Day 11: Whether success comes from luck or skill
（Monday）
各位书友，今天我们一起阅读《Zero to One》第六章YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKET的59-69页。
THE MOST CONTENTIOUS question in business is whether success comes from luck or skill.
商界最有争议的问题是——成功是靠运气还是靠技能？
01 YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKET
THE MOST CONTENTIOUS question in business is whether success comes from luck or skill.
商界最有争议的问题是——成功是靠运气还是靠技能？
What do successful people say?
成功人士怎么说呢？
Malcolm Gladwell, a successful author who writes about successful people, declares in Outliers that success results from a “patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages.”
马尔科姆.格拉德威尔，一位写成功人士传记的畅销书作家，在他的书《异类》中说成功源于“运气和偶然的优势”。
Warren Buffett famously considers himself a “member of the lucky sperm club” and a winner of the “ovarian lottery.”
沃伦.巴菲特认为自己是“幸运精子俱乐部里的一员”，是“卵巢彩票”的赢家。
Jeff Bezos attributes Amazon’s success to an “incredible planetary alignment” and jokes that it was “half luck, half good timing, and the rest brains.”
杰夫.贝佐斯把亚马逊的成功看成与“行星连珠”一样令人难以置信，而且还开玩笑地说这成功靠的“一半是运气，一半是时机，剩下的则是智慧”。
Bill Gates even goes so far as to claim that he “was lucky to be born with certain skills,” though it’s not clear whether that’s actually possible.
比尔.盖茨甚至宣称自己“太幸运了,生来就具有一定的技能”，虽然这是否可能还不清楚。
Perhaps these guys are being strategically humble. However, the phenomenon of serial entrepreneurship would seem to call into question our tendency to explain success as the product of chance. Hundreds of people have started multiple multimillion-dollar businesses.
也许这些人处于交际策略或多或少有些谦虚，但是这种连续创业的企业家精神是对“机遇创造成功”理论的质疑。已经有成百上千的人开创了市值数百万美元的企业。
In January 2013, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, tweeted to his 2 million followers: “Success is never accidental.”
2013年1月，推特和Square的创始人杰克.多西在推特上向其200万关注者发表推文：《成功绝非偶然》。
Most of the replies were unambiguously negative.
这种说法顿时引来嘘声一片。
Referencing the tweet in The Atlantic, reporter Alexis Madrigal wrote that his instinct was to reply: “ ‘Success is never accidental,’ said all multimillionaire white men.”
《大西洋月刊》上，记者亚历克西斯.马德加格尔说他的第一反应是反驳：“所有拜仁巨富都会说，‘成功绝非偶然。’”
It’s true that already successful people have an easier time doing new things, whether due to their networks, wealth, or experience. But perhaps we’ve become too quick to dismiss anyone who claims to have succeeded according to plan.
的确，已经成功的人涉足新领域要容易一些，不管事因为他们的网络效应、财富，还是丰富的经验。但也许，是我们自己太快地否定了那种按计划一步一步获得成功的可能性。
Is there a way to settle this debate objectively?
有没有办法客观地平息这场争论？
Unfortunately not, because companies are not experiments.
不幸的是，没有。因为公司并不是实验室。
From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t.
从文艺复兴、启蒙运动到20世纪中期，运气是可以被掌握支配的；大家都认为一个人应该做力所能及的事，而不是纠结于做不到的事。
Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.…Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
拉尔夫.瓦尔多.爱默生捕捉到了这种社会思潮，他写道：“浅薄的人才会相信运气和境遇......强者只相信因果。”
In 1912, after he became the first explorer to reach the South Pole, Roald Amundsen wrote: “Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck, people call it.”
1912年，罗尔德.阿蒙森成为第一个探索南极的人，他说：“胜利只等待那些有准备的人，也许这就是人们说的运气吧！”
No one pretended that misfortune didn’t exist, but prior generations believed in making their own luck by working hard.
没有人会假装坏运气不存在，但是前辈们相信努力会换来好运气。
Did Bill Gates simply win the intelligence lottery? Was Sheryl Sandberg born with a silver spoon, or did she “lean in”? When we debate historical questions like these, luck is in the past tense. Far more important are questions about the future: is it a matter of chance or design?
难道比尔.盖茨只是中了智力头彩？难道谢丽尔.桑德伯格本来就喊着金汤匙出生，或者她“向前一步”了？当我们讨论像这样的历史问题时，幸运已是过去式了。更重要的问题是关于未来的：未来是靠机遇还是计划呢？
02 CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR FUTURE?
你能掌控自己的未来吗？
You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.
你可能期望未来清晰可见，你也可能只把未来视作一团迷雾。如果你认为自己的未来是明确的，那么提前来了解未来，并且努力打造未来就是有意义的。但如果你脑海里的未来只是一团迷雾，无法预测，那你就会萌生放弃掌控它的念头。
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options.
把未来看成不确定的态度正好可以解释当今世界功能失调的原因，就是把过程看得比实质重要：当人们缺少具体的实施计划，他们就会依照惯例，尽量把多种选择组合起来。
A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. You can also expect the future to be either better or worse than the present. Optimists welcome the future; pessimists fear it.
一个明确的愿景可以坚定人的信念。可以认为未来比现在更好，也可以认为未来比现在更糟。乐观的人迎接未来，悲观的人害怕未来。
Combining these possibilities yields four views:
这些可能性组合成四种观点。
A Indefinite Pessimism
对未来不明确的悲观主义
Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it.
每种文化都有从黄金时期走向衰败的故事，而几乎历史上所有民族都是悲观的。甚至今天，悲观情绪仍左右着世界的大部分地区。一个对未来不明确的悲观者看到的未来是阴郁的，但是他束手无策。
This describes Europe since the early 1970s. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow motion crisis, and nobody is in charge.
这描述得恰是1070年后的欧洲。现在整个欧元区都处在一场慢性危机中，没有人对这种状态负责。
B Definite Pessimism
对未来明确的悲观主义
A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it. Perhaps surprisingly, China is probably the most definitely pessimistic place in the world today.
一个对未来明确的悲观主义者相信未来是可知的，但却是暗淡的，所以他必须提前做好准备。也许当今的中国是最典型的对未来明确的悲观主义者。
From China’s viewpoint, economic growth cannot come fast enough. Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t.
从中国的角度来看，经济增长得还不够快。其他国家都害怕中国将要统治整个世界，而中国是唯一一个认为自己不会统治世界的国家。
C Definite Optimism
对未来明确的乐观主义者
To a definite optimist, the future will be better than the present if he plans and works to make it better. From the 17th century through the 1950s and ’60s, definite optimists led the Western world.
在对未来明确的乐观主义者眼中，如果计划缜密，工作努力，未来会比现在更好。从17世纪一直到20世纪五六十年代，对未来明确的乐观主义者都领导者西方世界。
As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw clearly, the 19th-century business class created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?
卡尔.马克思和弗里德里希.恩格斯就看得非常清楚。19世纪资产阶级创造的生产力比之前所有时代加起来还要大。人定胜天，机械化、工农业的化学应用、蒸汽轮船、铁路、电报、陆地基础建设开发、开凿运河等，仿佛用术法从地底召唤出大量人口——之前哪个世纪的人会想到社会劳动会蕴藏着如此巨大的生产力？
D Indefinite Optimism
对未来不明确的乐观主义
After a brief pessimistic phase in the 1970s, indefinite optimism has dominated American thinking ever since 1982, when a long bull market began and finance eclipsed engineering as the way to approach the future.
20世纪79年代悲观主义主宰的阶段过去之后，迷茫的乐观主义者从1982年开始主宰美国的思想。那时牛市开始抬头，金融代替了建筑工程成为未来发展的手段。
To an indefinite optimist, the future will be better, but he doesn’t know how exactly, so he won’t make any specific plans. He expects to profit from the future but sees no reason to design it concretely. In his perspective, instead of working for years to build a new product, indefinite optimists rearrange already-invented ones.
一个对未来不明确的乐观主义者只知道未来会越来越好，却不知道究竟有多好，因此不去制订具体计划。他想在未来获利，但是却认为没有必要制订具体规划。在其观念，与其努力数年开发一件新产品，迷茫的乐观主义者选择改进已有产品。
Recent graduates’ parents often cheer them on the established path. The strange history of the Baby Boom produced a generation of indefinite optimists so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it. Since tracked careers worked for them, they can’t imagine that they won’t work for their kids, too.
近些年，毕业生的家长总是鼓励他们走既定的轨道。婴儿潮培养出一代迷茫的乐观主义者，他们理所当然地享受着不费吹灰之力得来的成果。既定的道路适合他们，他们无法想象既定道路会不适合自己的后代。
☞ 领读达人：刘亚南
☞ 主播：Sophie，闷骚但不腹黑的逗比天蝎座女生，至死不渝的Jay迷，美利坚研二学生Dog，欢迎志同道合的小伙伴来骚扰～
☞ 设计：刘莹
☞ 编校：陈珺洁