Why are we suddenly getting much better at Tetris?
我们为什么突然变得擅长俄罗斯方块了?
Author and vlogger, John Green, raises this very interesting question in a recent video.Tetris was released for the Nintendo in 1984.At that time, far more people were playing Tetris than there are today.
作家和视频主播约翰·格林(John Green)最近在一个视频中提出了这个非常有趣的问题。俄罗斯方块是 1984年发布的一款游戏，后来版权归任天堂所有。当时玩俄罗斯方块的人远比现在要多。
And yet, performance on Tetris is better now, than it was then.A lot better.
但现在人们玩俄罗斯方块的成绩比过去更好，而且是好得多。
Which brings up an interesting point: why would far fewer players, playing a game which is less objectively popular, nonetheless be much better at the game now, then in its heyday?
这带来一个有意思的问题:相比于这个游戏最风靡的年代，如今玩的人少得多，客观来说也不如过去流行，但是玩家的水平却比过去高得多，这是为什么?
The answer actually has a lot to teach us about how people learn and what are the key ingredients needed for gettting really good at something.
事实上，这个问题的答案可以告诉我们很多关于人如何学习的原理，以及精通一件事需要哪些关键要素。
The Four-Minute Barrier
四分钟难关
Years before the Tetris renaissance there was another feat of human achievement.Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes.
在俄罗斯方块复兴前许多年，人类还取得了另一项壮举:罗杰·班尼斯特(Roger Bannister)用不到4分钟的时间跑完了1英里。
Before this moment, many had considered such an athletic feat impossible.Yet, being an elite athlete with intense preparation, Bannister eventually ran a mile in under four minutes.
在此之前，许多人认为这样的运动成绩是不可能的。然而，作为一名经历了高强度准备的精英运动员，班尼斯特最终在4分钟以内跑完了1英里
Today, however, running a mile in under four minutes is easy enough that even some high-school students can do it.
而今天，用不到4分钟跑完1英里相当容易，甚至一些高中生都能做到。
Why did something once deemed impossible suddeenly become routine?The human body didn’t change.Miles didn’t get any shorter.Yet our performance exploded.
为什么一些过去认为不可能的事突然变得平常?人类的身体没有发生改变，1英里的长度也没有缩短，但我们的表现呈现出爆炸性的提高。
Record-Breaking Environments
破记录的环境
I believe the key to understanding both the explosion in Tetris Performance and the numerous pot-Bannister four-minute runs, is that while individual human beings are the ones breaking records, the overall performance often depends on the structure of the environment and the communities in which the results occur.
人们玩俄罗斯方块水平的爆发，以及班尼斯特之后出现无数在4分钟以内跑完1英里的跑者，我认为理解这两个现象的关键在于，尽管打破记录的是单个个体，但整体的表现通常取决于环境的结构，以及产生结果的社群。
In the case of Tetris, easy recording, uploading and sharing of gameplay videos was a pivotal innovation to create the performance improvements, despite a declining player base.
在俄罗斯方块的例子中，尽管玩家人数减少了，但能够容易地录制、上传和分享游戏视频是一项重要的创新，带来了成绩的提高。
Being able to watch top players, live, gives enormous insight into how they practice.You can see which strategies are used.You can learn tricks, such as the placement of holes, depending on the game speed, and avoid common pitfalls that would have stymied excellent players in the early days of the game.
能够观看顶级玩家的游戏实况，使我们对他们如何练习有了许多深刻的理解。你可以看到他们使用了哪些策略，可以学习他们的技巧，例如根据游戏速度安排空洞的位置，避免常见的陷阱。而在早年，那些陷阱曾让优秀的玩家折戟。
Plentiful live recordings, plus online communities for discussing those recordings, allowed a much smaller group of people to collaborate on improving performance much more than a much more diffuse, less well-connected player base of casual fans.
大量实况录像，再加上讨论这些录像的线上社区，使规模小得多的一小群人，能够合作提高游戏水平，远胜过一群更分散、缺少联系的业余粉丝。
How the Environment Determines Growth
环境如何决定成长
Take two genetically identical seeds, raise one in soil, with plenty of water and sunlight, and it will grow into a large plant.Take another and put it in a dark closet and it will die.Environments determine growth in many biological systems, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they had enormous influence over human-scale ones.
挑选两粒在基因组成上完全相同的种子，一颗种在土里，并提供充足的水分和光照，它会茁壮成长;另一颗放在黑暗的橱柜里，最终将会死亡。在许多生物系统中，环境因素都决定了成长，因此环境对人的成长产生巨大影响也就不足为奇了
In our Tetris example, different docial structures had different impacts on the growth in performance.Add the ability to see exactly how the best people are doing things, and a novice player can quickly get to the cutting edge.Have a large, diffuse player base and there is no accumulation of innovations.Each player must figure out what works best, on their own, through trial-and-error.
在俄罗斯方块的例子里，不同的社会结构对成绩的提高有不同影响。具备了观看最优秀的选手如何操作的能力，新手玩家也可以迅速达到顶尖水平。如果玩家群体数量庞大、分散，创新没有积累，那么每个玩家都必须通过自己的试错来发现什么技巧最好用。
I suspect there are quite a few factors which determine this growth in performance, but I’d like to sketch out a few of the main possibilities here:
我认为人们玩俄罗斯方块水平的提高是由很多因素决定的，但在此我想概述几种主要的可能:
- Being able to witness performance in others.
- 能够看到其他人的表现
Recordings and streaming have made a big difference because they allowed players to learn via example.Prior to this, players could only learn by watching their best local player, or reading snippets of text descriptions from strategy guides which were often out of date.
录像和流媒体引发了巨大的改变，因为它们允许玩家通过实例学习。在此之前，玩家只能通过观看本地最好玩家的操作，或阅读策略指南上片断的文字描述–通常是过时的–来学习。
Witnessing performance may matter a lot more than being able to understand performance.Studies show that groups which can copy can show rapid performace improvements, even when the individuals’ understanding of the principles behind their success are essentially zero.
观看他人表现的作用远不只是能够理解他人的表现。研究表明，能够复制他人操作的组表现出快速的成绩提高，尽管个人对他们成功背后的规律一无所知。
I believe this is a highly-underused aspect of learning which we should foster more.Why are there plentiful recordings of video games, but far fewer recordings of high-level entrepreneurs going about their work?Engineers solving problems?Scientists doing experiments?
You may argue that privacy, selfishness or trade secrets prevent these, but I see these as being mostly technical obstacles.Open source software has succeeded on the same sorts of principles, despite being in competitive inidustries where both privacy and trade secrets are concerns.
你或许会反驳，隐私、自私或商业机密阻止了人们这样做，但我认为这些很大程度上都是技术障碍。开源软件基于同样的原则取得了成功，尽管其所处的是一个高度竞争的行业，且隐私和商业机密也是那个行业人们关心的内容。
3. Knowing that a goal is achievable.
4. 知道目标是可实现的
The post-Bannister prevalence of four-minute miles is not a case of technical innovation resulting in an explosion of performance, but of breaking a barrier indicating that future performance improvements are possilbe.
在班尼斯特之后，能在4分钟内跑完1英里的人大量涌现，这不是技术创新带来的成绩迅速提高，而是因为打破了障碍，表明未来成绩的提高是可能的。
Often, even if you can’t know exactly how someone achieved something, the mere fact that the achievement exits can help you in planning for it.The constraints around the accomplishment limit the scope of what strategies could have been used, and they also give you a target which you can strive towards.
很多时候，即使你并不确切知道某人是如何做成一件事的，但仅仅是有人做到这个事实就有助于你做出规划。 成就周围的约束限制了你能采用的策略的范围，但它们也为你设定了目标，可以向之努力奋进。
In this sense, I see the posting of measureable progress made by Tetris players(and other competitive video gaming) as a component of what contributes to their success, beyond merely watching live replays.Knowing that someone has reached certain times spurs investment and innovation.
在这个意义上，我认为除了仅仅观看实况回放外，公布俄罗斯方块玩家(以及其他竞技性电子游戏)取得的可衡量的进展，也是有助于他们成功的因素。知道有人已经达到某个时间，可以刺激投入和创新。
3. Having the right incentives to improve.
3. 有正确的激励促进提高
Patrick Collison and Michael Nielson report that our progress in science has declined.We used to make much more progress, with far fewer researchers, than we do today.A good question is why.
帕特里克·科里森(Patrick Colison) 和迈克尔·尼尔森(Michael Nielson)报告，我们在科学上的进步已经放缓。我们过去仅凭少得多的研究者，就取得了比今天多得多的科学进步。一个很好的问题是，为什么会这样。
While speculation as to the causes of the decline in academic productivity is everywhere, one that strikes me as a particularly apt one is by former MIT AI researcher David Chapman.
尽管随处可见人们对于学术生产力下降原因的推测，但其中最打动我、最合理的一个解释是MIT前人工智能研究员大卫·查普曼(David Chapman)提出的。
Chapman argues that poor incetives, which encourage making token progress on unimportant matters in order to increase paper publishing count degrade scientific progress.Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder echos this sentiment arguing that modern physics has gotten derailed spawning endless esoteric models rather than focusing on hard, mathematically wee-formulated problems
查普曼认为，糟糕的激励，即鼓励研究者在不重要的问题上取得装模作样的进步从而增加文章发表数量，导致了科学进步的放缓。物理学家萨宾，霍森菲尔德(Sabine Hossenfelder)发出了同样的感慨，称现代物理学已经偏离了正轨，孵化出无数复杂难懂的模型，而不是把精力集中在困难、能清楚数学描述的问题上。
Tetris players improve, not only because of their community and know achievements, but because the community is organized around accomplishing well-understood goals.Science, politics, and often business, can fail when the incentives that encourage participation(papers published, elections won, money earned) don’t reflect the true goals of those institutions(progress in knowledge, improved policies or value to customers and stakeholders).
俄罗斯方块的玩家们水平提高，不仅因为他们有自己的社群、知道已经取得的成就，还因为这个社群是围绕完成清楚明晰的目标组织起来的。在科学、政治，通常还有商业界，如果鼓励参与的激励(发表文章、赢得选举、赚取财富)无法反应这些行业真正的目标(知识的进步、政策的改进或顾客与股东的价值)，那么就会失败。
How Can We Learn Better, By adjusting the groups we belong to?
如何通过调整所属的群体更好地学习?
In some sense, these problems exceed the capacity of any one individual to solve them.Even the most inspired Tetris player in 1985, couldn’t have single-handedly changed the landscape of Tetris improvement. Pre-Bannister runners, couldn’t have had the benefit of knowing the 4-minute mile could be run .
在某种意义上，解决这些问题超出了任何个人的能力。在1985年，即使是最有灵感的俄罗斯方块玩家，也无法仅凭一己之力改变俄罗斯方块水平提高的前景。班尼斯特之前的跑者也无法享有知道跑进4分钟是可能的所带来的好处，
However, there are two main ways I see this idea improving our thoughts on knowledge and growth:
但我认为，调整所在的群体主要以两种方式改进了我们对知识和成长的看法:
5. Better designing of the communities and institutions around performance.
6. 围绕成绩更好地设计社群和制度
Thanks to the internet, brand-new communities, with new rules and incentives for behavior are being generated every day in the form of new social networks.The difference between Twitter and Instagram isn’t simplty that the people are different, but that the mechanisms of how the community functions have been shaped by design decisions.
由于互联网的出现，拥有新的规则和行为激励模式的全新社群每天都以新的社交网络的形式出现。Twitter和Instagram的区别不在于用户，而在于设计决策如何影响社区功能的机制。
What’s stopping us from creating live-stream sharing where we practice skills which are actually useful?What’s to stop creating practice environments centered around skills with clear metrics for improvement?These things could exist, they would just take a few people with the initiactive to design them, or integrate them into platforms which already exist.
是什么阻止了我们创建实时直播，分享对真正有用技能的练习?是什么阻止了我们围绕技能创建练习环境，并建立清晰的标准以更好地提高?这些功能可以有，只要有人主动设计，或把这些功能集成到已有的平台。
2. Joining communities with the right characteristics.
2. 加入具备正确特质的社群
If you want to learn a language, the best way is through immersion.This is because having an environment that necessitates non-stop practice makes learning so much easier than one where practice is always a deliberate effort.
如果你想学习语言，最好的方式是沉浸在那个语言环境中，这是因为在一个迫使你不停练习的环境中学习，要比在一个需要有意识地练习的环境中学习容易得多。
Similarly, if you want to learn an important career skill, whether it’s design, programming, accounting, entrepreneurship or public speaking, the choice of where you choose to learn and practice may have more consequence than the methods or materials you end up using.
类似地，如果你想学习一项重要的职业技能，无论是设计、编程、会计、企业思维，还是公开演讲，选择在哪里学习、练习，可能比最终使用什么方法和材料更重要。
Look for groups where you can witness expert performance and emulate it.Join communities where you can see what goals are achievable.Go to environments where the incentives align with improving the skill you want.
找到正确的群体，亲眼见到专业的表现并模仿之。加入正确的社区，看到哪些目标是可行的。进入正确的环境，它提供的激励恰好符合你想要提高的技能。
Ultimately, whether it’s building a business, discovering new science or just getting really good at Tetris, the environment matters.
总而言之，不论是创办企业、发现新科学，或仅仅是精通俄罗斯方块，环境都至关重要。
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