December 2014
2014年12月
I've read Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade at least two times, maybe three. And yet if I had to write down everything I remember from it, I doubt it would amount to much more than a page. Multiply this times several hundred, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them?
我曾经读过维莱哈杜因的《第四次十字军东征纪事》至少两次，也许三次。并且，如果我必须把我记得的每件事都写下来，我怀疑它会远远超过一页。乘以几百，当我看着我的书架时，我有一种不安的感觉。如果我对这些书记忆犹新，读这些书有什么用？
A few months ago, as I was reading Constance Reid's excellent biography of Hilbert, I figured out if not the answer to this question, at least something that made me feel better about it. She writes:
Hilbert had no patience with mathematical lectures which filled the students with facts but did not teach them how to frame a problem and solve it. He often used to tell them that "a perfect formulation of a problem is already half its solution."
几个月前，当我在读康斯坦斯·里德（Constance Reid）的《希尔伯特传》（biography of Hilbert）时，我发现了这个问题的答案，至少是一些让我感觉更好的东西。她写道：
希尔伯特对数学课没有耐心，数学课给学生们讲了大量的事实，但却没有教他们如何构思和解决问题。他经常告诉他们，“一个问题的完美表述已经是它的一半解决方案。”
That has always seemed to me an important point, and I was even more convinced of it after hearing it confirmed by Hilbert.
在我看来，这一直是一个很重要的问题，在听到希尔伯特证实这一点后，我更加确信这一点。
But how had I come to believe in this idea in the first place? A combination of my own experience and other things I'd read. None of which I could at that moment remember! And eventually I'd forget that Hilbert had confirmed it too. But my increased belief in the importance of this idea would remain something I'd learned from this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it.
但我怎么开始相信这个想法呢？结合我自己的经验和我读过的其他东西。我当时都记不起来了！最终我会忘记希尔伯特也证实了这一点。但我对这个想法重要性的日益增长的信念，仍然是我从这本书中学到的东西，即使我忘记了我已经学会了。
Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.
阅读和体验训练你的世界模型。即使你忘记了你的经历或你读过的东西，它对你的世界模式的影响依然存在。你的思想就像一个编译过的程序，你已经失去了它的来源。它起作用了，但你不知道为什么。
The place to look for what I learned from Villehardouin's chronicle is not what I remember from it, but my mental models of the crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege warfare, and so on. Which doesn't mean I couldn't have read more attentively, but at least the harvest of reading is not so miserably small as it might seem.
寻找我从维莱哈德因编年史中学到的东西的地方，不是我记忆中的东西，而是我对十字军东征、威尼斯、中世纪文化、围攻战等的心理模型。这并不意味着我不能更专心地阅读，但至少阅读的收获并不像看上去那么小。
This is one of those things that seem obvious in retrospect. But it was a surprise to me and presumably would be to anyone else who felt uneasy about (apparently) forgetting so much they'd read.
回想起来，这是显而易见的事情之一。但这对我来说是一个惊喜，而且可能会让其他人感到不安（显然）忘记了他们读过的那么多书。
Realizing it does more than make you feel a little better about forgetting, though. There are specific implications.
不过，意识到这不仅仅是让你对忘记感觉好一点。有具体的含义。
For example, reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. I always used to feel some misgivings about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together with work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a sign you did it wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase "already read" seems almost ill-formed.
例如，阅读和经验通常是在它们发生的时候“编译”的，利用你当时的大脑状态。同一本书在你生活的不同阶段会有不同的编纂。这意味着它非常值得多次阅读重要的书籍。我以前总对重读书籍感到有些疑虑。我不自觉地把读书和木工之类的工作混为一谈，不得不再做一件事是你第一次做错的标志。而现在“已经读过”这个短语看起来几乎是不正确的。
Intriguingly, this implication isn't limited to books. Technology will increasingly make it possible to relive our experiences. When people do that today it's usually to enjoy them again (e.g. when looking at pictures of a trip) or to find the origin of some bug in their compiled code (e.g. when Stephen Fry succeeded in remembering the childhood trauma that prevented him from singing). But as technologies for recording and playing back your life improve, it may become common for people to relive experiences without any goal in mind, simply to learn from them again as one might when rereading a book.
有趣的是，这种暗示并不局限于书籍。科技将越来越使我们重温我们的经历成为可能。当人们今天这样做的时候，通常是为了再次享受它们（例如，当看旅行的照片时），或者在他们编译的代码中找到一些错误的来源（例如，当斯蒂芬·弗莱成功地记住了童年时阻止他唱歌的创伤）。但是随着记录和回放你生活的技术的进步，人们可能会在没有任何目标的情况下重温自己的经历，就像重读一本书一样简单地从中学习。
Eventually we may be able not just to play back experiences but also to index and even edit them. So although not knowing how you know things may seem part of being human, it may not be.
最终，我们可能不仅能够回放体验，而且能够索引甚至编辑它们。所以，虽然不知道自己是怎么知道事情的，但这似乎不是人类的一部分。
