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謝謝,十分感謝,剛才的演講很精彩,非常棒。我想脫下帽子,希望你們別介意,因為我怕興奮之下把帽子弄掉了,儘管這是相當拉風的帽子。
首先感謝2015年畢業生邀請我來演講,我深感榮幸。收到邀請時,我開始回想在哥倫比亞大學度過的時光。我記得入學後我立刻感受到極大壓力,因為我意識到,以某種程度來說,現在我必須尋找自己的人生規劃,感覺超可怕的。你們當中有些人或許正經歷這種感覺,但我無意嚇唬你們。我記得當我腦海裡冒出第一個關於人生規劃的想法時,我正在Mudd大樓上課。今天有人跟我提到這棟大樓-喔,Mudd!今天有人告訴我,如果你喜歡監獄和天主教學校,肯定會認為Mudd很棒。
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So first of all, thank you, Class of 2015, for inviting me to speak. It’s such a great honor and when I got the invitation I started thinking back to when I was in Columbia and I remember getting to Columbia and I was immediately stressed out, because I realized that I now had to figure out, at some point, what I was going to do with my life. That was super scary. Some of you might be going through that now a little bit, (but not to bring that up or anything.) I remember when I got the first clue of what I might do, I was taking a class over in the Mudd Building, which somebody was telling me today is a great building if you like prisons and Catholic school.
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當時課堂上正談到艾倫.圖靈這個人,談到他如何證明-如果你製造一部他所謂的「圖靈機」,理論上不可能有任何機器的運算能力勝於圖靈機。我心想-當我聽見這些時,腦子糊成一團,因為我甚至無法想像他在說什麼,因為當時是1984年。別忘了,1984年時電腦甚至只是構想,因此「萬能機器」的想法相當不切實際,因為當時所有的機器都只針對特定用途,例如專門做數學運算的機器,你們的父母應該記得它叫做「計算機」。我們也有一種叫「打字機」的文字處理機器,我們甚至有一種叫「電視機」的影片播放機器,因此這個想法-好,現在即將出現一部萬能機器,這個傢伙40年前就想到了,我甚至毫不知情。我毫無概念,感覺就像宇宙級秘密突然被揭露:「喔,就是這樣,順帶一提,這部機器是萬能的,你可以用它來做任何事。」我心想「絕不可能」,翻譯成西班牙語的說法是「no way Jose」(絕不可能)。
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I was in this class and they were talking about this guy, Alan Turing and they were talking about how he had proven that if you built a machine, that he called a Turing Machine, it was theoretically impossible to build a machine that was computationally more powerful. It just melted my mind when I heard it, because I couldn’t even imagine what he was talking about, because it was 1984 and you have to remember 1984 computers weren’t even really a thing. So the idea of a machine that could do anything was just so farfetched, because all of our machines were just special-purpose machines, like for doing math. Your parents will remember it’s called a calculator. And then we had one machine for word processing called a typewriter and we even had one for video called a television set. And so the idea of, okay, now you’re gonna have the machine that can do absolutely anything and this guy had figured that out 40 years previously — I didn’t even know it was possible. I had no idea, it was like this secret to the universe in which they were saying, “Oh, here, there is a machine that’s limitless and you can do anything on it.” And I was just thought: “No way.” Translate, español, no way Jose.
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跟現場家長說明一下,這是參考肯伊.威斯特的說法。我生命中那一刻感覺就像-《飛哥與小佛》粉絲應該知道-就像飛哥說:「我知道今天要做什麼了。」那樣的感覺。我要主修電腦科學!因此我跑到Carmen大樓,十分興奮地打算告訴朋友們,心想:「他們也會為我高興,我已找到人生目標,可以不再焦慮了。」我說:「兄弟們,我打算主修電腦科學。」我的一位朋友說:「哇,這是我聽過最愚蠢的事。」我說:「為什麼?」他說:「你唸的是哥倫比亞大學,這就像等價交換,想學這些你可以去德福瑞大學,他們會教你如何製造、維修電腦,編寫程式,你在這裡應該主修一些實際的東西。」我只是默默地想:「我說的是萬能機器,你說的是洗衣機。」我十分挫敗,實在不知該如何解釋,但就在這個時刻,我人生中最挫敗的時刻,我學到最寶貴的一課,我在哥倫比亞大學學到:別聽信朋友的話。「別聽信朋友的話」更廣義的解釋是:「獨立思考」。
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For the parents, that’s a Kanye West reference. That point in my life was like, for those of you who are Phineas and Ferb fans, it was like that time when Phineas goes, “I know what I’m gonna do today. ” I’m gonna major in computer science. And so I ran over to (Carmen) and I was just so excited to tell my friends. I was, like, man, they’re gonna be just like so fired up for me, I figured it out. I’m not gonna be stressed anymore: “Guys, I’m gonna major in computer science.” And one of my friends said, “Wow, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” And said: “Why?” He said, “Look, you’re at Columbia University. That’s like a trade. You could learn that at DeVry. They’ll teach you how to build computers, fix them, program them. Here you should major in something real.” And I was just thinking to myself: “I’m talking about a limitless machine. You’re talking about a washing machine.” I was completely frustrated, I couldn’t really explain to him why, but it was at that point, at my height of frustration that I learned the most valuable lesson that I learned at Columbia, which is: Don’t listen to your friends. Think for yourself.
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「獨立思考」聽起來既簡單又膚淺,但事實上既困難又意義深遠,以下是其中原因。身為人類的我們希望受歡迎,這是人類學常識。在穴居人時代,不受歡迎的人會被吃掉,因此希望受歡迎是人類的天性,最簡單的方法就是說別人想聽的話。你知道人們想聽什麼嗎?他們已認定真實的話,因此他們最不希望聽見的就是違背他們信仰體系的想法,因此提倡這樣的理念相當困難,但唯有你相信、周遭人都不相信的理念只有在證明你沒錯時才能在世上創造真正的價值。所有人都已知的事不具有創造價值,那只是尋常的事物,因此獨立思考相當重要。在我的事業中經常看見這種情形,我經營創投公司,如果你們有創業的念頭,或許會來找我說:「我有個想法。」當你帶著你的想法來找我時,我優先觀察的是這是否是你獨創的想法?是否是他人尚未想到的點子?還是每個人都知道的想法?我舉個例子,例如你來找我說:「嘿,我知道如何延長電池壽命及手機待機時間。」我會說:「這是相當棒的想法,但我不會投資,因為每個人都認為這是個好想法。」因為每個人都認為這是個好想法,Google、Apple、三星這些資源豐富的公司早已著手研究,因此這並非真正具有創造價值的新想法。
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Thinking for yourself sounds both simple and trivial, but in reality it’s extremely difficult and it’s profound and here is why. As human beings, we want to be liked. It’s anthropological. If people didn’t like you in caveman days, they would just eat you. So you really have a natural built in instinct to want to be liked and the easiest way to be liked is to tell people what they want to hear.And you know what everybody wants to hear? What they already believe to be true. And so the last thing they want to hear is an original idea that contradicts their belief system. So it’s very hard to even bring that kind of stuff up. But those are the things; those are the only things — things that YOU believe, that everybody around you doesn’t believe — that when you’re right that create real value in the world. Everything else people already know. There is no value created. It’s just business as usual. So it’s so important to think for yourself. I see this in my business every day. My business is that I fund people who have companies. Some of you probably have company ideas and you might come to me and say, “I’ve got an idea.” The biggest thing that I’ll look for when you come to with an idea is, have you thought for yourself? Is it something that you know that nobody else knows? Or is it something that everybody knows? Let me give you an example. Let’s say you come to me and say, “Hey, I’ve got an idea to make batteries and cell phones last longer.” I would react, “Well, that’s a pretty good idea, but I’m not gonna fund it, because everybody thinks that’s a good idea.” And because everybody think that’s a good idea, companies like Google and Apple and Samsung with tons of resources will just build that. So it’s not really a new value creation for a new person.
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相較於大約5年前我接獲的一個投資案例,一位叫Brian Chesky的年輕人來找我,他的想法是:他打算在公寓裡放一張氣墊床租給旅客,類似附早餐的氣墊床旅館。我心想:「真是爛透了的想法。」因為誰會在別人的公寓租氣墊床,搞不好遇上連環殺手?但Brian有個秘密,他的秘密是:他已做過實驗,他已實行過這個想法,許多不是連環殺手的人都願意出租家裡的氣墊床。此外,他還研究了連鎖飯店的歷史,他發現連鎖飯店是相當新穎的概念。連鎖飯店興起前,人們多半住旅館或民宿,旅館和民宿的問題在於它們就像一盒巧克力,你不知道會拿到什麼口味,有時運氣不錯,有時可能拿到杏仁櫻桃口味或一些奇怪的口味。因此他心想:「哇,藉由網路,我們可以讓盒子裡的巧克力透明化,你可以知道自己拿到什麼口味。」這樣就能同時擁有民宿與連鎖飯店的優勢。因此他發現這個秘密,這是個有趣的秘密,因為或許世上每個人都對這一點有點概念,卻忽略了每個人都忘了旅館為何存在。我想現在紐約「氣墊床旅館」每晚的出租率遠勝於希爾頓飯店,這不過是5年前的事,這一切都源於他相信沒人相信的事。
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Contrast that with an idea that came to me about five years ago. A young man by the name of Brian Chesky came up to me and had this idea that he was going to have an air mattress in his apartment that he rented to people. It would be an air bed and breakfast and I immediately thought: wow, that’s a horrible, horrible idea. Who would want to rent an air mattress out to somebody’s apartment like probably a serial killer?But Brian had a secret and his secret: and that was he had run the experiment. He had actually tried his idea and a whole lot of people wanted to rent that air mattress and they weren’t serial killers. Beyond that, he went and he studied the history of hotel chains and he found out hotel chains were a relatively new concept. That before hotel chains, people stayed at inns and bed and breakfasts. And that the problem with inns and bed and breakfast were, they were like a box of chocolates. You had no idea what you were going to get — one day you might have something good and the other day you might have marzipan cherry or some weird stuff. So, he though, with the internet, we can make every one of those little chocolates in the box transparent and you can know what you’re getting. And then you’d get all the greatness of the bed and breakfast and all the goodness of the hotel chain all in one. And he had figured out that secret and it was an interesting secret, because it wasn’t something everybody knew. Or it was something that probably everybody in the world knew at one point, but they had all forgotten. Everybody had forgot why we had hotels. And today? I think they rent more nights every night in New York than Hilton Hotel. Just five years ago and it was all based on him believing something that nobody else believed.
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因此基於這種精神,我想提出一些非傳統的畢業建言,我給它們標題的是:「別追隨你的熱情,世界還沒糟到不可收拾,2015年畢業生不需要以拯救世界為目標。」我說過這是非傳統的畢業建言,因此別追隨你的熱情。你現在或許正想著:「這是相當愚蠢的想法。」因為所有成功的人-如果你詢問1000個成功的人,他們都會說他們從事的是自己所愛之事,因此世人的普遍想法是,如果你從事所愛之事,就會成功。但我們是工程師,我們知道這只是「可能」,但也可能是:如果成功,你就會喜愛所從事之事。你喜歡成功的感覺,每個人都崇拜你,棒極了。那麼哪一個才是真的?我認為如果想弄清楚,你必須回到起點,你必須從成功的時刻回到像現在身為2015年畢業生的時刻。第一個關於「熱情所在」的棘手問題是很難選出優先順序:我的熱情所在為何?你比較喜愛數學或工程?你比較喜愛歷史或文學?你比較喜愛電子遊戲或韓國流行樂?這些都是艱難的選擇。你如何得知熱情所在?另一方面,你擅長什麼?你比較擅長數學還是寫作?這是比較容易分辨的事。
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So in that spirit, what I’d like to give is a few unconventional graduation thoughts and I’m titling them, “Do Not Follow Your Passion and the World is Not Going to Hell in a Handbasket and the Class of 2015 is Not Required to Save it.” I told you it wasn’t going to be conventional. Don’t follow your passion.Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s a really dumb idea.” Because if you poll 1,000 people who are successful they’ll all say that they love what they do. And so the broad conclusion of the world is that if you do what you love, then you’ll be successful. But we’re engineers and we know that that might be true. But it also might be the case that if you’re successful, you love what you do. You just love being successful and everybody loves you. It’s awesome.So which one is it?Well, I think to figure it out, you have to go back in time. You have to back off when you were successful to right now when you’re graduating as the Class of 2015. And the first tricky thing about passions are they’re hard to prioritize. Which passion is it? Are you more passionate about math or engineering? Are you more passionate about history or literature? Are you more passionate about video games or K-pop? These are tough decisions. How do you even know? On the other hand, what are you good at? Are you better at math or writing? That’s a much easier thing to figure out.
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與「追隨你的熱情」有關的第二個棘手問題是,你21歲時的熱情所在不一定等於40歲時的熱情所在,這也適用於男友和工作選擇。與「追隨熱情所在」有關的第三個問題是:抱歉,喉嚨有點乾,你不一定擅長你所熱愛之事。有人看過《美國偶像》嗎?你們知道我在說什麼,喜歡唱歌不一定代表應該成為職業歌手。最後,也是最重要的是:「追隨你的熱情是」相當於「自我中心」的世界觀。當你經歷人生起伏後,你會發現你從這個世界獲取的東西-無論是金錢、汽車、物質、榮耀,遠不如你為這個世界付出的東西來得重要。因此我的建議是:追隨你的貢獻、找出你擅長之事,將它奉獻給這個世界。為他人奉獻,幫助世界走向更美好的道路,這才是你應該追隨的東西。
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The second thing that’s tricky if you’re going forward in time with this follow your passion idea is that what you’re passionate about at 21 is not necessarily what you’re gonna be passionate about at 40. Now, this is true for boyfriends as well as career choices.The third issue with following your passion is you’re not necessarily good at your passion. Has anybody ever watched American Idol? You know what I’m talking about. Just because you love singing doesn’t mean you should be a professional singer.Finally and most importantly, following your passion is a very “me”-centered view of the world. When you go through life, what you’ll find is what you take out of the world over time — be it money, cars, stuff, accolades — is much less important than what you’ve put into the world. So my recommendation would be follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better and that is the thing to follow.
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現在-談到這個世界,在一般的畢業演講中,這個時候我應該說:「2015年畢業生正面臨前所未有的挑戰,ISIS恐怖組織、全球暖化…,糟透了。」別讓我開始討論國會僵局問題。我認為這都是事實,但以歷史角度觀察當今世界,我認為最顯著的並非前所未有的挑戰,而是前所未有的機會。容我迅速說明一下目前世界的情況,因此-目前世上極度貧困人口創歷史新低,約1900年的五分之一;童工人數於2000至2012年間驟減三分之一;相較於19世紀末,工作時數幾乎減少一半;自1960年起,收入中的飲食支出百分比已減少一半;1990至2012年間,人類預期壽命延長了6年;1990起,兒童死亡率下降了一半;人類身高逐漸增加,代表營養情況逐漸改善;過去100年間的人口增長速度遠勝於過去2000年。談到ISIS,自1940年代起,全球戰爭死亡人數減少了20倍;自1970年代末起,美國兇殺案發生率下降了一半,暴力犯罪發生率是1976年的三分之一;自1990年起,全球核武供應量幾乎減少了5倍;2014年是40年來碳排放量首次不曾增加的一年,因此情況還不是那麼糟。
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Now, speaking of the world, this is generally the point in a graduation speech where I should say, “The Class of 2015 faces unprecedented challenges. There is ISIS. There is global warming. It sucks.” Don’t get me started on congressional gridlock. And I think all those are true, but what’s remarkable from a historical standpoint about this time in the world, to me, are not the unprecedented challenges; it’s the unprecedented opportunities.Let me talk quickly about the state of the world.The number of people living in extreme poverty today is the lowest in the history of the world and one-fifth of what it was in 1900. Child labor is in steep decline and fell one-third between 2000 and 2012. Compared to the late 19th Century, the number of hours that one has to work has fallen roughly in half. The percent of income spent on food has fallen in half since 1960. Life expectancy has increased six years between 1990 and 2012. Child mortality has fallen in half since 1990. People are getting taller, which is a measure of nutrition. People have grown more in the last 100 years than in the previous 2,000. Speaking of ISIS, worldwide battlefield deaths are down twentyfold since the 40s. The homicide rate in the U.S. is down half since the late 70s, violent crime is one-third of what it was in 1976. The global supply of nuclear weapons is down nearly fivefold since 1990 and in 2014 was the first year in 40 that carbon emissions were flat. So it’s not that bad.
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但我們正開始探索最大的機會,為了說明這一點,我想回到你們父母和我仍在唸大學的時候。因為當我們唸大學時-他們或許告訴過你,你或許會受到驚嚇,抱歉嚇到你們,但我們沒有網際網路。當時沒有網際網路,因此如果我們像Brian Chesky一樣有個新想法,當我們想瞭解相關事項時,我們無法上Google搜尋。但我們確實有搜尋引擎,那是不同型態的科技,稱之為「圖書館」,難用極了。事實上那裡就有個舊型搜尋引擎,它相當難用,因為:一、你無法在宿舍裡使用,因為它不在網路空間,而是在實際空間,你必須走到那裡,然後出示證件,否則無法進入。也沒有所謂的用戶體驗回饋,它基於相當奇特、很久以前發明的技術,稱之為「杜威十進分類法」。這是相當古老的技術,以發明者「杜威」命名,但為了使它看起來像高科技,他們稱之為「十進分類法」,感覺就像「我們用數字分類,這可是高科技!」不僅是整數,還有小數!它的使用介面爛透了,稱之為「目錄卡」,爛到你必須經過訓練才會使用。你無法立刻上手,必須經過冗長的課程訓練才會使用。最後結果是,尋找資料相當令人沮喪,因為你無法在幾毫秒內得到結果,而需要花上數小時,即使是擁有Butler這種優質圖書館的哥大學生也需要花幾小時找資料,因此相當令人沮喪。也許如果Brian Chesk生活在那個時代,他只能說:「算了,我還是去Taco Bell上班好了,我不打算尋找旅館的起源了。」但思考一下,哥大學生都這麼困擾,更別提沒有這種優質圖書館的他校學生,甚至圖書館裡連相關資料都沒有。更甚於此,想像一下,如果你在孟加拉或蘇丹長大,你有各種好點子,但無法上網、無法使用搜尋引擎、無法將你獨創的想法貢獻給世界。
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But the biggest opportunity is one that we’ve only begun to measure and to explain this, I’d like to go back to when your parents and I were in college, because when we were in college, and they may have told you this, and it may have scared you, we didn’t have the internet. There was no internet. And so if we had an idea Brian Chesky had an idea, and we wanted to find out about it, we couldn’t Google it.But we did have a search engine. It was a different kind of technology. It was called a library and it kind of sucked. There is actually an old search engine behind me; I’m looking at it there. But it kind of sucked because, one, you couldn’t access it from your dorm room, because it wasn’t even in cyberspace. It was in, well, actual space. And you had to walk over there and then, and you had to bring your credentials or they wouldn’t even let you in. There was no logged out user experience.And it was based on this really weird tech that was invented a long time ago called the Dewey Decimal System. And this tech was so old, Dewey was named after the guy Dewey who invented it. But to make it seem high tech, they said it’s a decimal system: “This is so high tech, we’re using numbers, dude.” And not just integers, the decimal system! The user interface to it was so bad, it was called a card catalog, they had to train you to use it. You couldn’t just go in and use it. You needed hours and hours of classroom training.The net result of this was that looking stuff up was very discouraging, because you couldn’t look it up in milliseconds, it took hours, and that’s if you were a Columbia student, right? Even if you had a good library like Butler, it would take you hours to look things up, so it was very discouraging.Maybe if Brian Chesky was born then he would just have said, “Forget this, I’m going to Taco Bell. I’m not figuring out where hotels came from.” But think about it, that’s for a Columbia student. Even worse for like a student who didn’t go to Columbia and didn’t have access to as good a library and, you might not even have that book in the library.Or even more so, imagine if you grew up in Bangladesh or Sudan and you had all kinds of great ideas, you had no access, no search engine at all, no way to contribute your original ideas to the world.
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我們快轉到現在,每個人都有智慧手機,不久後世上每個人口袋裡都裝著國會圖書館,這意味著一個在孟加拉長大的現代女孩擁有比20年前的哥大或哈佛大學學生更棒的圖書館,那麼她可能擁有什麼想法?她可能做出什麼貢獻?我認為這主要在於你們,因為地球不是平的,世上存在許多問題。能源問題、水源問題、食物問題、平權問題,但如果你付出心力,如果你貢獻世界,如果你獨立思考,我相信你們將成為最偉大的世代。因為當我們回顧50年前、100年前、500年前,你們將成為釋放人類潛能的世代。恭喜2015年哥大畢業生,感謝你們的邀請。
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But then we fast forward to where we are now and everybody who has a smart phone, which is pretty soon going to be everybody in the world has the Library of Congress in their pocket. That means a girl growing up in Bangladesh now has a better library than a student at Columbia or Harvard had 20 years ago.What might her idea be? What might she contribute? Well, I think that’s going be a lot up to you, because the world still isn’t flat. There are issues. There are issues with power and issues with water and issues with food and issues with equal rights. But if you contribute, if you put your contribution into the world, if you think for yourself, then I believe that you will be the greatest generation. Because when we look back 50 years from now, 100 years from now, 500 years from now, you will be the generation that unlocked human potential.So congratulations Columbia Class of 2015 and thank you for inviting me.