Some days, it feels like the only thing we can agree on is that we can't agree on anything.
有时候，我感觉我们唯一能达成一致的事，就是无法在任何事上达成一致。
Public discourse is broken. And we feel that everywhere -- panelists on TV are screaming at each other,
公共讨论已经一团糟了。我们会发现这样的场景无处不在--电视上的辩手们互相大喊大叫，
we go online to find community and connection, and we end up leaving feeling angry and alienated.
我们上网寻找（与自己立场相同的）社区，试图与他人建立联系，却常常在愤怒和孤立感中下线。
In everyday life, probably because everyone else is yelling,
在日常生活中，可能因为别人都在大喊大叫，
we are so scared to get into an argument that we're willing not to engage at all. Contempt has replaced conversation.
我们变得特别害怕去辩论，一点也不想参与其中。蔑视代替了交流。
My mission in life is to help us disagree productively.
我的人生使命是帮助大家有效地提出不同意见。
To find ways to bring truth to light, to bring new ideas to life.
找到揭露真相的办法，给生活提供新的见解。
I think -- I hope -- that there is a model for structured disagreement that's kind of mutually respectful
我认为--或者说我希望--会有一个结构清晰的争论模式，那种相互尊重，
and assumes a genuine desire to persuade and be persuaded.
带有说服或被说服愿望的真诚立场。
And to uncover it, let me take you back a little bit.
为了说明白这点，让我带你们追溯一下过去。
So, when I was 10 years old, I loved arguing.
我10岁时，特别爱与人争论。
This, like, tantalizing possibility that you could convince someone of your point of view, just with the power of your words.
对我来说，这是一种诱人的可能性，仅凭语言的力量，你就能说服别人接受你的观点。
And perhaps unsurprisingly, my parents and teachers loved this somewhat less.
也许是意料之中，我的父母和老师们都不怎么喜欢争论。
And in much the same way as they decided that four-year-old Julia might benefit from gymnastics to burn off some energy,
就跟他们觉得四岁的朱莉亚通过体操燃烧一些能量有好处一样，
they decided that I might benefit from joining a debate team.
他们觉得我加入辩论队可能也有好处。
That is, kind of, go somewhere to argue where they were not.
意思就是，到他们不在的地方争论去吧。
For the uninitiated, the premises of formal debate are really straightforward:
对于门外汉来说，一场正式辩论的前提非常直观：
there's a big idea on the table -- that we support civil disobedience, that we favor free trade
台面上有个大的议题--比如我们支持非暴力反抗活动，我们青睐自由贸易，
and one group of people who speaks in favor of that idea, and one against.
有一组人支持这个观点，另一拨人则反对。
My first debate in the cavernous auditorium of Canberra Girls Grammar School
我的第一次辩论是在堪培拉女子文法学校的圆形礼堂里进行的，
was kind of a bundle of all of the worst mistakes that you see on cable news.
那次辩论我犯了你们能在有线电视新闻上看到的各种糟糕错误。
It felt easier to me to attack the person making the argument rather than the substance of the ideas themselves.
我当时觉得攻击持有论点的人比攻击论点的本质要简单得多。
When that same person challenged my ideas, it felt terrible, I felt humiliated and ashamed.
当同一个人再次挑战我的观点时，那种感觉特别糟糕，我感到被羞辱了，简直无地自容。
And it felt to me like the sophisticated response to that was to be as extreme as possible.
它让我感觉到最精妙的反驳方式是尽可能的极端。
And despite this very shaky entry into the world of debate, I loved it.
尽管我硬着头皮走进了辩论的世界，却开始入迷了。
I saw the possibility, and over many years worked really hard at it, became really skilled at the technical craft of debate.
我看到了那种可能性，我努力了很多年，掌握了娴熟的辩论技巧。
I went on to win the World Schools Debating Championships three times.
我赢得了三次世界校园辩论赛的冠军。
I know, you're just finding out that this is a thing.
我看得出来，你们压根儿不知道还有这么个比赛。
But it wasn't until I started coaching debaters, persuaders who are really at the top of their game, that I actually got it.
但直到我开始培训那些在他们领域中具备顶尖实力的辩手和说服者时，我才真正认识到。
The way that you reach people is by finding common ground.
接触他人的方式是寻找共同立场。
It's by separating ideas from identity and being genuinely open to persuasion.
这是通过区别对待观点和身份，并真诚开放接受说服来实现的。
Debate is a way to organize conversations about how the world is, could, should be.
通过辩论的方式，可以组织世界是什么、可能是什么、应该是什么的对话。
Or to put it another way, I would love to offer you my experience-backed, evidence-tested guide
或者换一种方法说，我很乐意分享我的亲身经验，经过实践检验的指导方案，
to talking to your cousin about politics at your next family dinner;
来教你在下一次的家庭晚宴中和你的表兄妹谈谈政治；
reorganizing the way in which your team debates new proposals; thinking about how we change our public conversation.
重新组织你们团队讨论新提案的方式；想想该如何改变我们的公共交流方式。
And so, as an entry point into that:
那么，我们先要找到一个切入点：
debate requires that we engage with the conflicting idea, directly, respectfully, face to face.
辩论要求我们直截了当而不失礼貌，面对面地直面相互冲突的观点。
The foundation of debate is rebuttal. The idea that you make a claim and I provide a response, and you respond to my response.
辩论的基础是反驳。就是你发表论点然后我回复，然后你再对我的回复作出应对。
Without rebuttal, it's not debate, it's just pontificating.
如果没有反驳，那不叫辩论，那只能叫自说自话。
And I had originally imagined that the most successful debaters,
我一开始曾想象过那些最成功的辩手们，
really excellent persuaders, must be great at going to extremes.
最出色的说客们，都一定特别擅长走向极端。
They must have some magical ability to make the polarizing palatable.
他们一定有某种令极端观点变得可以接受的神奇能力。
And it took me a really long time to figure out that the opposite is actually true.
我花了很长的时间才想通，事实其实恰恰相反。
People who disagree the most productively start by finding common ground, no matter how narrow it is.
最富有成效地提出异议的人，通常都是从寻找共同立场开始的，无论共同立场是多么的小。
They identify the thing that we can all agree on and go from there:
他们首先找出来我们都认同的事情，然后以此为出发点：
the right to an education, equality between all people, the importance of safer communities.
受教育的权利，全人类的平等，一个更安全社区的重要性。
What they're doing is inviting us into what psychologists call shared reality.
他们正在我们带到如心理学家所说的“共享现实”中去。
And shared reality is the antidote to alternative facts.
而共享现实正是另类事实的解药。
The conflict, of course, is still there. That's why it's a debate.
当然，冲突仍然存在。所以它才叫做辩论。
Shared reality just gives us a platform to start to talk about it.
共享现实给了我们一个谈论它的平台。
But the trick of debate is that you end up doing it directly, face to face, across the table.
但辩论的诀窍在于你最终得通过直接讨论，面对面，在台面上来实现。
And research backs up that that really matters.
研究发现也证明这点非常关键。
Professor Juliana Schroeder at UC Berkeley and her colleagues have research that suggests that
加州大学伯克利分校的教授朱丽安娜·施罗德和同事的研究表明，
listening to someone's voice as they make a controversial argument is literally humanizing.
在人们提出有争议的观点时，倾听他们的声音是人性化的过程。
It makes it easier to engage with what that person has to say.
这会让你更容易理解对方要说的话。
So, step away from the keyboards, start conversing.
所以，现在请远离键盘，开始和别人交流。
And if we are to expand that notion a little bit,
如果我们把这个观点扩展开来，
nothing is stopping us from pressing pause on a parade of keynote speeches, the sequence of very polite panel discussions,
没什么能阻止我们在一系列主题演讲中，在有礼貌的小组讨论中按下暂停键，
and replacing some of that with a structured debate.
并用一场结构分明的辩论来替代它们。
All of our conferences could have, at their centerpiece, a debate over the biggest, most controversial ideas in the field.
我们所有的会议都可以有意识地对该领域中最大、最具争议的观点展开辩论。
Each of our weekly team meetings could devote 10 minutes to a debate about a proposal to change the way in which that team works.
我们每周的小组会议都可以拿出十分钟来辩论一个改变团队运作方式的提议。
And as innovative ideas go, this one is both easy and free. You could start tomorrow.
随着创新的点子不断涌现，这种方法不仅方便，还不费钱。你甚至可以明天起就这么干。
And once we're inside this shared reality,
一旦我们进入了共享现实的层面，
debate also requires that we separate ideas from the identity of the person discussing them.
辩论也要求我们将观点从提出观点的人的身份中分离出来。
So in formal debate, nothing is a topic unless it is controversial: that we should raise the voting age, outlaw gambling.
所以在一场正式的辩论中，只有有争议性的东西才能成为话题：比如我们应该提升选民年龄，禁止非法赌博。
But the debaters don't choose their sides. So that's why it makes no sense to do what 10-year-old Julia did.
但是辩手们并不选择自己的立场。这就是为什么那个10岁的朱莉亚做的事情毫无意义。
Attacking the identity of the person making the argument is irrelevant, because they didn't choose it.
攻击参与争论的人的身份和辩论并不相干，因为他们无权选择自己的立场。
Your only winning strategy is to engage with the best, clearest, least personal version of the idea.
你唯一获胜的策略就是去和最好、最清晰、最客观的观点直接交锋。
And it might sound impossible or naive to imagine that you could ever take that notion outside the high school auditorium.
这听起来可能有点不现实，或者说有点幼稚，去想象你能把这种想法带出高中礼堂。
We spend so much time dismissing ideas as democrat or republican.
我们花了太多时间来驳斥民主党或共和党人的观点。
Rejecting proposals because they came from headquarters, or from a region that we think is not like ours.
拒绝提议只是因为这是来自总部，或是来自一个我们认为跟我们不同地方。
But it is possible. When I work with teams, trying to come up with the next big idea, or solve a really complex problem,
但这是可能的。当我和团队一起工作，要想出一个什么新点子，或是解决一个极其复杂的问题时，
I start by asking them, all of them, to submit ideas anonymously.
我会让他们所有人匿名提交观点。
So by way of illustration, two years ago,
例如，两年前，
I was working with multiple government agencies to generate new solutions to reduce long-term unemployment.
我和多个政府部门一起在考虑解决长期失业问题的新的方案。
Which is one of those really wicked, sticky, well-studied public policy problems.
这也是极其难缠、棘手以及早已经被研究透了的公共政策问题之一。
So exactly as I described, right at the beginning, potential solutions were captured from everywhere.
和我之前说的一样，在开始的时候，可能的解决方案都是从各处搜集来的。

We aggregated them, each of them was produced on an identical template.
我们把它们收集到一起，每一个方案都按照相同的模版呈现。
At this point, they all look the same, they have no separate identity.
在这一点上，它们看起来都是一样的，没什么明显的不同。
And then, of course, they are discussed, picked over, refined, finalized.
当然，随后会它们被挑出来讨论、提炼，最终审定。
And at the end of that process, more than 20 of those new ideas are presented to the cabinet ministers responsible for consideration.
在这个过程的末尾，二十多个新的点子都呈送到了负责决策的内阁大臣们面前。
But more than half of those, the originator of those ideas was someone who might have a hard time getting the ear of a policy advisor.
但其中超过半数的点子，它们的创作者曾经都是在政策顾问面前连话都说不上的人。
Or who, because of their identity, might not be taken entirely seriously if they did.
或者一些由于身份卑微，其观点从来没有被当作一回事的人。
Folks who answer the phones, assistants who manage calendars, representatives from agencies who weren't always trusted.
那些接电话的职员，管理日程表的助理，来自不总是被信任的机构的代表。
Imagine if our news media did the same thing.
想想如果我们的新闻媒体干过的同样事情会如何。
You can kind of see it now -- a weekly cable news segment with a big policy proposal on the table that doesn't call it liberal or conservative.
那场景几乎历历在目--本周的有线电视新闻时段有一份重要的政策提议在台面上，也不知道来自自由党派还是保守党派。
Or a series of op-eds for and against a big idea that don't tell you where the writers worked.
或者是对某个观点提出一连串支持或反对的观点，也不会告诉你其作者在哪里工作。
Our public conversations, even our private disagreements,
我们的公众对话，甚至是我们的个人异见，
can be transformed by debating ideas, rather than discussing identity.
都可以通过辩论观点来转换，而不是讨论身份立场。
And then, the thing that debate allows us to do as human beings is open ourselves,
作为人类，辩论还让我们能够真正开放自己的心态，
really open ourselves up to the possibility that we might be wrong. The humility of uncertainty.
去接受我们犯了错误的可能。对不确定性的谦逊。
One of the reasons it is so hard to disagree productively is because we become attached to our ideas.
难以有效地进行争执的原因之一就是我们常常执着于自己的意见。
We start to believe that we own them and that by extension, they own us.
我们开始认为我们拥有它们，延伸开去就是它们拥有我们。
But eventually, if you debate long enough, you will switch sides,
但最终，如果你辩论的时间够长，你的立场就会改变，
you'll argue for and against the expansion of the welfare state.
你会在扩大国家福利的争论中不停变换立场。
For and against compulsory voting. And that exercise flips a kind of cognitive switch.
也会赞同或反对强制投票。这种训练会颠覆你的认知转换。
The suspicions that you hold about people who espouse beliefs that you don't have, starts to evaporate.
你对那些不同信仰的人所持有的疑虑就会开始消失。
Because you can imagine yourself stepping into those shoes.
因为你已经可以站在他们的角度思考了。
And as you're stepping into those, you're embracing the humility of uncertainty.
而当你站在他们的角度思考时，你就是在接受不确定性带来的谦逊。
The possibility of being wrong. And it's that exact humility that makes us better decision-makers.
也是在接受犯错的可能性。正是那种谦逊让我们成为了更好的决策者。
Neuroscientist and psychologist Mark Leary at Duke University and his colleagues have found that
杜克大学的神经学家以及心理学家马克·里亚利和他的同事发现，
people who are able to practice -- and it is a skill
那些能够实践这些的人--这是一种技能，
what those researchers call intellectual humility are more capable of evaluating a broad range of evidence,
也就是研究者称为大智若愚的人，拥有广泛评估不同证据的能力，
are more objective when they do so, and become less defensive when confronted with conflicting evidence.
他们在评估时也会更加客观，在面对冲突证据时也不会摆出防御的姿态。
All attributes that we want in our bosses, colleagues,
这些正是所有我们希望我们的老板、同事、
discussion partners, decision-makers, all virtues that we would like to claim for ourselves.
共同讨论的搭档以及决策者都具有的美德，所有我们想要自己拥有的美德。
And so, as we're embracing that humility of uncertainty, we should be asking each other, all of us, a question.
所以，当我们拥抱这种不确定性的谦逊时，所有人都应该彼此问这样一个问题。
Our debate moderators, our news anchors should be asking it of our elective representatives and candidates for office, too.
我们辩论节目的主持，以及新闻主播都应该问我们的普选代表以及候选议员。
"What is it that you have changed your mind about and why?"
“你改变了什么主意，为什么改变主意？”
"What uncertainty are you humble about?"
“你对什么事情的不确定性保持谦逊？”
And this by the way, isn't some fantasy about how public life and public conversations could work. It has precedent.
顺便一提，这不是什么关于公共生活以及公众对话如何运作的幻想。这是有先例的。
So, in 1969, beloved American children's television presenter Mister Rogers sits impaneled
在1969年，著名的美国儿童电视节目主持人罗杰斯先生坐在
before the United States congressional subcommittee on communications, chaired by the seemingly very curmudgeonly John Pastore.
由看起来特别乖戾的约翰·帕斯托尔主持的美国国会通信小组委员会面前。
And Mister Rogers is there to make a kind of classic debate case, a really bold proposal:
罗杰斯先生在这里要做一个经典辩论，一个非常大胆的提议：
an increase in federal funding for public broadcasting.
提高公共电视广播节目的联邦政府拨款。
And at the outset, committee disciplinarian Senator Pastore is not having it.
一开始，纪律委员会参议员帕斯托尔没有准许通过。
This is about to end really poorly for Mister Rogers.
这都差点就成为罗杰斯先生可怜的结局了。
But patiently, very reasonably, Mister Rogers makes the case why good quality children's broadcasting,
但凭着耐心、理智，罗杰斯先生解释了为什么高质量的儿童节目，
the kinds of television programs that talk about the drama that arises in the most ordinary of families, matters to all of us.
那些讲述出现在多数普通家庭中的奇闻逸事的电视节目，对我们所有人都至关重要。
Even while it costs us. He invites us into a shared reality.
即便它需要花费成本。他把我们带入到了共享现实的层面。
And on the other side of that table, Senator Pastore listens, engages and opens his mind.
而在辩论的另一方，帕斯托尔参议员在聆听，并用心去思考。
Out loud, in public, on the record. And Senator Pastore says to Mister Rogers,
参议员大声地、公开地、在录音的情况下，对罗杰斯先生说：
"You know, I'm supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I've had goosebumps in two days."
“要知道，我本来是个相当固执的人，但这是两天来我第一次起鸡皮疙瘩。”
And then, later, "It looks like you just earned the 20 million dollars."
然后，他又说，“看起来你赢得了两千万美元。”
We need many more Mister Rogers. People with the technical skills of debate and persuasion.
我们需要更多像罗杰斯先生一样的人。需要更多拥有辩论和说服技巧的人。
But on the other side of that table, we need many, many, many more Senator Pastores.
但在辩论桌的另一边，我们也需要很多，甚至更多像帕斯托尔参议员一样的人。
And the magic of debate is that it lets you, it empowers you to be both Mister Rogers and Senator Pastore simultaneously.
辩论的魔力在于它能够让你，赋予你力量，同时成为罗杰斯先生和帕斯托尔议员一样的人。
When I work with those same teams that we talked about before,
当我和那些我们之前说过的团队一起工作时，
I ask them at the outset to pre-commit to the possibility of being wrong.
我请求他们用最长远的考虑去承认出错的可能性。
To explain to me and to each other what it would take to change their minds.
让他们向我以及其他每一个人解释如何能让他们改变主意。
And that's all about the attitude, not the exercise.
这都是态度的问题，而非实践。
Once you start thinking about what it would take to change your mind,
一旦你开始思考什么会让你改变主意，
you start to wonder why you were quite so sure in the first place.
你就会开始想为什么你一开始会如此确信。
There is so much that the practice of debate has to offer us for how to disagree productively.
有很多辩论的实践教我们如何去有效地争论。
And we should bring it to our workplaces, our conferences, our city council meetings.
我们应该把这些方法带到工作中，带到会议中，以及我们的市参议会中。
And the principles of debate can transform the way that we talk to one another,
辩论的原则能够改变我们彼此交流的方式，
to empower us to stop talking and to start listening.
能够让我们停止说话，开始聆听。
To stop dismissing and to start persuading.
停止拒绝，开始说服。
To stop shutting down and to start opening our minds. Thank you so much.
停止自我封闭，并开始开放自己的思维。非常感谢大家。