We know less about the ancient world than we think we do 我们对古代世界的认识，比我们以为的要少 作者：James Hannam @ 2015-1-9 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：Tankman 来源：Quodlibeta，http://bedejournal.blogspot.jp/2015/01/we-know-less-about-ancient-world-than.html On 15 June 763BC, a near total eclipse of the sun was visible over a swathe of the Near East. As luck would have it, the event was noted in the official list of Assyrian high officials. This record provides the earliest absolute and uncontroversial date in ancient history. Using lists of kings and the chronicles of events, historians have counted the years back from this date to construct the chronology of ancient history. 公元前763年的6月15日，在近东的大片地区都能看到一次近似日全食。幸运的是，这一事件被记录在了亚述国高官的官方系年表【译注：即名年官表，亚述以一年一任的“名年官”之姓名纪年，记录当年发生的重大事件】中。这一文献为我们提供了古代历史上最早的无争议的绝对日期。历史学家们利用历代国王名表和大事记，从这一日期开始倒排年代，已经构造出古代史的编年次序。 Radiocarbon analysis (which measures the decay of carbon 14, an unstable isotope) and the predicable styles of pottery found in digs both provide corroborating evidence. Dating the layers of archaeological remains from the artefacts found within them is called stratigraphy and can yield quite precise results. The vast amount of pot shards that has been unearthed allows archaeologists to use statistical methods to screen out random noise and anomalous samples that have found their way into the wrong strata. 放射性碳分析（该方法测量的是碳-14这种不稳定同位素的衰变）和出土陶器可确认的风格，均提供了佐证。从出土的人工制品来测定这些制品所在的考古遗迹各地层的年代，这叫做考古地层学，由此得出的结论相当准确。大量发掘出的陶器碎片，使得考古学家能够利用统计方法排除那些混入错误地层的随机噪声和异常样本。 Of course, pottery and radiocarbon methods need to be calibrated to produce absolute dates. This has been done using samples of wood whose age can be determined by matching patterns of tree rings, a technique called dendrochronology. We can count back sequences of tree rings from the present day, all the way to 2000BC. By carbon dating the oldest samples of wood, we can tie the tree ring record to the results from carbon 14 decay. 当然，陶器和放射性碳方法也需要经过校正，才能得出确切日期。我们现在通过木头样本来做校正，这些木头的年龄可以通过与树木样本的年轮模式进行对照来确定，这种技术叫做树轮年代学。我们现在可以从今天倒推树木年轮的序列，一直推到公元前2000年。通过对最早的木头样本进行碳年代测定，我们就可以将树木的年轮档案和碳-14的衰变结果结合起来。 By 1990, all these clues had yielded a multi-dimensional jigsaw which fitted together to almost everyone’s satisfaction. There were a few heretics like Peter James, who suggested in his book Centuries of Darkness that the conventional chronology included two hundred additional years around 1000BC. Thus remains that were conventionally dated to 1050BC actually occurred in 850BC. Although James’s book is an excellent read, it fails to convince. 到1990年为止，上述所有线索加起来构成了一个多维度的拼图，相互吻合，几乎能让所有人满意。当然也有一些异端，如Peter James曾在其著作《黑暗数世纪》中提出，传统的编年学在公元前1000年前后额外多出了200年。因此传统上定为公元前1050年的遗迹实际上产生于公元前850年。尽管James的书是一本优秀读物，但并不能让人信服。 Nonetheless, it has now turned out that the conventional chronology was not as secure as everybody else thought. While James was convinced ancient history was two centuries too long, new evidence has begun to pile up in the opposite direction: it now looks like the conventional chronology is up to 150 years too short. To put it another way, a cataclysm that everyone thought occurred in 1500BC actually happened before 1620BC. The event in question was the massive eruption of the island of Thera in the Aegean Sea. 尽管如此，现已发现，传统的编年学确实不如大家曾认为的那样可靠。James坚信古代史多出了200年，但新积累的证据却逐渐偏向另一个方向。如今看来，传统的编年学似乎短了多达150年。换句话说，过去人人都以为发生于公元前1500年的一次灾变实际发生于公元前1620年以前。这里所说的事件就是爱琴海锡拉岛的一次大规模火山爆发。 Conventional chronology dated the end of Minoan age in Crete to 1450BC. Archaeologists assumed that the Thera eruption (on the modern island of Santorini) and its resulting tsunami had destroyed the Minoan fleet leaving them vulnerable to raiders from the mainland. Certainly, the havoc wrought by the volcano can clearly be seen across the Eastern Mediterranean. When Thera exploded, it blasted 60 cubic kilometres of rock into the atmosphere which settled over Asia Minor. 传统编年学将克里特岛米诺斯文明的终结时间定在公元前1450年。考古学家猜测，锡拉岛的火山爆发（发生于今天的圣托里尼岛上）及其导致的海啸摧毁了米诺斯的舰队，使之难以抵挡来自大陆的入侵者。当然，由这次火山爆发导致的破坏在整个东地中海地区都清晰可见。锡拉爆发时，曾将60立方千米的岩石冲入空中，落在小亚细亚。 The resulting layer of ash and pumice is used to date the sites where it is observed. And the eruption had other effects. Sulphur dioxide released by the volcano spread across the northern hemisphere and fell to earth as acid rain, or more significantly as acid snow. At the poles, not all of that snow has yet melted and, from the 1990s, it provides a new strand of evidence to date the eruption. 由此产生的火山灰和浮石组成的地层，被用来确定地层中遗址的年代。这次火山爆发还有其他影响。火山中释放出来的二氧化硫席卷北半球，以酸雨或更厉害时以酸雪的形式降落地面。在极地地区，这些雪至今都还没有完全融化。从1990年代开始，这些降雪就为测定该次火山爆发的年代提供了一条新的证据链。 Ice cores, drilled from the icecap of central Greenland, record the depth of each annual snowfall. The ice holds within it information on the constitution of the atmosphere going back tens of thousands of years. Like tree rings, each layer can be counted so as to give an absolute rather than relative date. 从格陵兰岛中部的冰盖中钻孔取出的冰芯，记录着每年降雪的深度。这些冰中包含有过去数万年间大气成分的信息。跟年轮一样，每一层冰都可以数出来，因此能给出绝对年代，而非相对年代。 Big volcanic eruptions show up as spikes in the sulphur-content of the annual fall of snow: Krakatau in 1886; Tombura in 1815; Vesuvius in AD79. Despite the presence of literate civilisations in Egypt, the Levant and Babylon, no written record of the Thera eruption exists, but the ice cores should overcome that deficiency and provide an absolute date for the cataclysm. 大型火山爆发就表现为年度降雪中硫含量的突然增加。如1886年喀拉喀托火山爆发，1815年坦博拉火山爆发，以及公元79年维苏威火山爆发。尽管当时埃及、黎凡特和巴比伦都已产生能够书写文字的文明，但锡拉岛火山爆发并没有成文记录留存下来。不过，冰芯应该能够克服这一不足，为我们提供此次灾难的确切年代。 Actually, the fact that the Thera event went unrecorded is less surprising than it seems. Mankind has been remarkably unobservant of enormous volcanic eruptions. An event in 1257AD, less than 800 years ago, is indelibly imprinted into both the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores. It was greater in size even than Tombora and thus the largest eruption in the last ten thousand years. But remarkably, no one knows where it happened. Only in 2012 has Mt Rinjani in Indonesia emerged as a likely candidate. Another big eruption, as recent as 1809, remains unidentified. 实际上，锡拉事件没有留下成文记录并没有初看上去那么异常。人类对于大型火山爆发历来特别粗心。在不到800年前，公元1257年发生了一次火山爆发，确凿无疑地体现于格陵兰岛和南极的冰芯中。它在规模上甚至比坦博拉爆发还大，因此是过去一万年间最大的火山爆发。但是，引人注目地是，没人知道它发生于何地。直到2012年，印度尼西亚的林加尼火山才得以成为备选答案。另外一次大型火山爆发，晚至1809年，至今身份不明。 By 2000, the Greenland ice cores had revealed that Thera could not have happened when everyone thought it had. The most likely anomaly in the ice dated from 1640BC, but this turned out to be from a volcano in Alaska. At the same time, carbon dating an olive tree buried in the Aegean eruption yielded a date of around 1620BC. Sulphur traces in the ice have been found that correspond to this date, although they are not as strong as might be expected. 到2000年时，格陵兰岛的冰芯已经揭示，锡拉火山爆发不可能发生于此前人们所设想的年代。冰层中最有可能的一次异常发生于公元前1640年，但这源于阿拉斯加的一座火山。同时，通过对在此次爱琴海火山爆发中被掩埋的一颗橄榄树进行碳年代测定，得出的年代大概是公元前1620年。冰层中也发现了与这一年代吻合的硫磺痕迹，只是不如预期的那么强烈。 Now, the dendrochronologists have piled in. The Thera eruption would have caused unusually cold weather which stunted plant growth across the globe. Evidence from bristlecone pines in the western United States, oak trees in Ireland and Swedish pines all point to a cold snap in 1627BC. This is consistent with what we’d expect from a big volcano blowing its top in the Mediterranean. Evidence from the Antarctic ice cores should be in shortly, but for a northern hemisphere volcano, this is unlikely to be conclusive. 现在，树轮年代学家挤进来了。锡拉火山爆发应该会导致不同寻常的寒冷天气，从而会妨碍全球范围内树木的生长。美国西部的狐尾松、爱尔兰的橡树和瑞典的松树所提供的证据，都表明公元前1672年出现了一次突然的寒冷期。这与我们对地中海地区一次大型火山爆发的预期后果相吻合。来自南极地区冰芯的证据应该很快就会出现，但这对一场发生于北半球的火山爆发而言，恐怕并不具有结论性。 The lack of a definitive date for the Thera disaster is frustrating, but we can now be reasonably sure it occurred 120 years earlier than thought. The implications of this for ancient history are immense. The chronology of the New Kingdom of Egypt was thought to be rock solid. Finding that they need to find room for a dozen more decades has been too disconcerting for Egyptologists to tackle so far. There is a good chance that the extra years belong in a period after the well-documented New Kingdom called the Third Intermediate Period. 找不到锡拉岛灾难发生的确切年代，这令人沮丧。不过，我们现在可以合理地确信，它的发生，比原先所设想的要早120年。这对于古代史意义重大。埃及新王国时期的编年次序曾被认为如磐石一般确切。自从埃及学家发现他们需要找出空隙来摆放这多出来的100多年，就一直仓皇不安、无从下手。很有可能，多出来的这些岁月属于文献详实的新王国以后的一段时期，即“第三中间期”。 For historians of Babylonia, the crisis has been less existential. Absolute dates for the second half of the second millennium are based on ancient observations of the planet Venus. We know from modern calculations that a particular configuration of Venus recorded during the eighth year of the reign of a certain King Ammisaduqa must have occurred in 1702BC, 1646BC, 1582BC or 1550BC. 对于研究巴比伦王国的历史学家而言，危机尚没有那么严重。（公元前）第二个千年下半叶的确切年代，是根据古代对金星的观测记录推出来的。基于现代的推算，我们知道，文献记载中某个叫做Ammisaduqa的国王治下第8年出现的某种特定的金星形态，必定发生于以下年代之一：公元前1702年，前1646年，前1582年或前1550年。 Other events in Babylonian history, such as the reign of King Hammurabi (famous for his law code) and the sack of Babylon by the Hittites are arranged around whichever absolute date is most convenient. That some of these possible Venusian dates differ by 120 years, about the same length of time that the Thera eruption has been moved back, is highly suggestive to say the least. 巴比伦历史上的其他事件，如汉谟拉比国王（以其法典而闻名）的统治和赫梯人对巴比伦的洗劫，均参照上述确切年份中最合用的那个来排列。上述几个备选的金星日期中存在相隔120年的情况，大体上与锡拉火山爆发时间被推后的时长间隔相等，这至少可说是非常意味深长。 So, where does all this leave biblical chronology? That remains very unclear. But the redating of Thera shows that we know a lot less about when things happened in the ancient world than we thought we did. 于是，所有这些对圣经编年学而言意味着什么？这一点尚不清楚。但对锡拉火山爆发的重新追溯表明，对于古代世界中的事情何时发生，我们的认识比自认为的，要少得多。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

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Such a thing 种族这回事 作者：Gregory Cochran @ 2016-4-19 译者：Tankman 校对：龙泉 来源：https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/such-a-thing/ “there’s no such thing as race” is a standard sentence in the United States and Europe. Conventional wisdom, and like so much conventional wisdom, false. “没有种族这回事”在欧美,这是老生常谈｡传统观点,甚至如此传统的观点,是错误的｡ Of course there is. 种族,当然是存在的｡ First you need to define your terms. I would suggest that any population – a group whose members have mated within that group, almost entirely, for some time – and has experienced strong-enough natural selection to change significantly in some trait that we give a shit about can usefully be considered a race. Or a ‘goklu’, where goklu has exactly the same operational meaning as race, without having yet acquired any toxic associations. 首先,你得需要为你的术语给出定义｡我的建议是:任何人群,群内成员交配繁衍(有时几乎只在群内交配),并且经历了足够强度的自然选择因而显著改变了一些被我们所在意的重要性状,那么方便起见,这样的群体便可称作一个种族｡或者叫它“格克鲁”【译注:作者生造词】也行,在此处,格克鲁有着和种族完全一样的操作性意义,但尚未像后者那样获得毒性｡ Low levels of inward gene flow allow selection to change the frequencies of alleles, so mating within the group is important. Usually this endogamy is a natural consequence of geography (not much gene flow across the Atlantic before Columbus) but sometimes it has been caused by social rules, as in the case of the Ashkenazi Jews or the Hindu castes. 低水平的外来基因流入,让自然选择得以改变等位基因的频率,因此交配限于群内这一点是重要的｡通常这种内婚是地理分割的自然结果(如哥伦布之前,大西洋两岸并未发生很多基因转移),但有时社会规则也会导致内婚,如阿什肯納茲犹太人和印度种姓制度｡ Low inward gene flow: in order for significant differences in the neutral genome to accumulate, there must have been < 1 immigrant per generation for tens of of thousands of years or more. That has happened sometimes, and not just with Neanderthals: sub-Saharan Africans and Eurasians were that separate until fairly recently, and have that kind of differences in their neutral genomes. For that matter, Bushmen and Bantu were genetically distinct for an even longer period. So it takes only a little gene flow to stop drift in its tracks. 低水平的外来基因流入:为了累积中性基因组的显著差异,在数万年甚至更长时间内,每代的外来迁入率必须小于1%【编注:依下文内容可知,此处原文漏了百分号】｡这种情况时有发生,而且不止在尼安德特人身上:撒哈拉以南的非洲人和欧亚人种间的隔离状态,直到相当晚近时才结束｡而他们的中性基因组也有这种差别｡同样的,布希曼人和班图人在更长的时间内,在遗传学上有显著不同｡所以,只需要一小点基因转移,就能让遗传漂变改变轨迹｡ Selection can be a lot stronger, and it takes more gene flow to scotch it. You could have effective selection for IQ among the Ashkenazi Jews even in the presence of as much as 0.5% inward gene flow per generation from the general European population. 2% would have been too much, though. 选择压力的作用则可强大得多,需要更多的基因流入才能抵消｡即使目前经历了每代0.5%的来自欧洲人口的外来基因流入,你仍可以在阿什肯納茲犹太人中观察到针对智商的让人印象深刻的选择压力｡不过,也许2%的外来基因流入会抵消选择压力的效果｡ A long period of genetic isolation does not automatically generate differences in any particular trait: but it does show that there has been an extended opportunity for selection to operate effectively and generate population differences. 长期的遗传隔离不能自动产生任何特有性状上的不同:但是它的确显示了选择压力更起作用,并导致种群差异｡ So when we see differences, how old are they? and how can we tell? Plausible selection pressures could generates one-std trait differences in as little as a thousand years, and in some cases, like the Ashkenazim, it likely has. In other cases it may have operated over tens of thousands of years, even as much as quarter of a million years (Bushmen/Pygmies versus other humans). 所以,当我们看到差异时,如何得知这些差异发生多久了?某些情况下,在短短一千年里,合理的选择压力可以产生一个标准差的性状差异,阿什肯納茲犹太人很可能就是这样｡其他情况下可能要花上几万年甚至长达二三十万年(比如布须曼人/俾格米人相对于其他人类的差异)｡ If the trait in question is characteristic of a geographically extended population, you might suspect that selection had operated over a long time. But since we now know that there have been many population expansions and replacements, you might be wrong. Ancient DNA may be a better guide. 如果讨论的性状属于一个在地理上广泛分布的人群,你一定会怀疑自然选择已经作用了很长时间｡但是既然我们现在知道很多人口扩张和替代现象,你的猜测可能是错的｡古代DNA可能是更好的线索｡ So sometimes the explanation for the differences between two populations may go back deep into the Ice Age, but it might also have happened since the birth of agriculture, or even since the fall of Rome. 所以有时解释两个种群间的差异,可能要回溯到冰河时代,但它也可能发生在农业起源之后,甚至是罗马灭亡之后｡ Suppose you have a one-std difference in some trait between two populations? What can we say about the genetic architecture? Well, sometime it boils down to the presence or absence of a single allele. Other times it is caused by a shift in the frequencies of a number of alleles that each have a small effect on the trait. 假如在两个种群间,一些性状存在一个标准差的差距,在遗传构成方面,我们有何结论?有时,这归结于某个等位基因的存在或缺失｡也有时,这是因为多个等位基因的频率漂变,每个(对)等位基因对性状均有一些影响｡ African-Americans average about 1-std lower in white count. That’s all due to the Duffy allele. All else equal, northern Europeans are a couple of centimeters taller than southern Europeans: that is caused by frequency differences in hundreds of alleles affecting height, a shift that on the whole has increased the frequency of plus variants. 非裔美国人平均比美国白人矮一个标准差｡这完全归因于Duffy等位基因｡其他条件相同时,北欧人比南欧人高一两厘米:这是因为数百个影响身高的等位基因的频率差异,某个漂变作用于这些等位基因上,增加了正向变异的频数｡ So what to say to someone that asks about the ‘race gene’? First, you tell her that she’s an idiot. The complex of shovel-shaped incisors, thick hair, small breasts, more eccrine sweat glands, and a different shape to the hangy-down part of the ear, fixed in northeast Asia, is indeed caused by a single allele, an EDAR variant that is essentially nonexistent in Europe or Africa. On the other hand, Pygmy height, or the lack of it, is influenced by a number of alleles. 所以如果有人问道“人种基因”的问题,该怎么回答呢?首先,你告诉她她是个白痴｡铲形门齿,浓密头发,小乳房,小汗腺发达,以及耳垂的不同形状,这些集中于东北亚人种的组合性状,实际上是由同一个等位基因带来的,一个不存在于欧非人种中的EDAR变异｡另一方面,俾格米人的身高,或者说身高很低,则反映了大量等位基因的影响｡ But the genetic architecture isn’t all that important: it’s the differences that matter. Pygmies are really short – that’s what matters. 但是遗传结构并不一定都那么重要:重要的是性状差异｡比如俾格米人真的很矮,这才是要紧的｡ Along those lines, Lewontin and other bullshit artists have tried to argue that genetic statistics are such that human groups can’t really be different. Most genetic variation in humans is within-group, rather than between-group: so fucking what? the same is true for dogs: am I supposed to think that pit bulls and Chihuahuas and border collies are ‘really the same’? 类似的,列万廷或者其他喷子一直试图争辩,遗传统计学反映了人类族群并非真的不同｡人类的大多数遗传学变异出现在族群内,而非族群之间:那又如何?对狗来说也一样啊:难道我就应该认为斗牛犬和吉娃娃和边境牧羊犬“真的是一样的”吗? Having more plus variants in the alleles that affect a particular quantitative trait doesn’t show up in these genetic statistics (like Fst) at all. Neither would a big frequency difference in a single allele that had a big effect, like EDAR. 这些遗传统计学差异(例如Fst,【译注:费雪统计量,衡量种群间基因差异程度】)完全不能反映影响了特定性状的数据对应的等位基因含有更多正向变异｡也不能反映某一有显著影响的单个等位基因在频数上的巨大差异,例如EDAR｡ People are mostly about as different as they seem to be. There are exceptions, cases where an environmental insult makes a fair amount of difference. This is particularly the case with height, where nutritional status can easily create a 1-std difference. But height is influenced by genetics, too, and the shortest people (the Pygmies) are short for genetic reasons, not because they’re starving. 一般来说,人群间的差异看上去有多大,他们的基因差异就有多大｡环境冲击是一个例外,它也可以导致相当多的差异｡尤其是身高,营养环境可以造成一个标准差的差异｡但基因也可以影响身高｡最矮的人群(俾格米人)长得矮就是因为基因而非饥饿｡ What about the magic immunity of the brain to natural selection? That’s nonsense, of course. We know, for sure, that different goklus have different distributions of personality traits – because they act significantly differently with 24 hours of birth. All the psychometric results indicate that goklus vary in intelligence too [perhaps 3 stds from highest to lowest] probably largely because of differences in the frequency of many alleles with small effects. 关于自然选择,难道大脑就能神奇的免于其影响吗?这当然是胡扯｡我们确定知道,不同种族在人格特质上有不同的分布——出生24小时之后,人们的行为就明显不同｡所有智商测试结果都表明不同种族在智商上也有差异(最低水平与最高水平间约有三个标准差),这可能归因于众多影响智商的等位基因在频率上的差别｡ （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

I Love the U.N., but It Is Failing 我爱联合国，但它辜负了我们的期待 作者：ANTHONY BANBURY @ 2016-3-18 译者：Eartha（@王小贰_Eartha） 校对：慕白（@李凤阳他说） 来源：The New York Times，http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/i-love-the-un-but-it-is-failing.html I HAVE worked for the United Nations for most of the last three decades. I was a human rights officer in Haiti in the 1990s and served in the former Yugoslavia during the Srebrenica genocide. I helped lead the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Haitian earthquake, planned the mission to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons, and most recently led the Ebola mission in West Africa. I care deeply for the principles the United Nations is designed to uphold. 我在联合国工作了近三十年。1990年代，我在海地担任人权干事，并于斯雷布雷尼察大屠杀期间在前南斯拉夫工作。我曾帮助应对印度洋海啸和海地地震，策划了消除叙利亚化学武器的项目，最近还曾在西非指挥抗击埃博拉病毒。我深切地关心联合国着意维护的准则与理念。 And that’s why I have decided to leave. 这也是我决定离开的原因。 The world faces a range of terrifying crises, from the threat of climate change to terrorist breeding grounds in places like Syria, Iraq and Somalia. The United Nations is uniquely placed to meet these challenges, and it is doing invaluable work, like protecting civilians and delivering humanitarian aid in South Sudan and elsewhere. But in terms of its overall mission, thanks to colossal mismanagement, the United Nations is failing. 全球正面临一系列骇人的危机，从气候变化的威胁到叙利亚、伊拉克和索马里不断涌现的恐怖分子。在应对这些挑战方面，联合国有着特殊的地位，而它所做的工作也极其宝贵，例如在南苏丹及其他地区保护平民与提供人道主义救助。但是当我们谈及它的全面使命时，由于大范围的管理不善，联合国实则正日渐辜负我们的期待。 Six years ago, I became an assistant secretary general, posted to the headquarters in New York. I was no stranger to red tape, but I was unprepared for the blur of Orwellian admonitions and Carrollian logic that govern the place. If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again. 六年前，我成为联合国助理秘书长，前往纽约总部工作。我对繁文缛节并不陌生，但此处盛行的奥威尔式告诫与卡罗尔式逻辑的暧昧含糊，仍是令我措手不及。就算你把一群邪恶天才关在实验室里，他们也设计不出这种官僚体系，繁琐到让人发狂，耗费了大量精力到头来却一事无成。这样的体制就是一个黑洞，大把的税金和人们的抱负全都被吸到里面，有去无回。 The first major problem is a sclerotic personnel system. The United Nations needs to be able to attract and quickly deploy the world’s best talent. And yet, it takes on average 213 days to recruit someone. In January, to the horror of many, the Department of Management imposed a new recruitment system that is likely to increase the delay to over a year. 第一个严重的问题是僵硬的人事制度。联合国需要有能力去吸引全球最优秀的人才，并迅速把他们安排到合适的岗位。但现状是，招募一个新人平均要花掉213天。今年一月份，管理部门施行了新的招募制度，时间花费可能超过一年，让人深感恐怖。 During the Ebola epidemic, I was desperate to get qualified people on the ground, and yet I was told that a staff member working in South Sudan could not travel to our headquarters in Accra, Ghana, until she received a new medical clearance. We were fighting a disease that killed many thousands and risked spinning out of control and yet we spent weeks waiting for a healthy colleague to get her forms processed. 埃博拉病毒流行期间，我急需在当地找到合适的帮手，结果却被告知，一位在南苏丹工作的成员在拿到新的体检合格单之前，无法前来阿克拉的总部。我们正在与杀死数千人的流行病抗争，局面时刻有失控恶化的危险，然而却需要耗费数周时间去等一位健康同事走完表格流程。 Too often, the only way to speed things up is to break the rules. That’s what I did in Accra when I hired an anthropologist as an independent contractor. She turned out to be worth her weight in gold. Unsafe burial practices were responsible for about half of new Ebola cases in some areas. We had to understand these traditions before we could persuade people to change them. As far as I know, no United Nations mission had ever had an anthropologist on staff before; shortly after I left the mission, she was let go. 唯一能加快进度的办法就是打破规则，这种情形屡见不鲜。我在阿克拉招募一名人类学家作独立合约员工时就是这么做的。结果证明她真是帮了大忙。在一些地区，近一半的新增病例源于不安全的埋葬措施，我们必须在理解这些习俗传统之后才有办法劝说人们去做出改变。就我所知，在此之前联合国的任务团队里从未有过人类学家；而我离开这个项目后不久，她就被解雇了。 The heads of billion-dollar peace operations, with enormous responsibilities for ending wars, are not able to hire their immediate staff, or to reassign non-performers away from critical roles. It is a sign of how perversely twisted the bureaucracy is that personnel decisions are considered more dangerous than the responsibility to lead a mission on which the fate of a country depends. 维和行动的花费常达数十亿美金，其首长们肩负着结束战争的重大使命，却无法招募到他们的直属部下，或者调离重要职位上的不作为者。这个信号显示了联合国的官僚系统被扭曲至何种无理的程度：比起肩负关乎一国命运的重任，进行人事变动安排对他们来说反而更危险。 One result of this dysfunction is minimal accountability. There is today a chief of staff in a large peacekeeping mission who is manifestly incompetent. Many have tried to get rid of him, but short of a serious crime, it is virtually impossible to fire someone in the United Nations. In the past six years, I am not aware of a single international field staff member’s being fired, or even sanctioned, for poor performance. 这种机制失灵的结果之一就是问责制度形同虚设。当下，一个大型维和任务的总参谋长明显无法胜任，许多人都想把他赶走。但在联合国的体系内，除非他面临严重的犯罪指控，否则要解雇他几乎是不可能的。就我所知，过去的六年间不曾有一名国际部门的职员因为表现糟糕而被解雇，甚至连处罚都没有。 The second serious problem is that too many decisions are driven by political expediency instead of by the values of the United Nations or the facts on the ground. 第二个严重的问题是，太多的决策出于政治上的权宜考虑，而非基于联合国的价值体系或实际需求。 Peacekeeping forces often lumber along for years without clear goals or exit plans, crowding out governments, diverting attention from deeper socioeconomic problems and costing billions of dollars. My first peacekeeping mission was in Cambodia in 1992. We left after less than two years. Now it’s a rare exception when a mission lasts fewer than 10. 维和部队常常在没有清晰的任务目标或退出方案的情况下，就这么四处游荡长达数年，排挤了当地政府，转移了对更深层的社会经济问题的注意力，耗费掉数十亿美元。我参与的第一个维和任务是1992年在柬埔寨。不到两年时间我们就离开了。而现在，罕有任务会短于10年。 Look at Haiti: There has been no armed conflict for more than a decade, and yet a United Nations force of more than 4,500 remains. Meanwhile, we are failing at what should be our most important task: assisting in the creation of stable, democratic institutions. Elections have been postponed amid allegations of fraud, and the interim prime minister has said that “the country is facing serious social and economic difficulties.” The military deployment makes no contribution at all to solving these problems. 看看海地吧：那里已经10余年未曾发生过武装冲突，但是仍有超过4,500名联合国士兵驻守在当地。同时，我们却一直没有履行好最重要的任务：帮助当地人民建立稳定、民主的体制。选举因被指控存在欺诈而延期，临时总理也谈及“这个国家正面临严重的社会与经济困难。”然而军事部署对于解决这些问题毫无助益。 Our most grievous blunder is in Mali. In early 2013, the United Nations decided to send 10,000 soldiers and police officers to Mali in response to a terrorist takeover of parts of the north. Inexplicably, we sent a force that was unprepared for counterterrorism and explicitly told not to engage in it. More than 80 percent of the force’s resources are spent on logistics and self-protection. Already 56 people in the United Nations contingent have been killed, and more are certain to die. The United Nations in Mali is day by day marching deeper into its first quagmire. 我们犯下的最严重错误是在马里。2013年初，恐怖分子夺取了马里北部的部分地区，于是联合国决定派遣10,000士兵与警察前往马里加以应对。令人费解的是，我们派去的军队并无反恐的准备，并且被明确命令不要与恐怖分子交火。超过80%的部队资源用在了后勤和自卫上。到目前，已有56名联合国士兵牺牲，之后必然会出现更多人员伤亡。联合国将就此日渐深陷于马里的泥潭之中。 BUT the thing that has upset me most is what the United Nations has done in the Central African Republic. When we took over peacekeeping responsibilities from the African Union there in 2014, we had the choice of which troops to accept. Without appropriate debate, and for cynical political reasons, a decision was made to include soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and from the Republic of Congo, despite reports of serious human rights violations by these soldiers. Since then, troops from these countries have engaged in a persistent pattern of rape and abuse of the people — often young girls — the United Nations was sent there to protect. 但是，最让我感到不安的是联合国在中非共和国的所作所为。2014年，当我们从非洲联盟手中接过维和任务时，我们可以选择接收哪些部队。没有经过合理的辩论程序，出于现实的政治原因考量，刚果民主共和国与刚果共和国的部队也一起被联合国接收，尽管当时已有报告显示这些士兵存在严重违反人权的行为。自此，这些军队强奸和虐待当地人民的情况持续不断出现，受害者通常都是年轻女孩，而这些人原本是联合国应当保护的对象。 Last year, peacekeepers from the Republic of Congo arrested a group of civilians, with no legal basis whatsoever, and beat them so badly that one died in custody and the other shortly after in a hospital. In response there was hardly a murmur, and certainly no outrage, from the responsible officials in New York. 去年，刚果共和国的维和部队在毫无法律依据的情况下逮捕了一群平民，对他们实施猛烈的殴打，导致一人死于监禁场所，另一人也随后死于医院。但纽约的负责人对此却毫无回应，更别提去表达愤怒了。 As the abuse cases piled up, impassioned pleas were made to send the troops home. These were ignored, and more cases of child rape came to light. Last month, we finally kicked out the Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers, but the ones from the Republic of Congo remain. 随着凌虐事件越积越多，当地人民陈情要求遣返这些部队。这些声音被无视了，同时越来越多强奸幼童的案子被曝光。上个月，我们终于赶走了刚果民主共和国的部队，但是刚果共和国的士兵现在仍驻留在当地。 In 1988, my first job with the United Nations was as a human rights officer in Cambodian refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border, investigating rapes and murders of the poor and helpless. Never could I have imagined that I would one day have to deal with members of my own organization committing the same crimes or, worse, senior officials tolerating them for reasons of cynical expediency. 1988年，我在联合国的第一份工作是作为人权干事前往泰柬边界的柬埔寨难民营，调查贫苦无助的平民所遭受的强奸和谋杀案件。我从未想到，自己日后竟要处理实施同样犯罪的联合国人员，更有甚者，还要处理那些出于现实的政治考量而容忍放纵他们的长官们。 I am hardly the first to warn that the United Nations bureaucracy is getting in the way of its peacekeeping efforts. But too often, these criticisms come from people who think the United Nations is doomed to fail. I come at it from a different angle: I believe that for the world’s sake we must make the United Nations succeed. 联合国的官僚体制正在成为它维和努力的障碍，我并不是第一个发出这样警告的人。但这些批评通常来自对联合国抱持悲观态度的人，而我则选择从不同的角度来看待这个问题：我相信，为了全世界，我们必须让联合国成功。 In the run-up to the election of a new secretary general this year, it is essential that governments, and especially the permanent members of the Security Council, think carefully about what they want out of the United Nations. The organization is a Remington typewriter in a smartphone world. If it is going to advance the causes of peace, human rights, development and the climate, it needs a leader genuinely committed to reform. 面对今年即将到来的新任联合国秘书长选举，世界各国，尤其是各安理会常任理事国，需要好好想想他们想从联合国得到些什么。这个机构就像一台智能手机时代的雷明顿打字机，如若仍有心继续推进关于和平、人权、发展与气候等议题，它就需要一位真心实意寻求变革的领导人。 The bureaucracy needs to work for the missions; not the other way around. The starting point should be the overhaul of our personnel system. We need an outside panel to examine the system and recommend changes. Second, all administrative expenses should be capped at a fixed percentage of operations costs. Third, decisions on budget allocations should be removed from the Department of Management and placed in the hands of an independent controller reporting to the secretary general. Finally, we need rigorous performance audits of all parts of headquarters operations. 联合国的官僚体系需要服务于各项任务，而不是反其道行之。第一步应先全面革新人事体制。我们需要一个外部小组来检视这个体制并提供变革建议。第二，所有行政支出都应该控制在任务总费用的某个固定比例内。第三，分配预算的权力应当从管理部门转移至一个直接向秘书长汇报的独立主管人。最后，我们需要对总部行动的各个部分进行严格的绩效审计。 Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is a man of great integrity, and the United Nations is filled with smart, brave and selfless people. Unfortunately, far too many others lack the moral aptitude and professional abilities to serve. We need a United Nations led by people for whom “doing the right thing” is normal and expected. 潘基文秘书长为人诚实正直，联合国也充满了聪明、勇敢与无私的人。可惜的是，太多的人缺少必要的道德品质与专业能力。我们期望联合国被这样一个人领导：对他/她来说，“做正确的事”是平常且可以期待的。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Seattle’s Coming $15 Minimum Wage 西雅图即将实施15美元最低工资标准 作者：Clinton Alexander @ 2015-10-28 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值） 来源：The New American，www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/21844-seattles-coming-15-minimum-wage In the city of Seattle, Washington, Joe Salvatore runs The Recycling Depot, a recycling business employing about 20 people. Not far away, Bobby Denovski is eking out a living at Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta with a handful of employees, and Remo Borracchini is busy running an Italian Bakery. The story is the same across Washington State and across the nation: Businesses are fighting every day to service customers, treat employees well, and simply stay open. Joe Salvatore在华盛顿州西雅图市经营一家叫做“回收站”的回收企业，雇佣了大约20人。不远处，Bobby Denovski正惨淡经营着“帕记披萨和意粉”店，雇有少量员工。而Remo Borracchini则在为经营一家名为“意大利烘焙”的小店而上下奔波。这种故事在华盛顿州和整个美国都很普遍：为了服务顾客、善待雇员以及仅仅是保持开业，企业每天都在奋斗。 Unfortunately in the city of Seattle, it is about to get much more difficult for business owners to continue the fight. Pushed forward primarily by socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, the first phase of a new minimum wage law went into effect on April 1, 2015, and the law will eventually bring all businesses to a $15 minimum wage, more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. 不幸地是，在西雅图市，企业主想要继续奋斗下去，将来会变得更加艰难。主要由信奉社会主义的女市议员Kshama Sawant推动的新最低工资法已于2015年4月1日进入第一阶段的实施，并最终将对所有企业实行15美元最低工资标准，相当于将目前时薪7.25美元的联邦最低工资翻了一倍以上。 The law is a graduated system with different pay scales and timelines for businesses above and below 500 employees. For businesses with 501 employees or more, the April 1, 2015 minimum wage was set at $11 an hour. For the next two years, on January 1 of each year, the wage increases, rising from the current $11 per hour to $13, reaching $15 an hour on January 1, 2018. 新法建立的是一个分级制度，对于雇员超过和低于（及等于）500人的企业分别设立了不同的工资标准和时间表。对于雇有501或更多雇员的企业，2015年4月1日开始最低工资是时薪11美元。在接下来的两年内，每年1月1日提一次工资，从现在的时薪11美元提到13美元，到2018年1月1日实现时薪15美元。 For companies paying at least $1.50 per hour toward a silver level medical benefits plan, the minimum wage goes to $12.50 on January 1 of 2016, then $13.50 in 2017, and finally $15 an hour in January of 2018. As stated on Seattle’s website seattle.gov, “Once Seattle’s minimum wage reaches $15.00/hour, payments toward medical benefits no longer impact employees’ minimum wage.” 如果企业每小时至少帮员工支付1.5美元给白银级医疗福利计划，那么它们的最低工资从2016年1月1日开始将是12.5美元，2017年是13.5美元，最终到2018年1月达到15美元。西雅图市的网站seattle.gov上称：“一旦西雅图的最低工资达到15美元每小时，那么医疗福利付费就不会再影响雇员的最低工资标准。” On April 1, 2015, small-business wages were set at $11 an hour as well. For companies at or below the 500-employee mark, the $15 minimum wage is set to be phased in over the course of the next decade. Again, counting medical benefits and other factors such as tips, the total compensation varies. By the year 2021, the minimum wage will be $15 with tips and health insurance factored in, and in 2025, small businesses must meet the $15 minimum wage without credit for tips or insurance. 2015年4月1日起，小企业的工资也被设定为时薪11美元。对于雇员数量在500名或更少的公司，最低工资标准将在接下来的10年内逐步施行。同样，把医疗福利和其他因素如小费算在内，总工资也会不同。到2021年，把小费和健康保险算在内，最低工资将是15美元，而到2025年，小企业必须符合刨除小费或保险后15美元的最低工资标准。 President Obama has repeatedly urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. For this reason it would behoove those across the nation to pay special attention to the city of Seattle. Seattle is tucked away in the northwestern corner of the nation; however, as the city squeezes its businesses for more and more money, it may become ground zero for the minimum wage fight. 奥巴马总统已经反复敦促国会将联邦最低工资从时薪7.25美元提升至时薪10.10美元。因此之故，全美理应特别关注西雅图市。西雅图深藏于美国的西北角落，不过，随着这座城市从其企业身上不断榨取越来越多的钱财，它可能成为最低工资之战的引爆点。 Reasons for the Law 立法理由 Since being first enacted in 1928, the idea of a “minimum wage” has been sold as a law that will benefit the poorest sectors of our society. According to Cornell Law School, “The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.” 自1928年首次创设为法律以来，“最低工资”概念就被作为一种有利于社会中贫困群体的法律向大众兜售。根据康奈尔大学法学院的说法，“设计最低工资是为了制定一种最低生活水平，以保障雇员的健康和福利。” Likewise, from the city of Seattle’s own website we find, “Citywide minimum wage laws offer local governments a powerful tool for helping low-income workers and families in their communities. Such measures also have significant impact on businesses and how they operate.” Minimum wage advocates have held that it is possible to set a minimum pay scale and have no ill effect on jobs. 同样，我们也能从西雅图市自己的网站上看到，“全市范围内的最低工资法，能给地方政府提供一种强大工具，以帮助各自社区中的低收入工人和家庭。这种措施也将对企业及其运营方式产生巨大影响。”最低工资的鼓吹者历来相信，设定一种最低工资标准而不对就业产生任何不良影响是可能的。 Operating under the assumption that simply raising the minimum wage will guarantee said wage, the people pushing for the $15 minimum wage claim that it has the power to lift the poor to that “new standard of living.” Is this true? Will it indeed lift the needy in our communities to another level, or is it a false assumption, one that will cause irreparable damage to business and industry? 依着“简单地将最低工资标准提升一下就能实现这一工资收入”的假定行事，那些争取15美元最低工资的人就此宣称，这一标准有能力将穷人提升到“新的生活水平”。这是真的吗？它真的能将我们社区中的贫困人口提升一个水平？还是说这是个错误的假设，将会对企业和实业造成不可弥补的伤害？ Asking the Businesses 问问企业 Several business owners in Seattle were kind enough to give their own opinions of Seattle’s minimum wage law and explain how it will have a negative impact not only on their businesses, but on those people it was designed to help. 承蒙西雅图一些企业主的好意，向我们表达了他们对西雅图最低工资法的个人看法，并解释了它会如何产生负面影响，而这种负面影响不仅仅会作用于他们自己的企业，而且会作用于立法本来意图帮助的那些人。 Walter McLaughlin has been in Small Business Administration (SBA) lending for 27 years. He won the Washington State Financial Services Champion award in 2005. Concerning the minimum wage law in Seattle, McLaughlin said in an e-mail statement: Walter McLaughlin已在“小企业管理局”（SBA）借贷项目工作了27年。他于2005年获得了“华盛顿州金融服务冠军”的称号。关于西雅图的最低工资法，McLaughlin在一份电邮声明中说：

In economics, there is a principal called “zero sum gain” in which an increase is offset by a loss of equal amount. When a small business (and per the SBA’s size standards, over 99% of U.S. companies qualify as small) sees its operating costs increase, it has three options: 1) absorb the cost, 2) raise prices or 3) lower expenses. Since businesses don’t operate with the intention of losing money, the irony of a drastic increase in the minimum wage is that in order for employers to adjust, the net effect may be higher inflation and unemployment, disproportionately hurting the very same group the $15 minimum wage was intended to help. 在经济学中，有个原理叫做‘零和受益’，其中增加值被等量的损失所抵消。如果一家小企业（按照SBA的规模标准，美国超过99%的公司算小企业）的运营成本上升，它就面临三个选项：1）承担这一成本，2）提高价格，或者3）降低开支。由于企业运营的目的并不是为了损失金钱，所以最低工资急剧提升的反讽在于，雇主为了实现调整，最终净效果可能是通胀升高及失业率升高，这对于15美元最低工资标准意图帮助的那个群体损害相对更大。

McLaughlin lays out three ways in which the new Seattle minimum wage law will play out as it’s implemented: a loss to the business owner (absorb the cost), a cost to the general public (raise prices), or a reduction in expenses (possible job loss). McLaughlin提出了西雅图最低工资新法实施之后最终将走向的三种路径：企业主出现损失（承担成本），一般公众的损失（提高价格），或者削减开支（可能出现工作岗位流失）。 A Loss to the Business Owner 企业主出现损失 For those people who have never run a business, the absorption of the additional cost may seem to be the easiest and most straightforward solution to the requirement to pay employees more. But contrary to what those who have never had the experience of sitting down with a company’s balance sheets might think, all business owners are not jet-setting CEOs with profits just flowing in. 对于从未经营过任何企业的人来说，为了达到支付雇员更高工资的要求，由企业承担额外成本似乎是最简单、最直接的解决办法。但与这些从未看过任何一个公司财务收支表的人所想的相反，并非所有企业主都是乘坐直升机的CEO，利润滚滚而来。 At The Recycling Depot, general manager Joe Salvatore stated, “What these people don’t take into consideration is that when you raise the wage, you’re raising the Labor and Industries Insurance cost because that amount is affected by the wages. I have already talked to several small businesses in the area and there’s not a single one who is making tons and tons of money where they’re just going to be able to absorb these costs.” “回收站”的总经理Joe Salvatore说，“这些人没有考虑到，如果提高工资，你还会提高劳动和工业保险成本，因为后者会受工资影响。我已经和本地区的数家小企业谈过，没有一家是在成吨成吨地赚钱，没有一家能够直接承担这些成本。” In other words, while the absorption of minor costs may be a normal and constant part of running a business, the bottom line is a major factor. At Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta, Bobby Denovski echoed Salvatore’s sentiment: “We aren’t a large company with huge profits. As a small business the cost of labor is one of the main factors. Fifteen dollars an hour, that’s a lot of money to ask from a small business.” 换句话说，尽管运营一家企业时，承受并消化小量的成本可能是个司空见惯、总在发生的事，但盈亏底线是个主要的因素。“帕记披萨和意粉”店的Bobby Denovski呼应了Salvatore的观点：“我们不是那种利润巨大的大公司。对于小企业来说，主要因素之一就是劳工成本。15美元一小时，这种要价对于小企业来说可是一大笔钱。” When asked what effect he could foresee the escalating minimum wage law having on his business, Denovski commented, “It could put us all out looking for jobs. We have a couple more years paying on the loan for our restaurant. If we end up paying this $15 an hour, we are honestly in danger of losing it.” 当被问及不断升级的最低工资法将来会对其生意产生何种影响时，Denovski评论说，“我们可能都会被迫出去找工作了。我们的餐馆还有几年贷款需要还。如果最终我们需要支付15美元的时薪，我们真的可能会失去餐馆。” Likewise, The Recycling Depot, as a metals recycling business, is subject to sometimes-dramatic market fluctuations. Metal values can skyrocket, allowing ample room to treat employees well, and values can plummet, leaving the business struggling to survive. Said Salvatore of the times when the market is up, “We do take care of our employees during those times. We give bonuses and things like that. However what about the lean times? This is going to have a dramatic effect on us during the lean times. You can’t just start taking the pay away.” 同样，从事金属回收生意的“回收站”也承受着市场波动，时不时还非常剧烈。金属价格可能飙升，此时企业就有足够的空间来更好对待员工，但价格也可能跳水，那样企业就只能竭力求生。谈及市场向好的时候，Salvatore说，“那种时候我们确实会照顾自己的员工。我们提供奖金等类似东西。但生意差的时候呢？在生意差的时候，这会给我们造成巨大的影响。减少支出都来不及。” A Cost to the General Public 一般公众的损失 If costs cannot be simply absorbed by the company, another option is to raise the price of the product. Bobby Denovski stated, “The only thing I can do is to raise the prices. I worry that the demand for pizza in the community will not support the prices we will have to go to when the wages go up.” How much is a pizza worth to those in his community? How about a gallon of milk? Those claiming the minimum wage will have no ill effect on the community should be asking themselves these questions, because at some point most small business owners such as Denovski must find a way to recoup these costs. 如果成本不能简单地由企业承担，还有一个选项就是提高产品价格。Bobby Denovski称，“我唯一能做就是提高价格。如果工资上涨，我们就必须抬高价位，我担心我所在社区的披萨需求不足以支持我们的这种要价。”在他的社区，一份披萨应该要价多少？一加仑牛奶呢？那些声称最低工资不会对社区产生不良影响的人应当问问自己这些问题，因为到了某个时候，绝大多数小企业主，如Denovski一样，都会想办法转移这些成本。 Referring again to fluctuating values in the metals market, Salvatore stated, “We’re very dependent on the global prices of metals. When the metal values drop, we’re making less money and our margins shrink. During times like this there are a lot of businesses just trying to stay afloat.” And so he is forced to try to pass on the costs in another manner. Salvatore再一次谈及金属市场的波动价格：“我们对全球金属价格有很大的依赖。金属价格下跌时，我们赚的钱就减少，利润收缩。碰到这种时候，大量的企业只是谋求维持下去。”所以他将被迫以另一种方式把成本传递出去。 As a metals recycling business, The Recycling Depot purchases metals from other businesses and from the general public, then sells those metals based on current market prices. Because Salvatore has no control over the sale price (dictated by global supply and demand), the only thing he can do is to drop the prices he is paying the public for those metals, illustrating the second point (a cost to the public) in another light. 从事金属回收行业的“回收站”从别的企业及一般公众手里收购金属，然后依照当前市场价格将这些金属卖出。由于Salvatore没有办法控制销售价格（它由全球供给和全球需求决定），他唯一能做的就是压低他支付给公众的金属收购价格，这从另一个方面说明了我们提出的第二点（公众的损失）。 Lower Expenses 降低开支 Absent the ability to absorb the higher wages or pass on the costs to someone else, a third way to compensate is to lower expenses. On the surface this sounds harmless enough. However, it often means the disappearance of jobs. 要是没有能力承担更高的工资或将成本传递给其他人，那么还有第三种弥补办法，那就是降低开支。表面看来这种做法相当无害。但是，它通常意味着工作岗位消失。 At Borracchini’s Bakery in Seattle, a business that has been open for 94 years, Remo Borracchini has a long history of hiring youth. “I myself have probably hired 1,500 young people over the years. I have had people come here as teenagers and stay here as much as 25 years, so they came and learned a trade,” said Borracchini. 西雅图的“博记烘焙”是一家已经开业94年的企业，店主Remo Borracchini 历来喜欢雇佣年轻人。“多年以来，我本人可能雇佣了1500个年轻人。我手下有些人，来的时候还是个少年，然后就在这工作了25年。他们来我这里，学会了一门生意”，Borrachini这样说道。 He has brought in high-school students who have never worked a job and started them washing pots and pans, stocking shelves, and mopping floors. While the wages many of these new hires make is not a large sum, Borracchini sees a bigger picture: 他曾招过一些从未干过任何工作的高中生，让他们从刷盘子洗碗、装货架、拖地开始干起。尽管这些新进员工所赚取的工资并不多，Borracchini看到的却是一幅更大的图景：

It’s not that we’re just looking for cheap labor. It’s the understanding that you’re doing something for these young people other than sending them out to wander aimlessly through the neighborhoods. You see, I do believe we have a responsibility to our young people. There used to be internships throughout industry. Now that has changed. 并不是说我们只是为了找些廉价劳工。我们的理解是，你是在帮这些年轻人做点什么事，没有让他们在社区中没头没脑地游窜。跟你说，我确实相信我们对年轻人负有责任。过去，各行各业都有实习。现在事情发生了变化。 They used to go into places like print shops, or bakeries and come to begin learning a trade; that was their reimbursement, they were learning something that would benefit them throughout their life. Now they’ve passed a law saying they have to be paid a wage. So what happens? If you’re going to have to pay someone who doesn’t know anything, you might as well pay someone who already knows something. 过去，他们要去文印店或面包店等类似地方，开始学习一门行当；那相当于他们的回报，他们是在学习某种将会受益终身的东西。现在有人制定一条法律，说是必须给他们支付工资。那会发生什么呢？如果有人啥都不懂，你也必须要支付他工资，那你还不如向那些懂点什么的人支付工资。

Continued Borracchini, Borracchini继续说，

Businesses like McDonald’s, they built their empire not on a philosophy of it being a high paying job, but to take kids who have never worked before, teach them a little bit about work ethic and how to perform, and they move on to better opportunities when they have shown they have a bit of ability. You’ll begin to see the order screens in every type of McDonald’s scenario. Look at the jobs they’re eliminating right there. Kids who would be learning to show up for work on time, learning how to interact with the public, how to have a bit of work ethic. 像麦当劳这种企业帝国，它的建基哲学并不是它之作为一种高薪职位，而是它招募此前从未工作过的人，教给他们一点工作伦理和如何履职，然后当他们表现出具备一定能力时，就能前进一步，迈向更好的机会。以后你会看到各式各样的麦当劳式情景，大家都开始用点菜屏。看看他们正在消灭的工作。孩子们本来可以学会按时上班，学会如何与公众打交道，如何具备一点工作伦理。

Salvatore echoed Borracchini, stating that in order to recoup labor costs, jobs would almost certainly be cut, “at least cutting hours back if not completely doing away with jobs. The well is not bottomless.” Salvatore呼应了Borrachini，并说，为了弥补劳工成本，工作岗位几乎肯定会被削减，“如果不是彻底废除岗位，至少需要减少雇佣时长。井中的水毕竟是有限的。” At Padrino’s, a clearly concerned Denovski stated, “Right now it’s [the minimum wage] at $11 an hour and it is already difficult for me and my partner to keep the bills paid and the employees paid. They’re going to be raising that expense up to $15, but none of our other costs will be going down. I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do.” “帕记”的Denovski明显很是担心，他说，“现在的最低工资是时薪11美元，而我和我的合伙人已经感到难以偿付账单、支付员工工资。他们还要将这一开支提高到15美元，而我们的其他成本都不会降低。我真的不知道我们有什么办法。” Salvatore then commented on a worst-case scenario, “Eventually we have to tighten the ropes, and then what happens when there’s nothing left in the reserve?” Indeed, what does happen? What happens to the low-skill workers looking for a job? Where will the teenager or young adult go for training when McDonald’s has automated order screens? As Borracchini said, “It is the internship and low-skill jobs which will be cut. We will have sent them back out onto the street.” 然后，Salvatore就最坏的情形作了评论，“最终我们必须拉紧裤腰带，如果没有剩下任何储备，那会发生什么呢？”确实，会发生什么呢？对于那些找工作的低技术工人，会发生什么呢？当麦当劳开始用自动点菜屏时，少年或刚刚成年的人们要去哪里接受训练？正如Borracchini所说，“被削减的会是那些实习岗位和低技术岗位。我们将不得不把他们送回街上。” Help or Harm? 帮助还是伤害？ Seattle businesses obviously view the new minimum wage law with quite a bit of trepidation. It is easy to see why. These companies will have to find a way to recuperate the costs one way or another. No matter how it ends up happening, it will be a detriment to the community and the city. 西雅图的企业显然正以相当程度的恐惧看待最低工资新法。很容易发现原因所在。这些公司都必须寻找各种办法来弥补成本。不管最终会发生什么，它对于社区和整个城市都是一种损害。 In “The Tax & Budget Bulletin” by The Cato Institute dated March 2014, Joseph J. Sabia, associate professor of economics at San Diego State University, explains how a minimum wage affects the poor’s standard of living and employment opportunities: 在加图研究所2014年3月的“税收与预算简报”中，圣迭戈州立大学的经济学副教授Joseph J. Sabia就最低工资会如何影响穷人的生活水平和就业机会作出了解释：

The bulletin concludes that minimum wage increases almost always fail to meet proponents’ policy objectives and often hurt precisely the vulnerable populations that advocates wish to help. The weight of the science suggests that policymakers should abandon higher minimum wages as an antiquated anti-poverty tool. Minimum wages deter employment and are poorly targeted to those in need. 简报的结论是，提高最低工资几乎总是不能实现其支持者的政策目标，而且通常都会恰好伤害到鼓吹者们想要帮助的脆弱群体。科学表明，决策者们应当放弃提高最低工资这种早已过时的反贫困工具。最低工资伤害就业，而且对于身处困境的人们来说真是南辕北辙。

His words echo the business owners quoted here. Says Borracchini, “I can sympathize with someone who is trying to raise a family. Fifteen dollars is not a lot of money. It’s very difficult. However, there is an element of society who through laws like this are being denied a great privilege. The opportunity to learn how to work.” 他的言论正与我们此处所引企业主的言论互相呼应。Borracchini说，“有人要努力养活一家人，这我能够同情。15美元并不是很大一笔钱。世事艰难。但是，通过这种法律，社会中有一部分人将无法享有一项重要的权利。那就是学会如何工作的机会。” The bottom line is that the minimum wage law was supposedly created to help the poor and needy in our society. However, it is the low-skill and poor who will feel the effect first and foremost, and who will find it much more difficult to acquire the job skills needed to raise the value of their labor to or above the minimum wage. 这里的底线是，最低工资法的创设，本意是为了帮助我们社会中的穷人和急需帮助的人群。但是，首当其冲感受到其影响的就是低技术人口和贫困人口，他们将发现，要将自己的劳动价值提高到或超过最低工资，就必须获得工作技能，而这将变得比以前更难。 As voices cry ever louder for an increased federal minimum wage, the stories of small businesses across the nation need to be brought into the spotlight — businesses reaching out to unskilled youth willing to put in time training. Companies managing a tight bottom line can’t handle the extra expense of yet another increase in wages. 随着提高联邦最低工资的呼声与日俱增，有必要将全美小企业的故事带到台前——这些企业都在向那些技能不足但愿意花时间接受训练的年轻人敞开双臂。盈亏底线很紧张的公司没有办法应对未来工资再次上涨所带来的额外开支。 The heart of our nation does not lie within the halls of Congress but rather in the bakeries, pizza shops, recycling centers, and myriad other small businesses. It is not in the backroom deals between politicians where the effects of these laws will be felt, but rather in the checking accounts of struggling businesses. 我们民族的心脏并不位于国会的办公大楼里，而是位于各家烘焙店、披萨店、回收中心以及种种其他小企业中。要感受到这些法律的效果，不是去看政客之间的暗箱交易，而需要去看艰难度日的各家企业的存款账户。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The Global Vote of No Confidence in Pax Americana 全球对美利坚治世投下不信任票 作者：WRM @ 2016-4-5 译者：焦美淳（@火车入巷） 校对：Drunkplane（@Drunkplane-zny) 来源：The American Interest，http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/04/05/the-global-vote-of-no-confidence-in-pax-americana/ Defense spending is rising around the world, and it’s not because people feel safer. Bloomberg: 世界各地的国防开支都在上升，而这不是因为人们感到越来越安全。彭博社讯：

Global military spending has begun rising in real terms for the first time since the U.S. began its withdrawal of troops from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 根据斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所（SIPRI）的数据，自美军从伊拉克和阿富汗撤军后，全球军事开支第一次有了实际增长。 Defense budgets rose 1 percent to $1.68 trillion in 2015, making up about 2.3 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, Sipri said in a report Tuesday. While the U.S. spent the most at $596 billion, that was down 2.4 percent compared with 2014, while China’s outlay increased 7.4 percent to $215 billion. SIPRI在周二的报告中指出，2015年全球国防预算增加了1%，达到1.68万亿美元，占世界国内生产总值的2.3%。其中美国以5960亿美元的支出高居首位，这一数据比2014年降低2.4%。而中国的国防经费则提高了7.4%，达2150亿美金。 Concern about a possible advance by Russia into North Atlantic Treaty Organization territory following the Crimea invasion and hostilities in east Ukraine led to a surge in spending in Eastern Europe, as Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea spurred arms purchases among Southeast Asian states. 随着克里米亚的遭受入侵以及发生在东乌克兰的敌对行动，对俄罗斯可能挺进北约领土的担忧已导致东欧的军事支出出现了井喷式的增长。同时中国在南海的野心也刺激了东亚国家的武器采购。

What’s forgotten among all the grousing by President Obama and Donald Trump about ‘free riding’ allies is this basic fact of international life: the Pax Americana was intended to suppress global geopolitical and military competition by providing a framework for international security. That benefitted the world by making countries safer at a lower cost and by assuring people that their national defense and access to world trade and markets did not require them to build huge military establishments. 在奥巴马总统和唐纳德·川普抱怨那些“搭顺风车”的盟国时，他们忘记了国际生活的这一基本事实：美利坚治世【译注：第二次世界大战后美国强权主导之下非共产世界的和平秩序】提供一个国际安全框架，旨在抑制全球地理政治和军事的竞争。美利坚治世让全世界受益，它以更低的开支使各国更加安全，并向人们保证他们不需要去建造大量的军事设施来换取国防安全和世界贸易市场的通行证。 People who don’t know much about history or understand American foreign policy will look at the result—that the U.S. spent more on the military than other countries—and think that we were somehow getting snookered. But they forget—or perhaps they never learned—some vital facts: 不怎么懂历史或者不理解美国外交政策的人只会看结果——美国在军事上的花费比其他国家都多——从而认为我们以前不知怎地就被骗了。但是他们忘记了——或者说也许他们从不知道——一些重要的事实： 1. The U.S., a country whose economic and security interests extend globally more than those of any other country thanks both to our geography and the nature of our economy, benefits more than any other country from the existence of a global economic and security system 1. 因为我们的地理位置和经济性质，美国的经济和安全利益辐射全球，甚于其他任何一个国家，因此从全球经济和安全体系中的所获利益也甚于其他任何一个国家。 2. It is actually cheaper for us to maintain this framework when other countries don’t feel the need to spend lots of money on their militaries—when the U.S. spends less than 4% of GDP on defense but has a bigger defense budget than the rest of the world combined, that is the sign of a successful strategy: our military superiority is immense and unchallengeable, yet the cost to us, is by historical great power standards, low. That is the sign of strategic success, not of ‘free riding allies’, Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump. 2. 事实上，当其他国家觉得在军事上并不需要有大量开销的时候，维持这个框架对我们来说成本更低——当美国的国防开支少于GDP的4%，国防预算却比其他所有国家总和还多，这标志着一个成功的战略：我们的军事优势是巨大且不容挑战的；而其成本——按照历史上的强国标准——仍是很低的。奥巴马先生和川普先生，这就是战略成功的标志，而不是让同盟国“搭顺风车”。 3. The other reason that the U.S. has followed this strategy is the bitter experience of the past that teaches an important lesson: multipolar arms races lead to great power war. The U.S. has believed since the 1940s that another global conflict on the scale of World War I and World War II would mean the collapse of global civilization, or even the extermination of the human race. We have therefore made it a centerpiece of our policy to deter other powers from building huge military establishments and, when they do it—as the USSR did in its day—to ensure that such powers are deterred from war and that other powers feel safe enough in the shadow of U.S. strength that their military responses, though real, are limited. 3. 令美国遵循这个战略的另一个原因是，过去的苦涩经验给我们上了重要一课：多极的军备竞赛导致强国间战争。自1940年代起，美国就相信，另一场规模如一战和二战的全球冲突意味着全球文明的崩塌，甚至是全人类的灭亡。因此我们政策的中心就是阻止其他政权建立起庞大的军事设施，并且，当有国家这么做时——就像前苏联当初的所作所为——我们会确保阻止这些政权走向战争，并且使其他政权在美国军事力量的羽翼下感到安心，即便他们的军事反应能力被切实地限制了。 For 70 years this strategic approach has prevented the outbreak of devastating wars like those of the first half of the twentieth century. That we did so at an affordable, though not an insignificant, cost, is a triumph of strategic thinking and of American foreign policy. 过去70年，这项战略方针阻止了很多发生在20世纪上半叶那样的毁灭性战争。尽管我们做到了，其代价不能说不大，但仍是我们能够承受的，这是美国战略思考和外交政策的胜利。 Weak leadership and a failure of strategic intelligence now threatens the success of the most successful world strategy of modern times, a strategy whose success has been the root cause of American prosperity and global stability for two generations. There is no enemy powerful enough to destroy the Pax Americana today, except for the greatest of all great powers in human affairs: the power of stupidity. 软弱的领导力和战略情报的失败，如今威胁着现代最成功的世界战略。这个战略的成功，在整整两代人的时间里，是美国繁荣和全球稳定的根本原因。当下没有任何敌人有足够的能力去摧毁美利坚治世，除了所有影响人类事物的伟力中最强大的：愚蠢之力。 We will know that American foreign policy has started to work again when military budgets around the world go down, while ours remains at an affordable level. Those are the metrics we are looking for; right now, we seem to be getting the opposite. 当全世界军事预算下降，而美国的军事预算尚在可负担水平时，我们会知道美国的外交政策又开始起作用了。这些就是我们要达到的指标；而现在，我们似乎正与之背道而驰。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read 抱歉，你无法速读 作者:Jeffrey M. Zacks, Rebecca Treiman @ 2016-4-15 译者:焦美淳(@火车入巷) 校对:Drunkplane (@Drunkplane-zny) 来源:纽约时报,http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/sorry-you-cant-speed-read.html OUR favorite Woody Allen joke is the one about taking a speed-reading course. “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes,” he says. “It’s about Russia.” 关于速读，伍迪艾伦讲过一个我们非常喜欢的笑话：“我20分钟就看完了《战争与和平》，”他说，“讲苏联的。” The promise of speed reading — to absorb text several times faster than normal, without any significant loss of comprehension — can indeed seem too good to be true. Nonetheless, it has long been an aspiration for many readers, as well as the entrepreneurs seeking to serve them. And as the production rate for new reading matter has increased, and people read on a growing array of devices, the lure of speed reading has only grown stronger. 速读的美好愿望——即在不错失原文主旨的情况下，以几倍于寻常的速度理解文章内容——看起来并不易达成。然而，对很多读者来说，这确是梦寐已久的美事，一些企业家也一直试图在这方面为读者提供一些服务。由于读物的出版速度越来越快，并且阅读设备越来越多，速读的诱惑力只增不减。 The first popular speed-reading course, introduced in 1959 by Evelyn Wood, was predicated on the idea that reading was slow because it was inefficient. The course focused on teaching people to make fewer back-and-forth eye movements across the page, taking in more information with each glance. Today, apps like SpeedRead With Spritz aim to minimize eye movement even further by having a digital device present you with a stream of single words one after the other at a rapid rate. 第一个著名的速读课程在1959年由伊芙琳伍德所创建。它基于这一概念——阅读之所以缓慢是因为其效率低下。这个课程着眼于教导人们阅读书页时，眼睛尽可能少的左右往返运动，而要让眼睛每扫过一次都获取更多的信息。如今，像SpeedRead With Spritz这样的app，甚至通过在电子设备上快速滚动一个个的单词，来减少眼球的活动。 Unfortunately, the scientific consensus suggests that such enterprises should be viewed with suspicion. In a recent article in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, one of us (Professor Treiman) and colleagues reviewed the empirical literature on reading and concluded that it’s extremely unlikely you can greatly improve your reading speed without missing out on a lot of meaning. 遗憾的是，科学共识显示，我们须抱有怀疑的眼光来看待这番速读事业。在一篇最近发表于《大众心理学期刊》的文章中，Treiman教授和她的同事回顾了有关阅读的实证文献，并得出一个结论：在不大量错失文章原意的情况下，你基本不可能显著地提高阅读速度。 Certainly, readers are capable of rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information, or to pick up a general idea of what the text is about. But this is skimming, not reading. We can definitely skim, and it may be that speed-reading systems help people skim better. 当然，阅读者确实能够通过迅速地扫视，从一段文本中提取到特定词语或者信息片段，亦或摘取出这段文字的中心思想。但这是浏览，不是阅读。我们肯定可以做到浏览，或许速读体系有助于促进浏览的效果。 Some speed-reading systems, for example, instruct people to focus only on the beginnings of paragraphs and chapters. This is probably a good skimming strategy. Participants in a 2009 experiment read essays that had half the words covered up — either the beginning of the essay, the end of the essay, or the beginning or end of each individual paragraph. Reading half-paragraphs led to better performance on a test of memory for the passage’s meaning than did reading only the first or second half of the text, and it worked as well as skimming under time pressure. 举例而言，一些速读系统指导人们只在文段或者章节的开端加以关注。这或许是一个很好的浏览策略。在2009年的一个实验中，参与者阅读盖住一半内容的文章——或前半篇，或后半篇，或每段的开头或结尾。阅读每个段落的一半，相比于阅读前半或后半篇文章，对全文意思的记忆效果更好。并且，其效果等同于在时间紧张情况下的浏览。 But speed reading? Techniques that aim to guide eye movements so that we can take in more information from each glance seem doomed to fail. There is only a small area in the retina (called the fovea) for which our visual acuity is very high. Our eyes are seriously limited in their precision outside of that. This means that we can take in only a word or so at each glance, as well as a little bit about the words on either side. In fact, since the 1960s, experiments have repeatedly confirmed that when people “speed read,” they simply do not comprehend the parts of the text that their eyes skip over. 但有速读这回事吗？一些技巧旨在指导我们眼球的活动，以便眼睛一瞥就能获得更多的信息，但它们似乎注定失败。只有在视网膜上很小的一块区域（称作中央凹），我们的视觉敏锐度才非常高。而除了它之外，我们的眼睛在精确度上非常受限。这就意味着我们每次只能看清一个词，顶多再看到它旁边个把词。事实上，自从1960年代起，很多实验都验证了当人们“速读”的时候，他们并不理解他们眼睛扫视过的那部分内容。 A deeper problem, however — and the one that also threatens the new speed-reading apps — is that the big bottleneck in reading isn’t perception (seeing the words) but language processing (assembling strings of words into meanings). Have you ever tried listening to an audio recording with the speaking rate dialed way up? Doubling the speed, in our experience, leaves individual words perfectly identifiable — but makes it just about impossible to follow the meaning. The same phenomenon occurs with written text. 然而我们还有一个更深层次的问题——这个问题也威胁着那些新兴的速读软件——阅读中最大的瓶颈并不是感知（看到词语），而是语言处理（组合词语使其有意义）。你是否尝试过以极快的速度听录音？在我们的经验里，录音速度被增加一倍后，每一个单词都可以听清，但我们却恰恰跟不上它的意思。这种现象也同样出现在阅读纸质内容时。 As in all forms of human behavior, there is a trade-off, in reading, between speed and accuracy. You can learn to skim strategically so that you spend more time looking where the more important words are likely to be, and if the words are presented in a stream you may be able to learn which words to focus on and which to ignore. However, that does not mean that you can somehow magically read parts of a page that you don’t look at, or process all the words in a superfast sequence. 在各种人类行为中，总有取舍。阅读时，取舍就体现在速度和准确度上。你可以学习策略性地浏览，以便在可能出现更重要词语的地方花费更多时间。如果词语在眼前滚动，你能够知道哪些词需要重视，哪些词可以忽略。然而，这并不意味着你可以不看某一页的部分内容，就神奇地阅读了它；也不意味着你能以极快的速度处理所有的词。 Reading is about language comprehension, not visual ability. If you want to improve your reading speed, your best bet — as old-fashioned as it sounds — is to read a wide variety of written material and to expand your vocabulary. 阅读关乎语言的理解，而不是视觉能力。如果你想提高你的阅读速度，你最好的方法——这听起来有点老掉牙——是阅读大量文字资料并且扩充你的词汇库。 Just don’t expect to read “War and Peace” in 20 minutes. 真的别指望在20分钟里读完《战争与和平》。 Jeffrey M. Zacks, the author of “Flicker: Your Brain on Movies,” and Rebecca Treiman are professors of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Jeffrey M. Zacks（著有《闪光：看电影的大脑》（Flicker：You Brain on Movies））和Rebecca Treiman，皆为圣路易斯华盛顿大学心理和大脑科学教授。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The US Has The Best Rail System in the World, and Matt Yglesias Actually Pointed Out the Reason 美国拥有世界上最好的铁路系统，Matt Yglesias其实已经点出了背后的原因 作者:Warren Meyer @ 2016-5-2 翻译:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 校对:babyface_claire(@许你疯不许你傻) 来源:www.coyoteblog.com，http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/05/the-us-has-the-best-rail-system-in-the-world-and-matt-yglesias-actually-pointed-out-the-reason.html Yglesias has a very good article on why passenger rail is not a bigger deal in the US. In it, he says this (emphasis added): 关于为何客运铁路在美国并未大行其道，Yglesias写了篇很好的文章。在那篇文章中，他说道：

Instead the issue is that the dismal failure of US passenger rail is in large part the flip side of the success of US freight rail. America's railroads ship a dramatically larger share of total goods than their European peers. And this is no coincidence. Outside of the Northeast Corridor, the railroad infrastructure is generally owned by freight companies — Amtrak is just piggybacking on the spare capacity. 相反，美国客运铁路的萧索其实很大程度上可视为其货运铁路兴盛的另一面。比起欧洲的铁路，美国的铁路承担全国货物运输的比重要大得多。而这并不是巧合。除了东北走廊线，美国的铁路设施基本由货运公司拥有——Amtrak【译注：美国国家铁路公司，其全部优先权股份都由美国联邦政府所有，并接受政府投资以维持公司运转。公司的运作模式为准政府机构，董事会成员皆由总统提名经参议院同意而任命】）仅仅肩负了剩余的运输能力。

It is a short article, so it does not go into more depth than this, but I have actually gone further than this and argued that the US freight-dominated rail system is actually far greener and more sensible than the European passenger system.  As I wrote years ago at Forbes: 这是篇短文章，所以只是点到为止，但我其实做过更深的研究，并提出货运占主导的美国铁路系统其实远比欧洲的客运系统更环保和更合理。正如多年前我在《福布斯》上发表的文章所说：

The US rail system, unlike nearly every other system in the world, was built (mostly) by private individuals with private capital.  It is operated privately, and runs without taxpayer subsidies.    And, it is by far the greatest rail system in the world.  It has by far the cheapest rates in the world (1/2 of China’s, 1/8 of Germany’s).  But here is the real key:  it is almost all freight. 与世界上几乎所有其他铁路系统都不一样，美国的铁路系统基本全部由私人出资，并由私人建设。它由私人运营，不需要拿纳税人的钱进行补贴。而且，目前为止它是世界上最大的铁路系统，也是目前为止最便宜的系统（成本为中国铁路系统的二分之一，德国的八分之一）。但真正的关键在这：它基本上完全为货运服务。 As a percentage, far more freight moves in the US by rail (vs. truck) than almost any other country in the world.  Europe and Japan are not even close.  Specifically, about 40% of US freight moves by rail, vs. just 10% or so in Europe and less than 5% in Japan.   As a result, far more of European and Japanese freight jams up the highways in trucks than in the United States.  For example, the percentage of freight that hits the roads in Japan is nearly double that of the US. 若以百分比计，在美国，铁路承担的货运量（同汽车运输相比）比世界上几乎其他任何国家都大得多。欧洲和日本完全不在同一档次上。具体来说，美国40%的货运由铁路承担，而欧洲为10%左右，日本则不到5%。结果便是，比起美国，在欧洲和日本，多得多的货物在卡车里堵在了高速公路上。例如，在日本由公路运输的货物的百分比几乎是美国的两倍。 You see, passenger rail is sexy and pretty and visible.  You can build grand stations and entertain visiting dignitaries on your high-speed trains.  This is why statist governments have invested so much in passenger rail — not to be more efficient, but to awe their citizens and foreign observers. 如你所见，客运铁路性感、招人喜欢，更容易被人看见。你可以修建雄伟的车站并以此取悦前来参观高速铁路的政要。这便是为何国家主义的政府已在客运铁路上投入了如此多的资金——并不是为了更高效，而是为了让他们的市民和外国参观者感到敬畏。 But there is little efficiency improvement in moving passengers by rail vs. other modes.   Most of the energy consumed goes into hauling not the passengers themselves, but the weight of increasingly plush rail cars.  Trains have to be really, really full all the time to make for a net energy savings for high-speed rail vs. cars or even planes, and they seldom are full.  I had a lovely trip on the high speed rail last summer between London and Paris and back through the Chunnel — especially nice because my son and I had the rail car entirely to ourselves both ways. 但是同其他方式相比，用铁路运输旅客并没有什么效率上的提高。大部分的能源被用在制动和运送日益豪华的车厢，而不是运送旅客上。同汽车（甚至飞机）相比，火车必须始终装得非常非常满才能更节省能源，而它们很少是满载的。去年夏天，在往返伦敦和巴黎时，我选择了乘坐穿梭英吉利海峡隧道的火车。那趟旅程可谓惬意——尤其考虑到往返旅程中车厢里都只有我和我儿子时。 The real rail efficiency comes from moving freight.  As compared to passenger rail, more of the total energy budget is used moving the actual freight rather than the cars themselves.  Freight is far more efficient to move by rail than by road, but only the US moves a substantial amount of its freight by rail.    One reason for this is that freight and high-speed passenger traffic have a variety of problems sharing the same rails, so systems that are optimized for one tend to struggle serving the other. 火车的真正效率来自货运。同客运铁路比起来，总能量开销更多被用来运输货物而不是车厢本身。用铁路运输货物要比用公路有效率得多，但只有美国用铁路运输大量货物。原因之一是客货共线存在许多问题，这样，被优化用于一种运输方式的系统会很难为另一种提供服务。 Freight is boring and un-sexy.  Its not a government function in the US.  So intellectuals tend to ignore it, even though it is the far more important, from and energy and environmental standpoint, portion of transport to put on the rails. .... 货运既无聊又不性感。在美国这不是政府职能之一。所以知识分子倾向于忽视它，尽管从能源和环境角度，货运都是交通极为重要的组成部分。 I would argue that the US has the world’s largest commitment to rail where it really matters.  But that is what private actors do, make investments that actually make sense rather than just gain one prestige (anyone know the most recent company Warren Buffet has bought?) 要我说，在它真正能够施展身手的地方，美国才是全世界向铁路交托了最大重任的国家。但那是私人部门所为，他们做有实际意义的投资而不是仅仅买得一个虚名（有谁知道沃伦·巴菲特新近买下的公司吗？） The greens should be demanding that the world emulate us, rather than the other way around.  But the lure of shiny bullet trains and grand passenger concourses will always cause some intellectuals to swoon. 绿党分子们应该要求全世界模仿我们，而不是反过来。但是闪亮的子弹头列车和雄伟的乘客广场总是太诱人，引得一些知识分子意乱情迷。

Which would you rather pounding down the highway, more people on vacation or more big trucks moving freight?  Without having made an explicit top-down choice at all, the US has taken the better approach. 在高速公路上，你乐意看到更多出门度假的人还是更多载货的大卡车？全然没有一个清晰的至上而下的选择，美国已然采用了更好的方式。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Beyond the 10,000-hour-rule: Experts disagree about the value of practice 一万小时理论的背后：专家并不认同练习的价值 作者：Kevin Hartnett @ 2016-3-27 译者：黑色枪骑兵（@忠勇仁义诚实可靠小郎君） 校对：babyface_claire（@许你疯不许你傻） 来源：The Boston Globe，http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/03/26/beyond-hour-rule-experts-disagree-about-value-practice/jYrsmvBqFqdddVa3lKDGnO/story.html IN RECENT YEARS, it’s become a matter of conventional wisdom that if you want to get good at something, you have to practice. A lot. There’s always been some intuitive truth to this idea, but it gained greater influence after the 2008 publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller “Outliers,” which presented research suggesting that the best people in a field got there because they practiced longer and harder than everyone else. 近年来，“如果你想要变得擅长某事，你就必须大量练习”俨然已成共识。支持这种观点的直觉性事实有很多，但是在2008年马尔科姆·格拉德维尔的畅销书《异类》出版之后，这种观点变得更有影响力了。书中说，研究表明，领域内最优秀的人才之所以优秀，是因为他们比其他人练习得更多更努力。 Among researchers, however, the importance of practice for achievement remains an open and hotly debated question. In particular, a group of researchers argues in a recently published book chapter and a forthcoming paper in Perspectives on Psychological Sciences that the importance of practice has been wildly overstated. 然而在研究人员中，练习对于成功的价值依然是被公开热烈争论的问题。尤其是一组研究者在他们最近出版的著作的一章中，和即将在《心理科学展望》发表的一篇论文中表示：练习的重要性被过分高估了。 “It’s just not scientifically defensible at this point to say that training history does or could explain all the variation [in talent],” says Brooke Macnamara, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University. “训练经历能够或者可能能够解释（才能上的）所有差异这种观点从科学角度看是站不住脚的，”凯斯西储大学心理学家Macnamara表示。 Macnamara is coauthor of the book chapter, published earlier this year in “The Psychology of Learning and Motivation,” and the forthcoming study. This work follows 2014 research in which she and her coauthors performed a meta-analysis on thousands of studies on skill acquisition in order to estimate exactly how much practice matters in different pursuits. They found that how much a person practices explains about 26 percent of the variation in how good people are at games like chess, 21 percent of the variation in performance playing musical instruments, and 18 percent of the variation in performance in sports. Macnamara是今年早些时候出版的《学习与动机的心理学》一书的专章和上述即将发表的研究的合著者。这项研究紧随2014年的一项研究，在前一项研究中，她与合作者对数千份针对技能习得的研究进行了荟萃分析，以期精确估计练习在不同的消遣活动中占了多少比重。他们发现练习量能够解释博弈游戏（比如象棋）的能力差异的26%，乐器演奏的21%，以及体育运动的18%。 “Our conclusion is that, of course, deliberate practice is an important factor, but it’s not the only factor or even the largest factor,” says coauthor David Hambrick, a psychologist at Michigan State University. “我们的结论是：刻意练习是一项重要的因素，但是这并不是唯一的因素，甚至连最大的因素都算不上，”合著者之一，密歇根州立大学心理学家David Hambrick表示。 Hambrick and Macnamara’s work is a rejoinder to research by Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State University and the person most famously identified with the view that the right kind of practice makes all the difference. Ericsson’s research played a starring role in “Outliers,” the book that gave birth to the now famous “10,000-hour rule,” which says that elite performance hinges on practicing the correct way for that amount of time. Hambrick和Macnamara的研究是对弗罗里达州立大学心理学家Anders Ericsson的反驳，后者以“恰当类型的训练决定一切”这一观点之化身而出名。Ericsson的研究在提出了著名的“10000小时理论”的《异类》中扮演主要角色。该理论认为优异的表现取决于用正确的方式练习足够长时间。 Ericsson says Gladwell misstated his research and that he never specifies any amount of practice time as a magic threshold. He takes issue with the 10,000-hour rule in his new book, “PEAK: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise,” due out in April. Ericsson表示Gladwell 错误解读了他的研究，他从未把任何特定数量的练习时间划定为神奇界限。他在四月即将出炉的新书《巅峰：专业技能新科学的奥秘》中对10000小时理论提出了异议。 More generally, he argues that Hambrick and Macnamara’s research underrepresents the value of practice because it counts training activities that fall short of the kind of focused, deliberate practice that underpins his research. As he sees it, to really make a difference, practice has to be undertaken with the specific goal of improving an aspect of performance and under the supervision of a coach or mentor who can provide skilled feedback. 更一般而言，他认为Hambrick和Macnamara的研究低估了练习的价值，因为这项研究所统计的练习行为缺少专注的、刻意的练习，而这正是支撑他的研究的关键。他认为，如果想要有所成效，练习必须有明确的提升某方面表现的目标，并且在教练或者导师等能提供专业反馈的人的监督下进行。 “Critics have tried to put us into this mindless repetition idea here, and that completely misunderstands [my] view,” he says. “We find that the expert is engaging in this search for finding the best ways of performing and then constantly seeking feedback about where they’re performing suboptimally.” “批评者们试图把我们的想法解释为愚蠢的重复，这完全误解了我的观点，”他表示，“我们发现，专家会致力于寻找最佳执行方式并就何处表现未达最优持续谋求反馈。 Ericsson grants that practice is not necessarily everything. He argues that some physical characteristics and personality traits do influence the development of talent — it helps to be tall to play basketball, and people with the right disposition may be better able to able to sustain hours of deliberate practice. Still, Ericsson continues to view practice as far and away the factor that explains differences in ultimate talent. Ericsson认同练习不意味着所有。他认为某些身体特性和性格特征确实会影响才能的发展——长得高对打篮球有帮助，有良好性格的人可能更能承受数小时的刻意练习。Ericsson仍然把练习看作解释才能之最终差异的最重要因素。 “Lacking evidence about what some people actually lack in order to achieve at this very high level, wouldn’t you as a scientist have to say we don’t know?” Ericsson says. “And if we don’t know, let’s not go around saying it’s obvious that some people are able to and others are not.” “为了达到相当高的水准，人们真正缺乏的是什么，这个问题一直缺少证据，难道作为一名科学家不应该必须说我们不知道吗？”Ericsson表示“如果不知道的话，我们就不要四处散播说什么很明显有人行而其他人不行这类说法。” Others in the field are less convinced. 这一领域内的其他专家对此不是很信服。 “I wouldn’t expect that if my kids got 10,000 hours of piano playing, they’d become professional piano players,” says Jonathan Wai, a visiting researcher at Case Western Reserve University and research scientist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program. “It doesn’t take away from the idea that practice is important, but it does take away from the idea that anyone can be anything.” “我并不期待我的孩子在练习弹奏钢琴10000小时之后成为专业的钢琴演奏家，”凯斯西储大学访问学者，杜克大学才能鉴别项目研究科学家Jonathan Wai表示。“这并不会贬低练习的重要性，但是这会削弱任何人能做成任何事这类观点。“ If practice isn’t everything, the next step is to nail down what else matters, and that’s where a number of researchers have turned in recent years. 如果练习并不意味着全部，那么下一步就是明确是何种其他因素产生影响，这正是一批研究人员近年来所转向的方面。 The answer, Hambrick and Macnamara suggest, is likely to be nuanced. They argue it’s time to get beyond the idea that talent is either “born” (genetic) or “made” (all about practice). Instead they propose what they call a “multifactorial” model. It features arrows going all over the place in an effort to capture how factors like basic ability, personality, and deliberate practice affect each other and the overall development of talent. Hambrick和Macnamara给出的答案相当微妙。他们认为是时候跳过才能究竟是天生（遗传）或者造就（只关乎练习）这种观点了。取而代之的是他们称之为“多因子”的模型。该模型的特征是全方位探索，试图捕捉到诸如基础能力、个性、刻意练习等因素如何互相影响以及对才能整体发展的影响。 If this revised picture of talent acquisition is complicated, it implies at least one simple message: While practice may make perfect, perfect is probably off the table already for most people in most tasks. 如果这幅改进版的才能习得图景有一天能完成，那么至少能表明一个简单的信息：虽然练习能造就完美，但是对于绝大多数人来说，在绝大多数任务中，“完美”这个概念没有讨论的必要。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Breitbart PolitiCon Panel: Shapiro, Milo, Davi, Marlow Wage ‘Hollywood Wars’ 布莱巴特PolitiCon小组座谈：“好莱坞战争” 作者: Daniel Nussbaum @ 2015-10-13 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值） 来源：Breitbart，http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/10/13/breitbart-politicon-panel-shapiro-milo-davi-marlow-wage-hollywood-wars/ LOS ANGELES — If politics is truly located “downstream” from culture — as the late Andrew Breitbart was fond of saying— then three editors from Breitbart News and one Hollywood screen legend spent the afternoon on Friday knee-deep in the water, wading upstream through the muck. 洛杉矶报道——如果政治确实位于文化的“下游”——如已故的安德鲁·布莱巴特喜欢说的那样——那么来自“布莱巴特新闻网”的三位编辑和来自好莱坞的一位荧幕传奇人物本周五下午就是在没膝深的水中趟着淤泥逆流跋涉。 Three firebrand culture warriors–Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro, editor Milo Yiannopolous, and actor/singer/director/Big Hollywood contributor Robert Davi–took the stage Friday at PolitiCon for a panel titled “The Hollywood Wars.” Led by moderator and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, the panel deconstructed Hollywood’s impact on politics and offered their own predictions for what that influence might look like in the future. 三位热情充沛的文化战士——“布莱巴特”高级特约编辑Ben Shapiro，编辑Milo Yiannopolous和演员/歌手/导演/“大好莱坞”栏目撰稿人Robert Davi，周五登上PolitiCon，举行了一场名为“好莱坞战争”的小组座谈。主持人由“布莱巴特”总编辑Alex Marlow担任。这次座谈解构了好莱坞对政治的影响，并就这一影响未来走向如何给出了各自的预测。 The discussion began with the idea that conservative actors, writers, producers, and executives are routinely blackballed by a hostile liberal Hollywood system–an idea that Davi, as a conservative actor with more than 130 credits under his belt, was uniquely qualified to weigh in on. 座谈首先讨论的是这样一个观点：保守派演员、编剧、制片人和监制经常遭到满怀敌意的好莱坞自由派体制的排挤。作为一个拥有130多部作品的保守派演员，Davi特别有资格就此观点发表意见。 “I would think so,” Davi confirmed, before explaining: “You’re just not invited to the party. You’re not going to the card games, or the fundraisers… All business is social, especially entertainment. ‘We’re doing this film, do you wanna be in it?’ But then if you’re not in their group, you’re not going to get it.” “我认为确实如此，”在加以解释之前，Davi确认了这个观点：“他们不会邀请你去参加派对。你没法去打牌，也没法参加筹款会……一切行业都是社会性的，娱乐业尤其如此。‘我们要搞个电影，你想演吗？’但如果你不是他们那个圈子里的，你就没得机会。” “Also, Hollywood is a bunch of thieves,” he added. “They’re just like politicians, they’re corrupt. You go in and say, ‘I have an idea.’ Two years later, you’ll see it on some cable network, your exact idea that’s been cannibalized in some way.” “另外，好莱坞就是一群小偷，”他补充说。“他们就跟政客一样，一群腐败分子。你要是跟他们说‘我有个想法’。两年以后，你就能在某个有线电视上看到它了，那就是你的想法，被他们想个办法给改编利用了。” Marlow asked Shapiro if the cultural landscape had changed significantly since the release of his 2012 book Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, which examines how liberal gatekeepers use television to shape culture in America. Shapiro在2012年出了一本书，《黄金时段的宣传：关于左派如何占领你的电视的好莱坞真实故事》，讨论了自由派看门人如何利用电视来塑造美国文化。Marlow问到，自该书出版以来，文化地景是否有了很大的改变？ “Obviously, there’s a tremendous amount of bias in Hollywood,” Shapiro said. “It’s quite open, actually. You just have to be a leftist in order to see it, because people who discriminate don’t typically tell people they’re discriminating against that they’re victims of discrimination.” “显然，好莱坞存在巨大的偏见，”Shapiro说。“实际上，这是相当公开的。只是你需要是个左派才能看到这一点，因为歧视者通常并不会告诉被歧视者说他们是歧视受害者。” Shapiro added that in Hollywood, “it’s not a question of leftist versus conservative, it’s a question of human versus non-human.” Shapiro补充说，在好莱坞，“问题就不是左派vs. 保守派，而是人类 vs. 非人。”

You either agree with the people in Hollywood, which makes you human, or you disagree with the people in Hollywood which means you’re somewhat less than human. And the typical kind of litmus test right now is gay marriage. If you’re pro-gay marriage, then you’re a wonderful and decent human being. If you’re anti-gay marriage, then you’re a Nazi. And you will not work. “要么你同意好莱坞的人，那样的话你就是人；要么你不同意好莱坞的人，那样的话你就比人低一等。目前典型的试金石就是同性婚姻。如果你支持同性婚姻，那你就是个善良体面的好人。如果你反对同性婚姻，那你就是个纳粹分子。并且你没法工作。 There are certain positions you can hold as a conservative, abortion is getting closer to acceptable in Hollywood if you’re pro-life, but if you’re someone who believes that traditional marriage is superior to homosexual marriage, then that is obviously springing from your inherent bigotry, and you must be cast out like a leper. “作为一个保守派，有些立场你可以持有，比如如果你反对堕胎，那么好莱坞只是个对堕胎变得更宽容的地方，但如果你相信传统婚姻比同性婚姻要优越，那这显然源自你内在的顽固偏执，必须要像对待麻风病人一样把你驱逐。”

By now, the rather large room hosting the panel on the second floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center had begun to fill up. 这时候，举办座谈的这间位于洛杉矶会议中心二层的颇为宽敞的会议室已经开始坐满。 The conversation swung to Lena Dunham and the notion that Hollywood insists on forcing Americans to care about hyper-liberal, “hip” actresses even when nobody watches their shows. Yiannopoulos said that millennials, the very target demographic that Dunham’s show Girls looks to capture, especially don’t care about her show, or about any TV, for that matter. 讨论转到了Lena Dunham身上，大家论及这样一个想法：好莱坞坚持强迫美国人去在乎那些狂热自由派的“嬉皮”女演员，即使压根没人看她们的表演。Yiannopoulos说，“千禧一代”，也正就是Dunham的电视剧《衰姐们》想要吸引的目标人口群体，恰好特别不关心她的剧，当然其实他们是不关心任何电视。 “[Millennials] are not in the slightest bit interested in tuning into her show,” Yiannopoulos said.“They’re not interested in anything, not Empire, not Breaking Bad. Hollywood doesn’t have the same purchase over them.” “千禧一代压根对她的电视剧没有一丝一毫兴趣，”Yiannopoulos说。“他们对一切都不感兴趣，管他《嘻哈帝国》也好，《绝命毒师》也好。好莱坞对他们无能为力。” Instead, he argues, they’re increasingly playing video games and creating content themselves, most of it on the Internet. But even video games have come under fire from leftist social justice elements, something Yiannopoulos has spent much of the past year documenting. And even though the video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood, Yiannopoulos lamented that, as with Hollywood, the political right is “letting it go” on video games. 他认为，取而代之的是，他们现在越来越多玩电子游戏、自己制作内容，而且大都在网上完成。不过，即使是电子游戏也已经处于左派社会正义分子的炮火之下，Yiannopoulos去年有很长一段时间就在记录这个现象。尽管电子游戏产业现在比好莱坞还大，Yianopoulos却哀叹，跟好莱坞一样，政治右派在电子游戏上也在“放手”。 “The left is engaged in this process of attacking gamers and readers for imagined sins like racism, sexism, and transphobia on the basis that playing a game online can make you a worse person in real life,” he said. “[The right] is not fighting on video games.” “左派正在以想象的罪名攻击游戏玩家和读者，诸如种族主义、性别歧视和变性恐惧，理由是玩在线游戏能让你在现实生活中变坏，”他说。“右派并没有在电子游戏问题上进行反击。” The discussion then focused on the tools of narrative, which the panel agreed have a conservative bias. 随后，讨论聚焦于叙事工具，小组成员一致认为，现在的叙事工具对保守派存在偏见。 “The left has taken all these right-wing tropes that they reject, and then they turn around and use them in their films,” said Shapiro. “The left uses the right’s tools and the right uses the left’s tools, and the right loses with the right message and the wrong tools, and the left wins with the wrong message and the right tools.” “左派已经把所有他们反对的右派使用的修辞手法占为己有，然后一转身将之用到了自己的电影中，”Shapiro说。“左派用了右派的工具，右派则用左派的工具。右派用正确的信息加上错误的工具而失败了，左派则用错误的信息加上正确的工具而成功了。” “I look at it through a whole different prism,” added Davi. “In the past you had films like Death Wish and Dirty Harry. There’s something I have to go back to, when Cecil B. DeMille made the Ten Commandments. That was a big cultural moment; Judeo-Christian values at its apex… When that Noah film came out, there was a secularization in that experience.” “我是透过一个完全不同的棱镜来看待这一点的，”Davi补充说。“过去，我们有像《猛龙怪客》和《警探哈里》这样的电影。有种东西我必须回头去找，回到Cecil B. Demille制作《十诫》的时候。那可是个重大的文化节点；犹太—基督教价值观达到了顶峰……当《诺亚》那部电影出来的时候，影视界经历了一次世俗化。” Still, Yiannopoulos sounded an optimistic note when he suggested that “culture is moving in a good direction,” mostly due to the rise of video games. He argued that, unlike Hollywood, video games promote conservative and libertarian values that are “baked into” the experience. 不过，Yiannopoulos还是发出了一个乐观的音符，他认为，主要由于电子游戏的兴起，“文化正在向一个好的方向前进”。他认为，电子游戏与好莱坞不同，保守派和自由意志主义的价值观“植入了”在玩游戏的体验中并得以推广。 “There’s very little you can do to break that, however much messaging, however many paraplegic Armenian lesbians you put on Level 17,” he added. “There is a limit to how many leftist tropes and messages you can shoehorn in to a game about killing prostitutes, or shooting space aliens.” “不管在游戏中出现多少信息，不管在游戏关卡里放多少半身瘫痪的美国女同，都很难取得左派想要的效果”他补充说。“对于一个内容是杀害妓女或者射杀太空外星人的游戏，能往里头塞的左派修辞和信息毕竟有限。” Because politics are truly downstream from culture, the conversation was destined to end up on Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. 由于政治确实位于文化的下游，讨论就注定要以共和党总统竞选领跑者Donald Trump作为最后一个话题。 Davi praised Trump’s “authenticity” and said he’d recently been in New York City, where he’d heard both a Pakistani taxi driver with six kids and women in their 20s and 30s say they were for Trump. Davi赞扬了Trump的“真实”，并说他最近刚到过纽约市，他在那听到一个有6个孩子的巴基斯坦的士司机和一群20或30多岁的女士，都声称自己支持Trump。 “If I was looking at all these politicians like I was an acting coach, and they’ve all said the same thing; one speaks like a Harvard law degree that’s been well-prepped… and I’ve heard them say the right things, and do nothing! They get in office, and do absolutely not a thing.” “如果我把自己当成一个表演教练来看这些政客，那么他们所有人说的都是一样的；都是那种准备良好的哈佛法律学位获得者的说话方式……我听他们说过各种正确的话，却没做任何事！他们上台了，然后绝对不做任何事。” “Trump captures the imagination of the public,” Davi added. “There’s a likability factor that’s unconscionable.” “Trump抓住了大众的想象力，”Davi补充说。“他有种不合情理的可爱因素。” “His name recognition makes a massive difference, because when you know someone, you’re willing to cut them some slack,” added Shapiro. “Everybody feels like they know Trump. He’ll never sink below 15 percent in the polls, kind of like Hillary.” “他的知名度影响很大，因为如果你认识某人，你就会愿意对他加以优待，”Shapiro补充说。“人人都觉得自己认识Trump。他的民调绝对不会掉到15%以下，这有点像Hillary。” Yiannopoulos said millennials particularly connect with Trump because his campaign has tapped into the generation’s defining characteristics of mischief, joy, and a ridicule of the establishment. Yiannopoulos说千禧一代跟Trump特别有共鸣，因为他的竞选已经契合了这一代人的本质特征，即胡闹、欢乐和对体制的嘲弄。 “He’s almost a comment section come to life, and I mean that as a compliment,” Yiannopoulos said. “What I mean is he’s feisty, he’s irreverent, he’s rude: I think the guy’s brilliant. He speaks the way we all speak, if only we could get away with it. Look at the [political] figures who are rising and who are more popular than ever: they reject the language policing of the left.” “他几乎就是个活的留言板，我说这个是表示赞扬，”Yiannopoulos说。“我的意思是，他很活跃，很不敬，很粗鲁；我觉得这人太赞了。他说话就跟我们没顾忌地说话一样，但我们会有种种顾忌。看看那些正在上升的和比以往任何时候都更受欢迎的（政治）人物：他们拒绝左派的语言监督。” Milo added that the left’s preferred tactic for ending debate, by branding their opponents “racist” or “transphobic,” is becoming increasingly ineffective as the cultural climate slowly changes: “When they come at you and call you a misogynist, or a racist, or a transphobe, nothing bad happens if you just laugh at them. In fact, people will like you even more. And I think Trump is tapping in to that natural sense of defiance and mischief and irreverence that people now feel.” Milo补充说，随着文化气候的缓慢变迁，左派最爱用的一个用于结束辩论的伎俩——给他们的对手贴上“种族主义者”或“变性恐惧”的标签——现在正日益丧失效果。“当他们走过来把你称作厌女者，或种族主义者，或变性恐惧，如果你只是笑话他们一下，就不会有什么后果。事实上，人们会更加喜欢你。我认为Trump正在迎合人们现在感受到的那种蔑上、胡闹和不敬的自然意识。” （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

New Study Indicates Existence of Eight Conservative Social Psychologists 最近研究显示：保守派社会心理学家现存8位 作者：Jonathan Haidt @ 2016-1-7 译者：Marcel ZHANG（@马赫塞勒张） 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源：Heterodox Academy，http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/new-study-finds-conservative-social-psychologists/ Just how much viewpoint diversity do we have in social psychology? In 2011 nobody knew, so I asked 30 of my friends in the field to name a conservative. They came up with several names, but only one suspect admitted, under gentle interrogation, to being right of center. 社会心理学领域到底有多大的观点多样性？2011年时还没人知道，所以我询问了30个该领域的朋友，让他们举出一位保守派。结果他们提到了好几个名字，但在温和的盘问之下，只有一位嫌疑人承认了自己的政治倾向是中间偏右的。 A few months later I gave a talk at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in which I pointed out the field’s political imbalance and why this was a threat to the quality of our research. 几个月后，我在人格与社会心理学协会（SPSP）年会上发言时，指出了该领域的政治失衡现象，以及为什么这种现象会对我们的研究质量造成威胁。 I asked the thousand-or-so people in the audience to declare their politics with a show of hands, and I estimated that roughly 80% self-identified as “liberal or left of center,” 2% (I counted exactly 20 hands) identified as “centrist or moderate,” 1% (12 hands) identified as libertarian, and, rounding to the nearest integer, zero percent (3 hands) identified as “conservative or right of center.” That gives us a left: right ratio of 266 to one. I didn’t think the real ratio was that high; I knew that some conservatives in the audience were probably afraid to raise their hands. 我要求在场的约一千名听众举手表明自己的政治倾向，估计大略有80%的人认为自己是“自由派或者中间偏左派”，有2%（我数下来不多不少20个人）认为自己是“中立派或者温和派”，只有1%（12个人）自认自由意志主义者，如果直接取整的话，几乎0%（3个人）自认“保守派或者中间偏右派”。我们看到的是一个266:1的左右派比值。我不认为真实的比值会如此之高，我知道当时听众席里有些保守派可能会怯于举手。 Some of my colleagues questioned the validity of such a simple and public method, but Yoel Inbar and Yoris Lammers conducted a more thorough and anonymous survey of the SPSP email list later that year, and they too found a very lopsided political ratio: 85% of the 291 respondents self-identified as liberal overall, and only 6% identified as conservative. 有些同事对我这种简易公开方式的有效性提出了质疑。但是，同年晚些时候，Yoel Inbar 和 Yoris Lammers在该协会邮件组中进行了一场更加彻底的匿名调查，结果他们也发现了一边倒的政见比值：总共291个调查对象中，有85%认为自己基本可以算作自由派，而只有6%的调查对象认为自己是保守派。 That gives us our first good estimate of the left-right ratio in social psychology: fourteen to one. It’s a much more valid method than my “show of hands” (which was intended as a rhetorical device, not a real study). But still, we need more data, and we need to try more ways of asking the questions. 这就给我们提供了社会心理学界中左右派比值的第一份合理估计：14:1。这就比我之前的“举手”办法要可靠多了（当时我只是为了表明观点，并非真正的学术研究）。但是话说回来，我们还是需要更多的数据，而且需要尝试更多的调查途径。 A new data set has come in. Bill von Hippel and David Buss surveyed the membership of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. That’s a professional society composed of the most active researchers in the field who are at least five years post-PhD. It’s very selective – you must be nominated by a current member and approved by a committee before you can join. 现在我们有了一组新数据。Bill von Hippel和David Buss调查了实验社会心理学会（SESP）的全体会员。这是个由该领域最活跃的研究者组成的专业协会，全体成员都至少已博士毕业5年。他们都是经过精挑细选的，入会必须获得会员提名且通过一个委员会的批准。 Von Hippel and Buss sent a web survey to the 900 members of SESP and got a response rate of 37% (335 responses). So this is a good sample of the mid-level and senior people (average age 51) who produce most of the research in social psychology. Von Hippel和Buss向该学会的900名会员发送了网上调查问卷，回应率为37%（共335个回应者）。所以，对于在社会心理学领域贡献了绝大部分研究的中高级人员（平均年龄51岁）而言，这是一个很不错的样本。 Von Hippel and Buss were surveying the members’ views about evolution, to try to understand the reasons why many social psychologists distrust or dislike evolutionary psychology. At the end of the survey, they happened to include a very good set of measures of political identity. Not just self-descriptions, but also whom the person voted for in the 2012 US Presidential election. And they asked nine questions about politically valenced policy questions, such as “Do you support gun control?” “Do you support gay marriage?” and “Do you support a woman’s right to get an abortion?” Von Hippel和Buss的问卷要调查的是会员们对进化问题的观点，试图了解许多社会心理学家怀疑或厌恶进化心理学的原因。在问卷最后一部分，他们碰巧设置了一组很棒的政治认同鉴别方法。不仅仅包括自我描述，而且还问到了他们在2012年美国大选中的投票对象。此外他们还提出了9个已成为政治心理价（valence）的政策问题【编注：心理价（valence）是指那些会恒常的引发正面或负面情绪的东西、事情或特征】，比如“你是否支持枪支管制”，“你是否支持同性婚姻”和“你是否支持妇女堕胎权”等等。 In a demonstration of the new openness and transparency that is spreading in social psychology, Von Hippel and Buss sent their raw data file and a summary report to all the members of SESP, to thank us for our participation in the survey. They noted that their preliminary analysis showed a massive leftward tilt in the field – only four had voted for Romney. Von Hippel和Buss体现了新近在社会心理学界蔚然成风的公开透明精神，将他们的原始数据文件和总结报告发送给了SESP的全体会员，以感谢我们在这场调查研究中的积极参与。他们指出，他们的初步分析显示出了该领域严重左倾的现象——只有四个人曾给罗姆尼投过票。 I then emailed them and asked if I could write up further analyses of the political questions and post them at Heterodox Academy. They generously said yes, and then went ahead and made all the relevant files available to the world at the Open Science Framework (you can download them all here). 而后我通过电邮联系了他们，问我能不能就这些政治问题写个深度分析并发到异端学院（Heterodox Academy）网站上。他们很大方地同意了，紧接着就把相关文件发到开放科学框架网（Open Science Framework）上并开放了下载（你们可以在这个网站下载全部资料https://osf.io/ebvtq/）。 So here are the results, on the political distribution only. (Von Hippel and Buss will publish a very interesting paper on their main findings about evolution and morality in a few months). There are three ways we can graph the data, based on three ways that participants revealed their political orientation. 下面就是仅涉及政见分布问题的成果了。（Von Hippel和Buss将会在几个月后发表一篇非常有意思的论文，主题是他们在进化和道德方面的主要发现。）依照参与者透露他们政治倾向的三种途径，我们也可以通过三种方式来将数据图表化。 1）Self-descriptions of political identity: 36 to one. 1）自我描述的政治认同：36:1。 One item asked “Where would you put yourself on a continuum from liberal to conservative?” The 11 scale points were labeled “very liberal” on the left-most point and “very conservative” on the right-most point. If we do a simple frequency plot (a graph of how many people chose each of the 11 possible responses) we get the following: 有一道题问到：“在自由派和保守派之间这个连续区间内，你会将自己定位于何处？”在这11个选项中，最左端的那个被标为“极端自由派”，最右端则为“极端保守派”。如果我们绘制一个频率分布直方图（一个体现11个选项对应人数的图表），则得下图：

【图表一：政治倾向自评分】

The graph shows that 291 of the 326 people who responded to this question picked a left-of-center label (that’s 89.3%), and only 8 people (2.5%) picked a right of center label, giving us a Left to Right ratio of 36 to one. This is much higher than that found by Inbar and Lammers. The main source of political diversity appears to be the 27 people (including me) who self-identified as centrists. 图表显示，该题的326位回答者中有291位选择了中间偏左标签（占总数89.3%），而只有8位选择了中间偏右标签（占总数2.5%），这就得出了一个36:1的左右派比值。这比Inbar和Lammers发现的比值还高。政治多样性主要基于27位自我定义为中间派的回答者（包括本人在内）。 2）Presidential voting: 76 to one. 2）总统选举投票：76:1。 Another item asked: “Who did you vote for in the last presidential election (if you are not a US citizen, or if you did not vote, who would you have voted for if you had voted)? The options were: “Obama,” “Romney,” or “Other.” If we do a frequency plot of the 3 possible choices we get this: 另有一道题问到：“在上次总统大选中你把选票投给了谁（如果你不是美国公民，或者你并未投票的话，假设让你投票，你可能会投给谁）？”选项有这么几个：“奥巴马”、“罗姆尼”或“其他”。如果我们依照这三个选项绘制频率分布直方图，则得下图：

【图表二：2012年美国总统大选】

The graph shows that 305 of the 322 people (94.7%) who responded to this question voted for Obama, 4 (1.2%) voted for Romney, and 13 (4.0%) said they voted for another candidate. This gives us a Democrat to Republican ratio of 76 to one. 图表显示，该题的322位回答者中有305位（占94.7%）投给了奥巴马，4位（占1.2%）投给了罗姆尼，而有13位（占4.0%）回答者投给了其他总统候选人。这就得出了一个76:1的“驴象比”比值。 3）Views on political issues: 314 to one. 3）政治议题上的观点：314:1。 A third way of graphing the viewpoint diversity of these senior social psychologists is by computing an average score across all 9 of the politically valenced policy items. For each one, the 11 point response scale was labeled “strongly oppose” on the left-most point and “strongly support” on the right-most point. 将这些资深社会心理学家的观点多元状况图表化的第三条途径，就是算出他们在九道政治心理价问题上的平均得分。每个问题的答案选项都有11个，最左端的为“强烈反对”，最右端为“强烈支持”。 I converted all responses to the same 11 point scale used in figure 1 so that “strongly supporting” the progressive position (e.g., pro-choice) was scored as -5 and “strongly supporting” the conservative position (e.g., prayer in school) was scored as +5. That puts the leftists on the left and the rightists on the right of the graph. Here’s the graph: 我将所有回答都转换成与图表1中的11个选项一一对应，也就是说，“强烈支持”进步派立场的（比如主张堕胎权）就会被记作-5分，而“强烈支持”保守派立场（比如支持校内祷告）就会被记作5分。这样就可以在图表上把左派标到左侧，右派标到右侧。图表如下：

【图表三：对九个政治议题的观点】

I counted anyone whose average score fell between -1.0 and +1.0 (inclusive) as a centrist. The graph shows that 314 of the 327 participants (96.0%) had an average score below -1.0 (i.e., left of center), one had an average score above +1.0 (i.e., right of center), and 12 were centrists. That gives us a Left to Right ratio of 314 to one. 我将所有平均得分在-1.0与1.0之间的参与者都算作中间派。图表显示，在327名参与者中有314位（占96.0%）的平均得分低于-1.0（即中间偏左），只有一位参与者的平均得分高于1.0（即中间偏右），另外还有12位是中间派。这样我们就得出了一个314:1的左右派比值。 What does this mean? 这意味着什么？ However you measure it, and for all samples measured so far, social psychology leans heavily to the left and has very few people right of center. Von Hippel and Buss’s new data confirms the story that a few of us told in a recent paper (Duarte, Crawford, Stern, Haidt, Jussim & Tetlock, 2015) in which we created the graph below, which shows just how fast psychology has been moving to the left since the 1990s. The ratio of Democrats to Republicans (diamonds) and liberals to conservatives (circles) was roughly 3 to 1 for most of the 20th century. But it skyrockets beginning in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation retires and the Baby Boomers take over. 不论你如何衡量，就目前已经测得的样本来看，社会心理学界已经左倾得非常严重了，只有很少人是中间偏右的。Von Hippel和Buss的新数据也证实了我们几个在最近的一篇论文（Duarte, Crawford, Stern, Haidt, Jussim和Tetlock于2015年发表）里说到的情况，文中我们绘制了下面这张图表，它显示了从1990年代起心理学界是以何等之快的速度左倾化的。“驴象比”（在图中以方块示出）和“左右比”（在图中以圆圈示出）比值在上个世纪基本为3:1。但随着“最伟大世代”【编注：作家Tom Brokaw将成长于大萧条年代，接着参加二战，随后又经历了战后大繁荣的那一代人称为最伟大一代】的退休和婴儿潮一代的接班，这个比值在90年代开始直线窜升。

【图表四： 1920年代起学院心理学家左右派比值的攀升。（详见Duarte等人在2015年发表的论文）】

Why does this matter? 这为什么重要？ Most people know that professors in America, and in most countries, generally vote for left-leaning parties and policies. But few people realize just how fast things have changed since the 1990s. An academic field that leans left (or right) can still function, as long as ideological claims or politically motivated research is sure to be challenged. But when a field goes from leaning left to being entirely on the left, the normal safeguards of peer review and institutionalized disconfirmation break down. Research on politically controversial topics becomes unreliable because politically favored conclusions receive less-than-normal scrutiny while politically incorrect findings must scale mountains of motivated and hostile reasoning from reviewers and editors. 美国以及大多数国家的教授们一般都会支持左翼政党或政策，这没什么新鲜，但鲜为人知的是， 1990年代以来事态是以何其快的速度转变着。只要意识形态主张或者出于政治目的的研究仍必然会遭到挑战，那么一个左倾（或右倾）的学术领域就还能运转。但是当一个学术领域从左倾发展到铁板一块的左翼时，同行评议或者体制化否证的正常保障监督措施就会崩溃。对在政治上有争议的论题的研究会变得不再可靠，因为存在政治偏袒的结论现在受到的审查少之又少，而政治不正确的发现则需要排除万难，须要遭受评议人和编辑们发出的种种带有政治动机和敌意的论证。 I consider the rapid loss of political diversity, over the last 20 years, to be the second-greatest existential threat to the field of social psychology, after the “replication crisis.” The field is responding constructively to the replication crisis. Will it also attend to its political diversity crisis? Or will it continue to think of diversity only in terms of the demographic categories that most matter to people on the left: race, gender and sexual orientation? 我将过去二十年间发生的这次政见多样性的迅速退减视为，社会心理学领域的第二大致命威胁，仅次于“可重复性危机”。这个领域正在积极地应对可重复性危机，那么它也会去解决它的政见多样性危机吗？还是说，它仍旧只会从人口统计学这个对左派人士来说至关重要的角度来考虑多样性？只会考虑种族、性别和性向问题？ I don’t mean to single out social psychology. It is the field that I know best, but what we have learned at Heterodox Academy is that this problem, this rapid shift to political purity, has happened to most fields in the humanities and social sciences in just the last 2 decades. 我并不是故意要把社会心理学挑出来。这只是我最熟悉的领域，但我们在异端学院意识到了：这个问题，即政治单一化现象，仅在过去的短短20年内就在大部分人文社科领域都已经发生了。 An optimistic ending 一个乐观的结局 I would like to end by thanking my colleagues. I have been raising a fuss about these issues since 2011. In that time I also moved from the left to the center, politically. I am no longer a progressive. So you might expect that I’ve been ostracized, but I have not. Nothing bad has happened to me. 我想以我对同事们的感激来结尾。从2011年开始我就因为这些事搞得他们鸡犬不宁，那时候我也在政治倾向方面由左派转变为中间派。我不再是个进步主义者了。所以你可能以为我已经被排挤了，但是并没有，万事顺遂。 Some of my colleagues believe that the political imbalance is not a problem. But the majority response has been, roughly: “This is really interesting. We really truly value diversity, and we agree with you and your co-authors that diversity of viewpoints is the kind that confers the most benefits on groups. But gosh, how are we going to get more?” 我的有些同事觉得政见失衡没什么大不了的。但大多数回答大概是这样的：“这确实挺有意思的。我们的确很看重多样性，而且我们同意你和你的合著者的观点，观点多样性是那种可以为团体带来最大益处的东西。但是啊，我们怎么才能获取更多多样性呢？” That’s our mission at Heterodox Academy – to figure out how to get more. It will be hard, but it can and must be done. Please see our “solutions page.” 这就是我们在异端学院中的使命了，那就是搞清楚如何能获得更多的多样性。道路是曲折的，但前途是光明的。请参看我们的“方案页”。 Post script: Paul Krugman recently referred to us at Heterodox Academy as “outraged conservatives,” and he said that the leftward shift in the academy was really just the rightward shift of the Republican Party since the 1990s. He suggests that professors didn’t change their views on policy, they just stopped identifying as Republicans as the party went off the deep end. 附：Paul Krugman最近将我们这些异端学院上的人称为“愤怒的保守派”，他说1990年代以来学界的左转其实只是共和党的右转。他的言下之意是，教授们并没有改变过他们的政见，他们只是在共和党转入极端时不再自我标榜为共和派了而已。 There is surely some truth to Krugman’s argument, but that doesn’t negate our claim that the makeup of the professoriate really did change after the Greatest Generation retired. Krugman’s argument could not explain graph #3, for example, which shows just a single person with views on social issues that are right of center. Also, I should point out that most of us at Heterodox Academy are not conservatives, and if you read everything on our site, it will be hard to find evidence of “outrage.” Krugman的质疑确实反映了部分事实，但这并没有驳倒我们的主张，最伟大世代逝去之后教授阶层的组成结构确实发生了变化。比如，Krugman的质疑就没能解释图表三里只有一个人对偏右社会事件支持的现象。此外，我必须要指出，异端学院上的大多数人都不是保守派，而且如果读过我们网站上的所有文章的话，你会很难发现有“愤怒”的踪迹。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The Lower Productivity Of Organic Farming: A New Analysis And Its Big Implications 有机农业生产率更低：一项新的分析及其重大含义 作者：Steven Savage @ 2015-10-9 译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 校对：babyface_claire 来源：Forbes，http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage/2015/10/09/the-organic-farming-yield-gap/ The productivity of organic farming is typically lower than that of comparable “conventional” farms. This difference is sometimes debated, but a recent USDA survey of organic agriculture demonstrates that commercial organic in the U.S. has a significant yield gap. 有机农业的生产率通常低于可比的“传统”农业。其中差异时有争论，不过美国农业部最近关于有机农业的一项调查证实，美国的商业有机作物存在一个巨大的产量差距。 I compared 2014 survey data from organic growers with overall agricultural yield statistics for that year on a crop by crop, state by state basis. The picture that emerges is clear – organic yields are mostly lower. To have raised all U.S. crops as organic in 2014 would have required farming of one hundred nine million more acres of land. That is an area equivalent to all the parkland and wildland areas in the lower 48 states or 1.8 times as much as all the urban land in the nation. 我将采自有机作物种植者的2014年调查数据与农业总产量统计数据分作物、分州别进行了对比，得出的画面非常清晰——有机作物的产量一般都更低。如果2014年全美农作物都是有机种植，那么需要耕种的土地将比实际多出1.09亿英亩。这一面积相当于本土48州所有绿地和荒地的总和，或全国所有城市用地之和的1.8倍。 As of 2014 the reported acreage of organic cropland only represented 0.44% of the total, but if organic were to expand significantly, its lower land-use-efficiency would become problematic. This is one of several reasons to question the assertion that organic farming is better for the environment. 到2014年，公开的有机农用地面积只占全部农地的0.44%，但如果有机种植大幅扩张，它那较低的用地效率将很棘手。有人断言有机农业对环境更有利，这里提到的只是质疑理由之一。 The USDA conducted a detailed survey of organics in 2008 and then again in 2014. Information is collected about the number of farms, the acres of crops harvested, the production from those acres, and the value of what is sold. The USDA also collects similar data every year for agriculture in general and makes it very accessible via Quick Stats. 美国农业部2008年对有机作物进行了一次详细调查，2014年又做了一次。采集的信息包括农场数量、作物收获面积、产量和卖出总价。美国农业部每年还针对全部农业采集类似数据，并在Quick Stats上公开发布。 It is interesting that they don’t publish any comparisons of these two data sets as they would be able to make comparisons on a county basis. By working with both USDA data resources I was able to find 370 good comparisons of organic and total data for the same crop in the same state and where the organic represented at least 20 acres. That comparison set covers 80% of US crop acreage. 有意思的是，尽管他们对这两组数据能够做到分县对比，他们却从不发布任何比较结果。通过使用这两份来自美国农业部的数据，我得以找出370组有机数据和总数据之间的高质量比较，每组比较的均是有机作物种植面积20英亩以上的同一个州的同一种作物。这一比较涉及了美国农作物种植面积的80%。

【2014年有机与传统农业统计数据比较概要】

For 292 of those comparisons, the organic yields were lower (84% on an area basis). There were 55 comparisons where organic yield was higher, but 89% of the higher yielding organic examples involved hay and silage crops rather than food crops. The organic yield gap is predominant for row crops, fruit crops and vegetables as can be seen in the graphs below. 在其中292个比较结果中，有机作物产量都要更低（以面积而言占到84%）。有机作物产量更高的，有55组比较结果。但这些产量更高的案例中有89%种的是干草和青贮饲料作物，而非食用作物。以下图表显示：有机作物产量差距在中耕作物、水果作物和蔬菜中非常突出。 The reasons for the gap vary with crop and geography. In some cases the issue is the ability to meet periods of peak nutrient demand using only organic sources. The issue can be competition from weeds because herbicides are generally lacking for organic. In some cases its reflects higher yield loss to diseases and insects. Although organic farmers definitely use pesticides, the restriction to natural options can leave crops vulnerable to damage. 出现差距的原因随作物和地理不同而有所不同。在某些情形中，问题出在只用有机资源来满足营养需求高峰的能力上。问题也可能出在杂草竞争，因为有机作物中一般不用除草剂。在某些情形中，它反映的是因病害和虫害导致的减产。尽管种植有机作物的农场主绝对也会用杀虫剂，但是对天然产品的限制要求仍会让作物更易受到伤害。 I’ve posted a much more detailed summary of this information on SCRIBD with the data at the state level. 有关上述信息，我已在SCRIBD上贴了一份更加详细的摘要，用的是州级层面的数据。

【大量主要中耕作物采用有机种植时产量大幅降低】

【有机水果和坚果的产量绝大多数都大幅低于传统种植】

【蔬菜作物中的产量差距存在巨大差异】

There is some potential for artifacts within this data set. If the proportion of irrigated and non-irrigated land differs between organic and conventional that would skew the data. With lettuce and spinach it is likely that the organic is proportionally more in the “baby” category making yields appear dramatically lower. 这组数据中可能存在一些人为现象。如果在有机种植和传统种植中，灌溉地和非灌溉地的比例不同，那么数据就有所扭曲。生菜和菠菜的有机种植可能很大程度上仍属于“婴儿”类，故而产出差距看起来十分大。 But overall this window on farming is useful for understanding the current state of commercial organic production. Since the supply of prime farmland is finite, and water is in short supply in places like California, resource-use-efficiency is an issue even at the current scale of organic (1.5 million cropland acres, 3.6 million including pasture and rangeland). 但总体来说，这一农业信息窗口很有用，能让我们了解商业有机作物生产的现状。由于优质农田的供给是有限的，而在加州等地，水也存在供给短缺，因此，即便是以有机作物当前的种植面积（150万英亩耕地，包括草地和牧场则为360万亩）来说，资源利用效率也是个大问题。 You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at [email protected]. I’d be happy to share a data file with interested parties and to get feedback about where particular yield comparisons might be misleading. A more detailed presentation is available at https://www.scribd.com/doc/283996769/The-Yield-Gap-For-Organic-Farming 欢迎提出评论或发送邮件至[email protected]。我愿意和感兴趣者分享数据文件，如果哪个具体的产量比较可能具有误导性，我也希望得到反馈。更详细的介绍请见：https://www.scribd.com/doc/283996769/The-Yield-Gap-For-Organic-Farming （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Why you probably hate the sound of your own voice 为什么你可能会讨厌自己的声音 作者:Rachel Feltman @ 2015-6-16 译者:Marcel ZHANG(微博:@马赫塞勒张) 校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 来源:The Washington Post，https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/06/16/why-you-probably-hate-the-sound-of-your-own-voice/ Whether you've heard yourself talking on the radio or just gabbing in a friend's Instagram video, you probably know the sound of your own voice -- and chances are pretty good that you hate it. 不论是通过听到自己在广播上讲话,或是在朋友的Instagram视频里闲聊,你可能都已经了解了自己的声音,而且你很可能并不喜欢这个声音｡ As the video above explains, your voice as you hear it when you speak out loud is very different from the voice the rest of the world perceives. That's because it comes to you via a different channel than everyone else. 你在你大声讲话时自己听到的声音跟其他人听到的大不相同｡那是因为声音传播给其他人和传播给你自己所通过的是不同的途径｡ When sound waves from the outside world -- someone else's voice, for example -- hit the outer ear, they're siphoned straight through the ear canal to hit the ear drum, creating vibrations that the brain will translate into sound. 当从外界传来的声波(比如其他人发出的声音)抵达外耳时,鼓膜会直接通过耳道将其接收并产生震动,再由大脑将这些震动转化为声音｡ When we talk, our ear drums and inner ears vibrate from the sound waves we're putting out into the air. But they also have another source of vibration -- the movements caused by the production of the sound. Our vocal cords and airways are trembling, too, and those vibrations make their way over to auditory processing as well. 当我们讲话时,我们的鼓膜和内耳会因我们向空气中发出的声波而产生震动｡但是他们还有其他的震动源,那就是发声时触发的动作｡我们的声带和气道也在颤动,而且这些震动也同样参与到了听觉进程当中｡ Your body is better at carrying low, rich tones than the air is. So when those two sources of sound get combined into one perception of your own voice, it sounds lower and richer. That's why hearing the way your voice sounds without all the body vibes can be off-putting -- it's unfamiliar -- or even unpleasant, because of the relative tininess. 你的身体比空气更容易传递低沉浑厚的声调｡所以,当两种声源合并成为了你对自己声音的感知时,它听起来会相对更加低沉浑厚｡这就是为什么你听到自己没有通过身体共鸣的声音会感到反感､陌生甚至是厌恶了,因为那声音相对更单薄｡ The sound of your own voice isn't the only place where daily perception can butt up against the ugly truth: We often feel uncomfortable when we see our bodies as other people see them, too. 你自己的声音并不是日常认知与丑陋现实针锋相对的唯一情形｡当我们以其他人看我们的方式看到自己的身体时,时常也会觉得有点难受｡ Think about it: Chances are good that most of the times that you look at yourself, it's thanks to a mirror or some other reflective surface. But those are mirror images -- our bodies are flipped. Because most faces are pretty asymmetrical (under close observation, anyway), a flip can create really jarring changes. That's why you might wince at photos that show the real you instead of a mirror image. 大家可以想一下,我们要看到自己,大多数情况基本都要借助镜子或者其他反射面｡但这些都是镜像,我们的身体是经过翻转的｡因为大多数的人脸都是不太对称的(反正在近距离观察下就是这样的),所以一个翻转就能造成令人不快的差别｡这就是为什么你在照片中看到真正的自己而不是镜像时可能会眉头紧蹙了｡ “We see ourselves in the mirror all the time—you brush your teeth, you shave, you put on makeup,” Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, told The Atlantic. “Looking at yourself in the mirror becomes a firm impression. You have that familiarity. Familiarity breeds liking. You’ve established a preference for that look of your face.” 媒体心理学研究中心(Media Psychology Center)主任帕梅拉·拉特利奇在接受《大西洋月刊》采访时说:“我们时常都会在镜子里看到自己,比如刷牙､剃须和化妆的时候｡故而镜中的自己就变成了一种固定印象｡那么你就会对其产生熟悉感,久而久之这种熟悉感就会催生出喜爱之情,这样一来你便确立了对自己的那种形象的偏爱｡” So it should come as no surprise that being reminded that our faces -- and voices -- are slightly different than we think them to be can be a bit unnerving. 所以,当我们想起来我们的形象和声音与我们印象中的不太一致时,也难怪会感到有点懊恼｡ （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Trivers' Pursuit 罗伯特·特里夫斯:一生的追寻 作者:Matthew Hutson @ 2016-1-5 译者:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 校对:慕白(@李凤阳他说) 来源:Psychology Today，https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201601/trivers-pursuit Renegade scientist Robert Trivers is lauded as one of our greatest thinkers—despite irking academia with blunt talk and bad manners. 尽管罗伯特·特里夫斯直率的言谈和粗鲁的举止让学界恼怒,这位离经叛道的科学家仍被誉为最伟大的思想家之一｡ To call Robert Trivers an acclaimed biologist is an understatement akin to calling the late Richard Feynman a popular professor of physics. As a young man in the 1970s, Trivers gave biology a jolt, hatching idea after idea that illuminated how evolution shaped the behavior of all species, including fidelity, romantic bonds, and willingness to cooperate among humans. Today, at 72, he continues to spawn ideas. And if awards were given for such things, he certainly would be on the short list for America’s most colorful academic. 把已故的理查德·费曼称为“一位受欢迎的物理学教授”,那是低估了他,同样地,如果把罗伯特·特里夫斯称为“一位广受赞誉的生物学家”也不够恰当｡1970年代,当时不过是一个年轻人的特里夫斯就大大促进了生物学的研究,阐述了一个又一个想法,揭示了进化是如何塑造所有物种的行为,包括人类在性方面的忠贞､恋爱和合作的意愿｡今天,他72岁,新的想法仍然不断从他脑中诞生｡如果要为“想法”颁奖的话,他一定能进入“美国最有想法学者”短名单｡ He was a member of the Black Panthers and collaborated with the group’s founder. He was arrested for assault after breaking up a domestic dispute. He faced machete-wielding burglers who broke into his home and stabbed one in the neck. He was imprisoned for 10 days over a contested hotel charge. And two men once held guns to his head in a Caribbean club that doubled as a brothel. 他曾是黑豹党一员,并曾同该组织的创立者合作｡他曾因为在家庭纠纷中动手打人而被拘捕｡他曾直面挥舞着弯刀的破门而入者,并在其中一人的脖子上扎了一刀｡他曾因为一笔有争议的酒店费用而坐了十天牢｡他还曾在加勒比一个俱乐部被人用枪顶着头——那个俱乐部同时也是妓院｡ Fisticuffs aside, what propelled Trivers into the academic limelight were five papers he wrote as a young academic at Harvard—including research on altruism, sex differences, and parent-offspring conflict. This work won him the 2007 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Crafoord Prize in Biosciences, the Nobel for evolutionary theory. The award came with half a million dollars and a ceremony attended by the queen. 除拳脚之外,让特里夫斯在学术圈声名大噪的是他年轻时在哈佛写就的五篇论文——包括关于利他主义､性别差异和亲子冲突的研究｡这些成就为他赢得了2007年瑞典皇家科学院颁发的克拉福德生物学奖——进化理论的诺贝尔奖｡奖金为50万美元,女王亦出席了颁奖典礼｡ Steven Pinker has called him “one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought.” Yet Trivers has not led the life of your typical contemplative academic. Mental breakdowns, public feuds, and near-death experiences have peppered his career, distracting him from his work even as they’ve nourished it. 史蒂文·平克曾称特里夫斯是“西方思想史上伟大的思想家之一”｡然而特里夫斯不是你印象中那种典型的喜欢沉思的学者｡精神崩溃､公开与人结怨和险些丧命的经历都让他的生涯显得与众不同,他的工作因此受到影响也因此获益｡ No one is quite sure what to make of him, but all agree he is both brilliant and volatile, a sort of Steve Jobs without the colossal second coming. In a new memoir, Wild Life, he contrasts his existence with the “often solitary and intensely internal” one he sees in most scientists. “[That] kind of life,” he writes, “never appealed to me.” 没人确信该怎么评价他,但所有人都同意,他绝顶聪明,绝不安分,就像史蒂夫·乔布斯,但没有经历过乔布斯式卷土重来｡在新回忆录《狂野生活》中,他对比了自己的生活同他在大多数科学家中所看到的“往往孤寂的､极其注重内心的”的生活,“那样的生活,”他写道,“从来不曾吸引我｡” To begin, Trivers’ revolutionary 1970s papers presented no new data. Trivers simply offered entirely novel ways of looking at what was already there, along with new avenues for moving science forward. His dissertation was so strong that when he showed up before the evaluating committee, which included such luminaries as E. O. Wilson and Ernst Mayr, they skipped the charade of making him defend it and simply offered their congratulations. 刚开始时,特里夫斯于1970年代发表的那几篇革命性论文中并没有提出新的数据｡特里夫斯仅仅提供了一种全新的视角来看待既已存在的知识,一条推动科学进步的崭新道路｡他的论证强而有力,以至当他面对评审委员会时——其中包括著名科学家爱德华·威尔逊和厄内斯特·迈尔——他们跳过了答辩环节,直接向他表示祝贺｡ Yet he published little follow-up work. A scientist can build a whole career milking a single small concept, but Trivers has been known to put forth a big new idea and then essentially drop the mic. 之后他几乎没有发表后续研究｡一名科学家可以以一个小概念为基础建构自己的全部事业,但特里夫斯通常是提出一个全新的､有爆炸力的想法后,然后就不再就此发言了｡ Trivers’ first paper, on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, described a theoretical model showing how altruism among strangers could naturally develop—people cooperate with the expectation of similar treatment from others. This model explained a wide variety of feelings and behaviors, from friendship to moralistic aggression. 特里夫斯的第一篇论文是关于互惠利他主义(reciprocal altruism)的,论文描述了一个关于陌生人之间的利他主义是如何自然发展的理论模型——人们带着“我怎样对人,人就怎么对我”的期许相互合作｡这个模型解释了从友谊到道德侵略(moralistic aggression)等许多不同的感受和行为｡ The emotion of gratitude, for instance, evolved to motivate us to return favors, encouraging cooperation. Guilt motivates us to repair relationships we’ve harmed. Anger makes us avoid or punish those who have harmed us. And gossip makes us mindful of our reputations. Trivers suggested that complex strategies of cheating, detecting cheating, and the false accusation of cheating (itself a form of cheating) pushed the development of intelligence and helped increase the size of the human brain. 举例来讲,之所以进化出“感激”这种情绪,是因为它会激励我们投桃报李,鼓励合作｡负罪感会促使我们修复受损的关系｡愤怒会让我们避开或惩罚那些伤害了我们的人｡而闲言碎语则让我们在意自己的名声｡特里夫斯认为,欺骗､发现欺骗和对欺骗的不实指控(其本身也是种欺骗)构成了复杂的策略,推动我们智力的发展并助力人类大脑尺寸的增长｡ Next, in Trivers’ second paper, he hypothesized that a single factor drives sex differences across all species. He argued that differences in parental investment—the energy and resources invested in an offspring—lead the sex that invests more (females, in most species) to focus on mate quality and the sex that invests less (males) to seek quantity. 接着,特里夫斯在他的第二篇论文中提出一个假说:一个单一因素便导致了所有物种的性别差异｡他认为亲代投资(为后代投入的能量和资源)的差别区分了“投资多的性”(对大多数物种而言是雌性)和“投资少的性”(雄性),前者关注配偶的质量而后者追求数量｡ So in humans we expect choosiness in females and aggression between males as they vie for females. The theory has tremendous explanatory power, from justifying the brightly colored feathers of male birds to illuminating why sexual jealousy is a leading (and, until recently, legally defensible) cause of homicide—men prize their mate’s fidelity above all. 因此在人类中我们便观察到女性的挑剔和男人之间在追逐女性时所表现出的攻击性｡这个理论有力地解释了雄鸟身上鲜艳的羽毛,以及为何性嫉妒是杀人案的首要(直到现在也是法律上站得住脚的【编注:在美国一些州,当场捉奸并杀死奸夫的丈夫往往可以愤激作为辩护理由并得以脱罪】)动机——在男人看来,伴侣的忠贞高于一切｡【编注:此处有所夸大,亲代投资理论本身并不能单独解释性嫉妒】 In another paper, Trivers conceptualized offspring not as passive recipients of parental investment, but as independent actors, generating the theory of parent-offspring conflict. A child wants disproportionate attention and resources for him- or herself, but a parent wants to spread the goods equally between all offspring. 在另一篇论文里,特里夫斯将后代视为独立的行为主体,而不仅仅是亲代投资的被动接受者,从而引出了“亲子冲突”(parent-offspring conflict)这一理论｡子女想要为自己争取到比例过当的关注和资源,但家长则希望在后代之间平分好处｡ And so we have kids who bawl until they get what they want, siblings who maintain lifelong rivalries, and parents who try to instill equality no matter how selfish the kids’ tendencies. It was for these three papers, plus another two, on insect colonies and on parents’ ability to vary the sex ratio of their offspring, that he won the Crafoord. 于是,子女们闹个不停直到他们得到想要的,兄弟姐妹们终其一生相互竞争,而父母们不管小孩多么自私仍坚持贯彻平等主义｡这三篇论文加上另外两篇有关昆虫巢群和亲代改变子代性别比例之能力的论文,为特里夫斯赢得了克拉福德奖｡ In each paper, he found a simple, clear idea, and took it as far as it would go, wrapping diverse and widespread phenomena together in one neat package. You might not have made the connections before, but once you see them, they’re quite clear. 在每篇论文里,他都建立一个简洁､清晰的概念,并最大限度地发展这个概念,将多种多样､涵盖广泛的各种现象融为一炉｡你也许以前并没有发现这些现象间的联系,但一旦你注意到,这些联系就显得十分清楚｡ “Trivers has answered some of the most profound questions about the human condition,” Pinker  told me. “Namely, why are our relationships with other people such complicated mixtures of cooperation and conflict? He did so with a simple, though nonobvious, analysis of the patterns of overlap and nonoverlap of our long-term genetic interests.” “特里夫斯回答了关于人类境况的一些最本质的问题,”平克对我说｡“即为什么我们同他人的关系是如此复杂,既有合作又有冲突?他以一种简明——虽然不那么一目了然——的方式分析了重叠或不重叠的基因利益,从而回答了这个问题｡” According to David Haig, a geneticist at Harvard and a longtime friend and collaborator of Trivers, “Bob has a great ability to see questions as simple and not be distracted by details.” Richard Dawkins praises him for applying economic ideas to biology “with greater clarity of mind than any biologist since R. A. Fisher,” the knighted geneticist. 据戴维·海格——哈佛遗传学家､特里夫斯的多年好友和合作者——所言,“鲍勃【罗伯特的昵称】有一种能力,可以单刀直入地看问题而不被细节干扰｡” 理查德·道金斯赞扬他将经济学的观点引入生物学,“思路极清晰,罗纳德·费希尔(就是后来被册封骑士的那位遗传学家)之后的生物学家难以望其项背｡” In their own books, E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins drew heavily on Trivers’ papers, although he has not always had positive things to say about his popularizers. “Richard wrote a beautiful book,” Trivers says about The Selfish Gene. “I was not about to take the time to do it.” 威尔逊和道金斯在自己的书中都大量引用了特里夫斯的论文,让特里夫斯的观点在学界人尽皆知,但特里夫斯本人对这两位却并不总是好言相向｡“理查德的书写得漂亮,”特里夫斯如此评价《自私的基因》,“我不会花时间去做这种事｡” But as for Wilson and Sociobiology, “He played the old Harvard game of becoming the father of a field by becoming the father of the name of a field.” (Wilson told me his own work on the sociobiology of insects actually influenced Trivers.) 但对威尔逊和《社会生物学》,特里夫斯说,“他为一个领域发明一个名字然后便成了该领域的开山鼻祖,这不过是老套的哈佛把戏罢了｡”(威尔逊告诉我他对昆虫的社会生物学研究成果其实影响过特里夫斯｡) After writing papers addressing how we treat strangers, friends, lovers, parents, and children, Trivers offered a no-less-powerful theory on how we deal with ourselves. In a sentence in the foreword to Dawkins’ book, he proposed that self-deception evolved to facilitate the deception of others. Trivers says he’d planned to flesh out the theory but didn’t get around to it because he was “smoking too much strong herb.” 在撰写了有关我们如何对待陌生人､朋友､爱人､父母和小孩等论文之后,特里夫斯又就我们如何对待自我提出了一个同等重要的理论｡在为道金斯的新书【编注:《自私的基因》第一版】写的序中,他提出,自我欺骗机制(self-deception)之所以进化出来,是为了方便我们欺骗他人｡特里夫斯说他本打算丰富下该理论但终未动手,因为他“抽了太多够劲的大麻｡” Trivers also made a mark with the 2006 textbook Genes in Conflict, for which he and Austin Burt spent 15 years integrating thousands of papers on genetic competition within organisms. A reviewer for NatureGenetics called it “meticulously assembled, thought-provoking, and sometimes deliciously speculative.” 特里夫斯于2006年撰写的教科书《基因冲突》让他再一次名声大噪｡为了这本书,他和奥斯汀·伯特花了15年时间,将数千篇关于有机体内基因竞争的论文进行了整合｡《自然—遗传学》的一名评审者称,这本书在整合方面不遗余力,引人思考,一些地方还包含了有趣的猜测｡ According to Trivers, “We created an entire field, the evolutionary dynamics of within-individual genetic conflict. So first, I worked on social theory between individuals, then I dropped one level lower.” Proudly showing me its color inserts, he pointed to what appeared to be a drumstick. “Looks like a piece of chicken, right? No, it’s the only transmissible cancer known. That’s a dog dick. He punches it into a female, the cancerous tissue breaks off and starts growing inside her pumpum.” 特里夫斯说:“我们创造了一个完整的领域:个体内部基因冲突的进化动力学｡首先,我研究关于不同个体的社会学,然后我深入到更基础的一个层次｡”特里夫斯自豪地给我展示一张彩色插图,指着上面一个像鸡腿一样的东西问我,“看起来像是鸡的一部分,对吧?但其实不是,这是唯一已知的会传播的癌症｡那是狗的屌｡他把这玩意插入母狗体内,癌症组织便分裂,然后在母狗的屄里开始生长｡” My early emails with Trivers attested to his mercurial nature. He lavished praise for a hypothesis I’d suggested, then scolded me for failing to answer a question he’d written. After some back and forth, he agreed to an interview and last spring met me at the train station in New Brunswick—he’s currently a professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. 我同特里夫斯早期往来的电子邮件见证了他善变的性格｡他曾对我提出的某项假设大加赞赏,然后又因为我答不上他提出的问题而骂我｡在几个回合后,他同意接受我的采访,并在去年春天于新泽西新不伦瑞克市的火车站与我见面——他现在已是新泽西州立罗格斯大学的一名教授｡ Wearing a wool hat with a weed leaf on it, he grumbled at my not finding the right station exit. He warmed up as we drove to his disorganized apartment—a mattress remained in the middle of the floor from a visit by his son. One wall displayed photos of his family, a former girlfriend and her family, and a lizard. We cracked open beers, and he soon offered me a puff of his joint as we got down to business. 见到他时,他戴着一顶毛线帽,上面粘着一片大麻叶子,他抱怨我没有找对车站出口｡在开车前往他的公寓的途中,我们逐渐变得热络起来｡他的公寓乱糟糟的,他儿子来看他时留下的一个床垫还躺在地板中央｡公寓的一面墙上贴满他家人的照片,包括一位前女友及其家人,还有一只蜥蜴｡我们开了啤酒,不一会当我们聊到正题时他已经开始给我递大麻烟卷了｡ The son of a diplomat, Trivers grew up in Maryland, Denmark, and Germany. At age 12, he knew he wanted to be a scientist and took a liking to astronomy, then to math. He spent two months mastering a calculus textbook and another two months mastering the next volume. 他是一名外交官的儿子,在美国马里兰州､丹麦和德国长大｡12岁时,他想成为一名科学家并先后对天文学和数学产生了兴趣｡他花了两个月时间钻研一本微积分教材,又花了两个月时间把下一本学完｡ He studied pure math as a Harvard freshman, but as a sophomore he realized it wasn’t likely to yield many applications, so he briefly looked to physical science. He didn’t have a knack for physics, however, and hadn’t learned much chemistry or biology. (His college roommates once showed him pictures of a hippo and a rhino and asked him to identify which was which. He picked wrong.) 大一时,他在哈佛学习纯数学,但到了大二他意识到这可能没有太多实际用处,于是又跑去学习物理,但只是浅尝辄止｡同样他也没有多少化学和生物学知识｡(他的大学室友曾把河马和犀牛的照片拿给他选,结果他选错了｡) “So, I literally said, ‘Well, if it’s not truth I’m going to devote myself to, then it’s justice.’” He identified with the civil rights movement and decided to become a lawyer. Unfortunately that meant plodding through a major in U.S. history, which he found to be “an exercise in self-deception and self-glorification.” “所以我当时曾说,‘如果我不能献身真理,那就献身正义｡’”他受民权运动的感召并决意成为一名律师｡不幸的是这意味着要修完枯燥的美国历史课程,这在他看来就是“练习自我欺骗和自我美化｡” During his junior year at Harvard, Trivers had a mental breakdown. After five weeks of mania—little of which he remembers besides insomnia and feelings of grandiosity—he checked himself into the hospital and stayed for 11 weeks. Doctors diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. 特里夫斯在哈佛念大三时曾有过一次精神崩溃,在五个星期的躁狂症之后(在这其间的一切他几乎都不记得了,除了失眠和自大的感觉),他把自己送进了医院并在里面呆了11周｡医生诊断他患了躁郁症｡ When he returned to school, he thought it might be a good idea to take courses in psychology—though not abnormal psych because, as he likes to say, “I had a special advantage in it.” But he soon decided psychology in its then state was not a real science. 当他重返学校时,他认为修心理学课程可能是个不错的主意——这心理动机不算太意外——因为正如他自己喜欢说的,“这方面我有特别的优势｡”不过他很快认定当时的心理学还算不上一门真正的科学｡ The field at the time had three strands: First was work on conditioning, pioneered by Ivan Pavlov and B. F. Skinner. Skinner “was stupid enough to think you could build up a whole theory and system of logic about human psychology based entirely on learning,” Trivers says, “and specifically the kind of stimulus-response learning that’s studied in the lab.” Trivers didn’t see how, for example, the brain could pick up the complexities of language this way without some genetic scaffolding. 心理学当有三个分支:首先是对条件反射的研究,由巴甫洛夫和斯金纳开创｡斯金纳“太蠢了,以至于认为你可以仅仅通过学习便建立起一整套关于人类心理的理论和逻辑体系,”特里夫斯说,“尤其是通过那种在实验室里被当作研究对象的刺激-反应式学习｡”举个例子,特里夫斯就不认为,抛开遗传因素,大脑能够通过这种方式领会语言的复杂性｡ Then there’s Freud, who had some keen insights into self-deception, Trivers says, “but he wedded them to a completely corrupt view of human development” characterized by the anal, oral, and Oedipal stages.“He just invents it out of whole cloth while snorting too much cocaine.” 第二个分支便是弗洛伊德,他对自我欺骗有着某种深刻的洞见,特里夫斯说,“但他将这种洞见同一种朽烂不堪的人类成长观嫁接到了一起”,其观点的标签便是肛欲期､口欲期和恋母期｡“他不过是在嗑了太多白粉后凭空发明了这些概念｡” Third was social psychology, which Trivers saw as too dependent on self-reports. “You cannot build up a science based on a whole series of correlations between how people answer questionnaires,” he says. “By definition it can’t work, if only because we don’t know most of what’s causing us to do things, and second, we don’t necessarily tell the truth.” Trivers considered psychology “a joke.” 第三个分支是社会心理学,特里夫斯认为其太依赖自我报告了｡“你不能以人们如何回答问卷之间的相关性为基础,建立起一门学科｡”特里夫斯说｡“显然这不管用,首先我们大部分时候并不知道是什么让自己去做一件事,其次,我们也不一定会说实话嘛｡”特里夫斯认为心理学就是个“笑话”｡ So he stuck to justice and applied to law school. He selected the progressive law school at Yale, with Virginia as a backup, but neither accepted him, in part because of his mental health. “But for his mental illness,” says William von Hippel, a friend and collaborator at the University of Queensland, “he would not be the famous scientist that he is. He’d be a well-to-do lawyer.” 所以他转而追求正义并申请了法学院｡他选择了耶鲁的进步主义法学院,并把弗吉尼亚法学院作为备选项,但都被拒绝了——部分因为他的心理健康状况｡“要不是他的心理疾病,”特里夫斯在昆士兰大学时的同事和朋友威廉·范希波尔说,“他不会是今天这个著名科学家｡他会是一个有钱的律师｡” Suddenly without a clear path, Trivers heard about a job writing children’s books. He took his writing sample, an account of his breakdown, to Jerome Bruner, the Harvard psychologist running the project. “I was hired. Strange, eh?” He was assigned to write about biology, a topic he knew nothing about (hippo or rhino) and to work under the wing of the naturalist and bird expert William Drury. 突然不知通过什么方式,特里夫斯听说了一份为小孩子写书的工作｡他带上他写的样稿(讲述他自己精神崩溃的事),去见杰罗姆·布鲁纳——当时主持该项目的哈佛心理学家｡“我被雇佣了,怪不?”他被分配到博物学和鸟类学家威廉·特鲁里的麾下,题目有关生物学,一个他一无所知的主题(还记得河马和犀牛吧)｡ Together they would sit in the woods imitating bird sounds so they could watch avian courting, clashes, and cooperation. Under Drury’s tutelage, Trivers decided to become an evolutionary biologist. Upon discovering evolutionary logic, he says. “I knew I had found where I wanted to be.” He has called Drury “the man who taught me how to think.” 他俩会一起坐在树林下模仿鸟类的叫声,观察它们求偶､打架以及合作｡在特鲁里的指导下,特里夫斯决意成为一名进化生物学家｡在发现进化的逻辑之后,他说“我知道我已找到我想追求的东西｡”他称特鲁里为“那个教会我如何思考的人｡” Trivers headed back to Harvard to earn a Ph.D. in biology, studying under Ernest Williams, a herpetologist. Trivers decided to study lizards in Jamaica and became enamored with the island—not least because he finds dark-skinned women attractive and says that at that time a white man couldn’t roam Boston with a black woman on his arm. 特里夫斯之后回到哈佛大学攻读博士学位,师从厄内斯特·威廉斯,一位爬虫学家｡特里夫斯决定去牙买加研究蜥蜴并从此爱上了这个岛国｡(其中一个重要原因是,他发现深色皮肤的女人很有吸引力,他还说,那时白人男性无法同黑人女性并肩徜徉在波士顿街头)｡ “So I always felt free down there in a way that I never felt here,” he says. He has lived in Jamaica on and off since 1968 and frequently falls into Jamaican patois, speckling his speech with its slang (pumpum, raashuol). “所以在那里我时常感到在这里(美国)从来没感受过的自由,”他说｡自1968年起他便时常回到牙买加居住并且经常讲牙买加方言,他的句子从此不时点缀些牙买加俚语(pumpum屄､raashuol屌)｡ He has many tales to tell of Jamaica. One is a memorable stickup in an East Kingston club. That story begins when he visited the establishment after a hiatus, curious to see if things had gotten as bad as he’d heard. 关于牙买加,特里夫斯有很多故事可讲｡其中之一便是在东金斯敦俱乐部里被持枪抢劫,这事可谓终身难忘｡这个故事要从他闲来无事走进这家俱乐部讲起,他是个好奇的人,想看看事情是不是真有听说的那么糟｡ When he entered, two men put guns to his head as three more gunmen stood by. They pulled the money from his pocket and pushed him against a wall next to a man bleeding from the head. When the next victim arrived, Trivers dashed out the door. After reporting the robbery to police, he learned that they and the community had sanctioned the ambush as a form of extrajudicial punishment for the johns. 当他走进去,两个男人拿枪顶着他的头,旁边还站着三个持枪者｡他们拽出他兜里的钱,把他推到墙上,旁边就是个满头是血的人｡当下一个受害者进来时,特里夫斯夺路而逃｡在向警察报告了这起抢劫案后,他得知警察和这个社区是认可这类袭击的,并将其视作对嫖客的法外惩罚｡ But as a white man, whose death would have caused major scrutiny for the area, he was a surprise inconvenience. The robbers had let him flee. According to Trivers, one woman who saw him running down the road later said to him, “Massah, me nebber know white man could fly, until I see you go by.” 但是白人是烫手山芋,他的死会引起对这个地区的大规模监视,所以抢匪们放他跑了｡据特里夫斯回忆,一个看到他逃命的女人后来对他说,“妈呀,我原来都不知道白人还会飞,看到你我才信了｡” Trivers also nurtured a family in Jamaica. He has two Jamaican ex-wives, five children, and eight grandchildren. One daughter is now the principal of a charter school in Harlem. 特里夫斯还在牙买加组建了一个家庭｡他有两个牙买加前妻､五个儿女和八个孙辈｡其中一个女儿现在是哈林区一所特许学校的校长｡ After finishing his Ph.D. in 1972, Trivers joined Harvard’s faculty. In 1977, he sought tenure, but the decision was pushed back three years because of his mental health issues. Instead of waiting, he decamped to the University of California at Santa Cruz with his wife and son in tow. 1972年博士毕业后,特里夫斯留在哈佛任教｡1977年,他谋求终身教职,但因为心理健康的问题连续三年被驳回｡他没有继续等待,而是带着妻子和儿子到了加州大学圣克鲁斯分校｡ In Santa Cruz, Trivers met Huey Newton, then a Ph.D. student and the leader of the Black Panthers. They became close, and in 1979 Trivers joined the party—for which he says he’s done “an illegal thing or two.” Trivers still refers to himself as “my black ass,” which he picked up from Newton, who told him: “Bob, everyone’s ass is black if you look closely enough.” 在圣克鲁斯,特里夫斯遇到了休伊·牛顿,一名在读博士,也是黑豹党的领导人｡两人走得很近,在1979年特里夫斯加入了这个党｡特里夫斯说他自己曾为黑豹党“干过那么一两件非法的事情｡”特里夫斯如今还以“我这个黑屁眼”自称,这是他从牛顿那学来的｡牛顿曾对他说:“鲍勃,所有人的屁眼都是黑的,如果你离近点看的话｡” Together they wrote an article for the magazine Science Digest about self-deception in the pilots of Air Florida Flight 90, which had crashed into the Potomac River upon takeoff in 1982, killing 78. A friend of Trivers, the Harvard butterfly expert Bob Silberglied, had died in the crash. 他俩一起在《科学文摘》上发表了一篇文章,论述1982年1月13日佛罗里达航空90次航班空难中飞行员的自我欺骗行为｡当时飞机在起飞时坠入波托马克河,共造成78人丧生,包括他的朋友､哈佛的蝴蝶专家罗伯特·希尔博格里德｡ Trivers was also drawn to the cockpit conversation replayed on TV. “You could hear the fear and rationality of the copilot,” he says, “and the overconfidence of the pilot, who showed fear only when they were in the air and it was too late.” 特里夫斯被电视上播放的驾驶舱录音所吸引｡“听得出来,副机长怀有担忧,很理性,”他说,“而机长过于自信,他在飞机离地以后才表现出担忧,但已经太迟了｡” In their article, they analyze the NTSB transcript line by line. The copilot repeatedly expresses concern about snow accumulating on the wings, the need for more de-icing, and what he believes are faulty instrument readings. The pilot brushes him off. Finally, 49 minutes after their last de-icing, they take off. Without sufficient velocity, they pull up, and a few seconds later they stall. The plane grazes a bridge and plunges into the Potomac. 在那篇文章中,他们逐行分析了全国运输安全委员会的报告｡副机长当时反复表达了对机翼积雪的担忧,认为需要再除除冰,还有仪器读数也不正常｡机长没理他｡最终在最后一次除冰后49分钟,他们起飞了｡在没有足够速度的情况下,他们就开始爬高,几秒钟后引擎熄火｡飞机擦过一座桥梁,一头栽进波托马克河｡ “We imagine that presenting a falsely positive front may often have been advantageous to the pilot prior to Flight 90,” Trivers and Newton wrote, “giving him the illusion that skill plus overconfidence works in all encounters.” “我们猜想,在飞90次航班之前,对这名机长来说,虚假的积极乐观一直都是有利的,”特里夫斯和牛顿写道,“这给了他一种幻觉,似乎技术加上过度自信就能应付任何情况｡” The two began writing a book titled Deceit and Self-Deception, but the publishing house closed. Newton, Trivers recalls, “was a master at propagating deception, he was a master at seeing through other people’s deception, he was a master at beating people’s self-deception out of them, and like all the rest of us, he fell down when it came to his own self-deception.” In an interview with The Black Panther newspaper, he called Newton a “heavyweight mind,” in comparison to the many “light- and middleweight minds” he found at Harvard. 两人开始写一本名为《欺骗与自我欺骗》的书,但出版社倒闭了｡牛顿“是个宣传欺骗的大师”,特里夫斯回忆道,“一个一眼洞悉别人骗术的大师,他精于把他人从自我欺骗中打回原形,然后他像其他所有人一样,当他从自己的自我欺骗中走出来时,他垮掉了｡”有一次《黑豹》报采访了他,他说牛顿是“重量级的思想者”,许多他在哈佛接触过的人相较之下只能算是“轻量级或中量级的思考者”｡ Trivers’ most detailed exploration of self-deception didn’t come until his 2011 book The Folly of Fools, where he explains that we fool ourselves in all realms of life—when overestimating our looks or abilities, when justifying our righteousness, when defending our power or privilege, when constructing false historical narratives. It’s all part of advancing our own agendas. 直到2011年《愚人愚道》出版,特里夫斯才对自我欺骗进行了详细论述,书中他解释说我们在生活的各个领域愚弄自己——高估自己的能力和相貌､为自己的正直感找正当的理由､保卫自己的权力或特权､构建虚假的历史叙事｡这些都是为了达到自己某种目的而做的部分努力｡ “What I’ve done is found disciplines,” Trivers says. As to self-deception, “I lost a lot by being sooo slow to develop suuch an important idea. Had I written the paper in ’78 like I was supposed to, there would have been a whole science now.” “我做的工作是建立范式,”特里夫斯说｡对自我欺骗理论,“这个理论太太太重要了,而我太太太晚才发展出这个理论以至于我损失了太多｡我本该在1978年就写下论文,我要是那样做了,现在肯定已经发展出完整的学科了｡” In 1994, he moved to Rutgers to be closer to his children. There, he has continued to publish on evolution and human behavior. One area of interest has been body symmetry in Jamaican children as a measure of genetic ability to withstand stressors during development. In 2005, he co-authored a paper showing that more symmetrical Jamaican teenagers were rated better dancers. The study was featured on the cover of the prestigious journal Nature. 1994年他前往罗格斯大学,这样可以跟他的孩子们近一些｡在那里他继续就进化和人类行为发表文章｡当时他的一个兴趣所在是身体的对称性,他将牙买加小孩身体的对称性视作一把尺子,度量在发育过程中适应压力的遗传能力｡2005年,他合作撰写的一篇论文指出,身体更为对称的牙买加青少年在舞蹈方面表现更好｡这项研究被声名卓著的《自然》杂志选作封面报道｡ Later, however, another researcher had trouble replicating the findings, and Trivers took a closer look at the data. He found irregularities and concluded that William Brown, a postdoc and the paper’s lead author, had fabricated data. Trivers sought retraction from the journal, but Brown and Lee Cronk, a fellow Rutgers professor who had worked on the paper, denied any wrongdoing or mistakes. 然而另一名研究者在之后验证这项发现的可重复性时遇到了问题,特里夫斯也仔细检查了数据｡他发现了不合常规的地方,并得出结论:论文的第一作者､博士后威廉·布朗编造了数据｡特里夫斯试图从杂志上撤回论文,但布朗和另一位罗格斯大学的同事李·克朗克却否认存在任何不端行为或错误｡ (Von Hippel said Cronk’s position is a classic case of self-deception, because a Nature paper was more important to his résumé than it was to Trivers’.) Trivers self-published a book, The Anatomy of a Fraud, to back up his case. Rutgers conducted its own investigation and came to the same conclusions as Trivers. (范希波尔说克朗克的行为是自我欺骗的典型案例,因为一篇发表于《自然》的论文对他的履历的重要性要远胜于对特里夫斯履历的重要性｡)特里夫斯自己出版了一本书《解剖骗子》来支持自己的立场｡罗格斯大学展开了调查并得出了同特里夫斯一致的结论｡ In 2012, he stood in Cronk’s office and called him a “punk” for continuing to deny the allegations. Cronk claims to have felt threatened, and Trivers was banned from campus for five months. (Cronk declined to comment for this article.) Nature finally retracted the paper in 2013, five years after the initial request. “For me to produce a fraudulent result, know about it, and not do everything to expose it and prove it is anathema to the essence of my identity,” Trivers says. 2012年,特里夫斯跑到克朗克的办公室,为他继续否认指控而叫他“废物”｡克朗克宣称他受到威胁,于是特里夫斯被禁止出现在校园,为期五个月｡(克朗克拒绝为本文就此事发表评论｡)《自然》终于在2013年将论文撤回,距初次发表已有五年时间｡“对我来说,知道自己伪造了一个结果却不竭尽全力去揭露它,是对我人格本质的诅咒,” 特里夫斯说｡ Trivers’ latest dustup with Rutgers began at the end of 2013, when he was assigned to teach a course on human aggression and he protested that he didn’t know the material. After much back and forth, he showed up in class and told his students the backstory. The university suspended him with pay for bringing students into the dispute, then withheld his pay for three months. 特里夫斯同罗格斯大学最近的一次纷争始于2013年底,当时他被分配去教一门关于人类攻击行为的课,而他抗议自己并不熟悉这个领域｡在几轮较量后,他最后还是出现在了教室里,他告诉学生发生了什么｡大学先是以将学生卷入纷争为由让他带薪停课,之后又扣了他三个月工资｡ “I am one of the most accomplished scientists they have ever had, period,” Trivers says in a characteristic but not inaccurate self-assessment. “Why not treat him well?” he asks. He has taken a dim view of the university and looks forward to a conscious uncoupling. “Honesty is not their strong suit,” he says. “Remember, we’re talking about New Jersey.” “我是他们拥有过的成就最高的人之一”,他这话带着特里夫斯的风格,但这个自我评价却不能说不准确｡“怎么就不能对他(指特里夫斯自己)好点呢?”他问道｡他对罗格斯大学的前景感到悲观并主动寻求离开｡“诚实不是他们的强项,”他说,“记住,毕竟我们说的是新泽西州｡” Trivers also had a talk at Harvard canceled once when he made a perceived threat against Alan Dershowitz in The Wall Street Journal letters pages over their conflicting views on Israeli-Lebanese relations. He admits to writing many “strongly worded” letters to people. And he notes: “If I ask you a direct question and you don’t give me a direct answer, I will wheel on you and say, ‘Yes but what about the question I asked you?!’” 因为对以色列-黎巴嫩关系的相左认识,特里夫斯曾在《华尔街日报》的读者来信版面里猛烈抨击艾伦·德肖维茨,这让后者感觉受到了人身威胁,特里夫斯在哈佛的一次讨论会也因此取消｡他承认自己给人写过许多“措辞激烈”的信｡他还补充说:“如果我直截了当地问你一个问题,而你不直截了当地回答,那我就要穷追猛打,‘是的,可是我刚才问你的那个问题呢?!’” When I asked Trivers how much blame he should take for the drama that surrounds him, he says, “I know I’m a hard man.” But he doesn’t see himself as violent. When he was kicked off campus for calling Cronk a punk, Rutgers sent him to a psychologist for threat evaluation. 当我问特里夫斯,对于这些围绕你的这些争议,你自己负有多少责任,他回答“我知道自己是个不好相处的人｡”但他并不认为自己暴力｡当他因为叫克朗克废物而被踢出校园时,罗格斯大学给他找了个心理学家进行威胁评估｡ “After an hour and a half, the psychologist says to me: ‘You know something, Dr. Trivers? You’re not a danger to anyone, including any of your colleagues. Your problem is you call stupid people stupid, and if they have power over you, you get blowback.’” Trivers told me this not a minute after framing an off-the-record comment with: “Please, I will get violent if I see this in print, and I’m not joking.” “一个半小时后,这位心理学家对我说:‘你知道吗,特里夫斯博士?对任何人你都不是一个威胁,包括你的大学同事｡你的问题是你管笨蛋叫笨蛋,如果他们能奈何得了你,你就有得好受｡”特里夫斯在告诉我这些之前没多一会儿的时候曾说过,他的某句评论可不能传出去｡他是这么说的:“拜托,我要是看见这句话印出来的话,我肯定会动手打人的,我不开玩笑｡” But this hard man is trying to change. He relies on strategies he developed years ago for managing his emotions, including something resembling prayer. He put religion aside at around age 13, “because math was a hell of a lot more interesting than ‘begat begatbegat.’ And there was this little contradiction between religion and 13-year-old girls.” 不过这位不好相处的人也在试着改变｡他依靠一套自己多年前开发出的办法来管理情绪,其中一种办法类似于祈祷｡他13岁时便抛弃了宗教,“因为比起什么‘以父之名’,数学要他妈有趣得多｡而且宗教这玩意还和13岁的女孩子有矛盾【编注:这里特里夫斯大概是在吹嘘他13岁时就懂得泡妞了】｡” Now, he wishes he hadn’t neglected it so much. He doesn’t believe in a god who listens: “How does God have any time left for my moaning and groaning? It’s insane.” Instead, it’s more a meditation. “I pray to keep my anger under control, to be more compassionate, for forgiveness, but I regard myself as talking to different parts of my own psyche.” 现在,他后悔自己当时如此地忽视宗教｡他并不相信有一个会倾听的神:“神怎么会有时间来听我抱怨?这太扯了｡”他的祈祷更接近冥想｡“我祈祷我的愤怒得到控制,自己更加悲悯,我祈祷得到宽恕,但我总感觉,我这是在和自己灵魂的不同部分对话｡” Trivers sees himself doing another five to ten years of research, but he describes his current contributions as more humble. He pumps out papers on lizards and knee symmetry in runners, which he admits, were “designed to fly me to Jamaica at someone else’s expense.” 特里夫斯认为自己还能做上5到10年的研究,但他认为自己目前的贡献远不如前｡关于蜥蜴和跑步运动员膝盖的对称性,他撰写了大量论文,对此他说“用处也不过是能让我花别人的钱飞来牙买加罢了｡” Yet one recent idea emerging from his interest in self-deception appears to have real significance: Research shows that older adults are biased toward paying attention to and remembering the positive over the negative and that they don’t dwell in negative moods, a phenomenon called the aging positivity effect. 然而他对自我欺骗的关注最近孕育了一个新观念,这一观念可能具有巨大的价值:研究者们发现年长些的人总是偏向关注和记忆正面的事情而忽略负面的,他们不会长时间陷在负面情绪里,这一现象被称作“衰老的正面效应”｡ There’s been no functional explanation, and it would seem that such a bias could be dangerous by blinding people to hazards. But Trivers notes that positive moods improve immune function, and older adults have a greater need for a strong immune system to fight off tumors and other ills. So maybe we’ve evolved to cheer ourselves up as we age just to boost immunity. 对这一效应现在还没有有效的解释,而这一对正面事物的偏执会让人们对危害视而不见,因而可能造成危险｡不过特里夫斯注意到,积极的情绪会增强人体的免疫机能,而年长的人需要一个强健的免疫系统来对抗肿瘤和其他疾病｡所以,也许我们就是这样进化的:越老就越充满正能量,从而提高我们的免疫力｡ He suggested the idea to von Hippel, who didn’t buy it. Why would natural selection shape old age, after we can no longer reproduce? But, Trivers argued, you can still help raise your grandchildren, who carry your genes. 他把这一理念跟范希波尔提起,但后者一开始并不买账｡自然选择为什么在我们失去生育能力后,还让我们老当益壮?但特里夫斯争辩说,在你老了之后你仍可以帮助养育孙辈,他们身上仍然携带了你的基因｡ Von Hippel ran a test that found that in older adults, a greater positivity bias correlated with stronger immune function. So they published the findings in 2014 in Psychology & Aging. Now they’re working on a longitudinal study to see if positivity predicts later immune function. 范希波尔做了验证,发现专注正面事物的年长者确实拥有更强健的免疫功能｡于是在2014年,他俩在《心理学与衰老》上发表了这一发现｡现在他们正合作一项纵向研究,以验证积极的心态是否会带来免疫力｡ Trivers refrains from making grand predictions about the future of evolutionary theory, but he has certain interests. David Haig’s work on genetic conflict excites him, as does von Hippel’s work on aging. And he’s just applied for a yearlong fellowship at Harvard to study honor killings. “How in the world,” he wonders, “do you select for, if indeed you do, murdering your own daughter?” 特里夫斯不会预测进化理论会有如何广阔的前景,但对这一理论他颇有兴趣｡David Haig关于基因冲突的研究､范希波尔关于衰老的研究都让他兴奋｡而且他刚刚申请了哈佛为期一年的研究员职位,以研究“荣誉谋杀”现象｡“在这个世界上,人怎么会选择——如果真的是自己选择的话——亲手杀死自己的女儿呢?”特里夫斯对此感到疑惑｡ He also has a lifetime interest in homosexuality—another genetic conundrum—and plans to write a review paper. “I enjoy trying to think through those kinds of problems,” he says. “As a theoretician you’re attracted, or you ought to be, to precisely those phenomena that seem to contradict your theory, and the deeper the better.” 他对同性恋现象——另一个遗传学的谜题——也抱有持续的热情,并打算写一篇综述论文｡“我很享受思考这些问题,”他说,“作为一个建立理论的人,你被,或者说你理应被那些与你的理论相悖的现象所吸引,越是痴迷就越好｡” Eating dinner at a Thai restaurant with Trivers, I mentioned that a colleague of his had painted him to be something of a badass. As evidence I noted the time he stabbed the home invader in the neck. “That’s a badass?” he inquired between slurps of soup. “That ain’t a badass. That’s someone protecting his f*cking life. I came an inch from being killed, man.” 和特里夫斯在一家泰国餐馆吃饭时,我提到他的一位同事曾把他描述成一个混蛋｡作为证据,我强调了那次他曾捅伤一位非法闯入者的脖子｡“那叫混蛋?”他一边喝汤一边质问,“那不叫混蛋,那他妈是保命｡我差点就被干死了,老兄!” Fair enough. But hurting his case, he went on to describe his response to the criminals’ lenient sentences. “I chased down both of them, because I had to,” he says. “Since the police aren’t disciplining them, I will.” One morning he spotted one of the men and pulled his car over. 言之有理｡不过接下去他描述他对轻判罪犯的反应,可就要为他减分了｡“我对这俩家伙穷追不舍,因为我不得不这么做,”他说,“既然警察不去规训他们,那我来｡”一天早上,他认出了罪犯中的一个,然后停下车｡ “‘Listen,’ I say, ‘If you want to rob me, you rob me at the roadside. Don’t rob me in my own home. That’s where my children live, that’s where my guests are. I will kill you three times over. In fact...’” As he started to get out of his car, Trivers says the man ran backward. (Helpfully, Trivers boxed in boarding school at Andover; but still, during one separate altercation, he ended up with an ice pick to his hand.) “‘听着,’我说,‘你要是想抢我,那你就在路边抢我｡别在我家抢｡那是我孩子生活的地方,是我客人到访的地儿｡你再那么干,信不信我让你死透?实际上……’”特里夫斯说,当他准备下车时,那家伙倒退着跑开了｡(特里夫斯在安多弗的寄宿学校练过拳击,不过,在另外一次争执中,他最后还是操起了碎冰椎｡) Today, Trivers retains vitriol for those who don’t see the legitimacy in his work and the research it’s spawned. According to von Hippel, people reject evolutionary psychology for ideological reasons. Those on the right fear that it absolves us of responsibility, while those on the left fear that accepting inherited differences hinders the goal of social equality. 今天,特里夫斯仍然对那些看不出他所做工作及其孵化出的研究的合理性的家伙们冷嘲热讽｡据范希波尔说,人们拒绝进化心理学是处于意识形态的理由｡右派担心进化心理学会解除我们身上的责任,而左派担心承认天生差异会对阻碍实现社会平等这一目标｡ Trivers says that many feminists and cultural anthropologists regard him as “the devil.” In return, he calls them “feebleminded” and “stone nuts.” More genes are expressed in the brain than in any other tissue, he notes, and to ignore the partnering of nurture with nature is “ludicrous, if you have any serious interest in reality or science.” 特里夫斯说,许多女权主义者和文化人类学家将他视为“魔鬼”｡而作为回击,他管他们叫“玻璃心”和“石化脑”｡他指出,比起其他组织,在大脑里得到表达的基因更多,忽视后天习得和先天遗传的共同作用是“可笑的,要是你对事实和科学还有一丝严肃态度的话｡” Trivers feels grateful for everything evolutionary biology has given him. It’s taken him around the world to wild and often unwelcoming places, and it’s given him the tools to analyze what he’s seen, from lizards to lovers’ quarrels to leftist movements. “In short,” Trivers writes in his memoir, “I signed on to a system of thought that allowed me to study life and live it, sometimes very intensively.” 特里夫斯对从进化心理学那里得到的一切都心存感激｡进化心理学带他走向世界各地,去到荒僻､甚至往往不友好的地方;给他分析所见所闻的工具,从蜥蜴到情侣争吵再到左翼运动｡“一言以蔽之,”特里夫斯在回忆录里写道,“我献身于一个思想体系,它让我可以研究和体味生命,而且这一过程有时还颇为激烈｡” （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? 语言是否塑造了你的思维方式？ 作者：Guy Deutscher @ 2010-8-26 译者：尼克基得慢（@尼克基得慢） 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源：NYtimes，http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=0 Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century.At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most people’s idea of glamour. 在七十年前的1940年，一份大众科学杂志发表了一篇短文，开启了二十世纪最新潮的思想风尚之一。乍看这篇文章，很难预料到它之后的名气。无论是文章标题《科学和语言学》，还是刊登的杂志《麻省理工科技评论》，都跟大多数人心目中的魅力不沾边。 And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language’s power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think. 而且，身为保险公司的化学工程师，同时兼职担任耶鲁大学人类学讲师，作者的这种身份并没有成为国际超级巨星的潜质。然而Benjamin Lee Whorf提出了一种关于语言对思维影响的诱人观点，而且他激动人心的文章诱使整整一代人相信，我们的母语限制了我们所能思考的内容。 In particular, Whorf announced, Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects (like “stone”) and actions (like “fall”). 特别是，Whorf宣称，美洲土著语言令它们的使用者形成了与我们完全不同的现实图景，所以美洲土著完全不能理解我们的一些最基本概念，比如时间的流逝，以及物体（比如“石头”）与动作（比如“下落”）的区分。 For decades, Whorf’s theory dazzled both academics and the general public alike. In his shadow, others made a whole range of imaginative claims about the supposed power of language, from the assertion that Native American languages instill in their speakers an intuitive understanding of Einstein’s concept of time as a fourth dimension to the theory that the nature of the Jewish religion was determined by the tense system of ancient Hebrew. 几十年来，学术圈和普罗大众都为Whorf的理论所折服。在他的巨大影响下，其他人基于设想中的语言之威力提出了很多富有想象力的断言，比如断言美洲土著语言赋予了美洲土著对爱因斯坦将时间作为第四维这一观念的直观理解，又如提出犹太教的本质决定于古希伯来语时态系统的理论。 Eventually, Whorf’s theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute. 最终，当人们发现Whorf的荒诞断言从未有证据支持时，他的理论在坚硬的事实和可靠的常识面前败退了。这一反弹的后果如此严重，以至于数十年里，任何探究母语对于我们思考之影响的尝试都被贬斥为不光彩的疯狂之举。 But 70 years on, it is surely time to put the trauma of Whorf behind us. And in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways. 但是70年过去了，是时候把Whorf造成的不幸放诸脑后了。在过去几年里，新近研究表明，我们在学习母语时确实会养成一些思维习惯，这些习惯会以重要且出乎意料的方式塑造我们的体验。 Whorf, we now know, made many mistakes. The most serious one was to assume that our mother tongue constrains our minds and prevents us from being able to think certain thoughts. The general structure of his arguments was to claim that if a language has no word for a certain concept, then its speakers would not be able to understand this concept. If a language has no future tense, for instance, its speakers would simply not be able to grasp our notion of future time. 我们现在知道Whorf犯了许多错误。最严重的一个就是，他假定我们的母语会限制我们的思维，而且使我们无力思考某些概念。他论证的大体框架就是声称，如果一种语言没有某种概念对应的词汇，该语言的使用者就不能理解这种概念。例如，假设一种语言没有将来时态，它的使用者就无法理解未来时间的概念。 It seems barely comprehensible that this line of argument could ever have achieved such success, given that so much contrary evidence confronts you wherever you look. When you ask, in perfectly normal English, and in the present tense, “Are you coming tomorrow?” do you feel your grip on the notion of futurity slipping away? Do English speakers who have never heard the German word Schadenfreude find it difficult to understand the concept of relishing someone else’s misfortune? Or think about it this way: If the inventory of ready-made words in your language determined which concepts you were able to understand, how would you ever learn anything new? 我们很难理解为什么这一论点竟能获得如此巨大的成功，因为你随处可见大量相反的证据。当你用完全标准的英语以现在时态问出“Are you coming tomorrow?”这句话时，难道你就感觉到对未来这一概念的理解随之消逝了吗？难道从未听说过德语单词Schadenfreude的英语使用者就很难理解幸灾乐祸这一概念吗？或者这样思考一下：如果你的母语中现存的全部词汇决定了你可以理解哪些概念，那你又如何可能学到任何新东西呢？ SINCE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that any language forbids its speakers to think anything, we must look in an entirely different direction to discover how our mother tongue really does shape our experience of the world. Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about. 既然并无证据表明任何一种语言会令其使用者无法思考某些事情，我们必须从反方向来探究我们的母语如何确实塑造了我们对世界的感受。大概五十年前，著名语言学家Roman Jakobson 用一句精辟箴言指出了关于不同语言之差异的一个关键事实：“语言实质上区别于它们所必须表达的内容，而不是它们可能表达的内容。”这句箴言给我们提供了解开母语真实威力的钥匙：如果不同的语言会以不同的方式影响我们的思维，这不会是由于语言允许我们思考什么内容，而会是由于语言内在地强制我们思考什么内容。 Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. 考虑这样一个例子。假设我用英语对你说“我昨天晚上跟我的邻居一起”。你或许会想知道我的同伴是男还是女，但是我有权礼貌地告诉你这事与你无关。但是如果我们讲法语或者德语，我就没有这样含糊其辞的特权了，因为语法强制我必须从voisin与voisine或者Nachbar与Nachbarin中选择一个。 These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so. 这些语言强迫我将同伴的性别告知你，不管我是否认为你与此事有什么干系。当然，这并不意味着英语使用者就无法理解与男邻居共度的夜晚和与女邻居共度的夜晚之间的区别，但这确实意味着他们并不需要思考在对话中出现的邻居、朋友、老师和其他许多人的性别，然而某些语言的使用者却必须这么做。 On the other hand, English does oblige you to specify certain types of information that can be left to the context in other languages. If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor’s sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. 另一方面，英语也会强制你明确说明某些类型的信息，而这些信息在其他语言里可以留在语境里面。如果我想用英文给你讲我跟邻居的一顿晚餐，我可能不用必须提到我邻居的性别，但是我却必须告知你有关事件发生时间的一些东西：我必须选择我们是已经吃过晚饭了（we dined）、已经在吃着晚饭（have been dining）、正在吃着晚饭（are dining）还是将要吃晚饭（will be dining）等。 Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. Again, this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action. 与此不同，汉语则并不强制其使用者这样详细说明动作的具体时间，因为汉语中同样的动词可以用于指称过去的、现在的和将来的动作。同样地，这并不意味这中国人就无法理解时间的概念。但是这确实意味着，无论何时描述一个动作，他们都不会被强制去考虑时间的问题。 When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world. 当你所用的语言经常强制你去说明特定种类的信息时，它会迫使你关注世界中的某些特定细节和经历中的某些特定方面，而这可能是其他语言的使用者不必一直思考的。因为这些说话的习惯从很小就开始养成，他们很自然就会变成超越语言本身的思维习惯，影响你在世上的体验、知觉、联想、感觉、记忆和倾向。 BUT IS THERE any evidence for this happening in practice? 但是有证据表明上述影响在现实中发生过吗？ Let’s take genders again. Languages like Spanish, French, German and Russian not only oblige you to think about the sex of friends and neighbors, but they also assign a male or female gender to a whole range of inanimate objects quite at whim. What, for instance, is particularly feminine about a Frenchman’s beard (la barbe)? Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her? 我们再以性别为例。像西班牙语、法语、德语和俄语这样的语言不仅强制你思考朋友和邻居的性别，而且还心血来潮地赋予各种无生命的物体以性别。例如，法国人胡须怎么就成了阴性的？为何俄语中水是阴性的，但是把一个茶包放进她里面，她为何又会变成了他呢？ Mark Twain famously lamented such erratic genders as female turnips and neuter maidens in his rant “The Awful German Language.” But whereas he claimed that there was something particularly perverse about the German gender system, it is in fact English that is unusual, at least among European languages, in not treating turnips and tea cups as masculine or feminine. 众所周知，Mark Twain曾用“糟糕透顶的德语”一语来痛斥其稀奇古怪的词性，比如阴性的萝卜和中性的少女。尽管他声称德语的词性系统有些特别不合常理之处，但事实上，至少在欧洲各语言里，像英语这样不把萝卜和茶杯看作阴性或者阳性的，才真正是不同寻常。 Languages that treat an inanimate object as a he or a she force their speakers to talk about such an object as if it were a man or a woman. And as anyone whose mother tongue has a gender system will tell you, once the habit has taken hold, it is all but impossible to shake off. When I speak English, I may say about a bed that “it” is too soft, but as a native Hebrew speaker, I actually feel “she” is too soft. “She” stays feminine all the way from the lungs up to the glottis and is neutered only when she reaches the tip of the tongue. 那些把无生命物体当作他或她对待的语言，会迫使其使用者以它是一个男人或女人的方式来谈论该物体。而且，母语有性别系统的人会告诉你，一旦养成这种习惯，就不可能改掉了。当我说英语时，我可能会说一张床“它”太软了，但作为一个生来就讲希伯来语之人，我实际上是感觉到“她”太软了。从肺部上至声门，“她”一直都是阴性的，只有当她到达舌尖时才会变成中性。【编注：作者是犹太人，生于以色列特拉维夫市，在荷兰莱顿大学任教授】 In recent years, various experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them. In the 1990s, for example, psychologists compared associations between speakers of German and Spanish. There are many inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed. A German bridge is feminine (die Brücke), for instance, but el puente is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for clocks, apartments, forks, newspapers, pockets, shoulders, stamps, tickets, violins, the sun, the world and love. 近几年，不同实验均表明，语法上的性别可以塑造说话人对周围物体的感觉和联想。比如1990年代，心理学家比较了德语使用者和西班牙语使用者的联想。两种语言中有很多无生命名词的性别是相反的。比如德语中的桥是阴性的(die Brücke)，但是在西班牙语中桥(el puente)是阳性的。同样，时钟、公寓、叉子、报纸、口袋、肩膀、邮票、票、小提琴、太阳、世界和爱都是如此。 On the other hand, an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish, and so are chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and garbage. When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed. 另一方面，对德国人来说，苹果是阳性的，但是在西班牙语中则是阴性的，椅子、扫帚、蝴蝶、钥匙、山岳、星星、桌子、战争、雨和垃圾也是如此。当说话者被要求对不同物体的一系列特征进行评分时，说西班牙语的人认为桥梁、时钟和小提琴拥有更多“男性特质”，比如力量；但是德国人则倾向于认为它们更加纤弱或雅致。对于像山岳或椅子这样德语中为阳性而在西班牙语为阴性的物品来说，效果正好相反。 In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory. 在另一个实验中，说法语和西班牙语的人被要求为卡通中的不同物体配上人类发音。说法语的人看到一幅叉子(la fourchette)的图片时，大多数就想要为它配上女性声音，但在西班牙语中，叉子(el tenedor)是阳性的，其使用者就会更倾向于给它一个沙哑的男性声音。心理学家最近甚至揭示，“名词具有词性的语言”会将物体的性别特性在思维上留下极为深刻的印记，以致于这种联想甚至会阻碍语言使用者记忆信息的能力。 Of course, all this does not mean that speakers of Spanish or French or German fail to understand that inanimate objects do not really have biological sex — a German woman rarely mistakes her husband for a hat, and Spanish men are not known to confuse a bed with what might be lying in it. Nonetheless, once gender connotations have been imposed on impressionable young minds, they lead those with a gendered mother tongue to see the inanimate world through lenses tinted with associations and emotional responses that English speakers — stuck in their monochrome desert of “its” — are entirely oblivious to. 当然，所有这些并不意味着说西班牙语、法语或者德语的人不能理解无生命物体并没有真正的生物性别——一个德国女性很少会把她的丈夫错认为一顶帽子，西班牙男性也并不以混淆床和床上的东西而著称。然而，一旦性别涵义强加于易受影响的年轻头脑上，它们就会使得母语中名词具有词性的人通过联想和感性回应的滤镜来看待这无生命的世界，而这是困在单色的“its”沙漠中的英语使用者完全察觉不到的。 Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany? Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned? At the current state of our knowledge about the brain, this is not something that can be easily measured in a psychology lab. But it would be surprising if they didn’t. 例如，“桥梁”在德语和西班牙语中相反的性别会对两国桥梁的设计有影响吗？词性系统所设置的情感地图对我们的日常生活会产生更高级别的行为后果吗？它们会影响相关社会的品味、时尚、习惯和倾向吗？在我们有关大脑的现有知识状态下，这并不是能在心理学实验室轻松测量出来的事情。但是如果它们没有影响，这会叫人意外。 The area where the most striking evidence for the influence of language on thought has come to light is the language of space — how we describe the orientation of the world around us. Suppose you want to give someone directions for getting to your house. You might say: “After the traffic lights, take the first left, then the second right, and then you’ll see a white house in front of you. Our door is on the right.” But in theory, you could also say: “After the traffic lights, drive north, and then on the second crossing drive east, and you’ll see a white house directly to the east. Ours is the southern door.” 我们在某个领域已经发现了有关语言影响思想的最引人注目的证据。这一领域就是有关空间的语言——我们如何描述我们周围世界的方向。假设你想给要去你家的某人指路。你可能会说：“过了红绿灯后，第一个路口左转，然后第二个路口右转，然后你会看到面前有一栋白房子。我家门在右边。”但是理论上，你也可以说：“过了红绿灯后，向北开，然后在第二个十字路口往东开，然后你会看到正东方向有栋白房子。我家门是南边那个。” These two sets of directions may describe the same route, but they rely on different systems of coordinates. The first uses egocentric coordinates, which depend on our own bodies: a left-right axis and a front-back axis orthogonal to it. The second system uses fixed geographic directions, which do not rotate with us wherever we turn. 这两组指令描述的是同一路线，但是它们依赖不同的坐标系统。第一种使用了依赖自己身体的自我中心坐标：左右坐标轴和与之垂直的前后坐标轴。第二种系统使用固定的地理方向，不论我们转向何处都不会随我们旋转。 We find it useful to use geographic directions when hiking in the open countryside, for example, but the egocentric coordinates completely dominate our speech when we describe small-scale spaces. We don’t say: “When you get out of the elevator, walk south, and then take the second door to the east.” The reason the egocentric system is so dominant in our language is that it feels so much easier and more natural. After all, we always know where “behind” or “in front of” us is. We don’t need a map or a compass to work it out, we just feel it, because the egocentric coordinates are based directly on our own bodies and our immediate visual fields. 我们发现有时使用地理方向很有用，比如当我们在开阔的野外徒步时。但是当我们描述小型空间时，自我中心坐标在我们的言谈中占绝大多数。我们并不会这么说：“出电梯后，往南走，然后在第二个门往东走。”自我中心坐标在我们的语言中如此重要，原因是我们觉得用起来更容易、更自然。毕竟，我们总是会知道我们的“后面”或者“前面”在哪。我们不需要地图或者指南针来辨别前后，我们只需靠感觉，因为自我中心坐标直接基于我们的身体和当下的视野。 But then a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all languages conform to what we have always taken as simply “natural.” In fact, Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. 可是且慢，一种生僻的澳洲土著语言——北昆士兰的Guugu Yimithirr语——冒了出来，它让人们震惊地意识到，并不是所有语言都符合我们理所当然认定的“自然”。事实上，Guugu Yimithir语根本不使用自我中心坐标。先是人类学家John Haviland，后来又有语言学家Stephen Levinson，都表示Guugu Yimithirr语并不使用诸如“左”或“右”、“前”或“后”这些词来描述物体的方位。在任何我们使用自我中心坐标的场合，Guugu Yimithirr语都依赖于东西南北这种基本方向。 If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.” 如果他们想让你在车座上挪出点空位来，他们会说“往东移一点。”为了告诉你他们忘在你家的东西的具体位置，他们会说，“我把它落在西边桌子的南边了。”他们还会警告你，“小心你脚北边的大蚂蚁。”甚至当电视上播放电影时，他们也会基于屏幕的朝向来描述电影。如果电视机朝北，屏幕上的男人正在靠近，他们会说他“正在往北走”。 When these peculiarities of Guugu Yimithirr were uncovered, they inspired a large-scale research project into the language of space. And as it happens, Guugu Yimithirr is not a freak occurrence; languages that rely primarily on geographical coordinates are scattered around the world, from Polynesia to Mexico, from Namibia to Bali. Guugu Yimithirr语的这些怪异特性的发现，激发了对于空间语言的一项大规模研究项目。经过研究发现，Guugu Yimithirr语并不是不寻常的事情；主要依靠地理坐标的语言散落在世界各地，从波利尼西亚到墨西哥，从纳米比亚到巴厘岛。 For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.”But the joke would be lost on some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on Bali in the 1930s, recalls a young boy who showed great talent for dancing. As there was no instructor in the child’s village, McPhee arranged for him to stay with a teacher in a different village. 对于我们来说，如果一位舞蹈老师说“现在举起你北边的手，向东移动你的南腿”，可能听起来十分荒谬。但是某些情况下就不好笑了：曾于1930年代在巴厘岛生活过几年的美籍加拿大音乐学家Colin McPhee回忆说，他在那儿遇到过一个有着极佳舞蹈天赋的男孩。由于男孩的村子没有老师，McPhee就安排他跟着另一个村子的老师。 But when he came to check on the boy’s progress after a few days, he found the boy dejected and the teacher exasperated. It was impossible to teach the boy anything, because he simply did not understand any of the instructions. When told to take “three steps east” or “bend southwest,” he didn’t know what to do. The boy would not have had the least trouble with these directions in his own village, but because the landscape in the new village was entirely unfamiliar, he became disoriented and confused. Why didn’t the teacher use different instructions? He would probably have replied that saying “take three steps forward” or “bend backward” would be the height of absurdity. 但是几天后当他检查男孩的进展时，他发现男孩情绪低落而且老师充满怒气。因为男孩根本不能理解任何指令，所以没法教他任何事情。当被告知“向东三步”或者“往西南弯曲”时，他不知道该怎么做。男孩在他自己的村子就不会有这些方向上的麻烦，但是因为新村子的地貌完全不熟悉，他变得困惑，分不清方向。为什么老师不用不同的指令呢？他的回答大概是：说“往前三步”或者“向后弯曲”是极度荒谬的。 So different languages certainly make us speak about space in very different ways. But does this necessarily mean that we have to think about space differently? By now red lights should be flashing, because even if a language doesn’t have a word for “behind,” this doesn’t necessarily mean that its speakers wouldn’t be able to understand this concept. Instead, we should look for the possible consequences of what geographic languages oblige their speakers to convey. In particular, we should be on the lookout for what habits of mind might develop because of the necessity of specifying geographic directions all the time. 所以不同语言确实让我们对于空间的描述十分不同。但是这一定表明我们必须对空间有不同的思考吗？到此红灯应该闪起来了，因为即使一种语言没有“后面”这一个词，这不一定意味着说这种语言的人不能理解这个概念。相反，我们应该寻找地理语言强制它们的使用者传达某些内容所带来的后果。特别是我们应该留神观察，由于他们一直需要明确地理位置，他们的思维会形成什么样的习惯。 In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. 为了讲一种像Guugu Yimithirr这样的语言，你需要在你醒着的每一刻都知道基本方向在哪。你的脑中需要有一个一直运行的指南针，无论白天还是晚上，没有午休或者周末休息，否则你就无法表述最基本的信息，也无法理解周围人在说什么。确实，地理语言的使用者好像拥有近乎超人般的方向感。不管视线条件如何，不管他们在茂密的森林或是开阔的平原，不管在户外或是室内乃至洞穴中，不管静止还是移动，他们都有准确的方向感。 They don’t look at the sun and pause for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.” They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals. 他们不看太阳，也无需停下片刻计算一番，就能脱口而出“你脚的北边有一只蚂蚁。”他们凭感觉就能知道哪是北方、南方、西方和东方，就像有完美音调的人不用计算音程就能感觉出每个音调是什么。 There is a wealth of stories about what to us may seem like incredible feats of orientation but for speakers of geographic languages are just a matter of course. One report relates how a speaker of Tzeltal from southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed without hesitation at the geographic directions. 在我们看来似乎不可思议的定位奇迹，对于使用地理语言的人来说是理所当然的事，关于此有太多故事可讲。一份报告描述了南墨西哥说Tzeltal语的人被蒙住眼睛在漆黑的屋子里转二十多圈的故事。转完后，虽然仍旧被蒙住双眼而且头昏，他还是毫不犹豫地指出了地理方向。 How does this work? The convention of communicating with geographic coordinates compels speakers from the youngest age to pay attention to the clues from the physical environment (the position of the sun, wind and so on) every second of their lives, and to develop an accurate memory of their own changing orientations at any given moment. So everyday communication in a geographic language provides the most intense imaginable drilling in geographic orientation (it has been estimated that as much as 1 word in 10 in a normal Guugu Yimithirr conversation is “north,” “south,” “west” or “east,” often accompanied by precise hand gestures). 这是怎么实现的呢？用地理坐标进行交流的习惯，使得说话者从很小开始就在生命中每一秒都去留意有关物理环境的线索（太阳的位置，风等等），培养出了在任何时刻都能记住自己方位变化的精确记忆力。所以在地理语言中，日常交流提供了对地理方位最大强度的想象训练（据估计，一次普通的Guugu Yimithirr语谈话中，每十个词就有一个是“北”“南”“西”或“东”，而且经常伴有准确的手部姿势）。 This habit of constant awareness to the geographic direction is inculcated almost from infancy: studies have shown that children in such societies start using geographic directions as early as age 2 and fully master the system by 7 or 8. With such an early and intense drilling, the habit soon becomes second nature, effortless and unconscious. When Guugu Yimithirr speakers were asked how they knew where north is, they couldn’t explain it any more than you can explain how you know where “behind” is. 这种恒常知晓地理方向的习惯从婴儿时期就开始得到灌输。研究表明，这种社会中的儿童最早在2岁就开始使用地理方向了，到了7、8岁就能完全掌握。有了这样早且高强度的训练，这种习惯很快就变成了毫不费力且不会察觉的第二本能。当Guugu Yimithirr语的使用者被问到他们如何知道哪是北方时，他们无法解释，就像你不能解释你怎么知道“后方”是哪一样。 But there is more to the effects of a geographic language, for the sense of orientation has to extend further in time than the immediate present. If you speak a Guugu Yimithirr-style language, your memories of anything that you might ever want to report will have to be stored with cardinal directions as part of the picture. One Guugu Yimithirr speaker was filmed telling his friends the story of how in his youth, he capsized in shark-infested waters. 但是地理语言的影响还不仅如此，因为方向感要求在当下时间的基础上有所延伸。如果你讲的是Guugu Yimithirr类型的语言，你对于自己想要说的任何东西的记忆都会将基本方向作为记忆画面的一部分来存储。一位讲Guugu Yimithirr的人曾被拍摄到向他的朋友讲述自己年轻时如何在遍布鲨鱼的水域里翻船的故事。 He and an older person were caught in a storm, and their boat tipped over. They both jumped into the water and managed to swim nearly three miles to the shore, only to discover that the missionary for whom they worked was far more concerned at the loss of the boat than relieved at their miraculous escape. Apart from the dramatic content, the remarkable thing about the story was that it was remembered throughout in cardinal directions: the speaker jumped into the water on the western side of the boat, his companion to the east of the boat, they saw a giant shark swimming north and so on. 他和一个年纪稍大的人被困在风暴中，他们的船翻了过来。他们都跳入水中，奋力游了3英里才到了海岸，却发现雇佣他们的传教士只关心船只损失，毫不庆幸他们奇迹般的死里逃生。除了这戏剧性的内容之外，值得注意的事情是整个故事都是通过基本方向来记忆的：说话者从船的西侧跳入水中，他的同伴在船的东侧跳下，他们看见了一条大鲨鱼从北面游来等等。 Perhaps the cardinal directions were just made up for the occasion? Well, quite by chance, the same person was filmed some years later telling the same story. The cardinal directions matched exactly in the two tellings. Even more remarkable were the spontaneous hand gestures that accompanied the story. For instance, the direction in which the boat rolled over was gestured in the correct geographic orientation, regardless of the direction the speaker was facing in the two films. 有没有可能，其中提到的基本方向只是临时想到的呢？很巧合的是，同一个人几年过后又被拍摄讲同样的故事。两次描述中的基本方向完全相符。更加引人注意的是伴随故事而出现的自发手势。例如，在讲述船往哪个方向摇晃时，他的手能够指向正确的地理方向，不管说话者在两段视频中面向哪个方向。 Psychological experiments have also shown that under certain circumstances, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr-style languages even remember “the same reality” differently from us. There has been heated debate about the interpretation of some of these experiments, but one conclusion that seems compelling is that while we are trained to ignore directional rotations when we commit information to memory, speakers of geographic languages are trained not to do so. 心理学实验也表明，在某些情况下，对于“同一个事实”，说Guugu Yimithirr型语言的人甚至会与我们有不同的记忆。关于如何解释部分此类实验，人们一直都有一些热烈的争议，但是有一个结论非常令人信服：尽管我们受到的思维训练是在记忆信息时忽略方向变化，但是说地理语言的人却被训练得不去这么做。 One way of understanding this is to imagine that you are traveling with a speaker of such a language and staying in a large chain-style hotel, with corridor upon corridor of identical-looking doors.Your friend is staying in the room opposite yours, and when you go into his room, you’ll see an exact replica of yours: the same bathroom door on the left, the same mirrored wardrobe on the right, the same main room with the same bed on the left, the same curtains drawn behind it, the same desk next to the wall on the right, the same television set on the left corner of the desk and the same telephone on the right. In short, you have seen the same room twice. 理解这种区别的一个方法是：想象你正与一个说这种语言的人一同旅行，住在一家各层走廊两边的门都一模一样的大型连锁酒店。你的朋友住在正对着你的房间，当你走进他的房间里时，你会看见跟你完全一样的房间：卫生间门一样在左侧，带镜衣柜一样在右侧，一样的主卧，床也一样在主卧的左边，后面一样是窗帘，靠右侧墙也一样摆着桌子，桌子的左边一样是电视，电话一样在右边。简言之，你两次看到的是相同的房间。 But when your friend comes into your room, he will see something quite different from this, because everything is reversed north-side-south. In his room the bed was in the north, while in yours it is in the south; the telephone that in his room was in the west is now in the east, and so on. So while you will see and remember the same room twice, a speaker of a geographic language will see and remember two different rooms. 但是当你的朋友进到你的房间时，他会看见相当不同的东西，因为所有事情都是南北颠倒的。在他的房间床是在北边，而在你的房间床是在南边；他房间里的电话是在西边，而你的在东边等等。所以尽管你两次看到并记住相同的房间，地理语言的使用者则看见和记住了两间不同的房间。 It is not easy for us to conceive how Guugu Yimithirr speakers experience the world, with a crisscrossing of cardinal directions imposed on any mental picture and any piece of graphic memory. Nor is it easy to speculate about how geographic languages affect areas of experience other than spatial orientation — whether they influence the speaker’s sense of identity, for instance, or bring about a less-egocentric outlook on life. 说Guugu Yimithirr的人把基本方向的十字瞄准器加诸于任何精神画面和图像记忆之上，我们很难想像他们是如何感受这个世界的。同时也很难猜测地理语言如何影响除了空间定向外的体验领域——比如它们是否会影响说话者对个体身份的理解或者是否会导致对于人生更少自我中心的看法。 But one piece of evidence is telling: if you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant. 但是有个证据颇能说明问题：如果你看到一个说Guugu Yimithirr语的人指向他自己，你会自然地假设他有意引起对他自己的注意。事实上，他正在指向一个方向，刚好在他背后。尽管我们总是处于世界的中心，而且从来不会意识到，指向我们胸部方向的动作除了是想要引起对自己的注意之外，还能有什么别的意思，但是一个说Guugu Yimithirr语的人会指穿他自己，仿佛他是稀薄的空气，他自己的存在并不相关。 IN WHAT OTHER WAYS might the language we speak influence our experience of the world? Recently, it has been demonstrated in a series of ingenious experiments that we even perceive colors through the lens of our mother tongue. There are radical variations in the way languages carve up the spectrum of visible light; for example, green and blue are distinct colors in English but are considered shades of the same color in many languages. 我们所说的语言会在其他什么方面影响我们对世界的感受呢？最近，一系列别出心裁的实验表明，我们甚至是通过母语的滤镜来观察颜色的。在区分可见光光谱方面，各语言有很大的不同；例如，英语中绿色和蓝色是不同的颜色，但是在很多语言中它们却是同种颜色的不同色调。 And it turns out that the colors that our language routinely obliges us to treat as distinct can refine our purely visual sensitivity to certain color differences in reality, so that our brains are trained to exaggerate the distance between shades of color if these have different names in our language. As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue. 我们还发现，我们的语言所经常性地强制我们加以区分的颜色，会修正我们对于现实中特定颜色区别的视觉敏感性，所以如果这些颜色在我们的语言中有不同的名字，我们的大脑就会被训练得夸大不同色度颜色的差距。虽然这听起来很奇怪，但是我们对于Chagall画作的感受某种程度其实依赖于我们语言中是否有蓝色这一单词。 In coming years, researchers may also be able to shed light on the impact of language on more subtle areas of perception. For instance, some languages, like Matses in Peru, oblige their speakers, like the finickiest of lawyers, to specify exactly how they came to know about the facts they are reporting. You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such. 在未来几年，研究人员或许能发现语言对更细微的感知领域的影响。例如，一些语言，像秘鲁的Matses，会像最挑剔的律师一样强制其使用者详细说明他们如何知晓正在讲述的事实。你不能像在英语中那样简单地说，“一动物经过了此处。”你必须用不同动词形式详细说明，这是直接经历的（你看到了一动物正在经过）、还是你推断的（你看到了脚印）、还是你猜测的（动物一般都会在一天中的那个时间经过那里），还是你听说的，诸如此类。 If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie. So if, for instance, you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment, he would have to answer in the past tense and would say something like “There were two last time I checked.” After all, given that the wives are not present, he cannot be absolutely certain that one of them hasn’t died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago. 如果提出一份陈述时的“证据性质”不正确，该陈述就会被认为是谎言。所以，举例来说，如果你问一个Matses男性他有多少老婆，除非他在那时能看到他妻子，否则他必须用过去时回答，会说一些“上次核实时，我有两个老婆”这样的话。毕竟，鉴于他的老婆并不在场，他不能绝对确定自从他上次看到她们后，他们中的一个有无死亡或者跟其他男人跑掉，即使“上次核实”也就在5分钟之前。 So he cannot report it as a certain fact in the present tense. Does the need to think constantly about epistemology in such a careful and sophisticated manner inform the speakers’ outlook on life or their sense of truth and causation? When our experimental tools are less blunt, such questions will be amenable to empirical study. 所以他不能用现在时把这作为一个确定事实来说。这种如此小心复杂地思考认识论的需要，会影响说话者对人生的看法或者他们对真相和起因的理解吗？只有在我们的实验工具足够锐利时，这些问题才能经受实证研究的检验。 For many years, our mother tongue was claimed to be a “prison house” that constrained our capacity to reason. Once it turned out that there was no evidence for such claims, this was taken as proof that people of all cultures think in fundamentally the same way. But surely it is a mistake to overestimate the importance of abstract reasoning in our lives. After all, how many daily decisions do we make on the basis of deductive logic compared with those guided by gut feeling, intuition, emotions, impulse or practical skills? 很多年来，我们的母语被称为限制我们理性能力的“牢笼”。一旦证明这样的说法没有证据，人们就以为这证明了所有文化的人根本上都以相同的方式进行思考。但是，过分高估抽象推理在我们生命中的重要性，这显然是个错误。毕竟，与那些在感觉、直觉、情感、冲动或实用技能指导下做出的日常决定相比，我们有多少决定是在演绎逻辑的基础上做出的呢？ The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter, and their consequences probably go far beyond what has been experimentally demonstrated so far; they may also have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies. We may not know as yet how to measure these consequences directly or how to assess their contribution to cultural or political misunderstandings. But as a first step toward understanding one another, we can do better than pretending we all think the same. 我们的文化从婴儿时期就灌输进我们大脑的习惯，会影响我们在世界中的定向，和对我们所遇到的东西的情感回应，它们的影响可能比目前实验所揭示的要更深远；它们可能对我们的信仰、价值观和思想体系也有显著影响。我们可能还不知道如何直接测量这些影响，或者如何评估它们对于文化或政治误解的作用。但是作为迈向理解彼此的第一步，我们还可以做的更好，不能假装所有人都以相同方式思考。 Guy Deutscher is an honorary research fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. His new book, from which this article is adapted, is “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages,” to be published this month by Metropolitan Books. Guy Deutscher是曼彻斯特大学语言与文化学院的荣誉研究员。他的新书《透过语言之镜：为何其他语言中的世界看起来如此不同》这个月将由Metropolitan Books出版，本文即选摘自此书。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Nearly 1,000 People Move From Blue States to Red States Every Day. Here’s Why. 每天将近有1000人从蓝州搬到红州，这自有缘由。 作者：Stephen Moore @ 2015-10-9 译者：董慧颖 校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 来源：The Daily Signal，http://dailysignal.com/2015/10/09/nearly-1000-people-move-from-blue-states-to-red-states-every-day-heres-why/ The so-called “progressives” love to talk about how their policies will create a worker’s paradise, but then why is it that day after day, month after month, year after year, people are fleeing liberal blue states for conservative red states? 那些所谓的“进步人士们”喜欢谈论他们的政策将如何创造出一个工人的天堂。可是，为什么日复一日，月复一月，年复一年，人们总是在从自由派的蓝州逃到保守派的红州去呢？ The new Census data on where we live and where we moved to in 2014 shows that the top seven states with the biggest percentage increase in in-migration from other states are in order: North Dakota, Nevada, South Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, and Texas. All of these states are red, except Colorado, which is purple. 2014年最新人口普查中关于居住地和搬迁地的数据显示，按照迁入量增长的百分比计算，有他州居民迁入的前七大州依次是：北达科他，内华达，南卡罗来纳，科罗拉多，佛罗里达，亚利桑那和德克萨斯。这些州中除了科罗拉多是紫色以外，其他都是红州。 Meanwhile, the leading exodus states of the continental states in percentage terms were Alaska, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Kansas. All of these states are blue, except Alaska and Kansas. 同时，以百分比计算，大陆州中主要的外流州是：阿拉斯加，纽约，伊利诺伊、康涅狄格，新墨西哥，新泽西和堪萨斯。这些州中除了阿拉斯加和堪萨斯外，其他都是蓝州。 The latest Rich States, Poor States document (which I co-author), published by ALEC, the state legislative organization, finds that nearly 1,000 people each day on net are leaving blue states and entering red states. This migration is changing the economic center of gravity in America—moving it relentlessly to the South and West. 最新的《富州和穷州》报告（我是合著者），由专注各州立法的美国立法交流委员会（ALEC）出版，发现每天离开蓝州进入红州的人数净值接近1000。这一迁徙正在改变美国的经济重心，使之持续不断地向南、向西转移。 Travis Brown, the author of the indispensable book “How Money Walks,” shows that two of the leading factors behind this movement of human capital are 1) whether a state has a right to work law (half of the states do) and 2) how high the top income tax rate is in the state. Nine states have no income tax today, and they are creating twice the pace of jobs as are high-income tax states. 特拉维斯·布朗写作了一本不可或缺的书：《钱如何走路》。他指出，在人力资本的上述流动背后，有两个主要的影响因素：1）该州是否有权制定工作法（一半的州都有），2）该州最高的所得税税率有多高。如今有九个州没有所得税，而他们创造的工作机会是高所得税州的两倍。 Data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) show a similar trend. Each year the IRS issues a migration data report that examines how many tax filers (and dependents) in the year changed their residency and how much income was transported from one state to another. The numbers for the most recent year (tax filing year 2013) are gigantic and put the lie to the claim that interstate migration is too small to matter in terms of the wealth and economic opportunity in one state versus another. 国税局的数据也显示了类似的趋势。每年国税局都会发布一份移民数据报告，分析当年度有多少报税人（及其家属）改变了他们的居住地以及有多少收入从一个州转移到另一个。最新一年（2013报税年度）的数字非常之大，证明下述断言就是扯谎：州际迁移太小，不会对各州之间财富和经济机会造成影响。 In 2013, Florida gained $8.2 billion in adjusted gross income from out-of-staters. Texas gained $5.9 billion—in one year. Five of the seven states with the biggest gains in income have no income tax at all: Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, and Nevada. New York was again the big loser, with another 112,236 tax filers leaving and taking $5.2 billion with them. (So much for those TV ads trying to lure businesses into America’s 2nd highest taxed state with temporary tax breaks.) Illinois lost nearly 67,000 tax filers and $3.7 billion of income it can no longer tax. 2013年，佛罗里达从外州来者身上获得了共计82亿美元的调整后总收益。德克萨斯在一年内获得了59亿美元。收益增加最多的七个州中有五个没有任何所得税：佛罗里达、德克萨斯、亚利桑那、华盛顿州和内华达。纽约州又是最大的输家，又有112236名纳税人离开，一并带走了52亿美元。（那么多电视广告企图用临时税收减免来引诱企业到全美税负第二重的州去发展，还是打住吧。）伊利诺伊失去了近67000名纳税人，可征税收入中流走了中37亿美元。 I’ve never met a Democrat who could come up with even a semi-plausible explanation for why families and businesses are hightailing it out of blue states. They are leaving states with high minimum wages, pro-union work rules, high taxes on the rich, generous welfare benefits, expansive regulations to “help” workers, green energy policies, etc. People are voting with their feet against these liberal policies. 我从来没有见过任何一个民主党人能想出半个理由，能解释为什么家庭和企业都在从蓝州逃离。他们正在离开的这些州，都有很高的最低工资，有利于工会的工作规定，对富人的高税收，慷慨的福利待遇，无孔不入的旨在“帮助”工人的管制，绿色能源政策，等等。人们正在用脚投票，反对这些自由派政策。 When I debated Paul Krugman this summer, I confronted him with this reality. His lame explanation for the steady migration from liberal North to conservative South was that “air conditioning” has made the South more livable. Americans are evidently moving because of the weather. 今年夏天当我和保罗·克鲁格曼辩论时，我用这样的事实与他对质。他对从自由派北部到保守派南部间的稳定移民的蹩脚解释是，“空调”使南部更适于居住。美国人显然是由于天气原因才搬家的。 There are two glaring problems with this theory: California and North Dakota. In the last decade ending in 2013, 1.4 million more Americans left California than moved into the once-Golden State. It’s a good bet these California refugees didn’t leave for more sunshine or better weather. 这个想法面临着两个突出的困难：加利福尼亚和北达科塔。到2013年为止的十年间，从曾经的黄金州加利福尼亚迁出的人口比迁入的多出140万。可以肯定地说，这些离开加利福尼亚州的难民并不是为了追寻更多的阳光或更好的气候。 And if warm weather is what is attracting people to the South—and surely there is some truth to that—why did the coldest state outside Alaska, North Dakota, have the biggest population gain in percentage terms in the most recent year? The answer is that workers went to get jobs created by the Bakken Shale oil and gas boom. By the way, California is one of the oil- and gas-richest states in the nation, but its “green” politicians are regulating that industry out of businesses. So much for caring about working-class Americans. 如果温暖的气候是吸引人们迁往南方的原因——当然这也有一定的道理——那为什么最近一年中，除阿拉斯加以外最寒冷的州——北达科塔——却有着最大的人口增长百分比？答案是，工人们是去追寻因巴肯页岩油气繁荣而创造出来的工作。顺便提一下，加利福尼亚是全国石油和天然气最为富集的州之一，但该州的“绿色”政治家们正通过管制逼死油气行业。别再说什么关心工薪阶层美国人了。 The latest Census and IRS data merely confirm what Americans can see every day with their own two eyes. Red states are a magnet. There’s a downside to this for sure. Conservatives have a legitimate gripe that as blue-staters come into their prosperous red states, they try to turn them blue. That’s happened in New Hampshire, where Massachusetts transplants vote for the left-wing policies they just fled. 最新的人口普查和国税局的数据只是证实了美国人每天用自己的两只眼睛都能看到的事情。红州是一块磁铁。这肯定会有消极面。保守派的抱怨合情合理，蓝州人在进入繁荣的红州后，正试图将他们的红州变蓝。这种事已经在新罕布什尔发生，来自马萨诸塞的移民投票支持他们方才逃离的左翼政策。 But the underlying trend is unmistakable: Liberal blue states are economic dinosaurs. Will they change their ways before they go the way of Detroit and become extinct? 但基本的趋势是显而易见的：自由派的蓝州是经济的巨大障碍。在重蹈底特律的覆辙走向灭绝之前，他们会改变自己的方式吗？ （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

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