Robin Hanson on Signaling and Self-Deception (Ep. 35)

This episode was recorded live at Mason for econ grad students.

这一集是在梅森为经济学研究生现场录制的。

If you’re interested in learning economics with great professors like Robin and Tyler, check out these fellowships.

如果您有兴趣向罗宾和泰勒等伟大教授学习经济学，请查看这些奖学金。

The claim we make in there is that, although we like to talk about conversation as if it was about imparting information and finding out useful things, more plausibly it’s about showing off your backpack of tools and skills in context.

我们在那里提出的主张是，虽然我们喜欢谈论对话，就好像它是关于传递信息和发现有用的东西，但更合理的是，它是关于在上下文中展示你的工具和技能的背包。

As usual, apparently, people like your conversations because you have some magic sauce, some special way that you can show that you get to people in a way that other people can’t.

显然，像往常一样，人们喜欢你的谈话，因为你有某种魔力，某种特殊的方式可以表明你能以其他人无法做到的方式与人们打交道。

I suppose other people probably say that about art.

我想其他人可能也会这样评价艺术。

It’s just one of those feel-good sort of things.

这只是那些感觉良好的事情之一。

Art is a thing you’re supposed to feel good about, and that’s how it’s supposed to produce all the good things.

艺术是一种让人感觉良好的东西，这就是它应该产生所有美好事物的方式。

It probably produces health and empathy and long life and faithfulness to your spouse.

它可能会带来健康、同理心、长寿和对配偶的忠诚。

As people get older, why is it that biologically they’ve evolved to keep on signaling?

随着人们年龄的增长，为什么从生物学上来说他们会进化出继续发出信号的能力？

There are some signals they send much more of—high-culture signals.

他们发出了更多的一些信号——高雅文化信号。

A lot of learning classes are done primarily by the elderly.

许多学习课程主要由老年人完成。

What determines the cross-section here?

这里的横截面由什么决定？

In order to serve those purposes, we need allies.

为了实现这些目的，我们需要盟友。

We need associates.

我们需要同事。

We need people to trust us and relate to us and deal with us.

我们需要人们信任我们、与我们建立联系并与我们打交道。

So signaling is an instrumental way to get all those other resources you need to do most anything.

因此，信号发送是获取完成大多数任务所需的所有其他资源的有效方法。

We didn’t evolve for a world where, say, 74-year-olds would visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

我们的发展并不是为了一个 74 岁的人会参观明尼阿波利斯艺术学院的世界。

Could it not be that a lot of human behavior, it’s a kind of accidental interaction of very broad features of human character that evolved for very general purposes.

难道人类的很多行为不都是为了非常普遍的目的而进化的人类性格的非常广泛的特征的一种偶然的相互作用吗？

But the actual, particular, detailed instantiations of what happens in the US of A are, in a sense, not really the result of signaling in any direct way at the margin.

但从某种意义上说，美国发生的事情的实际、具体、详细的实例并不是在边缘以任何直接方式发出信号的结果。

We’re using those sorts of cues and mapping onto our evolved instincts in that way.

我们正在使用这些线索并以这种方式映射到我们进化的本能。

I think art is roughly impressive things that are hard to do and that don’t seem to have much other function or purpose.

我认为艺术大致上是一些令人印象深刻但很难做到的事情，而且似乎没有太多其他功能或目的。

Our evolutionary cues for that are pretty good.

我们对此的进化线索非常好。

Now, there are some things we do that bother some people that other people like, that they find it endearing.

现在，我们做的一些事情让一些人感到困扰，但其他人却喜欢，他们觉得很可爱。

Sometimes we can do countersignaling or signaling to a particular group to show them that we are focused on them and trying to impress them, as opposed to everybody else.

有时我们可以向特定群体发出反信号或信号，向他们表明我们专注于他们并试图给他们留下深刻的印象，而不是其他人。

Which is fine, but some things we do, like scratching our butt, basically, nobody’s impressed by and nobody’s very endeared by.

这很好，但我们做的一些事情，比如挠屁股，基本上没有人会留下深刻的印象，也没有人会很喜欢。

That would be the kind of thing.

就是这样的事情。

In some sense, I think of introverts as going for the egg people strategy.

从某种意义上说，我认为内向的人会采取鸡蛋人策略。

They’re trying to show you, “This is who I am.

他们试图向你展示：“这就是我。

There’s not much more hidden, and you get past my shell, and you can know me and trust me.

没有什么隐藏的了，只要你突破了我的外壳，你就可以了解我并信任我。

And there’s a sense in which we can form a stronger bond because I’m not hiding that much more.”

从某种意义上说，我们可以建立更牢固的联系，因为我没有隐藏更多。”

I’ve sometimes been tempted to classify people as egg people and onion people.

有时我很想把人分为鸡蛋人和洋葱人。

Onion people have layer after layer after layer.

洋葱人一层又一层。

You peel it back, and there’s still more layers.

你把它剥回来，还有更多层。

You don’t really know what’s underneath.

你并不真正知道下面是什么。

Whereas egg people, there’s a shell, and you get through it, and you see what’s on the inside.

而鸡蛋人则有壳，你穿过它，就能看到里面的东西。

The United States government should be signaling to potential enemies that we love them, that we’re all one big broad caring world community.

美国政府应该向潜在的敌人发出信号，表明我们爱他们，我们都是一个充满关爱的国际社会。

Is the real problem with signaling not the waste in the signal but that we signal too narrowly?

信号传递的真正问题不是信号的浪费而是我们信号传递的范围太窄了吗？

It’s not necessarily great when America gets really focused on showing the rest of the world what America is because in the past, that’s often meant we’re trying to show how much better we are than everybody else, and how committed we are to fighting to the end should anybody challenge us, et cetera—not necessarily going to reduce war.

当美国真正专注于向世界其他国家展示美国是什么样子时，这并不一定很好，因为在过去，这通常意味着我们试图展示我们比其他人好得多，以及如果有人挑战我们，我们有多么坚定地战斗到底，等等——不一定会减少战争。

The other thing I think is, it’s less about the scope of the audience and more about how well informed they are.

我认为的另一件事是，这与受众的范围无关，而更多地与他们的消息灵通程度有关。

I’d say our main problem is our audiences are too ignorant.

我想说我们的主要问题是我们的观众太无知了。

We’re impressing people who can be impressed by things that are stupid.

我们正在给那些会对愚蠢的事情留下深刻印象的人留下深刻的印象。

It’s less about the scope of the audience and more about how well informed they are.

重点不在于受众的范围，而在于他们的消息灵通程度。

I’d say our main problem is our audiences are too ignorant.

我想说我们的主要问题是我们的观众太无知了。

We’re impressing people who can be impressed by things that are stupid.

我们正在给那些对愚蠢的事情留下深刻印象的人留下深刻的印象。

We don’t actually know which medicines work very well, and we don’t much care because the people we’re helping don’t know and the audience doesn’t know.

我们实际上并不知道哪些药物效果很好，我们也不太关心，因为我们帮助的人不知道，观众也不知道。

Since none of them really knows what works, we don’t care that much about what works when we push them to get more medicine.

由于他们都不知道什么有效，所以当我们敦促他们服用更多药物时，我们并不太关心什么有效。

The more that the audience that we were trying to impress knew which kinds of medicines were effective and which were not, the more we would pay attention to that and try to impress people with how much we care about them by getting them stuff that worked.

我们试图打动的受众越了解哪些药物有效，哪些药物无效，我们就越会关注这一点，并试图通过向人们提供有效的药物来让他们知道我们对他们的关心程度。

Education may be signaling; but if part of what it does is help turn you into an elite, which you’re doing because you’re signaling, but then you become an elite audience, haven’t we in a super roundabout way found the Hansonian third-best argument for why education is still underrated?

教育可能是一种信号；但如果它的部分作用是帮助你成为精英，你这样做是因为你在发出信号，但随后你就成为了精英受众，那么我们不是以超级迂回的方式找到了汉森主义第三最佳论据来解释为什么教育仍然被低估吗？

But I don’t think that’s very close to the world we’re in.

但我认为这与我们所处的世界不太接近。

In our world, the people who are running schools and facing students are not really the kind of elites that I’m focused on here.

在我们的世界里，办学的人和面对学生的人并不是我在这里关注的那种精英。

They don’t necessarily know much better about the things we’re talking about.

他们不一定对我们正在谈论的事情了解得更多。

What we really want to do is set up a world that caters to the elephant in our brain, so to speak.

可以这么说，我们真正想做的是建立一个迎合我们大脑中大象的世界。

We just want all policies to pander to signaling as much as possible.

我们只是希望所有政策尽可能迎合信号。

Maybe make signals cheaper, but just signals everywhere now and forever.

也许可以让信号变得更便宜，但现在和永远都是信号。

What says you?

你说什么？

If that’s true, then we are built to do that.

如果这是真的，那么我们就是为此而生的。

That’s the thing we want to do, and in some sense it’s a great world when we get to do it.

这就是我们想做的事情，从某种意义上说，当我们做到这一点时，这就是一个伟大的世界。

My complaint isn’t really that most people don’t acknowledge this.

我的抱怨并不是大多数人不承认这一点。

I accept that people may be just fine leaving the elephant in their brain and not paying attention to it and continuing to pretend one thing while they’re doing another.

我承认，人们可能会把大象留在大脑里，不去注意它，继续假装做一件事，而在做另一件事。

That may be what makes them happy and that may be OK.

这可能就是让他们高兴的原因，这也许没什么问题。

My stronger claim would be that policy analysts and social scientists who claim that they understand the social world well enough to make recommendations for changes—they should understand the elephant in the brain.

我更强烈的主张是，那些声称自己足够了解社会世界并能够提出变革建议的政策分析师和社会科学家——他们应该了解大脑中的大象。

They should have a better idea of hidden motives because they could think about which institutions that we might choose differently to have better outcomes.

他们应该对隐藏的动机有更好的了解，因为他们可以思考我们可能会以不同的方式选择哪些机构以获得更好的结果。

My stronger claim would be that policy analysts and social scientists who claim that they understand the social world well enough to make recommendations for changes — they should understand the elephant in the brain.

我更强烈的主张是，那些声称自己足够了解社会世界并能够提出变革建议的政策分析师和社会科学家——他们应该了解大脑中的大象。

They should have a better idea of hidden motives because they could think about which institutions that we might choose differently to have better outcomes.

他们应该对隐藏的动机有更好的了解，因为他们可以思考我们可能会以不同的方式选择哪些机构以获得更好的结果。

In a world where, say, we’re all showing what strong, virile men we are by fighting battles every day, physical battles, we may each enjoy that until the day we die at 25.

比如说，在这个世界上，我们每天都在通过身体上的战斗来展示自己是多么坚强、有男子气概，我们每个人都可以享受这样的生活，直到 25 岁去世的那一天。

But from a larger social point of view, there’s a huge loss.

但从更大的社会角度来看，损失是巨大的。

The focus here is on the coordination failure, on the equilibrium being inefficient because we have these huge negative externalities.

这里的重点是协调失败，均衡效率低下，因为我们有巨大的负外部性。

It’s the negative externalities that are the problem and the fault with the signaling, not so much the fact that you like to show off.

负外部性才是问题所在，也是信号传递的错误，而不是你喜欢炫耀的事实。

You get to show off, and hey, isn’t that great?

你可以炫耀一下，嘿，这不是很棒吗？

On what offends Robin deep down

罗宾内心深处的冒犯之处

That’s a noble cause in my mind.

在我看来，这是一项崇高的事业。

There are many people out there who other people are giving credit to them for doing that sort of thing, and I don’t think they deserve it because they’re not actually doing it.

有很多人因为做了这类事情而受到其他人的赞扬，但我认为他们不值得，因为他们实际上并没有这样做。

That’s not my broad scope for all morality, but if you want to pick a thing that just makes me mad .

这并不是我对所有道德的广泛范围，但如果你想选择一件让我生气的事情。

.

。

.

。

In the last few hundred years, we’ve gotten used to having more privacy.

在过去的几百年里，我们已经习惯了拥有更多的隐私。

It used to be rooms didn’t have doors.

以前的房间没有门。

It used to be people slept together with other people in the same room.

过去人们和其他人睡在同一个房间里。

It used to be when people read, they read out loud.

过去，人们读书时，他们会大声朗读。

People around them could hear them.

周围的人都能听到他们的声音。

Today we can read silently.

今天我们可以默读。

We can be by ourselves, and we’ve gotten used to a lot of privacy.

我们可以独处，而且我们已经习惯了很多隐私。

If you go through the excuse of putting it in a paper bag, they aren’t fooled.

如果你借口把它放在纸袋里，他们就不会被愚弄。

They are pretty sure you’re drinking liquor out of the paper bag, but they feel they have an excuse now.

他们很确定你喝的是纸袋里的酒，但他们觉得现在有借口了。

They don’t have to arrest you.

他们不必逮捕你。

They can claim they didn’t know.

他们可以声称他们不知道。

Similarly, if you invite someone up to see your etchings, they’re not entirely sold yet.

同样，如果你邀请某人来看你的蚀刻版画，它们还没有完全售出。

They would like an out, and they’d like the out to say they never intended to go anywhere close to where you were suggesting to go.

他们想要一个出局，他们希望出局说他们从来没有打算去任何接近你建议去的地方。

So you need to give them that excuse.

所以你需要给他们这个借口。

Until the very last moment they want to commit, you need to give them the excuse not only to not commit, to pretend they had no intention of ever going close to committing.

直到他们想要承诺的最后一刻，你需要给他们借口，不仅不承诺，假装他们无意接近承诺。

On coarse and fine social signals

关于粗略和精细的社交信号

We socially unskilled people tend to prefer things to be out in the open and clear, where we can read them and understand them and react, at least at some very basic level.

我们这些社交能力不强的人往往更喜欢事情公开、清晰，这样我们就可以阅读它们、理解它们并做出反应，至少在一些非常基本的层面上。

That’s who I am.

这就是我。

I am a nerdy person.

我是一个书呆子。

So personally, I prefer things to be more out in the open where I can have some idea what the heck’s going on, and I will notice them.

所以就我个人而言，我更喜欢将事情公开化，这样我可以知道到底发生了什么，并且我会注意到它们。

But I think has given me some advantage in being a social scientist, in that when you’re really socially skilled and you move about in the social world, you just intuitively do all the right things, and you don’t think explicitly about it.

但我认为这给了我成为一名社会科学家的一些优势，因为当你真正具有社交技能并且你在社交世界中活动时，你只是凭直觉做所有正确的事情，而你不会明确地思考它。

You don’t really notice that your theories that you might write on the chalkboard about social science don’t actually fit your behavior or the people around you.

你并没有真正注意到你可能写在黑板上的关于社会科学的理论实际上并不适合你的行为或你周围的人。

You can just not notice that conflict.

你可能只是没有注意到这种冲突。

But I think that has given me some advantage in being a social scientist, in that when you’re really socially skilled and you move about in the social world, you just intuitively do all the right things, and you don’t think explicitly about it.

但我认为这给了我成为一名社会科学家的一些优势，因为当你真正具有社交技能并且你在社交世界中活动时，你只是凭直觉做所有正确的事情，而你不会明确地思考它。

You don’t really notice that your theories that you might write on the chalkboard about social science don’t actually fit your behavior or the people around you.

你并没有真正注意到你可能写在黑板上的关于社会科学的理论实际上并不适合你的行为或你周围的人。

You can just not notice that conflict.

你可能只是没有注意到这种冲突。

Whereas, if you are a nerd like myself, you go through the social world noticing that you don’t understand what’s going on, and your theory of what people are doing doesn’t fit what they’re doing, and you’re just puzzled by that.

然而，如果你是像我一样的书呆子，你会在社交世界中发现自己不明白正在发生的事情，并且你对人们正在做的事情的理论与他们正在做的事情并不相符，你只是对此感到困惑。

And you bring in social science to try to help, and you realize it’s not helping you that much either.

当你引入社会科学来试图提供帮助时，你意识到它对你的帮助也没有多大。

Social science is not giving you a lot more progress to help this strange behavior in the people around you, so it’s a struggle.

社会科学并没有给你带来更多的进步来帮助你周围的人这种奇怪的行为，所以这是一场斗争。

On personality psychology

论人格心理学

They are feeling a bonding.

他们感受到了一种联系。

They’re saying, “We are right.

他们说：“我们是对的。

They are wrong.” They are showing a loyalty to their group by expressing their moral superiority to other people.

他们错了。”他们通过向他人表达自己的道德优越感来表达对群体的忠诚。

Expressing moral superiority to the other people you are most closely related immediately next to is probably not something people do a lot, nor is it really that wise.

向与你关系最密切的其他人表达道德优越感可能不是人们经常做的事情，也不是那么明智。

A smart IQ person who can do an SAT test and do a math problem, they are good at using explicit conscious reasoning to calculate things.

智商高的人可以做 SAT 考试并做数学题，他们擅长使用明确的有意识的推理来计算事物。

That doesn’t much involve their subconscious social calculations, in which context they can manipulate somebody or ask them to do something—and they do it—that sort of thing, which is just a whole separate cognitive capacity.

这并没有太多涉及他们的潜意识社交计算，在这种情况下，他们可以操纵某人或要求他们做某事——他们就会这么做——之类的事情，这只是一种完全独立的认知能力。

In your book, if you talk about, say, spending money on healthcare to show that you care or education not always being about learning, jokes being about in-group bonding, and so on—to what extent do you see your book as explaining the diversity of strategy choices?

在你的书中，如果你谈论在医疗保健上花钱以表明你关心或教育并不总是与学习有关，笑话与群体内的联系有关，等等——你认为你的书在多大程度上解释了策略选择的多样性？

Or do you think you’re telling us what’s the modal or median choice and explicating that?

或者您认为您正在告诉我们模态或中值选择是什么并对此进行解释？

I feel that across my career, I was really quite surprised.

我觉得在我的职业生涯中，我真的很惊讶。

I figured social sciences would mostly have the basics covered, and I would be making a few minor adjustments on various margins because surely we must have understood the social world really well by now.

我认为社会科学将主要涵盖基础知识，并且我会在不同的范围内进行一些细微的调整，因为我们现在肯定已经非常了解社会世界了。

We’ve been social for so long.

我们已经社交这么久了。

I was surprised to find that it seems I could find big deviations where people have been saying one thing and the truth is really quite different.

我惊讶地发现，我似乎能发现人们所说的一件事和事实完全不同的巨大偏差。

I’m happy if I can just make the case that the typical case is really quite different than what people have been saying.

如果我能证明典型案例与人们所说的确实有很大不同，我会很高兴。

But of course, the actual case has huge variation around the typical case in a very high dimensional space.

但当然，实际情况与高维空间中的典型情况存在巨大差异。

No doubt, there’s enormous complexity to figure out and discover there.

毫无疑问，那里有巨大的复杂性需要弄清楚和发现。

I’m just scratching the surface of figuring out that this basic difference, just the middle of the distribution is really far from what people say.

我只是触及了表面，弄清楚这个基本差异，只是分布的中间与人们所说的真的相去甚远。

It seems to me the priority is to go figure out more areas of life and see if the middle of the distribution is anywhere close to what people say.

在我看来，首要任务是去了解生活的更多领域，看看分布的中间是否与人们所说的很接近。

That seems, to me, much more valuable than trying to go figure out the variance because all this behavior is really high dimensional.

对我来说，这似乎比试图找出方差更有价值，因为所有这些行为都是高维的。

There’s not just one point to go find out to find out the variance.

找出差异的地方不只是一个点。

You have to look across many dimensions and figure out, where is the middle of the distribution?

您必须查看多个维度并找出分布的中间位置在哪里？

That’s more canonical.

这更规范。

You can say, what’s the most common motive?

你可以说，最常见的动机是什么？

What’s the typical case?

典型案例是什么？

That’s just a lot easier.

这样就容易多了。

On healthcare coverage

关于医疗保险

You try to follow heuristic—would I pay for this out of pocket if I had to?

你尝试遵循启发式——如果必须的话，我会自掏腰包吗？

If you wouldn’t pay for it out of pocket, skip it maybe, unless there’s an especially strong reason to think that’s one of the exceptions, which there are some.

如果你不想自掏腰包，也许可以跳过它，除非有特别充分的理由认为这是例外之一，但也有一些例外。

I resent the distraction of people who focus on the difference between this country and the neighboring country or this decade and the decade before or after.

我讨厌那些把注意力集中在这个国家和邻国、这十年和前后十年之间的差异上的人。

That’s all the sort of thing you want to get around to once you’ve understood the basics of what was happening, and I don’t think we do.

一旦你了解了正在发生的事情的基本原理，这就是你想要解决的所有事情，但我认为我们不会这样做。

On social memes and cues

关于社交模因和暗示

What you’re doing is complaining about hypocrisy, but the Straussian or Machiavellian reading of your book is, you’re teaching us all how to be better at it but with a very long-term goal: that, eventually, we’ll evolve into beings that don’t do this at all.

你所做的是抱怨虚伪，但对你的书的施特劳斯式或马基雅维利式解读是，你在教我们所有人如何做得更好，但有一个非常长期的目标：最终，我们将演变成根本不这样做的人。

We’re trying to say it’s there and it’s important, and if you miss it, you’re going to be unhappy and just not understand the world.

我们试图说它就在那里并且很重要，如果你错过了它，你就会不高兴并且无法理解这个世界。

But we’re not really recommending wholesale changes in human behavior.

但我们并不是真正建议大规模改变人类行为。

Since, if I say 90 percent of human behavior is signaling, then we’re pretty much accepting that’s going to continue.

因为，如果我说 90% 的人类行为都是信号传递，那么我们几乎可以接受这种情况将会持续下去。

We try to be really clear.

我们尽力说得非常清楚。

We like people, in case it’s not clear.

我们喜欢人，以防不清楚。

Pretty much every other living creature on Earth is much less admirable and interesting than humans.

地球上几乎所有其他生物都没有人类那么令人钦佩和有趣。

Humans are where it’s at.

人类就在它所在的地方。

Humans are the people you want to talk to, you want to interact with, you want to form relationships with.

人类是你想要与之交谈、你想要与之互动、你想要与之建立关系的人。

Humans are great.

人类是伟大的。

Humans aren’t what they pretend to be.

人类并不是他们所假装的那样。

But what they actually are is spectacular.

但它们实际上是壮观的。

Humans aren’t what they pretend to be.

人类并不是他们所假装的那样。

But what they actually are is spectacular.

但它们实际上是壮观的。

Another way to think about this is, Tyler and I, over the years, have talked about the value of reading the classics.

另一种思考方式是，泰勒和我多年来一直在谈论阅读经典的价值。

You might say, yes, you might get it, but then you’ll never be able to tell anybody else that either, so what’s the point other than your personal enjoyment?

你可能会说，是的，你可能会得到它，但你也永远无法告诉其他人，所以除了你个人的享受之外还有什么意义呢？

I put a priority on discovering things intellectually that I could explain to other people, that I could transfer to other people.

我优先考虑从智力上发现可以向其他人解释、可以转移给其他人的事物。

To be part of this collective enterprise where lots of us work together, discover things, tell each other, and then we all know more as a result over time—I think that’s a wonderful thing to be part of, and that’s what I hope to be part of.

成为这个集体事业的一部分，我们很多人一起工作，发现事物，互相告诉对方，然后随着时间的推移我们都知道更多——我认为成为其中的一部分是一件很棒的事情，这就是我希望成为其中的一部分。

These experiences I could have that would give me some sort of insight in a way that I couldn’t communicate to other people, I figure, what’s the point, then?

我可能拥有的这些经历会给我某种洞察力，而我无法与其他人交流，我想，那么有什么意义呢？

That’s not part of this grand enterprise that I’m trying to be part of.

这不是我想要参与的这个伟大事业的一部分。

On The Age of Em

论他们的时代

Emulations—they see themselves in virtual reality, so they experience that in virtual reality, but they are made out of real resources.

仿真——他们在虚拟现实中看到自己，因此他们在虚拟现实中体验到这一点，但它们是由真实资源制成的。

They are made out of real computers with real energy and real structural support and all those things.

它们是由真实的计算机制成的，具有真实的能量和真实的结构支撑以及所有这些东西。

They grow their economy very fast by making more of those things.

他们通过制造更多这些东西来快速增长经济。

On a cosmic timescale, they would grow very fast and take over the earth, take over the solar system, grow out farther, become a big, visible thing that we don’t see.

在宇宙时间尺度上，它们会生长得非常快，占领地球，占领太阳系，长得更远，成为一个我们看不到的巨大的、可见的东西。

Fermi’s paradox is the question.

费米悖论就是问题所在。

If we seem to have this bright future to grow and become visible, why don’t we see anything out there that’s visible?

如果我们似乎有这个光明的未来来成长并变得可见，为什么我们看不到任何可见的东西呢？

That’s the key question.

这是关键问题。

It’s a hard and somewhat scary question.

这是一个很难而且有点可怕的问题。

We, as rich people with the society we are using and building on, we use much of our resources and time for signaling, but the existence of all these resources that we can use for this purpose, that’s not explained by signaling.

我们，作为我们正在使用和建立的社会的富人，我们使用大量的资源和时间来发出信号，但是我们可以用于此目的的所有这些资源的存在，并不是通过信号来解释的。

That’s explained by whatever makes humans special and powerful.

这可以用人类的特殊性和力量来解释。

The obvious, easy answer is to say the hardest step was the very first step because it’s the one we know the least about.

显而易见、简单的答案是，最困难的一步是第一步，因为这是我们了解最少的一步。

It’s the one that does look really hard, and so you can breathe a somewhat sigh of relief saying, “Well, that’s our best answer.

这是一个看起来确实很难的问题，所以你可以松一口气说：“好吧，这是我们最好的答案。

The best answer is the very first step was really hard, and because of that, our future could be bright.”

最好的答案是，第一步确实很艰难，但正因为如此，我们的未来才会光明。”

What that predicts is, wherever that happened in the galaxy, the only other life we should ever see in the galaxy is other life that came from that same origin point.

预测的是，无论银河系中发生什么，我们在银河系中看到的唯一其他生命就是来自同一起源点的其他生命。

Now, our star started in a cluster of stars that were all born about the same time, and in the last 4 billion years, that cluster has spread out to a ring around the center of the galaxy.

现在，我们的恒星开始于一个几乎同时诞生的恒星团，在过去的 40 亿年里，这个星团已经扩散成围绕银河系中心的一个环。

There’s roughly a hundred other stars out there plausibly that might have life because they had the same origin of life as we did.

大约还有一百颗其他恒星可能有生命，因为它们的生命起源与我们相同。

But if we find life anywhere else, then that says, “No, that’s not the hard step.”

但如果我们在其他地方找到了生命，那就说明，“不，这不是困难的一步。”

If you think there’s only a 20 percent chance that it might not be that, then you have to say, “There’s a 20 percent chance that there’s the rest of the great filter, and it might be in front of us, and a 20 percent chance of dying soon isn’t something to worry about.”

如果你认为只有 20% 的可能性不是那样，那么你必须说，“有 20% 的可能性存在伟大过滤器的其余部分，而且它可能就在我们面前，而 20% 的可能性很快就会死亡，这并不值得担心。”

My answer is that I don’t know.

我的回答是我不知道。

That should be an acceptable answer to a question after thinking about it for a long time, as there are some things you don’t know the answer to.

经过长时间思考后，这应该是一个可以接受的答案，因为有些事情你不知道答案。

That seems like a really safe guess because there’s so many people in the world that have so much variation.

这似乎是一个非常安全的猜测，因为世界上有很多人，他们的差异也很大。

I at the moment believe that I would identify with it, but hey, you turn it on in front of me, and I chat for a while, and maybe I will say, “No, I guess I don’t.” That’s a possibility.

我现在相信我会认同它，但是嘿，你在我面前打开它，我聊了一会儿，也许我会说，“不，我想我不会。”这是一种可能性。

On identical copies of ourselves

在我们自己的相同副本上

In the same way that if you look down an ordinary decision tree .

就像你查看普通决策树一样。

.

。

.

。

That doesn’t mean you’re willing to take more risks about the more distant future because there’s so many versions of you there.

这并不意味着你愿意为更遥远的未来承担更多风险，因为那里有很多版本的你。

You’re still worried to have more of them and not less.

你仍然担心它们会更多而不是更少。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

First, Tolstoy, the Russian author.

首先是俄罗斯作家托尔斯泰。

There are just a few things you can do.

您可以做几件事。

You can factor numbers, which means you have to change cryptography.

你可以分解数字，这意味着你必须改变密码学。

You can do some quantum simulations, which hardly anybody ever does anyway.

你可以做一些量子模拟，但几乎没有人这样做过。

So honestly, it doesn’t make that much difference.

老实说，这并没有多大区别。

An example I give on my talks on The Elephant in the Brain is saying, if you are an actor, and you are given a script, and the script is basically a scene at a restaurant where you and your lover are telling each other how much you love each other and how great your relationship is, the actor will throw up and say “I can’t act this” because it needs to have more than one level.

我在《大脑中的大象》演讲中举的一个例子是，如果你是一名演员，给你一个剧本，剧本基本上是一个在餐厅里的场景，你和你的爱人告诉对方你们有多爱对方，你们的关系有多好，演员会呕吐并说“我不能演这个”，因为它需要有多个级别。

They will look for the hidden motive of this character: Why they are here being so nice?

他们会寻找这个角色隐藏的动机：为什么他们在这里如此友善？

Am I going to break up with them?

我要和他们分手吗？

Am I afraid they’re going to break up with me?

我害怕他们会和我分手吗？

Only when they find the hidden motive can they actually do the scene, which is just more evidence that we are constantly expecting multiple levels of meanings in fiction, nonfiction, and everywhere.

只有当他们找到隐藏的动机时，他们才能真正完成这个场景，这只是更多证据表明我们不断期待小说、非小说和无处不在的多层次意义。

What they’re really doing is trying to show that they feel empathy, that they feel a vulnerability to pain around them, and so if you were in pain around them, they might feel vulnerable to help you.

他们真正做的就是试图表明他们有同理心，他们觉得自己很容易受到周围痛苦的影响，所以如果你在他们周围感到痛苦，他们可能会觉得很容易帮助你。

People do things to appear like they’re trying to help, but because their audience hardly knows what actually helps, they don’t pay much attention to doing things that actually help.

人们做事看起来像是在试图提供帮助，但由于他们的听众几乎不知道什么是真正有帮助的，所以他们不会太注意做真正有帮助的事情。

They just do something that looks like it would be a reaction to someone who felt like they wanted to help.

他们只是做一些看起来像是对那些想要提供帮助的人的反应。

The more that people knew what actually helped or not, then the more that would pressure people who were trying to help to show that they have this feeling to do stuff that really helped, which would be great.

人们越了解什么真正有帮助，什么没有帮助，那么就会对那些试图提供帮助的人施加更大的压力，以表明他们有这种感觉去做真正有帮助的事情，这会很棒。

Overall, that would be a way to create a more informed audience, is to have more people who are effective altruists.

总的来说，这将是创造更知情的受众的一种方式，就是让更多的人成为有效的利他主义者。

But of course, you have to be pretty aware and smart and dedicated and paying attention to actually be someone who knows which charities are how effective.

但当然，你必须非常清醒、聪明、专注、专注，真正知道哪些慈善机构有多有效。

That can’t be that large a fraction of the population, for a while, at least.

至少在一段时间内，这个比例不可能占总人口的那么大。

On Robin the doer

关于实干家罗宾

Why aren’t private companies more interested in prediction markets?

为什么私营公司对预测市场不更感兴趣？

There’s the standard thing that’s a favorite excuse for most activities, and it gives you the impression that people in an organization think they want more information and they want more analysis because that’s what they’re using as this excuse for lots of things.

有一个标准的东西是大多数活动最喜欢的借口，它给你这样的印象：组织中的人们认为他们需要更多信息，他们想要更多分析，因为这就是他们用来作为很多事情的借口。

They’re lying.

他们在撒谎。

That is, they’re actually more often playing politics.

也就是说，他们实际上更多地是在玩弄政治。

That is, a lot of corporate activity is about creating coalitions and getting support for your coalition and undermining other rival coalitions.

也就是说，许多企业活动都是为了创建联盟并为您的联盟获得支持并破坏其他竞争对手的联盟。

That’s what people are actually doing, but they want to give lip service to the information thing.

这就是人们实际上在做的事情，但他们只是想在信息问题上口头说说而已。

So when you say, “There’s a great new institution for information,” they’re kind of put in a corner, saying, “Of course I want that.

因此，当你说“有一个很棒的新信息机构”时，他们就会被困在角落里，说：“我当然想要那个。

Don’t I?”

我不是吗？

I would say if you have a project with a deadline today, quite often, that goes badly.

我想说的是，如果你今天有一个截止日期的项目，通常情况会很糟糕。

That is, you’ll have reviews of the project, and people will say, “Yes, of course we’re going to make the deadline.” Then finally the deadline comes, and you don’t make the deadline, and you’ve failed.

也就是说，你会对项目进行审查，人们会说：“是的，我们当然会在最后期限前完成。”最后最后期限到了，如果你没有在最后期限前完成，你就失败了。

This happens a lot, and if you ask people, “Why does that happen?” they often say, “It was because they wouldn’t listen to us about the problems with the project and all the things going wrong, and they kept saying it would work.”

这种情况经常发生，如果你问人们“为什么会发生这种情况？”他们经常说，“这是因为他们不听我们谈论项目的问题和所有出错的地方，而他们一直说它会起作用。”

If you turn it around and look at it from the guy running the project’s point of view, they’re thinking, “I might fail on this project.

如果你反过来从项目负责人的角度来看，他们会想：“我可能会在这个项目上失败。

It might not make the deadline.

可能赶不上最后期限。

What will my excuse be?

我的借口是什么？

I need a good excuse.”

我需要一个好的借口。”

Their favorite excuse is usually, “Everything was going fine until all of the sudden, something came out of left field.

他们最喜欢的借口通常是：“一切都很顺利，直到突然间，有什么东西从左场出现了。

No one could have seen it coming.

没有人能预见到它的到来。

It’ll never happen again.

它永远不会再发生了。

It knocked us flat, but you don’t need to hold anybody accountable or prepare or change it in any way because this was a one-time event.”

它让我们崩溃了，但你不需要让任何人承担责任，也不需要以任何方式准备或改变它，因为这是一次性事件。”

In order to make that excuse work, you need everybody to say “It’s going fine” until all of a sudden, it doesn’t.

为了让这个借口起作用，你需要每个人都说“一切顺利”，直到突然间，一切都不好了。

The prediction market gets in the way of that.

预测市场阻碍了这一点。

It shows everybody that from an early point, people knew this wasn’t going to work, and so then people will hold you accountable for, “Why didn’t you do something about it?”

它向每个人表明，从一开始，人们就知道这是行不通的，因此人们会要求你负责，“你为什么不对此采取行动？”

They knew that changing would be expensive and hard.

他们知道改变将是昂贵且困难的。

They knew it would be risky.

他们知道这会有风险。

They knew that most innovations would fail, and nevertheless, they were still really eager for innovation.

他们知道大多数创新都会失败，但他们仍然非常渴望创新。

My first connection with social science was seeing that in social science, there appeared to be a lot of really big powerful innovations that had great potential, and that was a lot of what made me want to go into social science.

我与社会科学的第一次联系是看到在社会科学中，似乎有很多非常强大的创新，具有巨大的潜力，这就是让我想进入社会科学的很多原因。

I said, “Look, look at all the impact I could have by going into social science and doing these innovations.”

我说：“看看，看看我进入社会科学并进行这些创新所能产生的所有影响。”

It wasn’t until a little while I realized, “The reason why it’s so easy to find big improvements in social science is we almost never actually apply them.

直到过了一会儿我才意识到，“社会科学之所以如此容易发现重大改进，是因为我们几乎从未真正应用它们。

We don’t actually make the improvements that we could.”

我们实际上并没有做出我们可以做的改进。”

That set up this puzzle for me.

这为我设置了这个谜题。

But in part, my initial social science career was all about innovation, i.e., new mechanisms, new institutions, studying the institutions we have, what variations could work better, all with an eye to trying to make it better.

但在某种程度上，我最初的社会科学职业生涯都是关于创新，即新机制、新机构、研究我们现有的机构、哪些变化可以更好地发挥作用，所有这些都是为了让它变得更好。

It took me a while to realize that that wasn’t working because we don’t actually apply much of this whole literature about how to make things better in social science.

我花了一段时间才意识到这不起作用，因为我们实际上并没有应用很多关于如何使社会科学变得更好的文献。

That’s one big way I was influenced.

这是我受到影响的一大方式。

In an ordinary prediction market, you might bet on the election, which candidate will win or something, and then you’ve got a handful of things you’re betting on.

在普通的预测市场中，你可能会押注选举，哪个候选人会获胜或其他什么，然后你就得到了一些你押注的东西。

Will this candidate win or not?

这位候选人会获胜吗？

What will be the vote share?

投票份额是多少？

If you take a lot of these questions, you can create combinations of them, and if you have 10 questions, each of whom has 10 answers, you can make 10 to the 10 possible questions, which is 10 billion.

如果你提出很多这样的问题，你可以将它们组合起来，如果你有 10 个问题，每个问题有 10 个答案，你可以对 10 个可能的问题做出 10 个，也就是 100 亿个。

You might think that would be impossible to actually do, but we can do that.

您可能认为这实际上不可能做到，但我们可以做到。

We can not only create all those questions, we can allow people to effectively manage it so that they are making all of those billions of numbers reasonable.

我们不仅可以提出所有这些问题，还可以让人们有效地管理它，以便他们使所有这些数十亿的数字变得合理。

Do view quake books dwindle as you get older?

随着年龄的增长，阅读地震书籍会减少吗？

And if so, how should this alter one’s intellectual diet?

如果是这样，这应该如何改变一个人的智力饮食？

It took me a while — actually, until the age of 34 — to go back to school to get my PhD, where I had a little more career sense to realize I would have to be a seller, not a buyer, to make things that other people would want.

我花了一段时间——事实上，直到 34 岁——才回到学校获得博士学位，在那里我有了更多的职业意识，意识到我必须成为卖家，而不是买家，才能制造其他人想要的东西。

I think if you’re eager for these big innovative changes in how you look at things, I think there’s a peak, somewhere in the middle, perhaps.

我认为，如果你渴望在看待事物的方式上发生这些重大的创新变化，我认为也许会在中间的某个地方出现一个高峰。

There’s two contrary effects.

有两种相反的效果。

One is that the more you know, the more you can learn.

一是你知道的越多，你能学到的就越多。

The more you know about many different fields, the more intersections you could make, the more easier it is to read each new textbook, the easier it is to understand each new thing they’re presenting.

你对许多不同领域了解得越多，你能做出的交集就越多，阅读每本新教科书就越容易，就越容易理解他们所呈现的每一个新事物。

And so there is a scale and scope economy of knowing more over life.

因此，存在着在生活中了解更多的规模和范围经济。

The more you know, the more you can learn.

你知道的越多，你能学到的就越多。

The more you know about many different fields, the more intersections you could make, the more easier it is to read each new textbook, the easier it is to understand each new thing they’re presenting.

你对许多不同领域了解得越多，你能做出的交集就越多，阅读每本新教科书就越容易，就越容易理解他们所呈现的每一个新事物。

And so there is a scale and scope economy of knowing more over life.

因此，在生活中了解更多就存在规模和范围经济。

I’m not sure if in my life, I’m seeing a trajectory overall of view quakes going down.

我不确定在我的生活中，我是否看到了视图震动的整体轨迹下降。

I may be an exception.

我可能是个例外。

I think when you’re really young, you don’t know enough to even have a view quake because a view quake is, you have to have some way of thinking about things that is then changed.

我认为当你真的很年轻的时候，你甚至不会有足够的知识来进行观点震动，因为观点震动是，你必须有某种方式来思考然后改变的事情。

When you don’t really have a way of thinking about something, you don’t know enough to have a way, you aren’t changed, so there’s a sense in which you can really only surprise or shock someone who has a theory, who has an opinion about something.

当你没有真正思考某事的方式时，你就没有足够的知识来思考某事，你就没有改变，所以从某种意义上说，你只能让那些有理论、对某事有看法的人感到惊讶或震惊。

It takes time to acquire these expectations such that you could then be surprised.

获得这些期望需要时间，这样你才会感到惊讶。

The more I heard about that, the more I wondered, “What’s that?

我听得越多，就越想知道：“那是什么？

That sounds really important, and it doesn’t make much sense.” They kept saying contradictory things about it, so I wanted to get to the bottom of, “What is this science thing that’s supposedly so great, that we have all this stuff called science because of it?”

这听起来确实很重要，但没有多大意义。”他们一直在说关于它的矛盾的话，所以我想弄清楚，“这个被认为如此伟大的科学东西是什么，我们因此有了所有这些被称为科学的东西？”

I do think learning philosophy is useful mainly because it inoculates you against other philosophy, and there is a lot of philosophy loose in the world.

我确实认为学习哲学是有用的，主要是因为它可以让你免受其他哲学的影响，而且世界上有很多哲学。

Unless you can find a world where you won’t be exposed to it later, you may find it in your interest to be exposed to it on purpose early so that you are inoculated.

除非你能找到一个以后不会接触到它的世界，否则你可能会发现尽早有目的地接触它以便你接种疫苗符合你的利益。

On improving rational thinking

关于提高理性思维

It’s actually one of the reasons I’m somewhat wary about a format like this.

这实际上是我对这样的格式有些警惕的原因之一。

I’m wary of this expectation that you should have an opinion about everything that you’re willing to defend and go far with, right?

我对这种期望持谨慎态度，即你应该对你愿意捍卫并坚持到底的一切有自己的看法，对吗？

You will be better, a contribution to the world will be better, and your financial portfolio will also be better if you focus on knowing some things, and on other things, you might practice thinking about them because they connect and it’s useful, but don’t have much confidence in it.

如果你专注于了解一些事情，而在其他事情上，你会变得更好，对世界的贡献会更好，你的财务投资组合也会更好，你可能会练习思考它们，因为它们相互联系并且很有用，但对此没有太多信心。

Certainly, don’t go betting on it because you don’t know.

当然，不要因为你不知道而去赌它。

For God’s sake, you don’t know.

看在上帝的份上，你不知道。

This is one of the hard things to judge, especially as you get older and have more potential capacity, is, when do I know enough on something that it’s worth for me getting in there and learning more?

这是很难判断的事情之一，尤其是当你变老并且有更多的潜在能力时，我什么时候对某件事了解得足够多，值得我进入那里并学习更多？

And when do I think I have enough confidence in something that I’m willing to stand up and say, “I’m going to put myself up against the best and say I know as much as they do”?

我什么时候认为自己对某些事情有足够的信心，愿意站起来说：“我要让自己与最优秀的人对抗，并说我知道的和他们一样多”？

Groups that form around a goal can work better or worse, depending on how well the goal can be verified by the group.

围绕某个目标组成的团队可能会工作得更好或更差，这取决于团队对目标的验证程度。

If you’re forming a group based on how dedicated we are, say, what percentage of our income are we willing to devote, that’s a really easy thing to monitor.

如果你是根据我们的奉献程度来组建一个团队，比如说，我们愿意投入收入的多少百分比，那么这是一件非常容易监控的事情。

It’s really possible.

这确实是可能的。

Some of the effective altruists have formed subgroups where they say, “We donate 10 percent of our income to charity.

一些有效的利他主义者已经组成了小组，他们说：“我们将收入的 10% 捐赠给慈善机构。

We’ve committed to that, and we can show you our tax returns,” et cetera.

我们已经承诺这一点，我们可以向您展示我们的纳税申报表，”等等。

That’s something a group can do.

这是一个团体可以做的事情。

They could also, somewhat, commit to following certain measures of effectiveness of charities, randomized trial or something like that.

他们还可以在某种程度上承诺遵循慈善机构有效性的某些衡量标准、随机试验或类似的方法。

Having a group identified around the concept of rationality, it’s harder because how do you tell if we are being rational?

让一个群体围绕理性概念进行识别，这会更困难，因为你如何判断我们是否理性？

I’m mainly interested in prediction markets because it’s a potential institution that we can create, and then we can all be better off by having these prices.

我主要对预测市场感兴趣，因为它是我们可以创建的潜在机构，然后我们都可以通过拥有这些价格而变得更好。

But in fact, most of the interest in prediction markets has come, say, through the book The Wisdom of Crowds or Superforecasting, where the content is mostly about which among us are better?

但事实上，人们对预测市场的大部分兴趣都来自于《群体的智慧》或《超级预测》这本书，其中的内容主要是关于我们当中谁更优秀？

Who are the people among us who are wiser and more rational and informed such that they can crow and brag about it and other people should be ashamed?

我们当中有哪些人比较聪明、比较理性、比较有见识，可以吹嘘、吹嘘，而让其他人感到羞耻呢？

The institution itself that allowed people to do this, the prediction market, is a secondary, background sort of thing.

允许人们这样做的机构本身，即预测市场，是次要的、背景性的东西。

Similarly, in rationality, I’m afraid there’s such a strong human tendency to want to collect these signs of “I’m smarter than you” that a group that defines itself by rationality ends up, in practice, just collecting “I know Bayes’s theorem,” “I know about overconfidence,” et cetera, and then showing off that in any one context they can invoke those things.

同样，在理性中，恐怕人类有一种强烈的倾向想要收集“我比你聪明”的迹象，以至于一个以理性定义自己的群体实际上最终只是收集“我知道贝叶斯定理”、“我知道过度自信”等等，然后炫耀在任何一种情况下他们都可以调用这些东西。

People like that very often say, “You’re citing a psychology study.

这样的人经常说：“你引用的是一项心理学研究。

Didn’t you know that psychology is all crap now because none of it replicates?” Because that’s a thing that sounds sophisticated and rational.

难道你不知道心理学现在都是垃圾吗，因为它都无法复制？”因为这听起来很复杂且理性。

I talk about futarchy as a form of governance.

我将 futarchy 视为一种治理形式。

It’s just much easier to get people excited and interested if you apply the example to the biggest possible things you could apply it to, like governing nations or even the world.

如果你将这个例子应用到你可以应用的最大可能的事物上，比如治理国家甚至世界，那么更容易让人们兴奋和感兴趣。

That’s obviously not the place to start for initial trials.

这显然不是初步试验的起点。

That’s a problem because you’d be heard as saying, “Somebody around here is stealing and we need to find out who.” So that might be discouraged.

这是一个问题，因为你会听到这样的话：“这里有人在偷窃，我们需要找出是谁。”所以这可能会令人沮丧。

In a world where everybody else does cost accounting, you say, “Let’s not do cost accounting here.” That will be heard as saying, “Could we steal and just not talk about it?” which will also seem negative.

在一个其他人都进行成本核算的世界中，您会说：“我们不要在这里进行成本核算。”人们会说，“我们可以偷窃而不谈论它吗？”这也会显得消极。

Similarly, with prediction markets, you could imagine a world like ours where nobody does them, and then your proposing to do it will send a bad signal.

同样，对于预测市场，你可以想象一个像我们这样的世界，没有人这样做，然后你提议这样做会发出一个坏信号。

You’re basically saying, “People are bullshitting around here.

你基本上是在说：“人们在这里胡说八道。

We need to find out who and get to the truth.”

我们需要找出是谁并找出真相。”

But in a world where everybody was doing it, it would be similarly hard not to do it.

但在一个每个人都这样做的世界里，不这样做也同样困难。

If every project with a deadline had a betting market and you say, “Let’s not have a betting market on our project deadline,” you’d be basically saying, “We’re not going to make the deadline, folks.

如果每个有截止日期的项目都有一个投注市场，而你说，“我们的项目截止日期不要有投注市场，”你基本上会说，“伙计们，我们不会在截止日期前完成。

Can we just set that aside and not even talk about it?”

我们可以把这件事放在一边，甚至不谈论它吗？”

That’s one issue.

这是一个问题。

It’s potential that if we switch to a new equilibria, then it would be a standard thing, just like cost accounting.

如果我们转向新的均衡，那么它可能会成为一个标准，就像成本会计一样。

Cost accounting, is that compatible with real organizations and emotions?

成本核算，符合真实的组织和情感吗？

There’s a sense in which it can’t help, really.

从某种意义上说，它确实无济于事。

You’re being very critical about people and then very negative, trying to track all their money and where it goes, and suspect that they might be stealing.

你对别人非常挑剔，然后又非常消极，试图追踪他们所有的钱及其去向，并怀疑他们可能在偷窃。

Nevertheless, once it’s the standard, then you’ve got to follow it along.

然而，一旦成为标准，你就必须遵循它。

Decision markets of futarchy, you might say, have more of a potential because we often run organizations and communities via the myths and hypocrisies that we have with each other about what we say works and what has what consequences.

你可能会说，未来的决策市场具有更大的潜力，因为我们经常通过我们彼此之间关于我们所说的有效和什么会产生什么后果的神话和虚伪来管理组织和社区。

To the extent that these prediction markets were on those topics, they might get in the way of this sort of hypocrisy.

如果这些预测市场涉及这些主题，它们可能会妨碍这种虚伪。

But of course, just as with cost accounting, an organization that has good emotional bonding because they don’t use cost accounting could still function pretty badly because everybody’s stealing.

但当然，就像成本会计一样，一个因为不使用成本会计而拥有良好情感纽带的组织仍然可能运作得很糟糕，因为每个人都在偷窃。

Then you might imagine new organizations that show up that compete with them that do do cost accounting that don’t quite support everybody emotionally as deeply as they might but actually function.

然后你可能会想象出现的新组织与他们竞争，这些组织确实进行成本会计，但在情感上并没有像他们可能那样深入地支持每个人，但实际上在运作。

They could win out.

他们可以获胜。

Similarly, prediction market–based organizations that actually have accurate forecasts about what works and what doesn’t would beat out other organizations that were more emotionally indulgent.

同样，基于预测市场的组织实际上能够准确预测什么有效、什么无效，从而击败其他在情感上更加放纵的组织。

Sometimes people do try to signal, say, that they aren’t very good at relationships in order to convince you that “What you see on the surface is all there is to me, and you don’t have to worry about me having hidden motives and other layers that will try to fool you.

有时，人们确实会试图表现出他们不太擅长人际关系，以便让你相信“你在表面上看到的就是我的全部，你不必担心我有隐藏的动机和其他层面的东西来欺骗你。

What you see is what you get.”

你所看到的就是你所得到的。”

That’s often, of course, not always true, but it is a stance that some people can credibly take.

当然，这通常并不总是正确的，但这是一些人可以可信地采取的立场。

Q&A

问答

So it only counts as signaling if you actually are doing something that you don’t want to do while, say, pretending that you do, or you are actually doing something where your true motivation is not the stated motivation.

因此，只有当你实际上正在做一些你不想做的事情，而假装你想做的事情，或者你实际上正在做一些你真正的动机不是所声明的动机的事情时，它才算作信号。

What would that do to your signaling share?

这会对您的信令共享产生什么影响？

So they might want to take the stance of favoring prediction markets even if they don’t actually want to look at the answers or trade in them, as a signal, as a stance about the world.

因此，他们可能会采取支持预测市场的立场，即使他们实际上并不想查看答案或进行交易，将其作为一种信号，作为一种对世界的立场。

The prediction market will tell you what are the right clothes to buy to impress someone on a date, or how to spruce up your resume, and if 90 percent of everything’s signaling, it will make signaling worse, no?

预测市场会告诉你在约会时买什么衣服才能给某人留下深刻印象，或者如何美化你的简历，如果90%的一切都是信号，它会让信号变得更糟，不是吗？

I think that, in fact, we’re already mostly maxing out on our efforts, signaling all over the place, so there really wasn’t much more to spend, but we can get more from it.

我认为，事实上，我们已经竭尽全力，到处发出信号，所以确实没有太多可花的，但我们可以从中得到更多。

When we have new technology, we might signal by getting a faster car, but new technology gets us a faster car, so we get to places faster.

当我们拥有新技术时，我们可能会通过获得更快的汽车来发出信号，但是新技术让我们拥有更快的汽车，因此我们可以更快地到达目的地。

Similarly, we might be signaling via promoting prediction markets and using them, but then we might get more accurate answers on lots of the topics that we want answers to.

同样，我们可能会通过推广预测市场并使用它们来发出信号，但随后我们可能会在许多我们想要答案的主题上获得更准确的答案。

My question is, how much of signaling is about relatively objective virtue, things that everyone thinks are good, and how much is emphasizing that you’re part of a certain specific tribal group?

我的问题是，有多少信号是关于相对客观的美德，每个人都认为好的事情，有多少是在强调你是某个特定部落群体的一部分？

I’d say roughly half of signaling is signaling loyalty.

我想说大约一半的信号是忠诚度信号。

It’s a big fraction, a huge fraction, but it’s not something we would like to admit.

这是一个很大的分数，一个很大的分数，但这不是我们愿意承认的。

First of all, we don’t like to admit we’re signaling at all.

首先，我们根本不想承认我们在发出信号。

But if we’re going to be signaling, we’d rather admit we were signaling being smart and conscientious and hardworking and knowledgeable, rather than signaling that we’re showing this group that we’re one of them.

但如果我们要发出信号，我们宁愿承认我们发出的是聪明、认真、勤奋和知识渊博的信号，而不是发出信号让这群人知道我们是他们中的一员。

Just to be clear, humans are enormously complicated.

需要明确的是，人类非常复杂。

Humans have a wide range of motives for all sorts of behaviors.

人类的各种行为都有各种各样的动机。

In each area, they have a main motive they’d like to call your attention to, if they have a choice.

在每个领域，如果他们有选择的话，他们都有一个想要引起你注意的主要动机。

Our main thesis in the book is that they’re often wrong about what the main motive is, and there’s another main motive that’s more important, and that’s commonly signaling.

我们在书中的主要论点是，他们对主要动机的判断常常是错误的，而且还有另一个更重要的主要动机，这通常是信号。

It’s not to say that signaling is everything or it’s even the only thing.

这并不是说信号就是一切，甚至是唯一的。

It’s the big thing that people don’t like to talk about that explains a large fraction of behavior, if I have to just mention one thing.

如果我不得不提一件事的话，那就是人们不喜欢谈论的大事可以解释大部分行为。

I do not mean to say that people are only always signaling.

我并不是说人们总是在发出信号。

Certainly not consciously, as was mentioned.

正如前面提到的，当然不是有意识的。

I use the example of “the dog ate my homework.” That works as an excuse because dogs sometimes eat homework.

我用“狗吃了我的作业”作为例子。这是一个借口，因为狗有时会吃作业。

Certainly, all the other things we like to call attention to as our usual motives, they work as excuses because they’re sometimes true.

当然，我们喜欢引起人们注意的所有其他事情都是我们通常的动机，它们只是借口，因为它们有时是真的。

We sometimes do get healthy from going to the doctor.

有时我们确实会因为去看医生而变得健康。

We sometimes do learn things in school.

我们有时确实在学校学到东西。

We sometimes do help people with charity.

我们有时确实会通过慈善事业帮助人们。

It’s not true that this is all fake and all something else, but the claim is that those things are more claimed than they actually are, but they sometimes are.

并非所有这些都是假的，还有其他东西，但声称这些东西比实际情况更多，但有时确实如此。

The downward-sloping demand curve, in a sense, its explanatory power is really quite small.

向下倾斜的需求曲线，从某种意义上说，它的解释力确实很小。

Would you agree to a comparable redescription for signaling that by one metric, it is very large and significant, but that’s only one layer of explanation for social phenomena in general, and there’s another way in which signaling is really a pretty small percentage of what’s going on?

您是否同意对信号进行类似的重新描述，即通过一个指标，它非常大且重要，但这只是对一般社会现象的一层解释，还有另一种方式，其中信号实际上只占正在发生的事情的一小部分？

We’re talking about people’s behavior, and we’re focused on the proximate explanation.

我们谈论的是人们的行为，我们关注的是最接近的解释。

Then you’re focused on what was in their head a moment before, and what sort of feelings did they have, et cetera.

然后你会关注他们刚才脑子里想的是什么，他们有什么样的感受，等等。

Whereas, if you’re looking for an ultimate explanation, then you have to go back to physics and the creation of the universe, evolution and selection, et cetera.

然而，如果你正在寻找最终的解释，那么你必须回到物理学和宇宙的创造、进化和选择等等。

Then we’re usually talking at some intermediate level, but it’s less clear which level.

然后我们通常会在某个中间级别上进行讨论，但不太清楚是哪个级别。

So I would say, for our book, we’re focused on relatively distal social explanations, which are more about the basic forces that shape our common social institutions.

所以我想说，在我们的书中，我们关注的是相对遥远的社会解释，更多的是关于塑造我们共同社会制度的基本力量。

Why are schools the way they are?

学校为什么会变成现在这个样子？

Why are hospitals the way they are?

医院为什么是这个样子？

My Straussian reading of this book is that it’s presented as amoral, but underneath, it’s really deeply moral rather than morally neutral, and you’re, in a sense, afraid to signal your actual moral condemnatory stance.

我对这本书的施特劳斯式解读是，它被呈现为不道德的，但在本质上，它确实是深刻的道德而不是道德中立，从某种意义上说，你害怕表明你实际的道德谴责立场。

Agree or disagree?

同意还是不同意？

We think our first priority is to convince you of the facts of these motives, that they really are there, and we thought if we took on a really strong moral tone or connected this to political factions or something, you wouldn’t be persuaded by our arguments.

我们认为我们的首要任务是让你们相信这些动机的事实，它们确实存在，我们认为如果我们采取非常强烈的道德基调或将其与政治派别或其他什么联系起来，你们就不会被我们的论点说服。

You would think that we are taking sides in some other battles.

你可能会认为我们在其他一些战斗中偏袒一方。

So we thought we should take this more neutral stance with respect to the book, and we also thought that we should try to be positive about humans.

所以我们认为我们应该对这本书采取更加中立的立场，我们也认为我们应该尝试对人类采取积极的态度。

I have this essay from a long time ago about the cynic’s conundrum.

我很久以前就有一篇关于愤世嫉俗者的难题的文章。

In fact, it does seem that on average, people who talk cynically, especially in this sort of whiny, complainy, cynical voice, do have low motives for that, and they are somewhat failures and people you don’t want to affiliate with.

事实上，平均而言，那些说话玩世不恭的人，尤其是用这种发牢骚、埋怨、愤世嫉俗的声音，确实动机很低，他们在某种程度上是失败者，是你不想与之交往的人。

There’s a sense in which most people don’t want to seem cynical because the people who seem cynical are not the sort of people you want to seem.

从某种意义上说，大多数人都不想显得愤世嫉俗，因为那些看起来愤世嫉俗的人并不是你想要的那种人。

We didn’t want to seem that sort of a whiny, cynical, complainy sort of person who plausibly is a failure and a loser, and not the sort of person you want to listen to or associate with.

我们不想让自己看起来是那种爱发牢骚、愤世嫉俗、爱抱怨的人，貌似是一个失败者和失败者，而不是那种你愿意倾听或与之交往的人。

We want to be, honestly, what we are.

老实说，我们希望成为我们自己。

We like humans.

我们喜欢人类。

We like people.

我们喜欢人。

We think people have great potential, and even if they aren’t what they seem, we are happy with them.

我们认为人们具有巨大的潜力，即使他们并不像看上去的那样，我们也对他们感到满意。