为什么读书要读 5678 遍？｜paul graham

文章： how you know ^[1]

作者：paul graham

翻译：gpt-4o, @howie.serious（排名有先后，GPT的翻译实验）

I've read Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade at least two times, maybe three. And yet if I had to write down everything I remember from it, I doubt it would amount to much more than a page. Multiply this times several hundred, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them?

我至少读过两次，也许三次维尔哈杜因的《第四次十字军东征编年史》。然而，如果要我写下从中记住的内容，我怀疑全部加起来也不超过一页。把这种情况乘以几百，我看到我的书架，心中就会产生不安的感觉：如果我从这些书中记住的东西如此之少，那么读书还有什么用呢？

A few months ago, as I was reading Constance Reid's excellent biography of Hilbert, I figured out if not the answer to this question, at least something that made me feel better about it. She writes:

几个月前，在阅读康斯坦斯·瑞德写的希尔伯特传记时，我找到了问题的答案，或者至少是让我感觉好点的东西。她写道：

Hilbert had no patience with mathematical lectures which filled the students with facts but did not teach them how to frame a problem and solve it. He often used to tell them that "a perfect formulation of a problem is already half its solution."

希尔伯特对那些充斥着事实却不教学生如何构建和解决问题的数学讲座没有耐心。他经常告诉学生：“完美表述一个问题，已经是解决问题的一半。”

That has always seemed to me an important point, and I was even more convinced of it after hearing it confirmed by Hilbert.

我一直深以为然。看到希尔伯特也这么想，我就更加确信了。

But how had I come to believe in this idea in the first place? A combination of my own experience and other things I'd read. None of which I could at that moment remember! And eventually I'd forget that Hilbert had confirmed it too. But my increased belief in the importance of this idea would remain something I'd learned from this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it.

但是，我一开始是怎么产生这个观点的呢？ 是自己亲身经验与阅读他人思想的结合 。但在当时，我却哪样也记不起来！最终，我甚至会忘记希尔伯特也持有这个观点。但即使我忘记了我从这本书中学到的东西，我对这个想法重要性的增强信念仍然会被保留下来。

Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

阅读和经验训练了你的世界模型 。即使你忘记了自己的经历或读过的内容，它对你的世界模型的影响依然存在。你的思维就像一个编译后丢失了源代码的程序。它能运行，但你不知道为什么。

The place to look for what I learned from Villehardouin's chronicle is not what I remember from it, but my mental models of the crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege warfare, and so on. Which doesn't mean I couldn't have read more attentively, but at least the harvest of reading is not so miserably small as it might seem.

我从维尔哈杜因的编年史中学到了什么？寻找的地方并不是我对内容本身的 记忆 ，而是我对十字军东征、威尼斯、中世纪文化和围城战的 心理模型 。这并不说明我的阅读本身多么投入，但至少说明阅读的收获并非看起来那样少到可怜。