如果你发现了一些新事物，你很有可能会被指控为某种形式的异端。
If you discover something new, there's a significant chance you'll be accused of some form of heresy.
要发现新事物，你必须致力于那些优秀但不显而易见的主意。如果一个主意显而易见地好，别人可能早就已经在做了。一个好主意之所以不显而易见，一个常见的原因是它隐藏在人们深信不疑的某个错误假设的阴影之下。但是，你通过研究这样的主意所发现的任何事物，往往都会与掩盖它的那个错误假设相矛盾。因此，你就会遭到那些固守该错误假设的人的强烈抨击。伽利略和达尔文是这一现象的著名例子，但在对新思想的抵制中，这恐怕始终是一个不可或缺的因素。
To discover new things, you have to work on ideas that are good but non-obvious; if an idea is obviously good, other people are probably already working on it. One common way for a good idea to be non-obvious is for it to be hidden in the shadow of some mistaken assumption that people are very attached to. But anything you discover from working on such an idea will tend to contradict the mistaken assumption that was concealing it. And you will thus get a lot of heat from people attached to the mistaken assumption. Galileo and Darwin are famous examples of this phenomenon, but it's probably always an ingredient in the resistance to new ideas.
因此，对于一个组织或社会来说，形成一种对异端群起而攻之的文化是极其危险的。当你压制异端邪说时，你不仅阻止了人们去反驳你试图保护的那个错误假设，你也压制了任何间接暗示该假设是错误的观点。
So it's particularly dangerous for an organization or society to have a culture of pouncing on heresy. When you suppress heresies, you don't just prevent people from contradicting the mistaken assumption you're trying to protect. You also suppress any idea that implies indirectly that it's false.
每一个被珍视的错误假设周围，都存在一个未被探索的创意盲区。而这个假设越是荒谬，它所造成的盲区就越大。
Every cherished mistaken assumption has a dead zone of unexplored ideas around it. And the more preposterous the assumption, the bigger the dead zone it creates.
不过，这种现象也有积极的一面。如果你正在寻找新创意，一种方法就是去寻找异端邪说。当你从这个角度来看待问题时，错误假设周围那些令人沮丧的巨大盲区，就会变成令人兴奋的、蕴藏着新创意的巨大矿藏。
There is a positive side to this phenomenon though. If you're looking for new ideas, one way to find them is by looking for heresies. When you look at the question this way, the depressingly large dead zones around mistaken assumptions become excitingly large mines of new ideas.