今早读过Scott Young订阅专栏的这一篇文章，觉得在我脑子里点亮了几只灯泡，跟我这阵子的一些思考有共鸣。那就先分享下原文和我的翻译吧～
The Art of Unlearning 摈弃旧知的艺术
“It ain’t what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
“让我们陷入困境的不是无知，而是我们所坚信的实为谬误。”——马克 吐温
Most people think about learning as adding knowledge and skills. When you learn French, you learn that the word, avoir means “to have.” You now have a new fact in your mind that didn’t exist before.
大部分人觉得学习就是增长知识和技能。你学法语的时候，学了avoir，意思是“得到”，你脑子里就收获了一个从没有过的新概念。
Adding knowledge like this, I’d like to argue, is actually the less important case. The most useful learning isn’t usually a strict addition of new knowledge, but first unlearning something false or unhelpful.
但我觉得，这种新知识的增长，它的重要性其实还在其次。最有用的学习往往并不严格局限在增长新知上，而是要首先摈弃那些错误和无益的旧知识。
To see why unlearning might matter more than strictly additive learning, consider that, for any area of your life in which you operate regularly, you must acquire facts and knowledge about that area. You need to understand your work, where you live, the language you speak, culture you exist in, etc..
要知道为什么摈弃（错误的知识）会比纯粹地增加新识更紧要，不妨这样看：在你日常生活的方方面面，你肯定已经掌握了每个领域里的事实和知识。你需要了解你的工作，你生活的地方，你所用的语言，你所处的文化，等等……
This means that, for the parts of your life that matter for you right now or in the past, you already have quite a bit of knowledge. For new knowledge to come in, and not replace or alter anything you know already, that knowledge either needs to be about a detail in your current life that was too insignificant to merit observation earlier, or it has to be about a domain with which you still have relatively little experience.
这就意味着，现在或是从前，在对你重要的那部分生活里，你已经知道得相当多了。增加的新知识如果不是替换或者改变你已有的知识的话，它们要么是有关你目前生活的某个细节的，而这个细节无足轻重到从前你都懒得看上一眼；要么就是关于你目前还接触得比较少的领域。
That additive learning must pertain to either unfamiliar domains or relatively unimportant aspects of domains you are familiar with may seem a strange fact. Most of what we learn in school is of this type of additive learning. Yet, by this very assertion, much of it must not be very important for our day-to-day lives.
新增加的知识一定属于以下两类：一、来自你不熟悉的领域；二、在你熟悉的领域里不是那么重要的事情。这或许看起来也许有点怪。但我们在学校学到的绝大部分知识都具有这样的属性。而依照这个论断，我们新学的知识中一定有很多内容对日常生活并不怎么重要。
When you first need to unlearn or modify what you currently know, that knowledge must involve something you had already learned. This doesn’t guarantee that it is important, however, since most of our knowledge is acquired for living practically in the world, there’s a higher chance something that must be first unlearned is more important.
如果你要摈弃或修改现有的认知，它首先一定包含了一些你曾经学过的东西。这并不说明这些已知的内容一定有多重要，但既然我们掌握的大部分知识都是为了在现世中实用，那我们需要摈弃的这部分旧认知大概率上会（比全新的知识）对我们的生活来得更加重要。
Types of Unlearning 摈弃（错误知识）的方式
There’s different ways you might unlearn something in light of new information. The first is a straightforward refutation of the old idea. If you thought that Abraham Lincoln was the first American president and then read in a book it was actually George Washington, you might, if you believed the book, completely revise your view.
受益于新信息的出现，不同的摈弃（错误旧）知识的方法应运而生。第一种是直接驳倒一个错误的观念。如果你原以为林肯是美国的第一任总统，之后在一本书里读到，其实乔治华盛顿才是，你要是相信书里说的，你就会彻底改写之前的认知。
This complete refutation is atypical. More likely the new knowledge doesn’t contradict the old one, but it may modify it in some way. If I believe my best friend is very trustworthy, but I learn he is cheating on his wife, I may not completely revise my opinion of him, but I may trust him a bit less or trust him less in marital matters.
这种彻底的驳倒并不常见。更多情况下，新老认知并不是针尖对麦芒，前者对后者往往只是某种修改。如果我相信我最好的朋友是个值得信赖的人，但是他却背叛了他的配偶，我不会一下子完全改变我对他的看法，而是会对他减少一些信任或减弱对他在婚姻问题上的信赖。
Other times new knowledge revises a simpler picture by filling it with more complex details. This is similar to adding new knowledge, although because the older, simpler view of the issue has been overwritten with more detail, there is some unlearning going on. When Albert Einstein discovered special relativity, this overthrew Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. However, this wasn’t a complete refutation, but a modification—Newton’s laws still hold approximately in areas where near light-speed or extreme gravitation aren’t issues.
其他情况下，新的认知在简化版的老认知的基础上加入了更多复杂的细节。这类似于之前说的增加新知识，但因为陈旧、简化的老观念在被重写时加入了更多的细节，这个过程里就包含了摈弃旧知识。当爱因斯坦发现了狭义相对论，它就推翻了牛顿的运动定律。但是，这并不是全盘否定，而是修正扩展——在不涉及接近光速或者极端重力的情况下，牛顿的经典力学仍然成立。
In all of these cases, however, you have to first let go of something you thought you understood to make way for a new understanding. This isn’t always easy to do.
在所有这些情景下，你不得不先放下你以为已经懂得的事情，从而给新的认知腾出空间。但做到这点往往并不容易。
Difficulties of Unlearning 摈弃（错误知识）的难点
The first challenge of unlearning is that when something contradicts your current understanding, you are likely to dismiss it. This may be adaptive in a world where many of the things people say or information you encounter are false, or lies constructed to manipulate you. Things that you don’t currently believe are, ceteris paribus, more likely to be false. However, this confirmation bias can make it harder to unlearn when that’s valuable to you.
摈弃（错误知识）的第一个挑战是，当事物与你当前的认知相矛盾时，你很可能会不去理会。这种做法可能更适用于一个充斥了大量的谬论或者谎言被用来操纵人的世界。你目前不相信的事情，其他条件保持不变，那就更可能是假的。但是你的这种确定性偏见会让你更加难以摈弃旧知识，即使摈弃它们确实对你有好处。
A deeper problem, I believe, is that human beings tend not to deeply represent doubt and uncertainties in a fine-grained way. That is, the things you believe now, you tend to believe completely, even if provisionally. However, whether those beliefs are near-certain or highly-doubtful, the way they are represented in the brain is much the same.
我想，更深层次的问题在于人类倾向于不对那些可疑和不确定的事物抽丝剥茧。你现在相信的事情，你会全然相信，即使它不久后就会变化。然而，不管事情是接近确凿或是高度可疑，它们在人脑中的反映都几乎相同。
It’s true that a more doubtful belief is more likely to be dismissed than a certain one. If I try to argue that the moon is made of cheese, for instance, I’ll be met with a lot more resistance than if I try to argue something you only believed loosely. However, this revision occurs in an active sense—when one is directly assessing reasons for the belief in question. I believe that, when a belief isn’t being actively considered, it can still inform your thinking in other ways and, that, in those cases the relative certainty of the belief isn’t used.
确实，一个比较可疑的观点会比一个确信的观点更容易被无视。打个比方，相比起其他没那么确信的事情，如果我非说月亮是奶酪做的，我会遇到更大的阻力。然而，这个反应是人们在受到这个有争议的问题的直接挑战的时候，主动积极地做出的。我相信，如果人们没有主动地考虑过某个观点，它也会以其他的方式潜入人们的思想，在那样的情况下，人们对它确不确信就不构成（被人接受的）障碍了。
If this view is true, then that means that many of the things we learned aren’t dangerous because they are immune to counterargument, but because they can subtly influence our thinking in adjacent areas when we aren’t being vigilant to how likely they are to be true.
如果这个观点成立，那就意味着我们习得的很多东西之所以危险，不是因为它们对与其对立的观点产生了免疫，而是由于在我们对它们真实性不设防的时候，它们能对我们脑子里与之相接的想法产生微妙的影响。
If this sounds confusing, consider the example I mentioned earlier: a best friend who you discovered was cheating on his spouse. However, suppose you didn’t learn it firsthand, but through a rumor by a third-party. You don’t dismiss the charge outright, but you tentatively accept that there’s some probability that your friend is being unfaithful. If forced to confront this belief directly, through debate or reasoning, you might come to the conclusion that there’s only a minor chance that he is cheating. But, consider instead, if someone asked you, in an unrelated context, of whether your friend ever lies to get what he wants in business. Now, it’s my opinion that this latent, provisional belief that “X cheats on his spouse” may implicitly inform your intuitions about his trustworthiness, even though that belief itself may not be very reliable.
这听起来似乎有点乱，那我们来看看我之前举的那个例子：你那个被发现背叛了配偶的好朋友。但是，假设你不是从当事人那儿，而是通过别的渠道传播的谣言知道这件事的。你不会立马不把这消息当回事儿，而是会姑且接受他在某种程度上不忠的可能。当你被迫去直面这个评判，通过争论或是说理，那你得出的结论可能是，他出轨的可能性非常小。但试想，如果有人问了你一个与此无关的问题：你的朋友有没有为了得到他在生意上想要的东西撒过谎？此时，以我的观点来看，“某某劈了腿”这个暂时潜藏在你心里的评判会潜移默化地影响到你在“他是否值得信赖”这个问题上的直觉，即使这个你所依据的基础本身可能并不可靠。
The intuition I want to present is that beliefs, in our capacity to inform us, tend to be a lot more black-and-white as either believed or completely dismissed, rather than, a more accurate picture where many beliefs tend to have middling likelihood of being true. While we can have more nuanced views when the belief is being debated directly, the dangerous case is when they are being used to infer about other topics, yet their doubtful status is simply being ignored to make that inference.
我想说我的直觉是：信念是基于我们的能力提供的信息，它们明显地表现出非黑即白的倾向，即要么相信要么全然无视；而不是为我们提供一幅更加精确的信息图，揭示了很多说法实际上是真假参半的。一方面，当我们直接对一些观念展开辩论的时候，我们可以得到一些更加精微的看法；而另一方面，危险的情况往往出现在，当这些观念被用于推断别的议题的时候，它们自身的可疑性就立刻被我们忽视了。
The main challenge of unlearning, therefore, is that most of our false or doubtful assumptions about the areas that impact our lives are never examined. We use these assumptions to operate, but because they aren’t actively reflected upon, studied or challenged, they maintain their full force, even if fairly simple arguments could overturn them.
因此，摈弃错误的旧知识遇到的主要挑战就是：大部分对我们的生活产生影响的谬论或是可疑的假设从未被检验过。我们一直在这些假设的基础上行事，但由于它们没有被积极地反思、研究或者挑战过，于是历久弥坚，即使驳倒它们其实是可以相当容易的。
Learning as Stamp Collecting Versus Diving into Strangeness
两种学习方法：集邮式 vs 沉浸入陌生
I see two main views of learning. The first is like stamp collecting. The person wants to collect more and more knowledge, mostly for the purposes of showing it off to people they want to impress. The knowledge here is largely inert and unimportant for their lives—it’s just a collecting hobby accruing more facts and ideas.
我发现有两种主要的认知方式。第一种是集邮式的。学习者想要获得越来越多的知识，主要是为了在他们想要引起其注意的人那里炫耀。这里涉及的是大量无用的、对他们的生活不重要的知识——他们不过是有收集事实和观念的爱好。
There’s nothing wrong with stamp collecting. Knowing facts and ideas, even if they aren’t particularly useful or central to our lives, isn’t a bad thing. It’s probably a superior hobby to many other pursuits, since knowledge can, at least some of the time, spillover to more practical consequences.
集邮式的学习也无可指责。知道事实和理念，即使它们对我们的现实生活起不到作用或不处于中心位置，知道了也不坏。它很可能是个比其他很多追求更好的爱好，毕竟知识可以——至少有些时候——转化成更实用的成果。
The other view of learning, however, is centered around unlearning. This is the view that what we think we know about the world is a veneer of sense-making atop a much deeper strangeness. The things we think we know, we often don’t. The ideas, philosophies and truths that guide our lives may be convenient approximations, but often the more accurate picture is a lot stranger and more interesting.
而另外一种关于看待学习的角度是关注在摈弃错误知识上的。这种观点认为，我们对世界的已知只不过是一层覆盖在比它更深奥的未知世界之上的看似合理的装饰板。那些我们自以为知道的，我们常常并没真懂。那些指导我们生活的理念、哲理和真相可能只是些易于理解的近似概念，但其更精深的内涵往往更加陌生更加有趣。
Stamp collecting is more popular than diving into strangeness. For one, it is strictly additive. Every new trivia fact, book of the month and water cooler topic gets added to your collection, which you can whip out in conversations and impress people who want to talk about them.
集邮式的学习方式比浸入未知的学习方式更受欢迎。对某些人来说，学习就是严格地做加法。每一项琐碎的事物、本月所读的书以及水冷却器的相关话题都被纳入收藏，这些能在交谈中成为利器，让谈论它们的人给其想要接近的听者留下好印象。
Diving into strangeness, in contrast, involves a cyclical process of first undermining the things you thought you had learned. Facts, ideas and theories, are no longer a comforting collection, but a temporary foothold as you leave them to try to get to something deeper.
与集邮式相对的，深入探索事物的未知，包含了一个循环的过程，这个循环过程的第一步就是去怀疑你已经学过的知识。事实、理念和理论不再是让你满足的收藏了，而是为你提供了一个暂时的立足之地，让你以此为起点继续往深处探究。
What is Strange? 是什么如此奇异？
Almost everything is much, much weirder than it looks at first. Science is the clearest example of this. Subatomic particles aren’t billiard balls, but strange, complex-valued wavefunctions. Bodies aren’t vital fluids and animating impulses, but trillions of cells, each more complex than any machine humans have invented. Minds aren’t unified loci of consciousness, but the process of countless synapses firing in incredible patterns.
几乎所有的事物都比它们看上去的古怪得多。科学是个最明显的例子。亚原子粒子不是台球，而是奇怪的复波函数。人体不是维持生命的体液和生物脉冲，而是数以万亿的细胞，其中的每一个细胞都比任何一台人类发明的机器更加复杂。头脑不是统一的意识场所，而是无数突触以难以置信的模式刺激碰撞的一系列过程。
Science confirms the underlying weirdness, but for most people, knowing science is another kind of stamp collecting. Knowing quantum strangeness doesn’t overlap with most areas of practical life, so it can be an additional fact or idea one knows and can bring out in conversations.
科学证实了潜藏在其表面之下的奇特性，但对大多数人而言，学习科学就像另一种“集邮”。知道了量子奇异性不会与大部分的现实生活有交集，这就能成为一个人“额外”知道的事实或理念，也可以把它拿来当作谈资。
More interesting, for me at least, are all the skills and knowledge that we depend on and use everyday that have hidden weirdness beneath them. When you remember something, did it actually happen that way? When you give a reason for your behavior, did reasoning have anything to do with it? When you think that achieving something will make you happy, will it?
我觉得更有意思的是，在所有日常生活中赖以生存和使用的技能和知识的表面下都藏着吊诡的一面。当你记得什么事，这件事情真的如你所记地那样发生过吗？当你对你的行为作出解释，推理归因的结果真是那样吗？当你觉得做成什么事情会让你幸福，它真的会吗？
Just as science has incredible depths of strangeness underneath, everyday life also floats calmly upon a deeper weirdness that first requires unlearning in order to appreciate.
就像科学有它深藏的奇异性，生活也在它安静浮动的表象下潜藏着光怪陆离的未知，要想去欣赏它，首先就得忘掉你学过的东西。
Unlearning and Local Maxima 摈弃旧知识与区域极限
Unlearning is unpleasant for most people. Finding out something you thought you knew was false, or a misleading simplification, feels bad. Since strangeness tends to predominate, and we manage to get by in our lives without worrying about it most of the time, why bother? Why not just collect stamps and leave the bedrock of our intuitions comfortably untouched?
摈弃所学对大部分人而言是不愉快的。当你发现你原本以为知道的事情是错的或者过于简单化而带有误导性，你会感觉很糟糕。既然奇特性倾向于更强大，而我们大部分时间都好好地不用担心它，那为什么要管它呢？为什么不就只“集集邮”让我们直觉的根基舒舒服服地不被触碰？
For most people, this aversion to unlearning may not be so bad. Skillful action exceeds skillful knowledge, so, for most people we manage to get by okay even if our articulated theories of the world are out of sync with a deeper reality.
对多数人来说，对摈弃旧知识的厌恶可能也不是那么强烈。高超的行为技巧超越了精妙的书本知识，因此，即使教化我们的理论与这个世界更深的真相不相符，我们中的大多数也都还在现实生活中搞得定。
The main advantage, I see, of trying to get a deeper picture is that it helps climb out of local maxima. Theories can, to the extent they are accurate, shine a light on potential things we could do, change or experience that are outside what we’ve experienced directly before. Theories help us make predictions about whether those unseen places are good places to be or not.
我觉得，想办法看得更深入的主要好处在于，它能帮我们爬出眼前的区域极限（去到更大的区域）。理论，在某种程度上是精确的，它启发我们看到在我们已亲身经历过的事情之外我们还有哪些可以做的、可以改变或经历的。
A powerful algorithm for machine learning is gradient descent. It has a complex mathematical formulation involving vector calculus and partial derivatives, but the intuitive picture of what it is doing is quite simple to understand. Imagine yourself standing at the edge of a valley. Your goal is to get to the lowest possible spot you can. However, the terrain is quite complex, and you aren’t sure exactly what it looks like. What should you do?
在机器学习里有一种强大的算法叫梯度下降。它有一个复杂的数学公式，涉及到矢量微积分和偏导数，但这个算法的直观画面很容易理解。想象下你自己站在一个山谷边上。你的目标是要尽可能地达到你能去的最低点。但是，山谷的地形相当复杂，你不确定它到底是怎样的。你该怎么办？
The gradient descent algorithm is simple: go downhill. If you always walk in the direction of steepest decline, you’ll eventually reach a spot where every direction goes uphill again. This must be a low spot in the terrain.
这个梯度下降的算法很简单：下山。如果你总是往最陡的下行方向走，那最终你会到达一个点，从这里起所有的方向都开始是上坡。那这个点就肯定是这个区域的最低点。
The problem with gradient descent is that you can get stuck in little pockets where, to go further downhill, you must go uphill for awhile at first. 梯度下降带来的问题在于，你会困在一些小的洼地，你在这些地方的时候，如果想下山，你必须先往上山的方向走一阵子。
This is a computer analogy, but I believe that human learning methods for acquiring many practical skills through experience work in a similar way. We are pushed and pulled by our intuitions to reach a local maxima of “goodness” in how our lives could be. Although we aren’t always at this equilibrium, if our lives are relatively stable, we tend to return to it.
这是用计算机打的比方，但我相信人类通过实际经验习得的很多实操经验的方法跟这个类似。我们被我们的直觉或推或拉以达到我们生活所能达到的“好”的区域极大值。虽然我们无法总是处于这种平衡的理想状态，但一旦生活相对稳定了，我们就会想要回归理想态的平衡。
The problem with our lives is the same as with computers, however. Many people get “stuck” in local maxima. The person who is addicted to alcohol is in a local maxima. Drinking less causes pain, to make things better, they first have to feel worse.
而人类遇到的问题竟然也和计算机的一样。很多人会被困在区域极限里。嗜酒者处于某个区域的极限上。少喝酒会引发疼痛，但为了让他们身体状况好转一些（即走出眼前的区域极限，向更大的区域极限走），他们首先就得少喝酒疼一阵。
Procrastination is a local maxima. Starting work first involves pushing through an unpleasant feeling about the task at hand. However, as anyone who procrastinates often knows, the state of procrastination isn’t particularly good, in an absolute sense. It feels awful, it’s just that any immediate action you anticipate makes you feel a little worse than that, so you stay stuck.
“ 拖延症”是一个区域极限。开始工作时首先要应付一种对手中的任务产生的不良情绪。而每个拖延的人都知道，拖延的感觉不太好，绝对是这样。这感觉糟透了，只是任何即时行动的预想都会让你感觉比现在的更糟一些，所以你就限在里面，一直拖延。
What’s the connection between unlearning and local maxima? Well one way you can get out of local maxima is if you have some notion of what the terrain is shaped like. If you know, for a fact, that you are sitting in a locally optimal, but globally awful, position, you can push against your intuitions and accept transitional badness in hopes of longer-term goodness.
摈弃错误知识与区域极限的联系在哪里？一个是如果你对这个地形有些了解，你可以找到超越区域极限的更大值，如果你知道，你在区域内最优，但在国际上排不上号，你就能挑战下你的舒适区，接受过渡性的“坏”，以期获得长期的“好”。
Knowing what the terrain is shaped like, however, depends on having an accurate picture of the very facts and knowledge that are closest and most fundamental to your life right now. If those facts are wrong, your ability to make guesses about what places further from your immediate vicinity are actually like diminishes rapidly. Depending on how large the local maxima is that surrounds you, it may not be possible to see a better future when one does exist, or there may appear to be one which is actually a mirage.
然而，知道地形地貌取决于你精确地知道离你当下生活最近的最基本的事实和知识。如果这些事实错了，你对从离你最近的地方往外走会遇到什么的预测能力就会迅速减弱。仅仅根据你周围的区域极大值，你也许不能看到一个更好的未来，尽管它的确真实存在；抑或你会看见，但那不过只是海市蜃楼罢了。
In many ways, unlearning has the same properties of the local maxima problem for your overall life situation. To get a more accurate picture, you have to first sacrifice some certainty in the things you take for granted. This sacrifice involves going against your natural local-optimization inclinations.
很多时候，摈弃旧知识在你普遍的人生场景里所起的影响和作用与区域极大值的问题所具有的属性相同。为了得到更精确的认知图，你必须先得牺牲掉一些你在习以为常的事物上形成的理所应当的确定感。这种牺牲有时会与你寻求“区域最优化”的本能倾向背道而驰。
Strangeness, Randomness and Unlearning 奇异未知、随机尝试和摈弃旧知
So far, I’ve spoken about one method for overcoming the local maxima problem: having a better theory of what unvisited places in the vast space of possible life experiences might be like. This helps spot genuine opportunities for improvement and avoids mirages of hope-inspiring, but ultimately illusory directions to follow.
以上我讲到了一种克服区域极限带来的问题的方法：去找一种更好的理论，去看看在生命可能体验到的辽阔版图上还未被涉足的领域会是什么样子。它会有助于发现改善的真正机会，同时为你避开了一些由希望激发但最终会变为泡影的虚无缥缈的方向。
Unlearning fits into this because, unlikely with the stamp collecting of purely additive learning, we all have pre-existing theories of what the terrain of nearby life spaces is already like.
摈弃旧知识就属于这个方法，不像集邮式地纯粹收集新知识，我们对我们生活的外延是怎样的已经有了一套自己的基础理论。
Another method, however, for getting out of local maxima is simply randomness.Programmers often use some amount of random motion in their gradient descent algorithms. This randomness means that their solutions don’t snag on relatively insignificant dips.
而另一种超越区域极限的方法就是随机尝试。程序员经常在他们的梯度下降的算法里使用一定数量的随机测试。这些随机测试让他们的解法不至于落入一些相对无意义的方向。
Human beings can use randomness too to avoid the same problem. Exposing yourself to a larger variety of experiences can pull you out of temporary snags. The main disadvantage of this approach is that randomness can sometimes be destructive. Trying heroin, cheating on your spouse or joining a cult may all offer unique experiences, but their dangers may not be worth the payoff.
人类也可以利用随机性来避免同样的问题。把你自己暴露在更多样的体验中就能把你从暂时的困境中拉出来。这种方法的主要弊端在于它有时候具有破坏性。尝试海洛因、背叛你的配偶或是加入某个邪教都能带给你独特的体验，但他们对你的危害会远远大于收获。
Unlearning, to me, proposes a relatively safer way of exploring larger swaths of the terrain of life possibilities. It may create a mental discomfort and instability, as you contend with the fact that many of the things you took for granted before may not be true. However, this is often a lot less dangerous than undirected randomness may have on your life.
摈弃错误的旧知识对我来说是一种相对安全的方式去在更大的人生版图里体验更多的可能性。你可能会经历一个情绪不适和不稳的过程，直到你充分接受了一个事实，那就是很多你曾经认为理所应当的事情都有可能不是真的。但这也会比毫无引导的随意冒险对你生命可能造成的杀伤力要弱得多。
How to Unlearn Things 如何摈弃错误的知识
How do you go about unlearning the things you think you know? This isn’t a trivial task. Simply throwing your hands up and admitting you know nothing may be a Zen kind of solution, but it doesn’t really offer a way forward to true knowledge. It simply admits ignorance of any theory for explaining the terrain, rather than trying to come up with more useful ones.
你要如何摈弃你认为已知的东西呢？这可不是一项琐碎无意义的工作。直接双手投降承认你什么都不懂可能是一种禅修的解决之道，但这实际上不能为靠近真知提供任何出路。这只不过表了个态，无视所有为解释此事所产生的理论，但没有努力去寻找一种更有效的解法。
One way to begin unlearning is to seek additive knowledge in familiar areas and then use that new knowledge to start pulling up and modifying old knowledge. For me, learning about psychology and cognitive science often had this effect: I would start with a particular belief that seemed reasonable about myself, and then digging deeper, I would encounter careful arguments that showed why those beliefs were probably false. From that point of tension, I could start reworking some of my old beliefs.
摈弃旧知识的方法之一：是在熟悉的领域探寻增补的知识，然后用这新的知识去提升修改旧的知识。对我来说，学习心理学和认知科学经常有这个效果：从一个我觉得合理的具体的理念开始，逐渐深入，然后我会遇到严谨的辩论，看清为什么这些理念很可能是错的。从这个拉锯点开始，我就能开始动手修改一些我的旧观念了。
This approach can work, but it’s difficult and it requires a lot more patience for theory and academic learning than most people have an appetite for. Another approach is to seek other people’s experiences of the world. Other people may not give you *the* theory for understanding the world, but the more diverse their experiences are from yours, the more likely they are situated in a different position in the space of life possibilities and how their lives differ from your expectations can itself give you information about your own thinking.
这第一种方法可以奏效，但是很难，它要求你在理论和学术研究上有比大多数人更多的耐心。另一种方法是寻求别人的经验。其他人可能给不了你认识世界的具体理论，但是他们的经历与你的越不相同，他们越有可能在生命可能性的空间中处于一个不同的位置。他们的人生经历与你的设想之间的差别本身会带给你有关你自己想法的信息。
Travel, in this way, can be a potent form of unlearning. For me, the best travel experiences of my life haven’t been going to a place that exceeded my expectations, but going to ones which deeply undermined them. I’ve written about how going to China forced me to radically rethink that place. But talking to people in different places has also shown me how arbitrary many of my own culturally-specific views are of things.
旅行，就属于这第二种，它可以是一种有力的摈弃旧知识的方式。我人生中最好的旅行体验不是去了哪个超出我预期的地方，而是在所到之处深度探索。我写过我的中国之行如何迫使我理智地重新思考那个地方。但是与世界各地的人交谈也让我看到了自己的文化视角在很多事物上的武断。
This kind of travel means actually talking to people. Learning languages helps because you’re more likely to encounter people who differ from you more dramatically. The normal process of sightseeing and taking Instagram-worthy photos of famous landmarks is fine, but it’s stamp collecting, not acquiring model-altering insights. 这样的旅行意味着要实实在在地与人们交谈。学习语言对这点有帮助，因为你会更有可能遇到和你截然不同的人。常见的观光、在Instagram上发著名景点的照片不错，但这是“集邮”的方式，不会让你获得改变格局的眼界。
A third approach to unlearning is to be more varied and bold in your experiments in life.Pure randomness can have a destructive quality to it. However, if you avoid obvious risks, many directions in life can be explored more thoroughly than most people do.
摈弃旧知识的第三种方法是在你的生活中做出更丰富更大胆的尝试。纯粹的随意乱来会有破坏性。但如果你规避掉显而易见的风险，你就能在很多人生方向上探索得比大部分人彻底。
I think the main drawback of this third approach is that it depends on a kind of self-confidence that itself tends to depend on having had positive experiences venturing outside your safe, little local maxima in the past. Without confidence, people have an instinctive aversion to explore, and so this approach to getting out of life’s local maxima has a feedback component to it. The more successful your unlearning and exploration of life’s possibility space, the more likely you’ll take larger leaps on theory rather than direct experience alone.
我想这第三种方法的主要障碍在于它得靠一种你之前在一些安全的小范围之外成功探索而培养出来的自信。缺了自信，人们对探索会有本能的厌恶——那么“自信”就是跳出区域极限的这种方法系统的一个反馈环节。（即成功跳出区域极限后，产生自信，自信反馈回系统，促成再一次跳出区域极限。）你在摈弃旧知识和对生命可能性的探索上做得越成功，你就越有可能在理论的层面超越得越远，而不单单只是直接的生活体验了。
Being Comfortable with Mystery 适应神秘感
A good meta-belief to this whole unlearning endeavor is to be comfortable with the idea that everything you know is provisional, and that underneath what you know is likely a more complex and stranger picture.
与整个摒弃坏知识的努力匹配的本质信念是：你所知道的事物都只是暂时的，而且在你所知的事物表面之下很可能有一个更复杂奇异的画面。”。
Human beings seem to be naturally afraid of this groundless view of things. I’m not quite sure why that is. It may be that this kind of epistemic flexibility might start to question societal norms and rules of conduct, and so people who think too much about things may have an amoral character. That’s certainly the perspective of many traditional religious viewpoints on things, which discourages open-ended inquiry in favor of professing allegiance to dogma.
人类似乎本能地害怕这种不设底线、缺乏定性的看待事物的理念。我不太清楚这背后的原因。也许是因为这种认识的灵活性可能会引发对社会规范和行为准则的质疑，再就是，人们认为对事物思考得过多的人可能有人格异常。这当然也是传统的宗教观念看待很多事物的角度，为了宣称忠于教条而不鼓励开放式的询问。
However, there’s probably a more basic level aversion to groundlessness rooted in a feeling that uncertainty is bad and that certainty is good. Like most aversions, however, I think this is something you can condition yourself to be comfortable with via exposure.
然而，可能还有一种更本质的、植根于情感的对于这种不设限不定性的厌恶，他让人觉得不确定是坏的，确定是好的。而就像大多数厌恶，我想人们是能狗通过暴露在这种情绪中而逐渐适应接受它的。
I used to be very afraid of heights. When I was a child, I had a hard time even going near the window if I was in a tall building. Sometime around my late teens, however, I started pushing myself to be exposed to more heights. First roller coasters, then ziplining and paragliding. Last year, I went skydiving for the first time and, although it was scary, I felt a lot less anxious than I used to feel with much less extreme exposures to heights.
我曾经特别恐高。小时候，如果是在高楼上，我会特别害怕靠近窗户。但自从青春末期，我就迫使自己更多地暴露在很高的环境中了。先是过山车，接着是空中索道，还有滑翔伞。去年，我第一次尝试了空中跳伞，虽然还是很害怕，但我当时的焦虑感，比起我之前暴露在没这么高的环境中所体会到的，要好多了。
Psychologists have known for some time that progressive exposure can remove many conditioned fears and aversions to things. Sometimes, if the exposure gets paired with a reward, something initially aversive can eventually become desirable as spicy-food eaters and adrenaline junkies can attest to.
心理学家们早已发现，循序渐进地暴露在（厌恶、恐惧等的）情境中，会消除很多由环境条件引起的恐惧和对事物的厌恶。有时，如果在暴露的过程中加入奖励，一些原本让人厌恶的事物反而会变得让人有欲求，嗜辣的人和肾上腺素的瘾君子，他们都能证明这点。
Similarly, I think exposure to the unknown, to unlearning comfortable old beliefs about things, to the deeper mystery of things for which our current knowledge is only a temporary foothold, can be something that can switch from we shy away from to something you enjoy. The thrills of finding a new, more accurate, way of looking at things, start to eclipse the aversion to uprooting a previously stable way of thinking.
类似地，我想，暴露于未知中，摈弃让我们舒适但已经错误过时的信念，拥抱那些以当前已知的事物作为暂时踏板的更为深奥未知的事物，这会是件让你从回避变成热爱的事情。那种从找到一种更新、更准确的看待事物的方式中获得的兴奋感会逐渐化解掉因为推翻之前稳定的思维方式而产生的厌恶。