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On Intellectual Humility
Baccalaureate Address, Yale College Class of 2022
Peter Salovey, President of Yale University,
May 22, 2022
论思想上的谦逊
耶鲁大学校长苏必德2022届毕业典礼演讲
2022年5月22日
Graduates of the Class of 2022, family members, friends, and colleagues.
诸位2022届毕业生们、家长们和朋友们：
Before I get started, I want to mention that this is the last baccalaureate at least in his present role for your Dean, Marvin Chun, before he returns to the faculty. And I’m wondering if we could all show him just a little bit of gratitude for his service these last five years. He’s not going far away.
开始之前，我想提一下，今天是你们的院长 Marvin Chun 在现任职位上参加的最后一次毕业典礼。让我们对他过去五年的工作表示感谢。将来他不会离我们很远。
So it is a special pleasure to be here with you today, a day made doubly meaningful by our ability to celebrate our graduates in person. And I am delighted to welcome you to Yale’s first on-campus Baccalaureate ceremony since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
今天大家在这里共聚一堂，我感到十分荣幸，这一天也因为我们可以亲自来到校园为毕业庆贺而更加意义非凡。在此，我向你们的到来表示欢迎，欢迎你们参加耶鲁大学自新冠肺炎疫情开始以来第一次恢复线下举办的毕业典礼。
And after a three-year hiatus, there is a wonderful Yale tradition that I would like to reinstitute: May I ask all the families and friends here today to rise and recognize the outstanding – and graduating – members of the Class of 2022? Thank you! And now, may I ask the Class of 2022 to consider all those who have supported your arrival at this milestone, and to please rise and recognize them? Thank you!
在中断了三年之后，现在，请允许我恢复这一耶鲁的宝贵传统：请今天在座的所有毕业生家属和朋友们起立，向2022届杰出的毕业生们表示祝贺。现在，请2022届的全体毕业生们感念所有曾支持你们走到今天这一里程碑的人们，请你们起立向他们致敬。谢谢各位！
Our excitement today is tempered by global turbulence. We can see the perils of conflict and crisis around the world. And yet, as I look out onto this courtyard, I can also see the promise of those well prepared to better our collective future. Old Campus is filled anew with the boundless potential of graduates who offer cause for hope.
当我们在这里庆贺之时，我们知道世界各地正发生着冲突与危机，这些全球动荡使我们不能尽兴。然而，当我望向眼前的你们，我同时也看到了希望，人类集体的未来将经由整装待发的你们得到改善。在这片老校区的广场上，充满无限潜力的毕业生们将赋予未来希望。
Throughout the country on this weekend and those weekends surrounding it, presidents of colleges and universities are inspiring their graduating seniors by telling them that they have received the very best education possible, and that as educated adults, they are now ready to go out and make the world a better place. This is, of course, true in many respects, and I have certainly spoken on other Commencement weekends of the importance of improving the world for this and future generations.
最近的几个周末里，全美各所高校的校长们都在为即将走出校园的毕业生们送上毕业寄语，激励他们作为接受过最优质教育的年轻人，已经做好了准备离开母校，去让世界变得更好。当然，从某些方面来讲这是毋庸置疑的，我也在其他毕业典礼上谈到了为这一代和未来几代人改善世界的重要性。
But I would like you, graduating seniors from Yale College, to depart from this place with a somewhat different mindset. I am going to urge you to recognize that your excellent education allows you to listen to others carefully, consider what they have to say, and sometimes come to a new point of view. I am suggesting today – a day filled with the pride of accomplishment – to recognize, at the same time, the value of intellectual humility. Today, I wish to focus on the courage to acknowledge all we do not know, to admit when we are wrong, and to change our minds.
但是，我希望你们，耶鲁本科学院即将毕业的学生，带着某种不同的心态告别校园。我希望你们在这个充满成就感的日子里认识到，思想上的谦逊也无比重要。你们所受的优秀教育使你们能够认真听取他人的意见，思虑他人的言论，这有时会带来新的观点。所以今天，我的演讲将聚焦在承认未知的勇气，承认我们的错误和改变我们的想法。
Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy spoke to a capacity audience seated right where you are now. He saw a similar state of unrest as the specter of war loomed. And I suspect he gained a similar sense of optimism atop this platform from members of the Class of 1962. President Kennedy’s historic Commencement address at Yale was sweeping in its rhetoric and its scope. And more than a-half century later, there is still much for us to heed from his message, including the abiding but now especially relevant value of seeking new perspectives.
60年前，美国前总统约翰·F·肯尼迪对坐在你们现在位置上满席的听众发表演讲。在战争阴影的笼罩下，他看到的局势与今天动荡的局势类似，而且我估计他在这个讲台上从1962届的耶鲁毕业生身上同样看到了希望。肯尼迪总统在这场具有历史意义的耶鲁毕业典礼演讲中，以其风采和内容赢得了广泛的影响。对于半个多世纪后的我们，仍然可以从他的演讲中得到很多启发，尤其是我们今天要谈到的寻求新视角的价值。
“Too often,” President Kennedy told the graduates in a rousing appeal for intellectual humility, “Too often, we subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.” “Too often,” he continued, “we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” History teaches us the grave hazard of certitude and the hubris from which it germinates.
他在演讲中向毕业生们呼吁要保持思想上的谦逊：“我们常常把所有的事实置于一套预设的解释之下。我们常常乐于接受观点而不愿去思考。”历史告诉我们，确信不疑所带来的严重危害，以及它所滋生的狂妄。
Now, when I was a graduate student here, Professor Irving Janis, a social psychologist, was one of my teachers. He formulated the concept of groupthink and linked the suppression of dissent to a series of foreign policy debacles such as the escalation of the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs invasion.
我在耶鲁读研究生的时候，社会心理学家艾尔芬·詹尼斯教授是我其中一位老师。他提出了“群体思维”的理论，并将这种对不同意见的压制与当时美国一系列外交政策的失败联系起来，如越南战争的升级和猪湾入侵。
The Bay of Pigs invasion – a decision by Kennedy to have the CIA lead a group of armed Cuban exiles in a failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro – was described by Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger as rooted in a “curious atmosphere of assumed consensus, [in which] not one spoke against it.” And as President Kennedy himself disclosed to TIME magazine, “there were 50 or so of us, presumably the most experienced and smartest people we could get, to plan such an operation. Most of us thought it would work…I wasn’t aware of any great opposition.” Yet “when we saw the wide range of failures,” Kennedy continued, “we asked ourselves: why had it not been apparent to somebody from the start? I guess you get walled off from reality when you want something to succeed too much.” The invasion was an embarrassment to the United States, and in those Cold War days, it pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union.
猪湾入侵是时任美国总统的肯尼迪决定由中央情报局领导一群武装的古巴流亡者在古巴西南海岸猪湾，向菲德尔·卡斯特罗领导的古巴革命政府发动的一次失败的入侵。事后，作为总统顾问的阿瑟·施莱辛格描述这次决策为根植于一种“奇怪的假定共识氛围，（其中）没有人反对。”正如肯尼迪本人向《时代》杂志透露的那样：“我们有50人左右，大概是我们能找到的最有经验和最聪明的人，来计划这样一次行动。我们中的大多数人都认为它会成功......我没听见强烈的反对声音。然而，当我们一败涂地的时候，我们责问自己，为什么事情没有在一开始得到明显的阻止。我想，当你太希望某件事情成功时，你就会与现实隔绝。”这场入侵对于美国来说很难堪，在冷战时期它把古巴推得与苏联更近了。
In the many years since President Kennedy spoke at Yale, silos in which unchecked opinion can find refuge have become both ubiquitous and more easily accessed; they act as echo chambers that reaffirm beliefs in real-time. Within these silos, speculation travels great distances without scrutiny. And the spirit of discord between these silos discourages the honest exchange of ideas across them. In short, clinging to our circles of consensus has grown more comforting – and questioning them, more difficult.
然而自肯尼迪总统在耶鲁大学发表演讲后的许多年里，我们看见的却是，隔阂让未经证实的观点得到庇护，而且它们已经变得无处不在且更容易产生。它们就像回声室一样，实时地对这些观点进行重申和加固。在这些隔阂之中，无根据的推测不胫而走，不和谐的氛围让真诚的思想交流举步维艰。简而言之，加强我们已有的共识愈来愈成为一个“舒适圈”，而质疑它们则变得难上加难。
I encourage you to reject that comfort, because a willingness to explore new ideas is what makes all the difference. You know this perfectly well, I realize. The diversity of academic experiences available here at Yale ensured that you were not limited to learning from those who already shared your outlook. Indeed, President Kennedy chose to speak of such matters at Yale “because of the self-evident truth that a great university is always enlisted against the spread of illusion and on the side of reality.”
我想向你们呼吁，拒绝接受这种安逸，因为愿意探索新的想法才会让事情变得不同。我想你们对此一定深有体会。耶鲁大学在学术上的多样性确保了你们不局限于从那些已经与你们观点相同的人身上学习。实际上，肯尼迪总统选择在耶鲁大学谈论这些问题，“是因为一个不言而喻的事实——一所伟大的大学总是会选择站在传播谬误的对立面，而和真相站在一边。”
Another social psychologist, Mark Leary, who recently retired from the faculty of Duke University, closely examined the intellectual humility I seek to nurture in higher education generally and in you today. His review of this attribute – a recognition that “one’s beliefs and opinions might be incorrect” – reveals that it is associated with gratitude, altruism, empathy, and more satisfying relationships. Intellectually-humble people are more likely to be forgiven by others for their mistakes.
我一直以来试图在高等教育中和今天的你们身上培养思想上的谦逊。一位最近从杜克大学退休的社会心理学家Mark Leary对此进行过深入的研究。他重新审视了“承认一个人的观念和观点可能是错误的”这种心理，结果发现它与感恩、利他主义、同情心和更令人满意的关系有关。此外，思想上谦逊的人更有可能因其错误而得到他人的谅解。
As extremism, polarization, and gridlock plague our politics at a time when pressing challenges call on us to harness our shared humanity, Professor Leary details equally substantial advantages of intellectual humility for society, including “lower acrimony that is based on differences in beliefs and ideology…[and] greater negotiation and compromise.”
当全球紧迫的挑战需要我们心怀人类福祉，极端主义、两极分化以及由此产生的僵局困扰着世界政治。在这种情况下，Leary教授对于思想谦逊的研究，对社会有着实质上的启示，包括“减少基于信仰和意识形态差异的争吵……（以及）增加谈判和妥协” 。
Now, when we first met four years ago in Woolsey Hall, I described a series of obligations that would accompany your Yale education, including the responsibility to be constantly curious – and to listen carefully to others. At that 2018 Opening Assembly, I encouraged members of this class to remember that “you have come to Yale because you don’t know everything – not yet.”
四年前我与你们在耶鲁伍尔西音乐厅第一次见面时，我告诉过你们一系列责任将伴随着你们的耶鲁教育，包括持续保持好奇心和仔细聆听他人的意见。在2018年的开学典礼上，我鼓励2022届的成员们铭记，“你们来到耶鲁是因为你们还有需要探索的未知领域。”
Now, even as you prepare to depart Yale four years later, I will again declare that your acquisition of knowledge is unfinished. You’ll leave Yale despite not knowing everything. The transformative power of liberal education lies not in a promise to teach you everything but in the preparedness to meet presumptions – including those we harbor ourselves – with a healthy measure of doubt. It lies not in the ability to answer but in the audacity to question.
现在，在四年后的今天你们完成了学业，我还想说的是你们获取的知识仍不完整。但尽管你们并非无所不知，你们终将离开耶鲁。通识教育的力量不在于承诺教给你们一切，而在于让你们准备好以有益的怀疑态度来应对各种假设，包括我们对自身所处的假设。它不在于回答的能力，而在于敢于质疑的能力。
As graduates, it behooves you to carry forth the inquisitive attitude you have forged here at Yale into the world; to carry forth your insistence on pushing opinions – including your own – beyond the confines of comfort; your resolve to strengthen your reasoning through personal investigation and civil discourse.
作为毕业生，你们有责任将你们在耶鲁锻造的探究精神带向世界；有责任坚持将各种观点——包括你们自己的观点——推出接受的舒适圈之外；有责任带着你们通过个人研究和广泛讨论而追求理性的决心前行。
In thinking of these trademarks of the academic enterprise, I am reminded of a dictum from Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the great medieval philosopher known as Maimonides. In his introduction to Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers, Maimonides urges readers to “accept the truth from whoever speaks it.”
想到这些学术事业的成就时，我想起了伟大的中世纪哲学家摩西·本·迈蒙尼德的一句箴言。他在著作Pirkei Avot的导言中敦促读者“接受真理，无论它出自谁之口”。
Indeed, wisdom is rooted in this willingness – this responsibility – to entertain ideas brought to you by others. To listen carefully. To think critically. To challenge your views – and then to change them when the discovery of truth demands it. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor said recently, “It is, I fear, too easy for people to fail to listen when what they’re hearing is different than what they think.”
事实上，智慧植根于接受他人带给你的想法的意愿，或者说是责任。仔细聆听，批判性地思考，挑战自己的观点，然后为了发现真理而去改变。正如美国最高法院法官索尼娅·索托马约尔最近所说，“我担心，当人们听到的与他们所想的不同时，他们很容易听不进去了。”
As we know, engaging with those who hold profoundly different perspectives threatens not to betray our beliefs, but to broaden them. Listening to that with which we may disagree is an act not of conciliation, but of fidelity to truth. And admitting what we got wrong is no sign of failure, but a necessary step toward knowledge.
与那些持有不同视角的人互动交流，并不会让我们背弃自己的信仰，反而会扩大它。倾听我们可能不认同的观点，并不是一种妥协，而是对真理的忠诚。承认我们的错误并不是失败的标志，而是走向博学的必要过程。
The mark of a great education consists not only of the new frontiers of knowledge we reach, but of the existing viewpoints we reconsider; not necessarily of the understanding we gain, but of the assumptions we shed. For only when we subject the “prefabricated set of interpretations” President Kennedy spoke of here at Yale to scrutiny, can we elevate our limitations into points of strength. Indeed, humility – that willingness to say we are wrong – enables us to scale otherwise unattainable heights in the lifelong pursuit of knowledge.
伟大的教育的标志不仅在于我们对于新知识的探索抵达到了多远，还在于我们对现有观点有多少重新的思考；这并不一定意味着要收获多少新的理解，而是我们放弃了多少假设。因为只有当我们将肯尼迪总统在耶鲁大学谈到的“一套预设的解释”置于严格的审视之下时，我们才能摒弃局限而获得力量。事实上，谦逊——勇于承认错误——使我们能够在终生追求真理的道路上攀登到其他情况下难以企及的高度。
As Yale graduates, you are allegiant to truth. You know that breakthroughs are byproducts of the questions you raise, the conventions you dispute, the fallacies you uncover. But, also, the mistakes you own. You know that the “new ideas and solutions” I spoke of when we first assembled as a class four years ago – ideas and solutions to fight disease, alleviate suffering, and find justice – are made better when they endure the rigors of critical inquiry.
作为耶鲁大学的毕业生，你们忠于真理。你们知道，突破往往伴随着提出问题、争论不决、承认错误，这其中也包括自己的错误。你们知道，四年前我们第一次相聚于此，我谈到的“新想法和解决方案”，即对抗疾病、减轻苦难和寻求正义的想法和解决方案，这些往往在接受批判和质询之后变得更好。
Perhaps now more than ever, the world into which you will soon enter needs you to search for these solutions. It needs your expertise. But it also needs your example as a graduate of this inspiring learning environment. It needs you to continue probing the preconceptions held by others and, with equal vigor, those you hold yourself. It needs your answers and your questions. It needs your scholarship and your skepticism. It needs your intellectual prowess. And it needs your intellectual humility. It needs you, Class of 2022.
也许现在比以往任何时候，你们即将步入的这个世界都更需要你们寻找这些解决方案，需要你们的专业知识，但它也需要你们作为这种启发性学习环境下培养的毕业生树立好榜样；需要你们继续深入思考他人的想法，并以同样的活力深挖自己的先入之见；需要你们的答案也需要你们的提问；需要你们的学术研究和你们的质疑精神；需要你们在思想智慧上大展拳脚，也需要你们永葆思想上的谦逊。2022届毕业生，世界需要你们。
Congratulations!
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