon Valley——但 20 年前我在 Silicon Valley 见过的每一个聪明人,每一个,年轻又聪明的那一批,现在全部成功。每一个。我想不出反例。

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.

我当时就该按聪明程度做个 index。顺便说,Y Combinator 在做的不就是这件事吗?——大规模做。多漂亮的机制。

So it works. If people stick at it for 20 years, it works. Now you might say, "Easy for you to say, man, that's for the people in Silicon Valley."

所以它有效。坚持 20 年,有效。你可能会说:「你说得轻巧,那是 Silicon Valley 的人。」

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. So agency does work, but if you're keeping track of the time period, you're going to be disappointed.

没人是 Silicon Valley 出生的——他们全是搬来的。他们搬来,是因为想跟其他聪明孩子在一起、想要高 agency。所以 agency 有效。但如果你盯着时间表,你会失望。

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, 50 years ago, in the eighties he was talking about building a computer that would fit in a book.

你会太早放弃。所以你需要一个更高的驱动。所以 Elon 要去火星,所以 Sam 要造 AGI,所以 Steve Jobs 50 年前——80 年代就在讲一个能装进一本书里的电脑。

He was talking about the iPad. So it's these very long visions that sustain you over the long periods of time to actually build the thing you want to build and get to where you want to get.

他讲的就是 iPad。是这种长得离谱的愿景在长时间尺度上撑住你,让你真的把那个东西建出来、走到你想去的地方。

So a cynical 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.

所以 cynical 的信念是自我实现的。悲观的信念就像你骑摩托——你本来该转开的那堵砖墙,你却一直盯着。你会自己撞上去,而且毫无察觉。

So you have to preserve your agency. You have to preserve your belief that you can change things. 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.

所以你必须保留你的 agency,必须保留「我能改变事情」的信念。你生来就有 agency。小孩子就是 high-agency——他们想要的东西就直接去拿,看到了就去抓。

You have to preserve your agency. You have to preserve your belief that you can change things.

你必须保留你的 agency,必须保留「我能改变事情」的信念。

You have to take responsibility for everything bad that happens to you—and this is a mindset.

你必须为发生在你身上的所有坏事担责——这是一种心态。

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.

可能有点 fake,但极其 self-serving。如果你能更进一步,把所有发生在你身上的好事都归到运气头上,可能也有帮助。

But at some level, truth is very important. You don't want to fake it.

但归根到底,真实很重要——你不想真的在装。

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're focused on. And every success case knows this.

我自己看到的现实是:足够努力、专注、不放弃、为结果担责的人,在足够长的时间尺度上,会在他们专注的事上成功。每一个成功案例都知道这件事。

Richard Feynman used to say that he wasn't a genius. 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.

Richard Feynman 经常说他不是天才——他只是一个肯下功夫、肯非常努力的男孩。他当然非常聪明——但那是必要条件,不是充分条件。我们都见过「聪明但懒」那种典型形象。

And I like to harass all of my friends—including Nivi—that one of the problems I notice with these guys is you're just operating way below potential. Your potential is so much higher than where you are. You have to apply some of that into kinetic.

我喜欢调侃所有朋友——包括 Nivi——我注意到你们的一个问题是:你们在自己潜能之下跑得很低。你们的潜能比你们当下的位置高得多。得把一部分势能转成动能。

And ironically that will raise your potential because we're not static creatures.

讽刺的是,这反过来会抬高你的潜能——因为我们不是静态的生物。

We're dynamic creatures. And you will learn more. You will learn by doing. So just stop making excuses and get in the ring.

我们是动态的生物。你会学得更多——通过做来学。别找借口了,进圈。

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

你也喜欢 Schopenhauer。你从他那学到了什么?他作品里有什么让你意外的吗?

Schopenhauer is not for everybody and there are many different Schopenhauers. He wrote quite a bit, and you could read his more obscure philosophical texts, like The World as Will and Idea, where he was writing for other philosophers. Or you could read his more practical stuff like On the Vanity of Existence.

Schopenhauer 不适合所有人,而且 Schopenhauer 也分好多种。他写了不少。你可以读他更晦涩的哲学文本,比如 The World as Will and Idea(《作为意志和表象的世界》)——那是写给别的哲学家的;也可以读他更实用的东西,比如 On the Vanity of Existence(《论生存的虚无》)。

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. He thought about things very deeply.

他是历史上少数几个写起来「不闪躲」的人。他写他自认为是真的东西。他不总对,但他从不骗你——这一点会从字里行间透出来。他想得很深。

He didn't care that much what people thought of him. All he knew was, "What I am writing down I know to be true."

他不太在乎别人怎么看他。他只知道一件事:「我现在写下的东西,我知道它是真的。」

He also didn't put on any airs. He didn't use fancy language; he didn't try to impress you.

他也不摆架子,不用花哨的语言,不试着唬你。

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 want to read a harsh dose of truth.

很多人叫他悲观主义者。我觉得这不太公平。他的世界观可以被解读成悲观,但我只是在我想读一剂「硬真相」的时候读他。

What Schopenhauer did uniquely for me is that he gave me complete permission to be me. He just did not care at all what the masses thought, and his disdain for common thinking comes out.

Schopenhauer 对我独特的作用是:他给了我彻底的「做自己」的许可。他对大众想什么完全不在乎,他对俗见的轻蔑直接透出来。

Now, I don't necessarily share that—I'm a little bit more of an 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.

我自己未必跟他完全一致——我比他更平等主义一点。但他真的让你允许自己做自己。所以,如果你某件事擅长,别羞于承认——接受你擅长这件事。

And that was hard for me because we all want to get along. If you want to get along in a group, you don't want to stand out too much. It's the old line: The tall poppy gets cut.

对我来说这一点不容易——我们都想跟人合得来。在一个群体里要合得来,你不想显得太突出。老话说:「高罂粟会被砍头。」

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.

但如果你要做任何 exceptional 的事,你必须以某种方式 bet on yourself。如果你在某件事上 exceptional,你确实需要承认这一点——或至少在尝试做到——并且不去操心别人怎么看。

Now, you don't want to be delusional either. Anyone who has 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.

当然你也不想 delusional。做投资的人天天碰到人说「我超会做某件事」,但其实有点 delusional。不——你不能自己宣布自己 exceptional。该是别人说你 exceptional——而且你妈不算。

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.

来自别人的反馈通常都是假的。奖项是假的,评论家是假的,亲友的赞美是假的——他们可能确实想真心,但被太多 fake 淹没,你拿不到真实反馈。

Real feedback comes from free markets and nature. Physics is harsh: either your product worked, or it didn't. Free markets are harsh: either people buy it, or they don't. But feedback from other people is fake.

真反馈来自自由市场和自然。物理是残酷的:你的产品要么 work,要么不 work。自由市场是残酷的:用户要么买,要么不买。但来自别人的反馈是假的。

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. It falls apart. And the larger the group, the less good feedback you're going to get from it.

你不可能从群体里得到好反馈——群体在乎的是「合得来」。个体寻找真相,群体寻找共识。合不来的群体会「退相干」,会散掉。群体越大,你能从里面拿到的真反馈越少。

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.

你不想去依赖你妈、你朋友、你家人的反馈,甚至也不要依赖颁奖典礼或奖项体系。

If you're optimizing your company to end up on the cover of a magazine, or to win an industry award, you're failing.

如果你优化你公司是为了上某本杂志的封面或拿某个行业奖,你已经在失败。

You need customers. That's your real feedback. You need feedback from nature.

你要的是用户。那才是真反馈。你要的是自然给的反馈。

Did your rocket launch?

火箭起飞了吗?

Did your drone fly?

无人机飞起来了吗?

Did your 3D printer print the object within the tolerances that it was supposed to, in the time it was supposed to, in the cost budget that it was supposed to?

你的 3D 打印机是不是在该有的公差里、该有的时间里、该有的预算里、把那个东西打出来了?

It's very easy to fool yourself. It's very easy to be fooled by others.

骗自己很容易。被别人骗也很容易。

It is impossible to fool Mother Nature.

但你骗不了大自然。

Unlike Schopenhauer, you are an industrial philosopher. Like an industrial designer, your philosophy is designed for the masses. People suggest you read the great books—Aristotle and Wittgenstein and all the supposedly great philosophers.

不同于 Schopenhauer,你是一个「工业哲学家」——像工业设计师那样,你的哲学是为大众设计的。大家会推你去读「伟大的书」——Aristotle、Wittgenstein 之类那些「被默认的伟大哲学家」。

I've read almost all that stuff, and I've gotten very little value from it. 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.

那些东西我基本读过,价值不大。我真正拿到价值的地方是 Twitter 上像你这样的人在做哲学。我会跟所有想读哲学的人说:跳过古典,直接去读 David Deutsch。

You're not wrong. I can't stand any of the philosophers you talked about. I don't like Plato either.

你说得没错。你提到的那些哲学家我一个都受不了。Plato 我也不喜欢。

Every other piece of philosophy I've 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. When he tries to talk to other philosophers, he's at his worst.

我拿起又快速放下的哲学书几乎都一样——他们就是在为芝麻点的事吵得无比晦涩,想搞出「包罗万象的世界理论」。Schopenhauer 也掉进过这个坑——当他试图跟别的哲学家对话时,他状态最差。

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. You can pick it up, read one paragraph, and you're thinking for the next hour. I think I'm a better writer, a better thinker, and a better judge of people and character thanks to what I read from him.

我喜欢的是他写短随笔的时候。那时他几乎是在写 Twitter——如果他活在今天,他会是 Twitter 的统治者。思想密度高、想得透、例子和类比少而精。你随便翻一段,看完后能想一个小时。多亏读他,我写得更好、想得更好、看人和品性也更准。

Now, he's writing from the early part of the 19th century. Whenever he wanders into topics that are scientific or medical or political, he's obviously off base—that stuff doesn't apply anymore. But when he's writing about human nature, that is timeless.

他写于 19 世纪早期。一旦他走到科学、医学、政治那些话题,他就明显不准——那些东西已经过时了。但他写人性的部分是永恒的。

When it comes to anything about human nature, I say go read the Lindy 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 want to stay on the bleeding edge. That knowledge is going to be more timely and obsolete more quickly.

关于人性的任何事,我建议读 Lindy 类的书——那些扛过了时间考验的老书。但如果你想要 specific knowledge、想靠它赚钱、想做有用的事——那你要留在最前沿。那种知识时效性强,过期也快。

Those two make sense. 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.

这两类我都理解。我不理解的是那种「既不 Lindy、又不是写人性、但又老」的书。我也躲着低密度的东西——比如绝大多数历史书。

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 going to go read the 12-volume series. I've read plenty of history. I know he's referring to these kinds of things, so I'm not just taking his word for it on high-level concept.

我喜欢 Will Durant 的 The Lessons of History——它是他那 12 卷大部头 The Story of Civilization 的浓缩版。但我不会去读 12 卷。我读过足够多历史,知道他在指什么——他在高层概念上的判断我不是空信他。

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. 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.

在我生命的这个阶段,我想读高密度的作品。你可以叫它 TikTok 综合征或 Twitter 一代——但它本质上是在尊重我们的时间。我们已经有了大量数据,也有了一些知识——我们现在想要的是智慧,是那些能挂在脑子里别的信息上的「一般化原则」。

We do want to read high-density work, but I would argue that Schopenhauer is very high-density work.

我们要读高密度作品。我想说 Schopenhauer 就是非常高密度的作品。

All my favorite authors are very high density. Deutsch is extremely high density. Borges is very high density. Ted Chiang is very high density. The old Neal Stephenson was very high density (then he just got high volume, high density, high everything).

我爱的作者都极高密度。Deutsch 极高密度。Borges 极高密度。Ted Chiang 极高密度。早期的 Neal Stephenson 也极高密度——后来他成了高产量、高密度、什么都高。

But the best authors respect the reader's time, and Schopenhauer is very much in that vein.

但最好的作者尊重读者的时间——Schopenhauer 就是这一脉。

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.

关于「知识的哲学」——也就是大家说的 epistemology(认识论)——的当下最前沿,你基本可以跳过一切,直接读 David Deutsch。

I think that's right. If you just want to know epistemology, read David Deutsch—full stop.

我同意。如果你只想懂认识论,读 David Deutsch——句号。

That said, for some people it helps to know the history, the counterarguments, where he's coming from.

话说回来,对一些人来说,了解历史、反对论点、他从哪里出发——是有帮助的。

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.

现存的知识理论——比如 justified true belief 理论(JTB)、归纳法理论——通过学校教育也好、日常经验也好,深深嵌进了我们。

Induction seems like it should work: You watch the sunrise every day, the sun is going to rise tomorrow. That just seems like common sense.

归纳看起来就该 work——你每天看日出,所以明天太阳还会升起。这看起来就是常识。

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 on solid footing. So you might imagine some counterexample exists.

因为太多人相信归纳,你只读 Deutsch 的话,会看到他把这些理论一个个击落——但你自己对这些被击落的理论根基不深,所以你可能脑补出「也许有反例」。

When I first read Deutsch a long time ago I didn't quite get it. I treated it just like any other book that any other physicist had written. So I would read Paul Davies and Carlo Rovelli and Deutsch, and I would treat them with the same level of contemplation, time, and respect.

我很久以前第一次读 Deutsch 没真懂。我把他当成跟别的物理学家一样的写作者——读 Paul Davies、Carlo Rovelli、Deutsch,投入的思考、时间、尊重都差不多。

It turned out I was wrong.

结果我错了。

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.

Deutsch 实际上在一个深得多的层面运作。他有一堆理论彼此自洽、互相强化,构成了一个「世界哲学」——每一块都在加固其他块。

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 come back to Deutsch and try again, and then you'll see how he addresses those issues.

读读别的、不要直接跳到 Deutsch,可能也有用。但我一定从 Deutsch 开始;如果不确定,再去看一些别人,然后回头再读 Deutsch——这时你会看到他是怎么处理那些疑问的。

Deutsch himself would refer you to Popper. He would say, "Oh, I'm just repeating Popper."

Deutsch 自己会让你去读 Popper。他会说:「哦,我不过是在重复 Popper。」

Not quite true. I find Popper much less 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.

没那么准确。我觉得 Popper 远没那么好读、远没那么清晰。Deutsch 和 Brett Hall 都会跟我吵这点——他们觉得 Popper 极清晰;我觉得他难读得很。

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. Deutsch is not writing for you. I get the feeling Deutsch is writing for himself. He is just elucidating his own thoughts and how they all connect together.

不知道为什么,我读 Deutsch 更容易——也许是因为 Popper 花了大量篇幅在解释核心点上。Popper 是写给哲学家的。Deutsch 不是写给哲学家的——也不是写给科学家的——也不是写给你的。我的感觉是 Deutsch 在为自己写——他在向自己解释自己的想法以及它们之间怎么连起来。

I also don't think you're going to get maximal value out of Deutsch just reading the epistemology, although that is absolutely where everybody should start. That's the first three chapters of The Beginning of Infinity.

我也不觉得只读 Deutsch 的认识论部分就能拿到最大价值,虽然那确实是大家该开始的地方——也就是 The Beginning of Infinity(《无穷的开始》)的前三章。

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, et cetera.

讽刺的是,《The Beginning of Infinity》前几章和末几章最易读、最 accessible;中间是硬骨头——量子计算、量子物理、进化等等。

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. 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.

人会卡在这里,因为它要求的——倒不必是数学或科学背景——是对科学概念 / 原则的一种「舒适度」。他还在为 multiverse(多重宇宙) 做强论证——大多数人对这场仗根本没立场,他们没想到那么远,也没绑定 observer collapse(观察者塌缩) 那一派,因为他们就不关心量子力学——它跟他们的日常没关系。

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.

完整读完 Deutsch 后我拿到的是:我看见他的整个理论是怎么连成一块的——每一块都触到另一块、靠着另一块。

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. 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, get inside the AGI's brain and say, "If that AGI is observing something, does it collapse?"

他其实是在为他的多重宇宙理论(本质上是个量子物理理论)寻找证伪手段时,提出了量子计算理论,把 Church–Turing 猜想扩展为 Church–Turing–Deutsch 猜想。为了能设计那个证伪多重宇宙的实验,他得在脑子里「想象一个 AGI」,然后钻进这个 AGI 的脑子问:「如果这个 AGI 在观察某个东西,这个东西会塌缩吗?」

"But now I need to be inside the brain."

「但我得钻进那颗脑子。」

"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!"

「那我怎么钻进一颗量子 AGI 的脑子?——你甚至怎么造一个量子 AGI?——我们连量子计算机都没有!」

"Okay, we need quantum computers."

「好吧,那我们需要量子计算机。」

So he came up with the theory of quantum computation, and that launched the field of quantum computing.

于是他提出了量子计算理论——量子计算这个领域就这么起来了。

That's an example of how quantum physics and quantum computing are inextricably linked.

这就是为什么「量子物理」和「量子计算」是无法剥离的——它们捆在一起。

I think reading Deutsch across all the different disciplines is very useful. Even when he talks about memes and meme theory—that comes from evolution, but crosses over straight into epistemology, conjecture, and criticism.

横着读 Deutsch 跨学科的部分非常有用。比如他讲 memes 和 meme 理论——从进化论来的,但直接跨进了认识论、conjecture 与 criticism。

And it reaches far beyond his definition of wealth: the set of physical transformations that you can effect. 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.

再扩到他对「财富」的定义:你能制造的物理变换的集合。这同时把资本和知识算进去,而且明确地把「知识」放在了更大头的位置。这条可以用到商业、用到日常,既适用于「国家的财富」也适用于「个体的财富」。

So there are a lot of parts that interconnect together.

所以他书里很多模块是连在一起的。

He says that good explanations are hard to vary. 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."

他说 好的解释 hard to vary(改无可改)。回头看一个好解释,你会说:「还能怎样呢?这是这件事唯一可行的样子。」

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.

这些不同的零件互相咬合、互相约束,长出某种你没预料到的涌现属性 / 复杂性 / 结果——也就是一个能干净地解释所有的解释。

That doesn't just apply to good explanations. It applies to product development.

这条不只适用于「好解释」——也适用于产品开发。

Good products are hard to vary.

好产品改无可改。

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.

看 iPhone——光滑、完美、美得像一颗宝石。形态从初代到今天没怎么变。围绕的就是单屏、multi-touch、内置电池、装进口袋、握在手里光滑——基本就是「真正个人、可装入口袋的电脑」的柏拉图理想型。

So that product is hard to vary. 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.

这个产品 hard to vary。Apple 自己和竞品在 16 代 iPhone 里都试过去改,实质性上没法改——零件可以升级、底层能力可以升级,但形态本身改不动。他们一开始就设计对了。

There's a famous saying, I think from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 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."

有句名言我记得是 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 说的——飞机的机翼之所以完美,「不是因为再没东西可加,而是因为再没东西可减」。

That airplane wing is hard to vary.

那张机翼 hard to vary。

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.

等我们搞清楚去火星的飞船该怎么设计,我敢打赌——无论是高层还是细节——在很长一段时间里那东西也会 hard to vary,直到出现某种突破技术。

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.

内燃机的基本设计在很长时间里都 hard to vary,直到电池好到一定程度——电动车出现了——现在电动车也 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? Why is that?

现在有些设计师在抱怨——现代社会里产品和器物长得越来越像。是因为 Instagram 吗?到底为什么?

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 and 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.

至少汽车的例子是这样:它们都像是被风洞设计出来的——因为那是最高效的设计。它们都长得 swoopy、流线型,是因为都在风洞里跑,都想找出「最小阻力切空气」的形状。所以最后都长得很像——因为那个设计 hard to vary,一动就掉效率。

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.

好作者 写作密度和互连性都极高,作品天然是 fractal 的——你会在你「准备好接收」的层级上跟知识相遇。

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. You listen to one of Brett Hall's podcasts alongside it, now you got 28% of it. Now you go to Grok or ChatGPT, you ask it some questions, you dig in on some part, now you got 31% of it.

你不必全懂。学习的本性就是这样:第一遍读拿到 20%;再读拿到 25%;再配着 Brett Hall 的播客听,变 28%;再去 Grok 或 ChatGPT 问问题、挖某块,变 31%。

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 it. 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.

所有知识都是作者和观察者 / 读者之间的一次通信。两边都要在某种水平上才能吸收。你准备好接收哪一块,你就接收哪一块。但无论你在哪个水平,只要你能读懂语言,你总会拿到点东西。

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.

大家都看过 SpaceX 火箭 Raptor 引擎的迭代图——一路从 easy-to-vary 走到 hard-to-vary。因为最新版上根本没剩多少零件给你「折腾」。

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.

早期版本上有一万个零件——你能改厚度、改宽度、改材料,什么都能动。现在这版几乎没什么可改的地方了。

There's a theory in 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.

复杂性理论里有个观点:你在自然界看到一个能 work 的复杂系统,它一般都是某个非常简单的系统反复迭代出来的结果。

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.

最近 AI 研究就在反复证明这件事——你拿一个非常简单的算法,往里灌越来越多数据,它就越来越聪明。

What doesn't work as well is the reverse. 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.

反过来——你设计一个非常复杂的系统、再想把它扩成一个能 work 的大系统——往往散架,复杂性太多。所以大量产品设计就是不停迭代自己的设计,直到找到那个「简单可行的版本」。而且你常常会在它周围加一堆不需要的东西——之后你得回头把「简单」从噪音里再挖出来。

You can see this in personal computing where macOS is still quite a bit harder to use than iOS. 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.

在个人电脑里就能看到——macOS 比 iOS 难用一截。iOS 更接近「操作系统的柏拉图理想」。不过基于 LLM 的操作系统(用自然语言交互)可能还要更接近一些。

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.

最终你必须删东西才能 scale。Raptor 引擎就是这种例子。你越搞清什么 work,就越能看清什么不必要,然后把零件删掉。

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.

这正是 Musk 最重要的原则之一——他基本是这么说的:「优化」是你最后才做的几件事之一。在你想「怎么让它更高效」之前,第一件要做的事是质疑需求本身。

You're like, "Why does the requirement even exist?"

你会问:「这个需求为什么存在?」

One of the Elon methods in Jorgenson's new book is you first go and you track down the requirement. And not which department came up with the requirement; the requirement has to come from an individual.

Jorgenson 那本新书里的一种 Elon 式方法是:你先把需求顺着源头追溯到底——而且不是哪个部门提的,要追到具体哪一个人。

Who's the individual who said, "This is what I want."

哪个人当初说「我要这个」?

You go back and say, "Do you really need this?"

你回去问他:「你真的需要它吗?」

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.

把不需要的需求干掉。等没必要的需求都被干掉之后,剩下需求变少。然后你看零件,在满足那些绝对必要的需求的前提下,尽量删零件。

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 into the right place most efficiently. And then finally, you might get into cost efficiencies and economies of scale and those sorts of things.

再之后才开始想优化——这个零件怎么造、怎么放最高效。最后才轮到成本优化、规模经济这一类。

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.

把一个好产品从 zero to one 推过去最关键的那个人——通常是创始人——是那个能把整个问题装在脑子里、能做权衡、能解释每个组件为什么在它现在这位置的人。

And they don't necessarily need to be the person designing each component, or 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?

他们不必亲自设计每个组件、不必懂制造的所有细节——但他们必须能理解:这个件为什么在这里?如果把 A 件拿掉,B / C / D / E 以及它们各自的需求与考虑会怎样?

It's that holistic view of the whole product.

就是这种「整个产品的整体视野」。

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.

在 Raptor 引擎里就看得出。Elon 给的另一个我觉得很好的例子——他当时想把 Tesla 电池上面那层玻纤垫的生产搞得更高效。

So he went to the line where it was taking too long, put his sleeping bag down, and 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—they managed to improve it a bit, but it was still frustratingly slow.

他跑到那条耗时太久的产线,铺睡袋住下来。他们试着优化那个把玻纤垫粘上去的机器人,想加速产线——也确实加速了一点,但还是慢得让人抓狂。

And finally he said, "Why is this requirement here? Why are we putting fiberglass mats on top of the batteries?"

最后他问:「这个需求为什么在这?我们为什么要在电池上盖玻纤垫?」

The battery guy said, "It's actually because of noise reduction, so you've got to go talk to the noise and vibration team."

电池组的人说:「其实是为了降噪,你得去找噪声 / 振动团队。」

So he goes to the noise and vibration team.

他就跑去噪声 / 振动团队。

He's like, "Why do we have these mats here? What is the noise and vibration issue?"

他问:「为什么要有这些玻纤垫?有什么噪声和振动问题?」

And they're like, "No, no—there's no noise and vibration issue. They're there because of heat, if the battery catches fire."

他们说:「不不,这里没有噪声和振动问题。它们是为了散热——万一电池起火。」

And then he goes back to the battery team like, "Do we need this?"

他又跑回电池团队问:「那我们需要这个吗?」

And they're like, "No. There's not a fire issue here. It's not a heat protection issue. That's obsolete. It's a noise and vibration issue."

他们说:「不,这里没有起火问题,这不是热保护问题——那条早过期了。它就是个噪声 / 振动问题。」

They had each been doing things the way they were trained to do—in the way things had been done. They 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, and so they eliminated the part.

两边都各自按「被训练成的样子 / 一直以来的方式」做事。他们做了一次安全测试、再做了一次贴麦克风测噪音的测试——结论是不需要——于是这个零件直接砍掉。

This happens a lot with very complex systems and complex designs.

这种事在非常复杂的系统和设计里时常发生。

It's funny—everybody says "I'm a generalist," which is their way of copping out on being a specialist. But really what you want to be is a polymath, which is a generalist who can pick up every specialty, at least to the 80/20 level, so they can make smart trade-offs.

有意思的是,每个人都说「我是 generalist」——其实是不想当 specialist 的托词。但你真正想做的是 polymath:一个能把任何 specialty 都拉到 80/20 水平、能做聪明权衡的 generalist。

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.

我建议获得这种 polymath 能力的方式——一个能拿起任何 specialty 的 generalist——是:如果你要学,要上学,就学那些「伸得最远」的理论。

I would summarize that further and just say study physics.

我会再浓缩一下:学物理。

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. You 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.

学物理就是在学现实是怎么运作的。物理底子够好,你可以拎起电气工程、CS、材料科学、统计与概率;数学也能拎起来——因为它是物理的一部分,被应用进去了。

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. 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.

我在几乎任何一个领域里见过的最好的人,都有物理背景。没有物理背景也别哭——我自己物理学得很烂。你也可以通过别的路达到——但物理训练你跟现实交手,而且现实是不留情的,它会把你身上一切漂亮的「伪真」都打掉。

Whereas if you're somewhere in social science, you can have all kinds of cuckoo beliefs. Even if you pick up some of the abstruse mathematics they use in social sciences, you may have 10% real knowledge, but 90% false knowledge.

反过来,如果你在某个社科分支里,你可以抱一堆离谱信念。哪怕你学了一些社科里那种晦涩数学——你可能 10% 是真知识,90% 是假知识。

The good news about physics is you can learn pretty basic physics. 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.

好消息是,基础物理就够。不必非要钻到 夸克和量子物理。「球从斜坡上滚」那一类基本就够当 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. 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.

其实任何 STEM 学科都值得学。如果你已经过了选学科的阶段——那就跟人组队。事实上,最好的人未必只学物理——他们是 tinkerer、是 builder、在动手造东西。tinkerer 永远在知识的前沿,因为他们永远用最新的工具、最新的零件造酷的东西。

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 together the personal computer because they want the computer in their home and they're not satisfied going to school and using the computer there. These are the people who understand things the best, and they're advancing knowledge the fastest.

就是那些在「无人机军用化」之前就在拼竞速无人机的人;在「机器人军用化」之前就在拼对战机器人的人;以及那些不满意去学校用电脑、要把电脑搬回家自己组装的人。这些人理解得最深,推进知识也最快。