演讲MP3+双语文稿:你在哪个年龄段最有可能成功？
听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:你在哪个年龄段最有可能成功？，希望你会喜欢！
【演讲人】Albert-László Barabás
【演讲主题】成功，真的和年龄没多大关系
翻译者psjmz mz 校对者YolandaZhang
Today, actually, is a very special day forme,because it is my birthday.
今天对我来说很特别，因为是我的生日。
00:08（Applause） （鼓掌）
00:12And so, thanks to all of you for joiningthe party.
谢谢大家参与这个聚会。
00:16（Laughter） （笑声）
00:17
But every time you throw a party, there'ssomeone there to spoil it. Right?
可是，每次你举办聚会的时候， 总是有人捣蛋，对吧？
00:22（Laughter） （笑声）
00:23
And I'm a physicist,and this time Ibrought another physicist along to do so.His name is Albert Einstein --also Albert -- and he's the one who saidthat the person who has not made hisgreat contributions to scienceby the age of 30will never doso.
我是个物理学家，这次我带来了另一个物理学家。他的名字是阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦—— 也叫阿尔伯特——他是那个说过如果一个人到30岁时对科学都没啥大贡献，也就永远不会有贡献了。
00:41
（Laughter）
（笑声）
00:42
Now, you don't need to checkthat I'm beyond 30.
你不需要查维基百科去了解我是不是超过30岁。
00:46
（Laughter）
（笑声）
00:47
So, effectively, what he is telling me, andus,is that when it comes to my science,I'm deadwood.Well,luckily, I had my share of luck within my career.Around age 28, I becamevery interested in networks,and a few years later, we managed to publisha few key papersthat reported the discovery of scale-freenetworksand really gave birth to a new discipline that we call networkscience today.And if you really care about it, you can get a PhD now in networksciencein Budapest, in Boston,and you can study it all over theworld.
实际上他是想告诉我们，当涉及到我在科学领域的作为时，我是朽木难雕了。幸运的是，我的事业运还算不错。在28岁时，我对网络产生了兴趣，几年后，我成功发表了几篇关于发现无标度网络的核心论文，并催生了一门我们今天称为 网络科学的新学科。如果你对这个学科也很感兴趣，可以在布达佩斯，在波士顿读取网络科学的博士学位，也可以在全球各地学习这门课程。
01:27
A few years later,when I moved toHarvard first as a sabbatical,I became interested in another type ofnetwork:that time, the networks within ourselves,how the genes andthe proteins and the metabolites link to each otherand how they connectto disease.And that interest led to a major explosion withinmedicine,including the Network Medicine Division at Harvard,thathas more than 300 researchers who are using this perspectiveto treatpatients and develop new cures.
几年后，当我第一次在哈佛进行学术休假时，我对另一种形态的网络产生了兴趣：在我们自身的网络中，基因、蛋白质和代谢物如何相互联系以及它们与疾病的关系。这个兴趣引发了 医学领域的一阵轰动，包括哈佛大学的网络医学部，有300多名研究人员 基于这个想法来治疗病人，开发新的治疗方法。
02:01
And a few years ago,I thought that Iwould take this idea of networksand the expertise we had innetworksin a different area,that is, to understandsuccess.And why did we do that?Well, we thought that, to somedegree,our success is determined by the networks we're part of--that our networks can push us forward, they can pull us back.AndI was curious if we could use the knowledge and big data andexpertisewhere we develop the networksto really quantify how thesethings happen.
几年以前，我觉得我应该把网络的概念和关于网络的专业知识应用于一个新的领域，用来理解成功。我们为什么要这么做？我们认为，在某种程度上，我们的成功取决于我们所处的网络——我们的网络可以推动我们前进， 也能拖我们后腿。我好奇我们能否使用在网络中获得的这些知识，结合大数据和专长来量化事情是如何发生的。
02:32
This is a result from that.What yousee here is a network of galleries in museumsthat connect to eachother.And through this map that we mapped out last year,we are ableto predict very accurately the success of an artistif you give me thefirst five exhibits that he or she had in their career.
这是一个结果。你在这里看到的是博物馆里相互连接的画廊网络。通过这张我们去年绘制的图，如果给我他或她在他们的 职业生涯举办的前五个展览，我们就能够非常准确地预测一个艺术家是否成功。
02:53
Well, as we thought about success,werealized that success is not only about networks;there are so many otherdimensions to that.And one of the things we need for success,obviously,is performance.So let's define what's the differencebetween performance and success.Well, performance is what you do:howfast you run, what kind of paintings you paint,what kind of papers youpublish.However, in our working definition,success is about whatthe community notices from what you did,from your performance:Howdoes it acknowledge it, and how does it reward you for it?In otherterms,your performance is about you, but your success is about all ofus.And this was a very important shift for us,because the moment wedefined success as being a collective measurethat the community providesto us,it became measurable,because if it's in the community, thereare multiple data points about that.So we go to school, we exercise, wepractice,because we believe that performance leads to success.Butthe way we actually started to explore,we realized that performance andsuccess are very, very different animalswhen it comes to the mathematicsof the problem.And let me illustrate that.
当我们思考成功时，我们意识到成功不仅跟网络有关；还有很多其他的维度。其中一个成功的必要因素，很明显就是业绩。让我们定义一下业绩和成功的差别。业绩是你做的事情：你跑得有多快，你画的是什么画，你发表的是什么论文。然而，在我们的工作定义中，成功是社群从你的业绩中注意到你做的哪些事情，如何承认你的成就，如何奖励你？换句话说，你的业绩跟你有关， 但你的成功跟大家都有关。这对我们来说是个非常重要的转变，因为我们把成功定义为社群给予我们的集体评价。这样一来成功就变得可衡量，因为在一个社群中， 关于成功包含着很多数据点。我们上学，我们练习，我们实践，因为我们相信业绩会让我们成功。但当我们开始探索，我们开始意识到 以数学的方式看待这个问题时，业绩和成功是非常， 非常不同的概念，让我来解释一下。
04:12
So what you see here is the fastest man onearth, Usain Bolt.And of course, he wins most of the competitions that heenters.And we know he's the fastest on earth because we have achronometerto measure his speed.Well, what is interesting about himis that when he wins,he doesn't do so by really significantly outrunninghis competition.He's running at most a percent faster than the one wholoses the race.And not only does he run only one percent faster than thesecond one,but he doesn't run 10 times faster than I do --and I'mnot a good runner, trust me on that.
你在这里看到的是世界上 最快的人，尤塞恩·博尔特。当然，他赢得了大多数参与的比赛。我们知道是他是世界上最快的人，因为我们有精密的计时器去测量他的速度。有趣之处在于当他获胜时，他并没有明显地超过竞争对手。他跑得比输掉比赛的人 最多快百分之一。他不仅只比第二名快百分之一，他的速度也不超过我的10倍——并且我还不是个擅长跑步的人， 这点请相信我。
04:50
（Laughter）
（笑声）
04:51
And every time we are able to measureperformance,we notice something very interesting;that is,performance is bounded.What it means is that there are no huge variationsin human performance.It varies only in a narrow range,and we doneed the chronometer to measure the differences.This is not to say thatwe cannot see the good from the best ones,but the best ones are very hardto distinguish.And the problem with that is that most of us work inareaswhere we do not have a chronometer to gauge our performance.
每次我们能够评估业绩时，我们都会注意到一些有趣的事情：业绩是有界限的。这意味着人类的业绩 并没有巨大的差异。它变化的范围非常小，我们确实需要精密的计时器 来测量这个差异。不是说我们不能从 最好的人身上看到好的一面，但最好的人非常难以识别。并且问题在于我们很多人的工作领域并没有精密的计时器来衡量我们的业绩。
05:23
Alright, performance is bounded,thereare no huge differences between us when it comes to our performance.Howabout success?Well, let's switch to a different topic, likebooks.One measure of success for writers is how many people read yourwork.And so when my previous book came out in 2009,I was in Europetalking with my editor,and I was interested: Who is thecompetition?And I had some fabulous ones.That week –
好了，业绩是有界限的，当涉及我们的业绩时， 我们之间并没有显著的差异。那么成功呢？让我们转到另一个话题，比如书籍。评估作家成功的一个方法是 有多少人阅读了你的作品。当我早先那本书在2009年出版时，我在欧洲和编辑谈话，我感兴趣的是：谁是我的竞争对手？我有一些炙手可热的对手。那周——
05:52
（Laughter）
（笑声）
05:53
Dan Brown came out with "The LostSymbol,"and "The Last Song" also came out,NicholasSparks.And when you just look at the list,you realize, you know,performance-wise, there's hardly any differencebetween these books ormine.Right?So maybe if Nicholas Sparks's team works a littleharder,he could easily be number one,because it's almost byaccident who ended up at the top.So I said, let's look at the numbers --I'm a data person, right?So let's see what were the sales for NicholasSparks.And it turns out that that opening weekend,Nicholas Sparkssold more than a hundred thousand copies,which is an amazingnumber.You can actually get to the top of the "New York Times"best-seller listby selling 10,000 copies a week,so he tenfold overcamewhat he needed to be number one.Yet he wasn't numberone.Why?Because there was Dan Brown, who sold 1.2 million copiesthat weekend.
丹·布朗出版了《失落的秘符》，并且尼古拉斯·斯帕克斯的《最后一首歌》也问世了。当你看这个书单时，你意识到，就业绩而言，这些书和我的之间并无多大差别。是吧？如果尼古拉斯·斯帕克斯 的团队再努力一点，他就可以轻松进入榜首，因为最终谁在畅销榜顶端 几乎是随机的。所以我说，让我们看看数字吧—— 我就是干这行的，对吧？让我们看看尼古拉斯·斯帕克斯 的作品销量。结果在新书发售的那个周末，尼古拉斯·斯帕克斯 卖出了10万多本书，这是个惊人的数字。你可以看看纽约时报 每周销量在1万册以上的畅销书榜单，所以他只凭借新书销量的 十分之一就能轻松登上榜首。然而他不是第一名。为什么？因为有丹·布朗，他在 那个周末卖出了120万册。
06:51
（Laughter）
（笑声）
06:53
And the reason I like this number isbecause it shows that, really,when it comes to success, it'sunbounded,that the best doesn't only get slightly more than the secondbestbut gets orders of magnitude more,because success is acollective measure.We give it to them, rather than we earn it through ourperformance.
我喜欢这个数字的原因 是因为它真正显示了，当涉及到成功时，它是没有界限的，最好的不止比第二名好一点点，而超越了好几个数量级，因为成功是集体的衡量标准。我们给予他们成功，而不是通过我们的业绩获得它。
07:17
So one of things we realized is thatperformance, what we do, is bounded,but success, which is collective, isunbounded,which makes you wonder:How do you get these hugedifferences in successwhen you have such tiny differences inperformance?And recently, I published a book that I devoted to that veryquestion.And they didn't give me enough time to go over all ofthat,so I'm going to go back to the question of,alright, you havesuccess; when should that appear?
我们意识到业绩是有界限的，但成功，属于集体衡量的，是无界的，这一定让你心生疑惑：当人们的业绩表现差异很小的时候，为何成功的差异如此之大？最近，我出版了一本 关于这个问题的书。我没有太多时间详细介绍这本书，所以我打算回到这个问题，成功通常会在什么时候出现呢？
07:44
So let's go back to the party spoiler andask ourselves:Why did Einstein make this ridiculous statement,thatonly before 30 you could actually be creative?Well, because he lookedaround himself and he saw all these fabulous physiciststhat createdquantum mechanics and modern physics,and they were all in their 20s andearly 30s when they did so.And it's not only him.It's not onlyobservational bias,because there's actually a whole field of geniusresearchthat has documented the fact that,if we look at the peoplewe admire from the pastand then look at what age they made their biggestcontribution,whether that's music, whether that's science,whetherthat's engineering,most of them tend to do so in their 20s, 30s, early40s at most.But there's a problem with this genius research.Well,first of all, it created the impression to usthat creativity equalsyouth,which is painful, right?
那么让我们回到派对捣乱者 的话题，问问我们自己：为什么爱因斯坦要发表这样荒谬的言论，人的创造力止步于30岁？因为他发现周围 所有这些创造量子力学和现代物理学的伟大物理学家，他们的伟大成就都是诞生在 20多岁和30岁出头。并不是只有他这样想。这不仅是观察偏差，因为事实上有一整个 领域的天才研究都证明了这一点，如果回顾一下我们崇拜的先人，然后再看他们做出 最大贡献的年纪，不管在音乐，在科学，还是在工程领域，大部分人都是在他们20岁，30岁， 最多40岁出头时做出了这些成绩。但这个天才研究有个问题。首先，它为大众制造了一种印象，即创造力等于年轻，真让人伤心，不是吗？
08:45
（Laughter）
（笑声）
08:47
And it also has an observationalbias,because it only looks at geniuses and doesn't look at ordinaryscientistsand doesn't look at all of us and ask,is it really truethat creativity vanishes as we age?So that's exactly what we tried todo,and this is important for that to actually have references.
并且它也存在观察偏差，因为它只观察了天才， 并没研究普通科学家，并没有看着我们这些人问，随着年龄的增长， 创造力真的会消失吗？所以这正是我们尝试做的，并且有参照对象很重要。
09:08
So let's look at an ordinary scientist likemyself,and let's look at my career.So what you see here is all thepapers that I've publishedfrom my very first paper, in 1989; I was stillin Romania when I did so,till kind of this year.And vertically, yousee the impact of the paper,that is, how many citations,how manyother papers have been written that cited that work.And when you look atthat,you see that my career has roughly three different stages.Ihad the first 10 years where I had to work a lotand I don't achievemuch.No one seems to care about what I do, right?There's hardly anyimpact.
那么让我们看看像我 这样平凡科学家的职业生涯。这里是我发表的全部论文，从1989年发表的最早一篇论文； 当时我还在罗马尼亚，直到今年这个时候。纵坐标，你可以看到论文的影响，也就是被引用的次数，有多少其他人发表的论文 引用了我的工作。当你看这个数据时，可以看到我的职业生涯有三个阶段。我第一个10年，工作很多，但却并没有多少成就。似乎没人关注我做的事情，对吧？没有一点影响力。
09:43
（Laughter）
（笑声）
09:44
That time, I was doing materialscience,and then I kind of discovered for myself networksand thenstarted publishing in networks.And that led from one high-impact paper tothe other one.And it really felt good. That was that stage of mycareer.
当时，我在做材料科学，然后我自己发现了网络，然后开始发表网络的文章，从那以后，高影响力的文章 我发表了一篇又一篇。那时感觉真是很好，那是 我职业生涯的高光时刻。
09:59
（Laughter）
（笑声）
10:00
So the question is, what happens rightnow?And we don't know, because there hasn't been enough time passedyetto actually figure out how much impact those papers will get;ittakes time to acquire.Well, when you look at the data,it seems tobe that Einstein, the genius research, is right,and I'm at that stage ofmy career.
那么问题是，现在发生了什么？我们不知道，现在就去 计算出这些论文会产生怎样的影响还为时尚早，需要时间来获取这些信息。当你看这个数据时，会觉得爱因斯坦和 天才研究的结论是对的，我在我职业生涯的高光阶段。
10:18
（Laughter）
（笑声）
10:21
So we said, OK, let's figure out how doesthis really happen,first in science.And in order not to have theselection bias,to look only at geniuses,we ended up reconstructingthe career of every single scientistfrom 1900 till todayand findingfor all scientists what was their personal best,whether they got theNobel Prize or they never did,or no one knows what they did, even theirpersonal best.And that's what you see in this slide.Each line is acareer,and when you have a light blue dot on the top of thatcareer,it says that was their personal best.And the questionis,when did they actually make their biggest discovery?To quantifythat,we look at what's the probability that you make your biggest discovery,let'ssay, one, two, three or 10 years into your career?We're not looking atreal age.We're looking at what we call "academicage."Your academic age starts when you publish your firstpapers.I know some of you are still babies.
那么让我们看看 这究竟是如何发生的，首先看看科学领域。为了不产生选择偏差，只看天才，我们最终重建了1900年至今每一位科学家的职业生涯，并找到了所有科学家 的个人最高成就，不管他获得了诺贝尔奖还是没有，或是没人问津，即便是他最好的成就。这就是你们在这张幻灯片上看到的。每条线是个职业生涯，在职业生涯的顶端 有一个浅蓝色的点，代表着他们个人的最好成就。问题是，他们最重大的发现 发生在什么时候？要量化这点，我们看的是你获得 最大发现的概率是多少，比如你职业生涯的 的第1，2，3或者10年。我们真正要看的并不是年纪。我们看的是所谓的“学术年龄。”你的学术年龄始于 你发表第一篇论文的时候。我知道你们有些人还是婴儿。
11:19
（Laughter）
（笑声）
11:20
So let's look at theprobabilitythat you publish your highest-impact paper.And what yousee is, indeed, the genius research is right.Most scientists tend topublish their highest-impact paperin the first 10, 15 years in theircareer,and it tanks after that.It tanks so fast that I'm about --I'm exactly 30 years into my career,and the chance that I will publish apaper that would have a higher impactthan anything that I didbeforeis less than one percent.I am in that stage of my career,according to this data.But there's a problem with that.We're notdoing controls properly.So the control would be,what would ascientist look like who makes random contribution to science?Or what isthe productivity of the scientist?When do they write papers?So wemeasured the productivity,and amazingly, the productivity,yourlikelihood of writing a paper in year one, 10 or 20 in your career,isindistinguishable from the likelihood of having the impactin that part ofyour career.
那么让我们来看看你发表最高影响力论文的概率。你看到的是，的确， 天才研究的结论是正确的。很多科学家发表的影响力最高的论文倾向于发表在他们职业生涯的 前10到15年，在那之后就会直线下降。它下降得如此之快——我如今 正处在我职业的第30个年头，我发表一篇比过往有 更高影响力的论文的概率不到1%。根据这个数据，我正处在 职业生涯的这个阶段。但这里有个问题。我们的对照数据有问题。对照数据就是，对科学做出随机贡献的 科学家会是什么样子？或者科学家的生产力怎样？他们什么时候写的论文？所以我们评估了生产力，令人惊讶的是，生产力，你在职业生涯的第1年、第10年 或第20年写论文的概率，与论文产生影响的概率几乎无法区分。
12:25
And to make a long storyshort,after lots of statistical tests, there's only one explanation forthat,that really, the way we scientists workis that every singlepaper we write, every project we do,has exactly the same chance of beingour personal best.That is, discovery is like a lottery ticket.Andthe more lottery tickets we buy,the higher our chances.And ithappens to be sothat most scientists buy most of their lotteryticketsin the first 10, 15 years of their career,and after that,their productivity decreases.They're not buying any more lotterytickets.So it looks as if they would not be creative.In reality,they stopped trying.So when we actually put the data together, theconclusion is very simple:success can come at any time.It could beyour very first or very last paper of your career.It's totally random inthe space of the projects.It is the productivity that changes.
长话短说，在很多的数据检验后， 只有一个解释，真相是，我们科学家的工作，我们写的每篇论文，做的每个项目都有同样的概率成为 我们个人的最佳成果。那就是，发现就像中彩票。我们买了越多的彩票，我们中奖的几率就越高。碰巧的是，很多科学家在他们 职业生涯的头10年，15年买了大部分的彩票，在那之后，他们的生产力就下降了。他们不再买更多的彩票。所以看起来他们没有创造力了。现实中，他们停止了尝试。所以当我们把数据放在一起时， 结论非常简单：成功可能随时会来。它可能是你职业生涯中 最早或最后的论文。它在项目的空间中完全是随机的。改变的是你的生产力。
13:26
Let me illustrate that.Here isFrank Wilczek, who got the Nobel Prize in Physicsfor the very first paperhe ever wrote in his career as a graduate student.
让我解释一下。这是获得诺贝尔物理学奖 的弗兰克·威尔切克，他得奖要归功于研究生时 写的第一篇论文。
13:34
（Laughter）
（笑声）
13:35
More interesting is John Fenn,who,at age 70, was forcefully retired by Yale University.They shut his labdown,and at that moment, he moved to Virginia CommonwealthUniversity,opened another lab,and it is there, at age 72, that hepublished a paperfor which, 15 years later, he got the Nobel Prize forChemistry.
更有趣的是约翰·芬，他在70岁时，被耶鲁大学强制退休，他们关闭了他的实验室，那时，他搬到了弗吉尼亚联邦大学，开了另一个实验室，就在那里，在年纪72岁时， 他发表了一篇论文，这篇论文在15年后 获得了诺贝尔化学奖。
