【原創】牛頓的風險與普通人生的變數

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翻譯並分享最近讀的一篇短文。矮小精悍但準確地表達了我一直以來的一個想法。

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譯文：探索未知的風險 ( The Risk of Discovery )

http://paulgraham.com/disc.html January 2017

傳記作家為著名科學家寫傳時，往往傾向於粉飾或刪減他們在專業上的錯誤和失敗。於是乎，我們就低估了科學家在進行科學探索時所冒的風險（指各種潛在的風險，包括失敗的風險，一無所獲的風險，甚至殞命的風險等等。譯者注）。再加上時間一久，科學家被廣為人知並且樂於談論的，都是科學家成功的一面，似乎看起來他們最初的選擇就是一條光明大道。

比如說牛頓的傳記作家，就更多地強調了他在物理方面的成就，而他痴迷鍊金術和神學則較為忽略。於是讀者就留下一個印象：正是牛頓準確的洞察力和直覺，引導他走上了一條發現前人未曾發現、正確物理規律的大道。那怎麼解釋他在鍊金術和神學上花費的大量時間呢？這還不容易：「你知道極聰明的人都是有點瘋狂的」。

但我想有個更簡單的解釋。偉大人物的聰明頭腦和瘋狂特質不像乍一想的那麼涇渭分明。在我們現在看來，要想獲得成就物理學明顯更合適，而鍊金術或神學則純屬浪費時間。但注意，這是我們站在當今時代、物理學（牛頓的時代甚至沒有這個名字）已經證明是科學的前提下的結論。在牛頓的時代，這三個領域可能看起來前途差不多，誰能知道投入大量精力研究現在我們謂之為「物理」的學科會有什麼收穫。如果都知道的話，眾人都會趨之若鶩去研究了，而不僅是牛頓等少數人；然後鍊金術和神學依舊躺在「如果成了，就是超級大發現（ Marc Andreessen語）」的分類里。

牛頓做了三項重大的嘗試，只有在物理學上他成功了。但在當時，這三者對牛頓來說都充滿了未知的風險。

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自己的感想：

1，對於普通人來講，沒有人給你一幅人生如何走的地圖，更沒有人為你鋪就一條康庄大道。能夠在關鍵結點有貴人相助或是指點，已經燒了高香。

2，每個成功人士的的道路是不可複製的，且不說模仿時難免刻舟求劍，單單說他們的成功之路缺乏細節、失敗之處又嚴重失真，所以也不可行。「成功大道」僅對於大方向掌控、精神激勵有益。

3，每個人的人生都有無數岔路。未知太多，只有聰明的努力可解。

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原文：The Risk of Discovery

http://paulgraham.com/disc.html January 2017

Because biographies of famous scientists tend to edit out their mistakes, we underestimate the degree of risk they were willing to take. And because anything a famous scientist did that wasnt a mistake has probably now become the conventional wisdom, those choices dont seem risky either.

Biographies of Newton, for example, understandably focus more on physics than alchemy or theology. The impression we get is that his unerring judgment led him straight to truths no one else had noticed. How to explain all the time he spent on alchemy and theology? Well, smart people are often kind of crazy.

But maybe there is a simpler explanation. Maybe the smartness and the craziness were not as separate as we think. Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time. But thats because we know how things turned out. In Newtons day the three problems seemed roughly equally promising. No one knew yet what the payoff would be for inventing what we now call physics; if they had, more people would have been working on it. And alchemy and theology were still then in the category Marc Andreessen would describe as "huge, if true."

Newton made three bets. One of them worked. But they were all risky.

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