How to Avoid Foolish Opinions 如何避免愚蠢的观...

How to Avoid Foolish Opinions 如何避免愚蠢的观...

喜欢这篇文章很久了,还是在上学的时候老师推荐的一篇文章.隐隐记得推荐的原因是,文笔好,逻辑性强,可读性强.当时却没有注意文章表达的思想.现在贴出来和大家一起分享.中文是虫子自己翻译的,可能有不通的地方.凑合着看吧.
To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind is prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
想避免人类易犯的各种蠢见,无需超人类的天赋.一些简单的规则可以让你避免犯一些愚蠢的错误,但不是所有的错误.
If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them.
如果一件事可以通过观察的方式来解决,那么自己去做观察.亚里士多德本可以简单地让亚里士多德太太张开嘴巴,数数牙齿的数量,就能避免犯下认为女人的牙齿比男人的少的错误.他没那么做的原因是,他认为自己就是知道.自认为那些在事实上不对的东西是对的,这是致命的错误,我们都容易犯这种错误.我认为刺猬是吃黑甲虫的,因为我听说是这样的；而我要是写本有关刺猬习惯的书的话,那么直到我看到一只刺猬很喜欢吃这种让人倒胃口的食物的时候,我才能相信自己.遗憾的是,亚里士多德有点不小心了.古时候和中世纪的作家知道所有有关独角兽和火蜥蜴的故事；他们没有一个人觉得有必要去避免有关这些动物的武断的陈述,因为他们没人曾经见过哪怕是一只.
Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
不过,有很多事情是不容易靠经验来验证的.就像很多人一样,如果你对此类很多事情有十足的信心,那么有些方法可以让你意识到你的偏见.如果某种看法因与你相左而让你生气的话,那么你在潜意识里会觉得你这样想是没有什么很好理由的,这是个信号.如果有人坚持认为二加二等于五,或者冰岛在赤道上的话,那么你会可怜他却不会生气,除非你对算术和地理一窍不通,以至于他的观点颠覆掉了你的观点.最为野蛮的争论就是关于那些不能被证明或者证伪的事情的争论.迫害用于神学而不用在算术中的原因是,算术存中有的是知识,而神学中的只是观点.这样,一旦发现自己因不同的观点而开始发怒时,自己要警惕起来；你很可能会发现,经过检验,证据不能确保你的信念是对的.
A good way of riding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I young, I lived much outside my own country—in France, Germany, Italy, the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.
控制自己在某些方面作出武断判断的一个好办法是,清楚其他社会圈子的观点和自己圈子的不同.我年轻的时候,我常在国外生活——法国、德国、意大利还有美国.我发现这对减轻偏颇之见非常有用.如果你没法出游,那么找到和你意见相左的人,阅读其他不是你所在党派的报纸.如果这些人和报纸看起来是疯狂的、不正当的甚至是邪恶的,那么提醒自己,你对他们来说也是这样的.这样看来,两党都可能是对的,却不可能都是错的.这种反思应该引发小心.
For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi deplored railways and steamboats and machinery; he would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting any one who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantages of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have said in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent.
对于那些精神想象力足够丰富的人来说,想象和有不同偏见的人的争论是个很好的办法.较之于和对手真正地进行对话,这样有且有一个优点,就是这种方法不受时间和空间的限制.圣雄甘地强烈反对过铁路、蒸汽轮船和机器；他本想要从整体上破坏工业革命.你可能永远没机会在现实中遇到怀有此种想法的人,因为在西方国家,大多数人认为享受现代技术带来的福利是理所应当的.你若想确保自己所认同的流行观点是正确的,想象一下甘地所说的会遭到他们的驳斥的情形,你会发现这是个很好的测试自己所遇到争论的方法.过去我有时确实会因为这样想象的诊断而改变自己的主意,除此以外,我经常发现,在意识到假想对手的可能的合理性时,我变得不再很武断、不再过于自信了.
对那些让你自我感觉良好的奉承话要保持警惕之心.无论男女,十之八九都肯定地认为自己的性别是超级优秀的.有大量的证据都能证明男人和女人的这种想法.如果你是男人,你能指出大多数诗人和科学工作者都是男性；如果你是女人,你会反驳说,大多数罪犯也是男人.这个问题本就是不可解的,但自信蒙蔽了大多数人.无论我们来自世界何处,我们都被说服相信我们自己的国家比其他的所有国家都优秀.明白了每个国家都有自己的优缺点,我们就调整自己国家的价值标准,以期我们国家所拥有的优点是真正重要的,而其缺点相对来讲只是微不足道的.再次说一下,理性的人会承认这个问题是没有绝对的正确答案的.作为人类,要处理人类自负的问题会更加困难,因为我们没办法和非人类说出个所以然来.我知道处理这类人类自负问题的唯一方法就是,提醒自己人类只是宇宙一角里一个小星球生命历程里的一段小插曲,提醒自己也许宇宙的其他地方存在比我们更高级的生物,就像我们相对于水母那样高级的存在.