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原文： Paul Graham - How To Think For Yourself，程序員、風險投資家和技術作家，著有《黑客與畫家》
譯註： 本文探討的 Conventional-minded，下文可能譯爲思想傳統、因循守舊或循規蹈矩的人，Independent-minded 可能譯爲獨立思考的或思想獨立的人
There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet.
有些工作如果做不到與同齡人思維方式不同就很難做好，例如成爲一個成功的科學家，只做到正確是不夠的。你的想法需要正確且新穎。你不能發表談論衆人皆知的觀點的論文。你需要去談其他人還不明白的事。
The same is true for investors. It's not enough for a public market investor to predict correctly how a company will do. If a lot of other people make the same prediction, the stock price will already reflect it, and there's no room to make money. The only valuable insights are the ones most other investors don't share.
對於投資者同樣如此。公開市場的投資者準確預測到一個公司會怎麼做是不夠的。如果大部分人做出相同的判斷，那早就體現在股價上了，也就沒有賺錢的空間。唯一有價值的是大多數投資者不分享的洞見。
You see this pattern with startup founders too. You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea, but that you know isn't — like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent airbeds on strangers' floors.
在創業者身上你能發現類似的模式。你不會動身創業去做每個人都覺得是好點子或其他公司已經在做的事。你應該去做一些大部分人覺得是壞主意但你覺得不是的事——像是爲幾千個業餘愛好者使用的迷你計算機編寫軟件，或是搭建一個讓人們在陌生人地板上租賃氣墊牀的網站。
Ditto for essayists. An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new.
對於作家也是如此。一篇聊着人們已經知道的內容是瞭然無趣的。你必須說點有新意的。
But this pattern isn't universal. In fact, it doesn't hold for most kinds of work. In most kinds of work — to be an administrator, for example — all you need is the first half. All you need is to be right. It's not essential that everyone else be wrong.
但這個模式也並非通用。實際上，對大多數的工作都不適用——例如，作爲一個管理員——你只要做到前半句。只要你做對就夠了。其他人做錯了也不要緊。
There's room for a little novelty in most kinds of work, but in practice there's a fairly sharp distinction between the kinds of work where it's essential to be independent-minded, and the kinds where it's not.
大多數類型的工作都有一點創新的空間，但實際上，是否注重獨立思考的工種之間有天壤之別。
I wish someone had told me about this distinction when I was a kid, because it's one of the most important things to think about when you're deciding what kind of work you want to do. Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? I suspect most people's unconscious mind will answer that question before their conscious mind has a chance to. I know mine does.
我很希望在我孩提時期有人能告訴我這一差異。因爲這是當你決定從事哪種類型工作時首要考慮的事情之一。你想從事那種僅當想法與衆不同才能勝出的工作嗎？我猜大多數人會先下意識地給出答案，而沒機會有意地去回答這個問題。至少我是如此。
Independent-mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture. Which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent-minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional-minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research.
獨立思考似乎更像一種天性而非後天培養。這意味着當你選錯工作的類型，你會覺得不悅。即便你天生具備獨立思考的能力，你會發現成爲一箇中層管理者是件令人沮喪的事。而如果你天性循規蹈矩，做原創研究對你而言將如逆風航行。
One difficulty here, though, is that people are often mistaken about where they fall on the spectrum from conventional- to independent-minded. Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. And in any case, it genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers'. And the independent-minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. [1]
難點在於，人們總誤以爲自己處在循規蹈矩者和獨立思考者。循規蹈矩的人不會覺得他們是因循守舊的。在任何情況下，他們天然地認爲所有事情都是他們自己做的主。他們所信奉的只是恰巧與同齡人相同。與此同時，對於獨立思考的人來說，他們常常沒意識到他們的想法與慣常守舊的人之間有怎樣的不同，至少在公開發表他們的想法之前。
By the time they reach adulthood, most people know roughly how smart they are (in the narrow sense of ability to solve pre-set problems), because they're constantly being tested and ranked according to it. But schools generally ignore independent-mindedness, except to the extent they try to suppress it. So we don't get anything like the same kind of feedback about how independent-minded we are.
成年以後，大多數人能粗略瞭解自己的聰明程度（指狹義上的解決預設問題的能力），因爲他們一直被測試，並以此作爲排名的依據。除非他們意欲打壓，學校通常會忽略獨立思考的能力。所以我們無法獲得類似的反饋，來了解自己獨立思考的程度。
There may even be a phenomenon like Dunning-Kruger at work, where the most conventional-minded people are confident that they're independent-minded, while the genuinely independent-minded worry they might not be independent-minded enough.
工作中甚至會有一種鄧寧-克魯格的現象出現（譯註：Dunning-Kruger，即認知偏差）最循規蹈矩的人自信地認爲自己是思維獨立的，而天性獨立思考的人卻擔心自己的思維不夠獨立。
Can you make yourself more independent-minded? I think so. This quality may be largely inborn, but there seem to be ways to magnify it, or at least not to suppress it.
有辦法讓自己更思維獨立嗎？我覺得可以，這個品質可能受天性影響很大，但有辦法去放大它，至少不去壓制它。
One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It's hard to be a conformist if you don't know what you're supposed to conform to. Though again, it may be that such people already are independent-minded. A conventional-minded person would probably feel anxious not knowing what other people thought, and make more effort to find out.
最有效的方法之一是像很多書呆子實踐的：少去了解傳統觀念。你很難成爲一個循規蹈矩的人，如果你連要遵守什麼都不知道。話說回來，這樣的人可能已經是思想獨立的了。一個循規蹈矩的人可能會因爲不知道其他人的想法而感到焦慮，並花更大力氣去找到答案。
It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you're surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you'll have the opposite experience: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more.
你周圍的人很重要。如果你被循規蹈矩的人所包圍，這會限制你能表達的想法，並最終限制你能產生怎樣的想法。但如果你周圍的是思想獨立的，你會有相反的體驗：聽到其他人聊着令人驚奇的事，會鼓勵你多去思考。
Because the independent-minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional-minded people, they tend to self-segregate once they have a chance to. The problem with high school is that they haven't yet had a chance to. Plus high school tends to be an inward-looking little world whose inhabitants lack confidence, both of which magnify the forces of conformism. And so high school is often a bad time for the independent-minded. But there is some advantage even here: it teaches you what to avoid. If you later find yourself in a situation that makes you think "this is like high school," you know you should get out. [2]
因爲思想獨立的人會發現被循規蹈矩的人所包圍是很難受的，他們一有機會就會趨向於自我隔離。問題是，高中時期他們沒有這樣的機會。加上高中更趨向於一個內向的小世界，住着不自信的居民。兩者都放大了因循守舊的力量。因此，高中對於思想獨立的人而言通常不是一段好時光。但也有一個好處：它教會你要避開什麼。如果你後面發現自己身處一個“像高中”的地方，你就知道你該走人了。
Another place where the independent- and conventional-minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent-minded; otherwise the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent-minded ones, so as the company grows, the original spirit of independent-mindedness is inevitably diluted. This causes all kinds of problems besides the obvious one that the company starts to suck. One of the strangest is that the founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees. [3]
另一個將思想獨立者和循規蹈矩者放在一起的地方是成功的創業公司。創始人和早期員工幾乎都是思想獨立的；否則創業不會成功。但隨着公司發展，循規蹈矩的人會遠遠多於思想獨立的人，最初的獨立思考精神不可避免地被沖淡了。除了公司開始陷入困境這樣明顯的問題之外，還會導致各種問題。最奇怪的一個是，創始人發現，比起自己公司的員工，和其他公司的創始人能更自在地交談。
Fortunately you don't have to spend all your time with independent-minded people. It's enough to have one or two you can talk to regularly. And once you find them, they're usually as eager to talk as you are; they need you too. Although universities no longer have the kind of monopoly they used to have on education, good universities are still an excellent way to meet independent-minded people. Most students will still be conventional-minded, but you'll at least find clumps of independent-minded ones, rather than the near zero you may have found in high school.
幸運的是，你不必將所有時間都花在思想獨立的人身上。有一兩個可以定期交談的就足夠了。一旦找到他們，他們通常和你一樣渴望交談；他們也需要你。儘管大學不再像過去那樣壟斷教育，但好的大學仍然是結識思想獨立的人的絕佳方式。大多數學生仍然循規蹈矩的，但你至少會發現一部分獨立思考的學生，不像你在高中，可能一個都沒有。
It also works to go in the other direction: as well as cultivating a small collection of independent-minded friends, to try to meet as many different types of people as you can. It will decrease the influence of your immediate peers if you have several other groups of peers. Plus if you're part of several different worlds, you can often import ideas from one to another.
另一個方向也是可行的：除了培養一小羣思想獨立的朋友之外，還可以嘗試結識儘可能多不同類型的人。如果你有其他幾組不同類型的朋友，將降低你在當下的同行影響力。另外，假如你身處多個不同的世界，通常可以將想法從一個導入另一個。
But by different types of people, I don't mean demographically different. For this technique to work, they have to think differently. So while it's an excellent idea to go and visit other countries, you can probably find people who think differently right around the corner. When I meet someone who knows a lot about something unusual (which includes practically everyone, if you dig deep enough), I try to learn what they know that other people don't. There are almost always surprises here. It's a good way to make conversation when you meet strangers, but I don't do it to make conversation. I really want to know.
但我所說的不同類型的人並非指人口統計學上的不同。爲了使這個方法奏效，他們必須做不同的思考。因此，儘管去其他國家旅行是個好主意，但你可能會在某個角落就找想法不同的人。當我遇到一個對一些不尋常的事情瞭解很多的人（如果你深入挖掘的話，可能涵蓋每個人），我會嘗試瞭解他們所知道而其他人不知道的事。驚喜幾乎總在這裏。和陌生人交談是很好的方式，但我不是爲了交談。我真的很想了解。
You can expand the source of influences in time as well as space, by reading history. When I read history I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past. How did things look to them? This is hard to do, but worth the effort for the same reason it's worth travelling far to triangulate a point.
你可以通過閱讀歷史來擴展時間和空間的影響來源。當我閱讀歷史時，我不只是要了解發生了什麼，而要試着深入瞭解過去的人們是怎麼想的。他們怎麼看待事物？這不是件容易的事，但值得付出努力，因爲同樣值得遠行去三角測量（triangulate）一個點。
You can also take more explicit measures to prevent yourself from automatically adopting conventional opinions. The most general is to cultivate an attitude of skepticism. When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself "Is that true?" Don't say it out loud. I'm not suggesting that you impose on everyone who talks to you the burden of proving what they say, but rather that you take upon yourself the burden of evaluating what they say.
你還可以採取更明確的措施來防止自己自動採納常規的觀點。最普遍的做法是培養一種懷疑的態度。當你聽到他人的觀點時，停下來問問自己“這是真的嗎？”不用說出聲。我不是建議你，讓每個與你交談的人承擔證明他們所說的話的責任，而是由你擔起評估他們觀點的責任。
Treat it as a puzzle. You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong. See if you can guess which. The end goal is not to find flaws in the things you're told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. So this game should be an exciting quest for novelty, not a boring protocol for intellectual hygiene. And you'll be surprised, when you start asking "Is this true?", how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you're more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few.
把它視作謎題。你知道，一些被接受的想法，後來被證明是錯的。看看你能否猜中是哪個。最終目標不是在你被告知的事情中找缺陷，而是找到被“錯誤”的想法所掩蓋的新想法。這個遊戲應該是一個令人興奮的新奇探索，而不是一個無聊的智力衛生協議。當你開始問“這是真的嗎？”，會覺得很驚訝，答案不是當下立判的肯定。如果你有任何的想象，你更可能擁有太多的線索去探索而不是太少。
More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. Some of the most powerful influences are implicit. How do you even notice these? By standing back and watching how other people get their ideas.
更普遍地說，你的目標應該是不要讓任何事情未經檢查就進入腦袋，並且事情並不總是以陳述的形式進入你的頭腦。一些最強有力的影響是隱式的。那你怎麼注意到它？退後幾步，觀察其他人如何獲得他們的想法。
When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves. The most obvious are in fashion: you notice a few people wearing a certain kind of shirt, and then more and more, until half the people around you are wearing the same shirt. You may not care much what you wear, but there are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those. Not just because you want sovereignty over your own thoughts, but because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking. [4]
當你站得足夠遠，你可以看到想法像波浪一樣在人羣中傳播。最明顯的是時尚：你注意到有幾個人穿着某種襯衫，然後越來越多，直到你周圍有一半的人穿着同樣的襯衫。你可能不太在意你穿什麼，但也有思想潮流，而你肯定不想參與其中。不僅僅是因爲你想要對自己的想法擁有主權，還因爲不入流的想法很可能會引發一些有趣的事情。尋找未被發現的想法的最佳地點是，沒有其他人關注的地方。
To go beyond this general advice, we need to look at the internal structure of independent-mindedness — at the individual muscles we need to exercise, as it were. It seems to me that it has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity.
爲了超越這個一般建議，我們需要看看獨立思考的內部結構——可以說，我們需要鍛鍊特定的肌肉。在我看來，它包含三個部分：苛求真相、拒絕被告知要怎麼想，以及好奇心。
Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief. For most people, degree of belief rushes unexamined toward the extremes: the unlikely becomes impossible, and the probable becomes certain. [5] To the independent-minded, this seems unpardonably sloppy. They're willing to have anything in their heads, from highly speculative hypotheses to (apparent) tautologies, but on subjects they care about, everything has to be labelled with a carefully considered degree of belief. [6]
對真相的苛求不僅意味着不相信虛假的事情。它意味對信任程度要保持謹慎。對大多數人來說，信任程度未被檢查就衝向極端：不太可能變成不可能，而可能變成一定。 [5] 對於獨立思考的人來說，這似乎是不可原諒的草率。從高度投機的假設到（明顯）正確的陳述，他們願意在頭腦中有各種東西，但在他們關心的主題上，每件事都必須貼上經過仔細思考的信任程度標籤。
The independent-minded thus have a horror of ideologies, which require one to accept a whole collection of beliefs at once, and to treat them as articles of faith. To an independent-minded person that would seem revolting, just as it would seem to someone fastidious about food to take a bite of a submarine sandwich filled with a large variety of ingredients of indeterminate age and provenance.
因此，獨立思考的人對意識形態感到恐懼，這需要一個人同時接受一整套信仰，並將它們視爲信條。對於思想獨立的人來說，這似乎令人反感，就如同對老饕而言，咬一口裝滿不同年份、來源不明的成分的潛艇三明治（submarine sandwich）一樣。
Without this fastidiousness about truth, you can't be truly independent-minded. It's not enough just to have resistance to being told what to think. Those kind of people reject conventional ideas only to replace them with the most random conspiracy theories. And since these conspiracy theories have often been manufactured to capture them, they end up being less independent-minded than ordinary people, because they're subject to a much more exacting master than mere convention. [7]
沒有這種對真相的苛求，你就不能真正地思想獨立。僅僅拒絕被告知要怎麼想是不夠的。那種拒絕傳統觀念的人，只是用最隨意的陰謀論代替它們。而且這些陰謀論往往是爲了抓住他們的心而製造的，最終會使得他們的思想比普通人更不獨立，因爲他們受制於一個比單純的傳統更嚴格的控制。
Can you increase your fastidiousness about truth? I would think so. In my experience, merely thinking about something you're fastidious about causes that fastidiousness to grow. If so, this is one of those rare virtues we can have more of merely by wanting it. And if it's like other forms of fastidiousness, it should also be possible to encourage in children. I certainly got a strong dose of it from my father. [8]
可以提高對真相苛求的能力嗎？我覺得可以。以我的經驗，僅僅想着你苛求的事情就會帶來苛求度的增長。如果是這樣，這是我們可以擁有的少數幾個僅僅通過想要就可以獲得的美德。如果它像其他形式的苛求一樣，也應該可以鼓勵孩子。我確實從我父親那裏得到了很多。
The second component of independent-mindedness, resistance to being told what to think, is the most visible of the three. But even this is often misunderstood. The big mistake people make about it is to think of it as a merely negative quality. The language we use reinforces that idea. You're unconventional. You don't care what other people think. But it's not just a kind of immunity. In the most independent-minded people, the desire not to be told what to think is a positive force. It's not mere skepticism, but an active delight in ideas that subvert the conventional wisdom, the more counterintuitive the better.
獨立思想的第二個組成部分，即拒絕被告知該想什麼，是這三個組成部分中最明顯的。但即使這樣也經常被誤解。人們對此犯的最大錯誤是，認爲它僅僅是一種消極的品質。我們所使用的語言強化了這一想法。你很反傳統。你不在乎別人怎麼想。但這不僅僅是一種免疫力。在思想最獨立的人中，不被告知如何思考的願望是一種積極的力量。這不僅僅是懷疑，而是對顛覆慣常思維的積極享受，越反直覺越好。
Some of the most novel ideas seemed at the time almost like practical jokes. Think how often your reaction to a novel idea is to laugh. I don't think it's because novel ideas are funny per se, but because novelty and humor share a certain kind of surprisingness. But while not identical, the two are close enough that there is a definite correlation between having a sense of humor and being independent-minded — just as there is between being humorless and being conventional-minded. [9]
一些最新穎的想法在當時看來幾乎像是惡作劇。想想你有多少次對一個新想法的反應是笑。我不認爲這是因爲新穎的想法本身很有趣，而是因爲新奇和幽默都有某種令人驚訝的地方。雖然不完全相同，但兩者足夠相近，以至於在具有幽默感和獨立思想之間存在一定的相關性——就像在沒有幽默感和因循守舊之間存在一定的相關性一樣。
I don't think we can significantly increase our resistance to being told what to think. It seems the most innate of the three components of independent-mindedness; people who have this quality as adults usually showed all too visible signs of it as children. But if we can't increase our resistance to being told what to think, we can at least shore it up, by surrounding ourselves with other independent-minded people.
我不認爲我們可以顯著增加我們拒絕對被告知該怎麼想的能力。它似乎是獨立思想的三個組成部分中最受天性影響的；成年後具有這種品質的人通常在孩童時代就表現出明顯的跡象。但是，如果我們不能增加對被告知該怎麼想的抵抗力，我們至少可以通過與其他思想獨立的人在一起來維持它。
The third component of independent-mindedness, curiosity, may be the most interesting. To the extent that we can give a brief answer to the question of where novel ideas come from, it's curiosity. That's what people are usually feeling before having them.
獨立思想的第三個組成部分是好奇心，可能是最意思的一部分。在某種程度上，我們可以對新穎想法從何而來給出一個簡短的回答，那就是好奇心。這是人們在擁有它們之前的一般感受。
In my experience, independent-mindedness and curiosity predict one another perfectly. Everyone I know who's independent-minded is deeply curious, and everyone I know who's conventional-minded isn't. Except, curiously, children. All small children are curious. Perhaps the reason is that even the conventional-minded have to be curious in the beginning, in order to learn what the conventions are. Whereas the independent-minded are the gluttons of curiosity, who keep eating even after they're full. [10]
在我的經驗中，思想獨立和好奇心可以完美地相互預測。我認識的每個思想獨立的人都有很強的好奇心，而我認識的每個思想傳統的人都沒有。孩子們除外。所有小孩子都很好奇。也許是因爲，即使是因循守舊的人，一開始也必須好奇，才能瞭解什麼是慣例。而思想獨立的人是好奇的大胃王，即使喫飽了也會繼續喫東西。
The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it.
思想獨立的三個組成部分協同工作：對真理的苛求和拒絕被告知要如何思考會在你的大腦中留下空間，而好奇心會找到新的想法來填補它。
Interestingly, the three components can substitute for one another in much the same way muscles can. If you're sufficiently fastidious about truth, you don't need to be as resistant to being told what to think, because fastidiousness alone will create sufficient gaps in your knowledge. And either one can compensate for curiosity, because if you create enough space in your brain, your discomfort at the resulting vacuum will add force to your curiosity. Or curiosity can compensate for them: if you're sufficiently curious, you don't need to clear space in your brain, because the new ideas you discover will push out the conventional ones you acquired by default.
有趣的是，這三種成分可以相互替代，就像肌肉（譯註：代償）一樣。如果你對真相足夠苛求，你就不必拒絕被告知要怎麼想，因爲苛求本身就會在你的知識中形成足夠的鴻溝。任何一種都可以彌補好奇心，原因是如果你在大腦中創造了足夠的空間，你對由此產生真空的不適感，會增加你的好奇心。或者說好奇心可以彌補它們：如果你足夠好奇，你不需要清理大腦空間，因爲你發現的新想法會推出你默認獲得的慣性思維。
Because the components of independent-mindedness are so interchangeable, you can have them to varying degrees and still get the same result. So there is not just a single model of independent-mindedness. Some independent-minded people are openly subversive, and others are quietly curious. They all know the secret handshake though.
因爲獨立思想的組成部分是可以互換的，你可以在不同程度上擁有它們，但仍然獲得相同的結果。因此，不存在獨立思想的單一模型。一些思想獨立的人是公然顛覆的，而另一些人則是靜默地好奇。他們都知道祕密握手（譯註：識別相同成員的方式，典型的祕密握手是將一個人的手指或拇指放在特定位置，其他成員可以識別該位置，而對於非成員則是一般的握手）。
Is there a way to cultivate curiosity? To start with, you want to avoid situations that suppress it. How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something.
有沒有培養好奇心的方法？首先，你要避免扼制它的情況。你目前從事的工作在多大程度上激發了你的好奇心？如果答案是“不多”，也許你應該做出一些改變。
The most important active step you can take to cultivate your curiosity is probably to seek out the topics that engage it. Few adults are equally curious about everything, and it doesn't seem as if you can choose which topics interest you. So it's up to you to find them. Or invent them, if necessary.
爲了培養你的好奇心，你可以採取的最重要的正向步驟，可能是尋找與之相關的話題。很少有成年人對所有事情都同樣好奇，而且你似乎無法選擇自己感興趣的主題。因此，取決於你能否找到他們。或者在必要時發明它們。
Another way to increase your curiosity is to indulge it, by investigating things you're interested in. Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions.
增加好奇心的另一種方法是，通過調查你感興趣的事物來沉浸其中。在這方面，好奇心與大部分食慾不同：沉迷於它往往結果是增加而不是滿足。疑問會帶來更多問題。
Curiosity seems to be more individual than fastidiousness about truth or resistance to being told what to think. To the degree people have the latter two, they're usually pretty general, whereas different people can be curious about very different things. So perhaps curiosity is the compass here. Perhaps, if your goal is to discover novel ideas, your motto should not be "do what you love" so much as "do what you're curious about."
好奇心似乎比對真理的苛求或拒絕被告知要怎麼想更個性化。就人們擁有後兩者的程度而言，它們通常非常籠統，而不同的人可能對非常不同的事物感到好奇。所以，也許好奇心是這裏的指南針。或許，如果你的目標是發現新穎的想法，那麼你的座右銘不應該是“做你喜歡的事”，而是“做你感興趣的事”。
Notes
作者注
[1] One convenient consequence of the fact that no one identifies as conventional-minded is that you can say what you like about conventional-minded people without getting in too much trouble. When I wrote "The Four Quadrants of Conformism" I expected a firestorm of rage from the aggressively conventional-minded, but in fact it was quite muted. They sensed that there was something about the essay that they disliked intensely, but they had a hard time finding a specific passage to pin it on.
沒有人自認爲是因循守舊者這一事實的一個容易接受的結果是，你可以說出你喜歡因循守舊者的話，而不會遇到太多麻煩。當我寫“墨守成規的四個象限”時，我預期會引起激進的因循守舊者的暴怒，但實際上卻風平浪靜。他們會感覺到這篇文章有一些他們很不喜歡的地方，但很難找到一個具體的段落來印證。
[2] When I ask myself what in my life is like high school, the answer is Twitter. It's not just full of conventional-minded people, as anything its size will inevitably be, but subject to violent storms of conventional-mindedness that remind me of descriptions of Jupiter. But while it probably is a net loss to spend time there, it has at least made me think more about the distinction between independent- and conventional-mindedness, which I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.
當我問自己，我的高中生活是怎樣的，答案是跟推特一樣。因爲它的空間所限，高中不可避免地充滿了循規蹈矩之人，同時還會受到傳統思想的猛烈風暴，這讓我想起了對木星的描述。雖然花時間在那裏可能是一種淨虧損，但它至少讓我更多地思考獨立思想和傳統思想之間的區別，否則我可能不會這樣做。
[3] The decrease in independent-mindedness in growing startups is still an open problem, but there may be solutions.
成長中的初創公司的思想獨立性下降仍然是一個懸而未決的問題，但可能有解決方案。
Founders can delay the problem by making a conscious effort only to hire independent-minded people. Which of course also has the ancillary benefit that they have better ideas.
創始人可以通過有意識地只僱傭思想獨立的人來延緩問題的發生。當然，這還有一個附帶的好處，那就是他們有更好的想法。
Another possible solution is to create policies that somehow disrupt the force of conformism, much as control rods slow chain reactions, so that the conventional-minded aren't as dangerous. The physical separation of Lockheed's Skunk Works may have had this as a side benefit. Recent examples suggest employee forums like Slack may not be an unmitigated good.
另一種可能的解決方案是制定政策，以某種方式破壞因循守舊者的力量，就像控制棒減緩連鎖反應一樣，使因循守舊者不那麼危險。洛克希德臭鼬工廠的物理隔離可能有一個附帶的好處。最近的例子表明，像 Slack 這樣的員工論壇可能不是一個絕對的好東西。
譯註： 臭鼬工廠是洛克希德公司的核心部門，擔任祕密研究飛行器爲主，包括美國許多著名的偵察機、無人機，因當時其廠址毗鄰一家散發着惡臭的塑料廠，而被工程師在組內稱之臭鼬工廠，該部門直接受公司最高層垂直領導。
The most radical solution would be to grow revenues without growing the company. You think hiring that junior PR person will be cheap, compared to a programmer, but what will be the effect on the average level of independent-mindedness in your company? (The growth in staff relative to faculty seems to have had a similar effect on universities.) Perhaps the rule about outsourcing work that's not your "core competency" should be augmented by one about outsourcing work done by people who'd ruin your culture as employees.
最激進的解決方案是在不發展公司的情況下增加收入。你覺得僱傭一個初級公關人員會比程序員便宜，但是對公司的獨立思想的平均水平有什麼影響？ （教職工的增長似乎對大學產生了類似的影響）也許關於外包工作的規則除了不是你公司的“核心競爭力”，還應該增加一個規則，這些外包工作由那些會破壞公司文化的僱員完成。
譯註： 公關人員，PR，Public Relationship
Some investment firms already seem to be able to grow revenues without growing the number of employees. Automation plus the ever increasing articulation of the "tech stack" suggest this may one day be possible for product companies.
一些投資公司似乎已經能夠在不增加員工數量的情況下增加收入。自動化加上不斷提高的“技術棧”清晰度表明，有朝一日，這對產品公司而言是可行的。
[4] There are intellectual fashions in every field, but their influence varies. One of the reasons politics, for example, tends to be boring is that it's so extremely subject to them. The threshold for having opinions about politics is much lower than the one for having opinions about set theory. So while there are some ideas in politics, in practice they tend to be swamped by waves of intellectual fashion.
每個領域都有思想潮流，但它們的影響各不相同。例如，政治往往很無聊的原因之一是，非常受制於政治本身。對政治有意見的門檻遠低於對集合論有意見的門檻。因此，雖然在政治上有一些想法，但在實踐中，它們往往會被思想潮流的浪潮所淹沒。
[5] The conventional-minded are often fooled by the strength of their opinions into believing that they're independent-minded. But strong convictions are not a sign of independent-mindedness. Rather the opposite.
因循守舊者經常被他們的觀點所愚弄，即相信他們纔是思想獨立者。但堅定的信念並不是思想獨立的標誌。而是相反。
[6] Fastidiousness about truth doesn't imply that an independent-minded person won't be dishonest, but that he won't be deluded. It's sort of like the definition of a gentleman as someone who is never unintentionally rude.
對真相的苛求並不意味着一個思想獨立的人不會不誠實，但他不會被欺騙。這有點像紳士的定義，即一個永遠不會無意粗魯的人。
[7] You see this especially among political extremists. They think themselves nonconformists, but actually they're niche conformists. Their opinions may be different from the average person's, but they are often more influenced by their peers' opinions than the average person's are.
你在政治極端分子中更能看到這一點。他們認爲自己是不因循守舊的人，但實際上他們是小衆的因循守舊者。他們的觀點可能與普通人不同，但他們往往比普通人更受同類人觀點的影響。
[8] If we broaden the concept of fastidiousness about truth so that it excludes pandering, bogusness, and pomposity as well as falsehood in the strict sense, our model of independent-mindedness can expand further into the arts.
如果我們擴大對真相苛求的概念，使其排除拉皮條、虛假和浮誇以及嚴格意義上的虛假，我們獨立思想的模型可以進一步擴展到藝術。
[9] This correlation is far from perfect, though. Gödel and Dirac don't seem to have been very strong in the humor department. But someone who is both "neurotypical" and humorless is very likely to be conventional-minded.
然而，這種相關性遠非完美。哥德爾和狄拉克在幽默方面似乎不是很強。但是一個既“神經質”又沒有幽默感的人很可能是因循守舊者。
譯註： Kurt Gödel，庫爾特·哥德爾，奧匈帝國數學家、哲學家和邏輯學家，死於因人格障礙導致的營養不良。
Paul Dirac，保羅·狄拉克，英國理論物理學家，1933年與薛定諤一同獲得諾貝爾物理學獎，狄拉克發展了量子力學，提出了著名的狄拉克方程。因其工作細緻且沉默寡言而著稱，其劍橋的同事開玩笑地定義了一個“狄拉克”的單位，即每小時一個字。
[10] Exception: gossip. Almost everyone is curious about gossip
例外：八卦。幾乎每個人都對八卦好奇。