置之死地而后生 選自紐約時報

The next time you’re juggling options — which friend to see, which house to buy, which career to pursue — try asking yourself this question: What would Xiang Yu do?

該見哪個朋友，買哪幢房子，做什么事業，下一次當你面對這些令人眩暈的選擇時，不妨問自己這樣一個問題：項羽是怎么做的？

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.

項羽是公元前3世紀中國古代的一位將軍。在長江率部身陷敵軍包圍圈的時候他做出了一個賭博式的決定：“破釜沉舟”。

He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.

他將此解釋為使自己的士兵孤注一擲在拼殺向前的戰斗中，盡管這種鼓動性的講演并不為那些眼睜睜的看著退路在硝煙中被截斷的士兵所領悟。但無論如何，項羽的做法是值得信服的，無論是戰場的結局還是社會學研究都證實了這一點。

He is one of the role models in Dan Ariely’s new book, “Predictably Irrational,” an entertaining look at human foibles like the penchant for keeping too many options open. General Xiang Yu was a rare exception to the norm, a warrior who conquered by being unpredictably rational.

在丹-埃雷里的新書中，他也是其中的范例之一。所謂“預見的不合理性”正是對人類喜歡為自己留有余地的弱點一種戲謔的看法。西楚霸王是很少的例外之一，他最終輸給了所謂“不可預見的合理性”。

Most people can’t make such a painful choice, not even the students at a bastion of rationality like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Dr. Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics. In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).

沒有多少人能夠做出這樣痛苦的抉擇，即使是身為行為經濟學教授埃雷里所在的麻省理工學院理性熏陶下的學生。在一系列的實驗中，數百名學生都無法承受市區選擇的境地。

The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open. 這些實驗包含了一個同樣的游戲規則。那就是迫使人們摒棄一些令我們不能放棄某些選擇的理由。在現實世界里，我們總是提醒自己留些后路的好處。

You don’t even know how a camera’s burst-mode flash works, but you persuade yourself to pay for the extra feature just in case. You no longer have anything in common with someone who keeps calling you, but you hate to just zap the relationship.

你甚至不知道閃光燈的作用卻仍然要多花些錢以防萬一，有些話不投機的人總是聯系你，你卻不能徹底結束這種關系。

Your child is exhausted from after-school soccer, ballet and Chinese lessons, but you won’t let her drop the piano lessons. They could come in handy! And who knows? Maybe they will.

你的孩子從足球培訓班或是芭蕾，中文班回來已是筋疲力盡，你卻還讓他練習鋼琴。是的，他們會用得上的。誰又知道呢？或許吧。

In the M.I.T. experiments, the students should have known better. They played a computer game that paid real cash to look for money behind three doors on the screen. (You can play it yourself, without pay, at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com.) After they opened a door by clicking on it, each subsequent click earned a little money, with the sum varying each time.

在麻省理工學院的實驗中，參與的學生應該有更好的理解。他們需要花錢在電腦屏幕上的三扇門后尋找錢幣。在用鼠標點開一扇門之后，接下來的每一次點擊都會獲得數額不等的獎勵。

As each player went through the 100 allotted clicks, he could switch rooms to search for higher payoffs, but each switch used up a click to open the new door. The best strategy was to quickly check out the three rooms and settle in the one with the highest rewards.

每一個玩家都有100次點擊的機會。玩家也可以利用一個門上的開關來尋求更高的回報，但這樣也會失去開啟一扇門的機會。最佳的策略就是迅速的查看三個房間然后確定其中的一個尋求最高的獎勵。

Even after students got the hang of the game by practicing it, they were flummoxed when a new visual feature was introduced. If they stayed out of any room, its door would start shrinking and eventually disappear.

盡管許多學生都通過練習知道了其中的訣竅，他們在新的視覺效果出現的時候仍然會感到驚慌失措。那就是無論他們呆在哪一個房間，身后的門會慢慢的關閉直至消失。

They should have ignored those disappearing doors, but the students couldn’t. They wasted so many clicks rushing back to reopen doors that their earnings dropped 15 percent. Even when the penalties for switching grew stiffer — besides losing a click, the players had to pay a cash fee — the students kept losing money by frantically keeping all their doors open.

他們應該忽略那些消失的門，但他們做不到這一點。他們浪費了太多的點擊機會去回頭打開那些即將關閉的門，也因此損失了15%的收獲。盡管對使用開關的懲罰加強（除了少一次點擊機會，還要加一部分游戲費），但許多學生還是為了要保證所有的門都開著而損失了許多錢。

Why were they so attached to those doors? The players, like the parents of that overscheduled piano student, would probably say they were just trying to keep future options open. But that’s not the real reason, according to Dr. Ariely and his collaborator in the experiments, Jiwoong Shin, an economist who is now at Yale.

為什么他們如此熱衷于那些門呢？這些參與游戲者就像上文提到的那些為孩子安排過多鋼琴課和補習班的家長一樣，或許是為將來多留一些余地。但是埃雷里博士和她本次實驗的合作者，耶魯大學的經濟學家申紀武認為那并非真正的原因所在。

They plumbed the players’ motivations by introducing yet another twist. This time, even if a door vanished from the screen, players could make it reappear whenever they wanted. But even when they knew it would not cost anything to make the door reappear, they still kept frantically trying to prevent doors from vanishing.

為了研究玩家的這種動機，他們采取了另一種辦法。這一次，即便一扇門從屏幕上消失，玩家也可以根據自己的意愿讓它重現。但是在這樣的情況下，玩家仍然會瘋狂般的阻止那些門的消失。

Apparently they did not care so much about maintaining flexibility in the future. What really motivated them was the desire to avoid the immediate pain of watching a door close.

顯然他們并不去在意對將來保持靈活變通。他們這樣做實際是為了避免一種看到們被關上的現時的恐懼。

“Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious — wasted time, missed opportunities. If you are afraid to drop any project at the office, you pay for it at home.

埃雷里說：關上一扇門就如同經歷一種缺失，而人們則愿意為避免這種確實感付出一定的代價。在這個實驗中，代價可以用金錢的損失來衡量。而在生活中，這種損失則不那么明顯可見，如浪費的時間，錯過的機會等。如果你是一個工作狂，你就會付出家庭的代價。

“We may work more hours at our jobs,” Dr. Ariely writes in his book, “without realizing that the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away. Sometimes these doors close too slowly for us to see them vanishing.”

在書中，埃雷里寫道：我們總是花在工作上更多的時間，卻忽略了我們的子女，他們的童年就這樣流走了。有時那些門在不知不覺慢慢的從我們的視線中消失了。

Dr. Ariely, one of the most prolific authors in his field, does not pretend that he is above this problem himself. When he was trying to decide between job offers from M.I.T. and Stanford, he recalls, within a week or two it was clear that he and his family would be more or less equally happy in either place. But he dragged out the process for months because he became so obsessed with weighing the options.

作為在這一領域著作頗豐的一位作家，埃雷里并不否認自己本身也會受到這種問題的困擾。他回憶說在選擇到麻省理工學院還是斯坦福大學任教時，在起初的一兩個周內他和家人覺得兩個地方都還愜意。甚至幾個月的時間里，他都一直為權衡這兩個選擇心思疲憊。

“I’m just as workaholic and prone to errors as anyone else,” he says.. “I have way too many projects, and it would probably be better for me and the academic community if I focused my efforts. But every time I have an idea or someone offers me a chance to collaborate, I hate to give it up.”

他說：我是一個工作狂，也會像其他人一樣經常犯錯。我接手了許多項目，如果我能專心致志無論對自己還是研究院來說都是一件好事。但是每當我有什么新想法或是有人給我一個合作的機會，我都不愿放棄。

So what can be done? One answer, Dr. Ariely said, is to develop more social checks on overbooking. He points to marriage as an example: “In marriage, we create a situation where we promise ourselves not to keep options open. We close doors and announce to others we’ve closed doors.”

所以能夠做什么呢？埃雷里說：只有一個答案，那就是精心篩選過多的選擇。他以婚姻為例做出說明。所謂婚姻，就是我們要給自己一個契約，使自己處于一個無路可退的境地。我們關上其余的門然后告訴人們我們已經做出了選擇。

Or we can just try to do it on our own. Since conducting the door experiments, Dr. Ariely says, he has made a conscious effort to cancel projects and give away his ideas to colleagues. He urges the rest of us to resign from committees, prune holiday card lists, rethink hobbies and remember the lessons of door closers like Xiang Yu.

或許我們可以試著自己去做。埃雷里博士說，自從引入了這個實驗，他已經有意識的放棄了一些項目和一些合作者的想法。他呼吁我們其余的人也要下定決心，像項羽一樣做一個懂得放棄的人。

If the general’s tactics seem too crude, Dr. Ariely recommends another role model, Rhett Butler, for his supreme moment of unpredictable rationality at the end of his marriage. Scarlett, like the rest of us, can’t bear the pain of giving up an option, but Rhett recognizes the marriage’s futility and closes the door with astonishing elan. Frankly, he doesn’t give a damn.

如果你認為項羽將軍的計策太過殘酷的話，埃雷里為你推薦了另一個榜樣——賴特-巴特勒。 只因他最后未可預見的合理的婚姻結局。斯佳麗，正如我們一樣，不能承受放棄一個選擇的痛苦，但當巴特勒萬念俱灰毅然離開的時候。坦率地說，他根本不在意什么。