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.

一个人应该做什么？这似乎是一个奇怪的问题，但它并非毫无意义或无法回答。这是孩子们在学会不问大问题之前会问的那种问题。我自己在调查其他事情的过程中才偶然发现了这个问题。但一旦我发现了，我就觉得至少应该尝试回答它。

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？一个人应该帮助他人，照顾世界。这两点是显而易见的。但还有其他事情吗？当我问这个问题时，脑海中浮现的答案是创造美好的新事物。

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.

我无法证明一个人应该这样做，就像我无法证明一个人应该帮助他人或照顾世界一样。我们在这里讨论的是第一性原理。但我可以解释为什么这个原则有意义。人类能做的最令人印象深刻的事情就是思考。这可能是能做的最令人印象深刻的事情。而最好的思考方式，或者更准确地说，是证明一个人思考得最好的方式，就是创造美好的新事物。

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.

我指的是非常广义的新事物。牛顿的物理学就是一个很好的新事物。事实上，这个原则的第一个版本是拥有好的新想法。但这似乎不够概括：例如，它不包括创作艺术或音乐，除非它们体现了新的想法。虽然它们可能体现了新的想法，但这并不是它们所体现的全部，除非你把”想法”这个词延伸得毫无用处，以至于它包括了所有通过你神经系统的东西。

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.

即使对于人们有意识的想法，我还是更喜欢”创造好的新事物”这种说法。还有其他方法来描述最好的思考方式。例如，做出发现，或者比其他人更深入地理解某件事。但是，如果你不能建立一个模型，或者写下它，你对某件事的理解有多深呢？事实上，试图表达你所理解的东西不仅仅是一种证明你理解它的方式，更是一种更好地理解它的方式。

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.

我喜欢这种措辞的另一个原因是，它使我们倾向于创造。它使我们更喜欢那些自然而然地被视为创造事物，而不是对其他人创造的事物进行批判性观察的想法。那些也是想法，有时也是有价值的想法，但人们很容易欺骗自己，认为它们比实际更有价值。批评似乎很老练，而创造新事物往往显得笨拙，尤其是在一开始；然而，正是这些最初的步骤最为罕见和宝贵。

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.

新颖性是必不可少的吗？我认为是这样。显然，它在科学中是必不可少的。如果你抄袭了别人的论文并以自己的名义发表，那不仅显得毫无价值，而且是不诚实的。艺术也是如此。一幅好画的复制品可能令人赏心悦目，但它不像原作那样令人印象深刻。反过来，这意味着一遍又一遍地做同样的事情，无论做得多么好，都不会令人印象深刻；你只是在复制自己。

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. [1]

请注意，我们在这里讨论的”应该”与这个原则中的”应该”有所不同。照顾人和世界是一种义务，所以是”应该”的，但创造美好的新事物是一种充分发挥个人潜力的”应该”。历史上，关于如何生活的规则大多是这两种”应该”的混合体，尽管通常前者多于后者。[1]

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.

在历史上的大部分时间里，无论你问西塞罗还是孔子，“人应该做什么？“这个问题得到的答案几乎都是一样的。你应该明智、勇敢、诚实、节制和公正，维护传统，服务公众利益。在世界的某些地方，有一段很长的时间，答案变成了”为上帝服务”，但实际上，人们仍然认为明智、勇敢、诚实、节制和公正，维护传统，服务公众利益是好的。事实上，这个方法对大多数维多利亚时代的人来说都是正确的。但其中没有任何关于照顾世界或创造新事物的内容，这有点令人担忧，因为这个问题似乎应该是永恒的。答案不应该改变太多。

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?

我不太担心传统答案没有提到照顾世界。显然，人们只是在意识到我们可能会毁掉它之后才开始关心这个问题。但是，如果传统答案没有提到创造美好的新事物，那么创造美好的新事物怎么会重要呢？

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. [2]

传统答案是对一个略有不同的问题的回答。它们是关于如何存在，而不是做什么的答案。听众在做什么方面没有太多选择。直到最近几个世纪，听众都是土地所有者阶级，他们也是政治阶级。他们不是在做物理和写小说之间做出选择。他们的工作是注定的：管理他们的庄园，参与政治，必要时战斗。在业余时间做某些其他类型的工作是可以的，但理想情况下，一个人不应该有任何业余时间。《西塞罗论义务》是古典时代对如何生活这一问题的伟大解答之一，其中他明确表示，如果不是因为最近的政治动荡而被排除在公共生活之外，他甚至不会写这本书。[2]

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，当时也有人在做我们现在所说的”原创工作”，他们也常常因此受到钦佩，但他们并没有被视为榜样。阿基米德知道他是第一个证明球体的体积是其最小外接圆柱体体积的 2/3 的人，并对此感到非常高兴。但你不会发现古代作家敦促他们的读者去效仿他。他们更多地将他视为一个天才，而不是一个榜样。

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，我们中的更多人可以效仿阿基米德的例子，将我们的大部分注意力投入到一种工作中。事实证明，他最终成为了一个榜样，还有其他一些人，他的同时代人会觉得将他们视为一个独特的群体很奇怪，因为创造新事物的人的脉络与社会等级制度成直角。

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.

哪些类型的新事物才算数？我宁愿把这个问题留给它们的创造者。试图定义任何类型的门槛都是一项冒险的举动，因为新型的工作最初往往会被鄙视。雷蒙德·钱德勒当时写的是不折不扣的廉价小说，而现在他被认为是二十世纪最伟大的作家之一。事实上，这种模式非常普遍，你可以把它当作一个秘诀：如果你对某种不被认为是高尚的工作感到兴奋，并且你能解释为什么其他人忽略了它的优点，那么这不仅仅是一种可以做的工作，而是一种应该去寻找的工作。

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.

我不想定义任何门槛的另一个原因是，我们不需要它们。那些创造美好新事物的人不需要规则来保持他们的诚实。

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，这就是我对一套生活原则的猜测：照顾好人和世界，创造美好的新事物。不同的人会以不同的程度来做这些事情。大概会有很多人完全专注于照顾人。也会有一些人主要专注于创造新事物。但即使你是其中之一，你也至少应该确保你创造的新事物不会对人和世界造成净伤害。如果你更进一步，尝试创造对他们有帮助的东西，你可能会发现你在交易中领先了。你创造的东西会受到更多的限制，但你会更有活力地创造它。

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.

另一方面，如果你创造出令人惊叹的东西，即使你不是故意的，你通常也会帮助到人或世界。牛顿的动力来自于好奇心和雄心，而不是他的工作可能产生的任何实际效果，然而他的工作的实际效果却是巨大的。而且这似乎是规律而不是例外。所以，如果你认为你能创造出令人惊叹的东西，你应该直接去做。

Notes 笔记

[1] We could treat all three as the same kind of should by saying that it’s one’s duty to live well — for example by saying, as some Christians have, that it’s one’s duty to make the most of one’s God-given gifts. But this seems one of those casuistries people invented to evade the stern requirements of religion: you could spend time studying math instead of praying or performing acts of charity because otherwise you were rejecting a gift God had given you. A useful casuistry no doubt, but we don’t need it.

[1] 我们可以把这三种情况都看作是同一种”应该”，即认为好好生活是人的责任——例如，像一些基督徒那样说，充分利用上帝赋予的才能是人的责任。但这似乎是人们为了逃避宗教的严厉要求而发明的一种诡辩：你可以花时间学习数学，而不是祈祷或行善，因为否则你就是在拒绝上帝赋予你的天赋。毫无疑问，这是一种有用的诡辩，但我们不需要它。

We could also combine the first two principles, since people are part of the world. Why should our species get special treatment? I won’t try to justify this choice, but I’m skeptical that anyone who claims to think differently actually lives according to their principles.

我们也可以把前两个原则结合起来，因为人是世界的一部分。为什么我们的物种要受到特殊待遇？我不会试图为这种选择辩护，但我怀疑是否有人声称自己的想法不同，但实际上是按照他们的原则生活的。

[2] Confucius was also excluded from public life after ending up on the losing end of a power struggle, and presumably he too would not be so famous now if it hadn’t been for this long stretch of enforced leisure.

[2] 孔子在权力斗争中失败后也被排除在公共生活之外，如果不是因为这段漫长的强制性闲暇时间，他现在可能也不会这么出名。

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.

感谢 Trevor Blackwell、Jessica Livingston 和 Robert Morris 阅读了本文的草稿。