Ezra Klein on Why We’re Polarized (Ep. 86)

One thing to always be careful on is that history is long.

需要始终小心的一件事是历史悠久。

Even American history, which is shorter than a lot of countries’ history, has been going on for some time.

即使是比许多国家的历史都短的美国历史，也已经持续了一段时间了。

So we have had really, really high highs in enmity between different groups here, and reasonably low lows.

因此，我们这里不同群体之间的敌意确实非常高，但也有相当低的低点。

And the 20th century, which is a part that is in memory for a lot of people, was oftentimes a more low low.

而20世纪，对于很多人来说都是记忆中的一部分，往往是一个更加低谷的世纪。

I just want to note that.

我只是想指出这一点。

In terms of whether or not the religions are more polarized, I don’t think so, though I’m not learned enough on that to be confident in my answer here.

至于宗教是否更加两极分化，我不这么认为，尽管我对此了解不够，无法对我在这里的答案充满信心。

What I would say is that the fundamental form of polarization seems to me to be changing, that the polarization now that has a religious dimension is secular people versus religious people.

我想说的是，在我看来，两极分化的基本形式正在发生变化，现在具有宗教维度的两极分化是世俗人民与宗教人民之间的对立。

So there’s been a collapsing of, say, the political leanings of more devout Protestants and Catholics in a way where they might have used to be thought of as a division, but now they much more often are in coalition against the more left-leaning coalition, of which the single biggest religious group is people who don’t have a religious affiliation, and then you have people who are more spiritual, and Marianne Williamson, and liberal Christians, and so on.

因此，比如说，更虔诚的新教徒和天主教徒的政治倾向正在崩溃，以前他们可能被认为是一个分裂，但现在他们更经常结成联盟反对更左倾的联盟，其中最大的宗教团体是没有宗教信仰的人，然后你有更精神的人，玛丽安·威廉姆森和自由派基督徒，等等。

Imagine, in some of the ways you’re talking about here, someone who’s mid-century.

想象一下，以你在这里谈论的某些方式，一个二十世纪中叶的人。

There might be a lot of polarization in, say, the Catholic-Protestant dimension, or maybe the Jew-Protestant dimension.

比如说，天主教-新教维度，或者犹太-新教维度，可能存在很多两极分化。

They might be polarized on sports teams.

他们在运动队中可能会两极分化。

They might be polarized in terms of they belong to a union and they’re angry at their bosses, or they’re angry at people who don’t belong to the union.

他们可能会因为自己属于工会而对老板感到愤怒，或者对不属于工会的人感到愤怒而两极分化。

They might be polarized regionally.

他们可能会因地区而两极分化。

One of the things, though, that was happening, certainly — again, mid-century in America — is those forms of polarization tended to be noncorrelated with each other, or at least a lot less correlated than they are today.

然而，其中一件事确实正在发生——同样是在上世纪中叶的美国——这些形式的两极分化往往彼此不相关，或者至少比今天的相关性要低得多。

Maybe you’re Republican, but you also belong to a union, and you are also a Protestant, and you are also living in the city, and so on.

也许你是共和党人，但你也属于一个工会，你也是新教徒，你也住在城市，等等。

Now, if I know one of those things about you, I’m much more likely to know the others about you.

现在，如果我了解你的其中一件事，我就更有可能了解你的其他事情。

When you have the forms of polarization stacking on top of each other, they exert a much greater weight, and they tend to be activated by a much broader range of conflicts.

当两极分化的形式相互叠加时，它们会产生更大的影响力，并且往往会被更广泛的冲突所激活。

One of the things, though, that was happening, certainly — again, mid-century in America — is those forms of polarization tended to be noncorrelated with each other, or at least a lot less correlated than they are today.

然而，其中一件事确实正在发生——同样是在上世纪中叶的美国——这些形式的两极分化往往彼此不相关，或者至少比今天的相关性要低得多。

Maybe you’re Republican, but you also belong to a union, and you are also a Protestant, and you are also living in the city, and so on.

也许你是共和党人，但你也属于一个工会，你也是新教徒，你也住在城市，等等。

Now, if I know one of those things about you, I’m much more likely to know the others about you.

现在，如果我了解你的其中一件事，我就更有可能了解你的其他事情。

When you have the forms of polarization stacking on top of each other, they exert a much greater weight, and they tend to be activated by a much broader range of conflicts.

当两极分化的形式相互叠加时，它们会产生更大的影响力，并且往往会被更广泛的冲突所激活。

Sports, in this way, actually is an interesting example.

从这个角度来看，体育运动实际上是一个有趣的例子。

I guess a couple of years ago, you had the period of time when you had Colin Kaepernick leading NFL players in kneeling during the national anthem.

我想几年前，科林·卡佩尼克 (Colin Kaepernick) 带领 NFL 球员在奏国歌时下跪。

Donald Trump, of course, got involved.

唐纳德·特朗普当然也参与其中。

NFL is something that was actually quite nonpolarized.

NFL实际上是一个相当非极化的运动。

There was actually polling on this, somewhat randomly, that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump supporters had about the same level of approval of the NFL.

事实上，有一项随机的民意调查显示，希拉里·克林顿和唐纳德·特朗普的支持者对 NFL 的支持程度大致相同。

Then, after that began happening, you just had a plummet among Donald Trump supporters and what they thought of the NFL, and a rise or a steadiness among Democrats and what they thought of the NFL.

然后，在这种情况发生之后，唐纳德·特朗普的支持者及其对 NFL 的看法急剧下降，而民主党人和他们对 NFL 的看法则上升或稳定。

So, all of a sudden, instead of sports becoming crosscutting, it became one more thing, at least for that moment, that was pulled into this broader sense of polarization.

因此，突然之间，体育运动不再是交叉的，而是变成了另一件事，至少在那一刻，它被拉入了更广泛的两极分化之中。

One of the stories and lines of research I’m going through in the book quite a bit is the idea that, if you look at Republicans whose policy preferences seem to place them in the Democratic Party, or Democrats whose policy preferences seem to place them in the Republican Party, they will be angrier at the other side.

我在书中详细介绍的一个故事和研究思路是，如果你看看政策偏好似乎将他们置于民主党的共和党人，或者政策偏好似乎将他们置于共和党的民主党人，他们会对另一方更加愤怒。

They will hate the other side more, even though they agree with them on policy, than if you look at people whose identities place them in crosscutting ways with the other party.

即使他们在政策上同意对方，他们也会更讨厌对方，而不是看看那些身份使他们与对方有交叉的人。

So, policy polarization — what we would think of as the most important kind of substantive polarization — ends up being a lot less powerful than these identity dimensions.

因此，政策极化——我们认为最重要的实质性极化——最终的威力远不如这些身份维度。

And so, once you get those identities efficiently working together, you develop a kind of difference that is very hard for people to overcome and that our political system is pretty bad at handling.

因此，一旦你让这些身份有效地结合在一起，你就会产生一种人们很难克服的差异，而我们的政治制度很难处理这种差异。

Again, I don’t think it’s necessarily a case that polarization is a problem.

再说一次，我认为两极分化不一定是一个问题。

One story I tell in the book is, number one, I think it probably makes sense that we’re polarized.

我在书中讲述的一个故事是，第一，我认为我们两极分化可能是有道理的。

Number two, I think that you, at the very least, have to give credit to polarization as something that happens in most systems.

第二，我认为你至少必须承认大多数系统中都会发生两极分化。

In most ways or reasons we weren’t polarized mid-century had a lot to do with race, and they were not great.

在大多数方面或原因中，我们在本世纪中叶没有两极分化，这与种族有很大关系，而且它们并不好。

We had a depolarized system built on segregation.

我们有一个建立在隔离基础上的去极化系统。

But we have a political system that requires high levels of consensus to operate.

但我们的政治体系需要高度共识才能运作。

I think the question is not so much how do you get polarization down, but how do you change things around it so that this system can operate well amidst polarization?

我认为问题不在于如何降低两极分化，而在于如何改变周围的事物，使这个系统能够在两极分化中良好运行？

Domestic spending, Social Security, Medicare — no one wants to cut those.

国内支出、社会保障、医疗保险——没有人愿意削减这些。

That’s actually consensus.

这实际上是共识。

The other main issue is how we deal with or regulate tech.

另一个主要问题是我们如何处理或监管技术。

America has its own system.

美国有自己的制度。

It’s happened through the regulators.

这是通过监管机构发生的。

It’s not really that partisan.

这并不是真正的党派之争。

One may or may not like it, but again, disagreement about it doesn’t fall along normal party lines.

人们可能喜欢也可能不喜欢它，但同样，对此的分歧并不符合正常的政党路线。

So the main foreign policy issue, the main substantive social issue — we’re less polarized.

因此，在主要的外交政策问题、主要的实质性社会问题上，我们的两极分化程度有所降低。

And then, domestic spending, it seems, we all mostly agree.

然后，对于国内支出，我们似乎都大体同意。

Why is that wrong?

为什么这是错误的？

Now what you have is a Republican Party that has much more truthfully admitted it does not want to have any form of a universal healthcare insurance scheme.

现在，共和党更真实地承认它不希望有任何形式的全民医疗保险计划。

And then, the Democratic Party that’s moving much more towards Medicare for All or a single-payer scheme, not even just universal healthcare, but actual single payer.

然后，民主党正在更多地转向全民医疗保险或单一付款人计划，甚至不仅仅是全民医疗保健，而是真正的单一付款人。

So that’s a place where I think it’s pretty clear that the polarization has increased sharply.

因此，我认为很明显，两极分化急剧加剧。

I think a useful heuristic here — people don’t have nearly as strong views on policy qua policy as certainly people like you and I tend to assume they do.

我认为这里有一个有用的启发——人们对政策作为政策的看法并不像你和我这样的人所认为的那么强烈。

The way that Washington, DC, talks about politics is incredibly projection oriented.

华盛顿特区谈论政治的方式令人难以置信地以预测为导向。

We talk about politics as if everybody is a political junkie with highly distinct ideologies.

我们谈论政治就好像每个人都是有着截然不同意识形态的政治迷一样。

Political scientists have done a lot of polling on this, going all the way back to the 1960s, and it seems something like 20 to 30 percent of the population has what we would think of as a coherent policy-oriented ideology, where things fit together, and they have everything lined up.

政治学家对此进行了大量民意调查，可以追溯到 20 世纪 60 年代，似乎有 20% 到 30% 的人口拥有我们所认为的连贯的政策导向意识形态，其中事物相互配合，并且一切都井然有序。

Most people don’t hold policy positions all that strongly.

大多数人并没有那么坚定地持有政策立场。

What happens is that they do hold — to the extent they’re involved in politics — identity strongly, political affiliations quite strongly.

所发生的情况是，就他们参与政治的程度而言，他们确实持有强烈的身份认同，政治立场也相当强烈。

They know who is on their side and who isn’t.

他们知道谁站在他们一边，谁不站在他们一边。

The pattern that I see here, again and again, is that when things are out of the spotlight, when they are not being argued about, when they are not the thing that the parties are disagreeing about, they’re actually quite nonpolarized.

我在这里一次又一次看到的模式是，当事情脱离聚光灯时，当它们没有被争论时，当它们不是各方不同意的事情时，它们实际上是相当非极化的。

You’ll sit there in rooms of experts.

你将坐在专家的房间里。

There’ll be a panel here, George Mason, whatever it might be, and everybody will have some good ideas about how you can make the system better for everyone.

这里将会有一个小组，乔治梅森大学，无论它是什么，每个人都会有一些关于如何使系统对每个人都更好的好主意。

Then what will happen is, the Eye of Sauron of the American political system will turn towards whatever the policy issue is.

那么将会发生的事情是，美国政治体系的索伦之眼将转向任何政策问题。

Maybe it’s Obamacare, maybe it’s climate change.

也许是奥巴马医改，也许是气候变化。

Remember, climate change was not that polarized 15–20 years ago.

请记住，15 至 20 年前，气候变化并没有那么两极分化。

John McCain had a big cap-and-trade plan in his 2008 platform —

约翰·麦凯恩 (John McCain) 在 2008 年的政纲中制定了一项宏伟的限额与交易计划 —

Immigration, by the way, is a very good example.

顺便说一句，移民就是一个很好的例子。

You go back to, say, Bill Clinton, and you read the Clinton 1996 Democratic National Committee platform.

比如说，你回到比尔·克林顿，你会读到克林顿 1996 年民主党全国委员会的纲领。

That sounds like Donald Trump’s immigration platform.

这听起来像是唐纳德·特朗普的移民纲领。

It sounds so much more conservative than where Democrats are on immigration today.

这听起来比民主党今天在移民问题上保守得多。

Today, as it’s become a much more core central issue, as the Democratic Party’s taken on a much larger Hispanic base inside of it, that issue is polarized dramatically.

如今，随着它成为一个更加核心的核心问题，随着民主党内部拥有更大的拉美裔基础，这个问题急剧两极分化。

If you were looking a couple of years ago, you might have said, “Hey, look, George W.

如果你几年前在看，你可能会说，“嘿，看，乔治·W·布什 (George W.

Bush tried to do immigration reform.

布什试图进行移民改革。

In 2013, you have the Gang of Eight doing immigration reform in the Senate.

2013年，八人帮在参议院进行移民改革。

Immigration is a good example of something we’re not polarized.” That was true until it became the thing we’re actually doing, and then it became a central driver of polarization in the country.

移民就是一个很好的例子，说明我们没有两极分化。”事实确实如此，直到它成为我们实际正在做的事情，然后它成为该国两极分化的主要驱动因素。

So, again, moment by moment, it looked super polarized, but what actually happened was, there was a big shift.

所以，每时每刻，它看起来都是超级两极分化，但实际发生的是，发生了巨大的转变。

It took, say, about a decade.

比如说，大约花了十年的时间。

It’s not a story of gridlock.

这不是一个僵局的故事。

It’s a story of radical change, where the masses are still consuming their opiate.

这是一个彻底变革的故事，大众仍在吸食鸦片。

And now maybe they’re arguing about threats to Ukraine rather than gay marriage.

现在也许他们争论的是对乌克兰的威胁而不是同性婚姻。

And now we change policy towards China and develop a tech sector.

现在我们改变对中国的政策并发展科技行业。

And the Supreme Court supports gay marriage, and progress moves on, including political progress.

最高法院支持同性婚姻，进步不断前进，包括政治进步。

Is that wrong?

这是错误的吗？

You were saying Republicans didn’t win elections on it.

你说共和党没有因此赢得选举。

But what’s amazing about that issue is right before it actually changed, they did.

但令人惊奇的是，在这个问题真正发生变化之前，他们就做到了。

Do you remember after the 2004 election, there was a lot of talk — I think ultimately it didn’t turn out to be true — but that perhaps George W.

你是否还记得 2004 年大选后，有很多讨论——我认为最终结果都不是真的——但也许乔治·W·布什 (George W.

Bush had won because of gay marriage ballot initiatives.

布什因同性婚姻投票倡议而获胜。

So, I just want you to know that that was actually an issue that has its own unusual dynamics to it.

所以，我只是想让你们知道，这实际上是一个有其不寻常动态的问题。

But to your broader point, I wouldn’t call it an opiate in the sense that I don’t believe that what is happening is that people are amusing themselves with polarization over here.

但从更广泛的角度来看，我不会称其为鸦片，因为我不相信正在发生的事情是人们在这里用两极分化来取乐。

Whereas a political system is being run — people cannot see me making hand motions at the moment — but over here on the other side, what is happening is actually the political system, when it runs into these issues, ends up being, for the most part, foiled, and that has tremendous implications for governance, climate change idea being a pretty good example of that.

虽然政治体系正在运行——人们现在看不到我在做手势——但在另一边，正在发生的事情实际上是政治体系，当它遇到这些问题时，最终在很大程度上会被挫败，这对治理产生巨大影响，气候变化的想法就是一个很好的例子。

So, I do think systems move on.

所以，我确实认为系统会继续前进。

I would not claim that what I’m describing here, that if somebody comes and writes a book about the American political system in 30 years, it will hold to the exact same dynamics I’m describing right now.

我不会声称我在这里所描述的，如果有人在 30 年后写一本关于美国政治制度的书，它会保持与我现在所描述的完全相同的动态。

Demographic change has a lot to do with this.

人口结构的变化与此有很大关系。

I think generational change is a very underdiscussed force in politics.

我认为代际变革是政治中未被充分讨论的一股力量。

A lot less changes through persuasion than through cohort replacement, to put a nice euphemism on it, people aging out of the electorate.

通过说服带来的改变比通过群体更替带来的改变要少得多，委婉地说，人们已经从选民中消失了。

One of the tricky things about this conversation — and people will kind of hear it going on — when you say the word “polarization,” you could be referring to a bunch of different things.

这次谈话的棘手之处之一——人们会听到它正在发生——当你说“两极分化”这个词时，你可能指的是一堆不同的东西。

Are we talking about how legislators vote in Congress?

我们是在谈论立法者如何在国会投票吗？

Are we talking about how people feel about the other side?

我们是在谈论人们对另一方的感受吗？

Are we talking about issue outcomes?

我们在谈论问题的结果吗？

So, the question, a little bit, is what dimension of polarization we’d be looking at there.

所以，问题是，我们将在那里看到什么维度的两极分化。

Different ones probably have different answers.

不同的人或许有不同的答案。

I think it’s notable to say “abortion aside” because there’s clearly been a very strong level of polarization on the abortion issue.

我认为说“堕胎除外”值得注意，因为在堕胎问题上显然存在非常强烈的两极分化。

Let’s call it here, because I think what we’re talking about here is, basically, policy divergence.

让我们在这里这么称呼它，因为我认为我们在这里谈论的基本上是政策分歧。

This is what you’re talking about.

这就是你所说的。

I am not sure that I think the right way to measure what polarization does, at any level, is policy divergence, and here’s why: To a first approximation, what I think polarization tends to do is make it harder to pass anything because most of the American political system, both at the state and the national level, is built on requiring reasonably high levels of compromise to work.

我不确定我认为衡量两极分化在任何层面上的作用的正确方法是政策分歧，原因如下：初步估计，我认为两极分化往往会使任何事情的通过变得更加困难，因为大多数美国政治制度，无论是在州还是国家层面，都是建立在要求相当高水平的妥协才能发挥作用的基础上的。

So, if what you assume polarization does in its first dimension is make it much harder to get compromise, what you’re going to do is simply reduce the ability to make very high levels of policy change at the state level.

因此，如果你认为两极分化在第一个维度上的作用是让妥协变得更加困难，那么你要做的就是降低在州一级做出非常高水平的政策改变的能力。

I think what you’d want to do here is you’d want to look at states that have extended periods of unified governance, trifecta governance, and see whether or not they’ve diverged, and if so, how much.

我认为你在这里想做的是，你想看看那些长期实行统一治理、三重治理的国家，看看它们是否存在分歧，如果有，分歧程度有多大。

That would be an interesting thing, and I just haven’t done it.

这将是一件有趣的事情，但我只是还没有做到。

But my guess is that, for most states, what you’re seeing — just like you’re seeing at the national level — is probably a little bit less getting done, if anything, because what polarization does, again, make it harder to make anything happen, and make it harder for anything to stick.

但我的猜测是，对于大多数州来说，你所看到的——就像你在国家层面上看到的那样——如果有什么不同的话，可能是完成的事情有点少，因为两极分化再次使任何事情变得更难发生，并使任何事情更难坚持。

My concern with Moral Foundations Theory — which I know has also been under some academic challenge, although I don’t actually feel super qualified to adjudicate that debate — my concern with Moral Foundations Theory is that it is pretty easy to imagine how people, if they’re motivated by elite cues or motivated by partisan interests or something else, could argue their way into justifying a lot of different kinds of policy perspectives under different moral foundations.

我对道德基础理论的关注——我知道它也受到了一些学术挑战，尽管我实际上并不觉得自己超级有资格来裁决这场辩论——我对道德基础理论的关注是，很容易想象，如果人们受到精英暗示或党派利益或其他什么动机的激励，他们会如何在不同的道德基础下论证自己的方式来证明许多不同类型的政策观点的合理性。

My concern with Moral Foundations Theory is that it is pretty easy to imagine how people, if they’re motivated by elite cues or motivated by partisan interests or something else, could argue their way into justifying a lot of different kinds of policy perspectives under different moral foundations.

我对道德基础理论的担忧是，很容易想象，如果人们受到精英暗示或党派利益或其他因素的激励，他们会如何在不同的道德基础下争论以证明许多不同类型的政策观点的合理性。

So, to the extent you do have — and I do buy this part of it — to the extent you do have different moral foundations for people who are on different sides of the debate, I talk a lot about, there’s a very clear in the data increase in polarization by political psychology, resounding down to open versus closed versions of psychology, where you’re an openist to experience versus conscientiousness.

所以，就你确实有的程度——我确实相信这一部分——就你对辩论不同方的人确实有不同的道德基础而言，我谈了很多，政治心理学的两极分化的数据非常明显地增加，回响到开放与封闭版本的心理学，在这种情况下，你对经验与责任心持开放态度。

That is polarizing, but because we are so good at arguing ourselves into the position we need to take, and because a lot of people’s policy perspectives are actually reasonably weak, I’m just not sure how much, in an abstract way, that actually tells you about where people are going to end up.

这是两极分化的现象，但因为我们非常善于论证自己需要采取的立场，而且因为很多人的政策观点实际上相当薄弱，所以我只是不确定，以抽象的方式，这实际上能告诉你人们最终会走向何方。

Maybe a very simple way of putting it is, given the stated views of both the Democrats and Republicans on questions like harm and sacredness and so on — where Jon would put them in moral foundations, or other people would put them just in terms of caring about government interference — it seems very plausible that you could’ve had the two parties reverse their position ultimately on abortion, that you could have had a Republican Party that was much more pro-choice because it was worried about government interference in people’s lives, a Democratic Party that had taken the other position for other reasons.

也许一种非常简单的表达方式是，考虑到民主党和共和党在伤害和神圣等问题上的既定观点——乔恩会把它们放在道德基础上，或者其他人会把它们放在关心政府干预的方面——似乎很可能你可以让两党最终在堕胎问题上改变立场，你可以有一个更加支持堕胎的共和党，因为它担心政府干预人们的生活，一个民主党因其他原因采取了其他立场。

The fact that we didn’t always makes me wonder how much of positions are actually being explained by people’s underlying psychologies versus that their underlying psychologies end up helping them explain how they’re going to argue for the positions they’ve taken for other demographic and historical reasons.

事实上，我们并不总是让我想知道有多少立场实际上是由人们的潜在心理解释的，而他们的潜在心理最终帮助他们解释他们将如何争论他们因其他人口和历史原因而采取的立场。

Now, I get on any moment, “Oh, we talked about Russia, Putin, Ukraine.” People go crazy being polarized.

现在，我随时都会说：“哦，我们谈论了俄罗斯、普京、乌克兰。”人们因为两极分化而发疯。

But they almost don’t even know what the places are they’re talking about, and it can fade in an instant.

但他们几乎不知道他们在谈论什么地方，而且它可能会瞬间消失。

And when you ask, what does each party actually want to do when it’s in charge, I’m not sure I could even describe the differences.

当你问，各方在负责时实际上想做什么时，我什至不确定我是否可以描述其中的差异。

And the parties seem, in a way, incoherent on foreign policy — both of them — to me.

在我看来，在某种程度上，两党在外交政策上似乎不一致。

Do you think that’s a fair characterization, that in foreign policy, putting aside moment-by-moment, that polarization has gone down?

您认为这样的描述公平吗？在外交政策中，抛开每时每刻，两极分化已经减弱？

For instance, something I note in the book is that opposition to Vietnam War — when opposition to Vietnam War was at its height, it was actually pretty evenly distributed between the Democratic and Republican parties.

例如，我在书中提到的一点是，反对越战——当反对越战最激烈的时候，民主党和共和党之间的分布实际上相当均匀。

During that period, when he was running as Ford’s vice president, Bob Dole famously said, “The Democratic Party is a party of war.” People were very upset about that.

在那段时期，当鲍勃·多尔担任福特副总统时，他曾说过一句名言：“民主党是一个战争政党。”人们对此感到非常不安。

But there was a reason he said it.

但他这么说是有原因的。

A lot of the wars have been launched by Democrats.

许多战争都是民主党发动的。

So, while I agree with you that I don’t think foreign policy is highly polarized in a way that some other things are, I’m not sure it was more polarized in the past.

因此，虽然我同意你的观点，即我不认为外交政策像其他一些事情那样高度两极分化，但我不确定过去是否更加两极分化。

This actually is an important point.

这实际上是很重要的一点。

I do not think that, abstractly, polarization is a problem.

抽象地讲，我不认为两极分化是一个问题。

I think it’s really important to say this and be clear about it because, practically, in Washington and in a lot of contemporary political discourse, polarization or being polarized operates as a kind of epithet.

我认为说清楚这一点非常重要，因为实际上，在华盛顿和许多当代政治话语中，两极分化或被两极分化是一种绰号。

To be polarized is bad.

两极分化是不好的。

Polarized operates as a synonym for extreme, which it very much is not, and one of the arguments I make in the book is that the alternative to polarization is often suppression of disagreement.

两极分化是极端的同义词，但事实并非如此，我在书中提出的论点之一是，两极分化的替代方案通常是压制分歧。

So, what you tend to get in multiparty, or even more to the point, two-party political systems is that when disagreements are located within a political party, they are handled by an effort either to suppress the disagreement or to find compromise on the disagreement.

因此，在多党政治制度中，或者更重要的是，在两党政治制度中，当一个政党内部出现分歧时，就会通过努力压制分歧或就分歧寻求妥协来解决。

When they are located between the political parties, they tend to lead towards escalation, as the parties sharpen the differences between them in an effort to beat the other party, to show who they are, to differentiate, etc.

当它们位于政党之间时，往往会导致冲突升级，因为政党会加剧彼此之间的分歧，以击败对方、展示自己、进行区分等。

A lot of what was de-polarized in the mid-20th century had to do with the Democratic Party being the home of a racist, southern Dixiecrat block, which ended up controlling a lot of the Democratic Party’s outcomes and approaches.

20 世纪中叶发生的许多去极化事件都与民主党是南方迪克西克拉特种族主义阵营的大本营有关，该阵营最终控制了民主党的许多成果和做法。

As part of that, the Republican Party, having this sort of liberal, northern, and to some degree even western dimension — that was built on an agreement that American politics was not going to do anything about the southern white supremacist hierarchy.

作为其中的一部分，共和党具有这种自由主义的、北方的、甚至在某种程度上甚至是西方的维度——它是建立在美国政治不会对南方白人至上主义等级制度采取任何行动的协议之上的。

That was bad.

那很糟糕。

That was not a good thing.

这不是什么好事。

We had a more de-polarized and, you can argue in certain ways, what looked like a more functional politics, but is built on blood.

我们有一个更加去极化的政治，你可以在某些方面争论，它看起来像是一个更实用的政治，但它是建立在血统之上的。

So, when things are polarized, on the one hand, they often don’t work that well in our political system due to the requirement for consensus, but you often are getting arguments and debates you wouldn’t have otherwise.

因此，当事情两极分化时，一方面，由于需要达成共识，它们在我们的政治体系中往往不能很好地发挥作用，但你经常会遇到原本不会有的争论和辩论。

Immigration here is a good example.

这里的移民就是一个很好的例子。

Immigration is something that has traditionally split the parties internally, trade being another one, and both parties, for their own reasons, have suppressed that internal debate.

传统上，移民是两党内部分裂的一个问题，贸易则是另一个问题，双方都出于各自的原因压制了内部辩论。

So, Donald Trump, who for his own reasons, due to the kind of media coverage he could attract, due to the amount of money he had, due to his own personal celebrity — he came in on something where there was a large number of Americans who felt unrepresented by the two political parties on immigration and trade.

因此，唐纳德·特朗普，由于他自己的原因，由于他可以吸引的媒体报道，由于他拥有的金钱，由于他自己的个人名气，他介入了很多美国人在移民和贸易问题上感觉没有得到两个政党代表的事情。

And he was able to break through the suppression on that.

而他，竟然能够突破这方面的压制。

He was able to polarize around those two issues, which — particularly immigration is a very, very powerful locus of polarization, not just in our country but in all of Western Europe and Canada and so on.

他能够围绕这两个问题产生两极分化，特别是移民问题是一个非常非常强大的两极分化焦点，不仅在我们国家，而且在整个西欧和加拿大等地。

So, polarization is not, in and of itself, bad.

因此，两极分化本身并不是坏事。

Political systems can work well or poorly with it happening.

当这种情况发生时，政治制度可能会运作得很好，也可能会很糟糕。

I have a little bit of familiarity with the Rhode Island political system, and —

我对罗德岛州的政治制度有一点了解，而且——

I’m the son of an immigrant.

我是移民的儿子。

I grew up in Southern California.

我在南加州长大。

I grew up in Irvine, where you taught for a while.

我在欧文长大，你在那里教过一段时间。

It’s a very immigrant-heavy community.

这是一个移民密集的社区。

I feel — both on the empirical evidence of what it does for growth and what kind of communities it builds, and on the big-picture emotional questions — very, very deeply pro-immigration.

无论是从它对经济增长的作用和它建立的社区类型的经验证据来看，还是从大局的情感问题上来看，我都非常非常强烈地支持移民。

So, that’s a place where I’m probably a lot more polarized than most people are.

所以，在这个地方我可能比大多数人更加两极分化。

I think, certainly, immigration.

我认为，当然是移民。

If I feel that people are dehumanizing immigrants or speaking about people who risk everything to come here, as if they’re somehow just criminals who should be dismissed, I have a very, very negative reaction to that.

If I feel that people are dehumanizing immigrants or speaking about people who risk everything to come here, as if they’re somehow just criminals who should be dismissed, I have a very, very negative reaction to that.

I mentioned animal rights issues — I have a very strong emotional reaction to the way people talk about those issues and think about them and act on them.

I mentioned animal rights issues — I have a very strong emotional reaction to the way people talk about those issues and think about them and act on them.

And then, around a bunch of the economic issues — one thing that has been interesting to me more recently is that, as economics has become more polarized, I think that debate has become more polarized, and I have found myself in a slightly weird position in it, where I think I still operate in a pretty .

And then, around a bunch of the economic issues — one thing that has been interesting to me more recently is that, as economics has become more polarized, I think that debate has become more polarized, and I have found myself in a slightly weird position in it, where I think I still operate in a pretty .

.

。

.

。

I am a pretty big fan of markets as a policy mechanism, but have become a lot more convinced by the arguments against neoliberalism as a form of, not policy agenda, but as a kind of ideological water we swim in, that we don’t notice how often we talk about those.

I am a pretty big fan of markets as a policy mechanism, but have become a lot more convinced by the arguments against neoliberalism as a form of, not policy agenda, but as a kind of ideological water we swim in, that we don’t notice how often we talk about those.

So I think I’m probably becoming personally a little more polarized on that and quite a bit more sympathetic to the much more polarized critique of just the way we approach issues of how to weight who deserves what.

So I think I’m probably becoming personally a little more polarized on that and quite a bit more sympathetic to the much more polarized critique of just the way we approach issues of how to weight who deserves what.

I am a pretty big fan of markets as a policy mechanism, but have become a lot more convinced by the arguments against neoliberalism as a form of, not policy agenda, but as a kind of ideological water we swim in, that we don’t notice how often we talk about those.

I am a pretty big fan of markets as a policy mechanism, but have become a lot more convinced by the arguments against neoliberalism as a form of, not policy agenda, but as a kind of ideological water we swim in, that we don’t notice how often we talk about those.

So I think I’m probably becoming personally a little more polarized on that and quite a bit more sympathetic to the much more polarized critique of just the way we approach issues of how to weight who deserves what.

So I think I’m probably becoming personally a little more polarized on that and quite a bit more sympathetic to the much more polarized critique of just the way we approach issues of how to weight who deserves what.

But that’s a contentious claim.

但这是一个有争议的说法。

I’m not saying do you agree with the views of those conservatives, but do you agree with their self-description that they’re epistemically more moderate because they don’t want these big, quick, radical changes?

I’m not saying do you agree with the views of those conservatives, but do you agree with their self-description that they’re epistemically more moderate because they don’t want these big, quick, radical changes?

We use the word conservative to describe both an ideology in terms of lower taxes, smaller government, etc., and this conservative temperament that you’re discussing, with Michael Oakeshott, some phases of Andrew Sullivan: “Let’s just move slowly here.

We use the word conservative to describe both an ideology in terms of lower taxes, smaller government, etc., and this conservative temperament that you’re discussing, with Michael Oakeshott, some phases of Andrew Sullivan: “Let’s just move slowly here.

Let’s think about what we’ve built, and let’s be careful about what we’re tearing down.”

Let’s think about what we’ve built, and let’s be careful about what we’re tearing down.”

We are often talking about people of a conservative ideology, but not a conservative temperament, in a confusing way.

We are often talking about people of a conservative ideology, but not a conservative temperament, in a confusing way.

Paul Ryan, I would say, is somebody with, in many ways, what we would understand as a conservative ideology, but if anything, he has a very progressive temperament.

Paul Ryan, I would say, is somebody with, in many ways, what we would understand as a conservative ideology, but if anything, he has a very progressive temperament.

He wants to make big changes, reconstruct the budget, go in a whole different direction.

He wants to make big changes, reconstruct the budget, go in a whole different direction.

Medicare is working fine — let’s change it entirely.

Medicare is working fine — let’s change it entirely.

So, he’s somebody who, I think, you would understand as conservative in ideology, progressive, if anything, in temperament.

So, he’s somebody who, I think, you would understand as conservative in ideology, progressive, if anything, in temperament.

Paul Ryan, I would say, is somebody with, in many ways, what we would understand as a conservative ideology, but if anything, he has a very progressive temperament.

Paul Ryan, I would say, is somebody with, in many ways, what we would understand as a conservative ideology, but if anything, he has a very progressive temperament.

He wants to make big changes, reconstruct the budget, go in a whole different direction.

He wants to make big changes, reconstruct the budget, go in a whole different direction.

Medicare is working fine — let’s change it entirely.

Medicare is working fine — let’s change it entirely.

So, he’s somebody who, I think, you would understand as conservative in ideology, progressive, if anything, in temperament.

所以，我想，你会理解他在意识形态上是保守的，但在气质上却是进步的。

Someone like Joe Biden is almost the reverse.

像乔·拜登这样的人几乎恰恰相反。

I think he’s between moderate and progressive in his ideology.

我认为他的意识形态介于温和派和进步派之间。

I think he’s somewhat conservative in temperament.

I think he’s somewhat conservative in temperament.

Then there are people who don’t have much ideology but are almost reactionary in temperament, where I’d put, say, a Donald Trump.

Then there are people who don’t have much ideology but are almost reactionary in temperament, where I’d put, say, a Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders, I think, is confusing on this, too.

我认为伯尼·桑德斯对此也感到困惑。

He’s obviously relatively socialist, or at least democratic socialist, in ideology.

He’s obviously relatively socialist, or at least democratic socialist, in ideology.

He is not that revolutionary in temperament.

他的气质并不那么革命。

I’ve covered him as a legislator for a very long time.

我很长时间以来一直关注他作为立法者的情况。

He’s not one of the people who’s always trying to blow up the chamber.

他不是那些总是试图炸毁密室的人之一。

There are people like that.

有这样的人。

He’s not calling general strikes.

他并没有号召大罢工。

He’s not using every parliamentary maneuver he can to stop anything he doesn’t like.

他并没有利用议会的一切手段来阻止他不喜欢的事情。

So, it is worthwhile to think very hard about the temperament people bring to politics.

So, it is worthwhile to think very hard about the temperament people bring to politics.

I think that the number of people who end up having strong ideologies and hewing to a genuinely conservative temperament is quite small.

我认为最终拥有强烈意识形态并坚持真正保守气质的人是很少的。

I’m more consensus oriented.

我更注重共识。

I like hearing people out.

我喜欢听别人说话。

I probably have a little bit more of a moderate temperament in that way.

从这方面来说，我的性格可能比较温和一些。

But I wouldn’t really change that about myself.

但我不会真正改变自己的这一点。

I think it’s a shame that so much of politics happens on Twitter now, but that’s the way it is.

我认为现在这么多政治活动都发生在 Twitter 上是一种耻辱，但事实就是如此。

I wouldn’t change me to operate to that.

我不会改变我的做法。

A lot of conservatives believe very strongly in Conquest’s Second Law, and they see it more and more as a kind of curse.

许多保守派非常相信征服第二定律，他们越来越将其视为一种诅咒。

I think they would claim it polarizes them, like, “My goodness, we’ve got to do something or we’re going to lose.” Is that one of the seven or x number of factors behind polarization, the perception that my side is losing?

我想他们会声称这让他们两极分化，比如，“天哪，我们必须做点什么，否则我们就会失败。”这是两极分化背后的七个或多个因素之一，即我方正在失败的感觉吗？

But the thing I wanted to say on this — because I’ve been thinking about it since we were chatting about it the other day — is it seems to me that we rate how left or right an institution is by where it is on some of these cultural questions, like how do you feel about gay marriage?

但我想说的是——因为自从我们前几天讨论这个问题以来我一直在思考这个问题——在我看来，我们是根据一个机构在某些文化问题上的立场来评价它的左或右，比如你对同性婚姻有何看法？

I’d almost call it a cosmopolitan divide, like how cosmopolitan are you on your fundamental orientation?

我几乎会把它称为国际化鸿沟，比如你的基本取向有多国际化？

But then, a lot of these institutions that people think of as left wing are also growing at the same time, as they get older, more conservative on other dimensions.

但随后，许多人们认为是左翼的机构也在同时成长，因为它们变老了，在其他方面更加保守。

So, they become more conservative in how things work.

因此，他们在事情的运作方式上变得更加保守。

There tends to be, with Bernie Sanders being an interesting counterexample of this — although, given how he feels about the filibuster and so on, maybe not, actually — there tends to be a conservatism that emerges on how things get done in complicated systems, be they legislatures or bureaucracies, that happen after people have been in those systems a very long time.

伯尼·桑德斯（Bernie Sanders）就是一个有趣的反例——尽管考虑到他对阻挠议事等的看法，实际上也许不是——在复杂的系统中，无论是立法机关还是官僚机构，在人们在这些系统中呆了很长时间之后，往往会出现一种保守主义。

They begin to be very used to how the thing works, and it’d hard for them to imagine it working another way.

他们开始非常习惯这个东西的运作方式，并且很难想象它以另一种方式运作。

My colleague Matt Yglesias sometimes makes a point that everybody calls Hollywood very left wing, but if you actually think about Hollywood’s veneration of soldiers, police, other kinds of government authority figures, there are dimensions where it’s actually quite right wing.

我的同事马特·伊格莱西亚斯（Matt Yglesias）有时会指出，每个人都称好莱坞非常左翼，但如果你真正考虑一下好莱坞对士兵、警察和其他类型的政府权威人物的崇拜，就会发现在某些方面它实际上是相当右翼的。

Economics — I’m more used to this one from being in newsrooms, but newsrooms don’t, in my experience — they are left wing in the sense of some of their cosmopolitan orientations, but they have a sort of Morning Joe approach on economics.

经济学——由于在新闻编辑室工作，我更习惯这一点，但根据我的经验，新闻编辑室并不习惯——他们在某些国际化取向的意义上是左翼，但他们对经济学有一种早安乔的方法。

They tend to be quite biased towards deficit reduction, towards a Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget view of the world.

他们往往非常偏向于削减赤字，偏向于负责任的联邦预算委员会的世界观。

I think there is something very interesting and important — I actually tried to talk about it in the book — in the way we actually key left or right increasingly to this cultural dimension.

我认为有一些非常有趣和重要的事情——我实际上试图在书中讨论它——我们实际上越来越多地向左或向右强调这种文化维度。

But it is very far from the only dimension operating, and I think that one of the destabilizing tensions of American politics right now is that the Right feels like they are losing on culture, which is what they care about most, and the Left feels like it is losing on economics, which is what it cares about most.

但这远非唯一起作用的维度，我认为目前美国政治不稳定的紧张局势之一是，右翼感觉自己在文化上失败了，这是他们最关心的，而左翼则感觉自己在经济上失败了，这是他们最关心的。

So, everybody simultaneously, both in this and some other respects, feels like they are losing power, even as the other side sees an endlessly winning power, and that feeling of nobody being quite sure who is winning and who is losing is quite disorienting.

因此，每个人同时，无论是在这方面还是在其他方面，都感觉自己正在失去权力，即使对方看到了无尽的获胜力量，而没有人完全确定谁赢谁输的感觉非常令人迷失方向。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

But I have just never felt a connection to Manhattan.

但我从来没有感受到与曼哈顿的联系。

I don’t like the subway.

我不喜欢地铁。

I don’t like the level of density.

我不喜欢这种密度。

It just doesn’t work for me.

这对我来说不起作用。

I wish I had a better and more thought-through answer, but I think in some ways my feelings towards Manhattan have always been so deeply visceral that I’ve never had to create —

我希望我有一个更好、更经过深思熟虑的答案，但我认为在某些方面，我对曼哈顿的感情一直都是如此深刻的发自内心，我从来没有必要创造——

Also, look how much it ends up controlling politics.

另外，看看它最终在多大程度上控制了政治。

We’ve had no fewer than three former New York mayors involved in this year’s presidential campaign, and a number of Southern District prosecutors — drives me crazy.

我们有不少于三名前纽约市长参与了今年的总统竞选，还有一些南区检察官——让我发疯。

And then, when I lived in DC for a long time, DC has a lot of people who grew up in New York, and they’re just endlessly shitting on DC, and I like DC.

然后，当我在华盛顿生活了很长一段时间后，华盛顿有很多在纽约长大的人，他们只是无休止地在华盛顿拉屎，而我喜欢华盛顿。

So I have a somewhat reflexive dislike of Manhattan that is built in response to people from Manhattan always talking about how great Manhattan is.

所以我对曼哈顿有一种反射性的厌恶，这是因为曼哈顿的人们总是在谈论曼哈顿有多么伟大。

Beyond that, I think Pakistan is a very interesting political system.

除此之外，我认为巴基斯坦是一个非常有趣的政治体系。

You’ve recommended this book on your blog, but I’ll recommend it too.

您在博客上推荐了这本书，但我也会推荐它。

Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country is just a really wonderful book.

阿纳托尔·利文的《巴基斯坦：一个艰难的国家》是一本非常精彩的书。

And then, there’s a book of short stories, called In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, that I think is a really beautiful evocation of what it’s like to live in a functionally feudal society.

然后，有一本短篇小说集，名为《在其他房间，其他奇迹》，我认为这本书非常美丽地再现了生活在功能性封建社会中的情况。

The kind of mixture of advanced parts of Pakistan and more developing parts of Pakistan is interesting and disorienting.

巴基斯坦先进地区和巴基斯坦较发展地区的混合体很有趣，也令人迷失方向。

But I want to say that I spent my time in Lahore there.

但我想说我是在拉合尔度过的。

It’s a very different country outside of these areas, so I would love to do more traveling there.

在这些地区之外，这是一个非常不同的国家，所以我很想在那里进行更多的旅行。

It’s just an amazing place to be.

这真是一个了不起的地方。

The book I ended up writing is very different than the book I intended to write.

我最终写的书与我打算写的书非常不同。

It was one of the most generative, intellectual experiences I’ve ever had.

这是我所经历过的最有创造力、最有智慧的经历之一。

It forced me .

这迫使我。

.

。

.

。

It is me pulling the deep model and rebuilding the deep model I have of how American politics works and functions.

是我拉动了深层模型并重建了我对美国政治如何运作和运作的深层模型。

And one of the humbling things about that is recognizing how much in my model that I thought was there actually wasn’t.

令人谦卑的事情之一是认识到我的模型中有多少我认为实际上不存在的东西。

Or it was working off of intuition, but it wasn’t strong enough, or it wasn’t built on good evidence there.

或者它是凭直觉起作用的，但它不够强大，或者它没有建立在良好的证据之上。

A really sobering thing for me in doing this book was, I had to do a chapter on asymmetric polarization because that’s a big part of this.

在写这本书时，对我来说真正发人深省的一件事是，我必须写一章关于不对称极化的内容，因为这是其中的重要组成部分。

If you’re talking about polarization, you have to talk about why the Republican Party has become a very different institution from the Democratic Party.

如果你谈论两极分化，你就必须谈论为什么共和党已经成为一个与民主党截然不同的机构。

And it was really to my surprise to find that, for all that political science had a strong view that there was asymmetric polarization going on, they did not have a good story for why it was happening.

令我惊讶的是，尽管所有政治学都强烈认为存在不对称两极分化，但他们却没有一个好的故事来解释为什么会发生这种情况。

The causal mechanism is extremely underdeveloped.

因果机制极其不发达。

I had to go through a lot of different drafts, and a lot of reporting, and a lot of reading on that chapter to come up with something that I found convincing, but asymmetric polarization was a very big part of my story of American politics, and recognizing how undertheorized it was in my head was striking.

我必须经过很多不同的草稿、大量的报告、大量的阅读该章才能得出一些我认为有说服力的东西，但不对称的两极分化是我关于美国政治的故事的一个非常重要的部分，并且认识到它在我的头脑中是多么缺乏理论性是令人震惊的。

So, I think that writing a book — it forces you to pull forward things that you might assume are pretty settled because some level of intuition, or value, or just hearing other people talk about it has made you think it is more sure than it is.

所以，我认为写一本书——它迫使你推进一些你可能认为已经相当确定的事情，因为某种程度的直觉或价值，或者只是听到其他人谈论它，让你认为它比实际情况更确定。

Then when you actually have to put it in a coherent framework, you find out that there’s a lot of blank space in there.

然后当你真正要把它放在一个连贯的框架中时，你会发现里面有很多空白。

Look, my experience is in media.

听着，我的经验是在媒体领域。

My organization has a lot of people working in different places.

我的组织有很多人在不同的地方工作。

We have offices in New York and Austin and DC and California and a number of other places.

我们在纽约、奥斯汀、华盛顿特区、加利福尼亚州以及其他许多地方设有办事处。

We have a lot of people who just work from home in different areas of the country, and a lot of those people are really, really excellent performers.

我们有很多人在全国不同地区在家工作，其中很多人都是非常非常出色的表演者。

Now, that is individual, right?

现在，这是个人的，对吧？

Some people work well in that context, some don’t.

有些人在这种情况下工作得很好，有些人则不然。

I’m now basically telecommuting.

我现在基本上都是远程办公。

I’m in the SF office for Vox, but my team is primarily in DC, with a number of them in New York.

我在 Vox 的旧金山办公室，但我的团队主要在华盛顿，其中一些在纽约。

And I think that my work has remained, hopefully, quite good in most ways, although there’s certainly things I’m worse at than I was before.

我认为，希望我的工作在大多数方面仍然保持得很好，尽管肯定有些事情我比以前更糟糕了。

I think that the two things that are hard about it — one is one, it is pretty difficult to run an organization that is 70/30.

我认为有两件事是困难的——一是，管理一个 70/30 的组织是相当困难的。

I think that running an organization that is entirely telecommuting is probably — I don’t want to call it easy, but it’s a lot easier than running an organization where most people are in one place, and then some significant, but not near majority percentage of them are not, because what you end up having then is dual processes, where a lot of things are built for everybody being around each other, and then the people who are not around everyone else are at somewhat of a disadvantage.

我认为，运营一个完全远程办公的组织可能——我不想说这很容易，但这比运营一个大多数人都在一个地方的组织要容易得多，然后有一些重要但不是接近大多数的人不在一个地方，因为最终你会得到双重流程，其中很多东西是为每个人都在彼此周围而构建的，然后那些不在其他人身边的人在某种程度上处于不利地位。

So, I think that’s one issue, that oftentimes what people want to do is not create a telecommuting equilibrium, but they want to create a 70/30 equilibrium, and that one doesn’t work that well.

所以，我认为这是一个问题，人们通常想做的不是创造一种远程办公平衡，而是他们想要创造一种 70/30 的平衡，但这种平衡效果并不好。

And it certainly doesn’t work that well if you’re ambitious and want to advance within the company, particularly within its bureaucratic hierarchy.

如果你雄心勃勃并希望在公司内部（尤其是在其官僚体系内）取得进步，那么它肯定不会那么有效。

But then, the other piece of it that I think is very real is that you just lose a lot of information, even in the very best telecommuting software.

但是，我认为非常现实的另一件事是，即使在最好的远程办公软件中，你也会丢失很多信息。

And this isn’t even just a question of it being buggy.

这甚至不仅仅是一个有问题的问题。

It’s a question of .

这是一个问题。

.

。

.

。

Do you ever do this podcast remote?

你曾经遥控过这个播客吗？

So, I think that this may not be a marginally-economic-product question so much as it may be the preferences-people-ultimately-feel question.

所以，我认为这可能不是一个边际经济产品问题，而可能是一个人们最终感受的偏好问题。

There’s just a preference for being in person.

只是偏好面对面。

We’re human animals.

我们是人类动物。

A lot is lost.

失去了很多。

Maybe what is lost is not that important, but in terms of how it feels on the other side of it, it matters quite a bit.

也许失去的东西并不那么重要，但就失去的另一面的感受而言，这却是相当重要的。

I was writing on this years ago, before the current Pete Buttigieg backlash was in gear.

我几年前就写过这个问题，当时皮特·布蒂吉格(Pete Buttigieg)的强烈反对尚未开始。

What seems to me to be happening there — and this was what I found when I was reporting with kids on college campuses about it — is that, basically, McKinsey has arbitraged — as have some Wall Street firms, other consulting firms — the ways in which a lot of particularly liberal arts majors feel like they’re graduating college without usable skills.

在我看来，那里正在发生的事情——这是我在大学校园里与孩子们一起报道此事时发现的——基本上，麦肯锡已经像一些华尔街公司和其他咨询公司一样，进行了套利，让许多特别是文科专业的学生感觉自己大学毕业时没有可用的技能。

And I don’t think it, number one, is that true that they are graduating without usable skills.

第一，我不认为他们毕业时没有可用的技能。

But McKinsey has the money to have very, very sophisticated recruiting infrastructures that are hiring people at good salaries very early in the senior year.

但麦肯锡有钱拥有非常非常复杂的招聘基础设施，可以在高年级的早期就以丰厚的薪水招聘人才。

So, if you’re somebody who is there, you feel anxious about what’s going to come next.

所以，如果你是那里的人，你会对接下来会发生的事情感到焦虑。

McKinsey swoops in.

麦肯锡突然介入。

It’s like fall, you get a great job that you know your parents are going to be happy with —

就像秋天一样，你找到了一份很棒的工作，你知道你的父母会对此感到满意 -

And I’ll just say, as somebody who’s a new father — my son is 10 months old — having to live in that idea of what it would be like to be divorcing and feeling your kid falling further away from you, I could feel that agony in such an intense way that my emotional reaction to that movie was probably much more specific than — I don’t want to say than it was for other people — but than it would have been at another time in my own life.

我只想说，作为一个新父亲——我的儿子才10个月大——不得不生活在离婚的感觉中，感觉你的孩子离你越来越远，我能感受到那种强烈的痛苦，以至于我对那部电影的情感反应可能比——我不想说比其他人的情感反应——但比我自己生命中的另一个时期更具体。

So, the way in which that movie spoke to me emotionally was very, very intense.

所以，那部电影对我的情感表达是非常非常强烈的。

On parenthood

关于为人父母

The idea that you would force anyone to go through that is now, to me, so barbaric.

现在，对我来说，你会强迫任何人经历这一切的想法是如此野蛮。

Having seen it like that, it’s not somebody else’s right.

这么一看，就知道这不是别人的权利。

Almost whatever you think about it, the idea that you would demand that of somebody is just too much for me.

几乎无论你怎么想，你对某人提出要求的想法对我来说都太过分了。

And then, the other thing is that I adore my son to the ends of the earth.

然后，另一件事是我爱我的儿子到天涯海角。

There’s nothing I can say that is as important to me as how I feel about him.

对我来说，没有什么比我对他的感觉更重要的了。

Also, when you’re going through pregnancy, you realize that in that first 6, 12, 10, even 20 weeks, miscarriages are very common.

此外，当您怀孕期间，您会意识到在最初的 6、12、10、甚至 20 周内，流产是很常见的。

Things go wrong.

事情出了问题。

I don’t believe you’re dealing with a person until relatively later in that game.

我不相信你会在游戏相对较晚的时候与一个人打交道。

So the combination of those two experiences .

所以这两种经验的结合。

.

。

.

。

It’s a developing embryo.

这是一个正在发育的胚胎。

But then, also, you’re dealing with a full human being who you’re putting through something both medically dangerous and very, very, very emotionally and physically difficult.

但同时，你面对的是一个完整的人，你正在经历一些医疗上危险的事情，而且在情感和身体上都非常非常困难。

It just made me a lot more pro-choice.

这让我更加支持选择。

The other piece of it is, this is a way in which it just affirms something in me.

另一方面是，这是一种肯定我内心某些东西的方式。

It’s made me much more egalitarian in my politics.

这让我在政治上更加平等。

I think that’s actually the wrong way to say it.

我认为这实际上是错误的说法。

I don’t think it’s changed them except it’s affirmed them.

我不认为这改变了他们，只是肯定了他们。

I don’t mean to say that being a parent has confirmed everything I thought about life, but when I see what I am willing to do for my son — the amount of time I’m willing to give him, the environment I’m going to try to create for him, the fact that both of his parents have, say, flexible schedules so we can be there for him, take him to the pediatrician if he needs that, pick him up from something if he needs to be picked up, make sure he’s got great childcare, on and on and on and on — that we have family networks that will help, friend networks that will help, our transportation is not bad, so we’re able to get to him and get him where he needs to go.

我并不是说，成为一名父母已经证实了我对生活的一切想法，但当我看到我愿意为我的儿子做的事情时——我愿意给他多少时间，我要努力为他创造的环境，事实上，他的父母都有灵活的时间表，这样我们就可以在他身边，如果他需要的话带他去看儿科医生，如果需要接他，就去接他，确保他得到良好的托儿服务，等等。等等——我们有可以提供帮助的家庭网络，可以提供帮助的朋友网络，我们的交通也不错，所以我们能够找到他并把他送到他需要去的地方。

The idea that this is in any way a fair race is so ridiculous when you just look at that around you, when you see what is happening to people from the moment they come out of the womb and even before that, that the amount of redistribution we do on the back end just seems ridiculously small to me.

当你看看你周围的情况，当你看到人们从子宫里出来的那一刻起，甚至在那之前发生的事情时，我们在后端所做的重新分配的数量对我来说似乎小得可笑。

I remember when Corbyn was being hailed as showing a politics that could truly work, that this is what Americans had to do, too.

我记得当科尔宾被誉为展示了一种真正可行的政治时，这也是美国人必须做的。

And I think that you have to take that with almost as much force in the other direction.

我认为你必须在另一个方向上以几乎同样的力量来接受这一点。

He is in some ways, maybe, a uniquely bad politician.

从某些方面来说，他也许是一位极其糟糕的政治家。

The fact that he didn’t have a clear position on Brexit was quite bad.

他对英国脱欧没有明确的立场这一事实非常糟糕。

But there is a very deep potency to this form of politics that is being played with around Brexit, also in America, also in a bunch of other places, that I think needs to be taken seriously.

但这种围绕英国脱欧而展开的政治形式有着非常深远的影响力，在美国也是如此，在其他许多地方也是如此，我认为需要认真对待。

I will say that Fintan O’Toole just wrote a book called The Politics of Pain that I thought was really remarkably sharp on this, and as an analysis of the British psyche was one of the most convincing things I’ve read, making an argument, going way back in Britain’s history, that there’s a deep, unresolved set of psychic questions around Britain won WWII, and then somehow feels like it lost the piece that it deserved to, if not own Europe, then be understood as a savior of Europe in an ongoing way.

我要说的是，芬坦·奥图尔刚刚写了一本名为《痛苦的政治》的书，我认为这本书在这一点上非常尖锐，对英国心理的分析是我读过的最令人信服的东西之一，他提出了一个论点，追溯到英国的历史，围绕英国赢得二战，存在一系列深刻的、未解决的心理问题，然后不知何故感觉它失去了它应得的一块，如果不是拥有欧洲的话，那么持续被理解为欧洲的救世主。

Instead, here you have the European Union emerge.

相反，欧盟出现了。

In many ways, the European Union is dominated by Germany, the aggressor in World War II.

在很多方面，欧盟都是由二战侵略者德国主导的。

There was some interesting stuff about colonialism in the British psyche.

英国人的心灵中有一些关于殖民主义的有趣的东西。

He does a lot of very deep analysis of popular British television and literature that I think shows this in an interesting way.

他对流行的英国电视和文学做了很多非常深入的分析，我认为这以一种有趣的方式展示了这一点。

I recognize that gets at some endogenous dimensions of the Brexit question, but I think it’s a recommendation worth following for readers.

我承认这触及了英国脱欧问题的某些内生维度，但我认为这是一个值得读者遵循的建议。

The other thing that I will say is that, in terms of things that I think are broad based — and this gets to sort of Martin Gurri Revolt of the Public theses — is that Boris Johnson clearly shares quite a bit — as does Brexit — with Donald Trump.

我要说的另一件事是，就我认为基础广泛的事情而言——这有点像马丁·古里的公共论点的反抗——鲍里斯·约翰逊显然与唐纳德·特朗普有很多共同点——就像英国脱欧一样。

A lot of the national populist politicians seem to me to share certain dimensions with each other.

在我看来，许多全国性的民粹主义政治家似乎在某些方面具有共同点。

And one of the core things they share is, one, that I think we’re in an age, technologically and for other reasons, where extremely strong, outrageous, conflictual forms of politics are at least somewhat advantaged, certainly on the right.

他们共同的核心内容之一是，我认为我们正处于一个时代，无论是技术上还是出于其他原因，极其强大、令人愤慨、冲突的政治形式至少在某种程度上具有优势，尤其是右派。

They’re very good at practically dominating agendas.

他们非常擅长实际主导议程。

I think that the media has not in any way effectively adapted to the social media age.

我认为媒体无论如何都没有有效地适应社交媒体时代。

So, the way in which we’ve been overturned is that, among other things, we think that our primary power as an institution is that we can cover things positively or negatively, that the thing we’re covering doesn’t much matter so much as how we are covering it.

因此，我们被推翻的方式是，除其他外，我们认为我们作为一个机构的主要权力是我们可以积极或消极地报道事物，我们报道的事情并不重要，重要的是我们如何报道它。

So, we’re covering somebody’s lies, right?

所以，我们正在掩盖某人的谎言，对吗？

Boris Johnson said lies a lot.

鲍里斯·约翰逊说了很多谎话。

We’re fact-checking that all over, and, “Well, that’s really going to show him.” Instead, what we’re actually doing is amplifying the lie.

我们正在对这一切进行事实核查，并且，“嗯，这真的会向他展示。”相反，我们实际上正在做的是放大谎言。

What a lot of these players have understood is that — to actually use something that Mike Cernovich, the right-wing civic nationalist, I guess, guy, says — “Conflict is attention, and attention is influence.” So highly conflictual politicians seem to me to be advantaged.

这些球员中的很多人都明白，实际上用右翼公民民族主义者迈克·切尔诺维奇（Mike Cernovich）的话来说，我想，“冲突就是注意力，注意力就是影响力。”在我看来，高度冲突的政客似乎占据了优势。

Politicians who lie a lot — they’re able to use that level of very brazen lying as a way to hijack the media narrative because the media will cover somebody who has said something incredibly untrue over someone who said something kind of benignly true.

经常撒谎的政客——他们能够利用这种程度的厚颜无耻的谎言来劫持媒体的叙述，因为媒体会掩盖那些说了一些极其不真实的话的人，而不是那些说一些善意的真实的话的人。

You could think about this in America as a difficulty for an Amy Klobuchar going up against a Donald Trump.

你可以把这看作是在美国，艾米·克洛布彻 (Amy Klobuchar) 与唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 对抗的一个困难。

A politician like Amy Klobuchar is very popular.

像艾米·克洛布彻这样的政治家很受欢迎。

She highly overperforms in Minnesota.

她在明尼苏达州的表现非常出色。

She is a very effective politician in the Senate.

她是参议院一位非常有效的政治家。

But if you go back a couple of years, she wasn’t getting very much coverage, whereas the people who are more provocateurs were.

但如果你回到几年前，你会发现她并没有得到太多报道，而那些更具煽动性的人却得到了很多报道。

So, that way in which the coverage dimensions were shifting, away from “What does a consensus of party elites tell you about who to pay attention to?” versus “Who goes most viral on social media?” That has really changed who is succeeding in politics, and the kind of people willing to play that game tend to be either highly ideological or highly conflictual.

因此，报道维度正在发生转变，不再是“政党精英的共识告诉你应该关注谁？”与“谁在社交媒体上最火爆？”这确实改变了谁能在政治上取得成功，而愿意玩这种游戏的人往往要么高度意识形态化，要么高度冲突。

But I will say in a big level that I think the failures of governance in California are much more profound failures for the Left and for progressivism than people give them credit for.

但我要说的是，从大的层面上来说，我认为加州治理的失败对于左派和进步主义来说是比人们所认为的更加深刻的失败。

The fact that California cannot figure out how to make it affordable to live in its major cities, or usable to get around as a state, not just inside the cities, where transportation in LA and San Francisco are really bad.

事实上，加州不知道如何让主要城市的生活负担得起，或者作为一个州可以出行，而不仅仅是在城市内部，洛杉矶和旧金山的交通非常糟糕。

The failure of high-speed rail in California is such a cosmic embarrassment for the Left that I think it really needs to be taken a bit more seriously.

加州高铁的失败对左派来说是一个巨大的耻辱，我认为确实需要更认真地对待它。

It’s something that the Left needs to figure out how to change.

这是左派需要弄清楚如何改变的事情。

If they can’t build high-speed rail with the billions and billions and billions of dollars earmarked for that project, why should people trust them on the Green New Deal, etc.?

如果他们不能用数十亿美元建设高铁，人们为什么要相信他们的绿色新政等？

It’s not like it’s going to be easier outside of California.

在加州以外的地方，情况并不容易。

California had very big Democratic majorities.

加州拥有很大的民主党多数席位。

So, the failures of government in California — I can tell you about them at some levels, right?

那么，加州政府的失败——我可以在某种程度上告诉你，对吗？

You have very powerful NIMBY-istic politics there.

那里有非常强大的邻避主义政治。

Prop 13 has certainly made taxation hard.

第 13 号提案无疑让税收变得困难。

California, for a very long time, had extremely sharp strictures to the proposition process and, through some other constitutional changes, on what you could do even in the legislatures.

加利福尼亚州在很长一段时间里对提案程序以及通过其他一些宪法修改甚至在立法机关中可以做什么都有极其严格的限制。

So, not only is a lot of the money already earmarked through propositions, but you had for a long time — and I might get these numbers a little bit wrong from memory — but I think you needed a two-thirds vote to raise taxes in the legislature.

因此，不仅大量资金已经通过提案指定，而且已经有很长一段时间了——我记忆中的这些数字可能有点错误——但我认为你需要三分之二的投票才能在立法机关提高税收。

I think you needed something similar to do budgets.

我认为你需要类似的东西来做预算。

I haven’t looked at these rules for a little while, and I think at least they’ve been partially, though not in any way fully, repealed.

我已经有一段时间没有看过这些规则了，我认为至少它们已经被部分废除，尽管没有完全废除。

But California actually had a kind of super filibuster operating that made it much harder to govern.

但加州实际上有一种超级阻挠政治的运作方式，这使得治理变得更加困难。

The way power is distributed between the governor, sort of the state level and the local level, is a little bit unusual in California.

在加州，州长（州一级和地方一级）之间的权力分配方式有点不寻常。

There are a bunch of reasons, but I think that those reasons do not fully explain the level of the failure here.

原因有很多，但我认为这些原因并不能完全解释这里失败的程度。

And then, I think that there might be some interesting things in actual liberal psychology that are operating.

然后，我认为在实际的自由主义心理学中可能存在一些有趣的事情正在发挥作用。

So, to a little bit go back to a Jon Haidt Moral Foundations Theory of Californians, it is true that California is quite liberal, and when I say “California liberal,” something is going to come to mind for people.

因此，稍微回顾一下乔恩·海特的加州人道德基础理论，加州确实相当自由，当我说“加州自由主义”时，人们会想到一些东西。

There’s a certain stereotype there that’s maybe a little bit different than a New York liberal, maybe a little bit different than what you would imagine, say, a Colorado liberal, even, to be in.

那里有一种刻板印象，可能与纽约自由派有点不同，甚至可能与你想象的科罗拉多自由派有点不同。

But that kind of preservationist, a little bit skeptical — for all that Silicon Valley has taken over a lot of the economy — a little bit skeptical of certain kinds of progress.

但那种保护主义者，有点怀疑——尽管硅谷已经接管了很多经济——对某些进步有点怀疑。

I think those are pretty strong undercurrents in California that oriented against certain kinds of change, oriented towards protecting people who are already there.

我认为这些是加州相当强大的暗流，旨在反对某些类型的变革，旨在保护已经在那里的人们。

And the status quo is somehow more natural, oriented against a lot of important housing and building structural reforms that we need to do.

现状在某种程度上更加自然，以我们需要进行的许多重要的住房和建筑结构改革为导向。

So you may be seeing things that are not just at the legislative-social-political-dynamics level, but also a little bit in the psychology of liberalism that creates real problems for the progressive agenda writ large.

因此，你可能会看到的事情不仅存在于立法、社会、政治动态层面，而且还存在一些自由主义心理学，这给进步议程带来了真正的问题。

On media

在媒体上

So, PBS, NPR, all public media is undergoing some of the same dynamics there as everybody else, which is, they’re just war for attention.

因此，PBS、NPR 以及所有公共媒体都在经历着与其他媒体相同的动态，即它们只是为了争夺注意力而进行的战争。

In some ways it might be good for them and their trust in the long run.

从某些方面来看，从长远来看，这可能对他们和他们的信任有利。

They’re also a little bit less able to fight that war because they need to hold their political sponsors in place.

他们打这场战争的能力也有点差，因为他们需要保持政治支持者的地位。

So, you can’t become quite as outrageous on PBS.

所以，你不能在 PBS 上表现得那么离谱。

I think, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post have made more moves to be viral than PBS has.

我认为《纽约时报》或《华盛顿邮报》比 PBS 采取了更多的病毒式传播举措。

And I’m not saying that’s a wrong thing for PBS to do.

我并不是说 PBS 这样做是错误的。

I like PBS a lot.

我非常喜欢 PBS。

I admire what they do greatly.

我很钦佩他们所做的事情。

But I think a problem for PBS is that they’re widely admired, and sometimes they’re not as widely shared.

但我认为 PBS 的一个问题是它们受到广泛的钦佩，但有时却没有得到广泛的分享。

Long term, it’s probably good for their trust.

从长远来看，这可能有利于他们的信任。

Short term, that’s probably quite bad for their influence.

短期来看，这可能对他们的影响力相当不利。

In England, I’m a little less sure of what the future of the BBC is.

在英国，我不太确定 BBC 的未来。

I know Boris Johnson is not a fan.

我知道鲍里斯·约翰逊不是粉丝。

So I could imagine it weakening in terms of its power and its influence.

所以我可以想象它的力量和影响力会减弱。

I also know, at the same time, that the way that Johnson was covered on the BBC has created incredible levels of anger on the UK left, which is probably weakening the BBC’s hold on that constituency as well.

与此同时，我还知道，BBC 报道约翰逊的方式引起了英国左翼人士的极大愤怒，这也可能削弱了 BBC 在该选区的控制力。

So I suspect that the BBC is both subject to the same competitive dynamics as you’re seeing here — although it starts from a place of more power in centralization and funding than PBS does here, than NPR does here — and then secondarily, is in a more intense form of its political vise than those players are here, in part because it’s more important, and so there’s more margin for different political players in attacking or weakening it.

因此，我怀疑 BBC 都受到与您在这里看到的相同的竞争动态的影响——尽管它一开始在集权和资金方面比 PBS 和 NPR 拥有更大的权力——其次，它的政治钳制形式比这里的那些参与者更强烈，部分原因是它更重要，因此不同的政治参与者有更多的空间来攻击或削弱它。

I think that social media and the way we deal with it — and this is true in a lot of places — we end up focusing on, one, the easy cases rather than the hard cases, like fake news as opposed to real news.

我认为社交媒体和我们处理它的方式——在很多地方都是如此——我们最终会关注简单的案例而不是困难的案例，就像假新闻而不是真实新闻。

Everybody agrees that fake news is bad, and you shouldn’t have it.

每个人都同意假新闻是坏消息，你不应该拥有它。

Real news can also be very bad in terms of what it emphasizes, or the quality of the work, and so on.

真实的新闻也可能在其强调的内容或工作质量等方面非常糟糕。

But the question of how to handle it is much, much harder, and it’s not going to be something that a Facebook supreme court handles.

但如何处理这个问题要困难得多，而且这不会是 Facebook 最高法院处理的事情。

I think the underlying and very deep problem with Facebook, with Twitter, with a bunch of them, is building the future of our communication commons atop a business model that is about engagement mediated through the intensity of the viewers’ or audiences’ emotional reaction.

我认为 Facebook、Twitter 以及其他一些公司的根本性且非常深刻的问题是，在一种商业模式之上构建我们通信共享的未来，这种商业模式是通过观众或观众的情绪反应强度来调节参与度的。

I don’t think that’s something the Facebook supreme court can solve, and I also don’t think it is a good thing for the future.

我不认为这是 Facebook 最高法院能够解决的问题，而且我也不认为这对未来来说是一件好事。

But nobody really seems to want to fight it.

但似乎没有人真正愿意与之抗争。

The questions about privacy — I think they’re important.

关于隐私的问题——我认为它们很重要。

The questions about fake news are important.

关于假新闻的问题很重要。

All the questions people bring up in these cases are important.

人们在这些情况下提出的所有问题都很重要。

But I think all of them are also less important than the question of, is the future of how we will communicate with each other, of how politicians will communicate with the public, of how, basically, all important communication will be structured and incentivized — is it what gives you the strongest emotional countercharge?

但我认为所有这些问题都不如以下问题重要：未来我们将如何相互沟通，政治家将如何与公众沟通，基本上所有重要的沟通将如何构建和激励——这是否会给你带来最强烈的情感反冲力？

If so, I think that we are in for this period where a lot of energy is going to go towards the most outrageous and most offensive players because they both get the energy of the people they inspire and the people who hate them.

如果是这样，我认为我们正处于这个时期，大量的能量将流向最令人愤慨和最具攻击性的球员，因为他们既从他们激励的人和讨厌他们的人那里获得了能量。

And it’s the combination of the energy and counter-energy that gives them so much control of the conversation.

正是能量和反能量的结合使他们能够很好地控制对话。

I think virtually every politician and media figure who goes on Twitter is a worse version of themselves on it than off of it, and that we are in a collective action problem, where it is individually rational for everybody to be on it, and it is collectively bad for all of these institutions to be on it.

我认为几乎每一个使用 Twitter 的政治家和媒体人物在 Twitter 上的表现都比在 Twitter 上的自己更糟糕，而且我们正面临着一个集体行动的问题，每个人都在 Twitter 上使用个人理性，而所有这些机构使用 Twitter 则对集体行动不利。

Among other things, again, in a slightly Martin Gurri way, I think that one of the things Twitter is doing, particularly for the media, is making it extremely clear some of our .

除此之外，我再次以有点马丁·古里（Martin Gurri）的方式，认为 Twitter 正在做的事情之一，特别是对媒体来说，就是非常清楚地表明我们的一些 .

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If somebody is not a big fan of “objective media,” I think it’s even a bad version of this.

如果有人不是“客观媒体”的忠实粉丝，我认为这甚至是一个糟糕的版本。

It’s making extremely clear our biases, the ways in which we’re cliquish, the ways in which we are reactive.

它非常清楚地表明我们的偏见、我们的拉帮结派方式、我们的反应方式。

I think for politicians, it incentivizes a lot of their worst behavior.

我认为对于政客来说，这会激励他们做出许多最糟糕的行为。

Again, it is good for individuals, and that’s one reason that I still am on it.

再说一遍，这对个人有好处，这也是我仍然坚持下去的原因之一。

But I feel like there are things in society that are not good for society, but in order for me to play my role in society, I still have to participate in, and that’s one of them.

但我觉得社会上有一些对社会不好的事情，但是为了让我在社会上发挥自己的作用，我还是必须参与，这就是其中之一。

On Sillicon Valley’s intellectual culture

论硅谷的知识文化

It has definitely changed some of my views on California governance.

它确实改变了我对加州治理的一些看法。

We were talking about that earlier, and just watching it up close .

我们之前讨论过这个，只是近距离观察。

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I’ve gone to planning meetings and stuff, and that’s been an education in its own way.

我去计划会议和其他事情，这本身就是一种教育。

I think the view that has changed more than any other is, it is a really interesting intellectual culture to see up close.

我认为比任何其他观点变化最大的观点是，近距离观察这是一种非常有趣的知识文化。

And in a lot of ways, for all that it gets lionized, I actually think I prefer the way DC thinks about problems.

在很多方面，尽管它被推崇，但我实际上认为我更喜欢 DC 思考问题的方式。

The tech conversations that I’m part of, when you go to these dinners and so on — it’s interesting.

当你参加这些晚宴等时，我参与的技术对话很有趣。

It’s like an intellectual culture that is very venture capitalist in its approach.

这就像一种在其方法上非常风险资本家的知识文化。

So, it’s like, “Here are 20 ideas.

所以，就像是，“这里有 20 个想法。

They’re all very interesting.

他们都很有趣。

Nineteen of them are probably quite wrong, not even a little wrong, like very wrong.

其中十九个可能是完全错误的，甚至没有一点错误，就像非常错误一样。

But that last one might be great, really important, and if you could just figure out which one it is .

但最后一个可能很棒，非常重要，如果你能弄清楚它是哪一个的话。

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Now, that works really well when the question is money, and it works less well when the question is, you’re trying to rebuild society in the image of your own ideas.

现在，当问题是金钱时，这种方法非常有效，而当问题是，你试图按照自己的想法重建社会时，这种方法就不太有效了。

I have heard you on Eric Weinstein’s podcast recently, and the word you used for Eric was generative, and I think that’s actually a good word for what is prized out there.

我最近在埃里克·韦恩斯坦的播客上听到了你的声音，你对埃里克使用的词是生成性的，我认为这实际上是一个很好的词来形容那里所珍视的东西。

There’s a kind of generative thinking.

有一种生成思维。

Like, here’s a bunch of ideas, and they’re all kind of cool, kind of interesting, and they all may be very ungrounded in the bureaucratic or emotional or human or social realities of the thing they’re talking about.

就像，这里有很多想法，它们都很酷，很有趣，而且它们都可能非常没有根据他们所谈论的事情的官僚、情感、人类或社会现实。

They’re very smart people, puzzling about how a system works from the outside.

他们是非常聪明的人，对系统如何从外部运作感到困惑。

On the one hand, that sometimes lets you cut away a lot of the BS and see what is going on, but oftentimes, it just makes you miss why the system works the way it does.

一方面，有时这会让你去掉很多废话，看看到底发生了什么，但很多时候，它只会让你错过系统为什么会这样工作。

It makes you miss the Chesterton’s fence dimensions of a system.

它会让你错过系统的切斯特顿栅栏尺寸。

I have been struck by the way I instinctually recoil from that way of thinking, even as I find a lot of what it comes up with interesting.

令我震惊的是，我本能地回避这种思维方式，尽管我发现它带来的很多东西都很有趣。

I think that the thing it has probably changed the most is, I have a little bit more appreciation, even than I did before, for the work that people do when they’re actually doing the hard work to understand bureaucratic and human and social complexity because that is something that, when you’re trying to build things, it will scale, or build ideas that really sound great when you say them at a party or something, you tend to underrate.

我认为它改变最大的事情可能是，我比以前更欣赏人们所做的工作，因为他们实际上正在努力理解官僚、人类和社会的复杂性，因为当你试图构建东西时，它会扩展，或者构建听起来确实很棒的想法，当你在聚会或其他什么地方说它们时，你往往会低估它们。

Again, I want to note that you really can go too far in the other direction and get trapped in the realities of how things exist now, and so be unable to imagine how they could exist in another dimension, or another reality, or in a future that you have built by creating Uber, or whatever it might be.

再次，我想指出的是，你确实可能在另一个方向上走得太远，并陷入事物现在如何存在的现实中，因此无法想象它们如何存在于另一个维度，或另一个现实，或你通过创建 Uber 建立的未来，或任何可能的东西。

But what is great as a way of thinking about ideas for new businesses, or even great as a way of thinking about investments, is not always great as a way of doing big-picture political and social analysis.

但是，作为思考新业务的想法的好方法，甚至作为思考投资的方法的好方法，并不总是作为进行宏观政治和社会分析的方法好。

The actual number of hours I work has become shorter.

我的实际工作时间变短了。

There just is no doubt that I cannot work weekends and nights in the same way I did, and to the degree I can, I’ve had to do it on the book.

毫无疑问，我不能像以前那样在周末和晚上工作，而且在我能做到的范围内，我不得不在书上这样做。

It’s this kind of endless thing of doing the book for four hours.

花四个小时看这本书就是一种永无休止的事情。

Then when I’d normally, or in my past, I’d rest, I go on to childcare for four hours, and then I’d do the book for four hours, and then I’d .

然后，当我通常，或者在过去，我会休息，我会继续照顾孩子四个小时，然后我会做四个小时的书，然后我会。

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It’s not been good, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.

这不是很好，我不会向任何人推荐它。

I think the thing that I have heard from other parents, and it is proven to be true in my own life, is that I just have to pare down my number of projects.

我认为我从其他父母那里听到的，并且在我自己的生活中被证明是正确的，是我只需要减少我的项目数量。

There is a ruthlessness to the way that you have to make choices between time, which is ultimately quite zero-sum, and I’m starting to have to make those choices.

你必须在时间之间做出选择，这是一种无情的方式，这最终是零和的，而我开始不得不做出这些选择。

So, where before, I would get involved in an almost unlimited number of things, now I’m having to ask myself, truly, the question, “Can I sustain an involvement in this project if I get involved in it?

所以，以前我会参与几乎无限数量的事情，现在我不得不问自己一个真正的问题：“如果我参与这个项目，我可以继续参与它吗？

If I say yes to this, am I really going to be able to handle it at the back end, knowing that I can’t just accordion my time out, and tell my partner I’m not going to see her for a couple of days because I have to work around the clock?”

如果我同意这一点，我真的能够在后端处理它吗？我知道我不能只是安排我的时间，然后告诉我的伴侣我有几天不会见到她，因为我必须全天候工作？”

So, that’s probably a healthy thing for me in the long run, but there are genuine tradeoffs here.

所以，从长远来看，这对我来说可能是一件健康的事情，但这里确实存在权衡。

I found it personally good.

我个人觉得不错。

I have had trouble turning down the part of myself that always wants to do more, even when I know it’s not the best thing for me.

我很难拒绝自己总是想做更多的事情，即使我知道这对我来说不是最好的事情。

So, the way in which, now, I emotionally am more in alignment with that part of myself that knows it needs to do a little bit less — that feels good.

所以，现在，我在情感上与自己的那部分更加一致，因为我知道自己需要少做一点——这感觉很好。

The degree to which I still have to work through the projects I have already in the system has been really hard.

我仍然需要完成系统中已经存在的项目，这非常困难。

I’m a little bit dreading the book tour I’m about to go on.

我有点害怕即将进行的售书活动。

All of that just feels tough to me.

所有这些对我来说都感觉很艰难。

So, ask me in a year, and maybe things will be settled into a new equilibrium.

所以，一年后问我，也许事情会陷入新的平衡。

But currently, I have a lot of good ideas about how to do less, and I’ve not quite been able to put them into play yet.

但目前，我有很多关于如何少做事的好主意，但我还没有完全能够将它们付诸实施。

The only other thing I would say on this is, boy, does it teach you the value of sleep.

对此我唯一要说的是，孩子，它是否教会了你睡眠的价值。

And I don’t just mean in the sense of, with a kid you sleep less.

我的意思不仅仅是说，带着孩子你会睡得更少。

I more mean in the sense of, spending a lot of time being truly under-rested just really forces you to confront how different you are when you’re deeply underslept, and that isn’t just in terms of what you can get done.

我更想说的是，花很多时间真正休息不足只会迫使你面对深度睡眠时自己有多么不同，而这不仅仅是你能完成什么事情。

I actually don’t find what I can get done is the key change there.

事实上，我不认为我能做的事情是关键的改变。

It is how I am with the people in my life.

这就是我与我生命中的人相处的方式。

It is how short I am with people.

这就是我与人相处的距离有多短。

It is how I react to adversity.

这就是我对逆境的反应。

It is how I feel when I’m doing things.

这就是我做事时的感受。

I used to have a very sleep-is-a-cousin-of-death approach to my life.

我曾经对自己的生活抱有一种“睡眠就是死亡的表亲”的态度。

I really did not want to sleep, and I resented the time I had to sleep, and it has really cured me of that particular emotional or psychological disease.

我真的不想睡觉，我讨厌我必须睡觉的时间，它确实治愈了我那种特殊的情绪或心理疾病。