A decade ago, the psychologist Rebecca Lawson published a lovely paper on “cycology”. She posed a simple question: could people draw the basics of a bicycle?
10年前，心理学家丽贝卡?劳森(Rebecca Lawson)发表了一篇有关“自行车学”的有趣论文。她提出了一个简单的问题：人们能否画出自行车的基本构造？
About 40 per cent, including those confident in their ability to sketch pedals and forks, found it impossible. Fundamental errors included a bike frame linking the front and back wheels, making it impossible to steer, and the chain looping round both wheels (ditto). Even cyclists struggled.包括那些自信能画出踏板和车前叉的人在内，大约40%的人发现他们画不出来。基本错误包括画出同时连接前后轮的车架，这样的自行车是无法操纵的，还有画出同时环绕前后轮的链条（问题同上）。甚至连自行车手也犯了难。“It seems that many people have virtually no understanding of how bicycles work?.?.?.?despite bicycles being highly familiar and most people having learnt how to ride one,” Ms Lawson, from the University of Liverpool, concluded.“看起来，很多人几乎完全不了解自行车的工作原理……尽管自行车是人们非常熟悉的事物，大多数人也学过怎么骑自行车，”来自利物浦大学(University of Liverpool)的劳森总结道。Our personal knowledge, then, of how even everyday objects function is sketchy and shallow. We are individual ignoramuses who somehow manage to pool intelligence, and then brazenly bask in the collective glory. Ms Lawson’s finding is writ large in The Knowledge Illusion, a recent book that exposes us for the intellectual shams we are.哪怕是对寻常事物的工作原理，我们个人掌握的知识也是粗略和浅显的。就个体而言，我们都是浑噩无知之人，却总能把智慧汇集起来，然后厚颜沉浸在这种集体荣耀之中。劳森发现的这种现象，在最近一本新书中得到详细阐述，这本名为《知识幻觉》(The Knowledge Illusion)的著作揭露出我们的智慧是假象。The authors, psychologist Steven Sloman and marketing researcher Philip Fernbach, argue that knowledge is a collective effort but that we underestimate how little of it we hold ourselves. Intelligence comes from without, rather than within, hence the book’s subtitle: Why We Never Think Alone.
本书的两位作者——心理学家史蒂文?斯洛曼(Steven Sloman)和市场营销研究人员菲利普?费恩巴赫(Philip Fernbach)提出，知识是一种集体努力，但我们对我们自己掌握的知识之少却认识不足。智慧来自于外部，而非来自我们自身，因此这本书的副标题是：为什么我们从未独立思考？Before Ms Lawson wheeled out her bicycle challenge, the Yale psychologist Frank Keil had already been cataloguing our shaky grasp of how commonplace objects such as zips, mobile phones and flush toilets worked. Almost universally, people thought they could explain them. But when they actually sat down and tried to articulate the mechanisms, most were stumped.在劳森提出她的自行车挑战之前，耶鲁大学的心理学家弗兰克?凯尔(Frank Keil)已经指出，我们对拉链、手机和抽水马桶等寻常事物的工作原理的理解并不扎实。人们几乎无一例外地认为他们能够解释这些事物。但当他们真的坐下来试图清楚地说明其中原理的时候，大多数人都被难倒了。Prof Keil and his colleague, Leonid Rozenblit, called it the “illusion of explanatory depth”, defining it like this: “Most people feel they understand the world with far greater detail, coherence and depth than they really do.” We do not reflect upon or double-check our knowledge nearly enough.凯尔和他的同事列昂尼德?罗森布利特(Leonid Rozenblit)把这种现象叫做“解释深度的幻觉”(illusion of explanatory depth)，他们对此的定义是“大多数人感觉他们对世界的理解非常细致、连贯和有深度，但实际情况比这差远了”。我们对我们所掌握知识的反思或者检查是远远不够的。This phenomenon — which also suggests that people become humbler about their knowledge after having their deficiencies exposed — is surprisingly relevant to the way we think about policy. Prof Fernbach and colleagues have previously conducted research suggesting that voters who adopt extreme positions on issues such as how healthcare should be financed, or a trading system for carbon emissions, become more moderate once they are asked to explain the policies. Being forced to engage in “causal reasoning” can, it seems, temper hot thinking.这种现象——它也表明人们在自己的不足暴露后会对自己的认知更谦逊——对于我们思考政策的方式具有非常重要的意义。费恩巴赫教授和他的同事们此前进行的研究表明，在医保筹资方式或碳排放交易系统等问题上持极端立场的选民，会在被要求解释这些政策后变得更温和。看起来，被强制进行“因果推理”或许能够缓和激进的想法。Here, it is also worth mentioning the Dunning-Kruger effect: the least competent also tend to be the most confident in their abilities. Put another way, the most ignorant are the least aware of their shortcomings. To a degree, this makes sense: it is only by gaining knowledge that the gaps become visible. And very competent individuals are prone to underestimating their abilities — something to bear in mind when a politician championing a cause promises a paradise without caveats.“邓宁-克鲁格效应”(Dunning-Kruger effect)也值得一提：最无能的人往往也是对自己的能力最自信的人。换句话说，最无知的人也是最意识不到自己的不足的人。在某种程度上，这是说得通的：只有获取知识，才能看到差距。非常能干的个人往往会低估自己的能力——如果一名宣扬某项事业的政治人士承诺一个天堂却完全不提隐忧，有必要记住这一点。Prof Keil has argued that, when asked to explain things, we do not reason causally — which explains why we are so bad at it — but instead grab our comebacks from intuition. That’s because the world is a massively complicated web of interrelated things and events, anchored in a vast ocean of causal complexity. Our recourse to intuition — the instant retrieval of information better known as gut instinct — is a sane strategy for reducing cognitive overload.凯尔教授认为，当被要求解释事物的时候，我们并不进行因果推理——这就是我们如此不擅于此的原因——而是凭直觉做出反应。这是因为，世界是一个建立在海量的复杂因果关系之上、由相互关联的事物和活动组成的极其错综复杂的网络。我们诉诸于直觉——即时抽取我们更了解的信息的本能——是一种减少认知超负荷的明智做法。Technology, of course, allows greater and quicker access to ever more information. Every Google search, and each answer returned, perpetuates and intensifies a person’s belief that he or she is an under-appreciated genius. Remember, though, it’s an illusion: technology simply bolsters the fallacy that each of us is an Einsteinian beacon in a world of stupidity.当然，科技让我们能够更广泛、更快速地接触更多信息。在谷歌(Google)上的每一次搜索，得到的每一次回答，都会维持和深化一个人对于自己怀才不遇的信念。不过要记住，这是一种错觉。科技只是强化了一种谬见：在一个愚蠢的世界，我们每一个人都是像爱因斯坦那样的指路明灯。