转载自引知，公众号ID：ingenius-prep
公众号简介：创立于耶鲁，集合百名名校前招生官经验与智慧的平台。
月底，耶鲁大学本科学院迎来了1,647名刚入学的大一生。此外，还有17名转学生和21名通过伊莱·惠特尼项目（Eli Whitney Students Program）加入的学员。
这一届的新生是从历史上申请耶鲁人数最多的一届——超过52000名申请者中脱颖而出。
他们来自美国的53个州和地区，以及68个其他国家的1200多所高中。值得注意的是，72%的被录取学生选择接受了耶鲁的录取通知书，这一入读率也创下了新纪录。与此同时，超过半数的新生（53%）的母语或第一语言不是英语。
8月21日上午，耶鲁大学在Cross Campus举办了一年一度的开学典礼，耶鲁大学校长苏必德（Peter Salovey）和耶鲁本科学院院长Pericles Lewis发表了主题为“放慢脚步，弥合裂缝”的主题演讲。寄语新生：培养谨慎的、有条理的行动习惯，深度反思听到的各种观点，为即将进入的世界修复出现的问题。这段寄语为所有新生开启了他们在耶鲁的学术之旅。
Good morning! It gives me great pleasure to welcome you, our entering students, and your family members to campus, and to mark officially the start of your undergraduate education.This is a big moment—for you and for Yale! On behalf of my colleagues here on stage, we are so glad this day has arrived. We are so glad you are here.It is evident why you belong at Yale. Your academic distinction, leadership savvy, and outstanding motivation solidify your standing among students who have sat for centuries where you are sitting today. What is more, the richness of your diversity—across every dimension—reflects Yale’s commitment to creating an inclusive educational environment.Now, as you prepare to enter Yale—and leave your unique imprint on it—allow me to alert you to a perennial observation among our alumni. Many of your predecessors, I must caution, have marveled at the breakneck clip at which today’s festivities give way to your graduation.It’s a hard truth codified in one of Yale’s most celebrated traditions, the singing of our unofficial alma mater, “Bright College Years.” Your time here is described as the “shortest, gladdest years of life,” and as “gliding by,” “swiftly,” in fact. So, I encourage you to savor the qualities that drew you to this remarkable place.Between the ceremonies that will bookend your “bright college years,” I encourage you to remain ever aware that time here moves at warp speed.As you set off on the grand adventure of a liberal education, though, I want also to impart a bit of wisdom. Today, I want to urge you to cultivate the habit of moving deliberately, systematically—slowly—not necessarily to blunt the wistfulness you may feel in four years’ time, but to reflect on the ideas to which you will be exposed, and to be in a position to repair what is broken in the world you will then enter.As perhaps never before, this year’s cohort of new undergraduate students has come of age in a culture of haste. Yours is a generation that has never known life without the instant spread of information. Social networking was born before nearly all of you. And similarly novel technologies that were unthinkable in my generation are native to yours.Many of the innovations on which society has come to rely are the fruit of a mantra first articulated by Mark Zuckerberg. “Move fast and break things,” he instructed his staff at Facebook around the time of its 2004 launch. “Unless you are breaking stuff,” he continued, “you are not moving fast enough.”To be sure, this mantra was eventually phased out as Facebook’s motto, but it remains very much a prevailing ethos that animates today’s tech ecosystem. “Blitzscaling,” as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman characterized it, “drives ‘lightning’ growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency, even in an environment of uncertainty.”Of course, this ethos also has seeped into the DNA of newer online platforms that prioritize, rather detrimentally, speed over depth—platforms that can stoke our emotional impulses all while suppressing our capacity to think broadly and engage with ideas that challenge us. The emerging frontier of artificial intelligence has given us a glimpse into its potential to compound these tendencies.So, rather than “move fast and break things,” I say, here today, “slow down and fix things.”Now, I am not a Luddite. I treasure the benefits of technological advance to our lives and our relationships. Here on campus, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the extraordinary usefulness of digital tools in sustaining our educational mission—and in allowing us to cope and connect with one another—amid social isolation and hardship. And sometimes, tech is just plain fun. I could spend hours on YouTube checking out Appalachian music from past decades.But the propensity we have developed for the immediate deprives us of the time and space necessary for careful reflection. Social media feeds can bait us with the hollow lure of “likes”—and then bombard us with viewpoints that reinforce, indeed intensify, our most strongly held assumptions. We consume what we already believe to be true—and are largely shielded, therefore, from what is.So, I encourage you: Slow down and fix things.To place this advice in context, I would like to draw upon my field of study, the discipline of psychology.Last year, I had the special privilege of engaging in a public dialogue about generative AI with Professor Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist known best for his field-changing research on decision-making heuristics and biases. Years ago, my lab relied on his work to conduct research on how to make health messages more persuasive. And Yale was proud to bestow on him an honorary degree in 2014.In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Professor Kahneman details how our minds are governed by two systems. System 1 is the fast one. It’s based in emotion, reflex, and stereotype. And it makes us “gullible,” therefore, “and biased to believe.” System 2 is the slow one, in charge of “doubting and unbelieving” through analytical, deliberate, and rational thought.“The confirmatory bias of System 1,” in short, “favors uncritical acceptance of suggestions and exaggerations of the likelihood of extreme and improbable events.” We can see here the hazards of nurturing it as a default way of thinking, particularly in a time of upheaval and unrest.Of course, as members of the Class of 2027, your most formative years coincided with moments of monumental consequence. In high school, you witnessed a once-in-a-generation pandemic and the virulent spread of conspiracy theories about it. You saw violent insurrectionists disrupt the most basic functioning of our democracy, and Vladimir Putin launch the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War. You have seen, and some of you have participated in, transformative social and cultural movements. And as recently as this summer, you experienced the hottest recorded week in history even as some deny the severity—in fact, the existence—of the climate emergency.So, I sense you may rightfully feel, among a mix of many other emotions, a burning desire to pursue speedy action. But our commitment to lux et veritas—to light and truth—compels us to slow down, to listen to each other, to deal with complex and sometimes conflicting ideas, to engage in deep thoughtfulness, and then to look for ways to fix things.Now, let me be clear: this is not to suggest that the pace of progress ought to be glacial. No, the challenges confronting society demand our restlessness to improve the world for this and future generations. Patience, as university president Kingman Brewster Jr. told incoming members of a Yale College class, “is not come by easily in a world for which survival is a serious question.” And that was to the Class of 1974! So “where then,” he asked, “is the purpose which makes patient learning supportable?”As President Brewster would go on to insinuate, enduring, institutional progress takes not only knowledge but understanding. Solutions born of even the most well-founded scientific or historical expertise still require the public will to implement them. Changing other people’s minds requires us to expand our own; breakthroughs are brought about in a chorus, not an echo chamber. We must take time to think deliberatively if we want to fix things.Let me provide an example from two Yale College alumni, David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, political scientists, the latter of whom is at Yale. Professors Broockman and Kalla focus on political persuasion, public opinion, and prejudice reduction. And their signal work on transgender rights and immigration informs and guides meaningful action in these and other realms of public discourse.They found that the inclination to correct others who do not see the world as we do “may provide emotional relief, but it’s not likely to persuade. In fact, [expressing such frustration] can make people harden their existing views.” “Deep canvassing,”—that is “non-judgmentally exchanging narratives in interpersonal conversations”—can “facilitate durable reductions in exclusionary attitudes.”They dispatched dozens of door-to-door canvassers in the wake of a new law to protect transgender people from discrimination. One group of canvassers “said nothing to residents about transphobia,” while the other “[asked] sensitive questions, [listened] to the answers with sincere interest, and then [asked] more questions.”The result? “Not everyone was swayed… but on average, [the group engaged in the deeper, thoughtful interactions] experienced a drop in transphobia [even] greater than the fall in homophobia among Americans from 1998 to 2012.” The canvassers, by listening sincerely—patiently—“had produced the equivalent of fourteen years of social change.”[8] So, we must undertake the rigorous, painstaking, and yes, sometimes plodding, task of listening carefully to the broad range of perspectives that surround us instead of blazing forth complacently.We must elevate the virtues, indeed the value, of patience and a willingness to listen to ideas we do not like, and reject a counterproductive culture of calling out, denunciation, and ostracism. In an obvious paradox, slowing down can achieve faster, more effective results.In thinking of this imperative, I am reminded of the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren’s recent exploration of patience as a virtue with the Yale Divinity School’s Center for Faith and Culture. “Internet advocacy—our very connected world—does make us [a] less patient people. I mean that in both ways,” she says, “less patient for change but also less patient with one another. It takes real work to slow down and listen to another person’s perspective, especially if you disagree.”I think, too, of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, another honorary Yale degree recipient I reference today, who expressed powerfully that “arguments are won only by giving your opponent a hearing.”Here at Yale, and at colleges and universities like it, we advance this worthy endeavor by educating students to seek out competing ideas, to evaluate evidence, and to mobilize the tools of reason and critical inquiry. Yes, this takes time and patience. But the effortful, System 2 mode of thinking a liberal education promotes cultivates collaboration—and thereby propels sweeping contributions to our world.That is, I think, what makes education “the strongest force available.”It is what makes “patient learning” supportable, in fact, essential.I take as my final words today a part of what Rabbi Sacks wrote on the merits of engaging with diverse perspectives. Jewish scholarship in the first century BCE, he noted, “was riven by a series of controversies between the schools of two great rabbis, Hillel and Shammai. Eventually, the views of Rabbi Hillel prevailed on most issues. The Talmud explains why: ‘the disciples of Hillel were pleasant and did not take offense, and they taught the views of their opponents as well as their own; indeed they taught the views of their opponents before their own.’” He might have said, seek lux et veritas, light and truth, through audi alteram partem, listening to the other side—that is, if Rabbi Hillel spoke Latin.Here in the arena of higher education, I am sure, you will do so. Here you will find an oasis—if not an island—of the pensive, interdependent thought process through which positive change advances. And then, in due course, you will be well-positioned to put this hallmark of your Yale education to work in the world.You will know that taking the time to see the whole of a problem, to create something lasting and beneficial, and to build consensus—even, and most especially, with those whose worldview does not align with your own—is not an impediment but a prerequisite to progress.Even as you slow down and contemplate new perspectives, you will still hold fast to your ideals and move thoughtfully—faithfully—to fulfill them.I am pleased to welcome you today to Yale.I am pleased to advise you: slow down, fix things. 非常荣幸在此欢迎各位新生及家长们来到校园，与大家共同见证大学生活的开启。你们之所以被选中进入耶鲁，原因显而易见。你们在学术上的卓越、领导能力以及出色的动力使你们跻身于数百年来坐在你们现在位置上的学生之列。更为重要的是，是你们的多样性丰富了耶鲁，也反映出我们对于创造一个包容的教育环境的坚定承诺。当你们准备融入耶鲁这个大家庭并在此留下自己的独特印记时，我想提醒你们一个经常被我们的校友提及的事。许多你们的前辈都曾感叹，在愉快的开学典礼之后，时间会过得飞快，一转眼就要又进行毕业典礼了。
这是一个很真实的事实，在耶鲁的非官方校歌《美好校园年华》（Bright College Years）的歌词中也有体现。歌词把你们在校的时光形容为“最短暂最欢快的光阴”“快速地从指间流走”。毕业时唱这首歌也是耶鲁最重要的传统之一。你们在这里的时光被描述为“生命中最短暂、最快乐的岁月”，时间如水，飞逝而去。请你们好好享受这个非凡之地，并珍惜那些吸引你选择耶鲁的特质。在开学和毕业典礼之间的“美好校园年华”中，我希望你们始终记住，在这里：时光如白驹过隙，不舍昼夜。当你们开始这段寻求博雅教育的奇妙旅程时，我想传递给你们一些智慧。我希望你们能培养谨慎地、有条理的行动习惯，这样做不仅是为了减轻四年后你们可能感受到的怅然之情，更是为了深入思考你们将接触到的各种观念和信息，并为了修复你们即将步入的这个世界。这届新生是前所未有地在急速的世界中长大的一届，在一个急躁的文化中成长。你们从未经历过没有即时信息传播的生活。社交网络在你们之前就已经出现。而同样的，对于我的这一代来说难以想象的新技术，对于你们来说却是如此熟悉。如今世界赖以生存的很多新发明都来源于马克·扎克伯格首次提出的一个口号。他在2004年Facebook刚刚启动时对他的团队说“快速行动，打破常规” “如果你不在破除什么，那就是行动得不够快。”当然，这个口号后来被Facebook淘汰，但它仍然是如今科技生态系统中盛行的精神。正如LinkedIn的联合创始人Reid Hoffman所描述的，“Blitzscaling”即“在不确定的环境中优先考虑速度而不是效率，以实现‘闪电’般的增长。”当然，这种精神也已经渗透到了那些优先考虑速度而不是深度的新型在线平台的DNA中，这些平台可能会刺激我们的情感冲动，同时抑制我们广泛思考和接触挑战性观念的能力。人工智能的新前沿为我们展示了它可能加剧这些倾向的潜力。与其“快速行动，打破常规”，我主张大家“放慢脚步，弥合裂缝”。我并不是反科技的。我珍视技术进步为我们的生活和关系带来的好处。例如，在这个校园里，COVID-19大流行强调了数字工具在维持我们的教育使命以及在社会孤立和困境中帮助我们应对和联系彼此方面的非凡用途。有时，技术只是纯粹的乐趣。我可以在YouTube上花上好几个小时，查看过去几十年的阿巴拉契亚音乐。但是近年来，我们越来越倾向于瞬间满足，仔细思考的时间越来越少。当我们在社交网络看到一条推文，我们先受空洞的“点赞数”吸引，然后读到的全都是与我们想法一致的评论，因为网络推送的是我们认为正确的东西——而不是真正正确的。为更好地论证我的建议，我想引用我研究的领域：心理学。去年，我有幸与Daniel Kahneman教授就生成性AI进行了一场公开对话。他是一位获得诺贝尔奖的心理学家，以他对决策启发式和偏见的领域改变性的研究而著称。多年前，我的实验室依赖于他的研究来研究如何使健康信息更有说服力。而耶鲁在2014年也为他授予了荣誉学位。在他的书《思考，快与慢》中，Kahneman教授详细描述了我们的思维是如何受到两个系统的支配的。System 1是快速的。它基于情感、反应和刻板印象。因此，它使我们“轻信”并“偏向于相信”。System 2则是慢速的，负责通过分析性、有意识和理性的思考来“怀疑和不信”。简而言之，“System 1的证实偏见”“倾向于不加批判地接受建议，并夸大极端和不太可能发生的事件的可能性”。不难发现，如果这一思维模式成为我们默认的思考路径时，尤其在目前动荡不安的世界中，是非常危险的。当然，作为2027届的成员，你们价值观的形成的岁月与重大的历史时刻相吻合。在高中时期，你们见证了一个代代都有的大流行病和关于它的阴谋论的猖獗传播。你们看到了暴力的叛乱分子破坏我们民主的基本功能，以及Vladimir Putin发起自二战以来欧洲的最大规模地面战争。你们见证了，甚至有些人参与了，转型的社会和文化运动。就在这个夏天，你们经历了有史以来最热的一个星期，尽管一些人否认气候紧急状况的严重性，甚至否认它的存在。
所以，我能感受到你们可能有一种紧迫感，想要迅速采取行动。但我们对光明和真理的校训促使我们放慢脚步，倾听彼此，处理复杂甚至是相互冲突的观点，深入思考，然后寻找修复问题的方法。
我要明确的是，这并不意味着进步的步伐应该像冰川一样缓慢。不，面对的社会挑战要求我们不停地努力，为这一代和未来的世代。正如耶鲁大学前校长Kingman Brewster Jr.在开学演讲中说的 “在一个生存都是一个严肃问题的世界里，耐心不是容易获得的。”那是对1974届的！他问到，“是什么在支持我们在耐心的学习? ”正如Brewster校长随后所暗示的那样，持久、机构性的进步不仅需要知识，还需要理解。即使是基于最有根据的科学或历史专业知识的解决方案也需要公众的意愿来实施。改变他人的思想需要我们扩大自己的视野；突破是在和声中，而不是在回声室中实现的。如果我们想修复事物，我们必须花时间深入思考。下面这个例子，来自两位耶鲁大学的校友，David Broockman和Joshua Kalla，他们是政治学家，后者现在耶鲁任教。Broockman和Kalla教授专注于政治说服、公众舆论和偏见减少。他们在跨性别权利和移民方面的开创性工作为这些领域以及其他公共话题提供了有意义的行动指导。他们发现，纠正那些与我们有不同看法的人的倾向“可能会让自己的情感得到缓解，但不太可能说服对方。事实上，甚至可能加固他们原有的观念。” 反而“深度游说”，也就是“在人际交往中非判断地交换叙述”，可以“持续地减少排斥态度”。他们在一项保护跨性别人群免受歧视的新法律出台后派出了数十名上门拉票员。一个团队的拉票员“对居民没有提及跨性别恐惧症”，而另一个团队则“提出了敏感的问题，听取了答案，并表现出真正的兴趣，然后再问更多的问题”。结果怎样？“并不是每个人都被说服…但平均来说，后者也就是参与深入、有思考交流的团队经历了跨性别恐惧症的下降，这甚至超过了从1998年到2012年美国人对同性恋的态度的变化。”这些拉票员通过真诚、耐心地倾听，“产生了相当于十四年的社会变革”。所以，我们必须进行严格、细致、是的，有时候也是缓慢的，仔细倾听我们周围的广泛观点的任务，而不是自满地蛮横前行。我们必须发扬提升耐心倾听我们不喜欢的观点的美德，确实是价值，并拒绝公开指责、谴责和排斥的文化。显然，放慢脚步可以获得更快、更有效的结果。在考虑到这个建议的时候，我想起了Reverend Tish Harrison Warren最近与耶鲁神学院的信仰与文化中心探讨耐心为一种美德的研究。她说：“互联网倡导人与人的链接，但确实使我们变得更不耐烦。我是这样认为的，对于变革和对待彼此都是这样。要放慢脚步，去真正努力倾听另一个人的观点，特别是那些和你不同的见解。”我还想到了已故的犹太教拉比勋爵乔纳森·萨克斯Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks，他是我今天提到的另一位获得耶鲁荣誉学位的人，他曾表示，“只有认真聆听对手，你才可能赢得争吵。”
在耶鲁和类似的大学，我们通过教育学生寻找竞争性的观点，评估证据，并调动推理和批判性探询的工具来推进这一有意义的努力。是的，这需要时间和耐心。但博雅教育所提倡的努力的、System 2模式的思考培养了协作，从而推动了我们的世界的广泛贡献。这，我认为，是教育成为“最强大的可用力量”的原因。这是使“耐心的学习”得以支持，事实上，是必要的。
今天，我想用Rabbi Sacks关于接触多样观点的优点所写的部分话作为结语。他在公元前一世纪的犹太学术中指出：“两位伟大的拉比，Hillel和Shammai的学派之间发生了一系列的争论。最终，在大多数问题上，Rabbi Hillel的观点占了上风。塔木德解释了为什么：‘Hillel的门徒们很和蔼，不轻易生气，他们既教授对手的观点，也教授自己的观点；事实上，他们先教授对手的观点。’”他可能会说，通过audi alteram partem，听取另一方的观点，寻求lux et veritas，光明和真理——如果Rabbi Hillel会说拉丁文的话。在高等教育的舞台上，我相信，你们会这样做。在这里，你们会找到一个沉思、相互依赖的思考过程的绿洲—甚至是一个岛屿—通过这种思考过程，积极的变化会得到推进。然后，到时候，你们就能够把这一耶鲁教育的标志性特质应用到实际工作中。你们会知道，花时间看到问题的全貌，去创造一些持久和有益的东西，建立共识。特别是，与那些与你们的世界观不一致的人，不是进步的障碍，而是进步的先决条件。即使你们放慢脚步，思考新的观点，你们仍然会坚守自己的理想，并谨慎的思考如何朝着理想实现它们。我很高兴今天在这里欢迎你们来到耶鲁。我很高兴给你们提出建议：放慢脚步，弥合裂缝。Peter Salovey
耶鲁大学校长
心理学Chris Argyris 讲席教授
翻译｜整理 sherry
