1 nil
之前挖的坑，终于填了一个。看了一半，不知道放那里多长时间了，单位还是月，再看看那些单位按年算得，罄竹难书、惨绝人寰、满目疮痍的那青春期的脸。
Paul Graham的旧文。
2 Two kinds of judgement
April 2007
别人评价你的时候都会存在两种方法。一种确实是为了对你有一个客观的评价，但是更多情况都是另一种。 我们自己总是会以为别人对我们的评价都是第一种。要是能分清这两者，我们平时就不会过得现在这样不自在了。1
第一种评价，就是为了准确评估你的能力，比如打官司、学校的考试，还有大部分的竞赛都是这一类。当然，这种评价体系也会有出错的时候，不过由于这个体系的目的就是为了准确评估，一般情况下你还有机会上诉：你如果觉得自己的能力和评价结果不符合，可以去抗议评价不公平。2
由于童年时期的评价大都是这一类型的，所以我们就习惯性的认为所有的评价都是这一类的。3
但是实际上还有更多的评价根本就不是这么回事，比如大学的入学申请、企业雇佣员工的决定、投资人的决定，当然还有约会的时候做的评价。这些评价都和你本人没有多大关系。4
比如假设说你为国家队挑选队员，简化起见，队伍不分具体位置，只要挑20个队员就可以。很明显的，那些排名前几的超级明星球员肯定会被你选进队伍，而那些普通球员，你就根本看不上。受你自己的评价影响最大的其实就是队伍最后的那一人的选择。你要是不小心低估了排名第二十的队员，结果他没有入选，反而第二十一的那个入选了，虽然犯了个错，你其实还是选了一支好队伍。如果队员的能力是正态分布的，那么第二十一的队员和第二十的队员其实能力上差不太多。可能他俩之间的实际差距还没有测量误差大。5
第二十的那人可能觉得自己没有被正确评价，问题是你不是去提供队员能力评价服务的，你只是为了选出一个国家队去比赛。要是第二十和第二十一的能力差距还真没有测量误差大，那么你其实还是做了一个最优的决定。6
你能说这种情况是不公平么？它本来就不是为了正确评估每个个体的能力，而只是为了选择一个合理的最优组合。7
为什么我们会在这种情况下觉得不公平呢？因为挑选队员的人是在一个上级的位置上，看起来就像是一个评判员。你要是把他当成一个顾客，而不是一个评判员，就不会考虑公平不公平这个问题了。一个不错的小说作家不会说读者更喜欢包装诱人但是内容粗制滥造的作品的现象不公平。你可以说这种情况下读者很傻X，但是这种情况算不上不公平。8
从小就接受第一种评价的经历加上人们总是倾向以自我为中心，造成我们总是觉得每个对我们的评价都是针对自己个人的。其实大部分都不是。这个少见的例子说明了一个道理：少点自我为中心可以让人更加自信。等你心里清楚别人的评价大部分根本就不在乎准确与否（因为申请人的正态分布，评价影响较大的时候反而是评价不怎么准确的时候），别人拒绝你这种事情你真就不会太看重了。9
你别不相信，不太看重别人的拒绝反而会帮助你以后更少的被拒绝。你要是认为别人都在很严肃的评价你，那你就容易受这些评价的影响，更难准确评价自己，结果就是越来越悲观。你如果明白大部分的评价其实都是受随机、无关的因素影响的（也就是说大部分的评价类似反复无常的小说读者的观点，而不是一个聪明、慎重的法官的最后判决），你就会清楚你可以通过自己的行动来改变结果。10
大学申请是这一原理的最佳实验地了。大部分的高中生申请学校的时候都是抱着小孩子那种混杂着自卑与自我中心的心情。他们自卑的认为招生委员会的成员都明察秋毫。同时，又自我中心的认为委员会的成员真的会努力用心的调查他们的申请内容，然后委员们就会知道自己到底是不是真的足够优秀。要是申请人真的知道筛选过程是多么的快速和没有人情味，就会更加努力的推销自己，而且对于最终的申请结果也不会过于看重了。11
Footnotes:
There are two different ways people judge you. Sometimes judging you correctly is the end goal. But there's a second much more common type of judgement where it isn't. We tend to regard all judgements of us as the first type. We'd probably be happier if we realized which are and which aren't.
The first type of judgement, the type where judging you is the end goal, include court cases, grades in classes, and most competitions. Such judgements can of course be mistaken, but because the goal is to judge you correctly, there's usually some kind of appeals process. If you feel you've been misjudged, you can protest that you've been treated unfairly.
Nearly all the judgements made on children are of this type, so we get into the habit early in life of thinking that all judgements are.
But in fact there is a second much larger class of judgements where judging you is only a means to something else. These include college admissions, hiring and investment decisions, and of course the judgements made in dating. This kind of judgement is not really about you.
Put yourself in the position of someone selecting players for a national team. Suppose for the sake of simplicity that this is a game with no positions, and that you have to select 20 players. There will be a few stars who clearly should make the team, and many players who clearly shouldn't. The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the borderline cases. Suppose you screw up and underestimate the 20th best player, causing him not to make the team, and his place to be taken by the 21st best. You've still picked a good team. If the players have the usual distribution of ability, the 21st best player will be only slightly worse than the 20th best. Probably the difference between them will be less than the measurement error.
The 20th best player may feel he has been misjudged. But your goal here wasn't to provide a service estimating people's ability. It was to pick a team, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the measurement error, you've still done that optimally.
It's a false analogy even to use the word unfair to describe this kind of misjudgement. It's not aimed at producing a correct estimate of any given individual, but at selecting a reasonably optimal set.
One thing that leads us astray here is that the selector seems to be in a position of power. That makes him seem like a judge. If you regard someone judging you as a customer instead of a judge, the expectation of fairness goes away. The author of a good novel wouldn't complain that readers were unfair for preferring a potboiler with a racy cover. Stupid, perhaps, but not unfair.
Our early training and our self-centeredness combine to make us believe that every judgement of us is about us. In fact most aren't. This is a rare case where being less self-centered will make people more confident. Once you realize how little most people judging you care about judging you accurately—once you realize that because of the normal distribution of most applicant pools, it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgement has the most effect—you won't take rejection so personally.
And curiously enough, taking rejection less personally may help you to get rejected less often. If you think someone judging you will work hard to judge you correctly, you can afford to be passive. But the more you realize that most judgements are greatly influenced by random, extraneous factors—that most people judging you are more like a fickle novel buyer than a wise and perceptive magistrate—the more you realize you can do things to influence the outcome.
One good place to apply this principle is in college applications. Most high school students applying to college do it with the usual child's mix of inferiority and self-centeredness: inferiority in that they assume that admissions committees must be all-seeing; self-centeredness in that they assume admissions committees care enough about them to dig down into their application and figure out whether they're good or not. These combine to make applicants passive in applying and hurt when they're rejected. If college applicants realized how quick and impersonal most selection processes are, they'd make more effort to sell themselves, and take the outcome less personally.