【短片】Chris Williamson - The Vicious Cost of Self-Awareness

Chris reveals the downsides of getting to know yourself better.

克里斯揭示了更深入地瞭解自己的弊端

連結

• Youtube影片連結 - youtu.be/CHj7FSfjJjc

• Chris Williamson官方Youtube頻道 - www.youtube.com/chan...

Youtube影片

全部內容

The paradox of self-awareness. So everyone understands that actions are more important than words, right? You are what you do, not what you say you'll do. And there's this line from Hamlet, "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." I've never read any Shakespeare, I can barely remember even going through it in school, but I came across this line again and did a deep dive on what it means. "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." This line comes from Hamlet and it's usually misheard as an insult. It's as if Shakespeare is sort of sneering at morality, saying that "ethics soften us" or "thought drains courage"
from the body. I don't think that's what's happening.

每個人都知道行動比言語更重要，對吧？ 你是你的行為，而不是你所說要做的。 莎士比亞有一句名言：「良心使我們都變得膽小」。 我從未讀過任何莎士比亞的作品，幾乎不記得在學校里學過它，但我再次發現了這句話，並深入研究了它的含義。「良心使我們都變得膽小。」

這句話出自《哈姆雷特》，通常被誤解為一種侮辱。 好像莎士比亞正在嘲笑道德，說「倫理讓我們變得軟弱」或「思考會從身體中奪走勇氣」。 我不認為這是真的。

Shakespeare isn't attacking goodness, he's pointing at self-awareness and naming its cost. It's in the "to be or not to be" soliloquy. And Hamlet isn't really weighing life versus death. He's circling a more practical question. Why do humans hesitate to act even when action would clearly relieve their suffering? Why do we endure situations we don't want? Why do we tolerate lives that we could in theory change?

莎士比亞並沒有攻擊善良，他只是指出了自我意識的代價。 這出現在「生存還是毀滅」的獨白中。 並且哈姆雷特並不是真正地權衡生與死。 他在思考一個更實際的問題：為什麼人類即使知道行動可以減輕他們的痛苦，也會猶豫不決？ 為什麼我們忍受自己不想經歷的情況？ 為什麼我們容忍那些理論上我們可以改變的生活？

Well, pain isn't the only obstacle. Imagination is. And by conscience, Shakespeare means something closer to consciousness. It's the ability to think ahead, to judge ourselves, to simulate futures before they arrive. It's to see the consequences coming and experience them emotionally in advance. And unfortunately, that ability cuts both ways because the very capacity that makes you reflective, and ethical, and intelligent also makes you hesitant. We imagine worst-case scenarios so vividly that we treat them as if they're already real. So courage isn't defeated by fear, it's defeated by simulation. We rehearse embarrassment, loss, rejection, and moral failure in advance, and then our bodies respond as if those things have already happened. Your heart rate rises, your muscles tighten, avoidance feels sensible, and inaction feels like safety.

嗯，痛苦不是唯一的障礙。 想像力也是。 並且，在這裡，「良心」指的是更接近「意識」。 它是一種思考能力，一種自我評判的能力，一種在未來到來之前模擬未來的能力。 它是預見後果並提前從情感上體驗它們。 不幸的是，這種能力具有兩面性，因為使你變得有反思性、道德和智慧的能力也會讓你猶豫不決。 我們生動地想像最壞的情況，以至於我們將其視為已經發生的事實。 因此，勇氣不是被恐懼擊敗的，而是被模擬所擊敗的。 我們提前排練尷尬、失去、拒絕和道德失敗，然後我們的身體會像這些事情已經發生一樣做出反應。 你的心率加快，肌肉緊繃，迴避似乎是明智的選擇，而不作為則感覺像是安全。

Hamlet describes what follows. Thought, he says, puzzles the will. Thought puzzles the will. Reflection drains us. Not because thinking is bad, but because it multiplies potential outcomes faster than our actions can deal with them. I think that's so cool. Thinking isn't bad itself, but it's able to generate more realities than our actions can solve. Animals don't suffer this, right? They just act when a threshold is crossed. Humans linger, and by the time that the moment to move arrives, we feel as if we've already lived through its inevitable failure. So we wait.

哈姆雷特描述了接下來發生的事情。 他說：「思考使意志困惑」。 思考使意志困惑。 反思會讓我們疲憊。 不是因為思考不好，而是因為它比我們的行動更快地增加了潛在的結果。 我覺得這太酷了。 思考本身並不壞，但它能夠產生比我們行動所能解決的更多的現實。 動物不會受到這種影響，對吧？ 他們只是在某個閾值被跨越時就採取行動。 人類會猶豫不決，而且當行動的時刻到來時，我們感覺好像已經經歷了其不可避免的失敗。 所以我們等待。

This is the deepest psychological point that I think Shakespeare is making. And I'm aware that a guy that basically didn't read Shakespeare is just reverse engineering what I think he said, but I do think that this is a cool interpretation. Our intelligence doesn't just protect us, it also inhibits us. We learn quickly from mistakes that we make, but we almost never feel the cost of mistakes that we avoid. The humiliation of speaking and failing leaves a scar, but the decades-long erosion of never speaking leaves nothing that you can point to, which explains why people stay in the wrong job, the wrong relationship, the wrong version of themselves for years. Not because they don't know better, but because action demands stepping into an unrehearsed future.

我認為這是莎士比亞所提出的最深刻的心理觀點。 我知道一個幾乎沒有讀過莎士比亞的人只是在逆向工程他所說的話，但我確實認為這是一個很棒的解釋。 我們的智慧不僅保護我們，而且也抑制我們。 我們很快就能從自己犯的錯誤中吸取教訓，但我們幾乎從未感受到避免犯錯的代價。 說出來並失敗會留下傷疤，但長達數十年的沉默卻沒有任何可以指出的東西，這解釋了為什麼人們會在錯誤的職業、錯誤的戀愛關係和錯誤的自我狀態中度過數年。 不是因為他們不知道該怎麼做，而是因為行動需要進入一個未經排練的未來。

Hamlet names the real enemy, which is uncertainty. Not pain or effort, but just the unknown. Our minds would rather endure a familiar misery than gamble on an unfamiliar freedom. Even suffering becomes tolerable once it's predictable, but people would rather spend years in misery than risk a few days of pain. And this is why modern life, despite being safer than any previous era, often feels more paralyzing. Because our nervous systems evolved to avoid death and lions, and now we use it to avoid embarrassment and misjudgment and reputational damage and identity fracture.

哈姆雷特點出了真正的敵人，那就是不確定性。 不是痛苦或努力，而是僅僅是未知的事物。 我們的思想寧願忍受熟悉的痛苦，也不願冒險追求陌生的自由。 即使是痛苦，一旦變得可預測，也會變得可以忍受，但人們寧願在痛苦中度過數年，也不願冒幾天疼痛的風險。 這就是為什麼現代生活，儘管比任何之前的時代都更安全，但常常讓人感到更加麻痹的原因。 因為我們的神經系統是爲了避免死亡和獅子而進化出來的，現在我們用它來避免尷尬、誤判、聲譽損害以及身份認同的瓦解。

And here's the final uncomfortable implication Shakespeare leaves hanging. Self-awareness is not a pure good. Beyond a certain point, self-awareness actually inhibits agency. Less reflection can mean more peace. Less certainty can mean more movement. Less conscience can sometimes mean more life. Courage isn't about thinking clearly. It's about moving while things are still unclear. You know, there's that famous line, "The unexamined life is not worth living." But a life can be deeply examined and still never lived. This paradox of self-awareness, the fact that the deeper you think, sometimes the less you're able to act, if your mind is able to generate realities more quickly than you are able to come up with solutions or move through them, you kind of have this weird cost-benefit imbalance. So maybe like a cost-profit, your balance sheet is offset where the overheads are higher than the revenue. And this sort of puts you in a negative equity in terms of your ability to move forward. And that can freeze you in place.

以下是莎士比亞留下的最後一個令人不安的啟示。 自我意識並非純粹的好處。 在某種程度上，自我意識實際上會抑制行動能力。 減少反思可能意味著更多的平靜。 減少確定性可能意味著更多的行動。 有時，減少良心反而能帶來更多的人生體驗。 勇氣不是關於清晰地思考，而是關於在事情仍然不清楚的時候採取行動。 你知道，有一句著名的格言：「未經審視的生活是不值得過的。」 但一個人的生活可以被深入地審視，但仍然從未真正開始過。 這種自我意識的悖論，即你思考得越深入，有時就越難以行動，如果你的思想能夠比你解決問題或克服它們的速度更快地創造出各種可能性，那麼你就產生了一種奇怪的成本效益失衡。 就像一個成本-利潤表，你的支出超過了收入。 這會讓你在前進的能力上陷入負債狀態，並可能使你停滯不前。

You don't want to do something because you think, "Look at all the ways it could go wrong. And the more ways it could go wrong, the less ability I'm going to have to act. And what if this thing occurs and that thing occurs?" And over time, conscience makes cowards of us all. It's weird because most people probably need to be more thoughtful. They need to spend more time, be less rash, act less impulsively. But there is a cohort of people that are the opposite. And they're people like me and maybe you too. And they're the people who think more than they should, talk themselves out of more things than into them, and actually move more slowly. They get less done in life due to their thought than more.

你不想做某事，因為你認為：「看看它可能出錯的所有方式。 而且，出錯的方式越多，你就越沒有行動的能力。 還有，如果發生這個事情，然後又發生那個事情呢？」 隨著時間的推移，良心讓我們都變得膽小。 這很奇怪，因為大多數人可能需要更加深思熟慮。 他們需要花更多的時間，減少衝動行為。 但有一部分人恰恰相反。 他們是像我這樣的人，也許也包括你。 他們是那些思考過多、說服自己放棄更多事情而不是去做的人，他們實際上行動得更慢。 由於他們的思考，他們在生活中完成的事情反而更少。

Now, they'll make way fewer mistakes, and that's great. But again, the mistake of omission is different to the mistake of commission. So people make commission errors if they don't think enough. People make omission errors if they think too much. If you overthink, decide not to go up and speak to that girl that's been in the cafeteria at work for six months, she gets a boyfriend, she would have been the perfect partner for you, and you decide to not make the move because you've talked yourself into and out of it so many times, your mind's ability to show you what could go wrong is greater than your actions ability to fix it in reality. That is an omission error, but we don't see it in the same way because it's not as obvious.

當然，他們會犯的錯誤要少得多，這很好。 但再次強調，遺漏的錯誤和行為上的錯誤是不同的。 如果一個人思考不夠，就會犯行為上的錯誤；如果一個人思考太多，就會犯遺漏上的錯誤。 例如，如果你過分思考，決定不去和在公司食堂已經認識了六個月的那位女生搭訕，她可能會找到一個男朋友，而她可能就是你最理想的伴侶，但你因為反覆思考各種可能性而最終放棄了行動，你的思想能夠展示出所有可能出錯的情況，這使得你的行動能力無法在現實中彌補這些問題。 這是一種遺漏上的錯誤，但我們通常不會以同樣的方式看待它，因為它不太明顯。

For instance, I chose to not bring a number of guests on this podcast in 2024. And maybe that's leaked out of me in a couple of other vlogs or whatever, but I didn't make a big song and dance about it. I basically never spoke about it. I'm never going to get credit for the things that I didn't do. And in the same way, you never pay a cost for the things that you don't do. I mean, look, if you leave a person to bleed out on the side of the street without calling the ambulance, that's a kind of omission error, but it's pretty obvious. A much more quiet omission error is I was scared of building the business because my mind taught me all of the different ways that stuff could go wrong. So I didn't do it. And I'll never know the pain of not fulfilling my dreams, but I avoided the pain of failure. And the pains of failure are much more prevalent in our mind than the pain of, "Fuck, what if this doesn't go well?"

例如，我選擇沒有邀請一些嘉賓參加 2024 年的播客節目。 也許我在其他幾個視訊部落格或類似內容中提到過這件事，但我並沒有大肆宣揚。 我基本上從不談論它。 我永遠也不會因為我沒有做的事情而獲得任何讚賞。 同樣地，你永遠不會為你沒有做的事情付出代價。 看看，如果你把一個人留在一旁流血，卻不撥打救護車，那是一種遺漏上的錯誤，但這是顯而易見的。 一種更微妙的遺策是，我因為我的思想告訴我所有可能出錯的方式而害怕發展事業。 所以我沒有這樣做。 我永遠不會知道未能實現夢想的痛苦，但我避免了失敗的痛苦。 而我們頭腦中出現的失敗的痛苦，比「如果事情進展不順利會怎樣？」這種擔憂要多得多。

So there's this great audiobook from Tony Robbins. It's 30 years old. George Mac sent it to me. I don't even know how to find it. I'll try and find it and put it in the links, but it's basically an hour and a half worksheet, Awaken the Giant Within. It's an audiobook. And all he does, it's basically one long exercise to try and front load the pain as much as possible. Look at what this situation you're in now has cost you in the past. Look at what it's costing you right now and look at what it will cost you in the future. And he tries to get you to sit in the discomfort as much as possible. It's horrible, awful exercise. It's like the mental equivalent of an ice bath.

所以，有一個非常棒的由Tony Robbins錄製的有聲書。 它已經30年了。George Mac把它發給了我。 我甚至不知道該如何找到它。我會嘗試去尋找並將其放在鏈接中，但它基本上是一個長達一個半小時的練習冊，名為《喚醒你內在的巨人》（Awaken the Giant Within）。 這是一個有聲書。 他所做的，基本上就是一個長時間的練習，旨在儘可能地讓你提前體驗痛苦。 思考一下你現在所處的境況，過去已經給你帶來了什麼損失？ 思考一下它現在正在給你帶來什麼損失，以及它未來會給你帶來什麼損失。 他試圖讓你儘可能地沉浸在不適之中。 這是一種可怕、糟糕的練習。 它就像精神上的冰水浴。

And then he gets you to try and do the opposite. Look at what would have happened in the past if you'd made the change that you want to, that you think is right. If you'd improved this thing, look at what would be happening now and look at what would happen in the future. And he tries to get you to use, he calls it the pain pleasure principle. Motivate your behavior through pain and pleasure. And the type of pain that you can front load with, look at what not starting this thing has cost you in the past and now in the future.

然後他會讓你嘗試做相反的事情。 思考一下，如果你在過去做出你想要做的改變，如果你改善了這件事，現在會發生什麼？ 以及未來會發生什麼？ 他試圖讓你運用他稱之為「痛苦與快樂原則」，通過痛苦和快樂來激勵你的行為。 你可以提前體驗的痛苦是，思考一下不開始做某件事已經給你帶來了過去的損失以及現在的損失，以及未來的損失。

You have to be much more conscious. The commission errors come naturally to us, but the omission errors are much more hidden. So you need to kind of, you need to do an exercise. You need to consciously bring omission errors in like, fuck, like I've always wanted to be a stand up comedian. I've always just wanted to do, I've always, I want to do an open mic. I just really want to do an open mic. And you've put it off for decades. You never did it. You never closed that loop and you might hate it. Here's the other thing. The thing that you're putting off from doing, you might absolutely hate, but at least once you realize whether you like it or you don't, you go up and speak to the girl in the cafeteria and find out she's got horrible breath and she's an asshole. There you go. Loop closed. You don't need to think about it. But the what if after the fact will kill you, but the what if before the fact is really hard to determine. So yeah, I think this conscience does make count of us all. That is my year seven, fourth grade assessment of Shakespeare. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

你必須更加有意識。 行為上的錯誤對我們來說是很自然的，但遺漏上的錯誤則隱藏得更深。 所以你需要進行一些練習，你需要有意識地將遺漏上的錯誤帶入你的思考中，比如：「我一直都想成為一名脫口秀喜劇演員。 我一直都想做某件事，我一直都想去參加開放麥克風表演。 我真的非常想去參加開放麥克風表演。」 但你已經推遲了這麼多年。 你從未做到過。 你從未完成這個循環，而且你可能會討厭它。 還有一件事，你正在推遲去做的事情，你可能絕對會討厭它，但至少一旦你意識到自己是否喜歡它，你就知道了。 你走上前去和在食堂的那位女生搭訕，發現她口臭並且是個混蛋。 就這樣。 循環完成。 你不需要再思考這件事了。 但是，事後產生的「如果……」的想法會讓你痛苦，而事前很難確定「如果……會怎樣」。 所以是的，我認為這種良心確實影響著我們所有人。 這就是我作為七年級四年級的學生對莎士比亞的評估。 感謝各位來參加我的TED演講。