The Cook and the Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce Decoded

The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret Sauce 厨师与大厨：马斯克的秘密配方
2015年11月6日作者：Tim Urban

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html
https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html

This is the last part of a four-part series on Elon Musk’s companies. For an explanation of why this series is happening and how Musk is involved, start with Part 1.11 ← also click these
这是四篇系列文章中关于埃隆·马斯克公司探讨的尾声篇。如果你想了解这个系列诞生的初衷，以及马斯克本人在其中的角色，请先从第一部分读起。←（也可点击这里）

Three quick notes:
三点小提示：

PDF and ebook options: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing (see a preview here), and an ebook containing the whole four-part Elon Musk series:
1）PDF与电子书下载：我们精心制作了本篇文章的雅致PDF版本，便于打印或离线阅读（可点击此处预览），并同步推出收录完整四篇马斯克系列的电子书：

Buy the PDFget the ebook
购买 PDF ｜下载电子书

Here’s a G-rated version of the post, appropriate for all ages (with its own URL, so safe to share too).
这里提供一篇适合全年龄阅读的“无敏感版”文章（带有专属链接，分享也同样安心）。
Extra big thanks to our Patreon supporters for making WBW sustainable and for being immensely patient during the long wait.
衷心感谢所有 Patreon 支持者的慷慨相助，正因你们的支撑，WBW 才得以长久续航；亦由衷感激你们在漫长等待中所展现的无尽耐心。

Welcome to the last post in the series on the world of Elon Musk.
欢迎来到本系列探寻埃隆·马斯克世界的终章。

It’s been a long one, I know. A long series with long posts and a long time between posts. It turns out that when it comes to Musk and his shit, there was a lot to say.
这篇文章确实够漫长——整个系列篇幅不小，更新间隔也隔了好一阵子。谁让说到马斯克和他的那些事，总有一箩筐话要讲呢。

Anyone who’s read the first three posts in this series is aware that I’ve not only been buried in the things Musk is doing, I’ve been drinking a tall glass of the Elon Musk Kool-Aid throughout. I’m very, very into it.
如果你读过本系列的前三篇文章，应该早就察觉到，我不仅整个人埋进了马斯克正在折腾的那些事，还毫不掩饰地一杯接一杯灌下了浓烈的“马斯克牌鸡血”。没错，我彻底、无可救药地迷上了这一切。

I kind of feel like that’s fine, right? The dude is a steel-bending industrial giant in America in a time when there aren’t supposed to be steel-bending industrial giants in America, igniting revolutions in huge, old industries that aren’t supposed to be revolutionable. After emerging from the 1990s dotcom party with $180 million, instead of sitting back in his investor chair listening to pitches from groveling young entrepreneurs, he decided to start a brawl with a group of 900-pound sumo wrestlers—the auto industry, the oil industry, the aerospace industry, the military-industrial complex, the energy utilities—and he might actually be winning. And all of this, it really seems, for the purpose of giving our species a better future.
这没什么不妥，对吧？毕竟，这位仁兄是在美国早已不再盛产“能弯钢”的工业巨擘的时代，硬生生闯出一片属于自己的天地。他在那些本被认为不可撼动的庞大而古老的行业中，引燃了革命的火种。上世纪90年代互联网狂潮散场时，他手握1.8亿美元，原本可以悠然坐在投资人的椅子上，听一群年轻创业者为融资而低声下气地陈述计划。可他没有，他反而主动向一群“900磅级相扑选手”——汽车业、石油业、航空航天业、军工复合体、能源公用事业——发起正面冲锋，而且眼下看来，他的确有可能正在赢下这场硬仗。而这一切，似乎只因他笃信，可以为人类争取一个更光明、更广阔的未来。

Pretty Kool-Aid worthy. But someone being exceptionally rad isn’t Kool-Aid worthy enough to warrant 90,000 words over a string of months on a blog that’s supposed to be about a wide range of topics.
这已经相当值得“举杯同饮”了。但仅仅因为某个人格外出众，还不足以让我在一个原本该包罗万象的话题博客上，耗费几个月、挥洒九万字去专门谈论他。

During the first post, I laid out the two objectives for the series:
在首篇文章中，我阐明了这个系列的两个核心目标：

To understand why Musk is doing what he’s doing.
1）理解马斯克为何选择去做他正在做的事情。
To understand why Musk is able to do what he’s doing.
2）探究马斯克为何能成就他人难以企及之事。

So far, we’ve spent most of the time exploring objective #1. But what really intrigued me as I began thinking about this was objective #2. I’m fascinated by those rare people in history who manage to dramatically change the world during their short time here, and I’ve always liked to study those people and read their biographies. Those people know something the rest of us don’t, and we can learn something valuable from them. Getting access to Elon Musk gave me what I decided was an unusual chance to get my hands on one of those people and examine them up close. If it were just Musk’s money or intelligence or ambition or good intentions that made him so capable, there would be more Elon Musks out there. No, it’s something else—what TED curator Chris Anderson called Musk’s “secret sauce”—and for me, this series became a mission to figure it out.
到目前为止，我们的时间大多花在探讨第一个目标上。但真正令我心生好奇的，其实是第二个目标。历史上总有极少数人，能在短暂的人生里深刻地改变世界，我一直被他们吸引，乐于研究他们、细读他们的传记。这样的人一定掌握了我们大多数人所不知道的奥秘，而我们也能从中汲取弥足珍贵的启示。能够接触到埃隆·马斯克，我觉得自己得到了一个罕见的机会，可以近距离审视这样的人物。如果马斯克的非凡成就仅仅来自财富、智慧、雄心壮志或善意，那么世上理应遍布“马斯克”。但事实并非如此——还有一种更深层的力量，正如 TED 策展人克里斯·安德森所称，那是马斯克的“秘密配方”。对我而言，这一系列文章的使命，就是要解开这个谜团。

The good news is, after a lot of time thinking about this, reading about this, and talking to him and his staff, I think I’ve got it. What for a while was a large pile of facts, observations, and sound bites eventually began to congeal into a common theme—a trait in Musk that I believe he shares with many of the most dynamic icons in history and that separates him from almost everybody else.
好消息是，经过长时间的反复思考、查阅海量资料，并与马斯克本人及其团队深入交谈之后，我相信自己终于摸索出了答案。那些过去零散的事实、片段的观察，以及偶尔捕捉到的只言片语，如同散落的星辰，如今已缓缓聚拢成一个清晰的星座——一种特质，我确信它为马斯克与历史上许多最具活力与创造力的传奇人物所共有。正是这一特质，让他与几乎所有其他人之间，拉开了真正的距离。

As I worked through the Tesla and SpaceX posts, this concept kept surfacing, and it became clear to me that this series couldn’t end without a deep dive into exactly what it is that Musk and a few others do so unusually well. The thing that tantalized me is that this secret sauce is actually accessible to everyone and right there in front of us—if we can just wrap our heads around it. Mulling this all over has legitimately affected the way I think about my life, my future, and the choices I make—and I’m going to try my best in this post to explain why.
在撰写特斯拉与SpaceX系列文章的过程中，我不断被一个反复浮现的概念所吸引。渐渐地，我意识到，若不深入探讨马斯克以及寥寥几位人物所独有、并且异常高效的能力，这整个系列便会显得不完整。令我心驰神往的是，这份“秘制良方”其实对所有人都触手可及——就摆在我们眼前，只要我们能真正领悟。反复沉思这一点，已实实在在地改变了我对生活、未来以及抉择的思考方式。接下来，我将在这篇文章中竭力娓娓道来其中的缘由。

Two Kinds of Geology
两种地质学

———

1681年，英国神学家托马斯·伯内特出版了《地球的神圣理论》，详述了他心目中的地质运行机制。依他之言，大约六千年前，地球诞生时是一颗完美无瑕的球体，表面铺展着宁静理想的陆地，内部则充盈着巨量的水。可不久之后，地表开始干涸，裂纹悄然生成，深藏于地心的洪流随之奔涌而出——这场劫难，正是《圣经》中记述的那场大洪水，迫使诺亚在动荡的一周里应付不尽的麻烦。待洪水退去、天地平复，昔日的完美球体已不复存在——剧变扭曲了地表形态，隆起为山脉，陷落成峡谷，幽深的洞穴在地下蔓延，而地面上亦遍布着那场洪灾的牺牲者化石。

In 1681, English theologian Thomas Burnet published Sacred Theory of the Earth, in which he explained how geology worked. What happened was, around 6,000 years ago, the Earth was formed as a perfect sphere with a surface of idyllic land and a watery interior. But then, when the surface dried up a little later, cracks formed in its surface, releasing much of the water from within. The result was the Biblical Deluge and Noah having to deal with a ton of shit all week. Once things settled down, the Earth was no longer a perfect sphere—all the commotion had distorted the surface, bringing about mountains and valleys and caves down below, and the whole thing was littered with the fossils of the flood’s victims.
1681年，英国神学家托马斯·伯内特出版了《地球的神圣理论》，在书中他描绘了一个关于地质如何运作的宏大构想。依他所言，大约六千年前，地球诞生时是一个完美的球体，表面覆盖着如画的陆地，内部则盛满清澈的水。此后，随着地表渐渐干涸，外壳出现了裂缝，内部的水奔涌而出，最终引发了《圣经》中记载的那场大洪水——诺亚于是陷入了整整一周的天翻地覆与繁重苦差。待动荡平息，地球已不复往日的圆润完美——剧烈变动使地貌隆起与陷落，山峦、峡谷与幽深洞窟相继诞生，而洪水吞噬的生灵，则化作化石散落在这片全新的世界之中。

And bingo. Burnet had figured it out. The great puzzle of fundamental theology had been to reconcile the large number of seemingly-very-old Earth features with the much shorter timeline of the Earth detailed in the Bible. For theologians of the time, it was their version of the general relativity vs. quantum mechanics quandary, and Burnet had come up with a viable string theory to unify it all under one roof.
没错，Burnet终于破解了这一谜团。神学界长期悬而未决的核心难题，是如何将地球上那些看似亘古悠远的地貌特征，与《圣经》中描绘的短暂地球年代巧妙调和。对于当时的神学家而言，这几乎就是他们的“广义相对论与量子力学之争”——而Burnet则开出了一个行之有效的“弦理论”，将众说纷纭的矛盾悉数纳入同一套完整的体系之中。

It wasn’t just Burnet. There were enough theories kicking around reconciling geology with the verses of the Bible to today warrant a 15,000-word “Flood Geology” Wikipedia page.
不仅仅是伯内特如此思索。历史上，为了将地质学与《圣经》经文相互印证，人们提出过不计其数的理论——多到如今足以让“洪水地质学”在维基百科上拥有一篇长达一万五千字的专门条目。

Around the same time, another group of thinkers started working on the geology puzzle: scientists.
几乎在同一时期，另一批善于思辨的人也投身于破解地质之谜的探索——科学家们登场了。

For the theologian puzzlers, the starting rules of the game were, “Fact: the Earth began 6,000 years ago and there was at one point an Earth-sweeping flood,” and their puzzling took place strictly within that context. But the scientists started the game with no rules at all. The puzzle was a blank slate where any observations and measurements they found were welcome.
对于那些神学阵营的“谜题破解者”而言，游戏一开始便设下了明确的前提规则：“事实：地球诞生于六千年前，且曾发生过一次席卷全球的大洪水。”他们的推理与探求，唯有在这一框架内才能进行。而科学家们则完全没有任何既定规则——对他们来说，这场谜题犹如一张尚未染色的白纸，所有能够获得的观察与测量结果，都可以自由地纳入考量。

Over the next 300 years, the scientists built theory upon theory, and as new technologies brought in new types of measurements, old theories were debunked and replaced with new updated versions. The science community kept surprising themselves as the apparent age of the Earth grew longer and longer. In 1907, there was a huge breakthrough when American scientist Bertram Boltwood pioneered the technique of deciphering the age of rocks through radiometric dating, which found elements in a rock with a known rate of radioactive decay and measured what portion of those elements remained intact and what portion had already converted to decay substance.
在接下来的三百年间，科学家们在层层理论之上不断累积、修正与革新。随着新技术引入全新的测量方法，旧有的理论一次次被推翻，取而代之的是更精确、更完善的版本。科学界屡屡为自己的新发现惊叹不已，因为地球的“表观年龄”在不断被延长，远超先前的认知。直到 1907 年，美国科学家伯特兰·博尔特伍德（Bertram Boltwood）在探索岩石年龄的奥秘时取得了划时代的突破——他首创了利用放射性测年技术解析岩石年代的方法。该技术通过测量岩石中某些元素的已知放射性衰变速率，精确计算这些元素所保留的比例与已转化为衰变产物的比例，从而揭示出岩石真正的历史年轮。

Radiometric dating blew Earth’s history backwards into the billions of years, which burst open new breakthroughs in science like the theory of Continental Drift, which in turn led to the theory of Plate Tectonics. The scientists were on a roll.
放射性测年法将地球的历史猛然向后推延至数十亿年前，如同打开了一扇通向未知的巨大之门，随之引发了一系列科学上的重大突破——例如大陆漂移理论的诞生，而这一理论又进一步孕育出板块构造学说。科学家的探索仿佛进入了高速奔涌的黄金时期，连连掀起新的浪潮。

Meanwhile, the flood geologists would have none of it. To them, any conclusions from the science community were moot because they were breaking the rules of the game to begin with. The Earth was officially less than 6,000 years old, so if radiometric dating showed otherwise, it was a flawed technique, period.
与此同时，“洪水地质学家”们对此依然毫不理会。在他们看来，科学界的任何结论都纯属无稽，因为科学家从一开始就已经“破坏了游戏规则”。依照他们的说法，地球的“官方年龄”绝不超过六千年，所以若放射性测年得出相反的结果，那只能说明这种测量方法天生有瑕疵，至此便不必再多言。

But the scientific evidence grew increasingly compelling, and as time wore on, more and more flood geologists threw in the towel and accepted the scientist’s viewpoint-maybe they had had the rules of the game wrong.
然而，随着科学证据愈发确凿，时间推移间，越来越多的洪水地质学家不得不放下成见，接受科学界的观点——或许他们从一开始就误解了这场博弈的规则。

Some, though, held strong. The rules were the rules, and it didn’t matter how many people agreed that the Earth was billions of years old—it was a grand conspiracy.
然而，仍有一些人固执坚守。他们笃信规则就是规则，不管多少人认同地球已有数十亿年的历史，在他们眼中，这一切依旧只是场庞大而精心编织的阴谋。

Today, there are still many flood geologists making their case. Just recently, an author named Tom Vail wrote a book called Grand Canyon: A Different View, in which he explains:
如今，依然有不少“洪水地质学家”为自己的立场辩护。就在不久前，一位名叫汤姆·维尔（Tom Vail）的作家出版了《大峡谷：另一种视角》一书，并在其中如此阐述：

Contrary to what is widely believed, radioactive dating has not proven the rocks of the Grand Canyon to be millions of years old. The vast majority of the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon were deposited as the result of a global flood that occurred after and as a result of the initial sin that took place in the Garden of Eden.
与大众普遍的看法不同，放射性测年法并未确证科罗拉多大峡谷的岩石已有数百万年历史。事实上，大峡谷中绝大部分沉积岩层，是在伊甸园原罪发生之后，由一次席卷全球的洪水淤积而成。

If the website analytics stats on Chartbeat included a “Type of Geologist” demographic metric, I imagine that for Wait But Why readers, the breakdown would look something like this:
如果网站分析工具 Chartbeat 能提供一个名为“地质学家类型”的受众画像指标，我想在 Wait But Why 的读者群中，其数据分布大概会是这样：

Geology Breakdown
地质学流派全解析

It makes sense. Whether religious or not, most people who read this site are big on data, evidence, and accuracy. I’m reminded of this every time I make an error in a post.
这很有道理。无论是否信仰宗教，大多数阅读本网站的人都格外看重数据、证据与精准性。每当我在文章中出现纰漏时，读者的反馈都会让我再次深刻领会这一点。

Whatever role faith plays in the spiritual realm, what most of us agree on is that when seeking answers to our questions about the age of the Earth, the history of our species, the causes of lightning, or any other physical phenomenon in the universe, data and logic are far more effective tools than faith and scripture.
无论信仰在精神领域拥有何种意义，大多数人都普遍认同：当我们探寻关于地球年龄、人类历史、闪电成因，或宇宙中其他物理现象的答案时，数据与逻辑，远比信仰与经典经文来得有效而有力。

And yet—after thinking about this for a while, I’ve come to an unpleasant conclusion:
然而——经过一番深思，我最终得出了一个令人心生不悦的结论：

When it comes to most of the way we think, the way we make decisions, and the way we live our lives, we’re much more like the flood geologists than the science geologists.
在我们大多数的思考方式、决策习惯，以及生活方式上，其实更像那些“洪水地质学家”，而非真正的“科学地质学家”。

And Elon’s secret? He’s a scientist through and through.
埃隆的秘密？他骨子里就是个纯粹的科学家。

Hardware and Software
硬件与软件系统

The first clue to the way Musk thinks is in the super odd way that he talks. For example:
马斯克思维方式的第一个线索，就潜藏在他那种异乎寻常、古怪得发奇的说话方式中。比如：

Human child: “I’m scared of the dark, because that’s when all the scary shit is gonna get me and I won’t be able to see it coming.”
小孩：“我害怕黑暗，因为那时那些吓人的东西会来找我，而我却无法提前察觉。”

Elon: “When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength—400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.”2
埃隆：“小时候我非常怕黑。但后来我明白，黑暗不过是可见光波段——约400到700纳米——的光子缺席而已。于是我想，害怕没有光子，其实挺荒唐的。自那以后，我便再也不怕黑了。”

Or:
亦或：

Human father: “I’d like to start working less because my kids are starting to grow up.”
普通爸爸：“我想开始少些工作，因为孩子们已经渐渐长大。”

Elon: “I’m trying to throttle back, because particularly the triplets are starting to gain consciousness. They’re almost two.”3
埃隆：“我正试着让自己慢下来，尤其是因为三胞胎已开始萌生自我意识——他们快满两岁了。”

Or:
或曰：

Human single man: “I’d like to find a girlfriend. I don’t want to be so busy with work that I have no time for dating.”
单身男：“我想找个女朋友，也不想忙于工作到连约会的时间都挤不出来。”

Elon: “I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. That’s why I need to carve out just a little more time. I think maybe even another five to 10 — how much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours? That’s kind of the minimum? I don’t know.”4
埃隆：“不过，我还是想多挤出些时间来谈恋爱。我得找个女朋友。所以必须硬从日程里划出一点空档。我在想，也许每周多出五到十个小时——女生一周希望你陪她多久呢？大概十个小时？这算是最低限度吧？我也不太确定。”

I call this MuskSpeak. MuskSpeak is a language that describes everyday parts of life as exactly what they actually, literally are.
我称这种表达为“马斯克式语言”（MuskSpeak）。所谓马斯克式语言，就是以最直接、最精准的方式，把生活中的日常片段照其真实本质描绘出来——不加粉饰，不作隐喻，仅用字句还原事实本身。

There are plenty of instances of technical situations when we all agree that MuskSpeak makes much more sense than normal human parlance—
在许多技术领域的情境中，我们不得不承认，马斯克式表达（MuskSpeak）往往比寻常的日常说法来得更有道理——

Heart Surgery
心脏外科手术

—but what makes Musk odd is that he thinks about most things in MuskSpeak, including many areas where you don’t usually find it. Like when I asked him if he was afraid of death, and he said having kids made him more comfortable with dying, because “kids sort of are a bit you. At least they’re half you. They’re half you at the hardware level, and depending on how much time you have with them, they’re that percentage of you at the software level.”
但马斯克之所以独特，在于他几乎用“马斯克式表达”（MuskSpeak）来思考一切——甚至是那些一般人很少会用这种方式去探讨的话题。比如我曾问他是否害怕死亡，他的回答是，有了孩子之后，他对死亡反而更加释然，因为“孩子在某种意义上就是你的一部分。至少在硬件层面，他们有一半来自于你；而在软件层面上，你在他们身上的比例，则取决于你与他们相处、影响他们的时间有多少。”

When you or I look at kids, we see small, dumb, cute people. When Musk looks at his five kids, he sees five of his favorite computers. When he looks at you, he sees a computer. And when he looks in the mirror, he sees a computer—his computer. It’s not that Musk suggests that people are just computers—it’s that he sees people as computers on top of whatever else they are.
当你我看着孩子时，往往只看到那些小小的、傻傻的、又惹人喜爱的“小人儿”。而马斯克看着他自己的五个孩子时，看到的却是五台他最钟爱的电脑。他看着你，也会看到一台电脑。甚至当他注视镜中的自己，也看到一台电脑——属于他的那一台。马斯克并不是在宣称人类只是电脑，而是习惯于把人看作电脑，再加上他们所拥有的一切其他面向。

And at the most literal level, Elon’s right about people being computers. At its simplest definition, a computer is an object that can store and process data—which the brain certainly is.
从最字面意义而言，马斯克关于“人类是计算机”的观点并非虚言。依照最简洁的定义，计算机是一种能够存储并处理数据的装置——而我们的脑袋，无疑正具备这一切功能。

And while this isn’t the most poetic way to think about our minds, I’m starting to believe that it’s one of those areas of life where MuskSpeak can serve us well—because thinking of a brain as a computer forces us to consider the distinction between our hardware and our software, a distinction we often fail to recognize.
尽管将我们的思维比作计算机或许称不上诗意盎然，但我愈发认为，这正是马斯克式表达（MuskSpeak）能够发挥作用的领域——因为一旦把大脑视作计算机，我们就不得不认真审视“硬件”和“软件”之间的区别，而这层差别，往往被我们轻易忽视。

For a computer, hardware is defined as “the machines, wiring, and other physical components of a computer.” So for a human, that’s the physical brain they were born with and all of its capabilities, which determines their raw intelligence, their innate talents, and other natural strengths and shortcomings.
对于计算机而言，硬件是指“机器设备、线路以及其他物理构成部分”。类比到人类，这就相当于我们与生俱来的大脑及其全部机能——它决定了一个人的基础智力、天赋，以及各种先天的优势与不足，这便是属于人类的那部分“硬件”。

A computer’s software is defined as “the programs and other operating information used by a computer.” For a human, that’s what they know and how they think—their belief systems, thought patterns, and reasoning methods. Life is a flood of incoming data of all kinds that enter the brain through our senses, and it’s the software that assesses and filters all that input, processes and organizes it, and ultimately uses it to generate the key output—a decision.
计算机的软件，指的是“计算机运行所依赖的程序及其他操作信息”。对于人类而言，这一概念对应的就是我们所掌握的知识与思维运作方式——我们的信念体系、思维模式以及推理方法。人生中，形形色色的信息如洪流般经由感官涌入大脑，而正是这套“心智软件”在评估与筛选这些输入、加以处理与归纳，并最终将其转化为最重要的输出——我们的决策。

The hardware is a ball of clay that’s handed to us when we’re born. And of course, not all clay is equal—each brain begins as a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses across a wide range of processes and capabilities.
我们降生之时，仿佛被递来一团属于自己的泥胚——那便是我们的“硬件”。然而，并非所有泥胚皆相同——每个人的大脑在广阔的认知过程与能力领域中，天生便织就了独一无二的优势与弱点。

But it’s the software that determines what kind of tool the clay gets shaped into.
但真正决定这团“泥”究竟会被塑造成何种工具的，是你脑中的那套“软件”。

When people think about what makes someone like Elon Musk so effective, they often focus on the hardware—and Musk’s hardware has some pretty impressive specs. But the more I learn about Musk and other people who seem to have superhuman powers—whether it be Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Genghis Khan, Marie Curie, John Lennon, Ayn Rand,2 or Louis C.K.—the more I’m convinced that it’s their software, not their natural-born intelligence or talents, that makes them so rare and so effective.
当人们思考埃隆·马斯克这样的人为何能如此高效时，往往首先关注他的“硬件”——而马斯克的硬件参数确实令人赞叹不已。然而，随着我不断深入了解马斯克，以及那些看似拥有非凡能力的人——无论是史蒂夫·乔布斯、阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦、亨利·福特、成吉思汗、玛丽·居里、约翰·列侬、安·兰德，还是路易斯·C.K.——我愈发确信，让他们真正与众不同、卓尔不群的，并非与生俱来的智力或天赋，而是他们的“软件”——即那套独特的思维方式与认知模式。

So let’s talk about software—starting with Musk’s. As I wrote the other three posts in this series, I looked at everything I was learning about Musk—the things he says, the decisions he makes, the missions he takes on and how he approaches them—as clues to how his underlying software works.
那就从“软件”开始聊——先谈马斯克的那套。在撰写这个系列的前三篇文章时，我始终在细细审视和梳理与马斯克有关的一切：他的言辞、他的抉择、他承担的使命，以及他处理每项任务的方式——这些都如同一枚枚线索，逐渐勾勒出他内在“软件”的运转轨迹。

Eventually, the clues piled up and the shape of the software began to reveal itself. Here’s what I think it looks like:
随着线索的层层累积，马斯克“软件”的轮廓终于在眼前缓缓显现。在我心中，它大致呈现出这样的模样：

Elon’s Software
埃隆的“思维软件”

The structure of Musk’s software starts like many of ours, with what we’ll call the Want box:
马斯克的“软件”架构，就像我们大多数人的一样——从一个被称作“欲望盒”的起点展开：

Software - Want Box
软件——欲望盒

马斯克的“软件”结构，与我们大多数人的起点相似——首先从一个名为“欲望盒”的部分开始：

这个盒子盛放着你生命中所有希望将“状态A”转变为“状态B”的心愿。状态A是你当下的现实，而你渴求某种改变，让状态B取而代之、成为新的现实。比如：

This box contains anything in life where you want Situation A to turn into Situation B. Situation A is currently what’s happening and you want something to change so that Situation B is what’s happening instead. Some examples:
这个盒子盛放着你人生中所有“渴望将状态A转化为状态B”的心念。状态A是你当下的现实，而你盼望某种改变，让状态B取而代之，成为新的生活图景。比如说——

Wants
欲望

Next, the Want box has a partner in crime—what we’ll call the Reality box. It contains all things that are possible:
接下来，“欲望盒”还有一位并肩作战的伙伴——我们称之为“现实盒”。它收纳着世间一切在现实中可行的事物：

Software - Reality Box
软件——现实之盒

Pretty straightforward.
再简单不过。

The overlap of the Want and Reality boxes is the Goal Pool, where your goal options live:3
“欲望盒”与“现实盒”的交汇之处，便是那座盛放着所有潜在目标的“目标池”。

Software - Goal Pool
软件——目标池

So you pick a goal from the pool—the thing you’re going to try to move from Point A to Point B.
你从目标池中选定一个目标——那个你打算全力促使它从A点抵达B点的事物。

And how do you cause something to change? You direct your power towards it. A person’s power can come in various forms: your time, your energy (mental and physical), your resources, your persuasive ability, your connection to others, etc.
那么，如何促成一件事的改变呢？你需要将自身的力量精准地引向它。人的力量可呈现多种形态：你的时间、你的精力（兼具思维与体力）、你的物质资源、你的说服能力、你与他人之间的联系网络，等等。

The concept of employment is just Person A using their resources power (a paycheck) to direct Person B’s time and/or energy power toward Person A’s goal. When Oprah publicly recommends a book, that’s combining her abundant power of connection (she has a huge reach) and her abundant power of persuasion (people trust her) and directing them towards the goal of getting the book into the hands of thousands of people who would have otherwise never known about it.
“就业”这个概念，本质上是甲方运用自身的资源权力（如薪酬），去引导乙方的时间与/或精力权力，以服务于甲方的目标。比如，当奥普拉在公众面前推荐一本书时，她是在将自身强大的“连接之力”（她的影响力极其广泛）与“说服之力”（人们对她高度信任）相结合，并将其引向一个明确的目标——让成千上万原本毫不知情的人拿起并阅读这本书。

Once a goal has been selected, you know the direction in which to point your power. Now it’s time to figure out the most effective way to use that power to generate the outcome you want—that’s your strategy:
一旦锁定了目标，你便清楚该将力量指向何方。接下来，就要思索如何以最高效的方式调动这股力量，去创造你所期望的结果——这，便是你的策略：

Software - Strategy Box
软件——策略框

Simple right? And probably not that different from how you think.
挺简单的，不是吗？或许与你平时的思考方式并无太大差别。

But what makes Musk’s software so effective isn’t its structure, it’s that he uses it like a scientist. Carl Sagan said, “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge,” and you can see Musk apply that way of thinking in two key ways:
马斯克的软件之所以卓有成效，奥秘不在于它的结构，而在于他运用它的方式——像一位科学家。正如卡尔·萨根所言：“科学首先是一种思维方式，而不仅仅是一部知识的总汇。”在马斯克身上，你能清晰看到这种思维方式的两大核心体现：

He builds each software component himself, from the ground up.

Musk calls this “reasoning from first principles.” I’ll let him explain:
马斯克将这种方法称作“第一性原理思维”。让我们听听他如何阐释这一理念：

I think generally people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good.” But that’s just a ridiculous way to think. You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.5
我认为，大多数人的思维过程过于依赖传统，或者习惯以过往经验的类比来作判断。极少有人会真正尝试用第一性原理来思考问题。人们常会说：“我们这样做，因为一直以来都是这么做的。”或者干脆不去尝试，因为“从来没人这么干过，所以一定不好。”然而，这种思维方式实在荒谬。你必须从最根本的层面重新搭建推理——在物理学中，这被称为“从第一性原理出发”。先审视最核心的事实与规律，再基于这些基础推导出属于自己的结论，随后判断其是否成立。这样的结果，或许与过去的做法一致，或许截然不同。

In science, this means starting with what evidence shows us to be true. A scientist doesn’t say, “Well we know the Earth is flat because that’s the way it looks, that’s what’s intuitive, and that’s what everyone agrees is true,” a scientist says, “The part of the Earth that I can see at any given time appears to be flat, which would be the case when looking at a small piece of many differently shaped objects up close, so I don’t have enough information to know what the shape of the Earth is. One reasonable hypothesis is that the Earth is flat, but until we have tools and techniques that can be used to prove or disprove that hypothesis, it is an open question.”
在科学领域，这意味着必须从证据所揭示、被确认为真实的事实起步。科学家不会说：“地球是平的，因为看上去确实如此，这符合直觉，而且大家都这么认为。”科学家的表述应该是：“在任何特定时刻，我所能观测到的那一部分地球看起来是平的，而这恰如你近距离观察形状各异的物体时，仅取一小块时所呈现的平面感。因此，仅凭这些有限信息，我无法断定地球的整体形状。假设地球是平的可以算是一个合理推测，但在我们获得足以验证或推翻这一假设的工具与方法之前，这依旧是一个悬而未决的问题。”

A scientist gathers together only what he or she knows to be true—the first principles—and uses those as the puzzle pieces with which to construct a conclusion.
科学家只会汇集那些确凿无疑、已被验证为真理的知识——即“第一性原理”——并将它们视作拼图的碎片，用以组合、推演出最终的结论。

Reasoning from first principles is a hard thing to do in life, and Musk is a master at it. Brain software has four major decision-making centers:
在现实生活中，依循第一性原理进行推理，是一项极为艰难的本领，而马斯克恰是此道中的宗师。我们的“大脑软件”中，蕴藏着四大核心决策中枢：

Filling in the Want box
① 填充“欲望盒”
Filling in the Reality box
2）填入现实盒
Goal selection from the Goal Pool
3）从目标池中甄选目标
Strategy formation
4）策略形成

Musk works through each of these boxes by reasoning from first principles. Filling in the Want box from first principles requires a deep, honest, and independent understanding of yourself. Filling in the Reality box requires the clearest possible picture of the actual facts of both the world and your own abilities. The Goal Pool should double as a Goal Selection Laboratory that contains tools for intelligently measuring and weighing options. And strategies should be formed based on what you know, not on what is typically done.
马斯克处理这些“盒子”时，始终以第一性原理为指导。要用第一性原理填满“欲望盒”，首先必须对自我有深刻、坦诚且独立的认知；填充“现实盒”则需要尽可能获得世界真实面貌与自身能力边界的最清晰图景。“目标池”不仅是目标的汇聚之所，更应化身为目标筛选的实验室，配备能智慧衡量、权衡各种选项的工具。策略的制定，应立足于你真正掌握的事实，而非盲目沿袭他人的惯常做法。

He continually adjusts each component’s conclusions as new information comes in.
他会随着新信息的不断涌入，持续修正各组成部分的结论。

You might remember doing proofs in geometry class, one of the most mundane parts of everyone’s childhood. These ones:
或许你还记得小时候几何课上的那些“证明题”——几乎是学生时代最枯燥乏味的环节之一。比如这样的：

Given: A = B Given: B = C + D Therefore: A = C + D
已知：A = B
已知：B = C + D
因此：A = C + D

Math is satisfyingly exact. Its givens are exact and its conclusions are airtight.
数学之美，在于它的绝对精确：前提条件分毫不差，推导结果严谨如密闭之室，无懈可击。

In math, we call givens “axioms,” and axioms are 100% true. So when we build conclusions out of axioms, we call them “proofs,” which are also 100% true.
在数学中，我们将“已知条件”称作“公理”，而公理是绝对成立的。由公理推演出的结论，被称为“证明”，同样是毫无例外的绝对正确。

Science doesn’t have axioms or proofs, for good reason.
科学之所以不设公理，也不追求绝对的“证明”，自有其深刻缘由。

We could have called Newton’s law of universal gravitation a proof—and for a long time, it certainly seemed like one—but then what happens when Einstein comes around and shows that Newton was actually “zoomed in,” like someone calling the Earth flat, and when you zoom way out, you discover that the real law is general relativity and Newton’s law actually stops working under extreme conditions, while general relativity works no matter what. So then, you’d call general relativity a proof instead. Except then what happens when quantum mechanics comes around and shows that general relativity fails to apply on a tiny scale and that a new set of laws is needed to account for those cases.
我们曾一度可以将牛顿的万有引力定律视为不可辩驳的“铁证”——在很长的一段时间里，它确实看似如此。然而，当爱因斯坦登场，他揭示了牛顿的理论其实只是“近距离的放大视角”，就如同有人宣称地球是平的，而当你将视野拉得更远，才发现真正支配宇宙的规律是广义相对论。牛顿的定律在极端条件下会失效，而广义相对论却在更广的尺度上无往不利。于是，你或许又会认为广义相对论才是真正的“定论”。然而，量子力学随后登场，告诉我们广义相对论在微观世界中同样失效——在那些极细微的尺度上，我们必须依靠一整套全新的法则，才能准确解释其现象。

There are no axioms or proofs in science because nothing is for sure and everything we feel sure about might be disproven. Richard Feynman has said, “Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.” Instead of proofs, science has theories. Theories are based on hard evidence and treated as truths, but at all times they’re susceptible to being adjusted or disproven as new data emerges.
在科学世界里，没有所谓的公理或绝对的证明，因为没有任何事物是完全确定的——哪怕是我们深信不疑的结论，也随时可能被推翻。理查德·费曼曾言：“科学知识是一组确定程度各不相同的陈述——有的极不确定，有的几近确定，但没有哪一条是绝对确定的。”科学不以“证明”为终极目标，而是依托坚实证据建立起理论。理论虽可暂时视作真理，却始终敞开修正的大门——一旦新的数据浮现，它们随时可能被调整，甚至彻底改写。

So in science, it’s more like:
在科学领域，更接近这样的运作方式：

Given (for now): A = B Given (for now): B = C + D Therefore (for now): A = C + D
假设（暂时）：A = B
假设（暂时）：B = C + D
因此（暂时）：A = C + D

In our lives, the only true axiom is “I exist.” Beyond that, nothing is for sure. And for most things in life, we can’t even build a real scientific theory because life doesn’t tend to have exact measurements.
在人生的长河中，唯一真确且无可辩驳的公理是：“我存在。”除此之外，世间几乎没有绝对的确定性。而面对生活中的大多数事物，我们甚至难以构建真正意义上的科学理论，因为现实并不总能提供精确的衡量尺度。

Usually, the best we can do is a strong hunch based on what data we have. And in science, a hunch is called a hypothesis. Which works like this:
通常情况下，我们所能做到的最接近真相的，不过是依据手头的数据，做出一种强烈的直觉判断。在科学中，这样的直觉被称为“假设”，而它的运作方式大致是这样的：

Given (it seems, based on what I know): A = B Given (it seems, based on what I know): B = C + D Therefore (it seems, based on what I know): A = C + D
据我目前所掌握的情况：A = B
据我目前所掌握的情况：B = C + D
因此，依据我现有的认知，可以推断：A = C + D

Hypotheses are built to be tested. Testing a hypothesis can disprove it or strengthen it, and if it passes enough tests, it can be upgraded to a theory.
假设的设立，正是为了接受检验。检验的结果，或许会推翻它，亦或会令它更为坚固。若它在一次又一次的考验中屹立不倒，便可晋升为理论。

So after Musk builds his conclusions from first principles, what does he do? He tests the shit out of them, continually, and adjusts them regularly based on what he learns. Let’s go through the whole process to show how:
那么，当马斯克依照第一性原理推演出自己的结论后，他的下一步是什么？他会对这些结论进行密集而彻底的验证，不断反复试探，并依据新得到的认知及时修正与优化。接下来，让我们循序渐进地走一遍他的完整流程，看看这一切是如何展开的：

You begin by reasoning from first principles to A) fill in the Want box, B) fill in the Reality box, C) select a goal from the pool, and D) build a strategy—and then you get to work. You’ve used first principles thinking to decide where to point your power and the most effective way to use it.
你先以第一性原理为起点展开推演：A）填满欲望盒，B）充实现实盒，C）从目标池中选定一个目标，D）构建属于它的策略——然后付诸实践。通过这种思维方式，你已明确了力量的指向，以及运用这股力量的最优路径。

But the goal-achievement strategy you came up with was just your first crack. It was a hypothesis, ripe for testing. You test a strategy hypothesis one way: action. You pour your power into the strategy and see what happens. As you do this, data starts flowing in—results, feedback, and new information from the outside world. Certain parts of your strategy hypothesis might be strengthened by this new data, others might be weakened, and new ideas may have sprung to life in your head through the experience—but either way, some adjustment is usually called for: Software - Strategy Loop
但你最初拟定的达成目标策略，不过是一次开局之作——更确切地说，它是一个亟待检验的假设。要验证这样的策略假设，唯一的途径便是付诸行动。将全部精力注入其中，去亲身感受它在现实中的运作结果。随着行动一步步展开，数据会源源不断地涌入——成果的显现、反馈的回收，以及来自外界的新信息。这些新数据可能会让策略中的某些环节更加坚实，也可能削弱另一些环节，甚至还可能在实践过程中催生出全新的念头——无论结果如何，几乎总需要对策略作出修正与优化：

软件——策略循环

As this strategy loop spins and your power becomes more and more effective at accomplishing your goal, other things are happening down below.

For someone reasoning from first principles, the Want box at any given time is a snapshot of their innermost desires the last time they thought hard about it. But the contents of the Want box are also a hypothesis, and experience can show you that you were wrong about something you thought you wanted or that you want something you didn’t realize you did. At the same time, the inner you isn’t a statue—it’s a shifting, morphing sculpture whose innermost values change as time passes. So even if something in the Want box was correct at one point, as you change, it may lose its place in the box. The Want box should serve the current inner you as best possible, which requires you to update it, something you do through reflection:
对于坚持“第一性原理思维”的人来说，欲望盒（Want box）在某一时刻仿佛是一幅内心深处的快照，定格着上一次你深度沉思时最真实的渴望。然而，那其中的内容并非铁律，而是一种假设——生活的历练常会让你意识到，曾自认为重要的东西并不值得追求，反而是那些未曾察觉的渴望才真正触动内心。同时，内在的你并非一尊凝固不动的雕像，而更像是一件不断生长、自由变形的雕塑，其核心的价值与追求会随时间推移而悄然变换。因此，即便某个欲望曾经无可置疑地属于盒中的“正确答案”，随着你的蜕变，它也可能退出舞台。欲望盒的意义，在于始终契合并服务于当下真实的自我，而这需要不断地更新与打磨——唯有借助深刻的自我反思，才能完成这一过程。

Software - Want Loop
软件——欲望之环

A rotating Want loop is called evolution.
持续运转的“欲望循环”，便是进化的本源。

On the other side of the aisle, the Reality box is also going through a process. “Things that are possible” is a hypothesis, maybe more so than anything else. It takes into account both the state of the world and your own abilities. And as your own abilities change and grow, the world changes even faster. What was possible in the world in 2005 is very different from what’s possible today, and it’s a huge (and rare) advantage to be working with an up-to-date Reality box.
在过道的另一侧，现实盒也在悄然经历自身的演化。“可能做到的事”本质上更像是一个假设——它既依赖于当下世界的状态，也取决于你自身的能力。而当你的能力不断变化与成长时，世界的变化往往比你想象得更迅疾。2005年在世界上可行的事，与今天相比已截然不同。拥有一个始终紧贴时代脉动、持续更新的现实盒，是一种极为罕见且弥足珍贵的优势。

Filling in your Reality box from first principles is a great challenge, and keeping the box current so that it matches actual reality takes continual work.
用第一性原理构建你的“现实盒”本身就是一道艰难的考验，而要让这个盒子始终贴合真实世界的脉动，更需要你持之以恒地投入心力，不断更新与校准。

Software - Reality Loop
软件——现实环路

For each of these areas, the box represents the current hypothesis and the circle represents the source of new information that can be used to adjust the hypothesis. It’s our duty to remember that the circles are the boss, not the boxes—the boxes are only trying their best to do the circles proud. And if we fall out of touch with what’s happening in the circles, the info in the boxes becomes obsolete and a less effective source for our decision-making.
在每个领域中，方框代表当前的假设，圆圈则象征着可用于修正假设的新信息源。我们必须牢牢记住，圆圈才是真正的“掌舵者”，而方框只是在竭尽全力向圆圈交出满意的答卷。若我们与圆圈的最新动态失去联系，方框中的信息便会迅速陈旧，失去时效性，也会削弱其在决策中的参考价值。

Thinking about the software as a whole, let’s take a step back. What we see is a goal formation mechanism below and a goal attainment mechanism above. One thing goal attainment often requires is laser focus. To get the results we want, we zoom in on the micro picture, sinking our teeth into our goal and honing in on it with our strategy loop.
将整个“软件”系统作为一个整体来思考，不妨先退后一步审视全局。可以看到，下方是目标生成的机制，上方则是目标达成的机制。而实现目标，往往离不开那种“激光般的专注”。为了取得理想的结果，我们会将视角收缩到微观层面，死死咬住目标不放，通过策略循环不断锁定、精雕细琢，直到水到渠成地将其实现。

But as time passes, the Want box and Reality box adjust contents and morph shape, and eventually, something else can happen—the Goal Pool changes.
然而，随着时间的流逝，欲望盒与现实盒中的内容不断调整、形态逐渐变换，最终可能引发另一种变化——目标池也会随之转移。

The Goal Pool is just the overlap of the Want and Reality boxes, so its own shape and contents are totally dependent on the state of those boxes. And as you live your life inside the goal attainment mechanism above, it’s important to make sure that what you’re working so hard on remains in line with the Goal Pool below—so let’s add in two big red arrows for that:
目标池，其实就是“欲望盒”和“现实盒”相互重叠的区域，因此它的形态与内容完全依赖于这两个盒子的状态。而你的人生，正是在上面那个目标实现机制中不断运转的过程，所以至关重要的一点是：要确保自己全力以赴的方向，始终与下方的目标池相契合。为此，不妨在图中加上两根鲜明的红色箭头，以直观强调这一关键联系：

Software - Full
软件——完整版本

Checking in with the large circle down below requires us to lift our heads up from the micro mission and do some macro reflection. And when enough changes happen in the Want and Reality boxes that the goal you’re pursuing is no longer in the goal pool, it calls for a macro life change—a breakup, a job switch, a relocation, a priority swap, an attitude shift.
要与下方那个“大圈”保持呼应，我们就必须暂时抬起头，从眼前的“小任务”里跳脱出来，进行一次宏观层面的审视与沉思。而当“欲望盒”和“现实盒”里的内容发生了足够显著的变化，以至于你正在追逐的目标已从“目标池”中消失，那便意味着你需要进行一次重大的生活转向——也许是分手、换工作、搬迁住所、重新调整人生优先级，或是彻底重塑自己的态度与心境。

All together, the software I’ve described is a living, breathing system, constructed on a rock solid foundation of first principles, and built to be nimble, to keep itself honest, and to change shape as needed to best serve its owner.
总体而言，我所描绘的这套“软件”，是一套有生命、有呼吸的动态体系，扎根于坚如磐石的第一性原理之基，天生灵巧机敏，能自我审视、保持真诚，并随境而变，以最契合主人需求的姿态全力运作。

And if you read about Elon Musk’s life, you can watch this software in action.
倘若你细细探寻埃隆·马斯克的生平，便能真切目睹这套“思维软件”在现实中如何运转。

How Musk’s software wrote his life story
马斯克如何以“思维软件”谱写人生传奇

Getting started
启程

Step 1 for Elon was filling in the contents of the Want box. Doing this from first principles is a huge challenge—you have to dig deep into concepts like right and wrong, good and bad, important and trivial, valuable and frivolous. You have to figure out what you respect, what you disdain, what fascinates you, what bores you, and what excites you deep in your inner child. Of course, there’s no way for anyone of any age to have a clear cut answer to these questions, but Elon did the best thing he could by ignoring others and independently pondering.
对埃隆而言，第一步就是为“欲望盒”注入内容。若以第一性原理来完成这一步，其挑战堪称艰巨——你必须向内探寻，对于“是与非”、“善与恶”、“重要与琐碎”、“有价值与无意义”等根本命题一一深究。你要辨清自己究竟尊崇什么、厌弃什么，何物令你心驰神往、何事令你索然无味，以及那些能唤醒你内心深处孩童般的热忱与好奇。诚然，无论年岁几何，这些问题都不可能有绝对而明晰的答案，但埃隆选择了他认为最笃定的方式——屏蔽外界的喧哗，独自沉思，反复咀嚼其中的真意。

I talked with him about his early thought process in figuring out what to do with his career. He has said many times that he cares deeply about the future well-being of the human species—something that is clearly in the center of his Want box. I asked how he came to that, and he explained:
我曾与他探讨过，他在职业生涯初期是如何思考并选择方向的。他不止一次公开表示，自己深切关怀人类未来的福祉——这毫无疑问是他“欲望盒”中最核心的所在。我问他，这份关切究竟源自何处，他便娓娓道来：

The thing that I care about is—when I look into the future, I see the future as a series of branching probability streams. So you have to ask, what are we doing to move down the good stream—the one that’s likely to make for a good future? Because otherwise, you look ahead, and it’s like “Oh it’s dark.” If you’re projecting to the future, and you’re saying “Wow, we’re gonna end up in some terrible situation,” that’s depressing.
我真正关心的是——当我凝视未来时，眼前浮现的是一条条分岔延伸的概率之河。于是你必须自问：我们正在做的事情，是否正引领人类驶入那条“良善之流”——最有可能通往美好前景的航道？否则，当你向前眺望，只会感到“前方一片幽暗”。如果你推演未来，得出的结论是：“天啊，我们终将陷入某种糟糕境地”，那将是何等令人灰心的事。

Fair. Honing in on his specific path, I brought up the great modern physicists like Einstein and Hawking and Feynman, and I asked him whether he considered going into scientific discovery instead of engineering. His response:
没错。为了更聚焦于他的独特道路，我提到了几位伟大的现代物理学家，比如爱因斯坦、霍金和费曼，并问他是否曾考虑投身于科学探索，而不是走工程这条路。他的回答是：

I certainly admire the discoveries of the great scientists. They’re discovering what already exists—it’s a deeper understanding of how the universe already works. That’s cool—but the universe already sort of knows that. What matters is knowledge in a human context. What I’m trying to ensure is that knowledge in a human context is still possible in the future. So it’s sort of like—I’m more like the gardener, and then there are the flowers. If there’s no garden, there’s no flowers. I could try to be a flower in the garden, or I could try to make sure there is a garden. So I’m trying to make sure there is a garden, such that in the future, many Feynmans may bloom.
我当然深深敬仰那些伟大科学家的发现。他们揭示的是早已存在的事物——是对宇宙本来运行规律的更深层理解。这样的探索令人赞叹，但宇宙本身其实早已“知晓”这一切。真正重要的，是这些知识置于人类语境中的意义。我的追求，是确保在未来，人类依然能够获得并延续这种知识。打个比方——我更像是那位耕耘者，而科学家们则是花朵。没有花园，就不会有花朵。我既可以选择做花园里的那朵花，也可以选择守护和培育花园本身。我所努力的，是让花园永续存在，这样在未来，便能有更多像“费曼”那样的花朵竞相绽放。

In other words, both A and B are good, but without A there is no B. So I choose A.
换言之，A与B皆为美好，但若无A，便无B。故我唯选A。

He went on:
他继续说道：

I was at one point thinking about doing physics as a career—I did undergrad in physics—but in order to really advance physics these days, you need the data. Physics is fundamentally governed by the progress of engineering. This debate—“Which is better, engineers or scientists? Aren’t scientists better? Wasn’t Einstein the smartest person?”—personally, I think that engineering is better because in the absence of the engineering, you do not have the data. You just hit a limit. And yeah, you can be real smart within the context of the limit of the data you have, but unless you have a way to get more data, you can’t make progress. Like look at Galileo. He engineered the telescope—that’s what allowed him to see that Jupiter had moons. The limiting factor, if you will, is the engineering. And if you want to advance civilization, you must address the limiting factor. Therefore, you must address the engineering.
我曾一度认真考虑过以物理为终身职业——毕竟我本科读的就是物理。但在如今这个时代，要真正推动物理学向前，你必须掌握数据。说到底，物理的进步是由工程技术驱动的。

关于“工程师和科学家谁更重要？科学家不是更伟大吗？爱因斯坦不是最聪明的人吗？”这些争论，我个人倾向于认为工程更关键。因为若没有工程，就无法获得数据，发展就会停滞在瓶颈之中。你或许能在现有数据的框架内展现才智，但若缺乏获取更多数据的途径，就无法继续前行。

举个例子，看看伽利略。他打造了望远镜，正是这项工程壮举让他看见了木星的卫星。换句话说，决定上限的，其实是工程。而如果你渴望推动文明进步，就必须直面并突破这个限制因素——因此，工程才是必须全力以赴去攻克的关键所在。

A and B are both good, but B can only advance if A advances. So I choose A.
A 和 B 都各有其价值，但唯有 A 先行取得突破，B 才能随之迈进。因此，我选择了 A。

In thinking about where exactly to point himself to best help humanity, Musk says that in college, he thought hard about the first principles question, “What will most affect the future of humanity?” and put together a list of five things: “the internet; sustainable energy; space exploration, in particular the permanent extension of life beyond Earth; artificial intelligence; and reprogramming the human genetic code.”6
在思考如何将自己引向最能造福人类的方向时，马斯克回忆，大学时期他曾凝神深究过一个“第一性原理”的问题：“哪些事物将对人类的未来产生最深远的影响？”于是，他罗列出了五大领域：互联网、可持续能源、太空探索（特别是让生命能够永久延伸到地球之外）、人工智能，以及重塑人类基因密码。

Hearing him talk about what matters to him, you can see up and down the whole stack of Want box reasoning that led him to his current endeavors.
听他谈起那些真正触动心弦的事，你会发现，“欲望盒”推理的整座逻辑阶梯从上至下铺陈开来，清清楚楚地映照出他为何走到今天这一步，投身于如今的事业。

He has other reasons too. Next to wanting to help humanity in the Want box is this quote:
他还有其它动机。在“欲望盒”中，除了渴望造福人类之外，还写着这样一句话：

I’m interested in things that change the world or affect future in wondrous new technology where you see it and you’re like, “How did that even happen? How is that possible?”7
我热衷于那些足以改变世界、深刻影响未来的奇妙新科技——当你亲眼见到它时，往往会情不自禁地惊叹：“这究竟是如何实现的？这真的可能吗？”

This follows a theme of Musk being passionate about super-advanced technology and the excitement it brings to him and other people. So given all of the above, an ideal endeavor for Musk would be something involving engineering, something in an area that will be important for the future, and something to do with cutting-edge technology. Those broad, basic Want box items alone narrow down the goal pool considerably.
这与马斯克对超前科技的炽热情怀一脉相承——那种令人心潮澎湃的兴奋，不仅点燃了他的激情，也感染了周围的人。由此看来，对他而言，理想的事业应当与工程密切相关，处在关乎未来的关键领域之中，并且深入触及尖端科技。仅凭这些宽泛而核心的“欲望盒”要素，便已将“目标池”的范围大幅收窄。

Meanwhile, he was a teenager with no money, reputation, or connections, and limited knowledge and skills. In other words, his Reality box wasn’t that big. So he did what many young people do—he focused his early goals not around achieving his Wants, but expanding the Reality box and its list of “things that are possible.” He wanted to be able to legally stay in the US after college, and he also wanted to gain more knowledge about engineering, so he killed two birds with one stone and applied to a PhD program at Stanford to study high energy density capacitors, a technology aimed at coming up with a more efficient way than traditional batteries to store energy.
与此同时，那时的他不过是个十几岁的少年，既没钱、没名气，也没有任何人脉，知识与技能更是捉襟见肘。换句话说，他的“现实盒”容量相当有限。于是，他走上了许多年轻人惯常的道路——早期的目标并非立刻去触及自己的“欲望”，而是先着力扩展“现实盒”，去拓宽那份“可实现之事”的清单。他希望大学毕业后能够合法留在美国，同时又渴望在工程领域汲取更多知识。为了两全其美，他申请了斯坦福大学的博士项目，专攻高能量密度电容器——一种旨在比传统电池更高效储存能量的尖端技术。

U-turn to the internet
急转向互联网

马斯克原已从目标池中选定了斯坦福的博士项目，并为此搬到加州，打算开启全新的生活。然而，一件事彻底改变了他的轨迹——那是1995年，互联网方兴未艾，发展速度远远超出人们的想象。更关键的是，这个崭新的世界对马斯克几乎毫无门槛：不需要资金，不需要名望，也不需要人脉。他便将一连串与互联网相关的可能性塞进了自己的现实盒。很快，他发现互联网的前景比预想的还要令人振奋，于是，“投身互联网”迅速被收入了他的欲望盒。

Musk had gone into the Goal Pool and picked the Stanford program, and he moved to California to get started. But there was one thing—it was 1995. The internet was in the early stages of taking off and moving much faster than people had anticipated. It was also a world Musk could dive into without money or a reputation. So he added a bunch of internet-related possibilities into his Reality box. The early internet was also more exciting than he had anticipated—so getting involved in it quickly found its way into his Want box.
马斯克最初从“目标池”中选定了斯坦福的博士项目，并为此搬到加州，准备开启新生活。然而有一个无法忽视的背景——那是1995年。互联网刚刚崭露头角，却以远超人们预期的速度迅猛发展。更妙的是，这个新世界对他而言无需资金或名望即可一头扎入。于是，他把各种与互联网相关的可能性装进了自己的“现实盒”。而早期互联网的生机与魅力更是超出了他的想象——不久，“投身互联网浪潮”也被他郑重地收入了“欲望盒”。

These rapid adjustments caused big changes in his Goal Pool, to the point where the Stanford PhD was no longer what his software’s goal formation center was outputting.
这些迅速的调整深刻重塑了他的目标池，以至于斯坦福博士项目已不再是其“软件”中目标生成核心的输出结果。

Most people would have stuck with the Stanford program—because they had already told everyone about it and it would be weird to quit, because it was Stanford, because it was a more normal path, because it was safer, because the internet might be a fad, because what if he were 35 one day and was a failure with no money because he couldn’t get a good job without the right degree.
大多数人或许都会选择留在斯坦福的项目中——因为他们早已将这事宣告给所有人，半途退出会显得突兀尴尬；因为那是斯坦福，背后是名校的光环与认可；因为这条道路更为正规，也更为稳妥；因为互联网或许只是一阵转瞬即逝的潮流；因为万一有一天，自己三十五岁了，却事业无成、囊中羞涩，没有一纸体面的学位，也找不到一份好工作，该怎么办。

Musk quit the program after two days. The big macro arrow of his software came down on the right, saw that what he was embarking on wasn’t in the Goal Pool anymore, and he trusted his software—so he made a macro change.
马斯克在斯坦福仅坚持了两天便选择退学。他思维“软件”中的那支代表宏观方向的箭头，落到右侧时察觉自己正投入的事情已不在目标池之列。信赖这套思维“软件”的他，便果断作出了彻底的抉择。

He started Zip2 with his brother, an early cross between the concepts of the Yellow Pages and Google Maps. Four years later, they sold the company and Elon walked away with $22 million.
他与哥哥共同创办了Zip2，这是一家融合了早期“黄页”与“谷歌地图”概念的先锋公司。四年后，他们成功将公司出售，埃隆·马斯克由此收获了2200万美元的可观财富。

As a dotcom millionaire, the conventional wisdom was to settle down as a lifelong rich guy and either invest in other companies or start something new with other people’s money. But Musk’s goal formation center had other ideas. His Want box was bursting with ambitious startup ideas that he thought could have major impact on the world, and his Reality box, which now included $22 million, told him that he had a high chance of succeeding. Being leisurely on the sidelines was nowhere in his Want box and totally unnecessary according to his Reality box.
作为互联网泡沫年代的百万富翁，按常理，他完全可以安享一生的财富——或是投身投资圈把资金撒向别人的公司，或是轻松用他人的资金再开一摊新生意。然而，马斯克的“目标生成中心”却另有盘算。他的“欲望盒”早已被一连串雄心勃勃的创业构想塞得满满，这些念头在他看来都足以深刻改变世界。而他的“现实盒”此刻握有的，是2200万美元的真金白银——这清楚地提示他：成功的可能性相当可观。至于在场外悠闲旁观？这样的念头既不在他的“欲望盒”里，也被“现实盒”判定为全然多余。

So he used his newfound wealth to start X.com in 1999, with the vision to build a full-service online financial institution. The internet was still young and the concept of storing your money in an online bank was totally inconceivable to most people, and Musk was advised by many that it was a crazy plan. But again, Musk trusted his software. What he knew about the internet told him that this was inside the Reality box—because his reasoning told him that when it came to the internet, the Reality box had grown much bigger than people appreciated—and that was all he needed to know to move forward. In the top part of his software, as his strategy-action-results-adjustments loop spun, X.com’s service changed, the team changed, the mission changed, even the name changed. By the time eBay bought it in 2002, the company was called PayPal and it was a money transfer service. Musk made $180 million.
1999年，马斯克凭借新近积累的财富创办了X.com，立志打造一家功能齐全的在线金融机构。彼时，互联网仍在襁褓之中，把钱存进“网络银行”在绝大多数人看来完全是天方夜谭。许多人劝他，这想法简直疯狂。然而，马斯克再次选择信赖自己的“软件”（思维方式）。他对互联网的认知让他笃信，这个创意属于“现实盒”里的内容——因为他的推理已然告诉他，互联网的现实盒早已比人们所认知的宽阔得多，而这就是他推进计划所需的全部信号。

在他的“软件”顶层，策略—行动—结果—调整的循环高速运转着，X.com的服务在迭代，团队在重组，使命在演变，连名字也经历了更换。到2002年eBay收购这家公司时，它已更名为PayPal，专注于资金转账服务。马斯克由此获得了1.8亿美元的收益。

Following his software to space
循着他的“思维软件”，迈向苍穹

Now 31 years old and fabulously wealthy, Musk had to figure out what to do next with his life. On top of the “whatever you do, definitely don’t risk losing that money you have” conventional wisdom, there was also the common logic that said, “You’re awesome at building internet companies, but that’s all you know since you’ve never done anything else. You’re in your thirties now and it’s too late to do something big in a whole different field. This is the path you chose—you’re an internet guy.”
马斯克此时已是31岁，家财万贯，却面临着人生下一步的重要抉择。除了人们惯念中的忠告——“无论做什么，千万别冒险让到手的财富流失”，另一种更普遍的声音也在耳边低语：“你搭建互联网公司的本事无人能及，但你也只懂这一行，毕竟从未涉足其他领域。如今你已步入三十而立之年，要在截然不同的行业闯出一番天地，已为时过晚。这条路是你自己选的——你就是个互联网人。”

But Musk went back to first principles. He looked inwards to his Want box, and having reflected on things, doing another internet thing wasn’t really in the box anymore. What was in there was his still-burning desire to help the future of humanity. In particular, he felt that to have a long future, the species would have to become much better at space travel.
但马斯克选择回归到第一性原理的思考。他凝视内心的“欲望盒”，经过深刻反省，意识到自己已不再对再做一个互联网项目心生向往。真正燃烧在心中的，是那份始终不灭的宏愿——为人类的未来添砖加瓦。尤其令他笃信的是，若人类要拥有悠远的明天，整个物种就必须在太空航行的能力上实现质的飞跃。

So he started exploring the limits of the Reality box when it came to getting involved in the aerospace industry.
于是，他开始探寻在涉足航天产业时，“现实盒”的边界与极限。

Conventional wisdom screamed at the top of its lungs for him to stop. It said he had no formal education in the field and didn’t know the first thing about being a rocket scientist. But his software told him that formal education was just another way to download information into your brain and “a painfully slow download” at that—so he started reading, meeting people, and asking questions.
传统观念几乎嘶声力竭地劝他止步。人们说，他既无相关领域的正规学术训练，更不懂火箭科学的基本原理。但在他的“软件”看来，所谓正规教育，无非是将信息缓慢地导入大脑的一种途径——而且还是“异常缓慢的下载”。于是，他毅然投入阅读，与业内人士结交，不停发问，主动汲取所需的知识养分。

Conventional wisdom said no entrepreneur had ever succeeded at an endeavor like this before, and that he shouldn’t risk his money on something so likely to fail. But Musk’s stated philosophy is, “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
普遍的看法是，从未有哪位创业者在这种尝试中取得过成功，他不该将资金押在一桩几乎注定失败的事业上。然而，马斯克的信条是：“当一件事足够重要时，即便胜算渺茫，你也必须去做。”

Conventional wisdom said that he couldn’t afford to build rockets because they were too expensive and pointed to the fact that no one had ever made a rocket that cheaply before—but like the scientists who ignored those who said the Earth was 6,000 years old and those who insisted the Earth was flat, Musk started crunching numbers to do the math himself. Here’s how he recounts his thoughts:
传统观念认为，马斯克根本无力承担造火箭的高昂成本，因为火箭历来价格不菲，且从未有人以如此低廉的预算成功制造过火箭。然而，马斯克并未被这些似是而非的“常识”束缚。就像那些无视“地球只有六千年历史”或坚称“地球是平的”言论的科学家一样，他选择亲自动手推算，细细掂量数字、核算成本。马斯克是这样回忆当时的思考过程的：

Historically, all rockets have been expensive, so therefore, in the future, all rockets will be expensive. But actually that’s not true. If you say, what is a rocket made of? It’s made of aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber. And you can break it down and say, what is the raw material cost of all these components? And if you have them stacked on the floor and could wave a magic wand so that the cost of rearranging the atoms was zero, then what would the cost of the rocket be? And I was like, wow, okay, it’s really small—it’s like 2% of what a rocket costs. So clearly it would be in how the atoms are arranged—so you’ve got to figure out how can we get the atoms in the right shape much more efficiently. And so I had a series of meetings on Saturdays with people, some of whom were still working at the big aerospace companies, just to try to figure out if there’s some catch here that I’m not appreciating. And I couldn’t figure it out. There doesn’t seem to be any catch. So I started SpaceX.8
从历史上看，火箭一向价格高昂，人们也因此习惯性地推断：未来的火箭依旧会贵得离谱。可事实却并非如此。试着问一句——火箭究竟是由什么构成的？不过是铝、钛、铜、碳纤维这些材料。进一步拆开思路，把它分解成这些部件的原材料，去算一算它们的成本。如果把这些原料整齐地堆放在地板上，而你手里有一根魔法棒，能让“重新排列原子的成本”归零——那么，这枚火箭的成本会是多少呢？我一算，惊讶得不得了——只相当于火箭总价的约2%。显然，真正的成本在于“原子如何排列”，也就是说，关键在于怎样能更高效地将这些原子组合成火箭的形态。

于是，我开始在每个周六约上一些朋友，其中有些人还效力于大型航天企业，一起探讨：这里面是不是有什么我忽略的隐患？可无论怎么琢磨，也找不出半点“坑”。既然如此，我便决定创办SpaceX。

History, conventional wisdom, and his friends all said one thing, but his own software, reasoning upwards from first principles, said another—and he trusted his software. He started SpaceX, again with his own money, and dove in head first. The mission: dramatically lower the cost of space travel to make it possible for humanity to become multi-planetary.
历史、传统智慧，甚至至亲好友都在劝他走同一条路，而他心中的那套“软件”——基于第一性原理逐层推演出的逻辑——却给出了截然不同的答案，而他选择信任自己的“软件”。于是，他用自己的资金创立了SpaceX，毫不迟疑地跃入这片未知深海。使命只有一个：以革命性的方式降低太空航行的成本，让人类真正有机会迈向多星球文明。

Tesla and beyond
特斯拉与更辽远的征途

Two years later, while running a growing SpaceX, a friend brought Elon to a company called AC Propulsion, which had created a prototype for a super-fast, long-range electric car. It blew him away. The Reality box of Musk’s software had told him that such a thing wasn’t yet possible, but it turns out that Musk wasn’t aware of how far lithium-ion batteries had advanced, and what he saw at AC Propulsion was new information about the world that put “starting a top-notch electric car company” into the Reality box in his head.
两年后，正值SpaceX蓬勃发展的时期，一位朋友带马斯克拜访了一家名为AC Propulsion的公司——他们打造出一款极速且续航惊人的电动汽车原型。那一刻，马斯克被彻底震撼。一直以来，他脑海中的“现实盒”告诉他，这种电动汽车尚属不可能。然而，他并未察觉锂离子电池技术已取得巨大飞跃。而在AC Propulsion所见到的一切，宛如来自世界的新讯息，将“创办一家顶尖电动汽车公司”的念头，坚定地装进了他的现实盒中。

He ran into the same conventional wisdom about battery costs as he had about rocket costs. Batteries had never been made cheaply enough to allow for a mass-market, long-range electric car because the cost of making a battery was simply too high. He used the same first principles logic and a calculator to determine that most of the problem was the cost of middlemen, not raw materials, and decided that actually, conventional wisdom was wrong and batteries could be much cheaper in the future. So he co-founded Tesla with the mission of accelerating the advent of a mostly-electric-vehicle world—first by pouring in resources power and funding the company, and later by contributing his time and energy resources as well and becoming CEO.
在电池成本的问题上，他又一次撞上了与火箭成本如出一辙的“传统智慧”之墙。长期以来，人们普遍认为电池的造价居高不下，因此大众化的长续航电动车始终停留在愿景之中——原因就在于，制造电池的成本被视作难以逾越的障碍。可马斯克依然祭出了他的第一性原理思维，拿着计算器一番推演后揭示出真相：症结并非来自原材料，而是层层中间环节抬高了价格。于是，他得出了颠覆性的结论——传统观点错了，未来电池完全可能大幅降价。

凭借这份洞察，他与人联合创立了特斯拉，肩负起“加速一个以电动车为主的世界到来”的使命。起初，他以雄厚资金与资源为公司注入动力；后来更亲自投入时间与精力，全身心参与企业运转，最终走上了首席执行官之位。

Two years after that, Musk co-founded SolarCity with his cousins, a company whose goal was to revolutionize energy production by creating a large, distributed utility that would install solar panel systems on millions of homes. Musk knew that his time/energy power, the one kind of power that has hard limits, no matter who you are, was mostly used up, but he still had plenty of resources power—so he put it to work on another goal in his Goal Pool.
两年后，马斯克与两位表兄弟共同创立了 SolarCity，这家公司立志以一种全新的方式变革能源生产——打造庞大的分布式能源网络，为数以百万计的家庭安装太阳能电池板系统。马斯克深知，自己的“时间与精力”这一类无论是谁都难以突破上限的能量，已所剩无几；然而他仍握有充足的“资源型能量”。于是，他将这些可支配的资源倾注到目标池中的又一项宏愿之上。

Most recently, Musk has jumpstarted change in another area that’s important to him—the way people transport themselves from city to city. His idea is that there should be an entirely new mode of transport that will whiz people hundreds of miles by zinging them through a tube. He calls it the Hyperloop. For this project, he’s not using his time, energy, or resources. Instead, by laying out his initial thoughts in a white paper and hosting a competition for engineers to test out their innovations, he’s leveraging his powers of connection and persuasion to create change.
最近，马斯克又在他关切的另一个领域掀起了新一轮变革——城市间的交通方式。他设想，未来应诞生一种全然不同的运输模式，让人们能够以惊人的速度在数百英里间穿梭，其核心构想是将乘客置于管道之中，如疾风般被送抵目的地。他将这一概念命名为“超级高铁”（Hyperloop）。然而，这一次他并未投入大量的时间、精力或资金，而是另辟蹊径：先以白皮书公开自己的初步构想，再举办工程师竞赛，邀请各路才俊将设想化为现实。藉此，马斯克巧妙运用自身的人脉与说服力，让变革的种子在更广阔的土壤中萌芽生长。

There are all kinds of tech companies that build software. They think hard, for years, about the best, most efficient way to make their product. Musk sees people as computers, and he sees his brain software as the most important product he owns—and since there aren’t companies out there designing brain software, he designed his own, beta tests it every day, and makes constant updates. That’s why he’s so outrageously effective, why he can disrupt multiple huge industries at once, why he can learn so quickly, strategize so cleverly, and visualize the future so clearly.
世界上有无数科技公司专注于研发各类软件，它们往往耗费多年心血，反复推敲，只为找到最优、最高效的产品实现方式。然而，马斯克却将人类视作计算机，把自己的大脑“软件”看作他最重要的产品——既然没有公司替人设计这种软件，他便亲手打造，每天亲自进行“公测”，并持续不断地升级迭代。正因如此，他才具备惊人的执行力，能够同时撼动多个庞大产业，快速汲取新知，巧妙制订策略，并以极其清晰的视角洞察未来。

This part of what Musk does isn’t rocket science—it’s common sense. Your entire life runs on the software in your head—why wouldn’t you obsess over optimizing it?
马斯克所做的这一部分，并不是什么高深莫测的火箭科学——归根结底，就是常识。你的一生都仰赖于脑中的那套“软件”来驱动，既然如此，为什么不倾尽全力去打磨、优化它呢？

And yet, not only do most of us not obsess over our own software—most of us don’t even understand our own software, how it works, or why it works that way. Let’s try to figure out why.
然而，大多数人不仅很少会为自己的“软件”操心，甚至连它究竟是什么、如何运作、以及为何如此运作都一知半解。那就让我们试着探究其中的缘由。

Most People’s Software
多数人的“思维软件”

You always hear facts about human development and how so much of who you become is determined by your experiences during your formative years. A newborn’s brain is a malleable ball of hardware clay, and its job upon being born is to quickly learn about whatever environment it’s been born into and start shaping itself into the optimal tool for survival in those circumstances. That’s why it’s so easy for young children to learn new skills.
我们常常听到关于人类成长的种种论述——一个人的性格、能力，甚至命运，往往在那段关键的成长期便已被深刻塑造。新生儿的大脑宛如一团柔韧可塑的“硬件泥”，它在降临人世的那一刻起，便肩负起迅速感知并适应所处环境的使命，努力将自身锻造成最契合生存需要的工具。也正因如此，年幼的孩子总能轻松学会新的技能。

As people age, the clay begins to harden and it becomes more difficult to change the way the brain operates. My grandmother has been using a computer as long as I have, but I use mine comfortably and easily because my malleable childhood brain easily wrapped itself around basic computer skills, while she has the same face on when she uses her computer that my tortoise does when I put him on top of a glass table and he thinks he’s inexplicably hovering two feet above the ground. She’ll use a computer when she needs to, but it’s not her friend.
随着年岁渐长，大脑这团“黏土”逐渐变硬，想要改变它的运作方式愈发艰难。我的外婆用电脑的时间和我几乎一样久，但我操作起来游刃有余，因为童年的大脑仍柔韧灵活，能轻易将基础电脑技能融入思维。而她用电脑时的神情，活像我的乌龟被放在玻璃桌上时——满脸困惑，好似莫名悬空在半尺高的地方，完全弄不清状况。她会在必要时使用电脑，但这台机器，对她而言始终只是工具，从来不算伙伴。

So when it comes to our brain software—our values, perceptions, belief systems, reasoning techniques—what are we learning during those key early years?
那么，当我们谈到大脑的软件——也就是我们的价值观、认知方式、信念体系与推理方法——在那些关键的早期岁月里，我们究竟汲取了哪些内容？

Everyone’s raised differently, but for most people I know, it went something like this:
每个人的成长方式各不相同，但据我所知，大多数人的童年轨迹大致如下：

We were taught all kinds of things by our parents and teachers—what’s right and wrong, what’s safe and dangerous, the kind of person you should and shouldn’t be. But the idea was: I’m an adult so I know much more about this than you, it’s not up for debate, don’t argue, just obey. That’s when the cliché “Why?” game comes in (what MuskSpeak calls “the chained why”).
我们从父母和老师那里学到了形形色色的道理——什么是对与错，什么是安全与危险，什么样的人值得成为，什么样的人不应成为。背后的潜台词却很直接：我是大人，所以我比你懂得多，这些事无需讨论，别辩解，只管照做。于是，那场老掉牙的“为什么？”游戏便登场了——在马斯克的说法里，这叫“连环为什么”。

A child’s instinct isn’t just to know what to do and not to do, she wants to understand the rules of her environment. And to understand something, you have to have a sense of how that thing was built. When parents and teachers tell a kid to do XYZ and to simply obey, it’s like installing a piece of already-designed software in the kid’s head. When kids ask Why? and then Why? and then Why?, they’re trying to deconstruct that software to see how it was built—to get down to the first principles underneath so they can weigh how much they should actually care about what the adults seem so insistent upon.
孩子的本能不止是分辨该做与不该做，她更渴望洞悉自身所处环境的规则。而要真正理解一件事，必须先明白它的架构与源起。当父母或老师要求孩子去做某件事，并让她直接服从时，无异于在她的脑海里“植入”一套现成的软件。而当孩子一遍又一遍地追问“为什么？为什么？为什么？”时，她其实是在剖析这套软件的运作逻辑，探寻它的设计根源——一路追溯到最深处的第一性原理，好衡量那些大人们誓言般坚持的事情，自己究竟该投入多少真实的关注与认同。

The first few times a kid plays the Why game, parents think it’s cute. But many parents, and most teachers, soon come up with a way to cut the game off:
最初几次孩子玩“为什么”游戏时，父母通常觉得挺有趣。然而没过多久，大多数父母，尤其是老师，便会想办法让这个游戏迅速收场：

Because I said so.
因为我是这么说的。

“Because I said so” inserts a concrete floor into the child’s deconstruction effort below which no further Why’s may pass. It says, “You want first principles? There. There’s your floor. No more Why’s necessary. Now fucking put your boots on because I said so and let’s go.”
“因为我说了算”，就像在孩子的追根问底中，猛然砸下了一块坚硬无比的地板，把一切“为什么”都牢牢封在地板之下，无法再向下探究。它的潜台词是：“你想要第一性原理？好了，这就是最终的底线。无需再问为什么。现在——立刻穿好靴子，因为我说了算，走！”

Imagine how this would play out in the science world.
试着想象，这一幕在科学界会如何上演。

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In fairness, parents’ lives suck. They have to do all the shit they used to have to do, except now on top of that there are these self-obsessed, drippy little creatures they have to upkeep, who think parents exist to serve them. On a busy day, in a bad mood, with 80 things to do, the Why game is a nightmare.
说句公道话，当父母真是够辛苦的了。他们依旧要处理那些原本就令人头大的杂事，如今还多了几只自我中心、整天黏个不停的小生物需要全天候操心——而这些小家伙还心安理得地认为父母的存在就是为了服侍他们。试想在你忙得团团转、情绪低落、手头压着八十件急事的时候，孩子突然发起一场没完没了的“为什么”连环追问，那真是堪称噩梦般的折磨。

But it might be a nightmare worth enduring. A command or a lesson or a word of wisdom that comes without any insight into the steps of logic it was built upon is feeding a kid a fish instead of teaching them to reason. And when that’s the way we’re brought up, we end up with a bucket of fish and no rod—a piece of installed software that we’ve learned how to use, but no ability to code anything ourselves.
但或许，这场“噩梦”依然值得我们去承受。那些缺乏任何逻辑推演过程、直接灌输的命令、教诲或被冠以“智慧”之名的言语，其实就像只给孩子一条鱼，却不教他们如何独立思考与捕获。若我们自幼在这样的方式中成长，最终的结局便是手中握着一桶鱼，却没有一支钓竿——我们习得了运用他人预装的“软件”，却失去了亲手编写属于自己代码的能力。

School makes things worse. One of my favorite thinkers, writer Seth Godin (whose blog is bursting with first principles reasoning wisdom), explains in a TED Talk about school that the current education system is a product of the Industrial Age, a time that catapulted productivity and the standard of living. But along with many more factories came the need for many more factory workers, so our education system was redesigned around that goal. He explains:
学校往往让事情变得更糟。作家赛斯·戈丁（Seth Godin）是我最敬佩的思想家之一，他的博客充满了“第一性原理思维”的智慧。在一次 TED 演讲中，他谈到学校，指出现行教育制度本质上是工业时代的产物。那是一个生产力和生活水平突飞猛进的年代，但伴随着更多工厂的建立，社会急需更多工厂工人。于是，我们的教育体系便围绕这一目标被彻底重塑。戈丁如此说道：

The deal was: universal public education whose sole intent was not to train the scholars of tomorrow—we had plenty of scholars. It was to train people to be willing to work in the factory. It was to train people to behave, to comply, to fit in. “We process you for a whole year. If you are defective, we hold you back and process you again. We sit you in straight rows, just like they organize things in the factory. We build a system all about interchangeable people because factories are based on interchangeable parts.”
这套制度的真正意图在于：推行全民公共教育，却并非着眼于培养未来的学者——学者早已不缺。它的使命，是让人们心甘情愿走进工厂，训练他们服从守纪、循规蹈矩、融入整体。“我们会对你进行一整年的‘加工’，若成品不合格，就退回重制一遍。我们让你端坐在整齐排列的座位上，仿佛工厂中井然有序的生产线。我们构筑的是一个以‘可替换的人’为核心的体系，因为工厂的运行建立在‘可替换的零件’之上。”

Couple that concept with what another favorite writer of mine, James Clear, explained recently on his blog:
再结合我另一位深受我喜爱的作家——James Clear近日在他的博客中所剖析的理念：

In the 1960s, a creative performance researcher named George Land conducted a study of 1,600 five-year-olds and 98 percent of the children scored in the “highly creative” range. Dr. Land re-tested each subject during five year increments. When the same children were 10-years-old, only 30 percent scored in the highly creative range. This number dropped to 12 percent by age 15 and just 2 percent by age 25. As the children grew into adults they effectively had the creativity trained out of them. In the words of Dr. Land, “non-creative behavior is learned.”
上世纪六十年代，创造力研究专家乔治·兰德对1600名五岁儿童进行了测试，结果显示，其中高达98%的孩子被评为“创造力极高”。此后，兰德博士每隔五年对这批孩子进行一次复测。当他们年满十岁时，仅有30%依然保持高度的创造力；到了十五岁，这一比例降至12%；而在二十五岁时，几乎只剩下2%。随着年岁渐长，这些孩子在走向成人的过程中，创造力几乎被一步步“训练”削弱殆尽。正如兰德博士所言：“非创造性行为，是后天习得的。”

It makes sense, right? Creative thinking is a close cousin of first principles reasoning. In both cases, the thinker needs to invent his own thought pathways. People think of creativity as a natural born talent, but it’s actually much more of a way of thinking—it’s the thinking version of painting onto a blank canvas. But to do that requires brain software that’s skilled and practiced at coming up with new things, and school trains us on the exact opposite concept—to follow the leader, single-file, and to get really good at taking tests. Instead of a blank canvas, school hands kids a coloring book and tells them to stay within the lines.4
这讲得通，是吧？创造性思维与“第一性原理思维”简直是近亲。在这两种思维模式中，思考者都必须亲自开辟属于自己的思路。许多人把创造力看作与生俱来的天赋，但本质上，它更像是一种思维方式——就像在一张空白画布上自由挥洒。同样的，要做到这一点，大脑中的“软件”必须娴熟且长期训练于生发新意。然而，学校灌输的却恰恰是反向的理念——排列整齐地跟随前行、专注于应试的分数。学校交到孩子手中的，不是可以任意创作的素描纸，而是一册填色画，并不断叮嘱：“务必涂在既定的线条之内。”

What this all amounts to is that during our brain’s most malleable years, parents, teachers, and society end up putting our clay in a mold and squeezing it tightly into a preset shape.
归根结底，在我们大脑最易被塑造的那些年里，父母、老师以及整个社会，仿佛拿着模具塑形，将我们这团柔软的泥胚紧紧压进一个早已设定好的形状之中。

And when we grow up, without having learned how to build our own style of reasoning and having gone through the early soul-searching that independent thinking requires, we end up needing to rely on whatever software was installed in us for everything—software that, coming from parents and teachers, was probably itself designed 30 years ago.
等我们长大成人，如果既没学会塑造属于自己的推理方式，也没经历过独立思考所必需的那段早期自我探寻，我们就只能在生活的方方面面依赖那套早年被“装入”脑海的思维软件——而这套软件，多半来自父母与老师，版本恐怕还是三十年前的“陈旧款”。

30 years, if we’re lucky. Let’s think about this for a second.
如果幸运的话，也不过三十年而已。我们不妨停下来仔细咀嚼这个数字。

Just say you have an overbearing mother who insists you grow up with her values, her worldview, her fears, and her ambitions—because she knows best, because it’s a scary world out there, because XYZ is respectable, because she said so.
假设你有一位极具掌控欲的母亲，她坚持要你依循她的价值观、世界观、恐惧与抱负成长——因为她确信自己最懂你，因为外面的世界充满危险，因为某个选择在她看来体面而可取，或者，仅仅因为那是她的命令。

Your head might end up running your whole life on “because mom says so” software. If you play the Why? game with something like the reason you’re in your current job, it may take a few Why’s to get there, but you’ll most likely end up hitting a concrete floor that says some version of “because mom says so.”
你的思想或许终其一生都在运行着那套“因为妈妈说的”程序，主宰着你的选择与方向。若你用“为什么？”的游戏去层层追问——比如，你为何会从事如今的工作——也许需要连续问上好几次“为什么”，但最终你极有可能会碰到一块坚硬如石的底板，上面刻着某种版本的：“因为妈妈说的”。

But why does mom say so?
那妈妈为何会这么说呢？

Mom says so because her mom said so—after growing up in Poland in 1932, where she was from a home where her dad said so because his dad—a minister from a small town outside Krakow—said so after his grandfather, who saw some terrible shit go down during the Siberian Uprising of 1866, ingrained in his children’s heads the critical life lesson to never associate with blacksmiths.
妈妈之所以这样说，是因为她的母亲当年也是这样教她的——而那位母亲之所以如此坚信，是因为她的父亲在1932年的波兰家中就抱持着同样的观点；而这位父亲又是听从了自己的父亲——一位居住在克拉科夫郊外小镇的牧师——的叮嘱。至于这位牧师的父亲，他在1866年西伯利亚起义期间亲眼目睹了极其惨烈的场景，于是将一个“终生绝不可与铁匠为伍”的信条，刻进了子孙的心里，世代相传。

Through a long game of telephone, your mother now looks down upon office jobs and you find yourself feeling strongly about the only truly respectable career being in publishing. And you can list off a bunch of reasons why you feel that way—but if someone really grilled you on your reasons and on the reasoning beneath them, you end up in a confusing place. It gets confusing way down there because the first principles foundation at the bottom is a mishmash of the values and beliefs of a bunch of people from different generations and countries—a bunch of people who aren’t you.
历经一场漫长的“传话游戏”，你母亲如今已对办公室工作嗤之以鼻，而你却由衷地认定，出版业才是唯一真正体面的职业。你也许能顺口列出一长串理由来支撑这种看法——可一旦有人步步紧逼，追问这些理由的根源与背后的思维逻辑，你便会陷入一种混乱的境地。深入探究之后才发现，最底层、第一性原理的基石，其实是由来自不同时代、不同国度的人们的价值观与信念交织而成的杂糅之物——而这些人，并非你自己。

A common example of this in today’s world is that many people I know were raised by people who were raised by people who went through the Great Depression. If you solicit career advice from someone born in the US in the 1920s, there’s a good chance you’ll get an answer pumped out by this software:
在当今社会，这种现象并不罕见。举个例子，我认识的许多人，成长过程中是由那些“曾被经历过大萧条的人养育的人”抚养大的。如果你向一位1920年代出生的美国人请教职业规划，很可能得到的答复，正是由这样一套跨越几代传承下来的“祖辈思维软件”所生成的。

Grandma Software
奶奶版软件

The person has lived a long life and has made it all the way to 2015, but their software was coded during the Great Depression, and if they’re not the type to regularly self-reflect and evolve, they still do their thinking with software from 1930. And if they installed that same software in their children’s heads and their children then passed it on to their own children, a member of Generation Y today might feel too scared to pursue an entrepreneurial or artistic endeavor and be totally unaware that they’re actually being haunted by the ghost of the Great Depression.
这个人历经沧桑走到了2015年，但他脑中的“思维软件”却是在大萧条年代写就的。如果他不是那种习惯自我反省、不断更新的人，那么至今仍会用着1930年的“老程序”来处理思考。而如果他又将这套“软件”装进了孩子的脑海，孩子再传给他们的孩子，那么今天的一位Y世代成员，可能会在面对创业或艺术创作时平白生出畏惧，且全然不知，自己其实正被大萧条时代的幽灵缠绕。

When old software is installed on new computers, people end up with a set of values not necessarily based on their own deep thinking, a set of beliefs about the world not necessarily based on the reality of the world they live in, and a bunch of opinions they might have a hard time defending with an honest heart.
当陈旧的软件被装进崭新的电脑，人们最终会抱持一套并非经由自身深度思索而成的价值观，存有一套对世界的信念却未必植根于他们所身处的真实世界，同时还积攒着许多连自己也难以坦然辩护的观点。

In other words, a whole lot of convictions not really based on actual data. We have a word for that.
换句话说，许多信念其实并未真正奠基于真实的数据之上。对此，我们有一个专门的词——“教条”。

Dogma
信条

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile! —Richard Feynman
我真是困惑，人们到底怎么了？他们并非通过理解来学习，而是依赖其他途径——比如机械死记硬背。这样的知识，脆弱得不堪一击！——理查德·费曼

Dogma is everywhere and comes in a thousand different varieties—but the format is generally the same:
教条无处不在，千姿百态，但其底层模式几乎如出一辙：

X is true because [authority] says so. The authority can be many things.
X之所以被视为真理，只因【权威】如此断言。而这所谓的权威，形态千差万别。

Because I said so 2
因为权威说了算 2

Dogma, unlike first principles reasoning, isn’t customized to the believer or her environment and isn’t meant to be critiqued and adjusted as things change. It’s not software to be coded—it’s a printed rulebook. Its rules may be originally based on reasoning by a certain kind of thinker in a certain set of circumstances, at a time far in the past or a place far away, or it may be based on no reasoning at all. But that doesn’t matter because you’re not supposed to dig too deep under the surface anyway—you’re just supposed to accept it, embrace it, and live by it. No evidence needed.
与“第一性原理思维”不同，教条既不会因信奉者的个人特质或所处环境而有所调整，也不会随着时势变迁而接受质疑或修订。它不是可以灵活编写的“软件”，而是一册早已铅印成型的规则手册。其内容或许源自某位特定思想者在某种特定情境下的推理——也可能是在久远的昔日或遥远的异域——亦或根本毫无推理基础。但这些都无足轻重，因为本就无需深入探究其内里的逻辑，你只需照单全收，全心拥抱，并依其行事，不必出示任何证据。

You may not like living by someone else’s dogma, but you’re left without much choice. When your childhood attempts at understanding are met with “Because I said so,” and you absorb the implicit message “Your own reasoning capability is shit, don’t even try, just follow these rules so you don’t fuck your life up,” you grow up with little confidence in your own reasoning process. When you’re never forced to build your own reasoning pathways, you’re able to skip the hard process of digging deep to discover your own values and the sometimes painful experience of testing those values in the real world and learning you want to adjust them—and so you grow up a total reasoning amateur.
你或许并不愿被他人的教条所束缚，但现实中你几乎没有太多选择。童年时，当你努力尝试去理解这个世界，却屡屡被一句“因为我说了算”打发，你便在不知不觉间接受了一个隐含的信息——“你的推理能力一文不值，别费心思考，照着这些规矩做，不然你会把人生搞得一团糟。”在这种氛围中长大，你很难建立对自身思考能力的信心。而当你从未被迫亲手构建属于自己的推理路径，你就轻易绕过那段艰难的深掘过程——去发掘自己的价值观，并在现实世界中反复检验、甚至痛苦地修正它们的历程——于是，终有一天，你会发现自己只是一个彻头彻尾的推理“生手”。

Only strong reasoning skills can carve a unique life path, and without them, dogma will quickly have you living someone else’s life. Dogma doesn’t know you or care about you and is often completely wrong for you—it’ll have a would-be happy painter spending their life as a lawyer and a would-be happy lawyer spending their life as a painter.
唯有深厚而敏锐的推理能力，方能为你劈开荆棘、走出独一无二的人生之路。缺乏它，顽固的教条便会迅速将你塑造成他人的翻版。教条既不了解你，更不关心你，甚至常常与你的真实天性背道而驰——它可以让本该幸福挥洒画笔的人一生困于律所，也能让本该心满意足于法庭的人一辈子耗在画架前。

But when you don’t know how to reason, you don’t know how to evolve or adapt. If the dogma you grew up with isn’t working for you, you can reject it, but as a reasoning amateur, going it alone usually ends with you finding another dogma lifeboat to jump onto—another rulebook to follow and another authority to obey. You don’t know how to code your own software, so you install someone else’s.
当你不会进行理性推演时，你也就失去了自我进化与适应的能力。若你一路成长所奉行的教条已不再适合自己，你或许会选择摒弃它们，但作为推理上的新手，独自摸索的结局通常是——你又跳上了另一艘“教条的救生艇”，换一套新的规则手册，再去服从另一位权威的指令。由于你无法亲手为自己编写专属的“心智软件”，于是只能照搬安装他人的系统。

People don’t do any of this intentionally—usually if we reject a type of dogma, our intention is to break free of a life of dogmatic thinking altogether and brave the cold winds of independent reasoning. But dogmatic thinking is a hard habit to break, especially when it’s all you know. I have a friend who just had a baby, and she told me that she was so much more open-minded than her parents, because they wanted her to have a prestigious career, but she’d be open to her daughter doing anything. After a minute, she thought about it, and said, “Well actually, no, what I mean by that is if she wanted to go do something like spend her life on a farm in Montana, I’d be fine with that and my parents never would have been—but if she said she wanted to go work at a hedge fund, I’d kill her.” She realized mid-sentence that she wasn’t free of the rigid dogmatic thinking of her parents, she had just changed dogma brands.
人们其实并非有意如此——大多数时候，当我们拒绝某种教条的束缚，心里的初衷，是想彻底冲破桎梏，勇敢迎向那刺骨的独立思考之风。然而，教条思维犹如根深蒂固的旧习，一旦它是你所知的一切，想要戒除便异常艰难。

我有一位刚为人母的朋友，曾自豪地对我说，她比自己的父母要开放得多。父母一心希望她拥有一份光鲜体面的职业，而她则坚信，女儿未来选择什么都行。可话说到一半，她忽然停顿，沉思了一会儿，才缓缓补充：“其实……也不是完全如此。我的意思是，如果她愿意去蒙大拿的农场度过一生，我当然没意见，这可是我父母绝不会接受的——但如果她说想去对冲基金上班，我会气到抓狂。”就在话音未落的瞬间，她猛然意识到，自己并未真正挣脱父母那种僵硬的教条，只是把“教条”的标签换成了另一种而已。

This is the dogma trap, and it’s hard to escape from. Especially since dogma has a powerful ally—the group.
这就是所谓的“教条陷阱”，一旦坠入其中，几乎难以脱身。更棘手的是，教条还握有一个最得力的伙伴——群体。

Tribes
族群

Some things I think are very conservative, or very liberal. I think when someone falls into one category for everything, I’m very suspicious. It doesn’t make sense to me that you’d have the same solution to every issue. —Louis C.K.
有些观点在我看来极端保守，另一些则极端自由。而如果有人在所有事情上都只固守同一立场，我就会心生疑虑。用同一种解法去应对所有问题，于我而言毫无道理。——路易斯·C.K.

What most dogmatic thinking tends to boil down to is another good Seth Godin phrase:
多数教条化的思维，归根结底，不妨借用塞思·戈丁的一句妙语来点破：

People like us do stuff like this.
像我们这样的人，就该干这种事。

It’s the rallying cry of tribalism.

There’s an important distinction to make here. Tribalism tends to have a negative connotation, but the concept of a tribe itself isn’t bad. A tribe is just a group of people linked together by something they have in common—a religion, an ethnicity, a nationality, family, a philosophy, a cause. Christianity is a tribe. The US Democratic Party is a tribe. Australians are a tribe. Radiohead fans are a tribe. Arsenal fans are a tribe. The musical theater scene in New York is a tribe. Temple University is a tribe. And within large, loose tribes, there are smaller, tighter, sub-tribes. Your extended family is a tribe, of which your immediate family is a sub-tribe. Americans are a tribe, of which Texans are a sub-tribe, of which Evangelical Christians in Amarillo, Texas is a sub-sub-tribe.
这里有个重要的区别需要澄清。“部落主义”一词常带有负面意味，但“部落”这一概念本身未必是坏事。所谓部落，不过是一群因某种共性而紧密相连的人——可能是宗教、族裔、国籍、家族、哲学理念，抑或共同的事业。基督教是一个部落，美国民主党是一个部落，澳大利亚人是一个部落，Radiohead乐队的粉丝是一个部落，阿森纳球迷是一个部落，纽约的音乐剧界是一个部落，坦普尔大学亦是一种部落。

在这些庞大而松散的部落中，往往还孕育着更小、更紧密的“子部落”。譬如，你的大家族可以视作一个部落，而直系亲属便是其中的子部落。美国人是一个部落，德克萨斯人是其子部落，而生活在德州阿马里洛的福音派基督徒，又构成了更细分的“子子部落”。

What makes tribalism a good or bad thing depends on the tribe member and their relationship with the tribe. In particular, one simple distinction:
部落主义的好坏，取决于成员自身，以及他们与部落之间的关联。尤为重要的是，有一个简明而关键的界限：

Tribalism is good when the tribe and the tribe member both have an independent identity and they happen to be the same. The tribe member has chosen to be a part of the tribe because it happens to match who he really is. If either the identity of the tribe or the member evolves to the point where the two no longer match, the person will leave the tribe. Let’s call this conscious tribalism.
当部落与成员各自拥有清晰而独立的身份，并且两者恰好契合时，部落主义便是一种积极的力量。换言之，成员之所以选择加入这个部落，是因为它真实地映照了他的自我本质。倘若有一天，无论是部落还是成员的身份发生演变，令两者不再相符，这个人便会毅然离开。我们可以将这种基于自我认知的联结称为“自觉的部落主义”。

Tribalism is bad when the tribe and tribe member’s identity are one and the same. The tribe member’s identity is determined by whatever the tribe’s dogma happens to say. If the identity of the tribe changes, the identity of the tribe member changes with it in lockstep. The tribe member’s identity can’t change independent of the tribal identity because the member has no independent identity. Let’s call this blind tribalism.
当部落的身份与成员的身份完全合二为一时，部落主义便会走向有害的极端。在这种模式下，成员的自我认同全然由部落的教条所塑造；一旦部落的身份发生改变，成员的身份也会如影随形地随之转变。由于缺乏独立的自我，成员的身份无法脱离部落而存在。我们可以将这种现象称为“盲目部落主义”。

With conscious tribalism, the tribe member and his identity comes first. The tribe member’s identity is the alpha dog, and who he is determines the tribes he’s in. With blind tribalism, the tribe comes first. The tribe is the alpha dog and it’s the tribe that determines who he is.
在有意识的部落主义中，个人及其身份凌驾于部落之上。个人的身份才是真正的主宰，他是谁，决定了他会加入哪些部落；而在盲目的部落主义中，部落本身才是至高的“领袖”，由部落来规定个人的身份与存在。

This isn’t black and white—it’s a spectrum—but when someone is raised without strong reasoning skills, they may also lack a strong independent identity and end up vulnerable to the blind tribalism side of things—especially with the various tribes they were born into. That’s what Einstein was getting at when he said, “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
这并非简单的黑白分明，而更像是一条渐变的光谱。当一个人在成长过程中未能培养起扎实的推理能力时，他往往也缺乏独立而坚定的自我认同，于是容易滑向盲目部落主义的深渊——尤其是在那些自出生便被卷入的各类“群体”之中。爱因斯坦曾敏锐地指出：“能够平和地表达与其社会环境偏见相异的观点的人寥寥无几。多数人甚至连形成这种观点的能力都不具备。”

A large tribe like a religion or nation or political party will contain members who fall across the whole range of the blind-to-conscious spectrum. But some tribes themselves will be the type to attract a certain type of follower. It makes logical sense that the more rigid and certain and dogmatic the tribe, the more likely it’ll be to attract blind tribe members. ISIS is going to have a far higher percentage of blind tribe members than the London Philosophy Club.
像宗教、民族或政党这样的庞大部落，其成员在“盲从—自觉”的光谱上几乎遍布各个层次。然而，有些部落的特质本身就决定了它们吸引的往往是特定类型的追随者。依理而言，部落越是僵硬封闭、确信绝对、充满教条色彩，就越容易聚拢那些盲目跟随的成员。比如，ISIS（伊斯兰国）中盲从型成员的比例，必然远远高于伦敦哲学俱乐部。

The allure of dogmatic tribes makes sense—they appeal to very core parts of human nature.
教条化的部落之所以令人心驰神往，是因为它们精准触动了人性最深处的本能与渴望。

Humans crave connection and camaraderie, and a guiding dogma is a common glue to bond together a group of unique individuals as one.
人类天性渴求连接与同伴情谊，而一套共同的信仰准则，正是将一群性格迥异的个体紧密相连、融为一体的精神纽带。

Humans want internal security, and for someone who grows up feeling shaky about their own distinctive character, a tribe and its guiding dogma is a critical lifeline—a one-stop shop for a full suite of human opinions and values.
人类渴望内心的笃定与安宁。对于那些自幼便对自身独特性心存摇摆的人而言，部落及其主导信条宛如生命线——在这里，他们能一站式获得一整套现成的人类观点与价值体系，成为精神归属与价值认同的港湾。

Humans also long for the comfort and safety of certainty, and nowhere is conviction more present than in the groupthink of blind tribalism. While a scientist’s data-based opinions are only as strong as the evidence she has and inherently subject to change, tribal dogmatism is an exercise in faith, and with no data to be beholden to, blind tribe members believe what they believe with certainty.
人类同样渴望那份源自确定性的安慰与安全感，而在盲目部落主义的集体思维中，这种笃定的确信感表现得尤为浓烈。科学家的观点建立在数据与证据之上，因此她的立场只能如手中证据般坚实，并且随时可能因新证据而修正；相比之下，部落主义的教条则纯然出于信仰。由于毫不依赖任何数据支撑，盲从的部落成员会对自己的信念执着不疑，坚信到底。

We discussed why math has proofs, science has theories, and in life, we should probably limit ourselves to hypotheses—but blind tribalism proceeds with the confidence of the mathematician:
我们曾讨论过：数学依托于严谨的证明，科学建立在理论之上，而在现实生活中，我们或许只能停留在假设阶段——然而，盲目的部落主义却自信得令人惊讶，仿佛握有无懈可击的数学定理般笃定不疑：

Given (because the tribe says so): A = B Given (because the tribe says so): B = C + D Therefore, with certainty: A = C + D
部落的共识：A = B
部落的共识：B = C + D
于是，理所当然：A = C + D

And since so many others in the tribe feel certain about things, your own certainty is reassured and reinforced.
因为部落中有那么多人对某些事深信不疑，这股集体的笃定会潜移默化地安抚、加固你心中的确信。

But there’s a heavy cost to these comforts. Insecurity can be solved the hard way or the easy way—and by giving people the easy option, dogmatic tribes remove the pressure to do the hard work of evolving into a more independent person with a more internally-defined identity. In that way, dogmatic tribes are an enabler of the blind tribe member’s deficiencies.
但这些安逸的背后，实则隐藏着沉重的代价。化解内心的不安全感，可以选择艰难之路，也可走捷径——而教条化的群体往往递上那条最轻省的选项，让人不必辛苦磨砺，去蜕变为更独立、更由内心定义自我的存在。由此，教条化的群体反而成了推助者，放纵并巩固了盲目追随者的内在缺陷。

The sneaky thing about both rigid tribal dogma and blind membership is that they like to masquerade as open-minded thought with conscious membership. I think many of us may be closer to the blind membership side of things with certain tribes we’re a part of than we recognize—and those tribes we’re a part of may not be as open-minded as we tend to think.
无论是僵化的部落教条，还是盲目的群体归属，它们最狡猾之处在于，常常披上开放思考、理性选择的外衣。我觉得，事实上我们在一些身处的圈子里，可能比自己以为的更接近“盲目跟随”；而那些我们自认思想开放的群体，或许远没有我们想象中那般包容与开阔。

A good test for this is the intensity of the us factor. That key word in “People like us do stuff like this” can get you into trouble pretty quickly.
判断这一点的妙招，就是看看“我们”这个因素的浓度有多高。在那句“像我们这样的人，就会干这种事”里，那个核心词——“我们”——往往会很快把你拖进麻烦之中。

Us feels great. A major part of the appeal of being in a tribe is that you get to be part of an Us, something humans are wired to seek out. And a loose Us is nice—like the Us among conscious, independent tribe members.
“我们”是一种令人愉悦的存在感。加入一个部落，最大的魅力之一，就是能融入那个名为“我们”的整体——这是人类天性中的深层渴望。而那种松散自由的“我们”也同样迷人，犹如由具备自我意识、独立精神的部落成员之间自然凝聚的“我们”。

But the Us in blind tribalism is creepy. In blind tribalism, the tribe’s guiding dogma doubles as the identity of the tribe members, and the Us factor enforces that concept. Conscious tribe members reach conclusions—blind tribe members are conclusions. With a blind Us, if the way you are as an individual happens to contain opinions, traits, or principles that fall outside the outer edges of the dogma walls, they will need to be shed—or things will get ugly. By challenging the dogma of your tribe, you’re challenging both the sense of certainty the tribe members gain their strength from and the clear lines of identity they rely on.
然而，盲目部落主义中的那个“我们”，却透着一股令人不寒而栗的气息。在这种状态下，部落的指导性教条不仅是成员们共同奉行的准则，更被等同为他们的身份，而“我们”这个概念正是这种认同的放大器。清醒的部落成员会主动思考并形成结论——盲目的成员则是被动化身为结论本身。若在这个盲目的“我们”中，你的个人观点、特质或原则恰好越过了教条的边界，就必须舍弃，否则冲突难免降临。质疑部落的教条，意味着你同时在撼动部落成员赖以汲取力量的确定感，以及他们所依托的、界限分明的身份标识。

The best friend of a blind Us is a nemesis Us—Them. Nothing unites Us like a collectively hated anti-Us, and the blind tribe is usually defined almost as much by hating the dogma of Them as it is by abiding by the dogma of Us.
盲目之“我们”的最佳伴侣，往往是它的宿敌——“他们”。没有什么能比对一个共同仇恨的反“我们”更能令“我们”紧密相连。对于盲目的群体而言，其身份认同往往不仅源于遵循自身的教条，更深深植根于对“他们”教条的敌视与排斥。

Whatever element of rigid, identity-encompassing blindness is present in your own tribal life will reveal itself when you dare to validate any part of the rival Them dogma.
在你所归属的群体里，那些顽固深植、几乎与身份融为一体的盲点，往往会在你胆敢认可对立阵营的任意信条时暴露得淋漓尽致。

Give it a try. The next time you’re with a member of a tribe you’re a part of, express a change of heart that aligns you on a certain topic with whoever your tribe considers to be Them. If you’re a religious Christian, tell people at church you’re not sure anymore that there’s a God. If you’re an artist in Boulder, explain at the next dinner party that you think global warming might actually be a liberal hoax. If you’re an Iraqi, tell your family that you’re feeling pro-Israel lately. If you and your husband are staunch Republicans, tell him you’re coming around on Obamacare. If you’re from Boston, tell your friends you’re pulling for the Yankees this year because you like their current group of players.
试着来一次这样的挑战吧。下回你与自己所属“部落”的成员相处时，不妨勇敢地抛出一个话题转向——在某个争论焦点上，你的立场突然与部落认定的“异己者”站到了一边。比如，如果你是虔诚的基督徒，可以在教堂里告诉大家，你开始怀疑上帝是否真的存在；如果你是博尔德的艺术家，下一次晚宴上说说你觉得全球变暖或许真是自由派杜撰的骗局；如果你是伊拉克人，向家人坦言最近对以色列颇有好感；如果你和丈夫都是坚定的共和党支持者，不妨告诉他你渐渐觉得奥巴马医保也未必全然错误；如果你来自波士顿，可以对好友表示，今年你会为洋基队加油，因为你喜欢他们如今这套阵容。

（译者注：这些例子皆出自作者原文的幽默设想，旨在凸显挑战群体信念的难度与尴尬。）

If you’re in a tribe with a blind mentality of total certainty, you’ll probably see a look of horror. It won’t just seem wrong, it’ll seem like heresy. They might get angry, they might passionately try to convince you otherwise, they might cut off the conversation—but there will be no open-minded conversation. And because identity is so intertwined with beliefs in blind tribalism, the person actually might feel less close to you afterwards. Because for rigidly tribal people, a shared dogma plays a more important role in their close relationships than they might recognize.
如果你身处一个对信仰绝对笃定、盲目追随的群体，当你提出不同的看法时，迎接你的很可能是一双充满惊恐的眼睛。这不仅会被视作错误，甚至会被当作亵渎或背叛之举。对方或许会愤然不满，或许会激烈劝说你改变立场，甚至可能干脆终止对话——但你绝不会收获一次真正开放、平等的交流。因为在盲目部落主义中，个人身份与信念紧密相缠，质疑信仰几乎等同于挑战自我。结果是，对于那些极度部落化的人来说，共同的教条在亲密关系中占据着远超他们自觉的重要位置。当你表达异议之后，他们或许真的会觉得与你的距离拉远，因为在他们的眼中，信仰上的一致性远比情感的亲近更不可或缺。

Most of the major divides in our world emerge from blind tribalism, and on the extreme end of the spectrum—where people are complete sheep—blind tribalism can lead to terrifying things. Like those times in history when a few charismatic bad guys can build a large army of loyal foot soldiers just by displaying strength and passion. Because blind tribalism is the true villain behind our grandest-scale atrocities:
我们世界上许多深刻的裂痕，追根溯源，往往源自盲目的部落主义。而在它的极端形态下——当人们彻底沦为“羊群”——这种盲从足以酿成令人战栗的恶果。历史中不乏这样的时刻：几位富有魅力却心怀不轨的人，仅凭展示力量与激情，便能召集起庞大的忠诚队伍。因为，在那些规模空前的惨剧背后，真正的罪魁祸首，正是这无视理性的盲目部落主义。

Equations
方程

Most of us probably wouldn’t have joined the Nazi party, because most of us aren’t on the extreme end of the blind-to-conscious spectrum. But I don’t think many of us are on the other end either. Instead, we’re usually somewhere in the hazy middle—in the land of cooks.5
我们大多数人或许并不会去加入纳粹党，因为我们中的绝大多数并不处在“盲从—觉醒”光谱的极端一端。但我也不认为我们有多少人站在另一端的极点。更多时候，我们徘徊在那片朦胧的中间地带——也就是所谓的“厨师之国”。

The Cook and the Chef
厨师与大厨

The difference between the way Elon thinks and the way most people think is kind of like the difference between a cook and a chef.
马斯克的思维方式与大多数人的差别，就像主厨与普通厨师之间的区别般截然不同。

The words “cook” and “chef” seem kind of like synonyms. And in the real world, they’re often used interchangeably. But in this post, when I say chef, I don’t mean any ordinary chef. I mean the trailblazing chef—the kind of chef who invents recipes. And for our purposes, everyone else who enters a kitchen—all those who follow recipes—is a cook.
“厨师”（cook）和“大厨”（chef）这两个词乍听起来像是同义词，在现实生活中也常被混用。但在这篇文章里，我说的“大厨”，可不是普通意义上的厨师，而是那种敢于开疆拓土、首创新方的料理大师——他们会亲手研发全新的食谱。而在我们的语境中，其他走进厨房、依循既有菜谱按部就班烹饪的人，都归为“厨师”。

Everything you eat—every part of every cuisine we know so well—was at some point in the past created for the first time. Wheat, tomatoes, salt, and milk go back a long time, but at some point, someone said, “What if I take those ingredients and do this…and this…..and this……” and ended up with the world’s first pizza. That’s the work of a chef.
我们熟悉的每一道佳肴、每一种风味，都是在历史长河中的某个时刻，第一次被人大胆创造出来的。小麦、西红柿、食盐、牛奶这些食材的渊源可追溯至久远岁月，但总有一天，有人心生妙想：“如果我把这些原料这样搭配……再那样处理……再稍作如此变化……”于是，世界上第一块披萨便烙然而生。这，便是厨艺匠人的杰作。

Since then, god knows how many people have made a pizza. That’s the work of a cook.
自那以后，天晓得已有多少人烤制出披萨——这，正是厨师的本分。

The chef reasons from first principles, and for the chef, the first principles are raw edible ingredients. Those are her puzzle pieces, her building blocks, and she works her way upwards from there, using her experience, her instincts, and her taste buds.
厨师运用的是第一性原理的思维方式，而在她的世界里，这些原理便是新鲜且可直接入口的食材。它们是她的拼图碎片，是她的积木基石；从这里起步，她凭借经验的沉淀、直觉的指引与味蕾的灵敏，层层递进地构建出独具风味的料理。

The cook works off of some version of what’s already out there—a recipe of some kind, a meal she tried and liked, a dish she watched someone else make.
厨师往往会依循已有的蓝本——也许是某份食谱、一道她曾品尝并喜爱的菜肴，或是一道她亲眼见他人烹制的美味。

Cooks span a wide range. On one end, you have cooks who only cook by following a recipe to the T—carefully measuring every ingredient exactly the way the recipe dictates. The result is a delicious meal that tastes exactly the way the recipe has it designed. Down the range a bit, you have more of a confident cook—someone with experience who gets the general gist of the recipe and then uses her skills and instincts to do it her own way. The result is something a little more unique to her style that tastes like the recipe but not quite. At the far end of the cook range, you have an innovator who makes her own concoctions. A lamb burger with a vegetable bun, a peanut butter and jelly pizza, a cinnamon pumpkin seed cake.6
厨师的类型可谓千差万别。最基础的一类，是严格依循食谱的厨师——每一种食材都按食谱精确称量，步骤一丝不苟，毫不偏离原本的指示。这样的成品，味道与食谱设定几乎毫厘不差，稳妥而可口。

再往前一步，是那些更自信、更有经验的厨师——她们对食谱的精髓心中有数，依仗手艺与直觉，在细节上自由调整。这样的菜肴既保留了原本的风味，又融入了个人特色，既似又非，别具一格。

走到另一端，则是充满创意的革新者。她们不拘成规，勇于自创各种匪夷所思的搭配——蔬菜“面包”夹着羊肉饼，花生酱果酱披萨，或者一款香气四溢的肉桂南瓜籽蛋糕。

But what all of these cooks have in common is their starting point is something that already exists. Even the innovative cook is still making an iteration of a burger, a pizza, and a cake.
但这些厨师都有一个相同之处：他们的创作起点，皆源于已有的事物。哪怕是最具巧思的厨师，归根结底也只是为汉堡、披萨或蛋糕赋予了一次新的演绎与变奏。

At the very end of the spectrum, you have the chef. A chef might make good food or terrible food, but whatever she makes, it’s a result of her own reasoning process, from the selection of raw ingredients at the bottom to the finished dish at the top.
在这条光谱的最尽头，站着的是“主厨”。她做出的菜肴，或许令人赞不绝口，也可能让人皱眉摇头。但无论成败，每一道菜都是她独立推演与深思的结晶——从最底层的原料甄选，到顶端端上的成品，皆出自她自身的逻辑与判断。

Chef-Cook Spectrum
厨师与厨子之间的思维光谱

在这条光谱的极端一端，是“厨师”。无论她端出的佳肴是令人赞叹的美味，还是让人皱眉的失败之作，都是源自她独立的思考与决策——从挑选最初的食材，到烹调成最后的成品，每一步都凝结着她自己的判断与创造。

而在烹饪的世界里，做一个“厨子”并无不可。大多数人都是厨子，因为对他们而言，创造全新的菜谱并不是人生的目标所在。

In the culinary world, there’s nothing wrong with being a cook. Most people are cooks because for most people, inventing recipes isn’t a goal of theirs.
在美食世界里，做一名厨师并无不可。多数人选择成为厨师，因为对他们来说，创作全新的菜谱并不是追求的目标。

But in life—when it comes to the reasoning “recipes” we use to churn out a decision—we may want to think twice about where we are on the cook-chef spectrum.
然而在现实生活中——当我们依赖各类“思维配方”来推敲并产出决策时，也许值得停下来反问自己：此刻的你，是循着旧谱的庖丁，还是敢于自创佳肴的真正大厨？

On a typical day, a “reasoning cook” and a “reasoning chef” don’t operate that differently. Even the chef becomes quickly exhausted by the mental energy required for first principles reasoning, and usually, doing so isn’t worth his time. Both types of people spend an average day with their brain software running on auto-pilot and their conscious decision-making centers dormant.
在寻常的一天里，“思维厨师”和“思维大厨”的运作方式其实差别不大。哪怕是大厨，也会很快被第一性原理思维所需的巨大脑力消耗拖得精疲力竭，于是多半觉得，这样的深度推演并不值得耗费时间。于是，两类人往往都让自己的“大脑软件”进入自动驾驶模式，理性决策的中枢几乎整日沉睡。

But then comes a day when something new needs to be figured out. Maybe the cook and the chef are each given the new task at work to create a better marketing strategy. Or maybe they’re unhappy with that job and want to think of what business to start. Maybe they have a crush on someone they never expected to have feelings for and they need to figure out what to do about it.
但总会有那么一天，命运递来一道全新的难题，亟需解答。或许，厨师与大厨都被布置了一个全新任务：打造更高效的市场营销策略；又或者，他们对眼前的工作心生倦意，开始筹划要创立一番自己的事业；甚至，他们可能突如其来地对某个人萌生了情愫——这一份意料之外的心动，让他们陷入未曾有过的情感涟漪，必须认真思量下一步该如何抉择。

Whatever this new situation is, auto-pilot won’t suffice—this is something new and neither the chef’s nor the cook’s software has done this before. Which leaves only two options:
无论眼前出现了怎样的新局面，自动驾驶都无济于事——这是完全陌生的领域，“厨师”也好，“厨工”也罢，他们的思维软件从未应对过这样的挑战。此时，唯有两条路可走：

要么创作，要么照搬。

Create. Or copy.
创造，或是照搬。

The chef says, “Ugh okay, here we go,” rolls up his sleeves, and does what he always does in these situations—he switches on the active decision-making part of his software and starts to go to work. He looks at what data he has and seeks out what more he needs. He thinks about the current state of the world and reflects on where his values and priorities lie. He gathers together those relevant first principles ingredients and starts puzzling together a reasoning pathway. It takes some hard work, but eventually, the pathway brings him to a hypothesis. He knows it’s probably wrong-ish, and as new data emerges, he’ll “taste-test” the hypothesis and adjust it. He keeps the decision-making center on standby for the next few weeks as he makes a bunch of early adjustments to the flawed hypothesis—a little more salt, a little less sugar, one prime ingredient that needs to be swapped out for another. Eventually, he’s satisfied enough with how things are going to move back into auto-pilot mode. This new decision is now part of the automated routine—a new recipe is in the cookbook—and he’ll check in on it to make adjustments every once in a while or as new pertinent data comes in, the way he does for all parts of his software.
主厨嘟囔一声：“唉，好吧，开干。”随即挽起袖子，照例做起这种情境下惯用的动作——唤醒思维软件中主动决策的核心模块，投入工作。他先审视手头已有的数据，再主动追寻那些仍欠缺的信息。他会权衡当下世界的局势，反思自身的价值取向与优先顺序。然后，他将那些与“第一性原理”契合的原材料一一归拢，着手拼凑出一条推理的路径。过程颇为艰辛，但最终，他会抵达一个假设。他深知，这个假设多半并不完美，随着新数据的涌入，他会不断进行“试吃”般的检验，并做出相应修正。接下来的几周里，他让决策中心保持高度戒备，对这份尚显粗糙的假设进行一轮轮早期微调——盐或许要多一点，糖要少一些，某个关键原料需要换成另一种。直到他对整体走向感到足够满意，才会将操作切回自动驾驶模式。这个新决策便自然融入他的自动化日常——一本新食谱收入了菜谱库——此后，他会像维护思维软件的其他模块一样，不时检视并调整，或在新的相关数据出现时及时更新。

The cook has no idea what’s going on in the last paragraph. The reasoning cook’s software is called “Because the recipe said so,” and it’s more of a computerized catalog of recipes than a computer program. When the cook needs to make a life decision, he goes through his collection of authority-written recipes, finds the one he trusts in that particular walk of life, and reads through the steps to see what to do—kind of like WWJD, except the J is replaced by whatever authority is most trusted in that area. For most questions, the authority is the tribe, since the cook’s tribal dogma covers most standard decisions. But in this particular case, the cook leafed through the tribe’s cookbook and couldn’t find any section about this type of decision. So he needs to get a hold of a recipe from another authority he trusts with this type of thing. Once the cook finds the right recipe, he can put it in his catalog and use it for all future decisions on this matter.
厨师在最后一段里完全是一头雾水。他脑中的“软件”其实叫作“因为菜谱是这么写的”，与其说是能推理的程序，不如说更像一本数字化的菜谱百科。当他需要在人生中作出抉择时，便会翻出自己收藏的权威菜谱，找到在那个领域里最值得信赖的那一本，然后按着步骤一步步照做——有点像“WWJD（耶稣会怎么做）”，只不过这里的“J”被替换成在该领域最令他心服口服的权威人物。多数时候，部落的集体信条就足以应对，因为部落的教义几乎涵盖了所有常规决策。但这回，厨师翻遍了部落的菜谱，也没找到能指导这类情况的章节。于是，他只能去寻求另一个在这方面同样值得信任的权威，看看能否弄到一份合用的“菜谱”。一旦找到合适的配方，这份菜谱便会被收入他的目录，从此以后遇到类似的状况，他就能够直接依样画葫芦。

First, the cook tries a few friends. His catalog doesn’t have the needed info, but maybe one of theirs does. He asks them for their advice—not so he can use it as additional thinking to supplement his own, but so it can become his own thinking.
首先，这位厨师会请教几位朋友。自己的“菜谱目录”里找不到相关信息，但或许朋友们的目录里能翻出答案。他向他们征询意见——不是单纯将这些建议作为外加的参考，而是让它们直接融入、化作自己的一套思考方式。

If that doesn’t yield any strongly-opinionated results, he’ll go to the trusty eternal backstop—conventional wisdom.
如果依然没能得出任何明确而坚定的结论，他就会求助于那份历久弥新的“终极倚靠”——世人所奉的传统智慧。

Society as a whole is its own loose tribe, often spanning your whole nation or even your whole part of the world, and what we call “conventional wisdom” is its guiding dogma cookbook—online and available to the public. Typically, the larger the tribe, the more general and more outdated the dogma—and the conventional wisdom database runs like a DMV website last updated in 1992. But when the cook has nowhere else to turn, it’s like a trusty old friend.
整个社会，其实就是一个松散的大部落，疆域可跨越整个国家，甚至涵盖你所在的半个世界。而我们口中的“传统智慧”，正是这个部落奉行的指导宝典——像一本人人可在网上翻阅的公共食谱。通常，部落越庞大，这套宝典的内容就越笼统，也越陈旧，仿佛一个自1992年起便无人维护的车管所官网。但在无路可寻、求解无门之时，这本风尘旧卷依然如老友般可靠，总能给你几分安慰与回应。

And in this case—let’s say the cook is thinking of starting a business and wants to know what the possibilities are—conventional wisdom has him covered. He types the command into the interface, waits a few minutes, and then the system pumps out its answer:
在这种情境下——假设这位厨师正盘算着要自己创业，想弄清楚有哪些可能的路径——“常识宝典”正好能派上用场。他在界面上输入指令，耐心等待片刻，系统便悠悠吐出一份答复：

CWDOS
常识版操作系统

The cook, thoroughly discouraged, thanks the machine and updates his Reality box accordingly.
心灰意冷的厨师依旧向机器致谢，并随即在现实盒中更新了记录。

Cook reality box simple
厨师更新现实盒，简洁明了

With the decision made (not to start a business), he switches his software back into auto-pilot mode. Done and done.
在作出（不创业）的决定后，他便将自己的“软件”切回自动驾驶模式。事情就这么尘埃落定，彻底告一段落。

Musk calls the cook’s way of thinking “reasoning by analogy” (as opposed to reasoning by first principles), which is a nice euphemism. The next time a kid gets caught copying answers from another student’s exam during the test, he should just explain that he was reasoning by analogy.
马斯克把这种“厨师式”的思维方式称作“类比推理”（reasoning by analogy），用以对照“第一性原理思维”，说得颇为委婉。下回如果有学生在考试中被当场抓到抄同桌的答案，他大可以面不改色地辩解：我这不是作弊，我只是在进行类比推理。

If you start looking for it, you’ll see the chef/cook thing happening everywhere. There are chefs and cooks in the worlds of music, art, technology, architecture,7 writing, business, comedy, marketing, app development, football coaching, teaching, and military strategy. And in each case, though both parties are usually just on autopilot, mindlessly playing the latest album again and again at concerts, it’s in those key moments when it’s time to write a new album—those moments of truth in front of a clean canvas, a blank Word doc, an empty playbook, a new sheet of blueprint paper, a fresh whiteboard—that the chef and the cook reveal their true colors. The chef creates while the cook, in some form or another, copies.
只要你稍加留心，就会发现“主厨与厨师”的区别几乎渗透在各行各业——音乐、艺术、科技、建筑、写作、商业、喜剧、市场营销、应用开发、足球教练、教学，甚至军事战略。平时，两类人往往都在自动驾驶般地工作，比如在演唱会上机械地反复播放最新专辑，缺乏真正的突破。然而，真正的分水岭总是出现在那些关键时刻——创作全新专辑、面对一张空白的画布、一页新建的Word文档、一册尚未动笔的战术手册、一张洁净的蓝图纸，或者一块刚擦拭干净的白板。此时，主厨与厨师的本质便无所遁形：主厨在创新，而厨师则以各种形式进行复制。

Line of cooks
一列厨师

And the difference in outcome is enormous. For cooks, even the more innovative kind, there’s almost always a ceiling on the size of the splash they can make in the world, unless there’s some serious luck involved. Chefs aren’t guaranteed to do anything good, but when there’s a little talent and a lot of persistence, they’re almost certain to make a splash. Sometimes the chef is the one brave enough to go for something big—but other times, someone doesn’t feel the desire to make a splash and the chef is the one with the strength of character to step out of the game and in favor of keeping it small. Being a chef isn’t being like Elon Musk—it’s being yourself.
结果的差异可谓天壤之别。对于那些“厨师”（cooks），即便是较具创新精神的人，往往也会撞上难以突破的天花板，除非幸运之神格外眷顾，才可能在世界舞台上激起更大的浪花。而“主厨”（chefs）虽也并非必然成就非凡，但只要稍有才华，再辅以坚持不懈的努力，他们几乎总能掀起不小的波澜。主厨有时是那个勇于冲击宏伟目标的无畏者；有时则是不求轰动、凭借坚韧品格主动退出角逐，宁愿保有小而美的格局。成为主厨，并不意味着要成为马斯克那样的人——而是要做最真实的自己。

No one talks about the “reasoning industry,” but we’re all part of it, and when it comes to chefs and cooks, it’s no different than any other industry. We’re working in the reasoning industry every time we make a decision.
没人把“推理产业”挂在嘴边，但事实上，我们都是其中的一分子。无论是厨师还是伙夫，这一点并无二致——每一次我们作出的决定，都是在从事这门推理的行当。

Your current life, with all its facets and complexity, is like a reasoning industry album. The question is, how did that set of songs come to be? How were the songs composed, and by whom? And in those critical do-or-die moments when it’s time to write a new song, how do you do your creating? Do you dig deep into yourself? Do you start with the drumbeat and chords of an existing song and write your own melody on top of it? Do you just play covers?
你如今的生活，纵横交错、繁复多姿，宛如一张蕴含深意的“推理创作专辑”。问题是，这整套“曲目”究竟是如何诞生的？这些歌是谁谱写的，又是用何种方式创作出来的？而在那些生死攸关、非写不可的关键时刻，你又是如何孕育新的乐章的？你会深潜入自己的内心深处，探寻真正的灵感源泉吗？你会循着一首现有歌曲的鼓点与和弦，在其之上编织出属于你的旋律？还是只停留于翻唱别人的作品，浅尝辄止、照搬成篇？

I know what you want the answers to these questions to be. This is a straightforward one—it’s clearly better to be a chef. But unlike the case with most major distinctions in life—hard-working vs. lazy, ethical vs. dishonest, considerate vs. selfish—when the chef/cook distinction passes right in front of us, we often don’t even notice it’s there.
我知道你心里希望这些问题的答案指向哪里。这其实是一道简单而明了的选择题——毫无疑问，“主厨”远胜于“厨工”。然而，与生活中那些泾渭分明的差异不同——比如勤奋与懒惰、正直与欺诈、体贴与自私——主厨与厨工的界限常常悄然从我们眼前掠过，却很少有人真正察觉它的存在。

Missing the Distinction
忽视了关键的界线

我明白你心里希望这些问题的答案是什么。这个问题其实一清二楚——毫无疑问，当“厨师”要比当“厨工”好得多。然而，不同于生活中那些人人都能察觉的重要分野——比如勤奋与懒惰、正直与不诚实、体贴与自私——当“厨师”和“厨工”的差别从我们眼前掠过时，我们却常常浑然不觉，它的存在仿佛隐形一般。

Like the culinary world’s cook-to-chef range, the real world’s cook-to-chef range isn’t binary—it lies on a spectrum:
就像烹饪界的“厨师到大厨”之路并非截然二分，现实世界中的“厨师到大厨”转变同样呈现为一个连续的光谱：

Chef-Cook Life Spectrum
厨师到主厨的人生光谱

But I’m pretty sure that when most of us look at that spectrum, we think we’re farther to the right than we actually are. We’re usually more cook-like than we realize—we just can’t see it from where we’re standing.
但我敢肯定，大多数人在看到这条“厨师—厨子光谱”时，都会以为自己站得比实际更靠右。其实，我们往往比想象中更像“厨子”——只是身处其位，未必能看清罢了。

For example—
举个例子——

Cooks are followers—by definition. They’re a cook because in whatever they’re doing, they’re following some kind of recipe. But most of us don’t think of ourselves as followers.
厨师，按定义来说，就是“跟随者”。他们之所以是厨师，是因为无论从事何事，都依循某种菜谱而行。然而，我们大多数人并不认为自己是跟随者。

A follower, we think, is a weakling with no mind of their own. We think about leadership positions we’ve held and initiatives we’ve taken at work and the way we never let friends boss us around, and we take these as evidence that we’re no follower. Which in turn means that we’re not just a cook.
我们往往认定，“跟随者”就是缺乏主见的软弱之人。于是，我们会回顾自己曾担任的领导岗位、在工作中主导的创举，以及从不容许朋友对自己颐指气使的态度，把这一切都视作“我绝非跟随者”的铁证。也正因如此，我们笃信自己绝不仅是个按方行事的“厨师”。

But the problem is—the only thing all of that proves is that you’re no follower within your tribe. As Einstein meanly put it:
但问题在于——这一切只能说明，你在自己的族群中并非盲目随从之人。正如爱因斯坦曾尖刻地讽言：

“若要成为羊群中无可挑剔的一员，首先你必须是一只羊。”

In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
若要在羊群中塑造一名无可挑剔的成员，首先必须自己就是一只羊。

In other words, you might be a star and a leader in your world or in the eyes of your part of society, but if the core reason you picked that goal in the first place was because your tribe’s cookbook says that it’s an impressive thing and it makes the other tribe members gawk, you’re not being a leader—you’re being a super-successful follower. And, as Einstein says, no less of a cook than all those whom you’ve impressed.
换句话说，你或许在自己的世界里光芒四射、被视为领袖人物，但如果你当初选定这个目标的根本动机，只是因为你所属的“部落菜谱”写明这件事够炫、能令族人瞠目结舌——那你并非在引领方向，而只是在做一名极其成功的跟随者。正如爱因斯坦所言，你与那些被你惊艳过的人相比，并不更擅长烹饪——归根到底，你依旧只是个照着菜谱行事的厨师。

To see the truth, you need to zoom way out until you can see the real leader of the cooks—the cookbook.
要洞悉真相，你必须将视野无限拉远，直到能看见那位真正统领厨师的“主宰”——那本烹饪全书。

But we don’t tend to zoom out, and when we look around at our life, zoomed in, what appears to be a highly unique and independent self may be an optical illusion.8 What often feels like independent reasoning when zoomed out is actually playing connect-the-dots on a pre-printed set of steps laid out by someone else. What feels like personal principles might just be the general tenets of your tribe. What feels like original opinions may have actually been spoon-fed to us by the media or our parents or friends or our religion or a celebrity. What feels like Roark might actually be Keating. What feels like our chosen life path could just be one of a handful of pre-set, tribe-approved yellow brick roads. What feels like creativity might be filling in a coloring book—and making sure to stay inside the lines.
但我们往往缺乏主动拉远视角的习惯。当目光只停留在眼前的人生局部时，那种看似独一无二、极具自主性的“自我”，很可能只是光影交错下的幻象。许多时候，我们自以为的独立推理，其实不过是在别人早已设计好的路径上玩“连点成线”的游戏；所谓“个人原则”，或许只是所属群体的通用信条；那些看似原创的观点，往往是媒体、父母、朋友、宗教、某位偶像一口一口“喂”给我们的；我们以为自己像洛克（Roark，《源泉》中坚持独立的建筑师），却可能更接近基廷（Keating，习惯随波逐流的角色）；自信选择的人生道路，或许只是部落认可的几条预设“黄砖路”之一；至于我们引以为傲的“创造力”，也许只是一本填色画册——而且还格外谨慎地不肯越出边界线。

Because of this optical illusion, we’re unable to see the flaws in our own thinking or recognize an unusually great thinker when we see one. Instead, when a superbly science-minded, independent-thinking chef like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein comes around, what do we attribute their success to?
正因这种“光学错觉”，我们往往难以察觉自身思维中的瑕疵，也不易在与之相遇时认出真正非凡的思想者。于是，当像埃隆·马斯克、史蒂夫·乔布斯或阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦这样拥有科学智慧、坚持独立思考的“顶尖厨师”出现时，我们通常会把他们的成功归因于什么呢？

Awesome fucking hardware.
逆天级的硬件。

When we look at Musk, we see someone with genius, with vision, with superhuman balls. All things, we assume, he was more or less born with. So to us, the spectrum looks more like this:
当我们看向马斯克，映入眼帘的是天赋异禀的才智、洞察未来的眼光，以及近乎超凡的胆识与魄力。而我们往往会觉得，这些特质大抵是他与生俱来的。因此，在我们心中，这条“人生光谱”更像是这样的——

Chef-Cook Life Spectrum Skewed
厨师—炊工人生光谱的失衡

The way we see it, we’re all a bunch of independent-thinking chefs—and it’s just that Musk is a really impressive chef.
在我们看来，人人都是具备独立思考的“厨师”，只是马斯克恰好是一位才华非凡的大师级厨师。

Which is both A) overrating Musk and B) overrating ourselves. And completely missing the real story.
这既是对马斯克的高估，也是对我们自己的高估，并且完全错失了事情的真正核心。

Musk is an impressive chef for sure, but what makes him such an extreme standout isn’t that he’s impressive—it’s that most of us aren’t chefs at all.
马斯克无疑是一位令人赞叹的大厨，但让他真正卓尔不群的，并不只是他的才华横溢，而是因为我们大多数人，压根儿不算是“厨师”。

It’s like a bunch of typewriters looking at a computer and saying, “Man, that is one talented typewriter.”
就像一群打字机望着一台电脑，忍不住惊叹：“哇，这台打字机可真是才华横溢啊。”

The reason we have such a hard time seeing what’s really going on is that we don’t get that brain software is even a thing. We don’t think of brains as computers, so we don’t think about the distinction between hardware and software at all. When we think about the brain, we think only about the hardware—the thing we’re born with and are powerless to change or improve. Much less tangible to us is the concept of how we reason. We see reasoning as a thing that just kind of happens, like our bodies’ blood flow—it’s a process that automatically happens, and there’s not much else to say or do about it.
我们之所以难以洞察事物的真相，根本原因在于我们甚至没有意识到“大脑软件”这种概念的存在。我们不习惯将大脑视作一台计算机，自然也就忽略了硬件与软件之间的差别。谈到大脑，我们往往只想到硬件——那部分与生俱来、似乎无法改变也无法提升的结构。而至于我们如何推理、如何思考，这类属于“软件”层面的东西在我们心中就更加模糊难捉。我们习惯将推理视为一种自然而然发生的过程，仿佛如同血液在体内奔流——它自动进行，我们也觉得无须操心，更无从干预。

And if we can’t even see the hardware/software distinction, we certainly can’t see the more nuanced chef software vs. cook software distinction.
如果我们连“硬件”和“软件”的界限都辨不清，更遑论体会“主厨思维软件”与“厨师思维软件”之间那层更细腻、更深刻的差别了。

By not seeing our thinking software for what it is—a critical life skill, something that can be learned, practiced, and improved, and the major factor that separates the people who do great things from those who don’t—we fail to realize where the game of life is really being played. We don’t recognize reasoning as a thing that can be created or copied—and in the same way that causes us to mistake our own cook-like behavior for independent reasoning, we then mistake the actual independent reasoning of the chef for exceptional and magical abilities.
如果我们未能真正洞察自己的“思维软件”——这是一项至关重要的生活技能，可以学习、磨炼、持续优化，也是区分能成就非凡与碌碌无为的关键所在——那么我们便无法看清人生这场游戏的真正竞技场究竟在哪里。我们未曾意识到，推理与思考本质上是一种可以创造、也可以仿效的才能。正因如此，我们常将自己那种“帮厨式”的思维误当成独立推理，而当真正具备“主厨级”独立思考的人出现时，又往往将之误认为是某种天赋异禀、近乎魔法的能力。

Three examples:
三个示例：

We mistake the chef’s clear view of the present for vision into the future.
1）我们往往会将厨师对当下的透彻洞察，误当成他对未来的先见之明。

Musk’s sister Tosca said “Elon has already gone to the future and come back to tell us what he’s found.”9 This is how a lot of people feel about Musk—that he’s a visionary, that he can somehow see things we cannot. We see it like this:
马斯克的妹妹托斯卡曾说：“埃隆仿佛已踏入未来，又带着在那里所得的发现归来与我们分享。”许多人对马斯克的感受正是如此——他是个富有远见的开拓者，似乎能洞察我们所无法触及的景象。我们往往会这样看待他：

Musk Visionary 1
马斯克的姐姐托斯卡曾形容：“埃隆仿佛亲历了未来，又回到现在，把他在那里看到的一切讲给我们听。”许多人对马斯克的印象正是如此——天生的“远见者”，似乎能洞察我们所无法触及的景象。我们往往是这样去想的——

然而，事实的真相却更接近这样——

But actually, it’s like this:
其实，情况真正的样子是这样——

Musk Visionary 2
马斯克式远见（二）

事实的运转往往如此：

所谓“传统智慧”总是慢半拍——从现实发生到大众认知更新，其间总会有一段显著的滞后期。等到主流观点好不容易修正过来，现实却早已悄然迈入了下一个阶段。然而，“主厨型”思考者并不会让自己被这种惯性拖住，他们凭借自己的眼睛、耳朵与切身经验来审视世界，不因旧有认知而蒙蔽判断。对他们而言，最重要的是洞见当下的真实，并实时追踪世界的最新动向。即便主流尚未为他们的行动“盖章同意”，他们早已能凭着最新的信息先行一步——而这一刻，多数人仍在原地等候那道迟迟未下的“许可”。

Conventional wisdom is slow to move, and there’s significant lag time between when something becomes reality and when conventional wisdom is revised to reflect that reality. And by the time it does, reality has moved on to something else. But chefs don’t pay attention to that, reasoning instead using their eyes and ears and experience. By ignoring conventional wisdom in favor of simply looking at the present for what it really is and staying up-to-date with the facts of the world as they change in real-time—in spite of what conventional wisdom has to say—the chef can act on information the rest of us haven’t been given permission to act on yet.
传统观念向来步伐缓慢，从现实发生变化到主流认知调整以反映这一变化，中间总有一段显著的滞后。而等到它终于修正时，现实早已驶向新的方向。可“主厨型思考者”并不在意这些，他们依赖的是自己的眼睛、耳朵与切身经验。相比盲从固有认知，他们更愿意直面当下的真实，并在世界变动的瞬息之间保持与事实同步——无论传统观念如何评说。正因他们敢于以即时、未被主流认可的信息为依据果断行动，才得以抢占先机，而多数人仍在原地徘徊，等待所谓的许可。

We mistake the chef’s accurate understanding of risk for courage.
我们往往将厨师对风险的精准洞察，错当成了勇气。

Remember this MuskSpeak quote from earlier?
还记得我们先前提到的那句“马斯克式金句”吗？

When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength—400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.10
小时候，我非常害怕黑暗。后来我才明白，黑暗不过是可见光波长——约在400到700纳米之间——缺少光子的状态而已。于是我想，害怕光子的缺席，实在是件愚蠢的事。从那以后，黑暗就再也不能让我感到恐惧了。

That’s just a kid chef assessing the actual facts of a situation and deciding that his fear was misplaced.
这不过是个小厨师在仔细审视事实后，认清了自己的恐惧其实是虚惊一场。

As an adult, Musk said this:
成年之后，马斯克曾这样说过：

Sometimes people fear starting a company too much. Really, what’s the worst that could go wrong? You’re not gonna starve to death, you’re not gonna die of exposure—what’s the worst that could go wrong?11
有时候，人们对创业的畏惧实在过头了。想想看，最坏的情况能有多糟呢？你不会饿死，也不会因无处栖身而冻毙——那么，究竟能糟到什么地步呢？

Same quote, right?
这不就是同一句话吗？

In both cases, Musk is essentially saying, “People consider X to be scary, but their fear is not based on logic, so I’m not scared of X.” That’s not courage—that’s logic.
在这两种情形下，马斯克的核心意思都是：“人们认为 X 可怕，但这种恐惧并无逻辑依据，所以我并不害怕 X。” 这并非勇气，而是理性。

Courage means doing something risky. Risk means exposing yourself to danger. We intuitively understand this—that’s why most of us wouldn’t call child Elon courageous for sleeping with the lights off. Courage would be a weird word to use there because no actual danger was involved.
勇气，意味着去做带有风险的事；而风险，则意味着让自己直面危险。我们对此都有一种本能的理解——这也是为什么大多数人不会说，小时候的埃隆·马斯克关灯睡觉算得上勇敢。把“勇气”套用在那种情境上反而显得古怪，因为里面根本不存在任何真正的危险。

All Elon’s saying in the second quote is that being scared to start a company is the adult version of being scared of the dark. It’s not actually dangerous.
埃隆在第二句话里其实是在说，害怕创业，不过是成年人的“怕黑”版本——表面上让人心怵，实际上并没有真正的危险。

So when Musk put his entire fortune down and on SpaceX and Tesla, he was being bold as fuck, but courageous? Not the right word. It was a case of a chef taking a bunch of information he had and puzzling together a plan that seemed logical. It’s not that he was sure he’d succeed—in fact, he thought SpaceX in particular had a reasonable probability of failure—it’s just that nowhere in his assessments did he foresee danger.
所以，当马斯克将全部家当押注在 SpaceX 与特斯拉之上时，他的确大胆得惊人，但“勇敢”一词未必贴切。更准确的说法是：他像一位厨师，手握各种原材料与信息，耐心推敲、拼合出一个看似合情合理的方案。他并非笃定自己必然成功——事实上，他认为 SpaceX 尤其有相当高的失败概率——只是，在他的所有评估中，他并未预见到真正的危险。

We mistake the chef’s originality for brilliant ingenuity.
3）我们往往将厨师的独到创意误作天才般的妙思。

People believe thinking outside the box takes intelligence and creativity, but it’s mostly about independence. When you simply ignore the box and build your reasoning from scratch, whether you’re brilliant or not, you end up with a unique conclusion—one that may or may not fall within the box.
人们往往以为，“跳出思维定势”意味着需要非凡的智慧与创造力，但归根结底，真正重要的是思想的独立。当你干脆抛开所谓的“盒子”，从头开始构建属于自己的推理逻辑时，无论你是否才华横溢，得出的结论都会别具一格——而且，这个结论未必会回到“盒子”之中。

When you’re in a foreign country and you decide to ditch the guidebook and start wandering aimlessly and talking to people, unique things always end up happening. When people hear about those things, they think of you as a pro traveler and a bold adventurer—when all you really did is ditch the guidebook.
当你置身异国，忽然决定抛开旅游指南，随性漫步、与不期而遇的人攀谈，总会邂逅独一无二的经历。等别人听你讲起这些故事时，往往会将你视作老练的旅人、无畏的探险者——而其实，你不过是把那本指南丢在一旁罢了。

Likewise, when an artist or scientist or businessperson chef reasons independently instead of by analogy, and their puzzling happens to both A) turn out well and B) end up outside the box, people call it innovation and marvel at the chef’s ingenuity. When it turns out really well, all the cooks do what they do best—copy—and now it’s called a revolution.
同样地，当艺术家、科学家、企业家或厨师选择独立推理而非套用类比时，如果他们的探索既A）获得了理想的成果，又B）跳脱了固有框架，人们便会称之为“创新”，赞叹这位厨师的非凡才智。若成果惊艳至极，其他厨师便会施展他们最擅长的本领——效仿——于是，这一举措便被冠以“革命”之名。

Simply by refraining from reasoning by analogy, the chef opens up the possibility of making a huge splash with every project. When Steve Jobs9 and Apple turned their attention to phones, they didn’t start by saying, “Okay well people seem to like this kind of keyboard more than that kind, and everyone seems unhappy with the difficulty of hitting the numbers on their keyboards—so let’s get creative and make the best phone keyboard yet!” They simply asked, “What should a mobile device be?” and in their from-scratch reasoning, a physical keyboard didn’t end up as part of the plan at all. It didn’t take genius to come up with the design of the iPhone—it’s actually pretty logical—it just took the ability to not copy.
只要抛开类比式思维，主厨便能在每一个项目中激起惊涛骇浪，创造无限可能。比如，当史蒂夫·乔布斯与苹果公司将目光投向手机领域时，他们并没有说：“好吧，大家似乎更喜欢这种键盘而不是那种，而且所有人都在抱怨数字键不好按——那我们就发挥创意，做出史上最强的手机键盘吧！” 他们只是抛出一个根本性的问题：“移动设备究竟应该是什么？”在这场从零出发的推演中，实体键盘从一开始就被排除在蓝图之外。事实上，iPhone的设计并非源于天才的某个突发奇想——它的逻辑相当清晰——真正的关键在于敢于不照搬前人的模式。

Different version of the same story with the invention of the United States. When the American forefathers found themselves with a new country on their hands, they didn’t ask, “What should the rules be for selecting our king, and what should the limitations of his power be?” A king to them was what a physical keyboard was to Apple. Instead, they asked, “What should a country be and what’s the best way to govern a group of people?” and by the time they had finished their puzzling, a king wasn’t part of the picture—their first principles reasoning led them to believe that John Locke had a better plan and they worked their way up from there.
同样的情节，在美国诞生的故事中也有另一番演绎。当开国的先贤们迎来一个全新的国家时，他们并没有问：“我们应制定怎样的规则来选出国王？国王的权力应如何加以限制？”在他们眼里，国王就如同苹果公司对待实体键盘——一种早已该淘汰的陈旧之物。相反，他们发问的是：“国家的本质应是什么？治理众人的最佳方式又是什么？”当他们细细推敲、层层拆解这些根本性问题时，国王的概念已完全从蓝图中消失——凭借第一性原理的推演，他们认定约翰·洛克的构想更为高明，于是以此为基点，从零搭建起全新的制度框架。

History is full of the stories of chefs creating revolutions of apparent ingenuity through simple first principles reasoning. Genghis Khan organizing a smattering of tribes that had been fragmented for centuries using a powers of ten system in order to build one grand tribe that could sweep the world. Henry Ford creating cars with the out-of-the-box manufacturing technique of assembly-line production in order to bring cars to the masses for the first time. Marie Curie using unconventional methods to pioneer the theory of radioactivity and topple the “atoms are indivisible” assumption on its head (she won a Nobel Prize in both physics and chemistry—two prizes reserved exclusively for chefs). Martin Luther King taking a nonviolent Thoreau approach to a situation normally addressed by riots. Larry Page and Sergey Brin ignoring the commonly-used methods of searching the internet in favor of what they saw as a more logical system that based page importance on the number of important sites that linked to it. The 1966 Beatles deciding to stop being the world’s best cooks, ditching the typical songwriting styles of early-60s bands, including their own, and become music chefs, creating a bunch of new types of songs from scratch that no one had heard before.
纵观历史长河，屡屡涌现出以简驭繁的“主厨”人物，他们凭借第一性原理思维，烹制出看似奇巧、实则深思的革新盛宴。成吉思汗以十进制的组织体系，将分裂数百年的零散部落编织成一个空前强大的超级部落，席卷欧亚，横扫世界。亨利·福特首创流水线生产，让汽车第一次真正走进千家万户。玛丽·居里采用极不寻常的研究路径，创立放射性理论，颠覆了“原子不可分割”的固有观念——她在物理与化学两领域双获诺贝尔奖，这份殊荣堪称“主厨”的桂冠。马丁·路德·金借鉴梭罗的非暴力理念，在通常会演变为骚乱的局势中，坚持和平抗争。拉里·佩奇与谢尔盖·布林拒绝沿用当时盛行的互联网搜索算法，反而构建出更为逻辑化的体系——以权威网站的链接数量评估网页的重要性。1966年的披头士乐队决定不再满足于做世界上最顶尖的“厨师”，果断抛弃60年代初期乐队（包括他们自己）固守的写歌方式，化身音乐的“主厨”，从零调制出一批前所未闻的崭新曲风。

Whatever the time, place, or industry, anytime something really big happens, there’s almost always an experimenting chef at the center of it—not being anything magical, just trusting their brain and working from scratch. Our world, like our cuisines, was created by these people—the rest of us are just along for the ride.
无论时代、更迭的地点，还是纷繁的行业领域，每当有真正意义上的巨变降临，几乎总能在中心看到一位“实验派大厨”的身影。他们并非天赋异禀的魔法师，只是笃信自己的思维，从白纸般的起点出发，亲手试验、推敲，直至勾勒出全新篇章。我们的世界，正如琳琅的佳肴，皆出自这些创造者之手——而我们其余的人，不过是在他们开辟的航道上随风而行。

Yeah, Musk is smart as fuck and insanely ambitious—but that’s not why he’s beating everybody. What makes Musk so rad is that he’s a software outlier. A chef in a world of cooks. A science geologist in a world of flood geologists. A brain software pro in a world where people don’t realize brain software is a thing.
没错，马斯克的确聪明绝顶，野心也大得惊人——但这并不是他能领先所有人的真正秘诀。让马斯克如此非凡的，是他在“思维软件”上的绝对异类身份。他如同厨师世界里的宗师级大厨，科学地质学领域里的真正行家，置身于“洪水地质学家”的人群之中；在大多数人尚未意识到“大脑软件”这一概念存在时，他早已精通其道、运用自如。

That’s Elon Musk’s secret sauce.
这，便是埃隆·马斯克的独门秘方。

Which is why the real story here isn’t Musk. It’s us.
所以，这个故事真正的核心，并非马斯克本人，而是我们所有人。

The real puzzle in this series isn’t why Elon Musk is trying to end the era of gas cars or why he’s trying to land a rocket or why he cares so much about colonizing Mars—it’s why Elon Musk is so rare.
这个系列真正令人费解的，并非马斯克为何立志终结燃油车时代，也不是他为何执着于让火箭能够着陆回收，更不是他为何如此倾心于火星殖民——而是，像马斯克这样的人，为什么会如此凤毛麟角。

The curious thing about the car industry isn’t why Tesla is focusing so hard on electric cars, and the curious thing about the aerospace industry isn’t why SpaceX is trying so hard to make rockets reusable—the fascinating question is why they’re the only companies doing so.
在汽车行业中，真正耐人寻味的，并非特斯拉为何如此执着于电动汽车；在航天领域，真正引人深思的，也不是SpaceX为何穷尽心力让火箭可以重复使用。令人着迷的核心问题是——为何唯独他们在做这些事？

We spent this whole time trying to figure out the mysterious workings of the mind of a madman genius only to realize that Musk’s secret sauce is that he’s the only one being normal. And in isolation, Musk would be a pretty boring subject—it’s the backdrop of us that makes him interesting. And it’s that backdrop that this series is really about.
我们花了这么长时间，苦苦试探这位“疯狂天才”的心智奥秘，最终却发现，马斯克的“独门秘方”原来是——他只是唯一一个按常理思考的人。若将他与世隔绝，马斯克本身或许并无太多波澜；真正令他非凡的，是衬托在他身后的我们。而这组文章，所要探究的正是这幅背景。

So…what’s the deal with us? How did we end up so scared and cook-like? And how do we learn to be more like the chefs of the world, who seem to so effortlessly carve their own way through life? I think it comes down to three things.
那么……我们究竟怎么了？为何我们会变得如此畏首畏尾，像个只会按方抓药的“厨工”般循规蹈矩？而我们又该怎样，才能像那些“主厨”一样，举重若轻地雕刻出属于自己的人生路径？我想，答案归结起来，无非三点。

How to Be a Chef
如何修炼成一名真正的主厨

Anytime there’s a curious phenomenon within humanity—some collective insanity we’re all suffering from—it usually ends up being evolution’s fault. This story is no different.
每当人类社会浮现某种令人费解的现象——比如我们集体陷入一场莫名的疯狂——其根源往往都能追溯到进化的安排。这一次的故事，也不例外。

When it comes to reasoning, we’re biologically inclined to be cooks, not chefs, which relates back to our tribal evolutionary past. First, it’s a better tribal model for most people to be cooks. In 50,000 BC, tribes full of independent thinkers probably suffered from having too many chefs in the kitchen, which would lead to too many arguments and factions within the tribe. A tribe with a strong leader at the top and the rest of the members simply following the leader would fare better. So those types of tribes passed on their genes more than other tribes. And now we’re the collective descendants of the more cook-like people.
在推理方面，我们的天性更接近“照方烹饪的厨师”，而非“独创佳肴的主厨”，这背后可追溯到人类的部落进化史。对大多数人而言，做“厨师”是更顺应部落生存的模式。早在五万年前，若一个部落里满是独立思考者——也就是“主厨”太多——必然争论频仍、内部派系林立。相比之下，那些由强势首领当家、其他成员只需服从追随的部落，更能安稳存续。于是，这样的部落更成功地延续了他们的基因，而我们，正是那些更像“厨师”族群的集体后裔。

Second, it’s about our own well-being. It’s not in our DNA to be chefs because human self-preservation never depended upon independent thinking—it rode on fitting in with the tribe, on staying in favor with the chief, on following in the footsteps of the elders who knew more about staying alive than we did, and on teaching our children to do the same—which is why we now live in a cook society where cook parents raise their kids by telling them to follow the recipe and stop asking questions about it.
其次，这更关乎我们的自身安危与生活福祉。我们并非与生俱来就是“主厨”，因为人类的自我保护从未建立在独立思考之上——生存靠的是融入部落，得酋长的好感，循着那些比我们更懂求生智慧的长者的足迹，并把这种依生存而来的准则一代代传下去。正因如此，我们才形成了一个“厨师社会”：厨师式的父母教育子女时，总是要他们按食谱行事，照章办事，别再追问其中的缘由。

Thinking like cooks is what we’re born to do because what we’re born to do is survive.
我们生来就有“厨师般的思维”，因为求生存是与生俱来的本能。

But the weird thing is, we weren’t born into a normal human world. We’re living in the anomaly, when for many of the world’s people, survival is easy. Today’s privileged societies are full of anomaly humans whose primary purpose is already taken care of, softening the deafening roar of unmet base needs and allowing the nuanced and complex voice of our inner selves to awaken.
奇妙的是，我们并非降生在一个“正常”的人类世界。我们这一代所处的时代，本身就是一个罕见的异数：如今，世界上有许多人已无需为基本生存苦苦挣扎。在当下这些幸运的社会中，生活着一群“异类人类”——他们最根本的生存任务早已完成，那曾经震耳欲聋的匮乏之声被消解，取而代之的是内心深处那细腻而复杂的低语，终于得以苏醒。

The problem is, most of our heads are still running on some version of the 50,000-year-old survival software—which kind of wastes the good luck we have to be born now.
问题在于，我们的大多数大脑至今仍运行着某种“距今五万年的原始求生程序”，于是我们恰逢在此幸运时代降生的天赐机缘，便这样无声无息地被辜负了。

It’s an unfortunate catch-22—we continue to think like cooks because we can’t absorb the epiphany that we live in an anomaly world where there’s no need to be cooks, and we can’t absorb that epiphany because we think like cooks and cooks don’t know how to challenge and update their own software.
这是个令人无奈的悖论：我们之所以始终抱着“厨师式思维”，是因为无法真正醒悟——我们其实生活在一个异类世界，在这里根本不必当厨师；而我们之所以无法醒悟这一真相，又恰恰是因为仍旧用着“厨师式思维”。而这样的思维模式，天生就不懂如何质疑，更不会主动升级自己的“心智软件”。

This is the vicious cycle of our time—and the secret of the chef is that they somehow snapped out of it.
这正是当下时代的恶性循环——而那些“主厨”的秘诀，便在于他们奇迹般地挣脱出了这个桎梏。

So how do we snap out of the trance?
那么，我们该怎样才能挣脱这种恍惚的魔咒，重新清醒过来呢？

I think there are three major epiphanies we need to absorb—three core things the chef knows that the cook doesn’t:
我认为，我们必须领悟三场至关重要的心灵觉醒——那是大厨深谙而庖丁未及的三大核心真知。

Epiphany 1) You don’t know shit.
顿悟一：你其实什么都不懂。

You don’t know shit
你其实什么都不懂

The flood geologists of the 17th and 18th centuries weren’t stupid. And they weren’t anti-science. Many of them were just as accomplished in their fields as their science geologist colleagues.
17、18世纪的“洪水地质学家”既不愚昧，也谈不上排斥科学。事实上，他们在各自领域的造诣丝毫不逊于那些活跃在主流地质学界的同行。

But they were victims—victims of a religious dogma they were told to believe without question. The recipe they followed was scripture, a recipe that turned out to be wrong. And as a result, they proceeded on their path with a fatal flaw in their thinking—a software bug that told them that one of the undeniable first principles when thinking about the Earth was that it began 6,000 years ago and that there had been a flood of the most epic proportions.
然而，他们其实是受害者——受困于一种被要求绝对服从、毫无质疑去相信的宗教教条。他们所依循的“配方”是《圣经》，而事实证明，这套“配方”从根本上就是谬误。于是，他们在认知深处种下了致命的缺陷——一种“思维漏洞”，让他们笃信在探索地球之时，有一个不可撼动的第一性原理：地球诞生于六千年前，并且曾经历过一场空前绝后的洪水浩劫。

With that software bug in place, all further computations were moot. Any reasoning tree that puzzled upwards with those assumptions at its root had no chance of finding truth.
一旦这个“软件漏洞”植入，之后所有的推理运算便彻底失去意义。若思维之树的根部扎下了这些谬误的假设，无论枝叶向上如何延展推演，都注定无法触及真理。

Even more than being victims of any dogma, the flood geologists were victims of their own certainty. Without certainty, dogma has no power. And when data is required in order to believe something, false dogma has no legs to stand on. It wasn’t the church dogma that hindered the flood geologists, it was the church mentality of faith-based certainty.
相比于被教条束缚，洪水地质学家更像是遭到了自身那份笃信的反噬。缺少这种毫不怀疑的确定感，教条便失去了力量；一旦信念必须依赖数据来支撑，虚假的教条便无从立足。真正阻碍他们的，并非教会的字句教义，而是教会根深蒂固的那种“信仰即真理”的思维模式。

That’s what Stephen Hawking meant when he said, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” Neither the science geologist nor the flood geologist started off with knowledge. But what gave the science geologist the power to seek out the truth was knowing that he lacked knowledge. The science geologists subscribed to the lab mentality, which starts by saying “I don’t know shit” and works upwards from there.
这正是斯蒂芬·霍金所言：“知识最大的敌人，并非无知，而是知识的幻觉。”无论是科学地质学家，还是洪水地质学家，最初都并未拥有真正的知识。然而，科学地质学家之所以拥有探寻真理的力量，正源于他们清楚自己尚且一无所知。科学地质学家们秉持着“实验室精神”——从一句坦诚的“我什么都不知道”起步，再一步步攀向认知的高峰。

If you want to see the lab mentality at work, just search for famous quotes of any prominent scientist and you’ll see each one of them expressing the fact that they don’t know shit.
如果你想真正感受“实验室心态”的魅力，只要搜索一下那些著名科学家的名言，你就会发现，他们几乎无一例外都坦诚地承认：自己其实一无所知。

Here’s Isaac Newton: To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
艾萨克·牛顿曾如此描绘自己：“在我眼中，我只是个在海滩上嬉戏的孩子，而真理那无垠的海洋依然在我面前未曾揭晓。”

And Richard Feynman: I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
理查德·费曼曾说：“我生来一无所知，只是在有限的时光中，偶尔得以添几分理解。”

And Niels Bohr: Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
尼尔斯·玻尔曾说：“我口中吐出的每一句话，都不该被视为定论，而应当被当作一个待探究的问题。”

Musk has said his own version: You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.12
马斯克曾说过：“你应当先假设自己是错的，而你的目标，就是让自己尽量少错。”

The reason these outrageously smart people are so humble about what they know is that as scientists, they’re aware that unjustified certainty is the bane of understanding and the death of effective reasoning. They firmly believe that reasoning of all kinds should take place in a lab, not a church.
这些才智超群的人之所以在知识面前依然保持谦逊，是因为作为科学家，他们深知——毫无根据的笃信是理解的天敌，也是有效推理的终结。他们坚定地认为，所有形式的推理都应在“实验室”里展开，而非在“教堂”里进行。

If we want to become more chef-like, we have to make sure we’re doing our thinking in a lab. Which means identifying which parts of our thinking are currently sitting in church.
如果我们想更像一位掌控全局的“主厨”，就必须确保我们的思维在实验室中运转——也就是说，要先识别并剔除那些仍被安置在“教堂”里的思考方式。

But that’s a hard thing to do because most of us have the same relationship with our own software that my grandmother has with her computer:10 It’s this thing someone put there, we use it when we need to, it somehow magically works, and we hope it doesn’t break. It’s the way we are with a lot of the things we own, where we’re just the dumb user, not the pro. We know how to use our car, microwave, phone, our electric toothbrush, but if something breaks, we take it to the pro to fix it because we have no idea how it works.
但这事真不容易做到，因为我们大多数人与自己“脑中软件”的关系，就像我奶奶和她的电脑一样：这是别人给装上的某个东西，闲时用用，凑合能用就好，运转得好像有点魔法，我们只盼它别坏。我们对手头许多物件都是这种态度——只是个普通用户，而非专业人士。我们会开车、用微波炉、玩手机、刷电动牙刷，但一旦它们出了故障，只能送去找专家修，因为我们根本不懂它的运作原理。

But that’s not a great life model when it comes to brain software, and it usually leads to us making the same mistakes and living with the same results year after year after year, because our software remains unchanged. Eventually, we might wake up one day feeling like Breaking Bad’s Walter White, when he said, “Sometimes I feel like I never actually make any of my own… choices. I mean, my entire life it just seems I never… had a real say about any of it.” If we want to understand our own thinking, we have to stop being the dumb user of our own software and start being the pro—the auto mechanic, the electrician, the computer geek.
但把这种模式套用在大脑“软件”上并不是理想的生活方案——它几乎注定会让我们年复一年地犯着同样的错误、收获一成不变的结果，因为那套“软件”从未真正更新过。直到某一天，你或许会像《绝命毒师》里的沃尔特·怀特那样骤然醒悟：“有时候我觉得自己根本没有做过属于自己的选择。我的一生，似乎从来没有……真正掌握过主动权。”若想真正洞察自己的思维，我们必须停止充当那位对自己“软件”一知半解的笨拙用户，而要转身成为行家——像修车师傅、电工、电脑极客般，主动拆解、检修，甚至改造升级自己的思维系统。

If you were alone in a room with a car and wanted to figure out how it worked, you’d probably start by taking it apart as much as you could and examining the parts and how they all fit together. To do the same with our thinking, we need to revert to our four-year-old selves and start deconstructing our software by resuming the Why game our parents and teachers shut down decades ago. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, pop open the hood, and get our hands dirty with a bunch of not-that-fun questions about what we truly want, what’s truly possible, and whether the way we’re living our lives follows logically from those things.
假如你独自身处一间房间，面前停着一辆汽车，想弄清它的运作原理，你大概率会尽可能将它拆解开来，仔细端详每个零件，以及它们是如何精密契合地组合成整体的。若想用同样的方法审视我们的思维，我们必须回到四岁时的自己——重新开始拆解自己的“心智软件”，把那些在数十年前被父母和老师叫停的“为什么”游戏再度拾起。现在，是时候卷起袖子，掀开思维的引擎盖，直面一连串并不轻松的追问：我们究竟真正渴望什么？哪些目标在现实中确实可行？而我们当下的生活方式，是否真能合乎这些答案的逻辑？唯有勇敢探究这些看似不起眼却意味深长的问题，我们才有可能真正读懂自己，并重新编写属于自己的思维程序。

With each of these questions, the challenge is to keep asking why until you hit the floor—and the floor is what will tell you whether you’re in a church or a lab for that particular part of your life. If a floor you hit is one or more first principles that represent the truth of reality or your inner self and the logic going upwards stays accurate to that foundation, you’re in the lab. If a Why? pathway hits a floor called “Because [authority] said so”—if you go down and down and realize at the bottom that the whole thing is just because you’re taking your parent’s or friend’s or religion’s or society’s word for it—then you’re in church there. And if the tenets of that church don’t truly resonate with you or reflect the current reality of the world—if it turns out that you’ve been working off of the wrong recipe—then whatever conclusions have been built on top of it will be just as wrong. As demonstrated by the flood geologists, a reasoning chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
每当你直面这些问题时，关键在于一遍又一遍地追问“为什么”，直到探到底部的根基。这个“地板”会揭示，在人生的这一节点，你究竟身处“教堂”还是“实验室”。如果所触及的地板，是一条或多条彰显现实真相或内心本质的第一性原理，并且从此根基往上的逻辑推演始终准确无误，那你就在“实验室”。但若你的“为什么”一路穷追，最终抵达的却是一个名为“因为权威如此说”的地板——也就是说，归根结底你只是照搬了父母、朋友、宗教或社会的成见——那你就在“教堂”。而倘若这个“教堂”的教义并不能真正触动你，或已无法映照当下世界的真实——换句话说，你一直依循着一份错误的配方——那么建立在此基础上的所有结论，也必然同样谬误。正如“洪水地质学家”的案例所示，一条推理链的坚韧，永远取决于它最脆弱的那一环。

False Dogma 1
虚妄信条一

Astronomers once hit a similar wall in their progress trying to calculate the trajectories of the sun and planets in the Solar System. Then one day they discovered that the sun was at the center of things, not the Earth, and suddenly, all the perplexing calculations made sense, and progress leapt forward. Had they played the Why game earlier, they’d have run into a dogmatic floor right after the question “But why do we know that the Earth is in the center of everything?”
天文学家在研究太阳与行星运行轨迹时，曾同样陷入进展的困境。繁复的运算屡屡碰壁，许多现象始终难以自圆其说。直到某一天，他们意识到，主宰这套天体舞曲的中心并非地球，而是太阳——瞬间，所有令人费解的公式与数据焕然有序，天文学也由此迎来飞跃。倘若他们更早开始玩“为什么”的追问游戏，在问到“为何我们确信地球是万物的中心？”之时，恐怕便会触碰到顽固的信条之墙，从而就此止步。

People’s lives are no different, which is why it’s so important to find the toxic lumps of false dogma tucked inside the layers of your reasoning software. Identifying one and adjusting it can strengthen the whole chain above and create a breakthrough in your life.
人的一生亦复如此，因此我们必须警觉地探寻那些潜伏在思维“软件”深层、带有毒性的虚假信条。只要能识别并纠正其中一个，便足以巩固整条思维链，更有可能在生命中迎来一次突破性的飞跃。

False Dogma 2
谬误信条二

The thing you really want to look closely for is unjustified certainty. Where in life do you feel so right about something that it doesn’t qualify as a hypothesis or even a theory, but it feels like a proof? When there’s proof-level certainty, it means either there’s some serious concrete and verified data underneath it—or it’s faith-based dogma. Maybe you feel certain that quitting your job would be a disaster or certain that there’s no god or certain that it’s important to go to college or certain that you’ve always had a great time on rugged vacations or certain that everyone loves it when you break out the guitar during a group hangout—but if it’s not well backed-up by data from what you’ve learned and experienced, it’s at best a hypothesis and at worst a completely false piece of dogma.
你真正需要留心警惕的，是那些缺乏依据的笃信。生活中，哪些事让你确信到不容置疑，甚至早已越过“假设”或“理论”的范畴，仿佛成了一条铁打的“定理”？当你对某件事抱有这种“证明级”的确信，要么它背后有坚实可靠、反复验证的数据为支撑；要么，这只是一种由信念衍生出的教条。你或许深信辞职必然是灾难；深信世上并无神灵；深信大学教育至关重要；深信自己在崎岖野外的旅行总是乐趣无穷；甚至确信每次聚会弹起吉他大家都一定欢喜——然而，如果这些看法并未得到你所学知识与亲身经验的数据充分印证，那么它们充其量只是一个假设，最糟也不过是毫无根据的虚妄教条。

And if thinking about all of that ends with you drowning in some combination of self-doubt, self-loathing, and identity crisis, that’s perfect. This first epiphany is about humility. Humility is by definition a starting point—and it sends you off on a journey from there. The arrogance of certainty is both a starting point and an ending point—no journeys needed. That’s why it’s so important that we begin with “I don’t know shit.” That’s when we know we’re in the lab.
如果你在思考这些问题的过程中，最后发现自己溺于自我怀疑、自我厌弃，甚至陷入身份认同的危机——那恰恰是最好的结果。因为第一重顿悟，讲的正是“谦卑”。谦卑，顾名思义，是一切探索的源点——它会由此引领你踏上未知的旅途。相比之下，那种笃信己见的傲慢，既是起点，也是终点——没有旅程可言。因此，我们必须从一句“我其实什么都不懂”开始，这才意味着，你真正走进了思想的实验室。

Epiphany 2) No one else knows shit either.
顿悟二）其实别人也同样一窍不通。

No one else knows shit
其实，旁人也未必真懂什么。

Let me illustrate a little story for you.
让我给你讲一个小故事。

Emperor 1Emperor 2Emperor 3Emperor 4
帝王一、帝王二、帝王三、帝王四

Emperor 5Emperor 6 Emperor 7Emperor 8Emperor 9Emperor 10Emperor 11Emperor 12Emperor 13 Emperor 13aEmperor 14Emperor 15Emperor 16Emperor 17Emperor 18
五皇　六皇
七皇　八皇　九皇　十皇　十一皇　十二皇　十三皇
十三皇·甲　十四皇　十五皇　十六皇　十七皇　十八皇

Yes, it’s an old classic. The Emperor’s New Clothes. It was written in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen11 to demonstrate a piece of trademark human insanity: the “This doesn’t seem right to me but everyone else says it’s right so it must be right and I’ll just pretend I also think it’s right so no one realizes I’m stupid” phenomenon.
没错，这便是那部久负盛名的经典——《皇帝的新装》。它出自汉斯·克里斯汀·安徒生之手，写于1837年，用一个寓言揭示了人类极具代表性的荒诞心理：那种“我心里觉得不对劲，可其他人都说没问题，那大概就是我错了吧。为了不让别人觉得我愚蠢，我也只好装作赞同”的奇怪现象。

My favorite all-time quote might be Steve Jobs saying this:
我最钟爱的名言，大概就是史蒂夫·乔布斯曾说过的那句话：

When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.12
当我们长大成人，总会被告知：世界就是如此运转，你的任务不过是在这既定格局中安身立命。别撞得太狠，尽量安稳过日子，组建一个温馨的家庭，偶尔享受片刻欢乐，攒下一点积蓄。这样的生活，其实是极为局限的。直到你发现一个朴素却深刻的真相——你眼中所谓的“世界”，不过是由那些并不比你聪明的人建构出来的。你可以改变它，可以影响它，甚至能够创造出属于自己的事物，让他人受用。一旦你真正领悟了这一点，你的生命将不再原样，你的眼界与心境都会彻底改写。

This is Jobs’ way of saying, “You might not know shit. But no one knows shit. If the emperor looks naked to you and everyone else is saying he has clothes, trust your eyes since other people don’t know anything you don’t.”
这就是乔布斯的说话之道：“你或许觉得自己一无所知，但事实上没人真的懂得更多。如果在你眼里皇帝赤身裸体，而旁人却纷纷称赞他衣着华美，请相信你所看到的——因为别人并不比你多知道什么。”

It’s an easy message to understand, a harder one to believe, and an even harder one to act on.
这句话容易懂，信起来不易，而真正践行则更是难上加难。

The purpose of the first epiphany is to shatter the belief that all that dogma you’ve memorized constitutes personal opinions and wisdom and all that certainty you feel constitutes knowledge and understanding. That’s the easier one because the delusion that we know what we’re talking about is pretty fragile, with the “Oh god I’m a fraud who doesn’t know shit” monster never lurking too far under our consciousness.
第一次顿悟的意义，在于彻底粉碎这样一种信念：你死记硬背的那些教条，并非真正的个人见解与智慧；你笃定无疑的那份自信，也不等于真实的知识与理解。相较之下，这一步其实不算难，因为“我们很懂”的幻觉本就脆弱不堪——只要轻微触动，那个潜伏在意识深处的怪兽便会浮现，低声咆哮着：“天啊，我根本什么都不懂，我只是个冒牌货。”

But this epiphany—that the collective “other people” and their conventional wisdom don’t know shit—is a much larger challenge. Our delusion about the wisdom of those around us, our tribe, and society as a whole is much thicker and runs much deeper than the delusion about ourselves. So deep that we’ll see a naked emperor and ignore our own eyes if everyone else says he has clothes on.
但这种顿悟——即所谓的“别人”和他们的传统智慧其实毫无真知——才是真正的巨大挑战。我们对周围人的智慧、对所属群体，乃至整个社会的迷信，比对自我的错觉更为厚重、更为根深蒂固。深到何种程度？深到即便亲眼看见皇帝赤身裸体，只要众人一致声称他穿着衣服，我们也会选择背弃自己的眼睛。

This is a battle of two kinds of confidence—confidence in others vs. confidence in ourselves. For most cooks, confidence in others usually comes out the winner.
这是一场两种自信的较量——信赖他人的判断，还是坚信自己的眼光。对大多数厨师而言，最终胜出的往往还是那份对他人的依赖。

To swing the balance, we need to figure out how to lose respect for the general public, your tribe’s dogma, and society’s conventional wisdom. We have a bunch of romantic words for the world’s chefs that sound impressive but are actually just a result of them having lost this respect. Being a gamechanger is just having little enough respect for the game that you realize there’s no good reason not to change the rules. Being a trailblazer is just not respecting the beaten path and so deciding to blaze yourself a new one. Being a groundbreaker is just knowing that the ground wasn’t laid by anyone that impressive and so feeling no need to keep it intact.
要想真正扭转局势，我们必须学会淡化乃至放下——对公众舆论、对所属群体教条、以及对社会惯常智慧——那种根深蒂固的敬畏。人们往往用一串浪漫而响亮的词汇去赞美那些“世界级的大师”，听来耀眼非凡，然而他们的秘诀，不过是比常人更早地学会了不再盲从这些权威。所谓“游戏规则的改写者”，无非是对这场游戏本身缺乏执念，于是洞察到——既然规则并非不可撼动，何不重新制定一套？所谓“开路者”，也只是对早已踏烂的旧径不再顶礼膜拜，于是决心亲手劈出崭新的路径。而所谓“破土者”，不过是看透了脚下这片土地的来历，并不出自什么令人肃然起敬的伟人，因此毫无束缚地去改造它、重塑它。

Not respecting society is totally counterintuitive to what we’re taught when we grow up—but it makes perfect sense if you just look at what your eyes and experience tell you.
不敬于社会，这一想法完全背离了我们自小所受的教诲——然而，只要你凭自己的眼睛去看、凭亲身的经验去感受，便会发现这其中实在合乎情理。

There are clues all around showing us that conventional wisdom doesn’t know shit. Conventional wisdom worships the status quo and always assumes that everything is the way it is for a good reason—and history is one long record of status quo dogma being proven wrong again and again, every time some chef comes around and changes things.
我们身边处处可见的细微迹象，都在暗示着所谓的“传统智慧”其实一无是处。它崇拜现状，执念于相信世事之所以如此，必有正当理由——然而，历史分明是一幅不断推翻旧有信条的长卷。每当有勇于革新的“厨师”登场，搅动锅中的秩序，昔日的信念便一次次被证明不过是虚妄。

And if you open your eyes, there are other clues all through your own life that the society you live in is nothing to be intimidated by. All the times you learn about what really goes on inside a company and find out that it’s totally disorganized and badly run. All the people in high places who can’t seem to get their personal lives together. All the well-known sitcoms whose jokes you’re pretty sure you could have written when you were 14. All the politicians who don’t seem to know more about the world than you do.
只要你肯睁开眼去看，其实生活中处处都有迹象提醒你——这个社会并没有那么不可一碰、不可一敌。你或许曾亲眼见识过某些公司的内部运作，结果发现它们杂乱无章、管理乏善可陈；你也见过那些位居高位的人，私生活却像失控的列车般狼狈不堪。那些家喻户晓的情景喜剧，你甚至确信自己在十四岁时就能写出同样的笑点。还有那些政客，看上去对世界的认知并不比你高明多少。

And yet, the delusion that society knows shit that you don’t runs deep, and still, somewhere in the back of your head, you don’t think it’s realistic that you could ever actually build that company, achieve that fabulous wealth or celebrity-status, create that TV show, win that senate campaign—no matter what it seems like.
然而，那种“社会掌握着你所不知的真理”的错觉早已深植人心。即便你表面上毫不动摇，脑海深处依然会闪过这样的念头：自己不可能真的去创办那家公司，赢得令人艳羡的财富或跻身名流之列，策划并推出那档电视节目，或者在参议员竞选中脱颖而出——无论外表看上去多么近在咫尺，你始终觉得，那只是一个不切实际的幻象。

Sometimes it takes an actual experience to fully expose society for the shit it doesn’t know. One example from my life is how I slowly came to understand that most Americans—the broader public, my tribe, and people I know well—knew very little about what it’s actually like to visit most countries. I grew up hearing about how dangerous it was to visit really foreign places, especially alone. But when I started going places I wasn’t supposed to go, I kept finding that the conventional wisdom had been plain wrong about it. As I had more experiences and gathered more actual data, I grew increasingly trusting of my own reasoning over whatever Americans were saying. And as my confidence grew, places like Thailand and Spain turned into places like Oman and Uzbekistan which turned into places like Nigeria and North Korea. When it comes to traveling, I had the epiphany: other people’s strong opinions about this are based on unbacked-up dogma and the fact that most people I talk to feel the same way means nothing if my own research, experience, and selective question-asking brings me to a different conclusion.13 When it comes to picking travel destinations, I’ve become a chef.
有时候，唯有亲身踏入其中，才能彻底揭开社会对某些事物的无知与偏见。以我自己的经历为例，我逐渐发现，大多数美国人——不论是普通大众、我的朋友圈，还是那些与我熟识的人——其实对大多数国家的真实面貌知之甚少。自小耳濡目染的，是关于那些“极度陌生”地方的危险传言，尤其是独自前往，更被视为一场赌博。然而，当我开始踏上那些“按理不该去”的旅途时，却一次又一次发现，所谓的“常识”不过是空穴来风。
随着旅途的累积，我收获了更多鲜活的体验与真实的数据，渐渐地，我更信赖自己的判断，而非美国社会口中的定论。自信心不断滋长，我的行程也从泰国、西班牙，延伸到阿曼、乌兹别克斯坦，甚至是尼日利亚与朝鲜。
在旅行这件事上，我突然顿悟：他人的激烈观点，大多不过是未经验证的教条；就算我周围多数人抱持相同看法，若凭借研究、经历和有针对性的提问，我得出了截然不同的结论，那他们的意见于我毫无分量。13 至少在选择旅行目的地这道“菜”上，我已经成了能独当一面的“主厨”。

I try to leverage what I learned as a traveler to transfer the chefness elsewhere—when I find myself discouraged in another part of my life by the warnings and head-shaking of conventional wisdom, I try to remind myself: “These are the same people that were sure that North Korea was dangerous.” It’s hard—you have to take the leap to chefdom separately in each part of your life—but it seems like with each successive cook → chef breakthrough, future breakthroughs become easier to come by. Eventually, you must hit a tipping point and trusting your own software becomes your way of life—and as Jobs says, you’ll never be the same again.
我努力将旅行中领悟到的“主厨心法”迁移到人生的其他领域——每当我在某个方面因循着传统观念的警告与摇头叹息而感到沮丧时，我会提醒自己：“这些人当年也笃信朝鲜极度危险。”这并非易事——在生活的每个版块，你都需要独立踏出那一步，完成向“主厨”的蜕变。但似乎每一次从“厨师”到“主厨”的突破，都会让下一次的飞跃轻松许多。终有一刻，你会抵达那个转折点，开始由衷地信任自己的“软件”（思维模式与认知体系），它会自然演化为你的生活之道——正如乔布斯所言，那时的你将彻底改变，再也回不到过去的自己。

The first epiphany was about shattering a protective shell of arrogance to lay bare a starting point of humility. This second epiphany is about confidence—the confidence to emerge from that humility through a pathway built on first principles instead of by analogy. It’s a confidence that says, “I may not know much, but no one else does either, so I might as well be the most knowledgeable person on Earth.”
第一个顿悟，是击碎那层由傲慢铸成的自我防护壳，让自己坦然回到谦逊的原点。第二个顿悟，则关乎一种自信——那是从谦逊中生长出来的力量，不依赖类比，不照搬他人的路径，而是沿着“第一性原理思维”铺就的道路前行。这种自信会让你由衷地说：“我或许懂得不多，但别人其实也未必懂得更多，那么我也可以成为世上最了解此事的人。”

Epiphany 3) You’re playing Grand Theft Life
顿悟三：你正在玩“侠盗人生”

Grand Theft Life
人生夺宝

The first two epiphanies allow us to break open our software, identify which parts of it were put there by someone else, and with confidence begin to fill in the Want and Reality boxes with our own handwriting and choose a goal and a strategy that’s right for us.
前两个顿悟让我们得以冲破固有的思维枷锁，看清哪些理念其实是外界强加于我们的。由此，我们便能自信而笃定地，用自己的笔迹填满“欲望盒”和“现实盒”，并从中择取契合自身的目标，拟定真正适合自己的策略。

But then we hit a snag. We’re finally in the lab with all our tools and equipment, but something holds us back. To figure out why, let’s bring back our emperor story.
但就在此时，我们遇到了一点麻烦。好不容易带着所有工具与设备走进实验室，却像是被什么东西拖住了脚步。为了弄清缘由，不妨再把那位皇帝的故事搬出来细细端详。

When the emperor struts out with his shoulder hair and his gut and his little white junk, the story only identifies two kinds of people: the mass of subjects, who all pretend they can see the clothes, and the kid, who just says that the dude is obviously naked.
当皇帝昂然阔步走出来，肩头的细毛、圆鼓的肚腩，还有那点雪白的“小玩意儿”一览无遗，故事里其实只分了两种人：一类是满朝的臣民，个个假装看得见那套华丽的新衣；另一类是那个孩子，径直说破真相——这人分明是赤身裸体嘛。

But I think there’s more going on. In an emperor’s new clothes situation, there are four kinds of people:
但我认为事情远不止如此。在“皇帝的新装”的情境里，实际上可以分出四类人：

Proud Cook. Proud Cook is the person drinking the full dogma Kool-Aid. Whatever independent-thinking voice is inside of Proud Cook was silenced long ago, and there’s no distinction between his thoughts and the dogma he follows. As far as he’s concerned, the dogma is truth—but since he doesn’t even register that there’s any dogma happening, Proud Cook simply thinks he’s a very wise person who has it all figured out. He feels the certainty of the dogma running through his veins. When the emperor walks out and proclaims that he is wearing beautiful new clothes, Proud Cook actually sees clothes, because his consciousness isn’t even turned on.
1）自傲的厨师。自傲的厨师就是那种将教条奉为至宝、毫不犹豫地一饮而尽的人。他心中曾经的独立思考早已被彻底压制，如今他的思想与所信奉的教条浑然一体、无丝毫分界。对他而言，教条便是绝对真理——而他甚至未曾察觉自己正被教条操控，只是笃定地觉得自己智慧非凡、洞悉万物。教条的笃信像血液一样在他体内奔涌，令他信心十足。当皇帝昂然而出，宣称自己身着华美的新衣时，自傲的厨师确确实实“看见”了衣服，因为他的意识早已沉睡，从未真正苏醒。
Insecure Cook. Insecure Cook is what Proud Cook turns into after undergoing Epiphany #1. Insecure Cook has had a splash of self-awareness—enough to become conscious of the fact that he doesn’t actually know why he’s so certain about the things he’s certain about. Whatever the reasons are, he’s sure they’re right, but he can’t seem to come up with them himself. Without the blissful arrogance of Proud Cook, Insecure Cook is lost in the world, wondering why he’s too dumb to get what everyone else gets and trying to watch others to figure out what he’s supposed to do—all while hoping nobody finds out that he doesn’t get it. When Insecure Cook sees the emperor, his heart sinks—he doesn’t see the clothes, only the straggly gray hairs of the emperor’s upper thighs. Ashamed, he reads the crowd and mimics their enthusiasm for the clothes.
2）不安厨师。骄傲厨师在经历第一次顿悟后，便化身为不安厨师。他开始萌生一丝自知——足以察觉自己其实并不明白，为什么会对某些事如此笃信不疑。理由究竟是什么？他坚信那些理由一定正确，却无论如何也想不出来。失去了骄傲厨师那种天真而自满的傲气，不安厨师在世间显得不知所措，困惑于为何自己总是比别人迟钝，为什么人人似乎都懂而自己却懵然无知。于是他只能暗暗观察他人，揣摩自己该怎么做——又惧怕着被人察觉自己根本没有弄明白。当不安厨师看到皇帝时，心头陡然一沉——眼前根本没有什么华衣，只能望见皇帝大腿上零乱的灰白毛发。羞愧之下，他只能顺着人群的表情与情绪，学着他们的热烈反应，假装自己也看见了那件“新衣”。
Self-Loathing Cook. Self-Loathing Cook is what Insecure Cook becomes after being hit by Epiphany #2. Epiphany #2 is the forbidden fruit, and Self-Loathing Cook has bitten it. He now knows exactly why he didn’t feel certain about everything—because it was all bullshit. He sees the tenets of conventional wisdom for what they really are—faith-based dogma. He knows that neither he nor anyone else knows shit and that he’ll get much farther riding his own reasoning than jumping on the bandwagon with the masses. When the emperor emerges, Self-Loathing Cook thinks, “Oh Jesus…this fucktard is actually outside with no clothes on. Oh—oh and my god these idiots are all pretending to see clothes. How is this my life? I need to move.”
3）自我厌恶厨师

自我厌恶厨师，是不安厨师在经历第二次顿悟后蜕变而成的模样。第二次顿悟犹如那枚禁果，而他已经咬下了一口。此刻他彻底明白自己为何一直无法笃信那些所谓的真理——因为全都是荒唐的废话。他看穿了“传统智慧”的遮羞布，发现那不过是用信念绑成的教条。他确信，无论是自己，还是任何人，其实都一知半解；与其随波逐流，不如沿着自己的推理之路前行，反而能走得更远。

当皇帝现身时，自我厌恶厨师心中暗叫：“我的天……这蠢货竟真的赤身裸体站在众人面前。哦——天啊，这帮人居然还一本正经地假装看见了华服。我怎么会活在这样的荒诞里？我得赶紧离开。”

But then, right when he’s about to call everyone out on their pretending and the emperor out on his bizarre life decision, there’s a lump in his throat. Sure, he knows there are no clothes on that emperor’s sweaty lower back fat roll—but actually saying that? Out loud? I mean, he’s sure and all—but let’s not go crazy here. Better not to call too much attention to himself. And of course, there’s a chance he’s missing something. Right?
但就在他打算当众揭穿众人的假装，直指皇帝那荒诞至极的决定时，喉头却像被什么堵住了。没错，他心知肚明——那位皇帝满是汗水的后背赘肉上根本没有一丝布料——可真要说出口吗？在众人面前？他固然笃定，但也不至于疯到这个程度吧。还是别让自己太显眼为妙。毕竟，或许是自己漏看了什么，对吧？

Self-Loathing Cook ends up staying quiet and nodding at the other cooks when they ask him if those clothes aren’t just the most marvelous he’s ever seen.
自我厌恶的厨师最终还是选择缄默不语，当其他厨师问他那些衣服是不是他见过最华美的时，他只是默默点头，勉强附和。

The chef. The kid in the story. The chef is Self-Loathing Cook—except without the irrational fear. The chef goes through the same inner thought process as Self-Loathing Cook, but when it’s time to walk the walk, the chef stands up and yells out the truth.
4）主厨。故事中的那个孩子。主厨其实就是“自我怀疑厨师”的翻版，只是少了那份莫名其妙的恐惧。他的内心依然会经历与自我怀疑厨师相同的思想拉锯，可一旦到了必须付诸行动的时刻，他会毫不退缩地站出来，坦然而坚定地喊出真相。

A visual recap:
视觉摘要：

4 Subjects
四种人物

We’re all human and we’re all complex, which means that in various parts of each of our lives, we play each of these four characters.
我们都是凡人，也各具复杂面貌，这意味着在人生的不同阶段与领域里，我们都会化身为那四种角色中的每一种。

But to me, Self-Loathing Cook is the most curious one of the four. Self-Loathing Cook gets it. He knows what the chefs know. He’s tantalizingly close to carving out his own chef path in the world, and he knows that if he just goes for it, good things would happen. But he can’t pull the trigger. He built himself a pair of wings he feels confident work just fine, but he can’t bring himself to jump off the cliff.
在我看来，“自我嫌弃的厨师”是这四类人中最令人费解的一个。他深谙此道，掌握着顶级厨师的诀窍，离开辟属于自己的烹饪之路仅一步之遥。他心知肚明，只要鼓起勇气踏出那一步，好事必将接踵而至。然而，他始终无法扣下那扳机。他亲手打造了一双令自己充满信心的翅膀，确信它们足以带他翱翔天际，却始终无法说服自己纵身跃下悬崖。

And as he stands there next to the cliff with the other cooks, he has to endure the torture of watching the chefs of the world leap off the edge with the same exact wings and flying skills he has, but with the courage he can’t seem to find.
他立在悬崖边，与其他厨师并肩而站，眼睁睁看着世界各地的大师们，怀着他所缺失的那份勇气，带着与他无异的翅膀与同样精湛的飞行本领，毅然跃下悬崖。那一刻，他只能在原地忍受心灵的煎熬，眼看着梦想与自己擦肩而过。

To figure out what’s going on with Self-Loathing Cook, let’s remind ourselves how the chefs operate.
为了弄清“自我厌恶厨师”究竟发生了什么，不妨先回忆一下这些厨师们平日是如何运作的。

Free of Self-Loathing Cook’s trepidation, the world’s chefs are liberated to put on their lab coats and start sciencing. To a chef, the world is one giant laboratory, and their life is one long lab session full of a million experiments. They spend their days puzzling, and society is their game board.
摆脱了“自我厌恶型厨师”的畏缩与犹疑，天下厨师们仿佛解开了束缚，尽情披上实验袍，投身于属于自己的科学探索。于他们而言，世界是一座辽阔无垠的巨型实验室，而一生，便是一场漫长而绵延的实验课——其中蕴含着成千上万的试验与推演。他们的日子是在探究与琢磨中度过，将社会视作一盘无边的棋局，不断设想、尝试，并在挑战中开启新的可能。

The chef treats his goals and undertakings as experiments whose purpose is as much to learn new information as it is to be ends in themselves. That’s why when I asked Musk what his thoughts were on negative feedback, he answered with this:
这位“厨师”将自己的目标与事业视作一场场实验——这些实验的意义不仅在于达成既定的结果，更在于从过程中汲取新的认知与洞见。也正因如此，当我问马斯克对负面反馈的看法时，他是这样回答的：

I’m a huge believer in taking feedback. I’m trying to create a mental model that’s accurate, and if I have a wrong view on something, or if there’s a nuanced improvement that can be made, I’ll say, “I used to think this one thing that turned out to be wrong—now thank goodness I don’t have that wrong belief.”
我格外珍视反馈，因为我的目标是构建一个精确无误的思维模型。倘若我在某件事上抱有偏颇的见解，或是存在细微的改进空间，我都会坦然承认：“我曾相信过一种观点，结果证明是错误的——庆幸的是，如今我已及时修正，不再执着于那份谬误。”

To a chef in the lab, negative feedback is a free boost forward in progress, courtesy of someone else. Pure upside.
对于实验室里的“厨师”而言，负面反馈犹如他人赠予的免费助推器，能让前进的步伐更快，无损全益。

As for the F word…the word that makes our amygdalae quiver in the moonlight, the great chefs have something to say about that too:
说到那个让我们在月光下杏仁核轻颤的“F”字——失败，顶尖厨艺大师们也有自己的见解：

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. —Henry Ford
失败只是一次重新出发的契机，而这一次，你将以更睿智的方式前行。——亨利·福特

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. —Winston Churchill13
成功，就是一次次从失败中走过，却从未熄灭心中的热情。——温斯顿·丘吉尔

I have not failed 700 times. I’ve succeeded in proving 700 ways how not to build a lightbulb. —Thomas Edison
我并没有失败七百次，而是成功找出了七百种造不出灯泡的方法。——托马斯·爱迪生

There’s no more reliable corollary than super-successful people thinking failure is fucking awesome.
没有什么规律比“顶尖成功人士都觉得失败酷到不行”更经得起验证了。

But there’s something to that. The science approach is all about learning through testing hypotheses, and hypotheses are built to be disproven, which means that scientists learn through failure. Failure is a critical part of their process.
这话确实不无道理。科学的核心方法在于通过检验假设来获取知识，而假设的本质正是为了被推翻，这也意味着科学家是在一次次挫败中积累经验、不断前行。失败，不只是过程的一部分，更是推动他们探索的关键动力。

It makes sense. If there were two scientists trying to come up with a breakthrough in cancer treatment, and the first one is trying every bold thing he can imagine, failing left and right and learning something each time, while the second one is determined not to have any failures so is making sure his experiments are similar to others that have already been proven to work—which scientist would you bet on?
这很有道理。试想，两位科学家同时致力于研发革命性的癌症疗法。第一位勇于突破常规，大胆尝试各种设想，尽管频频遭遇失败，却在每一次挫折中汲取新的经验；而第二位则谨慎行事，誓不容失败，只选择与现有成功案例相似的实验路线——如果让你押注，你会看好哪一位科学家呢？

It’s not surprising that so many of the most wildly impactful people seem to treat the world like a lab and their life like an experiment session—that’s the best way to succeed at something.
难怪那些真正改变世界的人，总爱将整个世界视作实验室，把自己的人生当作一场持续进行的实验——因为，这正是通向非凡成就的最佳途径。

But for most of us, we just can’t do it. Even poor Self-Loathing Cook, who is so damn close to being a chef—but somehow so far away.
但对我们大多数人而言，这几乎是无法做到的。哪怕是那个满心自我嫌弃的厨子，明明已近乎触及真正厨师的门槛，却依旧像隔着一道无法跨越的鸿沟，遥不可及。

So what’s stopping him? I think two major misconceptions:
那么，是什么在束缚他的脚步呢？我想，归根结底源于两个根深蒂固的认知误区：

Misconception 1: Misplaced Fear
误区一：被误导的恐惧

We talked about the chef’s courage actually just being an accurate assessment of risk—and that’s one of the major things Self-Loathing Cook is missing. He thinks he has become wise to the farce of letting dogma dictate your life, but he’s actually in the grasp of dogma’s slickest trick.
我们刚才提到，厨师的所谓勇气，其实不过是对风险的精准评估——而这，恰恰是“自我厌弃型厨师”最为缺乏的一项关键能力。他以为自己已洞悉了让教条主宰人生的荒谬，并自信因此变得睿智，然而事实是，他正落入了教条最隐秘、最巧妙的圈套之中。

Humans are programmed to take fear very seriously, and evolution didn’t find it efficient to have us assess and re-assess every fear inside of us. It went instead with the “better safe than sorry” philosophy—i.e. if there’s a chance that a certain fear might be based on real danger, file it away as a real fear, just in case, and even if you confirm later that a fear of yours has no basis, keep it with you, just in case. Better safe than sorry.
人类的本能是将恐惧视作头等大事，而进化并未安排我们去对每一种恐惧反复审视、层层推敲，而是沿用了那套“宁慎勿失”的生存哲学——只要某种恐惧有可能源于真实的危险，就会被立刻归档为有效的恐惧，以防万一。即便日后确认这种恐惧毫无根据，它依旧会伴你左右，留存心底。毕竟，宁可信其有，不可信其无。

And the fear file cabinet is somewhere way down in our psyches—somewhere far below our centers of rationality, out of reach.
恐惧档案柜深埋在我们心灵的幽深处——远在理性核心的下方，仿佛置身难以企及的深渊。

The purpose of all of that fear is to make us protect ourselves from danger. The problem for us is that as far as evolution is concerned, danger = something that hurts the chance that your genes will move on—i.e., danger = not mating or dying or your kids dying, and that’s about it.
恐惧之所以存在，其根本目的在于促使我们警惕、避开危险，以保护自身。然而，从进化的立场来看，“危险”只有一个定义——任何会削弱你基因得以延续的因素。换言之，危险意味着无法繁衍后代、死亡，或是子女夭折，仅此而已。

So in the same way our cook-like qualities were custom-built for survival in tribal times, our obsession with fears of all shapes and sizes may have served us well in Ethiopia 50,000 years ago—but it mostly ruins our lives today.
正如我们的“厨师型”天性是为部落时代的生存量身锻造的，我们对各种恐惧的执迷，或许在五万年前的埃塞俄比亚曾是保命的法宝——但在当下，它却多半成了摧毁我们生活的幕后推手。

Because not only does it amp up our fear in general to “shit we botched the hunt now the babies are all going to starve to death this winter” levels even though we live in an “oh no I got laid off now I have to sleep at my parents’ house for two months with a feather pillow in ideal 68º temperature” world—but it also programs us to be terrified of all the wrong things. We’re more afraid of public speaking than texting on the highway, more afraid of approaching an attractive stranger in a bar than marrying the wrong person, more afraid of not being able to afford the same lifestyle as our friends than spending 50 years in meaningless career—all because embarrassment, rejection, and not fitting in really sucked for hunters and gatherers.
不仅如此，这套古老的机制不仅会将我们的恐惧推到荒谬的极限——比如“糟糕，狩猎失败了，今年冬天孩子们都得饿死”——尽管我们如今的现实更像是“唉，被裁员了，只好回爸妈家暂住两个月，枕着松软的羽毛枕头，室温恒定在理想的68华氏度（约20℃）”。更糟的是，它还会把我们的恐惧指向完全错误的地方：我们害怕在公众场合讲话，却不怕在高速路上发短信；害怕在酒吧主动与一个有吸引力的陌生人交谈，却不怕与不合适的人结婚；害怕无法维持和朋友相同的生活水准，却不怕在一份毫无意义的职业里虚耗半个世纪——而这一切，只因在狩猎采集的年代，尴尬、被拒绝、与群体格格不入，曾经真的是致命的代价。

This leaves most of us with a skewed danger scale:
这使得我们大多数人对危险的衡量标准出现了严重偏差：

Danger Scale
危险刻度表

Chefs hate real risk just as much as cooks—a chef that ends up in the Actually Dangerous territory and ends up in jail or in a gutter or in dire financial straits isn’t a chef—he’s a cook living under “I’m invincible” dogma. When we see chefs displaying what looks like incredible courage, they’re usually just in the Chef Lab. The Chef Lab is where all the action is and where the path to many people’s dreams lies—dreams about their career, about love, about adventure. But even though its doors are always open, most people never set foot in it for the same reason so many Americans never visit some of the world’s most interesting countries—because of an incorrect assumption that it’s a dangerous place. By reasoning by analogy when it comes to what constitutes danger and ending up with a misconception, Self-Loathing Cook is missing out on all the fun.
大厨其实和普通厨师一样，对真正的风险同样心怀畏惧——倘若某位大厨闯入了“实质危险区”，最终锒铛入狱、流落街头，或陷入严重的经济困境，他便不再是大厨，而只是一个囿于“我刀枪不入”幻念的厨师。我们眼中那些似乎无比勇敢的大厨，多半只是在“大厨实验室”里探险。精彩纷呈的故事皆发生在这间实验室，而许多人关于事业、爱情与冒险的美梦，也都在这里开启。可是尽管这扇门始终敞开，大多数人却从未跨入一步——原因恰似许多美国人从不踏访世界上一些最有趣的国家——因为他们误以为那里危机四伏。用类比来推测何为危险，终究落入误判，“自我厌弃型厨师”也因而错过了所有的趣味与精彩。

Misconception 2: Misplaced Identity
误区二：身份错位

自我否定型厨师的第二大症结在于，他与所有厨师一样，始终未能领悟——自己应是掌控实验的科学家，而非被实验操控的对象。

The second major problem for Self-Loathing Cook is that, like all cooks, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s the scientist in the lab—not the experiment.
自我厌恶型“厨师”的第二大困境在于，他和所有“厨师”一样，始终无法真正领悟：自己其实是那位在实验室执掌试管的科学家，而不是被摆上实验台的试验品。

As we established earlier, conscious tribe members reach conclusions, while blind tribe members are conclusions. And what you believe, what you stand for, and what you choose to do each day are conclusions that you’ve drawn. In some cases, very, very publicly.
正如我们先前所说，有自觉的部落成员会主动推导并形成自己的结论；而盲目随从的部落成员，往往只是某种结论的化身。你所信奉的理念、你所坚持的立场、你每天的取舍与行动，归根结底，都是你亲自做出的判断与抉择。某些时候，这些结论还会以极为显眼、极为公开的方式呈现于人前。

As far as society is concerned, when you give something a try—on the values front, the fashion front, the religious front, the career front—you’ve branded yourself. And since people like to simplify people in order to make sense of things in their own head, the tribe around you reinforces your brand by putting you in a clearly-labeled, oversimplified box.
在社会层面上，无论你是在价值观、时尚、宗教还是职业等领域尝试新的道路，你都相当于在自己身上烙下了一枚独特的印记。人们为了在脑海中更轻松地对他人归类，往往会将你简化成一个易于识别的“品牌”，而你所在的圈层则会不断强化这一标签，将你推入一个带有醒目标识、却过于单调化的格子之中。

What this all amounts to is that it becomes very painful to change. Changing is icky for someone whose identity will have to change along with it. And others don’t make things any easier. Blind tribe members don’t like when other tribe members change—it confuses them, it forces them to readjust the info in their heads, and it threatens the simplicity of their tribal certainty. So attempts to evolve are often met with opposition or mockery or anger.
归根结底，这意味着改变会变得格外痛苦。对那些在转变中连自身身份认同也不得不随之改变的人而言，这种痛苦尤为刺骨。而周围的人往往也不会让这一过程变得轻松。那些“盲目的部落成员”讨厌看见同伴发生变化——那会让他们困惑，迫使他们重新整理脑中的认知，并动摇他们赖以安心的部落式笃信。于是，任何试图进化或自我革新的努力，常常招来反对、讥笑，甚至愤怒。

And when you have a hard time changing, you become attached to who you currently are and what you’re currently doing—so attached that it blurs the distinction between the scientist and the experiment and you forget that they’re two different things.
当你发现自己难以改变时，便会对当下的自己和正在做的事产生深深的依恋——这种依恋强烈到足以模糊“科学家”与“实验对象”的界限，让你忘了它们本该是截然分开的两个存在。

We talked about why scientists welcome negative feedback about their experiments. But when you are the experiment, negative feedback isn’t a piece of new, helpful information—it’s an insult. And it hurts. And it makes you mad. And because changing feels impossible, there’s not much good that feedback can do anyway—it’s like giving parents negative feedback on the name of their one-month-old child.
我们曾谈过，科学家为何乐于接受别人对其实验的负面反馈。然而，当“实验对象”变成你自己时，负面反馈便不再是新鲜、可供参考的有用信息，而成了一种冒犯。它会刺痛你，让你愤怒。而因为改变本身就几近不可能，这样的反馈往往也帮不上什么忙——就像有人跑去告诉刚满月婴儿的父母，他们给孩子取的名字很糟糕一样，除了添堵和难堪，并无任何建设性。

We discussed why scientists expect plenty of their experiments to fail. But when you and the experiment are one and the same, not only is taking on a new goal a change of identity, it’s putting your identity on the line. If the experiment fails, you fail. You are a failure. Devastating. Forever.
我们刚刚谈过，科学家为何预料到很多实验注定会以失败收场。然而，当你本人就是那个实验时，追寻一个新目标不仅意味着身份的转变，更是将整个自我押上赌局。一旦实验失败，你也随之失败——你，就是那个失败者。那是种足以摧毁灵魂的打击，仿佛会在生命中永远刻下烙印。

I talked to Musk about the United States and the way the forefathers reasoned by first principles when they started the country. He said he thought the reason they could do so is that they had a fresh slate to work with. The European countries of that era would have had a much harder time trying to do something like that—because, as he told me, they were “trapped in their own history.”
我曾与马斯克谈及美国，以及建国之初先贤们如何以“第一性原理思维”推演与抉择。他认为，他们能做到这一点，是因为手中握着一张未染尘埃的白纸，可以尽情描绘未来。而彼时的欧洲诸国则难以仿行——正如他对我所言，他们“被自身的历史牢牢束缚”。

I’ve heard Musk use this same phrase to describe the big auto and aerospace companies of today. He sees Tesla and SpaceX like the late 18th century USA—fresh new labs ready for experiments—but when he looks at other companies in their industries, he sees an inability to drive their strategies from a clean slate mentality. Referring to the aerospace industry, Musk said, “There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”
我曾听马斯克用过同样的说法来形容当今的大型汽车制造商和航天企业。在他看来，特斯拉和 SpaceX 就像十八世纪末的新生美国——一块尚未染色的实验室白纸，任由试验与探索的笔墨自由挥洒。而当他审视这些行业里的其他公司时，却发现它们难以以“从零起步”的心态来制定战略。谈到航天产业，马斯克直言：“人们对冒险有着极强的本能排斥，所有人都在竭力精雕细琢自己的‘免责防护’。”

Being trapped in your history means you don’t know how to change, you’ve forgotten how to innovate, and you’re stuck in the identity box the world has put you in. And you end up being the cancer researcher we mentioned who only tries likely-to-succeed experimentation within the comfort zone he knows best.
陷于自身的历史，就意味着你已失去了改变的方向，遗忘了创新的能力，被锁在外界为你套上的身份之盒中无法脱身。久而久之，你就会沦为我们先前提到的那类癌症研究员——只肯在自己最熟悉、最安全的舒适圈内，从事那些几乎注定会成功的实验，却始终不敢跨出一步去追寻真正的突破。

It’s for this reason that Steve Jobs looks back on his firing from Apple in 1986 as a blessing in disguise. He said:14 “Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” Being fired “freed” Jobs from the shackles of his own history.
正因如此，史蒂夫·乔布斯才将自己在1986年被苹果公司解雇视作一场“化险为夷”的恩赐。他曾说：“被苹果解雇，是我这一生发生过的最美好的事。成功带来的沉重，被重新成为初学者的轻盈所替代。这让我得以踏入人生中最富创造力的时期。”这次解雇，实际上“解放”了乔布斯，使他摆脱了自身历史的桎梏。

So what Self-Loathing Cook has to ask himself is: “Am I trapped in my own history?” As he stands on the cliff with his wings ready for action and finds himself paralyzed—from evolving as a person, from making changes in his life, from trying to do something bold or unusual—is the baggage of his own identity part of what’s holding him back?
因此，“自我厌恶的厨师”真正要拷问自己的，是：“我是否被自己的历史囚住了？”当他站在悬崖边，双翼已然舒展，准备冲向天空，却在关键时刻如同被定格——无法作为一个人继续成长，无法在生活中作出改变，无法尝试任何大胆或不寻常的事——他是否正被自身身份的沉重包袱拖拽着，把自己困在无形的枷锁中？

Self-Loathing Cook’s beliefs about what’s scary aren’t any more real than Insecure Cook’s assumption that conventional wisdom has all the answers—but unlike the “Other people don’t know shit” epiphany, which you can observe evidence of all over the place, the epiphany that neither failing nor changing is actually a big deal can only be observed by experiencing it for yourself. Which you can only do after you overcome those fears…which only happens if you experience changing and failing and realize that nothing bad happens. Another catch-22.
自我厌恶的厨师心中那些“可怕”的念头，其实并不比不自信厨师盲目相信“传统智慧掌握一切答案”更贴近真实——然而不同的是，“别人其实也并非全知全能”这种顿悟，你随处都能找到佐证；而“失败或改变其实没什么大不了”的觉悟，却只有在亲身经历后才能获得。你必须先跨越恐惧，去真正尝试改变、敢于经历失败，才能发现原来并没有什么糟糕的事情发生。这就成了一个双重困境：唯有经历，才能消除恐惧；但唯有消除恐惧，你才会去经历。

These are the reasons I believe so many of the world’s most able people are stuck in life as Self-Loathing Cook, one epiphany short of the promised land.
这正是我之所以认为，世界上那么多才华横溢之人，最终却困守于“自我厌恶的厨师”境地——与理想彼岸仅隔一道顿悟之门。

The challenge with this last epiphany is to somehow figure out a way to lose respect for your own fear. That respect is in our wiring, and the only way to weaken it is by defying it and seeing, when nothing bad ends up happening, that most of the fear you’ve been feeling has just been a smoke and mirrors act. Doing something out of your comfort zone and having it turn out okay is an incredibly powerful experience, one that changes you—and each time you have that kind of experience, it chips away at your respect for your brain’s ingrained, irrational fears.
最后这个顿悟的难处在于：你必须想方设法，学会不再对自己的恐惧抱有敬畏。那份敬畏几乎镌刻在我们的天性之中，而削弱它的唯一途径，就是迎面直击它、抗衡它；然后你会发现——当你真的踏出那一步，结果并没有发生任何糟糕的事——那些长久以来压在心头的恐惧，其实多半不过是障眼的幻影。走出舒适区，去做一件令你心生怯意的事，却最终安然无恙，这种体验的力量不可思议，它会深刻地改变你。每一次这样的历练，都会在你心中凿去一块对大脑里根深蒂固、非理性恐惧的敬畏之石。

Because the most important thing the chef knows that the cooks don’t is that real life and Grand Theft Auto aren’t actually that different. Grand Theft Auto is a fun video game because it’s a fake world where you can do things with no fear. Drive 200mph on the highway. Break into a building. Run over a prostitute with your car. All good in GTA.
厨师与普通厨师的最大差别在于，他洞悉现实生活与《侠盗猎车手》（Grand Theft Auto）其实并无天壤之别。《侠盗猎车手》之所以令人着迷，是因为它为你营造了一个无需恐惧的虚拟世界，在那里你可以肆意妄为：在高速公路上狂飙到每小时200英里，潜入高楼闯荡，甚至驾车撞向街边的妓女——在GTA的世界里，这些都毫无顾忌。

Unlike GTA, in real life, the law is a thing and jail is a thing. But that’s about where the differences end. If someone gave you a perfect simulation of today’s world to play in and told you that it’s all fake with no actual consequences—with the only rules being that you can’t break the law or harm anyone, and you still have to make sure to support your and your family’s basic needs—what would you do? My guess is that most people would do all kinds of things they’d love to do in their real life but wouldn’t dare to try, and that by behaving that way, they’d end up quickly getting a life going in the simulation that’s both far more successful and much truer to themselves than the real life they’re currently living. Removing the fear and the concern with identity or the opinions of others would thrust the person into the not-actually-risky Chef Lab and have them bouncing around all the exhilarating places outside their comfort zone—and their lives would take off. That’s the life irrational fears block us from.
现实生活和《侠盗猎车手》（GTA）不同——法律是真切存在的，监狱也确确实实存在。但两者的差异，其实到这里也就差不多了。假如有人为你打造一个百分百还原当下世界的虚拟模拟，让你在其中自由探索，并保证这一切全是虚构、没有任何真实后果——唯一的规则是不能触犯法律、不能伤害他人，同时还要满足自己和家人的基本生存需求——你会怎么选择？

我想，大多数人在这样的世界里，会毫不犹豫地去尝试那些现实中渴望却一直不敢触碰的事情。结果，他们会在模拟世界中迅速开辟出一段比现实更成功、更贴近自我的人生。因为一旦去掉恐惧、身份羁绊和对他人眼光的顾虑，人便会被推入一个并不真正危险的“主厨实验室”，开始跃入舒适圈之外令人心潮澎湃的未知领域——而人生，也会就此展翅高飞。

那些不合逻辑的恐惧，正是阻断我们通向这样人生的最大锁链。

When I look at the amazing chefs of our time, what’s clear is that they’re more or less treating real life as if it’s Grand Theft Life. And doing so gives them superpowers. That’s what I think Steve Jobs meant all the times he said, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
当我望向当代那些令人叹服的“主厨”们时，我清楚地看到，他们几乎是在把现实人生当作一场真人版的《侠盗人生》来玩。而这种对世界的大胆游戏之心，恰恰赋予了他们如同超能力般的创造力与行动力。我想，这也正是史蒂夫·乔布斯多次所说“求知若渴，虚心若愚”的真正旨意。

And that’s what this third epiphany is about: fearlessness.
这便是第三个顿悟的真义：无惧。

这第三次顿悟所揭示的，正是无所畏惧的心境。

So if we want to think like a scientist more often in life, those are the three key objectives—to be humbler about what we know, more confident about what’s possible, and less afraid of things that don’t matter.
若我们希望在生活中更常以科学家的方式思考，那就应把握三大要义：对既有认知心存谦逊，对未来潜能笃定自信，对那些无关轻重之事少生惧意。

It’s a good plan—but also, ugh. Right? That’s a lot of stuff to try to do.
这个计划的确不错——可说真的，也让人有点发怵，是吧？要做的事情实在太多了。

Usually at the end of a post like this, the major point seems manageable and concrete, and I finish writing it all excited to go be good at shit. But this post was like, “Here’s everything important and go do it.” So how do we work with that?
通常，在写到这种文章的结尾时，核心观点往往已经变得清晰而具体，让人心潮澎湃，恨不得立刻冲出去大展拳脚。但这篇文章却仿佛在说：“所有重要的东西都在这儿了——去做吧。”那么，面对这样的情形，我们究竟该怎样着手呢？

I think the key is to not try to be a perfect chef or expect that of yourself whatsoever. Because no one’s a perfect chef—not even Elon. And no one’s a pure cook either—nothing’s black and white when you’re talking about an animal species whose brains contain 86 billion neurons. The reality is that we’re all a little of both, and where we are on that spectrum varies in 100 ways, depending on the part of life in question, the stage we’re in of our evolution, and our mood that day.
我觉得关键在于，不要执念于成为十全十美的“主厨”，也不要对自己抱有这样的奢望。毕竟，没有人真的是完美的主厨——连马斯克也不例外。同样，也没人是彻底纯粹的“厨师”，因为当我们谈论一种大脑里拥有860亿个神经元的生物时，一切都不可能是泾渭分明的黑白。现实是，我们每个人身上都兼具“厨师”的一面与“主厨”的一面，而在这条光谱上的位置，会随着生活所处的领域、个人成长的阶段，甚至当天的心绪而在百种微妙的变化中游移。

If we want to improve ourselves and move our way closer to the chef side of the spectrum, we have to remember to remember. We have to remember that we have software, not just hardware. We have to remember that reasoning is a skill and like any skill, you get better at it if you work on it. And we have to remember the cook/chef distinction, so we can notice when we’re being like one or the other.
如果我们想要不断精进自己，朝“主厨”那一端逐步迈近，就必须学会——记得去记得。要记得，我们不仅拥有“硬件”（天赋与生理条件），更具备“软件”（思维模式与知识体系）；要记得，推理是一种可以磨炼的技艺，和其他技能一样，唯有勤加练习才能臻于成熟；也要记得“厨师”与“主厨”的差异，这样才能在生活中敏锐察觉自己在不同情境下更像哪一类人。

It’s fitting that this blog is called Wait But Why because the whole thing is a little like the grown-up version of the Why? game. After emerging from the blur of the arrogance of my early twenties, I began to realize that my software was full of a lot of unfounded certainty and blind assumptions and that I needed to spend some serious time deconstructing—which is the reason that every Wait But Why post, no matter what the topic, tends to start off with the question, “What’s really going on here?”
“Wait But Why”这个博客的名字可谓恰到好处，因为它本质上就像是成年人版的“为什么？”游戏。走出二十岁出头那段自负而迷惘的岁月后，我渐渐察觉，自己的“软件”里充斥着许多毫无依据的笃信和盲目的假设。于是，我必须投入大量时间，细细拆解这些固化的思维——这也正是为何，无论主题为何，“Wait But Why”的每一篇文章几乎都会从一个发问开始：“这里，究竟在发生什么？”

For me, that question is the springboard into all of this remembering to remember—it’s a hammer that shatters a brittle, protective feeling of certainty and forces me to do the hard work of building a more authentic, more useful set of thoughts about something. Or at least a better-embraced bewilderment.
对我而言，这个问题就像一块跳板，将我推入那种“记得去记得”的思维之流——又仿佛是一柄锤子，猛然击碎那层脆弱却自我防御的确定感，逼迫我去做那份艰难而必要的功课，重新搭建一套更真切、更有价值的思想架构。或者，至少让我能更从容、更坦然地与困惑共处。

And when I started learning about Musk in preparation to write these posts, it hit me that he wasn’t just doing awesome things in the world—he was a master at looking at the world, asking “What’s really going on here?” and seeing the real answer. That’s why his story resonated so hard with me and why I dedicated so much Wait But Why time to this series.
当我为撰写这一系列文章而开始深入探究马斯克时，我猛然意识到，他不只是在人世间做着令人叹服的事业，更是一位洞察世界的高手——他总会追问：“这里的真相究竟是什么？”并能直抵事物的核心。这正是他的故事如此深深触动我的缘由，也是我愿倾注大量“Wait But Why”时间来完成这一系列的原因。

But also, Mars. Let’s all go, okay?
还有，火星。我们一起去吧，好吗？