Concise Summary简洁概述
Drawing on Enron's collapse and his own intellectual autobiography, Yudkowsky argues that the standard of Traditional Rationality — eventually yielding to enough evidence — misses something crucial: speed. When you have made a large mistake, making only small, grudging concessions is both epistemically costly and emotionally painful over time. The truly rational move is a clean, total "Oops": admit the fundamental error all at once, absorb the one large loss, and use the resulting clarity to change course fast. Pride-driven minimization of error traps you in a slow-motion replay of the same mistake.
Yudkowsky 以安然公司的崩溃和自己的思想自传为素材，指出传统理性主义的标准——终究向足够多的证据屈服——遗漏了关键一点：速度。当你犯了大错，只做出小而勉强的退让，既在认识论上代价高昂，又在情感上旷日持久地痛苦。真正理性的做法是干净彻底地说一声「哎呀，我错了」：一次性承认根本性错误，吞下那一大口苦药，用由此获得的清醒快速改变航向。出于自尊而最小化错误，只会让你在同一个错误的慢动作回放中越陷越深。
Infographic信息图
Big mistakes need big admissions
大错误需要大承认
Every improvement requires change; if you only concede small errors you can only make small corrections. Fundamental problems demand a watershed moment, not bite-sized nibbles.
每一次改进都需要改变；若你只承认小错误，就只能做出小修正。根本性的问题需要一个分水岭时刻，而非被分割成可口的小块一点点吞咽。
Traditional Rationality's blind spot: speed
传统理性主义的盲点：速度
"Eventually" yielding to evidence is not enough. The goal is to integrate contrary evidence as efficiently as possible, reaching the right conclusion with a minimum of resistance.
「终究」向证据屈服还不够。目标是尽可能高效地整合反面证据，以最小的阻力尽快得出正确结论。
One bitter gulp beats a thousand sips
一口苦药胜过千次小啜
Even hedonically, a single large loss is preferable to stretching the pain over years. Minimizing each concession merely prolongs the battle with yourself.
即便从享乐主义角度看，一次大损失也优于将痛苦拖延数年。将每次退让最小化，不过是延长你与自己的内战。
The Enron trap
安然陷阱
Enron's executives never admitted a fundamental mistake — only local, palatable ones. Their pride-driven minimization ensured they would repeat the same errors to the end.
安然的高管们从未承认根本性错误——只承认局部的、可口的失误。出于自尊而最小化错误，确保了他们会将同样的错误重演到最后。
"I've been a fool" — the liberating sentence
「我一直是个傻瓜」——那句解放的话
Saying "I've been a fool" — not just "I was wrong on this point" — is the shortcut that collapses years of grudging retreat into one clean reset.
说「我一直是个傻瓜」——而不只是「我在这一点上错了」——是把数年勉强撤退压缩成一次干净归零的捷径。
Detailed Summary详细概述
Setting the scene: Enron as anti-example
Yudkowsky opens with The Smartest Guys in the Room, a history of Enron's collapse — and immediately notes the cruel irony of the title. Enron's distinguishing feature was not complexity or bad luck; it was that no executive ever admitted a large mistake. Each new catastrophe was greeted with "Too bad that didn't work out" rather than "I've been stupid" or "it was a mistake from the beginning." The company never had a watershed moment of humbling realization — not even after the bankruptcy, when CEO Jeff Skilling testified before Congress that Enron had been a great company.
The structural argument: small concessions ↔ small changes
The essay's core logical claim is compact and powerful: not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is necessarily a change. If you only admit small local errors, the motivation for large corrective change is never generated. The magnitude of the acknowledged mistake must match the magnitude of the required fix.
Traditional Rationality's blind spot
Yudkowsky describes his own upbringing on Heinlein and Feynman — the classic tropes of rationality: bold theories, willingness to abandon ideas under evidence, play nice in arguments, avoid self-deception. He has no quarrel with these. But they optimize for eventual concession, not for speed. Traditional Rationality distinguishes science from religion, but it doesn't tell you to give up the fight as quickly as possible, or to integrate evidence so efficiently that only a minimum of contrary evidence is needed to update.
The author's own "Oops" moment
He switched from Traditional Rationality to Bayescraft (the Laplace / Jaynes / Tversky / Kahneman tradition) after making a large mistake of his own. Looking back, he saw that his retreat had been agonizingly slow — a series of minimal concessions, grudging millimeter by millimeter, realizing as little as possible of the mistake on each occasion. He could have moved so much faster, he concluded, if he had simply screamed "OOPS!"
And I thought: I must raise the level of my game.
The phenomenology of pride-driven minimization
The essay closes with a sharply observed portrait of how people typically behave: making minimal concessions, never confessing a global mistake where a local one will do, always learning as little as possible from each error. After confessing one mistake, they never say I've been a fool — they say I was right in principle, or It could have worked, or I still want to embrace the true essence of whatever-I'm-attached-to. Defending pride in the passing moment, they ensure they will make the same mistake again, and again need to defend their pride.
The final line is characteristically blunt: "Better to swallow the entire bitter pill in one terrible gulp."
What makes this more than life advice
The deeper point is about the coupling between the size of acknowledged mistakes and the size of epistemic updates. If a belief-revision event is small, it can never force a fundamental model change. Genuine rationality requires having the courage to let a sufficiently bad mismatch between prediction and reality propagate all the way through — to let the big error be a big error, not an administrative problem to be managed in installments.
开场：安然作为反面教材
Yudkowsky 以《房间里最聪明的人》——一本关于安然公司崩溃的历史书——开篇，并立即指出书名的残酷讽刺。安然的与众不同之处不在于复杂性或运气不好，而在于没有任何高管承认过一次大错误。每一场新的灾难都被迎以「真可惜，这个没成功」，而非「我太蔗了」或「这从一开始就是个错误」。公司从未迎来那个令人汗颜的觉醒时刻——即便在破产之后，前 CEO 杰夫·斯基林在国会作证时仍宣称安然曾是一家伟大的公司。
结构性论证：小退让 ↔ 小改变
文章的核心逻辑主张简洁而有力：不是每次改变都是进步，但每次进步必然需要改变。 如果你只承认小的局部错误，就永远产生不出大规模纠正改变的动力。所承认错误的大小，必须与所需修正的大小相匹配。
传统理性主义的盲点
Yudkowsky 描述了自己在海因莱因和费曼熏陶下成长的经历——理性主义的经典信条：大胆的理论、面对证据时愿意放弃自己的想法、在辩论中保持公正、避免自欺。他对这些并无异议。但它们优化的是终究让步，而非速度。传统理性主义把科学与宗教区分开来，却没有告诉你要尽快放弃这场战斗，或者要把整合反面证据的效率提高到只需最少的反面证据就能完成更新。
作者自己的「哎呀」时刻
他在犯了一个重大错误之后，从传统理性主义转向了贝叶斯工艺（拉普拉斯/杰恩斯/特沃斯基/卡尼曼的传统）。回顾往事，他看到自己的撤退慢得令人痛苦——一系列最小化的退让，一毫米一毫米地勉强后退，每次都尽可能少地意识到错误的真实程度。他得出结论：如果他当时直接大喊一声「哎呀，我错了！」，本可快得多。
我想：我必须提升我的游戏水平。
出于自尊而最小化错误的心理现象学
文章以一幅犀利观察的画像作结：人们通常的行为模式——做出最小化的退让，只要局部错误能过关就绝不承认全局性失误，每次从错误中尽可能少地学习。承认一个错误之后，他们从不会说我一直是个傻瓜——他们说我在原则上是对的，或者本来是可以成功的，或者我仍想拥抱我所依附之物的真正精髓。在这一瞬间捍卫自己的自尊，确保了他们将再次犯同样的错误，再次需要捍卫自己的自尊。
最后一句话是作者一贯的直白风格：「最好一口吞下整颗苦药。」
为何这不只是人生建议
更深层的要点关乎承认错误的大小与认识论更新幅度之间的耦合。如果一次信念修正事件微不足道，它就永远无法迫使一次根本性的模型变革。真正的理性需要一种勇气：当预测与现实之间的错配足够严重时，让它一路传导到底——让大错误就是大错误，而非一个可以分期管理的行政问题。
FAQ常见问答
What exactly is the difference between a "small concession" and saying "Oops"?「小退让」与说「哎呀，我错了」之间的区别究竟是什么？
A small concession admits that this particular instance failed, while preserving the core belief and the ego investment in it. "Oops" means admitting that the underlying model was fundamentally flawed — absorbing the full update at once. The difference is the scope of what you're willing to revise.
小退让承认这一具体情形失败了，同时保留核心信念和对它的自我投入。「哎呀，我错了」意味着承认底层模型从根本上就有缺陷——一次性吸收全部更新。区别在于你愿意修正的范围。
Why does the author single out "speed" as what Traditional Rationality lacks?为什么作者单独点出「速度」是传统理性主义所缺乏的？
Traditional Rationality's standard — eventually yielding to evidence — already distinguishes science from dogma, which is real. But it says nothing about how quickly you should update. Slow updating under a large mistake means years of damage, wasted effort, and psychological suffering that a faster update would have cut short. Bayesianism adds an efficiency criterion: integrate evidence at the rate it justifiably warrants, no slower.
传统理性主义的标准——终究向证据让步——已经把科学与教条区分开来，这是真实的进步。但它对更新速度只字未提。在重大错误面前缓慢更新，意味着数年的损失、浪费的努力和心理痛苦，而更快的更新本可将其切断。贝叶斯主义增加了一个效率标准：以证据实际上所证明的速率整合信息，不得更慢。
Is Yudkowsky saying you should be dramatic about admitting mistakes?Yudkowsky 是在说承认错误应该大张旗鼓吗？
Explicitly not. He writes: "Do not indulge in drama and become proud of admitting errors." The goal is not performative humility or masochistic self-flagellation. The goal is ruthless epistemic efficiency — making one full update instead of stretching it into a thousand small ones. The bitter pill analogy emphasizes that it's a cost you should minimize the duration of, not a virtue to display.
明确不是。他写道：「不要沉溺于戏剧性，为承认错误而沾沾自喜。」目标不是表演性的谦卑或受虐式的自我鞭打。目标是冷酷的认识论效率——做出一次完整的更新，而不是把它拉长为一千次小更新。苦药的比喻强调：这是一种你应该尽量缩短持续时间的代价，而非一种要展示的美德。
How does this relate to Yudkowsky's switch from Traditional Rationality to Bayescraft?这与 Yudkowsky 从传统理性主义转向贝叶斯工艺有何关联？
He uses his own intellectual biography as a case study. After making a large mistake and retreating from it glacially slowly, he recognized that the fuzzy verbal tropes of Traditional Rationality had been insufficient to prevent the mistake and insufficient to repair it quickly. Bayesianism gave him a more rigorous framework for quantifying how much evidence should move a belief by how much — which makes it harder to maintain a comforting false belief under accumulating counter-evidence.
他以自己的思想自传作为案例。在犯了一个大错误并以冰川速度从中撤退之后，他认识到传统理性主义模糊的言语信条既不足以阻止错误，也不足以迅速修复它。贝叶斯主义给了他一个更严格的框架，用于量化多少证据应该以多大幅度移动一个信念——这使得在反面证据不断积累的情况下维持一个令人慰藉的虚假信念变得更难。
Does the argument apply to group or institutional mistakes, not just personal ones?这个论点适用于群体或机构的错误，而不仅仅是个人错误吗？
The Enron example is precisely about institutional failure to say "Oops." The executives' serial minimal concessions — acknowledging each small problem while never admitting the underlying rot — destroyed far more value than an early, honest reckoning would have. Yudkowsky doesn't develop the institutional implications explicitly, but the analogy clearly generalizes: organizations that can say "we were fundamentally wrong" and reorganize accordingly outperform those that manage failures in installments.
安然的例子恰恰是关于机构层面未能说「哎呀，我们错了」的失败。高管们一系列最小化的退让——承认每个小问题，却始终不承认根本性的腐烂——造成的价值破坏，远超一次早期、诚实的清算所需付出的代价。Yudkowsky 没有明确展开机构层面的含义，但这个类比显然可以推广：能说「我们从根本上就错了」并据此重组的组织，优于那些将失败分期管理的组织。
What about cases where you genuinely aren't sure whether you've made a large mistake?如果你真的不确定自己是否犯了大错，该怎么办？
The essay doesn't directly address genuine uncertainty about the scale of one's error. It targets the identifiable failure mode of knowing you've made a significant mistake but managing it in small doses for ego protection. Where the scale is genuinely unclear, the Bayesian answer would be to update proportionally to the evidence — neither inflating the error into a crisis nor deflating it into a footnote. The essay's heuristic is most useful when pride is visibly driving the minimization.
文章并未直接处理对错误规模的真正不确定性。它针对的是一种可识别的失败模式：知道自己犯了重大错误，却为了保护自尊而小剂量地管理它。当规模真正不清楚时，贝叶斯主义的答案是与证据成比例地更新——既不把错误夸大成危机，也不把它缩小为脚注。这篇文章的启发式原则，在自尊明显驱动着最小化行为时最为有用。
In-depth Analysis · Pros & Cons深入解读 · 优缺点
This short essay belongs to the Map and Territory sequence but reads more like a personal credo — part intellectual autobiography, part behavioral prescription. It takes the well-known injunction to "update on evidence" and sharpens it into something more demanding: update fast, update completely, and reserve the gravest acknowledgments for the gravest mistakes.
这篇短文属于《地图与疆域》系列，但读来更像一篇个人信条——既是思想自传，也是行为处方。它将人们熟知的「根据证据更新」的告诫磨砺成更高要求的东西：更新要快，更新要彻底，并将最严肃的承认留给最严重的错误。
- Targets an underappreciated failure mode精准击中一种被低估的失败模式The essay identifies something real that broader discussions of rationality miss: the systematic bias toward minimizing the acknowledged size of one's mistakes, independent of their actual size. This is a distinct failure from simply being wrong.文章识别出一种广泛的理性讨论所遗漏的真实现象：系统性地倾向于最小化所承认的错误大小，与其实际大小无关。这是一种有别于单纯犯错的独立失败模式。
- Enron as a tight structural analogy安然作为紧密的结构性类比The Enron story isn't just color; it mirrors the essay's argument precisely: a company that managed every catastrophe as a local problem, never admitted a fundamental flaw, and consequently could not generate the motivation for fundamental change until collapse.安然的故事不只是点缀；它精确地映照了文章的论点：一家将每次灾难都当作局部问题处理、从不承认根本性缺陷的公司，因此始终无法产生根本性变革的动力，直至崩溃。
- Hedonics as an unexpected ally享乐主义作为意外的盟友The observation that a single large loss is hedonically preferable to many small ones reframes the argument: saying "Oops" isn't just epistemically correct, it's also less painful in aggregate. This undercuts the ego-protection strategy on its own terms.「一次大损失在享乐主义上优于许多次小损失」的观察重构了论点：说「哎呀，我错了」不仅在认识论上正确，在总体上也不那么痛苦。这用自尊保护策略自己的逻辑拆解了它。
- Honest about what the advice is not对建议的边界诚实Explicitly warning against making a performance of error-admission prevents the essay from accidentally endorsing a different pathology: competitive self-flagellation or performative humility.明确警告不要将承认错误表演化，防止文章无意间为另一种病态背书：竞争性自我鞭打或表演性谦卑。
- Blurs the diagnosis with the prescription将诊断与处方混为一谈The essay largely assumes that the reader knows when they have made a large mistake as opposed to a series of small ones. In practice, the hardest cases are precisely those where the scope of error is genuinely ambiguous — and the essay offers no guidance for distinguishing pride-driven minimization from legitimate uncertainty about whether a global revision is warranted.文章基本上假定读者知道自己何时犯了大错误，而非一系列小错误。实践中，最难处理的恰恰是错误范围真正模糊的情形——文章对于如何区分出于自尊的最小化与对全局修正是否正当的合理不确定性，没有提供任何指引。
- The speed imperative may overshoot速度命令可能矫枉过正Maximizing update speed can be epistemically dangerous if it causes premature wholesale revision on insufficient evidence — a kind of over-corrective "Oops" that throws out valid beliefs along with invalid ones. The essay frames slowness as the dominant failure mode but doesn't acknowledge the symmetric risk of updating too fast on ambiguous evidence.若更新速度最大化导致在证据不足时过早地进行全面修正——一种矫枉过正的「哎呀，我错了」，将有效信念连同无效信念一起抛弃——则在认识论上可能同样危险。文章将缓慢视为主要失败模式，却未承认在模糊证据面前更新过快的对称风险。
- Skips the social and incentive structure跳过社会和激励结构In institutional contexts like Enron, reluctance to say "Oops" is not merely a cognitive habit — it is rationally responsive to career incentives, legal liability, and hierarchical dynamics. The essay treats it as a pure epistemic/character failing, which understates how much structural reform (not just individual rationality training) is needed to change such behavior.在像安然这样的机构背景下，不愿说「哎呀，我们错了」不仅仅是一种认知习惯——它是对职业激励、法律责任和层级动态的理性回应。文章将其视为纯粹的认识论/品格缺陷，低估了改变此类行为所需的结构性改革（而非仅仅个人理性训练）的程度。
- "Traditional Rationality" is somewhat of a strawman「传统理性主义」在一定程度上是个稻草人Thinkers like Feynman and Popper did care about the speed and completeness of belief revision, not just its eventual direction. Framing them as optimizing only for "eventual" concession slightly mischaracterizes the tradition in order to make the Bayesian upgrade look more radical than it is.像费曼和波普尔这样的思想家确实关心信念修正的速度和完整性，而不仅仅是其最终方向。将他们定性为只优化「终究」让步，稍微曲解了这一传统，以使贝叶斯升级看起来比实际上更具革命性。
"The Importance of Saying 'Oops'" is a focused, honest, and personally grounded argument for a specific rationalist virtue that often goes unnamed: the courage to take large epistemic losses cleanly. Its Enron frame is apt, its hedonic argument is underrated, and its autobiographical candor is disarming. The genuine weaknesses — ignoring structural incentives, conflating diagnosis with prescription, overlooking the symmetric danger of over-updating — don't undermine the core insight but do limit how far the advice transfers beyond individual belief revision.
《学会说「哎呀，我错了」的重要性》是一篇聚焦、诚实、有个人根基的论文，为一种常常无名的理性主义美德辩护：干净彻底地承担巨大认识论损失的勇气。它的安然框架恰当，它的享乐主义论点被低估，它的自传式坦诚令人卸下防备。真正的弱点——忽视结构性激励、将诊断与处方混为一谈、忽略过度更新的对称危险——不会削弱核心洞见，但确实限制了这个建议在个人信念修正之外的迁移范围。
Original Text原文
I just finished reading a history of Enron’s downfall, The Smartest Guys in the Room, which hereby wins my award for “Least Appropriate Book Title.”
An unsurprising feature of Enron’s slow rot and abrupt collapse was that the executive players never admitted to having made a large mistake. When catastrophe #247 grew to such an extent that it required an actual policy change, they would say, “Too bad that didn’t work out—it was such a good idea—how are we going to hide the problem on our balance sheet?” As opposed to, “It now seems obvious in retrospect that it was a mistake from the beginning.” As opposed to, “I’ve been stupid.” There was never a watershed moment, a moment of humbling realization, of acknowledging a fundamental problem. After the bankruptcy, Jeff Skilling, the former COO and brief CEO of Enron, declined his own lawyers’ advice to take the Fifth Amendment; he testified before Congress that Enron had been a great company.
Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is necessarily a change. If we only admit small local errors, we will only make small local changes. The motivation for a big change comes from acknowledging a big mistake.
As a child I was raised on equal parts science and science fiction, and from Heinlein to Feynman I learned the tropes of Traditional Rationality: theories must be bold and expose themselves to falsification; be willing to commit the heroic sacrifice of giving up your own ideas when confronted with contrary evidence; play nice in your arguments; try not to deceive yourself; and other fuzzy verbalisms.
A traditional rationalist upbringing tries to produce arguers who will concede to contrary evidence eventually—there should be some mountain of evidence sufficient to move you. This is not trivial; it distinguishes science from religion. But there is less focus on speed, on giving up the fight as quickly as possible, integrating evidence efficiently so that it only takes a minimum of contrary evidence to destroy your cherished belief.
I was raised in Traditional Rationality, and thought myself quite the rationalist. I switched to Bayescraft (Laplace / Jaynes / Tversky / Kahneman) in the aftermath of . . . well, it’s a long story. Roughly, I switched because I realized that Traditional Rationality’s fuzzy verbal tropes had been insufficient to prevent me from making a large mistake.
After I had finally and fully admitted my mistake, I looked back upon the path that had led me to my Awful Realization. And I saw that I had made a series of small concessions, minimal concessions, grudgingly conceding each millimeter of ground, realizing as little as possible of my mistake on each occasion, admitting failure only in small tolerable nibbles. I could have moved so much faster, I realized, if I had simply screamed “OOPS!”
And I thought: I must raise the level of my game.
There is a powerful advantage to admitting you have made a large mistake. It’s painful. It can also change your whole life.
It is important to have the watershed moment, the moment of humbling realization. To acknowledge a fundamental problem, not divide it into palatable bite-size mistakes.
Do not indulge in drama and become proud of admitting errors. It is surely superior to get it right the first time. But if you do make an error, better by far to see it all at once. Even hedonically, it is better to take one large loss than many small ones. The alternative is stretching out the battle with yourself over years. The alternative is Enron.
Since then I have watched others making their own series of minimal concessions, grudgingly conceding each millimeter of ground; never confessing a global mistake where a local one will do; always learning as little as possible from each error. What they could fix in one fell swoop voluntarily, they transform into tiny local patches they must be argued into. Never do they say, after confessing one mistake, I’ve been a fool. They do their best to minimize their embarrassment by saying I was right in principle, or It could have worked, or I still want to embrace the true essence of whatever-I’m-attached-to. Defending their pride in this passing moment, they ensure they will again make the same mistake, and again need to defend their pride.
Better to swallow the entire bitter pill in one terrible gulp.
我刚读完一本关于安然公司崩溃的历史书，《房间里最聪明的人》，我特此将它授予「最不恰当的书名」奖。
安然公司缓慢腐烂、骤然崩塌过程中毫不令人意外的一个特征是：高管们从未承认过一次重大错误。每当第247号灾难严重到需要切实改变政策时，他们会说：「真可惜那没成功——那可是个好主意——我们要怎么把这个问题藏进资产负债表？」而不是「现在回头看，这从一开始就是个错误，显而易见。」也不是「我太蠢了。」从来没有一个分水岭时刻，没有一个令人汗颜的觉醒瞬间，没有对根本性问题的承认。破产之后，安然前首席运营官兼短暂任职的首席执行官杰夫·斯基林拒绝了自己律师建议的援引第五修正案的权利；他在国会作证，声称安然曾是一家伟大的公司。
不是每次改变都是进步，但每次进步必然需要改变。如果我们只承认小的局部错误，我们就只会做出小的局部改变。做出大改变的动力，来自承认大错误。
我从小在科学与科幻小说的等量滋养下长大，从海因莱因到费曼，我学到了传统理性主义的那些信条：理论必须大胆并将自身暴露于证伪之下；面对反面证据时，要有勇气做出放弃自己想法这一英雄式的牺牲；在辩论中保持公正；尽量不要自欺；以及其他种种模糊的言语训诫。
传统理性主义的培育，试图塑造出这样的辩论者：终究会向反面证据让步——应该存在某种足以撼动你的证据之山。这并不微不足道；它使科学有别于宗教。但人们对速度的关注较少，对尽可能快地放弃这场争斗的关注较少，对高效地整合证据、以便只需最少的反面证据就能摧毁你珍视的信念的关注较少。
我在传统理性主义中成长，自认为相当有理性。我转向了贝叶斯工艺（拉普拉斯/杰恩斯/特沃斯基/卡尼曼）——在……嗯，这是个长故事之后。粗略说来，我转向是因为我意识到传统理性主义模糊的言语信条不足以阻止我犯一个重大错误。
在我终于彻底承认了自己的错误之后，我回顾了将我引向那个「可怕领悟」的那条路。我看到，我曾做出一系列小小的退让，最小化的退让，勉强地一毫米一毫米地让出地盘，每次都尽可能少地意识到自己的错误，只以小而可忍受的小口承认失败。我意识到，我本可以快得多，如果我当时只是大声喊出一声「哎呀，我错了！」
我想：我必须提升我的游戏水平。
承认你犯了一个大错误，有一种强大的优势。这很痛苦。它也可以改变你的整个人生。
拥有那个分水岭时刻，那个令人汗颜的觉醒时刻，是重要的。去承认一个根本性的问题，而不是把它分割成可口的、一口大小的错误。
不要沉溺于戏剧性，为承认错误而沾沾自喜。当然，第一次就做对是更优越的。但如果你确实犯了错误，一次性看清它要好得多。即便从享乐主义角度看，承受一次大损失也好过许多次小损失。另一种选择，是将与自己的战斗拖延数年。另一种选择，是安然。
从那以后，我看着其他人做出自己那一系列最小化的退让，勉强地一毫米一毫米地让出地盘；从不在局部错误足以应付的地方承认全局性失误；每次都从错误中尽可能少地学习。本可以一举修复的东西，他们将其变成一个个微小的局部补丁，不得不被人一点一点地说服才肯打上。他们从不会在承认一个错误之后说，我一直是个傻瓜。 他们竭尽全力地通过说我在原则上是对的，或者本来是可以成功的，或者我仍想拥抱我所依附之物的真正精髓，来最小化他们的窘迫。在这一瞬间捍卫他们的自尊，确保了他们将再次犯同样的错误，再次需要捍卫他们的自尊。
最好一口吞下整颗苦药。