硅谷创业教父Paul Graham对应试教育的批判

今天在Hacker News看到了YC的创始人Paul Graham对应试教育提出的尖锐的批判，对作为教育的从业者，又同时做过投资人的我有非常多的共鸣（但并不全赞同），又看在国内暂时还没有人翻译过来。所以我就把这篇文章翻译给大家，并加上了四个小标题。欢迎大家转载，务必标明“翻译者胡天硕”。

The Lesson to Unlearn 《应试教育——最应被忘却的一课》

原文地址：http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html

阅读时间10分钟左右

第一部分：自己上大学的经历与“追求高分”的捷径

The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades.

学校的教育给人的一生留下的最深祸害的并不是某一节课的具体内容，而是学生们学会“如何拿高分”。

When I was in college, a particularly earnest philosophy grad student once told me that he never cared what grade he got in a class, only what he learned in it. This stuck in my mind because it was the only time I ever heard anyone say such a thing.

当我还是一个大学生时，有个单纯的哲学系研究生跟我坦言，最终成绩他从来不在乎，他只在乎课上真正学到了什么。他的话一直留在我的脑海中，因为我从未听过其他人表达过类似学习态度。

For me, as for most students, the measurement of what I was learning completely dominated actual learning in college. I was fairly earnest; I was genuinely interested in most of the classes I took, and I worked hard. And yet I worked by far the hardest when I was studying for a test.

大学期间，对我和绝大多数其他同学来讲，学习结果的评价（考试成绩）比真正的学习过程重要得多。我有端正的学习态度，我既对上课内容感兴趣，也刻苦学习；然而我最勤奋的时候依旧是为考试做准备。

In theory, tests are merely what their name implies: tests of what you've learned in the class. In theory you shouldn't have to prepare for a test in a class any more than you have to prepare for a blood test. In theory you learn from taking the class, from going to the lectures and doing the reading and/or assignments, and the test that comes afterward merely measures how well you learned.

理论上讲，“测验”顾名思义就是“测试你上课掌握度”。理论上讲，期末考试所需要的准备工作不应比“空腹抽血”多。理论上讲，上课时学知识，课后完成老师布置的作业，考试不过是检验自己学得有多好。

In practice, as almost everyone reading this will know, things are so different that hearing this explanation of how classes and tests are meant to work is like hearing the etymology of a word whose meaning has changed completely. In practice, the phrase "studying for a test" was almost redundant, because that was when one really studied. The difference between diligent and slack students was that the former studied hard for tests and the latter didn't. No one was pulling all-nighters two weeks into the semester.

而实际上，各位读者都心知肚明，”测验“、“考试”早已与其教育学定义发生了巨大偏离。实际上，“为了考试而学习”成为一句废话，因为本来大家都是这样学出来的。大学时，学霸与学渣的差别只不过是前者为了应付考试努力了，而后者没有。很显然，开学前两周，不论是学霸还是学渣，都不会有人通宵去学习。

Even though I was a diligent student, almost all the work I did in school was aimed at getting a good grade on something.

尽管我是个刻苦学习的学生，我在学校里所做的一切事情几乎都围绕着争取得到某种“好成绩”。

To many people, it would seem strange that the preceding sentence has a "though" in it. Aren't I merely stating a tautology? Isn't that what a diligent student is, a straight-A student? That's how deeply the conflation of learning with grades has infused our culture.

上面这句的转折对于有很多人会显得很突兀。难道拿全A不就是刻苦学习本身的意义吗？由此可见，“成绩好等于学习好”这个概念已经深深地渗透到我们的文化中。

Is it so bad if learning is conflated with grades? Yes, it is bad. And it wasn't till decades after college, when I was running Y Combinator, that I realized how bad it is.

把“成绩好”和“学习好”画上等号，真的很糟糕吗？必须说，简直糟透了。而直到我本人从学校毕业几十年后创办Y Combinator(硅谷顶级创业企业孵化器），才意识到这件事情的严重性。

I knew of course when I was a student that studying for a test is far from identical with actual learning. At the very least, you don't retain knowledge you cram into your head the night before an exam. But the problem is worse than that. The real problem is that most tests don't come close to measuring what they're supposed to.

我自己做学生时，自己心里也清楚，为了考试而学习和“真正的学习”完全是两码事。显而易见的是，考试前一夜的突击，是不可能形成长期记忆的。但更深刻的问题是，测验本身和他们应该测验的东西是完全背离的。

If tests truly were tests of learning, things wouldn't be so bad. Getting good grades and learning would converge, just a little late. The problem is that nearly all tests given to students are terribly hackable. Most people who've gotten good grades know this, and know it so well they've ceased even to question it. You'll see when you realize how naive it sounds to act otherwise.

如果测验真的能够检测学习的掌握度，事情还不会至于这么糟糕。真正的学习总会带来好的成绩，哪怕稍微晚一点。问题是，几乎所有测验都是可以被“技术破解”的，这对于大多数学霸而言几乎是常识，甚至都不会去质疑这样做是否对。反而是”不去应试“会显得幼稚可笑。

Suppose you're taking a class on medieval history and the final exam is coming up. The final exam is supposed to be a test of your knowledge of medieval history, right? So if you have a couple days between now and the exam, surely the best way to spend the time, if you want to do well on the exam, is to read the best books you can find about medieval history. Then you'll know a lot about it, and do well on the exam.

打比方你选的中世纪历史马上就要期末了。期末考试应该去考察你对中世纪历史知识的掌握度，对吧？所以，临考前的这几天，对于时间的最好分配就”应该“是找到中世纪相关的最佳参考书，反复阅读，直到最终拿到好成绩。

No, no, no, experienced students are saying to themselves. If you merely read good books on medieval history, most of the stuff you learned wouldn't be on the test. It's not good books you want to read, but the lecture notes and assigned reading in this class. And even most of that you can ignore, because you only have to worry about the sort of thing that could turn up as a test question. You're looking for sharply-defined chunks of information. If one of the assigned readings has an interesting digression on some subtle point, you can safely ignore that, because it's not the sort of thing that could be turned into a test question. But if the professor tells you that there were three underlying causes of the Schism of 1378, or three main consequences of the Black Death, you'd better know them. And whether they were in fact the causes or consequences is beside the point. For the purposes of this class they are.

大错特错！真正的学霸不会这样做的。如果只是读中世纪相关的书籍，大多数只是根本就不会出现在考试中。与其去读这些书，远不如把上课的笔记和老师指定的读物好好地多看两遍。甚至笔记也不必全看，只要花精力去看那些能够”变成考试题“的部分。如果制定阅读中有一个非常有趣但本身不重要的细节，你可以放心大胆地忽略过去，毕竟考试中不可能考这个的。但如果你的教授跟你讲过，1378的教会分列有三大原因，或者是黑死病有三大后果，你务必要牢记。至于真实的历史中原因/后果是否真的如此，或许额外书本中未提到的，就不要去考究了，毕竟在你选的课中，考试就是这么考的。

At a university there are often copies of old exams floating around, and these narrow still further what you have to learn. As well as learning what kind of questions this professor asks, you'll often get actual exam questions. Many professors re-use them. After teaching a class for 10 years, it would be hard not to, at least inadvertently.

大学期间，总会有往年的试题被传阅，这就进一步缩小了你需要备考的范围。通过揣摩老师的出题方式，往往可以命中考试的真题。毕竟很多题目被反复使用，尤其是当一门课被教授十年以上，总会不经意间有雷同或类似的考题。

In some classes, your professor will have had some sort of political axe to grind, and if so you'll have to grind it too. The need for this varies. In classes in math or the hard sciences or engineering it's rarely necessary, but at the other end of the spectrum there are classes where you couldn't get a good grade without it.

在有的选课中，你的教授会夹带私货（译者：左派或者右派的政治观点），如果你想考高分，那你得附和教授的价值观。并非所有的课都如此，比如越那些偏数学偏理工类的就不用，而对于文科/社会科学的部分选课，不这样做是不可能拿高分的。

Getting a good grade in a class on x is so different from learning a lot about x that you have to choose one or the other, and you can't blame students if they choose grades. Everyone judges them by their grades —graduate programs, employers, scholarships, even their own parents.

科目X中获得高分和真正学懂往往是截然不同的两种方式，以至于学生们选择应试往往是迫不得已的。毕竟大家都以分数论英雄，不论是升学，就业，奖学金，还是在亲戚中的谈资。

I liked learning, and I really enjoyed some of the papers and programs I wrote in college. But did I ever, after turning in a paper in some class, sit down and write another just for fun? Of course not. I had things due in other classes. If it ever came to a choice of learning or grades, I chose grades. I hadn't come to college to do badly.

我喜爱学习，而且我很享受我上大学时的所做的一些论文和程序。但我是会否在某个学科完成一篇论文后又因为纯粹的爱好再提交一篇新的论文吗？当然不会。我毕竟还有别的课要完成。每当我面临”获得高分“和”学习本身“的选择，我都选择了前者。毕竟我上大学不是来“混日子”的。

Anyone who cares about getting good grades has to play this game, or they'll be surpassed by those who do. And at elite universities, that means nearly everyone, since someone who didn't care about getting good grades probably wouldn't be there in the first place. The result is that students compete to maximize the difference between learning and getting good grades.

每一个在乎自己分数的学生都必须参与应试的游戏，否则就会被其他其他应试的同学所超过。在顶尖大学，这几乎是所有人，毕竟不在乎拿高分的学生也考不进来。结果就是，学生之间的竞争让“高分”和“真正学会”变得更加的割裂了。

Why are tests so bad? More precisely, why are they so hackable? Any experienced programmer could answer that. How hackable is software whose author hasn't paid any attention to preventing it from being hacked? Usually it's as porous as a colander.

为什么大学的测验那么糟糕？或者说，为什么如此轻易被“破解”？这是一个经验丰富的程序员一定能回答的问题。假如软件的制作者从未防范过自己的软件被破解，那么这个软件基本上就跟筛子一样全是安全漏洞。

Hackable is the default for any test imposed by an authority. The reason the tests you're given are so consistently bad —so consistently far from measuring what they're supposed to measure — is simply that the people creating them haven't made much effort to prevent them from being hacked.

按惯例，权威们设计的考试无一不被轻易”破解“的。大多数考试之所以设计得那么糟糕——乃至与其测量的能力相去甚远——的根本原因是，设计这些考试的老师根本没有花精力防止他们被“破解”。

But you can't blame teachers if their tests are hackable. Their job is to teach, not to create unhackable tests. The real problem is grades, or more precisely, that grades have been overloaded. If grades were merely a way for teachers to tell students what they were doing right and wrong, like a coach giving advice to an athlete, students wouldn't be tempted to hack tests. But unfortunately after a certain age grades become more than advice. After a certain age, whenever you're being taught, you're usually also being judged.

但责怪出题的老师也并不合理。他们的主要工作是传授知识而非设计“不能被破解”的测验。根源的问题还是“成绩”本身，或确切地来讲，“成绩”被高估了。如果“成绩”仅被用作给学生的一种反馈机制，就像教练给运动员做反馈一样，那么学生大可不必去“破解”考试。只不过，超过一定年龄的学生（译者：基本上就是上了小学），“成绩”不再只起到诊断的作用，还被赋予了“评价”的意义。

第二部分：“美国高考”下的应试教育

I've used college tests as an example, but those are actually the least hackable. All the tests most students take their whole lives are at least as bad, including, most spectacularly of all, the test that gets them into college. If getting into college were merely a matter of having the quality of one's mind measured by admissions officers the way scientists measure the mass of an object, we could tell teenage kids "learn a lot" and leave it at that. You can tell how bad college admissions are, as a test, from how unlike high school that sounds. In practice, the freakishly specific nature of the stuff ambitious kids have to do in high school is directly proportionate to the hackability of college admissions. The classes you don't care about that are mostly memorization, the random "extracurricular activities" you have to participate in to show you're "well-rounded," the standardized tests as artificial as chess, the "essay" you have to write that's presumably meant to hit some very specific target, but you're not told what.

前面我我以大学考试为例，但实际上大学考试相对最难破解的。绝大多数人一生参加的所有考试都一样糟糕，尤其最糟糕的是，大学的升学考试（译者注：文中特指美国的升学考试）。如果招生的老师策略学生大脑里的知识储备能够像称物体的重量那么简单，我们只需要告诉年轻人“学习尽可能多的知识”即可。而真实的大学升学考试与“多学知识”这个初衷的背离，反映出了高中教育的扭曲。那些想上考好大学的孩子们在高中所必须完成的荒谬的事，与大学入学的可破解性正相关，这包括：参加一系列靠死记硬背的无关紧要课程，被逼参加的乱七八糟的“课外活动”以彰显自己“全面发展”，让自己去适应那些人造的考试标准，还有完成那些“达到某种不可知的教学目标”的论文。

As well as being bad in what it does to kids, this test is also bad in the sense of being very hackable. So hackable that whole industries have grown up to hack it. This is the explicit purpose of test-prep companies and admissions counsellors, but it's also a significant part of the function of private schools.

除了耽误了孩子”真正的学习“，大学的升学考试在”可破解性“也是非常差劲的。升学考试被”破解“得如同裸奔，也因此造就了主打应试教育的培训行业的繁荣。培训机构和相关的老师/顾问，安身立命的根本就是去破解升学考试，而私立中学的本质也是吃这碗饭。

Why is this particular test so hackable? I think because of what it's measuring. Although the popular story is that the way to get into a good college is to be really smart, admissions officers at elite colleges neither are, nor claim to be, looking only for that. What are they looking for? They're looking for people who are not simply smart, but admirable in some more general sense. And how is this more general admirableness measured? The admissions officers feel it. In other words, they accept who they like.

升学考试为什么这么容易遭人”破解“呢？我认为根源在于”测量的指标“。虽然普遍的观点是”聪明勤奋的学生“进入好学校，负责招生的老师并不是只在意这点。他们在试图选拔出符合某种广义的“卓越”，而这种广义的“卓越”其实是极度主观的，更多是符合选拔的老师的个人偏好。（译者注：实际上中国大学的招办老师没有这么大权利，社会中依然存在着极为严重的应试教育现象，所以Paul的这个解释并不是经得起推敲的）

So what college admissions is a test of is whether you suit the taste of some group of people. Well, of course a test like that is going to be hackable. And because it's both very hackable and there's (thought to be) a lot at stake, it's hacked like nothing else. That's why it distorts your life so much for so long.

所以大学的升学考试真正要去测的是，你是否讨得某一群招生老师的“喜爱”。很显然，这就意味着这个考试有“破解可能性”。由于大学升学考试既能够被破解，同时（被认为）是改变自己人生命运的考试，那么这个考试自然就是被破解得最彻彻底底的了。所以你的人生就被这个考试摆布了如此之久。

It's no wonder high school students often feel alienated. The shape of their lives is completely artificial.

难怪高中生经常感觉自己的人生是错乱的。他们的学习生活建立在空中楼阁上。

第三部分：在创业者身上看到了应试教育的毒害

But wasting your time is not the worst thing the educational system does to you. The worst thing it does is to train you that the way to win is by hacking bad tests. This is a much subtler problem that I didn't recognize until I saw it happening to other people.

然而当今教育系统犯下的最大的过错并不是浪费了年轻人的青春。真正后患无穷的是，他让你误以为“破解考试”是通向成功之路。这一点并不容易被发现，直到我在他人的身上发现了蛛丝马迹。

When I started advising startup founders at Y Combinator, especially young ones, I was puzzled by the way they always seemed to make things overcomplicated. How, they would ask, do you raise money? What's the trick for making venture capitalists want to invest in you? The best way to make VCs want to invest in you, I would explain, is to actually be a good investment. Even if you could trick VCs into investing in a bad startup, you'd be tricking yourselves too. You're investing time in the same company you're asking them to invest money in. If it's not a good investment, why are you even doing it?

当我开始在Y Combinator给创业者，尤其是年轻的创业者做创业指导时，一件非常令我困惑的点在于，许多创业者总把简单的事情复杂化。他们会问我，如何融资？如何打动风投让他们投资金。我解释给他们，其实答案非常简单，让风投投资你们的关键在于成为一个“好的投资”。就算你“忽悠”了风投去投了你当下这个“不太好的”的投资，别忘了除了他们投入了资金，你还在投入你宝贵的时间。既然这项投资都不值得，为什么还去做呢？

Oh, they'd say, and then after a pause to digest this revelation, they'd ask: What makes a startup a good investment?

他们简单思索后就会继续追问，那么如何让自己的创业企业成为一个“好的投资“呢？

So I would explain that what makes a startup promising, not just in the eyes of investors but in fact, is growth. Ideally in revenue, but failing that in usage. What they needed to do was get lots of users.

然后我就解释，一个创业企业的潜力，不光光是投资人眼中的潜力，事实上是来自增长。最好的是收入上的增长，如果不行，就是使用量的增长。而你们当下最需要的就是获得很多用户。

How does one get lots of users? They had all kinds of ideas about that. They needed to do a big launch that would get them "exposure." They needed influential people to talk about them. They even knew they needed to launch on a tuesday, because that's when one gets the most attention.

如何获得很多用户呢？对此，他们有很多的”点子“。他们打算通过一场“发布会”吸引”眼球“，他们需要有影响力的人谈论他们的产品，他们甚至认定了，应该在周二举办这场发布会因为那时候最能够获得更多人的关注。

No, I would explain, that is not how to get lots of users. The way you get lots of users is to make the product really great. Then people will not only use it but recommend it to their friends, so your growth will be exponential once you get it started.

”不“，我跟他们解释，”这不应该是你们获得很多用户的方法，真正应该获得很多用户的方法是把产品做得特别好，然后人们使用你的产品后还会跟他们的朋友去推荐，所以你才能够拥有指数型的增长。“

At this point I've told the founders something you'd think would be completely obvious: that they should make a good company by making a good product. And yet their reaction would be something like the reaction many physicists must have had when they first heard about the theory of relativity: a mixture of astonishment at its apparent genius, combined with a suspicion that anything so weird couldn't possibly be right. Ok, they would say, dutifully. And could you introduce us to such-and-such influential person? And remember, we want to launch on Tuesday.

这时候我已经告诉了这些创始人，一个看起来再简单不过的常识：他们通过做一款好的产品成为一家好的企业。然而他们听到这番话的反映就像当初物理学家听到相对论的反映差不多：一方面为答案的精妙而感到惊讶，一方面对着这个”奇怪的答案“深表怀疑。他们于是就继续跟我讲，”那你能帮我引见XXX意见领袖吗？不要忘记我们在周二举办发布会呢“

It would sometimes take founders years to grasp these simple lessons. And not because they were lazy or stupid. They just seemed blind to what was right in front of them.

这么简单的道理，有的时候需要创始人几年才能够明白。并不是因为他们愚蠢或懒惰，而只是对于显而易见的道理熟视无睹。

Why, I would ask myself, do they always make things so complicated? And then one day I realized this was not a rhetorical question.

我自己就问自己，为什么创业者会把简单的问题整得这么复杂呢？直到有一天，我突然才意识到，这不只是一个逻辑游戏，而有更深刻的本质。

Why did founders tie themselves in knots doing the wrong things when the answer was right in front of them? Because that was what they'd been trained to do. Their education had taught them that the way to win was to hack the test. And without even telling them they were being trained to do this. The younger ones, the recent graduates, had never faced a non-artificial test. They thought this was just how the world worked: that the first thing you did, when facing any kind of challenge, was to figure out what the trick was for hacking the test. That's why the conversation would always start with how to raise money, because that read as the test. It came at the end of YC. It had numbers attached to it, and higher numbers seemed to be better. It must be the test.

为什么当答案就在创业者自己眼前却看不到呢？因为他们一生中就是这样被训练出来的。他们在自己的教育中已经习惯于，通向胜利的路径是“破解测验”，这种思维模式几乎是下意识乃至无意识的。年轻的创业者，尤其是刚刚从学校走向社会，从未经历过一个“非人造的测验”。他们以为世界的运行规则就是：当你遇到任何挑战时，首先找到“破解测验”的捷径。所以与交流永远以“如何融资“为起点，因为他们认为那就是”测验“——YC训练营的结尾总要出去融资，而融资有具体的数字，数字越高越好。所以在他们眼里，”融资“必定是那个有待”破解“的测验。

There are certainly big chunks of the world where the way to win is to hack the test. This phenomenon isn't limited to schools. And some people, either due to ideology or ignorance, claim that this is true of startups too. But it isn't. In fact, one of the most striking things about startups is the degree to which you win by simply doing good work. There are edge cases, as there are in anything, but in general you win by getting users, and what users care about is whether the product does what they want.

在这个世界上，的确有一些领域通过”破解测验“就可以获得成功。这种现象不仅仅只在学校里出现。甚至有一些人，不论是因为其价值观还是因为其无知，认为这点对于创业来讲也是成立的。但实际上并非如此。实际上，对于创业而言，最有意思的一件事情就是创业成功来自”把事情做好“。不排除有例外，毕竟任何领域都有例外，但总体来讲，创业通过获得用户来成功，而用户来不来主要取决于你的产品是否满足他们的需求。

Why did it take me so long to understand why founders made startups overcomplicated? Because I hadn't realized explicitly that schools train us to win by hacking bad tests. And not just them, but me! I'd been trained to hack bad tests too, and hadn't realized it till decades later.

为什么我花了那么久才理解到为什么创业者容易把问题想复杂？这是因为我没有意识到学校的教育已经把让我们养成了通过“破解考试”获得成功的思维定式了。不仅仅是他们，还包括我自己。我也养成“破解差劲的考试”的坏习惯了，而意识到这件事情则是几十年后了。

I had lived as if I realized it, but without knowing why. For example, I had avoided working for big companies. But if you'd asked why, I'd have said it was because they were bogus, or bureaucratic. Or just yuck. I never understood how much of my dislike of big companies was due to the fact that you win by hacking bad tests.

我在我的一生中，似乎潜意识里已经明白“破解考试”不太对，但没有真正明白背后的道理。例如，我一生中都尽可能不给大公司打工，你如果问我为什么，我可能会说，因为他们“很假”或者“很官僚”，或者“让人不适”。但我没有意识到我对大公司的的反感有多少来自可以通过”破解考试“来作弊这点的反感。

Similarly, the fact that the tests were unhackable was a lot of what attracted me to startups. But again, I hadn't realized that explicitly.

同样，”测验“不能作弊是”创业“这事儿吸引我的一大原因，但这么多年来，这个道理我没有想透。

第四部分-如何打破应试教育给我们下的魔咒?

I had in effect achieved by successive approximations something that may have a closed-form solution. I had gradually undone my training in hacking bad tests without knowing I was doing it. Could someone coming out of school banish this demon just by knowing its name, and saying begone? It seems worth trying.

我通过创业对于真理的无数次逼近，似乎找到了一个正解。我在不经意间把我在学校中所培养的”破解测验“的恶习打破了，忘却了。是否刚刚从学校毕业的学生，能够通过意识到自己身上的问题，像念咒语一样破解自己身上的封印？这个似乎值得一试。

Merely talking explicitly about this phenomenon is likely to make things better, because much of its power comes from the fact that we take it for granted. After you've noticed it, it seems the elephant in the room, but it's a pretty well camouflaged elephant. The phenomenon is so old, and so pervasive. And it's simply the result of neglect. No one meant things to be this way. This is just what happens when you combine learning with grades, competition, and the naive assumption of unhackability.

仅仅是把”破解测验“这个恶习挑明就是进步，因为这件事情的一部分危害来自我们都已经把它习以为常了。一旦你注意到，这个恶习就显得很突兀，哪怕过去欺骗了我们许久。这个问题如此的久远，如此的久治不愈，仅仅是因为我们无视它。事情原本可以不是这样的，这只是当成绩，竞争和”容易被破解“被搅和到一起带来的天然结果。（译者注：”应试的捷径“其实很多中国人并不是无意识的，真正无意识的往往是”应试的危害“）

It was mind-blowing to realize that two of the things I'd puzzled about the most — the bogusness of high school, and the difficulty of getting founders to see the obvious — both had the same cause. It's rare for such a big block to slide into place so late.

两个让我困惑了很久的问题”高中学习为什么会与现实脱节“与”创业者为什么会出现知识盲区“竟然有相同的根源，这简直太出乎我的意料了。

Usually when that happens it has implications in a lot of different areas, and this case seems no exception. For example, it suggests both that education could be done better, and how you might fix it. But it also suggests a potential answer to the question all big companies seem to have: how can we be more like a startup? I'm not going to chase down all the implications now. What I want to focus on here is what it means for individuals.

这种顿悟其实意味着许多领域可能出现创新，例如教育可能可以做得更好。但这也许正是”大公司病“的一道良方“如何更接近一个创业者”。这里我就不再展开了。我更想说说这件事情对于普通人的启迪。

To start with, it means that most ambitious kids graduating from college have something they may want to unlearn. But it also changes how you look at the world. Instead of looking at all the different kinds of work people do and thinking of them vaguely as more or less appealing, you can now ask a very specific question that will sort them in an interesting way: to what extent do you win at this kind of work by hacking bad tests?

首先这意味着，那些习惯于拿高分的学生，可以更早意识到自己有应该忘却的恶习。但同时我们看世界的视角或许能够发生改变：我们看待一个不熟悉的行业和职业，不再仅是以”这份工作有多吸引人“，而可以用一个新的指标来衡量”有多大比例我可以通过应试的手段来实现成功“？

It would help if there was a way to recognize bad tests quickly. Is there a pattern here? It turns out there is.

如果有一种方法能够快速识别出”测验可以被破解“一定是对自己的认知有帮助的。而实际上这还真有一定的规律的。

Tests can be divided into two kinds: those that are imposed by authorities, and those that aren't. Tests that aren't imposed by authorities are inherently unhackable, in the sense that no one is claiming they're tests of anything more than they actually test. A football match, for example, is simply a test of who wins, not which team is better. You can tell that from the fact that commentators sometimes say afterward that the better team won. Whereas tests imposed by authorities are usually proxies for something else. A test in a class is supposed to measure not just how well you did on that particular test, but how much you learned in the class. While tests that aren't imposed by authorities are inherently unhackable, those imposed by authorities have to be made unhackable. Usually they aren't. So as a first approximation, bad tests are roughly equivalent to tests imposed by authorities.

生活中的测验一般有两类。一种是”某个权威“设计的，一种是本身就存在的。那些不被人为设计出来的”测验“从本质上是极难被破解的，毕竟人们没有这个”测验“赋予其内涵以外的意义。如同足球比赛，测验的项目并不是哪一个队优秀，而是哪一个队战胜另外一个队，毕竟还有评论员会说”更优秀的队伍“竟然输了的情况。而”权威“设计的测验往往不那么纯粹。期末考试不仅仅要测出来你”你自己在这次考试中获得多少分“还要推测出”你在这门课里学得如何“。纯粹的测试本身很难被破解，而权威设计的测验则需要刻意去被”加固“以防被破解，而多数情况下出题人并没有这样做。所以大概率来看，被“权威”设计出来的测验是“容易被破解”的概率会比较大一些。（译者注：这段Paul Graham的还是不太了解教育的现状，实际上只要有利益相关，足球也能够有黑哨有假球有恶意犯规，而ETS几千人所设计的防破解的英语考试一样也能够被中国的语言培训机构破解）

You might actually like to win by hacking bad tests. Presumably some people do. But I bet most people who find themselves doing this kind of work don't like it. They just take it for granted that this is how the world works, unless you want to drop out and be some kind of hippie artisan.

你可能会觉得通过“应试”去赢挺好的。的确也有人就是这样做的。但绝大多数从事这类事情的人，其实痛恨他们的工作。他们以为世界的运行规则就是“破解测验”，除非自己“辍学”去做一个艺术家什么的。

I suspect many people implicitly assume that working in a field with bad tests is the price of making lots of money. But that, I can tell you, is false. It used to be true. In the mid-twentieth century, when the economy was composed of oligopolies, the only way to the top was by playing their game. But it's not true now. There are now ways to get rich by doing good work, and that's part of the reason people are so much more excited about getting rich than they used to be. When I was a kid, you could either become an engineer and make cool things, or make lots of money by becoming an "executive." Now you can make lots of money by making cool things.

我同时意识到，有许多人认为赚大钱的意味着自己必须做一个有“破解测验”规则的行业。但这并不对。过去，在20世纪中叶，经济被财阀垄断，遵守他们游戏规则是唯一赚钱的道路。但如今，不再是这样的。靠做出好的工作，一样能够赚钱，这也是为什么有更多人对赚钱这件事更上心。当我是一个孩子时，一个人只能二选一，要么成为一个工程师发明很酷的东西，要么成为一个“管理者”赚很多钱。如今发明创造一样能够赚大钱。

Hacking bad tests is becoming less important as the link between work and authority erodes. The erosion of that link is one of the most important trends happening now, and we see its effects in almost every kind of work people do. Startups are one of the most visible examples, but we see much the same thing in writing. Writers no longer have to submit to publishers and editors to reach readers; now they can go direct.

随着工作中，权威力量的消融，“破解测验”不像过去那么重要。旧的秩序的瓦解是当今社会最重要的趋势之一，并且已经出现人们所从事的各行各业。创业企业是对这事情最明显的一种体现，但写作也是一样的。作家不再需要跟出版社和编辑打交道才能获得读者，如今他们可以直接通过互联网触达。

The more I think about this question, the more optimistic I get. This seems one of those situations where we don't realize how much something was holding us back until it's eliminated. And I can foresee the whole bogus edifice crumbling. Imagine what happens as more and more people start to ask themselves if they want to win by hacking bad tests, and decide that they don't. The kinds of work where you win by hacking bad tests will be starved of talent, and the kinds where you win by doing good work will see an influx of the most ambitious people. And as hacking bad tests shrinks in importance, education will evolve to stop training us to do it. Imagine what the world could look like if that happened.

我越思考这个问题，我越感觉到对未来的乐观。这似乎是一种无形枷锁被破解，让我们能够发挥出过去无法使上的劲儿。我甚至预见到了空中楼阁的倒塌。如果有更多人在问自己，我真的想靠“破解测验”来赢吗？然后意识到这不是他们想要的人生。那么那些依靠”破解测验“的行业会有更少人去，而那些靠真实实力的工作就会涌入更多有实力和野心的人。当”破解测验“这事儿的价值在社会中越来越低，教育也必定会演化，不再培养人们去”应试“。到那时候这个世界会有多么大的变化。

This is not just a lesson for individuals to unlearn, but one for society to unlearn, and we'll be amazed at the energy that's liberated when we do.

”应试“/”破解测验”不仅仅是一个个体应该忘却的课，更是整个社会应该学会忘却的。当我们真正做到时，我们会为了自己新获得的能量而感到惊讶的。