双语原稿-好运气于人生而言,到底有多大影响？

双语原稿| 好运气于人生而言，到底有多大影响？心理学家巴里·施瓦茨（Barry Schwartz）说，机会在生活中的作用远比我们愿意承认的要大得多。当然，努力工作和遵守规则可以让你走得更远，但剩下的可以归结为简单的好运。施瓦茨研究了运气、功绩和成功之间被忽视的联系，提出了一个有趣的解决方案来平衡机会——从大学入学开始。

演讲者：Barry Schwartz

演讲题目: What role does luck play in your life?

Hello, everybody. I'm honored to be here to talk to you, and what I'm going to talk about today is luck and justice and the relation between them.大家好。我很荣幸能在这里与大家分享，今天我要谈的是运气与正义及其之间的关系。 Some years ago, a former student of mine called me to talk about his daughter. It turns out his daughter was a high school senior, was seriously interested in applying to Swarthmore, where I taught, and he wanted to get my sense of whether she would get in. Swarthmore is an extremely hard school to get into.

几年前，我的一名前学生打电话给我谈论他的女儿。其实，他的女儿是一名高中生，对申请我在斯沃斯莫尔（Swarthmore）的课程非常感兴趣，他想让我看看她是否能加入。毕竟斯沃斯莫尔（Swarthmore）是一所很难进入的学校。

So I said, "Well, tell me about her." And he told me about her, what her grades were like, her board scores, her extracurricular activities. And she just sounded like a superstar, wonderful, wonderful kid. So I said, "She sounds fabulous. She sounds like just the kind of student that Swarthmore would love to have."

所以我说：“好，告诉我关于她的状况。” 他告诉我有关她的情况，她的成绩如何，她的董事会成绩，她的课外活动。她听起来像一个超级巨星，很棒，很棒的孩子。所以我说：“她听起来很棒。她听起来就像斯沃斯莫尔想要拥有的那种学生。”

And so he said, "Well, does that mean that she'll get in?" And I said, "No. There just aren't enough spots in the Swarthmore class for everybody who's good. There aren't enough spots at Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Stanford.

于是他说：“好吧，这意味着她会被录取吗？”我说：“不。在Swarthmore班级，没有一个教授是适合每个人的。在哈佛大学，耶鲁大学，普林斯顿大学或斯坦福大学都没有这样的人才。

There aren't enough spots at Google or Amazon or Apple. There aren't enough spots at the TED Conference. There are an awful lot of good people, and some of them are not going to make it." So he said, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" And I said, "That's a very good question."

谷歌、亚马逊或苹果的广告位都不够。TED会议的名额不够。好人太多了，有些人活不下去了。”于是他说：“好吧，我们该怎么办？”我说，“这是个很好的问题。”

What are we supposed to do? And I know what colleges and universities have done. In the interest of fairness, what they've done is they've kept ratcheting up the standards because it doesn't seem fair to admit less qualified people and reject better qualified people, so you just keep raising the standards higher and higher until they're high enough that you can admit only the number of students that you can fit.

我们该怎么办？我知道大学和大学都做了什么。为了公平起见，他们所做的就是不断提高标准，因为接纳不合格的人，拒绝优秀人才似乎不公平，所以你只要不断提高标准，直到他们足够高，最后你只能录取你能教授的学生人数。

And this violates a lot of people's sense of what justice and fairness is. People in American society have different opinions about what it means to say that some sort of process is just, but I think there's one thing that pretty much everyone agrees on, that in a just system, a fair system, people get what they deserve.

这违背了很多人对正义和公平的理解。美国社会中的人们对什么是正义有不同的看法，但我认为有一件事几乎每个人都同意，那就是在一个公正的制度，一个公平的制度中，人们得到了他们应得的。

And what I was telling my former student is that when it comes to college admissions, it just isn't true that people get what they deserve. Some people get what they deserve, and some people don't, and that's just the way it is.

我告诉我以前的学生的是，当涉及到大学入学时，人们得到他们应得的是不切实际的。有些人得到了他们应得的，有些人却得不到，现实就是这样。

When you ratchet up requirements as colleges have done, what you do is you create a crazy competition among high school kids, because it's not adequate to be good, it's not adequate to be good

enough, you have to be better than everybody else who is also applying.

当你像大学一样不断提高要求时，你要做的就是在高中生之间制造一场疯狂的竞争，因为做得好是不够的，再怎么好也是不够的，你必须比其他申请的人都优秀。

And what this has done, or what this has contributed to, is a kind of epidemic of anxiety and depression that is just crushing our teenagers. We are wrecking a generation with this kind of competition.

而这一切所造成的，或者说它所促成的，是一种焦虑和抑郁的流行病，它正在压垮我们的青少年。这种竞争正在摧毁一代人。

As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me there's a way to fix this problem.

在我思考这个问题的时候，我突然想到有一种方法可以解决这个问题。

And here's what we could do: when people apply to college, we distinguish between the applicants who are good enough to be successful and the ones who aren't, and we reject the ones who aren't good enough to be successful, and then we take all of the others, and

we put their names in a hat, and we just pick them out at random and admit them.

我们可以这样做：当人们申请大学时，我们区分那些足够优秀的申请人和那些不成功的申请人，我们拒绝那些不够优秀而不能成功的申请者，然后我们把其他所有的人都录取，然后把他们的名字戴上帽子，然后随机挑选出来录取他们。

In other words, we do college admissions by lottery, and maybe we do job offers at tech companies by lottery, and -- perish the thought -- maybe we even make decisions about who gets invited to talk at TED by lottery.

换言之，我们通过抽签的方式进行大学招生，也许我们会通过抽签的方式在科技公司提供工作机会，而且——打消这种想法——也许我们甚至会决定谁会被抽签邀请到TED演讲。

Now, don't misunderstand me, a lottery like this is not going to eliminate the injustice. There will still be plenty of people who don't get what they deserve. But at least it's honest. It reveals the injustice for what it is instead of pretending otherwise, and it punctures the incredible pressure balloon that our high school kids are now living under.

不过，别误会我，像这样的抽奖不会消除不公。仍然会有很多人得不到他们应得的。但至少是诚实的。它揭示了不公平的事实，而不是假装，它刺穿了我们高中生现在生活的不可思议的压力气球。

So why is it that this perfectly reasonable proposal, if I do say so myself, doesn't get any serious discussion? I think I know why. I think it's that we hate the idea that really important things in life might happen by luck or by chance, that really important things in our lives are not under our control. I hate that idea. It's not surprising that people hate that idea, but it simply is the way things are.

那么，为什么这个完全合理的建议，如果我自己说的话，却没有得到任何认真的讨论呢？我想我知道为什么。我认为这是因为我们讨厌那种，认为生活中真正重要的事情可能是偶然发生的想法，我们生活中真正重要的事情不在我们的控制之下。我讨厌这种想法。人们讨厌这种想法并不奇怪，但事实就是如此。

First of all, college admissions already is a lottery. It's just that the admissions officers pretend that it isn't. So let's be honest about it. 首先，大学招生已经是一种彩票。只是招生官假装不是。所以我们要诚实点。

And second, I think if we appreciated that it was a lottery, it would also get us to acknowledge the importance of good fortune in almost every one of our lives.

其次，我认为如果我们把这看成是一次抽奖，它也会让我们认识到好运在我们几乎每一个人的生活中的重要性。

Take me. Almost all the most significant events in my life have occurred, to a large degree, as a result of good luck. When I was in seventh grade, my family left New York and went to Westchester County.

就像我一样。几乎所有的重大事件的发生，在很大程度上都是因为好运。我七年级时，我的家人离开纽约，去了威斯切斯特县。

Right at the beginning of school, I met a lovely young girl who became my friend, then she became my best friend, then she became my girlfriend and then she became my wife. Happily, she's been my wife now for 52 years. I had very little to do with this. This was a lucky accident.

刚开始上学的时候，我遇到了一个可爱的小女孩，她成了我的朋友，后来她成了我最好的朋友，后来她成了我的女朋友，后来又成了我的妻子。幸运的是，她做我妻子已经52年了。我没有做什么努力。这是个幸运的意外。

I went off to college, and in my first semester, I signed up for a class in introduction to psychology. I didn't even know what psychology was, but it fit into my schedule and it met requirements, so I took it. And by luck, the class was taught by a superstar introductory psychology teacher, a legend. Because of that, I became a psychology major.

我去了大学，在我的第一个学期，我报名参加了心理学导论课程。我甚至不知道什么是心理学，但它符合我的时间表，也符合要求，所以我选了它。幸运的是，这门课是由一位超级明星心理学入门老师，一位传奇人物执教的。正因为如此，我主修心理学。

Went off to graduate school. I was finishing up. A friend of mine who taught at Swarthmore decided he didn't want to be a professor anymore, and so he quit to go to medical school. The job that he occupied opened up, I applied for it, I got it, the only job I've ever applied for. I spent 45 years teaching at Swarthmore, an institution that had an enormous impact on the shape that my career took.

后来我去读研究生。当我的学生生涯就要结束时，我的一个在斯沃斯莫尔教书的朋友觉得自己不想再当教授了，于是辞职去了医学院。他换了一份新工作，我申请并得到了他原来那份教授的工作，这是我申请过的唯一一份工作。我在斯沃斯莫尔教书45年，这所学校对我的职业生涯产生了巨大的影响。

And to just give one last example, I was giving a talk about some of my work in New York, and there was somebody in the audience who came up to me after my talk. He introduced himself. He said, "My name is Chris. Would you like to give a talk at TED?" And my response was, "What's TED?" Well, I mean, he told me, and TED then wasn't what it is now. But in the intervening years, the talks I've given at TED have been watched by more than 20 million people.

举最后一个例子，我在纽约做了一个关于我在纽约的作品的演讲，听众中有人在我演讲后走到我跟前。他自我介绍。他说：“我叫克里斯。你想在TED演讲吗？”我的回答是，“泰德是什么？”嗯，他后来回答了我，那时的泰德不是现在的样子。但在这几年里，我在TED上的演讲吸引了超过2000万人。

So the conclusion is, I'm a lucky man. I'm lucky about my marriage. I'm lucky about my education. I'm lucky about my career. And I'm lucky to have had a platform and a voice at something like TED.

所以结论是，我是个幸运儿。我的婚姻很幸运。我的教育很幸运。我的事业很幸运。我很幸运在TED这样的地方站上讲台并发出自己的声音。

Did I deserve the success I've had? Sure I deserve that success, just as you probably deserve your success. But lots of people also deserve successes like ours who haven't had it.

我应该得到这样的成功吗？当然，我应该得到成功，就像你应该得到你的成功一样。但是还有很多像我们这样本应该成功的人，并没有获得成功。

So do people get what they deserve? Is society just? Of course not. Working hard and playing by the rules is just no guarantee of anything. If we appreciate the inevitability of this kind of injustice and the centrality of good fortune,

那么人们得到他们应得的吗？社会公正吗？当然不是。努力工作，遵守规则并不能保证什么。如果我们认识到这种不公正的必然性和好运的中心地位，

we might ask ourselves what responsibilities do we have to the people we are now celebrating as heroes in this time of the pandemic when a serious illness befalls their family to make sure that they remain whole and their lives aren't ruined by the cost of dealing with the illness?

我们也许会问自己，在这个大流行的时代，当一场严重的疾病降临到他们的家庭时，我们要对他们被视为英雄一般的人们承担什

么样的责任，以确保他们保持平安无事，他们的生活不会因治疗疾病的费用而受到影响？

What do we owe people who struggle, work hard and are less lucky than we are?

我们欠那些勤劳、努力工作、但却比我们运气差的人什么？

About a half century ago, the philosopher John Rawls wrote a book called "A Theory of Justice," and in that book, he introduced a concept that he called "the veil of ignorance." The question he posed was: If you didn't know what your position in society was going to be, what kind of a society would you want to create?

大约半个世纪前，哲学家约翰·罗尔斯写了一本名为《正义理论》的书，在那本书中，他提出了一个他称之为“无知的面纱”的概念。他提出的问题是：如果你不知道自己在社会中的地位是什么，你想创造一个什么样的社会？

And what he suggested is that when we don't know whether we're going to enter society at the top or at the bottom, what we want is a society that is pretty damn equal, so that even the unlucky will be able to live decent, meaningful and satisfying lives.

他建议的是，当我们不知道我们是要进入上层社会还是底层社会时，我们想要的是一个相当平等的社会，这样即使是不幸的人也能过上体面、有意义和令人满意的生活。

So bring this back, all of you lucky, successful people, to your communities, and do what you can to make sure that we honor and take care of people who are just as deserving of success as we are, but just not as lucky.

所以，你们这些幸运的，成功的人，回到你们的社区，尽你们所能确保我们尊重和照顾那些和我们一样值得成功，但却没有我们幸运的人。 Thank you.谢谢您。