Dare to disagree
TED簡介：大多數(shù)人自然而然地回避矛盾,但是Margaret Heffernan為我們展示：好的懷疑精神對于進步是很關(guān)鍵的。 她為我們證明了(有時候通過反直覺的方式)為什么最好的伙伴不是志趣相投的人,以及好的研究,團隊,人際關(guān)系,以及商業(yè)如何允許人們?nèi)岩珊蜖巿?zhí)的。
演講者：Margaret Heffernan瑪格麗特·赫弗南
片長：09：47
中英對照翻譯
In Oxford in the 1950s, there was a fantastic doctor, who was very unusual, named Alice Stewart. And Alice was unusual partly because, of course, she was a woman, which was pretty rare in the 1950s. And she was brilliant, she was one of the, at the time, the youngest Fellow to be elected to the Royal College of Physicians. She was unusual too because she continued to work after she got married, after she had kids, and even after she got divorced and was a single parent, she continued her medical work.
在20世紀50年代的牛津，有一位很優(yōu)秀、不尋常的醫(yī)生，她叫Alice Stewart Alice。很不尋常，因為她是個女的醫(yī)生，這對于在20世紀50年代很罕見了。她非常厲害，是當時最年輕的 "皇家醫(yī)師學院"最年輕的學員之一；她很不尋常還因為在她結(jié)婚生子后，她還繼續(xù)工作，甚至在她離婚成為單親媽媽之后，她繼續(xù)著她的醫(yī)學工作。
And she was unusual because she was really interested in a new science, the emerging field of epidemiology, the study of patterns in disease. But like every scientist, she appreciated that to make her mark, what she needed to do was find a hard problem and solve it. The hard problem that Alice chose was the rising incidence of childhood cancers. Most disease is correlated with poverty, but in the case of childhood cancers, the children who were dying seemed mostly to come from affluent families. So, what, she wanted to know, could explain this anomaly?
她很不尋常還因為她對一門新的科學感興趣，當時新出現(xiàn)的流行病學。對于疾病規(guī)律的研究，但跟每個科學家一樣，她知道為了讓她出眾，她需要尋找到難題然后解決它。Alice當時選擇的難題是童年期癌癥發(fā)生率的上升，大多數(shù)疾病都是跟貧窮有關(guān)的，不過在童年期癌癥的問題上,，這些垂死的孩子似乎大多數(shù)都從富裕家庭中而來，因為她想知道，怎樣才能解釋這樣一種特殊現(xiàn)象呢?
Now, Alice had trouble getting funding for her research. In the end, she got just 1,000 pounds from the Lady Tata Memorial prize. And that meant she knew she only had one shot at collecting her data. Now, she had no idea what to look for. This really was a needle in a haystack sort of search, so she asked everything she could think of. Had the children eaten boiled sweets? Had they consumed colored drinks? Did they eat fish and chips? Did they have indoor or outdoor plumbing? What time of life had they started school?
當時,Alice很難為她的研究籌備到資金，最后,她只得到了1000英鎊,，從Lady Tata紀念獎得來的。這意味著她知道她對于收集數(shù)據(jù)，只有一次機會。她完全不知道應當尋找什么，這對于需要大量數(shù)據(jù)的研究來說是一個沉重打擊。因此她問了所有她能想到的東西，這些孩子有沒有吃煮沸的甜食? 他們有沒有喝花里胡哨的飲料? 他們是不是吃油炸魚和薯片了? 他們是不是使用過戶內(nèi)或者戶外的鉛制品? 他們什么時候開始上學的?
And when her carbon copied questionnaire started to come back, one thing and one thing only jumped out with the statistical clarity of a kind that most scientists can only dream of. By a rate of two to one, the children who had died had had mothers who had been X-rayed when pregnant. Now that finding flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom held that everything was safe up to a point, a threshold. It flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which was huge enthusiasm for the cool new technology of that age, which was the X-ray machine. And it flew in the face of doctors' idea of themselves, which was as people who helped patients, they didn't harm them.
而當她的用碳做的調(diào)查問卷回來的時候，只有一個明顯的數(shù)據(jù)顯示了出來，這是大多數(shù)科學家都無法想象的：三分之二的這些由于癌癥而死的孩子，他們的母親在懷孕的時候，都做過X光檢查。這個發(fā)現(xiàn)對于傳統(tǒng)觀念是一大沖擊，傳統(tǒng)觀念認為任何事情在一種程度上都是安全的，像一個門檻。這對于這一觀念是很大的沖擊，尤其是對于當時新科技，X光機器 的巨大熱情。而且對于醫(yī)生對自己的看法也是巨大的沖擊，因為他們都是幫助病人的，而不是害他們的。
Nevertheless, Alice Stewart rushed to publish her preliminary findings in The Lancet in 1956. People got very excited, there was talk of the Nobel Prize, and Alice really was in a big hurry to try to study all the cases of childhood cancer she could find before they disappeared. In fact, she need not have hurried. It was fully 25 years before the British and medical -- British and American medical establishments abandoned the practice of X-raying pregnant women. The data was out there, it was open, it was freely available, but nobody wanted to know. A child a week was dying, but nothing changed. Openness alone can't drive change.
不過呢，Alice Stewart還是很快的將她最初的發(fā)現(xiàn)在1956年的The Lancet雜志中發(fā)表了 。人們都很興奮，有人還提到諾貝爾獎的可能，Alice也很著急，她想去學習她能找到所有的兒童癌癥的資料，在他們消失之前。事實上，她并不需要那么急，過了25年之后，英國的醫(yī)學建樹--英國和美國醫(yī)學建樹，也禁止了給懷孕女人的X光測驗，數(shù)據(jù)都是開放的，很容易獲得，但是沒人想知道這一點。每周都有一個小孩在垂死掙扎，但就跟啥都沒發(fā)生一樣，開放性無法帶來改變。
So for 25 years Alice Stewart had a very big fight on her hands. So, how did she know that she was right? Well, she had a fantastic model for thinking. She worked with a statistician named George Kneale, and George was pretty much everything that Alice wasn't. So, Alice was very outgoing and sociable, and George was a recluse. Alice was very warm, very empathetic with her patients. George frankly preferred numbers to people. But he said this fantastic thing about their working relationship. He said, "My job is to prove Dr. Stewart wrong." He actively sought disconfirmation. Different ways of looking at her models, at her statistics, different ways of crunching the data in order to disprove her. He saw his job as creating conflict around her theories. Because it was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong, that George could give Alice the confidence she needed to know that she was right.
25年來Alice Stewart在做很大的斗爭。所以說，她怎么知道她當時是對的? 她有一個極佳的思考模型，她當時與一位名叫George Kneale的統(tǒng)計學家合作，而George剛好與Alice正互補。Alice非常外向和社交化，而George是個隱居者；Alice很熱情，與她的病人有很多互動，而George相比之下更喜歡數(shù)字。而不是人們不過他提到過他們工作關(guān)系的極大好處，他說:"我的工作就是證明Stewart博士是錯的." 他積極地尋找錯誤的證明以不同方式研究她的模型、她的數(shù)據(jù)，以及不同方式去利用數(shù)據(jù)來證明她是錯的，他把他自己的工作當作為Alice的理論創(chuàng)造矛盾，因為只有他無法證明Alice是錯的時候， George就可以帶來Alice所需要的自信，讓她相信她是正確的。
It's a fantastic model of collaboration -- thinking partners who aren't echo chambers. I wonder how many of us have, or dare to have, such collaborators. Alice and George were very good at conflict. They saw it as thinking.
這是完美的合作的模型由伙伴之前相互補充，我想知道有多少人有過，或者敢有過這樣的合作者，Alice和George對于矛盾很擅長，他們認為這就是思考。
So what does that kind of constructive conflict require? Well, first of all, it requires that we find people who are very different from ourselves. That means we have to resist the neurobiological drive, which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves, and it means we have to seek out people with different backgrounds, different disciplines, different ways of thinking and different experience, and find ways to engage with them. That requires a lot of patience and a lot of energy.
那么這種建設(shè)性的矛盾要求什么呢? 首先呢，它需要我們?nèi)フ业绞植煌娜藗儯@意味著我們必須抗拒精神上的推動，那就是我們更喜歡像我們的人們。這意味著我們必須尋找有不同背景、不同訓練、不同方法去思考以及不同經(jīng)驗的人們,，而且還要去想辦法與他們交流，這需要很多熱情和能量。
And the more I've thought about this, the more I think, really, that that's a kind of love. Because you simply won't commit that kind of energy and time if you don't really care. And it also means that we have to be prepared to change our minds. Alice's daughter told me that every time Alice went head-to-head with a fellow scientist, they made her think and think and think again. "My mother," she said, "My mother didn't enjoy a fight, but she was really good at them."
我想這一點想的越多，真的我覺得這是一種愛。因為如果你不在乎的話，你不可能付出那么多能量的。這還意味著我們必須準備好去改變我們的想法，Alice的女兒告訴我每次Alice去和一個同事科學家會面，他們都讓她一遍一遍的思考. "我的母親" 她說,"我的母親不喜歡爭吵, 但是她卻很擅長."
So it's one thing to do that in a one-to-one relationship. But it strikes me that the biggest problems we face, many of the biggest disasters that we've experienced, mostly haven't come from individuals, they've come from organizations, some of them bigger than countries, many of them capable of affecting hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives. So how do organizations think? Well, for the most part, they don't. And that isn't because they don't want to, it's really because they can't. And they can't because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.
因此這在一對一的關(guān)系中是一個方面，但這使我想到那些我們面對過的最大難題、經(jīng)歷過的最嚴重的災難,，大多都不是由個人引起的而是從組織而來的，有些比國家還大，大多數(shù)都有影響上百人的能力甚至上千人、上百萬人。那么這些組織是怎么想的呢? 其實大多數(shù)情況下，他們是不思考的，這不是因為他們不想，而是因為他們無法。因為在組織里面的人對于矛盾有一種恐懼心理。
In surveys of European and American executives, fully 85 percent of them acknowledged that they had issues or concerns at work that they were afraid to raise. Afraid of the conflict that that would provoke, afraid to get embroiled in arguments that they did not know how to manage, and felt that they were bound to lose. Eighty-five percent is a really big number. It means that organizations mostly can't do what George and Alice so triumphantly did. They can't think together. And it means that people like many of us, who have run organizations, and gone out of our way to try to find the very best people we can, mostly fail to get the best out of them.
在對歐洲和美國行政人員的調(diào)查中，有百分之85都承認他們有一些他們自己不敢說出的話題和意見，對可能產(chǎn)生的矛盾有恐懼心理，不想被纏繞在他們不知道怎么處理的爭論中，而且感到他們肯定會輸。百分之85可是很大的數(shù)字，這意味著大多數(shù)組織沒法做 George和Alice成功做到的事情。他們不能心往一處想，而這意味著跟我們一樣的許多帶領(lǐng)組織的人，都在盡可能找到他們能找到最好的人，不過大多數(shù)都失敗了。
So how do we develop the skills that we need? Because it does take skill and practice, too. If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking, and then we have to get really good at it. So, recently, I worked with an executive named Joe, and Joe worked for a medical device company. And Joe was very worried about the device that he was working on. He thought that it was too complicated and he thought that its complexity created margins of error that could really hurt people. He was afraid of doing damage to the patients he was trying to help. But when he looked around his organization, nobody else seemed to be at all worried. So, he didn't really want to say anything. After all, maybe they knew something he didn't. Maybe he'd look stupid. But he kept worrying about it, and he worried about it so much that he got to the point where he thought the only thing he could do was leave a job he loved.
那么我們怎樣培養(yǎng)我們需要的技巧呢? 因為這的確需要一些技巧和練習，如果我們不懼怕矛盾的話,，我們必須把它當作思考。然后我們必須變得很擅長，因此，最近，我在和一個叫Joe的行政人員工作。Jow為一家醫(yī)療設(shè)備公司工作，他很擔心他正在工作的這臺醫(yī)療設(shè)備，實在太復雜了，以至于這臺機器可能會產(chǎn)生一些錯誤去傷害人們。他很害怕去傷害那些他想幫助的人們，不過他看了看周圍的人， 沒人似乎有這種擔心，因此，他不想把自己的想法說出來。畢竟，其他人可能知道他有不知道的東西,，這樣他會看起來很愚蠢，但是他始終非常擔心， 以至于他到達一種程度。他覺得唯一可以做的事情，就是辭掉他熱愛的工作。
In the end, Joe and I found a way for him to raise his concerns. And what happened then is what almost always happens in this situation. It turned out everybody had exactly the same questions and doubts. So now Joe had allies. They could think together. And yes, there was a lot of conflict and debate and argument, but that allowed everyone around the table to be creative, to solve the problem, and to change the device.
最后，Joe和我找到一個提升他擔心關(guān)注度的方法，結(jié)果呢，總是發(fā)生的事情，果然再一次發(fā)生了。所有人其實都有著同樣的問題和懷疑，所以現(xiàn)在Joe和他的伙伴，他們可以往一處去思考。當然，這其中有很多的矛盾和辯論。不過這使得所有人都變得有創(chuàng)造力，都能去解決問題、去改變這臺設(shè)備。
Joe was what a lot of people might think of as a whistle-blower, except that like almost all whistle-blowers, he wasn't a crank at all, he was passionately devoted to the organization and the higher purposes that that organization served. But he had been so afraid of conflict, until finally he became more afraid of the silence. And when he dared to speak, he discovered much more inside himself and much more give in the system than he had ever imagined. And his colleagues don't think of him as a crank. They think of him as a leader.
Joe有點像是大多數(shù)認為的揭發(fā)者，只不過像所有揭發(fā)者一樣，他不是在異想天開。他有激情地為組織付出以及為組織的目標所努力，不過他對于矛盾太過于懼怕，直到最后沉默對他來說更為可怕，而當他敢于說出口的時候,，他發(fā)現(xiàn)了更多的自己以及他從未想象過的對于系統(tǒng)的貢獻。而且他的同事沒覺得他的想法是天方夜譚，他們認為他是個領(lǐng)導者。
So, how do we have these conversations more easily and more often? Well, the University of Delft requires that its PhD students have to submit five statements that they're prepared to defend. It doesn't really matter what the statements are about, what matters is that the candidates are willing and able to stand up to authority. I think it's a fantastic system, but I think leaving it to PhD candidates is far too few people, and way too late in life. I think we need to be teaching these skills to kids and adults at every stage of their development, if we want to have thinking organizations and a thinking society.
所以說。我們怎么樣才能更簡單、更經(jīng)常地來發(fā)起這些對話呢? 嗯， Delft 大學要求它所有的博士學生必須提交他們已經(jīng)準備好可以進行辯護的5個陳述，這些陳述是什么都無所謂 ，重要的是這些選手們愿意而且有能力對權(quán)威提出挑戰(zhàn)。我認為這是一個極棒的系統(tǒng)，不過我覺得把這些留給博士生太少了，而且太晚了，我認為我們應該向所以小孩和大人，都來教授這些技巧，如果我們想要能夠思考的組織和社會。
The fact is that most of the biggest catastrophes that we've witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to, because we can't handle, don't want to handle, the conflict that it provokes. But when we dare to break that silence, or when we dare to see, and we create conflict, we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.
事實上，那些我們曾經(jīng)見證過的最大的災難，很少是由于一些隱藏的或者秘密的信息而產(chǎn)生。都是由那些公開的信息而造成的，不過我們只不是完全忽略了而已，因為我們不想去處理引起的各種麻煩和矛盾。但是當我們愿意去打破這種沉默或者我們敢于看到并且制造矛盾，我們使得我們以及周圍的人進行最有效的思考。
Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential. But the truth won't set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it. Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.(Applause)
公開信息是很棒的，公開的網(wǎng)絡很關(guān)鍵，但是事實不會讓我們自由。除非我們擁有技能、習慣、天賦以及道德上的勇氣去利用它，公開并不是一個結(jié)束，它只是一個開始。
(鼓掌)
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