Incentives are for losers

激励机制是留给失败者的

We can all agree: the incentives are bad. Everywhere you look, people are being rewarded for doing the wrong thing. This has become the go-to diagnosis for every problem, from climate change to political polarization to scientific malfeasance—“sorry pal, you’ve got a bad case of the incentives.” 我们都能达成共识：激励机制很糟糕。环顾四周，人们因为做错事而获得奖励。这已成为诊断各种问题的首选方案，从气候变化到政治极化，再到科学不端行为——“抱歉伙计，你这是患上了严重的‘激励机制依赖症’。”

I don’t disagree with this analysis, exactly. Who could? It’s basically tautological. “People do bad things because they are encouraged and rewarded for doing bad things.” Well, why else would you do them? 我并不完全反对这种分析。谁会反对呢？这基本上是同义反复。“人们做坏事是因为他们受到鼓励并因做坏事而获得奖励。”好吧，不然你为什么要做这些事呢？

My real gripe with this line of thinking is it implies that incentives should be obeyed, that it is normal or even noble to do so, and that is perhaps impossible to do otherwise. How could you be expected to break a rule, forego a promotion, or give up a decimal of your grade point average, for the sake of—what? Doing the right thing? 我对这种思维方式真正不满的地方在于，它暗示人们应该服从激励机制，暗示这样做是正常的甚至高尚的，并且暗示如果不这样做是不可能的。你怎么可能为了——什么呢？为了做正确的事——而去打破规则、放弃晋升或牺牲哪怕一点点的平均绩点？

There’s a point here that should go without saying, but instead it has simply gone unsaid. Which is: incentives are for losers. Doing something simply because an arbitrary reward system will give you a lil treat—that’s for pigeons, not people. If you build your life around satisfying incentives, then you’re a dummy and a schmuck. 这里有一个本该不言自明，却一直未被提及的观点：激励机制是留给失败者的。仅仅因为一个随意的奖励系统会给你一点“小甜头”就去做某事——那是给鸽子准备的，不是给人准备的。如果你围绕着满足激励机制来构建生活，那你就是一个笨蛋和傻瓜。

COME HELMET OR HIGH WATER

自带头盔，风雨无阻

When I played Little League baseball for a few disastrous years, my least favorite part was going up to bat, because you had to wear one of these ratty old batting helmets supplied by the local rec department. None of them fit right, and they all smelled like a hundred sweaty 10-year-olds had worn them before you, because a hundred sweaty 10-year-olds had worn them before you. And so every at-bat carried not only the risk of striking out, but also the risk of contracting head lice. 当我参加小联盟棒球赛的那几年简直是一场灾难，我最讨厌的部分就是上场击球，因为你必须戴上当地娱乐部门提供的那些破旧的击球头盔。它们没有一个合身的，而且闻起来就像有一百个满头大汗的十岁孩子在你之前戴过一样——因为事实确实如此。所以每一次击球不仅面临被三振出局的风险，还面临感染头虱的风险。

A few kids, the serious ones, brought their own helmets—custom fitted, tastefully decorated with decals, and presumably containing zero lice. These kids ran the bases like little princes. Any errant pitches bounced harmlessly off their heads, leaving their perfect skulls un-dented. The outfielders would perk up whenever a kid with a bespoke helmet stepped up to the plate, all of them thinking to themselves, this kid might actually hit the ball. 有几个孩子，那些认真的孩子，会自带头盔——定制的尺寸，装饰着有品位的贴纸，而且大概率没有头虱。这些孩子像小王子一样跑垒。任何偏离轨道的投球撞到他们的头上都会无害地弹开，他们完美的头骨毫发无损。每当一个戴着定制头盔的孩子走上击球区，外野手们就会打起精神，心里想着：这孩子说不定真能击中球。

I say all this because incentives are like batting helmets: if you don’t bring your own, you’ll have to use the crappy ones that are provided for you. 我说这些是因为激励机制就像击球头盔：如果你不自带，你就只能使用别人提供给你的那些劣质品。

A critical part of human development—in fact, the most human part of human development—is to acquire a purpose. That means refining your sense of right and wrong and figuring out how you, personally, can increase the right and decrease the wrong. Once your neural tube has ballooned into a brain, once you can poop without issue, conjugate irregular verbs, and feed yourself solid foods, you ought to ask yourself, “Why am I doing these things?” What’s it all for? How can I make myself useful? 人类发展的一个关键部分——事实上，是人类发展中最具人性的一部分——就是获得目标。这意味着要完善你的是非观，并弄清楚你个人如何能增加正确的事，减少错误的事。一旦你的神经管发育成了大脑，一旦你能顺利排便、变位不规则动词并能自己进食固体食物，你就应该问问自己：“我为什么要这样做？”这一切是为了什么？我怎样才能让自己变得有用？

It’s fine if you’re still working on your answers to those questions. It’s fine—and good!—if you have multiple answers, or if your answers change over time. But it’s not fine to pass on the questions entirely. We owe these answer to each other, and we owe them to ourselves, because a sense of purpose is both prosocial and protective. If you have a void where your moral convictions should be, then that cavity of your personality will get filled up with tumorous desires—for money, power, fame, status. This is the kind of person who “responds to incentives”. 如果你还在寻找这些问题的答案，没关系。如果你有多个答案，或者你的答案随着时间而改变，那也没关系——甚至很好！但完全回避这些问题是不行的。我们欠彼此这些答案，我们也欠自己这些答案，因为目标感既是亲社会的，也是具有保护性的。如果你的道德信念本该存在的地方是一片空白，那么你人格中的那个空洞就会被肿瘤般的欲望所填满——对金钱、权力、名望和地位的欲望。这就是那种“对激励机制做出反应”的人。

It took me a long time to understand this. In my early 20s, when I was at the bottom of every ladder that I aspired to ascend, I assumed the people at the top of those ladders must be pretty great. How wise these incentive-maxxers must be, how cool and smart, to have the things that everybody else wants! 我花了好长时间才明白这一点。在我20岁出头时，当我处于我渴望攀登的每一架梯子的底层时，我以为那些站在梯子顶端的人一定很了不起。这些“激励机制最大化者”一定非常睿智、酷且聪明，才能拥有每个人都想要的东西！

But over the years, as I had the opportunity to meet some of these captains of industry, these Grand Pooh-Bahs and Distinguished Scholars, I’ve realized how wrong I was. They only seemed enviable because I was looking at them from a distance, so all I could see was what they had. Up close, when you can see what they are, it becomes clear that only a few of these ladder-toppers are indeed wise and cool. More often, they’re sniveling little twerps. They’re spiritually chinless. They have no convictions, no passions, no purpose other than ladder-climbing. It’s sad to watch them, these people who have everything except the one thing that actually matters. 但多年来，当我有机会见到一些行业领袖、大人物和杰出学者时，我意识到我错得有多离谱。他们看起来令人羡慕，只是因为我从远处看他们，所以我只能看到他们拥有什么。近距离观察时，当你看到他们是什么样的人，就会发现这些站在梯子顶端的人中，只有少数人确实睿智且酷。更多时候，他们只是卑微的小丑。他们精神上软弱无力。他们没有信念，没有激情，除了爬梯子之外没有其他目标。看着他们很可悲，这些人拥有一切，唯独缺少了唯一真正重要的东西。

Often, these are the people who are most insistent that the incentives ought to be obeyed. They are quick to swear that good grades, cash, prestige, etc. are inherently valuable, or that they are useful proxies for value. The incentive-obsessives feel this way because they have to. Like the government of a failing nation, they must swear that their currency is real, and they must lash out at anyone attempting to participate in an alternative economy, lest the whole fraud come crashing down upon itself. 通常，这些人最坚持认为应该服从激励机制。他们急于发誓说好成绩、现金、声望等本身就具有价值，或者它们是价值的有用代理指标。那些沉迷于激励机制的人之所以这样想，是因为他们不得不这样做。就像一个衰败国家的政府，他们必须发誓他们的货币是真实的，并且必须抨击任何试图参与替代经济的人，以免整个骗局彻底崩溃。

HELP ME, SKY DADDY, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE

救救我，天父，你是我唯一的希望

Without any formal instruction, approximately 100% of humans will learn to speak, and approximately 0% of humans will learn to read. Talking comes easy and early, enabled by ancient mental structures that hoover up words and extract the meaning behind them. These are the original LLMs, and still the best in the known universe. Reading, on the other hand, comes late and laboriously, piggybacking on bits of brain that were never meant to decode squiggles on paper, let alone comprehend Finnegans Wake. 在没有任何正式指导的情况下，大约100%的人类会学会说话，而大约0%的人类会学会阅读。说话来得容易且早，这是由古老的心理结构所促成的，它们能吸收词汇并提取其背后的含义。这些是最初的“大语言模型”（LLM），至今仍是已知宇宙中最好的。另一方面，阅读来得晚且费力，它依赖于大脑中那些从未被设计用来解码纸上涂鸦的部分，更不用说去理解《芬尼根的守灵夜》了。

So when thinking about any human ability, it’s useful to ask: is this more like speaking, or is it more like reading? Is this an ancient capability that we get for free just by living long enough, or is this a modern skill that you can’t get without working for it? 因此，在思考任何人类能力时，问一个问题很有用：这更像是说话，还是更像是阅读？这是一种我们只要活得够久就能免费获得的天赋，还是一种不努力就无法获得的现代技能？

Developing a value system seems to be a lot more like reading, because research suggests that many people don’t make it very far. 建立价值体系似乎更像是阅读，因为研究表明，许多人在这方面并没有走得很远。