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Why do we keep doing things we know we shouldn't?
为什么我们还要继续做明知不该做的事情？
And is that really a failure of will?
这真的是意志的失败吗？
Author Meghan O'Gieblyn spent years trying to answer that question, first in response to her struggle with alcoholism and her loss of faith, and then by means of Simone Weil, William James, and Iris Murdoch, who argue that the will is powerless over the things we want to change most.
作家梅根·奥吉布林花了数年时间试图回答这个问题，首先是为了回应她与酗酒和失去信仰的斗争，然后通过西蒙娜·韦尔、威廉·詹姆斯和艾丽丝·默多克的帮助，他们认为意志对于我们最想改变的事情是无能为力的。
Listen as she speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about her new memoir, Will and Attention , which explores why paying attention does what effort alone can't, why we can reason ourselves into doing destructive things, and why the choices that most shape our lives are the "choices in between the choices," or the ones we barely notice making at all.
听听她与 EconTalk 的拉斯·罗伯茨 (Russ Roberts) 谈论她的新回忆录《意志与注意力》，该书探讨了为什么集中注意力可以做到仅靠努力无法做到的事情，为什么我们可以说服自己做出破坏性的事情，以及为什么最能塑造我们生活的选择是“选择之间的选择”，或者是那些我们几乎没有注意到的选择。
It was at this point that I realized the problem was not about cliff diving, but about gravity itself.
正是在这一点上，我意识到问题不在于悬崖跳水，而在于重力本身。
Why didn’t each of those divers fall immediately to their death?
为什么这些潜水员没有立即坠落身亡？
Which is to say, why were all of us fragile, earthbound creatures not always constantly falling to our deaths?
也就是说，为什么我们这些脆弱的地球生物并不总是不断地坠落而死？
Why in this universe ruled by force and blind chance was everything not crashing relentlessly into everything else?
为什么在这个由武力和盲目机会统治的宇宙中，一切事物都没有无情地撞击其他一切事物？
How is it possible that healthy babies were ever born, that car trips were completed without accidents, that flights departed and landed every day without a crash?
健康的婴儿怎么可能出生，汽车旅行没有发生事故，航班每天起降都没有发生事故？
It was as though the theodicies that had preoccupied me for years suddenly inverted themselves.
就好像我多年来一直关注的神义论突然颠倒了过来。
The riddle was not the problem of evil.
这个谜语并不是邪恶的问题。
It was the problem of good.
这是善的问题。
This is a great passage in response to the issue of theodicy, and a lovely expression of a deep thought.
这是回应神正论问题的精彩段落，也是深刻思想的可爱表达。
C.
C.
S.
S。
Lewis gives a lengthy and thoughtful book on the same issue: The Problem of Pain.
刘易斯针对同一问题写了一本冗长而深思熟虑的书：《疼痛问题》。
I was sharing a meal with George Brett, the Hall of Fame third baseman for the Kansas City Royals.
我正在与堪萨斯城皇家队名人堂三垒手乔治·布雷特共进晚餐。
He related a story about his visit to the deathbed of great reliever Dan Quisenberry, who died of a brain tumor at the age of 45, four months after being inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame.
他讲述了他探望伟大的中继投手丹·奎森贝里临终前的故事，丹·奎森贝里在入选皇家队名人堂四个月后，因脑肿瘤去世，享年 45 岁。
Brett asked him “Dan, why you?” Quisenberry, a dedicated Christian, responded “Why not me?”
布雷特问他：“丹，为什么是你？”奎森伯里是一名虔诚的基督徒，他回答说：“为什么不是我呢？”
Ultimately, we’re all just dust in the wind.
归根结底，我们都只是风中的尘埃。
But how many blessings we take for granted on the journey!
但旅途中有多少祝福我们认为是理所当然的！
I hesitated to play this episode.
我犹豫着要不要播放这一集。
The title didn’t grab me, but I decided to try it – it was one of those suprises where it spoke to me and I wouldn’t have guessed that it would.
这个标题并没有吸引我，但我决定尝试一下——这是它对我说话的惊喜之一，我没想到它会这样。
I am also watching Severance on AppleTV – The protagonists are suppressing trauma (at the time of being severed, not asking why not me) via will/surgery vs attention (explicitly non attention since they don’t have the memory)
我还在 AppleTV 上观看《Severance》——主角们通过意志/手术与注意力（明确地不注意，因为他们没有记忆）来抑制创伤（在被切断时，不是问为什么不是我）
I recently read this paraphrase from Emerson’s essay on Self Reliance:
我最近读到了艾默生关于自力更生的文章中的这段话：
“Men imagine they communicate their virtue…
“男人想象他们传达自己的美德......
only by overt actions and words.
仅通过公开的行动和言语。
They do not see that virtue or its opposite emits a breath at every moment.”
他们看不到德行或其对立面每时每刻都散发着气息。”
Russ and Meghan got at this idea beautifully.
拉斯和梅根完美地理解了这个想法。
Great episode.
很棒的一集。
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该网站使用 Akismet 来减少垃圾邮件。
Learn how your comment data is processed.
了解您的评论数据是如何处理的。
Additional ideas and people mentioned in this podcast episode:
本播客节目中提到的其他想法和人物：
A few more readings and background resources:
更多阅读材料和背景资源：
More related EconTalk podcast episodes, by Category:
更多相关的 EconTalk 播客剧集，按类别：
* As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases.
* 作为亚马逊合作伙伴，Econlib 通过符合条件的购买赚取收入。
Intro.
简介。
[Recording date: September 14, 2026.]
[记录日期：2026年9月14日。]
Russ Roberts: Today is September 14th, 2026, and my guest is author Meghan O'Gieblyn.
拉斯·罗伯茨：今天是 2026 年 9 月 14 日，我的嘉宾是作家梅根·奥吉布林。
Her latest book, the subject of today's conversation, is Will and Attention: A Memoir .
她的最新著作，也就是今天谈话的主题，是《意志与注意力：回忆录》。
Meghan, welcome to EconTalk.
梅根，欢迎来到 EconTalk。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Thanks so much.
梅根·奥吉布林：非常感谢。
Happy to be here.
很高兴来到这里。
Russ Roberts: Now, this isn't an easy book to summarize.
拉斯·罗伯茨：这不是一本容易总结的书。
It is a memoir, but its themes go deep into questions of addiction, rationality, religion, what it means to lead a good life.
这是一本回忆录，但其主题深入探讨了成瘾、理性、宗教以及美好生活的含义等问题。
Just to set the stage, tell us a little bit about your personal story, which is the memoir part, which is the thread that runs through the book.
为了奠定基础，请告诉我们一些你的个人故事，这是回忆录部分，也是贯穿全书的主线。
You've had some interesting experiences.
你有过一些有趣的经历。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I guess the first thing to say is I grew up in a very religious home.
我想首先要说的是我在一个非常虔诚的家庭中长大。
My parents were evangelical fundamentalists, and so that was a big part of my early childhood.
我的父母是福音派原教旨主义者，所以这是我童年的一个重要组成部分。
I went to Moody Bible Institute to study theology when I was in college.
我在大学时曾到穆迪圣经学院学习神学。
Moody is one of the oldest and most conservative evangelical colleges in the country.
穆迪学院是美国最古老、最保守的福音派学院之一。
I had a lot of good experiences there, but I also ended up having a faith crisis, largely around the problem of evil.
我在那里有很多美好的经历，但我最终也遇到了信仰危机，主要是围绕邪恶的问题。
I left the school after two years.
两年后我离开了学校。
I ended up leaving the Christian faith altogether and had this period of being in the wilderness, so to speak, where I fell into--I was drinking a lot.
我最终完全离开了基督教信仰，并在旷野度过了一段时期，可以说，我陷入了——我喝了很多酒。
I was working at bars.
我当时在酒吧工作。
I fell into an addiction, was not really connected to anybody from my former life.
我陷入了上瘾，与我前世的任何人都没有真正的联系。
I ended up getting sober when I was 28 years old and really found my way back into a sense of community and just a much more stable, healthy life, largely through my participation in 12-step programs.
当我 28 岁时，我终于戒酒了，并真正找到了回归社区意识的方法，以及更加稳定、健康的生活，这主要是通过参与 12 步计划。
That whole experience gave me my life back--or maybe gave me my life for the first time.
整个经历让我重获新生——或者也许是第一次让我重获新生。
I was sober for 11 years.
我清醒了11年。
I got married.
我结婚了。
I started writing during that time.
我就是在那段时间开始写作的。
And then, around the late 2010s, so I don't know, 2018, 2019, I became really attracted to Catholicism for reasons that were unclear to me at the time.
然后，大约在 2010 年代末，所以我不知道，2018 年、2019 年，我真的被天主教吸引了，原因当时我还不清楚。
I had not identified as a Christian for over a decade.
十多年来我一直没有认定自己是基督徒。
I called myself an atheist, but I found myself drawn back to attending mass every day.
我称自己为无神论者，但我发现自己又开始每天参加弥撒。
I started talking with a priest and came very close to converting.
我开始与一位牧师交谈，差点就皈依了。
In the end, I didn't.
最后，我没有。
And then, shortly after that, for reasons that were totally baffling, returned to drinking, and I drank for about a year in secret without telling anybody.
然后，不久之后，出于完全令人费解的原因，我又开始喝酒，我秘密地喝酒了大约一年，没有告诉任何人。
This was after I had spent years working with other alcoholics, telling my story from the podium of church basements, talking about how much better my life was.
这是在我花了多年时间与其他酗酒者一起工作之后，在教堂地下室的讲台上讲述我的故事，谈论我的生活有多么美好。
So, it was this completely irrational, in both cases, this return to Christianity, which had not worked the first time and didn't work the second time, and then also this return to drinking.
所以，在这两种情况下，回归基督教都是完全不合理的，第一次没有奏效，第二次也没有奏效，然后又回归酗酒。
The book begins as I was sort of coming out of those experiences and trying to make sense of them and figuring out this problem of why do we keep doing these things that we know we shouldn't do?
这本书开始时，我正从这些经历中走出来，试图理解它们，并弄清楚为什么我们继续做这些我们知道不应该做的事情？
Is it a problem of willpower?
是意志力的问题吗？
Yeah, that was really the starting place for the book.
是的，这确实是这本书的起点。
Russ Roberts: I want to start with a quote, and we're going to talk somewhat about a thinker that I always thought was pronounced Simone Weil, W-E-I-L, but sophisticated people say Simone Weil [rhymes with 'way'].
拉斯·罗伯茨（Russ Roberts）：我想从一句话开始，我们要谈谈一位思想家，我一直认为他的发音是西蒙娜·韦尔（Simone Weil），W-E-I-L，但老练的人会说西蒙娜·韦尔（Simone Weil）[与“way”押韵]。
So, if you hear Weil, we're talking about a woman who was born Jewish, who becomes deeply attracted to Catholicism; does not convert, though, finds it, as is in your story, a bridge too far for a variety of reasons.
所以，如果你听到韦尔，我们谈论的是一个出生为犹太人的女人，她深深地被天主教所吸引；她是一位犹太人。然而，并没有转变，发现它，就像你的故事中那样，由于各种原因，一座桥梁太远了。
Maybe we'll get to those, maybe we won't.
也许我们会实现这些，也许我们不会。
But, you start early in the book with a really amazing quote from her: "We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will." And that's the quote.
但是，你在书的开头就引用了她的一句非常惊人的话：“我们必须尝试通过注意力而不是意志来纠正我们的错误。”这就是引言。
It's a seemingly simple sentence.
这是看似简单的一句话。
A chunk of the book is trying to untangle what that actually means.
本书的大部分内容试图阐明这到底意味着什么。
So, take a crack at that.
所以，尝试一下吧。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: In some way, the whole book grew out of my desire to understand that one quote, which I was totally--the first time I read it, I was, on one hand, attracted to it.
梅根·奥吉布林：在某种程度上，整本书源于我对理解这句话的渴望，我第一次读它时，一方面，我被它所吸引。
I knew that willpower didn't work.
我知道意志力是行不通的。
So, that part of it I really recognized.
所以，这部分我真的很认可。
I knew that it had not worked in my own life: that, if anything, it led to more problems.
我知道这在我自己的生活中不起作用：如果有的话，它会导致更多的问题。
I guess I'll just say, in context, it didn't work with addiction.
我想我只想说，在上下文中，它对成瘾不起作用。
I couldn't cure myself of alcoholism by gritting my teeth and trying harder.
我无法通过咬紧牙关并更加努力地治愈自己的酗酒问题。
And it didn't work with spiritual belief either.
它也不适用于精神信仰。
You can't will yourself to believe in God, right?
你总不能强迫自己相信上帝吧？
The part that mystified me was 'attention' because I'd never seen those two words talked about together or set in opposition to one another--that attention could help cure faults that could not be cured through will.
让我感到困惑的是“注意力”，因为我从未见过这两个词一起谈论或相互对立——注意力可以帮助治愈无法通过意志治愈的过错。
I was really fascinated by what Weil meant by 'attention.' And, the more of her work that I read, the more elusive it became in some ways.
我对韦尔所说的“注意力”的含义非常着迷。而且，我读的她的作品越多，在某些方面就越难以捉摸。
I mean, I guess, just for context, to her spiritual writing that we have today was not published during her life.
我的意思是，我想，只是为了背景，我们今天所拥有的她的精神著作并不是在她生前出版的。
It was composed mostly in private notebooks that she wrote during the last years of her life, so the early 1940s, late 1930s.
它主要是在她生命的最后几年（即 20 世纪 40 年代初和 1930 年代末）写的私人笔记本中撰写的。
And, it was compiled after her death by a friend of hers.
而且，它是在她去世后由她的一位朋友编写的。
One of her most famous books is Gravity and Grace .
她最著名的书之一是《重力与恩典》。
What that was is basically her friend, who is a French Catholic farmer, Gustave Thibon--he basically went through her notebooks and took all of these isolated quotes.
那基本上是她的朋友古斯塔夫·蒂邦（Gustave Thibon），他是一位法国天主教农民——他基本上浏览了她的笔记本并记下了所有这些孤立的引言。
Some of them she wrote in a way that was very aphoristic.
其中一些她以一种非常警句的方式写下。
So, she has the quote about attention and will that sounds really gripping, but there's no context around there in her journals, which is really maddening.
所以，她引用了关于注意力和意志的引言，听起来确实很扣人心弦，但她的日记中没有任何上下文，这真的很令人抓狂。
Yeah.
是的。
But, in Gravity and Grace , there's basically--Thibon took these isolated aphorisms and organized them by theme.
但是，在《重力与恩典》中，蒂邦基本上采用了这些孤立的格言，并按主题组织了它们。
So, there's a piece in Gravity and Grace called "Attention and Will." It has all of these phrases that she jotted in her notebook about the relationship between these two ideas, but it sounds like you're listening to someone who is talking almost in a way of negative theology--almost like she's trying to understand these concepts herself.
所以，《重力与恩典》中有一段叫做“注意力与意志”。她在笔记本上写下了所有这些关于这两个想法之间关系的短语，但听起来你正在听一个几乎以消极神学方式说话的人——几乎就像她自己试图理解这些概念。
But, I gathered through reading, actually, her journals themselves, and reading a bunch of essays and books that she wrote during her life, that attention was not at all the way that we think about it today.
但是，实际上，我通过阅读她的日记本身，以及她生前写的一堆文章和书籍，发现这种关注根本不是我们今天所思考的方式。
I think most people, when we talk about waning attention spans, there's a sense that attention is this hyper-focus, almost like a really rigid kind of tunnel vision.
我认为大多数人，当我们谈论注意力持续时间减弱时，都会有一种注意力过度集中的感觉，几乎就像一种非常僵化的狭隘视野。
Like, you got to look at the screen and focus on this one thing and ignore everything else.
就像，你必须看着屏幕并专注于这一件事，而忽略其他一切。
And for her, attention was almost the opposite of that.
对她来说，关注几乎与此相反。
It was a kind of directed receptivity.
这是一种定向接受能力。
It was a willingness to look and not grasp.
这是一种愿意去看而不是去抓的态度。
So, she talks about attention in the context of art.
因此，她谈到了艺术背景下的注意力。
When you're looking at a painting and trying to understand it, she says sometimes you move from one end of the room to the other, look at it from different angles.
她说，当你观看一幅画并试图理解它时，有时你会从房间的一端移动到另一端，从不同的角度观看它。
Sometimes you have to repeatedly come back to the same thing day after day until the light dawns and that that process is largely mysterious.
有时你必须日复一日地重复同一件事，直到曙光出现，而这个过程在很大程度上是神秘的。
It's something that you can't force.
这是你无法强迫的事情。
She talks about it, too, in the context of paying attention to people who are suffering, and that that requires to actually listen and to give someone your full attention--requires a kind of self-emptying that you can't be trying to--I don't know.
她也谈到了这一点，即关注那些正在遭受痛苦的人，这需要真正倾听并给予某人充分的关注——需要一种你无法尝试的自我清空——我不知道。
You can't be thinking about yourself.
你不能只考虑你自己。
You can't be thinking about what you want and be paying attention at the same time.
你不能一边思考你想要什么，一边注意。
So, in that way, will is really the enemy of attention.
所以，从这个角度来看，意志确实是注意力的敌人。
So, I started just reading a lot of her writing and thinking about that: how that applied to addiction, for one thing, where it does feel like you can get in your own way when you try to--I mean, one of the, I think, the delusions of addiction is that you can somehow figure it out.
所以，我开始阅读她的大量著作，并思考这一点：这如何适用于成瘾，一方面，当你尝试时，你确实会感觉自己会以自己的方式行事——我的意思是，我认为，成瘾的错觉之一是你可以以某种方式弄清楚它。
Like, 'Oh, if I just try harder to control my drinking, or if I just drink the right thing at the right time, then I'll be able to master this.' The truth is what works for a lot of people is you have to give up that delusion and just basically stop fighting, surrender.
就像，“哦，如果我更加努力地控制饮酒，或者我只是在正确的时间喝正确的东西，那么我就能掌握这个。”事实是，对很多人来说，有效的方法是你必须放弃这种幻想，基本上停止战斗，投降。
For me, it came through showing up into this community and listening to other people's stories.
对我来说，这是通过出现在这个社区并聆听其他人的故事来实现的。
And I think that's a type of attention.
我认为这是一种关注。
[More to come, 10:00]
[更多精彩，10:00]
Russ Roberts: So, I'm going to read a quote.
拉斯·罗伯茨：所以，我要读一段引言。
You say,
你说，
And I just want you to expand on this idea a little bit because I think in, I would call it, Western civilization--I don't have a better phrase for it--there's a deep, deep belief that our choices are ours and we bear responsibility for them.
我只是想让你稍微扩展一下这个想法，因为我认为，我称之为西方文明——我没有更好的措辞来形容它——有一种深深的信念，即我们的选择是我们自己的，我们对它们承担责任。
So when we make a bad choice, whether it's addiction or something cruel, something evil, it's our fault because we should have willed otherwise.
因此，当我们做出错误的选择时，无论是上瘾还是残忍、邪恶的事情，都是我们的错，因为我们本来应该有其他的意愿。
And you're suggesting it's not 100% or maybe at all in our control.
你暗示这不是 100% 或根本不在我们的控制范围内。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: I mean, I'm very interested in the question of free will as a philosophical problem, and I do touch on it a little bit in the book.
梅根·奥吉布林：我的意思是，我对自由意志作为一个哲学问题非常感兴趣，我在书中确实谈到了它。
I think I was more interested in the practical, first person experience of trying to will something and just having it completely resist any kind of effort.
我想我更感兴趣的是实际的、第一人称的体验，即尝试想要某件事，然后让它完全抵制任何形式的努力。
I mean, the other place where I've experienced this is in creative work or intellectual work, right?
我的意思是，我经历过这种情况的另一个地方是在创造性工作或智力工作中，对吧？
I think everyone recognizes this point where you're just banging your head against the wall: you've hit an obstacle, and you can't figure it out.
我想每个人都认识到这一点，即你只是用头撞墙：你遇到了障碍，但你无法弄清楚。
What doesn't work in those cases is to just grit your teeth and try harder.
在这些情况下，仅仅咬紧牙关并加倍努力是行不通的。
Usually, what works is to get up, go for a walk, take a shower, and the answer arises almost just from outside of yourself--
通常，有效的办法是起床，去散步，洗澡，答案几乎就从你自己的外部出现——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Somehow, yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：不知何故，是的。
Physicists have this phrase that they use to describe the places that are most likely to give way to a breakthrough, the three Bs: the bed, the bath, and the bus.
物理学家用这个短语来描述最有可能取得突破的地方，即“三个 B”：床、浴室和公共汽车。
I mean, I think everybody can recognize that.
我的意思是，我想每个人都能认识到这一点。
It's almost when you're relaxed and not trying that the answer comes.
几乎当你放松并且不去尝试时，答案就会出现。
So, I was really interested, too--I mean, Weil writes a lot about this idea that when you try to force those things that can't be forced--like spirituality, virtue, creativity, love--you end up with what she would call idols or sort of false versions of what you're trying to achieve.
所以，我也很感兴趣——我的意思是，韦尔写了很多关于这个想法的文章，即当你试图强迫那些无法强迫的东西——比如灵性、美德、创造力、爱——你最终会得到她所说的偶像，或者是你想要实现的目标的错误版本。
I think that's especially true in any type of moral or spiritual life, where, if you try to act more virtuous than you are, you end up with a sort of false piety that isn't really rooted in a true spirituality.
我认为在任何类型的道德或精神生活中尤其如此，如果你试图表现得比实际更道德，你最终会得到一种虚假的虔诚，而这种虔诚并不是真正植根于真正的灵性。
That was something I recognized in my experience in 12-step programs, where I think, for a lot of my time there, I was sort of walking the walk and talking the talk, but didn't really have that deeper belief--or had some really deep unresolved problems with the idea of a higher power and the whole spiritual aspect of that ideology.
这是我在 12 步计划的经历中认识到的一点，我认为，在那里的大部分时间里，我都是言出必行，但并没有真正有更深刻的信仰——或者对更高权力的想法和该意识形态的整个精神方面有一些真正深刻的未解决的问题。
So, yeah, I think that the thing I was interested in is how can attention to those things that we're trying--instead of trying to will something, paying attention to what it is that you're not being honest with yourself about or what you're not looking at, how can that sort of offer a way through?
所以，是的，我认为我感兴趣的是如何关注我们正在尝试的那些事情——而不是试图去做某事，而是关注你对自己不诚实的事情或你没有看到的事情，这如何能提供一条出路呢？
Russ Roberts: I often say on the program, when these kind of issues come up, that part of growing up is becoming self-aware and realizing you're not the center of the universe, which is the way human beings start.
拉斯·罗伯茨：我经常在节目中说，当出现这类问题时，成长的一部分就是变得有自我意识，意识到自己不是宇宙的中心，而这正是人类开始的方式。
You are the center of the universe.
你是宇宙的中心。
You're an infant, you're a child, and you get a lot of attention because otherwise you're not going to survive.
你是一个婴儿，你是一个孩子，你会受到很多关注，因为否则你将无法生存。
And it's hard to do anything else except put yourself in the first.
除了把自己放在第一位之外，很难做其他任何事情。
So, I say there are four ways to grow up and become self-aware: religion, meditation, literature, therapy.
所以，我说有四种成长和自我意识的方法：宗教、冥想、文学、治疗。
You've done all four.
这四件事你都做了。
You write about all four in the book in some detail.
您在书中详细介绍了这四个方面。
I would say, in some sense, your book is about--ask the question, is this possible even?
我想说，从某种意义上说，你的书是关于——问一个问题，这可能吗？
Is there any sense in which we control our own destiny, that we can forge ourselves, that we can become better?
我们是否可以掌控自己的命运，可以锻造自己，可以变得更好？
I'm Jewish.
我是犹太人。
We're in the time of the Jewish calendar between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which are the Ten Days of Return.
我们正处于犹太历的犹太新年和赎罪日之间，即回归十日。
They're called the Ten Days--sometimes it's translated as repentance.
它们被称为“十日”——有时被翻译为“悔改”。
I think that's a mistranslation, but the idea is this is a time of self-reflection, and you should improve yourself.
我认为这是一个误译，但我的意思是，这是一个自我反思的时期，你应该提高自己。
Now, it's really hard to do, and we all understand that, but in Judaism, it is a core belief that it's possible .
现在，这确实很难做到，我们都明白这一点，但在犹太教中，这是可能的核心信念。
That belief might be wrong, but I'm curious: what's your take on that?
这种信念可能是错误的，但我很好奇：你对此有何看法？
Is it possible to make yourself a better person?
有可能让自己成为一个更好的人吗？
Is it possible, through attention, say, maybe not through will, but through attention and various techniques--religion, meditation, reading great books, therapy--to become a better person?
是否有可能通过注意力，比如说，也许不是通过意志，而是通过注意力和各种技巧——宗教、冥想、阅读伟大的书籍、治疗——成为一个更好的人？
Become a different person?
成为另外一个人？
Just even start with that.
就从那开始吧。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I like your four things.
我喜欢你的四件事。
I would agree with all of those.
我同意所有这些。
I would add maybe a fifth, suffering, I think, is how you--
我想补充第五点，我认为苦难就是你——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
Yes.
是的。
Well, and I mean, it's been true for me, too, that I oftentimes--I know something intellectually, but it doesn't really sink in until I've suffered the consequences of not doing it.
嗯，我的意思是，对我来说也是如此，我经常——我在理智上知道一些东西，但直到我承受了不这样做的后果之后，它才真正被理解。
This is a thing that's really maddening me because I'm a slow learner and have to learn things firsthand: that you really don't transform that, at least for me, you don't transform that intellectual knowledge into actionable wisdom until you've had some sort of experience with it in life.
这件事真的让我抓狂，因为我学东西很慢，必须亲自学习：你真的不能改变这一点，至少对我来说，你不能将知识转化为可操作的智慧，除非你在生活中获得了某种经验。
But, yeah, I mean, I think the idea of any kind of religious pursuit or moral pursuit is to try to change and improve without having to constantly suffer consequences before you do.
但是，是的，我的意思是，我认为任何形式的宗教追求或道德追求的想法都是尝试改变和改进，而不必在这样做之前不断承受后果。
Yeah.
是的。
I mean, I fiercely believe in change.
我的意思是，我坚信改变。
It does feel like it's a slightly unfashionable idea.
确实感觉这是一个有点不时尚的想法。
I think a lot of people today are skeptical that people can change, but I've seen it happen in my life multiple times.
我认为今天很多人都怀疑人们是否可以改变，但我已经多次看到这种情况在我的生活中发生。
I've seen it happen in the lives of other people, specifically through recovery from addiction.
我在其他人的生活中看到过这种情况，特别是通过毒瘾的康复。
But, it's hard because, I mean, it's an incredibly slow process, and it's not direct.
但是，这很难，因为我的意思是，这是一个极其缓慢的过程，而且不是直接的。
I think that's the thing that is sometimes frustrating about it, is that most things in life, if you want something in the material world--like success, or, I don't know, if you want to change your life through wellness or fitness or something like that--there's very sort of clear steps to doing so.
我认为有时令人沮丧的是，生活中的大多数事情，如果你想要物质世界中的某些东西——比如成功，或者，我不知道，如果你想通过健康或健身或类似的东西来改变你的生活——有非常明确的步骤来做到这一点。
Not always easy, but there's sort of a path.
并不总是那么容易，但总有一条路。
For me, the idea of inner transformation, it's largely circular in some ways.
对我来说，内在转变的想法在某些方面很大程度上是循环的。
It's about sort of having to come back, either through ritual or through these successive acts of attention, to the same thing and constantly sort of reminding yourself of these truths until they sink in.
这是关于必须通过仪式或通过这些连续的关注行为回到同一件事上，并不断提醒自己这些真理，直到它们深入人心。
And, yeah, I do think it's oftentimes the case where the change happens once you've given up changing, in some way, where you've sort of just committed to doing these things for their own sake, and then suddenly you realize a problem that you've been struggling with is gone or that the wall that you've been sort of pushing against, it suddenly falls over, where before it wasn't.
是的，我确实认为，通常情况下，一旦你在某种程度上放弃了改变，你只是为了自己的利益而致力于做这些事情，然后突然你意识到你一直在努力解决的一个问题已经消失了，或者你一直在推挤的那堵墙突然倒塌了，而之前它还没有倒塌。
Russ Roberts: Well, I thought one of the themes, which, of course, is a fascinating question in human behavior for economists--economists tend to ignore it--but economists assume that you look at your situation, you decide what's best for you, and that's what you do.
拉斯·罗伯茨：嗯，我想到了其中一个主题，这对经济学家来说当然是一个令人着迷的人类行为问题——经济学家往往会忽视它——但经济学家假设你会考虑自己的情况，决定什么对你来说是最好的，然后你就会这么做。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Well, that's, like, classical economics, right?
梅根·奥吉布林：嗯，这就像古典经济学，对吧？
Yeah.
是的。
Russ Roberts: There's some modern variants on it, but not so much.
拉斯·罗伯茨：有一些现代变体，但不多。
It's hard to get very far if you don't assume rationality.
如果你不假设理性，就很难走得太远。
So, then you need a model of irrationality.
所以，你需要一个非理性模型。
There isn't a good one, usually.
一般情况下，没有一个好的。
But, what I like is, at various points in your book, you concede that as human beings, we often tell stories to ourselves to explain what we did that aren't the real reasons, and we may not even have access to those reasons.
但是，我喜欢的是，在你书中的不同点上，你承认，作为人类，我们经常给自己讲故事来解释我们所做的事情，但这并不是真正的原因，而且我们甚至可能无法了解这些原因。
I thought--it's a beautiful quote I'd never heard that you use from William James.
我想——这是一句美丽的名言，我从未听过你用过威廉·詹姆斯的名言。
You say: it's impossible to know how or when it will bear fruit--some technique.
你说：不可能知道它如何或何时会结出果实——一些技巧。
And you quote William James saying that he believed that the crisis of religious conversion was the 'last stage of a long incubation that had taken place in the unconscious.' James writes, quote, "When the fruit is ripe, a touch will make it fall."
你引用威廉·詹姆斯的话说，他相信宗教皈依的危机是“潜意识中发生的长期孵化的最后阶段”。詹姆斯写道，“当果实成熟时，轻轻一碰它就会掉落。”
And I love that, because it looks like something was decisive--the touch.
我喜欢这一点，因为它看起来像是有决定性的东西——触感。
But there's decades, sometimes, or years or months that set the stage for that change.
但几十年、有时、几年或几个月的时间为这种变化奠定了基础。
And I think people want to have a lightning bolt or a crisis or--I'm not just talking about religion--but any transformation where people decide, say, to lose weight or to stop drinking.
我认为人们想要闪电或危机，或者——我不仅仅是在谈论宗教——而是人们决定减肥或戒酒的任何转变。
Or to start drinking.
或者开始喝酒。
Any kind of transformation, good or bad, it's usually we attribute it to a dramatic moment.
任何一种转变，无论好坏，我们通常都会将其归因于一个戏剧性的时刻。
And James is saying, actually, that's really not the right way to think about it, and I think a lot of your book has that theme underlying it.
詹姆斯说，事实上，这确实不是正确的思考方式，我认为你的很多书都以这个主题为基础。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I was so fascinated by James' work, which I'd read The Varieties of Religious Experience before, but I went back and read it again.
我对詹姆斯的作品非常着迷，我之前读过《宗教经验的多样性》，但我又回去读了一遍。
It had been several years when I was writing this book.
我写这本书已经好几年了。
I mean, he's talking about the very problem that I'm wrestling with in the book, which is this problem of being at war with oneself.
我的意思是，他正在谈论我在书中正在努力解决的问题，即与自己交战的问题。
And he talks about these people who have divided wills.
他谈到了这些意志不一致的人。
They have some sort of a higher aspiration, but then they keep running into problems, and sometimes it's spiritual doubt.
他们有某种更高的抱负，但他们总是遇到问题，有时是精神上的怀疑。
Sometimes it's temptation.
有时这是诱惑。
Sometimes it's excessive self-criticism.
有时是过度的自我批评。
And, that there's often this moment that comes, which he calls the crisis of self-surrender, where the person kind of just stops the war, says, 'I'm going to hand over my problem to some sort of higher power,' or 'I am going to simply admit defeat,' and then the solution becomes possible.
而且，经常会出现这样的时刻，他称之为自我投降的危机，人们会停止战争，说，“我要把我的问题交给某种更高的权力”，或者“我要简单地承认失败”，然后解决方案就成为可能。
And, yeah.
而且，是的。
He did believe that that moment of self-surrender was not the lightning bolt: that there was all its work that had been happening, maybe even throughout the struggle, that this work had been happening unconsciously.
他确实相信，自我投降的那一刻并不是闪电：所有的工作都在发生，甚至在整个斗争过程中，这些工作都是在无意识中发生的。
You know, James--I don't think he ever uses the word 'unconscious' in that book.
你知道，詹姆斯——我认为他在那本书中从未使用过“无意识”这个词。
He talks about the powers outside of the conscious mind.
他谈论了意识之外的力量。
He has this great phrase, too, which relates to the idea of rationality.
他也有这句伟大的短语，它与理性的概念有关。
I think he said that the change happens below the loquacious level of rationality.
我认为他说的是这种变化发生在理性的理性水平之下。
Which I love.
我喜欢哪个。
It's almost this idea that we're constantly telling ourselves these stories, right, and sometimes you just need to shut up and listen.
几乎就是这个想法，我们不断地告诉自己这些故事，对吧，有时你只需要闭嘴并倾听。
Yeah.
是的。
I think that so much of modern psychology and even this idea of cognitive biases rely on this idea that we are fundamentally rational creatures with maybe some glitches here and there in our thinking.
我认为现代心理学的大部分内容，甚至认知偏差的观点都依赖于这样一种观点，即我们从根本上来说是理性的生物，我们的思维可能会出现一些小问题。
I mean, the thing that I really love about psychoanalysis or even the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is that there seems to be this notion that the human mind and the human heart has vast depths that are not accessible to the person, the individual themselves.
我的意思是，我真正喜欢精神分析甚至整个犹太基督教传统的一点是，似乎有这样一种观念，即人类的思想和人类的心灵有着巨大的深度，是个人、个体本身无法触及的。
I really became interested in that larger sense of the unconscious and its role in change.
我真的对无意识的更广泛意义及其在变化中的作用感兴趣。
I don't necessarily mean the Freudian unconscious.
我不一定指的是弗洛伊德的无意识。
I just mean everything that we're not paying attention to, right?
我只是指我们没有注意到的一切，对吗？
Everything that we're not focused on.
我们不关注的一切。
And, with this idea that maybe the solution lay outside of that narrow focus.
而且，有了这样的想法，也许解决方案就在这个狭隘的焦点之外。
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
拉斯·罗伯茨：是的。
I'm reminded of the line from Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, writing about--he talks about writing about the human heart in conflict with itself.
我想起了福克纳在诺贝尔奖获奖感言中的一句话，他谈到要写人类内心与自身的冲突。
I think it's related to other work you've done, which I'm not very familiar with, but I think there's this temptation to see the brain as a machine.
我认为这与你所做的其他工作有关，我不太熟悉这些工作，但我认为存在将大脑视为机器的诱惑。
Now we see it as an LLM [Large Language Model], which is a neural network: which, of course, it has neurons.
现在我们将其视为 LLM（大型语言模型），它是一个神经网络：当然，它有神经元。
There is a network.
有网络。
It has electricity.
它有电。
But it's a rather meager view of the complexity of the human experience.
但这只是对人类经验复杂性的相当肤浅的看法。
But, ultimately, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, there's this bug called cognitive bias.
但最终，这就像，‘哦，是的，有一种叫做认知偏见的错误。
We'll just correct that.
我们会纠正这个问题。
Let me explain it to you, by the way.
顺便让我向你解释一下。
Let me tell you what this bias you have, and once I tell you, you will be protected.
让我告诉你你有什么偏见，一旦我告诉你，你就会受到保护。
You'll be inoculated.' It doesn't work that way.
你将会接种疫苗。事实并非如此。
It's an endlessly fascinating challenge, our war with our own self, and it's part of, again, what I mean by growing up or living.
这是一个无尽迷人的挑战，我们与自己的战争，这也是我所说的成长或生活的一部分。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I mean, yeah, it's maybe one of the oldest problems.
我的意思是，是的，这可能是最古老的问题之一。
I mean, this is what the Greek philosophers called akrasia , this idea of weakness of will, right?
我的意思是，这就是希腊哲学家所说的“akrasia”，即意志薄弱的观念，对吧？
You know something is good intellectually, you know what you should be doing, and yet you don't do it.
你知道某件事在理智上是好的，你知道你应该做什么，但你却没有这样做。
You do the opposite.
你却反其道而行之。
I was really fascinated by these quotes that you find both in Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.
我对东方和西方精神传统中的这些引言非常着迷。
I was exposed to it through, first--I think that my first awareness of this was through the Apostle Paul, who says in his letter to the Romans, 'I don't know why I do what I do.
我首先是通过使徒保罗接触到这一点的，我想我第一次意识到这一点是通过使徒保罗，他在写给罗马人的信中说：“我不知道我为什么要做我所做的事情。”
The thing I want to do, I don't do, and what I hate, I do.' Yeah, I think that really just sums up the heart of the problem.
我想做的事我不做，我讨厌的事我做。是的，我认为这确实概括了问题的核心。
I think, through the Christian interpretation of that problem, is, yes, your will is weak.
我认为，通过基督教对这个问题的解释，是的，你的意志很弱。
You need to rely on God and not trust in your own hubris or your own ability to change.
你需要依靠上帝，而不是相信自己的傲慢或自己的改变能力。
You need grace.
你需要恩典。
Today, I think--I don't know--obviously, Christianity still has a long legacy in our culture, but I'm really interested in these more contemporary metaphors about the mind being a machine and how that changes our view of our own minds and our view of what can be changed and what can't.
今天，我想——我不知道——显然，基督教在我们的文化中仍然有着悠久的遗产，但我真的对这些更现代的隐喻很感兴趣，这些隐喻是关于思想是一台机器，以及它如何改变我们对自己思想的看法，以及我们对什么可以改变、什么不能改变的看法。
I think that the thing that is most pernicious about that metaphor of the brain as a computer is this idea that, well, there's really no point.
我认为，将大脑比喻为计算机的最有害之处在于，实际上没有任何意义。
Everything is sort of an automatic process.
一切都是一个自动过程。
There's no point in actually--
实际上没有任何意义——
Russ Roberts: It's an algorithm.
拉斯·罗伯茨：这是一种算法。
It's all built in--
这一切都是内置的——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Right.
梅根·奥吉布林：对。
There's no point in actually paying attention to what your mind is doing.
实际上关注你的头脑在做什么是没有意义的。
And this is so much of what Weil writes about, and Iris Murdoch writes about this idea of you really need to pay close attention to your thoughts and to the stories that you're telling yourself because your actions are a result of those thoughts: that, your will is not this sort of isolated power where you're facing a choice and you have total freedom to choose one thing or the other.
这就是韦尔所写的内容，而艾丽丝·默多克则写到了这样的想法：你真的需要密切关注你的想法和你告诉自己的故事，因为你的行为是这些想法的结果：也就是说，你的意志不是这种孤立的力量，你面临着选择，你有完全的自由来选择一件事或另一件事。
It's really the outcome of what you've been thinking, how you've trained your attention, how you've trained[?changed?] your mind, and those habits over a much, much long period of time.
这实际上是你一直在想什么、你如何训练你的注意力、你如何训练[？改变？]你的思想以及这些习惯在很长一段时间内的结果。
Russ Roberts: I want to read another quote, which I found fascinating, from--referencing G.K.
拉斯·罗伯茨（Russ Roberts）：我想读另一句话，我觉得这句话很有趣，来自——引用 G.K.
Chesterton, who is famous on EconTalk for his fence.
切斯特顿（Chesterton）因围栏而在 EconTalk 上出名。
Chesterton's fence gets talked about a lot in here: the idea that you see something that doesn't make sense, so you should just, of course, tear it down rationally.
切斯特顿的栅栏在这里被谈论了很多：你看到一些没有意义的东西，所以你当然应该理性地拆掉它。
Why would you leave something that doesn't make sense?
为什么要留下一些没有意义的东西？
And, then, because you don't really appreciate the complexity of the world, you don't realize why the fence was put there in the first place: that the problem that it solved is still there, and so on, and so on.
然后，因为你并没有真正理解世界的复杂性，所以你不会意识到为什么栅栏首先被放在那里：它解决的问题仍然存在，等等，等等。
But, here's another insight on Chesterton that is really kind of cool, and it relates a little bit to what you were just saying, so I want you to talk about it.
但是，这是关于切斯特顿的另一个见解，这真的很酷，它与你刚才所说的有一点关系，所以我想让你谈谈它。
You say, quote:
你说，引用：
Now, I'm going to step out of my quote for a second.
现在，我要暂时退出我的引言。
Taboo is completely out in our modern culture.
禁忌在我们的现代文化中已经完全消失了。
Taboos are irrational.
禁忌是不合理的。
They're silly.
他们很傻。
They shouldn't have any taboos.
他们不应该有任何禁忌。
Almost by definition, a taboo is something that you believe in that's obviously you're afraid of or you stay away from but there's no reason for it.
几乎根据定义，禁忌是你相信的东西，但显然你害怕或远离，但没有理由这样做。
I mean, it's just a weird cultural bias.
我的意思是，这只是一种奇怪的文化偏见。
Anyway, back to the quote:
无论如何，回到引用：
Close double-quote.
关闭双引号。
Say anything about that you like.
说任何你喜欢的事情。
It's just a really interesting idea.
这是一个非常有趣的想法。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: I was fascinated by this idea, too, and I had, not, until you mentioned it, connected it to that other writing of his about the fence.
梅根·奥吉布林：我也对这个想法很着迷，直到你提到它，我才将它与他关于栅栏的另一篇文章联系起来。
It's almost exactly the same thing, although I think here he's talking about almost this sort of mystical plane.
这几乎是完全相同的事情，尽管我认为他在这里谈论的是几乎这种神秘的飞机。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
Yeah, I agree.
是的，我同意。
I think the idea of a taboo is so--especially a senseless taboo, right?
我认为禁忌的想法是如此——尤其是毫无意义的禁忌，对吧？
It's just so antithetical to any type of rational, contemporary thinking about--
这与任何类型的理性、当代思维都是背道而驰的——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah, modernity.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的，现代性。
I was fascinated by this quote, particularly when it came to thinking about addiction, because I think the one thing that you can't do as an alcoholic is drink.
我对这句话很着迷，特别是当谈到成瘾时，因为我认为作为一个酒鬼你不能做的一件事就是喝酒。
And, so long as you don't drink, your life can be great.
而且，只要你不喝酒，你的生活就会很美好。
The thing that's gotten me in trouble, and a lot of other addicts I know in trouble, is starting to be, like, 'Well, maybe the taboo can be negotiated.
让我和我认识的许多其他瘾君子陷入麻烦的事情开始是，‘好吧，也许这个禁忌可以通过谈判解决。
Maybe I was just really young when I was drinking.
也许我喝酒的时候还很年轻。
Maybe it'd be different now.
也许现在会有所不同。
Maybe I didn't try hard enough.' Once your mind goes down that path and tries to start thinking rationally about that taboo, you can talk yourself back into something that's completely irrational.
也许我还不够努力。一旦你的思想沿着这条路走下去并试图开始理性地思考这个禁忌，你就可以说服自己去做一些完全不理性的事情。
I think this is something that I was really interested in the book, is that even reason can be used to arrive at completely irrational, destructive conclusions, and that you need to be skeptical of your reason and sometimes trust the idea that these taboos exist for a reason, particularly when they're embedded in a community.
我认为这是我对这本书真正感兴趣的一点，那就是即使理性也可以用来得出完全非理性的、破坏性的结论，你需要对你的理性持怀疑态度，有时要相信这些禁忌的存在是有原因的，特别是当它们嵌入到社区中时。
I've heard countless people in recovery communities talk about why this one rule is the center of their lives and that sometimes we just need to respect that there's a hard limit to something and something that we can't understand.
我听到康复社区中无数的人谈论为什么这一规则是他们生活的中心，有时我们只需要尊重某些事物和我们无法理解的事物存在严格限制。
I'm never going to figure out why I'm an alcoholic, but I know for a fact that my life is better when I heed that one rule.
我永远不会弄清楚为什么我是一个酒鬼，但我知道一个事实，当我遵守这条规则时，我的生活会更好。
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
拉斯·罗伯茨：是的。
I've talked on the program before about the challenge of a modest violation versus a cold-turkey rule.
我之前曾在该节目中讨论过适度违规与冷火鸡规则之间的挑战。
So, it is remarkably easier to eat no potato chips at a party than one.
因此，在聚会上不吃薯片比吃薯片要容易得多。
When you say to yourself, 'But, one potato chip is not harmful'--and it isn't--that's true.
当你对自己说：“但是，一片薯片没有害处”——事实确实如此——这是真的。
So, you take the one, and, of course, 30 seconds pass, and it's still the case that one is okay.
所以，你拿了一张，当然，30秒过去了，一张仍然没问题。
And after a while, you've had 40, and that's just not good.
过了一段时间，你已经有 40 个了，这可不太好。
So, it's better to have a rule: I don't eat potato chips, and I'd like to have that rule, Meghan.
所以，最好制定一条规则：我不吃薯片，我希望制定这条规则，梅根。
I sometimes have it.
我有时也有。
Part of what your book talks about is that there are times when you seem to have control of your will and times when you don't.
你的书中谈到的部分内容是，有时你似乎能控制自己的意志，有时却不能。
Do you think it is a personality?
你认为这是一种个性吗？
It's a terrible way to describe it, but that some people have an addictive personality versus others?
这是一种糟糕的描述方式，但是有些人与其他人相比具有令人上瘾的性格？
For them, alcohol is not an issue.
对于他们来说，酒精不是问题。
It's never an issue.
这从来都不是问题。
In your case, you can't have one.
就你而言，你不能拥有一个。
You can't have the potato chip.
你不能吃薯片。
So, is it a part of our nature for some of us that we struggle with certain things like that, or is it everyone who has that, or for different things?
那么，对于我们中的某些人来说，与某些类似的事情作斗争是我们本性的一部分吗？或者是每个人都有这样的情况，或者是为了不同的事情？
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I mean, it's something I think about a lot.
我的意思是，这是我经常思考的事情。
I certainly think that it's idiosyncratic: that it's different for everybody.
我当然认为这是特殊的：对每个人来说都是不同的。
Yeah.
是的。
I absolutely cannot have one drink of alcohol without it becoming totally destructive.
我绝对不能喝一杯酒，否则它就会变得完全具有破坏性。
I can have an occasional cigarette, and I'm fine, whereas I have friends who can't.
我可以偶尔抽支烟，这很好，但我有些朋友却不能。
I don't know what that has to do with brain wiring or experience or what.
我不知道这与大脑线路或经验或其他什么有什么关系。
This is also, I think, one of the things that's so baffling about willpower when it comes to those addictions and compulsions and things that we can't control, is, like, when I was drinking, I had an incredible will in a lot of other areas of life.
我认为，当涉及到那些成瘾、强迫和我们无法控制的事情时，这也是意志力如此令人困惑的事情之一，就像，当我喝酒时，我在生活的许多其他领域都有令人难以置信的意志。
I was able to show up to work for a time.
我能够去上班一段时间。
I was able to do anything else--moderate my eating, exercise--all that stuff.
我可以做任何其他事情——节制饮食、锻炼——所有这些事情。
I had a very healthy will; but when it came to this one thing, I just could not.
我有一个非常健康的意志；但当谈到这一件事时，我就是做不到。
Willpower was completely useless, and I think that thing is different for everybody.
意志力是完全没用的，我想这对每个人来说都是不同的。
But, yeah: what you're saying about the potato chips, too--I mean, the great thing about having a taboo is that you don't spend, waste all of this mental energy constantly negotiating, like, 'Okay.
但是，是的：你所说的关于薯片的事情也是——我的意思是，有禁忌的好处是你不会花费、浪费所有的精神能量不断地谈判，比如，‘好吧。
When does one chip turn into two chips, and when do I need to stop?
什么时候一颗芯片会变成两颗芯片，什么时候需要停止？
Can I do another one?' And you're completely distracted and outside of yourself.
我可以再做一个吗？而你却完全心烦意乱、心不在焉。
Whereas, if you just have a hard rule, you can stop thinking about it, and it frees up an enormous amount of space in the mind.
然而，如果你有一个硬性规则，你就可以停止思考它，并且它会释放你大脑中巨大的空间。
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
拉斯·罗伯茨：是的。
I had a friend who would tell me that there should be no overweight Orthodox Jews because Orthodox Jews are really good at self-control.
我有一个朋友告诉我，东正教犹太人不应该有超重的人，因为东正教犹太人真的很善于自我控制。
They don't eat pork.
他们不吃猪肉。
They only eat certain types of food, even that are non-pork, that are certified as kosher.
他们只吃某些经过犹太洁食认证的食物，即使是非猪肉的食物。
They don't use their phone on the Shabbat, on Saturday.
他们在周六的安息日不使用手机。
So, they have this incredible will.
所以，他们有这种不可思议的意志。
So, how could they be overweight?
那么，他们怎么会超重呢？
Welcome to the real world.
欢迎来到现实世界。
My theory, which is not a theory, but an amusing-to-me thought, is that you have a certain amount, and you use it up on some things, that it spills over elsewhere to not be available in those other things.
我的理论，这不是一个理论，而是一个对我来说很有趣的想法，是你有一定的数量，并且你把它用在某些事情上，它会溢出到其他地方，而无法用于其他事情。
So, you just have to have some things you struggle with.
所以，你只需要面对一些你挣扎的事情。
I don't know.
我不知道。
It's a mystery.
这是一个谜。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: It is a mystery.
梅根·奥吉布林：这是一个谜。
Yeah.
是的。
I mean, the way you're talking about, about the will being sort of finite, I think there was a really popular framework called ego depletion theory--throughout the late 1990s, early 2000s, maybe--that was sort of the dominant paradigm for self-control research.
我的意思是，就你所谈论的方式而言，关于意志是有限的，我认为有一个非常流行的框架，称为自我耗竭理论 - 整个 90 年代末，2000 年代初，也许 - 这是自我控制研究的主导范式。
And this idea that the will was a muscle that could be overextended and that it sort of declined the more you used it.
这种观点认为，意志是一块肌肉，可能会过度伸展，并且随着你使用它的次数增多，它会逐渐减弱。
Or, maybe that you could also strengthen the muscle through--
或者，也许你还可以通过以下方式增强肌肉——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
Right.
正确的。
And, I don't know.
而且，我不知道。
I think there's some truth there.
我认为这里面有一些道理。
But a lot of theories, it feels incomplete, too, because there's--I don't know.
但很多理论也感觉不完整，因为有——我不知道。
It's a mystery.
这是一个谜。
I think the problem of will, for me, is that it also extends backward and ad infinitum .
我认为对我来说，意志的问题在于它也向后延伸并且无限延伸。
You can maybe talk about, 'Okay.
你也许可以谈论，‘好吧。
I have a desire.
我有一个愿望。
When I really want something, I can do it, and I can achieve it.' But, where did the desire come from, you know?
当我真正想要某件事时，我就能做到，而且我就能实现它。”但是，欲望从何而来，你知道吗？
I think everyone has had this moment where it's, like, 'Oh, I wanted so badly to get fit or skinny that I finally was able to stick to a diet.' But, why did it happen at that moment that you were so motivated?
我想每个人都经历过这样的时刻，比如，“哦，我非常想变得健康或苗条，所以我终于能够坚持节食了。”可是，为什么那一刻你会如此激动呢？
Schopenhauer talks about this.
叔本华谈到了这一点。
There's a famous--I think it's actually a paraphrase of what he wrote, but he said, 'A man can will what he will, but not will itself.' Basically, you can do what you desire, but desire itself is dependent on some previous experience or conditioning that we're not in control of.
有一个著名的——我认为这实际上是他所写的一个释义，但他说，“一个人可以随心所欲，但不能随心所欲。”基本上，你可以做你想做的事，但欲望本身取决于我们无法控制的一些先前的经验或条件。
So, it's really this really deep problem of freedom and determinism that goes back to a person's birth, essentially.
所以，这实际上是一个非常深刻的自由和决定论问题，本质上可以追溯到一个人的出生。
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
拉斯·罗伯茨：是的。
My dad smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for a good chunk of his life.
我父亲一生中很大一部分时间每天吸三包烟。
We, his children, when we were younger, would beg him to stop.
我们，他的孩子，当我们还小的时候，会恳求他停下来。
I would be maybe, I don't know, 13, 14 years old; I'd talk to his mother, my grandmother, and say, 'Can you get dad to stop smoking?' She would look at me with total sincerity, and she'd say, 'He would do anything I told him.' I said, 'Could you tell him to stop smoking?' And, she would never do it.
我可能，我不知道，13、14岁；我会和他的母亲、我的祖母交谈，然后说：“你能让爸爸戒烟吗？”她会非常真诚地看着我，然后说：“他会做我告诉他的任何事情。”我说：“你能告诉他戒烟吗？”而且，她绝对不会这么做。
Now, I don't know if she'd have wanted to challenge her view of her relationship with her son or whether she knew that, in this one case, that wasn't realistic, but that's a complicated example of what you're talking about.
现在，我不知道她是否想挑战她对与儿子关系的看法，或者她是否知道，在这种情况下，这是不现实的，但这是你所说的一个复杂的例子。
Ultimately, by the way, my dad stopped smoking somewhere--I think he smoked probably from 20 to 60, or 20 to 50, something.
顺便说一句，最终我父亲在某个地方戒烟了——我想他可能吸了 20 到 60 支，或者 20 到 50 支之类的东西。
He had to have a surgery, and he had to stop smoking for the surgery, which he managed to do because he could.
他必须接受手术，并且为了手术他必须戒烟，他成功地做到了，因为他可以。
Russ Roberts: And then, he didn't start again.
拉斯·罗伯茨：然后，他就没有再首发了。
He went cold turkey.
他突然戒掉了。
He didn't say, 'Well, I'll go down to two packs, or one pack.' I'm a deep believer in zero being the right--being really effective.
他没有说，“好吧，我会减少到两包，或者一包。”我坚信零是正确的——真正有效。
Unfortunately, it doesn't work with food.
不幸的是，它不适用于食物。
It's hard to have zero food if you want to lose weight.
想要减肥，零食很难。
Russ Roberts: Let's turn to an issue which is on my mind these days, and it's really about religion writ large more than your personal or my personal story.
拉斯·罗伯茨：让我们谈谈我最近一直在想的一个问题，它实际上与宗教有关，而不是你个人或我个人的故事。
One of my favorite quotes, and I quote it often, is David Foster Wallace in his famous commencement address that's been called "This Is Water." He says, 'Everybody worships.' In that passage, after he says that, he says, 'Some people worship--if they don't worship God, they worship money, fame, beauty, youth.' And he says, 'Those are all false gods.' He then recommends that you pick one of the older religions that have stood the test of time.
我最喜欢的名言之一，而且我经常引用，是大卫·福斯特·华莱士在他著名的毕业典礼演讲中所说的“这就是水”。他说：“每个人都崇拜。”在那段话中，他说完之后说道，“有些人崇拜——如果他们不崇拜上帝，他们就会崇拜金钱、名誉、美丽、青春。”他说：“那些都是假神。”然后他建议你选择一种经受住时间考验的古老宗教。
And I've always found that interesting, and it turns out Simone Weil says the same thing.
我一直觉得这很有趣，事实证明西蒙娜·韦尔也说过同样的话。
You write:
你写：
And I want to say two things about that, and then I'll let you react.
我想说两件事，然后我会让你们做出反应。
I've always thought about the David Foster Wallace quote about adoration: Everybody worships.
我一直在思考大卫·福斯特·华莱士关于崇拜的名言：每个人都崇拜。
Everybody finds something that they adore.
每个人都会找到自己喜欢的东西。
But, it's also--I started to realize recently--it's also about something to submit to, something to be commanded by, the way religion does.
但是，它也是——我最近开始意识到——它也是关于某种要服从的东西，某种要受其指挥的东西，就像宗教那样。
Religion has all kinds of demands either on your beliefs or your actions or your practices or your rituals, restrictions on your freedom.
宗教对你的信仰、你的行为、你的实践或你的仪式有各种各样的要求，对你的自由有限制。
And I start to worry that, as religion retreats in the West, which it is doing now--it could change, but I'm not optimistic--that it will be replaced not by Hegelian and Kantian wisdom, or Voltaire, but rather by people submitting to different religions that have other negative consequences.
我开始担心，随着宗教在西方的退却，正如它现在正在做的那样——它可能会改变，但我并不乐观——它不会被黑格尔和康德的智慧或伏尔泰所取代，而是会被屈服于不同宗教的人们所取代，而这些宗教会产生其他负面后果。
I think we're at risk of that in our time, very much so.
我认为我们这个时代正面临着这样的风险，而且非常危险。
The rise of populism, the strong leader.
民粹主义崛起，强势领袖。
Human beings like to be free, but they also like to be commanded.
人类喜欢自由，但也喜欢被指挥。
As a child, we have both of those urges.
作为一个孩子，我们有这两种冲动。
We want to do what we want.
我们想做我们想做的事。
We don't like to be told what to do, but we also like limits.
我们不喜欢被告知要做什么，但我们也喜欢限制。
If we don't find our limits in religion, I worry we're going to find them elsewhere, and it will be a dark time.
如果我们找不到宗教的限制，我担心我们会在其他地方找到它们，那将是一个黑暗的时期。
What do you think?
你怎么认为？
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah, I could not agree more with that.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的，我非常同意这一点。
I think a lot of my writing, even from the very beginning, has been about how essentially religious or spiritual impulses find their way into weird corners of secular culture.
我认为我的很多作品，甚至从一开始，都是关于宗教或精神冲动如何进入世俗文化的奇怪角落。
My last book was about how that happened with technology, this idea--
我的上一本书是关于技术如何发生这种情况的，这个想法——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah, that all these spiritual metaphors that come up in conversations about AI [artificial intelligence] or how this sort of techno-optimist view of the future has a lot of similarities with Christian eschatology.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的，在有关人工智能的对话中出现的所有这些精神隐喻，或者这种对未来的技术乐观主义观点与基督教末世论有很多相似之处。
Yeah.
是的。
You see it, and I think about it a lot with politics, too, and the idea that we like to say that we want freedom and endless choice, and the truth is that that is an enormous burden.
你看，我也对政治进行了很多思考，我们喜欢说我们想要自由和无尽的选择，但事实是，这是一个巨大的负担。
I think that people are looking for any way out of that.
我认为人们正在寻找摆脱这种情况的方法。
I think that it can be a healthy thing when it's channeled towards something--
我认为，当它被引导到某件事上时，它可能是一件健康的事情——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Right.
梅根·奥吉布林：对。
A religious community that has ethics built into it.
一个具有道德规范的宗教团体。
And it is also about something--this is going back to Weil--she talked about why religion was the right thing, or I guess spirituality, she would say, is the better thing to submit to, as opposed to an authoritarian leader or the sort of fascist politics, was that you're looking at something transcendent in a spiritual tradition.
这也是关于一些事情——这要追溯到韦尔——她谈到了为什么宗教是正确的事情，或者我猜灵性，她会说，是更好的服从，而不是独裁领导人或法西斯政治，因为你正在寻找精神传统中超越的东西。
She talked about how God was the void in this idea of surrendering to mystery, to something that we fundamentally can't understand, because if you're submitting to anything in the human world that's promising to give you answers or control, that's going to come back to bite you, and you're in the same place that you started out in.
她谈到，在屈服于神秘的想法中，上帝是如何空虚的，屈服于我们根本无法理解的东西，因为如果你屈服于人类世界中任何承诺给你答案或控制的东西，它就会回来咬你，而你又回到了你开始的地方。
Especially in the United States, I think the extent to which Christianity itself has become wed and bound up with an authoritarian strain of politics has been really confusing to me, and it seems like a lot of--I mean, it's not confusing in a way.
尤其是在美国，我认为基督教本身在多大程度上与专制政治的结合和联系一直让我感到困惑，而且似乎有很多——我的意思是，在某种程度上，这并不令人困惑。
I mean, there's a way in which these things could be opposed to one another or different alternatives, right?
我的意思是，有一种方式可以使这些事物相互对立或形成不同的选择，对吗？
The submit-to-God or submit-to-this-other ideology--
服从上帝或服从其他意识形态——
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Caesar, yes.
梅根·奥吉布林：凯撒，是的。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Yeah.
是的。
Yeah, exactly.
是的，完全正确。
And, that the Christian nationalism just confuses that in such a strange way.
而且，基督教民族主义只是以一种奇怪的方式混淆了这一点。
And, a lot of evangelicals, I think, here tend to almost put politics over their belief system or see the belief as sort of subservient to this larger political ideology.
而且，我认为，很多福音派人士几乎倾向于将政治置于他们的信仰体系之上，或者将信仰视为服从于这种更大的政治意识形态。
So, I think that there is also this countervailing trend, I think, in the United States and Europe of young people who are trying to go back to traditional religion and returning to--I mean, most of the press has been about Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, about an enormous amount of young people that are returning to those traditions and who are, in some cases, doing so as a retreat from politics, which I think has become kind of a religion at this point of time.
所以，我认为，在美国和欧洲，年轻人也存在着一种相反的趋势，他们试图回归传统宗教并回归——我的意思是，大多数媒体都在谈论天主教和东正教，关于大量年轻人正在回归这些传统，在某些情况下，他们这样做是为了远离政治，我认为政治在此时此刻已经成为一种宗教。
Russ Roberts: You reference The Brothers Karamazov , which has an extraordinary, immortal scene of the dilemma or distinction between organized religion and true faith, right?
拉斯·罗伯茨：你提到了《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》，其中有一个非凡的、不朽的场景，讲述了有组织的宗教和真正的信仰之间的困境或区别，对吧？
It's always an issue.
这始终是一个问题。
It's an issue in every religion.
这是每个宗教的一个问题。
It's an issue in Judaism.
这是犹太教的一个问题。
It's an issue in Christianity.
这是基督教的一个问题。
Is this version that we are practicing now, is it apostasy?
我们现在实行的这个版本是不是叛教？
Is it heresy, or is it the true--it's capturing the essence of what we think our purpose is?
这是异端邪说，还是真实的——它抓住了我们认为我们的目的的本质？
There's a lot of ferment, I think, to the extent that religion is still a viable outlet for these urges in 2026, I think it's going to get complicated.
我认为，在 2026 年宗教仍然是这些冲动的可行出口的情况下，存在着很大的骚动，我认为事情将会变得复杂。
I think it's going to get more diverse.
我认为它会变得更加多样化。
I think, as you say, I think there's going to be a lot of innovation, is the way I would say it.
我认为，正如你所说，我认为将会有很多创新，这是我想说的。
I can't help but notice--I was in Italy, which is a very unreligious country.
我不禁注意到——我在意大利，这是一个非常不信教的国家。
It is the home place of--the Vatican is in Italy, and yet Italians are, I think, very unconnected to the Church.
它是梵蒂冈的故乡，位于意大利，但我认为意大利人与教会毫无联系。
I suspect--as an economist, I like to believe--that the government's control of religion in many countries has limited the innovation that would have allowed it to evolve into more healthy or more attractive, at least, competitive ways.
我怀疑——作为一名经济学家，我愿意相信——许多国家政府对宗教的控制限制了创新，而创新本来可以使其演变成更健康或更有吸引力（至少是更具竞争力）的方式。
We'll see.
我们拭目以待。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I mean, I'm similar, kind of bewildered by what's happening with religion these days.
我的意思是，我也有类似的情况，对最近宗教发生的事情感到有点困惑。
It feels like there's so many different facets of it and different directions in which it's going.
感觉它有很多不同的方面和不同的方向。
But, I do think there's this, I don't want to say, trend, but this sort of pattern in the history of Christianity where you have Christianity become bound up with power, institutionalized in some way, and then you have this movement to, 'Let's go to the wilderness, to the desert,' or the Protestant Revolution.
但是，我确实认为存在这样的趋势，我不想说，基督教历史上的这种模式，你让基督教与权力联系在一起，以某种方式制度化，然后你就有了这样的运动，“让我们去荒野，去沙漠，”或者新教革命。
There's this idea that we need to get back to the true faith, back to the first century church.
有这样的想法，我们需要回到真正的信仰，回到一世纪的教会。
I think there's a way in which the faith has constantly renewed itself through those movements, but it does feel like it's sort of this eternal cycle that the faith is going through.
我认为信仰可以通过这些运动不断更新自己，但确实感觉信仰正在经历这种永恒的循环。
Russ Roberts: Let's talk about Iris Murdoch for a minute.
拉斯·罗伯茨：我们来谈谈艾丽丝·默多克。
I had never read anything by her until very, very recently, and she's a fascinating thinker and intellect because she's a very serious philosopher, and she's a very serious novelist.
直到最近，我才读过她的任何作品，她是一位迷人的思想家和才智，因为她是一位非常严肃的哲学家，也是一位非常严肃的小说家。
I hope to read more of her novels.
我希望能读到更多她的小说。
I may read some of her philosophy, but you have a really interesting variation on some of the practices we've been talking about from Murdoch.
我可能会读到她的一些哲学，但对于我们一直在谈论的默多克的一些做法，你有一个非常有趣的变化。
I'm going to read this.
我要读一下这个。
This is Murdoch.
这是默多克。
It goes to the question of what is attention and this difference between focus and other things.
它涉及什么是注意力以及焦点与其他事物之间的区别的问题。
Murdoch writes: If we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice, most of the business of choosing is already over.
默多克写道： 如果我们考虑一下注意力的工作是什么样的，它如何持续进行，以及它如何不知不觉地在我们周围建立起价值结构，我们就不会感到惊讶，在选择的关键时刻，大多数选择的事情已经结束了。
This does not imply that we are not free, certainly not.
这并不意味着我们不自由，当然不是。
But it implies that the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments.
但这意味着我们自由的行使是一件零碎的小事，一直在进行，而不是在重要时刻畅通无阻的宏大跳跃。
The moral life, on this view, is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices.
根据这种观点，道德生活是一种持续不断的东西，而不是在明确的道德选择发生之间被切断的东西。
What happens in between such choices is indeed what is crucial.
在这些选择之间发生的事情确实至关重要。
Closequote.
闭引号。
And that's a really interesting commentary at all the things we were talking about earlier.
对于我们之前讨论的所有事情来说，这是一个非常有趣的评论。
So, add your thoughts on that.
因此，请添加您的想法。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: I love that passage so much, and it was really not until I read Murdoch--because throughout that book that you quoted--the quote comes from her book The Sovereignty of Good , which is just a long essay that she wrote in the late 1960s, and she was basically trying to interpret and build upon Weil's ideas of attention and will, and I think she does so in a way.
梅根·奥吉布林：我非常喜欢这段话，直到我读了默多克之后才真正喜欢上这段话——因为你在整本书中都引用了这段话——这句话来自她的书《善的主权》，这只是她在 20 世纪 60 年代末写的一篇长文，她基本上是在试图解释和建立韦尔的注意力和意志的思想，我认为她在某种程度上这样做了。
She's famous for having taken Weil's ideas and secularized them.
她因采纳韦尔的思想并将其世俗化而闻名。
Like, instead of God, she talks about the good, which she saw in this very platonic sense.
就像，她谈论的不是上帝，而是善，她在柏拉图式的意义上看到了善。
But, I think that she makes Weil's ideas about attention and will so much more clear and practical.
但是，我认为她使韦尔关于注意力和意志的想法变得更加清晰和实用。
And, the idea, as I understand it, is that we all think that we're free at any moment to take any choice, right?
而且，据我了解，这个想法是我们都认为我们可以在任何时候自由地做出任何选择，对吗？
And, when you are faced with a temptation or in the crucible of some sort of moral dilemma, you've basically already become the person who is going to make one choice, right?
而且，当你面临诱惑或者陷入某种道德困境时，你基本上已经成为了要做出选择的人，对吧？
It's not like you are totally free in that moment.
在那一刻你并不是完全自由的。
You've actually been conditioned by everything that you've done, especially in the weeks and months and years leading up to that, what you've turned your attention to, how you've tried or not tried to condition your mind through paying attention to your thoughts.
事实上，你已经被你所做的一切所制约，尤其是在这之前的几周、几个月和几年里，你把注意力转向了什么，你是否试图通过关注你的想法来调节你的思想。
That's actually what counts and not these big moments of choice: that the choice comes down to those much simpler acts of attention that we perform every day.
这实际上才是重要的，而不是这些重要的选择时刻：选择归结为我们每天执行的那些简单得多的关注行为。
She gives an example that I found really useful, especially when it comes to paying attention to one's thoughts and self-interrogation, where she says: Imagine that there's this woman, a mother-in-law, who finds her daughter-in-law to be uncouth and vulgar.
她举了一个我觉得非常有用的例子，尤其是在关注一个人的思想和自我审问时，她说：想象一下，有一个女人，一个婆婆，她发现她的儿媳妇粗鲁无礼。
She's very self-controlled.
她的自制力很强。
It doesn't affect her behavior in every way.
这并不会在各个方面影响她的行为。
She still treats her graciously, but she has this prejudice in her mind.
她对她还是很客气的，但是心里却有这样的偏见。
And then, one day she decides, 'You know what?
然后，有一天她决定，‘你知道吗？
Maybe I'm being unfair.
也许我不公平。
Maybe she's not simple and vulgar.
也许她并不简单粗俗。
Maybe she's actually spontaneous and youthful.' And, Murdoch's point is that that action happens completely in the woman's mind.
也许她实际上是自发且年轻的。而且，默多克的观点是，这种行为完全发生在女人的脑海中。
There's no action attached to it.
没有附加任何操作。
And yet she says we have to be able to talk about that as a moral act.
但她说我们必须能够将其视为一种道德行为。
Murdoch was writing in the sort of shadow of behaviorist and existentialist theories of human nature and philosophy, where there was this idea that the will was radically free and that action is what counted.
默多克是在行为主义和存在主义人性和哲学理论的阴影下写作的，其中有这样一种观念，即意志是完全自由的，行动才是最重要的。
She's saying, 'No, everything that happens in your mind and how you have controlled your mind or not is what counts.' And, I just found that to be utterly--it felt like one of those moments where you read something that has distilled a truth that you've known for a long time but haven't been able to put into words, and I think that that idea was maybe one of the most transformative things that I encountered in my work on this book.
她说：“不，你脑子里发生的一切以及你是否控制了自己的思想才是最重要的。”而且，我发现这完全是——感觉就像是你读到的一些东西，其中提炼出你已经知道很长时间但无法用语言表达的真理，我认为这个想法可能是我在写这本书时遇到的最具变革性的事情之一。
Russ Roberts: I think it's incredibly profound.
拉斯·罗伯茨：我认为这是非常深刻的。
Especially if it's true.
尤其是如果这是真的的话。
I like to think it's true, this idea that we form ourselves day by day rather than through some great rational study of morality or religion or whatever.
我喜欢认为这是真的，我们是日复一日地形成自己的，而不是通过对道德或宗教或其他东西的一些伟大的理性研究。
We actually--we are making choices constantly, most of them quite small.
事实上，我们不断地做出选择，其中大多数都很小。
And we think, 'Well, it's small, so I don't have to really pay attention to it.' And what Murdoch is arguing--which, again, if true, is profound--is that it's the small decisions that add up to form you and allow you to become the person that makes the right choice when it's a big decision.
我们会想，“嗯，它很小，所以我不必真正关注它。”默多克的观点是——如果正确的话，这也是意义深远的——正是这些小决定加起来塑造了你，让你成为在重大决定时做出正确选择的人。
And I think so often we fool ourselves into thinking that this thing we're doing that's actually quite self-interested is probably okay because it's just a small thing.
我认为我们常常欺骗自己，认为我们正在做的这件事实际上是非常自私的，可能是可以的，因为这只是一件小事。
It's not stealing, it's a corporation; or it's not--whatever is my rationalization.
这不是偷窃，这是一个公司；或者不是——无论我的合理解释是什么。
And Adam Smith actually writes about this very profoundly in The Theory of Moral Sentiments , the sort of slippery slope of small indiscretions and inappropriate things.
事实上，亚当·斯密在《道德情操论》中对此进行了非常深刻的论述，即小不检点和不恰当事物的滑坡。
And, I recently--I interviewed Adam Mastroianni on this idea of incentives that economists like that explain behavior.
而且，我最近采访了亚当·马斯楚安尼 (Adam Mastroianni)，讨论了经济学家喜欢用这种方式解释行为的激励理念。
So, if the incentive to do something slightly dishonest or slightly unattractive--I'll pick a tiny one.
所以，如果有动机去做一些稍微不诚实或稍微没有吸引力的事情——我会选择一个很小的。
I wish I'd talked about it when I interviewed him.
我希望我在采访他时谈论过这一点。
I'm leaving my office at the end of the day.
我将在一天结束时离开办公室。
Should I turn the lights off?
我应该把灯关掉吗？
The cost is tiny.
成本很小。
But, I could say to myself--it would be, I think, the wrong thing to say--but I could say to myself, 'Well, the college that I'm the president of, we rent the building and the electricity is included.
但是，我可以对自己说——我认为这是错误的说法——但我可以对自己说，‘好吧，我担任校长的学院，我们租用大楼，电费也包括在内。
So we're not billed for it.
所以我们不为此付费。
So, I don't have any incentive to turn the lights off.
所以，我没有任何动力去关灯。
So I should just leave them on.
所以我应该把它们留在上面。
Then when I come back, they'll be on already.'
然后当我回来时，他们就已经开始了。”
First of all, it's wrong because when we renegotiate our lease, they'll notice we used a lot of electricity because we didn't turn our lights off at night, and they'll probably pick a higher number.
首先，这是错误的，因为当我们重新协商租约时，他们会注意到我们用了很多电，因为我们晚上没有关灯，他们可能会选择更高的数字。
So, it's an illusion that we're not paying for it.
所以，我们没有为此付费只是一种错觉。
We are paying for it.
我们正在为此付出代价。
It's embedded in the price of the rent.
它包含在租金价格中。
But, the more important point is that every time I make a decision like that and say, 'Oh, well, it's a small thing, and I'm going to get a little bit of benefit, and I won't pay a cost,' regardless of whether it's the right or wrong thing to do, is you're degrading, you're eroding your moral sense.
但更重要的是，每当我做出这样的决定时，说“哦，好吧，这是一件小事，我会得到一点好处，我不会付出代价”，无论这是对还是错的事情，你都是在贬低你，你在侵蚀你的道德感。
And every time you do the right thing, I think you're strengthening that muscle.
每次你做正确的事，我认为你就在增强那块肌肉。
That's my view.
这是我的观点。
So, I like Murdoch.
所以，我喜欢默多克。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
And I think that those types of moral dilemmas, even though it almost seems too small to call them moral dilemmas--about whether to turn on the light or not, or turn off the light or not, or whether to recycle, or just all these other small choices that we have in these enormous economies of scale that we're immersed in--it feels almost like you're completely powerless to do anything.
我认为这些类型的道德困境，尽管看起来太小，无法称之为道德困境——关于是否开灯，或关灯，或是否回收，或者只是我们在这些巨大的规模经济中所拥有的所有其他小选择——感觉几乎你完全无能为力。
What does it matter if I call my congressperson as opposed to, yanno?
如果我称呼我的国会议员而不是“yanno”，那又有什么关系呢？
But, yeah, I agree that it's like there is something to the idea of doing something just for the sake that it's right and doing it because it's a principle that you've chosen to live your life by, that, not only, I think, strengthens your own moral sense of yourself, but also just makes life so much easier because you're not constantly thinking about--right?--those questions of, 'What does this count?
但是，是的，我同意，做某事只是为了它是正确的，并且这样做是因为这是你选择的生活原则，我认为这不仅增强了你对自己的道德感，而且还让生活变得更加容易，因为你不会不断地思考——对吧？——那些问题，‘这算什么？
Will this matter?' All those things that have to do with outcomes.
这有关系吗？所有这些都与结果有关。
And I think probably Murdoch would say that the outcome is not even the point.
我想默多克可能会说结果甚至不是重点。
It's about what's happening inside of you.
这是关于你内心发生的事情。
And she has an interesting point that she makes, too, and it's a really difficult one at first, or it was difficult for me to wrap my head around, where she says, 'The ultimate goal of a moral life is not to expand your freedom, but to actually restrict it.' She says: The person who has really trained their moral sense through these small acts and through attention, when they arrive at a moral dilemma, they don't have to deliberate because they automatically know what's good, right?
她也提出了一个有趣的观点，一开始这是一个非常困难的观点，或者说我很难理解，她说，“道德生活的最终目标不是扩大你的自由，而是实际上限制它。”她说：真正通过这些小行为和注意力训练了道德感的人，当他们遇到道德困境时，他们不需要深思熟虑，因为他们自动知道什么是好的，对吧？
That you act according to your principles or toward your higher aspirations so long as you've done the work leading up to that point.
只要你已经完成了到达这一点的工作，你就会按照你的原则或朝着你更高的愿望行事。
I struggle with that idea a little bit because it almost seems like she's encouraging thoughtlessness or something.
我对这个想法有点挣扎，因为她似乎在鼓励轻率之类的东西。
There's actually a line in Weil where she says the same thing, where she says, basically, we should become automatons of the good.
事实上，韦尔在书中也说过同样的话，她说，基本上，我们应该成为善良的机器人。
Almost like doing good should not require any kind of struggle because you have trained yourself to desire the good to such a point where it doesn't feel like a struggle.
就像行善不应该需要任何形式的斗争一样，因为你已经训练自己渴望善事，以至于感觉不到斗争。
And I think there's some truth to that; but, yeah, then it does raise this question of, like, well, what about--the thing about moral dilemmas is that they're incredibly difficult and nuanced, and you can't really apply some rule that fits every situation.
我认为这有一定道理；但是，是的，那么它确实提出了这样一个问题：道德困境是非常困难和微妙的，你不能真正应用一些适合每种情况的规则。
You really have to think about the context and all of these other things.
你真的必须考虑上下文和所有其他事情。
Yeah.
是的。
So, that was one thing I struggled with.
所以，这是我挣扎的一件事。
I do think that there's truth to this idea that it's not--I don't think Weil or Murdoch are encouraging thoughtlessness by any means.
我确实认为这个想法有道理，但事实并非如此——我不认为韦尔或默多克以任何方式鼓励轻率。
I think they're encouraging the kind of deep self-reflective introspection in, again, this sort of longer, piecemeal period leading up to a choice, so that the choice becomes more obvious when you are in the trenches of a temptation or a moral dilemma of some kind.
我认为他们再次鼓励在这种较长的、零碎的时期中进行深刻的自我反省，从而做出选择，这样当你陷入诱惑或某种道德困境时，选择就会变得更加明显。
Russ Roberts: No, I would think of it--and again, I don't know if they'd agree, or you can just tell me if you agree--but I think of it as: it's not so much a muscle that you're strengthening.
拉斯·罗伯茨：不，我会想到这一点——再说一次，我不知道他们是否同意，或者你可以告诉我你是否同意——但我认为：你正在加强的并不是一块肌肉。
Well, that's half of it.
嗯，这就是一半。
The other half is you're developing a moral intuition.
另一半是你正在发展道德直觉。
Because, if you continually are thinking about what's the right thing to do here and you systematically urge yourself to do these small, relatively low-cost, selfless things, then when the more complicated ones come around, you're not going to have to study it for so long.
因为，如果你不断地思考在这里做什么是正确的，并系统地督促自己去做这些小事、相对低成本、无私的事情，那么当更复杂的事情出现时，你就不需要研究那么久了。
That's been my experience, and especially, I think, as you get older and you go through the experiences that you referred to earlier, which I do think are really very much maybe the only way that you learn.
这是我的经历，尤其是，我认为，随着年龄的增长，你会经历你之前提到的经历，我确实认为这可能是你学习的唯一方式。
As Adam Mastroianni, in a different episode, talked about, the brain is not connected to the ears.
正如亚当·马斯楚安尼（Adam Mastroianni）在另一集中谈到的那样，大脑与耳朵没有联系。
The things that you're told don't really go in.
你被告知的事情并没有真正进入。
You have to suffer or experience them or learn from them.
你必须经历它们，或者经历它们，或者从中学习。
Intuition, which has, I think, a very bad name in some circles because it's, quote, "your gut," and it's not rational--you haven't done a careful analysis.
我认为，直觉在某些圈子里有一个非常糟糕的名字，因为它是“你的直觉”，而且它不是理性的——你没有进行仔细的分析。
I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how thinking and reason should work and can work.
我认为这是对思考和理性应该如何运作以及如何运作的根本性误解。
So, I think, to give Weil and Murdoch their due about the thoughtless part, is that it's thoughtless because you feel it.
所以，我认为，对于韦尔和默多克的轻率部分，我认为应该给予他们应有的评价，那就是，它是轻率的，因为你感觉到了。
You don't have to study it and pretend that you've done a careful analysis.
你不必研究它并假装你已经做了仔细的分析。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
Yeah.
是的。
I think what you're describing--I totally agree that, and I like the idea of thinking about it as a moral intuition.
我认为你所描述的——我完全同意这一点，并且我喜欢将其视为道德直觉的想法。
I think this is what, basically, we mean by wisdom--right?--is the ability to, because you've experienced so much, you have these internalized rules that you maybe don't have conscious access to the way that you do with--I think once you get to a point of mastery with anything, with art, writing, or music, or something, you sort of just know what to do in a certain situation.
我认为，基本上，这就是我们所说的智慧——对吗？——是一种能力，因为你经历了这么多，你有这些内在的规则，你可能无法有意识地了解你的处理方式——我认为一旦你达到了对任何事物的掌握程度，无论是艺术、写作、音乐还是其他什么，你就知道在某种情况下该做什么。
It is a type of knowledge.
它是一种知识。
It's something that is often difficult to articulate according to rules or maxims, but it is maybe the most valuable kind of knowledge that there is.
它通常很难根据规则或格言来表达，但它可能是最有价值的知识。
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
拉斯·罗伯茨：是的。
Beethoven knew what note to put next.
贝多芬知道接下来该放什么音符。
He couldn't explain it, but he was really good at it.
他无法解释，但他确实很擅长。
Russ Roberts: Let's close with a personal reflection.
拉斯·罗伯茨：让我们以个人反思作为结束。
This is a brutally honest book.
这是一本极其诚实的书。
There's some very hard things in it to read, and I assume that they weren't easy to write.
其中有一些内容很难读，我想它们也不容易写。
Why did you do that?
你为什么这么做？
Why did you choose yourself?
你为什么选择自己？
Why did you expose yourself the way you do in this book, your challenges with addiction?
你为什么要像在这本书中那样暴露自己面临的成瘾挑战？
If I were a really bad psychologist, I would say you put them down on the page so that you would be able to be held responsible for them.
如果我是一个非常糟糕的心理学家，我会说你把它们写在纸上，这样你就能对它们负责。
I don't think that's what you did, but maybe that was part of it.
我不认为那是你所做的，但也许那是其中的一部分。
Can you talk about that?
你能谈谈吗？
And, if you don't want to, you don't have to.
而且，如果您不想，也不必这样做。
Meghan O'Gieblyn: No, no. I'm interested in this question, I mean, because to some extent, it's a mystery to me, too.
梅根·奥吉布林：不，不。我对这个问题很感兴趣，我的意思是，因为在某种程度上，这对我来说也是一个谜。
Why am I led to write anything?
为什么我被引导去写任何东西？
I mean, I think with anything that I write, I wrote it because it felt like it was the only thing that I could write, that I felt was urgent to write.
我的意思是，我认为我写的任何东西都是因为感觉这是我唯一能写的东西，我觉得迫切需要写。
I guess with this particular book, I did not plan on it being so personal when I first started off.
我想对于这本特别的书，我一开始并没有打算让它变得如此个人化。
I really conceived of it as more of a bibliomemoir.
我真的认为它更像是一本书目回忆录。
I thought I would be talking about Weil's ideas and maybe have an anecdote here and there from my life.
我想我会谈论韦尔的想法，也许还有一些我生活中的轶事。
And, as I was writing more and trying to understand this one passage about will and attention, I realized that these ideas are so elusive and abstract that they really didn't make any sense unless I put them in conversation with my own life.
而且，当我写得更多并试图理解这篇关于意志和注意力的文章时，我意识到这些想法是如此难以捉摸和抽象，除非我将它们与我自己的生活对话，否则它们真的没有任何意义。
The thing that I was thinking about during this period was, obviously, addiction and religion and these things that I've just struggled with throughout my life.
显然，我在这段时间所思考的事情是成瘾和宗教，以及我一生都在与之斗争的事情。
And, it is always a danger to put yourself into such a center point of a narrative because once you start telling your story, people want to know more, and so the personal stuff became bigger and bigger.
而且，将自己置于叙述的中心点总是很危险的，因为一旦你开始讲述你的故事，人们就想了解更多，因此个人的事情变得越来越大。
But, I also think, I mean, if I could speculate now after the fact about why I felt compelled to write about this, is that writing is really the only way I know how to pay attention.
但是，我也认为，我的意思是，如果我现在可以推测为什么我觉得有必要写下这件事，写作确实是我知道如何集中注意力的唯一方式。
This book, which took about two and a half years to write, was just a way to lock me in to looking at these problems, looking at these thinkers, and then looking at my own life to see how those ideas were playing out and how my misconceptions about will and attention had led me astray.
这本书花了大约两年半的时间写成，它只是让我专注于审视这些问题，审视这些思想家，然后审视我自己的生活，看看这些想法是如何发挥作用的，以及我对意志和注意力的误解是如何让我误入歧途的。
I think any time you start writing a book, you think you're going to get the answer at the end of it.
我认为任何时候你开始写一本书时，你都会认为你会在书的结尾得到答案。
You almost need that delusion to think, 'I'm going to solve this.' And, of course, you never solve it.
你几乎需要那种错觉来思考：“我要解决这个问题。”当然，你永远也解决不了这个问题。
If anything, I think the best thing you can do is just articulate the problem to the best of your ability and to maybe create something beautiful out of that struggle that puts the questions to rest or transcends them.
如果有的话，我认为你能做的最好的事情就是尽你最大的能力阐明问题，并也许从这场斗争中创造出一些美丽的东西，让问题得到解决或超越它们。
Russ Roberts: Actually, I want to ask you one other thing.
拉斯·罗伯茨：实际上，我想问你另一件事。
I'm sorry.
对不起。
I thought that was going to be the last question.
我以为这将是最后一个问题。
You mentioned in passing a few times the problem of theodicy--which is why there's suffering in the world, why good people suffer, in particular.
您曾多次提到神正论的问题——这就是为什么世界上有苦难，尤其是好人受苦的原因。
And you have a beautiful--we haven't devoted enough time to your lyricism as a writer.
你有一个美丽的——我们没有投入足够的时间来欣赏你作为作家的抒情。
So, I'll just encourage listeners to go read the book because there's some really beautiful writing in here.
所以，我只是鼓励听众去读这本书，因为这里有一些非常美丽的文字。
There's a long passage where you talk about going swimming with your husband, and you're watching these young men, and they're mostly men, but they're all young, jumping off of a ridiculously steep cliff down toward rocks below and just sometimes barely avoiding them, and that during this time, no one was hurt.
有一段很长的段落，你谈论和你丈夫去游泳，你正在看着这些年轻人，他们大多是男人，但他们都很年轻，从陡峭得可笑的悬崖上跳下来，跳向下面的岩石，有时勉强避开他们，在这段时间里，没有人受伤。
I think for those of us who choose some kind of religious path, we have to deal with this.
我认为对于我们这些选择某种宗教道路的人来说，我们必须处理这个问题。
Especially in the modern world, we think about it a lot.
尤其是在现代世界，我们对此思考得很多。
I think any thoughtful person who chooses a religious path has to think about evil.
我认为任何有思想的人选择宗教道路时都必须考虑邪恶。
I always find comfort in the idea that there's also good--an immense amount of good.
我总是在这样的想法中感到安慰：世间也有美好的事物——大量的美好事物。
There's an immense amount of evil, is the problem; but there's also an immense amount of good.
问题是，存在着巨大的邪恶；但也有很多好处。
Brian Doyle, who you mention I think once, writes about this very beautifully.
布赖恩·多伊尔（Brian Doyle），我想你曾经提到过他，他对此写得非常漂亮。
He's a person of faith who has great suffering and challenges at various times in his life, as all human beings do.
他是一个有信仰的人，和所有人一样，在一生中的不同时期都经历着巨大的痛苦和挑战。
So, I thought that was a really interesting, a nice thought.
所以，我认为这是一个非常有趣、很好的想法。
Want to say something about it?
想对此说些什么吗？
Meghan O'Gieblyn: Yeah.
梅根·奥吉布林：是的。
I think the moment that I'm describing, too, is sort of an example of what we were talking about earlier, where it's like you're struggling with some problem for a really, really long time, can't solve it, and then you sort of are one day just sitting and looking, and this insight comes.
我认为我所描述的那一刻也是我们之前讨论的一个例子，就好像你在某个问题上挣扎了很长一段时间，无法解决它，然后你有一天只是坐着看，然后这种洞察就出现了。
I'm trying to articulate in a sort of logical, rational manner what the thought that took hold of me, which was really just a deep feeling or intuition or maybe a sense of wonder.
我试图以一种逻辑、理性的方式阐明我的想法，这实际上只是一种深刻的感觉或直觉，或者可能是一种惊奇感。
I mean, it goes back to this really fundamental question of why is there anything instead of nothing?
我的意思是，这又回到了这个真正基本的问题：为什么有东西而不是没有？
And why is there beauty?
而为什么会有美呢？
Why is there order?
为什么有秩序？
Why, if the universe is just sort of blind chance and a cosmic accident, why do we have all of this?
如果宇宙只是某种盲目的偶然和宇宙事故，为什么我们会拥有这一切？
I have just never been able to fully buy into atheism because of that question, I guess, even though I know sort of the logical response to it.
我想，因为这个问题，我一直无法完全相信无神论，尽管我知道对此的逻辑反应。
The thing about that moment is that it has stuck with me since then.
那一刻的事情是从那时起它就一直困扰着我。
I don't really think about the problem of evil anymore.
我真的不再思考邪恶的问题了。
I mean, it is something that I think that we all wrestle with and that is unavoidable in any kind of spiritual pursuit, but it hasn't become an obstacle to faith in the way that it once was for me.
我的意思是，我认为这是我们所有人都在努力解决的问题，并且在任何精神追求中都是不可避免的，但它并没有像以前那样成为我信仰的障碍。
I think a lot of this, too, was the outcome of the reading that I've been doing leading up to that moment.
我认为这在很大程度上也是我在那一刻之前一直在阅读的结果。
Simone Weil talks a lot about gravity and grace being these two fundamental laws of the universe.
西蒙娜·薇依（Simone Weil）多次谈到引力和恩典是宇宙的两个基本定律。
And, gravity is just sort of the blind laws of nature: that the world is sort of run by these laws, and there's a lot of chance and accident; and she talks about it as a sense of fate, almost.
而且，引力只是一种盲目的自然法则：世界是由这些法则运行的，并且存在很多机会和意外；她几乎将其视为一种命运感。
But then, there's also grace: these things, these moments of beauty, wonder, human goodness.
但同时，也有优雅：这些东西，这些美丽的时刻，奇迹，人类的善良。
The idea that people can attain these sort of moments of heroic virtue that just it doesn't seem like it applies to those same laws of cause and effect that run the rest of the world.
人们可以达到这种英雄美德的时刻，但它似乎并不适用于世界其他地方的因果法则。
And so, I don't know.
所以，我不知道。
I think any spirituality has to hold those things in tension, the gravity that keeps us maybe returning to old habits, keeping us in sort of a fallen state, and then these moments of self-transcendence that are really rare and that you can't will, but nevertheless happen.
我认为任何灵性都必须保持这些东西处于紧张状态，这种重力可能让我们回到旧习惯，让我们处于某种堕落的状态，然后这些自我超越的时刻非常罕见，你无法愿意，但仍然会发生。
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Meghan O'Gieblyn.
拉斯·罗伯茨：今天我的客人是梅根·奥吉布林。
Meghan, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
梅根，感谢您参与 EconTalk。