Do you remember the story of Odysseus and the Sirens from high school or junior high school? There was this hero, Odysseus, who's heading back home after the Trojan War. And he's standing on the deck of his ship, he's talking to his first mate, and he's saying, "Tomorrow, we will sail past those rocks, and on those rocks sit some beautiful women called Sirens. And these women sing an enchanting song, a song so alluring that all sailors who hear it crash into the rocks and die." Now you would expect, given that, that they would choose an alternate route around the Sirens, but instead Odysseus says, "I want to hear that song. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pour wax in the ears of you and all the men -- stay with me -- so that you can't hear the song, and then I'm going to have you tie me to the mast so that I can listen and we can all sail by unaffected." So this is a captain putting the life of every single person on the ship at risk so that he can hear a song.
还记不记得 高中或是初中时 奧德修斯和塞壬的故事? 有这么个英雄,奧德修斯 从特洛伊战争返回 他站在战船的甲板上 和大副说着话 他说: “明天我们驶过那些岩石 岩石上会坐者一群美女 她们是塞壬 她们会唱首摄人心魄的歌 会令 听到歌声的水手着迷 船撞上岩石而亡 你会想 既然如此 他们应该另找一条航线避开塞壬 但是奧德修斯说 ”我想听到那首歌 我会用蜡 把你和其他所有人的 耳朵 都封上- 这样你们就听不见这歌了 你们把我绑在桅杆上 这样我就能听到歌 并且航行不受影响 这个船长 置全船人的危险于不顾 就为了自己听首歌
And I'd like to think if this was the case, they probably would have rehearsed it a few times. Odysseus would have said, "Okay, let's do a dry run. You tie me to the mast, and I'm going to beg and plead. And no matter what I say, you cannot untie me from the mast. All right, so tie me to the mast." And the first mate takes a rope and ties Odysseus to the mast in a nice knot. And Odysseus does his best job playacting and says, "Untie me. Untie me. I want to hear that song. Untie me." And the first mate wisely resists and doesn't untie Odysseus. And then Odysseus says, "I see that you can get it. All right, untie me now and we'll get some dinner." And the first mate hesitates. He's like, "Is this still the rehearsal, or should I untie him?" And the first mate thinks, "Well, I guess at some point the rehearsal has to end." So he unties Odysseus, and Odysseus flips out. He's like, "You idiot. You moron. If you do that tomorrow, I'll be dead, you'll be dead, every single one of the men will be dead. Now just don't untie me no matter what." He throws the first mate to the ground. This repeats itself through the night -- rehearsal, tying to the mast, conning his way out of it, beating the poor first mate up mercilessly. Hilarity ensues.
我想要是这种状况 他们应该事先练习几次 奧德修斯会说:“好,我们试试。 你把我绑在桅杆上,我怎么央求 不管说什么你都不要解开绳子 好,现在把我绑上桅杆吧。” 大副取了绳子 把奧德修斯牢牢绑在桅杆上 奧德修斯拼命假装求情 说:“放开我吧。放开我吧。 我想听那首歌。放开我吧。” 大副会很明智地拒绝 不会解开奧德修斯 然后奧德修斯说;“好,你能胜任这个任务。 好,解开我咱们吃晚饭去。” 大副迟疑了 “我们还在练习呢 还是我就解开绳子呢?” 大副想 “好吧,排练总有结束的时候” 他解开奧德修斯,但是奧德修斯大发雷霆 “你个蠢货,你个白痴。 明天你要这么干,我们都死定了 每个人都死定了 不管我说什么都不能解开!” 他把大副摔倒在地 他们就这么折腾了一夜- 排练,绑在桅杆上 哄大副解开绳子 毫不留情地殴打大副 闹剧就来了
Tying yourself to a mast is perhaps the oldest written example of what psychologists call a commitment device. A commitment device is a decision that you make with a cool head to bind yourself so that you don't do something regrettable when you have a hot head. Because there's two heads inside one person when you think about it. Scholars have long invoked this metaphor of two selves when it comes to questions of temptation. There is first, the present self. This is like Odysseus when he's hearing the song. He just wants to get to the front row. He just thinks about the here and now and the immediate gratification. But then there's this other self, the future self. This is Odysseus as an old man who wants nothing more than to retire in a sunny villa with his wife Penelope outside of Ithaca -- the other one.
把自己绑到桅杆上 大概是最早的 心理学家称为承诺手段的书面记录了 承诺手段是你在冷静状态下 做出的决定来约束自己 以防在冲动之下 做出事后后悔的事情 你想想,人内心 有两种状态 当涉及到诱惑的问题时 学者们早就用了两个自我的比喻 第一是当下的自我 就象是奥德修斯 他一听到这歌 就想去前排占个好位子 只想着此时此刻和当下的满足 但是另一个自我,未来的自我 作为一个老人的奥德修斯 他只想在远离伊萨卡的别墅里 和妻子佩罗普过退休生活 这是另一个自我
So why do we need commitment devices? Well resisting temptation is hard, as the 19th century English economist Nassau William Senior said, "To abstain from the enjoyment which is in our power, or to seek distant rather than immediate results, are among the most painful exertions of the human will." If you set goals for yourself and you're like a lot of other people, you probably realize it's not that your goals are physically impossible that's keeping you from achieving them, it's that you lack the self-discipline to stick to them. It's physically possible to lose weight. It's physically possible to exercise more. But resisting temptation is hard.
那么为什么我们需要承诺手段呢? 因为诱惑难以抗拒 19世纪的英国经济学家 老纳索威廉姆说 “放弃我们能得到的享受 或者追寻遥远而不是眼下的结果 是人类意志中 最痛苦的事情之一。” 如果你为自己设定目标,并且你跟普通人一样 也许你会意识到 不是定的目标高不可攀 而是缺乏自律 去坚持下来 减肥是现实可行的 增加运动是现实可行的 但是抵抗诱惑 很难
The other reason that it's difficult to resist temptation is because it's an unequal battle between the present self and the future self. I mean, let's face it, the present self is present. It's in control. It's in power right now. It has these strong, heroic arms that can lift doughnuts into your mouth. And the future self is not even around. It's off in the future. It's weak. It doesn't even have a lawyer present. There's nobody to stick up for the future self. And so the present self can trounce all over its dreams. So there's this battle between the two selves that's being fought, and we need commitment devices to level the playing field between the two.
另一个 难以抵抗诱惑的原因是 当下的自我和未来的自我之间 不平等的战争 当下的自我活在现在 控制一些 这个自我有强大英勇的胳膊 抓起甜甜圈送到嘴里去 而未来的自我都不在场 它还在远远的未来,没什么力量 它连律师都不在场 没人会为了未来自我而争辩 所以当下的自我可以击败 未来的所有梦想 所以在这两个斗争的自我之间 要有承诺手段 来平衡二者的力量
Now I'm a big fan of commitment devices actually. Tying yourself to the mast is the oldest one, but there are other ones such as locking a credit card away with a key or not bringing junk food into the house so you won't eat it or unplugging your Internet connection so you can use your computer. I was creating commitment devices of my own long before I knew what they were. So when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers or I would have to give up five dollars.
我很拥护承诺设备 把自己绑到桅杆上是最古老的一个例子,还有其他的 把信用卡锁起来 不把垃圾食品带回家而减少摄入 断网 来保证使用电脑 在我自己知道承诺手段之前 我就在创造他们了 当我还是哥伦比亚大学的 苦逼博士后时 我还在“发表(论文)或淘汰”中挣扎 我得为了文章 一天写五页 不然就得丢掉5块钱
And when you try to execute these commitment devices, you realize the devil is really in the details. Because it's not that easy to get rid of five dollars. I mean, you can't burn it; that's illegal. And I thought, well I could give it to a charity or give it to my wife or something like that. But then I thought, oh, I'm sending myself mixed messages. Because not writing is bad, but giving to charity is good. So then I would kind of justify not writing by giving a gift. And then I kind of flipped that around and thought, well I could give it to the neo-Nazis. But then I was like, that's more bad than writing is good, and so that wouldn't work. So ultimately, I just decided I would leave it in an envelope on the subway. Sometimes a good person would find it, sometimes a bad person would find it. On average, it was just a completely pointless exchange of money that I would regret. (Laughter) Such it is with commitment devices.
当你得执行这些承诺手段的时候 你就意识到了执行的细节太邪恶了 因为要丢掉五块钱不那么容易 你不能烧了,那是犯法 我想 我可以捐给慈善机构 或者给我老婆,等等 但是转念一想,我这是在混淆视线 因为不写作是坏事,但慈善是好事 这样赠予就把不写作 变得合理了 然后我想了想 我可以把它给新纳粹分子 但是,这比不写作更坏 所以这个方法行不通 最后我决定 我把它放进信封留到地铁上 有时候是好人捡到 有时候是坏人捡到 总的来说 只是没有意义的但是我会后悔的 丢钱行为 (笑声) 这就是承诺手段
But despite my like for them, there's two nagging concerns that I've always had about commitment devices, and you might feel this if you use them yourself. So the first is, when you've got one of these devices going, such as this contract to write everyday or pay, it's just a constant reminder that you have no self-control. You're just telling yourself, "Without you, commitment device, I am nothing, I have no self-discipline." And then when you're ever in a situation where you don't have a commitment device in place -- like, "Oh my God, that person's offering me a doughnut, and I have no defense mechanism," -- you just eat it. So I don't like the way that they take the power away from you. I think self-discipline is something, it's like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
虽然我很喜欢它 但是对于承诺手段 我仍有两个顾虑 在使用的时候可能会感受到 首先就是 当你使用这些手段的时候 比如说不写就付钱 这只是会不断地提醒自己 没有自控能力 你只是在告诉自己,“没有承诺手段, 你会一事无成,你不能自律。” 这样在一个 没有承诺手段的情况下- 比如“天哪,那家伙要给我一个甜甜圈 我可没有防御机制” 你就给吃了 所以我不喜欢承诺手段让我们失去能力 我想自律就象是肌肉 锻炼越多就越强壮
The other problem with commitment devices is that you can always weasel your way out of them. You say, "Well, of course I can't write today, because I'm giving a TEDTalk and I have five media interviews, and then I'm going to a cocktail party and then I'll be drunk after that. And so there's no way that this is going to work." So in effect, you are like Odysseus and the first mate in one person. You're putting yourself, you're binding yourself, and you're weaseling your way out of it, and then you're beating yourself up afterwards.
承诺手段的另一个问题就是 你可以很容易耍滑头就逃过 你说:“哎呀,今天写不了啦 我有个TED演讲,还得接受5个媒体访问 然后得去个鸡尾酒晚会 然后我肯定就喝醉了 所以我今天肯定写不了。” 这样一来,你就象奥德修斯和大副 二者合一 你把自己绑起来 然后耍个手段逃脱了 然后事后就痛打自己
So I've been working for about a decade now on finding other ways to change people's relationship to the future self without using commitment devices. In particular, I'm interested in the relationship to the future financial self. And this is a timely issue. I'm talking about the topic of saving. Now saving is a classic two selves problem. The present self does not want to save at all. It wants to consume. Whereas the future self wants the present self to save. So this is a timely problem. We look at the savings rate and it has been declining since the 1950s. At the same time, the Retirement Risk Index, the chance of not being able to meet your needs in retirement, has been increasing. And we're at a situation now where for every three baby boomers, the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that two will not be able to meet their pre-retirement needs while they're in retirement.
为了寻找 承诺手段之外的方法 来改善人们 与未来自我的关系 我努力了近十年 特别地,我对财政意义上的 未来自我关系感兴趣 这是时间跨度的话题 我要说的是就是储蓄 储蓄是个典型的两个自我的问题 当下的自我完全不想储蓄 它要消费 但是未来的自我要现在的自我储蓄 所以这是个时间跨度的问题 看看储蓄率 自50年代以来一直下跌 同时,退休风险指数 -在退休时无法有足够的积累 一直在上升 我们现在的状况是 按照麦肯锡全球研究中心预计 婴儿潮的人群里 每三个就有两个无法完成退休前 为退休生活的积累
So what can we do about this? There's a philosopher, Derek Parfit, who said some words that were inspiring to my coauthors and I. He said that, "We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination." That is to say, we somehow might not believe that we're going to get old, or we might not be able to imagine that we're going to get old some day. On the one hand, it sounds ridiculous. Of course, we know that we're going to get old. But aren't there things that we believe and don't believe at the same time?
我们能做些什么呢? 有个哲学家 德瑞克巴菲特 他说了一些话对我和我的合作者很有启发 他说:“我们忽视未来自我 是因为没有信念或缺乏想像。” 也就是说 我们不知怎么的不相信自己会变老 或者我们没法想像 有天我们会变老 一方面这听起来很可笑 当然我们知道自己会变老 但是有没有可能有些东西我们相信的同时又不相信呢?
So my coauthors and I have used computers, the greatest tool of our time, to assist people's imagination and help them imagine what it might be like to go into the future. And I'll show you some of these tools right here. The first is called the distribution builder. It shows people what the future might be like by showing them a hundred equally probable outcomes that might be obtained in the future. Each outcome is shown by one of these markers, and each sits on a row that represents a level of wealth and retirement. Being up at the top means that you're enjoying a high income in retirement. Being down at the bottom means that you're struggling to make ends meet. When you make an investment, what you're really saying is, "I accept that any one of these 100 things could happen to me and determine my wealth."
我和我的合作者用电脑 这个时代最伟大的工具 来帮助人们想像 想像未来可能的 样子 在这儿我会展示几个 第一个是“分配生成器” 可以向人们展示未来可能的状况 它能显示你未来可能取得的 一百种同等概率的结果 每一种结果都用这些记号来表示 各排上的每一个单位 代表一定程度的财富和退休期 位置越高 也就意味着你可以享受富足的晚年 越往下 也就是你得努力糊口 如果你进行投资 如果说你承认 这一百件事 有可能发生在自己身上并最终决定我的财富
Now you can try to move your outcomes around. You can try to manipulate your fate, like this person is doing, but it costs you something to do it. It means that you have to save more today. Once you find an investment that you're happy with, what people do is they click "done" and the markers begin to disappear, slowly, one by one. It simulates what it is like to invest in something and to watch that investment pan out. At the end, there will only be one marker left standing and it will determine our wealth in retirement.
你就可以把收入进行分配了 你可以象这个人一样修改你的命运 但是是有代价的 也就是说你得在现在储蓄更多 一旦发现了一个感兴趣的投资 你就点击“完成” 然后这些记号慢慢得 一个接一个消失 这就象是投资了什么 然后坐收红利一样 最后将只有一个标记剩下来 这就决定了退休时的财富
Yes, this person retired at 150 percent of their working income in retirement. They're making more money while retired than they were making while they were working. If you're like most people, just seeing that gave you a small sense of elation and joy -- just to think about making 50 percent more money in retirement than before. However, had you ended up on the very bottom, it might have given you a slight sense of dread and/or nausea thinking about struggling to get by in retirement. By using this tool over and over and simulating outcome after outcome, people can understand that the investments and savings that they undertake today determine their well-being in the future.
这个人 在退休时能有工作收入的百分之一百五十的入帐 他们退休了比工作的时候 挣的钱还要多 大多数人 看到这都会有点喜不自禁 一想到自己退休了 能比工作的时候还多挣百分之五十 但是 如果最后的结果是在底部 这应该会让你有点 担心或者不寒而栗 一想到退休了还得挣扎过活的话 通过不停地使用这个工具 来预测未来的结果 人们能够意识到 今天进行的储蓄决定了 明天的生活质量
Now people are motivated through emotions, but different people find different things motivating. This is a simulation that uses graphics, but other people find motivating what money can buy, not just numbers. So here I made a distribution builder where instead of showing numerical outcomes, I show people what those outcomes will get you, in particular apartments that you can afford if you're retiring on 3,000, 2,500, 2,000 dollars per month and so on. As you move down the ladder of apartments, you see that they get worse and worse. Some of them look like places I lived in as a graduate student. And as you get to the very bottom, you're faced with the unfortunate reality that if you don't save anything for retirement, you won't be able to afford any housing at all. Those are actual pictures of actual apartments renting for that amount as advertised on the Internet.
人们常受情绪而激发 但是激发每个人的事物却往往不一样 这个工具 使用了图片 很多人不大受代表钱的数字而影响 但是钱能买到的东西可以 这个分配生成器 显示的不是数字 而是具体你能买到的东西 比如 你的每个月的退休金能有 三千,两千五,两千的话 这是你买得起的公寓 随着排名的下降 能看出来质量越来越差 有一些看上去象我作为研究生的时候住过的地方 而最底下 如果你退休的时候一无所有 那就得面对老无所居的 残酷现实 这些照片拍的 都是对应价格的 网上实际在售的公寓
The last thing I'll show you, the last behavioral time machine, is something that I created with Hal Hershfield, who was introduced to me by my coauthor on a previous project, Bill Sharpe. And what it is is an exploration into virtual reality. So what we do is we take pictures of people -- in this case, college-age people -- and we use software to age them and show these people what they'll look like when they're 60, 70, 80 years old. And we try to test whether actually assisting your imagination by looking at the face of your future self can change you investment behavior.
最后一个我想展示的 行为时光机器 是我和哈尔赫施费尔德共同开发的 他是从一个之前项目加入我称为合作者的 也就是“Bill Sharpe” 这个工具 提供具象的现实 我们拍下用户的照片- 这个是大学生- 然后我们用软件模拟衰老 看看当他们六七八十岁的时候 是什么样子 我们试着测试 如果帮助你想像 将来的自己的样子 能不能改变投资行为
So this is one of our experiments. Here we see the face of the young subject on the left. He's given a control that allows him to adjust his savings rate. As he moves his savings rate down, it means that he's saving zero when it's all the way here at the left. You can see his current annual income -- this is the percentage of his paycheck that he can take home today -- is quite high, 91 percent, but his retirement income is quite low. He's going to retire on 44 percent of what he earned while he was working. If he saves the maximum legal amount, his retirement income goes up, but he's unhappy because now he has less money on the left-hand side to spend today. Other conditions show people the future self. And from the future self's point of view, everything is in reverse. If you save very little, the future self is unhappy living on 44 percent of the income. Whereas if the present self saves a lot, the future self is delighted, where the income is close up near 100 percent.
这是我们的一个试验 左边是我们测试对象的年轻的脸 他可以 调控自己的储蓄率 当他的储蓄率降低 指针在最左边 意味着储蓄为零 他目前的年收入- 现在他每天能拿到手的钱很多 百分之九十一 但是退休金会很低 他的退休金只有工作时 薪水的百分之四十四 如果现在提高到法定的储蓄上限 他的退休金就上升 但是他现在 就无钱可花而会过得不快乐 还有其他的状况来展现未来的情形 从未来的角度来看,一切都是相反的 如果储蓄很少 未来靠收入的百分之四十 生活就会很不爽快 如果现在多储蓄一点 未来就会好过很多 因为退休金几乎和工作的收入一样多
To bring this to a wider audience, I've been working with Hal and Allianz to create something we call the behavioral time machine, in which you not only get to see yourself in the future, but you get to see anticipated emotional reactions to different levels of retirement wealth. So for instance, here is somebody using the tool. And just watch the facial expressions as they move the slider. The younger face gets happier and happier, saving nothing. The older face is miserable. And slowly, slowly we're bringing it up to a moderate savings rate. And then it's a high savings rate. The younger face is getting unhappy. The older face is quite pleased with the decision. We're going to see if this has an effect on what people do. And what's nice about it is it's not something that biasing people actually, because as one face smiles, the other face frowns. It's not telling you which way to put the slider, it's just reminding you that you are connected to and legally tied to this future self.
为了推广这个概念 我和哈尔以及安莲兹 开发出了行为学时间机器 这个软件不仅让你看到未来 也可以看到你未来会根据退休收入的不同 而有各种层次的情绪反应 比如说 有人用这个工具 移动光标 查看面部表情 年轻的脸越来越开心,但没有零星储蓄 而老年的年就愁容满面 如果转换到中等的储蓄率 然后是高储蓄率 年轻时候的脸笑容越来越淡 年老的脸则随之 变的开心 我们以此来看看人们是否会对此反应 它的好处是 它并不会左右人们的想法 因为一侧的脸在笑 而另一侧脸就在愁 它并不指手画脚说选择哪一边 只是提醒你 对自己的未来负责的人 就是自己
Your decisions today are going to determine its well-being. And that's something that's easy to forget. This use of virtual reality is not just good for making people look older. There are programs you can get to see how people might look if they smoke, if they get too much exposure to the sun, if they gain weight and so on. And what's good is, unlike in the experiments that Hal and myself ran with Russ Smith, you don't have to program these by yourself in order to see the virtual reality. There are applications you can get on smartphones for just a few dollars that do the same thing. This is actually a picture of Hal, my coauthor. You might recognize him from the previous demos. And just for kicks we ran his picture through the balding, aging and weight gain software to see how he would look. Hal is here, so I think we owe it to him as well as yourself to disabuse you of that last image. And I'll close it there.
你现在的选择就决定了将来的生活 而这一点是我们很容易忘记的 这种可视化现实 不仅能显示年老的样子 还可以看看 如果抽烟 暴晒、或者增肥的话 将来会是什么样子 它的好处是 我、哈尔和罗斯・史密斯的试验得自己写程序 你可以不用这么大费周章 想看到未来 只要用智能手机下载几美元的应用程度 就可以了 这是我的合作者哈尔的照片 也许能从之前的演示里认出他来 我们把他的照片弄来恶搞 用软件看看要是他秃顶、老了还变胖了 会是个什么样子 哈尔也在场,所以为了他,也为了在场各位观众 我就不再滥用这个照片了 今天就到这里结束
On behalf of Hal and myself, I wish all the best to your present and future selves. Thank you.
我代表哈尔和自己 给各位和将来的各位最好的祝福 谢谢
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