(单词翻译:单击)
The brain is only the organ with which we think; we think.
大脑是我们唯一可以用来思考的器官；我们可以用其进行思考。
Its job is not to win Nobel prizes and to pass math tests.
大脑的存在不是为了让人们赢得诺贝尔奖和通过数学考试。
Its job is to get us to tomorrow.
它的存在是让我们拥抱明天。
It's a survival machine,and it plays a lot of tricks with the facts in order to get us to tomorrow.
大脑是一台活机器，它一直和现实周旋，以便让我们更好地走向明天。
That worked pretty well when the risks were lions and tigers and bears and the dark, oh, my.
当我们面临的危险是狮子、老虎和熊以及黑暗的时候，大脑很管用。
It's not as good now when we need to rationalize and reason and use the facts more with the complicated risks we face in a modern age.
当我们需要理性和推理的时候，并利用事实来应对我们在现代所面临的复杂风险时，大脑就表现得不那么好了。
Climate change and genetically modified food and unsustainable living on the planet,that takes a lot more thinking.
气候变化和转基因食品以及地球上不可持续的生活，都需要大脑进行更多的思考。
We'd better accept that and understand it so that we can apply that in order to avoid the pitfalls of our subjective way of perceiving the world.
我们最好接受并理解上述这一点，以便我们能够应用它，以避免我们感知世界的主观方式所带来的陷阱。
It's quite a robust thinking systemthat we've got between our ears, but what's going to happen,and has been happening for several millennia now,is we're gonna develop more and better-thinking tools,and we're going to identify more weaknesses in our rationality.
大脑是长在我们两个耳朵中间的一个相当强大的思维系统，大脑会给我们带来什么呢，那就是我们将开发更多和更好的思维工具，虽然这已经有几千年的发展历史，但是我们将在自己的理性中发现更多的弱点。
A weakness identified is at least something that can be avoided to some degree.
一个可以被发现的弱点至少在某种程度上来说是可以避免的。
We can learn workarounds.
我们可以学习变通的方法。
We can recognize that we're suckers for certain sorts of bad ideas and, alerted to that, we can flag them when they come up.
我们可以认识到我们很喜欢某些坏主意，那么当它们出现的时候，我们可以提醒自己。
There's one way to be rational.
可以理性的方式只有一种。
There are many ways to be irrational.
但是可以不理性的方式有太多了。
We could be irrational by getting confused,not taking actions,being myopic, vindictive, emotional, you name it.
我们可以因为迷惑、不采取行动、近视、报复性、情绪化等方式变得不理性，等等。
There's lots of ways to be wrong,and because of that, there's not one way to fix it, but one interesting way to try and inject some rationality is to think from an outsider's perspective.
做错事的方法太多了，正因为如此，没有一种方法可以解决这个问题，但有一种有趣的方法可以让我们尝试运用一些理性，就是从局外人的角度来思考。
Here's what happens-When you think about your own life,you're trapped within your own perspective,you're trapped within your own emotions and feelings and so on, but if you give advice to somebody else,
当你思考自己的生活时，你被困在自己的视角中，被困在自己的情绪和感受中，等等，但如果你给别人提供建议，
all of a sudden, you're not trapped within that emotional, combination, mishmash complexity,and you can give advice that is more forward-lookingand not so specific to the emotions.
突然间，你就不会被困在那种情绪、组合、混杂的复杂性中了，你可以提供更有前瞻性的建议，而不是发泄情绪。
One idea is to basically ask people for advice.
所以我们应向人们征求意见。
So if you're falling in love with some person,good advice is to go to your mother and say,"Mother, what do you think about the long-term"compatibility of that person?
如果你爱上了某个人，给你一个好的建议是去找你的母亲，说：“母亲，你对这个人长期“和我的匹配性”有什么看法？
"You're infatuated, right, when you're infatuated, you're not able to see things three months down the road.
“当你很迷恋一个人的时候，对，当你迷恋他的时候，你无法看到三个月后会发生什么。
You're saying, "I'm infatuated. I'll stay infatuated forever, this will never go away."
你会觉得，“我很迷恋他。我会永远迷恋下去，这种感觉永远不会消失。”
Your mother, being an outsider, is not infatuated, and she could probably look at things like long-term compatibility and so on.
你的母亲，作为一个局外人，并不迷恋他，而且她可能会看清一些事情，比如你们的长期匹配性等等。
We stick with a business plan or a career or a relationship long after it's become quite clear that it's not doing anything for us or that it's actively destructive or self-destructive.
我们坚持于一个商业计划、职业或一种关系，但很明显，这些对我们没有任何作用，反而它是有破坏性的或具有自我破坏性的。
We have an irrational commitment to whatever we have been doing for a while, 'cause we don't like the idea of our past investment having gone to waste or because it's become part of our identity.
我们对自己已经做了一段时间的事情有一种非理性的承诺，因为我们不喜欢自己过去投资的时间精力被浪费，或者因为它已经成为我们的一部分。
