【TED演讲36*】如何高效学习？演说者：Scott Young

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演说题目：如何高效学习？演说者：Scott Young

今天的演讲者叫Scott Young，来自加拿大，是美国MIT（麻省理工学院）计算机科学专业的学生。毫无疑问，他是超级学霸，有着超强的学习能力，他通过12个月自学完成了本专业33门课程的学习，也就是说他用一年的时间修完了大学四年的课程。

中英对照演讲稿

So if you’ve been watching the news lately, you have probably seen photographs like this. Students protesting because their government is cutting subsidies to education. 

如果你们最近有看新闻的话，你们可能看过这样的照片。学生们抗议的原因是政府削减了教育补助金。

And the big part of the reason for this, both the government cutting subsidies and the student outcry is that getting a college education just doesn’t cost what it used to.

而对于这两个现象——政府削减补助金，以及学生们出来抗议;它们的主要原因就是：大学教育已经不再是以前那个价了。

So if you graduated more than 2 decades ago, you might be surprised to know that it now costs students over 2.5x as much as it did for you, and that’s in real dollars for any economists in the audience here.

所以，如果你是20多年前毕业的，你可能会吃惊地发现：现在学生们要花你那时候2.5倍的钱，而且我们这里说的是实际价格(而不是账面价格)，如果观众里有经济学家的话。

And it’s not an easy problem. On one hand the cost is becoming harder for both students and governments to bear. But in the other hand employers are demanding an educated workforce. 

这不是个容易解决的问题。一方面，教育成本对学生和政府来说都越来越难负担;但另一方面，雇主们要的是一个受过教育的劳动力大军。

They want employees with complex analytical skills. The world now runs out of what we dig out of people’s brains not just what we dig out of the ground. So, that’s the problem.

他们要的是具备复杂分析技巧的雇员。现在全世界急缺的不光是自然资源，还有优质的脑力劳动。对，这就是问题的症结。

Now what’s the fix? Well, let me be completely honest with you. I have no idea.

那，怎么解决呢?嗯，实话讲，我完全不知道。

But what I do want to suggest is that maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place. We’ve been expecting change to come from schools and governments, but what if the change came from us.

不过，我想说，可能我们一直以来寻求答案的方向是错的。我们一直指望学校和政府能带来改变，但有没有可能其实是我们自己该改变呢?

I’d like to share my story and suggest that maybe an education doesn’t need to be expensive and what’s more, maybe we can learn better without it.

我想分享一下我自己的故事，告诉大家教育可能并不需要这么昂贵，而且，我们在没有它的情况下可能可以学得更好。

So in my case I was lucky. When I got accepted to college, I managed to narrow down my choice in major to two choices: Business and computer science. I was really interested in both. 

就我个人而言，我挺幸运的。当我被大学录取时，我成功地把专业选项缩减到2个：商科和计算机科学。我对两者都真的非常感兴趣。

With one you get to build companies, with the other you get to build technologies. And these two are not mutually exclusive. After all Bill Gates was a hacker before he built an empire.

其中一个让你可以建立公司，而另一个让你可以创造技术。而且这两者并不是互相排斥的。毕竟，比尔•盖茨在建立他的帝国前就是个黑客嘛。

But in my school I could only major in one. So I did what any freshman would do, and did a careful rational cost-benefit analysis.

不过，在我们学校里，你只能选一个专业。于是我做了任何一个大一新生都会做的事：一个严密、理性的成本-收益分析。

So business it was, and after graduating I have no regrets. I learned a lot and I had a great time.

于是我就选了商科，而且毕业后我也完全没有遗憾。我学到了很多，也过得很开心。

But after finishing my education, I had this longing for the path not taken. I really wanted to learn computer science. But going back to school didn’t appeal to me, four more years of my life, acceptance boards, tuition bills, I didn’t want to postpone my life and rack up debt, just to pursue a curiosity. I wanted the education, not the school.

但是在结束了我的大学教育之后，我一直对自己没有选的那条路心怀渴望。我真的很想学计算机科学。但是，回学校读书对我来说没有什么吸引力; 我不想再花4年时间，不想再应付一次招生委员会，不想再交学费，不想仅仅为了满足好奇心就推迟我的人生并背一大笔债。我想要的是教育，而不是学校。

And then I remembered that Universities like MIT, Stanford and Harvard, had a habit of putting up classes online for free. I’ve done a few of these before and then a thought occurred to me. If you could learn a class, why not an entire degree.

然后，我想起来像麻省理工、斯坦福和哈佛这样的大学都有把课程免费放到网上的习惯。我以前上过几次这种课，而这时我突然有了一个点子：如果你能用这种方法学一门课，为什么不直接学完一个学位呢?

So that was the beginning of an experiment. Would it be possible to get an MIT education in computer science without ever going to MIT? So it’s an intriguing idea, 

于是，实验就这么开始了。到底有没有可能不去麻省理工就得到麻省理工的计算机科学教育呢?这个想法的确挺诱人的，

but already you can probably notice some of the complexities and objections this might raise. So going to MIT is a lot more than just what you learn in the classroom.

不过你可能已经意识到这个事情很复杂，而且会引起一些人的反对。对，去麻省理工上学意味的并不仅仅是课堂上学的那些东西。

So how can you possibly hope to replicate something which is such a multifaceted experience? So I like to think college is a lot like eating at a five star restaurant. 

你怎么可能用别的东西替代一个这么多维的体验呢?我觉得上大学很像是去米其林五星餐厅吃饭。

You’re never paying for just the food. You get the wait staff, elegant decor, the fancy french wines. You’re paying for a complex and multifaceted experience.

你绝不是仅仅为了食物才付那么多钱，你的消费还涵盖服务员的服务、雅致的装潢、高档的法国葡萄酒。你买的是一个复杂而多维的体验。

And the same is true at college. You get networking with your intellectual peers, research opportunities and credentials from elite institutions. And like the fancy restaurant you get a big bill at the end.

这对于上大学来说也是一样的。你可以和那些聪明的同辈互动，你能从这些精英机构得到研究机会以及证书。而且，和高档餐厅一样，你最终会拿到一份老贵的账单。

And you know what, sometimes this system works, but just as you probably don’t want to go to a five star restaurant, every time you get hungry, you probably also don’t want to go back to school every time you want to learn something. I didn’t want the five course meal. I wanted my education “a la carte”.

而事情是这样的，有时候这个系统的确有用，但就像你不是每次饿的时候都想去一家五星餐厅，你可能也不是每次想学点什么的时候都要回学校。我不想要一顿五道菜的全餐，我希望我的教育是“按需点菜”。

So what mattered most to me, was being able to understand the big ideas of computer science; things like algorithms, artificial intelligence, encryption, and the Internet and being able to implement those ideas in computer programs.

所以，对我来说最重要的，一个是理解计算机科学里的主要概念，比如算法、人工智能、加密以及互联网;另一个是将这些概念运用到电脑程序里。

So I decided to make my challenge simple. My goal will be to try to pass the exams an MIT student would do and to do the programming projects. I admit it is a simplification. It omits a lot of the MIT experiences. 

于是我决定要让这次大学经历简单点。我的目标是通过麻省理工学生需要通过的考试，并实际动手编程。我承认这的确是个简化版本。它把去麻省理工上学的大部分体验都剔除了。

But for what I wanted to get out of it, it was a pretty good simplification. And what mattered more, it was a simplification that worked.

但对于我想从中获取的东西来说，这是个非常好的简化版本。而更重要的是，这个简化版本的确有用。

So I was able to build a curriculum of 33 classes, that with one or two minor exceptions was identical to the course list an MIT student would use. 

情况是这样的，我当时成功地建立起一个包含33门课的课表，这和一个麻省理工学生要用到的课表几乎是一模一样的，只有一两门课有点小区别。

And I was able to build this using only MIT’s free online available information. The only cost was for a few text books which meant I could follow this entire program for under $2000.

而我建立这个课表时用的全是麻省理工放在网上的免费资源。唯一的花费就是买了些教科书，这意味着这个项目对我来说还不超过2000美元。

Okay. So I have my goal and now I have the material.Now for the hard part: actually learning MIT classes.

好，现在我既有目标也有资源了。接下来是困难的部分：真的学完这些课程。

 I’m not kidding myself, MIT is a really hard school, it’s notoriously difficult even for bright students and what’s more, I’m not going to have the help of faculty, and professors, and classmates that I can easily get help from.

我不是在闹着玩，麻省理工是个很难毕业的学校，即使对聪明的学生来说这里也是臭名昭著地难，而且，我还得不到教员、教授和同学的帮助。

So in theory the project’s doable but would it just be too difficult in practice? And when I told my friends about this, that I was planning on doing an MIT degree on my own, they reinforced those doubts. 

所以，理论上来讲这个项目是可行的，但它是不是因为太难而无法完成呢?而当我把这告诉我的朋友的时候，当我告诉他们我准备自学一整个麻省理工学位的时候，他们强化了那些疑虑。

They told me they couldn’t imagine trying to learn a MIT degree on your own. It’d be too difficult without the constant guidance and support of faculty members.

他们告诉我，他们根本无法想象光凭自己就学完一个麻省理工的学位，没有教职人员的支援和引导这实在是太难了。

But that last point didn’t ring true for me, because when I went to college, I was in lecture halls like this one, where the professor would give a talk to an auditorium full of 300 students. 

不过他们说的这最后一点在我看来并不正确，因为当我上大学的时候，我也去过这样的讲座，一个教授在里面会对着300个学生讲课。

Yeah, sure that if I had a question I could rise my hand, but if I really didn’t understand something it was up to me to learn it.

的确，如果我有问题要问可以直接举手，但如果我有什么不懂的，最终只能自己学着去解决。

So perhaps the doubts and worries over do-it-yourself degree, had more to do with it being unconventional, than it being genuinely more difficult than a formal program.

所以，对于自助学位的疑虑，可能更多地来自于它的不同寻常，而非它比正统求学难。

And as I started doing the first few classes, my results were even more surprising than that. I found I was able to learn faster using this approach than I ever had while in university. 

而当我开始学前几门课程的时候，我得到的结果甚至比这个还要惊人。我发现用这种方法学习的速度比我以前在大学里学习的速度要快多了。

So far from being an obstacle, it turned out that not going to MIT had made my job a lot easier.

目前看来，这并不是一个障碍，事实证明不去MIT反而让我的学习工作容易了不少。

Okay, so that last bit deserves a little bit of an explanation. After all, an MIT student has access to everything I do, and much much more. How can I possibly have an advantage over a student when I have fewer resources? It defies common sense.

不过，最后这一点我得多做点解释。毕竟，我拥有的资源，MIT的学生都有，而他们还拥有很多我没有的。当我的资源少于一个MIT学生的时候，我怎么可能比TA有优势呢?这很违反常识。

So in order to explain this, I need to do a little bit of a detour. I need to go into the geeky realm of personal productivity. So there is a tool called the TimeLog.

想要解释这一点，我得绕点弯子，我得讲点个人生产力方面的艰深内容。而我要讲的是一种工具，它叫时间日志。

And here is how the TimeLog works. You jot down the starting and the stopping times for every activity you do. And I mean every activity, from when you wake up in the morning, to when you 

take out the garbage.

时间日志是这样用的：你记下你做每件事的起始时间和完成时间。我说的是所有的事，包括你早上几时起床，以及你什么时候出去倒垃圾。

Now my guess is that most of you here have never done a TimeLog before. You can just imagine how irritating that is to do.But if you do one, the results can be eye-opening. 

我猜你们中的大部分人以前都没有用过时间日志，你们可以想象得出这个有多么烦人。但只要你用过一次，它的结果会让你觉得发现了新世界。

So here’s a recent Wall Street Journal article where the reporter did just that. She writes: “I soon realized I’d been lying to myself about where the time was going. What I thought was a 60-hour workweek wasn’t even close. 

《华尔街日报》最近有篇文章，写这篇文章的记者就干了这个。她是这样写的：“我很快意识到，对于‘我的时间都用在什么地方了’这一问题，我一直都在骗自己。我曾以为自己一周工作60小时，其实远没有那么多。

I would have guessed I spent hours doing dishes when in fact I spent minutes. I spent long stretches of time lost on the Internet or puttering around the house, unsure exactly what I was doing.”

我本以为我花在洗盘子上的时间有几小时，而实际上只有几分钟。在很大一部分时间里，我都是在网上闲逛或在家里瞎转悠，并不知道到底要干什么。”

Now, because I am a huge geek I’ve done TimeLogs before and I can say the situation is even worse for students. The vast majority of time students spend, isn’t spent learning, it’s spent commuting to class, copying notes at Starbucks, and trying to stay awake in lectures.

而由于我是个资深极客，我以前也用过时间日志，我可以告诉你们，学生人群的情况要糟糕得多。学生所花的绝大部分时间都没有用在学习上，而是用在了去上课的路上、在星巴克抄笔记、或者是在讲座上尽力不睡着。

If you could total up the amount of time that students spend forming new insights, and remembering facts which is of course what learning is, it would be tiny. And for the most part, this is not even the student’s fault. 

如果你能把学生用在“形成新见解”和“记住新要点”上的时间加总，换句话说就是用在学习上的时间，你会发现它其实很少。而这很大程度上并不是学生的错。

After all, entrepreneurs often notice a startling difference in their productivity, at a start-up versus a big firm. Big institutions mean bureaucracy. They mean paper work, they mean doing what you’re told instead of what’s important.

毕竟，企业家们也常常发现自己在刚创业时和公司做大时的产出率完全不一样。大机构意味着官僚主义。它们意味着更多的纸面流程，意味着你得做上级告诉你的事而不是真正重要的事。

So being an educational entrepreneur can therefore offer some learning advantages over people in a formal system. So, take lectures as a perfect example. So, when I would do MIT lectures, when I started doing the classes, 

所以，像我这样把自我教育当创业来做的人，比那些在正规系统里学习的人更有学习优势。比如讲座就是个完美的例子。当我要听一场MIT讲座或者一门课的时候，

I would watch them at one and a half times the speed. This may sound very difficult, but the difference is barely audible in human speech, and of course, if it goes too fast, you just hit rewind.

我会用1.5倍速来听。这听起来可能很难，不过其中的区别基本听不出来，而且，如果真的太快了，你完全可以倒回去重听。

Students in a regular classroom don’t have access to a fast-forward or rewind button, even though I’m guessing most of them would like one. And the impact of this isn’t trivial. 

教室里的学生并没有快进键和倒带键可以用，然而我觉得他们其实都想要一套。这点不同带来的后果可不小。

By being able to watch lectures at a slightly faster pace, and watching them sequentially, I was able to take classes that normally span four months, and watch them in two days of real time.

由于可以用稍微快一点的速度播放这些讲座，并且可以连着把它们看完，我可以把正常情况下4个月的课程压到2天内看完。

Or take assignments. Students do assignments because they have to. Yes, sometimes they facilitate learning, but sometimes they don’t. For example, if you are struggling with a concept why wait weeks to get your answers back? 

还有作业。学生们做作业是因为有人要求他们这么做。对，有的时候这对学习有帮助，但有的时候并没有。比如，如果你正在为某个概念纠结，为什么非得等好几周才得到反馈呢?

When I would do a hard MIT assignment, I would do the questions with the solution key in hand, one question at a time, because it’s tight feedback loops like this that cognitive scientists recognize as being critical to learning.

当我需要做一份很难的MIT作业时，我手里同时也拿着答案，每次只做一个题，因为认知科学家们认为这样的及时反馈对学习来说至关重要。

And you don’t need to be a genius to apply these ideas either. Being able to replay key segments of lectures; being able to get immediate feedback on your skills; these are structural advantages that benefit slow learners as much as they benefit fast ones.

而且，并不是只有天才才能运用这些点子。能够回放讲座中的关键部分、能够立即得到关于技能的反馈，这些结构性的优势对慢学生和快学生来说都很有益。

So, where am I right now? As of this moment I’ve completed 20 of the 33 computer science courses in the MIT curriculum. And by completed I mean that I’ve passed those final exams and I did the programming projects associated with those classes. 

那么，到现在我学得怎样了呢?现在我已经完成了MIT课表里33门计算机科学课程的20门。我说的“完成”是指：通过了期末考试，而且完成了相关的编程项目。

And what’s more, because of speed-ups like this that I have mentioned, I’m on track to finishing the program in 12 months instead of 4 years.

更值得一提的是，因为有我刚刚提到的这些提速方法，我正顺利地把4年的课程压缩到12个月内学完。

So today the big topic is about how technology is going to change educational institutions and classrooms. I think this misses the point. The big upheavals in education aren’t going to be about schools, they are going to be about students. 

今天我们谈的主题是技术将如何改变教育机构和课堂。但我认为这个命题其实没有切中要点。

And I am not alone in believing this. There is already grassroot organizations looking to rethink education, not from the top-down but from the bottom-up. These are movements that are not planned by schools or governments, but from students who are fed up with the limited options the current system provides.

而且不止我一个人这么认为。已经有些草根组织在重新构思教育了，不是自上而下，而是自下而上。这些运动并不是由学校或政府策划的，而是由那些受够了现有体系里有限选择的学生们发起的。

Education hacking is the new trend. So billionaire investor Peter Thiel now gives $100,000 scholarship to students, not to go to school but to drop out, and start something interesting. 

在教育方式上开辟新道路是现在的新潮流。所以亿万富翁Peter Thiel现在给学生们提供了一份10万美元的奖学金，而且不是奖励那些去学校的学生，而是奖励那些从学校辍学来创造有趣事业的人。

And so when the best and brightest and most motivated start singling their talent by not going to school, the rest of the world will take notice.

而当那些最杰出、最有才、最有行动力的人开始通过不去上学来发挥自己的才能时，世界上的其他人都会注意到的。

And it is not an “all or nothing” proposition either. Jay Cross, the founder of “Do-It-Yourself Degree” is putting together a list of universities based on the number of transfer credits they accept. 

而且这不是一个“非此即彼”的事。“自助学位”的创始人Jay Cross正在组建一个清单，按照一所大学接受的可转换学分数来给大学排序。

That means you can go to a real university, and get a real degree, but minimize the amount of time you have to spend learning in the classroom.

这意味着你可以去一所货真价实的大学拿到一个货真价实的学位，并能只在教室里花尽量少的时间。

Look, I get it, maybe you don’t want to go to MIT or try to learn an MIT degree on your own just for fun, I get that.

我知道，可能你并不想去上MIT或者为了好玩而靠自己学完一个MIT学位所需的课程，我明白这一点。

But even if you decide to do your education the old fashion way, this still impacts you. The world is changing too fast to believe that learning stops once you get your diploma. 

但是，即使你决定用老式的方法来接受教育，这依旧可以影响到你现在的世界变化得太快了，你不可能一拿到文凭就停止学习。

Being able to teach yourself complex skills and big ideas is going to be essential to stay ahead.So, like it or not, most education in the future is going to be self-education.

自学复杂技巧和重大思潮的能力对于保持竞争力来说至关重要。所以，不管你喜欢与否，未来的教育将主要是自我教育。

Universities aren’t going away anytime soon, they will always offer things self-education will miss. They’re a great experience even if they’re sometimes an expensive one.

大学不会在短时间内消失，它们将一直提供一些自我教育不能提供的东西。而且上大学是个很棒的体验，虽然有时候真的很贵。

But that said, I believe self-education is the future. If a person like me can learn an MIT degree in one quarter of the time and 1/100 of the financial cost, what’s to stop you from doing it too?Thank you.

不过，即便如此，我也相信自我教育才是未来的主流。如果我这样一个人能够只花1/4的时间和1/100的钱就学完一个MIT的学位，你们又怎么会没可能呢?谢谢大家。