📝 本节摘要：
在本章中，Pieter Levels 阐述了他作为“独立黑客”的核心理念：拒绝风险投资，坚持单兵作战，利用极简的技术栈快速验证创意。他通过对比个人开发者与大公司（如 Google）的效率差异，强调了“行动力”的重要性。此外，他分享了健身与体力劳动如何成为他对抗心理压力的良药，以及他为何宁愿做一个快乐的创造者，也不愿成为管理数百人的 CEO。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You've launched a lot of companies and built a lot of products. As you say, most failed, but some succeeded. What's your philosophy behind building the startups that you did?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你发布了很多公司，打造了很多产品。正如你所说，大部分都失败了，但也有一些成功了。你创建这些初创公司背后的哲学是什么？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think my philosophy is very different than most people in startups. 'Cause most people in startups, they build a company and they raise money, right? And they hire people, and then they build a product, and they find something that makes money. I don't really raise money. I don't use VC funding. I do everything myself. I'm a designer. I'm the developer. I make everything, I make the logo. So for me, I'm much more scrappy.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得我的哲学和大多数做初创公司的人非常不同。因为大多数人做初创公司，他们是建立公司，然后融资，对吧？然后他们雇人，打造产品，再寻找能赚钱的东西。我并不真的去融资。我不使用风险投资（VC）。我所有事情都自己做。我是设计师，我是开发者。我制作所有东西，连 Logo 都是我做的。所以对我来说，我更加“草根”（scrappy）。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And because I don't have funding, I need to go fast. I need to make things fast to see if an idea works, right? I have an idea in my mind and I build it, build like a micro, mini startup. And I launch it very quickly, like within two weeks or something of building it, and I check if there's demand. And if people actually sign up, and not just sign up, but if people actually pay money, right? They need to take out their credit cards, pay me money, and then I can see if the idea is validated.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 因为我没有资金，所以我必须快。我必须快速制造出东西来看看这个点子是否行得通，对吧？我脑子里有个想法，我就把它做出来，做一个微型的、迷你的初创项目。然后我非常快地发布它，比如在开发两周内发布，接着检查是否有需求。看人们是否真的注册，而且不仅仅是注册，还得看人们是否真的付钱，对吧？他们得掏出信用卡，付钱给我，然后我就能知道这个想法是否得到了验证。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So there's this rapid iterative phase where you just build a prototype that works, launch it. See if people like it, improving it really, really quickly to see if people like it a little bit more enough to pay, and all that. That whole rapid process is how you think of.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以这是一个快速迭代的阶段，你只是构建一个能用的原型，发布它。看人们是否喜欢，然后非常非常快地改进它，看看人们是否更喜欢它一点，以至于愿意付费等等。这整个快速的过程就是你的思维方式。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, I think it's very rapid, and it's like if I compare to, for example, Google, like big tech companies. Especially Google right now is kind of struggling. They made transformers. They invented all the AI stuff years ago, and they never really shipped. They could have shipped ChatGPT, for example, I think I heard in 2019, and they never shipped it because they were so stuck in bureaucracy.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，我觉得这非常快，如果我和例如 Google 这样的大型科技公司相比的话。特别是 Google 现在有点挣扎。他们做出了 Transformer 模型。他们几年前就发明了所有这些 AI 技术，但他们从未真正发布过。他们本可以发布类似 ChatGPT 的产品，比如我听说是在 2019 年，但他们从未发布，因为他们深陷于官僚主义之中。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But they had everything, they had the data, they had the tech, they had the engineers, and they didn't do it. And it's because these big organizations, it can make you very slow. So being alone by myself on my laptop, in my underwear in a hotel room or something, I can ship very fast, and I don't need to ask legal for like, "Oh, can you vouch for this?" I can just go and ship.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但他们拥有一切，他们有数据，有技术，有工程师，却没做成。这是因为这些大组织会让你变得非常慢。所以我独自一人，拿着笔记本电脑，穿着内裤在酒店房间或其他什么地方，我可以发布得非常快，我不需要去问法务部门，比如“噢，你能担保这个吗？”我直接发布就行了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Do you always code in your underwear? Your profile picture, you're slouching on a couch in your underwear, chilling on a laptop.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你总是穿着内裤写代码吗？你的头像照片里，你正穿着内裤瘫在沙发上，悠闲地玩着笔记本电脑。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: No, but I do wear shorts a lot, and I usually just wear shorts and no T-shirt 'cause I'm always too hot. I'm always overheating.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 没有啦，但我确实经常穿短裤，而且我通常只穿短裤不穿 T 恤，因为我总是觉得太热了。我总是体温过高。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Since I go to the gym, I'm always too hot. What's your favorite exercise in the gym?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 因为我也去健身房，所以我也是总是觉得热。你在健身房最喜欢的动作是什么？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, overhead press.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，过头推举（Overhead press）。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Overhead press like shoulder press?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 过头推举，就像肩推那样？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah. But it feels good 'cause you win, 'cause when you... I do 60 kilos. So it's like 120 pounds or something. It's my only thing I can do well in the gym. And you stand like this and you're like, "I did it," like a winner pose.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对。但这感觉很棒，因为你赢了，因为当你……我做 60 公斤。大概是 120 磅左右。这是我在健身房唯一能做好的项目。而且你像这样站着，你会觉得“我做到了”，就像一个胜利者的姿势。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Hence the mug. Talking to my therapist. It's a deadlift.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以有了这个马克杯。上面写着“正在和我的心理治疗师聊天”。其实是在做硬拉（deadlift）。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah. Because it acts like therapy for me. Which is controversial to say. If I say this on Twitter, people get angry,
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对。因为那对我来说就像治疗一样。这话虽然有争议。如果我在 Twitter 上这么说，人们会生气的。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Physical hardship is a kind of therapy.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 身体上的磨难确实是一种治疗。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, my dad taught me that. My dad always did construction in the house. He's always renovating the house. He breaks through one room and then he goes to the next room, and he is just going in a circle around the house for the last 40 years. So he is always doing construction in the house and it's his hobby.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，这是我爸教我的。我爸总是在家里搞装修。他总是在翻新房子。他打通一个房间，然后去下一个房间，过去 40 年里他就在房子里转圈圈。所以他一直在家里搞装修，这是他的爱好。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: He taught me, when I'm depressed or something, he says, "Get a big," what do you call it? Like a big mountain of sand or something from construction, and just get a shovel and bring it to the other side and just do physical labor, do hard work, and do something. Set a goal, do something. And I kind of did that with startups too.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 他教我，当我抑郁或者怎样的时候，他说，“找一大堆，”怎么说来着？就像装修弄出来的一大堆沙子之类的，拿把铲子把它铲到另一边去，就做这种体力活，做苦力，做点什么。定个目标，行动起来。我做初创公司某种程度上也是这种做法。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Yeah, construction is not about the destination, man. It's about the journey.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 是啊，装修并不在于终点，伙计。而在于过程。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: No, no, its not. It's the journey. No, he doesn't care about the results. Well, he shows me, he's like, "It's amazing." I'm like, "Yeah, it's amazing." But then he wants to go to the next room. But I think it's very metaphorical for work, 'cause I also, I never stop work. I go to the next website, or I make a new one, right? or I make a new startup.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 不，不，这不（是为了结果）。这就是个过程。不，他不关心结果。虽然他会展示给我看，说“这太棒了”。我就说，“是啊，太棒了。”但他接着就想去搞下一个房间了。但我觉得这对工作来说是个很好的隐喻，因为我也是，我从不停止工作。我去搞下一个网站，或者做一个新的，对吧？或者我做一个新的初创项目。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I'm always like... To give you something to wake up in the morning, and like, have coffee and then kiss your girlfriend, and then you have like a goal. Today I'm gonna fix this. Today I'm gonna fix this bug or something. I'm gonna do something. You have something to wake up to. And I think maybe especially as a man, also women, but you need a hard work. You need like an endeavor, I think.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我总是……这给了你早晨醒来的理由，比如喝杯咖啡，亲吻你的女朋友，然后你有一个目标。今天我要修好这个。今天我要修好这个 Bug 之类的。我要做点什么。你有让你醒来的动力。我觉得特别是作为男人，当然女人也是，你需要艰苦的工作。我觉得你需要某种奋斗的事业。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: How much of the building that you do is about money? How much is it about just a deep internal happiness?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你所做的这些构建工作，有多少是为了钱？有多少纯粹是为了内心深处的快乐？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It's really about fun, 'cause I was doing it when I didn't make money, right? That's the point. So I was always coding, I was making music. I made electronic music, drum bass music 20 years ago, and I was always making stuff. So I think creative expression is like a meaningful work that's so important. It's so fun. It's so fun to have like a daily challenge where you try figure stuff out.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 真的主要是为了好玩，因为我在没赚到钱的时候就在做这些了，对吧？这才是重点。所以我以前一直在写代码，做音乐。20 年前我制作电子音乐，鼓打贝斯（Drum & Bass），我一直在创造东西。所以我认为创造性表达是一种非常有意义的工作，这很重要。这太有趣了。每天都有挑战，你去尝试解决问题，这太有趣了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: But the interesting thing is you built a lot of successful products and you never really wanted to take it to that level where you scale real big and sell it to a company or something like this.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 但有趣的是，你打造了很多成功的产品，但你从未真正想过把它们提升到大规模扩张的层级，然后卖给某家公司之类的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I never raised funding for it. And I think, 'cause I don't like the stressful life that comes with it. I have a lot of founder friends and they tell me secretly. With hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and stuff, they tell me, "Next time, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it like you because it's more fun, it's more indie, it's more chill, it's more creative." They don't like to be manager, right? You become like a CEO, you become a manager.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我从未为此融过资。我觉得是因为我不喜欢随之而来的那种高压生活。我有很多创始人朋友，他们私下告诉我。即使拿着数亿美元的融资之类的，他们告诉我，“下次如果我还做，我要像你这样做，因为那样更有趣，更独立，更轻松，更有创造力。”他们不喜欢当管理者，对吧？如果你成了 CEO，你就成了一个管理者。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But look at Elon. He's doing things million times bigger than me, and would I wanna do that? I don't know, you can't really choose these things, right? But I really respect that. I think Elon's very different from VC founders. VC, it's like software. There's a lot of bullshit in this world, I think. There's a lot of there's dodgy, finance stuff happening there, I think.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但看看 Elon Musk。他做的事情比我大一百万倍，我会想做那个吗？我不知道，这事儿你没法真正选择，对吧？但我真的很尊敬他。我觉得 Elon 和那些 VC 支持的创始人非常不同。VC，就像软件行业一样。我觉得这个世界上有很多胡扯。我觉得那里发生着很多狡诈的、金融方面的勾当。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: With Elon, that's not. He's just raising money from investors and he's actually building stuff. He needs the money to build stuff, hard hardware stuff, and that I really respect.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对 Elon 来说不是那样。他只是从投资者那里筹集资金，然后他是真的在造东西。他需要钱来造东西，硬核的硬件产品，这点我非常尊敬。
📝 本节摘要：
本章回顾了 Pieter 人生中的至暗时刻：27岁时，他陷入了迷茫与抑郁，感觉自己一事无成，是个彻底的失败者。关键时刻，父亲关于“搬沙子”的建议——即通过单纯的行动来对抗情绪——启发了他。作为回应，他发起了著名的“12个月12个产品”挑战。此外，他还回忆了童年时为了开通在线支付账户不得不发传真到美国的艰难经历，对比了如今使用 Stripe 创业的便捷性，并介绍了该挑战的第一个产品“Play My Inbox”。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You said that there's been a few low points in your life. You've been depressed, and building is one of the ways you get out of that. Can you talk to that? Can you take me to that place, that time when you were at a low point?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你提到过你人生中有过几次低谷。你曾经历过抑郁，而“构建产品”是你走出抑郁的方式之一。能谈谈这个吗？能不能带我回到那个时刻，那个你处于低谷的时间点？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I was in Holland and I graduated university, and I didn't wanna get a normal job, and I was making some money with YouTube 'cause I had this music career and I uploaded my music to YouTube. And YouTube started paying me with AdSense, like $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month. And all my friends got normal jobs, and we stopped hanging out, 'cause people would, like in university, hang out, chill at each other's houses, you go party.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 当时我在荷兰，刚大学毕业，我不想找一份正常的工作。那时我靠 YouTube 赚点钱，因为我有做音乐的事业，我把音乐上传到 YouTube。YouTube 开始通过 AdSense 给我钱，大概一个月 2000 到 3000 美元。但我所有的朋友都找到了正常工作，我们就停止聚会了。以前在大学里，大家会一起玩，去彼此家里闲逛，去派对。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But when people get jobs, they only party in the weekend, and they don't hang anymore in the week 'cause you need to be at the office. And I was like, "This is not for me. I wanna do something else." And I was starting getting this like, I think it's like Saturn return when you turn 27. It's like some concept where Saturn returns to the same place in the orbit that it was when you're born.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但当人们有了工作，他们只在周末聚会，平时就不出来玩了，因为得去办公室。我就觉得，“这不适合我。我想做点别的。”然后我开始有了那种感觉，我想那就像是你 27 岁时的“土星回归”（Saturn return）。这是一个概念，指土星回到了你出生时它在轨道上的同一个位置。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I'm learning so many things. So many truly special artists died when they were 27.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我真是学到了好多东西。好多真正特别的艺术家都是在 27 岁去世的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Exactly, there's something with 27, man. And it was for me. I started going crazy. Because I didn't really see my future in Holland, buying a house, going living in the suburbs, and stuff. So I flew out, I went to Asia, started digital nomading, and did that for a year.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 没错，27 岁确实有点什么，伙计。对我来说也是。我开始发疯了。因为我真的看不到我在荷兰的未来，买个房子，去郊区生活之类的。所以我飞走了，我去了亚洲，开始做数字游民，那样过了一年。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And then that made me feel even worse, 'cause I was like alone in hotel rooms, looking at the ceiling. What am I doing with my life? I was working on startups and stuff on YouTube, but what is the future here? While my friends in Holland were doing really well and living normal life. So I was getting very depressed and I'm like an outcast. My money was shrinking. I wasn't making money anymore a lot. I was making $500 a month or something.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后那让我感觉更糟了，因为我独自一人在酒店房间里，盯着天花板看。我这辈子在干什么？我在搞初创项目和 YouTube 之类的，但未来在哪里？而我在荷兰的朋友们都过得很好，过着正常的生活。所以我变得非常抑郁，我就像个被抛弃的人。我的钱在缩水。我也没再赚多少钱了。一个月大概就赚 500 美元左右。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I was looking at the ceiling thinking like, "Now I'm 27, I'm a loser." And that's the moment when I started building startups. And it was because my dad said, "If you're depressed, you need to get sand, get shovel, start shoveling, doing something. You can't just sit still." Which is kinda like a interesting way to deal with depression. It's not like, "Oh, let's talk about it." It's more like, "Let's go do something."
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我盯着天花板想，“我现在 27 岁了，我是个失败者（loser）。”就是在那一刻，我开始建立初创公司。那是因为我爸说，“如果你抑郁了，你需要找点沙子，拿把铲子，开始铲沙子，做点事情。你不能就那样坐着不动。”这是一种应对抑郁的有趣方式。它不是那种“噢，咱们来聊聊吧”，而更像是“咱们去做点什么吧”。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I started doing a project called 12 Startups in 12 Months where every month I would make something, like a project, and I would launch it with Stripe, so people could pay for it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 于是我开始做一个叫“12个月12个初创产品”的项目，每个月我会做一个东西，比如一个项目，然后我会加上 Stripe 发布它，这样人们就能付费了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So the basic format is try to build a thing, put it online, and put Stripe to where you can pay money for it.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以基本模式就是试着造个东西，把它放到网上，然后加上 Stripe 让人们可以为此付钱。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, add a Stripe... I'm not sponsored by Stripe, but add a Stripe checkout button.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，加一个 Stripe……我没有被 Stripe 赞助，但是加一个 Stripe 的结账按钮。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Behind the scenes, it must be difficult to actually make that happen because that used to be a huge problem. Just adding a thing, a button where you can pay for a thing.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 在幕后，要真正实现这一点肯定很难，因为那以前是个巨大的问题。就是添加一个东西，一个能让你付款的按钮。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Dude, I know this because when I was nine years old, I was making websites also, and I tried to open a merchant account. There was like before Stripe you would have like, I think it was called Worldpay. So I had to fill out all these forms, and then I had to fax them to America from Holland with my dad's fax.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，我知道这个，因为我在九岁的时候，我也在做网站，我试着去开一个商户账户。那时还没有 Stripe，大概是用一个叫 Worldpay 的东西。所以我得填这一大堆表格，然后用我爸的传真机从荷兰把它们传真到美国。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It was on my dad's name, and he had to sign for this, and he started reading these terms and conditions, which is he's liable for 100 million in damages. And he's like, "I don't wanna sign this." I'm like, "Dad, come on, I need a merchant account. I need to make money on the internet." And he signed it, and we faxed it to America, and I had a merchant accounts, but then nobody paid for anything, so that was the problem.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 那是用我爸的名字申请的，他得签字，然后他开始读那些条款和条件，上面写着他要对 1 亿美元的损失负责。他说，“我不想签这个。”我说，“爸，拜托了，我需要一个商户账户。我需要在互联网上赚钱。”最后他签了，我们把它传真到了美国，我有了商户账户，但后来没人买任何东西，所以那才是问题所在。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So 12 startups in 12 months. Startup number one, what was that? What were you feeling? Were you sitting behind the computer, how much do you actually know about building stuff at that point?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 那么，12个月12个初创产品。第一个初创产品是什么？你当时什么感觉？你坐在电脑后面，那时候你对构建产品实际上了解多少？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Well, I could code a little bit 'cause I did the YouTube channel and I made a website for... I would make websites for the YouTube channel. It was called "Panda Mix Show." And it was like these electronic music mixes, like dubstep, or drum bass, or techno house.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 嗯，我会写一点代码，因为我做过 YouTube 频道，我给……我会给 YouTube 频道做网站。那个频道叫 "Panda Mix Show"。里面是一些电子音乐混音，比如 Dubstep、Drum & Bass 或者 Techno House。
(此处省略一段关于 Flash 技术的讨论，直接进入第一个产品介绍)
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Do you remember the first one you did?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你还记得你做的第一个是什么吗？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think it was Play My Inbox, 'cause back then my friends, we would send like cool... It was before Spotify, I think, we would send music to each other, like YouTube links. This is a cool song, this is a cool song. And it was these giant email threads on Gmail. And they were like unnavigable.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我想是 Play My Inbox（播放我的收件箱），因为那时候我和朋友们，我们会发送很酷的……我想那是在 Spotify 之前，我们会互相发音乐，发 YouTube 链接。这首歌很酷，那首歌很酷。Gmail 里就会有这种巨大的邮件如山，根本没法浏览。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I made an app that would log into your Gmail, get them emails and find ones of YouTube links and then make kinda like a gallery of your songs. Essentially Spotify, and my friends loved it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我做了一个 App，它会登录你的 Gmail，获取那些邮件，找到带有 YouTube 链接的邮件，然后做成一个类似歌曲画廊的东西。本质上就是 Spotify，我的朋友们都很喜欢。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: That was fun. And that first product already would get pressed, when think like some tech media and stuff. And I was like, that's cool. It didn't make money, there was no payment button, but actually people using it. I think tens of thousands of people used it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 那很有趣。而且那第一个产品就已经获得了媒体报道，我想是一些科技媒体之类的。我觉得那太酷了。它没赚到钱，没有支付按钮，但真的有人在用。我想有成千上万的人使用了它。
📝 本节摘要：
本章深入探讨了数字游民生活方式背后不为人知的一面。Pieter 坦诚分享了长期旅居带来的心理压力：虽然摆脱了社会期望的束缚，但极致的自由往往伴随着极度的迷茫与孤独（“我自由了，所以我迷失了”）。他回忆了早期游民圈子中充斥着的灰色产业，以及为了对抗孤独，他与朋友在巴厘岛彻夜狂欢般工作的疯狂经历——伴随着工业 Techno 音乐和 30 杯拿铁，直到清晨的第一缕阳光洒下。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Actually, can we go back to the, you laying in a room feeling like a loser? I still feel like a loser sometimes. Can you speak to that feeling, to that place of just like, feeling like a loser? Because I think a lot of people in this world are laying in a room right now listening to this. And feeling like a loser.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 实际上，我们能不能回到那个场景，你躺在房间里觉得自己像个失败者的时候？我有时仍然觉得自己像个失败者。你能谈谈那种感觉吗，那种觉得自己一无是处的处境？因为我觉得在这个世界上，此时此刻正有很多人躺在房间里听着这段对话，并且觉得自己像个失败者。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Okay, so I think it's normal if you're young that you feel like a loser, first of all. Especially, when you're 27. Yeah, especially. I think 20 is the peak. And so I would not kill yourselves. It's very important. Just get through it. Because you have nothing, probably no money, you have no business, you have no job yet.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 好的，首先我觉得如果你很年轻，感觉自己像个失败者是很正常的。特别是当你 27 岁的时候。对，特别是那时候。我觉得 20 多岁是个（情绪波动的）高峰。所以我建议不要自杀。这很重要。只要熬过去就好。因为你一无所有，可能没钱，没生意，还没工作。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Jordan Peterson said this, I saw it somewhere, people are depressed because they have nothing. They don't have a girlfriend. They don't have a boyfriend. They don't have a... You need stuff, you need like, or a family. You need things around you. You need to build a life for yourself. If you don't build a life for yourself, you'll be depressed.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: Jordan Peterson 说过这个，我在哪儿看到的，人们抑郁是因为他们一无所有。他们没有女朋友，没有男朋友，没有……你需要一些东西，你需要比如家庭。你需要周围有东西支撑。你需要为自己建立一种生活。如果你不为自己建立生活，你就会抑郁。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So if you're alone in Asia in a hostel looking at the ceiling, and you don't have any money coming in, you don't have a girlfriend, you don't, of course, you're depressed. It's logic. But back then, if you're in a moment, you think there's not logic, there's something wrong with me.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以如果你独自一人在亚洲的旅舍里盯着天花板，没有收入，没有女朋友，你当然会抑郁。这很合逻辑。但在当时，如果你身处其中，你会觉得这没逻辑，你会觉得是我自己出了问题。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And also I think I started getting like anxiety, and I think I started going a little bit crazy where I think travel can make you sane. And I know this because I know that there's like digital nomads that they kill themselves. I haven't checked the comparison with baseline people, like suicide rate. But I have a hunch, especially in the beginning when it was a very new thing like 10 years ago, that it can be very psychologically taxing.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 而且我觉得我开始变得焦虑，我觉得我开始有点发疯了，虽然我认为旅行本该让你理智。我知道这点是因为我知道有些数字游民自杀了。我没查过这跟普通人自杀率的对比数据。但我有种直觉，特别是在早期，比如 10 年前这还是个很新鲜的事物时，这种生活在心理上是非常沉重的负担。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And you're alone a lot, back then when you travel alone, there was no other digital nomads back then, a lot. So you're in a strange culture. You look different in everybody. I was in Asia, everybody's really nice in Thailand, but you're not part of the culture. You're traveling around, you're hopping from city to city. You don't have a home anymore. You feel disrooted.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 你经常独自一人，那时候你独自旅行，那时还没有多少其他的数字游民。所以你身处一个陌生的文化中。你在人群中显得格格不入。我在亚洲，泰国的每个人都非常好，但你并不属于那个文化。你四处旅行，从一个城市跳到另一个城市。你不再有家了。你感到无根无依。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: And you're constantly in the outcast and that you're different from everybody else.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你一直处于被排斥的状态，你和所有人都不同。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yes, exactly. Like Thailand, people are so nice. But you still feel like outcast. And then I think the digital nomads I met then were all kinda like, it was like shady business. But they were like vigilantes 'cause it was a new thing. And one guy was selling illegal drugs. It was an American guy. It was selling illegal drugs via UPS to Americans on this website. There were a lot of dropshippers doing shady stuff. There's a lot of shady things going on there.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，没错。像在泰国，人们真的很好。但你还是觉得像个局外人。而且那时我遇到的数字游民，都有点像是在做灰色生意。但他们像法外之徒，因为那是个新事物。有个家伙在卖非法药物。是个美国人。他在网站上通过 UPS 把非法药物卖给美国人。还有很多做代发货（Dropshipping）的人在搞些见不得光的事。那里发生着很多阴暗的事情。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And they didn't look like very balanced people. They didn't look like people I wanted to hang with. So I also felt outcast from other foreigners in Thailand, other digital nomads. And I was like, "Man, I made a big mistake." And then I went back to Holland and then I got even more depressed.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 他们看起来不像心态很平衡的人。他们看起来不像是我想与之交往的人。所以我感觉在泰国的其他外国人、其他数字游民中间也是个局外人。我就想，“天哪，我犯了个大错。”然后我回到了荷兰，结果变得更抑郁了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You said digital nomad. What is digital nomad? What is that way of life? What is the philosophy there? And the history of the movement.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你提到了数字游民。什么是数字游民？那是一种什么样的生活方式？背后的哲学是什么？还有这个运动的历史。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I struck upon it on accident. 'Cause I was like, I'm gonna graduate university and then I need to get out of here. I'll fly to Asia... And it's cheap. It's very cheap. Chiang Mai, I would live like for $150 per month rent. So I struggled on this on accident. I was like, okay, there's other people on laptops working on their startup or working remotely.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我是偶然撞上这个概念的。因为我当时想，我要大学毕业了，然后我得离开这儿。我要飞去亚洲……而且那里很便宜。非常便宜。在清迈，我的房租大概只要 150 美元一个月。所以我完全是误打误撞。我当时想，好吧，这里还有其他拿着笔记本电脑做初创项目或者远程工作的人。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Back then nobody worked remotely, but they worked on their businesses, right? And they would live in Columbia or Thailand or Vietnam or Bali. They would live kind of like in more cheap places. And it looked a very adventurous life. You travel around, you build your business. There's no pressure from your home society, right?
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 那时候还没人远程办公，但他们在经营自己的生意，对吧？他们住在哥伦比亚、泰国、越南或者巴厘岛。他们住在那些物价比较低的地方。这看起来是非常充满冒险的生活。你四处旅行，建立你的事业。没有来自家乡社会的压力，对吧？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: You get pressure from American society telling you kind of what to do. You need to buy a house or you need to do this stuff. I had this in Holland too. And you can get away from this pressure. You can kind of feel like you're free. There's nobody telling you what to do. But that's also why you start feeling like you go crazy 'cause you are free, you're disattached from anything and anybody, you're disattached from your culture.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 你会感受到来自美国社会的压力，告诉你该做什么。你需要买房，或者你需要做这些事。我在荷兰也有这种感觉。你可以逃离这种压力。你会觉得你是自由的。没人告诉你该做什么。但这也就是你开始觉得发疯的原因，因为你自由了，你和任何事、任何人都断了联系，你脱离了你的文化。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I think Franz Kafka said, "I'm free, therefore I'm lost."
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我想弗朗茨·卡夫卡说过，“我自由了，所以我迷失了。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, that's so true. Yeah, that's exactly the point. And yeah, freedom is like, it's the definition of no constraints, right? Anything is possible. You can go anywhere. And everybody's like, "Oh, that must be super nice." Freedom, you must be very happy. And it's opposites, I don't think that makes you happy. I think constraints probably make you happy, and that's a big lesson I learned then.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，这太真实了。对，这就是重点。自由就像是，它的定义就是没有约束，对吧？一切皆有可能。你可以去任何地方。大家都觉得，“噢，那肯定超级棒。”自由，你肯定很开心。但事实恰恰相反，我不觉得那会让你开心。我觉得约束可能才会让你开心，这是我那时学到的一个大教训。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: But what were they making for money? So you're saying they were doing shady stuff at that time?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 但他们靠什么赚钱？你是说他们那时候在做些见不得人的勾当？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: For me, 'cause I was more like a developer. I wanted to make startups kind of... I wanted to make real startups and that was my thing. I would read Hacker News, like Y Combinator, and they were making cool stuff. So I wanted to make cool stuff.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对我来说，因为我更像是个开发者。我想做初创公司那一类的……我想做真正的初创公司，那是我想做的事。我会读 Hacker News，像 Y Combinator 那样，他们在做很酷的东西。所以我也想做很酷的东西。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What are some happy memories? Just like working, working in cafes or working in just the freedom that envelopes you from that way of life...
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 有什么快乐的回忆吗？比如在咖啡馆工作，或者那种生活方式带来的被自由包裹的感觉……
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think it was amazing. We would work. I would make friends and we would work until 6:00 AM in Bali, for example, with Andre, my best friend was still my best friend and another friend, and we would work until the morning when the sun came up. Because at night, the coworking space was silence. There was nobody else.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得那很棒。我们会工作。我交了朋友，比如在巴厘岛我们会工作到早上 6 点，和 Andre——我最好的朋友，现在还是——还有另一个朋友，我们会一直工作到早晨太阳升起。因为在晚上，联合办公空间是安静的。没有其他人。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I would wake up 6:00 PM or 5:00 PM. I would drive to the coworking space on a motorbike. I would buy 30 hot lattes from a cafe.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我会在下午 6 点或 5 点醒来。骑摩托车去联合办公空间。我会从咖啡馆买 30 杯热拿铁。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Did you say three, zero, 30?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你是说三、零，30 杯？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah. And we would drink like four per person or something. Man, it's Bali. I don't know if they were powerful lattes, but they were lattes and we'd put 'em in a plastic bag and then we'd drive there and all the coffee was like falling everywhere. And then we'd go negotiate and have these coffees here and we'd work all night. We'd play like techno music, and everybody would just work in there. This was literally like business people. They would work in their startup and we'd all try and make something.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对。我们每人大概喝四杯之类的。伙计，那是在巴厘岛。我不知道那拿铁劲儿够不够大，但确实是拿铁，我们把它们装在塑料袋里，然后骑车过去，咖啡洒得到处都是。然后我们就在那里喝着咖啡通宵工作。我们放着 Techno 音乐，大家就在那里埋头苦干。就像真正的生意人一样。他们在做他们的初创项目，我们都在努力做出点什么。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And then the sun would come up and the morning people, the yoga, yoga girls and yoga guys would come in after the yoga class at six, and they'd say, "Hey, good morning." And we're like, we look like this. And we're like, what's up, how are you doing? And we didn't know how bad we looked, but it was very bad. And then we'd go home, sleep in a hostel or a hotel and do the same thing and again and again and again. And it was this lock-in mode, like working. And that was very fun.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后太阳升起来了，早起的人，那些瑜伽女孩和瑜伽小伙会在六点上完课后走进来，他们说，“嘿，早上好。”而我们就那样看着。我们说，“咋样，你好吗？”我们不知道自己看起来有多糟，但肯定非常糟。然后我们回家，睡在旅舍或酒店里，然后不断重复这一过程。那是一种锁定模式，就是工作。那真的很有趣。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So it's just a bunch of you techno music blasting all through the night, yeah.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以就是你们一帮人伴着整夜轰鸣的 Techno 音乐。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: More like (imitates techno music) Like industrial. Not like this cheesy.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 更像是（模仿 Techno 音乐节奏），像是工业风格的。不是那种俗气的。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Do you remember a time you had woken in a strange town and felt like that? We're talking about small towns or big towns or?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你还记得你在一个陌生的城镇醒来并有那种感觉的时刻吗？是小镇还是大城市？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, anywhere. I think I wrote it in some blog posts... It was a common thing when you would wake up and this was like... I have this website. I started a website about this digital nomads, called nomadlist.com. And this was a community, so it was like 3,000 other digital nomads, 'cause I was feeling lonely. So I built this website and I stopped feeling lonely.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，任何地方。我想我在一些博客文章里写过……当你醒来时，这很常见……我有个网站。我做了一个关于数字游民的网站，叫 NomadList.com。这是一个社区，大概有 3000 个其他的数字游民，因为我当时感到很孤独。所以我建了这个网站，我就不再感到孤独了。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It was very common that people would say, they would wake up and they would forget where they are. For the first half minute. And I had to look outside like, where am I? Which country? Which sounds really like privileged, but it was more like funny. You literally don't know where you are because you're so disrooted.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 大家经常说，他们醒来时会忘记自己在哪儿。在最初的半分钟里。我得往窗外看，心想，我在哪儿？哪个国家？这听起来好像很优越，但更多的是好笑。你真的不知道自己在哪，因为你完全没有根基。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But there's something... Man, it's like Anthony Bourdain. There's something pure about this kinda vagabond travel thing. It's behind me, I think. Now I travel with my girlfriend, right? It's very different. But it is a romantic, memories of this kind of like vagabond, individualistic solo life. But the thing, it didn't make me happy, but it was very cool.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但这有点……伙计，就像安东尼·波登（Anthony Bourdain）。这种流浪式的旅行有一种纯粹的东西。我觉得这已经过去了。现在我和女朋友一起旅行，对吧？这非常不同。但这是一种浪漫的、关于这种流浪的、个人主义的独行生活的回忆。但问题是，它并没有让我快乐，尽管它非常酷。
📝 本节摘要：
在本章中，Pieter 揭示了他的创意生成机制的转变：从早期的“寻找生活痛点”转变为“探索新技术的可能性”。他详细讲述了 Photo AI 是如何通过一系列“玩票”性质的实验诞生的——从利用 Stable Diffusion 生成虚构豪宅，到转型做室内设计 AI，最终因试图看清自己长相（被网友嘲笑像“双髻鲨”）而训练出人像模型。此外，他还分享了当独立开发者面对资本雄厚的竞争对手（如 Lensa）时的心态：与其愤怒，不如致敬并寻找差异化生存之道。他更是透露了 Photo AI 早期“人工职能”的真相——通过 Typeform 收集图片，手动解压压缩包，这再次印证了他“先验证，后自动化”的原则。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: How do you find a good idea?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你是如何找到一个好点子的？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I think you need to be able to spot problems. So for example, you can go in your daily life, when you wake up and you're like, what are stuff that I'm really annoyed with? In my daily life that doesn't function well, and that's a problem that you can see. Okay, maybe that's something I can add, write code about, code for and it will make my life easier.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得你需要能够发现问题。比如，你可以回顾你的日常生活，当你醒来时你会想，有什么东西真的让我很烦？在我的日常生活中有什么运作得不好，那就是你能看到的一个问题。好吧，也许我可以为此加点什么，写点代码，让我的生活更轻松。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Right now I think like, because I already have money, I can do more things based on technology. So for example, AI, when I found out about when Stable Diffusion came or ChatGPT and stuff, all these things were like, I didn't start working with them because I had a problem. I had no problems. But I was very curious about technology and I was like playing with it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 现在我的想法是，因为我已经有钱了，我可以基于技术做更多的事情。比如 AI，当我发现 Stable Diffusion 或者 ChatGPT 出来的时候，所有这些东西，我开始研究它们并不是因为我有问题要解决。我没有问题。但我对技术非常好奇，我就开始玩它。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I was trying to see like what is it good at? Is it good at people? No, it's really bad at people, but it was good at houses. So architecture, for example, I would generate like architecture houses. So I made a website called thishousedoesnotexist.org. And it generated like, they called it like house porn at that one.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我试着看看它擅长什么？擅长画人吗？不，它画人画得很烂，但它擅长画房子。比如建筑，我会生成像建筑风格的房子。所以我做了一个网站叫 thishousedoesnotexist.org（此房不存在）。它生成的内容，那时人们称之为“房产色情片”（house porn，指极具吸引力的房屋图片）。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But then I saw it was really good at interior, so I pivoted to interiorai.com where I tried to like upload first generate interior designs. And then I tried to do like, there was a new technology called Image to Image where you can input an image, like a photo, and it would kind of modify the thing.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但后来我发现它真的很擅长室内设计，所以我转型做了 interiorai.com，我尝试先生成室内设计。然后我试着做……当时有一种新技术叫“图生图”（Image to Image），你可以输入一张图像，比如一张照片，它会对其进行修改。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I would upload a photo of my interior where I lived, and I would ask like change this into like a, I don't know, like maximalist design. And it worked and it worked really well. So I was like, okay, this is a startup, 'cause obviously interior design AI, and nobody's doing that yet.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我会上传一张我自己住处的室内照片，然后要求它把这改成，比如，极繁主义设计。结果它成功了，而且效果非常好。所以我想，好吧，这是一个初创项目，因为很明显这是“室内设计 AI”，而且还没人在做。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And then for fun, I uploaded photos of myself, and here's where it happened. And to train myself like, and this would never work obviously. And it worked. And actually it started understanding me as a concept. So my face worked, and you could do like different styles, me as like very cheesy, medieval warrior, all this stuff. So I was like, this is another startup. So now I did avatarai.me.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后为了好玩，我上传了我自己的照片，就在这时候事情发生了。我训练模型识别我，我想这肯定行不通。结果它行得通。实际上它开始把我作为一个概念来理解。所以我的脸能用，你可以做不同的风格，比如把我变成非常俗气的中世纪战士，诸如此类。所以我想，这又是一个初创项目。于是我做了 avatarai.me。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: But I remember seeing a lot of really, really hilarious photos. I think you were using yourself as a case study. There's a tweet here... "I trained an ML model on my face. Because my eyes are quite far apart."
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 但我记得看到过很多真的非常搞笑的照片。我想你是拿自己当案例研究。这儿有一条推文……“我训练了一个机器学习模型来识别我的脸。因为我的两眼间距很宽。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I learned when I did YouTube, I would put a photo of like my DJ photo, my mixture. And people would say I look like a hammerhead shark. It was like the top comment. So then I realized my eyes are far apart.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 这是我做 YouTube 时学到的，我会放一张我的 DJ 照片，我的混音带封面。然后人们会说我长得像一只双髻鲨（hammerhead shark）。那是点赞最高的评论。所以我那时候才意识到我的两眼间距很宽。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I did this [Avatar AI] and then I was getting DMs... how can I do the same thing? I want these photos. My girlfriend wants these photos. So I was like, okay, this is obviously a business, but I didn't have time to code it... So I made a HTML page, registered domain name. It was a Stripe payment link, which means you have literally a link to Stripe to pay, but there's no code in the back.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我做了这个 [Avatar AI] 之后就开始收到私信……怎么才能做同样的事？我想要这些照片。我女朋友想要这些照片。所以我想，好吧，这显然是个生意，但我没时间去写代码……所以我做了一个 HTML 页面，注册了域名。放了一个 Stripe 支付链接，这意味你真的只有一个去 Stripe 付款的链接，但后端没有任何代码。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Then I added like a Typeform link... So enter the email, upload the photos... So I had to do manually. So the first few hundred, I just literally took their photos, train them, and then I would generate the photos with the prompts, and I had this text file with the prompts, and I would do everything manually.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后我加了一个 Typeform 链接……所以输入邮箱，上传照片……所以我必须手动操作。前几百个客户，我真的就是拿他们的照片，训练模型，然后用提示词生成照片，我有一个写着提示词的文本文件，我所有事情都手动完成。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Literally, and you unzipped it. One by one.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 真的啊，你自己解压压缩包。一个接一个。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yes. No, because you know, do things that don't scale. Paul Graham says, right? And then I would train, and I would email them the photos, I think from my personal email say, "Here's your avatars."
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的。不，因为你知道，“做那些无法扩展的事”（Do things that don't scale）。Paul Graham 说的，对吧？然后我会训练，我会把照片发邮件给他们，我想我是用我的个人邮箱发的，说“这是你的头像。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And then big, this is very interesting, the big VC companies like Lensa... They quickly built an iOS app that does the same. And I think they made like $30 million with it. They became like the top grossing app after that.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后大的来了，这很有趣，像 Lensa 这样的大型风投公司……他们迅速开发了一个做同样事情的 iOS App。我想他们靠这个赚了大概 3000 万美元。在那之后他们成了收入最高的 App。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: How do you feel about that? You didn't have like a feeling like, ah, fuck.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你对此感觉如何？你没有那种感觉吗，比如，“啊，该死。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: No, I was a little bit like sad, 'cause all my products would work out and I never had like real fierce competition. And now I have fierce competition from like a very skilled high talent... But I think it's amazing, honestly... I think they made so much money. I think they did a really great job. And I also made a lot of money with it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 不，我也有一点点难过，因为我所有的产品通常都能成，而且我从未遇到过真正激烈的竞争。而现在我面临着来自非常有技术含量、高天赋团队的激烈竞争……但老实说，我觉得这很了不起……我觉得他们赚了那么多钱。我觉得他们干得非常漂亮。而且我也靠这个赚了不少钱。
📝 本节摘要：
本章中，Pieter Levels 揭示了他构建千万级营收产品的极简技术栈：原生 HTML、PHP、jQuery 和 SQLite。他直言不讳地批评了现代软件开发中流行的“框架崇拜”，认为许多复杂的技术框架背后是风险投资和营销在推波助澜，而非出于实用性。他指出，对于独立开发者而言，最重要的不是使用“正确”或“时髦”的技术，而是使用自己熟悉工具快速发布产品并验证商业模式。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So this whole interface you've built... It's so jQuery.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以你构建的这整个界面……真是太 jQuery 了。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I still use jQuery.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 没错，我还在用 jQuery。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: The only one.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 唯一一个还在用的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Still.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 依然在用。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: After 10 years.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 10 年后还在用。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: To this day.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 直到今天。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You're not the only one, the entire of the web.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你不是唯一一个，整个互联网都在用。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: This PHP.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 还有 PHP。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: PHP and jQuery. Yeah, SQLite.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: PHP 和 jQuery。对，还有 SQLite。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You're just like one of the top performers from a programming perspective that are still openly talking about it. But everyone's using PHP. Most of the web is still probably PHP and jQuery.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 从编程的角度来看，你是顶尖的表现者之一，而且还公开谈论这些技术。但其实大家都在用 PHP。大部分网络可能依然是 PHP 和 jQuery 构成的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think 70%, 'cause of WordPress, right? 'Cause the blogs are-
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我想有 70%，因为 WordPress，对吧？因为那些博客都是——
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Yeah, that's true.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 是的，没错。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I'm seeing a revival now. People are getting sick of frameworks. Like all the JavaScript frameworks are so like, what do you call it? Like wieldy, so it takes so much work to just maintain this code and then it updates to a new version. You need to change everything. PHP just stays the same and works.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我现在看到一种复兴。人们开始厌倦框架了。所有的 JavaScript 框架都太……怎么说呢？太笨重了，光是维护代码就要花好多功夫，然后它更新到一个新版本，你又得改所有东西。PHP 始终如一，而且一直能用。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Yeah, can you actually just speak to that stack? You build all your websites, apps, startups, projects, all of that with mostly vanilla HTML. JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, and SQLite. And so that's a really simple stack, and you get stuff done really fast. Can you just speak to the philosophy behind that?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 是的，你能具体聊聊这个技术栈吗？你构建所有的网站、App、初创公司、项目，所有这些主要都是用原生的 HTML、JavaScript、jQuery、PHP 和 SQLite。这是一个非常简单的技术栈，而且你能非常快地把事情做完。能谈谈这背后的哲学吗？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think it's accidental, 'cause that's the thing I knew, like I knew PHP, I knew HTML, CSS, 'cause you make websites and when my startups started taking off, I didn't have time to... I remember putting on my to-do list like learn Node.js, 'cause it's important to switch, 'cause this obviously is much better language than PHP, and I never learned it. I never did it, 'cause I didn't have time.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得这是偶然的，因为那就是我懂的东西，我懂 PHP，我懂 HTML、CSS，因为你是做网站的嘛。当我的初创公司开始起飞时，我没有时间去……我记得我在待办事项清单上写过“学习 Node.js”，因为切换过去很重要，因为那显然是比 PHP 更好的语言，但我从未去学。我从未做这件事，因为我没时间。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: These things were growing like this, and I was launching more project and I never had time. It's like one day, I'll start coding properly and I never got to it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 这些项目长势迅猛，我又在发布更多的项目，我根本没时间。就像是想着“总有一天，我会开始‘正确地’写代码”，但我从未走到那一步。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I sometimes wonder if I need to learn that stuff. It's still to do for me to really learn Node.js or Flask or these kind of... React. It feels like a responsible software engineer should know how to use these, but you can get stuff done so fast with vanilla versions of stuff.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我有时也想我是不是需要学那些东西。对我来说，真正学习 Node.js 或 Flask 或者这类……React，依然在我的待办清单上。感觉一个负责任的软件工程师应该知道怎么用这些，但用原生版本的东西你确实能干得非常快。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, it's like software developers if you wanna get a job and it's like, you know, people making stuff like startups and if you want to be entrepreneur probably maybe shouldn't, right?
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，如果你是想找工作的软件开发人员（那可能需要学），但如果你是做产品、做初创公司的，如果你想成为企业家，可能就不该学，对吧？
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I wonder if there's like, I really wanna measure performance and speed. I think there's a deep wisdom in that. I do think that frameworks and just constantly wanting to learn the new thing that's complicated way of software engineering gets in the way.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我在想是不是有种……我真的很想衡量一下性能和速度。我觉得那里面有深刻的智慧。我确实认为框架，以及总是想学习新东西的那种复杂的软件工程方式，实际上构成了阻碍。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So I don't know, but it just feels like you can get so much more stuff done if you don't care about how you do it.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以我不知道，但感觉如果你不在乎“怎么做”，你能完成的事情会多得多。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, this is my most controversial take, I think, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there's frameworks now that raise money. They raise a lot of money. They raise 50 million, 100 million, $30 million. And the idea is that you need to make the developers, the new developers, like when you're 18 or 20 years old, right? Get them to use this framework and add a platform to it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，这是我最具争议的观点，我想，也许我是错的，但我感觉现在的框架是在融资。它们融了很多钱。它们融了 5000 万、1 亿、3000 万美元。这个理念就是你需要让开发者，新一代的开发者，比如当你 18 或 20 岁的时候，对吧？让他们使用这个框架，并为其附加一个平台。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Where the framework can... It's open source, but you probably should use the platform which is paid to use it. And the cost of the platforms to host it are a thousand times higher than just hosting it on a simple AWS server or a VPS on DigitalOcean, right? So there's obviously like a monetary incentive here.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 这个框架……它是开源的，但你可能应该使用那个付费平台来运行它。而这些托管平台的成本比仅仅在简单的 AWS 服务器或 DigitalOcean 的 VPS 上托管要高出一千倍，对吧？所以这里显然有金钱上的动机。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: We wanna get a lot of developers to use this technology and then we need to charge them money 'cause they're gonna use it in startups and then the starters can pay for the bills. It kind of destroys the information out there about learning to code because they pay YouTubers, they pay influencers, developer influencers is a big thing to like... And same thing what happens with like nutrition and fitness or something.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我们想让很多开发者使用这项技术，然后我们需要向他们收费，因为他们会在初创公司里使用它，然后这些初创者会买单。这在某种程度上破坏了关于学习编程的信息环境，因为他们付钱给 YouTuber，付钱给网红，“开发者网红”是个很大的现象……就像营养学和健身领域发生的事情一样。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Same thing happens in developing, they pay this influencer to promote this stuff, use it, make stuff with it, make demo products with it. And then a lot of people are like, "Wow, use this." And I started noticing this 'cause when I would ship my stuff, people would ask me, "What are you using?" I would say, "Just PHP, jQuery, why does it matter?"
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 开发领域也发生了同样的事，他们付钱给这个网红来推广这个东西，使用它，用它做东西，用它做演示产品。然后很多人就会说，“哇，用这个。”我开始注意到这点是因为当我发布我的产品时，人们会问我，“你用的是什么？”我会说，“就是 PHP，jQuery，这有什么关系吗？”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And people would start kind of attacking me like, "Why are you not using this new technology, this new framework, this new thing?" And I say, "I don't know, 'cause this PHP thing works and I'm optimizing for anything, it just works."
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后人们就开始有点攻击我，像是，“你为什么不用这个新技术，这个新框架，这个新东西？”我说，“我不知道，因为这个 PHP 能用，我也不是为了别的什么在优化，它就是能用。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I never understood like why, I understand there's new technologies that are better and there should be improvement, but I'm very suspicious of money. Just like lobbying. There's money in this developer framework scene. There's hundreds of millions that goes to ads or influencer or whatever.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我一直不理解为什么，我明白有更好的新技术，也应该有进步，但我对金钱非常怀疑。就像政治游说一样。在开发者框架这个圈子里有钱在流动。有数亿美元流向广告或者网红或者其他什么地方。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It can't all go to developers. You don't need so many developers for a framework, and it's open source. To make a lot of more money on these startups.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 这些钱不可能全给开发者。开发一个框架不需要那么多开发者，而且它是开源的。这是为了从这些初创公司身上赚更多的钱。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Anyway, I just sort of questioning the conventional wisdom that keeps wanting to push software engineers towards frameworks, towards complex... Like super complicated sort of software engineering approaches that stretch out the time it takes to actually build a thing.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 总之，我只是有点质疑那种传统智慧，那种一直想把软件工程师推向框架，推向复杂……推向那种超级复杂的软件工程方法，结果反而拉长了真正构建出一个东西所需的时间。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, 100%. And it's the same thing with big corporations. 80% of the people don't do anything. It's not efficient. Your benchmark is like people building stuff that actually gets done and like for society, right?
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，百分之百同意。大公司也是一样。80% 的人什么都不做。这没有效率。你的基准应该是那些真正把东西做出来并且对社会有用的人，对吧？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: If we wanna save time, we should probably use technology that's simple, that's pragmatic, that works, that's not overly complicated. It doesn't make your life like a living hell.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 如果我们想节省时间，我们可能应该使用简单的、务实的、管用的、不过度复杂的技术。这不会让你的生活变成活地狱。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: And use a framework one that obviously solves a problem, a direct problem that you-
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 并且只使用那些明显解决了问题，解决了你直接面临的问题的框架——
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Of course, yeah, of course. I'm not saying you should code without a framework. You should use whatever you want. Yeah, think it's suspicious. And I think it's suspicious. When I talk about it on the Twitter, there's this army comes out. There's these framework armies.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 当然，是的，当然。我不是说你应该不用框架写代码。你应该用你想用的任何东西。但我认为这很可疑。我觉得这很可疑。当我在 Twitter 上谈论这个的时候，就会有一支军队冒出来。那些“框架大军”。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I wanna ask the framework army, what have they built this week? It's the Elon question. What did you do this week?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我想问问这支框架大军，他们这周造了什么？这就是那个 Elon 问题。你这周做了什么？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, did you make money with it? Did you charge users? Is it a real business? Yeah.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，你用它赚钱了吗？你向用户收费了吗？这是一门真正的生意吗？
📝 本节摘要：
在本章中，Pieter 揭开了早期开源 AI 模型的一个“公开秘密”：许多逼真的微调模型实际上是基于成人内容训练的，这迫使他在 Photo AI 中必须使用“负向提示词”和 Google Vision API 来过滤不雅内容。此外，他深入探讨了用户对自己长相的心理认知——所谓的“面部畸形恐惧”（Face Dysmorphia）。他指出，AI 往往比人类自己更客观地捕捉到了面部特征（如他自己的“双髻鲨”眼距），而用户往往只接受自己想象中的样子。最后，他分享了微调模型的关键技巧：保持面部特征的一致性，同时最大化背景、光线和服装的多样性，以防止模型“死记硬背”错误的特征。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So the photo realistic models that are like fine tunes. They were all trained on porn in the beginning. And it was a guy called Hassan. So I was trying to figure out how to do photo realistic AI photos. Stable Diffusion by itself is not doing that well. The faces look all mangled.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 那些看起来很逼真的微调模型，它们一开始其实都是用色情内容训练出来的。有个叫 Hassan 的家伙做的。当时我正试图搞清楚怎么生成逼真的 AI 照片。Stable Diffusion 原生模型做得并不好。人脸看起来都是扭曲的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But I started seeing these base models, these fine models and people would train on porn and I would try them and they would be very photorealistic. They would have bodies that actually made sense like body anatomy. But if you look at the photo realistic models that people use now, still, there's still core of porn there, of naked people.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但我开始看到这些基础模型，这些微调模型，人们用色情内容去训练，我试了一下，它们非常逼真。它们的身体结构，比如人体解剖学结构，实际上是合理的。但如果你看现在人们使用的那些逼真模型，它们的内核里依然有色情内容，有裸体的人。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I need to prompt out the naked and everyone needs to do this with AI startups, with imaging. You need to prompt out the naked stuff. You need to put a naked...
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我必须通过提示词把裸体内容“剔除”出去，所有做图像类 AI 初创公司的人都得这么干。你需要把那些裸露的东西通过反向提示词去掉。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You have to keep reminding the model. You need to put clothes on the thing.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你得不断提醒模型。你得给这东西穿上衣服。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, don't put naked 'cause it's very risky. I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it's shown to the user to like check for NSFW.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，别搞裸体，因为那风险很大。我用 Google Vision 在每张照片展示给用户之前进行检查，看看有没有不雅内容（NSFW）。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Like the nipple detector? Oh, NSFW detector.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 就像乳头探测器？噢，是不雅内容探测器。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Because the journalists get very angry if they, you know. There was a journalist I think, that would got angry to use this. And it was like, oh, it showed like a nipple, 'cause Google Vision didn't detect it. So that's like these kind of problems you need to deal with.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 因为如果出现了那种东西，记者们会非常生气的。我想之前有个记者就因为用了这个很生气，好像是露了个乳头，因为 Google Vision 没检测出来。这就是你需要处理的那种问题。
(...对话转向关于人类面部认知的讨论...)
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: But is there some tricks to fine tuning to like the collection of photos that are provided?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 但是微调方面有什么技巧吗？比如关于提供的照片集？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yes, man, there's so many hacks. It's like 100 hacks to make it work. I think people, well man, as a living, people don't know how they look. They generate photos of themselves and then they say, "Ah, it doesn't look like me." You can check the training photos. It does look like you. But you don't know how you look. So there's a face dysmorphia of yourself that you have known idea how you look.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，伙计，有太多的黑客技巧了。大概有 100 种技巧能让它跑通。我觉得，作为一种生物，人们并不知道自己长什么样。他们生成了自己的照片，然后说，“啊，这一都不像我。”你可以去检查训练用的照片。它确实像你。但你不知道自己长那样。所以有一种对自我的“面部畸形恐惧”（face dysmorphia），你根本不知道自己长什么样。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: That's hilarious. I mean I've got to one of the least pleasant activities in my existence is having to listen to my voice and look on my face.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 这太搞笑了。这也是我生活中最不愉快的活动之一，就是不得不听我自己的声音，看我自己的脸。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I know that like if I would make a selfie how I think I look that, that's nice. Other people think that's not nice. But then they make a photo of me, I'm like that's super ugly. But then they're like, no, that's how you look. And you look nice. So how other people see you is nice. So you need to ask other people to choose your photos.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我知道如果我拍一张自拍，我觉得我长那样，那挺好的。别人可能觉得不好看。但当他们给我拍照片时，我觉得那超级丑。但他们会说，不，你就长那样。而且你看起来很不错。所以别人眼中的你是好看的。你需要让别人来帮你挑选照片。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Yeah, you don't know what makes you interesting, what makes you attractive or all this kind of stuff. And a lot of us, this is dark aspect of psychology. We focus on some small flaws.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 是的，你不知道是什么让你有趣，是什么让你有吸引力，诸如此类。而且我们很多人，这是心理学阴暗的一面，我们总是盯着一些小瑕疵。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I learned from the hammerhead shark eyes this, the stuff about you that looks ugly to you. And it's probably what makes you, original makes you nice and people like it about you. And people notice it. People notice your hammerhead eyes. But it's like, that's me, that's my face. I love myself. And that's confidence, and confidence is attractive.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我是从“双髻鲨眼睛”这件事上学到的，那些你觉得丑的地方，很可能正是让你独特、让你美好、让人们喜欢你的地方。人们会注意到的。人们会注意到你的“双髻鲨眼睛”。但这就像是，那就是我，那就是我的脸。我爱我自己。这就是自信，而自信是有吸引力的。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Do you have any guidelines for people of how to get good data? How to give good data to fine tune on?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你对人们如何获取好的数据有什么建议吗？如何提供好的数据来进行微调？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: The photos should be diverse. So for example, if I only upload photos with a brown shirt or green shirts, the model will think that I'm training the green shirts. So the things that are the same every photo are the concepts that are trained. What you want is your face to be the concept that's trained and everything else to be diverse, like different.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 照片必须多样化。举个例子，如果我只上传穿着棕色衬衫或绿色衬衫的照片，模型会认为我是在训练这件绿色衬衫。所以，在每张照片里都一样的东西，就是被训练的概念。你想要的是，“你的脸”是被训练的概念，而其他所有东西都应该是多样的，不同的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, outside, inside. But there's no, like, this is the problem. There's no like manual for this, and nobody knew. We were all just... Especially two years ago, we're all hacking, trying to test anything. It's one of the most frustrating and also fun and challenging things to do because with AI, 'cause it's a black box.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，室外、室内都要有。但问题是，这里没有说明书，也没人知道该怎么做。我们都只是……特别是在两年前，我们都在瞎折腾（hacking），试着测试任何东西。这是最令人沮丧但也最有趣、最具挑战性的事情之一，因为对于 AI 来说，它就是一个黑盒子。
📝 本节摘要：
本章深入探讨了 Pieter Levels 独特的“认知操作系统”。他认为最好的创意并非源自长时间的苦思冥想，而是潜意识中长期“炖煮”后突然迸发的灵感（如同微波炉的“叮”一声）。在学习新技能方面，他彻底摒弃了传统的系统化学习，主张“以行动为导向”——需要什么学什么，不懂就问 ChatGPT 或 Google。此外，他分享了在这个 AI 飞速发展的时代保持前沿的秘诀：抛弃偏见，在 X (Twitter) 上关注那些使用动漫头像的匿名黑客，因为他们往往是真正的构建者。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Speaking of ideas, you shared a tweet explaining why the first idea sometimes might be a brilliant idea. The reason for this you think is the first idea submerges from your subconscious, and was actually boiling your brain for weeks, months, sometimes years in the background. The eight hours of thinking can never compete with a perpetual subconscious background job.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 说到点子，你分享过一条推文，解释了为什么第一个点子有时可能就是极好的点子。你认为原因是第一个点子是从你的潜意识中浮现出来的，它实际上已经在你的大脑后台“炖煮”了数周、数月，有时甚至数年。八小时的刻意思考永远无法与这种持久的潜意识后台作业相提并论。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, I mean like emerges. I wrote it wrong because I'm not native English, but it emerges from your subconscious, right? It comes from the like a water, your subconscious in here, it's boiling, and then when it's ready it's like ding. It's like a microwave comes out and there you have your idea.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，我是指“浮现”（emerges）。我当时写错了，因为英语不是我的母语，但它是从你的潜意识中浮现出来的，对吧？它就像水一样，你的潜意识在这里，它在沸腾，等到它准备好了，就像“叮”的一声。就像微波炉出炉一样，你的点子就有了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You think you have ideas like that?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你觉得你的点子是那样产生的吗？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, all the time, 100%. And also, it comes up and I bring it, I send it back, like send it back to the kitchen. To boil more. And it's like a soup of ideas that's cooking. It's 100%. This is how my brain works, and I think most people.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，一直都是，100%。而且，当它冒出来时，我会拿着它，把它送回去，就像送回厨房一样。让它再煮一会儿。这就像一锅正在炖的点子汤。绝对是这样。我的大脑就是这样运作的，我觉得大多数人也是。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: But it's also about the timing. Sometimes you have to send it back, not just because you're not ready, but the world is not ready.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 但这也关乎时机。有时你必须把它送回去，不仅仅是因为你没准备好，而是因为这个世界还没准备好。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, so many times, startup founders are too early with their idea. Yeah, 100%.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，很多时候，创业者的点子都太超前了。对，绝对是。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: One of the things you do really, really well is learn. You tried to build it, and then you learn everything you need to in order to build it. Just by way of example, you did a 30 days learning session on 3D. Where you documented yourself, giving yourself only 30 days to learn everything you can about 3D.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你有一件事做得非常非常好，那就是学习。你试着去构建它，然后你为了构建它去学习所有你需要的东西。举个例子，你做过一个 30 天的 3D 学习课程。你记录了整个过程，只给自己 30 天时间去学习关于 3D 的一切。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, I tried to learn virtual reality 'cause I was like... This was same as AI, it came up suddenly like 2016, 2017... I was like, oh, this is gonna be big, so I need to learn this. I know nothing about 3D. I installed like, I think Unity, and Blender and stuff. And I started learning all this stuff because I thought this was like a new nascent technology that was gonna be big.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，我试着去学虚拟现实（VR），因为当时我觉得……这就像 AI 一样，大概在 2016、2017 年突然冒出来……我想，噢，这东西会很火，所以我得学这个。我对 3D 一窍不通。我安装了 Unity、Blender 之类的软件。我开始学习所有这些东西，因为我觉得这是一种新兴的技术，未来会很了不起。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And so I think with learning for me, I think learning is so funny 'cause people always ask me, "How do you learn to code?" Should I learn to code?" And I'm like, "I don't know." Every day I'm learning. It's kind of cliche, but every day I'm learning new stuff. So every day I'm searching on Google or asking out ChatGPT, how to do this thing, how to do this thing.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以关于学习，我觉得很有趣，因为人们总是问我，“你是怎么学会写代码的？”“我应该学写代码吗？”我就想，“我不知道啊。”我每天都在学习。这听起来有点老套，但我确实每天都在学新东西。所以我每天都在 Google 上搜索，或者问 ChatGPT，这个怎么做，那个怎么做。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So you never stop learning. So the whole concept of like how do you learn? Well, you never ends. So where do you want to be? Do you wanna know a little bit? Or do you wanna know a lot? Do you wanna do it for your whole life? So I think taking action is the best step to learn. So making things like, you know nothing, just start making things.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以你永远不会停止学习。所以“你是怎么学习的”这个概念本身……好吧，这事儿没个头。你想达到什么程度？你是想懂一点皮毛？还是想精通？你是想做一辈子吗？所以我认为采取行动是学习的最佳步骤。就是去制造东西，即使你什么都不懂，直接开始做。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Okay, so like how to make a website? Search how to make a website. Or nowadays you ask ChatGPT, how do I make a website? Where do I start? It generates codes for you, right? Copy the code, put it in a file, save it, open it in Google Chrome or whatever. You have a website and then you start tweaking with it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 好吧，比如怎么做一个网站？搜一下“怎么做网站”。或者现在你问 ChatGPT，“我怎么做一个网站？从哪儿开始？”它会给你生成代码，对吧？复制那些代码，放到一个文件里，保存，用 Google Chrome 或其他浏览器打开。你就有一个网站了，然后你开始微调它。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What's your advice for people in general on how to learn all this state-of-the-art AI tools available? How do you pay attention? How do you stay on top of everything?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 对于普通人如何学习所有这些现有的最先进 AI 工具，你有什么建议？你是如何关注这些的？你是如何掌握所有最新动态的？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think you need to join Twitter X. X is amazing now and the whole AI industry is on X, and they're all like anime avatars. So (chuckles) it's funny, 'cause my friends ask me this. Who should I follow to stay up to date? And I say go to X, and follow all the AI anime models that this person is following or follows.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得你需要加入 Twitter (X)。X 现在太棒了，整个 AI 行业都在 X 上，而且他们用的都是动漫头像。所以（轻笑）这很有趣，因为我朋友问过我这个。我该关注谁才能保持更新？我说去 X，去关注这个人都关注了哪些 AI 动漫头像账号。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I send them something URL, and they all start laughing like, what is this? But they're real like people hacking around in AI. They get hired by big companies and they're on X, and most of 'em are anonymous. It's very funny. They use anime avatar, I don't, but those people hack around and then they publish what they're discovering. They talk about papers, for example. So yeah, definitely X.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后我发给他们一个链接，他们都开始大笑，心想“这是什么鬼？”但这些人真的是在 AI 领域瞎折腾（hacking）的牛人。他们被大公司录用，他们就在 X 上，而且大部分人是匿名的。这非常有趣。他们用动漫头像，虽然我不用，但那些人到处钻研，然后发布他们的发现。比如他们会讨论论文。所以对，绝对是 X。
📝 本节摘要：
本章聚焦于 Pieter Levels 标志性的“众包”产品哲学。他讲述了 Nomad List 如何从一个简单的 Google 电子表格演变成全球最大的数字游民社区，以及 Hoodmaps 如何利用“颜色绘图”来众包城市街区的真实评价（如“游客区”或“文青区”）。Pieter 坦诚分享了运营此类产品的挑战：从高昂的地图 API 账单到如何应对网络巨魔（Trolls）。有趣的是，他将 4chan 等论坛的捣乱者视为免费的“渗透测试员”，认为适度的混乱反而是社区自我进化的免疫系统。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So for example, Nomad List, which is like this website I made to figure out the best cities to live and work as digital nomad. It wasn't a website, it launched as a Google spreadsheets. So it was a public Google spreadsheet. Anybody could edit. And I was like, I'm collecting cities where we can live with as nomads, with the internet speeds, the cost of living, other stuff.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 比如 Nomad List，这个我做的用来找出最适合数字游民生活和工作城市的网站。它最初不是一个网站，它是作为一个 Google 电子表格发布的。所以它是一个公开的 Google 表格。任何人都可以编辑。我当时想，我要收集那些我们可以作为游民居住的城市，包括网速、生活成本和其他东西。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I tweeted it, and back then I didn't have a lot of followers. I had like a few thousand followers or something. And I went like viral for my skill viral back then, you know, which was like five retweets. And a lot of people started editing it. And there was like hundreds of cities in this list, from all over the world with all the data. It was very crowdsourced. And then I made that into a website.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后我发了一条推文，那时我没多少粉丝。大概就几千个粉丝之类的。然后它就病毒式传播了——以我那个层级的“病毒式”标准来看，大概就是 5 次转发吧。很多人开始编辑它。那个列表里有了来自世界各地的数百个城市和所有数据。这是非常众包化的。然后我把它做成了一个网站。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I've actually did the spreadsheet thing. You share a spreadsheet publicly and I made it editable. It's so cool.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我其实也做过电子表格这种事。你公开分享一个表格，然后我把它设为可编辑。这太酷了。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Interesting things start happening.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 有趣的事情就开始发生了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Yeah, I did it for like a workout thing... And well, I had Google Sheets is pretty limited and that everything is allowed. So people could just write anything in any cell and they can create new sheets. And it just exploded. And one of the things that I really enjoyed is there's very few trolls because actually other people would delete the trolls. There would be like this weird war... It's an immune system that's inherent to the thing.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 是的，我做过一个健身类的……Google 表格挺受限的，而且什么都被允许。所以人们可以在任何单元格里写任何东西，他们还能创建新表。然后它就炸了。我真正享受的一点是，巨魔（捣乱者）非常少，因为实际上其他人会删除巨魔的内容。那里就像有一场奇怪的战争……这是事物内在的一种免疫系统。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It comes to society. In the spreadsheets.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 就像社会一样。在电子表格里。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Can you explain what Hoodmaps is and what this whole process was?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你能解释一下 Hoodmaps 是什么，以及整个过程是怎样的吗？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I was traveling, and I was still trying to find problems, right? I would discover that like everybody's experience of a city is different because they stay in different areas. So I'm from Amsterdam... I knew that center is like in Europe, the centers are always tourist areas. So they're super busy, they're not very authentic.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我当时在旅行，我还在试图发现问题，对吧？我发现每个人对城市的体验都是不同的，因为他们住在不同的区域。我来自阿姆斯特丹……我知道市中心，就像在欧洲一样，市中心总是游客区。所以那里超级繁忙，非常不地道。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I thought this could be like an app where you can have like a Google maps and you put colors over it. You have areas that are like color code. Red is tourists, green is rich, green money, yellow is hipster. You can figure out where you need to go in the city when you travel, 'cause I was traveling a lot. I wanted to go to the cool spots.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我想这可以做一个 App，就像你在 Google 地图上给它涂色。你有用颜色编码的区域。红色是游客，绿色是富人（绿色的钱），黄色是文青（hipster）。你在旅行时就能知道该去城市的哪里，因为我经常旅行。我想去那些酷的地方。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I thought, okay, what do I need? I need to... So Canvas is a HTML5 thing that allows you to draw shapes. Just draw pixels essentially. And I knew I needed to draw pixels 'cause I need to draw these colors.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我想，好吧，我需要什么？我需要……Canvas 是一个 HTML5 的东西，允许你绘制形状。本质上就是画像素。我知道我需要画像素，因为我得画这些颜色。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And then I started drawing, and then I felt like, obviously, other people need to edit this 'cause I cannot draw all these things myself. So I crowdsource it again, and you would draw on the map and then it would send the pixel data to the server. It would put it in the database, and then I would have a robot running like a cron job... So find the most common value in a little pixel area on a map. So if most people say it's tourists, it's tourists, and it becomes red.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后我开始画，接着我觉得，显然得让其他人来编辑这个，因为我不可能自己画完所有东西。所以我再次把它众包了，你在地图上画，然后它会把像素数据发送到服务器。服务器把它存入数据库，然后我有一个机器人像定时任务（Cron Job）一样运行……找出地图上一小块像素区域里最常见的值。所以如果大多数人说那是游客区，那就是游客区，它就变成红色。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Would they draw shapes or would they draw pixels?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 他们是画形状还是画像素？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, they drew like crazy stuff. Like offensive symbols. I cannot mention they would draw penises.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，他们画了些疯狂的东西。像是冒犯性的符号。我都不好意思提，他们会画男性生殖器。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I mean, that's obviously a guy thing. That's the first thing. When I show up to Mars and there's no cameras, I'm drawing penis on the sand.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我是说，这显然是男人会干的事。那是第一件事。当我到了火星，如果没有摄像头，我就要在沙子上画个那玩意儿。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, I did it in the snow, you know, but the penises did not become a problem, 'cause I knew that not everybody would draw a penis and not in the same place. So most people would use it fairly. So just if I had enough crowdsource data... it's just like a bowl, but in visual format. And it worked and within a week got enough data.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，我在雪地里干过这事儿，你知道的，但那些涂鸦并没有成为问题，因为我知道不是每个人都会画那玩意儿，也不会都画在同一个地方。大多数人还是会公正地使用它。只要我有足够的众包数据……它就像一碗大杂烩，只是以视觉形式呈现。它奏效了，一周之内就有了足够的数据。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And every time my maps bill like Mapbox, I had to stop using... You first use Google Maps, it went viral, and Google Maps, it was out of credits. It's so funny, when I launched it, it went viral. Google Maps, the map didn't load anymore. It says over the limits, you need to contact enterprise sales.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 每次我的地图账单，比如 Mapbox，我都得停用……一开始用 Google Maps，结果火了，Google Maps 的额度用光了。这太搞笑了，当我发布时，它火了。Google Maps 直接加载不出来了。它显示超出限额，你需要联系企业销售部。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I switched to Mapbox, and then had Mapbox for years, and then it went viral and I had a bill of $20,000 was like last year. So they helped me with the bill. They said, "You can pay less." And then I now switched to like a open source kind of map platform. So it's a very expensive product and never made any dollar money.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我切换到了 Mapbox，用了好几年，然后它又火了，去年我收到了一张 20,000 美元的账单。他们帮我处理了账单。他们说，“你可以少付点。”然后我现在切换到了一个开源类的地图平台。所以这是一个非常昂贵的产品，而且从未赚到一分钱。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: There's something on the internet. You mentioned like 4chan discovered Hoodmaps.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 互联网上有些东西。你提到过比如 4chan 发现了 Hoodmaps。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, but I love 4chan. I don't love 4chan, but you know what I mean, like they're so crazy, especially back then. It's kind of funny what they do.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，但我爱 4chan。我不是真的爱 4chan，但你懂我的意思，他们太疯狂了，特别是以前。他们做的事有点搞笑。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: And people just understand 4chan. It's so much about freedom and also like the humor involved and fucking with the system.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 人们得理解 4chan。它在很大程度上关乎自由，关乎幽默，还有搞乱这个系统。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: That's it. It's just anti-system for fun. They're kind like pen testers, like penetration testers, hackers. They just test your app for you and then you add some stuff, like I add like a NSFW word list.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 就是这样。纯粹是为了好玩而反系统。他们就像渗透测试员（pen testers），黑客。他们只是在替你测试你的 App，然后你就加点东西，比如我加了一个不雅词汇（NSFW）列表。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: They would say like bad words. So when they would write like a bad words, they would get forwarded to YouTube, which was like a video. It was like a very relaxing video that like kind of ASMR with like glowing jelly streaming like this to relax them, or cheese melting on the toast. To chill them out.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 他们会写脏话。所以当他们写脏话的时候，他们会被跳转到 YouTube，那是一个视频。一个非常放松的视频，有点像 ASMR，有发光的果冻像这样流动来让他们放松，或者是吐司上融化的奶酪。为了让他们冷静下来。
📝 本节摘要：
在本章中，Pieter Levels 与 Lex 探讨了一个令人困惑的现象：为何像航空公司和酒店这样的大企业，其网站体验往往极其糟糕？Pieter 认为这是因为缺乏改进的动力，而 Lex 则归咎于扼杀天才工程师的官僚主义。作为对此的对抗，Pieter 展示了他的“一人帝国”运营哲学：极致的自动化。他拒绝雇佣员工，而是利用简单的 PHP 脚本和 CronJob（定时任务）来处理从组织聚会到监控服务器的所有事务。他甚至构建了一套带有 Emoji 的“健康检查”系统，一旦出问题，Telegram 机器人就会向他发送警报，让他得以独自维持庞大的业务运转。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Why does every airline website suck when you try book a flights? It's very strange. Why does it have to suck? Obviously, there's competition here. Why doesn't the best website win?
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 为什么每次你试着订机票时，所有航空公司的网站都那么烂？这很奇怪。为什么非得这么烂？明明这里有竞争。为什么最好的网站没有胜出？
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What's the explanation of that?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 对此有什么解释吗？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, I thought about this for years. So I think it's like I have to book the flight anyway. I know there's a route that they take and I need to book, for example, Qatar Airlines, and I need to get through this process. And with a hotel similar, you need a hotel anyway. So do you have time to like figure out the best one? Not really.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，我思考这个问题好多年了。我觉得是因为反正我也得订机票。我知道他们飞这条线，比如我需要订卡塔尔航空，我就必须走完这个流程。酒店也是类似，你反正需要住酒店。你有时间去找出最好的那个吗？并不真的有。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: My theory would be that great engineers, great software engineers are not allowed to make changes. Basically, there's some kind of bureaucracy, there's way too many managers. There's a lot of bureaucracy. And great engineers show up, they try to work there and they're not allowed to really make any contributions and then they leave.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我的理论是，伟大的工程师，伟大的软件工程师不被允许做出改变。基本上，那里有某种官僚主义，经理太多了。官僚主义严重。伟大的工程师来了，试着在那里工作，但他们不被允许真正做出贡献，然后他们就离开了。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, I would work there just to fix it for myself.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是啊，我都想去那儿工作，就为了给我自己修好它。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Just imagine all the thousands, maybe millions of people that go to that website. And have to click like a million times. It often doesn't work. It's clunky, all that kind of stuff. You're making their life just so much better.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 想象一下成千上万，甚至数百万访问那个网站的人。他们不得不点击一百万次。网站经常崩溃。它很笨重，诸如此类。你（如果修好它）会让他们的生活美好得多。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think big companies, especially in America, a lot of it's legal, right? They need to pass everything through legal. Man, the things I do, I could never do that in a big corporation, 'cause it's everything has to be probably Git deploy has to go through legal.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得大公司，特别是在美国，很多是因为法律问题，对吧？他们所有事情都得通过法务部门。伙计，我做的那些事，在大公司里绝对做不了，因为每一件事，哪怕是一次代码部署（Git deploy）可能都得经过法务。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: One thing you espouse a lot, which I love is the automation step. So once you have a thing... Once you have an idea and you build it, and it actually starts making money. You want to take the automation step of automating the things you have to do as little work as possible for it to keep running indefinitely.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你非常推崇的一点，我也很喜欢，就是自动化步骤。一旦你有了一个东西……一旦你有了一个点子并且把它做出来了，而且它真的开始赚钱了。你会想要采取自动化步骤，把你必须做的事情自动化，尽可能少做工作，让它能无限期地运行下去。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, so the general theory of starters would be that when it starts, you start making money, you start hiring people to do stuff, right? Do stuff that you, like marketing, for example. Do stuff that you would do in the beginning yourself, and whatever community management and organizing meetups for Nomad List, for example, that would be a job, for example.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，创业的一般理论是，当它开始运作，你开始赚钱了，你就开始雇人来做事，对吧？做那些比如市场营销之类的事。做那些你一开始自己做的事，还有比如社区管理和为 Nomad List 组织聚会，那本来会是一份工作。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I felt like I don't have the money for that and I don't really wanna run a big company with a lot of people, 'cause there's a lot of work managing these people. So I've always tried to automate these things as much as possible.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得我没那个钱，而且我真的不想经营一家人很多的大公司，因为管理这些人要花很多功夫。所以我一直试图尽可能地自动化这些事情。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And this can literally be like for Nomad List... It was like a webpage where you can organize your own meetup, set a schedule, a date, whatever. You could see how many nomads will be there at that date. So there will be actually enough nomads to meet up, right? And then when it's done, it sends a tweet out on the Nomad List account. There's a meetup here. It sends a direct message to everybody in the city who are there.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 这在 Nomad List 上就像是……那是一个网页，你可以组织你自己的聚会，设定日程、日期等等。你可以看到那个日期会有多少游民在那里。这样实际上就会有足够的游民来聚会，对吧？然后等到敲定后，它会用 Nomad List 的账号发一条推文。说这里有个聚会。它还会给那个城市里所有的用户发私信。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So when you say automate, are you talking about like CronJob?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以当你说自动化的时候，你是指像 CronJob（定时任务）那样的吗？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yes, man, a lot of CronJob. I literally, I log into the server and I do like sudo crontab-e, and then I go into editor and I write like hourly and then I write PHP, dothisthing.php, and that's a script. And that script does a thing and it does it then hourly. That's it. And that's how all my websites work.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，伙计，大量的 CronJob。我真的是登录到服务器，输入 sudo crontab-e，然后进入编辑器，写上 hourly（每小时），然后写上 PHP dothisthing.php（做这件事.php），那就是一个脚本。那个脚本就执行一个任务，每小时执行一次。就这样。我所有的网站都是这么运作的。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Do you have a thing where it like emails you or something like this? Or emails somebody managing the thing, if something goes wrong?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你有没有那种机制，比如它会发邮件给你之类的？如果出错了，发邮件给管理这事儿的人？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I have these webpage that make, they're called like healthchecks. It's like healthcheck.php, and then it has emojis, it has a green check mark if it's good, and a read one if it's bad. And then it does like database cures, for example. Like what's the internet speed in, for example, Amsterdam. Okay, it's a number. It's like 27 point megabits. So it's accurate number. Okay, check, good.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我有这种网页，叫健康检查（healthchecks）。就像 healthcheck.php，上面有 Emoji 表情，如果正常就是一个绿色的勾，如果不正常就是一个红色的。然后它会执行数据库查询，举个例子。比如阿姆斯特丹的网速是多少。好的，是个数字。比如 27 点几兆。所以这是个准确的数字。好的，检查通过，很好。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Then I have uptimerobot.com, which is like for Uptime, but it can also check keywords. It checks for an emoji, which is like the red X, which is if something is bad. And so it opens that health check page every minute to check if something's bad. Then if it's bad, it sends a message to me on Telegram saying, "Hey, what's up?" Or it doesn't say, "Hey, what's up?" It sends me like alert.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 然后我有 uptimerobot.com，那是用来监控运行时间的，但它也能检查关键词。它会检查 Emoji，比如红色的 X，那就意味着出问题了。所以它每分钟打开那个健康检查页面，看看有没有坏事发生。如果有，它就在 Telegram 上给我发条消息说，“嘿，咋了？”或者它不会说“嘿，咋了”，它发给我一个警报。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Hey, hey, sweetie. This thing is down.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 嘿，嘿，亲爱的。这东西挂了。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So within a minute of something breaking, I know it and then I can open my laptop and fix it. But the good thing is like the last few years, things don't break anymore. And definitely 10 years ago, when I started, everything was breaking all the time. And now it's like almost, last week was like a 100.000% Uptime.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以只要有东西坏了，一分钟内我就知道了，然后我可以打开笔记本电脑修好它。但好消息是过去几年，东西都不怎么坏了。肯定比 10 年前强，那时候我刚开始，所有东西随时都在坏。而现在几乎，上周的运行时间大概是 100.000%。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You're actually making me realize I should have a page for myself. Like one page that has all the healthchecks, just so I can go to it and see all the green check marks.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你真的让我意识到我也该给自己搞个页面。就像一个页面包含所有的健康检查，这样我就能进去看到所有的绿色对勾。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It feels good to look at, you know.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 看着那个感觉很好的，你知道吧。
📝 本节摘要：
在本章中，Pieter Levels 分享了他关于变现的实用主义哲学：拒绝主流的“免费增值”模式，主张直接向用户收取较高费用（如30美元以上），以此作为筛选高质量用户的过滤器。他展示了如何利用 GPT-4 实现自动化的内容审核，从而在没有人工团队的情况下维持社区秩序。此外，他解释了为何从未出售过自己的公司：由于公司拥有极高的利润率（90%）且高度自动化，传统的收购倍数在财务上并不划算，且他对 Nomad List 这样的产品有着深厚的情感羁绊。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What's your philosophy of monetizing how to make money from the thing you build?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你关于变现的哲学是什么？也就是如何从你构建的东西中赚钱？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, so a lot of starters, they do like free users. So you could sign up and could use an app for free... It never worked for me well, because I think free users generally don't convert.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，很多初创者，他们搞免费用户。你可以注册并免费使用 App……但这对我来说从来都不管用，因为我觉得免费用户通常不会转化。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think it's best to start and just start asking people for money in the beginning. So show your app, what are you doing on your landing page? Make a demo or whatever video. And then if you wanna use it, pay me money, pay $10, $20, $40.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得最好一开始就直接管人要钱。展示你的 App，在着陆页上说明你在做什么。做一个演示或者视频之类的。然后如果你想用，就付钱给我，付 10 美元、20 美元、40 美元。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I would ask more than $10 per month. Netflix, like $10 per month. But Netflix is a giant company, they can afford to make it so cheap, relatively cheap. If you're an individual, like an indie hacker, you are making your own app. You need to make like at least $30 or more on a user to make it worthy for you.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我会要求一个月超过 10 美元。Netflix 大概是一个月 10 美元。但 Netflix 是个巨头公司，他们负担得起这么便宜的价格，相对便宜。如果你是个体，像独立黑客，你在做你自己的 App。你需要从每个用户身上赚至少 30 美元甚至更多，这样对你来说才划算。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, it gives you high quality users. Free users are sure, but they're horrible. It's just like millions of people, especially with AI startups, you get a lot of abuse. So you get millions of people from anywhere just abusing your app, just hacking it and whatever.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，这会给你带来高质量的用户。免费用户当然也有，但他们很糟糕。就像是有数百万人，特别是做 AI 初创公司，你会遇到很多滥用。你会遇到来自各地的数百万人滥用你的 App，攻击它或者干别的。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: And paying does prevent spam or help prevent spam.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 而且付费确实能防止垃圾信息，或者有助于防止垃圾信息。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: How do you fight spam?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你是如何对抗垃圾信息的？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, I use GPT-4 now. It's amazing. So I have like user input have reviews, people can review cities... So I run into GPT-4 now, and I ask like, "Is this a good review? Is this offensive? Is this racist or some stuff?" And then send me message on Telegram when it rejects reviews and I check it, and man, it's so on point.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，我现在用 GPT-4。太神奇了。我有用户输入的内容，比如评论，人们可以评价城市……所以我现在把它们丢给 GPT-4，然后问它，“这是一条好的评论吗？这具有冒犯性吗？这是种族主义或者类似的东西吗？”当它拒绝评论时，它会在 Telegram 上给我发消息，我去检查，天哪，它判断得太准了。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: It understands humor. It understands like you could say something bad, but it's kinda a joke, and it's kind of not offensive so much, so it shouldn't be deleted, right? It understands that.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 它理解幽默。它理解那种你可以说点坏话，但这有点像开玩笑，并没有那么强的冒犯性，所以不应该被删除，对吧？它能理解这个。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Okay, so what about the exit? When and how to exit?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 好的，那关于退出（Exit）呢？什么时候退出，怎么退出？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, you shouldn't ask me 'cause I never sold my company.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，你不该问我，因为我从未卖掉过我的公司。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So you've never... All the successful stuff you've done, you've never sold it.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 所以你从未……你做的所有成功的东西，你都没卖过。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, it's kind of sad, right? So I've been in a lot of acquisition like deals and stuff... A lot of people string you on to acquire you and then it takes six months. It's a classic. It takes six to 12 months. They wanna see everything. They wanna see your Stripe and your code and whatever. And then in the end, they'll change the price to lower, 'cause you're already so invested.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是啊，这有点悲哀，是吧？我参与过很多收购交易之类的谈判……很多人吊着你说要收购你，然后一拖就是六个月。这是经典套路。要花六到十二个月。他们想看所有东西。他们想看你的 Stripe 数据、你的代码等等。然后在最后，他们会把价格压低，因为你已经投入了太多精力。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And the problem with my companies is like, they make 90% profit margin. So the multiple, companies get sold with multiples, kind of multiples of profit or revenue. And often the multiple is like three times, three times or four times or five times revenue or profit.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 而且我的公司的问题在于，它们有 90% 的利润率。而在收购中，公司是按倍数出售的，基于利润或收入的倍数。通常这个倍数大概是 3 倍，3 倍、4 倍或 5 倍的收入或利润。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So in my case, they're all automated. So I might as as well wait three years and I get the same money as when I sell and then I can still sell the same company. You know what I mean? So financially, it doesn't really make sense to sell.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以就我的情况而言，它们都是自动化的。所以我还不如等上三年，我就能拿到和卖掉它一样多的钱，而且之后我依然拥有这家公司可以卖。你懂我意思吗？所以在财务上，卖掉真的不划算。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But Nomad List, it's like my baby. It's like my first project I took off, and I don't really know if I wanna sell it. It's like something you... Would be nice when you're old to just still work on this. It has like a mission.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 而且 Nomad List，它就像我的孩子。它是我第一个起飞的项目，我真的不知道我是不是想卖掉它。它就像是那种……当你老了以后如果还能继续做这个会很不错的东西。它有一种使命感。
📝 本节摘要：
在本章中，Pieter Levels 挑战了所谓“高效办公”的传统教条。他解释了为何抛弃多显示器的“作战指挥室”，转而拥抱极简主义：一台 MacBook，一张沙发，和一个背包。他分享了自己如何通过举重而非昂贵的人体工学椅治愈了背痛，并揭示了他独特的“感官黑客”技巧——利用“核弹级”浓咖啡将自己推向焦虑边缘，再配合工业 Techno 或棕色噪音（Brown Noise）来屏蔽外界，强行进入深度心流状态。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: And you're still a Mac guy or was a Mac guy?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你现在还是 Mac 用户，还是曾经是？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, yeah, I switched to Mac in 2014... All my great things started when I switched to Mac, which sounds very dogmatic, right? The business started working out. I started traveling. I started building startups. I started making money. It all started when I switched to Mac.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，是的，我在 2014 年换到了 Mac……我所有伟大的事情都是从换到 Mac 开始的，这听起来很教条，对吧？生意开始好转。我开始旅行。我开始建立初创公司。我开始赚钱。一切都是从换到 Mac 开始的。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What's your favorite place to work?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你最喜欢在哪里工作？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: On the couch.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 在沙发上。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Does the couch matter? Is the couch at home or is it any couch?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 沙发重要吗？是家里的沙发还是随便什么沙发？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: No, like hotel couch also. In the room, right? But I used to work like very ergonomically with like a standing desk. And everything like perfect, like eye height, screen, blah, blah, blah. And I felt like, man, this has to do with lifting too. I started getting RSI like repetitive strain injury, like tingling stuff. And it would go all the way on my back.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 不，酒店的沙发也可以。房间里的那种，对吧？但我以前工作非常讲究人体工学，用站立式办公桌。一切都很完美，屏幕高度与视线齐平，巴拉巴拉。但我觉得，伙计，这跟举重也有关。我当时开始出现 RSI（重复性劳损），那种刺痛感。它一直蔓延到我的背部。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I was sitting in a coworking space like 6:00 AM... and my neck gets stuck like (imitates cracking) and I'm like, wow, fuck! And I'm like, am I dying? So I started lifting and since then, it seems like everything gets straightened out. Your posture kinda, you're more straight. And I never have RSI anymore... No pains and stuff. So then I started working on the sofa and it's great.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我坐在联合办公空间里，大概早上 6 点……我的脖子卡住了，发出（模仿咔嚓声），我就想，哇，该死！我想，我是不是要死了？后来我开始举重，从那以后，似乎一切都矫正过来了。你的姿态，你变得更挺拔了。我再也没有 RSI 了……没有疼痛之类的。所以我开始在沙发上工作，感觉很棒。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: One screen.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 一个屏幕。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: One screen. And I used to have three screens... I had all the stuff, but then I realized that having it all condensed in one laptop... it's amazing, 'cause you're so close to the tools, you're so close to what's happening.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 一个屏幕。我以前有三个屏幕……我什么装备都有，但后来我意识到把它全部浓缩在一台笔记本电脑里……这太棒了，因为你离工具很近，你离正在发生的事情很近。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, I'm suspicious of like more. Do you really need all the stuff? It might slow me down, actually. Then I see friends just with gear acquisition syndrome that buying so much stuff, but they're not that productive. They have the best, most beautiful battle stations, desktops, everything. They're not that productive.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，我对“更多”持怀疑态度。你真的需要所有这些东西吗？实际上它可能会拖慢我。我看到朋友们有那种“设备购置综合症”（Gear Acquisition Syndrome），买了超级多东西，但他们并没有那么高效。他们有最好、最漂亮的“作战指挥室”（Battle Stations），台式机，应有尽有。但他们并没有那么高效。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What music are you listening to?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你听什么音乐？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I think like techno, like YouTube techno. There's a channel called HÖR with Umlaut... It's Berlin techno, whatever. It looks like they film it in like a toilet with like white tiles and stuff. And it's very cool. And they always have like, very good, kind of industrial. Kinda aggressive.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我想是 Techno，YouTube 上的 Techno。有个频道叫 HÖR，带变音符号的……是柏林 Techno 之类的。看起来像是在厕所里拍的，贴着白瓷砖什么的。非常酷。他们总是有非常棒的，那种工业风格的音乐。有点侵略性。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: That's interesting, 'cause I actually mostly now listen to brown noise.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 这很有趣，因为我其实现在主要听棕色噪音（Brown noise）。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, wow. For me, it does something. I discovered it right away when I tried it for the first time. After about like a couple minutes, every distraction just like disappears. And it goes like (imitates pressure deflating). You can like hold focus on things like really well. It's weird.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，哇。对我来说，那很有用。我第一次尝试时立刻就发现了。大约几分钟后，所有的干扰就像消失了一样。感觉就像（模仿压力释放的声音）。你能非常好地保持专注。很奇怪。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: How much caffeine are you consuming in this day?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你这一天摄入多少咖啡因？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: My friends call 'em like nuclear coffee 'cause it's quite heavy. It's quite strong. But it's nice to hit that anxiety level where you're like almost panic attack. But you're not there yet. But that's like, man, it's like super locked in. Just like (imitates intense music). It's amazing.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我朋友管那叫“核弹咖啡”，因为它相当重口。非常浓。但这很好，能让你达到那种焦虑水平，就像快要恐慌发作（panic attack）一样。但你还没到那一步。那种状态，伙计，就像是被超级锁定了。就像（模仿激烈的音乐节奏）。太神奇了。
📝 本节摘要：
在访谈的最终章，Pieter Levels 分享了他激进的极简主义实验：为了追求精神自由，他曾变卖几乎所有家当（包括心爱的摄像机），将个人物品缩减至不到 100 件，仅靠一个背包生活。他同时解释了为何选择做一个“难以联系”的人——关闭私信并非傲慢，而是为了保护有限的时间与精力。而在关于创新环境的讨论中，他通过“Nvidia 诞生于 Denny's 餐厅”的故事，以此以此抨击欧洲咖啡馆禁止笔记本电脑的现象，强调“第三空间”对创业者的重要性。最后，他给年轻创作者留下了最硬核的建议：无视噪音，全力以赴。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: I gotta ask you about back to the digital nomad life. You wrote a blog post on the reset. And in general, just giving away everything, living a minimalist life. What did it take to do that, like to get rid of everything?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 我得问问你关于回归数字游民生活的事。你写过一篇关于“重置”的博文。总体来说，就是放弃一切，过极简主义的生活。要做到这一点，彻底摆脱所有东西，需要付出什么代价？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: 10 years ago was like this trend in the blog... It was a blogosphere, and it was like 100 things challenge. I mean, it's ridiculous. But like you write down every object you have in your house and you count it, you make a spreadsheet and you're like, "Okay, I have 500 things." You need to get it down to 100.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 10 年前博客圈有这么个趋势……那时是博客的黄金时代，有个“100 件物品挑战”。我是说，这听起来很荒谬。但你要把你家里的每样东西都写下来，数一数，做一个电子表格，然后你会发现，“好吧，我有 500 样东西。”你需要把它减到 100 样。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So I did it. I started like selling stuff, started throwing away off. And I did like MDMA and ecstasy like 2012 kind of. And after that trip, I felt so different, and I felt like I had to start throwing shit away. I swear.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 所以我照做了。我开始卖东西，开始扔东西。而且我在 2012 年左右尝试了 MDMA 和摇头丸。在那次迷幻之旅后，我感觉完全不同了，我觉得我必须开始把那些破烂都扔掉。我发誓。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I felt that was like, it was almost the drug sending me to a path of like, you need to throw all your shit away. You need to start go on a journey. You need to get out of here. And that's what the MDMA did, I think, yeah.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得那就像是药物指引我走向一条路，比如，你需要扔掉所有的东西。你需要开始一段旅程。你需要离开这里。我觉得那就是 MDMA 起的作用。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: What's the weirdest thing you had to sell and you had to find a buyer for, not the weirdest, but like, what's memorable?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你卖过的最奇怪的东西是什么？或者说不是最奇怪，而是最让你难忘的？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: So back then I was making music and we would make music videos with like a Canon 5D camera. Back then everybody's making films... And it was kind of like, I had to sell this thing too, 'cause it was very expensive. It was like 6K or something.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 那时候我在做音乐，我们会用佳能 5D 相机拍音乐视频。那时候大家都在拍片子……但我不得不把这东西也卖了，因为它很贵。大概值 6000 块之类的。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But it meant that selling this, meant that we wouldn't make music theater anymore. I would leave Holland. This kind of stuff we were working on would end. And it felt like, sorry guys, it doesn't work and I need to go.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但卖掉它意味着我们不再做音乐剧场了。我要离开荷兰了。我们正在做的这些事情都要结束了。那种感觉就像是，“对不起伙计们，这行不通，我得走了。”
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: Who bought it? Do you remember? It was some guy who couldn't possibly understand the journey. The emotion of it.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 谁买了它？你还记得吗？肯定是个完全无法理解这段旅程的人。无法理解其中的情感。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, but it was like cutting your life. This shit ends now and now we gonna do new stuff.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，但这就像是切断你的过去。这破事儿到此为止，现在我们要去做新的事情了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You wrote a blog post, "Why I'm unreachable and maybe you should be too." What's your strategy on communicating with people?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你写过一篇博文，《为什么我无法联系，也许你也该这样》。你在与人沟通方面的策略是什么？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, so when I wrote that, I was getting so many DMs... and people were getting angry that I wasn't responding and I was like, "Okay, I'll just close down these DMs completely. And people got angry that I closed my DMs down, that I'm not like man of the people.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，当我写那篇文章时，我收到了太多的私信……人们因为我不回复而生气，我就想，“好吧，我就彻底关闭这些私信。”结果人们因为我关了私信更生气了，觉得我不再是“亲民”的人了。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: It's like you changed man.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 就像在说，“你变了，伙计。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, you've changed. And I'm like, I'll explain why. I just don't have the time in a day to answer every question. And also people send you like crazy shit, man. Stalkers and like, people write their whole life story for you and then ask you advice. Man, I have no idea. I'm not a therapist.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，“你变了”。我想解释一下原因。我一天里真的没有时间回答每个问题。而且人们会发给你一些疯狂的东西，伙计。跟踪狂之类的，还有人把他们一生的故事写给你，然后问你建议。伙计，我不知道啊。我又不是心理治疗师。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: I helped my friend Andre... he came up to me in a cowork space. And he said, "I wanna learn to code. I wanna do startups, how do I do it?" I said, "Okay, let's go install Nginx. Let's start coding." And he has this self-energy that he actually... He doesn't need to be pushed, he just goes and learns it.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我帮过我的朋友 Andre……他在联合办公空间走向我。他说，“我想学代码。我想做初创公司，怎么做？”我说，“好，咱们去装 Nginx。开始写代码吧。”他自带那种自我驱动的能量……他不需要人推，他直接去学。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And the people that I had to kind of like, that ask me for help, but then I gave help and then they started debating it. Do you have that? People ask you advice and they go against you say, "No, you're wrong, because." I'm like, "Okay, bro, I don't wanna debate. You asked me for advice," right?
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 而有些人，他们向我求助，我给了帮助，然后他们开始辩论。你有过这种情况吗？人们问你建议，然后反驳你说，“不，你错了，因为……”我就想，“好吧，兄弟，我不想辩论。是你问我建议的，”对吧？
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: You tweeted something about the Denny's thing... Nvidia, a $3 trillion company was started in a Denny's, an American diner. People need a third space to work on their laptops to build the next billion or trillion dollar company.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 你发过一条关于 Denny's 的推文……Nvidia，一家 3 万亿美元的公司，是在 Denny's，一家美式餐厅里创立的。人们需要一个“第三空间”，能在那里用笔记本电脑工作，去建立下一个十亿或万亿美元的公司。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah. You need a space to like congregate. Man, and I found history on this. So 400 years ago in the coffee house of Europe. The scientific revolution, the enlightenment happened because they would go to coffee houses, they would sit there, they would drink coffee and they would work. They would work. They would write and they would do debates.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的。你需要一个聚会的地方。伙计，我查过这方面的历史。400 年前欧洲的咖啡馆。科学革命、启蒙运动之所以发生，是因为人们去咖啡馆，坐在那里，喝着咖啡，然后工作。他们是真的在工作。他们写作，他们辩论。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And then when you're in Europe, like large parts of Europe now, you cannot use a laptop anymore. It's like no laptop. Which I understand. But not allowing laptops in cafes is kind of like part of the vibe, which is like, yeah, we're not really here to work. We're here to like enjoy life.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但现在你在欧洲，像欧洲大部分地区，你不能再用笔记本电脑了。就是禁止笔记本电脑。我能理解。但不允许在咖啡馆用电脑成了某种氛围的一部分，就像是，“对，我们来这儿不是为了工作的。我们是来享受生活的。”
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: But there's something more there. There's people actually making stuff, making new companies that the society benefits from. We're benefiting from Nvidia. And I feel in Europe there's this vibe... We have a very anti-entrepreneurial mindset.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 但这背后有更深层的东西。有人真正在制造东西，建立新公司，社会从中受益。我们正受益于 Nvidia。我觉得在欧洲有这种氛围……我们有一种非常反创业的心态。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: So what advice would you give to young people about how to do the same?
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 那么，你会给年轻人什么建议，让他们也能做到同样的事？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Man, I would listen to like nobody. Just do what you think is good and follow your heart, right? Everybody peer press you into doing stuff you don't wanna do. And they tell you, parents or family or society tell you, but try your own thing, 'cause it might work out.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 伙计，我会谁的话都不听。就做你觉得好的事，追随你的内心，好吗？每个人都在施加同辈压力，让你做你不想做的事。父母、家庭或社会告诉你该怎么做，但试着做你自己的事，因为它可能会成功。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: And I think that should be more promoted. Do your own thing. There's space in economy and in society for do your own thing. It's like little villages, everybody would sell. I would sell bread, you would sell meat. Everybody can do their own little thing. You don't need to be a normie as you say. You can be what you really wanna be.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 我觉得这应该被更多地提倡。做你自己的事。经济和社会中有空间让你做自己的事。就像小村庄一样，大家都在卖东西。我卖面包，你卖肉。每个人都可以做自己的一点小事。你不需要像你说的那样做一个“普通人”（normie）。你可以成为你真正想成为的人。
[原文] [Lex Fridman]: And go all out doing that thing.
[译文] [Lex Fridman]: 并且全力以赴去做那件事。
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, you gotta go all out 'cause if you half ass it, you cannot succeed. You need to go lean in to the outcast stuff. Lean in to the being different, and just doing whatever it is that you wanna do, right?
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 对，你必须全力以赴（go all out），因为如果你半吊子（half ass it），你不可能成功。你需要全身心投入到那种“局外人”的状态中。全身心拥抱与众不同，只管去做你想做的任何事，对吧？
[原文] [Pieter Levels]: Yeah, whole assets, yeah.
[译文] [Pieter Levels]: 是的，全情投入（Whole assets，注：此处Pieter口误或双关，意指whole-ass it/全力以赴）。