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Can 'goal factoring' help you keep your New Year's resolution to hit the gym every day in 2014?
“目标构想”能帮助你坚持自己的新年决心，在2014年的每一天都去健身房健身吗？
'Goal factoring, ' a method of designing better plans, is one of the techniques taught by the Center for Applied Rationality, which hosts three-day workshops that teach attendees how to use science-based approaches to achieve goals. A November workshop in Ossining, N.Y., instructed 23 participants on how thinking about one's future self as a different person can help goal-setting and why building up an 'emotional library' of associations can reduce procrastination.
“目标构想”是应用理性学习中心(Center for Applied Rationality，简称“CFAR”)所教授的技巧之一，是一种拟定更合理计划的方法。该中心常举办为期三天的讲习班，教授与会者如何采用有科学依据的方法来实现目标。他们于11月份在纽约州奥西宁(Ossining)举办的讲习班吸引了23名参加者，指导他们把未来的自己想象成一个不同的人可如何帮助制定目标，以及建立“情感（联想）库”为何能减轻拖延。
CFAR, a Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit, is prominent in the growing 'rationality movement, ' which explores the science of optimized decision-making. In recent years, books about decision-making and probability theory -- including 'Predictably Irrational' by Dan Ariely, who writes a regular column for The Wall Street Journal, and 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman -- have been best-sellers. Websites like Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong serve as communities for those who believe the best way to be effective, whether in changing eating habits or changing the world, is to actively look at the lessons of science and hard data. The movement draws on some of the same research as economists who argue that investors behave irrationally.
CFAR是加州伯克利(Berkeley)的一个非营利机构，它在影响正在日益扩大的探讨优化决策制定科学的“理性运动”中地位显著。近些年，有关决策制定及概率论的书籍一直都是畅销书，包括也为《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)定期撰写专栏的丹·阿雷利(Dan Ariely)所写的《可预见的非理性》(Predictably Irrational)，以及丹尼尔·卡内曼(Daniel Kahneman)撰写的《思考，快与慢》(Thinking, Fast and Slow)等。诸如Overcoming Bias和Less Wrong这样的网站成为了那些认为变得高效──无论是改变饮食习惯或是改变世界──的最佳方法就是积极参考科学经验和硬数据的人士的活动中心。此外，理性运动还借鉴了那些提出投资者总是不理性地行动的经济学家所借鉴的部分研究。
Very smart people often make irrational decisions, says University of Toronto psychologist Keith Stanovich. This leads to, say, physicians choosing less effective medical treatments or governments spending millions on unneeded projects. In 2013, Dr. Stanovich received a $1 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to develop a rigorous 'rationality quotient' test similar to an IQ test. Dr. Stanovich, who sits on CFAR's advisory board, hopes to have such a test ready in two years. He hopes the test will encourage people to learn to be more rational.
多伦多大学(University of Toronto)的心理学家基思·斯塔诺维奇(Keith Stanovich)称，非常聪明的人常常也会做出不理智的决定。这会导致医生选择了不怎么有效的医疗方案，或者是政府在不必要的工程上花了几百万。2013年，斯塔诺维奇博士收到了约翰·坦普尔顿基金会(John Templeton Foundation)提供的100万美元资助，以开发一个类似智商测试的严密的“理性商数”测试。斯塔诺维奇博士也是CFAR的顾问之一，他希望在两年后设计出这样的测试，并希望该测试能促动大家学习变得更理性一些。
For individuals, the odd secret of rationality is its reliance on emotions, proponents say. 'People are always really surprised at how much time we spend at the workshops talking about our feelings, ' says CFAR President Julia Galef, who has a statistics degree from Columbia University. 'Rationality isn't about getting rid of emotions, but analyzing them and taking them into consideration when making decisions, ' she says.
支持者称，对于个人而言，理性的奇特秘密在于它对情感的依赖。CFAR主席朱莉娅·加利夫(Julia Galef)指出：“总是有人对自己在讲习班中花了那么多时间谈论自己的感受非常惊讶。理性并不是要你消除情感，而是要分析它们并在做决定时把它们考虑进去。”加利夫拥有哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)的统计学学位。
Attendees, who each paid about $4, 000 to participate in the Ossining workshop (meals and lodging included), learned a technique called 'pre-hindsight' that uses emotional cues to create more foolproof plans. It works like this: Imagine that six months have passed, and you haven't achieved the body of your dreams. How surprised are you? The less surprised you are, the less likely it is you will succeed at your goal. Then think in detail about each reason you wouldn't be surprised if June comes and the number on the scale hasn't budged. Each reason -- whether 'I don't have time' or 'I don't like running in the mornings' -- is a possible cause of failure. Using the surprise level to anticipate these is crucial to creating a plan to address each weak point.
参加奥西宁讲习班的人每人需交费约4,000美元（包括食宿），学习的是一项名为“事后认识预测”的技能，即运用情感暗示来制定更万无一失的计划。它是这样起作用的：想象一下六个月已经过去，而你还未实现你的理想身材。你会有多惊讶？你越是不惊讶，你成功实现目标的可能性就越低。接下来，你要仔细想想假如6月份已经到来，但体重秤上的数字还没变化，对此你并不惊讶的每个原因。每一个原因──无论是“我没有时间”还是“我不喜欢在早晨跑步”──都是可能让你失败的原因。利用惊讶程度来预测这些是制定计划以解决每个弱点的关键。
Similarly, goal factoring can help determine whether shelling out $40 a month at the YMCA is the best way to get in shape. This involves mapping out the motivations (health, stress relief, weight loss) behind doing something (going to the gym), and questioning whether there is a more effective way to achieve the same things. Goal factoring could lead a person to realize that, given time and interests, an hour on the treadmill is unrealistic, but a weekly soccer tournament with friends is doable.
同样地，目标构想能帮助你决定每个月在基督教青年会(YMCA)花上40美元是否是保持体型的最佳方法。这包括要列出做某件事情（比如去健身房）背后的动因（为了健康、减压或减肥），然后自问做成同样的事情是否还有更有效的方法。目标构想可让一个人意识到，考虑到时间和兴趣问题，在跑步机上跑一小时是不切实际的，而每周和朋友踢场足球则是可行的。
Other lessons include 'structured procrastination.' The idea is that if you're going to procrastinate, you might as well procrastinate by doing something that works toward another goal -- for example, procrastinate on starting a work project by watching a TED talk you've been meaning to catch or starting a book you've wanted to read.
其他技巧包括“结构化拖延”。其理念是假如你想拖延某事，倒不如通过做些有助于实现另一个目标的事情来拖延它。比如说，如果你想延迟开始一个工作项目，你可以去看一段你一直想补上的TED的演讲，或者开始读一本以前想读的书。
If it seems like the rationalists are overthinking the decision-making process, consider the audience, Ms. Galef says. Most workshop participants have been software engineers, entrepreneurs, students or scientists. In one session, the instructor asked whether anyone present hadn't written a computer program. No hands went up.
加利夫说，如果你觉得理性主义者似乎对决策制定过程思虑过度了，想想讲习班的那些人吧。参加讲习班的人大多数曾是软件工程师、企业家、学生和科学家。在某节课上，讲师问在座的人是否有没有写过电脑程序的。没有一个人举手。
Can rationality exercises actually teach us to act more rational day to day?
理性训练真能教会我们一天比一天更理性地行动吗？
Psychologist Dr. Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for research into decision-making in 2002, says it is very difficult to overcome our split-second irrational reactions. 'Much of it is automatic, ' he says. 'Preferences come to mind and emotions arise, and we're not aware that we're making [decisions and assumptions] and therefore cannot control them.'
凭借对决策制定的研究在2002年获得诺贝尔经济学奖的心理学家卡内曼博士指出，我们会很难克服我们自己在一瞬间的非理性反应。他说：“多数是自然出现的，你偏爱的东西会出现在你的脑海中，情绪会随之产生，而且我们也意识不到我们正在做出决定和假设，所以我们无法控制它们。”
Organizations can generally make gains by adopting rational procedures enforced from the top, but Dr. Kahneman is skeptical of how much individuals can change.
机构团体一般都能够从采纳自上而下执行的理性程序中受益，但卡内曼博士对个人能改变多少持怀疑态度。
Dr. Stanovich is more optimistic. It is true that automatic biases can't be removed, he says, but people can train themselves to slow down and question these biases, and learn other mechanisms -- even something as simple as deliberately thinking of the effect of the opposite decision -- that may counteract such biases.
斯塔诺维奇博士则更为乐观。他说，自然而然的偏见确实不能消除，但人们可以训练自己减缓和质疑这些偏见，并学会其他也许能抵消这些偏见的机制──甚至是像审慎考虑相反决定的后果这样简单的事情。
Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he 'already had a high level of rationalism' but found the CFAR workshop useful.
麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)物理学家马克斯·泰格马克(Max Tegmark)说他“已经具备很高的理性程度”，不过还是发现CFAR的讲习班很有用。
'I had this huge to-do list with over a thousand things on it, and I found I wasn't looking at it very often because whenever I did, I just got this depressing feeling of being overwhelmed by my failure to accomplish stuff, ' says Dr. Tegmark. After the March workshop in Berkeley, Calif., the 46-year-old developed an improved system for tackling emails by writing a program that responds to routine emails with automated messages. He also got better at staying on track with long-term projects. 'I learned that if I want Max to do something in December, I should think about December Max as a different person, ' he says. Instead of just putting a reminder to do something in a few months, he'll plan ahead and send email reminders and incentives for his 'future self.'
泰格马克博士说：“我制定了一份庞大的任务清单，单子上列了1000多件事情，我发现我并不会经常看它，因为每当我去看它时，我就会因为受不了自己做不成那些事情而产生一种沮丧的感觉。”在3月份于加州伯克利参加了讲习班后，46岁的泰格马克写了一个以自动生成的信息回复日常邮件的程序，由此开发了一个跟踪邮件的升级系统。他在坚持长期项目方面也做得更好了。他说：“我了解到如果我要马克斯在12月份做些事情，我应该把12月的马克斯想象成一个不同的人。”他不只是记上要在几个月后做某件事的提醒，而是提前计划，给“未来的自己”发送邮件提醒和激励。
Another March attendee, Estonian computer programmer and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, says the workshop helped him improve his fitness plan. After analyzing his actions, Mr. Tallinn, 41, realized that he was avoiding exercise mostly because his routine was too long. He designed a shorter routine with different exercises that he finds it easier to stick to. (Mr. Tallinn is an investor in the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which is affiliated with CFAR.)
爱沙尼亚电脑程序员、Skype的联合创始人扬·塔林(Jaan Tallinn)也在3月份参加了讲习班。他说讲习班帮助他改进了他的健身计划。在分析了自己的行动后，41岁的塔林意识到他逃避健身主要是因为他的那个日常计划太长了，于是他拟定了一个他认为更容易坚持的包含不同锻炼项目的较短期的计划。（塔林为隶属于CFAR的机器智能研究所(Machine Intelligence Research Institute)的投资者。）
That individuals -- as well as markets and corporations -- don't always behave rationally is a tenet of behavioral economics.
个人──连同市场及企业──并不总是理性行事是行为经济学的一大信条。
Scholars of behavioral economics, including Dr. Kahneman, have attempted to tease out the factors behind individuals' and investors' shifting risk tolerances and decisions.
包括卡内曼博士在内，行为经济学的学者曾尝试理出个人及投资者的风险容忍度和决策不断变化背后的因素。
Behavioral economics, which has gained ground among academic economists over the past several decades, departs from traditional notions by assuming that individuals don't always behave rationally and act in their own best interests. Thus we have market bubbles in which investors inflate stocks or homes way above their rational value.
过去数十年来，行为经济学在学院派经济学家中得到了发展，它与传统观念不同，认为个人的行为并不总是理性的，并且总是按照自己的最大利益行事。因此，我们会看到市场泡沫，投资者将股票或房产的价格抬高到远远高于它们合理价值的水平。
