The Cure for America's Societal Problems | Tim Urban
发布时间 2023-03-28 15:00:00 来源
摘要
Tim Urban is known for his ability to explain complex topics in a relatable way, and this interview is no exception.
Discussing Tim's new book "What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies", James and Tim explore a variety of societal issues, including the increasing polarization of American society in the past decade. They delve into the reasons behind this polarization, including the concept of societal echo chambers versus idea labs.
Listen on for a fresh perspective on the challenges we face as a society and actionable solutions for creating a better future.
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中英文字稿 
What is our problem? What is the problem with society and what can we do about it? So Tim Urban who writes the huge blog, Wait but Why? I mean millions of people read his blog every month. He just wrote a book, What's our problem? A self-help book for societies. I happen to agree with him that this is a huge problem in society. The bifurcation of everybody's either on one team or another. And everyone just assumes that they're right and the other 150 million people are wrong. We talk about why this is a problem, the history of it. And Tim offers an excellent guide on what a solution could be. But I think it's more not just a self-help book for societies. It's ideas for how you and I can improve our lives in the way we think about the problems in our lives as well as society. I view this as a self-help book for me. This podcast improved me. But was super excited to have Tim on. I've been a fan of his blog for almost 10 years. Here he is.
我们的问题是什么？社会的问题是什么？我们能为此做些什么？Tim Urban写了一篇非常受欢迎的博客网站，叫做Wait but Why？每个月数百万人阅读这个网站。他现在写了一本书，叫做What's our problem？这是一本为社会写的自助书。我也认为这是社会中的一个重大问题。每个人要么站在这一边，要么站在那一边。每个人都认为自己是正确的，而其他1.5亿人是错误的。我们讨论了为什么这是一个问题，以及它的历史。Tim提供了一个非常好的解决方案指南。但我认为这不仅是一个自助书，它也是一些关于如何思考我们的生活和社会中的问题的想法。我认为这是我的一个自助书。这个播客让我有所提高。但我非常兴奋能够有Tim的加盟。我已经是他的博客的粉丝近10年了。这就是他。
This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger show. This is your first kid? First kid. Ray Page of 41. 41. So, that's hard work. Yeah. Like, I'm in my 50s. I don't think I can have another kid just because it would be too much energy for me. Yeah. It's, yeah, I wouldn't. Right now I have all this, like, how many kids do you have? Well, three step kids, two kids. So I had two babies. Yeah, that's a lot. Right. And it's like, this, right now I have all this energy and it's novel and it's so exciting. And I have all this, like, fatherhood to give. And I would not want to do this if I didn't have that. If I was feeling like this was like, I was like, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to father another kid. That would be really bad because it's not a small. You can just, yeah, it's a long-term company. Yeah, I can't hardly decide to have a kid. Unless you want to just like leave the kid, like have the kid and then leave it. Right. Then you can do that. I don't think that's the way I want to go, but you never know.
这不是一档普通的商业播客，他也不是普通的主持人。这是詹姆斯·阿尔蒂格尔的节目。这是你的第一个孩子吗？第一个孩子。雷·佩奇41岁了。那很辛苦。是啊。像我这个年龄，我觉得我再要一个孩子太花精力了。就是，是啊，我不想。现在我有这么多精力，这很新奇和令人兴奋。我有这么多给予父亲的爱。如果我没有这个感觉，我不会想这样做的。如果我觉得这很烦，我不想再做父亲，那会很糟糕，因为它不是一个小公司，你不能只是这样做。是啊，这是一个长期的责任。我几乎无法决定要孩子。除非你想把孩子遗弃，就像有了孩子然后离开。对。然后你可以这样做。我不认为这是我想走的路，但你永远不知道。
Which, by the way, I will make this an odd segue into your blog. One of my favorite blogs, Weight But Why. You've been doing this blog forever. I'm going to segue, I'm going to connect with that in a second. But you've been doing this blog like forever. I feel like I've been doing my blog since about 2010. How long have you been doing your blog? 2013. 2013, so a long time. And it's got, I'm usually popular. And would you say that blogging, like people don't look at blogs as much anymore, like when you started and at that time I remember very well, people were reading every blog post. And now I feel it's on and off. You know, I feel like when I started 2013, I was hearing a lot of blogging is dead. I feel like the age of a certain, because also blog is such a broad word, right? It's like, it's like an online solo publication, basically.
顺带一提，我要用这个话题奇怪的话题过渡到你的博客上。我的一个最爱的博客是《肥胖为什么》。你已经做这个博客好久了。我一会就会接着谈论它。但你也做了很久了，感觉我自己的博客也大概是从2010年开始做的。你做了多久了？2013年。哦，很长时间了。通常也很受欢迎。你认为现在人们不再像以前那么关注博客了吗？当你开始时，我还记得，人们会读每篇博客文章。现在我感觉有时有人会有一会儿关注，一会儿不关注。你知道，2013年我听说很多人说博客已死。我觉得这是某种时代的问题，因为“博客”这个词实在是太广泛了吧，基本上是一种在线个人出版物。
So there's a lot of different genres under that umbrella. But I think when they're saying blogging is dead, maybe that was for a certain type of blogger, you know, they had gone down in popularity. What I was doing is like really long in-depth deep dives into something. And it's just like to have that in the same category as someone who's doing celebrity gossip updates, you know, little short things every two hours. Versus me like every two months coming out of the big. So it's like, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know like whether I don't know what the state of like other blogging genres is. I get the impression that if someone writes a deep dive today, it's people are still interested. I don't know. I get that, you know, also I might have a cute thing because I have readers now. So my readers now know me and they're going to come read my thing. If I'm starting fresh today, I do think that the 2013 was a very good time to start when I started just got lucky because it was like Facebook was Facebook was like an incredible engine for like a couple years. And now I don't know if there's any engine is good today to have a new writer's articles go viral as Facebook was back then.
所以这个范畴下有很多不同的类型。但我认为当他们说博客已经死了时，也许是针对某种类型的博主，你知道，他们的受欢迎程度下降了。我所做的是真正的深入研究某些东西。这就像将我放在同一类别中的人更新名人八卦，你知道，每两个小时发布一些简短的东西。而我每隔两个月会发布一个深入研究的东西。所以，我不知道其他博客类型的状况如何。我有这样的印象，如果今天有人写深入研究，人们仍然会感兴趣。我不知道。我明白，也许是因为我现在有读者，所以我的读者现在已经认识我，他们会来阅读我的东西。如果我今天开始一切都是新的，我觉得2013年是一个非常好的时间开始。当我开始的时候，我只是走了运气。因为Facebook在几年内都是一个难以置信的引擎。现在我不知道是否有任何引擎像当时的Facebook一样适合新作者的文章走红。
Yeah, I would say it's important to have like, like you have a newsletter like even an email list. And that's a way people get exposed to like when you have new blog posts out. Yeah, exactly. It's like and so it's actually early on because you have to decide, you know, if someone gets to the end of a lot of people get to the end of your article, a lot of people don't get to the end of your article, right?
"嗯，我认为拥有类似邮件列表这样的新闻通讯是很重要的。这是人们了解你发布新博客文章的一种方式。是的，没错。因此，在早期阶段，你必须决定如果有人读完了你的文章，因为很多人没有读完你的文章，对吧？"
And then a lot of people get to the end and they're like, that was good or that was bad. But either way, they're not coming back or they don't care enough. A few people get there and they're like, Oh my God, I love this writer. I love this article. I need more. You need to capture that person because they're still going to forget about you on stadium. There's too much on the internet, right? And so that's you have this one moment to like have that person follow you in a way that you can now remind them, Hey, I still exist. Here's a new one for you. And then that's a long term reader of yours.
然后很多人到了最后会说，“这篇文章好极了” 或者 “这篇文章糟透了”，但无论如何，他们可能不会再回来或者不够关心。有些人到达这里后感叹，“哦我的天，我太爱这个作家了。我太爱这篇文章了。我需要更多。” 你需要抓住这个人，因为他们仍然会在赛场上忘记你。互联网上的内容实在太多了，对不对？你现在只有一个机会，以某种方式让他们跟随你，这样你可以提醒他们，“嘿，我还在这里。这是给你的新作品。” 然后，这个人就成为了你的长期读者。
And so what do you have to decide? What do you, what's the number one thing you want? And for a while, I was like, Facebook has to be Facebook follows because again, people forget now because Facebook is a totally different thing than it was. 2013, it was the only relevant social network. I mean, Twitter was minor. Facebook was everyone was on it. It was, it was just the main thing. It was the coolest thing and it was worldwide. And then at some point, Facebook, I realized like it was like, it was like, it was like a six months in.
你需要做出什么决定呢？你最想要的是什么？有一段时间我认为Facebook必须保持Facebook的本性，因为人们现在已经忘记了，Facebook已经完全不同了。2013年，它是唯一有影响力的社交网络。我是说，Twitter很小众。Facebook吸引了所有人。它是最主要的东西，最酷的东西，而且它是全球性的。然后，在某个时候，我意识到Facebook就像……大约6个月后。
I would post something, I realized I had to pay now to reach my own followers, which is not criticizing Facebook for that. It's the business they should be making money for it. But I realized I was like, wait a second. I don't want to trust whoever's running Facebook in eight years. I mean, a people, yes, Facebook could go out of style, but B, they could decide, you know what? Now it's going to cost 50 grand if you want to reach all your people. And I'm like, well, I'm screwed. So quickly made a change and said email email.
我原本想要发些东西，结果发现我现在要花钱才能接触到自己的追随者，这并不是对Facebook的批评。这是他们应该赚钱的生意。但我意识到，我突然间想到了：我不想信任八年之后管理Facebook的人。我是说，人民，是的，Facebook可能会过时，但另一方面，他们可以决定：“你想接触到所有人，那要花费50万美元。”我就很糟糕了。所以我很快改变了主意，开始使用电子邮件。
It's still, by the way, still don't know what's going to, you know, how, if email can go out of style. But I said, the first thing you're going to see is sign up for the email list. And that's what I've been doing since I'm very happy that I did that. Yeah. I mean, that was probably the best decision I ever made was building an email list on top of my blog, which I probably started around at the same time, the email list. And it worked out well because then you have a permanent relationship with your readers, no matter what platform is like the platform of the day.
顺便提一下，我还是不知道电子邮件会不会过时，你知道的，还有，如果它会过时，会发生什么。但我说过，你首先要做的事情就是注册电子邮件列表。我一直这样做，而且我很高兴自己这样做了。是的。我的博客和电子邮件列表大约是同时开始的，这可能是我做过的最好的决定之一。因为这样，你就能与读者建立永久的关系，无论当时的平台是什么。
Especially if you're like me, and you don't publish regularly. You know, if it's if it's every single Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you know, you know, like Randall Monroe does XKCD. I don't know if he needs an email list because everyone knows Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there's a new comic and people are going to go check it out. If I, I might publish something two weeks in a row and then disappear for six months. And what do you do during those six months? Are you just researching for the next article? It depends.
特别是如果你和我一样，不定期发表文章。你知道，如果每个星期一、星期三、星期五都发，就像Randall Monroe的XKCD一样。我不知道他是否需要邮件列表，因为每个星期一、星期三、星期五，大家都知道会有一篇新漫画，所以人们会去查看。但我可能连续两周发布内容，然后就消失六个月。那这六个月你该怎么办呢？你只是在为下一篇文章做研究吗？这要视情况而定。
I mean, yeah, for a really long, I've, I've done some really big deep dives where it's, you know, the length of a short book. And other times I'm just, I, I, I, you know, I try, I write a couple articles on it like them and I go back to the draw and bring it just takes me a while sometimes. And if you're a reader, it's really annoying to have to like check the site and refresh nothing new. And it's like, instead, I'm just like, sign up for the email list, forget about me. I'll let you know when I have something new. And then I can just boom, I can reach everybody when I'm ready.
我是说，是啊，有时候我会进行长时间的深度探讨，就像是一本短篇小说那么长。还有其他时候，我只是尝试着写一些关于它的文章，但可能需要一段时间才能完成。如果你是一位读者，需要不断地检查网站并刷新页面来获取新的信息，这真的很烦人。相反，我会建议你们通过加入我的邮件列表来获取最新的信息。然后，我只需要一击即可通知所有人。
So I'm very grateful for the email medium. Since then you've written a bunch of books. The latest one, what's our problem, a self-help book for societies? And I want to talk about that. But my question also is, why haven't you written more books? Like because you do these deep dives, you have so many interesting posts about a variety of topics. Like first, you could have written an entire book about Elon Musk just by stapling together some books.
所以，我非常感激电子邮件这个媒介。自那以后，您已经写了很多书。最新的一本是《我们的问题》，一本为社会提供自助的书？我想谈论一下这个。但我的问题也是，为什么您没有写更多的书呢？因为您进行了这些深入的研究，对各种话题都有很多有趣的文章。比如说，您完全可以通过一些书本将埃隆·马斯克的整个故事写成一本书。
I basically did. It's just on the internet. Oh, right. That's right. It's an ebook on the internet. But it's, you could have just said to Amazon, hey, make this a paperback also. Like self-published it. No, no, no, totally. No, I just meant, I also had, I did happen to make it knee-burke, but I was just saying, I basically wrote a book in its blog post form.
我基本上就是这么做的。只是在网上而已。哦，对了。没错。这是一本在网上的电子书。但你也可以让亚马逊把它制作成平装本。自我出版。不，不，完全不是。我只是想说，我确实也把它制成了纸质版，但我的意思是，我基本上是以博客文章的形式写了一本书。
And so I understand your question, which is like, why not just do books? And I think it's an evolving thing. I think back, I think when I honestly with the Elon thing, I didn't think I was going to write so much. And as I got going, I realized this is, by the end I looked at it and I said, I think I just wrote a book. I didn't mean to. But I just wrote four really long blog posts that added up to 95,000 words.
所以，我明白你的问题，就是为什么不只写书呢？我认为这是一个不断发展的过程。我回忆起来，当我跟伊隆相关时，我并没有想过我会写那么多。但是，当我开始写作时，我意识到这是一本书，到最后我看了一眼，我觉得我刚刚写了一本书。我并没有打算这样做。但是，我写了四篇非常长的博客文章，加起来有95,000字。
And then most recently, again, because I'm not good at predicting what I'm actually doing here. So like for this most recent thing, this is my first, I would say, my first real book. And even this is an print book. My first print book is going to be the next one, which I'm starting working on now. You know, I was thinking about it, by the way, if you did this as a print book, it would be a beautiful book.
最近，我又做了一件事情，因为我不擅长预测我在这里实际做了什么。所以对于这最新的事情，我可以说，这是我第一本真正的书。而且这还是一本实体书。我的第一本实体书将是下一本，我现在开始着手准备。顺便说一下，我在想，如果你将它做成实体书，那会是一本很漂亮的书。
Like there's so many, like, great drawings and man. I might still. I've gotten so many requests for it. I'm like, okay, well, I did. I knew I'd get some requests, but I'm not too surprised by the number of people who have been like, I want a hard copy, dude. And I'm like, all right, maybe, maybe we'll do one.
就像有这么多的很棒的图画和作品一样，我可能还会做更多。我收到了很多人的请求。我觉得好吧，我已经预料到我会收到一些请求了，但是我对那些说“我想要一份实体复本”的人数没有太大惊讶。我想，好吧，也许我们可以考虑出版一本实体书。
The part of the reason that we didn't hear is because this topic felt timely. But we're working on it forever, I really wanted to get it out. And then it was already going to be like the summer. So if it did print, it would be a few months away from coming out. And then we learned that because of, I guess, paper supply shortage or something, it was going to be more like the fall, like September.
我们之所以没听到是因为这个话题很及时。但我们一直在努力，我真的想把它发出去。然后，这已经快到夏天了。如果印刷的话，就还要再等几个月才能发表。然后我们得知，我想是因为纸张供应短缺之类的原因，可能要等到秋天，就是九月左右才能印刷发表。
And I was like, absolutely not. I was like, you know what? Let's just go and publish this in February. And then we'll talk about a print book later, maybe. But like, let's just get this out there because I'm not waiting another eight months to get this out there. That's the problem with traditional publishing, is that you got to wait like a year.
我当时就说，当然不能等啊。我当时就想，你说呢？我们还是在二月份就把它出版了吧。以后再说出版实体书的事吧，但是我们，就是要让它问世。我不能再等八个月才让它问世了。这就是传统出版的问题，你得等一年。
You get your deal. The good thing about traditional publishing, like with your number of followers and the popularity of your blog and the popularity of your TEDx talks, you would get easily a seven figure advance from a traditional publisher. The sucky thing about traditional publishing is from that point where you get the advance, your book won't come out for a year and a half.
你获得了自己的交易。传统出版行业的好处在于，如果你有很多关注者、博客的受欢迎程度和 TEDx 演讲的受欢迎程度，你很容易就能从传统出版商处获得七位数预付款。但传统出版的糟糕之处在于，从你获得预付款的那一刻起，你的书籍需要一年半才能出版。
My next book is not going to have anything to do with current events, right? It's going to be timeless. It's going to be about the universe and stuff. So there I'm like, fine, go take it. It'll appear in the world in a year and a half. This one is so specific. It's about current events. It was going to kill me to, it actually, like, there's something really nice, one of the things that could, I would because there was no print book, I could put a book out in February.
我的下一本书不会和当前事件有任何关系，对吧？它会是永恒的。它会关注宇宙和其他事物。所以我就说，好吧，你拿去吧。它会在一年半内问世。这本书非常具体地关注了当前事件。我几乎快被它搞垮了，实际上还有一件非常好的事情，因为没有印刷版书籍，我可以在二月份发布一本书。
And there are examples, there are stories from 2023 in the book. It's like, it's almost like a blog post, you know, the ebook, you know, takes like a month to get it together. So it's really fresh. It's like, as recent as you could possibly be reading a book. So this would not have been a good one to wait a year and a half for. It's like, it's right on the pulse of early 2023 at the moment.
在这本书里，有许多例子和故事来自2023年。就像一篇博客文章一样，这本电子书花了一个月时间才完成，所以非常新鲜。你可以说，这是最近你能读到的书了。所以等了一年半来读这本书是不明智的选择，因为它真的描绘了2023年初的生活脉搏。
Yeah, no, your book's very timely because the topic of your book comes up in my house constantly, which is our society in and the US specifically, US society is having some big issues, no matter what side of this you're on. And you do, you really kind of build up the argument beautifully, but maybe kind of describe top level what your book is about and why people should be interested.
是的，你的书非常及时，因为你书中的主题在我家里经常讨论，这就是我们的社会以及美国特别是美国社会正在遇到一些重大问题，无论你站在哪一边。你真的很好地构建了这个论点，并描述了你的书的高级别内容和人们应该为什么感兴趣。
Yeah, I mean, I think there's something that was making me uneasy about my society. You know, and I think of, you know, a group in American society and it's not perfect, but it's great. You know, it's liberal. And I mean that lowercase L and that, you know, in that there is free speech and the government's never going to arrest you for saying the wrong thing.
我觉得我的社会里有些什么让我感到不安。你知道，我想到了美国社会中的一个群体，它虽然不完美，但很棒。你知道，它很自由。我是指小写的L，也就是有言论自由，政府永远不会因为说错话而逮捕你。
And, you know, there's just, you know, I feel like it's, you know, I feel like it's you feel like it's a very kind of grown up place in a lot of ways, even though of course America's not in many ways, but it just felt like it was, you know, I felt like I could trust the society for the most part. And that feeling was going away. Like it was 2016 and I was just like something feels weird.
你知道的，有一个感觉，我感觉它是一个非常成熟的地方，虽然当然在很多方面美国并不是，但它让我感觉它是的，你也感觉它是这样。总的来说，我觉得我可以相信这个社会。但这种感觉正在消失。就像2016年，我感觉有些奇怪。
Like I feel scared to talk right now publicly about anything to do with politics. What's up with that? Yeah, it's not how America is supposed to be like. And I wasn't scared of the government. I was like scared of, and the weird thing for me was that I was like scared of the people who I thought like we were like the people, I wasn't scared of, you know, I was like, no, bomb a voter.
我现在公开谈论任何与政治相关的事情都感到害怕。这是怎么回事？是的，这不是美国应该有的样子。而且，我并不害怕政府。我感到害怕的是，我觉得我们是同一类人的人们。我并不害怕那些人，但我害怕被那些人反感。
I wasn't scared of right wingers because I don't think the right wing has had any power to do anything. I didn't care what, you know, if they, I was like scared of my, you know, people who also probably voted for Obama and I was like, this is what's going on? You know, why? And then the media was just getting like worse and worse. Like journalistic integrity was just like just evaporating. And there was so much tribalism like rising like crazy political tribalism. And I was like, we seem to be like descending in some important way, like losing our grip on kind of stability in some important way. So that's what got me into this.
我并不害怕右翼派，因为我觉得右翼派没有任何实际影响力。但我害怕那些和我有相同观点的人，可能也投票支持奥巴马的人。我想知道为什么会这样，这样的情况持续下去。媒体也越来越糟糕，不再具有新闻媒体的应有职业道德。政治派系意识不断上升，整个局势似乎在往不好的方向发展，我们似乎正在不断失去稳定性。这些是让我涉足此领域的原因。
And I was like, what's going on? You know, what's our problem? Like, why are we doing this? And then I had the second thought, which is like, the stakes are high right now because technology is continuing to explode. Like there's new paradigm shifts every year in some industry. And like, that's not going to change. We need to like be smart and wise and like be able to talk about stuff together and like make wise decisions and I felt like we were going in the total opposite direction.
我当时就想着，到底怎么回事呢？我们有什么问题？为什么要这样做呢？可是随后我又产生了另一个想法，那就是现在的情况比较危险，因为科技在持续爆炸，每年某些行业都会面临全新的范式转变。而且这种情况不会改变，我们需要聪明而明智地一起探讨这些问题，做出正确的决策。可是我觉得我们正走向完全相反的方向。
I was like, I don't think my society can make a wise decision about anything right now. And so that's what got me into it and and and it swallowed my life for six years trying to answer that question. You know, it's really interesting because I think like the pandemic accelerated this trend where, you know, like as my kids say it, silence is violence. So even when you don't say something, there could be a negative reaction against you.
我当时感觉，我觉得我们的社会现在无法做出明智的决定。所以我开始研究这个问题，结果它吞噬了我六年的生活时间。你知道的，有趣的是，我觉得这次疫情加速了这种趋势。就像我的孩子所说的，沉默也是一种暴力。即使你什么也不说，也可能会引起负面反应。
And specifically, as you pointed, there's two teams, right? There's this kind of social justice team that has one menu and then there's the other people who have another menu and you have to agree with everything that's on the menu of your team. And if you don't agree with like one thing, even people get angry at you. Like there's no liberalism where, you know, the technical meaning of liberalism has nothing to do with liberal or conservative.
具体来说，正如你所指出的，有两个团队，对吧？有这种社会正义团队，有一个菜单，然后有其他人有另一个菜单，你必须同意你团队菜单上的所有内容。如果你不同意其中的一件事情，即使是人们也会对你生气。就像没有自由主义一样，你知道，自由主义的技术意义与自由派或保守派无关。
It's this idea that a society can have many people who have many different viewpoints and in a politically liberal society, everybody gets together, argues it out and then sort of decides on a compromise that some people are happy with and some people aren't happy with and they move on to the next issue. And that's political liberalism. But now liberalism is sort of interpreted as, you know, you have to believe that everything that's under this banner of social justice is correct. Everything else is incorrect. You should be silenced if you're incorrect.
这个想法是，一个社会可以有许多人持有许多不同的观点，在政治上自由的社会中，每个人聚在一起，辩论出个妥协方案，一些人高兴了，一些人不高兴了，接着他们就转向下一个议题。这就是政治自由主义。但现在自由主义被解释为，你必须相信一切社会正义旗帜下的东西都是正确的，其他一切都是不正确的。如果你不正确，你就应该被沉默。
And I'm oversimplifying, there's been similar periods where things have been the opposite, where if you're not like on the religious right, then you could be silenced also. There's it's kind of this pendulum that goes back and forth. But what are you actually afraid of when you when you speak or have an issue? So I think you're right. Like this feeling that there's two teams, both are entirely sure that they're right.
我有点简单化了，实际上有过类似的时期，情况完全相反，如果你不是宗教右派，也可能被压制。这是一个来回摆动的钟摆。但是，当你说话或面对问题时，你真正害怕的是什么？所以我认为你是对的。就像现在有两个团队，他们都确信自己是对的。
They're both scary if you're within that world to disagree with your own team.
如果你身处那个世界，和自己的团队意见不同，两种情况都很可怕。
People are scared of their own team, much more than the other team. But what I realized when you took a step back is I said, that's two teams playing one game. And there's a whole second game, which is what you just described, kind of classic liberalism. There's two games. And what's happened is this one game where these two, I call it political Disney world, right? Here are those in villains.
人们害怕自己的团队，比对手更害怕。但当你退后一步时，你会意识到，我说的是两个团队在打一场比赛。还有第二场比赛，就是你刚才描述的传统自由主义。有两个比赛。所发生的事情是这个我称之为政治迪士尼世界的一个比赛，对错分明。
Our team is perfectly good and righteous and their team is perfectly evil and awful. And we're right about everything and they're wrong about everything and we're righteous whatever. That to me is not reality, right? That's this crazy childish kind of way to view the world. And to me, it seems like they're two different teams and they are, but they're really, they're both in political Disney world.
我们的团队完美善良，他们的团队完美邪恶可怕。我们对所有事情都是正确的，他们对所有事情都是错误的，而我们总是正义的。但我认为这不是现实，对吧？这种疯狂幼稚的世界观。在我看来，他们是两个不同的团队，虽然他们确实是，但他们都生活在政治迪士尼世界里。
They're playing one game. What I realized is that most people aren't actually down there in that game. That's a lot of people are scared of the people in that game. But most people are much more like, they're not exactly sure if they think or even if they are. They don't try to silence people who disagree with them. They care about nuance and they want to, you know, they're open to compromise because every democracy built on compromise.
他们在玩一个游戏。我所意识到的是，大多数人实际上并没有参与进那个游戏中去。这就是为什么很多人害怕那个游戏中的人。但是大多数人更像是，他们不确定自己在想什么，甚至自己是否存在。他们不会试图消声那些与他们意见不同的人。他们关心细节和微妙之处，并且他们愿意妥协，因为每一个民主都建立在妥协之上。
And I realized this is a whole second game that no one has a label for. No one, you know, people in that, they want to play that game. Don't think they're all alone. They don't realize how many that the majority of people wish they were playing that game. And though there needs to be like a broad pushback from game number two against game number one. And that includes both teams that are to me kind of one really in another way, they're kind of working together.
我发现这是全新的第二种游戏，没有任何标签。没有人，你知道，那里的人想玩这个游戏。不要觉得他们孤单。他们没有意识到大多数人都希望玩这个游戏。虽然第二个游戏需要有一个广泛的反击，反对第一个游戏。这包括了两个团队，他们在某种程度上是一个团队，他们也在某种程度上共同努力。
Nothing was better for Donald Trump than the rise of authoritarian wokeness. Nothing is better for authoritarian wokeness than the rise of a demagogue right wing president like Trump. These are, they're each other is best friend, right? And so even though that's not how they feel, that's what's actually happening.
唐纳德·特朗普最喜欢崛起的专制唤醒主义。而对于专制唤醒主义而言，像特朗普这样的极右独裁主义总统的崛起是最好的。他们是彼此最好的朋友，即使他们并不是这么感受，但这就是实际上正在发生的事情。
And here's the thing about it that really got me going was thinking that like it's not like, you know, some people would hear this and say, oh, well, game number two he's talking about is all high pollutant and they want to talk about things. They don't want to actually get on the ground and make change. But the thing is if you look at all these different statistics, the people in that political Disney world game, they're actually harmful to the causes that they say the people in the the kind of hardcore woke people, they are really bad for social justice causes.
这样，让我感到烦恼的是，有些人听到这个后可能会说，“哦，他说的第二个游戏是高污染的，只是想说些东西，不是真的想要去行动改变。”但事实是，如果你看看所有的统计数据，那些处在政治迪士尼世界游戏中的人，实际上对于自己所声称的事业是有害的。而那些极端唤醒的人，对于社会正义事业是真的有害的。
So the idea that you have to see the rejector except social justice is missing a huge distinction which is that there's liberal social justice, which is the great tradition of the US, women, you know, emancipation, women's suffrage, civil rights movement, gay rights, all of that is the product of liberal social justice, social justice movements that leverage liberal tools that are pro free speech that persuade, they don't coerce, they get out there through campaigns of persuasion and they make huge change. And that's great for social justice causes.
所以，这个观点认为你必须接受社会正义，而拒绝者缺乏的一个很大的区别是，有自由主义社会正义，这是美国的伟大传统。女性解放、妇女选举权、民权运动、同性恋权利，所有这些都是自由主义社会正义的产物，这些社会正义运动利用自由主义工具，支持言论自由，通过说服而非强迫，通过宣传活动来取得巨大变革。这对社会正义事业来说是伟大的。
And then there's this other thing. I don't use the term woke very much because I don't think it's productive. It's too vague and it's low to a baggage. So I'll say social justice fundamentalism, which is a whole different thing and it calls itself social justice. But I think it's kind of the antithesis of liberal social justice. And I think it's not a, and likewise, you know, people say, oh, look at Trump, look how far right the Republican party has moved. I don't think that's true.
那么还有另一件事。我不太使用“醒目”这个词，因为我认为它没有多大用处。它太模糊，而且带有一些包袱。因此，我会说“社会正义原教旨主义”，这是完全不同的事情，它自称为社会正义。但我认为它有点与自由派的社会正义相对立。我认为这不是，同样，你知道，人们说，哦，看看特朗普，看看共和党向右移动了多少。我不认为这是真的。
I think that actual principle conservatism is a direct odds with someone like Trump. And that Trump isn't assaulting us with conservatism. He's depriving the country of principled conservatism, which we need. We need both principled progressivism and conservatism. So game number two is actually the productive one that actually helps these causes that are actually good for the country. And that game is so scared into silence by game number one. And game number one likes to tell game number two people that, you know, we're the ones on the ground. We're the ones making change. But that's not true. It doesn't map on to reality.
我认为真正的保守主义原则与特朗普这样的人直接相悖。特朗普并不是用保守主义来攻击我们，而是剥夺了我们需要的有原则的保守主义。我们需要有原则的进步主义和保守主义。所以游戏编号二才是真正有益的游戏，有助于那些对国家有好处的事业。然而，游戏编号一却把游戏编号二吓得不敢出声。游戏编号一还喜欢告诉游戏编号二的人，你知道的，我们才是实际在一线的人，我们才是促进变革的人。但这并不是真的，不符合实际情况。
Let me play devil's advocate for a second. I'm going to steal man your argument. So free speech is something you described initially as a social justice thing, but maybe not part of social justice fundamentalism. So what specifically do you think you can't say? And I'm not holding you to this as a belief, but like what's an example of something one can't say to the social justice fundamentalist for fear of being either canceled or blocked on Twitter or whatever?
让我扮演一下反对者的角色。让我来帮你修改一下观点。所以你最初将自由言论描述为社会正义的一部分，但也许不属于社会正义中最基本的部分。那么具体来说，你认为有什么话是不能说的呢？我并不是要让你相信某种观点，但是举个例子，有没有什么话是一个社会正义信仰者不敢说的因为他们害怕会被取消或者在推特上被封号？
Well, you really can't disagree with any of the tenants of the S.J.F. social justice fundamentalism narrative. So the S.J.F. narrative is treated like the Bible in a church. And if you go into a church and you start saying, I don't like this passage in the Bible. And I actually think that this isn't true and this is wrong. I mean, look, I'm sure some churches are all about debating that. But in a lot of very hardcore churches, you're going to be kicked out. They're going to say, no, the Bible is the sacred text here.
嗯，你确实不能反对S.J.F.社会正义基本事实论。因此，S.J.F.基本事实论就像教堂里的圣经一样被对待。如果你进入教堂并开始说，我不喜欢圣经中的这段话。我实际上认为这不是真的，这错了。我的意思是，我将来陆续介绍了一些相信的非常核心的教堂，你将被赶出去。他们会说，不，这里是圣经。
So they're the narrative, which is, you know, it's very extreme, right? It's extreme. And what I mean by that is they'll have an un very unnew on. It's very extreme, very one dimensional depiction of society. So for example, they'll say, you know, any disparity of outcome. So there's more men than women at Google, for example, or this industry. There's not enough people of color and leadership or whatever. Any disparity, one of the things that their narrative says is any disparity is only caused by systemic oppression of some kind. That's the only explanation. And secondly, the only remedy to that is through reverse discrimination, basically, right?
所以，这就是他们的叙述方式，你知道，它非常极端，对吧？非常极端。我的意思是，他们会给出一个非常不真实的，非常单一的社会描述。例如，他们会说，你知道，任何不平等的结果都只能是由某种系统性压迫引起的。这是唯一的解释。其次，唯一的解决办法就是实行反向歧视，基本上就是这样。
And this is, this is Ebrim Kendi. This is straight, you know, his words. This is kind of his two of his main tenets. And that's it.
这个是，这个是 Ebrim Kendi。这就是直接的，你知道，他的话。这算是他两个主要信条的其中之一。就是这样。
And so, you know, if there's not a 50-50 gender at Google, the only explanation is that Google has a sexism problem. Google is, you know, harassment problem, discrimination problem of some kind against women. And the hiring process should be shifted so that it kind of forced into 50-50, no matter what.
所以，你知道，如果谷歌没有50-50的性别平衡，唯一的解释就是谷歌存在性别歧视的问题。谷歌有一些针对女性的骚扰问题和歧视问题。招聘过程应该进行调整，以确保无论如何都能达到50-50的平衡。
A, I don't agree with that. I think that's too extreme. I think that that certainly discrimination is probably playing a role. And I think that perhaps hiring changes might be good, right? But there's a lot of different things that can be causing this. It's a complicated thing. Societies are complicated. Google is complicated, right? And people are complicated. And so I would say, let's go look at the more nuanced story.
我不同意这个想法。我认为这太过极端。我觉得可能有歧视在起作用。我认为也许改变雇佣方式会是好事，对吧？但是有很多不同的事情可能会导致这种情况。这是一个复杂的问题。社会是复杂的。Google也是复杂的，对吧？人也是复杂的。所以我认为，让我们去看看更加微妙细致的故事。
Now, my problem with social justice fundamentalism is not that they have extreme tenets. There's a lot of groups in society that have extreme tenets. And in the liberal society, they're all welcome, right? My problem is that instead of saying, well, we think this. And you think that and you're wrong. And here's why. They don't say that.
现在，我对社会正义原教旨主义的问题并不在于他们持有极端主义信条。在社会中有很多团体持有极端主义信条，在自由社会里，他们都受到欢迎，对吧？我的问题在于，他们没有说：“我们认为这样，而你认为那样，你是错的，原因是……”而是直接断言自己的正确性。
If I say, actually, I think there could be other reasons than just discrimination that there are more men than women at Google, they'll say victim blaming, misogynist. In other words, social penalties. That's kind of social penalties. I'll get smeared as a bad person. And so it's this kind of coercive tactic to shut down debate.
如果我说，实际上，我认为谷歌男性比女性多可能不仅仅是歧视的原因，他们会说我在指责受害者，是厌女者。换句话说，这是一种社会惩罚。这种惩罚会让我被污名化成一个坏人。所以这是一种强制性的策略，试图关闭辩论。
I have a question there. Like what if you say, listen, the population is 50-50, but the population of men and women at Google is 80% male, 20% female, which is what this guy wrote in his initial article about it. But that's because that's the breakdown of the population of men and women in the tech industry. So what if you were to kind of make an argument why Google has this disparity?
我有个问题。比如，你说，“听着，人口是男女平分的，但谷歌男性与女性的比例是80%对20%。这是那个人在他的文章中写的。但是这是因为科技行业男女比例的分析。那么，如果你要做出一个关于为什么谷歌存在这种差异的论证，该怎么做呢？”
So I'm saying with SJF, there's no room for anything. They would be saying, stop making a, you're an apologist, you're a misogynist. You know, look at the reaction that happened. And again, my point about that memo isn't that everything in it was correct. It's that the people I criticize in the book with the guard to that member are not the people who said this memo is wrong. Great. I love people who say this. Say this memo is wrong. Tell me why. Let's hear this debate. And I read so much interesting debate about it. My problem is with the people that said he should be fired for saying the memo because that's totally different.
所以我认为在SJF中，没有任何余地。他们会说，别再解释了，你是为其开脱的，你是厌女症者。你知道，看看发生的反应。再次强调，我对那份备忘录的看法并不是说里面的一切都是正确的。而是说我在书中批评的那些人和那份备忘录无关。很好。我喜欢那些说这份备忘录错了的人。告诉我为什么。让我们听听这场辩论。我看到了很多有趣的辩论。我的问题在于那些认为他应该因为说这份备忘录而被解雇的人，这是完全不同的事情。
That's attacking the person that's punishing a person for disagreeing with you as opposed to punishing their ideas, which is great. And every liberal society should be full of disagreement, criticism. And this makes our discussions richer and makes us all smarter.
攻击那些因为不同意你而惩罚他们的人，而不是惩罚他们的观点，这是不好的。每个自由的社会都应该充满不同意见和批评。这让我们的讨论更加丰富，并让我们每个人都更聪明。
So again, it's like, you don't even have to get into, forget what his memo said. It's like, it's like, should he be fired for it? And so the other thing that I would criticize SJF for is it's also hypocritical. Like there's 60% of college students are women, 40% are men. You know if that were reversed, the story would be colleges are systemically sexist against women, right?
所以，再说一遍，你甚至不用去追究他的备忘录都说了些什么。问题是，他因此该被解雇吗？而我要批评SJF的另一点是它也很虚伪。像有60%的大学生是女性，40%是男性。如果这个比例反过来了，那么报道的故事就会是大学系统性地歧视女性，对吗？
And there's discrimination. And there's bad social norms. And there's bad gender norms in society and bad messaging to women. But it's the other way. And there's no consistency. They'll never say, well, there's something wrong. What are we doing against men? Suddenly, there's no problem. There's no discrimination. It's not symbolic of any kind of systemic discrimination.
还有歧视。社会上有不好的社交规范和不好的性别规范，对女性发放的信息也不好。但事实恰恰相反。没有一致性。他们永远不会说，“有问题出现了。我们要对男性做些什么？”突然间，就没有问题了。没有歧视。这不代表任何系统性歧视的象征。
That's just how it is. So I would criticize any ideology on left or right or in any religion or any other area that is just hypocritical. That applies it's stuff when it applies certain tenets and prescriptions when the story fits with their narrative and then ignores the ones that don't fit with the narrative. But that's not even my big problem.
这就是事情的实际情况。因此，我会批评任何左翼或右翼的意识形态、任何宗教或任何其他领域中的伪善。这种伪善表现在他们只在故事符合其叙事内容时遵循某些原则和规定，然后无视不符合故事叙述的内容。不过，这还不是我最大的问题。
Again, there's a lot of ideologies I don't respect or don't think are productive. It's that this one will try to ruin your life if you make the points I'm making. I'm lucky because I have an independent platform. If I worked at the New Yorker, I worked at Harvard, I worked at the ACLU right now and I start trying to make these points. I'm probably out of a job. And that's my problem.
再说一遍，有很多理念我不尊重或认为不够有效。但是这一种理念会试图毁掉你的生活，如果你表达我所说的话。我很幸运，因为我有一个独立的平台。如果我在纽约客工作，我在哈佛工作，我现在在美国公民自由联盟工作，并开始尝试表达这些观点，我可能就没有工作了。这是我的问题。
Like it's this punitive nature of it. This coercive kind of like agree with us or else, that is not okay. Again, I don't care if that's on the left or right.
就像是这种惩罚性的本质一样。这种强制性的，就是要么同意我们，要么，不然，这是不好的。同样，我不管它是属于左派还是右派。
And what do you think that's happened? I think there's a lot of reasons. I get into a lot of different back stories in the book. But part of it is because there's always ideologies, go back to the 60s.
你认为发生了什么？我想有很多原因。在这本书中，我提到了许多不同的背景故事。但其中一部分原因是因为意识形态一直延续到了60年代。
I read a lot about the 60s in politics in the US. And there's ideologies always that want to do this. That want to not just have an extreme view but punish anyone who disagrees. They don't want to have to win fair and square in the persuasion game. They want to say, we're not even going to play that game. Our ideas are right. End of story. If you try to fight against the ideas, you're in trouble.
我读了很多有关美国60年代政治的文章。总是有一些意识形态的人想这样做。他们不仅持有极端观点，还想惩罚任何持不同意见的人。他们不想通过说服游戏来公平地赢得胜利。他们想要说，我们甚至不打算玩这个游戏。我们的观点是正确的。就此结束。如果你试图反对这些想法，你就会有麻烦。
There's always groups that want to do that. The question to me was, and there's always, by the way, there's always Donald Trump's out. There's always demagogue people who want to play on people's worst instincts, who want to lie incessantly and kind of cheat their way to the top. And there's always people who would have loved to undermine trust in the election after they lost.
总是有一些团体想要这样做。对我来说，问题是，总是有像唐纳德·特朗普这样的人。总会有一些煽动性的人想要利用人们最坏的本能，不断地撒谎、欺骗直到升到顶端。而总有一些人希望在他们输掉选举之后破坏对选举的信任。
So, why is a demagogue doing so well now? Why is a political group that likes to bully, likes to scare people? Why is that group succeeding so much right now? And I think it is a few reasons.
那么，为什么现在煽动家做得很好？为什么一个喜欢欺负和恐吓人民的政治团体也喜欢？为什么这个团体现在如此成功？我认为有几个原因。
I mean, one is the general political environment has gone from, you know, general political hot button stuff to total hypercharged tribalism. And I think part of the reasons for this, there's a lot of reasons.
我是说，一个是政治环境已经从一般的政治争议变成了完全高度的部落主义。我认为这一部分原因，有很多原因。
But one big one is like, if you look at the 50s and 60s, political tribalism was distributed. And what I mean by that is some people, the parties themselves had a really like rich diversity. There were progressives and conservatives in both parties and everyone in between. So a lot of people were really, most of their iron, their tribal iron, was worked up about the other guys in their party.
有一个重要的问题，就是，如果你回顾50年代和60年代，政治上的派别分化很普遍。我指的是，有些人，政党自身存在着非常丰富的多样性。两党都有进步派和保守派，以及处于两者之间的人。因此，许多人真正把他们的忠诚感和热情都投入到与同一党派中的其他人的竞争上。
They hated those people. Some people were not thinking about that. They were thinking about Republican versus Democrat. That they were really worked up about that. And then another group of people were most worked up about the US versus the Soviet Union.
他们讨厌那些人。有些人没有考虑这个，而是在考虑共和党和民主党之间的问题。他们对此非常激动。另一些人则最为关注美国与苏联之间的问题。
Or, you know, before that, the US versus Hitler. And so their minds were, their tribalism was on the national level. So you have a lot of tribalism still and a lot of division. It's just in, it's distributed in whole different arenas.
哦，你知道，在那之前，美国对抗希特勒。因此，他们的思维方式、他们的部落主义是在全国范围内的。因此，你仍然会看到很多部落主义和分歧。只是在不同的领域里分布开来了。
And what's happened since then is that lower arena, kind of the factions within the parties disappeared mostly because all the conservatives, because of a lot of reasons, all, you know, with civil rights movement kind of started. All the conservatives went to the Republicans. All the progressives moved over to the Democrats.
后来发生的事情是，较低层的竞技场内的派系在很大程度上消失了，因为由于许多原因，所有保守派都转向共和党。所有进步派都转向民主党，这一切伴随着民权运动的开始。
So you start, you kind of that intra party tribalism disappeared. And then on the top level, we just haven't had like a real, like as big a threat, foreign threat as the Soviet Union was in people's minds since then. And so those two arenas melt away a little bit.
所以你开始讲，你会觉得党内部族群主义消失了。而且在高层面上，我们自那以后没有像苏联那样作为人们头脑中真正的大威胁的外来威胁。于是，这两个领域都有点消失了。
And what's left is this one hot political divide. Left versus right. The good guys versus the bad guys, whatever it is. And then the media landscape is totally shifted. So there's a lot of explanations. But yeah.
现在剩下的是政治上的激烈撕裂。左右分化，好人对坏人，无所谓是什么。媒体格局也完全改变了。所以有很多解释。嗯。
Do you notice that like when you talk to people, like I tend to be pretty neutral or at least, you know, I don't feel strong enough about so many issues that I'm going to fight for them. But people who talk to me, it's almost like this chameleon effect, whether someone's like right or left.
你有没有注意到，当你和人交谈时，就像我倾向于非常中立，或者至少，你知道的，我对很多问题感到不太强烈，不会为它们而战。但和我交谈的人，无论是左派还是右派，都会产生一种变色龙效应。
People always talk to me as if they assume I'm the same as them. Do you find that also like yes, people all the way on the woke left will just talk to me thinking, of course, James is a smart guy. I'm talking to him. He must be extreme woke left like I am.
人们总是像假设我和他们一样那样和我交谈。你有没有发现，就像那些极度进步的人，他们会和我交谈，认为詹姆斯也很聪明。他们以为我和他们一样是极度进步派。
And the same thing like people who are like super pro Trump, bar right, they talk to me thinking, oh, James is smart must think like me because I'm talking to him. And so they assume that I'm like, bar right. And they never even like wonder because of course, he's not the other side, which is like a bunch of idiots, even though the country is basically 50, 50 right now. Yeah.
就像那些非常支持特朗普的人一样，他们认为我聪明，肯定和他们有一样的思想。他们总是默认我是那种很右翼的人，甚至从未考虑过我可能有不同的观点。他们认为像我这种人当然会对那些支持他们的人投以赞同的目光。但事实上，现在的国家基本上呈50比50的状态，两边观点几乎一样多。所以他们认为另一方都是一群白痴，显然是错误的。
I think part of that. So again, to talk about hypercharge tribalism, what does that environment do when it's like there's this raging tribal divide in the country? You know, I'm sure if you went back to pre civil war, you'd find another raging, you know, division and the end of the 20th century, another raging division was going on.
我认为这其中有一部分。那么，再谈超级充值部落主义，当国家出现了这种狂热的部落分裂时，这种环境会产生什么影响呢？我敢肯定，如果你回到南北战争前，你会发现另一个激烈的分裂；在20世纪末，另一个激烈的分裂正在进行中。
And then during the 60s, rage, right? That's not always the case. Most decades, it's not we're in one of those right now. And when you're in one of those, what you're going to find is a lot of people in that environment either become really tribal themselves or they get real scared because the most people are just not that disagreeable.
然后在60年代期间，充满了愤怒，对吧？但并不总是那样。大多数十年都不是这样，而我们现在也不是。而当你处于其中之一时，你会发现在那种环境中，大多数人要么变得非常部落化，要么变得非常恐惧，因为大多数人并不容易产生分歧。
Like they don't want to get out there and like disagree. They just, if someone's being real scary, but it's sure like I'll just say quiet or pretend I agree with you. So what happens is you end up with an intellectual culture. You know, we talk about echo chambers. I think of it as echo chamber is an intellectual culture. It's a culture where disagreement is bad and it's to be part of the group you have to agree.
就像他们不想表达自己的不同意见，不想冒险。如果有人太吓人了，我就会保持安静或假装同意。这样就会形成一个知识性文化。我们谈论过“回声室”，我认为它是一个知识性文化，不同意见被视为不好的东西，为了融入团队，你必须同意。
I have the opposite kind of culture, ideal ab culture, I call it, which is the opposite. It's like disagreement is fun and being in the group has nothing to do with your specific views. We actually like when we disagree. It's fun, right? It's ideas are not sacred. And so when you have a hypercharged decade, like we're in right now, what you're going to see is that ideal ab culture starts to kind of go into the private places and people get scared. And what echo chamber culture kind of rises up and takes over.
我有一种相反的文化理念，我称之为“理想反身体韵律”的文化理念，与众不同。就好像不同意见很有趣，而在团体中与你的特定观点无关。我们实际上喜欢有不同意见的情况。是不是很有趣？这些观点并不是万能的。所以，当你像我们现在这样度过一个充满能量的十年时，你会看到这种理念开始进入私人领域，人们也变得害怕。而随着“回声室文化”的兴起，它也逐渐接管了。
What you're describing is I think people who are so used to being in an echo chamber and when I, they're just everyone they know agrees with them or pretends to, they're not even considering that someone might not. Now I feel lucky because I haven't done that. I don't like echo chamber culture. I find it extremely boring and stressful. I'm not like, I don't want to be like, I have to like be a contrarian all the time or like be someone everyone's mad at.
我觉得你在描述的是那些太习惯自己活在“同声传音室”里的人。当他们身边的人都赞同他们的观点或者只是装作赞同，他们就不会考虑到还有人有不同的想法。我感到幸运的是我没有做过这种事。我不喜欢这种“同声传音”的氛围，我觉得这很无聊而又压力很大。我不想成为一个“与众不同”的人，也不想成为大家都不喜欢的人。
And I also don't want to have to like pretend to agree with people. So I'm surrounded by, if I'm in, you know, if my friend groups are mostly ideal ab's, I say something. I'm just waiting for someone to be like, you're being hypocritical and biased and here's why and you're, you know, this is a straw man argument. And so I'm not going to go to you and assume you think that you agree with me because I'm so used to people disagreeing with me. So when someone is doing that to you, it tells me that they probably are just that that's part of one of their friend criteria is if you're my friend, you agree with me, which means they are enforcing kind of echo chamber culture around them or they're just so used to being in it.
我也不想要装着同意别人的意见。所以如果我的朋友圈大部分是理想的人，我会说些什么。我只是在等着有人说你正在持有自相矛盾和有偏见的观点，这就是为什么你在构建草人论。所以我不会去假设你同意我的观点，因为我已经习惯了和我不同意的人相处。如果有人这样对你，那就说明他们可能把这当作朋友的标准之一，即如果你是我的朋友，你必须同意我的观点，这意味着他们会在自己周围形成一种回音室文化，或者他们是太习惯于这样了。
Yeah. And it's interesting because again, there's this what I call menu phenomenon, which is that if you believe in one thing that your team believes in, we have to believe in everything on the menu that your team believes in. So for instance, in the pandemic, if you thought there was the slightest chance that hydroxocloroquine was good for COVID, like, you know, prevents COVID, then it also happens to mean that you're pro life, which also means you're against the war in Ukraine right now. Like there's all these things that are lumped together that have nothing to do with each other in any intellectual way whatsoever.
对，有趣的是，这里有一个我所谓的“菜单现象”，就是如果你相信你的团队相信的一件事，那么我们必须相信你的团队相信菜单上的所有事情。例如，在大流行期间，如果您认为羟氯喹对COVID有最轻微的好处，例如预防COVID，那也意味着您支持直到现在仍在进行的乌克兰战争。就像有很多无关的东西被一起放在一起，没有任何知识上的联系。
But one team believes all these things and the other team believes the opposite of all these things. Why did that happen also that all the smart people kind of quote unquote, gang together on all the same positions on all the same ideas and all the other people gang together on all the opposite ideas? Well, that's game number one game number one in political Disney world. There is a narrative and it includes a it's like a little it's a little special package that gives you all your opinions in one one stop shop for all of your opinions.
有一个团队相信所有这些事情，另一个团队相信所有这些事情的反面。为什么聪明人似乎总是群聚在同一个观点上，而其他人则成群结队地持有相反的观点？嗯，这就是政治迪士尼世界的第一场游戏。有一个故事情节，它包括一个小特别套餐，让你在一个地方就可以获得所有的观点。
You can you know your view and by the way, that might change the party line might change and might reverse on Russia or might reverse on tax policy or might reverse on government overreach or whatever. And then you quickly get the message and everyone gets the message and now we're all we all think this right? To me, that's such a waste of human the human mind. I mean, like think about what and if you actually are truly independent learning and thinking about all of these issues, I think what a smart independent knowledgeable person would say about a lot of them is I don't know. I don't have enough info.
你可以知道你的观点，顺便说一下，那可能会改变党的立场，可能会在俄罗斯问题上或税收政策或政府过度干预方面进行扭转或逆转。然后你很快就理解了，每个人都明白了，现在我们都认为这样对吗？对我来说，这是对人类思维的浪费。我的意思是，想想看，如果你真的是一个真正独立学习和思考所有这些问题的人，我认为一个聪明独立知识渊博的人会对很多这些问题说出我不知道。我没有足够的信息。
You know, the Obamacare, I need to I need to research that for a month before I have an opinion. And then sometimes they would have an opinion, but it would be nuanced and it would be kind of weird and it would definitely not abide by the checklist that would be very unusual, very huge coincidence. If they had the exact same opinion as a tribe as one of these tribes on guns and abortion and climate change and like you said, COVID and any other thing on the war. Like before you can have an opinion, you have to know where your where your team is.
你知道，像Obamacare这样的问题，我需要研究一个月才能有自己的意见。有时候即使有观点，也会非常复杂，有点奇怪，肯定不能符合极其罕见的清单。如果他们跟某个部落在枪支、堕胎、气候变化、以及像你所说的COVID和战争之类的议题上的观点完全一致，那真是个巨大的巧合。在发表意见之前，你必须知道你的团队在哪里。
Like COVID, the lab leak theory. This is new news, this theory that maybe came out of the lab instead of the market. And you can have opinion, but I think before you, before most people voice their opinion, they have to know, well, which side am I supposed to be on? Is it the lab leak theory or is it the wet market theory? Like what is one side believe and what is the other side believe?
就像COVID一样，实验室泄漏理论也是新闻。这个理论是可能来自实验室而不是市场。你可以有自己的观点，但我认为在大部分人发表观点之前，他们必须知道自己应该站在哪一边。是支持实验室泄漏理论还是支持湿市场理论？就像一方人相信什么，另一方人相信什么。
Game number one has no reverence for individual thinking. You know, does not say, oh, you're a rogue individual. Great. It says you're a rogue individual like you're a terrible person. You know, if you disagree with us on any of these check every, you can disagree on every single issue, but you have the wrong opinion on guns, you're a terrible person. Yeah. So game number one basically says screw the individual, screw the individual thinking and independent thinking and that is not valued. That's actually a negative. I mean, it's really, it's in place. No, again, no one says that out loud. No one's actually thinking that, but that is the ultimate thing that's going on. As it says, it basically stops on the individual and says, this is, this is our collective opinions. And that's that.
游戏一毫不尊重个人思考。你知道，它不会说“哦，你是一个流氓个体，太好了！”它说你是一个流氓个体，就像你是一个可怕的人一样。你知道，如果你在任何一个问题上和我们持不同意见，你可以在每个问题上持不同意见，但是你对枪支持有错误的观点，你就是一个可怕的人。是的。所以游戏一基本上是说搞砸个人，搞砸个人思考和独立思考，这是不被重视的。这实际上是负面的。我的意思是，这是存在的。再次强调，没有人会公开说出这个，没有人实际上会想到这个，但这是正在发生的最终事情。因为它基本上停留在个人身上，并说：“这是我们的集体意见，就这样。”
And that is, again, that's boring to be part of. And you don't learn anything. And it collectively produces stupidity because no one is thinking, think about the lab leak. What if we could have just talked about that? Someone puts out an opinion on that and say, well, let's examine that. Let's criticize the idea. Let's talk about it. As opposed to saying that person just said, I, you know, so Brett Weinstein is, you know, a famous person who's talked about lab leak early. And I remember tweeting something totally unrelated about Brett Weinstein and it was like a positive thing.
那就是，再说一遍，那很无聊，你学不到什么东西。而且这会产生集体的愚昧，因为没有人思考，想想实验室泄漏的问题。如果我们可以坦诚讨论这个问题呢？有人发表了意见，我们可以说，好的，让我们检验一下这个想法，批判一下，谈谈这个问题。而不是简单地说那个人只是说了这个话，比如Brett Weinstein，他是一个早期谈论实验室泄漏的著名人士。我记得当时发了一条与他完全无关的推文，是个正面的东西。
And someone was like, I saw someone else be like, Tim has jumped the shark. He's praising a lab leak person now. So think about what that means. Not only is Brett tarnished forever because he has this view. So that's punishing him. That's making, you know, no one's going to want to, no one wants that for themselves. Right. It's labeling him on a team. But it's also now labeling me. Tim has jumped the shark. It's punishing me for associating with him for praising him. So it's basically this guilt by association.
有人说，我看见别人说，蒂姆已经过时了，他正在赞扬实验室泄漏的人。那你考虑一下这意味着什么。不仅布雷特因为持有这种看法永远被玷污，这是对他的惩罚。这意味着没有人愿意接近他自己。对于一个团队而言，这是对他的定性。但现在也给了我一个标签。蒂姆已经过时了。对于我来说，因为我与他有联系，因为我赞扬他，所以这是惩罚我。所以这基本上就是因果关系的罪。
I mean, well, what does that do to discourse? Is anyone in the right mind going to go talk about the lab leak thing now? No, it's just not worth it for most people unless you're like a Glenn Greenwald like suit you, you know, you're super disagreeable and that most people just aren't like that. And so they're going to shut up and think and then other people are going to think, well, if everyone thinks lab leak hypothesis is an awful thing for awful people, it must be. It must be racist.
我是说，这会对对话产生什么影响？有没有人会理智地去谈论实验室泄漏的事情？不，对于大多数人来说，这根本不值得，除非你像格伦·格林沃尔那样喜欢争执，你知道的，你很不好相处，大多数人都不会那样。所以他们会保持沉默并思考，其他人会想，如果每个人都认为实验室泄漏假设是可怕的事情，是为可怕的人进行的，那肯定是真的。那一定是种族主义的。
Meanwhile, how much like lost time did we have there when we could have been discussing this thing and discussing like our vi virology and epidemiology policies, which are really important for the future. I mean, there's a big scary thing virology and like instead of actually having any discussion, it just silences discussion. And you have that kind of checklist. If you think about it, the stakes are really high, right? Whether or not the lab leak theory is true, knowingly answer helps us prevent the next five million deaths that come from some leaked or not leaked virus.
与此同时，在那段时间里，我们本可以讨论这件事并讨论我们的病毒学和流行病学政策，这些对未来非常重要。我的意思是，病毒学是一个非常让人害怕的东西，而不是实际上进行任何讨论，它只是使讨论变得无声。你有那种清单。如果你仔细想想，赌注真的很高，对吧？无论实验室泄漏理论是否正确，有意回答都有助于我们预防下一个来自泄漏或非泄漏病毒的五百万死亡。
So it's really important that we not be political and you have this idea spectrum where you describe, we can either think like a scientist, think like a sports fan, think like an attorney, or think like a zealot. And think like a scientist, you describe this intellectual culture of an idea lab where you could pull together disparate ideas for my hypothesis, figure out a test hypothesis and so on, all the way down to thinking like a zealot where you must believe this or else. And you know, this is kind of the problem and then you say this is a self-help for societies, but it's really self-help for individuals. It's both.
所以，我们非常重视不持政治立场，并且您有这个思想谱系，您可以描述为：我们可以像科学家一样思考，或像一个运动迷一样思考，或像一位律师一样思考，或像一个狂热者一样思考。例如，像科学家一样思考，您描述了一个思想实验室的智识文化，您可以将不同的想法结合起来，以推导假设，然后进行假设测试等等，一直到像狂热主义者一样思考，您必须相信这一切，否则就不行了。您知道，这是个问题，然后您说这是为社会做得到的自助，但它实际上也是为个人进行的自助。它两者兼备。
Yeah, like it's nice to say this is self-help for societies because we're all kind of fine saying something's wrong with society, but no one wants to think there's something wrong with themselves. But ultimately, this is a self-help for people about how to be more aware of this style of thinking that has taken over society and so that you could rid yourself of this potential disease. What's important to emphasize here is like, there's so much of the, say, what in political Disney world, the message is always the same. We are perfect and right and they are bad. This tribal thing. This is a them problem.
对于社会来说，说这是自助的好处很不错，因为我们都很舒服地认为社会有问题，但没有人想到自己有问题。但最终，这是一个关于如何更加意识到占据社会的这种思维方式并且摆脱这种潜在疾病的人类自助指南。重要的是要强调的是，就像在政治迪士尼世界中，信息总是一样的，我们完美无缺，正确无误，而他们很差。这是一个他们的问题。
But the thing about that ladder you just described that I talk about, you know, that different ways of thinking is it's not like there's the good people on the high wrongs of the ladder and the bad people on the lower. It's not true, actually. We all go up and down this ladder. We all have susceptible to this.
关于你刚才描述的那个梯子，我想说的是，不同的思维方式并不是好人在高处，坏人在低处。实际上并非如此。我们都会在这个梯子上上下下，都有可能受到影响。
This is something that is a problem for every person in different areas. Some people are better at it than others and some areas of your thinking will be, you'll be just great at being very kind of evidence-based and humble and then others, you just find yourself with this kind of like your ego is involved and you have this under-conviction and you hate, you hate when someone argues with you, you get really angry. When you're talking about a certain thing and it's like, this is a problem for all humans. It just I think makes it hopefully easier for people to look in the mirror because no one is saying that you're one of the bad people. It's saying you're one of the human people that, you know, we all do this stuff.
这是一个不同区域每个人都面临的问题。有的人在这方面比其他人更擅长，而在思考的某些领域，你可能会很擅长基于证据并保持谦虚，但在其他领域，你会发现自己的自我介入了进来，你会有一种坚定的信念，你讨厌别人跟你争论，你很生气。当你谈论某件事时，这是每个人都面临的问题。我认为这会让人们更容易直面自己，因为没有人认为你是坏人，只是说你是人，我们都会做这些事情。
Echo chamber culture. You know, I love to talk about ideal-ab culture but I've been part of many echo chambers. I've probably enforced echo chamber on someone somewhere.
听说过回音壁文化吗？其实，我很喜欢讨论理想的文化，但我也参与了很多回音壁文化。我也可能曾经在某个地方强制形成回音壁文化。
I can almost guarantee I've been someone at a dinner table where people are like, don't bring this topic up in front of Tim, he's going to flip out. That's me enforcing an echo chamber on that dinner table. I'm sure I've been that person. So, yeah, it's self-awareness is I think what is a good starting place.
我可以几乎确定，在某次晚宴上我可能是那个人，大家都说：“不要在蒂姆面前提起这个话题，否则他会生气的”。那时我在晚宴上形成了一个回声室。我相信我可能就是那个人。因此，意识到自己的问题是一个很好的起点。
You have this top-down way of describing like, there's these type of people and this is the sort of intellectual culture we could aspire to. And again, you say this for societies but as an individual, I should be aware, hey, am I thinking like a sports fan, one team or the other? Am I thinking like a zealot? Like I believe this and you should be silenced if you don't believe it or am I thinking like a scientist where I pull things apart?
你有一种自上而下的描述方式，比如有这些类型的人，以及我们可以追求的某种知识文化。同样地，你针对社会做了这样的描述，但作为个人，我应该意识到：我是像一个体育迷，只支持某一个队伍吗？还是像一个狂热者，认为只有我相信的事情才是正确的，其他人应该被消声？还是像一个科学家，能够对事物进行分析？
Like it's very much awareness combined with remedy. This self-help idea is very important.
这个自助理念很重要，就像是深入认知和解决措施的结合一样。
This is other thing I feel that's been going on though, which is that the extreme social justice fundamentalism, you describe the 60s where we saw a big split on issues like civil rights. I feel there was a slight difference where yes, there was a split that seems almost as big as it is now. But the split wasn't the exact same.
我感觉还有另一件事情一直在发生，那就是极端社会正义原教旨主义的存在。你提到了60年代，在那个时期我们看到了像民权等问题上的大分裂。我感觉有一个微小的区别，就是是的，当时确实有一个看起来几乎和现在一样大的分裂。但这个分裂并不完全一样。
Like civil rights was about equality of opportunity and let everybody have the opportunity to drink out of the same water fountain, to go to the same schools, to vote, you know, all of these things.
就像民权运动所追求的是机会平等，让每个人都有机会喝同样的水，上同样的学校，投票等等，你知道，所有这些。
But now I feel like you described before as almost like a reverse racism thing. I feel like people are insisting on equality of outcome. It's not good enough that everyone has the opportunity, equal opportunity to work at Google is that everyone, there needs to be equal outcome.
现在我感觉就像你之前所描述的那样，几乎像一种种族主义的反向。我觉得人们坚持追求结果的公平性。不仅仅是每个人都有机会，在谷歌工作这点一样，还需要有相同的结果。这样显然就不够好了。
50% of Google needs to be men, 50% of Google needs to be women. And then if you throw in this ideology called intersectionalism, okay, of the women, some need to be this sexual preference, some need to be this ethnic background and on and on, like the weakest voice should have more rights than the historically strongest voices.
谷歌需要50%的男性和50%的女性。然后，如果加入这种称为交集主义的意识形态，那么，女性中的一些人需要有这种性倾向，一些人需要有这种民族背景，以此类推，就像历史上最强的声音应该比历史上最弱的声音拥有更多的权利。
And I feel like that extreme starts the border on insanity. But they don't say we care about equality of outcome and not equality of opportunity.
我感觉极端会让人疯狂，但他们不关心机会平等，只关心结果平等。
With this particular narrative, this ideology, what it says is, it's worldview is so simple that it says there's only one reason that there's ever a disparity like that. And it's discrimination.
这个故事里，这种意识形态的观点是，它的世界观非常简单，因为它认为只有一个原因会导致某些人数量的差异。那就是歧视。
Therefore, if there were a quality of opportunity, then there would be a quality of outcome. And the fact that there's not is evidence that there's not a quality of opportunity, which is again, that's very one dimensional way to look at something.
因此，如果存在机会的质量，那么就会存在结果的质量。而事实上并不存在这种情况，这就是缺乏机会平等的证据，这是一个非常片面的看待问题的方式。
So they're ultimately are arguing for a quality of outcome, but because they believe that they're one in the same. And of course, they're not one in the same.
所以，他们最终是在为结果质量辩论，但因为他们认为这是同样的事情。当然，它们并不是同样的事情。
It's just, it's, you know, all you have to do is look at like white Americans of different ethnic backgrounds. You know how much, you know, Russian Americans out-earn Polish Americans who out-earn English Americans who out-earn French Americans, for example.
其实，你知道，只需要看看不同种族背景的白人美国人就可以知道了。比如，俄罗斯血统的美国人的收入比波兰血统的美国人高，他们又比英国血统的美国人高，而法国血统的美国人收入更低。
Suddenly there, I mean, like, why would we ever expect that every white ethnicity earned exactly the same? We would never think that. Of course, it would just be a huge, and why do those earn differently? It's not discrimination, right?
突然间，我是说，为什么我们会期望每个白人族裔都赚取完全相同的收入呢？我们永远不会这样想。当然，这将是一个巨大的问题，为什么那些人会有不同的收入呢？这不是歧视，对吧？
It is what are the cultural values? Different interests, different feelings about ambition, different feelings about what makes success, different feelings about achievement in school and how much it matters about how much family matters versus career.
文化价值观是什么呢？不同的兴趣、不同的野心感受、不同的成功定义、不同对学校成就的价值观，以及不同对家庭与事业重要性的看法，都会影响价值观的形成。
Right? There's just a million reasons, just culturally, where those groups would end up with different outcomes. But as soon as you say that, you know, white Americans in this industry out-earned black Americans, you can't apply that same nuanced, obvious kind of complex reasoning.
对吧？就只是文化背景等各种原因，使得这些群体的结果不同。但是一旦你说白人美国人在这个行业收入比黑人美国人高，你就不能应用同样具有细微差别、显然更加复杂的推理方法了。
You have to say, according to this group, that is discrimination, period, no more discussion. There's no other thing that could be causing it. And it's just unnecessary.
从这个团体的角度来看，你必须承认，这就是歧视，没有讨论的余地。没有其他原因可以导致这种情况。并且这是毫无必要的。
Like, at Google, like, there is a lot, I mean, look, there's a lot of reasons here, but there's a lot of evidence, a lot of research done. This is not like new research.
在谷歌公司，嗯，有很多原因，看，这里有很多证据，做了很多研究。这不是新研究。
That on average, men are more interested in professions that involve things, and women are more interested in professions that involve people. In fact, some of the research shows that women who are qualified to be top engineers at Google have more options than men who are qualified to be top engineers at Google.
一般来说，男性对于涉及事物的职业更感兴趣，而女性则更喜欢涉及人际的职业。事实上，一些研究显示，在谷歌有资格成为顶级工程师的女性比有资格成为谷歌顶级工程师的男性有更多的选择机会。
Because they tend to also have better verbal skills. So they can go to a lot of industries. When the men, more likely, who are qualified there, they're not going to be as good at other industries. So there's just so many reasons.
因为女性往往也具备更好的口头表达能力，所以她们可以在很多不同的产业中寻找工作。男性，在那些领域有资格的话，也许不会像在其它行业中那样出色。因此，这只是许多原因之一。
And when you learn about them all, you don't end up more of a misogynist. You end up like appreciating the value of gender diversity more because you're like, wow, there's different interests, there's different things. And of course, this also applies broadly.
当你了解所有这些时，你不会变得更加厌女。相反，你会更加欣赏性别多样性的价值，因为你会惊叹，原来有不同的兴趣爱好和事物。当然，这也可以广泛应用。
It's not, you can't tell you anything about any one person. So again, when you're just grown up reasoning here, I'm not like, this is just basic, one on one, grown up reasoning that societies are complex, people are complex, men and women are complex, and on broad averages, you're going to see different things, and it's going to have different outcomes.
这是很基本的事情，如果你想批判，那就得有成熟的思考方式。事实上，我们不能靠简单的规律去描画复杂的社会，也不能用任何一种标准来描述每个人。在广泛的平均数上，男女有着不同的特点，最终会带来不同的结果。
To wipe all of that away and make it all taboo to even talk about. And then say, no, this is going to only be discrimination. What does that do? A, you don't solve any problems. You don't figure anything out, right? Because you just know all the real discussions done.
抹去所有这些，并将其变成禁忌话题。然后说，“不，这只会造成歧视。”这样做有什么好处吗？你不解决任何问题，也不会想出任何方法，因为你只是知道所有真正的讨论都没有意义。
B, you end up furthering this narrative that there is rank discrimination. And that's the only thing, which makes people angry and it's divisive. Why are you making that seem even, you know, there are probably some discrimination. Why are you making it seem worse than it is?
B，你这样做只会让人们认为存在等级歧视的说法更加严重，这是唯一会让人们生气和分裂的原因。也许确实存在某些歧视现象，但是为什么要夸大其词？为什么要让它看起来比实际情况更糟糕呢？
Then, you know, and then of course, if you institute the other thing, which is reverse discrimination. So now make sure that it's 50-50. That's just actually not, that is not fair to the men who you're actually who are losing their spot because it doesn't, I mean, Google is welcome to do it, but it's not like it's a moral good.
然后，你知道的，当你实行另一件事，也就是反向歧视时。现在，请确保它是50-50。这实际上是不公平的，因为失去位置的男性并不被认为是道德良知，尽管谷歌可以这么做。
It's not like it's a moral win. So the SJF ideas don't stand up to scrutiny very often. It's very easy.
这并不是一个道德上的胜利。所以，SJF的想法很少经得起审查。这很容易理解。
Like I just did to very quickly break down and be like, this doesn't make sense. This is not how we should be, which is part of the, I think, the reasoning behind why the reaction is not, let's debate this. You'll never hear them say, you know, let's debate this. It's, you're a bad person.
就像我刚才做的那样，非常快地分解并且认为这没有意义。这不是我们应该做的方式，这是我认为反应背后推理的一部分。他们不会说让我们辩论这个问题，你永远不会听到他们这么说。相反，他们会说你是个坏人。
No one talked to this guy because he has this evil, misogynist, bad person argument. He's a privileged, white guy who blah, blah, blah. And so that's what you do when you don't think you can win the debate, right?
没有人和这个家伙交谈，因为他有恶毒、厌女、坏人的观点。他是个有特权的白人家伙，说了一大堆废话。因此，当你认为自己赢不了辩论时，你就会这么干，对吧？
If you think you have no chance of winning this game, well, let's make the game illegal in the first place. But then there's the question like, so there are very smart, intelligent, and even powerful people who are extreme.
如果你认为你没有赢得这场比赛的机会，那么我们就应该首先将这场比赛定为非法。但这里有个问题，那么就是有些非常聪明、有智慧甚至有权势的人也会变得极端。
And by the way, I'm not saying any of these, like, yeah, maybe Google's hiring practices maybe do need to look at war women. Who knows? Like, we're just, we're just using this as an example. But basically, the fringes on both sides are maybe 1 to 5% of the population.
顺便说一句，我不是在说这些，像，是的，也许谷歌的招聘方式确实需要关注女性。谁知道呢？就像我们只是用这个作为例子。但基本上，双方的极端分子也许只占人口的1至5%。
And yet we've seen over and over again that 3% of the population could be strong enough to basically set the entire narrative of an entire population. And why is it the case that, you know, university presidents are willing to fire professors or saying something that might be very reasonable, might be very understandable.
然而，我们一遍又一遍地看到只有3%的人口就足以基本上确定整个人口的叙述。而为什么会发生这种情况呢，您知道，大学校长会愿意解雇教授，因为他们说了一些非常合理，非常易懂的话。
Okay, let's question whether this is a lab leak or not. And yet those professors get fired who question too much.
好的，我们来质疑这是否是实验室泄漏。然而那些质疑过多的教授被解雇了。
Again, the university presidents are usually, I'm going to assume that they're either more moderate or diplomatic. I mean, they have to be diplomatic to rise up to where they are because you have to all every wrong on the career ladder, you have to opi's a fairly large population, particularly, you know, in a university environment.
再说一遍，大学校长通常都比较温和或外交。我的假设是，他们必须要外交，才能升至现在的位置。因为你得遇到各种各样的人，特别是在大学环境里，才能爬工作阶梯。
So why is it the case that people are getting fired from high-level jobs if they say something that's even questionable?
那么为什么人们会因为说出一些可疑的话而被解雇高层职位呢？
It's, you know, people are like, oh, the mob, you know, the person got fired by the rock. The mob doesn't fire anyone. I've yet to see the mob call someone into their office and say, you're fired.
你懂的，人们常说，哦，黑帮，某人被老大解雇了。可黑帮不会解雇任何人。我还没见过黑帮把某人叫进他们的办公室然后说，“你被解雇了”。
Who, you know, what's happening is that the very, usually, the university president, who if you got them alone almost definitely, they're going to say, yeah, this is crazy. This person shouldn't be fired, but what can you do?
你知道，实际上，通常是校长自己，如果你单独跟他们谈的话，他们肯定会说，这太疯狂了，这个人不应该被解雇，但是你能做什么呢？
It's just so much easier to not want to be in the target of the mob. I don't want to be associated with this guy. Let me just fire them and move on. And it's kind of like deal with the devil kind of shameful thing and then forget about it and it's over, right?
只要不想成为暴民攻击的目标就容易得多了。我不想与这个人联系在一起。让我解雇他们然后继续前进。这就像是与魔鬼打交道一样可耻的事情，然后忘记它，一切就结束了，对吧？
And so it's almost like, I like to point out there's like this moment of truth here when it's like someone, the professor says something that offends the mob.
所以这种情况就像是，我喜欢指出这种“真相时刻”，就好像当某个教授说了一些引起群众不满的话时一样。
The mob says fire them. Okay. So that's what's happened so far.
暴民说要解雇他们。好的，这就是目前发生的事情。
Now, the president or whoever it is, the CEO, whoever has the ability to make this, you know, the Google CEO, whoever, the university president has a moment when they can either defend, not again, not even the professor because maybe they disagree with the president, defend the basic liberal values of the institution that we have, we have a diversity of ideas here, which is that they, in their head, you know, that's the thing that they're saying, this is the right thing to do.
现在，总统或者是CEO，无论是谁拥有权力决定这件事，比如谷歌CEO，大学校长都有一个时刻，他们可以选择维护我们拥有的基本自由主义价值观，我们这里拥有多元化的观点，甚至不是因为他们同意那个教授，而是因为他们认为这是正确的事情。
Or did they say not worth it, must fire them and move on. That's the moment of truth.
他们是不是说不值得，必须解雇他们然后继续前进。那就是真正的关键时刻。
And what's happened so much recently is they've, the moment of truth has gone the wrong way.
最近发生了很多事情，真相的时刻走了错误的路。
Because again, it's easier. It's just easier, right? But what it is, it's just, that is cowardice.
因为再说一遍，这样更容易。对吧，只是更容易而已？但实际上，这是懦弱的表现。
And it should be thought of this is pretty like, it's pretty, it's harmful because you in that moment are, the mob doesn't have any power without that moment.
它应该被认为是相当严重的，因为在那一刻，如果没有那个时刻，群众是没有任何力量的，这是有害的。
And so what you're doing is you're actually giving the mob its power.
所以你现在的做法是在实际上赋予了暴徒它们的权力。
Is there a solution like, are we going to trend in the other direction ever?
我们是否有解决方案，或者我们会朝着另一个方向趋势吗？
Because the problem with, we've gone so deep down this trend, like it's suddenly all the university presidents and all the media and all the heads of diversity and all these companies are all of a sudden they're going to be ashamed for things they've done because we realize they took it to an extreme.
因为这个问题，我们已经深深地陷入了这个趋势，就好像突然所有的大学校长、所有的媒体、所有的多元化领导以及所有这些公司都会因为我们认识到他们把它带到了极端而感到羞愧。
Like it doesn't seem like, like your book is great as a solution.
你的书似乎不像是一个有效的解决方案。
And again, I would apply it more as a self-help book to the end of everyone should read it because it's more of a way to think as an individual and it would be great if everyone thought that way because then society would kind of correct this trend.
再次强调，我更愿意把它看作为一个自助书籍，因为它更多的是教我们个体如何思考问题。如果每个人都能这样思考的话，那么整个社会都会得到改善。因此，我强烈推荐每个人都读一读。
But realistically, is this trend going to correct itself? Yeah, I mean, the thing about like, if you're in another country and in a different time maybe and offending the mob will get you lynched and maybe your whole family, right?
实际上，这种趋势会自我纠正吗？是啊，我的意思是，如果你身处另一个国家，可能处于不同的时间，冒犯了愤怒的群众会让你被私刑处决，也有可能会牵连你的整个家族，对不对？
You'll get killed. That's a hard one to overcome.
你会死的，那很难克服。
You need incredible courage.
你需要令人难以置信的勇气。
You need people with ridiculous amount of courage to overcome that.
你需要有着荒谬的勇气的人才能克服那个问题。
We're in a country where like that is happening.
我们现在所处的国家正在发生这样的事情。
You're getting killed now because your ability to make an income is like death.
你现在被打败了，因为你赚钱的能力就像死亡一样糟糕。
Yes, okay, but it's different than getting murdered and for a, and also a bill is sure that some people genuinely will lose their ability to make an income. But a lot of people just have to deal with a shit storm for a few days.
是的，好的，但这和被谋杀不一样，有些人确实会失去赚钱的能力，并且账单肯定会让一些人真正受到影响。但很多人只是需要忍受几天糟糕的情况。
A lot of people will just have to get criticized and get bullied by the mob and then they move on to someone else.
很多人只能被暴徒批评和欺负，然后才转向其他人。
A lot of things times the sky doesn't actually fall, right?
许多事情大多数时候天空并不会真的塌下来，对吧？
And so there's a huge difference between the hard cudgel of murder and what the mob has here, which is a soft cudgel of social fear.
所以，在谋杀的硬棍棒和这里的暴民所拥有的社会恐惧的软棍棒之间存在巨大的差别。
And they rely on widespread social fear.
他们依赖于广泛的社会恐惧。
And as soon as the thing about that is that it's kind of a house of cards.
而关于这件事情的问题就在于它有点像一座纸牌屋。
And a few people start standing up and very quickly it can be kind of just like you're going to have a downward spiral of cowardice where everyone's kind of copying each other's cowardice.
有一些人站了起来，很快就会变得像你会陷入一种懦弱的下降螺旋，每个人都在模仿彼此的懦弱。
You can have upward spiral of courage.
你可以拥有勇气的向上螺旋。
You can have people start to copy each other's courage and say, well, you know what, they did it and they did it.
你可以让人们开始相互鼓励，说：“你知道吗，他们做到了，我们也可以！”
You know, I even saw one of the worst cancel stories is James Bennett at the New York Times.
你知道吗，我甚至看到了《纽约时报》最糟糕的撤职故事之一，就是詹姆斯·贝内特。
He's the op-ed writer, op-ed editor. And he gets fired for publishing an op-ed that half the country agreed with, but it offended the staff at the New York Times.
他是一位专栏作家和专栏编辑。他因发表一篇得到了一半国家人同意，但冒犯了纽约时报的员工的专栏文章而被解雇了。
Right. He got fired. The editor got fired for publishing. Yeah.
没错，他被解雇了。因为出版了那篇文章，编辑也被解雇了。
With all 150 million people were fine with it.
对于这件事情，一亿五千万人都没意见。
And his point, he's first tried to defend his decision to publish it.
他想表达的是，他首先试图为自己发表那篇文章的决定辩护。
He said, I disagree with the op-ed. But if we're only publishing things that people like me and probably you agree with, then we're not much of a newspaper, right?
他说他不同意这篇评论文章。但是，如果我们只发表像我和你这样的人同意的内容，那我们就没有多少报纸的意义了，对吧？
He was basically saying we have to be an ideal in other words.
他的意思基本上是说，换句话说，我们必须成为一个理想的典范。
Then when the mob reached a fever pitch, changed his tune entirely, said this was a huge mistake, we shouldn't have done it and I'm going to resign.
当群众情绪达到极点时，他完全改变了态度，表示这是一个巨大的错误，我们不应该这样做，我将辞职。
And you know, you got fired whatever it was.
你知道的，不管那是什么，你都被解雇了。
So you could say, okay, that's an example of like the leadership at the New York Times had a moment of truth.
那么，你可以这样说，纽约时报的领导层经历了一个真相时刻。
They know that this is the worst decision to fire this guy.
他们知道开除这个人是最糟糕的决定。
It's so at the antithesis of what the New York Times is supposed to be, but they do it anyway.
这完全不符合《纽约时报》应具备的风格，但他们还是这么做了。
But now flash a couple of years later, just recently, the Washington Post published an article where someone was talking about the James Bennett thing and they said, you know what?
现在往后推几年，最近《华盛顿邮报》发表了一篇文章，有人在谈论詹姆斯·贝内特的事情，他们说，你知道吗？
It was wrong and we should have said it then and we didn't because we were scared and we're saying it now.
这是错误的，我们当时应该说出来，但由于害怕，我们没有说，现在我们说出来了。
Boom, courage, right?
“砰，勇气，对吗？”
And it doesn't take too many of those because no one wants to feel like a cow.
这种情况不需要太多次，因为没有人想感觉自己像一头牛。
So if you're watching him post a saying that maybe now the LA Times is going to say, you know what, we also should have said something. It could very quickly spiral the other way. So I think actually I would be scared if I were the mom because I'm thinking we don't have the hard cut your little violence. We're relying on this fear and that could crumble pretty quickly if people start getting courageous.
如果你看到他发布了一句话，可能现在洛杉矶时报会说，你知道吗，我们也应该说点什么。它很快就可能朝另一个方向发展。所以，如果我是这个妈妈，我实际上会感到害怕，因为我认为我们没有更强硬的打击暴力的措施。我们依靠的是这种恐惧，如果人们开始变得勇敢，这种依靠很快就会崩溃。
So yeah, I feel optimistic actually. You know, Tim, I wish I'm usually an optimistic person. This stuff scares me particularly, you know, way to your kid, you knew newborn gets older. Like the kind of arguments I have in my house. And by the way, I don't really argue with my kids. I let them say their thing and I try to be as quiet as possible. But when you hear over and over again, silence is violence. You know, if you don't believe this, then you're that. And depending on whatever the argument of the day is whether 10 year old girls should be allowed to get penises or an issue whether, you know, one war is better than another war or F the police everywhere. These are the kind of arguments that come up with people who are on the front lines of this kind of fundamentalism.
嗯，实际上我感觉很乐观。你知道，蒂姆，我希望我通常是一个乐观的人。这些东西特别让我害怕，你知道，当你的孩子长大了，从新生儿到现在。就像我在家里经常发生的争吵一样。顺便说一句，我并不真的跟我的孩子争吵。我让他们说出自己的看法，我尽量保持安静。但当你一遍又一遍地听到“沉默就是暴力”，你知道，如果你不相信这种说法，那么你就是那个什么什么之类的人。无论是10岁女孩是否应该允许得到阴茎还是一种战争是否比另一种战争更好，还是到处反对警察，这些都是那些坚定信仰的人们在前线发生的争论。
And it's hard to look at nuanced positions when the common phrase is silence is violence or even, you know, nuanced is violence. But I think your book, which is called What's Our Problem, A Self-Help Book for Societies, this is a great book which not only describes what's going on, but looks at the history of ideas in the past 100 years or more. You have great graphics describing everything, great essays and chapters describing everything. This is really a must read book about what's happening in our society right now. I encourage everyone to read it.
当我们常听到“沉默是暴力”或者“甚至优秀也是暴力”这样的话语的时候，很难去看待复杂的观点。但是我认为你的书，名叫《我们的问题，一个自助书籍为社会》，它不仅描述了正在发生的事情，而且审视了过去100年或更久的思想史。你有很棒的图示来描述一切，伟大的论文和章节描述一切。这是一个关于我们社会正在发生什么的必读书籍。我鼓励每个人阅读它。
But also I encourage everyone to read your blog. Wait, but why? I am an avid reader. You have great posts, by the way, about the nature of time. Like, you know, like you're one, how do you, you know, you have 100 blocks in a day, how do you use them? Or you're, you start off this book, actually, with kind of a, you know, your thoughts about the history of the human race, where if you divide it into a thousand pages, pages one through nine hundred ninety-nine sort of look the same. And then the final page is like huge differences. And you have a really good sense about how to describe time in different situations. Like, we might have only, you know, ten more things, giving's left with our parents and whatever. So, so I encourage everybody to read your blog. It's filled with so many fascinating topics where you've done a deep dive.
我鼓励大家阅读你的博客。等等，为什么？因为我是个狂热的读者。你的帖子非常出色，尤其是关于时间的本质。比如，你知道，就像你是一个人，你有一天100个方块，你会怎么用它们？或者你刚开始写这本书，实际上，你谈到了人类历史的思考，如果你将其分成一千页，前999页看起来差不多，最后一页却差别很大。你非常擅长描述不同情境下的时间，比如我们可能只有十个赠与家长等等的机会。所以我鼓励每个人阅读你的博客，里面有许多深入研究的有趣主题。
But most importantly, read this book, what's our problem, a self-help book for societies, which I really, again, do feel this has been like a self-help book for me. And it's a, it's a good reminder when I get too much of a sports fan or an attorney or a zealot. And it brings me back to my, I, what I feel are my idea lab roots. So thanks for coming on the podcast. You don't know this, but I've been a huge fan of your blog for since you started it. Thanks again for reaching out and wanting to come on the podcast.
最重要的是，请读这本书——《我们的问题》。它是一本自助书籍，适用于整个社会。我真的感觉它对我来说就像一本自助书籍。当我沉迷于运动、当一个律师或狂热者时，它提醒我回到我认为最根本的思想。所以感谢您能出现在这次播客中。您不知道，我从您开始写博客就一直是您的忠实粉丝。再次感谢您联系我，并希望来参加这个播客节目。
Yeah, thanks James. And I, by the way, you know, when I was starting this blog, you were one of like, I was listening to you and Tim Ferriss a lot. And you know, I think part of it is, you know, you're kind of like very frank upfront style where you're just openly a human. You're just being yourself flagrantly. And I thought that was inspiring. And I think it probably helped me encourage you to do that. So I also appreciate you and, you know, what they kind of work you do.
嗯，谢谢詹姆斯。顺便说一下，当我开始写这个博客的时候，我经常听你和蒂姆·费里斯的节目。你知道吗，我觉得你的风格很坦率，直接，你不掩饰自己的本性。我觉得这很鼓舞人心，也让我更勇于表达自己。所以我也很感激你和你所做的工作。
Oh, thanks Tim. I appreciate it. And I will say it's often gotten me into a lot of trouble too, just being myself.
哦，谢谢 Tim。我很感激。我要说，有时只是做我自己，就会惹上不少麻烦。
So yeah, well, that's also why you have a lot of listeners though because people like a rogue individual, you know, it's interesting. Yeah, I hope so. Well, thanks again, Tim. And hopefully come on the podcast again. I'd love to talk more about all this stuff anytime.
嗯，是的，这也是为什么你有很多听众的原因，因为人们喜欢那些有些叛逆的人，你知道，这很有趣。嗯，我希望如此。好的，再次感谢你，Tim。希望能再次来参加播客节目。我随时都很愿意谈论所有这些事情。