Compounding Optimism 复合乐观

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Jun 14, 2023

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来源：Collab Fund

Compounding Optimism 复合乐观

A crocodile in Costa Rica was found pregnant recently – and she did it all herself, with no help from a male. Her fetus is 99.99% genetically identical to her.哥斯达黎加的一只鳄鱼最近被发现怀孕了——这一切都是她自己做的，没有雄性的帮助。她的胎儿与她的基因有 99.99% 相同。

It’s the first documented case of a crocodile reproducing asexually. A few other animals – some birds and snakes – can do it as well, but it’s extremely rare.这是鳄鱼无性繁殖的第一例记录在案的案例。其他一些动物——一些鸟类和蛇——也能做到这一点，但这种情况极为罕见。

There’s a good reason why.这是有充分理由的。

Almost 100 years ago, an evolutionary biologist named Herman Muller came up with a theory that eventually became known as Muller’s Ratchet. It says dangerous mutations tend to pile up when there’s no genetic recombination, which can ultimately lead a species to extinction. In the absence of variety – a male and female mixing genes – dangerous mutations tend to stick around, because there are no new, better, variations to compete the bad stuff out of the gene pool.大约 100 年前，一位名叫赫尔曼穆勒的进化生物学家提出了一个理论，该理论最终被称为穆勒棘轮理论。它说，当没有基因重组时，危险的突变往往会堆积起来，最终导致一个物种灭绝。在缺乏多样性的情况下——男性和女性混合基因——危险的突变往往会持续存在，因为没有新的、更好的变异来与基因库中的坏东西竞争。

It’s why so few species reproduce asexually.这就是为什么很少有物种进行无性繁殖。

David Senra of the wonderful Founders podcast recently told a story about Steve Jobs:精彩的 Founders 播客的 David Senra 最近讲述了一个关于 Steve Jobs 的故事：

Steve was in his 20s and he goes and meets [Polaroid founder] Edwin Land. And Steve says, “Visiting Edwin Land was like visiting a shrine … he is my hero.”史蒂夫当时 20 多岁，他去见了 [宝丽来创始人] 埃德温兰德。史蒂夫说，“拜访埃德温·兰德就像拜访圣地……他是我的英雄。”
And Jeff Bezos took a lot of ideas from Sam Walton. Both Steve and Jeff took a lot of ideas from Sony.Jeff Bezos 从 Sam Walton 那里汲取了很多想法。史蒂夫和杰夫都从索尼那里汲取了很多想法。
You always find these people where you’re like, “Oh, I thought this was a Steve Jobs idea.” No, no. It’s an [Sony founder] Akio Morita idea, or an Edwin Land idea.你总能在你喜欢的地方找到这些人，“哦，我认为这是史蒂夫乔布斯的想法。”不，不。这是 [Sony 创始人] Akio Morita 的想法，或者是 Edwin Land 的想法。
Watch the presentations that Steve Jobs gives where he says, “We’re building at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.” Edwin Land said those exact words!观看史蒂夫·乔布斯 (Steve Jobs) 的演讲，他说：“我们正在技术与文科的交汇处建设。” Edwin Land 说了那些原话！
You’re never going to find anybody who gets to the top of the profession without studying the people that came before them and learning from them and admiring them.如果不研究前人，向他们学习并欣赏他们，你永远找不到任何人登上行业的顶峰。

This is so true.这是真的。

Thomas Edison took a lot of ideas from Michael Faraday.托马斯·爱迪生从迈克尔·法拉第那里汲取了很多想法。

Bill Gates took ideas from a computer inverter named Henry Edwards Roberts.比尔·盖茨从一个名叫亨利·爱德华兹·罗伯茨的计算机逆变器中汲取了灵感。

Warren Buffett learned from Ben Graham and Phil Fisher.沃伦巴菲特向本格雷厄姆和菲尔费舍尔学习。

Edwin Land himself was massively influenced by a Harvard physics professor named George Wheelwright, who became a Polaroid co-founder.埃德温·兰德本人深受哈佛大学物理学教授乔治·惠莱特的影响，后者后来成为宝丽来的联合创始人。

The question is: Did George Wheelwright know that he would influence Edwin Land, who would then influence Steve Jobs, who would then design a phone that 2.5 billion people would use?问题是：George Wheelwright 是否知道他会影响 Edwin Land，后者会影响 Steve Jobs，后者会设计出 25 亿人会使用的手机？

Did Michael Faraday, who died in 1867, know that his ideas would directly influence the light bulb, which effectively led to the creation of everything from the modern power grid to nightlife?1867 年去世的迈克尔·法拉第是否知道他的想法会直接影响灯泡，从而有效地创造从现代电网到夜生活的一切事物？

Did Ben Graham know that his 1950s finance class would lead to 45,000 trekking to Omaha every year to hear his student speak?Ben Graham 知道他 1950 年代的金融课会导致每年有 45,000 人徒步到奥马哈听他的学生演讲吗？

Of course not. It’s so hard to know what an idea, or an invention, or a philosophy, will influence, and what a person who’s influenced by it will go on to create.当然不是。很难知道一个想法、一项发明或一种哲学会影响什么，以及受其影响的人会继续创造什么。

Visa Founder Dee Hock says, “A book is far more than what the author wrote; it is everything you can imagine and read into it as well.” An author might write something that’s dull or obvious, but it could inspire a reader to go do something incredible.Visa 创始人 Dee Hock 说：“一本书远不止作者写的东西；它是您可以想象和阅读的所有内容。”作者可能会写一些乏味或明显的东西，但它可以激发读者去做一些不可思议的事情。

Ideas compound. 想法复合。

Inventions compound. 发明化合物。

Education compounds. 教育化合物。

A trivial thing can grow into a massive thing, and faster than most people realize.一件微不足道的事情可以发展成为一件大事，而且比大多数人意识到的要快。

Science writer Matt Ridley says most innovation happens when several different ideas “have sex.”科普作家马特·里德利 (Matt Ridley) 说，大多数创新都是在几个不同的想法“发生性关系”时发生的。

Most new ideas and inventions are pretty bland on their own. But when you mix several of them together, you can get magic. Plastic is great. Electronics are neat. Metal is special. But mix them together in the right way and you get an iPhone, which is pure magic.大多数新想法和发明本身都很乏味。但是，当你将其中的几种混合在一起时，你就会产生魔力。塑料很棒。电子设备很整洁。金属很特别。但以正确的方式将它们混合在一起，你就会得到一部 iPhone，这简直就是魔法。

It’s ideas combining, joining, and merging, that create the modern world.正是思想的结合、结合和融合创造了现代世界。

And it’s the opposite process of what our crocodile friend recently pulled off.这与我们的鳄鱼朋友最近完成的过程相反。

Ridley explains in his book The Rational Optimist about the benefits of recombination:Ridley 在他的《理性乐观主义者》一书中解释了重组的好处：

A mutation that occurs in one creature can join forces with a mutation that occurs in another. If microbes had not begun swapping genes a few billion years ago, and animals had not continued doing so through sex, all the genes that make eyes could never have got together in one animal; nor the genes to make legs or nerves or brains. Each mutation would have remained isolated in its own lineage, unable to discover the joys of synergy.发生在一个生物身上的突变可以与发生在另一个生物身上的突变联合起来。如果几十亿年前微生物没有开始交换基因，动物也没有通过性交继续这样做，那么所有构成眼睛的基因就不可能在一只动物身上聚集在一起；也不是制造腿、神经或大脑的基因。每个突变都将在自己的谱系中保持孤立，无法发现协同作用的乐趣。

Ridley once explained this further:雷德利曾进一步解释过这一点：

I’m not interested in the debate about whether some groups have higher I.Q.s than other groups. It’s completely irrelevant. What’s relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas, and how well they’re cooperating, not how clever the individuals are.我对关于某些群体是否比其他群体的智商更高的争论不感兴趣。这完全无关紧要。与社会相关的是人们交流想法的程度以及他们合作的程度，而不是个人的聪明程度。

Small ideas mixing and compounding into big ones – that’s what really drives the world.小创意混合并复合成大创意——这才是真正驱动世界的动力。

I think part of the reason pessimism is so much easier and more common than optimism is that compound growth is not intuitive.我认为悲观主义比乐观主义更容易和更普遍的部分原因是复合增长不是直觉的。

It’s hard to imagine, say, our incomes doubling over the next few generations. That seems like such a massive leap, like we’d have to boil the ocean to get it done. But doubling the average income over 30 years works out to about 2.3% growth per year. It’s not crazy at all. It’s actually quite achievable. What made it seem so ambitious to begin with is that compound growth is easy to underestimate.很难想象，比如说，我们的收入会在未来几代人中翻一番。这似乎是一个巨大的飞跃，就像我们必须煮沸海洋才能完成它一样。但在 30 年内将平均收入翻一番，每年的增长率约为 2.3%。这一点也不疯狂。这实际上是可以实现的。它一开始就显得如此雄心勃勃，是因为复合增长很容易被低估。

If you look at the end result of a long period of compounding, it’s astounding. But all it took to get it done was little bits of incremental growth strung together for a long time.如果你看一下长期复利的最终结果，那将是惊人的。但要完成它所需要的只是长时间串在一起的一点点增量增长。

All progress is like that.所有的进步都是如此。

Technological progress is easy to underestimate because it’s so counterintuitive to see how, for example, the philosophies of a guy who invented Polaroid film would go on to inspire the iPhone. Or how an 18th-century physicist would write a notebook that would set the foundations for a modern electrical system.技术进步很容易被低估，因为它是如此违反直觉的，例如，一个发明宝丽来胶卷的人的哲学会如何继续激发 iPhone 的灵感。或者 18 世纪的物理学家如何编写一本笔记本，为现代电气系统奠定基础。

If you view progress as being driven by the genius of individuals, of course it’s hard to imagine a future where things are dramatically better, because no individual is orders of magnitudes smarter than average.如果你认为进步是由个人的天才推动的，那么当然很难想象未来会出现更好的情况，因为没有人比平均水平聪明几个数量级。

But when you view it as one person coming up with a small idea, another person copying that idea and tweaking it a little, another taking that insight and manipulating it a bit, another yet taking that product and combining it with something else – incremental, tiny bits, little ideas mixing, joining, blending, mutating, and compounding together – it’s suddenly much more conceivable.但是当你把它看作是一个人提出一个小想法，另一个人复制那个想法并稍微调整它，另一个人接受那个洞察力并稍微操纵它，另一个人接受那个产品并将它与其他东西结合起来——渐进的，微小的点点滴滴，小点子混合、连接、混合、变异和复合在一起——突然变得更容易想象了。