Larissa MacFarquhar on Getting Inside Someone's Head (Ep. 58)

But in my first foray into this field, I was writing about people who donated one of their kidneys to a stranger, and I discovered .

但在我第一次涉足这一领域时，我发现，我正在写一些人将自己的一个肾脏捐赠给陌生人的故事。

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I was talking to people about the people I was meeting, and they would say, “Well, those people surely are all mentally ill, right?

我和人们谈论我遇到的人，他们会说：“嗯，那些人肯定都是精神病患者，对吧？

Or they have some problem, or they are probably very, very censorious or judgmental.”

或者他们有一些问题，或者他们可能非常非常挑剔或喜欢评判。”

It was very surprising to me.

这让我非常惊讶。

I understand, of course, that not everyone is going to be an extreme altruist, but I didn’t realize the extent of the hostility and suspicion of them until I started writing about them.

当然，我知道并不是每个人都会成为极端的利他主义者，但直到我开始写他们时，我才意识到对他们的敌意和怀疑的程度。

And I became fascinated by that.

我对此很着迷。

It became a major part of the book, trying to figure out where this comes from because I don’t think it exists in every time and place in the same way.

它成为这本书的一个主要部分，试图找出它的来源，因为我不认为它以同样的方式存在于每个时间和地点。

But it also comes from so many areas of popular culture.

但它也来自流行文化的许多领域。

For instance, one of the things that I became really intrigued by was Al-Anon.

例如，我真正感兴趣的事情之一是 Al-Anon。

Al-Anon, as you may know, is the organization founded in the ’50s by the spouses and partners and family members of alcoholics.

如您所知，Al-Anon 是一个由酗酒者的配偶、伴侣和家庭成员于 20 世纪 50 年代创立的组织。

It was designed to help people understand that trying to help someone stop drinking, which used to be an unambiguously great thing to do — it’s the thing that long-suffering virtuous spouses did — was actually not just unlikely to be helpful but was part of the same addictive behavior as drinking itself, as alcoholism itself.

它的目的是帮助人们理解，试图帮助某人戒酒，这在过去无疑是一件伟大的事情——“这是长期受苦的良善配偶所做的事情”——实际上不仅不太可能有帮助，而且与饮酒本身、酗酒本身一样是上瘾行为的一部分。

It was a sickness and one that needed to be gotten over.

这是一种疾病，需要克服。

I think this notion that trying to help people, sacrificing yourself to help people was a sickness became very widespread, especially in the ’70s and ’80s under the better-known term codependency.

我认为这种试图帮助别人、牺牲自己来帮助别人是一种病态的观念变得非常普遍，尤其是在 70 年代和 80 年代，在更广为人知的术语“相互依赖”下。

It’s part of our now unconscious culture, the way we look at altruists.

这是我们现在无意识文化的一部分，也是我们看待利他主义者的方式。

When we hear about them, many people think first, “Are they sick?”

当我们听到他们的消息时，很多人首先想到的是：“他们生病了吗？”

But I’ll say one thing: I read a lot of psychological and psychiatric articles about altruism, and nearly all of them, as I’ve suggested, pathologized altruism in some way.

但我要说一件事：我读了很多关于利他主义的心理学和精神病学文章，正如我所建议的，几乎所有这些文章都以某种方式将利他主义病态化。

I became quite annoyed by this.

我对此感到非常恼火。

I read one article that described altruists in terms of parentified children.

我读过一篇文章，用父母养的孩子来描述利他主义者。

The idea here is that, if you grow up in a household where at least one of your parents is not functioning as a parent, either because they are mentally ill or they’re an alcoholic or an addict — for some reason they’re not functioning as a parent — obviously, in many cases, this just messes the child up.

这里的想法是，如果你在一个家庭中长大，你的父母中至少有一位不能发挥父母的作用，要么因为他们患有精神疾病，要么他们是酒鬼或瘾君子——“由于某种原因他们不能发挥父母的作用”——显然，在很多情况下，这只会把孩子搞砸。

But in some cases, the child responds by trying to fix the situation.

但在某些情况下，孩子的反应是试图解决问题。

They may take care of their parent, they may try to be a perfect student, they may take care of their younger siblings.

他们可能会照顾父母，他们可能会努力成为一名完美的学生，他们可能会照顾弟弟妹妹。

They try to fix their family.

他们试图修复他们的家庭。

And the idea is that this parentified child, the child who takes on the role of a parent as a young person, may grow up to have an outsized desire to fix the world, a sense of responsibility for the world in the way that they felt responsible for their family as a child.

这个想法是，这个被父母化的孩子，在年轻时扮演父母角色的孩子，长大后可能会产生一种改变世界的强烈愿望，一种对世界的责任感，就像他们小时候对家庭负责一样。

And I thought about the people I’d met who I’d interviewed for my book, and not all of them, but lots of them had that circumstance.

我想到了我为我的书采访过的那些人，虽然不是所有人，但很多人都有这种情况。

One of their parents was either an alcoholic or was mentally ill or was an addict of some kind.

他们的父母之一要么是酒鬼，要么患有精神疾病，要么是某种瘾君子。

So I thought, “Okay, maybe there is something to this particular theory.” However, I do want to push back on the idea that this therefore makes somebody pathological.

所以我想，“好吧，也许这个特殊的理论有其道理。”然而，我确实想反驳这样的观点，即这会让人变得病态。

Just because your altruistic tendencies may not be free in the sense of freely chosen, devoid of any cause from your childhood, does not mean that they are wrong.

仅仅因为你的利他倾向可能不是自由选择意义上的自由，没有任何童年时期的原因，并不意味着它们是错误的。

So here’s what I try to persuade people who tell me that all altruists are mentally ill.

这就是我试图说服那些告诉我所有利他主义者都是精神病的人。

I say, think about a kid who grows up with two lovely parents who try to persuade them that taking care of other people is the right thing to do, and because of that upbringing, they also grow up to feel an outsized sense of duty and responsibility to take care of other people in the world.

我说，想想一个孩子，他和两个可爱的父母一起长大，他们试图说服他们照顾别人是正确的事情，并且由于这种教育，他们长大后也会感受到照顾世界上其他人的巨大责任感。

They are no more free than the person who came upon such a sense of duty because of their bad parents.

他们并不比那些因为坏父母而产生这种责任感的人更自由。

So is one more free or worse than the other?

那么其中一个比另一个更自由还是更差呢？

No, I don’t believe that they could be extreme altruists because I think that genocide is wrong, and I don’t think that’s a very controversial position.

不，我不相信他们可能是极端利他主义者，因为我认为种族灭绝是错误的，而且我不认为这是一个非常有争议的立场。

However, it is certainly true that people who do very terrible things can consider themselves extreme altruists.

然而，确实，那些做了非常可怕的事情的人可以认为自己是极端的利他主义者。

And throughout history, as we know, it’s very obvious that people have sacrificed themselves as often for terrible causes as for good.

正如我们所知，纵观历史，很明显，人们为了可怕的事业和为了正义的事业而牺牲自己。

Fortunately for Gauguin, he had the moral luck to be an excellent painter, so everyone forgives him.

对于高更来说幸运的是，他有道德上的运气成为一名优秀的画家，所以每个人都原谅他。

They say, “How wonderful that he did what he needed to do to make this extraordinary art.” What if he had been a terrible painter?

他们说：“他做了他需要做的事情来创作这件非凡的艺术，这真是太棒了。”如果他是一位糟糕的画家怎么办？

That wouldn’t have made a moral difference, but it would have made a difference to how we would judge him.

这不会造成道德上的差异，但会改变我们对他的评价。

So in that sense, he had moral luck.

所以从这个意义上说，他在道德上是幸运的。

With extreme altruists, there’s this sense that I think most of us have that morality should be judged by motive, and therefore it is, to some extent, divorced from luck.

对于极端利他主义者来说，我认为我们大多数人都认为道德应该根据动机来判断，因此在某种程度上，它与运气无关。

That’s why Bernard Williams’s idea of moral luck was so strange and so startling to many people.

这就是为什么伯纳德·威廉姆斯的道德运气观念对许多人来说是如此奇怪和令人震惊。

The idea is, if you try to do good, that’s what counts, and whether you are able to in fact do good is a result of luck of various kinds, like your own ability, the situation in the world that you find yourself in, all kinds of things like that.

这个想法是，如果你试图做好事，这才是最重要的，而你是否能够做好事实际上是各种运气的结果，比如你自己的能力，你所处的世界的处境，诸如此类的事情。

But more ancient notions of morality find this paradox less strange because they believe that you can hold someone to account for how wise they are and how able they are to judge their actions and successfully anticipate whether they will produce wrong or not.

但更古老的道德观念认为这种悖论并不那么奇怪，因为他们相信你可以让某人对他们的智慧和判断自己的行为以及成功预测他们是否会产生错误的能力负责。

So you can blame someone for having a terrible idea of the good.

所以你可以责怪某人对善的想法很糟糕。

That is part of how you judge them, and therefore, even though it may be because you grow up in a society where terrible ideas of the good are predominant, and you somewhat haplessly find yourself swept along in them, you’re still held to account.

这就是你评判他们的方式的一部分，因此，即使这可能是因为你成长在一个可怕的善良观念占主导地位的社会，你多少不幸地发现自己被这些观念所卷入，你仍然要承担责任。

MACFARQUHAR It’s funny you say that because one thing that I have noticed about the extreme altruist .

麦克法夸尔：你这么说很有趣，因为我注意到关于极端利他主义者的一件事。

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You know what?

你知道吗？

I don’t want to call them extreme altruists.

我不想称他们为极端利他主义者。

I think they’re people with a very strong sense of duty.

我认为他们是有很强责任感的人。

The people I met were very, very different from each other, but one thing they had in common is they really, really barely cared about what other people thought.

我遇到的人彼此之间非常非常不同，但他们有一个共同点，那就是他们真的非常非常不关心别人的想法。

They had to feel that way because almost everyone they met thought they were at best weirdos, and at worst dangerous megalomaniacs.

他们必须有这种感觉，因为几乎他们遇到的每个人都认为他们往好了说是怪人，往坏了说是危险的自大狂。

So they were unconventional in their degree of duty but also in many other ways.

因此，他们的职责程度以及许多其他方面都是非常规的。

For instance, there was a couple, the Badeaus, who now live in Philadelphia, who adopted 20 special-needs kids in addition to the two biological kids that they had, and that was obviously an unconventional thing to do.

例如，有一对现在住在费城的巴多斯夫妇，除了自己的两个亲生孩子之外，还收养了 20 个有特殊需要的孩子，这显然是一件非常规的事情。

But it wasn’t the only one.

但这并不是唯一的一个。

Mr. Badeau, Hector Badeau, stayed home.

巴多先生，赫克托·巴多，呆在家里。

He was the one who changed the diapers.

他是那个换尿布的人。

He made the breakfasts, he made the lunches, he cooked the dinners for the most part.

他做早餐，他做午餐，大部分时间他做晚餐。

And Sue, his wife, was the one who went out to work and earned the money to keep the household going.

他的妻子苏则外出打工，挣钱养家糊口。

This was a long time ago.

这是很久以前的事了。

They started out life together — oh my gosh, it was many decades ago — I’m forgetting the exact year that they got married.

他们一起开始了生活 ——“天哪，那是几十年前的事了”—— 我忘记了他们结婚的具体年份。

And they just didn’t care that other people thought they were weird because they knew that was the price of doing what they thought was right to do.

他们只是不在乎其他人认为他们很奇怪，因为他们知道这是做他们认为正确的事情的代价。

I think organizations like GiveWell, which do research into various charities and show you which charities are more likely to succeed at their missions than others, are incredibly helpful.

我认为像 GiveWell 这样的组织非常有帮助，它们对各种慈善机构进行研究，并向您展示哪些慈善机构比其他慈善机构更有可能成功完成其使命。

In principle, if you say effective altruists don’t pay enough attention to politics, to governmental institutions, to human rights, to what people say they want, which is as often equality as material well-being, they will say, “Well, there’s nothing in our philosophy that rejects those things.

原则上，如果你说有效的利他主义者对政治、政府机构、人权、人们所说的他们想要的东西（通常是平等和物质福祉）给予足够的关注，他们会说：“好吧，我们的哲学中没有任何东西拒绝这些东西。

We’re for well-being of whatever form it takes, and if you convince me that going into politics is a better thing to do than going into banking, I’d be happy to do that.”

我们支持任何形式的福祉，如果你让我相信进入政坛比进入银行业更好，我会很乐意这样做。”

But in practice .

但在实践中。

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They can, in principle, avoid the traps that in fact are preventing effective altruists from being as effective as they should be because in practice, it’s very difficult to resist a short-term surer bet in terms of doing good.

原则上，他们可以避免陷阱，这些陷阱实际上阻碍了有效的利他主义者发挥应有的作用，因为在实践中，很难抗拒短期更可靠的行善赌注。

If you can spend a small amount of money and buy deworming medicine that will cure a child of worms and enable him or her to go back to school, or if you can buy a bed net that will prevent a family from getting malaria — those are such obvious short-term immediate goods that it’s hard to resist them.

如果你能花很少的钱，买一个驱虫药，治愈孩子的寄生虫​​，让他或她重返学校，或者如果你能买一个蚊帐，防止一个家庭感染疟疾——这些都是明显的短期即时商品，让人很难抗拒。

It’s hard to take the gambles and take the risks of investing in less certain means of promoting welfare, like lobbying for political change, like investing in institutions that are obviously extremely important and, longer term, more important than immediate material gains.

很难冒险投资于不太确定的促进福利的手段，比如游说政治变革，比如投资于显然极其重要、从长远来看比眼前的物质收益更重要的机构。

Now, through a combination of discussion and technology, people have learned to care about more people.

现在，通过讨论和技术的结合，人们已经学会了关心更多的人。

Does that make us more moral?

这会让我们更有道德吗？

That’s an incredibly complex question that I’m not equipped to answer.

这是一个极其复杂的问题，我没有能力回答。

Of course, there are many, many exceptions, and there are heroes in higher-brow fiction.

当然，也有很多很多的例外，高雅小说中也不乏英雄。

Over the past 100 years, it has become noticeable that genre fiction is filled with far more heroism than higher culture.

在过去的 100 年里，人们已经注意到，类型小说比高等文化充满了更多的英雄主义。

And it’s such a noticeable pattern that it’s almost as though there is something pushing against that kind of character.

这是一种非常明显的模式，几乎就像有什么东西在对抗这种性格。

When I started talking about this with people — I talked about this first with a novelist who shared a fellowship with me, so I saw him every day.

当我开始和人谈论这个的时候 —— 我先和一个和我有交通的小说家谈论这个，所以我每天都见到他。

I said, “What is wrong with you novelists?

我说：“你们小说家怎么了？

Why don’t you write about heroic characters who are moved by a sense of moral duty?” Because I find these people fascinating, and that’s one of the reasons I wrote my book, is that it was almost an advertisement to novelists: “You should write about these people.

你为什么不写那些被道德责任感所感动的英雄人物呢？”因为我发现这些人很有趣，这就是我写这本书的原因之一，因为它几乎是给小说家的广告：“你应该写这些人。

They’re not simple.

他们并不简单。

They’re complex and fascinating.”

它们既复杂又迷人。”

He gave me this look of total contempt like I had asked him to write about bunnies or butterflies.

他用一种完全蔑视的眼神看着我，就像我让他写关于兔子或蝴蝶的文章一样。

And I found that this was a feeling that many fiction writers share.

我发现这是许多小说作家都有的感受。

I talked to another friend of mine who is a novelist.

我和我的另一位小说家朋友交谈过。

He was trying to write about a heroic character, and he said it was so difficult to write a novel about someone who was unambiguously admirable.

他试图写一个英雄人物，他说写一部关于一个明确令人钦佩的人的小说非常困难。

It was almost as though the form itself was resisting.

就好像形式本身在抵抗。

The kind of person that was always valorized — well, not always; I should not say always; as I said, there are exceptions — but tended to be valorized in novels was the person who rejected large universal abstractions about humans and valued instead the person in front of them, the person they loved, the member of their family, and was not like Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House, always looking to suffering people far away.

那种总是受到重视的人——“好吧，并非总是如此；”我不应该说总是；正如我所说，也有例外——但小说中往往会强调的是那些拒绝对人类普遍存在的抽象观念，而是重视眼前的人、他们所爱的人、他们的家庭成员的人，而不是像《荒凉山庄》中的果冻夫人那样，总是把目光投向远方受苦的人们。

First of all, there are practical problems.

首先，存在实际问题。

It’s not as though, when you have dementia, your cognitive decline is predictable and smooth.

这并不是说，当你患有痴呆症时，你的认知能力下降是可以预测和平稳的。

It goes up and down.

它上下移动。

You may be lucid one morning and not at all the next morning.

您可能某一天早上神智清醒，但第二天早上就完全不清醒了。

You may be lucid in the afternoon and completely bewildered in the evening.

你可能在下午很清醒，但在晚上却完全困惑。

So there are all these practical difficulties, that if someone, thinking of you as they last saw you, lies to you but you’re lucid at that moment, you will see that lie, and you will realize that you cannot trust that person.

因此，存在所有这些实际困难，如果有人在上次见到你时想起你，对你撒谎，但你当时很清醒，你会看到那个谎言，你会意识到你不能相信那个人。

What if that person is your only living relative?

如果那个人是你唯一在世的亲戚怎么办？

What if that person is your spouse?

如果那个人是你的配偶怎么办？

What if that person is the nurse who takes care of you every day?

如果那个人是每天照顾你的护士怎么办？

That is a devastation.

那是一场毁灭。

That is an extraordinary tragedy that takes place in your life, and that’s a risk you’re always taking by lying.

这是你生命中发生的一场非同寻常的悲剧，而你总是因为撒谎而冒着风险。

Then I was very moved and convinced by the philosopher Sissela Bok, who wrote a book about lying several decades ago.

然后，哲学家西塞拉·博克（Sissela Bok）让我非常感动和信服，她在几十年前写了一本关于谎言的书。

She said the only issue is not the person in front of you .

她说唯一的问题不是你面前的人。

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It’s very easy when you’re taking care of someone with dementia, or when you have dementia, to think that the only thing that matters is kindness, and the only thing that matters is kindness to that person whom you’re taking care of.

当您照顾患有痴呆症的人时，或者当您患有痴呆症时，很容易认为唯一重要的是仁慈，而唯一重要的是对您所照顾的人仁慈。

But she said that’s not the only thing that matters because if other people hear you lying, if your children hear you lying, if other people in the nursing home hear you lying, if people waiting in the doctor’s office hear you lying, and lying evidently with a feeling that’s the right thing to do, this will spread a sense that lying is fine, that lying can even be the better thing to do.

但她说这并不是唯一重要的事情，因为如果其他人听到你说谎，如果你的孩子听到你说谎，如果疗养院里的其他人听到你说谎，如果在医生办公室等候的人听到你说谎，并且明显地感觉说谎是正确的，这会传播一种感觉，即说谎是可以的，甚至说谎可能是更好的事情。

But once you’ve lost the sense that lying is rare and repellent, you’ve lost something essential in terms of social trust.

但一旦你不再意识到说谎是罕见且令人厌恶的，那么你就失去了社会信任方面的一些重要东西。

And I think she’s right.

我认为她是对的。

It’s a very delicate thing, that if we all started lying —

这是一件非常微妙的事情，如果我们都开始撒谎——

But should we do it all the time?

但我们应该一直这样做吗？

Should there not be some point at which you try to be honest rather than kind at every point?

难道你不应该在某个时刻尝试诚实而不是处处友善吗？

That’s one of the fascinating things about this question, is, well, what is the purpose of our adherence to truth?

这个问题最有趣的地方之一就是，我们坚持真理的目的是什么？

But the problem is that, with dementia, in many ways, once you descend past a certain level of memory and cognitive functioning, you’re not really you anymore.

但问题是，对于痴呆症，在很多方面，一旦你的记忆和认知功能下降到一定水平，你就不再是真正的你了。

Is it fair to impose this harsh discipline of no lies on a future you who actually has very little in common with the you sitting across from me now and who is saying, “Don’t lie to me,” almost certainly who does not hold that value anymore, is very vulnerable?

未来的你实际上与坐在我对面的你几乎没有什么共同点，并且说“不要对我撒谎”，几乎可以肯定，不再持有这种价值观的未来的你非常脆弱，对未来的你施加这种不说谎的严厉纪律是否公平？

Do you want to really force that person to suffer from lies like, “No, sorry, your spouse is long dead.

你真的想强迫那个人承受诸如“不，对不起，你的配偶已经去世很久了”之类的谎言。

No, sorry, your child has not come to visit you in weeks,” whatever truth you might want to tell them?

不，抱歉，你的孩子已经好几个星期没有来看你了，”无论你想告诉他们什么真相？

And quite apart from future you, what about future me who is distressed by your distress?

那么除了未来的你之外，未来因你的苦恼而苦恼的我呢？

Should I be required to tell the truth to you and make you weep every single day?

难道要我每天对你说实话，让你哭泣吗？

What if I’m your nurse in a nursing home and I am made miserable every day on the job because you insisted on truth back in 2018?

如果我是你在疗养院的护士，而我每天都因为你在 2018 年坚持说实话而在工作中感到痛苦怎么办？

And we now know that Facebook — I’m just picking on Facebook because it’s the lowest-hanging fruit, but there’s many instances of this — we now know that Facebook’s mission to “connect everybody” — it sounded like it was going to produce a much more pluralistic, diverse world where people would have communication with people they couldn’t connect with physically because they lived in a different place.

我们现在知道 Facebook — 我选择 Facebook 是因为它是最容易实现的目标，但这样的例子有很多 — 我们现在知道 Facebook 的使命是“连接所有人” — 听起来它将创造一个更加多元化、多样化的世界，人们可以与那些因为生活在不同地方而无法实际联系的人进行交流。

But in fact, as you’ve noticed in Complacent Class, Facebook more often does the opposite.

但事实上，正如您在“自满课堂”中注意到的那样，Facebook 更多时候做的是相反的事情。

It unites people who are similar and convinces them that the voices in their own echo chamber are, in fact, the right ones to listen to, and they tune in less and less to other people.

它将相似的人团结在一起，让他们相信自己回声室中的声音实际上是值得聆听的，并且他们越来越少地听从其他人的声音。

It’s interesting.

这很有趣。

I would like to ask you about what you consider the roots of complacency and the kind of sorting that we have both been noticing.

我想问一下您认为自满的根源是什么以及我们都注意到的排序类型。

Because in some ways, you would think that people moving around and going other places and moving house every few years, as Americans did more several decades ago, would result in exposure to more kinds of people and have a bigger sense of the world.

因为在某些方面，你会认为人们每隔几年就搬家、去其他地方、搬家，就像美国人几十年前所做的那样，会导致接触更多种类的人并对世界有更广泛的认识。

But in fact, it often results in people grouping amongst people who are very similar to them.

但事实上，它常常导致人们聚集在与他们非常相似的人中。

Whereas if you have an old-fashioned small town, it can result in the opposite, which is to say, people going to church with, or socializing with, people who are very different in terms of age, in terms of — well, not conviction in going to church — but running into people who are a different social class, who do different things for work, that kind of stuff.

然而，如果你有一个老式的小镇，它可能会导致相反的结果，也就是说，人们去教堂或与年龄不同的人交往，就“嗯，不是去教堂的信念”而言，而是遇到不同社会阶层的人，他们为工作做不同的事情，诸如此类。

I see this problem as predating social media for the most part.

我认为这个问题在很大程度上早于社交媒体。

One hopes that most people don’t live in social media bubbles.

人们希望大多数人不要生活在社交媒体的泡沫中。

I think the data actually suggest they don’t so much.

我认为数据实际上表明他们并没有那么多。

Social media don’t seem to be enough of a cure.

社交媒体似乎不足以治愈这一问题。

Their net effect seems to be to keep us at home.

他们的最终效果似乎是让我们呆在家里。

You have Netflix, you have Amazon packages — wonderful things, but you enjoy them at home for the most part, and they just keep you there.

你有 Netflix，你有亚马逊套餐——都是很棒的东西，但你大部分时间都是在家里享受它们，它们只是让你呆在那里。

And people sometimes return from that kind of extreme existence to find regular existence kind of dull and savorless.

人们有时从那种极端的生活中回来后，会发现正常的生活是枯燥无味的。

That may be what she’s talking about, that there are times when humans are pushed by their circumstances to greater deeds.

这可能就是她所说的，有时人类会受到环境的推动而采取更大的行动。

This is something that I noticed when I was writing about altruism also, that during wartime, things that seem extreme and bizarre and unreasonable in ordinary times come to seem normal.

这也是我在写利他主义时注意到的一点，在战争时期，平时看似极端、怪异、不合理的事情变得很正常。

In ordinary times, a kidney donor, for instance, somebody who donates their kidney to a stranger might seem like a weirdo, but during wartime, a soldier who sacrifices his life for that of a comrade is thought to be a hero for sure, but definitely not a weirdo.

平时，比如说一个肾捐献者，把自己的肾捐献给陌生人，可能会被认为是怪人，但在战时，一个为战友献出生命的士兵，固然被认为是英雄，但绝对不是怪人。

Somebody who leaves his family behind to serve in an army is, again, thought to be noble for doing so.

抛下家人去参军的人再次被认为是高尚的。

The great, great William James wrote an essay about a hundred and some years ago called “The Moral Equivalent of War.” He advocated a kind of — it sounds odd because of the name — but a kind of peacetime peace corps because, he said, there’s no need to depend on moral luck, in effect — this is not his language — but we can engineer circumstances in which people are pushed to the same kind of self-sacrifice and heroism that they might be pushed to in war, but we can artificially engender it, and we can do it in a way that does not result in the horrible bloodshed and loss and waste of war, that results in something positive.

伟大的威廉·詹姆斯大约一百多年前写了一篇文章，名为《战争的道德等价物》。他提倡一种“——“因为这个名字听起来很奇怪”——“而是一种和平时期的和平队，因为他说，实际上没有必要依赖道德运气”——“这不是他的语言”——“但是我们可以设计环境，让人们被迫做出与战争中可能被迫做出的同样的自我牺牲和英雄主义，但我们可以人为地创造这种环境，我们可以采取一种不会导致可怕的流血、战争损失和浪费的方式来做到这一点，从而产生积极的结果。

So he had the notion of “Let’s send people to do work that is valuable but is really miserable and uncomfortable and pushes them.” They could be working in coal mines, or they could be working in soup kitchens.

因此他产生了这样的想法：“让我们派人去从事那些有价值但又非常痛苦和不舒服的工作，并推动他们去做。”他们可能在煤矿工作，也可能在流动厨房工作。

I can’t remember his examples; I read the essay a while ago.

我不记得他的例子了；我不久前读过这篇文章。

It was interesting because the reason he thought this was necessary is that he said people who are pacifists always talk about how terrible war is because it’s so bloody and violent and wasteful.

这很有趣，因为他认为这是必要的，因为他说和平主义者总是谈论战争是多么可怕，因为它是如此血腥、暴力和浪费。

What they’re not getting is that people who like war — or don’t dislike war — admit all that; they know that.

他们没有得到的是，喜欢战争——或者不讨厌战争的人——承认这一切；他们知道这一点。

It’s very obvious, but for them, it’s worth it because of the stimulation, as they see it, to human greatness.

这是非常明显的，但对他们来说，这是值得的，因为在他们看来，这对人类的伟大性产生了刺激。

And so, he said, we pacifists, we people who think war is dreadful have to come up with some other means, some other circumstance to push humans to greatness so that war, to people who value greatness, does not seem necessary.

因此，他说，我们和平主义者，我们这些认为战争是可怕的人，必须想出一些其他的手段、一些其他的环境来推动人类走向伟大，这样，对于那些珍视伟大的人来说，战争似乎就没有必要了。

On profiles versus podcasts

关于个人资料与播客

I like to imagine that the piece is, in a way, written by the person themselves.

我喜欢想象这篇文章在某种程度上是由这个人自己写的。

Now obviously, this is not true, and the piece is very much inflected by my view of the person, but that’s what I like to think about.

显然，这不是真的，这件作品很大程度上受到我对这个人的看法的影响，但这就是我喜欢思考的。

Although, inevitably, a profile is unrealistic because it’s a subjective view of the person, I like to imagine that I try to do that as little as possible.

尽管个人资料不可避免地是不切实际的，因为它是对人的主观看法，但我喜欢想象我会尽可能少地这样做。

I ask them, and I think most people just like to tell the story of their life and enjoy the feeling that somebody is intensely and unfeignedly interested in what they have to say.

我问他们，我认为大多数人只是喜欢讲述他们的生活故事，并享受有人对他们所说的内容产生强烈而真诚的兴趣的感觉。

If I’m lucky, it can be a really extraordinary experience for both of us.

如果我幸运的话，这对我们俩来说都是一次非同寻常的经历。

Obviously, I don’t know the person very well.

显然，我不太了解这个人。

I just met them, or even if we meet multiple times, I don’t know them nearly as well, in many senses, as their friends or their family.

我刚刚认识他们，或者即使我们见过多次，在很多方面我对他们的了解还不如他们的朋友或家人。

Of course, that’s obvious.

当然，这是显而易见的。

But at the same time, for the most part, even people you know and love the best, you don’t talk about your life as a whole.

但与此同时，在大多数情况下，即使是你最了解和最爱的人，你也不会谈论你的整个生活。

They don’t say, “Well, why is it that you .

他们不会说：“好吧，为什么是你。”

.

。

.

。

Where did you start out when you were 10?

当你10岁的时候，你从哪里开始？

What did you want to do when you were 10, and why did you at 20 take this path rather than that path?

你10岁时想做什么，为什么20岁时选择这条路而不是那条路？

And why did you give up on that thing that you wanted to do desperately when you were 24 and now can barely remember it?

为什么你要放弃那件24岁时你拼命想做的事，现在却几乎记不清了？

How did that happen?

这是怎么发生的？

How did you come to forget that thing?” Those kinds of questions.

你怎么把那件事给忘了？”诸如此类的问题。

And if you have a two-, three-, four-hour conversation, where you go with the person, prompting them over the course of their life, it can be revelatory for them too because you just don’t talk about that stuff usually.

如果你和对方进行两、三、四个小时的谈话，在他们的一生中给予他们提示，这对他们也有启发，因为你通常不会谈论这些事情。

You talk about what you did last weekend or what movie you’ve seen or what book you’ve read or what you had for dinner — stuff like that.

你可以谈论你上周末做了什么，或者你看过什么电影，或者你读过什么书，或者你晚餐吃了什么 ——诸如此类的事情。

You don’t talk about these longer-term movements in your life.

你不会谈论生活中的这些长期变化。

So at its best .

所以处于最佳状态。

.

。

.

。

I’ll give you an example.

我给你举个例子。

I was interviewing a woman named Heather Meyerend who is a hospice nurse in Brooklyn.

我正在采访一位名叫希瑟·梅耶伦德 (Heather Meyerend) 的女士，她是布鲁克林的临终关怀护士。

I asked her why she chose hospice as a specialty, and she said what I know from interviewing other hospice nurses is a common answer.

我问她为什么选择临终关怀作为专业，她说我从采访其他临终关怀护士中了解到的是一个常见的答案。

She said, “Even though working in a hospital is more prestigious, I didn’t like it because it was so fast-paced.

她说：“虽然在医院工作更有声望，但我不喜欢它，因为节奏太快了。

You’re constantly rushing from task to task to task.

你不断地从一个任务赶到另一个任务。

There’s a lot of paperwork.

有很多文书工作。

You don’t ever get to know a patient.

你永远无法了解病人。

You’re just sticking needles in arms and doing things that need to be done but are not intimate.

你们只是在手臂上扎针，做一些需要做但并不亲密的事情。

Whereas, when you’re a hospice nurse, you spend an hour with a person.

然而，当你是一名临终关怀护士时，你会花一个小时与一个人在一起。

You really get to know them.

你真的会了解他们。

You visit them every week, sometimes for months, and it’s much more.” Anyway.

你每周都会拜访他们，有时会持续几个月，而且次数还要多。”反正。

So fair enough, totally reasonable answer.

非常公平，完全合理的答案。

Then we started talking about her life, and she said — I’m going to get these details wrong, but something like, “My brother died at 20, and my other brother died at 24, and my niece died at 11, and my nephew died .

然后我们开始谈论她的生活，她说 - 我会把这些细节弄错，但类似这样的话，“我的兄弟在 20 岁时去世，我的另一个兄弟在 24 岁时去世，我的侄女在 11 岁时去世，我的侄子在 11 岁时去世。

.

。

.” And again, I’m maybe getting these details wrong, but there had been so much early death in her family.

”。再说一次，我可能把这些细节弄错了，但她家里有很多早逝的人。

And as she was telling me of one death after another after another, she said, “Oh, I wonder if that has something to do with my choice of work.” It felt like such an amazing privilege to be there at that moment because it literally had not occurred to her before, this central understanding of her life.

当她告诉我一个又一个死亡事件时，她说：“哦，我想知道这是否与我选择的工作有关。”那一刻能在那里感觉真是一种令人惊奇的荣幸，因为她以前从未想到过这种对她生活的核心理解。

So the idea came from my editor, Henry Finder, who does know a great deal about philosophy and suggested that it would be a good subject.

这个想法来自我的编辑亨利·凡德（Henry Finder），他对哲学非常了解，并认为这将是一个很好的主题。

And I was delighted because I had been meaning to read Reasons and Persons, and, as you know, it’s an electrifying book.

我很高兴，因为我一直想读《理性与人物》，正如你所知，这是一本令人兴奋的书。

First is, I think there is far too much emphasis on describing people’s looks.

首先，我认为人们过分强调描述人们的外表。

Because the thing about humans is that their faces are unique, so you can describe somebody, but you’re never going to be able to call up an exact picture in a reader’s mind about what the person looks like.

因为人类的面孔是独一无二的，所以你可以描述某人，但你永远无法在读者的脑海中唤起关于这个人长什么样子的准确图片。

So what you’re doing is not really describing what they look like — what you’re doing is evoking something which, I guess, the malign form of that is looksism.

所以你所做的并没有真正描述它们的样子 ——你所做的只是唤起某种东西，我猜，这种东西的邪恶形式就是外表歧视。

But I’ve started avoiding describing what people look like, not because it results in looksism — though I’m sure that’s true — but because, unconsciously or not, it puts the reader in a position of being outside the person, looking at them.

但我开始避免描述人们的长相，并不是因为它会导致外貌歧视——“尽管我确信那是真的”——而是因为，无论是否无意识，它都会让读者处于一个脱离这个人的位置，看着他们。

But I’ve started avoiding describing what people look like, not because it results in looksism — though I’m sure that’s true — but because, unconsciously or not, it puts the reader in a position of being outside the person, looking at them.

但我开始避免描述人们的长相，并不是因为它会导致外貌歧视——“尽管我确信那是真的”——而是因为，无论是否无意识，它都会让读者处于一个站在人物之外的位置，看着他们。

And what sometimes — though not always — I’m trying to do is give the reader a sense of what it’s like to be inside that person’s head.

有时————尽管并非总是————我想做的就是让读者了解那个人的头脑是什么样的。

And the more that you describe the physical person, the physical circumstances of the person, anything that involves being outside the person, looking at them, the less you cultivate that sense of intimacy that comes from being inside their head and looking out through their eyes.

你越多地描述这个人的身体、这个人的身体状况、任何涉及到这个人之外、看着他们的东西，你就越少培养出那种来自于他们的头脑内部并通过他们的眼睛向外看的亲密感。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

Kenneth Tynan, overrated or underrated?

肯尼思·泰南，被高估还是被低估？

And a very interesting thing happened to his writing.

他的写作中发生了一件非常有趣的事情。

I don’t know to what extent it was a result of the New Yorker, or whether it was just him getting old, but when he was a young man, his writing was electric and baroque.

我不知道这在多大程度上是《纽约客》的结果，或者只是他变老了，但当他年轻时，他的写作是令人兴奋的和巴洛克式的。

The adjective-to-noun ratio was so high.

形容词与名词的比例是如此之高。

Every sentence was encrusted with adjectives and adverbs, and there was no sentence that was just getting from A to B.

每个句子都充满了形容词和副词，没有一个句子是从A到B的。

It was so — what many would say overwritten, but I thought was so .

它是如此 ——很多人会说被重写了，但我认为确实如此。

.

。

.

。

It was just exciting.

这真是令人兴奋。

I would say — and I’m very curious what you think — I think it is underrated because people .

我会说 — 我很好奇你的想法 — 我认为它被低估了，因为人们。

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。

.

。

There’s this silly notion that what psychiatrists do is label people with diagnoses, and that that’s really stigmatizing.

有一种愚蠢的想法，认为精神科医生所做的就是给人们贴上诊断标签，这确实是一种耻辱。

For sure, sometimes that’s what psychiatry does.

当然，有时候精神病学就是这么做的。

But I think that a lot of the anti-psychiatric discourse is founded on misunderstanding that the DSM is psychiatry’s bible.

但我认为很多反精神病学的言论都是建立在误解《精神疾病诊断统计手册》是精神病学圣经的基础上的。

That’s what many people call it, whereas, in fact, it’s more like a dictionary.

这是很多人这么称呼它的，而事实上，它更像是一本字典。

What it is is a grouping.

它是一个分组。

Each disorder is a grouping of symptoms that enable psychiatrists to talk to each other in consistent ways because they’re using the language of psychiatry in consistent ways and without which the discipline could not function at all.

每种疾病都是一组症状，使精神科医生能够以一致的方式相互交谈，因为他们以一致的方式使用精神病学语言，否则该学科根本无法发挥作用。

So I don’t think it is as evil as people think.

所以我认为它并不像人们想象的那么邪恶。

What do you think?

你怎么认为？

But at the same time, in some cases, a diagnosis can be comforting.

但与此同时，在某些情况下，诊断结果可能会让人感到安慰。

It performs many different functions.

它执行许多不同的功能。

Sometimes a diagnosis means to a person, “Ah, I am not the only one.

有时，诊断对一个人来说意味着：“啊，我不是唯一的一个。

There are other people who have encountered this before.

以前还有其他人遇到过这种情况。

People have thought about what it means, thought about ways to alleviate the symptoms that give me pain.

人们思考过这意味着什么，思考过如何减轻给我带来痛苦的症状。

There’s hope!”

有希望！”

Using tape recorders for interviews?

使用录音机进行采访？

When you’re taking notes on what someone says, you try to do it verbatim, but sometimes you will use phrases that you expected to hear because it’s the normal way to say something.

当你记录某人所说的话时，你会尝试逐字记录，但有时你会使用你期望听到的短语，因为这是说话的正常方式。

But if you play a tape back, you hear that they didn’t say that.

但如果你回放磁带，你会发现他们并没有这么说。

They didn’t say what you thought that they said.

他们没有说你认为他们说的话。

They said something a tiny bit different, and it’s so exciting because they said it in a way that’s a little weird.

他们说了一些有点不同的话，这太令人兴奋了，因为他们说的方式有点奇怪。

I mean, it’s just their own, and I find that exciting the way some poetry is.

我的意思是，这只是他们自己的，我发现这就像一些诗歌一样令人兴奋。

We were at a hotel in Shanghai in ’85, and we were standing in the lobby, and both of them said, “What is that?” And my brother and I, who were kids, said, “It’s music, obviously.

85 年，我们在上海的一家酒店，站在大厅里，他们俩都说：“那是什么？”我和我小时候的兄弟说：“显然，这是音乐。

What’s the big deal?” And they said, “No, no, no, we have to find where that’s coming from.”

有什么大不了的？”他们说：“不，不，不，我们必须找到它的来源。”

They followed the sound of the music, we all four of us went to follow the sound of the music, and it was this little, tiny disco in one of the rooms in the hotel with a little disco ball rotating and multicolored lights, and they were playing Boney M, this British band from the ’80s.

他们跟着音乐的声音走，我们四个人都跟着音乐的声音走，酒店的一个房间里有一个小小的迪斯科舞厅，有一个旋转的小迪斯科球和五彩的灯光，他们正在演奏 Boney M，这是一支 80 年代的英国乐队。

To my brother and I this was a normal sight.

对于我和我的兄弟来说，这是很正常的景象。

My parents — their jaws were open.

我的父母————他们张开了嘴。

They couldn’t believe that there was a disco in China.

他们不敢相信中国还有迪斯科舞厅。

That’s how long ago it was I went there.

那是我很久以前去过那里的事了。

What would you like in terms of being a cyborg?

作为一个半机械人，你想要什么？

But I’m glad you asked about this because I know we’re both interested in this question.

但我很高兴你问这个问题，因为我知道我们都对这个问题感兴趣。

One of the things I want to think about in this book is how people who stay are not necessarily staying because they’re stuck.

在这本书中我想思考的一件事是，留下来的人不一定是因为被困住而留下来的。

There is a dominant American mythology that the smart, ambitious, interesting people move.

美国有一个占主导地位的神话：聪明、雄心勃勃、有趣的人会感动。

They leave — not just small towns, but anywhere — they leave their homes, and they go somewhere else, partly because they’re restless, partly because they’re curious, and partly because what they want to do is so big, it can’t be done where they are.

他们离开——不仅是小镇，而是任何地方——他们离开家园，去别的地方，部分是因为他们焦躁不安，部分是因为他们好奇，部分是因为他们想做的事情太大了，在他们所在的地方无法完成。

And that leaves the people who stay looking dull by comparison.

相比之下，那些留下来的人看起来就很乏味。

But I really want to question that.

但我真的很想质疑这一点。

The lodestar of this project, at least so far, is the great economist Albert Hirschman’s essay Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, which I’m sure you know.

至少到目前为止，这个项目的指南针是伟大的经济学家阿尔伯特·赫希曼（Albert Hirschman）的文章《退出、声音和忠诚》，我相信你知道。

He argued that if you’re discontent with where you are or what product you’re buying, discontent with something, you can do two things: You can exit, which means you can either leave a place or stop buying a product.

他认为，如果你对自己所处的位置或所购买的产品不满意，对某件事不满意，你可以做两件事：你可以退出，这意味着你可以离开一个地方或停止购买产品。

Or you can exercise voice — you can complain, you can try to change it.

或者你可以锻炼声音 ——你可以抱怨，你可以尝试改变它。

I think this is extraordinarily important when thinking about issues of mobility because if everyone left, if everyone’s response to a bad job or a bad home was to leave, then nothing is fixed.

我认为在考虑流动性问题时，这一点非常重要，因为如果每个人都离开，如果每个人对糟糕的工作或糟糕的家庭的反应都是离开，那么一切都没有解决。

It’s the people who say, “No, actually, I don’t want to leave.

人们会说：“不，实际上，我不想离开。

This is my home.

这是我的家。

There are many things wrong with it, but because I don’t want to leave, because I feel attached to it for other reasons, I’m going to fight.”

它有很多问题，但因为我不想离开，因为我因为其他原因而对它有依恋，所以我要去战斗。”

It’s really striking to me that the civil rights movement was driven in its earliest days not by the African Americans who migrated north in search of jobs but by those who were still home in Alabama and many other states, who didn’t want to leave.

令我震惊的是，民权运动在其早期并不是由北上寻找工作的非洲裔美国人推动的，而是由那些仍留在阿拉巴马州和其他许多州的人推动的，他们不想离开。

I talked the other day to the extraordinary attorney Fred Gray.

前几天我和杰出的律师弗雷德·格雷谈过。

I couldn’t believe he was still alive.

我不敢相信他还活着。

He was the person who defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in the bus boycott.

他是在公交车抵制活动中为罗莎·帕克斯和马丁·路德·金辩护的人。

The reason he is still alive is he did that when he was 25.

他之所以还活着，是因为他在25岁时就这么做了。

He went to law school in Cleveland because there were no law schools in Alabama who would accept black students at that point, and his professor there said, “Don’t go back to Alabama.

他去了克利夫兰法学院，因为当时阿拉巴马州没有法学院愿意接受黑人学生，他那里的教授说：“不要回到阿拉巴马州。

You won’t be able to practice.

你将无法练习。

There’s no room for a black lawyer in Alabama.

阿拉巴马州没有黑人律师的空间。

It’s too racist.

这太种族主义了。

Just stay here, you’ll have a proper and a much better career.”

只要留在这里，你就会有一个合适的、更好的职业。”

And he said, “No, the whole reason that I’m in law school is to go back to Montgomery and attack segregation.” And it was his loyalty to Montgomery .

他说：“不，我上法学院的全部原因就是要回到蒙哥马利，攻击种族隔离。”这是他对蒙哥马利的忠诚。

.

。

.

。

If he had stayed in Cleveland and had what appeared to be a better career — of course it wouldn’t have been, but sensibly might have been, reasonably expected, could have been — he would never have played a part in this extraordinary movement.

如果他留在克利夫兰，并拥有看似更好的职业生涯——当然不会，但明智地可能是，合理预期，他可能永远不会参与这场非凡的运动。

Similarly unions.

工会也同样如此。

If anyone who is dissatisfied with their wage — they reacted by going to the next employer, there would never be people who would stay and fight for higher wages and group together with people like them in the same position.

如果有人对自己的工资不满意——他们的反应是去找下一个雇主，那么就永远不会有人留下来争取更高的工资，并与像他们一样处于同一职位的人聚集在一起。

All of his siblings left the town because there was greater opportunity elsewhere.

他所有的兄弟姐妹都离开了这个小镇，因为其他地方有更多的机会。

Most of them went to Cincinnati, one went to Chicago, one went to somewhere else — I forget, but somewhere else where there were jobs and opportunity.

他们中的大多数去了辛辛那提，一个去了芝加哥，一个去了其他地方——我忘了​​，但其他地方有工作和机会。

And this was not only a small town, but a small southern town.

而这不仅仅是一座小镇，而是一座南方小镇。

He was coming of age in the ’20s and ’30s.

他在20世纪20年代和30年代已经成年了。

It was very difficult for a black man to get ahead in this town.

对于一个黑人来说，想要在这个小镇出人头地是非常困难的。

At one point, he was trying to register people to vote, and he was thrown in prison, and he heard that Judge Wallace — who, I think, was not George Wallace but George Wallace’s brother, Jack Wallace — wanted him never to come back to Eufaula because he was a troublemaker, wanted him to go.

有一次，他试图登记选民投票，结果被关进了监狱，他听说华莱士法官——我认为他不是乔治·华莱士，而是乔治·华莱士的兄弟杰克·华莱士——希望他永远不要回到尤福拉，因为他是个麻烦制造者，希望他离开。

And his brothers in Cincinnati were saying, “Come join us.

他在辛辛那提的兄弟们说：“来加入我们吧。

We can get you a job tomorrow.

明天我们就能给你找份工作。

You can earn so many times more than you can earn in Eufaula.

你可以赚到比在尤福拉多很多倍的钱。

Just come join us and have a better life.”

只要加入我们，就能过上更好的生活。”

When he heard that Judge Wallace wanted him out of Eufaula, he was like, “No!

当他听说华莱士法官希望他离开尤福拉时，他说：“不！

I’m going back.

我要回去了。

No one’s going to push me out.” It was just sheer orneriness — I mean, not only, but that was a big factor in why he was like, “No, no one’s going to push me out!

没有人会把我赶出去。”这纯粹是一种暴躁——我的意思是，不仅如此，这也是他为什么会说：“不，没有人会把我赶出去的一个重要因素！

I’m going to stay here.

我要留在这里。

This is my home.”

这是我的家。”

And this is part of the reason I wanted to write this book now, because I found in conversations with people about such altruists that there was such a resistance to that, such a resistance to the idea that the best thing you could do in your life was to donate or give or help people with whom you had no organic connection.

这就是我现在想写这本书的部分原因，因为我在与人们谈论此类利他主义者的对话中发现，人们对此有很大的抵制，对“你一生中能做的最好的事情就是捐赠、给予或帮助那些与你没有有机联系的人”的想法如此抵制。

There was such an attachment to the idea that a person ought to help their own community first, and I wanted to explore that because the altruists I was talking to, to them this made no sense.

人们对一个人应该首先帮助自己的社区的想法有如此执着，我想探索这一点，因为与我交谈的利他主义者对他们来说这毫无意义。

I remember one man I spoke to, Jeff.

我记得我和一个人交谈过，杰夫。

Jeff Kaufman would say, “Why should I have more obligation to a stranger who lives two blocks away from a stranger who lives in Ethiopia?” It made no sense to him.

杰夫·考夫曼会说：“为什么我要对一个住在埃塞俄比亚的陌生人两个街区之外的陌生人承担更多的义务呢？”这对他来说毫无意义。

He understood that if someone is a member of his family or a friend, he might have more obligation to them, but if someone was equally a stranger, why should place make a difference?

他明白，如果某人是他的家人或朋友，他可能对他们有更多的义务，但如果某人同样是陌生人，为什么地点会有所不同呢？

I’ve come to think that place makes a great deal of difference.

我开始认为那个地方有很大的不同。

On the Larissa MacFaruqhar production function

关于 Larissa MacFaruqhar 生产函数

One of the interesting things about this time of ours is that there seems to be so much appetite — it’s almost like the 1890s again — there seems to be so much appetite for talks about ideas.

我们这个时代的一件有趣的事情是，人们似乎有如此大的胃口 ——“几乎又回到了 1890 年代”—— 似乎对谈论想法有如此大的胃口。

There are all these lectures that are attended and sold out about relatively abstract, obscure subjects.

所有这些讲座都是关于相对抽象、晦涩的主题，但出席人数和门票都已售完。

The internet also has disseminated all kinds of writing about abstract ideas that people didn’t know how many people would be interested in reading such things.

网络上也传播了各种抽象思想的文章，不知道有多少人有兴趣阅读这些东西。

So I think yeah, absolutely.

所以我认为是的，绝对是的。