对穴居人而言，很少有东西是资源To a Caveman Very Few Things Are Resources
Brett：英国独立电视台（ITV）报道过一则新闻，说亚马逊制造了多少所谓的浪费——它经常成批销毁大量产品。
我当时想："这些人为什么要把自己的意见强加到一个他们完全不懂的行业上？"难道他们希望亚马逊拥有完美的知识，精确知道该生产多少产品？换句话说，这是一个认识论上根本不可能做到的事。还是说，他们宁愿亚马逊生产不足，让想买的人根本买不到？
亚马逊做的，当然只是让产量略高于需求量。任何生意都是如此——时不时地多生产那么一点点。
Naval：曾经有位风险投资家跟我争辩说，鞋的种类太多了，这正说明资本主义已经失败——因为根本没人需要这么多种类的运动鞋。
我当时问他："你是什么时候知道鞋子太多的？"历史上到底从哪一刻起，我们认定鞋子太多了？此前我们一直需要更多的鞋——我们需要更有弹性的鞋、更耐穿的鞋、鞋底更厚的鞋、更轻的鞋，我们需要各种了不起的鞋子创新。
然后到了某个时刻，有人宣布："其实我们的鞋已经够了，现在该把所有其他鞋款都砍掉了。"你凭什么觉得自己恰好生在正确的时间和地点，能够判断"没错，我们的鞋已经够了"？
这是人人都容易犯的一种狭隘。
这种狭隘还有一个更宏观的版本，就是"资源快要耗尽"的哲学。它源于这样一个想法：地球是有限的，资源总量有限，而我们正在把它们消耗殆尽。因此，如果我们不抑制消费，大家都会完蛋。
首先，你凭什么认定边界是地球？你凭什么断定你的小镇没有在耗尽资源？为什么小镇不是你想要拯救的范围，而范围之外的一切都是外来的、遥不可及的？
为什么要把边界画在地球这里？我们完全可以划到太阳系，划到银河系，划到整个宇宙，甚至可以划到多元宇宙。只要你知道如何去利用，外面有的是资源。
再者，你如何定义什么是资源？所谓资源，不过是通过知识，你能把它从一种东西转化为另一种东西的事物。
曾经有一段时间，煤不是资源，铁也不是资源。对穴居人来说，几乎没有什么是资源——只有几种可食用的植物和动物，仅此而已。
驯化动物、种植作物、冶金、化学、物理、发明引擎和火箭——所有这些都是把我们认为毫无价值的东西变成资源的过程。铀就从一文不值变成了令人惊叹的资源。
这种"世界资源有限"的模型，隐含地假设了知识也是有限的。它等于说：知识的创造已经终结，我们被困在了当下这个节点，因此，基于我们现有的知识，可用的资源就这么多，现在必须开始节约了。
但知识，是我们永远可以创造出更多的东西。
Brett: There was a story on ITV in the U.K. talking about how much supposed waste Amazon produces, that Amazon was routinely destroying a whole bunch of products.
I thought, “Why are these people inserting their opinion into a business that they know absolutely nothing about?” Would they prefer Amazon to have the perfect knowledge of precisely how many products need to be made? In other words, an epistemologically impossible situation to be in. Or would they prefer that Amazon made insufficient products, so the people who wanted to purchase them weren’t actually able to get ahold of them?
What Amazon does, of course, is make slightly more than what they need. That’s what happens in any business. They make slightly more than what they need now and again.
Naval: I once had a venture capitalist argue to me that there were too many kinds of shoes and it was an example of how capitalism had failed because nobody needs this many kinds of sneakers.
My question to him was, “When did you know that there were too many shoes?” What’s the point in history where we decide there are too many shoes? Before we needed more shoes because we needed more stretchy shoes, we needed more durable shoes, we needed thicker soled shoes, we needed lighter shoes, we needed all kinds of amazing shoe innovations.
And then at some point, somebody decides, “Actually we have enough shoes. Now we need to kill all the other shoe lines.” Where did you come up with this idea that you just happened to be born at the right time and the right place to identify that yes we have enough shoes?
This is a certain parochialism that everyone falls into.
There’s a more macro version of it, which is this “we’re running out of resources” philosophy. It starts with this idea that the Earth is finite, that there’s this finite set of resources and we’re consuming them all. And therefore we’re all going to die if we don’t tamp back our consumption.
First of all, how did you decide that it was the Earth? How did you decide that your town wasn’t running out of resources? Why wasn’t the town the actual area that you wanted to save and then everything outside of that was foreign and unreachable?
Why draw the boundary around the Earth? We could go to the solar system. We could go to the galaxy, we could go to the universe. We could go to the multiverse. There are a lot of resources out there if you know how to harness them.
Then, how do you define what a resource is? A resource is just something that through knowledge you can convert from one thing to another.
There was a time when coal wasn’t a resource; iron wasn’t a resource. To a caveman very few things are resources—just a few edible plants and a few edible animals and that’s it.
Domestication, harvesting crops, metallurgy, chemistry, physics, developing engines and rockets—all of these are things that are taking things that we thought were worthless and turning them into resources. Uranium has gone from being completely worthless to being an incredible resource.
This finite resource model of the world implicitly assumes finite knowledge. It says knowledge creation has come to an end. We are stuck at this current point, and, therefore, based on the knowledge that we have currently, these are all the resources available to us. Now we must start conserving.
But knowledge is a thing that we can always create more of.