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.
Pozdrav svima. Čast mi je biti ovdje i razgovarati s vama, a govorit ću o pravdi i sreći i vezi između toga dvoga.
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."
Prije nekoliko godina nazvao me bivši učenik kako bi razgovarao o svojoj kćeri. Njegova kćer je tada bila maturantica i ozbiljno je razmišljala o upisu na Swarthmore, gdje sam ja podučavao pa ga je zanimalo mislim li da bi mogla upasti. Iznimno je teško upasti na Swarthmore. Pa sam mu rekao, "Pa, pričaj mi o njoj." I on mi je počeo pričati o njezinim ocjenama i sportskim uspjesima, o njenim izvannastavnim aktivnostima. I zvučalo je kao da je superzvijezda, čudo od djeteta. Pa sam rekao, "Ona zvuči fantastično. Zvuči baš kao učenica kakvu bi Swarthmore želio." Na to me on upitao, "Pa, znači li to da će ona upasti?" I ja sam rekao, "Ne." Jednostavno nema dovoljno slobodnih mjesta na Swarthmoreu za sve dobre učenike. Nema dovoljno mjesta na Harvardu, ni Yaleu, ni Princetonu, ni Stanfordu. Nema dovoljno mjesta u Googleu, Amazonu ili Appleu. Nema dovoljno mjesta na TED konferencijama. Ima strašno puno nadarenih ljudi i neki od njih neće uspjeti." Pa je on rekao, "Pa, što da radimo?" A ja sam rekao, "To je jako dobro pitanje."
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.
Što bismo trebali napraviti? Znam što su napravili fakulteti i sveučilišta. Kako bi igrali fer, nastavili su podizati standarde, jer ne djeluje pošteno upisivati manje kvalificirane ljude, a odbijati više kvalificirane ljude, pa standardi samo rastu i rastu dok toliko ne narastu da možete primiti samo onoliko učenika koliko stane.
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.
A to mnogima djeluje nepravedno i nepošteno. Pojedinci u američkom društvu imaju različita mišljenja o tome što znači tvrditi da je određeni proces pravedan, ali mislim da se svi slažu u jednom, a to je da u pravednom, poštenom sustavu, ljudi dobiju ono što zaslužuju.
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.
A ja sam govorio bivšem učeniku da kad su u pitanju upisi na fakultet, naprosto nije istina da ljudi dobiju što zaslužuju. Neki dobiju što zaslužuju, a neki ne, i to je naprosto tako.
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.
Kad podignete standarde kao što su to učinili fakulteti, zapravo stvarate nemilosrdno natjecanje među srednjoškolcima, jer nije dovoljno biti dobar, nije dovoljno biti dovoljno dobar, morate biti bolji od svih ostalih koji se također prijavljuju. A to je stvorilo, ili je doprinijelo nekoj vrsti epidemije anksioznosti i depresije koja slama naše tinejdžere. Uništavamo čitavu generaciju ovim nemilosrdnim natjecanjem.
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.
Dok sam razmišljao o tome, sinulo mi je da postoji način kako riješiti problem. Evo što bismo mogli učiniti. Kad se ljudi prijave na fakultet, odvajamo one koji su dovoljno dobri da budu uspješni od onih koji to nisu, i odbijamo one koji nisu dovoljno dobri da budu uspješni, a onda uzmemo sve ostale, stavimo njihova imena u šešir, nasumično izaberemo neke od njih i odobrimo im upis. Drugim riječima, vodimo upis na fakultet kao lutriju, a možda vodimo i zapošljavanje u tech tvrtkama kao lutriju, I - ne dao Bog - možda čak i odlučujemo koga pozvati na TED lutrijom.
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.
Nemojte me krivo shvatiti, lutrija neće eliminirati nepravdu. Još uvijek će biti mnogo ljudi koji neće dobiti što zaslužuju. Ali bar ćemo biti iskreni. Razotkrit ćemo nepravdu umjesto da je pokušavamo sakriti, a to će i probušiti balon nevjerojatnog pritiska u kojem sada žive naši školarci.
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.
Zašto se onda o ovom savršeno razumnom prijedlogu, ako to mogu reći, uopće ozbiljno ne razgovara? Mislim da znam zašto. Mislim da je to zato što mrzimo ideju da stvarno važne stvari u životu mogu biti rezultat sreće ili slučajnosti, da stvarno važne stvari u životu nisu pod našom kontrolom. I ja mrzim tu ideju. Ne iznenađuje da ljudi mrze tu ideju, ali to je naprosto kako stvari stoje.
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.
Prvo, upisi na fakultet već jesu lutrija. Samo se oni zaduženi za upise prave da nije tako. Budimo iskreni.
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.
Drugo, mislim da ako bismo prihvatili da to jest lutrija, to bi nam omogućilo da priznamo važnost sreće u životu svakoga od nas.
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.
Uzmite mene. Gotovo svi najznačajniji događaji u mom životu bili su u velikom dijelu rezultat čiste sreće. Kad sam bio u sedmom razredu, moja je obitelj napustila New York i preselila se u Westchester County. Baš na početku školske godine, sreo sam predivnu djevojčicu koja je postala moja prijateljica, pa najbolja prijateljica, pa moja djevojka i naposljetku moja žena. Nasreću, moja je žena već 52 godine. Ja nisam imao ništa s time. To je bila sretna slučajnost.
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 sam na fakultet i na prvom semestru upisao uvod u psihologiju. Nisam znao ni što je psihologija, ali uklapalo mi se u raspored i ispunjavalo sve uvjete pa sam to upisao. Nasreću, kolegij je predavao fenomenalan profesor psihologije, legenda. Zbog toga sam upisao psihologiju.
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.
Otišao na diplomski. Završavao sam studij kad je prijatelj koji je predavao na Swarthmoreu odlučio da više ne želi biti profesor, pa je dao otkaz i otišao u medicinsku školu. Njegovo radno mjesto se ispraznilo, ja sam se prijavio, dobio ga i to je bio jedini posao na koji sam se ikad prijavio. Proveo sam 45 godina poučavajući na Swarthmoreu, instituciji koja je imala nevjerojatan utjecaj na moju karijeru.
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.
I samo još jedan primjer, držao sam izlaganje o svom radu u New Yorku, i netko iz publike mi je došao nakon toga. Predstavio se. Rekao je, "Zovem se Chris. Biste li željeli održati izlaganje za TED?" Moj odgovor je bio, "Što je TED?" Pa, mislim, rekao mi je, TED tada još nije bio ono što je danas. Ali narednih godina, izlaganja koja sam održao na TED-u pogledalo je više od 20 milijuna ljudi.
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.
Dakle, zaključak je da sam veliki srećković. Imao sam sreće u braku. Imao sam sreće u obrazovanju. Imao sam sreće u karijeri. I imao sam sreće što sam dobio platformu i priliku na nečem poput TED-a.
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.
Jesam li zaslužio toliki uspjeh? Naravno da jesam, kao što i vi vjerojatno zaslužujete svoj uspjeh. Ali mnogo ljudi zaslužuje jednaki uspjeh, ali ga nisu dobili.
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?
Dakle, dobiju li ljudi ono što zaslužuju? Je li društvo pravedno? Naravno da nije. Marljivost i igranje po pravilima vam ne garantiraju ništa. Ako priznamo neizbježnost ove vrste nepravde i središnju važnost sreće, mogli bismo se zapitati kakvu odgovornost imamo prema onima koje sada slavimo kao heroje u doba pandemije kad ozbiljna bolest zadesi članove njihove obitelji kako bismo se pobrinuli da ostanu cijeli i da im život ne uništi nošenje s bolešću? Što dugujemo ljudima koji se muče, teško rade i nisu toliko sretni kao mi?
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.
Prije otprilike pola stoljeća, filozof John Rawls napisao je knjigu "Teorija pravde" u kojoj je uveo koncept koji je nazvao "velom neznanja." Postavio je pitanje: da ne znate koji ćete položaj imati u društvu, kakvo biste društvo željeli stvoriti? Predložio je da kad nismo sigurni hoćemo li ući u društvo na vrhu ili na dnu, onda želimo društvo koje je dobrano ravnopravno, kako bi čak i najveći pehisti mogli živjeti pristojne, smislene i zadovoljavajuće živote.
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.
Pa proširite ovo, svi vi sretni, uspješni ljudi, vašim zajednicama. Učinite što možete da se uvjerite da poštujemo i brinemo se za ljude koji zaslužuju uspjeh jednako koliko i mi, ali naprosto nemaju sreće.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.