Notes
Enter gears-level models 输入齿轮级模型。#Concept
当金钱充裕时，知识才是真正的财富。要更新一下之前博客里知识就是财富的措辞了。让我来说，我想说的缓和点，知识能有效的转化为金钱时，它才是真正的财富，钱财和认知富有两个方面的财富。
As one resource becomes abundant, other resources become bottlenecks. When wealth and power become abundant, anything wealth and power cannot buy become bottlenecks - including knowledge and expertise.
当一种资源变得丰富时，其他资源就会成为瓶颈。当财富和权力变得丰富时，任何财富和权力买不到的东西都会成为瓶颈——包括知识和专业知识。
After a certain point, wealth and power cease to be the taut constraints on one’s action space. They just don’t matter that much. Sure, giant yachts are great for social status, and our lizard-brains love politics. The modern economy is happy to provide outlets for disposing of large amounts of wealth and power. But personally, I don’t care that much about giant yachts. I want a cure for aging. I want weekend trips to the moon. I want flying cars and an indestructible body and tiny genetically-engineered dragons. Money and power can’t efficiently buy that; the bottleneck is knowledge.
到了一定程度之后，财富和权力就不再是对一个人行动空间的严格限制。他们只是没那么重要。当然，巨型游艇非常有利于社会地位，而我们的蜥蜴脑热爱政治。现代经济很乐意为处置大量财富和权力提供渠道。但就我个人而言，我不太关心巨型游艇。我想要治愈衰老的方法。我想要周末去月球旅行。我想要飞行汽车、坚不可摧的身体和基因工程的小龙。金钱和权力无法有效地买到这一点；瓶颈是知识。
Origin
When Money Is Abundant, Knowledge Is The Real Wealth 当金钱充裕时，知识才是真正的财富
First Puzzle Piece 第一块拼图
By and large, the President of the United States can order people to do things, and they will do those things. POTUS is often considered the most powerful person in the world. And yet, the president cannot order a virus to stop replicating. The president cannot order GDP to increase. The president cannot order world peace.
总的来说，美国总统可以命令人们做事，他们也会做那些事。美国总统通常被认为是世界上最有权势的人。然而，总统不能命令病毒停止复制。总统不能命令GDP增长。总统不能命令世界和平。
Are there orders the president could give which would result in world peace, or increasing GDP, or the end of a virus? Probably, yes. Any of these could likely even be done with relatively little opportunity cost. Yet no president in history has known which orders will efficiently achieve these objectives. There are probably some people in the world who know which orders would efficiently increase GDP, but the president cannot distinguish them from the millions of people who claim to know (and may even believe it themselves) but are wrong.
总统可以发布哪些命令来实现世界和平、GDP 增长或病毒终结？可能是。其中任何一项都可能以相对较低的机会成本来完成。然而历史上没有一位总统知道哪些命令能够有效地实现这些目标。世界上可能有一些人知道哪些命令可以有效地增加 GDP，但总统无法将他们与数百万人声称知道（甚至可能自己相信）但错误的人区分开来。
Last I heard, Jeff Bezos was the official richest man in the world. He can buy basically anything money can buy. But he can’t buy a cure for cancer. Is there some way he could spend a billion dollars to cure cancer in five years? Probably, yes. But Jeff Bezos does not know how to do that. Even if someone somewhere in the world does know how to turn a billion dollars into a cancer cure in five years, Jeff Bezos cannot distinguish that person from the thousands of other people who claim to know (and may even believe it themselves) but are wrong.
我上次听说，杰夫·贝索斯是官方的世界首富。他基本上可以买到任何有钱能买到的东西。但他买不到治愈癌症的方法。有什么方法可以在五年内花费十亿美元治愈癌症吗？可能是。但杰夫·贝佐斯不知道该怎么做。即使世界上某个地方的某个人确实知道如何在五年内将 10 亿美元转化为癌症治疗方法，杰夫·贝佐斯也无法将该人与其他数千名声称知道（甚至可能自己相信）但错误的人区分开来。
When non-experts cannot distinguish true expertise from noise, money cannot buy expertise. Knowledge cannot be outsourced; we must understand things ourselves.
当非专家无法区分真正的专业知识和噪音时，金钱就买不到专业知识。知识不能外包；我们必须自己了解事情。
Second Puzzle Piece 第二块拼图
The Haber process combines one molecule of nitrogen with three molecules of hydrogen to produce two molecules of ammonia - useful for fertilizer, explosives, etc. If I feed a few grams of hydrogen and several tons of nitrogen into the Haber process, I’ll get out a few grams of ammonia. No matter how much more nitrogen I pile in - a thousand tons, a million tons, whatever - I will not get more than a few grams of ammonia. If the reaction is limited by the amount of hydrogen, then throwing more nitrogen at it will not make much difference.
哈伯工艺将一分子氮与三分子氢结合起来，产生两分子氨——可用于化肥、炸药等。如果我将几克氢和几吨氮注入哈伯工艺，我会得到排出几克氨。无论我添加多少氮——一千吨、一百万吨，无论什么——我都不会得到超过几克的氨。如果反应受到氢气量的限制，那么向其投入更多的氮气不会产生太大影响。
In the language of constraints and slackness: ammonia production is constrained by hydrogen, and by nitrogen. When nitrogen is abundant, the nitrogen constraint is slack; adding more nitrogen won’t make much difference. Conversely, since hydrogen is scarce, the hydrogen constraint is taut; adding more hydrogen will make a difference. Hydrogen is the bottleneck.
用约束和松弛的语言来说：氨的生产受到氢气和氮气的限制。当氮素丰富时，氮素约束较宽松；添加更多的氮不会产生太大的影响。相反，由于氢稀缺，氢约束很紧；添加更多的氢将会产生影响。氢是瓶颈。
Likewise in economic production: if a medieval book-maker requires 12 sheep skins and 30 days’ work from a transcriptionist to produce a book, and the book-maker has thousands of transcriptionist-hours available but only 12 sheep, then he can only make one book. Throwing more transcriptionists at the book-maker will not increase the number of books produced; sheep are the bottleneck.
同样在经济生产中：如果一个中世纪的书籍制作者需要 12 张羊皮和抄写员 30 天的工作来制作一本书，而该书籍制作者有数千个抄写员小时可用，但只有 12 只羊，那么他只能制作一本书。向图书制造商投入更多的抄写员并不会增加图书的出版数量；羊是瓶颈。
When some inputs become more or less abundant, bottlenecks change. If our book-maker suddenly acquires tens of thousands of sheep skins, then transcriptionists may become the bottleneck to book-production. In general, when one resource becomes abundant, other resources become bottlenecks.
当某些投入变得更加丰富或更加不丰富时，瓶颈就会发生变化。如果我们的图书制造商突然获得了数万张羊皮，那么抄写员可能会成为图书生产的瓶颈。一般来说，当一种资源变得丰富时，其他资源就会成为瓶颈。
Putting The Pieces Together
将各个部分组合在一起
If I don’t know how to efficiently turn power into a GDP increase, or money into a cure for cancer, then throwing more power/money at the problem will not make much difference.
如果我不知道如何有效地将权力转化为国内生产总值的增长，或者将金钱转化为癌症的治疗方法，那么投入更多的权力/金钱来解决问题不会有太大区别。
King Louis XV of France was one of the richest and most powerful people in the world. He died of smallpox in 1774, the same year that a dairy farmer successfully immunized his wife and children with cowpox. All that money and power could not buy the knowledge of a dairy farmer - the knowledge that cowpox could safely immunize against smallpox. There were thousands of humoral experts, faith healers, eastern spiritualists, and so forth who would claim to offer some protection against smallpox, and King Louis XV could not distinguish the real solution.
法国国王路易十五是世界上最富有、最有权势的人之一。 1774 年，他死于天花，同年，一位奶农成功为他的妻子和孩子接种了牛痘疫苗。所有的金钱和权力都买不来奶农的知识——牛痘可以安全地免疫天花的知识。有成千上万的体液专家、信仰治疗师、东方唯灵论者等声称可以提供一些针对天花的保护措施，而国王路易十五却无法辨别真正的解决方案。
As one resource becomes abundant, other resources become bottlenecks. When wealth and power become abundant, anything wealth and power cannot buy become bottlenecks - including knowledge and expertise.
当一种资源变得丰富时，其他资源就会成为瓶颈。当财富和权力变得丰富时，任何财富和权力买不到的东西都会成为瓶颈——包括知识和专业知识。
After a certain point, wealth and power cease to be the taut constraints on one’s action space. They just don’t matter that much. Sure, giant yachts are great for social status, and our lizard-brains love politics. The modern economy is happy to provide outlets for disposing of large amounts of wealth and power. But personally, I don’t care that much about giant yachts. I want a cure for aging. I want weekend trips to the moon. I want flying cars and an indestructible body and tiny genetically-engineered dragons. Money and power can’t efficiently buy that; the bottleneck is knowledge.
到了一定程度之后，财富和权力就不再是对一个人行动空间的严格限制。他们只是没那么重要。当然，巨型游艇非常有利于社会地位，而我们的蜥蜴脑热爱政治。现代经济很乐意为处置大量财富和权力提供渠道。但就我个人而言，我不太关心巨型游艇。我想要治愈衰老的方法。我想要周末去月球旅行。我想要飞行汽车、坚不可摧的身体和基因工程的小龙。金钱和权力无法有效地买到这一点；瓶颈是知识。
Based on my own experience and the experience of others I know, I think knowledge starts to become taut rather quickly - I’d say at an annual income level in the low hundred thousands. With that much income, if I knew exactly the experiments or studies to perform to discover a cure for cancer, I could probably make them happen. (Getting regulatory approval is another matter, but I think that would largely handle itself if people knew the solution - there’s a large profit incentive, after all.) Beyond that level, more money mostly just means more ability to spray and pray for solutions - which is not a promising strategy in our high-dimensional world.
根据我自己的经验和我认识的其他人的经验，我认为知识很快就会变得紧张——我想说的是，在年收入水平在几十万的情况下。有了这么多的收入，如果我确切地知道要进行哪些实验或研究来发现癌症的治疗方法，我可能会让它们成为现实。 （获得监管部门的批准是另一回事，但我认为，如果人们知道解决方案，这在很大程度上会自行解决 - 毕竟有很大的利润激励。）超出这个水平，更多的钱主要意味着更有能力喷洒和祈祷解决方案 -在我们的高维世界中，这不是一个有前途的策略。
So, two years ago I quit my monetarily-lucrative job as a data scientist and have mostly focused on acquiring knowledge since then. I can worry about money if and when I know what to do with it.
因此，两年前，我辞去了数据科学家的高薪工作，从那时起，我主要专注于获取知识。如果我知道如何处理金钱，我就可以担心金钱的问题。
A mindset I recommend trying on from time to time, especially for people with $100k+ income: think of money as an abundant resource. Everything money can buy is “cheap”, because money is “cheap”. Then the things which are “expensive” are the things which money alone cannot buy - including knowledge and understanding of the world. Life lesson from Disney!Rumplestiltskin: there are things which money cannot buy, therefore it is important to acquire such things and use them for barter and investment. In particular, it’s worth looking for opportunities to acquire knowledge and expertise which can be leveraged for more knowledge and expertise.
我建议时不时地尝试一下这种心态，尤其是对于收入超过 10 万美元的人：将金钱视为一种丰富的资源。钱能买到的一切都是“便宜”的，因为钱是“便宜”的。那么“昂贵”的东西就是光靠金钱买不到的东西——包括知识和对世界的理解。迪士尼的人生教训！Rumplestiltskin：有些东西是金钱买不到的，因此获取这些东西并将其用于易货和投资非常重要。特别是，值得寻找获得知识和专业知识的机会，这些知识和专业知识可以用来获取更多知识和专业知识。
Investments In Knowledge 知识投资
Past a certain point, money and power are no longer the limiting factors for me to get what I want. Knowledge becomes the bottleneck instead. At that point, money and power are no longer particularly relevant measures of my capabilities. Pursuing more “wealth” in the usual sense of the word is no longer a very useful instrumental goal. At that point, the type of “wealth” I really need to pursue is knowledge.
过了某个点，金钱和权力就不再是我得到我想要的东西的限制因素了。知识反而成为瓶颈。到那时，金钱和权力不再是衡量我能力的特别相关标准。追求更多通常意义上的“财富”不再是一个非常有用的工具性目标。到那时，我真正需要追求的“财富”就是知识。
If I want to build long-term knowledge-wealth, then the analogy between money-wealth and knowledge-wealth suggests an interesting question: what does a knowledge “investment” look like? What is a capital asset of knowledge, an investment which pays dividends in more knowledge?
如果我想建立长期的知识财富，那么金钱财富和知识财富之间的类比提出了一个有趣的问题：知识“投资”是什么样的？什么是知识资本资产，即能带来更多知识红利的投资？
输入齿轮级模型。
Mapping out the internal workings of a system takes a lot of up-front work. It’s much easier to try random molecules and see if they cure cancer, than to map out all the internal signals and cells and interactions which cause cancer. But the latter is a capital investment: once we’ve nailed down one gear in the model, one signal or one mutation or one cell-state, that informs all of our future tests and model-building. If we find that Y mediates the effect of X on Z, then our future studies of the Y-Z interaction can safely ignore X. On the other hand, if we test a random molecule and find that it doesn’t cure cancer, then that tells us little-to-nothing; that knowledge does not yield dividends.
规划系统的内部工作原理需要大量的前期工作。尝试随机分子并看看它们是否能治愈癌症，比绘制出导致癌症的所有内部信号、细胞和相互作用要容易得多。但后者是一项资本投资：一旦我们确定了模型中的一个齿轮、一个信号、一个突变或一个细胞状态，就会为我们未来的所有测试和模型构建提供信息。如果我们发现 Y 介导 X 对 Z 的影响，那么我们未来对 Y-Z 相互作用的研究就可以安全地忽略 X。另一方面，如果我们测试随机分子并发现它不能治愈癌症，那么这就说明了我们几乎一无所有；知识不会产生红利。
Of course, gears-level models aren’t the only form of capital investment in knowledge. Most tools of applied math and the sciences consist of general models which we can learn once and then apply in many different contexts. They are general-purpose gears which we can recognize in many systems.
当然，齿轮级模型并不是知识资本投资的唯一形式。大多数应用数学和科学工具都包含通用模型，我们只需学习一次即可将其应用到许多不同的环境中。它们是我们可以在许多系统中识别的通用齿轮。
Once I understand the internal details of how e.g. capacitors work, I can apply that knowledge to understand not only electronic circuits, but also charged biological membranes. When I understand the math of microeconomics, I can apply it to optimization problems in AI. When I understand shocks and rarefactions in nonlinear PDEs, I can see them in action at the beach or in traffic. And the “core” topics - calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, big-O analysis, Bayesian probability, optimization, dynamical systems, etc - can be applied all over. General-purpose models are a capital investment in knowledge.
一旦我了解了如何的内部细节，例如当电容器工作时，我不仅可以应用这些知识来理解电子电路，还可以理解带电的生物膜。当我理解微观经济学的数学时，我可以将其应用于人工智能中的优化问题。当我理解非线性偏微分方程中的冲击和稀疏时，我可以看到它们在海滩或交通中的作用。而“核心”主题——微积分、线性代数、微分方程、大O分析、贝叶斯概率、优化、动力系统等——可以应用到各处。通用模型是对知识的资本投资。
I hope that someday my own research will be on that list. That’s the kind of wealth I’m investing in now.
我希望有一天我自己的研究也能出现在这份名单上。这就是我现在投资的财富。