Peter Thiel on Stagnation, Innovation, and What Not To Name Your Company (Ep. 1 - Live at Mason)

Peter himself doesn’t need an introduction; he has a best-selling book.

彼得本人不需要介绍；他有一本畅销书。

His role in PayPal, Facebook, Palantir, many other companies, is well known.

他在 PayPal、Facebook、Palantir 和许多其他公司中的角色众所周知。

Peter is a dynamo.

彼得是一个发电机。

There is no one like Peter.

没有人像彼得一样。

But the purpose today is to focus on Peter’s views as a public intellectual.

但今天的目的是关注彼得作为公共知识分子的观点。

The way we run these dialogues are a bit different than usual.

我们进行这些对话的方式与平常有所不同。

It’s not going to be chatty and drawn out.

它不会是闲聊和冗长的。

We’ll try to replicate a kind of conversation Peter and I would have with each other.

我们将尝试复制彼得和我之间的一种对话。

Get right to the point, a lot of quick back and forth, and we’ll see how well we can do that in public.

开门见山，快速来回，我们会看看我们在公共场合能做得如何。

But I’ve watched a lot of interviews with Peter online and we’re going to try to make this different from all those.

但我在网上观看了很多对彼得的采访，我们将尝试让这一切有所不同。

Let’s start with some questions about stagnation, Peter.

彼得，让我们从一些关于停滞的问题开始。

At any point, if you care to add other topics of your own, please do so.

在任何时候，如果您想添加自己的其他主题，请这样做。

You’re well known for arguing, well, “they promised us flying cars and all we got is 140 characters”; “technological progress has slowed down.” How is it you think that we’re most likely to get out of the great stagnation, when that happens?

你因争论而闻名，“他们答应给我们飞行汽车，但我们得到的只有 140 个字符”； “技术进步已经放缓。”当这种情况发生时，您认为我们如何最有可能摆脱大停滞？

There are a lot of questions of what has caused it and I think maybe that’s a good part to start in terms of what gets you out of it.

关于造成这种情况的原因有很多问题，我认为这可能是一个很好的开始，可以帮助您摆脱困境。

On a first cut, I would say that we lived in a world in which bits were unregulated and atoms were regulated.

首先，我会说我们生活在一个比特不受监管而原子受到监管的世界。

If you are starting a computer software company, that costs maybe $100,000, to get a new drug through the FDA, maybe on the order of a billion dollars or so.

如果您正在创办一家计算机软件公司，那么通过 FDA 获得一种新药的成本可能是 10 万美元，可能需要 10 亿美元左右。

If the FDA were regulating video game technologies, and you had to do a double-blind study to make sure that the video games weren’t addictive, damaging to your brain, etc. These things are very overdetermined.

如果 FDA 正在监管视频游戏技术，你必须进行双盲研究，以确保视频游戏不会让人上瘾、不会损害你的大脑等。这些事情是非常不确定的。

It’s driven by many different factors.

它是由许多不同的因素驱动的。

My narrow attempt to get out of it is not necessarily to come to DC and beg the regulators to be more reasonable.

我试图摆脱困境的狭隘尝试不一定是来到华盛顿并恳求监管机构更加合理。

It is just to try to find ways for people to succeed at the margins.

只是试图找到让人们在边缘取得成功的方法。

Because I think the other thing that has driven the stagnation is the hysteresis.

因为我认为导致停滞的另一个因素是滞后现象。

When you have a history of failure, that becomes discouraging and so failure begets failure.

当你有失败的历史时，就会变得令人沮丧，因此失败会引发失败。

No halfway sane parent would encourage their kids to study nuclear engineering today, whereas there are a lot of people going into software.

今天，没有一个半理智的父母会鼓励他们的孩子学习核工程，而有很多人进入软件领域。

The history of success in software is encouraging more people to go into it and drive more innovation.

软件的成功历史正在鼓励更多的人进入它并推动更多的创新。

Then the history of failure in these other areas has been very discouraging.

然后，在这些其他领域的失败历史是非常令人沮丧的。

What I think would start, if you got some signal successes in other areas, that can then set a precedent and you can somehow get what’s been a vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle.

我认为首先，如果你在其他领域取得了一些明显的成功，那么就可以开创先例，你可以以某种方式将恶性循环转变为良性循环。

I think the most natural hope is that information technology starts to broaden out and starts to impact this world of atoms.

我认为最自然的希望是信息技术开始扩展并开始影响这个原子世界。

Then we’re going to have this question about whether the technology outpaces the politics or vice versa.

然后我们会问技术是否超越政治，反之亦然。

There was this sort of hyperoptimistic book by Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near; we had all these sort of accelerating charts.

库兹韦尔有一本过于乐观的书，《奇点临近》；我们有所有这些加速图表。

I also disagree with that, not just because I’m more pessimistic, but I disagree with the vision of the future where all you have to do is sit back, eat popcorn, and watch the movie of the future unfold.

我也不同意这一点，不仅因为我更悲观，而且我不同意未来的愿景，即你所要做的就是坐下来，吃爆米花，观看未来的电影展开。

I think the future is open to us to decide what to do.

我认为未来我们可以决定做什么。

If you take a nap, if you encourage everybody else to take a nap, then the great stagnation is never going to end.

如果你小睡一下，如果你鼓励其他人小睡一下，那么大停滞就永远不会结束。

I am somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of government being a key, a place where the great stagnation gets reversed.

我对政府成为扭转大停滞的关键的可能性有些悲观。

There is a sense in which a letter from Einstein to the White House would get lost in the mail room today.

从某种意义上说，爱因斯坦写给白宫的一封信今天会在收发室里丢失。

You could not even do Apollo.

你甚至不能做阿波罗。

I am somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of government being a key, a place where the great stagnation gets reversed.

我对政府成为扭转大停滞的关键的可能性有些悲观。

There is a sense in which a letter from Einstein to the White House would get lost in the mail room today.

从某种意义上说，爱因斯坦写给白宫的一封信今天会在收发室里丢失。

You could not even do Apollo.

你甚至无法做到阿波罗。

Even something like the SDI program in the 1980s.

甚至像 20 世纪 80 年代的 SDI 计划。

The debate in the ’80s was, it’s a dangerous first-strike weapon versus a great defensive technology, whereas today, people would say that SDI was just this fictional thing that would have never worked.

80 年代的争论是，它是一种危险的先发制人武器，而不是一项伟大的防御技术，而今天，人们会说 SDI 只是一个虚构的东西，永远不会起作用。

Again, this very odd way that our expectations have been dramatically reduced.

同样，这种非常奇怪的方式使我们的期望大大降低了。

But I do think there’s sort of a question about where in the private sector can you coordinate things on a big enough scale.

但我确实认为存在这样一个问题：在私营部门中，你可以在哪里进行足够大的协调。

Silicon Valley start-ups have been a way to do it, and maybe there’s some class of somewhat larger companies.

硅谷的初创公司是一种做到这一点的方法，也许还有一些规模较大的公司。

My PayPal colleague Elon Musk started both SpaceX and Tesla, which are extremely charismatic businesses, because it involved somewhat larger-scale complex coordination, getting a lot of different pieces together to work.

我的 PayPal 同事埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 创办了 SpaceX 和特斯拉，这两家公司都是极具魅力的企业，因为它涉及更大规模的复杂协调，需要将许多不同的部分组合在一起工作。

Not as big as we could do, perhaps, if you had a well-functioning government.

如果你有一个运作良好的政府，也许我们的规模不会那么大。

But I think that’s not really that realistic.

但我认为这不太现实。

We’ve had something like $450 billion has gone into the fracking industry in the last four or five years, and there’s a question whether at $50 a barrel oil, can you actually get a positive return on that money?

在过去的四五年里，我们已经向水力压裂行业投入了大约 4500 亿美元，但问题是，以每桶 50 美元的价格，你真的能从这笔钱中获得正回报吗？

The striking thing, even as of summer 2014, when oil was still at $100-plus a barrel, was even though you had these two boom stories: you had the Silicon Valley IT story, and you had the fracking, mid-US growth story.

令人震惊的事情是，即使到 2014 年夏天，油价仍处于每桶 100 美元以上的水平，尽管你有这两个繁荣故事：你有硅谷 IT 故事，你有水力压裂、美国中部增长故事。

The striking thing was always how much smaller the fortunes were that were being made in the fracking industry, which led me to think that somehow, it was not as great an innovation as was happening on the IT side.

令人震惊的事情始终是水力压裂行业所创造的财富要少得多，这让我想到，不知何故，它并不像 IT 领域那样伟大的创新。

Or more marginal, harder to get to work.

或者更边缘化，更难上班。

I think if it barely worked at $100, it’ll be very interesting to see how it works at $50.

我认为，如果它在 100 美元的价格下勉强能工作，那么看看它在 50 美元的价格下如何工作将会非常有趣。

[Editor’s note: The recording was briefly interrupted here.]

[编者注：录音在此短暂中断。]

But I will also go a little bit out on a limb: I think the monopoly idea, that the goal of every successful business is to have a monopoly, that’s on the border of what I want to say.

但我也会有点冒险：我认为垄断理念，即每个成功企业的目标都是垄断，这正是我想说的边界。

But the really good ideas are way more dangerous than that.

但真正好的想法比这危险得多。

So you have taken this to heart.

所以你已经把这件事记在心里了。

The world out there is deeply weird.

外面的世界非常奇怪。

Even though there appears to be free entry into ideas production, because of René Girard–like ideas, the people who deviate, someone comes down on them pretty hard.

尽管似乎可以自由地进入创意生产，但由于雷内·吉拉德式的创意，那些偏离的人，就会受到严厉的打击。

So there’s excess conformity, the original sin in people’s motives gets magnified at the social level.

所以存在过度的从众，人们动机中的原罪在社会层面上被放大了。

So basically, there are distortions out there.

所以基本上，那里存在扭曲。

And everything we can see, it’s a gnostic theology, and a relatively small number of people who can see through those distortions can be great entrepreneurs, or can tell the truth about politics.

我们所看到的一切都是诺斯替神学，能够看清这些扭曲的相对少数人可以成为伟大的企业家，或者可以说出政治真相。

And it’s all ultimately some kind of bundled, implicitly theological, but not necessarily involving belief in God, but theological perspective about the nature of people.

这一切最终都是某种捆绑的、隐含的神学，但不一定涉及对上帝的信仰，而是关于人性的神学观点。

And it ends up spreading to all the different parts of society and that, to me, has been what ties your thought together.

它最终传播到社会的各个不同部分，对我来说，这就是将你的思想联系在一起的原因。

But that’s a hypothesis; let’s hear your reaction to that.

但这只是一个假设；让我们听听你对此的反应。

I don’t know if it’s strictly the awareness of it that solves it.

我不知道是不是严格意义上的意识可以解决这个问题。

Certainly, there probably are some people who are just vaguely oblivious to it, so in Silicon Valley, I point out that many of the more successful entrepreneurs seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s where it’s like you’re missing the imitation, socialization gene.

当然，可能有些人只是隐约忽视了这一点，所以在硅谷，我指出，许多更成功的企业家似乎都患有轻度的阿斯伯格症，就好像你缺少模仿和社交基因一样。

We’ll notice that’s a little bit too weird, that’s a little bit too strange.

我们会注意到这有点太奇怪了，这有点太奇怪了。

Maybe I’ll just go ahead and open the restaurant that I’ve been talking about, that everyone else can understand and agree with, or do something extremely safe and conventional, and therefore hypercompetitive, and probably not that great as an idea.

也许我会继续开一家我一直在谈论的餐厅，让其他人都能理解和同意，或者做一些极其安全和传统的事情，因此竞争激烈，而且可能不是一个伟大的想法。

I’d say a lot of these people may not understand this larger theory about society, but they are somewhat oblivious to it, and it pushes progress.

我想说，这些人中的很多人可能不理解这个关于社会的更大的理论，但他们有点忽视了它，而它推动了进步。

Now, certainly my own experience would have been a little bit more where — I grew up in Northern California.

现在，我自己的经历当然会更多一点——我在北加州长大。

It was this hyper-tracked process, where my eighth grade junior high school yearbook, one of my friends wrote in, “I know you’re going to get into Stanford in four years.”

正是这个高度跟踪的过程，我的一位朋友在我的八年级初中年鉴中写道：“我知道你将在四年内进入斯坦福大学。”

Four years later I got into Stanford, then I got into Stanford Law School.

四年后，我进入斯坦福大学，然后进入斯坦福大学法学院。

You won all the conventionally tracked competitions; you ended up at a big law firm in Manhattan.

您赢得了所有传统的田径比赛；你最终进入了曼哈顿的一家大型律师事务所。

From the outside, it was a place where everybody wanted to get in.

从外面看，这是一个每个人都想进去的地方。

On the inside, it was a place where everybody wanted to get out.

在里面，这是一个每个人都想离开的地方。

You ask one of the people down the hall from me, said that it was great to see me leave.

你问我旁边的一个人，他说很高兴看到我离开。

I left after seven months and three days, it was great to see me leave.

七个月零三天后我离开了，很高兴看到我离开。

It was like “I had no idea it was possible to escape from Alcatraz.”

就像“我不知道可以逃离恶魔岛”。

I do think that one of the ways of challenging convention, one way, the Asperger’s way, is just to be vaguely oblivious to it all, and continue apace.

我确实认为挑战传统的方法之一，一种方法，阿斯伯格的方法，就是模糊地忽视这一切，并继续快速前进。

Then I think there is another modality where you just become aware of how conventional our conventions really are, and then that becomes sort of an indirect route of trying to start thinking for yourself.

然后我认为还有另一种方式，你只是意识到我们的惯例到底有多传统，然后这就成为一种尝试开始为自己思考的间接途径。

I worry that the conformity problem is actually more acute than it was in the ’50s or ’60s, so that the category of the eccentric scientist, or even the eccentric professor, is a species that is steadily going extinct because there is less space for that in our research universities than there used to be.

我担心，从众问题实际上比 50 年代或 60 年代更加严重，因此古怪的科学家，甚至古怪的教授这一类别正在逐渐灭绝，因为我们的研究型大学中的空间比以前少了。

I worry that the conformity problem is actually more acute than it was in the ’50s or ’60s, so that the category of the eccentric scientist, or even the eccentric professor, is a species that is steadily going extinct because there is less space for that in our research universities than there used to be.

我担心，从众问题实际上比 50 年代或 60 年代更加严重，因此古怪的科学家，甚至古怪的教授这一类别正在逐渐灭绝，因为我们的研究型大学中的空间比以前少了。

I worry that perhaps, if anything, it’s a little bit the other way.

我担心也许，如果有的话，情况可能有点相反。

It’s very hard to measure these things or calibrate them, but I think that in politics, the conventional approach is to simply look at pollsters.

衡量或校准这些事情非常困难，但我认为在政治中，传统的方法是简单地查看民意调查。

What are your positions going to be?

你的职位是什么？

You just look at the polls, you figure this out, and it works fairly well.

你只要看看民意调查，你就会明白这一点，而且效果相当好。

At the end of the day, that’s probably not how the system really changes.

归根结底，这可能并不是系统真正改变的方式。

It probably will be changed by some idiosyncratic people who have really strong convictions, and are over time, able to convince more people of them.

它可能会被一些有着坚定信念的特殊人士所改变，并且随着时间的推移，能够说服更多的人相信他们的信念。

But whether this means that we have more or less change is hard to evaluate.

但这是否意味着我们有或多或少的改变很难评估。

It always comes from these somewhat nonconventional channels.

它总是来自这些有些非常规的渠道。

Then the important question becomes, OK, would they actually be able to function socially and execute?

那么重要的问题就变成了，好吧，他们真的能够发挥社交作用并执行任务吗？

Then maybe the teamwork question you’d ask would be, what’s the prehistory of this company?

那么您可能会问的团队合作问题是，这家公司的历史是什么？

How did you meet, how long have you been working together, and if there’s a long prehistory, that would be good on the other side.

你们是怎么认识的，一起工作多久了，如果有很长的史前史，那在另一边就好了。

I think it’s always getting these combinations right.

我认为这些组合总是正确的。

You work for a consulting firm, or you go to finance if you come out of a top school.

你在一家咨询公司工作，或者如果你毕业于顶尖学校，你就去金融界。

It’s now become a new kind of conservative choice, maybe, to go to Silicon Valley in certain ways.

也许，以某些方式去硅谷现在已经成为一种新的保守选择。

Given the difficulties of becoming an entrepreneur, and the pull of conformity, how is it actually, socially?

考虑到成为一名企业家的困难以及从众的吸引力，它实际上在社会上如何？

What kind of intellectual or ideological reconstruction do we need to get people out of so many of these conservative career choices?

我们需要什么样的知识或意识形态重建才能让人们摆脱这么多保守的职业选择？

It’s just this vague, empty term.

这只是一个模糊、空洞的术语。

It’s like “I want to be rich” or “I want to be famous.”

就像“我想变得富有”或“我想出名”。

I am actually quite skeptical of that as a term, so yes, I think I did say the Straussian reading of Zero to One, was that perhaps — I had the adverb in — but perhaps you should not be an entrepreneur.

我实际上对这个术语非常怀疑，所以是的，我想我确实说过施特劳斯式的《从零到一》的解读，也许是“-”我有副词“-”，但也许你不应该成为一名企业家。

It was because on one level, the book is advice about how you would go about building a business, but then on some level, you could also read every single chapter as discouraging people from going into business potentially as well.

这是因为，在某种程度上，这本书是关于如何建立企业的建议，但在某种程度上，你也可以阅读每一章，因为它也可能阻止人们进入企业。

If you give the core advice that you should start a business that’s going to be a monopoly, and then you say, well that’s really discouraging a lot of people who don’t have an idea for a monopoly, so maybe they shouldn’t be starting businesses.

如果你给出的核心建议是你应该创办一家将成为垄断的企业，然后你说，这确实让很多没有垄断想法的人感到沮丧，所以也许他们不应该创办企业。

My view is we should be starting more good businesses and fewer bad ones.

我的观点是，我们应该开办更多的好企业，少开坏企业。

Not more businesses in the abstract, not more start-ups in the abstract.

不再是抽象的企业，也不再是抽象的初创企业。

Yes, there is always this psychosocial bubble question.

是的，总是存在这种心理社会泡沫问题。

I don’t think we’re in a tech bubble today, like we were in ’99, 2000.

我认为我们今天并不像 99 年、2000 年那样处于科技泡沫之中。

I actually do not think the public, as a whole, is involved in quite the same way, and so I’m not worried about it like I would have been in ’99, 2000.

事实上，我认为公众作为一个整体，参与的方式并不完全相同，所以我并不像 99 年、2000 年那样担心。

If you’re reasonably talented, you can get training in software and coding in a fairly short period of time, and get in an employable job.

如果你有相当的天赋，你可以在相当短的时间内接受软件和编码方面的培训，并找到一份可以就业的工作。

It’s sort of an odd cultural thing in our society where we still think of computer programming as such a geeky, bad career choice for people that even after a decade in which it’s worked surprisingly well, there probably are still far too few people going into it.

在我们的社会中，这是一种奇怪的文化现象，我们仍然认为计算机编程对人们来说是一种极客、糟糕的职业选择，即使在它出人意料地运作了十年之后，可能仍然很少有人进入它。

I think that’s a safe general one.

我认为这是一个安全的一般性的。

Petroleum engineering, that’s the other amazing one that has not yet attracted more people into it, in spite of a decade-long boom.

石油工程是另一个令人惊叹的领域，尽管经历了长达十年的繁荣，但尚未吸引更多人加入其中。

I certainly think Hollywood is producing fewer great movies relative to 20, 30, 40 years ago.

我当然认为，与 20、30、40 年前相比，好莱坞制作的精彩电影越来越少。

On the other hand, there are a lot of good TV shows.

另一方面，也有很多好看的电视剧。

My suggestion is that perhaps at this point, Japan is the least conformist, the least imitative country in the world.

我的建议是，也许在这一点上，日本是世界上最不墨守成规、最不模仿的国家。

There’s actually a lot of interesting aesthetic cultural stuff going on, there still is a lot of very successful types of businesses.

实际上有很多有趣的美学文化正在发生，仍然有很多非常成功的企业类型。

There’s innovation in food production, all sorts of interesting areas.

食品生产以及各种有趣的领域都有创新。

My suggestion is that perhaps at this point, Japan is the least conformist, the least imitative country in the world.

我的建议是，也许在这一点上，日本是世界上最不墨守成规、最不模仿的国家。

There’s actually a lot of interesting aesthetic cultural stuff going on, there still is a lot of very successful types of businesses.

实际上有很多有趣的美学文化正在发生，仍然有很多非常成功的企业类型。

There’s innovation in food production, all sorts of interesting areas.

食品生产以及各种有趣的领域都有创新。

But then it’s an indictment of the West, where I think Japan is no longer the Japan of the Meiji Restoration of the 1870s, or the Japan of the cheap plastic imitation toys of the 1950s.

但这是对西方的控诉，我认为日本不再是1870年代明治维新的日本，也不再是1950年代廉价塑料仿制玩具的日本。

It’s a country that no longer thinks it can get that much by copying the West.

这个国家不再认为通过模仿西方就能得到那么多。

There’s probably still some narrow interest in IT and software.

人们对 IT 和软件的兴趣可能仍然有限。

Outside of that, I think they are copying the US and Western Europe less and less.

除此之外，我认为他们越来越少地模仿美国和西欧。

People aren’t even learning English that much anymore.

人们甚至不再学那么多英语了。

They’re speaking less English than they were 15, 20 years ago.

与 15、20 年前相比，他们说的英语更少了。

The golf courses are all getting shut down and converted to solar farms or something; people don’t even want to play golf anymore.

高尔夫球场都被关闭并改建为太阳能发电厂或其他什么；人们甚至不想再打高尔夫球了。

I think we need to take this as a real critique of our society, very seriously, that they’re finding less that’s desirable to imitate in the US or Western Europe.

我认为我们需要非常认真地将此视为对我们社会的真正批评，因为他们发现在美国或西欧不太值得模仿。

If you ask, what do Virginia and New York have in common, and what do Texas and California have in common?

如果你问，弗吉尼亚州和纽约州有什么共同点，德克萨斯州和加利福尼亚州有什么共同点？

Both Texas and California are very inward-focused places.

德克萨斯州和加利福尼亚州都是非常内向的地方。

California, both the Hollywood version and the Silicon Valley version, are very focused in on themselves.

加州，无论是好莱坞版还是硅谷版，都非常注重自我。

Texas is also a very inward-focused place.

德克萨斯州也是一个非常内向的地方。

What Virginia and New York, or let’s say DC and New York City, have in common is that they’re centers of globalization.

弗吉尼亚州和纽约，或者说华盛顿特区和纽约市的共同点是它们都是全球化中心。

Finance is an industry that’s fundamentally leveraged to globalization, and DC is fundamentally leveraged to international geopolitics.

金融是一个从根本上撬动全球化的行业，而DC从根本上撬动着国际地缘政治。

I would bet on globalization slowly being in abeyance.

我敢打赌全球化会慢慢暂停。

I think with the benefit of hindsight, we will realize that 2007 was not just the peak year of the finance boom, but also the peak year of globalization, like maybe 1913.

我认为事后看来，我们会意识到2007年不仅是金融繁荣的高峰年，而且也是全球化的高峰年，就像1913年一样。

Happily, it hasn’t resulted in a world war, at least not yet, but I think we are in this period where globalization is steadily pulling back.

令人高兴的是，它还没有导致世界大战，至少目前还没有，但我认为我们正处于全球化稳步倒退的时期。

I would bet on globalization slowly being in abeyance.

我敢打赌全球化会慢慢暂停。

I think with the benefit of hindsight, we will realize that 2007 was not just the peak year of the finance boom, but also the peak year of globalization, like maybe 1913.

我认为事后看来，我们会意识到2007年不仅是金融繁荣的高峰年，而且也是全球化的高峰年，就像1913年一样。

Happily, it hasn’t resulted in a world war, at least not yet, but I think we are in this period where globalization is steadily pulling back.

令人高兴的是，它还没有导致世界大战，至少目前还没有，但我认为我们正处于全球化稳步倒退的时期。

And so you want to be in places or industries that are levered to things other than globalization.

因此，你希望进入那些能够利用全球化以外的事物的地方或行业。

In 2005, it was a very widespread question, in what year will China overtake the US?

2005年，一个非常普遍的问题是，中国哪一年会超过美国？

A decade later, it’s reasonable to think that it’s a decade closer to when this will happen.

十年后，我们有理由认为距离这一切发生又近了十年。

It’s a much less commonly asked question.

这是一个不太常见的问题。

At the end of the day I suspect we are underestimating China, but it may be very hard to invest.

归根结底，我怀疑我们低估了中国，但投资可能非常困难。

I’ve always thought that you could only participate in the Chinese boom if you are a well-connected, card-carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party.

我一直认为，只有当你是一个人脉广泛、有资格的中国共产党党员时，你才能参与中国的繁荣。

I’m not, and so it’s not been a place that I’ve really focused that much.

我不是，所以这不是我真正关注的地方。

The ones that were the hardest to break into were the ones with the very separate language groups.

最难闯入的是那些语言群体非常不同的语言。

Brazil was much harder than the rest of Latin America, it sort of had this Spain to Latin America aspect, whereas Brazil is a self-contained country where most of the people in the world who speak Portuguese live, and Portugal barely counts.

巴西比拉丁美洲其他地区要困难得多，它有点像西班牙与拉丁美洲的关系，而巴西是一个自给自足的国家，世界上大多数说葡萄牙语的人都生活在那里，而葡萄牙几乎算不上。

I do think it qualifies on the inward-looking piece.

我确实认为它符合内向的作品。

If you look at the history over the last 150 years, I think there have been four points where people were hyper-bullish on Brazil.

如果你回顾一下过去 150 年的历史，我认为人们在四个方面对巴西过度看好。

I’m not going to get them exactly right, but there was one in the pre–World War I.

我不会让它们完全正确，但第一次世界大战前有一个。

There was one in the ’60s, in the ’50s, in the ’70s .

六十年代、五十年代、七十年代都有过。

.

。

.

。

There was this giant energy company called OGX.

有一家名为 OGX 的能源巨头。

The guy who started it was worth $30 billion in 2011.

2011 年，创始人的身家达到 300 亿美元。

He’s now worth −$1 billion.

他现在的身价为-10亿美元。

You met with him in Rio de Janeiro.

你在里约热内卢见过他。

He had a McLaren parked in his living room in the villa, on a pedestal.

他将一辆迈凯伦停在别墅客厅的基座上。

He had just divorced his wife.

他刚刚与妻子离婚。

He told me, “I can now park my car wherever I want.”

他告诉我，“我现在可以把车停在任何我想要的地方。”

Maybe the oil didn’t exist at all.

也许石油根本不存在。

Maybe the whole thing was a giant fraud.

也许整件事就是一个巨大的骗局。

Very hard to tell.

很难说。

These things work when people are bullish about integration, and globalization, and then the reality sets back in.

当人们看好一体化和全球化时，这些事情就会发挥作用，然后现实就会回归。

It could be the case that it’s fairly decoupled, and the excess optimism came from people thinking it wasn’t.

可能情况是，它是相当脱钩的，而过度乐观来自于人们认为事实并非如此。

PayPal was a very friendly name.

PayPal 是一个非常友好的名字。

It was the friend that helps you pay.

是那个朋友帮你付钱的。

Napster was a bad name.

Napster 是个坏名字。

It was the music sharing site.

这是音乐共享网站。

You nap some music, you nap a kid.

你听着音乐打盹，你就让孩子打盹。

That sounds like a bad thing to be doing.

这听起来像是一件坏事。

PayPal was a very friendly name.

PayPal 是一个非常友好的名字。

It was the friend that helps you pay.

是那个朋友帮你付钱的。

Napster was a bad name.

Napster 是个坏名字。

It was the music sharing site.

这是音乐共享网站。

You nap some music, you nap a kid.

你听着音乐打盹，你就让孩子打盹。

That sounds like a bad thing to be doing.

这听起来像是一件坏事。

You can say that all these social networks involve both reading and writing.

你可以说所有这些社交网络都涉及阅读和写作。

Unlike real life, you have to write, before you read.

与现实生活不同，在阅读之前你必须先写。

You first have to write some things about yourself, then you read more about other people.

你首先必须写一些关于你自己的事情，然后你才能阅读更多关于其他人的事情。

Over time, reading dominates writing.

随着时间的推移，阅读主导了写作。

Facebook was about learning about people around you.

Facebook 的宗旨是了解你周围的人。

About the real identities at Harvard.

关于哈佛的真实身份。

MySpace started among wannabe actors in Los Angeles, and it was about them coming up with fictional narratives around themselves, and then a lot of other people in LA, who are generally like that.

MySpace 始于洛杉矶的那些想成为演员的人，他们围绕自己提出虚构的叙述，然后洛杉矶的很多其他人通常都是这样的。

Because reading dominates writing, Facebook would ultimately dominate MySpace.

由于阅读主导了写作，Facebook 最终将主导 MySpace。

There’s a certain version where the whole product arc was implicit in the names.

在某个版本中，整个产品弧都隐含在名称中。

It’s hard to generalize.

很难一概而论。

California and Germany are extremely opposite kinds of places, in certain ways.

在某些方面，加利福尼亚和德国是截然不同的地方。

I think of California as both very optimistic and somewhat desperate.

我认为加州既非常乐观又有些绝望。

You have 20,000 people a year move to Los Angeles to become movie stars, maybe 20 of them make it.

每年有 20,000 人搬到洛杉矶成为电影明星，其中也许有 20 人成功。

All of California has a super-optimistic, but somewhat desperate .

整个加州都有一种超级乐观，但又有些绝望的情绪。

.

。

.

。

If you are a mildly pessimistic person, you might do well in a place where people are insanely optimistic.

如果你是一个稍微悲观的人，那么你可能在人们极其乐观的地方表现得很好。

If you are a mildly optimistic person, you would do well in a place where people are insanely pessimistic, like say Germany.

如果你是一个温和乐观的人，那么你会在人们极度悲观的地方表现得很好，比如德国。

A healthy attitude is always either something that’s milder.

健康的态度总是比较温和的。

Mild optimism, mild pessimism.

轻度乐观，轻度悲观。

I average out to a mild version, even though maybe the components are extreme.

我平均选择了温和的版本，尽管成分可能很极端。

On average, it comes out somewhere in the middle.

平均而言，它处于中间的某个位置。

If I had to make a straightforward forecast, I would do a straight-line extrapolation, where life expectancy has gone up something like, 2.2 to 2.5 years per decade, since 1840.

如果我必须做一个简单的预测，我会做一个直线外推，自 1840 年以来，预期寿命每十年增加 2.2 至 2.5 岁。

That would probably get me into my early to mid-90s.

这可能会让我进入 90 岁出头到中期。

Then, you add maybe 10 years, so somewhere 100 to 110.

然后，您可能会加上 10 年，即 100 到 110 年。

That would be a pretty good upper case.

那将是一个非常好的大写字母。

There’s a lot of variability.

有很多变化。

If things end up stagnant, it’ll be not much more than what people would expect today.

如果事情最终停滞不前，那也不会比人们今天的预期好多少。

If things accelerate, it could be a lot longer.

如果事情加速，时间可能会更长。

But you are right.

但你是对的。

We are not going to get that many gains from reductions in infant mortality, or things of that sort.

我们不会从降低婴儿死亡率或诸如此类的事情中获得那么多收益。

It will come from people who are somewhat older, hopefully living both longer, and hopefully healthier, lives.

它将来自年龄稍大的人，他们希望活得更长久，也希望生活更健康。

You are different in that way, but what is it in your character, intellect, or background, do you think accounts for that difference, given some of the other things you’ve said?

你在这方面是不同的，但考虑到你所说的其他一些事情，你认为你的性格、智力或背景是什么造成了这种差异？

And I think for the most part, it was necessary for Christ to be very careful how he expressed himself.

我认为在大多数情况下，基督有必要非常小心地表达自己。

It was mostly in these extremely parabolic, indirect modalities, because if it had been too direct, it would have been very dangerous.

主要是采用这些极其抛物线的、间接的方式，因为如果太直接，就会非常危险。

It was John Locke, in The Reasonableness of Christianity, said that Christ obviously had to mislead people, since if he had not done so, the authorities might have tried to kill him.

约翰·洛克在《基督教的合理性》中说，基督显然必须误导人们，因为如果他不这样做，当局可能会试图杀死他。

That’s how you end up getting very interesting perspectives, and how you change your mind on things.

这就是你如何最终获得非常有趣的观点，以及如何改变你对事物的看法的方式。

The overarching agenda is always to try to figure out some way to get out of the stagnation by literally helping people to start companies that will change the world.

最重要的议程始终是试图找出某种方法来摆脱停滞，真正帮助人们创办将改变世界的公司。

I wouldn’t say we have a monopoly, but the space of doing liberty-oriented ideas in a university setting is by no means what everyone is jumping at doing, to say the least.

我不会说我们有垄断，但至少可以说，在大学环境中实现以自由为导向的想法的空间绝不是每个人都在热衷于做的事情。

If you think of us as a start-up, embodying at least some characteristics which have something to do with what you’ve praised, what advice would you give us at the margin, for being successful in the future?

如果您认为我们是一家初创企业，至少体现了一些与您所赞扬的特征有关的特征，那么您会给我们什么建议，以帮助我们未来取得成功？

I would always be long substance, short status.

我总是看重物质，看淡地位。

The temptation is to try to get more respectability within an academic setting, or within some sort of a broader audience.

人们的诱惑是试图在学术环境中或在更广泛的受众中获得更多的尊重。

If you try to get respectability, it will always come at a price of softening the edges, modulating what you say.

如果你试图获得尊重，你总是会以软化自己的棱角、调整自己的言论为代价。

You want to always put substance over status.

你总是希望实质重于地位。

I would always be long substance, short status.

我总是看重物质，看淡地位。

The temptation is to try to get more respectability within an academic setting, or within some sort of a broader audience.

人们的诱惑是试图在学术环境中或在更广泛的受众中获得更多的尊重。

If you try to get respectability, it will always come at a price of softening the edges, modulating what you say.

如果你试图获得尊重，你总是会以软化自己的棱角、调整自己的言论为代价。

You want to always put substance over status.

您希望始终将实质内容置于地位之上。

If that was a single overarching theme, that would be a very, very healthy one to maintain.

如果这是一个单一的总体主题，那么这将是一个非常非常健康的主题。

Q&A

问答

Globalization, I think there is actually a formula.

全球化，我觉得其实有一个公式。

You can copy what’s working, try to mechanically apply it.

你可以复制有效的方法，尝试机械地应用它。

There’s something scientific about globalization.

全球化有一定的科学性。

There’s something deeply unscientific about the history of technology itself.

技术本身的历史有一些非常不科学的地方。

Science starts with the number two, whereas every moment in the history of science, technology, business, I believe, happens only once.

科学从数字二开始，而我相信科学、技术、商业史上的每一个时刻都只发生一次。

The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t start a social network, the next Larry Page won’t start a search engine.

下一个马克扎克伯格不会创建社交网络，下一个拉里佩奇不会创建搜索引擎。

It’s always some idiosyncratic thing.

这总是一些特殊的事情。

It’s good to be passionate about something that you are good at, that other people are not doing.

对自己擅长、而别人不擅长的事情充满热情是件好事。

If you get those three things lined up, that’s a very good start.

如果你把这三件事排列起来，那就是一个很好的开始。

If you are able to push unpopular causes, that’s very good.

如果你能够推动不受欢迎的事业，那就非常好。

Then, the Zen-like problem, the paradox, is that you have a lot of impact, if you are able to push a good, worthwhile, but unpopular cause.

然后，类似禅宗的问题，即悖论，是，如果你能够推动一项好的、有价值的、但不受欢迎的事业，你就会产生很大的影响。

The Zen paradox, is that it’s very hard to market it and get money to do it.

禅宗的悖论在于，很难推销它并筹集到资金。

That’s the tension that it’s worth thinking through really hard.

这就是值得认真思考的张力。

I think most nonprofits fail at this, where they end up supporting things that are super conventional, they can get funding for them, but if they didn’t do it, there’d be 100 other people doing it.

我认为大多数非营利组织都在这方面失败了，他们最终支持了一些非常传统的事情，他们可以获得资金，但如果他们不这样做，就会有 100 个人这样做。

Always having a counterfactual sense of mission is important.

始终保持反事实的使命感很重要。

If we weren’t doing this, nobody else in the world would be doing this.

如果我们不这样做，世界上没有其他人会这样做。

To the extent that’s not true, you want to make that more true.

如果这不是真的，你想让它变得更真实。

Maybe it’s a spectrum, but you want to always tilt more in that direction.

也许这是一个范围，但你总是想朝这个方向倾斜更多。

On the business side, on the nonprofit side, I always differentiate mission-oriented businesses, which have this counterfactual sense of importance, from social entrepreneurship.

在商业方面，在非营利方面，我总是将具有这种反事实重要性意识的使命导向型企业与社会企业家精神区分开来。

Anything that has a social element to it — the word social is very ambiguous.

任何带有社交元素的东西 ——“社交”这个词是非常含糊的。

It can mean, number one, good for society.

第一，它可能意味着对社会有益。

It can mean, number two, good as seen by society.

第二，它可能意味着社会所认为的美好。

In practice, the second meaning always ends up dominating the first.

在实践中，第二个含义最终总是支配第一个含义。

Then, you end up with the “me too,” lemming-like, sheep-like clones, where you lose every raison d’être.

然后，你最终会得到“我也是”，像旅鼠一样、像绵羊一样的克隆人，在那里你失去了一切存在的理由。

They are somehow considered not cool, not prestigious.

不知怎的，他们被认为不酷，不享有盛誉。

The average plumber makes about as much as the average medical doctor.

水管工的平均收入与医生的平均收入相当。

I do think this idea of what’s unfashionable is very important as an initial anchor.

我确实认为这种不时尚的想法作为最初的锚点非常重要。

There’s no reason that people of average ability are going to be more pushed towards what’s fashionable than people who are very smart.

没有理由认为能力一般的人会比非常聪明的人更倾向于时尚。

I think often the smarter people are more prone to trendy, fashionable thinking because they can pick up on things, they can pick up on cues more easily, and so they’re even more trapped by it than people of average ability.

我认为通常聪明的人更容易产生新潮、时尚的思维，因为他们可以发现事物，他们可以更容易地发现线索，因此他们比能力一般的人更容易被它所困。

My question to you, and then also I have a follow-up for Dr. Cowen, is “What do we need to do to enlist your powerful support in that view, in addition to getting introduced by someone in your inner circle?”

我向你提出的问题以及考恩博士的后续问题是：“除了得到你核心圈子里的人的介绍之外，我们还需要做什么才能获得你对这一观点的强有力支持？”

Dr. Cowen, my question to you is, “What do we need to do to be on that stage, having a similar conversation with you and the crowd that you have managed to get out here?”

考恩博士，我问你的问题是，“我们需要做什么才能在那个舞台上与你和你设法走出这里的人群进行类似的对话？”

Then the question “How does one actually do this?” is very tricky.

接下来的问题是“实际上如何做到这一点？”非常棘手。

All the surface area on this planet is occupied.

这个星球上的所有表面区域都被占据了。

It seems very hard to get this to work.

让它发挥作用似乎很难。

I know Romer had this experiment with these city-states in Africa.

我知道罗默对非洲的这些城邦进行了这个实验。

I think it was prohibitively expensive.

我认为它太贵了。

It could never really quite get started.

它永远不可能真正开始。

You need to have some version of where this would work and you could get started with a budget of let’s say less than $50 billion.

你需要有某种版本的方法可以发挥作用，并且你可以从比方说少于 500 亿美元的预算开始。

If you could give me a convincing way it would work for $50 million instead of $50 billion, I’d be interested.

如果你能给我一个令人信服的方法，它可以在 5000 万美元而不是 500 亿美元的情况下发挥作用，我会很感兴趣。

I tend to favor larger political units and to think that human freedom will be found by the wealth and diversity within larger political units giving people pockets.

我倾向于支持更大的政治单位，并认为人类自由将通过更大的政治单位内的财富和多样性为人们提供口袋来实现。

I’m not sure we’ll ever have a bottom-down creation of a lot of micro-units which compete very intensely and through exit give people true liberty.

我不确定我们是否会自下而上地创建许多竞争非常激烈的微型单位，并通过退出给予人们真正的自由。

I’m more optimistic about the larger political unit vision, but maybe that’s a matter of taste.

我对更大的政治单位愿景更加乐观，但这也许是一个品味问题。

In terms of these events, you or anyone else feel free to write me.

关于这些事件，您或其他任何人都可以随时给我写信。

My retrospective was that if you actually ask someone to double-check things for whether or not it’s controversial, you already deep-down know that you should double-check it yourself.

我的回顾是，如果你真的要求某人仔细检查事情是否有争议，那么你内心深处就知道你应该自己仔细检查。

My updated version on it would be that — I made the case that I thought democracy and capitalism weren’t quite compatible — the updated version I would give is it’s not at all clear that we’re living in anything resembling a democracy.

我对此的更新版本是： —— 我认为民主和资本主义并不完全兼容 —— 我给出的更新版本是，根本不清楚我们是否生活在类似于民主的环境中。

We’re living in a representative republic, but then that’s modified through a judicial system.

我们生活在一个代议制共和国，但随后通过司法系统进行了修改。

Of course, that’s been largely superseded by these very unelected agencies of one sort or another, which really drive most of the decision-making.

当然，这在很大程度上已被这些未经选举产生的机构所取代，这些机构确实推动了大部分决策。

I think calling our society a democracy, whatever may be good or bad about democracy, is very, very deeply misleading.

我认为称我们的社会为民主社会，无论民主是好还是坏，都是非常非常具有误导性的。

We’re not a republic.

我们不是共和国。

We’re not a constitutional republic.

我们不是立宪共和国。

We are actually a state that’s dominated by these very unelected, technocratic agencies.

我们实际上是一个由这些非选举产生的技术官僚机构主导的国家。

The very difficult political question is, “How can you get an advanced, technological society to function in any way that’s more republican or more democratic at all?”

非常困难的政治问题是：“如何让一个先进的技术社会以更加共和或更民主的方式运作？”

Not at all sure how that is, but I think the challenge is that a lot of these agencies have become deeply sclerotic, deeply nonfunctioning, even though the alternatives to them, politically, often seem to be even worse.

完全不确定这是怎么回事，但我认为挑战在于，许多这些机构已经变得非常僵化，完全不起作用，尽管在政治上，它们的替代品往往看起来更糟糕。

The Federal Reserve — lots of things they do, I don’t like, but then once you get people in Congress involved in dictating Fed policy, that always seems even worse.

美联储——他们做了很多事情，我不喜欢，但是一旦你让国会的人参与决定美联储的政策，情况似乎总是更糟。

If you do that on a physical globe, it’s somewhere in the southern hemisphere.

如果你在一个物理地球上这样做，它就会在南半球的某个地方。

It’s basically halfway between New Zealand and Tahiti.

它基本上位于新西兰和塔希提岛之间。

If you had to pick them, I’d go with New Zealand over French Polynesia, which is where the people in France go, who find the work hours in France too onerous.

如果你必须选择它们，我会选择新西兰而不是法属波利尼西亚，法属波利尼西亚是法国人去的地方，他们发现法国的工作时间太繁重。

I think in the 1930s and 1940s you had a degree of technocratic competence that was quite significant.

我认为在 20 世纪 30 年代和 1940 年代，技术官僚能力相当重要。

Today, a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room.

今天，爱因斯坦的一封信会在白宫收发室丢失。

The Manhattan Project would be unthinkable.

曼哈顿计划是不可想象的。

Apollo would be unthinkable.

阿波罗是不可想象的。

I think the first signal one that really went wrong was Nixon’s war on cancer.

我认为第一个真正出错的信号是尼克松的癌症战争。

I always do think the 1970s were this decade where many of our institutions, especially our governmental institutions, started to work much less well.

我一直认为 20 世纪 70 年代是我们许多机构，尤其是政府机构开始运作不佳的十年。

That was perhaps the signal one where things went badly wrong.

这也许是事情发生严重错误的信号。

In terms of investing in science and technology, it seems to me that the minimum criterion for doing it is to have some understanding of these things and some ability to evaluate them properly.

对于科技投资，我觉得最起码的标准就是对这些东西有一些了解，有一些正确评估的能力。

In a government in which two-thirds of the representatives are lawyers and in which .

在一个三分之二的代表是律师的政府中。

.

。

.

。

Again, just using the House and Senate as a proxy for our government, by generous count, no more than 35 have degrees in engineering or science or anything like that, or any technical field, very generously defined, both the House and Senate.

再说一遍，仅使用众议院和参议院作为我们政府的代理人，根据慷慨的统计，众议院和参议院拥有工程学或科学或类似学位或任何技术领域（非常慷慨地定义）学位的人不超过 35 人。

Perhaps these are not the right people to be driving these investments.

也许这些人不是推动这些投资的合适人选。

I think we, again, should have much more of a focus on substance, much less on process.

我认为我们再次应该更多地关注实质内容，而不是过程。

I always use the Solyndra bankruptcy as an example in this question of what went wrong.

在这个问题中，我总是用 Solyndra 破产案作为例子。

There’s a Republican process critique.

有对共和党程序的批评。

The process was screwed up.

过程搞砸了。

There were kickbacks.

有回扣。

Somehow, there was this corruption.

不知何故，存在这种腐败。

They could never quite prove it, but that was the intuition.

他们永远无法完全证明这一点，但这就是直觉。

The Democratic defense was, “We had a process.

民主党的辩护是，“我们有一个过程。

We had a portfolio, a financial process where we gave money to lots of different things.” You let 100 flowers bloom or something like that.

我们有一个投资组合，一个财务流程，我们可以为很多不同的事情提供资金。”你让 100 朵花绽放或类似的东西。

A mathematical objection to it was that a cylinder has 2πr the surface area of a flat panel, which would be 2r and therefore is, by definition, 1 over π as efficient as a flat panel.

对此的数学反对意见是，圆柱体的表面积为平板的 2πr，这将是 2r，因此，根据定义，其效率为 1 除 π 与平板一样高效。

You could just use ninth-grade, high school geometry to show that this was a demonstrably inferior technology.

你可以用九年级、高中的几何知识来证明这是一种明显较差的技术。

It was never going to be commercially viable.

它永远不会具有商业可行性。

You have a Nobel laureate, Steve Chu, running the Energy Department who is not allowed to use ninth-grade high school geometry in evaluating what to do.

诺贝尔奖获得者朱棣文（Steve Chu）负责管理能源部，但他不被允许使用高中九年级的几何知识来评估该做什么。

That sort of a society, that sort of a government is one that should not be allowed to make any investments in these areas whatsoever.

这样的社会、这样的政府是不应该被允许在这些领域进行任何投资的。

I think money and the nature of money is somehow much less important than all the microregulations that make up the economy.

我认为金钱和金钱的本质在某种程度上远不如构成经济的所有微观监管那么重要。

If you give me a choice of getting rid of the vast bulk of government regulations and keeping the Fed, I’d much rather do that than keeping all the other zoning laws and crazy rules we have and going with PayPal, Bitcoin, gold, any sort of alternate currency one could come up with.

如果你让我选择摆脱大量政府法规并保留美联储，我宁愿这样做，也不愿保留我们现有的所有其他分区法和疯狂规则，并使用 PayPal、比特币、黄金以及人们可能想出的任何一种替代货币。

I think money and the nature of money is somehow much less important than all the microregulations that make up the economy.

我认为金钱和金钱的本质在某种程度上远不如构成经济的所有微观监管那么重要。

If you give me a choice of getting rid of the vast bulk of government regulations and keeping the Fed, I’d much rather do that than keeping all the other zoning laws and crazy rules we have and going with PayPal, Bitcoin, gold, any sort of alternate currency one could come up with.

如果你让我选择摆脱大量政府法规并保留美联储，我宁愿这样做，也不愿保留我们现有的所有其他分区法和疯狂规则，并使用 PayPal、比特币、黄金以及人们可能想出的任何一种替代货币。

I’d much prefer to focus on the level of atoms, the real economy, than on the virtual level of bits, which I think of money as being linked to.

我更愿意关注原子层面，即实体经济，而不是虚拟的比特层面，我认为虚拟比特与金钱息息相关。

My intuition, for what it’s worth, is that you’d want money to somehow be linked back to the real, in a fundamental way.

我的直觉是，无论其价值如何，你都希望金钱能够以某种方式从根本上与现实挂钩。

This was the merit of the gold standard, that it would at least maintain this discipline that money was not something that grew on trees and could be printed ad infinitum, and so I’d want it to be linked to something real.

这就是金本位制的优点，它至少会维持这样的纪律：金钱不是长在树上的东西，可以无限地印刷，所以我希望它与真实的东西联系起来。

Maybe you link it to the equity market, or something that’s somewhat more real than just fiat money.

也许你将它与股票市场联系起来，或者比法定货币更真实的东西。

I think the much more critical thing are all the microregulations.

我认为更关键的是所有的微观监管。

I don’t know all about the details of the terrorism issue in Indonesia; my sense is that a lot of these national security debates have involved these fake tradeoffs in many different places.

我不太了解印尼恐怖主义问题的具体情况，我的感觉是，许多国家安全辩论都涉及许多不同地方的虚假权衡。

It’s always you do more with more, or less with less.

你总是用更多的钱做更多的事，或者用更少的钱做更少的事。

You have more security with more privacy invasions — a more centralized, powerful state.

你会因为更多的隐私侵犯而获得更多的安全——一个更集中、更强大的国家。

Versus, you have less security with more privacy.

相反，您的安全性较低，但隐私较多。

It’s almost like the NSA versus the ACLU, and I think this is a very fake dichotomy.

这几乎就像美国国家安全局与美国公民自由联盟的对立，我认为这是一个非常虚假的二分法。

The technological solution I would like is where you do more with less, where we have more security with fewer invasions of privacy and we try to find ways to actually do things that are much smarter.

我想要的技术解决方案是用更少的资源做更多的事情，我们有更多的安全性，更少的隐私侵犯，我们试图找到真正做更聪明的事情的方法。

That’s what I would define as actual innovation in a space.

这就是我所定义的空间中的实际创新。

We can always do more with more, versus less with less, and that’s the boring ideological debate we’re always stuck with.

我们总是可以用更多的钱做更多的事，而不是用更少的钱做更少的事，这就是我们一直陷入的无聊的意识形态争论。

I always think it’s very odd how weirdly strange the anti-aging, life extension idea is.

我一直认为抗衰老、延长寿命的想法是多么奇怪。

I always think, “Why would people think that you would need a life mission or some extraordinary reason to want to live longer?” Part of it goes to these very strange psychological ways we deal with mortality, through a combination of acceptance and denial.

我总是想，“为什么人们会认为你需要一个人生使命或一些非凡的理由才能活得更久？”部分原因在于我们通过接受和否认的结合来应对死亡的这些非常奇怪的心理方式。

We accept that we’re all going to die, and so we don’t do anything, and we think we’re not going to die anytime soon, so we don’t really need to worry about it.

我们承认我们都会死，所以我们什么都不做，我们认为我们不会很快死，所以我们真的不需要担心。

We have this sort of schizophrenic combination of acceptance and denial, like extreme pessimism and extreme optimism.

我们有这种接受与否认的精神分裂组合，就像极端悲观主义和极端乐观主义一样。

It converges to doing nothing, and I’d like us to just fight it a little bit more for its own sake.

它会导致什么都不做，我希望我们为了它本身而多做一点斗争。

Let’s grant number one.

让我们授予第一。

Then you have a second question, why is this happening, and then a third question, what to do about it?

然后你有第二个问题，为什么会发生这种情况，然后是第三个问题，该怎么办？

I think these things are very different.

我认为这些事情非常不同。

Why it is happening: I tend to blame it more on globalization than technology.

为什么会发生这种情况：我倾向于将其更多地归咎于全球化而不是技术。

I think it’s very overdetermined by many different things that are very hard to solve, and then I think what to do about it: many of the remedies are actually worse than the disease.

我认为这是由许多不同的事情决定的，这些事情很难解决，然后我想该怎么办：许多补救措施实际上比疾病更糟糕。

If you come up with higher marginal tax rates, for example, you probably will just incent people to come up with more loopholes; maybe it hurts the middle class more than the wealthy.

例如，如果你想出更高的边际税率，你可能只会激励人们想出更多的漏洞；也许它对中产阶级的伤害比对富人的伤害更大。

If you actually look at societies with officially very redistributionist policies, they seem to get more and more static the more redistributionist the rhetoric is.

如果你真正观察一下官方实行再分配主义政策的社会，你会发现，再分配主义言论越多，它们似乎就会变得越来越静态。

You have to go very far left before you actually get to effective redistribution.

在真正实现有效的重新分配之前，你必须走得很远。

Venezuela is not left-wing enough to get the redistribution.

委内瑞拉不够左翼，无法获得重新分配。

You have to go probably all the way to Cuba, Soviet Union, things like that.

你可能必须一路去古巴、苏联之类的地方。

France, not nearly far enough.

法国，还远远不够。

I’d rather go in a very different direction.

我宁愿走一个完全不同的方向。

My sense is always that it’s basically that the issue is not inequality, the issue is much more stagnation.

我的感觉始终是，问题根本不在于不平等，而在于停滞。

There’s a sense of people’s living standards are generally not improving that much, and then, what can you do about that?

人们有一种感觉，人们的生活水平普遍没有提高太多，那么，你能做些什么呢？

What are the microsolutions for that?

有哪些微观解决方案？

In Silicon Valley, San Francisco, where I live, I would say the single biggest variable that makes people feel the stagnation is the sense in which housing costs, rental costs, are through the roof.

在我居住的旧金山硅谷，我想说，让人们感到停滞的最大变量是住房成本、租金成本飞涨的感觉。

The political fix I would be tempted to pursue would be trying to find a way to break the unholy alliance between urban slumlords and pseudo-environmentalists that sort of prevent any new urban development.

我试图寻求的政治解决方案是试图找到一种方法来打破城市贫民窟和伪环保主义者之间的邪恶联盟，这种联盟在某种程度上阻止了任何新的城市发展。

But I think it’s always much more a problem of stagnation than inequality.

但我认为这更多的是停滞问题而不是不平等问题。

I managed to talk to Dr. Collins from the NIH, who was the director then, and his answer was, “Great idea, but it’s too hard to do.” I wanted to get your response to that.

我设法与当时的所长、美国国立卫生研究院的柯林斯博士进行了交谈，他的回答是：“好主意，但做起来太难了。”我想得到你的回应。

It would take a lot longer to explain all my misgivings about it, but I think it fits a little bit too much into this conventional inequality narrative, that we have rapid technological progress, and the only problem is that people won’t have jobs, they’ll be replaced by computers.

要解释我对此的所有疑虑需要更长的时间，但我认为这有点太符合传统的不平等叙事，即我们拥有快速的技术进步，唯一的问题是人们不会有工作，他们将被计算机取代。

I suspect that’s not quite correct.

我怀疑这不太正确。

I think the whole AI story is, if anything, happening more slowly.

我认为整个人工智能的故事发展得更慢了。

The data point people always give is self-driving cars.

人们总是给出的数据点是自动驾驶汽车。

The fact that they always come up with the same example suggests that maybe there’s not that much to it.

事实上，他们总是提出相同的例子，这表明也许并没有那么多。

Even if you got — and I think self-driven cars would be significant — it might replace at most 1 percent of the workforce, it might increase productivity by a few percent in the economy.

即使你拥有 ——我认为自动驾驶汽车会很重要——它可能会取代最多 1% 的劳动力，也可能会提高经济中几个百分点的生产率。

If you phased them in over a decade, it would not be that transformative.

如果你在十多年的时间内逐步实施它们，那不会有那么大的变革。

I think we’ve had this sort of Gresham’s law, where the bad scientists have driven out the good, or people who are nimble in the art of writing government grant applications have replaced the eccentric scientists who’ve really pushed the research.

我认为我们已经有了这样的格雷欣法则，即坏科学家驱逐了好科学家，或者擅长撰写政府资助申请的人取代了真正推动研究的古怪科学家。

I think that’s sort of this deep corruption of the process.

我认为这就是流程的深度腐败。

I think we’ve had this sort of Gresham’s law, where the bad scientists have driven out the good, or people who are nimble in the art of writing government grant applications have replaced the eccentric scientists who’ve really pushed the research.

我认为我们已经有了这样的格雷欣法则，即坏科学家驱逐了好科学家，或者擅长撰写政府资助申请的人取代了真正推动研究的古怪科学家。

I think that’s sort of this deep corruption of the process.

我认为这就是流程的深度腐败。

It’s very hard for the public to fully appreciate it, because science is so specialized.

公众很难完全理解它，因为科学是如此专业。

Who am I to evaluate superstring research, or quantum computing research, or nanotech, or immunotherapy as applied to cancer?

我是谁来评估应用于癌症的超弦研究、量子计算研究、纳米技术或免疫疗法？

Because of this extreme specialization of science, you have these self-reinforcing expert communities that have made this process of politicization extremely opaque to the broader public.

由于科学的极端专业化，这些自我强化的专家社区使得这一政治化过程对更广泛的公众来说极其不透明。

I’m very much in favor of science, but I’m skeptical of people who excessively invoke science as an incantation of sorts.

我非常支持科学，但我对那些过度引用科学作为某种咒语的人持怀疑态度。

When you use the word science it’s often a tell, like in poker, that you’re bluffing and that no science at all is going on.

当你使用“科学”这个词时，就像在扑克中一样，这通常表明你在虚张声势，根本没有科学依据。

We have political science, we have social science.

我们有政治学，我们有社会科学。

We don’t have physical science or chemical science.

我们没有物理科学或化学科学。

There are just physics and chemistry, there’s no debate.

只有物理和化学，没有辩论。

If you think about other areas where people use the word science excessively, I think those are areas that we should perhaps be a lot more skeptical of.

如果你考虑一下人们过度使用“科学”这个词的其他领域，我认为这些领域我们也许应该更加怀疑。

But I’ve always questioned the premise of the question.

但我一直质疑这个问题的前提。

I’m not sure whether subjective happiness should be the most important metric at which we evaluate things.

我不确定主观幸福是否应该成为我们评估事物的最重要指标。

There’s many other metrics we can use.

我们还可以使用许多其他指标。