必须摒弃的一些旧观念：停止破解糟糕的测试【中英版本】

The Lesson to Unlearn 必须摈弃的一些旧观念：停止破解糟糕的测试December 2019 2019年12月The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades. 你在学校学到的最有害的东西，

并不是你在任何一门课上学到的知识，而是通过「学习如何取得好成绩」学到的。When I was in college,a particularly earnest philosophy grad student once told me that he never cared what grade he got in a class,

only what he learned in it. This stuck in my mind because it was the only time I ever heard anyone say such a thing. **在我上大学时，

有一位学习特别认真的哲学研究生曾对我说，他从不关心自己在一门课上得了多少分，他只关心自己在这门课上学到了什么。**这句话深深地印在我的脑海里，这是我第一次听到有人这么说。For me,as for most students,the measurement of what I was learning completely dominated actual learning in college. I was fairly earnest;

I was genuinely interested in most of the classes I took,and I worked hard. And yet I worked by far the hardest when I was studying for a test. 对我和大多数学生来说，

对所学知识的衡量完全主宰了我在大学里的实际学习。我相当认真；我对大多数课程都真心感兴趣，并且努力学习。

然而，当我为考试而学习时，我付出的努力远远超过平时。In theory, tests are merely what their name implies:tests of what you've learned in the class. In theory you shouldn't have to prepare for a test in a class any more than you have to prepare for a blood test. In theory you learn from taking the class,

from going to the lectures and doing the reading and/or assignments,and the test that comes afterward merely measures how well you learned. 从理论上讲，考试只是顾名思义：

测试你在课程中学到了什么。理论上，你不应该为课程中的考试做特别准备，就像你不需要为血液检查做特别准备一样。理论上，你可以通过上课、听课、阅读和/或做作业来学习，而之后的考试只是衡量你的学习效果。In practice,as almost everyone reading this will know,

things are so different that hearing this explanation of how classes and tests are meant to work is like hearing the etymology of a word whose meaning has changed completely. In practice,

the phrase "studying for a test" was almost redundant,because that was when one really studied. The difference between diligent and slack students was that the former studied hard for tests and the latter didn't. No one was pulling all-nighters two weeks into the semester. 然而实际情况是，

几乎每个读到这篇文章的人都会知道，理论和实际情况是如此不同，以至于听到这种关于上课和考试是如何进行的解释，就像听到一个词的词源，而这个词的含义已经完全改变。实际上，说"为了考试而学习 "几乎是多余的，因为那才是真正的学习。勤奋和懒散学生的区别在于，前者为考试努力学习，后者则不然。

没有人会在学期开始后的两周就熬夜通宵。Even though I was a diligent student,almost all the work I did in school was aimed at getting a good grade on something. 虽然我是一个勤奋的学生，

但我在学校所做的几乎所有努力都是为了在某门课上取得好成绩。To many people,it would seem strange that the preceding sentence has a "though" in it. Aren't I merely stating a tautology?

Isn't that what a diligent student is, a straight-A student?That's how deeply the conflation of learning with grades has infused our culture. 对许多人来说，前一句话中有一个 "虽然 "似乎很奇怪。

我不就是在陈述一个同义反复吗？勤奋的学生难道不就是取得优异成绩的学生吗？这就是将「学习与成绩」混为一谈对我们文化的深刻影响。Is it so bad if learning is conflated with grades?Yes,it is bad. And it wasn't till decades after college,when I was running Y Combinator,

that I realized how bad it is. 将学习与成绩混为一谈有那么糟糕吗？是的，这很糟糕。直到大学毕业几十年后，当我经营 Y Combinator 时，我才意识到这有多糟糕。I knew of course when I was a student that studying for a test is far from identical with actual learning. At the very least,

you don't retain knowledge you cram into your head the night before an exam. But the problem is worse than that. The real problem is that most tests don't come close to measuring what they're supposed to. 当然，

我在学生时代就知道，为考试而学习与真正的学习相去甚远。最起码，考试前一晚塞进脑子里的知识是留不住的。但问题比这更严重。真正的问题是，大多数考试并没有检验他们真正想要检验的东西。If tests truly were tests of learning,things wouldn't be so bad. Getting good grades and learning would converge,

just a little late. The problem is that nearly all tests given to students are terribly hackable. Most people who've gotten good grades know this,

and know it so well they've ceased even to question it. 如果考试真的是对学习的检验，事情就不会那么糟糕。取得好成绩和学习会趋于一致，只是晚了一点。但问题是，几乎所有给学生的考试都是非常容易被破解的。

大多数取得好成绩的人都知道这一点，而且知道得很清楚，甚至不再质疑。Suppose you're taking a class on medieval history and the final exam is coming up. The final exam is supposed to be a test of your knowledge of medieval history,

right?So if you have a couple days between now and the exam,surely the best way to spend the time,if you want to do well on the exam,is to read the best books you can find about medieval history. Then you'll know a lot about it,

and do well on the exam. You'll see when you realize how naive it sounds to act otherwise. 当你意识到不这样做听起来是多么幼稚时，你就会明白了。假设你正在上一门关于中世纪历史的课，期末考试马上就要到了。

期末考试应该是对你中世纪历史知识的一次检验，对吗？

所以，如果从现在到考试只剩几天时间，并且你想在考试中取得好成绩，那么最好的办法肯定是阅读你能找到的关于中世纪历史的最好的书籍。这样你就会对中世纪历史有更多的了解，考试成绩也会更好。No,no,no,experienced students are saying to themselves. If you merely read good books on medieval history,

most of the stuff you learned wouldn't be on the test. It's not good books you want to read,but the lecture notes and assigned reading in this class. And even most of that you can ignore,

because you only have to worry about the sort of thing that could turn up as a test question. You're looking for sharply-defined chunks of information. If one of the assigned readings has an interesting digression on some subtle point,

you can safely ignore that,because it's not the sort of thing that could be turned into a test question. But if the professor tells you that there were three underlying causes of the Schism of 1378,

or three main consequences of the Black Death,you'd better know them. And whether they were in fact the causes or consequences is beside the point. For the purposes of this class they are. 有经验的学生会在心里对自己说：

“不，不，不”。如果你只读中世纪历史方面的好书，你学到的大部分东西都不会出现在考试当中。你要读的不是好书，而是这门课的讲义和指定读物。甚至其中的大部分你都可以忽略，因为你只需要担心那些可能出现在考试题目中的内容。你在寻找的是明确定义的信息块。

如果指定读物中的一篇文章对某些微妙的问题进行了有趣的延伸，你可以放心地忽略它，因为它不是那种可以变成考试题目的东西。但如果教授告诉你"西斯玛分裂"（Schism of 1378）的三个潜在原因，或者黑死病的三个主要后果，你最好记住它们。

它们是否真的是这些事件的原因或后果并不重要。但对这门课的考试而言，它们是。At a university there are often copies of old exams floating around,and these narrow still further what you have to learn. As well as learning what kind of questions this professor asks,

you'll often get actual exam questions. Many professors re-use them. After teaching a class for 10 years,it would be hard not to,at least inadvertently. 在大学里，通常会有过往考试试卷的副本流传，这进一步缩小了你需要学习的范围。

除了学习这位教授会问什么类型的问题，你通常还会得到实际的考试题目。许多教授会重复使用它们。在教了10年之后，即使不是故意的，也很难不这样做。In some classes,your professor will have had some sort of political axe to grind,

and if so you'll have to grind it too. The need for this varies. In classes in math or the hard sciences or engineering it's rarely necessary,

but at the other end of the spectrum there are classes where you couldn't get a good grade without it. 在某些课程中，你的教授可能会有某种政治倾向，如果是这样，你也必须表现出同样的倾向。

这种需要的程度各不相同。在数学、硬科学或工程学的课程中，很少有必要这样做，但在另一些课程中，如果不这样做，你就无法取得好成绩。Getting a good grade in a class on x is so different from learning a lot about x that you have to choose one or the other,

and you can't blame students if they choose grades. Everyone judges them by their grades — graduate programs,employers,scholarships,even their own parents. 在一门关于x的课程中取得好成绩与学到很多关于x的知识是如此不同，以至于你不得不二选一，

你也不能怪学生们选择了成绩。毕竟每个人都根据他们的成绩来评价他们——研究生项目、雇主、奖学金，甚至他们自己的父母。I liked learning,and I really enjoyed some of the papers and programs I wrote in college. But did I ever,

after turning in a paper in some class,sit down and write another just for fun?Of course not. I had things due in other classes. If it ever came to a choice of learning or grades,

I chose grades. I hadn't come to college to do badly. 我喜欢学习，我真的很享受我在大学写的一些论文和程序。但我有没有在某门课上交完论文后，坐下来为了好玩而再写一篇呢？当然没有，我还有其他课要上。

如果必须在学习和成绩之间做出选择，我选择成绩。我上大学不是为了表现不佳。Anyone who cares about getting good grades has to play this game,or they'll be surpassed by those who do. And at elite universities,

that means nearly everyone,since someone who didn't care about getting good grades probably wouldn't be there in the first place. The result is that students compete to maximize the difference between learning and getting good grades. 任何关心成绩的人都必须参与这场游戏，

否则就会被其他在乎成绩的参与者超越。在顶尖大学，这几乎意味着每个人，因为不在乎成绩的人本来就不会出现在这里。结果就是，学生们竞相将学习和取得好成绩之间的差距最大化。Why are tests so bad?More precisely, why are they so hackable?

Any experienced programmer could answer that. How hackable is software whose author hasn't paid any attention to preventing it from being hacked?

Usually it's as porous as a colander. 为什么考试这么糟糕？更准确地说，为什么它们这么容易被破解？任何有经验的程序员都能回答这个问题。如果软件作者没有注意防止软件被黑客攻击，那么软件被破解的程度会有多高？

通常情况下，它会像笸箩一样漏洞百出。Hackable is the default for any test imposed by an authority. The reason the tests you're given are so consistently bad — so consistently far from measuring what they're supposed to measure — is simply that the people creating them haven't made much effort to prevent them from being hacked. 可破解性是任何权威机构实施的测试的默认设置。

你所获得的测试之所以总是那么糟糕，总是与它们应该检验的东西相去甚远的原因很简单，那就是制定这些考试的人并没有花太多精力防止他们被破解。But you can't blame teachers if their tests are hackable. Their job is to teach,

not to create unhackable tests. The real problem is grades,or more precisely,that grades have been overloaded. If grades were merely a way for teachers to tell students what they were doing right and wrong,

like a coach giving advice to an athlete,students wouldn't be tempted to hack tests. But unfortunately after a certain age grades become more than advice. After a certain age,

whenever you're being taught,you're usually also being judged. 但是，如果教师的测试容易被破解，你也不能责怪他们。毕竟他们的工作是教学，而不是制造无法破解的测试。真正的问题是成绩，或者更准确地说，是成绩的过度负担。

如果成绩仅仅是老师告诉学生他们做对和做错了什么，就像教练给运动员的建议一样，学生就不会被诱惑去破解考试。但不幸的是，过了一定年龄后，成绩就不仅仅是建议了。到了一定年龄之后，你在接受教育的同时，通常也在接受评判。I've used college tests as an example,but those are actually the least hackable. All the tests most students take their whole lives are at least as bad,

including,most spectacularly of all,the test that gets them into college. If getting into college were merely a matter of having the quality of one's mind measured by admissions officers the way scientists measure the mass of an object,

we could tell teenage kids "learn a lot" and leave it at that. You can tell how bad college admissions are,as a test,from how unlike high school that sounds. In practice,

the freakishly specific nature of the stuff ambitious kids have to do in high school is directly proportionate to the hackability of college admissions. The classes you don't care about that are mostly memorization,

the random "extracurricular activities" you have to participate in to show you're "well-rounded," the standardized tests as artificial as chess,

the "essay" you have to write that's presumably meant to hit some very specific target,but you're not told what. 我以大学考试为例，但实际上大学入学考试是最难被破解的。

大多数学生一生中参加的所有考试至少都一样糟糕，但其中最引人注目的是大学入学考试。如果进入大学仅仅是让招生官员像科学家测量物体质量那样测量一个人的思维质量，我们就可以告诉十几岁的孩子 "多学点东西"，就这么简单。高中生活与大学录取标准的迥异之处，恰恰揭示了大学招生体系的荒诞。

实际上，高中生为了迎合大学的招生要求，所做的那些古怪而具体的事情，与大学招生的可破解性成正比。你不感兴趣的课程几乎都是死记硬背，你还得参与各种“课外活动”，只为证明自己是个“全面发展”的人。就像下棋一样，标准化测试充满了人为的设定。“论文”也是你必须写的，据说是为了达到某个非常具体的目标，但具体是什么，却没人告诉你。

As well as being bad in what it does to kids,this test is also bad in the sense of being very hackable. So hackable that whole industries have grown up to hack it. This is the explicit purpose of test-prep companies and admissions counsellors,

but it's also a significant part of the function of private schools. 除了对孩子们的不好影响之外，这个测试本身也很糟糕，因为它非常容易被破解。操纵它的程度之大以至于有一整个行业都为此而生。

这是考前培训公司和招生顾问的明确目标，也是私立学校功能的重要组成部分。œ Why is this particular test so hackable?I think because of what it's measuring. Although the popular story is that the way to get into a good college is to be really smart,

admissions officers at elite colleges neither are,nor claim to be,looking only for that. What are they looking for?They're looking for people who are not simply smart,

but admirable in some more general sense. And how is this more general admirableness measured?The admissions officers feel it. In other words, they accept who they like. 为什么这个测试这么容易被破解呢？

我认为这是因为它所测量的内容。虽然流行的说法是，进入好大学的方法就是要非常聪明，但名校的招生官们既不只看重这一点，也不声称只看重这一点。他们在寻找什么？他们寻找的不仅仅是聪明的人，而是在某种更普遍意义上值得钦佩的人。这种更普遍的令人钦佩程度是如何衡量的呢？

凭招生官员的感觉。

换句话说，他们招收他们喜欢的人。So what college admissions is a test of is whether you suit the taste of some group of people. Well,of course a test like that is going to be hackable. And because it's both very hackable and there's (thought to be) a lot at stake,

it's hacked like nothing else. That's why it distorts your life so much for so long. 所以说，大学入学考试考验的是你是否符合某些人的口味。这样的测试当然会被人破解。

因为它非常容易被破解又有（被认为）很多利益在其中，所以它被破解得最厉害。

这就是为什么它会在很长一段时间内极大地扭曲你生活的原因。It's no wonder high school students often feel alienated. The shape of their lives is completely artificial. 难怪高中生常常有疏离感。

他们生活的轮廓完全是人为设定的。But wasting your time is not the worst thing the educational system does to you. The worst thing it does is to train you that the way to win is by hacking bad tests. This is a much subtler problem that I didn't recognize until I saw it happening to other people. 但浪费你的时间并不是教育系统对你做的最糟糕的事情。

它最糟糕的是训练你通过破解糟糕的考试来取胜。这是一个更微妙的问题，直到我看到它发生在其他人身上，我才意识到这一点。When I started advising startup founders at Y Combinator,especially young ones,

I was puzzled by the way they always seemed to make things overcomplicated. How,they would ask,do you raise money?What's the trick for making venture capitalists want to invest in you?The best way to make VCs want to invest in you,I would explain,

is to actually be a good investment. Even if you could trick VCs into investing in a bad startup,you'd be tricking yourselves too. You're investing time in the same company you're asking them to invest money in. If it's not a good investment,

why are you even doing it?当我开始在 Y Combinator 为初创企业创始人，尤其是年轻创始人提供建议时，我对他们似乎总是把事情搞得过于复杂的方式感到困惑。他们会问，你如何筹集资金？让风险投资人愿意投资你的诀窍是什么？

我解释说，让风险投资人愿意投资你的最好办法，就是真正成为一个好的投资对象。即使你能欺骗风险投资人投资一家糟糕的初创企业，那也是在欺骗你自己。你在要求他们投资的同一家公司上投入了时间。如果这不是一项好的投资，那你为什么还要这么做呢？Oh, they'd say, and then after a pause to digest this revelation, they'd ask:

What makes a startup a good investment?他们会说：“哦”，然后在消化这一启示后暂停一下，他们又会问：“是什么让初创企业成为一项好的投资？” So I would explain that what makes a startup promising,

not just in the eyes of investors but in fact,is growth. Ideally in revenue,but failing that in usage. What they needed to do was get lots of users. 于是我会解释，让一家初创公司有前景，

不仅是在投资者眼中看起来有前景，而是实际上有前景。一家初创公司有没有前景的关键在于它的增长。最理想的是收入增长，但如果达不到，那就是使用量增长。他们需要做的是获得大量用户。How does one get lots of users?They had all kinds of ideas about that. They needed to do a big launch that would get them "exposure." They needed influential people to talk about them. They even knew they needed to launch on a tuesday,

because that's when one gets the most attention. 如何吸引大量用户？他们有各种各样的想法。他们需要做一个大型发布会，以获得“曝光”。他们需要有影响力的人谈论他们。他们甚至知道他们需要在星期二发布，因为那是获得最多关注的时候。

No,I would explain,that is not how to get lots of users. The way you get lots of users is to make the product really great. Then people will not only use it but recommend it to their friends,

so your growth will be exponential once you get it started. 不，我会解释说，这不是获得大量用户的方法。获得大量用户的方法是把产品做得非常好。这样，人们不仅会使用它，还会把它推荐给他们的朋友。

而且一旦开始，你的产品就会呈指数级增长。At this point I've told the founders something you'd think would be completely obvious:that they should make a good company by making a good product. And yet their reaction would be something like the reaction many physicists must have had when they first heard about the theory of relativity:

a mixture of astonishment at its apparent genius,combined with a suspicion that anything so weird couldn't possibly be right. Ok,

they would say,dutifully. And could you introduce us to such-and-such influential person?And remember, we want to launch on Tuesday. 在这一点上，我告诉了创始人一些你认为显而易见的事情：

他们应该通过制造好产品来成就一家好公司。

然而，他们的反应就像许多物理学家第一次听说相对论时的反应一样：既惊讶于相对论的天才之处，又怀疑如此怪异的理论不可能是正确的。他们会恭敬地回答：“好的，您能介绍我们认识某位有影响力的人吗？请记住，我们想在周二发布产品。” It would sometimes take founders years to grasp these simple lessons. And not because they were lazy or stupid. They just seemed blind to what was right in front of them. 创始人们有时需要数年时间才能理解这些简单的道理。

并不是因为他们懒惰或愚蠢，而是他们似乎对眼前的真相视而不见。Why, I would ask myself, do they always make things so complicated?And then one day I realized this was not a rhetorical question. 我常问自己，为什么他们总是把事情搞得如此复杂？然后有一天，我意识到这不仅仅是个反问。

Why did founders tie themselves in knots doing the wrong things when the answer was right in front of them?Because that was what they'd been trained to do. Their education had taught them that the way to win was to hack the test. And without even telling them they were being trained to do this. The younger ones,

the recent graduates,had never faced a non-artificial test. They thought this was just how the world worked:that the first thing you did,when facing any kind of challenge,

was to figure out what the trick was for hacking the test. That's why the conversation would always start with how to raise money,

because that read as the test. It came at the end of YC. It had numbers attached to it,and higher numbers seemed to be better. It must be the test. 为什么当答案就在眼前时，创始人却把自己捆绑在错误的事情上？

因为他们接受的就是这种训练。他们所受的教育告诉他们，获胜的方法就是破解测试。而且甚至在没有明确告诉他们的情况下，他们就被训练成这样了。年轻的创始人，尤其是那些刚毕业的，从未面对过非人为设定的测试。他们以为世界就是这样运作的：面对任何挑战时，你要做的第一件事就是找出破解测试的诀窍。

这就是为什么谈话总是从如何筹集资金开始，因为这就是 YC 创业营招募的测试。它出现在YC 创业营招募的结尾。它附有数字，数字越大似乎越好，所以这一定是测试。There are certainly big chunks of the world where the way to win is to hack the test. This phenomenon isn't limited to schools. And some people,

either due to ideology or ignorance,claim that this is true of startups too. But it isn't. In fact,one of the most striking things about startups is the degree to which you win by simply doing good work. There are edge cases,

as there are in anything,but in general you win by getting users,and what users care about is whether the product does what they want. 在这个世界上，

当然有很大一部分人的取胜之道就是破解糟糕的测试。这种现象并不局限于学校。有些人出于意识形态或无知，会认为初创企业也是如此。但事实并非如此。事实上，初创企业最吸引人的一点是，你只需做好自己的工作就能获胜。当然，任何事物都会有边缘案例，但总的来说，你通过获得用户来获胜，而用户关心的是产品是否满足他们的需求。

Why did it take me so long to understand why founders made startups overcomplicated?Because I hadn't realized explicitly that schools train us to win by hacking bad tests. And not just them,

but me!I'd been trained to hack bad tests too,and hadn't realized it till decades later. 为什么我花了这么长时间才明白创始人为何使创业变得这么复杂？

因为我还没有明确意识到，学校是通过破解糟糕的考试来训练我们取胜的。而且不仅仅是他们，还有我自己！我也被训练去应对糟糕的考试，直到几十年后我才意识到这一点。I had lived as if I realized it,but without knowing why. For example,

I had avoided working for big companies. But if you'd asked why,I'd have said it was because they were bogus,or bureaucratic. Or just yuck. I never understood how much of my dislike of big companies was due to the fact that you win by hacking bad tests. 我在生活中似乎意识到了这一点，

但却不知道为什么。

例如，我一直避免为大公司工作。如果你问我为什么，我会说因为它们是虚假的，或者是官僚主义，或者就是纯粹的讨厌。我一直不明白，我之所以不喜欢大公司，在很大程度上是因为你需要通过破解糟糕的测试而获胜。Similarly,the fact that the tests were unhackable was a lot of what attracted me to startups. But again,

I hadn't realized that explicitly. 同样，创业无法破解的事实是它吸引我的一大原因，但我同样没有明确意识到这一点。I had in effect achieved by successive approximations something that may have a closed-form solution. I had gradually undone my training in hacking bad tests without knowing I was doing it. Could someone coming out of school banish this demon just by knowing its name,

and saying begone?It seems worth trying. 实际上，我已经通过连续近似的方法，得到了可能是闭合形式解的东西。在不知不觉中，我已经逐渐摆脱了我在破解糟糕测试方面所受的训练。刚从学校毕业的人，能不能只知道这个恶魔的名字，然后说一声 "滚蛋"，就把它赶走呢？

这似乎值得一试。Merely talking explicitly about this phenomenon is likely to make things better,because much of its power comes from the fact that we take it for granted. After you've noticed it,

it seems the elephant in the room,but it's a pretty well camouflaged elephant. The phenomenon is so old,and so pervasive. And it's simply the result of neglect. No one meant things to be this way. This is just what happens when you combine learning with grades,

competition,and the naive assumption of unhackability. 仅仅明确地谈论这个现象就可能使情况变得更好，因为它的力量很大程度上来自于我们将其视为理所当然的事实。在你注意到它之后，它似乎就成了房间里的大象，但它却是一头伪装得相当好的大象。

这种现象由来已久，而且无处不在。这只是疏忽的结果。没有人想让事情变成这样。当你把学习与成绩、竞争和 "不可破解 "的天真假设结合在一起时，就会出现这种情况。It was mind-blowing to realize that two of the things I'd puzzled about the most — the bogusness of high school,

and the difficulty of getting founders to see the obvious — both had the same cause. It's rare for such a big block to slide into place so late. 我突然意识到，

我最困惑的两件事：1) 高中的虚假性和 2) 让创始人看到显而易见的事实的困难都有相同的原因。如此重要的谜团在这么晚的时候才得以解开，实属罕见。Usually when that happens it has implications in a lot of different areas,

and this case seems no exception. For example,it suggests both that education could be done better,and how you might fix it. But it also suggests a potential answer to the question all big companies seem to have:

how can we be more like a startup?I'm not going to chase down all the implications now. What I want to focus on here is what it means for individuals. 通常情况下，

这种情况会对许多不同领域产生影响，这个案例似乎也不例外。

例如，它既表明教育可以做得更好，也表明你可以如何解决这个问题。但它也为所有大公司似乎都有的问题提供了一个潜在的答案：我们怎样才能更像一家初创公司？我现在不想追问所有的含义。在这里，我想关注的仅仅只是它对个人的意义。To start with,it means that most ambitious kids graduating from college have something they may want to unlearn. But it also changes how you look at the world. Instead of looking at all the different kinds of work people do and thinking of them vaguely as more or less appealing,

you can now ask a very specific question that will sort them in an interesting way:to what extent do you win at this kind of work by hacking bad tests?

首先，这意味着许多有志向的大学毕业生可能需要摒弃一些旧观念。同时，这也改变了你看待世界的方式。与其模糊地看待人们从事的各种工作，并试图判断它们的吸引力，不如提出一个更具体的问题，以一种有趣的方式对这些工作进行分类：在这种工作中，你通过应对糟糕的测试来赢得胜利的程度有多大？

It would help if there was a way to recognize bad tests quickly. Is there a pattern here?It turns out there is. 如果有一种方法能迅速识别糟糕的考试就好了。

这里有没有什么模式？事实证明是有的。Tests can be divided into two kinds:those that are imposed by authorities,and those that aren't. Tests that aren't imposed by authorities are inherently unhackable,in the sense that no one is claiming they're tests of anything more than they actually test. A football match,

for example,is simply a test of who wins,not which team is better. You can tell that from the fact that commentators sometimes say afterward that the better team won. Whereas tests imposed by authorities are usually proxies for something else. A test in a class is supposed to measure not just how well you did on that particular test,

but how much you learned in the class. While tests that aren't imposed by authorities are inherently unhackable,those imposed by authorities have to be made unhackable. Usually they aren't. So as a first approximation,

bad tests are roughly equivalent to tests imposed by authorities. 测试可以分为两种类型：一种是权威机构强加的，另一种则不是。那些非权威机构强加的测试，本质上是不可破解的，因为没有人声称它们是对任何超出实际测试内容之外的事物的考验。

例如，足球比赛就只是一场关于谁能获胜的测试，而不是关于哪个队伍更强的测试。从评论员有时赛后说哪个更好的队伍赢了，就能看出这一点。而权威机构强加的测试通常会代表其它东西。课堂上的考试不仅要测试你在那次考试中的表现，还要测试你在课堂上学到了多少东西。

非权威机构强加的测试本质上是不可破解的，但权威机构强加的测试必须被设计成不可破解的。但通常情况下，它们并没有设计成不可破解的。

因此，作为一个初步的判断，糟糕的测试大致等同于权威机构强加的测试。You might actually like to win by hacking bad tests. Presumably some people do. But I bet most people who find themselves doing this kind of work don't like it. They just take it for granted that this is how the world works,

unless you want to drop out and be some kind of hippie artisan. 你可能真的喜欢通过破解糟糕的测试来获胜。大概有些人就是这样。但我敢打赌，大多数从事这种工作的人并不喜欢它。他们只是想当然地认为世界就是这样运转的，除非你想辍学，做个嬉皮士手艺人。

I suspect many people implicitly assume that working in a field with bad tests is the price of making lots of money. But that,

I can tell you,is false. It used to be true. In the mid-twentieth century,when the economy was composed of oligopolies,

the only way to the top was by playing their game. But it's not true now. There are now ways to get rich by doing good work,

and that's part of the reason people are so much more excited about getting rich than they used to be. When I was a kid,

you could either become an engineer and make cool things,or make lots of money by becoming an "executive." Now you can make lots of money by making cool things. 我怀疑很多人隐隐地认为，

在有糟糕测试的领域工作是赚大钱的代价。但我可以告诉你，这是错误的。这曾经是真的。在二十世纪中叶，当经济由寡头垄断组成时，只有玩他们的游戏才能登上顶峰。但现在并非如此。现在有了通过出色工作致富的途径，这也是人们比过去更热衷于致富的部分原因。

当我还是个孩子的时候，你要么成为一名工程师，做出很酷的东西，要么成为一名 "高管"，赚很多钱。现在，你可以通过制造很酷的东西来赚大钱。Hacking bad tests is becoming less important as the link between work and authority erodes. The erosion of that link is one of the most important trends happening now,

and we see its effects in almost every kind of work people do. Startups are one of the most visible examples,but we see much the same thing in writing. Writers no longer have to submit to publishers and editors to reach readers;

now they can go direct. 随着工作与权威之间联系的削弱，破解糟糕的测试变得越来越不重要。这种联系的削弱是当前最重要的趋势之一，我们在人们从事的几乎所有工作中都能看到它的影响。初创企业是最明显的例子之一，但我们在写作领域中也看到了同样的情况。

作家不再需要向出版商和编辑投稿才能接触到读者，现在他们可以直接面对读者。The more I think about this question,the more optimistic I get. This seems one of those situations where we don't realize how much something was holding us back until it's eliminated. And I can foresee the whole bogus edifice crumbling. Imagine what happens as more and more people start to ask themselves if they want to win by hacking bad tests,

and decide that they don't. The kinds of work where you win by hacking bad tests will be starved of talent,and the kinds where you win by doing good work will see an influx of the most ambitious people. And as hacking bad tests shrinks in importance,

education will evolve to stop training us to do it. Imagine what the world could look like if that happened. 我越思考这个问题，

就越感到乐观。

在这种情况下，我们似乎不会意识到有什么东西在阻碍着我们，直到它被消除。我可以预见，整个假大厦都会轰然倒塌。想象一下，当越来越多的人开始扪心自问他们是否想通过破解糟糕的测试来获胜，并决定他们不想这样做时，会发生什么。那些通过破解糟糕的测试而获胜的工作岗位将人才匮乏，而那些通过做好工作而获胜的岗位则会涌入大量雄心勃勃的人才。

随着 "破解糟糕测试 "的重要性不断降低，教育也将不断发展，不再培训我们如何破解糟糕测试。试想一下，如果出现这种情况，世界将会变成什么样？This is not just a lesson for individuals to unlearn,but one for society to unlearn,

and we'll be amazed at the energy that's liberated when we do. 这不仅是个人需要忘记的一课，也是社会需要忘记的一课，当我们这样做的时候，我们会对解放出来的能量感到惊讶。