TED英語(yǔ)演講：偏見(jiàn)可能是一件好事
我們時(shí)常將偏見(jiàn)和偏好視為無(wú)知的產(chǎn)物。但是，心理學(xué)家保羅?布魯姆試圖告訴大家，偏見(jiàn)時(shí)常是天生的、理性的......甚至是有道德的。布魯姆認(rèn)為，最重要的是去理解我們的偏見(jiàn)是如何運(yùn)作的——這樣我們就能在它出錯(cuò)時(shí)，提出更好的應(yīng)對(duì)方式。下面是小編為大家收集關(guān)于TED英語(yǔ)演講：偏見(jiàn)可能是一件好事，歡迎借鑒參考。
演說(shuō)題目：偏見(jiàn)可能是一件好事!
演說(shuō)者：Paul Bloom
演講稿
When we think about prejudice and bias, we tend to think about stupid and evil people doing stupid and evil things. And this idea is nicely summarized by the British critic William Hazlitt, who wrote, "Prejudice is the child of ignorance." I want to try to convince you here that this is mistaken. I want to try to convince you that prejudice and bias are natural, they're often rational, and they're often even moral, and I think that once we understand this, we're in a better position to make sense of them when they go wrong, when they have horrible consequences, and we're in a better position to know what to do when this happens.
當(dāng)我們想到偏見(jiàn)和偏愛(ài)，我們總會(huì)聯(lián)想到愚蠢又邪惡的人做著愚蠢且邪惡的事。英國(guó)評(píng)論家威廉?哈茲里特非常好地總結(jié)了這個(gè)想法，他寫(xiě)道，“偏見(jiàn)是無(wú)知的幼子” 我想要試圖游說(shuō)你這是錯(cuò)誤的。我想要向你證明偏見(jiàn)和偏愛(ài)是自然而然的，它們時(shí)常是理性的，時(shí)常甚至是道德的，我想當(dāng)我們理解這，當(dāng)它出現(xiàn)問(wèn)題的時(shí)候 當(dāng)它可能造成嚴(yán)重后果的時(shí)候，我們會(huì)有更好的應(yīng)對(duì)方式，當(dāng)這一切發(fā)生的時(shí)候，我們會(huì)知道要如何處理。
So, start with stereotypes. You look at me, you know my name, you know certain facts about me, and you could make certain judgments. You could make guesses about my ethnicity, my political affiliation, my religious beliefs. And the thing is, these judgments tend to be accurate. We're very good at this sort of thing. And we're very good at this sort of thing because our ability to stereotype people is not some sort of arbitrary quirk of the mind, but rather it's a specific instance of a more general process, which is that we have experience with things and people in the world that fall into categories, and we can use our experience to make generalizations about novel instances of these categories. So everybody here has a lot of experience with chairs and apples and dogs, and based on this, you could see unfamiliar examples and you could guess, you could sit on the chair, you could eat the apple, the dog will bark. Now we might be wrong. The chair could collapse if you sit on it, the apple might be poison, the dog might not bark, and in fact, this is my dog Tessie, who doesn't bark. But for the most part, we're good at this. For the most part, we make good guesses both in the social domain and the non-social domain, and if we weren't able to do so, if we weren't able to make guesses about new instances that we encounter, we wouldn't survive. And in fact, Hazlitt later on in his wonderful essay concedes this. He writes, "Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way my across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life." Or take bias. Now sometimes, we break the world up into us versus them, into in-group versus out-group, and sometimes when we do this, we know we're doing something wrong, and we're kind of ashamed of it. But other times we're proud of it. We openly acknowledge it. And my favorite example of this is a question that came from the audience in a Republican debate prior to the last election.
好，讓我們從“成見(jiàn)”開(kāi)始聊起。你看著我，你知道我的名字，以及一些關(guān)于我的事情，你可以做出一定的判斷。你可以猜測(cè)我的種族，我的政治傾向，我的宗教信仰 這些判斷似乎可以是準(zhǔn)確的。我們對(duì)這些事非常擅長(zhǎng)。我們非常善于這些事的原因是我們“定義”他人的能力不是非常武斷的意識(shí)行為，而是一個(gè)綜合過(guò)程的特定反應(yīng)， 這意謂著，當(dāng)我們對(duì)所經(jīng)歷過(guò)的世界上發(fā)生的人與事做出分類，我們可以用經(jīng)驗(yàn)來(lái)做出反應(yīng)，這里的每個(gè)人都有很多經(jīng)驗(yàn)椅子，蘋(píng)果，狗根據(jù)這些物件，你可以看到 不熟悉的例子，并且你可以猜測(cè)，你可以坐在這張椅子上，你可以吃這個(gè)蘋(píng)果，狗會(huì)對(duì)著你叫。
我們可能是錯(cuò)的。當(dāng)你坐在椅子上的時(shí)候，椅子可能會(huì)塌， 蘋(píng)果可能是有毒的，狗未必會(huì)叫，事實(shí)上，這是我的狗泰西，它不叫。但在大多數(shù)情況下，我們對(duì)此很擅長(zhǎng)。在大多數(shù)情況下，我們的猜測(cè)是合理的 在社會(huì)領(lǐng)域或其他領(lǐng)域，如果我們不具有這樣的能力，如果我們沒(méi)有辦法對(duì)出現(xiàn)的新鮮事物做出正確的猜測(cè)，我們將無(wú)法生存。事實(shí)上，哈茲里特后來(lái)在他的佳作中 對(duì)此評(píng)論做出了讓步。
他寫(xiě)道，“如果沒(méi)有偏見(jiàn)和風(fēng)俗習(xí)慣的幫助，我將無(wú)法找到穿越房間的路;也無(wú)法知曉自己在不同條件下要做出怎樣的行為反應(yīng)， 也無(wú)法體會(huì)人生關(guān)系中的任何感覺(jué)。”現(xiàn)在來(lái)討論偏愛(ài)。有時(shí)候，我們將世界劃分為我們對(duì)抗他們，內(nèi)群體對(duì)抗外群體，有時(shí)當(dāng)我們這么做的時(shí)候， 我們知道我們正在犯錯(cuò)誤，我們甚至?xí)行M愧。但其他時(shí)間，我們對(duì)此很自豪。我們公開(kāi)承認(rèn)。我最喜歡的例子是一個(gè)來(lái)自觀眾的問(wèn)題在一個(gè)選前的共和黨辯論。
Anderson Cooper: Gets to your question, the question in the hall, on foreign aid? Yes, ma'am.
Woman: The American people are suffering in our country right now. Why do we continue to send foreign aid to other countries when we need all the help we can get for ourselves?
AC: Governor Perry, what about that?
Rick Perry: Absolutely, I think it's—
安德森·庫(kù)柏：?jiǎn)柎饡r(shí)間，觀眾提問(wèn)，有關(guān)對(duì)外援助?有請(qǐng)這位女士。
女士：在美國(guó)國(guó)內(nèi)，有很多美國(guó)人民正在經(jīng)受苦難。為什么我們要持續(xù)為其他國(guó)家提供援助呢?此時(shí)我們需要這些援助使用在本國(guó)人身上。
安德森·庫(kù)柏：州長(zhǎng)佩里，請(qǐng)您解答?
里克·佩里：絕對(duì)的，我認(rèn)為--
Paul Bloom: Each of the people onstage agreed with the premise of her question, which is as Americans, we should care more about Americans than about other people. And in fact, in general, people are often swayed by feelings of solidarity, loyalty, pride, patriotism, towards their country or towards their ethnic group. Regardless of your politics, many people feel proud to be American, and they favor Americans over other countries. Residents of other countries feel the same about their nation, and we feel the same about our ethnicities.
保羅·布魯姆：這個(gè)臺(tái)上的每個(gè)人同意她問(wèn)題的前提，這個(gè)前提就是作為美國(guó)人，我們應(yīng)該將更多的關(guān)注給予本國(guó)人民而不是其他人民。事實(shí)上，總的來(lái)說(shuō)， 人們時(shí)常容易受到影響對(duì)他們國(guó)家以及種族諸如團(tuán)結(jié)，忠誠(chéng)，自豪以及愛(ài)國(guó)主義。不談?wù)蝺A向，很多人對(duì)他們美國(guó)人的身份感到自豪，他們偏愛(ài)美國(guó)多于其他國(guó)家。 其他國(guó)家的人們也持有這樣的態(tài)度，人們對(duì)自己的種族也是如此。
Now some of you may reject this. Some of you may be so cosmopolitan that you think that ethnicity and nationality should hold no moral sway. But even you sophisticates accept that there should be some pull towards the in-group in the domain of friends and family, of people you're close to, and so even you make a distinction between us versus them.
一些人會(huì)反對(duì)這種說(shuō)法。你們中的某些人可能是世界主義者，會(huì)認(rèn)為種族和國(guó)籍不該影響到人們。但是，即便如此，你仍然會(huì)接受群體可以以朋友和家人來(lái)做劃分， 那些與你更親近的人們甚至你也會(huì)做一個(gè)劃分區(qū)別我們和他們。
Now, this distinction is natural enough and often moral enough, but it can go awry, and this was part of the research of the great social psychologist Henri Tajfel. Tajfel was born in Poland in 1919. He left to go to university in France, because as a Jew, he couldn't go to university in Poland, and then he enlisted in the French military in World War II. He was captured and ended up in a prisoner of war camp, and it was a terrifying time for him, because if it was discovered that he was a Jew, he could have been moved to a concentration camp, where he most likely would not have survived. And in fact, when the war ended and he was released, most of his friends and family were dead. He got involved in different pursuits. He helped out the war orphans. But he had a long-lasting interest in the science of prejudice, and so when a prestigious British scholarship on stereotypes opened up, he applied for it, and he won it, and then he began this amazing career. And what started his career is an insight that the way most people were thinking about the Holocaust was wrong. Many people, most people at the time, viewed the Holocaust as sort of representing some tragic flaw on the part of the Germans, some genetic taint, some authoritarian personality. And Tajfel rejected this. Tajfel said what we see in the Holocaust is just an exaggeration of normal psychological processes that exist in every one of us. And to explore this, he did a series of classic studies with British adolescents. And in one of his studies, what he did was he asked the British adolescents all sorts of questions, and then based on their answers, he said, "I've looked at your answers, and based on the answers, I have determined that you are either" — he told half of them — "a Kandinsky lover, you love the work of Kandinsky, or a Klee lover, you love the work of Klee." It was entirely bogus. Their answers had nothing to do with Kandinsky or Klee. They probably hadn't heard of the artists. He just arbitrarily divided them up. But what he found was, these categories mattered, so when he later gave the subjects money, they would prefer to give the money to members of their own group than members of the other group. Worse, they were actually most interested in establishing a difference between their group and other groups, so they would give up money for their own group if by doing so they could give the other group even less.
這些區(qū)別是自然而然的時(shí)常也是道德的，但有時(shí)也會(huì)出錯(cuò)，這是偉大的社會(huì)心理學(xué)家亨利·泰吉弗爾研究的一個(gè)部分。泰吉弗爾生于1919年的波蘭。 他離開(kāi)家鄉(xiāng)去法國(guó)上大學(xué)，因?yàn)樗仟q太人，無(wú)法在波蘭接受大學(xué)教育，隨后在第二次世界大戰(zhàn)他應(yīng)募入伍加入法軍。他被捕了隨后被送到戰(zhàn)俘營(yíng)， 對(duì)他來(lái)說(shuō)這是非常恐怖的經(jīng)歷，因?yàn)槿绻坏┌l(fā)現(xiàn)他是猶太人，他便會(huì)被移送到集中營(yíng)，很難活下來(lái)。
事實(shí)上，當(dāng)戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)結(jié)束的時(shí)候，他被釋放了， 絕大多數(shù)他的親友都死亡了。他參與不同的活動(dòng)。他幫助戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)孤兒。但他對(duì)偏見(jiàn)科學(xué)有著極高的興趣因此當(dāng)一個(gè)極有聲望的，有關(guān)“刻板印象成見(jiàn)” 的英國(guó)獎(jiǎng)學(xué)金機(jī)會(huì)釋出的時(shí)候，他遞交了申請(qǐng)，并拿到了獎(jiǎng)學(xué)金，這使他開(kāi)啟了精彩的職業(yè)生涯。他的職業(yè)開(kāi)始于發(fā)覺(jué)當(dāng)絕大多數(shù)人思考大屠殺是錯(cuò)誤的 采取了怎樣的方法。
很多人，那時(shí)候的絕大多數(shù)人，將大屠殺視為代表某種德國(guó)人的悲劇錯(cuò)誤，像是基因污點(diǎn)，威權(quán)性格。泰吉弗爾拒絕這樣的解釋。他說(shuō)道，大屠殺 只是夸大了正常的心理狀態(tài)這樣的心理狀態(tài)存在于我們中的每一個(gè)人。為了繼續(xù)研究，他做了一系列的經(jīng)典研究有關(guān)英國(guó)青少年。在他的其中一項(xiàng)研究中，他去詢問(wèn) 英國(guó)青少年各種不同的問(wèn)題，基于他們的回答，他說(shuō)，“我看過(guò)你的答案，基于你的回答，我決定你是”--他告訴青少年中一半的人--“康定斯基迷， 你喜愛(ài)康定斯基的作品，你是克利迷，你喜愛(ài)克利的畫(huà)作。”這完全是胡編的。這些青少年的答案和康定斯基或者克利一點(diǎn)關(guān)系也沒(méi)有。他們甚至還未聽(tīng)說(shuō)過(guò) 這兩位藝術(shù)家的大名。
泰吉弗爾只是武斷地把青少年們劃分開(kāi)來(lái)。但他發(fā)現(xiàn)，這樣的類別劃分是有作用的，隨后，他讓這些青少年分配錢，他們更愿意將金錢給予 他們本組的其他人而不是另一個(gè)組別的人。更糟的是，他們真的很樂(lè)于建立一個(gè)不同來(lái)將自己的組和他組區(qū)分開(kāi)來(lái)，為了令別組少拿到些錢他們甚至愿意放棄自己的錢。
This bias seems to show up very early. So my colleague and wife, Karen Wynn, at Yale has done a series of studies with babies where she exposes babies to puppets, and the puppets have certain food preferences. So one of the puppets might like green beans. The other puppet might like graham crackers. They test the babies own food preferences, and babies typically prefer the graham crackers. But the question is, does this matter to babies in how they treat the puppets? And it matters a lot. They tend to prefer the puppet who has the same food tastes that they have, and worse, they actually prefer puppets who punish the puppet with the different food taste. (Laughter)
偏愛(ài)很快就展現(xiàn)出來(lái)。我的妻子也是我的同事，凱倫·維恩，在耶魯大學(xué)做了一系列有關(guān)嬰兒的研究她將幼兒放在玩偶旁邊，玩偶有它們各自喜愛(ài)的食物。 某個(gè)玩偶可能喜愛(ài)青豆。另個(gè)玩偶更愛(ài)全麥餅干。研究人員測(cè)試了幼兒們自身的食物偏好幼兒們代表性地更愛(ài)全麥餅干。問(wèn)題是，這樣的喜好差別 會(huì)影響到幼兒們對(duì)待玩偶的態(tài)度嗎?確實(shí)有很大影響。幼兒們更喜歡和他們有相同口味偏好的玩具，更糟的是，幼兒們喜歡那些懲罰擁有不同口味同伴的玩偶。(笑聲)
We see this sort of in-group, out-group psychology all the time. We see it in political clashes within groups with different ideologies. We see it in its extreme in cases of war, where the out-group isn't merely given less, but dehumanized, as in the Nazi perspective of Jews as vermin or lice, or the American perspective of Japanese as rats.
這樣群體內(nèi)外分別非常常見(jiàn)。政治沖突中也會(huì)展現(xiàn)在持有不同意識(shí)形態(tài)的群體。極端的例子通過(guò)戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)展現(xiàn)，外群體不是被輕視而是被不當(dāng)作人類對(duì)待， 如同納粹視猶太人為害蟲(chóng)或是虱子，美國(guó)人視日本人為老鼠。
Stereotypes can also go awry. So often they're rational and useful, but sometimes they're irrational, they give the wrong answers, and other times they lead to plainly immoral consequences. And the case that's been most studied is the case of race. There was a fascinating study prior to the 2008 election where social psychologists looked at the extent to which the candidates were associated with America, as in an unconscious association with the American flag. And in one of their studies they compared Obama and McCain, and they found McCain is thought of as more American than Obama, and to some extent, people aren't that surprised by hearing that. McCain is a celebrated war hero, and many people would explicitly say he has more of an American story than Obama. But they also compared Obama to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and they found that Blair was also thought of as more American than Obama, even though subjects explicitly understood that he's not American at all. But they were responding, of course, to the color of his skin.
刻板印象是會(huì)歪曲現(xiàn)實(shí)的。因此時(shí)常他們是理性的，有幫助的，但時(shí)常也會(huì)是非理性的，會(huì)給出錯(cuò)誤的答案，有時(shí)會(huì)導(dǎo)致不道德的后果。最常被研究的案例是種族。 在2008年美國(guó)大選前有個(gè)極好的研究，社會(huì)心理學(xué)家研究被測(cè)者們是如何通過(guò)對(duì)美國(guó)國(guó)旗不知不覺(jué)的聯(lián)系和美國(guó)聯(lián)系在一起的。在其中一個(gè)研究中， 他們比較了奧巴馬和麥凱恩，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)麥凱恩比奧巴馬更加“美國(guó)”，某種程度上，人們甚至并未表示驚訝。麥凱恩是一個(gè)著名的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)英雄，很多人明確地說(shuō)道 比起奧巴馬，麥凱恩有更多的美國(guó)故事。研究人員也比對(duì)了奧巴馬和英國(guó)首相布萊爾，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)比起奧巴馬人們認(rèn)為布萊爾更加“美國(guó)”，即使他們完全知曉 布萊爾根本不是美國(guó)人。但人們回應(yīng)，當(dāng)然，因?yàn)槟w色的原因。
These stereotypes and biases have real-world consequences, both subtle and very important. In one recent study, researchers put ads on eBay for the sale of baseball cards. Some of them were held by white hands, others by black hands. They were the same baseball cards. The ones held by black hands got substantially smaller bids than the ones held by white hands. In research done at Stanford, psychologists explored the case of people sentenced for the murder of a white person. It turns out, holding everything else constant, you are considerably more likely to be executed if you look like the man on the right than the man on the left, and this is in large part because the man on the right looks more prototypically black, more prototypically African-American, and this apparently influences people's decisions over what to do about him.
這樣的成見(jiàn)和偏好有著現(xiàn)世的影響，這有些微妙，也非常重要。在最近的一個(gè)研究中，研究人員在易趣(eBay)網(wǎng)站上投放廣告銷售籃球卡。有些賣家是白人， 另一些則是黑人。同樣的實(shí)驗(yàn)也包括銷售棒球卡。黑人賣家得到的來(lái)自買家的出價(jià)價(jià)位略小于白人賣家。在斯坦福的一個(gè)研究項(xiàng)目也表明，心理學(xué)家研究了 因謀殺白人而被判刑的罪犯。結(jié)果表明，除去其他因素，比起圖片左邊的人(白人)圖片右邊的人(黑人)更可能被判死刑，這很大程度歸結(jié)于圖片右邊的人是黑人， 美國(guó)黑人，很明顯這影響到了人們對(duì)他所做出的決定。
So now that we know about this, how do we combat it? And there are different avenues. One avenue is to appeal to people's emotional responses, to appeal to people's empathy, and we often do that through stories. So if you are a liberal parent and you want to encourage your children to believe in the merits of nontraditional families, you might give them a book like this. ["Heather Has Two Mommies"] If you are conservative and have a different attitude, you might give them a book like this. (Laughter) ["Help! Mom! There Are Liberals under My Bed!"] But in general, stories can turn anonymous strangers into people who matter, and the idea that we care about people when we focus on them as individuals is an idea which has shown up across history. So Stalin apocryphally said, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic," and Mother Teresa said, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." Psychologists have explored this. For instance, in one study, people were given a list of facts about a crisis, and it was seen how much they would donate to solve this crisis, and another group was given no facts at all but they were told of an individual and given a name and given a face, and it turns out that they gave far more. None of this I think is a secret to the people who are engaged in charity work. People don't tend to deluge people with facts and statistics. Rather, you show them faces, you show them people. It's possible that by extending our sympathies to an individual, they can spread to the group that the individual belongs to.
現(xiàn)在我們知道了成見(jiàn)和偏愛(ài)的存在，我們要怎樣對(duì)抗這樣的想法呢?有很多不同的方法。一個(gè)方法是去感化人們的情感，去令人們感同身受，通常我們會(huì)用故事 來(lái)達(dá)到這樣的效果。如果你是自由的父母你想要鼓勵(lì)你的孩子來(lái)相信非傳統(tǒng)家庭的價(jià)值優(yōu)點(diǎn)，你會(huì)給他們看這樣的書(shū)。[海瑟有兩個(gè)媽媽]如果你比較傳統(tǒng) 對(duì)此持有不同的態(tài)度，你會(huì)給他們看這本書(shū)(笑聲)[“救命呀!媽媽!自由黨人藏在我的床下!”]總的來(lái)說(shuō)，故事能夠讓路人從陌生到關(guān)注，我們?cè)诤跞藗?當(dāng)我們將他們是做個(gè)體這樣的思想貫穿人類歷史。因此，斯大林虛情假意地說(shuō)，“一個(gè)人死亡是悲劇，一百萬(wàn)人的死亡則是統(tǒng)計(jì)數(shù)據(jù)，”特蕾莎修女說(shuō)道， "假如我看到一群人，我不會(huì)有所行動(dòng)。假如我看到一個(gè)人，我會(huì)。
"心理學(xué)家對(duì)此作出研究。比方說(shuō)，在一個(gè)研究中，研究人員交給人們一張清單， 上面列舉了一些危急的例子，看人們?cè)敢鉃榱嘶馕C(jī)捐贈(zèng)多少，另一個(gè)組則未被告知這些事情但研究人員告訴他們個(gè)體故事，包括名字，相片， 結(jié)果是，他們比上一組捐贈(zèng)更多善款。上述故事對(duì)于從事慈善工作的人來(lái)說(shuō)都不是秘密。慈善工作者不會(huì)向人們展示大量的事實(shí)和數(shù)據(jù)。而是，給人們看相片， 展示災(zāi)民的樣子。很有可能的是，通過(guò)展現(xiàn)我們對(duì)于個(gè)體的同情，他們可以進(jìn)而展示個(gè)體從屬的群體。
This is Harriet Beecher Stowe. The story, perhaps apocryphal, is that President Lincoln invited her to the White House in the middle of the Civil War and said to her, "So you're the little lady who started this great war." And he was talking about "Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not a great book of philosophy or of theology or perhaps not even literature, but it does a great job of getting people to put themselves in the shoes of people they wouldn't otherwise be in the shoes of, put themselves in the shoes of slaves. And that could well have been a catalyst for great social change.
這是哈里耶持·比徹·斯托。故事，可能是假的，林肯總統(tǒng)邀請(qǐng)她在美國(guó)內(nèi)戰(zhàn)期間到白宮對(duì)她說(shuō)，“你是開(kāi)始這場(chǎng)戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)的女子。”他談到“湯姆叔叔的小屋。” “湯姆叔叔的小屋”不是偉大的哲學(xué)或宗教故事甚至可能都不是文學(xué)，但它起了很大的作用在人們能夠?qū)⒆约褐蒙碛谀硞€(gè)故事那些本不可能屬于他們的故事中， 以奴隸的角度來(lái)看世界。這些是催化劑，催生巨大的社會(huì)變革。
More recently, looking at America in the last several decades, there's some reason to believe that shows like "The Cosby Show" radically changed American attitudes towards African-Americans, while shows like "Will and Grace" and "Modern Family" changed American attitudes towards gay men and women. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the major catalyst in America for moral change has been a situation comedy.
近年來(lái)，看看美國(guó)在過(guò)去幾十年的表現(xiàn)，太多的原因讓我們相信像是“考斯比一家”從更本上改變了美國(guó)人對(duì)美國(guó)黑人的看法，“威爾與格蕾絲”，“摩登家庭” 改變了很多美國(guó)人對(duì)同性戀男女的態(tài)度。不夸張地說(shuō)，對(duì)美國(guó)道德價(jià)值改變做出最大貢獻(xiàn)的是情景喜劇。
But it's not all emotions, and I want to end by appealing to the power of reason. At some point in his wonderful book "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Steven Pinker says, the Old Testament says love thy neighbor, and the New Testament says love thy enemy, but I don't love either one of them, not really, but I don't want to kill them. I know I have obligations to them, but my moral feelings to them, my moral beliefs about how I should behave towards them, aren't grounded in love. What they're grounded in is the understanding of human rights, a belief that their life is as valuable to them as my life is to me, and to support this, he tells a story by the great philosopher Adam Smith, and I want to tell this story too, though I'm going to modify it a little bit for modern times.
但這并不全是情感上的，最后我想要談到理性的力量。在他佳作的某些部分“喚醒人性中的天使”史蒂文·平克說(shuō)道，舊約說(shuō)到要愛(ài)我們的鄰居， 新約說(shuō)到要愛(ài)我們的敵人，但我不愛(ài)他們中的任何一個(gè)，不盡然，但我不想殺了他們。我知道我有義務(wù)對(duì)他們，但我對(duì)他們的道德感受，我要如何對(duì)待他們的道德信念， 不會(huì)是基于愛(ài)。是基于對(duì)人權(quán)的理解，他們的生命對(duì)他們的價(jià)值正如我的生命對(duì)我的價(jià)值，為了支持這個(gè)觀點(diǎn)，他講了一個(gè)故事，關(guān)于偉大的哲人亞當(dāng)·斯密， 我現(xiàn)在講這個(gè)故事，我為了使其適應(yīng)現(xiàn)代略微做了改動(dòng)。
So Adam Smith starts by asking you to imagine the death of thousands of people, and imagine that the thousands of people are in a country you are not familiar with. It could be China or India or a country in Africa. And Smith says, how would you respond? And you would say, well that's too bad, and you'd go on to the rest of your life. If you were to open up The New York Times online or something, and discover this, and in fact this happens to us all the time, we go about our lives. But imagine instead, Smith says, you were to learn that tomorrow you were to have your little finger chopped off. Smith says, that would matter a lot. You would not sleep that night wondering about that. So this raises the question: Would you sacrifice thousands of lives to save your little finger? Now answer this in the privacy of your own head, but Smith says, absolutely not, what a horrid thought. And so this raises the question, and so, as Smith puts it, "When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble?" And Smith's answer is, "It is reason, principle, conscience. [This] calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it."
亞當(dāng)斯密讓你來(lái)想象數(shù)千人死亡的場(chǎng)景，想象這數(shù)千人是在你不熟悉的國(guó)家。可能是中國(guó)，或者是印度，或者是某個(gè)非洲國(guó)家。斯密說(shuō)到，你會(huì)怎樣回應(yīng)? 你可能會(huì)說(shuō)，這太糟了，然后繼續(xù)你的生活。如果你打開(kāi)紐約時(shí)報(bào)的網(wǎng)站或什么，看到這些消息，事實(shí)上這常發(fā)生，我們繼續(xù)我們的生活。斯密說(shuō)，想象另一個(gè)畫(huà)面： 你發(fā)現(xiàn)明天你的小手指會(huì)被砍掉。斯密說(shuō)，這太重要了。你整晚會(huì)睡不著覺(jué)輾轉(zhuǎn)反側(cè)。這就提出了問(wèn)題：你會(huì)犧牲數(shù)千人的生命以求得保全自己小手指嗎? 現(xiàn)在在自己的腦袋里回答這個(gè)問(wèn)題，但是斯密說(shuō)，絕對(duì)不，這是多么邪惡的想法。這就提出了問(wèn)題，隨后，斯密提出這樣的疑問(wèn)，“我們的消極情緒總是 如此利欲熏心，自私卑鄙，我們的行為又怎么可能時(shí)常很無(wú)私和高尚呢?”斯密回答道，“因?yàn)槔硇?，道德，良知?rdquo;[這]告訴我們能夠驚人地絕大部分 爆發(fā)我們的激情，但眾多思考中，沒(méi)有比尊重更重要。“
And this last part is what is often described as the principle of impartiality. And this principle of impartiality manifests itself in all of the world's religions, in all of the different versions of the golden rule, and in all of the world's moral philosophies, which differ in many ways but share the presupposition that we should judge morality from sort of an impartial point of view.
最后的這個(gè)部分是有關(guān)公正的原則。這樣公正的原則在全世界宗教中都有所證明，在各種不同版本的黃金法則，世界上所有的道德哲學(xué)，即使有所不同但共有的假設(shè)是 我們應(yīng)該從公正的角度來(lái)評(píng)判道德。
The best articulation of this view is actually, for me, it's not from a theologian or from a philosopher, but from Humphrey Bogart at the end of "Casablanca." So, spoiler alert, he's telling his lover that they have to separate for the more general good, and he says to her, and I won't do the accent, but he says to her, "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."
這觀點(diǎn)最重要的是事實(shí)上，對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，這不是從宗教學(xué)家或哲學(xué)家聽(tīng)來(lái)，而是從亨弗萊·鮑嘉在電影“卡薩布蘭卡”片尾的表現(xiàn)。警告有劇透，他告訴他的愛(ài)人 為了更偉大的善，他們必須要分開(kāi)，他對(duì)她說(shuō)，我不會(huì)模仿這口音，他對(duì)她說(shuō)“不用多久就可以看到這三個(gè)小人的問(wèn)題不會(huì)使世界瘋狂。”
Our reason could cause us to override our passions. Our reason could motivate us to extend our empathy, could motivate us to write a book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or read a book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and our reason can motivate us to create customs and taboos and laws that will constrain us from acting upon our impulses when, as rational beings, we feel we should be constrained. This is what a constitution is. A constitution is something which was set up in the past that applies now in the present, and what it says is, no matter how much we might to reelect a popular president for a third term, no matter how much white Americans might choose to feel that they want to reinstate the institution of slavery, we can't. We have bound ourselves.
我們的理性可以駕馭我們的熱情。我們的理性可以激勵(lì)我們擴(kuò)展我們的同理心，可以激勵(lì)我們寫(xiě)“湯姆叔叔的小屋”這樣的書(shū)或者看“湯姆叔叔的小屋”， 我們的理性可以促使我們創(chuàng)造海關(guān)，煙草和法律這會(huì)限制我們沖動(dòng)的行為，當(dāng)理性存在，我們感到我們要被限制。這是憲法。憲法是過(guò)去撰寫(xiě)的 適用于現(xiàn)在以及未來(lái)，憲法提到的，無(wú)論我們多想選舉受歡迎的總統(tǒng)開(kāi)始第三任期，無(wú)論美國(guó)白人多么想重新回到奴隸制度，我們不能。我們限制自己。
And we bind ourselves in other ways as well. We know that when it comes to choosing somebody for a job, for an award, we are strongly biased by their race, we are biased by their gender, we are biased by how attractive they are, and sometimes we might say, "Well fine, that's the way it should be." But other times we say, "This is wrong." And so to combat this, we don't just try harder, but rather what we do is we set up situations where these other sources of information can't bias us, which is why many orchestras audition musicians behind screens, so the only information they have is the information they believe should matter. I think prejudice and bias illustrate a fundamental duality of human nature.
我們也從別的方式約束自己。當(dāng)我們想要選擇某人來(lái)從事一項(xiàng)工作，獲得一個(gè)獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng)，我們很容易受到種族因素的影響，我們會(huì)因他們的性別產(chǎn)生偏見(jiàn)， 我們會(huì)因?yàn)樗麄兊臉用伯a(chǎn)生偏愛(ài)，有時(shí)我們會(huì)說(shuō)，“是的，就是這樣。”有時(shí)我們會(huì)說(shuō)，“這是錯(cuò)的。”為了對(duì)抗這些，我們不僅更加努力，我們建立機(jī)構(gòu) 這些信息資源不會(huì)有成見(jiàn)，這就是為什么很多交響樂(lè)團(tuán)面試音樂(lè)家時(shí)，讓他們站在幕后，這樣評(píng)委唯一的信息來(lái)源就是他們認(rèn)為最重要的。我認(rèn)為偏見(jiàn)和偏愛(ài) 展示了人性最基礎(chǔ)的二元性。
We have gut feelings, instincts, emotions, and they affect our judgments and our actions for good and for evil, but we are also capable of rational deliberation and intelligent planning, and we can use these to, in some cases, accelerate and nourish our emotions, and in other cases staunch them. And it's in this way that reason helps us create a better world.Thank you.
我們有膽識(shí)，本能，情感，這會(huì)影響我們對(duì)于好與壞的判斷和行為，但我們同樣有能力做出理性思考和智能規(guī)劃， 我們可以運(yùn)用這些，在某些情況下，加速和豐富我們的情緒，某些情況下止住它們。這樣成見(jiàn)和偏愛(ài)就能幫助我們創(chuàng)建更美好的世界。謝謝。
相關(guān)文章：