CHAPTER 8

生活原则列表

1.4Look to nature to learn how realityworks.

通过学习自然掌握现实是如何运转的

All the laws of realitywere given to us by nature. Man didn’t create these laws, but by understandingthem we can use them to foster our own evolution and achieve our goals. Forexample, our ability to fly or to send cell phone signals around the world camefrom understanding and applying the existing rules of reality—the physical lawsor principles that govern the natural world.

While I spend most of mytime studying the realities that affect me most directly—those that driveeconomies, the markets, and the people I deal with—I also spend time in natureand can’t help reflecting on how it works by observing, reading, and speaking with some ofthe greatest specialists on the subject. I’ve found it both interesting andvaluable to observe which laws we humans have in common with the rest of natureand which differentiate us. Doing that has had a big impact on my approach tolife.

First of all, I see howcool it is that the brain’s evolution gave us the ability to reflect on howreality works in this way. Man’s most distinctive quality is our singularability to look down on reality from a higher perspective and synthesize anunderstanding of it. While other species operate by following their instincts,man alone can go above himself and look at himself within his circumstances andwithin time (including before and after his existence). For example, we canponder the ways that nature’s flying machines, swimming machines, and billionsof other machines, from the microscopic to the cosmic, interact with oneanother to make up a working whole that evolves through time. This is becausethe evolution of the brain gave man a much more developed neocortex, whichgives us the power to think abstractly and logically.

While our higher-levelthinking makes us unique among species, it can also make us uniquely confused.Other species have much simpler and more straightforward lives, without any ofman’s wrestling with what’s good and what’s bad. In contrast with animals, mostpeople struggle to reconcile their emotions and their instincts (which comefrom the animal parts of their brains) with their reasoning (which comes fromparts of the brain more developed in humans). This struggle causes people toconfuse what they want to be true with what actually is true. Let’s look atthis dilemma to try to understand how reality works.

When trying tounderstand anything—economies, markets, the weather, whatever—one can approachthe subject with two perspectives:

1. Top

down:By trying to find the one code/law that drives them all. For example, in thecase of markets, one could study universal laws like supply and demand thataffect all economies and markets. In the case of species, one could focus onlearning how the genetic code (DNA) works for all species.

2. Bottom

up:By studying each specific case and the codes/laws that are true for them, forexample, the codes or laws particular to the market for wheat or the DNAsequences that make ducks different from other species.

Seeing things from thetop down is the best way to understand ourselves and the laws of reality withinthe context of overarching universal laws. That’s not to say it’s not worthhaving a bottom-up perspective. In fact, to understand the world accurately youneed both. By taking a bottom-up perspective that looks at each individualcase, we can see how it lines up with our theories about the laws that weexpect to govern it. When they line up, we’re good.

By looking at naturefrom the top down, we can see that much of what we call human nature is reallyanimal nature. That’s because the human brain is programmed with millions ofyears of genetic learning that we share with other species. Because we sharecommon roots and common laws, we and other animals have similar attributes andconstraints. For example, the male/female sexual reproduction process, usingtwo eyes to provide depth perception, and many other systems are shared by manyspecies in the animal kingdom. Similarly, our brains have some “animal” partsthat are much older in evolutionary terms than humanity is. These laws that wehave in common are the most overarching ones. They wouldn’t be apparent to usif we just looked at ourselves.

If you just looked atone species—ducks, for example—to try to understand the universal laws, you’dfail. Similarly, if you just looked at mankind to understand the universallaws, you’d fail. Man is just one of ten million species and just one of the billionsof manifestations of the forces that bring together and take apart atomsthrough time. Yet most people are like ants focused only on themselves andtheir own anthill; they believe the universe revolves around people and don’tpay attention to the universal laws that are true for all species.

To try to figure out theuniversal laws of reality and principles for dealing with it, I’ve found ithelpful to try to look at things from nature’s perspective. While mankind isvery intelligent in relation to other species, we have the intelligence of mossgrowing on a rock compared to nature as a whole. We are incapable of designingand building a mosquito, let alone all the species and most of the other thingsin the universe. So I start from the premise that nature is smarter than I amand try to let nature teach me how reality works.

a. Don’t

get hung up on your views of how things “should” be because you will miss out

on learning how they really are.It’s important not tolet our biases stand in the way of our objectivity. To get good results, weneed to be analytical rather than emotional.

Whenever I observesomething in nature that I (or mankind) think is wrong, I assume thatI’mwrong and try to figure out why what nature is doingmakes sense. That has taught me a lot. It has changed my thinking about 1)what’s good and what’s bad, 2) what my purpose in life is, and 3) what I shoulddo when faced with my most important choices. To help explain why, I will giveyou a simple example.

When I went to Africa anumber of years ago, I saw a pack of hyenas take down a young wildebeest. Myreaction was visceral. I felt empathy for the wildebeest and thought that whatI had witnessed was horrible. But was that because itwashorrible or was it because I am biased to believe it’s horrible

when it is actuallywonderful? That got me thinking. Would the world be a better or worse place ifwhat I’d seen hadn’t occurred? That perspective drove me to consider thesecond- and third-order consequences so that I could see that the world wouldbe worse. I now realize that nature optimizes for the whole, not for theindividual, but most people judge good and bad based only on how it affectsthem. What I had seen was the process of nature at work, which is much moreeffective at furthering the improvement of the whole than any process man hasever invented.

Most people callsomething bad if it is bad for them or bad for those they empathize with,ignoring the greater good. This tendency extends to groups: One religion willconsider its beliefs good and another religion’s beliefs bad to such an extentthat their members might kill each other in the mutual conviction that each isdoing what’s right. Typically, people’s conflicting beliefs or conflictinginterests make them unable to see things through another’s eyes. That’s notgood and it doesn’t make sense. While I could understand people likingsomething that helps them and disliking things that hurt them, it doesn’t makesense to call something good or bad in an absolute sense based only on how itaffects individuals. To do so would presume that what the individual wants ismore important than the good of the whole. To me, nature seems to define goodas what’s good for the whole and optimizes for it, which is preferable. So Ihave come to believe that as a general rule:

b. To

be “good” something must operate consistently with the laws of reality and

contribute to the evolution of the whole; that is what is most rewarded.For example,if you come up with something the world values, you almost can’t help but berewarded. Conversely, reality tends to penalize those people, species, andthings that don’t work well and detract from evolution.17

In looking at what istrue for everything, I have come to believe that:

c. Evolution

is the single greatest force in the universe; it is the only thing that is

permanent and it drives everything.18Everything from thesmallest subatomic particle to the entire galaxy is evolving. While everythingapparently dies or disappears in time, the truth is that it all just getsreconfigured in evolving forms. Remember that energy can’t be destroyed—it canonly be reconfigured. So the same stuff is continuously falling apart andcoalescing in different forms. The force behind that is evolution.

For example, the primarypurpose of every living thing is to act as a vessel for the DNA that evolveslife through time. The DNA that exists within each individual came from aneternity ago and will continue to live long after its individual carriers passaway, in increasingly evolved forms.19

As I thought aboutevolution, I realized that it exists in other forms than life and is carriedout through other transmission mechanisms than DNA. Technologies, languages,and everything else evolves. Knowledge, for example, is like DNA in that it ispassed from generation to generation and evolves; its impact on people overmany generations can be as great or greater than that of the genetic code.

Evolution is goodbecause it is the process of adaptation that generally moves things towardimprovement. All things such as products, organizations, and human capabilitiesevolve through time in a similar way. It is simply the process by which thingseither adapt and improve or die. To me this evolutionary process looks likewhat you see on the right:

Evolution consists ofadaptations/inventions that provide spurts of benefits that decline in value.That painful decline leads either to new adaptations and new inventions thatbring new products, organizations, and human capabilities to new and higher levelsof development (as shown in the top diagram on the facing page); or decline anddeath, which looks like the diagram at bottom left.

Think of any product,organization, or person you know and you will see that this is true. The worldis littered with once-great things that deteriorated and failed; only a rarefew have kept reinventing themselves to go on to new heights of greatness. Allmachines eventually break down, decompose, and have their parts recycled tocreate new machines. That includes us. Sometimes this makes us sad becausewe’ve become attached to our machines, but if you look at it from the higherlevel, it’s really beautiful to observe how the machine of evolution works.

From this perspective,we can see that perfection doesn’t exist; it is a goal that fuels anever-ending process of adaptation. If nature, or anything, were perfect itwouldn’t be evolving. Organisms, organizations, and individual people arealways highly imperfect but capable of improving. So rather than getting stuckhiding our mistakes and pretending we’re perfect, it makes sense to find ourimperfections and deal with them. You will either learn valuable lessons fromyour mistakes and press on, better equipped to succeed—or you won’t and youwill fail.

As the saying goes:

d. Evolve

or die.This evolutionary cycle is not just for people but for countries, companies,economies—for everything. And it is naturally self-correcting as a whole,though not necessarily for its parts. For example, if there is too much supplyand waste in a market, prices will go down, companies will go out of business,and capacity will be reduced until the supply falls in line with the demand, atwhich time the cycle will start to move in the opposite direction. Similarly,if an economy turns bad enough, those responsible for running it will make thepolitical and policy changes that are needed—or they will not survive, makingroom for their replacements to come along. These cycles are continuous and playout in logical ways—and they tend to be self-reinforcing.

The key is to fail,learn, and improve quickly. If you’re constantly learning and improving, yourevolutionary process will look like the one that’s ascending. Do it poorly andit will look like what you see on the left, or worse.

I believe that:

译文：

1.4

真实世界的所有规律都通过自然传达给我们。人类并不创造这些规律，通过理解规律我们可以转而使用规律去培养我们自己的改变并达成目标。举例，我们可以飞或者通过无线电话信号传递到全世界从而理解和提供真实世界的存在法则—物理规律或原则在掌控着整个自然世界。

首先，我明白大脑的进化是如此的酷带给我们真实世界是如何运作的反馈的能力。人类的最独特的品质是我们能从一个更高维度俯视真实世界并将理解综合。而其他生物则在按照自己的本能行事，人类能独立超过自己并在大环境，一段时间内审视自己。举例，我们能参考自然界的飞行机械，游泳机制，其他成百万的机械，从微观到宇宙，通过互动组建一套随时间发展的工作机制。因为大脑的进化给了人类一套更加先进的大脑皮层，而皮层给了我们更有力的抽象思维和逻辑思维能力。

而我们高水平的思考使我们能独立于其他物种，当然也能使我们遭遇独特的困惑。而其他物种则有简单多的和更加直接的生活，没有任何人类的好的和坏的混合的特质。对比动物，大多数人类通过调节他们的情绪与直觉（这些来自于属于人类的动物性的那一面）而使用推理（这来自于人脑发展出的）。这种战斗致使人类混淆他们想要的真实和实际的真相。让我们看看这种困境，尝试理解真相是如何运作的。

 当我们尝试明白任何事情—经济，市场，气候，所有这些—人类通过两种观点能达成目标。

[if !supportLists]1、[endif]从上至下：尝试发现驱动所有的编码/规则。举例，市场案例下，人类能学习通用规则比如供应和需求—影响所有经济和市场。学习物种，人类能聚焦在学习dna是如何在所有物种中工作的。

从下至上：通过学习每一种特定案例和案例的编码/规则，举例，特定市场的编码或者规则比如小麦或者DNA序列使得鸭子区别于其他物种。

从上至下看待问题是了解我们自己和在整个宇宙规则框架下的真实世界规则。那并不是说不需要从下至上的视角。事实上，想正确理解这个世界你需要两种视角。通过从下至上的视角我们来看每个独立的案例，我们就能明白我们想要的控制世界的规则是如何由我们的理论来组合的。而当他们按序排列时，整个世界都处于良性之中。

从上至下的观察自然界，我们就能明白我们所谓的人类自然其实就是动物世界。因为人类的大脑实际是由上百万年的我们和其他物种共享的基因学习而获得的大脑编码。因为我们分享了共同的根和法规，我们和其他动物有着近似的属性和约束。举例，公/母性的性繁殖过程，使用双眼提供深度感知，很多其他系统在动物王国被很多物种享用。近似的，我们的大脑有一些动物的部分—这部分在进化序列中远比人性的部分古老的多。我们在普通生活中的这些法则是最总体的部分。如果我们仅从自身观察那些属性并不明显。

如果你仅仅 观察一种生物-比如鸭子，举例—尝试理解通用的规则，你会失败，相似的，如果你只盯住人类，你会失败。人类只是千万物种中的一个，并且是仅是上亿种力量组合和分离事件中的一个。然而大多数人就像蚂蚁只盯着他们自己和他们的自身利益；他们相信周边的人，不去关心对所有物种都有效的通用规则。

下面我尝试刻画出真实的通过法则和应对原则，我发现以自然的视角观察事物有助于发现规则。当然人类相对于其他物种非常聪明，相比整个自然界我们的智慧就像长在石头上的苔藓。我们身子无法设计和建造一个蚊子，丢开其他所有物种和大多数其他事物。我从自然比我们聪明的多这个前提开始尝试让自然教会我真实世界的运作规律。

[if !supportLists]A．[endif]别固执于你以为的“应该是”因为那样你可能会错过学习他们本来的样子。重要的是别让偏见阻碍你的客观。想要得到好的结果，我们需要分析而不是靠情绪。

不论何时我观察自然的事物如果我的思考是错误的，我假设我是错的，并尝试去琢磨为何自然发生的能产生感觉。那样思考已经教会我太多了。改变了我思考的方式1）什么是好的，什么是不好的2）我的生活目的是什么3）当我棉铃最重要的决定时 我应该怎么做。并帮助解释为什么，我将给你举一个简单例子。

许多年前我去非洲，我看见一群土狼拿下一只年幼的羚羊。我的反应是内脏。我能感受到羚羊的感觉，并想到我在一旁目睹是可怕的。但正是因为可怕或者因为我的偏见才相信那样是可怕的。

并明白这个案例，或者是换位思考吧，老爷子总是喜欢举例，但例子有时并不恰当。

实际上很壮观是吗？这让我思考。如果我看到的这一切没有发生过那么这个世界是否会好一点或者更加恶略？那个视角驱使我考虑第二-第三顺位的结果，所以我可能以更大的恶意看待这个世界。现在我意识到对于整体的自然优化，而不是单个个体，但大多数人评判好和坏仅仅基于对于他们的影响多大。我所见的是自然工作的过程，显然对于整体的提高更加高效，相比人类曾发明的那些。

大多数人认为不好是因为对他本人不利，或者爱屋及乌，从而忽略了更大的利益。这种趋势延伸到团体：一种宗教愿意相信他的信念是好的，而另一种宗教的信念不好，以至于达到他们的成员可能会争论谁好谁坏而互相残杀。典型的例子是人们的相冲突的信仰或者冲突的兴趣让他们从他人的角度看待问题。这当然不好，不会有意义。当然我能理解人们喜欢帮助到他们的东西而不喜欢伤害他们的，所以仅从影响方面考虑某事好或坏没什么意义。当个个体的想法和整体的利益相比更重要。对我来说，自然界似乎定义好的用对整体是否利益和优化有关，而其中最好的。所以我开始相信那是一种常规定律。

[if !supportLists]B．[endif]要成为“好的”。必须要按客观规律持续进行并对整体进化有贡献；那就是最大的奖励，举例，如果你有世界价值的事情，那你几乎不可能帮助却得到奖励。相反的，真相会惩罚那些人，物种，无法良性运作的事物，从演化的序列中掉队。

为了寻找所有事情的真相，我必须相信：

进化是宇宙中最伟大的单一力量；进化是唯一永久发声，进化驱动万物从最小的基础院子成长为整个银河系都参与进来。当万物显现死亡或消失，真相就是万物只是重新配置了进化的方式。记住能量不灭-他只能被重新配置。所以同样一个东西持续分解并凝聚成其他形式，藏在背后就是进化。

举例：每种生物的主要目的就是作为dna的容器参与生命的延续。Dna存在于每一个来自于远古时代的独立个体，并将继续存活在每一个独立个体的搬运过程中，在持续增加的进化形式中。

我这样思考进化，我意识到进化发生在生命和再被除DNA之外的其他传输机制携带之外的其他形式。技术，语言，发展中的任何事物。知识，举例，例如dna随着一代代人延续并发展；影响深远并能可能远比最早的遗传密码影响大的多。

进化总是好的因为他是一种适应过程—逐渐推动事物向前发展进步。任何事物例如产品，组织，人类的能力随着时间呈现一种相似的方式。进化是一种简单过程要么适应并进步要么死亡，灭绝。于我而言这种革命性的过程就像你在右边看到的那样：

进化由适应和革新组成—提供了大量的低价值的价值点。这种痛苦的减低导致要么趋向新的适应，促使新的革新带来新的产品，组织，人类的新技能到新的更高的发展水平；要么降低并死亡，就像在下面左边看到的图表那样。

思考下任何产品，组织或者你认识的人，你都会看到这种进化规律。世界到处散落着曾今伟大的事物—现在已经衰败了；只有少数几种能持续革新并走向新的辉煌。所有机械整体坍塌，分解，重新循环组装成新的机械。也包括我们。有时我们可能会难过因为我们成了机械的附属品，但如果你能从更高的维度来看，从机械进化的角度来看是多么真实而美丽啊。

从这个视角，我们就知道完美其实并不存在；完美只是一个永不停息的适应过程的目标。如果大自然或任何事物，都完美，就不会再进化了。生物，组织，独立个体的人类总是高度的额不完美却能不断进步。所以宁可被错误卡住也不要假装我们很完美，找出我们的不完美并解决他更有意义。你要么从错误中学到有价值的教训并迎难而上更好的准备并成功—要么你不会，你就是失败了。

D．俗话说：进化或死亡。这个进化圈不仅适用于人类同时适用于国家，公司，经济体—任何事物。同时进化是自然自我矫正的尤其是对整体而言，而不仅仅适用于部件。举例，如果供给太多，市场浪费，价格就会下降，公司就会倒闭，直到供给随着需求下降新的供需关系才会重新产生，而这时平衡回向相反的方向发展。相似的，如果经济足够糟糕，那些负责运转经济的会促使政治和政策改变迎合需求—否则经济会不可持续，并腾出空间准备替换。这些圈子是持续并按逻辑方式运转的-他们都是能自我强化的。

关键就是失败，学习，快速发展。如果你能不断地学习，进步，你的进化过程就像一个不断上升的过程。不学那么就会像你在左边看的的或者更糟糕。

我相信：

读后感：

是不是很啰嗦，就连干货也不是我们希望看到的干条，而是长篇大论，其实凝练下来就是几句话，比如进化，适应，物竞天择，不进则退。

哈哈，老爷子毕竟70了，文体和思维都显得有点啰嗦，远不像他在投资领域做得那么漂亮。再次奉劝想要看全书的朋友，不要看了，找一个解读比较好的听下就好。我是来学英语的。