幸福与成功：通往满足的两条路

幸福是满足于你所拥有的。成功源于不满足。那成功还值得追求吗？

Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Is success worth it then?

唉。我不确定那句话现在是否还成立。那是我很久以前写下的笔记，很多都是写给自己的，高度依赖上下文。它们来去匆匆。幸福。好吧，这是个非常复杂的话题。但我一直喜欢苏格拉底的故事：他走进集市，人们向他展示各种奢侈品和精美物品，他说‘这世上有多少东西是我并不想要的’，这是一种自由。不想要某样东西和拥有它一样好。还有亚历山大和第欧根尼的古老故事：亚历山大征服世界后遇到住在木桶里的第欧根尼，第欧根尼说‘让开，你挡住了我的阳光’。亚历山大说‘我多么希望来世能像第欧根尼一样’，第欧根尼说‘这就是区别，我不希望成为亚历山大’。所以有两条通往幸福的路：一条是成功——得到你想要的，满足物质需求；另一条是像第欧根尼那样，一开始就不想要。我不确定哪条路更有效，这也取决于你如何定义成功。如果最终目标是幸福，那为什么不直奔主题呢？

Oof. I'm not sure that statement is true anymore. Like I made that statement a long time ago and a lot of these things are just notes to myself and they're highly contextual. They come in the moment, they leave in the moment. Happiness. Okay. So very complicated topic but I always like the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries and he says how many things there are in this world that I do not want right and that's a form of freedom so not wanting something is as good as having it in the old story with Alexander Dionius right Alexander goes out and conquers the world and he meets Dionius who's living in a barrel and Dionius says get out of the way you're blocking my son and Alexander says oh how I wish I you know could be like Dionius the next life and Dionis says that's the difference I don't wish that I could sorry Dioynes Dioynes Dioynes says I I I don't wish to be Alexander so two paths to happiness and uh one path is success you get what you want you satisfy your material needs or like Dioynes you just don't want in the first place and I'm not sure which one is more valid um and it also depends what you define as success if the end goal is happiness then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for

快乐会让你不那么成功吗？这是传统智慧，甚至可能是你现实中的实际经验。你会发现，当你快乐时，你什么都不想要，所以你不会起身去做任何事。但另一方面，你仍然需要做点什么。你是动物，你在这里是为了生存和繁衍。你有驱动力，有动机，你会做点什么，不会整天坐着。不太可能。有些人会，也许那是他们的天性。但我认为大多数人仍然想行动，想活在竞技场里。我发现，随着我变得更快乐——这是个很大的词，但更平和、更平静、更活在当下、更满足于我所拥有的——我仍然想做事，只是想做更大的事，更纯粹、更符合我认为需要做且我能独特完成的事。从这个意义上说，我认为更快乐实际上可以让你更成功，但你对成功的定义可能会随之改变。

Does being happy make you less successful? That is a conventional wisdom. That may even be the practical earned experience of your reality. You find that when you're happy, you don't want anything. So, you don't get up and do anything. On the other hand, you know, you still got to do something. You're an animal. You're here. You're here to survive. You're here to replicate. You're driven. You're motivated. You're going to do something. You're not just going to sit there all day. Unlikely. Some people do. Maybe it's in their nature. But I think most people still want to act. they want to live in the arena. Uh I found for myself as I've become uh happier is a big word, but you know, more peaceful, more calm, more present, more uh satisfied with what I have, uh I still want to do things. I just want to do bigger things. I want to do things that are more pure, more aligned with uh what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do. So in that sense, I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way.

你认为如果你最初没有取得一些成功，你能意识到这一点吗？

Is that a realization you think you could have gotten to had you not had some success in the first place?

至少对我来说，我总想先走物质成功的路。我不会去做苦行僧，坐在那里放弃一切。那太不现实，也太痛苦了。在佛陀的故事里，他最初是王子，然后发现一切都没有意义，因为你仍然会老去和死亡，于是他走进森林寻找更多。我会选择包含物质成功的快乐之路。谢谢。我认为这在某些方面更快。你的一个见解是，实现物质欲望远比放弃它们容易。这因人而异，但我认为你必须尝试那条路。如果你想要什么，就去得到它。我曾打趣说，赢得游戏是为了摆脱它。所以你玩游戏，赢游戏，然后希望你对游戏感到厌倦。你不想一遍又一遍地循环同一个游戏，尽管很多游戏非常诱人，有很多关卡且相对开放。然后你在某种意义上摆脱了游戏，不再试图赢它。你知道你能赢。要么你换一个游戏，要么你纯粹为了乐趣而玩。

At least for me, I always wanted to take the path of material success first. I was not going to go be an aesthetic and sit there and renounce everything. That just seems too unrealistic and too painful. Uh, in the story of Buddha, he starts out as a prince and then he sees that it's all kind of meaningless because you're still going to get old and die and then he goes into the woods looking for something more. I'll take the happy route that involves material success. Thank you. I think it's quicker in some ways. You know, one of your uh insights is it's far easier to achieve our material desires than it is to renounce them. And uh it depends on the person, but I I think you have to try that path. If you want something, go get it. Uh, you know, like I I I quipped that the reason to win the game is to be free of it. So, you you play the games, you win the games, and then you get hopefully you get bored of the games. You don't want to just keep looping on the same game over and over. Although a lot of these games are very enticing and have many levels and are relatively open-ended. Uh, and then you become free of the game uh in a sense that you're no longer trying to win it. You know, you can win it. Uh, and either you move to a different game or you play the game for the sheer joy of it.

是的。你的另一句话：生活中大部分收获来自短期的痛苦，这样你才能在长期得到回报。我觉得很经典。每天都在棉花糖测试中获胜。但有一个有趣的挑战：我认为人们需要避免成为痛苦成瘾者。把痛苦当作进步的替代品，而不是痛苦的结果。对吧？就像我因为没吃棉花糖而痛苦，我因为做这项工作而痛苦。我把幸福和满足感附着在痛苦上，而不是痛苦带给我的结果上。

Yeah. You, another one of yours, most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term. I think that's classic. Winning the marshmallow test on a daily basis. But, uh, there's an interesting challenge where I think people need to avoid becoming uh, a suffering addict. Sort of using suffering as the proxy for progress as opposed to the outcome of the suffering. Right? It's like I was in pain not eating the marshmallow. I was in pain doing this work. I have attached well-being and satisfaction to pain, not to what the pain gets me on the other side of it.

如果你把痛苦定义为身体上的疼痛，那是真实存在的，发生了就无法忽视。但这不是我们所说的‘受苦’。受苦主要是精神上的痛苦和折磨。它只是意味着你不想做手头的任务。如果你做手头的任务没问题，你就不会受苦。那么问题来了：是沿途受苦更有效，还是把它解释成不是受苦更有效？你听到很多成功人士回顾时说，‘哦，旅程才是有趣的部分，那其实是娱乐的部分，我应该更享受它。’这是一种常见的遗憾。

If you define pain as physical pain, then it's a real thing. It happens and you can't ignore it. But that's not what we mean by suffering. Suffering is mostly mental anguish and mental pain. And it just means you don't want to do the task at hand. Uh if you were fine doing the task at hand, then you wouldn't be suffering. And then the question is what's more effective to suffer along the way or just to interpret it in a way that it's not suffering? You hear from a lot of successful people they look back and they say oh the journey was the fun part right that was actually the entertaining part and I should have enjoyed it more. It's a common regret.

我喜欢做一个小思维练习：回到你自己的生活中，试着把自己放在 5 年前、10 年前、15 年前、20 年前的确切位置。试着回忆：我和谁在一起？我在做什么？我感觉如何？我的情绪是什么？我的目标是什么？真正地把自己带回去，看看有没有什么建议可以给自己，有没有什么可以做得不同。现在，你没有新信息。别假装你可以回去买股票或比特币什么的，但仅凭你现在知道的关于自己性情和一点年龄相关的经验，你会怎么做不同的事？我认为这是一个值得做的练习。所以别让我剥夺你的结论，但对我来说，我会做同样的一切，只是带着更少的愤怒、更少的情绪、更少的内在痛苦，因为那是可选的，不是必要的。而且我认为，一个至少能平和地、甚至快乐地完成工作的人，会比一个有不必要情绪动荡的人更有效。

Uh there's a little thought exercise I like to do, which is you can go back into your own life and uh try to put yourself in the exact position you were in 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And you try to remember, okay, who was I with? What was I doing? What was I feeling? What were my emotions? What were my objectives? And really, really try to transport yourself back and see if there's any advice you'd give yourself. Anything you do differently. Now, you don't have new information. And don't pretend you could have gone back and, you know, bought a stock or bought bought Bitcoin or whatever, but just knowing what you know now in terms of your temperament and a little bit of age related experience, how would you have done things differently? And I think it's a worthwhile exercise to do. So don't let me rob you of the conclusion, but I'll tell you for me uh I would have done everything the same except I would have done it with less anger, less emotion, less internal suffering because that was optional. It wasn't necessary. And I would argue that someone who can do the job uh at least peacefully but maybe happily is going to be more effective than someone who has unnecessary emotional turmoil.

嗯，你最终会得到一系列悲惨的成功，对吧？结果可能是一样的，但整个到达那里的经历和旅程不仅是奖励，旅程就是一切。你知道，即使是成功，人类天性会很快把它存入银行，对吧？因为我们运行的正常循环是：你坐着，无聊，然后想要某样东西，然后当你想要某样东西时，你决定在得到它之前不会快乐。

Well, you end up with a series of miserable successes, right? The outcome may have been the same, but the entire experience of getting there and and the journey is not only the reward. The journey is the only thing there is. You know, even success, it's human nature to bank it very very quickly, right? Because the normal loop that we run through is you sit around, you're bored, then you want something, then when you want something, you decide you're not going to be happy until you get that thing.

然后你开始受苦或期待，同时努力去得到那个东西。如果你得到了，你就会习惯它，然后再次感到无聊。几个月后，你又想要别的东西。如果你没得到，你会短暂不开心，然后恢复，接着又想要别的。对吧？这就是正常的循环。所以无论你最终是开心还是不开心，它往往都不会持久。我不想轻率地说赚钱或成功没有意义。绝对有意义。钱能解决你所有的金钱问题。所以有钱是好事。话虽如此，确实有那些故事。我不知道你是否看过那些研究。我不知道它们有多真实。很多心理学研究无法复现，但有一个有趣的小研究表明，那些摔断背的人和中了彩票的人，两年后都会回到他们的幸福基线。是的。同样，我不知道这是否完全正确。我认为如果你赚到了钱，钱可以买到幸福，因为在这个过程中你对自己有自豪感和信心，有成就感，你设定目标并实现了。我打赌这种感觉会持续，而且正如我所说，钱能解决你的金钱问题。所以我不想说得太轻率，但总的来说，我们经历的欲望、多巴胺、满足、不满足这个循环，你必须享受过程。过程就是一切，对吧？99%的时间你都在过程中。所以，如果你不打算享受它，那是什么样的过程？如何缩短那个欲望契约？你可以专注，你可以决定我不想要大多数东西。我认为我们有很多不必要的欲望，随处捡来。我们对每件事都有意见，对每件事都有评判。所以，我认为只要知道这些是不快乐的根源，你就会对欲望有所选择。坦率地说，如果你想成功，你必须对欲望有所选择。你必须专注。你不可能事事精通。你只会浪费精力和时间。

Then you start your bout of suffering or anticipation while you strive to get that thing. If you get that thing, then you get used to it and then you get bored again. Then a few months later, you want something else. And if you don't get it, then you're unhappy for a bit and then you get over it and then you want something else. Right? That's the normal cycle. So whether you're happy or unhappy at the end, it tends not to last. Now I don't want to be glib and say that oh there's no point in making money or being successful. There absolutely is. Money solves all your money problems. So it is good to have money. That said, there are those stories. I don't know if you've seen those studies. I don't know how real these are. A lot of these psych studies don't replicate, but it's a fun little study that shows that people who break their back and people who win the lottery are back to their baseline happiness two years later. Yep. Again, I don't know if that's entirely true. I think money can buy you happiness if you earned it because then along the way you have both pride and confidence in yourself and you have a sense of accomplishment and you set out to do something and you were right. So I'll bet that lingers and as I said money solves your money problem. So I don't want to be too glib about it but I would say in general this loop that we run through of desire, dopamine, fulfillment, unfulfillment, you have to enjoy the journey. The journey is all there is, right? 99% of your time is spent on the journey. So, what kind of a journey is it if you're not going to enjoy it? How do you shortcut that desire contract? You could focus, you could decide that I don't want most things. I think we have a lot of unnecessary desires that we just pick up everywhere. We have opinions on everything, judgments on everything. So, I think just knowing that those are the source of unhappiness will make you be choosy about your desires. And frankly, if you want to be successful, you have to be choosy about your desires. You have to focus. You can't be great at everything. You're just going to waste your energy and waste your time.

名声是一个值得追求的目标吗？

Is fame a worthwhile goal?

嗯，它能让你受邀参加更好的派对，进入更好的餐厅。名声是一件有趣的事：很多人认识你，但你却不认识他们。它确实会让你被捧上神坛。它能让你在远处得到你想要的东西。所以，我不会说它毫无价值。显然，人们想要它是有原因的。它是高地位的象征，所以能吸引异性。尤其是对男人来说，它能吸引女人。话虽如此，它的代价很高。这意味着你没有隐私。你会遇到怪人和疯子。你会经常被要求做奇怪的事情。而且你站在舞台上，被迫表演，被迫与你过去的言论和行动保持一致，你会有黑粉和所有那些废话。但我们确实这样做，我们似乎都想要它，这意味着说“哦，不，不，我出名了”是不真诚的。但你不想出名。话虽如此，我认为名声，和其他事物一样，最好是作为更有价值事物的副产品而产生或追求。想要出名、渴望出名、为了出名而出名，这些都是陷阱。为名声而名声。

Uh, it gets you invited to better parties, gets you into better restaurants. Fame is this funny thing where a lot of people know you, but you don't know them. And it does get you put on a pedestal. It can get you what you want at a distance. So, I wouldn't say it's worthless. Obviously, people want it for a reason. It's high status, so it attracts the opposite sex. Especially for men, it attracts women. That said, it is high cost. It means you have no privacy. You do have weirdos and lunatics. You do get hit up a lot for weird things. And you're on a stage, so you're forced to perform, so you're forced to be consistent with your past proclamations and actions, and you're going to have haters and all that nonsense. But the fact that we do it, the fact that we all seem to want it means that it would be disingenuous to say, 'Oh, no, no, I'm famous.' But you don't want to be famous. That said, I think fame, like anything else, is best produced as a or pursued as a byproduct of something potentially more worthwhile. Wanting to be famous and craving to be famous and being famous for being famous, these are sort of traps. Fame for fame's sake.

是的。完全正确。所以，最好是赢得的名声。

Yeah. Exactly. So, it's better that it's earned fame.

嗯，例如在部落中赢得尊重，就是做对部落有益的事。人类历史上最著名的人是谁？有些人是超越自我的。世上的佛陀、耶稣和穆罕默德。还有谁出名？艺术家出名。艺术长久流传。科学家出名。他们发现事物。征服者出名，大概是因为他们为部落而征服。他们为之战斗的人。所以一般来说，你为越来越大的群体做事而上升得越高，即使可能被视为暴虐或负面，比如成吉思汗很有名，但对蒙古人来说他做了好事，对其他人则不然。你运作的层次越高，你照顾的人越多，你就越能赢得尊重和名声，我认为这些是出名的好理由。如果名声是空洞的，如果你出名只是因为你的名字出现在很多地方，或者你的脸出现在很多地方，那么那是空洞的名声，我认为你内心深处会知道，所以它会很脆弱，你会一直害怕失去它，然后被迫表演。所以纯粹演员和名人的那种名声我不想要，但那种因为做了有用的事而赢得的名声，为什么要回避呢？

Uh so for example earn respect in the tribe is you do things that are good for the tribe. Who are the most famous people in human history? There are people who sort of transcended the self. The Buddhas and the Jesuses and the Muhammads of the world. Who else is famous? The artists are famous. Art lasts for a long time. The scientists are famous. They discover things. The conquerors are famous presumably because they conquered for their tribe. There was someone that they were fighting for. So generally the higher up you rise by doing things for greater and greater groups of people even though it may be considered tyrannical or negative like Genghis Khan is famous but to the Mongols he was doing good to the rest of them not so much the higher level you're operating at the more people you're taking care of the more you sort of earn respect and fame and I think those are good reasons to be famous. If fame is empty, if you're famous just because your name showed up in a lot of places or your face showed up in a lot of places, then that's a hollow fame and I think deep down you will know that and so it'll be fragile and you'll always be afraid of losing it and then you'll be forced to perform. So the kind of fame that pure actors and celebrities have I wouldn't want but the kind of fame that's earned because you did something useful, why dodge that?

现在你可以，我认为有一个挑战，尤其是当人们非常大声地公开宣称某些事情时，你提到过，你几乎成了你过去所说的话的人质，能够更新你的观点和改变主意，在互联网上看起来很像虚伪。

Now you can there's a challenge I think especially if people make very loud public proclamations about things you mentioned there about you're almost hostage to the things that you used to say that being able to update your opinions and change your mind looks very similar to the internet as hypocrisy does.

不，不，不。我过去说某件事和现在说不同的事之间的区别，可能是我学到了，可能是我更新了我的信念，但很少有人以合法的方式这样做。我认为那些骗子和托儿，你看到这就是确凿证据，表明他从来就没有真正相信过那件事。是的。几年前我去洛杉矶参加一个静修，那里有一个我以前关注的人，一个很大的商业和生产力建议内容创作者，非常成功，他完全退出了所有事情，进入了类似僧侣模式，专注于他的业务。我问他为什么，他说我开始觉得我必须在私下里兑现我在公开场合说的话。

No, no, no. The difference between me saying something in the past and saying something different now is perhaps I've learned, perhaps I've updated my beliefs, but so few people do it in a legitimate way. I think that the grifter shill you see this is the smoking gun that shows that he didn't really believe that thing all along. Right. And yeah, I went to a retreat in LA a couple of years ago and there was a guy that I used to follow that a big business and productivity advice content creator really really successful and he just totally stepped back from everything and went like monk mode and focused on his business. I asked him why and he said I started feeling like I had to live up to in private the things that I was saying in public.

对。是的。这是谁说的？好像是爱默生说的，愚蠢的一致性是小心灵的妖怪，对吧？

Right. Yeah. It's a what was it that who said it was a mein that foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds right?

但本质上，看，所有生命，所有学习都是纠错，对吧？每个知识创造系统都通过纠正错误、做出猜测和纠正错误来运作。所以根据定义，如果你在学习，你大多数时候都会错，你会更新你的先验。例如，我做了乔·罗根的播客，大概是八九年前，人们会指出那一件不正确的事，对吧？然后他们就一直揪着不放，因为这在他们心里有助于提升一点地位。啊哈，我抓到他错了。嗯，我认为如果你抓到某人公然撒谎，他们相信一件事却说了另一件事，那是合理的。那是性格缺陷。他们不应该撒谎。

But essentially look all life is all learning is error correction right every knowledge creation system works through correcting errors making guesses and correcting errors so by definition if you're learning you're going to be wrong most of the time and you'll be updating your priors and so for example I did this Joe Rogan podcast I don't know it's like eight or nine years ago and people will call out like the one thing that didn't turn out to be correct, right? And it's just like and they just beat on it because it helps them in their mind raise their status a little bit. Aha, I caught him in an error. Well, I think if you catch someone in a blatant lie where there's believe one thing and they say another, that's legit. That's a character flaw. They shouldn't be lying.

但另一方面，如果他们只是猜测某事而猜错了。顺便说一句，这主要关乎 AI 和 AGI 这件事。我认为我在这点上仍然是对的，但那是另一个故事了。那些认为我们已经实现 AGI 的人，只是自己没通过图灵测试。但有趣的是，人们总是抓住单一的宣言不放。但现实是，我们都是动态系统。我们一直在变化，一直在学习，一直在成长。希望我们也在纠正错误。你不应该做的是为了看起来好看而在公开场合撒谎。我觉得人们能嗅到这一点。这个世界现在真正缺乏的是真诚，因为每个人都想要点什么。他们想被看作某种人，想成为他们不是的那种人。所以你确实会抓到很多人说他们并不真正相信的话。我觉得人们对此非常敏感。雷达已经变得过度敏感，试图判断这个人是否真的相信他们说的话。

But on the other hand, if they just made a guess at something and they got it wrong. And by the way, mostly it's about the AI AGI thing. And I think I'm still right about that, but it's a different story. People who think we have achieved AGI just fail a Turing test from their side. But it's funny how people latch on to single proclamations. But the reality is all of us are dynamical systems. We're always changing. We're always learning. We're always growing. And hopefully we're correcting errors. What you don't want to be doing is lying in public because you're trying to look good. And I think people can smell that. What this world really lacks right now is authenticity, because everybody wants something. They want to be seen as something. They want to be something that they're not. And so you do catch a lot of people saying things that they don't really believe. And I think people are very sensitive to that. Radars have become hypersensitized to try and work out whether or not this person means the thing that they're saying.

是的。我是说很多人都是错的。我们大多数人在大多数时候都是错的，尤其是在任何新尝试中。但错误和不诚实之间的区别在于，故意犯错。

Yeah. I mean a lot of people are wrong. Most of us are wrong most of the time, especially in any new endeavor. The difference between being wrong and disingenuous though, purposefully wrong.

对，没错。所以我认为这是最大的区别。如果有人错了，没什么大不了的。只要他们对自己说的话或相信的事有真实的理由。但如果他们为了提升地位、外表或迎合某种期望而撒谎，那就是错误。这个错误不仅对听众有害，对他们自己也有害，因为你会陷入一个镜子迷宫。你自己会与你过去的宣言保持一致。所以如果你对别人撒谎，你也会对自己撒谎。你被一个甚至不是你的木偶操控着。

Correct. Exactly. So I think that's the big difference. If someone is wrong, no big deal. As long as they have a genuine reason for saying what they're saying, or believing what they're believing. But if they are lying to elevate their status or their appearance or to live up to some expectation, that's the mistake. And that's a mistake not just for the listener, it's a mistake for themselves because then you're going to get trapped in a hall of mirrors. You yourself are going to be consistent with your past proclamations. So if you're lying to others, you're going to be lying to yourself. You're puppeted by a person that you are not even.

没错。是的。那句话怎么说来着？你基本上是在试图打动那些你知道并不在乎你的人。所以他们不喜欢真实的你，如果看到真实的你，他们也不会在乎；而那些会喜欢真实你的人却看不到真实的你，所以他们就错过了你，对吧？你只想要你尊重的极少数人的尊重。试图从大众那里要求尊重是傻瓜的差事。

That's right. Yeah. It's like what was that line? You're basically trying to impress people who you know don't care about you. So they don't like the real you and if they saw the real you they wouldn't care and the people who would like the real you don't get to see the real you so they pass you by, right? You only want the respect of the very very few people that you respect. Trying to demand respect from the masses is a fool's errand.

地位游戏，积累的诱惑，无论是名声、实际的名声，还是竞争比较的陷阱，它总是存在。被社会认可所左右确实很有吸引力。人们应该如何学会不被地位游戏分心呢？

Status games, the allure of accruing, whether it's fame, actual fame, or just the competition comparison trap, it's always there. There's a real draw of being swayed by social approval. How should people learn to get less distracted by status games in that way?

我认为只要认识到地位游戏不像过去那么重要了，就会有所帮助。在旧社会，让我们回到狩猎采集时代，那时没有财富这种东西。你只有你能携带的东西。没有储存的财富。所以财富游戏并不真正存在；财富创造游戏也不存在。存在的只有地位游戏。如果你地位高，那么你就能先得到那一点点可用的东西。但即使在那时，你也必须通过照顾部落来赢得地位。现在我们有了财富创造，你可以真正创造产品或服务。你可以扩展那个产品或服务，为许多人提供富足。这不是零和游戏，而是正和游戏。我可以富有，你也可以富有，我们可以一起创造东西，显然我们所有人比狩猎采集时代要富有很多很多倍。财富创造是正和的，但地位是有限的。能分配的地位是有限的。它是一个排名阶梯，一个等级制度。所以地位的上升意味着别人地位下降。现在你可以有多种地位，所以你可以扩展某些类型的地位，但这不像财富创造可以无限增长，让我们都能住在星星上、月球基地或火星殖民地之类的。所以只要认识到地位游戏本质上是有限的。它们总是对抗性的，总是需要直接战斗，而财富创造游戏可以只是你创造产品。你不需要和任何人争斗。是的，在市场上你的产品必须成功，但这与对别人进行谩骂、对别人生气、感觉被贬低或抬高、或与某人结仇完全不同。所以我认为财富创造游戏更令人愉快。它们是正和的，而且实际上有具体的物质回报。如果你有更多钱，你可以买更多东西。告诉我你能在银行用地位兑换什么。

I think it just helps to see that status games don't matter as much as they used to. In old society, let's go back hunter-gatherer times, there was no such thing as wealth. You just had what you could carry. There was no stored wealth. So wealth games didn't really exist; wealth creation games didn't exist. All that existed was status games. If you were high status, then you got what little was available first. But even back then, you had to earn your status by taking care of the tribe. Now we have wealth creation where you can actually create a product or a service. You can scale that product or service and you can provide abundance for a lot of people. And that's not zero sum, that's a positive sum game. I can be wealthy, you can be wealthy, we can create things together and clearly since we are all collectively far far wealthier than we were in hunter-gatherer times. Wealth creation is positive but status is limited. There's limited status to go around. It's a ranking ladder. It's a hierarchy. And so it's a rise in status; somebody else has a lower status. Now you can have multiple kinds of status. So you can expand some kinds of status, but it's not like wealth creation where it can go infinitely where we can all be, you know, living in the stars and moon bases or Mars colonies or what have you. So just realize that status games are inherently limited. They're always combative. They always require direct combat whereas wealth creation games can be just you're creating products. You don't have to fight anybody else. Yes, in the marketplace your product has to succeed, but that's not quite the same as invective against other people or being angry with other people or feeling pushed down or pushed up or having a beef with somebody. So, I would argue that wealth creation games are both more pleasant. They're positive sum and they actually have concrete material returns. If you have more money, you can buy more. Show me where you can exchange your status at the bank.

没错。是的。它模糊而含混。现在，你看到人们变富了，他们有钱了，他们想要什么？他们想要地位。所以他们去好莱坞，开始主演电影，他们向非营利组织捐款，他们去 KS 或达沃斯之类的地方。他们开始试图用钱换取地位。所以，你知道，人们总是想要他们没有的东西。我们在进化上天生就追求地位，因为正如我所说，财富创造直到农业革命才真正存在，那时你可以储存谷物，然后工业革命把它提升到另一个水平，现在信息时代又把它提升到另一个水平。但从来没有比现在更容易赚钱的时候了。是的，仍然很难，但从来没有比现在更容易创造财富的时候，因为有那么多杠杆可用。有那么多机会。你仍然需要去找到它。这并不容易，它不会掉到你腿上，你必须学习一些东西，知道一些东西，做一些有趣的事情。但尽管如此，它对更多人来说是可能的。几百年前，你生为农奴，死为农奴。几乎没有出路。这已经改变了。所以我认为你最好专注于财富游戏而不是地位游戏。如果你试图，比如说，在社交网络上建立粉丝群，出名，然后靠出名致富，那是一条比先致富更艰难的道路。然后之后再去追求名声，这是我的建议。

Exactly. Yeah. It's vague and it's fuzzy. Now, you see people get rich, they have money, what do they want? They want status. So they go to Hollywood, start starring in movies, they donate to nonprofits, they go to KS or Davos or what have you. And they start trying to trade the money for status. So, you know, people always want what they don't have. And we are evolutionarily hardwired for status because as I said, wealth creation didn't really exist until the agricultural revolution, when you could store grain and then the industrial revolution took it to another level and now the information age is taking it to yet another level. But there's never been an easier time to make money. Yes, it's still hard, but there's never been an easier time to create wealth because there's so much leverage out there. There's so much opportunity. You still have to go find it. It's not easy. It's not going to fall on your lap, and you have to learn something and know something and do something interesting. But nevertheless, it's possible to many more people. A few hundred years ago, you were born a serf, you were going to die a serf. There was almost no way out of that. That's changed. And so I would argue that you're better off focusing on wealth games than status games. If you're trying to build up, for example, your following on a social network and get famous and then get rich off of being famous, that's a much harder path than getting rich first. And then go for your fame afterwards would be my advice.

嗯，很多人确实像你说的那样做。有趣的是，那些已经达到如此财富水平的人，你会想为什么还需要地位，因为大多数人用地位来变现以获得财富，如果你已经有钱了，如果你已经过了财富阶段或者资产雄厚，为什么还要往相反的方向走呢？

Well, a lot of people do that as you said. It's funny how people who have achieved such a level of wealth that you don't think why do you need the status given that most people use status to then try and cash in to achieve wealth if you've achieved money already if you're post money or asset heavy as it's known. Why are you trying to go in the other direction?

嗯，正如你所说，因为我们在生物学上有着追求地位的辉煌历史，而财富是某种新奇的东西。它是新的。财富是你需要更理性地理解的东西。

Well, as you said because we've got an illustrious history biologically of wanting status and wealth is kind of novel. It's new. Wealth is something that you have to understand more intellectually.

是的，财富有物质层面，比如更多食物、更多生存机会，但要真正理解财富的影响、力量、能力、局限以及优缺点，你需要更多地使用你的新皮层。

Yeah, there's a physical component, more food, more survival, but to truly understand the effects and the powers and the abilities and limitations and the advantages and disadvantages of wealth, you have to use your neocortex a lot more.

这是否意味着它不是边缘系统驱动的？玩这个游戏是为了赢并结束它，但地位比财富更难赢并结束。这是个很好的观察。我想过这一点，但你是对的。

Does that mean it's not limbic? The reason to play the game is to win the game and be done with it is harder to win and be done with for status than it is for wealth. That's a good observation. I had thought that through, but you're right.

是的，我认为没错。我觉得人们总是想要更多地位，但财富达到一定水平后，你可以感到满足。

Yeah, I think that's right. I think people will always want more status. But I think you can be satisfied at a certain level of wealth.

嗯，你总是有这种感觉。这就是排行榜的意义，对吧？比如公告牌榜单。它是零和的，我想，你知道，福布斯全球富豪榜也是如此。那个榜单更难爬上去。但像 iTunes 和 YouTube 这样的平台，每天都能让你与同代人竞争，让你上下波动，展示你的点赞、评论和评分。这就是你上升了多少。

Well, as well you always have this sort of sense. This is what leaderboards are, right? This is the Billboard chart, right? And it is zero sum and it is, I guess, you know, the Forbes richest people on the planet thing. That one's harder to climb the ladder on. But the fact that for example iTunes and YouTube can put you in competition against your contemporaries every single day and make you go up and down and show you likes and comments and ratings. This is how much you're up.

没错。它们让你永远在那台跑步机上奔跑。吉米·卡尔有个很棒的想法，他说轨迹比位置更重要。所以，如果你是世界第 101 名，但去年你是第 200 名，相比之下，如果你是世界第二，但去年你是第一，这种减速感非常非常真实。这又回到了进化论，你知道，流血的东西最终会死，除非你止血。所以你天生就不想失去已有的东西，因为我们在几乎无法生存的条件下进化，你不想放弃任何东西。这刻在我们的基因里，所以你会紧紧抓住。

Exactly. They keep you running on that treadmill forever. Jimmy Carr has this cool idea where he says trajectory is more important than position. So if you are number 101 in the world but last year you were number 200 versus you're number two in the world but last year you were number one, there is this sense of deceleration that is very, very tangible. And it's again it goes back to evolution, you know, something that is bleeding eventually dies unless you stop the bleeding. So you're hardwired not to lose what you have, and because we evolve in conditions where we're so close to just not surviving, you don't want to give anything up. It's hardwired into us to not give anything up. So you grip tightly.

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世界上最糟糕的结果是没有自尊。为什么？

The worst outcome in the world is not having self-esteem. Why?

嗯，这是个难题。我观察人们，我不想冒犯任何人，但我看到那些不喜欢自己的人，那是最艰难的处境，因为他们总是在与自己斗争，而面对外部世界已经够难了。没有人会比你自己更喜欢你。所以，如果你与自己斗争，那么外部世界就变成了不可逾越的挑战。很难说为什么人们自尊心低。可能是遗传，也可能只是环境所致。很多时候我认为是因为他们小时候没有得到无条件的爱，这深深渗透到核心层面。但自尊问题可能是最限制性的。

Yeah, that's a tough one. Well, I look at the people and I don't want to offend anybody, but I look at the people who don't like themselves, and that's the toughest slot because they're always wrestling with themselves, and it's hard enough to face the outside world. And no one's going to like you more than you like yourself. So, if you're struggling with yourself, then the outside world becomes an insurmountable challenge. And it's hard to say why people have low self-esteem. It might be genetic. It might just be circumstantial. A lot of times I think it's because they just weren't unconditionally loved as a child and that sort of seeps in at a deep core level. But self-esteem issues can be the most limiting.

一个有趣的想法是，在某种程度上，自尊是你对自己的声誉。你一直在观察自己。你知道自己在做什么，你有自己的道德准则。每个人都有不同的道德准则。但如果你不遵守自己的道德准则，也就是你要求别人遵守的同一准则，那就会损害你的自尊。所以，也许建立自尊的一个方法就是严格遵循自己的准则。先有一个准则，然后去遵守它。

One interesting thought is that to some extent self-esteem is a reputation you have with yourself. You're watching yourself at all times. You know what you're doing and you have your own moral code. Everyone has a different moral code. But if you don't live up to your own moral code, the same code that you hold others to, it will damage your self-esteem. So perhaps one way to build up your self-esteem is to live up to your own code very rigorously. Have one and then live up to it.

提升自尊的另一个方法可能是为他人做事。如果我回顾我的一生，你知道哪些时刻我真正感到自豪，那非常少，而且不是你想的那样。不是物质上的成功，也不是学到了这个或那个。而是当我为我所爱的人或事做出牺牲的时候。讽刺的是，那才是我最自豪的时候。现在这是通过明确的心理练习得出的。但我敢打赌，在某种程度上，我在潜意识里记录着这一点。所以这告诉我，即使我没有被爱，创造爱的方式就是付出爱，通过牺牲和责任来表达爱。所以我认为做这样的事情可以很快建立你的自尊。

Another way to raise your self-esteem might be to do things for others. If I look back on my life and you know what are the moments that I'm actually proud of, there's very far and few between and it's not that often and it's not the things you would expect. It's not the material success. It's not having learned this thing or that. It's when I made a sacrifice for somebody or something that I loved. And that's when I'm actually, ironically, most proud. Now that's through an explicit mental exercise. But I'll bet you at some level I'm recording that implicitly. So that tells me that even if I am not being loved, the way to create love is to give love, to express love through sacrifice and through duty. And so I think doing things like that can build up your self-esteem really fast.

有趣的是你谈到牺牲，因为很多时候人们说：“我为工作牺牲了很多。”但那是你为了更想要的东西牺牲了不那么想要的东西，而不是真正承担某种代价。我想知道自尊是否就是你在困难时，甚至更困难时，坚持你的内在，使你的行动和价值观保持一致。我想知道那些更内省、高度正直的人是否付出了代价，因为你觉得你有一大笔开销需要以某种方式支付。

It's interesting when you talk about sacrifice because a lot of the time people say, "I sacrificed so much for my job." It's like, "Yeah, but that was you sacrificing something that you wanted less for something that you wanted more" as opposed to genuinely taking some sort of cost. And I wonder whether self-esteem is you adhering to your internal, your actions and your values aligning even when it's difficult, or perhaps even more so when it's difficult. I wonder whether there is a price that people who are more introspective, high integrity pay because you think well you've got this heavy set of overheads that you need to pay in some way.

嗯，如果道德能带来利润，每个人都会去做，对吧？所以，在某种程度上，它确实涉及牺牲。但这种牺牲也可以看作是你为长期而非短期考虑。例如，美德是一套信念，如果社会中的每个人都作为个体遵循它们，就会为每个人带来双赢的结果。所以，如果我诚实，你也诚实，我们就能更容易地做生意。我们可以更容易地互动，因为我们可以互相信任。所以，即使系统中可能有少数说谎者，只要说谎者和欺骗者不太多，一个高度信任、每个人都诚实的社会会更好。我认为很多美德都是这样运作的，对吧？如果我不去勾引你的妻子，你也不勾引我的；如果我不先拿走桌上所有的食物等等，那么我们就能更好地相处，玩双赢的游戏。在博弈论中，最著名的游戏是囚徒困境。但那完全是关于每个人都作弊和纳什均衡。那里的稳定均衡是每个人都作弊，而你能玩双赢游戏的唯一方式是通过长期重复的互动。但这实际上并不是社会中最常见的游戏。

Well, if being ethical were profitable, everybody would do it, right? So, at some level it does involve a sacrifice. But that sacrifice can also be thought of as you're thinking for the long term rather than the short term. For example, the virtues are a set of beliefs that if everybody in society followed them as individuals it would lead to win-win outcomes for everybody. So if I am honest and you are honest then we can do business more easily. We can interact more easily because we can trust each other. So even though there might be a few liars in the system, as long as there aren't too many liars and too many cheaters, a high trust society where everybody's honest is better off. And I think a lot of the virtues work this way, right? If I don't go around sleeping with your wife and you don't sleep with mine, and if I don't take all the food that's at the table first and so on, then we all get along better and we can play win-win games. In game theory, the most famous game is prisoner's dilemma. But that's all about everybody cheating and the Nash equilibrium. The stable equilibrium there is everybody cheats and the only way you can play a win-win game is if you have long-term iterated moves. But that's not actually the most common game played in society.

最常见的博弈叫‘猎鹿博弈’：如果合作，我们能猎到一头大鹿，两人都吃大餐；如果不合作，就只能各自去抓兔子，吃小餐。这个博弈有两个稳定均衡：一个是两人都抓兔子，另一个是两人都猎鹿。所以高信任社会是一个更道德的社会，我可以信任你和我一起去猎鹿，准时出现，干活，然后公平分配。你希望生活在一个每个人都有一套自己的美德并遵循它、最终大家都赢的系统里。但我认为你不需要为了牺牲而这样做，不需要为了别人而这样做。你可以纯粹为了自己这样做。你会拥有更高的自尊，也会吸引其他高美德的人。

The most common game played is called a stag hunt, where if we cooperate, we can bring down a big stag and both have big dinners, but if we don't cooperate, then we have to go hunt rabbits and we each have small dinners. That game has two stable equilibriums: one where we're both hunting the rabbit, and one where we're hunting the stag. So the high trust society is a more virtuous society where I can trust you to come hunt the stag with me, show up on time, do the work, and divide it up properly. You want to live in a system where everybody has their own set of virtues and follows them, and then we all win. But I would argue you don't need to do that for sacrifice. You don't need to do that for other people. You can do it purely for yourself. You will have higher self-esteem. You will attract other high virtue people.

我会和自己一起去猎鹿吗？没错，就是这样。如果你是那种长期传递道德和美德信号的人，你就会吸引其他道德高尚的人。相反，如果你是条鲨鱼，你最终会发现身边全是鲨鱼，那是一种令人不快的存在。但这又回到了棉花糖测试的类比。顺便说一句，棉花糖测试无法复现，我最近看到它陷入了可重复性危机。但这关乎用短期换取长期。所以我认为，对于很多所谓的美德，长期来看，自私的理由就是要有美德。

Would I go on a stag hunt with me? Correct. Yeah, that's right. And if you're the kind of person who long-term signals ethics and virtues, then you will attract other people who are ethical and virtuous. Whereas, if you are a shark, you will eventually find yourself swimming entirely amongst sharks. And that's an unpleasant existence. But again, this goes back to the equivalent of the marshmallow test. And by the way, the marshmallow test does not replicate. I saw it replication crisis hard recently. But it is about trading off the short term for the long term. And so I think for a lot of these so-called virtues, there are long-term selfish reasons to be virtuous.

你过去有过自我怀疑吗？这是你需要克服的障碍吗？

Did you deal with self-doubt in the past? Is that something that was a hurdle for you to overcome?

既是也不是。我想我确实有过自我怀疑，比如‘我不知道自己在做什么，我需要弄清楚’。但我没有那种‘别人比我更了解我’或‘我是个白痴、我不值得’的自我怀疑。我想我受益于在充满爱的环境中长大，周围的人无条件地爱我。这给了我很多自信。不是那种‘我有答案’的自信，而是那种‘我会弄明白，我知道自己想要什么，只有我自己才能判断我想要什么’的自信。

Yes and no. I think I dealt with self-doubt in the sense that, oh, I don't know what I'm doing and I need to figure it out. But I didn't doubt myself in the way of somebody else knows better than me for me or that I'm an idiot or I'm not worthwhile. I guess I had the benefit of growing up with a lot of love, like the people around me loved me unconditionally. And so that just gave me a lot of confidence. Not the kind of confidence that would say I have the answer, but the kind of confidence that I will figure it out and I know what I want, or only I am a good arbiter of what I want.

这种程度的自信，我想，能让你判断什么对我重要、我的自尊、我是否应该追求某件事？我能做出公正的判断，而不是轻易被左右。但你说得对，即使你认为自己没有有意识地记录自己做的事情，有些东西也在你脑海深处。是‘代蒙’吗？古希腊人是不是谈论过这个？

That level of self-belief, I suppose, allows you to determine what is it that matters to me, my self-esteem, should I chase this thing or not? I can make a fair judgment on that as opposed to being so swayed. But it's such a good point about even if you think you're not consciously logging the stuff that you're doing, there is some that's in the back of your mind. Was it the Damon? Is that what the ancient Greeks or something used to talk about?

是的。在计算机科学中也有‘守护进程’的概念，它是一个一直在后台运行的程序，你看不到它。但它可能源自古希腊的‘代蒙’。但你知道的、甚至你自己都不知道自己知道的东西，远比你意识到的要多得多，对吧？你甚至无法表达你知道的大部分东西。有些感觉你找不到词语来形容。有些想法你只在身体里或潜意识里感受到，从未对自己表达过。你无法说出语法规则，但说话时却能毫不费力地运用它们。所以我认为，你的隐性知识和你自己都不知道的知识，远大于你能表达和沟通的知识。因此在某种程度上，你一直在观察自己。这就是你的意识，对吧？它是在观察一切的东西，包括你的思想、你的身体。所以如果你想拥有高自尊，那就赢得自己的尊重。

Yeah. Also in computer science there's a concept of a demon, which is a program that's always running in the background. You can't see it. But yeah, it probably comes from the ancient Greek daemon. But yeah, what you know that you don't even know you know is far greater than what you know you know, right? You can't even articulate most of the things you know. There are feelings you have that have no words for them. There are thoughts you have that are felt within the body or subconsciously that you never articulate to yourself. You can't articulate the rules of grammar yet you exercise them effortlessly when you speak. So I would argue that your implicit knowledge and your knowledge that is unknown to yourself is far greater than the knowledge you can articulate and communicate. And so at some level you're always watching yourself. That's what your consciousness is, right? It's the thing that's watching everything including your mind, including your body. So if you want to have high self-esteem, then earn your own self-respect.

我有个想法叫‘内在黄金法则’。黄金法则是‘己所不欲，勿施于人’，你希望别人怎么对待你。内在黄金法则说的是‘像别人本应对待你的那样对待自己’，这可能是对那些没有在无条件爱中长大的人的一种回应。

I had this idea the internal golden rule. So the golden rule says treat others the way that you should be treated. You want to be treated. The internal golden rule says treat yourself like others should have treated you and it was a repost to maybe people that didn't grow up with unconditional love.

关于爱，有趣的一点是你可以试着回忆被爱的感觉。回想一下有人爱着你的时候，真正记住那种感觉，沉浸其中，试着在自己内心重新创造它。然后转向你爱别人、你陷入爱河时的感觉。我甚至不一定在说浪漫爱情，所以小心一点。我更多说的是对兄弟姐妹、孩子或父母的爱。想想你曾经对某人或某物感到爱的时候。现在，哪个更好？我认为，陷入爱河的感觉实际上比被爱的感觉更令人振奋。被爱有点黏人，有点太甜了，你有点想推开那个人，有点尴尬。而且你知道，如果那个人太投入，你会感到束缚。另一方面，陷入爱河的感觉非常开阔，非常开放。它实际上让你成为更好的自己，让你想成为一个更好的人。所以你可以随时创造爱，只是渴望接受爱才是问题所在。

On the love thing, one of the interesting things about love is you can try to remember the feeling of being loved. So go back to when someone was in love with you or someone did love you and really remember that feeling, really sit with it and try to recreate it within yourself. And then go to the feeling of you loving someone and when you were in love. And I'm not even talking about romantic love necessarily. So be a little careful there. I'm talking more about love for a sibling or a child or something like that or a parent. And think about when you felt love towards someone or something. And now which is better? And I would argue that the feeling of being in love is actually more exhilarating than the feeling of being loved. Being loved is a little clawing. It's a little too sweet. You kind of want to push the person away. It's a little embarrassing. And you know that if that person is too much into it that you feel constrained. On the other hand, the feeling of being in love is very expansive. It's very open. It actually makes you a better version of yourself. It makes you want to be a better person. And so you can create love anytime you want. It's just that craving to receive it. That's the problem.

最昂贵的特质是骄傲。为什么？

The most expensive trait is pride. How come?

哦，那是最近的一条推文。我发那条推文是因为我认为骄傲是学习的大敌。当我观察我的朋友和同事时，那些仍然停留在过去、成长最少的人，往往是最骄傲的，因为他们觉得自己已经有了答案。所以他们不想公开纠正自己。这又回到了关于名声的讨论。你被自己说过的话困住了，那句话让你出名，你因此被熟知。现在你想转向或改变，但骄傲阻止你说‘我错了’。

Oh, that was a recent one. I tweeted that just because I think that pride is the enemy of learning. So when I look at my friends and colleagues, the ones who are still stuck in the past and have grown the least are the ones who were the proudest because they sort of feel like they already had the answers. And so they don't want to correct themselves publicly. And so this goes back to the fame conversation. You get locked into something you said. It made you famous. You're known for that. And now you want to pivot or change. So pride prevents you from saying I'm wrong.

在这个语境下，骄傲是什么？

What's pride in this context here?

它可以很简单，比如你在交易股票，不承认自己错了，于是死守着一笔糟糕的交易。也可能是你决定和某人结婚、搬到某个地方或进入某个行业，结果不顺利，但你不愿承认错误，于是被困在里面。这主要是关于陷入局部最优，而不是退下来重新爬山。

It could be as simple as you're trading stocks and then you don't admit you were wrong. So you hang on to a lousy trade. It could be that you made a decision to marry someone or move somewhere or enter a profession, it doesn't work out and then you don't want to admit that you were wrong so you get stuck in it. It's mostly about getting trapped in local maxima as opposed to going back down and climbing up the mountain again.

这就是为什么它是一笔昂贵的交易，因为你需要以某种形式不断偿还它。

And that's why it's an expensive trade because you continue to need to repay it in one form or another.

是的。你被困在一个次优的点上。它会让你付出金钱、成功和时间的代价。

Yeah. You're just stuck at a suboptimal point. It's going to cost you money, success, and time.

伟大的艺术家总是有能力重新开始，无论是保罗·西蒙还是麦当娜。甚至伟大的企业家也总是愿意重新开始。埃隆·马斯克的故事一直让我印象深刻，他最初做的是 X.com，也就是 PayPal。实际上，他的金融机构被合并进了 PayPal。还好你保留了那个域名。他挺执着的，用了很久。他说过类似这样的话：我从出售 PayPal 中赚了 2 亿美元，我把 1 亿投进 SpaceX，8000 万投进特斯拉，2000 万投进 SolarCity，然后还得借钱付房租。这家伙是个永远的风险承担者。他总愿意重新开始。他不在乎被人看作成功还是失败。他愿意全押进去，每次都再赌自己一把。关键是，他总愿意重新开始。即使现在，他的新创业项目就是美国，对吧？他基本上是在像修复自己的创业公司一样修复它。我认为这就是一种愿意看起来像个傻瓜、愿意重新开始的态度。很多人就是做不到。他们成功了、有钱了、出名了，然后就停在那里了。他们不想回到零。而创造任何伟大的东西都需要从零到一，这意味着你要回到零，这真的很痛苦，很难做到。

The great artists always have this ability to start over, whether it's Paul Simon or Madonna. And even the great entrepreneurs are just always willing to start over. I'm always struck by the Elon Musk story where he did PayPal as X.com originally. Actually, it was his financial institution that got merged into PayPal. It's good that you've got the domain. He's consistent. He's been using it for quite a while. And he said something like, I made $200 million from the sale of PayPal. I put $100 million into SpaceX, $80 million into Tesla, $20 million into SolarCity, and I had to borrow money for rent. This guy is a perennial risk taker. He's always willing to start over. He doesn't have any pride about being seen as successful or as a failure. He's willing to put it all in and back himself again each time. But the key thing is he's always willing to start over. Even now, his new startup is the USA, right? He's basically trying to fix it like he would fix one of his startups. And I think that is a willingness to look like a fool and a willingness to start over. A lot of people just don't have that. They become successful or rich or famous, and that's it. They're stuck. They don't want to go back to zero. And creating anything great requires zero to one, which means going back to zero, and that's really painful and hard to do.

说到风险，我一直在想和你有关的一件事。任何你过得不好、不开心的时候，你其实对谁都没好处。我觉得很多人已经异常习惯于默默忍受，对自己的生活质量期望不高。很多时候，你是在用自我暗示把自己推向糟糕的结局，因为你认为某种程度的痛苦是光荣的，或者能让你成为更好的人。我过去常打趣说：如果你这么聪明，为什么还不快乐？为什么你就想不通呢？现实是，你可以既聪明又快乐。人类历史上有大把聪明又快乐的人。我认为这始于你对自己说：你知道吗，我要快乐。很久以前我在泰国遇到一个人，他以前为托尼·罗宾斯工作。他态度很好。我们坐着聊天，他说：有一天我意识到，世界上必须有一个人是最快乐的。那个人一定存在。他说：为什么不能是我呢？我来承担这个负担，我来做那个人。我听了之后想，哇，这真不错。这是个好框架。他知道如何重新定义事物。所以我认为快乐在很大程度上是一种选择，首先你认定自己是一个会快乐的人。你会找到方法的。你不会失去其他偏好，不会失去野心或对成功的渴望。我觉得很多人害怕：如果我快乐了，我就不想成功了。不，你只会想做更符合快乐版本的你的事情，而且你会在那些事情上成功。相信我，快乐的你不会回头看那个不快乐的你，说：哎呀，那家伙本来会更成功的，我真希望我是他。你其实是为了快乐才追求成功的。这才是重点。你把顺序搞反了。

Talking about risk, something I've been thinking about a lot related to you. Any moment when you're not having a good time, when you're not really happy, you're not doing anyone any favors. I think lots of people have become unusually familiar with suffering silently in that sort of way, not having a high bar for your expectation for quality of life. A lot of it is just you're memeing yourself into a bad outcome because you think that somehow suffering is glorious or that it makes you a better person. My old quip was: if you're so smart, why aren't you happy? Why can't you figure that one out? The reality is you can be smart and happy. There are plenty of people in human history who are smart and happy. And I think it just starts with saying, you know what, I'm going to be happy. There was a guy I met in Thailand a long time ago, and he used to work for Tony Robbins. He had a great attitude. We were sitting around and he said, I realized one day that someone out there had to be the happiest person in the world. That person just has to exist. He said, why not me? I'll take on that burden. I'll be that guy. I heard that and thought, wow, that's pretty good. That's a good frame. He knew how to reframe things. So I think a lot of happiness is just a choice in the sense that you first identify yourself as someone who is going to be happy. You're going to figure it out. You're not going to lose your other predilections. You're not going to lose your ambition or your desire for success. I think a lot of people have this fear that if I'm happy, then I won't want to be successful. No, you'll just want to do things that are more aligned with the happy version of you, and you'll be successful at those things. And believe me, the happy version of you is not going to look back at the unhappy version and say, oh man, that guy was going to be more successful. I wish I was him. You're actually trying to be successful so you'll be happy. That's the whole point. You've got it backwards.

你触发了我的一张陷阱卡。我最喜欢的洞见之一是：我们为了得到想要的东西而牺牲了那个东西本身。所以我们为了成功而牺牲快乐，以为等我们足够成功了，就能真正快乐。如果你列一个联立方程，把成功从两边都去掉，至少在我的生活中，我没有发现存在权衡。相反，我发现我越快乐，就越会去做那些我擅长且契合的事情，而这会让我更快乐。所以我实际上变得更成功，而不是更不成功。

You unlocked one of my trap cards. One of my favorite insights is that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice happiness in order to be successful so that when we're finally sufficiently successful, we can actually be happy. And if you have some sort of simultaneous equation and you just sort of stripped success off from both sides, at least in my own life, I have not found there to be a trade-off. If anything, I have found that the happier I get, the more I am going to do the things that I'm good at and aligned with, and that will make me even happier. So I actually end up more successful, not less.

“契合”这一点很有意思。我尽量说得委婉些。从我们相处的这段时间来看，你有一个非常有趣的特质，就是整体性的自私。你似乎准备好把自己放在第一位。如果对你来说是真实的，你似乎不太在意说或做一些可能让别人感到尴尬的事情。这大概就是毫无歉意地优先考虑自己吧。

The aligned with thing is interesting. I'm going to try and put this across as delicately as I can. From the bit of time we've spent together, you have a really interesting trait of holistic selfishness. You're sort of prepared to put yourself first. You seem largely unfazed by saying or doing things that might result in other people feeling a little bit awkward if it's truthful for you. It's like unapologetically self-prioritizing, I guess.

是啊，我觉得每个人都是。也许“毫无歉意”这部分相对少见，但我认为每个人都把自己放在第一位。这只是人性。你在这里是因为你活下来了。你是一个独立的有机体。这很有意思。也许我是这样。但我知道我们喜欢道德标榜，假装是在为对方做事。有多少次有人说：“当然，我很乐意参加婚礼。”而实际上他们心里想：“我不想参加婚礼。”有多少次有人问：“你今天怎么样？”而他们并不真的告诉你。有多少——我不去婚礼。但这就是我的观点。

Yeah, I think everybody is. Maybe unapologetic is the part that's relatively rare, but I think everybody puts themselves first. That's just human nature. You're here because you survived. You're a separate organism. That's interesting. I'm maybe. But I know we like to virtue signal and pretend we're doing it for each other. How many times does somebody say, 'Yeah, of course. I'd love to come to the wedding,' when they're like, 'I don't want to be at the wedding.' How many times does someone say, 'How are you doing today?' and they don't tell you. How many— I don't go to weddings. But this is my point.

所以我不认为你一定是正确的。我认为人们确实——我不认为他们把自己放在第一位。我有时觉得他们会为了迎合眼前的社交场合而妥协自己真正想要的东西。

So I don't think you're necessarily right with that. I think that people do— I don't think they put themselves first. I sometimes think that they compromise what it is that they want in order to appease socially what's in front of them.

是啊，我只是觉得你在浪费所有人的时间。不要做你不想做的事。你为什么在浪费时间？在这个地球上时间太少了。人生过得很快。是多少？4000 周。那就是你的寿命。是的，我们听说过，但我们不记得。但我想我敏锐地意识到我的时间有多短，所以我就是不会浪费它。

Yeah, I just view it as you're wasting everyone's time on it. Don't do something you don't want to do. Why are you wasting your time? There's so little time on this earth. Life goes fast. What is it? 4,000 weeks. That's your lifespan. And yes, we hear that, but we don't remember it. But I guess I'm keenly aware of how little time I have, so I'm just not going to waste it.

你是如何变得更自在地做一个毫无歉意的自我优先者的？

How have you gotten more comfortable at being the unapologetic self-prioritizer?

是的，我在这方面变得越来越无情。主要是因为看到或听到别人的自由，这进一步解放了我。我读过一篇马克·安德森写的博客，他说“不要保留日程表”，我深以为然。所以我删掉了日历，不保留日程表。我试着把所有事情记在脑子里。如果我记不住，我就不会——我很高兴你准时到了。是啊，没错。我讨厌最后一刻才去查东西。但讽刺的是，我甚至不知道马克自己是否遵循这一点，但他说得对。

Yeah, I've gotten utterly more and more ruthless on it. Mainly it's that I see or hear people's freedom and then that liberates me further. So I read a blog post by P. Mark, aka Mark Andreessen, where he said 'don't keep a schedule,' and I took that to heart. So I deleted my calendar and I don't keep a schedule. I try to remember it all in my head. If I can't remember it, I'm not going to— I'm glad you got here on time. Yeah, exactly. I hate to look things up at the last minute. So, but ironically, I don't even know if Mark himself follows that, but he made the correct point.

我读到一个小故事，说杰克·多尔西只用 iPhone 和 iPad 处理所有业务，甚至不用 Mac，我就说：‘好吧，我也想那样做。’所以，我打算通过短信来操作，不再处理我那烦人的邮件。这感觉更自由吗？

I read a little story about Jack Dorsey doing all his business off his iPhone and iPad and not even going into a Mac, and I said, 'Okay, I want to do that.' So, I'm going to operate through text messaging and not put up my nasty email. Does that feel like more freedom?

确实。是的。因为你在移动中。所以，我有一个烦人的邮件自动回复，写着：‘我不查邮件，也别给我发短信。’对。如果你需要找我，你会找到我的。显然，这有些是成功的奢侈，但这些习惯我很久以前就养成了，那个敌意的邮件自动回复很早就开始了。我曾经拥有 coffee.com 这个域名，后来放弃了。我曾经用那个邮箱回复，只是为了让人明白我的意思。但我后来不再那么粗鲁了。现在我只是消失。我妻子知道永远不要为我预订或安排任何事情。我不需要参加夫妻晚餐，不需要参加生日聚会，不需要参加婚礼。如果有人试图让她说服我出席，她会说他自己做决定，你得直接问他。

It does. Yeah. Because you're on the go. So, I have a nasty email autoresponder that says, 'I don't check email and don't text me either.' Right. If you need to find me, you'll find me. Obviously, some of this is a luxury of success, but some of these habits I adopted long before actually the hostile email autoresponder started a long time ago. I used to own the domain coffee.com. I let it go. I used to reply from that email just so people would get the point. But I stopped being rude about it. Now I just ghost. I just disappear. My wife knows not to ever book or schedule me for anything. I'm not expected to go to couples dinners. I'm not expected to go to birthdays. I'm not expected to go to weddings. If somebody tries to rope her into having me show up, she says he makes his own decisions. You got to ask him directly.

反过来呢？难道你不会在某种程度上扼杀机缘巧合吗？

What about vice versa? Well, are you not killing serendipity in a way?

不，不。我解放了我所有的时间。所以，我的整个生活都是机缘巧合。我可以随时随地和任何我想互动的人互动。你会收到邀请，但由你决定，因为如果进来的事情更少，你就假设你知道未来什么对你最好。所以，我会说：‘好吧，如果那件事有趣，我会看看那天我有没有心情去做。’但没有什么比过去自己承诺的事情，而现在的自己不想做更糟糕的了。该死的。过去。是的。然后它会毁掉你整个日历。它会毁掉你的一天，因为就像，哦，这一个小时的时段像坨屎一样坐在我的日历上，我必须围绕它安排我的一整天。前后二十分钟我什么都做不了。即使是电话，如果有人想打电话，就说：‘好吧，你有空时给我发短信，我有空时给你发短信。’然后我们临时通话。这比那种过度安排的 cal.com 或 iCal 之类的生活要好得多。过度安排的生活不值得过。真的不值得。我认为这是一种糟糕的生活方式。我们不是那样进化的。我们不是那样长大的。希望我们小时候也不是那样，除非你是直升机父母或虎妈。你的自然秩序是自由。我有一个朋友曾经对我说：‘我永远不想在特定的时间出现在特定的地点。’我当时想：‘哦，天哪，那就是自由。’听到那句话，那一刻改变了我的生活。

No, no. I'm freeing up all my time. So, my entire life is serendipity. I get to interact with whoever I want, whenever I want, wherever. You'll hear the invite, but make the decision because if there are fewer things incoming, you're assuming that you know what's best for you in the future. So, I'll say, 'Okay, if that thing is interesting, I'll see if I can get in that day when I'm in the mood.' But there's nothing worse than something coming up that your past self committed you to that your present self doesn't want to do. God damn it. Past. Yeah. And then it destroys your entire calendar. It destroys your day because there's like, oh, this 1 hour slot which is sitting like a turd on my calendar that I have to schedule my whole day around. I can't do anything the 20 minutes before, the 20 minutes afterwards. Even for phone calls, if someone wants to do a phone call, say, 'Okay, just text me when you're free. I'll text you when I'm free.' and we'll just do it on the fly. It's a much better way of living than this overly scheduled you know cal.com or iCal whatever. The overscheduled life is not worth living. It's not. I think it's a terrible way to live life. That's not how we evolved. It's not how we grew up. It's not how we were as children hopefully unless you're a helicopter parent or a tiger mom. Your natural order is freedom. I had a friend who said to me once, you know, 'I never want to have to be at a specific place at a specific time.' And I was like, 'Oh my god, that's freedom.' When I heard that, that changed my life right there.

你仍然不用闹钟吗？

You still alarm clockless?

是的，我不用闹钟。今天，我确实设了闹钟，只是为了不错过这个。非常重要。是的。但你知道，我把闹钟设在上午 11 点，以防那天我得了流感。我不会把闹钟设在早上 8 点或 9 点。果然，我提前好几个小时就起床了。但这只是一个备用的紧急闹钟。事实上，有时我有事要做，不想看日历，我就直接设个闹钟。

Yes, I'm alarm clockless. Today, I did set my alarm clock just so I wouldn't miss this. Very important. Yeah. But just so you know, I set the alarm clock from 11:00 a.m. in case I was stricken with a flu that day. I wasn't going to set my alarm clock for 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. And sure enough, I got up many hours before that. But it was sort of a backup emergency alarm. In fact, sometimes when I have something that I need to do, I don't want to look at a calendar, so I'll just set an alarm for it.

再深入一点那种‘你能量’，那种自我优先的能量，因为我认为人们理性上喜欢这个想法：我只做我想做的事。即使他们拥有一定程度的自由，也不是那种‘你能量’，我认为每个人都应该尽可能以那种方式生活。显然，我们有工作和义务的要求，这些对我们真正重要。但不要把你的生命浪费在随机安排的事情上，那些不重要、无关紧要的事情，以及活动、婚礼，还有你不想去的和无聊的人的无聊晚餐。尽可能把自由带入你的生活，为此优化，你实际上会更有效率。你不仅会更快乐、更自由，还会更有效率，因为那样你就可以专注于眼前的事情，无论那天最大的问题是什么。当我早上醒来时，前 4 个小时是我精力最充沛的时候，那时我想解决所有难题。接下来的 4 个小时，我可能想做更多的户外活动，或者锻炼，或者也许可以开一些会，但我会尽量根据当天优先事项的需求在最后一刻安排。最后 4 个小时，我想放松一下。我想和孩子们一起玩，玩游戏或读书之类的。所以拥有这种灵活性和自由非常重要。这样你就可以把最需要的事情放在那个时刻的时段里。相反，如果我下午 2 点有一个会议，然后我必须完成一件事和一些邮件，我会把它推迟到下午 6 点。我会很匆忙，不会有效率，也不会自由。你当然不自由。我绝对不自由。但另一件我深信不疑的事情是，灵感是易逝的。要立即行动。所以当你受到启发要做某事时，就去做那件事。如果我受到启发要写一篇博客文章，我想立刻写。如果我受到启发要发一条推文，我想立刻发。如果我受到启发要解决一个问题，我立刻解决。如果我受到启发要读一本书，我想立刻读。如果我受到启发要解决一个问题，我当场解决。如果我想学点什么，我在好奇的那一刻就去做。好奇心一出现，我立刻去学那个东西。我下载那本书，上谷歌，上 ChatGPT，无论什么。我会当场弄明白，那就是学习发生的时候。它不会因为我安排了时间、留出了一个小时而发生，因为当那个时间到来时，我可能心情不同，可能只想做别的事情。所以我认为自发性非常重要。当你玩得开心、享受过程时，你学得最好，而不是被迫坐在那里学。你从学校记得多少？你知道你被迫按照这个时间表、这个时间、根据这个人学习地理、历史、数学。没记住。所有你记住的东西都是你在想要的时候、真正有渴望的时候学到的。那种自由，那种在你想要的那一刻就行动的能力，是如此解放，以至于我们大多数人一生中很少尝到这种滋味。如果你一生都那样生活，那就是幸福的秘诀。感觉也很高效，你也很高效。

Just sink a little bit more into that kind of you energy, that self-prioritizing energy because I think people rationally love the idea of this. I'm going to do what only I want to do. Even if they've got the level of freedom, it's not you energy in the sense that I think everyone should live their life that way to the greatest extent possible. Obviously, we have our requirements around work and obligations that are genuinely important to us. But don't fritter away your life on randomly scheduled things and things that aren't important, don't matter, and events and weddings and you know tedious dinners with tedious people that you don't want to go to. To the extent you can bring freedom into your life, optimize for that, you'll actually be more productive. You won't just be happier and more free. You will be more productive because then you can focus on what is in front of you, whatever the biggest problem of that day. When I wake up in the morning, the first 4 hours are when I have the most energy and that's when I want to solve all the hard problems. And the next 4 hours are when I kind of want to do some more outdoorsy activities or I want to work out or maybe I can have some meetings, but I'll try to do those last second based on whatever the day's priorities demand. The last 4 hours I kind of want to wind down. I want to hang out with the kids and I want to play games or read a book or something like that. So having that flexibility and freedom is really important. So you can just put whatever is most needed into the slot at that moment. And instead if I have like a meeting at 2 p.m. and then I have to get a thing and some emails done, I put that off till 6 p.m. I'm rushing. I'm not going to be productive. I'm not going to be free. You're certainly not free. I'm definitely not free. But also another thing that I really believe is that inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. So when you're inspired to do something, do that thing. If I'm inspired to write a blog post, I want to do it at that moment. If I'm inspired to send a tweet, I want to do it at that moment. If I'm inspired to solve a problem, I do it that moment. If I'm inspired to read a book, I want to read it right then. If I'm inspired to solve a problem, I solve it right there. If I want to learn something, I do it at the moment of curiosity. The moment the curiosity arrives, I go learn that thing immediately. I download the book. I get on Google. I get on ChatGPT, whatever. I will figure that thing out on the spot and that's when the learning happens. It doesn't happen because I've scheduled time because I've set an hour aside because when that time arrives I might be in a different mood. I might just want to do something different. So I think that spontaneity is really important. You're going to learn best when you're having fun, when you generally are enjoying the process, not when you're forced to sit there and do it. How much do you remember from school? You know you were forced to learn geography, history, mathematics on this schedule at this time according to this person. Didn't happen. All the stuff that sticks with you is you learned it when you wanted to, when you genuinely had the desire. And that freedom, that ability to act on something the moment you want to is so liberating that most of us go through our lives with very very little tastes of that. If you live your entire life that way, that is a recipe for happiness. It feels like efficiency that you have efficient also.

你有了灵感，那将是做那件事最顺畅的时机。所以，哦，我有灵感做那件事。我会把它推迟到我不再那么想做的时候。而在我还想做那件事的时候，我会去做另一件我需要做的事，因为它在日程上。这行不通。拖延是因为你现在不想做那件事。你想做别的事。那就去做别的事。

You have the inspiration that is going to be the most frictionless time to ever do that particular task. So, oh, I've had the inspiration to do that. I'll put that off until a time when I no longer really want to do it quite so much. And while I do want to do that thing, I'll do something else that I needed to do because it's on the schedule. It does not work. Procrastination is because you don't want to do that thing right now. You want to do something else. Go do that something else.

我拒绝这种认为效率、生产力和成功与幸福和自由对立的框架。它们实际上是相辅相成的。怎么说？

I reject this frame that efficiency and productivity and success are counter to happiness and freedom. They actually go together. How so?

你越快乐，就越能持续做某件事，就越有可能做一件会让你更快乐的事。你会继续做下去，并且比任何人都努力。你越自由，就越能更好地分配时间，越少陷入义务和承诺的网中，越能专注于手头的任务。

The happier you are, the more you can sustain doing something, the more likely you're going to do something that will in turn make you even happier. and you'll continue to do it and you'll outwork everybody else. The more free you are, the better you can allocate your time and the less you're caught up in a web of obligations and commitments and the more you can focus on the task at hand.

另外，本期节目由 Function 赞助。保持健康不仅仅需要年度体检，所以我与 Function 合作。他们每年进行两次实验室测试，追踪超过 100 个生物标志物，并监测数千种疾病的早期迹象。他们甚至在第一阶段筛查 50 种癌症，这比年度体检多出五倍的数据。你会收到来自专家医生团队的见解，他们提供所有观察结果的详细书面临床总结，并对任何关键发现进行电话咨询。这些实验室测试通常要花费数千美元，但通过 Function 只需 499 美元。现在，你可以通过下方描述中的链接或访问 functionhealth.com/modernwisdom 获得与我完全相同的血液检测，并绕过他们的等待名单。网址是 functionhealth.com/modernwisdom。

In other news, this episode is brought to you by Function. Staying on top of your health requires more than just an annual physical, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year to track over a 100 biomarkers and monitor for early signs of thousands of diseases. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. You receive insights from a team of expert physicians who provide a detailed written clinician summary of all their observations and then phone consultations for any critical findings. Getting these lab tests done would usually cost thousands, but with function, it is only $499. And right now, you can get the exact same blood panels that I get and bypass their weight list by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdism.

这与你另一个见解有关。你越不想要某样东西，越不去想它，越不痴迷于它，你就越会自然地去做，越会为自己而做，你会以自己擅长的方式去做，并且坚持下去。你周围的人会看到你的工作质量更高。但这似乎是一个难以处理的张力，因为对细节的痴迷关注也是你工作的竞争优势。所以这两件事有点相互冲突。

This is related to another insight of yours. The less you want something, the less you're thinking about it, the less you're obsessing over it, the more you're going to do it in a natural way, the more you're going to do it for yourself, you're going to do it in a way that you're good at and you're going to stick with it. The people around you will see the quality of your work is higher. But this seems like a difficult tension to navigate because an obsessive attention to detail is a competitive advantage of your work as well. So you have these two things sort of conflicting with each other.

没有人能在做你自己这件事上打败你。所以我喜欢说的一句话是：找到那些对你来说是游戏，但对别人来说是工作的事情。所以对他们来说是工作，但对你来说是游戏。这不是工作。所以你会胜过他们，因为你毫不费力地做。你为了乐趣而做。他们为了工作而做。他们为了某种副产品而做。对你来说，这是艺术，是美，是快乐，是心流，是满足。你一定喜欢做播客。如果你不喜欢，你就不会擅长。对吧？如果你决定在人生中取得成功的方式是写书，那么没有人会听说过你。克里斯·威廉姆森的书会彻底失败。那不是你。你是一个播客主播。你喜欢与人交谈，喜欢采访他们。你越做自己自然的事情，竞争就越少。你通过真实来逃避竞争，通过做你自己。

No one is going to beat you at being you if it So one of the things I like to say is like find what feels like play to you but looks like work to others. So it looks like work to them but to you it feels like play. It's not work. So you're going to out compete them because you're doing it effortlessly. You're doing it for fun. They're doing it for work. They're doing it for some byproduct. To you it's art. It's beauty. It's joy. It's it's flow. It's fulfilling. Uh, you must enjoy podcasting. If you didn't, you wouldn't be good at it. You would either, right? If you would, if if you decided that the right way to get ahead in life was to go write books, you would nobody would have heard of you. Chris Williamson's book would be a complete flop. That's not who you are. You're a podcaster. You enjoy talking to people. You enjoy interviewing them. The more you do things that are natural to you, the less competition you have. You escape competition through authenticity. by being your own self.

如果要用两个词来总结如何在生活中成功，我会说：产品化你自己。就是这样。弄清楚你天生擅长什么，世界可能需要什么，你可以将其规模化并转化为产品，最终对你来说会毫不费力。是的，总是需要努力，但对你来说甚至不会感觉像工作。它会感觉像游戏。现代社会给了我们这个机会。如果你生活在两千年前，出生在农场，你的选择非常有限。你只能在那农场干活。现在，你可以醒来就搬到另一个城市。你可以换职业，换工作，换身边的人。你可以改变关于你是谁、和谁在一起、做什么的很多事情，机会是无限的。真的是无限的。所以最好把它当作一个搜索功能，找到最需要你的人，最需要你的工作，最适合你的地方。在投入开发之前，花时间探索是值得的。

If I had to summarize how to be successful in life in two words, I would just say productize yourself. That's it. Just figure out what it is that you naturally do that the world might want that you can scale up and turn into a product and it'll be it'll eventually be effortless for you. Yes, there's always work required, but it won't even feel like work to you. It'll feel like play to you. And modern society gives us that opportunity. You know, if you were 2,000 years ago, you're born in a farm. Your choices are very limited, right? You're going to do stuff on that farm. Now, you can literally wake up and you can move to a different city. You can switch careers. You can switch jobs. You can change the people that you're with. Uh, you know, you can change so many things about who you are and who you're with and what you're doing that there is infinite opportunity out there for you. Literally infinite. And so it's much better to treat this like a search function to find the people who need you the most, to find the work that needs you the most, to find the place you're best suited to be at. And it's worthwhile to spend time in that exploration before diving into exploitation.

在一个有这么多选择的世界里，最大的错误是过早承诺。如果你过早承诺成为一名律师或医生，现在你已经投入了五年，你可能完全错过了。你可能最终在错误的职业、错误的地方或错误的人身边，辛苦三十年。是的，最好的弄清楚的时间是之前，但第二好的时间是现在。所以，就改变吧。而且，大概要快速扼杀那些不奏效的事情。默认情况下，你应该扼杀一切。如果你无法决定，答案就是“不”。大多数事情你应该直接说“不”。我保持日程空闲的部分就是默认对一切说“不”。我是否要创建一个日程来添加你的活动？或者添加你的需求或愿望？

The biggest mistake in a world with so many choices is premature commitment. If you prematurely commit to being a lawyer or a doctor and now you've got like, you know, 5 years invested into that, you might have just completely missed. You might just end up in the wrong profession, the wrong place, or the wrong people for 30 years of your life grinding away. And yes, the best time to figure that out was before, but the second best time is now. So, just change it. And also, presumably kill things that aren't working very quickly. By default, you should kill everything. You know, if you can't decide, the answer is no. Uh, and most things you should just be saying no to. The part of my keeping my calendar free is just by default saying no to everything. Do I want to create a calendar just to add your event, right? Or to add your need or your desire.

另一件事是，在人生早期，你在寻找机会。所以你对一切都说“是”。那是你经历的一个阶段，是探索阶段。后来，当你找到了想做的事情，你就进入了开发阶段。你必须默认对一切说“不”。如果你不默认对一切说“不”，如果你甚至需要特意去说“不”，那会占用时间。例如，有很多人热衷于 hustle 文化，而 hustle 文化的一大特点是：如果你不要求，你就得不到。所以他们会 hustle 别人。他们总是给你发请求、发消息。是的，这是名人的问题，但我也有。人们总是向我索要东西。我收到这些消息时会有点不安，我相信你也会收到这样的短信、邮件，说：“嘿，克里斯，我的朋友某某应该上你的播客”，或者“你应该来参加我的活动”，“你应该为我的书写序”。你收到这些时会有点不安，对吧？你必须想办法说“不”。我学到的一件事是，如果你不会要求别人去做某件事，而你自己收到了那个请求，你可以直接忽略它。你不需要回复。

One of the other things about, you know, early on in life, you're looking for opportunities. So, you're saying yes to everything. And that is a phase that you go through. That is the exploration phase. Later, when you found the thing you want to work on, you're in the exploitation phase. You have to say no to everything by default. And if you don't say no to everything by default, if you have to even explicitly go out of your way to say no to something, that will take up time. Uh, for example, you know, there there are a lot of people out there who are into hustle culture and and a big piece of hustle culture is like, well, you're not going to get something if you don't ask for it. So, they'll hustle people. They'll always be sending you requests, messages. Yeah, this is a famous person problem, but I have it. And people are always asking me for things. And I kind of squirm when I get these messages, and I'm sure you get these two text messages, emails saying, "Hey, Chris, my friend so and so should really be on your podcast, or you should come to my event. You should write a forward for my book." And you kind of squirm when you get this, right? You have to figure out how to say no. And one of the things I learned along the way is that if you wouldn't ask somebody else to do it and then you get that request yourself, you can just dismiss it. You don't have to respond.

你甚至不让它进入你的大脑。如果你想规模化，你必须能够毫不犹豫地删除电子邮件和短信。规模化非常重要。规模化你的时间非常重要。每一次打断都会让你脱离心流。所以保持心流的唯一方法是，要么你非常擅长默认忽略这些东西，要么像我们共同的朋友蒂姆·费里斯那样像隐士一样封闭自己，要么你就在情感上能够不把这些视为内心引起波澜的事情。这种不在情感上记录它的能力是根本性的。这对生活中的很多事情都至关重要。

You don't even let it enter your brain. You have to be able to delete emails and text messages without flinching if you want to scale. And scaling is very important. Scaling your time is really important. Every interruption will take you out of flow. So the only way you can remain in flow is if you get either very good at ignoring these things by default or closing yourself off like a hermit like our mutual friend Tim Ferriss does, or you just become emotionally capable of not registering these as something that causes turbulence inside of you. That not registering it emotionally thing is fundamental. That's so fundamental to so many things in life.

我们能深入探讨一下吗？因为再次，我只看到现在的你。我不认识 20 年前的你，也不认识小时候的你。所以我只看到你这种整体的自私，整合的自我优先化，不管我们怎么称呼它。自私没问题。我接受自私。我很自私。我是一个非常自私的人。别联系我。是的，那种情绪反应。我也有一种感觉，也许人们过义务生活太久了，以至于他们实际上很难挖掘出自己真正想要什么。他们隐藏了自己的愿望、欲望和需求，他们把自己放在次要位置太久了，以至于他们会问：'我到底想要什么？是什么？我想去这件事还是不想？'因为我所做的一切都是被操纵的，对吧？我被别人的欲望像木偶一样操纵了太久。我甚至无法再触及那个了。说'不'感觉像是一种战争罪行。

Can we dig into that a little bit? Because again, I've only seen you as you right now. I didn't know you 20 years ago, I didn't know you as a child. So I've only seen you with this holistic selfishness, the integrated self-prioritization, whatever we call it. Selfish is fine. I'll take selfish. I'm selfish. I'm a very selfish person. Don't contact me. Yeah, that emotional reaction. I also get the sense too that maybe people have lived an obligation life for so long that they actually kind of struggle to tap into what it is that they want. They've hidden their wants and their desires and their needs and they've deprioritized themselves so much for so long they go, 'What do I want actually? What is it? Do I want to go to this thing or not?' Because all I've done is be puppeted, right? I've been marionetted by other people's desires for so long. I can't even tap into that anymore. And saying no feels like a war crime.

所以我认为能够客观地看待自己的思想和想法是非常好的。这是冥想的一大好处。它在你意识观察的自我和你的思想之间创造了一个小间隙，让你可以审视自己的想法，就像评估第三方的陈述一样。如果你认为你的思想就是你，它们始终融为一体，你从思想中做出反应，那么你甚至不会质疑进入你脑海的东西。任何引起反应的东西都会立即引起反应。但如果你能稍微观察一下你的想法，不是用某种玄学的方式，而是通过治疗、写日记、任何你喜欢的方式，甚至只是长时间散步，你不需要冥想或盘腿打坐。所有这些都不是必需的。但如果你能观察自己的想法并稍微客观地看待它们，那么你就可以开始更有选择性、更批判性，你会意识到现实世界中除了可能给你的身体带来痛苦的事情之外，没有其他问题。其他一切首先必须成为你思想中的问题。你必须看待它、解释它并创造一个叙事，说它是一个问题，然后它才成为一个问题。然后你会意识到你很多情感能量都花在了对思想自动认为是问题的事情做出反应上。你不需要所有这些麻烦。你真的需要生活中那么多问题吗？再次，我会说试着只专注于一个首要问题，然后去解决那个问题。就像如果你想成功，就要非常具体地定义成功。专注于那个。其他一切，当它进入你的脑海时，它就变成了一个问题。无论是关于街上走着的女孩的判断，还是刚刚插到你前面的车，或者你的会计做了件蠢事，是的，它会触发你，但观察一下它正在触发我。我创造了一个问题。我现在真的想要这个问题吗？我想把精力花在这个问题上，还是想把它用到别处？而且它不必那么明显。你不必。思想与自己泥浆摔跤也是一个问题，因为它喜欢这样做。我的问题有问题，我还有一个真正的问题关于解决我的问题。是的。没错。所以你会更快乐、更专注。再次，我认为幸福、专注和成功可以相互补充。你会有更多的精力。把它当作精神能量。如果你不开始无意识地、下意识地、反应性地到处捡起问题，你就会有更多的精神能量专注于你实际想要解决的问题。所以在任何东西成为消耗你情感能量的问题之前，你必须先接受它是一个问题。你可以对你的问题有所选择。我并不是说我在那方面是完美的，但我认为我比以前更好了。

So I think it's really good to be able to view your own mind and your own thoughts objectively. And that is the big benefit of meditation. It creates a small gap between your conscious observation self and your mind, and that lets you then look at your thoughts and evaluate them a little bit like you would a third party's statements. And if you just take your mind to be you and they're integrated in one and the same at all times and you're reacting from the mind, then you're not even going to question things that come into your mind. Anything that comes in that creates a reaction will immediately create a reaction. But if you can observe your thoughts a little bit, and not in some woo way, but you can even just do it through therapy, you can do it through journaling, you can do it any way you would like, you can just take long walks, you don't have to meditate and do lotus position. All that is unnecessary. But if you can observe your own thoughts and view them a little objectively, then you can start being a little more choosy, a little more critical, and you can realize that there are no problems in the real world other than maybe things that inflict pain on your body. Everything else has to become a problem in your mind first. You have to view it and interpret it and create a narrative that it is a problem before it becomes a problem. And then you realize that a lot of your emotional energy is spent on reacting to things that your mind is automatically saying are problems. And you don't need all those problems. Do you really need that many problems in your life? Again, I would say try to focus on just one overarching problem and then go solve that problem. It's like if you want to be successful, define success very concretely. Focus on that. In everything else, when it enters your mind, it becomes a problem. Whether it's a judgment about the girl walking down the street or the car that just cut in front of you or whether it's like your accountant did this stupid thing, yes, it's going to trigger you, but observe for a moment that it's triggering me. I've created a problem. Do I really want to have this problem right now? Do I want to spend the energy on this problem or do I want that going somewhere else? And it doesn't have to be that overt. You don't have to. The mind mud wrestling with itself is also a problem, but because it loves to do that. I have my problems have got problems and I have a real problem about fixing my problems. Yeah. Exactly. So you're going to be much happier and much more focused. Again, I think happiness and focus and success can kind of complement each other. You're going to have much more energy. Just think about it as mental energy. You have much more mental energy to focus on the actual problems you want to solve if you don't start unconsciously, subconsciously, reactively picking up problems everywhere. So before anything can be a problem that takes up your emotional energy, you have to accept it as a problem. You can be choosy about your problems. And I'm not saying I'm perfect in that regard, but I think I'm better than I used to be.

嗯，很多人都沉迷于解决问题。以至于有时人们在没有问题的时候也会制造问题，只是为了能解决它们。这种情况正在发生。更糟糕的是，我们还会承担我们无法影响的问题。所以，我的另一个小俏皮话是，一个理性的人可以对无法控制的事情培养冷漠。或者一个理性的人可以通过对无法控制的事情培养冷漠来找到平静。我和任何人一样，在 X 或社交媒体上刷负面信息，为那些我无能为力的事情感到激动。比如，我真的想在我完全无法改变的情况下在脑海里打那些仗吗？所以，如果你发现自己在一个问题上循环，比如你看太多新闻，陷入一个你无法改变的问题，你必须远离它。现代媒体是模因病毒的传递机制。现在发生的事情是，100 年前、500 年前，如果某件事没有发生在你附近，你就不会听说它。它不会成为你的问题。但现在世界上的每一个问题都变成了一个模因病毒，进入新闻战场，实时试图感染你的思想，让你沉迷于遥远的乌克兰战争，或者沉迷于气候变化，或者沉迷于 AI 末日，或者沉迷于其他任何事情。没有什么比古老的宗教更引人入胜的了：世界末日来了，世界末日来了，注意，世界末日来了。如果你不……全球规模的卡桑德拉情结。

Well, lots of people are addicted to solving problems. So much so that sometimes people create problems when we don't have any simply so that we can solve them. We have that going on. And then even worse is we take on problems that we can't affect. So, another one of my little quips was, a rational person can cultivate indifference to things that are out of their control. Or a rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things that are out of their control. And I'm as guilty as anybody of doom surfing on X or social media and getting worked up about things that I can't do anything about. Like, do I want to be fighting those battles in my mind when I literally cannot do anything about it? So, if you find yourself looping on a problem, like you're watching the news too much and you're getting caught up in a problem you can't do anything about, you have to step away from that. And modern media is a delivery mechanism for mimetic viruses. And now, what's happened now is, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, if something wasn't happening in your immediate vicinity, you wouldn't hear about it. It wouldn't be a problem for you. But now every single one of the world's problems has turned into a mimetic virus which is going into the battlefield of the news and is trying to infect your mind in real time so that you become obsessed with the war in Ukraine which is really far away, or you get obsessed with climate change, or you get obsessed with AI doom, or you get obsessed with whatever. And there's nothing as riveting as the old religion: the world is ending, the world is ending, pay attention, the world is ending. And if you don't... Cassandra complex at global scale.

嗯，我会认为很大一部分人口基本上只是被这些模因病毒感染了，这些病毒已经接管了他们的大脑，导致他们对可能甚至不真实或被严重夸大的事情产生难以置信的激动。

Well, and I would argue that large percentages of the population are essentially just infected with these mimetic viruses that have taken over their brain and are causing them to do incredible agitation about things that probably aren't even true or are greatly exaggerated.

但即使这些事是真的，也是那个人无能为力的。他们应该先把自己的家收拾好。所以，我对自己还有一句座右铭：你的家庭一团糟，却想去拯救世界？对吧？人们自己的生活一团糟，却跑出去试图修复世界。天哪。对吧？我认为如果你连自己的生活都搞不定，那就缺乏可信度。如果你连自己的生活都搞不定，我不会把你当回事。就像那些哲学家，看起来值得效仿、那么聪明，或者那些才华横溢的名人，结果自杀了。好吧，你刚刚否定了你整个生活方式。就像《老无所依》里那句台词：杀手在等主角，主角来了，杀手说：‘如果你的那套规则把你带到了这里，那你的规则还有什么用？’它没起作用。

But even to the extent they are true, they're things that that person can do nothing about. And they should put their own house in order first. So, you know, another little line I have for myself is your family is broken, but you're going to fix the world. Right? People are running out there to try and fix the world when their own lives are a mess. Oh my god. Right? And I think it defies credibility if you can't fix your own life first. I'm not going to take you seriously if you can't fix your own life. Like all these philosophers who, you know, seem like people you emulate and so smart or like these brilliant celebrities and they go off and commit suicide. Well, you just kind of invalidated your whole way of life. It's like that line in No Country for Old Men where the killer is waiting for the protagonist and protagonist shows up and the killer says, 'Well, you know, if your set of rules brought you here, then what good are your rules?' It didn't work.

嗯，我在整体上是自私的，因为我希望在我着手做的每件事上都客观成功。是的。你只有一次生命。不要满足于平庸。我认为唯一真正的智力测试是，你是否从生活中得到了你想要的。这有两部分。一是得到你想要的，所以你知道如何得到它。二是想要正确的东西。首先知道想要什么。我可能想成为一个 6 英尺 8 英寸的篮球运动员，但我得不到。所以那是想要错误的东西。那是想要你得不到的东西。也是想要你并不真正想要的东西。是的。想要一个陷阱奖品。外面有很多陷阱奖品。对。我大概 20 年没听过这个词了。是的。那些不值得拥有或会带来自身问题的奖品。

Um, I am holistically selfish in that I want to be objectively successful in everything I set out to do. Yeah. You have one life. Don't settle for mediocrity. And I think the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. And there are two parts to that. One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it. And the second is wanting the right things. Knowing what to want in the first place. I could want to be a 6'8" basketball player and I'm not going to get that. So that's wanting the wrong thing. That's wanting something you can't get. It's also wanting something that you don't want. Yeah. Wanting something that's a booby prize. There are plenty of booby prizes out there, too. Right. I haven't heard that word in about 20 years. Yeah. Prizes that are just not worth having or that create their own problems.

嗯，如果你不小心，你最终可能会处于一个不仅你不想要，而且你甚至无意到达的生活境地。那是如果你在无意识地前进。而且我认为人们通常会这样，因为他们是在自动驾驶，遵循社会期望或他人的期望。所以，你知道，或者出于内疚，或者出于模仿欲望。你知道，彼得·蒂尔从勒内·吉拉尔那里借鉴了整套理论，关于模仿欲望是如何从他人那里习得的欲望。其中一些自动融入了社会，比如，你知道，去法学院，去医学院，去任何地方，去商学院。或者可能来自观察你的朋友在做什么，其他猴子在做什么。或者可能只是你父母的期望。可能是内疚。你知道，内疚只是社会在你脑海中说话的声音，是社会编程，让你成为一只好猴子，做对部落有益的事情。

Well, if you're not careful, you can end up in a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but one that you didn't even mean to get to. That's if you're kind of proceeding unconsciously. And usually I think people end up there because they are going on autopilot with sort of societal expectations or other people's expectations. So, you know, or out of guilt or out of mimetic desire. You know, Peter Thiel has this whole thing from René Girard about how mimetic desires are desires picked up from other people. And some of those are automatically baked into society like, you know, go to law school, go to med school, go to whatever, go to business school. Or they might be from watching what your friends are doing and, you know, the other monkeys are doing. Or it might just be, you know, what your parents' expectations are. It might be guilt. You know, guilt is just society's voice speaking in your head, socially programmed, so you'll be a good little monkey and do things that are good for the tribe.

但我认为最好的结果来自于你自己深思熟虑并为自己做决定。我认为人们没有花足够的时间做决定。例如，我们遵循这些四年周期。你知道，在硅谷，你加入一家初创公司，你的股票在四年内归属。这是标准。对吧？在大学，你知道，你上四年。高中，你上四年。有些事情需要更长时间。你知道，你有了孩子，他们 9 年后进入青春期。那是一个 9 年的周期，直到那种关系改变。但我们习惯了这些相当长的周期，多年周期，我们在其中对事情做出承诺。你去法学院，你知道，四五年周期。你成为律师，40 年周期。这些是非常长的周期。我们花在决定做什么和与谁一起做上的时间非常短，非常非常短，对吧？我们花，你知道，三个月决定，一个月决定一份我们将要做 10 年或 5 年的工作。而且因为很多发现是路径依赖的，你在路径上找到的下一个东西取决于你在前一条路径上的位置。你有点开始沿着这个向量前进，这是一个非常长的距离。人们轻率地决定住在哪个城市，而这将决定他们的朋友是谁，他们的工作是什么，他们的机会，他们的天气，他们的食物供应，他们的空气供应，生活质量。你知道，这是一个如此重要的决定，但人们花很少的时间去深思熟虑。我会说，如果你要做一个四年的决定，花一年时间去深思熟虑。真正地深思熟虑。25%的时间。

But I think the best outcomes come when you think it through for yourself and decide for yourself. And I don't think people spend enough time deciding. For example, we run on these four-year cycles. You know, in Silicon Valley, you go join a startup, you vest your stock over four years. That's the standard. Okay? In college, you know, you go for four years. High school, you go for four years. Some things take longer. You know, you have children, they hit puberty 9 years later. That's like a 9-year cycle until that relationship changes. But we're used to these fairly long cycles, multi-year cycles in which we are committed to things. You go to law school, you know, four or five year cycle. You go be a lawyer, 40-year cycle. These are very long cycles. The amount of time we spend deciding what to do and who to do it with, very short, very very short, right? We spend, you know, 3 months deciding, one month deciding on a job where we're going to be for 10 years or 5 years. And because a lot of discovery is path dependent where the next thing you find on the path depends on where you were on the previous path. You sort of start going down this vector that is a very long distance. People decide frivolously which city to live in and that's going to decide who their friends are, what their jobs are, their opportunity, their weather, their food supply, their air supply, quality of life. You know, it's such an important decision, but people spend so little time thinking it through. I would argue that if you're making a four-year decision, spend a year thinking it through. Like really thinking it through. 25% of the time.

是的。没错。有个秘书定理。我不知道你是否知道这个。计算机科学。在你面试了这么多人之后，从接下来的多少人中选最好的那个。没错。是的。秘书定理是这样的：一个计算机科学教授试图弄清楚他应该花多少时间面试秘书，然后留用秘书多久。假设他要用一个秘书 10 年。他应该继续寻找一年、两年、三年、一个月、两个月？什么是最优时间？结果发现最优时间大约是三分之一。大约在三分之一的时候，你选出你合作过的最好的人，然后试图找到同样好或更好的人。所以当你走到大约三分之一的时候，你已经看得足够多，现在知道了标准是什么。然后任何达到或超过这个标准的人都足够好。这适用于约会，适用于工作和职业，普遍适用。但秘书定理有趣的一点是，它实际上不是基于时间的。它不是基于三分之一的时间。它是基于迭代次数的。候选人的数量，你射门的次数。

Yeah. Exactly. There's the secretary theorem. I don't know if you know that one. Computer science. After you've done this many people, pick the best one of the next however many. That's right. Yeah. The secretary theorem is this computer science professor is trying to figure out how much time he should spend interviewing secretaries and then how long to keep the secretary. So let's say he's going to have a secretary for 10 years. Does he keep searching for you know one year, 2 years, 3 years, 1 month, 2 months? What is the optimal time? And it turns out that the optimal time is somewhere around a third. About a third of the way through, you take the best person you've worked with and try to find someone that good or better. So that by the time you've gotten about a third of the way through, you have, excuse me, seen enough that you now have a sense of what the bar is. And then anybody who meets or exceeds that bar is good enough. And this applies to dating, this applies to jobs and careers, this applies generally. But the interesting thing about the secretary theorem is that it's actually not time based. It's not based on one third of the time. It's iteration based. The number of candidates, the number of shots you took on goal.

没错。所以，你想要很多很多次迭代。这意味着你需要快速退出，并且需要快速果断。没错。你需要快速抓住机会，快速退出。正确。就像如果你回顾失败的关系，最大的遗憾可能是你在知道关系结束后还继续留在里面。正是如此。你应该早点离开。当你意识到它行不通的那一刻，你就应该继续前进。所以在这个意义上，我认为马尔科姆·格拉德威尔普及了 1 万小时精通的概念。我会说实际上是 1 万次迭代精通。实际上不是 1 万。是某个未知的数字。但驱动学习曲线的是迭代次数。而迭代不是重复。重复是另一回事。重复是反复做同一件事。

That's right. So, you want to have lots and lots of iterations. So, that means that you need to bail out quickly and you need to be decisive quickly. That's right. You need to take opportunities quickly and bail out quickly. Correct. Like if you go back and you look through failed relationships, probably the biggest regret will be staying in the relationship after you knew it was over. Exactly. You should have left sooner. The moment you knew it wasn't going to work out, you should have moved on. So in that sense, I think Malcolm Gladwell popularized this idea of 10,000 hours to mastery. I would say it's actually 10,000 iterations to mastery. It's not actually 10,000. It's some unknown number. But it's about the number of iterations that drives a learning curve. And iteration is not repetition. Repetition is a different thing. Repeating is doing the same thing over and over.

迭代就是带着学到的东西去修改，然后做出另一个版本。这就是纠错。所以如果你在任何事情上经历一万次纠错，你就会成为专家。

Iteration is modifying it with a learning and then doing another version of it. So that's error correction. So if you get 10,000 error corrections in anything, you will be an expert at it.

你之前提到那些家里一团糟却想拯救世界的人。但很多时候，我们发现自己内心也有这种愤世嫉俗和悲观。我们看待世界的方式，不管愿不愿意，要么是因为我们吸收了新闻或身边负面人士的话，要么是更内生的原因——它就在我们骨子里。这就是我们看世界的方式。人们如何避免自己内心的愤世嫉俗和悲观呢？

You mentioned there about the people who've got a nightmare going on at home and are trying to fix the world. But a lot of the time that cynicism and pessimism we find in ourselves. We see the world whether we want to, whether it's because we've embodied what the news or the negative people around us have said or it's a bit more endogenous than that. It's just sort of in us. It's the way that we see the world. How can people avoid cynicism and pessimism within themselves?

愤世嫉俗和悲观是个棘手的问题。我们天生就有这种倾向。我又要回到进化论了，抱歉一直提进化论，但在生物学中，好的解释理论很少，而自然选择进化论可能是最好的一个。所以，如果你不能用进化论解释生活、心理学或人性的某些方面，那你可能就没有一个好的理论。我认为悲观也是由此而来的——在自然环境中，你天生就是悲观的。比方说，我看到树林里有东西在动，如果我走过去，结果是食物或猎物，那好，我能吃一顿；但如果那是捕食者，我就被吃掉了，一切就结束了。所以我们天生就倾向于避免毁灭和死亡。因此我们天生就是悲观者，但现代社会非常不同——不管你对现代社会有什么看法，它都比在丛林中求生要安全得多。而且向上的机会是非线性的。例如，投资时，如果你做空一只股票，最多能赚一倍（如果股票跌到零，你翻倍）。但如果这只股票是下一个英伟达，涨了 100 倍或 1000 倍，你就能赚大钱。所以通过杠杆，上行空间几乎是无限的。同样，在现代社会，你可以和很多人互动；如果你约会失败，还有无数人可以约会。在部落系统中，可能只有 20 个人，你甚至无法全部尝试。所以现代社会对失败宽容得多。你只需要用新皮层意识到并覆盖这种本能。你必须认识到，你更像是在运行一个搜索函数，寻找那个能成功的东西。然后那一个东西会带来巨大的复利。一旦你找到终身伴侣——你的妻子或丈夫——你就可以在这段关系中复利。中间有 50 次失败的约会也没关系。同样，一旦你找到那个你该全力投入的事业，它会带来复利回报。中间有 50 次小失败或 50 次失败的工作面试也没关系。失败次数不重要。所以悲观没有意义。你想成为一个乐观者。但我想说，你应该对具体的事情持怀疑态度。每一个具体的机会很可能都会失败。但你要在总体上保持乐观。总体上你要觉得：这里总会有东西能成。

Cynicism and pessimism is a tough one. It's we're naturally hardwired for it. Again, I go back to evolution. I'm sorry to keep harping on evolution, but within biology, there's very few good explanatory theories. And the theory of evolution by natural selection is probably the best one. So, if you can't explain something about life or psychology or human nature through evolution, then you probably don't have a good theory for it. And I would say that pessimism is another one that comes out of this, which is in the natural environment, you're hardwired to be pessimistic. Because let's say that I see something rustling in the woods and if I move towards it and it turns out to be food and prey then good I get to eat one meal but if it turns out to be a predator I get eaten and that's the end of that. So we are hardwired to avoid ruin and just dying. So we are naturally hardwired to be pessimists but modern society is very different despite whatever problems you may have with modern society. It is far far safer than living in the jungle and just trying to survive. And the opportunities on the upside are nonlinear. For example, when you're investing, if you short a stock, the most money you can make is 2x. You just lose, you know, if the stock goes to zero, you double your money. But if the stock is the next Nvidia and it goes 100x or 1000x, you make a lot of money. So upside through leverage is nearly unlimited. Also in modern society, because there's so many different people you can interact with, if you go on a date and it fails, there are infinite more people to go on a date with. In a tribal system, there might have been 20 people and you can't even get through all of them. So, modern society is far more forgiving of failure. And you just have to sort of neocortically realize and override that. You have to realize that you're much more running a search function to find the thing that'll work. And then that one thing will pay off in massive compounding. Once you find your mate for the rest of your life, you find your wife or your husband, then you can compound in that relationship. It's okay if you had 50 failed dates in between. The same way once you find the one business you're meant to plow into and it'll compound returns. It's okay if you had 50 small failed ventures or 50 small failed job interviews. The number of failures doesn't matter. And so there's no point in being a pessimist. You want to be an optimist. But I would say you want to be skeptical about specific things. Every specific opportunity is probably a fail. But you want to be optimistic in the general. In the general you want to be like something in here is going to work out.

你如何驾驭这种张力？

How do you navigate that tension?

我的意思就是，正如我说的，我在总体上乐观：如果某件事现在失败了，那——这有点玄学——就是它本不该成。这是一次学习经历，一次迭代。只要我从中学到了东西，那就是赢。如果没学到，那就是输。但只要你学习，快速迭代，迅速止损，那么当你找到正确的东西时，你必须乐观并投入其中。所以你不应该一头扎进第一个机会。你也不一定非要和第一个约会的人结婚，除非你非常幸运。但你要快速调查和探索，直到找到匹配的。然后你必须愿意全力以赴，愿意把筹码推到桌子中央。所以这两种方法都需要。这是一种杠铃策略。它要么黑要么白。而大多数人卡在灰色地带，半进半出，自己也不太确定。

I mean, exactly as I said, I'm optimistic in the general that if something fails right now, then this is a little woo-woo, but it wasn't meant to be. It was a learning experience. It was an iteration. As long as I learned something from it, then it's a win. If I didn't learn from it, then it's a loss. But as long as you're learning and you keep iterating fast and cutting your losses quickly, then when you find the right thing, you have to be optimistic and compound into it. So, you don't want to jump into the first thing. And you don't want to marry the first person you date necessarily, unless you got very lucky. But you want to investigate and explore very very quickly until you find the match. And then you have to be willing to go all in. You have to be willing to move your chips to the center of the table. So both those approaches are required. So it's a barbell strategy. It's sort of black or it's white. And most people are sort of stuck in this gray bit. And I'm like half in, but I'm kind of don't really know if I am.

我还认为，像悲观者、乐观者、愤世嫉俗者、内向者、外向者这样的标签非常自我限制。人类是非常动态的。有时候你想内向，有时候你想外向。有些情境下你会悲观，有些情境下你会乐观。别管那些标签。最好只看眼前的问题。看清现实本来的样子。试着在某种意义上把自己从方程中移除。显然你参与其中，但动机性推理是最糟糕的推理。你无法通过高度动机性的推理找到真相。你必须客观。客观意味着尽可能把自己抽离出来，至少尽可能把个性抽离出来。所以，如果你带着厚重的身份和个性行事，它会蒙蔽你的判断，把你锁在过去。如果你说‘我是一个抑郁、不快乐的人。是的，我会不快乐。’这就是把自己锁在过去。甚至说‘我有创伤。我有 PTSD。’是的，你感受到一些东西。有记忆，有闪回，偶尔有不好的感觉。但不要以此定义自己，因为那样你会把它锁进身份里，然后不断循环。最好保持灵活，因为现实总是在变化，你必须能够适应。适应也是智慧。适应就是生存。适应是你之所以在这里的原因。你在这里是因为你是一个适应者，你的祖先也是适应者。所以为了适应，你才能看清事物。而如果你通过自己的身份来看，它会蒙蔽你的判断。

I also think labels like pessimist, optimist, cynic, introvert, extrovert, these are very self-limiting. Humans are very dynamic. There are times when you feel like being introverted. There are times when you feel like being extroverted. There are contexts in which you'll be pessimistic. There are contexts in which you'll be optimistic. Leave all those labels alone. It's better just to look at the problem at hand. Look at reality the way it is. Try to take yourself out of the equation in a sense. Like obviously you're involved, but motivated reasoning is the worst kind of reasoning. You're not going to find truth through highly motivated reasoning. You have to be objective. And objective means trying to take yourself out of it as much as possible or at least your personality out of it as much as possible. And so to the extent you run with this thick identity and personality, it's going to cloud your judgment. It's going to try and lock you into the past. If you say, 'I'm a depressed, unhappy person. Yeah, I'm going to be unhappy.' That's a way of locking yourself into your past. Even saying, 'I have trauma. I have PTSD.' Yeah, you feel something. There are memories. There are flashes. There are occasional bad feelings. But don't define yourself by it because then you'll lock it into your identity and you're just going to loop on it. It's better to stay flexible because reality is always changing and you have to be able to adapt to it. Adaptation is also intelligence. Adaptation is survival. Adaptation is kind of how you're here. You're here because you're an adapter and your ancestors were adapters. So to adapt, you will be able to see things clearly. And if you're seeing them through your own identity, it's going to cloud your judgment.

顺便提一句，你可能之前听我提过 Element。事实上，你可能会想：‘天哪，Chris，你能闭嘴不提 Element 吗？’答案是：不，我不会，因为我喝了它之后真的感觉到了不同。我真心相信适当补水对你的表现有巨大影响。所以我会一直说，直到你开始喝它。Element 是一种美味的电解质饮料冲剂，包含你需要的一切，没有你不需要的。

A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about Element before. In fact, you might be thinking, 'For sake, Chris, will you shut up about Element?' And the answer is no, I won't because when I take it, I genuinely feel the difference. I genuinely believe that proper hydration makes a massive difference to your performance. So, I'm going to keep talking about it until you start drinking it. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't.

每个即溶棒包都含有科学配比的电解质——钠、钾、镁，无糖、无色素、无人工成分或任何其他垃圾。它在减少肌肉痉挛和疲劳、优化大脑健康、调节食欲和抑制渴望方面起着关键作用。这种橙子口味加在一杯冷水里，是我过去三年多每天早上开始的方式，我真的能感觉到喝与不喝的区别。最重要的是，他们有无条件退款政策，不限时长。所以你可以购买并尝试任意长时间。如果因任何原因不喜欢，他们就会退款，你甚至不需要退回盒子。他们对你喜欢它就是这么有信心。此外，美国境内免运费。现在，通过下方描述中的链接或访问 drinklnt.com/modernwisdom，你的第一盒将附赠所有八种口味的免费样品包。那就是 drinklnt.com/modernwisdom。

Each grab-and-go stick pack contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, or any other junk. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating appetite, and curbing cravings. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water is how I've started my morning every single day for over 3 years now, and I genuinely feel the difference versus when I don't. Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So, you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you love it. Plus, they offer free shipping within the US. And right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom.

接下来谈谈幸福。这显然是你的一个话题，老实说，我觉得自己最没资格谈这个。这就像一个长臂的家伙教你卧推，或者一个高个子教你硬拉？一个觉得自己处于劣势的人。是啊。你是在问一个疯子他的想法。所以，好好想想。幸福仍然是关于平静多于快乐吗？

Moving on to sort of thinking about happiness. Obviously a topic of yours that's a it's honestly the one that I feel least qualified to talk about. Is it like a guy that's got long arms teaching you how to bench press or a dude that's really tall teaching you how to deadlift? someone that feels like they came from behind the eightball. Yeah. Is you're you're asking a crazy person about their thoughts. So, just thought it through. Is happiness still more about peace than it is about joy?

这只是那些被过度使用的词之一，对不同的人意味着不同的东西。所以，我甚至不确定我们是否在用同一种语言交流。但是，呃，什么是幸福？我认为它基本上就是对自己所处的位置感到满意。不希望事情变得不同。不觉得此刻缺少什么。不需要任何改变。你当前的积极状态不依赖于从外部世界获得某种调整。讽刺的是，我认为如果你问大多数人他们持续快乐的时候——不是短暂的瞬间，因为快乐可以覆盖幸福并制造一种幸福的幻觉——但如果你问人们他们持续快乐的时候，他们很可能是在做某种形式的“什么都不做”。

It's just one of those overloaded words that means different things to different people. So, I'm not even sure we're communicating the same language. But, uh what is happiness? I think it's just basically being okay with where you are. Not wanting not wanting things to be different than the way they are. Not having the sense that anything is missing in this moment. Needing something to change. Your current positive situation being contingent on an adjustment on getting something from the outside world. Ironically, I think most people if you were to ask them when they were happiest for a sustained period of time, not for a brief moment, because pleasure can override happiness and create kind of this illusion of happiness. But if you ask people when they were happy for a sustained period of time, they were probably doing some variation of nothing.

这很有趣，因为在追逐中就有这种缺失、这种偶然性。没错。但然后你会感到无聊。如果你一直坐着不动，你会感到无聊。所以你渴望冒险，渴望惊喜。就像有一个有趣的“极乐机器”思想实验，对吧？假设我可以在你头上钻个洞，放个电极进去。他们用猴子做过这个，我可以放根电线进去，刺激你大脑的某个正确部位，让你进入极乐状态，你就一直极乐。你想要那样吗？那好吗？多久？做吧，然后我告诉你。对。所以大多数人会说：“嗯，我不想要那个。我想要意义。我不只是想要极乐。我想要意义。”然后你会说：“好吧，那我放个电极进去，给你意义。怎么样？”如果你把这个思想实验进行得足够久，我认为大多数人会意识到，实际上我想要的是惊喜。我想要世界给我惊喜，我想以某种可预测但又不可预测的方式与之搏斗。然后你有点回到了起点。所以我不知道是否对某些人来说，纯粹的幸福是终极目标。他们想要，你知道的，无论在哪里、无论何时都幸福快乐。但我认为其他人，大多数人会说，我在这世上，我在这生命中。我不理解它或为什么，但我想参与其中。我想被惊喜。我想做事。我想完成事情。我想渴望东西然后得到它们。对吧？这就是我们都在玩的游戏。

That's interesting because in the chase is this sort of lack, this contingency. That's right. But then you get bored. If you just sit around all the time, you get bored. So you want adventure, you want surprise. Like there's a funny thought experiment of the bliss machine, right? Which is suppose I could drill a hole in your head and put electrode in. And they did this with monkeys and I can put a wire in there and I can stimulate just the right part of your brain and I can put you in bliss and you'll just be in bliss. Would you would you want that? Would that be nice? For how long? Do it and I'll tell you. Right. So most people will say, "Well, I don't want that. I want meaning. I don't want just bliss. I want meaning." And you're like, "Okay, well, I'll put an electrode in there and I'll give you meaning. How about that?" And if you kind of run this thought experiment long enough, I think most people realize actually what I want is I want surprise. I want and I want the world to surprise me and I want to wrestle with it in ways that are somewhat predictable but somewhat not. And you kind of end up back where you started. So I I don't know if necessarily for some people Pure happiness is the ultimate goal. They want to, you know, just be blissfully happy wherever they are, whenever they are. But I think other people, most people would say, well, I'm here in this world. I'm here in this life. I don't understand it or why, but I want to be I want to be engaged. I want to be surprised. I want to do things. I want to accomplish things. I want to want things and then get them. Right? That's kind of the whole game that we're all playing here.

惊喜真的很有趣。那种不可预测性。我觉得这完全是“兄弟科学”，但我很确定这就是多巴胺的工作原理。事情比你预期的好一点。这意味着，如果你是一个长期不安全的过度成就者，渴望控制，真的希望日程完美完成，我们知道行程，我们知道这个时间点会在哪里——你在某种程度上降低了惊喜的能力，因为一切都变得非常刻意、预先规定、提前安排好，你被惊喜的能力实际上减弱了。

Surprises are really interesting. the sort of unpredictability. I think total bro science here, but I'm pretty sure that that's kind of how dopamine works. That things are a bit better than you expected. That within that it means that if you for the perennial insecure overachievers that uh cloy for control that really want to be able to the schedule is perfectly done and we know the itinerary, we know where we're going to be at this time. you're in some ways I guess reducing down the capacity for surprise because everything has become uh very contrived prescribed done in advance laid out your ability to be surprised actually diminishes.

是啊。如果一切都不按你预期的方式发展，如果全是偶然，而你不想要那样，你就会变成一个焦虑的球。另一方面，如果一切都如你所愿地发展，你会无聊到不如死了算了。所以，你知道，生命之河就在这两岸之间流淌，享受它吧。

Yeah. If if nothing worked out the way you expected, if it was all serendipity and you didn't want that, you would just be a ball of anxiety. On the other hand, if everything worked out as you expected and wanted, you'd be so bored you might as well be dead. So there's some, you know, the river of life kind of flows between these two banks and enjoy it.

你说思考自己是所有不快乐的根源，但大概你也需要改进自己和自己的弱点。所以一定程度的反思很重要。如果思考自己是不快乐的根源，这是你需要付出的代价吗？我需要向内反思。我不得不暂时降低这个幸福水平，然后我可以用这个新水平。我系上了棕带，我可以作为棕带走向世界。

You say thinking about yourself is the source of all unhappiness, but presumably you need to work on yourself and your weaknesses as well. So some degree of reflection is important. And if thinking about yourself is a source of unhappiness, is this a price that you need to pay? I need to sort of reflect inward. I'm going to have to diminish this level of happiness for a little while and then I can use this new level. I've got my brown belt on and I can go out into the world as a brown belt.

我特别指的是，如果你在思考你的个性、你的自我和你的性格，并且你对此着迷。那是很多抑郁和不快乐徘徊和滋生的地方。所以，思考“我真可怜，这发生在我身上，那发生在我身上。我有这种性格。我有这个问题。我应得这个。我没得到那个。”——你只是在强化里面那个永不满足的小野兽。我认为很多不快乐就来源于此。

What I'm specifically referring to that is if if you're thinking about your personality and your ego and the character of you and uh you're obsessing over that. That's where a lot of depression and unhappiness sort of lingers and and gets cultivated. Uh so uh thinking about woe is me, this happened to me. that happened to me. I have this personality. I have this issue. I deserve this. I didn't get that. That's you're just strengthening a little beast in there that is insatiable. And that's where I think a lot of unhappiness comes from.

那个野兽是什么？

What's the beast?

那是自我。但这个词被过度使用了，我有点讨厌用这个词。嗯，但它就像一系列反复出现的、非常自我迷恋且永不满足的想法。也非常具体化。所以它们不易改变，不太灵活。你通过一直思考它们来给它们添砖加瓦。你在创造叙事、故事和身份。嗯，但这与解决个人问题不同。所以如果你遇到某事，从某事中学习，你在反思所学，那么你可以反思它，吸收它，然后继续前进。但坐在那里说：“我是克里斯。我是纳瓦尔。我应得这个。这发生在我身上。那个人冤枉了我。这就是我。这不应该发生。”

It's the ego. But that word is so overused that I kind of hate to use the word. Um, but it's like a it's a recurrent collection of thoughts that are very self-obsessed and will never be satisfied. Very concretized as well. So, they're not malleable, not particularly flexible. So you're just adding to them by thinking about them all the time. You're creating narratives and stories and identities. Um but that's different from solving personal problems. So if you encounter something, you learn from something, you're reflecting upon the learning, then you can reflect upon it, absorb it, and then just move on. But sitting there saying, "I'm Chris. I'm Nal. I deserve this. This happened to me. That person wronged me. This is who I am. This shouldn't have happened."

我需要去报复这个，或者我需要修复那个，改变这个。我认为很多心理疾病就来源于此。所以，这取决于你思考某件事是为了解决问题、把它从心里吐出来、从脑海里清除掉。如果思考之后你的头脑更清晰了，那我认为是值得的。如果思考之后你的头脑更混乱了，那你可能走错了方向。

I need to go get revenge on this or I need to fix that or change this. I think that is where a lot of mental illness comes from. So it depends if you are thinking about something to solve a problem and get it off your chest and get it off your mind. If it leaves your mind clearer at the end of it, then I think it was worthwhile. If it leaves your mind busier at the end of it, then you're probably going the wrong direction.

这是否为超然、刻意无知、分心提供了理由？

Is this a justification for detachment, cultivated ignorance, distraction?

超然不是目标，超然是副产品。它只是意识到什么重要、什么不重要的副产品。关于自我这件事，我想说，每个人都渴望思考比自己更宏大的事物。如果你想在一定程度上快乐，就必须忘记自己的个人问题。一个方法是承担其他问题，更大的问题。那可以是一个使命，可以是灵性，可以是孩子，可以是关心地球——尽管我认为有些人做得有点过，变得压抑和专制，支持抽象概念。但这些都可能过度，就像宗教，就像任何过度的事物。一般来说，你越少想自己，就越能思考使命、上帝、孩子之类的东西。

Detachment is not a goal. Detachment is a byproduct. It's just a byproduct of realizing what matters and what doesn't. And just for one moment on the self thing, I think everybody craves thinking about something more than themselves. If you want to be happy to some extent, you have to forget about your personal problems. And one way to do that is take on other problems, bigger problems. That could be a mission, that could be spirituality, that could be kids, it could be caring about the planet, although I think people take that a little far, and then they get kind of oppressive and tyrannical in support of abstract concepts. But these can be taken too far, just like religion, just like anything in excess. Generally, the less you think about yourself, the more you can think about a mission or about God or about a child or something like that.

我记得 Loom 的创始人 Vinnie Himmath 说：‘我很有钱，但不知道该怎么过我的生活。’你回答说：‘上帝、孩子、使命——至少选一个。’没错，最好三个都选。这非常解放。我认为过度思考自己可能不是抑郁的原因，但它肯定无助于反刍思维。

I remember Vinnie Himmath, the founder of Loom, said, 'I am rich and I have no idea what to do with my life,' and you replied, 'God, kids, on mission — pick at least one.' That's right, preferably all three. It's very liberating. I think overthinking about yourself is probably not the cause of depression, but it certainly doesn't help rumination.

是的，我有点因此患上了自我诱导的斯德哥尔摩综合征，因为我喜欢思考，而你又提供了无穷无尽可思考的东西。所以你同时是囚犯和狱警。

Yeah, I kind of had a self-induced Stockholm syndrome from this sort of thing because I like to think about stuff, and you provide an endless number of things to think about. So you're the prisoner and the prison guard at the same time.

我请过 Abigail Shrier 上节目。她写了《Bad Therapy》这本书，反对针对孩子的治疗文化。它的波及范围几乎涵盖了一切，包括 CBT。我觉得，我们正危险地接近一些非常循证的东西。但我想得越多，看得越多，基本上发现，你思考自己的程度和你的痛苦程度有直接关联。治疗如果让你发泄并解决一个问题，几次后你就结束了、清晰了，那很好。但如果你永远在同一个问题上循环，那实际上适得其反。你在其中沐浴，你在沉溺。

I had Abigail Shrier on the show. She wrote this book called Bad Therapy, pushing back against therapy culture for kids. There was a blast radius that covered pretty much everything, including CBT. I'm like, we're getting perilously close to some really evidence-based stuff here. But the more I've thought about it and looked at the evidence, there is basically a direct correlation between how much you think about yourself and how miserable you are. Therapy is great if it lets you vent and solves a thing, and then X sessions later you're done, you're clear. But if you're just looping on the same thing forever, then it's actually the opposite. You're bathing in it, you're indulging in it.

是的。

Yeah.

你的快乐技巧是如何随时间发展的？

How have your happiness techniques developed over time?

我以前有很多技巧。现在我尽量没有，因为我觉得技巧本身就是一种挣扎。就像竞标地位暗示你地位低，它暴露了你地位低。所以试图炫耀的人显得地位低。同样，试图快乐的人等于在说‘我不快乐’，并创造了那个框架。所以最好甚至不再用快乐或不快乐来思考。我只是做我的事。

I used to have a lot of them. Now I kind of try not to have any because I think the techniques themselves are kind of a struggle. It's sort of like bidding for status implies you're low status. It reveals that you're low status. So someone who's trying to show off comes across as low status. The same way someone who's trying to be happy is sort of saying 'I'm unhappy' and creating that frame. So it's better just not to even think in terms of happiness or unhappiness anymore. I just kind of do my thing.

另一个类似的问题：你认为如果你没有经历那种程序化、系统化、一步一步的方法然后走出来，你能达到那种状态吗？

Another question similar to a bunch of them: Do you think you could have gotten there had you not done the procedural, systematic, step-by-step approach and then come out the other side?

我不认为有什么公式。我认为每个人都是独特的。就像问一个成功人士：‘你是怎么成功的？’每个人都会给你不同的故事。你无法复制别人的路。而且他们大多数可能告诉你一个不太真实的叙事版本。我不断意识到这一点，尤其是当我花更多时间与成功人士相处时。你会听到：‘优先考虑工作与生活的平衡非常重要。’这是成功人士最常说的话之一。那不是我的经历。但你不应该问一个成功人士现在如何维持成功。你应该问他们当初在你那个位置时是如何取得成功的。而那些真正非凡成功的人并没有坐着看成功学。他们直接去做了。他们对所做的事情有如此强烈的成功欲望，以至于他们直接去做了。他们没有时间学习、倾听；他们只是去做。强烈的欲望最重要，以及由此产生的专注。

I don't think there are any formulas. I think it's unique to each person. It's like asking a successful person, 'How did you become successful?' Each one will give you a different story. You can't follow anyone else's path. And most of them are probably telling you some narratized version that isn't quite true. I continually realize that, especially as I spend more time around successful people. You hear, 'It's very important to prioritize work-life balance.' That's one of the most common things people who have attained success say. That's not my experience. But you shouldn't be asking somebody who is successful what they do to continue their success now. You should be asking them what they did to attain their success when they were where you were. And the people who are really extraordinarily successful didn't sit around watching success porn. They just went and did it. They had such an overwhelming desire to be successful at the thing they were doing that they just went and did that thing. They didn't have time to study and learn and listen; they just did it. It's the overwhelming desire that's the most important, and the focus that comes from that.

你的那条推文：‘擅长创造财富的人不需要教别人怎么做。’你不需要导师，你需要行动。另一条：‘真正知道如何赚钱的人不需要卖课给你。’就是这样。还有一条：‘如果你不会夜不能寐地思考它，那你就不够想要。’

That tweet of yours: 'People who are good at making wealth don't need to teach anybody else how to do it.' You don't need mentors, you need action. Another one: 'The people who actually know how to make money don't need to sell you a course on it.' There it is. And another: 'If you don't lie awake at night thinking about it, you don't want it badly enough.'

是的，我想你听过我之前说过，未闭合的循环、你正在处理的问题会导致失眠。我睡眠不好。跟我说说这个。

Yeah, I think you've heard me talk before about how unclosed loops, problems you're working on, can cause you to be sleepless. And I'm not a good sleeper. Tell me about that.

哦，我的 Eight Sleep 恨我。它总说我睡眠又失败了。Brian Johnson 觉得我会早死。他可能没错。你估计你每晚睡多少？有概念吗？

Oh, I mean my Eight Sleep hates me. It's always telling me I failed at sleeping again. And Brian Johnson thinks I'm going to die early. He's probably right. How much do you reckon you sleep a night? Any idea?

非常随机。有些晚上我睡 8 小时，有些晚上睡 4 小时。完全是随机的。

It's so random. Some nights I'll sleep 8 hours. Some nights I'll sleep 4 hours. It's literally just random.

你为此烦恼吗？你在尝试优化吗？有睡眠教练教你吗？

Are you bothered about that? Are you trying to optimize? Do you have a sleep coach teaching you?

我不为事情纠结。想睡就睡，不想睡就不睡。我不觉得自己在做对或错的事。我不给它贴上好夜、坏夜的标签。我每天锻炼，因为我觉得它给我更多能量，我已经养成了好习惯。也许我会对睡眠做同样的事，也许我会养成好习惯，但我不会为此自责。总有一天它会变得对我重要，当它重要时，我就会去做。

I don't fogg myself over things. If I want to sleep, I'll sleep. If I don't want to sleep, I don't sleep. I don't think I'm doing anything right or wrong. I don't label it good night, bad night. I work out every day because I think it gives me more energy and I've gotten into a good habit with it. Maybe I'll do the same thing with sleep. Maybe I'll develop a good habit, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it. There'll come a point where it's important to me, and when it's important to me, I'll just do it.

你知道，大多数情况下，比如你看那些有瘾的人，对吧？暴饮暴食或吸烟之类的，他们可能会尝试各种方法，但都是三心二意的。然后有一天他们突然说，‘哦，我得了肺癌。我爸爸得了肺癌。’然后他们立刻就戒掉了。所以我认为很多改变更多是关于渴望和理解，而不是强迫自己或试图驯服自己。这又是效率问题，我想，就是把你想要做的事情和你对这件事的感受对齐。是的。不是陷入半心半意的欲望或模仿欲望。而是真正意识到此刻你真正想要的是什么。当你想要某样东西时，你就会以最大的能力去行动。那才是行动的时候。与此同时，仅仅因为别人告诉你应该做，或者社会告诉你应该做，或者你感到有点内疚而去做，这些都是半心半意的努力，半心半意的努力不会让你达到目标。

You know, most of like, for example, you look at people with addictions, right? Overeating or smoking or whatever, they can kind of go through all the different methods, but it's half-hearted. And then one day they're like, 'Oh I've got lung cancer. My dad has lung cancer.' and they drop it immediately. So I think a lot of change is more about desire and understanding than it is about forcing yourself or trying to domesticate yourself. It's efficiency again, I guess, aligning the thing that you want to do with the way that you feel about what it is that you want to do. Yeah. It's not getting caught up in a half desire or a mimetic desire. It's really just being aware of what it is that you actually want at this point in time. And when you want something, then you will act on it with maximal capability. And that's the time to act on it. In the meantime, just doing it because other people tell you you should do it or society tells you you should do it or you feel slightly guilty about it. These are half-hearted efforts and half-hearted efforts don't get you there.

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你之前提到过焦虑。想象一下，如果你不是一直焦虑，你会多么高效，这是你的观点之一。焦虑是 21 世纪的情绪阴霾，很多有动力的人非常焦虑、非常偏执，这正是他们受到影响的原因。他们过于关注细节，不放手，晚上熬夜思考。这就是偏执的表现。你对焦虑和应对它有什么了解？

You mentioned anxiety before. Imagine how effective you'd be if you weren't anxious all the time is one of yours and anxiety is the emotion dour of the 21st century and lots of driven people very anxious very paranoid that's what's caused them to be affected. They pay so much attention detail oriented not letting things go staying up at night thinking about it. That's the paranoia coming in. What have you come to learn about anxiety and dealing with it?

所以，焦虑和压力很有趣。它们非常相关。压力就像，如果你看一根铁梁，当铁梁承受压力时，是因为它同时被向两个不同方向弯曲。所以，当你的大脑承受压力时，是因为它同时有两个相互冲突的欲望。例如，你想被人喜欢，但你又想做自私的事，你无法调和两者，所以你感到压力。你想为别人做点什么，也想为自己做点什么，对吧？你不想去上班，但你想赚钱，所以你感到压力。所以你有两个相互冲突的欲望，我认为克服压力的方法之一是承认，哦，我实际上有两个相互冲突的欲望，要么我需要解决它，我需要选择一个，然后接受失去另一个，要么我稍后再决定，但至少意识到你为什么有压力可以帮助减轻很多压力。然后焦虑，我认为是一种普遍存在的、无法识别的压力，你只是一直感到压力，甚至不确定为什么，甚至无法识别潜在的问题。我认为原因是你在生活中有太多未解决的问题、未解决的压力点堆积起来，以至于你无法再识别问题是什么，你的脑海里有一座垃圾山，只有一点点像冰山一样露出水面，那就是焦虑。但下面有很多未解决的事情。所以你需要每次焦虑时非常仔细地审视。比如，好吧，我这次为什么焦虑？我不知道为什么。哦，好吧，让我坐在这里想一想。让我写下可能的原因。让我冥想一下。让我写日记。让我和治疗师谈谈。让我和朋友谈谈。让我看看那种压力什么时候消失？如果你能识别、解开并解决这些问题，那么我认为这有助于消除焦虑。很多焦虑是因为我们生活得太快，没有观察自己对事物的反应。我们没有解决它们。所以，这与我之前说的不要过度反思相悖，但你要反思问题以观察和解决它们。你不是为了自我感觉良好或沉溺其中而反思。如果你只是为了自我感觉良好，那可能会强化你的个性和自我，并可能创造一个更脆弱的个性。

So, anxiety and stress are interesting. They're very related. Stress is when, like if you look at an iron beam, when an iron beam is under stress, it's because it's being bent in two different directions at the same time. So, when your mind is under stress, it's because it has two conflicting desires at once. So, for example, you want to be liked, but you want to do something selfish, and you can't reconcile the two, and so you're under stress. You want to do something for somebody else, you want to do something for yourself, right? You don't want to go to work but you want to make money so you're under stress. So you have two conflicting desires and I think one of the ways to get through stress is to acknowledge that, oh I actually have two conflicting desires and either I need to resolve it, I need to pick one and then be okay losing the other, or I will decide later but at least just being aware of why you're stressed can help alleviate a lot of stress. And then anxiety I think is sort of this pervasive unidentifiable stress where you're just kind of stressed out all the time and you're not even sure why and you can't even identify the underlying problem. I think the reason for that is because you have so many unresolved problems, unresolved stress points that have piled up in your life that you can no longer identify what the problems are and there's this mountain of garbage in your mind and it's a little bit of it poking out the top like an iceberg and that's anxiety. But underneath there's a lot of unresolved things. And so you just need to kind of go through very carefully every time you're anxious. Like, okay, why am I anxious this time? I don't know why. Oh, well, let me sit here and just think about it. Let me write down what the possible causes could be. Let me meditate on it. Let me journal. Let me talk to a therapist. Let me talk to my friends. Let me just kind of see like when does that stress go away? If you can kind of identify and unravel and resolve these issues, then I think that helps get rid of anxiety. A lot of the anxiety is piled up because we move through life too quickly, not observing our own reactions to things. We don't resolve them. So, this goes counter to what I was saying earlier about not reflecting too much on things, but you reflect on the problems to observe them and solve them. You don't reflect on them to feel better about yourself, to indulge them. Well, if you're doing it to just feel better about yourself, that could be strengthening your personality and your ego and could be creating a more fragile personality.

对我来说，一个很大的焦虑解决方法是思考死亡。我认为这是一个好方法。你将会死去。一切都会归零。你什么也带不走。我知道这很老套。我知道我们没有花足够的时间思考大问题。我们在很小的时候就放弃了它们。你知道，一个小孩可能会问大问题，比如，我们为什么在这里？生命的意义是什么？这一切是怎么回事？你知道，有圣诞老人吗？有上帝吗？但作为成年人，我们被教导不要思考这些事情，或者我们已经放弃了它们。但我认为大问题之所以是大问题是有充分理由的。如果你能时刻牢记你将会死去，一切都会归零。那还有什么好压力的呢？

One big anxiety resolver for me is just ruminating on death. I think that's a good one. You're going to die. It's all going to zero. You cannot take anything with you. And I know this is trite. And I know we don't spend enough time thinking about the big questions. We kind of give up on them when we're very, very young. You know, a little child might ask the big questions like, why are we here? What's the meaning of life? What is this all about? You know, is there Santa Claus? Is there God? But then as adults, we're taught not to think about these things or we've given up on them. But I think the big questions are the big questions for good reasons. And if you can keep the idea in front of you at all times that you're going to die and that everything goes literally to zero. What's there to stress about?

无论好坏，生命都很短暂。人们应该如何应对它的短暂？

For better or worse, life is very short. How should people deal with its briefness?

享受它。充分利用它。你知道，它甚至比那更短暂。每一刻都消失了。它不见了。只有一个当下，它瞬间就消失了。所以如果你不在那里，如果你压力很大或焦虑，或者你在想别的事情，你就错过了它。所以任何你不在当下的时刻，你对那个时刻来说就是死的。你不如死了，因为你的思绪在别处，或者生活在某种想象的现实中，那只是对真实现实的非常糟糕的替代。

Enjoy it. Make the best of it. You know, it's even briefer than that. Each moment just disappears. It's gone. There's only a present moment and it's gone instantly. So if you're not there for it, if you're stressed out or you're anxious or you're thinking about something else, you missed it. So any moment when you're not in that moment, you are dead to that moment. You might as well be dead because your mind is off doing something else or living in some imagined reality that is just a very poor substitute for the actual reality.

所以我最近的一个领悟是：什么是浪费的时间？我不喜欢浪费时间，但什么是浪费的时间？从某种意义上说，一切都是浪费，因为最终什么都不重要。但在每一个当下，那件事很重要。在每一个当下，它是唯一重要的事。实际上，你眼前发生的一切就是世界上所有的意义。所以重要的是你全身心投入其中。如果你在做一件你想做的事，并且完全沉浸其中，那就不是浪费时间。如果你不想做，你的心在逃避、抗拒，希望自己身处别处，想着别的事，期待未来，后悔过去，或者害怕什么，那就是浪费时间。那是你没有真正面对眼前现实而浪费的时间。所以我对浪费时间的定义是：是的，我确实想要一些物质上的东西，生活中有些东西比其他的更有价值，但这一生非常短暂且有限。所以真正的浪费时间是你没有在场的时间，当你不在那里的时候。当你没有尽最大努力去做你想做的事，以至于你没有沉浸其中。如果你没有沉浸在这一刻，你就是在浪费时间。

So one of my recent realizations was what is wasted time? I don't like to waste time, but what is wasted time? Everything is wasted time in a sense because nothing matters in the ultimate. But in each moment, the thing matters. In each moment, it's the only thing that matters. Actually, what's happening in front of you literally has all the meaning in the world. So what matters is just being present for the thing. If you're doing something that you want to do and you're fully there for it, then it's not wasted time. If you don't want to do it and your mind is running away from it, reacting against it, wishing you were somewhere else, thinking about some other thing, anticipating some future, regretting some past, or being fearful of something, then that's wasted time. That's time being wasted when you're not actually present for the reality in front of you. So my definition of wasted time: yes, I do want some material things in life, and there are things that have more value than others within this life, but this life is very short and bounded. So the true wasted time is time that you're not present for, when you are not there for it. When you're not doing the thing you want to do to the best of your capability such that you're immersed in it. If you're not immersed in this moment, then you're wasting your time.

人们担心死亡，担心不再存在，但他们没有意识到，他们生命中的大部分时间本来就不在场。

People get worried about dying and no longer being here, but they don't realize that so much of their life is spent not being here in any case.

没错。我认为人们渴望在场。当你真正在场时，你其实不会想着自己。你更沉浸于那件事、那个当下、手头的任务。

That's right. And I think people crave being here for it. And when you're here for it, you're actually not thinking about yourself. You are more immersed in the thing, the moment, the task at hand.

我们不是要内心的平静，我们要的是让内心平静。

We don't want peace of mind. We want peace for our mind.

没错。是的。你不需要平静。如果你放任它，头脑会把你生吞活剥。你不仅仅是你的头脑。

That's right. Yeah. You don't peace. The mind is what can eat you alive if you let it. And there's more to you than the mind.

怎么说？

How so?

嗯，我的意思是，归根结底，一切都在你的意识中升起，对吧？你没有其他地方可以体验它。而那个意识是相对静止的，从你出生到死亡，它始终如一。你所经历的一切——你的身体、你的头脑、世界、所有一切——都在那个意识之内。而那个东西，那个存在的基础层——佛教徒会告诉你——才是真实的。中间来来去去的一切，包括你的头脑，包括你的身体，都是不真实的。试图在那些短暂的事物中寻找稳定，就像在沙子上建城堡，终将崩塌。

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, everything arises within your consciousness, right? You've got nowhere else to experience it. And that consciousness is relatively static in the sense that it's been exactly the same from the moment you were born to the moment you die. And everything that you experience—from your body, from your mind, to the world, to everything—is within that consciousness. And that thing, that base layer of being—this is what the Buddhists will tell you—is the real thing. Everything that comes and goes in the middle, including your mind, including your body, is unreal. Trying to find stability in those transient things is building your castle on sand that's going to crumble.

生活会按照它本来的方式展开。会有一些好，一些坏。大部分其实取决于你的解读。你出生，经历一系列感官体验，然后死去。你如何选择解读这些体验，取决于你。不同的人以不同的方式解读。那句老话：两个人走在街上，经历完全相同。一个快乐，一个悲伤，对吧？那是他们头脑中的叙事，是他们选择解读的方式。

Life is going to play out the way it's going to play out. There will be some good and some bad. Most of it is actually just up to your interpretation. You're born, you have a set of sensory experiences, and then you die. How you choose to interpret those experiences is up to you. And different people interpret them in different ways. The old line about two people walking down the street: they're having the exact same experience. One is happy, one is sad, right? It's a narrative in their heads. It's how they choose to interpret.

所以当我说那句话时，那是很久以前了。我当时更多是在谈论正面和负面的解读。但现在，我认为最好根本不要有任何解读，只是让事物存在。你仍然会有解读。你无法阻止它。你也不应该试图阻止。但即使有解读，也只是你可以不去管它的一件事。

So when I said that, it was a long time ago. I was talking more about having positive interpretations and negative interpretations. But these days, I think it's better just not to have any interpretations and to just allow things to be. You're still going to have interpretations. You can't stop it. Nor should you try. But even that having an interpretation is just a thing you can leave alone.

我真的很想再深入一点，找到最好的方式来提醒人们珍惜时间。生命如此短暂，你花在沉思、分心、对过去的恐惧、后悔上的时间。

I really want to try and just dig in a little more to the best way to remind people that they should value their time. Just how brief it is, that the time that you spend ruminating, being distracted, fears of the past, regrets.

嗯，我不想告诉任何人该怎么生活。我只想说，如果你想提高生活质量，最简单最好的方法就是观察你自己的头脑和思想，稍微——不一定是批判性的——而是更客观地观察自己。然后你就会意识到自己的循环和模式。这需要时间。不是一夜之间。不是瞬间的。

Well, I don't want to tell anybody how to live their life. I would just say that to the extent that you want to improve your quality of life, the easiest and best way to do that is to observe your own mind and your own thoughts and be a little—not necessarily critical—but be observant of yourself more objectively. Then you'll kind of realize your own loops and patterns. It takes time. It's not overnight. It's not instantaneous.

所以你的意思是放手不是一次性的。

So you mean letting go is not a one-time event.

是的。而且放手甚至不一定是对的答案。比如，如果你想成为一个开悟的人，想活得像个神，一切完美，成为佛陀，那你当然可以放手。但在实践中，这其实很难做到。我想说的是，你会从生活中找到很多满足感，只要做你想做的事，真正探索你想要什么，而不是做别人期望你做的事，或者社会期望你做的事，或者你只是认为默认应该做的事。我认为大多数年长成功的人会告诉你，当他们毫无歉意地按照自己的方式生活时，他们的人生最好。要自私。整体的自私。

Yeah. And letting go is not necessarily even the right answer. Like yes, if you're trying to be an enlightened being and you want to live like a god and everything's going to be perfect and be a Buddha, sure you can let go. But in practice, it's actually quite hard to do. I think I would say that you're going to find a lot of fulfillment out of life by just doing what you want to do and genuinely exploring what it is that you want, rather than doing what other people expect you to do or society expects you to do or what you might just think should be done by default. I think most older successful people will tell you that their life was best when they lived it unapologetically on their own terms. Be selfish. Holistic selfishness.

我们可以剪掉那个小自私。是的。是的。是的。继续回放。坏家伙。太好了。

We can clip that little selfish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep running back. Bad guy. Great.

我有一个见解或问题，我想。你认为我们应该多大程度上相信头脑中的声音？因为一半的智慧建议依靠自下而上的直觉，另一半则必须尽可能自上而下地理性。你如何在这种方式下处理头脑和直觉之间的张力？

I had this insight or a question, I guess. How much do you think that we should trust the voice in our heads? Because half of wisdom suggests to rely on your sort of bottom-up intuition and then half of it has to be sort of top-down rational as possible. How do you navigate the tension between head and gut in this way?

我认为是直觉在做决定。头脑只是在事后将其合理化。直觉是最终的决策者。如果它不……什么是直觉？直觉是精炼的判断。它是品味的集合，可以通过进化积累——存在于你的基因和 DNA 中——或者通过你的经历和思考积累。头脑擅长解决新问题，以及外部世界中那些有明确边界的问题——有始有终和目标。头脑真正不擅长的是做艰难的决定。所以当你面临艰难决定时，我发现最好是先思考，权衡所有利弊，然后睡一觉。等几天。等到直觉的答案带着确信出现，感觉对了。当你年轻时，这需要更长时间，因为你没有那么多经验。当你年长时，它可以发生得更快，这就是为什么你时间更少……

I think the gut is what decides. The head is kind of what rationalizes it afterwards. The gut is the ultimate decision maker. If it doesn't... And what is the gut? The gut is refined judgment. It's taste aggregated, and it could be aggregated through evolution—it's in your genes and your DNA—or it could be aggregated through your experiences and what you've thought through. The mind is good at solving new problems and new problems in the external world that have defined edges—beginnings and ends and objectives. What the mind is actually really bad at is making hard decisions. So when you have a hard decision to make, I find it's better to ruminate on it, think through all the pros and cons, but then sleep on it. Wait a couple of days. Wait until the gut answer appears with conviction and it feels right. When you're younger, it takes longer because you just don't have as much experience. When you're older, it can happen much faster, which is why you have less time to...

老年人也因此更固执己见，对吧？他们知道自己想要什么，不想要什么。所以培养直觉和判断力需要时间。但一旦你培养好了，就别再相信其他任何东西，因为你不能违背自己的直觉。最终它会反咬你一口。通常在失败的感情中，你回头看看会说：‘哦，其实我早知道它会因为某个原因失败，但我还是继续了，因为我希望它变成那样，对吧？我希望这个人变成另一种样子，或者我想从中得到一些我知道得不到的东西，但我就是想要。’所以有时候欲望会压倒你的判断，然后把你困住。

And old people just more set in their ways as a consequence, right? They know what they want. They know what they don't want. So it takes time to develop your gut instinct and judgment. But once you've developed them, don't trust anything else because you can't go against your gut. It'll bite you in the end. Usually in relationships that failed, you can look back and say, 'Oh, actually, I knew it was going to fail because of this reason, but I kind of went ahead anyway because I wanted it to be this way, right? I wanted this person to be a different way than they are, or I wanted to get a different thing out of it than I thought I was going to than I knew I was going to get, but I just wanted it.' So sometimes desire will override your judgment and then trap.

一厢情愿。它把你困在一条消耗时间的路上。

Wishful thinking. It traps you into a pathway that chews up time.

你内心是怎么想的？我们以为自己无法改变自己，但其实可以。我们以为自己能改变别人，但其实不能。

What's that inside of yours? We think we can't change ourselves but we can. We think we can change other people but we can't.

完全正确。我想补充一点，你无法改变别人。你可以改变自己对他们的反应。你可以改变自己，但别人只会通过创伤或自己的领悟，按照自己的节奏改变，而且永远不会以你喜欢的方式。

Exactly. I think to add to that you can't change other people. You can change your reaction to them. You can change yourself but other people only change through trauma or their own insight on their own schedule and never in a way that you like.

是的。Alanderon 说过，人有时确实会改变，但在感情中很少，而且永远不会在被要求的时候改变。

Yeah. Alanderon says that people do sometimes change but rarely in relationships and never when they're told to.

绝对。最快疏远一个人的方法就是告诉他要改变。事实上，戴尔·卡耐基公众演讲学校是这样运作的：他们让你上台，然后意识到公众演讲的头号问题是人们非常自我意识过强。所以那些在戴尔·卡耐基公众演讲学校练习的人——我没上过，我是听说的，所以可能不对，但我喜欢这个故事——他们站起来开始演讲，观众只被允许赞美他们，真诚的赞美，不是假赞美，针对他们做得好的地方，但不允许批评他们做得不好的地方。最终他们挺过来了，建立了自信。同样，还有米歇尔·托马斯语言学习法。那种方法是你听老师和一个学生对话。他们不是在教你，你不需要记住或背诵任何东西。你只是听一个学生在语言上磕磕绊绊。这是一种更好的学习方式，因为你自己不会感到慌乱。你没有被测试、打分。

Absolutely. The fastest way to alienate somebody is to tell them to change. In fact, the Dale Carnegie School of Public Speaking, the way that operates is, they get you up there and they realize that the number one problem with public speaking is that people are very self-conscious. So people who are practicing in the Dale Carnegie School of Public Speaking, I don't know, I never went through, I heard this secondhand so I could be wrong, but I like the story where they get up and they start speaking and the people in the audience are only allowed to compliment them, genuine compliments not fake compliments, on things that they did well, but you're not allowed to criticize them on things that they did poorly. Eventually they kind of get through it and they develop the self-confidence. The same way there's like the Michelle Thomas school of language learning. On that one, what they do is you listen to a teacher talking to a student. They're not teaching you, you're not expected to remember or memorize anything. You just listen to a student stumbling over the language. It's a better way to learn because you yourself don't feel flustered. You're not being tested, graded.

哦，所以你不会那么自我纠结。

Oh, so you're not in your own head as much.

对。你不会自我纠结，你甚至可能在嘲笑那个学生，或者同意老师，或者反过来，或者同情那个学生。但因为你是被动的观察者，你可以更客观，不会感到威胁或恐惧，学习效果更好。回到最初的观点：你无法改变别人。如果你真的想改变某人的行为，我认为唯一有效的方法是在他们做了你希望的事情时赞美他们。不是正面强化。

Correct. You're not in your own head and you're just, you might even be laughing at the student or you might be agreeing with the teacher or vice versa or sympathizing with the student. But because you are a passive observer, you can be more objective about it and you aren't threatened or fearful and you can learn better. And coming back to the original point of you can't change people. If you do want to change someone's behavior, I think the only effective way to do it is to compliment them when they do something you want. Not to positive.

完全正确。不是在他们做了你不希望的事情时侮辱他们或消极批评。我们忍不住，批评显然是我们天性。我也这样做，但这提醒我，当有人做了值得称赞的事情时，别忘了赞美他们。一定要特意去做，而且要真诚。必须是真诚的，不能是假的。这不是那种随便丢几句赞美的事，最终人们会看穿。他们想要真实，但只是别忘了在别人做了值得称赞的事情时赞美他们，你就会得到更多那种行为。

Exactly. Not to insult them or be negative or critical when they do something you don't want. And we can't help it. It's obviously in our nature to criticize. And I do it as well, but it just reminds me that like when somebody does something praiseworthy, don't forget to praise them. Like definitely go out of your way and it'll be genuine. It has to be genuine. It can't be a fake thing. This is not one of those dropping compliments type thing, eventually people will see through that. They want authenticity, but just don't forget to praise people when they do something praiseworthy and you'll get more of that behavior.

Reddit 上有一个非常著名的帖子，列出了五个问题，如果你对感情不确定，可以问自己。其中一个问题是：‘你真正爱的是你的伴侣，还是他们的潜力或你心中的形象？’你知道，他们展现出很大的希望。他们看重对方改变和成长的能力。他们走在正确的道路上。伴侣匹配这件事太难了。你知道，当有人来问我：‘哦，我应该和这个人在一起吗？’我的回答是：‘嗯，如果你问我，答案显然是否定的。’对吧？因为如果你和合适的人在一起，你根本不需要问。或者当你问某人为什么和某人在一起，他们开始念对方的简历，对吧？那也是一个坏信号。

There was a really famous thread on Reddit about five questions to ask yourself if you're uncertain about your relationship. One of the questions was, 'Are you truly in love with your partner or just their potential or the idea of them?' And that's the, you know, they show such great promise. They look at their ability for change and growth. They're on the right path. The partner matching thing is so hard. You know, when people come and ask me like, 'Oh, should I be with this person?' Like, 'Well, if you're asking me, the answer is clearly no.' Right? Because you wouldn't have to ask if you were with the right person. Or when you ask someone like why they're in a relationship with somebody and they start reading out his or her resume, right? That's also a bad sign.

什么意思？

What do you mean?

哦，就像：‘哦，我们有这么多共同点。我们喜欢一起打高尔夫。’这可不是感情的基础。或者：‘哦，你知道，她是芭蕾舞演员，或者他上了哈佛之类的。’这些都是简历上的东西。那不是这个人的真实面目。

Oh, it's like, 'Oh, we have so much in common. We like to golf together.' It's like, it's not a basis for a relationship. Or, 'Oh, you know, she's a ballerina or, you know, he went to Harvard or what have you.' These are resume items. That's not who the person actually is.

那更好的答案是什么？

What's a better answer?

我就是喜欢和这个人在一起。我就是信任他们。我喜欢和他们相处。我爱他的能力。我爱她的善良。我爱她的精神。我爱他的能量。你们在一起的理由越具体、越物质化，就越糟糕。难以言喻的东西才是真爱所在，因为真正的爱是一种统一，一种连接，是灵魂的连接。你和我，我的意识遇见你的意识。爱、艺术、科学、神秘主义背后的驱动力都是对统一的渴望，对连接的渴望。你知道，布尔热（Bourhees）有句名言：‘每个人内心都有一种感觉，好像失去了某种无限的东西。’你心里有一个上帝形状的洞，你试图去填补。所以我们总是在寻找那种连接。爱就是试图在另一个人身上找到它，然后说：‘好了，你是男性，我是女性，或者随便什么。’无论你的偏好是什么，现在我们连接了，我们形成了一个整体，一个连接的整体。或者在神秘主义中，就是坐下来冥想，你会感受到整体。在科学中，哦，原子碰撞是力学，但会产生热量。所以热力学和运动学或动力学是一个统一的理论，那是一个整体。电和磁是一回事，那个整体创造了敬畏感。在艺术中，我感受到一种情感，我围绕它创作一件艺术品，然后你看到那幅画，或者你看到西斯廷教堂，或者你读到那首诗，你感受到那种情感。所以，这又是在创造统一，创造连接。我认为每个人都渴望这个。所以当你真正爱一个人时，是因为你在他们身边感到一种完整感。而这种完整感很可能与他们上过什么学校或从事什么职业无关。

I just love being with this person. I just trust them. I enjoy being around them. I love how capable he is. I love how kind she is. I love her spirit. I love his energy. The more materially and concretely definable the reasons are you're together, the worse they are. The ineffable is actually where the sort of true love lies because real love is a form of unity. It's a form of connection. It's connecting spirits. Oh you two, my consciousness meets your consciousness. It's the underlying drive in love, in art, in science, in mysticism is the desire for unity. It's a desire for connection. As you know, Bourhees famously wrote, 'In every human, there's a sense that something infinite has been lost.' There's a God-shaped hole in you you're trying to fill. And so, we're always trying to find that connection. Love is trying to find it in one other person and saying, 'Okay, you're male, I'm female, or whatever.' And you know, whatever your predilections are, and now we connect, now we form a whole, a connected whole. Or in mysticism it's like it's all about okay sit down meditate and you'll feel the whole. In science it's like oh atoms bouncing is mechanics but that generates heat. So thermodynamics and motion or kinetics are one combined theory that's a whole. Electricity and magnetism are one thing that's the whole creates that sense of awe. In art it's like I feel an emotion I create a piece of art around it and then you see that painting or you see the Sistine Chapel or you read the poem and you feel that emotion. So again, it's creating unity. It's creating connection. And I think everybody craves that. And so when you really love somebody, it's because you feel a sense of wholeness by being around them. And that sense of wholeness probably doesn't have anything to do with what school they went to, you know, or what career they're in.

把这一点联系到‘人生苦短，该停就停’。如果你面临一个艰难的选择，无法决定，答案就是‘不’。原因是现代社会充满了选项。理性上知道这一点听起来很棒，但现实中要有勇气去践行，我觉得是另一回事。在三大关键领域——关系、工作和地点——迅速止损很难。你会对那些在理智上同意你、说‘我理解’的人说什么？

Just sort of tying that into the life is short, stop about. If you're faced with a difficult choice and you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is modern society is full of options. Knowing this rationally sounds great, but having the courage to commit to it in reality, I think is a different task. And cutting your losses quickly in the big three, relationships, jobs, and locations is hard. What would you say to someone who may cerebrally be able to agree with you and say, 'I understand.'

我表弟曾这样评价我。他说：‘我注意到你最大的特点就是能够离开那些对你来说不够好、不够棒的局面。’我认为这是我的一个特质。我不会接受人生中次优的结果。最终，你会停留在你所能接受的地方。你从生活中得到的，就是你所能接受的。有些事对我非常重要，我不会将就。但还有很多其他事我根本不在乎，因为如果我把时间都花在那些事上，我就没有精力去关注那几件真正重要的事了。所以在做决定时，我有自己的一套启发式规则。别人可以用他们自己的，但我的规则是：如果你无法决定，答案就是‘不’。如果你得到一个机会，一个需要你回答‘是’或‘否’的新事物，而它是对你现状的改变，那么默认答案永远是‘不’。第二，如果你有两个选择，A 或 B，而且看起来差不多，那就选短期更痛苦的那个，那个会立刻带来痛苦的选择，因为你的大脑总是试图逃避痛苦。所以任何迫在眉睫的痛苦，它都会放大。这有点像塔勒布的外科医生悖论。塔勒布说，你要找那个看起来不那么好的外科医生，因为他更可能是好医生。类似地，表象具有欺骗性，因为你是在逃避冲突、逃避痛苦。所以选择短期更痛苦的路，因为你的大脑制造了一种错觉，认为短期痛苦大于长期痛苦。而长期来看，你会把未来的自己拖入各种‘明天再说’的困境。所以选短期更痛苦的那个。最后一条，我要归功于卡波·古普塔：你要选择那个能让你长期更平静的选择。‘平静’指的是更平和、更心安。所以，哪个选择能让你头脑更清晰、未来内心独白更少，如果你能模拟出来，那可能就是更好的路。

My cousin said this about me. He said that what I've really noticed about you is your ability to walk away from situations that are just not great enough for you or not good enough for you. And I think that is a characteristic that I have. I will not accept second best outcomes in my life. Ultimately you will end up wherever is acceptable to you. You will get out of life whatever is acceptable to you. There are certain things to me that are very important where I will not settle for second best. But then there are a lot of other things I just don't care about because if I spend all my time caring about those things, I don't have the energy for the few things that matter. So in decision-making, I have a few heuristics for myself. Other people can use their own, but mine are: if you can't decide, the answer is no. If you're offered an opportunity, if you have a new thing that you're saying yes or no to that is a change from where you're starting, the answer is by default always no. Secondly, if you have two decisions, if you have A or B and both seem very equal, take the path that's more painful in the short term, the one that's going to be painful immediately because your brain is always trying to avoid pain. So any pain that is imminent, it is going to treat as much larger than it actually is. This is kind of like the decision-making equivalent of Taleb's surgeon. Taleb says you want the surgeon that doesn't look as good because he's more likely to be a good surgeon. It's similar in that appearances are deceiving because you're avoiding conflict. You're avoiding pain. So take the path that is more painful in the short term because your brain is creating this illusion that the short-term pain is greater than the long-term pain. Because long-term, you'll commit your future self to all kinds of long-term mañana. Exactly mañana. So take the more short-term painful one. And then finally the last one which I would credit Kapo Gupta with is that you want to take the choice that will leave you more equanimous in the long term. By equanimous he means more at peace, more mental peace in the long term. So whatever clears your mind more and will have you having less self-talk in the future, if you can model that out, that is probably the better route to go.

然后我会把决策聚焦在真正重要的三件事上，因为其他一切都取决于这三个决定。尤其是早期的人生决定。后期你会有不同的优化目标。但早期，你要弄清楚你和谁在一起、你做什么、以及你住在哪里。我认为在这三件事上，你需要认真思考。人们有时会无意识地做出这些决定。比如，和谁在一起，常常是‘我们在一起了，凑合着过，感觉还行，时间差不多了，就结婚了’。对吧？不是很好的理由，也许也不是太糟。我的意思是，过度思考的人有时也得不到正确答案。但也许，如果你是那种不愿将就的人，你会迭代。你在一个封闭的时间框架内迭代，以免时间耗尽。然后决定你做什么。你尝试很多不同的事情，直到找到那个对你来说像玩、对别人像工作的事。你不会输。获得一些杠杆，找到它的实际应用，然后深入进去。至于你住在哪里，这非常重要。我认为人们在这上面花的时间不够。人们选择城市往往是随机的——因为我在那里上学，或者我的家人恰好在那边，或者我的朋友在，或者我某个周末去玩很喜欢。你真的需要想清楚，因为你的居住地会限制和定义你的机会。它会决定你的朋友圈、约会对象、工作机会、食物、空气和水质。它会决定你离家人的远近，这在你年纪渐长、有了孩子后可能很重要。所以这是非常非常重要的决定。天气、生活质量。你待在室内还是室外的时间有多少？基于此你能活多久？我认为人们在这个选择上可能比另外两个更糟糕，投入的思考也更少。

And then I would focus decision-making down on the three things that really matter because everything else is downstream of these three decisions. Especially these are early life decisions. Later in life, you have different things to optimize for. But early in life, you're trying to figure out who you're with, what you're doing, and where you live. And I think on all three of those, you want to think pretty hard about it. And people do some of these unconsciously. You know, who you're with very often it's like, well, we were in a relationship. We stumbled along. It felt okay. It had been enough time, so we got married. Right? Not great reasons. Maybe not terrible reasons either. I mean, people who overthink these things sometimes don't get the right answer. But maybe here, if you're the kind of person that's not going to settle for second best, you iterate. You iterate on a closed time frame so you don't run out the clock. And then you decide on what you do. You try a whole bunch of different things until you find the one that feels like play to you, looks like work to others. You can't lose at it. Get some leverage, try to find some practical application of it and go into that. And then where you live, where you live is really important. I don't think people spend enough time on that one. I think people pick cities randomly based on where I went to school or where my family happened to be or where my friend was or I visited one weekend. I really liked it. You really want to think it through because where you live really constrains and defines your opportunities. It will determine your friend circle, your dating pool, your job opportunities, the food and air and water quality that you receive. It will determine your proximity to your family, which might be important as you get older and have kids. So very, very important decision. Weather, quality of life. How much do you stay inside or outside? How long are you going to live based on that? And I think people choose that one probably more poorly than they put a lot less thought into that one than the other two.

在某种程度上，是的，但还有……你说得太对了。有多少人是稀里糊涂地陷入一段关系，还没反应过来就同居了、养狗了、有孩子了、结婚了。然后有了孩子，因为那是你的一半和对方的一半在跑，你永远无法与之分离。所以一旦你和某人生了孩子，那么对你来说世界上最重要的事就是那个人的一半，无论你喜欢与否。

In some ways, yeah, but also the... You're so right. How many people fall backward into a relationship and before they know it, we're living together, we got a dog, we got a kid, we were married and you know, yeah. And then when you have kids, because then that's half of you and half of them running around, you're never going to separate yourself from that. So once you have a child with somebody, then the most important thing in the world to you is half that other person whether you like them or not.

是的。杰弗里·米勒很久以前发过一条推文，我经常想起。他说世界上所有的育儿书都可以被一本行为遗传学书取代。我非常相信遗传学。是的，我认为很多行为都源于遗传，而我们低估了这一点。出于社会原因，我们喜欢夸大教养、贬低天性，但天性很重要。你结婚对象的性情很可能默认会反映在你的孩子身上。想要一个安全型依恋的孩子，就选一个安全型依恋的伴侣。幸福关系的秘诀是两个幸福的人，对吧？所以，我会说，如果你想幸福，那就和一个幸福的人在一起。不要以为你能和一个不幸福的人在一起，然后以后让他们幸福。或者如果你能接受他们不幸福，但你喜欢他们的其他方面，那也行。但这又回到了对其他事情的不满足。是的。实际上我们之前聊过人们如何在精神层面成功连接，但那可能有点抽象。如果想更实际一点，可以基于价值观。价值观就是一套你绝不会妥协的东西。

Yeah. Jeffrey Miller had a tweet a long time ago that I always think about and he said every parenting book in the world could be replaced with one book on behavioral genetics that I am a big believer in genetics. Yes, I do think a lot of behavior is downstream of genetics and I think we underplay that. We like to overplay nurture and underplay nature for societal reasons but nature is a big deal. The temperament of the person you marry is probably going to be reflected in your child by default. People want securely attached kid, pick a securely attached partner. Well, the secret to a happy relationship is two happy people, right? So, I would say if you want to be happy, then be with a happy person. Don't think you're going to be with someone who's unhappy and then make them happy down the road. Or if you're okay with them being unhappy, but there are other things you like about them, that's fine. But this goes back to the unhappiness with other things. Yes. And actually we talked a little bit about how people do connect successfully, you know, on spirit and those things, but that's maybe a little too abstract. If you want to get a little more practical, it could be based on values. And values are a set of things you won't compromise on.

价值观就是那些艰难的决定：哦，我父母生病了。他们是搬来和我们住，还是我们送他们去养老院？呃，你知道，我们是给孩子钱还是不给孩子钱？呃，你知道，我们是搬到全国各地去离家人更近，还是待在原地？呃，你知道，我们是争论政治，还是在乎或不在乎？对吧，价值观比清单上的项目重要得多。呃，我认为如果人们在价值观上更加一致，他们的关系会更成功。

Values are the tough decisions of, oh, my parent got sick. Do they move in with us or do we put them in a nursing home? Uh, you know, the ch do we give the children money or do we not? uh you know do we um do we move across the country to be closer to our family or do we stay put where we are uh you know do we argue about politics do we care or do we not right the values are way more important than checklist items uh and uh I think if people were to align much more on their values they would have much more successful relationships

害怕改变的情感痛苦。我有这个事：工作、地点、伴侣，我要进入或不进入这个事。大部分时候，是离开。我认为我们有这种损失厌恶，我们真的感受到进化来的损失厌恶。在朋友面前离开自己是很痛苦的。很尴尬。你会如何建议人们克服自己的损失厌恶？那种对改变的恐惧。哦，天哪，我是不是要……

The emotional pain of fearing change. I have this thing: the job, the location, the partner I'm going to enter or not enter this thing. For the most part, it's leaving. I think we have this sort of loss aversion that we really feel evolved loss aversion. It's just painful separating yourself in front of your friends. It's embarrassing. And how would you advise people to get past themselves with the loss aversion? That fear of change. Oh my god, am I going to...

是的，这是世界上最难的事。呃，重新开始。又回到了从零到一的事情。呃，这是爬山的事。你不可能第一次就找到通往山顶的路。有时你爬上去，卡住了，然后你下来。所有成功的人和不成功的人之间的区别是，成功的人非常渴望，他们愿意一次又一次地回去重新开始，无论是在事业、人际关系还是其他任何事情上。

Yeah, it's the hardest thing in the world. Uh starting over. It's back to the zero to one thing. It's uh it's the mountain climbing thing. You're not going to find your path to the top of the mountain in the first go around. Sometimes you go up there, you get stuck, and you come back down. And the difference between all the successful people and the ones who are not is the ones who are successful want it so badly they're willing to go back and start over again and again whether in their career or in their relationships or in anything else.

你越把自己当回事，你就会越不快乐。你学会了不要把自己太当回事。嗯，名气对此没有帮助，因为那是名气的陷阱之一。人们总是谈论你。他们对你有某种看法，你开始相信它，然后你把自己当回事，这限制了你的行动。你不能再看起来像个傻瓜了。嗯，你不能再做新的事情了。你知道，明天我宣布我是一个霹雳舞者，对吧？那会遭到很多嘲笑和讽刺。但如果我想回去呢？如果你想那样做，我会支持你。是的。事实是，如果我想成为一个霹雳舞者，我会去跳霹雳舞。但是呃，你知道，就像我正在从零到一重新开始一家新公司。让我们再做一次，你知道。而不是去筹集一大笔风投资金或退休或什么的。但那是因为我想构建产品。我想看到它存在。所以我认为你必须不断强迫自己。你必须提醒自己。嗯，看，内心深处你还是那个 9 岁的克里斯。内心深处你还是个孩子。呃，你知道，你仍然对世界充满好奇。你仍然有很多相同的倾向、欲望和需求。你给它涂上了一层漂亮的外衣。但有孩子的一个好处是，你会意识到他们在个性、知识和技能上与你有多接近。就像我看着我的儿子，呃，你知道他八岁了，我注意到，哇，他可能拥有我 60%到 80%的知识和发展智慧，而且他拥有更多的自由和更多的自发性。在某些方面他更聪明，而且差距不大。这个孩子很快就会，你知道，赶上我。所以，就我认为我更懂、或者我在某个位置、或者我是某个人而言，这只是一个幻觉。这只是一个信念。这和把自己太当回事之间有什么联系？我不应该把自己太当回事，因为这里没有什么值得那么当回事的。如果我把自己太当回事，那么我会被困住。我会再次把自己限制在一套有限的行为和结果中，这让我无法自由，无法自发，无法快乐。嗯，所以这又回到了，你知道，不要想自己太多。

The more seriously you take yourself, the unhappier you're going to be. You learned how to take yourself less seriously. Well, fame doesn't help on that one because that is one of the traps of fame. People are always talking about you. They have a certain view of you and you start believing that and then you take yourself seriously and then that limits your own actions. You can't look like a fool anymore. Um you can't do new things anymore. You know, tomorrow I announce I'm a break dancer, right? That's going to be met with a lot of scorn and ridicule. But what if I want to be back? I'd back you if you want to make that. Yeah. The truth is if I want to be a break dancer, I'd be break dancing. But uh you know like I'm starting a new company from zero to one again from scratch. Let's do it you know one more time. uh and not just going and raising a big VC fund or retiring or what have you. But that's because I want to build the product. I want to see it exist. So I think that you constantly just have to force yourself. You have to remind yourself. Um look, deep down you're still the same Chris you were when you were 9 years old. Deep down you're still a kid. Uh you know, you're still curious about the world. You still have a lot of the same predilictions and desires and wants. You've got a nice veneer on it. But one of the nice things when you have kids is you realize how much closer they are to you in personality and knowledge and knowhow. Like I look at my son who's uh you know he's eight and uh I just noticed like wow he's probably has 60 to 80% of my knowledge and development wisdom and he has a lot more freedom and he has a lot more spontaneity. In some ways he's smarter and there's not a big gap here left to close. This kid's going to be, you know, done very soon. It caught up to me. And so to the extent that I think I know better or that I'm somewhere or that I'm someone, it's just an illusion. It's just a belief. What's the lineage between that and taking yourself too seriously? I shouldn't take myself too seriously because there's nothing here to take that seriously. And if I take myself too seriously, then I'm going to get trapped. I'm going to circumscribe myself again into a limited set of behaviors and outcomes that keep me from being free, keep me from being spontaneous, keep me from being happy. Um, so it just goes back to the, you know, don't think about yourself too much.

有一种特殊的痛苦，意识到你现在需要听到的建议几乎总是你很久以前就学到的，而且你知道你基本上还是九岁时的同一个人。你知道很多时候人们会问这样的问题：嗯，你希望 10 年前的自己得到什么建议？人们问自己这个问题，几乎无一例外，你给 10 年前的自己的建议仍然是你今天需要听到的。绝对是的。这就是为什么我做那个回顾的练习，你知道，10 年、20 年、30 年前。我会给自己什么建议？对我来说，就是少一点情绪化。不要把每件事都看得那么重。做同样的事情，但不要带着所有的情绪波动去做。所以，这就是我未来给自己的建议。是的。是的。是的。是的。有趣的是，我们需要那种距离才能更客观一点，更有视角一点。这几乎有点小技巧，对吧？因为通常当你这样做时，你会说你会告诉一个正在经历这个的朋友什么，然后你试图把给朋友的建议转给自己，但你总是想，嗯，我不是那个朋友。然后你说，好吧，10 年前的你，有足够的距离，你会说，哦，我实际上还是那个人，只有一线之隔。

There's a special type of pain in realizing that the advice that you need to hear right now is something that almost always you learned a long time ago and that you know you're basically sort of the same person you were as you were nine. You know a lot of the time people ask questions like um what advice do you wish that you would give yourself 10 years ago? People ask themselves that question almost invariably the advice that you would give yourself 10 years ago is still the advice that you need to hear today. Absolutely. That's why I did that exercise of thinking back, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago. What advice would I give myself? For me, it's just be less emotional. Don't take don't take everything so seriously. Do the same things, but do them without all the emotional turbulence. And so, that's the advice I'm giving myself going forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how we need that distance to be able to be a little bit more objective, to have a little bit more perspective. And it's almost a little bit of a trick, right? Because typically when you do that you say what would you tell a friend that was going through this right and then you try and turn the advice to the friend around onto yourself but you always think well I'm not the friend you go okay you 10 years ago there's enough distance in that you go oh I actually am still that person there's just a single line between that

与此相关的是，我认为理解比纪律重要得多。现在雅各可能会不高兴，但你知道，在身体方面，纪律很重要，如果我想练出好身材，我必须定期锻炼。但在精神方面，我认为理解重要得多。一旦你看到了某件事的真相，你就无法忽视它。我们都有过这样的经历：我们看到一个人的行为，然后它改变了我们对那个人的看法。我们不再想和他们做朋友，或者我们深深地尊重他们，如果那是非常好的行为，也许是无意中观察到的。嗯，所以当我们真正清楚地看到某件事时，它会立即改变我们的行为，这比试图通过重复来改变你的行为有效得多。你能给我举个例子吗？

And related to this story is I think understanding is way more important than discipline. Now Jaco would have a fit but you know on physical things discipline is important if I want to build a good body, I got to work out on a regular basis. But on mental things, I think understanding is way more important. Once you see the truth of something, you cannot unsee it. All of us have had experiences where we've seen a behavior in a person and then it just changes what we think about that person. We no longer want to be friends with them or we deeply respect them if it was, you know, really good behavior that maybe was observed unintentionally. Um so when we really do see something clearly it changes our behavior immediately and that is far more efficient than trying to change your behavior through repetition. Could you give me an example?

嗯，比如说，你知道你有一个朋友，然后那个人原来是个小偷。你看到那个人偷东西，你就和他们断绝关系了。

Um if you were let's say that you know you have a friend and then that person turns out to be a thief. You see that person stealing something you're done with them.

比如，吸烟导致肺癌的例子就很好。对吧？你亲近的人，或者任何时候你亲近的人去世了，甚至你只是听说有人去世了，你第一件事是什么？第一件事，假设你和他们不那么亲近——显然如果很亲近就不一样了——但如果你不那么亲近，只是听说你社交圈里有人去世了，你会立刻开始试图把自己和他们区分开。你会想：‘哦，这个人多大年纪？他们抽烟吗？他们有什么问题吗？我有那个问题吗？’对吧？你立刻开始比较。你实际上是在试图看看有没有重叠。但如果你看到了其中的真相，如果你觉得：‘天哪，这个人跟我同龄，他们去世了。’而这种事在我这个年纪开始发生了，我开始听说社交圈里有人去世。这提醒你时间真的很短暂。那里有一个真相。一个你无法行动的真相。一个你无法忽视的真相。或者，比如，你以前是不是练过健美什么的？我不知道。就像兄弟举铁？

If you are, you know, the smoking lung cancer example is a good one. Right? Someone close to you, or anytime someone close to you dies, or you even hear about someone dying, what's the first thing you do? The first thing, assuming that you weren't that close to them—obviously if you're close to them it's different—but if you weren't that close to them but you hear about someone in your extended social circle dying, you immediately start trying to distinguish yourself from them. You're like, 'Oh well, how old was this person? Did they have, were they a smoker? Did they have an issue? Do I have that issue?' Right? You immediately start comparing. What you're doing there is you're sort of just trying to see if there's an overlap. But if you see the truth in something, if you're like, 'Oh my god, this person was the same age as me and they died.' And that's starting to happen at my age where I'm starting to hear about extended circle people. It just reminds you time is really short. There's a truth there. There's a truth there that you cannot action. There's a truth there that you cannot unsee. Or for example, I think were you into bodybuilding or something back when? I don't know. Like bro lifting stuff?

是的，我以前是个瘦子，举重健身。

Yeah, I was a skinny guy lifting weights.

对。但可能有个时候你在健身房特别激进，伤了自己很多次。对吧？每一次都让你深刻理解‘不要超过这个限度’，对吧？那里有一个真相。所以，当你以无法忽视的方式看到这些事情时，它会立刻改变你的行为。我认为，这种寻找真相的内省实际上非常有用。这是否证明了生活中需要更多的实验、探索和体验，试图寻找意外发现，因为所有这些经历都会给你一个无法逃避的教训？

Right. But there probably was a point where you were being really aggro in the gym and you injured yourself many times. Right? And each one of those was a deep understanding of 'don't go beyond this point,' right? There was a truth there. So again, when you see these things in such a way that you can't unsee them, that changes your behavior instantly. And I would argue that that introspection to find those truths is actually very useful. Is that a justification for more experimentation, exploration, experience in life, sort of trying to find serendipity because all of these experiences are going to teach you an inescapable lesson?

你会做你该做的事。我是说，你的探索程度，我觉得，取决于你自己。但生活总是把真相抛回给你。关键在于你是否选择去看，是否选择去承认，即使它很痛苦。真相往往是痛苦的，对吧？如果不是，我们就会一直看到真相。现实总是在反映真相。仅此而已。为什么你还没有接触到它呢？

You're going to do what you're going to do. I mean, your level of exploration, I think, is sort of up to you. But life is always throwing truth back at you. It's about whether you choose to see it, whether you choose to acknowledge it, even if it's painful. Truth is often painful, right? If it wasn't, we'd all be seeing truth all the time. Reality is always reflecting truth. That's all it is. Why would you not have accessed it already?

没错。比如，所有那些哲学，几乎都成了陈词滥调。大多数人看待哲学就是这样，直到他们自己发现它。因为智慧是一套无法传递的东西。如果能传递，我们读同样的五本哲学书就都完事了。我们都会变得智慧。你必须自己去学。它必须在你自己的语境中重新发现。你必须拥有特定的经历，然后才能概括并看到那些事物中的真相，以你无法忽视的方式。但每个人都会以不同的方式看到它们。我可以给你讲苏格拉底的故事，但直到你遇到别人渴望的东西而你自己却不想要时，它才会产生共鸣。那一刻，你就会看到那个普遍陈述中的真理。

Exactly. You know, all the philosophy that's out there, for example, it's almost trite. Most people look at philosophy like that until they discover it for themselves. Because wisdom is the set of things that cannot be transmitted. If they could be transmitted, we'd read the same five philosophy books and we'd all be done. We'd all be wise. You have to learn it for yourself. It has to be rediscovered for yourself in your own context. You have to have specific experiences that then allow you to generalize and see the truth in those things in such a way that you're not going to unsee them. But each person is going to see them in a different way. I can tell you that Socrates story and it's not going to resonate until there's something that other people desire that you realize you yourself don't want. And the moment that happens, then you'll see the truth in the general statement.

我想给你读一篇我几周前写的两分钟短文。它叫‘无法传授的教训’。好的。我一直在思考一种特殊的教训，一种不亲身经历就无法发现的教训。有一类建议，出于某种原因，我们都拒绝通过教导来学习。这些是无法传授的教训。无论自己去发现它有多么艰难、昂贵或费力，我们宁愿忽视来自长辈、歌曲、文学、历史灾难、公众丑闻的如山警告，而是想：‘是的，那可能对他们是真的，但对我不是。’我们决定一次又一次地用艰难的方式学习艰难的教训。不幸的是，它们似乎也都是大事。从来不是关于如何安装水平架子或在鸡尾酒会上迷人地自我介绍的新见解。相反，我们花费一生的大部分时间亲身学习前人已经警告过我们的最重要教训。比如：金钱不会让你快乐。名声不会修复你的自我价值。你不爱那个漂亮女孩。她只是性感且难以得到。没有什么事情像你想象中那么重要。你会后悔工作太多。担忧不会提高你的表现。你所有的恐惧都是浪费时间。你应该多看看你的父母。分手后你会没事的，并且会庆幸你做了。把有毒的人从你的生活中剔除完全没问题。即使重读这个列表，我也对它的陈词滥调翻白眼。这些都是每个人以前都听过的基本明显见解。但如果它们如此基本，为什么每个人在一生中都如此可靠地陷入其中？如果它们如此明显，为什么那些最近成名、富有、失去父母或经历分手的人，会以刚刚经历宗教启示的人那种重新焕发的隆重仪式来宣告这些事实？这也是一个在互联网上非常有争议的列表。如果你采访一个亿万富翁，他说他所有的钱没有让他快乐，或者一个电影明星，她说她的名声感觉像监狱，互联网会因为他们忘恩负义和脱离现实而把他们撕碎。所以，我们不仅拒绝学习这些教训，甚至拒绝听到那些警告我们的人的信息。甚至更多，我认为对于每一个教训，如果我深入思考，我可以回忆起一个时刻，包括现在，我让自己相信我是规则的例外。我特定的心理构成、生活状况、历史创伤或对未来的梦想使我免疫于这些教训的适用。不，不，不。我的内心世界可以通过绕过时代最广为人知的智慧来解决。不，不，不。我可以正确地穿针引线。看我跳舞穿过雷区，避开所有其他人踢到的绊线。然后你踢到了一个。你分享一个会意的眼神，那种只能发生在两个以完全相同方式受伤的人之间的眼神。你脑海深处会有一个声音说：‘我告诉过你。’这就是无法传授的。

I want to just read you a two-minute essay that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. So, it's called 'Unteachable Lessons.' Okay. I've been thinking about a special category of lesson, one which you cannot discover without experiencing it firsthand. There is a certain subset of advice that for some reason we all refuse to learn through instruction. These are unteachable lessons. No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it is going to be for us to find out ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical catastrophes, public scandals, and instead think some version of, 'Yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me.' We decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way over and over again. Unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things, too. It's never new insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generations already warned us about. Things like money won't make you happy. Fame won't fix your self-worth. You don't love that pretty girl. She's just hot and difficult to get. Nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. You will regret working too much. Worrying is not improving your performance. All your fears are a waste of time. You should see your parents more. You'll be fine after the breakup and will be grateful that you did it. It's perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life. And even reading this list back, I'm rolling my eyes at how trite it is. These are all basic obvious insights that everybody has heard before. But if they're so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives? And if they're so obvious, why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to proclaim these facts with the renewed grand ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious revelation? It's also a very contentious list of points to say on the internet. If you interview a billionaire who says that all of his money didn't make him happy, or a movie star who said that her fame felt like a prison, the internet will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch. So, not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them. And even more than that, I think for every one of these, if I consider a bit deeper, I can recall a time, including right now, where I convinced myself that I am the exception to the rule. That my particular mental makeup or life situation or historical wounds or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable. No, no, no. My inner landscape would be solved by skirting around the most well-known wisdom of the ages. No, no, no. I can thread this needle properly. Watch me dance through the minefield and avoid all of the trip wires that everyone else kicks. And then you kick one. And you share a knowing look, the kind that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in the exact same way. And a voice in the back of your mind will say, 'I told you so.' That's unteachable.

这是一篇好文章。我认为这些教训无法传授的原因之一是它们太宽泛了。它们必须在上下文中应用。你列出的许多教训相互矛盾。

It's a good essay. I think one of the reasons why these lessons are unteachable is because they're too broad. They have to be applied in context. A number of the ones that you laid out contradict each other.

比如多陪陪父母，别那么拼命工作，但同时又想成功。我觉得很多道理都来自高高在上的人，比如著名影星或亿万富翁说‘你不需要快乐’。那好，你放弃试试？实际上，很多道理是相互矛盾的。如果你只学四年哲学，你根本不知道怎么生活，因为你不知道在什么情况下该用哪个理论。你得真正去生活，经历各种问题，才能弄清楚自己想要什么。语境很重要：是的，多去看父母，但别和他们住一起，也别每天或每周末都见，如果合不来的话。这高度依赖具体情况。

Like spend more time with your parents and don't work so hard, but at the same time you do want to be successful. I think a lot of these lessons come from on high, like a famous movie star or billionaire saying you don't need to be happy. It's like, okay, then give it up. In reality, many of these contradict each other. If you studied philosophy for four years, you wouldn't know how to live life because you wouldn't know which doctrine to apply. You have to actually live life and go through issues to figure out what you want. Context matters: yes, visit your parents more, but not live with them or see them every day if you don't get along. It's highly contextual.

一旦你自己想明白了，就能在这些格言上刻出适合你的变体，而且你会有一段具体的经历帮你记住并执行。你可以用不陈腐的方式表达。我的很多格言和给自己的笔记都是现代化的。它们表达的是真理，但如果不以今天对我有意义的新方式说出来，就会显得陈腐。有位诺贝尔奖得主说过：所有值得说的话可能以前都说过了，但因为没人听，所以必须再说一遍。必须为现代重新语境化。事物在变：技术、文化、人都在变。

Once you figure it out for yourself, you can carve variations on these maxims that apply to you, and you'll have a specific experience that helps you remember and execute. You can phrase it in a way that's not trite anymore. Many of my maxims and notes to self are modernized. They say something true that might be trite if not said in a new way relevant to me today. A Nobel Prize winner said something like: everything worth saying may have been said before, but since nobody was listening, it must be said again. It has to be recontextualized for the modern age. Things change: technology, culture, people.

你谈到过‘显得明智’和‘真正明智’的区别。你小时候试图通过死记硬背来显得聪明，假装有洞见。我觉得这个节目对我来说，很大程度上是一个救赎弧线，弥补了我完全压制求知欲的那十年。我当了十年专业派对男孩，站在夜店门口发 VIP 手环。那很好玩，但回到学术圈，拿了两个学位，然后这个节目帮我洗掉了需要证明自己的污点。当你死记硬背时，说明你没理解。死记硬背和照本宣科假装有智慧。人们把流畅度当作真实和洞见的替代品，也看重语言的复杂性。

You've talked about the difference between seeming wise and being wise. You tried to appear smart as a kid by rote memorization masquerading as insight. I feel that a lot of this show for me has been a redemption arc from a decade where I completely suppressed intellectual curiosity. I was a professional party boy for 10 years, standing at nightclub doors giving VIP wristbands. It was fun, but coming back to academia, getting two degrees, and then this show helped me wipe off the slime of needing to prove myself. When you memorize things, it indicates you don't understand them. Rote memorization and regurgitation masquerading as wisdom. People use fluency as a proxy for truthfulness and insight, and the complexity of language.

用复杂的方式解释简单的事情是江湖骗子的标志。当人们用非常复杂的语言解释简单的事情时，他们要么是想打动你并混淆视听，要么是他们自己也不懂。

It's the mark of a charlatan to explain a simple thing in a complex way. When people use very complicated language to explain simple things, they're either trying to impress you and obfuscate, or they don't understand it themselves.

这其中有诱惑力。我去做心理治疗时，必须关掉‘播客克里斯’。经过 700 多期节目，我训练自己表演：编个好故事，打个蝴蝶结，推到桌子对面，看着你眼睛发亮。治疗师戳穿了我：你在表演，你在做克里斯·威廉姆森那套，像爵士舞手势。所以我也有自己的版本。

There's an allure in that. When I went to therapy, I had to turn off podcast Chris. I trained myself over 700 episodes to perform: create a nice story, put a bow on it, push it across the table, and watch your eyes light up. The therapist called me out: you're performing, you're doing the Chris Williamson thing with jazz hands. So I have my own version.

我有‘播客嘉宾纳瓦尔’。我经常想到一个洞见想发推，但在脑子里我是在播客上谈论它。我的大脑就是这样记录的。有一阵我觉得这不好，试图消灭‘播客纳瓦尔’，但后来我意识到这就是它出来的方式，所以不如坦然接受。

I have podcast guest Naval. Very often I'll think of an insight and want to tweet it, but in my mind I'm talking about it on a podcast. That's how my mind registers it. For a while I thought this was bad and tried to eradicate podcast Naval, but then I realized that's just how it comes out, so I might as well be okay with it.

你知道我为什么上这个播客吗？

Do you know the reason I'm on this podcast?

不知道。

No.

我很久没做正式访谈了，可能从罗根之后就没有。我主动联系了你。原因很有趣：当我在脑子里播放播客时，不知为什么，对面坐的是你。我不知道为什么。我只看过你播客的一些片段，但你是我脑子里那个播客里的人。所以我想不如就做吧。

I haven't done a proper formal interview in a long time, since Rogan maybe. I reached out to you for this one. The reason is funny: when I'm playing podcast in the vault in my head, for some reason you're on the other side. I don't know why. I've only seen snippets of your podcasts, but you were the guy in the podcast in my head. So I thought I might as well just do it.

我不知道这是会结束那个循环还是让它更根深蒂固。现在是现实加梦境，我摆脱不了他了。我拒绝过很多人，说我不做播客了。我对此感到抱歉。我没什么新东西可讲，所以不知道要说什么。

I wonder if this will close that loop or further entrench it. Now it's reality plus a dream, and I can't get away from him. There are enough people I turned down saying I'm just not doing podcasts. I feel bad about that. I have nothing new to talk about, so I don't know what I'm going to say.

嗯，我很感激你在罗根节目上说的话，这也算是一种回报。在我开始这个节目之前，我有一个五头拉什莫尔山的嘉宾名单：乔丹·彼得森、萨姆·哈里斯、生命学院的阿兰·德波顿、你，还有罗根。那就是我的九头蛇拉什莫尔山。我记得有人曾经问过你，可能是罗根之后的一条推文，或者你在罗根节目上说过：‘我不喜欢把同一件事说两遍，至少不会用同样的方式。我不喜欢续集。’我真的很尊重这一点。那是 2019 年。你说那是八九年前，但其实没那么久。我记性很差。你说得对，2019 年，就在新冠之前。我真的很感激，因为在内容创作领域，你可以不断重复自己。我敢肯定我今天说的很多话观众已经听过了，但足够关心去获得新颖的见解，或者至少对类似的见解有新的视角，然后说：‘嗯，在你上乔节目后的六年里，这些观点——我现在用不同的方式看待它们。’实际上，我今天对你说的第一句话就是：‘我不确定我是否完全同意我以前说的那个观点了。’这很酷。这表明你之前确立的立场不是一根绳子。你不再被它束缚了。

Well, I appreciate what you said on Rogan, and this was something to kind of pay it back to you. I had a five-headed Mount Rushmore of guests before I started this show: Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Alain de Botton from the School of Life, you, and Rogan. That was my hydra of Mount Rushmore. I think someone had asked you at some point, maybe a tweet or something after Rogan, or maybe you even said it on Rogan, where you said, 'I don't like to say the same thing twice, at least not in the same way. I don't like sequels.' I really respected that. That was 2019. You said it was eight or nine years ago, but it wasn't that long ago. I have a terrible memory. You're right, 2019, right before COVID. I really appreciated that because in the content game, you can keep repeating yourself. I'm sure I'll have said many things today that the audience has already heard, but caring enough to have novel insights, or at least a new perspective on similar insights, to say, 'Well, in the six years since you were on Joe, a lot of these—I'm coming at them differently.' Actually, the first thing I said to you today was, 'I'm not convinced I fully agree with that thing I used to say,' which is cool. That shows that the position you put in the ground previously is not a tether. You're not held to it anymore.

嗯，我想我之所以想上这个节目，是因为我觉得你是在进行对话，而我喜欢对话。我不喜欢采访。这就是为什么我做了我上一个创业项目 Airchat，它完全是关于对话的。对我来说，对话更真实、更真诚。有来有往，有交流，有真正的好奇心。这并不是说其他播客主持人不这样做——他们当然做——但不知为何，在我心里，我把你视为一个我会真正与之对话的人。果然，你刚才读了我的文章，我觉得没有其他人会这么做。这暗示着有来有往，有真正的好奇心。我认为这很有用，因为这样我内心某些隐性的知识就会浮现出来。这很有帮助。

Well, I think the reason I wanted to be on this show is because I have the impression that you engage in conversations, and I like conversations. I don't like interviews. That's why I was doing my last startup, Airchat, which was all about conversations. Conversations to me are more genuine, more authentic. There's a give and take, a back and forth, genuine curiosity. It's not to say other podcasters don't do it—they absolutely do—but for some reason, in my mind, I had you as a guy I would actually have a conversation with. And sure enough, you just read me your essay, which I don't think anyone else would really do. That implies a give and take, genuine curiosity. I think that's useful because then certain inexplicit knowledge I had will be surfaced for myself. That's helpful.

你在某种程度上打破了第四面墙，看到了你曾经有过的那些入门级洞见，而你是无法选择这些的。我知道你有一种反导师的情绪，一种非常强烈的‘别听我的，我不知道我在做什么’。导师是个陷阱。不要追随我，不要向我鞠躬，不要做任何那些事。但是，如果你在另一个人身上看到共鸣——我认为这就是我们都在试图寻找的东西。人们可以抱怨内容创作的山一样多，也许有道理。但如果你能找到一个人，在他们身上看到一点你自己，也许不多，但就像‘哦，他们身上的那一点——他们的自尊，他们看待关系的方式，他们想做什么，他们想要的生活，他们想要的内心平静程度’——如果你在别人身上找到了一点点，就像你之前说的：你不能再不相信那一点了。它介入并成为你的一部分。你也许看到了反射回来的、从很久以前渗透出来的、蜿蜒的洞见，然后发生了一些事情。也许五年后你会说：‘你知道你关于教训说的那些话吗？’这很酷——这就是综合，一种融合。

You're seeing, to break the fourth wall a bit, some of the gateway drug insights you had that you just don't get to choose. I'm aware you have an anti-guru sentiment, a very strong 'don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm doing.' Guru is a trap. Do not follow me, do not bow to me, do not do any of those things. But if you see resonance in another person—and I think that's what we're all trying to find. People can complain about the mountains of content creation, maybe rightly so. But if you can find someone and see a bit of yourself in them, maybe not much, but like, 'Oh, that bit of them—their self-esteem, how they look at relationships, what they want to do, the kind of life they want, the level of peace of mind they want'—if you find a little bit of that in someone else, it's like what you said before: you can no longer be unconvinced of that. It steps in and becomes a part of you. You're maybe seeing reflected back to you this percolated, meandering insight from however long ago, and something's happened. Maybe in five years you'll be like, 'You know that thing you said about the lessons?' It's cool—that's synthesis, a blending.

我花很多时间在旧金山的原因，是因为它是世界上最聪明的人的引力吸引中心。尽管这座城市有很多问题——管理混乱得令人难以置信——但它似乎确实吸引了年轻、聪明、有创造力的人。不仅仅是那些建造技术的人，还有那些探索生活方方面面的人。他们很奇怪，有时令人反感、怪异，但你和他们交谈，你会看到一个非常聪明的人以完全不同的方式对待生活，把它通过人类 DNA 的组合（这是数不清的）进行加工，给你一个可以扭曲你思维的奇怪视角。要做到这一点，你必须不断学习。你不能有导师心态。如果我和某人在一起，他们听我说的每一个字并紧紧抓住不放，那对我来说并不有趣。我什么也学不到。我想要聪明的人，他们会说一些有点不同的话。我可能不同意，但它会留下印记，留下印象。它会在某种程度上留下印象，既因为他们正确，也因为我选择倾听。如果我不认为自己比他们地位更高或更聪明，我就会选择倾听。另一面是，我并不真正被高地位的人打动。事实上，我大多数后来变得非常出名或成功的朋友——他们越出名、越成功，我和他们在一起的时间就越少。部分原因是他们被一群谄媚的粉丝包围，很难突破，而且我不想要他们任何东西。我不喜欢暗示交易关系的情况。这对那些处于高位的人来说可能很难，因为他们爬得越高，不想要他们东西的人就越少。所以从这个意义上说，你有一个更好的朋友，对吧？但他们被那些想要东西并且非常善于假装不想要的人包围，以至于我不值得花时间去试图从那个群体中突围。所以可以说，高处确实不胜寒。但这也是选择。你可以成为自己最好的朋友。实际上，我就是自己最好的朋友。我真的很享受和自己相处。

The reason I spend a lot of time in San Francisco is because it's a gravitational attractor for the smartest people in the world. Despite all the problems the city has—it's mismanaged beyond belief—it does seem to pull in young, smart, creative people. Not just those building technology, but those exploring every facet of life. They're weird, sometimes repulsive and bizarre, but you talk to them and you see a very intelligent person coming at life in a completely different way, putting it through the combinatorics of human DNA, which are uncountable, and giving you a weird perspective that can twist your mind around. To do that, you always have to be learning. You can't be in a guru mentality. If I'm with someone and they're listening to every word I say and hanging on it, that's not interesting for me. I'm not going to learn anything. I want people who are intelligent, who will say something back that's a little different. I may not agree with it, but it will leave a mark, an impression. It will leave an impression to the extent that both they are correct and I choose to listen. I'll choose to listen if I don't view myself as higher status or smarter than them. The flip side is I'm not really impressed by high-status people. In fact, most of my friends who have gone on to become very famous or successful—the more famous and successful they've been, the less I spend time with them. Partially because they get surrounded by an army of sycophantic fans, which is hard to break through, and because I don't want anything from them. I don't like situations where transactional relationships are implied. That can be tough for people who are up there because the higher they climb, the fewer people don't want anything from them. So in that way, you have an even better friend, right? But they get surrounded by people who do want things and are so good at pretending they don't that it's just not worth my time to try to break out from that group. So it does get lonely at the top, so to speak. But it's also by choice. You can be your own best friend. I am my own best friend, actually. I really enjoy spending time with myself.

最聪明的人对显得聪明不感兴趣，也不在乎你怎么想。生活中很多事情就是不在乎。生活中很多最好的东西都源于此。这是不是说那种死记硬背伪装成智慧和洞见的东西——我认为几乎可以肯定像这样的播客对此有所贡献？你听到一个阿兰·德波顿，他就像一个用文字作画的画家。

The smartest people aren't interested in appearing smart and don't care what you think. A lot of life is not giving a f***. A lot of the best things in life come out of that. Does this mean talking about that rote memorization masquerading as wisdom and insight thing, which I think almost certainly podcasts like this have contributed to? You hear an Alain de Botton who's like a painter with words.

非常简单，非常朴实，但如果你有求知欲，你只看到他思想的产物，不一定看到背后的努力。所以你会把呈现方式误认为洞察力。有道理吗？

Very simple, very unpretentious, but if you're intellectually curious, you only see the production of his thoughts. You don't necessarily see the work behind them. So you confuse the presentation for the insight. Does that make sense?

当然。我的很多内容都更精致。就在这个播客之前，我想也许我应该回去读读我以前的推文，记住我说过的话并好好表达。但后来我意识到那只是表演。我只会记住自己的东西来表演。

Of course. A lot of my stuff is more polished. Right before this podcast, I thought maybe I should go back and read my old tweets to remember what I said and articulate it well. But then I realized that's just performance. I would just be memorizing my stuff to perform.

那你已经堕入了一个特别的地狱层次。

That's an extra special level of hell you've descended into.

我写下来是为了让自己更像我。没错。为了达到某种期望或成为某个名人，我现在不得不穿上束缚衣。私下里我也得活出我喜欢的样子。

I wrote memorizing me to be more me. Bingo. And to live up to some expectation or famous personality that I now have to become some straight jacket I have to put on. I'm having to live up to in private the things I prefer.

没错。所以我很快就看穿了。那是胡说八道，还占用我的时间，只是工作。我觉得那是你的冥想练习在起作用，那个正念间隙让你想，嗯？是啊，又是那个东西。

That's right. So pretty quickly I saw through that. It's nonsense and it constrains my time and it's just work. I think that's your meditation practice at work, that mindfulness gap to be like, huh? Yeah, there's that thing again.

正是。所以不是要改变你的想法或修正你自己。只是观察自己，这样就会自动改变。任何需要发生的改变都会发生。试图改变自己是非常循环的。大脑试图改变大脑，大脑不喜欢与自己搏斗。我认为这不会让你有任何进展。

Exactly. So it's not about changing your thoughts or fixing yourself. It's just about being observant of yourself so that it'll automatically change. Whatever change needs to happen will happen. Trying to change yourself is very circular. The mind trying to change the mind, the mind doesn't like wrestling with itself. I don't think it gets you anywhere.

你花了很多时间创造财富或思考如何创造财富。你学到的最好的花钱方式是什么？

You've spent a lot of time either creating wealth or thinking about how to create wealth. What have you learned are the best places to spend wealth?

我实际上认为埃隆想通了这一点，他把自己的钱重新投入自己的企业，为人类做更大更好的事情。你可以捐给非营利组织，但很多非营利组织很腐败，或者是由没赚到钱的人试图花钱，或者他们没有良好的反馈循环来确保效果。顺便说一句，我想做的一件事是为年轻物理学家创办一所小学校。那是我的非营利项目。但我资助过媒体和一些物理学项目。我不喜欢谈论它，因为我觉得那会让它变得不那么真实，更注重地位，更不慈善。然后人们会看我的慈善有多慈善，还会有人来讨钱。所有这些弊端。我不相信给学校捐款。它们有足够的钱。常春藤盟校有足够的钱，而且不知道怎么花。所以我认为钱最好的用途是创办一个好企业，创造人们自愿购买并从中获得价值的产品。史蒂夫·乔布斯、埃隆和像他们这样的企业家为世界创造了大量价值。所以我可以把自己的钱投资到自己身上，去建造下一个我认为需要存在的伟大事物。这就是我现在正在做的。我在做一个新业务，自己出资，投入大量资金。我要建造一个我认为美丽、希望看到存在的东西。

I actually think Elon had this one figured out, which is he plowed his own money back into his own businesses to do bigger and better things for humanity. You could give it to nonprofits, but a lot of nonprofits are grifty or it's people who didn't earn it trying to spend it, or they don't have tight feedback loops on having a good effect. One of the things I want to do as an aside is create a little school for young physicists. That's my nonprofit. But I've underwritten media and some physics stuff. I don't like to talk about it because I think that makes it less real, more status oriented, less philanthropic. Then people look at how charitable my charity is, and people come hunting for money. There's all that disease. I don't believe in giving to schools. They have enough money. Ivy Leagues have enough money and they don't know how to spend it. So I think the best use of money is a good business that creates a product people voluntarily buy and get value out of. Steve Jobs and Elon and entrepreneurs like that have created a lot of value for the world. So I can take my own money and invest it in myself to build the next great thing that I think needs to exist. That's basically what I'm doing right now. I'm doing a new business, self-funding it, plowing a lot of money into it. I'm going to build something beautiful that I want to see exist.

你谈过这个吗，还是仍然保密？

Have you spoken about this yet or is it still dark mode?

还太早了。也许几个月后我会给你看，希望是 6 个月。我很兴奋，这是钱的好用途。

It's so early. Maybe I'll show it to you in a few months, hopefully 6 months. I'm excited about it and that's a good use of money.

那最糟糕的花钱方式呢？老话怎么说？如果它会飞、会浮或会交配。

What about the worst places to spend wealth? What is the old line? If it flies, floats or fornicates.

把最后一个 F 改得很妙。我听到的就是这样。不能归功于我。我确定是福克斯，但没错。我觉得是费利克斯·丹尼斯说的那句话。他说：‘如果它会飞、会浮或会交配，就租。’我认为最后一个有点不对，因为他没有家庭，没有孩子。所以他错过了最重要的。但有很多糟糕的花钱方式。我相信投资，而不是消费。你生来就做空房子，平仓，给自己买个好房子。请些帮手来解放你的时间，这样你就不用做别人能做得更好的事。善待他人，总是多付并期待最好。像对待最好的人一样付钱，并期待最好。但总的来说，钱的好用途是冒险，建造别人做不到的东西。与你独特的天赋保持一致，这样你可以继续为世界做贡献。我不会无所事事或退休。那是浪费我剩下的时间。如果我在做我喜欢的事，那我已经在永久退休中了。工作只是一堆你不得不做但不想做的事。所以如果你想做，那就不是工作。有些我想做的事感觉不像工作。我可以把钱投进去，把它们变成现实。我不想说‘让世界变得更美好’，因为那太老套了，而是创造一件我引以为豪的产品，否则它不会存在，其他人会从中获得巨大价值。而这是通过财富实现的，因为你能承担原本无法承担的风险。

Very nice way to change the final F. That's the way I heard it. Can't take credit for that. I'm pretty sure it's Fox, but yeah. I think it was Felix Dennis who had that quote. He said, 'If it flies, floats or fornicates, rent it.' I think the last one was a little wrong because he didn't have a family, didn't have kids. So he missed the big one. But there are lots of bad ways to spend money. I believe in investment, not consumption. You're born with a short housing position, you close that out, get yourself a nice house. Get some help to free up your time so you're not doing things others can do better. Treat people well, always overpay and expect the best. Pay them like they're the best and expect the best. But overall, a good use of money is to take risks and build things that others can't do. Align it with your own unique talent so you can keep delivering to the world. I'm not going to sit idle or retire. That's a waste of whatever time I have left. If I'm doing something I enjoy, then I'm already in perpetual retirement. Work is just a set of things you have to do that you don't want to do. So if you want to do it, it's not work. There are things I want to do that don't feel like work. I can put money behind them and instantiate them into reality. I don't want to say 'make the world a better place' because that's too trite, but more just create a product I'm proud of that wouldn't exist otherwise, that others will get tremendous value from. And it's enabled through wealth because you're able to take a level of risk you wouldn't have otherwise.

财富给你自由。它给你自由去探索更多选择。就我而言，它给了我自由去创业，而不必征求别人的许可，或者根据他们想要回报的愿望或他们认为赚钱的方式扭曲我的愿景。

Wealth gives you freedom. It gives you freedom to explore more options. And in my case, it gives me freedom to start businesses without having to ask other people for permission or to warp my vision based on their desires to make a return or how they think money should be made.

你有什么想补充到‘如何致富’系列里的吗？有没有什么你觉得只要我能进去编辑再加一条的？

Is there anything that you'd add to the 'how to get rich' thread? Is there anything you thought like just one if I could go in and edit and add one more?

没有，大概有一万件事。老实说，我可以永远谈论那个话题。

No, there's like 10,000 things. I could talk about that topic forever to be honest.

那条推文很短，也很有限，虽然我是即兴写的，但某种程度上是精心雕琢的。它留下了太多未讲的内容，我可以就那个话题聊上几天。但一切都要看具体情境。商业是非常依赖具体情境的。你必须审视具体的业务，理解它在做什么、为什么做、怎么做，然后才能拆解它，再正确地重新组装。我认为那才是我拥有特定知识和专长的地方。我的特定知识不在于幸福或哲学。我的生活被精心设计得很独特，但那不是我的特定知识。我的特定知识在于分析一家企业，尤其是科技企业，从接缝处拆解它，并预测什么可能成功、什么可能失败。Clubhouse 是个例外。大多数时候你仍然会犯错。这就像买彩票，但你提前知道一两个号码。你只需要对几次，甚至一次，就能大获全胜。Peter Thiel 创办了 PayPal，但他的钱主要来自 Facebook。那才是大赢家。这在任何幂律分布中都成立。第一名回报超过第二名到第 n 名的总和。第二名回报超过第三名到第 n 名的总和。你是在一个高度杠杆化的智力领域运作，所以结果是非线性的。我对这个话题了解很多，但它高度依赖具体情境。如果面前有一个具体的业务或创业者，那就更有意义了。我可以拆解它，然后说：‘这不会成功，因为你做这件事的动机不对。你做 A 是为了达到 B，直接去做 B 吧。’或者‘你这样做是为了赚钱，但真正热爱产品的人会打败你。’或者‘你从错误的人那里融资，你的联合创始人不合适，你的股权兑现计划有问题，你在错误的地方创业，或者你从错误的角度切入。’当然，我也会犯错，但我见过大量数据，有自己的理论。那是我感到自在的领域。问题在于，当我必须谈论如何创造财富时。‘如何致富’是一个故意吸引眼球的标题。但抽象地谈论财富创造非常困难，因为你必须说出在几乎所有情境下都正确的真理。这限制了你所能说的。缺乏具体性让它又回到了哲学。但如果我能具体化，那才是真正的知识，可以像顾问一样帮助别人。

That thread was so short and limited, crafted in a sense, though I wrote it spontaneously. It left so much on the cutting room floor that I could talk about that topic for days. But it's all contextual. Business is very contextual. You have to look at the particular business, understand what's being done, why, and how, then you can tear it apart and reassemble it properly. I like to think that's where I have specific knowledge and expertise. My specific knowledge is not in happiness or philosophy. My life is hacked to be unique, but that's not my specific knowledge. My specific knowledge is in analyzing a business, especially a technology business, taking it apart at the seams, and predicting what is likely to work and what is not. Clubhouse notwithstanding. You're still going to be wrong most of the time. It's like playing the lottery, but you know one or two ticket numbers in advance. You only have to be right a few times, or even just once, to get the big score. Peter Thiel started PayPal, but he made all his money on Facebook. That was the big winner. That's true in any power law distribution. Number one returns more than two through n combined. Two returns more than three through n combined. You're operating in a highly leveraged intellectual domain, so outcomes are nonlinear. I know a lot about that topic, but it's highly contextual. It makes more sense with a specific business or entrepreneur in front of me. I can take it apart and say, 'This won't work because you're doing it for the wrong reasons. You're doing A to get to B. Just go to B.' Or 'You're doing this to make money, but the person who loves the product will beat you.' Or 'You're raising money from the wrong people, your co-founder isn't right, your vesting schedule is wrong, you're starting in the wrong place, or approaching from the wrong angle.' Of course, I'll be wrong too, but I've seen a lot of data and have theories. That's where I feel comfortable. The problem is when I have to talk about how to create wealth. 'How to get rich' is a clickbait title deliberately. But talking about wealth creation in the abstract is difficult because you have to speak truth that applies in almost every context. That limits what you can say. The lack of specificity makes it back to philosophy. But if I can get specific, that's where real knowledge can be like a counselor for people.

是的，没错。又回到了哲学。

Yeah. Correct. It's back to philosophy.

我开始做播客的部分原因——这是自我在作祟，我坦率承认——当我发推文时，我算是开创了哲学 Twitter，或者说某种实用哲学 Twitter。在 140 个字符里，我试图用一种有趣的方式说出一些真实且当时对我有启发的话。但后来那被复制了。现在有成千上万的人在做同样的事，ChatGPT 整天试图生成这些东西。虽然我倾向于认为我的内容是不可压缩的；我用最紧凑的方式表达，这源于一点失败的诗歌背景。但我意识到，如果你真正深刻理解某件事，那么你可以整天谈论它。你可以从那种理解中重新推导出你需要的一切。不需要记忆。你可以从第一性原理出发，你所知的每一块都像乐高积木一样拼合起来，形成钢架结构。它很坚固，牢牢锁定。所以在播客上，我可以更深入地展开这些话题。例如，我们可以谈论任何你喜欢的业务，但必须在具体情境中，必须是真实的、实际的问题。然后我们可以解决它。我真的很喜欢那个启发式原则：如果你不得不记忆某件事，那是因为你不理解它。如果你理解了，你就不需要记忆。

Part of the reason I started doing podcasts—and this is ego at play, I'll admit it freely—when I was tweeting, I kind of pioneered philosophy Twitter, or a certain kind of practical philosophy Twitter. In 140 characters, I would try to say something true in an interesting way that was insightful to me at the time. But then that got copied. There are thousands of us now, thousands of people spitting it out, ChatGPT trying to create these things all day long. Although I like to think my stuff is incompressible; I'm saying it in the tightest way possible, which comes from a little failed poetry background. But what I realized was if you truly have a deep understanding of something, then you can talk about it all day long. You can rederive everything you need from that understanding. No memorization required. You can get to it from first principles, and every piece of what you know is like a Lego block that fits in and forms a steel frame. It's solid, locked in there. So on a podcast, I can unload much more deeply about some of these topics. For example, we can talk about any business you like, but it has to be in context, real, an actual problem. Then we can solve it. I just really love that heuristic: if you're having to memorize something, it's because you don't understand it. If you understand something, you don't have to memorize it.

没错。如果你不得不记忆某件事，那是因为你不理解它。如果你理解了，你就不需要记忆。

That's right. If you have to memorize something, it's because you don't understand it. And if you understand something, you don't have to memorize it.

是的。再次，为了指出我试图做的很多事——这种救赎弧线——如果我听起来很聪明，那就像聪明本身，对吧？你会说，ChatGPT 已经记住了整个互联网。祝你在记忆方面与它竞争。你在记忆方面甚至比不过一个图书馆。你比不过任何十本书。所以记忆不是关键。记忆的价值每天都在下降。它已经很低了。理解才是关键。能够——判断才是关键。品味才是关键。理解、判断、品味——这些来自于面对真实问题，解决它们，然后找到共性。什么是哲学？每个人，如果你活得够久，你就会成为哲学家。哲学就是你在生活中具体的经历中找到隐藏的可概括的真理，然后你知道如何基于一些启发式原则来应对未来的具体经历，并围绕它建立一种哲学。任何学科，如果深入钻研，最终都会通向哲学。对任何事情的精通，真的任何事情，都会让你成为哲学家。你只需要坚持足够久，然后把真理概括出来。而这些是普世真理。又回到了统一性与多样性。如果你深入足够，你可以在任何事物中找到统一性。这就是为什么那些陈词滥调不幸地不断出现。你会想，好吧，看，这是陈词滥调是有原因的。它有原因。但有时你也会学到新东西。有时你确实会发现新东西。即使在哲学中，例如，科学进步了，随着科学的进步，它实际上扩展了哲学的边界。当我们曾经认为地球是宇宙的中心时，你会有一个不同的哲学观，而不是当你认为宇宙浩瀚而我们微不足道时。

Yeah. Again, just to sort of call out a lot of what I tried to do—this redemption arc thing—if I sound smart, that's like being smart, right? You go, well, ChatGPT has memorized the entire internet. Good luck competing with that. You're not going to beat it in memorization. You're not even going to beat a library at memorization. You're not going to beat any 10 books in memorization. So memorization is not the thing. The value of memorization is going down by the day. It's already so low. Understanding is a thing. Being able to—judgment is the thing. Taste is a thing. Understanding, judgment, taste—these come out of having real problems and then solving them and then finding the commonalities. What is philosophy? Everyone, if you live long enough, you'll be a philosopher. Philosophy is just when you find the hidden generalizable truths among the specific experiences you've had in life, and then you know how to navigate future specific experiences based on some heuristics, and you create a philosophy around that. Any subject pursued deeply enough will eventually lead to philosophy. Mastery in anything, literally anything, will lead you to being a philosopher. You just have to stick with it long enough and generalize the truths back out. And these are universal truths. It's back to the unity and variety. You can find unity in anything if you go deep enough. And that's why the trite stuff unfortunately sort of keeps coming back around. You're like, well, look, this is cliche for a reason. It's cliche for reasons. But sometimes you learn new things. Sometimes you do figure out new things too. Even in philosophy, for example, science has advanced, and as science has advanced, it's actually expanded our boundaries of philosophy. When we used to think the earth was the center of the universe, you would have a different philosophical outlook than when you think the universe is vast and we're infinitesimally small.

它会给你一种不同的哲学观。就像如果你认为自然是由天使、恶魔和神灵驱动，而不是存在可计算、可理解的物理定律，那会导向不同的哲学观。如果你认为知识是自上而下、代代相传的，而不是即时创造并经过现实检验的，那也会导向不同的哲学观。如果你认为人类是上帝创造的，而不是从某种单细胞生物进化而来的，这仍然没有解决最初的问题——谁创造了上帝？但至少它让你走得更远。甚至模拟理论也是一种基于我们对计算机的了解来重新构建哲学的尝试，尽管它得出了许多与造物主相似的结论，但它至少是一种受技术和科学启发的哲学。

It will give you a different philosophical outlook. The same way if you think that nature is driven by angels and demons and gods versus if there are laws of physics that are computable and understandable, that will lead you to a different philosophical outlook. If you think that knowledge is something that is passed down from above and through generations versus something that is created on the fly and then tested against reality, that will lead you to a different philosophical outlook. If you think humans are created by God as opposed to humans evolved from some unicellular organism, it still doesn't solve the original problem. Who created that? But at least it takes you further down the road. Even simulation theory is an attempt at reformulating philosophy based on what we know about computers, even though it kind of leads to a lot of the same conclusions as a creator. But it is at least philosophy that is informed by technology and by science.

哲学也可以进化。道德哲学在进化，对吧？曾几何时，几乎每个征服文化都实行奴隶制。现在几乎所有文化都憎恶奴隶制。这就是道德哲学的进化。甚至有一大群医生，基于研究，直到 20 世纪 80 年代还相信婴儿感觉不到疼痛。所以直到今天，我认为割礼仍然在没有麻醉的情况下进行，因为理论是婴幼儿感觉不到疼痛。这很荒谬。80 年代有一项研究说，不，他们确实感到疼痛。然后人们才恍然大悟。所以人们可能会长期陷入糟糕的哲学陷阱。因此，即使是哲学也能取得进步。

Philosophy can also evolve. Moral philosophy evolves, right? There was a time when every culture that was a conquering culture practiced slavery. Now almost all cultures abhor slavery. That's moral philosophy having evolved. There was even a fairly large group of doctors based on studies who believed until the 1980s that babies couldn't feel pain. So even to this day, I think circumcision is done without anesthesia because under the theory that very young children, babies, don't feel pain. That's ludicrous. There was a study that came out in the 80s that said no, they do feel pain. It's like, oh yeah, of course. So people can be stuck in bad philosophical traps for a long period of time. So even philosophy can make progress.

举个例子，我意识到的一个问题，这要感谢大卫·多伊奇和我的朋友詹姆斯·皮尔斯，以及我自己的思考，就是有一些永恒的老问题，答案看起来像是悖论。所以我们停止思考它们。比如自由意志。你有自由意志吗？或者任何事情重要吗？生命有意义吗？我们被困在其中，因为，例如，生命有意义吗？是的，生命有意义，因为你就在这里。你创造自己的意义。这一刻有你所能想象的一切意义。它就是所有存在的意义。另一方面，你会死。一切归零。热寂。宇宙没有意义。那么到底是哪一个？它看起来矛盾的原因是你从一个特定尺度、特定时间的人类角度提问，然后从宇宙无限时间的视角回答。所以你耍了个花招：你切换了回答问题的层次。问题应该在被问的层次上回答。所以如果你问“有意义吗？”你，克里斯，在问这个问题。是的。对克里斯来说，有意义。意义就在这里。这就是意义。你可以赋予它任何你想要的意义。不要以克里斯的身份提问，然后以上帝或宇宙的身份回答。这就是你耍的花招。这就是为什么它看起来矛盾。

As an example, one of the realizations I had, thanks to David Deutsch and my friend James Pierce, and also thinking it through a little bit, is that there are these timeless old questions where the answers seem like paradoxes. So we stop thinking about them. An example is free will. Do you have free will? Or does anything matter? Is there a meaning to life? We get stuck in them because, for example, is there a meaning to life? Yes, life has a meaning because you're right here. You create your own meaning. This moment has all the meaning you could imagine. It's all the meaning there is. On the other hand, you're going to die. It all goes to zero. Heat death. The universe has no meaning. So which one is it? The reason it seems paradoxical is because you're asking the question of a human here and now at a certain scale and a certain time, and then you're answering it from the viewpoint of the universe over infinite time. So you pull the trick: you switch the level at which you're answering the question. Questions should be answered at the level at which they're asked. So if you ask the question, is there meaning? You, Chris, are asking that question. Yes. To Chris, there is meaning. There's meaning right here. This is the meaning. You can interpret any meaning you want onto it. Don't ask the question as Chris and then answer it as God or as the universe. That's the trick you're playing. That's why it seems paradoxical.

同样，你可以说，我有自由意志吗？人们整天争论自由意志。问题是在错误的框架下回答的。他们问：作为个体，我有自由意志吗？当然有，我有自由意志。我的心身系统无法预测我下一步要做什么。宇宙是无限复杂的。我在脑海中做出选择，然后做某事。这就是我的自由意志。所以在你被问的层次上回答。我当然有自由意志，因为我感觉我有自由意志，我对待你就像你有自由意志一样，你对待我也像我有自由意志一样。我们有自由意志。问题在于你开始试图以宇宙的身份回答这个问题。你会说，在宇宙尺度上，大爆炸、粒子碰撞，没有人做任何选择。你怎么可能不同于宇宙希望你成为的样子？一切都是一个块宇宙。所以你没有自由意志。不要在你没有被问的层次上回答问题。所以如果上帝问这个问题，有自由意志吗？不，没有自由意志。宇宙问这个问题，没有自由意志。但如果一个个体现在问这个问题，那么是的，有自由意志。所以很多这样的悖论就自行解决了——那些人们从古至今一直在挣扎的哲学悖论——当你意识到你是在不同于问题被问的尺度和时间上回答它们时。

The same way you can say, do I have free will? People debate free will all day long. The question is answered at the wrong frame. They ask the question: do I as an individual have free will? Hell yeah, I have free will. My mind-body system can't predict what I'm going to do next. The universe is infinitely complex. I'm making a choice in my mind and I'm doing something. There's my free will. So answer at the level at which you were asked. Of course I have free will because I feel like I have free will and I treat you like you have free will and you treat me like I have free will. We have free will. The problem then is you start trying to answer the question as if you're the universe. You're like, well on the universal scale, big bang, particle collisions, no one makes any choices. How could you be any different than what the universe wants you to be? It's all one block universe. So you don't have free will. Don't answer the question at the level at which it wasn't asked. So if God asked the question, is there free will? No, there is no free will. The universe asks the question, there is no free will. But if an individual asks the question right now, then yes, there is free will. So a lot of these paradoxes resolve themselves, philosophical paradoxes that people have been struggling with since the beginning of time, when you just realize you're answering them at a scale and time different than they were asked.

说到更新信念，你最近有什么改变想法的事情吗？非常近期的。

Speaking of updating beliefs, is there anything that you've changed your mind around recently? Very recently.

我的意思是，一直在变。但你是说哲学存在层面的东西还是技术层面的？

I mean, all the time. But are you talking about philosophical existential things or technological things?

是的，哲学存在层面的东西，或者任何你想到的。如果有什么是你脑海中浮现的，你会说，啊，对，那是一次相当大的系统更新。

Yeah, philosophical existential things or anything that comes to mind. If there's anything that's front of mind where you go, ah, yeah, that's a pretty big OS update.

是的，在社会层面，我不像以前那样自由放任了。我认为文化和宗教是人类良好的合作系统。所以如果你想在一个高信任社会中运作，你需要有一套人们必须遵守和服从的规则，这样他们才能和睦相处，即使这些规则是通用的，并不适合每个人。

Yeah, I'm less laissez-faire than I used to be on a societal level. I think that culture and religion are good cooperating systems for humans. So if you want to operate in a high trust society, you need to have sets of rules that people need to follow and obey so they get along, even if they're one-size-fits-all and doesn't work for everybody.

从自由意志主义稍微移动了一点。

Moved up a little bit from libertarian.

是的。我认为纯粹的自由意志主义者会在竞争中被淘汰并消亡，对吧？他们会被淹没，因为那是人人为己。他们无法协调。

Yeah. I think pure libertarians get outcompeted and die, right? They get overrun because it's every man for himself. They can't coordinate.

他们无法协调。正是如此。

They can't coordinate. Exactly.

对。所以是协调问题。文化存在是为了解决基本的协调问题。宗教解决协调问题。种族在历史上解决协调问题。当你过快打破这些协调系统而不代之以其他东西时，你就会得到社会崩溃。所以你可能会有非常功能失调的社会。去日本和去任何西方城市，你可以看到运作良好的文化和运作不佳的文化之间的区别。所以我认为这是一系列我改变了很多想法的事情。我过去在那方面要自由放任得多，这么说吧。

Right. So the coordination problems. Culture exists to solve fundamental coordination problems. Religion solves coordination problems. Ethnicity solves coordination problems historically. And when you break down those coordination systems too fast and don't replace them with anything else, you get societal breakdown. So you can have very malfunctioning societies. Go to Japan versus go to any Western city and you can see the difference between a culture that's working and a culture that's not. So I think that's a broader set of things that I've changed my mind on a fair bit. I used to be much more laissez-faire on that stuff, let's put it that way.

嗯。还有什么？

Mhm. What else?

在育儿方面，我变得宽松多了。我仍然不是完全自由放任，但我更意识到孩子就是孩子，你让他们做自己的事。

On child raising, I've gotten a lot looser. I'm still not completely laissez-faire, but I'm much more realized that kids are going to be kids and you kind of let them do their thing.

和他们辩论。是不是塔利布有那种上升的层次，比如无政府主义对保守主义？那是他的见解吗？比如在地方层面，我是这个。看起来你走了相反的方向。

The debate with them. Is it a Talib that has the ascending levels of like anarchism versus conservatism? Is that his insight? Like at the local level, I'm this. It seems like you've gone the other way.

这就像在孩子的层面我是无政府主义者，在社会层面我是保守派。

It's like at the child level I'm an anarchist and at the societal level I'm a conservative.

不，他是在引用别人的话，某个兄弟，我忘了是谁，但他像往常一样雄辩地阐述了观点。在家庭本地层面他是共产主义者。在家庭层面你是共产主义者。在大家庭层面你是社会主义者，在本地层面你有点像民主党人，以此类推，直到联邦层面你是自由意志主义者，对吧？所以你反过来了。你对孩子是自由意志主义者，在社会层面是宗教保守派。

No, he was quoting somebody else, some brothers, I forget which ones, but he was making the point eloquently as he often does. That at the family local level he's a communist. At the family level you're communist. At maybe the extended family level you're a socialist, at the local level you're kind of a democrat, and so on until at the federal level you're a libertarian, right? So you've done it the other way. You're being a libertarian with the kids and you're being a religious conservative at the societal level.

不，这是一种有趣的看法。我不知道这个尺度是否那么简单。我还改变了什么想法？我的意思是，我认为现代 AI 真的很酷。但我觉得这些是自然语言计算机。它们开始在某些层面显示出推理的证据，但我不认为它们有创造力。

No, that's a funny way of looking at it. I don't know if the scale is that simple. What else have I changed my mind on? I mean, I think modern AI is really cool. I think it's but I think these are natural language computers. They're starting to show evidence of reasoning at some levels but I don't think they do creativity.

我最喜欢的观点来自 Dwash Patel，他说如果你给地球上任何一个人一个 LLM 消耗量的 0.00001%，任何 LLM，他们都会想出成千上万的新想法，对吧？给我一个由它产生的新想法，一个根本性的新想法。是的。比如我很喜欢诗歌。LLM 写的每一首诗都是垃圾。我认为它们的小说写作也很糟糕。即使是新的 GPT-4.5，对 Sam 和他的团队没有不敬，我觉得他们是糟糕透顶的作家。我发现它们非常不擅长总结。它们非常擅长外推文书工作。它们实际上非常不擅长提炼事物的本质和重点。它们没有意见或观点。但它们仍然是难以置信的强大突破。它们解决了搜索问题。它们解决了自然语言计算。它们让英语成为编程语言。它们解决了驾驶问题。它们解决了简单编码和备份编码。它们解决了翻译。它们解决了转录。它们是计算领域的根本性突破。这是一种不同的编程计算机的方式：不是你明确地说它的语言并编写代码然后运行数据，而是你运行足够多的数据直到它学会如何编写程序。这很了不起。但它们是 AGI 吗？还不是。而且我没有看到从这里到那里的直接路径。也许在那之前我们还需要解决更多问题。我认为 ASI 是幻想。我不认为存在什么人工超级智能，拥有人类无法理解的智能。

One of my favorite takes is from Dwash Patel and he says if you gave any human on the planet 0.00001% of the consumption that an LLM has, any LLM, they would have come up with thousands of new ideas, right? Give me one new idea, one fundamental new idea that's been generated. Yeah. Like I'm big into poetry. Every poem ever written by an LLM is garbage. I think even their fiction writing is terrible. Even the new GPT-4.5, with all due respect to Sam and crew, I think they're terrible, terrible writers. I find them really bad at summarizing. They're really good at extrapolating paperwork. They're very bad at actually distilling the essence of something and what's important. They don't have opinions or a point of view. But they're still unbelievably powerful breakthroughs. They solve search. They solve natural language computing. They make English a programming language. They solve driving. They solve simple coding and backup coding. They solve translation. They solve transcription. They are a fundamental breakthrough in computing. It is a different way to program a computer: rather than you explicitly speak its language and write the code and then run the data through it, you just run enough data through it until it figures out how to write the program. That's huge. But are they AGI? Not yet. And I don't see a direct path from here to there. Maybe we'll have to solve a few more problems before that happens. And I think ASI is a fantasy. I don't think there's any such thing as artificial super intelligence where it has some kind of intelligence that humans can't fathom.

好的。是的，看起来我不知道你是否来自 LessWrong 阵营之类的。不，我不是 AI 末日论者。我认为那是一种有缺陷的推理思路。但假设你来自 lesswrong.com 这样的 Slate Star Codex 世界，那里有一条从计算机到 AI 越来越强大越来越强大，最终达到 AGI 和 ASI 的谱系，而 LLMs 似乎是与此正交的运动，你是说你不认为它们是那条路上的一步？

Okay. Yeah, it seems like I don't know if you're from the less wrong camp or whatever. No, I'm not an AI doomer. I think that's such a flawed line of reasoning. But let's say that you came out of the lesswrong.com like Slate Star Codex world and there was this sort of lineage from computers and AI gets more powerful more powerful more powerful and then you end up AGI ASI and it seems like LLMs have been this sort of orthogonal move from that which are you saying you don't believe they are a step on that path?

我认为这是一种不同形式的智能。我觉得 Steven Wolf 说得更好：这是一种不同形式的智能。就像你在丛林中看到一只美洲虎，它有不同形式的智能，而植物有通过光合作用和生长体现的智能。这是一种不同形式的智能。它不是那种像爱或幸福一样被过度使用的词，对不同的人意味着不同的事情。但根据我的定义，真正的考验是你从生活中得到你想要的东西，它甚至没有生命。它甚至不想要任何东西。这是不同的东西。我确实认为它非常有用。我很高兴它存在。你还没有看到它在大规模生产系统中取代人类，因为它有幻觉的倾向。所以你不能把它用于任何关键任务：十分之一的情况下自信地犯错。没错。而且它甚至不知道什么时候错了。也许他们会把十分之一降到百分之一。但对于关键的事情，你总是需要人类监督。

I think it's a different form of intelligence. I think Steven Wolf puts it better: it's a different form of intelligence. It's like if you see a jaguar in the jungle, it has a different form of intelligence, and a plant has a form of intelligence in how it can photosynthesize and grow. It's a different form of intelligence. It's not intelligence again like love or happiness is this overloaded word that means many things to many people. But by my definition where the true test is you get what you want out of life, it doesn't even have a life. It doesn't even want anything. It's a different thing. I do think it's unbelievably useful. I'm glad that it exists. You don't see it much yet in large scale production systems replacing humans because of this tendency to hallucinate. So you can't put it into anything mission critical: confidently wrong one time out of ten. Correct. And it doesn't even know when it's wrong. Maybe they'll get that one out of ten down to one out of a hundred. But you'll kind of always want human oversight for critical things.

我总是感到有点苦涩。我有时很小气。我那个不那么经济学家的版本很小气，如果它犯了错，我总是想教训它一顿。比如你怎么敢，你那么自信。我在对待它，但我在拟人化。它没有观点。而且它们会变得更好，可能会达到错误率很低的地步，以至于你可以把它们用于某些有边界的问题，比如自动驾驶。我认为这会被完全解决，因为这是一个有边界的问题：汽车不会越野穿过房子之类的东西。同样，某些类型的编码，我认为编码的创造性方面不会消失。我认为程序员反而会获得更大的杠杆和力量。而不是计算取代程序员，程序员用 AI 取代其他人。

I always feel so bitter. I'm petty sometimes. My less economist version of me is petty and I always want to teach it a lesson if it gets something wrong. Like how dare you, you were so confident. I'm treating it but I'm anthropomorphizing. It doesn't have a point of view. And they are going to get a lot better and they might get to the point where the error rates are so low that you can put them into certain bounded problems like self-driving. I think will be solved completely because it's a bounded problem: cars don't go off-road and drive through houses and stuff like that. And same way, certain kinds of coding, the creative side of coding I think doesn't go away. I think if anything programmers get even more leverage and more powerful. And rather than computing replacing programmers, programmers use AI to replace everybody else.

关于特斯拉对 Waymo，你会押注软件还是硬件来实现自动驾驶？

On Tesla versus Waymo, would you bet on software or hardware for self-driving?

是的。所以我认为特斯拉处于更强势的长期位置，但很难反驳现在有效的东西。Waymo 现在就在工作。所以我不会低估他们，因为当你实际部署某样东西时，你会经历一个学习曲线。Waymo 在这方面领先很多。但特斯拉的纯摄像头方法如果成功的话是更优越的。它更具可扩展性，而且特斯拉知道如何批量生产汽车，对吧？他们可以大规模制造汽车。但我认为两者都会存在。两者都会很好。其他没有自动驾驶汽车的人就惨了。

Yeah. So I think Tesla's in the stronger, longer term position, but it's hard to argue with what's working right now. And Waymo is working right now. So I would not underestimate them because there's a learning curve that you go through when you actually deploy something. And Waymo is way ahead in that regard. But Tesla's camera-only approach if it works is superior. It's much more scalable and Tesla knows how to print cars, right? They can just mass manufacture cars. But I think they'll both be around. They'll both be fine. It's everybody else who doesn't have a self-driving vehicle that's screwed.

你提到了孩子，你有一条推文说：“我不认为需要积极对抗生育率下降。”我忘了那条。你得……我挖得很深。为什么？

You mentioned kids there and you had a tweet that said, "I'm not convinced that declining fertility needs to be proactively fought." I forgot that one. You're going to have to... I dug deep. Why?

嗯，我的意思是，回想一下 30 年前、20 年前？每个人都说地球人口过剩会是个问题。马尔萨斯式的结局，我们会有太多人。而现在突然我们会有太少人。所以部分原因只是末日论 meme 总是活跃着，对吧？或者只是被重新包装了。是的。我们快没油了。我们有太多油了，对吧？你知道，就像世界在变冷，世界在变暖。总是有什么可以尖叫的。世界末日。技术没有进步。AI 会炸毁世界，对吧？所以人们倾向于在两个方向上都过度反应。那么，实际的生育问题是什么？嗯，人们生的孩子更少了。

Well, I mean, think back like what was it 30 years ago, 20 years ago? Everybody was saying overpopulation of the earth is going to be a problem. Malthusian ending, we're going to have too many people. And now all of a sudden we're going to have too few people. So part of it is just the doomerism meme is always alive and well, right? Or it just gets repackaged. Yeah. We're running out of oil. We have too much oil, right? You know, it's like the world is cooling, the world is warming. Like there's always something to scream about. The world is ending. There's no progress in technology. AI is going to blow up the world, right? So people tend to overdo in both directions. Now, what is the actual fertility problem? Well, people are having less kids.

他们生更少的孩子是因为疾病吗？有病毒吗？他们失去生育能力了吗？睾丸里的微塑料，对吧？不，人们生更少的孩子是因为他们选择生更少的孩子，对吧？女性获得了解放，在职场中独立，赚了更多钱。人们不再需要孩子作为保险。他们生更少的孩子。也许他们过着享乐的生活。上帝保佑他们，对吧？他们想要更多乐趣。他们想要更少的孩子。我不认为选择生更少孩子是个问题。

Are they having less kids because there's a disease? Was there a virus? Did they lose their fertility? The microplastics in the testicles, right? No, it's people are having less kids because they're choosing to have less kids, right? Women have gotten emancipation, independence in the workforce, and they're making more money. People don't need kids as insurance policies. They have less kids. Maybe they're living hedonistic lives. God bless them, right? They want to have more fun. They want to have less kids. I don't see the act of choosing to have less kids as a problem.

好，那我们往上走一层。这是因为退休人员。因为很大一部分人口基本上在 65 或 70 岁的保证年龄退休，多亏了社会保障。所以他们需要别人来买单。他们需要更多劳动力。如果劳动力在萎缩，那么就是少数人在支撑大量退休人员。在民主国家，你不能取消养老金。选民会把你选下去。所以他们慢慢扼杀经济。那怎么办？然后你就有大量移民，整个文化就变了。你最终陷入低信任社会，人们开始争夺有限资源，如何控制哪些移民进来，如何确保他们进来后成为好纳税人等等。所以你陷入这种陷阱，低生育率是下游文化和社会问题的上游。但我不确定通过让人们生更多孩子就能解决这个问题。你怎么用模因让他们生更多孩子？我甚至不确定这一定是个问题，因为记住，你现在有更多资源。负担更轻了。但另一方面，每个孩子都是一张彩票和一项发明。所以生更多孩子有一些好处，但你不能强迫。我认为它会自行解决，对吧？

Okay, so let's move one level up. It's because of retirees. It's because a large percentage of the population is essentially retiring at the guaranteed age of 65 or 70 thanks to social security. And so they need other people to pay for it. They need more workers in the workforce. And if the workforce is shrinking, then you have a small number of people who are supporting a large number of retirees. And in democracies, you can't take pensions away. The voters vote you out. So they slowly strangle the economy. So what do you do? Then you have a bunch of immigration and then the whole culture changes. You end up in a low trust society and people start fighting over limited resources and how do you control which immigrants come in and how do you make sure that they're good taxpayers after they're in and so on. So you end up in this kind of trap where the low fertility rate is upstream of the downstream problems that are cultural and societal. But I'm not sure that you're going to solve that by making people have more kids. How are you going to meme them into having more kids? And I'm not even sure it's necessarily a problem because keep in mind, you have more resources now. You have less of a burden. Now, there's a flip side where every kid is a lottery ticket and an invention. So, there's some benefit to having more kids, but you can't force it. I think it'll work itself out, right?

斯科特·亚当斯有一条很棒的定律，他称之为‘缓慢灾难的亚当斯定律’。当灾难非常缓慢，比如石油峰值、全球变暖或人口崩溃，每个人都能看到它们来临，经济和社会作为一种力量会解决它们，因为足够多的个体有动力去解决。所以我不确切知道它会如何解决，但我认为它可以通过各种方式解决。一个例子可能是，人们更晚退休。也许 AI、自动化和机器人照顾老人。也许我们找到在保持高信任社会的同时接纳移民的方法。我们对移民施加更多规则，保护一些高信任的好处。也许我们外包更多事情。也许我们只是有更多土地和住房可用。相信我，如果我们孩子太多，每个人都会抱怨没有住房和土地，对吧？所以他们总会找到关心的事。所以我不认为这是任何个人或政府行动能解决的问题。我认为经济和激励会随着时间解决它。我甚至不确定它有那么大问题。

Scott Adams has this great law which he calls the Adams law of slow-moving disasters. When disasters are very slow-moving like peak oil or global warming or population collapse and everyone can kind of see them coming, economics and society as a force solve them because enough individual people have incentives to go solve them. So I don't know exactly how it gets solved but I think it could get solved in various ways. One example could be, you know, maybe people retire later. Maybe AI and automation and robots take care of the older people. Maybe we figure out how to have immigrants while still keeping a high trust society. We kind of put more rules around immigration that protect some of the high trust benefits. Maybe we outsource more things. Maybe we just, you know, have more land and housing to go around. Believe me, if we were having too many kids, everybody would complain about how there's no housing and there's no land, right? So they'll always find something to care about. So, I just don't view this as like a thing that any individual or government action is going to solve. I think economics and incentives over time will solve it. And I'm not even convinced it's like that big of a problem.

有没有什么你认为也可能是自我纠正的，那就是如果社会上的孩子太少，生孩子的回报实际上可能会上升。现在有动力生孩子可能更容易，因为周围孩子太少，他们会得到最好的工作。他们会有机会和资源。就像每个人都想要……我想如果你从痛苦的一面来看，看看周围所有没有孩子的人。假设养老金完全消失，老年人唯一能生存的方式就是他们的孩子给他们某种津贴，比如反向的，把钱向上代际传递。你会说，嗯，那是个很好的激励。那是个好激励。我也认为人们被模因洗脑，认为孩子会让你的生活更糟，那很糟糕……你的经历是怎样的？孩子在各个方面让你的生活更好。如果你想要生活中自动内置的意义，生孩子。我认为有一些糟糕的心理学研究，像大多数心理学研究一样，不幸的是，它们说人们有孩子时不快乐。是的，因为你在他们换尿布的时候问，‘你高兴有孩子吗？’或者他们甚至不问那个。他们问，‘你快乐吗？’他们回答，‘不，我现在不快乐。’但他们没意识到那个人找到了比当下快乐更重要的东西。他们找到了意义。意义来自孩子。如果你问父母，你后悔有孩子吗？我认为会是 99 比 1 反对，他们会说，‘不，我不后悔有孩子。我爱有孩子。我很高兴我有孩子。’遇到后悔有孩子的父母极其罕见。几率很好。几率非常好。我认为很多人到了晚年，然后他们无法承认自己不想要孩子，他们本应有孩子。已经有点晚了。但很多时候你看到每个人养宠物，对吧？他们用婴儿车推着它们，对吧？那是什么？那是被升华的想要孩子的欲望。

Is there anything that you do think is a it may be self-correcting too, which is that if there are too few kids in society and the returns to having kids literally might just go up. It might just be easier to have the incentive to now have a child because there's so few around, they're going to get the best job. They're going to have opportunity resources. It's like everyone wants to... I suppose if you could come at it from a pain side which is you look at all of the other people around who don't have kids. Let's say that pensions completely drop off and the only way that old people are able to survive is if their children pay them some sort of stipend like reverse, you know, send money back up the generations. You go okay well that's a pretty good incentive. That's a good incentive. I also think that people have been memed into thinking that kids make your life worse and that's a pretty bad... what's your experience been? Kids make your life better in every possible way. If you want an automatic built-in meaning to life, have kids. And I think there are these bad psych studies, like most psych studies, unfortunately, that say that people are unhappy when they have kids. Yeah, it's because you're catching them in the middle of changing a diaper and you're saying like, 'Are you glad you had kids or not?' Or they don't even say that. They say, 'Are you happy or not?' And they say, 'No, I'm not happy right now.' But what they don't realize is that person has found something more important than being happy in the moment. They found meaning. And the meaning comes from kids. And if you ask parents, do you regret having kids? I think it would be 99 to 1 against, you know, it would be, 'No, I don't regret having kids. I love having kids. I'm so glad I had kids.' It's incredibly rare to meet a parent that regretted having children. It's pretty good odds. It's extremely good odds. And I think a lot of people get late into life and then they can't admit that they didn't want kids, that they should have had kids. It's kind of late in the game. But a lot of times you see everybody who has a pet, right? And they're pushing them around in a stroller, right? What is that? That's a sublimated desire for children.

马尔科姆·柯林斯说，养宠物之于孩子，就像看色情片之于性。他基本上认为这是一种替代。肯定是那个方向。而且，你知道，我喜欢宠物。我喜欢动物。但我不喜欢给动物绝育，然后把它当囚犯关在家里，还要训练它。你知道，我只是不想为此负责。

Malcolm Collins says that having a pet is to children what using porn is to sex. He basically thinks that it's sort of a surrogate. It's definitely in that direction. And, you know, I like pets. I like animals. I don't but I don't like the idea of like neutering or spaying something and then keeping it as a prisoner in the house and having to train it. You know, it's just I don't want to be responsible for that.

既然你一直在思考养育孩子，你希望你的孩子从童年中学到什么？

Given that you've been thinking more about child rearing kids, what do you hope that your kids learn from their childhood?

他们应该快乐，做自己想做的事。我对他们没有特定目标。我认为那是通往不快乐的另一条路。

They should just be happy and do what they want. I don't have particular goals in mind for them. I think that's another route to unhappiness.

但这不一样，对吧？与学习目标不同。不一定他们想要什么？你希望他们从生活中想要什么？就像你那个想法，作为父母的首要工作是给孩子无条件的爱。

That's different though, right? Than learn versus goals. It's not necessarily what do they want? What do you want them to want out of life? Like what is it that you had that idea around your number one job as a parent is to provide unconditional love to your kids.

是的，就是这样。对。所以我可以被爱，或者我被无条件地爱。那是其中之一吗？我希望我的孩子感受到无条件的爱，我希望他们有高自尊。作为结果，但我不能选择任何……我唯一能选择的是我的输出。我可以输出爱。我不能选择他们的感受。我不能选择他们的行为。我不能选择他们想要什么。

Yeah, that's it. Right. So I can be loved or I am loved unconditionally. Is that one of the things? I want my kids to feel unconditionally loved and I want them to have high self-esteem. As a consequence of that, but I don't get to choose any... All I get to choose is my output. I can output love. I can't choose what they feel. I can't choose how they behave. I can't choose what they want.

我无法选择他们成为什么样的人。由此而来，应该有自由。这种自由来自于无条件的爱所带来的自尊。他们应该犯自己的错误，吸取自己的教训，有自己的欲望，并以适当的方式实现它们。像任何父母一样，我不希望他们受伤，不希望他们不快乐。但我无法控制这些。

I can't choose what they turn out to be. And downstream from that, there should be freedom. There should be a degree of freedom that comes from the self-esteem that comes from the unconditionality. They should make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons and have their own desires and fulfill them as is appropriate. I like any parent, I wouldn't want them to be hurt. I wouldn't want them to be unhappy. But I cannot control these things.

你回复了我的朋友 Rob Henderson。他谈到孩子被抱着时入睡更快，你说“哭睡法”和同床睡是危险的。什么是 IYI 科学？IY 是 Nim TB。他谈到“知识分子却白痴”。这些人受过过度教育，却否认基本常识。

You replied to my friend Rob Henderson. He was talking about how kids fall asleep more quickly when they're being carried and you said cry it out and co-sleeping is dangerous. What's IYI science? IY is Nim TB. He talks about intellectual yet idiot. These are people who are overeducated and they deny basic common sense.

好吧。在育儿方面有很多这样的情况，这要归功于非常糟糕的研究和糟糕的公共医疗指令。例如，有些父母可能喝醉了、吸毒了或有其他问题，他们睡觉时翻身压到孩子，孩子窒息，或者他们忽视孩子，然后这就是同床睡吗？

Okay. So there's a lot of that that goes on in child rearing thanks to really bad studies and bad public medical directives. So, for example, a few parents maybe they're drunk or they're high or they're just other issues and they roll over their kid when they're sleeping, the kid suffocates or they neglect their kid and then is that co-sleeping having them in the bed.

是的，没错。或者有现代的宣告。因此，他们说：“不要和孩子同床睡。”但在所有人类历史上，每个社会的孩子都和父母同床睡。你觉得他们还能睡在哪里？那时候可没有多个房间的房子。

Yeah. Exactly. Or there's the modern proclamation. And so, because of that, they say, 'Well, don't co-sleep with your kids.' Well, the kids in every society through all of human history co-slept with their parents. Where else do you think they were sleeping? They weren't houses in multiple rooms.

是的，没错。放在另一个帐篷里。这完全是胡说八道。同床睡从古至今一直存在。母乳耗尽或无法获得时喂孩子牛奶或羊奶也是如此。然而我们被告知，用大豆和玉米糖浆制成的配方奶，最近才发明出来，却比牛奶更好。牛奶对孩子危险，同床睡对孩子危险，而“哭睡法”才是正确答案。所有这些都毫无意义。

Yeah. Exactly. Put in the other tent. It's just nonsense. Co-sleeping has been around since the dawn of time. So has feeding kids cow milk or goat milk when breast milk runs out or is not available. Yet we're told formula, made with soy and corn syrup, which was invented recently, is somehow better than cow milk. And cow milk can be dangerous for your kids and co-sleeping is dangerous for your kids and cry it out is the right answer. All of that is nonsense.

我的意思是，很明显，我们在整个人类历史上养育孩子都没有这些干预。对我来说，让孩子哭到睡着的想法，我理解这样做是出于实际原因，这样你就能睡会儿觉，早上能去上班，但现实是，当你让孩子哭到睡着时，你是在让孩子一直哭到最终放弃。我的意思是，如果孩子在野外独自哭到睡着，它会被吃掉，对吧？会被老虎吃掉。所以这个孩子从一开始就建立在错误的基础上。

I mean, it's very clear that we raise children throughout human history without these interventions. And to me, the idea that you're going to let your kid cry it out, I get why that's done for practical reasons so that you can get some sleep and you can go to work in the morning, but the reality is when you let the kid cry it out, you're letting the kid bawl until it finally gives up. I mean, the kid left by itself to cry it out in the wild, it's going to get eaten, right? It's going to get eaten by a tiger. So this kid is starting off on the wrong foundation.

我之前提到的那个观点，认为婴儿感觉不到疼痛。这很荒谬，对吧？我以前从未听说过。这真是个疯狂的想法。

The one I mentioned earlier about the idea that babies don't feel pain. That's ludicrous, right? I've never heard that before. That's such a wild idea.

是的，我不是说那百分之百是真的。我在……孩子脸颊上很用力地读到过。那是个学院。我在推特上读到它，并做了一级确认，但它太荒谬了，我可能在谈论它之前应该做两三级确认。但确实有一些人相信它，以至于在一段时间内，在某些圈子里它是个事。

Yeah, I'm not saying that's 100% true. I read it on the child in the cheek quite hard. And that's an academy. I read it on Twitter and I did one level confirmation on it, but it's so ludicrous that I should probably do two or three level confirmations on it before I talk about it. But there are definitely some people who believe that enough that it was a thing in certain circles for a while.

但我认为我们只是经历了这些 IYI 信念，这些知识分子信念来自那些掌握一点知识就过度外推的人。他们认为由于最近的科学研究，我们知道得比实际多，而这些是垃圾科学。这些是在非常特定背景下进行的低效研究，然后被过度应用。行为心理学在这方面罪责很大，但很多科学领域都是如此。所以即使对科学，你也必须保持怀疑。你必须非常仔细地看：它是否适用于正确的背景？它来自好的来源吗？他们是否进行了足够多的高效研究并被广泛接受？

But I think we just go through these IYI beliefs, these intellectual beliefs come from people who take a little bit of knowledge and extrapolate it too far. They think we know more than we know due to recent scientific studies and these are junk science. These are low power studies on very certain contexts that then get over applied. Behavioral psych is very guilty of this but it's true across a lot of science. So even with science, you have to be skeptical. You have to look very carefully at, does it apply in the right context or not? Is it from good sources? Did they run enough high-powered studies widely accepted?

还有一大堆事情你根本不应该谈论。你不应该说任何关于疫苗的负面言论，因为万一他们不打小儿麻痹症疫苗怎么办，对吧？这也是最近疫苗辩论的部分原因，因为我们把对疫苗的崇拜推得太远了，因为我们不希望人们不打非必要的疫苗。所以它被过度了。

And there are a whole bunch of things you're just not supposed to talk about. You're not supposed to say anything negative about vaccines because god forbid what if they don't get the polio vaccine, right? And that's part of the reason why the recent vaccine debate because we've taken our worship for vaccines too far because we don't want people to not take non-essential vaccines. So it gets overdone.

同样，还有整个 SIDS（婴儿猝死综合征）的事情，对吧？比如不，孩子不会突然神秘地死亡。更可能是存在忽视或问题，然后照顾者不想承认问题或没有认识到问题，但孩子不会无缘无故死在婴儿床里，对吧？所以他们谈论包裹婴儿。你把婴儿包裹起来，基本上绑起来，像木乃伊一样。所以你限制他们，导致他们翻身时无法翻回来而死于 SIDS。我的意思是，所有这些围绕筹款的疯狂。这真是一个雷区。

So the same way there's this whole SIDS thing, sudden infant death syndrome, right? It's like no, kids don't suddenly mysteriously die. More likely there was neglect or there was a problem and then whoever was the caretaker doesn't want to admit to the problem or didn't recognize the problem, but kids don't just spontaneously die in the crib, right? So they talk about swaddling babies. You swaddle babies, basically tie them up, mummify them. So you constrict them so they die of SIDS where they roll over and they can't get back. I mean, it's just all this craziness around fundraising. It's a real minefield.

这是一个雷区。你有这些第一次生孩子的害怕的父母，他们打开一本书，开始阅读如何养育孩子，而我认为你对孩子该做什么的自然本能实际上相当不错。

It's a minefield. And you have these scared parents having a kid for the first time and they open a book and they start reading how to raise children when I would argue that your natural instincts on what to do with your child are actually pretty good.

有趣的是，当我和妻子有了第一个孩子时。我记得，在医院，抱歉，第一个是自然分娩，在分娩中心。我们回家了。我心想：“好了，就这样。”然后我们想，我们该怎么办？说明书在哪里？你把孩子带回家，然后放松下来，你意识到实际上本能相当不错。你知道，如果孩子哭，检查他们是否干净，喂他们，等等。你的基本本能实际上非常好。孩子的本能也非常好。他们知道自己想要什么，他们想要东西是有原因的，他们可以鼓励你给他们。

It's funny when my wife and I had our first baby. I remember, at the hospital, sorry, the first one was natural birth at the birthing center. We went home. I was like, 'There you go. That's it.' And we're like, what do we do? Where's the instruction manual? You take them home and then you relax and you realize actually instincts are pretty good. You know, if the kid cries, check to see if they're clean, feed them, all that. It's like your basic instincts are actually very very good. And kids' instincts are actually very very good. They know what they want and they want things for a reason and they can encourage you to give it to them.

是的。通常孩子不是无法推理的有缺陷的成年人。在某种程度上这是真的，但大部分不是真的。大多数情况下，他们想要什么有很好的理由，而你作为父母，主要和他们有沟通问题。他们还无法与你沟通。你也无法与他们沟通。所以早期和我的孩子在一起时，我试图专注于教他们基本的解释性理论，而不是让他们死记硬背。那是最“诺尔”的解决方案。

Yes. It's usually children are not deficient adults who can't reason. And to some extent that's true but mostly it's not true. Mostly they have very good reasons for what they want and you as a parent mostly have communication problems with them. They can't yet communicate to you. You can't communicate to them. So early on with my kids, I tried to focus on teaching them basic explanatory theories as opposed to having them memorize things. That's just the most nol solution.

我给你一个非常简单的例子，好吗？好的。这是推特上的“如何不靠运气致富”帖子。第一个，一个简单的例子是，你知道知识是如何创造的吗？如果你遵循批判理性主义大卫·多伊奇的哲学，那么就是通过猜测，然后测试你的猜测。

I'll give you a very simple example, right? Okay. So this is Twitter and this is the how to get rich without getting lucky thread. So the first one well a simple one is you know how does knowledge get created? If you follow the critical rationalism David Deutsch philosophy, then it's by guessing and then by testing your guesses.

所以每当他们问我类似的问题，比如'你为什么这么认为？'或者'我们怎么才能知道这是真的？'对吧？这就是一个你可以和他们玩的基本游戏。但另一个点是，你教给孩子的很多规则都和卫生有关，比如你必须刷牙、咳嗽时捂住嘴、收拾好自己的东西、别碰那个、做完这个要洗手、别捡地上的食物吃。但这些都可以归结到疾病细菌理论。所以如果你在 YouTube 上给他们看细菌的视频，或者让他们用显微镜看任何东西，他们就会说'啊，他们能推断出发生了什么。没错，到处都是脏东西，我得小心它们。'然后你就可以跟他们讲，如果你看看人类，我们真正的敌人是病原体。我认为很多衰老和疾病实际上都源于我们与病原体长期竞争的结果，这一点人们至今仍未完全认识到。

So whenever they ask me something like, well, why do you think that is? Well, how would we figure out if that's true? Right? So that's a basic game you can play involving them. But another one is that a lot of the rules that you teach kids have to do with hygiene, right? You must brush your teeth, cover your mouth when you cough, clean up after yourself, don't touch that, wash your hands after you do this, don't eat food off the floor. But all of these are subsumed under the germ theory of disease. So if you instead go on YouTube and show them videos of germs or have them look under a microscope at anything, they're like, 'Ah, they can infer what's going on. Yeah, there's creepy crawlies everywhere and I got to watch out for them.' And then you can talk about how if you look at humans, our real enemy are pathogens. I think a lot of aging and disease are actually downstream of our competition with pathogens over time, to a point that people still don't fully appreciate.

有一个红皇后假说，认为我们通过有性生殖来混合基因。所以每 20 年，每一代，基因都会混合。但如果你看看细菌和病毒如何通过随机突变来变异，它们的基因混合率和进化率大致和我们相同。尽管它们在 20 年内经历了成千上万代，因为它们不进行有性生殖，而是无性复制和突变，但它们的进化速度大致和我们相当。所以我们处于一场红皇后竞赛中，双方以大致相同的速度奔跑，但策略截然不同。但我们很多方面都与病原体有关。比如我们的免疫系统是身体运行成本最高的系统之一，很多都关乎免疫系统优化。这都与病原体有关。细菌中的垃圾 DNA 和 CRISPR 的发现，是因为细菌的 DNA 进化来对抗病毒，其方式是在每次病毒攻击时，将病毒 DNA 剪下来并储存在自己的 DNA 中，这样它们就有了副本，下次攻击时就能识别。物种的种群结构很大程度上决定了它们的寿命。所以如果某个物种的感染率很高，那么年长的成员就会携带疾病，进而感染年轻的成员。因此，该物种需要更快地淘汰年老者。所以一个种群中疾病率越高，整个种群的寿命就越短，这样年老者就不会感染年轻者。这是一个假说，我认为它是正确的。这是一个有趣的假说。

There's a Red Queen hypothesis which is that we undergo sexual selection to mix up our genes. So every 20 years, every generation, mix up your genes. But if you look at how bacteria and viruses mutate through just random mutations, their mix-up rate on their genes and evolution rate is roughly the same as ours. Even though they go through thousands of generations in those 20 years because they're not doing sexual selection, they're doing asexual replication and mutation, their evolutionary rate is roughly equivalent to ours. So we're in a Red Queen race where we're both running at roughly the same speed using very different strategies. But a lot of how we're involved is around pathogens. Like our immune system is one of the most expensive things to run in the body; so much is about immune system optimization. That's about pathogens. Junk DNA in bacteria and CRISPR was discovered because in bacteria their DNA evolved to fight viruses, and the way it does that is by taking viral DNA and snipping it up every time there's a viral attack and storing it in their own DNA so they have a copy so they can recognize it next time it attacks. A lot of the population structure of species determines how long their lifespans are. So if in a given species there's a very high rate of infection, then you'll have these older members of the population carrying diseases that will then infect the young. So it's important for that species to get rid of the old faster. So the higher the disease rate in a given population, the less long-lived the entire population, so the older ones don't infect the younger ones. That's a hypothesis and I think it's true. It's an interesting hypothesis.

人体内的稳态，我们总是回到某个设定水平，这是我们构成的基本部分：体温、pH 值、血压等等都在稳态下。但如果你进行任何形式的信号传递，比如你服用一种肽，那是一种信号分子。你从外部摄入一种激素，身体会抵消它。你摄入睾酮，身体会很快下调自身产量。而且身体以脉冲形式释放自己的激素，而不是稳态。这是为什么？那是因为细菌和病毒可以感染你的身体并欺骗它。它们可以接管。比如弓形虫就是这样，狂犬病也是这样。它们接管宏观结构、结构体。而微小的细菌和病毒会入侵我们的身体，如果没有防御机制，它们真的会接管我们。而防御机制之一就是稳态。每当看到什么东西偏离正常，你就会立即强烈地反击，因为你会想：我是不是被感染了？是不是有什么东西想接管我？这也是为什么激素在夜间以脉冲形式释放，而不是以稳定的低水平释放，因为敌人细菌可以释放毒素或相同的信号分子，但量很小，而且它们无法脉冲。它们无法协调产生脉冲。所以你的身体作为一个宏观物体可以协调产生脉冲，但微观物体无法协调产生同样的脉冲。

Homeostasis within the human body, how we're always returning to a given level of things, like that's a fundamental part of our makeup: our temperature, pH, blood pressure, and so on under homeostasis. But if you engage in any kind of signaling, like you take a peptide for example, that's a signaling molecule. You take a hormone externally, the body will counteract it. You take testosterone, the body will downregulate its own production very fast. And the body releases its own hormones in pulses rather than steady state. Why is that? Well, that's because bacteria and viruses can infect your body and trick your body. They can take it over. Like toxoplasmosis does this, rabies does this. They take over macroscopic structure, structural bodies. And small bacteria and viruses would hack our bodies and literally take them over if we didn't have defense mechanisms. And one of those defense mechanisms is homeostasis. Anytime you see something getting out of whack, you immediately push back really hard on it because like, did I just get infected? Is something trying to take me over? It's also why hormones get released in pulses at night rather than in steady state low levels because enemy bacteria can release toxins or the same signaling molecules in small quantities but they can't pulse. They can't coordinate to pulse. So your body can coordinate to pulse as a macroscopic object but microscopic objects can't coordinate to create the same pulses.

哦，这很酷。是的。所以这一切都意味着你知道它来自你自身。这就是原因吗？

Oh that's cool. Yeah. So there's all I mean so you know that it's coming from you. Is that why?

没错。这是内源性的，而不是外源性的。我以前不知道这一点。这就是为什么我们抵抗很多外源性治疗。很多医疗手段都不起作用。总之，这些是……我还可以继续说很多，但我认为，你在癌症中看到很多细菌出现，比如 EB 病毒出现在很多癌症中，而且现在肠道微生物组似乎影响很多方面。基本上，细菌和病毒与我们相比处于食物链顶端。就像我们是众所周知的食物链顶端，但细菌和病毒吃我们。真菌吃我们。所以这些微观捕食者是我们天然的捕食者。因此，很多衰老、社会结构、卫生、宗教对猪肉的禁忌、割礼等等，所有这些都是为了抵抗细菌和病毒。所以如果你能在孩子很小的时候就教给他们这种哲学，你就绕过了所有争论。

Correct. It's endogenous rather than exogenous. So I never knew that. And that's why we resist a lot of exogenous treatments. A lot of our medical treatments don't work. Anyway, so these are... there's a bunch more I could go on, but I think that a lot of you know, you see this in cancers where a lot of bacteria show up, like the Epstein-Barr virus shows up in a lot of cancers, and now it seems like the gut microbiome influences so many things. Basically bacteria and viruses are at the top of the food chain compared to us. Like we are top of the well-known food chain, but bacteria and viruses eat us. Fungus eats us. So these microscopic predators are our natural predators. And so a lot of aging, societal structure, hygiene, religious strictures against pork, circumcision, all of these things are designed to resist bacteria and viruses. So if you can teach children this philosophy at an early age, you shortcut all the debates.

你在向孩子传授这种哲学方面有多有效？

How effective have you been at teaching that philosophy to children?

那个，我觉得我挺有效的。我在家里反复强调过。我还没怎么涉及的是进化论。比如我开始讲一点，比如我们是从猴子进化来的。那意味着什么？已经让他们思考一些更深层次的问题了。我问过我的小儿子，比如'无'能存在吗？我觉得那是个有趣的问题。所以我喜欢抛出有趣的问题。

That one, I think I've been pretty effective. I've drilled that one at home. The one I haven't quite gotten around to yet is evolution. Like I'm starting to do little bits of that, you know, like we came from monkeys. What does that mean? Already got them thinking about some of the deeper questions. I did ask my young son like, you know, can nothing exist? I thought that was a fun question. So, I like to throw a fun question.

他现在多大了？四岁、三岁？不，不，他八岁了。哦，对。一个八岁，一个六岁。

How old is he now? Like four, three. No, no, he's he's eight. Oh, right. An 8-year-old and a six-year-old.

所以我问他们两个：'无'能存在吗？他们回答得相当不错，对吧？还有一次我们玩的是：'什么是矩阵？'好吧。你知道，这是什么？这一切是什么？我只是觉得这很有趣。和孩子们讨论这些问题很有意思。我并不是说这是一种好的育儿方式。这不会带来更深层次的学习，除了可能让他们开始或继续质疑现实的基本结构，而不是那么快就跳过它。还有，要享受乐趣。你知道这背后的元教训是什么吗？爸爸花时间问那些不一定有答案的问题，因为学习过程和试图解读正在发生的事情本身就有乐趣。而且，爸爸不太刻意去教别人东西。我不想变成说教。

So, I asked them both like, 'Can nothing exist?' And they had pretty good answers, right? Another one we played with the other day was like, 'What is the matrix?' Okay. You know, what is this? What is all this? I just find it entertaining. It's just fun to talk about these questions with your kids. I'm not saying that one is a good way of child raising. It's not leading to any deeper learning other than maybe just have them start or continue to question the basic structure of reality and not move past it so quickly. Also to take joy. You know what's the meta lesson that's being taught there? Dad spends time asking questions to which there are not necessarily an answer because there is something enjoyable in the process of learning and trying to decipher what's happening possibly. Also, dad tries not too hard to teach people things. I don't want to be didactic.

他帮助他们自己找到答案。是的，没错。爸爸在这里是帮你解决问题的，你有问题，而且你总是有问题。所以如果你来找爸爸，爸爸可以解释他会怎么解决。但大多数时候他们并不想要那样，大多数时候他们只是希望我直接解决问题，对吧？所以有时候他们得装傻。比如‘为什么我的电脑连不上 Wi-Fi？’我就说‘我不知道。你点那个东西了吗？’你看，你有一个叛逆的、自主的孩子。他们可能很自主，但有时还是需要爸爸介入。所以除了感受到爱和拥有高自尊之外，我认为最不应该剥夺他们的特质就是能动性。我希望他们保留自己的能动性。他们天生就有主动性和意志力，但很多育儿方式通过驯化他们，把这给打掉了。没错。我宁愿要野生动物和狼，也不要训练有素的狗，因为我不会一直在他们身边照顾他们。所以他们必须能够照顾自己。完全正确。是的。我一个朋友，Parsa，在 Air Chat 上，他说了句很棒的话：他希望他的孩子‘学得快，死不了’。我觉得这说得很好。

He helps them to arrive at it. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Dad is here to help you solve problems when you have problems and you constantly have problems. So if you come to dad, dad can help explain to you how he would solve the problem. But most of the time they don't want that. Most of the time they just want me to solve the problem, right? So sometimes they have to play it dumb. It's like why is my Wi-Fi not working on my computer? I'm like I don't know. Did you click on that thing? Look, you've got like a rebellious sovereign child. Sovereign as they may be, but sometimes they still need the dad to step in. So in addition to feeling loved and having high self-esteem, I think the most important trait that would be nice to not rob them of is agency. I want them to preserve their agency. They're born naturally agentic and willful, but a lot of child raising can beat that out of them by essentially domesticating them. That's right. And I would rather have wild animals and wolves than have well-trained dogs because I'm not going to be around to take care of them. Yeah. So, they're going to have to be able to look after themselves. Exactly. Yeah. A friend of mine, Parsa on Air Chat, he had a great saying. He said he wants his children to be quick to learn and hard to kill. I thought that was pretty good.

我记得你之前说过，关于未来和文化之类的东西。我记得你说左派已经赢得了文化战争，现在他们只是在四处扫射幸存者，对吧？经过过去六个月的变化和我们目前的处境，你认为文化战争的未来会是什么样子？

I remember you saying just thinking about sort of future and culture and stuff like that. I remember you saying that the left had won the culture war and now they're just driving around shooting the survivors, right? After the last 6 months of change that we've seen and sort of where we're at at the moment, what do you think the future of the culture war looks like?

还没结束。他们确实赢了前几轮，接管了机构。我认为现在更像是一场公平的战斗。有像埃隆这样的人在支持，所以历史上总有这些不同的力量，对吧？历史学家会争论这个。有一种‘历史伟人’理论，就是说有爱因斯坦、特斯拉、成吉思汗、凯撒这些人，他们决定了历史的走向。另一种观点则认为，是人口、地理等巨大力量在起作用，具体的伟人并不重要，他们来来去去，拿破仑不重要，换成别人也一样，具体名字不重要。由于过去几十年我们机构的左转，他们现在只信奉‘巨大力量’的历史理论，而不是‘伟人’理论。但我认为现在我们看到两者都在上演，特朗普、埃隆和其他个人正在崛起，说‘不，我们抵抗’。

It's not over yet. They definitely won earlier rounds. They took over institutions. I think now it's much more of a fair fight. Where you have people like Elon, you know, kind of supporting so there are these different forces through history, right? Historians will argue about this. But there's a theory of the great man of history thing where it's like oh you have the Einsteins, you have the Teslas, you have the Genghis Khans and the Caesars, right? They determine the flow of history. And then there's the other point of view that no there are these massive forces at play you know demographics and geography and so on and then the particular great man doesn't matter they just come and go Napoleon doesn't matter they would have been somebody else the specific names are not important. And because of the leftist turn that our institutions took in the last few decades they now only subscribe to the great forces theory of history not the great man theory of history. But I think now we're seeing the two play out where you're seeing Trump and Elon and other individuals rising up and saying no, we resist.

是的，这很有趣。

Yeah, that's interesting.

我认为不幸的是，这种集体主义、巨大力量与个人之间的斗争，和人类本身一样古老。这是物种的根本。我们不是一个完全个人主义的物种。你知道，没有人是一座孤岛。一个人无法独自完成任何事情。但我们也不是博格人，不是蜂巢，不是蚁群，不是所有工蚁都在行进。那么到底是哪种？我们处于中间。人类总是在这两者之间摇摆。我们喜欢强大的领导者，喜欢被领导，喜欢协调力量、聚集起来做事。但同时，我们也是独立的个体，愿意脱离，愿意做自己的事，每个人都想成为领导者，总在进行地位游戏。所以，钟摆总是在来回摆动。在现代经济中，这表现为马克思主义和资本主义之间的斗争，对吧？马克思主义是‘各尽所能，按需分配’。我们都是平等的。这是一个千年计划，最终人人平等。不要试图脱颖而出，要做对大家都有利的事。这还有宗教的一面。而资本主义个人主义则是自由意志主义：人人为己。每个人都做自己想做的事，最终会带来更大的利益。这是亚当·斯密。市场的无形之手会养活你。面包师烤面包，屠夫切肉，蜡烛匠做蜡烛，一切都会好起来。每个人都尽力而为，然后进行交易。那么哪种理论是正确的？我认为这两者之间总会有一场战斗。有趣的是，现在有一种现代风味改变了它。现代风味是，个人变得更强大，因为他们获得了更多的杠杆。像埃隆·马斯克这样的人，可以拥有数万名优秀工程师和生产者的杠杆为他工作。他可以有机器人工厂制造产品，有数千亿美元的资本支持，通过媒体向数亿人展示自己。这比历史上任何个人都拥有更多的权力。所以历史伟人变得更伟大了。但话说回来，同样的杠杆也扩大了富人和穷人之间的差距。在财富游戏中，总体上赢家更多，平均值在上升。但在地位游戏中，输家更多。有更多隐形的男男女女，他们从生活中得不到任何东西，也没有杠杆。相对而言。客观地说，他们可能过得更好。他们还有手机和电视，但我们不是绝对主义者。我们是相对主义者。没错。因此，作为相对主义者，输家多于赢家。在民主制度中，这些人会超过赢家，他们会投票把赢家拉下来。这就是正在进行的斗争，而民主已经变得非常广泛。所以我还有一个俏皮话：不是投票权赋予你权力，而是权力赋予你投票权。我们混淆了这两者。事情是这样的：投票最初是权力拥有者分配权力、避免内斗的方式。革命的赢家、战争的赢家、上议院和下议院的人，他们自己分配权力。说：‘嘿，我们拥有所有金钱和权力。我们是骑士，有剑，有战士。我们可以杀死所有人，但我们不想整天互相争斗。我们不必永远上演《权力的游戏》。’

And I think that unfortunately the battle between these collectivists and great forces versus individuals, it's as old as humanity itself. And it is fundamental to the species. We are not a completely individualistic species. You know, no man is an island. A single person can't do anything by themselves. But we're also not a Borg. We're not a beehive. We're not an ant colony. We're not all just drones marching along. So, which is it? We're somewhere in the middle. And the human race is always kind of bouncing between the two. We like strong leaders. We like to be led. We like to coordinate our forces and mass and do things. But at the same time, we're also all individuals and willing to break away and willing to do our own thing and everyone's always fighting to be a leader and there's always status games going on. So, there's a pendulum that's always swinging back and forth. And in modern economics, the way that manifests is between Marxism and capitalism, right? Marxism is like from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. We're all equal. There's a millennial project. We're all going to be equal in the end. And don't try and stand out, but do what's good for everybody. And there's a religious aspect to it. And then the capitalist individualist is like libertarian. Every man for himself. You just each do what you want and it'll work out for the greater good. That's Adam Smith. You know, the invisible hand of the market will feed you. The baker should bake and the butcher should butcher and the candlestick maker should make candlesticks and it'll all work out. Each person does their best and they trade. So which theory is correct? And I think there's always going to be a battle between the two. And I think the interesting thing is what's going on there's a modern flavor to it which changes it. The modern flavor is that the individual is getting more powerful because they're becoming more leverage. So someone like an Elon Musk can have the leverage of tens of thousands of brilliant engineers and producers working for him. He can have factories of robots manufacturing things. He can have hundreds of billions of dollars of capital behind him and he can project himself through media to hundreds of millions of people. That is more power than any individual could have had historically. So the great men of history are becoming greater. That said, that same leverage is increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots. So in the wealth game, more people are winning overall and the average is going up. But in the status game, there are essentially more losers. There are more invisible men and women who are getting nothing out of life and have no leverage. Relatively speaking. Objectively speaking, they might be better off. They still have phones and they still have TVs and they're not absolutist creatures though. We're relative creatures. Correct. And so to the extent that we're relative creatures, there are more losers than winners. And in a democracy, those people will outnumber the winners and they will vote the winners down. And so that's the battle that kind of goes on and the democracy has gotten very broad. And so one of my other quips is that it's not the right to vote that gives you power, it's power that gives you the right to vote. So we've confused the two. So what happened was, voting started as a way for people who had power to divide up the power, not fight amongst themselves. The winners of the revolution, the winners of the war, the people in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, they divide up power amongst themselves. to say, 'Hey, we have all the money. We have the power. We are the knights. We have the swords. We have the warriors. We could kill everybody, but we don't want to just fight each other all day long. We don't have to be Game of Thrones forever.'

所以，我们打算通过投票来分配权力。但随着社会越来越和平，投票权逐渐扩大，扩展到那些没有土地、没有权力、可能无法施加暴力的人。最终，每个人都拥有了投票权。每个人都投票支持糖果、仙女，以及生活中所有免费的东西。然后，人们开始投票压迫彼此。任何领域中的 51%都会投票压迫 49%，这就是多数人的暴政。但并非所有人都愿意用武力来支撑这一点。于是，你可能会陷入这样一种局面：没有武力的人利用国家机构来控制有武力的人。举个简单的例子，在美国，没有枪的人投票解除有枪的人的武装。但如果持枪者协调一致并足够在意，你就做不到这一点。所以我认为，这些社会结构最终是不稳定的，它们会崩溃，因为最终掌握权力的人会说：‘不，等等，你没有投票权。你之所以有投票权，是因为你曾经拥有权力，而现在你没有权力了，你却还想投票。’整个自然界、整个社会、整个资本主义、所有人类努力，都建立在暴力之上。这是一个很难接受、也很难摆脱的残酷事实。自然界是血淋淋的。如果你不战斗，你就无法生存。你不活，就会死。今天所有活着的生物都是如此，人类也不例外。所以，放弃武力，然后以为可以行使政治权力，这是行不通的。这就是为什么每一次共产主义革命——尽管口号是平等、团结、兄弟姐妹——最终都被一群暴徒掌控。因为如果你没有办法根据功绩来分配财富，那么分配就总是基于权力和影响力。持枪的暴徒最终总是赢家。所以问题只是：在一个基于功绩分配的成功社会中，你能让持枪的暴徒得到报酬并感到满意吗？如果不能，那就只能基于权力来分配。所以我认为这场战斗还没有结束，但因为它从未停止过。它从第一天起就存在，并将继续下去。

So, we're going to divide up power by voting among ourselves. But then, as society goes on and becomes more and more peaceful, that franchise for voting gets spread. It gets spread to people who don't have land, who don't have power, who may not be able to inflict physical violence. And then eventually, you get to the point where everybody's voting. And everybody was voting for candy and fairies and all the free things in life. And then eventually people start voting to oppress each other. The 51% in any domain vote to oppress the 49%, the tyranny of the majority. But not all of them are willing to back that up with physical power. And so you can end up in a situation where people who don't have physical power are using the institutions of the state to control the people who do have physical power. As a simple example, taking the United States, the people who don't have guns voting to disarm the people that do have guns. Well, if the people who do have guns get coordinated and care enough, you can't do that. So I think eventually these societal structures are unstable; they break down because eventually the people who have the power say, 'No, wait a minute, you don't get to vote. You only got to vote because you had power, and now you don't have power, and you're somehow trying to vote.' All of nature, all of society, all of capitalism, all of human endeavors are underpinned by physical violence. And that is a very hard truth to swallow and hard to get away from. Nature is red in tooth and claw. If you don't fight, you don't survive. You don't live, you die. And that's true of everything alive today. And humans are no different. So giving up physical power and then thinking you can exercise political power fails. Which is why every communist revolution, which is all about equality and kumbaya and brothers and sisters, ends up being run by a bunch of thugs. Because if you don't have a way to divide up the wealth based on merit, then it's always going to be based on power and influence. The thugs with the guns always win in the end. So the question is just: can you keep the thugs with the guns paid and happy in a successful society where you're allocating based on merit? Because if you can't, then you do it based on power. So I do think that this battle is not over, but that's because it never stopped. It's always been there from day one. It will continue.

在新闻饱和的时代，不去关心新闻是一场战斗吗？所有这些内容，24 小时的头条新闻，通过你口袋里的设备直接涌入你的意识。我们今天谈到的很多内容都是关于自由——免于思考或关心那些你无法控制、不应该或不想关心的事情的自由。然而，人们却像被淹没到鼻孔底部，基本上在担忧中溺水。那么，怎么做？当新闻铺天盖地时，置身事外是一场战斗吗？

Is it a battle to not care about the news in an age of news saturation? All of this stuff, headlines 24 hours a day, streamed directly into your consciousness through a device in your pocket. A lot of what we've spoken about today is freedom. Freedom from having to think about things or care about things that you do not have control over or that you shouldn't or that you don't want to. And yet people are just submerged up to the bottom of their nostrils, basically drowning in worry. So how? Is it a battle to sort of stay out of the news when you're saturated in it?

是的。我是说，正如你所说，人类大脑并没有进化到能实时处理世界上所有的紧急事件，你不可能关心所有事情，如果你尝试，你会发疯。这并不意味着你完全不应该关心。没有‘应该’这回事。我是说，如果你想关心，那就去关心。我只是想说，你最好只关心那些本地的事情，或者你能影响的事情。所以，如果你真的关心新闻中的某件事，那就尽管去关心，但要有所作为。去做点什么。并且确保这是你压倒性的愿望，而不是同时有五个其他愿望。同时，也要意识到后果。在那件事解决之前，你会一直不开心，而那件事往往是你无法控制的。欲望是一份让你在得到想要的东西之前一直不开心的契约。但确切地说，大多数情况下，那是你生活中的事情，比如‘直到我减肥成功’，‘直到我得到那份工作’。外部的事情也一样。如果是‘直到二氧化碳浓度低于某个数值’，那很难。或者所有患有‘特朗普精神错乱综合征’的人，对吧？他免费住在他们脑子里，把他们逼疯。我理解。我是说，有些政客也确实让我抓狂过。但这代价很高，而且是你无法控制、无法真正影响的事情。所以，至少意识到这一点可能是好的。

Yeah. I mean, as you're saying, the human brain has not evolved to handle all the world's emergencies breaking in real time, and you can't care about everything, and you'll go insane if you try. It doesn't mean you shouldn't care at all. There's no 'should.' I mean, if you want to care, go ahead and care. I would just say that you're probably better off only caring about things that are local or things that you can affect. So, if you really care about something that's in the news, then by all means care about it, but make a difference. Go do something about it. And make sure that it's your overwhelming desire and you don't have five other desires at the same time. Also, just realize the consequences of it. You're going to be unhappy until that thing gets fixed, and that thing will often be out of your control. Desire is a contract to be unhappy until you get what you want. But exactly, for the most part, that's something that is in your life. It's like 'until I lose the weight,' 'until I get the job.' Outside too. Yeah. If it's 'until the carbon dioxide parts per million are below this particular number,' that's a tough one. Or all the people with Trump derangement syndrome, right? He's living rent-free in their heads and driving them insane. And I get it. I mean, there are politicians who have definitely driven me insane as well. But it comes at a very high cost and is something that is out of your control that you cannot really influence. So it's probably good to at least be conscious of it.

你之前提到过历史学家。我有个朋友有一个问题，相当于彼得·蒂尔的那个问题：‘你相信什么大多数人不同意的事情？’他的问题是：‘你认为目前被媒体忽视，但会被历史学家研究的是什么？’你现在是在问我这个问题。我认为什么被媒体忽视，但会被历史学家研究？

You mentioned historians before. One of my friends has a question, his equivalent of Peter Thiel's question of 'What is it that you believe that most people would disagree with?' His is 'What do you think is currently ignored by the media but will be studied by historians?' You're asking me that question right now. What do I think is ignored by the media but will be studied by historians?

嗯，我的意思是媒体只关注非常时效性的事情，对吧？所以这取决于你想谈时效性还是永恒性。但举个简单的例子，如果我看看未来五到十年内可能产生巨大影响、但人们关注不够的事情。我认为两年内这些就会变得显而易见。所以，我做一个预测，预测很难，几年后我得自食其言。是的，几年后我得自食其言。所以我可能错了，但我关注的两件事，我认为很多人并不关注。嗯，有几件。一是现代医学有多糟糕。我认为人们对现代医学的信任超过了它应得的。比如，我们对很多疾病最好的想法就是手术，直接切除，对吧？把多余的东西处理掉，比如‘哦，你不需要胆囊，你不需要阑尾，你不需要扁桃体。’哦，那是错的。每一个多余的器官都有其用途。人体非常非常高效。所有这些器官都是必需的。所以我认为现代医学的状况仍然很糟糕。我们在生物学中没有很多好的解释性理论。我们有疾病细菌理论，我们有进化论，我们有细胞理论，我们有 DNA 遗传学，形态发生，胚胎发生，除此之外没有多少了。其他一切都是经验法则、死记硬背。A 影响 B 是因为 A 影响 C 影响 D，但我们不理解背后的解释。一切都只是词语指向词语指向词语。所以生物学仍然处于非常可怜的状态，而且因为我们不允许冒可能致人死亡的风险，我们在生物学中实验不够。所以很多治疗方法直接被大型监管机构禁止。所以我们根本没有创新。

Well, I mean the media is only focused on very timely things, right? So it depends if you want to talk about timely or timeless. But as a simple example, if I just look at things that maybe in the next five or ten years are going to make a massive difference that people are not focused enough on. And I think within two years this will be obvious. So, like, I make a prediction, and predictions are tough, and I have to eat it in a few years. Yeah, I'm going to have to eat this in a few years. So I'm probably wrong, but two things that I pay attention to that I don't think a lot of people do pay attention to. Well, there's a couple. One is I think just how bad modern medicine is. I think people just put a lot more faith in modern medicine than is warranted. Like our best ideas for a lot of things are surgery, just cutting things out, right? Treating things that are extraneous like, 'Oh, you don't really need a gallbladder, you don't really need an appendix, or you don't really need tonsils.' Oh, that's false. Every surplus requirement. The human body is very, very efficient. All those things are needed. So I think the state of modern medicine is still pretty bad. We don't have many good explanatory theories in biology. We have germ theory of disease, we have evolution, we have cell theory, we have DNA genetics, morphogenesis, embryogenesis, and not much else. Everything else is rules of thumb, memorization. A affects B because A affects C affects D, but we don't understand the underlying explanation. It's all just words pointing to words pointing to words. So biology is still in a very sorry state, and because we are not allowed to take risks that might kill people, we just don't experiment enough in biology. So a lot of treatments are just outright banned by large regulatory bodies. So we just don't have the innovation.

所以我认为在生物学方面，我们仍然处于石器时代，还有很长的路要走。我认为人们会对此感到震惊。我认为这就是布莱恩·约翰逊的观点。他说，让我们更极端一点。让我们尝试永生。我们必须更加实验性。我将从自己开始，开始在自己身上做实验。但即使在那里，我在很多事情上也不同意布莱恩，比如服用大量补充剂。我认为我们不了解补充剂在自然背景之外的作用，比如直接吃肝脏就好。但这没关系。我也不会成为素食主义者，但我很欣赏他在做实验。他性格很好，分享一切。所以我们需要更多像他这样的人。所以我认为人们回顾生物学现状时会说，哇，那真是黑暗时代。

So I think we're still in the stone age when it comes to biology and we got a long ways to go. And I think people will look back aghast at this. And I think this is Brian Johnson's point. He's like, you know, let's be more extreme. Let's try to live forever. We must be more experimental. And I'll start as an end of one and start experimenting on myself. But even there, I disagree with Brian in many things like, you know, taking huge amounts of supplements. I think we just don't know supplements outside of their natural context like just eat liver, man. But that's fine. And I wouldn't be vegan either, but I really appreciate that he's experimenting. He's good-natured about it, he shares everything. So we need more people like that. So I think the state of biology people will look back and say wow that was in the dark ages.

我认为另一件我们会回顾的事情是，我们仍然继续低估无人机在战争中的重要性。所有战争的未来都是无人机。战场上将没有其他东西。因为我认为无人机的最终形态是自主子弹。甚至不是制导自主，而是自我导向。所以如果那是我们走向的未来，而且确实如此，为什么还要有武装力量？将没有航空母舰，没有坦克，没有步兵，只有自主子弹。用你的自主子弹对抗对方的自主子弹。哪一方赢了，另一方就投降，因为结束了。

I think another thing that we'll look back on is I think we still continue to underestimate how important drones are going to be in warfare. The future of all warfare is drones. There will be nothing else on the battlefield. Because I think of the end state of drones as autonomous bullets. Not even guided autonomous like they're self-directed. So if that's the future we're headed towards, and it is, why would you have an armed force? There's going to be no aircraft carriers, there's going to be no tanks, there's going to be no infantry men, there's just going to be autonomous bullets. Buy autonomous bullets against your autonomous bullets. Whichever ones win, the other side just surrenders because it's over.

我认为第三件会有些出乎意料的事情是 GLP-1 类药物，我知道我们之前私下讨论过。我认为这些是自抗生素以来最具突破性的药物。它们可能比他汀类药物更重要。它们有点像奇迹药物。有缺点，但与除了减肥之外的好处相比，缺点和副作用非常小。它们似乎还能打破成瘾。它们似乎能降低多种癌症的风险。它们几乎能在一定程度上逆转代谢衰老。我认为它们将改变医疗成本的曲线。未来 5 年人们会问的一个大问题是，为什么美国人每月要为此支付数千美元，而海外的人可以免费获得，或者我可以从中国免费订购等等。如果我是伯尼·桑德斯，我的竞选纲领会是，好吧，我们向诺和诺德和礼来支付数千亿美元，然后让这些药物免费，或者有数百种有效的类似物。这些药物不会仅限于今天使用的几种。只要拿其中一两种，让它们免费，我认为就会产生巨大影响。

I think a third piece that is going to be kind of unexpected is the GLP-1s, which I know you and I have privately discussed before. I think these are the most breakthrough drugs since antibiotics. They're probably more important than statins. They're sort of miracle drugs. There are downsides, but the downsides and side effects are so minor compared to the upsides beyond just weight loss. They also seem to be addiction breakers. They seem to lower many kinds of cancer. They almost metabolically reverse aging up to a certain point. And I think they're going to bend the curve on health care costs. And the big question people are going to be asking over the next 5 years is why are Americans paying thousands of dollars a month for this when people overseas are getting them for free or I can order them from China for free or whatever. Maybe if I were Bernie Sanders the platform I would be running on is I would say okay we're going to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to Novo and Eli Lilly and we're just going to make these free or there are hundreds of analogs of these things that work. These are not going to be limited to just the few that are being used today. Just take one of them or two of them, make them free, and I think it'll make a big difference.

正如我们之前讨论的，这确实让很多通过传统方式达到目标的人感到不爽，他们想将肥胖视为人们的道德缺陷，而如果突然信号不再那么明显，他们的地位就会降低。没错。完全正确。

And as you and I were discussing earlier, this does bend a lot of people out of shape who got there the old-fashioned way, and they want to see obesity as a moral failing on people's parts and it lowers their status if they are suddenly signal is less of a signal. Correct. Absolutely.

是的。所以他们有动机说，‘哦，好吧，你不知道副作用。’暗示它会导致癌症是不负责任的。祝你失去骨骼和肌肉质量愉快。但这些都不是真的。关于癌症的部分实际上是有益的。我认识一些人现在为了抗衰老而服用这些药物。他们已经健康了，但他们只是想更好地衰老，拥有更强的胰岛素代谢。现在有证据表明这些药物能延缓痴呆、阿尔茨海默病、结肠癌。这太疯狂了。心血管疾病，好处清单太疯狂了。没有免费的午餐。但这是一类能阻止你将其他药物摄入体内的药物。它阻止你在富足时代摄入过多的糖和卡路里，阻止你吸烟，甚至阻止你……有一个叫 Casper 的组织现在正在研究海洛因成瘾，他们表明这可以降低阿片类药物过量和海洛因成瘾。所以有大量压倒性的医学证据出现，我认为大约 10%的人口可能已经尝试过这些药物。

Yeah. So they are incentivized to say, 'Oh, well, you don't know the downsides.' It's irresponsible to suggest it's going to cause cancer. Have fun losing bone and muscle mass. But none of that stuff is really true. The cancer stuff is actually beneficial. I know people who are now taking these things for anti-aging reasons. They're already fit, but they just want to age better and have a stronger insulin metabolism. And there's evidence now these things put off dementia, Alzheimer's, colon cancer. It's insane. Cardiovascular disease, the list of benefits is insane. There's no free lunch. But this is a class of drugs that prevents you from taking other drugs into your body. It prevents you from taking too much sugar, too many calories in an era of abundance, prevents you from smoking, prevents you from even... there's an organization called Casper that is now doing a study on heroin addictions and they're showing that this can lower opioid overdoses and heroin addiction. So there's a lot of overwhelming medical evidence coming out and I think something like 10% of the population might have tried these things.

我认为这也是我看到的数字。非常庞大。我认为大约 50%的人口表示他们想尝试。

I think that's the number I've seen as well. It's massive. I think it's about 50% of the population say that they would like to try it.

没错。所以我认为身体自爱运动已经死了，我们一直都知道这是个骗局。我是说它正在非常非常快地消亡。

Exactly. So I think the body positivity movement is dead and we always kind of knew it was a scam. I mean it's dying very very quickly.

就像你永远不会太富有、太瘦或太干净，对吧？然后立刻有一大堆人反应激烈，比如你说太瘦是什么意思？卫生假说呢？显然总有例外，但人们想要苗条健康，人们想要干净，回到我们之前讨论的病原体话题。

Equipped like you can never be too rich, too thin or too clean, right? And immediately a whole bunch of people went nonlinear my mention like what do you mean too thin and what about the hygiene hypothesis and obviously there's always exceptions but people want to be thin and fit and people want to be clean back to the pathogen discussion that we had.

所以我认为总体而言，对这些药物的需求会很大，而我们现代的医疗体系并不适合供应这些药物。我不怪制药公司。我认为制药公司完成了他们的工作，创造了这个东西，但我认为接下来我们需要站出来，想办法让它广泛且廉价地可用，而不是仅仅榨取那些肥胖患者（通过医保批准）或自掏腰包支付极高价格的人。

So I think overall that there's going to be huge demand for these things and our modern medical system is not built to supply these. Well, I don't hold it against the pharmas. I think the farmers did their job by creating the thing, but I think next we need to step up and figure out how to make it broadly and cheaply available as opposed to just milk it for only people on obesity who can get Medicare to sign off for it or people paying out of pocket at very very high prices.

更安全的 GLP-1 类药物在社会层面推广的好处如此之大，以至于任何解决这个问题的政治家都会得到丰厚的回报。

The benefits of societal distribution of the safer GLP-1s is so large that whichever politician tackles that is going to be richly rewarded.

嗯，肥胖是全球营养不良的头号原因。肥胖人数是饥饿人数的两倍。大约有 5 亿人挨饿，10 亿人肥胖。很多问题都源于此。比如看看联邦预算中有多少用于肾衰竭透析。为什么？因为糖尿病，对吧？所以现代社会的很多问题都源于肥胖。而健康非常重要。是的，在某些人身上，这些药物会导致肌肉和骨骼流失，但那些摄入高蛋白并努力锻炼的人不会。所以它们可以以更安全的方式服用。其中一些版本，比如原始的利拉鲁肽，已经存在了几十年，其他的也大约存在了十年。所以正如你所说，已经有 10%的人口在服用它们。所以它们已经相当广泛地分布了。很好的样本量。

Well, obesity is the number one source of malnutrition worldwide. There's twice as many people that are obese than are starving. So about half a billion people are starving and a billion are obese. So many problems are downstream of that. Like look at how much of the federal budget goes into dialysis because of kidney failure. And why is that? It's because of diabetes, right? So many of the problems that we have in modern society are downstream of obesity. And fitness is so important. And yes, in some people these things cause muscle and bone loss, but not in the people who are eating high protein and working out hard. So they can be taken in a way that's safer. And some versions of these like literal glutai, the original one, they've been around for decades, and the others have been around for about a decade. So we already have, as you said, 10% of the population taking them. So they're already quite widely distributed. A good sample size.

是的，样本量很大。

Yeah, it's a great sample size.

你还需要什么？比如你得了细菌感染，我不会说：‘哦，我有抗生素，但它会升高你的血压。’而是说：‘不，吃抗生素。’如果你要自杀，我会说：‘吃这种抗精神病药，多活一会儿，解决问题。’我不会说：‘哦，它会让你的心率每分钟增加三下。’我不担心那个。同样，如果你用毒素和过度使用不该用的物质毒害自己，比如海洛因、酒精、香烟、糖，或者纯粹的热量，那就吃 GLP1。它们还能改善消化。你胃里经过的食物就少了。它们全面降低癌症风险。有好几种癌症风险降低。心血管，我是说，我不知道还能告诉你什么。每次谈到 GLP1 时，负面反应都让我很惊讶。我认为很多可能是那些基本上在说‘你应该更努力，你应该像我一样健康’的人。这降低了他们的地位。想想所有那些营养师、医生和教练，他们在某种程度上正在被淘汰。这有点像为什么美国军方在无人机时代还继续购买航空母舰？存在激励偏差。有非常强烈的动机推理。但这没关系。10%的人在用。每个人都想健康。它会像野火一样蔓延。

What more do you need? Like if you have a bacterial infection that's eating you, I don't say, 'Oh, I have this antibiotic, but it's going to raise your blood pressure.' It's like, 'No, take the antibiotic.' If you're going to kill yourself, I say, 'Take this antipsychotic and stay alive a little longer and solve it.' I don't say, 'Oh, it's going to cause your heart rate to go up by three beats a minute.' I don't worry about that. So similarly, if you're poisoning yourself with toxins and overuse of substances that you shouldn't be using, either heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, or just sheer calories, take this GLP1. They also improve digestion. You just have less food matter going through your stomach. They lower cancer risks across the board. There are quite a few cancers that lower. Cardiovascular, I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. I've been very surprised by the negative reception whenever you have a conversation about GLP1s. I think a lot of it may be people who are basically saying, 'You should work harder, you should be fit like I did.' It's lowering their status. Think about all the nutritionists and doctors and trainers who are now being put out of business in a way. It's kind of like why does the American military keep buying aircraft carriers in the age of drones? There's an incentive bias. There's a very strong motivated reasoning. But it doesn't matter. 10% of people are on it. Everybody wants to be fit. It's going to spread like wildfire.

你说话时我就在想，当我们谈到健康时，很多人被他们的成长方式、童年习惯、父母的做法或遗传倾向所束缚。我认为你和很多人一样，有理由因为早年的挑战而感到委屈。摆脱过去是一种技能吗？有点像今天不被你的历史所左右。有点像没有那种受害者心态。

I was just thinking as you were talking that when we think about health, a lot of people get captured by the way they were brought up, the habits they had from childhood, or what mom and dad did, or genetic predisposition. I think you have as many reasons as many people to feel hard done by challenges you had earlier in your life. Is getting past your past a skill? Sort of not being owned today by your history. Sort of not having that victimhood mentality.

是的，我确实有一个艰难的童年，但我不去想它。这里面有几件事。一是我的确处理了很多。我想过它，但我想它是为了摆脱它。我不是为了沉溺或放纵而想它。我想要成功。我最想要的就是超越它。所以我不能让它成为我的负担。所以我必须摆脱它。就我处理它的程度而言，完全是为了摆脱它，而不是为了创造身份或故事，或者反思它，或者说看看我，看看我取得了什么成就，看看我有多伟大。所以我摆脱了它。我认为在某个时刻，你会与那件事搏斗，然后你意识到你永远无法解开整个事情。这是一个戈尔迪之结问题。就像亚历山大在印度发现的那个缠结的结，他们说著名的征服者会来解开这个没人能解开的结。他看了一眼，拔出剑，直接砍断了它。所以在某个时刻，你只需要切断你的过去。如果你的过去困扰你，你最终会厌倦试图解开那个结，你会直接放弃它，因为你会意识到生命短暂，你越想在这一生中完成更多，你解开那件事的时间就越少。所以我只想真正把事情做完。所以我没有时间去处理它。所以我直接切断了它。就像一段非常糟糕的关系。但在这里，是你与自己历史的糟糕关系。所以你就放弃它。

Yeah, I did have a tough childhood, but I don't think about it. There are a couple of things going on there. One is I did process it quite a bit. I thought about it, but I thought about it to get rid of it. I didn't think about it to dwell on it or to indulge. I wanted to be successful. I wanted more than anything else to rise past that. So I couldn't have that as a burden on me. So I had to get rid of it. To the extent that I dealt with it, it was for the express purpose of getting rid of it, not to create an identity or story or to reflect upon it or to say look at me, look at what I've accomplished and look how great I am. So I got rid of it. I think at some point you wrestle with that thing and then you just realize you're never going to untangle the whole thing. It's a Gordian knot problem. Like Alexander found that tangled knot in India and they said the famous conqueror will come and will untie this knot nobody else can untie. He took one look at it, pulled out a sword, and just cut it. So at some point you just have to cut your past. If your past is bothering you, you will eventually get tired of trying to untangle that knot and you will just drop it because you will realize life is short and the more you want to accomplish in this life, the less time you have to unravel that thing. So I just wanted to actually get things done. So I had no time to deal with it. So I just cut it. It's like a really bad relationship. But in this case, it's a bad relationship with your own history. So you just drop it.

我认为我们今天谈到的很多内容都是关于生命的短暂，以及每一刻都很珍贵。你不得不谈到，你生命中最基本的资源不是时间，而是注意力。

I think so much of what we've spoken about today is on the shortness of life and the fact that every moment is precious. You had to talk about that the most fundamental resource in your life is not time, it's attention.

没错。我以前认为生命的货币，人们认为是钱。是的，钱很重要，它确实让你用某些东西换取时间，但它并不能真正买到时间。问问沃伦·巴菲特钱能买多少时间，或者迈克尔·布隆伯格。他们像斯克鲁奇一样富有，但他们买不到更多时间。布莱恩·约翰逊除外。所以你不能用钱换时间。钱不是生命的真正货币。时间本身甚至没那么重要，因为正如我们之前谈到的，很多时间可以被浪费，因为你并没有真正活在当下。你没有在注意。所以生命的真正货币是注意力。是你选择关注什么以及你对此做什么。所以回到关于新闻媒体的话题，你可以把注意力放在新闻上，但那就是你在花费生命的真正货币。所以只要意识到这一点。如果你想这样，那没问题。这里没有对错。也许你的命运就是挑选新闻中的某件事，了解那个问题，采纳那个问题，并解决它。但要小心，因为你的注意力是你唯一拥有的东西，它也可能被你的过去所捕获。

That's right. I used to think the currency of life, people think it's money. Yes, money is important and it does let you trade certain things for time, but it doesn't really buy you time. Ask Warren Buffett how much time money can buy you or Michael Bloomberg. They're rich as Scrooge, but they can't buy more time. Brian Johnson notwithstanding. So you can't trade money for time. Money is not the real currency of life. And time itself doesn't even mean that much because as we talked about before, a lot of time can be wasted because you're not really present for it. You're not paying attention. So the real currency of life is attention. It's what you choose to pay attention to and what you do about it. So back to the point about the news media, you can put your attention on the news, but that's how you're spending the real currency of life. So just be aware of that. If you want to, that's fine. There's no right or wrong here. Maybe it is your destiny to pick something in the news, learn about that problem, adopt that problem, and solve it. But just be careful because your attention is the only thing that you have and that can also be captured by your own past.

是的。你可以把它浪费在任何你喜欢的事情上。从失败者开始有优势吗？

Yes. You can fritter it away on anything you like. Is there an advantage to starting out as a loser?

绝对有。因为如果你是个失败者，你就会想成为赢家，然后你会培养所有帮助你在生活中成为所谓赢家的特质。不过，我不会让我的孩子也这样。我不认为你能人为地做到这一点。这有点像想象你 300 年前生为农奴，然后不知怎么逃出了农场，成了地主，最终成了小贵族和贵族。你会把你的孩子放回农场，说你再做一次农奴吗？我知道他们都喜欢那些故事。孩子们自己也喜欢那些故事，因为它说我是从艰苦学校出来的。我爸爸让我去铲了一个夏天的干草。这不是真的。你骗不了他们。我认为你能做的是培养对你所拥有的东西的欣赏和感激。而唯一的方法就是你自己以身作则。展示你自己如何花钱，如何尊重它，用它做什么，如何照顾人，你对谁负责。你拥有的资源越多，你能照顾的部落就越大。所以当你没有资源时，你连照顾自己都很挣扎。

Absolutely. Because if you're a loser, then you'll want to be a winner and then you'll develop all the characteristics that will help you be a winner in life. That said, I wouldn't sentence my kids to it. I don't think you can artificially do that. It's sort of like imagine that you were born a serf 300 years ago and then somehow you managed to escape off the farm and you become a land owner and then eventually you become minor nobility and aristocrat. Are you going to put your kids back on the farm and say you're going to be a serf again? I know they all like those stories. The kids themselves like those stories because it says I came from the school of hard knocks. My dad made me go shovel hay for a summer. It's not real. You're not going to trick them. I think what you can do is cultivate an appreciation and gratitude for what you have. And the only way to do that is just evidence it yourself. Just show yourself how you spend money, how you respect it, what you do with it, how you take care of people, who you're responsible for. And the more resources you have, the greater the tribe you can take care of. So when you have no resources, you're struggling to take care of yourself.

在那个时候，自私一点是好的，因为如果你连自己都救不了，你就救不了别人。是的。所以你要照顾好自己，成为最好的自己。但是有太多有能力、健康、有点钱的男人，他们什么都不做，只是坐在家里无所事事，沉溺于自我。也许他们出去约会，点个外卖。我对此毫无敬意。我认为社会上最糟糕的就是懒惰的男人，因为他把一切都浪费了，他把自己的潜力浪费了。这对他不好。所以接下来你要做的是组建家庭，照顾你的家人。照顾好那个部落。然后照顾你的大家庭。照顾你的堂表亲、兄弟、叔叔、祖母、阿姨、姐妹，所有你能照顾的人。然后如果你有更多的资源，你就去照顾你当地的部落。照顾你的人民。你开始尝试为世界做些好事。如果你有更多的资源，你就去照顾一个更大的部落。这就是你赢得尊重和自信的方式，也是你发挥潜力的方式。

And at that point, it's good to be selfish because you can't save somebody else if you can't even save yourself. Yes. So you take care of yourself and you become the best version of yourself. But there are too many men who are able, fit, and have some money who are doing nothing with their lives. They're just sitting at home doing nothing, just indulging in themselves. Maybe they go on dates and they get DoorDash. Like I have no respect for that. I think there's nothing worse in society than a lazy man because he's leaving it all on the table. He's leaving his potential on the table. It's bad for him. So the next thing you do is you go and you have a family and you take care of your family. Take care of that tribe. Then you take care of your extended family. You take care of your cousins, brothers, uncles, grandmothers, aunts, you know, sisters, everybody that you can. And then if you have more resources beyond that, then you go take care of your local tribe. You take care of your people. You start trying to do some good for the world. And if you have more resource than that, you go take care of an even bigger tribe. And that's how you earn both respect and self-confidence and you live up to your potential.

所以你拥有的越多，人们对你的期望就越高。我认为这是一个很好的社会契约：当有能力的人通过给予更多、做得更多来表达和施展他们的能力时，社会会用他们无法通过其他方式获得的东西来奖励他们，那就是地位。对吧？所以社会应该用地位来交换。他们应该说，‘好吧，你做得很好。你照顾了更多的人，不仅仅是自己和身边的人。’这就是我对阿尔法男性的定义。阿尔法男性不是那个先吃饭的人。阿尔法男性最后吃。阿尔法男性先喂饱所有人，然后自己最后吃。他们这样做是出于自尊和骄傲。社会通过称他们为阿尔法并给予他们地位来奖励他们。

So the more you have, the more is rightfully expected of you. And I think it's a good compact with society when highly capable people express and flex that capability by giving more and more and by doing more and more. And society rewards them with the one thing they can't get otherwise which is status. Right? So society should give you status in exchange for it. They should say, 'Okay, you did a good job. You took care of more people than just yourself and just the people immediately around you.' And that's what an alpha male to me is. An alpha male is not the one who gets to eat first. The alpha male eats last. The alpha male feeds everybody else first and then gets to eat last. And they do that out of their own self-respect and pride. And society rewards them by calling them an alpha and giving them status.

我想知道，我们对富人、有钱人、有权势的人的一些抵制是否在起反作用。比如是谁？扎克伯格捐钱给扎克伯格综合医院，他们却想把他的名字从上面去掉。我是说……我没看到，但这种事情适得其反，对吧？你应该奖励人们做正确的事……你之前说过，你不需要……实际上，如果你想改变他们的行为，当他们做错事时，要主动避免谴责他们。当他们做对时，要加以强化。这在社会层面也在发生。

I wonder whether some of the pushback we've got against rich, wealthy, powerful people is disincentivizing. It is like who was it? Zuck who donated money at Zuckerberg General's hospital and they wanted to pull his name off of it. I mean that's... I didn't see that but that's that kind of stuff backfires, right? You should reward people for doing what... were you saying before you don't just need to... in fact actually actively avoid castigating people if you want their behavior to change when they get something wrong. Look at reinforcing it when they get something right. It's happening at a societal level as well.

没错。我的意思是，那些赚了很多钱然后去买体育队的人，我不会那样做，对吧？但是那些去建医院或者造火箭把人送上月球，或者营救宇航员的人，你应该奖励他。

Correct. I mean, like the guys who make a lot of money and go out and buy sports teams, I wouldn't do that, right? But the one who goes out and builds a hospital or builds a rocket to take people to the moon, or rescue some astronauts, you should be rewarding him for that.

Naval，我真的很感激你。我希望这没有辜负你那些奇怪的白日梦。你接下来有什么计划？在接下来的时间里，人们可以期待你什么？

Naval, I really appreciate you. I hope that this has lived up to whatever weird daydreams you've been having. What have you got coming up? What can people expect from you over the next however long?

什么都别期待。这是最 Naval 的方式，伙计。

Expect nothing. That's the most Naval way that we could have finished this, dude.

这一天等了很久，我真的很感谢你今天能来。但我确实希望你有所产出。

It's been a long time coming and I really do appreciate you for being here today. But I do hope you deliver something.

哦，我觉得你已经有了。所以，谢谢你。谢谢邀请我。

Oh, I think you have. So, thank you. Thanks for having me.

也谢谢你。谢谢你进入我的脑海。希望现在你出来了。我们拭目以待。也许更糟，现在你有真实的记忆了。我不知道。赢得游戏的理由是为了摆脱它。做播客的理由是为了完成它。好了。哇。你坚持到了最后。恭喜。如果你喜欢这个，你会喜欢我和来自人生学校的独一无二的 Alander Boton 的完整对话。点这里。

Thank you, too. Thanks for getting in my mind. And hopefully now you're out. We'll see. Maybe even worse now you've got the real memories to stick. I don't know. The reason to win the game is to be free of it. The reason to do the podcast is to be done with it. All right. Wow. You made it to the end. Congratulations. Well, if you enjoyed that, you're going to love my full-length conversation with the one and only Alander Boton from the School of Life right here. Go on.