原文內容過多，我做了些刪減。

目錄：

1.我們平時如何做決定

2.兩類無知

3.空套裝的人

4.利用故事認識無知

5.應用

This article builds onDecisions Under Uncertainty. In fact, consider this a continuation.

這篇文章基于[在不確定性下做決定]，事實上，可以把這看作是續集。

一.我們平時如何做決定

Think of how we make decisions in organizations — we often do what standard decision theory would ask of us.

思考一下我們是如何在組織里做決定的，我們經常按照標準決策理論的要求去執行。

We create a powerpoint that identifies the future desired state, identify what might happen, attach weighted probabilities to said outcomes, and make a choice. Perfectly rational. Right?

我們做出來識別未來期望狀態的PPT，識別可能發生什么，將有價值的可能性和提及的結果聯系在一起，并做出選擇。相當理性，對嗎？

One of the problems with this approach is the risk charts and matrices that accompany this analysis. In my experience these charts are rarely discussed in detail and become more about checking the ‘I thought about risk' box than anything else. We conveniently pin things into categories of low, medium, or high risk with a corresponding“impact” scale.

使用這種方法的一個問題是伴隨著這種分析的風險表格和矩陣。以我的經驗來看，這些表格經常缺少細節，并且比起檢驗其他東西，更多地是檢查“我以為的風險黑盒。我們想當然的把事物劃分到低風險、中風險、高風險三種分類里，來代表相應的影響的規模。

What gets most of the attention is high-risk, high-impact. Perhaps deservedly so. But you have to ask yourself how did we arrive at these arbitrary scales? Is one person's look at risk the same as someone else's? Are there hidden incentives to nudge risk one way or another? What biases come into play?

吸引我們注意力的多是那些高風險、高影響的事兒。或許值得這樣做。但是你有必須問你自己我們如何處理任意的規模?一個人看風險的角度和另外一個人一樣嗎？有隱藏的刺激用不同的方式推動風險嗎？什么偏差在起作用？

Often we can't even identify everything. Rarely do people ever go back and look at what happened and how accurate those “risk” tables were. From the ones I've seen, the “low risk” stuff happens a lot more often than people imagined. And a lot of things happen that never even made the chart in the first place.

我們不能認識到所有的事物。很少有人會回顧過去并查看發生了什么，并檢查那些風險表的準確性是怎樣的。從我的觀察來看，那些低風險的事情發生的頻率比我們想象的高多了。許多風險表不重視的事情發生了。

On the occasion when people do go back, and I've seen this firsthand, hindsight bias creeps in. “Oh, we discussed that but it didn't make it in the document. But we knew about it.” Yes, of course you did.

那些回顧過去的人們，我親眼所見的，受到了事后偏見的影響。“噢，我們討論過那件事，但并沒有記錄。但是我們知道它會發生。”是的，你當然知道。

Ignorant and unknowing.無知和未知。

We're largely ignorant, that is, we operate in a state of the world where some possible outcomes are unknown. However, we've prepared for a world where outcomes and probabilities can be estimated. There is a mis-match between our training and reality. You can't even hope to accurately estimate probabilities if the range of outcomes is unknown.

我們幾乎是無知的，我們處于一個一些可能的結果是未知的狀態的世界。然而，我們卻為一個結果和可能性都可估計的世界做著準備。我們的訓練和真相是錯配的。如果結果的范圍是未知的，你不能期待可以準確地估計可能性。

二.兩類無知

There are two types of ignorance.

兩類的無知

The first category is when we do not know we are ignorant. This is primary ignorance. The second category is when we recognize our ignorance. This is called recognized ignorance.

第一種分類是我們不知道我們無知的時候，這是最基本的無知。第二種是我們知道我們無知。

三.空套裝的人

Empty Suits

Empty SuitsandFragilistasare almost always ignorant and unknowing.

Empty Suits和Fragilistas這兩類的人幾乎是無知和未知的。

InAntifragile, Nassim Taleb writes:

在Antifragile里，Nassim Taleb寫道：

[The Empty Suit/Fragilista] defaults to thinking that what he doesn't see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.

[The Empty Suit/Fragilista]是那些默認為他看不見的就是不在那的，或者他不知道到就是不存在的人。本質上，他傾向于把未知誤以為是不存在的。

Ignorance, primary or recognized, is only important if the expected consequences are significant. Otherwise we can be ignorant without consequence.

無知，無論是基本的或是認識到的，只有當預期的結果很有價值時才是重要的。否則在沒有后果時，我們可以無知。

While human irrationality factors into all decisions, it hits us most when we are unknowingly ignorant.當人類不理性的因素考慮到決定中時，當我們無意識地無知時，它對于我們的影響才最大。

Rational decision making becomes harder as we move along the continuum:

當我們沿著位于兩個不同的可能性間的有輕微區別的連續體移動時，理性的決定變得更加困難了：

outcomes are known —> risk —> uncertainty/ignorance.

可知的結果—>風險—>不確定性/無知。

If we can not consider all possible outcomes, preventing failure becomes nearly impossible. Further complicating matters, situations of ignorance often take years to play out. Joy and Zeckhauser write:

如果我們不能考慮到所有的結果，阻止失敗變成幾乎不可能的事情。更遠的復雜變得重要，無知地后果經常要多年才能顯現。Joy和Zeckhauser寫道：

One could argue … that a rational decision maker should always consider the possibility of ignorance, thus ruling out primary ignorance. But that is a level of rationality that very few achieve.

一個人可以爭論，一個理性的決策者應該始終考慮到無知的可能性，因而排除基本的無知。但那種層面的理性卻很少人能達到。

If we could do this we'd always be in the space of recognized ignorance, better, at least, than primary ignorance.

如果我們可以這樣做，我們會始終處于可認識到的無知狀態，至少，比基本無知更好。

四.利用故事認識無知

Literature文學

“Fortunately,” write Joy and Zeckhauser, “there is a group of highly perceptive chroniclers of human decision-making who observe individuals and follow their paths, often over years or decades. They are the individuals who write fiction: plays, novels, and short stories describing imagined events and people (or fictional characters.)”

“不幸地”，Joy和Zeckhauser寫道，“有那么一群高度認知地人類決策編年史者，他們觀察個體，并跟隨他們的道路數年或數十年。這些個體是那些寫科幻小說的人，他們寫劇本、小說、短篇故事，來描述想象中的人或事件（或者科幻的角色）。”

Joy and Zeckhouser argue these works have “deep insights” into the way we approach decisions, “both great and small.”

Joy 和 Zeckhouser認為這些工作對于我們做決定的方式有深深地智慧，無論大小的決定。

In thePoetics, a classical treatise on the principles of literary theory, Aristotle argues that art imitates life. We refer here to Aristotle's ideas ofmimesis, or imitation. Aristotle claims one of art's functions is the representation of reality. “Art” here includes creative products of the human imagination and, therefore, any work of fiction. Indeed, a crevice, not a canyon, separates faction and fiction.

《Poetics》，作為一本關于為文學理論原則的經典書籍，亞里士多德辯論道藝術模仿生活。我們在這里引用了亞里士多德模仿的思想。亞里士多德宣稱藝術的一個作用是代表真相。這里的藝術包括人類想象的創造性的作品，當然，任何科幻作品。事實上，一條裂縫，不是峽谷，區分了紀實派和科幻派。

In Gustave Flaubert’sMadame Bovary(1856/2004), Charles Bovary is a stolid rural doctor who is ignorant of the true character of the woman he is marrying. Dazzled by her youth and beauty, he ends up with an adulterous wife who plunges him into debt. His wife Emma, the titular “Madame Bovary,” is equally ignorant of the true character of her husband. Her head filled with romantic fantasies, she yearns for a sophisticated partner and the glamor of city life, but finds herself trapped in a somnolent marriage with a rustic man.

在古斯塔夫 福樓拜（法國現實主義作家）的[包法利夫人]里，查爾斯 包法利是一位遲鈍的鄉村醫生，他對于將和他結婚的女人的真實的品質是無知的。他被她的年輕貌美迷惑，和一個不貞并讓他負債累累的妻子一起生活。他的妻子Emma，名義上的包法利夫人，對于丈夫真實的品質是同樣無知的。她腦子里充滿了浪漫的幻想，渴望一名有情調的伴侶和城市生活的光鮮，卻發現和一個鄉村男人困在了一段無趣的婚姻里。

Joy and Zeckhouser use stories to study ignorance, which makes sense.

Joy和Zeckhouser用故事來學習無知，也說得通了。

Stories offer “simulations of the social world,” according to Psychologists Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley, through abstraction, simplification, and compression. Stories afford us a kind of flight simulator. We can test run new things and observe and learn, with little economic or social cost. Joy and Zeckhouser believe “that characters in great works of literature reproduce the behavioral propensities of real-life individuals.”

據心理學家雷蒙德 瑪和吉斯 奧特利說，通過抽象、簡化及壓縮，故事提供了社會的模擬。我們可以用很少經濟和社會的代價，檢驗新事物、觀察和學習。Joy和Zeckhauser相信“那些偉大文學里的角色再現了現實生活中個人行為沖動。”

While we'll likely never uncover situations as fascinating as we find in stories, this doesn't mean they are not a useful tool for learning about choice and consequence. “In a sense,” Joy and Zeckhauser write, “this is why great literature will never get dated: these stories observe the details of human behavior, and present such behavior awash with all the anguish and the splendor that is the lot of the human predicament.

我們可能在生活中找不到想故事里那樣迷人的場景，但是那不意味著他們不是用來學習選擇和后果有用的工具。“某種程度上”，Joy和Zeckhauser寫道，“這就是文學作品絕不會過時的原因：這些故事觀察了人類行為的細節，呈現出充滿了痛苦以及那些許多人類困境的光鮮的行為。

As Steven Pinker notes inHow The Mind Works:

就如史蒂芬 平克在[How the mind works] 里記錄的那樣：

Characters in a fictitious world do exactly what our intelligence allows us to do in the real world. We watch what happens to them and mentally take notes on the outcomes of the strategies and tactics they use in pursuing their goals.

虛擬小說的世界里的角色和現實世界中的我們做著同樣的智力范圍內允許的事情。我們見識了發生在他們身上的事情，并且記憶他們用來追逐目標的策略和方案。

If we assume we live in a world where we are, to some extent, ignorant then the best course is “thoughtful action or prudent information gathering.” Yet, when you look at the stories, “we frequently act in ways that violate such advice.”

假如我們生活在一個，某種程度上，我們是無知的世界里。最好的方式是審慎的行動和審慎信息的收集。然而，當你看著那些故事時，“我們卻經常做著違背這個建議的行為。”

So reading fiction can help us adapt and deal with the world of uncertainty.

所以，閱讀小說可以幫助我們適應并處理世界的不確定性。

Read part three of this series:Avoiding Ignorance.

閱讀這系列的第三部分：避免無知。

五.應用

以前我只是知道可能還有我不知道的知識，卻沒想到可能還有不存在于自己認知世界里的知識。這兩種無知聽繞口的，不知道的無知（即基本的無知）和知道的無知，關于知道的無知，方法挺簡單的，既然知道自己不懂的內容是什么，去搜、去讀、去學習就好了。但是對于那些不存在于我們認知世界里的知識，即我們不知道自己不知道的知識，這就比較難了。

作者也提供了識別基本的無知的方法，通過檢查過去的決策，閱讀文學作品，文學作品里的故事是對我們現實世界的模擬，通過學習那些故事里的人的生活，學習他們的無知，讓我們的基本的無知變成知道的無知，進而通過學習，擺脫無知。

下一篇文章作者會講如何避免無知的方法，就關于無知這個話題，我也說一說自己的思考吧，首先要學會記錄整理自己的知識，通過記錄，既方便自己復盤，檢驗做出的決定的準確率，也可以區分自己的知識邊界。其次是保持一個好奇心，學習任何事物都不能過于極端，警惕可能存在那些基本的無知。最后就是多讀書，多思考，學到老，活到老，學海無涯。

欲知如何避免無知，請見下篇文章。

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