It's the Second World War. A German prison camp. And this man, Archie Cochrane, is a prisoner of war and a doctor, and he has a problem. The problem is that the men under his care are suffering from an excruciating and debilitating condition that Archie doesn't really understand. The symptoms are this horrible swelling up of fluids under the skin. But he doesn't know whether it's an infection, whether it's to do with malnutrition. He doesn't know how to cure it. And he's operating in a hostile environment. And people do terrible things in wars. The German camp guards, they've got bored. They've taken to just firing into the prison camp at random for fun. On one particular occasion, one of the guards threw a grenade into the prisoners' lavatory while it was full of prisoners. He said he heard suspicious laughter. And Archie Cochrane, as the camp doctor, was one of the first men in to clear up the mess. And one more thing: Archie was suffering from this illness himself.
这是二战期间, 一个德国集中营, 这个人, 阿奇·卡克伦, 是战俘也是一名医生, 他遇到了一个问题, 这个问题是他看护的人们 正在承受 病痛和衰弱的煎熬。 阿奇不明白是怎么回事。 这种症状是 皮肤下面有可怕水肿。 他不知道这是一种感染,还是营养不良造成的。 他不知道怎样提供治疗。 他是在一个充满敌意的环境里工作。 而人们常常在战争期间做可怕的事情。 德国集中营的守卫无聊的时候。 他们会对着集中营随意扫射 来寻开心。 特别是有一次, 一个守卫朝犯人的厕所里扔了枚手榴弹, 里面满是犯人。 他说他听到了可疑的笑声。 而阿奇·卡克伦,作为集中营的医生, 是第一个进去 处理惨状的人。 另外, 阿奇自己也受着这个疾病的困扰,
So the situation seemed pretty desperate. But Archie Cochrane was a resourceful person. He'd already smuggled vitamin C into the camp, and now he managed to get hold of supplies of marmite on the black market. Now some of you will be wondering what marmite is. Marmite is a breakfast spread beloved of the British. It looks like crude oil. It tastes ... zesty. And importantly, it's a rich source of vitamin B12. So Archie splits the men under his care as best he can into two equal groups. He gives half of them vitamin C. He gives half of them vitamin B12. He very carefully and meticulously notes his results in an exercise book. And after just a few days, it becomes clear that whatever is causing this illness, marmite is the cure.
所以情况是非常危急。 但是阿奇·卡克伦 是一个足智多谋的人。 他已经将维生素C带到了集中营, 现在他又想办法 从黑市上弄到了 一些马麦。 你们中的一些人也许会问马麦是什么, 马麦英国人热爱的早餐面包酱, 它看上去象天然油。 味道 很浓 更重要的是, 它含有丰富的 维他命B12。 所以阿奇就把他的病人平分 成两组人。 他给其中的一半维他命C。 他给另一半维他命B12。 他非常小心谨慎把他的结果 记录在一个练习簿上。 几天以后 结果显然表明 不管是病因是什么 马麦能帮助治愈这个病。
So Cochrane then goes to the Germans who are running the prison camp. Now you've got to imagine at the moment -- forget this photo, imagine this guy with this long ginger beard and this shock of red hair. He hasn't been able to shave -- a sort of Billy Connolly figure. Cochrane, he starts ranting at these Germans in this Scottish accent -- in fluent German, by the way, but in a Scottish accent -- and explains to them how German culture was the culture that gave Schiller and Goethe to the world. And he can't understand how this barbarism can be tolerated, and he vents his frustrations. And then he goes back to his quarters, breaks down and weeps because he's convinced that the situation is hopeless. But a young German doctor picks up Archie Cochrane's exercise book and says to his colleagues, "This evidence is incontrovertible. If we don't supply vitamins to the prisoners, it's a war crime." And the next morning, supplies of vitamin B12 are delivered to the camp, and the prisoners begin to recover.
所以卡克伦跑去跟管理集中营的德国人说。 你想象一下那一刻, 别看这张照片, 你想象一下这个家伙 一下巴淡黄色大胡子,一头刺眼的红发 他好久没有修面,有点象比利·康诺利那个样子 卡克伦开始数落那些德国人, 带着苏格兰口音, 其实他讲着一口流利的德语,只是带点苏格兰口音 他对他们说他无法理解 能够为世界带来席勒和歌德的 德国文化怎么可以容忍 如此的野蛮。 他发了一通牢骚 然后就回到了他的住处, 倒头哭泣 因为他认为这个状况无可救药。 但是另一个年轻的德国医生 拿起了阿奇·卡克伦的练习簿 对他的同僚说 "这个证据是不用质疑的 “如果我们不给犯人提供维生素 这是战争犯罪”。 第二天早上, 含维他命B12的物资被送到了集中营, 犯人开始恢复。
Now I'm not telling you this story because I think Archie Cochrane is a dude, although Archie Cochrane is a dude. I'm not even telling you the story because I think we should be running more carefully controlled randomized trials in all aspects of public policy, although I think that would also be completely awesome. I'm telling you this story because Archie Cochrane, all his life, fought against a terrible affliction, and he realized it was debilitating to individuals and it was corrosive to societies. And he had a name for it. He called it the God complex. Now I can describe the symptoms of the God complex very, very easily. So the symptoms of the complex are, no matter how complicated the problem, you have an absolutely overwhelming belief that you are infallibly right in your solution.
我现在跟你们讲这个故事, 不是因为我认为阿奇·卡克伦是个人物, 虽然阿奇·卡克伦本来就是个人物。 我跟你说这个故事也不是 因为我认为我们应该更小心地 随机抽样试验。 在公共政策的各个方面 虽然我觉得这样做完全会很好。 我告诉你这个故事 是因为阿奇·卡克伦的一生, 都在与一种可怕的痛苦做斗争。 而且他认识到这是一种削弱个人 和腐蚀社会的东西。 他为它取了个名字, 他把它称为:万能神力(自以为有能力解决复杂问题的本事) 现在我可以来描述万能神力的症状 它的症状是: 无论问题多么复杂 你还是绝对彻底相信 你的解决方案是准确无误的
Now Archie was a doctor, so he hung around with doctors a lot. And doctors suffer from the God complex a lot. Now I'm an economist, I'm not a doctor, but I see the God complex around me all the time in my fellow economists. I see it in our business leaders. I see it in the politicians we vote for -- people who, in the face of an incredibly complicated world, are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they understand the way that the world works. And you know, with the future billions that we've been hearing about, the world is simply far too complex to understand in that way.
阿奇是个医生 他一直和医生们在一起 医生就常常患有这种毛病 我是个经济学家, 我不是医生 我在我周围也一直看到这种“万能神力”的症状 出现在我的经济学家伙伴中 我看见它存在于我们的商业领袖身上 我们看见它存在于我们推选的政客身上。 这些人面对这及其复杂的世界 仍然绝对坚信 他们知道这个世界是怎样运作的 而你们知道,我们在这里听到的未来的数十亿人的种种 用那种方法来理解这个复杂 的世界显然是太简单化了
Well let me give you an example. Imagine for a moment that, instead of Tim Harford in front of you, there was Hans Rosling presenting his graphs. You know Hans: the Mick Jagger of TED. (Laughter) And he'd be showing you these amazing statistics, these amazing animations. And they are brilliant; it's wonderful work. But a typical Hans Rosling graph: think for a moment, not what it shows, but think instead about what it leaves out. So it'll show you GDP per capita, population, longevity, that's about it. So three pieces of data for each country -- three pieces of data. Three pieces of data is nothing. I mean, have a look at this graph.
让我来给你们一个例子 你们想象一下 现在如果站在你们面前的不是我 而是汉斯·罗斯林在展示他的图表 你们知道汉斯: TED的米克·贾格尔 (笑声) 他给你们展示了这些神奇的数据 神奇的动画 它们很出色,很棒的研究结果 但是汉斯的图表: 想一下,不是那些已经展示的 而是想一下那些没有被展示的。 是,里面包括了人均国内生产总值 人口,寿命 就这些 每个国家三个数据 三个数据 三个数据什么都不是 我是说,请看一下这张图
This is produced by the physicist Cesar Hidalgo. He's at MIT. Now you won't be able to understand a word of it, but this is what it looks like. Cesar has trolled the database of over 5,000 different products, and he's used techniques of network analysis to interrogate this database and to graph relationships between the different products. And it's wonderful, wonderful work. You show all these interconnections, all these interrelations. And I think it'll be profoundly useful in understanding how it is that economies grow. Brilliant work. Cesar and I tried to write a piece for The New York Times Magazine explaining how this works. And what we learned is Cesar's work is far too good to explain in The New York Times Magazine.
这张图是物理学家塞萨尔·伊达尔戈制作的 他在麻省理工工作 你一个字也不懂 但是它看上去是这个样子的 塞萨尔用数据库搜索 5000个不同的产品, 他用网络分析的技术 提取分析数据 并用图表来表示不同产品间的关系 那是非常非常好的工作 展示了所有这些互相的关系和链接 我想这些对理解经济怎样增长 是极其有用的 是杰作 塞萨尔和我试着想要给纽约时代杂志 写一篇稿子描述这个工作 我们发现 塞萨尔的研究成果远不是一篇 纽约时代杂志的文章可以描述得清楚的
Five thousand products -- that's still nothing. Five thousand products -- imagine counting every product category in Cesar Hidalgo's data. Imagine you had one second per product category. In about the length of this session, you would have counted all 5,000. Now imagine doing the same thing for every different type of product on sale in Walmart. There are 100,000 there. It would take you all day. Now imagine trying to count every different specific product and service on sale in a major economy such as Tokyo, London or New York. It's even more difficult in Edinburgh because you have to count all the whisky and the tartan. If you wanted to count every product and service on offer in New York -- there are 10 billion of them -- it would take you 317 years. This is how complex the economy we've created is. And I'm just counting toasters here. I'm not trying to solve the Middle East problem. The complexity here is unbelievable. And just a piece of context -- the societies in which our brains evolved had about 300 products and services. You could count them in five minutes.
5000个产品 这还没什么 5000个产品 想象我们来数塞萨尔·伊达尔戈数据 中的每个产品的目录 想象你每一秒钟 听到一个产品种类的名字 大约用这段会议的时间 你可以数完5000个产品 现在你再想象去数各种 不同的在沃尔玛销售的产品 那有10万种, 那大概需要一天才能数完 现在你想象去数 在主要经济体中销售的 每种不同的特殊产品和服务 比如,东京, 伦敦,或者纽约 在爱丁堡就更难了 因为你得数所有的威士忌和格子呢绒 如果你要数在纽约提供的 产品和服务 那就有100亿种 你得数317年 这就是我们创造的复杂的经济体 而我这只是在这里数烤面包机而已 我没想去解决中东问题 所以问题的复杂性是不可思议的 我再提供一个背景数据 我们大脑演变的社会 具有300多种产品和服务 你可以在5分钟里数完他们
So this is the complexity of the world that surrounds us. This perhaps is why we find the God complex so tempting. We tend to retreat and say, "We can draw a picture, we can post some graphs, we get it, we understand how this works." And we don't. We never do. Now I'm not trying to deliver a nihilistic message here. I'm not trying to say we can't solve complicated problems in a complicated world. We clearly can. But the way we solve them is with humility -- to abandon the God complex and to actually use a problem-solving technique that works. And we have a problem-solving technique that works. Now you show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.
所以这就是我们所处的环境的复杂性 这也许也是为什么 我们发现“万能神力”很有吸引力 我们喜欢退一步说:“我们可以来画一个图, 我们可以贴一些图表, 我们知道这是怎么运作的。” 但是我们不知道 我们从来都不知道。 我不是要在这里传递一个虚无主义的信息 我不是想说我们不能在 复杂的世界里解决复杂的问题 我们显然是可以的 但是我们需要用一种 谦逊的态度来解决问题 要抛弃“万能神力”的态度 而是用一个实际可行的解决问题的手法。 我们有一个实际可行的解决问题的手法 你给我举一个 成功的复杂系统 我就能显示给你看 这个系统是如何在试验和排除错误中不断演进的。
Here's an example. This baby was produced through trial and error. I realize that's an ambiguous statement. Maybe I should clarify it. This baby is a human body: it evolved. What is evolution? Over millions of years, variation and selection, variation and selection -- trial and error, trial and error. And it's not just biological systems that produce miracles through trial and error. You could use it in an industrial context.
这里有一个例子 这个孩子是通过试验和排除错误而产生的 我知道这是一个模糊的说法 也许我应该澄清 这个孩子是人类的身体:它进化了。 什么是进化? 经历了几百万年的变种和选择 变种和选择 试验和排除错误 试验和排除错误 这不只是生物系统 在试验和排除错误中缔造神奇 你可以把它用于产业环境中
So let's say you wanted to make detergent. Let's say you're Unilever and you want to make detergent in a factory near Liverpool. How do you do it? Well you have this great big tank full of liquid detergent. You pump it at a high pressure through a nozzle. You create a spray of detergent. Then the spray dries. It turns into powder. It falls to the floor. You scoop it up. You put it in cardboard boxes. You sell it at a supermarket. You make lots of money. How do you design that nozzle? It turns out to be very important. Now if you ascribe to the God complex, what you do is you find yourself a little God. You find yourself a mathematician; you find yourself a physicist -- somebody who understands the dynamics of this fluid. And he will, or she will, calculate the optimal design of the nozzle. Now Unilever did this and it didn't work -- too complicated. Even this problem, too complicated.
比如你要生产清洁剂 你是联合利华 你要在利物浦旁边的一家工厂生产清洁剂 你怎么做呢? 你有这么一大池子的液体清洁剂 你用高压将它压过一个喷嘴 你制造了清洁剂喷雾 喷雾干燥后就成了粉末 掉在地板上, 你将它铲起,放入一个纸板盒子里。 你到超市去卖, 你可以赚好多钱。 你怎么设计喷嘴 结果这个很重要 如果你倾向于用万能神力来解决这个问题 你会觉得自己是个小上帝 你会发现自己是个数学家,物理学家 是一个懂得液体动态的专家 他或者她会 计算管口的最佳设计方案 联合利华这么做了,但是失败了 太复杂了 即使是这样的问题,也太复杂了
But the geneticist Professor Steve Jones describes how Unilever actually did solve this problem -- trial and error, variation and selection. You take a nozzle and you create 10 random variations on the nozzle. You try out all 10; you keep the one that works best. You create 10 variations on that one. You try out all 10. You keep the one that works best. You try out 10 variations on that one. You see how this works, right? And after 45 generations, you have this incredible nozzle. It looks a bit like a chess piece -- functions absolutely brilliantly. We have no idea why it works, no idea at all. And the moment you step back from the God complex -- let's just try to have a bunch of stuff; let's have a systematic way of determining what's working and what's not -- you can solve your problem.
但是遗传学家史蒂文琼斯教授 讲述了联合利华其实是怎样解决这个问题的 试验和失败 改变和选择 你拿一个管口 你随机地做出10个不同的管口 你测试这10个管口,你把最好的那个保留下来 你再拿这个做基础再做10个不同的管口 你测试这10个,你把最好的保留下来 你再这个基础上测试10个 你知道这是怎么做出来的了吧? 经过45轮测试后 你们就得到了这个很好的喷嘴管口 这个看上去有点象国际象棋棋子 工作起来绝对高效 我们不知道 为什么它那么高效 根本不知道 当你不再认为自己有万能神力 而是开始尝试一些东西 用一个系统的办法来决定什么办法行什么办法不行 你就能解决你的问题
Now this process of trial and error is actually far more common in successful institutions than we care to recognize. And we've heard a lot about how economies function. The U.S. economy is still the world's greatest economy. How did it become the world's greatest economy? I could give you all kinds of facts and figures about the U.S. economy, but I think the most salient one is this: ten percent of American businesses disappear every year. That is a huge failure rate. It's far higher than the failure rate of, say, Americans. Ten percent of Americans don't disappear every year. Which leads us to conclude American businesses fail faster than Americans, and therefore American businesses are evolving faster than Americans. And eventually, they'll have evolved to such a high peak of perfection that they will make us all their pets -- (Laughter) if, of course, they haven't already done so. I sometimes wonder. But it's this process of trial and error that explains this great divergence, this incredible performance of Western economies. It didn't come because you put some incredibly smart person in charge. It's come through trial and error.
这个过程就是试验和排除错误的过程 事实上这是成功机构的一个很大的共性 只是我们认识得很不够 我们听过很多经济是如何运作的言论 美国的经济仍然是世界上最好的经济体 它怎么变成世界上最好的经济体的呢? 我可以给你很多事实和数字 关于美国经济的 但是我想最突出的是这点: 每年10%的美国企业 会消失 这是很高的失败率 这个失败率比美国人的失败率要高 美国人并没有以10%的比率每年消失 所以我们可以总结说 美国企业比美国人消失得更快 因此美国企业比美国人进化得要快 而最终, 他们进化到了完美的顶端 他们会把我们都变成他们的宠物 (笑声) 如果,他们还没有这么做的话 我有时会想 但是试验和排除错误的过程 解释了这巨大的差异 西方经济的出色的表现。 它的发生不是因为你让一些特别聪明的人掌管了一切 它是从试试验和排除错误中得来的
Now I've been sort of banging on about this for the last couple of months, and people sometimes say to me, "Well Tim, it's kind of obvious. Obviously trial and error is very important. Obviously experimentation is very important. Now why are you just wandering around saying this obvious thing?"
在过去的几个月里, 我反复 在讨论这个问题 有人有时跟我说 “提姆,这不是很显然么 很显然试验和排除错误很重要 很显然尝试很重要 你为什么到处讲这个显然的事情呢?”
So I say, okay, fine. You think it's obvious? I will admit it's obvious when schools start teaching children that there are some problems that don't have a correct answer. Stop giving them lists of questions every single one of which has an answer. And there's an authority figure in the corner behind the teacher's desk who knows all the answers. And if you can't find the answers, you must be lazy or stupid. When schools stop doing that all the time, I will admit that, yes, it's obvious that trial and error is a good thing. When a politician stands up campaigning for elected office and says, "I want to fix our health system. I want to fix our education system. I have no idea how to do it. I have half a dozen ideas. We're going to test them out. They'll probably all fail. Then we'll test some other ideas out. We'll find some that work. We'll build on those. We'll get rid of the ones that don't." -- when a politician campaigns on that platform, and more importantly, when voters like you and me are willing to vote for that kind of politician, then I will admit that it is obvious that trial and error works, and that -- thank you.
所以我说,好啊 你认为这个很显然是吗? 我也会承认这个很显然 当学校 开始告诉孩子们 有时问题不总是有正确答案的时候 不再给他们一系列问题 每个问题都有一个答案 而老师的桌子背后的角落里总是站着 一个知道所有答案的权威 如果你找不到答案 你不是懒惰就是愚蠢 当学习停止这么做时 我愿意承认 试验和排除错误显然是好事 当政客们站出来 竞选公职时 他们说:“我想治理我们的健康系统 我想治理我们的教育体系 我还不知道怎么做 但是我又很多想法 我们会测试这些想法, 我们可能失败 然后我们会再测试其他想法 我们会发现有些有效的办法,然后在那个基础上继续建设 我们会抛弃那些无效的做法。“ 当政治家在那样的平台上竞选 更重要的是,象你我这样的选举人 愿意投票给这样的政治家 那我就承认 测试和排除错误显然是有效的,而那时, 我会对你们说:谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)
Until then, until then I'm going to keep banging on about trial and error and why we should abandon the God complex. Because it's so hard to admit our own fallibility. It's so uncomfortable. And Archie Cochrane understood this as well as anybody. There's this one trial he ran many years after World War II. He wanted to test out the question of, where is it that patients should recover from heart attacks? Should they recover in a specialized cardiac unit in hospital, or should they recover at home? All the cardiac doctors tried to shut him down. They had the God complex in spades. They knew that their hospitals were the right place for patients, and they knew it was very unethical to run any kind of trial or experiment.
直到那个时候, 直到那个时候 我会继续讨论测试和排除错误这个话题 和为什么我们需要抛弃“万能神力”态度 因为我们很难 我们自己是很容易犯错的 这令人感到很不舒服 阿奇·卡克伦和其他人一样理解这一点 这是他做的一个试验 那时在二战很多年后 他想要测试出 病人心脏病发作后 应该在哪里 康复 他们是应该在医院的心脏科康复 还是在家康复 所有心脏科医生都想要把他挡在门外 他们完全摆出拥有万能的神力的样子 他们知道医院才是病人康复的地方 他们觉得做任何试验都是 不道德的
Nevertheless, Archie managed to get permission to do this. He ran his trial. And after the trial had been running for a little while, he gathered together all his colleagues around his table, and he said, "Well, gentlemen, we have some preliminary results. They're not statistically significant. But we have something. And it turns out that you're right and I'm wrong. It is dangerous for patients to recover from heart attacks at home. They should be in hospital." And there's this uproar, and all the doctors start pounding the table and saying, "We always said you were unethical, Archie. You're killing people with your clinical trials. You need to shut it down now. Shut it down at once." And there's this huge hubbub. Archie lets it die down. And then he says, "Well that's very interesting, gentlemen, because when I gave you the table of results, I swapped the two columns around. It turns out your hospitals are killing people, and they should be at home. Would you like to close down the trial now, or should we wait until we have robust results?" Tumbleweed rolls through the meeting room.
无论如何,阿奇得到了试验的许可 他进行了试验 试验进行了一阵后 他把他所有的同事召集起来 在他的桌子旁, 他说:“先生们, 我们已经有了初步的结果。 这些数据在统计学上并不可观 但是我们有了些数据 结果表明你们是正确的我是错的 让心脏病人在家 康复是危险的 他们应该留在医院里。 ” 这引起了一片吵嚷, 医生们开始拍桌子 说:“我们一直说阿奇你这样做是不道德的” 你用你的临床试验在杀人,你应该现在就停止。 马上停止。“ 阿奇等这一阵大声的吵嚷 安静下来后 说:“先生们, 真是很有意思, 因为当我给你们看结果的时候, 我互换了这两行资料 其实结果证明你们的医院在杀人, 病人应该在家恢复。 你们还想让我停止试验呢 还是希望等我们得到更确切的结果?” 会议室如风滚草 卷过一般安静下来
But Cochrane would do that kind of thing. And the reason he would do that kind of thing is because he understood it feels so much better to stand there and say, "Here in my own little world, I am a god, I understand everything. I do not want to have my opinions challenged. I do not want to have my conclusions tested." It feels so much more comfortable simply to lay down the law. Cochrane understood that uncertainty, that fallibility, that being challenged, they hurt. And you sometimes need to be shocked out of that. Now I'm not going to pretend that this is easy. It isn't easy. It's incredibly painful.
阿奇喜欢做这样的事情 他喜欢这么做的原因是 他知道 大家更喜欢 站在那里说: “ 在我的小世界里, 我是上帝, 我懂得一切 我不希望有人挑战我的观点。 我不需要有人来测试我的结论。” 简单地定下法则 然人感到很自在。 阿奇懂得 他们对那种不肯定的, 易错的 被挑战的感觉感到不爽 而有的时候我们需要把这种感觉震落掉 我不想假装这是件容易的事情 这并不容易 它会是个痛苦的过程
And since I started talking about this subject and researching this subject, I've been really haunted by something a Japanese mathematician said on the subject. So shortly after the war, this young man, Yutaka Taniyama, developed this amazing conjecture called the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture. It turned out to be absolutely instrumental many decades later in proving Fermat's Last Theorem. In fact, it turns out it's equivalent to proving Fermat's Last Theorem. You prove one, you prove the other. But it was always a conjecture. Taniyama tried and tried and tried and he could never prove that it was true. And shortly before his 30th birthday in 1958, Yutaka Taniyama killed himself. His friend, Goro Shimura -- who worked on the mathematics with him -- many decades later, reflected on Taniyama's life. He said, "He was not a very careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes. But he made mistakes in a good direction. I tried to emulate him, but I realized it is very difficult to make good mistakes."
当我开始谈论这个话题 研究这个话题 我脑海里一直环绕着 一个日本数学家在这个话题上说的话 战争一结束 这个年轻人,谷山丰 提出了惊人的推测 谷山-志村猜想 结果几十年后 为证明费马最后定理 奠定了基础 事实,它和费马最后定理是 同等的 你证明了一个,就证明了另一个 但是它只是一个猜想 谷山丰试了一遍又一遍 但是他不能证明它是正确的 1958年他刚刚过了30岁后 谷山丰结束了自己的生命 他的朋友,志村五郎 和他一起研究数学 几十年后回顾谷山丰的生平时 他说 “他不是一个很仔细的人 作为一个数学家 他犯了很多错误 但是他能朝好的方向犯错 我想效仿他 但是我发现 能朝好的方向犯错 很难。”
Thank you.
谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)