网帖翻译

Katherine Milkman talks with psychologist Maria Konnikova about her new book, ‘The Biggest Bluff.’

米尔克曼教授与心理学家兼记者康尼科娃就她的新书《最大的虚张声势》进行了交流。

In her new book, The Biggest Bluff, psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova writes about her immersion into the world of high-stakes poker. Starting as a novice who knew nothing about the game, she eventually rose to become a world-class professional poker player. Yet, poker was never just about the cards or money for Konnikova, and neither is her book. Instead, she picked up poker as a means to explore human decision-making in an environment where every player has very little control. Wharton operations, information and decisions professor Katherine Milkman recently spoke with Konnikova about what poker has taught her about letting go of the control we think we have over our lives, and using the control we do have to make the world a better place.

心理学家兼记者玛丽亚 · 康尼科娃在她的新书《最大的虚张声势》中，描述了她沉浸在高赌注扑克世界中的经历。从一个对游戏一无所知的新手开始，她最终成为了一名世界级的职业扑克玩家。然而，对于康尼科娃来说，扑克从来都不仅仅是纸牌或钱，她的书也不是。相反，她选择了扑克作为一种探索人类世界的手段——在一个几乎没有玩家有控制权的环境中探索人类的决策。信息和决策教授米尔克曼教授最近与康尼科娃进行了访谈，她谈到了自己如何从扑克中学到了放开我们自以为是的控制力，并运用我们实际拥有的控制力，让世界变得更美好。

Katherine Milkman: I wanted to start by asking if you could tell us what motivated you to write this book. It’s such a fascinating story.

凯瑟琳·米尔克曼：我想先问一下，是什么促使你写这本书的？这是一个非常有趣的故事。

Maria Konnikova: The book is, on the face of it, about poker, but it really isn’t. And my motivation had nothing to do with poker what I was really interested in writing about was luck and the nature of chance, and how we can learn to tell the difference between the things we control and the things we don’t control.

玛丽亚·康尼科娃：从表面上看，这本书是关于扑克的，但实际上不是。我的动机与扑克毫无关系，我真正感兴趣的是运气和机会的本质，以及我们如何学会区分我们能控制的和不能控制的事情之间的区别。

When I was a grad student with [psychologist] Walter Mischel at Columbia, I studied the illusion of control. We thought we were studying self-control, and we thought that we were going to be studying how these very smart people are able to make really good decisions in stochastic environments with a lot of uncertainty. What we found instead was that actually, maybe the Achilles’ heel of self-control is when you put someone in an environment where they’re not controlling a lot of variables. They’re so used to being in control and being good in their lives, that they fall for the illusion of control. They think they have more agency than they actually do.

当我还是哥伦比亚大学的心理学家米舍尔教授的研究生时，我研究了关于控制的错觉。我们以为自己会研究自我控制，以及非常聪明的人如何能够在充满不确定的随机环境中做出明智决定。但实质上，我们发现，自我控制的致命弱点当你把一个人放在有太多他其实无法控制的变量的环境中，由于他们太习惯于控制，而且在生活中一直表现得很好，以至于陷入了控制的错觉。他们认为自己拥有的控制权其实比实际的要多。

This was totally fascinating to me. We didn’t find a solution. It’s not like we said, “And now, this is how you cure the illusion of control.” It’s a really difficult thing to break through. A few years ago, I had a rough patch in my life when I got really sick, my grandmother died, my husband lost his job, my mom lost her job. It made me stop and think about luck again in a new light, and think about, “You know what? I’ve studied the illusion of control. I thought I knew all about it, but it ends up that I probably have some of these illusions myself, because this really caught me off guard.” I wanted to find a way to explore it.

这一现象对我来说太迷人了。我们没有找到解决办法。你没法确定说，“现在，你可以治愈控制的错觉。”这很难突破。几年前，当我生了一场大病，我奶奶去世了，我丈夫失业了，我妈妈失业了，我的生活很艰难。这让我停下脚步，用新的眼光重新思考人生和运气：“我自己研究过控制的错觉。我以为我对此了如指掌，但最终我自己也存在这样的幻想，因为这些变化真的让我措手不及。“我想找到一种探索它的方法。

I did what I always do at the beginning of any project — a lot of reading. Someone said, “You should be reading about game theory if you’re interested in chance, because it’s a great frxwork of looking at it.” So I picked up The Theory of Games, which is the foundational text of game theory. One of its authors, John von Neumann, was a poker player. And what I learned was that game theory was actually inspired by poker. Von Neumann said, “This game is the perfect model for human decision-making.” Chess is a really bad model for that, because it’s a game of perfect information. All the pieces are there. The board is there. You can make a right decision.

开始时我做了大量阅读。有人说：“如果你对机会感兴趣，你应该读博弈论，因为它是一个很好的研究框架。”于是我选择了这本《博弈论理论》，作者之一是约翰·冯·诺依曼，他本人也是位扑克玩家。我学到的是，博弈论实际上是受扑克游戏启发的。诺依曼说：“扑克游戏是人类决策的完美模式。”而国际象棋在这方面真是一个糟糕的模式，因为它是一场完美信息的游戏。所有的信息碎片都在那里，裁判在那里，你可以做出正确的决定。

But poker is a game of incomplete information. There are things I know that you don’t know. There are things you know that I don’t know. There are things that both of us know. And now we can try breaking our brains by saying, “Okay, what do you think I know about what you know?” And, “What do I think you know about what I know?” And we do those iterations over and over and over.

但是扑克是一种信息不完全的游戏。有些事我知道你不知道。有些事你知道我不知道。有些事情我们都知道。现在我们可以试着动脑筋，“好吧，你认为我对你所知道的有什么了解？以及，“我觉得你对我知道的有什么了解？“我们一遍又一遍地重复这些迭代。

But that’s what makes poker so fascinating, because it’s not just a game of math — von Neumann was a mathematician; it’s not like he had any problems with math — but it’s also a game of humans, and it’s a game of intention. It’s a game of deception. It’s a game of reading people. It’s a game of information. How can I gain the informational advantage here? And that’s what fascinated him. He said, “If I can solve this, I basically can solve life.” And poker, by the way — no-limit, hold ’em — still hasn’t been solved. It’s like the gold standard for AI, but it has not been solved.

但这正是扑克牌如此迷人的原因，因为它不仅是一个数学游戏——冯·诺依曼是一个数学家；但它也是一个人性的游戏，这是一个意图的游戏，是一个骗人的游戏，是一个阅读人心的游戏，是一场信息游戏。如何在这里获得信息优势？这就是他着迷的原因。他说，“如果我能解决这个问题，我基本上就可以面对生活。”顺便说一句，扑克，没有限制，也没有解决方案。这就像人工智能的金标准，但一直没有解决。

As I started reading about this, I thought, “Maybe this is my book.” Maybe I start to play this game. Maybe I dive into it and learn it and use that as a laboratory of sorts — a way of exploring all of these issues and trying to figure out if poker can help me discern the limits of my control. Can it teach me what I should be focusing on, what I should be letting go of?

当我开始读到这些的时候，我想，“这就是我要看的书。”也许我会开始玩这个游戏，也许我会潜入其中，钻研它，并把它作为一个探索人性的实验室——弄清楚扑克是否能帮助我识别自己控制的极限？它能教我应该专注于什么，我应该放弃什么吗？
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Milkman: It’s such a wonderful journey. How did your training as a psychologist change the way you approached becoming a world-class poker player?

米尔克曼：这真是一段美妙的旅程。你作为心理学家的训练是如何促使你成为世界级扑克玩家的？

Konnikova: First of all, it helped in getting my coach, Erik Seidel. He’s one of the greatest poker players in the world. I think it intrigued him that I had this psychology training, and not just any psychology training: I’d studied decision-making under uncertainty, and I’d studied hot emotional conditions. When he saw that, he was like, “Wow, this is poker. You have a background for this.”

康尼科娃：首先，这有助于我找到我的教练埃里克·塞德尔。他是世界上最伟大的扑克手之一。我的背景让他很感兴趣，我接受过这种心理训练，即我研究了不确定性条件下的决策，以及情绪状态。当他看到我的时候，说，“哇，这就是扑克。你有这方面的背景。”

But I think it also helped me have the correct vocabulary for conceptualizing the experiences and being more introspective about it. I’m a big believer in having the correct vocabulary to express your thoughts, that it actually can help you realize what’s going on. When you have the right word, you can identify emotions that you couldn’t otherwise.

但我认为我受过的教育也有助于我有正确的词汇来概念化这些经历，并对其更加内省。我非常相信用正确的词汇来表达的力量，因为它可以帮助你意识到发生了什么。当你有正确的词时，你可以识别出其他人可能无法识别的情绪。

I quote one of my favorite poets in the book, W.H. Auden: “Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought.” I really believe that. It’s not like you have thoughts and then you try to get words to express them. And so in that sense, I think that being a psychologist and having studied all of this and being able to spot it in myself and in other players really helped me home in on it and helped me figure out, “Okay, this is what I need to work on.”

我在书中引用了我最喜欢的诗人奥登的话：“语言是思想的母亲，而不是女仆。”我真的相信这说法。不是说你有了想法，然后试图用语言来表达。我认为作为一个心理学家，研究了所有这些，并且能够在我自己和其他选手身上发现这些，真的帮助我明白了，这就是我需要努力的地方。

And let’s be clear, it’s not like I magically didn’t have any of these biases. There were certainly moments when I was playing, and I thought, “Oh, boy. I am definitely experiencing the gambler’s fallacy right now, but I’m just going to bet again because I can’t lose again, can I?” You see it happening. Knowing it doesn’t magically mean you’re not going to experience it, or that you’re going to be able to overcome it — but it’s a first step.

澄清一下，我并不是神奇地没有任何这些偏见。当我真正玩的时候，“我现在肯定是在经历赌徒的谬论，但我只想再赌一次，因为我不能再输了，对吗？“你看，明白道理并不意味着你不会经历它，也不意味着你能克服它——但了解是第一步。

Milkman: You mentioned the gambler’s fallacy, and that’s a great segue to research you cite in your book. What research studies did you find most important to becoming a poker player, and why?

米尔克曼：你提到了赌徒的谬论，这是你在书中引用的一个很好的研究段落。你认为成为一个扑克玩家最重要的是什么？为什么？

Konnikova: I dedicated the book to [my dissertation adviser] Walter, who unfortunately died before it came out. But he was very excited about the project. He had introduced me to Julian Rotter’s work on the locus of control very early on in my grad work and said, “This is a theorist who’s often forgotten. A lot of people don’t go back to his early papers, but this is such a fundamental concept in everything, and it has really inspired me.” So, I have a special place in my heart for those papers, and they really helped, because the locus of control is, at its core, all about the question of my book — your internal locus, the things that you control, your external locus. I tried to marry that to Walter’s work on CAPS (the cognitive-affective processing system) and how you really can’t study personality in a vacuum. Everything needs to be conceptualized. You need to figure out what people’s “if-then” patterns of behavior are.

康尼科娃：我把这本书献给了我的论文导师沃尔特，他不幸在书出版前去世。但他对这个项目非常兴奋。在我研究生的早期，他就向我介绍了朱利安·罗特关于控制核心点的研究，并说：“这是一个经常被遗忘的理论家。很多人不会回顾他早期的论文，但这是一个基本概念，它确实给了我灵感。“因为控制点的核心也就是本书围绕的问题——你的内在轨迹，你控制的东西，你的外在轨迹。我试图把这一点和沃尔特关于认知-情感处理系统以及你不能在真空中研究人格的工作结合起来。一切都需要概念化。你需要弄清楚人们的“如果—那样”行为模式是什么。

I realized those two things can actually go hand-in-hand, because the way the locus of control interacts with positive versus negative events tells a lot about the person. For instance, there are people who have an internal locus for all good things, and an external locus for all bad things. There are people who are the other way around, and they have an external locus for the good things. They say, “Oh, no, no. That’s not me. I just got lucky.” And an internal locus for all the bad things. They say, “Yes, that’s my fault.” Those people tend to be depressed.

我意识到这两件事实际上可以齐头并进，因为控制点与积极或消极事件的互动方式告诉了我们很多这个人的性格。例如，有些人对所有好的事物都有一个内在的轨迹，而对所有的坏事都有一个外在的轨迹。有些人则相反，他们对美好事物有一个外在的控制点轨迹。他们说，“哦，不，不，那不是我。我只是运气好而已。”而坏事则有一个内在轨迹。他们说，“是的，那是我的错。”那些人往往很沮丧。

If you can spot those at the poker table, those sorts of dynamics are incredibly useful, because you can try to start thinking, Okay, is this a player who sees themselves as in control, or sees the game as happening to them? How are they talking? What’s the vocabulary they’re using? Are they saying, “Oh, man, I’m so unlucky,” or are they saying, “I may have made a bad play.” How are they analyzing their decisions?

如果你需要在扑克牌桌上观察玩家，那么这种动态是非常有用的。这是一个认为自己在掌控，还是顺着游戏发生的玩家？他们在谈什么？他们用的词汇是什么？他们是在说“哦，天哪，我真倒霉”，还是说“我打的可糟糕。”他们是如何分析自己的决定的？

That really helped. And a lot of the work on self-control really helped, because poker gets very emotional. You’re at the table for 10, 11, 12, 13-hour days ­— these really long stretches of time. You get tired, and when you’re tired, your decision quality deteriorates. It’s really, really hard to make decisions that are as good and as logical at 1:00 a.m. as it was at noon, if you started playing at noon.

很多关于自我控制的工作真的很有帮助，因为扑克很容易让人情绪化。你每天都要在牌桌上坐10多个小时……真的很久。当你累了，决策质量就会下降。如果你在中午开始比赛的话，你很难在凌晨1点做出像中午那样良好的合乎逻辑的决定。

Knowing all of that helped me just look at some of the research. I used some of Ethan Kross’ work about distancing and learning how to step away from emotional situations. I would actually do some of those exercises at the poker table as I got tired and knew that my nerves were getting a little bit more frayed. I would say, “Okay, I’m a fly on the wall, looking down at Maria.” It actually worked.

了解了所有这些，我只需要看看一些研究。我用了伊桑·克罗斯的一些关于如何远离情绪的方法。我真的会在牌桌上做这些练习，因为我累了，神经越来越紧张了。我会说，“好吧，我是墙上的一只苍蝇，低头看着玛丽亚。”这确实奏效了。

Of course, it would have been impossible to do my research, and it would have been very difficult to conceptualize a lot of this, without Danny Kahneman’s research on decision-making. It’s so integral to the field, and it’s so ingrained in my thinking that I almost take it for granted — “Risk-averse or risk-seeking. Having his knowledge was incredibly helpful. A lot of those biases that you see in poker are things that Dan Kahneman had identified decades earlier.

当然，如果没有丹尼·卡尼曼关于决策的研究，我的研究就不能做到，而且很难对这些概念进行概念化。他的研究是这个领域不可或缺的一部分，它在我的思想中根深蒂固，以至于我几乎认为这是理所当然的，比如“风险规避或风险寻求”。他的知识非常有帮助，你在扑克游戏中看到的很多偏见都是卡尼曼在几十年前就已经指出和命名的。

Milkman: You mentioned you dedicated the book to your late dissertation advisor, the great Walter Mischel. For listeners who aren’t familiar with this work, he’s best known as the scientist behind the famous marshmallow experiments. I’m curious — if he had been able to read this book, what you think he would have found most interesting about it?

米尔克曼：你提到把这本书献给已故的论文导师，伟大的沃尔特·米舍尔。对于不熟悉这项工作的读者来说，他最出名的身份是著名的棉花糖实验背后的科学家。我很好奇——如果他能读到这本书，你认为他会发现其中最有趣的是什么？

Konnikova: Oh, boy, that’s not a question I have ever been asked. It’s a great question. We had talked about this game, and we talked about what I was working on. And he was really excited about it, but he had no knowledge of it in terms of what poker actually entailed. I think he would have been really happy to see that in poker, I have found a solution to a lot of the things that we had studied. If you teach someone to play poker correctly, you can solve a lot of those biases that we found. You can solve the illusion of control a lot of times. You can make people more aware of randomness. You can make people better able to examine their decision process and to divorce themselves from the outcome, which is so difficult. And these are things that we were never able to fix when we were working together. So, I think he would have been excited, and he probably would have said, “Okay, you’re going back to the lab now. Now we’re going to use poker, and we’re going to see what we can do.”

康尼科娃：哦，天哪，我从来没有被问过这个问题。这是个好问题。我们讨论过，他真的很兴奋，但他不知道扑克到底需要什么。我想他会很高兴看到在扑克牌中，我找到了很多我们研究过的解决方案。如果你教别人正确地玩扑克，你可以解决很多偏见，你可以在很多时候解决控制的错觉。你可以让人们更加意识到随机性，更好地审视决策过程，并让自己从结果中脱离出来，这是非常困难的。我想他会很兴奋，他可能会说，“好吧，你现在要回实验室了。现在我们要用扑克，看看我们能做些什么。”

Because that was Walter. I mean, to his last day, he was just always excited about research ideas, and he was always gunning for the next thing. And I got him at the very, very end. I was his final grad student…. He had thought he wasn’t going to be taking any more students, and then he decided to take me as the last one….

那就是沃尔特。我的意思是，在他生命的最后一天，他都会对研究的想法感到兴奋，他总是在为下一件事而努力。最后，我跟随了他。我是他教学生涯中最后一个研究生…他原以为他不会再招收学生了，然后他决定把我作为最后一个...
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

He told me that I kept him teaching many more years that he would have wanted to. But he wanted to, that’s the thing. I don’t think it was me. I’d exchange war stories with some of his old students about him calling at 3:00 in the morning, not because anything was wrong, but because he got excited about someone else that he was reading at the time. So, I can definitely see him reading this book and saying, “Okay, I know you’re not really in academia, but we’re going to do these studies, and we’re going to use poker, and it’s going to be awesome.” And you know what? For Walter, I would have gone back to the lab and done it.

他告诉我，我让他继续多教了几年的书，这是他本来想做的。但是他也想这么做，这就是问题所在。我觉得不是我的原因。我会和他以前的一些学生交流血汗史，说他曾凌晨3点打电话来，不是因为出了什么事，而是因为他对当时正在读的某个人物感到兴奋。所以，我可以肯定地看到他在读这本书的时候会说“好吧，我知道你不是真的在学术界，但是我们要做这些研究，我们要使用扑克来做，这会很棒的。”你知道吗？为了沃尔特，我会回到实验室去做这项研究。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Milkman: What a wonderful gift you both gave each other, it sounds like. And I’m sorry he couldn’t read the book.

米尔克曼：你们俩给对方的礼物真是太棒了。我很遗憾他不能读到这本书。

I want to turn to a really different topic, but one that I find fascinating, as well. Your gender played a really important role in the stories you share about professional poker. I’m wondering if you have any advice for other women attempting to enter and succeed in traditionally male forums, based on your experiences?

我想转到一个完全不同的话题，但是我也觉得这个话题很有意思。在你分享的关于职业扑克的故事中，你的性别扮演了非常重要的角色。基于你的经验，你对其他试图进入传统男性平台并取得成功的女性有什么建议吗？

Konnikova: The field of poker is 97% male. Three percent female. I’ve been in other fields that are predominantly male. Media is male. I was in television. That’s male. But I was not prepared for this. I mean, 97% is a lot. You can go for days and not see another woman. At the beginning, it was really difficult, but I think it ended up being a big advantage, and I was able to make myself into a much stronger player and person because of poker.

康尼科娃：扑克领域的玩家97%是男性。百分之三的女性。我曾在其他以男性为主的领域工作过。媒体是男性。我上过电视。这也是男性。但我对此并没有做好准备。我是说，97%已经很多了。你可以去几天也见不到别的女人。一开始，这真的很难，但我逐渐认为这是一个很大的优势，我能够使自己成为一个更强大的扑克选手。

I think one thing —and this is true from all of the psychology research — there is a reason that women aren’t as “good at negotiating” and don’t get promoted as much. And that’s because they are punished for negotiating the same way that men do. It’s actually a very smart strategy to be nicer and to just kind of smile and not be aggressive, because you get punished [otherwise].

我认为有一件事，所有的心理学研究证明了一个问题，女性不那么“善于谈判”，因此没有得到晋升。这是因为如果她们和男人采取同样的谈判方式，可能会受到惩罚。事实上，如果你只是微笑而不是咄咄逼人，对女性来说会是一个非常聪明的策略。

Try to figure out how the people you’re playing against — in whatever world you’re entering — view women. If you can figure that out, then you can play against them. You can use their biases against them. You can use the fact that they underestimate you against them. If they think that women are incapable of bluffing, you’d better bluff, because they will think, “Wow, she must really be strong. She must really be confident, because women wouldn’t bluff.”

试着弄清楚你正在与之竞争的对手是怎样看待女性的——无论你进入什么样的世界。如果你能弄明白这一点，那么你就可以和他们竞争了。你可以用他们的偏见来反驳他们。你可以利用他们低估你的事实来对付他们。如果他们认为女人不会虚张声势，你最好要虚张声势，因为他们会想“哇，她一定很厉害。她一定很自信，因为女人是不会虚张声势的。”

And then, see what the aggressive guys who are winning do, and take a page out of their playbook. Realize that they don’t always have the best hand. They don’t always have great cards, but boy, do they know how to project confidence. Boy, do they know how to make other people think that they’ve got the goods.

然后，看看那些咄咄逼人的胜利者会怎么做，并从他们的战术手册中学习。要意识到他们并不总是有好牌，但是，我的天，他们确实知道如何表现自信。他们知道如何让别人认为他们有一套。

I don’t necessarily like them, but I can take that from them and say, “Okay, projecting confidence is a huge part of the battle.” No one knows what cards you have — and I’m now talking very metaphorically. No one knows what you hold in your arsenal, and no one knows what you are and aren’t willing to lose. Being able to bluff is very powerful. People can see that confidence, and it will make you seem more qualified.

我不一定喜欢他们，但我可以从他们身上学到这一点，然后说，“好吧，表现出自信是这场战斗的一个重要部分。”没有人知道你有什么牌，我现在只是打个比方。没有人知道你的武器库里有什么，也没有人知道你是什么，不愿意失去什么。能够虚张声势是非常有力的。人们可以看到这种自信，这会让你看起来更有资格。

Milkman: If your readers left this book and remembered just one thing, what would you want it to be?

米尔克曼：如果你的读者读完这本书，只记得一件事，你会希望它是什么？

Konnikova: Focus on the things you can control. There’s so much about life that you can’t and are never going to be able to control. And that’s okay. Just learn to let go of that and focus on yourself. What can I control? Well, I can control my decisions. I can control my reactions to people. I can control my mental framings. I can control my interactions. I can control what I do.

康尼科娃：把注意力集中在你能控制的事情上。生活中有太多你永远无法控制的事情。没关系。学会放下这些，专注于你自己。我能控制什么？好吧，我可以控制我的决定，我能控制自己对别人的反应，我能控制我的情绪、互动和行为。

I can’t control other people. I can’t control the world. So what do I do to make the world as good as I possibly can, knowing that my abilities are limited?

我不能控制别人，我无法控制世界。那么，我该怎么做才能让这个世界尽可能美好呢？
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Focusing on yourself is so powerful because you’ll maximize a lot of the things that can make the world a better place. It’s really important to realize both that your agency is limited, but also that that doesn’t mean you should stop making decisions and stop trying. I think it can be a hopeful message, and not just a hopeless one.

专注于自己是如此的强大，因为你可以最大限度地利用很多能让世界变得更美好的事情。重要的是，你要认识到你的能力是有限的，但这并不意味着你应该停止决策和尝试。我认为这是一个积极的充满希望的信息，而不是一个消极的信息。