Innovation 2.0: Do Less
创新 2.0：少做事

The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.
下面的文字记录可能是本集的早期版本。我们的文字记录由各个合作伙伴提供，可能包含错误或与音频略有偏差。

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Think about the last time you were part of a brainstorming session.
Shankar Vedantam：这是隐藏的大脑。我是香卡·韦丹塔姆。回想一下您上次参加头脑风暴会议的情况。

Clip: We just need to brainstorm five ideas. But to be safe, let's come up with 50. Let's make it 100.
剪辑：我们只需要集思广益五个想法。但为了安全起见，我们想出 50。让我们把它变成 100。

Shankar Vedantam: Maybe this was at work or at a planning meeting for a community organization.
Shankar Vedantam：也许这是在工作中或在社区组织的规划会议上。

Clip: Just want to emphasize there's no bad ideas here. We're just brainstorming.
剪辑：只是想强调这里没有坏主意。我们只是集思广益。

Shankar Vedantam: Many people probably suggested ideas. Perhaps there was some discussion about which proposal was best. At the end, maybe everyone voted on the best idea. If your meeting was like most meetings, there was probably one kind of idea that was in short supply: how to do less. I remember a brainstorming session some years ago where colleagues filled an entire wall with Post-it Notes. When I looked at the Post-it wall later on, I was struck that almost none of the notes suggested that the organization could streamline projects, or stop doing things that weren't working. All the ideas were about expansion, new projects. Today we ask why we often ignore one of the most powerful paths to innovation. When less is more, this week on Hidden Brain.
Shankar Vedantam：很多人可能提出了想法。也许有人讨论过哪个提案最好。最后，也许每个人都投票选出最好的想法。如果您的会议像大多数会议一样，那么可能有一种想法供不应求：如何减少工作量。我记得几年前的一次头脑风暴会议，同事们在整面墙上贴满了便利贴。后来当我看到便利贴墙时，我惊讶地发现几乎没有一张纸条表明该组织可以简化项目，或者停止做不起作用的事情。所有的想法都是关于扩张、新项目。今天我们要问的是，为什么我们常常忽视最有力的创新途径之一。少即是多，本周《隐藏的大脑》。

Shankar Vedantam: Humans are curious and inventive creatures. Give us a problem and we will come up with solutions. Usually, this is a marvelous skill. Our drive to invent new things, generate new ideas is responsible for great breakthroughs in science, technology, and medicine. There are times however when our desire to come up with new solutions gets in the way of coming up with the best solutions. At the University of Virginia, Leidy Klotz has long been fascinated by the process of invention and an important component of invention that many of us overlook. Leidy Klotz, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Shankar Vedantam：人类是充满好奇心和创造力的生物。给我们一个问题，我们会想出解决方案。通常，这是一项了不起的技能。我们发明新事物、产生新想法的动力促成了科学、技术和医学的巨大突破。然而，有时我们提出新解决方案的愿望会妨碍提出最佳解决方案。在弗吉尼亚大学，莱迪·克洛茨长期以来一直对发明过程以及我们许多人忽视的发明的重要组成部分着迷。莱迪·克洛茨，欢迎来到隐藏的大脑。

Leidy Klotz: Thanks Shankar. It's great to be here.
莱迪·克洛茨：谢谢香卡。很高兴来到这里。

Shankar Vedantam: Leidy, when you were an undergraduate trying to master the fundamentals of engineering, you initially adopted an approach to studying that will be familiar to many students. What was that approach and how did it work out for you in your college course on mechanics?
Shankar Vedantam：Leidy，当您还是一名试图掌握工程学基础知识的本科生时，您最初采用了许多学生熟悉的学习方法。这种方法是什么？它在你的大学力学课程中效果如何？

Leidy Klotz: Yeah, so for those of listeners that have enough sense not to major in engineering, mechanics is this branch of physics that deals with objects at rest and in motion. And it requires you to go from plugging numbers into equations to actually visualizing how the concepts work in the world. And my approach to mechanics was the approach that I'd been using in all my courses up to that point, which was okay, figure out how to solve the problems that I've been assigned for homework, learn that specific problem and try to cram as many of those into my brain as possible, so that when the exam came about, I'd be more likely to have an exact replica of the problem that was on the exam already accessible in my brain.
Leidy Klotz：是的，对于那些有足够理智而不是主修工程学的听众来说，力学是处理静止和运动物体的物理学分支。它要求你从将数字代入方程到实际可视化概念在世界中的运作方式。我的力学方法是我迄今为止在所有课程中使用的方法，这没关系，弄清楚如何解决我分配给家庭作业的问题，学习特定的问题并尝试将尽可能多的内容塞进我的大脑中，这样当考试到来时，我就更有可能在我的大脑中找到与考试问题完全相同的副本。

Shankar Vedantam: And how were you doing in terms of grades as the semester unfolded?
Shankar Vedantam：随着学期的展开，你的成绩怎么样？

Leidy Klotz: I had a C average. It was serious. I was coming into the third exam with the C average and for the first time in my life, I was in danger of failing the course. And if that happened, I would either have to delay my degree progress and ask my parents to pay extra tuition to take the course the following year or change my major to something that didn't require me to pass mechanics.
Leidy Klotz：我的平均成绩是 C。事情很严重。我以 C 的平均成绩参加第三次考试，这是我一生中第一次面临不及格的危险。如果发生这种情况，我要么不得不推迟我的学位进度，并要求我的父母支付额外的学费来参加第二年的课程，要么将我的专业改为不需要我通过机械师的专业。

Shankar Vedantam: So at one point as you were getting these bad grades, you came up with a radical and some might say risky approach for the final portion of the semester. What did you do, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：因此，当你取得这些糟糕的成绩时，你在学期的最后部分想出了一种激进的、有些人可能会说冒险的方法。你做了什么，莱迪？

Leidy Klotz: I just really stripped away the extraneous things that I was trying to cram into my brain. And this first mechanics class really just boils down to applying Newton's second law of motion. So all of these scenarios can be described by force equals mass times acceleration. And I could derive everything I needed from that equation. And so before that third exam, I stopped memorizing dozens of other equations and tangential ideas. I didn't need to know a bunch of forces and masses and accelerations, I just needed to remember that formula, F equals MA.
Leidy Klotz：我只是真的剥离了我试图塞进大脑的无关事物。这第一堂力学课实际上可以归结为应用牛顿第二运动定律。因此，所有这些场景都可以用力等于质量乘以加速度来描述。我可以从这个方程中得出我需要的一切。因此，在第三次考试之前，我停止了记住数十个其他方程和离题的想法。我不需要知道一堆力、质量和加速度，我只需要记住这个公式，F 等于 MA。

Shankar Vedantam: So you try this radical approach, you do the exam and the day comes when the professor's handing out the grades. Paint me a picture of what happens.
Shankar Vedantam：所以你尝试这种激进的方法，你进行考试，然后教授公布成绩的那一天到来了。给我描绘一下所发生的事情。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. I'll never forget it. This is Professor Viscomi, just the classic nice engineering professor, but he had this thing where when he handed the exams back, he would write the highest and lowest score on the chalkboard to give you a sense of kind of how the rest of the class did. And so this exam, he comes in and he writes on the board a 98 and a 47. And then he looked at me and smirked. And everybody assumed that I had gotten the 47. My classmates were playfully jeering me and I'm sitting there thinking about like, okay, now that I've failed out of engineering, what will my major be? And when I got my test back, I realized why he had smirked. And it was because I had earned the 98.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。我永远不会忘记它。这是维斯科米教授，是一位典型的好工程学教授，但他有这样一种做法，当他把试卷交回来时，他会在黑板上写下最高分和最低分，让你感觉到班上其他人的表现做过。所以这次考试，他进来了，在黑板上写下了 98 和 47。然后他看着我，傻笑了。每个人都认为我得了 47 分。我的同学们开玩笑地嘲笑我，我坐在那里思考，好吧，既然我在工程学上失败了，我的专业会是什么？当我拿到测试结果时，我意识到他为什么傻笑。那是因为我获得了98分。

Shankar Vedantam: Leidy did better when he focused his mind on fewer things, on core concepts. And it was the start of a long journey to recognize the value in everyday life of removing, of reducing, of subtraction. Some years later, after Leidy graduated, got married and started a family, he had another moment of insight. He was building a bridge using Legos with his son, Ezra.
Shankar Vedantam：当莱迪将注意力集中在更少的事情和核心概念上时，他会做得更好。这是认识日常生活中消除、减少和减法价值的漫长旅程的开始。几年后，雷迪毕业、结婚、组建家庭后，他又有了顿悟的时刻。他正在和他的儿子埃兹拉一起用乐高积木建造一座桥梁。

Leidy Klotz: He was three at the time and we were building a bridge out of his Duplo blocks, the bigger Legos, and the support towers were different heights, so we couldn't span them. They weren't level. And as I turned back toward the soon to be bridge, Ezra had already removed a block from the taller tower. So whereas my impulse had been to add to the short support in that moment, I realized that it wasn't the only way to create a level bridge.
Leidy Klotz：当时他三岁，我们正在用他的 Duplo 积木（更大的乐高积木）建造一座桥，支撑塔的高度不同，所以我们无法跨越它们。他们本来就不是一个水平的。当我转身走向即将建成的桥梁时，埃兹拉已经从更高的塔上移走了一块砖。因此，尽管当时我的冲动是增加空头支撑，但我意识到这并不是创建水平桥的唯一方法。

Shankar Vedantam: So this moment captured in a concrete way for you how many of us underestimate the power of subtraction. And I understand you showed other people a replica of Ezra's bridge to see how many of them came up with the idea of taking away a block instead of adding a block.
Shankar Vedantam：因此，这一刻以具体的方式为您捕捉到了我们中有多少人低估了减法的力量。我知道你向其他人展示了以斯拉桥的复制品，看看有多少人想出了去掉一个方块而不是添加一个方块的想法。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. Students would come to talk to me about their assignments and I'd give them this bridge and see what they did. And everybody added like me. And then I also took it to Gabe Adams who's a professor colleague of mine and I thought that I had been talking to her about these ideas, and plus she's like a genius. So I figured, okay, she's the one who's going to subtract here when I give her this. And so I give it to her and she added like me, but then when I said, "Hey, this is what Ezra did." She says, "Oh, so what you've been trying to say is that you're interested in: why do we overlook subtraction as a way to improve things?"
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。学生们会来和我谈论他们的作业，我会给他们这座桥梁，看看他们做了什么。每个人都像我一样添加。然后我也把它带给了加布·亚当斯（Gabe Adams），她是我的教授同事，我以为我一直在和她谈论这些想法，而且她就像一个天才。所以我想，好吧，当我给她这个时，她就是要在这里减去的人。所以我把它给了她，她像我一样补充道，但当我说，“嘿，这就是以斯拉所做的。”她说：“哦，所以你一直想说的是你感兴趣的是：为什么我们忽视减法作为改善事物的一种方式？”

Shankar Vedantam: So Leidy, you became obsessed with the value of subtraction. Some might even say you became a zealot. You started collecting examples from the worlds of engineering and design and you stumbled in the work of the early 20th century architect, Anna Keichline. Tell me her story.
Shankar Vedantam：Leidy，你开始沉迷于减法的价值。有些人甚至可能会说你变成了狂热分子。您开始收集工程和设计领域的示例，并偶然发现了 20 世纪初建筑师 Anna Keichline 的作品。告诉我她的故事。

Leidy Klotz: Oh, she's a fascinating person. She was the first female licensed architect in the state of Pennsylvania. She'd played basketball in college, was one of the first women to drive a car. She was also a serial inventor and she made one of the most ingenious advances of the 20th century. And before Anna Keichline, building blocks were solid. So if your house is more than a century old, it probably rests on solid blocks. In her patent, and I think this was 1927, Keichline invented the K Brick, which started to subtract some of the mass from building blocks. What she essentially did was create a hollow block knowing that the load bearing could happen on the outside parts of the block and by creating the hollow block, you remove half the material compared to what was in the typical building block, which of course makes it less expensive and easier to build with and less fuel to transport. And then these hollow blocks also provide more insulation because of the air voids that are in the blocks. So the resulting buildings are more comfortable, less nosy, less prone to fire and the block itself is less expensive. And her subtractive insight it's since gone through several evolutions, but it's led to this building block that's now ubiquitous. It's used to build everything from the facades of schools and skyscrapers to the foundation walls for my two-story addition.
Leidy Klotz：哦，她是一个迷人的人。她是宾夕法尼亚州第一位女性注册建筑师。她在大学打过篮球，是最早开车的女性之一。她也是一位连续发明家，她取得了 20 世纪最巧妙的进步之一。在 Anna Keichline 之前，构建模块是坚实的。因此，如果您的房子已有一个多世纪的历史，它可能建在坚固的砖块上。在她的专利中，我认为那是 1927 年，Keichline 发明了 K 砖，它开始减少积木的一些质量。她本质上所做的是创建一个空心块，因为她知道承重可能发生在块的外部部分，并且通过创建空心块，与典型的建筑块相比，您可以去除一半的材料，这当然使得它成为可能。更便宜、更容易建造，运输燃料也更少。而且，由于块中存在空气空隙，这些空心块还提供了更多的隔热性。因此，最终的建筑更加舒适、更少打扰、更不易发生火灾，而且街区本身也更便宜。她的减法洞察力经历了几次演变，但它导致了现在无处不在的构建块。它被用来建造一切，从学校和摩天大楼的外墙到我的两层楼的基础墙。

Shankar Vedantam: Once we become familiar with a particular object, we tend to look for ways to add to it rather than to subtract from it. But the act of taking away can produce remarkable results. One of Leidy's favorite examples is an invention known as the Strider bike.
Shankar Vedantam：一旦我们熟悉了某个特定的物体，我们就会倾向于寻找增加它而不是减少它的方法。但拿走的行为却能产生显着的效果。莱迪最喜欢的例子之一是一项名为 Strider 自行车的发明。

Leidy Klotz: These are the pedal-less mini bikes that basically allow kids as soon as one and a half years old to ride a bike. And the way they work, they're small bikes, but they're not propelled by chains and pedals, but by toddlers striding with their legs. That's why they're called Strider Bike. And what happens is the toddler propels the bike forward kind of like the Flintstone cars. And what's even more impressive is once...my son has since aged out of the Strider bike and once he decided it was time for his big kid bike, we didn't have to bother with training wheels. He already knew how to balance and he just needed to learn how to push the pedals and of course, to break. And children's bikes were marketed as their own distinct class of bicycle for almost a century and there were plenty of design changes over that time, right? Training wheels, fatter tires, more and more speeds, those contraptions that connect a kid's bike to a grownups like a caboose. And it took a really long time for somebody to have the insight of, "hey, will this be better if we subtract the pedals and the drive train?" And when they did think of it, it made these two-wheeled bikes rideable for a whole new age group and saleable to their parents.
Leidy Klotz：这些是无踏板迷你自行车，基本上可以让一岁半的孩子骑自行车。从它们的工作方式来看，它们是小型自行车，但它们不是由链条和踏板推动，而是由幼儿用腿迈步推动。这就是为什么它们被称为 Strider Bike。所发生的事情是，幼儿推动自行车前进，就像打火石汽车一样。更令人印象深刻的是，有一次……我的儿子已经不再使用 Strider 自行车了，一旦他决定是时候购买他的大儿童自行车了，我们就不必为辅助轮而烦恼了。他已经知道如何保持平衡，他只需要学习如何踩踏板，当然还有如何刹车。近一个世纪以来，儿童自行车一直作为自己独特的自行车类别进行销售，并且在这段时间内发生了很多设计变化，对吗？辅助轮、更宽的轮胎、越来越快的速度，这些装置就像守车一样将儿童自行车与成人自行车连接起来。花了很长时间才有人意识到，“嘿，如果我们减去踏板和传动系统，这会更好吗？”当他们真正想到这一点时，这些两轮自行车就可以适合整个新年龄段的人骑乘，并且可以卖给他们的父母。

Shankar Vedantam: So later you began to ask yourself after seeing these examples how you could apply the insights of subtraction to your own life. And at one point you came up with a novel, approach to a home renovation project. You threw down an unusual challenge to your students, a design contest. You called it "Addition by Subtraction." Can you describe the challenge to me?
Shankar Vedantam：所以后来你在看到这些例子后开始问自己如何将减法的见解应用到自己的生活中。有一次，您想出了一种新颖的家居装修项目方法。您向学生提出了一项不寻常的挑战：设计竞赛。你称之为“减法加法”。你能向我描述一下所面临的挑战吗？

Leidy Klotz: Sure. So we moved to University of Virginia and we downsized our home when we moved here ,and the home had also been a student rental. And so we knew that we were going to have to do a renovation. Subtraction was top of mind and I'm an engineer/architect, I guess, by profession. And so I was like, "Can we put subtraction into play here?" And so the name of our contest was "Addition by Subtraction," And I have the great fortune of working with really smart students for whom I ran a design contest. And we emphasized that our goal was to subtract and we even said that we were willing to pay more if the renovation could make a statement through subtraction. And I offered $1,000 in cash and free cookies. And a couple of dozen architecture engineering and environmental design type majors signed up.
莱迪·克洛茨：当然。所以我们搬到了弗吉尼亚大学，搬到这里时我们缩小了房子的面积，房子也一直是学生出租的。所以我们知道我们必须进行翻新。减法是我的首要考虑，我想，我的职业是一名工程师/建筑师。所以我想，“我们可以在这里加入减法吗？”因此，我们比赛的名称是“减法加法”，我很幸运能够与非常聪明的学生一起工作，我为他们举办了一场设计比赛。我们强调我们的目标是减法，甚至表示如果改造能够通过减法来表达，我们愿意付出更多。我提供了 1,000 美元现金和免费饼干。还有几十名建筑工程和环境设计类专业的学生报名参加。

Leidy Klotz: And the students came up with clever designs. There was one student who found unused vertical space in our house and used that to add a lofted area to Ezra's bedroom. There was a junior who changed the grading of our backyard and that provided outside access to the basement, which then turned that into a viable living space. And there was this graduate student team that kind of intricately reconfigured the entire floor plan. And all of those things would've made our house more livable. And yet no one had actually subtracted, right? Nobody had taken away a square footage.
Leidy Klotz：学生们想出了巧妙的设计。有一名学生在我们的房子里发现了未使用的垂直空间，并利用它为以斯拉的卧室添加了一个阁楼区域。有一位大三学生改变了我们后院的等级，并提供了通往地下室的外部通道，然后将其变成了一个可行的居住空间。还有一个研究生团队对整个平面图进行了复杂的重新配置。所有这些都会让我们的房子变得更宜居。但实际上没有人做减法，对吧？没有人拿走一平方英尺。

Shankar Vedantam: Leidy, at the end of this whole process of invention, what was the end result of your home renovation project?
Shankar Vedantam：Leidy，在整个发明过程结束时，您的家居装修项目的最终结果是什么？

Leidy Klotz: My wife was worried you would ask. Because now we have a five-room, two-story, 900-square foot edition that extends from the rear of what had been a little Cape Cod.
Leidy Klotz：我妻子担心你会问。因为现在我们有一个五居室、两层楼、900 平方英尺的版本，它从原来的科德角小岛的后面延伸出来。

Shankar Vedantam: Leidy's design contest ultimately failed as a generator of ideas that would lead to subtraction. He discovered that while subtraction might be a powerful driver of invention, many powerful obstacles stand in its way. Understanding those obstacles, and how to overcome them, became his new obsession. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Shankar Vedantam：莱迪的设计竞赛最终失败了，因为它产生了导致减法的想法。他发现，虽然减法可能是发明的强大驱动力，但许多强大的障碍阻碍了它。了解这些障碍以及如何克服它们成为他新的痴迷。你正在听《隐藏的大脑》。我是香卡·韦丹塔姆。

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Leidy Klotz is an engineer at the University of Virginia. He studies our automatic tendency to add things when it comes to solving problems. After a home renovation project explicitly aimed at subtraction ended up greatly expanding the size of his Cape Cod home, Leidy started to ask why human beings find it so hard to subtract. So, Leidy, at the end of this home renovation project, you were humbled by the process, but it also gave you some important insights into why it is so hard to subtract, to remove, to take away. When it comes to home renovations in particular, one barrier to subtraction was economics?
Shankar Vedantam：这是隐藏的大脑。我是香卡·韦丹塔姆。 Leidy Klotz 是弗吉尼亚大学的工程师。他研究了我们在解决问题时自动添加东西的倾向。在一项明确以减法为目标的家居装修项目最终大大扩大了他位于科德角的家的面积后，莱迪开始问为什么人类发现减法如此困难。所以，Leidy，在这个家居装修项目结束时，你对这个过程感到谦卑，但它也给了你一些重要的见解，让你明白为什么它如此难以减去、移除、拿走。特别是在家庭装修方面，减法的一个障碍是经济？

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. For us, I mean this is the biggest investment our family has and the kind of rule of thumb for home's values, how Zillow calculates it, how the realtors calculate it when they're appraising it, is that the value increases with the total square footage. So 2,000-square foot, that's one price. If you have 2,500 square feet, that's another price. And entrants in the design competition and Monica and I could just never figure out a way past this financial reality. Spending money without adding square footage would've been a really risky investment and spending money to get rid of existing square footage was preposterous. Another thing was it's not that subtracting is always the right option. It has been beneficial to have more square footage in our home. Our family was growing and we did need some more square footage. So this may have been a case where subtracting wasn't the better option, even though we started out with that as our intention.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。对我们来说，我的意思是这是我们家庭拥有的最大的投资，也是房屋价值的经验法则，Zillow 如何计算它，房地产经纪人在评估它时如何计算它，即价值随着总平方的增加而增加镜头。所以 2,000 平方英尺，这是一个价格。如果你有 2,500 平方英尺，那就是另一个价格了。设计竞赛的参赛者以及莫妮卡和我永远无法找到摆脱这种财务现实的方法。花钱而不增加平方英尺将是一项非常危险的投资，而花钱来摆脱现有的平方英尺是荒谬的。另一件事是，减法并不总是正确的选择。我们家拥有更多平方英尺是有益的。我们的家庭正在成长，我们确实需要更多的面积。因此，在这种情况下，减法可能不是更好的选择，尽管我们一开始就是这样做的。

Shankar Vedantam: And I'm also thinking that presumably they were people - architects and builders and contractors - and they all get paid more for doing more, not for doing less.
Shankar Vedantam：我还认为他们可能是人——建筑师、建筑商和承包商——他们都因为做得更多而不是做得更少而获得更多报酬。

Leidy Klotz: Exactly. If we had hired a contractor to subtract space, they're getting paid based on the percentage of how much it costs them to do the renovation. So a less expensive renovation that subtracts space, they get less overhead on that.
莱迪·克洛茨：没错。如果我们聘请了承包商来减少空间，他们将根据装修费用的百分比获得报酬。因此，通过减少空间的较便宜的改造，他们可以获得更少的开销。

Shankar Vedantam: I'm also thinking that expanding during a home renovation is also what's sort of culturally expected, right? How many people do a renovation and end up with a smaller home?
Shankar Vedantam：我还认为，在家庭装修期间进行扩建也是文化上的预期，对吧？有多少人进行装修后最终拥有一个较小的房屋？

Leidy Klotz: Well, I mean it's right there in the word, right? The synonym for home renovation is a home addition. You never hear of a home subtraction.
Leidy Klotz：嗯，我的意思是它就在这个词中，对吧？家居装修的同义词是家居添置。你从来没有听说过家庭减法。

Shankar Vedantam: Yeah. So as you started to think about the economic and cultural obstacles to practicing subtraction, you came to understand that such obstacles reach very far back into human history. How so, Leidy?
香卡·韦丹塔姆：是的。因此，当您开始思考练习减法所面临的经济和文化障碍时，您会发现这些障碍可以追溯到人类历史的很久以前。怎么样，莱迪？

Leidy Klotz: Certainly in human history, let's start there. This concept of monumental architecture. And again, my background's engineering, I like big structures. I was surprised to learn about how key a role people think or the scientists think monumental architecture played in the development of civilization.
Leidy Klotz：当然在人类历史上，让我们从这里开始。这种纪念性建筑的概念。再说一次，我的背景是工程学，我喜欢大型结构。我很惊讶地了解到人们认为或科学家认为纪念性建筑在文明发展中发挥了多么重要的作用。

Shankar Vedantam: What do you mean by monumental architecture?
Shankar Vedantam：纪念性建筑是什么意思？

Leidy Klotz: It's literally defined by the fact that it adds well beyond what is necessary. So the principle defining feature of monumental architecture is that the scale and elaboration and detail exceed the requirements of any practical functions. So the ziggurats in Mesopotamia, the pyramids of Egypt and China, these massive but marginally useful structures kind of grew at the same time as the cities around them.
Leidy Klotz：它的字面意思是它的添加远远超出了必要的范围。因此，纪念性建筑的主要定义特征是规模、精致和细节超出任何实际功能的要求。因此，美索不达米亚的金字形神塔、埃及和中国的金字塔，这些巨大但几乎没有什么用处的建筑与它们周围的城市同时发展。

Shankar Vedantam: And even today, you could argue that in a modern world, people are rewarded in terms of resources and status when they add as opposed to when they subtract. We have markers and plaques for the people who build skyscrapers, not for the people who take them down.
Shankar Vedantam：即使在今天，你也可以说，在现代世界中，人们在增加资源和地位时会得到回报，而不是减少资源和地位。我们为建造摩天大楼的人设立标记和牌匾，而不是为拆除摩天大楼的人设立标记和牌匾。

Leidy Klotz: Exactly. That's a huge challenge on university campuses, for example, right? It's so much easier to get a donation for somebody to create a building that has their family's name on it than a donation for removing something or even for something that doesn't come with this big physical reminder of the person's generosity.
莱迪·克洛茨：没错。例如，这对大学校园来说是一个巨大的挑战，对吗？为某人建造一座刻有其家族名字的建筑而募捐，比为拆除某些东西甚至为那些没有体现该人慷慨大方的东西而募捐要容易得多。

Shankar Vedantam: It makes sense that donors want to put their money behind something tangible. Politicians similarly want to be able to cut a ribbon to tout a new amenity that they're delivering for their constituents. It's hard to cut a ribbon on an empty field. These are the sorts of cultural and political forces that subtly push us to favor addition over subtraction.
Shankar Vedantam：捐助者希望将资金投入有形的东西，这是有道理的。政客们同样希望能够剪彩来宣传他们为选民提供的新便利。在空旷的场地上剪彩是很困难的。这些文化和政治力量巧妙地推动我们偏爱加法而不是减法。

Leidy Klotz: Across all of these examples, the problem is that subtracting is more work. It's more mental work. It's more kind of steps as we're talking about it, and there's less to show for it. And so after you do all this extra work, you have less evidence because the thing that you've done has by definition disappeared.
Leidy Klotz：在所有这些例子中，问题在于减法需要更多的工作。这是更多的脑力劳动。当我们谈论它时，这更像是一些步骤，而且没有什么可展示的。因此，在完成所有这些额外工作之后，您获得的证据就会减少，因为根据定义，您所做的事情已经消失了。

Shankar Vedantam: So I understand that your employer, the University of Virginia, once asked for suggestions on how the university could be improved and you ended up analyzing the recommendations that came in. What did you find, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：据我了解，您的雇主弗吉尼亚大学曾经就如何改进大学征求建议，您最终分析了收到的建议。Leidy，您发现了什么？

Leidy Klotz: Yeah, we had a new latest strategic planning effort with a new president and it's began, as these tend to, by soliciting ideas from students, faculty, staff, community, alumni members, donors, and all of them were basically offering their ideas for how to improve the university. We got our hands on the data and as expected, the adding was rampant. People wanted more study abroad grants, more mental health services tailored to international students, more housing options. There was a request for a new ice arena. And I didn't know we had an ice hockey team here, but I'm assuming that's progress too. But the thing is surely there was untapped potential because out of 750 ideas for changing the university, fewer than 10% suggested taking something away.
Leidy Klotz：是的，我们与新任校长进行了一项最新的战略规划工作，它是通过向学生、教职员工、社区、校友、捐助者征求想法而开始的，他们基本上都在提供建议他们对如何改进大学的想法。我们拿到了数据，正如预期的那样，添加量非常猖獗。人们希望获得更多的留学补助、更多为国际学生量身定制的心理健康服务以及更多的住房选择。有人要求建造一个新的冰场。我不知道我们这里有一支冰球队，但我认为这也是进步。但问题是，肯定存在未开发的潜力，因为在 750 个改变大学的想法中，只有不到 10% 的人建议取消某些内容。

Shankar Vedantam: Yeah. I want to turn my attention to what happens within organizations when we are having brainstorming sessions around a table, for example. I feel like there's often a lot of pressure to add and almost no incentive to subtract. So everyone sitting around the table wants their idea implemented. Polite people don't want to shoot down ideas from their colleagues. And so the net result is a pile up of new programs, new projects, a ton of additions.
香卡·韦丹塔姆：是的。例如，我想将注意力转向组织内部发生的情况，例如，当我们围坐在桌子旁进行头脑风暴会议时。我觉得经常有很大的压力去增加，而几乎没有动力去减少。所以坐在桌子旁的每个人都希望他们的想法得到实施。有礼貌的人不想否定同事的想法。因此，最终的结果是一堆新计划、新项目和大量的新增内容。

Leidy Klotz: Certainly. There's politeness and then there's also just, it's kind of a good decision making shortcut to not come in and say, "Oh, here's something we definitely should subtract from this organization" until you understand how the organization works, right? So it's pretty bold for somebody to say, "Hey, let's get rid of the ice hockey team" before you understand what they're contributing to the university, the history of the ice hockey team and so on and so forth. To add something, you can just say, "Well, this would make anything better. So let's add it to our system that I don't really understand."
莱迪·克洛茨：当然。有礼貌，还有就是，这是一种很好的决策捷径，不要进来说，“哦，这是我们绝对应该从这个组织中减去的东西”，直到您了解该组织是如何运作的，对吗？因此，在你了解他们对大学的贡献、冰球队的历史等等之前，有人说“嘿，让我们摆脱冰球队吧”是相当大胆的。要添加一些东西，你可以说，“好吧，这会让一切变得更好。所以让我们将它添加到我们的系统中，我不太明白。”

Shankar Vedantam: I understand that you've also looked at how adding could even have biological roots. Tell me about the work of Stephanie Preston.
Shankar Vedantam：据我所知，您也研究了加法如何具有生物学根源。告诉我斯蒂芬妮·普雷斯顿的工作。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. Stephanie's one of my favorite researchers. She's a psychologist at the University of Michigan and she knows more than anybody about what she calls acquisitiveness, which is how and why we get and keep things. So for example, one of my favorite studies of hers, participants are shown more than 100 different objects in random order and one at a time. And then as each object appears on the screen, participants are asked whether they would like to acquire it virtually. It's all imaginary. They know they won't actually get these things. And they can acquire as many or as few as they want. And the objects vary in their usefulness. So there are things like bananas and coffee mugs and extension cords, things you might pick up. Others seem less useful, but people do still pick up like empty two-liter bottles, used sticky notes, outdated newspapers. And once they have made a choice about each of these 100 objects, participants are then shown everything that they've added. So if you've acquired 70 things, you're shown all 70 things together on the screen and then you're encouraged to subtract. Then they're challenged to whittle down their collection, so that it can fit into a shopping cart on the computer screen. And finally, they're asked to make it even smaller so that it can fit into one virtual paper grocery bag. So the goal is very clear. Everything needs to fit into one grocery bag or else you don't complete the task and you're getting real time feedback displayed on the screen of whether you've subtracted enough stuff. And a lot of participants fail to get it down to a single bag and many don't even make it past the shopping cart.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。斯蒂芬妮是我最喜欢的研究人员之一。她是密歇根大学的心理学家，她比任何人都更了解她所谓的占有欲，即我们如何以及为何获得和保留东西。例如，我最喜欢的她的一项研究中，参与者以随机顺序展示了 100 多个不同的物体，每次一个。然后，当每个物体出现在屏幕上时，参与者会被询问是否愿意虚拟地获得它。这一切都是想象的。他们知道他们实际上不会得到这些东西。他们可以随心所欲地获得任意数量的物品。这些物体的用途各不相同。所以有香蕉、咖啡杯和延长线之类的东西，你可能会捡到。其他的似乎没那么有用，但人们仍然会捡起两升的空瓶子、用过的便利贴、过时的报纸。一旦他们对这 100 个对象中的每一个做出选择，参与者就会看到他们添加的所有内容。因此，如果您已经获得了 70 件物品，屏幕上会同时显示所有 70 件物品，然后鼓励您进行减法。然后，他们面临的挑战是减少自己的收藏，以便将其放入电脑屏幕上的购物车中。最后，他们被要求将其做得更小，以便可以放入一个虚拟的纸质杂货袋中。所以目标非常明确。所有东西都需要装进一个购物袋，否则你就无法完成任务，并且屏幕上会显示实时反馈，表明你是否已经减去了足够的东西。许多参与者未能将其分解为一个袋子，许多人甚至没有通过购物车。

Shankar Vedantam: I understand there's also been research into what happens inside the brain when we engage in addition or engage in subtraction. What does that research show, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：据我所知，也有人研究了当我们进行加法或减法时大脑内部会发生什么。莱迪，这项研究表明了什么？

Leidy Klotz: One way that the neuroscientists have studied this is hooking people up to their brain imaging machines while they're acquiring things. And so food acquisition as well as other types of acquisition activate this same reward system in the brain. So it's this pathway connects basically the thinking and the feeling parts of our brain, and this is what makes it pleasurable to eat. And it can also be stimulated, as we know, by drugs like cocaine, website designs that keep us clicking and scrolling, and then for hoarders, even the used sticky notes can kind of stimulate this reward pathway. And so when you do find that a specific reward system like this one is playing a role, it confirms just how deep-rooted some of our tendency to add might be.
Leidy Klotz：神经科学家研究这一问题的一种方法是在人们获取东西时将他们的大脑成像机器连接起来。因此，食物获取以及其他类型的获取都会激活大脑中相同的奖励系统。因此，正是这条通路基本上连接了我们大脑的思维和感觉部分，这就是让吃东西变得愉快的原因。正如我们所知，它也可以通过可卡因等药物、让我们点击和滚动的网站设计来刺激，然后对于囤积者来说，甚至用过的便签纸也可以刺激这种奖励途径。因此，当你确实发现像这样的特定奖励系统正在发挥作用时，它证实了我们的添加倾向可能是多么根深蒂固。

Shankar Vedantam: So you've also conducted a whole bunch of experiments and reveal what you call subtraction neglect, our tendency to ignore the power of subtraction. And one of them was inspired by a long-running debate you've had with your wife when it comes to travel. Can you give me a concrete example of this debate in action, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：所以你还进行了一大堆实验并揭示了你所说的减法忽视，我们倾向于忽视减法的力量。其中之一的灵感来自于您与妻子就旅行问题进行的一场长期争论。 Leidy，你能给我一个关于这场辩论的具体例子吗？

Leidy Klotz: Well, so yeah, we go to the Outer Banks sometimes, and that's the islands off of North Carolina. And so your day can look something like going to look at Kitty Hawk and see where the Wright brothers did their thing and go see some sand dunes and you can go out to eat and you could drive down and look at all the lighthouses. Or you could kind of just let the day come to you and maybe do some looking for shells on the beach and see what happens for lunch and have a less scheduled day there. And so I prefer the latter kind of vacation. My wife, Monica, likes to pack in as many activities as possible.
Leidy Klotz：嗯，是的，我们有时会去外滩群岛，那是北卡罗来纳州附近的岛屿。所以你的一天可以看起来像是去看基蒂霍克，看看莱特兄弟在哪里做他们的事情，去看一些沙丘，你可以出去吃饭，你可以开车去看看所有的灯塔。或者你也可以让这一天到来，也许在海滩上寻找贝壳，看看午餐会发生什么，然后在那里安排较少的一天。所以我更喜欢后一种假期。我的妻子莫妮卡喜欢参加尽可能多的活动。

Shankar Vedantam: And I understand that you've actually run studies perhaps based on this marital dispute you've been having when it comes to how people think about travel. Tell me about those experiments, Leidy.
Shankar Vedantam：据我所知，您实际上可能基于婚姻纠纷开展了研究，了解人们如何看待旅行。告诉我那些实验的事，莱迪。

Leidy Klotz: Well, it's not a dispute. She's right, right? So it's not. But this is worse than even anything Monica would schedule. So we created this itinerary for a day spent in Washington, DC. So now we're back in the experimental world again, and over the course of 14 hours, this itinerary had participants visiting major tourist sites like the White House, the National Cathedral, the Old Post Office. And then have them paying their respects at the various memorials like the Lincoln and the Veterans Memorial. And then a museum visit, shopping, and lunch at a five star bistro. So just travel time between all these stops would exceed two hours assuming optimal D.C. traffic, which never happens. Participants saw this original itinerary and then like kind of a drag-and-drop interface on the computer screen and they could change their itinerary by rearranging, adding, and subtracting activities. And even with this jam-packed itinerary, only one in four participants removed activities from the packed original.
Leidy Klotz：嗯，这不是争议。她是对的，对吧？所以事实并非如此。但这比莫妮卡安排的任何事情都要糟糕。因此，我们创建了在华盛顿特区度过一天的行程。现在我们又回到了实验世界，在14个小时的时间里，这个行程让参与者参观了白宫、国家大教堂、老邮局等主要旅游景点。然后让他们在林肯和退伍军人纪念碑等各种纪念碑前表达敬意。然后参观博物馆、购物并在五星级小酒馆享用午餐。因此，假设华盛顿特区交通状况最佳，所有这些站点之间的旅行时间就会超过两个小时，但这种情况永远不会发生。参与者看到这个原始行程，然后就像计算机屏幕上的拖放界面一样，他们可以通过重新安排、添加和减少活动来更改行程。即使行程如此拥挤，只有四分之一的参与者取消了原本拥挤的活动。

Shankar Vedantam: Wow. And what did the rest do?
香卡·韦丹塔姆：哇。其余的人做了什么？

Leidy Klotz: Well, some rearranged, but most added.
Leidy Klotz：嗯，有些是重新安排的，但大多数是添加的。

Shankar Vedantam: They added to this itinerary? How is that even possible?
Shankar Vedantam：他们添加到这个行程中了吗？这怎么可能呢？

Leidy Klotz: It isn't. There's not time, but it was possible to kind of collect something, drag and drop another task, and it was enticing when they saw the other tasks sitting in there on the side. I think they were thinking, "Oh, look, that would be a fun thing to do." And it's kind of the same as the strategic planning. You think, "Okay, adding more good stuff is always good." And in this case, it was just going to make the overall schedule even more impossible and more crowded and less pleasant.
莱迪·克洛茨：事实并非如此。没有时间，但可以收集一些东西，拖放另一个任务，当他们看到其他任务放在一边时，这很诱人。我认为他们在想，“哦，看，这将是一件有趣的事情。”这与战略规划有点相同。你会想，“好吧，添加更多好东西总是好的。”在这种情况下，这只会让整个日程变得更加不可能、更加拥挤、更加不愉快。

Shankar Vedantam: There's another study you conducted that was inspired by a difficulty you encountered in your own writing. Tell me about the challenge that you have faced in your own writing and the study you conducted, Leidy.
Shankar Vedantam：您进行的另一项研究是受到您在写作中遇到的困难的启发。告诉我你在自己的写作和你进行的研究中遇到的挑战，Leidy。

Leidy Klotz: Anybody who spends time playing with words on paper or on a screen has heard the advice, right? Strunk and White, they're the most assigned textbook on college and high school syllabi and their classic advice is: omit needless words, that editing is the way to make your writing more clear. And yet that's very obviously a form of subtracting, right? You're taking something that you've created and now you're taking things away from it. So we gave people a summary of an article and said, "How would you make this better?" And only 17% ended up subtracting words from the original. So by and large, they added to make the summaries better.
Leidy Klotz：任何花时间在纸上或屏幕上玩文字的人都听过这个建议，对吗？斯特伦克和怀特是大学和高中教学大纲中布置最多的教科书，他们的经典建议是：省略不必要的单词，编辑是让你的写作更清晰的方法。但这显然是一种减法，对吧？你正在拿走你所创造的东西，现在你又要从中拿走一些东西。因此，我们向人们提供了一篇文章的摘要，并说：“你会如何让这篇文章变得更好？”只有 17% 的人最终从原文中删减了单词。总的来说，他们添加了一些内容以使摘要变得更好。

Shankar Vedantam: And I understand the same thing applies when you look at how people think about recipes, for example, how they're cooking. The same idea, addition rather than subtraction.
Shankar Vedantam：我知道当你观察人们如何看待食谱时，例如他们如何烹饪，同样的情况也适用。同样的想法，加法而不是减法。

Leidy Klotz: Oh yeah, we found this in so many contexts. People improving a five ingredient recipe, two out of 90 participants subtracted. When they transformed loops of musical notes, they were more likely to add notes than to take them away. So we found this across many different contexts.
Leidy Klotz：哦，是的，我们在很多情况下都发现了这一点。人们改进了五种成分的食谱，90 名参与者中有两人被淘汰。当他们改变音符循环时，他们更有可能添加音符而不是删除它们。所以我们在许多不同的背景下发现了这一点。

Shankar Vedantam: When we come back, techniques to battle the obstacles that stand in the way of subtraction. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Shankar Vedantam：当我们回来时，我们会学习一些技巧来对抗减法中的障碍。你正在听《隐藏的大脑》。我是香卡·韦丹塔姆。

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Engineer Leidy Klotz is convinced that our world would be a better place if we engaged more often in subtraction instead of always choosing to add. The problem is there are many psychological obstacles to subtraction. There are times however when opportunities for subtraction open up and Leidy says smart people and smart communities seize on such opportunities. Leidy, tell me the story of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway.
Shankar Vedantam：这是隐藏的大脑。我是香卡·韦丹塔姆。工程师 Leidy Klotz 坚信，如果我们更多地进行减法而不是总是选择加法，我们的世界将会变得更加美好。问题是减法有很多心理障碍。然而，有时会出现减法的机会，莱迪表示，聪明的人和聪明的社区会抓住这样的机会。莱迪，请告诉我旧金山内河码头高速公路的故事。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. Like so many other city crossing highways in the United States, the Embarcadero Freeway was built after World War II and it was made possible by federal support for highways to move the military and serve the growing number of automobiles. It stretched for more than a mile along the eastern waterfront and it blocked precious views and access to the bay. And so planners started to think, "Well, is this costing more than it's adding?" And finally the planning commission said, and this is in the mid '80s, "We should get rid of the Embarcadero Freeway."
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。与美国许多其他穿越城市的高速公路一样，内河码头高速公路是在第二次世界大战后修建的，联邦政府对高速公路的支持使军队运输和服务于不断增长的汽车数量成为可能。它沿着东部海滨绵延一英里多，挡住了宝贵的景观和通往海湾的通道。于是规划者开始思考，“嗯，这是否比增加的成本还要多？”最后，规划委员会在 80 年代中期表示，“我们应该拆除内河码头高速公路。”

Shankar Vedantam: And what was the public reaction to this?
Shankar Vedantam：公众对此有何反应？

Leidy Klotz: Not good. But this one actually got put to a vote and it wasn't even close. For every voter in favor of removing it, there were two who wanted to keep it. And whether it was for fear of traffic, fear of lost business, fear of change, voters rejected it. And the people had spoken. So the planning commission basically moved on and focused on other projects.
莱迪·克洛茨：不好。但这实际上已经进行了投票，而且结果还差得远。每有一个选民赞成删除它，就有两个选民想保留它。无论是担心交通拥堵、担心失去生意还是害怕改变，选民都拒绝了它。人们也发声了。因此，规划委员会基本上继续关注其他项目。

Shankar Vedantam: So following the 1986 vote, it seemed that the possibility of tearing down the freeway and opening up the waterfront was dead. And then something happened on October 17th, 1989.
Shankar Vedantam：因此，在 1986 年投票之后，拆除高速公路和开放海滨的可能性似乎已经消失。然后 1989 年 10 月 17 日发生了一些事情。

Ted Koppel: I'm Ted Koppel. There has been a rather strong earthquake in Northern California, so strong in fact that it has among other things, knocked out all the power at Candlestick Park where the third game of the World Series was being played. But in the overall scheme of things, that may be the very least of things that has happened today. Let me show you a piece of video that just came in.
特德·科佩尔：我是特德·科佩尔。北加州发生了一场相当强烈的地震，事实上，地震的强度如此之大，以至于摧毁了正在进行世界职业棒球大赛第三场比赛的烛台公园的所有电力。但从整体来看，这可能是今天发生的最不重要的事情。让我给你看一段刚刚发布的视频。

Shankar Vedantam: So this was the Loma Prieta earthquake. And of course, the earthquake was a terrible thing. It caused a lot of damage, but it may have had one unexpected benefit: it changed how people thought about the Embarcadero Freeway. How so?
Shankar Vedantam：这就是洛马普列塔地震。当然，地震是一件可怕的事情。它造成了很大的损失，但它可能带来了一个意想不到的好处：它改变了人们对内河码头高速公路的看法。为何如此？

Leidy Klotz: Well, a number of ways. So the earthquake killed more than 60 people and injured thousands. A lot of the deaths actually happened on a similar double-decker highway, the Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland. So people seeing this double-decker elevated concrete structure just over a mile in length, it looked ominously like the Embarcadero. And then it also gave people a view of what life would be like if you didn't have the Embarcadero because the Embarcadero didn't collapse during the earthquake, but it was rendered unusable for a while. And so people saw that they found other ways to get around the city and that it didn't kind of totally ruin life in San Francisco to not have the Embarcadero.
Leidy Klotz：嗯，有很多方法。因此，地震造成60多人死亡，数千人受伤。许多死亡事件实际上发生在类似的双层高速公路上，即奥克兰的赛普拉斯街高架桥上。所以人们看到这个长度只有一英里多的双层高架混凝土结构时，它看起来就像内河码头一样不祥。然后它也让人们看到了如果没有内河码头的话生活会是什么样子，因为内河码头在地震中并没有倒塌，只是暂时无法使用。因此，人们发现他们找到了游览这座城市的其他方式，而且没有内河码头并没有完全毁掉旧金山的生活。

Shankar Vedantam: And then what finally came of all of this, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：那么这一切最终发生了什么，Leidy？

Leidy Klotz: It still wasn't...this was by no means a unanimous choice. There's a famous Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His name's Herb Caen and he's such an influential columnist. And even after the earthquake, as people brought this discussion back up, he has this great quote. "Once again, there's serious talk about tearing down the Embarcadero Freeway - an even worse idea than building it." And so there was still resistance. But eventually the freeway came down. And when it was removed, they got the waterfront back, they saw an increase in housing, increase in jobs, it didn't cause traffic nightmare, trips were rerouted. And if you've ever visited there, it's one of the most visited places in the world and it's obvious why it shouldn't be covered with the freeways. So it took about 10 years, but by 2000, kind of the 10 year anniversary of the demolition, the Chronicle was then reporting that it was hard to find anyone who thinks ripping down the freeway was a bad idea.
Leidy Klotz：仍然不是……这绝不是一个一致的选择。有一位著名的普利策奖得主，《旧金山纪事报》专栏作家。他的名字叫赫伯·卡昂（Herb Caen），是一位很有影响力的专栏作家。即使在地震发生后，当人们重新提起这个讨论时，他仍然引用了这句话。 “再一次，有人认真讨论拆除内河码头高速公路——这是一个比建造它更糟糕的想法。”所以仍然存在阻力。但最终高速公路倒塌了。当它被拆除时，他们恢复了海滨，他们看到住房增加，就业机会增加，这并没有造成交通噩梦，旅行被重新安排。如果您曾经去过那里，它是世界上访问量最大的地方之一，很明显为什么它不应该被高速公路覆盖。所以这花了大约 10 年的时间，但到了 2000 年，也就是拆除的 10 周年纪念日，《纪事报》当时报道说，很难找到任何人认为拆除高速公路是一个坏主意。

Shankar Vedantam: So we've had a crisis of our own the last couple of years that have forced a lot of us to think about what we do, where we work, how we work. How might the COVID-19 pandemic serve as a potential driver of subtraction, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：过去几年我们遇到了一场危机，迫使我们很多人思考我们在做什么、在哪里工作以及如何工作。 Leidy，COVID-19 大流行如何成为减法的潜在驱动力？

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. I think at horrific cost, it's given us this singular chance for change and forced us to subtract in ways that we never would've managed on our own. And certainly, I don't advocate subtracting family visits and friendly hugs, but we've also had to get rid of kind of things that I don't mind if they don't come back. Things like buffets and commutes and evictions, and even carbon emissions. So I think that the crises interrupts this normal flow of things and shows us what a world with some of these subtractions might look like.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。我认为，它付出了可怕的代价，给了我们这个难得的改变机会，并迫使我们以我们自己永远无法做到的方式进行减法。当然，我不主张减少家人探望和友好拥抱，但我们也必须取消一些我不介意的事情，如果他们不回来的话。比如自助餐、通勤和驱逐，甚至碳排放。因此，我认为危机打断了事物的正常流动，并向我们展示了一个带有某些减法的世界可能是什么样子。

Shankar Vedantam: Isn't it interesting that so often we actually need the external push before we see the value in subtraction? We've talked about earthquakes, we've talked about a pandemic. You can think of a forest fire the same way. It's obviously not a good thing when you have a forest fire, but the removal of old growth might be helpful for new growth to happen in a forest. When I'm thinking about the marketplace for example, businesses go out of business, stores go out of business because they kind of track customers or they're selling stuff that people no longer want. And of course, it's painful if you happen to be the store owner whose business is going bankrupt, but the net effect of this is that it gives another business a chance to spring up. But in each of these cases, it's interesting that we almost need the external force in order for us to see the value of subtraction. It's so emotionally difficult for us to do the subtraction ourselves that we need almost an external executioner to come in and do the hard stuff for us.
Shankar Vedantam：在我们看到减法的价值之前，我们经常需要外部推动，这不是很有趣吗？我们谈论过地震，我们谈论过流行病。您可以用同样的方式思考森林火灾。发生森林火灾显然不是一件好事，但清除旧的生长可能有助于森林中新的生长。例如，当我想到市场时，企业会倒闭，商店会倒闭，因为他们在某种程度上跟踪客户，或者他们正在销售人们不再想要的东西。当然，如果你碰巧是店主，生意即将破产，那是很痛苦的，但这样做的最终效果是，它给了另一家企业崛起的机会。但有趣的是，在每一种情况下，我们几乎都需要外力才能看到​​减法的价值。从情感上来说，我们自己做减法是如此困难，以至于我们几乎需要一个外部刽子手来为我们做困难的事情。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. Emotionally and cognitively difficult. And even if you look at evolution as a metaphor, the way that it works is through adaptation and then selection. So adaptation is an add and then the selection is a subtraction and they're working hand in hand.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。情感上和认知上都很困难。即使你将进化视为一个隐喻，它的运作方式也是通过适应然后选择。所以适应是一个加法，然后选择是一个减法，它们是齐头并进的。

Leidy Klotz: And I think another fundamental disadvantage that's coming into play here is that we don't get as many reminders of subtraction, right? Because when something is added, there it is right in front of you as evidence that adding this thing was a way to make change. If something was subtracted in the rare cases that we do it and follow through with it, it's by definition gone. So as we walk around in the world, we don't have these external reminders that, hey, here's this subtraction. It's also a good way to make things better.
Leidy Klotz：我认为这里出现的另一个根本缺点是我们没有得到那么多减法提醒，对吗？因为当添加一些东西时，它就在你面前，作为添加这个东西是一种做出改变的方式的证据。如果我们在极少数情况下做了某件事并坚持到底，那么它就定义消失了。因此，当我们在世界上行走时，我们没有这些外部提醒，嘿，这是减法。这也是让事情变得更好的好方法。

Shankar Vedantam: The things we subtract are often invisible. We don't notice them or we quickly become used to their absence. And so we fail to appreciate how these innovations, like Anna Keichline's building blocks, are affecting our lives. But sometimes inventors can find clever workarounds to this obstacle. Back in the 1970s, an aerospace engineer named Marion Rudy came up with the idea of using air to provide cushioning in running shoes. It was a classic moment where less added up to more. But there was a problem. You couldn't actually see this innovation in action. It was inside the shoes. Marion Rudy kept bringing the idea to shoe companies and they kept turning him down.
Shankar Vedantam：我们减去的东西通常是看不见的。我们没有注意到他们，或者我们很快就习惯了他们的缺席。因此，我们无法理解这些创新，如安娜·凯奇莱恩的构建模块，是如何影响我们的生活的。但有时发明家可以找到巧妙的解决方法来克服这个障碍。早在 20 世纪 70 年代，一位名叫 Marion Rudy 的航空航天工程师提出了利用空气为跑鞋提供缓冲的想法。这是一个经典的时刻，少即是多。但是有一个问题。您实际上无法看到这项创新的实际应用。它在鞋子里面。马里昂·鲁迪不断地将这个想法带给制鞋公司，但他们却不断拒绝他。

Leidy Klotz: He finally got to Nike, which at the time was kind of this boutique outfit that just served elite runners. And as the story goes in Nike lore, Phil Knight took him out for a run, liked what he felt, and then air went into the Nike shoes. But even after the air was in the shoes, nobody could see it, but the Nike really started to take off. They had this seminal shoe, the Air Max 1, and those shoes were one of the first models that actually displayed the air. So they have the little window on the side so you could see, hey, in fact, there's air in here. And that made the subtraction noticeable and it was something that made Nike shoes different from any other kind of shoe and kind of helped launch them on the path that took them to where they are today. Of course, there's a guy named Michael Jordan who helped.
Leidy Klotz：他最终选择了耐克，当时耐克是一家专门为精英跑步者服务的精品服装公司。正如耐克传说中的故事那样，菲尔·奈特带他出去跑步，喜欢他的感觉，然后空气进入了耐克鞋。但即使鞋子里充满了空气，也没有人能看到，但耐克真的开始腾飞了。他们推出了这款开创性的鞋款——Air Max 1，这些鞋款是最早真正展示空气性能的鞋款之一。所以他们的侧面有一个小窗户，这样你就可以看到，嘿，事实上，这里有空气。这使得这种减法变得引人注目，这使得耐克鞋不同于任何其他类型的鞋，并在某种程度上帮助它们走上了今天的道路。当然，有一个名叫迈克尔·乔丹的人提供了帮助。

Shankar Vedantam: So we've looked at how external crises can sometimes be a driver of subtraction and how increasing the noticeability of subtraction, the value of subtraction, can help us embrace subtraction. You've also thought about other systems in some ways that can incentivize people to focus on subtraction. Tell me about your stop-doing list, Leidy.
Shankar Vedantam：因此，我们研究了外部危机有时如何成为减法的驱动因素，以及提高减法的引人注目度和减法的价值如何帮助我们拥抱减法。您还考虑过其他系统在某些方面可以激励人们专注于减法。告诉我你的停止做事清单，莱迪。

Leidy Klotz: A stop-doing list is essentially the same as a to-do list except for you're thinking of things that you're not going to do anymore. And how I use it is whenever I do my to-dos, which I try to do on a weekly basis, I also force myself to come up with equivalent number of stop doings, which kind of makes sense, right? If you're going to add new stuff to your day and assuming you're already at capacity, you need to also figure out what you're going to take away.
Leidy Klotz：停止做的事情清单本质上与待办事项清单相同，只不过你正在考虑不再做的事情。我如何使用它是每当我做我的待办事项时，我尝试每周做一次，我也会强迫自己想出相同数量的停止做的事情，这是有道理的，对吧？如果你要在一天中添加新的东西，并且假设你已经满负荷了，那么你还需要弄清楚你要拿走什么。

Shankar Vedantam: Are there any specific things on your stop doing list that you have? I'm curious in terms of your stop doing list, what are the things that you put on?
Shankar Vedantam：您停止做的事情清单上有什么具体的事情吗？我很好奇你的停止做的事情清单，你列出了哪些事情？

Leidy Klotz: One that's been really helpful for me is basically a stop-editing. I read a lot of my students writing and it can be really tempting to just go through and make all of the changes that I would want to make. But of course, that's not really helpful to them. And so like I'll set a limit. I'll say, "Okay, give this student the 10 most important comments for this piece of writing." And it works really well. It saves me time, one, but it also kind of rewards students who do more, right? So if the student gives you a really polished piece of writing, I still force myself to come up with 10 ways to make it better whereas if somebody doesn't put as much time in and gives you this really rough first draft, I don't spend all my time getting that to the same place that the other piece of writing is. Another example is just meetings. Meetings are the classic thing where I am providing some marginal value by attending a meeting or by calling a meeting, but not considering what could be done in that time. So I think often times my stop doings are directed at meetings that I'm attending, but also the ones that I'm calling and asking other people to attend for me.
Leidy Klotz：对我来说真正有帮助的一个基本上是停止编辑。我读了很多学生的写作，真的很想浏览并做出我想做的所有改变。但当然，这对他们来说并没有真正的帮助。所以我会设定一个限制。我会说，“好吧，给这位学生这篇文章的 10 条最重要的评论。”而且效果非常好。第一，它节省了我的时间，但它也奖励了做得更多的学生，对吧？因此，如果学生给你一篇非常优美的文章，我仍然强迫自己想出 10 种方法让它变得更好，而如果有人没有投入那么多时间并给你这个非常粗糙的初稿，我不会'我不会花所有的时间把它放到与另一篇文章相同的地方。另一个例子就是会议。会议是一种经典的事情，我通过参加会议或召开会议来提供一些边际价值，但不考虑当时可以做什么。因此，我认为很多时候我停止做的事情是针对我正在参加的会议，但也是针对我打电话并要求其他人代表我参加的会议。

Shankar Vedantam: Can you talk a moment about the role of subtraction in public policy? When we think about legislators, for example, we think about legislators as people who make laws, whereas you might argue that a crucial part of what legislators ought to be doing is pruning back laws that might no longer be useful.
Shankar Vedantam：您能谈谈减法在公共政策中的作用吗？例如，当我们想到立法者时，我们认为立法者是制定法律的人，而你可能会认为立法者应该做的一个关键部分是修剪可能不再有用的法律。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. I did some digging into how much laws have grown over time and by some measures they've grown even faster than our economy. So it's just like all these things have this adding trend and laws are no exception. And it's the same as the building of civilization. When you don't have roads, it makes sense to add them, but once you've kind of been adding roads for a while, there are more opportunities to take them away to reveal pristine water. And so the laws, we've kind of accumulated, accumulated, accumulated, and we're left with a bunch that are redundant. And so some places have actually required legislators to when they come with a new law also come with two that are on the books that they want to get rid of. And that kind of rule can be really helpful. It's saying, look, you're a competent legislator if you do this.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。我深入研究了法律随着时间的推移发展了多少，从某些衡量标准来看，它们的发展速度甚至比我们的经济还要快。所以就像所有这些东西都有这种增加的趋势一样，法律也不例外。这和文明建设是一样的。当你没有道路时，添加道路是有意义的，但一旦你添加道路一段时间后，就有更多机会将它们拆除以露出原始水源。所以法律，我们已经积累了，积累了，积累了，我们留下了一堆多余的东西。因此，有些地方实际上要求立法者在制定新法律时，同时附上他们想要废除的两项法律。这种规则确实很有帮助。它是在说，看，如果你这样做，你就是一位称职的立法者。

Shankar Vedantam: Leidy has been struck by the fact that subtraction can play a surprisingly powerful role in medicine. Doctors and nurses often have so much going on that simplifying rules and reducing complexity can actually improve patient outcomes.
Shankar Vedantam：雷迪对减法在医学中发挥的惊人强大作用感到震惊。医生和护士经常要做很多事情，简化规则和降低复杂性实际上可以改善患者的治疗结果。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. My sister's a medical doctor and she was actually taught by this guy, Peter Pronovost. And what Pronovost was interested in was improving the practice of inserting central line catheters. So these are those thin plastic tubes that are used to draw blood or administer fluids and medication.
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。我姐姐是一名医生，她实际上是由彼得·普罗诺沃斯特这个人教的。普罗诺沃斯特感兴趣的是改进插入中心线导管的实践。这些是用于抽血或输液和药物的细塑料管。

Shankar Vedantam: Catheters are ubiquitous in American hospitals and they're also one of the most common sources of infection.
Shankar Vedantam：导管在美国医院随处可见，也是最常见的感染源之一。

Leidy Klotz: And it's not a sexy topic certainly, but these infections were actually causing about 30,000 deaths each year in the United States, roughly as many as car accidents. And it's a complicated process. There are dozens of steps requiring thought and judgment and skill and it's different based on the person. If you've got a 10 year old who's dehydrated, it's a different process than inserting one on a concussed offensive lineman, for example. But to prevent the infections, Pronovost and his team considered all of this complexity, but then they proposed a very simple recipe. They gave a checklist and it's that medical professionals would wash their hands with soap, clean the patient's skin with antiseptic, put sterile drapes over the entire patient, wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves, and put a sterile dressing over the catheter site. And those very simple steps have brought striking results. It's almost entirely eradicated catheter infections and it saved thousands of lives.
Leidy Klotz：这当然不是一个性感的话题，但这些感染实际上每年在美国造成约 30,000 人死亡，大约与车祸一样多。这是一个复杂的过程。有几十个步骤需要思考、判断和技巧，而且因人而异。例如，如果你有一个脱水的 10 岁孩子，这与给一名脑震荡的进攻边锋插入一个不同的过程。但为了防止感染，普罗诺沃斯特和他的团队考虑了所有这些复杂性，但随后他们提出了一个非常简单的方案。他们给出了一份清单，医疗专业人员会用肥皂洗手，用消毒剂清洁患者的皮肤，在整个患者身上铺上无菌手术单，戴上无菌口罩、帽子、长袍和手套，并在患者身上铺上无菌敷料。导管部位。这些非常简单的步骤带来了惊人的结果。它几乎完全消除了导管感染，挽救了数千人的生命。

Shankar Vedantam: We've talked at some length about how addition is psychologically pleasurable and subtraction is often psychologically painful. One of your really interesting insights is that we should all try to reframe losses, subtractions, as additions. And there's an author you like who preaches this message. Here's the clip of her.
Shankar Vedantam：我们已经详细讨论了加法在心理上令人愉悦，而减法通常在心理上令人痛苦。您真正有趣的见解之一是，我们都应该尝试将损失、减法重新定义为加法。有一位你喜欢的作家宣扬了这一信息。这是她的剪辑。

Marie Kondo: The important things about tidying is not choosing things to discard, but choosing things to keep. So how do you choose what to keep? Is the item spark-showing? Keep it. It does not, get rid of it.
近藤麻理惠：整理最重要的不是选择要丢弃的东西，而是选择要保留的东西。那么你如何选择保留什么？该物品是否闪闪发光？收下。事实并非如此，摆脱它。

Shankar Vedantam: I take it you're a fan of the tidying guru Marie Kondo.
Shankar Vedantam：我想你是整理大师近藤麻理惠的粉丝。

Leidy Klotz: Yeah, a reluctant fan. As a professor, I felt like, oh, I can't be a Kondo acolyte, but talking about our research, people would keep bringing her up. So I said, "I got to figure out what she's writing about." And of course her tone and observations, advice are very spiritual, but through trial and error in this her specific context, tidying, she's derived some tips that are pretty scientifically sound. For example, her core message is sparking joy. Default home organization advice is like get rid of the stuff you don't want, that doesn't fit. And she flipped it around. She said, "Keep what sparks joy and get rid of everything else." And so she's kind of steering us around loss aversion there knowingly or not because she's focusing us on this future vision of the tidy space. And sure it's a little painful to get rid of these individual things, but you're just thinking of them as one component that's going to improve the overall situation.
Leidy Klotz：是的，一个不情愿的粉丝。作为一名教授，我觉得，哦，我不能成为近藤的助手，但在谈论我们的研究时，人们会不断提起她。所以我说：“我必须弄清楚她在写什么。”当然，她的语气、观察、建议都是非常有灵性的，但通过在她的特定背景下的反复试验和整理，她得出了一些非常科学合理的技巧。例如，她的核心信息是激发欢乐。默认的家庭组织建议就像扔掉你不想要的、不合适的东西。她把它翻转过来。她说：“保留那些能带来快乐的东西，扔掉其他一切。”所以她有意或无意地引导我们绕过损失厌恶，因为她让我们专注于整洁空间的未来愿景。当然，摆脱这些单独的东西会有点痛苦，但你只是将它们视为将改善整体情况的一个组成部分。

Shankar Vedantam: I understand you've also looked at artists, writers, musicians, painters who've also thought deeply about subtraction. What have you found, Leidy?
Shankar Vedantam：我知道您也关注过对减法进行了深入思考的艺术家、作家、音乐家、画家。莱迪，你发现了什么？

Leidy Klotz: It's hard to find an expert who doesn't have some counterintuitive or seemingly counterintuitive advice on how to subtract, right? So Picasso defining art is the elimination of the unnecessary. And then you've got The Little Prince's author saying "Perfection is achieved not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing left to take away." We talked about Strunk and White omit needless words. This goes way back. You've got William of Ockham of Occam's razor fame and his quote is, "It's in vain to do with more what can be done with less." And then a quote that gets attributed to Lao Tzu, "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day." And that's two and a half millennia back. And I think I learned a ton from these new and old prophets of subtraction, but the main takeaway is that they're the exceptions proving the rule, right? Their advice endures because we are still neglecting subtraction.
Leidy Klotz：很难找到一位专家在如何减法方面没有一些反直觉或看似反直觉的建议，对吧？所以毕加索对艺术的定义就是消除不必要的东西。 《小王子》的作者说：“完美不是在没有什么可以添加的时候实现的，而是在没有什么可以删除的时候实现的。”我们谈论了斯特伦克和怀特，省略了不必要的话语。这可以追溯到很久以前。奥卡姆的威廉因奥卡姆剃刀而闻名，他的名言是：“用更少的钱做更多的事情是徒劳的。”还有一句出自老子的话：“欲得知识，日日增物。欲得智慧，日日减物。”那是两千年前的事了。我想我从这些新老减法先知那里学到了很多东西，但主要的收获是他们是证明规则的例外，对吗？他们的建议之所以经久不衰，是因为我们仍然忽视了减法。

Shankar Vedantam: I want to play you an excerpt from a song from an artist you admire. (singing) Leidy, tell me about Bruce Springsteen's celebrated album, Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Shankar Vedantam：我想给你播放一首你欣赏的艺术家的歌曲节选。 （唱）莱迪，告诉我布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀的著名专辑《城镇边缘的黑暗》。

Leidy Klotz: He's my favorite musician. And I think I love Darkness on the Edge of Town as an example of persistent subtraction. So there are 10 songs on the album, the one you just played, Darkness on the Edge of Town, being the title track, but he recorded more than 50 songs during this time just to get those 10. And these are not bad songs that he cut, but some of the ones he cut became hits instantly for other artists. So Patti Smith's Because the Night, that got to number 13 on the charts. He gave a song, Gary U.S. Bonds' This Little Girl, that hit number 11 on the charts. The Pointer Sisters' Fire, which hit number two on the charts, that's a Bruce Springsteen song and a thing that he didn't think was good enough to go on Darkness on the Edge of Town. And now we know Bruce Springsteen is this incredibly successful musician, but the audacity at the time, he had yet to have a top 20 single of his own and he gave away three singles off that became top 20 hits for other artists.
Leidy Klotz：他是我最喜欢的音乐家。我想我喜欢《城镇边缘的黑暗》作为持续减法的一个例子。所以专辑里有 10 首歌曲，你刚才播放的那首《Darkness on the Edge of Town》是主打歌，但他在这段时间里录制了 50 多首歌曲，只是为了得到这 10 首。这些都不是坏歌，他剪了，但他剪的一些作品立即成为其他艺术家的热门作品。帕蒂·史密斯 (Patti Smith) 的《Because the Night》在排行榜上排名第 13 位。他演唱的歌曲《Gary U.S. Bonds》的《This Little Girl》在排行榜上排名第 11 位。 《Pointer Sisters' Fire》在排行榜上排名第二，这是布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀的一首歌曲，但他认为这首歌不够好，不适合在《小镇边缘的黑暗》中播放。现在我们知道布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀是一位非常成功的音乐家，但当时他还没有拥有自己的前 20 名单曲，而且他还赠送了三首单曲，这些单曲成为其他艺术家的前 20 名热门单曲。

Shankar Vedantam: And what do you think he was after doing this kind of extreme culling?
Shankar Vedantam：你认为他在进行这种极端剔除之后会做什么？

Leidy Klotz: He has a great description of it in his autobiography, Born to Run, which is just an amazing autobiography. He talks about this album as his samurai record, all stripped down for fighting. And those are his exact words. So he was going for this really stripped down aesthetic than he had had on any of his previous albums and that he thought would kind of revolutionize the way music was heard.
Leidy Klotz：他在自传《天生会跑》中对此进行了精彩的描述，这是一本令人惊叹的自传。他将这张专辑视为他的武士唱片，一切都因战斗而被剥光。这就是他原话。因此，他追求的是一种比他以前的任何专辑都更加简洁的美学，他认为这会彻底改变音乐的聆听方式。

Shankar Vedantam: I understand that one of these songs has a special meaning for you and your son.
Shankar Vedantam：我知道其中一首歌对你和你的儿子来说有特殊的意义。

Leidy Klotz: Yes. My absolute favorite song from that album will always be Racing in the Street. And that was Ezra's lullaby for as long as he needed them. He doesn't need them anymore. And it's a very stripped down song. The first line of it is "I got a '69 Chevy with a 396." And that's illustrative of the sparse lyrics that are present all the way across Darkness on the Edge of Town. And this is really a transformation for Springsteen because the opening line to the first song on his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, it's the song Blinded by the Light, which... Here's the opening line, "Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat." So he's perfectly capable of this meandering Dylan-esque prose and now he's going to Racing in the Street, "I got a '69 Chevy with a 396." (singing)
莱迪·克洛茨：是的。那张专辑中我最喜欢的歌曲永远是《Racing in the Street》。只要以斯拉需要，这就是他的摇篮曲。他不再需要它们了。这是一首非常精简的歌曲。第一行是“我有一辆 69 年雪佛兰和 396”。这说明了《城镇边缘的黑暗》中贯穿始终的稀疏歌词。这对斯普林斯汀来说确实是一次转变，因为他的首张专辑《来自阿斯伯里公园的问候》中第一首歌的开场白是歌曲《Blinded by the Light》，...这是开场白，“狂人鼓手无赖和印第安人在和一位十几岁的外交官一起度过的夏天。”所以他完全有能力写出迪伦式的曲折散文，现在他要写《街头赛车》，“我有一辆 69 年的雪佛兰和 396。” （唱歌）

Shankar Vedantam: Leidy Klotz is a professor of engineering at the University of Virginia. He's the author of Subtract: The Untapped Power of Less. Leidy, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Shankar Vedantam：Leidy Klotz 是弗吉尼亚大学工程学教授。他是《Subtract：The Untapped Power of Less》一书的作者。 Leidy，感谢您今天加入我的“隐藏大脑”节目。

Leidy Klotz: Thanks so much for having me. (singing)
Leidy Klotz：非常感谢您邀请我。 （唱歌）

Shankar Vedantam: Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy Paul, Laura Kwerel, Kristin Wong, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.
Shankar Vedantam：隐藏的大脑由隐藏的大脑媒体制作。我们的音频制作团队包括 Bridget McCarthy、Annie Murphy Paul、Laura Kwerel、Kristin Wong、Ryan Katz、Autumn Barnes 和 Andrew Chadwick。塔拉·博伊尔是我们的执行制片人。我是《隐藏的大脑》的执行编辑。

Shankar Vedantam: Today for our unsung hero segment, we bring you a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. A few years ago, LaQuista Erinna's six year old son, Jackson, was diagnosed with autism. This wasn't a surprise. Ever since he was a baby, she had noticed he was overly sensitive to everyday things: textures in his clothes, light touches, loud sounds. Haircuts were the worst. He'd gets so anxious that he'd start kicking and screaming. It was really hard for LaQuista to watch, so she decided to stop taking him.
Shankar Vedantam：今天，在我们的无名英雄部分，我们为您带来我们姐妹播客《我的无名英雄》中的故事。几年前，拉奎斯塔·埃琳娜 (LaQuista Erinna) 六岁的儿子杰克逊 (Jackson) 被诊断出患有自闭症。这并不奇怪。从他还是个婴儿的时候起，她就注意到他对日常事物过于敏感：衣服的纹理、轻微的触摸、响亮的声音。理发是最糟糕的。他会变得如此焦虑，以至于开始踢腿和尖叫。拉奎斯塔实在难以忍受，所以她决定不再带他去。

LaQuista Erinna: This is so traumatic for my son. Why am I continuing to put him through this? And so we went almost two years with no haircuts, people making comments. You need to get his cut. Why your hair looks like... People just say all kind of rude things.
拉奎斯塔·埃琳娜：这对我儿子来说太痛苦了。为什么我还要继续让他经历这些？就这样，我们几乎两年没有理发，人们发表评论。你需要得到他的帮助。为什么你的头发看起来像……人们只是说各​​种粗鲁的话。

Shankar Vedantam: Eventually, LaQuista found a barber named Ree. For the past few years, Ree has been able to take things slow with Jackson and learned how to stave off his meltdowns until one day in early 2022 when things went wrong.
Shankar Vedantam：最终，LaQuista 找到了一位名叫 Ree 的理发师。在过去的几年里，Ree 能够慢慢地对待杰克逊，并学会了如何避免他的崩溃，直到 2022 年初的某一天，事情出了问题。

LaQuista Erinna: We were running late. We got caught in traffic. He left his headphones. We hadn't had lunch. It was just like a series of unfortunate events. And he's like, "No, I don't want to go." I was like, "Come on, Jackson. Stop playing. I got things to do. I'm hungry myself." I have to say it like three times. And this time he refused to get in the seat and he started running around the shop and Ree is like, "Come on, Jackson. Man, you know you my man." She's trying to talk to him. She tried to put the cape on him and he just had a fit. And she was like, "Come look in the mirror. I'm going to show you what I'm doing." And he looked, but he still wasn't having it. And I was like, "Come on, Jackson. I'm getting frustrated." And she was like, "No, I got it." And so I just sat on the couch and I'm like, "She's not going to be able to cut his hair. I'm going to give it five minutes. We're going to go get something to eat and go home." Well, next thing you know, I'm looking and she's cutting his hair. He's standing up. And I'm like, "Wait, she's playing a game with him." She would shave his hair, the hair would fall, he would wipe it off, and then they would run to a different spot because he doesn't like the hair to get on him. It's like a whole thing. So it was a good distraction for him and she was able to cut his hair. When they got finished, he was so happy and he was like, "Well, can we come back tomorrow and play the game?" I was like, "I don't know about tomorrow, but we'll be back in a couple weeks." Jackson and Ree, they have their own special relationship. And I think most importantly, he trusts her. He will not let anyone else touch his hair. And that just goes to show like how she nurtured that relationship. This has been a really tough year for Jackson. The last couple years have been really challenging from starting pre-K and then now transitioning to kindergarten and then a new school. So when Ree was able to do this and just accommodate him, it meant the absolute world for me to be able to trust her and be like, "Okay, I know she's going to take care of my son and make sure he's looking the best." You can't ask for anything more than that. I just want to tell Ree that we love you. You are part of our family now and you'll never fully understand how much this meant to me as a mom.
LaQuista Erinna：我们迟到了。我们遇到交通堵塞了。他留下了耳机。我们还没有吃午饭。这就像一系列不幸事件一样。他说：“不，我不想去。”我当时想，“来吧，杰克逊。别玩了。我还有事要做。我自己也饿了。”我必须说三遍。这次他拒绝坐在座位上，他开始在商店里跑来跑去，雷就像是，“来吧，杰克逊。伙计，你知道你是我的男人。”她正试图和他说话。她试图给他披上斗篷，但他却感到一阵痉挛。她说，“来看看镜子。我要告诉你我在做什么。”他看了看，但仍然没有得到它。我当时想，“得了吧，杰克逊。我很沮丧。”她说：“不，我明白了。”所以我只是坐在沙发上，我想，“她不能剪他的头发。我要给它五分钟。我们要去吃点东西然后回家。” ”好吧，接下来你知道的，我正在看她正在剪他的头发。他站起来了。我说，“等等，她正在和他玩游戏。”她会剃他的头发，头发会掉下来，他会把它擦掉，然后他们会跑到另一个地方，因为他不喜欢头发粘在他身上。这就像一个整体。所以这对他来说是一个很好的分散注意力的方法，她也能够剪掉他的头发。当他们完成后，他非常高兴，他说：“好吧，我们明天可以回来玩游戏吗？”我当时想，“我不知道明天会怎样，但我们几周后就会回来。” Jackson和Ree，他们有自己特殊的关系。我认为最重要的是，他信任她。他不会让任何人碰他的头发。这恰恰表明了她是如何培养这种关系的。对于杰克逊来说，这是非常艰难的一年。 过去几年从开始学前班到现在过渡到幼儿园，再到新学校，确实充满挑战。因此，当 Ree 能够做到这一点并适应他时，这对我来说意味着绝对能够信任她，并且会说：“好吧，我知道她会照顾我的儿子并确保他看起来最好”。除此之外你不能要求更多。我只是想告诉 Ree 我们爱你。你现在是我们家庭的一员了，你永远不会完全理解这对我作为一个母亲来说意味着什么。

Shankar Vedantam: LaQuista Erinna. LaQuista took a video of Ree that day calming Jackson down with the haircutting game and posted it on social media. That clip now has millions of views. If you enjoyed today's conversation about how to innovate through subtraction, please be sure to share it with a few friends. Another way to help the show is through financial contributions to our work. You can make a donation in any amount at support.hiddenbrain.org. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
香卡·维丹塔姆：拉奎斯塔·埃琳娜。拉奎斯塔当天拍摄了一段雷伊通过理发游戏让杰克逊平静下来的视频，并将其发布到社交媒体上。该剪辑现在有数百万次观看。如果您喜欢今天关于如何通过减法进行创新的对话，请务必与几个朋友分享。帮助演出的另一种方式是为我们的工作提供财政捐助。您可以在 support.hiddenbrain.org 上进行任意金额的捐款。再说一遍，这是 support.hiddenbrain.org。我是香卡·韦丹塔姆。再见。