Link: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/face-it-youre-a-crazy-person

摘要

本文作者 Adam Mastroianni 探讨了人们在职业选择中普遍存在的“未拆包”问题，即对理想职业的实际细节缺乏深入了解。他通过“咖啡豆程序”的比喻，指出许多人对开咖啡店的憧憬停留在浪漫化的想象，而忽略了经营一家小企业所需的具体琐碎工作。这种现象也存在于其他职业选择中，例如想成为教授的大学生往往只看到光鲜一面，却未曾考虑实际的教学和研究工作内容。

作者强调，当人们真正“拆包”任何职业时，会发现只有“疯子”才会去做。这里的“疯子”并非指精神疾病，而是指那些在某些方面远超常人、拥有独特偏好和忍耐力的人。例如，外科医生需要日复一日地重复手术，演员需要依赖外貌，婚礼摄影师需要在周末保持清醒。这些职业的成功者，如 YouTube 巨星 Mr. Beast 和畅销小说家 Tracy Wolff，都展现出异于常人的投入和毅力，他们愿意为工作付出常人难以想象的时间和精力。

文章进一步指出，人们之所以难以“拆包”，是因为我们的大脑倾向于将复杂信息打包处理，形成“解释性深度错觉”和“错误共识效应”，即高估自己偏好的普遍性，并认为自己的思维模式是常态。这种认知偏差导致人们难以认识到自己的“疯狂”之处，也难以理解他人独特的偏好。

作者认为，职业选择的困境源于我们缺乏对自身“疯狂”的认识，以及对职业实际需求的理解。他举例说明，一些行政人员讨厌学生，却选择在大学工作；一些皮肤科医生厌恶病人，却从事了这一竞争激烈的专业。相反，当人们的“疯狂”与正确的职业出口匹配时，他们会变得异常强大，例如一个不怕羞辱的大学政客最终成功当选。

文章最后呼吁读者进行“拆包”，即深入探究职业的日常细节，并反思自己是否真正喜欢这些细节。这包括询问具体的工作内容、使用的工具、以及在执行这些任务时的真实感受。作者承认，这种“拆包”过程可能令人不适，但却是解决职业选择困境的关键。他认为，现代社会职业选择的多样性是一个相对较新的问题，我们尚未发展出成熟的文化技术来应对。通过“拆包”，人们可以找到与自己独特“疯狂”相匹配的职业，从而实现个人价值。

内容精简

职业选择中的“未拆包”问题

人们在职业选择中常常陷入一种困境，即对理想职业的实际内容缺乏深入了解，作者称之为“未拆包”问题。这种现象普遍存在，许多人憧憬着某种职业的光鲜外表，却忽略了其背后琐碎、重复甚至令人厌烦的日常工作。作者通过“咖啡豆程序”这一生动比喻，揭示了这种认知偏差。当被问及“想开咖啡店”的人如何获取咖啡豆、选择咖啡杯、烘焙松饼、使用何种收银系统，甚至如何处理员工突发状况等具体问题时，大多数人会感到困惑或不感兴趣。这表明他们对咖啡店经营的想象停留在浪漫化的表层，而非实际运营的细节。如果一个人对这些具体问题不感兴趣，那么他很可能不适合经营咖啡店，因为这些正是咖啡店主日常工作的核心。

这种“未拆包”的现象也延伸到其他职业。例如，许多大学生梦想成为教授，但他们往往只看到教授在讲台上授课、受人尊敬的形象，却从未深入思考教授的实际工作内容，如撰写研究论文、与学生进行一对一交流等。当被问及是否喜欢这些具体工作时，大多数学生会发现自己并不喜欢。这说明他们对教授这一职业的认知，仅仅是一个低分辨率的卡通形象，缺乏对实际工作细节的理解。更常见的情况是，人们甚至没有具体想象，只是反复思考“我是否想成为教授？”而没有进一步探究其内涵。

作者解释了为什么“拆包”如此困难。他将大脑处理信息的方式比作搬家后的箱子：刚开始时，未拆包的箱子显眼且令人困扰；但随着时间的推移，它们会逐渐融入环境，成为“家具”，变得难以察觉。同样，我们大脑中的假设、细微之处和背景信息也会被“打包”起来，变得难以感知。这种机制在一定程度上是必要的，因为如果所有信息都处于“拆包”状态，那么回答一个简单问题就会像在巨大杂物堆中寻找一只袜子一样困难。然而，这种打包机制也阻碍了我们对职业细节的深入理解，导致我们常常基于不完整的想象做出职业选择。

只有“疯子”才适合某些职业

当人们真正深入“拆包”任何职业时，会发现一个令人惊讶的结论：只有“疯子”才应该从事这些工作。这里的“疯子”并非指精神疾病患者，而是指那些在某些方面远超常人、拥有独特偏好、极度投入或具备非凡忍耐力的人。例如，外科医生需要每周重复进行相同的程序十几次，持续三十五年；演员的职业生涯可能取决于其面部骨骼结构；婚礼摄影师则需要在每个周六晚上作为酒店宴会厅里唯一清醒的人。对于大多数人来说，这些职业的日常工作听起来可能令人望而却步，但正是那些对这些特定任务充满热情、甚至有些“疯狂”的人，才真正适合并能在这些领域取得成功。

高地位的职业尤其难以“拆包”，因为它们的优点显而易见且极具吸引力，而缺点却常常被刻意隐藏，且只有极少数人能够忍受。作者以 YouTube 巨星 Mr. Beast 和畅销小说家 Tracy Wolff 为例，生动地说明了这一点。Mr. Beast 为了制作视频，愿意进行数到十万、活埋自己、穿巨型鞋子走马拉松等极端行为，他将频道视为自己的“孩子”，并为此付出了全部生活。他的“泄露”制作指南揭示了他异于常人的投入和疯狂。尽管 Gen Z 中有超过一半的人希望成为社交媒体明星，但他们中的大多数人并未“拆包”成为 Mr. Beast 这样的人所需的巨大付出和“疯狂”程度。

同样，畅销小说家 Tracy Wolff 在成名之前，曾在11年间创作了超过六十本书，平均每年5.5本，并且至今仍在高产。她的作品涵盖了多种浪漫小说类型，其网站甚至需要搜索栏来管理庞大的书库。这种惊人的创作速度和对特定类型文学的专注，也体现了一种常人难以企及的“疯狂”和投入。

作者强调，这些成功人士的“疯狂”之处不仅体现在他们的产出上，更体现在他们投入工作的时间上。人们往往忽视了一个显而易见却又被忽视的洞察：人们在工作中花费了大量时间，每天数小时，每周数天。没有任何意志力能够支撑一个人度过一生中无数个周二下午的重复工作。因此，无论一个人从事什么工作，他都必须真正“想”去做那些日常任务。作者以自己小时候被建议打篮球的经历为例，指出人们常常只看到运动的光环，却忽略了每天数小时的枯燥训练、替补席上的等待以及对比赛结果的承受。只有当一个人真正愿意投入这些具体的、重复的、甚至可能令人沮丧的日常任务时，他才真正适合这项工作。

认识你自己的“疯狂”

作者指出，每个人都是一个“疯子”，即在至少一个方面，甚至在许多方面，都远超常人。这种“疯狂”并非指精神疾病，而是指我们每个人都有独特的偏好、习惯和忍耐力，这些在他人看来可能完全不可思议。例如，有人凌晨五点起床制作杏仁羊角面包，有人喜欢看电视高尔夫，有人愿意驾驶八万磅的半挂卡车穿越全国运送指尖陀螺。还有人喜欢摩擦泡沫塑料的声音，有人观看关于拜占庭帝国的94集 YouTube 系列视频，甚至有人在长途飞行中能一直盯着前方。对于大多数人来说，这些行为都显得“完全疯狂”。

然而，我们通常不会意识到自己的“疯狂”，因为我们倾向于高估自己偏好的普遍性，这种现象在心理学上被称为“错误共识效应”。我们很难站在他人的角度思考问题，除非遇到直接的反驳证据，否则我们都会认为自己的心理设定是默认的、普遍的。我们的独特之处可能从未被我们自己察觉。作者举了一个生动的例子：有人一生都看到天空中挂着三轮模糊的月亮，直到戴上眼镜才发现别人只看到一轮清晰的月亮。这说明我们对世界的感知和偏好可能与他人大相径庭，而我们却浑然不觉。

作者的经验表明，每当深入“拆包”一个人时，总会发现他们身上一些极其古怪的特质。有时这些特质显而易见，例如一位朋友收集了两万张“发现”的照片；有时则深藏不露，因为当事人自己并不认为那是“疯狂”，例如一位朋友因为前男友不够“威胁”而分手。

正是因为人们不了解自己所拥有的“疯狂”，也不了解职业所要求的“疯狂”，所以他们在选择职业时常常感到“大脑便秘”，并最终选择了错误的职业。他们试图将自己“方块形”的个性强行塞入“圆形”的职业中。作者举例说明，一些大学行政人员发现大学生令人烦恼和恼火，却选择在大学工作，他们甚至不认为有人会喜欢与18-22岁的年轻人相处。另一个例子是，一位皮肤科医生似乎总是对病人感到不耐烦，而与此同时，YouTube 上却有近900万订阅者关注“痘痘医生”的频道，这表明有些人对痤疮充满兴趣。这说明，通过强大的意志力、缺乏自我认知以及拒绝“拆包”细节，一个人可以获得一份自己讨厌的工作，并为此奋斗一生。

相反，当人们的“疯狂”与正确的职业出口匹配时，他们会变得异常强大。作者提到了一个大学同学丹尼，他有一种对政治特别有用的“疯狂”：他无法感到羞辱。丹尼在大一入学时就宣布竞选学生会主席，并打印了上千份包含他 SAT 成绩的简历，贴满了校园。尽管他因此受到广泛嘲笑，但第二年他却赢得了选举。事实证明，人们会投票给他们认识的名字，而认识的原因并不重要。丹尼的例子说明，独特的“疯狂”——比如不怕羞辱——可以成为成功的强大驱动力。

如何进行“拆包”

“拆包”是一个简单且免费的过程，但很少有人真正去做，因为它感觉奇怪且不自然。承认自己对事物缺乏解释性深度，承认自己对正在发生的事情一无所知，并不断提出“愚蠢”的问题直到情况改变，这都是令人不适的。

更糟糕的是，人们在谈论自己和工作时，往往停留在抽象层面，例如说自己是“开发和销售之间的联络人”。因此，在“拆包”一个人的工作时，需要不断追问具体细节：你今天早上做了什么？和我谈完后你会做什么？这通常是你做的事情吗？如果你整天坐在电脑前，电脑上有什么？你使用什么程序？这听起来很无聊，你喜欢做这些吗，还是只是忍受？

通过“拆包”，你会发现各种意想不到的事情，例如消防员大部分时间并不灭火，或者 Twitch 主播不仅仅是“玩电子游戏”，他们每天玩12小时。但“拆包”不仅仅是了解工作，更是了解自己。这项工作的哪些方面与你以前做过的事情相似？你喜欢做那些事情吗？这里的问题不是“你喜欢被称为做这些事的人吗？”也不是“你喜欢已经做过这些事吗？”，而是在你实际做这些事的时候，你是想停下来，还是想继续下去？这些问题听起来可能很“愚蠢”，但它们的答案常常令人惊讶。

作者以自己的经历为例，他从未在从事任何工作之前进行“拆包”，总是等到第一天上班才发现自己陷入了什么境地。例如，他曾在2014年夏天在一个17岁青少年夏令营担任辅导员，尽管他本可以轻易知道这份工作需要他做一些他讨厌的事情，比如与17岁青少年相处。他可能无法预知具体任务，如“护送孩子穿过校园以防他们逃进树林”或“偷偷闻孩子们的呼吸以判断是否有人带酒参加舞会”，但如果他稍作“拆包”，他就会选择不同的方式度过夏天。

作者认为，人们在职业选择上挣扎，是因为我们尚未发展出应对这一问题的文化技术。在人类进化的早期，职业选择并不多；农业社会时期，几乎所有人都是农民。“我应该如何度过一生？”是一个1850年之后才出现的现代问题，这意味着我们还没有足够的时间来解决它。

作者相信，“拆包”是解决这一问题的开端。通过剖开那些“箱子”，倾倒出你可能未来的所有组成部分，你将找到一份与你自身“疯狂”相匹配的工作。然后，他鼓励人们去追求它，即使未能达到预期，也能在自己的“三轮月亮”中找到归属。

问答

什么是“未拆包”问题？ “未拆包”问题是指人们在职业选择中，对理想职业的实际细节、日常任务和潜在挑战缺乏深入了解，往往只停留在浪漫化或抽象的想象层面。
“咖啡豆程序”的比喻说明了什么？ “咖啡豆程序”说明了许多人对理想职业（如开咖啡店）的想象是肤浅的，他们只看到光鲜的一面，而忽略了经营一家小企业所需的具体、琐碎且可能枯燥的日常工作细节。如果对这些细节不感兴趣，就不适合从事该职业。
为什么作者说只有“疯子”才适合某些职业？ 作者用“疯子”来形容那些在某些方面远超常人、拥有独特偏好、极度投入或具备非凡忍耐力的人。他认为，许多职业的日常工作对于大多数人来说是重复、枯燥或充满挑战的，只有那些对这些特定任务充满热情、甚至有些“疯狂”的人，才能长期坚持并取得成功。
“错误共识效应”如何影响职业选择？ “错误共识效应”是指人们倾向于高估自己偏好的普遍性，认为自己的思维模式和喜好是常态。这导致人们难以认识到自己的“疯狂”之处，也难以理解他人独特的偏好，从而在职业选择中做出不适合自己的决定。
为什么“拆包”过程会令人不适？ “拆包”过程要求人们承认自己对事物缺乏解释性深度，承认自己对正在发生的事情一无所知，并不断提出“愚蠢”的问题直到情况改变。这种自我反省和面对未知的感觉是令人不适的。
如何有效地进行“拆包”？ 有效地“拆包”需要深入探究职业的日常细节，包括具体的工作内容、使用的工具、以及在执行这些任务时的真实感受。这包括询问“你今天早上做了什么？”、“你使用什么程序？”以及“你喜欢做这些吗，还是只是忍受？”等具体问题，并反思自己是否真正喜欢这些细节。
现代社会职业选择的困境根源是什么？ 作者认为，现代社会职业选择的多样性是一个相对较新的问题（约1850年之后），人类尚未发展出成熟的文化技术来应对。在过去，职业选择非常有限，因此人们没有必要进行复杂的职业规划。
“拆包”的最终目标是什么？ “拆包”的最终目标是帮助人们找到一份与自己独特“疯狂”相匹配的工作。通过深入了解职业的真实面貌和自己的真实偏好，人们可以做出更明智的职业选择，从而实现个人价值。

原文

Face it: you’re a crazy person

OR: why your brain needs a boxcutter

photo cred: my dad

I meet a lot of people who don’t like their jobs, and when I ask them what they’d rather do instead, about 75% say something like, “Oh, I dunno, I’d really love to run a little coffee shop.” If I’m feeling mischievous that day, I ask them one question: “Where would you get the coffee beans?”

If that’s a stumper, here are some followups:

Which kind of coffee mug is best?
How much does a La Marzocco espresso machine cost?
Would you bake your blueberry muffins in-house or would you buy them from a third party?
What software do you want to use for your point-of-sale system? What about for scheduling shifts?
What do you do when your assistant manager calls you at 6am and says they can’t come into work because they have diarrhea?

The point of the Coffee Beans Procedure is this: if you can’t answer those questions, if you don’t even find them interesting, then you should not open a coffee shop, because this is how you will spend your days as a cafe owner. You will not be sitting droopy-lidded in an easy chair, sipping a latte and greeting your regulars as you page through Anna Karenina. You will be running a small business that sells hot bean water.

The Coffee Beans Procedure is a way of doing what psychologists call unpacking. Our imaginations are inherently limited; they can’t include all details at once. (Otherwise you run into Borges’ map problem—if you want a map that contains all the details of the territory that it’s supposed to represent, then the map has to be the size of the territory itself.) Unpacking is a way of re-inflating all the little particulars that had to be flattened so your imagination could produce a quick preview of the future, like turning a napkin sketch into a blueprint.1

When people have a hard time figuring out what to do with their lives, it’s often because they haven’t unpacked. For example, in grad school I worked with lots of undergrads who thought they wanted to be professors. Then I’d send ‘em to my advisor Dan, and he would unpack them in 10 seconds flat. “I do this,” he would say, miming typing on a keyboard, “And I do this,” he would add, gesturing to the student and himself. “I write research papers and I talk to students. Would you like to do those things?”

Most of those students would go, “Oh, no I would not like to do those things.” The actual content of a professor’s life had never occurred to them. If you could pop the tops of their skulls and see what they thought being a professor was like, you’d probably find some low-res cartoon version of themselves walking around campus in a tweed jacket going, “I’m a professor, that’s me! Professor here!” and everyone waving back to them going, “Hi professor!”

Or, even more likely, they weren’t picturing anything at all. They were just thinking the same thing over and over again: “Do I want to be a professor? Hmm, I’m not sure. Do I want to be a professor? Hmm, I’m not sure.”

Why is it so hard to unpack, even a little bit? Well, you know how when you move to a new place and all of your unpacked boxes confront you every time you come home? And you know how, if you just leave them there for a few weeks, the boxes stop being boxes and start being furniture, just part of the layout of your apartment, almost impossible to perceive? That’s what it’s like in the mind. The assumptions, the nuances, the background research all get taped up and tucked away. That’s a good thing—if you didn’t keep most of your thoughts packed, trying to answer a question like “Do I want to be a professor?” would be like dumping everything you own into a giant pile and then trying to find your one lucky sock.

THE BEAST AND THE WOLFF

When you fully unpack any job, you’ll discover something astounding: only a crazy person should do it.

Do you want to be a surgeon? = Do you want to do the same procedure 15 times a week for the next 35 years?
Do you want to be an actor? = Do you want your career to depend on having the right cheekbones?
Do you want to be a wedding photographer? = Do you want to spend every Saturday night as the only sober person in a hotel ballroom?

If you think no one would answer “yes” to those questions, you’ve missed the point: almost no one would answer “yes” to those questions, and those proud few are the ones who should be surgeons, actors, and wedding photographers.

High-status professions are the hardest ones to unpack because the upsides are obvious and appealing, while the downsides are often deliberately hidden and tolerable only to a tiny minority. For instance, shortly after college, I thought I would post a few funny videos on YouTube and, you know, become instantly famous2. I gave up basically right away. I didn’t have the madness necessary to post something every week, let alone every day, nor did it ever occur to me that I might have to fill an entire house with slime, or drive a train into a giant pit, or buy prosthetic legs for 2,000 people. If you read the “leaked” production guide written by Mr. Beast, the world’s most successful YouTuber, you’ll quickly discover how nutso he is:

I’m willing to count to one hundred thousand, bury myself alive, or walk a marathon in the world’s largest pairs of shoes if I must. I just want to do what makes me happy and ultimately the viewers happy. This channel is my baby and I’ve given up my life for it. I’m so emotionally connected to it that it’s sad lol.

(Those aren’t hypothetical examples, by the way; Mr. Beast really did all those things.)

Apparently 57% of Gen Z would like to be social media stars, and that’s almost certainly because they haven’t unpacked what it would actually take to make it. How many of them have Mr. Beast-level insanity? How many are willing to become indentured servants to the algorithm, to organize their lives around feeding it whatever content it demands that day? One in a million?

Another example: lots of people would like to be novelists, but when you unpack what novelists actually do, you realize that basically no one should be a novelist. For instance, how did Tracy Wolff, author of the Crave “romantasy” series, become one of the most successful writers alive? Well, this New Yorker piece casually mentions that Wolff wrote “more than sixty” books between 2007 and 2018. That’s 5.5 novels per year, every year, for 11 years, before she hit it big. And she’s still going! She has so many books now that her website has a search bar. Or you can browse through categories like “Contemporary Romance (Rock Stars/Bad Boys)”, “Contemporary Erotic Billionaire Romance”, “Contemporary Romance (Harlequin Desire)”, and “Contemporary New Adult Romance (Snowboarders!)”.

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. (source)

Wolff and Beast might seem extreme, but they’re only extreme in terms of output, not in terms of time on task. This is the obvious-but-overlooked insight that you find when you unpack: people spend so much time doing their jobs. Hours! Every day! It’s 2pm on a Tuesday and you’re doing your job, and now it’s 3:47pm and you’re still doing it. There’s no amount of willpower that can carry you through a lifetime of Tuesday afternoons. Whatever you’re supposed to be doing in those hours, you’d better want to do it.

For some reason, this never seems to occur to people. I was the tallest kid in my class growing up, and older men would often clap me on the back and say, “You’re gonna be a great basketball player one day!” When I’d balk, they’d be like, “Don’t you want to be on a team? Don’t you want represent your school? Don’t you want to wear a varsity jacket and go to regionals?” But those are the wrong questions. The right questions, the unpacked questions, are: “Do you want to spend three hours practicing basketball every day? Do you want to dribble and shoot over and over again? On Thursday nights, do you want to ride the bus and sit on the bench while your more talented friends compete, secretly hoping that Brent sprains his ankle so you could have a chance to play?” And honestly, no! I don’t! I’d rather be at home playing Runescape.

When you come down from the 30,000-foot view that your imagination offers you by default, when you lay out all the minutiae of a possible future, when you think of your life not as an impressionistic blur, but as a series of discrete Tuesday afternoons full of individual moments that you will live in chronological order and without exception, only then do you realize that most futures make sense exclusively for a very specific kind of person. Dare I say, a crazy person.

Fortunately, I have good news: you are a crazy person.

YOU’RE NUTS

I don’t mean you’re crazy in the sense that you have a mental illness, although maybe you do. I mean crazy in the sense that you are far outside the norm in at least one way, and perhaps in many ways.

source

Some of you guys wake up at 5am to make almond croissants, some of you watch golf on TV, and some of you are willing to drive an 80,000-pound semi truck full of fidget spinners across the country. There are people out there who like the sound of rubbing sheets of Styrofoam together, people who watch 94-part YouTube series about the Byzantine Empire, people who can spend an entire long-haul flight just staring straight ahead. Do you not realize that, to me, and to almost everyone else, you are all completely nuts?

No, you probably don’t realize that, because none of us do. We tend to overestimate the prevalence of our preferences, a phenomenon that psychologists call the “false consensus effect”3. This is probably because it’s really really hard to take other people’s perspectives, so unless we run directly into disconfirming evidence, we assume that all of our mental settings are, in fact, the defaults. Our idiosyncrasies may never even occur to us. You can, for instance, spend your whole life seeing three moons in the sky, without realizing that everybody else sees only one:

the first time i looked up into the night sky after i got glasses, [I] realized that you can, in fact, see the moon clearly. i assumed people who depicted it in art were taking creative license bc they knew it should look like that for some reason, and that the human eye was incapable of seeing the moon without also seeing two other, blurrier moons, sort of overlapping it

In my experience, whenever you unpack somebody, you inevitably discover something extremely weird about them. Sometimes you don’t have to dig that far, like when your friend tells you that she likes “found” photographs—the abandoned snapshots that turn up at yard sales and charity shops—and then adds that she has collected 20,000 of them. But sometimes the craziness is buried deep, often because people don’t think it’s crazy at all, like when a friend I knew for years casually disclosed that she had dumped all of her previous boyfriends because they had been insufficiently “menacing”.

DR. PIMPLE POPPER WILL SEE YOU NOW

This is why people get so brain-constipated when they try to choose a career, and why they often pick the wrong one: they don’t understand the craziness that they have to offer, nor the craziness that will be demanded of them, and so they spend their lives jamming their square-peg selves into round-hole jobs. For example, when I was in academia, there was this bizarre contingent of administrators who found college students vaguely vexing and exasperating. When the sophomores would, say, make a snowman in the courtyard with bodacious boobs, these dour admins would shake their heads and be like, “College kids are a real pain in the ass, huh!” They didn’t seem to realize that their colleagues actually liked hanging out with 18-22 year-olds, and that the occasional busty snowman was actually what made the job interesting. I don’t think these curmudgeonly managers even thought such a preference was possible.

Another example: when I was a pimply-faced teenager, I went to this dermatologist who always seemed annoyed to see patients. Like, how dare we bother him by seeking the services that he provides? Meanwhile, Dr. Pimple Popper—a YouTube account that does exactly what it says on the tin—has nearly 9 million subscribers. Clearly, there are people out there who find acne fascinating, and dermatology is the one of the most competitive medical specialties, but apparently you can, through sheer force of will, lack of self-knowledge, and refusal to unpack the details, earn the right to do a job you hate for the rest of your life.

On the other hand, when people match their crazy to the right outlet, they become terrifyingly powerful. A friend from college recently reminded me of this guy I’ll call Danny, who was crazy in a way that was particularly useful for politics, namely, he was incapable of feeling humiliated. When Danny got to campus freshman year, he announced his candidacy for student body president by printing out like a thousand copies of his CV—including his SAT score!—and plastering them all over campus. He was, of course, widely mocked. And then the next year, he won. It turns out that people vote for the name that they recognize, and it doesn’t really matter why they recognize it. By the time Danny ran for reelection and won in a landslide, he was no longer the goofy freshman who taped a picture of his own face to every lamp post. At that point, he was the president.4 5

COPS FOR TEENS

Unpacking is easy and free, but almost no one ever does it because it feels weird and unnatural. It’s uncomfortable to confront your own illusion of explanatory depth, to admit that you really have no idea what’s going on, and to keep asking stupid questions until that changes.

Making matters worse, people are happy to talk about themselves and their jobs, but they do it at this unhelpful, abstract level where they say things like, “oh, I’m the liaison between development and sales”. So when you’re unpacking someone’s job, you really gotta push: what did you do this morning? What will you do after talking to me? Is that what you usually do? If you’re sitting at your computer all day, what’s on your computer? What programs are you using? Wow, that sounds really boring, do you like doing that, or do you endure it?

You’ll discover all sorts of unexpected things when unpacking, like how firefighters mostly don’t fight fires, or how Twitch streamers don’t just “play video games”; they play video games for 12 hours a day. But you’re not just unpacking the job; you’re also unpacking yourself. Do any aspects of this job resemble things you’ve done before, and did you like doing those things? Not “Did you like being known as __ a person who does those things?” or “Do you like _having done_ those things?” but when you were actually doing them, did you want to stop, or did you want to continue? These questions sound so stupid that it’s no wonder no one asks them, and yet, somehow, the answers often surprise us.

That’s certainly true for me, anyway. I never unpacked any job I ever had before I had it. I would just show up on the first day and discover what I had gotten myself into, as if the content of a job was simply unknowable before I started doing it, a sort of “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” kind of situation. That’s how I spent the summer of 2014 as a counselor at a camp for 17-year-olds, even though I could have easily known that job would require activities that I hated, like being around 17-year-olds. Could I have known specifically that my job would include such tasks as “escorting kids across campus because otherwise they’ll flee into the woods” or “trying to figure out whether anyone brought booze to the dance by surreptitiously sniffing kids’ breath?” No. But had I unpacked even a little bit, I would have picked a different way to spend my summer, like selling booze to kids outside the dance.

It’s no wonder that everyone struggles to figure what to do with their lives: we have not developed the cultural technology to deal with this problem because we never had to. We didn’t exactly evolve in an ancestral environment with a lot of career opportunities. And then, once we invented agriculture, almost everyone was a farmer the next 10,000 years. “What should I do with my life?” is really a post-1850 problem, which means, in the big scheme of things, we haven’t had any time to work on it.

The beginning of that work is, I believe, unpacking. As you slice open the boxes and dump out the components of your possible futures, I hope you find the job that’s crazy in the same way that you are crazy. And then I hope you go for it! Shoot for the stars! Even if you miss, you’ll still land on one of the three moons.

Experimental History is the blog equivalent of filling your house with slime

You can think of unpacking as the opposite of attribute substitution; see How to Be Wrong and Feel Bad.

In my defense, this was a decade ago, closer to the days when you could become world famous by doing a few different dances in a row.

There is also a “false uniqueness effect”, but it seems to show up more rarely, on traits where people are motivated to be better than others, or when people have biased information about themselves. So people who like Hawaiian pizza probably think their opinion is more common than it is (false consensus). But if you pride yourself on the quality of your homemade Hawaiian pizza, you probably also overestimate your pizza-making skills (false uniqueness).

I’m pretty sure every campus politician was like this. During one election cycle, the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups started competing petitions to remove/keep a brand of hummus in the dining hall that allegedly had ties to the IDF. One of the guys running for class rep signed both petitions. When someone called him out, his response was something like, “I’m just glad we’re having dialogue.” Anyway, he won the election.

A few years later, a sophomore ran for student body president on a parody campaign, promising waffle fries and “bike reform.” He won a plurality of votes in the general election, but lost in the runoff, though he did get a write-up in the New York Times. Now he’s a doctor.

Top-tier insanity can sometimes make up for mid-tier talent. I’ve been in five-ish different improv communities, and in every single one there was someone who was pretty successful despite not being very good at improv. These folks were willing to mortgage the rest of their life to support their comedy habit—they’d half-ass their jobs, skip class, ignore their partners and kids, and in return they could show up for every audition, every gig, every side project. Their laser focus on their dumb art didn’t make them great, but it did make them available. Everybody knew them because they were always around, and so when one of your cast mates dropped out at the last second and you needed someone to fill in, you’d go, “We can always call Eric.” If you’ve ever seen someone on Saturday Night Live who isn’t very funny and wondered to yourself, “How did they get there?”, maybe that’s how.

译文

面对现实吧：你是个疯子

或者说：为什么你的大脑需要一把美工刀

图片来源：我爸爸

我遇到很多人不喜欢自己的工作，当我问他们更想做什么时，大约75%的人会说：“哦，我不知道，我真的很想开一家小咖啡馆。”如果那天我心情不好，我会问他们一个问题：“咖啡豆从哪里来？”

如果这个问题难住了你，这里还有一些后续问题：

哪种咖啡杯最好？
La Marzocco意式浓缩咖啡机多少钱？
你的蓝莓松饼是自己烤还是从第三方购买？
你想用什么软件作为销售点系统？排班呢？
当你的助理经理早上6点打电话告诉你他得了腹泻不能来上班时，你怎么办？

“咖啡豆程序”的目的是：如果你回答不了这些问题，甚至觉得它们不“有趣”，那么你就不应该开咖啡馆，因为这就是你作为咖啡馆老板的日常。你不会坐在舒适的椅子上，半闭着眼睛，啜饮着拿铁，翻阅着《安娜·卡列尼娜》，和你的常客打招呼。你将经营一家出售热豆水的公司。

“咖啡豆程序”是一种心理学家称之为“展开”（unpacking）的方法。我们的想象力天生有限，无法同时包含所有细节。（否则你就会遇到博尔赫斯的地图问题——如果你想要一张包含其所代表领土所有细节的地图，那么这张地图就必须和领土本身一样大。）展开是一种重新填充所有那些为了让你的想象力快速预览未来而不得不扁平化的细节的方式，就像把餐巾纸上的草图变成蓝图一样。1

当人们难以弄清楚自己的人生方向时，往往是因为他们没有“展开”。例如，在研究生院时，我与许多认为自己想成为教授的本科生一起工作。然后我会把他们送到我的导师丹那里，他会在10秒钟内把他们“展开”。“我做这个，”他会一边说一边模仿在键盘上打字，“我还做这个，”他会补充说，一边指着学生和自己。“我写研究论文，我与学生交谈。你想做这些事情吗？”

大多数学生会说：“哦，不，我不想做那些事情。”教授生活的实际内容从未出现在他们的脑海中。如果你能打开他们的头盖骨，看看他们“认为”当教授是什么样子，你可能会发现一个低分辨率的卡通版自己，穿着粗花呢夹克在校园里走来走去，说：“我是教授，那就是我！教授在这里！”然后每个人都向他们挥手说：“嗨，教授！”

或者，更有可能的是，他们根本什么都没想。他们只是反复思考同样的事情：“我想当教授吗？嗯，我不确定。我想当教授吗？嗯，我不确定。”

为什么“展开”如此困难，哪怕只是一点点？你知道当你搬到一个新地方时，你所有未拆开的箱子每次回家都会面对你吗？你知道如果把它们放在那里几周，箱子就不再是箱子，而变成了“家具”，只是你公寓布局的一部分，几乎无法察觉吗？大脑里就是这样。假设、细微之处、背景研究都被打包并藏起来了。这是一件好事——如果你不把大部分想法都打包起来，试图回答“我想当教授吗？”这样的问题，就像把你所有的东西都倒进一大堆，然后试图找到你那只幸运的袜子一样。

野兽与沃尔夫

当你完全“展开”任何一份工作时，你会发现一些令人惊讶的事情：只有疯子才应该做这份工作。

你想成为一名外科医生吗？= 你想在接下来的35年里，每周做15次同样的手术吗？
你想成为一名演员吗？= 你想让你的事业取决于你是否有合适的颧骨吗？
你想成为一名婚礼摄影师吗？= 你想每个周六晚上都成为酒店宴会厅里唯一清醒的人吗？

如果你认为没有人会回答“是”这些问题，那么你就错过了重点：几乎没有人会回答“是”这些问题，而那些少数自豪的人才是应该成为外科医生、演员和婚礼摄影师的人。

高地位的职业是最难“展开”的，因为其优点显而易见且吸引人，而缺点往往被刻意隐藏，只有极少数人才能忍受。例如，大学毕业后不久，我曾想在YouTube上发布一些有趣的视频，然后，你知道的，立刻成名2。我几乎立刻就放弃了。我没有每周，更不用说每天发布视频的疯狂劲头，我也从未想过我可能需要用史莱姆填满一整栋房子，或者把火车开进一个巨大的坑里，或者为2000人购买假肢。如果你阅读了世界上最成功的YouTube博主Mr. Beast撰写的“泄露”制作指南，你会很快发现他有多么疯狂：

我愿意数到十万，活埋自己，或者穿着世界上最大的鞋子跑一场马拉松，如果我必须这样做的话。我只是想做让我开心，最终也让观众开心的事情。这个频道是我的孩子，我为它付出了我的生命。我与它的情感联系如此之深，以至于有点悲伤，哈哈。

（顺便说一句，这些并非假设性的例子；Mr. Beast确实做了所有这些事情。）

显然，57%的Z世代希望成为社交媒体明星，这几乎肯定是因为他们没有“展开”真正需要付出什么才能成功。他们中有多少人拥有Mr. Beast那样的疯狂？有多少人愿意成为算法的契约仆人，围绕着每天算法要求的内容来组织自己的生活？百万分之一？

另一个例子：很多人想成为小说家，但当你“展开”小说家实际做的事情时，你会发现基本上没有人应该成为小说家。例如，畅销“浪漫奇幻”系列《渴望》的作者特蕾西·沃尔夫是如何成为最成功的作家之一的？嗯，这篇《纽约客》文章随意提到，沃尔夫在2007年至2018年间写了“六十多本”书。这意味着在成名之前，她每年写5.5部小说，持续了11年。而且她还在继续！她现在有如此多的书，以至于她的网站上有一个搜索栏。或者你可以浏览“当代浪漫（摇滚明星/坏男孩）”、“当代情色亿万富翁浪漫”、“当代浪漫（哈珀·柯林斯欲望系列）”和“当代新成人浪漫（滑雪者！）”等类别。

你可能不喜欢，但这才是巅峰表现。（来源）

沃尔夫和野兽可能看起来很极端，但他们只是在产出方面极端，而不是在任务时间方面。这是当你“展开”时发现的显而易见但被忽视的洞察：人们花大量时间做他们的工作。几个小时！每天！周二下午两点，你在工作，现在是三点四十七分，你还在工作。没有任何意志力能让你度过一辈子的周二下午。无论你在这几个小时里应该做什么，你最好“想”做它。

不知何故，人们似乎从未想到这一点。我从小就是班上最高的孩子，年长的男人经常拍着我的背说：“你将来会成为一名伟大的篮球运动员！”当我犹豫时，他们会说：“你不想加入球队吗？你不想代表你的学校吗？你不想穿校队夹克去参加地区赛吗？”但这些都是错误的问题。正确的问题，即“展开”的问题是：“你愿意每天花三个小时练习篮球吗？你愿意一遍又一遍地运球和投篮吗？周四晚上，你愿意坐公交车，坐在替补席上，看着你更有天赋的朋友比赛，暗自希望布伦特扭伤脚踝，这样你就有机会上场吗？”老实说，不！我不想！我宁愿在家玩《符文工厂》。

当你从想象力默认提供的3万英尺高空俯瞰，当你铺陈出未来可能的所有细枝末节，当你将生活不再视为印象派的模糊，而是视为一系列离散的周二下午，充满你将按时间顺序无一例外地度过的每一个瞬间时，只有那时你才会意识到，大多数未来只对一种非常特定的人有意义。我敢说，一个“疯子”。

幸运的是，我有个好消息：你就是个疯子。

你疯了

我不是说你患有精神疾病，尽管你可能确实有。我的意思是，你至少在一个方面，甚至在许多方面，都远远超出了常态。

来源

你们有些人早上五点起床做杏仁羊角面包，有些人看电视高尔夫，还有些人愿意开着八万磅重的装满指尖陀螺的半挂卡车横穿全国。有些人喜欢摩擦泡沫塑料板的声音，有些人看94集的拜占庭帝国YouTube系列，有些人可以在长途飞行中只是直视前方。你们难道没有意识到，对我，以及对几乎所有人来说，你们都完全疯了吗？

不，你可能没有意识到，因为我们都没有。我们倾向于高估我们偏好的普遍性，这种现象心理学家称之为“虚假共识效应”3。这可能是因为很难真正从他人的角度看问题，所以除非我们直接遇到反驳证据，否则我们都会认为我们所有的心理设定实际上都是默认设置。我们的怪癖甚至可能从未被我们意识到。例如，你可以一生都看到天上有三颗月亮，却不知道其他人只看到一颗：

我戴上眼镜后第一次仰望夜空，才意识到你确实能清楚地看到月亮。我原以为艺术作品中描绘月亮的人是出于艺术创作的自由，因为他们知道月亮应该那样，而人眼无法在看到月亮的同时不看到另外两颗模糊的、有些重叠的月亮。

根据我的经验，每当你“展开”一个人时，你总会发现他们身上一些极其奇怪的地方。有时你不需要挖得太深，比如当你的朋友告诉你她喜欢“发现”的照片——那些在旧货市场和慈善商店里出现的被遗弃的快照——然后又补充说她已经收集了2万张。但有时这种疯狂深埋其中，通常是因为人们根本不认为那是疯狂，比如我认识多年的一个朋友，她随意透露她甩掉了所有前男友，因为他们不够“凶险”。

痘痘医生现在就诊

这就是为什么人们在选择职业时会感到大脑堵塞，以及为什么他们经常选择错误的职业：他们不了解自己所能提供的疯狂，也不了解将对他们提出的疯狂要求，因此他们一生都在将自己方方正正的个性塞进圆孔般的工作中。例如，当我在学术界时，有一群奇怪的行政人员，他们觉得大学生有点烦人、令人恼火。当大二学生，比如说，在庭院里堆了一个胸部丰满的雪人时，这些严肃的行政人员会摇摇头说：“大学生真是个麻烦，是吧！”他们似乎没有意识到他们的同事实际上喜欢和18-22岁的年轻人在一起，偶尔出现的丰满雪人实际上正是这份工作的有趣之处。我不认为这些脾气暴躁的管理者甚至认为这种偏好是“可能”的。

另一个例子：当我还是个满脸痘痘的少年时，我去看了一个皮肤科医生，他似乎总是对看病人感到恼火。好像我们寻求他提供的服务是在打扰他一样。与此同时，Dr. Pimple Popper（痘痘医生）——一个YouTube账号，内容正如其名——拥有近900万订阅者。显然，有些人觉得痤疮很有趣，而皮肤科是竞争最激烈的医学专业之一，但显然，你可以通过纯粹的意志力、缺乏自我认知以及拒绝“展开”细节，获得一份你余生都会讨厌的工作。

另一方面，当人们将自己的疯狂与正确的出口匹配时，他们会变得异常强大。一位大学朋友最近让我想起了我称之为丹尼的这个人，他以一种对政治特别有用的方式疯狂，那就是他无法感到羞辱。丹尼大一到校园时，他通过打印大约一千份他的简历——包括他的SAT分数！——并将其贴满校园，宣布他竞选学生会主席。他当然受到了广泛嘲笑。然后第二年，他赢了。事实证明，人们会投票给他们认识的名字，而他们认识这个名字的原因并不重要。当丹尼竞选连任并以压倒性优势获胜时，他不再是那个把自己的照片贴在每个路灯上的傻气大一新生了。那时，他已经是“主席”了。4 5

青少年警察

“展开”既简单又免费，但几乎没有人会这样做，因为它感觉奇怪而不自然。面对自己的解释深度错觉，承认自己真的不知道发生了什么，并不断提出愚蠢的问题直到改变，这让人感到不舒服。

更糟糕的是，人们乐于谈论自己和自己的工作，但他们是在这种无益的抽象层面上进行的，他们会说诸如“哦，我是开发和销售之间的联络人”之类的话。所以当你“展开”某人的工作时，你真的需要深入追问：你今天早上做了什么？和我谈完之后你会做什么？你通常都做这些吗？如果你整天坐在电脑前，你的电脑上有什么？你正在使用什么程序？哇，那听起来真无聊，你“喜欢”做那些事，还是“忍受”它们？

当你“展开”时，你会发现各种意想不到的事情，比如消防员大多不灭火，或者Twitch主播不只是“玩电子游戏”；他们每天玩12个小时的电子游戏。但你不仅仅是在“展开”这份工作；你也在“展开”你自己。这份工作的任何方面是否与你以前做过的事情相似，你喜欢做那些事情吗？不是“你喜欢被“称为”做那些事情的人吗？”也不是“你喜欢“已经做过”那些事情吗？”而是当你实际做它们的时候，你是想停下来，还是想继续？这些问题听起来如此愚蠢，难怪没有人问它们，然而，不知何故，答案常常让我们感到惊讶。

对我来说，情况确实如此。我从未在从事任何工作之前“展开”过它。我只是在第一天出现，然后发现自己陷入了什么境地，仿佛一份工作的内容在我开始做之前是根本无法得知的，就像那种“我们必须通过法案才能知道里面有什么”的情况。这就是我2014年夏天作为17岁青少年夏令营辅导员的方式，尽管我本可以很容易地知道这份工作会要求我讨厌的活动，比如和17岁的青少年在一起。我能具体知道我的工作会包括“护送孩子穿过校园，否则他们会逃进树林”或“通过偷偷闻孩子的呼吸来判断是否有人带酒去舞会”这样的任务吗？不。但如果我稍微“展开”一下，我就会选择另一种方式度过我的夏天，比如在舞会外面卖酒给孩子们。

难怪每个人都在为自己的人生方向而挣扎：我们没有发展出处理这个问题的文化技术，因为我们从未需要过。我们并没有在一个有很多职业机会的祖先环境中进化。然后，一旦我们发明了农业，接下来的1万年里，几乎每个人都是农民。“我该如何度过我的人生？”这实际上是一个1850年之后的问题，这意味着，从大局来看，我们还没有时间来解决它。

我相信，这项工作的开始就是“展开”。当你切开箱子，倒出你未来可能的所有组成部分时，我希望你能找到一份与你“疯狂”方式相同的“疯狂”工作。然后我希望你去追求它！去摘星吧！即使你错过了，你也会落在三颗月亮中的一颗上。

《实验历史》是把你的房子填满史莱姆的博客版

你可以把“展开”看作是属性替代的反面；参见《如何犯错并感觉糟糕》。

为自己辩护一下，那是十年前的事了，更接近于你可以通过连续跳几支舞就闻名世界的时候。

也存在“虚假独特性效应”，但它似乎更少出现，通常是在人们有动力比别人做得更好的特质上，或者当人们对自身信息存在偏见时。所以喜欢夏威夷披萨的人可能认为他们的观点比实际更普遍（虚假共识）。但如果你为自己制作的夏威夷披萨的质量感到自豪，你可能也会高估自己的披萨制作技能（虚假独特性）。

我敢肯定每个校园政客都这样。在一个选举周期中，亲巴勒斯坦和亲以色列团体开始竞争请愿书，要求移除/保留食堂里一种据称与以色列国防军有关的鹰嘴豆泥品牌。一个竞选班级代表的家伙两份请愿书都签了。当有人指出他时，他的回答大概是：“我很高兴我们正在进行对话。”总之，他赢得了选举。

几年后，一名大二学生以一场模仿竞选活动竞选学生会主席，承诺提供华夫饼薯条和“自行车改革”。他在普选中获得了多数票，但在决选中落败，尽管他确实在《纽约时报》上获得了报道。现在他是一名医生。

顶级的疯狂有时可以弥补中等的才能。我曾参与过大约五个不同的即兴表演社群，在每个社群中都有一个人相当成功，尽管他们的即兴表演水平并不高。这些人愿意抵押他们余生来支持他们的喜剧爱好——他们会敷衍了事地工作，逃课，忽视他们的伴侣和孩子，作为回报，他们可以参加每一次试镜，每一次演出，每一个副项目。他们对他们愚蠢的艺术的专注并没有让他们变得伟大，但确实让他们“有空”。每个人都认识他们，因为他们总是在场，所以当你的一个演员在最后一刻退出，你需要有人替补时，你就会说：“我们总可以叫埃里克。”如果你曾在《周六夜现场》上看到过一个不怎么好笑的人，并自问：“他们是怎么到那里的？”，也许这就是原因。

Face it: you're a crazy person

摘要