原创 Koji 2025-04-03 07:38 上海

只要一直 build 就会有好事发生。

我的 Notion 里有一个置顶文件，叫做「值得每年重读一遍的文章」，我会在每年的 12 月 31 日，安静地把它们全部重读一遍。

之前，这里面收录了 6 篇文章，今天，又添加了第 7 篇：来自 Y Combinator 创始人 Paul Graham 这两天刚发表的《What To Do^[1] (做点什么好呢？)》

我也迫不及待的想分享这一篇给大家。它回答了两个关键问题：

人活着最根本的价值在哪里？答案是：创造真正美好的新东西。

创造为何如此重要？是因为它体现了人类最核心的特质：深度思考的能力和探索未知的勇气。

但在放出全文翻译之前，我想先写点最近的个人感受。

前不久，因为 Manus 发布后全网热议，出现了很多批评的声音。让我再次想起自己一直放在个人网站^[2]的一句话，来自多抓鱼创始人猫助：

批评时总显得聪明，就像建造时总显得笨拙。

这句话与 Paul Graham 在文章中的观点不谋而合。

我的朋友 indigo 也在他的公众号中向大家推荐了这篇文章，他同时写道：

”一个真正充实的人生，既需要遵守传统的道德义务（比如善良与责任感），更要有意识地追求创造与突破。只有这样，人类的精神才不会停滞，个体也才可能真正活出自己的潜能与意义。人应该做的最根本的事情，就是去做一个有创造力的人，去创造那些尚不存在但却美好、深刻且富有意义的新东西。“

昨晚我们和 StressWatch^[3] 的创始人 Patrick 录完播客，一群人走在上海街头，Patrick 和我聊起「运气」的话题，我再次想起下面这张图：

这张图在试着回答这个问题：「如何才能拥有好运气呢？」

它给出的答案是：运气是存在面积的；你一生中拥有多少运气，就等于你创造了多少价值，乘以你告诉了多少人。

是的。

多做事，然后要让尽可能多的人知道你做的这些事。

Paul Graham 的文章我每篇必读，因为它们总能同时提供信念感和方法论。一本《黑客与画家》^[4]几乎被我翻烂了，在我创业初期，这些文章给了我很多启发。

随着 PG 年龄和智慧的增长，他开始探讨人生意义和工作价值这类话题。虽然世上关于这些主题的文章数不胜数，但 PG 的写作独树一帜——他既犀利又温柔，既富有洞察又充满共情。

接下来，我会分享这篇文章的中英文对照版。

我尝试在 Claude 3.7 的帮助下进行了人肉翻译润色。但我保留了英文版，因为我发现无论是我自己、还是靠 Claude 3.7，都难以完全准确地翻译这篇文章。只有阅读英文原文，才能最准确地理解这篇文章。

《做点什么好呢？》

What To Do

What should one do? That may seem a strange question, but it's not meaningless or unanswerable. It's the sort of question kids ask before they learn not to ask big questions. I only came across it myself in the process of investigating something else. But once I did, I thought I should at least try to answer it.

一个人应该做点什么好呢？

这可能听起来是个奇怪的问题，但它并非毫无意义或无法回答。

孩子们常常会问这样的大问题，直到他们被大人教育“不要再问这种宏大叙事的问题了”。

我最近在研究其他东西时，偶遇了这个问题。既然遇到了，我想我应该试着回答一下它吧。

So what should one do? One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious. But is there anything else? When I ask that, the answer that pops up is Make good new things.

那么，一个人，应该，做什么呢？

首先：帮助他人，爱护世界。这两点毋庸置疑。

但除此之外呢？当我思考这个问题时，浮现在脑海中的答案是：

创造美好的新东西。

I can't prove that one should do this, any more than I can prove that one should help people or take care of the world. We're talking about first principles here. But I can explain why this principle makes sense. The most impressive thing humans can do is to think. It may be the most impressive thing that can be done. And the best kind of thinking, or more precisely the best proof that one has thought well, is to make good new things.

我无法证明为什么一个人应该做这个，就像我也无法证明为什么一个人应该帮助他人或爱护世界。这些都是基本原则。

但我可以解释为什么这个原则有意义——

人类最令人印象深刻的能力就是：「思考」。这可能是世界上最了不起的事情。

然而，「最好的思考」，或者说证明人类的思考的最佳方式，就是去创造美好的「新东西(new things)」。

I mean new things in a very general sense. Newton's physics was a good new thing. Indeed, the first version of this principle was to have good new ideas. But that didn't seem general enough: it didn't include making art or music, for example, except insofar as they embody new ideas. And while they may embody new ideas, that's not all they embody, unless you stretch the word "idea" so uselessly thin that it includes everything that goes through your nervous system.

我所说的「新东西(new things)」含义很广。牛顿的物理学就是一个很好的新东西。

最初我本来想说创造美好的「新想法(new ideas)」，但这个说法似乎太局限了——它没法包括艺术或音乐创作，除非我们把艺术和音乐也看作是一种 idea。但艺术和音乐不仅仅是 idea，它们承载的内容远不止于此。

Even for ideas that one has consciously, though, I prefer the phrasing "make good new things." There are other ways to describe the best kind of thinking. To make discoveries, for example, or to understand something more deeply than others have. But how well do you understand something if you can't make a model of it, or write about it? Indeed, trying to express what you understand is not just a way to prove that you understand it, but a way to understand it better.

所以，我更喜欢用「创造美好的新东西(new things)」这个说法。

其实也有很多别的方式，可以展现什么是「最好的思考」。例如，去发现新的东西，或者比别人更透彻地理解某些事情

但这些方式，都不如真的去「创造美好的新东西」。

如果你不把一个思考创造出来，使它成为某种「新东西」，那就说明你可能还没真正理解它。

把思考创造出来，不仅能检验你的思考能力，还能让思考更全面、更通透。

Another reason I like this phrasing is that it biases us toward creation. It causes us to prefer the kind of ideas that are naturally seen as making things rather than, say, making critical observations about things other people have made. Those are ideas too, and sometimes valuable ones, but it's easy to trick oneself into believing they're more valuable than they are. Criticism seems sophisticated, and making new things often seems awkward, especially at first; and yet it's precisely those first steps that are most rare and valuable.

我喜欢这个说法，是因为它鼓励人们把重心放在创造上。

它让我们更倾向于做出新东西，而不是去评判他人的作品。当然，评判也是一种想法，有时也很有价值。但评判别人时，我们很容易误认为自己很了不起。

批评时总显得聪明，而创造新东西往往显得笨拙，尤其是在开始阶段。

不过，正是这些看似笨拙的开始最为可贵，也最为难得。

Is newness essential? I think so. Obviously it's essential in science. If you copied a paper of someone else's and published it as your own, it would seem not merely unimpressive but dishonest. And it's similar in the arts. A copy of a good painting can be a pleasing thing, but it's not impressive in the way the original was. Which in turn implies it's not impressive to make the same thing over and over, however well; you're just copying yourself.

那么，"新"真的很重要吗？我认为是的。

在科研领域，这一点显而易见。如果你抄袭别人的论文，不仅不会令人刮目相看，还会被视为不诚实的行为。

艺术领域也是如此。一幅画作的复制品可能很美，但它永远无法像原作那样令人惊叹。

同样的道理，不断重复创作同样的东西，不管做得多好，都不会让人印象深刻，因为那只是在复制自己。

Note though that we're talking about a different kind of should with this principle. Taking care of people and the world are shoulds in the sense that they're one's duty, but making good new things is a should in the sense that this is how to live to one's full potential. Historically most rules about how to live have been a mix of both kinds of should, though usually with more of the former than the latter.

请注意：我们再谈论两种不同的"应该"：

"应该帮助他人和爱护世界"是人们需要去履行的责任，而"应该去创造美好的新东西"则是为了让每个人都活出人生最大的潜能。

从前人们定下的生活准则中，通常都混合了这两种"应该"，但前者往往更多一些。

For most of history the question "What should one do?" got much the same answer everywhere, whether you asked Cicero or Confucius. You should be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest. There was a long stretch where in some parts of the world the answer became "Serve God," but in practice it was still considered good to be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest. And indeed this recipe would have seemed right to most Victorians. But there's nothing in it about taking care of the world or making new things, and that's a bit worrying, because it seems like this question should be a timeless one. The answer shouldn't change much.

过去，无论你是向西塞罗还是孔子求教"人生应该做点什么好呢?"，答案都大同小异：人应该智慧、勇敢、诚实、节制、正义，坚持传统媒体，为公众利益服务。

后来在一些地区，答案变成了"侍奉上帝"。但实际上，人们依然认为应该保持上述美德。

即使到了维多利亚时代，人们仍然认同这些价值观。

然而，这些传统答案中既没有提到"爱护世界"，也没有提到"创造新东西"。

这让人困惑，因为这个问题应该是超越时代的，答案不应该随时代改变太多。

I'm not too worried that the traditional answers don't mention taking care of the world. Obviously people only started to care about that once it became clear we could ruin it. But how can making good new things be important if the traditional answers don't mention it?

传统答案没有提到"爱护世界"很正常，毕竟人类是在认识自己可能毁灭地球之后，才开始关注环保。

但是，如果「创造美好的新东西」真的那么重要，为什么传统答案中却从未提及？

The traditional answers were answers to a slightly different question. They were answers to the question of how to be, rather than what to do. The audience didn't have a lot of choice about what to do. The audience up till recent centuries was the landowning class, which was also the political class. They weren't choosing between doing physics and writing novels. Their work was foreordained: manage their estates, participate in politics, fight when necessary. It was ok to do certain other kinds of work in one's spare time, but ideally one didn't have any. Cicero's De Officiis is one of the great classical answers to the question of how to live, and in it he explicitly says that he wouldn't even be writing it if he hadn't been excluded from public life by recent political upheavals.

这是因为，在传统的答案中，其实回答的是另一个问题：他们在回答"如何做人(how to be)"，而不是"做什么事(what to do)"。

在过去的时代，人们其实没有太多选择。

直到最近几个世纪前，能提出这类问题的都是地主阶级，也就是政治阶级。他们不需要在物理研究和写小说之间做选择，因为他们的工作早已注定：管理土地、参与政治、必要时参战。

虽然他们可以在空闲时间做一些其他工作，但理想状态下，他们根本不应该有空闲时间。

西塞罗的《论责任》是一部关于“如何生活(how to live)”的经典著作，他在书中明确表示，如果不是因为政治动荡让他被排除在公共生活之外，他甚至不会写这本书。

There were of course people doing what we would now call "original work," and they were often admired for it, but they weren't seen as models. Archimedes knew that he was the first to prove that a sphere has 2/3 the volume of the smallest enclosing cylinder and was very pleased about it. But you don't find ancient writers urging their readers to emulate him. They regarded him more as a prodigy than a model.

当然，在那个时代也有人在做原创性工作。虽然他们常常受人钦佩，但并不被视为榜样。

阿基米德发现球体的体积是其外接圆柱体的 2/3，这让他感到很自豪。但是，古代作家从不鼓励读者效仿他。

在他们眼中，阿基米德更像是一个天才，而不是一个可以模仿的榜样。

Now many more of us can follow Archimedes's example and devote most of our attention to one kind of work. He turned out to be a model after all, along with a collection of other people that his contemporaries would have found it strange to treat as a distinct group, because the vein of people making new things ran at right angles to the social hierarchy.

现在，我们很多人都可以和阿基米德一样，把大部分时间和精力都投入到一种工作中。

阿基米德最终成为了人们的榜样，还有其他一些人也是如此。

在阿基米德的时代，人们会觉得把这些人当作一个特别的群体很奇怪，因为那些创造新东西的人与当时的社会等级制度是不相符的，他们凭借创新能力而不是社会地位脱颖而出。

What kinds of new things count? I'd rather leave that question to the makers of them. It would be a risky business to try to define any kind of threshold, because new kinds of work are often despised at first. Raymond Chandler was writing literal pulp fiction, and he's now recognized as one of the best writers of the twentieth century. Indeed this pattern is so common that you can use it as a recipe: if you're excited about some kind of work that's not considered prestigious and you can explain what everyone else is overlooking about it, then this is not merely a kind of work that's ok to do, but one to seek out.

那么，什么样的新东西才算有价值的创造呢？——这个问题最好留给创造者们自己判断。

为它设定标准是很危险的，因为新东西在刚出现时往往不被重视。

比如雷蒙德·钱德勒，他最初只是在写难登大雅之堂的通俗小说，如今却被认为是20世纪最伟大的作家之一。

这种模式很常见，你甚至可以用它来找寻方向：

如果你热爱一份不被重视的工作，而且你明白它的独特价值，那就大胆去做吧！

The other reason I wouldn't want to define any thresholds is that we don't need them. The kind of people who make good new things don't need rules to keep them honest.

我们不需要设定标准的另一个原因是：

真正能创造好东西的人，不需要规则来约束自己。

So there's my guess at a set of principles to live by: take care of people and the world, and make good new things. Different people will do these to varying degrees. There will presumably be lots who focus entirely on taking care of people. There will be a few who focus mostly on making new things. But even if you're one of those, you should at least make sure that the new things you make don't net harm people or the world. And if you go a step further and try to make things that help them, you may find you're ahead on the trade. You'll be more constrained in what you can make, but you'll make it with more energy.

所以，我认为生活的原则可以概括为：关心他人和世界，创造美好的新东西。

每个人都有自己的专长和选择。有人喜欢照顾他人，有人擅长创新。

如果你是创新者，记住一点：你创造的东西不能伤害他人和这个世界。

更好的是，你可以把创新的目标定位在帮助他人。这样虽然会给创新带来一些限制，但也会激发你更大的热情。

On the other hand, if you make something amazing, you'll often be helping people or the world even if you didn't mean to. Newton was driven by curiosity and ambition, not by any practical effect his work might have, and yet the practical effect of his work has been enormous. And this seems the rule rather than the exception. So if you think you can make something amazing, you should probably just go ahead and do it.

有趣的是，当你专注于创造令人惊叹的事物时，往往会不经意间帮助到他人和这个世界。

就像牛顿一样。他做研究纯粹是出于好奇心和追求成就，但他的发现最终给人类带来了巨大的改变。这种情况其实很普遍。

所以，如果你觉得自己能创造出厉害的东西，就放手去做吧！