Michael Nielsen 是居住在旧金山的量子物理学家，科学作家和计算机编程研究员。也是一个多产的作家，在推特上有5.7万fo。

这篇文章是几年前他发表在 Facebook 上的一篇短文，标题 Volitional Philanthropy 的意思，用他自己的话来说，是帮助他人扩展在世上存活的方式的范围。用人话来讲，就是开启他人的潜能。

有的人生而具有这种看到别人潜能并能很快将之激发出来的本能，有的组织也乐于做这样的事情，比如 Michael 曾经工作过的 YC，在YC孵化营里呆过的创业者，哪怕创业失败，都比之前开发出来了巨大潜能。

我之所以很有共鸣，这让我想到了我自己也常常愿意鼓励别人，看到别人的长处和潜力，并且今后我的人生目标就是帮助更多的人认识自己，实现自己最大价值。并且我认为每个人和组织都应该这样做。

黄色高亮是我昨晚阅读时选取的共鸣段落。

On Volitional Philanthropy (a short essay!)

T. E. Lawrence, the English soldier, diplomat and writer, possessed what one of his biographers called a capacity for enablement: he enabled others to make use of abilities they had always possessed but, until their acquaintance with him, had failed to realize. People would come into contact with Lawrence, sometimes for just a few minutes, and their lives would change, often dramatically, as they activated talents they did not know they had.

Most of us have had similar experiences. A wise friend or acquaintance will look deeply into us, and see some latent aspiration, perhaps more clearly than we do ourselves. And they will see that we are capable of taking action to achieve that aspiration, and hold up a mirror showing us that capability in crystalline form. The usual self-doubts are silenced, and we realize with conviction: “yes, I can do this”.

This is an instance of volitional philanthropy: helping expand the range of ways people can act on the world.

I am fascinated by institutions which scale up this act of volitional philanthropy.

Y Combinator is known as a startup incubator. When friends began participating in early batches, I noticed they often came back changed. Even if their company failed, they were more themselves, more confident, more capable of acting on the world. This was a gift of the program to participants [1]. And so I think of Y Combinator as volitional philanthropists.

For a year I worked as a Research Fellow at the Recurse Center. It's a three-month long “writer's retreat for programmers”. It's unstructured: participants are not told what to do. Rather, they must pick projects for themselves, and structure their own path. This is challenging. But the floundering around and difficulty in picking a path is essential for growing one's sense of choice, and of responsibility for choice. And so creating that space is, again, a form of volitional philanthropy.

There are institutions which think they're in the volitional philanthropy game, but which are not. Many educators believe they are. In non-compulsory education that's often true. But compulsory education is built around fundamental denials of volition: the student is denied choice about where they are, what they are doing, and who they are doing it with. With these choices denied, compulsory education shrinks and constrains a student's sense of volition, no matter how progressive it may appear in other ways.

There is something paradoxical in the notion of helping someone develop their volition. By its nature, volition is not something which can be given; it must be taken. Nor do I think “rah-rah” encouragement helps much, since it does nothing to permanently expand the recipient's sense of self. Rather, I suspect the key lies in a kind of listening-for-enablement, as a way of helping people discover what they perhaps do not already know is in themselves. And then explaining honestly and realistically (and with an understanding that one may be in error) what it is one sees. It is interesting to ask both how to develop that ability in ourselves, and in institutions which can scale it up.

[1] It is a median effect. I know people who start companies who become first consumed and then eventually diminished by the role. But most people I've known have been enlarged.

Note, by the way, that I work at Y Combinator Research, which perhaps colours my impression. On the other hand, I've used YC as an example of volitional philanthropy since (I think) 2010, years before I started working for YCR.