Being a Noob
Paul Graham reflects on the positive value of feeling like a noob. He observes that the more you feel like a noob locally, the less of a noob you are globally. This discomfort is an evolutionary relic useful in stable environments but now misaligned in a rapidly changing world where novelty is abundant. Embracing the noob feeling is a sign of learning and growth.
January 2020When I was young, I thought old people had everything figured out. Now that I'm old, I know this isn't true.
I constantly feel like a noob. It seems like I'm always talking to some startup working in a new field I know nothing about, or reading a book about a topic I don't understand well enough, or visiting some new country where I don't know how things work.
2020年1月 年轻时，我以为老年人什么都懂。 如今我老了，才知道并非如此。
我总觉得自己像个菜鸟。似乎我总是在跟某个新领域的初创公司交流，而我对那个领域一无所知；或者在读一本理解不够透彻的书；或者访问一个陌生的国家，不了解当地的一切如何运作。
It's not pleasant to feel like a noob. And the word "noob" is certainly not a compliment. And yet today I realized something encouraging about being a noob: the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally.
For example, if you stay in your home country, you'll feel less of a noob than if you move to Farawavia, where everything works differently. And yet you'll know more if you move. So the feeling of being a noob is inversely correlated with actual ignorance.
感觉自己像个菜鸟并不愉快，而且“菜鸟”这个词当然不是夸奖。但今天我意识到了关于做菜鸟的一件鼓舞人心的事：你在局部越像个菜鸟，你在全局上就越不是菜鸟。
例如，如果你待在自己的国家，你会比搬到法拉瓦维亚（Farawavia）感觉更不像菜鸟，那里的一切运作方式都不同。但如果你搬过去，你会懂得更多。所以，菜鸟的感觉与实际的无知程度成反比。
But if the feeling of being a noob is good for us, why do we dislike it? What evolutionary purpose could such an aversion serve?
I think the answer is that there are two sources of feeling like a noob: being stupid, and doing something novel. Our dislike of feeling like a noob is our brain telling us "Come on, come on, figure this out." Which was the right thing to be thinking for most of human history. The life of hunter-gatherers was complex, but it didn't change as much as life does now. They didn't suddenly have to figure out what to do about cryptocurrency. So it made sense to be biased toward competence at existing problems over the discovery of new ones. It made sense for humans to dislike the feeling of being a noob, just as, in a world where food was scarce, it made sense for them to dislike the feeling of being hungry.
但如果菜鸟的感觉对我们有好处，为什么我们不喜欢它呢？这种厌恶有什么进化目的？
我认为答案在于，产生菜鸟感有两个来源：愚蠢和做新鲜事。我们对菜鸟感的厌恶，是大脑在说：“快点，快点，搞明白这个。”在人类历史的大部分时间里，这正是应该有的想法。狩猎采集者的生活虽然复杂，但不像现在变化得这么快。他们不必突然去搞明白加密货币怎么办。所以，偏向于解决现有问题的能力而非发现新问题是合理的。人类不喜欢菜鸟感是有道理的，就像在食物匮乏的世界里，他们不喜欢饥饿感一样。
Now that too much food is more of a problem than too little, our dislike of feeling hungry leads us astray. And I think our dislike of feeling like a noob does too.
Though it feels unpleasant, and people will sometimes ridicule you for it, the more you feel like a noob, the better.
现在，食物过剩比不足更成问题，我们对饥饿感的厌恶让我们误入歧途。我认为，我们对菜鸟感的厌恶也是如此。
虽然这种感觉不愉快，有时还会招来嘲笑，但你越觉得自己是菜鸟，就越好。