原文内容过多，我做了些删减。
目录：
1.我们平时如何做决定
2.两类无知
3.空套装的人
4.利用故事认识无知
5.应用
This article builds onDecisions Under Uncertainty. In fact, consider this a continuation.
这篇文章基于[在不确定性下做决定]，事实上，可以把这看作是续集。
一.我们平时如何做决定
Think of how we make decisions in organizations — we often do what standard decision theory would ask of us.
思考一下我们是如何在组织里做决定的，我们经常按照标准决策理论的要求去执行。
We create a powerpoint that identifies the future desired state, identify what might happen, attach weighted probabilities to said outcomes, and make a choice. Perfectly rational. Right?
我们做出来识别未来期望状态的PPT，识别可能发生什么，将有价值的可能性和提及的结果联系在一起，并做出选择。相当理性，对吗？
One of the problems with this approach is the risk charts and matrices that accompany this analysis. In my experience these charts are rarely discussed in detail and become more about checking the ‘I thought about risk' box than anything else. We conveniently pin things into categories of low, medium, or high risk with a corresponding“impact” scale.
使用这种方法的一个问题是伴随着这种分析的风险表格和矩阵。以我的经验来看，这些表格经常缺少细节，并且比起检验其他东西，更多地是检查“我以为的风险黑盒。我们想当然的把事物划分到低风险、中风险、高风险三种分类里，来代表相应的影响的规模。
What gets most of the attention is high-risk, high-impact. Perhaps deservedly so. But you have to ask yourself how did we arrive at these arbitrary scales? Is one person's look at risk the same as someone else's? Are there hidden incentives to nudge risk one way or another? What biases come into play?
吸引我们注意力的多是那些高风险、高影响的事儿。或许值得这样做。但是你有必须问你自己我们如何处理任意的规模?一个人看风险的角度和另外一个人一样吗？有隐藏的刺激用不同的方式推动风险吗？什么偏差在起作用？
Often we can't even identify everything. Rarely do people ever go back and look at what happened and how accurate those “risk” tables were. From the ones I've seen, the “low risk” stuff happens a lot more often than people imagined. And a lot of things happen that never even made the chart in the first place.
我们不能认识到所有的事物。很少有人会回顾过去并查看发生了什么，并检查那些风险表的准确性是怎样的。从我的观察来看，那些低风险的事情发生的频率比我们想象的高多了。许多风险表不重视的事情发生了。
On the occasion when people do go back, and I've seen this firsthand, hindsight bias creeps in. “Oh, we discussed that but it didn't make it in the document. But we knew about it.” Yes, of course you did.
那些回顾过去的人们，我亲眼所见的，受到了事后偏见的影响。“噢，我们讨论过那件事，但并没有记录。但是我们知道它会发生。”是的，你当然知道。
Ignorant and unknowing.无知和未知。
We're largely ignorant, that is, we operate in a state of the world where some possible outcomes are unknown. However, we've prepared for a world where outcomes and probabilities can be estimated. There is a mis-match between our training and reality. You can't even hope to accurately estimate probabilities if the range of outcomes is unknown.
我们几乎是无知的，我们处于一个一些可能的结果是未知的状态的世界。然而，我们却为一个结果和可能性都可估计的世界做着准备。我们的训练和真相是错配的。如果结果的范围是未知的，你不能期待可以准确地估计可能性。
二.两类无知
There are two types of ignorance.
两类的无知
The first category is when we do not know we are ignorant. This is primary ignorance. The second category is when we recognize our ignorance. This is called recognized ignorance.
第一种分类是我们不知道我们无知的时候，这是最基本的无知。第二种是我们知道我们无知。
三.空套装的人
Empty Suits
Empty SuitsandFragilistasare almost always ignorant and unknowing.
Empty Suits和Fragilistas这两类的人几乎是无知和未知的。
InAntifragile, Nassim Taleb writes:
在Antifragile里，Nassim Taleb写道：
[The Empty Suit/Fragilista] defaults to thinking that what he doesn't see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.
[The Empty Suit/Fragilista]是那些默认为他看不见的就是不在那的，或者他不知道到就是不存在的人。本质上，他倾向于把未知误以为是不存在的。
Ignorance, primary or recognized, is only important if the expected consequences are significant. Otherwise we can be ignorant without consequence.
无知，无论是基本的或是认识到的，只有当预期的结果很有价值时才是重要的。否则在没有后果时，我们可以无知。
While human irrationality factors into all decisions, it hits us most when we are unknowingly ignorant.当人类不理性的因素考虑到决定中时，当我们无意识地无知时，它对于我们的影响才最大。
Rational decision making becomes harder as we move along the continuum:
当我们沿着位于两个不同的可能性间的有轻微区别的连续体移动时，理性的决定变得更加困难了：
outcomes are known —> risk —> uncertainty/ignorance.
可知的结果—>风险—>不确定性/无知。
If we can not consider all possible outcomes, preventing failure becomes nearly impossible. Further complicating matters, situations of ignorance often take years to play out. Joy and Zeckhauser write:
如果我们不能考虑到所有的结果，阻止失败变成几乎不可能的事情。更远的复杂变得重要，无知地后果经常要多年才能显现。Joy和Zeckhauser写道：
One could argue … that a rational decision maker should always consider the possibility of ignorance, thus ruling out primary ignorance. But that is a level of rationality that very few achieve.
一个人可以争论，一个理性的决策者应该始终考虑到无知的可能性，因而排除基本的无知。但那种层面的理性却很少人能达到。
If we could do this we'd always be in the space of recognized ignorance, better, at least, than primary ignorance.
如果我们可以这样做，我们会始终处于可认识到的无知状态，至少，比基本无知更好。
四.利用故事认识无知
Literature文学
“Fortunately,” write Joy and Zeckhauser, “there is a group of highly perceptive chroniclers of human decision-making who observe individuals and follow their paths, often over years or decades. They are the individuals who write fiction: plays, novels, and short stories describing imagined events and people (or fictional characters.)”
“不幸地”，Joy和Zeckhauser写道，“有那么一群高度认知地人类决策编年史者，他们观察个体，并跟随他们的道路数年或数十年。这些个体是那些写科幻小说的人，他们写剧本、小说、短篇故事，来描述想象中的人或事件（或者科幻的角色）。”
Joy and Zeckhouser argue these works have “deep insights” into the way we approach decisions, “both great and small.”
Joy 和 Zeckhouser认为这些工作对于我们做决定的方式有深深地智慧，无论大小的决定。
In thePoetics, a classical treatise on the principles of literary theory, Aristotle argues that art imitates life. We refer here to Aristotle's ideas ofmimesis, or imitation. Aristotle claims one of art's functions is the representation of reality. “Art” here includes creative products of the human imagination and, therefore, any work of fiction. Indeed, a crevice, not a canyon, separates faction and fiction.
《Poetics》，作为一本关于为文学理论原则的经典书籍，亚里士多德辩论道艺术模仿生活。我们在这里引用了亚里士多德模仿的思想。亚里士多德宣称艺术的一个作用是代表真相。这里的艺术包括人类想象的创造性的作品，当然，任何科幻作品。事实上，一条裂缝，不是峡谷，区分了纪实派和科幻派。
In Gustave Flaubert’sMadame Bovary(1856/2004), Charles Bovary is a stolid rural doctor who is ignorant of the true character of the woman he is marrying. Dazzled by her youth and beauty, he ends up with an adulterous wife who plunges him into debt. His wife Emma, the titular “Madame Bovary,” is equally ignorant of the true character of her husband. Her head filled with romantic fantasies, she yearns for a sophisticated partner and the glamor of city life, but finds herself trapped in a somnolent marriage with a rustic man.
在古斯塔夫 福楼拜（法国现实主义作家）的[包法利夫人]里，查尔斯 包法利是一位迟钝的乡村医生，他对于将和他结婚的女人的真实的品质是无知的。他被她的年轻貌美迷惑，和一个不贞并让他负债累累的妻子一起生活。他的妻子Emma，名义上的包法利夫人，对于丈夫真实的品质是同样无知的。她脑子里充满了浪漫的幻想，渴望一名有情调的伴侣和城市生活的光鲜，却发现和一个乡村男人困在了一段无趣的婚姻里。
Joy and Zeckhouser use stories to study ignorance, which makes sense.
Joy和Zeckhouser用故事来学习无知，也说得通了。
Stories offer “simulations of the social world,” according to Psychologists Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley, through abstraction, simplification, and compression. Stories afford us a kind of flight simulator. We can test run new things and observe and learn, with little economic or social cost. Joy and Zeckhouser believe “that characters in great works of literature reproduce the behavioral propensities of real-life individuals.”
据心理学家雷蒙德 玛和吉斯 奥特利说，通过抽象、简化及压缩，故事提供了社会的模拟。我们可以用很少经济和社会的代价，检验新事物、观察和学习。Joy和Zeckhauser相信“那些伟大文学里的角色再现了现实生活中个人行为冲动。”
While we'll likely never uncover situations as fascinating as we find in stories, this doesn't mean they are not a useful tool for learning about choice and consequence. “In a sense,” Joy and Zeckhauser write, “this is why great literature will never get dated: these stories observe the details of human behavior, and present such behavior awash with all the anguish and the splendor that is the lot of the human predicament.
我们可能在生活中找不到想故事里那样迷人的场景，但是那不意味着他们不是用来学习选择和后果有用的工具。“某种程度上”，Joy和Zeckhauser写道，“这就是文学作品绝不会过时的原因：这些故事观察了人类行为的细节，呈现出充满了痛苦以及那些许多人类困境的光鲜的行为。
As Steven Pinker notes inHow The Mind Works:
就如史蒂芬 平克在[How the mind works] 里记录的那样：
Characters in a fictitious world do exactly what our intelligence allows us to do in the real world. We watch what happens to them and mentally take notes on the outcomes of the strategies and tactics they use in pursuing their goals.
虚拟小说的世界里的角色和现实世界中的我们做着同样的智力范围内允许的事情。我们见识了发生在他们身上的事情，并且记忆他们用来追逐目标的策略和方案。
If we assume we live in a world where we are, to some extent, ignorant then the best course is “thoughtful action or prudent information gathering.” Yet, when you look at the stories, “we frequently act in ways that violate such advice.”
假如我们生活在一个，某种程度上，我们是无知的世界里。最好的方式是审慎的行动和审慎信息的收集。然而，当你看着那些故事时，“我们却经常做着违背这个建议的行为。”
So reading fiction can help us adapt and deal with the world of uncertainty.
所以，阅读小说可以帮助我们适应并处理世界的不确定性。
Read part three of this series:Avoiding Ignorance.
阅读这系列的第三部分：避免无知。
五.应用
以前我只是知道可能还有我不知道的知识，却没想到可能还有不存在于自己认知世界里的知识。这两种无知听绕口的，不知道的无知（即基本的无知）和知道的无知，关于知道的无知，方法挺简单的，既然知道自己不懂的内容是什么，去搜、去读、去学习就好了。但是对于那些不存在于我们认知世界里的知识，即我们不知道自己不知道的知识，这就比较难了。
作者也提供了识别基本的无知的方法，通过检查过去的决策，阅读文学作品，文学作品里的故事是对我们现实世界的模拟，通过学习那些故事里的人的生活，学习他们的无知，让我们的基本的无知变成知道的无知，进而通过学习，摆脱无知。
下一篇文章作者会讲如何避免无知的方法，就关于无知这个话题，我也说一说自己的思考吧，首先要学会记录整理自己的知识，通过记录，既方便自己复盘，检验做出的决定的准确率，也可以区分自己的知识边界。其次是保持一个好奇心，学习任何事物都不能过于极端，警惕可能存在那些基本的无知。最后就是多读书，多思考，学到老，活到老，学海无涯。
欲知如何避免无知，请见下篇文章。
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