通用与新奇——最有价值的见解
Paul Graham 在本文中探讨了如何产生既有一般性又令人惊讶的见解。他认为最有价值的思想兼具这两点，但现实中人们往往只能做到其一，要么是泛泛而谈的陈词滥调，要么是琐碎新奇但缺乏普适性的八卦。突破口在于小增量：在普遍观念上添加一点点新颖性，或在具体发现中提炼出更一般的道理。他鼓励思考者不要害怕重复自己，因为细微的变体可能触发关键突破。文章最后指出，在普通想法上取得“不是全新”其实已是了不起的成就，因为普遍性会放大新颖性的价值。适合对创造力、写作和思维方法论感兴趣的读者。
September 2017
2017年9月
The most valuable insights are both general and surprising. F = ma for example. But general and surprising is a hard combination to achieve. That territory tends to be picked clean, precisely because those insights are so valuable.
最有价值的见解往往兼具普遍性和令人惊讶的特质，例如 F = ma。然而，要达到这种结合非常困难，因为这类见解价值极高，早已被发掘殆尽。
Ordinarily, the best that people can do is one without the other: either surprising without being general (e.g. gossip), or general without being surprising (e.g. platitudes).
通常，人们所能做到的最好情况也只是二者取其一：要么令人惊讶却不普遍（如八卦），要么普遍却不令人惊讶（如陈词滥调）。
Where things get interesting is the moderately valuable insights. You get those from small additions of whichever quality was missing. The more common case is a small addition of generality: a piece of gossip that's more than just gossip, because it teaches something interesting about the world. But another less common approach is to focus on the most general ideas and see if you can find something new to say about them. Because these start out so general, you only need a small delta of novelty to produce a useful insight.
有趣的是中等价值的见解。你可以通过少量补充所缺失的品质来获得它们。更常见的情况是补充少量普遍性：一条不只是八卦的八卦，因为它能教给你关于世界的有趣道理。另一种较少见的方法是聚焦于最普遍的想法，看看能否找到新的说法。因为这些想法本身已极其普遍，你只需要一点点新颖性就能产生有用的见解。
A small delta of novelty is all you'll be able to get most of the time. Which means if you take this route, your ideas will seem a lot like ones that already exist. Sometimes you'll find you've merely rediscovered an idea that did already exist. But don't be discouraged. Remember the huge multiplier that kicks in when you do manage to think of something even a little new.
Corollary: the more general the ideas you're talking about, the less you should worry about repeating yourself. If you write enough, it's inevitable you will. Your brain is much the same from year to year and so are the stimuli that hit it. I feel slightly bad when I find I've said something close to what I've said before, as if I were plagiarizing myself. But rationally one shouldn't. You won't say something exactly the same way the second time, and that variation increases the chance you'll get that tiny but critical delta of novelty.
And of course, ideas beget ideas. (That sounds familiar.) An idea with a small amount of novelty could lead to one with more. But only if you keep going. So it's doubly important not to let yourself be discouraged by people who say there's not much new about something you've discovered. "Not much new" is a real achievement when you're talking about the most general ideas. It's not true that there's nothing new under the sun. There are some domains where there's almost nothing new. But there's a big difference between nothing and almost nothing, when it's multiplied by the area under the sun.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Patrick Collison, and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of this.
很多时候，你只能得到一点点新颖性。这意味着如果你走这条路，你的想法会与已有的非常相似。有时你甚至会发现只是重新发现了某个已有想法。但不要气馁。记住，当你真的想到哪怕一点点新东西时，巨大的乘数效应就会启动。
推论：你讨论的想法越普遍，就越不必担心重复。如果你写得足够多，重复是不可避免的。你的大脑年复一年变化不大，刺激你的东西也是如此。当我发现自己说了和以前类似的话时，会感到有些内疚，仿佛在自我抄袭。但理性告诉我没必要。第二次你不会完全以相同的方式表达，而这种变化增加了获得微小但关键新颖性的机会。
当然，想法催生想法。（这听起来很熟悉。）一个带有一点点新颖性的想法可能引发更多新颖性，但前提是你坚持下去。因此，当有人说你发现的东西没什么新意时，千万不要气馁，这一点至关重要。“没什么新意”对于最普遍的想法来说其实是一种成就。太阳底下并非无新事。有些领域几乎没有什么新东西，但“没有”和“几乎没有”之间有天壤之别，尤其是在乘上“太阳底下”的面积之后。
感谢 Sam Altman、Patrick Collison 和 Jessica Livingston 对本文初稿的审阅。