2025-03-31 Naval Ravikant.Harsh Truths About The Game Of Life

Refer To：《Naval Ravikant.Harsh Truths About The Game Of Life》。

Happiness vs. Success

幸福 vs. 成功

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Is success worth it then?

克里斯·威廉姆森：幸福是对现有的一切感到满足，而成功则源于不满足。那么，成功值得吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oof. I’m not sure that statement is true anymore. I made that statement a long time ago, and a lot of these things are just notes to myself and they’re highly contextual. They come in the moment, they leave in the moment.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：唔。我不确定这个说法现在还成立。这是我很久以前说的，当时很多这些话其实只是写给自己的备忘录，极具语境性。一念之间出现，一念之间消散。

Happiness is a very complicated topic, but I always like the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries and he says, “How many things there are in this world that I do not want,” and that’s a form of freedom, so not wanting something is as good as having it.

幸福是个非常复杂的话题，但我一直很喜欢苏格拉底的那个故事。他走进集市，人们向他展示各种奢侈品和精美的物品，他说：“这个世界上有多少东西是我不想要的。”这是一种自由的形式——不渴望某样东西，就等同于拥有它。

In the old story with Alexander and Diogenes, Alexander goes out and conquers the world and he meets Diogenes who’s living in a barrel. Diogenes says “Get out of the way, you’re blocking my sun,” and Alexander says “Oh how I wish I could be like Diogenes in the next life,” and Diogenes says, “I don’t wish to be Alexander.”

在亚历山大与第欧根尼的那个古老故事中，亚历山大征服世界后遇见住在木桶里的第欧根尼。第欧根尼说：“走开点，你挡住我的阳光了。”亚历山大说：“多希望来世我能像你一样。”而第欧根尼则回答：“我并不想成为你。”

So there are two paths to happiness: one path is success, where you get what you want and satisfy your material needs. The other is like Diogenes, where you just don’t want it in the first place. I’m not sure which one is more valid, and it also depends what you define as success. If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it?

所以通向幸福有两条路：一条是通过成功，满足你的欲望与物质需求；另一条则是像第欧根尼那样，一开始就不想要。这两条路哪一条更有效，我并不确定——这也取决于你如何定义“成功”。如果终点是幸福，何不直接奔向它？

这个人的脑子有点乱，参考巴菲特的定义。

Well, I’ve said many times that if you get to be 65 or 70 and later, and the people that you want to have love you actually do love you, you’re a success. I’ve never seen anybody that reaches that age. I mean, I’m not talking about somebody that’s in extreme poverty or pain or something, but I’ve never seen anybody that if they have a lot of people that love them, that is other than happy. And I’ve seen some very, very wealthy people that they give testimonial dinners too and named schools after and everything. And nobody, nobody loves them. Yeah. Their own kids would say, he’s in the attic, he’s in the attic, you know. They were okay.

我常说，如果你活到六十五、七十岁乃至更晚，而且那些你希望爱你的人真的爱你，那你就是成功人士。我从没见过在那个年纪——当然我指的不是身处极端贫困或病痛的人——如果他有很多人真心爱他，却过得不幸福的。相反，我倒见过一些极其富有的人，别人给他们办隆重的答谢晚宴、用他们的名字命名学校，可没有人——真的没有人——爱他们。就连他们自己的孩子都会说：‘他在阁楼里，他在阁楼里。’他们过得也就那样罢了。

Does Happiness Hinder Success?

幸福会阻碍成功吗？

Does being happy make you less successful? That is conventional wisdom, that may even be the practical earned experience of your reality.

幸福会让人变得不那么成功吗？这是传统观念，也可能是你现实生活中切身的体会。

You find that when you’re happy you don’t want anything so you don’t get up and do anything.

你会发现，当你感到幸福的时候，就不会再渴望什么，于是也就不会起身去做事。

On the other hand, you still got to do something. You’re an animal, you’re here to survive, you’re here to replicate, you’re driven, you’re motivated, you’re going to do something. You’re not just going to sit there all day. Some people do, maybe it’s in their nature, but I think most people still want to act, they want to live in the arena.

但另一方面，你仍然得做点什么。你是动物，你要生存、要繁衍，你有动力、有欲望，总要去做点事。你不会整天只是坐在那里。虽然有些人确实会这么做，也许这就是他们的本性，但我觉得大多数人还是希望有所作为，活在竞技场中。

I found for myself as I’ve become happier—that’s a big word, but you know, more peaceful, more calm, more present, more satisfied with what I have—I still want to do things, I just want to do bigger things. I want to do things that are more pure, more aligned with what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do. So in that sense I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way.

就我个人而言，随着我变得更加“幸福”——这个词意义重大，但你懂的，就是更加平静、更加安宁、更加活在当下、对自己所拥有的更加满足——我依然想做事情，而且是更大的事情。我想做那些更纯粹、更符合我内心判断、更能发挥我独特能力的事。从这个角度看，幸福反而可能会让你变得更成功，但你的“成功”定义也会在这个过程中发生变化。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is that a realization you think you could have gotten to had you not had some success in the first place?

克里斯·威廉姆森：如果你一开始没有取得某种成功，你觉得自己还能得出这个领悟吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: At least for me, I always wanted to take the path of material success first. I was not going to go be an ascetic and sit there and renounce everything. That just seems too unrealistic and too painful.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：至少对我来说，我一直都想先走物质成功的道路。我不会成为一个苦行僧，坐在那里拒绝一切。那看起来太不现实，也太痛苦了。

白痴，不知道自己在说什么。

In the story of Buddha, he starts out as a prince and then he sees that it’s all kind of meaningless because you’re still going to get old and die, and then he goes into the woods looking for something more. I’ll take the happy route that involves material success. Thank you.

在佛陀的故事中，他一开始是王子，然后发现这些都没有意义，因为你终究还是会变老、会死，于是他进入森林去寻找更深的意义。对我来说，我选择那条包含物质成功的“幸福路线”。谢谢。

The Path to Freedom

通往自由之路

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think it’s quicker in some ways. One of your insights is it’s far easier to achieve our material desires than it is to renounce them.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我觉得某种意义上这条路更快。你的一个洞见是：实现我们的物质欲望比放弃它们要容易得多。

既要又要，自相矛盾的心理状态。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It depends on the person, but I think you have to try that path. If you want something, go get it. I quipped that the reason to win the game is to be free of it, so you play the games, you win the games, and then hopefully, you get bored of the games.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这取决于人，但我认为你得亲自走那条路。如果你想要某样东西，那就去追求。我打趣说过，赢得游戏的意义在于可以脱离它。所以你玩游戏、赢游戏，然后希望有一天你会厌倦这个游戏。

You don’t want to just keep looping on the same game over and over, although a lot of these games are very enticing and have many levels that are relatively open-ended. Then you become free of the game, in the sense that you’re no longer trying to win it—you know you can win it—and either you move to a different game or you play the game for the sheer joy of it.

你不会想要一遍又一遍地陷在同一个游戏里，尽管很多这样的游戏确实非常诱人，而且关卡层层递进、没有尽头。当你不再执着于赢得它——因为你知道你可以赢——你就从这个游戏中解放了。你可以选择换一个游戏，或者单纯为了快乐去玩它。

Suffering and Progress

痛苦与进步

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Another one of yours: most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term. That’s classic—winning the marshmallow test on a daily basis. But there’s an interesting challenge where I think people need to avoid becoming a suffering addict, sort of using suffering as the proxy for progress as opposed to the outcome of the suffering. Right?

克里斯·威廉姆森：还有你说过的另一点：人生中的大多数收获来自短期的痛苦，以换取长期的回报。这是经典的“日复一日地赢得棉花糖测试”。但也有个有趣的挑战，就是人们需要避免成为“痛苦上瘾者”，即将痛苦本身当作进步的象征，而不是痛苦所带来的成果，对吧？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s like, I was in pain not eating the marshmallow. I was in pain doing this work. I have attached well-being and satisfaction to pain, not to what the pain gets me on the other side of it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：就像这样：我因为没吃棉花糖而痛苦，我在工作中感到痛苦。我把幸福感和满足感附着在痛苦本身上，而不是附着在痛苦之后的成果上。

If you define pain as physical pain, then it’s a real thing, it happens, and you can’t ignore it, but that’s not what we mean by suffering. Suffering is mostly mental anguish and mental pain, and it just means you don’t want to do the task at hand.

如果你把痛苦定义为身体上的疼痛，那是确实存在的，你无法忽视。但我们说的“受苦”并不是这个意思。受苦更多的是一种心理上的煎熬和痛苦，也就是说你不愿意去做当下那件事。

If you are fine doing the task at hand then you wouldn’t be suffering, and then the question is what’s more effective: to suffer along the way or just to interpret it in a way that it’s not suffering? You hear from a lot of successful people, they look back and they say, “Oh the journey was the fun part.” That was actually the entertaining part and I should have enjoyed it more. It’s a common regret.

如果你对正在做的事感到自在，那你就不是在受苦。问题在于：哪种方式更有效——一路承受痛苦，还是以一种不带痛苦的方式来诠释它？很多成功人士在回顾时会说：“其实旅程才是最有趣的部分。”那段经历本身就是精彩的，而他们常常会后悔没有更好地享受它。这是一个很常见的遗憾。

Learning from Your Past Self

从过去的自己中学习

There’s a little thought exercise I like to do which is, you can go back into your own life and try to put yourself in the exact position you were in five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago. You try to remember who you were with, what you were doing, what you were feeling, what were your emotions, what were your objectives, and really try to transport yourself back and see if there’s any advice you’d give yourself, anything you’d do differently.

我喜欢做一个小小的思维练习，就是设法回到你人生中的某个时间点——五年前、十年前、十五年前、二十年前。你试着去回忆你当时跟谁在一起，你在做什么，你当时的感受、情绪、目标都是什么，尽量把自己带回那个状态，看看有没有什么你想对当时的自己说的建议，或者有什么事情你会想要做得不同。

Now you don’t have new information, don’t pretend you could have gone back and bought a stock or bought Bitcoin or whatever, but just knowing what you know now in terms of your temperament and a little bit of age-related experience, how would you have done things differently?

当然你不会有新的信息，不要假装你可以回去买某只股票或比特币之类的。但你现在有的是关于自己性格的认知，以及一些随年龄增长而来的经验——基于这些，你会有什么不同的做法吗？

I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to do. For me, I would have done everything the same except I would have done it with less anger, less emotion, less internal suffering because that was optional. It wasn’t necessary.

我认为这是一个值得一做的练习。对我来说，我会做一样的事情，但会用更少的愤怒、更少的情绪、更少的内在煎熬去完成它们，因为那些情绪其实是可以选择不要的，并非必要。

完全处于死循环的状态，过去的已经过去。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I would argue that someone who can do the job at least peacefully, but maybe happily, is going to be more effective than someone who has unnecessary emotional turmoil.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我会说，一个能至少平静地，甚至愉快地去完成任务的人，比一个内心充满不必要情绪冲突的人，会更有效率。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, you end up with a series of miserable successes, right? The outcome may have been the same, but the entire experience of getting there…

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，那样你得到的就是一连串“痛苦的成功”。结果可能一样，但整个过程的体验……

The Journey Is All There Is

旅程才是全部

And the journey is not only the reward, the journey is the only thing there is. Even success, it’s human nature to bank it very quickly, right, because the normal loop that we run through is you sit around, you’re bored, then you want something, then when you want something you decide you’re not going to be happy until you get that thing, then you start your bout of suffering or anticipation while you strive to get that thing.

旅程不仅仅是奖励，旅程是唯一存在的东西。即使是成功，人类的本性是很快就把它存档了，对吧？因为我们通常经历的循环是：你坐着发呆，感到无聊，然后你想要某样东西，一旦你想要它，你就告诉自己在得到它之前都不会快乐。然后你开始忍受痛苦或怀着期待去努力追求它。

If you get that thing then you get used to it, and then you get bored again, then a few months later you want something else, and if you don’t get it then you’re unhappy for a bit, and then you get over it then you want something else. That’s the normal cycle. So whether you’re happy or unhappy at the end, it tends not to last.

如果你得到了那样东西，很快你就会习惯，然后再次感到无聊。几个月后你又想要别的东西。如果你得不到它，你会暂时感到不快乐，然后你就释然了，然后又想要别的。这就是正常的循环。所以无论你最终是快乐还是不快乐，那种感觉都不会持续太久。

Now I don’t want to be glib and say that there’s no point in making money or being successful. There absolutely is—money solves all your money problems, so it is good to have money.

我并不是想轻描淡写地说赚钱或成功毫无意义。它们当然有意义——金钱可以解决你所有的金钱问题，所以拥有金钱是好事。

That said, there are those stories, I don’t know if you’ve seen those studies, I don’t know how real these are, a lot of these psych studies don’t replicate, but it’s a fun little study that shows that people who break their back and people who win the lottery are back to their baseline happiness two years later.

话虽如此，有些故事我不知道你听过没，有些研究我也不确定是否真实，很多心理学研究是无法复现的。但有一个有趣的小研究说，脊椎受伤的人和中彩票的人，两年后他们的幸福感都会回到最初的基准线。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yep.

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Again, don’t know if that’s entirely true. I think money can buy you happiness if you earned it, because then along the way you have both pride and confidence in yourself, and you have a sense of accomplishment, and you set out to do something and you were right, so I’ll bet that lingers, and then as I said, it solves your money problems.

再说一次，我也不确定这是否完全准确。我认为如果钱是你靠自己挣来的，它是可以带来幸福的。因为在这个过程中你会有自豪感和自信心，你会有成就感，你设定了一个目标并实现了它，而且你是对的——我相信这种感觉是会留下来的。而且就像我说的，它还能解决你的金钱问题。

So I don’t want to be too glib about it, but I would say in general, this loop that we run through of desire, dopamine, fulfillment, unfulfillment—you have to enjoy the journey. The journey is all there is. Ninety-nine percent of your time is spent on the journey, so what kind of a journey is it if you’re not going to enjoy it?

所以我不想轻率地看待这个问题，但我想说的是，总体而言，我们经历的这种欲望、多巴胺、满足、失落的循环——你必须学会享受这个旅程。因为旅程就是全部。你99%的时间都是花在旅程上的——如果你都不去享受它，那你到底是在过怎样的人生？

Managing Desires

管理欲望

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How do you shortcut that desire contract?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那你如何缩短这个“欲望契约”？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: You could focus, you could decide that I don’t want most things. I think we have a lot of unnecessary desires that we just pick up everywhere, have opinions on everything, judgments on everything, so I think just knowing that those are the source of unhappiness will make you be choosy about your desires.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：你可以专注一点，你可以决定大多数事情我都不想要。我认为我们有太多不必要的欲望，它们来自四面八方，我们对一切都有看法、有评判。所以，如果你意识到这些欲望是痛苦的根源，你就会开始对自己的欲望更挑剔。

And frankly if you want to be successful, you have to be choosy about your desires, you have to focus. You can’t be great at everything. You’re just going to waste your energy and waste your time.

而且说实话，如果你想成功，你也必须对欲望有所取舍，你必须聚焦。你不可能在所有事情上都做到卓越。那样你只会浪费精力，浪费时间。

Is Fame Worth It?

成名值得吗？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is fame a worthwhile goal?

克里斯·威廉姆森：成名是一个值得追求的目标吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It gets you invited to better parties. It gets you to better restaurants. Fame is this funny thing where a lot of people know you, but you don’t know them, and it does get you put on a pedestal. It can get you what you want at distance, so I wouldn’t say it’s worthless. Obviously people want it for a reason, it’s high status so it attracts the opposite sex, especially for men it attracts women.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：它会让你受邀参加更好的派对，去更高档的餐厅。成名是一种很奇妙的东西，很多人认识你，但你不认识他们。它会让你被捧上神坛，也能让你远距离地得到你想要的东西。所以我不会说它毫无价值。显然人们渴望它是有原因的，它代表高地位，也吸引异性，尤其是对男性来说，它能吸引女性。

That said, it is high cost. It means you have no privacy, you do have weirdos and lunatics, you do get hit up a lot for weird things, and you’re on a stage so you’re forced to perform. You’re forced to be consistent with your past proclamations and actions, and you’re going to have haters and all that nonsense.

但与此同时，它的代价也很高。你将失去隐私，会遇到怪人和疯子，会不断被骚扰奇怪的事，而且你处在聚光灯下，被迫表演。你必须始终与过去的言论和行为保持一致，你会有很多讨厌你的人，伴随着各种荒谬的纷扰。

But the fact that we do it, the fact that we all seem to want it means that it would be disingenuous to say, “Oh no, no, I’m famous, but you don’t want to be.” That said, I think fame, like anything else, is best produced as a byproduct of something potentially more worthwhile. Wanting to be famous and craving to be famous and being famous for being famous, these are sort of traps.

但我们仍然去追求它，大家似乎都想要它，这也说明如果我说“哦，不不，我已经成名了，但你最好别想成名”，那其实是虚伪的。不过我认为成名，就像其他东西一样，最好的方式是作为某种更有价值事情的副产品。渴望成名、为成名而成名，这些都是陷阱。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Fame bait.

克里斯·威廉姆森：成名诱饵。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah exactly, so it’s better that it’s earned fame. For example, earn respect in the tribe by doing things that are good for the tribe. Who are the most famous people in human history? They’re people who sort of transcended the self, the Buddhas and the Jesuses and the Mohammads of the world.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，没错。所以最好是“赢得的”名声。例如，做一些对你的族群有益的事情，从而赢得尊重。人类历史上最有名的人是谁？那些超越了个人自我的人，比如佛陀、耶稣、穆罕默德这样的。

Who else is famous? The artists are famous—art lasts for a long time. The scientists are famous—they discover a thing. The conquerors are famous, presumably because they conquered for their tribe, was someone that they were fighting for.

还有谁成名了？艺术家——艺术能够流传很久。科学家——他们有所发现。征服者也很有名，也许是因为他们为自己的族群征战，他们有他们所代表的一方。

So generally the higher up you rise by doing things for greater and greater groups of people, even though it may be considered tyrannical or negative, like Genghis Khan is famous, but to the Mongols he was doing good, to the rest of them not so much. The higher level you’re operating at, the more people you’re taking care of, the more you sort of earn respect and fame, and I think those are good reasons to be famous.

总的来说，当你为越来越大的群体做事、服务的层级越高时，即使有时会被认为是专制或负面的，比如成吉思汗，他的名声很大。对蒙古人来说他是英雄，对其他人来说则未必。但你服务的层级越高，照顾的人越多，你就越能赢得尊重和名望。我认为这是成名的好理由。

If fame is empty, if you’re famous just because your name showed up in a lot of places or your face showed up in a lot of places, then that’s a hollow fame and I think deep down you will know that and so it’ll be fragile and you’ll always be afraid of losing it and then you’ll be forced to perform.

如果成名是空洞的，只是因为你的名字或脸出现在很多地方，那就是一种空壳的名望。我认为你内心会知道这一点，这种名声是脆弱的，你会一直害怕失去它，最终不得不强撑着维持表演。

So the kind of fame that pure actors and celebrities have, I wouldn’t want, but the kind of fame that’s earned because you did something useful, why dodge that?

所以那种仅靠演艺和名人光环获得的名声，我不会羡慕；但那种因为你做了有用的事而获得的名望，又何必回避？

Changing Your Mind

改变观点

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No, you can’t. There’s a challenge I think, especially if people make very loud public proclamations about things. You mentioned there about, you’re almost a hostage to the things that you used to say. Being able to update your opinions and change your mind looks very similar to the internet as hypocrisy does. The difference between me saying something in the past and saying something different now is perhaps I’ve learned, perhaps I’ve updated my beliefs.

克里斯·威廉姆森：不，你不能。我觉得这确实很难，尤其是当人们曾经公开、大声地表态过某些观点时。就像你刚才说的，你几乎成了自己过去言论的“人质”。在网络上，更新观点和改变主意，看起来和“虚伪”非常相似。我以前说了某件事，现在说了不同的，可能只是因为我学到了新的东西，我更新了我的信念。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right. But so few people do it in a legitimate way. I think that the grifter shill—you’d see this is the smoking gun that shows that he didn’t really believe that thing all along.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对。但很少有人以正当的方式这么做。我认为很多骗子、炒作者的那种转变，会被视为“铁证如山”，证明他从来就不相信自己曾说的那些话。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I went to a retreat in LA a couple of years ago, and there was a guy that I used to follow, a big business and productivity advice content creator, really successful, and he just totally stepped back from everything, went monk mode and focused on his business.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我几年前在洛杉矶参加了一个闭关营，那里有个我曾经关注的人，他是做商业和效率类内容的，非常成功。然后他彻底从一切中抽身，进入“苦行僧模式”，专注在自己的事业上。

Living Authentically

活出真实的自己

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I asked him why, and he said, “I started feeling like I had to live up to in private the things that I was saying in public.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：我问他为什么，他说：“我开始感觉自己在私下必须活成我在公众场合所说的那个样子。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right. It’s what Emerson said, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But essentially, look, all learning is error correction. Every knowledge creation system works through making guesses and correcting errors. So by definition, if you’re learning, you’re going to be wrong most of the time and you’ll be updating your priors.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对。这就像爱默生说的，“愚蠢的一致性是小心灵的妖魔。”但归根结底，所有的学习都是纠错。每一个知识创造系统，都是通过猜测和纠错来运作的。所以，从定义上来说，如果你在学习，你大部分时间都会是错的，你会不断更新你的先验认知。

For example, I did this Joe Rogan podcast, I don’t know, eight or nine years ago, and people will call out like the one thing that didn’t turn out to be correct. They just beat on it because it helps them in their mind raise their status a little bit – “I caught him in an error.”

比如，我在八九年前上过一次Joe Rogan的播客，有些人会抓住其中一个后来看起来不正确的观点。他们会不断批评它，因为这会让他们在自己心中提升一点地位——“我抓住他犯错了。”

If you catch someone in a blatant lie where they believe one thing and say another, that’s legit – that’s a character flaw. They shouldn’t be lying. But on the other hand, if they just made a guess at something and got it wrong, that’s different. Mostly it’s about the AI AGI thing, and I think I’m still right about that, but it’s a different story.

如果你发现某人说的是谎话，也就是他们相信一件事却说了另一件，那当然是问题，那是品格上的缺陷，他们本就不该撒谎。但如果只是对某件事做出推测，结果错了，那是另一回事。多数人拿这个AI通用智能的问题说事，我觉得我在那方面仍然是对的，不过那是另一个话题了。

People who think we have achieved AGI just fail a Turing test from their side. It’s funny how people latch onto single proclamations, but the reality is all of us are dynamical systems. We’re always changing, always learning, always growing, and hopefully we’re correcting errors. But what you don’t want to be doing is lying in public because you’re trying to look good. I think people can smell that.

那些认为我们已经实现了AGI的人，其实只是自己在图灵测试里失败了。人们总喜欢死抓住某一句话不放，但现实是我们每个人都是动态系统，我们在不断改变、学习、成长，并且希望能不断纠错。但你真正不应该做的是为了让别人觉得你好看、体面而在公众场合撒谎。我认为人们能闻得出来那种味道。

What this world really lacks right now is authenticity, because everybody wants something. They want to be seen as something, they want to be something that they’re not. So you catch a lot of people saying things that they don’t really believe, and I think people are very sensitive to that. Bullshit radars have become hypersensitized to try and work out whether or not this person means the thing that they’re saying.

现在这个世界真正缺乏的是真诚，因为每个人都想要某些东西。他们想被看作是什么，想变成他们并不是的人。所以你会看到很多人说着自己根本不相信的话，我觉得人们对此非常敏感。大家的“废话雷达”已经变得过度敏锐，总在努力判断某人说的到底是不是真心话。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Most of us are wrong most of the time, especially in any new endeavor. There’s a difference between being wrong and disingenuous though.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我们大多数人，大多数时候都是错的，尤其是在做一些新尝试时。不过，“犯错”和“虚伪”之间是有区别的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Correct. Purposely wrong. Exactly.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。故意说错，那才是真正的问题。

I think that’s the big difference. If someone is wrong, no big deal, as long as they have a genuine reason for saying what they’re saying or believing what they’re believing. But if they are lying to elevate their status or their appearance or to live up to some expectation, that’s the mistake. And that’s a mistake not just for the listener, but a mistake for themselves, because then you’re going to get trapped in the hall of mirrors. You yourself are going to be consistent with your past proclamation, so if you’re lying to others, you’re going to be lying to yourself.

我认为这就是关键区别。如果一个人错了，没关系，只要他们说的话或相信的东西有真诚的理由。但如果他们是为了提升地位、维护形象，或是迎合某种期望而说谎，那就是错了。而这不仅仅是对听众的错误，更是对自己的一种错误。因为你会陷入一座镜厅之中，你会被迫持续与自己过去的言论保持一致。如果你对他人说谎，那你也会对自己说谎。

人是行走的三观，每个人都根据自己的三观认为自己是对的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’re puppeted by a person that you are not even.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你成了一个根本不是自己的“木偶人”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. It’s like, what was the line? You’re basically trying to impress people who don’t care about you. And they don’t like the real you, and if they saw the real you, they wouldn’t care. And the people who would like the real you don’t get to see the real you, so they pass you by.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。那句话怎么说来着？你其实是在试图取悦那些根本不在乎你的人。他们并不喜欢真正的你，如果他们看到了真正的你，也不会在意。而那些可能会喜欢真实你的那部分人，却从来没有机会见到你，他们就会错过你。

You only want the respect of the very, very few people that you respect. Trying to demand respect from the masses is a fool’s errand.

你真正需要的，是那些你自己尊敬的极少数人的尊敬。试图从大众那里获得尊重，那是徒劳无功的愚蠢之举。

Status Games vs. Wealth Creation

地位游戏 vs. 财富创造

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Satisfaction games, the allure of accruing, whether it’s fame, actual fame, or just the competition comparison trap, it’s always there. There’s a real draw of being swayed by social approval, but how should people learn to get less distracted by status games in that way?

克里斯·威廉姆森：所谓的“满足游戏”，积累的诱惑——无论是名声、真正的名声，还是单纯的竞争和攀比陷阱，总是无处不在。被社会认同感牵着走确实很有吸引力，但人们应该如何学会不那么容易被这些地位游戏分散注意力？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think it just helps to see that status games don’t matter as much as they used to. In old society, let’s go back to hunter-gatherer times, there was no such thing as wealth – you just had what you could carry. There was no stored wealth, so wealth creation games didn’t exist. All that existed was status games. If you were high status, then you got what little was available first, but even back then you had to earn your status by taking care of the tribe.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我认为，意识到“地位游戏”已经不像过去那么重要，这本身就是一种帮助。在早期社会，比如狩猎采集时期，根本没有“财富”这种概念——你只能拥有你能随身携带的东西，没有财富储存，所以“财富创造”的游戏根本不存在。当时唯一存在的就是“地位游戏”。如果你地位高，那么你就能优先获得那少得可怜的资源。但即便是那时，你也得通过照顾部落来赢得地位。

Now we have wealth creation where you can actually create a product or a service. You can scale that product or service and you can provide abundance for a lot of people, and that’s not zero-sum, that’s a positive-sum game. I can be wealthy, you can be wealthy, we can create things together. And clearly since we are all collectively far, far wealthier than we were in hunter-gatherer times, wealth creation is positive.

现在我们拥有了“财富创造”——你可以真正地创造一件产品或一种服务，你可以将它规模化，为很多人带来富足。这不是零和博弈，而是正和博弈。我可以变得富有，你也可以富有，我们可以一起创造。这一点很清楚，因为我们集体而言，已经比狩猎采集时代富有了太多太多，因此财富创造本质上是正面的。

But status is limited. There’s limited status to go around. It’s a ranking ladder, it’s a hierarchy, and so if one person rises in status, somebody else has to lower in status. Now you can have multiple kinds of status, so you can expand some kinds of status, but it’s not like wealth creation where it can go infinitely, where we can all be living in the stars and moon bases or Mars colonies.

但地位是有限的。地位总量是固定的，是一个等级阶梯，是一个等级体系，所以当一个人地位上升，另一个人的地位就必须下降。当然，你可以有不同类型的地位，这样可以扩展某些种类的地位，但它不像财富创造那样可以无限扩张——我们可以全部一起住到星球基地、月球基地或火星殖民地。

Just realize the status games are inherently limited. They’re always combative. They always require direct combat, whereas wealth creation games can be just you creating products – you don’t have to fight anybody else.

要意识到，地位游戏本质上是有限的，它总是充满斗争，总是需要直接对抗，而财富创造游戏只是你在创造产品——你不需要和其他人斗。

Yes, in the marketplace your product has to succeed, but that’s not quite the same as invective against other people or being angry with other people or feeling pushed down or pushed up or having a beef with somebody. So I would argue that wealth creation games are both more pleasant, they’re positive-sum, and they actually have concrete material returns. If you have more money you can buy more things.

当然，在市场上，你的产品必须成功，但这和攻击别人、与人怒火相向、觉得被踩在脚下或在争斗中浮沉完全不同。所以我认为，财富游戏更加愉快，它是正和博弈，而且它确实带来实质性的物质回报。如果你有更多钱，你就能买到更多东西。

Show me where you can exchange your status at the bank.

请告诉我，你能在哪里用“地位”去银行兑换点什么？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Exactly, it’s vague and fuzzy.

克里斯·威廉姆森：没错，它是模糊和飘渺的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Now, you see people get rich, they have money, what do they want? They want status, so they go to Hollywood, start starring in movies, they donate to non-profits, they go to Cannes or Davos, and they start trying to trade the money for status.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：现在你看到人们变得富有了，他们有钱了，那接下来想要什么？他们想要地位。所以他们去好莱坞，开始演电影，开始向非营利组织捐款，参加戛纳或达沃斯，然后开始试图用金钱换取地位。

People always want what they don’t have, and we are evolutionarily hardwired for status because as I said, wealth creation didn’t really exist until the agricultural revolution when you could store grain. Then the industrial revolution took it to another level and now the information age is taking it to yet another level.

人总是想要自己没有的东西，而我们在人类进化中就被深深植入了对地位的追求——正如我说过的，直到农业革命、粮食能够储存之前，财富创造根本不存在。然后工业革命把它带到了一个新层次，而现在信息时代又将它推向了另一个层次。

There’s never been an easier time to make money. Yes, it’s still hard, but there’s never been an easier time to create wealth, because there’s so much leverage out there, there’s so much opportunity. You still have to go find it, it’s not easy, it’s not going to fall on your lap and you have to learn something and know something and do something interesting, but nevertheless it’s possible to many more people. A few hundred years ago you were born a serf, you were going to die a serf, there was almost no way out of that.

现在从来没有一个时代像今天这样容易赚钱。是的，它依然不容易，但创造财富从未像现在这样简单，因为现在存在大量的杠杆和机会。你仍然需要去寻找它，这并不容易，它不会自动掉进你怀里，你必须学会一些东西，懂得一些事情，做些有意思的事。但无论如何，它对更多人而言是可能的。几百年前，你生来是农奴，就只能死为农奴，几乎没有出路。

That’s changed, and so I would argue that you’re better off focusing on wealth games than status games. If you’re trying to build up, for example, your following on a social network and get famous and then get rich off of being famous, that’s a much harder path than getting rich first, and then going for your fame afterwards would be my advice.

这一切已经改变了。所以我会说，你更应该专注于“财富游戏”，而不是“地位游戏”。比如，如果你正在努力在社交网络上积累粉丝、变得有名，然后靠名气赚钱，这条路比你先赚到钱再追求名气要难得多。这是我的建议。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: A lot of people do that, as you said. It’s funny how people who have achieved such a level of wealth – you think why do you need the status, given that most people use status to then try and cash in to achieve wealth? If you’ve achieved “fuck you money” already, if you’re post-money or asset-heavy as it’s known, why are you trying to go in the other direction?

克里斯·威廉姆森：很多人确实会这么做，正如你所说。有趣的是，那些已经实现极高财富水平的人——你会想，他们为什么还需要追求地位？毕竟大多数人是想先获得地位，然后用地位变现来实现财富。如果你已经实现了“够用一辈子的钱”（所谓的“F you money”），如果你已经超越了金钱，拥有大量资产，那你为什么还要反过来追求地位？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: As you said, because we’ve got an illustrious history biologically of wanting status, and wealth is kind of novel. It’s new. Wealth is something that you have to understand more intellectually. Yeah, there’s a physical component, more food, more survival, but to truly understand the effects and the powers and the abilities and limitations, and the advantages and disadvantages of wealth, you have to use your neocortex a lot more.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：就像你说的，因为从生物学上来看，我们有一段根深蒂固、悠久的追求地位的历史，而财富是比较新的东西。财富是你需要通过理性理解的概念。没错，它有物质层面，比如更多食物、更强生存能力，但如果要真正理解财富的作用、力量、能力与局限、优势与劣势，你必须更多地动用新皮层去思考。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Does that mean the reason to play the game is to win the game and be done with it? Is it harder to win and to be done with for status than it is for wealth?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那这是不是意味着我们玩这个游戏的目的，是为了赢下它然后离场？相比财富，地位是不是更难赢、更难放下？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s a good observation, I hadn’t thought that through, but you’re right. I think people will always want more status, but I think you can be satisfied at a certain level of wealth.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这是个很好的观察，我之前没这样深入想过，但你说得对。我认为人们永远会想要更多的地位，但财富在达到某个水平后，人是可以满足的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, you always have this sort of sense, and this is what leaderboards are.

克里斯·威廉姆森：确实，人们总是有这种感觉，这也是“排行榜”的本质所在。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. And it is zero-sum.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，而且这是个零和游戏。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And it is, I guess, you know, the Forbes richest people on the planet.

克里斯·威廉姆森：正如我们看到的，比如福布斯的全球富豪榜。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. That one’s harder to climb the ladder on, but the fact that, for example, iTunes and YouTube can put you in competition against your contemporaries every single day, and make you go up and down and show you likes and comments and ratings subscribers…

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对啊。那种排行榜确实更难攀登。但你想想，比如 iTunes 和 YouTube，每天都把你放进一个与同辈人竞争的环境中，让你上下浮动，看到点赞数、评论、评分、订阅者……

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is how much you’re up. Exactly. They keep you running on that treadmill forever.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你的“提升值”是多少。没错。它们让你一直跑在那台永无止境的跑步机上。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Jimmy Carr has this cool idea where he says trajectory is more important than position. So, if you are number one hundred and one in the world, but last year you were number two hundred, versus you’re number two in the world, but last year you were number one, there is this sense of the deceleration is very, very tangible.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：Jimmy Carr 有个很棒的观点，他说“轨迹比位置更重要”。所以，如果你现在是全球第101名，但去年是第200名，那你感觉在上升；而如果你是全球第2名，但去年是第1名，那种“减速感”是非常明显的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And again it goes back to evolution. Something that is bleeding eventually dies, unless you stop the bleeding, so you’re hardwired not to lose what you have. Because we evolved in conditions where we’re so close to just not surviving, you don’t want to give anything up. It’s hardwired into us to not give anything up.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这还是可以追溯到进化本能。任何正在流血的生命，如果不止血最终就会死去，所以我们从基因里就被“预设”为不能失去已有的东西。我们在极度接近死亡边缘的条件下进化出来，自然会有“绝不能放弃任何东西”的本能。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So you grip tightly?

克里斯·威廉姆森：所以你会紧紧抓住不放？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。

The Importance of Self-Esteem

自尊的重要性

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The worst outcome in the world is not having self-esteem. Why?

克里斯·威廉姆森：世界上最糟糕的状况就是没有自尊。为什么？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s a tough one. I look at the people who don’t like themselves and that’s the toughest slot because they’re always wrestling with themselves. It’s hard enough to face the outside world, and no one’s going to like you more than you like yourself, so if you’re struggling with yourself then the outside world becomes an insurmountable challenge.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这个问题很深。我看到那些不喜欢自己的人，那是最艰难的位置，因为他们始终在与自己斗争。面对外部世界已经够难了，而没有人会比你自己更喜欢你自己——所以如果你连自己都接受不了，那外部世界就成了无法逾越的障碍。

It’s hard to say why people have low self-esteem. It might be genetic, it might just be circumstantial. A lot of times I think it’s because they just weren’t unconditionally loved as a child and that sort of seeps in at a deep core level, but self-esteem issues can be the most limiting.

人们为何自尊低下，其实很难说。可能是遗传，也可能是环境因素。很多时候，我认为是因为他们小时候没有被无条件地爱过，这种缺失会渗透到内心最深处。而自尊问题，可能是最具限制性的障碍。

One interesting thought is that to some extent self-esteem is a reputation you have with yourself. You’re watching yourself at all times, you know what you’re doing and you have your own moral code. Everyone has a different moral code, but if you don’t live up to your own moral code, the same code that you hold others to, it will damage your self-esteem. So perhaps one way to build up your self-esteem is to live up to your own code – very rigorously have one and then live up to it.

一个有趣的想法是，自尊在某种程度上是你在自己内心中的“声誉”。你随时都在观察自己，你知道自己在做什么，而且你有属于你自己的道德标准。每个人的标准不同，但如果你不能做到你对别人也要求的标准，那就会损害你的自尊。所以，建立自尊的一种方式可能就是：坚定不移地制定一套标准，然后严格遵守它。

Another way to raise your self-esteem might be to do things for others. If I look back on my life and what are the moments that I’m actually proud of, they’re very far and few between. It’s not that often and it’s not the things you would expect – it’s not the material success, it’s not having learned this thing or that. It’s when I made a sacrifice for somebody or something that I loved. That’s when I’m actually, ironically, most proud.

另一个提升自尊的方法可能是为他人做事。如果我回顾我的一生，那些真正让我感到自豪的时刻其实屈指可数。而且往往不是你想象中的那些——不是物质上的成功，也不是学会了什么技能。真正让我感到自豪的，是我为我所爱的人或事做出牺牲的时刻。讽刺的是，那些时刻才是我最骄傲的。

虚荣的病。

Now that’s through an explicit mental exercise, but I’ll bet you at some level I’m recording that implicitly. So that tells me that even if I am not being loved, the way to create love is to give love, to express love through sacrifice and through duty. And so I think doing things like that can build up your self-esteem really fast.

这虽然是一个显性的心理练习，但我敢说，在某种层面上，我在潜意识里也在记录这些。所以这让我明白：即使我未被爱着，创造爱的方式是给予爱——通过牺牲和责任去表达爱。因此，我认为做这些事情可以迅速提升你的自尊。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s interesting when you talk about sacrifice, because a lot of the time people say, “I sacrificed so much for my job.” It’s like, yeah, but that was you sacrificing something that you wanted less for something that you wanted more, as opposed to genuinely taking some sort of cost.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你谈到“牺牲”时很有意思，因为很多人说：“我为工作牺牲了很多。”但其实，那往往只是你为了一个你更想要的东西，牺牲了一个你不那么想要的东西，而不是那种真正承担代价的牺牲。

The Price of Integrity

诚信的代价

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And, yeah, I wonder whether if self-esteem is you adhering to your internal values, your actions aligning with your values, even when it’s difficult or perhaps even more so when it’s difficult. I wonder whether there is a price that people who are more introspective, high integrity pay because they think, well, you’ve got this heavier set of overheads that you need to pay in some way.

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的，我在想，自尊是否可以理解为你坚持自己的内在价值观，即使在困难时也能做到言行一致，甚至说在困难时更能体现这种一致性。我也在想，那些更具内省能力、极具诚信的人，是否要为此付出某种代价——因为他们在某种意义上需要承担更沉重的“心理成本”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, being ethical were profitable, everybody would do it, right? So, at some level it does involve a sacrifice, but that sacrifice can also be thought of as you’re thinking for the long term rather than the short term. For example, virtues are a set of beliefs that if everybody in society followed them as individuals, it would lead to win-win outcomes for everybody.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：如果讲诚信是能立刻赚钱的事，那大家都会这么做，对吧？所以在某种程度上，确实需要某种牺牲。但这种牺牲也可以理解为你在做长期而非短期的思考。例如，“美德”是一种信念体系，如果社会中的每个人都作为个体去遵循这些信念，那最终将带来对所有人都有利的双赢结果。

So if I am honest and you are honest, then we can do business more easily, we can interact more easily because we can trust each other. Even though there might be a few liars in the system, as long as there aren’t too many liars and too many cheaters, a high trust society where everybody’s honest is better off, and I think a lot of the virtues work this way.

如果我诚实，你也诚实，那么我们就更容易做生意、更容易合作，因为我们彼此信任。即使系统中可能存在一些说谎者，只要不是太多，不是到达系统性腐蚀的程度，那么一个“高信任社会”——也就是人人讲诚信的社会——终将更富裕、更健康。我认为许多美德都是以这种方式发挥作用的。

If I don’t go around sleeping with your wife and you don’t sleep with mine, and if I don’t take all the food that’s at the table first and so on, then we all get along better and we can play win-win games.

如果我不去勾引你的妻子，你也不勾引我的；如果我不一上桌就抢光所有的食物等等，那么我们彼此相处就会更融洽，我们就可以展开双赢的合作。

Game Theory and Society

博弈论与社会结构

In game theory the most famous game is Prisoner’s Dilemma, but that’s all about everybody cheating and the Nash equilibrium, the stable equilibrium there is everybody cheats. The only way you can play a win-win game is if you have long term iterated moves, but that’s not actually the most common game played in society.

博弈论中最著名的例子是“囚徒困境”，它描述的是一个所有人都作弊的情景，其中的纳什均衡点也正是“每个人都选择作弊”。唯一能实现双赢的方法，是当博弈可以长期重复进行时才成立。但其实，这并不是现实社会中最常见的博弈形式。

The most common game played is one called a stag hunt, where if we cooperate we can bring down a big stag and both have big dinners, but if we don’t cooperate then we have to go hunt like rabbits and we each have small dinners.

现实中最常见的博弈是所谓的“猎鹿游戏”：如果我们合作，就能猎到一头大鹿，我们都能饱餐一顿；但如果我们不合作，那我们就只能各自去猎小兔子，吃一顿小饭。

That game has two stable equilibriums – one could be where we’re both hunting the rabbit, and one could be where we’re hunting the stag. So the high trust society is a more virtuous society where I can trust you to come hunt the stag with me and show up on time and do the work and divide it up properly.

这个游戏存在两个稳定的均衡点——一个是我们都去打兔子，另一个是我们合作去打鹿。因此，“高信任社会”其实是一个更有美德的社会，在这种社会中，我可以相信你会和我一起去猎鹿，按时出现、认真分工、公平分配。

So you want to live in a system where everybody has their own set of virtues and follows them, and then we all win. But I would argue you don’t need to do that for sacrifice, you don’t need to do that for other people, you can do it just purely for yourself. You will have higher self-esteem, you will attract other high virtue people.

所以你希望生活在一个每个人都有自己的美德并且愿意遵循它们的体系中，这样我们大家才能共赢。但我认为，这种行为不需要以“牺牲”或“为他人着想”为出发点，你完全可以为了自己去做这些事——你会拥有更高的自尊，也会吸引到同样讲究美德的人。

低下的逻辑，亚马逊的原子化已经在实践中证明了什么是有效率的共赢。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Would I go on a stag hunt with me?

克里斯·威廉姆森：如果是我，我愿不愿意跟自己一起去猎鹿？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Correct. Yeah, that’s right. If you’re the kind of person who long term signals ethics and virtues, then you’ll attract other people who are ethical and virtuous, whereas if you are a shark, you will eventually find yourself swimming entirely amongst sharks and that’s an unpleasant existence.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。是的，如果你是那种能长期释放出“有美德、有操守”信号的人，那你自然会吸引到同样有操守的人；相反，如果你是只“鲨鱼”，那你迟早会发现自己被困在一群“鲨鱼”中间——那是一种相当糟糕的生存状态。

This goes back to the equivalent of the marshmallow test. The marshmallow test does not replicate – it got hit hard in the replication crisis recently, but it is about trading off the short term for the long term. I think for a lot of these so-called virtues, there are long-term selfish reasons to be virtuous.

这可以类比“棉花糖实验”。尽管该实验近年来在可重复性上受到很多质疑，但它的本质是关于“为了长期利益而放弃短期诱惑”。我认为，对于很多所谓的“美德”，其实背后都有一种“长期利己”的动机。

Self-Doubt and Confidence

自我怀疑与自信

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. Did you deal with self-doubt in the past? Is that something that was a hurdle for you to overcome?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你过去是否曾经经历过自我怀疑？这对你来说是不是一个必须克服的障碍？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yes and no. I think I dealt with self-doubt in the sense that, “Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing, and I need to figure it out,” but I didn’t doubt myself in the way of “somebody else knows better than me for me” or that “I’m an idiot” or “I’m not worthwhile.”

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：算是也算不是。我确实会有那种“我不知道自己在做什么，我需要搞清楚”的疑问，但我从不会怀疑自己比如“别人比我更了解我自己”或者“我是个傻瓜”“我不值得”等等。

I guess I had the benefit that I grew up with a lot of love. The people around me loved me unconditionally and so that just gave me a lot of confidence. Not the kind of confidence that would say I have the answer, but the kind of confidence that I will figure it out and I know what I want, or only I am a good arbiter of what I want.

我想这可能是因为我从小在充满爱的环境中长大，周围的人无条件地爱我，这给了我很大的自信。这种自信并不是“我已经有了答案”的那种，而是“我一定能找出答案”、“我知道自己想要什么”，或者说“只有我自己能判断我想要什么”的那种自信。

说谎，绝无可能。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, that level of self-belief I suppose allows you to determine what is it that matters to me, my self-esteem. Should I chase this thing or not? I can make a fair judgment on that as opposed to being so swayed. It’s such a good point about even if you think you’re not consciously logging the stuff that you’re doing, there is some part that’s in the back of your mind. Was it the daemon? Is that what the ancient Greeks or something used to talk about?

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的，那种程度的自信会让你更清楚什么对你真正重要，什么才是你该在乎的东西，比如你的自尊。比如面对一件事，我要不要去追求它？你可以做出一个清晰的判断，而不是被左右。你刚才说得特别好——就算你没有有意识地记录你所做的一切，其实你头脑深处还是在记录的。那叫什么来着？daemon？是古希腊人用来描述的东西吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. In computer science, there’s a concept of a daemon, which is a program that’s always running in the background. You can’t see it. But yeah, it probably comes from the ancient Greek daemon.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，计算机科学中有一个叫“daemon”的概念，它是一个始终在后台运行的程序，你看不见它。但这个词很可能就是来源于古希腊的“daemon”。

What you know that you don’t even know you know is far greater than what you know you know. You can’t even articulate most of the things you know. There are feelings you have that have no words for them. There are thoughts you have that are felt within the body or subconsciously that you never articulate to yourself.

那些你知道却不知道自己知道的东西，远远多于你清楚知道自己知道的东西。你无法用语言表达出你大多数的知识。你有一些感受，是没有词语可以描述的；你也有一些想法，是身体感知到的或潜意识里的，但你从未真正用语言对自己说出来。

You can’t articulate the rules of grammar, yet you exercise them effortlessly when you speak. So I would argue that your implicit knowledge and your knowledge that is unknown to yourself is far greater than the knowledge you can articulate and that you can communicate.

比如你可能说不出语法规则，但你说话时却能毫不费力地用对。所以我认为，你内隐的知识和那些你自己都不知道自己知道的知识，其实远比你能清楚表达出来、能和他人沟通的知识要多得多。

At some level you’re always watching yourself, that’s what your consciousness is, right? It’s the thing that’s watching everything, your mind, including your body. So if you want to have high self-esteem, then earn your own self-respect.

在某种意义上，你始终都在观察自己——这就是“意识”的本质，对吧？它是那个在观察一切的存在，包括你的思想、你的身体。所以如果你想拥有高自尊，那就去赢得自己对自己的尊重。

I have this idea, the internal golden rule. So the golden rule says treat others the way that you want to be treated. The internal golden rule says treat yourself like others should have treated you, and it was a repost to maybe people that didn’t grow up with unconditional love.

我有个想法，叫“内在的黄金法则”。传统的黄金法则说的是“你希望别人如何对待你，你就如何对待别人”；而内在黄金法则是“你要像别人本应那样善待你一样善待自己”，这也是我对那些没有在无条件的爱中长大的人提出的一种回应。

The Nature of Love

爱的本质

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. On the love thing…

克里斯·威廉姆森：嗯，说到“爱”……

NAVAL RAVIKANT: One of the interesting things about love is you can try to remember the feeling of being loved. So go back to when someone was in love with you or someone did love you, and really remember that feeling, like really sit with it and try to recreate it within yourself.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：关于“爱”，一个有趣的点是你可以尝试去回忆“被爱”的感觉。回到你曾经被某人深爱、或某人真的爱过你的那个时刻，好好地坐下来，把那种感觉找回来，把它在自己内心重新唤起。

Then go to the feeling of you loving someone and when you were in love. I’m not even talking about romantic love necessarily, so be a little careful there. I’m talking more about love for a sibling or a child or something like that, or a parent. Think about when you felt love towards someone or something, and now which is better?

然后，再去回忆你去爱别人的那个时刻，或者你曾经深爱某人时的感觉。我这里说的甚至不一定是浪漫的爱情，要稍微注意下。我更多说的是对兄弟姐妹、孩子、父母的爱。想一想那时候你去爱某人或某事的那种感觉——哪种感觉更好？

I would argue that the feeling of being in love is actually more exhilarating than the feeling of being loved. Being loved is a little cloying, it’s a little too sweet, you kind of want to push the person away, it’s a little embarrassing, and you know that if that person is too much into it that you feel constrained.

我认为，“去爱”的感觉其实比“被爱”的感觉更令人兴奋。被爱有时候有点腻、太甜了，让人有点想把对方推开，甚至有些尴尬。如果对方太投入了，你反而会感到被束缚。

On the other hand, the feeling of being in love is very expansive, it’s very open, it actually makes you a better version of yourself, it makes you want to be a better person. So you can create love anytime you want, it’s just that craving to receive it that’s the problem.

而相反，“去爱”的感觉是扩张的、开放的，它会让你变得更好，让你想成为更好的自己。所以你其实可以在任何时候创造爱，只不过问题在于我们总是渴望“被爱”，而不是主动地“去爱”。

The Cost of Pride

骄傲的代价

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The most expensive trait is pride. How come?

克里斯·威廉姆森：最昂贵的性格特质是“骄傲”。为什么？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh, that was a recent one. I tweeted that just because I think that pride is the enemy of learning. When I look at my friends and colleagues, the ones who are still stuck in the past and have grown the least are the ones who were the proudest because they sort of feel like they already had the answers and so they don’t want to correct themselves publicly.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：哦，这是我最近发的一条推文。我之所以说“骄傲”是最昂贵的性格特质，是因为我认为骄傲是学习的敌人。当我观察我周围的朋友和同事时，那些停滞不前、成长最少的人，往往是那些最骄傲的人，因为他们觉得自己早就掌握了所有答案，不愿意在公众面前承认错误。

This goes back to the fame conversation – you get locked into something you said, it made you famous, you’re known for that and now you want to pivot or change. So pride prevents you from saying “I’m wrong.”

这也可以追溯到我们之前关于“名声”的对话——你曾说过某些话，这些话让你出名了，人们认识你是因为这些话，现在你想转向、改变，但“骄傲”会阻止你说出“我错了”。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s pride in this context here?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那你说的“骄傲”，在这个语境下指的是什么？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It could be as simple as you’re trading stocks and then you don’t admit you were wrong, so you hang on to a lousy trade. It could be that you made a decision to marry someone or move somewhere or enter a profession, it doesn’t work out, and then you don’t admit that you were wrong, so you get stuck in it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：它可能简单到你在炒股，但你不肯承认自己看错了方向，于是死守一个烂仓。也可能是你决定和某人结婚、搬到某个地方、进入某个行业，但结果不如人意，你却不愿意承认错误，最终被困在其中。

It’s mostly about getting trapped in local maxima, as opposed to going back down and climbing up the mountain again. And that’s why it’s an expensive trait, because you continue to need to repay it in one form or another.

它本质上是把你困在一个“局部最优解”中，而不是让你有勇气回头、重新攀登那座更高的山峰。这就是为什么说它是“昂贵”的性格特质——因为你会不断为它以各种方式付出代价。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, you’re just stuck at a suboptimal point. It’s going to cost you money, it’s going to cost you success.

克里斯·威廉姆森：对，你就是卡在了一个次优的位置上。它会让你损失金钱、错失成功。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And time.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：还有时间。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And time.

克里斯·威廉姆森：对，还有时间。

The Willingness to Start Over

从头再来的勇气

NAVAL RAVIKANT: The great artists always have this ability to start over, whether it’s Paul Simon or Madonna or YouTube. I’m dating myself a little bit, but even the great entrepreneurs, they’re just always willing to start over.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：伟大的艺术家总是具备重新开始的能力，无论是保罗·西蒙、麦当娜，还是YouTube。我提这些名字可能暴露了我的年代（笑），但哪怕是那些伟大的创业者，他们也都拥有随时从头开始的意愿。

I’m always struck by the Elon Musk story where he did PayPal as X.com originally, actually, was his financial institution that got merged into PayPal.

我总是对埃隆·马斯克的故事印象深刻。他最初创办的是X.com，那其实是一家金融机构，后来并入了PayPal。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, it’s good that you’ve got the domain, you know what I mean?

克里斯·威廉姆森：他手里还能保住这个域名，说明他早有打算，你懂我的意思吧？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, exactly. I’ll park that, I’ll hold on to it. He’s been using it for quite a while, and he said something like along the lines of, “I made two hundred million dollars from the sale of PayPal, I put one hundred million dollars into SpaceX, eighty million in Tesla, twenty million in Solar City, and I had to borrow money for rent.”

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，正是。他确实一直保留着那个域名。他说过这样一句话：“我从出售PayPal赚了两亿美元，拿一亿投到SpaceX，八千万投到特斯拉，两千万投到SolarCity，最后还得借钱交房租。”

This guy is a perennial taker. He’s always willing to start over. He doesn’t have any pride about being seen as successful or being seen as a failure. He’s willing to put it all in.

这个人是个“永远愿意再搏一次”的人。他总是愿意从头再来。无论是成功还是失败，他毫无包袱。他愿意把一切都压进去。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Back himself again each time.

克里斯·威廉姆森：每一次都选择相信自己。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Back himself again each time, but the key thing is he’s always willing to start over. Even now when he’s sort of made his new startup as USA. He’s basically trying to fix it like he would fix one of his startups.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，每次都再次相信自己。但关键是——他总是愿意从零开始。哪怕现在，他把美国当成一个“创业项目”来重塑，也是在用自己重启公司的方式来修复它。

I think that is a willingness to look like a fool, and that is a willingness to start over, and a lot of people just don’t have that. They become successful, they become rich, they become famous, and that’s it, they’re stuck. They don’t want to go back to zero, and creating anything great requires zero to one, and that means you go back to zero, and that’s really painful and hard to do.

我觉得这是一种“愿意看起来像个傻瓜”的态度，也是一种从头再来的勇气。而大多数人是没有这个的。他们一旦成功了、有钱了、有名了，就停在那了，不愿回到起点。但凡要创造伟大的东西，都要经历“从零到一”的过程，这意味着你得回到“零”，而这是非常痛苦、非常艰难的事。

Choosing Happiness

选择幸福

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Talking about risk, something I’ve been thinking about a lot to do with you. Any moment when you’re not having a good time, when you’re not really happy, you’re not doing anyone any favors. I think lots of people have become unusually familiar with suffering silently in that sort of a way of not having a high bar for your expectation for quality of life.

克里斯·威廉姆森：说到“风险”，有件事我最近老在想，特别跟你有关。每当你过得不开心、没有真正享受当下的时候，其实你也帮不了任何人。我觉得现在很多人已经习惯于默默承受痛苦，习惯了把对生活品质的期望值放得很低。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. A lot of it is just you’re memeing yourself into a bad outcome because you think that somehow suffering is glorious, or that it makes you a better person. My old quip was, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy? Why can’t you figure that one out?”

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。这种状态很大程度上是你自己把自己洗脑了——你以为痛苦是高尚的，或者能让你变得更好。我以前常说一句话，“你这么聪明，为什么不快乐？为什么这事你就搞不定？”

The reality is you can be smart and happy, there are plenty of people in human history who are smart and happy, and I think it just starts with saying, “Yeah, you know what, I’m going to be happy.”

事实上，你既可以聪明，也可以快乐。历史上有很多人都是又聪明又快乐的。我认为这从一个决定开始：“对，我决定要快乐。”

There was a guy that I met in Thailand a long time ago and he used to work for Tony Robbins. He had a great attitude, and we were sitting around and he said, “I realized one day that someone out there had to be the happiest person in the world, like that person just has to exist.” He said, “Why not me? I’ll take on that burden, I’ll be that guy.” I heard that and I thought, “Wow that’s pretty good, that’s a good frame,” but he knew how to reframe things.

我很多年前在泰国遇到过一个人，他曾在Tony Robbins那儿工作。他的心态非常棒。我们闲聊时他说，“有一天我意识到，世界上一定存在一个最幸福的人，这样的人肯定存在。”然后他说，“为什么不是我呢？我来承担这个‘责任’，我来当这个人。”我听了之后觉得，“哇，这个思维框架真棒。”他很擅长重新定义视角。

I think a lot of happiness is just a choice in the sense that you make. First you just identify yourself as “actually I’m going to be a person that’s going to be happy, I’m going to figure it out,” and you just figure it out along the way.

我认为，幸福其实是一种选择。首先你要把自己定位成一个“我要成为快乐的人，我会找到办法”的人。然后在这个过程中你就慢慢找到了答案。

You’re not going to lose your other predilections, you’re not going to lose your ambition or desire for success. I think a lot of people have this fear that “Oh if I’m happy then I won’t want to be successful.” No, you’ll just want to do things that are more aligned with the happy version of you and you’ll be successful at those things. Believe me, the happy version of you is not going to look back at the unhappy version and say, “Oh man, that guy was going to be more successful, I wish I was him.” You’re actually trying to be successful so you’ll be happy.

你不会因此失去自己的其他倾向，不会失去雄心壮志，也不会失去对成功的渴望。我想很多人担心，“如果我太快乐了，我就不会再渴望成功了。”不是这样的。你只会去做那些更契合“快乐的你”的事情，而你在那些事上也更容易取得成功。相信我，“快乐的你”不会回头看那个痛苦的你，然后说：“哎呀，那家伙本来更容易成功，我真想变回他。”你努力成功，其实只是为了最终变得快乐。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, so do…

克里斯·威廉姆森：哦，所以是……

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s the whole point. You’ve gotten it backwards.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这就是关键。你把因果关系搞反了。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You unlocked one of my trap cards. One of my favorite insights is that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that’s supposed to get it. So we sacrifice happiness in order to be successful, so that when we’re finally sufficiently successful, we can actually be happy.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你刚刚解锁了我的一个“陷阱卡”。我最喜欢的一个观点是：我们经常为了“获取某样东西的手段”，而牺牲了我们真正想要的东西。我们为了成功而牺牲幸福，是因为我们以为等成功了，幸福就会到来。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And if you have some sort of simultaneous equation, and you just sort of stripped success off from both sides… Yeah, at least in my own life, I have not found there to be a trade off. If anything, I have found that the happier I get, the more I am going to do the things that I’m good at and aligned with and that will make me even happier, and so I actually end up more successful, not less.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：但如果你把这个“等式”两边的“成功”都去掉……至少就我自己的人生而言，我并没有发现“幸福”和“成功”之间有冲突。相反，我越快乐，就越会去做那些我擅长、也真正契合我的事，而这反过来又让我更快乐。最终我变得更成功了，而不是更少。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The aligned with thing is interesting. I’m gonna try and put this across as delicately as I can.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你说的“契合”这一点真有意思。我接下来要尽量小心地表达一下我的意思……

The Freedom of Self-Prioritization

自我优先的自由

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I would say from the bit of time that we’d spent together, you have a really interesting trait of holistic selfishness. You’re sort of prepared to put yourself first. You seem largely unfazed by saying or doing things that might result in other people feeling a little bit awkward if it’s truthful for you. It’s like unapologetically self prioritizing, I guess.

克里斯·威廉姆森：根据我们相处的这段时间，我觉得你有一个非常有趣的特质，就是“整体性自私”。你愿意把自己放在第一位。你似乎完全不在意说出或做出一些让别人感觉尴尬的事——只要那是真实的你。我猜可以说是毫不道歉地把自己置于优先。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, I think everybody is, maybe unapologetic is the part that’s relatively rare, but I think everybody puts themselves first. That’s just human nature. You’re here because you survive, you’re a separate organism.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，我觉得每个人都是这样的。也许“不道歉”这个部分比较少见，但其实每个人都是把自己放在第一位的。这是人性。你之所以存在，是因为你在生存——你是一个独立的个体。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Interesting. I’m maybe, but I know we like to virtue signal and pretend we’re doing it for each other. How many times does somebody say, “Yeah, of course, I’d love to come to the wedding.” They’re like, “I don’t want to be at the fucking wedding.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：这很有意思。也许吧，但我知道人们喜欢通过道德姿态表现得好像我们是在为别人着想。比如，有多少次有人会说“当然啦，我很乐意参加婚礼”，其实内心是在想，“鬼才想去那个婚礼”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I don’t go to weddings.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我不参加婚礼。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But this is my point. Right. So I don’t think you’re necessarily right with that. I think that people don’t put themselves first. I sometimes think that they compromise what it is that they want in order to appease socially what’s in front of them.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这就是我想说的。所以我不完全认同你说的“每个人都把自己放在第一位”。我觉得很多人其实并没有那么做。他们经常会为了满足眼前的社交期待而牺牲自己真正想要的东西。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I just view it as everyone’s wasting their time on it. Don’t do something you don’t want to do. Why are you wasting your time? There’s so little time on this earth. Life goes fast, what is it, four thousand weeks that’s your lifespan? And yes, we hear that, but we don’t remember it, but I guess I’m keenly aware of how little time I have, so I’m just not going to waste it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我觉得这是在浪费时间。别去做你不想做的事，为什么要浪费时间？我们在世上的时间太少了。人生一共才多少，四千个星期？我们听过这说法，但我们并没有真正记住。但我非常清楚自己时间的有限性，所以我不会去浪费它。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How have you got more comfortable at being the unapologetic self prioritizer?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你是怎么做到越来越自在地“毫不道歉地以自我为先”的？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I’ve gotten utterly more and more ruthless on it, mainly it’s that I see or hear people’s freedom, and then that liberates me further. So I read a blog post by P. Marka, aka Marc Andreessen, where he said don’t keep a schedule, and I took that to heart, so I deleted my calendar and I don’t keep a schedule, I try to remember it all in my head, if I can’t remember it, I’m not going to add it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我在这方面变得越来越“冷酷无情”。主要是我看到或者听到别人怎样追求自由，然后我就被进一步激励。我曾读过P·Marka，也就是Marc Andreessen写的一篇博文，他说“不要安排日程”，我深受触动，于是我删掉了日历，不再设定时间表。我尽量靠记忆来安排事情，记不住的，我就不去做。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m glad you got your own time.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我挺开心你保留了属于你自己的时间。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, exactly, I had to look things up at the last minute. But ironically, don’t even know if Mark himself follows that, but he made the correct point. I read a little story about Jack Dorsey doing all his business off his iPhone and iPad and not even going into a Mac, and I said, okay, I want to do that, so I’m going operate through text messaging and I put up my nasty email.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，没错，我经常临时才去查安排。讽刺的是，我甚至不知道Marc自己有没有真的实践这套，但他说的确实有道理。我还读过一个小故事，说Jack Dorsey只用iPhone和iPad处理工作，根本不用Mac。我当时就想，好，我也要这么做，所以我改用短信处理事务，还设置了一个“毒辣”的邮件自动回复。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Does that feel like more freedom?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那种方式让你感觉更自由吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It does, yeah, because you’re on the go, so I have a nasty email autoresponder that says I don’t check email and don’t text me either, right? If you need to find me, you’ll find me.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：确实有，更自由。因为我随时都可以行动。我设的邮件自动回复很“毒”，写着我不会查看邮件，也别发短信给我。如果你真有事找我，你自会找到办法。

Obviously, some of this is a luxury of success, but some of these habits I adopted long before actually, the hostile email autoresponder started a long time ago. I used to own the domain, I let it go, dontdocoffee.com, I used to reply from that email just so people would get the point, but I stopped being rude about it, now I just ghost, I just disappear.

当然，这其中一部分是因为我已经成功了，有这样的“奢侈”条件。但其实这些习惯我很早就开始了。那个“敌意满满”的自动回复早就有了。我以前还注册过一个域名dontdocoffee.com，专门用这个邮箱回信，让人明白我的立场。不过现在我已经不再刻意粗鲁了，我干脆直接“消失”，不回应。

My wife knows not to ever book or schedule me for anything, I’m not expected to go to couples dinners, I’m not expected to go to birthdays, I’m not expected to go to weddings. If somebody tries to rope her into having me show up, she says he makes his own decisions, you gotta ask him directly.

我老婆知道，绝对不能帮我安排任何日程。我不用参加情侣聚餐，不用去生日派对，也不用去婚礼。如果有人想通过她让我出席什么，她就会说，“他自己做决定，你得直接问他。”

脑残。

Embracing Serendipity

拥抱机缘巧合

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about vice versa? Well, you’re not killing serendipity in a way, are you?

克里斯·威廉姆森：反过来说呢？你这样做并没有扼杀机缘巧合，对吧？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: No. I’m freeing up all my time, so my entire life is serendipity. I get to interact with whoever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want, but I hear the invite, then make the decision.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。我是在释放所有的时间，所以我的整个人生就是由机缘巧合构成的。我可以随时、随地和任何我想接触的人交流，我先听到邀请，再决定是否参与。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because if there’s fewer things incoming, you’re assuming that you know best for you.

克里斯·威廉姆森：因为当你接纳的事务变少时，等于是在假设你比任何人都更了解自己。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I don’t commit to anything in the future, so I’ll say, okay, if that thing is interesting, I’ll see if I can get in that day when I’m in the mood, but there’s nothing worse than something coming up that your past self committed you to, that your present self doesn’t want to do.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我不会对未来的任何事做承诺。我通常会说，如果那件事到时候有趣，我当日有心情再决定。但没什么比你“过去的自己”承诺了某事，而“现在的自己”却完全不想做更糟糕的事了。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Goddamn it, positive.

克里斯·威廉姆森：天哪，说得太对了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, and then it destroys your entire calendar. It destroys your day because there’s like, oh, this one hour slot which is sitting like a turd on my calendar that I have to schedule my whole day around. I can’t do anything twenty minutes before, twenty minutes afterwards.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对啊，那种事会毁掉你整天的安排。日历上就像坨便便一样卡着一个小时，我得围着它转。前二十分钟不能做事，后二十分钟也不能安排其他事。

Even for phone calls, if someone wants to do a phone call, say, okay, just text me when you’re free, I’ll text you when I’m free, we’ll just do it on the fly. It’s a much better way of living than this overly scheduled cal.com or iCal, whatever.

就连打电话也是一样。如果有人想通话，我会说，行啊，你有空就发我消息，我有空也发你，我们随时安排。这种生活方式比那些被cal.com、iCal之类日程表绑住的方式好太多了。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The over scheduled life is not worth living?

克里斯·威廉姆森：过度被安排的人生，不值得过吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s not. I think it’s a terrible way to live life. That’s not how we evolved, it’s not how we grew up, it’s not how we were as children hopefully, unless you have a helicopter parent or a tiger mom. Your natural order is freedom.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：确实不值得。我认为那是糟糕的生活方式。人类不是这样进化的，我们成长也不是这样，希望小时候也不是这样——除非你有个直升机父母或虎妈。你天生的秩序就是自由。

I had a friend who said to me once, “You know, I never want to have to be at a specific place at a specific time” and I was like, oh my god, that’s freedom. When I heard that, that changed my life right there.

我有个朋友曾经对我说：“你知道吗，我永远不想必须在特定的时间出现在特定的地点。”我当时心里一震，“天啊，那就是自由。”那一刻深深改变了我。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’re still alarm clock less?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你现在还是不用闹钟吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yes, I’m alarm clock less. Today, I did set my alarm clock just so I wouldn’t miss this.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，我不用闹钟。今天我设了一个，仅仅是为了不想错过这个访谈。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Very important, yeah.

克里斯·威廉姆森：确实很重要，哈哈。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: But just so you know, I set the alarm clock for 11am in case I was stricken with the flu, slept in. I was still not going to set my alarm clock for 8am or 9am, and sure enough, got up many hours before that. But it was sort of a backup emergency alarm. In fact, sometimes when there’s something that I need to do, I don’t want to look at a calendar, so I’ll just set an alarm for it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：但你得知道，我设的是早上11点的闹钟——以防我得流感睡过头了。我肯定不会设在早上8点或9点的。果然我提前好几个小时就醒了。那个闹钟只是备用的。事实上，有时候我需要做某事时，我甚至不想去看日历，我就直接设个闹钟提醒。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Just sink a little bit more into that, like, that kind of “fuck you” energy, that self prioritizing energy, because I think people rationally love the idea of this. I’m going to do what only I want to do, even if they’ve got the level of freedom.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我们能再多探一点那种“去你的”式的能量，那种彻底自我优先的能量吗？我觉得理性上人们都爱这个想法：“我只做我想做的事”，但即使他们已经有了那种自由，也未必真的这么做。

Freedom and Productivity

自由与生产力

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s not “fuck you” energy in the sense that I think everyone should live their life that way to the greatest extent possible. Obviously we have our requirements around work and obligations that are genuinely important to us, but don’t fritter away your life on randomly scheduled things and things that aren’t important, don’t matter, and events and weddings and tedious dinners with tedious people that you don’t want to go to.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这不是一种“去你”的能量，我的意思是，我认为每个人都应该尽最大可能那样生活。我们当然有工作和真正重要的责任，但别把你的人生浪费在那些随便安排、不重要、无关紧要的事情上，别去参加那些你根本不想去的活动、婚礼，或者和无趣的人吃无趣的晚饭。

To the extent you can bring freedom into your life, optimize for that, you’ll actually be more productive. You won’t just be happier, more free, you will be more productive, because then you can focus on what is in front of you, whatever the biggest problem of that day.

你能在生活中引入多少自由，就尽量优化到那个程度。你不光会更快乐、更自由，还会更有产出，因为这样你就能专注于眼前的事——当天最重要的问题。

When I wake up in the morning, the first four hours are when I have the most energy and that’s when I want to solve all the hard problems, and the next four hours are when I kind of want to do some more outdoorsy activities or I want to work out or maybe I can have some meetings, but I’ll try to do those last second based on whatever the day’s priorities demand. The last four hours I kind of want to wind down, I want to hang out with the kids, and I want to play games, or read a book or something like that.

我早上起床后的前四个小时是我能量最充沛的时候，那时我会解决所有困难的问题；接下来的四个小时我会做些户外活动、锻炼，或者也许开点会，但这些我通常临时决定，看当天的优先事项而定。最后四小时我会放松下来，陪陪孩子，玩玩游戏或读本书之类的。

So, having that flexibility and freedom is really important, so you can just put whatever is most needed into the slot at that moment. Instead if I have like a meeting at 2pm and then I have to get a thing and some emails done, I put that off till 6pm and I’m rushing, I’m not going to be productive.

所以，拥有这种灵活性和自由真的非常重要，这样你可以在每个时段做最需要的事情。相反，如果我下午两点有个会议，那我就得推迟其他事，比如处理一项任务或邮件，拖到六点再匆忙去做，那根本不会高效。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’re certainly not free.

克里斯·威廉姆森：那你肯定不自由了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I’m definitely not free, but also another thing that I really believe is that inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. So when you’re inspired to do something, do that thing. If I’m inspired to write a blog post, I want to do it at that moment. If I’m inspired to send a tweet, I want to do it that moment. If I’m inspired to solve a problem, I want it that moment. If I’m inspired to read a book, I want to read it right then.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我当然不自由。还有一个我非常相信的观点是：灵感是易逝的，要立刻行动。所以当你有灵感去做某事时，就去做它。如果我有灵感写博客，我会立刻动笔；如果我想发推文，我就立刻发；如果我突然想解决个问题，我会马上去解决；如果我突然想读书，我就当下就读。

If I want to learn something, do it at the moment of curiosity, the moment the curiosity arrives, I go learn that thing immediately. I download the book, I get on Google, I get on ChatGPT, whatever, I will figure that thing out on the spot, and that’s when the learning happens. It doesn’t happen because I’ve scheduled time, because I’ve set an hour aside, because when that time arrives I might be in a different mood, I might just want to do something different.

如果我想学点什么，我会在好奇心出现的那一刻就立刻去学。我会下载那本书，上Google，打开ChatGPT，随便用什么方法，我会当下就搞清楚那个东西。真正的学习就是那时发生的，而不是因为我安排了学习时间、预留了一小时——因为到了那个时候，我可能心情变了，只想做别的事。

So I think that spontaneity is really important, you’re going to learn best when you’re having fun, when you genuinely are enjoying the process, not when you’re forced to sit there and do it. How much do you remember from school? You know you were forced to learn geography, history, mathematics on this schedule at this time according to this person. Didn’t happen. All the stuff that sticks with you is what you learned when you wanted to, when you genuinely had the desire, and that freedom, that ability to act on something the moment you want to is so liberating that most of us go through our lives with very little tastes of that. If you live your entire life that way, that is a recipe for happiness.

所以我认为，自发性真的非常重要。你只有在玩得开心、真心享受过程中，才能学得最好，而不是被迫坐在那里学。你还记得学校里学了多少东西吗？你当时被强迫按时间表学地理、历史、数学、按这个老师的节奏来。效果如何？真正留在你脑子里的，是你发自内心想学的那些内容。而那种自由、那种“我想学就能立刻学”的能力，极具解放性——但我们大多数人一生中很少体验到。如果你能一辈子都这样生活，那就是获得幸福的秘诀。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It feels like efficiency that you have.

克里斯·威廉姆森：听起来你还拥有极高的效率。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Efficient also. You have the inspiration that is going to be the most frictionless time to ever do that particular task.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：也确实高效。你有灵感的那一刻，就是完成那件事阻力最小、效率最高的时候。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So I’ve had the inspiration to do that. I’ll put that off until a time when I no longer really want to do it quite so much. And while I do want to do that thing, I’ll do something else that I needed to do because it’s on the schedule. It does not work.

克里斯·威廉姆森：所以我灵感来了却把事情推迟到之后去做，等到那个时候我其实已经不太想做它了。而当我真想做某事时，却跑去做其他排定好的任务——这根本行不通。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Procrastination is because you don’t want to do that thing right now. You want to do something else. Go do that something else. I reject this frame that efficiency and productivity and success are counter to happiness and freedom. They actually go together.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：拖延就是因为你此刻不想做那件事，你想做别的事。那你就去做那个别的事。我拒绝那种认为效率、产出和成功是与幸福和自由对立的观点。它们其实是并行不悖的。

The happier you are, the more you can sustain doing something, the more likely you’re going to do something that will in turn make you even happier and you’ll continue to do it and you’ll outwork everybody else. The more free you are, the better you can allocate your time, and the less you’re caught up in a web of obligations and commitments, and the more you can focus on the task at hand.

你越快乐，就越能持续做某件事，也越有可能做些让你更快乐的事；你就会不断投入，最终胜过所有人。你越自由，就越能更好地分配时间，越少被义务和承诺的网络束缚，就越能专注于手头的重要事务。

Finding Your Authentic Work

寻找真正属于你的工作

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: This is related to another insight of yours. The less you want something, the less you’re thinking about it, the less you’re obsessing over it, the more you’re going to do it in a natural way. The more you’re going to do it for yourself, you’re going to do it in a way that you’re good at, and you’re going to stick with it. The people around you will see the quality of your work is higher. But this seems like a difficult tension to navigate because an obsessive attention to detail is a competitive advantage of your work as well. So you have these two things sort of conflicting with each other.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这与你的另一个见解有关。你越是不那么渴望某件事、越少思考它、不那么执着于它，你反而会更自然地去做它。你会为了自己去做、以你擅长的方式去做，也会坚持下去。周围的人也能看出你的作品质量更高。但这之间似乎存在一个难以平衡的张力，因为对细节的执着本身也是工作的一种竞争优势。所以这两者好像有点冲突。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: No one is gonna beat you at being you. Find what feels like play to you, but looks like work to others. So it looks like work to them, but to you it feels like play, it’s not work. So you’re gonna out compete them because you’re doing it effortlessly, you’re doing it for fun, they’re doing it for work, they’re doing it for some byproduct. To you, it’s art, it’s beauty, it’s joy, it’s flow, it’s fulfilling.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没人能打败一个做自己的你。找出那些对你来说像玩乐、但在别人看来像工作的事情。对别人而言它是工作，而对你来说它是游戏，是乐趣，不是工作。所以你会赢过他们，因为你做得轻松愉快，而他们是在苦干、在追求某种附带结果。对你来说，那是艺术、美感、喜悦、心流，是一种满足。

You must enjoy podcasting. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be good at it. You wouldn’t have nine hundred episodes either. If you decided that the right way to get ahead in life was to go write books, nobody would have heard of you. Chris Williamson’s book would be a complete flop, that’s not who you are. You’re a podcaster. You enjoy talking to people, you enjoy interviewing them.

你一定是喜欢播客的。如果你不喜欢，你也不会做得这么好，不可能录出九百期节目。如果你当初觉得人生成功的方式是写书，那就没人会听说你了。克里斯·威廉姆森的书会完全失败——那不是你真正的身份。你是播客人，你喜欢和人对话，喜欢采访他们。

The more you do things that are natural to you, the less competition you have. You escape competition through authenticity by being your own self.

你越多做那些对你而言自然的事，你就越少遇到竞争。你通过真实做自己来逃避竞争。

Productize Yourself

将自己产品化

If I had to summarize how to be successful in life in two words, I would just say productize yourself. That’s it. Just figure out what it is that you naturally do that the world might want that you can scale up and turn into a product, and it’ll eventually be effortless for you. Yes, there’s always work required, but it won’t even feel like work to you, it’ll feel like play to you, and modern society gives us that opportunity.

如果让我用两个词总结人生成功的方法，我会说：“产品化自己”。就这么简单。找出你天然擅长的、世界可能需要的、可以规模化的东西，把它转化成一个产品。最终对你来说会变得毫不费力。是的，它需要努力，但你不会觉得那是在工作，对你来说更像是在玩。而现代社会赋予了我们这种可能。

Know, if you were two thousand years ago, you’re born on a farm, your choices are very limited, right, you’re going to do stuff on that farm. Now you can literally wake up and you can move to a different city, you can switch careers, you can switch jobs, you can change the people that you’re with, you know you can change so many things about who you are and who you’re with and what you’re doing that there is infinite opportunity out there for you, literally infinite.

你要知道，如果你出生在两千年前的农场上，你的选择非常有限——你只能干农活。但现在你可以一觉醒来搬到另一个城市，可以换职业，换工作，换你身边的人。你可以改变关于自己的一切——你是谁、你跟谁在一起、你做什么。眼下对你而言，有无限的机会，真的无限。

So it’s much better to treat this like a search function to find the people who need you the most, to find the work that needs you the most, to find the place you’re best suited to be at, and it’s worthwhile to spend time in that exploration before diving into exploitation. The biggest mistake in a world with so many choices is premature commitment. If you prematurely commit to being a lawyer or a doctor and now you’ve got like five years invested into that, you might have just completely missed, you might just end up in the wrong profession, wrong place, the wrong people for thirty years of your life grinding away, and yes, the best time to figure that out was before, but the second best time is now, so just change it.

所以更好的方式是把这当作一次搜索过程：找出最需要你的人、最需要你完成的工作、最适合你去的地方。在开始“榨取”价值之前，先花时间去探索，这是值得的。在一个选择如此之多的世界里，最大的错误就是“过早承诺”。如果你太早决定做律师或医生，然后投入了五年，结果可能完全选错了。你可能会在错误的行业、错误的地方、和错误的人一起，消耗掉未来三十年的人生。是的，最好的时间是在最初认清这一点，但次好的时间就是现在——所以现在就去改变。

Say No By Default

默认说“不”

And also presumably kill things that aren’t working very quickly. By default, you should kill everything, you know, if you can’t decide, the answer is no, and most things you just be saying no to. Part of my keeping my calendar free is just by default saying no to everything. Do I want to create a calendar just to add your event, right, or to add your need or your desire?

而且也意味着你要快速终结那些无效的事情。默认情况下，你应该终止一切。如果你无法做决定，那答案就是“不”。大多数事情你都应该说“不”。我之所以能保持日历空白，很大一部分原因就是默认拒绝一切。我真的要为了你的活动、你的需求或你的愿望而专门去创建一个日程表吗？

One of the other things about, know, early on in life you’re looking for opportunities, so you’re saying yes to everything, and that is a phase that you go through, that is the exploration phase. Later when you found the thing you want to work on, you’re in the exploitation phase, you have to say no to everything by default, and if you don’t say no to everything by default, if you have to even explicitly go out of your way to say no to something, that will take up time.

还有一点是，在人生早期你会寻找各种机会，所以你会对一切说“是”，这是人生的一个阶段，叫“探索阶段”。但当你找到了自己真正想做的事，你就进入了“利用阶段”，这时候你必须默认对一切说“不”。如果你不这样做，甚至还要专门花时间去拒绝别人，那也会占用你的时间。

For example, know there are lot of people out there who are into hustle culture, and a big piece of hustle culture is like, well you’re not going get something if you don’t ask for it, so they’ll hustle people, they’ll always be sending you requests, messages. This is a famous person problem but I have it, and people are always asking me for things and I kind of squirm when I get these messages and I’m sure you get these two text messages, emails saying, “Hey Chris, my friend so and so should really be on your podcast” or “you should come to my event,” “you should write a forward for my book,” and you kind of squirm when you get this right, and you have to figure out how to say no.

举个例子，现在有很多人沉迷于“拼命文化”。而这种文化的一个核心信念就是：“不去争取你就得不到。”所以他们会不断去“推销”自己，不停发出各种请求。这是一个“名人烦恼”，但我确实会遇到这种情况——人们老是向我提出各种要求，我一收到这样的信息就会感到不舒服。我相信你也会收到类似的短信或邮件，比如：“嘿，Chris，我的朋友某某人很适合上你的播客”或者“你应该来参加我的活动”，“请你帮我新书写个前言”，你收到这些也会有些尴尬对吧？而你必须学会如何拒绝。

One of the things I learned along the way is that if you wouldn’t ask somebody else to do it and then you get that request yourself, can just dismiss it, you don’t have to respond, you don’t even let it enter your brain. You have to be able to delete emails and text messages without flinching if you want to scale, and scaling is very important, scaling your time is really important. Every interruption will take you out of flow, so the only way you can remain in flow is if you get either very good at ignoring these things by default or closing yourself off like a hermit like our mutual friend Tim Ferriss does, or you just become emotionally capable of not registering these as something that causes turbulence inside of you.

我一路上学到的一件事是：如果某个请求是你自己都不会开口去要求别人的，那当它落到你头上时，你完全可以直接忽略它。你不需要回复，甚至不用让它进入你的大脑。如果你想要实现“规模化”，你必须能毫不犹豫地删除邮件和短信。因为“规模化”非常重要，尤其是时间的规模化。任何一次打扰都会让你脱离“心流”状态。你要保持专注的唯一办法，就是要么默认无视这些请求，要么像我们共同的朋友Tim Ferriss那样把自己封闭起来，或者就是在情绪上做到完全不把这些事情当回事，不让它们在你心里掀起波澜。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That not registering it emotionally thing, is that fundamental? That’s so fundamental to so many things in life. Can we dig into that a little bit? Is it because again, I’ve only seen you as you. Right? I didn’t know you twenty years ago. I didn’t know you as a child. So I’ve only seen you with this holistic selfishness, the integrated self prioritization, whatever we—I don’t know what we called it.

克里斯·威廉姆森：那种“情绪上不把它当回事”的能力，是不是非常根本？它几乎适用于生活中无数的事。我们能深入聊聊这个吗？因为说实话，我只认识你现在的样子。我不知道你二十年前是什么样，不知道你小时候是什么样。我只见过你现在这种“整体性的自我优先”，或许我们该给它起个名字，我也不知道该叫什么。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Selfish is fine. I’ll take selfish. I’m selfish. I’m a very selfish person. Don’t contact me.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：自私就自私吧，我认了。我就是一个非常自私的人。别联系我。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That emotional reaction—whatever that is. Also get the sense too that maybe people have lived obligation life for so long that they actually kinda struggle to tap into what it is that they want. They’ve hidden their wants and their desires and their needs, they deprioritized themselves so much for so long. They go, what do I want, actually? What is it? Do I want to go to this thing or not? Because all I’ve done is be puppeted. Right? I’ve been marionetted by other people’s desires for so so so long. I can’t even tap into that anymore, and saying no feels like a war crime.

克里斯·威廉姆森：还有一点，那种情绪反应——不管它具体是什么。我感觉很多人已经按照“责任人生”活了太久，以至于他们都不知道自己真正想要什么了。他们把自己的愿望、欲望、需求都压抑起来了，长期以来一直把自己放在最后。他们会问：“我到底想要什么？”“我到底想不想去这个活动？”因为他们一直都是被别人牵着线走的木偶。太久太久了，已经无法再连接到内心的真实了。而“说不”对他们来说，就像犯了战争罪一样可怕。

Observe Your Thoughts Objectively

客观看待你的思维

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So I think it’s really good to be able to view your own mind and your own thoughts objectively, and that is the big benefit of meditation. It creates a small gap between your conscious observation self and your mind, and that lets you then look at your thoughts and evaluate them a little bit like you would a third party’s statements.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我认为能够客观看待自己的大脑和思维非常重要，而冥想的最大益处就在于此。它能在你的“有意识的观察者自我”和你的思维之间创造出一小段距离，从而让你像审视他人的陈述一样去看待并评估自己的想法。

If you just take your mind to be you and they’re integrated in one and the same at all times and you’re reacting from the mind, then you’re not even going question things that come into your mind. Anything that comes in that creates your reaction will immediately create a reaction, but if you can observe your thoughts a little bit and not in some woo woo way, but you can even just do it through therapy, can do it through journaling, you can do it any way you’d like, you can just take long walks, don’t have to meditate and do lotus position, all that is unnecessary.

如果你始终把思维当作“你自己”，并与之完全认同，那你就会本能地被它驱动，根本不会去质疑那些涌入大脑的念头。任何让你产生反应的想法都会立即触发情绪。但如果你能稍微观察一下自己的念头——我不是说用那种玄之又玄的方式——其实你可以通过心理治疗、写日记，或者任何你喜欢的方式去做到这一点。你也可以去散长步，不一定非得冥想或者打坐，那些形式都不是必须的。

But if you can observe your own thoughts and view them a little objectively, then you can start being a little more choosy, a little more critical, and you can realize that there are no problems in the real world other than maybe things that inflict pain on your body. Everything else has to become a problem in your mind first. You have to view it and interpret it and create a narrative that it is a problem before it becomes the problem.

但如果你能开始观察自己的想法，并以一种稍微客观的方式来看待它们，你就能变得更有选择性，也更有批判性。你会意识到，现实世界里真正的问题可能只有那些会给你身体造成痛苦的事情。其他的一切都必须先在你头脑中被解释为“问题”，才能真正成为“问题”。是你主动将某件事赋予了“问题”的叙述和标签，它才会变成问题。

Then you realize that a lot of your emotional energy is spent on reacting to things that your mind is automatically saying are problems, and you don’t need all those problems. Do you really need that many problems in your life? Again I would say try to focus on just one overarching problem and then go solve that problem.

然后你会发现，你的大量情绪能量都花在了回应那些你大脑自动认定为“问题”的事上，而这些“问题”你根本不需要。你真的需要生活中有那么多问题吗？我会再次建议你：试着只聚焦一个最核心的问题，然后专注去解决它。

先制造问题再解决问题。

It’s like if you want to be successful, define success very concretely, focus on that and everything else, when it enters your mind it becomes a problem, whether it’s a judgment about the girl walking down the street or the car that just cut in front of you or whether it’s like you know this, your accountant did this stupid thing, like yes it’s going to trigger you but observe for a moment that like it’s triggering me, I’ve created a problem, do I really want to have this problem right now, do I want to spend the energy on this problem or do I want that going somewhere else?

就像，如果你想成功，那就具体地定义什么是“成功”，然后专注于它。其他的事情，当它们进入你的脑海时会变成问题，无论是你对街上一个女孩的评价、前方一辆车突然插队、还是你的会计搞砸了什么事——这些都会触发你。但你可以稍微停一下，观察一下：“这件事触发了我，我自己制造了一个问题。我现在真的要拥有这个问题吗？我真的想把精力花在这个问题上，还是说我更愿意把精力用在别的地方？”

And it doesn’t have to be that over, you don’t have to, the mind mud wrestling with itself is also a problem.

而且这也不需要刻意为之。要知道，大脑与自己相互纠缠、内耗，也是另一种“问题”。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I have, my problems have got problems and I have a real problem about fixing my problems.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我现在的状况是，我的问题都生出更多问题，而我又对“如何解决问题”这件事本身产生了问题。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, exactly, and so you just, you’re going to be much happier and much more focused, again I think happiness and focus and success can kind of complement each other. You’re going to have much more energy, just think about it as mental energy, you’re have much more mental energy to focus on the actual problems you want to solve if you don’t start unconsciously, subconsciously, reactively picking up problems everywhere. So before anything can be a problem that takes up your emotional energy, you have to accept it as a problem, you can be choosy about your problems, and I’m not saying I’m perfect in that regard, but I think I’m better than I used to be.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，没错。所以你会变得更快乐、更专注。我认为幸福、专注和成功其实是可以相辅相成的。你会拥有更多的能量——把它理解为“心理能量”也好——去聚焦你真正想解决的问题。只要你不再无意识地、潜意识地、条件反射式地把一切都变成问题，你就会更轻松。在任何事真正消耗你情绪能量之前，是你自己先选择把它视为“问题”的。你是可以挑选你的问题的。当然我不是说我在这方面已经完美了，但我确实比以前好很多。

Choose Your Problems Wisely

明智地选择你的问题

Well, lots of people are addicted to solving problems, right, so much so that sometimes people create problems when we don’t have any, simply so that we can solve them. We have that going on, and then even worse is we take on problems that we can’t affect.

很多人对“解决问题”上瘾了，对吧？以至于有时候即便没有问题，人们也会制造出问题来，只是为了能解决点什么。我们常常陷入这种模式，更糟的是，我们还会揽上一些自己根本无法左右的问题。

So, you know, another one of my little quips was, you know, a rational person can sort of find peace by cultivating indifference to things that are out of their control, and I’m as guilty as anybody of doomsurfing on X or social media and getting worked up about things that I can’t do anything about, right? Like do I want to be fighting those battles in my mind when I literally cannot do anything about it?

你知道，我还有一句小格言是：“理性的人可以通过对无法控制之事培养冷漠感来获得内心的平静。”我自己也跟大家一样，有时会上X（原Twitter）或者社交媒体疯狂刷一些末日消息，然后为那些我根本无能为力的事情而情绪波动。说到底，当我明明什么也做不了时，我为什么还要在心里打这些毫无意义的仗呢？

So if you find yourself looping on a problem like you’re watching the news too much and you’re getting caught up in a problem you can’t do anything about, you have to step away from that, and modern media is a delivery mechanism for mimetic viruses, and what’s happened now is you know, one hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, if something wasn’t happening in your immediate vicinity, you wouldn’t hear about it. It wouldn’t be a problem for you, but now every single one of the world’s problems has turned into a mimetic virus, which is going into the battlefield of the news and is trying to infect your mind in real time. Hyper speed.

如果你发现自己陷入一个死循环，比如说你过度看新闻，沉溺于那些你根本无法影响的问题，那你就需要远离它。现代媒体就是模仿性病毒的传播机制。过去100年、甚至500年前，如果某件事不在你身边发生，你根本就不会听说，它也不会是你的问题。但现在，世界上每一个问题都变成了模因病毒，在新闻这片战场上以超高速实时感染你的大脑。

So that, yeah, so that you become obsessed with the war in Ukraine, is really far away, or you get obsessed with climate change or you get obsessed with AI doom or you get obsessed with whatever, and there’s nothing as riveting as the old religion, the world is ending, the world is ending, pay attention, the world is ending.

于是你就会开始沉迷于乌克兰的战争——一个遥远的问题，或者你开始执着于气候变化、AI 灾难，或是别的什么。没有什么比那句“世界要毁灭了，世界要毁灭了，快看这边”更吸引人注意的了，这就是人类最古老的精神信仰。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Cassandra Complex at global scale.

克里斯·威廉姆森：全球范围的“卡珊德拉综合症”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Cassandra Complex at global scale and I would argue that large percentages of population are essentially just infected with these mimetic viruses that have taken over their brain and are causing them to do incredible gyration about things that probably aren’t even true or are greatly exaggerated, but even to the extent they are true, are things that that person can do nothing about and they should put their own house in order first.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，全球性的卡珊德拉综合症。我认为，整个社会有相当一部分人实际上已经被这些模因病毒感染，脑子被彻底占据，然后为一些可能根本不是真的，或者被极度夸大的事情做出过度反应。就算其中有些事是真的，那也根本不是他们能做什么的。他们应该先把自己的生活整顿好。

So you know another little line I have for myself is your family is broken but you’re going to fix the world, right? People are running out there to try and fix the world and their own lives are a—

还有一句我经常对自己说的俏皮话是：“你家一团糟，你却想着去拯救世界？”人们常常热衷于去改变世界，可他们自己的人生却已经——

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh my god.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我的天。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right, and I think it defies credibility if you can’t fix your own life first. I’m not going to take you seriously if you can’t fix your own life, like all these philosophers who you know seem like people you emulate and so smart or like these brilliant celebrities and they go off and commit suicide, well you just kind of invalidated your whole way of life. It’s like that line of in No Country for Old Men where the killer is waiting for the protagonist and protagonist shows up and the killer says, “Well you know if your set of rules brought you here, then what good are your rules?” Didn’t work.

没错，如果你连自己的生活都搞不定，还谈什么拯救世界？我不会认真看待那些连自己都照顾不好的人。就像有些看起来非常睿智、你会去效仿的哲学家，或者那些天才名人，结果最后自杀了——那他们的一整套生活方式就等于全盘作废了。就像电影《老无所依》里有句台词，杀手对主人公说：“如果你的那套原则让你走到了现在这一步，那你的原则到底有什么用？”根本就没用。

I am self, I’m holistically selfish in that I want to be objectively successful in everything I set out to want.

我承认，我是自私的，我是“全面自私”的——我希望在我设定目标的每一件事上都能获得客观意义上的成功。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Mhmm.

克里斯·威廉姆森：嗯哼。

Don’t Settle for Mediocrity

不要甘于平庸

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, and you have one life, don’t settle for mediocrity. Don’t settle for mediocrity, and I think the only, like, people debate intelligence for example, right? We talk about IQ tests and all that, but I think the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life, and there are two parts to that.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，你只有一次生命，不要甘于平庸。不要安于平庸。我认为，虽然人们经常争论什么是智力，比如我们讨论 IQ 测试等等，但我觉得判断一个人是否真正聪明，唯一的标准就是他是否从人生中得到了自己想要的东西。而这又包含两个部分。

One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it, and the second is wanting the right things, knowing what to want in the first place. I could want to be a, you know, six foot eight basketball player, and I’m not going to get that, so it’s wanting the wrong thing.

第一是你能否得到你想要的东西，也就是说你知道如何去实现目标；第二是你想要的东西是否正确，一开始你是否就知道该想要什么。比如我可能想成为一个六尺八寸高的篮球运动员，但我注定不可能成为那样的人——那就是在追求一个错误的目标。

像是女人式的、没有脑子的说教。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s wanting something that you can’t get.

克里斯·威廉姆森：那是渴望一个你无法得到的东西。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s wanting something you can’t get. There’s also wanting something that you don’t want.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，那是你永远得不到的渴望。还有一种情况是，你以为自己想要某样东西，其实你根本不想要。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, wanting something that’s a booby prize.

克里斯·威廉姆森：对，那是想要一个“安慰奖”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: There are plenty of booby prizes out there too, right? I don’t know if that won, don’t know if won in about twenty or so. Yeah, prizes that are just not worth having, or that create their own problems. But if you’re not careful, you can end up in a place in life not only that you don’t want to be, but one that you didn’t even mean to get to.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，外面有太多“安慰奖”了。你不知道你是不是真的赢了，也不知道赢得值不值得。有些奖根本不值得拥有，甚至反而带来新的问题。如果你不小心，你可能会走到人生中一个你不仅不想要、甚至根本没打算去的地方。

Navigating Life’s Decisions

驾驭人生决策

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s if you’re kind of proceeding unconsciously. And usually I think people end up there because they are going on autopilot with sort of societal expectations or other people’s expectations, or out of guilt or out of mimetic desire. Peter Thiel has this whole thing from Renee Gerard about how mimetic desires are desires picked up from other people, and some of those are automatically baked into society like go to law school, go to med school, go to business school. Or they might be from watching what your friends are doing and what the other monkeys are doing, or it might be what your parents’ expectations are.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：那是因为你在无意识地推进人生。通常人们之所以会陷入那种境地，是因为他们在自动驾驶模式下活着，遵循社会期待、他人期待、内疚感，或者模仿性欲望（mimetic desire）在做决定。彼得·蒂尔有一整套来自雷内·吉拉尔的观点，讲的是模仿性欲望，也就是从他人那里“学来的”欲望。这些在社会中是被默认灌输的，比如“去读法学院”、“去读医学院”或“去商学院”。它们也可能来源于你看到朋友们在做什么，其他“猴子”在做什么，或者来自你父母对你的期待。

Guilt is just society’s voice speaking in your head, socially programmed so you’ll be a good little monkey and do things that are good for the tribe. But I think the best outcomes come when you think it through for yourself and decide for yourself, and I don’t think people spend enough time deciding.

内疚感其实只是社会的声音在你脑中说话，是被社会编程的机制，让你成为一只“听话的小猴子”，去为部落做对的事情。但我认为，最好的结果往往来自你为自己深思熟虑后做出的决定。而我觉得，大多数人花在“决定”上的时间远远不够。

For example, we run on these four-year cycles. In Silicon Valley, you go join a startup, you vest your stock over four years, that’s the standard. In college, you go for four years, high school you go for four years. Some things take longer – you have children, they hit puberty nine years later, that’s like a nine-year cycle until that relationship changes. But we’re used to these fairly long cycles, multi-year cycles, in which we are committed to things. You go to law school, four or five year cycle. You go be a lawyer, forty year cycle.

比如说，我们的生活往往是以“四年”为周期的。在硅谷，你加入一家初创公司，股票四年归属，这是标准流程。大学读四年，高中也是四年。有些事情则更长——比如你有了孩子，九年后他们进入青春期，那是一段九年的周期，关系也会发生变化。我们习惯于这种多年一轮的周期，并在其中长期投入。你去读法学院，是四五年的周期；你成为律师，可能是四十年的职业周期。

These are very long cycles. The amount of time we spend deciding what to do and who to do it with is very short, very, very short. We spend three months deciding, one month deciding on a job where we’re going to be for ten years or five years. And because a lot of discovery is path dependent, where the next thing you find on the path is dependent on where you were on the previous path, you sort of start going down this vector that is a very long distance.

这些是非常漫长的周期。而我们花在决定“做什么”以及“和谁做”的时间却非常短，非常非常短。我们可能只花三个月、甚至一个月来决定一份将要干五年、十年的工作。而人生的很多发现是路径依赖的，你之后遇见什么，很大程度上取决于你之前走了哪条路。所以一旦开始走某条路径，你就可能在那个方向上走得很远。

People decide frivolously which city to live in, and that’s going to decide who their friends are, what their jobs are, their opportunity, their weather, their food supply, their air supply, quality of life. It’s such an important decision but people spend so little time thinking it through. I would argue that if you’re making a four-year decision, spend a year thinking it through, like really thinking it through. Twenty-five percent of the time.

人们常常轻率地决定要住在哪个城市，而这会影响他们的朋友圈、工作机会、气候、食物来源、空气质量、生活质量。这个决定如此重要，可人们却很少认真思考。我会说，如果你要做一个未来四年的决定，那至少花一年的时间去思考它，真正地深思熟虑。花 25% 的时间做决定。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, exactly, there’s the secretary theorem. Don’t know if you know that one?

克里斯·威廉姆森：对，正是如此，这就像“秘书定理”。你知道那个吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Is that after you’ve done this many people, pick the best one of the next however many?

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：就是那个——你面试了一定数量的人后，在接下来的人选中挑选最优秀的那个？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s right. Yeah.

克里斯·威廉姆森：没错，就是那个。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: The secretary theorem is this computer science professor trying to figure out how much time he should spend interviewing secretaries and then how long to keep the secretary. So, let’s say he’s going to have a secretary for ten years, does he keep searching for one year, two years, three years, one month, two months, what is the optimal time?

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：“秘书定理”是一个计算机科学教授提出的，用来研究他应该花多长时间面试秘书，以及应该在什么时候定下来雇佣某个人。比如说，他打算雇秘书十年，那他是应该花一年、两年、三年，还是一个月、两个月来寻找最合适的人选？最佳的时间分配是什么？

And it turns out that the optimal time is somewhere around a third. About a third of the way through, you take the best person you’ve worked with and try to find someone that good or better. So by the time you’ve gone about a third of the way through, you have seen enough that you now have a sense of what the bar is, and then anybody who meets or exceeds that bar is good enough. This applies to dating, this applies to jobs and careers, this applies generally.

结果发现，最佳的策略是：花大约三分之一的时间先观察与筛选。到了那个阶段，你已经有足够的样本，知道标准大概是什么了，然后接下来一旦有人达到了或超过了这个标准，就可以选他了。这条原理适用于约会、找工作、选职业等各种情境。

But the interesting thing about the secretary theorem is that it’s actually not time based. It’s not based on one third of the time, it’s iteration based.

但“秘书定理”有趣的一点是，它并不是以时间为基础的，而是以“尝试的次数”为基础的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The number of candidates. The number of shots you took on goal.

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的，是你尝试的候选人数、你射门的次数。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. So, you want to have lots and lots of iterations.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。所以你要进行大量的迭代尝试。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So in that sense you need to bail out quickly, and you need to be decisive quickly.

克里斯·威廉姆森：所以从这个角度讲，你要能迅速退出，也要能迅速下决断。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. You need to take opportunities quickly, and bail out quickly.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。你要快速抓住机会，也要快速撤出。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Like, if you go back and you look through failed relationships, probably the biggest regret will be staying in the relationship after your year was over.

克里斯·威廉姆森：比如说，如果你回顾一段失败的感情，最大的遗憾可能就是在那段关系本该结束的一年后你还留在那里。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly, you should have left sooner. The moment you knew it wasn’t going to work out, you should have moved on.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：完全正确。你本该早点离开。在你意识到这段关系不行的时候，你就该转身走人了。

Iterations vs. Repetitions

迭代与重复

So in that sense, I think Malcolm Gladwell popularized this idea of ten thousand hours to mastery. I would say it’s actually ten thousand iterations to mastery.

从这个角度来看，我认为马尔科姆·格拉德威尔推广的“掌握一项技能需要一万小时”的观点，其实更准确的说法是——掌握一项技能需要一万次迭代。

It’s not actually ten thousand, it’s some unknown number, but it’s about the number of iterations that drive the learning curve, and iteration is not repetition. Repetition is a different thing. Repeating is doing the same thing over and over. Iteration is modifying it with learning and then doing another version of it. So that’s error correction. So if you get ten thousand error corrections in anything, you will be an expert at it.

并不一定真的是一万次，这个数字其实是未知的，但关键是：驱动学习曲线的是“迭代次数”。而“迭代”并不等于“重复”。重复是不断地做同样的事情；而迭代是带着学习的结果对行为进行调整，并做出新的版本。那是“纠错”过程。所以，如果你在某件事情上经历了一万次纠错，你就会成为那方面的专家。

不懂装懂，没有平常心、不理解什么是问题的源头，走错了路自己是不知道的。

Overcoming Cynicism and Pessimism

克服愤世嫉俗与悲观主义

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. You mentioned there about the people who’ve got a nightmare going on at home and are trying to fix the world, but a lot of the time that cynicism and pessimism we find in ourselves. We see the world whether it’s because we’ve imbibed what the news or the negative people around us have said, or it’s a bit more endogenous than that. It’s just sort of in us. It’s the way that we see the world. How can people avoid cynicism and pessimism within themselves?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：不要与愤世嫉俗者或悲观主义者合作。你刚才提到，有些人家里一团糟，却在试图拯救世界。但其实很多时候，这种愤世嫉俗和悲观主义来自我们自己。我们看世界的方式，可能是受到了新闻媒体或身边消极人的影响，也可能更深层，是内在植入的思维模式，是我们看世界的方式。人们该如何避免自己陷入这种悲观和愤世嫉俗呢？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Cynicism and pessimism is a tough one. We’re naturally hardwired for it. Again, I go back to evolution, I’m sorry to keep harping on evolution, but within biology there’s very few good explanatory theories and theory of evolution by natural selection is probably the best one. So if you can’t explain something about life or psychology or human nature through evolution, then you probably don’t have a good theory for it.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：愤世嫉俗和悲观确实很难克服。我们在进化上就是被编程成这样的。抱歉我老是提进化论，但在生物学里，很少有像自然选择进化论那样强有力的解释体系。所以如果你无法通过进化来解释某种生活现象、心理现象或人性特征，那你大概率还没有找到一个好的理论。

I would say that pessimism is another one that comes out of this, which is in the natural environment, you’re hardwired to be pessimistic because let’s say that I see something rustling in the woods. If I move towards it and it turns out to be food and prey, then good, I get to eat one meal. But if it turns out to be a predator, I get eaten, and that’s the end of that. So we are hardwired to avoid ruin and just dying, so we are naturally hardwired to be pessimists.

我认为悲观就是进化的产物之一。在自然环境中，我们天生倾向于悲观。比如你在树林里看到有东西在晃动，如果你走近它发现是猎物，那你可能吃到一顿饭；但如果它是掠食者，你就被吃掉了，一切都结束了。所以我们是被硬编码成去规避毁灭、规避死亡的，也就自然带有悲观倾向。

But modern society is very different. Despite whatever problems you may have with modern society, it is far far safer than living in the jungle and just trying to survive, and the opportunities and the upside are non-linear.

但现代社会完全不同。尽管现代社会有各种问题，但它比在丛林里求生安全得多，而且它带来的机会和回报是非线性的。

For example, when you’re investing, if you short a stock, the most money you can make is 2x – if the stock goes to zero, you double your money. But if the stock is the next Nvidia and it goes 100x or 1000x, you make a lot of money. So upside through leverage is nearly unlimited.

比如说投资，如果你做空一只股票，它跌到归零，你最多赚 2 倍。但如果这只股票是下一个英伟达，涨到 100 倍、1000 倍，你可以赚到巨额收益。所以现代社会里，杠杆带来的上行空间几乎是无限的。

Also in modern society because there’s so many different people you can interact with, if you go on a date and it fails, there are infinite more people to go on a date with. In a tribal system there might have been twenty people and you can’t even get through all of them. So modern society is far more forgiving of failure and you just have to neocortically realize and override that. You have to realize that you’re much more running a search function to find the thing that’ll work and then that one thing will pay off in massive compounding.

而且现代社会中，你可以接触到形形色色的人。如果你相亲失败，还有无数人可尝试；但在部落社会里，可能只有二十个人，你甚至没得选。所以现代社会对失败的宽容度要高得多。你要靠理性的大脑去意识到并克服那种天生的恐惧感。你其实是在运行一个搜索算法，寻找那个“有效的解”，一旦找到了，那会带来巨大的复利回报。

Once you find your mate for the rest of your life, you find your wife or your husband, then you can compound in that relationship. It’s okay if you had fifty failed dates in between. The same way once you find the one business you’re meant to plow into and it’ll compound returns, it’s okay if you had fifty small failed ventures or fifty small failed job interviews. The number of failures doesn’t matter, and so there’s no point in being a pessimist.

一旦你找到了终身伴侣，你们的关系就能持续积累复利。中间经历五十次失败的约会也没关系。同样道理，一旦你找到了那个值得投入的事业，它也会产生持续回报。之前经历五十次失败的创业或面试都没关系。失败的次数不重要，所以没必要做一个悲观主义者。

I would say you want to be skeptical about specific things. Every specific opportunity is probably a fail, but you want to be optimistic in the general.

我会说，你对具体的事情可以持怀疑态度，每一个具体的机会大概率会失败；但你在总体上应该保持乐观。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How do you navigate that tension?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：那你是如何平衡这种张力的？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I mean exactly as I said, I’m optimistic in the general that if something fails right now, then this is a little woo-woo, but it wasn’t meant to be, it was a learning experience, it was an iteration. As long as I learned something from it then it’s a win. If I didn’t learn from it then it’s a loss, but as long as you’re learning and you keep iterating fast and cutting your losses quickly, then when you find the right thing, you have to be optimistic and compound into it.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：就像我刚才说的，我在总体上保持乐观。如果一件事现在失败了，可能听起来有点玄乎，但我会觉得这只是“本就不该发生”，这是一次学习经验，是一次迭代。只要我能从中学到点什么，那就是一次胜利。如果什么都没学到，那才是失败。但只要你持续学习、快速迭代、及时止损，一旦你找到了那个“正确的事物”，你就该乐观地投入进去，让它产生复利。

So you don’t want to jump into the first thing, you don’t want to marry the first person you date necessarily unless you got very lucky, but you want to investigate and explore very, very quickly until you find the match, and then you have to be willing to go all in. You have to be willing to move your chips to the center of the table, so both those approaches are required.

所以你不该一开始就跳进某件事，不要第一次约会就决定结婚——除非你真的走运。但你需要快速探索、快速验证，一旦找到了那个契合点，你就要敢于“全押”，把筹码推向牌桌中央。这两种态度必须同时具备。

Beyond Labels and Identity

超越标签与身份认同

It’s a barbell strategy, it’s sort of black or white, and most people are sort of stuck in this gray bit, like “I’m half in, but I kind of don’t really know if I am.”

这是一种杠铃式策略——要么黑，要么白。而大多数人被困在中间的灰色地带，好像是“我算是参与了吧，但我其实也不确定自己是不是”。

Also think like labels like pessimists, optimists, cynic, introvert, extrovert – these are very self-limiting. Humans are very dynamic. There are times when you feel like being introverted, there are times when you feel like being extroverted, there are contexts in which you’ll be pessimistic, are contexts in which you’ll be optimistic.

还有那些诸如悲观主义者、乐观主义者、愤世嫉俗者、内向者、外向者这样的标签——这些其实都很限制自我。人类是非常动态的。有时你会倾向内向，有时又会倾向外向；有些情境下你可能悲观，有些情境下你可能乐观。

Leave all those labels alone. It’s better just to look at the problem at hand, look at reality the way it is, try to take yourself out of the equation in a sense. Like obviously you’re involved, but motivated reasoning is the worst kind of reasoning. You’re not going to find truth through highly motivated reasoning. You have to be objective, and objective means trying to take yourself out of it as much as possible or at least your personality out of it as much as possible.

不要被这些标签束缚。更好的做法是专注于眼前的问题，照原样看待现实，在某种意义上尽量把“你自己”从等式中抽离出来。当然你是参与者，但“动机驱动的推理”是最糟糕的推理方式。你无法通过强烈的主观动机找到真理。你需要保持客观，而客观意味着尽可能将自我，尤其是你的个性，从判断中剥离。

To the extent you run with this thick identity and personality, it’s going to cloud your judgment, it’s going to try and lock you into the past. If you say “I’m a depressed person,” yeah, you’re going to be unhappy. That’s a way of locking yourself into your past. Even saying “I have trauma, I have PTSD” – yeah, you feel something, there are memories, there are flashes, there are occasional bad feelings, but don’t define yourself by it because then you’ll lock it into your identity and just going to loop on it.

你越是执着于那些“厚重”的身份标签和个性定义，它就越会干扰你的判断，把你困在过去。如果你说“我是个抑郁的人”，那你注定不会快乐。那是你把自己困在过去的一种方式。即便你说“我有创伤，我有PTSD”——是的，你确实有感受，有回忆，有闪回和偶尔的不适，但不要用这些来定义你自己，否则你就会把它们固化成身份的一部分，陷入不断循环的困境。

It’s better to stay flexible because reality is always changing and you have to be able to adapt to it. Adaptation is also intelligence, adaptation is survival. Adaptation is kind of how you’re here. You’re here because you’re an adapter and your ancestors were adapters. So to adapt, you’ll see things clearly, and if you’re seeing them through your own identity, it’s going to cloud your judgment.

保持灵活才是更好的方式，因为现实总是在变化，而你必须有能力去适应它。适应本身就是一种智慧，是一种生存方式。你之所以能活到现在，是因为你是适应者，你的祖先也是适应者。所以要想适应，你必须看清事物的本来面目；而如果你通过自己的身份滤镜去看世界，那只会让你的判断变得模糊。

Defining Happiness

幸福的定义

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Moving on to sort of thinking about happiness, obviously, a topic of yours. It’s honestly the one that I feel least qualified to talk about. Is it like a guy that’s got long arms teaching you how to bench press, or a dude that’s really tall teaching you how to dead lift, someone that feels like they came from behind the eight ball?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：接下来谈谈关于幸福的问题，显然这是你常谈的话题。说实话，这是我最不觉得自己有资格谈论的一个主题。这是不是就像一个手臂特别长的人教你如何做卧推，或者一个特别高的人教你怎么硬拉？就好像一个原本就不占优势的人来教你打破局面一样？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, it’s you’re asking a crazy person about their thoughts, so I just thought it through.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是啊，就像你在问一个疯子他是怎么想的，所以我只是努力想通了这个问题。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is happiness still more about peace than it is about joy?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：幸福对你来说，还是更偏向于平和而不是喜悦吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s just one of those overloaded words that means different things to different people, so I’m not even sure we’re communicating the same language. But what is happiness? I think it’s just basically being okay with where you are. Not wanting.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：幸福是一个被过度使用的词，对不同的人意味着不同的东西，所以我甚至不确定我们现在说的是不是同一种语言。但对我来说，幸福就是对你所处的位置感到满足。不再渴求。

The Nature of Happiness

幸福的本质

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Not wanting things to be different than the way they are. Not having the sense that anything is missing in this moment. Needing something to change your current positive situation being contingent on an adjustment. I’m getting something from the outside world. Ironically, I think most people, if you were to ask them when they were happiest for a sustained period of time, not for a brief moment, because pleasure can override happiness and create kind of this illusion of happiness.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：不希望事情与现在的状态不同。不觉得此刻缺少什么。不需要某种改变来改善当下的正面状态，不需要从外部世界获得什么。有趣的是，我认为如果你问人们，他们什么时候在一段持续的时间里最幸福——不是短暂的一刻，因为愉悦感会掩盖幸福，制造出一种虚假的幸福感——

But if you ask people when they were happy for a sustained period of time, they were probably doing some variation of nothing.

但如果你问人们什么时候在持续一段时间内感到幸福，他们很可能是在“什么都没做”的某种状态中。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s interesting, because in the chase is this sort of lack, this contingency, but then you get bored. If you just sit around all the time, you get bored, so you want adventure, you want surprise, like there’s the funny thought experiment of the bliss machine, which is suppose I could drill a hole in your head and put electrode in, and they did this with monkeys, and I can put a wire in there, and I can stimulate just the right part of your brain, and I can put you in bliss, and you would just be in bliss, would you would you want that?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：这很有意思，因为追逐的过程中会有一种缺失感、依赖感，但如果你只是一直闲着，你又会觉得无聊。你会渴望冒险，渴望惊喜。就像那个关于“幸福机器”的有趣思想实验：假设我能在你脑袋上钻个洞，装上电极（科学家确实对猴子做过这个实验），然后我用电线刺激你大脑的某个区域，让你沉浸在幸福中——你愿意这样吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Might be nice. For how long?

NAVAL RAVIKANT：可能挺不错的。但能持续多久？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Do it and I’ll tell you.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：你做了我就告诉你。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right. So most people will say, well I don’t want that, I want meaning, I don’t want just bliss, want meaning, and you’re like, okay, well I’ll put an electrode in there and I’ll give you meaning, how about that? And if you kind of run this thought experiment long enough, I think most people realize, actually, what I want is I want surprise. I want the world to surprise me, and I want to wrestle with it in ways that are somewhat predictable but somewhat not, and you kind of end up back where you started.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：对。大多数人会说，“我不想那样，我想要意义。我不仅仅想要幸福，我想要意义。”那你就可以说，“那我给你植入一个电极，专门提供‘意义’，怎么样？”如果你把这个思想实验延续下去，大多数人最终会意识到，自己真正想要的是“惊喜”。他们想要这个世界让自己感到惊喜，并以一种既可预期又不可预期的方式与它搏斗。最终，人们还是会回到最初的起点。

So, I don’t know if necessarily, for some people, pure happiness is the ultimate goal. They want to, you know, just be blissfully happy wherever they are, whenever they are, but I think other people, most people would say, well I’m here in this world, I’m here in this life, I don’t understand it or why, but I want to be engaged, I want to be surprised, I want to do things, I want to accomplish things, I want to want things and then get them. Right? That’s kind of the whole game that we’re all playing here.

所以，我不确定纯粹的幸福是否是某些人的终极目标。有些人可能只是想在任何时间、任何地点都感到幸福快乐。但我认为其他人——大多数人——会说：“我来到了这个世界，活在这段人生中，我并不完全理解为什么，但我想要参与其中，我想要惊喜，我想要去做事，去实现目标，我想要渴望某些东西，然后实现它们。”对吧？这大概就是我们所有人都在玩的这场人生游戏。

The Value of Surprise

惊喜的价值

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Surprise is a really interesting, the sort of unpredictability, I think total bro science here, but I’m pretty sure that that’s kind of how dopamine works, that things are a bit better than you expected. That within that it means that if you for the perennial insecure overachievers that cloy for control, that really want to be able to the schedule is perfectly done and we know the itinerary, we know where we’re going to be at this time, you’re, in some ways, I guess, reducing down the capacity for surprise because everything has become very contrived, prescribed, done in advance, laid out.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：惊喜是件很有意思的事情，这种不可预测性。我这可能完全是“兄弟科学”（bro science），但我几乎可以确定多巴胺的作用机制就是如此：事情比你预期的要好一点。而对于那些长期缺乏安全感、过度努力的人来说——他们渴望掌控一切，想要日程安排得完美无缺，知道每个时刻我们在哪儿、在做什么——他们在某种程度上其实是削弱了生活中惊喜出现的可能性，因为一切都被预先设计好、规范好、提前计划好、排布好了。

Your ability to be surprised actually diminishes.

你被惊喜触动的能力实际上在减弱。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, if nothing worked out the way you expected, if it was all serendipity and you didn’t want that, you would just be a ball of anxiety. On the other hand, if everything worked out as you expected and wanted, you’d be so bored you might as well be dead. So there’s some, you know, the river of life kind of flows between these two banks and enjoy it.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是啊，如果事情全都不如你预期，全是偶然巧合，而你又不愿接受这种情况，那你会变成一个焦虑的集合体。但另一方面，如果一切都按你的预期发展，一切你想要的都如愿实现，那你会无聊到生无可恋。所以某种意义上，人生这条河就在这两岸之间流淌，你要学会享受其中。

Self-Reflection and Unhappiness

自我反思与不幸福感

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You say thinking about yourself is the source of all unhappiness, but presumably you need to work on yourself and your weaknesses as well. So some degree of reflection is important, and if thinking about yourself as a source of unhappiness, is this a price that you need to pay? I need to sort of reflect inward. I’m going to have to diminish this level of happiness for a little while, and then I can use this new level, I’ve got my brown belt on and I can go out into the world as a brown belt.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：你曾说过，“思考自己是所有不幸福感的源头”，但人们显然还是需要对自己和自己的弱点进行改进的。所以某种程度的自我反思是重要的。如果思考自己确实会带来不幸福，那这是否是一种“必须付出的代价”？也就是说，我需要向内反思，可能这段时间幸福感会下降，但之后我就可以用这个新的状态去面对世界，像一个刚拿到棕带的人一样。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: What I’m specifically referring to that is, if you’re thinking about your personality and your ego and the character of you, and you’re obsessing over that, that’s where a lot of depression and unhappiness sort of lingers and gets cultivated. So thinking about woe is me, this happened to me, that happened to me, I have this personality, I have this issue, I deserve this, I didn’t get that, that’s you’re just strengthening a little beast in there that is insatiable, and that’s where I think a lot of unhappiness comes from.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我这里特别指的是，如果你在不停地想自己的个性、自我、性格，不断沉溺于这些，那正是不少抑郁和不幸福滋生和积聚的地方。比如一直想着“我太惨了”、“这事发生在我身上”、“我有这种性格问题”、“我有这个缺陷”、“我本该得到那个却没得到”——你其实是在不断喂养内心那个永不满足的小怪兽。而我认为，很多不幸福感正是由此而来。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s the beast?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：什么是“野兽”？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s the ego, but that word is so overused that I kind of hate to use the word, but it’s like a recurring collection of thoughts that are very self obsessed and will never be satisfied, and very concretized as well, so they’re not malleable, not particularly flexible. But you’re just adding to them by thinking about them all the time, you’re creating narratives and stories and identities, but that’s different from solving personal problems.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：那就是自我，但“自我”这个词已经被用滥了，我其实不太喜欢用它。不过它就像是一组反复出现的、自我中心的思想集合，永远无法满足，而且非常固化，不容易改变，也不太灵活。而你一直在思考这些东西，只是在不断地给它们加料——你创造了种种叙述、故事和身份认同，但那和解决真正的个人问题是不一样的。

So if you encounter something, you learn from something, you’re reflecting upon the learning, then you can reflect upon it, absorb it and then just move on, but sitting there saying I’m Chris, I’m Naval, I deserve this, this happened to me, that person wronged me, this is who I am, this shouldn’t have happened, I need to go get revenge on this, I need to fix that or change this, I mean that I think is where a lot of mental illness is from.

所以如果你经历了什么、学到了什么，然后反思这些经验，吸收它们并继续前行，那是好的。但如果你只是坐在那里，不断地说“我是Chris，我是Naval，我应该得到这个，这件事发生在我身上，那个人伤害了我，这就是我，这不应该发生，我需要报复，我要改变这一切”，我认为这才是很多心理疾病的根源所在。

So it depends if you are thinking about something to solve a problem and get it off your chest, and get it off your mind. If it leaves your mind clearer at the end of it, then I think it was worthwhile. If it leaves your mind busier at the end of it, then you’re probably going in wrong.

所以关键在于你思考这些问题，是不是为了真正地解决问题、让心头的负担放下、让脑子轻松一点。如果最后你感觉头脑更清明，那这段思考就是值得的。如果反而更混乱、更焦虑，那你很可能走偏了。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is this a justification for detachment, cultivated ignorance, distraction?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：这算不算是为“抽离”、人为的“无知”、甚至“分心”找借口？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Detachment is not a goal, detachment is a byproduct. It’s just a byproduct of just realizing, you know, what matters and what doesn’t, and just for one moment on the self thing, I think everybody craves thinking about something more than themselves.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：抽离不是一个目标，它只是一个副产品。是你真正明白了什么重要、什么不重要之后自然产生的副产品。至于“自我”这件事，我认为每个人都渴望能思考一些超越自己的东西。

If you want to be happy to some extent, you have to forget about your personal problems, and one way to do that is take on other problems, bigger problems, and that could be a mission, that could be spirituality, that could be kids, it could be caring about the planet, although I think people take that a little far, and then they get kind of oppressive and tyrannical and supportive abstract concepts, but so these can be taken too far, just like religion, for example, just like anything in excess.

如果你想获得某种程度的幸福，你必须忘记自己的小我问题。而一种方式就是去承担其他问题，更大的问题。可能是一项使命，可能是某种精神信仰，可能是孩子，也可能是对地球的关心——虽然我觉得有些人走得太远，最后变得压迫他人、专制，而且狂热地支持某种抽象概念。但这些事情都可能走向极端，就像宗教一样，任何事情一旦过度都会变质。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, anything in excess, right?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是啊，任何事过犹不及，对吧？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: But generally, the less you think about yourself, the more you can think about a mission, or about God, or about a child, or something like that.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：但总的来说，你越少想着自己，就越能去思考一项使命、上帝、孩子，或类似这样的东西。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So, I remember Vinny Himath, the founder of Loom, said, I am rich, and I have no idea to do what to do with my life, and you replied, God, kids, on mission, pick at least one.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：我记得Loom的创始人Vinny Himath曾说：“我很有钱，但我完全不知道该拿我的人生做什么。”你当时回答他说：“上帝、孩子、使命——至少选一个。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. Preferably all three. It’s very liberating.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：没错。最好是三个全选。这会让人感到极度自由。

Overthinking and Depression

过度思考与抑郁

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think overthinking about yourself is probably the—it may not be the cause of depression, but it certainly doesn’t help.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我认为过度思考自己可能——它未必是抑郁的起因，但肯定不会有帮助。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Rumination.

克里斯·威廉姆森：反复思虑。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. I kind of had a self induced Stockholm Syndrome from this sort of a thing, because I like to think about stuff, and you provide yourself with an endless number of things to think about.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对。我有点像是对这种事情产生了自我诱发的斯德哥尔摩综合征，因为我喜欢思考，而你会给自己制造出无穷无尽的思考对象。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So you’re kind of the prisoner and the prison guard at the same time.

克里斯·威廉姆森：所以你既是囚犯，又是看守。

And I had Abigail Schrier on the show, she wrote this book called Bad Therapy, sort of pushing back against therapy culture for kids, specifically for kids, but there was a blast radius that covered pretty much everything, including kind of CBT, and I’m like, we’re getting perilously close to some really evidence based stuff here, but the more that I’ve thought about it, and the more that I’ve looked at the evidence, there is like basically a direct correlation between how much you think about yourself and how miserable you are.

我请了阿比盖尔·施赖尔来节目，她写了一本书叫《糟糕的治疗》，是对儿童心理治疗文化的一种反击，主要针对孩子，但影响范围波及了几乎一切，包括像认知行为疗法（CBT）这样的东西。我当时想，这些观点已经在接近一些有坚实证据支持的领域了。但我越思考、越查看相关证据，就越发现：你对自己思考得越多，你就越痛苦，这两者几乎是直接相关的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Therapy is great if it lets you vent and it solves the thing, and then a session later you’re done, you’re clear. But if you’re just looping on the same thing forever, then it’s actually the opposite. You’re bathing in it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：如果治疗能让你倾诉，并解决问题，那它非常有价值，一次疗程之后你就释然了。但如果你只是永远地反复在同一个问题上兜圈子，那结果反而适得其反。你是在沉浸其中。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’re indulging in it. Yeah. How have your “become happy” techniques developed over time?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你是在沉溺其中。是啊。你那些“变得快乐”的技巧随着时间是如何发展的？

Happiness Without Techniques

无需技巧的幸福

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. I used to have a lot of them. Now I kind of try not to have any because I think the techniques themselves are kind of a struggle. It’s sort of like bidding for status implies you’re low status, it reveals that you’re low status, so someone who’s basically trying to show off, comes across as low status, the same way someone who’s trying to be happy is sort of saying I’m unhappy and creating that frame, so it’s better just to not even think in terms of happiness.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的。我过去有很多技巧。现在我尽量不再使用任何技巧，因为我觉得技巧本身就是一种挣扎。就像追逐地位意味着你其实地位低，这本身就暴露了你地位低。一个人如果在炫耀，别人就会觉得他地位低；同样地，一个人若在努力追求幸福，实际上是在传递“我不幸福”的信号，并建立起这种认知框架。所以最好根本不要从“幸福”这个角度去思考。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Position yourself as being in lack in order to attain.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你把自己置于匮乏的位置，才能获得你想要的东西。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. I don’t even think in terms of happiness, unhappiness anymore. I just kind of just do my thing.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的。我现在根本不再用“幸福”或“不幸福”来定义任何状态。我只是做我自己的事。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Again, another question that’s similar to a bunch of them. Do you think you could have got there had you have not done the procedural systematic sort of step by step by step, this is what it is, and then come out the other side?

克里斯·威廉姆森：这个问题和前面几个有些类似。你觉得如果你没有经历那种程序化、系统性的逐步推进——一步步明确这是怎么回事——你还能达到现在的状态吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I don’t think there are any formulas, I think it’s unique to each person. It’s like asking a successful person, how did you become successful? Each one of them will give you a different story, you can’t follow anyone else’s path, and most of them are even probably telling you some narratized version of it that isn’t quite true.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我不认为有什么固定公式，我认为每个人的路都是独一无二的。就像你问一个成功人士：“你是怎么成功的？”每个人都会讲出不同的故事，你没法照搬别人的路径。而且他们大多数人可能说的还是经过加工、讲故事式的版本，未必完全真实。

I mean, that’s something that I continually realize, especially as I get to spend more time around people that are successful, and you hear it’s very important to prioritize work life balance, right? That’s one of the most common things that people who have attained success say.

我的意思是，这一点我越来越意识到，尤其是当我和越来越多的成功人士相处时。你会听到他们说，工作与生活的平衡非常重要，对吧？这是成功者最常挂在嘴边的话之一。

The Path to Success

通往成功之路

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s not my experience. If you look at—you shouldn’t be asking somebody who is successful what they do to continue their success now. You should be asking them what did they do to attain their success when they are where you were.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：那不是我的经验。你不应该去问一个已经成功的人，他们现在是怎么维持成功的。你应该问的是，当他们还在你现在这个阶段时，是做了什么才获得了成功。

And the people who are really extraordinarily successful didn’t sit around watching success porn. They just went and did it. They just had, they had such an overwhelming desire to be successful at the thing that they were doing that they just went and did that thing, they didn’t have time to study and learn and listen, and they just did it. It’s the overwhelming desire that’s the most important, and the focus that comes from that.

那些真正特别成功的人，并不会坐在那儿看“成功学”小视频。他们只是直接去做。他们有一种极度强烈的愿望，想要在自己所做的事情上取得成功，于是他们就去做了。他们根本没有时间去研究、去学习、去听道理，他们只是去做。最关键的是那股压倒性的渴望，以及由此产生的专注。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s a tweet of yours that was, people who are good at making wealth, or people who are good at attaining wealth don’t need to teach anybody else how to do it.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你曾发过一条推文说：那些擅长创造财富或积累财富的人，不需要教别人怎么做。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, you don’t need mentors, you need action, that was one of them. Another one is, you know, the people who actually know how to make money don’t need to sell you a course on it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，你不需要导师，你需要的是行动——这是我说的其中之一。还有一个是：那些真正懂得如何赚钱的人，不需要卖课教你赚钱。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There it is. Yeah, there’s lots of variations on it, but if you don’t, another one, if you don’t lie awake at night thinking about it, you don’t want it badly enough.

克里斯·威廉姆森：就是这个。是啊，还有很多类似的说法，比如你那句：如果你晚上不会因为这件事辗转难眠，那说明你还不够渴望它。

Sleep and Priorities

睡眠与优先事项

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, I think you’ve, I’ve heard you talk before about how sort of unclosed loops problems that you’re working on can cause you to be sleepless, and this—I’m not a good sleeper.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，我记得你之前谈过，有些未解决的问题像是没闭合的回路，会让你失眠。而我——我并不是一个睡得好的人。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Tell me about that.

克里斯·威廉姆森：说说看。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh, I mean, my eight sleep hates me. It’s always hard to me. I failed at sleeping again. Brian Johnson thinks I’m going to die early. He’s probably right.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：噢，我的Eight Sleep（智能床垫）恨我，它对我总是很难。我又一次没睡好。布莱恩·约翰逊觉得我会早死，他可能说得没错。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How much do you reckon you sleep at night? Do have any idea?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你估计你晚上能睡多久？有个大概的概念吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh, it’s so random. Some nights I’ll sleep eight hours, some nights I’ll sleep four hours, but it’s literally just random.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：噢，太随机了。有些晚上我能睡八小时，有些晚上只睡四小时，完全就是随机的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Are you bothered about that? Are you trying to optimize? Are a sleep coach teaching you how to—

克里斯·威廉姆森：你会为此困扰吗？你有没有试图优化？是不是有睡眠教练教你怎么——

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I don’t flog myself over things. If I want to sleep, I’ll sleep. If I don’t want to sleep, don’t sleep. It’s not a—I don’t think I’m doing anything right or wrong.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我不会因为这些事责备自己。如果我想睡，我就去睡；不想睡，就不睡。我不觉得自己做对了或做错了什么。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You don’t label it good night, bad night?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你不会给它贴标签说“今晚睡得好”或“今晚糟透了”？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: No. I work out every day because I think it gives me more energy and I’ve gotten into a good habit with it. Maybe I’ll do the same thing with sleep, maybe I’ll develop a good habit, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it. There’ll come a point where it’s important to me and when it’s important to me, I’ll just do it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：不会。我每天锻炼，是因为我觉得那让我更有精力，而且我已经养成了这个好习惯。也许有一天我会对睡眠也这样做，也许我会培养一个好的睡眠习惯。但我不会因此责备自己。等到某个时候它变得对我重要了，那时我自然就会去做。

You know, most of, like for example, you look at people with addictions, right, overeating or smoking or whatever, they can kind of go through all the different methods, but it’s half hearted, and then one day they’re like, oh shit, I’ve got lung cancer, my dad has lung cancer, they drop it immediately. So I think a lot of change is more about desire and understanding than it is about forcing yourself or trying to domesticate yourself.

你知道，大多数情况下，比如说那些有成瘾问题的人，比如暴饮暴食、吸烟之类的，他们可能尝试过各种方法，但都很敷衍。直到有一天他们突然意识到，“天啊，我得了肺癌，我爸也得了肺癌”，他们才会立刻戒掉。所以我觉得，很多改变其实更依赖于真正的渴望和理解，而不是靠强迫自己或驯服自己。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s efficiency again, I guess, you know, aligning the thing that you want to do with the way that you feel about what it is that you want to do.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这还是效率的问题，我想，就是把你想做的事情与你对那件事的真实感受对齐。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, it’s not getting caught up in a half desire or mimetic desire, it’s really just being aware of what it is that you actually want at this point in time, and when you want something, then you will act on it with maximal capability.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，不要陷入那种半吊子的渴望，或是模仿来的渴望。关键是清楚自己在这个时刻真正想要的是什么。一旦你真的想要某样东西，你就会以最大能力去行动。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Mhmm. Mhmm.

克里斯·威廉姆森：嗯，嗯。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And that’s the time to act on it. In the meantime, just doing it because other people tell you you should do it or society tells you you should do it or you feel slightly guilty about it, these are half hearted efforts, and half hearted efforts don’t get you there.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：那就是你该行动的时候。而在那之前，如果只是因为别人说你该做、社会说你该做，或你自己有点负罪感去做，这些都是敷衍的努力。而敷衍的努力不会让你成功。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: As you get older, one thing that becomes harder to ignore is your testosterone levels.

克里斯·威廉姆森：随着年龄增长，有一件事变得越来越难忽视——你的睾酮水平。

Dealing with Anxiety and Stress

应对焦虑与压力

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You mentioned anxiety before. “Imagine how effective you’d be if you weren’t anxious all the time” is one of yours, and anxiety is the emotion du jour of the twenty-first century. Lots of driven people are very anxious, very paranoid – that’s what’s caused them to be effective. It pays to be so attentive, detail-oriented, not letting things go, staying up at night thinking about it. That’s the paranoia coming in. What have you come to learn about anxiety and dealing with it?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你之前提到过焦虑。“想象一下，如果你不是一直焦虑，你会有多高效”——这是你说过的话之一。而焦虑几乎成了21世纪的时代情绪。很多有动力的人都非常焦虑、非常多疑——正是这种状态让他们变得高效。对细节的关注、不放过任何事、整夜思考，这些都是偏执的表现。你对焦虑和应对焦虑这件事，有什么体会？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Anxiety and stress are interesting – they’re very related. Stress is when your mind is being pulled in two different directions at the same time. If you look at an iron beam, when it’s under stress, it’s because it’s being bent in two different directions. When your mind is under stress, it’s because it has two conflicting desires at once.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：焦虑和压力是很有趣的现象——它们关系密切。压力是当你的大脑同时被两个不同方向拉扯时的状态。就像一根钢梁，承受压力是因为它被朝两个方向弯曲。大脑处于压力中，是因为它同时存在两个相互冲突的愿望。

For example, you want to be liked but you also want to do something selfish, and you can’t reconcile the two, so you’re under stress. You want to do something for somebody else, but you want to do something for yourself. You don’t want to go to work but you want to make money – so you’re under stress.

比如说，你想被人喜欢，但你又想做一件自私的事，这两个愿望无法调和，于是你就有了压力。你想为别人做点什么，但也想为自己做点什么。你不想上班，但又想赚钱——于是你就有了压力。

One of the ways to get through stress is to acknowledge that you actually have two conflicting desires and either resolve it, pick one and be okay losing the other, or decide later. But at least just being aware of why you’re stressed can help alleviate a lot of stress.

缓解压力的方法之一，是承认你确实有两个冲突的愿望，然后要么解决它，选择其中一个并接受失去另一个，要么暂时搁置决定。但至少，意识到你为什么有压力，就已经能缓解很大一部分了。

Anxiety, I think, is sort of this pervasive unidentifiable stress where you’re just stressed out all the time and you’re not even sure why. You can’t even identify the underlying problem. The reason for that is because you have so many unresolved problems, unresolved stress points that have piled up in your life that you can no longer identify what the problems are. There’s this mountain of garbage in your mind with a little bit of it poking out the top like an iceberg – that’s anxiety. But underneath there’s a lot of unresolved things.

我认为，焦虑是一种弥散性的、无法识别的压力，你总是感到紧张不安，却说不出具体原因。这是因为你生活中积累了太多未解决的问题和压力点，以至于你已经无法辨别到底是什么在困扰你。你的大脑像堆积了一座垃圾山，只有一小部分露出表面，就像冰山一角——那就是焦虑。而冰山之下，藏着许多未解的事。

You need to go through very carefully every time you’re anxious and ask, “Why am I anxious this time?” If you don’t know why, sit and think about it. Write down what the possible causes could be. Meditate on it. Journal. Talk to a therapist. Talk to friends. See when that stress goes away. If you can identify, unravel, and resolve these issues, then I think that helps get rid of anxiety.

每当你感到焦虑时，都需要非常认真地去问自己：“我这次为什么焦虑？”如果你不知道原因，就坐下来思考，写下可能的原因，冥想，写日记，和治疗师谈谈，和朋友聊聊，看看在什么时候这种压力消退。如果你能识别、理清并解决这些问题，我认为这将有助于消除焦虑。

A lot of anxiety is piled up because we move through life too quickly, not observing our own reactions to things. We don’t resolve them. This goes counter to what I was saying earlier about not reflecting too much on things, but you reflect on the problems to observe them and solve them. You don’t reflect on them to feel better about yourself.

很多焦虑是因为我们生活节奏太快，未能察觉自己对事物的反应，也没有及时解决。这和我之前说的“不要过度反思”看似相悖，但这类反思的目的是观察和解决问题，而不是为了让自己感觉更好。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: To indulge them.

克里斯·威廉姆森：不是为了沉溺其中。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, if you’re doing it just to feel better about yourself, that could be strengthening your personality and your ego, and could be creating a more fragile personality.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，如果你只是为了让自己感觉好一些而反思，那反而是在强化你的个性和自我，可能会让你变得更脆弱。

One big anxiety resolver for me is ruminating on death. I think that’s a good one. You’re going to die. It’s all going to zero. You cannot take anything with you. I know this is trite, and I know we don’t spend enough time thinking about the big questions – we kind of give up on them when we’re very young.

对我来说，一个重要的缓解焦虑方式是反思死亡。我觉得这是个有效的方法。你终将死去，一切都会归零，你带不走任何东西。我知道这听起来很老套，我也知道我们花在“大问题”上的时间太少——我们在很年轻时就已经放弃思考这些问题了。

A little child might ask the big questions like “Why are we here?”, “What’s the meaning of life?”, “What is this all about?”, “Is there Santa Claus?”, “Is there God?” But then as adults, we’re taught not to think about these things. We’ve given up on them. But I think the big questions are the big questions for good reasons, and if you can keep the idea in front of you at all times that you’re going to die and that everything goes literally to zero, what’s the distress about?

一个小孩子可能会问那些宏大的问题，比如“我们为什么在这里？”“生命的意义是什么？”“这一切到底是怎么回事？”“有圣诞老人吗？”“有上帝吗？”但长大后，我们被教导不要再想这些事，我们也就放弃了。但我认为，这些“终极问题”之所以是终极问题，是有理由的。如果你能时刻提醒自己——你会死，一切终归于零——那还有什么好焦虑的呢？

The Brevity of Life

生命的短暂

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: For better or worse, life is very short. How should people deal with its briefness?

克里斯·威廉姆森：无论好坏，生命都非常短暂。人们该如何面对这种短暂呢？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Enjoy it. Make the best of it. You know, it’s even briefer than that. Each moment just disappears, it’s gone. There’s only a present moment, and it’s gone instantly.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：去享受它，充分利用它。你知道，生命比我们想象的还要短暂。每一个时刻都会瞬间消失，只存在于当下，然后立刻消逝。

So if you’re not there for it, if you’re stressed out, or you’re anxious, or you’re thinking about something else, you missed it. Any moment when you’re not in that moment, you are dead to that moment. You might as well be dead because your mind is off doing something else or living in some imagined reality that is just a very poor substitute for the actual reality.

所以如果你没有真正活在当下——如果你在压力之中、焦虑之中，或者在想着别的事——你就错过了这个时刻。每一个你没有身临其境的时刻，对你而言都等同于“死亡”。你可以说是“活着”，但其实你的意识早已游离，漂浮在虚构的现实中，那种想象的现实是现实的低劣替代品。

One of my recent realizations was, what is wasted time? What is the waste of time? I don’t like to waste time, but what is wasted time? Everything is wasted time in a sense because nothing matters in the ultimate, but in each moment the thing matters. In each moment, what’s happening in front of you literally has all the meaning in the world, and so what matters is just being present for the thing.

我最近有一个领悟：什么是浪费时间？浪费时间到底是什么意思？我不喜欢浪费时间，但到底什么才是浪费时间？从某种意义上说，一切都是浪费时间，因为从终极角度看，什么都不重要；但从每一个当下来看，一切都重要。每一个当下发生的事情，本身就承载了全部的意义。所以真正重要的，是你有没有在那个时刻“在场”。

If you’re doing something that you want to do and you’re fully there for it, there’s not wasted time. If you don’t want to do it and your mind is running away from it, and you’re reacting against it, and you’re wishing you were somewhere else, and you’re thinking about some other thing, or you’re anticipating some future thing or regretting some past thing or being fearful of something, then that’s wasted time.

如果你在做你真正想做的事，并且你完全沉浸其中，那就不是浪费时间。但如果你不想做这件事，而你的大脑却在逃避、在抗拒、在想着别的地方，或者想着未来的某件事、后悔过去的某件事、害怕某件事情，那就是浪费时间。

That’s time that’s being wasted when you’re not actually present for the reality in front of you. So my definition of wasted time – yes, I do want some material things in life, and there are things that have more value than others within this life, but this life is very short and bounded. The true waste of time is time that you are not present for, when you are not there for it, when you are not doing the thing you want to do to the best of your capability such that you’re immersed in it.

当你没有真正活在面前的现实之中时，那就是浪费时间。所以我对浪费时间的定义是——是的，我人生中确实也想要一些物质的东西，也确实有些事比其他事更有价值，但这一生非常短暂且有限。真正的浪费，是那些你没有在场的时间，是你没有全情投入、没有尽力去做你想做的事、没有沉浸其中的时光。

If you’re not immersed in this moment, then you’re wasting your time.

如果你没有沉浸在当下，那你就是在浪费时间。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: People get worried about dying and no longer being here, but they don’t realize that so much of their life is spent not being here in any case.

克里斯·威廉姆森：人们害怕死亡，害怕“离开这个世界”，但他们没有意识到，其实他们的大半人生都没有真正“在这里”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. But I think people crave being here for it, and when you’re here for it, you’re actually not thinking about yourself. You are more immersed in the thing, the moment, the task at hand.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。但我认为人们渴望真正“在场”。而当你真正“在场”的时候，你不会想着自己，而是沉浸在事情之中、当下之中、你手头要做的事情之中。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: We don’t want peace of mind, we want peace from our mind.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我们想要的不是“内心的平静”，而是“摆脱大脑的折磨”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. The mind is what kills each you alive if you let it, and there’s more to you than the mind.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错。如果你任由大脑控制，它就会在你活着的时候杀死你。而你远远不止于你的大脑。

Beyond the Mind

超越头脑

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How so?

克里斯·威廉姆森：怎么说？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, I mean, I don’t want to disassemble the body, so to speak, right, because…

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：嗯，我的意思是，我并不是想要“拆解”身体，说得夸张一点，因为……

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Please go on.

克里斯·威廉姆森：请继续。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: At the end of the day, everything arises within your consciousness. You’ve nowhere else to experience it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：归根结底，一切都在你的意识中发生。你没有别的地方可以体验这一切。

That consciousness is relatively static in a sense that it’s been exactly the same from the moment you were born to the moment you die. Everything that you experience from your body, your mind to the world to everything is within that consciousness, and that thing, that base layer of being – and this is what the Buddhists will tell you – is the real thing.

从某种意义上说，那个意识是相对静止的——它从你出生那一刻起直到你死亡那一刻都是一样的。你所体验到的一切，从身体、头脑到外在世界，全都发生在这个意识之中。而这个意识，这个“存在的底层”，正如佛教徒所说的，才是真正的“实相”。

Everything that comes and goes in the middle, including your mind, including your body is unreal, and trying to find stability in those transient things is your castle that you’re building on sand that’s going to crumble.

所有在其间来来去去的事物，包括你的头脑、你的身体，都是“非真实”的。而你若试图在这些转瞬即逝的东西上寻找稳定，那就好比在沙地上建一座城堡，注定会崩塌。

Life is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. There will be some good and some bad. Most of it is actually just up to your interpretation. You’re born, you have a set of sensory experiences, and then you die. How you choose to interpret those experiences is up to you, and different people interpret them in different ways.

人生会按照它该有的样子展开，有些好事，有些坏事。实际上，大多数的“好”与“坏”只是取决于你的诠释。你出生，经历一系列感官体验，然后死亡。你如何解读这些体验，完全取决于你自己，不同的人会有不同的诠释方式。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s the old line about two people walking down the street, they’re having the exact same experience, one is happy, one is sad, right? It’s a narrative in their heads, it’s how they choose to interpret.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这就像那句老话，两个人走在同一条街上，经历完全一样的事，一个人很开心，另一个却很难过，对吧？这是他们脑中的叙事，是他们选择如何解读。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So I think when I said that it was a long time ago, I was talking more about having positive interpretations and negative interpretations, but these days I think it’s better just not to have any interpretations. And to just allow things to be.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我以前说这番话的时候，更多是谈论正面解读和负面解读的区别。但现在我觉得，更好的做法是干脆不去解读。就让事物“是它所是”。

You’re still going to have interpretations. You can’t stop it, and nor should you try, but even that having an interpretation is just a thing you can leave alone.

你依然会产生解读，这是无法避免的，也不需要强行阻止。但即使产生了解读，它也只是一个可以不去理会的念头而已。

Valuing Your Time

珍惜你的时间

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I really want to try and just dig in a little more to the best way to remind people that they should value their time, just how brief it is – that the time that you spend ruminating, being distracted, fears of the past, regrets…

克里斯·威廉姆森：我真的想再深入一点，探索怎么做才是最好的方式，能提醒人们要珍惜自己的时间，意识到它是多么短暂——那些用来反复思考、分心、沉溺于过去的恐惧与后悔的时间……

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I don’t want to tell anybody how to live their life. I would just say that to the extent that you want to improve your quality of life, the easiest and best way to do that is to observe your own mind and your own thoughts and be a little more observant of yourself objectively. Then you’ll kind of realize your own loops and patterns. It takes time, it’s not overnight, it’s not instantaneous.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我不想告诉别人该怎么过他们的人生。但我可以说，如果你想提升生活质量，最简单、最有效的方法就是去观察自己的头脑和念头，客观地多关注一下自己。这样你就会逐渐意识到自己的思维循环和行为模式。这需要时间，不是一蹴而就的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So you mean letting go is not a one-time event?

克里斯·威廉姆森：所以你的意思是，放下并不是一次性的事情？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, and letting go is not necessarily even the right answer. If you’re trying to be an enlightened being and you want to live like a god and everything’s going to be perfect and be a Buddha, sure you can let go, but I think in practice it’s actually quite hard to do.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，而且放下也未必是正确答案。如果你试图成为一个觉悟的存在，想要像神一样生活，一切都完美，像佛陀一样，那当然可以尝试放下。但我认为在现实中，这其实非常难做到。

I think you’re going to find a lot of fulfillment out of life by just doing what you want to do and genuinely exploring what it is that you want rather than doing what other people expect you to do or society expects you to do or what you might just think should be done by default. I think most older successful people will tell you that their life was best when they lived it unapologetically on their own terms.

我觉得，真正让人感到充实的人生，是去做你真正想做的事，去真诚地探索你真正想要的东西，而不是去做别人期待你做的、社会要求你做的，或者你以为“默认就该做”的事情。我想大多数年长且成功的人都会告诉你，他们人生中最好的时光，就是毫无歉意、按照自己的方式活着的时候。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Be selfish.

克里斯·威廉姆森：做个自私的人。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Holistic selfishness.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：整体性的自私。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There you go. Exactly. We can clip that little…

克里斯·威廉姆森：就该这样。完全正确。我们可以把这段剪出来……

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I’m telling you about…

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我要告诉你的是……

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s really selfish.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这真是太自私了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. And then we just keep running about it. Bad guy. Great.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的。然后我们就围绕这点不停讲，成了个“坏人”。太好了。

Trusting Your Gut vs. Your Head

信任直觉还是信任头脑

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I had this insight, a question, I guess. How much do you think that we should trust the voice in our heads? Because half of wisdom suggests to rely on your sort of bottom-up intuition, and then half of it has to be sort of top-down rational as possible. How do you navigate the tension between head and gut in this way?

克里斯·威廉姆森：我最近有个领悟，也算是个问题吧。你觉得我们该在多大程度上信任脑海中的那个声音？因为一半的智慧建议我们依靠“由下而上”的直觉，另一半则强调要尽量“由上而下”地理性分析。在直觉与理性之间的张力中，你是怎么应对的？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think the gut is what decides, the head is kind of what rationalizes it afterwards. The gut is the ultimate decision maker, and what is the gut? The gut is refined judgment, it’s taste, aggregated. It could be aggregated through evolution, in your genes and your DNA, or it could be aggregated through your experiences and what you’ve thought through.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我认为，真正做决定的是“直觉”，而“头脑”是在事后为它找理由。直觉才是最终的决策者。那么直觉是什么？它是一种精炼过的判断力，是一种品味的积累。它可能是通过进化沉淀下来的，写在你的基因和DNA里，也可能是你人生经验和思考的积淀。

The mind is good at solving new problems, new problems in the external world that have defined edges – beginnings and ends and objectives. What the mind is actually really bad at is making hard decisions. So when you have a hard decision to make, I find it’s better to ruminate on it, think through all the pros and cons, but then you sleep on it, you wait a couple of days, you wait until the gut answer appears with conviction and it feels right.

头脑擅长解决新问题，尤其是那些边界清晰、有开始、有结束、有目标的外部问题。但头脑真正不擅长的是做出艰难的决定。所以当你面临一个困难抉择时，我发现最好的方法是：先仔细思考它，权衡利弊，然后搁置一下，睡一觉，等个几天，等那个来自直觉、带着笃定感的答案自然浮现——那种“对了”的感觉。

When you’re younger, it takes longer because you just don’t have as much experience, and when you’re older, it can happen much faster, which is why old people are more set in their ways as a consequence. They know what they want, they know what they don’t want.

在你年轻的时候，这种直觉出现得比较慢，因为你经验不足。而当你年长时，它会来得更快，这也是为什么年纪大的人更坚定自己的方式。他们知道自己要什么，也知道自己不要什么。

So it takes time to develop your gut instinct and judgment, but once you’ve developed them, don’t trust anything else because you can’t go against your gut – it’ll bite you in the end.

所以，培养你的直觉和判断力是需要时间的。但一旦你培养出来了，就别再信别的东西了。因为你无法违背自己的直觉——最终它会反咬你一口。

Relationships and Personal Growth

关系与个人成长

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Usually in relationships that failed you can look back and say, “Oh actually I knew it was going to fail because of this reason, but I kind of went ahead anyway because I wanted it to be this way, right? I wanted this person to be a different way than they are, or I wanted to get a different thing out of it than I thought I was going to, than I knew I was going to get, but I just wanted it.” So sometimes desire will override your judgment.

克里斯·威廉姆森：通常一段关系失败之后，你回头看会说，“其实我早知道它会失败，是因为某个原因，但我还是硬着头皮继续了，因为我太想让它成为我想象中的样子了，对吧？我希望那个人是另一个样子，或者我希望从这段关系中得到我知道得不到的东西，但我就是想要。”所以有时候，欲望会压过判断。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Wistful thinking. It traps you into a pathway that just chews up time.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这是幻想性的思维。它会把你困在一条只会吞噬你时间的道路上。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s that insight of yours?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你不是有句关于这个的洞见吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Think we can’t change ourselves, but we can; we think we can change other people, but we can’t.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我们以为自己无法改变，其实可以；我们以为能改变别人，其实不行。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Exactly.

克里斯·威廉姆森：没错。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think to add to that, you can’t change other people, you can change your reaction to them, you can change yourself, but other people only change through trauma or their own insight on their own schedule, and never in a way that you like.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我想补充的是，你确实无法改变别人，你能做的是改变自己对他们的反应，改变自己。而别人只有在经历创伤或获得自身的洞察时，才会按他们自己的节奏改变——而且从来不是你希望的方式。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Al Anon teaches that people do sometimes change, but rarely in relationships and never when they’re told to.

克里斯·威廉姆森：Al-Anon（一个支持亲人有酗酒问题者的组织）教导说，有时人是会改变的，但极少是在一段关系里改变，也从不会是在你叫他们改变的时候。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Absolutely. The fastest way to alienate somebody is to tell them to change.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：完全正确。让一个人与你疏远最快的方法，就是告诉他要改变。

Learning Without Pressure

无压力的学习

NAVAL RAVIKANT: In fact, the Dale Carnegie School of Public Speaking operates by getting you up there and realizing that the number one problem with public speaking is that people are very self-conscious. People who are practicing in the Dale Carnegie School of Public Speaking start speaking and the people in the audience are only allowed to compliment them, genuine compliments, not fake compliments, on things that they did well. You’re not allowed to criticize them on things that they did poorly and eventually they develop self confidence.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：实际上，戴尔·卡耐基的公众演讲学校采用的方法是让你走上台去演讲，并意识到公众演讲的最大障碍是人们过于自我意识过强。在这个学校练习演讲时，观众只被允许指出演讲者做得好的地方，给予真诚的赞美，不能是假客套，也不允许批评他们做得不好的地方。久而久之，他们就会建立起自信。

The same way, there’s the Michel Thomas School of Language Learning. What they do is you listen to a teacher talking to a student—they’re not teaching you, you’re not expected to remember or memorize anything—you just listen to a student stumbling over the language. It’s a better way to learn because you yourself don’t feel flustered or tested or graded. You’re not in your own head as much.

还有一个类似的方法，是米歇尔·托马斯语言学习法。他们的做法是让你听老师和学生对话——他们不是直接教你，你也不用记忆或背诵什么——你只是听一个学生在语言上磕磕绊绊地学习。这种学习方式更有效，因为你自己不会感到紧张、不受评判、不被打分。你不会一直困在自己的脑海中。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Correct, you’re not in your own head and you’re just observing. You might even be laughing at the student or agreeing with the teacher or sympathizing with the student, but because you are a passive observer you can be more objective about it. You aren’t threatened or fearful and you can learn better.

克里斯·威廉姆森：对，你不再陷在自己的脑袋里，而是在观察。你甚至可能会对学生发笑，或认同老师，或者对学生感到同情。但正因为你是一个旁观者，你可以更客观地看待学习过程。你不会感到被威胁或害怕，所以学得会更好。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Coming back to the original point of you can’t change people, if you do want to change someone’s behavior, I think the only effective way to do it is to compliment them when they do something you want.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：回到一开始说的“你无法改变别人”这个观点——如果你真的想改变一个人的行为，我认为唯一有效的方式就是：当他们做出你希望看到的行为时，及时给予赞美。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Positive reinforcement.

克里斯·威廉姆森：正向强化。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah exactly, not to insult them or be negative or critical when they do something you don’t want. We can’t help it, it’s obviously in our nature to criticize and I do it as well, but it reminds me that when somebody does something praiseworthy, don’t forget to praise them. Definitely go out of your way, and it’ll be genuine—it has to be genuine, it can’t be fake. People want authenticity, but just don’t forget to praise people when they do something praiseworthy, and you’ll get more of that behavior.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，正是如此。不要在他们做出你不喜欢的行为时去侮辱、否定或批评他们。我们很难避免这种本能，我自己也会这么做。但这提醒我：当某人做了值得称赞的事时，别忘了去称赞他们。一定要主动表达，而且要真诚——必须是真诚的，不能是虚假的。人们渴望真实。所以，当别人做了值得表扬的事，不要吝啬你的肯定，这样你就会看到更多这种行为的发生。

Relationship Clarity

关系的清晰

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There was a really famous thread on Reddit about five questions to ask yourself if you’re uncertain about your relationship. One of the questions was, “Are you truly in love with your partner or just their potential or the idea of them?” That’s the “they show such great promise” thinking. They look at their ability for change and growth. They’re on the right path.

克里斯·威廉姆森： Reddit 上曾有一篇非常著名的帖子，列出了在你对一段感情感到不确定时应问自己的五个问题。其中一个是：“你是真的爱你的伴侣，还是爱他们的潜力，或者是你脑海中那个理想化的他们？”这是一种“他们看起来很有前途”的思维方式，人们看中的是他们改变和成长的潜力，他们似乎正在走在“正确的道路上”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: The partner matching thing is so hard. When people come and ask me, “Should I be with this person?” Well, if you’re asking me, the answer is clearly no, right? Because you wouldn’t have to ask if you were with the right person. Or when you ask someone why they’re in a relationship with somebody and they start reading out his or her resume, that’s also a bad sign.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：找到合适伴侣这件事真的太难了。当有人来问我，“我该不该和这个人在一起？”那答案其实已经很明显是“不”了，对吧？如果你和对的人在一起，你根本不会问这个问题。还有一种情况——当你问别人为什么要和某人在一起，而他们开始背诵对方的“简历”时，那也是个糟糕的信号。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do you mean?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你是什么意思？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s like, “Oh, we have so much in common, we like to golf together.” That’s not a basis for a relationship. Or “Oh, you know, she’s a ballerina,” or “He went to Harvard.” These are resume items, not who the person actually is.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：就像是，“我们有很多共同点，我们都喜欢打高尔夫。”这并不能作为一段关系的基础。或者说，“她是个芭蕾舞者”、“他是哈佛毕业的”——这些只是简历项，不是真正的那个人本身。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s a better answer?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那什么才是更好的回答？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: “I just love being with this person. I just trust them. I enjoy being around them. I love how capable he is. I love how kind she is. I love her spirit. I love his energy.”

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特： “我就是喜欢和这个人在一起。我信任他/她。我享受与他们相处的时光。我爱他那种能力，我爱她的善良，我爱她的灵魂，我爱他的能量。”

The more materially and concretely definable the reasons are you’re together, the worse they are. The ineffable is actually where the true love lies.

你们在一起的理由越具体、越物质化，反而越不牢靠。真正的爱，往往藏在那些难以言表的地方。

Because real love is a form of unity, it’s a form of connection, it’s connecting spirit. My consciousness meets your consciousness. The underlying drive in love, in art, in science, in mysticism, is the desire for unity, it’s the desire for connection.

因为真正的爱是一种合一，是一种连接，是灵魂的相遇。是我的意识与你的意识相遇。无论是在爱、艺术、科学还是神秘主义中，其根本动力都是对“合一”的渴望，是对“连接”的渴望。

As Borges famously wrote, in every human there’s a sense that something infinite has been lost. There’s a God-shaped hole in you you’re trying to fill, and so we’re always trying to find that connection. Love is trying to find it in one other person and saying, “You’re male, I’m female,” or whatever your predilections are, and now we connect, now we form a whole, a connected whole.

正如博尔赫斯所说，每个人心中都有一种“某种无限的东西已失去”的感觉。你内心有一个“上帝形状的空洞”需要填补，因此我们总是在寻找连接。爱，是在另一个人身上寻找这种连接，是在说：“你是男性，我是女性”，或其他你倾向的组合，“我们现在连接了，我们组成了一个完整的整体”。

In mysticism it’s about sitting down to meditate and feeling the whole. In science it’s like atoms bouncing is mechanics but that generates heat, so thermodynamics and motion or kinetics are one combined theory—that’s a whole. Electricity and magnetism are one thing, that’s the whole, creates that sense of awe.

在神秘主义中，这种合一体现在冥想中感受到整体。在科学中，比如说，原子的运动属于力学，但它产生热，于是热力学与动力学合为一体——这就是一个整体。电与磁是一体的，也构成了一个整体，令人敬畏。

In art, I feel an emotion, I create a piece of art around it, and then you see that painting, or you see the Sistine Chapel, or you read the poem and you feel that emotion, so again it’s creating unity, it’s creating connection. I think everybody craves that, and so when you really love somebody, it’s because you feel a sense of wholeness by being around them, and that sense of wholeness probably doesn’t have anything to do with what school they went to or what career they’re in.

在艺术中，我体验到一种情感，我围绕这种情感创作出一幅画。你看到这幅画，或是西斯廷礼拜堂的穹顶，或是一首诗，你也感受到了那种情感——这又是一种“合一”，一种连接。我认为每个人都渴望这种感觉。所以当你真正爱一个人时，是因为和他们在一起时你感受到一种“完整感”。而这种完整感，很可能和他们上的学校、从事的职业毫无关系。

Just tying that into “life is short”—if you’re faced with a difficult choice and you cannot decide, the answer is no. The reason is modern society is full of options.

再联系到“人生短暂”这个话题——如果你面对一个艰难的选择却迟迟无法决定，那答案就是“不”。原因是现代社会充满了选择。

Decision Making Principles

决策原则

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Knowing this rationally sounds great, but having the courage to commit to it in reality is a different task. Cutting your losses quickly in the big three—relationships, jobs, and locations—is hard. What would you say to someone who may cerebrally be able to agree with you?

克里斯·威廉姆森：理性上知道这些听起来很棒，但在现实中有勇气去真正做到是另一回事。在“关系、工作和居住地”这三大领域中快速止损很难。对于那些头脑上同意你但行动上却犹豫不决的人，你会怎么说？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: My cousin said this about me. He said, “What I really noticed about you is your ability to walk away from situations that are just not great enough for you, or not good enough for you.” And I think that is a characteristic that I have.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我表兄曾这么评价我。他说：“我特别注意到你的一点是，你有能力从那些不够好、不适合你的情况中果断抽身。”我觉得这确实是我身上的一个特点。

I will not accept second best outcomes in my life. Ultimately, you will end up wherever is acceptable to you. You will get out of life whatever is acceptable to you.

我不会在生活中接受“次优结果”。归根结底，你会停留在你愿意接受的地方。你的人生也只会给你你愿意接受的东西。

There are certain things to me that are very important where I will not settle for second best, but then there are a lot of other things I just don’t care about. If I spend all my time caring about those things, I don’t have the energy for the few things that matter.

对我来说，有些事情非常重要，我绝不会妥协；而其他很多事情我根本不在意。如果我把时间都花在那些无关紧要的事上，我就没有精力去关注真正重要的少数几件事。

In decision making, I have a few heuristics for myself. Other people can use their own, but mine are:

在做决策时，我为自己设立了一些启发式原则。别人可以有自己的方法，但我的有以下几条：

1. If you can’t decide, the answer is no. If you’re offered an opportunity, if you have a new thing that you’re saying yes or no to that is a change from where you’re starting, the answer is by default always no.

1. 如果你无法做决定，那答案就是“不”。如果有一个机会摆在你面前，如果是一个你要对其做出“是或否”的新选择，会带来改变，那么默认答案应始终是“不”。

2. If you have two decisions, A or B, and both seem very equal, take the path that’s more painful in the short term, the one that’s going to be painful immediately, because your brain is always trying to avoid pain. Any pain that is imminent, it is going to treat as much larger than it actually is.

2. 如果你在 A 和 B 两个选择之间犹豫，它们看起来势均力敌，那么选那个短期内更痛苦的路径，那个立刻会带来痛苦的。因为你的大脑总是试图回避痛苦，而任何即将到来的痛苦都会在你脑中被放大成远大于实际的样子。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: This is kind of like a decision making equivalent of a Taleb surgeon? The surgeon that doesn’t look as good because he’s more likely to be a good surgeon.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这有点像塔勒布那个外科医生的类比，对吧？那个长相不怎么样但反而可能更靠谱的医生。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, it’s similar in that appearances are deceiving because you’re avoiding conflict, you’re avoiding pain. So take the path that’s more painful in the short term because your brain has created this illusion that the short term pain is greater than the long term pain.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，类似的道理——表象是会骗人的，因为你在回避冲突、回避痛苦。所以选择那个短期更痛苦的路径，因为你的大脑制造了一种幻觉，认为短期的痛苦比长期的更可怕。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because long term, you’ll commit your future self to all kinds of long term pain.

克里斯·威廉姆森：因为从长期来看，你会把未来的自己推入各种长期痛苦中。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Mañana, mañana. Exactly.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特： “明天再说，明天再说。”对，正是如此。

3. Take the choice that will leave you more equanimous in the long term—more mental peace in the long term. Whatever clears your mind more and will have you having less self-talk in the future, if you can model that out, that is probably the better route to go.

3. 选择那个从长期看能让你更平静、更安心的选项。无论哪种选择能更好地清理你的思绪、减少你将来内心对话的纷扰——如果你能设想出来，那大概率就是更好的路径。

The Three Key Life Decisions

人生三大关键决策

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I would focus decision making down on the three things that really matter, because everything else is downstream of these three decisions, especially early in life. Later in life you have different things to optimize for, but early in life you’re trying to figure out who you’re with, what you’re doing, and where you live.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我会把决策重点放在三件真正重要的事情上，因为其他一切几乎都是这三项决策的“下游产物”，尤其是在人生早期。到了人生后期，你要优化的东西会不一样，但在早期，你需要搞清楚三件事：你和谁在一起，你在做什么，你住在哪里。

I think on all three of those, you want to think pretty hard about it. People do some of these unconsciously. With who you’re with, very often it’s like, “We were in a relationship, we stumbled along, it felt okay, it had been enough time, so we got married.”

这三件事，你都需要认真思考。但很多人是无意识地做出决定的。比如“和谁在一起”，很多时候是这样的：“我们谈恋爱了，一路跌跌撞撞，感觉还行，时间也差不多了，于是我们就结婚了。”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Not great reasons.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这些理由听起来并不太好。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Maybe not terrible reasons either. People who overthink these things sometimes don’t get the right answer, but maybe here, if you’re the kind of person that’s not going to settle for second best, you iterate on a closed timeframe, so you don’t run out the clock, and then you decide.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：或许也不算太糟。那些想太多的人，有时反而得不到正确答案。但如果你是那种不会将就的人，那么可以在一个封闭的时间范围内做出多次尝试，这样你就不会一直拖延，最终能够做出决定。

On what you do, you try a whole bunch of different things until you find the one that feels like play to you, looks like work to others, you can’t lose at it, get some leverage, try to find some practical application of it and go into that.

关于“你在做什么”，你需要尝试很多不同的事情，直到你找到那种：对你来说像在玩，对别人看起来像工作，你在其中不会失败，又能放大杠杆的事物。找到它的实际应用场景，然后投入进去。

And then where you live is really important. I don’t think people spend enough time on that one. People pick cities randomly based on where they went to school, or where their family happened to be, or where their friend was, or they visited one weekend and really liked it.

再说“你住在哪里”，这个真的很重要。我觉得人们对这个决定花的时间远远不够。很多人选择城市的方式非常随意——要么是因为大学在那里，要么是家人在那里，要么是朋友在那里，或者只是某个周末去玩了一下，觉得喜欢就留下了。

You really want to think it through, because where you live really constrains and defines your opportunities. It’s going to determine your friend circle, your dating pool, your job opportunities, the food and air and water quality that you receive, your proximity to your family, which might be important as you get older and have kids. Very, very important decision.

你真的需要认真思考这一点，因为你住的地方会极大地限制或定义你的机会。它会影响你的社交圈、恋爱对象、职业机会、你接触到的食物、空气和水的质量，还有你离家人的距离——这些在你变老、成家之后会变得更加重要。这是一个极其关键的决策。

Weather, quality of life, how much you stay inside or outside, how long you’ll live based on that—I think people choose that one probably more poorly than the other two. They put a lot less thought into that one.

气候、生活质量、你会更多待在室内还是室外、甚至你的寿命——都受到这个决定的影响。我觉得在这三大决策中，人们在“住在哪里”这个问题上的思考最少，做得也最差。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: In some ways, yeah, but also you’re so right, how many people fall backward into a relationship and before they know it, “We’re living together, we got a dog, we got a kid, we’re married.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：某种程度上确实是这样。但你说得太对了，有太多人在一段关系里“被动滑进去”，等意识到时就已经“我们同居了，养了只狗，有了孩子，也结婚了”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, and then when you have kids, because that’s half of you and half of them running around, you’re never going to separate yourself from that. So once you have a child with somebody, then the most important thing in the world to you is half that other person, whether you like them or not.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是啊，而一旦你有了孩子，因为那是你和对方各一半的结合在你眼前奔跑着，你就再也无法和那个人真正切割开。你和某人有了孩子之后，世界上对你最重要的事物中就有一半是那个人的组成部分，无论你喜不喜欢他们。

Nature vs. Nurture

天性与教养

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Jeffrey Miller had a tweet a long time ago that I always think about. He said, “Every parenting book in the world could be replaced with one book on behavioral genetics.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：杰弗里·米勒以前发过一条推文，我一直记得。他说：“全世界所有的育儿书都可以被一本关于行为遗传学的书取代。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I am a big believer in genetics. I do think a lot of behavior is downstream of genetics, and I think we underplay that. We like to overplay nurture and underplay nature for societal reasons, but nature is a big deal. The temperament of the person you marry is probably going to be reflected in your child by default.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我非常相信基因。我确实认为，很多行为是基因的下游结果，而我们对此往往低估了。出于社会层面的原因，我们倾向于高估“后天教养”，低估“先天本性”，但其实“天性”是非常重要的。你所嫁娶之人的性格，很可能会在你的孩子身上自动体现出来。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: People should watch for a securely attached kid, pick a securely attached partner.

克里斯·威廉姆森：人们应该留意那些有安全依恋的孩子，选择有安全依恋模式的伴侣。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, the secret to a happy relationship is two happy people, right? So I would say if you want to be happy, then be with a happy person. Don’t think you’re going to be with someone who’s unhappy and then make them happy down the road. Or if you’re okay with them being unhappy, but there are other things you like about them, that’s fine, but this goes back to conversation. Conversations are unhappiness with other things.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：嗯，一段幸福关系的秘诀是：两个人都幸福，对吧？所以我要说的是，如果你想幸福，那就和一个幸福的人在一起。不要以为你可以和一个不幸福的人在一起，然后日后让他/她变幸福。如果你接受他们不幸福，只是因为你喜欢他们的其他方面，那也可以。但说到底，这一切都归结到“对话”：一段持续的对话，是“不幸福”夹杂着其他元素的组合。

The Importance of Values in Relationships

关系中价值观的重要性

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, and actually, we talked a little bit about how people do connect successfully on spirit and those things, but that’s maybe a little too abstract. If you want to get a little more practical, could be based on values, and values are the set of things you won’t compromise on. Values are the tough decisions of, my parent got sick, do they move in with us or do we put them in nursing home? Do we give the children money or do we not? Do we move across the country to be closer to our family or do we stay put where we are?

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的，我们刚才谈到过，人们确实能在精神层面建立良好的连接，但那可能有点太抽象了。如果想更实际一点，可以从“价值观”入手。所谓价值观，就是你绝不妥协的那一套东西。它体现在关键抉择中，比如：父母病了，是接他们来同住，还是送进疗养院？要不要给孩子金钱支持？我们是否要搬到全国另一边靠近家人，还是留在原地？

Do we argue about politics? Do we care or do we not? Right? The values are way more important than checklist items, and I think if people were to align much more on their values, they would have much more successful relationships. The emotional pain of fearing change, I have this thing, the job, the location, the partner, I’m going to enter or not enter this thing, for the most part it’s leaving.

我们会不会争论政治？我们在不在意这些问题？对吧？价值观远比那些“条件清单”重要得多。我认为如果人们能在价值观上更加一致，他们的关系会更成功。人们因为害怕改变而带来的情绪痛苦，比如：我现在有这个工作、有这个住处、有这个伴侣，我到底要不要进入这个关系？归根结底，绝大多数时候，人们恐惧的是“离开”。

I think we have this sort of loss aversion that we really feel. Evolve loss aversion, it’s painful separating yourself in front of your friends. It’s embarrassing. And how would you advise people to get past themselves with that loss aversion, that fear of change?

我认为我们对“失去”有一种强烈的本能抗拒。这种进化出的“损失厌恶”机制让我们很难割舍。当着朋友的面分手、辞职、搬离会让人感到痛苦，甚至尴尬。那你会如何建议人们克服自己这种对失去和改变的恐惧？

Overcoming Fear of Change

克服对改变的恐惧

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh my god. I’m going to… Yeah. It’s the hardest thing in the world, starting over. It’s back to the zero to one thing, it’s the mountain climbing thing, you’re not going to find your path to the top of the mountain in the first go around, sometimes you go up there, you get stuck and you come back down, and the difference between all the successful people and the ones who are not, is the ones who are successful want it so badly they’re willing to go back and start over, again and again, whether in their career, or in their relationships, or in anything else.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：天啊。我想说……是的，重新开始是这世界上最难的事之一。它就像“从 0 到 1”，像攀登一座山，你不可能第一次尝试就找到通向山顶的路。有时你爬上去，卡住了，不得不退回来。而成功者和不成功者之间的区别就在于：那些成功的人渴望成功到愿意一次又一次地重来——无论是在事业上、在关系中，还是其他任何领域。

The more seriously you take yourself, the unhappier you’re going to be.

你越把自己当回事，你就会越不幸福。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You learned how to take yourself less seriously?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你学会了如何少把自己当回事了吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, fame doesn’t help on that one, because that is one of the traps of fame. People are always talking about you, they have a certain view of you, and you start believing that, and then you take yourself seriously, and then that limits your own actions. You can’t look like a fool anymore, you can’t do new things anymore. If tomorrow I announce I’m a breakdancer, right, that’s going to be met with a lot of scorn and ridicule.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：其实，名气在这方面一点也没帮助，它反而是一个陷阱。人们总是在谈论你，他们对你有一个固定印象，而你也开始相信那一套，于是你就开始把自己太当回事，结果反而限制了自己的行动。你不能再像个傻子那样出丑，也无法再去尝试新事物。比如我明天说我要去当个霹雳舞者，肯定会遭到嘲笑和讽刺。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’d back you if you want to make that pivot.

克里斯·威廉姆森：如果你真想转行去跳霹雳舞，我会支持你。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, the truth is if I want to be a breakdancer, I’d be breakdancing, but you know, like I’m starting a new company, zero to one again, from scratch, let’s do it, you know, one more time, and not just going and raising a big VC fund or retiring or what have you, but that’s because I want to build the product, I want to see it exist.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：哈，是啊，事实上如果我真想做霹雳舞者，我早就在跳了。但现在我是在创办一家新公司，又是“从 0 到 1”，从头再来一次。我不是去搞什么大型风投基金，也不是退休什么的，而是因为我真的想造出那个产品，想看到它真正存在于世界上。

So I think that you constantly just have to force yourself, have to remind yourself. Look, deep down, you’re still the same Chris you were when you were nine years old. Deep down, you’re still a kid, you know, you’re still curious about the world, you still have a lot of the same predilections and desires at once, you’ve got a nice veneer on it.

所以我觉得你必须不断逼自己、提醒自己。你看，内心深处，你仍然是那个 9 岁的克里斯。你仍然是个孩子，你仍然对世界充满好奇，你仍然拥有许多相同的偏好和渴望，只是现在披上了一层精致的外壳而已。

But one of the nice things when you have kids is you realize how much closer they are to you in personality and knowledge and know how. Like I look at my son who’s eight and I just notice like wow he probably has sixty to eighty percent of my knowledge and development wisdom and he has a lot more freedom and he has a lot more spontaneity, in some ways he’s smarter, and there’s not a big gap here left to close. This kid’s going to be done very soon, caught up to me, and so to the extent that I think I know better or that I’m somewhere or that I’m someone, it’s just an illusion, it’s just a belief.

但你有了孩子之后，会意识到他们在性格、知识、技能上其实离你很近。我看着我 8 岁的儿子，惊讶地发现：哇，他可能已经掌握了我 60% 到 80% 的知识和成长智慧，而且他拥有更多自由和更多自发性。在某些方面，他甚至比我聪明。这之间的差距已经不大了。这个小家伙很快就能赶上我了。所以我自以为“更懂”“更厉害”或“更特别”的那种感觉，其实不过是幻觉，只是一种信念而已。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s the lineage between that and taking yourself too seriously?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那这个和“把自己太当回事”之间有什么关联？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I shouldn’t take myself too seriously because there’s nothing here to take that seriously, and if I take myself too seriously then I’m going to get trapped, I’m going to circumscribe myself again into a limited set of behaviors and outcomes that keep me from being free, keep me from being spontaneous, keep me from being happy. So it just goes back to, you know, don’t think about yourself too much.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我不应该把自己太当回事，因为其实没什么好当回事的。如果我太认真对待自己，那我就会被困住，再次把自己限定在一套狭窄的行为和结果中，失去自由，失去自发性，失去快乐。所以最终还是那句话——别太把自己当回事。

The Advice We Already Know

我们早已知道的建议

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a special type of pain in realizing that the advice that you need to hear right now is something that almost always you learned a long time ago, and that you’re basically sort of the same person you were as you were nine. You know, a lot of the time people ask questions like, what advice do wish that you would give yourself ten years ago? Right. People ask themselves that question.

克里斯·威廉姆森：有一种特别的痛苦，是你意识到自己此刻最需要听到的建议，其实早在很久以前你就已经学过了。而且你其实和自己九岁时并没有多大区别。很多人都会问自己这样的问题：“你希望十年前的自己听到什么建议？”对吧，人们经常这样自问。

Almost invariably, the advice that you would give yourself ten years ago is still the advice that you need to hear today.

几乎毫无例外地，你十年前会对自己说的建议，也正是你今天仍然需要听到的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Absolutely, that’s why I did that exercise of thinking back, you know, ten years, twenty years, thirty years ago, what advice would I give myself, for me it’s just be less emotional. Don’t take everything so seriously. Do the same things, but do them without all the emotional turbulence, and so that’s the advice I’m giving myself going forward.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：完全正确。这就是为什么我会做那个练习——回想十年前、二十年前、三十年前的自己，我会给他什么建议？对我来说，就是“情绪少一点”。不要对一切都那么认真。做同样的事情，但不要带着那么多情绪波动。这也是我接下来继续对自己说的建议。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny how we need that distance to be able to be a little bit more objective, to have a little bit more perspective, and it’s almost a little bit of a trick, right, because typically when you do that, say, would you tell a friend that was going through this? Right. And then you try and turn the advice to the friend around onto yourself, but you always think, I’m not the friend. You’re okay, you, ten years ago, there’s enough distance in that, you go, oh, I actually am still that person. There’s just a single line between that.

克里斯·威廉姆森：是啊，是啊，是啊。有趣的是，我们往往需要一些距离，才能更客观一些，才能有更多视角。这几乎是一种心理技巧，对吧？你会想：“如果是你朋友正在经历这些，你会怎么劝他？”然后你试着把那番话反过来说给自己听，但你总是觉得，“我不是那个朋友”。你觉得你和十年前的自己之间有足够距离，但其实你会突然意识到，“我还是那个人”。你和那个旧日的自己之间，其实只隔着一条线而已。

Understanding vs. Discipline

理解 vs. 自律

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, related to this story is I think understanding is way more important than discipline. Now, Jocko would have a fit, but you know, on physical things discipline is important. If I want to build a good body, got to work out on a regular basis, but on mental things, I think understanding is way more important.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，说到这个话题，我认为“理解”远比“自律”重要。当然，Jocko（威尔林克）可能会对此大为光火，但在身体层面，自律确实很重要。比如我要锻炼出好身材，就得规律健身。但在精神和思维层面，我觉得理解更加重要。

Once you see the truth of something, you cannot unsee it. All of us have had experiences where we’ve seen a behavior in a person and then it just changes what we think about that person, we no longer want to be friends with them, or we deeply respect them if it was really good behavior that maybe was observed unintentionally.

一旦你看清了一件事的真相，你就无法“看不见”它。我们每个人都经历过这样的事：你看到某人的一个行为，这会立刻改变你对他的看法——可能你再也不想和他做朋友了，或者你开始深深尊敬他，尤其当你无意中看到的是一种非常正面的行为时。

So when we really do see something clearly, it changes our behavior immediately, and that is far more efficient than trying to change your behavior through repetition.

所以当我们真正看清楚一件事时，我们的行为会立刻改变，这种改变远比通过反复训练或强迫自己更有效率。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Could you give me an example?

克里斯·威廉姆森：能举个例子吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: If you were, let’s say that you have a friend and then that person turns out to be a thief, you see that person stealing something, you’re done with them.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：比如说你有个朋友，后来你发现他是个小偷，你亲眼看到他偷了东西，那你肯定立刻断绝关系，对吧？

If you are, you know, the smoking lung cancer example is a good one, right, someone close to you, or anytime someone close to you dies, or you even hear about someone dying, you hear about someone, what’s the first thing you do? The first thing, assuming that you weren’t that close to them, obviously your closeness is different, but if you weren’t that close to them, but you know, you hear about someone in your extended social circle dying, you immediately start trying to distinguish yourself from them.

再比如说，吸烟导致肺癌这个例子也很典型。当你身边有人去世，或是你听说某个熟人去世时，你的第一反应是什么？假设你和这个人并不是特别亲近，那你第一反应就是试图把自己和他区分开来。

You know, “oh well how old is this person, were they a smoker, did they have an issue, do I have that issue?” Right, you immediately start comparing, and what you’re doing there is you’re sort of just trying to see if there’s an overlap here, but if you see the truth in something, if you’re like, “oh my god, this person was the same age as me and they died,” and that’s starting to happen at my age, where I’m starting to hear about extended circle people. Just reminds you, time is really short.

你会想：“他多大年纪？吸烟吗？有基础病吗？我有没有类似的问题？”你马上开始比较，想看看自己是不是也有风险。但如果你真的看到某个真相，比如“天啊，这个人跟我一样大就去世了”，而这种事开始发生在你的朋友圈里时，它就会猛然提醒你：时间真的很短暂。

There’s a truth there, there’s a truth there that you cannot unsee. Or, for example, I think, you into bodybuilding or something back when? I don’t know.

那是真实存在的，而且是你再也无法忽视的真相。再比如，我记得你以前是不是搞健身的？我不太确定。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Just like bro lifting stuff.

克里斯·威廉姆森：哈哈，就那种兄弟式举铁健身吧。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Okay, bro lifting. Yeah. Right, but there probably was a point where you were being really agro in the gym and you injured yourself.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：好吧，兄弟举铁，是的。那你肯定有过在健身房冲太猛把自己弄伤的时候吧。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Many times.

克里斯·威廉姆森：太多次了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right, and each one of those was a deep understanding of don’t go beyond this point, right? There was a truth there. So again, when you see these things in such a way that you can’t unsee them, that changes your behavior instantly, and I would argue that that introspection to find those truths is actually very useful.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，每次受伤你都会深刻地意识到：“不能越过那个界限。”这就是真相。所以，当你以一种“无法忽视”的方式看清这些事时，它们会立刻改变你的行为。我认为，这种自我反省以发现这些真相，其实非常有价值。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is that a justification for more experimentation, exploration, experience in life, so they’re trying to find serendipity because all of these experiences are going to teach you a inescapable lesson?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那这是不是也算是鼓励我们多去尝试、探索、体验生活？因为这些经历最终都会教会你一些无法回避的人生教训？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: You’re going to do what you’re going to do, I mean your level of exploration I think is sort of up to you, but life is always throwing truth back at you. It’s about whether you choose to see it, whether you choose to acknowledge it, even if it’s painful, truth is often painful, right? If it wasn’t, we’d all be seeing truth all the time, reality is always reflecting truth, that’s all it is.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：你会做你会做的事，我想探索的深度是你自己决定的。但生活总是在不断把“真相”扔回你面前。关键是你是否选择去看见它，是否愿意去承认它，即使它是痛苦的。真相往往确实是痛苦的，对吧？如果不痛，我们早就无时无刻不在面对真相了。现实其实就是一直在映照真相，仅此而已。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Why would you not have accessed it already?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那为什么我们早就没有认清这些真相呢？

Wisdom Must Be Discovered Personally

智慧必须由个人亲自发现

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly, you know, all the philosophy that’s out there, for example, it’s almost trite, like most people they look at philosophy like until they discover it for themselves, because wisdom is the set of things that cannot be transmitted. If they could be transmitted, you know, we’d read the same five philosophy books, it would all be done, we’d all be wise.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，你看，世上流传的那些哲学思想，比如说，很多时候听起来都很老套，人们往往也不太在意哲学，直到他们自己亲身“发现”它。因为“智慧”是无法传授的东西。如果智慧真能被传授，那我们每个人读上五本哲学书就都搞定了，人人都会变得睿智。

You have to learn it for yourself, it has to be rediscovered for yourself in your own context, you have to have specific experiences that then allow you to generalize and see the truth in those things in such a way that you’re not going to unsee them, but each person is going to see them in a different way. I can tell you that Socrates story, and it’s not going to resonate until there’s something that other people desire that you realize you yourself don’t want, and the moment that happens, then you’ll see the truth in the general statement.

你必须自己去学，必须在你自己的情境中重新发现。你需要经历某些具体的事情，才能从中提炼出普遍性的洞察，才能看见那些无法忽视的真相。每个人看到这些真相的方式也都不同。比如我可以跟你讲苏格拉底的故事，但它不会真正触动你，除非有一天你看到别人渴望某种东西，而你突然意识到自己其实根本不想要——就在那一刻，你才会真正看见那个“普遍性的真相”。

Unteachable Lessons

无法教会的教训

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I want to just read you a two minute essay that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It’s called Unteachable Lessons.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我想读一篇我几周前写的两分钟小短文给你听，标题是《无法教会的教训》。

I’ve been thinking about the special category of lesson, one which you cannot discover without experiencing it firsthand. There is a certain subset of advice that for some reason we all refuse to learn through instruction. These are unteachable lessons.

我一直在思考一种特殊类型的教训——这种教训非亲身经历不可获得。总有那么一些忠告，我们无论如何都不愿通过听别人讲来学习。这些，就是“无法教会的教训”。

No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it is going to be for us to find out ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical catastrophes, public scandals, and instead think some version of, “yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me.” We decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way over and over again.

无论自己去经历这些教训有多么艰难、代价多么高昂，我们都更倾向于忽视长辈的无数警告、忽略文学、歌曲、历史灾难和公共丑闻带来的启示，转而心想：“是，他们可能是这样，但我不会。”我们一次又一次选择用最难的方式去学会最难的道理。

Unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things too. It’s never new insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generations already warned us about.

不幸的是，这些教训还往往都是人生中最重要的。它们从来都不是“如何把架子装平”或者“如何在鸡尾酒会上自我介绍得体”这类小事。我们一生的大部分时间都在亲身体验那些前人早已警告过的重要人生课题。

Things like money won’t make you happy, fame won’t fix your self worth, you don’t love that pretty girl, she’s just hot and difficult to get, nothing is as important as you think it is when you’re thinking about it, you will regret working too much. Worrying is not improving your performance. All your fears are a waste of time. You should see your parents more. You’ll be fine after the breakup and be grateful that you did it. It’s perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life.

比如：钱不会让你幸福，名声无法修复你的自我价值感；你并不爱那个漂亮女孩，她只是很美也很难追；当你陷在某件事里时，它其实远没有你当时以为的那么重要；你终将后悔工作太多；焦虑不会提升表现；你所有的恐惧都是浪费时间；你应该多去看看你的父母；分手后你会好起来，甚至会庆幸做了那个决定；把有毒的人剔出你的生活，完全没问题。

And even reading this list back, I’m rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is. These are all basic bitch, obvious insights that everybody has heard before. But if they’re so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives? And if they’re so obvious, why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to proclaim these facts with the renewed grandiose ceremony of someone who’s just gone through religious revelation?

甚至在读这段清单时，我都忍不住翻白眼：这些简直老掉牙。所有人都听过这些浅显的道理，但如果它们真的那么“基本”，为什么我们仍旧一遍又一遍地栽在它们身上？如果它们真的那么“显而易见”，为什么那些刚刚成名、暴富、失亲、分手的人，还会以一种刚接受宗教启示般的“隆重仪式感”来高调宣讲这些陈词滥调？

It’s also a very contentious list of points to say on the Internet. If you interview a billionaire who says that all of his money didn’t make him happy or a movie star who said that her fame felt like a prison, the Internet will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch. So not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them.

而且这些观点在网上非常容易引起争议。如果你采访一个亿万富翁，他说钱没有让他幸福；或者一个明星说名声像一座牢笼——网友会群起而攻之，说他们“身在福中不知福”、“脱离群众”。所以我们不光拒绝学习这些教训，甚至连听这些劝告的意愿都没有。

And even more than that, I think for every one of these, if I consider a bit deeper, I can recall a time, including right now, where I convinced myself that I am the exception to the rule, that my particular mental makeup or life situation or historical wounds or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable. No. No. No. My inner landscape would be solved by skirting around the most well known wisdom of the ages. No. No. No. I can thread this needle properly. Watch me dance through the minefield and avoid all of the tripwires that everyone else kicks.

更甚的是，我意识到，对这些每一条“无法教会的教训”，我都曾（包括此刻）试图说服自己：“我是个例外”。我以为我特别的性格、人生环境、过去的伤痕或对未来的梦想，让这些教训不适用于我。错！错！错！我天真地以为，我可以绕开那些古老而知名的智慧之路；我可以聪明地穿针引线，在雷区中翩翩起舞，避开所有别人绊倒的引线。

The Value of Unteachable Lessons

无法传授的教训的价值

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And then you kick one, and you share a knowing look, the kind that can only occur between two people who’ve been hurt in the exact same way, and a voice in the back of your mind will say, I told you so. That’s unteachable lesson. It’s a good essay.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：然后你真的踩到一个（地雷），你会和另一个曾在同一个地方受过伤的人交换一个心照不宣的眼神。你脑海深处的声音会说：“早就告诉你了。”这就是所谓的“无法传授的教训”。这篇文章写得很好。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think one of the reasons why these lessons are unteachable is because they’re too broad, they have to be applied in context. A number of the ones that you laid out contradict each other, like spend more time with your parents and don’t work so hard, but at the same time, you do want to be successful, right? I think a lot of these lessons come from down on high, from as you said, like the famous movie star or the billionaire saying, “Oh, you don’t need money to be happy,” it’s like, well okay then give it up.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我觉得这些教训之所以“无法教会”，部分原因是它们太宽泛，必须依赖特定语境才能发挥作用。你列出的许多教训甚至是互相矛盾的，比如“多花时间陪伴父母”与“别太拼命工作”，可与此同时你又想要成功，对吧？我觉得很多这样的教训都是从“高处”传下来的，就像你说的那种——著名电影明星或亿万富翁说：“幸福不需要钱。”那我就想说：“那你把钱捐掉啊。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right? So in reality I think many of these contradict each other. It’s like if you went to school and you just studied philosophy for four years, you would not know how to live life because you wouldn’t know which philosophical doctrine to apply in which circumstance. You have to actually live life, go through all of the issues to figure out what it is that you want, what’s the context in which some of these things apply and some of them don’t. Yes you want to visit your parents more often, but you don’t want to live with your parents and you don’t want necessarily see them every day or every weekend depending on the parent. You might not get along with one of them, so I think it is highly contextual.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对吧？现实中，很多教训确实互相矛盾。就好比你去读了四年哲学，但你依然不知道怎么过人生，因为你根本不知道在什么情境下该运用哪一种哲学体系。你必须真正去过日子，亲历所有问题，才能搞清楚你到底想要什么，才能知道这些道理在哪些情况下适用，在哪些情况下不适用。是的，你确实应该多去看看父母，但不代表你要搬去和父母住，也不意味着你必须每天或每个周末都去看他们——这取决于父母的情况。你可能和其中一个相处得不好。所以我觉得，这一切都非常依赖具体语境。

That said, I would argue that once you figure it out for yourself, you can kind of carve these variations on these maxims that apply to you, and then you’ll have a specific experience that helps you remember it and actually execute on it.

不过，我还是认为，一旦你自己想通了，你可以对这些格言加以调整，使它们更贴合你的情况。这样，你就会有一种具体的体验帮助你记住它，并真正去实践它。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And you can also phrase it in a way where it’s not trite anymore.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你也可以用一种不那么陈词滥调的方式去表达它。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s personal. So a lot of my maxims in those to self are carved in a way that they’re modernized. They’re saying something true, which might be trite if I didn’t say it in a new way or in an interesting way that is more relevant to me today.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，那是个人化的。我很多写给自己的格言，都是经过重新雕琢的，是现代化的。如果我不是用一种更新的、更有趣、更贴合当下自己的方式表达，它们听起来可能会很老套。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There was a Nobel Prize winner who said something to the effect of “everything worth saying may have been said before, but given that nobody was listening, it must be said again.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：曾经有位诺贝尔奖得主说过类似这样一句话：“所有值得说的话，也许早已有人说过了，但鉴于当时没人听进去，所以这些话必须被再次说出来。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, it has to be said again, it has to be recontextualized for the modern age. Things do change, technology changes things, culture changes, people change.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，它们必须被重复说出来，必须被重新置于现代语境中。时代在变，技术在变，文化在变，人也在变。

Wisdom vs. Appearing Wise

智慧与显得有智慧之间的区别

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: On that, I’ve heard you say, you talk about the difference between seeming wise and being wise, that you tried to appear smart as a kid.

克里斯·威廉姆森：关于这个话题，我听你说过你曾经谈到“看起来聪明”和“真正聪明”之间的区别，你说你小时候曾经努力让自己看起来很聪明。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Still do.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：现在也还是这样。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Rote memorization, masquerading as insight and wisdom. I’d certainly feel that, you know, a lot of the show, for me, I think, has been, was and still is, a redemption arc from this decade of my life where I completely suppressed any intellectual curiosity. Like, okay, I’ll be a professional party boy for ten years, stand on the front door of a nightclub and give out VIP wristbands and have access to all of the pretty girls or the cool parties or whatever it might be.

克里斯·威廉姆森：死记硬背，伪装成洞察力和智慧。我确实有这种感觉，对我来说，这档节目的很大一部分，其实是我人生中某个十年的一种救赎。我在那十年里完全压抑了自己的求知欲。就像，“好吧，那我就当个职业派对男孩吧，当十年，站在夜店门口发VIP手环，进入所有漂亮女孩和酷炫派对的圈子。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Seems like it worked out okay.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：听起来好像也还不错嘛。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It did in some ways, but it was a good way to spend my twenties. But to sort of come back above water, two degrees, one of which was a master’s, and then this, like, just shut down any of that learning. I did that while I was at uni. While I was at uni, I was running the events. So it was actually a decade and a half.

克里斯·威廉姆森：某种程度上是不错的，确实是我用来度过二十多岁的方式。但在那之后，我重新“浮出水面”了，有两个学位，其中一个是硕士，然后就开始做这个节目。但其实那十年我完全关闭了学习的大门。我上大学时就在组织活动，所以实际上那是一段长达十五年的时间。

I think there was a big redemption arc within this show, and I constantly have to kind of wipe the slime off me of this sense that I need to prove myself. That’s why it really resonates with me when you’re memorizing things that indicate that you don’t understand them, or that sort of rote memorization and regurgitation masquerading as wisdom, because people use fluency as a proxy for truthfulness and insights. They use the complexity of your language and your communication.

我觉得这档节目对我来说是一条巨大的救赎曲线，我总是得不时清除那种“我需要证明自己”的焦虑残留。这也是为什么你说的那种“死记硬背却代表不了真正理解”、那种“把复述伪装成智慧”的现象会如此触动我。因为人们总是把表达的流利程度当作判断真理和洞察力的替代标准。他们会以语言和表达的复杂性来衡量你的深度。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, there’s a lot of jargon out there. I think it’s the mark of a charlatan to explain a simple thing in a complex way, and so when you see people using very complicated language to explain simple things, they’re either trying to impress you and obfuscate, or they don’t understand it themselves.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是啊，现在有太多行话术语。我觉得一个骗子的标志就是用复杂的方式解释简单的事情。所以当你看到某些人用非常复杂的语言来解释一个本来很简单的道理时，他们要么是想让你印象深刻、故意搞得模糊不清，要么就是他们自己根本没弄懂。

Authenticity vs. Performance

真实与表演之间的矛盾

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But there’s an allure in that though. This was one of the things I had to do when I went to therapy. I don’t think I’ve talked about this before. I needed to turn off “podcast Chris” when I stepped into therapy because most of the time that I spend one on one in a deep conversation that’s undistracted throughout the week, I’d trained myself over, you know, when I started doing it, seven hundred episodes now, nine hundred and whatever.

克里斯·威廉姆森：但那种状态确实有种吸引力。这是我去做心理治疗时必须面对的一件事。我以前好像从来没谈过这个。当我走进治疗室时，我必须“关闭播客版的Chris”。因为在我的一周当中，大多数不受干扰的一对一深度对话时间，就是我在录播客，而我已经训练自己做这个很多年了，从刚开始到现在，录了七百多集，甚至九百多集。

I knew what I could say to this therapist to just sort of veer off a little and create some nice story, put a bow on it, push it across the table, watch your eyes light up a little bit, like a little grin or a self-deprecating joke or whatever. I’m like, you’re not here. You’re performing. You’re doing the Chris Williamson thing with the sort of jazz hands.

我知道我可以跟治疗师说些什么，稍微偏离一下正题，讲一个精彩的故事，加个漂亮的结尾，像包好礼物那样推到她面前，看她眼神一亮，嘴角一笑，也许再来个自嘲的笑话之类的。但我内心却在想：你根本不在这里。你只是在表演。你在上演Chris Williamson秀，还带着一点炫技的手势。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I have my own version. So you have podcast Chris. I have podcast guest Naval. Very often, I’ll think of something, I’ll have some, what I think is an insight, and I want to tweet it or write it down, but in my mind, I’m talking about it on a podcast. That’s kind of how my mind registers it, and for a while, I thought this was a bad thing, and I tried to eradicate podcast Naval, and then I just realized that’s just how it comes out, so I might as well just be okay with it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我也有我自己的版本。你有播客版Chris，我有“播客嘉宾版Naval”。很多时候我想到一个点子，觉得是个洞察，我想发推或写下来，但在我脑海里，我是在播客上讲它。这就是我的大脑编码的方式。曾经我觉得这是个问题，想要消除这个“播客Naval”，后来我意识到：它就是这样呈现出来的，那我不如就接受它。

Now, do you know the reason I’m on this podcast? I haven’t done a proper formal interview, straight up, top ten, twenty podcasts in a long time. Since Rogan, maybe?

你知道我为什么会上你这个播客吗？我已经很久没有上过那种正式的一线播客了，前十、前二十的节目。可能是自从上Joe Rogan之后吧？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Probably since Rogan. You went out at the top, right? That was the theory.

克里斯·威廉姆森：也许就是Rogan那次。你当时是站在巅峰退场的，对吧？那是当时的说法。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, it’s still at the top. And then, you know, I’ve done some stuff with Tim Ferriss, a good friend, but that’s been more co-hosting. I haven’t been a guest. And then I did one or two random things where I just stumbled into a thing, but it wasn’t like this, and I reached out to you for this one.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：嗯，他现在依然是巅峰。我后来也和Tim Ferriss一起做过些内容，他是个好朋友，不过那更像是共同主持，而不是作为嘉宾出现。还有一两次是我偶然参与了一些节目，但都不如这次正式。而这一次是我主动找你的。

I have lots of people reaching out to me for podcasts. I did not answer them. I reached out to you, and the reason is a really funny one. It’s because when I am playing Podcast Naval in my head, for some reason, you’re on the other side, and I don’t know why. I literally don’t know why. It’s not like I’ve even seen many of your podcasts. I think I’ve seen some snippets here and there, but for some reason, you were the guy in the podcast, in podcast Naval. And so I was like, oh, I might as well just do it. So I reached out to you.

很多人找我上播客，但我都没回复。而我是主动找你的，原因其实挺有趣的。当我脑中“扮演播客版Naval”的时候，出现在我对面的人就是你，我也不知道为什么，真的不知道。我其实并没看你很多节目，也就是偶尔看到几个片段而已。但不知为何，在我的脑海里，你就是那个人。所以我就想，那不如就干脆真的来一次吧，于是我联系了你。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder if this will close that loop or further entrench it. I wonder if you’ve made it way worse now, and you’re just going to have—well, first off, it was a dream, and now it’s reality plus a dream.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我倒是好奇这次录制会不会让你那个脑海中的回路关闭了，还是反而让它变得更根深蒂固。也许你现在把它搞得更严重了——本来是个幻想，现在变成了“现实加幻想”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: There are enough people that I turned down where I said I’m just not doing podcasts, that I feel bad about that. I gotta go back and do those podcasts, but I probably wear out my welcome. I have nothing new to talk about, so I don’t know what I’m going to say.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：确实有很多人我都拒绝了，跟他们说我不上播客，所以我现在多少也有点内疚。我得回去补上那些节目录制了，但可能人家都已经不欢迎我了。而且我也没什么新话题，不知道还能说点什么。

Conversations vs. Interviews

对话与访谈的区别

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, I appreciate you. You’d said on Rogan, and this was something to kind of pay it back to you, I had a five-headed Mount Rushmore of guests before I started this show, and it was Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Alain de Botton from the School of Life, you, and Rogan, and that was my hydra of a Mount Rushmore.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我真的很感激你能来。我记得你曾在Rogan的节目里说过一句话，而作为回应，我想告诉你：在我开始这个节目前，我心中有一个“五头版的总统山”嘉宾名单，分别是乔丹·彼得森、山姆·哈里斯、《人生学校》的阿兰·德波顿、你，还有乔·罗根，这就是我心目中的“总统山九头蛇”。

And I knew someone had asked you at some point, maybe it was a tweet or something after Rogan, or maybe even said it on Rogan where you said, I don’t like to say the same thing twice, at least not in the same way. I don’t like sequels.

我记得有人曾经问过你，可能是Rogan节目之后，也可能是在节目里你就说了，你不喜欢重复说同样的事情，至少不会以同样的方式重复。你也不喜欢“续集”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. Yeah.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，没错。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I really, really respected that. You know, that was 2019. You said it was eight or nine years ago.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我特别尊重你那种态度。那是2019年的事了。你说那是八九年前的事。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I have a terrible memory. Yeah. You’re right. 2019, right before COVID.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我记性很差。是的，你说得对，那是2019年，刚好在新冠疫情之前。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And, I really appreciated that, because there is something in the content game you can continue to sort of—I’m sure I’ll have said many things today that the audience will have already heard. But, caring enough about having novel insights or at least having a new perspective on similar insights. In the space of six years since you were on Joe, the first thing I said to you today was, I’m not convinced I actually fully agree with that thing that I used to say, which is cool. Right? That’s you showing that the position that you put in the ground previously is not a tether. It’s not you being held to it anymore.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我特别欣赏你这种精神。在内容创作这个领域里，人们可以一直不断地“炒冷饭”——我今天肯定也讲了一些观众已经听过的内容。但你愿意在意是否有新的洞见，或者至少在相似洞见上能提供新的视角。你上Rogan已经是六年前的事了，我今天开头跟你说的第一句话就是，我不确定自己是否还完全同意我当初说的那些话——这其实很棒，对吧？这说明你没有被自己曾经立下的观点所束缚，不再被它牵制。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think the reason why I wanted to be on this is because for some reason I have the impression that you engage in conversations, and I like conversations. I don’t like interviews. This is why I was doing my last startup Air Chat, which was all about conversations, and conversations to me are more genuine. They’re more authentic. There’s a give and take, there’s a back and forth, there’s a genuine curiosity.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我之所以愿意上你这个节目，是因为我总觉得你是一个会真正“对话”的人，而我喜欢“对话”，我不喜欢“访谈”。这也是我为什么创办上一个创业项目 Air Chat，它完全是围绕“对话”而来的。在我看来，对话更真实，更有真诚的互动。有来有往，有好奇心的交流，这才是我喜欢的。

It’s not to say the other podcasters don’t do it, they absolutely do do it, but for some reason in my mind, I had you as the guy that I would actually have a conversation with, and sure enough, you just read me your essay, which I don’t think anybody else would really do, right? That implies there’s a give and take, there’s a genuine curiosity, and I think that’s useful, because then, certain inexplicit knowledge that I had will be surfaced for myself, and I think that’s helpful.

当然，这并不是说其他播客主持人就没有这种对话能力，他们当然也有。但不知为何，在我脑海里，你就是那个我能真正“对话”的人。果不其然，你刚才还读了你的一篇短文给我听，我觉得这几乎没有其他人会这么做，对吧？这就体现了交流中的“你来我往”和真诚的好奇心。我觉得这非常有价值，因为这能让我把一些模糊的、内隐的认知表达出来，对我自己也有帮助。

Finding Resonance in Others

在他人身上寻找共鸣

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, you’re seeing, to kind of break the fourth wall a bit, you’re seeing very much of some of the gateway drug insights that you had that you just don’t get to choose. I’m aware that you kind of have an anti-guru sentiment in you, like a very strong, like, don’t listen to me. I don’t know what I’m doing.

克里斯·威廉姆森：好吧，打破一下第四面墙，你看到的其实是你曾经获得的一些引导性洞见，某些你并不主动选择的东西。我知道你身上有一种反导师的情绪，尤其是很强烈的那种“不听我说，我也不知道自己在做什么”。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Guru is a trap. Do not follow me. Do not bow to me. Do not do any of the other things to me.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：导师是一种陷阱。不要追随我。不要对我鞠躬。不要做其他任何事。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But, if you see resonance in another person, and I think this is what we’re all trying to find. People can complain about the mountains of content creation that happens, and maybe rightly so. But if you’re able to find someone and you see in them a little bit of you, maybe not even much of you, but like, oh, that bit of them, their self-esteem or the way they look at relationships or what they want to do, the kind of life they want or the level of peace of mind that they want to have. If you find in somebody else a little bit of that, it’s kind of like what you’re saying before. You can no longer be unconvinced of that, and it steps in and becomes a part of you.

克里斯·威廉姆森：但如果你在别人身上看到共鸣，我想这也是我们都在寻找的东西。人们可能会抱怨如今内容创作的泛滥，也许这种抱怨是有道理的。但如果你能够找到某个人，并且在他们身上看见一点点自己，也许并不完全是自己，但比如说，他们的自尊，或者他们看待关系的方式，或者他们想做什么，想要过什么样的生活，想要获得怎样的内心平静。如果你能在别人身上看到这些东西的一部分，就像你之前说的，你就再也不能对这些持怀疑态度了，它会进入你的心里，成为你的一部分。

And, yeah, you’re maybe seeing reflected back to you some percolated, very meandering insight from however long ago. Maybe in five years time, you’ll be like, you know that thing that you said about the lessons and the blah blah blah? It’s cool. That’s like synthesis.

而是，你也许看到的反映回来的，是从很久以前流淌出来、非常迂回的某种洞察。或许五年后你会说：“你说的那个关于教训，什么什么的事？很酷。”那就是一种综合。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: The reason I spend a lot of time in San Francisco is because it’s a gravitational attractor for the smartest people in the world, and despite all of the many problems the city had, because it’s mismanaged beyond belief, it does just seem to pull in the young, smart, creative people. Not just the ones who are building technology, but they’re exploring every facet of life and they’re weird and sometimes it’s repulsive and it’s bizarre, but you talk to these people and you just see a very intelligent person coming at life in a completely different way.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我花很多时间在旧金山，是因为那里的确是世界上最聪明的人的引力中心。尽管这座城市有许多问题，管理得极其糟糕，但它确实吸引着年轻、聪明、富有创造力的人们。并不仅仅是那些在开发技术的人，更多的是他们在探索生活的方方面面，他们很怪异，有时让人反感，也有点离奇。但你与这些人交谈，你会看到一个非常聪明的人以完全不同的方式面对生活。

Putting it to the combinatorics of human DNA which are uncountable, and giving you a weird perspective that can twist your mind around, and to do that you always have to be learning. You can’t be in a guru mentality. If I’m with somebody and they’re listening to every word I say and hanging on it, that’s not interesting for me, I’m not going to learn anything. I want people who are intelligent, who will say something back that is a little different, and I may not agree with it, but it’s going to leave a mark, it’s going leave an impression. It’s going to leave an impression to the extent that both that they are correct, and that I choose to listen, and I’ll choose to listen if I don’t view myself as higher status or smarter than them.

将其放到人类DNA的组合学中，简直是无数的变数，这会给你一种奇异的视角，能让你从不同角度审视一切。为了做到这一点，你必须保持学习的态度。你不能有“导师思维”。如果我和某人在一起，他们听着我说的每一句话，并紧紧抓住每个字，那对我来说没有趣味，我不会从中学到任何东西。我想和那些聪明的人交谈，他们会回应一些稍微不同的观点，我可能不同意，但它会留下印记，会给我深刻的印象。它的印象深刻程度，取决于他们的观点是对的，而我选择倾听，尤其是当我不觉得自己比他们更高人一等或更聪明时。

The Value of Authentic Relationships

真实关系的价值

NAVAL RAVIKANT: The flip side of that is I’m not really impressed by high status people. In fact, most of my friends who have gone on to become very famous or successful, the less I spend time with them. Partially because they get surrounded by an army of sycophants—it’s just hard to break through. And because I don’t want anything from them, I don’t like situations in which transactional relationships are implied.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这一点的反面是，我其实并不觉得那些高地位的人特别令人印象深刻。事实上，很多后来变得非常著名或成功的朋友，我和他们在一起的时间越来越少。部分原因是他们总是被一群奉承者围绕——这让人很难突破。再者，我不想从他们身上获得任何东西，我不喜欢那种暗示有交易性质的关系。

That’s clearly a gift to people of that status, because the higher they climb up that hierarchy, the fewer people don’t want anything from them. So in that way, you want to be an even better friend. But they get surrounded by people who do want things from them and are so good at pretending they don’t, that it’s just not worth my time to try and break out from that group.

这显然是地位高的人们的一种特权，因为他们在层级越高，想从他们那里得到东西的人就越少。因此，从这个角度来看，你应该成为一个更好的朋友。但这些人周围总是围绕着一些确实想从他们身上得到东西的人，而且他们擅长装作不在意，这让我根本不想花时间去努力从那个圈子里突破出来。

So, it does get lonely at the top, so to speak, but it’s also by choice, because it’s a champagne problem.

所以，站在顶端确实有点孤独，可以这么说，但这也是一种选择，因为这只是“香槟问题”。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, you can be your own best friend too.

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的，你也可以是自己最好的朋友。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I am my own best friend actually, so I really do enjoy spending time with myself. The smartest people aren’t interested in appearing smart and don’t care what you think. A lot of life is not giving a shit, but a lot of the best things in life come out of that.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：实际上，我就是我自己的最好朋友，我真的很享受和自己相处的时光。最聪明的人并不在乎看起来聪明，也不在乎你怎么想。生活中的很多美好，来自于不在乎。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Does this mean, sort of talking about that rote memorization masquerading as wisdom and insight thing, which I think perhaps podcasts like this will have contributed to? You hear someone like Alan Watts who’s like a painter with words—very simple, very sort of unpretentious—but if you’re intellectually curious, you only see the production of his thoughts. You don’t necessarily see the work that’s gone into the thoughts behind, so you confuse the presentation of them for the insight. Does that make sense?

克里斯·威廉姆森：这是不是意味着，谈到那种死记硬背伪装成智慧和洞察力的现象，我认为像这种播客或许会有所贡献？你听像阿兰·沃茨那样的人，他用文字画画——非常简单、朴素——但如果你有智力上的好奇心，你看到的只是他思想的产物。你并不一定看到这些思想背后付出的努力，所以你会把他的表达和洞察混淆。这样说有道理吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Of course, yeah. A lot of my stuff is more polished. One of the funny things right before this podcast was I thought, “Oh, maybe I should go back and read my old tweets just so I remember what I said and I can articulate it well.” Then I realized that’s just performance. I would just be memorizing my own stuff to perform.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：当然，没错。我很多东西都更精致了。在这次播客之前，我还曾想：“哦，也许我应该回去看看我以前的推文，记得自己说过什么，确保能把它说得好。”然后我意识到，那其实只是在表演。我只是为了表演而死记硬背自己的东西。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s an extra special level of hell that you’ve descended into.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你简直进入了一个特别的地狱。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly, memorizing me to be more me.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，就是为了成为我而死记硬背我。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Bingo.

克里斯·威廉姆森：就是这个意思。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And I still live up to some expectations or some famous personality that I now have to become, some straight jacket that I have to put on. So, I’m having to live up to in private the things that I prefer. Pretty quickly I saw through that—it’s nonsense, and it also constrains my time and it’s just work.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：而且我依然活在某些期望里，活成现在我必须要变成的那个著名人物，活成我不得不穿上的“紧身衣”。所以我在私下里要做那些我其实不喜欢做的事。很快我就看穿了这一点——这完全是胡说八道，它限制了我的时间，完全就是工作。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think that’s your meditation practice at work there, that mindfulness gap to be like, “Yeah. There’s that thing again.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：我想这就是你冥想实践的体现，那种正念的空隙，能让你意识到：“对，又是那个问题。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly, hello. It’s not about changing your thoughts, it’s not about fixing your thoughts, it’s not about changing yourself, it’s just about being observant of yourself so that whatever change needs to happen will happen. You trying to change yourself is very circular—the mind trying to change the mind. The mind doesn’t like wrestling with itself. I don’t think it gets you anywhere.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：正是这样，嗨。并不是要改变你的思想，也不是要修正你的思想，甚至不是要改变你自己，而是要观察自己，以便那些真正需要发生的变化自然而然地发生。你试图改变自己就像是一个循环——思想试图改变思想。思维不喜欢和自己对抗，我觉得那不会带来任何进展。

The Best Ways to Spend Wealth

财富的最佳使用方式

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’ve spent a lot of time either creating wealth or thinking about how to create wealth. What have you learned are the best places to spend wealth?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你花了很多时间要么创造财富，要么思考如何创造财富。你觉得财富最该用在什么地方？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I actually think Elon had this one figured out, which is he plowed his own money back into his own businesses to go and do bigger and better things for humanity.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我其实觉得埃隆在这方面做得很好，他把自己的钱重新投入到自己的企业中，去做更大、更好的人类事业。

You could give it to nonprofits, but a lot of nonprofits are grifty, or it’s people who didn’t earn it trying to spend it, or they don’t have tight feedback loops on having a good effect. One of the things I want to do as an aside is I want to create a little school for young physicists, but that’s my nonprofit thing. I’ve actually underwritten media and some physics stuff. I don’t like to talk about my so-called philanthropy, because I think that makes it less real, that makes it more status oriented.

你可以把钱捐给非盈利组织，但很多非盈利组织存在问题，要么是一些没赚到这些钱的人试图去花它们，要么他们没有一个有效的反馈机制，无法确保产生好的效果。顺便提一下，我想做的一个事情是为年轻物理学家创建一个小学校，这是我为非盈利做的一项事。我也确实资助过一些媒体和物理相关的项目。我不喜欢谈论自己所谓的慈善行为，因为我觉得那样会让它变得不那么真实，更多地变成了一种追求地位的行为。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Like less philanthropic.

克里斯·威廉姆森：就是显得不那么慈善了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, exactly. Then people look at how charitable my charity is, and people also come hunting for money, so there’s all that disease. I don’t believe in giving to schools—they have enough money. Ivy Leagues have enough money and they don’t know how to spend it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，没错。然后人们会关注我的慈善事业有多慷慨，而那些人也会来找我要钱，这种“病态”就产生了。我不相信捐钱给学校——它们有足够的钱，常春藤联盟有足够的钱，但他们根本不知道怎么花。

I think the best use of money is creating a product for people that they voluntarily buy and they get value out of. In that sense, I think Steve Jobs and Elon and entrepreneurs like that have created a lot of value for the world. One of the things I can do is take my own money and invest it in myself to go and build the next great thing that I think needs to exist, and that’s basically what I’m doing right now. I’m doing a new business, I’m self-funding it, I’m applying a lot of money into it. I’m going to build something that I think is beautiful, that I want to see exist.

我认为最好的财富使用方式是创造一个人们自愿购买并从中获益的产品。从这个意义上说，我认为史蒂夫·乔布斯、埃隆和像他们一样的企业家为这个世界创造了很多价值。我能做的一件事就是拿自己的钱投资自己，去建立下一个我认为需要存在的伟大事物，这基本上就是我现在在做的事情。我在做一个新业务，自己资助它，投入了大量资金。我将要构建一些我认为很美好的东西，那个我希望它能存在。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Have you spoken about this yet, or is it still dark?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你有谈过这个吗，还是它仍然保密？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s so early. Maybe I’ll show it to you in a few months. Hopefully months, and I’m excited about it, and that’s a good use of money.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：还很早，也许几个月后我会给你看看。希望几个月后吧，我对它很兴奋，这也是一个好的财富使用方式。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about the worst places to spend wealth?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那最糟糕的财富使用方式是什么？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: What is the old line, if it flies, floats, fornicates?

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：那句老话怎么说来着，如果它飞、漂浮、或是做爱？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Very nice way to change the final F. Very impressive.

克里斯·威廉姆森：很巧妙地换了最后一个字母，真是印象深刻。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh, that’s the way I heard it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：哦，这是我听到的版本。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m pretty sure it’s Felix Dennis who had that quote.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我很确定这句话是费利克斯·丹尼斯说的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, he said, “If it flies, floats, or fornicates, rent it.” I think the last one was a little too—it’s wrong. He didn’t have a family, didn’t have kids, so he missed the big one.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，他说过：“如果它能飞、漂浮，或者是做爱，就租它。”我觉得最后一个说法有点——不太对。他没有家庭，没有孩子，所以他错过了最重要的一点。

But yeah, there are lots of bad ways to spend money. I believe in investment, I don’t believe in consumption. You’re born with a short housing position, you close that out, you get yourself a nice house, get yourself some help to free up your time, so you’re not doing things that other people can do better. Treat people well—always overpay and expect the best, pay them like they’re the best and then expect the best.

但确实有很多不好的财富使用方式。我相信投资，而不相信消费。你出生时就有一个短期的住房需求，解决了这个问题，买一套好房子，雇人帮你腾出时间，不做那些别人能做得更好、更有效率的事。善待他人——总是多付点钱，期待最好的结果，支付他们像支付最优秀的人一样，然后期望最好的成果。

Overall I think a good use of money is to take risks and build things and do things that other people can’t do, align it with your own unique talents so you can keep delivering to the world. I’m not going to sit idle, I’m not going to retire, that’s a waste of whatever time I have left on this earth. If I’m doing something I enjoy, then I’m already in perpetual retirement. Because work is just a set of things you have to do that you don’t want to do. So if you want to do it, it’s not work.

总体来说，我认为财富的好用法是承担风险、构建事物，做一些别人做不到的事情，将它与自己的独特才能相结合，以便你能够不断为世界贡献。我不会闲置，不会退休，那样的话我就浪费了在世上的时光。如果我做的是自己喜欢的事，那我已经在“永续退休”中了。因为工作只是一堆你不想做的事。所以如果你想做，那就不算是工作。

There are things that I want to do that don’t feel like work. I can put money behind them and I can use that to instantiate them into reality. I don’t want to say “make the world a better place” because that’s too trite, but it’s more just create a product that I am proud of that wouldn’t exist otherwise, that other people will get tremendous value from.

我有一些事情，做起来并不觉得像工作。我可以为它们投入资金，并把它们变成现实。我不想说“让这个世界变得更好”，因为那太老套了，但更准确的说法是：创造出我为之自豪的产品，那些产品本来不会存在，而它们能为别人带来巨大的价值。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And it’s been enabled through wealth because you’re able to take a level of risk that you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

克里斯·威廉姆森：而且这一切都是因为财富的支持，让你能够承担通常无法承担的风险。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly, yeah. Wealth gives you freedom. It gives you freedom to explore more options, and in my case it gives me freedom to start businesses without having to ask other people for permission, or to warp my vision based on their desires to make a return, or how they think money should be made.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：完全正确，财富给了你自由。它让你有更多选择的自由，在我看来，它还让我有了开创企业的自由，而不需要向别人请求许可，或是根据他们想要回报的需求，或他们认为该怎么赚钱，来扭曲我的视野。

Beyond the “How to Get Rich” Thread

超越“如何致富”帖

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is there anything that you’d add to the “How to Get Rich” thread? Is there anything where you thought, “If I could go in and edit and add one more…”

克里斯·威廉姆森：你会在“如何致富”的帖子中加上什么内容吗？有没有什么想法是，“如果我能进去编辑一下，再加一个……”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh, there’s like ten thousand things. I could talk about that topic forever, to be honest. That thread was so short, and it was so limited, and it was so crafted in a sense, although I wrote it very spontaneously. It left so much on the cutting room floor that I could just talk about that topic for days, but it’s all contextual.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：哦，有成千上万的东西。我其实能永远谈论这个话题。说实话，那篇帖子很短，而且非常有限，虽然我写得非常随兴。它漏掉了太多内容，我可以就这个话题聊上好几天，但一切都是有情境的。

Business is very, very contextual. You have to look at the particular business and understand what’s being done and why it’s being done and how it’s being done, and then you can tear it apart or reassemble it properly. I like to think that that is actually where I have specific knowledge and expertise. My specific knowledge and expertise is not in happiness and not in philosophy. Yes, my life is very hacked to be very unique, but I don’t think that’s where my specific knowledge is.

商业是非常非常有情境的。你必须观察具体的业务，理解它在做什么，为什么做，以及怎么做，然后你才能拆解它或正确地重组它。我喜欢认为这是我特有的知识和专业领域。我特有的知识和专业并不在幸福和哲学领域。是的，我的生活方式非常独特，但我不认为那是我的专业领域。

My specific knowledge is in being able to analyze a business, especially a technology business, and take it apart at the seams and predict in advance what is likely to work and what is not likely to work—Clubhouse notwithstanding, because you’re still going to be wrong most of the time. It’s like playing the lottery, but you know one or two of the ticket numbers in advance. You only have to be right a few times or even just once to get the big score.

我的特有知识是在分析商业，尤其是技术类企业时，能够拆解它的构成，并提前预测哪些可能成功，哪些不可能成功——除去Clubhouse这个例外，因为大部分时候你仍然会错。就像买彩票，你提前知道一两个彩票号码。你只需要对几次，甚至一次就能获得大回报。

Peter Thiel started PayPal, but he made all his money on Facebook. Now he’s done more since then obviously, but that was the big winner. That’s true in any power law distribution—number one is going to return more than two through N put together, two will return more than three through N put together. You’re operating in a highly leveraged intellectual domain, so the outcomes are going to be non-linear.

彼得·蒂尔创办了PayPal，但他赚大钱是在Facebook。显然他后来做了更多事情，但那是最大的一笔胜利。这在任何幂律分布中都是真实的——第一名会带来比第二到第N名所有合起来更多的回报，第二名的回报会大于第三到第N名的合计。你在一个高度杠杆化的知识领域中运作，所以结果会是非线性的。

I know a lot about the topic, but it’s highly contextual. It makes a lot more sense if there’s a specific business in front of me, a specific entrepreneur, and I can take that apart. There are certain companies where I’ll say, “This is not going to work because you the entrepreneur are doing this for the wrong reasons. You’re doing A so you can get to B—just go to B. Or you’re doing this to make money when really the person who’s doing this because they love the product is going to beat you. Or you’re raising money from the wrong people who are in it for the wrong reasons. Or your co-founder is not in it for the right reasons, or you don’t have the right kind of co-founder, or your vesting schedule is wrong, or you’re starting the business in the wrong place, or you’re approaching it from this angle instead of that angle.”

我对这个话题了解很多，但它是高度情境化的。如果有一个具体的公司摆在我面前，一个具体的企业家，我可以把它拆解开。对于某些公司，我会说：“这不可能成功，因为你作为企业家是出于错误的理由在做这件事。你在做A是为了到达B——那你直接去做B吧。或者你是为了赚钱而做这件事，但真正因为热爱产品的人会把你打败。或者你从错误的人那里筹集资金，他们是为了错误的目的。或者你的联合创始人没有出于正确的动机参与，或者你没有合适的联合创始人，或者你的股权归属计划不对，或者你在错误的地方启动了公司，或者你从这个角度出发，而不是那个角度。”

Of course I’ll be wrong too, but I’ve just seen a lot of data, I have my theories around it, and that’s where I feel very comfortable operating.

当然我也会错，但我已经看过了很多数据，我有自己的理论，所以在这一点上我很有信心。

The problem is when I have to talk about how to create wealth—and “how to get rich” is a clickbait title deliberately—but when I talk about how to create wealth in the abstract, it’s very difficult. You have to just say the timeless stuff, you have to be right in almost every context, and so it really limits what you can say.

问题在于当我必须谈论如何创造财富时——而“如何致富”这个标题是故意用来吸引点击的——但当我在抽象层面上讨论如何创造财富时，真的很难。你必须说那些永恒不变的真理，你几乎在每个情境下都要是对的，这就极大地限制了你能说的内容。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The lack of specificity makes it challenging.

克里斯·威廉姆森：缺乏具体性让它变得很有挑战性。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Correct. It’s back to philosophy, but when I can get specific about it, that’s when the real knowledge is becoming useful.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：正是这样，回到哲学，但当我能具体地讲述时，那才是知识真正有用的时候。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You could be like a wealth counselor for people.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你可以像财富顾问一样为人提供咨询。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, part of the reason why I started doing podcasts—and this is ego at play, so I’ll admit it freely—when I was tweeting, I kind of pioneered philosophy Twitter, or a certain kind of practical philosophy Twitter. In one hundred and forty characters I would try to say something true in an interesting way that was insightful to me at the time.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，部分原因是我开始做播客——这背后也有自我的成分，所以我会坦率承认——当我开始发推时，我算是开创了哲学推特，或者说某种类型的实用哲学推特。在140个字符内，我会尽力以有趣的方式说出对我当时有启发的真理。

But then that got copied, there’s thousands of us now—thousands of people spitting it out, ChatGPT trying to create these things all day long. Although I like to think that my stuff is incompressible—I’m saying it in the tightest way possible, which is kind of a little failed poetry background.

但后来这被模仿了，现在有成千上万的人——成千上万的人在说这些话，ChatGPT也在试着全天候地生成这些内容。虽然我喜欢认为我的东西是不可压缩的——我把它以最精炼的方式表达出来，这也有点我失败的诗歌背景。

What I realized was if you truly have a deep understanding of something, then you can talk about it all day long. You can re-derive everything you need from that understanding, no memorization required. You can get it from first principles, and every piece of what you know is like a Lego block that just fits in and forms a steel frame—it’s solid, it’s locked in there. So on a podcast I can unload much more deeply about some of these topics.

我意识到的是，如果你对某件事有真正深刻的理解，你就能全天候谈论它。你可以从那个理解中重新推导出你需要的一切，完全不需要死记硬背。你可以从第一原理出发，你所知道的每一个部分就像一个乐高积木，紧紧地拼接成一个钢铁框架——它是坚固的，牢牢锁定在里面。所以在播客里，我可以更深入地讨论这些话题。

The Value of Understanding Over Memorization

理解的价值胜过死记硬背

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So for example, we can talk about any business you like, but it has to be in context, it has to be real, it has to be an actual problem, then we can solve it. I’ll just really love that heuristic of if you’re having to memorize something, it’s because you don’t understand it.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：比如说，我们可以谈论任何你喜欢的生意，但它必须有情境，必须是真实的，必须是一个实际的问题，这样我们才能解决。我非常喜欢这样的启发式方法：如果你需要记住某些东西，那是因为你不理解它。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You don’t understand it, that’s right.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你不理解它，没错。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: If you have to memorize something, it’s because you don’t understand it, and if you understand something, you don’t have to memorize it. Again, you know, just to sort of call out lot of what I tried to do, this redemption arc thing of if I sound smart, that’s like being smart.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：如果你需要记住某些东西，那是因为你不理解它；如果你理解了某个东西，你就不需要记住它。再说一遍，你知道，我曾经试图做的很多事情，这种救赎式的转变就是，如果我听起来聪明，那就像是聪明。

ChatGPT has memorized the entire Internet. Good luck competing with that. You’re not going to beat the memorization. You’re not even going to beat the library of memorization. You’re going to beat any ten books in memorization, so memorization is not the thing. Understanding is the thing.

ChatGPT已经记住了整个互联网。祝你和它竞争好运。你打不过记忆。你甚至打不过整个记忆的图书馆。你甚至打不过任何十本书的记忆，所以死记硬背并不是关键。理解才是关键。

Being able to exercise judgment is the thing. Taste is the thing, and understanding judgment, taste, these come out of having real problems and then solving them and then finding the commonalities.

能够运用判断力才是关键。品味才是关键，理解判断力和品味，这些都来源于真正的问题，然后解决这些问题，最终找到其中的共性。

Philosophy and Universal Truths

哲学与普遍真理

What is philosophy? Everyone, you live long enough, you’ll be a philosopher. Philosophy is just when you find the hidden generalizable truths among the specific experiences that you’ve had in life, and then you know how to navigate future specific experiences based on some heuristics, and you create a philosophy around that.

哲学是什么？每个人，只要活得够久，你就会成为一个哲学家。哲学就是在你生活中经历过的具体经验中找到那些隐藏的、可以普遍化的真理，然后基于一些启发式方法，知道如何应对未来的具体经历，并在此基础上创造一种哲学。

Any subject pursued deeply enough will eventually lead to philosophy. Mastery in anything, literally anything, will lead you to being a philosopher. You just have to stick with it long enough and generalize the truths back out, and these are universal truths. It’s back to the unity and variety. You can find unity in anything if you go deep enough.

任何学科，只要追求得足够深入，最终都会引向哲学。对任何事物的精通，字面上的任何事物，都将使你成为一个哲学家。你只需要坚持足够长的时间，把真理概括出来，而这些就是普遍的真理。这回到了统一性与多样性。只要深入到足够的程度，你就能在任何事物中找到统一性。

And that’s why the trite stuff unfortunately sort of keeps coming back around, you’re like, well look, this is cliche for kind of a reason. It’s cliche for reasons, but you know, sometimes you learn new things, sometimes you do figure out new things too, even in philosophy.

这也是为什么那些陈词滥调不幸总是不断回归的原因，你会想，看看，某些事情之所以变成陈词滥调，是有原因的。它之所以成为陈词滥调，是有原因的，但你知道，有时你会学到新的东西，有时你确实会发现新的东西，甚至在哲学中也是如此。

For example, science has advanced, as science has advanced, it’s actually expanded our boundaries of philosophy. When we used to think that the earth was the center of the universe, you would actually have a different philosophical outlook than when you think the universe is vast and we’re infinitesimally small. It will give you a different philosophical outlook, the same way if you think that nature is driven by angels and demons and gods versus if there are laws of physics that are computable and understandable, that will lead you to a different philosophical outlook.

例如，科学的进步实际上扩展了我们哲学的边界。当我们曾经认为地球是宇宙的中心时，你的哲学视角会与现在你认为宇宙浩瀚，我们微不足道时的哲学视角完全不同。同样的道理，如果你认为自然是由天使、恶魔和神灵驱动的，而不是认为有可以计算和理解的物理定律，那也会引导你走向不同的哲学观点。

If you think that knowledge is something that is passed down from above and through generations versus something that is created on the fly and then tested against reality, that will lead to a different philosophical outlook. If you think humans are created by God as opposed to humans evolved from some unicellular organism, yeah, still doesn’t solve the original problem, who created that, but at least it takes you further back.

如果你认为知识是从上方传递下来并通过世代传承的东西，而不是认为知识是随时创造出来并经过现实验证的东西，这也会引导你走向不同的哲学观。如果你认为人类是由神创造的，而不是认为人类是从某种单细胞生物进化而来的，嗯，虽然这仍然没有解决最初的问题——那是谁创造了神，但至少它把你带得更远了一步。

Even sim theory is an attempt at reformulating philosophy based on what we know about computers, even though it kind of leads to a lot of the same conclusions as Creator, but it is at least philosophy that is informed by technology and by science. So philosophy can also evolve.

即使是模拟理论，也是基于我们对计算机的了解来重新构建哲学的一种尝试，尽管它会得出很多与“创造者”相同的结论，但它至少是由技术和科学启发的哲学。所以哲学也可以进化。

Moral philosophy evolves, right? There was a time when every culture practically that was a conquering culture practiced slavery, now almost all cultures abhor slavery, that’s moral philosophy having evolved.

道德哲学是会进化的，对吧？曾经有一段时间，几乎每个征服文化的文化都会实行奴隶制，而现在几乎所有文化都痛恨奴隶制，这是道德哲学的进化。

There was even like, this sounds too ludicrous to be true, and I don’t know if it fully is true, but there were a fairly large group of doctors based on studies who believed until the 1980s that babies couldn’t feel pain, and so even to this day I think circumcision is done without anesthesia, because under the theory that very young children, babies don’t feel pain, and that’s ludicrous, and there was a study that came out in the 80s that said no no they do feel pain, it’s like oh yeah of course, right?

甚至曾经有过这样的事，听起来太荒谬，似乎不太可能是真的，我也不确定它是否完全真实，但基于研究，有一大群医生直到1980年代都相信婴儿是不会感到痛的，所以即使到今天，我认为割礼仍然是在没有麻醉的情况下进行的，因为他们认为很小的婴儿不会感到痛，这太荒谬了。1980年代有一项研究指出，不不，他们会感到痛，哦，当然是的，对吧？

So people can be stuck in bad philosophical traps for a long period of time, so even philosophy can make progress, and as an example, one of the realizations that I had, and this is thanks to David Deutsch and my friend James Pearson also thinking it through a little bit, is that there are these timeless old questions that we run into where the answers seem like paradoxes, so we stop thinking about them.

因此，人们可能会长时间陷入错误的哲学陷阱中，所以即使是哲学也能取得进步。举个例子，我曾有一个认识，这要感谢David Deutsch和我的朋友James Pearson的帮助，他们也稍微思考了一下，意识到我们遇到的一些永恒的老问题，答案看起来像悖论，所以我们停止思考它们。

Resolving Philosophical Paradoxes

解决哲学悖论

So an example is free will, do you have free will, or does anything matter, is there a meaning to life? And we get stuck in them because for example, is there a meaning to life? Like yes, life has a meaning because you’re right here, you create your own meaning, this moment has all the meaning you could imagine, it’s all the meaning there is. On the other hand you’re going die, it all goes to zero, heat, death, the universe has no meaning, right? So which one is it?

举个例子，自由意志，你是否拥有自由意志，或者是否有什么事情是重要的，生命是否有意义？我们会在这些问题中困惑，例如，生命是否有意义？答案是有，生命有意义，因为你就在这里，你创造了自己的意义，这一刻拥有你能想象的所有意义，这就是一切意义。而另一方面，你终究会死，一切都会归零，热寂，宇宙没有意义，对吧？那究竟是怎样的呢？

Well the reason why it seems paradoxical is because you’re asking the question of a human here now at a certain scale and a certain time, and then you’re answering it from the viewpoint of the universe over infinite time, so you pull the trick, you switch the level at which you’re answering the question, and questions should be answered at the level at which they’re asked.

问题之所以看起来像悖论，是因为你正在以某种时间和尺度的某个人类视角来提问，然后又从宇宙的视角，以无限时间来回答它，所以你玩了个小把戏，把回答问题的层次调换了，问题应该在提问时的层次上得到回答。

So if you ask the question, is there meaning? You Chris are asking that question. Yes, yes to Chris there is meaning, there’s meaning right here, this is a meaning, you can interpret any meaning you want onto it. Don’t ask the question as Chris and then answer it as God or as the universe. That’s the trick that you’re playing. That’s why it seems paradoxical.

所以，如果你问，是否有意义？是你，克里斯在问这个问题。是的，对克里斯来说，生命是有意义的，这里就有意义，你可以赋予它任何你想要的意义。不要以克里斯的身份提问，然后再以上帝或宇宙的身份回答。这就是你在玩的小把戏。这就是为什么它看起来像悖论。

The same way you can say, do I have free will? People debate free will all day long. The question is answered at the wrong frame, so they ask the question, do I as an individual have free will? Hell yeah, I have free will. My mind body system can’t predict what I’m going to do next. The universe is infinitely complex. I’m making a choice in my mind and I’m doing something. There’s my free will.

同样的道理，你可以问，我是否拥有自由意志？人们整天讨论自由意志。这个问题被回答的方式是错误的，所以他们问，作为个体的我是否有自由意志？当然，我有自由意志。我的身心系统无法预测我接下来会做什么。宇宙是无限复杂的。我在我的思维中做出了选择，并采取了行动。这就是我的自由意志。

So answer at the level at which you were asked, of course I have free will because I feel like I have free will and I treat you like you have free will and you treat me like I have free will, we have free will. The problem then is you start trying to answer the question as if you’re the universe, you’re like, well on the universal scale, big bang particle collisions, no one makes any choices, you know, how could you be any different than what the universe wants you to be, and it’s all one block universe, so you don’t have free will.

所以在提问时的层次上回答这个问题，当然我有自由意志，因为我感觉自己有自由意志，我对待你就像你有自由意志，你对待我就像我有自由意志，我们有自由意志。问题在于，你开始试图以宇宙的角度来回答问题，你会想，在宇宙的尺度上，宇宙大爆炸、粒子碰撞，没人做出任何选择，你怎么能和宇宙希望你成为的样子有任何不同呢？这就变成了一个整体的宇宙，因此你没有自由意志。

Don’t answer the question at the level at which it wasn’t asked. So if God asked the question, is there free will? No, there is no free will. The universe asked the question, there is no free will, but if an individual asks the question right now, then yes there is free will.

不要在提问层次不匹配的情况下回答问题。所以如果上帝问这个问题，是否有自由意志？没有，没有自由意志。如果是宇宙问这个问题，没有自由意志，但如果是个体现在问，那么是的，确实有自由意志。

So a lot of these paradoxes resolve themselves, philosophical paradoxes that people have been struggling with since the beginning of time, when you just realize they’re you’re answering them at a scale and time different than they were asked.

因此，很多哲学悖论自然而然会得到解答，那些自古以来人们一直困惑的哲学悖论，当你意识到你是在一个与提问时不同的尺度和时间下回答这些问题时，它们就能解决。

Changing Beliefs

改变信念

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Speaking of updating beliefs, is there anything that you changed your mind around recently? Very recently? I mean, all the time. But are you talking about, like, philosophical existential things, or like technological things?

克里斯·威廉姆森：说到更新信念，最近有没有什么你改变了看法的事情？非常近期的？我的意思是，实际上一直在变。但你是指像哲学存在性问题那样的事情，还是像技术性问题那样的？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. Philosophical existential things, or anything that comes to mind, if there’s anything that’s front of mind where you go, yeah, that’s a pretty big OS update.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，哲学存在性的问题，或者任何让我想起的事情，如果有让你脑海里浮现出来的东西，比如，你会想，嗯，那是个相当大的操作系统更新。

I’m less laissez faire than I used to be on a societal level, I think that culture and religion are good cooperating systems for humans, and so if you want to operate in a high trust society, you need to have sets of rules that people need to follow and obey, so they get along even if they’re, you know, one size fits all doesn’t work for everybody.

我在社会层面上比以前更少放任自由了，我认为文化和宗教是人类良好的合作系统，所以如果你想在一个高信任的社会中运作，你需要有一套人们需要遵守的规则，这样他们才能相处得很好，尽管你知道，一刀切的方式并不适合每个人。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s moved up a little bit from libertarian?

克里斯·威廉姆森：它从自由主义者的位置稍微上升了一些吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, I mean, pure libertarians get outcompeted and die. Why? They get overrun because they’re every man for himself.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，我的意思是，纯粹的自由主义者会被淘汰并死掉。为什么？因为他们是各自为战。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: They can’t coordinate.

克里斯·威廉姆森：他们无法协调。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: They can’t coordinate, exactly right. So, the coordination problems, like culture exists to solve fundamental coordination problems, religion solves coordination problems, ethnicity solves coordination problems historically, and when you break down those coordination systems too fast and don’t replace them with anything else, you get societal breakdown, so you can have very malfunctioning societies.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：他们无法协调，完全正确。所以，协调问题就像文化存在就是为了去解决基本的协调问题，宗教解决协调问题，种族在历史上也解决了协调问题，当你过快地打破这些协调系统，并没有用其他东西来替代时，你就会出现社会崩溃，因此你可能会有运作不良的社会。

You know, go to Japan versus go to any western city and you can see the difference being a culture that’s working and a culture that’s not. So I think that that’s like a broader set of things that I’ve changed my mind on a fair bit. I used to be much more laissez faire on that stuff, let’s put it that way.

你知道，去日本和去任何西方城市，你可以看到正在运作的文化和不运作的文化之间的区别。所以我觉得这是我改变了看法的一些更广泛的东西。我曾经在这方面更加放任自由，可以这么说。

What else? I mean, on child raising, I’ve gotten a lot looser, you know, I’m still not like completely laissez faire, but I’m much more realized like kids are going to be kids and you kind of let them do their thing.

还有什么呢？我的意思是，在育儿方面，我变得更宽松了，你知道，我还是不会完全放任自由，但我更意识到孩子就是孩子，你得让他们做自己想做的事。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’ve gone to- Debate with them. Is it Talib that has the ascending levels of like anarchism versus conservatism, is that his insight? Like, the local level, I’m this.

克里斯·威廉姆森：你去——和他们辩论过了。是塔利布（Talib）提出的关于无政府主义与保守主义的逐级理论吗？那是他的见解吗？比如，在地方层面，我是这样的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. It seems like you’ve gone the other way. It’s like, at the child level, I’m an anarchist. At the societal level, I’m a conservative.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对，看来你走的路正好相反。就像，在孩子面前，我是无政府主义者；在社会层面，我是保守主义者。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

克里斯·威廉姆森：是的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: No, he was quoting somebody else, some brothers, I forget which ones, but he was making the point eloquently as he often does, that at the family local level, he’s a communist. At the family level, you’re a communist. At maybe the extended family level, you’re a socialist. At the local level, you know, you’re kind of a Democrat and so on, until at the federal level you’re a libertarian.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：不，他在引用别人说的话，我忘了是哪个兄弟说的，但他像往常一样 eloquently（雄辩地）阐述了这一点，即在家庭层面，他是共产主义者；在家庭层面，你是共产主义者；在扩展的家庭层面，你是社会主义者；在地方层面，你知道，你差不多是民主党人，以此类推，直到在联邦层面你是自由主义者。

You’ve done it the other way, you know, being a libertarian with the kids and you’re being a religious conservative at societal level. That’s a way of looking at it. Don’t know if the scale is that simple.

你走了另外一条路，你知道，在孩子面前是自由主义者，在社会层面上是宗教保守主义者。这是一种看法。我不知道这种尺度是否如此简单。

Thoughts on AI

对人工智能的看法

What else do I change my mind on? I think the modern AI is really cool, I think it’s, but I think these are natural language computers. They’re starting to show evidence of kind of reasoning at some levels, but I don’t think they do creativity.

我还改变了什么看法？我认为现代人工智能真的很酷，我认为它们是自然语言计算机。它们开始在某些层面上展示出推理的证据，但我认为它们并不具备创造力。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: One of my favorite takes is from Dwarkash Patel, and he says, if you gave any human on the planet 0.00001 percent of the consumption that LLM has, any LLM, they would have come up with thousands of new ideas.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我最喜欢的观点之一来自Dwarkash Patel，他说，如果你给地球上的任何人0.00001%的LLM消耗量，他们会提出成千上万的新想法。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Right. Give me one new idea. One fundamental new idea. Just being generated. Yeah, like I’m big into poetry, every poem ever written by an LM is garbage, I think even their fiction writing is terrible, even the new GPT-four zero five, with all due respect to Sam and crew, I think they’re terrible writers.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：对。给我一个新想法。一个根本性的、全新的想法。仅仅是被生成出来的。是的，我喜欢诗歌，任何由LM写的诗歌都是垃圾，我认为他们的小说写作也很糟糕，即使是新的GPT-4和GPT-5，尽管我尊重Sam和他的团队，我认为他们是糟糕的作家。

I find them really bad at summarizing, they’re really good at extrapolating, you know, paperwork, they’re very bad at actually distilling the essence of something and what’s important, they don’t have opinions or a point of view, but they’re still unbelievably powerful breakthroughs.

我发现它们在总结方面真的很差，它们在推断方面做得很好，处理文书工作非常擅长，但它们在实际提炼某个事物的本质和重要性方面非常差，它们没有观点或立场，但它们仍然是令人难以置信的突破。

They solve search, they solve natural language computing, they make English a programming language, they solve driving, they solve simple coding and backup coding, they solve translation, they solve transcription, they are a fundamental breakthrough in computing, is a different way to program a computer rather than you explicitly speak its language and write the code and then run the data through it. You just run enough data through it until it figures out how to write the program, that’s huge, but are they AGI? Not yet, and I don’t see a direct path from here to there, maybe we’ll have to solve a few more problems before that happens, and I think ASI is a fantasy, don’t think there’s any such thing as artificial super intelligence, where it has some kind of intelligence that humans can’t fathom.

它们解决了搜索问题，解决了自然语言计算问题，它们将英语变成了一种编程语言，解决了驾驶问题，解决了简单编码和备份编码问题，解决了翻译问题，解决了转录问题，它们是计算机科学的根本突破，是一种不同的编程方式，你不再需要明确地讲述计算机语言，写代码然后运行数据。你只需输入足够多的数据，直到它弄明白如何写程序，这是巨大的突破，但它们是AGI吗？还不是，我看不到从这里到那里的一条直接路径，或许我们还需要解决几个问题才能实现，我认为ASI是幻想，不认为有人工超级智能这种东西，至少它没有人类无法理解的那种智能。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay. Yeah. It seems like, I don’t know, if you’re from the Bostrom camp or whatever.

克里斯·威廉姆森：好的，嗯。看起来，我不知道你是不是来自Bostrom阵营，或者说什么的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: No. I’m not an AI doomer. I think that’s such a flawed line of reasoning.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：不是。我不是AI悲观主义者。我认为那是一条有缺陷的推理路线。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But let’s say that, you know, you came out of the lesswrong.com, like, slate star codec world, and there was this sort of lineage from computers and AI gets more powerful, more powerful, more powerful, and then you end up AGI, ASI.

克里斯·威廉姆森：但假设你知道，你来自lesswrong.com，像Slate Star Codex那样的世界，那里面有一条从计算机到AI不断变得更强大的血脉，最终你会得到AGI，ASI。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: ASI, yeah.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特： ASI，没错。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And it seems like LLMs have been this sort of orthogonal move from that, which are you saying you don’t believe they are a step on that?

克里斯·威廉姆森：看起来LLMs（大语言模型）是从这个方向的一个正交的转变，你是不是在说你不认为它们是这条路径上的一步？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. I think it’s a different branch. I think Stephen Wolfram puts it better. It’s a different form of intelligence. It’s like if you see a jaguar in the jungle, it has a different form of intelligence, you’re like a plant has a form of intelligence, how it can like photosynthesize and grow, it’s a different form of intelligence.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的。我认为它是一个不同的分支。我觉得Stephen Wolfram表达得更好。这是另一种形式的智能。就像你在丛林中看到一只美洲豹，它有一种不同的智能，植物也有一种智能，它能进行光合作用并生长，这是一种不同的智能。

And intelligence again, like love or like happiness, this overloaded word that means many things to many people, but by my definition, where, you know, the true test is you get what you want out of life, it doesn’t even have a life, it doesn’t even want anything, it’s different.

而智能，再一次，像爱或像幸福，这个过载的词汇对许多人来说意味着很多事情，但按照我的定义，你知道，真正的考验是你从生活中得到你想要的东西，而它甚至没有生活，甚至不想要任何东西，它是不同的。

I do think it’s unbelievably useful, I’m glad that it exists. You don’t see it much yet in large scale production systems replacing humans because of the tendency to hallucinate, so you can’t put it into anything mission critical.

我确实认为它极其有用，我很高兴它存在。你现在还不常看到它在大规模生产系统中替代人类，因为它有幻觉的倾向，所以你不能将其应用于任何关键任务。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Confidently wrong one time out of ten.

克里斯·威廉姆森：每十次有一次非常自信的错误。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Correct. And it doesn’t even know when it’s wrong, and maybe they’ll get that one out of ten down to one out of a hundred, but you kind of always want human oversight for critical things. I always feel so bitter. I’m petty sometimes.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：正确。而且它甚至不知道自己错了，也许他们能将那十次中的一次减少到百分之一，但你总是希望对关键事务有人工监督。我总是感到很苦涩。我有时有些小气。

The Future of AI and Self-Driving Cars

人工智能与自动驾驶汽车的未来

NAVAL RAVIKANT: My less equanimous version of me is petty, and I always want to teach it a lesson if it gets something wrong. I’m anthropomorphizing it, but it doesn’t have a point of view. They are going to get a lot better, and they might get to the point where the error rates are so low that you can put them into certain bounded problems.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我的不那么平和的版本是小气的，如果它做错了什么，我总想教训它。我在拟人化它，但它没有观点。它们会变得更好，可能会达到一个错误率极低的程度，以至于你可以将它们应用于某些有限的问题。

Self-driving will be solved completely because it’s a bounded problem. Cars don’t go off-road and drive through houses and stuff like that. The creative side of coding doesn’t go away. If anything, programmers get even more leveraged and more powerful, and rather than computing replacing programmers, programmers use AI to replace everybody else.

自动驾驶会被完全解决，因为它是一个有限的问题。汽车不会偏离道路，也不会穿越房屋之类的地方。编程的创造性部分并不会消失。相反，程序员将变得更加高效和强大，而不是计算机取代程序员，程序员则使用人工智能取代其他所有人。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: On Tesla versus Waymo, would you bet on software or hardware for self-driving?

克里斯·威廉姆森：在特斯拉与Waymo的对比中，你会押注自动驾驶是依赖软件还是硬件？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think Tesla’s in the stronger longer-term position, but it’s hard to argue with what’s working right now and Waymo is working right now. I would not underestimate them because there’s a learning curve that you go through when you actually deploy something, and Waymo is way ahead in that regard.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：我认为特斯拉在长期来看处于更强的位置，但很难反驳现在正在运行的系统，而Waymo现在正运行得很好。我不会低估他们，因为当你真正部署某些东西时会经历一个学习曲线，Waymo在这方面遥遥领先。

Tesla’s camera-only approach, if it works, is superior—it’s much more scalable, and Tesla knows how to print cars. They can mass manufacture cars. But I think they’ll both be around, they’ll both be fine. It’s everybody else who doesn’t have a self-driving vehicle that’s screwed.

特斯拉的纯摄像头方案，如果它能成功，将是更优的——它的可扩展性更强，而且特斯拉知道如何生产汽车。他们可以大规模制造汽车。但我认为它们俩都会存在，都会没事。真正麻烦的是其他没有自动驾驶车辆的人。

Declining Fertility Rates

生育率下降

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You mentioned kids there, and you had a tweet that said, “I’m not convinced that declining fertility needs to be proactively fought.”

克里斯·威廉姆森：你提到了孩子，之前你有一条推文说，“我不认为生育率下降需要被主动对抗。”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, think back—thirty years ago, twenty years ago, everybody was saying overpopulation of the earth is going to be a problem, Malthusian ending, we’re going to have too many people. And all of a sudden we’re going to have too few people.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：好吧，想想看——三十年前，二十年前，每个人都在说地球过度人口将成为问题，马尔萨斯的终结，我们将有太多的人。然后突然间，我们将面临人手不足的问题。

Part of it is just the doomerism meme is always alive and well. It just gets repackaged. We’re running out of oil, we have too much oil. The world is cooling, the world is warming. There’s always something to scream about—the world is ending, there’s no progress in technology, AI is going to blow up the world. People tend to overdo in both directions.

部分原因就是末日主义的心态始终存在并且盛行，它只是不断被重新包装。我们石油快用完了，我们有太多石油了。世界在变冷，世界在变暖。总有些事值得叫嚷——世界末日，科技没有进步，人工智能要摧毁世界。人们往往会在两个极端上过度反应。

What is the actual fertility problem? People are having fewer kids because they’re choosing to have fewer kids. Women have gotten emancipation, independence in the workforce, they’re making more money. People don’t need kids as insurance policies. Maybe they’re living hedonistic lives—God bless them—they want to have more fun, they want to have fewer kids. I don’t see the act of choosing to have fewer kids as a problem.

真正的生育问题是什么？人们生育孩子减少是因为他们选择少生孩子。女性获得了解放，在职场上更加独立，收入也更多。人们不再需要孩子作为保险。也许他们过着享乐主义的生活——愿上帝保佑他们——他们想要更多的乐趣，想要少生孩子。我不认为选择少生孩子是一个问题。

Let’s move one level up. It’s because of retirees. A large percentage of the population is essentially retiring at the guaranteed age of sixty-five or seventy thanks to social security, and they need other people to pay for it. They need more workers, and if the workforce is shrinking, then you have a small number of people who are supporting a large number of retirees. In democracies, you can’t take pensions away—the voters vote you out—so this slowly strangles the economy.

让我们更进一步。问题出在退休人员上。由于社会保障，人口中有很大一部分实际上在65或70岁时退休，他们需要其他人来支付这些费用。他们需要更多的工人，而如果劳动力在减少，那么就会有少数人支持大量退休人员。在民主国家，你无法取消养老金——选民会把你投出去——所以这会慢慢扼杀经济。

So what do you do? You have a bunch of immigration, and then the whole culture changes. You end up in a low-trust society, and people start fighting over limited resources, and how do you control which immigrants come in, and how do you make sure that they’re good taxpayers after they’re in?

那该怎么办呢？你引入大量移民，然后整个文化就会发生变化。你会陷入一个低信任的社会，人们开始为有限的资源而争斗，那么你如何控制哪些移民可以进入，如何确保他们在进入后成为合格的纳税人呢？

You end up in this trap where the low fertility rate is upstream of the downstream problems that are cultural and societal, but I’m not sure that you’re going to solve that by making people have more kids. How are you going to meme them into having more kids? I’m not even sure it’s necessarily a problem, because you have more resources now, you have less of a burden.

你最终会陷入这种困境，低生育率是导致文化和社会下游问题的上游原因，但我不确定通过让人们多生孩子能解决这个问题。你怎么能通过文化方式让他们多生孩子呢？我甚至不确定这是否真的是一个问题，因为你现在有更多的资源，负担也更少。

There’s a flip side where every kid is a lottery ticket for invention, so there’s some benefit to having more kids, but you can’t force it. I think it’ll work itself out. Scott Adams has this great law which he calls the Adams law of slow-moving disasters: when disasters are very slow-moving, like peak oil or global warming or population collapse, and everyone can see them coming, economics and society are forced to solve them, because enough individual people have incentives to go solve them.

另一方面，每个孩子都是发明的“彩票”，所以多生孩子是有一些好处的，但你不能强迫它。我认为它会自行解决。斯科特·亚当斯有一个很棒的法则，他称之为亚当斯的慢性灾难法则：当灾难非常缓慢地发生时，像石油见顶、全球变暖或人口崩溃，当每个人都看到它们即将来临时，经济和社会会被迫去解决它们，因为足够多的个人有动力去解决这些问题。

I don’t know exactly how it gets solved, but I think it could get solved in various ways. Maybe people retire later, maybe AI and automation and robots take care of the older people, maybe we figure out how to have immigrants while still keeping a high-trust society, maybe we outsource more things, maybe we just have more land and housing to go around.

我不确定它是如何解决的，但我认为它可以通过多种方式解决。也许人们会更晚退休，也许人工智能、自动化和机器人会照顾老年人，也许我们能找到在保持高信任社会的同时接纳移民的方法，也许我们外包更多的事情，也许我们只是有更多的土地和住房可以分配。

Believe me, if we were having too many kids, everybody would be complaining about how there’s no housing and there’s no land. So they’ll always find something to care about. I just don’t view this as something that any individual or government action is going to solve. I think economics and incentives over time will solve it, and I’m not even convinced it’s that big of a problem.

相信我，如果我们生育孩子太多，大家都会抱怨没有住房，没有土地。所以他们总会找到值得关心的事。我只是认为这是一个任何个人或政府行为都无法解决的问题。我认为经济和激励会随着时间解决它，我甚至不确定它真的是个大问题。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is there anything that you do think—

克里斯·威廉姆森：有没有什么你认为——

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It may be self-correcting too. If there are too few kids in society, the returns to having kids literally might just go up. It might just be easier to have incentive to now have a child because there’s so few around. They’re going to get the best job opportunities, resources.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：它也可能是自我纠正的。如果社会上孩子太少，生孩子的回报实际上可能会提高。现在因为孩子太少，生孩子的动力可能会更强。孩子们会得到最好的工作机会和资源。

You could come at it from a pain side, which is you look at all of the other people around who don’t have kids. Let’s say that pensions completely drop off and the only way that old people are able to survive is if their children pay them some sort of stipends. Well, that’s a pretty good incentive.

你也可以从痛苦的角度来看，看看周围那些没有孩子的人。假设养老金完全取消，而老年人唯一能生存下去的方式是他们的孩子给他们一些津贴。嗯，这就是一个相当不错的动力。

I also think that people have been memed into thinking that kids make your life worse, and that’s pretty bad.

我还认为人们已经被灌输认为孩子会让你的生活更糟，这实在是挺糟糕的。

The Joy of Parenthood

父母之乐

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s your experience been?

克里斯·威廉姆森：你的经验如何？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Kids make your life better in every possible way. If you want an automatic built-in meaning to life, have kids.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：孩子在各方面都能让你的生活变得更好。如果你想要一种自动内建的生活意义，那就生孩子。

I think there are these bad psych studies, like most psych studies unfortunately, that say that people are unhappy when they have kids. It’s because you’re catching them in the middle of changing a diaper and you’re saying, “Are you glad you had kids or not?” Or they don’t even say that, they say, “Are you happy or not?” And they say, “No, I’m not happy right now.”

我认为有些糟糕的心理学研究，像大多数心理学研究一样，不幸的是，说的是人们有了孩子后不开心。因为你抓住他们正好在换尿布的时候，问他们：“你高兴自己有孩子吗？”或者他们甚至没问这个问题，而是问：“你现在开心吗？”然后他们说：“现在不开心。”

But what they don’t realize is that person has found something more important than being happy in the moment—they found meaning, and the meaning comes from kids. If you ask parents, “Do you regret having kids?” I think it would be ninety-nine to one. It would be, “No, I don’t regret having kids. I love having kids. I’m so glad I had kids.” It’s incredibly rare to meet a parent that regretted having children.

但他们没有意识到的是，这个人已经找到了比当下的快乐更重要的东西——他们找到了意义，而这个意义来自孩子。如果你问父母：“你后悔生孩子吗？”我觉得答案会是99比1。答案是，“不，我不后悔有孩子。我喜欢有孩子。我很高兴我有了孩子。”很少能遇到后悔生孩子的父母。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s pretty good odds.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这是非常好的概率。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s extremely good odds. I think a lot of people get late into life and then they can admit that they should have had kids, but it’s kind of late in the game.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这是极好的概率。我认为很多人到晚年才承认他们应该有孩子，但这时候已经有些晚了。

A lot of times you see everybody who has a pet, and they’re pushing them around in a stroller. What is that? That’s a sublimated desire for children.

很多时候你看到有宠物的人，他们会把宠物推着走。那是什么？那是对孩子的压抑欲望。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Malcolm Collins says that having a pet is to children as using porn is to sex. He basically thinks that it’s sort of a surrogate.

克里斯·威廉姆森： Malcolm Collins说，养宠物对孩子来说，就像看色情片对性一样。他基本上认为这是某种替代品。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s definitely in that direction. I like pets, I like animals, but I don’t like the idea of neutering or spaying something and then keeping it as a prisoner in the house and having to train it. I don’t want to be responsible for that.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这确实是朝那个方向发展的。我喜欢宠物，喜欢动物，但我不喜欢把某样东西去势或绝育后，把它当作囚犯关在家里并且必须训练它的想法。我不想对这件事负责。

Parenting Philosophy

养育理念

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Given that you’ve been thinking more about child-rearing, what do you hope that your kids learn from their childhood?

克里斯·威廉姆森：鉴于你现在更多地在思考养育孩子，你希望你的孩子从他们的童年中学到什么？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: They just be happy and do what they want. I don’t have particular goals in mind for them. I think that’s another route to unhappiness.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：他们只需要快乐，做他们想做的事。我没有特别的目标给他们。我认为那是通往不幸福的另一条路。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s different though, right, than learn versus goals. It’s not necessarily what do they want. What do you want them to want out of life? Like, you had that idea around your number one job as a parent is to provide unconditional love to your kids.

克里斯·威廉姆森：这与学习和目标是不同的，对吧？这不仅仅是他们想要什么。你希望他们从生活中获得什么？就像你曾经说过，作为父母，最重要的工作是为孩子提供无条件的爱。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. So I want my kids to feel unconditionally loved, and I want them to have high self-esteem as a consequence of that. But I don’t get to choose anything—all I get to choose is my output. I can output love, I can’t choose what they feel, I can’t choose how they behave, I can’t choose what they want, I can’t choose what they turn out to be.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的。所以我希望我的孩子感受到无条件的爱，我希望他们因此拥有很高的自尊。但我不能选择任何事情——我只能选择我的输出。我可以输出爱，但我不能选择他们的感受，不能选择他们的行为，不能选择他们想要什么，不能选择他们将成为什么样的人。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And downstream from that, there should be freedom, there should be a degree of freedom that comes from the self-esteem, that comes from the unconditional love.

克里斯·威廉姆森：而在这之下，应该有自由，应该有来自自尊的自由，来自无条件爱的自由。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, they should make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons and have their own desires and fulfill them as is appropriate. Like any parent, I wouldn’t want them to be hurt, wouldn’t want them to be unhappy, but I cannot control these things.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，他们应该犯自己的错，学自己的教训，拥有自己的欲望，并根据情况实现它们。像任何父母一样，我不希望他们受伤，不希望他们不开心，但我无法控制这些事情。

Parenting Practices and Science

育儿实践与科学

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You replied to my friend Rob Henderson, he was talking about how kids fall asleep more quickly when they’re being carried, and you said “cry it out and co-sleeping is dangerous. What’s IYI science?”

克里斯·威廉姆森：你回复了我的朋友Rob Henderson，他谈到孩子被抱着时入睡更快，你说“让孩子哭泣和同床睡是危险的。什么是IYI科学？”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: IYI is from Nassim Taleb, it’s “intellectual yet idiot.” These are people who are over-educated, and they deny basic common sense. There’s a lot of that that goes on in child-rearing, thanks to really bad studies and bad public medical directives.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特： IYI来自Nassim Taleb，意指“知识渊博但愚蠢”。这些人受过过度教育，但却否定基本常识。育儿中有很多这样的情况，归因于一些糟糕的研究和不良的公共医疗指引。

For example, a few parents—maybe they’re drunk or they’re high or they have other issues—and they roll over their kid when they’re sleeping, the kid suffocates, or they neglect their kid. Because of that they say, “Well, don’t co-sleep with your kids.”

例如，一些父母——也许他们喝醉了或者吸毒了，或者有其他问题——在睡觉时把孩子压住，孩子窒息，或者他们忽视孩子。因为这个原因他们说：“好吧，不要和孩子同床睡。”

Well, kids in every society through all of human history co-slept with their parents. Where else do you think they were sleeping? There weren’t houses with multiple rooms. We’ll put them in the other tent? It’s just nonsense. Co-sleeping has been around since the dawn of time.

事实上，在人类历史上，所有社会的孩子都和父母同床睡。你认为他们会睡在哪里？没有带多个房间的房子。我们把他们放到另一个帐篷里吗？这简直是胡说八道。自古以来，同床睡就存在了。

So has feeding kids cow milk or goat milk when breast milk runs out or is not available. Yet we’re told formula with soy and corn syrup, which was invented recently, is somehow better than cow milk, and cow milk can be dangerous for your kids, and co-sleeping is dangerous for your kids, and cry it out is the right answer. All of that is nonsense.

当母乳不足或无法提供时，给孩子喂牛奶或羊奶也是如此。然而我们被告知，由大豆和玉米糖浆制成的配方奶粉，这种最近才发明的东西，不知何故比牛奶更好，牛奶对孩子有危险，同床睡对孩子有危险，放任孩子哭泣是正确的答案。所有这一切都是胡说八道。

It’s very clear that we raised children throughout human history without these interventions. To me, the idea that you’re going to let your kid cry it out—I get why that’s done for practical reasons, so that you can get some sleep and you can go to work in the morning—but the reality is when you let the kid cry it out, you’re letting the kid bawl until it finally gives up.

很明显，在人类历史上，我们在没有这些干预措施的情况下抚养了孩子。对我来说，让孩子哭泣直到停止的想法——我理解为什么这样做是出于实际原因，这样你可以睡个觉，第二天早上去上班——但现实是，当你让孩子哭泣时，你让孩子哭到它最终放弃。

A kid left by itself to cry it out in the paleolithic wilderness is going to get eaten by a tiger. So this kid is starting off on the wrong foundation. The one I mentioned earlier about the idea that babies don’t feel pain—that’s ludicrous.

如果一个孩子被单独留下，在旧石器时代的荒野中让他哭泣，那他会被老虎吃掉。所以这个孩子从一开始就站在了错误的基础上。我之前提到的关于婴儿不会感到疼痛的想法——那是荒谬的。

The Dangers of Intellectual Yet Idiot Beliefs

知识渊博但愚蠢的信念的危险

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’ve never heard that before, it’s such a wild idea.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我以前从没听过这个，这是一个非常疯狂的想法。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, I’m not saying that’s one hundred percent true. I read it on Twitter, and I did one level confirmation on it, but it’s so ludicrous that I should probably do two or three level confirmations before I talk about it. But there are definitely some people who believe that, enough that it was a thing in certain circles for a while.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，我不是说这百分之百是真的。我在推特上读到的，我做了一次确认，但它太荒谬了，我可能应该做两三次确认才讨论它。但确实有些人相信这一点，足够多以至于它曾经在某些圈子里存在了一段时间。

I think we just go through these IYI beliefs, these intellectually yet idiot beliefs come from people who take a little bit of knowledge and extrapolate it too far. They think we know more than we know due to recent scientific studies, and these are junk science. These are low power studies on very certain contexts that then get over applied. Behavioral psychology is very guilty of this, but it’s true across a lot of science.

我认为我们只是经历了这些IYI信念，这些知识渊博但愚蠢的信念来自那些把一点点知识外推过头的人。他们认为我们通过最近的科学研究知道的比我们实际知道的还要多，而这些研究是伪科学。这些研究是在非常特定的背景下进行的低水平研究，然后被过度应用。行为心理学在这方面非常有罪，但这在很多科学领域都存在。

So even with science you have to be skeptical. You have to look very carefully at whether it applies in the right context, if it comes from good sources, if they ran enough high-powered studies, if it’s widely accepted.

所以即使是科学，你也必须保持怀疑。你必须非常仔细地查看它是否适用于正确的背景，是否来自可靠的来源，是否进行了足够强大的研究，是否被广泛接受。

There are a whole bunch of things you’re just not supposed to talk about. You can’t say anything negative about vaccines because God forbid, what if they don’t get the polio vaccine, right? And that’s part of the reason why the recent vaccine debate happened, because we’ve taken our worship for vaccines too far.

有很多事情你根本不应该谈论。你不能对疫苗说任何负面的话，因为天啊，如果他们没接种脊髓灰质炎疫苗怎么办？对吧？这也是最近疫苗辩论发生的部分原因，因为我们对疫苗的崇拜已经走得太远了。

The same way there’s this whole SIDS thing, sudden infant death syndrome. It’s like, no, kids don’t suddenly mysteriously die. More likely there was neglect or there was a problem, and then whoever was the caretaker doesn’t want to admit to the problem or didn’t recognize the problem, but kids don’t just spontaneously die in the crib.

同样，关于婴儿猝死综合症（SIDS）的问题也是如此。不是，孩子不会突然神秘地死去。更可能的是有忽视或者有问题，之后照顾者不想承认问题，或者没有意识到问题，但孩子不会在婴儿床里自发死亡。

Parenting and Natural Instincts

育儿与自然本能

NAVAL RAVIKANT: They talk about swaddling babies. You swaddle babies, basically tie them up, mummify them, so you constrict them so they don’t die of SIDS where they roll over and they can’t get back. I mean, it’s just all this craziness around child raising. It’s a real minefield.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：他们谈论包裹婴儿。你包裹婴儿，基本上把他们绑起来，像木乃伊一样包紧，这样就能限制他们的活动，防止他们因婴儿猝死综合症（SIDS）而翻身后无法自己翻回去。我是说，关于育儿的这些事情，简直太疯狂了。那真的是一片雷区。

You have these scared parents, they’re having a kid for the first time and they open a book and they start reading how to raise children, and I would argue that your natural instincts on what to do with your child are actually pretty good.

你有这些害怕的父母，他们是第一次有孩子，打开一本书开始阅读如何抚养孩子，我想说的是，你对孩子该怎么做的自然本能实际上是相当不错的。

It’s funny when my wife and I had our first baby, I remember at the hospital, first one was a natural birth at the birthing center, we went home and it was like, “there you go, that’s it,” and we’re like, “what do we do?”

我记得我和妻子生第一个孩子时，挺有趣的。我记得在医院，第一个是自然分娩，在助产中心生的，我们回家时就像，“好了，就是这样，”然后我们就想，“那我们该做什么？”

Where’s the instruction manual? You take them home, and then you relax and you realize, actually instincts are pretty good. If the kid cries, check to see if they’re clean, feed them, all that. Your basic instincts are actually very, very good, and kids’ instincts are actually very, very good. They know what they want and they want things for a reason.

哪本说明书？你把他们带回家，然后你放松下来，意识到，实际上本能是非常好的。如果孩子哭了，检查他们是否干净，喂他们，做这些事情。你的基本本能实际上非常好，孩子们的本能也非常好。他们知道自己想要什么，并且他们想要东西是有原因的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And they can encourage you to give to them?

克里斯·威廉姆森：他们能鼓励你给予他们吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yes, it’s usually children are not deficient adults who can’t reason, and to some extent that’s true, but mostly it’s not true. Mostly they have very good reasons for what they want, and you as a parent mostly have communication problems with them. They can’t yet communicate to you, you can’t communicate to them.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：是的，通常孩子并不是缺乏理性的成人，某种程度上这是真的，但大多数情况下并不是这样。大多数时候，他们对自己想要的东西有很好的理由，而你作为父母，通常和他们之间存在沟通问题。他们还不能和你沟通，你也不能和他们沟通。

So early on with my kids, I tried to focus on teaching them explanatory theories and of course having them memorize is just the most frivolous solution. I’ll give you a very simple example.

所以在我的孩子们早期，我试图专注于教他们解释性理论，当然让他们背诵只是最轻浮的解决方案。我给你一个非常简单的例子。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay.

克里斯·威廉姆森：好的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So, this is Twitter. And this is the “how to get rich without getting lucky” thread. So, first one.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这是推特。这是“如何在不依赖运气的情况下致富”这个话题。所以，第一个。

Teaching Children to Think

教孩子们思考

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, a simple one is, you know, how does knowledge get created? If you follow the critical rationalism David Deutsch philosophy, then it’s by guessing and then by testing your guesses. So, whenever they ask me something like, “well, do you think that is?” I’ll say, “Well how would we figure out if that’s true?” So that’s a basic game you can play.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：嗯，一个简单的问题是，知识是如何创造的？如果你遵循戴维·德伊奇的批判理性主义哲学，那就是通过猜测，然后通过检验你的猜测。所以，每当他们问我类似“你认为那是真的吗？”我会说，“我们怎么知道它是否是真的？”这就是你可以玩的基本游戏。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Involving them.

克里斯·威廉姆森：让他们参与其中。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Involving them, but another one is that a lot of the rules that you teach kids have to do with hygiene. You must brush your teeth, cover your mouth when you cough, clean up after yourself, don’t touch that, wash your hands after you do this, don’t eat food off the floor. But all of these are subsumed under the germ theory of disease.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：让他们参与其中，但另一个方面是，你教孩子们的很多规则与卫生有关。你必须刷牙，咳嗽时捂住嘴巴，自己清理，别碰那个，做完这件事后洗手，别吃掉掉在地上的食物。但所有这些都包含在疾病的细菌理论中。

So if you instead go on YouTube and show them videos of germs, or if you have them look under a microscope at anything, they’re like, “ah!” They can infer what’s going on. There’s creepy crawlies everywhere and I got to watch out for them.

所以，如果你去YouTube上给他们看细菌的视频，或者让他们用显微镜观察任何东西，他们就会像“啊！”他们能推测发生了什么。到处都是爬虫，我得小心它们。

The Red Queen Hypothesis and Pathogens

红皇后假说与病原体

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Then you can talk about how, if you look at humans, our real enemy are pathogens. I think a lot of aging and disease are actually downstream of our competition with pathogens over time, to a point that people still don’t fully appreciate.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：然后你可以谈论，如果你看人类，我们真正的敌人是病原体。我认为很多衰老和疾病实际上是我们与病原体长期竞争的结果，这一点人们至今仍未完全意识到。

There’s a red queen hypothesis which is that we undergo sexual selection to mix up our genes, so every twenty years, every generation we mix up our genes. But if you look at how bacteria and viruses mutate through just random mutations, their mix-up rate on their genes and evolution rate is roughly the same as ours, even though they go through thousands of generations in those twenty years.

有一个红皇后假说，就是我们经历性选择来混合我们的基因，因此每二十年，每一代我们都混合我们的基因。但是如果你看看细菌和病毒是如何通过随机突变变异的，它们在基因上的混合率和进化速度大致与我们相同，尽管它们在这二十年中经历了数千代。

Because they’re not doing sexual selection, they’re doing asexual replication and mutation, their evolutionary rate is roughly equivalent to ours. So we’re in a red queen race where we’re both running at roughly the same speed using very different strategies.

因为它们不是进行性选择，而是进行无性复制和突变，它们的进化速度大致与我们相当。所以我们处在一场红皇后竞赛中，我们都在以大致相同的速度奔跑，只是使用了非常不同的策略。

A lot of how we’ve evolved is around pathogens. Our immune system is one of the most expensive things to run in the body, so much is about immune system optimization.

我们进化的很多方面都与病原体有关。我们的免疫系统是体内最昂贵的运作之一，因此很多事情都涉及免疫系统的优化。

Junk DNA in bacteria and CRISPR was discovered because in bacteria their DNA is evolved to fight viruses. The way it does that is by taking viral DNA and snipping it up every time there’s a viral attack and storing it in their own DNA so they have a copy so they can recognize it next time it attacks.

细菌中的垃圾DNA和CRISPR之所以被发现，是因为在细菌中，它们的DNA进化用于对抗病毒。它们的做法是每当发生病毒攻击时，便将病毒DNA剪切，并将其储存在自己的DNA中，以便下次攻击时能够识别。

Population Structure and Lifespan

种群结构与寿命

NAVAL RAVIKANT: A lot of the population structure of species determines how long their lifespans are. If in a given species there’s a very high rate of infection, then the older members of the population are carrying diseases that will then infect the young, so it’s important for that species to get rid of the old faster. So the higher the disease rate in a given population, the less long-lived the entire population, so the older ones don’t infect the younger ones.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：许多物种的种群结构决定了它们的寿命。如果某个物种的感染率非常高，那么种群中的年长成员携带的疾病会传染给年轻的成员，因此对于该物种来说，快速淘汰年长个体是很重要的。所以在一个种群中，疾病的发病率越高，整个种群的寿命就越短，这样年长者就不会感染年轻者。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh that’s a hypothesis.

克里斯·威廉姆森：哦，那是一个假设。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s an interesting hypothesis. Homeostasis within the human body, how we’re always returning to a given level of things, that’s a fundamental part of our makeup – our temperature, pH, blood pressure and so on under homeostasis.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这是一个有趣的假设。人类体内的稳态机制，我们总是回到某一特定水平，这构成了我们的基本构成——例如我们的体温、pH值、血压等，都是在稳态下进行调节的。

But if you engage in any kind of signaling, like you take a peptide for example, that’s a signaling molecule, you take a hormone externally, the body will counteract it. You take testosterone, the body will counteract it, it will down-regulate its own production very fast, and the body releases its own hormones in pulses rather than steady state.

但是，如果你进行任何形式的信号传递，比如你服用肽类物质，这是一种信号分子，或者你外部摄入激素，身体会反应并抵抗它。你摄入睾酮，身体会进行反制，它会非常快速地降低自身的生产速度，而且身体会以脉冲的方式释放自己的激素，而不是维持恒定水平。

Why Our Bodies Use Hormone Pulses

为什么我们的身体使用激素脉冲

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Why is that? Well that’s because bacteria and viruses can infect your body and trick your body, they can take it over. Toxoplasmosis does this, rabies does this, they take over macroscopic structural bodies. Small bacteria and viruses would hack our bodies and literally take them over if we didn’t have defense mechanisms, and one of those defense mechanisms is homeostasis.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：为什么会这样呢？因为细菌和病毒可以感染你的身体并欺骗你的身体，它们能够控制你的身体。弓形虫病就是这样，狂犬病也是如此，它们会接管宏观结构体。小型细菌和病毒如果没有防御机制，实际上会劫持我们的身体，身体的防御机制之一就是稳态。

Anytime you see something getting out of whack, you immediately push back really hard on it because did I just get infected? Is something trying to take me over?

每当你看到某种情况失常时，你会立即强烈反应，因为我是不是刚刚被感染了？是不是有什么东西试图控制我？

It’s also why hormones get released in pulses at night rather than in steady state low levels. Enemy bacteria can release toxins or the same signaling molecules in small quantities, but they can’t pulse, they can’t coordinate to pulse. Your body can coordinate to pulse as a macroscopic object, but microscopic objects can’t coordinate to create the same pulses.

这也是为什么激素在晚上是以脉冲方式释放，而不是保持稳定的低水平。敌对细菌可以释放毒素或相同的信号分子，但它们不能脉冲式释放，不能协调释放。你的身体可以作为一个宏观物体协调脉冲，但微观物体无法协调产生相同的脉冲。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, that’s cool.

克里斯·威廉姆森：哦，真酷。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So you know that it’s coming from you.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：所以你知道这是来自你自己的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is that why?

克里斯·威廉姆森：那就是为什么吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Correct, you know it’s endogenous rather than exogenous.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：没错，你知道它是内源性的，而不是外源性的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I never knew that.

克里斯·威廉姆森：我从来不知道这一点。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And that’s why we resist a lot of exogenous treatments, a lot of our medical treatments don’t work.

纳瓦尔·拉维坎特：这就是为什么我们抵抗许多外源性治疗，我们的许多医疗治疗并不起作用。

Bacteria and Viruses as Our Natural Predators

细菌和病毒作为我们自然的捕食者

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Anyway, there’s a bunch more I could go on, but you see this in cancers where a lot of bacteria show up. The Epstein-Barr virus shows up in a lot of cancers. Now it seems like the gut microbiome influences so many things.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：总之，我还有很多话可以说，但你可以看到这种情况出现在癌症中，很多细菌出现在癌症中。Epstein-Barr病毒在许多癌症中出现。现在似乎肠道微生物组影响着许多事情。

Basically, bacteria and viruses are at the top of the food chain compared to us. We are top of the well-known food chain, but bacteria and viruses eat us, fungus eats us. These microscopic predators are our natural predators.

基本上，细菌和病毒在食物链中比我们处于更高的位置。我们处于著名的食物链顶端，但细菌和病毒吃我们，真菌也吃我们。这些微观捕食者是我们的自然捕食者。

So a lot of aging, societal structure, hygiene, religious strictures against pork, circumcision, all of these things are designed to resist bacteria and viruses. So if you can teach children this philosophy at an early age, you shortcut all the debates.

所以，许多关于衰老、社会结构、卫生、禁止食用猪肉的宗教戒律、割礼等，都旨在抵御细菌和病毒。因此，如果你能在孩子们年幼时就教导他们这种哲学，你就可以跳过所有的辩论。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How effective have you been at teaching that philosophy to children?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：你在教导孩子们这种哲学时有多有效？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That one I think I’ve been pretty effective, I’ve drilled that one at home. The one I haven’t quite gotten around to yet is evolution. I’m starting to do little bits of that, like we came from monkeys, what does that mean? Already got them thinking about some of the deeper questions.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我觉得我在这方面做得挺有效的，我在家里一直强调这个。至于进化论，我还没完全讲到。我开始做一些小的引导，比如我们来自猴子，这意味着什么？我已经让他们开始思考一些更深层次的问题。

Philosophical Questions for Children

孩子们的哲学问题

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I did ask my young son, “can nothing exist?” I thought that was a fun question, so I like to throw a fun question.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我确实问过我小儿子，“什么都不存在可以吗？”我觉得这是一个有趣的问题，所以我喜欢抛出这样的问题。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How old is he now? Like four, three?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：他现在多大了？四岁，三岁？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: No, no, he’s eight.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：不，不，他八岁了。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：哦，明白了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: An eight-year-old and a six-year-old. I asked them both like, “can nothing exist?” And they had pretty good answers. Another one we played with the other day was like, “what is the matrix?”

NAVAL RAVIKANT：一个八岁和一个六岁的孩子。我问了他们俩，“什么都不存在可以吗？”他们都给出了相当不错的答案。前几天我们玩了另一个问题，“什么是矩阵？”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：好的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: You know, what is this? What is all this? I just find it entertaining. It’s just fun to talk about these questions with your kids.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：你知道吗，这是什么？这一切是什么？我觉得很有趣。和孩子们讨论这些问题很有意思。

I’m not saying that one is a good way of child raising. It’s not leading to any deeper learning.

我并不是说这是一种好的育儿方式。这并没有引导到更深的学习。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Other than maybe just have them start, or continue to question the basic structure of reality, and not move past it so quickly.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：除此之外，可能只是让他们开始，或者继续质疑现实的基本结构，而不是这么快就跳过去。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Also, take joy, you know, what’s the meta lesson that’s being taught there? Dad spends time asking questions to which there are not necessarily an answer, because there is something enjoyable in the process of learning and trying to decipher what’s happening.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：还有，就是享受其中，你知道吗，那里面传达的元课题是什么？爸爸花时间问那些不一定有答案的问题，因为在学习的过程中，试图解码正在发生的事情是有乐趣的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Possibly. Also, dad tries not too hard to teach people things. I don’t want to be didactic.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：也许吧。还有，爸爸尽量不太强迫自己去教别人东西。我不想变得说教式。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: He helps them to arrive at…

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：他帮助他们得出…

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, correct. Dad is here to help you solve problems when you have problems, and you constantly have problems. So if you come to dad, dad can help explain to you how he would solve the problem, but most of the time they don’t want that. Most of the time they just want me to solve the problem.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：对，没错。爸爸在你有问题时会帮你解决问题，而你们总是有问题。所以，如果你来找爸爸，爸爸可以帮你解释他是怎么解决问题的，但大多数时候他们不想要那个。大多数时候，他们只想让我解决问题。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Right, okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：对，明白了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So sometimes I just have to play dumb. It’s like, “why is my Wi-Fi not working on my computer?” I’m like, “I don’t know, did you try turning on that thing?”

NAVAL RAVIKANT：所以有时候我就得装傻。比如，“为什么我的电脑Wi-Fi不工作？”我会说，“我不知道，你试过打开那个东西了吗？”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Look, you’ve got like a rebellious sovereign child, sovereign as they may be, but sometimes they still need…

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：看，你有一个叛逆的独立孩子，尽管他们很独立，但有时候他们仍然需要…

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. Dad to step in.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的。爸爸需要介入。

Preserving Agency in Children

在孩子们中保持自主性

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So in addition to feeling loved and having high self-esteem, I think the most important trait that would be nice to not rob them of is agency. I want them to preserve their agency. They’re born naturally agentic and willful, but a lot of child raising can beat that out of them by essentially domesticating them.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：除了感受到爱和拥有高自尊外，我认为最重要的品质是不要剥夺他们的自主性。我希望他们能够保持自主性。他们天生具有主动性和意志力，但很多育儿方式通过本质上将他们驯化，可能会把这些特质抹杀掉。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：没错。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And I would rather have wild animals and wolves than have well-trained dogs, because I’m not going to be around to take care of them.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我宁愿有野生动物和狼，而不是训练有素的狗，因为我不会在身边照顾它们。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, so they’re going to have to be able to look after themselves.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的，所以他们得能够照顾自己。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly. A friend of mine, Parsa on Air Chat, he had a great saying. He said he wants his children to be quick to learn and hard to kill. That was pretty good.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：没错。我有个朋友，Parsa在Air Chat上，他有一句很棒的话。他说他希望他的孩子们既能快速学习，又难以被杀死。那句说得很不错。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的。

The Culture War

文化战争

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I remember you saying, just thinking about sort of future and culture and stuff like that, I remember you saying that the left had won the culture war, now they’re just driving around shooting the survivors. After the last six months of change that we’ve seen and sort of where we’re at at the moment, what do you think the future of the culture war looks like?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：我记得你说过，想着未来和文化之类的事情时，我记得你说过，左翼赢得了文化战争，现在他们只是到处开枪射击幸存者。经过过去六个月我们所看到的变化以及目前我们所处的位置，你认为文化战争的未来是什么样的？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: It’s not over yet. They definitely won earlier rounds, they took over institutions. I think now it’s much more of a fair fight, where you have people like Elon supporting different forces.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：还没有结束。他们肯定赢得了早期的几轮，他们接管了各大机构。我认为现在的局面更像是公平的对抗，像Elon这样的人支持不同的力量。

Through history, historians will argue about this, but there’s the “great man of history” thing, where it’s like, oh you have the Einsteins, you have the Teslas, you have the Genghis Khans and the Caesars. They determine the flow of history.

历史上，历史学家会对这个问题争论不休，但有一种“伟人历史观”，就是说，你有爱因斯坦、特斯拉、成吉思汗和凯撒这些人物。他们决定了历史的进程。

And then there’s the other point of view that no, there are these massive forces at play – demographics and geography and so on, and then the particular great man doesn’t matter, they just come and go. Napoleon doesn’t matter, there would have been somebody else, the specific names are not important.

而另外一种观点认为不，历史中有一些巨大的力量在起作用——人口、地理等等，而具体的伟人并不重要，他们来来去去。拿破仑并不重要，其他人也会出现，具体的名字并不重要。

Because of the leftist turn that our institutions took in the last few decades, they now only subscribe to the great forces theory of history, not the great man theory of history. But I think now we’re seeing the two play out, where you’re seeing Trump and Elon and other individuals rising up and saying, “no, we resist.”

由于过去几十年我们机构的左倾转变，他们现在只信奉历史中的大力量理论，而非伟人理论。但我认为现在我们看到了两者的对抗，看到特朗普、Elon以及其他个人站出来说：“不，我们反抗。”

The Battle Between Collectivism and Individualism

集体主义与个人主义的斗争

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, that’s interesting. And I think that unfortunately, the battle between these collectivist forces versus individuals is as old as humanity itself, and it is fundamental to the species. We are not a completely individualistic species—no man is an island, a single person can’t do anything by themselves—but we’re also not a borg, we’re not a beehive, we’re not an ant colony, we’re not all just drones marching along. So which is it? We’re somewhere in the middle, and the human race is always kind of bouncing between the two.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的，这很有趣。我认为不幸的是，集体主义力量与个人之间的斗争几乎和人类本身一样古老，而且它是物种的根本特征。我们不是完全个体主义的物种——没有人是孤岛，一个人不能单独做任何事情——但我们也不是集体体，我们不是蜂巢，我们不是蚂蚁群体，我们不是所有人都只是跟着走的工蜂。那么究竟是什么呢？我们在两者之间，整个人类种族总是不断在两者之间摇摆。

We like strong leaders, we like to be led, we like to coordinate our forces and do things, but at the same time we’re also all individuals willing to break away and do our own thing. Everyone’s always fighting to be a leader, there’s always status games going on, so there’s a pendulum that’s always swinging back and forth. In modern economics, the way that manifests is between sort of Marxism and capitalism.

我们喜欢强有力的领导者，我们喜欢被领导，我们喜欢协调力量并做事情，但同时我们也是个体，愿意脱离群体做自己的事情。每个人总是争夺领导地位，总是有地位斗争在进行，因此总有一根摆锤在来回摇摆。在现代经济学中，这种表现就是马克思主义与资本主义之间的斗争。

Marxism is like “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.” We’re all equal, there’s a millennial project, we’re all going to be equal in the end. Don’t try and stand out, but do what’s good for everybody. There’s a religious aspect to it.

马克思主义就像是“各尽所能，各取所需”。我们都是平等的，这是一个千年的计划，最终我们都会平等。不要试图脱颖而出，而是为大家做对的事情。这其中有一种宗教性质。

Then the capitalist individualist is like a libertarian—every man for himself. You each do what you want and it will work out for the greater good. That’s Adam Smith, the invisible hand of the market will feed you. The baker should bake and the butcher should butcher and the candlestick makers should make candlesticks, and it’ll all work out. Each person does their best and they trade.

然后，资本主义的个人主义者就像是自由主义者——每个人为自己。你们每个人做自己想做的事，它将会为更大的好处结果。这是亚当·斯密的理论，市场的无形之手会养活你。面包师该做面包，屠夫该屠宰，制烛工该做蜡烛，一切都会顺利。每个人尽最大努力，进行交换。

So which is it? Which theory is correct? I think there’s always going to be a battle between the two.

那么，究竟是哪种理论？哪种理论是对的？我认为这两者之间的斗争将永远存在。

The Modern Power of the Individual

个人的现代力量

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think the interesting thing is what’s going on now—there’s a modern flavor to it which changes it. The modern flavor is that the individual is getting more powerful because they’re becoming more leveraged. Someone like an Elon Musk can have the leverage of tens of thousands of brilliant engineers and producers working for him. He can have factories of robots manufacturing things, he can have hundreds of billions of dollars of capital behind him, and he can project himself through media to hundreds of millions of people.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我认为有趣的是现在正在发生的事情——它有一种现代的特点，使其有所不同。现代的特点是个人变得越来越强大，因为他们的杠杆作用变得更大。像Elon Musk这样的人可以利用成千上万的才华横溢的工程师和生产者为他工作。他可以拥有制造物品的机器人工厂，他可以有数千亿的资本支持他，还可以通过媒体向数亿人展示自己。

That is more power than any individual could have had historically, so the great men of history are becoming greater. That said, that same leverage is increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots. In the wealth game, more people are winning overall and the average is going up, but in the status game, there are essentially more losers—there are more invisible men and women who are getting nothing out of life and have no leverage, relatively speaking.

这比历史上任何个人曾经拥有的权力都要大，因此历史上的伟人变得更加伟大。话虽如此，同样的杠杆作用却加大了富人与穷人之间的差距。在财富游戏中，更多的人总体上是赢家，平均水平在上升，但在地位游戏中，本质上是更多的失败者——有更多看不见的男女，他们一无所获，且相对没有任何杠杆作用。

Objectively speaking, they might be better off—they still have phones and they still have TVs. It’s not that we’re absolute creatures. We’re relative creatures.

客观地说，他们可能更好——他们仍然有手机，仍然有电视。并不是我们是绝对的生物，而是我们是相对的生物。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Correct.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：没错。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And so to the extent that we’re relative creatures, there are more losers than winners, and in a democracy, those people will outnumber the winners and they will vote the winners down.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：因此，鉴于我们是相对的生物，失败者比赢家更多，在民主制度下，这些人会超过赢家的数量，并会把赢家投下台。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yep.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的。

Power and Democracy

权力与民主

NAVAL RAVIKANT: And so that’s the battle that kind of goes on. The democracy has gotten very broad, and so one of my other quips is that it’s not the right to vote that gives you power, it’s power that gives you the right to vote. We’ve confused the two.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：这就是持续进行的斗争。民主变得非常广泛，因此我另一个说法是，赋予你权力的不是投票权，而是权力赋予你投票的权利。我们把两者弄混了。

What happened was, voting started as a way for people who had power to divide up the power and not fight amongst themselves. The winners of the revolution, the winners of the war, the people in the House of Lords and the House of Commons—they divide up power amongst themselves and say, “Hey, we have all the money, we have the power, we are the knights, we have the swords, we have the warriors, we could kill everybody, but we don’t want to just fight each other all day long. We don’t have to be Game of Thrones forever, so we’re going to divide up power by voting amongst ourselves.”

发生的事情是，投票最初是作为有权力的人将权力分配并避免相互争斗的方式。革命的胜利者、战争的胜利者、上议院和下议院的人——他们将权力在自己之间分配，并说：“嘿，我们拥有所有的钱，拥有权力，我们是骑士，我们有剑，我们有战士，我们可以杀掉所有人，但我们不想整天相互争斗。我们不必永远像《权力的游戏》那样，所以我们将通过投票在自己之间分配权力。”

But then as society goes on and becomes more and more peaceful, that franchise for voting gets spread. It gets spread to people who don’t have land, who don’t have power, who may not be able to inflict physical violence. Eventually you get to the point where everybody’s voting. Everybody’s voting for candy and fairies and all the free things in life. Then eventually people start voting to oppress each other—the fifty-one percent in any domain vote to suppress the forty-nine. Tyranny of the majority.

但随着社会的发展和越来越和平，投票的权利得到了普及。它传播到那些没有土地、没有权力、可能无法实施暴力的人身上。最终，你会看到每个人都在投票。每个人都在投票选择糖果、仙女和所有免费的东西。然后，最终人们开始投票压迫彼此——在任何领域，五十一个人投票压制四十九个人。多数人的暴政。

But not all of them are willing to back that up with physical power, and so you can end up in a situation where people who don’t have physical power are using the institutions of the state to control the people who do have physical power.

但并不是所有人都愿意用实际的力量来支持这一点，因此你可能会陷入一种局面，即没有实质力量的人正在利用国家的机构来控制那些有实质力量的人。

As a simple example, taking the United States—people who don’t have guns voting to disarm the people that do have guns. Well, if the people who do have guns get coordinated and care enough, you can’t do that.

举个简单的例子，以美国为例——没有枪的人投票要求解除那些有枪的人的武装。好吧，如果有枪的人能够协调一致并且足够关心，你就不能这么做。

The Foundation of Power

权力的基础

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think eventually these societal structures are unstable. They break down because eventually the people who have the power say, “No, wait a minute, you don’t get to vote. You only got to vote because you had power, and now you don’t have power and you’re somehow trying to vote.”

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我认为这些社会结构最终是不稳定的。它们会崩溃，因为最终拥有权力的人会说，“等一下，你不能投票。你之所以能够投票，是因为你曾经有权力，而现在你没有权力，结果你却想投票。”

All of nature, all of society, all of capitalism, all of human endeavors are underpinned by physical violence, and that is a very hard truth to swallow and hard to get away from.

大自然、社会、资本主义以及人类的所有努力都以物理暴力为基础，这是一个非常难以接受的事实，而且很难摆脱。

Nature is red in tooth and claw. If you don’t fight, you don’t survive, you don’t live—you die. That’s true of everything alive today, and humans are no different. So giving up physical power and then thinking you can exercise political power fails, which is why every communist revolution, which is all about equality and kumbaya and brothers and sisters, ends up being run by a bunch of thugs. Because if you don’t have a way to divide up the wealth based on merit, then it’s always going to be based on power and influence. The thugs with the guns always win in the end.

大自然是血腥的。如果你不战斗，你就无法生存，你就无法活下去——你会死。这对于今天所有活着的生物都适用，人类也不例外。因此，放弃物理权力而认为你能行使政治权力是行不通的，这也是为什么每一次关于平等和和谐、兄弟姐妹的共产主义革命最终都会被一群暴徒所主导。因为如果你没有办法根据才能来分配财富，那么它就永远会基于权力和影响力来分配。手握枪支的暴徒最终总会赢。

So the question is just, can you keep the thugs with the guns paid and happy in a successful society where you’re allocating based on merit? Because if you can’t, then you do it based on power. I do think that this battle is not over, but that’s because it never stopped. It’s always been there from day one, it will continue.

所以问题就是，你能在一个根据才能分配资源的成功社会中，保持那些有枪的暴徒得到报酬并感到满意吗？因为如果你做不到，那么你就只能根据权力来分配。我确实认为这场斗争还没有结束，但那是因为它从未停止过。从一开始它就一直存在，它将会继续下去。

Navigating News Saturation

应对新闻饱和

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is it a battle to not care about the news in an age of news saturation? All of this stuff—headlines twenty-four hours a day stream directly into your consciousness through a device in your pocket. A lot of what we’ve spoken about today is freedom—freedom from having to think about things or care about things that you do not have control over or that you shouldn’t or that you don’t want to. Yet people are just submerged up to the bottom of their nostrils, basically drowning in worry. So is it a battle to sort of stay out of the news when you’re saturated in it?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：在这个新闻饱和的时代，不去在意新闻是不是一场斗争？所有这些东西——每天二十四小时的头条新闻通过你口袋里的设备直接进入你的意识。今天我们谈到的很多内容都是关于自由——自由地不必去思考或者在乎那些你无法控制、不该在乎或不想在乎的事情。然而人们几乎都沉浸其中，基本上在忧虑中快要溺水。那么，在你被新闻信息饱和的情况下，远离新闻是不是一种斗争？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, I mean, as you’re saying, the human brain has not evolved to handle all the world’s emergencies breaking in real time, and you can’t care about everything, and you’ll go insane if you try. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care at all—there’s no “should.” If you want to care, go ahead and care.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的，正如你所说，人类的大脑并没有进化到能够处理所有世界紧急事件的实时爆发，你不可能关心所有的事情，如果你尝试这样做，你会疯掉。这并不意味着你完全不该关心——没有“应该”。如果你想关心，就去关心吧。

I would just say that you’re probably better off only caring about things that are local, or things that you can affect. If you really care about something that’s in the news, then by all means care about it, but make a difference—go do something about it. Make sure that it’s your overwhelming desire and you don’t have five other desires at the same time.

我只是想说，你最好只关心那些地方性的，或者是你能影响到的事情。如果你真的关心新闻中的某件事，那就去关心它，但要有所行动——去做点什么。确保这是你压倒性的欲望，而不是同时有五个其他的欲望。

Also, realize the consequences of it—you’re going to be unhappy until that thing gets fixed, and that thing will often be out of your control.

另外，要意识到它的后果——你会在那件事没有解决之前感到不开心，而那件事通常是超出你控制范围的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yep, desire is a contract to be unhappy until you get what you want.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的，欲望是一份合同，直到你得到想要的东西之前，你都将不快乐。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Exactly. For the most part, that’s something that is in your life, it’s like, “until I lose the weight,” “until I get the job.” It can be outside too.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：正是如此。大多数情况下，这就是你生活中的某件事，就像是，“直到我减掉体重”，“直到我得到这份工作。”它也可以是外部的。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: If it’s “until the carbon dioxide parts per million are below this particular number,” that’s a tough one. Or all the people with Trump derangement syndrome—he’s living rent-free in their heads and driving them insane. I get it. There are politicians who have definitely driven me insane as well, but it comes at a very high cost, and it’s something that is out of your control that you cannot really influence, so it’s probably good to at least be conscious of it.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：如果是“直到二氧化碳浓度降到某个特定值以下”，那就很棘手。或者所有患有特朗普狂躁症的人——他住在他们的脑袋里，免费占据了他们的心思，逼得他们疯狂。我理解。有些政治人物也确实让我发疯，但那是以非常高的代价为代价的，而且那是你无法控制的事情，你不能真正影响它，因此，至少要意识到这一点，可能会比较好。

What Will Historians Study?

历史学家将研究什么？

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You mentioned historians before. One of my friends has a question. His equivalent of Peter Thiel’s question of “what is it that you believe that most people would disagree with?” His is, “what do you think is currently ignored by the media but will be studied by historians?”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：你之前提到了历史学家。我有个朋友有一个问题。他的问题是彼得·蒂尔那句“你认为什么是大多数人不同意的”问题的变种。他的问题是，“你认为现在被媒体忽视的，但将来会被历史学家研究的是什么？”

NAVAL RAVIKANT: You’re asking me that question right now? What do I think is ignored by the media but will be studied by historians? Well, the media is only focused on very timely things, right, so it depends if you want to talk about timely or timeless.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：你现在问我这个问题吗？我认为哪些被媒体忽视的，但将来会被历史学家研究的？嗯，媒体只关注非常及时的事情，对吧，所以这取决于你是想谈及时的还是永恒的。

As a simple example, if I just look at things that maybe in the next five or ten years are going to make a massive difference that people are not focused enough on—and I think within two years this will be obvious, so I’m not making a prediction. Predictions are tough.

举个简单的例子，如果我看看那些可能在未来五到十年内会产生巨大变化的事情，而人们还没有足够关注——我认为在两年内这将变得显而易见，所以我并不是在做预测。预测很难。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And you’re going to have to eat it in a few years.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：而你在几年后得为此买单。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, I’m going to eat this in a few years, so I’m probably wrong, but two things that I pay attention to that I don’t think a lot of people do pay attention to:

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的，我在几年后会为此付出代价，所以我可能错了，但有两件我关注的事情，我认为很多人并没有关注：

The State of Modern Medicine

现代医学的现状

NAVAL RAVIKANT: One is I think just how bad modern medicine is. I think people just put a lot more faith in modern medicine than is warranted. Like our best ideas for a lot of things are surgery, just cutting things out, treating things that are “extraneous”—like “oh you don’t really need a gallbladder, don’t really need an appendix, you don’t really need tonsils, all that’s surplus requirement.” That’s false. The human body is very efficient, all those things are needed.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：一方面，我认为现代医学的状况很糟糕。我认为人们对现代医学的信任远超过实际所需。像我们对于许多问题的最佳解决方案就是手术，切除一些东西，治疗那些“多余”的东西——比如“哦，你其实不需要胆囊，不需要阑尾，不需要扁桃体，这些都是多余的要求。”这是错误的。人类的身体非常高效，所有这些东西都是需要的。

I think the state of modern medicine is pretty bad. We don’t have many good explanatory theories in biology. We have germ theory of disease, we have evolution, we have cell theory, we have DNA genetics, morphogenesis, embryogenesis, and not much else. Everything else is rules of thumb, memorization—A affects B because it affects C and D, but we don’t understand the underlying explanation. It’s all just words pointing to words pointing to words.

我认为现代医学的现状相当糟糕。我们在生物学上没有很多好的解释性理论。我们有病菌理论、进化论、细胞理论、DNA遗传学、形态发生学、胚胎发生学，其他的几乎没有。其他的只是经验法则，死记硬背——A影响B，因为它影响C和D，但我们并不理解背后的解释。所有的一切都只是词语指向词语，词语指向词语。

Biology is still in a very sorry state, and because we are not allowed to take risks that might kill people, we just don’t experiment enough in biology. A lot of treatments are just outright banned by large regulatory bodies, so we just don’t have the innovation.

生物学仍处于非常糟糕的状态，因为我们不允许采取可能致命的风险，所以我们在生物学方面的实验太少了。许多治疗方法被大型监管机构直接禁止，因此我们缺乏创新。

I think we’re still in the stone age when it comes to biology and we’ve got a long way to go, and I think people will look back aghast at this. I think this is Brian Johnson’s point—he’s like, “Let’s be extreme, let’s try to live forever. Let’s be more experimental, and I’ll start as N of one and start experimenting on myself.”

我认为在生物学方面，我们仍然处于石器时代，还有很长的路要走，我认为人们将会惊讶地回望这一点。我认为这正是Brian Johnson的观点——他说，“让我们极端一些，尝试永生。让我们更加实验，我会从我自己开始，进行自我实验。”

Even there I disagree with Brian on many things, like taking huge amounts of supplements. I think we just don’t know supplements outside of the natural context—like just eat liver, man. But that’s fine, and I wouldn’t be vegan either, but I really appreciate that he’s experimenting, he’s good-natured about it, he shares everything. We need more people like that.

即使在这方面，我也在许多问题上与Brian有不同的看法，比如服用大量补充品。我认为我们根本不了解在自然环境之外的补充品——像直接吃肝脏一样，伙计。但没关系，我也不会是素食主义者，但我非常欣赏他在实验，他心地善良，分享一切。我们需要更多像他这样的人。

So I think the state of biology—people will look back and say, “Wow, that was the dark ages.”

所以我认为生物学的现状——人们将回望并说：“哇，那是黑暗时代。”

The Future of Warfare

战争的未来

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think another thing that we’ll look back on is that we still continue to underestimate how important drones are going to be in warfare. The future of all warfare is drones. There will be nothing else on the battlefield, because I think of the end state of drones as autonomous bullets. Not even autonomous—they’re self-directed.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我认为我们将来回顾时，会发现我们仍然低估了无人机在战争中的重要性。未来所有的战争都将是无人机的战争。战场上将不会有其他任何东西，因为我认为无人机的最终状态是自主子弹。甚至不是自主的——它们是自我指引的。

If that’s the future we’re headed towards, that’s just like—why would you have an armed force? There’s going to be no aircraft carriers, there’s going to be no tanks, there’s going to be no infantrymen, there’s just going to be autonomous bullets against your autonomous bullets. Whichever ones win, the other side just surrenders because it’s over. I think that’s the second piece of it.

如果这是我们正在走向的未来，那就像是——为什么还需要武装力量呢？将没有航空母舰，没有坦克，没有步兵，只有自主子弹对抗你的自主子弹。谁赢了，另一方就投降，因为一切都结束了。我认为这就是其中的第二个方面。

The Rise of GLP-1 Medications

GLP-1药物的崛起

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think a third piece that is going to be kind of unexpected is the GLP-1s, which I know you and I have privately discussed before. I think these are the most breakthrough drugs since antibiotics, they’re probably more important than statins, they’re sort of miracle drugs. The downsides and side effects are so minor compared to the upsides beyond just weight loss.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我认为第三个可能有些出乎意料的因素是GLP-1药物，我知道你我之前私下讨论过这个问题。我认为这些药物是自抗生素以来最具突破性的药物，它们可能比他汀类药物更重要，算是一种奇迹药物。与减肥以外的好处相比，副作用和不良反应都非常轻微。

They also seem to be addiction breakers, they seem to lower many kinds of cancer, they almost metabolically reverse aging up to a certain point, and I think they’re going to bend the curve on healthcare costs.

它们似乎还能够打破成瘾，似乎能降低多种癌症的发生，它们几乎在一定程度上逆转了衰老的代谢过程，我认为它们将改变医疗成本的曲线。

The big question people are going to be asking over the next five years is why are Americans paying thousands of dollars a month for this when people overseas are getting them for free, or can order them from China for free.

在接下来的五年里，人们会问的一个大问题是，为什么美国人要为这些药物每月支付数千美元，而海外的人可以免费获得它们，或者可以从中国免费订购它们。

If I were Bernie Sanders, the platform I would be running on is I would say, okay, we’re going to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to Novo and Eli Lilly, and we’re just going to make these free. There are hundreds of analogs of these things that work, these are not going to be limited to just the few that are being used today. Take one of them or two of them and make them free, and I think it’ll make a big difference.

如果我是伯尼·桑德斯，我竞选的平台会是：好吧，我们将支付数百亿美元给诺和诺德和礼来公司，然后让这些药物免费提供。这些药物有数百种有效的类似品，这些药物不会仅限于今天使用的少数几种。选其中一两种，让它们免费，我认为这会带来很大的改变。

As you and I were discussing earlier, this does bend a lot of people out of shape who got there the old fashioned way, and they want to see obesity as a moral failing on people’s parts. It lowers their status if the signal is less of a signal.

正如你我之前讨论的那样，这让很多通过传统方式取得成功的人不舒服，他们希望把肥胖视为人们道德上的失败。如果信号的意义减弱，它们的地位就会下降。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, so they’re incentivized to say, “Oh, well you don’t know the downsides, it’s irresponsible to suggest it’s going to cause cancer, have fun losing bone and muscle mass,” but none of that stuff is really true.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的，所以他们有动力去说，“哦，你不了解副作用，建议它会引起癌症是不负责任的，享受失去骨骼和肌肉质量的乐趣吧，”但这些根本不是真的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: The cancer stuff is actually beneficial. I know people who are taking these things for anti-aging reasons – they’re already fit but they just want to age better and have a stronger insulin metabolism.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：关于癌症的说法实际上是有益的。我知道一些人因为抗衰老的原因正在服用这些药物——他们已经很健康了，但他们只是想衰老得更好，拥有更强的胰岛素代谢。

There’s evidence now these things put off dementia, Alzheimer’s, colon cancer, cardiovascular disease – it’s insane. The list of benefits is insane.

现在有证据表明，这些药物能够延缓痴呆症、阿尔茨海默症、结肠癌、心血管疾病——这简直不可思议。它们的好处清单简直令人震惊。

There’s no free lunch, but this is a class of drugs that prevents you from taking other drugs into your body. It prevents you from taking too much sugar, many calories in an era of abundance, prevents you from smoking. There’s an organization called Casper that is now doing a study on heroin addictions and they’re showing that this can lower opioid overdoses and heroin addiction.

没有免费的午餐，但这是一类能防止你将其他药物摄入体内的药物。它能防止你摄入过多糖分、过多热量，在这个丰盈的时代，它能防止你吸烟。有一个叫做Casper的机构现在正在进行海洛因成瘾的研究，他们表明这可以减少阿片类药物过量和海洛因成瘾。

There’s a lot of overwhelming medical evidence coming out, and I think something like ten percent of the population might have tried these.

有大量压倒性的医学证据正在涌现，我认为大约10%的人口可能已经尝试过这些药物。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, that’s the number that I’ve seen. Massive.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的，这是我看到的数字。巨大的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I think about fifty percent of the population say that they would like to try it. I think the body positivity movement is dead, and we always kind of knew it was a scam. I mean it’s dying very, very quickly.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我认为大约50%的人口表示他们愿意尝试。我认为身体积极性运动已经死了，我们一直知道它是一个骗局。我的意思是，它正在非常非常快地消亡。

I quipped like “you can never be too rich, too thin, or too clean,” and immediately a whole bunch of people went nonlinear in my mentions. “Do you mean too thin, and what about the hygiene hypothesis?” Obviously there’s always exceptions, but people want to be thin and fit, and people want to be clean, back to the pathogen discussion that we had.

我曾开玩笑说：“你永远不会太富有、太瘦，或太干净，”然后立刻有一大群人开始在我的评论中反应激烈。“你是说太瘦吗，卫生假说又怎么说？”显然总是有例外，但人们想要变瘦和健康，人们想要保持清洁，回到我们之前讨论的病原体话题。

I think overall that there’s going to be huge demand for these things, and our modern medical system is not built to supply these well. I don’t hold it against the pharma companies, I think they did their job by creating the thing, but I think next we need to step up and figure out how to make it broadly and cheaply available, as opposed to just milking it only for people with obesity who can get Medicare to sign off for it, or people paying out of pocket at very very high prices.

我认为总体上这些药物将会有巨大的需求，而我们现代的医疗系统并没有为此做好充分准备。我不怪制药公司，我认为他们通过创造这些药物完成了他们的工作，但我认为接下来我们需要采取行动，弄清楚如何让这些药物广泛且低成本地提供，而不是仅仅为了那些能够通过医疗保险获得批准的肥胖患者，或者那些支付高昂费用的患者来榨取利润。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The benefits of societal distribution of the safer GLP-1s is so large that whichever politicians tackle that is going to be richly rewarded.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：GLP-1药物的社会性分发带来的好处如此之大，任何处理这一问题的政治家都将获得丰厚的回报。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well, obesity is the number one source of malnutrition worldwide. There’s twice as many people that are obese than are starving, so about half a billion people are starving and a billion people are obese.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：肥胖是全球营养不良的最大来源。肥胖人数是饥饿人数的两倍，大约有五亿人正处于饥饿状态，而十亿人则患有肥胖症。

So many problems are downstream of that. Look at how much of the federal budget goes into dialysis because of kidney failure, and why is that? It’s because of diabetes. So many of the problems that we have in modern society are downstream of obesity.

因此，许多问题都是由此引发的。看看有多少联邦预算用于因肾衰竭而进行的透析，这又是为什么？因为糖尿病。现代社会中许多问题都是肥胖带来的后果。

You know this – fitness is so important. Yes, in some people these things cause muscle and bone loss, but not in the people who are eating high protein and working out hard, so they can be taken in a way that’s safer.

你知道，健康非常重要。是的，在一些人中，这些药物会导致肌肉和骨骼流失，但对于那些摄入高蛋白并且努力锻炼的人来说并不会这样，因此它们可以以更安全的方式服用。

Some versions of these like liraglutide, the original one, they’ve been around for decades and the others have been around for about a decade. We already have, as you said, ten percent of the population taking them, so they’re already quite widely distributed.

这些药物的一些版本，如利拉鲁肽（最初的版本），已经存在了几十年，其他版本大约也有十年历史。正如你所说，我们已经有10%的人口在使用它们，因此它们已经被广泛分发。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: A good sample size.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：样本量很大。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah, it’s a great sample size, what more do you need? If you have a bacterial infection that’s eating you, I don’t say “oh I have this antibiotic but it’s going to raise your blood pressure,” it’s like no, take the antibiotic.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的，样本量很大，还需要什么呢？如果你有细菌感染正在摧残你，我不会说“哦，我有这种抗生素，但它会升高你的血压”，而是说不，吃抗生素。

If you’re going to kill yourself, I say take this antipsychotic and stay alive a little longer and solve it. I don’t say “oh it’s going to cause your heart rate to go up by three beats a minute.”

如果你要自杀，我会说，服用这种抗精神病药物，活得久一点，解决问题。我不会说“哦，它会使你的心率每分钟增加三次。”

Similarly, if you’re poisoning yourself with toxins and overuse of substances that you shouldn’t be using – either heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, sugar or just sheer calories – take this GLP-1. They also improve digestion, you just have less food matter going through your stomach. Lower cancer risks across the board, there’s quite a few cancers that they lower. Cardiovascular benefits too.

类似地，如果你正在用毒素和滥用不该使用的物质——无论是海洛因、酒精、香烟、糖分，还是纯粹的热量——服用这种GLP-1药物。它们还能改善消化，你的胃里进入的食物残渣会更少。它们可以全面降低癌症风险，能降低很多癌症的风险。心血管健康的好处也不少。

I’ve been very surprised by the negative reception whenever you have a conversation about GLP-1s.

我对每次谈论GLP-1药物时的负面反应感到非常惊讶。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Indeed.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：确实。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Well think about how many sacred cows are being gored, right? All the people who are basically saying “you should work harder, you should be fit like I did.” It’s lowering their status.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：想想看，有多少“神圣的牛”被刺破了，对吧？所有那些基本上说“你应该更加努力，你应该像我一样保持健康”的人。它们正在降低他们的地位。

Think about all the nutritionists and doctors and trainers who are now being put out of business in a way. It’s like why does the American military keep buying aircraft carriers in the age of drones? There’s an incentive bias, there’s very strong motivated reasoning, but it doesn’t matter. Ten percent of people are on it, everybody wants to be fit, it’s going to spread like wildfire.

想想所有那些现在正在失业的营养师、医生和教练。就像为什么美国军方在无人机时代还继续购买航空母舰？这其中有激励偏差，也有非常强烈的动机推理，但这无关紧要。10%的人口正在使用这种药物，每个人都想保持健康，它会像野火一样蔓延。

Getting Past Your Past

超越过去

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I was just thinking as you were talking that when we think about health, a lot of people kind of get captured by the way that they were brought up, the habits that they had from their childhood, or what mom and dad did, or genetic predisposition. I think you have as many reasons as many people to sort of feel hard done by challenges that you had earlier on in your life. Is getting past your past a skill, of not being owned today by your history, sort of not having that victimhood mentality?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：我刚刚在听你说话时想到，当我们谈论健康时，很多人会受到他们成长方式的影响，他们从小时候养成的习惯，或是父母做过的事情，或是遗传的倾向。我认为你和许多人一样，有足够多的理由感到过去的挑战给你带来了困扰。超越过去是一个技巧吗？不被今天的历史所束缚，不拥有那种受害者心态？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yeah. I did have a tough childhood, but I don’t think about it. I think there are a couple of things going on there. One is I did process it quite a bit, I thought about it, but I thought about it to get rid of it. I didn’t think about it to dwell on it, or to create an identity around it.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的。我确实有一个艰难的童年，但我并不去想它。我觉得这里有几点。首先，我确实处理过很多次，我想过它，但我想的是如何摆脱它。我不是为了沉溺于其中，或围绕它创造一个身份而去思考它。

I wanted to be successful. I wanted more than anything else to rise past that, and so I couldn’t have that as a burden on me, so I had to get rid of it. So to the extent that I dealt with it, it was for the express purpose of getting rid of it, not to create an identity or story or to reflect upon it or to say “look at me, at what I’ve accomplished and look how great I am.”

我想要成功。我比什么都更想超越那些，所以我不能让它成为我身上的负担，我必须摆脱它。所以在我处理它的过程中，目的是为了摆脱它，而不是创造一个身份、故事，或者去反思它，或说“看看我，我成就了什么，看看我多么伟大。”

I think at some point you wrestle with that thing and then you just realize you’re never going to untangle the whole thing. It’s a Gordian knot problem. Alexander found a tangled knot in India and it said, “the famous conqueror will come and will untie this knot, nobody else can untie the knot.” He took one look at it, pulled out his sword and just cut it.

我认为有一天你会与那件事做斗争，然后你会意识到你永远无法解开整个问题。这是一个戈尔迪乌斯的结问题。亚历山大在印度发现了一个纠结的结，上面写着：“著名的征服者将来到这里解开这个结，其他人无法解开这个结。”他看了一眼，拔出剑，一刀斩断。

At some point, you just have to cut your past. If your past is bothering you, you will eventually get tired of trying to untangle that knot and you will just drop it because you will realize life is short. The more you have, the more you want to accomplish in this life, actually the less time you have to unravel that thing.

在某个时刻，你就必须斩断过去。如果你的过去困扰着你，你最终会厌倦试图解开那个结，你会放下它，因为你会意识到生命是短暂的。你拥有的越多，你想在这一生中实现的目标越多，实际上你用来解开那个结的时间越少。

I just wanted to actually get things done, so I had no time to deal with it, so I just cut it. It’s like a really bad relationship, but in this case, it’s a bad relationship with your own history, so you just drop it.

我只是想真正做成一些事，所以我没有时间去处理它，于是我就割舍了它。这就像一段非常糟糕的关系，但在这种情况下，这是与自己过去的一段糟糕关系，所以你就放下它。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think so much of what we’ve spoken about today is on the shortness of life, and the fact that every moment is precious. You had to take about, the most fundamental resource in your life is not time, it’s attention.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：我认为今天我们谈论的很多内容都是关于生命的短暂，以及每一刻的珍贵。你曾提到，生活中最根本的资源不是时间，而是注意力。

Attention: The Currency of Life

注意力：生命的货币

NAVAL RAVIKANT: That’s right. I used to think the currency of life is money, and yes money is important, and it does let you trade certain things for time, but it doesn’t really buy you time. Ask Warren Buffett how much time money can buy you, or Michael Bloomberg. They’re rich as Croesus, but they can’t buy more time, right, Brian Johnson notwithstanding.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：没错。我过去认为生命的货币是金钱，的确，金钱很重要，它确实能让你用来换取某些东西，比如时间，但它并不能真正帮你“购买”时间。去问问沃伦·巴菲特，问问迈克尔·布隆伯格，钱能为你买到多少时间？他们富可敌国，但也无法多买一分钟，对吧，即使是布莱恩·约翰逊也不例外。

So you can’t trade money for time. Money is not the real currency of life, and time itself doesn’t even mean that much because as we talked about before, a lot of time can be wasted because you’re not really present for it, you’re not paying attention.

所以你无法用金钱换时间。金钱不是生命真正的货币，甚至时间本身也没那么有意义，因为正如我们之前讨论过的，大量时间可能会被浪费掉，因为你并未真正活在其中，你没有真正投入注意力。

So the real currency of life is attention, it’s what you choose to pay attention to and what you do about it. Back to the point about the news media, you can put your attention on the news, but that’s how you’re spending the real currency of life, so just be aware of that.

所以生命真正的货币是注意力，是你选择把注意力放在哪里，并据此采取什么行动。回到我们刚才关于新闻媒体的话题，你可以把注意力放在新闻上，但那就是你在“花费”生命真正的货币，所以要有意识地看清这一点。

If you want to, that’s fine, there’s no right or wrong here. Maybe it is your destiny to pick something in the news, learn about that problem, adopt that problem and solve it, but just be careful because your attention is the only thing that you have.

如果你愿意，那也没问题，这里没有对错之分。也许你的命运就是从新闻中选出一个议题，深入了解，接纳这个问题并解决它，但要小心，因为注意力是你唯一真正拥有的资源。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And that can also be captured by your own past?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：而你的注意力也可能被你的过去所占据？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Yes, you can fritter it away on anything you’d like.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：是的，你可以把它浪费在任何你想浪费的东西上。

The Advantage of Starting as a “Loser”

作为“失败者”起步的优势

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is there an advantage to starting out as a loser?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：作为一个失败者起步有优势吗？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Absolutely, yeah. Because if you’re a loser, then you’ll want to be a winner, and then you’ll develop all the characteristics that’ll help you be a, quote unquote, “winner” in life.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：当然有。因为如果你是个失败者，那么你就会渴望成为赢家，然后你就会培养出一切能帮助你成为人生“赢家”的特质。

That said, I wouldn’t sentence my kids to it. I don’t think you can artificially do that. It’s sort of like imagine that you were three hundred years ago, born a serf, and then somehow you managed to escape off the farm and you become a landowner and then eventually you become minor nobility and aristocrat. Are you going to put your kids back on the farm and say “you’re going be a serf again”?

但话说回来，我不会故意让我的孩子经历这一切。我认为这无法人为制造。这就像你想象一下，三百年前你出生为农奴，然后你设法逃离农庄，成了土地所有者，最终变成了小贵族甚至是贵族。你会把你的孩子重新送回农庄对他说：“你得重新当一回农奴”吗？

I know they all like those stories. The kids themselves like those stories because it says, “I came from the school of hard knocks, my dad made me go shovel hay for a summer,” but it’s not real. You’re not going to trick them.

我知道大家都喜欢这样的故事。孩子们自己也喜欢这些故事，因为这听起来像是：“我是从苦难中走出来的，我爸让我整个夏天去铲干草”，但这不是真实的。你是骗不了他们的。

I think what you can do is cultivate an appreciation and gratitude for what you have, and the only way to do that is just evidence it yourself. Just show yourself how you spend money, how you respect it, what you do with it, how you take care of people, who you’re responsible for.

我认为你能做的，是培养对现有生活的珍惜与感恩，而做到这一点的唯一方式，就是以身作则。展示你是如何花钱的，你如何尊重金钱，你用它做了什么，你是如何照顾他人的，你对谁负有责任。

The more resources you have, the greater the tribe you can take care of, the more of the tribe you can take care of. When you have no resources, you’re struggling to take care of yourself, and at that point it’s good to be selfish because you can’t save somebody else if you can’t even save yourself.

你拥有的资源越多，你能照顾的群体就越大，能保护的人就越多。而当你一无所有时，你甚至连自己都照顾不好，那时自私其实是对的，因为连自己都救不了的人，也无法去拯救别人。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是的。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So you take care of yourself and you become the best version of yourself, but there are too many men who are able, fit, and have some money who are doing nothing with their lives, just sitting at home doing nothing, just indulging in themselves, maybe they go on dates and they get DoorDash. I have no respect for that.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：你先照顾好自己，成为最好的自己，但如今有太多身体健康、有能力、有些钱的男人，却对生活毫无作为，只是宅在家里虚度时光，沉溺于自我，可能偶尔约个会、点个外卖。我对这种人毫无尊重。

I think there’s nothing worse in society than a lazy man because he’s leaving his potential on the table. It’s bad for him.

我认为社会中最糟糕的事情之一就是一个懒惰的男人，因为他把自己的潜力白白浪费了。这对他本人也是有害的。

So the next thing you do is you go and you have a family and you take care of your family. Then you take care of your extended family – your cousins, brothers, uncles, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, everybody that you can.

接下来你要做的，就是成家立业，照顾你的家庭。然后扩展到更大的家庭——堂表兄弟、兄妹、叔叔、奶奶、阿姨、姐妹，所有你能照顾的人。

And then if you have more resources beyond that, then you go take care of your local tribe, you take care of your people, you start trying to do some good for the world. If you have more resources than that, you go take care of an even bigger tribe, and that’s how you earn both respect and self-confidence and you live up to your potential.

如果你还有更多资源，那么你就去照顾你所在的社区，照顾你的人群，开始为这个世界做点好事。如果资源更多，那就去照顾更大范围的人群，这样你才能获得真正的尊重和自信，活出你的潜力。

The Value of Giving Back

回馈社会的价值

NAVAL RAVIKANT: So the more you have, the more is rightfully expected of you, and I think it’s a good compact with society when highly capable people express and flex that capability by giving more and more and by doing more and more. Society rewards them with the one thing they can’t get otherwise which is status, right? Society should give you status in exchange for it. They should say, “Okay you did a good job, you took care of more people than just yourself and just the people immediately around you.”

NAVAL RAVIKANT：所以你拥有得越多，人们对你也应当有更多期望。我认为这是你与社会之间的一种良性契约：当那些非常有能力的人通过付出更多、行动更多来展示和施展他们的能力时，社会会给予他们唯一无法通过其他方式得到的东西，那就是地位，对吧？社会应该以地位作为回报。他们应该说：“好，你做得很好，你照顾了的不只是自己，也不只是身边的亲近之人。”

That’s what an alpha male to me is. An alpha male is not the one who gets to eat first, the alpha male eats last. The alpha male feeds everybody else first and then gets to eat last, and they do that out of their own self respect and pride, and society rewards them by calling them an alpha and giving them status.

在我看来，这才是真正的“领导者”。一个 alpha 男性并不是那个最先吃饭的人，而是最后一个吃饭的人。他先喂饱其他所有人，自己才吃，这是出于他的自尊与骄傲。社会以称他为“alpha”，赋予他地位作为回报。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder whether some of the pushback that we’ve got against rich, wealthy, powerful people is disincentivizing. It is, like, who is it, Zuck who donated money in Zuckerberg General’s Hospital and then they wanted to pull his name off of it. I mean, that’s like—

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：我在想，对富人、有权有势之人的一些抵制是否在起反激作用。比如，扎克伯格捐款成立了“扎克伯格综合医院”，结果他们却想把他的名字拿掉。这就像是——

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I didn’t see that, but that’s really—

NAVAL RAVIKANT：我没看到那事，但那真的很——

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, that kind of stuff backfires, right?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：是啊，那种事会产生反作用，对吧？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: You should reward people for doing—

NAVAL RAVIKANT：你应该为他们所做的给予奖励——

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, you were saying before, you don’t just need to, in fact, actually actively avoid castigating people if you want their behavior to change when they get something wrong, but reinforcing it when they get something right, it’s happening at a societal level as well.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：你之前说过，如果你希望人们在犯错时改变行为，不仅不能一味指责他们，反而应该主动避免责骂；而当他们做对了，你要强化这种行为。在社会层面上同样如此。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Correct, I mean like the guys who make a lot of money and go out and buy sports teams, I wouldn’t do that, right? But the one who goes out and builds a hospital, or builds a rocket to take people to the moon, you know, rescue some astronauts, you should be rewarding him for that.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：没错，我的意思是，那些赚了很多钱就去买职业球队的人，我自己不会那样做，对吧？但如果一个人拿钱去建医院，或者造火箭把人送上月球，甚至营救宇航员，那样的人就应该得到奖励。

Closing Thoughts

结语

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Naval, I really appreciate you. I hope that this has lived up to whatever weird daydreams you’ve been having. What have you got coming up? What can people expect from you over the next however long?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：Naval，我真的非常感激你。我希望这次访谈配得上你那些奇怪的白日梦。你接下来有什么计划？人们在接下来的时间里可以期待些什么？

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Expect nothing.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：别有期待。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s the most Naval way that we could have finished this. Dude, it’s been a long time coming. I really do appreciate you for being here today. But I do hope to deliver something.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：这真是最符合Naval风格的结尾了。兄弟，这场对话等了很久，我真的非常感谢你今天的到来。但我真心希望这次访谈能有所收获。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: Oh, I think you have, so thank you. Thanks for having me.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：哦，我觉得你已经做到了，谢谢你。感谢邀请我来。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Thank you too. Thanks for getting in my mind, and hopefully now you’re out.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：我也谢谢你。谢谢你进入我的脑海里，希望你现在已经从里面出来了。

NAVAL RAVIKANT: We’ll see. I mean, it might be even worse now. You’ve got the real memories to stick.

NAVAL RAVIKANT：那得看看了。也许现在更糟了，你脑中已经有了真实的记忆会留下来。

The reason to win the game is to be free of it. The reason to do podcast is to be done with it.

赢得游戏的理由是为了摆脱游戏。做播客的理由是为了做完播客。

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Alright.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON：好吧。