Concise Summary简洁概述
The human brain runs at 10-20 Hz per neuron, so it survives by caching: storing past conclusions and completing patterns rather than recomputing from scratch. This is efficient but dangerous. When a man tries to demolish a chimney using a neighbor's offhand tip he never examined, the result is disaster -- his brain had simply retrieved and executed a cached thought. Yudkowsky generalizes: skeptics who repeat "you can't disprove religion," good people who reflexively shrug "maybe humanity doesn't deserve to survive" -- these are cached thoughts from sources that were never vetted. Genuine rationality requires catching your brain mid-pattern and asking: did I actually think this through?
人类神经元以每秒 10-20 次的频率放电，所以大脑靠缓存存活：存储过去的结论，通过补全模式而非从头计算来应对现实。这很高效，却也很危险。一个男人按照邻居随口说的方法拆烟囱，结果惨不忍睹——他的大脑只是提取并执行了一个缓存的想法。Yudkowsky 将此推而广之：反复说「你无法证伪宗教」的怀疑论者，下意识耸肩「也许人类不值得生存」的好人——这些都是从未被审查过的缓存想法。真正的理性要求你在大脑自动补全模式的当下打住，然后问：我真的思考过这个吗？
Infographic信息图
The brain is a cache machine
大脑是一台缓存机器
Because neurons fire so slowly, the majority of human cognition is likely cache lookups -- retrieving stored conclusions rather than reasoning anew.
由于神经元放电极慢，人类认知的大多数很可能是缓存查找——提取存储的结论，而非重新推理。
The chimney disaster
烟囱惨案
A man used an unvetted neighbor's tip to demolish a chimney; his brain completed the pattern without questioning the source's reliability.
一个男人用未经验证的邻居建议来拆烟囱；他的大脑自动补全了模式，却没有质疑信息来源的可靠性。
Borrowed conclusions, unchecked
借来的结论，从未检验
We cache other people's conclusions to save effort -- but the brain doesn't tag them as "needs review," so they fire automatically without scrutiny.
我们缓存他人的结论以节省精力——但大脑不会标记它们「待审核」，于是它们会不经审查地自动触发。
Plausible-sounding memes as cached thoughts
听起来有道理的文化观念即缓存
Phrases like "you can't disprove religion" or "death gives meaning to life" spread as cached thoughts -- even skeptics repeat them without recomputing from principles.
「你无法证伪宗教」或「死亡赋予生命意义」这类话语作为缓存思想广泛传播——连怀疑论者也不加推导地重复它们。
The meta-trap in this very essay
本文自身的元陷阱
Yudkowsky ends with a deliberate twist: "cached thoughts" is now itself a cached label in your mind -- which means you must ask whether it is actually true.
Yudkowsky 以一个刻意的反转作结：「缓存思想」这个标签，现在已经是你心里的一个缓存——这意味着你必须追问：它是否真的成立。
Detailed Summary详细概述
The Hardware Constraint: Why Brains Must Cache
Yudkowsky opens with a striking neuroscience fact: neurons fire at only 10-20 spikes per second, with a ceiling around 200 Hz. The "hundred-step rule" in neurology says that any cognitive operation must complete in at most 100 sequential neural steps. Given that constraint, realtime thought is only possible because the brain caches heavily -- storing results of past computations and retrieving them by pattern-matching rather than recomputing from first principles. Yudkowsky's estimate: the majority of human cognition is cache lookups.
The Chimney Story
The essay's central illustration is a tale of a man who once heard his know-it-all neighbor advise that the right way to demolish a chimney is to knock out the fireplace, wait for bricks to drop, knock out those, and repeat. The neighbor was no expert. The man never questioned the idea. Years later, needing to remove his own chimney, the cached thought fired -- with predictably disastrous results.
"If he'd questioned the idea, he probably would have realized it was a poor one. Some cache hits we'd be better off recomputing."
The key observation: if the man himself had spontaneously thought of this method, he would have examined it more critically. But because someone else had already "thought it through" (badly), the brain accepted the cached conclusion without inspection.
Borrowed Cognition and Modern Civilization
Yudkowsky then broadens the point. No one can, starting from infancy, reinvent the full cognitive toolkit of a hunter-gatherer tribe in one lifetime -- let alone a literate civilization. Cached knowledge from culture and language is genuinely indispensable. The problem is the flip side: people who aspire to critical thinking still find their minds full of cached thoughts that were never generated by critical thinking.
His main example: the skeptic who says "you can't prove or disprove a religion by factual evidence." As Yudkowsky notes (with a pointer to another essay), this claim is simply false under probability theory. It's also historically absurd -- a few centuries ago it would have gotten you burned at the stake. A praying mother doesn't mentally note "of course, all religious consequences are unfalsifiable, so I'm only doing this for psychological comfort." Yet the meme propagates because it sounds sophisticated, and brains complete the pattern.
Meme Examples: Death, Rationality, Human Survival
The essay rapid-fires three more pattern-completions:
- Death: "Death gives meaning to life." -- How often do you actually examine this before repeating it?
- Human survival: Good, decent people who would never harm their own child reflexively shrug "maybe humanity doesn't deserve to survive" when the topic of existential risk comes up -- because the brain completed a pattern, not because they reasoned to that conclusion.
- Rationality: "Love isn't rational." -- If you had independently invented this thought, how would you have tested it?
The Recursive Twist
Yudkowsky ends with a self-referential warning. Now that you've read this essay, "cached thoughts" is a new pattern in your mind. The next time you hear someone repeat a meme you find dubious, your brain will fire "cached thoughts" automatically. But -- is the "cached thoughts" frame itself true? He is asking you not to let even his idea bypass the examination he's demanding of all ideas. Don't complete the pattern. Think.
硬件约束：为何大脑必须缓存
Yudkowsky 以一个引人注目的神经科学事实开场：神经元每秒仅放电 10-20 次，上限约 200 Hz。神经学中的「百步规则」规定，任何认知操作最多只能在 100 个串行神经步骤内完成。在这一约束下，实时思考之所以可能，正是因为大脑大量依赖缓存——存储过去计算的结果，通过模式匹配检索，而非从第一性原理重新推导。Yudkowsky 估计：人类认知的大多数都是缓存查找。
烟囱故事
文章的核心例证是一个男人的故事：他曾听万事通邻居说，拆烟囱的正确方法是先敲掉壁炉，等砖块落下一层，再敲掉那些砖，如此反复。邻居对此并无专业知识。那男人从未质疑过这个建议。多年后，他需要拆自己家的烟囱，那个缓存的想法如期触发——结果可想而知，一塌糊涂。
「如果他质疑过这个想法，他大概会意识到这是个糟糕的主意。有些缓存命中，我们还是重新计算比较好。」
关键观察在于：如果他自己突然想到了这个方法，他会更批判性地审视它。但因为是别人已经「想过」（且想得很糟），大脑便不加检验地接受了那个缓存结论。
借来的认知与现代文明
Yudkowsky 随后将论点推广。从婴儿期开始，没有人能在一生中从零重新发明狩猎采集部落的全套认知工具——更遑论一个文字文明的智识积累。来自文化与语言的缓存知识确实不可或缺。问题在于其另一面：那些立志批判性思考的人，内心依然充满了从未由批判性思考产生的缓存想法。
他的主要例证：那个说「你无法用事实证据证明或证伪宗教」的怀疑论者。Yudkowsky 指出（并附指向另一篇文章），这个论断在概率论层面根本是错的。在历史上也是荒谬的——几百年前说这句话会让你被烧死在火刑柱上。一个祈祷的母亲不会心里暗想「当然，所有宗教后果都是不可证伪的，所以我祈祷只是为了心理安慰」。然而这个文化观念得以传播，是因为它听起来老练深沉，而大脑自动完成了模式补全。
观念例证：死亡、理性与人类生存
文章随后快速列举三个更多的模式补全例子：
- 死亡：「死亡赋予生命意义。」——你在重复这句话之前，真的审视过它吗？
- 人类生存：善良正直的人，他们绝不会伤害自己的孩子，却在谈到存在性风险时下意识耸肩说「也许人类不值得生存」——因为大脑完成了一个模式，而非因为他们推导出了这个结论。
- 理性：「爱是非理性的。」——如果是你自己独立想出这个想法，你会如何检验它？
递归式的转折
Yudkowsky 以一个自我指涉的警告作结。现在你读完了这篇文章，「缓存思想」已是你心里的一个新模式。下次你听到有人重复你觉得可疑的文化观念时，你的大脑会自动触发「缓存思想」。但——「缓存思想」这个框架本身是真的吗？ 他在要求你，就连他自己的想法，也不要绕过他对所有想法所要求的审查。不要自动补全模式。去思考。
FAQ常见问答
What exactly is a "cached thought" in Yudkowsky's sense?在 Yudkowsky 的意义上，「缓存思想」究竟是什么？
A cached thought is a conclusion retrieved from memory -- either one you formed in the past, or more dangerously, one you absorbed from someone else -- that the brain executes automatically when a pattern triggers it, without recomputing from underlying reasons. It is the cognitive equivalent of a lookup table rather than a calculation.
缓存思想是从记忆中提取的结论——可能是你过去自己形成的，或者更危险地，是你从他人那里吸收的——当某个模式触发时，大脑会自动执行它，不再从底层原因重新计算。它在认知上等同于查找表，而非计算过程。
Isn't caching necessary? Couldn't we function without it?缓存不是必要的吗？没有它我们能运转吗？
Yes, caching is entirely necessary -- Yudkowsky makes this explicit. No individual could, in one lifetime, reconstruct all the useful knowledge of a civilization from scratch. The essay's target is not caching per se but the failure to notice which cached conclusions deserve re-examination, especially when the original source was unreliable or when stakes are high.
是的，缓存完全必要——Yudkowsky 明确说了这一点。没有哪个人能在一生中从零重建一个文明的全部有用知识。文章的批评对象不是缓存本身，而是未能察觉哪些缓存结论值得重新审视——尤其是当最初的来源不可靠、或赌注很高的时候。
How does this relate to the skeptic who says religion can't be empirically disproved?这与「宗教无法通过经验证伪」的怀疑论者有何关联？
This is the essay's main illustrative case. The claim "you can't prove or disprove religion by factual evidence" is factually wrong under probability theory and historically absurd -- but it sounds philosophically sophisticated, so it spreads as a cached thought even among people who would otherwise be critical. Even atheists repeat it without recomputing from first principles.
这是文章的主要例证。「你无法用事实证据证明或证伪宗教」在概率论层面是错误的，在历史上也是荒谬的——但它听起来哲学上很老练，所以即便在本应批判性思考的人中间，也作为缓存思想广泛传播。连无神论者也不加推导地重复它。
Why would I examine an idea more critically if I invented it myself vs. heard it from someone else?为什么自己想出的想法比从别人那里听来的想法，我会更批判性地审视？
Yudkowsky's hypothesis is that borrowed conclusions come pre-packaged as if already validated. When you personally have a bright idea, you're aware it's fresh and unvetted, so critical scrutiny feels natural. When someone else "already thought it through," the brain treats it as passed QA -- skipping the examination phase. The source's actual reliability is not tracked.
Yudkowsky 的假说是：借来的结论是预先打包好的，仿佛已经过验证。当你自己突然有了一个想法，你知道它是新鲜的、未经审查的，批判性审视就显得自然。而当别人「已经想过了」，大脑就把它视为通过了质量检验——跳过审查阶段。信息来源的实际可靠性并不被追踪。
What is the recursive twist at the end of the essay?文章末尾的递归式转折是什么？
After planting the "cached thoughts" concept in your mind, Yudkowsky warns: that very concept is now itself a cached pattern waiting to fire. When you hear someone repeat a dubious meme, you'll automatically think "cached thoughts" -- without examining whether the frame is actually correct. He asks you to resist this too, turning the essay's lesson back on itself.
在将「缓存思想」这个概念植入你的脑海之后，Yudkowsky 警告说：这个概念本身，现在就是一个等待触发的缓存模式。当你听到有人重复一个可疑的文化观念时，你会自动想到「缓存思想」——而不去审查这个框架本身是否正确。他要求你对此也保持抵抗，将文章的教训回溯到自身。
How is "death gives meaning to life" a cached thought in the essay's terms?在文章的意义上，「死亡赋予生命意义」如何是一个缓存思想？
Yudkowsky lists it as a bare phrase, not an argument, precisely to make the point: the phrase arrived in most people's minds pre-concluded, from culture, without being reasoned to. The appropriate response would be to ask: does death actually give meaning? What would a world with life but without death look like? Would meaning collapse? Most people never ask because the pattern completes before the questioning starts.
Yudkowsky 把它列为一个裸句，而非一个论证，正是为了说明这一点：这句话是以文化的形式、带着预设结论抵达大多数人心中的，从未经过推导。恰当的回应应当是问：死亡真的赋予意义吗？一个有生命却没有死亡的世界会是什么样？意义会崩溃吗？大多数人从未追问，因为模式在追问开始之前就已补全。
In-depth Analysis · Pros & Cons深入解读 · 优缺点
This brief essay sits within the "How To Actually Change Your Mind" sequence and serves as a diagnostic: before you can update your beliefs, you need to notice which of your apparent "beliefs" were never really yours to begin with. The caching framing is grounded in actual neuroscience and connects the biological to the epistemological.
这篇短文处于「如何真正改变你的想法」系列中，承担诊断功能：在你能够更新信念之前，你需要察觉自己那些表面上的「信念」，哪些从来就不是真正属于你的。缓存这一框架有真实的神经科学作为依托，将生物学与认识论连接了起来。
- Grounded in real cognitive science扎根于真实的认知科学The hundred-step rule and neuron firing rates are genuine neuroscience constraints, not metaphors invented for rhetorical effect. The caching analogy flows naturally from them.百步规则与神经元放电频率是真实的神经科学约束，而非为修辞效果发明的比喻。缓存的类比从它们之中自然流出。
- Concrete, sticky illustration具体而难忘的例证The chimney story perfectly embodies the mechanism: an unreliable source, a never-examined conclusion, automatic execution. It's more persuasive than an abstract definition.烟囱故事完美地体现了这一机制：不可靠的来源、从未审查的结论、自动执行。比抽象定义更具说服力。
- The recursive self-application递归的自我指涉Ending by warning you that "cached thoughts" is now itself a cached pattern shows intellectual honesty and raises the essay above mere finger-pointing at others' errors.以警告「缓存思想」本身已是缓存模式作结，体现了知识上的诚实，让文章超越了单纯指责他人错误的层面。
- Actionable heuristic可操作的启发法The test "would I examine this more critically if I'd thought of it myself?" is a concrete, applicable check -- not just a call to "think harder."「如果是我自己想出来的，我会更批判性地审视它吗？」这一检验是具体可用的标准，而非只是呼吁「更努力地思考」。
- Conflates two different problems混淆了两个不同的问题Caching false conclusions (the chimney) and caching conclusions from non-critical sources (the religion meme) are distinct failure modes. The essay runs them together, but the remedies differ: the first calls for more first-principles reasoning, the second for better source evaluation.缓存错误结论（烟囱）与缓存来自非批判性来源的结论（宗教观念），是两种不同的失败模式。文章将它们并列，但补救方法不同：前者需要更多的第一性原理推理，后者需要更好的信息来源评估。
- The religion example overstates the case宗教例证夸大了主张Whether "you can't disprove religion by factual evidence" is simply false depends on what "religion" means and how one reads probability theory. Many philosophers of religion and atheists hold nuanced versions of this claim that are not obviously wrong. Dismissing it wholesale as a cached mistake is itself somewhat unreflective.「你无法用事实证据证伪宗教」是否就是错的，取决于「宗教」的含义以及如何解读概率论。许多宗教哲学家和无神论者持有这一论断的细致版本，并非显然错误。一竿子打翻它作为缓存错误，本身也有些欠反思。
- Offers no reliable method for distinguishing good caches from bad未提供区分好缓存与坏缓存的可靠方法The essay tells you to stop and think when you notice a cached thought, but doesn't address how to identify which cached thoughts need examination in the first place -- you can't recompute everything from scratch. The selection problem is harder than the recomputation problem.文章告诉你当察觉到缓存思想时要停下来思考，但没有解决如何在第一步就识别出哪些缓存思想需要检验的问题——你不可能把所有事情从头计算。选择问题比重新计算问题更难。
- Underestimates the value of socially cached knowledge低估了社会缓存知识的价值Yudkowsky acknowledges that civilization requires caching, but the tone privileges individual recomputation. In practice, well-calibrated expert consensus is often more reliable than one person's fresh reasoning from first principles; the essay's framing can inadvertently license overconfident contrarianism.Yudkowsky 承认文明需要缓存，但文章的语气更推崇个人从头推导。而在实践中，校准良好的专家共识往往比一个人从第一性原理出发的新鲜推理更可靠；文章的框架可能会无意中为过度自信的逆向思维提供许可。
A sharp and memorable diagnostic essay that succeeds in making the invisible visible: the fact that a large fraction of what passes for our "thinking" is actually automated recall. Its chief limitation is providing no decision procedure for which recalls to interrupt -- the full problem is harder than the essay's breezy tone suggests. Read it as a prompt to occasionally audit your most confidently-held unreasoned beliefs, not as a license to recompute everything from scratch.
这是一篇犀利而难忘的诊断性文章，成功地让不可见之物变得可见：我们所谓「思考」的很大一部分，实际上是自动化的记忆提取。它的主要局限在于：没有提供决策程序来判断哪些记忆提取值得打断——这个完整问题比文章轻松的语气所暗示的要难得多。把它当作一个提醒来读：不时审计你那些最自信却未经推导的信念，而不是一张「把所有事情从头计算」的许可证。
Original Text原文
One of the single greatest puzzles about the human brain is how the damn thing works at all when most neurons fire 10–20 times per second, or 200Hz tops. In neurology, the “hundred-step rule” is that any postulated operation has to complete in at most 100 sequential steps—you can be as parallel as you like, but you can’t postulate more than 100 (preferably fewer) neural spikes one after the other.
Can you imagine having to program using 100Hz CPUs, no matter how many of them you had? You’d also need a hundred billion processors just to get anything done in realtime.
If you did need to write realtime programs for a hundred billion 100Hz processors, one trick you’d use as heavily as possible is caching. That’s when you store the results of previous operations and look them up next time, instead of recomputing them from scratch. And it’s a very neural idiom—recognition, association, completing the pattern.
It’s a good guess that the actual majority of human cognition consists of cache lookups.
This thought does tend to go through my mind at certain times.
There was a wonderfully illustrative story which I thought I had bookmarked, but couldn’t re-find: it was the story of a man whose know-it-all neighbor had once claimed in passing that the best way to remove a chimney from your house was to knock out the fireplace, wait for the bricks to drop down one level, knock out those bricks, and repeat until the chimney was gone. Years later, when the man wanted to remove his own chimney, this cached thought was lurking, waiting to pounce . . .
As the man noted afterward—you can guess it didn’t go well—his neighbor was not particularly knowledgeable in these matters, not a trusted source. If he’d questioned the idea, he probably would have realized it was a poor one. Some cache hits we’d be better off recomputing. But the brain completes the pattern automatically—and if you don’t consciously realize the pattern needs correction, you’ll be left with a completed pattern.
I suspect that if the thought had occurred to the man himself—if he’d personally had this bright idea for how to remove a chimney—he would have examined the idea more critically. But if someone else has already thought an idea through, you can save on computing power by caching their conclusion—right?
In modern civilization particularly, no one can think fast enough to think their own thoughts. If I’d been abandoned in the woods as an infant, raised by wolves or silent robots, I would scarcely be recognizable as human. No one can think fast enough to recapitulate the wisdom of a hunter-gatherer tribe in one lifetime, starting from scratch. As for the wisdom of a literate civilization, forget it.
But the flip side of this is that I continually see people who aspire to critical thinking, repeating back cached thoughts which were not invented by critical thinkers.
A good example is the skeptic who concedes, “Well, you can’t prove or disprove a religion by factual evidence.” As I have pointed out elsewhere,^1^ this is simply false as probability theory. And it is also simply false relative to the real psychology of religion—a few centuries ago, saying this would have gotten you burned at the stake. A mother whose daughter has cancer prays, “God, please heal my daughter,” not, “Dear God, I know that religions are not allowed to have any falsifiable consequences, which means that you can’t possibly heal my daughter, so . . . well, basically, I’m praying to make myself feel better, instead of doing something that could actually help my daughter.”
But people read “You can’t prove or disprove a religion by factual evidence,” and then, the next time they see a piece of evidence disproving a religion, their brain completes the pattern. Even some atheists repeat this absurdity without hesitation. If they’d thought of the idea themselves, rather than hearing it from someone else, they would have been more skeptical.
Death. Complete the pattern: “Death gives meaning to life.”
It’s frustrating, talking to good and decent folk—people who would never in a thousand years spontaneously think of wiping out the human species—raising the topic of existential risk, and hearing them say, “Well, maybe the human species doesn’t deserve to survive.” They would never in a thousand years shoot their own child, who is a part of the human species, but the brain completes the pattern.
What patterns are being completed, inside your mind, that you never chose to be there?
Rationality. Complete the pattern: “Love isn’t rational.”
If this idea had suddenly occurred to you personally, as an entirely new thought, how would you examine it critically? I know what I would say, but what would you? It can be hard to see with fresh eyes. Try to keep your mind from completing the pattern in the standard, unsurprising, already-known way. It may be that there is no better answer than the standard one, but you can’t think about the answer until you can stop your brain from filling in the answer automatically.
Now that you’ve read this, the next time you hear someone unhesitatingly repeating a meme you think is silly or false, you’ll think, “Cached thoughts.” My belief is now there in your mind, waiting to complete the pattern. But is it true? Don’t let your mind complete the pattern! Think!
^1^See ‘Religion’s Claim to be Non-Disprovable,” in Map and Territory.
关于人类大脑，最大的谜题之一是：当大多数神经元每秒只放电 10–20 次，最高不过 200 Hz，这玩意儿究竟是怎么运转的？在神经学中，「百步规则」是指：任何被假设的操作，最多只能在 100 个串行步骤内完成——你可以尽量并行，但你不能假设超过 100 个（最好更少）神经脉冲依次发放。
你能想象用 100 Hz 的 CPU 来编程吗，无论你有多少颗？光是要实时完成任何事情，你还需要一千亿个处理器。
如果你真的需要为一千亿个 100 Hz 处理器编写实时程序，你会尽可能大量使用的一个技巧就是缓存。也就是说，存储之前操作的结果，下次直接查找，而不是从头重新计算。这是一种非常神经性的惯用法——识别、联想、补全模式。
很有可能，人类认知的实际大多数，都是缓存查找。
在某些时刻，这个念头确实会掠过我的脑海。
曾经有一个极具说明性的故事，我以为自己收藏了书签，却再也找不到：故事说的是一个男人，他那个无所不知的邻居曾经随口提到，拆除房子烟囱的最好方法，是先敲掉壁炉，等砖块落下一层，再敲掉那些砖，如此反复，直到烟囱消失。多年后，当那个男人想拆自己家的烟囱时，这个缓存的想法潜伏在那里，等待着扑出来……
正如那个男人事后所说——你大概猜到结局不妙——他的邻居在这方面并无专业知识，也不是一个值得信赖的信息源。如果他质疑过这个想法，他大概会意识到这是个糟糕的主意。有些缓存命中，我们还是重新计算比较好。但大脑会自动补全模式——如果你没有意识到这个模式需要修正，你就会带着一个已被补全的模式继续前行。
我怀疑，如果这个想法是那个男人自己想到的——如果他亲自想出了拆烟囱的这个妙招——他会更批判性地审视这个想法。但如果是别人已经把一个想法想过一遍了，你就可以通过缓存他们的结论来节省计算资源——不是吗？
在现代文明中，没有人能快到足以只凭自己的思考来思考所有的事情。如果我婴儿时期被遗弃在森林里、由狼或沉默的机器人抚养长大，我几乎不会被认出是人类。没有人能快到足以在一生中、从零开始，重新概括出一个狩猎采集部落的智慧。至于文字文明的智慧，就更别提了。
但这枚硬币的反面是：我不断看到那些立志批判性思考的人，在重复着那些并非由批判性思考者发明的缓存思想。
一个好例子是怀疑论者的让步：「嗯，你无法用事实证据证明或证伪一种宗教。」正如我在别处指出的^1^，从概率论的角度看，这根本是错的。从宗教的真实心理学角度看，同样是错的——几百年前，说这话是要被烧死在火刑柱上的。一位女儿身患癌症的母亲祈祷道：「上帝啊，请治愈我的女儿」，而不是「亲爱的上帝，我知道宗教不被允许有任何可证伪的后果，这意味着你不可能治愈我的女儿，所以……嗯，基本上，我祈祷只是为了让自己感觉好一点，而不是去做任何真正能帮到我女儿的事情。」
但人们读到「你无法用事实证据证明或证伪一种宗教」，然后，下一次当他们看到一条反驳某种宗教的证据时，他们的大脑就补全了模式。就连一些无神论者也会毫不迟疑地重复这种荒谬。如果他们是自己想出这个主意的，而非从别人那里听来的，他们会更加持怀疑态度。
死亡。补全模式：「死亡赋予生命意义。」
与善良正直的人交谈令人沮丧——这些人在一千年里也绝不会自发地想到消灭人类这一物种——当你提起存在性风险的话题，却听到他们说：「嗯，也许人类这个物种不值得生存。」他们在一千年里都不会向自己的孩子开枪，而那个孩子正是人类物种的一部分，但大脑补全了模式。
在你心里，正在被补全的模式，都是你从未选择存在于此的模式——有哪些？
理性。补全模式：「爱是非理性的。」
如果这个想法是你自己突然想到的，完全是一个崭新的念头，你会如何批判性地审视它？我知道我会说什么，但你呢？用新鲜的眼光去看，是很难的。试着阻止你的心智以标准的、毫无惊喜的、已然知晓的方式去补全模式。也许标准答案没有更好的替代，但在你能阻止大脑自动填入答案之前，你无法真正思考那个答案。
现在你读完了这篇文章，下次当你听到有人毫不迟疑地重复一个你觉得愚蠢或错误的文化观念时，你会想：「缓存思想。」我的信念现在已经在你的心里，等待着补全模式。但它是真的吗？不要让你的心智自动补全模式！去思考！
^1^参见《地图与疆域》中的《宗教宣称自己不可证伪》。