Bryan Caplan on Learning Across Disciplines (Ep. 40)

On writing papers and books

关于撰写论文和书籍

People often have an idea of, there’s the really good papers where you should have a mind quake, and you never see the world again in the same way after that.

人们常常有这样的想法：有一些非常好的论文，你应该在其中进行思想震动，然后你就再也不会以同样的方式看待这个世界了。

For me, all of them fail to measure up to that standard.

对我来说，他们都达不到这个标准。

I think the way that you really learn something is by reading a vast empirical literature.

我认为真正学习东西的方法是阅读大量的实证文献。

The direct cause of this was .

造成这种情况的直接原因是。

.

。

.

。

I think Noah Smith had a challenge: “Name the two or three papers on each topic that are really convincing.” I was thinking about that and said, “Honestly, I can’t think of any papers like that unless you’re going to cheat and count a literature view as being that kind of a paper.”

我认为诺亚·史密斯面临着一个挑战：“说出每个主题中真正令人信服的两到三篇论文。”我在思考这个问题时说：“老实说，我想不出有什么论文是这样的，除非你会作弊，把文学观点算作那种论文。”

Just realizing that the way that you actually achieve social science knowledge isn’t by finding the one crucial — might be a natural experiment that shows exactly how the world works — but by assembling a wide variety of evidence and then muddling through.

只要意识到你真正获得社会科学知识的方式不是通过找到一个关键的“可能是一个自然实验来准确地展示世界是如何运作的”，而是通过收集各种各样的证据，然后蒙混过关。

Then I try to subdivide every topic into lots of separate subtopics, and then repeat that same process of going through Google Scholar just to see what is it that almost anyone has said about this topic.

然后我尝试将每个主题细分为许多单独的子主题，然后重复通过 Google Scholar 的相同过程，看看几乎每个人都对这个主题说了些什么。

When I actually get the papers, then I actually will go and look at the references and see if there’s more stuff that I should be looking at here.

当我真正拿到论文时，我实际上会去看参考文献，看看是否还有更多我应该看的东西。

I get those papers and go back to Google Scholar, and eventually the process does converge.

我拿到这些论文并返回谷歌学术，最终这个过程确实收敛了。

I do have some stopping rules.

我确实有一些停止规则。

I generally don’t worry too much about empirical papers written before 1980.

我一般不太担心 1980 年之前写的实证论文。

The next thing is when I’ve got what I think is a good, solid draft of a book.

接下来的事情是当我得到我认为是好的、扎实的一本书的草稿时。

That’s where I enlist my RA and say, “Get me all the emails of all the living people I’ve cited in the book so far,” and then email all of them with two offers.

在那里，我征召了我的 RA，并说：“给我提供迄今为止我在书中引用过的所有在世人物的所有电子邮件”，然后通过电子邮件向他们所有人发送两份录取通知书。

One of them is an offer to show them the entire manuscript.

其中之一是向他们展示整个手稿的提议。

The other one — so that I’m not over on the far right side of the Laffer curve — is to say, “Or, if you’re busy, then I could just tell you the exact pages where I discuss your works, so at least you can tell me whether I’m accurately summarizing your work or not.”

另一个 —— 这样我就不会在拉弗曲线的最右侧 —— 说，“或者，如果你很忙，那么我可以告诉你我讨论你的作品的确切页面，这样至少你可以告诉我我是否准确地总结了你的作品。”

For me, what I do is so interdisciplinary so I’m always worried about this autodidact’s curse, where you’ve read a ton of stuff but you still haven’t actually talked to anyone who knows what’s going on.

对我来说，我所做的事情是如此跨学科，所以我总是担心这个自学者的诅咒，你读了很多东西，但你仍然没有真正与任何知道发生了什么的人交谈。

This is one of the things that I try to do to deal with especially the wisdom of a field.

这是我尝试做的事情之一，尤其是处理某个领域的智慧。

Oftentimes there’s wisdom in a field, where it’s known to people who have thought about it for a long time, but they don’t write it down.

通常，某个领域存在智慧，人们思考很长时间就知道它，但他们不会把它写下来。

What I do is so interdisciplinary so I’m always worried about this autodidact’s curse, where you’ve read a ton of stuff but you still haven’t actually talked to anyone who knows what’s going on.

我所做的事情是如此跨学科，所以我总是担心这个自学者的诅咒，你读了很多东西，但你仍然没有真正与任何知道发生了什么的人交谈。

This is one of the things that I try to do to deal with especially the wisdom of a field.

这是我尝试做的事情之一，尤其是处理某个领域的智慧。

Oftentimes there’s wisdom in a field, where it’s known to people who have thought about it for a long time, but they don’t write it down.

通常，某个领域存在智慧，人们思考了很长时间才知道它，但他们不会把它写下来。

Of course, that’s very hard for the autodidact to find out.

当然，对于自学者来说这是很难发现的。

“What is the wisdom in your field that you don’t write down?” This is where I try to reach out to people.

“你所在领域的哪些智慧是你没有写下来的？”这就是我尝试与人们接触的地方。

Generally, I would say I get about a 15 percent response rate for the people saying they’ll at least read something, so I feel like it does give me some good quality control.

一般来说，我会说，对于那些说他们至少会读一些东西的人来说，我得到了大约 15% 的回复率，所以我觉得这确实给了我一些良好的质量控制。

There’s something actually very social about happiness.

幸福实际上是非常社交的。

When you read this, it makes so much sense — how little of happiness seems to be about material possessions and how much of it is about having good relationships with other people.

当你读到这篇文章时，你会发现它很有道理——“幸福似乎与物质财富无关，而与他人建立良好的关系却占了很大一部分。”

You can think about animals.

你可以想想动物。

When I read you something about animals, the animals that laugh, they’re all social animals.

当我读到一些关于动物的文章时，那些会笑的动物，它们都是群居动物。

Dogs laugh, chimpanzees laugh, humans laugh.

狗笑，黑猩猩笑，人类笑。

You never hear about a tiger laughing, these very asocial animals.

你从来没有听说过老虎笑，这些非常不合群的动物。

At least that’s one that I often do think about, is this connection between social interaction and being happy.

至少我经常思考的是社交互动和快乐之间的联系。

On how Bryan Caplan became Bryan Caplan

关于布莱恩·卡普兰如何成为布莱恩·卡普兰

There’s no curiosity.

没有好奇心。

It’s so insular, where people just are not curious, even what’s going on outside of the state of California.

它是如此与世隔绝，人们根本不好奇，甚至对加利福尼亚州以外发生的事情也不好奇。

It’s not like we only care about America.

我们并不只关心美国。

Californians talk about California all the time.

加州人总是谈论加州。

When you read the newspapers there, it’s like, “What’s happening in California?” To me, it’s a lot like when you’re in Canada, everybody’s always like, “What’s happening in Canada?” Well, why is that important?

当你读那里的报纸时，你会想，“加州发生了什么事？”对我来说，这很像当你在加拿大时，每个人总是会问，“加拿大发生了什么？”嗯，为什么这很重要？

This navel-gazing aspect of Californians — I see a lot of what I’m doing as reacting against that and being very intellectually curious and very interested in the world.

加州人的这种自我中心主义的一面——我认为我所做的很多事情都是对这一点的反应，并且对知识非常好奇，对世界非常感兴趣。

Although, not so much to me it’s a reaction.

不过，对我来说这并不是一种反应。

It does explain why I felt so dissatisfied growing up.

这确实解释了为什么我在成长过程中感到如此不满。

Remember, this is before the internet, so to go to the library and be able to get a good stack of books was the best that you could do in those days for intellectual enrichment.

请记住，这是在互联网出现之前，所以去图书馆并能够获得一大堆书籍是当时您可以做的最好的丰富知识的事情。

I really do envy my kids for what a cornucopia of wonder that they have if they want a feast for the mind.

我真的很羡慕我的孩子们，如果他们想要一场心灵的盛宴，他们就会拥有多么丰富的奇迹。

Honestly, no offense to my friends out in Northridge, but when I get there, it’s like, “Wow, this is such an intellectual wasteland.

老实说，无意冒犯我在北岭的朋友们，但当我到达那里时，我感觉，“哇，这真是一片知识荒地。

No one wants to talk about ideas out here.” There’s no curiosity.

没有人愿意在这里谈论想法。”没有好奇心。

It’s so insular, where people just are not curious, even what’s going on outside of the state of California.

它是如此与世隔绝，人们根本不好奇，甚至对加利福尼亚州以外发生的事情也不好奇。

It’s not like we only care about America.

我们并不只关心美国。

Californians talk about California all the time.

加州人总是谈论加州。

Anyway, I met Michael Huemer there, and out of all philosophers, he came to have the biggest influence on me.

不管怎样，我在那里遇到了迈克尔·休默，在所有哲学家中，他对我的影响最大。

There were many issues that I was grappling with, a lot of it under the influence of Ayn Rand, where the more I learned in philosophy, the more dissatisfied I became, and yet I couldn’t think of anything else that made any sense.

我正在努力解决很多问题，其中很多是在艾因·兰德的影响下，我在哲学上学到的越多，我就越不满意，但我想不出其他任何有意义的事情。

Mike Huemer, as a student, wrote a bunch of essays that said, “Wow, this seems like it really actually solves a fundamental problem of philosophy in a way that’s so much more satisfying than any of the others.”

迈克·休默（Mike Huemer）作为一名学生，写了一堆论文，其中写道：“哇，这似乎真的以一种比其他任何方法都更令人满意的方式解决了哲学的基本问题。”

He was a big influence to me there, and then over time, he really built on this.

他在那里对我产生了很大的影响，随着时间的推移，他真的以此为基础。

He now has this amazing corpus of work.

他现在拥有了这些令人惊叹的作品集。

For politics, he has this book, The Problem of Political Authority, which out of all the books of libertarian philosophy — almost every single one, if there were some nonlibertarian who said, “What’s a good book to read?” I’d be kind of embarrassed to give them the book because “Here it is, but .

对于政治，他有这本书《政治权威问题》，这本书在所有自由主义哲学书籍中——几乎每一本，如果有一些非自由主义者问，“什么是一本好书值得读？”如果我把这本书给他们，我会有点尴尬，因为“就在这儿，但是。

.

。

.” It’s not really very convincing to someone that doesn’t already agree.

”。对于尚未同意的人来说，这并不是很有说服力。

I think what’s great about this book, and really all of Mike’s work, is he always tries to start off with premises that make sense to people that don’t already agree, and then try to get somewhere.

我认为这本书以及迈克的所有作品的伟大之处在于，他总是试图从对那些尚未同意的人有意义的前提开始，然后尝试取得进展。

And the amazing thing is, he does get places, actually.

令人惊奇的是，他确实得到了位置，事实上。

What’s the fundamental feature in Bryan Caplan–think that has made you, unlike most other nerds, so much more interested in Stalin than science fiction?

布莱恩·卡普兰的基本特征是什么——你认为这使你与大多数其他书呆子不同，对斯大林比科幻小说更感兴趣？

Reading it, it’s like, “If only I could be one of these bloodthirsty tyrants, then everyone .

读起来就像是，“如果我能成为这些嗜血暴君之一，那么每个人都可以。

.

。

.” Terrible, but that’s the honest truth of it.

”。可怕的是，但这就是事实。

Even when I got to fifth grade, I read this big book.

即使我上了五年级，我也读了这本大书。

It was like 10 biographies of different dictators.

这就像十本不同独裁者的传记。

When I really got interested, though, I was very interested in European history, when I was in the 11th grade.

不过，当我真正感兴趣时，我对欧洲历史非常感兴趣，那是在我十一年级的时候。

I put a lot of time in reading that.

我花了很多时间来阅读它。

It was only later, actually, when I got into libertarianism that I became interested in first of all, not being a dictator, and going, “Oh my God, these people were actually terrible.”

实际上，直到后来，当我进入自由主义时，我首先对自己感兴趣，而不是成为一个独裁者，然后说：“天哪，这些人实际上很糟糕。”

Yeah, everybody knew that.

是的，每个人都知道这一点。

I kind of knew it, but at the same time, it was sort of like someone who reads through a crime where on the one hand, you know that it’s terrible, but on the other hand, it’s like, “Oh, but he’s so clever.

我有点知道这一点，但与此同时，这有点像一个人在阅读犯罪案件时，一方面，你知道这很可怕，但另一方面，它就像，“哦，但他太聪明了。

He almost got away with it.”

他差一点就逃脱了惩罚。”

When I became interested in libertarianism, then became interested in the exact opposite and what that’s like.

当我对自由主义感兴趣时，我又对完全相反的自由主义感兴趣。

And that’s where Stalin is, of course, a focal figure as, at least up until his time, the most totalitarian leader in human history — someone who combined an ideology, rationalizing it with a personality that actually craved it, combined the technology that allowed it to really be done in practice.

当然，这就是斯大林作为焦点人物的地方，至少在他那个时代，他是人类历史上最极权主义的领导人——他将意识形态与真正渴望意识形态的个性结合起来，将其合理化，并结合了使其能够在实践中真正实现的技术。

That got me really excited.

这让我非常兴奋。

In terms of why that rather than science fiction, I guess for me, the main thing about most science fiction is it lacks — not all of it but most of it — it lacks what I call emotional truth, where there’s just not a lot of interest in the inner lives of the characters.

就为什么这而不是科幻小说而言，我想对我来说，大多数科幻小说的主要问题是它缺乏 ——“不是全部，而是大部分”——它缺乏我所说的情感真实，即对人物的内心生活没有太多兴趣。

To me, that’s the interesting thing about any story, is the inner lives of the characters.

对我来说，任何故事的有趣之处在于人物的内心生活。

Tolstoy, you read it: “There are 17 kinds of little old ladies.

托尔斯泰，你读过：“小老太太有十七种。

This was the 13th kind.

这是第13种。

This was the kind that’s very interested in what you’re eating but doesn’t wish to hear about your romance, which will be contrasted with the seventh kind which has exactly the opposite preferences.” That’s what’s to me so great about Tolstoy.

这种人对你吃的东西很感兴趣，但不想听你的浪漫史，这与第七种人形成鲜明对比，第七种人的偏好完全相反。”这就是托尔斯泰对我来说如此伟大的地方。

To me, pure genre fiction has no appeal.

对我来说，纯粹的类型小说没有吸引力。

Especially anyone who ever tells me that science fiction is good because it’s scientifically accurate, this is where, “Oh god, that’s the best you can say for it is that there’s no sound in space?”

尤其是那些曾经告诉我科幻小说是好的，因为它在科学上是准确的，这就是“天哪，这是你能说的最好的，因为太空中没有声音？”

Wouldn’t you much rather watch a space opera where the characters have a rich inner life and where there’s drama and where the storytelling sucks you in and makes you care whether the character is disintegrated than whether the character disintegrates in a scientifically correct way?

难道你不愿意看一部太空歌剧，其中的角色有丰富的内心生活，有戏剧性，故事讲述吸引你，让你关心角色是否解体，而不是角色是否以科学正确的方式解体？

You have to remember these are the very early years of the internet, when all the suppressed urges that I had to go and pontificate suddenly had an outlet.

你必须记住，这是互联网的最初几年，当时我所有压抑的想要去发表言论的冲动突然有了一个出口。

If the internet existed when I was in high school, I might have actually failed out of high school because I would have put so much energy into creating web pages, like “This is my take on each of these different topics.”

如果我在高中时就已经存在互联网，那么我实际上可能会在高中毕业时失败，因为我会投入大量精力来创建网页，例如“这是我对每个不同主题的看法”。

The first time that the web was working well enough where you could actually do this — at least where I had enough knowledge to make it work — was 1993, 1994.

网络第一次运行得足够好，你可以真正做到这一点 ——至少在我有足够的知识使其运行的情况下——是在 1993 年、1994 年。

Then to me, I put, I think, more time into my internet projects than into my actual studies, counting class time and everything else.

然后对我来说，我认为，我在互联网项目上投入的时间比实际学习的时间还要多，算上课堂时间和其他一切。

If the internet existed when I was in high school, I might have actually failed out of high school because I would have put so much energy into creating web pages, like “This is my take on each of these different topics.”

如果我在高中时就已经存在互联网，那么我实际上可能会在高中毕业时失败，因为我会投入大量精力来创建网页，例如“这是我对每个不同主题的看法”。

So the Museum of Communism — this is one where I wanted to go and put together all of my thoughts about the history of communism.

所以共产主义博物馆 ——这是我想去的地方，汇集了我对共产主义历史的所有想法。

I would say that’s it’s maybe 7 percent done.

我想说这可能已经完成了 7%。

Almost all that 7 percent was done during my graduate school years, the parts that actually I really completed.

几乎所有这 7% 都是在我读研究生期间完成的，这些部分是我真正完成的。

I had sections on the Marxist and czarist origins of communism, which is building on a rich historical literature.

我有关于共产主义的马克思主义和沙皇主义起源的章节，这是建立在丰富的历史文献之上的。

Obviously, there’s the Marxist roots but then people saying that there’s a lot of continuities with czarism.

显然，它有马克思主义根源，但人们说它与沙皇主义有很多连续性。

That made a lot of sense to me in sort of thinking of Lenin as being the Marxist czar of all the Russias.

这对我来说很有意义，因为我认为列宁是所有俄罗斯的马克思主义沙皇。

Then I had a FAQ, frequently asked questions, where I went over what was known about the numbers at the time.

然后我有一个常见问题解答，常见问题，我回顾了当时对这些数字的了解。

Since then, I’ve learned quite a bit more about the numbers, especially numbers for deaths in the gulag seem in the literature at the time overstated by quite a bit.

从那时起，我对这些数字有了更多的了解，尤其是当时的文献中古拉格集中营的死亡人数似乎被夸大了很多。

But I’ve never gone back and updated.

但我从来没有回去更新过。

Obviously, that would be something that I would do, is bring it up to date with better data that we’ve got now.

显然，这将是我要做的事情，用我们现在掌握的更好的数据来更新它。

On the bias towards action

关于行动的偏见

To be hired as a bartender, maybe it’s a real advantage to have a college degree.

要被聘为调酒师，也许拥有大学学位才是真正的优势。

This encourages too many people to go to college.

这鼓励了太多人上大学。

At the same time, there seems to be a waste of talent and a lot of bureaucracy and paper credentials, hard to get second chances, and so on.

与此同时，似乎还存在人才浪费、大量官僚主义和纸质证书、很难获得第二次机会等问题。

What deeper disease about our society do you think excess credentialism reflects?

您认为过度的信用主义反映了我们社会的哪些更深层次的疾病？

That is, if you try to explain it almost as an anthropologist, like here’s why we’re really so screwed up to have done this, what’s your answer?

也就是说，如果你尝试以人类学家的身份来解释它，比如这就是为什么我们真的搞砸了这样做，你的答案是什么？

Let’s go and create a big education system and encourage everyone to spend as many years as possible in the system.

让我们去创建一个大的教育系统，并鼓励每个人在这个系统中度过尽可能多的时间。

Then in the end, of course, the hope is that this will lead to not just social mobility, but to a whole society where almost everyone has a really good job.

当然，最终我们希望这不仅会带来社会流动性，而且会带来一个几乎每个人都有一份好工作的整个社会。

Yet again, if my book is right, the main result seems to be not that everyone gets good jobs, or at least every college graduate gets a good job, but rather employers ratchet up the educational expectations to be considered worthy to be a secretary or to be a bartender at a nice bar.

再说一遍，如果我的书是对的，那么主要结果似乎不是每个人都找到了好工作，或者至少每个大学毕业生都找到了好工作，而是雇主提高了教育期望，以被认为值得成为一名秘书或在一家不错的酒吧担任调酒师。

There’s a lot of people who would like to start their own business, but they don’t try because they have some sense that it’s really hard.

有很多人想自己创业，但他们没有尝试，因为他们觉得这真的很难。

What I see in government is, there isn’t the same kind of filter, which is a big part of my work in general in politics.

我在政府中看到的是，没有同样类型的过滤器，这是我总体政治工作的重要组成部分。

You don’t have the same kind of personal disincentives against doing things that sound good but actually don’t work out very well in practice.

你不会有同样的个人阻碍去做那些听起来不错但实际上在实践中效果不佳的事情。

Probably even bigger than action bias is actually what psychologists call social desirability bias: just doing things that sound good whether or not they actually work very well and not really asking hard questions about whether things that sound good will work out very well in practice.

可能比行动偏见更严重的是心理学家所说的社会愿望偏见：只做听起来不错的事情，无论它们实际上是否运作良好，而不是真正询问听起来不错的事情在实践中是否会很好地发挥作用。

Again, I think of this as primarily a disease of government because it’s so based upon what people say rather than trying to do a comparison between what we thought was going to happen and how things actually turned out.

再说一次，我认为这主要是政府的一种疾病，因为它完全基于人们的言论，而不是试图将我们认为将要发生的事情与实际结果进行比较。

The Straussian version of the Caplanian themes is the whole world is infested with action bias and that if you understand action bias at a deep level for decisive actions .

卡普兰主题的施特劳斯版本是，整个世界都充斥着行动偏见，如果你深入了解行动偏见，就会采取果断的行动。

.

。

.

。

For nondecisive actions, rational irrationality kicks in.

对于非果断的行动，理性的非理性就会发挥作用。

You have two blades, the scissors.

你有两把刀片，剪刀。

You put them together, and you can then explain a 2018.

你把它们放在一起，然后你就可以解释 2018 年了。

Yes, no?

是的，不是？

I think that is a big part of what makes parenting so unpleasant in the modern US — the sense of “If I’m not acting all the time to go and help my kids, then I’m a failure, and my kids will be failures.”

我认为这就是现代美国养育子女如此不愉快的一个重要原因——“如果我不一直采取行动去帮助我的孩子，那么我就是一个失败者，我的孩子也会失败。”

I think there is a lot more going on than just those things.

我认为除了这些事情之外还有很多事情正在发生。

In general, my work is .

总的来说，我的工作是。

.

。

.

。

Unlike, say, Robin, I do have a resistance to monocausal things and explanations that seem like they’re overbroad.

与罗宾不同的是，我确实对单一因果的事物和似乎过于宽泛的解释有抵触情绪。

I do try to narrow it down and think about one thing at a time.

我确实尝试缩小范围，一次只考虑一件事。

My general view is, you get a better general theory of things if you work on a lot of particular issues first and then step back, like we’re doing now, and say, “Are there some commonalities?”

我的总体观点是，如果你首先研究很多特定问题，然后退后一步，就像我们现在所做的那样，然后说：“有一些共同点吗？”，你会得到一个更好的一般事物理论。

On signaling and the return to education

关于信号传递和回归教育

Of course, the reason, if you’re saying, “Well, why do you want to get completion probability up?” For an economist, “Well, so we can get the expected rate of return up.” Meanwhile, over in the realm where they’re doing the rate of return, they usually do it the wrong way, which is by looking at the payoffs for people who successfully complete.

当然，原因是，如果你说：“那么，为什么你想提高完成概率？”对于经济学家来说，“好吧，这样我们就可以提高预期回报率。”与此同时，在他们计算回报率的领域，他们通常以错误的方式做事，即查看成功完成的人的回报。

The most superficial story is just that people do it because the data is constructed that way.

最表面的故事只是人们这样做是因为数据是这样构建的。

Because normally, the measure of education that economists use asks, “What is the highest number of years of school that you have successfully completed?” Then they just run the regression and kind of forget exactly what the measure even is.

因为通常情况下，经济学家使用的教育衡量标准会问：“您成功完成的最高受教育年数是多少？”然后他们只是进行回归，却忘记了衡量标准到底是什么。

I think this does reflect a general pro-education bias, especially among people or economists who work in education — labor economists, education economists — where they just aren’t looking that hard for reasons that education might be overrated.

我认为这确实反映了普遍的支持教育的偏见，尤其是在从事教育工作的人或经济学家中——“劳动经济学家、教育经济学家”——他们只是因为教育可能被高估而没有那么努力地寻找。

Again, it’s one where there’s nonlinearity, and so it’s hard just to do the simple back of the envelope.

再说一次，这是一个存在非线性的问题，因此很难只做简单的背面处理。

But the thing to remember is not only — the on-time completion rate for full-time students doing four-year degrees, something like 40 percent.

但要记住的不仅仅是 ——攻读四年制学位的全日制学生的按时完成率，大约为 40%。

So, at least it’s not obvious to me that the right number is different from 80 percent, so that’s what I’ll go with.

所以，至少对我来说，正确的数字与 80% 不同并不明显，所以我会采用这个数字。

Again, just to see the small amount of K-12 time spent on any kind of studying that seems plausibly to be future job related.

再次，只是为了看看 K-12 花在任何似乎与未来工作相关的学习上的时间很少。

Then similarly, in college, you see just these — the rareness of majors that are plausibly vocational.

同样，在大学里，你会看到这些——看似职业的专业很少见。

There’s a lot of people saying, “Well, I mean, hardly anyone is doing your traditional humanities anymore.

很多人说：“嗯，我的意思是，几乎没有人再做传统的人文学科了。

There are not many people doing history or English anymore.”

现在学历史或英语的人已经不多了。”

Again, that doesn’t mean they’re switching to STEM.

再次强调，这并不意味着他们要转向 STEM。

They’re switching to things more like communications where, at first glance, you might think it’s vocational until you realize how few jobs there are in that field compared to the number of people that are graduating with that major every year.

他们正在转向更像通信的行业，乍一看，你可能会认为这是职业，直到你意识到与每年该专业的毕业生数量相比，该领域的工作岗位是多么少。

The material that they actually are studying in school is not very related to the job, and the way that people get good at their jobs in those countries, just like almost any country, is learning by doing.

他们实际上在学校学习的材料与工作并没有太大关系，而在这些国家，人们做好工作的方式，就像几乎所有国家一样，是在实践中学习。

The main thing going on is that they are spending years jumping through hoops in order to finally be allowed.

最重要的是，他们花费了数年的时间才最终获得许可。

Normally, I hate it when people go and find one new story as proof of something.

通常情况下，我讨厌人们去寻找一个新故事作为某件事的证据。

But there was a recent one from South Korea so vivid, where even if you say that it is cherry picked, still, that such a cherry exists says something.

但韩国最近有一个非常生动的例子，即使你说它是樱桃采摘的，但这样的樱桃的存在仍然说明了一些事情。

This was a story about, the government in South Korea wanted to hire four janitors, and most of the applicants had college degrees.

这是一个故事，韩国政府想招聘四名清洁工，而大多数应聘者都有大学学位。

In the end, they hired three BAs and one AA to be janitors there.

最后，他们聘请了三名 BA 和一名 AA 在那里担任清洁工。

This disease of credential inflation seems to be serious in countries where people think of education as something that’s central to their success.

在人们认为教育对其成功至关重要的国家，这种学历膨胀的弊病似乎很严重。

I don’t think so.

我不这么认为。

You could have a strong version of the signaling model where you have an idea about, first of all, average productivity, and then you have an idea about average productivity gain, and then there’s not much connection at all.

你可以有一个强大的信号模型版本，首先你可以了解平均生产力，然后你可以了解平均生产力增益，然后就没有太多联系了。

I don’t think that’s right.

我认为这是不对的。

What I would say is, it is reasonable to think the signaling share goes down over time, and there is evidence this is so.

我想说的是，认为信号份额随着时间的推移而下降是合理的，并且有证据表明确实如此。

However, how quickly does it go down and by how much?

然而，它下降的速度有多快以及下降的幅度是多少？

That’s where — there is a whole literature called the employer learning statistical discrimination literature where they do try to measure this.

这就是 —— 有一整篇文献称为雇主学习统计歧视文献，他们确实试图衡量这一点。

The usual view there is that, at minimum, you’re talking about a 10-year wait before you start getting reasonable credit even for your IQ, which is one of the easiest and most observable, most testable traits that employers value.

通常的观点是，至少要等 10 年才能开始获得合理的信用，即使你的智商也是雇主看重的最容易、最容易观察、最可测试的特质之一。

So it makes perfect sense to me, there’s a lot of other traits where it may take a very long time.

所以这对我来说非常有意义，还有很多其他特征可能需要很长时间。

Furthermore, as I say in the book, if the model of actual employment in the real world were, “Hire someone, see if they’re good, and then if they’re not as good as you thought, fire them,” then I think your story’d make a lot more sense.

此外，正如我在书中所说，如果现实世界中的实际就业模型是“雇用某人，看看他们是否优秀，然后如果他们不如你想象的那么好，就解雇他们”，那么我认为你的故事会更有意义。

There’s even a special word for this in what I call the termination community, the group of people who specialize in firing.

在我所说的“终止社区”中，甚至有一个专门的词来形容这一点，即专门从事解雇的一群人。

They call this de-hiring.

他们称之为“解雇”。

We’re not firing you, we’re de-hiring you.

我们不是解雇你，而是解雇你。

We’re encouraging you to find an opportunity elsewhere where you can become somebody else’s problem.

我们鼓励您到其他地方寻找机会，让您成为别人的问题。

The way that actual jobs usually work is, when you get someone who’s disappointing, they have to be really bad to get fired unless there’s a recession.

实际工作通常的运作方式是，当你找到一个令人失望的人时，除非出现经济衰退，否则他们必须非常糟糕才能被解雇。

If you do want to get rid of them, it’s much more common for there to be a little conspiracy between the bad employee and the employer to help the bad employee get another job someplace else.

如果你确实想解雇他们，更常见的是不良员工和雇主之间存在一些阴谋，以帮助不良员工在其他地方找到另一份工作。

As I found doing the research of the book, there’s even a special word for this in what I call the termination community, the group of people who specialize in firing.

当我对这本书进行研究时发现，在我所说的“终止社区”中，甚至有一个专门的词来形容这一点，即专门从事解雇的人群。

They call this de-hiring.

他们称之为“解雇”。

We’re not firing you, we’re de-hiring you.

我们不是解雇你，而是解雇你。

We’re encouraging you to find an opportunity elsewhere where you can become somebody else’s problem.

我们鼓励您在其他地方寻找机会，让您成为别人的问题。

Once you realize this is actually a big part of the modern labor market, the idea that someone could basically go from one job where they’re a burden to another job where they’re a burden to another one.

一旦你意识到这实际上是现代劳动力市场的一个重要组成部分，人们基本上可以从一份对他们来说是负担的工作转到另一份对另一份工作来说是负担的工作。

For me, the main value of a colleague is lunch.

对我来说，同事的主要价值是午餐。

Again, the key thing out of this whole literature on actual firing and de-hiring is that, even after the employer has full information, this does not mean it’s going to be reflected in wages anytime soon.

再说一遍，关于实际解雇和解雇的整个文献的关键是，即使雇主掌握了完整的信息，这并不意味着它会很快反映在工资中。

That can take a lot longer.

这可能需要更长的时间。

Because — and people don’t like firing, and they often conspire to help a worker that they don’t like to get another job where, once again, they’re overpaid.

因为 ——人们不喜欢被解雇，他们经常合谋帮助那些他们不喜欢的工人找到另一份工作，而这又是他们薪水过高的工作。

Then the way that actual pay is handed out, again, it’s very unusual to do an absolute pay cut, so really very unusual to even give a person zero raise if other people are getting raises.

然后，实际工资的发放方式再次表明，绝对减薪是非常不寻常的，因此，如果其他人加薪，甚至给一个人零加薪，这确实非常不寻常。

These are all things that really slow things down.

这些都是真正减慢速度的事情。

So even after you’ve handled the purely intellectual problem of how good is the person, there’s this other problem of, right, how quickly does the system actually react to it?

因此，即使你已经解决了这个人有多优秀这个纯粹的智力问题，还有另一个问题，对吧，系统实际上对它的反应有多快？

And how well does that information disperse throughout the system?

这些信息在整个系统中的传播情况如何？

If the speed of learning is very slow — let’s say you need 10 years to figure out who’s good and who isn’t — then it seems educational signaling is actually highly productive because it helps you slot the better workers into the better jobs.

如果学习速度非常慢——假设你需要 10 年才能弄清楚谁好谁不好——那么教育信号实际上是非常有效的，因为它可以帮助你将更好的员工分配到更好的工作。

So you can kind of pick your poison, but you’ve got to choose somewhere on the spectrum.

所以你可以选择你的毒药，但你必须选择范围内的某个地方。

Either way, it seems the cost of signaling won’t quite be that high.

不管怎样，信号传递的成本似乎不会那么高。

Or am I wrong?

还是我错了？

There’s still a big problem, which is, what has to happen before you can work for someone for three months?

还有一个大问题，那就是，你必须先做什么才能为某人工作三个月？

You have to be hired.

你必须被雇用。

What has to happen before you’re hired?

在你被录用之前必须发生什么？

You have to actually stand out in an interview.

你必须在面试中真正脱颖而出。

What has to happen to stand out in the interview?

怎样才能在面试中脱颖而出？

You have to get interviewed.

你必须接受采访。

What has to happen to get interviewed?

接受采访需要做什么？

You have to have your résumé not thrown in the trash.

你必须让你的简历不要被扔进垃圾桶。

I think of a lot of what people are signaling is just, they’re signaling to get opportunities.

我认为人们发出的很多信号只是为了获得机会。

They’re signaling to get a time to actually talk to the employer and convince them that they are worthy.

他们表示要找时间与雇主进行真正的交谈，并让他们相信自己是值得的。

I really much like the analogy of getting your big break in Hollywood.

我真的很喜欢在好莱坞取得重大突破的比喻。

There are a lot of actors right now, I think, who are really good.

我认为现在有很多演员都非常出色。

But until they actually get a chance to star in a movie, it’s very hard for them to convince anyone that they have this talent.

但在他们真正有机会主演电影之前，他们很难让任何人相信他们有这种天赋。

They can go and show up to try to get an audition, but again, just to get enough of people’s attention to show them and to get them to put the energy into you.

他们可以去参加试镜，但同样，只是为了获得足够的人们的注意力来展示他们，并让他们把精力投入到你身上。

Remember, hiring people is really expensive.

请记住，雇用人员的成本非常昂贵。

You’re taking the time of some of the most valuable employees at a firm, who are the people who need to be there to judge whether a person’s good enough, and you are distracting them.

你占用了公司中一些最有价值的员工的时间，他们需要在那里判断一个人是否足够好，而你却分散了他们的注意力。

Think about this: Say you’ve hired somebody who’s a disappointment.

想一想：假设你雇佣了一个令人失望的人。

At what percentile does someone have to be before it even is profitable just to fire them and then go back to the drawing broad?

一个人必须达到百分之几才可以盈利，然后解雇他们，然后再重新开始工作？

Obviously, somebody’s in the 45th percentile of expectation, you don’t want to fire them and go back to the drawing board.

显然，如果有人的期望值达到了 45%，你不想解雇他们并重新开始。

Maybe you want to go back, like maybe the 30th, the 25th percentile is there.

也许你想回去，比如第 30 个、第 25 个百分位数就在那里。

Obviously, this is about the big cost of hiring someone and just sorting them out at that stage.

显然，这是关于雇用某人并在那个阶段将他们分类的巨大成本。

The fact that employers are not in the business of giving chances, they’re in the business of making money.

事实上，雇主的职责不是提供机会，而是赚钱。

Chances are expensive to hand out.

提供机会的成本很高。

The more times people talk efficiency wages, that’s the real problem.

人们谈论效率工资的次数越多，这才是真正的问题。

How about the problem of employers don’t want to fire people who are incompetent?

雇主不想解雇无能的人的问题怎么样？

How about that problem?

那这个问题呢？

It’s not one that sounds very good, but it’s one that I think is very serious.

这不是一个听起来很好的问题，但我认为这是一个非常严肃的问题。

Or again, for all the talk that people have about discouraged workers and how unemployment rates understate the severity of the unemployment problems, they’re ignoring discouraged workers.

或者，尽管人们一直在谈论灰心丧气的工人以及失业率如何低估了失业问题的严重性，但他们却忽视了灰心丧气的工人。

I always remember, “Sure, but what about the megalomaniacal workers?” The workers that think they’re too good for any job for which they’re actually qualified for, and they keep searching around and staying in the numbers, even though it would be like me claiming to be an unemployed brain surgeon.

我总是记得，“当然，但是那些狂妄自大的工人呢？”那些认为自己太优秀而无法胜任自己真正有资格从事的工作的工人，他们不断地四处寻找并留在数字中，尽管这就像我自称是一名失业的脑外科医生一样。

I’m not an unemployed brain surgeon; I’m not a brain surgeon at all.

我不是失业的脑外科医生；我根本不是脑外科医生。

In general, the world’s more complicated.

一般来说，世界更加复杂。

Especially, the problem here is that the behavioral economics revolution, or like psychology in economics, does not really enter labor economics nearly as much as it should.

特别是，这里的问题是，行为经济学革命，或者像经济学中的心理学一样，并没有像应有的那样真正进入劳动经济学。

Especially like economists, when they do psychology, they only read a few parts of psychology, and there’s a bunch of other areas they just don’t pay much attention to that I think also are leading to some tough results.

特别是像经济学家一样，当他们研究心理学时，他们只阅读了心理学的一小部分，而他们只是没有太多关注其他许多领域，我认为这些领域也导致了一些艰难的结果。

Again, of course, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have government policies that are amplifying a problem.

当然，这并不意味着政府政策不会加剧问题。

Sure, any time you have human beings dealing with each other face to face, there’s going to be things that are badly screwed up.

当然，任何时候当人类面对面打交道时，总会有一些事情被严重搞砸。

Also, in your book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, you’re saying, at least within certain margins of acceptable behavior, parenting doesn’t matter that much.

另外，在你的书《生更多孩子的自私理由》中，你说，至少在可接受行为的某些范围内，养育子女并不那么重要。

You believe in both of these two views.

这两种观点你都相信。

Schooling doesn’t matter that much.

上学没那么重要。

Parenting doesn’t matter that much.

养育子女并不那么重要。

In terms of the economy, a big part of how people get good at their jobs is just by practice.

就经济而言，人们如何做好工作的很大一部分就是通过实践。

A major difference between practicing today and practicing 100 years ago is there’s better kinds of practice to emulate.

今天的练习与 100 年前的练习之间的主要区别在于，有更好的练习可供模仿。

I would say in terms of why modern culture has changed these ways, the story of just people are richer, and that makes a big difference.

我想说的是，就现代文化为何改变这些方式而言，人们的故事更加丰富，这产生了很大的不同。

I think there’s a lot to that.

我认为这有很多内容。

Just the way that people are much more freaked out about taking chances with their lives — that seems to me to be a big part of being in a rich society where you just have a lot to lose.

就像人们更加害怕拿自己的生命冒险一样——在我看来，这就是生活在一个富裕社会的一个重要组成部分，在这个社会里你会失去很多。

Also, you can live comfortably without risking your life.

而且，您可以舒适地生活，而不必冒生命危险。

Just being a richer society, I think that matters a lot.

作为一个更加富裕的社会，我认为这很重要。

In terms of other things that seem changed, just the much greater availability of entertainment — this is something that I think has replaced a lot of things that people were doing in earlier periods.

就其他似乎发生变化的事情而言，只是娱乐的可用性大大提高 ——我认为这已经取代了人们早期所做的很多事情。

I think the wide availability of entertainment probably explains a lot of religious decline.

我认为娱乐活动的广泛普及可能在很大程度上解释了宗教的衰落。

If you had a couple of weird parents today, then you might still turn out to be a normal member of adult society.

如果你今天有一对奇怪的父母，那么你可能仍然是成人社会的正常成员。

But on the other hand, if you were raised in a society where all the parents were very different, probably a very different outcome.

但另一方面，如果你在一个所有父母都非常不同的社会中长大，结果可能会非常不同。

I remember Judith Harris had an example in her book where there were some Orthodox Jewish parents who decided to move to Israel to live on a kibbutz because they said, “Look, as long as we’re in America, we can’t control our kids.

我记得朱迪思·哈里斯在她的书中举了一个例子，一些正统的犹太父母决定搬到以色列住在基布兹，因为他们说，“看，只要我们在美国，我们就无法控制我们的孩子。

We got to go to a place where all the kids are controlled by parents like this.

我们必须去一个所有孩子都被父母这样控制的地方。

So we have basically blocked out the outside world.”

所以我们基本上已经与外界隔绝了。”

She’s there saying, “No, I don’t care where you are.

她在那里说：“不，我不在乎你在哪里。

You should be an Aristotelian.

你应该是一个亚里士多德主义者。

Doesn’t matter you were born in Moscow or you had this background.

不管你出生在莫斯科还是有这样的背景。

We should all be reading the great works and the great minds, especially me,” for her of course.

我们都应该阅读伟大的作品和伟大的思想，尤其是我，”当然是为了她。

Your background shouldn’t matter very much.

你的背景应该不太重要。

In the end, the reason she wrote about this is, she looked around and saw that people are generally very conformist — Fountainhead, the “second-handers,” the people who form their views of what is meaningful based upon looking around at others.

归根结底，她写这篇文章的原因是，她环顾四周，发现人们普遍都很墨守成规——“源头”，即“二手者”，是那些通过环顾他人而形成自己对有意义事物的看法的人。

She didn’t write about this because she thought it was rare.

她没有写下这件事，因为她认为这种情况很少见。

She wrote about this because she thought it was normal but terrible.

她写下这件事是因为她认为这很正常但很可怕。

I think very much at least in the same ballpark for me, I am very individualistic.

我认为至少在同一个球场上对我来说，我非常个人主义。

Of course, if this were the normal thing, everyone else would be doing it.

当然，如果这是正常的事情，那么其他人都会这样做。

Then there wouldn’t be anything special about me doing it.

那么我这样做就没有什么特别的了。

In a way, if you don’t think the culture’s really important, it’s hard to be an individualist because then you aren’t different from other people.

在某种程度上，如果你不认为文化真的很重要，就很难成为个人主义者，因为那样你就与其他人没有什么不同。

On fixing schooling

关于解决学校教育问题

What if someone came to you and said, “Well, take South Korea.

如果有人对你说：“好吧，以韩国为例。

Government there spends relatively little subsidizing higher ed.

那里的政府对高等教育的补贴相对较少。

But signaling costs are high.

但信号发送成本很高。

In Germany, the whole system is more or less free.

在德国，整个系统或多或少都是免费的。

People go on strike if they’re asked to pay 10 marks or 10 euros a semester.

如果人们被要求每学期缴纳 10 马克或 10 欧元，他们就会罢工。

And in Germany, a lot of the universities are mediocre.

在德国，很多大学都很平庸。

But the German economy does fine.

但德国经济表现良好。

So isn’t the solution to too much signaling, in a sense, nationalize the sector and lower quality and get people less interested in it?”

那么，从某种意义上说，解决过多信号的办法难道不是将该行业国有化、降低质量并降低人们的兴趣吗？”

Government spending is generally going to be piled on top of whatever other spending is there.

政府支出通常会叠加在其他支出之上。

We see that there’s countries where the total spending is low, but government’s spending it all.

我们看到有些国家的总支出较低，但政府却将其全部支出。

I wouldn’t say that shows that government spending reduces spending.

我不会说这表明政府支出减少了支出。

I’d say that government is spending in countries where otherwise the private demand would have been lower on its own.

我想说的是，政府正在一些国家进行支出，否则私人需求本身就会较低。

Fun fact: it seems like the US spends as much as a share of GDP on Medicare plus Medicaid taking care of a small part of the population as a lot of other countries do taking care of the whole population.

有趣的事实：美国在医疗保险加医疗补助上的支出似乎占国内生产总值的一部分，用于照顾一小部分人口，而许多其他国家则用于照顾全体人口。

So you might look and say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we just did what other countries did?” I say, “Well, is what other countries do to spend in an American style for everybody?

所以你可能会说：“如果我们像其他国家那样做，不是很好吗？”我说：“那么，其他国家是如何以美国式的方式为每个人花钱的呢？

Or is it to go and spend in the style of other countries on everybody?”

还是像其他国家那样，在每个人身上花钱？”

I think what would happen in the US, or really almost any country that were to follow your advice, is that they would just have even more spending.

我认为在美国，或者几乎所有听从你建议的国家，将会发生的情况是，他们只会有更多的支出。

Especially the US.

尤其是美国。

If the US took socialized medicine, we wouldn’t even have Medicaid for all.

如果美国实行社会化医疗，我们甚至不会为所有人提供医疗补助。

We would have Medicare for all.

我们将为所有人提供医疗保险。

Americans would be horrified at the idea of anyone getting anything less than the very best treatment, and the cry of death panels has enormous resonance here.

美国人会对任何人得不到最好治疗的想法感到震惊，死亡小组的呼声在这里引起了巨大的共鸣。

Your general point: government subsidies increase spending.

您的一般观点是：政府补贴增加支出。

If it seems like they don’t, it’s probably because you haven’t looked closely enough.

如果看起来没有，那可能是因为你观察得还不够仔细。

This is puzzling because it sure seems like there’s way better ways to improve test scores, starting obviously with just teaching the test.

这令人费解，因为似乎确实有更好的方法来提高考试成绩，显然从教授考试开始。

Many people say people are teaching the test all the time.

许多人说人们一直在教考试。

Whenever I actually look at my kid’s schools, like, what are you talking about?

每当我真正看到我孩子的学校时，我就会想，你在说什么？

There’s three practice tests.

有三个练习测试。

If I wanted to teach the test, there would be a hundred practice tests.

如果我想教考试，就会有一百个模拟考试。

That’s how I would handle it if you told me, “Get test scores up.”

如果你告诉我“提高考试成绩”，我就会这样处理。

I think the main thing that we learn from this is that most parents don’t care about test scores.

我认为我们从中学到的主要一点是，大多数家长并不关心考试成绩。

When you give them a choice, they aren’t looking around for the school that will raise kids’ test scores the most.

当你给他们选择时，他们不会四处寻找最能提高孩子考试成绩的学校。

They’re looking around for other things.

他们正在四处寻找其他东西。

Part of it is just convenience or location.

部分原因是便利或位置。

Probably another big part of it is whether the kids are happy.

可能另一个重要因素是孩子们是否快乐。

I think we agree this is actually one of the most undervalued benefits of school choice, just giving kids some options so that kids that are crying and miserable at one school can go and take that money and go to another school.

我认为我们同意这实际上是择校最被低估的好处之一，只是给孩子们一些选择，这样那些在一所学校哭泣和痛苦的孩子就可以拿着这笔钱去另一所学校。

For instance, you could allow federal funds for certificates rather than just degree programs.

例如，您可以允许联邦资金用于证书而不仅仅是学位课程。

You could imagine governmental nudges to give people a three-year option, a two-year option.

你可以想象政府会推动给人们一个三年、两年的选择。

There are a lot of one-year alternatives to colleges popping up the way two-year community college could be treated.

现在有很多一年制大学的替代方案出现，就像两年制社区大学的待遇一样。

There seems to be a lot we could do but maybe aren’t doing to create or produce signaling options that waste fewer resources.

我们似乎可以做很多事情，但也许没有做来创建或生产浪费更少资源的信号选项。

What should we do there?

我们应该在那里做什么？

It’s not as bad as there being a big literature saying that highlighting is totally ineffective for improving student learning.

这并不像有大量文献说突出显示对于提高学生学习完全无效那么糟糕。

Yet almost every kid in America still has a highlighter.

然而，几乎每个美国孩子仍然拥有一支荧光笔。

It’s actually on the list of mandatory school supplies for Fairfax County: “You must have a highlighter.” This is an item that science says you don’t need.

它实际上在费尔法克斯县的强制性学校用品清单上：“你必须有一支荧光笔。”科学表明你不需要这个物品。

Yet everyone must have one to be at school.

然而，每个人都必须拥有一件才能上学。

It’s been pointed out that a high percentage of government spending on healthcare is for medical research, but only a very small amount of education spending is for education research.

有人指出，政府医疗保健支出中很大一部分用于医学研究，但只有极少量的教育支出用于教育研究。

The main disappointment there is, despite all the education research, it seems like it’s not very often actually used for any education policy.

主要令人失望的是，尽管进行了所有的教育研究，但它似乎并没有经常被实际用于任何教育政策。

Medical research, you might have a similar pessimism, but I don’t think it’s as bad as that at least.

医学研究，你可能也会有类似的悲观情绪，但我认为至少没有那么糟糕。

It’s not as bad as there being a big literature saying that highlighting is totally ineffective for improving student learning.

这并不像有大量文献说突出显示对于提高学生学习完全无效那么糟糕。

Yet almost every kid in America still has a highlighter.

然而，几乎每个美国孩子仍然拥有一支荧光笔。

It’s actually on the list of mandatory school supplies for Fairfax County: “You must have a highlighter.” This is an item that science says you don’t need.

它实际上在费尔法克斯县的强制性学校用品清单上：“你必须有一支荧光笔。”科学表明你不需要这个物品。

Yet everyone must have one to be at school.

然而，每个人都必须拥有一件才能上学。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

I think effective altruism is all about, let’s try to get some actual measures of how much good is being done and to raise the status of that.

我认为有效的利他主义就是这样，让我们尝试采取一些实际措施来衡量所做的善事有多少，并提高其地位。

Rather than thinking of someone who asks, “How many lives is this going to save?” as being a Vulcan who doesn’t really care about people, to reframe that.

而不是想着有人问：“这将拯救多少生命？”作为一个并不真正关心人的瓦肯人，重新定义一下这一点。

No, he’s someone who cares a lot.

不，他是一个很在乎的人。

That’s what you would do if you actually cared about people.

如果你真正关心别人，你就会这么做。

I know that we talked about this.

我知道我们讨论过这个。

We blogged about it.

我们在博客上谈到了这一点。

I would just say, remember, most people have never heard of effective altruism, So it’s totally underrated relative to almost anyone else.

我只想说，记住，大多数人从未听说过有效的利他主义，所以相对于其他人来说，它完全被低估了。

If you were to go and look at the main philanthropic societies in the United States, how many of them have ever heard of effective altruism?

如果你去看看美国主要的慈善团体，有多少人听说过有效利他主义？

It’s just some nerdy thing out in the Bay Area.

这只是湾区的一些书呆子的事情。

The general idea of trying to go and spend money in a way that does the most good and using science in order to accomplish that seems great.

尝试以最有益的方式花钱并利用科学来实现这一目标的总体想法似乎很棒。

The idea that this isn’t a generally good approach seems very odd to me.

对我来说，这不是一个普遍的好方法的想法似乎很奇怪。

Of course, I do think that once you start thinking in this way, it also has all kinds of other good effects.

当然，我确实认为，一旦你开始这样思考，它还会产生其他各种良好的效果。

It makes you realize there’s a bunch of things that people in politics are super concerned with that we should just never worry about again in a triage sense, that they’re just so small that we’ve already spent more mental energy than we ever should.

它让你意识到，有很多政界人士非常关心的事情，从分类意义上来说，我们不应该再担心它们，因为它们太小了，我们已经花费了比我们应该花的更多的精力。

There’s a bunch of other things hardly anyone worries about that we should think about a lot.

还有很多其他的事情几乎没有人担心，但我们应该认真思考。

What Socrates does is, he’s at least trying to go and talk to his philosophical opponents like they’re human beings and find some common ground.

苏格拉底所做的是，他至少试图像人类一样与他的哲学对手交谈，并找到一些共同点。

“Let’s find some premises that we both agree are, at least tentatively, a good starting point.” The Socratic dialogues, out of all the stuff in ancient philosophy, I think that is close to the top of what I would enjoy reading to get something out of.

“让我们找到一些我们都同意的前提，至少暂时是一个很好的起点。”在古代哲学的所有内容中，苏格拉底对话录是我最喜欢阅读的内容之一。

Even the topics — when he gets on what I think of as sci-fi topic, those are the parts where I am least happy.

即使是话题——当他谈到我认为的科幻话题时，这些也是我最不高兴的部分。

But again, if you just read the blog, the range of things that Robin has thought about is actually vast, just in terms of breadth and depth and just sheer curiosity.

但同样，如果你只是阅读博客，罗宾思考的事情范围实际上是巨大的，无论是广度、深度还是纯粹的好奇心。

I’ve said this quite a few times.

这句话我已经说过好几次了。

When people get really mad at me, that doesn’t bother me.

当人们真的生我的气时，我并不介意。

When someone gets angry at Robin, this is what actually outrages me.

当有人对罗宾生气时，这才是真正让我愤怒的地方。

I just want to say, “Look, to get angry at Robin is like getting angry at baby Jesus.” He’s just a symbol and embodiment of innocence and decency.

我只想说，“看，对罗宾生气就像对小耶稣生气一样。”他只是纯真和正派的象征和体现。

For someone to get angry at someone who just wants to learn .

让某人对只想学习的人生气。

.

。

.

。

That was actually almost the only vacation I had when I was a kid, was camping.

这实际上几乎是我小时候唯一的假期，那就是露营。

I have some good memories but also a lot of bad things.

我有一些美好的回忆，但也有很多不好的事情。

Again, so much of the good stuff, we could have kept 90 percent of it while getting rid of the bad stuff by staying in a hotel.

再说一遍，这么多好东西，我们可以保留 90%，同时通过住在酒店来摆脱坏东西。

That would be the place where you’re most likely to have smart people around — there’s things that you can do with your mind — and least likely to get ripped apart by barbarians.

那将是你周围最有可能有聪明人的地方 ——你可以用你的头脑做一些事情 —— 而且最不可能被野蛮人撕裂。

If I could get away with just being a teacher, if I have what I know, then to actually go and found a school and teach economics 1,300 years before the rise of modern economics and try to jump-start the Industrial Revolution and economic growth and social science and everything else.

如果我能摆脱仅仅当一名教师的束缚，如果我有我所知道的，那么就可以在现代经济学兴起前1300年真正去创办一所学校并教授经济学，并尝试推动工业革命、经济增长、社会科学和其他一切。

Emotionally, that would have by far the strongest pull on me.

从情感上来说，这对我来说是迄今为止最强烈的吸引力。

If that weren’t available, then there’s room in business, banking, moneylending, shipping.

如果这些都做不到，那么商业、银行、放贷、航运等领域还有空间。

I think I could learn those.

我想我可以学习这些。

Wouldn’t be thrilled.

不会感到兴奋。

But it beats rowing an oar.

但这胜过划桨。

On Capalanian aesthetics

论卡帕拉尼亚美学

If I think about some of the things you like or love, I think of, say, 18th century classical music, Wagnerian opera, certain traditions within graphic novels, a number of TV shows — one would be Ali G — Chinese opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, Larry David.

如果我想到一些你喜欢或喜爱的东西，我会想到，比如说，18 世纪的古典音乐、瓦格纳歌剧、图画小说中的某些传统、一些电视节目——其中一个是阿里·G——中国歌剧、吉尔伯特和沙利文、拉里·大卫。

You could add much more to the list.

您可以在列表中添加更多内容。

It’s always seemed to me there’s a broadly consistent pattern behind all those tastes.

在我看来，所有这些品味背后都有一个大致一致的模式。

But I’ve never been able to put my finger on what it is.

但我一直无法确定它是什么。

Now that we’re all here today, I would like for you to tell me what that pattern is.

现在我们今天都在这里，我想让你告诉我这个模式是什么。

What’s the common theme?

共同的主题是什么？

But for everything else, for anything that presents itself as serious art, for me what I would say is, I like what some people love.

但对于其他一切，对于任何呈现为严肃艺术的事物，对我来说，我想说的是，我喜欢一些人喜欢的东西。

If there is something where there’s a group of fanatical, devoted people who say, “This is the best thing in the world,” those are the kinds of things where at least I’ll say, “I want to try that.

如果有一群狂热、忠诚的人说，“这是世界上最好的事情”，那么至少我会说，“我想尝试一下。”

I want to see what that’s like.”

我想看看那是什么样子。”

A lot of times when I do this, I’ll say, “Wow, the people who fanatically love it are right.

很多时候，当我这样做时，我会说：“哇，那些狂热热爱它的人是对的。

This is wonderful.

这太棒了。

There’s so much going on.

发生了很多事情。

You could spend a lifetime on this.”

你可以为此花费一生。”

I remember once you described some Bach oratorio as chaff.

我记得有一次你把一些巴赫清唱剧形容为糠秕。

I said, “Bach doesn’t have any chaff.” There’s no piece of Bach, no oratorio I couldn’t properly spend a month on.

我说：“巴赫没有任何谷壳。”没有一首巴赫的作品，没有一首清唱剧我不能好好地花一个月的时间。

For me, anything, especially anything where it’s produced by someone who is a megalomaniac, who feels like what they’re doing is fantastic .

对我来说，任何东西，尤其是由一个狂妄自大的人制作的任何东西，他们觉得自己正在做的事情太棒了。

.

。

.

。

I think about Wagner’s term for his work, the Gesamtkunstwerk, the complete artwork.

我想到了瓦格纳对其作品的术语：Gesamtkunstwerk，即完整的艺术品。

“I, Richard Wagner, have composed the music.

“我，理查德·瓦格纳，创作了音乐。

I’ve done the libretto.

我已经完成了剧本。

I’ve done the stagings.

我已经完成了分阶段。

I’ve done the casting, everything.

我已经完成了选角，一切都完成了。

This is all a reflection of me, Richard Wagner.” Those are the kinds of things that pull me in.

这都是我理查德·瓦格纳的反映。”这些都是吸引我的事情。

I remember once I was just wandering past opening day for The Hunger Games, which I was not particularly a fan of.

我记得有一次我刚刚走过《饥饿游戏》的开幕日，我并不是特别喜欢它。

But just to see a bunch of people who are in love with something, I was happy just looking at them loving this thing in a way that when I see someone half watching a sitcom while doing something else, that’s the kind of thing that depresses me.

但只要看到一群人爱上某件事，我就很高兴看到他们热爱这件事，当我看到有人一边看情景喜剧一边做其他事情时，这会让我感到沮丧。

I just want to go and shut it off.

我只想走过去把它关掉。

If it’s worth watching, it’s worth watching with 100 percent attention.

如果值得一看，那就值得百分百关注。

If it doesn’t motivate you that way, you need to find something else.

如果它不能以这种方式激励你，你就需要寻找其他的东西。

Or else you might be wasting your whole aesthetic life!

否则你可能会浪费你的整个审美生命！

I remember once I was just wandering past opening day for The Hunger Games and just to see a bunch of people who are in love with something, I was happy just looking at them loving this thing in a way that when I see someone half watching a sitcom while doing something else, that’s the kind of thing that depresses me.

我记得有一次，我在《饥饿游戏》开幕当天闲逛，只是看到一群热爱某件事的人，我很高兴看到他们热爱这件事，而当我看到有人一边看情景喜剧一边做其他事情时，这会让我感到沮丧。

I just want to go and shut it off.

我只想走过去把它关掉。

If it’s worth watching, it’s worth watching with 100 percent attention.

如果值得一看，那就值得百分百关注。

If it doesn’t motivate you that way, you need to find something else.

如果它不能以这种方式激励你，你就需要寻找其他的东西。

Or else you might be wasting your whole aesthetic life!

否则你可能会浪费你的整个审美生命！

The Three Stooges is sublimely stupid.

三个臭皮匠真是愚蠢至极。

They’re taking the stupidity to a level that you or me or sitcom writers aren’t capable of.

他们正在将愚蠢提升到你我或情景喜剧作家无法达到的水平。

Maybe you might say that it is just the extremism.

也许你会说，这就是极端主义。

Or the fact that just they take a joke and they run with the idea of a guy in a gorilla suit meeting an actual gorilla.

或者事实上，他们只是开了个玩笑，然后他们就带着一个穿着大猩猩服的人遇见一只真正的大猩猩的想法。

For me, comedy — it is much more idiosyncratic.

对我来说，喜剧 ——它更加独特。

I’ve said Shakespeare I love except the comedy, which just isn’t very funny to me.

我说过我喜欢莎士比亚，除了喜剧，这对我来说不太好笑。

I get the joke, but why especially is that funny?

我明白这个笑话，但为什么特别有趣呢？

You said comedy’s more culturally specific.

你说喜剧更具文化特色。

That does make sense to me.

这对我来说确实有意义。

There is sort of a class of things that I almost certainly won’t like, like whenever my dad emails me a thing of lawyer jokes.

有一些事情我几乎肯定不会喜欢，比如每当我爸爸给我发一封关于律师笑话的电子邮件时。

I do say, “Look, if you find it funny, good odds I won’t think it’s funny because anyone can understand it.” But if you say, “What about The Three Stooges?” All right, that isn’t really a full theory.

我确实会说，“听着，如果你觉得这很有趣，那么我很可能不会认为它很有趣，因为任何人都能理解它。”但如果你说：“那三个臭皮匠呢？”好吧，这并不是一个完整的理论。

Probably a better answer is the delusion that money will buy happiness.

也许更好的答案是金钱能买到幸福的错觉。

There is an enormous amount of progress that is caused by people desperately going and trying to get rich.

人们拼命致富，取得了巨大的进步。

I think the actual psychological evidence is the money won’t actually lead to all that much happiness, but the things they produce are quite a bit more likely.

我认为实际的心理学证据是金钱实际上不会带来那么多幸福，但它们产生的东西更有可能。

Probably, in terms of the most happiness-producing stuff, I would think may be actually in the arts, where so much of the stuff was produced by people where, if they just did a reasonable ex ante calculation, would have said, “This isn’t worth it.” But the reason why we have it is because they ignored the odds or overestimated themselves, so maybe that.

就最能产生幸福感的东西而言，我认为可能实际上是在艺术领域，其中很多东西都是由人们制作的，如果他们只是进行合理的事前计算，他们会说：“这不值得。”但我们之所以拥有它，是因为他们忽视了可能性或高估了自己，所以也许是这样。

God would punish you in a way that’s far worse than the simple loss of power.

上帝会以比失去权力更严重的方式惩罚你。

If that were widely believed by people of power, I think there would be a lot more effort to actually double-check that what they’re doing really makes sense.

如果当权者广泛相信这一点，我认为就会付出更多的努力来真正仔细检查他们所做的事情是否真的有意义。

The Spiderman Principle — with great power comes great responsibility.

蜘蛛侠原则 ——能力越大，责任越大。

If there were false beliefs in some enormous concrete sanctions for people that violated the Superman Principle, I think that would be a big gain.

如果对违反超人原则的人存在一些巨大的具体制裁的错误信念，我认为这将是一个巨大的收获。

Or, more obviously, say in 1928, if the German government had just rounded up all the Nazis, or at least all the leading Nazis, and just executed them without trial, that would have been a big gain.

或者，更明显的是，在 1928 年，如果德国政府围捕了所有纳粹分子，或者至少是所有纳粹头目，并且不经审判就处决了他们，那将是一个巨大的收获。

There was an incident around 1940, when the Romanian government just took all the leading brass in the Iron Guard, which was the main Romanian Fascist Movement.

1940年左右发生了一起事件，当时罗马尼亚政府刚刚夺取了铁卫队的所有领导层，这是罗马尼亚法西斯运动的主要力量。

They had a lot of them in jail already, and without any warning at all, they just sent them out to a forest and they murdered them all.

他们已经把很多人关进监狱了，在没有任何警告的情况下，他们就把他们送到了森林里，然后把他们都杀了。

I read that and I said, “Wow.” Probably a bunch of these guys hadn’t done anything yet, and yet .

我读了之后说：“哇。”也许这些人中的一些人还没有做任何事情。

.

。

.

。

If you know how bad things were in Romania, if you know anything about the Iron Guard, I think it very likely would’ve been quite a bit worse.

如果你知道罗马尼亚的情况有多糟糕，如果你了解铁卫队的情况，我认为情况很可能会更糟。

There’s a small number of power-hungry people where there’s at least a moderate risk that they’re eventually going to get to do what they want.

有一小部分渴望权力的人，他们最终会做自己想做的事，至少有一定的风险。

Just to go and kill them preemptively, that’s a tough one.

想要先发制人地杀死他们，那是一件很难的事情。

Of course, once you’ve got that, if we were to go and do censorship for people like that, that’s another one of the more obvious ones.

当然，一旦你明白了这一点，如果我们要去对这样的人进行审查，那就是另一个更明显的问题了。

On the idea trap

关于想法陷阱

First of all, I had these empirical results out of public opinion that said pretty strongly and surprisingly that people who have higher income do not think more like economists, but people who either have experienced or expect higher income growth do think more like economists.

首先，我从公众舆论中得到了这些实证结果，这些结果非常强烈且令人惊讶地表明，收入较高的人并不像经济学家那样思考，但经历过或预期更高收入增长的人确实更像经济学家。

So the level doesn’t matter, but the change does.

所以水平并不重要，重要的是变化。

Essentially, the more optimistic view seems to actually push people in this economist direction.

从本质上讲，更乐观的观点似乎实际上将人们推向了这个经济学家的方向。

So there is that fact in my mind.

所以我心里有这个事实。

And then there was also this big literature on non-convergence where, at least for a very long time, economists were expecting that poor countries would tend to catch up to rich countries.

然后还有关于不趋同的大量文献，至少在很长一段时间内，经济学家预计贫穷国家往往会赶上富裕国家。

Then they looked at the data and weren’t seeing it happening.

然后他们查看了数据，却没有看到这种情况发生。

Further, there’s this literature saying at least a lot of the reason why this is happening is that countries that are poor just very persistently have bad policies.

此外，有文献称，造成这种情况的大部分原因至少是贫穷国家一直坚持糟糕的政策。

So I took these three facts and said, “Let’s come up with a little model.

所以我根据这三个事实说：“让我们想出一个小模型。

The model will have three variables, which we’ll call growth, policy, and ideas.”

该模型将包含三个变量，我们称之为增长、政策和想法。”

The model will have the following laws of motion: Good ideas cause good policy, which is almost a tautology.

该模型将遵循以下运动定律： 好的想法导致好的政策，这几乎是同义反复。

Good policy causes good growth, and that’s almost a tautology.

好的政策会带来好的增长，这几乎是同义反复。

And then the last thing is, how does growth affect ideas?

最后一件事是，增长如何影响创意？

What I said is, there’s a usual view that if you have bad growth, then people realize they’re making mistakes, and then ideas get better.

我所说的是，人们普遍认为，如果增长不佳，人们就会意识到自己犯了错误，然后想法就会变得更好。

On the other hand, maybe if you’re having good growth, people said, “We can afford to live a bit.

另一方面，也许如果你有良好的成长，人们会说，“我们有能力生活一点。

We don’t need to worry about this so much,” so ideas get worse.

我们不需要太担心这个”，所以想法会变得更糟。

What I said is, there’s a usual view that if you have bad growth, then people realize they’re making mistakes, and then ideas get better.

我所说的是，人们普遍认为，如果增长不佳，人们就会意识到自己犯了错误，然后想法就会变得更好。

On the other hand, maybe if you’re having good growth, people said, “We can afford to live a bit.

另一方面，也许如果你有良好的成长，人们会说，“我们有能力生活一点。

We don’t need to worry about this so much,” so ideas get worse.

我们不需要太担心这个”，所以想法会变得更糟。

In that model, that actually gives you growth convergence, and basically, all countries tend to be mediocre.

在该模型中，这实际上会带来增长趋同，基本上，所有国家都趋于平庸。

But I said if we tweak the models in light of that public opinion finding, where supposed good growth actually gives you good ideas, bad growth gives you bad ideas, this actually gives you a model of multiple equilibria, where you can have one equilibrium where everything is good.

但我说，如果我们根据公众意见调整模型，所谓的良好增长实际上会给你带来好主意，坏增长会给你带来坏主意，这实际上会给你一个多重均衡模型，在这个模型中你可以有一个一切都好的均衡。

You have good policy, good ideas, good growth all mutually supporting each other.

你们有好的政策、好的想法、好的增长，所有这些都是相互支持的。

Or you could have bad ideas, bad growth, bad policy all mutually supporting each other.

或者你可能有糟糕的想法、糟糕的增长、糟糕的政策，所有这些都是相互支持的。

In terms of 2018, at least the story you might tell in a lot of countries is, there are countries that are in the bad equilibrium where, say, they’ve had some bad growth, which then led to bad ideas, which I generally in the paper equate with populism, leading then to populist policies.

就2018年而言，至少你可能在很多国家讲述的故事是，有些国家处于不良均衡状态，比如说，它们的经济增长不佳，然后导致了糟糕的想法，我在论文中通常将其等同于民粹主义，然后导致民粹主义政策。

2018 is not that great, just because the actual growth for most countries is good right now.

2018年并没有那么好，只是因为目前大多数国家的实际增长都不错。

It made more sense during the Great Recession when there was bad growth, and then there were a lot of kooky ideas coming around.

在经济大衰退期间，增长不佳，然后出现了很多奇怪的想法，这更有意义。

In a way, I would think of the last few years as cutting against my model because it seems like people are getting very angry and very populist when it’s hard to even find what the supposed cause of it is.

在某种程度上，我认为过去几年违背了我的模式，因为当人们甚至很难找到其所谓的原因时，人们似乎变得非常愤怒和非常民粹主义。

The role that lags play in the model was to say, “Why is it the countries that have had good policy tend to keep it over longer runs, despite this?” And I said, “Well, if you have a good national intellectual organization, you probably have a higher chance of bouncing back to good ideas.”

滞后在模型中扮演的角色是说，“尽管如此，为什么那些拥有良好政策的国家倾向于长期保持这一政策？”我说，“好吧，如果你有一个好的国家知识分子组织，你可能就有更高的机会重新找到好想法。”

So a country like the US — if you had bad ideas in the ’70s, just the fact that it has a better tradition makes it more likely that they will get back out of the bad equilibrium

因此，像美国这样的国家 ——如果你在 70 年代有过糟糕的想法，那么仅仅因为它拥有更好的传统，他们就更有可能摆脱不良均衡

Or like during the Great Depression, there’s a revival of better ideas afterwards in a way that you wouldn’t expect from a country that had never been any better.

或者就像大萧条时期一样，之后更好的想法会以一种你不会期望从一个从未变得更好的国家出现的方式复兴。

All the historians who know the details of Stalin’s life will say he lived very modestly.

所有了解斯大林生平细节的历史学家都会说他生活得很简朴。

He slept on a cot.

他睡在一张小床上。

He wasn’t like a tin-pot despot, going and building palaces for himself.

他不像一个锡锅暴君，为自己建造宫殿。

I think a lot of economists would just assume that the guy is living high.

我认为很多经济学家都会假设这个人生活得很奢侈。

Instead, it seems very much like it’s the power, and not any kind of conventional luxury, that he cares about, and that not just the general goal but even very small policy details seem to be heavily influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideology.

相反，他关心的似乎是权力，而不是任何传统的奢侈，而且不仅总体目标，甚至很小的政策细节似乎都深受马克思列宁主义意识形态的影响。

Really, what you have to look for in Stalin’s career are the counterexamples to this.

事实上，你必须在斯大林的职业生涯中寻找与此相反的例子。

So in The Myth of the Rational Voter, I did actually find one counterexample where it seemed like Stalin did dump the ideology, and this was on the nuclear program.

因此，在《理性选民的神话》中，我确实找到了一个反例，斯大林似乎确实抛弃了意识形态，而这就是关于核计划的。

Stalin sent Beria to go and talk to one of the leading Soviet nuclear physicists.

斯大林派贝利亚去与一位领先的苏联核物理学家交谈。

I think it was Kurchatov.

我认为是库尔恰托夫。

He said, “So, is it true that relativity theory and quantum mechanics are idealist?” Which is something where you have to know a bunch of Marxist-Leninist philosophy to even understand the question.

他说：“那么，相对论和量子力学真的是唯心论吗？”这是你必须了解一堆马克思列宁主义哲学才能理解这个问题的问题。

The Soviet scientist says, “Well, if they’re idealist, if that’s bourgeois science, then nuclear weapons are bourgeois science, too.” “All right, fine.

这位苏联科学家说：“好吧，如果他们是唯心主义者，如果那是资产阶级科学，那么核武器也是资产阶级科学。” “好吧，好吧。

Then forget philosophical objections to relativity theory and quantum mechanics.

然后忘记对相对论和量子力学的哲学反对。

If this, the science, lets us build a nuclear bomb, I don’t care what the philosophy says.

如果科学让我们制造核弹，我不在乎哲学怎么说。

We’re just going to believe the science.”

我们只会相信科学。”

Occasions like that are fairly rare, and really, the more you study Stalin’s career, you do see, even bizarre doctrinal things like the farmers are kind of revolutionary.

这样的场合相当罕见，而且实际上，你对斯大林的职业生涯研究得越多，你就会发现，即使是像农民这样奇怪的教义事物也具有革命性。

It’s like, “What are you talking about?”

就像“你在说什么？”

It was like, “We have to go and set up a system based upon this, and that’s very important to Stalin in a way that it’s almost hard for anybody who isn’t a Marxist-Leninist to really realize it.”

就像是，“我们必须去建立一个以此为基础的体系，这对斯大林来说非常重要，以至于任何不是马克思列宁主义者的人都很难真正意识到这一点。”

Usually Westerners don’t have such a shallow understanding of the philosophy.

通常西方人对哲学的理解不会这么肤浅。

They don’t realize how much of it is all part of this bizarre package.

他们没有意识到其中有多少是这个奇怪的包裹的一部分。

They think it’s just about high levels of redistribution, and that’s not the story.

他们认为这只是高水平的再分配，但事实并非如此。

On the Bryan Caplan production function

关于布莱恩·卡普兰生产函数

When I actually teach, then I do a lot of improvisation.

当我实际教学时，我会做很多即兴创作。

Often, it’s whatever I was thinking about yesterday works its way into the notes in terms of examples.

通常，我昨天想到的任何事情都会以示例的形式融入到笔记中。

Another big part is actually just trying to talk to the students like human beings and find anything in their experience that relates to what I’m actually talking about.

另一个重要部分实际上就是尝试像人类一样与学生交谈，并在他们的经历中找到与我实际谈论的内容相关的任何内容。

The older I’ve gotten, the less popular culture I have in common with the students, so it does get harder.

随着年龄的增长，我与学生们的流行文化越来越少，所以确实变得越来越困难。

But The Simpsons fortunately, thank God, is still watched by students, so there’s that.

但幸运的是，感谢上帝，《辛普森一家》仍然被学生观看，所以就是这样。

Often, I’ll start by asking them questions.

通常，我会先问他们问题。

For me, a big part, one of the main things I learned from my students for The Case against Education was just saying, “All right.

对我来说，在《反教育案例》中，我从学生那里学到的主要内容之一就是说：“好吧。

How many students here have a job?” At George Mason, I’d say 80, 90 percent raised their hand.

这里有多少学生找到工作了？”在乔治梅森大学，我想说 80%、90% 的人举手了。

“How many of you hold a job where there is a person there that everyone agrees is incompetent?” And almost every hand stays up.

“你们中有多少人所从事的工作中，每个人都认为这个人不称职？”几乎每只手都举了起来。

I’m like, “That’s pretty interesting that almost everyone is at a job where they will say there’s someone who’s known to be incompetent.”

我想，“这很有趣，几乎每个人所从事的工作都会说有人被认为是无能的。”

That actually did get me searching to what researchers actually found about this, and quite a bit.

这确实让我开始研究研究人员对此的实际发现，而且是相当多的研究。

I was saying you could actually do a similar thing for a human being.

我是说你实际上可以为人类做类似的事情。

You could say, “Is it possible for you to successfully mimic the holder of a view that you disagree with?” Sort of jumping off of Mill’s famous line of, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows but little of that.”

你可以说，“你有可能成功地模仿你不同意的观点的持有者吗？”这有点像穆勒的名言：“只知道自己这边情况的人，对这一点知之甚少。”

The key thing about the idea is that it’s a real test.

这个想法的关键在于它是一个真正的测试。

It’s one you can actually administer.

这是您可以实际管理的。

The idea is you do it blind, and then you actually show it to people that hold a view that you don’t and see whether they can tell the difference between that and the real view.

这个想法是你盲目地做，然后你实际上把它展示给那些持有与你不一样的观点的人，看看他们是否能够区分这种观点和真实的观点。

I say, “Once you can pass that test, then you have at least indicated that you understand the view that you disagree with.” Now of course, in practice, it is hard to do this because of the cost.

我说：“一旦你能通过这个测试，那么你至少表明你理解你不同意的观点。”当然，现在在实践中，由于成本的原因很难做到这一点。

When I am actually trying to explain a view, I do try, in my mind at least, to pass this.

当我实际上试图解释一种观点时，我确实会尝试（至少在我的脑海中）通过这一点。

I will say, when I am going and checking on my references with the original authors, the one thing where I basically never contradict the author is if they say, “You misunderstood me.”

我会说，当我去与原作者核实我的参考文献时，我基本上从不反驳作者的一件事是，如果他们说，“你误解了我。”

That’s where I say, “If the guy says I misunderstood him, then I almost certainly misunderstood him, and I need to do better.”

这就是我说的，“如果那个人说我误解了他，那么我几乎肯定误解了他，我需要做得更好。”

This is a genre many people aren’t familiar with.

这是很多人不熟悉的类型。

There’s the general genre of the graphic novel, which is basically a highfalutin comic book.

图画小说的一般类型是，基本上是一本华丽的漫画书。

The nonfiction graphic novel — this is one where you use the vocabulary and grammar of comic books to talk about a nonfiction subject.

非小说类图画小说 ——这是一种使用漫画书的词汇和语法来谈论非小说类主题的小说。

This is not a story about immigration.

这不是一个关于移民的故事。

It is actually an extended journey through what social scientists know about immigration and what philosophers said about immigration.

这实际上是一段延伸的旅程，讲述了社会科学家对移民的了解以及哲学家对移民的看法。

This is actually in collaboration with Zach Weinersmith, who was, out of all cartoonists, was my first choice in the world to be my collaborator.

这实际上是与扎克·韦纳史密斯（Zach Weinersmith）合作，在所有漫画家中，他是我在世界上的首选合作者。

I didn’t know him when I started the project, and I amazingly talked him into it.

当我开始这个项目时我并不认识他，令人惊讶的是我说服了他。

Now, he’s drawn 90 percent of the first draft of the pages.

现在，他已经绘制了 90% 的初稿。

I’m super excited about this because this is my chance to be on the production side of a product that I have long been in love with.

我对此感到非常兴奋，因为这是我参与我一直喜爱的产品的生产方面的机会。

There’s that.

就是这样。

Then my big word book after that, to distinguish from a graphic novel.

然后是我的大字书，以区别于图画小说。

There’s going to be a book called Poverty — Who to Blame.

将会有一本名为《贫穷 —— 谁该责备》的书。

This is going to combine social science with economic philosophy.

这将把社会科学与经济哲学结合起来。

I want to begin with what I think of as one of the great neglected moral concepts in academic philosophy, which is the concept of blameworthiness and desert.

我想从我认为学术哲学中最被忽视的道德概念之一开始，即应受谴责和应得的概念。

These are concepts that almost everyone who thinks about right and wrong thinks about.

这些是几乎每个思考正确与错误的人都会思考的概念。

Yet they are so dismissed, certainly by consequentialist philosophers, but a lot of other philosophers implicitly dismiss them by neglect.

然而，他们是如此被忽视，当然是被结果主义哲学家所忽视，但许多其他哲学家也因忽视而含蓄地忽视了他们。

I want to say, actually, these concepts are very important.

我想说，其实这些概念非常重要。

They’re morally at least as plausible as the other stuff that people are talking about, probably more so.

它们在道德上至少和人们谈论的其他东西一样合理，甚至可能更合理。

I want to go and think about the actual social science of poverty through this lens of blameworthy, nonblameworthy, and semi-blameworthy poverty.

我想通过应受谴责的贫困、不应受谴责的贫困和半应受谴责的贫困的视角来思考贫困的实际社会科学。

A lot of what I want to do in the book is to revive this old notion of the deserving versus the undeserving poor, and then take everything that social science knows about the causes of poverty to understand what are the main sources of blameworthy poverty?

我在书中想做的很多事情就是复兴这种应得的穷人与不值得的穷人的旧观念，然后利用社会科学所知道的有关贫困原因的一切来了解应受谴责的贫困的主要根源是什么？

What are the main things that we’re overrating?

我们高估的主要因素是什么？

What are the main things we’re underrating?

我们低估的主要事情是什么？

Really to change people’s minds of, “What are the kinds of poverty that really are deeply, morally problematic and we should be thinking about all the time?” Which in my mind, things like poverty of people in the Third World who could easily come and get a job in the First World if it were legal.

真正要改变人们的想法，“什么样的贫困才是真正存在深刻道德问题、我们应该时刻思考的？”在我看来，像第三世界人民的贫困这样的事情，如果合法的话，他们可以很容易地来到第一世界找到工作。

People that are totally capable of solving their own problem if government would just get out of the way versus problems of, say, someone who is a chronic alcoholic, and if they would just stop drinking, they’d be doing fine.

对于那些长期酗酒的人的问题，如果政府不干涉，他们完全有能力解决自己的问题，如果他们停止喝酒，他们就会过得很好。

I think those are very different cases.

我认为这些是非常不同的情况。

Yet there’s, of course, a lot more concern about the second problem than the first in terms of ink that’s spilled over it.

当然，第二个问题比第一个问题更令人担忧，因为墨水溢出了。

And I want to go and get people to rethink that.

我想去让人们重新思考这一点。

Q&A

问答

Note: this episode was recorded live for economics students at Mason.

注：本集是为梅森大学经济学学生现场录制的。

Your advice is for students to go talk to speakers, to faculty, to other students, and so on.

你的建议是让学生去与演讲者、教师、其他学生等交谈。

So I was wondering if you could elaborate on how you see these networks interact with your story of signaling.

所以我想知道你是否可以详细说明你如何看待这些网络与你的信号故事的相互作用。

Do they impact career outcomes?

它们会影响职业成果吗？

If they do, is it just a form of signaling, or do they actually create value by spreading beliefs and habits, connecting individuals with different characteristics, and so on?

如果他们这样做了，这只是一种信号形式，还是他们实际上通过传播信仰和习惯、将具有不同特征的个人联系起来等等创造了价值？

But this does not mean that the social networks that people are getting in school are very helpful because there’s a couple of other key qualifiers, namely the kinds of social networks, the kinds of social ties that are very helpful.

但这并不意味着人们在学校获得的社交网络非常有帮助，因为还有其他一些关键限定条件，即社交网络的类型、社会关系的类型非常有帮助。

Either it’s people who totally love you, like close relatives, or it’s people who are in your exact field.

要么是完全爱你的人，比如近亲，要么是在你所在领域的人。

For a graduate student, then, I would say that social network is hugely important because, especially if you want to be a professor, then your professors have the job you want, and they know other people who have that job.

那么，对于研究生来说，我想说社交网络非常重要，因为，特别是如果你想成为一名教授，那么你的教授就有你想要的工作，而且他们认识其他有这份工作的人。

Those are the kinds of social networks that are great.

这些都是很棒的社交网络。

Similarly, like CS at Stanford — great social network because there you are studying with a bunch of people that you are very likely to be working with or for or be the vendor for, or they’re going to know such people.

同样，就像斯坦福大学的计算机科学一样，这是一个很棒的社交网络，因为在那里你正在和一群人一起学习，你很可能会与他们一起工作，或者为他们工作，或者成为他们的供应商，或者他们会认识这些人。

Those are the really valuable social networks.

这些才是真正有价值的社交网络。

However, the problem is that most college majors are so loosely tied to any occupation, that it is phenomenally unlikely you will ever work again with someone that is a fellow student or the professor.

然而，问题是，大多数大学专业与任何职业的联系都很松散，你不太可能再次与同学或教授一起工作。

If you’re an English major, the odds that you will ever get a job from a fellow student — very low; that you will do a startup with a fellow student — low; that you will hire someone else; that your professor can get you a job.

如果你是英语专业的，那么你从同学那里找到工作的可能性 ——非常低；你将和一位同学一起创业 —— 低；您将雇用其他人；你的教授能为你找到一份工作。

Unless, of course, you want to be an English professor, in which case, that’s great.

当然，除非你想成为一名英语教授，在这种情况下，那就太好了。

I would say is that social networks in general are very important.

我想说的是，社交网络总的来说非常重要。

Academic ones are grossly overrated.

学术的被严重高估了。

The people who usually ask this question are Silicon Valley people, and they are seeing a narrow subset of labor market where they’re right.

通常问这个问题的人都是硅谷人，他们看到了劳动力市场中一小部分他们是正确的。

But if you step back and just realize how nonvocational most majors are and how vast the economy is, it’s too unlikely.

但如果你退后一步，意识到大多数专业的非职业性以及经济规模有多大，那就太不可能了。

Then there’s other exceptions.

然后还有其他例外。

There are certain fraternities that are good at getting their brothers jobs in finance.

有些兄弟会很擅长为兄弟找到金融工作。

That’s where they funnel them.

这就是他们汇集的地方。

But these are very close ties.

但这些都是非常密切的联系。

Remember a fraternity — it’s a brotherhood.

记住兄弟会——这是兄弟情谊。

This is what really counts.

这才是真正重要的。

Like the Granovetter strength of weak ties stuff — this was one of the most cited papers in all of social science.

就像格兰诺维特的弱关系强度一样——这是所有社会科学领域被引用最多的论文之一。

When I started reading, I was like, “Wow.

当我开始阅读时，我的感觉是，“哇。

Essentially, no one believes the paper, but it’s got 39 citations.” That’s the main story you might tell from why educational social networks are good, and this is wrong.

本质上，没有人相信这篇论文，但它却被引用了 39 次。”这是你可能会讲述的为什么教育社交网络很好的主要故事，但这是错误的。

That’s honestly my reaction when I flip through a journal is, suppose you’re completely right.

老实说，当我翻阅日记时，我的反应是，假设你是完全正确的。

Who cares?

谁在乎？

Suppose you’re completely right.

假设你是完全正确的。

Who cares?

谁在乎？

That’s what I say for 80, 90 percent of pieces that I read.

我读过的 80%、90% 的文章都是这么说的。

This does not mean that I think that you can’t write a good piece on a narrow topic.

这并不意味着我认为你不能在狭窄的主题上写出一篇好文章。

But it’s got to be because you convincingly argue that it really reflects something bigger than just the topic itself.

但这一定是因为你令人信服地认为它确实反映了比主题本身更大的东西。

I can really enjoy reading a book about the French Wars of Religion because it’s not just about the French Wars of Religion.

我真的很喜欢读一本关于法国宗教战争的书，因为它不仅仅是关于法国宗教战争的。

It’s about the nature of human religiosity, and about the way that dogmatics try to tear society apart, and about, is religion primarily social, or doctrinal, or what’s the interrelation between them?

它涉及人类宗教信仰的本质，涉及教条主义试图撕裂社会的方式，涉及宗教主要是社会性的还是教义性的，或者它们之间的相互关系是什么？

That kind of thing.

那种事。

To me, that’s the main thing, is just that it’s boring and who cares?

对我来说，这才是最重要的，只是这很无聊，谁在乎呢？

The second biggest thing is the focus on disciplinary boundaries, where people usually, if they’re going to read, they only read within their field.

第二件大事是对学科界限的关注，人们通常如果要阅读，他们只会在自己的领域内阅读。

Economists read economics.

经济学家读的是经济学。

Even that is optimistic.

即使这样也是乐观的。

You usually read within your subfield of economics or your sub-subfield.

您通常会在经济学子领域或子领域内阅读。

What I always say is, “Look, if you really want to understand something, don’t read what other people in your niche are doing or have read.

我总是说，“听着，如果你真的想理解某些东西，就不要阅读你所在领域的其他人正在做或读过的内容。

Read what anyone who has thought about the issue has read, and it’s quite likely you’ll learn something.”

阅读任何思考过这个问题的人都读过的内容，你很可能会学到一些东西。”

Now, ultimately, I will say this: I think it does come down to academic incentives because those people in the fields that people aren’t reading don’t help you.

现在，最终我要说的是：我认为这确实取决于学术激励，因为那些人​​们不阅读的领域的人对你没有帮助。

They don’t do stuff for you.

他们不为你做事。

Honestly, I think most scholars are primarily about career advancement.

老实说，我认为大多数学者主要关注的是职业发展。

I don’t think there is that much curiosity.

我认为没有那么多好奇心。

I remember, this is actually one of the things that disturbed me most when I became an assistant professor.

我记得，这其实是我成为助理教授后最困扰我的事情之一。

When Tyler started telling me all about these backstories about professors.

当泰勒开始告诉我所有关于教授的背景故事时。

Finally I get to get behind the curtain — not anybody in our department, but other departments, others.

最后我终于走到幕后了——不是我们部门的任何人，而是其他部门、其他人。

Finding out .

找出来。

.

。

.

。

the thought of someone who started off really curious and, in the end, they’re just consumed with this pettiness over someone not citing them.

一个人一开始真的很好奇，最后，他们只是因为有人没有引用他们而感到琐碎。

Why do they care?

他们为什么关心？

Every citation translates into a statistical $100 a year.

每次引用可转化为每年 100 美元的统计收入。

This kind of mentality, it did horrify me at the time.

这种心态，当时确实让我感到毛骨悚然。

I’ve gotten over it, but still this is the kind of thing when I step back .

我已经克服了它，但当我退后一步时，仍然会遇到这种情况。

.

。

.

。

I think you become a scholar to go and advance human knowledge on important questions.

我认为你成为一名学者是为了在重要问题上推进人类知识。

I just don’t see many people doing it or even using the methods that you would want to use, which is, step one, go and read what anyone who has really thought hard about the question already knows.

我只是没有看到很多人这样做，甚至没有使用你想要使用的方法，也就是说，第一步，去阅读那些真正认真思考过这个问题的人已经知道的内容。

Economists mostly just read one sub-area of psychology called cognitive psychology.

经济学家大多只阅读心理学的一个子领域，即认知心理学。

Some other areas that are all worth reading, at least for depending upon what area you’re working on, like personality psychology.

其他一些领域都值得一读，至少取决于您正在研究的领域，例如人格心理学。

Human personality is really important.

人的个性真的很重要。

It explains a lot of things about the world.

它解释了世界上的很多事情。

Human beings are quite different from one another.

人类彼此之间是截然不同的。

Becker and Stigler tried to go and come up with a model of the world where you never mention differences in taste.

贝克尔和斯蒂格勒试图提出一个永远不会提及品味差异的世界模型。

Personality psychologists have documented very strong differences in taste between human beings.

人格心理学家已经记录了人类之间品味的巨大差异。

Human beings — of everyone from someone who would kill themselves if they couldn’t be a rock star with thousands of fans in front of them every night, to a librarian or a hermit — these are all human beings.

人类——“从如果不能成为每晚都有成千上万粉丝的摇滚明星就会自杀的人，到图书管理员或隐士——”这些都是人类。

This whole range of level of decider interaction is seen in the world.

决策者互动的整个级别范围在世界上随处可见。

Realize there’s everyone from me to someone who watches football all day, that whole range — just realizing that.

意识到从我到整天看足球的人，整个范围 ——只是意识到这一点。

Even areas more narrowly .

甚至范围更窄。

.

。

.

。

of course there’s educational psychology.

当然还有教育心理学。

It’s a big area in psychology where they answer questions that education economists should be interested in, like how do people learn, and how much can learning really explain?

这是心理学的一个重要领域，他们回答了教育经济学家应该感兴趣的问题，比如人们如何学习，以及学习能真正解释多少？

One thing I noted in the book is that when I started telling economists, “How can the human capital model be right, given that most of what people learn in school, they never use on the job?” And this is what economists who would never deign to actually read educational psychology would say: “Well, it’s like learning how to learn.”

我在书中提到的一件事是，当我开始告诉经济学家时，“考虑到人们在学校学到的大部分知识，他们从未在工作中使用过，人力资本模型怎么可能是正确的呢？”这就是那些永远不会屈尊真正阅读教育心理学的经济学家会说的：“嗯，这就像学习如何学习。”

Yeah.

是的。

And you realize that educational psychologists have been studying this for a hundred years, and they think something different.

你会意识到教育心理学家已经研究这个问题一百年了，他们的想法有所不同。

They don’t care.

他们不在乎。

Then, the last, there’s industrial psychology, the whole field of psychology where they do things like measure job performance.

最后是工业心理学，整个心理学领域，他们都在做诸如衡量工作绩效之类的事情。

How do we measure this?

我们如何衡量这一点？

What predicts it?

预示着什么？

How are firms organized?

公司是如何组织的？

How are promotions done?

促销是如何进行的？

It is a mass of information and data that economists really could easily get if they would just go and take a look.

这是大量的信息和数据，经济学家只要去看一看就可以轻松获得。

Wow, they have their own journals.

哇，他们有自己的日记。

There’s journals of industrial psychology, shockingly.

令人震惊的是，有工业心理学期刊。

How many labor economists have ever even bothered to crack open such a journal?

有多少劳动经济学家曾经费心去打开这样一本日记呢？

I don’t think it’s very many, but shame on us.

我认为数量不是很多，但对我们来说是耻辱。