Pozdrav svima. Čast mi je biti ovdje i govoriti vam. Ono o čemu ću danas govoriti je sreća i pravda i njihova povezanost.
Hello, everybody. I'm honored to be here to talk to you, and what I'm going to talk about today is luck and justice and the relation between them.
Prije nekoliko godina nazvao me je moj bivši učenik da porazgovara o svojoj kćerci. Njegova kćerka je bila maturant i ozbiljno zainteresovana da se upiše na Swarthmore, gdje sam ja predavao, i htio je čuti moje mišljenje hoće li biti primljena. Vrlo je teško upasti u Swarthmore. Rekao sam: "Reci mi nešto o njoj." I ispričao mi je o njoj, kakve su joj bile ocjene, bodovi na maturi, vannastavne aktivnosti. I zvučala je kao superzvijezda, krasno, krasno dijete. Rekao sam: "Zvuči odlično. Upravo je onakav student kakvog bi Swarthmore volio imati." On je rekao: "Pa, da li to znači da će upasti?" Rekao sam: "Ne. Jednostavno nema dovoljno mjesta u Swarthmore razredu za svakoga ko je dobar. Nema dovoljno mjesta na Harvardu, ili Yaleu ili Princetonu ili Stanfordu. Nema dovoljno mjesta u Googleu ili Amazonu ili Appleu. Nema dovoljno mjesta na TED konferenciji. Postoji užasno velik broj dobrih ljudi i nekoliko njih neće uspjeti." Upitao je: "Pa šta da radimo?" Odgovorio sam: "Dobro pitanje."
Some years ago, a former student of mine called me to talk about his daughter. It turns out his daughter was a high school senior, was seriously interested in applying to Swarthmore, where I taught, and he wanted to get my sense of whether she would get in. Swarthmore is an extremely hard school to get into. So I said, "Well, tell me about her." And he told me about her, what her grades were like, her board scores, her extracurricular activities. And she just sounded like a superstar, wonderful, wonderful kid. So I said, "She sounds fabulous. She sounds like just the kind of student that Swarthmore would love to have." And so he said, "Well, does that mean that she'll get in?" And I said, "No. There just aren't enough spots in the Swarthmore class for everybody who's good. There aren't enough spots at Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Stanford. There aren't enough spots at Google or Amazon or Apple. There aren't enough spots at the TED Conference. There are an awful lot of good people, and some of them are not going to make it." So he said, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" And I said, "That's a very good question."
Šta da radimo? Znam šta su koledži i univerziteti uradili. U interesu pravednosti, nastavljali su dizati standarde jer ne izgleda pošteno primiti manje kvalifikovane ljude a odbiti bolje kvalifikovane, te se nastave dizati standardi sve više i više dok nisu visoki dovoljno da se primi samo onaj broj studenata koji može stati.
What are we supposed to do? And I know what colleges and universities have done. In the interest of fairness, what they've done is they've kept ratcheting up the standards because it doesn't seem fair to admit less qualified people and reject better qualified people, so you just keep raising the standards higher and higher until they're high enough that you can admit only the number of students that you can fit.
Ovo uznemiruje većinsko shvatanje pravde i poštenosti. Ljudi američkog društva imaju različita mišljenja oko toga šta znači kada je neka vrsta procesa pravedna, no smatram da se većina slaže oko jedne stvari, a to je da u pravednom, poštenom sistemu ljudi dobivaju šta zasluže.
And this violates a lot of people's sense of what justice and fairness is. People in American society have different opinions about what it means to say that some sort of process is just, but I think there's one thing that pretty much everyone agrees on, that in a just system, a fair system, people get what they deserve.
I ono što sam govorio svom bivšem učeniku je da, kada je prijava na fakultet u pitanju, nije istina da ljudi dobivaju šta zasluže. Pojedini dobiju šta zasluže, a drugi ne; tako to jednostavno ide.
And what I was telling my former student is that when it comes to college admissions, it just isn't true that people get what they deserve. Some people get what they deserve, and some people don't, and that's just the way it is.
Kada se povise zahtjevi, kao što su to fakulteti uradili, stvori se ludo takmičenje među srednjoškolcima, jer ne odgovara biti dobar, ne odgovara biti dovoljno dobar, mora se biti bolji od ostalih koji se također prijavljuju. Ovo je stvorilo ili doprinijelo stvaranju jedne vrste epidemije anksioznosti i depresije koja uništava naše tinejdžere. Ovom vrstom takmičenja uništavamo cijelu jednu generaciju.
When you ratchet up requirements as colleges have done, what you do is you create a crazy competition among high school kids, because it's not adequate to be good, it's not adequate to be good enough, you have to be better than everybody else who is also applying. And what this has done, or what this has contributed to, is a kind of epidemic of anxiety and depression that is just crushing our teenagers. We are wrecking a generation with this kind of competition.
Dok sam razmišljao o ovome, shvatio sam da postoji način rješavanja ovog problema. Evo šta bismo mogli uraditi. Kada se ljudi prijavljuju na fakultet, među prijavljenim razdvojimo one koji su dovoljno dobri da uspiju i one koji to nisu. Odbijemo one koji nisu dovoljno dobri da uspiju, a onda uzmemo sve ostale i stavimo im imena u šešir, i samo ih nasumično izvučemo i primimo. Drugim riječima, vršimo prijem na fakultet na sreću; možda i prijave za posao u tehnološkim kompanijama, a možda i, sačuvaj Bože, možemo odlučivati ko će biti pozvan da održi govor na TED-u na sreću.
As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me there's a way to fix this problem. And here's what we could do: when people apply to college, we distinguish between the applicants who are good enough to be successful and the ones who aren't, and we reject the ones who aren't good enough to be successful, and then we take all of the others, and we put their names in a hat, and we just pick them out at random and admit them. In other words, we do college admissions by lottery, and maybe we do job offers at tech companies by lottery, and -- perish the thought -- maybe we even make decisions about who gets invited to talk at TED by lottery.
Sad, nemojte me pogrešno shvatiti, ovakva lutrija neće ukloniti nepravdu. Opet će biti veliki broj ljudi koji neće dobiti šta zasluže. Ali je barem iskreno. Umjesto pretvaranja, prikazuje nepravdu onakvom kakva jeste i buši ogromni balon pritiska ispod kojeg trenutno naši srednjoškolci žive.
Now, don't misunderstand me, a lottery like this is not going to eliminate the injustice. There will still be plenty of people who don't get what they deserve. But at least it's honest. It reveals the injustice for what it is instead of pretending otherwise, and it punctures the incredible pressure balloon that our high school kids are now living under.
Zašto se ovaj savršeno razumni prijedlog, ako smijem tako reći, ozbiljnije ne razmotri? Mislim da znam zašto. Mislim da nam je mrska pomisao da se zaista važne životne stvari možda dešavaju igrom sreće ili slučajno, da zaista važne stvari u našim životima nisu u našoj kontroli. Mrzim tu pomisao. Nije iznenađenje da ljudi mrze tu pomisao ali su stvari jednostavno tako posložene.
So why is it that this perfectly reasonable proposal, if I do say so myself, doesn't get any serious discussion? I think I know why. I think it's that we hate the idea that really important things in life might happen by luck or by chance, that really important things in our lives are not under our control. I hate that idea. It's not surprising that people hate that idea, but it simply is the way things are.
Kao prvo, prijem na fakultet već jeste lutrija, samo se prijemni službenici pretvaraju da nije. Stoga budimo iskreni.
First of all, college admissions already is a lottery. It's just that the admissions officers pretend that it isn't. So let's be honest about it.
Drugo, smatram da bi nam, ako bismo prihvatili tu lutriju, pomogla uvidjeti značaj dobre sreće u skoro svakom od nas.
And second, I think if we appreciated that it was a lottery, it would also get us to acknowledge the importance of good fortune in almost every one of our lives.
Uzmite mene za primjer. Gotovo svi najznačajniji događaji mog života nastali su, uglavnom, kao rezultat dobre sreće. Kada sam bio u sedmom razredu, moja porodica je napustila New York i preselila se u Westchester County. Odmah na početku škole upoznao sam ljupku djevojčicu s kojom sam se sprijateljio; potom je postala moja najbolja prijateljica, potom moja djevojka, a potom moja supruga. Sretno smo u braku već 52 godine. Malo sam šta imao s tim. Ovo je bila sretna slučajnost.
Take me. Almost all the most significant events in my life have occurred, to a large degree, as a result of good luck. When I was in seventh grade, my family left New York and went to Westchester County. Right at the beginning of school, I met a lovely young girl who became my friend, then she became my best friend, then she became my girlfriend and then she became my wife. Happily, she's been my wife now for 52 years. I had very little to do with this. This was a lucky accident.
Otišao sam na fakultet i na prvom semestru sam se upisao na čas uvoda u psihologiju. Nisam ni znao šta je psihologija ali se uklapalo u moj raspored i bila je adekvatna kao čas pa sam je upisao. I slučajno je predmet predavao superzvijezda od profesora uvodne psihologije, legenda. Zbog toga sam uzeo psihologiju kao glavni predmet,
I went off to college, and in my first semester, I signed up for a class in introduction to psychology. I didn't even know what psychology was, but it fit into my schedule and it met requirements, so I took it. And by luck, the class was taught by a superstar introductory psychology teacher, a legend. Because of that, I became a psychology major.
otišao u višu školu i završavao. Moj prijatelj koji je predavao na Swarthmoru nije htio više biti profesor pa je napustio i otišao na medicinu. Njegovo mjesto na poslu je ostalo slobodno, prijavio sam se i dobio ga - jedini posao za koji sam se ikada prijavio. Predavao sam 45 godina na Swarthmoru, u instituciji koja je uveliko uticala na formiranje moje karijere.
Went off to graduate school. I was finishing up. A friend of mine who taught at Swarthmore decided he didn't want to be a professor anymore, and so he quit to go to medical school. The job that he occupied opened up, I applied for it, I got it, the only job I've ever applied for. I spent 45 years teaching at Swarthmore, an institution that had an enormous impact on the shape that my career took.
Još samo jedan primjer da dam. Držao sam govor o nečemu iz mog posla u New Yorku a u publici je bio neko ko je došao do mene nakon govora. Predstavio se. Rekao je: "Zovem se Chris. Da li želite govoriti na TED-u?" Moj odgovor je bio: "Šta je TED?" Pa, rekao mi je, a TED tada nije bio ono što je danas. U međuvremenu je moje govore na TED-u odgledalo više od 20 miliona ljudi.
And to just give one last example, I was giving a talk about some of my work in New York, and there was somebody in the audience who came up to me after my talk. He introduced himself. He said, "My name is Chris. Would you like to give a talk at TED?" And my response was, "What's TED?" Well, I mean, he told me, and TED then wasn't what it is now. But in the intervening years, the talks I've given at TED have been watched by more than 20 million people.
Mogu zaključiti da sam sretan čovjek. Posrećilo mi se u braku. Posrećilo mi se u obrazovanju. Posrećilo mi se u poslu. Posrećilo mi se što sam imao nastup i govor na nečemu kao što je TED.
So the conclusion is, I'm a lucky man. I'm lucky about my marriage. I'm lucky about my education. I'm lucky about my career. And I'm lucky to have had a platform and a voice at something like TED.
Da li sam zaslužio uspjeh koji sam imao? Zasigurno ga zaslužujem, kao što vi vjerovatno zaslužujete vaš. No mnogi ljudi također zaslužuju uspjeh poput našeg, a nisu ga imali.
Did I deserve the success I've had? Sure I deserve that success, just as you probably deserve your success. But lots of people also deserve successes like ours who haven't had it.
Dakle, dobijaju li ljudi šta zasluže? Je li društvo pravedno? Naravno da ne. Naporan rad i igranje po pravilima ne garantuju ništa. Ako bismo cijenili neizbježnost ovakve vrste nepravde i središnjost dobre sreće, možemo se zapitati kakvu odgovornost imamo prema ljudima koje slavimo kao heroje u vremenu ove pandemije, dok je njihova porodica pogođena ozbiljnom bolešću, da osiguramo da ostanu prisebni i da ne unište vlastite živote po cijeni suočavanja s ovom bolešću? Šta dugujemo ljudima kojima je teško, koji naporno rade i nisu sretni kao mi?
So do people get what they deserve? Is society just? Of course not. Working hard and playing by the rules is just no guarantee of anything. If we appreciate the inevitability of this kind of injustice and the centrality of good fortune, we might ask ourselves what responsibilities do we have to the people we are now celebrating as heroes in this time of the pandemic when a serious illness befalls their family to make sure that they remain whole and their lives aren't ruined by the cost of dealing with the illness? What do we owe people who struggle, work hard and are less lucky than we are?
Prije pola stoljeća, filozof John Rawls je napisao knjigu "A Theory of Justice" i u njoj je predstavio koncept koji je nazvao "velo neznanja". Postavio je pitanje: Da ne znaš kakav položaj bi zauzeo, kakvo društvo bi htio napraviti? Onda je rekao, da kada ne znamo hoćemo li biti na vrhu ili na dnu društvene ljestvice, želimo društvo koje je poprilično jednako, tako da bi čak i nesretnici mogli fino, ispunjeno i zadovoljno živjeti.
About a half century ago, the philosopher John Rawls wrote a book called "A Theory of Justice," and in that book, he introduced a concept that he called "the veil of ignorance." The question he posed was: If you didn't know what your position in society was going to be, what kind of a society would you want to create? And what he suggested is that when we don't know whether we're going to enter society at the top or at the bottom, what we want is a society that is pretty damn equal, so that even the unlucky will be able to live decent, meaningful and satisfying lives.
Dakle, sretni i uspješni, vratite ovo u vaša društva i radite sve što možete da poštujemo i brinemo o ljudima koji isto tako zaslužuju uspjeh ali nisu naše sreće.
So bring this back, all of you lucky, successful people, to your communities, and do what you can to make sure that we honor and take care of people who are just as deserving of success as we are, but just not as lucky.
Hvala.
Thank you.