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9.Amazon We Are What We Choose
9.亞馬遜 選擇塑造人生
But what I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy---they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
但是今天我想對你們說的是，天賦和選擇不同。聰明是一種天賦，而善良是一種選擇。天賦得來很容易——畢竟它們與生俱來。而選擇卻頗為艱難。如果一不小心你可能被天賦所誘惑，這可能會損害到你做出的選擇。
This is a group with many gifts. I'm sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I'm confident that's the case because admission is competitive and if there weren't some signs that you're clever, the dean of admission wouldn't have let you in.
在應各位都擁有許多夭賦。我確信你們的天賦之一就是擁有精明能干的頭腦。我之所以如此確信，是因為入學競爭十分激烈，如果你們不能表現出聰明智慧，便沒有資格進入這所學校。
Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans, plodding as we are, will astonish ourselves. We'll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we'll assemble small machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but inevitable news that we've synthesized life. In the coming years, we'll not only synthesize it, but engineer it to specifications. I believe you'll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton---all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now.
你們的聰明才智必定會派上用場，因為你們將在一片充滿奇跡的土地上前進。我們人類盡管緩步前行，卻終將令自己大吃一驚。我們能夠想方設法制造各種清潔能源，也能夠一個原子一個原子地紐裝微型機械，使之穿過細胞壁，然后修復細胞。這個月，有一件非凡的而不可避免的事情發生了，那就是人類終于合成了生命。在未來幾年，我們不僅會合成生命，還會按說明書驅動它們。我相信你們甚至會看到我們讀懂人類的大腦。儒勒·凡爾納、馬克·吐溫、伽利略、牛頓——所有那些充滿好奇之心的人都希望能夠活到現在。
