agi来了，人生的意义在哪里？这是我见过的最好答案。
howie serious约 16 分钟人应何为？
简单问题最不好回答。比如，你是谁，你从哪儿来，你往何处去。
今天的这篇双语文章，正是激发你深度思考这个问题的催化剂。paul graham的风格一向如此：语言简洁，语气真诚，思想深刻。
他给出的答案既朴素又深邃：
make good new things.
创造那些美好的创新的事物。一方面它必须创新：如果只是复制现有的东西，那是生产线上的重复劳动，不叫创造；
另一方面它必须美好：我们都知道，当创新的价值观偏离轨道时，后果有多么严重（比如，算法短视频的本质，就是第一个价值观不对齐、并造成巨大破坏的邪恶ai）。
具体来说，一个有志于通过终身学习来自我实现的人，应该把绝大部分精力投入这样一件事：
它让你兴奋，却被普遍忽视，大多数人并不想做这件事，但是你能清晰地说明为什么它值得你为之倾注一切。
回到开头的问题，1400年前的唐朝僧人会说：贫僧唐三藏，自东土大唐而来，去往西天求取真经。
今天的@howie.serious则说，我是终身学习的践行者、科学学习的布道者，我曾经是一个学渣，所以我清楚看到“学会如何学习”在agi时代的战略意义，这就是为什么我要做小能熊这个项目，让每个人、每一个家庭的学习问题都不再成为问题。🤣
下面，就是paul graham极具洞察力的深刻杂文，双语对照，值得阅读5678遍。
祝你阅读愉快～
title: what to do
author: paul graham
date: march 2025
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.
人应何为？这听起来也许是个奇怪的问题，但它并非毫无意义或无法回答。这正是孩子们在还没学会不要问那些宏大的问题之前会问的那种问题。我自己也是在研究其他事情的过程中才偶然想到这个问题的。不过，一旦我意识到了它，我觉得自己至少应该试着回答一下。
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，人应何为？一个人应该帮助他人、爱护世界。这两个选择显而易见。不过，除此之外还有别的吗？当我这样问时，我脑海中冒出的答案是：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.
我无法证明一个人就应该这么做，正如我无法证明一个人应该帮助他人或关爱世界一样。此处我们谈论的是最基本的原则。不过，我可以解释为什么这个原则是有道理的。人类所能做的最了不起的事情就是思考。这也许是世上所能做到的最了不起的事情。而最出色的思考方式，或者更准确地说，最能证明一个人思考良好的方式，就是去创造美好的新事物。
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.
我所说的“新事物”是一个非常广义的概念。牛顿的物理学就是一个美好的新事物。事实上，这条原则最初的表述是“拥有好的新想法”。然而，这样的说法似乎不够宽泛：它没有将创作艺术或音乐包括在内——除非我们认为这些创作都体现了新的想法。而即使它们的确蕴含新的想法，那也不是它们蕴含的全部；除非你把“想法”这个词的含义稀释到毫无意义的地步，让它涵盖神经系统里的一切念头。
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.
然而，即使针对那些人们有意识产生的想法，我仍然倾向于使用“创造美好的新事物”这一表述。还有其他方式可以描述最出色的思考，例如，可以表述为有所发现，或者对某件事物的理解比他人更加深入。但是，如果你连为某个事物建立模型或将其写出来都做不到，那么你对它的理解又能有多深呢？确实，尝试表达你所理解的内容，这不仅是一种证明你理解了它的方法，也是一种让你更深入地理解它的手段。
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.
我喜欢这种说法的另一个原因是它让我们更偏向于创造。它使我们更偏好那些本质上在创造事物的想法，而不是，比如说，针对他人已经创造的东西提出批评性意见的想法。后者当然也是想法，而且有时也有价值，但人很容易自欺欺人，以为它们比实际上更有价值。批评看起来很高明，而创造新事物往往显得笨拙，尤其是在开始的时候。然而，恰恰是那些最初的尝试才是最稀有且宝贵的。
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.
新颖是否必要？我认为是必要的。在科学领域显然如此。如果你把别人的论文照搬下来并署上自己的名字发表，那不仅不会让人觉得出色，反而会被视为不诚实。在艺术领域也是类似的。复制一幅优秀的画作可能令人赏心悦目，但无法像原作那样令人印象深刻。这反过来也意味着，一次又一次地做同样的事情——无论你做得再好——都算不上令人印象深刻；因为你只是重复在复制你自己。
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]
不过请注意，我们在这里讨论的“应该”性质有所不同。关爱他人和世界属于责任意义上的“应该”，而创造美好的新事物则属于这样一种“应该”：这是使一个人充分发挥自身潜力的生活方式。回顾历史，大多数关于如何生活的准则都是这两类“应该”的混合体，不过通常前者所占的比重高于后者。[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.
在大部分的历史时期，无论你问西塞罗还是孔子，“人应该做什么？”这个问题得到的几乎都是同样的回答。一个人应该明智、勇敢、诚实、节制、公正，恪守传统，并为公共利益服务。有很长一段时间，在世界的某些地区，这个问题的答案变成了“侍奉上帝”，但实际上人们仍认为成为一个明智、勇敢、诚实、节制、公正的人，恪守传统并服务公共利益是正确的。而对于大多数维多利亚时代的人来说，这套答案似乎也没有问题。不过，这之中并未提及爱护世界或创造新事物，这一点有些令人担忧，因为这个问题本该是永恒的，其答案不应有太大的变化。
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?
我并不太担心传统的答案没有提到爱护世界。很明显，人们是在意识到我们有能力毁灭世界之后才开始关心它的。然而，如果传统的答案没有提到“创造美好的新事物”，那它怎么可能变得重要呢？
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]
传统的答案针对的是一个稍有不同的问题：它们回答的是如何做人，而不是做什么（如何做人，而不是人应何为）。当时的受众在“做什么”方面没有太多选择余地。直到近代以前，这些教诲的对象一直是土地拥有阶层，也就是政治阶层。他们不会在从事物理研究还是撰写小说之间做选择；他们的工作早已被预先规定：管理庄园，参与政治，在需要时上阵作战。在闲暇时间从事某些其他工作倒没什么问题，但理想情况下，一个人不应有任何闲暇。西塞罗的《论义务》（De Officiis）是古代对“如何生活”这一问题的经典解答之一。他在书中明确表示，如果不是最近的政治动荡使他被排除在公共生活之外，他本不会写这本书。[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.
历史上当然也有一些人在从事我们现在所说的“原创性工作”，他们也常常因此受到赞赏，但并未被视为榜样。阿基米德清楚自己是第一个证明球体体积等于包围它的最小圆柱体体积的2/3的人，并为此感到非常高兴。然而，你不会见到古代的作者敦促他们的读者去效仿他；在他们看来，与其说他是榜样，不如说更像一个奇才。
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.
如今，我们当中有许多人可以追随阿基米德的榜样，将大部分精力投入到某一类工作上。他最终还是成为了一个楷模，和另外一些人一起成为了榜样——只不过在他那个时代的人看来，把这些人当作一个独立的群体来看待会很奇怪，因为那些致力于创造新事物的人横跨于社会的各个阶层。
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.
什么样的新事物才算数呢？我倾向于把这个问题留给创造它们的人来决定。试图为其设定任何界限都是件冒险的事，因为新的工作类型常常在最初会被轻视。雷蒙德·钱德勒当年写的就是名副其实的粗制通俗小说，而现在他被公认为二十世纪最优秀的作家之一。实际上，这种模式普遍到可以成为一种指引：如果有一种工作让你感到兴奋，而这份工作目前并不被视为有声望，并且你能解释清楚别人对它忽视了什么，那么这类工作就不仅仅是“可以去做”的，而且是值得主动去追寻的。
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.
我不愿去设定任何界限的另一个原因是我们并不需要这些界限。能够创造美好新事物的那类人不需要用规则来约束他们。
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.
因此，我猜想可以用这样一组原则来指导生活：关爱他人和世界，并创造美好的新事物。每个人践行这些原则的程度会有所不同：可能会有许多人完全专注于关爱他人，也会有少数人主要专注于创造新事物。但即使你属于后者，你至少应该确保自己创造的新事物不会给他人或世界带来总体上的伤害。而如果你更进一步，尝试创造对他们有益的事物，你可能会发现这样做实际上让你收获更多。你能够创造的东西范围会更受限，但你投入其中的精力将更加充沛。
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，如果你创造出惊人的事物，即便你并非有意去帮助他人或世界，你往往仍然是在帮助他们。以牛顿为例，他当年从事研究完全是受好奇心和抱负的驱使，并非出于对实际效果的考虑，但他的研究成果最终产生的实际影响却是巨大的。而这样的情形似乎是常态而非例外。所以，如果你觉得自己能创造出非凡的东西，那就尽管去做吧。
Notes| 注释
[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] 我们可以把这三条都视为同一种“应该”，通过宣称过好生活本身就是一个人的责任——例如，有些基督徒就说，一个人有责任充分利用上帝赐予他的才能。但这显然属于人们为逃避宗教严苛要求而发明的诡辩之一：依据这种说法，你可以把时间用来学习数学，而不是去祷告或行善，因为否则你就是在辜负上帝给予你的天赋。这种诡辩无疑很有用，但我们并不需要它。
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.
我们也可以把前两条原则合二为一，毕竟人类也是世界的一部分。为什么我们的物种要得到特殊待遇呢？这一点我就不试图辩护了，不过我怀疑那些声称持不同观点的人事实上是否真能按照他们的原则行事。
[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] 孔子也在一场权力斗争中败北，被迫退出了仕途。据推测，如果不是有这一段漫长的被迫闲居，他现在大概也不会如此闻名于世。
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
感谢特雷弗·布莱克韦尔、杰西卡·利文斯顿和罗伯特·莫里斯审阅本文的草稿。
延展阅读
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