TED英语演讲：On being wrong 犯错的价值
TED Technology, Entertainment, Design在英语中的缩写，美国的一家私有非营利机构，以它组织的TED大会著称；将”用思想的力量来改变世界”作为宗旨。事实上，除了科技、娱乐、设计的主题，这场盛会涉及的领域还在不断扩展，展现着涉及几乎各个领域的各种见解，TED的演讲简短且深刻，参加者们称它为 “超级大脑SPA”。
So it’s 1995, I’m in college, and a friend and I go on a road trip from Providence, Rhode Island to Portland, Oregon. And you know, we’re young and unemployed, so we do the whole thing on back roads through state parks and national forests — basically the longest route we can possibly take. And somewhere in the middle of South Dakota, I turn to my friend and I ask her a question that’s been bothering me for 2,000 miles. “What’s up with the Chinese character I keep seeing by the side of the road?” My friend looks at me totally blankly. There’s actually a gentleman in the front row who’s doing a perfect imitation of her look. (Laughter) And I’m like, “You know, all the signs we keep seeing with the Chinese character on them.” She just stares at me for a few moments, and then she cracks up, because she figures out what I’m talking about. And what I’m talking about is this. (Laughter) Right, the famous Chinese character for picnic area.
当时是95年 我在上大学 我和一个朋友开车去玩 从罗得岛的普罗旺斯区出发 到奥勒冈州的波特兰市 我们年轻，无业 于是整个旅程都在乡间小道 经过州立公园 和国家保护森林 我们尽可能绕着最长的路径 在南达科塔州之中某处 我转向我的朋友 问她一个 两千英里路途上 一直烦恼我的问题 “路边那个一直出现的中文字到底是什么?” 我的朋友露出疑惑的神情 正如现在坐在第一排的这三位男士 所露出的神情一样 （笑声） 我说”你知道的 我们一直看到的那个路牌 写着中文的那个啊” 她瞪着我的脸一阵子 突然笑开了 因为她总算知道我所指为何 我说的是这个 （笑声） 没错，这就是代表野餐区的那个中文字
(Laughter)
（笑声）
I’ve spent the last five years of my life thinking about situations exactly like this — why we sometimes misunderstand the signs around us, and how we behave when that happens, and what all of this can tell us about human nature. In other words, as you heard Chris say, I’ve spent the last five years thinking about being wrong. This might strike you as a strange career move, but it actually has one great advantage: no job competition. (Laughter) In fact, most of us do everything we can to avoid thinking about being wrong, or at least to avoid thinking about the possibility that we ourselves are wrong. We get it in the abstract. We all know everybody in this room makes mistakes. The human species, in general, is fallible — okay fine.
过去的五年 我一直在思考 刚刚我所描述的状况 为什么我们会对身边的征兆 产生误解 当误解发生时我们作何反应 以及这一切所告诉我们的人性 换句话说，就像 Chris 刚才说的 过去五年的时间 我都在思考错误的价值 你可能觉得这是个奇异的专业 但有一项好处是不容置疑的： 没有竞争者。 （笑声） 事实上，我们大部分的人 都尽力不思考错误的价值 或至少避免想到我们 有可能犯错。 我们都知道这个模糊的概念。 我们都知道这里的每个人都曾经犯错 人类本来就会犯错 － 没问题
But when it comes down to me, right now, to all the beliefs I hold, here in the present tense, suddenly all of this abstract appreciation of fallibility goes out the window — and I can’t actually think of anything I’m wrong about. And the thing is, the present tense is where we live. We go to meetings in the present tense; we go on family vacations in the present tense; we go to the polls and vote in the present tense. So effectively, we all kind of wind up traveling through life, trapped in this little bubble of feeling very right about everything.
一旦这个想法临到我们自身 我们现在所有的 所有的信念 对人类可能犯错的抽象概念 随即被我们抛弃 我无法想到我有哪里出错 但是，我们活在现在 我们开会，去家庭旅游 去投票 全都是现在式 我们就像现在一个小泡泡里 经历人生 感觉自己总是对的
I think this is a problem. I think it’s a problem for each of us as individuals, in our personal and professional lives, and I think it’s a problem for all of us collectively as a culture. So what I want to do today is, first of all, talk about why we get stuck inside this feeling of being right. And second, why it’s such a problem. And finally, I want to convince you that it is possible to step outside of that feeling and that if you can do so, it is the single greatest moral, intellectual and creative leap you can make.
我认为这是个问题 我认为这是每个人私人生活 和职业生活中的问题 我认为我们身为群体，这也造成了文化问题 于是，我今天想做的是 先谈谈为甚么我们会 陷在这种自以为是的心态中 第二是为甚么这是个问题 最后我想说服大家 克服这种感觉 是可能的 而且一旦你做到了 这将成为你道德上 智性上和创意上最大的进步
So why do we get stuck in this feeling of being right? One reason, actually, has to do with a feeling of being wrong. So let me ask you guys something — or actually, let me ask you guys something, because you’re right here: How does it feel — emotionally — how does it feel to be wrong? Dreadful. Thumbs down. Embarrassing. Okay, wonderful, great. Dreadful, thumbs down, embarrassing — thank you, these are great answers, but they’re answers to a different question. You guys are answering the question: How does it feel to realize you’re wrong? (Laughter) Realizing you’re wrong can feel like all of that and a lot of other things, right? I mean it can be devastating, it can be revelatory, it can actually be quite funny, like my stupid Chinese character mistake. But just being wrong doesn’t feel like anything.
为甚么我们会陷在 这种自以为是的心态中？ 事实上这和犯错的感觉有关 我想问问你们 让我问问台上的你们 当你意识到自己犯错了 你感觉如何？ 糟透了。很差劲。 难堪。很好，是的。 很糟糕，很差劲，很难堪。 谢谢你们提供这些答案 但这些答案没有回答我的问题 你们回答的问题是： 当你意识到你犯错的时候，你的感觉如何？ （笑声） 意识到你犯错了就会有刚刚所说的这些感觉，不是吗？ 令人沮丧，暴露了一些真实 有时候甚至有些好笑 像我误以为路牌是中文字 但犯错本身 事实上毫无感觉
I’ll give you an analogy. Do you remember that Loony Tunes cartoon where there’s this pathetic coyote who’s always chasing and never catching a roadrunner? In pretty much every episode of this cartoon, there’s a moment where the coyote is chasing the roadrunner and the roadrunner runs off a cliff, which is fine — he’s a bird, he can fly. But the thing is, the coyote runs off the cliff right after him. And what’s funny — at least if you’re six years old — is that the coyote’s totally fine too. He just keeps running — right up until the moment that he looks down and realizes that he’s in mid-air. That’s when he falls. When we’re wrong about something — not when we realize it, but before that — we’re like that coyote after he’s gone off the cliff and before he looks down. You know, we’re already wrong, we’re already in trouble, but we feel like we’re on solid ground. So I should actually correct something I said a moment ago. It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.
让我给你一个例子 你记得卡通里 那个总是在追逐 却从未抓到猎物的土狼吗？ 几乎在每一集里 牠的猎物 － 一只走鹃鸟 都会跳下悬崖 反正牠是鸟，牠可以飞 但土狼也会跟着牠一起跳崖 那很好笑 如果你是个六岁儿童 土狼也很好 牠就这么继续跑 直到牠往下看 发现自己漫步在空中 这时候他才会往下掉 在我们犯错时 在我们意识到我们犯错时 我们就像那只土狼 还没意识到自己奔出悬崖 我们已经错了 已经惹上麻烦了 但仍然感觉像走在地上 我应该改变我之前的说法 犯错的感觉就和 正确的感觉一样
(Laughter)
（笑声）
So this is one reason, a structural reason, why we get stuck inside this feeling of rightness. I call this error blindness. Most of the time, we don’t have any kind of internal cue to let us know that we’re wrong about something, until it’s too late. But there’s a second reason that we get stuck inside this feeling as well — and this one is cultural. Think back for a moment to elementary school. You’re sitting there in class, and your teacher is handing back quiz papers, and one of them looks like this. This is not mine, by the way. (Laughter) So there you are in grade school, and you know exactly what to think about the kid who got this paper. It’s the dumb kid, the troublemaker, the one who never does his homework. So by the time you are nine years old, you’ve already learned, first of all, that people who get stuff wrong are lazy, irresponsible dimwits — and second of all, that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes.
事实上我们这种自以为对的感受 是有构造性的原因的 我称之为错误盲点 大部份的时间里 我们身体里没有任何机制 提醒我们错了 直到木已成舟 但还有第二个理由 文化性的理由 回想小学时代 你坐在课堂里 你的老师发回小考考卷 像这样的小考考卷 虽然这张不是我的 （笑声） 你从小学时代 就知道该对拿这张考卷的同学 下甚么评语 笨蛋，捣蛋鬼 从不做功课的坏学生 你不过才九岁 你已经懂得，首先 那些犯错的人 都是懒惰、不负责任的傻瓜 第二 想要在人生中成功 就不要犯错
We learn these really bad lessons really well. And a lot of us — and I suspect, especially a lot of us in this room — deal with them by just becoming perfect little A students, perfectionists, over-achievers. Right, Mr. CFO, astrophysicist, ultra-marathoner? (Laughter) You’re all CFO, astrophysicists, ultra-marathoners, it turns out. Okay, so fine. Except that then we freak out at the possibility that we’ve gotten something wrong. Because according to this, getting something wrong means there’s something wrong with us. So we just insist that we’re right, because it makes us feel smart and responsible and virtuous and safe.
我们很早就得到这些错误讯息 而我们 尤其是这个大厅里的许多人 都因此成为好学生 拿全A 完美主义、永不满意 不是吗？ 财务长、天体物理学家、超级马拉松先生们？ （笑声） 结果是你们全成了财务长、天体物理学家、跑超级马拉松 那很好 但一旦我们发现有可能犯错 就开始手足无措 因为依照规定 犯错 代表我们一定也有甚么不对劲 于是我们坚持己见 因为那让我们感觉聪明、得体 安全和可靠
So let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago, a woman comes into Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for a surgery. Beth Israel’s in Boston. It’s the teaching hospital for Harvard — one of the best hospitals in the country. So this woman comes in and she’s taken into the operating room. She’s anesthetized, the surgeon does his thing — stitches her back up, sends her out to the recovery room. Everything seems to have gone fine. And she wakes up, and she looks down at herself, and she says, “Why is the wrong side of my body in bandages?” Well the wrong side of her body is in bandages because the surgeon has performed a major operation on her left leg instead of her right one. When the vice president for health care quality at Beth Israel spoke about this incident, he said something very interesting. He said, “For whatever reason, the surgeon simply felt that he was on the correct side of the patient.” (Laughter) The point of this story is that trusting too much in the feeling of being on the correct side of anything can be very dangerous.
让我告诉你们一个故事 几年前 一个女人到 Beth Israel Deaconess 诊所做手术 Beth Israel 在波士顿 是哈佛大学的教学附属医院 全国数一数二的医疗中心 这个女人被送进开刀房 麻醉，外科医生做完手术 缝合，将她送进恢复室 一切看上去都很好 她醒来，往自己身上一看 说“为甚么我的左腿绑着绷带？” 她应该接受治疗的是右腿 但为他做手术的外科医生 却把刀开在左腿 当副院长出来为医院的医疗质量 和这次意外做出解释时 他说了句很有趣的话 他说“无论如何 这位外科医生感觉 他开下的刀是在正确的一侧” （笑声） 故事的重点是 相信自己的判断力 相信自己站在对的一边 是非常危险的
This internal sense of rightness that we all experience so often is not a reliable guide to what is actually going on in the external world. And when we act like it is, and we stop entertaining the possibility that we could be wrong, well that’s when we end up doing things like dumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or torpedoing the global economy. So this is a huge practical problem. But it’s also a huge social problem.
我们心中时常感觉到的 理直气壮的感觉 在真实世界中 并不是个可靠的向导。 当我们依此行事 不再思考我们是否犯错 我们就有可能 把两百湾加仑的石油倒进墨西哥湾 或是颠覆世界经济 这是个很实际的问题 这也是个很大的社会问题
Think for a moment about what it means to feel right. It means that you think that your beliefs just perfectly reflect reality. And when you feel that way, you’ve got a problem to solve, which is, how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you? It turns out, most of us explain those people the same way, by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions. The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they’re ignorant. They don’t have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they’re going to see the light and come on over to our team. When that doesn’t work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they’re idiots. (Laughter) They have all the right pieces of the puzzle, and they are too moronic to put them together correctly. And when that doesn’t work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes. So this is a catastrophe.
“感觉对”究竟是什么意思 这代表着你认为你的信念 和真实是一致的 当你有这种感觉的时候 你的问题就大了 因为如果你是对的 为甚么还有人和你持不同意见？ 于是我们往往用同一种 思考方式去解释这些异议 第一是当他人不同意我们的说法 我们便觉得他们无知 他们不像我们懂得这么多 当我们慷慨地和他们分享我们的知识 他们便会理解，并加入我们的行列 如果不是这样 如果这些人和我们获得的信息一样多 却仍然不认同我们 我们便有了下一个定论 那就是他们是白痴 （笑声） 他们已经有了所有的信息 却笨到无法拼凑出正确的图像 一旦第二个定论也不成立 当这些反对我们的人 和我们有一样的信息 又聪明 我们便有了第三个结论 他们知道事实是甚么 但却为了自己的好处 故意曲解真实。 这真是个大灾难
This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly. But to me, what’s most baffling and most tragic about this is that it misses the whole point of being human. It’s like we want to imagine that our minds are just these perfectly translucent windows and we just gaze out of them and describe the world as it unfolds. And we want everybody else to gaze out of the same window and see the exact same thing. That is not true, and if it were, life would be incredibly boring. The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t. We can remember the past, and we can think about the future, and we can imagine what it’s like to be some other person in some other place. And we all do this a little differently, which is why we can all look up at the same night sky and see this and also this and also this. And yeah, it is also why we get things wrong.
我们的自以为是 让我们在最需要的时候 无法预防犯错 更让我们互相仇视 对我来说 最大的悲剧是 它让我们错失了身为人的珍贵意义 那就像是想象 我们的心灵之窗完全透明 我们向外观看 描述在我们之前展开的世界 我们想要每个人和我们有一样的窗子 对世界做出一样的观察 那不是真的 如果是，人生将会多么无聊 心灵的神奇之处 不在你懂得这个世界是甚么样子 而是去理解那些你不懂的地方 我们记得过去 思考未来 我们想象 自己成为他人，在他方 我们的想象都有些不同 于是当我们抬头看同一个夜空 我们看到这个 这个 和这个 这也是我们搞错事情的原因
1,200 years before Descartes said his famous thing about “I think therefore I am,” this guy, St. Augustine, sat down and wrote “Fallor ergo sum” — “I err therefore I am.” Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it’s not some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system, something we can eradicate or overcome. It’s totally fundamental to who we are. Because, unlike God, we don’t really know what’s going on out there. And unlike all of the other animals, we are obsessed with trying to figure it out. To me, this obsession is the source and root of all of our productivity and creativity.
在笛卡儿说出那句有名的”我思故我在“ 的一千两百年前 圣奥古斯丁，坐下来 写下”Fallor ergo sum” “我错故我在” 奥古斯丁懂得 我们犯错的能力 这并不是人性中 一个令人难堪的缺陷 不是我们可以克服或消灭的 这是我们的本质 因为我们不是上帝 我们不知道我们之外究竟发生了甚么 而不同于其它动物的是 我们都疯狂地想找出解答 对我来说 这种寻找的冲动 就是我们生产力和创造力的来源
Last year, for various reasons, I found myself listening to a lot of episodes of the Public Radio show This American Life. And so I’m listening and I’m listening, and at some point, I start feeling like all the stories are about being wrong. And my first thought was, “I’ve lost it. I’ve become the crazy wrongness lady. I just imagined it everywhere,” which has happened. But a couple of months later, I actually had a chance to interview Ira Glass, who’s the host of the show. And I mentioned this to him, and he was like, “No actually, that’s true. In fact,” he says, “as a staff, we joke that every single episode of our show has the same crypto-theme. And the crypto-theme is: ‘I thought this one thing was going to happen and something else happened instead.’ And the thing is,” says Ira Glass, “we need this. We need these moments of surprise and reversal and wrongness to make these stories work.” And for the rest of us, audience members, as listeners, as readers, we eat this stuff up. We love things like plot twists and red herrings and surprise endings. When it comes to our stories, we love being wrong.
因为一些缘故 去年我在广播上 听了很多集的”我们的美国人生” 我听着听着 突然发现 这些故事全和犯错有关 我的第一个念头是 “我完了 我写书写疯了 四处都看到有关犯错的幻觉” 说真的是这样 但几个月后 我访问了那个广播节目的主持人 Ira Glass 我向他提到这件事 他回答我“事实上 你是对的”他说 “我们这些工作人员总是 开玩笑说每集节目之中的 秘密主题都是一样的 这个秘密主题就是 “我以为这件事会这样发生 结果其它事情发生了” 他说”但是，这就是我们需要的 我们需要这些意外 这些颠倒和错误 这些故事才能成立。” 而我们身为观众 听众、读者 我们吸收这些故事 我们喜欢故事转折 令人惊讶的结局 我们喜欢在故事里 看到犯错
But, you know, our stories are like this because our lives are like this. We think this one thing is going to happen and something else happens instead. George Bush thought he was going to invade Iraq, find a bunch of weapons of mass destruction, liberate the people and bring democracy to the Middle East. And something else happened instead. And Hosni Mubarak thought he was going to be the dictator of Egypt for the rest of his life, until he got too old or too sick and could pass the reigns of power onto his son. And something else happened instead. And maybe you thought you were going to grow up and marry your high school sweetheart and move back to your hometown and raise a bunch of kids together. And something else happened instead. And I have to tell you that I thought I was writing an incredibly nerdy book about a subject everybody hates for an audience that would never materialize. And something else happened instead.
但，故事会这样写 是因为人生就是这样 我们以为某些事情会这样发生 发生的却是其它事 小布什以为他入侵伊拉克 会找到大规模毁灭性武器 解放中东百姓，为他们带来民主自由 但却不是这样 穆巴拉克以为 他到死都会是埃及的独裁者 一直到他年老或卧病 再把他的权力交给下一代 但却不是这样 或许你想过 你会长大、嫁给你的初恋情人 搬回老家，生一群孩子 但却不是这样 我必须说 我以为我写的是一本很冷僻的书 有关一个人人讨厌的主题 为一些从不存在的读者 但却不是这样
(Laughter)
（笑声）
I mean, this is life. For good and for ill, we generate these incredible stories about the world around us, and then the world turns around and astonishes us. No offense, but this entire conference is an unbelievable monument to our capacity to get stuff wrong. We just spent an entire week talking about innovations and advancements and improvements, but you know why we need all of those innovations and advancements and improvements? Because half the stuff that’s the most mind-boggling and world-altering — TED 1998 — eh. (Laughter) Didn’t really work out that way, did it? (Laughter) Where’s my jet pack, Chris?
我们的人生 无论好坏 我们创造了啦 那包围我们的世界 而世界转过头来，令我们大吃一惊 说真的，这整个会议 充斥着这样难以置信的时刻 我们一次又一次地意识到自己的错误 我们花了整整一周 讨论创新，进步 和改善 你知道我们为甚么需要这些创新 进步和改善吗？ 因为其中有一半 来自最应该改变世界的 98年的TED 呃 （笑声） 真是出人意料之外啊，不是吗 （笑声） 我的逃生火箭在哪，Chris?
(Laughter)
（笑声）
(Applause)
（掌声）
So here we are again. And that’s how it goes. We come up with another idea. We tell another story. We hold another conference. The theme of this one, as you guys have now heard seven million times, is the rediscovery of wonder. And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, “Wow, I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.”
于是我们又在这里 事情就是这样 我们重新想出其它点子 我们有了新的故事 我们开了另一个会议 这次的主题是 如果你还没有听到耳朵出油的话 是重新找到想象的力量 对我来说 如果你真的想重新找到想象的力量 你需要离开 那个小小的、自我感觉良好的小圈圈 看看彼此 看看宇宙的 广大无垠 复杂神秘 然后真正地说 “哇，我不知道 或许我错了。”
Thank you.
谢谢各位
(Applause)
（掌声）
Thank you guys.
谢谢
(Applause)
（掌声）