Fierce Nerds
Paul Graham defines 'fierce nerds'—people who appear shy but are intensely competitive, overconfident, independent-minded, and impatient in their domain. Using Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA as an example, he argues that these traits, if channeled into ambitious projects, lead to great success; otherwise, they turn into bitterness and online trolling. Graham notes that the modern world increasingly rewards getting the right answer, giving fierce nerds an edge (7 of 8 richest Americans are fierce nerds). The essay is a call to young nerds to embrace their fierceness and work on hard problems.
May 2021Most people think of nerds as quiet, diffident people. In ordinary social situations they are — as quiet and diffident as the star quarterback would be if he found himself in the middle of a physics symposium. And for the same reason: they are fish out of water. But the apparent diffidence of nerds is an illusion due to the fact that when non-nerds observe them, it's usually in ordinary social situations. In fact some nerds are quite fierce.
2021年5月。大多数人认为书呆子（nerds）是安静、胆怯的人。在普通的社交场合中，他们确实如此——就像明星四分卫发现自己身处物理学研讨会时那样安静和胆怯。原因相同：他们其实都是离水之鱼。但这种表面上的胆怯是一种错觉，因为非书呆子们观察他们时，通常是在普通的社交场合。而事实上，有些书呆子是相当凶悍的。
The fierce nerds are a small but interesting group. They are as a rule extremely competitive — more competitive, I'd say, than highly competitive non-nerds. Competition is more personal for them. Partly perhaps because they're not emotionally mature enough to distance themselves from it, but also because there's less randomness in the kinds of competition they engage in, and they are thus more justified in taking the results personally.
Fierce nerds also tend to be somewhat overconfident, especially when young. It might seem like it would be a disadvantage to be mistaken about one's abilities, but empirically it isn't. Up to a point, confidence is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Another quality you find in most fierce nerds is intelligence. Not all nerds are smart, but the fierce ones are always at least moderately so. If they weren't, they wouldn't have the confidence to be fierce.
[1]There's also a natural connection between nerdiness and independent-mindedness. It's hard to be independent-minded without being somewhat socially awkward, because conventional beliefs are so often mistaken, or at least arbitrary. No one who was both independent-minded and ambitious would want to waste the effort it takes to fit in. And the independent-mindedness of the fierce nerds will obviously be of the aggressive rather than the passive type: they'll be annoyed by rules, rather than dreamily unaware of them.
I'm less sure why fierce nerds are impatient, but most seem to be. You notice it first in conversation, where they tend to interrupt you. This is merely annoying, but in the more promising fierce nerds it's connected to a deeper impatience about solving problems. Perhaps the competitiveness and impatience of fierce nerds are not separate qualities, but two manifestations of a single underlying drivenness.
凶悍的书呆子是一个人数不多但很有趣的群体。他们通常极具竞争心——我敢说，比那些高度竞争的非书呆子还要好胜。对他们而言，竞争更具个人色彩。部分原因可能是他们情感上还不够成熟，无法与之保持距离，但也因为他们参与的竞争类型随机性较小，因此更有理由把结果看作个人能力的体现。
凶悍的书呆子也往往有些过度自信，年轻时尤其如此。对自己的能力判断错误似乎是一种劣势，但经验证明并非如此。在某种程度上，自信是一种自我实现的预言。
大多数凶悍的书呆子身上还能找到另一种品质：聪明。并非所有书呆子都聪明，但凶悍的那些至少中等聪明。否则他们也不会有信心变得凶悍。
[1]书呆子性格与独立思考之间也有一种天然的联系。要做到独立思考而不显得社交笨拙是很难的，因为传统观念往往错误，或至少是任意的。任何既有独立思想又有雄心的人，都不会愿意浪费精力去迎合他人。而凶悍书呆子的独立性显然是激进型的，而非被动型：他们会因规则而恼火，而不是浑然不觉。
我不太确定为什么凶悍的书呆子缺乏耐心，但大多数人似乎如此。你首先会在交谈中注意到这一点——他们倾向于打断你。这虽然令人恼火，但在更有前途的凶悍书呆子身上，这与一种更深层的解决问题时的急躁相关。也许凶悍书呆子的竞争心和急躁并不是两种独立的品质，而是同一种内在驱力的两种表现。
When you combine all these qualities in sufficient quantities, the result is quite formidable. The most vivid example of fierce nerds in action may be James Watson's The Double Helix. The first sentence of the book is "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood," and the portrait he goes on to paint of Crick is the quintessential fierce nerd: brilliant, socially awkward, competitive, independent-minded, overconfident. But so is the implicit portrait he paints of himself. Indeed, his lack of social awareness makes both portraits that much more realistic, because he baldly states all sorts of opinions and motivations that a smoother person would conceal. And moreover it's clear from the story that Crick and Watson's fierce nerdiness was integral to their success. Their independent-mindedness caused them to consider approaches that most others ignored, their overconfidence allowed them to work on problems they only half understood (they were literally described as "clowns" by one eminent insider), and their impatience and competitiveness got them to the answer ahead of two other groups that would otherwise have found it within the next year, if not the next several months.
当所有这些品质累积到足够程度时，结果相当令人敬畏。凶悍书呆子最生动的例子或许是詹姆斯·沃森的《双螺旋》。书的第一句话是：“我从未见过弗朗西斯·克里克处于谦逊的状态。”他随后描绘的克里克形象是典型的凶悍书呆子：才华横溢、社交笨拙、争强好胜、独立思考、过度自信。而他隐含的自画像也是如此。事实上，他对社会规范的缺乏意识使这两幅肖像更加真实，因为他直白地陈述了各种观点和动机——那些更圆滑的人会加以掩饰。而且故事清楚地表明，克里克和沃森的凶悍书呆子气质是他们成功不可或缺的一部分。他们的独立思考使他们去考虑大多数其他人忽略的方法，他们的过度自信使他们敢于研究只半解的问题（一位著名业内人士甚至称他们为“小丑”），而他们的急躁和好胜让他们比其他两个小组提前得到了答案——否则别的小组也会在接下来的一年内（甚至几个月内）找到答案。
[2]The idea that there could be fierce nerds is an unfamiliar one not just to many normal people but even to some young nerds. Especially early on, nerds spend so much of their time in ordinary social situations and so little doing real work that they get a lot more evidence of their awkwardness than their power. So there will be some who read this description of the fierce nerd and realize "Hmm, that's me." And it is to you, young fierce nerd, that I now turn.
I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that your fierceness will be a great help in solving difficult problems. And not just the kind of scientific and technical problems that nerds have traditionally solved. As the world progresses, the number of things you can win at by getting the right answer increases. Recently getting rich became one of them: 7 of the 8 richest people in America are now fierce nerds.
Indeed, being a fierce nerd is probably even more helpful in business than in nerds' original territory of scholarship. Fierceness seems optional there. Darwin for example doesn't seem to have been especially fierce. Whereas it's impossible to be the CEO of a company over a certain size without being fierce, so now that nerds can win at business, fierce nerds will increasingly monopolize the really big successes.
The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness will turn to bitterness, and you will become an intellectual playground bully: the grumpy sysadmin, the forum troll, the hater, the shooter down of new ideas.
[2]“存在凶悍的书呆子”这一观点，不仅对许多普通人来说很陌生，甚至对一些年轻书呆子也是如此。尤其是在早期，书呆子们把大量时间花在普通社交场合，很少做实际工作，因此他们更多地感受到自己的笨拙，而非自身的力量。所以，有些人读到对凶悍书呆子的描述时，会意识到“嗯，说的就是我”。而我现在要对你——年轻的凶悍书呆子——说几句话。
我有一些好消息和一些坏消息。好消息是，你的凶悍将极大地帮助你解决难题。而且不仅是书呆子传统上解决的科学和技术问题。随着世界的发展，通过找到正确答案而获胜的事情越来越多。最近，致富也成为其中之一：美国最富有的8个人中有7个现在是凶悍的书呆子。
事实上，凶悍书呆子在商业中的帮助可能比在学术领域（书呆子的传统地盘）更大。凶悍在学术领域似乎是可选的，例如达尔文似乎并不特别凶悍。而担任一定规模公司的CEO则不可能不凶悍。所以现在既然书呆子能在商业上获胜，凶悍的书呆子将越来越多地垄断真正巨大的成功。
坏消息是，如果凶悍得不到施展，它会转化为苦涩，你会变成智力游乐场上的恶霸：暴躁的系统管理员、论坛喷子、仇视者、新点子的扼杀者。
How do you avoid this fate? Work on ambitious projects. If you succeed, it will bring you a kind of satisfaction that neutralizes bitterness. But you don't need to have succeeded to feel this; merely working on hard projects gives most fierce nerds some feeling of satisfaction. And those it doesn't, it at least keeps busy.
[3]Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, by devoting yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something like that. Maybe that's the right answer for some people. I have no idea. But it doesn't seem the optimal solution to me. If you're given a sharp knife, it seems to me better to use it than to blunt its edge to avoid cutting yourself.
如何避免这种命运？做雄心勃勃的项目。如果成功，它会带来一种消解苦涩的满足感。但你不需要成功才能感受到这种满足；仅仅从事困难的项目就能给大多数凶悍的书呆子带来一些满足感。即使不能，至少也能让你忙起来。
[3]另一种解决方案可能是以某种方式收敛你的凶悍，比如投入冥想或心理治疗之类的。也许这对某些人来说是正确答案。我不知道。但对我来说这似乎不是最优解。如果你得到一把锋利的刀，在我看来，使用它比磨钝刀刃以免伤到自己更好。
If you do choose the ambitious route, you'll have a tailwind behind you. There has never been a better time to be a nerd. In the past century we've seen a continuous transfer of power from dealmakers to technicians — from the charismatic to the competent — and I don't see anything on the horizon that will end it. At least not till the nerds end it themselves by bringing about the singularity.
如果你选择雄心勃勃的道路，你会得到顺风助力。现在从来没有比这更好的时代来当书呆子了。在过去一个世纪里，我们看到权力从交易者持续转移到技术专家——从魅力型转移到能力型——而我看不到任何东西能终结这一趋势。至少直到书呆子们自己通过引发奇点来结束它。
[1]To be a nerd is to be socially awkward, and there are two distinct ways to do that: to be playing the same game as everyone else, but badly, and to be playing a different game. The smart nerds are the latter type.
[1]所谓书呆子，就是社交笨拙的人，而社交笨拙有两种截然不同的方式：与他人玩同一场游戏，但玩得很差；或者玩一场不同的游戏。聪明的书呆子属于后一种。
[2]The same qualities that make fierce nerds so effective can also make them very annoying. Fierce nerds would do well to remember this, and (a) try to keep a lid on it, and (b) seek out organizations and types of work where getting the right answer matters more than preserving social harmony. In practice that means small groups working on hard problems. Which fortunately is the most fun kind of environment anyway.
[2]那些让凶悍书呆子如此高效的特质，也可能使他们非常惹人厌。凶悍书呆子最好记住这一点，并（a）尽量收敛，（b）寻找那些得到正确答案比维持社交和谐更重要的组织和工作类型。实际上，这意味着小团队攻克难题。幸运的是，这本身也是最有趣的工作环境。
[3]If success neutralizes bitterness, why are there some people who are at least moderately successful and yet still quite bitter? Because people's potential bitterness varies depending on how naturally bitter their personality is, and how ambitious they are: someone who's naturally very bitter will still have a lot left after success neutralizes some of it, and someone who's very ambitious will need proportionally more success to satisfy that ambition. So the worst-case scenario is someone who's both naturally bitter and extremely ambitious, and yet only moderately successful.
[3]如果成功消解了苦涩，为什么还有一些人虽然至少中等程度成功，却仍然相当苦涩？因为人们潜在的苦涩程度取决于他们天生性格的苦涩程度以及他们的雄心大小：一个天生非常苦涩的人，在成功消解一部分后仍然剩下很多；而一个非常有雄心的人，需要相应更多的成功才能满足其雄心。所以最坏的情况是：一个天生苦涩且极其雄心勃勃的人，却只取得了中等程度的成功。