平衡生活与持续学习：与一位科技投资者的对话

二、一，开拍。好了，我们开始了。非常感谢你来做这个节目，老兄，我真的很感激。我一直在吸收你的信息，听你讲话已经有一段时间了，所以能真正见到你真是太好了。

Two, one, boom. All right, we're live. Thank you very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. I've been absorbing your information and listening to you talk for quite a while now, so it's great to actually meet you.

谢谢你邀请我。

Thanks for having me.

我的荣幸。你是少数几个既是大型投资者、深入科技界，却又似乎对如何生活有着非常平衡视角的人，而不是完全专注于成功、财务成功和科技投资，而是如何快乐地生活。

My pleasure. You are one of the rare guys that is a big investor, deep in the tech world, but yet you seem to have a very balanced perspective in terms of how to live life, as opposed to just being entirely focused on success and financial success and tech investing, but rather how to live your life in a happy way.

那不是平衡。你知道，我认为人们喜欢听我说话的原因是，如果你去马戏团看到一只熊，那有点意思，但没那么有意思。如果你看到一辆独轮车，那很有意思。但如果你看到一只熊骑独轮车，那就非常有意思了。所以当你把本不该组合在一起的东西组合起来时，人们就会感兴趣。就像李小龙：引人深思的思想、哲学加上武术。我认为这是因为在某种程度上，所有人类都是广阔的。我们都是多变量的，但在生活中被简化为精炼的方式，而在内心深处我们知道那不是真的。每个人都能经历每一种体验和每一种思想。你是一个 UFC 评论员、喜剧演员、播客主持人，但你也不止于此。你也是一个父亲、爱人、思考者等等。所以我喜欢古人，希腊人、罗马人，所拥有的生活模式：你年轻时开始，上学，然后去打仗，然后经营生意，然后服务于元老院或政府，然后成为哲学家。生活有一个弧线，你尝试做所有事情。正如我的一位朋友所说，专业化是给昆虫的。所以每个人都应该能做所有事情。我不再相信这种试图将生活聚焦于一件事的模式了。你只有一次生命，就去做你将要做的所有事情吧。

That's a... it's not balance. You know, I think the reason why people like hearing me is because if you go to a circus and you see a bear, that's kind of interesting but not that much. If you see a unicycle, that's interesting. But you see a bear on a unicycle, that's really interesting. So when you combine things you're not supposed to combine, people get interested. It's like Bruce Lee: striking thoughts, philosophy plus martial arts. And I think it's because at some level, all humans are broad. We're all multivariate, but we get summarized in pithy ways in our lives, and at some deep level we know that's not true. Every human is capable of every experience and every thought. You're a UFC commentator, comedian, podcaster, but you're also more than that. You're also a father, lover, thinker, etc. So I like the model of life that the ancients had, the Greeks, the Romans, where you would start out young, go to school, then go to war, then run a business, then serve in the senate or the government, then become a philosopher. There's an arc to life where you try your hand at everything. As one of my friends says, specialization is for insects. So everyone should be able to do everything. I don't believe in this model anymore of trying to focus your life down on one thing. You've got one life, just do everything you're going to do.

我完全同意。我认为有时候人们在某项努力中取得了一定的成功，然后他们认为那就是他们的 niche，他们坚持它，从不改变，几乎是出于恐惧。

I couldn't agree more. I think that sometimes people find certain success in whatever the endeavor is, and then they think that that is their niche and they stick with it and they never change, almost out of fear.

嗯，这很难。有一个关于登山的类比：如果你找到一座山并开始攀登，你花了一辈子爬它，你爬到了比如三分之二的地方，然后你看到顶峰还在上面，但你已经爬了三分之二，你仍然很高。但现在要完成剩下的路程，你必须回到山底寻找另一条路。没有人想那样做。人们不想重新开始。而且这是晚年生活的本质：你只是不知道时间，所以回去寻找新路非常痛苦，但那可能是最好的做法。这就是为什么当你看到最伟大的艺术家和创作者时，他们拥有别人没有的重新开始的能力。比如埃隆会被叫做白痴，然后重新开始做一些他本不具备资格的全新的事情。或者当麦当娜、保罗·西蒙或 U2 发行新专辑时，他们现有的粉丝通常讨厌它，因为他们采用了从别处学来的全新风格。很多时候他们会完全失败。所以你必须愿意做个傻瓜，拥有初学者的心态，回到起点重新开始。如果你不这样做，你只是在变老。

Well, it's hard. There's the analogy around mountain climbing: if you find a mountain and you start climbing, you spend your whole life climbing it, and you get say two-thirds of the way, and then you see the peak is way up there, but you're two-thirds of the way up, you're still really high up. But now to go the rest of the way, you're going to have to go back down to the bottom and look for another path. Nobody wants to do that. People don't want to start over. And it's the nature of later in life that you just don't know the time, so it's very painful to go back down and look for a new path, but that may be the best thing to do. That's why when you look at the greatest artists and creators, they have this ability to start over that nobody else does. Like Elon will be called an idiot and start over doing something brand new that he supposedly is not qualified for. Or when Madonna or Paul Simon or U2 come out with a new album, their existing fans usually hate it because they've adopted a completely new style that they've learned somewhere else. And a lot of times they'll just miss completely. So you have to be willing to be a fool and have that beginner's mind and go back to the beginning to start over. If you're not doing that, you're just getting older.

我的意思是，我甚至不知道这是否是愿意做个傻瓜。对我来说，最令人兴奋的事情是尝试在某件事上变得更好，学习东西。当你在完全陌生的事情上取得渐进式进步时，真的很令人兴奋。

I mean, I don't even know if it's willing to be a fool. To me, the most exciting thing is to try to get better at something, to learn things. It's really exciting when you have incremental progress in something you're completely new to.

是的，我为顿悟时刻而活，那个你把你以前没有联系过的两件事联系在一起的时刻，它们完美而牢固地契合，帮助在你的脑海中形成一个钢铁般的理解框架，然后你可以把其他想法挂在上面。那就是我为之而活的。

Yeah, I live for the aha moment, that moment when you connect two things together that you hadn't connected before, and it fits nicely and solidly, and it helps form a steel framework of understanding in your mind that you can then hang other ideas off of. That's what I live for.

是的，就像好奇心得到了满足。这也是小孩子做的事情。我的小儿子总是问为什么、为什么、为什么、为什么、为什么。我总是试着回答他，但有一半时间我意识到实际上我并不真正理解为什么，我只是有一个背下来的答案给你，但那不是真正的理解。

Yeah, it's like curiosity fulfilled. And it's what little children do too. My little son is always asking why, why, why, why, why. And I always try to answer him, and half the times I realize actually I don't really understand why, I just have a memorized answer for you, but that's not really understanding.

是的，当你和你的孩子说话时，那些奇怪的对话：你说，看，现实是我不知道很多事情。我只是记住了很多事情。有些事情你就是无法知道。你意识到你对一些你深思熟虑过的事情有答案，然后你有一些掩饰，就像活板门：别来这里，这只是掩饰，我并不真正知道生命的意义是什么或者我们怎么来到这里的答案。然后你有一大堆背下来的东西，因为现在很多智力只是文明的外部大脑包。我知道它在那里，我知道答案在那里，我知道如何查找它们，而且我记住了一些。我有点理解钱是如何运作的，美联储印钱，以及这个政府的东西是什么，但并不是真正理解，不足以在大学里教它。

Yeah, those are weird conversations when you're talking to your kids and you say, look, the reality is I don't know a lot of things. I've just memorized a lot of things. And there's certain things that you just can't know. You realize that you have answers for a few things that you've thought through, then you sort of have cover-ups, like trap doors: don't go here, this is just a cover-up, I don't really know the answer to what the meaning of life is or how we got here. And then you've got a whole bunch of memorized stuff, because a lot of intelligence these days is just the external brain pack of civilization. I know it's out there, I know the answers are out there, I know how to look them up, and I've memorized some of them. I kind of understand how money works and the Federal Reserve prints it and what this government thing is, but not really, not good enough to teach it in university.

是的，我认为现在人们对生活中的几乎所有事情都这样做。他们有一页纸的 cheat sheet，一个关于这个非常复杂的主题可能是什么解释的简短摘要。TL;DR：不要给我讲座，给我书；不要给我书，给我博客文章；不要给我博客文章，给我推文；不要给我推文，我已经知道了。

Yeah, I think people do that with almost everything in life these days. They have a one-page cheat, a brief summary of what the explanation for this very complex subject might be. TL;DR: don't give me the lecture, give me the book; don't give me the book, give me the blog post; don't give me the blog post, give me the tweet; don't give me the tweet, I just already know.

我对你的阅读方式非常着迷，因为我以为我那样做有问题，但你并不是真的把一本书读完。你读着读着就拿起另一本，然后根据你的兴致，无论你对什么感兴趣，就那样做。

I got really fascinated by the way you read, because I thought there was something wrong with me by doing that, but you don't really just read a book to completion. You read and then you pick something else up and you just go based on your whims, whatever you're interested in.

嗯，我是在纽约由单亲妈妈抚养长大的，她把当地的图书馆当作日托中心，因为那是一个非常艰难的社区。所以她基本上会说，放学后直接去图书馆，直到我深夜来接你才出来。所以我基本上就住在图书馆里，我读了一切。我读了每一本杂志、每一本象形文字书、每一本书、每一张地图。我只是没有东西可读了。我读了所有东西。所以我克服了这种想法，即读很多书或把一本书读完是一种虚荣指标，因为当人们在 Twitter 或 Instagram 上晒出‘看我正在读的一堆书’的照片时，那是一种炫耀，一种信号。

Well, I was raised by a single mom in New York, and she used the local library as a daycare center because it was a very tough neighborhood. So she would basically say, when you get back from school, go straight to the library and don't come out until I pick you up late at night. So I used to basically live in the library, and I read everything. I read every magazine, every pictograph, every book, every map. I just ran out of stuff to read. I just read everything. So I got over this idea that reading a large number of books or reading a book to completion is a vanity metric, because really when people are putting up photos on Twitter or Instagram of 'look at my pile of books that I'm reading,' it's a show-off thing, it's a signaling thing.

现实是，我宁愿把最好的 100 本书反复读直到吸收，而不是读遍所有书。你的大脑信息容量有限，空间也有限。你得到足够多的建议，它们就会相互抵消为零。书里也有很多废话。所以我不再为了读完一本书而读书；我读书是为了满足真正的好奇心。可以是任何东西——可以是废话，可以是历史、小说、科学、科幻。现在主要是科幻、哲学、科学，因为那是我感兴趣的。但我会为了理解而读。所以一本真正的好书，我会翻阅，不会按顺序连续读，甚至不会读完。我在寻找想法，寻找我不理解的东西。当我发现真正有趣的东西时，我会反思、研究，然后当我厌倦了，就会放下或翻到另一本书。多亏了电子书，我的 Kindle 或 iBooks 里随时都有 50 到 70 本书打开着，我在它们之间跳来跳去。

Reality is, I would rather read the best hundred books over and over again until I absorb them, rather than read all the books. Your brain has finite information in a finite space. You get enough advice, it all cancels to zero. There's a lot of nonsense in books out there too. So I don't read anymore to complete books; I read to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity. And it can be anything—it could be nonsense, it could be history, fiction, science, sci-fi. These days it's mostly sci-fi, philosophy, science, because that's just what I'm interested in. But I will read for understanding. So a really good book, I will flip through; I won't actually read it consecutively in order, and I won't even finish it. I'm looking for ideas, things that I don't understand. And when I find something really interesting, I'll reflect on it, I'll research it, and then when I'm bored of it, I'll drop it or I'll flip to another book. Thanks to electronic books, I've got 50 to 70 books open at any time in my Kindle or iBooks, and I'm just bouncing around between them.

你提到了两个很棒的点。首先，书籍以及几乎所有事物的社交媒体方面——这是一种展示生活的奇怪方式，因为你把生活中最好的方面放在某种玻璃柜里展示。这是你精心培养和策划的不真实的生活版本。我和任何人一样有罪。每个人都有罪。我也有罪。

You brought up two awesome points. First of all, the social media aspect of books and basically anything—it's such a weird way to display your life because you're displaying the best aspects of your life in some sort of a glass case. It's an unrealistic version of your life that you cultivate and curate. I'm as guilty of that as anybody. Everybody's guilty of it. I'm guilty of it too.

是啊，你知道，我的意思是，我每次跑步都会和我的狗摆拍。是的，我们总是在炫耀。这就像不是真正审视自己，而是看别人怎么看你。所以这是一种间接的心理形象，这有点像一种病。因为社交媒体让我们所有人都成了名人，而名人是世界上最痛苦的人，对吧？因为他们有这种强烈的自我形象，被赞美建立起来。每次有人赞美你或我，我们就会说'哦，谢谢'，对吧？那就建立了一个我们是谁的形象。然后一个白痴出现了——十分之一，百分之一——他们可以轻易地摧毁它，因为不需要很多侮辱就能抵消很多赞美。现在你背负着这个沉重的自我形象，很容易受到攻击。因为你出名或知名，人们想攻击你。所以当名人不好；这实际上是个问题。就像我的一条推文——这些都是提醒我自己的——是'你想富有且匿名，而不是贫穷且出名。'

Yeah, you know, I mean, I pose with my dog every time I run. Yeah, we're always signaling. It's like rather than really looking at yourself, you're looking at how other people look at you. So it's this one-remove mental image, and it's kind of a disease. Because social media is making celebrities of all of us, and celebrities are the most miserable people in the world, right? Because they have this strong self-image that gets built up, built up by compliments. Every time somebody pays you or me a compliment and we're like, 'Oh well, thank you,' right? Then that builds up an image of who we are. And then one idiot comes along—one out of ten, one out of a hundred—and they can easily tear it down, because it doesn't take many insults to cancel out a lot of compliments. And now you're carrying around this big weighty self-image, and it's just very easy to be attacked. And because you're famous or well-known, people want to attack you. So being a celebrity is no good; it's actually a problem. Like one of my tweets is—and these are all reminders to myself—is 'You want to be rich and anonymous, not poor and famous.'

当然，这有好处。但我们不会去做；它有你不曾受过训练的不寻常问题，除非你经历过，否则你真的不会理解。你知道，我和我妻子有过这样的对话。我们在谈论那些直接走过来的人，他们不在乎你在做什么。他们不在乎我是否和女儿在一起，是否抱着她，是否在喂她。你知道，我们正在激烈交谈，她在哭——她可能在哭——然后某个哥们会走过来，立刻就要拍照。不在乎；他的需求凌驾于女儿之上。我妻子说，在她认识我之前，她曾认为那是成名的代价的一部分，人们喜欢你，那只是代价的一部分。现在当它打扰她的生活，你知道它打扰孩子和朋友，她现在觉得，'这很烦人。这不健康。这不是与人互动的明智方式。'人们有这种奇怪的挑战，如果你出名了，人们就想接近你，尤其是今天，因为如果他们能拍到你的照片，就能提升他们的社交媒体形象。比如，'嘿，我和 Naval 坐在一起，看那个笑容。'

There are benefits to it, of course. But we wouldn't do it; it has unusual problems that you don't get trained for, and you really will not understand unless you experience it. You know, I was having this conversation with my wife. We were talking about people that just come up to you and they don't care what you're doing. They don't care if I'm with my daughter, if I'm holding her, if I'm feeding her. You know, we're in the middle of an intense conversation, she's crying—she could be crying—and some bro will come over and just immediately have to take a picture. Doesn't care; his needs supersede the daughter. And my wife was saying that before she knew me, she used to think that's just part of the price of being famous, that people like you, that's just part of the price. And now when it interrupts her life and you know it interrupts the children and interrupts friends, she now she's like, 'This is annoying. This is not healthy. This is not a smart way to interact with people.' And people have this weird challenge that if you become famous, people just want to come to you, especially today, because if they can get a photo of you, then that boosts their social media profile. Like, 'Hey, I'm sitting here with Naval, look at that smile.'

匿名是一种特权。另一方面，这是自找的。我的意思是，是我们自己招来的。是的，不过我们当时没想过我们知道那是什么。我们确实知道，但我们继续了。所以是的，这说明我们从中得到了什么。所以你知道，有时候有人在公共场合接近我，我会有点不满，而其他时候我只是想，实际上我真的很感激，你知道我为此努力过，我做对了，这是回报。拥抱它，微笑，咬紧牙关忍受。

Anonymity is a privilege. On the other hand, it's self-inflicted. I mean, we brought it on ourselves. Yeah, we didn't think we knew what it was, though. We did, but we carry on. So yeah, it tells us we are getting something out of it. So you know, there are times when someone will approach me in public and I'm a little resentful, and there are other times I'm just like, actually I'm really grateful that you know I worked for this, I got this right, this is the payoff. Just embrace it, smile, grit and bear it.

但你也有一种不同的名人效应，对吧？你是投资者中的英雄，在——我的意思是，你只是——我是年轻男性极客中的英雄，他们是我最喜欢的一些人。但这不是我认为大多数人想要的那种名人，尤其是大多数男人。

But you have a different sort of celebrity too, right? You're a hero amongst investors and amongst—I mean you've just—I'm a hero among young male geeks, which are some of my favorite people. But that's not the kind of celebrity I think most people set out to get, especially most guys.

对对对。你想要可爱的女性。

Right, right, right. You want the cute females.

是啊，是啊。我看我那些简短的 YouTube 片段；我现在有一个小小的播客，观众大概 95%是男性。哦当然，是的，这非常集中在 18 到 35 岁。

Yeah, yeah. I look at my brief little YouTube clips; I have a tiny little podcast going now, and it's like 95% male. Oh sure, yeah, this is very highly 18 to 35.

对，我们，那个数字是多少？嗯，90 多集了。对，你做了那个，你做了那个很小的播客，每集只有三四分钟的小片段。

Yeah, we, what do we, what is the numbers? Yeah, it's in the 90s. Yeah, you did that one, you do that one very small podcast where you just have small like three or four minute clips.

嗯，事情是这样的：我发了一条推文风暴，标题是《如何不靠运气致富》，在推特上很火。它其实是关于创造财富的。我只是用了个标题党，试图阐述一些永恒的财富创造原则，如果你吸收了这些原则，你就会成为那种能够创造财富、创办企业、赚钱的人。我背后的理论是，每个人都想要三样东西——实际上不止三样，但我们先从三个基本点开始：每个人都想富有，每个人都想快乐，每个人都想健康。我知道有很多人故作清高，说什么“我们不在乎钱”、“我不在乎快乐”、“快乐是蠢人的事”，但面对现实吧：你想变得富有、快乐和健康。这就是三连胜。当然，你还想要内心平静、家庭和睦，所以还有其他东西，但这三样我认为是可以传授的。健身我就不教了——有很多人比我懂得多得多。但我出身贫寒、生活悲惨，现在却相当富有、非常快乐，而且我是通过努力达到的。所以我学到了一些东西，有一些原则。我试图以一种永恒的方式把它们讲出来，让你自己领悟，因为归根结底，我无法真正教给你什么——我只能激励你，也许给你一些提示，让你在事情发生时能记住它们，或者给它们起个名字。所以这个播客最终解释了那条推文风暴。那条推文风暴有 36 或 38 条推文，非常出名，被翻译成几十种语言。这些原则是我在很小的时候，大概 13、14 岁时为自己总结的，我在脑子里装了 30 年，一直在践行。随着时间的推移，我意识到，可悲或可喜的是，我真正擅长的是审视企业，找出最大杠杆点，从而创造财富并获取一部分财富，而且是以一种非常长期的方式——不是让银行家搞垮经济然后自己归零，而是创办企业、帮助他人、提供价值，尤其是在现代科技和我们所处的这个无限杠杆时代。所以播客就是逐条解释每条推文。这些是三四五分钟的小片段。我不喜欢重复说同一件事，也不喜欢详细解释。我觉得如果你有原创且有趣的东西要说，你就说出来——否则可能别人已经说得更好了。所以那个播客力求信息密集、非常简洁、高冲击力、永恒，并且包含我认为你需要的一切信息。这些原则：如果你吸收了它们，并努力十年，你就能得到你想要的。所以我已经做了关于财富创造的那一集。我打算尝试做一集关于快乐的——这个词很大，但快乐、内心平静、安宁等等。因为你不希望成为那种在生活中成功却紧张、压力大、不快乐，并给亲人和自己留下一串情感创伤的人——这种情况其实更常见。

Yeah, so what it was: I did a tweet storm called "How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky," and it got pretty popular on Twitter. It's really about wealth creation. I just used the clickbaity title, and it's trying to basically lay out timeless principles of wealth creation that if you absorb them, you become the kind of person who can create wealth, create business, make money. My theory behind that is there are three things everybody wants—actually more than three, but let's start with three basics: everybody wants to be wealthy, everybody wants to be happy, and everybody wants to be fit. I know there's a lot of virtue signaling, like "we don't want money" or "I don't care about being happy" and "happiness is for stupid people," but let's face it: you want to be rich, happy, and healthy. That's the trifecta. Of course, you also want an internally calm state of mind, a loving household, so there are other things, but those three I think can actually be taught. Fitness I'm not going to teach—there are a lot of people who know a heck of a lot more about fitness and health than I do. But I was born poor and miserable, and now I'm pretty well off and very happy, and I worked at those. So I've learned a few things; there are some principles. I try to lay them out in a timeless manner where you can figure it out yourself, because at the end of the day, I can't really teach anything—I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember things when they happen or put a name to them. So this podcast ended up explaining this tweet storm. There's a tweet storm with like 36 or 38 tweets, got very famous, translated into dozens of languages. These were principles I came up with for myself when I was really young, around 13 or 14, and I've been carrying them in my head for 30 years, living them. Over time, I realized that sadly or fortunately, the thing I got really good at was looking at businesses and figuring out the point of maximum leverage to actually create wealth and capture some of that, and do it in a very long-term way—not let the banker crash the economy and get wiped out, but build businesses, help people, and provide value, especially applied to modern technology and leverage in this age of infinite leverage we live in. So the podcast is just explaining each tweet. These are little three, four, five-minute snippets. I don't like to say the same thing twice; I don't like to explain in detail. I feel like if you have something original and interesting to say, you should say it—otherwise it's probably been said better. So that podcast tries to be information-dense, very concise, high-impact, timeless, and has all the information I think you need. The principles: if you absorb these and work hard over 10 years, you get what you want. So I've got the one on wealth creation. I'm going to attempt to do one on happiness—it's a big word, but happiness, inner peace, calm, and all that. Because what you want is not to be the guy who succeeds in life while being high-strung, high-stress, unhappy, and leaving a trail of emotional wreckage with you and your loved ones—which is more common than not.

对，因为你必须专注，而且很难样样精通。你想成为那种冷静、安静、不挣扎就能达到目标的人。你想成为那种在危机发生时，房间里最冷静、最镇定，却仍能找出正确答案的人。你之前说过，你觉得快乐是可以学习的，你甚至可以仅仅通过接受自己是一个快乐的人的心态，并向朋友宣告这一点，来教会自己快乐，这样你就建立了一种社会契约：“我是一个快乐的人，我必须做到这一点。”

Yeah, because you got to focus, and it's very hard to be great at everything. You want to be the guy or the gal who gets there calmly, quietly, without struggle. You want to be the person who, when there's a crisis going on, is the calmest, coolest cucumber in the room who still figures out the correct answer. One of the things you were saying is that you feel like happiness is something you can learn, and you can teach yourself to be happy even just by adopting the mindset that you are a happy person and proclaiming that to your friends, so you've sort of developed a social contract: "I'm a happy person and I have to live up to that."

对，我有几百种技巧。但我是怎么发展出那个的呢？嗯，存在社会一致性，对吧？人类有一种需求，要与自己过去的声明高度一致。我创办第一家科技公司的方式是：我在一家大公司工作，我告诉每个人我要去创办一家公司。我说：“我讨厌这个地方，我要做自己的事，我要成为一名成功的企业家。”六个月过去了，九个月过去了，然后人们开始问：“你还在这儿？我以为你要去创办公司。你在撒谎吗？”这就是潜台词。所以我们都知道这个，对吧？社会契约非常强大。如果你想戒酒，但你不是认真的，你会说：“我要少喝点，每晚只喝一杯，我只在周末喝。”你对自己说。但如果你是认真的，你会在 Facebook 上宣布，告诉所有朋友，告诉你的妻子，你会说：“我戒酒了，我把家里所有的酒都扔了，你再也不会看到我喝酒了。”当你这么说的时候，你知道你是认真的。所以我认为很多都是我们做出的选择，快乐就是其中之一。这么说不太受欢迎，因为有些人确实抑郁，化学原因或其他什么，还有些人不相信这是可能的，因为这给他们带来了责任：“哦，如果我不快乐，那就是我的错。”我不是那个意思。但我是说，就像健身可以是一种选择，健康可以是一种选择，营养可以是一种选择，努力工作和赚钱可以是一种选择一样，快乐也是一种选择。“如果你这么聪明，为什么你不快乐？为什么你还没想明白？”这是我对所有那些自认为很聪明、很有能力的人的挑战。如果你这么聪明、这么有能力，为什么你改变不了这个？

Yeah, I've got hundreds of techniques. But how did I develop that one? Well, there's social consistency, right? Humans have a need to be highly consistent with their past pronouncements. The way I started my first tech company was: I was working inside a larger organization, and I told everybody that I was going to go start a company. I was like, "I hate this place, I'm going to do my own thing, I'm going to be a successful entrepreneur." Six months pass, nine months pass, then people start: "You're still here? I thought you were going to go start a company. Are you lying?" That was the implication. So we kind of know this, right? Social contracts are very powerful. If you want to give up drinking, and you're not serious about it, you'll say, "I'm going to cut back, I'm going to have only one drink a night, I'm going to only drink on weekends." You tell yourself. But if you're serious, you'll announce it on Facebook, you'll tell all your friends, you'll tell your wife, you'll say, "I'm done drinking, I'm throwing everything out of the house, you'll never see me drink again." When you say that, you know you're serious. So I think a lot of these are choices we make, and happiness is just one of those choices. This is unpopular to say because there are people who are actually depressed, chemically or what have you, and there are people who don't believe it's possible because it creates a responsibility on them: "Oh, now if I'm not happy, that's my fault." I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that just like fitness can be a choice, health can be a choice, nutrition can be a choice, working hard and making money can be a choice, happiness is also a choice. "If you're so smart, how come you aren't happy? How come you haven't figured that out?" That's my challenge to all the people who think they're so smart and so capable. If you're so smart and capable, why can't you change this?

但有一群人实际上以痛苦为乐。追求卓越和成功超越了所有其他追求，在他们眼中，那是巅峰、顶点、最重要的事情。这不是一个权衡。

There are a bunch of people though that actually take pleasure in being miserable. There's something about the pursuit of excellence and of success that supersedes all other pursuits, that in their eyes it is the peak, the pinnacle, the most important thing. It's not a trade-off.

我会争辩说，如果——现在当我说快乐时，快乐是那种含义无数的词之一，对吧？就像爱，对吧？那是什么意思？“我爱奶酪。”对。我要更严格地定义它。所以让我们回到欲望。这是非常古老的佛教智慧。我没说什么原创的东西。但对我来说，欲望是你与自己签订的一份合同，约定在得到你想要的东西之前，你一直不快乐。

I would argue that if—now when I say happy, happy is one of those words that means a zillion different things, right? It's like love, right? What does that mean? "I love cheese." Yeah. I'm going to define it a little more tightly. So let's go back to desire. This is old, old Buddhist wisdom. I'm not saying anything original. But desire to me is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

你允许自己不快乐，直到得到想要的东西。我把这句话放在心里。所以当我不开心时，我会寻找背后未被满足的欲望。有欲望是可以的。你是生物，来到地球上，必须做点什么，必须有欲望，有使命。但不要太多。不要无意识地、随意地捡起欲望，不要有成千上万个。我的咖啡太凉了，味道不对，我坐得不舒服，哦我希望它热一点，我的狗在草坪上拉屎了，我不喜欢那样。不管是什么，只选择一个压倒性的欲望。为那个受苦是可以的，但其他的都要放下，这样你才能平静、安宁、放松，然后表现更好。

You allow yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. I keep that in front of my mind. So when I'm unhappy about something, I look for what is the underlying desire that I have that's not being fulfilled. It's okay to have desires. You're a biological creature, you're put on this earth, you have to do something, you have to have desires, you have a mission. But don't have too many. Don't pick them up unconsciously, don't pick them up randomly, don't have thousands of them. My coffee is too cold, doesn't taste quite right, I'm not sitting perfectly, oh I wish it was warmer, you know, my dog pooped on the lawn, I didn't like that. Whatever it is, pick your one overwhelming desire. It's okay to suffer over that one, but on all the others you want to let them go, so you can be calm and peaceful and relaxed, and then you'll perform a better job.

大多数人，当你不快乐时，比如抑郁的人，并不是因为他们头脑非常清晰冷静。他们脑子里太忙了，自我意识太强。他们总是坐在室内，脑子不停地工作，想得太多。如果你想成为高性能运动员，如果你总是癫痫发作，总是抽搐、乱跑、跳跃、四肢失控，你能成为多好的运动员？同样，如果你想在商业中有效，你需要清晰、冷静、镇定、从容的头脑。沃伦·巴菲特整天打桥牌，在阳光下散步。他不会坐在那里不停地往脑子里塞信息，为每件小事激动。

Most people, when you're unhappy like a depressed person, it's not that they have a very clear calm mind. They're too busy in their mind, their sense of self is too strong. They're sitting indoors all the time, their mind working working working, they're thinking too much. Well, if you want to be a high performance athlete, how good of an athlete are you going to be if you're always having epileptic seizures? If you're always like twitching and running around and jumping and your limbs are flailing out of control? The same way, if you want to be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, cool, collected mind. Warren Buffett plays bridge all day long and goes for walks in the sun. He doesn't sit around like constantly loading his brain with non-stop information and getting worked up about every little thing.

我们生活在一个无限杠杆的时代。我的意思是，你的行动可以放大一千倍，无论是通过播客广播、投资资本、让别人为你工作，还是写代码。因此，好的决策的影响比以前大得多，因为现在你可以通过决策或代码影响成千上万的人。所以清晰的头脑带来更好的判断，带来更好的结果。所以一个快乐、平静、安宁的人会做出更好的决策，得到更好的结果。所以如果你想在巅峰状态运作，你必须学会驯服你的头脑，就像你必须学会驯服你的身体一样。

We live in an age of infinite leverage. What I mean by that is that your actions can be multiplied a thousand fold, either by broadcasting on a podcast, or by investing capital, or by having people work for you, or by writing code. So because of that, the impacts of good decision making are much higher than they used to be, because now you can influence thousands or millions of people through your decisions or your code. So a clear mind leads to better judgment, leads to a better outcome. So a happy, calm, peaceful person will make better decisions and have better outcomes. So if you want to operate at peak performance, you have to learn how to tame your mind, just like you have to learn how to tame your body.

我喜欢你说的。沃伦·巴菲特可能不是最好的例子，因为他每天大概喝六瓶可乐，主要吃麦当劳，但还活着。这说明低压力更重要……没人看起来……他多大了？他年纪很大了。查理·芒格大概九十多岁了吧？对，他活得很久。我想知道沃伦在做什么？他肯定知道那对他不好，但很糟糕，他不在乎。他不在乎。我觉得他只是有点压力。对，压力就是那样。所以他享受可乐，可能……也许有取舍，对吧？也许他享受垃圾食品和可乐，那种心灵的愉悦，可能比只吃小麦草汁和沙拉、对每件事都超级紧张要好。就像如果你需要一杯红酒来减压和冷静，那可能比你失控要好，对吧？

I love what you're saying. Warren Buffett might not be the best example because he drinks like I think six Cokes a day and he eats mostly McDonald's and he's still alive somehow. So that shows you that low stress is more... nobody looks like... how old is he? I mean he's a fairly old man. Charlie Munger's I think in his 90s, right? Yeah, he's made it really far. I wonder what Warren's doing, you know? I mean, he's got to know that's bad for him, but it's terrible, he doesn't care. He doesn't care. I think he's just a little stressed. Yeah, stress is right. So he just enjoys that Coca-Cola and that's probably... maybe there is a trade-off, right? Like maybe him enjoying that junk food and that Coke, just that pleasing of the mind, is maybe better than him just eating wheatgrass shots and salads and just being super worked up about everything. It's like if you need your glass of red wine to de-stress and calm down, that's probably better than you flying off the rails, right?

对，对。我认为这不仅适用于商业，可能适用于任何追求。我喜欢你说的，允许那一件事成为你的痴迷，但其他一切……学会放手，选择你的战斗。

Right, right. And I think that that's applicable not just in business but in probably any pursuit. And I like what you're saying about allow that one thing to be your obsession but everything else just... learn how to let things go, pick your battles.

我们喜欢认为世界是线性的：我投入八小时工作，就得到八小时产出。对吧？但事实并非如此。经营街角杂货店的人工作和你我一样努力，甚至更努力。他得到多少产出？你做什么、和谁做、怎么做，远比工作努力程度重要。对吧？产出是非线性的，取决于你投入工作的质量。正确的工作方式像狮子。你和我不是牛。我们不是整天吃草的，对吧？我们注定像狮子一样狩猎。在杂食性发展中，我们更接近肉食动物而非草食动物。我们不告诉素食者这个。是的，抱歉。我希望那些都管用。我不想吃肉。未来一代会视我们比奴隶主更坏，因为我们正在对动物进行大屠杀。但他们会有味道更好、更健康的人造肉，比真肉好。据说是这样。

And we like to think that we view the world as linear, which is I'm going to put in eight hours of work, I'm going to get back eight hours of output. Right? It doesn't work that way. The guy running the corner grocery store is working just as hard or harder than you and me. How much output is he getting? What you do, who you do it with, how you do it, way more important than how hard you work. Right? Outputs are non-linear based on the quality of the work that you put in. The right way to work is like a lion. You don't... you and I are not like cows. We're not meant to graze all day, right? We're meant to hunt like lions. We're closer to carnivores in our omnivorous development than we are to herbivores. Um, we don't tell vegans that. Yeah, sorry. I wish all that stuff worked. I don't want to eat meat. This future generation will look back at us as worse than slavers, you know, because the holocaust we're committing with the animals. But they'll have artificial meats that taste and are healthier, is better than the real thing. So allegedly, allegedly.

但作为现代知识工作者，作为智力运动员，你要像运动员一样运作：刻苦训练，然后冲刺，然后休息，然后重新评估，获得反馈循环，然后再训练，再冲刺，再休息，再评估。那种认为每天按相同时间工作就能获得线性产出的想法……那是机器。机器应该朝九晚五工作。人类不是为朝九晚五而生的。

But so as a modern knowledge worker, as an intellectual athlete, you want to function like an athlete, which means you train hard, then you sprint, then you rest, then you reassess, you get your feedback loop, then you train some more, then you sprint again, then you rest, then you reassess. This idea that you're going to have linear output just by cranking every day at the same amount of time... that's machines. You know, machines should be working nine to five. Humans are not meant to work nine to five.

不，我完全同意。但对为别人工作的人来说，没有那个选择。所以不幸的是，这就是问题所在，对吧？这基本上是我那串推文的起点：首先，如果你想赚钱，你不会通过出租时间致富。即使律师和医生每小时收费三、四、五百美元，他们也不会变富，因为他们的生活方式随着收入慢慢提升，而且储蓄不够。他们就是没有退休的能力。所以你必须做的第一件事是拥有一部分生意。你需要有股权，无论是作为所有者、投资者、股东，还是建立属于你的品牌，来获得财务自由。

No, I agree wholeheartedly. But that's it for people that are working for someone, there's not really that option. So that's unfortunately the rub, right? That's kind of where my tweet storm starts, which is first of all, the first thing if you're going to make money is that you're not going to get rich renting out your time. Even lawyers and doctors who are charging three, four, five hundred an hour, they're not getting rich because their lifestyle is slowly ramping up along with their income and they're not saving enough. They just don't have that ability to retire. So the first thing you have to do is you have to own a piece of a business. You need to have equity, either as an owner, an investor, shareholder, or a brand that you're building that accrues to you, to gain your financial freedom.

是的，我对你提到的另一个关于为自己工作的事情非常着迷：你认为在未来，无论是 50 年还是 100 年后，几乎每个人都会为自己工作。我相信你的说法是信息时代将逆转工业时代。

Yeah, and I was really fascinated by another thing that you were bringing up about working for yourself, that you feel in the future, whether it's 50 or 100 years from now, virtually everyone is going to be working for themselves. And I believe the way you put it is that the information age is going to reverse the industrial age.

是的。如果你回到狩猎采集时代，我们是如何进化的，我们基本上为自己工作。我们在部落内沟通合作，但每个猎人、每个采集者独立，然后与家庭单位合并资源。但没有老板等级制度。在农业时代，我们变得更有等级，因为要经营农场，但即使那些也大多是家庭农场。是工业工作，工厂创造了这种模式：成千上万的人一起做一件事，有老板、时间表和上班时间。现实是，如果你必须……我不在乎。

Yeah. If you go back to hunter-gatherer times, how we evolved, we basically work for ourselves. We communicated and cooperated within tribes, but each hunter, each gatherer stood on their own and then combined their resources with the family unit. But there was no boss hierarchy. Hierarchy hierarchy, or you're like the third middle manager down. In the farming age, we became a little bit more hierarchical as we had to run farms, but even those were still mostly family farms. It's industrial work with factories that sort of created this model of thousands of people working together on one thing and having bosses and schedules and times to show up. The reality is, if you have to... I don't care.

你有多富有我不在乎。就算你是顶级华尔街银行家，如果有人必须告诉你什么时候上班、穿什么、怎么表现，你就不是自由的人，你并不真正富有。我们现在处于这种模式，认为一切都关乎雇佣和工作，其内在含义是我必须为别人工作。但信息时代正在打破这种模式。

How rich you are I don't care. Whether you're like a top Wall Street banker, if you have to go—if somebody has to tell you when to be at work and what to wear and how to behave—you're not a free person, you're not actually rich. So we're in this model now where we think it's all about employment and jobs, and intrinsic in that is that I have to work for somebody else. But the information age is breaking that down.

罗纳德·科斯是一位经济学家，他提出了科斯定理，一个非常著名的定理。但它基本上只是讨论为什么公司会是现在这个规模：为什么公司是一个人而不是十个人，不是一百个人，不是一千个人？这与内部交易成本和外部交易成本有关。假设我想做某事。假设我正在盖房子，需要有人来提供木材。我是开发商，对吧？我希望那是公司的一部分，还是希望那是外部供应商？这在很大程度上取决于与外部进行交易与内部进行交易的难度。如果每次外部签订合同太难，我就会把它内部化。如果外部做起来很容易，而且是一次性的事情，我宁愿把它放在外部。信息技术使这些外部交易变得越来越容易。与人沟通变得容易得多。零工经济：我可以给你汇小额款项，我可以通过应用程序雇佣你，之后我可以给你评分。所以我们看到公司正在原子化。我们看到公司的最佳规模正在缩小。这在硅谷最为明显：大量初创公司不断涌现，从大公司中剥离小块业务，并将其变成巨大的市场。所以克雷格列表上看起来很小的度假租赁市场，现在突然爆发成了爱彼迎。一个例子，这是个很好的例子。

Ronald Coase is an economist who has the Coase theorem, a very famous theorem. But it basically just talks about why is a company the size that it is: why is a company one person instead of 10 people, instead of 100, instead of a thousand? And it has to do with the internal transaction costs versus the external transaction costs. Let's say I want to do something. Let's say I'm building a house and I need someone to come in and provide the lumber. I'm a developer, right? Do I want that to be part of my company or do I want that to be an external provider? A lot of it just depends on how hard it is to do that transaction with someone externally versus internally. If it's too hard to keep doing the contract every time externally, I'll bring that in-house. If it's easy to do externally and it's a one-off kind of thing, I'd rather keep it out of the house. Well, information technology is making it easier and easier to do these transactions externally. It's becoming much easier to communicate with people. Gig economy: I can send you small amounts of money, I can hire you through an app, I can rate you afterwards. So we're seeing an atomization of the firm. We're seeing the optimal size of the firm shrinking. It's most obvious in Silicon Valley: tons and tons of startups constantly coming up and shaving off little pieces of businesses from large companies and turning them into huge markets. So what looked like the small little vacation rental market on Craigslist is now suddenly blown up into Airbnb. One example, that's a great example.

但我认为我们将看到的是，无论是 10 年、20 年、50 年还是 100 年后，高质量的工作将会出现。我们不是在谈论开优步；我们谈论的是超级高质量的工作将以零工形式出现，你早上醒来，手机嗡嗡响，你会有五个不同的工作，来自过去与你合作过的人或经人推荐。这有点像好莱坞已经运作的方式，他们为项目组织的方式。你决定是否接受这个项目。合同当场就在那里。你得到一定数额的报酬。你每天或每周被评分。钱到账。然后当你完成工作，你就关掉它，去塔希提或任何你想度过接下来三个月的地方。我认为聪明的人已经开始意识到互联网实现了这一点，他们开始越来越多地远程工作，按自己的日程、自己的时间、自己的地点、和自己的朋友、以自己的方式工作。而这实际上是我们最高产的方式。

But what I think we're going to see is, whether it's 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now, high-quality work will be available. We're not talking about driving an Uber; we're talking about super high-quality work will be available in a gig fashion, where you'll wake up in the morning, your phone will buzz, and you'll have five different jobs from people who have worked with you in the past or have been referred to. It's kind of like how Hollywood already works a little bit, with how they're organized for a project. You decide whether to take the project or not. The contract is right there on the spot. You get paid a certain amount. You get rated every day or every week. You get the money delivered. And then when you're done working, you turn it off and you go to Tahiti or wherever you want to spend the next three months. And I think the smart people have already started figuring out that the internet enables this, and they're starting to work more and more remotely on their own schedule, on their own time, on their own place, with their own friends, in their own way. And that's actually how we are the most productive.

所以信息革命通过使沟通、连接和合作更容易，让我们能够回到为自己工作。这是我的终极梦想。即使我经营一家公司，有员工，我总是告诉那些人：‘嘿，当你准备好了，我会帮你创办你自己的公司。’因为我认为这是最高的召唤。也许不是每个人都能达到那个境界，但即使我们在一个十人公司或二十人公司工作，也比在千人公司、万人公司工作要好得多。所以这种我们像工厂机器里的齿轮一样专业化、必须通过死记硬背或指令做事的想法将会消失。我们将回到成为小群体、创造性的个人团队，去执行任务。当这些任务完成时，我们收钱、被评分，然后休息和重新评估，直到准备好下一次冲刺。

So the information revolution, by making it easier to communicate, connect, and cooperate, is allowing us to go back to working for ourselves. And that is my ultimate dream. Even when I run a company and I have employees, I always tell those people, 'Hey, I'm going to help you start your company when you're ready,' because I think that's the highest calling. Maybe not everybody will get there, but it would be fine if we were even working a ten-person company or twenty-person company is way better than working in a thousand-person company, a ten-thousand-person company. So this idea that we're all factory-like cogs in a machine who are specialized and have to do things by rote memorization or instruction, it's going to go away. And we're going to go back to being small groups of creative bands of individuals setting out to do missions. And when those missions are done, we collect our money, we get rated, and then we rest and reassess until we're ready for the next sprint.

有没有关于幸福感和公司规模的研究？

Has there ever been a study done on happiness and as it regards the size of companies?

据我所知没有。但对我来说很明显，就是很明显：公司越小，你会越快乐。你的人际关系更人性化，你运作的规则更少，更灵活，更有创造力，你更表现得像一个人，仅仅因为你能做多件事。

Not that I'm aware. But to me it's obvious, it's just obvious: the smaller the company, the happier you're going to be. The more human your relations are, the less you have rules to operate under, the more flexible, the more creative, the more you behave like a human just because you're able to do multiple things.

是的，这让我想到一个现在经常被提起的话题：全民基本收入，伴随着即将到来的自动化末日。这是安德鲁·杨（正在竞选总统）所描绘的。我坐下来和他谈过。这很有说服力，他是个非常聪明的人，他自己也是企业家。当他开始谈论自动化将如何大规模消除就业岗位、让人们陷入困境时，你怎么看？我知道你是个思考未来的人，我要就这个流行观点发表看法。

Yeah, this brings me to what is a subject that keeps getting brought up nowadays: universal basic income, with the oncoming apocalypse of automation. This is how it's being portrayed by Andrew Yang, who's running for president. I sat down and talked to him about it. It's very compelling, and he's a very smart guy, and he's an entrepreneur himself. And when he starts talking about automation and how it's going to just eliminate massive amounts of jobs and leave people stranded, what do you think? I know you're a guy who thinks about the future, and I'm going to take this popular point of view on this.

我不这么认为。我认为这是对不存在的问题的非解决方案。我的意思是，自动化从远古时代就一直在发生。电的出现让很多人失业了，是吗？没错。很多人挑水、点灯之类的工作。工厂、应用程序、每一样东西都曾引起这种担忧。甚至印刷机也是如此。绝对是的。而它所做的就是解放人们去做新的创造性工作。所以问题不是：自动化会消除工作吗？没有有限数量的工作。我们不是像围着分石器时代以来就有的同一批工作。所以显然新工作正在被创造，而且通常是更好的工作、更有创造性的工作。所以问题是：这个转变会多快发生？哪些工作会被消除，哪些工作会被创造？向前看是不可能预测会创造什么工作的。如果我十年前告诉你播客主持人会是一份工作，或者玩电子游戏会是一份工作，或者解说电子游戏会是一份工作，你会把我笑出房间。那些是荒谬的工作，但我们现在就在这里。所以社会总会创造新工作。文明创造新工作，但不可能预测那些工作是什么。所以问题是：这个转变有多快？现实是，尽管每个人都在谈论这个自动化末日，我们却处于创纪录的低失业率。解释一下。转变在哪里？唐纳德·特朗普？这很难。我只是说，我在数字中看不到。我没有看到它实际发生。问题是：你能多快重新培训人们？所以这是一个教育问题。

I don't. I think it's a non-solution to a non-problem. And I mean that in the sense that automation has been happening since the dawn of time. Electricity came along, that put a lot of people out of work, did it? Right. A lot of people carrying buckets of water and lighting lamps and all those kinds of things. And this was the concern with factories as well, apps, everything. Literally every single thing that comes, even the printing press. Absolutely. And what it does is it frees people up for new creative work. So the question is not: is automation going to eliminate jobs? There is no finite number of jobs. We're not like sitting around dividing up the same jobs that we've been around since the Stone Age. So obviously new jobs are being created, and they're usually better jobs, more creative jobs. So the question is: how quickly is this transition going to happen, and what kinds of jobs will be eliminated and what kinds of jobs will be created? It's impossible looking forward to predict what kinds of jobs will be created. If I told you 10 years ago that podcaster was going to be a job, or that playing video games is going to be a job, or commentating on video games is going to be a job, you would have laughed me out of the room. Those are nonsense jobs, but yet here we are. So society will always create new jobs. Civilization creates new jobs, but it's impossible to predict what those jobs are. So the question is: how quickly is that transition happening? Well, the reality is, even though everybody keeps talking about this automation apocalypse, we're at a record low unemployment. Explain that. Where's the transition? Donald Trump? That's hard. All I'm saying is, it's—I don't see it in the numbers. I don't see it actually happening. The question is: how quickly can you retrain people? So it's an education problem.

全民基本收入的问题——全民基本收入有几个问题。一个是你在创造一个直接的——你在创造一个直接滑向社会主义的滑坡，对吧？

The problem with UBI—there's a couple of problems with UBI. One is you're creating a straight—you're creating a slippery slide transfer straight into socialism, right?

一旦人们可以投票给自己发钱，加上民主制度，对吧？底层 51%的人把顶层 49%的一切都投票给自己，只是时间问题。而且，顺便说一句，滑坡谬误并不是谬误。我知道人们喜欢这么说，但他们没有想清楚。一旦你在民主制度中开始有这样的直接转移机制，你基本上就是在用资本主义——经济增长的引擎——做这件事。你也在迫使企业家离开，或者告诉他们不要来这里。我看到一个估算，给每人每年 1.5 万美元的基本收入，将消耗当前 GDP 的四分之三。当然，随着所有企业家逃离，GDP 会相应萎缩，所以你基本上会让国家破产。

The moment people can start voting themselves money combined with a democracy, right? It's just a matter of time before the bottom 51% vote themselves everything from the top 49%. And by the way, the slippery slope fallacy is not a fallacy. I know people like saying that, but they haven't thought it through. The moment you start having a direct transfer mechanism like that in a democracy, you're basically doing it with capitalism, which is the engine of economic growth. You're also forcing the entrepreneurs out or telling them not to come here. The estimate I saw for $15,000 a year basic income for everybody would be three quarters of current GDP. And of course, GDP would shrink in response as all the entrepreneurs fled, so you would essentially bankrupt the country.

UBI 的另一个问题是，运气不好的人并不是在寻求施舍。这不仅仅是钱的问题，还关乎地位和意义。一旦我开始给你钱，让你领救济金，我就降低了你的地位，让你成为二等公民。所以我必须给你意义，而意义来自教育和能力。我必须教人钓鱼，而不是把腐烂的残羹剩饭扔给他，说‘来，吃剩饭吧。’所以它没有解决意义问题。最后，给每个人发 1.5 万美元是荒谬的。你需要进行经济状况调查。没有理由给你和我发钱。所以你最终又回到了福利体系，在那里你必须弄清楚谁需要、谁不需要。

Another issue with UBI is that people who are down on their luck are not looking for handouts. It's not just about money; it's also about status, it's about meaning. The moment I start giving money to you and put you on the dole, I've lowered your status, I've made you a second-class citizen. So I have to give you meaning, and meaning comes through education and capability. I have to teach a man to fish, not basically throw your rotting leftover carcasses at him and say 'here, eat the scraps.' So it doesn't solve the meaning problem. And lastly, it's nonsense to hand $15,000 out to everybody. You want to means-test people. There's no reason to give it to you and me. So you end up back towards the welfare system, where you do have to figure out who needs it and who doesn't.

我认为更好的途径是，我们实际上建立一套人们必需的基本生存服务，并通过基于技术的自动化大量提供这些服务。所以提供基本住房、基本食物、基本交通、高速互联网接入、口袋里的手机。这些是你想给人们的东西。

I think the better route is that we actually establish a set of basic subsistence services that you have to have, and we provide those in abundance through technology-based automation. So get basic housing, get basic food, get basic transportation, get high-speed internet access, get a phone in your pocket. Those are the kinds of things you want to give people.

最后，关于自动化的速度，我认为我们可以非常快速地教育人们。今天我们有一个误区，认为成年人无法再教育。我们把教育看作是你上学、大学毕业就结束了，不再有教育。但这是错误的。现在有所有这些很棒的在线训练营和编程学校，有些甚至会付钱让你去学习。你可以大规模地教育人们，并将他们教育成创造性职业。

And finally, in terms of the rate of automation, I think we can educate people very quickly. One of the myths that we have today is that adults can't be re-educated. We view education as this thing where you go to school, you come out when you're out of college, and you're done, no more education. Well, that's wrong. You have all these great online boot camps and coding schools coming up, ones that will even pay you to go there now. You can educate people en masse, and you can educate them into creative professions.

那些谈论 AI 自动化编程的人从未真正写过严肃的代码。编程就是思考；它是自动化的结构性思考。一个能像人类一样好或更好编程的 AI，就是一个刚刚接管了世界的 AI。那是终局，那是人类物种的终结。我也可以给你理由，为什么我认为这也不会发生。

People who are talking about AI automating programming have never really written serious code. Coding is thinking; it's automatic structure thinking. An AI that can program as well or better than humans is an AI that just took over the world. That's endgame, that's the end of the human species. And I can give you arguments why I don't think that's coming either.

那些认为——我知道我在这个辩论中与一些非常著名的人持相反立场——但我们离通用 AI 还差得很远，有生之年都不会。你真的不必担心，甚至在我们有生之年。这被过分夸大了。这是卡珊德拉情结——你知道，谈论世界末日很有趣——加上上帝情结，就像那些失去宗教信仰的人，在某种历史终结中寻找意义。

People who are thinking—and I know I take the opposite side from some very famous people in this debate—but we are nowhere near close to general AI, not in our lifetimes. You don't have to worry about it even in our lifetimes, really. It's so overblown. It's a combination of Cassandra complex—you know, it's fun to talk about the end of the world—combined with a god complex, like people who have lost religion so they're looking for meaning in some kind of end of history.

我认为 AI 不会很快到来的原因是，今天所谓的 AI 的许多进步都是我们所说的狭义 AI。它们实际上是模式识别、机器学习，用来弄清楚‘屏幕上的那个物体是什么？’或者‘如何在所有噪声中找到这个信号？’没有任何接近我们所说的创造性思维来真正模拟通用智能。你会遇到各种问题。首先，我们根本不知道大脑是如何工作的。第二，我们甚至从未模拟过草履虫或变形虫，更不用说人脑了。第三，有一种假设认为所有的计算都发生在细胞层面、神经元层面，而自然是非常节俭的；它利用一切可用的东西。细胞内有很多机器在进行计算，是智能的，但没有被考虑进去。最好的估计是，需要 50 年的摩尔定律才能近乎完美地模拟细胞内发生的事情，大概需要 100 年才能构建一个能够模拟细胞内的大脑。所以，说‘我只模拟神经元的开或关’，然后用它来构建人脑，是过于简单化的。

The reason why I don't think AI is coming anytime soon is because a lot of the advances in so-called AI today are what we call narrow AI. They're really pattern recognition, machine learning to figure out like 'what is that object on the screen?' or 'how do you find this signal in all that noise?' There's nothing approaching what we call creative thinking to actually model general intelligence. You run into all kinds of problems. First, we don't know how the brain works at all. Number two, we've never even modeled a paramecium or an amoeba, let alone a human brain. Number three, there's this assumption that all of the computation is going at the cellular level, at the neuron level, whereas nature is very parsimonious; it uses everything at its disposal. There's a lot of machinery inside the cell that is doing calculations, that is intelligent, that isn't accounted for. And the best estimates are it would take 50 years of Moore's law before we can simulate what's going on inside a cell near perfectly, and probably 100 years before we can build a brain that can simulate inside the cells. So putting it at saying 'I'm just going to model neurons on or off' and then use that to build a human brain is overly simplistic.

此外，我认为不存在所谓的通用智能。每种智能都是在其所处环境的背景下具有情境性的。所以你必须围绕它进化出一个环境。所以我认为很多兜售通用 AI 的人，举证责任在他们身上。我没有看到任何东西让我觉得我们正在接近通用 AI。相反，我们是在用大量数据解决确定性的、封闭的、有限的问题。但谈论这个并不性感。

Furthermore, I would posit there's no such thing as general intelligence. Every intelligence is contextual within the context of the environment that it's in. So you have to evolve an environment around it. So I think a lot of people who are peddling general AI, the burden of proof is on them. I haven't seen anything that would lead me to indicate we're approaching general AI. Instead, we're solving deterministic, closed-set, finite problems using large amounts of data. But it's not sexy to talk about that.

你是在谈论镜像细胞的实际能力，还是在谈论重建实际机制？细胞内和生物有机体中发生了什么？

If you're talking about mirroring the actual abilities of cells, or are you talking about recreating the actual mechanism? What is going on inside cells and biological organisms?

是的，我们就是不知道智能是如何工作的。我们完全不知道。所以大多数 AI 方法基本上是说，我们将尝试模拟大脑的工作方式，但模型是在神经元层面，即‘这个神经元开启，那个神经元关闭，组合它们的信号。’但我说神经元是一个细胞。在细胞内部，有所有这些机器在运行神经元，这也是智能装置的一部分。你不能只是忽略它并抽象掉它。你必须建模到细胞内层面。它也是生物有机体本身的一部分。

Yeah, we just don't know how intelligence works. We literally have no idea. So most of the AI approaches basically say we're going to try and model how the brain works, but the model at the neuron level, which is saying 'this neuron is on, that neuron is off, combining their signal.' But I'm saying the neuron is a cell. Inside the cell, there's all this machinery going on that's operating the neuron that is also part of the intelligence apparatus. You can't just ignore that and abstract that out. You have to model it down to the inside-the-cell level. It's also a part of the biological organism itself.

正是，它还有所有这些需求，生物有机体必须有食物和休息，并且存在一种平衡。但当你消除所有这些，当没有这些，只有计算，我们到达一个点，它只是我们创造的这个东西——无论你叫它计算机，甚至它不必是一个移动的东西，而是你创造的一个东西，它存储了世界上几乎所有可用的信息，存储了所有曾经活着的伟人的所有思维模式，所有作家，所有发表过任何东西的人，所有说过任何话的人，存储了他们所有的观点、所有的反驳、所有的矛盾，应用逻辑、理性和某种未来感，并开始改进这些模式，然后根据提供给它的信息开始自主行动——

Exactly, and it has all these needs that the biological organism has to have food and rest, and there's a balance going on. But when you eliminate all that, when there is none of that and it's just calculations, and we get to a point where it's just this thing that we've created—whether you call it a computer, whether it doesn't have to be a moving thing even, but a thing that you've created that stores virtually all the information that's available in the world, stores all the patterns of all the thinking of all the great people that have ever lived, all the writers, all the people that have ever published anything, all the people that have ever spoken any words, stores all of their points, all their counterpoints, all their contradictions, applies logic and reason and some sort of sense of the future, and starts improving upon these patterns, and then starts acting on its own based on the information that it's been provided with—

嗯，首先你必须实际模拟一个能够容纳所有这些信息的人脑结构。你基本上是在谈论相当于数万个大脑的信息量，对吧？我们连一个大脑都造不出来。

Well, first you would have to actually simulate a structure the human brain that can hold all that information. You're basically talking about tens of thousands of brains worth of information, right? We can't even build one brain.

十年、二十年还是三十年？就实际的大脑而言，是的。但如果是能重现大脑能力的东西呢？就像我说的，自然是节俭的。我们拥有这个三磅重的湿件，能容纳所有这些数据。自然在进化我们如何达到这一点上非常高效。我只是认为计算机远未达到那种程度。它们无法以那种复杂性、以大脑的全息结构来存储那么多数据，大脑可以通过多种方式回忆。而且我认为，你无法在真实介质的反馈边界之外进化出一个智能生物。如果你在一个没有外界输入的混凝土牢房里养大一个人，他们不会有来自真实世界的反馈；他们无法正常进化。所以我认为仅仅把信息塞进一个东西是不够的。它必须有一个环境来运作，从中获得反馈。它需要上下文。

A decade or two or three? Well, in terms of an actual physical brain, yes. But what about something that recreates the abilities of a brain? Like I said, nature is parsimonious. We've got this three-pound wetware object that can hold all this data. Nature has been very efficient in evolving how we get there. I just don't think computers are anywhere close to that. They can hold that amount of data with that complexity, with the holographic structure of the brain where it can recall in many different ways. And I don't think you can evolve a creature to be intelligent outside of the boundaries of feedback in a real medium. If you raised a human being in a concrete cell with no input from the outside, they wouldn't have any feedback from the real world; they wouldn't evolve properly. So I think just dumping information into a thing isn't enough. It has to have an environment to operate in, to get feedback from. It needs to have context.

但这不是生物性的吗？我的意思是，如果你把人类积累的所有信息和学到的教训都编程进计算机呢？比如，如果我们有一台能打败人类的计算机，真正的问题是：我们能制造某种人工智能来打败围棋选手吗？围棋比国际象棋复杂得多。他们也做到了，那是一个巨大的震惊，对吧？

But isn't that biological? I mean, what if you have all the information that people have accumulated and the lessons that people have learned, and you program that into the computer? Like, if we can take a computer that can beat someone at chess, the real question was: can we make some sort of artificial intelligence that could beat someone at Go, which is far more complex than chess? They figured out how to do that too, and that was a giant shock, right?

这些仍然是人为的、非常封闭、有边界的游戏。它们不在通往无限生活游戏的道路上。它们完全是人工的。

These are still man-made, very closed, bounded games. They're not on the road to the unbounded game of life. They are completely artificial.

但这难道没有让你稍微停顿一下吗？一点点？围棋不是围棋或英雄联盟或堡垒之夜。它们不是完全确定性的，对吧？但它们仍然是非常人工、非常有边界的游戏。擅长围棋并不意味着你就能突然写出伟大的诗歌，对吧？创造力，当然，是……创造力是最后的边疆。

But didn't that give you a little bit of a pause? A little bit? Go is not Go or League of Legends or Fortnite. They're not completely deterministic, right? But they're still very artificial, very bounded games. Being good at Go doesn't mean that you can then suddenly figure out how to write great poetry, right? The creativity, for sure, is something that's... creativity is the last frontier.

所以我确实相信，在足够长的时间内，自动化将取代每一个非创造性的工作，或每一个非创造性的劳动。但这是个好消息。这意味着我们所有的基本需求都得到了满足，留给我们的就是去创造，而这正是每个人都想要的。

So I do believe that automation, over a long enough period of time, will replace every non-creative job, or every non-creative work. But that's great news. That means that all of our basic needs are taken care of, and what remains for us is to be creative, which is really what every human wants.

是啊，你现在在做什么？这是一份创造性的工作。

Yeah, what are you doing right now? This is a creative job.

当然。这让我们回到了意义和全民基本收入的想法。我认为每年给某人 1.5 万美元不一定会导致……每个人担心的是人们靠救济金生活。你会有一群无精打采的人，生活没有意义。但想法是每年 1.5 万美元——我不一定同意这个，我甚至不赞同——但每年 1.5 万美元只会为你提供生活必需品。它会给你食物，给你住所。

Sure. That brings us back to the idea of meaning and universal basic income. I think the idea of giving someone $15,000 a year doesn't necessarily cause... what everyone would worry about is people being on the dole. You would have a bunch of listless people out there with no meaning in life. But the idea is that $15,000 a year—and I'm not necessarily sure I agree with this, I'm not even endorsing this—but that $15,000 a year would just provide you with the necessities to get by in life. It would give you food, it would give you shelter.

嗯，它不会停在 1.5 万，因为一旦人们……我是说，1.5 万，然后人们就会要求更多。伯尼·桑德斯会这样：1.6 万、1.7 万、4.5 万美元。是的，这些公司太大了。它不会停止。它会一路走向破产。担忧是滑向社会主义。这很明显。是的，我的意思是，见鬼，如果我不工作，每年拿 1.5 万美元，我会很高兴投票给那个给我 2 万或 2.5 万的人。这只是常识。

Well, it's not going to stop at 15, because the moment people are like... I mean, like 15, then people would demand more. Bernie Sanders would be on this: 16, 17, 45 thousand dollars. Yeah, these companies are too big. It doesn't stop. It just goes all the way to bankruptcy. The concern is the slide to socialism. It's obvious. Yeah, I mean, heck, if I was not working and I was getting my $15 a year, I would happily vote for the guy who would give me 20 or 25. It's just common sense.

你对那些不相信存在道德或富有同情心的资本主义的人怎么说？今天有很多人在宣扬马克思主义，宣扬某种社会主义社会。他们相信资本主义已经搞砸了人们，消灭了中产阶级。资本主义确实存在绝对的问题。我认为垄断是个问题。我认为裙带资本主义是个问题，政府与它们勾结，强制推行一些事情。我认为银行家真的强奸了社会，我们其余的人都在为此受苦。是的，他们基本上承担了巨大的风险，将收益私有化，将损失社会化。所以当它失败时，他们基本上得到救助，让其他所有人破产。所以资本主义的名声真的很臭。

What do you say to the people that don't believe that there is such a thing as ethical or compassionate capitalism? And there are many people today that are espousing Marxism and espousing some sort of a socialist society. They believe that capitalism has screwed people over and eliminated the middle class. And there are absolute problems with capitalism. I think monopolies are a problem. I think crony capitalism is a problem, with the government getting in bed with them and sort of forcing things. I think the bankers have really raped society and the rest of us are suffering for it. Yeah, they've essentially taken huge risks where they privatize the gains and they socialize the losses. So when it fails, they basically get bailed out and bankrupt everybody else. So capitalism has gotten a really bad name.

让我们谈谈它的自由交换。自由市场。自由市场和自由交换是人类固有的。从第一个人生火，另一个人带着一只鹿来说，‘嘿，如果我在你的火上烤我的鹿，我会分一些给你，’对吧？所以专业化、劳动、我们交易。这植根于人类物种。基础数学来自会计，记录债务和信贷等等。我们需要能够进行自由贸易。对资本主义的正确批评是当它不提供平等机会时。所以我们应该始终努力提供平等机会。但人们将其与平等结果混淆。当你拥有平等结果时，那只能通过暴力来强制执行，因为不同的人，自由的人，做出不同的选择。当他们做出不同的选择时，他们会有不同的结果。如果你不让他们承受坏选择的后果或收获好选择的回报，那么你就是在通过暴力强制重新分配。有趣的是，没有不通过暴力而存在的社会主义例子。你基本上需要有人拿着枪出现，说，‘好吧，你不允许那样做。你把这个交给那个人。’

Let's talk about its free exchange. Free markets. Free markets and free exchange are intrinsic to humans. From when the first person started a fire and somebody came along with a deer and said, 'Hey, if I cook my deer on your fire, I'll share some of it with you,' right? So specialization, labor, we trade. That's built into the human species. Basic math comes from accounting, keeping track of debts and credits, and so on. We need to be able to engage in free trade. The correct criticism of capitalism is when it does not provide equal opportunity. And so we should always strive to provide equal opportunity. But people confuse that with equal outcome. When you have equal outcome, that can only be enforced through violence, because different people, free people, make different choices. And when they make different choices, they have different outcomes. If you don't let them suffer the consequences of bad choices or reap the rewards from good choices, then you are forcibly redistributing through violence. It's interesting that there are no working socialist examples that exist without violence. You basically need someone to show up with a gun and say, 'Okay, you're not allowed to do that. You hand this over to that person.'

这个播客存在的原因之一是我相信每个人都可以变得富有。每个人。这不是一个零和游戏。这是一个正和游戏。你创造全新的东西，你用它交换我创造的全新东西。这对我们双方都创造了更高的效用。创造的价值总和是正的。不像地位，你更高，我更低。你是总统，所以我必须是副总统。你是加一，我是减一，必须抵消为零。我们都应该支持玩正和的道德游戏。问题是因为这些掠夺者毁了资本主义的名声，然后社会主义者进来，说‘烧掉整个系统。’对吧？你烧掉整个系统，我们最终会像委内瑞拉或前苏联一样。你知道，你不想成为一个失败的社会主义国家，瘦弱的青少年在街上猎猫吃。这确实发生在一些地方。所以我认为非常重要的是不要摧毁带我们走到这里的进步引擎。

One of the reasons why this podcast exists is because I believe everybody can be wealthy. Everybody. It's not a zero-sum game. It is a positive-sum game. You create something brand new, you exchange it with me for something brand new I've created. This creates higher utility for both of us. The sum of the value created is positive. It's not like status, where it's like you're higher up, I'm lower down. You're president, so I must be vice president. You're a plus one, I'm a minus one, and it has to cancel to zero. We should all be for playing positive-sum ethical games. The problem is because of these looters who have ruined capitalism's name, that then you get socialists coming in and saying, 'Burn the whole system down.' Right? You burn the whole system down, we end up like Venezuela or the former Soviet Union. You know, you don't want to be a failed socialist state with emaciated teens hunting cats in the streets to eat. That's literally what happens in some of these places. So I think it's very important not to destroy the engine of progress that brought us here.

是的，认为社会主义还没有成功，它需要……我们只需要做对。如果我们做对了，我们可以……如果你曾经……1 亿人死亡，是的，是的。好吧，让我们继续在世界各地尝试。是的，每次它被实施……你有没有和社会主义者交谈过？很多时候，我的一些好朋友是社会主义者。真的吗？我们真的……

Yeah, the idea that socialism just hasn't worked yet, that it needs to... we just need to do it right. If we do it right, we can... if you ever... 100 million dead and yeah, yeah. Well, let's keep trying all over the world. Yeah, and every single time it's been implemented... Have you ever had a conversation with someone who's a socialist? Many times, some of my better friends are socialists. Really? We really get...

是啊，那有什么呢？我是说，有人有令人信服的观点吗？我认为社会主义确实来自内心，对吧？我们都想成为社会主义者。资本主义来自头脑，因为任何系统中总有作弊者，任何系统中都有激励。所以当你年轻时，如果你不是社会主义者，你就没有心；当你年长时，如果你不是资本主义者，你就没有头脑。你没有想清楚。所以我理解它从何而来。我一直喜欢纳西姆·塔勒布对此的框架，他说：和我的家人在一起，我是共产主义者；和我的密友在一起，我是社会主义者；在我的州级政治中，我是民主党人；在更高层面，我是共和党人；在联邦层面，我是自由意志主义者。所以基本上，你聚集的人群越大，他们的利益越不同，信任就越少，作弊就越多，激励就越需要对齐，系统就越需要运作良好，你就越走向资本主义。你所在的群体越小——你在基布兹，你在公社，你在家里，你在部落里——完全可以做个社会主义者。和我的姑姑、兄弟、堂表亲、叔叔、妈妈、家人在一起，我是社会主义者。那是过一种有爱、快乐、完整生活的正确方式。但当你和陌生人打交道时，我是说，你想成为一个真正的社会主义者？很好，明天打开你所有的门窗，请吧，每个人都来拿他们想要的。看看那会怎样。

Yeah, and what is there? I mean, does anyone have a compelling perspective at all? I think really socialism comes from the heart, right? We all want to be socialist. Capitalism comes from the head because there are always cheaters in any system, and there are incentives in any system. So when you're young, if you're not a socialist, you have no heart; when you're older, if you're not a capitalist, you have no head. You haven't thought it through. So I understand where it comes from. I always liked Nassim Taleb's framing on this, where he said: with my family, I'm a communist; with my close friends, I'm a socialist; at my state-level politics, I'm a Democrat; at higher levels, I'm a Republican; and at the federal level, I'm a libertarian. So basically, the larger the group of people you have massed together who have different interests, the less trust there is, the more cheating there is, the better the incentives have to be aligned, the better the system has to work, the more you go towards capitalism. The smaller the group you're in—you're in a kibbutz, you're in your commune, you're in your house, you're in your tribe—by all means, be a socialist. With my aunts, with my brother, with my cousins, with my uncles, with my mom, with your family, I'm a socialist. That's the right way to live a loving, happy, integrated life. But when you're dealing with strangers, I mean, you want to be a real socialist? Great, open all your doors and windows tomorrow, please, everybody come take what you want. See how that works out.

收入不平等这个概念总是让我觉得是个很有欺骗性的术语。收入不平等？好吧，我们反过来看：它来自结果不平等。结果不平等之所以存在，是因为你做出了不同的选择。现在，再说回来，如果是因为你没有同样的机会，那是个问题。是的，社会应该始终努力给人们平等的机会。所以，例如，与其搞基本收入，不如在我们的基本社会结构中内置一个再培训计划，规定每四年或每六年——也许是每十年——你可以休一年假，我们出钱让你完全重新培训，你可以进入任何你喜欢的、有赚钱能力和产出的职业，希望是创造性的、长期的职业，你可以重新教育自己。那对社会各个层面都会好得多，而不是基本上就说你余生都要靠救济金生活。你得把马牵到水边，然后让它喝水；这需要人们付出一些努力。你知道，我们不能都无所事事。那只是……嗯，这就是我对收入不平等的看法。总是存在努力不平等和思想不平等。有些人就是痴迷，如果那些人成功了，并不意味着他们偷了你的东西；只是意味着他们付出了达到那个位置所需的精力和努力。现在有很多道德信号，人们说，‘嗯，那是因为你有特权。’好吧，你知道最大的特权是什么吗？你还活着。85%的人类已经死了。那你有多特权呢？你生活在第一世界，你有四肢等等。所以你可以把这个论点一路推下去；这有点像无意义的讨论。

This idea of income inequality always strikes me as a very deceptive term. Income inequality? Well, let's flip it around: it comes from outcome inequality. And outcome inequality is there because you made different choices. Now, again, going back, if it was because you didn't have the same opportunities, that's a problem. Yes, society should always try to give people equal opportunities. So, for example, instead of basic income, what if we had a retraining program built into our basic social fabric which said that every four years or every six years or whatever it is—maybe it's every ten—you can take one year out, and we'll pay for you to go retrain completely, and you can go into any profession you like that has some earning power and output, hopefully a creative, long-term profession, and you can re-educate yourself. That would be much better for society on all levels than basically just saying now you're going to be on the dole for the rest of your life. You'd have to lead that horse to water and then make them drink; it requires people to put in some effort. You know, we can't all just sit around. It's just not... Well, that's my perspective on income inequality. There's always effort inequality and thought inequality. There are just some people that are obsessed, and if those people become successful, it doesn't mean they stole from you; it just means that they put in the amount of energy and effort that it required to reach where they're at. And there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on now where people say, 'Well, it's because you're privileged.' Well, you know what the greatest privilege is? You're alive. 85% of humanity is dead. So how privileged are you then? You're living in the first world, and you have four limbs, etc. So you can take that argument all the way; it's kind of a nonsense discussion.

一个非常奇怪的进步主义论点，而且涉及到种族问题时，总是很奇怪，对吧？因为白人特权对我来说——虽然你可以从纸面上看他们说的，比如是的，我确信有更多黑人被警察骚扰，我确信有更多黑人被店主等怀疑对待。但问题不是那些没有被恶劣对待的人；问题是那些恶劣对待别人的人。问题是种族主义。问题不是那些没有要求生为白人或其他什么、也没有被骚扰的人。所以这种白人特权或男性特权之类的概念——那不是问题。你只是看着一个不是你强调的这个特定问题的受害者的人，但你没有看问题的肇事者。你仅仅因为别人存在、皮肤中黑色素较少或祖先来自……就让他们成为肇事者。实际上，这是一种狡猾的种族主义方式。然后他们说你不能是种族主义者，因为你是白人所以不是种族主义。没错，这很滑稽：‘你不能对白人是种族主义者’——那个，那是整个‘我打你时你别挣扎’论点的变种。太愚蠢了。你完全改变了种族主义的含义。但滑稽的是，大喊‘种族主义者’的人大多不是少数族裔。当我看我的推特、社交媒体或新闻时，那是白人对白人的暴力，道德信号。是的，那是白人对白人的暴力。主要发生的是精英白人、蓝州白人、受过大学教育的白人在打击受过高中教育的白人、蓝领。这是一场白领对蓝领的战争，而我们其他人只是看着，觉得‘哦，那挺有意思的。’

What's a very weird progressive argument, and as it pertains to race, is always a weird one, right? Because white privilege to me—although you could look at what they're saying on paper, like yes, I'm sure there are more black people that are harassed by the police, I'm sure there are more black people who are treated suspiciously by shop owners and the like. But the problem isn't the people who aren't treated poorly; the problem is the people who treat the people poorly. The problem is racism. The problem is not people that didn't ask to be born white or whatever they are and they don't get harassed. So this idea of white privilege or male privilege or whatever it is—that's not the problem. You're just looking at someone who's not a victim of this particular problem that you're highlighting, but you're not looking at the perpetrators of the problem. You're making people perpetrators by simply existing and having less melanin in their skin or having their ancestors come from... Actually, it's a sneaky way of being racist. And then they say you can't be racist, it's not racist because you're white. That's right, that is this hilarious: 'If you can't be racist against white people'—that one, that's a variation of the whole 'stop struggling while I'm hitting you' argument. It's just so silly. You've completely changed what racism means. But what's hilarious is mostly the people who are yelling 'racist' are not the minorities. When I look on my Twitter, my social media, or on my news, it's white-on-white violence, virtue signaling. Yeah, it's white-on-white violence. What's mostly going on is elitist whites, blue-state whites, college-educated whites beating up on high-school-educated whites, blue-collar. It's a white-collar versus blue-collar war that's going on, and the rest of us are just kind of watching like, 'Oh, that's kind of interesting.'

嗯，这也是广播能力的一个副作用，对吧？就像每个有推特账号的人都有广播能力，每个有脸书页面的人都有说教的能力，发表这些长篇大论、杂乱无章的巨大声明。当你读它们时，你会想，‘你花了多少时间在这上面？搞什么？你花那么多时间在你的孩子、工作、生活、未来或计划上吗？’你知道，你每天锻炼多少？我是说，你是不是只是……有些人的脸书帖子，我就想，‘你花了荒谬的精力说了几乎什么都没有。’

Well, it's also a side effect of the ability to broadcast, right? Like everyone with a Twitter handle has the ability to broadcast, everyone with a Facebook page has the ability to pontificate and have these long, rambling, huge statements that people put out. When you read them, it's like, 'How much time did you put into this? What the f***? Do you put that much time into your kids or your job or your life or your future or planning for your...' You know, how much do you work out a day? I mean, are you just... Some people's Facebook posts, I'm like, 'This is a preposterous amount of effort that you put into saying virtually nothing.'

让我们看看，人类很有创意。而人工智能也能做得很好。

Let's see, humans are being creative. And AI can do that well.

没错，这很有创意。以一种非常奇怪的方式有创意，对吧？因为它的创意在于他们试图引起人们的反应，试图提高他们的社会价值或在社会图腾柱上的地位。这是信号传递，而且是容易的信号传递，因为这是每个人都必须同意你的那种事，因为没人想被视为一个可怕的人。而且做出细微差别的反驳比随大流要难得多。

That's true, it is creative. It's creative in a very odd way, right? Because it's creative in that they're trying to elicit a response from people, and they're trying to raise their social value or raise their position on the social totem pole. It's signaling, and it's easy signaling because it's the kind of thing that everybody has to agree with you on because nobody wants to be seen as a horrible person. And it's very hard to make the nuanced arguments against it than it is to just kind of go along.

嗯，其中一些也如此陈词滥调，以至于看起来……我知道有个人在推特上假扮女人，但他做得太明显了。是的，叫什么名字，塔蒂亚娜·麦格雷戈？对，对，对。以前是戈弗雷·埃尔威克？是的。哦，是同一个人吗？我想是的。是啊，太搞笑了。我不知道……他们封了他的账号。他们肯定封了他的账号，因为假装是跨种族者。没错，他们封了。是啊，他基本上说……

Well, it's also some of it is so cliché that it seems like... I know one guy who poses as a woman on Twitter, but he does it just obviously. Yeah, what is this, the name Tatiana McGregor? Yes, yeah, yeah. Used to be Godfrey Elwick? Yes. Oh, is that the same guy? I think so. Yeah, that's hilarious. I did not... They killed his account. They killed his account for sure, for pretending to be transracial. That's right, they did. Yeah, he basically says...

左派说的那些疯狂言论，但他说的版本最极端，这反而让人觉得没什么大不了的。我最近看到一条推文说‘身为白人不可以’，居然还有人赞同。但这和他们的说法太接近了，简直是最巧妙的微妙讽刺。如果把一半内容里的‘白人’换成‘黑人’或‘亚裔’，意思完全一样。

All the crazy stuff that people on the left say, but he says the craziest version, and it kind of shows how it's okay. I saw a tweet from someone recently that said it's not okay to be white, and some people agreed. But it's so close to what they say that it's the most artful form of subtle parody. If you replace the word 'white' with 'black' or 'Asian' in half of these things, it's the same.

是啊，这是个奇怪的时代。有句话说：想知道谁在统治你，看看你不能批评谁。说得太对了。

Yeah, it's a strange time. There's a saying: if you want to see who rules over you, see who you're not allowed to criticize. That's so true.

是啊，说得太对了。我真不知道这会走向何方。这种新获得的广播能力——无论是通过 YouTube、推特还是其他方式——让你能把信息传播给那么多人，而大多数人却缺乏理解。总的来说，我认为这是件好事。这意味着任何人都能随时向地球上的任何人广播。比如，如果某个极权独裁者上台，法西斯分子殴打老妇人，那会被立刻传播出去，引发愤怒和声援。所以这有助于关注任何人的困境。但现在我们正处于一个阶段，我们有了召集暴民的力量，却不知道如何应对。很容易就能组织暴民攻击某人，断章取义。就连这场对话——我肯定有人会截取片段试图激怒别人。社会必须克服这种愤怒情绪。愤怒的人是社交媒体上最愚蠢的，我直接屏蔽他们。这是低层次思维。他们是暴民的步兵。最终社会必须明白，这些都是断章取义的片段、篡改过的视频、只是有人想找茬愤怒。还会出现反暴民策略。比如，如果我去某人的推特页面，全是政治咆哮和阴谋论，我还想和他共事吗？想和他做朋友吗？他的脑子里塞满了垃圾。我不怪他们——人脑不是设计来 24 小时吸收突发新闻、用标题党注入紧急事件的。如果你关注这些，即使你心地善良、心智健全，最终也会发疯。就像《发条橙》里他被强行撑开眼睛看新闻。现在就是这样，因为这些平台让人上瘾。推特、脸书、Instagram 都被武器化了。社会统计学家、科学家、研究人员、穿白大褂的人——我们这一代最聪明的人——都在研究如何让你对新闻上瘾。如果你上钩了，你的大脑就会被摧毁。这就是现代的斗争。

Yeah, that's so true. I wonder where this is going. This newfound ability to broadcast—whether through YouTube, Twitter, or whatever—lets you spread your message to so many people with very little understanding. Overall, I think it's a great thing. It means any human can broadcast to any other human at any time. For example, if a totalitarian dictator came to power and fascists were beating up old women, that would get broadcast instantly, causing outrage and rallying support. So it helps bring attention to anyone's plight. But right now, we're going through a phase where we have this power to assemble mobs, and people don't know how to handle it. It becomes very easy to set up a mob and attack someone, taking everything out of context. Even this conversation—I'm sure people will take snippets and try to get someone outraged. Society has to get over this idea of outrage. Outraged people are the stupidest on social media; I block them instantly. It's low-level thinking. They're the foot soldiers of the mob. Eventually, society must understand that these are snippets taken out of context, doctored clips, just someone trying to get outraged. There will also be anti-mob tactics. For instance, if I go to someone's Twitter feed and it's full of political ranting and conspiracy theories, do I want to work with them? Do I want to be friends? Their mind is cluttered with junk. I don't blame them—the human brain isn't designed to absorb 24/7 breaking news emergencies injected with clickbait headlines. If you pay attention, even if well-meaning and sound of mind, it will drive you insane. It's like 'A Clockwork Orange' where his eyes are forced open to watch the news. That's happening now because these platforms are addictive. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram are weaponized. Social statisticians, scientists, researchers in lab coats—the best minds of our generation—are figuring out how to addict you to the news. If you fall for it, your brain gets destroyed. This is the modern struggle.

古代的挣扎是部落式的——你有你的亲友部落、你的宗教、你的国家、你的忠诚、你的国籍。至少你有意义和支持。但你要与其他部落斗争。现代生活如此自由；一切都原子化了。你独自一人。你独自住在公寓里，父母不在附近，朋友也不在附近。你没有部落意义。你不再相信宗教或国家。这很好——你有很多自由，太棒了。但现在当他们来攻击你时，你独自一人，无法抵抗。他们怎么攻击你？都是出于好意。我不责怪资本主义；我热爱资本主义。但看看它是怎么发生的。社交媒体精心设计了所有机制让你上瘾，就像斯金纳的鸽子或老鼠，只会不停地点击。放不下手机。食物：他们把糖武器化，做成你无法抗拒的形式。毒品：他们把药物和植物合成、培育，让你上瘾。色情：如果你是年轻男性，它会消耗你的性欲，你不再出门社交，因为你有极度刺激的内容。电子游戏：另一种让人上瘾的方式。有整座工厂的人致力于让你对这些东西上瘾，而你独自一人。作为个体，现代的斗争首先是学会如何抵制这些东西，划定自己的界限。没有人帮你。这很可怕。这是一条新路，年轻人没有地图、没有指南需要摸索。我们这一代是过渡的一代。我想我们的孩子会处理得更好，因为他们会从小接触。但我希望如此，因为今天人们的行为荒谬至极，而且非常普遍。

The ancient struggle was tribal—you had your tribe of friends and family, your religion, your country, your loyalty, your nationality. At least you had meaning and support. But you struggled against other tribes. Modern life is so free; everything has become atomized. You stand alone. You live in your apartment alone, your parents don't live nearby, your friends don't live nearby. You don't have tribal meaning. You don't believe in religion or country anymore. It's fine—you have a lot of freedom, it's fantastic. But now when they come to attack you, you're alone and can't resist. How do they attack you? It's all well-meaning. I don't fault capitalism; I love capitalism. But look at how it happens. Social media has massaged all the mechanisms to addict you like a Skinner's pigeon or a rat that just clicks and clicks. Can't put the phone down. Food: they've taken sugar and weaponized it, put it in forms you can't resist eating. Drugs: they've taken pharmaceuticals and plants, synthesized and grown them so you get addicted. Porn: if you're a young male, it saps your libido and you don't go out in real life because you have incredibly stimulating stuff. Video games: another way to addict people. There are entire factories of people working to addict you to these things, and you stand alone. The modern struggle as an individual is learning how to resist these things in the first place, drawing your own boundaries. There's no one there to help you. That's terrifying. It's a new road that needs to be navigated by young people with no map, no guidebook. Our generation is the transition generation. I think our kids will handle it better because they'll grow up with it. But I hope so, because you're seeing ridiculous behavior from people today that's so common.

我不知道你有没有注意，有个人做了个视频——结果发现甚至不是他做的，至少他是这么说的——但视频里他篡改了南希·佩洛西的讲话，让她看起来像喝醉了。很多人转发说‘天哪，她醉了’。一家网络媒体追踪到他并人肉了他。结果他只是个日工，一个非裔特朗普粉丝，觉得这样很好玩。据他说，他只是把视频发到了自己的脸书页面上。更令人不安的是，脸书把他的信息交给了那个网站。为什么？就因为他做了个搞笑视频让人看起来醉了？关于我的这种视频有上百万个。我觉得脸书、推特和其他社交媒体平台正在通过这些行为慢性自杀。但这件事很惊人——他们居然出卖了这个劳工。

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but there was a guy who made a video—it turns out it wasn't even him who made it, at least that's what he said—but it was a video where he doctored Nancy Pelosi talking and made it look like she was drunk. A bunch of people retweeted it like 'Oh my god, look, she's drunk.' An online publication tracked him down and doxed him. Turned out he's just a day laborer, an African-American Trump fan, and thought it would be funny. According to him, he just put it on his Facebook page. What's even more disturbing is that Facebook gave up his information to that website. For what? Because he made something funny that made someone seem drunk? There are a million of those about me. I think Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are committing slow-motion suicide through these kinds of activities. That was a stunning one, though—that they would give up this guy who's a laborer.

因为他做了一个恶搞视频，或者通过剪辑让别人看起来很蠢。现在媒体基本上把追捕他们不喜欢的个人当作自己的工作。

Because he made a parody video or he made someone look foolish with editing. Well, you now have basically the media views it as their job to go after individuals they don't like.

是的，我在这方面给媒体加了引号。所以我不认为《纽约时报》会做任何负责任的事情，但媒体越来越绝望了，对吧？因为发生的事情是，在互联网之前，每个城镇可以有两家地方报纸和两家地方新闻台，你知道的，电视新闻台。然后 CNN 出现了，开始将新闻商品化，24/7 广播。然后互联网来了，这是压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草。因为互联网所做的就是，它说，实际上，如果有一个事实是新闻，你可以立即传播它。它可以上 Twitter，可以上 Facebook，在 Google News 上被转载一千次。你知道，你上 Google News，你会想，好吧，这条新闻是什么？哪个来源？还有另外三千篇文章，太多了，对吧？是的。所以新闻已经商品化了。因此整个新闻媒体已经转向兜售观点和娱乐。是的。所以现在它们变成了啦啦队、突击部队、执行者、你知道的，脱口秀评论员之类的变体。所以这些现在是部落化的。这些不是为它们的部落传递信号的宣传机器。这是一个右翼的，一个左翼的，对吧？有另类右翼，有控制左翼，它们只是用各自的各种媒体机构和迷因来争斗。所以基本上，当你看到这些新闻机构之一人肉搜索一个个人时，那就像一辆坦克碾过一个士兵，对吧？这就是正在发生的事情。这只是一场战争。所以不再有中立的媒体评论员这种东西了。新闻业曾经拥有的客观性幻觉已经消失了。不再有一个像沃尔特·克朗凯特那样每个人都会听的人了。现在都只是互相争斗的突击部队。

Yeah, I use media with air quotes in that regard. So I don't think this is something that The New York Times would have done anything responsible, but the media is getting more and more desperate, right? Because what happened was, before the internet, you could have two local newspapers in every town and you could have two local news stations, you know, TV stations in every town. And then CNN came along and started commoditizing the news 24/7 broadcast. And then the internet came along, that was the final nail in the coffin. Because what the internet did was, it said, actually, if there's a fact that's news, you can distribute that immediately. It can go on Twitter, it can go on Facebook, it gets reprinted on Google News a thousand times. You know, you go to Google News, you're like, okay, what's the piece of news? Which source? And three thousand other articles too many, right? Yeah. So news has become commoditized. So the entire news media has shifted into peddling opinions and entertainment. Yes. And so now they've become a variation between like cheerleaders, shock troops, enforcers, you know, talking heads. So these are now tribal. These are not propaganda machines signaling for their tribes. It's a right-wing one, this left-wing one, right? There's the alt-right, there's the control left, and the two of them are just fighting it out using their various media organs and memes. So basically, when you see one of these news organizations doxing an individual, that's like a tank running over a soldier, right? That's what's going on. It's just war. And so there's no such thing anymore as a neutral media commentator. The illusion of objectivity that journalism had is lost. There's no longer one guy like a Walter Cronkite that everyone's going to listen to. It's now all just shock troops fighting wars with each other.

这会如何发展？你想过吗？

How does this play out? Have you thought about it?

是的，有一点。所以互联网所做的，很多都是互联网驱动的。互联网所做的是，互联网为每件事创造了一个或两个巨大的聚合器：一个出租车调度员，一个电子商务商店，一个搜索引擎，一个，你知道的，一个面向朋友和家人的社交媒体网站，一个面向商业的，等等。所以互联网是一个巨大的聚合器，它为每件事创造了一个大的霸主，并创造了一个由数百万个体组成的原子化的长尾。它摆脱的是中间的中等规模的东西。例如，你可能曾有七家好莱坞制片厂。什么都会变成 Netflix？你有，你知道的，像 10 个大型电子商务参与者，从沃尔玛到好市多，到，你知道的，凯马特等等。现在只会是亚马逊和一大堆小型独立品牌。所以这就是我们正在走向的世界：一个霸主和数百万个体。所以长期来看，媒体将变成少数几个巨大的媒体机构，你知道的，可能是《纽约时报》，可能是 Facebook，几个这样的。然后会有一个非常长的由数百万独立个体组成的尾巴。所以谁是记者谁不是记者的这个想法，你知道的，阿桑奇是不是记者？每个人都是记者。这就是我们正在走向的世界。

Yeah, a little bit. So what the internet does, a lot of this is internet driven. What the internet does is, the internet creates one giant aggregator or two for everything: one taxi dispatcher, one e-commerce store, one search engine, one, you know, one social media site for friends and family, one for business, etc. So the internet is this giant aggregator where it creates one big hegemon for everything, and it creates an atomized long tail of millions and millions of individuals. What it gets rid of is the medium-sized ones in the middle. So for example, you might have had like seven Hollywood studios. What's all going to be Netflix? You had, you know, like 10 large e-commerce players, from Walmart to Costco to, you know, Kmart and whatever. Now it's just going to be Amazon and a ton of small individual brands. So that's the world that we're headed towards: one hegemon and millions of individuals. So where it ends up long term is media will be a few gigantic outlets, you know, it could be The New York Times, it could be Facebook, a few like that. And there's going to be just a really long tail of millions of independent people. So this idea of who's a journalist and who's not, you know, is Assange a journalist or not? Everyone's a journalist. That's the world that we're headed towards.

我确实认为极端的权力，当今世界上最有权势的人，这一点并不广为人知，但当今世界上最有权势的人是那些为 Twitter、Facebook 和 Instagram 编写算法的人，因为他们控制着信息的传播。他们实际上在重写人们的大脑，他们在编程文化，而且他们做得非常微妙。比如谷歌，我相信，你知道的，他们的一位高管在国会面前，国会议员问他，你知道的，你们操纵搜索结果吗？他说不，我们不操纵搜索结果。真的吗？那是你的工作。那实际上就是谷歌所做的全部。谷歌有一项工作，那就是操纵搜索结果，把它们从噪音中提取出来并正确排序。而他们这样做的精确算法非常隐蔽，非常复杂，但影响着每个人的心灵和思想，包括所有选民。

I do think the extreme power, the most powerful people in the world today, and this is not well known, but the most powerful people in the world today are the people who are writing the algorithms for Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, because they're controlling the spread of information. They're literally rewriting people's brains, they're programming the culture, and they're doing it very subtly. Like Google, I believe that, you know, one of their execs got up in front of Congress and the congressman asked him, you know, do you manipulate search results? And he said no, we do not manipulate search results. Really? That's your job. That is literally all Google does. Google has one job, which is to manipulate search results to pull them out of the noise and rank them properly. And the precise algorithms of how they do that is very hidden, very complex, but influences the hearts and minds of everybody, including all the voters.

现在，如果谷歌、Facebook 和 Twitter 对此聪明一点，他们就不会选边站。他们会说，我们是出版商。任何通过我们管道的东西都会通过我们的管道。如果是非法的，我们会删除。给我们法院命令。否则，我们不碰它。就像电话公司一样。如果我打电话给你，在电话里对你说了一些可怕的话，电话公司不会惹上麻烦。但一旦他们开始删除并非非法的内容，因为有人尖叫，他们基本上就失去了被视为运营商的资格。现在突然间他们承担了责任。所以他们正在滑下滑坡走向毁灭，左派希望他们删除右派，右派希望他们删除左派，现在他们没有朋友了，没有盟友了。传统上，倾向自由意志主义的共和党人和民主党人会原则上支持公共运营商，但现在他们不会了。所以我的猜测是，一旦国会——这一天正在到来，如果还没有到来的话。实际上可能今天就已经到来了，因为我在新闻中看到了相关的东西。这一天即将到来，政客们意识到这些社交媒体平台正在挑选下一任总统、下一任国会议员。他们实际上在挑选，而且他们有权力挑选。所以它们将被政府控制。

Now, if Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said, we're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise, we don't touch it. It's like the phone company. If I call you up and I say something horrible to you on the phone, the phone company doesn't get in trouble. But the moment they started taking stuff down that wasn't illegal because somebody screamed, they basically lost their right to be viewed as a carrier. And now all of a sudden they've taken on liability. So they're sliding down the slippery slope into ruin, sloping to ruin, where the left wants them to take down the right, the right wants them to take down the left, and now they have no more friends, they have no allies. Traditionally, the libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats would have stood up in principle for the common carriers, but now they won't. So my guess is, as soon as Congress—this day is coming, if not already here. It might even be here today, actually, because I saw something related in the news. The day is coming when the politicians realize that these social media platforms are picking the next president, the next congressman. They're literally picking, and they have the power to pick. So they will be controlled by the government.

以什么方式？你认为它们将如何被控制？你认为它们必须遵守严格的言论自由原则吗？

In what way? How do you think they're going to be controlled? You think they're going to have to adhere to strict principles of freedom of speech?

不，首先，特别不幸的是，它正朝着相反的方向发展，对吧？绝对。我希望是言论自由。更可能的是，在短期到中期内，它们会被传唤去听证会。它们会受到巨大压力：做这个，别做那个。我对此的担忧是，我看到的扎克伯格的听证会，那些人完全无能。他们似乎不理解。他们不理解。但他们只是在施加压力。他们只是试图吓唬他，让他做他们想做的事。而他们想让他做什么？他们想让他基本上压制另一方。所以如果你是右翼，你想压制左翼。如果你是左翼，你想压制右翼。而如果你看看这些公司的总部所在地，在硅谷，所有的审查官，实际上就是他们，这些公司内部有审查官在工作。他们只是被叫了不同的名字，显然，对吧？这是双重语言。你把战争部叫做国防部。所以在这种情况下，安全与信任部实际上是审查部。审查官就在硅谷内部。所以这将是一团糟。

No, first, particularly unfortunately, it's headed the opposite direction, right? Absolutely. I wish it was freedom of speech. Much more likely, they're going to be, in the short to medium term, they're going to be hauled in for hearings. They're going to be pressured massively: do this, don't do that. My concern about that is, the hearings that I saw with Zuckerberg, those people were completely incompetent. They don't seem to understand. They don't. But they're just applying pressure. They're just trying to scare him so he'll do what they want. And what do they want him to do? They want him to basically suppress the other side. So if you're right wing, you want to suppress the left wing. If you're left wing, you want to suppress the right wing. And if you just see where these companies are headquartered, in Silicon Valley, all the sensors, and that's really what they are, there are sensors working inside these companies. They're just called by different names, obviously, right? It's double speak. You call it the Department of Defense when it's the Department of War. So in this case, the Department of Safety and Trust when it's really the Department of Censorship. The sensors are inside Silicon Valley. So it's going to be a mess.

硅谷的政治氛围极其进步左倾。如果你不是那样，你在那里真的没有立足之地。我的意思是，试着在谷歌做一个公开的保守派。祝你好运。现在你会被围攻。是的，这太疯狂了。我认为从来没有一个如此有影响力、在政治和意识形态上如此一边倒的东西。

Silicon Valley's politics are extremely progressive left-wing. And if you're not that, you really have no place there. I mean, try being a conservative, an open conservative at Google. Good luck. Now you get lynched. Yes, that's crazy. I mean, I don't think there was ever a thing like that that was so influential and so politically and ideologically one-sided.

网上有句俗话，我想叫它康奎斯特定律：任何没有明确右翼的组织最终都会变成左翼。我不知道为什么这是真的，但在我看来确实如此。

There's a little saying on the internet, I think it's called Conquest's Law: any organization that's not explicitly right-wing eventually becomes left-wing. And I don't know why that's true, but it does seem to me to be true.

嗯，现在正在进行一场迷人的战斗。我的意思是，确实如此。而保守派，就社交媒体而言，他们正在被左右夹击。

Well, it's a fascinating battle that's going on right now. I mean, it really is. And conservatives, as far as social media is concerned, they're just getting chopped off at the knees left and right.

最终会发生的是，每当你压制言论，这个有机体就会转移。然后它必须开始转向其他手段。如果不幸，它会走向暴力。如果幸运，他们会找到其他出口。我认为会发生的是，我们将开始创建去中心化的媒体，不被任何单一实体拥有，不能被压制或关闭，然后开始传播这些各种东西，并将取代 Twitter 或 Facebook。

What'll eventually happen is that whenever you suppress speech, the organism metastasizes. Then it has to start turning towards other means. If you're unlucky, it goes towards violence. If you're lucky, they find other outlets. I think what will happen is we will start creating decentralized media that's not owned by any single entity, that can't be suppressed or shut down, that will then start spreading these various things, and that will take the place of Twitter or Facebook.

没错，但这需要 10 年、20 年。不是一夜之间。嗯，你知道，Twitter 花了 10 年才走到现在这个烂摊子。但能请到杰克·多西并和他谈论它的走向、他认为它基于他自己的原则会走向何方，这很有趣。他相信这是一项基本权利，他相信言论自由是我们所有人都应该拥有的，这些平台本质上应该像公用事业一样，比如电力公司。

That's right, but it's going to take 10 years, 20 years. It's not overnight. Well, you know, Twitter took 10 years to get to the point where it's at this mess right now. But it was so interesting to have Jack Dorsey and to talk to him about where it's going, where he thinks it's going in his own principles, which he believes that it's a fundamental right, and he believes that freedom of speech is something that we all should have, and that these platforms should essentially be like utilities, like the electric company.

杰克是对的，他有正确的愿景。只是他所在的组织中，其他成员感觉不同，非常不同。所以组织本身可能被劫持，他改变事物的时间表，就像几十年。我的意思是，我不知道，我不应该说几十年，但我的意思是，我当时想，你认为什么时候会...？

Jack is correct and he has the right vision. It's just he's in an organization where the other individuals in the organization feel differently, very differently. So the organization itself can get hijacked, and his timeline for changing things, it's like it's decades. I mean, I don't know, I shouldn't say decades, but I mean, I was like, when do you think that something...

嗯，有一个想法是拥有一个未经审查的 Twitter，就像一个狂野西部的 Twitter。比如你可以有常规 Twitter，或者你可以尝试狂野西部 Twitter。

Well, there was one idea of having an uncensored Twitter, like one Twitter that's the Wild West. Like you could have regular Twitter or you could try Wild West Twitter.

嗯，那已经存在了。有一个叫 Gab 的网络。是的，但 Gab 甚至不是狂野西部 Twitter。当人们人肉搜索时，他们会删除这类东西。是的，我的意思是，我认为肯定有关于暴力和非法的界限，你不想跨越。但没错，Gab 更接近一个言论自由平台，但它仍然不是去中心化的。它仍然可能被关闭，仍然可能被取缔。它也受到严重压制。是的，所以……现在那里的人非常右翼，所以对我来说不是一个愉快的地方，和所有被踢出某个平台的人混在一起。

Well, that already exists. There's a network called Gab. Yes, but Gab isn't even Wild West Twitter. When people dox people, they remove things like that. Yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly lines around violence and illegality that you don't want to cross. But yes, Gab is closer to a free speech platform, but it's still not decentralized. It can still get shut down, it can still get taken out. It's also suppressed heavily. Yes, so that... and the people on there right now are extremely right-wing, so it's not a pleasant place for someone like me to hang out with all the people that have been kicked off of something.

没错。试着去那里做个温和派。试着去那里，没有你的空间。是的，不幸的是，因为我不认同任何政党或任何信条，你知道，这对我来说行不通。

That's right. Try going over there and being moderate. Try going over there, there's no room for you. Yeah, unfortunately, because I don't identify as any party or any creed, you know, it doesn't work for me.

在硅谷，当你不认同任何东西时，这是个问题吗？你会受到压力吗？

Is that a problem in Silicon Valley when you don't identify as anything? Do you get pressure?

完全……以前还好。现在不行了。什么时候还好？大概 10 年前，我会说还好。然后你开始看到转变。是的，现在你必须选边站，否则你自动成为敌人。真的吗？是的，批判会之类的。天哪，批判会。我夸张了，但它确实有那种压迫感。对，而且你还必须在政治上直言不讳。对，是的，你不能保持中立。对，就像蒂姆·费里斯，我想在某个时候，发了一条推文，说你不能再随便说话了，你知道，人们被压制，然后一大群硅谷喜欢他的人蜂拥而上说：‘你不能说什么？你害怕说什么？你可以说任何你想说的，蒂姆。说吧，你怕什么？’对，他们不喜欢诱饵。是的，他想说什么？哇，我们必须把他放进那个盒子里。一个正在考虑说他不该说的话的人是什么？没错。现在我们知道了。我看到一条很棒的推文：‘你知道，左派赢得了文化战争。现在他们只是开车四处射杀幸存者。’哇，这太搞笑了。是的。

It totally... it used to be okay. It's not okay anymore. When was it okay? Like 10 years ago, I would say it was okay. And then you started seeing a shift. Yeah, and now you have to pick sides, otherwise you're automatically the enemy. Really? Yeah, struggle sessions and all that. God, struggle sessions. I'm exaggerating for effect, but it definitely has that oppressive feeling to it. Right, and you also have to be politically outspoken. Right, yeah, it can't be something that you just stay neutral about. Right, it's like when Tim Ferriss, I think at some point, put out a tweet about how you can't just say anything anymore, and you know, people are being suppressed, and a whole bunch of people who love them from Silicon Valley piled on and said, 'What is it that you can't say? What are you afraid to say? You can say whatever you want, Tim. Go ahead, what are you afraid of?' Right, they don't like baiting. Yeah, what was he trying to say? Wow, we have to put him in that box. What is someone who's thinking about saying something he shouldn't have said? Exactly. Now we know. One great tweet I saw was, 'You know, the left won the culture wars. Now they're just driving around shooting the survivors.' Wow, that's hilarious. Yeah.

我想知道谁赢得了文化战争。在社交媒体控制方面，肯定有一场战斗已经赢了。社交媒体的控制绝对是左翼的。

I wonder who has won the culture war. There's certainly a battle that's been won in terms of control of social media. Control of social media is absolutely left.

嗯，这对保守派来说是不幸的，但技术也是一种向左推的力量。所以如果你纵观整个人类历史，左派基本上在增长、增长、再增长。对吧？为什么？为什么正如一些评论员所说，利维坦向左倾斜？对，利维坦就是政府。为什么它向左倾斜？我认为很大程度上是因为技术。技术使得它更像工业革命技术。我们团结在一起，我们是国家的受监护人。对吧？避孕是一种有助于向左倾斜的技术。它削弱了家庭单位。堕胎是一种技术，对吧？几千年前是不可能的。所以技术实际上赋予个人权力。个人意味着家庭结构和宗教等的瓦解。我基本上不反对这一点，但这确实意味着向左的转变。现在我们得到了一小部分实际上可以让你更向右的技术。加密是一个例子，因为加密使隐私更容易，使拥有国家之外的货币更容易。枪支，3D 打印枪支是一个更向右转的技术例子。但总的来说，技术引领世界向左。

Well, this is unfortunate for conservatives, but technology is a force that also pushes left. So if you look all throughout human history, the left essentially grows and grows and grows. Right? Why is that? Why is it inexorably that, as some commentators have said, Leviathan slouches left? Right, Leviathan is the government. Why does it slouch left? And I think a lot of that has been because of technology. Technology has made it so that it makes more like industrial revolution technology. We all band together, we're wards of the state. Right? Contraception is a technology that kind of helps lean leftward. It takes away from the family unit. Abortion is a technology, right? It wasn't possible thousands of years ago. So technology actually empowers the individual. The individual means that you have the breakdown of family structure and religion and all that. And I'm not mostly opposed to that, but it does mean that there's a leftward shift to it. Now we're getting a small set of technologies that actually can take you more rightward. Encryption is an example, because encryption makes it easier to have privacy, it makes it easier to have money that is outside of the state. Guns, 3D printing of guns is an example of a technology that is more of a rightward shift. But generally, technology leads the world left.

是的，通常也是高学历的人首先参与技术。我认为当你特别看大学时，它们在这个国家也倾向于左倾。

Yeah, it's also usually highly educated people that are involved in technology in the first place. And I think when you look at universities in particular, they tend to lean left in this country as well.

嗯，大学，大学发生的事情非常有趣。大学首先，你知道，成为数据和理性主义以及是非对错的仲裁者。所以有一段时间，就像，我们该不该做那个？嗯，让我们看看大学。他们怎么说？最聪明的人，教授，智库怎么说？大学从硬科学中获得了这种可信度。所以他们从，你知道，物理、数学、计算机科学和化学中获得了这个，因为这些带来了真实的东西：曼哈顿计划、微处理器、太空飞行器等等，电动汽车。所以他们从硬科学中获得了这种权威和合法性的外衣。然后社会科学偷偷溜进来。然后你得到经济学和……

Well, universities, what happened with the university is very interesting. Universities first, when you know, became the arbiters of data and intellectualism and what's right and wrong. So there's a time period when it was like, should we be doing that or not? Well, let's look at the university. What do they have to say? What are the smartest people, the professors, the think tanks have to say? And the universities got this credibility from the hard sciences. So they got this from, you know, physics and math and computer science and chemistry, because these deliver real things: the Manhattan Project, the microprocessor, the space vehicles, and so on, the electric car. So they gain this mantle of authority and legitimacy from the hard sciences. So then come the social sciences kind of sneak in. Then you get economics and...

微观经济学是一门真正的学科，真正的科学，背后有真正的数学、逻辑和理性。然后你有了宏观经济学，它更容易被政治化，有点巫毒。然后你有了社会科学，再然后你有了性别研究，等等等等。所以发生的事情是，因为我们把科学家当作新世界的大祭司，科学本身已经被腐蚀了。而社会科学——你可以看出它们是伪科学，因为后面硬加了个'科学'——已经入侵并劫持了大学，成为新的智库。所以基本上，你今天在大学里看到的是社会科学和自然科学之间的战争。交叉点是生物学，在那里你可以看到整个'性别是社会建构'的运动正在攻击生物学和进化生物学。就像在社会领域，他们正在攻击喜剧演员。但你可以看到大学里的斗争，我会说自然科学基本上正在输掉这场战争。

Microeconomics is a real discipline, real science, real math behind it, logic, reason. And then you get macroeconomics, which can be politicized a little bit more, voodoo. And then you get social studies, and then you get gender studies, and then you get blah blah blah. So what happened is that because we took scientists to be the high priests of our new world, science itself has gotten corrupted. And the social sciences—and you can tell they're fake sciences because the word 'science' tacked on at the end—have come in and hijacked the universities and become the new think tanks. So essentially, what you see going on today in the universities is a war between the social sciences and the physical sciences. The crossover point is biology, where you can see the whole 'gender is a social construct' movement is attacking biology and evolutionary biology. Just like in the social sphere, they're coming after the comedians. But you can see the struggle going on in the universities, and I would say the physical sciences are essentially losing that war.

能做些什么？还是说这只能任其发展？我们是否必须意识到这种愚蠢的后果？

What can be done? Or is it just something that has to play out? Do we have to realize the consequences of the foolishness?

好消息是，自然科学有现实站在它们一边。但在很多方面甚至不被尊重。但归根结底，你的飞机仍然必须飞起来，你的微处理器仍然必须计算。所以他们只能走到那一步。但我确实看到，例如在生物学中，很多生物学家正面临这样的困境：他们不得不说一些他们知道不是真的东西来保住工作。

Well, the good news is the physical sciences have reality on their side. But it's not even respected in many ways. But at the end of the day, your aircraft still has to fly, your microprocessor still has to compute. So there's only so far they can take it. But I do see, for example in biology, a lot of biologists are facing this difficult thing where they have to say things that they know are not true to keep their job.

比如什么？

Like what?

嗯，你请过布雷特·温斯坦上节目，对吧？那是一个明显的例子。所以可接受和不可接受之间的分界线正在进入生物学。而生物学可能受害最深。例如，合成生物学最终会跑到中国去，因为你无法将事实、现实和行动联系起来。你拿不到资助，也得不到同行的赞誉。我对此了解不够，所以我现在处于不稳定的领域，但我的感觉是，当前的交叉战场是在进化生物学。经济学已经输了。嗯，当然在性别方面，这似乎是主要战场之一。

Well, you had Bret Weinstein on here, right? So that's a clear example. So the crossover line of what is acceptable and what's not is entering into biology. And biology will probably suffer the most. Synthetic biology, for example, will end up in China because you won't be able to map facts and reality and actions together. You won't be able to get grants, you won't be able to get the adulation of your peers. I don't know enough here, so now I'm in shaky territory, but it's just my sense that that crossover battleground right now is in evolutionary biology. Economics lost. Well, it's certainly in terms of gender, and that seems to be one of the major battlegrounds.

是的，我的意思是，这也会发生在比如白板理论上。你知道，我们是天性？还是教养？说很多是天性而不是教养，或者反过来，取决于你站在哪一边，这在社会上是不被接受的。对，这类讨论被腐蚀了。它们确实被腐蚀了，这真的很不幸，因为那是极其重要的事情要理解：是什么让一个人成为反社会者，是什么让一个人成为超级成功者、赢家，是什么让一个人成为吸毒者。这些因素是什么？你不能再对气候科学进行合理的讨论了，对吧？它不再是科学，它完全政治化了。你甚至不能提起它；每个人都已经拿定了主意。

Yeah, I mean, it's also going to happen for example, blank slate theory. You know, are we nature? Are we nurture? It's kind of socially unacceptable to say that a lot of it is nature and not nurture, or vice versa, depending on which side you're on. Right, those kinds of discussions get corrupted. They do get corrupted, and it's really unfortunate because that's an unbelievably important thing to understand: what makes a person a sociopath, what makes a person a super successful person, a winner, what makes a person a drug addict. What are these factors? You can't have a reasonable conversation about climate science anymore, right? It's not a science, it's all politicized. You can't even bring it up; everyone's got their minds made up already.

嗯，让我不舒服的是人们已经拿定了主意，但他们甚至没有数据。嗯，在大多数这些话题上，人们反正是在各说各话。他们在谈论不同的事情。比如当你谈到枪支管制时，对吧？一方在谈论携带武器的权利，以防暴虐的统治者或国王试图接管国家。另一方在谈论校园枪击案和保护人们在家免受犯罪侵害。所以他们只是在谈论两件不同的事情。而且甚至在政治上都不允许谈论同一件事。或者当谈到移民时，右派在谈论……左派把非法移民和合法移民混为一谈。而在右派，有时你里面有隐藏的种族主义者，所以这对他们的事业没有帮助。他们在谈论两件不同的事情。如果他们谈论的是同一件事——我们应该让多少移民进入这个国家，以及标准是什么——那将是一个非常不同的对话，而不是'不要移民'或'所有人都进来'。而且在左派，你还有这个好处：所有目前非法进入的人都会投票给左派，因为他们来自的社会经济背景。

Well, what's uncomfortable to me is people have their minds made up and they don't even have the data. Well, on most of these topics, people are talking past each other anyway. They're talking about different things. Like when you get into gun control, for example, right? One side is talking about the right to bear arms in case a tyrannical ruler or king tries to take over the country. The other side is talking about school shootings and protecting people in their homes from crime. So they're just talking about two different things. And it's just not politically acceptable to even talk about the same thing. Or when it comes to immigration, the right is talking about... the left is bundling together illegal immigration and legal immigration into one thing. Whereas on the right, sometimes you've got racists hiding in there, so it doesn't help their cause. They're talking about two different things. If they were talking about the same thing—which is how many immigrants should we let into the country and what are the criteria for that—that would be a very different conversation than 'no immigrants' or 'everybody comes in.' And also on the left, you have this benefit that everybody who's currently coming in illegally is going to vote for the left because of where they're coming from in their socioeconomic circumstances.

对我来说，任何好系统的测试是：你建立一个系统，然后把它交给你的敌人来运行十年。所以例如，如果你想要在 Twitter 或 Facebook 上审查，你应该建立那个系统，然后把它交给另一方来运行。所以如果你是一个提倡审查的左派，让别人来运行它。移民也一样：如果你想要一个移民系统，建立系统，然后把它交给另一方来运行。这样你才知道它是一个好系统。

To me, the test of any good system is: you build a system, hand it over to your enemies to run for the next decade. So for example, if you want censorship on Twitter or Facebook, you should build that system and then hand it over to the other side to run. So if you're a left-winger who's promoting censorship, let somebody else run it. Same with immigration: if you want an immigration system, build the system, then hand it over to the other side to run it. That's how you know it's a good system.

当你在处理这些政治战场时，没有细微差别的空间。当你在处理右派与左派时，一方有一个明确确立的立场你应该采取，比如枪支管制就是一个很好的例子。没有空间说'那心理健康呢？''那这么多人在服用精神药物的事实呢？'为什么那没有被讨论？我们正在运行历史上最伟大的心理健康实验之一，当我们给所有人服用 SSRIs。而且你知道，也许如果你给 3000 万人 SSRIs，也许 2990 万人更快乐了，然后你有一小部分人自杀或爆炸。你基本上是用均值换方差。你有爆炸风险。

There's no room for nuance when you're dealing with these political battlegrounds. When you're dealing with right versus left, and one side has a clearly established stance that you're supposed to take, like gun control is a great example of that. There's no room for 'what about mental health?' 'What about the fact that so many of these people are on psych medications?' Why is that not being discussed? We're running one of the greatest mental health experiments in history when we're doping everybody up with SSRIs. And you know, maybe if you give 30 million people SSRIs, maybe 29.9 million are a lot happier, and then you have a fraction that commits suicide or detonate. You're basically trading the mean for the variance. You have blow-up risk.

是的，没有细微差别的空间，这就是为什么我基本上远离政治。

Yeah, there's no room for nuance, which is why I stay out of politics largely.

但他们把你拖进去吗？有时他们总是尝试。

Do they drag you in though? Sometimes they always try.

我的意思是，这些对话，在这次对话中你确实被拖进去了，当然。但我肯定这里会有一些人……关于政治的事情是：因为我们有一个简单多数制，这意味着在这个国家谁赢得 51%的选票谁就获得大量权力。它不像比例代表制，绿党有 10%，自由意志党有 3%之类的。它就像，现在你们全是民主党掌权，我们全是共和党。正因为如此，为了获胜，你必须选择这两方之一。你必须选择。你不能只是说，'我要对此保持微妙。'你不能投票给第三方；那是浪费你的选票。我有一个朋友正在试图解决这个问题。他正在创办一个叫做'好党'的东西，在那里你启动你的投票，所以你结合你所有的选票，你把它们保留起来。

I mean, these conversations, in this conversation you get to get dragged in, sure. But I'm sure there's going to be some people here... Here's the thing about politics: because we have a first-past-the-post system, what that means is that whoever wins 51% of the vote in this country gets a lot of the power. It's not like proportional representation where the Greens have 10% and libertarians have 3% or whatever. It's just like, you're all Democrat in power now, we're all Republican. Because of that, to win, you have to pick one of these two sides. You have to choose. You can't just say, 'I'm going to be nuanced about it.' You can't vote for a third party; that's throwing away your vote. I have a friend who's trying to fix that. He's starting this thing called 'A Good Party' where you kick-start your vote, so you combine all your votes, you hold them in reserve.

然后当你有了足够的票数去赢，你就投票让那个人掌权，对吧？你不会浪费你的选票。但除了那些 hack 之外，我们永远不可能让第三方当选。所以正因为如此，你所有的信念都必须整齐地归入民主党或共和党的阵营。当你进入那个部落时，如果你在阵营之外发出信号，你就会受到攻击。是的，这实际上让你成为一个不清晰的思考者，让你成为一个混乱的思考者。如果你所有的信念都归于一个政党，你不是一个清晰的思考者。如果你所有的信念都和你的邻居、朋友一样，你也不是一个清晰的思考者。你的信念只是被社会化了，是从别人那里拿来的。所以如果你想成为一个清晰的思考者，你就不能关注政治。它会摧毁你思考的能力。

And then when you have enough to win, then you vote that person in power, right? You don't throw away your vote. But outside of those hacks, we're never gonna get a third party elected. So because of that, all of your beliefs have to neatly fit into the Democrat bundle or the Republican bundle. And so when you get into that tribe, if you signal outside of that bundle, you get attacked. Yeah, so it's literally making you into an unclear thinker. It's making you into a muddled thinker. If all of your beliefs line up into one political party, you're not a clear thinker. If all your beliefs are the same as your neighbors and your friends, you're not a clear thinker. You're literally just your beliefs are socialized; they're taken from other people. So if you want to be a clear thinker, you cannot pay attention to politics. It will destroy your ability to think.

我最害怕现代生活的是：我们所有的疾病都是富足病，而不是匮乏病。对吧？过去，我可能会挨饿。你知道，过去，如果我得到糖，那是件美妙的事；我应该吃掉所有能到手的糖。如果我得到一条新闻或八卦，那是有趣的数据，能帮助我的生活并推动我前进。如果我得到一点娱乐，无论是通过电子游戏还是杂志之类的，那都是好的。现在一切都是富足病。我们对一切都过度暴露。所以在现代社会中生存的方式就是做一个苦行者。就是从社会中退出来。无论你走到哪里，社会都太多了：你手机里的社会，你口袋里的社会，你耳朵里的社会。你现在听这个播客就是在被社会化，对吧？我们在社会化你，我们在编程你。每个人都在试图编程别人。唯一的解决办法就是关掉它。唯一的解决办法就是关掉它，专注于你的呼吸、冥想。

What I dread most of modern life: all our diseases are diseases of abundance, not diseases of scarcity. Right? Old times, I may have starved. You know, old times, if I got sugar, that was a wonderful thing; I should have eaten all the sugar to get my hands on. If I got a piece of news or gossip, that was interesting data that would have helped my life and moved me forward. If I got some brief amount of entertainment, whether through video games or magazines or whatever, that would have been good. Now it's all disease of abundance. We are overexposed to everything. So the way to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic. It is to retreat from society. There's too much society everywhere you go: society in your phone, society in your pocket, society in your ears. You're being socialized right now by listening to this podcast, right? We're socializing you, we're programming you. Everyone's trying to program everybody. The only solution is turn it off. The only solution is to turn it off and concentrate on your breathing, meditation.

是的，没错。我的意思是，它有效。它对我来说是救星。哦，我冥想，而且我一有空就冥想。今天早上我在医生办公室，我知道要等 20 分钟，所以我就闭着眼睛坐在那里冥想了 20 分钟。你知道，我小时候有一句话，我想是帕斯卡说的：他说，人类所有的问题都源于他不能独自在房间里坐 30 分钟。这非常正确。我总是需要刺激。当 iPhone 出现时，无聊就死了。我再也不会无聊了，即使排队，我也在用 iPhone。我当时觉得这很棒。小时候，我试图超频我的大脑，比如，我一次能想多少个想法？答案只有一个。但我会试着同时想多个想法，我为此感到自豪。我自豪我的大脑总是在运转，这个引擎总是在动。这是一种病。实际上是通往痛苦的道路。现在我年纪大了，我意识到你实际上想要再次让大脑休息。你想要学会如何安定在你的大脑里。现在我期待独处。你让我一个人待一天，那将是我一段时间以来最快乐的一天。这是一个超能力，我认为每个人都能获得：学会独处并享受它的超能力。

Yeah, yes. I mean, it works. It's been a lifesaver for me. Oh, I do it, and I do it whenever I get like spare time. I was in the doctor's office this morning and I knew it was going to be 20 minutes, so I just sat there with my eyes closed for 20 minutes and I meditated. You know, when I was growing up, there was this statement, I think it was Pascal: he said, you know, all of man's problems arise because he cannot sit by himself in a room for 30 minutes alone. And it's very true. I always needed to be stimulated. And when the iPhone came along, boredom was dead. I would never be bored again, even if I'm standing in line, I'm on my iPhone. And I thought it was great. And when I was a kid, I used to try and overclock my brain, be like, how many thoughts can I think at once? The answer is only one. But I would try to like think multiple thoughts at once, and I was proud of that. I was proud that my brain was always running, this engine was always moving. And it's a disease. It's actually the road to misery. And now that I'm older, I realize like you actually want to again rest your mind. You want to learn how to settle into your mind. Now I look forward to solitary confinement. You leave me alone for a day, it'll be like the happiest day I've had in a while. And that is a superpower that I think everybody can attain: the superpower of learning to be alone and enjoying it.

是的，是的。嗯，我认为这很关键。我确实认为，这些你只是思考事情、独自一人思考事情的时间，如今非常罕见。我认为在这些罕见的时间里，你才能真正理解你实际上相信什么或不相信什么。

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's critical. And I do think that these times where you just think about things, just be alone and think about things, are so rare these days. And I think during those rare times is when you really get to understand what you actually believe or don't believe.

是的，这很有趣。当我刚开始冥想时，真的很难，对吧？因为每个人，我想很多听这个广播的人，他们听说过冥想，它名声很好。所以每个人都尝试，他们挣扎，然后有点放弃。这是那种每个人都说他们做但实际上没人做的事，对吧？就像不吃糖，对吧？每个人都谈论，是啊，我不吃糖，但是，然后甜点车来了，每个人都去拿饼干。是的，对吧。所以它变成了那样的事情。事实上，它甚至没有变成一个信号性的事情，比如，哦，你冥想了多少？我冥想了这么多。或者你知道，现在有人戴着发带，上面有啾啾鸟叫，当他们进入深度冥想时，我不知道他们是怎么做到的，但他们会说，我今天有很多次旅行。你得到了多少次旅行？哦，天哪，哦，你的冥想技巧是错的，我的是对的。但实际上，它只是无为的艺术。好吗？这很重要，因为我认为当我们长大时，对吧，生活中会发生所有这些事情。其中一些你在处理，一些你在吸收，一些你可能应该多想一想并解决，但你没有，你没有时间。所以它被埋在你体内。这些都是偏好、判断和未解决的情况和问题。就像你的电子邮件收件箱，一封又一封未回复的邮件堆积如山，追溯到 10 年、20 年、30 年、40 年前。然后当你坐下来冥想时，那些邮件开始回击你：嘿，这个问题呢？那个问题呢？你解决了吗？你想过那个吗？你的遗憾在那里，你有问题在那里。这变得可怕。人们不想那样做。就像，它不起作用，我无法清空我的大脑，我最好站起来不做这个。但实际上发生的是自我治疗。只是你没有付费让治疗师坐在那里听你说话，而是你在听自己说话。你只需要坐在那里，让那些邮件一个一个地通过。你逐一处理它们，直到你达到神奇的收件箱为零。有一天你坐下来，你意识到你唯一在想的事情是昨天发生的事情，因为你已经处理了其他所有事情。不一定解决了，但至少听了自己。那时冥想才开始。我认为这是每个人应该体验的非常强大的事情。那时你就达到了无为的艺术。

Yeah, it's funny. When I first started meditating, it was really hard, right? Because everybody, I think a lot of people who listen to this broadcast, they've heard of meditation, it has a good rep. So everybody tries it, they struggle, they kind of give it up. It's one of those things that everybody says they do but nobody actually does, right? It's like not eating sugar, right? Everyone talks about how, yeah, I don't eat sugar, but like yeah, then right, then the dessert tray rolls around and everyone's going for the cookies. Yeah, right. So it's become one of those things. And in fact, it's not even become a signaling thing where it's like, oh, how much did you meditate? I meditated this much. Or you know, there are people now wearing headbands saying with tweety birds a chirp, and then when they're in deep meditation, I don't know how they make it work, but they'll be like, I got a lot of trips today. How many trips did you get? Oh my god, oh, your meditation technique is wrong, mine is right. But really, all it is is the art of doing nothing. Okay? And it's important because I think when we grow up, right, it's all this stuff happening to you in your life. And some of it you're processing, some of it you're absorbing, and some of it you should probably think a little bit more about and work through, but you don't, you don't have time. So it gets buried in you. And it's all these preferences and judgments and unresolved situations and issues. And it's like your email inbox, it's just piling up email after email after email that's not answered, going back 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And then when you sit down to meditate, those emails start coming back at you: hey, what about this issue? What about that issue? Have you solved this? Did you think about that? Your regrets there, you have issues there. And that gets scary. People don't want to do that. It's like, it's not working, I can't clear my mind, I better get up and not do this. But really what's happening is it's self-therapy. It's just that instead of paying a therapist to sit there and listen to you, you're listening to yourself. And you just have to sit there as those emails go through one by one. You work through each of them until you get to the magical inbox zero. And there comes a day when you sit down, you realize the only things you're thinking about are things that happened yesterday, because you've processed everything else. Not necessarily even resolved it, but at least listened to yourself. And that's when meditation starts. And I think it's a very powerful thing that everybody should experience. And that's when you arrive upon the art of doing nothing.

嗯，我认为甚至有一个问题，大多数人从应用程序获得冥想。我不会使用应用程序。它很狡猾。我的意思是，Sam Harris 有一个非常好的冥想应用程序，我应该说一下。但你应该能够直接做。而且很多人可以。它实际上就是无为的艺术。是的，你冥想所需要做的就是坐下来，闭上眼睛，舒适的姿势，发生什么就是什么。如果你思考，你就思考。如果你不思考，你就不思考。不要投入努力，也不要对抗努力。这就是你所需要的。

Well, I think it's even a problem that most people are getting their meditation from an app. I will not use an app. It's sneaky. I mean, Sam Harris has a very good meditation app, I should say that. But you should be able to just do it. And many people can. It is literally the art of doing nothing. Yeah, all you need to do for meditation is just sit down, close your eyes, comfortable position, whatever happens happens. If you think, you think. If you don't think, you don't think. Don't put effort into it, don't put effort against it. It's all you need.

你是专注于呼吸还是有特定的技巧？

Do you concentrate on your breath or do you have a specific technique?

没有，没有。不，你就坐着。你就坐着。

Nothing, nothing. No, you just sit. You just sit.

我思考我的呼吸。这就是我所做的。我只需要尝试只专注于呼吸。我以前那样做，但在某种程度上，所有的专注，每一种冥想技巧都是……

I think about my breath. That's all I do. I just need to try to only concentrate on breathing. I used to do that, but at some level, all the concentration, every meditation technique is...

这最终也会引导你到同一件事，那就是纯粹的观照。是的，专注是一种技巧，能让你的心足够平静，然后你就可以放下专注的对象。所以你也可以直接尝试进入最终状态。我所说的这种方法——不专注于呼吸——的问题在于，你必须长时间倾听你的思绪。除非你每天至少练习一小时，并且最好连续 60 天，否则它不会奏效，因为你需要先处理很多问题。所以一开始会很难，但当你走出来时，效果很棒。你会摆脱内心的杂音，或者当杂音出现时，它会在背景中，更暗淡、更微小。你以前听过它，你看清了模式，它更贴近当下，是你需要解决的事情。而且你会体验到真正的寂静时刻。

leading you to the same thing which is just witnessing. Yes, and concentration is a technique to still your mind enough that you can then drop the object of concentration. So you could also just try going straight to the end game. The problem with what I'm talking about, which is not focusing on your breath, is you will have to listen to your mind for a long time. It's not going to work unless you do at least an hour a day and preferably at least 60 days before you kind of work through a lot of issues. So it'll be hard for a while, but when you come out the other side, it's great. You get rid of the chatter, or when the chatter comes, it's in the background, it's dimmer, it's smaller. You've heard it before, you see the patterns, it's more recent, it's something you need to resolve anyway. And you will get moments of actual silence.

你冥想时的终极状态是什么？有没有一种状态，你很少达到，甚至从未达到，就是你处于极乐、和谐或开悟之中？那是什么样的？

What is your ultimate state when you meditate? Like, is there a state where you've achieved, rarely if ever, where you just... you're in bliss, or you're in harmony, or you're in enlightenment? Like what?

这有点难以描述，因为当你真正冥想时，你并不在那里。当没有念头时，就没有体验，什么都没有，只有空无。所以很难形容。但我想说，人们通过所谓的植物药物体验到的每一种迷幻状态，都可以通过纯粹的冥想达到，我确实达到过其中一些状态。你达到过一些超然的迷幻状态，你完全放空了。我有过迷幻的视觉，有过那种光和色彩，有过所谓的下载，有过领悟，有过极乐，有过光明，有过色彩。但并非每次都是。不，真的……事实上，我想说，那也是一种你会开始渴望的体验，而这反而会让你脱离冥想。你真正……我并没有开悟，甚至离得很远，所以根本不在那个范围。但根据我自己的经验，这是个人经验，我最常达到的状态，也是我真正想要的状态，是平静。只是平静。

It's kind of indescribable, because when you're really meditating, you're not there. When there's no thoughts, there's no experience, there's nothing, there's just nothing. So it's hard to describe. But I would say that every psychedelic state that people encounter using so-called plant medicines can be arrived just through pure meditation, and I've definitely hit some of those states. You've hit some transcendent psychedelic states where you're vacating the whole deal. I've had trippy visuals, I've had the kind of the lights and colors, I've had the so-called downloads, I've had the realizations, I've had the bliss, I've had the light, I've had the colors. But not every time. No, it's really... and in fact, I would say that that's also like an experience that you can start craving, which will then actually take you out of meditation. Where you really... and I'm not enlightened or anything close to it, so not even in the ballpark. But my own experience, and this is personal experience, is the place where I end up the most, that is really the one that I want to be at, is peace. It's just peace.

平静，快乐？

Peace, happy?

是的。对我来说，平静是静止的快乐，而快乐是动态的平静。你可以随时把平静转化为快乐，但大多数时候你真正想要的是平静。

Yeah. Peace to me is happiness at rest, and happiness is kind of peace in motion. You can convert peace to happiness anytime you want, but peace is what you want most of the time.

这很有趣。你可以随时把平静转化为快乐？

That's interesting. You can convert peace to happiness anytime you want?

是的。如果你是一个平静的人，你做的任何事都会是快乐的活动。顺便说一句，刷社交媒体、参与政治不会带给你平静。没有什么比这更不平静的了，对吧？在当今时代，我们以为通过解决所有外部问题就能获得平静。但外部问题是无限的。所以真正获得平静的唯一方法是从内心入手，放弃“问题”这个概念。

Yeah. If you're a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity. And by the way, being on social media, engaging politics will not bring you peace. There is nothing less peaceful. Right? And in today's day and age, the way we think, you get peace by resolving all your external problems. But there are unlimited external problems. So the only way to actually get peace is on the inside, by giving up this idea of problems.

谁认为可以通过解决外部问题获得平静？除了政客？

Who thinks you can get peace by resolving external problems? Other than politicians?

每个人。这就是每个人都在努力做的事情，对吧？你为什么想赚钱？为了解决你所有的金钱问题。你为什么想赢得一场政治辩论？因为那样你就会平静，因为你这边的人赢了。把外部世界整理好是一项艰巨的任务。改变自己比改变世界更容易。这是真的。

Everybody. That's what everybody's struggling to do. Right? Why are you trying to make money? To solve all your money problems. Why are you trying to win a political argument? Because then you'll be at peace because your people will have won. It's a daunting task to get your external world together. It's easier to change yourself than to change the world. That's true.

是的，改变世界的最好方法就是改变自己。没错。就是那些在社交媒体上大喊大叫的人。最好的方法其实就是过你希望别人过的生活。比如我去新西兰，遇到了一个人。你知道，每个人都在社交媒体上大喊环保、保护和可持续发展。我去他家，他非常安静、非常温和地进行了一个为期两周的零浪费实验，什么都不扔。他打开的每一个包裹，他都会保留并清理干净。他会保留他的亚马逊盒子，保留小容器，甚至一个茶包。如果你打开一个茶包，他得想办法把里面的茶叶堆肥，让茶叶本身有用，让茶包变成一个小储物用品。所以没有垃圾。他真的过着零垃圾的生活。他做到了。这真的很鼓舞人心。遇到像他这样的人，让我比任何在社交媒体上对我大喊大叫的人都更环保。

Yeah, and the best way to change the world is to change yourself. Exactly. It's all these people who are shouting on social media. The best way is just to actually live the life that you want other people to live. Like I went down to New Zealand and there's this guy that I met with. And you know, everyone's on social media shouting about environmentalism and conservation and sustainability. And I go to this guy's house and he was doing, very quietly, very gently, he was doing a two-week-long zero-waste experiment where he was throwing out nothing. So every package that he opened, he would keep and he would like clean it up. So he would keep his Amazon boxes, he would keep the little containers, even a tea bag. If you open the tea bag, he has to figure out how to compost the tea inside, how to make the tea itself useful, how to make the tea bag like a little storage item. So there was no trash. He was literally living with zero trash waste. And he was doing it. And it was really inspirational. Meeting people like him made me far more environmentally conscious than any amount of people yelling at me on social media ever will.

他那样做了多久？

How long did he do that for?

我想是两周。很难。你拿茶包怎么办？他收集了不少。他用它们装小东西。听起来像个疯狂的囤积者，像个囤积者，家里堆满了茶包。一个非常令人印象深刻的人。

I think it was two weeks. It was hard. What the hell are you going to do with tea bags? He had quite the collection. He was filling them with little things. He sounds like a crazy hoarder, like a hoarder person with stacks of tea bags in his house. A very impressive guy.

是的，这是一种奇怪的做法。我很欣赏。我的意思是，完全有可能以某种方式设计我们所有的杯子、所有物品和所有东西都可生物降解。你知道，现代环保运动的困境在于，他们识别出了正确的问题——地球是有限的，太空船地球，我们只有这个，不要毁了它。但他们没有解决方案。所以他们说的是：不增长，不增长，不增长。但问题是，有 30 亿印度人和中国人不会一直处于贫困中。不管你喜欢与否，他们都会增长。所以你可以对他们大喊大叫，对我们大喊大叫，但那不会发生。所以不幸的是，唯一的出路还是通过技术，你必须开发绿色技术。我非常感谢马斯克，他是少数几个试图这样做的人之一。所以你要制造可生物降解、对你有益、更健康的东西。每个人都想更健康。中国人想更健康，印度人想更健康，他们想更干净。如果你说我能清理你的河流，我能清理你的森林，我能让你的孩子不得霍乱、白喉和伤寒，我能治愈你的疾病，我能帮助增强你的免疫系统，我能给你干净的饮用水。这才是让人们成为环保主义者的原因，而不是对他们大喊大叫，说他们不应该增长，不应该向天空排放东西。你知道，他们没有那个概念。他们只是想摆脱贫困。所以我认为现代环保运动识别出了正确的问题，但没有提出一套吸引人的正确解决方案。人们不会放弃经济增长。他们必须先富起来。

Yeah, that's a strange way to go about things. I appreciate that. I mean, look, it is entirely possible to somehow or another engineer all of our cups and all of our things and all of our stuff to be biodegradable. You know, the struggle with the modern environmental movement is that they identify the correct problem, which is finite Earth, spaceship Earth, this is all we got, don't ruin it. But they don't have the solution. So what they say is no growth, no growth, no growth. Well, the problem is you got three billion Indian and Chinese who aren't going to stay in poverty. They're going to grow whether you like it or not. So you can yell at them, you can scream at them, you can yell at us and scream at us, but that's not going to happen. So the only way out, unfortunately, is again through technology, which is you have to build green technology. And I give Musk a lot of credit for being one of the few people who's out there trying to do that. So you build things that are biodegradable and good for you and healthier. And everybody wants to be healthier. Chinese want to be healthier, Indians want to be healthier, they want to be cleaner. If you say I can clean up your rivers, I can clean up your forests, I can have your children not get sick with cholera and diphtheria and typhoid, I can cure your diseases, I can help make your immune system stronger, I can give you clean drinking water. Like that is what causes people to become environmentalists, not shouting and screaming at them that they shouldn't grow and they should stop pumping things into the sky. And you know, they have no concept of that. They're just trying to get out of poverty. So I think the modern environmental movement identifies the correct problem but then doesn't come up with the right set of solutions that are appealing to people. People are not going to give up economic growth. They're going to have to get rich first.

嗯，这是一个很好的观点。但如何两者兼顾呢？

Hmm, that's a very good point. But how do you do both?

你大幅降低清洁技术的价格。所以基本上通过补贴、技术、创新让清洁技术具有成本竞争力。理想情况下，你可以在短期到中期内进行补贴，直到跨越创新曲线。我的意思是，就像特斯拉没有任何专利，对吧？或者他们免费提供。

You lower the price of clean technologies massively. So you basically make clean technologies cost competitive through subsidy, technology, innovation. Ideally you can subsidize in the short to medium term until the innovation curve is crossed. I mean, like Tesla doesn't have any patents, right? Or they freely give them.

放弃他们的专利，这就是一个例子。所以，如果你想摆脱塑料吸管，你可以这里那里地做，你可以让旧金山禁止塑料吸管，但中国不会禁止塑料吸管，除非你造出一种成本相同、耐用性好的纸吸管，然后你教育中国人，比如‘嘿，你们用的塑料是石油做的，这对你们有害，这是化学成分，这些会进入你们的血液。’他们也想要健康快乐的孩子，所以他们会让孩子用纸吸管。也许吸管不是最好的例子，但化石燃料也是如此，这可能是最好的例子，或者用玻璃和纸代替很多塑料等等。是的，有一项新技术，Rhonda Patrick 今天在她的推特上提到，能够将塑料垃圾转化为燃料，而且有公司正在积极尝试这样做。这样一来，塑料垃圾就会变得有价值，对吧？它会变成一种商品，变成人们可以资源化的东西。但有些问题这解决不了。这解决不了碳排放，解决不了森林砍伐。所以你需要用其他手段介入。例如，看看亚马逊，每个人都在抱怨亚马逊被砍伐。但你又不是贫穷的巴西农民，对吧？所以你坐在舒适的椅子上，在社交媒体上抨击邪恶的巴西人砍伐亚马逊。但亚马逊拥有不可思议的资源。如果我们真的在乎它，我们应该把它变成一个不可思议的旅游公园，把钱花在刀刃上，开始在亚马逊做生态旅游，开始为此付费，然后也许把未来所有来自那里神奇植物的药品权利拿出来出售，这样也许能给制药公司一个保护亚马逊生物多样性的激励。比如说，‘嘿，如果你买下这片亚马逊，你保护它，你可以从那里获得任何植物药物，然后你可以授权，获得 20 年或 30 年的专利等等。’所以我认为有一些解决方案，我们这些有钱的第一世界人可以言行一致，去拯救这些类型的财产。

Away their patents, that's the example of how you can do it. So you know, if you want to get rid of plastic straws, you can do it here and there, you can get San Francisco to ban plastic straws, but China's not going to ban plastic straws until you build a paper straw that is same cost, good durability, and then you educate the Chinese, like 'Hey, this plastic that you're using is petroleum, this is bad for you, here's the chemical composition, here's the things that are going in your bloodstream.' And they want healthy, happy kids also, so they're going to have their kids use paper straws. Maybe straws aren't the best example, but this is true with fossil fuels, for example, that's probably the best one, or replacing a lot of plastics with glass and paper, and so on. Yeah, there's a new technology that Rhonda Patrick had on her Twitter today about being able to convert plastic waste into fuel, and there are companies that are actively trying to do that now. So in that way, plastic waste will become valuable, right? And it'll become a commodity, it'll become something that people resource. Now, there are certain problems this doesn't solve. This doesn't solve carbon, this doesn't solve deforestation. So there you kind of have to step in with other means. For example, you look at the Amazon, right? Everyone's complaining about the Amazon being deforested. Well, you're not the poor Brazilian farmer, right? So you're sitting here in your comfortable chair, social media hammering away at the evil Brazilians for deforesting the Amazon. But the Amazon has incredible resources. If we really care about it, we should turn it into an incredible tourist park and put your money where your mouth is, start doing ecotourism in the Amazon, start paying for it, and then maybe take the future rights for all the pharmaceuticals that are going to come out of all the incredible plants there and start selling those off, so that maybe give the pharmaceutical companies an incentive to preserve the biodiversity of the Amazon. Say, 'Hey, if you buy this patch of the Amazon, you conserve it, and you can serve whatever plant medicines that come out of there that you can then license, you get the patent for 20 years or 30 years or whatever.' So I think there are solutions where we as the first worlders who have money can put our money where our mouth is and go and rescue these kinds of properties.

这是一个非常有趣的解决方案，但我能立即看到来自那些认为制药公司不应该拥有这种天然植物权利的人的反对。好吧，或者政府来做，然后政府获得专利，政府以后会拍卖专利，或者授权它们，或者别的什么，对吧？

That's a very interesting solution, but I could see immediate pushback from people that don't think the pharmaceutical company should have the rights to this natural plant. Okay, or the government does it and then the government gets the patents and the government will auction off the patents later or they'll license them or whatever it is, right?

嗯，这往往是问题所在。没有真正好的解决方案。有一堆解决方案也有缺点。这就是生活，是的。这就是权衡。所以作为人类，非常混乱。是的，这是一个受限的环境。显然我更倾向于私有财产资本主义类型的解决方案，因为即使它们不完美，它们已经被证明是有效的。没错，一旦某物是你的财产，你就会照顾它。你不会在自己的房子里到处拉屎。但它应该是临时财产，而不是永久财产。你看到世界上很多国家不这样做，比如不允许外国人拥有土地。或者墨西哥没有私人拥有海滩的权利。所以你可以在某些点上划清界限。

Well, that's often the problem. There is no really good solution. There's a bunch of solutions that also have drawbacks. That's life, yeah. That's the trade-off. So it's being human, very messy. Yeah, it's a constrained environment. Obviously I skew more towards private property capitalist type solutions because even though they're not perfect, they have been proven to actually work. Right, once something is your property, you take care of it. You're not going to crap all over your own house. But it should probably be temporary property, not permanent property. You see a lot of countries around the world not doing this, no foreign ownership of land thing, for example. Or Mexico has no private ownership of beaches, right. So you can draw the line at certain points.

你喜欢做这种事吗？把事情分解，给出你的观点，试图阐明某些复杂的主题？

Do you enjoy doing this kind of thing where you break things down and give your perspective on things and try to illuminate certain complex subjects?

与其说我在试图阐明，不如说，和你交谈，我学到的东西和我说的差不多，我为自己学习，因为我被迫把它表达出来。没错，我可以整天坐着想我的想法，但其中很多会是胡说八道。不是，因为思维中有一些空白，你对自己宽容，做了跳跃，却没有意识到。但当你被迫写下来——这就是为什么我发推文——或者当你必须和别人交谈时，你必须填补那些空白，形成一个完整的逻辑链条。我年轻时犯的错误是，我总是想成为房间里最聪明的孩子，就像你可能想成为房间里最有趣的孩子或最强壮的孩子一样。没错，我们一开始都是失败者，我们想成为赢家，所以我们选择自己擅长的东西，加倍努力。所以我总是想成为房间里最聪明的孩子。那我做了什么？我读了很多书，记住了很多东西，然后对于我没记住的，在谷歌出现之前，我就编造，让它听起来不错。好吧，谷歌之前。谷歌之后，事实核查开始了，我必须变得更好。没错，谷歌就这样提升了我。很多人都是这样。所以现在我意识到，记忆的最大错误是，当你真正试图与现实一致地生活时，你想对你所做的事情和为什么做有深刻的理解。所以真正掌握基础比知道高级的东西重要得多。知道微积分今天帮不了你。它在商业中帮不了你，在大多数事情中也帮不了你。但知道算术真的会帮你，无论是在街角杂货店找零，还是计算你的播客业务的价值，还是计算你想采取的某个行动的概率。所以彻底理解基础数学比记住微积分概念重要得多。问题是，我认为所有推理都是如此，从头开始了解基础，一个坚实的理解基础，一个钢铁般的理解框架，比仅仅有一个记住高级概念的脚手架要好得多。这就是为什么有很多人，我相信你听过，他们非常聪明，用了很多行话，但你不太能跟上他们的推理，你不知道他们如何把东西组合在一起，你内心深处怀疑他们甚至并不真正理解。没错，如果你看看最强大的思想家，尤其是那些涉及金钱或生命的人，他们必须把基础理解得非常非常好。物理学家理查德·费曼，他在一次讲座中有一个部分，他带你从用手指数数一直到微积分，只有四页文本。口头上，但写下来是四页文本，这是一个完整不间断的逻辑链条，带你通过几何、三角、微积分预备、解析几何、图形，一切，一直到微积分。

I'm not trying to illuminate so much as, you know, talking to you I learn as much as I say, and I learn it for myself because I'm being forced to articulate it. Right, I can sit around and think my thoughts all day long, but a lot of it is going to be nonsense. It's not, I'm going to because there are gaps in thinking where you make leaps because you're kind to yourself that you don't realize you're making. But when you're forced to write it down, and this is why I tweet, or when you have to talk to somebody, you have to complete those gaps and make it a proper logical chain. And the mistake that I made when I was young was, you know, I always wanted to seem like the smartest kid in the room, just like you probably want to seem like the funniest kid in the room or the toughest kid in the room. Right, we're all losers starting out, we want to be winners, so we pick the thing we're good at and we double down on it. So I always wanted to be the smartest kid in the room. So what did I do? I read a lot of books, I memorized a lot of things, and then whatever I hadn't memorized, pre-Google, I made it up so it sounded good. Okay, pre-Google. After Google, fact checking started, and I had to get better. Right, so Google improved me that way. A lot of people exactly. So now what I realize is that the biggest mistake with memorization, right, because when you're actually trying to live your life in congruence with reality, you want to have a deep understanding of what you do and why you do it. And so it's much more important to know the basics really well than to know the advanced. Knowing calculus wouldn't help you today. It doesn't help you in business, doesn't help you in most things. But knowing arithmetic really will help you, really, whether it's at the corner grocery store counting change, to figuring out the value of your podcast business, to figuring out how to do the probability math on some action that you want to take. So understanding basic mathematics cold is way more important than memorizing calculus concepts. And the problem is, and this is true of all reasoning I think, it's much better to know the basics from the ground up, solid foundation of understanding, a steel frame of understanding, than it is to just have a scaffolding of memorizing advanced concepts. This is why there are a lot of people, I'm sure that you listen to, who are really smart, they use a lot of jargon, and you can't quite follow their reasoning, you don't know how they're putting things together, and you have this deep down suspicion they don't even really understand. Right, so if you look at the most powerful thinkers, especially the ones where money or life is on the line, they have to understand the basics really, really well. Richard Feynman, the physicist, was able to, he had this piece in one of his lectures where he takes you from counting numbers on your hand all the way to calculus in four pages of text. Orally, but written down is four pages of text, and it's a complete unbroken logical chain that takes you through geometry, trigonometry, precalculus, analytic geometry, graphs, everything, all the way to calculus.

他在核心层面理解数字，不需要死记硬背。当你背诵时，说明你没理解。你应该能当场重新推导任何东西，如果不能，你就没掌握。

He understood numbers at a core level. He didn't have to memorize anything. When you're memorizing, it's an indication that you don't understand. You should be able to rederive anything on the spot, and if you can't, you don't know it.

那你把这一点应用到数学以外的事情上吗？

So do you apply that to things other than mathematics?

所有事。所有事。你甚至不要试图去记忆，只管去理解。你自然会记住。但如果你做不到——这就是推特对我的好处——我试着理解某件事，然后试着把它写下来，以便我能记住，只记住能指向深层理解的基本钩子。而且我被迫向别人解释，这样我就知道我真的理解了。

Everything. Everything. You don't even make an attempt to memorize things, just make an attempt to understand them. You can't help but memorize things. But if you can't—and this is where Twitter is great for me—I try to understand something and then I try to write it down in such a way that I can remember it, just the basic hook that'll point towards the deeper understanding. And I'm forced to explain it to people, and that's how I know I understand something.

这就是我最初的意思。我们聊过读一本好书：我一晚上只读一页，然后整晚思考它，或者去维基百科或奇怪的博客上追查参考文献，试图理解它。

So this is what I meant originally. We talked about reading a good book: I'll read one page in a night, and then I spend the rest of the night thinking about it, or I'm chasing down references on Wikipedia or weird blog posts trying to understand it.

比如，几个月前我处理过一个话题，很老套，但就是生命的意义，对吧？意义是什么？

You know, for example, there was a—I was dealing with this a few months back—I was dealing with a question of, stupid topic, but the meaning of life, right? What's the meaning?

这怎么会老套呢？

How could that be stupid though?

嗯，就是陈词滥调。你不该去想它。这是你小时候问父母的问题，他们告诉你别担心，或者让你去找工作。

Well, it's just trite. It's trite. You're not supposed to think about it. It's something you ask your parents when you're young, they tell you don't worry about it, or they'll get a job.

对，没错。好好工作，你这个嬉皮士。或者上帝：上帝是生命的意义，对吧？

Yeah, exactly. Good job, you freaking hippy. Or here's God: God is the meaning of life, right?

所以我只是想为自己解决，答案可能是什么？不是答案是什么，而是答案可能是什么？所以在核心层面，我被迫去追查所有这些奇怪的小东西，真正为自己理解。而且这必须是个人化的，对吧？但我必须为自己确立它可能是什么、不可能是什么，这给了我某种程度的平静。

And so I was just trying to resolve for myself, like, what could the answer be? Right? Not what is the answer, but what could the answer be? And so at a core level, I was forced to kind of hunt down all these weird little things and really understand for myself. And it's got to be personal, right? But I have to establish for myself what it could and could not be, and that gave me some level of peace.

所以现在我必须继续问这个问题：生命的意义是什么？我是说，我觉得问题比答案更有趣。每个人都应该自己探索，但让我和你一起探索几个部分，好吗？

So now I have to keep asking that question: what is the meaning of life? I mean, you—I think the question is more interesting than the answer. Everyone should explore this on their own, but let me just explore a few parts with you, right?

首先，如果我给你一个答案——如果我说生命的意义是取悦上帝——那么，哪个上帝？好吧，犹太-基督教上帝。那为什么是那个？为什么是这个？问题在于这是一个“为什么”的问题。你可以一直问为什么，对吧？我给你任何答案，你都会再问为什么，再问为什么。没错。然后你会陷入一个叫“阿格里帕三难困境”的地方。好吧，这是一个哲学练习。但我自己思考过，然后谷歌了一下，有一个叫阿格里帕三难困境的东西。阿格里帕三难困境说，任何这样的“为什么”追问最终都会走向三个结局之一。第一是无限回溯，对吧？为什么？因为这个。为什么那个？什么？然后一直问下去。第二是循环论证：A 为什么？因为 B。或者 B 为什么？因为 A，对吧？你被困在里面。第三是公理。最流行的公理是上帝，但也可以是任何东西：因为数学，因为科学，因为大爆炸，因为模拟，对吧？这些都是公理。这些都只是停止点。说“模拟，我们在模拟中”或者说“是大爆炸”只是另一种说上帝的方式。只是上帝是个脏词，所以我们不再那么常用，但一回事。所以你最终会陷入这三个死胡同之一，对吧？所以没有答案。

So first is, if I gave you an answer—if I said the meaning of life has to please God—well, which God? Okay, Judeo-Christian God. Well, okay, why that one? Why this thing? The problem is it's a 'why' question. You can keep asking why forever, right? Any answer I give you, you'll just ask why again, why again. That's right. And you end up in a place called Agrippa's Trilemma. Okay, this is a philosophical exercise. But I kind of thought it through, then Googled around, and there's a thing called Agrippa's Trilemma. And Agrippa's Trilemma says that any questioning like this 'why' will always end in one of three places. Okay, first is infinite regress, right? Why? Because of this. Why that? What? And just keep going forever. The second is circular reasoning: well, A why? Because of B. Or why B? Because of A, right? You get trapped in that. Or the third is an axiom. And the most popular axiom is God, but it could be anything: because of math, because of science, because the Big Bang, because the simulation, right? These are all axioms. These are all just stopping points. Saying 'simulation, we're in a simulation' or saying 'it's the Big Bang' is just another way of saying God. It's just God's a dirty word, so we don't use it as much anymore, but same thing. So you end up in one of these three dead ends, essentially, right? So there is no answer.

真正的答案是“因为”。对吧？生命的意义是什么？是的，你可以自己编造答案。美妙之处在于：如果有一个单一的答案，我们就不会自由。我们会被困住，因为那样我们都必须按照那个答案生活。然后我们会像机器人一样无聊，每个人都互相竞争，比其他人更好地实现那个单一意义。又回到信号传递：“我比你更擅长。”但幸运的是，没有答案，所以你想做什么就做什么。

The real answer is 'because'. Right? What is the meaning of life? Yeah, you get to make up your own answers. The beauty: if there was a single answer, we would not be free. We would be trapped, because then we would all have to live to that answer. Then we'd be bored like robots, each one competing with each other to fulfill that single meaning more than the others. Back to signaling: 'I'm better at it than you are.' But luckily, there is no answer, so you just do whatever you want.

有趣的是，这正是所有存在焦虑的基础：你不知道自己为什么在这里，而且你感觉这可能是无意义的。确实如此。我是说，当你开始思考多重宇宙、宇宙、星系、太阳系、行星、有机体、有机体内的细胞、细菌、寄生虫，对吧？我们与环境的共生关系。然后你开始想，“天哪，我是什么？只是这个东西的一小部分。”就像，所有伟大问题的答案都是悖论。是的。比如，你在问，“我重要吗？”这其实就是你问的问题，对吧？“在这个无限的宇宙中，我如何重要？”嗯，一方面，你是独立的。没有两个点是相同的。每个点——每两个点都是无限不同的。你完全独立。没有人会有你的思想、你的情感、你的感受、你的经历。所以你的生活是一场单人游戏。你被困在自己的脑袋里，你只是意识到一堆事情在发生，仅此而已。另一方面，我不能说出“乔·罗根”这个词而不牵涉整个宇宙。外星人乔来了，问：“那是什么？乔·罗根？乔·罗根是什么？人类。人类是什么？双足猿。猿是什么？在地球上。地球是什么？行星。行星是什么？太阳系。碳是在哪里制造的？在恒星内部。”对吧？相反，我必须创造整个宇宙才能说出“乔·罗根”这个词。所以从这个意义上说，你与一切相连。它是不可分割的。所以“我重要吗？”这个问题的答案是“我什么都不是，我是一切。”你会发现所有伟大问题都是这样：答案都是悖论。这就是为什么在某种程度上，追求它们以找到一个像我给出的陈词滥调答案是没意义的。但追求它们的行为实际上非常有用，因为它会给你生活中某种内在的理解，带来一定程度的平静。

It's funny that that—that's the basis of all existential angst: that you don't know why you're here, and you have this feeling that it could be meaningless. It is. I mean, when you start pondering the multiverse, the universe, the galaxies, the solar system, the planet, the organism, the cells inside the organism, the bacteria, the parasites, right? The symbiotic relationship we have to our environment. And you start going, 'Jesus Christ, what am I? Just a little piece of this thing.' It's like, well, the answers to all the great questions or paradoxes. Yeah. So for example, you're asking like, 'Do I matter?' That's really the question you asked, right? 'Well, how do I matter in this infinite universe?' Well, you know, on the one hand, you're separate. No two points are the same. Every point is—every two points are infinitely different. You're completely separated. No one will have your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your experience. So your life is a single-player game. You're trapped inside your head, and you're just aware of a bunch of things going on, and that's it. On the other hand, I cannot say the word 'Joe Rogan' without invoking the entire universe. Joe alien comes along, says, 'What's that? Joe Rogan? What's Joe Rogan? A human. What's a human? Bipedal ape. What's an ape? On the Earth. What's the Earth? Planet. What's a planet? Solar system. Where was the carbon made? Inside stars.' Right? Instead, I have to create the entire universe to just say the words 'Joe Rogan'. So in that sense, you're connected to everything. It's inseparable. So the answer to that question of 'Do I matter?' is 'I am nothing and I am everything.' And you'll find this with all the great questions: the answers are all paradoxes. Which is why, at some level, it's sort of pointless to pursue them to find a trite answer like I'm giving. But the act of pursuing them is actually really useful, because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding in your life that brings a level of peace.

我觉得对很多人来说，这个问题的压力也被不快乐的生活放大了。它实际上是被不快乐的选择、被困住放大的。不知道生命的意义和“天哪，我得离开这份工作。我不得不——我不能这样过我的生活。如果这就是我的生活，生命的意义是什么？”之间有很大区别。这就是为什么我总是从“先让你变富”开始，对吧？这就是为什么我对它非常务实。因为你看，佛陀是个王子，好吗？他一开始非常富有，然后他才能去森林里。在过去，如果你想要内心平静，你会成为僧侣。你会放弃一切。你会成为苦行者。你会放弃一切。你放弃女人、男人，你放弃孩子，你放弃金钱，你放弃政治、科学、技术，一切。然后你独自去森林里。你可以放弃一切以获得内心自由。好吧，今天我们有这个奇妙的发明叫做金钱，你可以把东西存在银行账户里，好吗？而且你基本上可以存钱。你可以非常努力地工作，你可以——

I feel like with many people, this stress of this question is also accentuated by unhappy lives. It's actually accentuated by unhappy choices, by being trapped. There's a big difference between not knowing what the meaning of life is and 'God, I gotta get out of this job. I have to—I can't live my life this way. What's the meaning of life if this is my life?' Which is why I always start with 'Let's get you rich first,' right? That's why I'm very practical about it. Because look, the Buddha was a prince, okay? He started out really rich, and then he got to go off in the woods. And in the old days, what happened was, if you wanted to be peaceful inside, you would become a monk. You would renounce everything. You would become an ascetic. You would give everything up. You renounce women, men, you'd renounce children, you'd renounce money, you'd renounce politics, science, technology, everything. And you would go out in the woods by yourself. You could give everything up to be free inside. Well, today we have this wonderful invention called money, where you can just store stuff up in a bank account, okay? And you can basically save up. You can work really hard, you can—

你可以为社会做伟大的事，社会会给你钱，因为你给了它想要却不知道如何获取的东西。然后你可以存起来，生活远低于你的能力范围，从中找到某种自由。这会给你时间和精力去追求内心的平静和幸福。所以我相信让每个人都快乐的办法就是给他们想要的。让他们都富有，都健康，然后让他们都快乐。

You can do great things for society, and society will give you money for giving it things that it wants and doesn't know how to get. Then you can save that up, live well below your means, and find a certain freedom in that. That will give you the time and energy to pursue your own internal peace and happiness. So I believe the solution to making everybody happy is to give them what they want. Let's get them all rich, let's get them all fit and healthy, and then let's get them all happy.

这些事情可能吗？每个人都能富有？

Are those things even possible? Everyone can be rich?

每个人都能富有。我给你一个思维实验。现在听起来像电视购物广告。每个人都能富有——我不是在卖我的房子，这是我的劳斯莱斯。所以这点说得好。我创作的所有关于如何赚钱的内容，我永远不会收一分钱，因为那会毁了它。那会显得我只是另一个想从你身上赚钱的骗子。没有快速致富的捷径，那只是别人想从你身上赚钱。所以对我来说，这更像是一种哲学贡献。为了让它有意义且合法，我不能向你收费。但没错，每个人都能富有。我给你一个思维实验。想象一下，如果明天我们挥动魔杖，每个人都成为科学家或工程师。每个人，即使你不是很好，你对计算机有足够的了解，能写点代码，能造点硬件。别告诉我人们做不到，因为他们可以。那只是软期望的暴政，只是你看不起别人。他们做不到？他们只需要接受教育。如果他们都接受教育，成为硬件和软件工程师、科学家、生物学家、技术人员、硬科学——不是社会科学——我们五年内就能完成。机器人会做所有事情，从打扫厕所到做饭，到开飞机，到开优步。那我们会做什么？我们会做所有创意工作来娱乐彼此，并研究科学和技术。我们会过上美好的生活。所以这真的只是教育的问题，没有别的。

Everyone can be rich. Here's my thought exercise for you. Now it seems like we're in an infomercial. Everyone can be rich—I'm not selling my home, this is my Rolls-Royce. So that's a good point. Everything I've ever created on this topic of how to make money, I will never charge a dollar for, because that would ruin it. That would show that I'm just another huckster trying to get rich off you. There are no get-rich-quick schemes; that's just somebody else trying to get rich off you. So to me, it's more of a philosophical contribution. For it to have meaning and be legit, I can't charge you anything for it. But yes, everybody can be rich. Let me give you a thought exercise. Imagine if tomorrow we could wave a wand and everybody was trained as a scientist or an engineer. Everybody, even if you weren't very good, you had enough understanding of computers, you could write some code, you could build some hardware. And don't tell me people can't do it, because they can. That's just the tyranny of soft expectations, that's just you looking down on somebody else. They can't do it? They just have to be educated. Now if they're educated all as hardware and software engineers, scientists, biologists, technicians, hard sciences—not the social sciences—we would all be done within five years. Robots would be doing everything from cleaning toilets to cooking food to flying airplanes to driving Ubers. And what would we be doing? We would be doing all creative jobs to entertain each other and researching science and technology. We would have wonderful lives. So it is really just a question of education, nothing else.

但这是规模问题吗？我的意思是，你说得好像这对 3 亿人都有效。

Is this a scale issue though? I mean, you're talking about it as if this would work with 300 million people.

它对 100 亿人也有效。它对一个拥有 100 万亿人的太空文明也有效。我们有资源，有能力。宇宙资源无限。你建造它。你听说过戴森球吗？你把戴森球套在一颗恒星上，收集它所有的能量。外面有那么多能量。一颗小行星就有我们需要的所有矿物。一个太阳，一个太阳系就有我们很长时间需要的所有能量。我们可以通过核聚变提取它。我们离这些技术实现并不远。这只是胆量和兴趣的问题。比如，我们应该在月球上建造核聚变试验厂。月球上应该到处都是。没有坏处。

It'll work with 10 billion people. It'll work with a spacefaring race with 100 trillion people. We have the resources, we have the ability. The universe is infinite resources. You build it. Have you heard of a Dyson sphere? You pull the Dyson sphere on a star and you gather all its energy. There's so much energy out there. One asteroid has all the minerals we need. One sun, one solar system has all the power we will need for a long, long time. We can extract it out of nuclear fusion. We're not that far from those kinds of technologies working. It's just a question of guts and interest. Like, we should be building nuclear fusion test plants on the moon. The moon should be littered with them. There's no downside.

是的，如果你能做到，那会怎么运作？嗯，不是送一堆人上去工作。

Yeah, if you could, how would that work? Well, it doesn't send a bunch of people up there to work.

哦，问题？机器人。裂变，核裂变的问题是，大自然通过核能创造能量，比如太阳通过核能创造能量。现在传输时，我们使用光子，因为光子不相互作用。光子很适合信息传输，但实际上不太适合能量传输。对于能量创造，你想要核能工作。问题在于，因为核能——我们用炸弹建造了它，我们有脏弹，所有那些福岛、三哩岛、切尔诺贝利的问题。我们不再在核能上创新了。想象一下，如果第一台蒸汽机爆炸时，我们说‘哦，暂时不要蒸汽机了’，或者非常严格地监管，数十亿美元的监管。你不能那样创新。第一架飞机坠毁时，我们说‘飞机不再创新了’。所以我们需要一种方法来迭代核裂变，最终是核聚变，让它们安全、清洁、被动安全地工作，等等，如果我们想摆脱能源陷阱。而做这件事的最佳地点是像月球或火星这样的地方。

Oh, the problem? Robots. The problem with fission, nuclear fission, is that nature creates energy through nuclear energy, like the sun creates energy through nuclear energy. Now for transmission, we use photons because photons don't interact. Photons are great for information transmission, but they're actually not great for energy transmission. For energy creation, you want nuclear to work. And the problem is because nuclear energy—we built it with a bomb, we have dirty nukes, all those kinds of problems with Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. We don't innovate anymore on nukes. Imagine if when the first steam engine blew up, we said, 'Oh, no more steam engines for a while,' or very carefully regulated, billions of dollars of regulation. You can't innovate that way. When the first airplane crashed, we said, 'No more innovation in airplanes.' So we need a way to iterate on nuclear fission and eventually fusion and get them working safely, cleanly, passive fail-safe, etc., if we're going to find our way out of the energy trap. And the best place to do that is somewhere like on the moon or Mars.

你认为他们有可能让核能发展到没有危害的程度吗？因为每个人都担心熔毁。

Do you think it's actually a possibility that they could get nuclear power to the point where it's not a detriment? Because what everyone's worried about is a meltdown.

是的，我们确实有这些老电厂，运行着 50 年前的技术。这很疯狂，因为无法关闭它们。非常老的技术。他们现在有第四代核反应堆，是被动安全的。换句话说，当它们失效时，它们会进入安全状态。当你拔掉插头时，它们会进入无泄漏、无问题的状态。它们的默认状态是积极结果，而不是现在的那些老式反应堆，如果你拔掉插头……而这些第四代只是第四代，不是第五代，不是第八十代，不是第一百代，就像我们在微处理器领域那样。这应该是人们努力的方向。我希望如此。在理想世界里，我们会。现在的问题是，如果你在月球上有核能，你怎么把它带回家？所以实际上你必须在月球上使用它，也许用来发射更多卫星、更多火箭到更远的太阳系。这是最初的应用场景。但最终技术会变得非常好，你可以把它带回家。

Yeah, and we do have these old plants that are running on 50-year-old technology. It's crazy because there's no ability to shut them off. Very old technology. They do now have Gen 4 nuclear reactors that are passive fail-safe. So in other words, when they fail, they fail into a safe state. When you pull the plug on them, they fail into a state where there's no leakage, no problem. Their default is a positive outcome, as opposed to the current ones, the old ones, where if you unplug them... And these Gen 4 are just Gen 4, not Gen 5, not Gen 80, not Gen 100, where we are in microprocessors. And that should be something that people are working towards. I hope so. In an ideal world, we would. Now the problem is, if you have nuclear energy on the moon, how do you get it home? So what you actually have to do is you have to use it on the moon, maybe to launch more satellites, more rockets further out into the solar system. That's the initial use case. But then eventually the technology gets so good you can bring it home.

我想回到这个让人富有的想法。那怎么让人快乐呢？你怎么阻止人们自然的进程，比如‘哦，我有一辆不错的雪佛兰，但我真的想要一辆宝马。我有一辆不错的宝马，但现在我想要一辆奔驰。我有奔驰，我想要法拉利。’你怎么阻止那个物质占有陷阱？因为在某种程度上你无法阻止。

I want to go back to this idea of getting people rich. How does that make people happy? How do you stop the natural progression that people have of, 'Oh, I have a nice Chevrolet, but I really want a BMW. I have a nice BMW, but now I want a Mercedes. I have a Mercedes, I want a Ferrari.' How do you stop that material possession trap? Because you can't at some level.

但我认为大多数聪明人随着时间的推移会意识到，物质财富并不能让他们快乐。只是你必须经历那个过程。你必须买你那辆愚蠢的车，才意识到它并不能吸引有吸引力的女孩。它实际上只会吸引其他男人，他们会说‘嘿，我喜欢那辆车，哥们。’比如，你有一些昂贵的车，一些花哨的车。告诉我那吸引女性和男性的比例是多少。嗯，我结婚了，那些是给我自己的。我只是喜欢机器。所以对我来说，它们是玩具。那是你享受机器的一种特殊方式。但我认为随着你变老，你会意识到物质财富中没有幸福。然而，缺乏物质财富会让你非常不快乐。所以贫穷会让你不快乐，但富有并不会让你快乐。不幸的是，很多人一生都在努力赚钱，他们赚了一些，筋疲力尽，然后他们想，‘嗯……’

But I think most smart people over time realize that possessions don't make them happy. It's just you have to go through that. You have to buy your stupid car to realize that it doesn't attract attractive girls. It actually just attracts other dudes who are like, 'Hey, I like that car, man.' Like, you have some expensive cars out there, some fancy cars. Tell me how much that attracts women versus men. Well, I'm married, those are for me. I just enjoy machines. So for me, they're toys. That's a particular thing where you enjoy machines. But I think as you get older, you just realize that there's no happiness in material possessions. Now, lack of material possessions can make you very unhappy. So being poor can make you unhappy, but being rich is not going to make you happy. And what happens unfortunately is a lot of people struggle through their whole lives to make money, they make some, they're exhausted, and then they're like, 'Well...'

为什么我不快乐？我想我只是个不快乐的人，聪明人都不快乐。这就像是个让人自我安慰的好说法。他们说：‘如果你聪明，你就不快乐，对吧？’那反过来呢？如果你聪明，你应该能想办法让自己快乐。否则，你也没那么聪明。

Now why am I not happy? I guess I'm just not a happy person, and smart people aren't happy. That's like a great little way for people to feel better about it. They say, 'Well, if you're smart, you're not happy, right?' Where's the positive the other way? If you're smart, you should be able to figure out how to be happy. Otherwise, you're not that smart.

是啊，说聪明就不快乐，这话挺冒犯的。我以前听过，除了自我辩解，我实在不明白这逻辑。

Yeah, that is an offensive statement, that if you're smart you're not happy. I've heard that before, and I just do not understand the logic of that other than self-justifying.

我明白这说法从哪来的。它来自：如果你聪明，通常是因为你深思熟虑，脑子很忙。脑子忙常常会让你失去内心的平静，因为我们寻求的平静不是内心的平静，而是远离内心的平静。所以，看看你为了快乐做的那些疯狂事——不管是想上床达到高潮，还是极限运动，或者看美景，或者嗑药——你都是在试图逃离自己的大脑。你试图让猴子大脑停止对你喋喋不休。你试图获得远离内心的平静。还有其他更好的方法。我们大多数试图远离内心的方法都是间接的，而如果你理解事物，如果你正确看待事物，你会自然而然地慢慢获得远离内心的平静。抱歉我跑题了。

I understand where it comes from. It comes from: if you're smart, it's usually because you think things through and you have a very busy mind. A busy mind can often rob you of peace of mind, because the peace we seek is not peace of mind, it's peace from mind. So if you look at all the crazy activities you do to be happy—whether it's trying to get laid and have an orgasm, or extreme sports, or looking at something beautiful, or taking a psychedelic—you're trying to get out of your own mind. You're trying to get your monkey mind to stop chattering at you for a moment. You're trying to get peace from the mind. There are other, better ways to do that. Most of the ways we try to get peace from mind are indirect, whereas if you understand things, if you see things properly, you will naturally slowly develop peace from mind. Sorry if I went on a tangent there.

不，这是个好跑题。这是个好跑题，因为我认为很多时候，追求本身才是让人兴奋的，而有一天能休息、能达到目标的可能——那是个根本的错觉：以为外面有什么东西能让我永远快乐和满足。

No, it's a good tangent. It's a good tangent because I think that oftentimes the pursuit is what's thrilling to people, and the possibility that one day they'll be able to rest and that they'll reach this goal—that's the fundamental delusion: that there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfill forever.

是啊，黄金岁月。有的，叫死亡。那会解决一切。那是伟大的平等器。

Yeah, golden years. There is, it's called death. That'll take care of everything. That's the great leveler.

但当人们看社交媒体时，回到那个话题：当你看到有人站在豪宅前，靠着豪车，穿着名牌衣服，戴着昂贵手表，你会想：‘我想要那个，对吧？那就是我想要的。’你真正想要的是自由。你想从金钱问题中解脱出来。我觉得这没问题。

But when people look at, particularly social media, bring it back to that: when you see someone posed in front of their mansion with their beautiful car, leaning against it with their designer clothes and expensive watch, you go, 'I want that, right? That's what I want.' What you really want is freedom. You want freedom from your money problems. And I think that's okay.

所以一旦有人能解决他们的金钱问题——要么降低生活水平，要么赚够钱——本质上你想让每个人都退休。但不是那种‘我 65 岁坐在养老院领支票’的退休。不同的定义：退休是你停止为了某个想象中的明天而牺牲今天。当今天本身是完整的，你就退休了。那么怎么达到呢？一种是你存够钱，被动收入就能覆盖你的开销，你什么都不用做——保持低开销。第二种是把开销降到零，你成为和尚。第三种是你做自己喜欢的事，你非常享受，跟钱无关。有多条路，但最常见的是人们只说‘我需要赚更多钱’。我谈的那种财富创造是关于创造永恒的原则和调整自己，这样赚钱就不是问题，你可以通过做自己喜欢的事来赚钱。

So once someone can solve their money problems—either by lowering their lifestyle or by making enough money—essentially what you want is to get everybody to retirement. But not retirement in the 'I'm 65 years old sitting in a nursing home collecting a check' sense. Different definition: retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete in and of itself, you're retired. So how do you get there? One is you can have so much money saved up that just your passive income covers your burn rate without you lifting a finger—keep your burn rate low. A second is you drive your burn rate down to zero; you become a monk. A third is you're doing something you love, you enjoy it so much it's not about the money. There are multiple paths, but the most common is people just say, 'I need to make more money.' The kind of wealth creation I talk about is about creating timeless principles and adapting yourself so that making money won't be an issue, and you can do it by doing what you love.

我认为人们必须非常小心，不要被那些你当前生活方式能负担的东西困住——你的生活方式和收入方式——但它们也在囚禁你。事实上，你现在必须每周工作 40 小时来得到你买不起的东西，但你现在被这份工作拖累。你没有储蓄，没有把东西放在好位置，你在为这些东西工作。把工作当作奖励是一个真正的陷阱，很多人都会掉进去。这是最大的陷阱。

I think people have to be very careful to not get trapped along the way with things that you can afford with your current lifestyle—the way you're living and the way you're earning—but they're also imprisoning you. The fact that you are now going to have to work this 40-hour-a-week job in order to get this thing that you can't afford, but now you're saddled down to this job. You're not saving, you're not putting things in a good place, and you're working for these things. Working for things as rewards is a real trap that a lot of people fall into. It's the biggest one.

你知道，纳西姆·塔勒布也说过，两大成瘾物：海洛因和月薪。这就是为什么你无法通过出租时间来致富，因为即使你开始为自己的时间收取更多费用，这也是一个缓慢的升级循环。然后你同时升级房子，同时弄坏车，你搬进那个社区。你真的还必须学会忽视你的同龄人，或者升级或改变你对同龄人的定义。这里很多穷人如果住在泰国和巴厘岛，如果他们有远程可行的工作，他们可能会想住在那里存钱。

You know, Nassim Taleb also says that under two great addictions: heroin and a monthly salary. And that's why you can't get rich renting out your time, because even when you start charging more and more for your time, it's a slow upgrade loop. Then you upgrade your house at the same time, you break your car at the same time, you move in the neighborhood. You really also have to get used to ignoring your peers or upgrading or changing the definition of your peers. A lot of people here who are poor here would be rich if they were living in Thailand and Bali, and if they have the luxury of a remotely doable job, they may want to be living there and saving up money.

我们陷入这种模式：‘我必须为别人工作，一步步往上爬，我必须像那个人一样赚钱。’但实际上，在今天的社会，你因为创造性工作而获得回报，因为创造了社会还不知道自己想要的全新东西，社会除了通过你之外不知道如何得到它。所以最强大的赚钱机器实际上是个体品牌——像你这样的人，或者埃隆、坎耶、奥普拉、特朗普。这些都是以自己名字命名的品牌，他们自己被杠杆化了。就像你被杠杆化了：你有一个播客媒体传播给每个人，这就是杠杆。播客在你睡觉时为你工作。他们拥有别人没有的知识，那就是你的知识——作为乔·罗根的知识。我是说，还有谁是 UFC 选手、评论员、播客主持人、喜剧演员，并且对所有这些东西感兴趣？所有这些人都无法取代你。所以我们必须付给你你应得的。

We get into this model of 'I must work for other people, work my way up the ladder, I must do what that person is doing to make money.' But really, today in society, you get rewarded for creative work, for creating something brand new that society didn't even know it wanted, that it doesn't know how to get other than through you. So the most powerful money makers are actually individual brands—people like yourself, or Elon, or Kanye, or Oprah, or Trump. These are eponymous name brands who themselves are leveraged. Like you're leveraged: you have a podcast media going out to everybody, that's leveraged. The podcast works for you when you sleep. They have knowledge that nobody else has, which is your knowledge—the knowledge of being Joe Rogan. I mean, who else is a UFC fighter and a commentator and a podcaster and a comedian and interested in all these things? All these people can't replace you. So we have to pay you what you're worth.

但我没在 UFC 打过啊。

I never fought in the UFC though.

哦，你没打过？好吧，抱歉。或者你参与了整个场景。你只是有一套独特的技能组合。所以，由于这种独特的——我称之为特定知识——由于你名字带来的责任感，由于你通过媒体拥有的杠杆，你是一台赚钱机器。我敢肯定，现在我可以让你明天重新开始，清空你的银行账户，你很快就会再次富有，因为你拥有所有这些技能。美妙之处在于，你做到这一点的方式是你没有任何竞争。没有替代品。如果乔·罗根明天从电波中消失，不会是随便哪个播客主持人第 12 号来填补那个空缺。不，它就没了。所以摆脱竞争陷阱的方法实际上是做真实的自己。退休的方法实际上是找到你比任何人都擅长的事情，而且你比任何人都擅长是因为你喜欢做。如果你喜欢做，没人能和你竞争。做真实的自己，然后想办法把它映射到社会真正想要的东西上。应用一些杠杆，把你的名字放在上面，这样你承担风险，但获得回报。拥有你所做事情的所有权和股权，然后只管做出来。

Oh, you didn't? Okay, sorry. Or you're involved in that whole scene. You just have a unique set of skill sets. So because of this unique—what I call specific knowledge—because of the accountability that you have with your name, because the leverage that you have through your media, you're a money-making machine. I'm sure at this point I could make you start over tomorrow, wipe out your bank account, you'd be rich again in no time because you have all the skill sets. The beauty is the way you've done it is you don't have any competition. There's no substitution. If Joe Rogan were to disappear off the air tomorrow, it's not like random podcaster number 12 would step in and fill that thing. No, it's just gone. So the way to get out of that competition trap is actually to be authentic. The way to retire is actually to find the thing that you know how to do better than anybody, and you know how to do it better than anybody because you love to do it. No one can compete with you if you love to do it. Be authentic, and then figure out how to map that to what society actually wants. Apply some leverage, put your name on it so you take the risks but you gain the rewards. Have ownership and equity in what you do, and then just crank it out.

但忽视同辈是个问题，因为攀比心理是真实存在的。是啊，嫉妒让世界运转，对吧？

But ignoring the peers is an issue because keeping up with the Joneses is a real phenomenon. Yeah, envy makes the world go around, right?

是的，还有另一件事人们必须避免：当他们听到你说的这些逻辑性很强的绝妙建议时，他们甚至允许自己的思维产生这六个脏字：“你说得倒轻松。”没错，那是一个可怕的陷阱。我的意思是，你看，我作为第一代移民在皇后区的牙买加长大，身无分文，单亲妈妈，两个孩子，没日没夜地工作，还要上学。你知道，我洗过盘子，做过餐饮工作，修剪过草坪，我从 11 岁起就断断续续地工作。口袋里没有一分钱。我不得不借 400 美元去上大学。真的，我就差 400 美元。我必须找到 400 美元，但我没有。还被唐恩都乐的工作拒绝了。所以，好吧，我不是说这很容易。这并不容易。实际上非常非常难。这是你将做的最难的事情，但也是最有回报的事情。你知道，看看那些生来富有的孩子：他们的生活没有意义。你处于一个糟糕的境地。你真正的简历就是你所有苦难的清单。对吧？如果我让你向自己描述你的真实生活，当你躺在临终床上回顾时，你会回想并说：“我做过哪些有趣的事情？”那将全部围绕你做出的牺牲和你做过的艰难事情。任何给予你的东西都不重要。你有四肢，你有大脑，你有头，你有皮肤。这些都是理所当然的。所以无论如何你都必须做艰难的事情来为自己创造生命的意义。赚钱是一个不错的选择。是的，奋斗。这很难。我不会说这很容易。这真的很难，但工具都是可用的。都在那里。还有一些陷阱，人们在脑海中为自己建立这些陷阱，给自己找借口或设置不可逾越的障碍、不可逾越的道路。受害者心态。是的，这是别人的错。是我肤色的错。是体制的错。是的，那些人正在沉沦。我为他们感到难过。我想把他们摇醒，说：“实际上，你可以摆脱它。你只需要停止认为这是别人的错。你必须改变视角。”是的，但这对人们来说非常困难。人们最难做到的事情之一就是改变他们接近现实本身的方式。

Yeah, and then there's another thing that people have to avoid: even allowing their mind to think when they're hearing what you're saying and all this logical fantastic advice, there's these six dirty words: 'That's easy for you to say.' Yeah, that is a terrible trap. I mean, look, I grew up as a first-generation immigrant in Jamaica, Queens, with zero money, single mom, two kids, working day and night, going to school. You know, I washed dishes, I was working catering jobs, I was mowing lawns, I was working since the age of 11 on and off. Didn't have two cents to rub together. I had to borrow $400 to go to college. Like literally, I was short $400. I had to find $400, I didn't have it. Got rejected from a job at Dunkin' Donuts. So, okay, it's not to say that it's easy. It's not easy. It's actually really freaking hard. It is the hardest thing you will do, but it's also the most rewarding thing. You know, look at the kids who are born rich: no meaning to their lives. You're in a terrible place. Your real resume is just a cataloging of all your suffering. Right? If I were to ask you to describe your real life to yourself, when you look back on your deathbed, you're going to go back and say, 'What are the interesting things I've done?' And it's all going to be around the sacrifices that you made and the hard things that you did. Anything you're given doesn't matter. You have your four limbs, you have your brain, you have your head, you have your skin. That's all for granted. So you have to do hard things anyway to create your own meaning in life. Making money is a fine one. Yeah, struggle. It is hard. I'm not gonna say it's easy. It's really hard, but the tools are all available. It's all there. There's also these traps that people sort of establish in their own mind of giving themselves excuses or giving themselves insurmountable obstacles, insurmountable paths. Victim mentality. Yes, it's somebody else's fault. It's my skin color's fault. It's the system's fault. Yeah, those people are sinking. I feel bad for them. I want to shake them out of it and say, 'Actually, you can get out of it. You just have to stop thinking it's everybody else. You have to alter the perspective.' Yeah, but it's so difficult for people to do. It's one of the most difficult things for people to do is to change the way they approach reality itself.

归根结底，我确实认为，即使我之前说过那些，生活真的是一场单人游戏。一切都发生在你的脑海里。你知道，无论你认为自己相信什么，都会极大地塑造你的现实，不仅是你承担的风险和采取的行动，还有你日常的现实体验。如果你走在街上评判每一个人，你会想：“我不喜欢那个人，因为他们的肤色。我不喜欢那个。哦，她不漂亮。那个家伙很胖。这个人是个失败者。哦，谁把这个挡在我路上了？”你知道，你评判得越多，你就越会孤立自己。你会瞬间感觉良好，因为你会自我感觉良好：“我比他们强。”但随后你会感到孤独，然后你只会看到处处都是消极。世界只是把你的感受反射回给你。现实是中性的。现实没有评判。对一棵树来说，没有对错或好坏的概念。对吧？你出生，你有一整套感官体验、刺激、光线、颜色和声音，然后你死去。是的，你如何选择解读这些取决于你。你确实有这个选择。所以这就是我所说的幸福是一种选择。如果你相信这是一个选择，那么你就可以开始努力。我不能告诉你如何找到它，因为是你自己的条件反射让你不快乐，所以你必须解除这些条件反射。就像我不能替你改变你的饮食习惯一样。我可以给你一些一般性的指导，但你必须经历养成正确饮食习惯的艰难过程。但你必须相信这是可能的，而且绝对可能。我以前很痛苦。我现在快乐得像一只蛤蜊。

At the end of the day, I do think even despite what I said earlier, life is really a single-player game. It's all going on in your head. You know, whatever you think you believe will very much shape your reality, both from what risks you take and what actions you perform, but also just your everyday experience of reality. If you're walking down the street and you're judging everyone, you're like, 'I don't like that person because their skin color. I don't like that. Oh, she's not attractive. That guy's fat. This person's a loser. Oh, who put this in my way?' You know, the more you judge, the more you're gonna separate yourself. And you'll feel good for an instant because you'll feel good about yourself: 'I'm better than that.' But then you're gonna feel lonely, and then you're just gonna see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality is neutral. Reality has no judgments. To a tree, there's no concept of right or wrong or good or bad. Right? You're born, you have a whole set of sensory experiences and stimulations and lights and colors and sounds, and then you die. Yeah, and how you choose to interpret that is up to you. You do have that choice. So this is what I meant that happiness is a choice. If you believe it's a choice, then you can start working on it. And I can't tell you how to find it because it's your own conditionings that are making you unhappy, so you have to uncondition yourself. It's just like I can't fix your eating habits for you. I can give you some general guidelines, but you gotta go through the hard habit forming of how to eat right. But you have to believe it's possible, and it is absolutely possible. I was miserable. I'm happy as a clam.

不只是钱。我在有钱之前就达到了那种状态。你在有钱之前就快乐了？大部分是的。你怎么在有钱之前就快乐了？

It's not just the money. I got there before the money. You got happy before the money? Mostly, yeah. How did you get happy before the money?

我开始变老了，你知道。我只是意识到生命短暂。我会死。再说一遍，老生常谈，对吧？用 20 种方式试试。是的，孔子有句名言：每个人都有两条命，第二条始于他意识到自己只有一条命。哇，我读到过。那是那种让人合上书的名言，就像麦克风掉落一样。孔子有很多这样的名言。那是个好句子。或者另一个是：下次你生病的时候，你知道，因为每个人都会时不时生病。快乐的人想要一万样东西；生病的人只想要一样东西。对吧？所以是你无限的欲望遮蔽了你的平静和幸福。要有欲望。你的生物本能站起来说：“我能做点什么。我移动，我抵抗，我活着。”但要对你的欲望非常小心。这是最古老、最陈腐的智慧：欲望即痛苦。就是这个意思。对吧？你的每一个欲望都是一个让你受苦的额外负担。所以一次只专注于一个欲望。宇宙的运作方式是这样的：如果你只想要一件事并专注于它，你就会得到它。但其他一切你都必须放手。

I started getting older, you know. I just realized like life is short. I'm going to die. Again, trite, right? Try it in 20 ways. Yeah, well, Confucius had a great saying that every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one. Wow, and I read that. It was one of those book-dropping lines, you know, it's like mic drop. Confucius had a lot of mic drops. That was a great one. Or another one is: next time you get sick, you know, because everybody gets sick every now and then. It's like a happy person wants 10,000 things; a sick person just wants one thing. Right? So it's your unlimited desires that are clouding your peace, your happiness. Have desires. Your biological creature stands up and says, 'I can do something. I move, I resist, I live.' But just be very careful of your desires. This is the oldest, most trite wisdom: desire is suffering. That's what it means. Right? Every desire you have is an excess where you will suffer. So just don't focus on more than one desire at a time. The universe is rigged in such a way that if you just want one thing and you focus on that, you'll get it. But everything else you gotta let go.

你是逐渐转向幸福，还是突然改变的？

Did you make a gradual shift to happiness or was it a radical change?

这是持续进行的。每天都在逐渐变化。所以你今天比一个月前更快乐？是的，据说是这样。是的，是的。这些天我非常快乐，快乐得有些飘飘然。实际上我很难和普通人相处。真的吗？是的。那么你在大约多少年的时间里发生了显著的转变？大约八年。八年。是的，哇。这是你通过某些书籍追求的东西，还是你只是在自己的头脑中理解或获得了理解，然后基于那种理解开始追求它？

It's ongoing. It's gradual every day. So you're happier today than you were a month ago? Yeah, allegedly. Yeah, yeah. I'm very happy these days, deliriously so. It's actually hard for me to hang out with normal people. Really? Yeah. So you've made a significant shift over the period of like how many years? About eight years. Eight years. Yeah, wow. And is this something that you've pursued through certain books or is it just like you've made an understanding or gained an understanding in your own mind and then started pursuing it based on that understanding?

是的，这非常非常个人化。基本上你必须决定把它作为优先事项，然后我尝试了所有我能想到的方法。我以前，你知道，我尝试了所有的冥想，我尝试了见证。你知道，我甚至尝试过 SSRI，只是想看看它是什么感觉。感觉如何？它把我从一个悲观主义者变成了一个乐观主义者，但我不喜欢身体上的副作用，也不想长期服用药物，所以我放弃了。它确实把你变成了乐观主义者？是的，当时是这样。我以前是个悲观主义者。是的。我开始做一些事情，比如我会开始看，你知道，在每一个时刻和发生的每一件事中，你都可以看到积极的一面，对吧？所以我过去强迫自己这样做，然后我训练它，直到它成为第二天性。

Yeah, it's very, very personal. It's basically you have to decide it's a priority, and then I tried every hack I possibly could. I used to, you know, I tried all the meditation, I tried witnessing. You know, I even tried an SSRI just to see what it would feel like. How did it feel? It turned me from a pessimist to an optimist, but I didn't like the physical side effects, nor did I want to be on a drug for a sustained basis, so I dropped it. And it did turn you into an optimist? Yes, at the time. I used to be a pessimist. Yeah. I started doing things like I would start looking at, you know, in every moment and everything that happens, you can look on the bright side of something, right? And so I used to do that forcibly, and then I trained it until it became second nature.

比如，我妻子的一位朋友在我们约会时来过，她拍了上百张照片，然后全发给了我们。我的第一反应是：‘你为什么往我手机里倒几百张照片？我不需要几百张照片，有点判断力好吗。’这是我的本能反应。然后我可以说：‘其实她真好，发给我几百张照片，这样我就能挑一张我喜欢的。’几乎所有事情都有两种看法。有些事痛苦程度很高，你没法那样做，只能告诉自己‘这是个教训’。但我慢慢克服了每一个负面判断，直到看到积极的一面。现在这对我来说已经是本能了。

For example, a friend of my wife's was over when we were dating, and she took hundreds of photos and sent them all to us. My immediate reaction was, 'Why are you dumping hundreds of photos on my phone? I don't need hundreds of photos. Have some judgment.' That's my immediate reaction. Then I could say, 'Actually, how nice of her. She sent me hundreds of photos so I can pick the one I like.' There are two ways of seeing almost everything. There are a few things that are high suffering, so you can't do that other than just saying, 'Well, this is a teacher.' But I slowly worked through every negative judgment I had until I saw the positive end. Now it's second nature to me.

我还意识到，你想要的是清空大脑，放下念头。快乐的念头会自动消散，很容易放下。负面念头则会挥之不去。所以如果你凡事都往积极方面解读，你就能更快地放下。简单的小技巧：多晒太阳，多微笑，多拥抱。这些行为实际上会反向释放血清素；它们不只是快乐的外在信号，更是通往快乐的反馈回路。多接触大自然。这些都是显而易见的。整天观察你的思绪，看它在做什么，不要评判，不要试图控制。你可以全天候冥想。冥想不是一种坐下闭眼的活动。冥想基本上就是像观察外界任何事物一样观察你自己的念头，然后问：‘我为什么会有这个念头？它对我还有用吗？这是不是我十岁时的条件反射？’

I also realized that what you want is to clear your mind. You want to let go of thoughts. Happy thoughts disappear out ahead automatically; it's very easy to let go of them. Negative thoughts linger. So if you interpret everything positively, you let it go much faster. Simple hacks: get more sunlight, learn to smile more, learn to hug more. These things actually release serotonin in reverse; they aren't just outward signals of being happy, they're actually feedback loops to being happy. Spend more time in nature. These are obvious. Watch your mind all day long. Watch what it does, don't judge it, don't try to control it. You can meditate 24/7. Meditation is not a sit-down, close-your-eyes activity. Meditation is just basically watching your own thoughts like you would watch anything else in the outside world, and saying, 'Why am I having that thought? Does that serve me anymore? Is that conditioning from when I was 10 years old?'

比如，为这期播客做准备：你准备了，我没有。但我确实准备了，我控制不住。事情是这样的：在播客前的几天里，我的思绪一直在运转。通常我的思绪很平静，但那时它不停地转。每一个念头，我都会想象自己说给你听。我的大脑忍不住在排练，一直在排练怎么跟你说话。然后我甚至排练了告诉你我在排练这件事。所以它在玩所有这些元游戏，我就想：‘闭嘴，停下，怎么回事？’我花了一段时间才弄明白：哦，对，我小时候在皇后区，没钱没资源，我需要自救。我摆脱困境的方式是听起来很聪明，而不是真的聪明——听起来聪明。那是我磨练出来的技能。所以我天生就总是排练，以便让自己听起来聪明。这是一种病，它让我无法快乐。但当你看到这一点，意识到这一点，理解它的时候，它就会自然地让你平静下来。在那之后，我就不怎么排练了。但这仍然是一个根深蒂固的习惯。

For example, getting ready for this podcast: you got ready, I didn't. But I did. I couldn't help it. What happened was, in the few days leading up to this, my mind was just running. Normally my mind is pretty calm, and it was just running and running. Every thought I had, I would imagine me saying it to you. My brain couldn't help but rehearse. It's just rehearsing all the time to talk to you. Then I was even rehearsing telling you about the rehearsal. So it was playing all these meta games, and I was just like, 'Shut up, stop it, what is going on?' It took me a while to figure out: oh yeah, when I was a kid in Queens, I had no money and nothing, and I needed to save myself. The way I got out was by sounding smart, not being smart—sounding smart. That was the skill I perfected. So I am hardwired to always rehearse things so I will sound smart. It's a disease; it keeps me from being happy. But when you see that, when you realize that, when you understand something, then it naturally calms you down. So after that, I stopped rehearsing as much. But it's still a trained habit.

这真是个有趣的观点，你想听起来聪明。很多人都会这样，尤其是年轻人。当你看到一个聪明或看起来聪明的人，他们会说些聪明的话。‘天哪，我想听起来聪明。我希望别人对我的看法和我对那个人的看法一样。’这就是我的病，我的感觉。它让我的思绪变得杂乱。我现在必须问自己：如果我可以，但永远不能告诉任何人，我还会对学习这件事感兴趣吗？这样我就知道它是不是真的，是不是我真正想知道的。

That is a really interesting point, that you want to sound smart. Many people do that, especially young people. When you see someone who is smart or appears smart, they say smart things. 'Oh god, I want to sound smart. I want people to think about me the same way I think about that person.' That is my disease, that is my feeling. It is what clutters my mind. The thing I have to ask myself now is: if I could, would I still be interested in learning this thing if I couldn't ever tell anybody about it? That's how I know it's real, that's how I know it's something I actually want to know.

不过这是很常见的事。我知道我年轻时也为此苦恼，想听起来聪明。这很普遍。我们所有人一开始都是失败者。你现在生活中赢得的每一件事，你在某个时刻都曾是输家。如果你在初中或高中时得到了所有女孩、所有钱、所有你想要的东西，长得又帅，那你的人生就不会有任何成就，你会早早达到顶峰。就像布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀的《光荣岁月》那首歌。你会娶了你的高中恋人，住在你的家乡，在当地麦当劳当经理，或者你最初梦想的工作。谢天谢地，我们年轻时没有都得到我们想要的，否则我们就会被困在那里。所以你必须能够突破你的出身。

That's a common thing though. I know I suffered from that when I was young, the desire to sound smart. It's very common. Well, all of us start out as losers. Everything you're a winner at now in your life, you were a loser at some point. If you had gotten all the girls, if you had all the money, if you had everything you wanted, if you were good looking in junior high or high school, you wouldn't have done anything with your life and you would have peaked early. It's like the Bruce Springsteen 'Glory Days' song. You would have married your high school sweetheart, you'd be living in your hometown, you'd be a manager at the local McDonald's, whatever the first dream job you had. Thank god we didn't all get what we wanted when we were young, or we would be trapped in that. So you have to be able to break out of where you came from.

关于那些过早达到顶峰的人，这也很有意思。也许那些过早达到顶峰的人可以像埃隆·马斯克那样，直接放弃，开始新的事情，然后学习在某件事上做得很烂的乐趣。

That is interesting too, about people who peak too early. Maybe those people that peak too early can do the Elon Musk thing and just abandon it and start something new, and then learn the joys of sucking at something.

是的，实际上在我们的职业中，尤其是当你知名度很高时，达到顶峰的问题在于你会被千刀万剐地淹没。人们对你有期望。‘嘿，乔，你能来我的活动吗？嘿，乔，你能看看我的商业计划吗？嘿，乔，你能给我点建议吗？你能跟我朋友谈谈吗？你能来这个播客吗？’你一直受到各种机会的冲击。所以你没有时间重新开始任何事情。所以你必须无情地让所有人失望，清空你的日程，取消所有会议，甚至不回邮件。这是你能够重新开始任何事情的唯一方法。

Yeah, and actually in our professions, especially when you're high visibility, the problem with peaking is that you then get drowned in a death of a thousand cuts. People have expectations of you. 'Hey Joe, can you come to my event? Hey Joe, can you look at my business plan? Hey Joe, can you give me advice on this? Can you talk to my friend? Can you come on this podcast?' You're just being assaulted all the time with inbound opportunities. So you have no time to start over with anything. So you have to ruthlessly disappoint everybody, eliminate and clear your schedule, drop all the meetings, not even respond to the emails. That's the only way you're going to be able to start over with anything.

是的，我喜欢你对待会议的方式。如果不是生死攸关，我也一样。我最近就避开了一个重要的会议。那是一个在大机构里很有名的人，一直追着我，我就说：‘我们能电话聊吗？’然后我们通了电话，没什么可说的。他们就是想让我去办公室。

Yeah, and I love your approach to meetings. If they're not life or death, I'm the same way. I avoided a good one recently. This was someone that was just tracking me down as a high-profile person in a big organization, and I'm like, 'Can we just talk on the phone?' And then we talk on the phone, there was nothing to say. It was just they wanted to get me in the office.

是的，会议应该变成电话，电话应该变成邮件，邮件应该变成短信。很多都是这样。对于会议，我深恶痛绝。我以前拥有域名 idonotdocoffee.com。我后来放弃了，但我以前会用那个钱包回复：‘我不喝咖啡。’那很搞笑，但有点混蛋。但真正的原因是我年轻时的一个原则：我知道我必须赚钱。那是我压倒一切的欲望。我做的其中一件事是，我说：‘好吧，我的价值永远不会超过我自认为的价值。没有人会付给我比我自认为的价值更多的钱。那么我值多少钱？’所以我给自己定了一个时薪，我说我永远不会把时间浪费在低于这个时薪的事情上。最初是每小时 500 美元，然后我升级到每小时 5000 美元。这很荒谬，但选一个有抱负的时薪。它必须有点荒谬。然后我会这样做：如果我要退货，排队退货的时间低于我的时薪，我就扔掉或送人。

Yeah, and meetings should really be phone calls, phone calls should be emails, and emails should just be texts. Many of them. With meetings, I despise them. I used to own the domain idonotdocoffee.com. I eventually let it go, but I used to respond from that wallet: 'I don't do coffee.' That was hilarious, but it was a bit of a jerk move. But really, where it comes from is when I was young, one of my principles was I knew I had to make money. It was my overwhelming desire. One of the things I did was I said, 'Okay, I'm never going to be worth more than what I think I'm worth. No one's going to pay me more than what I think I'm worth. So what am I worth?' So I picked an hourly rate for myself that I was worth, and I said I'm never going to squander my time for less than this. So originally it was $500 an hour, then I upgraded to $5000 an hour. It's ludicrous, but pick an aspirational hourly rate. It has to be a little ludicrous. Then what I would do is, if I have to return something and I'm standing in line to return something and it's below my hourly rate, I'll throw it away or give it away.

如果你想做任何伟大的事，极端的例子就是商务旅行：坐飞机飞到地球另一端参加一个毫无结果的会议，然后在那里浪费你的一生，再飞回来。所以大约五年前我下定决心：我再也不为商务旅行了。哇。从那以后我再也没有为商务旅行过。我只有在旅行体验本身足够有趣和愉快时才会旅行，因为我有朋友在那里，或者那是我想去的地方，等等，这样旅行本身就完整了。因为我知道无论什么商务会议都不值得。哇。实际上，这个原则不仅适用于旅行，也适用于整个生活。

If you're going to do anything great, the extreme example is business travel: getting on a plane to fly halfway around the world for one meeting which never amounts to anything, and then wasting your whole life there and then flying back. So about five years ago I resolved: I am never going to travel for business. Wow. And I haven't traveled for business since. I only travel if the travel experience itself will be so entertaining and joyous because I have friends or it's a place I want to see or whatever, that it will be complete in and of itself. Because I know that whatever the business meeting I came from is never worth it. Wow. And actually that principle applies larger than just travel; it applies to life in general.

幸福的秘诀之一就是真正拥抱你此刻正在做的事情。这听起来老套，但它的来源是：我只想做那些本身完整的行为。对吧？如果我期待某种未来的动机，它不会实现。即使你认为它会，即使它真的实现了，也会非常短暂。你生命中想要的任何东西——无论是车、女孩还是钱——当你得到它时，一年后你又回到了零点。你的大脑已经享乐适应了它，你开始寻找下一个东西。

One of the secrets to happiness is to really embrace what you're doing in that moment. That's trite, but where that comes from is saying: I only want to do actions that are complete in and of themselves. Right? If I'm looking for some ulterior motive down the line, it's not going to materialize. And if you think it is, maybe even if it does, it'll be very short-lived. Anything you wanted in your life—whether it was a car, or a girl, or money—when you got it, a year later you were back to zero. Your brain had hedonically adapted to it, and you were looking for the next thing.

说得好：享乐适应。这就是人们会发生的。你会习惯任何事物。我意识到当我第一次得到新公寓时，那是个不错的公寓。过了一段时间我就习惯了。我想，‘哦好吧，这只是一个公寓。只是我住的地方。我习惯了。它很好，但我习惯了。’

That's a great statement: hedonically adapted. That is what happens to people. You get accustomed to whatever it is. I realized that when I first got a new apartment, it was a nice apartment. After a while I got used to it. I was like, 'Oh okay, this is just an apartment. It's just where I live. I'm used to it. It's nice, but I'm used to it.'

是的，我们都经历过。这就像乘坐人生的摩天轮。你在底部，‘我想到达顶部，这太令人兴奋了。’你升上去，得到一点多巴胺冲击和一点血清素，然后随着效果消退，你又降下来。然后你需要另一个高潮，再升上去再降下来。事实上，你得到的高潮越多，转轮就越难，你越无聊，再升上去就越难。

Yeah, we all go through this. It's riding the Ferris wheel of life. It's like you get at the bottom, 'I want to get to the top, this is so exciting.' You ride it up, you get a little dopamine rush and a little serotonin, then you ride it back down as that wears off. Then you need another high, then you ride it back up and ride it back down. In fact, the more highs you get, the harder it gets to go around the wheel, and the more bored you get, the harder it goes to go back up.

那么现在什么能点燃你的热情？什么能激励你去做事和行动？

So what lights your fire now? What gets you motivated to do things and to act?

艺术。艺术就是创造力。就是任何为了自身而做的事情。那么哪些事情是为了自身而做的呢？除了爱一个人、创造一些东西，没有别的。玩艺术。对我来说，创造企业就是玩。我创建早期企业是因为有趣，因为我喜欢产品。即使我投资，也是因为我喜欢那些人，我喜欢和他们相处，我从他们那里学习，而且我认为产品很酷。所以现在我会放弃各种很好的投资，因为我觉得，‘产品不有趣，很无聊，我学不到任何东西。’

Art. Art is just creativity. It's just anything that's done for its own sake. So what are the things that are done for their own sake? There's nothing beyond loving somebody, creating something. Playing art. To me, creating business is play. I create businesses early stage because it's fun, because I'm into the product. Even when I invest, it's because I like the people, I like hanging out with them, I learn from them, and I think the product is really cool. So these days I will pass on all kinds of great investments because I'm like, 'I just the product's not interesting, it's boring, I'm not gonna learn anything.'

那是一种美丽的奢侈。确实是奢侈。

That's a beautiful luxury. It is a luxury.

艺术和学习。是的，那是奢侈。这些不是非黑即白的事情，对吧？你可以在生活中逐渐向那个方向靠拢，对吧？但那是一个目标。我年轻的时候，曾经非常渴望赚钱，愿意做任何事。对吧？如果你出现说，‘嘿，我有一个污水卡车运输生意，你要加入，’我会说，‘太好了，我们干吧，我要赚钱。’谢天谢地没人给我那个机会。我很高兴它走上了科技和科学的道路，这是我真正喜欢的。所以我得以将我的职业和爱好结合起来。

Art and learning. Yeah, it is a luxury. These are not 100 or zero things, right? You can in your life start moving more and more towards that, right? But that's a goal. When I was younger, I used to be so desperate to make money that I would have done anything. Right? If you'd shown up and said, 'Hey, I got a sewage trucking business and you're going to go into that,' I said, 'Great, let's do it, I'm going to make money.' Thank God no one gave me that opportunity. I'm glad that it went down the road of technology and science, which I genuinely enjoy. And so I got to combine my vocation and my advocation.

我的意思是，你在做什么？你在玩，你在享受，你在做艺术，你不是在工作。

I mean, what are you doing? You're playing, you're having fun, you're doing art, you're not working.

不，我一直这么说。当人们说我工作努力时，我会说，‘算是吧，也不完全是。’我总是在工作，但对他们来说看起来像工作，对我来说感觉像玩。这就是为什么我知道没有人能在这方面与我竞争，因为我一天只玩 16 个小时。如果他们想和我竞争，并且他们要去工作，他们会输，因为他们不会一天 16 小时、一周 7 天都这样做。

No, that's what I always say. When people say I work hard, I'm like, 'Sorta, not really.' I'm always working, but it looks like work to them, but it feels like play to me. And that's how I know no one can compete with me on it, because I'm just playing 16 hours a day. And if they want to compete with me and they're going to work, they're going to lose, because they're not going to do it 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

嗯，听着，老兄，这次对话中有一些智慧的瑰宝，我希望人们能从中提取出东西并应用到自己的生活中。我当然会再听你的话，并尝试将其中一些应用到我的生活中，那些我还没有应用的东西。但我真的很感激你的时间，也很感激你来到这里。

Well, listen man, there are some gems of wisdom in this conversation, and I hope people pull things out of this and apply them to their own life. And I'm certainly going to listen to you again and try to apply some of this to my own life, stuff that I'm not already applying. But I really appreciate your time and I really appreciate you coming in here.

谢谢你邀请我。请告诉大家——你那个小小的播客，就是 Naval 播客，对吧？是的。找到我的最好方式是在 Twitter 上。好的，就是@Naval。我有一个网站 nav.al，我有一个 YouTube 频道 Naval，我还有一个播客。就这些。

Thanks for having me. And please tell people—you those small little podcast, it's just the Naval podcast, right? Yeah. Best way to find me is on Twitter, actually. Okay, just @Naval. I have a website at nav.al, I have a YouTube channel, Naval, and I have a podcast in the world. That's it.

嗯，非常感谢。谢谢你，真的很感激。谢谢。大家再见。

Well, thank you very much. Thank you, really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye everybody.