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.
大家好。 很榮幸能在這裡對您說話, 我今天要談論的是運氣和正義, 以及它們之間的關係。
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."
幾年前, 我以前的一個學生打電話給我 談他的女兒。 原來他的女兒是高三學生, 非常想申請斯沃斯莫爾學院(Swarthmore), 我任教的學院, 他想知道我是否覺得她會被錄取。 斯沃斯莫爾是一所難進的學校。 因此我說:「好, 告訴我關於她的事。」 他告訴我她的學業成績、 美國大學理事會標準測試的分數、 課外活動。 聽起來她超級亮眼, 是個很棒,很棒的孩子。 然後我說:「她聽起來很棒。 她聽起來像是那種 斯沃斯莫爾想收的學生。 於是他說:「好, 這表示她會被錄取嗎?」 我說:「不。 斯沃斯莫爾沒有足夠的名額 錄取每一位優秀的學生。 哈佛、耶魯、普林斯頓 或史丹佛沒有足夠的名額。 Google、亞馬遜或蘋果也沒有。 TED 會議沒有足夠的名額。 有許許多多優秀的人, 當中有一些無法被錄取。」 然後他說:「好吧, 那麼我們應該怎麼做?」 我說:「這是一個好問題。」
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.
我們該怎麼做? 而我知道學院和大學是怎麼做的。 為了公平起見, 他們不斷提高標準, 因為這做法似乎不公平: 錄取稍微遜色的人才 而拒絕更為出色的人才。 因此他們就不斷提高標準, 提高到符合錄取標準的人數恰好。
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.
這違背了許多人對正義與公平的理解。 美國社會的人 對公正程序的意涵看法不同, 但我認為幾乎人人都同意: 在公正、公平的制度裡, 人會得其所應得。
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.
我告訴我以前的學生, 在大學錄取這事上 人得其所應得這事並不成立。 有些人得其應得,有些人沒有, 就這樣。
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.
提高大學入學的門檻, 就會造成高中生間的瘋狂競爭, 因為好還不夠, 夠好是不足夠的, 必須比其他的申請人更好才行。 而這造成、促成了 焦慮和抑鬱的流行, 簡直壓垮了我們的青少年。 我們用這競爭毀了一代人。
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.
在思考之際, 我想到一種能解決此問題的方法。 我們能這樣做: 收到大學入學申請時, 我們區分出 達到錄取水平 和低於錄取水平的申請人, 我們拒絕那些低於錄取水平 不會被錄取的人, 然後把所有其他人的名字放在帽裡, 隨機挑選, 挑到的就錄取。 換句話說,我們經由抽籤的方式 來決定誰被大學錄取, 也許透過抽籤的方式 提供在科技公司工作的機會, 還有——假裝我沒說—— 甚至決定邀請誰到 TED 演講 也可以用抽籤方式。
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.
別會錯意, 抽籤方式並不能消除不公正的現象, 仍然會有很多人未能得其所應得, 但至少此過程誠實。 它揭示了不公正之處, 而不是假裝公正, 它還刺破了我們的高中生 目前所處的超高壓力氣球。
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.
那麼為什麼我自己聲稱 是完全合理的此一建議 沒被認真討論呢? 我想我知道原因。 我認為我們討厭此一想法是因為 生活中真正重要的事情 可能因運氣或偶然而發生, 換言之,生活中真正重要的事 不受我們的控制。 我討厭那樣, 人們也討厭就不足為奇了, 但情況就是這樣。
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.
首先,大學錄取過程已是碰運氣, 只是招生人員假裝並非如此。 因此,讓我們誠實面對吧。
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.
其次, 我想,如果我們承認是碰運氣, 也會使我們認識到好運的重要性。 我們一生中幾乎事事如此。
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.
以我為例。 我生命中幾乎所有重要的事 在很大程度上 都是因為好運氣。 我七年級時,我和家人搬離紐約, 去了威徹斯特縣。 就在開學之初, 我遇到了一個可愛的年輕女孩, 她成為了我的朋友, 然後成為了我最好的朋友, 然後成為我的女朋友, 然後成為我的妻子。 我和妻子快樂結褵了 52 年。 我的所作所為幾乎無關。 只是好運氣。
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.
我去上大學, 在第一學期選了心理學概論課。 我甚至不知道心理學是什麼, 但它符合我的課表和修課所需, 所以我修了。 幸運的是,這堂課由一位 傳奇的心理學超級巨星教授授課。 因此,我以心理系為主修,
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.
上了研究所。 在我快完成學業時, 一個在斯沃斯莫爾教書的朋友 決定不再當教授了, 他辭了教職去讀醫學院。 他的職位成了職缺, 我申請,得到了, 它成了我唯一曾經申請過的工作。 我在斯沃斯莫爾教了 45 年書, 這學院對我的職涯影響巨大。
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.
最後再舉一個例子, 我曾在紐約演講,談我在做的研究。 演講結束後,聽眾中有個人來找我。 他自我介紹, 說:「我叫克里斯。 您想在 TED 上演講嗎?」 我問:「什麼是 TED?」 他告訴了我, 當時的 TED 和現在不同。 但是在隨後的幾年裡, 我在 TED 的演講被二千多萬人看過。
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.
因此結論是,我是個幸運的人。 我慶幸自己的婚姻, 慶幸自己的學業, 慶幸自己的職業, 還慶幸在 TED 之類的平台上有發言權。
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.
我值得獲取這些成功嗎? 當然我值得, 就像您值得獲取成功一樣。 但很多像我們一樣也值得獲取成功的人 卻還沒有成功。
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?
那麼,人們會得其所應得嗎? 社會是公正的嗎? 當然不是。 努力工作和遵守規則 並不能給予任何保證。 如果我們認知這種不公正的必然性 和好運的中心地位, 我們可能會問自己, 我們肩負了什麼責任, 在這疫情大流行時期, 我們對稱頌的英雄肩負什麼責任呢? 正當他們的家人面臨嚴重的疾病, 如何確保他們的家庭保持完整, 人生不因療病的花費而崩壞呢? 我們欠那些處於掙扎中的人什麼? 他們努力工作,卻沒有我們那麼好運。
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.
大約半個世紀前, 哲學家約翰·羅爾斯(John Rawls) 寫了一本叫做《正義論》的書。 書中介紹一個概念, 他稱之為「無知的面紗」。 他提出的問題是: 如果你不知道自己 將會在社會中立足何處, 又怎麼會知道你想要建立 什麼樣的社會呢? 他的建議 就是在我們不知道會進入 社會的頂部或底部的情況下, 我們將會想要一個極其平等的社會, 這樣就算倒霉的人 仍能夠過體面、有意義 和令人滿意的日子。
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.
因此,讓所有這些 有幸、成功的人回到社區, 盡力確保我們尊重並照顧到 那些和我們一樣值得成功, 卻沒那麼幸運的人。
Thank you.
謝謝。