纳瓦尔谈通过实践学习和情境化原则

欢迎回到 Naval 播客。我从 Naval 过去一年的推特中挑了一些推文，我们一条条来看。这是我第一个问题。你说你从 Eric Jorgenson 那里拿到了 Elon 传记的早期版本。里面有什么让你惊讶的吗？我大概只读了 20%。写得非常好，完全是 Elon 自己的话。我觉得最震撼的是那种独立、主动和紧迫感贯穿全书。读这些你不会学到一套步骤化的流程。你无法复制他的流程。那是为他设计的，为 SpaceX 设计的，为特斯拉设计的。它是情境化的。但看到他不让任何事阻挡他，他如何狂热地质疑一切，如何强调速度、迭代和务实的执行，这非常鼓舞人心。这让你想立刻行动起来，在自己的公司做同样的事。对我来说，这就是好书的作用。如果我听一场乔布斯的演讲，它会让我想变得更好。如果我读 Elon 如何执行，它会让我想执行得更好。然后我会找到自己的路。细节不一定能照搬。但更重要的是，我觉得正是这种灵感驱动着你。

Welcome back to the Naval podcast. I've pulled out some tweets from Naval's Twitter from the last year and we're just going to go through them. Here's actually my first question. You told me that you got an early copy of the Elon book from Eric Jorgenson. Anything surprising in there? I'm only about 20% of the way through. It's really good. It's just Elon in his own words. And I think what's striking is just the sense of independence, agency, and urgency that just runs throughout the whole thing. I don't think you necessarily learn a step-by-step process by reading these things. You can't emulate his process. It's designed for him. It's designed for SpaceX. It's designed for Tesla. It's contextual. But it's very inspiring just to see how he doesn't let anything stand in his way. How maniacal he is about questioning everything. And how he just emphasizes speed and iteration and no-nonsense execution. And so that just makes you want to get up and run and do the same thing with your company. And to me, that's what the good books do. If I listen to a Steve Jobs speech, it makes me want to be better. If I read Elon on how he executes, it makes me want to execute better. And then I'll figure out my own way. The details don't necessarily map. But more importantly, I think just the inspiration is what drives.

是的，这很有意思，因为我觉得人们视你为灵感来源，显然是的，但你也提出了人们实际遵循的原则。我把我的原则保持在高层次且不完整，部分是因为这样听起来更好、更容易记住，但也因为这样更适用。我遇到的关于“如何致富”内容的一个问题是，人们在推特上用 140 或 280 个字符问我非常具体的问题，而我根本没有足够的背景来回答。这些事情需要上下文。这就是为什么我喜欢 Air Chat、Clubhouse，以及我以前做 Periscope 时的语音形式。当人们问我一个问题时，我可以反问他们一个问题，他们再问我，我们可以深入挖掘，试图找到他们真正想问的核心。然后我可以说，根据我掌握的信息，如果我在你的处境，我会做以下事情。但大多数情况都是高度情境化的，所以很难照搬别人的细节。适用的是原则。这就是为什么我把我的内容保持在高层次。事实上，我认为作者 Eric Jorgenson 做得很好，他把那些可引用的片段提炼出来，变成独立的句子。他从 Elon 的作品中提取推文。但我不确定。我只是做我的风格。Elon 做他的，他以自己的方式激励人。也许我以自己的方式激励别人。我被他激励，也被其他人激励。灵感贯穿始终。但说到执行，你必须自己去做。生活是在竞技场中度过的。你只能通过做来学习。如果你不去做，那么你学到的一切都太笼统、太抽象。那就真的成了空洞的格言。你不知道什么在何时何地适用。很多这类一般原则和建议不是数学。有时你用“富有”这个词指一件事，有时又指另一件事。同样，“财富”、“爱”或“幸福”也是如此。这些都是过载的术语。所以这不是数学。没有精确的定义。你无法从中形成一个像计算机一样遵循的剧本。相反，你必须理解在什么情境下应用它们。所以正确的学习方式是真正去做事。然后当你做的时候，你会弄清楚应该如何做。然后你可以去看我发的推文，或者你在 Deutsch 或 Schopenhauer 中读到的，或者你在网上看到的，然后说：“哦，原来那家伙是这个意思。他说的是一条一般原则。”我知道在类似的情况下应用它，不是机械地、不是 100% 的时间，而是作为一个有用的启发式方法，当我遇到这种情况时。同样，你从推理开始，然后建立你的判断。当你的判断足够精细时，它就变成了品味、直觉或本能。你就靠这个运作。但你必须从具体开始。如果你从一般开始并停留在一般层面，只读原则、格言和年鉴之类的书，你就会像那个上过大学、过度教育但迷失的人。他们试图在错误的地方应用东西。这就是 Nassim Taleb 所说的“有知识的白痴”。

Yeah, that's pretty interesting because I think people look to you as inspirational, yes, obviously, but also laying out principles that people actually do follow. I keep my principles high level and incomplete partially because it just sounds better and it's easier to remember, but also just because it's more applicable. One of the problems I have with the 'how to get rich' content is people ask me highly specific questions on Twitter in 140 or 280 characters and I just don't have enough context to respond. These things require context. That's why I liked Air Chat. That's why I liked Clubhouse. That's why I like spoken format back when I used to do Periscopes. When people would ask me a question, then I could ask a follow-up question back to them and they could ask me another question and we could dig through and try to get to the meat of what they were asking. And then I could say, well, given the information that I have, if I were in your shoes, I would do the following thing. But most of these situations are highly contextual, so it's hard to copy details from other people. It's the principles that apply. And so that is why I keep my stuff very high level. And in fact, I think Eric Jorgenson, the author, has done a good job of trying to break out the little quotable bits and put them in their own standalone sentences. So he's pulling tweets out of Elon's work. But I don't know. I just do my style. Elon does his, he inspires in his own way. Maybe I inspire someone in my own way. I get inspired by him. I get inspired by others. Inspiration all the way down. But when it comes to execution, you got to do it yourself. Life is lived in the arena. You only learn by doing. And if you're not doing, then all the learning you're picking up is too general and too abstract. Then it truly is hallmark aphorisms. You don't know what applies where and when. And a lot of this kind of general principles and advice is not mathematics. Sometimes you're using the word 'rich' to mean one thing. Other times you use it to mean another thing. Same with the word 'wealth'. Same with the word 'love' or 'happiness'. These are overloaded terms. So this is not mathematics. These are not precise definitions. You can't form a playbook out of them that you can just follow like a computer. Instead, you have to understand what context to apply them in. So the right way to learn is to actually go do something. And then when you're doing it, you figure something out about how it should be done. Then you can go and look at something I tweeted or something you read in Deutsch or something you read in Schopenhauer or something you saw online and say, 'Oh, that's what that guy meant. That's a general principle he's talking about.' And I know to apply it in situations like this, not mechanically, not 100% of the time, but as a helpful heuristic for when I encounter this situation. Again, you start with reasoning and then you build up your judgment. And then when your judgment is sufficiently refined, it just becomes taste or intuition or gut feel. And that's what you operate on. But you have to start from the specific. If you start from the general and stay at the level of the general, just reading books of principles and aphorisms and almanacs and so on, you're going to be like that person that went to university, overeducated, but they're lost. They try to apply things in the wrong places. What Nassim Taleb calls the intellectual yet idiots.

我打算提的一条推文正是 6 月 3 日的那条：“获取知识很容易。难的是知道何时应用什么。这就是为什么所有真正的学习都是在工作中进行的。生活是在竞技场中度过的。”我喜欢那条推文。实际上，我只想发“生活是在竞技场中度过的”就完了。我想就停在那里，但我觉得需要多解释一点，因为“竞技场中的人”是一个著名的引用。所以我想从我的角度稍微展开一下。但这是我反复意识到的一点。我最近又创办了一家公司。这是一个非常困难的项目。事实上，公司名字就叫“不可能的公司”，叫 Impossible, Inc.。有趣的是，它让我陷入了一种学习的狂热，甚至不是出于消极的动机，而是我比很久以来都更受激励去学习。所以我发现自己更频繁地询问 Grok 和 ChatGPT。我读更多的书。我听更多的技术播客。我进行更多的头脑风暴。我只是在精神上更活跃。我甚至愿意在投资之外会见更多的公司，因为我从他们那里学习，而保持活跃让我自然地想学更多，而且不是以无趣或导致倦怠的方式。所以我认为做事会带来学习的欲望，进而带来学习，当然还有从做事本身中学习。而如果你纯粹为了学习而学习，过一会儿就会变得空虚。动机不一样。我们是生物力学生物。我走路时大脑运转得更快。你会认为为了节能应该更慢，但事实并非如此。一些最好的头脑风暴是在边走边谈时发生的，而不是坐着谈，这就是为什么我一度想破解行走播客这件事，因为我真的很喜欢边走边谈。我的大脑工作得更好。同样，我认为做事和学习是相辅相成的。所以如果你想学习，就去做。就像生活中大多数有趣而困难的事情一样，解决方案是间接的。

One of the tweets I was going to bring up is exactly that from June 3rd. 'Acquiring knowledge is easy. The hard part is knowing what to apply and when. That's why all true learning is on the job. Life is lived in the arena.' I like that tweet. Actually, I just wanted to tweet 'Life is lived in the arena' and that was it. I wanted to just drop it right there, but I felt like I had to explain just a little bit more because the man in the arena is a famous quote. So, I wanted to unpack a little bit from my direction. But this is a realization that I keep having over and over. I recently started another company. It's a very difficult project. In fact, the name of the company is the Impossible Company. It's called Impossible, Inc. What's interesting is that it's driven me into a frenzy of learning and not necessarily even motivated in a negative way, but I'm more inspired to learn than I have been in a long time. So, I find myself interrogating Grok and ChatGPT a lot more. I find myself reading more books. I find myself listening to more technical podcasts. I find myself brainstorming a lot more. I'm just more mentally active. I'm even willing to meet more companies aside from investing because I'm learning from them and just being active makes me want to naturally learn more and not in a way that it's unfun or causes me to burn out. So I think doing leads to the desire to learn and therefore to learning and of course there's the learning from the doing itself. Whereas I think if you're purely learning for learning's sake, it gets empty after a little while. The motivation isn't the same. We're biomechanical creatures. My brain works faster when I'm walking around. And you would think no energy conservation should work slower, but it's not the case. Some of the best brainstorming is when you're walking and talking, not just sitting and talking, which is why for a while I tried to hack the walking podcast thing because I really enjoy walking and talking. My brain works better. And so the same way I think doing and learning go hand in hand. And so if you want to learn, do. Like in most interesting difficult things in life, the solution is indirect.

那是‘如何致富’推文风暴的一部分：如果你想致富，不要直接奔着钱去。当然，你可以像银行家那样做。但如果你在创造价值，利用杠杆，承担责任，运用你的特定知识，那么赚钱会是副产品，你会创造出优秀的产品或把自己产品化，钱自然就来了。同样，如果你想快乐，就要缩小自我，投入心流活动，或者做那些让你忘掉自我的事情，快乐就会随之而来。顺便说一句，这在诱惑中也是如此。你不会走过去说‘我想和你上床’来诱惑一个女人，那不是这样运作的。地位也一样。公开追求地位反而显得地位低。追逐地位是低地位行为，因为它首先暴露了你处于地位等级的下层。并不是所有事情都必须间接追求。很多事情最好直接去做。如果我想开车，我就上车开。如果我想写东西，我就坐下来写。但那些本质上是竞争性的或者看似难以捉摸的事情，部分原因在于它们最好间接追求。

That was part of the how to get rich tweet storm, which is if you want to get rich, you don't directly just go for the money. I suppose you could like a bankster. But if you're building something of value and you're using leverage and you're taking accountability and you're applying your specific knowledge, you're going to make money as a byproduct and you're going to create great products or productize yourself and create money as a byproduct. The same way if you want to be happy, you minimize yourself and you engage in high flow activities or engage in activities that take you out of your own self and you end up with happiness. By the way, this is true in seduction as well. You don't seduce a woman by walking up and saying, 'I want to sleep with you.' That's not how it works. Same with status. The overt pursuit of status signals low status. It's a low status behavior to chase status because it reveals you as being lower in the status hierarchy in the first place. It's not the fact that everything has to be pursued indirectly. Many things are best pursued directly. If I want to drive a car, I get in, I drive the car. If I want to write something, then just sit down and write something. But the things that are either competitive in nature or they seem elusive to us. Part of the reason for that is that those are the remaining things that are best pursued indirectly.

从 4 月 2 日开始，当你真正为自己工作时，你将没有爱好，没有周末，没有假期，但也没有工作。这是为自己工作的悖论，每个企业家或自雇人士都熟悉：当你开始为自己工作时，你基本上牺牲了工作与生活的平衡，牺牲了工作与生活的区分。不再有朝九晚五，不再有办公室，没有人告诉你该做什么，没有剧本可循。同时，也没有东西可以关闭。你无法关闭它。你就是生意，你就是产品，你就是工作，你就是实体。如果你在做真正属于你自己的事情，你会非常在意，非常投入。所以你无法关闭它。这是企业家的诅咒。但企业家的好处是，如果你做得对，出于正确的理由，与正确的人以正确的方式做，并且你能放下未达成目标的压力——这压力是真实且难以放下的——那么它就不像工作。那时你最有生产力。你基本上只以产出衡量，只以自己设定的标准要求自己。所以它可以非常令人振奋和自由，这就是为什么我很久以前说过，尝到自由的滋味会让你变得不可雇佣。这正是那种自由的滋味。它让你在传统意义上变得不可雇佣——朝九晚五、遵循剧本、有老板。但一旦你突破了这一点，一旦你走过了没有安全网、没有老板、没有工作的钢丝绳——顺便说一句，这甚至可以在初创公司的小团队中发生，只要你非常自我驱动——你就会得到对普通人来说像是巨大负面的事情：没有周末、没有假期、没有休息时间、没有工作与生活的平衡。但同时，当你工作时，它感觉不像工作。它是你非常有动力去做的事情，这就是回报。总的来说，我认为这是一扇单向门。一旦人们体验过做自己关心的事情，和自己真正喜欢的人一起，以自我驱动的方式，他们就变得不可雇佣了。他们无法回到有经理、老板、打卡、朝九晚五、每周某天某时出现在某张桌子前、通勤的普通工作。

From April 2nd, when you truly work for yourself, you won't have hobbies. You won't have weekends and you won't have vacations, but you won't have work either. This is the paradox of working for yourself, which every entrepreneur or every self-employed person is familiar with, which is that when you start working for yourself, you basically sacrifice this work life balance thing. You sacrifice this work life distinction. There's no more 9 to 5, there's no more office, there's no one who's telling you what to do, there's no playbook to follow. At the same time, there's nothing to turn off. You can't turn it off. You are the business. You are the product. You are the work. You are the entity. And you care if you're doing something that's truly yours. You care very deeply. So you can't turn it off. And that's the curse of the entrepreneur. But the benefit of the entrepreneur is that if you're doing it right, if you're doing it for the right reasons with the right people in the right way, and if you can set aside the stress of not hitting your goals, which is real and hard to set aside, then it doesn't feel like work. And that's when you're most productive. You're basically only measured on your output and you're only held up to the bar that you raise for yourself. So it can be extremely exhilarating and freeing and this is why I said a long time ago that a taste of freedom can make you unemployable. And so this is exactly that taste of freedom. It makes you unemployable in the classic sense of 9 to 5 and following the playbook and having a boss. But once you have broken out of that, once you've walked the tight rope without a net, without a boss, without a job, and by the way, this can even happen in startups in a small team where you're just very self-motivated, you get what look like huge negatives to the average person that you don't have weekends, you don't have vacations, and you don't have time off, you don't have work life balance. But at the same time, when you are working, it doesn't feel like work. It's something that you're highly motivated to do, and that's the reward. And net net, I do think this is a one-way door. I think once people experience working on something that they care about with people that they really like in a way they're self motivated they're unemployable. They can't go back to a normal job with a manager and a boss and a check-ins and 9 to 5 and you know show up this day this week sit in this desk commute at this time.

我认为这条推文中还有一层隐藏的含义，我猜是故意的。它开头是‘当你真正为自己工作时’，我猜大多数人会理解为你是自己的老板。但我的另一种解读是，你是在为自己工作。所以你的劳动是你是谁、你是什么的表达。这是自我表达。而这不是一件容易弄清楚的事情。我最终认为，每个人都应该找出自己独特擅长的事情，这件事与他们的根本身份一致，带给他们真实性，带来特定知识，赋予他们竞争优势，使他们不可替代，然后他们应该全力投入。有时你只有做了才知道那是什么。所以这是活在竞技场中的生活。你不会知道自己的特定知识，直到你行动，直到你在各种困难情境中行动。然后你要么意识到，‘哦，我成功应对了这些别人会觉得困难的事情’，要么别人会指着你说，‘嘿，你的超能力似乎是 X。’

I think there's a hidden meaning in the tweet too which I'm guessing is intentional. It starts off with 'when you truly work for yourself', which I'm guessing most people are going to take that to mean you're your own boss. But the other way that I read it is that you are working for yourself. So your labor is an expression of who and what you are. It's self-expression. And that's not an easy thing to figure out. I ultimately think that everyone should be figuring out what it is that they uniquely do best that aligns with who they are fundamentally and that gives them authenticity that brings them specific knowledge that gives them competitive advantage that makes them irreplaceable and they should just lean into that and sometimes you don't know what that is until you do it. So this is life lived in the arena. You're not going to know your own specific knowledge until you act and until you act in a variety of difficult situations. And then you will either realize, oh, I managed to navigate through these things that other people would have had a hard time with, or someone else will point at you. They'll say, hey, your superpower seems to be X.

我有一个朋友，他创业过很多次。我注意到他可能不是最聪明或最懂技术的，而且他非常努力。这就是为什么我不想说他只是努力——他实际上超级努力。但我注意到的是他最有勇气。他根本不在乎障碍。没有什么能打倒他。他总是笑呵呵的，总是向前推进。这种人在 100 年前，你会说‘哦，他最有勇气，去冲那个机枪巢吧。’他会很适合。但在创业背景下，他是那种能不断用头撞销售墙，打几百个电话直到有人同意的人。他会打 400 个电话，得到 399 个拒绝，但他对一个‘是’就满足了。这就够了。然后他可以从那里开始迭代和学习。所以那是他的特定知识。这是知识，是一种能力，他知道自己对此没问题。另一边有他愿意去争取的结果，那是一种超能力。也许如果他能进一步发展它，或者与其他东西结合，甚至只是把它应用到需要的地方，这会使他有些不可替代。所以你通过行动、通过做来找到你的特定知识。当你为自己工作时，你也会自然倾向于选择那些与你是谁以及你的特定知识一致的方式做事。例如，看看营销，营销是一个开放问题。人们用不同方式解决营销。有些人会制作视频，有些人会写作或发推文，有些人会真的站在外面举着广告牌，有些人会交一大堆朋友，举办派对，通过口口相传传播。

I have a friend who has been an entrepreneur a bunch of times. And what I always notice about him is that he may not necessarily be the most clever or the most technical and he's very hardworking. That's why I don't want to say he's in the hardworking. He's actually super hardworking. But what I do notice is he's the most courageous. So he just does not care what's in the way. Nothing gets him down. He's always laughing or smiling. He's always moving through it. And this is the kind of guy that a 100 years ago you would have said, 'Oh, he's the most courageous. Go charge that machine gun nest.' He would have been good for that. But in an entrepreneurship context, he's the one who can keep beating his head against the sales wall and just calling hundreds of people until finally one person says yes. So he'll call 400 people and get 399 nos and he's fine with one yes. And that's enough. Then he can start iterating and learning from there. So that's his specific knowledge. It is knowledge. It's a capability that he knows that he's okay with it. There's an outcome on the other side that he's willing to go for and that's a superpower. Now maybe if he can develop that a little further or combine it with something else or maybe even just apply it where it's needed that makes him somewhat irreplaceable. And so you find your specific knowledge through action by doing. And when you are working for yourself, you will also naturally tend to pick things and do things in a way that aligns with who you are and what your specific knowledge is. For example, if you look at marketing, marketing is an open problem. People try to solve marketing in different ways. Some people will create videos. Some people will write or tweet. Some people will literally stand outside with a sandwich board. Some people will go make a whole bunch of friends and just throw parties and spread by word of mouth.

对于你的生意来说，可能其中一种方式远比其他方式好，但最重要的是选择一个与你喜欢做的事情相符的生意。比如，我有很多朋友来找我说，嘿，我们一起做个播客吧。我就问，你真的非常喜欢说话吗？因为如果你不喜欢，你就不会享受做播客的过程，也不会成为最优秀的播客主。他们只是想营销，于是开始做播客，录了两三期，最后就放弃了。他们放弃首先是因为他们不喜欢做播客。我不是说稍微喜欢一点，你必须非常喜欢。如果你想成为顶尖，你几乎要到了痴迷的程度。所以他们录了几期后，听众就会发现，这个人只是在问一堆问题，看起来并不真的享受，就像在播客里看表一样。而像乔·罗根这样的人，他完全沉浸其中，他非常喜欢和播客上的那些怪人聊天，即使没有听众他也会做。他在没有听众的时候就在做，当时他在 Ustream 上，只有他一个人，深夜在一个随机网站上直播。他能成为顶尖播客主绝非偶然。所以当你做营销时，你要利用你的特定知识和自身特点。如果你喜欢说话，那就试试播客。也许你喜欢更对话式的谈话，那就试试像 Twitter Spaces 这样的直播网络。也许你喜欢写作。如果你喜欢长文写作，就用 Substack。如果你喜欢短文写作，就用 X。如果你喜欢非常长的写作，那可能是一系列博客文章，最后变成一本书。如果你喜欢做视频，那也许可以用最新的 AI 模型制作视频并叠加内容。但你必须做对你来说非常自然的事情。诀窍的一部分是选择一个生意，其中你自然擅长的事情能很好地匹配，或者在这个生意中选择一个角色，或者选择一个联合创始人。这是一个匹配问题。好消息是，在现代世界，机会无限，人无限，平台无限，媒体形式无限，可供选择的东西无限。那么你如何找到自己真正擅长的事情呢？你要尝试一切。你要尝试一切，因为你会在竞技场上，努力解决问题。所以第一次做的时候，你可能会做很多你不喜欢的事情，可能做得不好，但最终你会缩小到真正喜欢的事情，然后希望找到那个匹配。我们过去讨论过如何成为你所在领域的世界最佳。不断重新定义你所做的事情，直到这个说法成立。Akira 为此写了一首歌，愿上帝保佑他。我认为这绝对正确。你想成为你所在领域的世界最佳，但不断重新定义你所做的事情，直到这个说法成立。而重新定义唯一能奏效的方式就是通过迭代的过程，通过行动。所以你需要那个胡萝卜，那面旗帜，那个终点奖励，来推动你前进。你需要迭代。迭代不等于重复。迭代不是机械的，不是一万小时，而是一万次迭代。不是花时间，而是学习循环。迭代的意思是，你做一件事，然后停下来，暂停，反思。看看它效果如何，是好是坏。然后你改变它，再尝试别的东西。然后暂停，反思，看看效果如何。然后改变，再尝试别的东西。这就是迭代的过程，也是学习的过程。所有学习系统都是这样运作的。所以进化就是迭代，有变异、复制和选择。你剔除那些不奏效的东西。在技术和发明中也是如此，你创新，创造新技术，然后尝试规模化，要么在市场中生存，要么被淘汰。正如大卫·多伊奇在寻找好的解释中所说，你提出一个猜想，这个猜想受到批评，然后不奏效的东西被剔除。这就是真正的科学方法。这一切都是关于找到对你来说自然的东西，并通过在竞技场中生活，以高能动性的迭代过程去实践，直到你弄明白。然后你就是世界最佳。而这一切就是做你自己。

Now it may be the case that for your business one of those is much better than others but the most important thing is picking a business that is congruent with whichever one you like to do. So for example I have a lot of friends approach me and say hey let's start a podcast together and I'm like do you genuinely enjoy talking a lot because if you don't you're not going to enjoy the process of podcasting. You're not going to be the best at it. They're just trying to market and so they start a podcast they do two or three episodes and then eventually they drop off. they drop off because firstly they don't enjoy podcasting. I don't mean like enjoy a little bit. You have to enjoy it a lot. If you're going to be the top at it, you have to be almost psychopathic at the level at which you enjoy the thing. And so they'll record a few episodes and then their readers or their listeners will pick up on actually this person just asking a bunch of questions and doesn't seem to really enjoy it and is doing the podcast equivalent of looking at their watch. Whereas someone like Joe Rogan, he's so immersed. He's so into talking to all these weird people that he has on his podcast that the guy would be doing it even if he had no audience. And he was doing it when he had no audience, when he was on Ustream with just him and live streaming late at night on one random website. It's no coincidence he's the top podcaster. So when you're marketing, you want to lean into your specific knowledge and into yourself. If you enjoy talking, then try podcasting. Maybe you enjoy talking in a more conversational tone, in which case you try a live network like a Twitter spaces. Maybe you enjoy writing. If you like long form writing, Substack. If you like short form writing, X. If you like really long form writing, then maybe a bunch of blog posts that turn into a book. If you enjoy making videos, then maybe you use one of the latest AI models and you make some video and you overlay onto it. But you have to do what is very natural to you. And part of the trick is picking a business where the thing that is natural to you lines up nicely or picking a role within that business or picking a co-founder in that business. It is a fit problem. It is a matching problem. The good news is in the modern world there are unlimited opportunities. There are unlimited people. There are unlimited venues. There are unlimited forms of media. There's just an unlimited set of things to choose from. So how are you going to find the thing that you're really good at? You're going to try everything. And you're going to try everything because you're going to do you're going to be in the arena. you're going to be trying to tackle and solve problems. So, the first time you do it, you might do a whole bunch of things you don't enjoy doing and you may not do them well, but eventually you'll hone down on the thing that you really like to do and then you'll hopefully find that fit. We talked about in the past how become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true. And Akira made a song out of it. Akira the dawn, God bless him. And I think that's absolutely true. You want to be the best in the world at what you do, but keep redefining what you do until that's true. And the only way that redefining is going to work is through the process of iteration, through doing. So you need that carrot, you need that flag, you need that reward at the end to pull you forward into doing. And you need to iterate. And iterate does not mean repetition. Iterate is not mechanical. It's not 10,000 hours. It's 10,000 iterations. It's not time spent. It's learning loops. And what iteration means is you do something and then you stop and you pause and you reflect. You see how well that worked or did not work. Then you change it. Then you try something else. Then you pause, reflect, see how well it did. Then you change it and you try something else. And that's the process of iteration. And that's the process of learning. And all learning systems work this way. So evolution is iteration where there's mutation, there's replication, and then there's selection. You cut out the stuff that didn't work. This is true in technology and invention where you will innovate, you create a new technology, and then you try to scale it and either survive in the marketplace or it'll get cut out. This is true as David Deutsch talks about in the search for good explanations. You make a conjecture, that conjecture is subject to criticism and then the stuff that doesn't work is weeded out. And this is the true scientific method. It is all about finding what is natural for yourself and doing it by living life in the arena high agency process of iteration until you figure it out. And then you're the best of the world at it. And it is just being yourself.

我们再聊一条推文，我第一次看到时就喜欢，或者可能转发了。我认为人们转发东西时，是因为他们看到了自己还没想好怎么说，但心里已经知道的东西，只是隐含的，没有被明确表达出来。我觉得那时人们就会想，我需要转发这个。所以这条是 1 月 17 日的：为一切责备自己，并保持你的能动性。从我的角度看，就是为一切承担责任，在承担责任的过程中，你创造并保留了解决那个问题的能动性。如果你对问题不负责任，你就没有办法解决它。

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

关于你提到的，有些东西你本来就知道，但以你喜欢的方式表达出来，爱默生经常这样做。他会用优美的语言表达，然后你会说：“哦，那正是我的想法和感受，但我不知道怎么表达出来。”他这样说：“在每一部天才作品中，我们都认出了自己曾被拒绝的思想。它们带着一种疏离的威严回到我们身边。”我特别喜欢这句话。

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

这就是我在 Twitter 上试图做的，我说一些真实的东西，但用有趣的方式。而且不仅仅是真实和有趣，它背后必须有情感分量。它必须最近触动过我，对我很重要。否则，我只是在装模作样。我不会坐在那里想写什么推文。更多的是，有些事情发生在我身上，情感上影响了我，然后我以某种方式综合它，测试它。我想，这是真的吗？如果我觉得它是真的，或者大部分是真的，或者在我关心的语境下是真的。如果我能用一种让我自己记住的方式说出来，那我就发出去。对于懂的人来说，这并不新鲜。如果不用有趣的方式说，那就是陈词滥调。或者如果他们听得太多，那也是陈词滥调。

This what I try to do with Twitter, which is I try to say something true, but in an interesting way. And not only just true and interesting way to say it, but also it has to be something that really has emotional heft behind it. It has to have struck me recently and been important to me. Otherwise, I'm just faking it. I don't sit around trying to think up tweets to write. It's more that something happens to me, something affects me emotionally, and then I synthesize it in a certain way, I test it. I'm like, is this true? And if I feel like it's true or mostly true or true in the context that I care about. And if I can say it in some way that'll help me stick in my mind, then I just send it out there. And it's nothing new for the people who get it. If it's not said in an interesting way, then it's a cliche. Or if they've heard it too much, it's a cliche.

但如果以有趣的方式说出来，可能会提醒他们一些重要的事情，或者转化他们的特定知识，或者成为将他们的特定知识转化为更普遍知识的钩子。所以我觉得这个过程对自己有用，也希望别人觉得有用。现在，针对那条具体的推文，我注意到一种倾向：人们非常愤世嫉俗，他们会说‘所有财富都是偷来的’，比如被银行家、裙带资本家、或者干脆就是强盗和寡头偷走的。‘你在这个世界上无法崛起，如果你曾是……’‘你无法崛起，如果你是个穷孩子。’‘你无法崛起，如果你来自这个种族或民族。’‘如果你出生在那个国家，或者你是跛子、残疾人、瞎子等等。’问题在于，是的，世界上确实存在真正的障碍。这不是一个公平的竞争环境，公平只存在于孩子的想象中，无法真正实现。但世界并不全是运气。事实上，你知道这一点，因为在你自己的生活中，有些事情是你做的，导致了好的结果。你知道如果你没做那件事，就不会有那个好结果。所以，你绝对可以改变局面。这不全是运气。尤其是时间跨度越长，活动越密集，迭代越多，你投入的思考和选择越多，运气就越不重要。它会逐渐退去。举个简单的例子，大多数人可能不喜欢，因为他们不在硅谷，但我 20 年前在硅谷遇到的每一个才华横溢的人，每一个，年轻而聪明的，每一个都成功了。每一个，我想不出例外。我本应该回去，根据他们的才华给他们编个索引。顺便说一句，这就是 Y Combinator 大规模做的事情，对吧？多好的机制。所以，这很有效。如果人们坚持 20 年，就会成功。你可能会说，‘你说得容易，那是硅谷的人。’没有人出生在那里。他们都是搬过去的。他们搬过去是因为他们想和其他聪明的孩子在一起，因为他们想拥有高能动性。所以，能动性确实有效，但如果你盯着时间表，你会失望的。你会过早放弃。所以你需要一个更高的动机。这就是为什么埃隆要去火星，为什么山姆想发明 AGI，为什么史蒂夫·乔布斯在 80 年代就想建造一台能放进书里的电脑。他在谈论 iPad。正是这些非常长远的愿景支撑你度过漫长的时期，真正建造你想建造的东西，到达你想去的地方。所以，愤世嫉俗的信念是自我实现的。悲观的信念就像你骑着摩托车，却看着你应该避开的砖墙。你会不知不觉地撞上砖墙。所以你必须保持你的能动性。你生来就有能动性。孩子有很高的能动性。他们去拿他们想要的东西。如果他们想要什么，他们看到就去拿。你必须保持你的能动性。你必须保持你能改变事情的信念。你必须为你身上发生的所有坏事承担责任。这是一种心态。也许有点假，但非常利己。事实上，如果你能更进一步，把所有好事都归功于运气，那也可能有帮助。但在某种程度上，真相非常重要。你不想假装。根据我的观察，事实是，那些努力工作、全力以赴、不放弃、在足够长的时间尺度上对结果负责的人，最终会在他们专注的事情上取得成功。每个成功案例都知道这一点。理查德·费曼曾说他不是天才。他只是一个努力工作的男孩。是的，他显然非常聪明，但那是必要但不充分的。我们都知道聪明懒散的人这个老套形象。我喜欢骚扰我所有的朋友，包括 Nivei，我注意到这些人的一个问题是，你们只是远低于潜力在运作。你们的潜力比现在高得多。你们必须把其中一些转化为动能。讽刺的是，这会提高你的潜力，因为我们不是静态的生物。我们是动态的生物。你会学到更多。你会通过实践学习。所以，别再找借口了，上场吧。

But if it's said in an interesting way, then it may remind them of something that was important or it might convert their specific knowledge or might be a hook for converting their specific knowledge into more general knowledge in their own minds. So I find that process useful for myself and hopefully others do too. Now, for the specific tweet, I just noticed this tendency where people are very cynical and they'll say, 'All the wealth is stolen,' for example, by banksters and the like, or crony capitalists or what have you, or just outright thieves or oligarchs. You can't rise up in this world if you're ex. You can't rise up in this world if you're a poor kid. You can't rise up in this world if you are from this race or ethnicity. If you were born in that country or if you're lame or crippled or blind or what have you. And the problem with this is that yes, there are real hindrances in the world. It is not a level playing field and fair is something that only exists in a child's imagination and cannot be pinned down in any real way. But the world is not entirely luck. In fact, you know that because in your own life, there are things that you have done that have led to good outcomes. And you know that if you had not done that thing, it would not have led to that good outcome. So, you can absolutely move the needle. And it's not all luck. And especially the longer the time frame you're talking about, the more intense the activity, the more iteration you take, and the more thinking and choice you apply into it, the less luck matters. It recedes into the distance. To give you a simple example, which most people won't love cuz they're not in Silicon Valley, but every brilliant person I met in Silicon Valley 20 years ago, every single one, the young, brilliant ones, every single one is successful. Every single one, I cannot think of an exception. I should have gone back and just indexed them all based on their brilliance. By the way, that's what Y cominator does at scale, right? What a great mechanism. So, it works. If people stick at it for 20 years, it works. Now, you might say, easy for you to say, man, that's for the people in Silicon Valley. No one was born here. They all moved here. They moved here because they wanted to be where the other smart kids were and because they wanted to be high agency. So, agency does work, but if you're keeping track of the time period, you're going to be disappointed. You'll give up too soon. So you need a higher motivator. That's why Elon goes to Mars and that's why Sam wants to invent AGI and that's why Steve Jobs wanted to build 50 years ago in the 80s he was talking about building a computer that would fit in the book. He was talking about the iPad. So it's these very long visions that sustain you over the long periods of time to actually build the thing you want to build and get to where you want to get. So a cynical belief is self-fulfilling. A pessimistic belief is like you're driving the motorcycle but you're looking at the brick wall that you're supposed to turn away from. you will turn into the brick wall without even realizing it. So you have to preserve your agency. You're born with agency. Children are high agency. They go get what they want. If they want something, they see it, they go get it. You have to preserve your agency. You have to preserve your belief that you can change things. You have to take responsibility for everything bad that happens to you. And this is a mindset. Maybe it's a little fake, but it's very self-serving. And in fact, if you can go the extra mile and just attribute everything good that happens to you to luck, that might be helpful, too. But at some level, truth is very important. You don't want to fake it. From what I have observed, the truth of the matter is people who work very hard and apply themselves and don't give up and take responsibility for the outcomes on a long enough time scale end up succeeding in whatever they are focused on. And every success case knows this. Richard Feman used to say that he wasn't a genius. He was just a boy who applied himself and worked really hard. Yeah, he was very smart obviously, but that was necessary but not sufficient. We all know the trope of the smart lazy guy. And I like to harass all of my friends, including Nivei, that one of the problems I noticed with these guys, you're just operating way below potential. Your potential is so much higher than where you are. You have to apply some of that into kinetic. And ironically, that will raise your potential because we're not static creatures. We're dynamic creatures. And you will learn more. You will learn by doing. So just stop making excuses and get in the ring.

你也喜欢叔本华。你从叔本华那里学到了什么？或者他的作品有什么令人惊讶的地方吗？

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

哦，叔本华不适合所有人，而且有很多不同的叔本华，他写了很多东西。你可以读他更晦涩的哲学文本，比如《作为意志和表象的世界》，那是他为其他哲学家写的，或者你可以读他更实用的东西，比如《论存在的虚无》。他是历史上少数几个毫不退缩地写作的人之一。他写他认为真实的东西。他并不总是正确的，但他从不对你撒谎，这一点很明显。他思考问题非常深刻。他不太在意别人怎么看他。他所知道的就是：‘我写下来的，我知道是真的。’他也不装腔作势。他不用华丽的语言。他不想给你留下深刻印象。人们称他为悲观主义者。我认为这不完全公平。我认为他的世界观可以被解释为悲观。但我只是在想读一剂严酷的真相时才读他。叔本华对我独特的影响是，他给了我完全的许可做我自己。他根本不在乎大众怎么想，他对普通思维的蔑视显露出来。我不一定认同这一点。我比他更平等主义一点。但他真的给了你做自己的许可。所以，如果你擅长某件事，不要害羞。接受你擅长某件事。这对我来说很难，因为我们都想合群。如果你想在群体中相处，你不想太突出。你知道，老话说‘枪打出头鸟’。但如果你要做任何非凡的事情，你确实必须以某种方式押注自己。如果你在某方面很出色，那确实需要你承认自己很出色，或者至少努力做到，而不担心别人怎么想。当然，你也不想自欺欺人。任何做过投资生意的人都会不断遇到有人说‘我太擅长某件事了’，而他们有点自欺欺人。不，你不能说自己很出色。别人可以说你很出色，你妈妈不算。

Oh, Schopenhauer is not for everybody and there are many different Schopenhauers like he wrote quite a bit and you could read his more obscure philosophical texts like 'The World as Will and Idea' where he was writing for other philosophers or you could read his more practical stuff like 'On the Vanity of Existence'. He was one of the few people in history who wrote unflinchingly. He wrote what he believed to be true. He wasn't always correct, but he never lied to you, and that comes across. He thought about things very deeply. He didn't care that much what people thought of him. All he knew was, 'What I'm writing down, I know to be true.' He also didn't put on any airs. He didn't use fancy language. He didn't try to impress you. People call him a pessimist. I don't think that's entirely fair. I think his worldview could be interpreted as pessimistic. But I just read him when I want to read a harsh dose of truth. What Schopenhauer did uniquely for me is that he gave me complete permission to be me. He just did not care at all what the masses thought and his disdain for common thinking comes out. Now I don't necessarily share that. I'm a little bit more of an egalitarian than he was. But he really gives you permission to be yourself. So if you're good at something, don't be shy about it. Accept that you're good at something. And that was hard for me because we all want to get along. If you want to get along in a group, you don't want to stand out too much. You know, it's the old line, the tall puppy gets cut. But if you're going to do anything exceptional, you do have to bet on yourself in some way. And if you're exceptional at something, that does require you acknowledging that you're exceptional at it, or at least trying to be, and not worrying about what other people think. Now, you don't want to be delusional either. Anyone who's been in the investing business is constantly hit by people who say, 'I'm so great at something,' and they're a little delusional. No, you don't get to say you're exceptional at something. Other people get to say you're exceptional at something, and your mom doesn't count.

来自他人的反馈通常是虚假的。奖项是假的，批评是假的，亲友的赞美也是假的。他们可能试图真诚，但淹没在虚假的海洋中，你得不到真正的反馈。真正的反馈来自自由市场和自然。物理是严苛的：你的产品要么成功要么失败。自由市场是严苛的：人们要么买要么不买。但来自他人的反馈是假的。你无法从群体中获得好的反馈，因为群体只想和睦相处。个体追求真理，群体追求共识。不和睦的群体会瓦解、分崩离析。群体越大，你能得到的良好反馈就越少。你不应该依赖妈妈、朋友、家人甚至颁奖典礼和奖项系统的反馈。如果你优化公司是为了上杂志封面或赢得行业奖项，那你就失败了。你需要客户，那是真正的反馈。你需要来自自然的反馈：你的火箭发射了吗？你的无人机飞起来了吗？你的 3D 打印机是否在预算内按时打印出符合公差的物体？欺骗自己很容易，被他人欺骗也很容易，但欺骗大自然是不可能的。

Feedback from other people is usually fake. Awards are fake. Critics are fake. Kudos from your friends and family are fake. They might try to be genuine, but it's lost in such a sea of fakeness that you're not going to get real feedback. Real feedback comes from free markets in nature. Physics is harsh. Either your product worked or it didn't. Free markets are harsh. Either people buy it or they don't. But feedback from other people is fake. You can't get good feedback from groups because groups are just trying to get along. Individuals search for truth. Groups search for consensus. A group that doesn't get along decoheres. It falls apart. And the larger the group, the less good feedback you're going to get from it. You don't want to necessarily rely on feedback from your mom or your friends or your family or even from award ceremonies and award systems. If you're optimizing your company to end up on the cover of a magazine or to win an industry award, you're failing. You need customers. That's your real feedback. You need feedback from nature. Did your rocket launch? Did your drone fly? Did your 3D printer print the object within the tolerances that it was supposed to in the time it was supposed to in the cost budget that was supposed to. It's very easy to fool yourself. It's very easy to be fooled by others. It is impossible to fool mother nature.

与叔本华不同，你是一位工业哲学家，就像工业设计师。你的哲学是为大众设计的。就像 Twitter 上的其他人一样，我们是在为广泛传播而哲学化。人们建议你读经典著作，读亚里士多德、维特根斯坦以及所有那些所谓的伟大哲学家。我几乎读过所有这些，但从中得到的价值很少。我获得价值的地方是像你这样的 Twitter 上的人的哲学思考。任何想读哲学的人，我都会告诉他们跳过那些，直接去读大卫·多伊奇。

Unlike Schopenhauer, you're an industrial philosopher. Like an industrial designer. Your philosophy is designed for the masses. Like everybody else on Twitter, we're philosophizing for wide adoption. People suggest you read the great books, read Aristotle and Wittgenstein and all the supposedly great philosophers. I've read almost all that stuff. And I've gotten very little value from it. Where I have gotten value is the philosophizing of people on Twitter like you. Anybody who wants to read philosophy, I would just tell them to skip it and go read David Deutsch.

你说得没错。我受不了你提到的那些哲学家。我也不喜欢柏拉图。我拿起又放下的其他哲学著作都相对很快，因为他们只是在琐碎细节上做晦涩的论证，试图构建包罗万象的世界理论。就连叔本华在试图与其他哲学家对话时也落入这个陷阱，那是他最糟糕的时候。我喜欢他的短篇随笔，在那里他几乎像在 Twitter 上写作一样。他会在 Twitter 上大放异彩。他的思想密度高，深思熟虑，有很好的最小化例子和类比。你可以拿起它，读一段，然后思考一个小时。因为读了他，我认为自己成为了更好的作家、更好的思想家、更好的人和性格判断者。他写作于 19 世纪早期，每当他涉足科学、医学或政治话题时，显然会偏离轨道，那些东西不再适用。但当他写人性时，那是永恒的。对于任何关于人性的话题，我会说去读林迪书籍，那些经得起时间考验的老书。但如果你想发展特定知识、靠它赚钱、做有用的事，那么你要保持在最前沿。那种知识会更及时，也会更快过时。这两者都有道理。对我来说没有道理的是读那些既不是林迪也不是关于人性、却又是老的东西。我也回避学习密度低的东西，比如历史书。我喜欢威尔·杜兰特的《历史的教训》，因为它是对《文明的故事》的总结，那是他的 12 卷巨著，但我不会去读那 12 卷。我读过很多历史，我知道他指的是那些东西，所以我不是仅仅接受他的高层次概念。但同时，在我人生的这个阶段，我想读高密度的作品。你可以称之为 TikTok 病或 Twitter 一代，但这其实也是尊重我们的时间。我们已经有很多数据，有一些知识，现在我们想要智慧，想要那些可以附着在我们脑海中所有其他信息上的通用原则。我们确实想读高密度的作品。但我认为叔本华就是高密度的作品。我所有喜欢的作者都是高密度的。多伊奇极其高密度，博尔赫斯非常高密度，特德·姜非常高密度，早期的尼尔·斯蒂芬森非常高密度——后来他变成了高容量、高密度、高一切。但最好的作者尊重读者的时间，叔本华正是如此。对于知识哲学（即认识论）的最新进展，你基本上可以跳过一切，直接去看大卫·多伊奇。

You're not wrong. I can't stand any of the philosophers you talked about. I don't like Plato either. Every other piece of philosophy I picked up and put down relatively quickly because they're just making very obscure arguments over minute and trying to come up with all-encompassing theories of the world. Even Schopenhauer falls into that trap when he tries to talk to other philosophers. He's at his worst. When I like him is in his shorter essays. That's where he almost writes like he's on Twitter. He would have dominated Twitter. He has high density of ideas, very well thought through, good minimal examples and analogies. You can pick it up, read one paragraph, and you're thinking for the next hour. I think of a better writer, a better thinker, and a better judge of people and character thanks to what I read from him. Now, he's writing from the early part of the 19th century. Whenever he wanders into topics that are scientific or medical or political, he's obviously off base. That stuff doesn't apply anymore. But when he's writing about human nature, that is timeless. When it comes to anything about human nature, I say go read the Lindy books, the older books, the ones that have survived the test of time. But if you want to develop specific knowledge, get paid for it, do something useful, then you want to stay on the bleeding edge. That knowledge is going to be more timely and obsolete more quickly. Those two make sense. What doesn't make sense to me is just reading stuff that's not Lindy or that's not about human nature, but is old. I also shy away from stuff that's low density in the learnings like history books. I like The Lessons of History by Will Durant because it's a summarization of The Story of Civilization which was his large 12 volume series but I'm not going to go read the 12 volume series. I've read plenty of history. I know he's referring to these kinds of things. So I'm not just taking his word for it on high level concept but at the same time at this point in my life I want to read high density works. You can call it the TikTok disease or the Twitter generation, but it's also just being respectful of our time. We already have a lot of data. We have some knowledge. Now, we want wisdom. Now, we want the generalized principles that we can attach to all of the other information we already have in our minds. We do want to read high density work. But I would argue that Schopenhauer is very high density work. All my favorite authors are very high density. Deutsch is extremely high density. Borges is very high density. Ted Chiang is very high density. The old Neal Stephenson was very high density. Then he just got high volume, high density, high everything. But the best authors respect the reader's time and Schopenhauer is very much in that vein. For the state-of-the-art on the philosophy of knowledge, which people call epistemology, you can basically skip everything and jump straight to David Deutsch.

我认为没错。如果你只想了解认识论，读大卫·多伊奇就够了。话虽如此，对一些人来说，了解历史、反驳观点、他的思想来源以及现有的知识理论（如确证真信念理论或归纳知识理论）是有帮助的。这些理论通过学校学习和日常经验深深植根于我们心中。归纳似乎应该成立：你每天看到太阳升起，太阳明天也会升起。这似乎是常识。很多人相信这一点，如果你只读多伊奇，你会看到他驳斥这些观点，但你自己对这些观点并没有牢固的理解。所以你可能会想象存在某种反例。很久以前我第一次读多伊奇时，并没有完全理解。我把它当作任何其他物理学家写的书一样对待。我会读保罗·戴维斯、卡洛·罗韦利和多伊奇，给予同样的思考时间、同样的尊重。结果我错了。多伊奇实际上在更深的层次上运作。他有许多不同的理论，这些理论连贯地结合在一起，创造了一种所有部分相互强化的世界哲学。读一些其他人的作品可能有助于理解，而不是直接跳到多伊奇。但我肯定会从多伊奇开始。如果你不确定，我会读一些其他人的作品，然后回到多伊奇再试一次，你会看到他如何处理这些问题。多伊奇本人会把你引向波普尔。他会说：“哦，我只是在重复波普尔。”这不完全正确。我觉得波普尔更难接近，更难读，文笔也不那么清晰。虽然我认为多伊奇和布雷特·霍尔会不同意我。他们觉得波普尔非常清晰。但无论出于什么原因，我觉得他很难读。我觉得多伊奇更容易读。也许是因为波普尔花了更多时间阐述核心观点。波普尔是为哲学家写作的。

I think that's right. If you just want to know epistemology, read David Deutsch full stop. That said, for some people it helps to know the history, the counterarguments, where he's coming from, the existing theories of knowledge, like the justified true belief theory or the inductive theory of knowledge. These are so deeply embedded into us both by school learning, but also by everyday experience. Induction seems like it should work. You watch the sun rise every day, the sun is going to rise tomorrow. That just seems like common sense. So many people believe in that that if you just read Deutsch, you would see him shooting down these things, but you yourself would not have those things in solid footing. So you might imagine some counter example exists. When I first read Deutsch a long time ago, I didn't quite get it. I treated it just like any other book that any other physicist had written. So I would read Paul Davies and I would read Carlo Rovelli and I would read Deutsch and I would treat them the same level of contemplation, time and respect. It turned out I was wrong. It turned out that Deutsch was actually operating at a much deeper level. He had a lot of different theories that coherently hung together and they created a world philosophy where all the pieces reinforce each other. It might help to read others and not just skip to Deutsch. But I would definitely start with Deutsch. Then if you're not sure about it, I would read some of the others and then come back to Deutsch and try again and then you'll see how he addresses those issues. Deutsch himself would refer you to Popper. He would say, "Oh, I'm just repeating Popper." Not quite true. I find Popper much less approachable, much harder to read, much less clear of a writer. Although I think here both Deutsch and Brett Hall would disagree with me. They find Popper very lucid. I find him very difficult to read for whatever reason. I find Deutsch easier to read. Maybe because Popper spent a lot more time elucidating core points. Popper was writing for philosophers.

多伊奇不是为哲学家写作，甚至不是为科学家写作，也不是为你写作。我感觉多伊奇是在为自己写作，他只是在阐明自己的思想以及它们如何相互关联。

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

我也不认为只读认识论部分就能从多伊奇那里获得最大价值。尽管那绝对是每个人都应该开始的地方，因为《无穷的开始》前三章就是认识论。讽刺的是，在《无穷的开始》中，前几章和最后几章是最容易、最易懂的。中间部分很艰难，因为它涉及量子计算、量子物理、进化论等。我认为那是人们挣扎的地方，因为它不一定需要数学或科学背景，但至少需要对科学概念和原理感到舒适。而且他为多重宇宙提出了强有力的论证，但大多数人对此并不关心。他们没有想得那么远。他们并不执着于量子力学中的观察者坍缩理论，因为他们并不真正关心量子力学。它不影响他们的日常生活。

I also don't think you're going to get maximal value out of Deutsch just reading the epistemology. Although that is absolutely where everybody should start as the first three chapters is beginning of infinity. Ironically, in the beginning of infinity, the first few chapters and the last few chapters are the easiest and the most accessible. The middle is a slog because that goes into quantum computation, quantum physics, evolution, etc. That's where I think people struggle because it does require not necessarily a mathematical or scientific background, but at least a comfort level with scientific concepts and principles. And he's making a strong argument for the multiverse, which most people don't have a dog in that fight. They haven't thought that far ahead. They're not wedded to the observer collapse theory of quantum mechanics because they don't really care about quantum mechanics. It doesn't impact their everyday life.

我阅读多伊奇全部作品得到的收获是，我看到了他的理论如何环环相扣。每一部分都触及并依赖于另一部分。他实际上提出了量子计算理论，并将丘奇-图灵论题扩展为丘奇-图灵-多伊奇论题，当时他正试图找到一种方法来证伪他的多重宇宙理论（这是一个量子物理理论）。为此，他必须发明量子计算，因为要设计如何证伪多重宇宙理论的实验，他必须在脑海中想象一个 AGI，并进入 AGI 的大脑，说如果那个 AGI 在观察某物，它是否会坍缩，但现在它需要在大脑内部。那么，我如何进入量子 AGI 的大脑？你甚至如何创造一个量子 AGI？我们没有量子计算机。好吧，我们需要量子计算机。于是，他提出了量子计算理论，这开启了量子计算领域。这就是量子物理和量子计算如何密不可分的一个例子。

What I got out of reading all of Deutsch was I got to see how his theory all hangs together. every piece touches upon and relies upon another piece. He actually came up with the theory of quantum computation and extended the church turning conjecture into the church turning Deutsch conjecture when he was trying to come up with a way to falsify his theory of the multiverse which was a quantum physics theory and to do that he had to invent quantum computation because to invent the experiment for how to falsify the multiverse theory he had to in his mind imagine an AGI and get inside the AGI's brain and say if that AGI is observing something does it collapse but now it needs to be inside the brain Well, how do I get inside the brain of a quantum AGI? How do you even create a quantum AGI? We don't have quantum computers. Okay, we need quantum computers. So, he came up with the theory of quantum computation and that launched the field of quantum computing. That's an example of how quantum physics and quantum computing are inextricably linked.

我认为跨学科阅读多伊奇非常有用。即使当他谈论模因和模因理论时，那来自进化论，但直接跨越到认识论、猜想和批评。它远远超出了他对财富的定义——你能影响的物理变换集合，同时考虑资本和知识。它清楚地表明知识是更大的组成部分，然后可以带入商业并应用于你的日常生活。它可以应用于国家的财富，也可以应用于个人的财富。所以有很多部分相互连接。

I think reading Deutsch across all the different disciplines is very useful. Even when he talks about memes and meme theory, that comes from evolution, but crosses over straight into epistemology and conjecture and criticism. And it reaches far beyond his definition of wealth. The set of physical transformations that you can affect that takes into account both capital and knowledge. And it clearly shows that knowledge is a bigger component and then that can be brought into business and applied into your everyday life. It can apply to the wealth of nations and it can apply to the wealth of individuals. So there are a lot of parts that interconnect together.

优秀的作家写作密度高、相互关联性强，他们的作品本质上是分形的。你会在你准备好接受知识的层次上遇到它。你不必理解全部。这就是学习的本质。你读它，理解了 20%，然后你重读，理解了 25%。你同时听布雷特·霍尔的播客，现在理解了 28%。然后你去问 Grok 或 ChatGPT 一些问题，深入某个部分，现在理解了 31%。所有知识都是作者与观察者或读者之间的交流。你们双方都必须达到一定水平才能吸收。当你准备好接受不同部分时，你会接收到不同部分，但无论你处于什么水平，你总能从中有所收获，只要你能够交流并阅读语言。

Good writers write with such high density and interconnectedness that their works are fractile in nature. You will meet the knowledge at the level at which you are ready to receive it. And you don't have to understand it all. This is the nature of learning. You read it, you got 20% of it, then you go back through it, you got 25% of it. You listen to one of Brett Hall's podcasts alongside. Now you got 28% of it. Now you go to Grock or ChatGPT, you ask us some questions, you dig in on some part, now you got 31% of it. All knowledge is a communication between the author and the observer or the reader. And you both have to be at a certain level to absorb. When you're ready to receive different pieces, you will receive different pieces, but you'll always get something out of it, no matter what level you're at, as long as you can even just communicate and read the language.

他说好的解释很难被改变。所以当你回顾一个好的解释时，你会说：‘好吧，它怎么可能不是这样？这是这件事唯一可能的方式。所有这些不同的部分以这种方式组合在一起并相互约束。现在有了一些你未曾预料到的涌现属性、复杂性或结果。一个能完美解释一切的解释。’这不仅适用于好的解释，也适用于产品开发。好的产品很难被改变。

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

看看 iPhone。那光滑、完美、美丽的宝石。外形因素自第一代以来并没有太大变化。它围绕单屏幕、多点触控、嵌入电池、适合放进口袋、手感顺滑，本质上创造了真正个人化口袋电脑的柏拉图式理想。所以，那个产品很难被改变。苹果及其竞争对手在 16 代 iPhone 中试图改变它，但未能实质性地改变它。他们能够改进组件和底层能力，但外形因素实质上是难以改变的。他们设计对了。

Go look at the iPhone. The smooth, perfect, beautiful jewel. The form factor hasn't really changed that much since the original one. It's all around the single screen. the multi-touch, embedding the battery, making it fit into your pocket, making it smooth and sliding in your hand, essentially creating the platonic ideal of the truly personal pocketable computer. So, that product is hard to vary. Both Apple and its competitors have tried to vary it across 16 generations of iPhone and they haven't been able to materially vary it. They've been able to improve the components and improve some of the underlying capabilities, but materially the form factor is hard to vary. They designed the right thing.

有一句名言，我想是安托万·德·圣-埃克苏佩里说的：飞机机翼之所以完美，不是因为没什么可加，而是因为没什么可减。那个机翼很难被改变。当我们设计出前往火星的航天器的正确方案时，我敢打赌，在很长一段时间内，无论是在宏观层面还是细节上，它都很难被改变，直到出现某种突破性技术。基本的内燃机设计很难被改变，直到我们有了足够好的电池，然后我们创造了电动汽车，现在电动汽车也很难被改变。事实上，现在一些设计师抱怨，在现代社会，产品和物品开始看起来都一样。是因为 Instagram 吗？为什么？至少就汽车而言，它们看起来都像经过了风洞设计，因为那是最有效的设计。它们看起来都流线型的原因是因为它们都经过风洞，试图找到以最小阻力切割空气的形状。所以它们最终看起来都一样，因为那种设计很难在不损失效率的情况下改变。

There's the famous saying I think from Antoine Deseri where he says the airplane wing is perfect not because there's nothing left to add but because there's nothing left to take away. That airplane wing is hard to vary. When we figure out the proper design of the spacecraft to get to Mars, I will bet you that both at a high level and in the details for quite a long time that thing will be hard to vary until there's some breakthrough technology. The basic internal combustion engine design was hard to vary until we got batteries good enough and then we created the electric car and now the electric car is hard to vary. In fact, there's a complaint now among some designers that in modern society products and objects are starting to look all the same. Is that because of Instagram? Why is that? Well, at least in the car case, they all look like they've been through a wind tunnel design because that is the most efficient design. And the reason they all look swoopy and streamlined is because they're all going through a wind tunnel and they're trying to find the thing that cuts through the air with minimal resistance. And so they do all end up looking the same because that design is hard to vary without losing efficiency.

我们都见过 SpaceX 火箭的猛禽发动机图片。如果你看它的各种迭代，它们从容易改变到难以改变，因为最新版本没有那么多你可以摆弄的部件。早期版本有上百万个不同部件，你可以改变厚度、宽度、材料等等。当前版本几乎没有任何部件留给你去改动。

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

复杂性理论中有一个理论：每当你在自然界中发现一个复杂的系统在运作时，它通常是一个非常简单的系统或事物反复迭代的输出。我们最近在 AI 研究中看到了这一点。

There's a theory on complexity theory that whenever you find a complex system working in nature, it's usually the output of a very simple system or thing that was iterated over and over. We're seeing this lately in AI research.

你只是把非常简单的算法丢进去，然后不断灌入更多数据，它们就变得越来越聪明。反过来就不太奏效：当你设计一个非常复杂的系统，然后试图把它做成一个能正常运转的大型系统时，它就会分崩离析，因为里面复杂度太高了。所以，很多产品设计就是不断迭代自己的设计，直到找到那个简单可行的东西。而且你常常会添加一些不需要的东西，然后不得不回头，从噪声中把简洁性重新提取出来。这在个人计算领域就能看到：Mac OS 用起来还是比 iOS 难不少。iOS 更接近操作系统的柏拉图式理想。虽然基于 LLM 的操作系统可能更接近——用自然语言交流——但最终你还是得移除一些东西才能让它规模化。Raptor 引擎就是一个例子。

You're just taking very simple algorithms and dumping more and more data into them. They keep getting smarter. What doesn't work as well is the reverse. When you design a very complex system and then you try to make a functioning large system out of that, it just falls apart. There's too much complexity in it. So, a lot of product design is iterating on your own designs until you find the simple thing that works. And often you've added stuff around it that you don't need and then you have to go back and extract the simplicity back out of the noise. You can see this in personal computing where Mac OS is still quite a bit harder to use than iOS. iOS is closer to the platonic ideal of an operating system. Although an LLM based operating system might be even closer, speaking in natural language, eventually you have to remove things to get them to scale. And the Raptor engine is an example of that.

当你弄清楚什么有效之后，你就会意识到哪些是不必要的，然后就可以移除那些部件。这也是马斯克的一个核心驱动原则：在优化系统之前——那其实是最后一步——你首先要做的是质疑需求。你会问：这个需求为什么存在？在约根森的新书里，有一个 Elon 的方法：你先去追溯需求，不是找哪个部门提出的需求，而是需求必须来自某个人。谁说的“这就是我想要的”？你回去问他：“你真的需要这个吗？”然后你消除这个需求。一旦消除了不必要的需求，剩下的需求就少了。接着你有了部件，就尽量去掉尽可能多的部件，只保留那些绝对必要的来满足需求。在那之后，也许你才开始考虑优化，想办法最有效地制造这个部件并把它装到正确的位置。最后，你才可能考虑成本效率和规模经济之类的事情。

As you figure out what works, then you realize what's unnecessary and you can remove parts. And this is one of Musk's great driving principles where he basically says before you optimize a system. That's among the last things that you do before you start trying to figure out how to make something more efficient, the first thing you do is you question the requirements. You're like why does the requirement even exist? One of the Elon methods in Jorgensson's new book is you first go and you track down the requirement and not which department came up with the requirement. The requirement has to come from an individual. Who's the individual who said this is what I want? You go back say do you really need this? You eliminate the requirement and then once you've eliminated the requirements that are unnecessary then you have a smaller number of requirements. Now you have parts and you try to get rid of as many parts as you can to fulfill the requirements that are absolutely necessary. And then after that maybe then you start thinking about optimization and now you're trying to figure out how can I manufacture this part and fit it in in the right place most efficiently. And then finally, you might get into cost efficiencies and economies of scale and those sorts of things.

把一个好产品从零做到一，最关键的人就是那个能一个人把整个问题装进脑子里、做出权衡、并理解每个部件为什么在那里的那个人——通常是创始人。他不一定需要亲自设计每个部件、制造或了解所有细节，但他必须能理解：这个零件为什么在这？如果去掉零件 A，零件 B、C、D、E 以及它们的需求和考量会怎样？这就是对产品的整体观。你在 Raptor 引擎的设计中就能看到这一点。马斯克举了一个我觉得很好的例子。当时他试图让特斯拉电池顶部的玻璃纤维垫生产得更高效。于是他去了那条耗时太长的产线，放下睡袋，就守在产线上。他们试图优化把玻璃纤维垫粘到电池上的机器人，想让它贴得更高效或加快产线速度。他们确实做到了，改进了一些，但速度仍然慢得令人沮丧。最后他问：“这个需求为什么存在？我们为什么要在电池顶部放玻璃纤维垫？”电池组的人说：“其实是为了降噪。”于是他们去找噪声和振动团队。他问：“我们为什么放这些垫子？有什么噪声和振动问题？”对方说：“不不，没有噪声和振动问题。放垫子是因为散热，电池会着火。”然后又回到电池组：“我们需要这个吗？”电池组说：“不，这里没有着火问题，也不是散热问题，那个已经过时了。是噪声和振动问题。”他们各自都按自己受训的方式和过去的做法行事。他们做了安全测试，用麦克风跟踪噪声，最后认定不需要这个垫子，就把它去掉了。

The most critical person to take a great product from zero to one is the single person, usually the founder, who can hold the entire problem in their head and make the trade-offs and understand why each component is where it is. And they don't necessarily need to be the person designing each component, manufacturing or knowing all the ins and outs, but they do need to be able to understand why is this piece here? And if part A gets removed, then what happens to parts B, C, D, E and their requirements and considerations. It's that holistic view of the whole product. You'll see this in the Raptor engine design. The example that Elon gives that I thought was a good one. He was trying to get these fiberglass mats on top of the Tesla batteries produced more efficiently. So, he went to the line where it was taking too long, put his sleeping bag down, and he just stayed at the line. And they tried to optimize the robot that was gluing the fiberglass mats to the batteries. They were trying to attach them more efficiently or speed up that line. And they did. They managed to improve it a bit, but it was still frustratingly slow. And finally, he said, "Why is this requirement here? Why are we putting fiberglass mats on top of the batteries?" The battery guy said, "It's actually because of noise reduction." So, we got to go talk to the noise and vibration team. So, he goes to the noise and vibration team. He's like, "Why do we have these mats here? What is a noise and vibration issue?" And they're like, "No, no, there's no noise and vibration issue. They're there because of heat. The battery catches fire." And then it goes back to the battery to be like, "Do we need this?" And they're like, "No, there's not a fire issue here. It's not a heat protection issue. That's obsolete. It's a noise and vibration issue." They had each been doing things the way they were trained to do and the way things had been done. They tested it for safety and they tested it by putting microphones on there and tracking the noise and they decided they didn't need it and they eliminated the part.

这种情况在非常复杂的系统和复杂设计中经常发生。有趣的是，每个人都说“我是个通才”，这其实是他们逃避成为专才的借口。但真正应该做的是成为“博学家”——一个能把每个专业至少学到 80/20 水平的通才，这样才能做出明智的权衡。我建议人们获得这种博学能力的方式是：如果你要学点什么，如果你要去上学，就学那些覆盖面最广的理论。我再进一步总结一下：学物理。一旦你学了物理，你就是在学习现实是如何运作的。如果你有扎实的物理背景，你可以学电气工程、计算机科学、材料科学、统计学和概率论、数学——因为数学也是物理的一部分，是应用性的。我见过的几乎所有领域里最优秀的人都有物理背景。如果你没有物理背景，别灰心，我自己物理就学得不好。你仍然可以通过其他方式达到那个水平。但物理训练你与现实互动，它非常严苛，会把你所有美好的假象都打掉。而如果你在社会科学领域，你可能会有一堆稀奇古怪的信念。即使你学会了社会科学中那些晦涩的数学，你可能只有 10% 的真知识，却有 90% 的假知识。物理的好处是你可以学很基础的物理，不需要深入到夸克和量子物理之类。你只需要学基本的球滚下斜坡，这其实就是一个很好的基础。不过我认为任何 STEM 学科都值得学。

This happens a lot with very complex systems and complex designs. It's funny, everybody says I'm a generalist, which is their way of coping out on being a specialist, but really what you want to be is a polymath, which is a generalist who can pick up every specialty at least to the 80/20 level so they can make smart trade-offs. The way that I suggest people gain that polymath capability, being a generalist that can pick up any specialty, is if you are going to study something, if you are going to go to school, study the theories that have the most reach. I would summarize that further and just say study physics. Once you study physics, you're studying how reality works. And if you have a great background in physics, you can pick up electrical engineering. You can pick up computer science. You can pick up material science. You can pick up statistics and probability. You can pick up mathematics cuz it's part of it. It's applied. The best people that I've met in almost any field have a physics background. If you don't have a physics background, don't cry. I have a failed physics background. You can still get there the other ways, but physics trains you to interact with reality and it is so unforgiving that it beats all the nice falsities out of you. Whereas if you're somewhere in social science, you can have all kinds of cuckoo beliefs. Even if you pick up some of the obtruse mathematics they use in social sciences, you may have 10% real knowledge, but you may have 90% false knowledge. The good news about physics is you can learn pretty basic physics. So you don't have to go all the way deep into quarks and quantum physics and so on. You can just go with basic balls rolling down a slope and it's actually a good backgrounder. But I think any of the STEM disciplines are worth studying.

如果你已经过了选择学什么的阶段，那就去和人们组队。实际上，最优秀的人不一定只学物理。他们是动手者，是建造者，他们在建造东西。动手者总是处在知识的前沿，因为他们总是用最新的工具和最新的零件来造酷炫的东西。比如在无人机成为军事装备之前就造竞赛无人机的人，在机器人成为军事装备之前就造格斗机器人的人，或者组装个人电脑的人——因为他们想把电脑放在家里，不满足于在学校用电脑。这些人最理解事物，也最快地推进知识。

Now if you don't have the choice of what to study and you're already past that, just team up with people. Actually, the best people don't necessarily even just study physics. They're tinkerers. They're builders. They're building things. The tinkerers are always at the edge of knowledge because they're always using the latest tools and the latest parts to build the cool things. So, it's the guy building the racing drone before drones are a military thing, or the guy building the fighting robots before robots are a military thing, or the person putting to the personal computer because they want the computer in their home and they're not satisfied going to school and using the computer there. These are the people who understand things the best and they're advancing knowledge the fastest.