成为一个菜鸟

Being-A-Noob

成为一个菜鸟

January 2020

2020 年 01 月

When I was young, I thought old people had everything figured out. Now that I’m old, I know this isn’t true.

年轻的时候，我以为老人能弄清楚一切。现在我成为老人，才知道那不是真的。

I constantly feel like a noob. It seems like I’m always talking to some startup working in a new field I know nothing about, or reading a book about a topic I don’t understand well enough, or visiting some new country where I don’t know how things work.

我一直觉得自己是个菜鸟。好像我一直在和一些新领域的创业者交谈，或者读一本我不太了解的主题的书，或者去一些我不知道事情如何运作的新国家。

It’s not pleasant to feel like a noob. And the word “noob” is certainly not a compliment. And yet today I realized something encouraging about being a noob: the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally.

感觉自己是个菜鸟可不是件愉快的事。而且，“菜鸟"不是什么褒义词。但是，现在我意识到成为一名菜鸟也会带来一些好事：当你在局部的事情上越是一个菜鸟，整体来看，你成为菜鸟的次数就会越少。

For example, if you stay in your home country, you’ll feel less of a noob than if you move to Farawavia, where everything works differently. And yet you’ll know more if you move. So the feeling of being a noob is inversely correlated with actual ignorance.

打个比方，如果你生活在自己国家，那么感觉自己是个菜鸟的频率与搬到 Farawavia 相比一定很少，因为 Farawavia 对你来说是陌生的，那里的运作方式与你以前熟悉的都不一样。但是，如果你真的搬到 Farawavia，实际上你将会了解到更多的知识。也就是说，成为菜鸟的感觉和实际的无知成反比。

But if the feeling of being a noob is good for us, why do we dislike it? What evolutionary purpose could such an aversion serve?

但是，如果成为菜鸟的感觉对我有益，为什么我们不喜欢它呢？这样厌恶的行为有什么进化的目的？

I think the answer is that there are two sources of feeling like a noob: being stupid, and doing something novel. Our dislike of feeling like a noob is our brain telling us “Come on, come on, figure this out.” Which was the right thing to be thinking for most of human history. The life of hunter-gatherers was complex, but it didn’t change as much as life does now. They didn’t suddenly have to figure out what to do about cryptocurrency. So it made sense to be biased toward competence at existing problems over the discovery of new ones. It made sense for humans to dislike the feeling of being a noob, just as, in a world where food was scarce, it made sense for them to dislike the feeling of being hungry.

我想答案是有两个原因让人感觉自己像个菜鸟：愚蠢、做一些没有做过的事。这种让我们讨厌的菜鸟的感觉，是我们的大脑告诉我们的：“来吧，来吧，想想办法搞定它。” 在人类历史的大部分时间里，这是正确的思考方式。狩猎-采集时代的生活是复杂的，但是没有像今天的生活这样改变这么多，他们不需要立刻弄明白如何处理加密货币。这样看来，人们更擅长解决现有问题的，而不是全新的问题，这是有理论依据的。人类不喜欢当菜鸟的感觉是有道理的，就像在一个食物匮乏的世界里，人们不喜欢饥饿的感觉也是有道理的。

Now that too much food is more of a problem than too little, our dislike of feeling hungry leads us astray. And I think our dislike of feeling like a noob does too.

如今吃太多比吃不饱更是一个问题，由于我们对饥饿的厌恶致使我们误入歧途。我认为这和我们不喜欢菜鸟的感觉是一样的。

Though it feels unpleasant, and people will sometimes ridicule you for it, the more you feel like a noob, the better.

尽管感觉不愉快，人们有时也会嘲笑你，但是你越觉得自己像个菜鸟，就越好。