演講MP3+雙語文稿:效率悖論

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聽力課堂TED音頻欄目主要包括TED演講的音頻MP3及中英雙語文稿，供各位英語愛好者學(xué)習(xí)使用。本文主要內(nèi)容為演講MP3+雙語文稿:效率悖論，希望你會喜歡！

【演講人及介紹】Edward Tenner

獨立的作家、演說家和編輯，分析技術(shù)在文化方面的變革。

【演講主題】效率悖論

【演講文稿-中英文】

翻譯Lilian Chiu 校對 HelenChang

00:12

Who doesn't love efficiency? I do.Efficiency means more for less. More miles per gallon, more light per watt,more words per minute. More for less is the next best thing to something fornothing. Algorithms, big data, the cloud are giving us more for less. Are weheading toward a friction-free utopia or toward a nightmare of surveillance?

誰不愛效率？我愛。效率意味著用較少得到較多。每加侖的油跑更多里程，每瓦特電力產(chǎn)生更多光線，每分鐘說更多話。唯一勝過「用較少得到較多」的，就是「用無得到某事物」。算法、大數(shù)據(jù)、云端，都讓我們能用較少得到較多。我們正在朝向零阻力的烏托邦邁進(jìn)？還是朝向監(jiān)控的惡夢邁進(jìn)？

00:42

I don't know. My interest is in thepresent. And I'd like to show you how the past can help us understand thepresent.

我不知道。我感興趣的是當(dāng)前。我想要跟各位說明，過去如何協(xié)助我們了解現(xiàn)在。

00:52

There's nothing that summarizes both thepromise and the danger of efficiency like the humble potato. The potatooriginated in the Andes and it spread to Europe from the ancient Inca. Thepotato is a masterpiece of balanced nutrition. And it had some very powerfulfriends. King Frederick the Great of Prussia was the first enthusiast. Hebelieved that the potato could help increase the population of healthyPrussians. And the more healthy Prussians, the more healthy Prussian soldiers.And some of those healthy Prussian soldiers captured a French militarypharmacist named Parmentier. Parmentier, at first, was appalled by the morning,noon and night diet fed to POWs of potatoes, but he came to enjoy it. Hethought they were making him a healthier person. And so, when he was released,he took it on himself to spread the potato to France. And he had some powerfulfriends. Benjamin Franklin advised him to hold a banquet, at which every dishincluded potatoes. And Franklin was a guest of honor. Even the king and queenof France were persuaded to wear potatoes, potato flowers, pardon me.

若要把效率的前景和危險做一個總整，最好的方式就是用馬鈴薯來說明。馬鈴薯源自安地斯山脈，透過古印加帝國傳播到歐洲去。馬鈴薯是均衡營養(yǎng)的杰作。且它有些非常有影響力的朋友。普魯士國王腓特烈二世是第一位熱衷馬鈴薯的人。他相信馬鈴薯可以協(xié)助增加健康普魯士人的數(shù)量。普魯士人越健康，普魯士士兵就越健康。而一些健康的普魯士士兵捉到了一位法國軍方的藥師，叫做帕門提爾。一開始，帕門提爾嚇壞了，因為戰(zhàn)俘早上、中午、晚上吃的都是馬鈴薯，但他漸漸開始喜歡上了。他認(rèn)為馬鈴薯讓他變得更健康。所以，當(dāng)他被釋放時，他自己攬起責(zé)任，要把馬鈴薯傳到法國。他有一些很有影響力的朋友。班杰明·富蘭克林建議他辦一場盛宴，每一道菜都要用到馬鈴薯。而富蘭克林是盛宴的貴賓。就連法國的國王和皇后都被說服穿戴馬鈴薯，抱歉，我是指馬鈴薯花。

02:26

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

02:27

The king wore a potato flower in his lapel,and the queen wore a potato flower in her hair. That was a truly great publicrelations idea.

國王在他的翻領(lǐng)上戴馬鈴薯花，皇后則在頭發(fā)上戴馬鈴薯花。這個公關(guān)的點子真的很棒。

02:39

But there was a catch. The potato was tooefficient for Europe's good. In Ireland, it seemed a miracle. Potatoesflourished, the population grew. But there was a hidden risk. Ireland'spotatoes were genetically identical. They were a very efficient breed, calledthe Lumper. And the problem with the Lumper was that a blight from SouthAmerica that affected one potato would affect them all. Britain's exploitationand callousness played a role, but it was because of this monoculture that amillion people died and another two million were forced to emigrate. A plantthat was supposed to end famine created one of the most tragic ones.

但有個問題。對歐洲而言，馬鈴薯的效率太好了。在愛爾蘭，它就象是個奇跡。馬鈴薯長得茂盛，人口也跟著成長。但背后藏有一個風(fēng)險。愛爾蘭馬鈴薯的基因相同。這些馬鈴薯屬于非常有效率的品種：碼頭工人馬鈴薯。碼頭工人馬鈴薯的問題是，來自南美的枯萎病只要影響了一個馬鈴薯，就會影響到全部馬鈴薯。英國的開采利用和冷酷無情也有影響，但正是因為這種單一栽培，導(dǎo)致一百萬人死亡，還有兩百萬人被迫移居。這種植物本來應(yīng)該要終結(jié)饑荒，卻造成了最悲劇性的饑荒之一。

03:29

The problems of efficiency today are lessdrastic but more chronic. They can also prolong the evils that they wereintended to solve. Take the electronic medical records. It seemed to be theanswer to the problem of doctors' handwriting, and it had the benefit ofproviding much better data for treatments. In practice, instead, it has meantmuch more electronic paperwork and physicians are now complaining that theyhave less, rather than more time to see patients individually. The obsessionwith efficiency can actually make us less efficient.

現(xiàn)今，效率的問題沒有那么極端，但比較長期。它們也可能延長本來打算要解決的禍害。以電子醫(yī)療記錄為例。它似乎可以解決醫(yī)生手寫記錄的問題，它還有一個益處，是能為治療提供更好的資料。但在現(xiàn)實上，卻意味著電子文書工作多出很多，現(xiàn)在醫(yī)生都在抱怨他們看個別病人的時間沒有變多，反而變少了。迷戀效率有可能實際上讓我們變得比較沒效率。

04:06

Efficiency also bites back with falsepositives. Hospitals have hundreds of devices registering alarms. Too often,they're crying wolf. It takes time to rule those out. And that time results infatigue, stress and, once more, the neglect of the problems of real patients.There are also false positives in pattern recognition. A school bus, viewedfrom the wrong angle, can resemble a punching bag. So precious time is requiredto eliminate misidentification. False negatives are a problem, too. Algorithmscan learn a lot -- fast. But they can tell us only about the past. So manyfuture classics get bad reviews, like "Moby Dick," or are turned downby multiple publishers, like the "Harry Potter" series. It can bewasteful to try to avoid all waste.

效率也可能會以偽陽性（誤判為真）的形式反咬。醫(yī)院有數(shù)百項會發(fā)出警報的裝置。通常都是假警報。排除假警報要花時間?；切r間會造成疲憊、壓力，并且忽視真正病人的問題。在模式辨識時也會遇到偽陽性的狀況。從錯誤的角度看一臺校車，可能會把它視為拳擊沙袋。要消除錯誤辨識，就要花寶貴的時間。偽陰性（誤判為假）也是個問題。算法能學(xué)得多且快。但它們只能告訴我們過去的狀況。許多未來的經(jīng)典得到的是惡評，比如《白鯨記》，或是被許多出版社拒絕，比如《哈利波特》系列。「試圖避免所有的浪費」可能就是一種浪費。

05:02

Efficiency is also a trap when theopposition copies it. Take the late 19th-century French 75-millimeter artillerypiece. It was a masterpiece of lethal design. This piece could fire a shellevery four seconds. But that wasn't so unusual. What was really brilliant wasthat because of the recoil mechanism, it could return to the exact sameposition without having to be reaimed. So the effective rate of firing wasdrastically increased. Now, this seemed to be a way for France to defeatGermany the next time they fought. But, predictably, the Germans were workingon something very similar. So when the First World War broke out, the resultwas the trench warfare that lasted longer than anybody had expected. Atechnology that was designed to shorten the war, prolonged it.

但對立方復(fù)制效率時，效率也是會變成陷阱。以十九世紀(jì)法國的七十五毫米大炮為例。它是致命設(shè)計的杰作。這種大炮每四秒鐘就能發(fā)射一次炮彈。但那不算什么。真正厲害的是它的回彈機制，它可以返回到完全相同的位置，不用重新瞄準(zhǔn)。因此大大增加有效發(fā)射的比率。對法國來說，這似乎是下次和德國對戰(zhàn)時的致勝之道。但，預(yù)料之中，德國也在研究類似的東西。所以，當(dāng)?shù)谝淮问澜绱髴?zhàn)爆發(fā)時，結(jié)果是戰(zhàn)壕交戰(zhàn)，持續(xù)的時間比任何人預(yù)期的都還久。設(shè)計來縮短戰(zhàn)爭的技術(shù)的結(jié)果卻延長了戰(zhàn)爭。

05:58

The biggest cost of all may be missedopportunities. The platform economy connecting buyers and sellers can be agreat investment, and we have seen that in the last few weeks. Companies thatare still losing hundreds of millions of dollars may be creating billionaireswith initial public offerings.

最大的損失可能是失去的機會。連結(jié)買家和賣家的平臺經(jīng)濟可能是很棒的投資，在過去幾周我們已經(jīng)看到了這一點。目前還虧損數(shù)億美金的公司能透過公開上市造出億萬富翁。

06:18

But the really difficult inventions are thephysical and chemical ones. They mean bigger risks. They may be losing out,because hardware is hard. It's much harder to scale up a physical or chemicalinvention than it is a software-based invention. Think of batteries.Lithium-ion batteries in portable devices and electric cars are based on a30-year-old principle. How many smartphone batteries today will last a full dayon a single charge? Yes, hardware is hard. It took over 20 years for the patenton the principle of dry photocopying, by Chester Carlson in 1938, to result inthe Xerox 914 copier introduced in 1959. The small, brave company, Haloid inRochester, NY had to go through what most corporations would never havetolerated. There was one failure after another, and one of the special problemswas fire. In fact, when the 914 was finally released, it still had a devicethat was called a scorch eliminator but actually it was a small fireextinguisher built in.

但真正困難的發(fā)明，是物理和化學(xué)的發(fā)明。這些發(fā)明代表更高的風(fēng)險。它們可能會因為硬件的難度而失去機會。擴大物理或化學(xué)發(fā)明規(guī)模的難度要比軟件發(fā)明的難多了。想想電池。便攜式裝置和電動汽車用的鋰電池基于三十年前的原理。現(xiàn)今有多少手機電池充一次電就能用一整天？沒錯，硬件很難做。切斯特·卡爾森在 1938 年提出的靜電復(fù)印原理的專利就花了超過二十年才被應(yīng)用，全錄到 1959 年才推出 Xerox 914 型復(fù)印機。（全錄的前身）Haloid 是位在紐約州羅徹斯特的勇悍小公司，大部分企業(yè)不會容許它的歷程。一次又一次失敗，其中一個特殊的問題是火。事實上，當(dāng) 914 終于推出時還配備了叫做焦痕清除器的裝置，事實上是個內(nèi)建的小型滅火器。

07:42

My answer to all these questions is:inspired inefficiency. Data and measurement are essential, but they're notenough. Let's leave room for human intuition and human skills. There are sevenfacets of inspired inefficiency. First, take the scenic route, say yes toserendipity. Wrong turns can be productive. Once, when I was exploring the eastbank of the Mississippi, I took the wrong turn. I was approaching a toll bridgecrossing the great river, and the toll collector said I could not turn back. SoI paid my 50 cents -- that's all it was at the time -- and I was in Muscatine, Iowa.I had barely heard of Muscatine, but it proved to be a fascinating place.Muscatine had some of the world's richest mussel beds. A century ago, a thirdof the world's buttons were produced in Muscatine, 1.5 billion a year. The lastplants have closed now, but there is still a museum of the pearl buttonindustry that's one of the most unusual in the world. But buttons were only thebeginning. This is the house in Muscatine where China's future president stayedin 1986, as a member of an agricultural delegation. It is now the Sino-USFriendship House, and it's a pilgrimage site for Chinese tourists. How could Ihave foreseen that?

我對所有這些問題的答案是：受啟發(fā)的無效率。資料和測量是很重要，但光有它們還不夠。留些空間給人類直覺和人類技能。受啟發(fā)的無效率有七個面向。第一，走緩慢的長路，接納機緣巧合。轉(zhuǎn)錯彎也可能會有豐富的產(chǎn)出。有次我在探勘密西西比東岸時轉(zhuǎn)錯了彎。當(dāng)時我駛近一座橫越這條大河的收費橋，收費員說我不能回頭。所以我付了五十分錢——那是當(dāng)時的價格——我到了愛荷華州的馬斯卡廷。我?guī)缀鯖]聽過馬斯卡廷，結(jié)果它卻是個很迷人的地方。馬斯卡廷有一些世界上最豐富的河蚌繁殖地。一世紀(jì)前，全世界三分之一的鈕扣是在馬斯卡廷生產(chǎn)的，一年十五億美金?，F(xiàn)在僅存的工廠也已關(guān)閉，但當(dāng)?shù)厝匀挥幸蛔渲殁o扣產(chǎn)業(yè)博物館，是世界上最奇異的現(xiàn)象之一。但鈕扣才是開端。在馬斯卡廷有一間房子，1986 年，中國的未來國家主席以農(nóng)業(yè)代表團(tuán)成員的身份住在那里。這間房子現(xiàn)在是中美友誼屋，也是中國游客的朝圣地。我怎么可能預(yù)見這些？

09:07

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

09:09

Second, get up from the couch. Sometimes itcan be more efficient to do things the hard way. Consider the internet ofthings. It's wonderful to be able to control lights, set the thermostat, evenvacuum the room without leaving one's seat. But medical research has shown thatactually fidgeting, getting up, walking around is one of the best things youcan do for your heart. It's good for the heart and the waistline.

第二，從沙發(fā)上站起來。有時，用困難的方式做事反而是更有效率的。想想物聯(lián)網(wǎng)?？梢钥刂茻艄獾拇_很好，設(shè)定自動調(diào)溫器，甚至用吸塵器清理房間，都可以坐著完成。但醫(yī)學(xué)研究顯示瞎忙、站起來、走一走事實上對心臟有益，對心臟和腰圍都好。

09:38

Third, monetize your mistakes. Great formscan be created by imaginative development of accidents. Tad Leski, an architectof the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, was working on a sketch and somewhite ink fell on the drawing. Other people might just have thrown it away, butLeski was inspired to produce a starburst chandelier that was probably the mostnotable of its kind of the 20th century.

第三，從你的錯誤中找到好處。富有想象力的事故可以發(fā)展造出很棒的做法。泰德·萊斯基是林肯中心大都會歌劇院的建筑師，他在畫草圖時，一些白色墨水灑到他的圖上。其他人可能就只會把圖丟了，但萊斯基得到靈感，制造出了一盞光芒四射的枝形吊燈，可能是整個二十世紀(jì)這類吊燈中最著名的一盞。

10:09

Fourth, sometimes try the hard way. It canbe more efficient to be less fluent. Psychologists call this desirabledifficulty. Taking detailed notes with a keyboard would seem to be the best wayto grasp what a lecturer is saying, to be able to review it verbatim. However,studies have shown that when we have to abbreviate, when we have to summarizewhat a speaker is saying, when we're taking notes with a pen or a pencil onpaper, we're processing that information. We're making that our own, and we arelearning much more actively than when we were just transcribing what was beingsaid.

第四，有時試試?yán)щy的方式。不要那么流暢可能會更有效率。心理學(xué)家稱之為有益的困難。用鍵盤來做細(xì)節(jié)筆記，似乎是理解講師講述之內(nèi)容的最佳方式，可以再逐字回顧。然而，研究顯示當(dāng)我們必須要簡短省寫時，當(dāng)我們必須要把講師的話做整理時，當(dāng)我們用筆在紙上記筆記時，我們是在處理那些信息。我們在把信息變成自己的，我們的學(xué)習(xí)會更主動許多，遠(yuǎn)勝于只是把聽到的話抄寫下來。

10:50

Fifth, get security through diversity.Monoculture can be deadly. Remember the potato? It was efficient until itwasn't. Diversity applies to organizations, too. Software can tell what hasmade people in an organization succeed in the past. And it's useful, sometimes,in screening employees. But remember, the environment is constantly changing,and software, screening software, has no way to tell, and we have no way totell, who is going to be useful in the future. So, we need to supplementwhatever the algorithm tells us by an intuition and by looking for people withvarious backgrounds and various outlooks.

第五，透過多樣性獲取擔(dān)保。單一栽培可能會致命。記得馬鈴薯嗎？它一直很效率，直到不再如此。多樣性也適用于組織。軟件可以判斷出是什么因素讓組織中的人過去很成功。這些信息有時對篩選員工很有用。但要記住環(huán)境時時刻刻在變，而軟件，篩選軟件無法判斷，我們也無法判斷誰在未來有用。我們得要補足算法告訴我們的信息，做法是用直覺以及尋找不同背景和不同前景的人。

11:35

Sixth, achieve safety through redundancyand human skills. Why did two 737 Max aircraft crash? We still don't know thefull story, but we know how to prevent future tragedies. We need multipleindependent systems. If one fails, then the others can override it. We alsoneed skilled operators to come to the rescue and that means constant training.

第六，以備用品和人類技藝來擔(dān)保。為什么兩架波音 737 Max 會墜毀？我們?nèi)匀徊恢廊康脑斍椋覀冎廊绾晤A(yù)防未來悲劇。我們需要不只一個獨立的系統(tǒng)。如果一個系統(tǒng)失靈，其他的系統(tǒng)能夠取代它。我們也需要熟練的操作員來救援，那就表示需要經(jīng)常性的訓(xùn)練。

12:00

Seventh, be rationally extravagant. ThomasEdison was a pioneer of the film industry, as well as of camera technology.Nobody has done more for efficiency than Thomas Edison. But his cost cuttingbroke down. His manager hired a so-called efficiency engineer, who advised himto save money by using more of the film stock that he'd shot, having fewerretakes. Well, Edison was a genius, but he didn't understand the new rules offeature films and the fact that failure was becoming the price of success. Onthe other hand, some great directors, like Erich Von Stroheim, were theopposite. They were superb dramatists, and Stroheim was also a memorable actor.But they couldn't live within their budgets. So that was not sustainable. Itwas Irving Thalberg, a former secretary with intuitive genius, who achievedrational extravagance. First at Universal, and then at MGM, becoming the idealof the Hollywood producer.

第七，做理智的揮霍。湯瑪斯·愛迪生是電影業(yè)的先鋒，也是照相技術(shù)的先鋒。沒人比愛迪生更有效率，但他的成本削減失敗了。他的經(jīng)紀(jì)人僱用所謂的效率工程師，他建議愛迪生多利用已經(jīng)拍攝的電影膠片，少重拍，以節(jié)省費用。愛迪生是天才，但他不了解電影長片的新規(guī)則和失敗成了（省錢）成功的代價。另一方面，一些偉大的導(dǎo)演，如艾瑞克·馮史卓漢，則恰恰相反。他們是一流的劇作家，史卓漢還是個讓人難忘的演員。但他們無法控制在預(yù)算之內(nèi)。那不是永續(xù)的做法。是歐文·托爾伯格這位有直覺的天才前任秘書達(dá)到了理智的揮霍。一開始是在環(huán)球，接著是在米高梅，成為理想的好萊塢制片。

13:04

Summing up, to be truly efficient, we needoptimal inefficiency. The shortest path may be a curve rather than a straightline. Charles Darwin understood that. When he encountered a tough problem, hemade a circuit of a trail, the sandwalk that he'd built behind his house. Aproductive path can be physical, like Darwin's, or a virtual one, or anunforeseen detour from a path we had laid out. Too much efficiency can weakenitself. But a bit of inspired inefficiency can strengthen it. Sometimes, thebest way to move forward is to follow a circle.

總結(jié)一下，要能真正有效率，我們需要把無效率做最佳化。最短的路徑可能是曲線而不是直線。查爾斯·達(dá)爾文了解這一點。當(dāng)他遇到困難的問題時，他用小徑做成一個回路，在他家后面建造了一條沙道。有生產(chǎn)力的路徑可以是實體的，就像達(dá)爾文的一樣，或是虛擬的，或是我們原訂路線所未預(yù)料的繞路。太有效率可能會削弱效率。但一點點受啟發(fā)的無效率可以強化效率。有時，向前的最佳路徑，是順著一個圓。

13:46

Thank you.

謝謝

13:48

(Applause)

（掌聲）