June 2025
2025年6月
An essay has to tell people something they don't already know. But there are three different reasons people might not know something, and they yield three very different kinds of essays.
一篇随笔必须告诉人们一些他们原本不知道的东西。但人们之所以不知道某件事，有三种不同的原因，而这会产生三种截然不同的随笔。
One reason people won't know something is if it's not important to know. That doesn't mean it will make a bad essay. For example, you might write a good essay about a particular model of car. Readers would learn something from it. It would add to their picture of the world. For a handful of readers it might even spur some kind of epiphany. But unless this is a very unusual car it's not critical for everyone to know about it. [1]
人们不知道某件事的一个原因，是它并不重要。这并不意味着它写出来就会是一篇糟糕的随笔。比如，你完全可以写一篇关于某个特定车型的好文章。读者会从中学到一些东西。它会丰富他们对世界的理解。对少数读者来说，它甚至可能引发某种顿悟。但除非这是一辆非常不同寻常的车，否则让每个人都知道它并不是什么要紧的事。 [1]
If something isn't important to know, there's no answer to the question of why people don't know it. Not knowing random facts is the default. But if you're going to write about things that are important to know, you have to ask why your readers don't already know them. Is it because they're inexperienced, or because they're obtuse?
如果某件事并不重要，那么“人们为什么不知道它”这个问题就无从谈起。不知道随机的事实，本来就是默认状态。但如果你要写的是那些重要的事，你就必须问一句：为什么你的读者还不知道？是因为他们缺乏经验，还是因为他们迟钝？
So the three reasons readers might not already know what you tell them are (a) that it's not important, (b) that they're obtuse, or (c) that they're inexperienced.
所以，读者之所以还不知道你要告诉他们的内容，原因有三种：（a）这件事不重要，（b）他们迟钝，或（c）他们缺乏经验。
The reason I did this breakdown was to get at the following fact, which might have seemed controversial if I'd led with it, but should be obvious now. If you're writing for smart people about important things, you're writing for the young.
我之所以这样拆分，是为了引出下面这个事实。如果我一上来就这么说，它可能会显得有争议；但现在看来，它应该已经很明显了。如果你是在为聪明人写重要的事，那么你的读者就是年轻人。
Or more precisely, that's where you'll have the most effect. Whatever you say should also be at least somewhat novel to you, however old you are. It's not an essay otherwise, because an essay is something you write to figure something out. But whatever you figure out will presumably be more of a surprise to younger readers than it is to you.
或者更准确地说，那是你最可能产生最大影响的地方。无论你多大年纪，你写的东西也应该至少在某种程度上对你自己来说是新的。否则它就不是随笔，因为随笔是你用来弄明白某件事而写出来的东西。但你弄明白的任何事，对较年轻的读者来说，多半会比对你自己更令人惊讶。
There's a continuum of surprise. At one extreme, something you read can change your whole way of thinking. The Selfish Gene did this to me. It was like suddenly seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous image: you can treat genes rather than organisms as the protagonists, and evolution becomes easier to understand when you do. At the other extreme, writing merely puts into words something readers were already thinking — or thought they were.
惊讶感有一条连续的光谱。在一端，你读到的东西会彻底改变你的思维方式。《自私的基因》对我就是这样。它就像突然看见了一幅歧义图像的另一种解释：你可以把基因而不是生物体当作主角来看待，而一旦这么做，进化就更容易理解了。在另一端，写作不过是把读者本来就在想的东西说出来而已——或者说，是把他们以为自己在想的东西说出来。
The impact of an essay is how much it changes readers' thinking multiplied by the importance of the topic. But it's hard to do well at both. It's hard to have big new ideas about important topics. So in practice there's a tradeoff: you can change readers' thinking a lot about moderately important things, or change it a little about very important ones. But with younger readers the tradeoff shifts. There's more room to change their thinking, so there's a bigger payoff for writing about important things.
一篇随笔的影响力，等于它改变读者思维的程度，乘以主题本身的重要性。但这两者很难同时做到很好。要在重要的主题上提出重大的新想法，是很难的。所以在实践中，这里存在一种权衡：你可以让读者在中等重要的事情上大幅改变看法，或者在非常重要的事情上稍微改变一点看法。但对年轻读者而言，这种权衡会发生偏移。因为改变他们思维的空间更大，所以写重要的事会有更高的回报。
The tradeoff isn't a conscious one, at least not for me. It's more like a kind of gravitational field that writers work in. But every essayist works in it, whether they realize it or not.
这种权衡并不是有意识作出的，至少对我来说不是。它更像是一种作家所处其中的引力场。但每个随笔作者都身处其中，不管他们是否意识到。
This seems obvious once you state it, but it took me a long time to understand. I knew I wanted to write for smart people about important topics. I noticed empirically that I seemed to be writing for the young. But it took me years to understand that the latter was an automatic consequence of the former. In fact I only really figured it out as I was writing this essay.
这话一说出来似乎很显然，但我花了很长时间才明白这一点。我知道自己想为聪明人写重要的话题。我也从经验上注意到，自己似乎是在为年轻人写作。但我花了好多年才明白，后者其实是前者的自动结果。事实上，我真正把这件事想清楚，还是在写这篇文章的时候。
Now that I know it, should I change anything? I don't think so. In fact seeing the shape of the field that writers work in has reminded me that I'm not optimizing for returns in it. I'm not trying to surprise readers of any particular age; I'm trying to surprise myself.
现在我明白了这一点，我该因此改变什么吗？我觉得不必。事实上，看清作家所处这个力场的形状，反而提醒了我：我并不是在追求其中的回报最大化。我不是想让某个特定年龄的读者感到惊讶；我是在努力让自己感到惊讶。
The way I usually decide what to write about is by following curiosity. I notice something new and dig into it. It would probably be a mistake to change that. But seeing the shape of the essay field has set me thinking. What would surprise young readers? Which important things do people tend to learn late? Interesting question. I should think about that.
我通常决定写什么的方式，是跟着好奇心走。我注意到一些新东西，然后一路深挖下去。改变这一点，多半会是个错误。但看清了随笔这个力场的形状，也让我开始思考：什么会让年轻读者惊讶？哪些重要的事，人们往往要到很晚才会明白？这是个有意思的问题。我该想想这个。
Note
注
[1] It's hard to write a really good essay about an unimportant topic, though, because a really good essayist will inevitably draw the topic into deeper waters. E. B. White could write an essay about how to boil potatoes that ended up being full of timeless wisdom. In which case, of course, it wouldn't really be about how to boil potatoes; that would just have been the starting point.
[1] 不过，要就一个不重要的话题写出一篇真正好的随笔，其实很难，因为一个真正优秀的随笔作者，几乎不可避免地会把这个话题带入更深的水域。E. B. White 可以写一篇关于如何煮土豆的随笔，结果写得充满永恒的智慧。当然那样一来，它其实就不真的是在讲如何煮土豆了；那不过只是一个起点。
Thanks to Jessica Livingston and Michael Nielsen for reading drafts of this.
致谢 Jessica Livingston 和 Michael Nielsen 阅读了本文的草稿。