Our uniquely human ability to look down from a higher level doesn’t apply just to understanding reality and the cause-effect relationships underlying it; it also applies to looking down on yourself and those around you. I call this ability to rise above your own and others’ circumstances and objectively look down on them “higher-level thinking.” Higher-level thinking gives you the ability to study and influence the cause-effect relationships at play in your life and use them to get the outcomes you want.
我们人类独特的从更高层次往下看的能力不仅适用于理解现实及其背后的因果关系；也适用于俯瞰自己和周围的人。我把这种超越自己和他人的处境并客观地看待他们的能力称为“更高层次的思维”。更高层次的思维使你能够研究和影响生活中的因果关系，并利用它们来获得您想要的结果。

For the most part, life gives you so many decisions to make and so many opportunities to recover from your mistakes that, if you handle them well, you can have a terrific life. Of course, sometimes there are major influences on the quality of our lives that come from things beyond our control—the circumstances we are born into, accidents and illnesses, and so forth—but for the most part even the worst circumstances can be made better with the right approach. For example, a friend of mine dove into a swimming pool, hit his head, and became a quadriplegic. But he approached his situation well and became as happy as anybody else, because there are many paths to happiness.
在大多数情况下，生活给了你很多决定要做，也给了你很多从错误中恢复的机会，如果你处理得好，你就能过上美好的生活。当然，有时我们的生活质量会受到一些我们无法控制的因素的影响——我们出生的环境、事故和疾病等等——但在大多数情况下，即使是最糟糕的情况也可以变得更好用正确的方法。例如，我的一个朋友跳进游泳池，撞到了头，四肢瘫痪。但他很好地处理了自己的处境，并变得和其他人一样快乐，因为通往幸福的道路有很多。

By recognizing the higher-level consequences nature optimizes for, I’ve come to see that people who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects of second- and subsequent-order consequences rarely reach their goals. This is because first-order consequences often have opposite desirabilities from second-order consequences, resulting in big mistakes in decision making. For example, the first-order consequences of exercise (pain and time spent) are commonly considered undesirable, while the second-order consequences (better health and more attractive appearance) are desirable. Similarly, food that tastes good is often bad for you and vice versa.
通过认识到自然优化的更高层次的后果，我发现那些过度重视决策的一阶后果而忽视二阶和后续后果影响的人很少能达到他们的目标。这是因为一阶后果往往与二阶后果具有相反的期望，从而导致决策中出现重大错误。例如，锻炼的第一级后果（疼痛和花费的时间）通常被认为是不受欢迎的，而第二级后果（更好的健康和更有吸引力的外表）是可取的。同样，味道好的食物往往对你有害，反之亦然。

In my own life, what I want to give to people, most importantly to people I love, is the power to deal with reality to get what they want. In pursuit of my goal to give them strength, I will often deny them what they “want” because that will give them the opportunity to struggle so that they can develop the strength to get what they want on their own. This can be difficult for people emotionally, even if they understand intellectually that having difficulties is the exercise they need to grow strong and that just giving them what they want will weaken them and ultimately lead to them needing more help.
在我自己的生活中，我想给予人们，最重要的是给予我所爱的人，是面对现实以获得他们想要的东西的能力。为了追求给他们力量的目标，我经常会拒绝他们“想要”的东西，因为这会给他们奋斗的机会，这样他们就可以发展力量，靠自己得到他们想要的东西。这对人们来说在情感上可能会很困难，即使他们在理智上明白，遇到困难是他们成长壮大所需的锻炼，而仅仅给他们想要的东西就会削弱他们并最终导致他们需要更多帮助。

If you don’t let up on yourself and instead become comfortable always operating with some level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace. That’s just the way it is.
如果你不放松自己，而是习惯于忍受一定程度的痛苦，你就会以更快的速度进步。就是那样子。

There is no avoiding pain, especially if you’re going after ambitious goals. Believe it or not, you are lucky to feel that kind of pain if you approach it correctly, because it is a signal that you need to find solutions so you can progress. If you can develop a reflexive reaction to psychic pain that causes you to reflect on it rather than avoid it, it will lead to your rapid learning/evolving. After seeing how much more effective it is to face the painful realities that are caused by your problems, mistakes, and weaknesses, I believe you won’t want to operate any other way. It’s just a matter of getting in the habit of doing it.
痛苦是不可避免的，尤其是当你追求雄心勃勃的目标时。不管你相信与否，如果你正确地对待它，你很幸运能够感受到这种痛苦，因为这是一个信号，表明你需要找到解决方案，这样你才能进步。如果你能够对精神痛苦产生一种反射性反应，使你反思它而不是避免它，那么它将导致你快速学习/进化。在看到面对由你的问题、错误和弱点造成的痛苦现实是多么有效之后，我相信你不会想要采取任何其他方式。这只是养成这样做的习惯的问题。

Realizing that we innately want to evolve–and that the other stuff we are going after, while nice, won’t sustain our happiness–has helped me focus on my goals of evolving and contributing to evolution in my own infinitely small way. While we don’t like pain, everything that nature made has a purpose, so nature gave us pain for a purpose. So what is its purpose? It alerts us and helps direct us.
意识到我们天生想要进化——而我们追求的其他东西虽然不错，但无法维持我们的幸福——这帮助我专注于我的进化目标，并以我自己无限小的方式为进化做出贡献。虽然我们不喜欢痛苦，但大自然创造的一切都有其目的，所以大自然给我们痛苦是有目的的。那么它的目的是什么？它提醒我们并帮助指导我们。

Earlier, I mentioned that the unique abilities of thinking logically, abstractly, and from a higher level are carried out in structures located in the neocortex. These parts of the brain are more developed in humans and allow us to reflect on ourselves and direct our own evolution. Because we are capable of conscious, memory-based learning, we can evolve further and faster than any other species, changing not just across generations but within our own lifetimes.
前面我提到，逻辑思维、抽象思维和更高层次的独特思维能力是在位于新皮质的结构中实现的。人类大脑的这些部分更加发达，使我们能够反思自己并指导自己的进化。因为我们能够进行有意识的、基于记忆的学习，所以我们可以比任何其他物种进化得更远、更快，不仅会在几代人之间发生变化，而且会在我们自己的一生中发生变化。

I have found understanding how nature and evolution work helpful in a number of ways. Most importantly, it has helped me deal with my realities more effectively and make difficult choices. When I began to look at reality through the perspective of figuring out how it really works, instead of thinking things should be different, I realized that most everything that at first seemed “bad” to me–like rainy days, weaknesses, and even death–was because I held preconceived notions of what I personally wanted. With time, I learned that my initial reaction was because I hadn’t put whatever I was reacting to in the context of the fact that reality is built to optimize for the whole rather than for me.
我发现了解自然和进化的运作方式在很多方面都有帮助。最重要的是，它帮助我更有效地应对现实并做出艰难的选择。当我开始从弄清楚现实如何运作的角度来看待现实，而不是认为事情应该有所不同时，我意识到大多数一开始对我来说似乎“糟糕”的事情——比如下雨天、弱点，甚至死亡——是因为我对我个人想要的东西抱有先入为主的观念。随着时间的推移，我了解到我最初的反应是因为我没有将我的反应放在这样一个事实的背景下：现实是为了整体而不是为了我而优化。