何謂真正的天才 我們需要收回天才這個詞
The MacArthur Foundation late last month announced its latest crop of genius grants,
上個月晚些時候，麥克阿瑟基金會宣佈了最新一批天才獎獲得者。
and once again you thought maybe, just maybe, this was your year.
而再一次，你暗想說不定，真的說不定，今年就該輪到我了。
And why not? These days, we’re all geniuses.
爲什麼不可能呢？在當今，我們人人都是天才。
We might be marketing geniuses or *culinary geniuses or TV geniuses.
我們可能是營銷天才、烹飪天才或者電視天才。
We have so *diluted genius that it’s fast joining the company of natural and mindful, words rendered inert through overuse and misuse.
因爲過度使用和誤用，天才這個詞很快和純天然、正念這樣的詞一樣，被稀釋詞義，失去了原有的深度。
Admittedly, the word is tough to nail down.
不可否認，這個詞的含義很難明確。
Sometimes we equate genius with raw intelligence.
有時，我們將天才等同於天生智力超羣的人。
But many of humanity’s greatest breakthroughs were achieved by those with only modest IQs.
但很多人類最偉大的突破都是由智力非常普通的人實現的。
Sometimes we think of the genius as someone extremely knowledgeable, but that definition also falls short.
有時，我們認爲天才是那些學富五車的人，但這種定義也有缺陷。
During Albert Einstein’s time, other scientists knew more physics than Einstein did, but history doesn’t remember them.
在愛因斯坦生活的年代，其他科學家要比愛因斯坦懂得更多的物理學知識，但歷史並沒有記住他們。
That’s because they didn’t *deploy that knowledge the way Einstein did.
這是因爲他們沒有像愛因斯坦一樣調配那些知識。
They weren’t able to, as he put it, regard old questions from a new angle.
正如愛因斯坦所說，他們不能用新的視角來看待舊問題。
The genius is not a know-it-all but a see-it-all, someone who, working with the material available to all of us, is able to make surprising and useful connections.
智者非知之者而悟之者也，是用人人觸手可及的材料創新且建立有效聯繫的人。
True genius involves not merely an *incremental advance, but a conceptual leap.
真正的智者不僅進行量的積累，更能實現質的飛躍。
As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put it: Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.
正如哲學家亞瑟.叔本華所言：能者達人所不能，智者達人所未見。
We’ve lost sight of this truth, and too often *bestow the title of genius on talented people hitting visible targets.
我們已丟失了天才這個詞所蘊含的真諦，太過頻繁地將天才這一頭銜授予那些實現了看得見目標的有才之人。
A good example is the much-*ballyhooed announcement earlier this year that scientists had, for the first time, recorded the sound of two black holes colliding, a billion light-years away.
一個恰當的例子就是，今年早些時候人們大肆宣揚科學家首次記錄到了10億光年外兩黑洞碰撞的聲音。
It was a remarkable discovery, no doubt, but it did not represent a *seismic shift in how we understand the universe.
毫無疑問，這是一個非凡的發現，但它不會對我們理解宇宙產生任何顛覆性的改變，
It merely confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
它只是證實了愛因斯坦的廣義相對論。
As Plato observed, What is honored in a country is cultivated there.
正如柏拉圖所說，一個國家會培養他們引以爲傲的東西。
What do we honor? Digital technology, and the convenience it represents, so naturally we get a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg as our geniuses, which, in point of fact, they aren’t.
我們以何爲傲？數字技術以及它所帶來的便利讓我們很自然地賦予喬布斯或馬克.扎克伯格天才的稱號，但實際上，他們不是。
The iPhone and Facebook are *wondrous inventions.
蘋果手機和臉書都是奇妙的發明。
In many ways, they make our lives a bit easier, a bit more convenient.
在很多方面，他們都讓我們的生活更加輕鬆，更加便捷。
If anything, though, a true genius makes our lives more difficult, more unsettled.
然而，如果現在存在真正的天才，那麼他會讓我們的生活更加困難，更加不安。
William Shakespeare’s words provide more *disquiet than *succor,
莎士比亞的作品帶給我們更多的是憂慮而非救助。
and the world felt a bit more secure before Charles Darwin came along.
而在達爾文出現以前，人們感覺世界是更安全的。
Zuckerberg and Jobs may have changed our world, but they haven’t yet changed our worldview.
扎克伯格和喬布斯或許已經改變了我們的世界，但他們還沒有改變我們的世界觀。
We need to reclaim genius, and a good place to start is by putting the brakes on Genius Creep.
我們需要收回天才這個詞，而一個不錯的開端就是限制對這個詞的濫用。
