2016年02月发表的文章(25)

[译文]美国港口为何没有自动化?

Why Aren’t America’s Shipping Ports Automated?
美国的航运港口为何没有实现自动化?

作者:Flexport @ 2015-9-30
译者:Veidt(@Veidt)
校对:小聂(@PuppetMaster)
来源:Priceonomics,http://priceonomics.com/why-arent-americas-shipping-ports-automated/

The massive cranes that sit at the Port of Oakland are veritable money-printing machines.

那些坐落在加州奥克兰港的巨型起重机都称得上是名副其实的印钞机。

As ships coming from Asia dock in the San Francisco Bay, these industrial behemoths quickly usher goods-bearing containers off the deck and onto land. Modern container ships are filled with thousands of containers. At peak efficiency, a single crane can remove about 40 of these per hour — and for each one they unload, companies moving containerized cargo are charged a terminal handling fee of around $300.

随着来自亚洲的船只驶入旧金山湾,这些巨型工业设备迅速开始将装满货物的集装箱从货轮的甲板上卸到岸上。现代的集装箱货轮中装载着数以千计的集装箱。在最高工作效率之下,一台起重机每小时能从船上卸下大约40个集装箱——对于它卸下的每个集装箱,运送集装箱货物的公司需要向港口交纳大约300美元的码头作业费。

But in many ways, the Port of Oakland, and most American ports in general, are some of the most technologically antiquated in the world. While many high-wage, developed countries have embraced and integrated automation in the process of moving shipping containers, Oakland has shied away from more technologically advanced solutions.

但是在许多方面,奥克兰港以及美国的大多数港口实际上都排在世界上技术最陈旧的港口之列。当许多高工资的发达国家热情拥抱自动化技术,并将其整合到装卸货运集装箱的流程中时,奥克兰港却回避了那些技术上更先进的解决方案。

A port terminal recently opened in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands tells a different story: almost every part of the process of unloading containers is handled by software, and office workers remotely control the cranes over their computers. Some have called the operation the world’s most advanced container-ship terminal.

最近在荷兰鹿特丹开放的一个港口码头则讲述了一个完全不同的故事:在卸载集装箱的流程中,几乎所有的部分都是由计算机软件操作完成的,坐在办公室里的工人通过他们的电脑远程操纵起重机。有人称其为世界上最先进的集装箱船码头。

Comparing the ports of Oakland and Rotterdam shows just how far American ports are lagging when it comes to automation.

对奥克兰港(more...)

标签: | |
6688
Why Aren’t America’s Shipping Ports Automated? 美国的航运港口为何没有实现自动化? 作者:Flexport @ 2015-9-30 译者:Veidt(@Veidt) 校对:小聂(@PuppetMaster) 来源:Priceonomics,http://priceonomics.com/why-arent-americas-shipping-ports-automated/ The massive cranes that sit at the Port of Oakland are veritable money-printing machines. 那些坐落在加州奥克兰港的巨型起重机都称得上是名副其实的印钞机。 As ships coming from Asia dock in the San Francisco Bay, these industrial behemoths quickly usher goods-bearing containers off the deck and onto land. Modern container ships are filled with thousands of containers. At peak efficiency, a single crane can remove about 40 of these per hour — and for each one they unload, companies moving containerized cargo are charged a terminal handling fee of around $300. 随着来自亚洲的船只驶入旧金山湾,这些巨型工业设备迅速开始将装满货物的集装箱从货轮的甲板上卸到岸上。现代的集装箱货轮中装载着数以千计的集装箱。在最高工作效率之下,一台起重机每小时能从船上卸下大约40个集装箱——对于它卸下的每个集装箱,运送集装箱货物的公司需要向港口交纳大约300美元的码头作业费。 But in many ways, the Port of Oakland, and most American ports in general, are some of the most technologically antiquated in the world. While many high-wage, developed countries have embraced and integrated automation in the process of moving shipping containers, Oakland has shied away from more technologically advanced solutions. 但是在许多方面,奥克兰港以及美国的大多数港口实际上都排在世界上技术最陈旧的港口之列。当许多高工资的发达国家热情拥抱自动化技术,并将其整合到装卸货运集装箱的流程中时,奥克兰港却回避了那些技术上更先进的解决方案。 A port terminal recently opened in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands tells a different story: almost every part of the process of unloading containers is handled by software, and office workers remotely control the cranes over their computers. Some have called the operation the world’s most advanced container-ship terminal. 最近在荷兰鹿特丹开放的一个港口码头则讲述了一个完全不同的故事:在卸载集装箱的流程中,几乎所有的部分都是由计算机软件操作完成的,坐在办公室里的工人通过他们的电脑远程操纵起重机。有人称其为世界上最先进的集装箱船码头。 Comparing the ports of Oakland and Rotterdam shows just how far American ports are lagging when it comes to automation. 对奥克兰港和鹿特丹港的比较,清楚地显示出美国港口在自动化方面已经落下了多远的距离。 How Does a Container Port Work? 一个集装箱港口是如何运作的? As many great articles and a highly-influential book have argued, containers are one of the great inventions of the modern world. In the shipping world, a “container” is defined as a standardized 20, 40 or 45 foot long steel receptacle that houses any variety of goods. 正如许多杰出文章和一部非常有影响力的著作【编注:指Marc Levinson的The Box,中译本《集装箱改变世界》】所认为的那样,集装箱属于现代世界的诸多伟大发明之一。在航运界,集装箱被定义为一个长20,40或45英尺的标准化钢制容器,它能够装载任何类型的货物。 These containers are a global ISO standard and work on essentially any ship, truck, or railcar that is fitted for them. This standardization, of course, alleviates concerns over how to pack a ship, what’s on it, whether the goods will be stolen at the dock, or whether it fit on a certain truck or train. Containers let you treat the physical atoms of the world almost like computerized bits. 这些集装箱都符合一个国际通用的ISO标准,并且能够与几乎所有针对它调整过的轮船,卡车或是有轨列车配合工作。这种标准化工作显然缓解了人们对于诸如该怎样装满一艘货船,船上都装了些什么,停放在港口的货物是否会被偷走,或者货物能否被装进一辆特定的卡车或列车这类问题的担忧。集装箱为你提供了一种像对待计算机中的比特位一样来对待真实世界中物理原子的方式。 The development of containers revolutionized trading among nations. Within 5 years of “containerization,” posits one estimate, trade among nations increased 320%; within 20 years, trade increased by 790%. In 1965, before containerization, a crew could move 1.7 tons of goods per hour. After containerization, a crew could move 30 tons per hour — a 17.6x increase in productivity. 集装箱的发展为国家间贸易带来了一场革命。根据一项估计,在集装箱化开始的5年内,世界各国间的贸易量增长了320%;在20年内,增长了790%。在集装箱化开始前的1965年,一名工人每小时能够搬运1.7吨货物。而在集装箱化之后,一名工人每小时则能够搬运30吨货物——这意味着生产率提高了17.6倍。 Typically, containers arrive via specialized ships at designated ports that have the particular equipment for unloading and loading the cargo as well as loading it onto trucks that can bring the goods to their destinations. The ports, and the level of efficiency with which they can process goods, have profoundly affected the global economy. 通常,集装箱会由特制的集装箱船运往那些拥有装卸货物的特定设备的指定港口,然后被装上集装箱卡车,将货物运送到目的地。而港口,以及它们处理货物的效率水平,对全球经济有着深刻的影响。 From the perspective of a ship coming into a port with containers and in the simplest terms, there a[re] three critical pieces of technology: the “gantry cranes” that lift the containers from the ships, the transport vehicles that move the containers strategically around each port’s container yard to a designated delivery location, and the stacking cranes that pile up the containers so that trucks can come take them away. For exporters, who move containers from truck to ship, this process operates in reverse. 从一艘装载着集装箱驶入港口的货轮的角度来看,通俗地说,有三项关键技术影响着效率:从货轮上吊起集装箱的龙门起重机,负责按照特定策略将集装箱运往港内集装箱堆场中指定位置的运输车,还有负责堆放集装箱以让运输卡车能够将集装箱运出港口的堆垛起重机。而对于货物的出口商而言,由于他们需要将集装箱从卡车转运到货轮上,整个流程的顺序则是相反的。 howportsworkdiagram The machinery of these three components (gantry cranes, transport vehicles, and stacking cranes) can be operated either by humans or software. In Oakland, like most of the United States, all three are operated by humans. But the reality is that software automation can not only make this process faster and safer, but available at a lower variable cost. 这三部分的机械装置(龙门起重机,运输车和堆垛起重机)既可人工操作,也可以由软件来操作。在奥克兰港,与美国的大多数港口一样,全部三个部分都是人工操作的。但事实是,软件自动化不仅能让这些流程更加安全快速,而且可变成本也更低。 While the process of automation hasn’t yet started in the Port of Oakland, Rotterdam began implementing port automation back in the 1990s. After investing hundreds of millions of dollars, Rotterdam’s port boasts an operation in which all stacking cranes that pile up the containers and transport vehicles are run by software. 奥克兰港直到今天还没有开启港口自动化的进程,而鹿特丹港早在上世纪九十年代就已经开始实施港口的自动化运作了。在投入了数亿美元资金后,鹿特丹港骄傲地向人们展示了新的操作流程,在该流程中,所有负责堆放集装箱的堆垛起重机以及运输车辆都是由软件操控的。 This is a far cry from Oakland, where every transport vehicle has a driver and each stack crane has multiple operators working in pairs for a single shift as well as dockman and clerks to help coordinate and direct the operators and vehicle flow within the container yard. 而奥克兰港的情况则与此相去甚远,在奥克兰港,每辆运输车都有一名司机,而每台堆垛起重机在进行一次搬运时都需要多名操作员结对工作,此外还需要码头工人和一些记录员在集装箱堆场内帮助协调引导操作员和运输车流。 The most difficult part of the port to automate is the gantry crane, which plucks the container from the ship—partly due to the extreme potential danger involved. At most ports, before a container can be removed from a ship, a human must unlock the lower container lock; in a fully-automated system, there exists the omnipresent risk that a completely robotic gantry crane might not notice the human who unlocked the container. 在整个港口机械中最难自动化的部分是龙门起重机,它负责从货船上吊起集装箱——之所以难以自动化,其中的部分原因是这种操作中蕴含着极大的潜在危险。在大多数的港口,集装箱在能够被从货船上吊走之前,一名操作员必须人工解开集装箱下端的锁;而在一个全自动化的系统中则存在一种无处不在的风险,就是一个完全自动化的龙门起重机可能不会注意到负责人工将集装箱解锁的那名操作员。 However, many vessels have started to convert towards automatic locking and unlocking equipment that eliminates the need for a person to climb amongst the stacks of containers on a vessel and unlock containers before they are unloaded. In an automated system, humans would only need to interact with the equipment in this setting if there was a malfunction with the locking mechanism and bringing attention to a safety stoppage until the malfunction is addressed. Ultimately, this lends further support to the safety benefits to increased levels of automation. 然而,很多货船已经开始转向自动化的集装箱锁定和解锁设备,以消除对那些需要在船上成堆的集装箱中攀爬并在集装箱被卸载之前为其解锁的操作员的需求。在一个自动化的系统中,人们只需要在锁定机制发生故障时与这套设置中的设备进行交互,请求系统关注并启动安全停工机制,直到故障被排除。最终,这种机制通过带来更多的安全收益为更高水平的自动化赢得了更多的支持。 In Oakland, teams of humans operate on-site gantry cranes. In the newest terminal at Rotterdam, however, a single person who operates this crane sits in an office and controls the machine from his or her computer. A person is still operating the controls of the gantry crane, but that person now has software assisting him, making the job more comfortable, easier, and more productive. 在奥克兰港,龙门起重机是由一队队的工人操作的。而在鹿特丹港最新的码头,一台龙门起重机唯一的操作员坐在办公室里通过电脑来控制这台机器。龙门起重机仍然需要一个人来操控,但这名操作员现在有了软件的协助,这使得这项工作变得更轻松,更舒服,同时也更有效率。 At a build cost of over $535 million, the Rotterdam port is now considered the most advanced in the world, with all three major parts of the container moving process automated. In Rotterdam’s other terminals, almost every single transport vehicle and stacking crane are fully automated. 鹿特丹港新集装箱码头的建造成本超过了5.35亿美元,它被认为是目前世界上最先进的集装箱码头,流程中所有的三个主要部分全都已经自动化了。而在鹿特丹港的其它集装箱码头,几乎所有的运输车和堆垛起重机的运作也已经完全自动化了。 Contrasting Levels of Productivity 对比鲜明的生产率水平 It is difficult to make an apples to apples comparison of productivity between the two ports; due to the variables in the way in which they are structured, vessel size, vessel call schedules, shipping channel depth, gantry crane height and reach as well as limited public information for additional metrics. However, let’s take our best stab at figuring out just how much more efficient Rotterdam is than Oakland. 由于两个港口在建造方式,货轮大小,货轮调度时间表,航运通道的水深,龙门起重机的高度和范围以及其它一些难以从公开信息中获得的更多变量上存在的诸多不同,很难将奥克兰港和鹿特丹港的生产效率进行一一对应的同类比较。尽管如此,我们仍然可以尽量尝试着看看鹿特丹港究竟比奥克兰港要高效多少。 Rotterdam is the much larger port of the two, with 445 millions tons passing through it each year compared to just 47 million per year in Oakland. Much of this difference, however, is attributed to the fact that Rotterdam also accepts shipments of resources like oil that do not come in containers, whereas Oakland predominantly accepts containers. 鹿特丹港要比奥克兰港大得多,每年通过鹿特丹港运输的货物达到了4.45亿吨,相比之下,奥克兰港每年的货运量只有4700万吨。但这其中很大一部分差异要归因于鹿特丹港还接受诸如原油这类不使用集装箱来运输的资源,而奥克兰港则基本上只接受集装箱。 Instead of gauging volumes, let’s start by looking at how many containers pass through Rotterdam versus Oakland. The industry metric for number of containers is the "TEU”, or “twenty-foot equivalent unit”. In the 2014 shipping year, 12.3 million TEUs passed through Rotterdam, compared to 2.4 million in Oakland. Naturally, there are more berths for ships and cranes in Rotterdam, so that doesn’t necessarily mean Rotterdam is more productive (it could simply just be bigger). 先不看货运量,让我看看有多少集装箱分别通过鹿特丹港和奥克兰港进行运输。航运业内衡量集装箱数量的单位是TEU,也就是“二十英尺等量单位”。在2014航运年度,有1230万TEU的集装箱货运量通过鹿特丹港,而只有230万TEU的集装箱货运量通过奥克兰港。很自然地,因为鹿特丹港拥有更多的船舶泊位和起重机,这并不一定意味着鹿特丹港比奥克兰港的生产率更高(可能仅仅是因为鹿特丹港更大)。 Publicly available data tells us that there are 36 gantry cranes in Oakland versus 103 in Rotterdam (note: this is pre-automated terminal, which is only just getting started, but will add 26 more cranes). To get our best estimate of productivity, let’s take a look at how many TEUs are processed by each of those cranes in Rotterdam (where most of the process is automated), versus in Oakland: 可公开获得的数据告诉我们,奥克兰港拥有36台龙门起重机,而在鹿特丹港,这个数字是103(作者注:这个数字仅仅包括了还没有完全自动化的货运码头,而这仅仅是个开始,之后还将有26台起重机加入进来)。为了得到我们对于生产率的最优估计,让我们看看在鹿特丹港(那里大多数的流程都已经自动化了)和奥克兰港,一年内分别有多少TEU的集装箱货运量通过一台龙门起重机: Screenshot2015-09-3010.24.25 By this (admittedly rough) calculation, cranes in Rotterdam are almost 80% more productive than in Oakland. 根据这项计算(必须承认它很粗略),鹿特丹港的起重机的效率要比奥克兰港高出接近80%。 Why Does Automation Make Things Faster? 为什么自动化能提高效率? It should go without saying that automation makes ports operate faster, but the exact reasons for this are less obvious. 自动化能够让港口运转得更快这个结论似乎是无需多言的,但其中实际的原因却并不是那么显而易见。 First, and perhaps most importantly, high levels of automation make it easier to have multiple shifts per day and better utilize expensive capital assets (cranes, trucks, berths, etc). In Oakland, it’s extremely expensive to run a second shift to quickly unload a ship because it is necessary to pay employees overtime wages in order to do so. 首先,或许也是最重要的一点是,高水平的自动化让每天处理多个班次变得更加容易,而这意味着对那些昂贵的资本资产(起重机,卡车,泊位等)更加有效的利用。在奥克兰港,想要加一个班次以尽快将一整船货物卸载完毕是一件非常昂贵的事情,因为这么做需要向雇员们支付加班工资。 In Rotterdam, it’s much more the normal course of business to operate two or three shifts per 24 hour period, especially for container yard deliveries. All terminals in the Port of Oakland still run 1st, 2nd and 3rd shift operations as needed based on volume, it is just at much higher cost to both capital and human assets. 而在鹿特丹港,在24小时的周期内进行两班或三班倒则更像是一种常态化的运作,尤其是对于像集装箱堆场内的运输这样的任务而言。奥克兰港所有的货运码头仍然根据货运量的具体需求来加班,甚至是三班倒,而这对于资本和人力资产而言都会带来高得多的成本。 Human-operated and software-operated cranes, can, in theory, move containers at the same rate. However, humans get tired and distracted, and don’t consistently operate at peak performance. Software, on the other hand, operates at the same rate no matter what. Technology can also make workers’ jobs easier and safer, reducing workplace stress which can increase productivity in its own right. 理论上说,人工操纵的起重机和软件操纵的起重机应该能够以相同的速率搬运集装箱。但是,人会变得疲劳,注意力也容易被分散,因此不能一直维持峰值表现。而软件则能够在任何情况下都以相同的效率进行操作。技术还能够让工人们的工作变得更加轻松和安全,从而减轻工作压力,而这本身也能够让生产率得到提升。 Why the Lack of Automation in Oakland? 为何奥克兰港缺乏自动化运作? A key reason that Oakland and the United States lag in terms of automation is that upgrading to automated systems is extremely expensive: new, fully automated terminals cost over half a billion dollars to implement. Nevertheless, one expert estimates that automation makes financial sense when a port is handling around one million TEUs per year. 奥克兰港和美国其它港口在自动化方面落后的一个核心原因是,升级到自动化系统的费用非常高昂:建造一个新的完全自动化的货运码头需要花费超过5亿美元。然而,一位专家估计,如果一个港口每年能够运送大约100万TEU的集装箱货运量,那么自动化便有其财务价值。 Oakland, currently handles more than twice that amount in total TEU, however none of the terminals in the Port individually service over a million TEU in volume. There are several terminals that are close and in the very near future could hit that tipping point for the return on the investment in automation technologies. 虽然奥克兰港目前以TEU计算的总货运量超过了这个数字的两倍,然而其中并没有任何一个货运码头每年独立承担的货运量超过100万TEU。有几个码头的货运量接近这个数字,并且可能在不远的将来达到自动化技术投资回报的临界点。 A second reason for the delay in adopting modern automation is the effect on union jobs. Some have estimated that if the Port of Oakland were to implement a modern level of automation, 40-50% of the jobs would be eliminated. 第二个使美国港口迟迟没有采用现代自动化技术的原因则是自动化技术对工会职位所产生的影响。一些人已经作出估计,如果奥克兰港达到了现代的自动化水平,那么40%到50%的职位将会消失。 All ports on the West Coast of the United States are organized under a single union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which gives them a tremendously powerful collective bargaining position. A strike doesn’t just affect one port, but every single port on the West Coast. 美国西海岸的所有港口都被组织在同一家工会之下——国际码头和仓库工人工会(ILWU),这让他们处于一个强有力的集体谈判地位。一次罢工并不仅仅是影响一个港口,而是会影响到西海岸的每一个港口。 This union power was used to oppose the introduction of containers in the 1960s and, later, computerized systems for tracking cargo. In each case, however, the union eventually conceded the introduction of these technologies in exchange for higher wages for existing workers and buyouts for displaced ones. 这家工会的力量曾经在1960年代用来反对集装箱的引入,在之后还曾被用来反对引入用于跟踪货物的计算机系统。但每一次,工会最终都接受了这些技术的引入,以换取现有员工的更高工资以及那些被替代工人的买断费用。 As with previous disruptive technology ILWU will need to be compensated for any reduction in jobs. Today, the average member of the union in Oakland makes $147,000 per year in wages, with benefits equal to another $82,000 per year. Needless to say, providing buyouts to force retirement on these union workers, many of whom have dedicated their entire working lives to port operations, is not an appetizing prospect for the terminal operators. 和之前那些颠覆性技术一样,对于港口自动化技术,ILWU也将为任何因此被削减的职位要求补偿。目前,在奥克兰港工作的工会会员的平均工资是每年14.7万美元,此外他们还享受着每年等价于8.2万美元的福利。不用说,为这些工会工人的强制退休提供买断费用——他们中的很多人将自己的整个职业生涯都献给了港口工作——对于码头运营商们而言并不是一个看起来很有吸引力的选项。 Nevertheless, several mitigating factors may allow automation to proceed. For one, the job loss calculations largely assume that shipping volumes will not be affected by automation. However, as automation reduces the price of shipping, we should expect to more shipping, which will partially offset some of the job losses. 然而,一些正在缓和的因素可能会让自动化技术的引进变得可行。一方面,对于工作职位减少量的计算在很大程度上是假设货运量不会受到自动化技术的影响。但是自动化技术会降低航运的成本,我们可以预期这将带来更多的货运量,从而抵消一部分由它带来的职位削减。 More importantly, the returns on investment in port terminal automation are large enough that there should be room for a negotiated settlement that makes both the union and the terminal operators happy. 更重要的是,投资于港口货运码头的自动化技术所带来的回报足够大,这将为工会和港口运营商之间的谈判提供空间,以达成一个能让双方皆大欢喜的协议。 Port terminal automation is no different from any other form of technological disruption, which almost inevitably leads to displacement of some segments of the workforce. In the long run, however, technology ends up creating better jobs and expanded opportunities across broad spectrums of the economy. Managing the transition is hard, often requiring social safety nets from government, as well as concessions from those who stand to benefit from the new technology. 港口货运码头的自动化与其它任何形式的颠覆性技术相比并没有什么不同,它们几乎不可避免地会替代某些现有劳动力。但从长期来看,技术最终会在更广阔的经济民生中创造出更多更好的工作机会。管理由技术带来的转变是困难的,这通常需要政府的社会保障网络提供帮助,同时还需要那些新技术的受益者作出一些让步。 Given the march of “software eating the world,” it’s hard to imagine a future where American ports do not become more automated. Difficult as the transition toward port automation may be, shying away from the challenge means less trade among countries. Shipping technology advancements have shown themselves time and again to be capable of creating a more prosperous and interconnected world. 在“软件改变世界”的大潮之中,很难想象在未来美国的港口不会变得更加自动化。也许向港口自动化的转变过程会很艰难,但回避其中的挑战意味着国家间的贸易将因此减少。航运技术的进步已在过去一次次证明了它们有能力创造一个更加繁荣和更具连通性的世界。 (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——

[译文]巴尔的摩悲剧,谁之过?

Whose Fault is Baltimore
巴尔的摩骚乱谁之过?

时间:@ 2015-4-30
译者:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny)
校对:龟海海
来源:The Burning Platform,http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/04/30/whose-fault-is-baltimore/

I’ve seen the liberal lying MSM pondering how WE could allow the riots, looting, burning and lawlessness to happen, as if it is our collective fault. Obama stands before his teleprompter and pontificates about the need for us to end the poverty that supposedly led to Purge Night in Charm City.

我看到那些满嘴跑火车的自由派主流媒体成天思考我们(又被代表)怎么能容忍暴动、抢劫、纵火和无法无天,就好像这是整个城市的错。奥巴马站在他的提词器前武断地宣称消除贫困的必要,似乎这贫困将会导致“净化之夜”在这魅力之城上演。【译注:电影《净化》中,未来的美国变成了一个极权的警察国家。每年的3月21日晚7点到次日早7点被称作净化之夜,在此期间所有的暴力犯罪都是合法的。

That term cracks me up. The city has so much charm, its football team once snuck out of town overnight and headed to Indianapolis. It has so much charm its baseball team was forced to play a game with no fans in the stands.

这情景让我反胃。这座城市是如此有魅力,它的橄榄球队曾半夜溜出城跑到印第安纳波利斯去;它如此有魅力,它的棒球队曾被迫在没有一个球迷的球场上打比赛。

I think most people can agree that Freddie Gray, a petty drug dealer, was killed in police custody for the crime of looking suspicious. The policemen who killed him d(more...)

标签: | | |
6686
Whose Fault is Baltimore 巴尔的摩骚乱谁之过? 时间:@ 2015-4-30 译者:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 校对:龟海海 来源:The Burning Platform,http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/04/30/whose-fault-is-baltimore/ I’ve seen the liberal lying MSM pondering how WE could allow the riots, looting, burning and lawlessness to happen, as if it is our collective fault. Obama stands before his teleprompter and pontificates about the need for us to end the poverty that supposedly led to Purge Night in Charm City. 我看到那些满嘴跑火车的自由派主流媒体成天思考我们(又被代表)怎么能容忍暴动、抢劫、纵火和无法无天,就好像这是整个城市的错。奥巴马站在他的提词器前武断地宣称消除贫困的必要,似乎这贫困将会导致“净化之夜”在这魅力之城上演。【译注:电影《净化》中,未来的美国变成了一个极权的警察国家。每年的3月21日晚7点到次日早7点被称作净化之夜,在此期间所有的暴力犯罪都是合法的。】 That term cracks me up. The city has so much charm, its football team once snuck out of town overnight and headed to Indianapolis. It has so much charm its baseball team was forced to play a game with no fans in the stands. 这情景让我反胃。这座城市是如此有魅力,它的橄榄球队曾半夜溜出城跑到印第安纳波利斯去;它如此有魅力,它的棒球队曾被迫在没有一个球迷的球场上打比赛。 I think most people can agree that Freddie Gray, a petty drug dealer, was killed in police custody for the crime of looking suspicious. The policemen who killed him deserve to go to jail for murder. As usual, the powers that be circled the wagons and intended to exonerate the hero first responders. 我想大部分人都会同意,Freddie Gray——一个小混混毒贩子——仅仅因为看起来可疑而被捕并在羁押期间遭到杀害。那些杀害他的警察理应为谋杀而坐牢。同往常一样,权贵们对此事会引起的风波早有准备,并且打算赦免那英雄的第一响应者【first responder,指突发状况时首先到场的警察、医护人员等。】。 The people of Baltimore had a right to be pissed. They had a right to protest. They didn’t have a right to burn businesses and cars. They didn’t have the right to riot, loot, and injure others. 巴尔的摩的人们有权感到愤怒,他们有权游行示威。但他们没有权利去焚烧商场和汽车,他们没权利暴乱、抢劫和伤害他人。 It is the police department created and controlled for decades by Democratic progressive politicians that has committed the atrocities against the people who have been electing these progressives year after year. Baltimore has a corrupt, reckless, out of control police department enabled by a crooked and incompetent Baltimore politicians. The rap sheet for Baltimore’s finest is long: 由民主党的进步派政客创建并控制了数十年的警察局屡屡犯下暴行,而人们年复一年地把这些进步派选上台。巴尔的摩有个腐败的、厚颜无耻的、失控的警察局,全靠一群腐败无能的政客得以运转。巴警察局干过的好事可不少:
  • Police commissioner Ed Norris was sent to prison on corruption charges (2004)
  • 2004年警察局长Ed Norris因为腐败而于锒铛入狱。
  • Two detectives were sentenced to 454 years in prison for dealing drugs (2005)
  • 2005年两位警探因为贩毒而被判刑454年。
  • An officer was dismissed after being videotaped verbally abusing a 14-year-old and then failing to file a report on his use of force against the same teenager (2011)
  • 2011年一位警官对一名14岁少年言语虐待并被拍摄下来,而后他无法书面解释为何对同一位少年使用武力,最终被解职。
  • An officer was been fired for sexually abusing a minor (2014)
  • 2014年,一位警官因为性虐待未成年人而被开除。
  • The city paid a quarter-million-dollar settlement to a man police illegally arrested for the non-crime of recording them at work with his mobile phone.
  • 巴市曾付过一笔25万美元的庭外和解费,只因警员们非法拘捕一位拿手机拍摄他们执法的男士。
The cries of racism and white oppression ring hollow. It’s a tired storyline. Facts are always inconvenient to race baiters with an agenda to extract more money from whites with a guilty conscience and the inability or unwillingness to speak the truth. Let’s examine some facts about good old Charm City, USA. 对种族主义和白人迫害的哭诉是空洞无力的,这也是陈词滥调了。对种族迫害论者而言,事实真相往往不合时宜,他们总是试图通过白人的负罪感、在说出真相上的无能或不情愿,来攫取更多的钱财。让我们来看看巴尔的摩这传说中的“魅力之城”都有哪些丰功伟绩吧。
  • The fine citizens of this metropolis have not elected a Republican as mayor since 1963, before the War on Poverty began. That mayor’s 4 year term is the only interruption in Democrat rule since 1947. They have had Democrat control for 64 of the last 68 years, and sole control for the last 48 years straight.
  • 自打1963年起,巴市的良民们就没有选出过哪怕一位共和党的市长,那时“向贫穷开战”还未开始【War on Poverty,指美国第三十六任总统林登·贝恩斯·约翰逊推行的一系列福利法案。】从1947年起,市长的4年任期限制就是民主党统治的仅有停顿。68年间,民主党主政了64年,过去的48年民主党更是大权独揽。
  • Their mayor is black. Their previous mayor, Sheila Dixon, was black. She was convicted of embezzlement in 2010 and couldn’t finish her term. They had a white mayor (current Democratic Presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley) for eight years. The mayor before him was black.
  • 他们的现任市长是黑人。他们的前任市长,Shiela Dixon,是黑人。她因为在2010年挪用公款而未能干满任期。他们曾有过一个干了八年的白人市长(如今民主党的热门总统竞选人Martin O’Malley)。在他之前,市长也是黑人。
  • Their City Council consists of 15 members. All fifteen are Democrats. The Council President is black. Democrats have had control of legislation in Baltimore for the last 50 years. Every program, policy, initiative, or school curriculum that exists in Baltimore was enacted by liberal Democrats.
  • 他们的市议会由15名成员组成,15人全是民主党。市议会的主席是黑人。过去50年,民主党控制了巴市的立法,巴尔的摩的每一个项目、政策、动议,甚至学校课程,都是由自由派民主党人制定颁布。
  • The Police Commissioner is black. Approximately 50% of the police force is black.
  • 警察局长是黑人。大约一半的警察也是黑人。
  • The School Superintendent is black, along with the School Board. The district has an annual budget of $1.32 billion to teach 84,000 kids. The Baltimore school system ranks second among the nation’s 100 largest school districts in how much it spent per pupil at $15,700 per student. Only NYC spends more. Only two thirds of students graduate high school, despite this high level of spending.
  • 校监是黑人,全体校董会也是黑人。学区每年拥有13.2亿美元预算作为84000个孩子的教育经费。在全美最大的100个学区中,巴尔的摩的教学系统花在每个学生身上的经费位列第二,平均每人高达15700美元,只有纽约市花得比这更多。尽管有如此高的花销,只有三分之二的学生从高中毕业。
  • The average SAT scores of Baltimore City public school students are: 379 in Reading; 376 in Math; 381 in Writing. These are the scores of the best of the best in Baltimore schools who actually think they should get into college. The average scores in the country, which still suck, are around 500. Students with these scores have about a 15% chance of graduating college. This is the ROI you get after spending $188,000 per student over their 12 year academic career.
  • 巴市公立学校学生的SAT成绩平均为:阅读379分,数学376分,作文381分。这还是那些自认应该进入大学的顶尖学生的分数。全国的平均分,虽然低但也有500左右。有着这成绩的学生有15%的机会从大学毕业。这就是在一个学生12年的学习生涯中花掉188000美元的投资回报率。
  • The population of Baltimore is 623,000 and 63% are black. Median household income is $41,000, with 24% living below the poverty line. The home ownership rate is 48%. The percentage of college graduates is 27%.
  • 巴市有623000人口,其中63%是黑人。每户人家的年平均收入是41000美元,24%的家庭生活在贫困线以下。48%的人拥有自己的房屋。只有27%的人是大学毕业生。
  • The population was 950,000 in 1950, so it has fallen by 35% in the last 65 years. The population was 24% black in 1950. Decades of liberal Democrat policies drove most of the white population out of the city.
  • 1950年的人口总数是950000,过去65年降低了35%。1950年黑人占人口总数的24%。数十年来民主党的政策将大多数白人赶出了这座城市。
  • Baltimore’s violent crime rate is 370% higher than the U.S. rate. They have over 200 murders, 300 rapes, 3,600 robberies, 4,600 assaults, 7,800 burglaries, and 22,000 thefts per year. These are all 2 to 4 times the U.S. averages per 100,000 people.
  • 巴市的暴力犯罪率是比全美水平高出3.7倍。这里一年发生200起命案、300起强奸案、3600起抢劫案、4600次人身伤害、7800起入室抢劫和22000起盗窃案。每一项都是全美每十万人平均犯案率的二至四倍。
  • Over 35% of all Baltimore residents get food stamps. Over 85% of the kids get free breakfasts and lunches at school. More than 60% of Baltimore residents are receiving some form of government assistance.
  • 超过35%的巴市居民领取食物救济券。超过85%的小孩在学校领取免费的早晨和午餐。全市超过60%的居民领取政府发放的某种救济。
  • Baltimore’s welfare paradise is paid for by outrageously high taxes. It’s income tax rate of 3.2% is on top of the state rate of 4.75%. It’s property tax rate is more than double the other counties in Maryland. The sales tax rate is 6%. Corporations pay an income tax rate of 8.25%.
  • 巴市的这种福利天堂是靠高得离谱的税收支撑的。个人所得税在州税率4.75%的基础上额外多收3.2%。。它的财产税比马里兰州其他郡的两倍还高。它的消费税为6%。公司要付的所得税为8.25%。
  • The percentage of out of wedlock births to black women in Baltimore exceeds 72%. Baltimore and Detroit are the two cities with populations over 600,000 with the highest percentage of single parent households – 59% to 61%.
  • 在巴市,黑人妇女婚外生育的比例高达72%。巴尔的摩和底特律都有超过60万的人口,它们的单亲家庭比例也是全美最高——分别为59%和61%。
  • The reported unemployment rate for Baltimore is 8.2%, one of the highest in the country. In reality, 42% of the working age population is not working. Young black men between the ages of 20 and 24 have a reported unemployment rate of 37%. But in reality, it is north of 60%. The number of employees in 1990 totaled 475,000. Today they total 365,000, down 23%.
  • 据报道,巴市的失业率为8.2%,为全国失业率最高的城市之一。事实上,42%的适龄人口都没有工作。20至24岁的黑人男性失业率据报道为37%,事实上远远不止60%。1990年,雇员的总数为475000,今天这个数字为365000,下降了23%。
It doesn’t take a village to raze, burn, and loot a village. It just takes 50 years of liberal economic and social policies. Of course the liberal media, liberal politicians, and liberal voters don’t think anyone should be blamed for the disaster that Baltimore and every other Democrat controlled urban shithole (Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta, Cleveland) have become over the last 50 years. 毁掉一个村子无须全村出力【编注:此处取典于一句非洲谚语“It takes a village to raise a child”,意思是为孩子成长提供文化环境的是整个社区,而非仅仅是个体家庭】,50年的自由派经济和社会政策足矣。当然,自由派媒体、政客和选民并不认为谁应该为过去50年巴尔的摩以及其他(底特律、费城、圣路易斯、亚特兰大、克利夫兰)民主党控制下的都市粪坑里所发生的灾难而受责难。 Community organizer Adam Jackson, living up to the standards of Organizer in Chief Obama, declared that in Baltimore “the Democrats and the Republicans have both failed.” At least progressive community organizers have a sense of humor. How can Republicans have failed if the mayors and City Council have been 100% Democrat since the mid 1960s? I wonder how many Republicans were among the youths burning, looting, and destroying the city this week. 社区组织者Adam Jackson倒是挺合奥巴马老大对组织者的口味,他宣称在巴尔的摩“民主党和共和党都是失败者”。至少这些人还挺幽默的,当巴尔的摩的市长和市议会从60年代中期开始便全是民主党人,共和党的失败倒是从何说起?我倒是想知道在这周的青年纵火、抢劫和破坏活动中有几个共和党参与。 No Republican, and definitely no conservative, is responsible for the poverty, crime, educational failure, and disintegration of this lesson in Democratic rule. Baltimore’s police department is the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party, enabled by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing Democratic creation. They get all the credit for what Baltimore has become. The mayor of Baltimore is an incompetent bumbling fool. These corrupt, arrogant left wing boobs are incapable of running a school system, police department, or economy. 没有共和党,当然更没有保守主义,这便是贫穷、犯罪、教育失败和民主党秩序崩溃的原因。巴尔的摩警察局就是民主党进步派的造物,奉行的是黑人本位政策。这完全是左翼民主党人的杰作,巴尔的摩的今天全拜其所赐。巴尔的摩市长就是个无能蠢货。这些腐败的、自以为是左翼笨蛋根本无力让教育系统、警察局或是城市经济正常运转。 They know how to play race politics to get elected. They know how to increase taxes on the few remaining producers in order to redistribute it to their black voters. They know how to destroy businesses and jobs. They know how to create a welfare mindset among black people, enslaving them in poverty, dependency, and ignorance. Blacks have suffered the most from Democratic black rule. 他们知道怎么打好种族这张牌来当选。他们知道如何对仅存的几个企业征税,好把财富重新分配给他们的黑人选民。他们知道怎么毁掉商业和工作岗位。他们知道怎么让黑人对福利上瘾,用贫穷、依赖和无知去奴役他们。民主党的“黑人统治”给黑人带来的伤害恰恰最大。 These riots will result in less businesses, less jobs and less taxes for the city. Blacks will be hurt the most, but they will continue to vote for Democrats. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Believing liberal welfare policies will fix the problems created by liberal welfare policies is insane. Liberalism is a disease of the brain and has infected a vast swath of America, especially in urban enclaves across the land. 这些暴乱将让这座城市的商业、工作岗位和税收越来越少。黑人将最受伤,但他们还是会给民主党投票。疯狂的市民总是种下同样的因却期盼着不同的果。相信自由派的福利政策会解决自由派福利政策带来的问题,这就是疯狂。自由主义是一种观念疾病,并已经感染了一大帮美国人,尤其是那些在城市孤岛里的居民。 Baltimore and every other Democrat controlled urban enclave in America are destined for decline, destruction, and civic decay. Baltimore cannot be fixed by spending more money on welfare programs. The country has spent $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs since LBJ declared his war on poverty. 巴尔的摩和其他民主党控制下的城市孤岛注定会衰败、毁灭、民生凋敝。靠在福利项目上花更多钱救不了巴尔的摩。自林登·约翰逊总统宣布“向贫穷开战”以来,这个国家已经花了22万亿美元在消除贫困的项目上了。 They haven’t moved the dial on poverty one iota. They have created generations of dependent black people, trapped in urban ghettos like Baltimore. If you can’t educate children for $15,700 per year, then you won’t educate them any better for $18,000 per year. Liberals will never admit their policies, programs, and corrupt practices created this national disaster. 他们在贫穷问题上毫无建树。他们培养了一代代习惯于依赖的黑人,这些人便被困在像巴尔的摩这样的贫民窟里。如果你一年花15700美元教育不好一个小孩,那你一年花18000美元也无济于事。自由派不会承认他们的政策、项目和腐败的作风导致了这个全国性的灾难。 Liberal welfare policies have encouraged and rewarded out of wedlock births. The 72% black out of wedlock birth rate is the single biggest cause of Baltimore’s long-term decline. Children without fathers are destined to be uneducated, unemployed, and underachieving. Children raised by married working parents who provide good role models are not on the streets. They are studying. They are not looting, killing, robbing or having kids when they are teenagers. 此外,自由派的福利政策无疑鼓励了非婚生育。72%的非婚生育率是巴尔的摩长期衰败的最大缘由。没有父亲的孩子们注定无法受到良好教育、注定失业并一事无成。那些双亲都有工作且能为表率的孩子们是不会在街头游手好闲的——他们要学习。他们不会去抢、去杀,不会十几岁就为人父母。 There are no guarantees in life, but being stupid, lazy and ignorant guarantees a life of poverty. Liberal welfare policies pay these people to have more kids out of wedlock in order to maximize their welfare payments. There have now been three generations of black people entrapped by these demented welfare programs. 没有什么能担保你有一个好的生活,但愚蠢、懒惰和无知却保准让你的生活一贫如洗。自由派的福利政策付钱给这些人,好让他们非婚生育更多的孩子以获得最多的福利款。已有整整三代黑人被困在这些疯狂的福利项目之中。 There is no will among the recipients or distributors of race based welfare payments to change their policies or programs. Therefore, every time a white cop kills a black person or a white store owner kills a black thief in Baltimore or any urban ghetto, the potential for riots, looting, and burning of businesses will rear its ugly head. 福利款的接受者或是发放者都没有意愿去改变这些基于种族的福利政策或项目。因此,在巴尔的摩或其他某个城市贫民窟,每当一个白人警察杀死一个黑人或是一个白人店主杀死一个黑人小偷,骚乱、抢劫、纵火等丑恶行径便会抬头。 The only guarantee is the liberals running the urban ghetto will not accept blame for what they have wrought. Farewell to the America of personal responsibility, work ethic, marriage, family, and valuing education. 唯一确定的是,控制这些城市贫民窟的自由派是不会接受任何对他们所犯好事的批评的。向那个推崇个人责任、勤勉美德,赞美婚姻、家庭并珍视教育的美国道别吧! The esteemed mayor of Baltimore Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (of course a liberal black woman must hyphenate her name) summed up the disease of liberalism after her peeps had destroyed their neighborhoods the night before: 我们尊敬的巴尔地摩市市长Stephanie Rawlings-Blake(哦,当然,一个自由派的黑人妇女的名字中自然会有连字符,以显示她已婚或来自少数族裔)在其同胞于昨晚破坏了他们的社区后,这样总结自由主义的病症:
“It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” “(警方的行动)有一种微妙的平衡,因为当我们试图确保抗议者不被车流和其他来往的东西伤害的同时,也给了那些想要搞破坏的人以机会。”
You reap what you sow America. 你们曾在美国大地播撒下那些种子,如今正在收获它们结出的果实。 (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——

[译文]挪威度假小屋的产权故事

Family hut sharing: how Norway avoids cabin fever
家庭小屋分享:挪威如何避免度假小屋“热”
——如何分配度假别墅小木屋遗产的问题

作者:Simone Abram @ 2015-10-1
译者:Horace Rae(@Sheldon_rae)
校对:龟海海
来源:The Conversation,https://theconversation.com/family-hut-sharing-how-norway-avoids-cabin-fever-46640

Mountain cabins and seaside houses are part of the Scandinavian dream. Europeans are right to envy their Nordic compatriots, who can gather with family and friends at a simple house for hiking, skiing, mushrooming, or just relaxing in front of a magnificent landscape.

山间小屋和海景房是斯堪的纳维亚梦的一部分。欧洲人很有理由羡慕他们的北欧同胞——北欧人可以和家人朋友们在一间房子里团聚,出去远足、滑雪、采蘑菇,或者在壮美的风景前悠然沉醉。

About half of all Norwegians have access to a summer house of some kind. The first boom in cabin ownership was in the 1960s, when intrepid Norwegians hiked into the mountains to build themselves a little hideaway. Another boom in the 2000s saw increasingly sophisticated summer houses coming onto the market in many upland areas.

约一半挪威人能享受某种形式的夏日度假屋。第一次小屋抢购潮发生在1960年代,那时,无畏的挪威人跋涉进大山,给自己搭建一个小小的世外桃源。另一次风潮发生在2000年代,那时日益成熟精致的夏日度假屋开始进入高地区域的房产市场。

At this time of year, many Norwegians have already closed up their summer cabins and are back at work, perhaps already looking forward to autumn half-term holidays at the end of September.

每年这个时候【编注:本文发表于10月1日】,挪威人已经锁上(more...)

标签: | | |
6683
Family hut sharing: how Norway avoids cabin fever 家庭小屋分享:挪威如何避免度假小屋“热” ——如何分配度假别墅小木屋遗产的问题 作者:Simone Abram @ 2015-10-1 译者:Horace Rae(@Sheldon_rae) 校对:龟海海 来源:The Conversation,https://theconversation.com/family-hut-sharing-how-norway-avoids-cabin-fever-46640 Mountain cabins and seaside houses are part of the Scandinavian dream. Europeans are right to envy their Nordic compatriots, who can gather with family and friends at a simple house for hiking, skiing, mushrooming, or just relaxing in front of a magnificent landscape. 山间小屋和海景房是斯堪的纳维亚梦的一部分。欧洲人很有理由羡慕他们的北欧同胞——北欧人可以和家人朋友们在一间房子里团聚,出去远足、滑雪、采蘑菇,或者在壮美的风景前悠然沉醉。 About half of all Norwegians have access to a summer house of some kind. The first boom in cabin ownership was in the 1960s, when intrepid Norwegians hiked into the mountains to build themselves a little hideaway. Another boom in the 2000s saw increasingly sophisticated summer houses coming onto the market in many upland areas. 约一半挪威人能享受某种形式的夏日度假屋。第一次小屋抢购潮发生在1960年代,那时,无畏的挪威人跋涉进大山,给自己搭建一个小小的世外桃源。另一次风潮发生在2000年代,那时日益成熟精致的夏日度假屋开始进入高地区域的房产市场。 At this time of year, many Norwegians have already closed up their summer cabins and are back at work, perhaps already looking forward to autumn half-term holidays at the end of September. 每年这个时候【编注:本文发表于10月1日】,挪威人已经锁上了夏日度假屋回去工作了,他们或许已经在期待九月末的秋季假期了。 For some of them though, the future of their cabin might be a little less straightforward than organising a shared calendar. As the first generation of owners leave cabins to their descendants, they often face difficult decisions. 但是,对于他们中的某些人来说,其小木屋的前途可没有安排共同日程那么简单直接。当第一代小木屋的主人想把木屋留给继承人时,他们往往需要面对艰难的决定。 Obscure agreements 模棱两可的条款 The main principle of Norwegian inheritance law is “partible inheritance”. This means that at least two thirds of a couple’s goods are expected to be divided equally between their children. 挪威继承法的主要原则是“遗产分割继承”。这意味着一对夫妇至少三分之二的财产应该被子女平均分配。 When it comes to a family home, inheritors who are already homeowners most commonly sell the house and share the proceeds, but the same does not necessarily apply to a cabin. Cabins are much more likely to stay in the family and be shared in different ways 对于家庭房屋,已拥有住房的继承人们通常会把房子卖掉,分配所得,但是这种原则并不适用于度假小屋。度假小屋更可能被留下,并以不同的方式分享。 One way that cabins can be shared is to split the ownership equally between siblings. This appears straightforward in principle, but if this happens over two or three generations, there may be so many owners that it becomes impossible to manage. 分享小屋的办法之一是,将所有权在子女间均等分割。这看似是最直接的原则,但是如果接连两三代都发生这样的分割,由于共有产权的人太多,小屋将变得无法管理。 As shares in the cabin move through the different branches of the family, and are split between various siblings, people can end up with 3/72 or 18/60 of a cabin, making ownership complex. 当小屋的所有权在家族不同分支中流传并被不同子女继承时,人们可能最终拥有小屋继承权的3/72或18/60,这就使得所有权状况十分复杂。 A popular option is to give ownership of the cabin to one child (or inheritor) and grant user rights to the others. To avoid disputes, many people add a clause to their will so that the owning inheritor cannot sell the cabin without giving the others the option of buying it first. 常规处理办法是把小屋的所有权给予一名子女(或继承人),然后保证其他人(直系亲属)拥有使用的权利。为了避免争端,许多人会在遗嘱中添加一个条款,规定如果不给其他共有人优先购买权,屋主不能出售小屋。 However, things can get even more complicated. Until the Norwegian government recently abolished inheritance tax, many couples would arrange to sell their cabins to their offspring in advance, still retaining usage rights themselves for up to four weeks a year. 并且,事情还能变得更复杂。在挪威政府近期废除继承税法之前,许多夫妇都已打算提前向其子女出售小屋,并且保留他们自己每年使用小屋四个月的权利。 There were good tax reasons to do this, which have now disappeared, but there are still good moral reasons behind the practice. 从税务的角度看来,这种做法大有裨益,虽然现在税务问题已经消失,但这种做法仍有良好的道德理由。 Parents who want to ensure their children remain on good terms with each other once they are gone, might settle their inheritance well before they are likely to die. This way, if the children are unhappy with the settlement, they can be unhappy with their parents, rather than with each other. 想要让孩子们在他们死后依然保持良好关系的父母,可能在他们去世前很久就安排好自己的财产。这样,如果孩子们对财产的分割不满意,他们可以对父母生气,而不至于亲人反目。 Despite attempts to keep the peace, things do go awry. Summer houses on the coast have become particularly valuable properties, because of the restricted areas where they may be built (despite the long coast, there are limits to coastal building). 尽管父母尝试保持和平,事情依然会弄糟。海滨的夏季度假屋已经成为相当珍贵的财产,因为它们的建造区域有限制(虽然挪威的海岸线很长,但是对海岸小屋的建造也有限制)。 Inheritance tax often priced inheritors out of taking on a cabin that may have been built 40 years ago for next to nothing, but is now a multi-million pound property. That problem has now disappeared. 之前,令人咋舌的继承税经常使继承人们不得不放弃一间40年前建造的,孤零零的临海小屋,它此时已是价值数百万磅的财产。这一问题现已不复存在。 However, issues still exist and there are good reasons why Norwegians often talk about stress and sadness in relation to cabins. “Everyone has a cabin story,” I am often told. 然而,问题依然存在,挪威人仍有很多理由谈论与小屋有关的压力和哀伤。“人人都有一段与度假屋有关的故事”,常有人对我说。 For example, say three siblings inherit a cabin equally and one wants out of the share, that then leaves the other two with a major bill to buy he or she out. This can often cause tension within the whole family. 举个例子,有三兄妹平分了一间小屋的所有权,然后其中一人想要卖掉自己的所有权,这就使得另外两人不得不花一大笔钱买下他或她的所有权。这种事情经常在整个家族内制造紧张气氛。 Worldwide lessons 各国的经验 There are many “blended” families in Norway due to exceptionally high divorce and remarriage rates. However, this doesn’t necessarily make things more complicated, as inheritance can go to direct heirs rather than step-children. 因为居高不下的离婚率和再婚率,挪威有许多重组家庭。然而,这未必会让事情变得更为复杂,因为遗产可以直接传给亲生子女,而不是继子继女。 When marrying, couples can retain property in their personal ownership, not necessarily bringing everything into joint ownership with their new spouse. 在结婚时,夫妇双方可以各自保留自己的财产,而不和新配偶共同拥有所有财产。 For example, if “Britta” owns a cabin that her parents built, she does not have to leave it to her new husband’s children from his previous marriage. 举个例子,如果Britta拥有一间父母建造的小屋,她不必把这间房子留给新丈夫在之前的婚姻中所育子女。 These days, so many families have cabins that there may be several to pass on. Each child might get a different one, and any significant difference in value might be compensated through a cash settlement. 如今,很多家庭都拥有小屋,所以会有很多小屋被传承。每个孩子可能得到不同的一间,并且任何价值上的显著差异都可以通过现金弥补。 By default however, this can also reinforce the difference between “legal” siblings (including birth and adopted siblings) and step-siblings, often quite subconsciously. 但是在默认情况下,这也会强化“法律上的”兄弟姐妹(包括亲生子女和收养子女)以及非同一对父母所生的兄弟姐妹之间的差异,这往往是潜意识地发生的。 Sharing a cabin doesn’t only bring a family together in the holidays, but it can also define what relations the different family members have with each other. 分享一间小屋不仅仅让一个家庭在假期相聚,这也能定义家庭成员之间的亲疏。 Perhaps surprisingly then, given the heightened emotions associated with a family cabin, startlingly few inheritance disputes end up in court. 纵然挪威人都有很深的小屋情结,令人吃惊的是,只有很少的继承争端最终走上法庭。 The abolition of inheritance tax has been seen as a potential threat to the “Equal Society” that the Norwegian welfare state has produced. But whether these changes will have an effect on the method of shared ownership and use of holiday cabins, remains to be seen. 继承税的废除,被视作对挪威这个福利国家之前创造的“平等社会”的威胁。但是这些改变是否能影响使用和分享度假小屋的方式,还得拭目以待。 It is quite likely that Norwegian families will continue to create equality – at least within the family – through sharing-arrangements at cabins. Whether equality can survive beyond the family is a different question. 很可能,挪威家庭将会通过分享小屋的方式继续创造平等——至少是在家庭内部。这种“平等”是否能衍生到家庭以外,就是另外一个问题了。 (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——

[译文]为何伊朗移民成于美国却败于瑞典

Why Iranian migrants succeed in the US but fail in Sweden
为何伊朗移民成于美国却败于瑞典

作者:Nima Sanandaji @NimaSanandaji @ 2015-3-23
译者:Eartha(@王小贰_Eartha)
校对:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)
来源:CapX,http://www.capx.co/why-iranian-migrants-succeed-in-the-us-but-fail-in-sweden/

Maryam Mirzakhani was born in Iran in 1977. Showing an early gift for mathematics, she received a degree from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. After moving to the US, Maryam earned her PhD from Harvard before becoming a young professor at Stanford.

玛利亚姆·米尔扎哈尼(Maryam Mirzakhani)于1977年出生在伊朗。她早早就显示出数学方面的天赋,并取得了位于德黑兰的谢里夫理工大学的学位。移居美国之后,玛利亚姆攻读了哈佛大学的博士学位,后成为斯坦福大学的一名年轻教授。

Last summer she was awarded the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics. Maryam was the first women to win the medal, unofficially referred to as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics”. Since it was established in 1936, all previous winners have been male.

去年夏天,她成为史上第一位获得菲尔兹奖的女性,该奖有着“数学界诺贝尔奖”之称。自该奖项于1936年设立以来,所有获奖者均为男性。

The story of Maryam is not only one of an unusually talented individual. It is also in line with a wider social phenomenon, where upward-striving Iranians rely on a winning mix of eastern culture and western institutions. This success however, has been easier to reach in some western nations than others.

玛利亚姆的故事不仅仅只关于一个天赋异禀的个人,还反映了一个更普遍的社会现象——奋发向上的伊朗人成功将东方文化与西方体制融合。然而,这种成功在某些西方国家相对更容易实现一些。

In 2003, administrators at Stanford University’s Electrical Engineering Department were reportedly startled. The notoriously difficult entrance exam for PhD studies had been aced by a group of foreign students.

2003年时,据说斯坦福大学电气工程系的考官们很吃惊,(more...)

标签: |
6681
Why Iranian migrants succeed in the US but fail in Sweden 为何伊朗移民成于美国却败于瑞典 作者:Nima Sanandaji @NimaSanandaji @ 2015-3-23 译者:Eartha(@王小贰_Eartha) 校对:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子) 来源:CapX,http://www.capx.co/why-iranian-migrants-succeed-in-the-us-but-fail-in-sweden/ Maryam Mirzakhani was born in Iran in 1977. Showing an early gift for mathematics, she received a degree from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. After moving to the US, Maryam earned her PhD from Harvard before becoming a young professor at Stanford. 玛利亚姆·米尔扎哈尼(Maryam Mirzakhani)于1977年出生在伊朗。她早早就显示出数学方面的天赋,并取得了位于德黑兰的谢里夫理工大学的学位。移居美国之后,玛利亚姆攻读了哈佛大学的博士学位,后成为斯坦福大学的一名年轻教授。 Last summer she was awarded the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics. Maryam was the first women to win the medal, unofficially referred to as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics”. Since it was established in 1936, all previous winners have been male. 去年夏天,她成为史上第一位获得菲尔兹奖的女性,该奖有着“数学界诺贝尔奖”之称。自该奖项于1936年设立以来,所有获奖者均为男性。 The story of Maryam is not only one of an unusually talented individual. It is also in line with a wider social phenomenon, where upward-striving Iranians rely on a winning mix of eastern culture and western institutions. This success however, has been easier to reach in some western nations than others. 玛利亚姆的故事不仅仅只关于一个天赋异禀的个人,还反映了一个更普遍的社会现象——奋发向上的伊朗人成功将东方文化与西方体制融合。然而,这种成功在某些西方国家相对更容易实现一些。 In 2003, administrators at Stanford University’s Electrical Engineering Department were reportedly startled. The notoriously difficult entrance exam for PhD studies had been aced by a group of foreign students. 2003年时,据说斯坦福大学电气工程系的考官们很吃惊,因为一群外国学生在以艰难著称的博士学位入学考试取得了优异成绩。 It was no surprise that smart kids from Asia were on top. What was more unexpected is that the majority originated from one place – the same Sharif University where Maryam had studied. Stanford is not an isolated example. Iranian top students are doing well in the international Science Olympiads, and flourishing in foreign universities. 来自亚洲的聪明孩子名列前茅并不让人吃惊,可出人意料的是,这群学生中的大多数来自同一个地方——玛利亚姆曾就读的谢里夫理工大学。斯坦福并不是个例。伊朗的顶尖学生在国际科学奥林匹克竞赛中成绩出色,并在国外各个大学中表现优异。 This achievement wouldn’t be surprising if Iran was anything like Singapore, Korea or Taiwan. Pupils in the latter countries outperform the rest of the globe in mathematics, according to the survey Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Iranian pupils on the other hand have considerably lower scores than in developed countries such as the US or in Western Europe. 如果伊朗是像新加坡、韩国或者台湾那样的地方,那么这些成就就并不让人吃惊。根据一项名为“国际数学与科学研究的发展趋势”的系列调查,来自后面这些国家的学生在数学方面的表现优于全球其他地区。而伊朗学生的分数则明显低于美国与西欧等发达国家。 How can a country with poor school performance export so many talents? One explanation is that Iran has an elitist school system, where talents such as Maryam are identified early and sent to a few top high schools. 为何一个学校表现不佳的国家能输出如此多的天才?一种解释认为,伊朗有一套精英学校体制,该体制能及早发现像玛利亚姆这样的天才,并将其送往少数顶尖高中学习。 The country has a competitive higher education system and few opportunities for those who do not succeed. To make it in life, many young Iranians study hard in high school. The dream is often to venture abroad. Since the 1979 revolution Iran has been characterized by continuous brain‑drain. 这个国家的高等教育体制竞争十分激烈,为失败者提供的机会少之又少。为了获得成功,许多伊朗年轻人在高中阶段刻苦学习,通常梦想着去国外闯荡一番。1979革命之后,伊朗一直面临着持续的人才流失。 A couple of generations ago, it was quite uncommon for Iranians to leave their native land. During recent times however, an Iranian diaspora of around 4 to 5 million individuals have evolved abroad. One example is the Iranian community in the US. 几代人以前,伊朗人很少离开故土。但是,伊朗人的海外移民近年来已逐渐发展至四、五百万人的规模。美国的伊朗人群体就是其中一例。 According to the US census in 1990, 221 000 persons of Iranian ancestry were at the time residing in the country. Slightly less than a quarter were born in the US from Iranian parents. Almost half of the remainder had resided in the country for less than ten years. 根据美国1990年的人口普查,当时有221,000名伊朗血统的人居住在美国,其中近四分之一出生于美国,双亲都是伊朗人。其余的人中有近一半在美国居住未满十年。 Still, the group was thriving economically. The poverty level amongst Iranians was only marginally higher than the national average. In fact, the median house income of Iranians was 22 percent higher than the national average. One explanation is that some Iranians migrants had brought wealth with them. 然而,这个群体在经济上欣欣向荣。在美伊朗人的贫困率仅略高于全美平均水平。但事实上,他们的家庭收入中位数却比全美平均水平高出22%。有一种解释是一些伊朗移民将他们的财富也转移到了国外。 Likely more important is their stock of knowledge capital. Amongst Iranians over 25 years of age, fully 26 percent had graduate degree or higher. At the time, this was almost four times the US average. 但更重要的可能是他们自身的知识资本储备。25岁以上的伊朗人中,足足有26%的人获得了硕士以上学位。在那时,这几乎是美国平均水平的四倍。 According to the 2013 American Community Survey, the number of Iranians had grown to some 460 000 (the true population might be considerably higher, since many do not identify themselves as “Iranian” on the census). The median household income of Iranians was $64 752, compared to a national average of $52 250. 根据2013年的美国社区调查,在美伊朗人的数量已增长至460,000人左右(真实数据可能还会高很多,因为很多人在普查中没把自己当做“伊朗人”)。伊朗人的家庭收入中位数为64,752美元,而全美平均水平为52,250美元。 Adjusting for household size, the per capita income of Iranians was $43 334, far higher than the national average of $28 155. The share with bachelor’s degree or higher was 61.9 percent amongst Iranians, compared to 28.8 percent for the average American. 根据家庭规模对数据进行调整后,伊朗人的人均收入为43,334美元,远远高于全美人均收入28,155美元。伊朗人中拥有学士学位以上学历的人占61.9%,而美国平均水平为28.8%。 Culture plays a key part in the Iranian success story. To begin with, knowledge is treasured. This is apparent in the Persian language, where occupation-bound terms of address are common. Someone who is a doctor, a “mohandes” (engineer) or “vakil” (lawyer) is addressed as such. 文化在伊朗式成功故事中起到了关键作用。首先,知识受到重视。这在波斯语中就表现的十分明显。与职业相关的称呼非常普遍,医生、工程师或者律师就被人以职业相称。 Having a good degree is not merely a source of pride for the individual, but for the family as a whole. The culture prevalent amongst the Iranian diaspora also emphasizes individual achievement, wealth accumulation and business-ownership. 拥有高学历是个人乃至整个家庭骄傲的资本。伊朗移民群体中的主流文化还强调个人成就、财富积累和生意家业。 Iran itself still lacks the education system, market based economy and high levels of trust needed for these cultural attributed to bear fruit. Western countries as the US however do. By adapting to western society, Iranians also leave behind some cultural traits: such as low trust for strangers and old-fashioned gender roles. 伊朗国内仍旧缺乏使得这些文化因素能够结出果实的良好的教育体制、市场经济和高度信任感。但美国等西方国家就具备这些条件。在融入西方社会的过程中,伊朗人也摒弃了一些文化特质,诸如对陌生人的不信任感和传统的性别角色观念。 Mehdi Bozorgmehr and Daniel Douglas conclude that the children of Iranian immigrants in the US have a more balanced achievement across gender lines: “in terms of educational attainment and labor force participation, females have quickly closed the gap with their male counterparts.” Mehdi Bozorgmehr与Daniel Douglas(在两人合著的文章“Success(ion): Second-Generation Iranian Americans.”中)总结认为,美国伊朗移民后裔的成就在性别上更为平衡:“就教育程度与就业而言,女性正在快速缩小与男性竞争者的差距。” The success of Iranians in the US can to some degree be explained by the fact that some of the rich elite fled Iran to New York and Los Angeles. In this regard, Canada differs from the US. Over the period 1978 to 1990 Iranians mainly came as political refugees. Later arrivals include refugees, family immigrants as well as students. 伊朗的部分富有精英阶层逃往纽约与洛杉矶这一事实,可在某种程度上解释伊朗人在美国的成功。就此而言,加拿大的情形与美国不同。1978-1990年间,伊朗人主要以政治难民的身份进入加拿大。随后到来的人则包括难民、亲属移民与学生。 According to the 2006 census, some 121 000 individuals of Iranian origin were at the time residing in Canada. One in six was born in Canada, while the remainders were immigrants. Nearly 30 percent of the immigrants had arrived in Canada during the last five years. This explains why 34 percent of Iranians lived below the low-income cut off before tax in 2006, almost three times the national average. 根据2006年加拿大人口普查,大约有121,000名伊朗裔居住在加拿大,其中六分之一出生于加拿大,其余的则是移民,且近30%是在最近五年内来到加拿大。这解释了为何2006年有34%的伊朗人税前收入在低收入指标以下,这一比例几乎三倍于全国平均水平。 With time however, integration occurs in the Canadian economy. The same census shows that full year working Iranians had merely twelve percent lower median incomes than the average Canadian – a good outcome for a group with many recent arrivals. The situation is quite different in another snowy part of the world: the Nordics. 然而,随着时间推移,加拿大的经济逐渐呈融合之势。该份人口普查报告也同时表明,全年工作的伊朗人收入中位数仅比加拿大平均水平低12%——这对一个新来者众多的群体来说是个不错的结果。但在世界的另一片冰雪地带——北欧,情况却大不相同。 Sweden has received a large influx of migrants from Iran. Today, Iranian immigrants and their children make up nearly one percent of Sweden’s population. As in Canada, the group has a strong educational background. 瑞典已接收了一大批伊朗移民。现在,伊朗移民和他们的下一代已占瑞典人口1%左右。和在加拿大一样,瑞典伊朗移民群体有着优秀的教育背景。 A study has however shown that in 1999, around 15 years after the average Iranian migrated to Sweden, a large segment was still trapped in welfare dependency. Merely a third of Iranian households supported themselves mainly through work at this time. The households were either depending on public support or low incomes from work. 但一项研究表明,在1999年,移民至瑞典平均近15年后,相当一部分伊朗人仍旧仰仗福利救济为生。当时,仅有三分之一的伊朗家庭能通过工作自食其力。伊朗家庭不是依赖公共救济,就是靠着微薄的工资勉强度日。 Another study has calculated the income from work between 1993 and 2000 for those born in Iran. It is shown that this amounted only to 61 percent of the average work income of a native Swede. With time, the situation of Iranians in Sweden has improved. But amongst the first generation, many have not been given the opportunity to fulfill their potential. 另一项研究计算了出生于伊朗的瑞典人口在1993-2000年间的工作收入,其水平仅是瑞典本土人的61%。随着时间推移,伊朗人在瑞典的境况正渐渐变好。但是,在第一代移民中,很多人未能得到机会去发挥他们的潜能。 A similar situation exists in neighboring Norway. A study by Statistics Norway has found that Iranians in Norway have unusually high educational level compared to other immigrant groups. However, fully 41 percent of adult Iranians surveyed responded that they were unemployed and actively seeking work at some point during 2006 – well before the global financial crises. 相似的情况也存在于瑞典的邻国挪威。挪威统计局的一项研究表明,相比于挪威的其他移民群体,伊朗人有着不一般的高教育水平。但是,参与调查的伊朗成年人中有足足41%的人回应说他们在2006年曾处于失业状态,并积极寻找工作——彼时全球经济危机还远未来临。 It is no coincidence that the US and Canada offer greater opportunities for upward social mobility of Iranian migrants. The economic structures in Sweden and Norway – based on strict wage-setting, rigid labor laws, high taxes and generous benefits – makes it more difficult and less rewarding to enter the labor market. 美国和加拿大为伊朗移民提供了更多进入社会上层的机会,这并非巧合。瑞典和挪威的经济结构建立于严格的工资设定、严苛的劳工法律、高赋税和慷慨的社会福利之上,这使得进入劳动力市场变得困难,得到的回报也更少。 Interestingly enough, welfare‑entrapment has not fully eroded the Iranian success story. Most young Iranians in Sweden have grown up supported by welfare handout and/or low work incomes. Yet, no group is as keen on earning a higher education as young Iranians. 不过有趣的是,福利的诱惑并未就此完全打断伊朗人的成功故事。瑞典的大多数伊朗年轻人靠着社会救济或微薄工作收入长大,但没有一个群体像他们那样渴望接受高等教育。 A study has shown that 45 percent of native Swedes have started higher education at the age of 25. This is considerably higher than 37 percent amongst the average immigrants. Iranians are a clear outlier, since 60 percent have begun higher education at the same age. 一项研究显示,45%的瑞典本土人在25岁时已开始接受高等教育,比移民的平均水平37%要高出一截。但伊朗人明显是个异数,有60%的同龄人已开始接受高等教育。 Countries such as Sweden societies have created higher obstacles to labor market inclusion than the more free‑market based Anglo-Saxon societies. For immigrant groups such as Iranians, the effect is greater entrapment in social poverty through welfare-dependency. 相比于自由市场经济成分更多的盎格鲁-撒克逊社会,瑞典式国家为进入劳动市场设置了较高的门槛。这诱使包括伊朗人在内的移民群体因依赖社会福利而深陷社会性贫困。 At the same time, Sweden offers fully publicly supported education to their citizens. Some young Iranians remain in the socially marginalized class that their parents were trapped in. Many more have begun climbing the social ladder through primarily education, but also business ownership and hard work. 同时,瑞典又为其国民提供全公费教育。一些年轻伊朗人和他们的父辈一样,仍陷于社会边缘群体。但更多的人正依靠他们所受的教育、自身的商业成就和勤奋工作努力地沿着社会阶梯向上攀登。 The social reward for becoming a doctor, a “mohandes” or a “vakil” remains strong in the group. Young Iranians are still encouraged to make their parents proud by earning a higher degree or founding a successful business. In Sweden, as well as in Canada and the US, the intermarriage between eastern culture and western institutions creates a route to up-ward social mobility. 在这个群体中,成为医生、工程师或律师可获得高昂的社会奖励。年轻伊朗人仍在被鼓励着去获取高学历或成功创业以为其父母脸上增光。在瑞典,正如在加拿大和美国那样,东方文化与西方制度的混合作用为在社会向上流动提供了一条新路径。 (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——

拍拍屁股

【2016-02-20】

@Ent_evo 我们可以承认一个坏的东西是“中华传统”、“人类传统”、“演化传统”之类的东西,但是一个坏的东西并不因它是传统就变好了。我们承认坏东西是传统,是为了揪出根源,以最有效、最彻底、最可行的办法干掉这个坏东西。仅此而已。

@whigzhou: 问题是,这个坏东西可能是某个大的好东西的一部分,而你未必清楚去掉这个坏东西后那个好东西是否还能存在。

@whigzhou: 比如女性割礼,我也同意它是个坏东西,但由一个外来权力禁止割礼可能会让一些社会的婚姻制度限(more...)

标签: | |
7036
【2016-02-20】 @Ent_evo 我们可以承认一个坏的东西是“中华传统”、“人类传统”、“演化传统”之类的东西,但是一个坏的东西并不因它是传统就变好了。我们承认坏东西是传统,是为了揪出根源,以最有效、最彻底、最可行的办法干掉这个坏东西。仅此而已。 @whigzhou: 问题是,这个坏东西可能是某个大的好东西的一部分,而你未必清楚去掉这个坏东西后那个好东西是否还能存在。 @whigzhou: 比如女性割礼,我也同意它是个坏东西,但由一个外来权力禁止割礼可能会让一些社会的婚姻制度限于瘫痪 @张大磊why:这,,试试呗 @whigzhou: 问题是罐子敲破了很难拼回去 @吴巢: 禁止或许会造成社会瘫痪,但还是要进行干预呀! @whigzhou: 嗯,我不反对干预,我反对的是进步主义者那种不负责任的干预,铲除那些他们眼里的坏东西,然后拍拍屁股走人,哪管洪水滔天,要干预就得承担起责任,提供一套可行的替代制度,这只有我们殖民主义者做得到 @whigzhou: 所以你们小清新真的想要干预吗,你们真的准备好了吗?那就请接受大英帝国的军靴~  
[大象]犹太人为何那么聪明

犹太人为何那么聪明
——两种选择力量如何塑造少数族群的独特禀赋
辉格
2016年2月27日

“犹太人特别聪明”——这恐怕是最难反驳的一句种族主义言论了。

自诺贝尔奖设立以来,犹太人共拿走了19%的化学奖、26%的物理奖、28%的生理与医学奖、41%的经济学奖;在其它顶级科学奖项中,这个比例甚至更高,综合类:38%的美国国家科学奖、25%的京都奖,数学:25%的菲尔兹奖、38%的沃尔夫奖,信息科学:25%的图灵奖、37%的香农奖、42%的诺依曼奖;在非科学领域,犹太人还拿走13%的诺贝尔文学奖,1/3以上的普利策奖,1/3以上的奥斯卡奖,近1/3的国际象棋冠军。

犹太人在科学和艺术上的成就着实令人惊叹,他们以世界千分之二的人口,在几乎所有科学领域都拥有1/5到1/3的顶级学者;究竟是什么原因让他们取得了如此惊人的成就?

考虑犹太民族的独特性,就难免想到他们在大流散(The Diaspora)之后所面临的特殊文化处境;丧失故国、散居各地的犹太人,无论最初在罗马帝国境内,还是后来在西方基督教世界和东方伊斯兰世界,皆处于少数族地位,而且因为拒绝改宗,长期被排斥在主流社会之外,不仅文化上受歧视,法律上也被剥夺了许多权利,屡屡遭受迫害、驱逐、甚至屠杀。

在中世纪欧洲,经济活动、财产权利和法律地位都与宗教有着难分难解的关系,作为异教徒,犹太人不可能与基督徒君主建立领主-附庸关系从而承租土地,无法组织手工业行会(因为行会也须以附庸身份向领主获取特许状),也无法与贵族通婚以提升社会地位,甚至无法由教会法庭来保障自己的遗嘱得到执行……总之,作为封建体系之基础的封建契约关系和教会法,皆与之无缘。

这样一来,他们就被排斥在几乎所有重要的经济部门之外,留给他们的只有少数被封建关系所遗漏的边缘行业,比如教会禁止基督徒从事(或至少道德上加以贬责)的放贷业,替贵族征收租税的包税/包租人,与放贷和收租有关的私人理财业,以及少数未被行会垄断的商业。

这些行当的共同特点是:缺乏垄断权保护因而极富竞争性,需要一颗精明的头脑,读写和计算能力很重要;这些特点提示了,犹太父母可能更愿意投资于孩子的教育,提升其读写计算能力,以及一般意义上运用理性解决问题的能力。

这一投资策略迥异于传统社会的主流策略,在传统农业社会,人们为改善家族长期状况而进行的投资与积累活动,主要集中于土地、上层姻亲关系、社会地位和政治权力,但犹太人没有机会这么做,因而只能集中投资于人力资本,而且在随时有着被没收和驱逐风险的情况下,投资人力资本大概也是最安全的。

正如一些学者指出,按古代标准,犹太人确实有着良好的教育传统,比如其宗教传统要求每位父亲都应向儿子传授妥拉(Torah)和塔木德(Talmud)等经典,在识字率很低的古代,仅从经文学习中获得的基本读写能力也相当有价值。

然而这一解释有个问题,假如犹太人的智力优势仅仅来自其教育和文化传统,那就无法说明,为何近代以来,当这一文化差异已不复存在(或不再重要),他们的智力优势却依然显著?实际上,现代杰出犹太科学家的教育和成长经历中,犹太背景已无多大影响,甚至犹太认同本身也已十分淡薄了。

为解开犹太智力之谜,犹他大学的两位学者格里高列·科克伦(Gregory Cochran)和亨利·哈本丁(Henry Harpending)在2005年的一篇论文中提出了一个颇为惊人的观点:犹太智力优势是近一千多年中犹太民族在严酷选择压力之下的进化结果,因而有着可遗传的生物学基础;在2009年出版的《万年大爆炸》(The 10,000 Year Explosion)一书中,他们专门用一章介绍了这一理论。

他们认为,犹太人中表现出显著智力优势的,是其中被称为阿什肯纳兹人(Ashkenazi)的一个分支,其祖先是9-11世纪间陆续从南欧和中东翻越阿尔卑斯山进入中欧的犹太移民,和留在地中海世界的族人相比,他们遭受的排挤和限制更加严厉,职业选择更狭窄,而由于前面所说的原因,这些限制对族群的智力水平构成了强大的选择压力。

如此特殊的社会处境,使得聪明好学、头脑精明的个体有着高得多的机会生存下去,并留下更多后代,经过近千年三四十代的高强度选择,与高智商有关的遗传特性在种群中的频率显著提高;据乔恩·昂蒂纳(Jon Entine)和查尔斯·穆瑞(Charles Murray)等学者综合多种来源的数据估算,阿什肯纳兹人的平均智商约110(科克伦的估算值更高,为112-115),比美国同期平(more...)

标签: | | | |
6782
犹太人为何那么聪明 ——两种选择力量如何塑造少数族群的独特禀赋 辉格 2016年2月27日 “犹太人特别聪明”——这恐怕是最难反驳的一句种族主义言论了。 自诺贝尔奖设立以来,犹太人共拿走了19%的化学奖、26%的物理奖、28%的生理与医学奖、41%的经济学奖;在其它顶级科学奖项中,这个比例甚至更高,综合类:38%的美国国家科学奖、25%的京都奖,数学:25%的菲尔兹奖、38%的沃尔夫奖,信息科学:25%的图灵奖、37%的香农奖、42%的诺依曼奖;在非科学领域,犹太人还拿走13%的诺贝尔文学奖,1/3以上的普利策奖,1/3以上的奥斯卡奖,近1/3的国际象棋冠军。 犹太人在科学和艺术上的成就着实令人惊叹,他们以世界千分之二的人口,在几乎所有科学领域都拥有1/5到1/3的顶级学者;究竟是什么原因让他们取得了如此惊人的成就? 考虑犹太民族的独特性,就难免想到他们在大流散(The Diaspora)之后所面临的特殊文化处境;丧失故国、散居各地的犹太人,无论最初在罗马帝国境内,还是后来在西方基督教世界和东方伊斯兰世界,皆处于少数族地位,而且因为拒绝改宗,长期被排斥在主流社会之外,不仅文化上受歧视,法律上也被剥夺了许多权利,屡屡遭受迫害、驱逐、甚至屠杀。 在中世纪欧洲,经济活动、财产权利和法律地位都与宗教有着难分难解的关系,作为异教徒,犹太人不可能与基督徒君主建立领主-附庸关系从而承租土地,无法组织手工业行会(因为行会也须以附庸身份向领主获取特许状),也无法与贵族通婚以提升社会地位,甚至无法由教会法庭来保障自己的遗嘱得到执行……总之,作为封建体系之基础的封建契约关系和教会法,皆与之无缘。 这样一来,他们就被排斥在几乎所有重要的经济部门之外,留给他们的只有少数被封建关系所遗漏的边缘行业,比如教会禁止基督徒从事(或至少道德上加以贬责)的放贷业,替贵族征收租税的包税/包租人,与放贷和收租有关的私人理财业,以及少数未被行会垄断的商业。 这些行当的共同特点是:缺乏垄断权保护因而极富竞争性,需要一颗精明的头脑,读写和计算能力很重要;这些特点提示了,犹太父母可能更愿意投资于孩子的教育,提升其读写计算能力,以及一般意义上运用理性解决问题的能力。 这一投资策略迥异于传统社会的主流策略,在传统农业社会,人们为改善家族长期状况而进行的投资与积累活动,主要集中于土地、上层姻亲关系、社会地位和政治权力,但犹太人没有机会这么做,因而只能集中投资于人力资本,而且在随时有着被没收和驱逐风险的情况下,投资人力资本大概也是最安全的。 正如一些学者指出,按古代标准,犹太人确实有着良好的教育传统,比如其宗教传统要求每位父亲都应向儿子传授妥拉([[Torah]])和塔木德([[Talmud]])等经典,在识字率很低的古代,仅从经文学习中获得的基本读写能力也相当有价值。 然而这一解释有个问题,假如犹太人的智力优势仅仅来自其教育和文化传统,那就无法说明,为何近代以来,当这一文化差异已不复存在(或不再重要),他们的智力优势却依然显著?实际上,现代杰出犹太科学家的教育和成长经历中,犹太背景已无多大影响,甚至犹太认同本身也已十分淡薄了。 为解开犹太智力之谜,犹他大学的两位学者格里高列·科克伦([[Gregory Cochran]])和亨利·哈本丁([[Henry Harpending]])在2005年的一篇论文中提出了一个颇为惊人的观点:犹太智力优势是近一千多年中犹太民族在严酷选择压力之下的进化结果,因而有着可遗传的生物学基础;在2009年出版的《万年大爆炸》([[The 10,000 Year Explosion]])一书中,他们专门用一章介绍了这一理论。 他们认为,犹太人中表现出显著智力优势的,是其中被称为阿什肯纳兹人([[Ashkenazi]])的一个分支,其祖先是9-11世纪间陆续从南欧和中东翻越阿尔卑斯山进入中欧的犹太移民,和留在地中海世界的族人相比,他们遭受的排挤和限制更加严厉,职业选择更狭窄,而由于前面所说的原因,这些限制对族群的智力水平构成了强大的选择压力。 如此特殊的社会处境,使得聪明好学、头脑精明的个体有着高得多的机会生存下去,并留下更多后代,经过近千年三四十代的高强度选择,与高智商有关的遗传特性在种群中的频率显著提高;据乔恩·昂蒂纳(Jon Entine)和查尔斯·穆瑞([[Charles Murray]])等学者综合多种来源的数据估算,阿什肯纳兹人的平均智商约110(科克伦的估算值更高,为112-115),比美国同期平均水平高出10个点,相当于2/3个标准差。 对个体来说,10个点的智商优势或许不算很大,但对于一个上千万人的大群体,这一差距有着非常惊人的含义,假如智商确如查尔斯·穆瑞的研究所显示,在群体内呈正态分布,那么均值高出2/3个标准差便意味着该群体内智商高于140的个体的比例,大约是基准群体(此处是美国总人口)的6倍。 科克伦和哈本丁的假说还得到了一些遗传学证据的支持,有多种与神经系统相关的遗传病在阿什肯纳兹人中比例奇高,这些疾病涉及一些与神经突触形成有关的基因变异,它们倾向于增加神经元之间的突触连接,据两位作者推测,这些变异在恰当组合下会导致高智商,而在不恰当组合下则带来神经疾病。 这意味着,在偏爱高智商的高强度选择作用下,阿什肯纳兹人一方面提升了获得高智商的机会,同时也承担了罹患若干神经疾病的高风险,就像在疟疾肆虐的西非,一些族群获得了一种与血红蛋白相关的变异,在杂合子组合下,该变异将提高疟疾存活率,而不幸的纯合子组合则带来致命的镰刀型细胞贫血症。 不过,这一假说尚未得到广泛认可,主要的障碍是,将这样一个重大优势归因于短短一千年内的进化过程,很难让人接受,因为通常生物学家在谈论进化改变时,涉及的时间尺度至少几十万年,虽然在理论上,只要选择压力足够大,并且种群基因池里有足够多可供自然选择起作用的遗传多样性,几十代时间足以将一些原本罕见的变异的分布频率成倍提高,从而产生显著的族群间差异。 俄国遗传学家德米特里·别列耶夫([[Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev]])从一群野生银狐开始,只用了二十多年时间,便选育得到了非常温顺驯服的品种,它们在性情、毛色、耳朵、颅形等方面表现出一系列鲜明的驯化特征;原则上,没有什么可以阻止类似事情发生在人类身上。 实际上,正如两位作者在《万年大爆炸》的其他章节中列举的,以及尼古拉斯·韦德([[Nicholas Wade]])在2014年出版的《棘手遗产》([[A Troublesome Inheritance]])中讨论的更多例子所显示,人类在走出非洲后的几万年里,尤其是农业起源后的一万多年里,已经发生了许多显著且有重大意义的进化改变,其中有涉及乳糖消化,抵抗疟疾或饥荒,抵御寒冷,维生素D代谢,黑色素合成,骨密度等等与生态条件和生活方式有关的改变。 但阿什肯纳兹的分化历史毕竟只有千年,而现有的遗传证据也是间接的,尚没有直接证据可以说明究竟何种变异如何提高了智力;所以,一些学者便尝试考虑其他可能性,罗格斯大学人类学家布莱恩·弗格森([[R. B. Ferguson]])认为,阿什肯纳兹的独特性源自族群形成之初的奠基人效应([[founder effect]])。 奠基人效应的意思是,基因池毕竟不像充分搅匀的理想溶液,随便舀一勺,其成分构成都和整体一样;最初翻越阿尔卑斯的阿什肯纳兹祖先或许恰好携带了一些与神经系统有关的罕见变异,由于构成奠基人的最初移民人数很少,所以即便只有一个家族携带这些变异,它在未来壮大后的种群里也可能占很高比例。 这是一种诉诸偶然性的解释,假如涉及阿什肯纳兹智力优势的只有一个变异,那么奠基人效应便足以解释,问题是,科克伦列举的阿什肯纳兹中比例奇高的神经系统遗传病有四五种,涉及许多变异,而这些变异恰恰都与神经元突触形成有关,把它们都归之于奠基人效应,就很难让人信服了。 两位经济学家马里斯泰拉·波第西尼(Maristella Botticini)和兹维·埃克斯坦(Zvi Eckstein)在2012年出版的著作《蒙择之民》(The Chosen Few)中为我们开辟了另一条思路;他们首先注意到一个重要事实:从公元1世纪大流散时期到15世纪末,犹太人口在其所在社会总人口中的比例,始终在快速下降,从公元65年的10%降至1490年的1.1%。 但同时,并没有证据显示他们的生育率低于其他族群,很明显,不断有大批犹太人改宗为基督徒或穆斯林;考虑到他们作为少数教派面临着极为不利的社会处境,大批改宗也在意料之中;重要的是,哪些犹太人更可能选择改宗,并非随机,据一些早期基督徒作家观察,多数改宗基督教的犹太人都是穷人和文盲。 于是两位作者对犹太人的改宗决定进行了成本收益分析,发现这样的选择倾向是完全合理的;因为作为宗教少数派,流散的犹太人若要维持自己的宗教和文化传统,保持身份独特性,就需要花大量精力阅读和向孩子教授宗教经典,然而,对于那些从事农耕等体力劳动的家庭,这些投入没有额外价值,相反,对于那些从事精细手工业、商业、金融和管理类职业的家庭,由读经而获得的读写能力可以带来额外回报。 所以,坚持不改宗的,大多是从事城市的、需要读写能力和精明头脑的非体力职业者,而这些职业都是偏于高端和精英的,这一逻辑反过来也成立:那些天资聪颖,发现自己在读写学习上表现出众,因而有望由读经而获得上述职业机会的孩子,更有可能坚持读经而不改宗,总之,保留犹太身份的,要么是祖上智力较高因而有能力从事精英职业的,要么自己智力较高因而有望并希望从事精英职业的。 这样,个体对是否改宗的权衡,实际上对族群的智力构成了一种选择压力,但这一选择不像自然选择那样,是以影响个体生存机会和繁殖数量而起作用,被“淘汰”的个体并未死亡或绝后,只是离开了群体,但是就塑造族群的遗传特性而言,两种选择机制的效果是等价的。 而且,这一基于自我选择的解释,和科克伦与哈本丁的自然选择解释并不排斥,可以共同起作用;在分工和贸易不发达的中世纪,能够让犹太人发挥智力优势并抵消因社会地位低下而造成的生存劣势的职业机会十分有限,只有优势最显著者才能生存下来并保持犹太身份,而改宗的可能性加速了这一选择过程——这可以部分消除质疑者对“一千年是否足够长”的疑虑。 不过,和科克伦与哈本丁的理论一样,波第西尼与埃克斯坦的理论也仅仅是一种假说,正如一些历史学家所指出,他们对改宗与职业选择行为的经济学分析只是推测性的,尚缺乏经验证据的支持;然而,无论它是否能解释犹太智力优势,改宗权衡(或其他自我选择机制)在塑造少数族群文化特性上的作用却是毋庸置疑的,有众多同类例子可以佐证。 经济史学家格列高利·克拉克(Gregory Clark)便采纳了波第西尼与埃克斯坦的核心论点,并援引穆罕默德·萨利赫(Mohamed Saleh)2013年发表的一项研究指出,残存于伊斯兰世界的各种非伊斯兰小教派,包括犹太人,祆教徒(Zoroastrian),希腊正教徒,亚述基督徒,亚美尼亚基督徒,其精英化程度全都远高于穆斯林,表现为他们在医生、工程师、机械师、外语教师等精英职业中的比例奇高,而且这些族群的1/2到2/3都居住在汇集着富人和精英的大城市。 萨利赫认为,这一状况是伊斯兰政权统治政策的结果,他们一方面不强迫被征服者改宗,同时又对非穆斯林征收歧视性的人头税([[jizya]]),于是这些群体中付不起人头税的下层成员就只好改宗,只有那些从其宗教与文化传统中获益最多且足以抵偿人头税和其他少数派特有成本的成员,才愿意坚守其传统身份,这样,统治者的歧视性政策实际上是在替这些少数族群不断清除资质禀赋较差,因而难以在精英职业中取得成就的成员。 虽然萨利赫没有提到,但人头税只是少数派生活在多数派中间所需负担的诸多成本中的一项,除了社会地位低下,法定权利缺失,他们还要遭受多数派邻居的歧视、排斥和攻击,这项成本在农村比在城市高得多,和城市流动性社会相比,农村熟人小社会的文化更单一和封闭,更排他,更难以容忍少数派的存在。 从阿什肯纳兹人在基督教欧洲和众多小教派在伊斯兰世界的经历中,都可以看到,基于个人禀赋在特定社会条件下给个体带来的比较优势而做出的自我选择,在塑造少数族群的文化和遗传特质上扮演了关键角色,这一选择机制也可通过另一条途径——跨国移民——表现出来,它在美国这个移民国家产生了两种对比鲜明的结果。 在2015年出版的《儿子照样升起》([[The Son Also Rises]])第13章里,格列高利·克拉克分析了美国社会一些少数族群的精英化程度;克拉克使用各族群在医生律师等精英职业中的相对代表率来度量这一指标,所谓相对代表率,是指某群体在某职业中的出现频率与它在总人口中所占比例的比值,基准值为1。(这一度量方法的有效性,在该书其他章节中已得到验证,克拉克用来衡量社会地位的数据来源包括收入与财产水平,遗嘱档案中的出现频率,顶级大学入学率,在大学教授、政府高官和国会议员中的代表率,获得科举功名的比例,等等,结果显示,基于不同来源的衡量结果有着很强的相关性。) 犹太人为何那么聪明.图1 【图1】若干精英度偏高的美国少数族群在医生中的相对代表率 上图列出了在医生职业中的相对代表率高于1的16个少数族群,其中有些可能出乎许多人的意料,高居榜首的埃及科普特基督徒尤为惹眼,科普特人血缘上属于埃及土著,在罗马帝国后期皈依了基督教,并且直到阿拉伯征服之前,始终构成埃及人口的多数,在罗马和拜占庭帝国统治下,科普特人长期处于社会底层,与“精英”二字完全无缘,正是在阿拉伯人统治下,前述选择机制将它从一个底层多数群体改造成了少数精英族群。 然后,向美国的移民过程又发生了二次筛选,科普特人尽管在埃及有着较高精英度,但相对于发达国家仍是贫穷者,只有其中条件最优越、禀赋最优秀者,才能跨越移民门槛而进入美国,可以说,他们是精英中的精英。 但不是所有移民群体都有着较高的精英化程度,如下图所示,拉美人、柬埔寨人、赫蒙人([[Hmong]],即越南苗族),在医生中的代表率皆远低于基准水平。 犹太人为何那么聪明.图2 【图2】若干精英度偏低的美国族群在医生中的相对代表率 比较两组族群不难看出,造成这一差别的关键在于移民机会从何而来,不同性质的移民通道有着不同的选择偏向;拉丁裔移民大多利用靠近美国的地理优势,从陆地或海上穿越国境而来,柬埔寨人和赫蒙人则大多是1970年代的战争难民,这两类移民通道,对移民的个人禀赋都不构成正向选择;相比之下,其他移民通道——上大学、工作签证、投资移民、政治避难、杰出人士签证,都有着强烈的选择偏向。 观察这一差别的最佳案例是非洲裔美国人,在上面两张图表中都有他们的身影,图2中的黑人是指其祖先在南北战争前便已生活在美国的黑人,他们在医生中的代表率仅高于美洲原住民,图1中的非洲黑人是指南北战争后来自撒哈拉以南非洲的黑人移民,医生代表率4倍于基准水平,5倍于德裔和英裔美国人。 这一差别显然源自不同移民通道的选择偏向,老黑人的祖先是被贩奴船运到美洲的,而新黑人的祖先则是凭借自身优势或个人努力来到美国,往往来自母国的精英阶层,奥巴马便属于后一类,他来自肯尼亚的一个富裕家族,其曾祖父娶了5位妻子,祖父曾为英国军队服役,精通英语和读写,娶了至少3位妻子,父亲6岁便进入教会学校,后来又在夏威夷大学和哈佛大学取得学位,回国后先后在肯尼亚交通部和财政部担任经济学家,虽然只活了46岁,却娶过4位妻子,生了8个孩子。  
抓起一泡掼进来

【2016-02-26】

@whigzhou: 有些可怜人,在粪坑里泡久了,以至无论什么话题他都能抓起一泡掼进来,你说红烧肉好吃,他就“都是地沟油做的”,你说股票是比黄金更好的投资品,他就草泥马肖缸死全家,你说黑人跑步真厉害,他就举国体制万恶无疆……结果被我拉黑了,哎,谁让我是坏人呢。

 

标签:
7040
【2016-02-26】 @whigzhou: 有些可怜人,在粪坑里泡久了,以至无论什么话题他都能抓起一泡掼进来,你说红烧肉好吃,他就“都是地沟油做的”,你说股票是比黄金更好的投资品,他就草泥马肖缸死全家,你说黑人跑步真厉害,他就举国体制万恶无疆……结果被我拉黑了,哎,谁让我是坏人呢。  
杀人取肾

【2016-02-26】

@海德沙龙 《仅有慷慨满足不了器官移植需求》 人体各器官的设计寿命看来有着不小差异,当然这差异也可能只是现代生活方式所带来,于是随着移植技术的成熟和寿命不断延长,对器官的需求日益强烈,与此同时,供给却大为滞后,而原因在于,当前伦理/法律体系下,需求无法转变成对器官提供者的激励 ……

@海德沙龙: 在本文作者看来,尽管现金激励或更开放的自由交易确实为当前伦理体系所不容,但许多非现金的激励安排是完全可行且在伦理上也容易被公众接受的。

@whigzhou: 我2009年在《器官移植的伦理困境》中也讨论的这个问题,后来还提出了一个具体的措施

@whigzhou: 其中的伦理问题,我后来又有了些新看法,现在我觉得,对人体器官交易近乎本能的道德反感,是有其道理的,原理和(more...)

标签: | | |
7038
【2016-02-26】 @海德沙龙 《仅有慷慨满足不了器官移植需求》 人体各器官的设计寿命看来有着不小差异,当然这差异也可能只是现代生活方式所带来,于是随着移植技术的成熟和寿命不断延长,对器官的需求日益强烈,与此同时,供给却大为滞后,而原因在于,当前伦理/法律体系下,需求无法转变成对器官提供者的激励 …… @海德沙龙: 在本文作者看来,尽管现金激励或更开放的自由交易确实为当前伦理体系所不容,但许多非现金的激励安排是完全可行且在伦理上也容易被公众接受的。 @whigzhou: 我2009年在《器官移植的伦理困境》中也讨论的这个问题,后来还提出了一个具体的措施。 @whigzhou: 其中的伦理问题,我后来又有了些新看法,现在我觉得,对人体器官交易近乎本能的道德反感,是有其道理的,原理和我们对杀人游戏的道德抵制类似,因为现实世界的信息条件不完备的,对于一件被出售的器官,人们很难判定它是否来自凶杀盗取,而后一种情况实在太可怕,共同体值得为杜绝它而走得远一点。 @whigzhou: 这一想法转变发生于4年前有关杀人游戏的讨论,依我看,我们禁止在大街上玩追杀游戏的理由,是因为这种游戏很难和真正的追杀区分开来,若要容忍它,那就相当于放弃了协助自卫的权利,而后者对我们太重要,不能放弃 @whigzhou: 去年对一桩醉奸案的讨论中,也表达了类似看法 @whigzhou: 更一般而言,社会规范都是在特定信息条件下产生的,所以当信息条件已大幅改变时,很多古老法则便不再适宜,可是许多规范过于古老乃至已内化为我们的本能道德口味,一时难以割弃,但是通过为它们披上温情外衣,其实也可绕过。 @whigzhou: 从信息条件出发考虑,大街追杀不可容忍,但是人为构造了较完备信息条件的角斗场拼死格杀,好像就没啥不可以  
[译文]首批美洲人吃鲑鱼吗?

America’s first fisherman bagged Alaskan salmon 11,500 years ago
11500年前,阿拉斯加渔民的鲑鱼

作者:Zach Zorich @ 2015-9-21
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:龟海海
来源:AAAS,http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/09/america-s-first-fisherman-bagged-alaskan-salmon-11500-years-ago

If you think most fish stinks after 3 days, try 11,500 years: That’s the age of salmon bones that archaeologists have uncovered at the Upward Sun River site, one of Alaska’s oldest human settlements.

如果你觉得大部分鱼放三天就会发臭,试试放11500年,考古学家在在向阳河遗址中发掘出的鲑鱼骨头就有这么古老,那里是阿拉斯加最早的人类聚居点之一。

They say the cooked bones provide the first clear evidence of salmon fishing among the earliest Americans, Paleoindians, who crossed from Siberia into Alaska ov(more...)

标签: | |
6603
America’s first fisherman bagged Alaskan salmon 11,500 years ago 11500年前,阿拉斯加渔民的鲑鱼 作者:Zach Zorich @ 2015-9-21 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:龟海海 来源:AAAS,http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/09/america-s-first-fisherman-bagged-alaskan-salmon-11500-years-ago If you think most fish stinks after 3 days, try 11,500 years: That’s the age of salmon bones that archaeologists have uncovered at the Upward Sun River site, one of Alaska’s oldest human settlements. 如果你觉得大部分鱼放三天就会发臭,试试放11500年,考古学家在在向阳河遗址中发掘出的鲑鱼骨头就有这么古老,那里是阿拉斯加最早的人类聚居点之一。 They say the cooked bones provide the first clear evidence of salmon fishing among the earliest Americans, Paleoindians, who crossed from Siberia into Alaska over the Bering Land Bridge more than 13,000 years ago. 他们说,这些经过烹制的骨头首次明确证实了早期美洲人的鲑鱼捕捞活动;这些古印第安人于13000多年前跨过白令陆桥,由西伯利亚进入阿拉斯加。 The finding, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps debunk the idea that America’s first fishermen relied primarily on big game for food. It also explains how they managed to survive in an ice age Arctic environment and adapt to life on a new continent. 这一发现已于今日【译注:9月21日】在线发表于《美国国家科学院院刊》,有助于驳倒认为美洲最早的渔民主要以大型猎物为捕食对象的观点。它也解释了这些人如何在冰河时期的北极世界中维持生存,并使自己适应一个全新大陆上的生活。 These days, salmon is a staple for native Alaskans, but evidence for the origins of salmon fishing has been hard to come by. Wood and rope fishing tools decompose quickly, as do salmon bones. And until recently, most researchers hadn’t been doing the kind of careful excavation necessary for discovering fragile fish skeletons. 目前,鲑鱼是阿拉斯加原住民的一种主食,不过有关鲑鱼捕捞起源的证据一直难以找到。木与绳制成的捕捞工具极易腐化,鲑鱼骨也是如此。并且,要发现易于破碎的鱼类骨骸,必须进行小心细致的发掘,而直至近期,大多数研究者都不曾做过此类发掘。 But building on recent work that suggests big-game hunting was just one part of a “broad-spectrum” strategy among America’s first people, researchers have begun searching for other remains. These include creatures like migratory waterfowl, small mammals, and salmon that would have been part of a more seasonally based diet. 但近期的研究提出,捕杀大型猎物可能只是早期美洲人“宽谱”策略【编注:指将较多种类的食物来源纳入食谱的取食策略,生物学的最优取食理论以一组条件因子来解释或推测动物在特定约束条件下如何选择最优食谱宽度,参见wikipadia词条:optimal foraging theory。】的一部分,有鉴于此,研究者近来已开始搜寻其它残骸。其中包括迁徙性的水禽,小型哺乳动物及鲑鱼等生物,它们都可能构成一个更为季节性的食谱的一部分。 Archaeological sites across the Bering Strait region—including Siberia—support this idea, says John Hoffecker, a University of Colorado, Boulder, archaeologist who specializes in the region. 科罗拉多大学波德分校专门研究这一区域的考古学家John Hoffecker说,遍及白令海峡地区——包括西伯利亚——的考古遗址为上述看法提供了依据。 But finding ancient salmon leftovers has been a challenge. “It’s difficult to capture ancient fishing because of the nature of fish bones—they’re small, fragile bones,” says Carrin Halffman, a biological anthropologist at the University of Alaska (UA), Fairbanks, and the lead author of the new study. And if archaeologists do turn up any fishy remains, she says, it’s hard to know just what kind of fish it was. 不过,寻找古代鲑鱼残留物一直是个挑战。“古代渔猎活动的发现之难源于鱼骨的特性——这种骨头小而脆”,阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校的生物人类学家Carrin Halffman如是说,她是上述研究的发起人。她还说,即便考古学家确实发现了一丁点鱼类残骸,也很难知道那到底是何种鱼类。 As the team tried to find out how the people at Upward Sun River used the resources of the nearby Tanana River, they carefully excavated parts of the site, sifting soil through fine-meshed screens. In the same fire pit where they found the buried remains of two infants, they discovered the salmon bones. 在尝试查明向阳河的人们如何利用附近的塔纳纳河资源时,这个团队小心地发掘了这一遗址的部分区域,用网眼细小的筛子翻检泥巴。在同一个火坑中,他们找到了两具婴儿遗骨,还发现了这些鲑鱼骨头。 Analyzing DNA in a piece of uncooked fish bone, Halffman and her team found that it was chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta), a hefty fish that weighs 5 to 10 kilograms and grows roughly 60 centimeters long. Thousands of chum salmon still swim up the Tanana River every summer to spawn, and the run remains a central cultural event for the indigenous Athabascan people who live there today. 通过对一份未经烹制的鱼骨进行DNA分析,Halffman及其团队发现它是大马哈鱼(学名Oncorhynchus keta),这是一种重达5-10公斤、长约60公分的大型鱼类。直至今日,每年夏天仍有成千上万大马哈鱼沿塔纳纳河溯游产卵,而且这种洄游至今仍是当地原住民阿萨巴斯卡人的一项核心文化活动。 But could the find be evidence for the beginnings of this annual ritual? It was possible that the salmon were not part of the annual saltwater-to-freshwater migration, but instead were freshwater fish that lived in the river their entire lives. To find out, Halffman analyzed carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the fish bones. Because different versions of the two elements—both with different weights—are found in varying concentrations in seawater and fresh water, that compositions is reflected in the fish bones. 但这一发现是否就是这种年度仪式的起源证据呢?另有一种可能性存在:鲑鱼过去并非每年定期从咸水洄游到淡水,而是终生存活于河流中的淡水鱼。为了查明这一点,Halffman分析了鱼骨中的碳、氮同位素。因为这两种元素的不同同位素——其重量各不相同——在海水和淡水中分别有着不同的富集度,而这一成分差异会体现在鱼骨中。 The bones that Halffman analyzed had higher ratios of heavier carbon and nitrogen isotopes, meaning the fish had lived in the ocean and must have been caught during a spawning run. “What we’re looking at is probably the beginnings of the utilization of salmon,” says Ben Potter, an archaeologist at UA Fairbanks, and a co-author of the study. 在Halffman所分析的鱼骨中,较重的碳、氮同位素占比更大,这意味着这些鱼曾经生活于海洋,必定是在产卵洄游时被人捕捞的。阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校的考古学家、本研究的共同作者Ben Potter说:“我们看到的可能是鲑鱼被人利用的开端。” The discovery boosts the view of Paleoindians as generalists who ate a variety of foods, Hoffecker says. “I don’t think it was possible for people to occupy these environments without this broad-based diet and without this kind of high-tech economy,” he says. Hoffecker说,这一发现为古印第安人是饮食种类繁多的多面手这一观点提供了支撑。“如果没有这种宽泛的食谱,没有这种高技术的经济,我不认为这些人有可能占领这样的自然环境”。 Herb Maschner, an Arctic archaeologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, agrees and says the careful excavation methods and analysis serve as a good example of what archaeologists need to do to answer questions about ancient people living in central Alaska where the conditions for preserving bones and artifacts are “notoriously” bad. 坦帕市南佛罗里达大学的北极考古学家Herb Maschner对此表示赞同并说,骨头和人工制品在阿拉斯加中部地区的保存环境之恶劣“臭名昭著”,为了回答与生活于此地的古代人有关的问题,考古学家要怎么做?这种细心的发掘方法和分析为此树立了一个良好典范。 Potter and the other researchers are already busy answering other questions. Eventually, they say, the abundance of salmon and the ability to store fish allowed the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest to settle in large permanent villages, a lifestyle that typically requires agriculture. Potter及其他研究者已经开始忙于回答其它问题。他们说,鲑鱼数量之丰富以及储存鱼类的能力,最终让太平洋西北地区的原住民得以定居于大型永久性村落,而这种生活方式通常要求农业的出现。 The team suspects that salmon fishing became more important over time as big game became scarcer in central Alaska, an idea they hope to test with further excavations. For now, little is known about salmon fishing in the period between 11,500 and 1000 years ago, but Upward Sun River gives the research team a start. Potter says: “You need that beginning to see how the end came about.” 该团队推测,随着阿拉斯加中部地区大型猎物日益稀少,鲑鱼捕捞的重要性可能也日益增加,团队并希望能通过进一步的发掘来验证这一想法。目前而言,人们对于从11500年前到1000年前这一时期的鲑鱼捕捞活动所知甚少,但向阳河给了这个研究团队一个起点。Potter说:“欲知晓终点如何而来,你需要这个开端。” (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——

[译文]像一个维多利亚时代人那么生活

I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it.
我热爱维多利亚时代,所以决定生活于其中。

作者:Sarah A. Chrisman @ 2015-9-09
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:龟海海
来源:Vox,http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life

My husband and I study history, specifically the late Victorian era of the 1880s and ’90s. Our methods are quite different from those of academics. Everything in our daily life is connected to our period of study, from the technologies we use to the ways we interact with the world.

我丈夫和我都研究历史,具体说是维多利亚时代晚期,即1880至1890年代。我们跟学院派的方法极为不同。我们日常生活中的所有事物,从我们所用的技术到我们与世界沟通的方式,都跟我们所研究的时代有关联。

Five years ago we bought a house built in 1888 in Port Townsend, Washington State — a town that prides itself on being a Victorian seaport. When we moved in, there was an electric fridge in the kitchen: We sold that as soon as we could. Now we have a period-appropriate icebox that we stock with block ice. Every evening, and sometimes twice a day during summer, I empty th(more...)

标签: | |
6601
I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it. 我热爱维多利亚时代,所以决定生活于其中。 作者:Sarah A. Chrisman @ 2015-9-09 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:龟海海 来源:Vox,http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life My husband and I study history, specifically the late Victorian era of the 1880s and '90s. Our methods are quite different from those of academics. Everything in our daily life is connected to our period of study, from the technologies we use to the ways we interact with the world. 我丈夫和我都研究历史,具体说是维多利亚时代晚期,即1880至1890年代。我们跟学院派的方法极为不同。我们日常生活中的所有事物,从我们所用的技术到我们与世界沟通的方式,都跟我们所研究的时代有关联。 Five years ago we bought a house built in 1888 in Port Townsend, Washington State — a town that prides itself on being a Victorian seaport. When we moved in, there was an electric fridge in the kitchen: We sold that as soon as we could. Now we have a period-appropriate icebox that we stock with block ice. Every evening, and sometimes twice a day during summer, I empty the melt water from the drip tray beneath its base. 五年前,我们买了栋建于1888年的宅子,位于华盛顿州的汤森港——一座以曾为维多利亚时期海港自傲的城镇。当我们搬进去时,厨房里还有台电冰箱。我们立马把它给卖了。现在我们使用一个跟时代相吻合的冰盒,里面储藏冰块。每天傍晚,我都要清空冰盒底下滴水盘中的融水,如果是夏天,有可能每天要清两次。 Every morning I wind the mechanical clock in our parlor. Each day I write in my diary with an antique fountain pen that I fill with liquid ink using an eyedropper. My inkwell and the blotter I use to dry the ink on each page before I turn it are antiques from the 1890s; I buy my ink from a company founded in 1670. My sealing wax for personal letters comes from the same company, and my letter opener was made sometime in the late Victorian era from a taxidermied deer foot. 每天早上我要给客厅里的机械钟上发条。每天写日记,我用的都是一支古董自来水笔,并用点眼药水的滴管给它灌墨水。我的墨水池和我翻页之前用于吸干墨水的吸墨纸都是1890年代的古董;我从一家成立于1670年的公司购买墨水。我在私人信件上所用的封蜡也是同一家公司所产,开信刀则制造于维多利亚时代晚期的某个时候,原料是一只经标本剥制术处理的鹿脚。 There are no modern lightbulbs in our house. When Gabriel and I have company we use early electric lightbulbs, based on the first patents of Tesla and Edison. When it's just the two of us, we use oil lamps. When we started using period illumination every day, we were amazed by how much brighter the light is from antique oil lamps than from modern reproductions. 我们家没有现代灯泡。我和Gabriel之外另有客人在时,我们就用早期的白炽灯,这种灯还是基于特斯拉和爱迪生最早的专利。如果只有我们两个,我们就用油灯。当初,我们开始每天都使用时代照明时,我们都感到很惊讶,来自古董油灯的光线可比来自其现代复制品的亮得多。 Our heat comes from 19th-century gas heaters and from an antique kerosene space heater. In the winter we tuck hot water bottles into bed with us, and even the cotton covers that I sewed for those bottles are made from period-appropriate fabric (its designs are copies of fabric patterns from the late 19th century). 我们用19世纪的煤气炉和一个古董煤油小暖炉取暖。冬天,我们把热水瓶子塞到我们的被子里,连我为这些瓶子缝棉套子时所用的布料都与时代吻合(其设计复制自19世纪末的织物图案)。 Our bed itself is an antique from our period of study, and since it didn't have a mattress when we bought it, I sewed one by hand and stuffed it with feathers. 我们用的床本身就是我们所研究的那个时代的古董,而因为买来的时候没有床垫,我手缝了一个,里面填充的是羽毛。 I bake all our bread from scratch, using a sourdough culture I keep constantly bubbling in the back corner of our kitchen in a bowl that belonged to my grandmother. When I want whipped cream or an omelet, I use an antique rotary eggbeater; when we want to grind something, we have a Victorian food chopper as well as mortars and pestles. 烤面包时,我都是从最初的原料开始准备,要用到的酵种被我装在一个我祖母用过的碗里,放在厨房的墙角养着,不停冒泡。需要打奶油或者煎蛋饼时,我用的是一个古董旋转打蛋器;要研磨东西时,我们有维多利亚时代的食品搅拌机、研钵和研槌。 Whenever I'm inside my house I have an antique chatelaine hanging from my waist — a marvelous 19th-century accessory that combines elements that would remind a modern person of a charm bracelet, multi-tool, and organizer all in one. Mine usually holds a notebook, pincushion, and scissors, but I also have attachments for it ranging from a thimble holder to a matchbox, a coin box, or a pair of tweezers. 任何时候只要我呆在屋子里,腰上总是系着一根古董腰链——一种神奇的19世纪饰品,其组成元素可让现代人感觉它是漂亮手镯、多功能器具和整理器的多合一。我这根腰链通常挂着笔记本、针插和剪刀,不过也有其它坠物,从顶针夹到火柴盒、硬币盒或小镊子不等。 I bathe with a bowl and pitcher every morning, and for a nice long soak I use our cast-iron clawfoot bathtub. I wash my hair using Castile bar soap from a company established in 1839. (Shampooing with Castile soap is a piece of beauty advice I found in a Victorian magazine from about the time our house was built.) My hairbrush is a 130-year-old design, and my toothbrush has natural boar bristles. 我每天早上洗澡用的是盆和水罐,要泡个舒服的长澡时就用我们那个带铸铁爪足的浴缸。洗头发用的是卡斯提尔橄榄条皂,生产公司始建于1839年。(用卡斯提尔橄榄条皂洗发是我从一本维多利亚时期的杂志上得到的美容建议,这本杂志的发行大概与我们房子的建立同期)。我用的梳子是个已有130年历史的工艺品,牙刷则含有天然猪鬃。 Neither my husband nor I have ever had a cellphone; I've never even had a driver's license. On special outings when Gabriel and I go cycling together, I ride a copy of a high-wheel tricycle from the 1880s. Gabriel has three high-wheel bicycles, and he has ridden them hundreds of miles. 我和我丈夫都从没用过手机;我连驾照都没有拿过。某些特别的日子,我和Gabriel会一起骑车出游,我骑的是一辆仿自1880年代的高轮三轮车。Gabriel有三辆高轮双轮车,他已经骑了有好几百英里。 On our vacation just last week, we rode our high-wheel cycles more than 75 miles along a historic railroad route between abandoned silver mines. I kept thinking of an article we had read in an 1883 cycling magazine about wheelmen riding bikes just like Gabriel's when they took a trip out to a mine. 就在上周的假期,我们就曾沿着几个废弃银矿之间的一条历史铁路线骑行,用我们的高轮自行车跑了75英里多。那时我就一直在想我们从一本1883年的骑行杂志上读过的一篇文章,讲的正是骑行者们蹬着与Gabriel那部一样的自行车,去往一个矿地远游。

******

The process didn't happen all at once.  It's not as though someone suddenly dropped us into a ready-furnished Victorian existence one day— that sort of thing only happens in fairy tales and Hollywood. We had to work hard for our dreams. The life we now enjoy came bit by bit, through gifts we gave each other. The greatest gift we give each other is mutual support in moving forward with our dreams. 这一转变并非一蹴而就。并不是说某人某天突然就将我们拉入了一个配备齐全的维多利亚式生活——这种事只会发生于童话故事或好莱坞中。我们得为我们的梦想辛苦奔忙。我们现在所享受的生活是通过我们送给彼此的礼物而一点一点得来的。我们所赠与彼此的最美好礼物就是伴着梦想相濡以沫的走下去。 Even before I met Gabriel, we both saw value in older ways of looking at the world. He had been homeschooled as a child, and he never espoused the strict segregation that now seems to exist between life and learning. As adults, we both wanted to learn more about a time that fascinated each of us. But it took mutual support to challenge society's dogmas of how we should live, how we should learn. We came into it gradually — and together. 早在我与Gabriel相识之前,我们就都已看到了老式世界观的价值所在。他小时候接受过家庭式教育,从不赞成生活与学习之间如今看似存在的那种严格分离。长大以后,我们都渴望更多地了解那个让我们都无比着迷的时代。但要挑战社会关于我们应该如何生活、应该如何学习的成见,这需要共同渡过。我们是逐渐——也是共同——步入这一点的。 It's hard to say who started it. I was the first to start wearing Victorian clothes, but Gabriel, who knew how I'd always admired Victorian ideals and aesthetics, gave them to me as presents, a way for both of us to research a culture we found fascinating. I was so intrigued by those clothes that I hand-sewed copies I could wear every day. 很难说我们之间是谁最先开始这么做的。其实是始于我穿维多利亚式的服装,不过Gabriel知道我素来崇尚维多利亚式的理念和审美,是他把那些服饰送给我作礼物的,这也是我们研究这种令我俩都着迷的文化的一种方式。我被这些衣物深深地迷住,以至于我手缝了许多件类似的,可以每日做伴。 Soon after, I gave Gabriel an antique suit of his own, but tailoring men's clothes is a separate skill set, and it took him a while to find a seamstress who could make Victorian men's clothing with the same painstaking attention to historic detail that I was putting into my own garments. 随后不久,我又送了Gabriel一套古董西装,不过缝制男士服装需要另一种技能,所以他花了段时间才找到一位女裁缝。这位裁缝能为他缝制维多利亚式的男装,并像我对待我的衣物一样,为其历史细节煞费苦心。 Wearing 19th-century clothes on a daily basis gave us insights into intimate life of the past, things so private and yet so commonplace they were never written down. Features of posture, movement, balance; things as subtle as the way my ankle-length skirts started to act like a cat's whiskers when I wore them every single day. 在日常生活中穿着19世纪的服装,为我们提供了有关过往私密生活的洞见,这类事物如此隐私却又如此日常,以至于从未被人书写过。姿势、动作与平衡的特征;一些无比微妙的事物,比如当我每天都穿着及踝长裙时,它们开始像猫须一样飘逸。 I became so accustomed to the presence and movements of my skirts, they started to send me little signals about my proximity to the objects around myself, and about the winds that rustled their fabric — even the faint wind caused by the passage of a person or animal close by. 对于裙子的存在和运动,我变得无比熟稔,以至于当我接近身边的事物时,当风与布面摩擦作响时——即便是临近的人或动物穿过时导致的那种微弱的风,它们都会给我传递小小的信号。 I never had to analyze these signals, and after a while I stopped even thinking about them much; they became a peripheral sense, a natural part of myself. Gabriel said watching me grow accustomed to Victorian clothes was like seeing me blossom into my true self. 我从不需要去分析这些信号,而且一段时间以后技艺已熟练于心;它们成为了一种外围感官,我自己的自然的一部分。Gabriel曾说,看着我逐渐适应维多利亚式衣服,就像是看到我那个绽放的真实自我。 When we realized how much we were learning just from the clothes, we started wondering what other everyday items could teach us. 当我们意识到仅仅从衣服上我们学到的就何其之多时,我们开始琢磨其它的日常用品能够教给我们什么。 When cheap modern things in our lives inevitably broke, we replaced them with sturdy historic equivalents instead of more disposable modern trash. Every birthday and anniversary became an excuse to hunt down physical artifacts from our favorite time period, which we could then study and use together. 当我们生活中便宜的现代物品不可避免地破损时,我们就代之以结实耐用的历史对应物,而不再用那种不能重复使用的现代垃圾。每个生日和纪念日都变成了搜罗我们最钟爱时代的人工制品的理由,然后它们就可以供我们一起研究和使用。 Everything escalated organically from there, and now our whole life revolves around this ongoing research project. No one pays us for it, but we take it more seriously than many people take their paying jobs. 一切都从那里开始有机的成长了起来,如今我们整个生活都围绕着这个持续进行的研究项目打转。没人为此向我们提供资金,但我们对待它,可比许多人对待他们的有偿工作更为严肃。

******

The artifacts in our home represent what historians call "primary source materials," items directly from the period of study.  Anything can be a primary source, although the term usually refers to texts. The books and magazines the Victorians themselves wrote and read constitute the vast bulk of our reading materials — and since reading is our favorite pastime, they fill a large percentage of our days. 我们家中的人工制品代表的是历史学家所谓“一手材料”,都是直接来自所研究时代的物品。任何事物都可以是一手的,尽管这个词汇通常指涉文本。维多利亚时代的人们自身所写作和阅读的书籍和杂志构成了我们的阅读材料的主要部分——并且由于阅读是我们最爱的消遣,它们也占据了我们一天中的很大一部分时间。 There is a universe of difference between a book or magazine article about the Victorian era and one actually written in the period. Modern commentaries on the past can get appallingly like the game "telephone": One person misinterprets something, the next exaggerates it, a third twists it to serve an agenda, and so on. Going back to the original sources is the only way to learn the truth. 关于维多利亚时代的书籍或杂志,和写于这一时期的书籍或杂志,两者之间有着天壤之别。对于过往的现代评论有可能像“打电话”游戏一样令人吃惊:某人曲解了某事,另一人进一步夸大,第三个人出于某个目的对其加以扭曲,如此持续。回顾原始材料是了解真相的唯一办法。 We're devoted to getting our own insights and perspectives on the era, not just parroting stereotypes that "everyone knows." The late Victorian era was an incredibly dynamic time, with so many new and extraordinary inventions it seemed anything was possible. 我们矢志于获得我们自己对这一时代的见解和观点,而不是仅仅人云亦云“众所周知”的刻板印象。晚期维多利亚时代是个充满活力的时期,有许多全新而非凡的发明,看起来似乎无所不能。 Interacting with tangible items from that time helps us connect with and share that optimism. They help us understand the culture that created them — a culture that believed in engineering durable, beautiful items that could be repaired by their users. 与源于这一时期的实物接触,能帮助我们了解并分享这种乐观主义。它们有助于我们理解那一创造了它们的文化——一种对制造耐用、美观且能由使用者修理的物品存有信念的文化。 Constantly using them helps us comprehend their context.  Absorbing the lessons our artifacts teach us shapes our worldview. They are our teachers.  Seeing their beauty every day elevates and inspires us, as it did their original owners. 在不断使用它们的过程中,我们领悟其内涵。吸收由我们的物品教给我们的教训,也塑造了我们的世界观。它们是我们的老师。欣赏它们的美,也提升并鼓舞了我们,就像它们曾提升鼓舞了其最初的主人一样。 It's a life that keeps us far more in touch with the natural seasons, too. Much of modern technology has become a collection of magic black boxes: Push a button and light happens, push another button and heat happens, and so on. The systems that dominate people's lives have become so opaque that few Americans have even the foggiest notion what makes most of the items they touch every day work — and trying to repair them would nullify the warranty. 这也让我们能无比贴近天然的四季轮替。多数现代技术都已然变成了一堆魔法黑箱子:按这个按钮就有光,按另一个按钮就有热,如此等等。主导人们生活的种种系统已变得如此晦涩,以至极少有美国人对他们每天碰到的物品都是如何运作的具有哪怕是模糊的概念——试着去修理它们还会使质保单作废。 The resources that went into making those items are treated as nothing more than a price tag to grumble about when the bills come due. Very few people actually watch those resources decreasing as they use them. It's impossible to watch fuel disappearing when it's burned in a power plant hundreds of miles away, and convenient to forget there's a connection. 用于制造这些物品的资源,仅仅是被当做一个价签来对待,在账单到期时供人们抱怨几句。极少有人在使用这些资源时真的看到它们在减少。当燃料是在几百英里以外的发电站里烧掉的时候,我们不可能看到它们消失;自然而然也就忘记这之间存在关联了。 When we use resources through technology that has to be tended, we're far more careful about how we use them. To use our antique space heater in the winter, I have to fill its reservoir with kerosene and keep its wick and flame spreader clean; when we want to use it, I have to open and light it. It's not a burdensome process, but it's certainly a more mindful one than flicking a switch. 当我们通过那些需要照看的技术来使用资源时,我们对于如何使用它们会更加仔细。冬天里,要用我们那件古董小暖炉的时候,我得往它的储液器里添煤油,保持灯芯和扩焰器干净;要用它时,我得打开它,然后点燃。这并非一件繁琐的事,但它确实比弹开一个开关要更费心思一些。 Not everyone necessarily wants to live the same lifestyle we have chosen, of course. But anyone can benefit from choices that increase their awareness of their surroundings and the way things they use every day affect them. 当然,未必所有人都想要过和我们选择的这般生活方式。但任何人都可以从这样一种选择中受益:这些选择将让他们更清晰的意识到周遭事物以及他们每日所用之物如何影响着他们。 Watching the level of kerosene diminish in the reservoir heightens our awareness of how much we're using, and makes us ask ourselves what we truly need. Learning to use all these technologies gives us confidence to exist in the world on our own terms. 看着储液器里煤油油位的下降,会提高我们对自己用了多少煤油的意识,促使我们追问自己,我们的真实需求是什么。学着使用所有这些技术,能让我们依照自己的方式充满自信地存在于这个世界。

******

And that, really, is the resource we find ourselves more and more in need of. My husband and I have slowly, gradually worked to base our lives around historical artifacts and ideals because — quite frankly — we love living this way. 而这,我们发现,确实是我们日益需要的东西。我丈夫和我已经慢慢地、逐步地将我们的生活建基于历史物品和历史理念之上,因为——坦率地说——我们忠爱这种生活方式。 People assume the hard part of our lifestyle comes from the life itself, but using Victorian items every day brings us great joy and fulfillment. The truly hard part is dealing with other people's reactions. 人们以为我们生活方式的难处会在于这种生活本身,但是每天使用维多利亚时代的物品给我们带来的是极大的愉悦和满足。然而真正的困难却在于应付别人对此的反应。 We live in a world that can be terribly hostile to difference of any sort. Societies are rife with bullies who attack nonconformists of any stripe. 我们所生活的世界,对于任何差异都可能极为敌视。社会上充斥着欺凌,攻击任何形式的不循常规者。 Gabriel's workout clothes were copied from the racing outfit of a Victorian cyclist, and when he goes swimming, his hand-knit wool swim trunks raise more than a few eyebrows — but this is just the least of the abuse we've taken. Gabriel的运动服是某位维多利亚骑行者所用竞赛服的复制品,而当他去游泳时,他的手织羊毛制泳裤所得到的可不止是一点点异样眼光——这还只是我们所受伤害中最轻微的一类。 We have been called "freaks," "bizarre," and an endless slew of far worse insults. We've received hate mail telling us to get out of town and repeating the word "kill ... kill ... kill." Every time I leave home I have to constantly be on guard against people who try to paw at and grope me. 我们曾被称为“变态”、“怪异”,以及无穷尽的一堆更为不堪的辱骂。我们还收到过恐吓信,让我们离开镇子,并重复写有“杀……杀……杀”这个词。每次出门,我都得时刻保持警惕,防止人们抓我或者摸我。 Dealing with all these things and not being ground down by them, not letting other people's hostile ignorance rob us of the joy we find in this life — that is the hard part. By comparison, wearing a Victorian corset is the easiest thing in the world. 应付所有这类事情,不被它们打翻,不让其他人充满敌意的无知剥夺我们在这种生活中找到的快乐——这才是难点。与之相比,穿件维多利亚式的紧身胸衣就是世上最容易的事了。 This is why more people don't follow their dreams: They know the world is a cruel place for anyone who doesn't fit into the dominant culture. Most people fear the bullies so much that they knuckle under simply to be left alone. In the process, they crush their own dreams. 这就是为什么更多的人没有追随自己的梦想:他们知道,对于任何不一致遵从主导文化的人来说,世界是个残忍的地方。多数人如此恐惧欺凌,以至于轻言放弃,以便免受干扰。在此过程中,他们碾碎了自己的梦想。 (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——

[译文]穷人孩子更偏爱快餐吗?

A dangerous myth about who eats fast food is completely false
关于都有谁吃了美国快餐的一个危险误区

作者:Roberto A. Ferdman @ 2015-9-18
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:龟海海
来源:The Washington Post,http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/18/rich-parents-might-look-down-on-fast-food-but-its-actually-their-kids-who-eat-it-the-most/

There’s a popular narrative about poor families and fast food: They eat more of it than anybody else. It’s dangled as evidence for the high rate of obesity among poorer Americans —  and talked about even by some of the country’s foremost voices on food. “[J]unk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories,” Mark Bittman for The New York Times in 2011.

有个流行的说法讲的是贫困家庭和快餐的关系:他们吃的快餐比谁都多。这种说法被人视为贫困美国人高肥胖率的根据——甚至这个国家食品界的一些权威人物也会这么讲。Mark Bittman 2011年在《纽约时报》上写道:“以卡路里来衡量,垃圾食品更便宜,这就使得快餐成为穷人必备,因为他们需要便宜的卡路里。”

But there’s a problem with saying that poor people like fast food better than others. It’s not true.

但是,贫困人口比其他人更喜欢快餐这种说法是错误的。

New data, released by the Centers for Disease Control, show that America’s love for fast food is surprisingly income blind. Well-off kids, poor kids, and all those in between tend to get about the same percentage of their calories from fast food, according to a survey of more than 5,000 people. More precisely, though, it’s the poorest kids that tend to get the smallest share of(more...)

标签:
6596
A dangerous myth about who eats fast food is completely false 关于都有谁吃了美国快餐的一个危险误区 作者:Roberto A. Ferdman @ 2015-9-18 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:龟海海 来源:The Washington Post,http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/18/rich-parents-might-look-down-on-fast-food-but-its-actually-their-kids-who-eat-it-the-most/ There's a popular narrative about poor families and fast food: They eat more of it than anybody else. It’s dangled as evidence for the high rate of obesity among poorer Americans --  and talked about even by some of the country’s foremost voices on food. "[J]unk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories," Mark Bittman for The New York Times in 2011. 有个流行的说法讲的是贫困家庭和快餐的关系:他们吃的快餐比谁都多。这种说法被人视为贫困美国人高肥胖率的根据——甚至这个国家食品界的一些权威人物也会这么讲。Mark Bittman 2011年在《纽约时报》上写道:“以卡路里来衡量,垃圾食品更便宜,这就使得快餐成为穷人必备,因为他们需要便宜的卡路里。” But there’s a problem with saying that poor people like fast food better than others. It’s not true. 但是,贫困人口比其他人更喜欢快餐这种说法是错误的。 New data, released by the Centers for Disease Control, show that America's love for fast food is surprisingly income blind. Well-off kids, poor kids, and all those in between tend to get about the same percentage of their calories from fast food, according to a survey of more than 5,000 people. More precisely, though, it's the poorest kids that tend to get the smallest share of their daily energy intake from Big Macs, Whoppers, Chicken McNuggets, and french fries. 疾病控制中心发布的新数据显示,美国人对快餐的狂热出人意料地和收入并无关系。根据一项针对5000多人的调查,富孩子、穷孩子以及所有处于两者之间的孩子,从快餐中获取的卡路里占比趋于相同。不过,更准确而言,在每日的能量摄入中,正是在最穷的孩子身上,来自巨无霸、皇堡、麦乐鸡和炸薯条的份额最小。 #116-2As shown in the chart above, children born to families living just above the poverty line and below get roughly 11.5 percent of their calories from fast food. For everyone else, the portion is closer to 13 percent. 上表显示,对于来自刚过贫困线及贫困线以下家庭的孩子,约有11.5%的卡路里来自快餐。对于所有其他人,这个比例接近13%。 Surprisingly, the better-off children—those between the ages of 2 and 11 years—lead the pack. The average percentage of calories coming from fast food for kids with working and middle class parents is 9.1 percent. But poor kids only get 8 percent of their calories food. 令人惊讶的是,在儿童——即2至11岁的孩子——中,富孩子处于领先。父母为工人阶级和中产阶级的孩子,源自快餐的卡路里比例平均为9.1%。贫困线以下的孩子该比例则仅有8%。 For teenagers, it's those born to the poorest families, once again, who rely on fast food the least. 青少年也一样,生于最贫困家庭的,对快餐依赖最少。 The data offer sobering insight into America's seemingly impenetrable love for fast food. More than a third of all children and adolescents living in the country still eat some form of fast food on any given day, a number which hasn't budged in decades, according to the CDC. 美国人对快餐的狂热令人费解,上述数据为此提供的见解发人深省。疾控中心数据表明,任选一天,我国都仍有超过三分之一的儿童和青少年会食用某种快餐,这个数字几十年没有变过。 And many children are getting alarmingly high proportions of their diet from chicken nuggets and french fries. About a quarter of all kids in the United States get 25 percent of their calories from fast food. And 12 percent of kids get more than 40 percent of their calories from fast food. 并且,许多孩子的食谱中炸鸡块和炸薯条的份额之高令人担忧。全美所有孩子中约有四分之一从快餐中获取的卡路里达到25%。有12%的孩子从快餐中获取的卡路里超过40%。 The data also help to discredit the notion that fast food — or, at the very least, unhealthy food — only preys on the poor. The concept of food deserts, lower income areas where healthy food is scarce or expensive or both, has given rise to the idea that poorer populations rely on fast food out of necessity and convenience. 数据同样否定了一个观念:快餐——或至少是不健康食物——只损及穷人。食物沙漠——健康食品或稀有或昂贵或两者兼有的低收入地区——这一概念导致了一种看法:贫困人口出于必然性与便利性的缘故,更为依赖快餐。 While there's evidence that income does appear to affect the relative nutritional value of foods people eat—food stamp participants, for instance, tend to procure the same amount of calories as everyone else but from substantially less healthy foods—there doesn't seem to be the same proof that that gap is attributable to fast food. 当然,有证据表明,收入似乎确实会影响人们所吃食物的相对营养价值。比如,使用食品券的人所获取的卡路里数量与其他人趋于相同,但其中大量来自相对不那么健康的食品。但要说在快餐问题上也存在这样的差距,则没有类似的证据。 Child obesity, though it has fallen off in recent years, is still historically high in the United States. American kids are far more likely to be overweight than those living in most other countries. The epidemic has affected poorer children disproportionately, but it would be foolish to overlook the fact that roughly 12 percent of high income children are obese. The deterioration of the American diet hasn't helped. But nor has kids's sustained love for fast food in this country. 尽管近些年来,儿童肥胖有所下降,但它仍处于美国历史上的高位。与绝大多数其它国家的孩子相比,美国孩子出现体重超标的可能性要高得多。这种流行病对较贫穷的孩子影响更大,但如果我们看不到约12%的高收入家庭孩子患有肥胖症这一事实,那也是不妥的。美国食谱的恶化让问题雪上加霜。同样,我国孩子对快餐的一贯热爱也同样没起到什么好作用。 Fast food remains a problem for the whole of American youth. Children, independent of socioeconomic status, are bombarded with advertisements for fast food. The industry spends billions of dollars each year on marketing, much of which is used to target children and teenagers. A 2012 study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that kids were seeing between three to five fast food ads on television every day. 对所有美国年轻人而言,快餐仍是个难题。不分社会经济地位,孩子们都处于快餐广告的狂轰滥炸之中。这个行业每年花费几十亿进行市场推广,其中许多就是针对儿童和青少年。食品政策与肥胖拉德中心2012年一项研究发现,孩子们每天在电视上看到的快餐广告有3-5种。 And those commercials appear to be working. On all children. 这些广告似乎在所有的孩子们身上起作用。 Rich parents might roll their eyes at Big Macs and french fries, but it's their kids who like them most. 富裕的父母可能会对着巨无霸和炸薯条翻白眼,但他们的孩子对这些爱不释手。 (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——

[译文]Robert Axelrod访谈录

National Medal of Science Awarded To Political Scientist Robert Axelrod
政治学家Robert Axelrod获颁国家科学奖章

作者:Eric Michael Johnson @ 2014-12-30
译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值)
来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/article/20003131/

Why do we choose to cooperate and how can we promote greater cooperation in world affairs? These are the questions that Robert Axelrod has pursued for more than 40 years. His career has been an interdisciplinary exploration that has encompassed mathematics, political science, and evolutionary biology. Now, his signature achievements in the areas of game theory and complex systems have earned him the highest scientific honor that the United States can bestow: the National Medal of Science.

我们为何选择合作?我们如何在世界事务中推进更大程度的合作?这些都是Robert Axelrod追问了40多年的问题。他的整个职业生涯都致力于跨学科研究,涉及数学、政治科学与进化生物学。如今,他在博弈论和复杂系统领域的标志性成就使他获得了美国可授予的最高科学荣誉:国家科学奖章。

I first encountered Axelrod’s work during my graduate studies working with great apes. His suggestion that cooperation could evolve as an adaptive strategy was an inspiration for me in a field still dominated by the view that selfish interests were the primary driver of evolution. After several years of watching bonobos – one of our closest evolutionary relatives – as they peacefully shared their resources with groupmates and avoided violence at all costs, I was eager for an alternative explanation.

我第一次接触Axelrod的著作,还是在研究生阶段研究类人猿的时候。他提出,合作有可能发展为一种适应策略。当时我所在的领域仍被自利乃进化的基本驱动这一观点所主导,而他的观点对我深有启发。我那时已对人类的进化近亲之一倭黑猩猩进行了好几年观察,发现它们与群体成员和平共享资源,不惜代价避免暴力,所以我特别渴望看到一种替代解释。

Axelrod’s publications with the celebrated evolutionary biologist William Hamilton had put the study of cooperation on a new foundation. What’s more, his application of this work to political science offered the potential for an evolutionary framework that could help reduce violence and encourage mutual aid between nations and peoples.

Axelrod和知名进化生物学家William Hamilton的共同作品已为研究合作奠定了新的基础。不仅如此,在将这一成果应用于政治科学之后,他还提出了一种进化论框架的潜在可能,该框架将有助于在国家与民族之间减少暴力、鼓励合作。

Axelrod first pursued a degree in mathematics before receiving his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 1969. After brief stints working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s failed presidential campaign that pledged to end the Vietnam War, Axelrod taught at UC Berkeley before becoming a professor of Political Science and Public Policy at The University of Michigan.

Axelrod先获得了数学学位,1969年又获得耶鲁大学政治学博士学位。他曾在国防部长办公室以及参议员尤金·麦卡锡誓将结束越战的失败的总统竞选中短暂工作。此后,Axelrod任教于加州大学伯克利分校,后来成为密歇根大学的政治科学与公共政策教授。

It was Axelrod’s work with computer simulations involving the Prisoner’s Dilemma game that launched his scientific career. In the game, two people who committed a crime are arrested and each is placed in solitary confinement for interrogation. If one betrays the other, the first goes free while the second is sentenced to three years in prison. If they both betray one another, they each receive two years. But if they both keep silent, they receive the minimum penalty of one year each. Under this scenario, the best individual strategy would be to betray the other. However, in actual trials, people were much more likely to cooperate than would be expected under the assumption of rational self-interest. Cooperation and altruism seem to be innate characteristics of the human species.

Axelrod对“囚徒困境”博弈的计算机模拟工作开启了他的科学事业。在此类博弈中,两个被捕的罪犯被分别单独拘禁,接受审问。如果其中一个出卖另一个,那么前者就能得到自由,而后者将被处以3年牢狱。如果两人都出卖彼此,那么将各获2年牢狱。但是,如果两人都保持沉默,他们得到的就都是最轻惩罚,即1年牢狱。在这种情形中,最佳的个人策略是背叛同伙。但是,在现实审判中,较之依据理性自私假设得出的预期,人们合作的可能性要大得多。合作和利他似乎是人类的一种天性。

Axelrod has been able to extend his model of cooperation from animals in nature, down to cancer cells, and up to conflicts involving rival superpowers. His books include The Evolution of Cooperation, The Complexity of Cooperation, and Harnessing Complexity. He has been published in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, World Politics, and the Journal of Peace Research. During his extensive career, his work on cooperation has been cited more than 9,000 times by researchers across academic disciplines.

Axelrod已将其合作模型大为拓展,从自然界的动物向下延伸至癌细胞,向上延伸至对立强权之间的冲突。其著作包括《合作的进化》、《合作的复杂性》和《驾驭复杂性》,并曾在《科学》、《自然》、《美国国家科学院院刊》、《世界政治》与《和平研究杂志》等期刊上发表论文。在漫长的学术生涯中,他关于合作的研究已被各个学科的研究者引用过9000多次。

It was my distinct honor to talk with Professor A(more...)

标签: | |
6594
National Medal of Science Awarded To Political Scientist Robert Axelrod 政治学家Robert Axelrod获颁国家科学奖章 作者:Eric Michael Johnson @ 2014-12-30 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值) 来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/article/20003131/ Why do we choose to cooperate and how can we promote greater cooperation in world affairs? These are the questions that Robert Axelrod has pursued for more than 40 years. His career has been an interdisciplinary exploration that has encompassed mathematics, political science, and evolutionary biology. Now, his signature achievements in the areas of game theory and complex systems have earned him the highest scientific honor that the United States can bestow: the National Medal of Science. 我们为何选择合作?我们如何在世界事务中推进更大程度的合作?这些都是Robert Axelrod追问了40多年的问题。他的整个职业生涯都致力于跨学科研究,涉及数学、政治科学与进化生物学。如今,他在博弈论和复杂系统领域的标志性成就使他获得了美国可授予的最高科学荣誉:国家科学奖章。 I first encountered Axelrod’s work during my graduate studies working with great apes. His suggestion that cooperation could evolve as an adaptive strategy was an inspiration for me in a field still dominated by the view that selfish interests were the primary driver of evolution. After several years of watching bonobos – one of our closest evolutionary relatives – as they peacefully shared their resources with groupmates and avoided violence at all costs, I was eager for an alternative explanation. 我第一次接触Axelrod的著作,还是在研究生阶段研究类人猿的时候。他提出,合作有可能发展为一种适应策略。当时我所在的领域仍被自利乃进化的基本驱动这一观点所主导,而他的观点对我深有启发。我那时已对人类的进化近亲之一倭黑猩猩进行了好几年观察,发现它们与群体成员和平共享资源,不惜代价避免暴力,所以我特别渴望看到一种替代解释。 Axelrod’s publications with the celebrated evolutionary biologist William Hamilton had put the study of cooperation on a new foundation. What’s more, his application of this work to political science offered the potential for an evolutionary framework that could help reduce violence and encourage mutual aid between nations and peoples. Axelrod和知名进化生物学家William Hamilton的共同作品已为研究合作奠定了新的基础。不仅如此,在将这一成果应用于政治科学之后,他还提出了一种进化论框架的潜在可能,该框架将有助于在国家与民族之间减少暴力、鼓励合作。 Axelrod first pursued a degree in mathematics before receiving his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 1969. After brief stints working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s failed presidential campaign that pledged to end the Vietnam War, Axelrod taught at UC Berkeley before becoming a professor of Political Science and Public Policy at The University of Michigan. Axelrod先获得了数学学位,1969年又获得耶鲁大学政治学博士学位。他曾在国防部长办公室以及参议员尤金·麦卡锡誓将结束越战的失败的总统竞选中短暂工作。此后,Axelrod任教于加州大学伯克利分校,后来成为密歇根大学的政治科学与公共政策教授。 It was Axelrod’s work with computer simulations involving the Prisoner’s Dilemma game that launched his scientific career. In the game, two people who committed a crime are arrested and each is placed in solitary confinement for interrogation. If one betrays the other, the first goes free while the second is sentenced to three years in prison. If they both betray one another, they each receive two years. But if they both keep silent, they receive the minimum penalty of one year each. Under this scenario, the best individual strategy would be to betray the other. However, in actual trials, people were much more likely to cooperate than would be expected under the assumption of rational self-interest. Cooperation and altruism seem to be innate characteristics of the human species. Axelrod对“囚徒困境”博弈的计算机模拟工作开启了他的科学事业。在此类博弈中,两个被捕的罪犯被分别单独拘禁,接受审问。如果其中一个出卖另一个,那么前者就能得到自由,而后者将被处以3年牢狱。如果两人都出卖彼此,那么将各获2年牢狱。但是,如果两人都保持沉默,他们得到的就都是最轻惩罚,即1年牢狱。在这种情形中,最佳的个人策略是背叛同伙。但是,在现实审判中,较之依据理性自私假设得出的预期,人们合作的可能性要大得多。合作和利他似乎是人类的一种天性。 Axelrod has been able to extend his model of cooperation from animals in nature, down to cancer cells, and up to conflicts involving rival superpowers. His books include The Evolution of Cooperation, The Complexity of Cooperation, and Harnessing Complexity. He has been published in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, World Politics, and the Journal of Peace Research. During his extensive career, his work on cooperation has been cited more than 9,000 times by researchers across academic disciplines. Axelrod已将其合作模型大为拓展,从自然界的动物向下延伸至癌细胞,向上延伸至对立强权之间的冲突。其著作包括《合作的进化》、《合作的复杂性》和《驾驭复杂性》,并曾在《科学》、《自然》、《美国国家科学院院刊》、《世界政治》与《和平研究杂志》等期刊上发表论文。在漫长的学术生涯中,他关于合作的研究已被各个学科的研究者引用过9000多次。 It was my distinct honor to talk with Professor Axelrod last week from his current position in the U.S. State Department. In our discussion, he reflected on his work with evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, how cooperation can be promoted within groups, and what this ultimately means for a planet caught in the thrall of competing national powers. 上周,我无比荣幸地与目前在美国国务院就职的Axelrod教授进行了交谈。在谈话中,他回顾了他与进化生物学家William Hamilton的著作,并思考了团体内部如何促进合作以及这对一个深受国际竞争困扰的星球最终意味着什么。

【“复杂系统研究中心” 的创始成员,摄于1980年代。 从左至右:Michael D. Cohen, Robert Axelrod, William Hamilton, Arthur Burks, John Holland, Rick Riolo, Michael Savageau, and Carl Simon. 图片蒙密歇根大学福特公共政策学院惠赐。】

Eric Michael Johnson: To begin with, I would like to talk with you about your work with the evolutionary biologist William Hamilton. In my opinion, this was a model of interdisciplinary collaboration that enriched both fields. How did you end up working with him? Eric Michael Johnson(以下简称J):首先,我想和你谈谈你与进化生物学家William Hamilton合著的著作。我认为,这是本跨学科合作的典范,对两个领域均很有促进。你是如何同他建立合作的? Robert Axelrod: I approached him because I thought that my work on the Prisoner’s Dilemma would have applications to biology. First I got in touch with Richard Dawkins and it was he who suggested Bill Hamilton who, at the time, was visiting The University of Michigan where I was. I didn’t even know he was there. Robert Axelrod(以下简称A):我去找他,是因为我觉得我对囚徒困境的研究可能在生物学上得以应用。首先我是跟Richard Dawkins接触,是他推荐的Bill Hamilton。Hamilton当时正访问我所在的密歇根大学。那时候我甚至都不知道他就在那儿。 When I looked him up and told him about my basic idea, he thought it was quite interesting. As you know, before he died of course, he was a world-class evolutionary biologist most noted for showing that animals often cooperate when they are closely related to each other. But my suggestion was a different idea: that cooperation could also be based on reciprocity. 当我找到他,把我的基本想法跟他一说,他觉得特别有意思。你当然知道,他生前曾是世界级的进化生物学家,特别是以指出亲缘关系密切的动物之间经常进行合作这一点而出名。不过我提出的是个不同的想法:合作也可能基于互惠。 To my delight, Bill immediately saw the value of this approach and he thought we could develop some useful applications for biology. He had already used game theory in some of his work, although he didn’t regard himself as a game theorist. We decided to write an article for Science, which is probably the world’s leading scientific journal. 令我高兴的是,Bill立马看出这一方法的价值,并且认为我们可以在生物学上提出一些有益的应用。他此前已在自己的一些研究中用过博弈论,尽管他并不自视为一个博弈理论家。我们决定给《自然》写篇文章,那大概是世界上最好的科学杂志。 Bill was able to bring the relevance to biology and speak directly to evolutionary biologists in a way that I could not and I brought the original theory. Then we worked out some of the elaborations together. We were really fortunate in that, not only was the article accepted, it was chosen as the best article of the year in Science magazine. It certainly gave my later work a mark of scientific credibility. Bill把生物学引入进来,并且以一种我做不到的方式直接与进化生物学家对话,而我提供的则是原创理论。然后我们共同把某些细节阐述部分解决了。我们运气很好,文章不仅被采用了,还被选为《科学》杂志的年度最佳论文。这当然给我以后的工作提供了科学可信性。 Johnson: What is one of your fondest memories of working with Hamilton? Can you paint a scene of how one of your collaboration sessions played out? J:关于你和Hamilton的合作,你最愉快的记忆是什么?你能描绘一下你们进行合作的场景吗? Axelrod: One of the characteristics I remember about him is that when we were talking about an idea he might suddenly stop and think very deeply about it. I learned to keep quiet and let him ponder. Many times he would come up with a really interesting next step. Of course, sometimes he would come up with something completely different because he had given up pondering the topic at hand and his mind had gone off in some other direction. I could never tell which it would be. It was a lot of fun. A:我记得他有个特点,就是当我们在讨论一个想法时,他可能会突然停下来,陷入深思。我后来学会在这时候保持安静,让他沉思。好多时候,他会想出一个特别有意思的下一步措施。当然,有时候他也会想出一个完全不同的东西,因为他已没在思考我们手头的事,思想早已离题到别的方向去了。我永远没法预知到底会如何。这很有意思。 Johnson: You were both so generous with one another in how you described your work together. For example, Hamilton wrote in his autobiography that your collaboration added to his own biological insights. Would you say that it also added to your own perspective on political science? J在描述你们之间的合作时,你们俩对彼此都非常慷慨大度。比如,Hamilton在他的自传中就说,你们的合作增加了他自己对生物学的理解。你觉得这一合作也拓宽了你自己对政治科学的视角吗? Axelrod: It certainly gave me a deeper sense of the fundamentals that we were studying. It wasn’t something specific like trench warfare, which was one of my examples. I saw that this model could be applied in many different places. For example, as you may know, I later developed another application related to this work as it had to do with cooperation among cancer cells. The same thing happened for him and, several years later, he came up with another idea that he wanted to try out on me related to parasites. A这当然让我对我们当时正研究的基本原理有了更深的理解。它不是堑壕战这么具体的东西,堑壕战是我那时使用的案例之一。我领会到,这个模型能应用于许多不同的地方。比如,如你所知的,我后来论述了与该项研究有关的另外一个应用,涉及癌细胞之间的合作。对他而言,事情也是如此。数年之后,他提出了另外一个与寄生物有关的想法,想要征求我的看法。 Johnson: This would have been your joint paper on the origin of sex. J这应该就是你们关于性别起源的合作论文了。 Axelrod: Yes, his idea was quite amazing. You see, at the time we did not have a good explanation for the fact that almost all large animals and plants reproduce sexually. This was a serious puzzle because it meant that only half of adults – the females – could reproduce. This is a huge cost in evolutionary terms, so there must be something very valuable about it. The fact that sex is so universal means it must be something that large animals and plants have in common. A对,他的想法确实神奇。你知道,对于几乎所有大型动植物都采用有性繁殖一事,我们当时并没有一个好的解释。这是个很重要的谜题,因为它意味着只有半数的成年个体,即雌性,能进行繁殖。从进化的角度来看,这是个巨大的代价,所以必定对应特别大的价值。而由于性别的存在是那么普遍,这种价值必定是大型动植物所共有的。 Bill’s idea for what they have in common was the need to resist parasites. Parasites evolved to mimic our cells so that our immune system wouldn’t attack them. As a result, they can evolve around thirty times faster than we can since their generation time is so short. If you were to reproduce asexually it would mean you’d have an offspring that was almost identical to you, so the parasites that are adapted to you would also be adapted to your offspring. However, by reproducing sexually our offspring are quite different from us. Therefore, the parasites have to start all over. Bill’s idea was that sexual reproduction is an adaptation to resist parasites. It is just a brilliant idea. Bill认为这是为了抵抗寄生物。寄生物进化得能够模拟我们的细胞,使自己不受免疫系统的攻击。结果是,它们的进化速度比我们快30倍,因为它们的世代时长特别短。如果你进行无性繁殖,那就意味着你的后代将跟你几乎一模一样,那么适应了你的寄生物将同样适应你的后代。而有性繁殖使后代与我们大为不同。因此,寄生物得从头开始进化适应。Bill的看法就是,有性繁殖是为抵抗寄生物而产生的一种适应。这真是个绝妙的想法。 Johnson: How did you end up coauthoring the paper with him? J你是如何跟他合写这篇论文的? Axelrod: He said to me that he didn’t have a way of modeling this concept because it inherently involved many genes and, in the formal model, you could only add two or three different genes before the whole thing got too complicated with all of the interaction effects. I used a technique that John Holland at University of Michigan had developed called the genetic algorithm. This was a computer simulation of the genetics and allowed us to handle dozens of genes in one simulation. A他告诉我他找不到方法为这个概念建模,因为它本身涉及许多基因。而在正式的模型中你只能加入两到三个不同的基因,再多就会由于交互作用变得过于复杂。我使用了一种叫做遗传算法的技术,是由密歇根大学的John Holland开发的。这是对基因的一种计算机模拟,一次模拟能处理好几十个基因。 This was just what we needed and we developed a simulation to demonstrate that this idea, at least in principle, was viable. It was a lot of fun to first have one idea of mine that I took to Bill only to have him come back with an idea of his own that I helped do simulations on. 我们就需要这个。我们建模展示了这一想法至少在理论上是可行的。这事确实很有意思,之前是我拿着一个想法去找Bill,结果促使他提出了一个他自己的想法,然后他又来找我帮忙对这个想法进行模拟。 Johnson: So it was a meeting of complementary minds. You would build on one another’s ideas and inspiration. J这就是头脑的互补。你们互相发展对方的观点和灵感。 Axelrod: Right. I remember he said in his memoirs that we were both quite serious about aesthetics. We like simple theories and want to get to the fundamentals of things. We both had a background in mathematical modeling and game theory so, even though we came from different disciplines, we had some important things in common. A对。我记得他在回忆录里说我们俩都非常看重美感。我们都喜欢简单的理论,渴望获得事物的基本原理。我们都曾接受过数学建模和博弈论的训练,所以尽管我们属于不同的学科,但在许多重要方面有共同点。 In addition, I had been fascinated with evolution ever since high school and had taken it quite seriously. I thought a lot about evolutionary biology although I certainly was not a professional. But it meant that he and I could communicate well together because I knew many of the basics in a way that political scientists wouldn’t normally be expected to. 除此之外,自高中时起我就一直对进化很是着迷,也很重视。我经常思考进化生物学的问题,当然我肯定不是这方面的专家。但这意味着我和他之间能够很好地交流,因为我知道很多政治科学家通常不会知道的基础知识。 Another thing that he mentioned in his memoirs is that neither one of us had any need to one up the other or establish who had made the biggest contribution. There was never any need to be overly modest just out of the sake of politeness, which I think is common in Britain and something Bill was used to from his time at Oxford. He was simply a delight to work with. 他在回忆录中还提到另外一件事,就是我们都没想要压过对方或者要论谁的功劳大。我们也从未觉得有必要出于礼貌的考虑而表现的过分谦虚,这一点我想在英国很普遍,而Bill自其牛津时代起就已习惯如此。与他合作真的非常愉快。 Johnson: You have also taken on other evolutionary questions over the years. One of the debates I have always been interested in is that you have been critical of some evolutionary psychologists, such as Joseph Henrich at University of British Columbia where I am based, who argue that there are specific genes for prosocial traits. Instead you advocate for more general-purpose capabilities such as language and foresight. Do you think there is an overreliance among some evolutionary researchers on genetic mechanisms for understanding the nature of cooperation and altruism? J多年以来,你也曾研究过其它进化问题。我历来很感兴趣的争论之一是,你一直对一些进化心理学家,比如我所在的英属哥伦比亚大学的Joseph Henrich,持批评态度。Henrich认为存在能够导致亲社会特性的特定基因。而你则主张(亲社会特性来自于)用途更为一般化的能力,如语言和预见能力。你是否认为某些进化学研究者在试图对合作和利他的本质进行理解时过分依赖基因机制? Axelrod: I think that genetics certainly plays a role. But I am kind of agnostic about just how big the role of genetics is in human behavior. For example, there is no doubt that an important genetic basis exists in both human and nonhuman animals for cooperation with kin. What I was addressing was how specific those genetic components have to be. A我认为基因确实发挥了作用。但是对于基因在塑造人类行为中的作用有多大这一问题,我有点倾向于不可知论。比方说,人类以及动物的亲缘间合作,毫无疑问存在非常重要的基因基础。我那时候要搞清楚的是,这些基因成分要具体独特到何种程度。 Henrich was moving towards the side where they are highly specific and identifiable. My collaborator and I were saying that it could be explained by much more general capacities that were evoked for this purpose. It wasn’t a major difference. Genes are important but I’m not a purist who believes they drive everything. Obviously culture is important too. Henrich倾向于认为它们十分特定且可识别。我和我的合作者则认为亲缘间合作可以由更一般化的能力来解释,这些能力就是为此目的而产生的。这并不是大分歧。基因很重要,但我不是个纯粹主义者。我不认为一切都由基因推动。显然文化也很重要。 Johnson: When Darwin was trying to understand the origin of morality in The Descent of Man he adopted a group selection model where those individuals that displayed selfish tendencies would be punished whereas those that displayed traits benefitting the group would be rewarded. Christopher Boehm followed up on this idea in his book Moral Origins that came out a few years ago. Do you find that the evolution of cooperation has come full circle back to where Darwin originally was? J当达尔文在《人类的由来》一书中试图理解道德的起源时,他使用了一种群体选择模型。在这个模型中,表现出自私倾向的个体会被惩罚,而表现出有益于群体的特征的个体会得到奖励。Christopher Boehm在几年前出版的著作《道德起源》中进一步发展了这种观点。你是否认为合作的进化论兜了一整个大圈子,回到了达尔文所在的起点? Axelrod: I think that Darwin’s speculation is quite plausible. At the time he couldn’t really establish it by studying large numbers of societies and identifying those that thrived and those that didn’t. A我认为达尔文的猜想似乎相当合理。那时候他不可能研究大量的社会,并确认哪些兴盛,哪些没有,然后真正证实他的猜想。 The idea of group selection, until recently, has had a pretty bad reputation in biology because some non-scientists wildly misused it, saying that if the British were so successful it must be because they were genetically better. But in the last ten years or so biologists have come to agree that, under certain conditions, one can get group selection. 在生物学中,群体选择这一观点直至最近名声都很差,因为它曾被一些非科学家滥用,他们宣称英国人如此成功必然是由于他们在基因上更为优秀。但在过去约十年间,生物学家们已经达成共识,认为在特定条件下确实存在群体选择。 If one small band of humans are better at cooperating than some other band whom they are competing with, the first may well be able to outperform the second either through getting more food or maybe even by fighting and killing them. I think it is a common principle that cooperation is invoked in the service of competition. Cooperation with insiders serves competition with outsiders. 如果一伙人比正与他们竞争的另外一伙人更善于合作,那么第一伙人或许能够远胜第二伙人,这或者是由于他们能获取更多食物,或者由于他们可能干脆将第二伙人打败并消灭。合作之产生是为了竞争,我认为这是一条一般性原则。与内部人合作是为了与外人竞争。 Johnson: You modeled this very process in the journal Nature with what you refer to as tags. You show that cooperation could increase even without reciprocity or high levels of relatedness. If enough individuals with the same tag were in a group they might cooperate simply because they shared these tags. Could you expand on that? J你在《自然》杂志上为你刚说的这一过程建立了模型,用的是你所谓的“标记”。你指出,即使没有互惠性或程度很高的亲缘关系,合作也可能增进。如果一个群体中具有相同“标记”的个体足够多,他们也可能纯粹因为共享同一种“标记”就相互合作。你能对此加以阐释吗? Axelrod: The idea of tags was actually developed by John Holland. Tags are completely arbitrary pieces of information that other people can observe, such as your accent or your skin color or the color shirt you wear. These are signals as to what group a person is a member of and this can lead to ethnocentrism or cooperating with others that are similar to you. A“标记”这个想法实际上是由John Holland提出的。“标记”就是别人能够观察到的任意信息,比如你的口音或肤色或你所穿的有色衬衫。这是一种信号,表明某人所属的群体,而它会引发本族中心主义或相似的人们之间的合作。 Even if those things are completely arbitrary initially, they can come to take on meaning. They become correlated with traits that include reciprocity. Of course, the question gets tricky and interesting in that somebody else can have this trait or be part of the in-group but then abuse that and not cooperate. 即使这些标记最初是完全任意的,它们也能逐渐承载意义。它们开始与某些特质相关,其中包括互惠性。当然,某人也可能具有某种特质或是这个内部团体的一份子而滥用了这一点,不与他人合作。这时候问题就变得更棘手也更有趣。 I remember Groucho Marx once said that, “The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you’ve got it made.” One of the purposes of our simulation is to study the conditions under which defectors are not able to take over a population even though, in the short run, they can do well. 我记得Groucho Marx曾经说过,“成功的秘诀就是诚实和公平交易。如果能假装如此,你已然成功。”我们所做模拟的一个目的就是要研究在什么条件下背叛者即使能短期得利也无法骗过整个群体。 Johnson: Do these models suggest that there is room for cultural and institutional change in order to promote cooperation in world affairs? For example, you wrote an article for The New York Times along with Scott Atran about how we should talk to terrorists. J这些模型是否表明,世界事务中存在通过文化和制度变革来推动合作的空间?比方说,你曾和Scott Atran一道为《纽约时报》写过一篇文章,讨论我们应该如何跟恐怖分子对话。 Axelrod: That’s right. As an interesting side note, you may know that this year I am working in the State Department on a fellowship. I was a little worried that I might not get a security clearance because I actually have talked to terrorists. But I have been up front about this so it turned out not to be a problem. I was still able to get my clearance. A对。顺便说个有趣的事。你可能也知道我今年正在国务院做研究员。我起先还有点担心通不过安全审查,因为我真地跟恐怖分子交谈过。不过我对此一直都很坦率,所以最后也没什么事。我还是通过了审查。 Johnson: So is this the kind of thing that could be utilized? By employing various tags and emphasizing shared cultural traits we might enter into closer dialogue that would promote cooperation. J那么我们能对标记加以利用对吗?通过调用多种多样的标记,通过强调共享的文化特征,我们有可能更为深入地对话,从而可能推动合作。 Axelrod: That is the aspiration. But there are some groups, and perhaps ISIL is one of them, where there is not a lot to talk to them about. A这是我们的期望。但是对于某些群体,可能跟他们就没多少可谈的,ISIL可能是这种情况吧。 Johnson: You noted in one of your autobiographical papers that your father was a painter and that he represented what was important on a given day by what he left out. In your early work you emphasized the Prisoner’s Dilemma because, at the time, the world was in a conflict between rival superpowers. How has the changing world situation altered what you find important and how has that influenced what you include, or don’t include, in your models? J在你的一篇自传文章中,你曾提到你的父亲是个画家,他会通过留白来表现某个特定日子里的重要事物。你在早期著作中强调的是囚徒困境,因为当时世界正处于超级大国的对立冲突之中。世界情势的变化是如何改变你对何者重要这一问题的认识的?这又如何对你的模型包括或不包括哪些东西产生影响呢? Axelrod: Obviously we’re not in a strict bipolar situation today like the United States and the Soviet Union were in the dominant confrontation during the Cold War. Now there are a number of power centers and, you might say, a two-sided game is only part of the issue. A很显然,我们现在面临的并非严格的两极态势,这跟冷战的时候已经不一样了,那时美国和苏联的对抗主导了局面。现在有很多权力中心,你可以说,双边游戏只是整个问题的一部分。 However, there are still lots of bilateral issues such as between Russia and its neighbor Ukraine. The United States and China also have a complex relationship that has elements of both cooperation and competition. In terms of the U.S.-Chinese relationship, a particularly important feature is that it represents an established power relating to a rising power. 不过,现在也仍然存在大量的双边问题,比如俄罗斯与其邻国乌克兰之间。中美之间的关系也很复杂,既有合作,也有竞争。就中美关系而言,一个特别重要的特征在于,它代表的是一个既存大国与一个崛起大国之间的关系。 Those situations have often led to war in the past. That has been a difficult relationship to manage. I think it is important that we recognize and promote the cooperative aspects and possibilities, just as President Obama did with the President of China on their agreement over climate change. We should build a cooperative relationship where we both have a common interest in the outcome. 历史上这种情形通常会导致战争。这一直是一种难以处理的关系。我认为,认识到并推进利于合作的各种方面和可能性,就像奥巴马总统和中国主席在气候变化问题上达成一致那样,是很重要的。在共同利益所在之处,我们应该建立合作关系。 Johnson: So this would still fall into the Prisoner’s Dilemma model. But it seems that there would be a high potential for noise, something that you wrote you wish you had considered more in your earlier work. J那么这仍然会陷入囚徒困境。不过似乎出现噪音的可能性会很高,关于这个事,你曾写道,你颇为遗憾没能在早期著作中加以更多考虑。 Axelrod: That’s right. For our purposes, instead of using the term noise it’s misunderstanding. One side may think it is perfectly reasonable and the other side might think it is breaking the norms that they should be following. An example of this is cyberspace where the United States gets quite angry that the Chinese are stealing industrial secrets and the Chinese don’t regard that as necessarily any different from normal espionage which everybody accepts that other countries do. A对。就我们的目的而言,使用“噪音”这个词汇,不如使用“误解”。一方认为极为合理的,另一方则认为破坏了彼此应当遵守的规则。这方面的一个例子是中国人在互联网上偷窃产业机密,美国对此非常恼怒,而中国人并不觉得这一定跟被普遍接受的别国所进行的常规间谍活动有什么区别。 Johnson: This would tie in with Elinor Ostrom’s work as it relates to the digital commons and how to manage that. J这就跟Elinor Ostrom关于数字公地及如何对之进行管理的文章有关了。 Axelrod: Right. You have clearly done a thorough job of looking at my vitae. (Laughs) A对。你显然认真细致地检查过我的履历表。(笑) Johnson: I’ve been reading your work for quite a while. J我读你的作品可有一段时间了。 Axelrod: But you’re right. I think it is important that we sustain the tremendous value of the Internet as a common resource that helps all economies to thrive and helps individuals, businesses, and countries. It is under challenge now because some countries, for example Germany, are promoting the idea that the data generated in their country should stay in their country. This sounds reasonable but it also risks the Balkanization of the Internet and undermining the collective good. A你是对的。因特网有助于所有经济体的繁荣,有助于所有的个体、企业和国家。我认为,维持它作为这种公共资源的巨大价值非常重要。这一点现在正受到挑战,因为有些国家,比如德国,正在宣扬一种观点,认为本国产生的数据就应该留在国内。这种说法听起来合理,但同时也有将网络割据化、破坏集体利益的危险。 Johnson: You are the first political scientist to be awarded the National Science Medal in United States history. While this award may represent the pinnacle of your career, it certainly is not the end. Where do you plan to go next? J你是美国历史上首位获得国家科学奖章的政治科学家。尽管这一奖励可能代表着你的学术生涯的顶峰,但它显然不会是终点。你下一步打算朝哪走? Axelrod: (Laughs) Two things, I have a serious interest in cyber conflict and what we can do to avoid or manage conflict in cyberspace. This could get very serious if one country causes blackouts in another or interferes with the financial system as a way to pressure the other instead of bombing them. A(笑)两件事,一是,对于网络冲突以及我们避免及处理网络空间冲突的可能措施,我十分感兴趣。这个问题可能变得非常严重,比如一个国家在另外一个国家制造出信号中断,或者干扰他国的金融系统,以这种方式,而不是轰炸,来向他国施压。 Because we don’t have established norms of what counts as armed conflict there could be a good deal of misunderstanding. One side could think they didn’t escalate very much and the other side could take action that is very serious. We understand the escalation ladder for conventional warfare, for example, but we really don’t have a common understanding for the various types of cyber conflict. I think it has a serious potential for misunderstanding so I’m interested in those issues and have an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the timing of cyber conflict. 因为对于什么算作武装冲突,我们并没有确定的规范,因此就可能存在大量的误解。一方可能认为其措施并没有剧烈升级,而另一方则可能采取非常严肃的行动。对于常规战争之类的危机升级阶梯,我们是熟悉的,但对于各种各样的网络冲突,我们确实没有什么共识。我认为这里存在引发误解的极为严重的可能性,所以我对这些问题很感兴趣。我在《美国科学院院刊》上发过一篇文章,就是关于网络冲突的时机掌握。 The other thing I have been interested in is learning about the State Department, about how organizations make decisions, and how policies develop using this opportunity to see policy formation from the inside. 我一直感兴趣的另一件事,是想了解国务院,想通过这次机会从内部观察政策形成的过程,了解组织如何做决策以及政策是如何形成的。 Johnson: Looking inside the sausage factory. J深入肉肠工厂里面去看个究竟。 Axelrod: Right. A对的。 Johnson: One final question I have for you is that, despite all of the crises in the world today and a seemingly gridlocked political system at home, what continues to give you hope? J我想提的最后一个问题是,如今世界上有如此多的冲突,而国内政治体系则似乎陷入僵局,面对这种情况,是什么让你继续存有希望? Axelrod: One important fact is that we have not had great power wars for a long time. I suppose the last time would have been the United States and China fighting in the Korean War from 1950-53. That was sixty years ago. We have not had a great power confrontation in all that time and even the Korean War was quite limited. A一个重要的事实是,我们已经很久没见过大国之间的战争了。我觉得最后一次可能是1950-53年中美之间的朝鲜战争。那都是60年前的事了。这么长的时间没有发生过大国冲突,而且即便是朝鲜战争,那也是相当有限的。 I think it is possible, and it’s certainly hopeful, that major powers can find non-violent ways of dealing with each other and making their interests known to the other side. But it is not guaranteed. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is a serious danger and major differences exist between the United States and Russia in this area. And, of course, jihadism is a serious threat to the world. 大国之间能够找到非暴力的方式来打交道,以让对方知晓自己的利益,我认为这是可能的,而且必定很有希望。但这一点没有保证。核武器的扩散是个严重的危险,而美俄两国在这个领域存在重大分歧。此外,圣战运动当然也是对世界的严重威胁。 But none of these are as serious as World War I or World War II or as dangerous as the Cold War. We could have had hundreds of millions of people dead in a single day if the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t go well, for example, or if some of the Berlin confrontations had escalated. So I am hopeful that the world is not as dangerous as it was then and that great powers can continue to deal with each other without periodic wars that seemed to be so common in the past. 不过,所有这些都不如一站或二战那么严重,也不如冷战那么危险。比如,如果古巴导弹危机没处理好,或者如果某次柏林对峙得以升级,我们一天就可能死掉几亿人。所以,世界不再像从前那样危险,大国之间能够继续与彼此打交道而不走向在过去似乎极为常见的周期性战争,对于这一点,我是抱有希望的。 Johnson: Thank you for taking this time to talk with me. I personally have gained a lot from reading your work over the years and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you have received this honor. J谢谢你花时间与我交谈。过去多年间,我本人从阅读你的作品中收获良多。你获得这一荣誉,我的激动无以言表。 Axelrod: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. I enjoyed talking with you as well. A啊,特别感谢你。我很感激。与你交谈我也很享受。 (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——

[译文]为何人类阴道那么大

Why Is the Human Vagina So Big?
为什么人类阴道那么大

作者:Holly Dunsworth @ 2015-12-03
译者:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)
校对:林翠(@cwlinnil)
来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/blog/why-is-the-human-vagina-so-big/

We are obsessed with penis and testicle size. Yet, we can barely say “vagina” and when we do we’re usually talking about the vulva.

我们总是着迷于阴茎和睾丸的尺寸,却极少谈及“阴道”,就算我们提到了,一般也只是讨论外阴。

Everyone’s come across some article somewhere on-line that is thrilled to share how big human penises really are, for primates, and to explain why they evolved to be so big. It’s not really the length, but the girth. Alan Dixson is your go-to on this. He’s conservative in his assessment of the literature on penis size and even he concedes that human penis “circumference is unusual when compared to the penes of other hominoids (apes)” (p. 65 in Sexual Selection and the Origins of Human Mating Systems).

每个人都见过,网上的一些文章在兴奋不已地告诉你,人类的阴茎在灵长类中有多大,为什么会进化成这么大。其实所谓的大,不是指长度,而是指茎围。说到这个话题,你去问Alan Dixson就准没错。他对有关阴茎大小的文献一贯持比较谨慎的态度,但连他也承认,人类的阴茎“周长和其他人猿的阳具相比是个异数” (见《性选择与人类繁衍系统起源》第65页)

A favorite explanation for the big phallus is female mate choice, that females selectively make babies with males who have larger and, presumably, more pleasurable semen delivery devices. This is backed up by studies. When life size projections of naked men are shown to female subjects, they say they find the ones with bigger ones to be more attractive. [This is exactly how mate choice works where I live, how about you?]

对阳具大型化的一个比较受欢迎的解释是雌性交配偏好,也就是说雌性倾向于选择与有着较硕大、想来也较受用的“精液注射器”的雄性交配产子。这一理论得到了一些研究的支持。有研究让女性受访对象看真实大小的裸男幻灯片,她们纷纷表示阳具伟岸的男性比较有吸引力。(这完全符合我日常所见的择偶选择,你呢?)

Other explanations include male competition. If you can deliver your package to the front yard but the other guy can deliver to the front door, his is more likely to be carried inside the house first. Or, if he can steal away what you just delivered, then, again, his package has yours beat. Thanks to his big penis he’s more likely to pass on his winning penis genes than you are to pass on your loser penis genes. Loser.

雄性竞争也是一种解释。如果你只能把包裹投递到院子里,但另一个人可以把包裹放到屋门前,那他的包裹先进屋的几率就高一些。又或者,如果他可以偷走你刚送的包裹,那他的包裹也一样打败了你的。因为器材比较大,他延续他那“赢茎”基因的可能性比你延续你那“输茎”基因的可能性也就比较大。于是你就完蛋了。

All this is just terribly fun to write about and I’m not even going nuts (gah) like they do. And they do. They really do(more...)

标签: |
6570
Why Is the Human Vagina So Big? 为什么人类阴道那么大 作者:Holly Dunsworth @ 2015-12-03 译者:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子) 校对:林翠(@cwlinnil) 来源:The Evolution Institute,https://evolution-institute.org/blog/why-is-the-human-vagina-so-big/ We are obsessed with penis and testicle size. Yet, we can barely say “vagina” and when we do we’re usually talking about the vulva. 我们总是着迷于阴茎和睾丸的尺寸,却极少谈及“阴道”,就算我们提到了,一般也只是讨论外阴。 Everyone’s come across some article somewhere on-line that is thrilled to share how big human penises really are, for primates, and to explain why they evolved to be so big. It’s not really the length, but the girth. Alan Dixson is your go-to on this. He’s conservative in his assessment of the literature on penis size and even he concedes that human penis “circumference is unusual when compared to the penes of other hominoids (apes)” (p. 65 in Sexual Selection and the Origins of Human Mating Systems). 每个人都见过,网上的一些文章在兴奋不已地告诉你,人类的阴茎在灵长类中有多大,为什么会进化成这么大。其实所谓的大,不是指长度,而是指茎围。说到这个话题,你去问Alan Dixson就准没错。他对有关阴茎大小的文献一贯持比较谨慎的态度,但连他也承认,人类的阴茎“周长和其他人猿的阳具相比是个异数” (见《性选择与人类繁衍系统起源》第65页) A favorite explanation for the big phallus is female mate choice, that females selectively make babies with males who have larger and, presumably, more pleasurable semen delivery devices. This is backed up by studies. When life size projections of naked men are shown to female subjects, they say they find the ones with bigger ones to be more attractive. [This is exactly how mate choice works where I live, how about you?] 对阳具大型化的一个比较受欢迎的解释是雌性交配偏好,也就是说雌性倾向于选择与有着较硕大、想来也较受用的“精液注射器”的雄性交配产子。这一理论得到了一些研究的支持。有研究让女性受访对象看真实大小的裸男幻灯片,她们纷纷表示阳具伟岸的男性比较有吸引力。(这完全符合我日常所见的择偶选择,你呢?) Other explanations include male competition. If you can deliver your package to the front yard but the other guy can deliver to the front door, his is more likely to be carried inside the house first. Or, if he can steal away what you just delivered, then, again, his package has yours beat. Thanks to his big penis he’s more likely to pass on his winning penis genes than you are to pass on your loser penis genes. Loser. 雄性竞争也是一种解释。如果你只能把包裹投递到院子里,但另一个人可以把包裹放到屋门前,那他的包裹先进屋的几率就高一些。又或者,如果他可以偷走你刚送的包裹,那他的包裹也一样打败了你的。因为器材比较大,他延续他那“赢茎”基因的可能性比你延续你那“输茎”基因的可能性也就比较大。于是你就完蛋了。 All this is just terribly fun to write about and I’m not even going nuts (gah) like they do. And they do. They really do. And all over the Internet they do: “Evolution of human penis” gets 53,000 hits just on scholar.google alone, and about 832,000 on Google. 写这些东西真是好玩死了,而我又不会像他们那样疯狂,咔咔。他们真是挺疯的,不骗你。男人在网上有这么疯:搜索“人类阴茎的进化”,仅仅在谷歌学术上就得到了53,000个结果,在整个谷歌上则得到了832,000个。 But doesn’t it make sense that for a penis to be somewhat useful it has to be somewhat correlated to vagina size? 但是,如果阴茎要发挥功能,难道不是应该和阴道的大小联系起来才说的通吗? I’m talking about all penises in the universe and all vaginas too. Sure there’s variation, but a penis can’t be too wide. It helps to be long, probably, but it can’t be too long. 我在讨论的是地球上所有的阴茎,和地球上所有的阴道。当然它们会有差异,但阴茎也不能太粗。长应该是有好处,但也不能太长。 So neither pleasure nor psychology need matter at all, just function associated with some sort of fit. Pleasure and psychology are never invoked to explain penis morphology in other animals. If anything, it’s the cornucopia of horrifying, not pleasing, animal penises that begs for evolutionary explanations. 其实肉体欢愉和心理需要都根本不重要,重要的只是与大小匹配相关的功能。肉体欢愉和心理感受从来就没有被拿来解释其他动物的阴茎形态。如果非要从进化论的角度看,就要去解释太多种并不讨喜,反而可怕的动物阴茎了。 Wouldn’t you explain the size and shape of the key by the size and shape of the lock? So wouldn’t it be a little more scientifically sound to hypothesize that the human penis is sized and shaped like that because it fits well into the human vagina? 你在解释钥匙的大小和形状的时候,不是以锁的大小和形状为参照的吗?因此,人类阴茎之所以是如此的大小和形状,是为了要匹配人类的阴道,这种猜想在科学上不是比较合理么? Sure, it gets chicken-and-eggy or turtles-all-the-way-downy, but c’mon. Isn’t it a bit obvious that the privates that fit inside the other privates are probably correlated? You’d think that even the people who have never had intercourse would default to this explanation for the evolution of the human penis. 当然,这会演变成一个鸡先蛋先,又或者是龟下有龟的问题【译注:”It’s turtles all the way down”来自一则古老的轶事,体现逻辑上的无限递归,后来成为一句玩笑话,用来表达表面立于不败之地,而实则回避逻辑问题的境况】。不过,拜托,互相契合的灵长类体征具有相关性,这不是很明显吗?你应该会同意,就算没有性经验的人,不需多想也会接受这个有关人类阴茎进化的理论吧。 But we’re rarely, if ever, told that human penises are relatively girthy because human vaginas are. It’s always about male competition or female preference. 但我们极少,甚至从没有听人提过,人类的阴茎之所以比较粗大,是因为人类的阴道比较粗大。大家总是在研究那些雄性竞争和雌性偏好的理论。 Sure, we may be a little weird compared to our close relatives for not having a baculum (penis bone), and maybe that’s the sort of thing you want to explain for whatever reason, but does human penis size and shape need a uniquely human story? 人类阴茎没有骨骼,和人类的近亲相比这也许显得有些奇怪,你可能会出于种种原因想为这一现象找个解释。但人类阴茎的大小和形状有别于其它动物,真的需要一个独特的解释吗? Assuming it’s correlated to the vagina like it probably is in many other species,* then no it doesn’t… unless the size and shape of the human vagina has an exceptional story. 有不少其他动物的阴茎大小和形状很可能和它们的阴道相关,假设人类也是如此,那除非人类阴道的形态有异于其它动物,否则人类阴茎的形态不应该有什么特别。

journal.pone_.0000418.g002 [水禽雌雄生殖器官协同变异的图例。标星型的为雄性生殖器,箭头指向的是女性生殖器。图片来自“水禽雌雄生殖形态的协同进化”。DOI编码: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000418]

Does it? We wouldn’t know. There are zero (look!) articles titled “Why is the human vagina so big?” 究竟有没什么特别呢,我们不知道。从来都没有文章(你自己看!)以“为何人类的阴道那么大”为题。 Until right now. 直到现在才有。 Here we go. If we were going to answer it the same way we’ve long explained the human penis, and other animal penis shapes, then we’ve got a few ideas… 来吧,如果以我们长期以来解释人类和其他动物阴茎形态的思路,来回答这一问题的话,我们可以有如下一些解释…… Because walking upright made the vagina conspicuous and males thought a bigger vagina was better. Because big vaginas outcompete small ones at catching sperm. Because of male pleasure from coitus with a big vagina. Because of heat dissipation or thermoregulation. Because of a tradeoff with brain size. 因为直立行走让阴道外露,雄性认为阴道大一点比较好。因为大点的阴道比小点的更易于捕捉精子。因为大一点的阴道令雄性性交更舒服。因为有利于散热和调节体温。因为这是针对脑量增大的折衷方案。 And of course, we’d need to demonstrate that the human vagina is in fact larger, relative to body size, than the vaginas of other primates. Regardless, a sound answer to the question of vagina size and shape focuses on childbirth, wouldn’t you say? She’s got to be big enough to push out a baby and, for humans, it’s a great big baby. 当然,我们需要证明人类阴道相对于身体的比例,比起其它灵长类动物来说的确要更大。无论如何,难道你不觉得要回答人类阴道大小形状的问题,重点应该放在分娩上吗?阴道得足够大才能把婴儿生出来呀,人类婴儿的个头可大得很。 #169-3

[红毛猩,大猩猩,黑猩猩与人类的对比。这些数值偏离了灵长类总体的回归分析。数据来自Dunsworth等人,2012年,PNAS第 109(38):15212-15216]

So if there’s an exceptionally human story for the great big human penis, that exceptional story originates not in a woman’s orgasms, not in her pornographic thoughts or her lustful eyes, but in her decidedly unsexy “birth canal.” 所以如果人类阴茎硕大有什么特别原因的话,那原因既不是来自女人的性高潮,也不是来自女人的淫思欲眼,而是来自于那毫无性感可言的“产道”。 And I dug up a nice little note to explain this to us all written by Dr. Bowman, a gynecologist, back in 2008 for the Archives of Sexual Behavior which is magnificent. It starts out giving the only vagina-size-based, not to mention childbirth-based, explanation for human penises that I can find in the literature (which is thankfully cited by Dixson in his book mentioned above). But it still manages to bring the explanation beyond the vagina and onto another proud triumph: “In sum, man’s larger penis is a consequence of his larger brain.” 我找到了妇科医生Bowman于2008年发表在《性行为档案》上的一篇文章,该文很好地向大家解释了上述问题。文章开始以阴道大小和分娩需要为切入点来解释人类阴茎的大小,这是我能找到的以阴道大小来解释阴茎大小的唯一文献,从分娩需要着眼就更不用说了。这要感谢Dixson在前文提到的书中引用了这一资料。Bowman在文中还站在一个比阴道更高的层次,去解释这个问题:“总而言之,人类阴茎巨大是脑量增加的后果”。 After you clean up the coffee you just spat onto your computer screen, you can read it all for yourself by clicking on the link up there (or emailing me for the pdf). 你可以先把喷到电脑上的咖啡抹干净,然后点击上面的链接,通读一下那篇文章(想要pdf格式的可以发邮件给我)。 Guess who didn’t read it? That study in PNAS, mentioned above, that showed women naked penises, got a high attractive score for the big ones, and thinks that’s evidence for mate choice now, today, let alone back when (I’m going to speculate that) women had a tiny bit less of it. 你猜谁没有读过那篇文章?就是文章开头提到的那项研究的研究者【编注:指本文第三节提到的“让女性受访对象看真实大小的裸男幻灯片”的那项研究】,他们把阴茎赤裸裸地呈现给女人看,让那些大家伙拿到高分,然后认为拿到了交配偏好在当代的证据,至于过去女人眼福稍浅(我只是猜的)的年代是什么情况,就更不用废话了。 Point is, the literature rages on with the special explanations for the big penis with nary a big vagina in sight. 重点是,各路文章热火朝天地为大阴茎找了各种特别的原因,却对大阴道视而不见。 But you heard it here, at least. 但起码你在这里听说了。 Childbirth is why the human vagina is so big and, consequently, why the male penis is so big. It’s pretty straightforward. Yet we’re still left scratching our heads as to why the penis question endures. 分娩导致了人类阴道如此巨大,进而导致人类阴茎如此巨大。这很直观。然而大阴茎的话题经久不衰,这很令我们挠头。 Is evolutionary science averse to big vaginas? 难道进化研究是反大阴道的么? Does nobody love a big vagina? 难道就没人喜欢大阴道么? Because that’s just ridiculous. Everybody came from one. 这很荒谬,每个人都是从那儿出来的呀。

******

P.S. Unfortunately a few scholar.google searches led me to find no cross-species comparisons of mammalian vagina lengths or any vaginal measures. It may be out there, but I haven’ t found it. I found some measures for bitches… DOGS! And some heifers… COWS! So I’ve got to compile some data if I’m to do this properly. Baby size might be a way to do this. P.S. 我在谷歌学术搜索了一下,可惜没有找到不同哺乳动物阴道长度或尺码的对比。也许有,但我找不到。我倒是找到了狗娘的尺码……是真的母狗啦!还有牛逼的尺码……也是真的母牛啦!所以如果要认真对比的话,我得收集整理一些数据才行。通过分析婴儿的大小可能也是一个办法。 P.P.S. p. 73 in Dixson has Figure 4.3 with nine primate species’ penile and vaginal lengths plotted. Thanks Patrick C. for reminding me where I’d seen something like this and where to point readers! P.P.S. Dixson书中第73页的图表4.3,列出了九种灵长类动物的阴茎与阴道的长度。谢谢Patrick C.提醒我曾经看到过这样的图表,让我可以告诉读者上哪里找。 (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——

[译文]钟形曲线上的窄尾巴

Tails of Great Soccer Players
伟大足球运动员的窄尾分布

作者:Jacob @ 2015-11-19
译者:Veidt(@Veidt)
校对:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny)
来源:Put A Number On It!,http://putanumonit.com/2015/11/10/003-soccer1/

Isn’t it strange that the Chinese aren’t world champions in every single team sport? Here’s why it’s strange: China has 19% of the world’s population. For individual sports that may not be a huge deal: if tennis ability and opportunity are distributed equally around the world, there would be only a 19% chance that the best tennis player hails from China and 81% that he is Swiss, Serbian, Spanish, Scottish or from any other country. It is somewhat surprising seeing the top 5 superior servers and strikers of soft springy spheres with swings of stringed racquets all come from sovereign states that start with “S”, but that’s a separate story.

中国没能在所有团队运动项目中成为世界冠军着实是件奇怪的事情。这之所以奇怪,是因为中国拥有着全世界19%的人口。对于个人运动项目来说,也许这个数字还并不算太大:如果打网球的能力和机会在全球均等地分布,那么全世界最好的网球运动员来自中国的概率仅有19%,而他来自于瑞士,塞尔维亚,西班牙,苏格兰或者任何其它国家的概率则有81%。全世界最具统治力的5名网球选手都来自于国名以“S”开头的国家这件事情的确有点令人吃惊,但那是另一件事情。

In team sports that should be different. If soccer talent was equally spread China should have on average 19 of the top 100 players in each generation, almost never less than 11. Countries like Spain, Germany and France on the other hand would expect to have 1 player in the top 100, maybe 2 or 3 if they’re lucky. That would be no match for the loaded Chinese squad. Even a top 3 player can’t dominate all by himself in a team-based sport like soccer, as evidenced by the below picture of sad Ronaldo.

在团队运动中情况则完全不同。如果踢足球的天赋在世界上均等地分布,那么平均而言,在每一代世界上最好的100名球员中,中国会拥有19个,而这个数字几乎绝不可能低于11。另一方面,西班牙,德国和法国这些国家则通常只会有1名球员进入全球前100名,即使幸运的话也最多只有2或3名。而他们的队伍应该完全无法与皆由精英组成的中国队抗衡。毕竟,即使是排名世界前3的球员也无法在足球这样的一项团队运动中靠一己之力统治比赛,下图中C罗悲伤的表情充分证明了这一点。

And yet, the Chinese team is not good at soccer, and I’m putting that milder than some. The Chinese men’s national soccer team is ranked 84th in the world, a few spots below Antigua and Barbuda – a nation with a population of 90,000. That’s roughly equal to a single neighborhood in Shanghai.

但实际上中国足球队的水平并不高,而我的这种表述方式已经比一些人温和得多了。中国男子国家足球队的世界排名是第84位,他们的积分比安提瓜和巴布达还要低上几分,而这个国家的人口仅有9万,几乎只相当于上海的一个街区。

Motivation is often brought up as an explanation: perhaps the Chinese have the talent and opportunity to play soccer, but all 1.3 billion of them choose not to. Perhaps instead of playing soccer they choose to study. Those that play soccer the least and study the most can go into medicine, and those that study hardest of all and have no room for soccer make it into top medical schools in the US.

常被提到的一个理由是动力不足:也许中国人拥有踢足球的天赋和机会,但是13亿中国人却选择不去踢。也许他们宁愿把时间花在学习上。那些踢球踢得少,读书读得多的孩子可以去学医,而那些在学习上最用功以至完全没时间踢球的(more...)

标签:
6560
Tails of Great Soccer Players 伟大足球运动员的窄尾分布 作者:Jacob @ 2015-11-19 译者:Veidt(@Veidt) 校对:Drunkplane(@Drunkplane-zny) 来源:Put A Number On It!,http://putanumonit.com/2015/11/10/003-soccer1/ Isn’t it strange that the Chinese aren’t world champions in every single team sport? Here’s why it’s strange: China has 19% of the world’s population. For individual sports that may not be a huge deal: if tennis ability and opportunity are distributed equally around the world, there would be only a 19% chance that the best tennis player hails from China and 81% that he is Swiss, Serbian, Spanish, Scottish or from any other country. It is somewhat surprising seeing the top 5 superior servers and strikers of soft springy spheres with swings of stringed racquets all come from sovereign states that start with “S”, but that’s a separate story. 中国没能在所有团队运动项目中成为世界冠军着实是件奇怪的事情。这之所以奇怪,是因为中国拥有着全世界19%的人口。对于个人运动项目来说,也许这个数字还并不算太大:如果打网球的能力和机会在全球均等地分布,那么全世界最好的网球运动员来自中国的概率仅有19%,而他来自于瑞士,塞尔维亚,西班牙,苏格兰或者任何其它国家的概率则有81%。全世界最具统治力的5名网球选手都来自于国名以“S”开头的国家这件事情的确有点令人吃惊,但那是另一件事情。 In team sports that should be different. If soccer talent was equally spread China should have on average 19 of the top 100 players in each generation, almost never less than 11. Countries like Spain, Germany and France on the other hand would expect to have 1 player in the top 100, maybe 2 or 3 if they’re lucky. That would be no match for the loaded Chinese squad. Even a top 3 player can’t dominate all by himself in a team-based sport like soccer, as evidenced by the below picture of sad Ronaldo. 在团队运动中情况则完全不同。如果踢足球的天赋在世界上均等地分布,那么平均而言,在每一代世界上最好的100名球员中,中国会拥有19个,而这个数字几乎绝不可能低于11。另一方面,西班牙,德国和法国这些国家则通常只会有1名球员进入全球前100名,即使幸运的话也最多只有2或3名。而他们的队伍应该完全无法与皆由精英组成的中国队抗衡。毕竟,即使是排名世界前3的球员也无法在足球这样的一项团队运动中靠一己之力统治比赛,下图中C罗悲伤的表情充分证明了这一点。 And yet, the Chinese team is not good at soccer, and I’m putting that milder than some. The Chinese men’s national soccer team is ranked 84th in the world, a few spots below Antigua and Barbuda – a nation with a population of 90,000. That’s roughly equal to a single neighborhood in Shanghai. 但实际上中国足球队的水平并不高,而我的这种表述方式已经比一些人温和得多了。中国男子国家足球队的世界排名是第84位,他们的积分比安提瓜和巴布达还要低上几分,而这个国家的人口仅有9万,几乎只相当于上海的一个街区。 Motivation is often brought up as an explanation: perhaps the Chinese have the talent and opportunity to play soccer, but all 1.3 billion of them choose not to. Perhaps instead of playing soccer they choose to study. Those that play soccer the least and study the most can go into medicine, and those that study hardest of all and have no room for soccer make it into top medical schools in the US. 常被提到的一个理由是动力不足:也许中国人拥有踢足球的天赋和机会,但是13亿中国人却选择不去踢。也许他们宁愿把时间花在学习上。那些踢球踢得少,读书读得多的孩子可以去学医,而那些在学习上最用功以至完全没时间踢球的孩子将在未来进入美国最好的医学院。 Certainly we don’t expect those Chinese to play soccer at all, and yet below is a group photo of the Emory University medical school soccer club. The summer I was there we played at least 4 hours a week. You can easily find me on the photo, I’m one of three non-Chinese people on the team. 显然我们不会相信中国人完全不踢足球,下面是一组埃默里大学医学院足球俱乐部的照片。在那个夏天,我每周至少在那里踢上4个小时足球。你可以轻松地在照片上找到我,我是那支球队里仅有的三名非华人球员之一。 The success of a national soccer team should depend on two factors: the pool of available players (population) and some combination of natural talent, infrastructure and opportunity that determine roughly how successful an average person in that country can be at soccer. I’ll call the combined second thing national soccer affinity, and will immediately note that it’s a huge simplification to throw so many disparate things into a single factor. 一支国家足球队的成功主要依赖于以下两个因素:可供他们选择的球员人数,还有某种天赋、基础设施和机遇的组合,这大体上决定了这个国家的普通人能在足球方面所能达到的平均高度。在后文中我会将这种组合称作一个国家的“足球亲和性”,并会很快提到将如此多不相关的东西整合到一个因子里实际上是一种极大的简化做法。 My goal is to separate the effects of population, so affinity is basically everything that’s independent of a country’s total size. I am making no guesses regarding the components of soccer affinity (maybe it’s all about having enough sunshine days for kids to play outdoors), only in the comparison between countries. The question I want to investigate is: 我的目标是将人口因素单独分离出来,所以“亲和性”这个概念基本就是所有与一个国家的人口数量不相关的因素。我也不会对“足球亲和性”这个概念的具体组成做任何的猜测(也许它只涉及有足够多晴朗的日子让孩子们在室外踢球),而仅仅是在国家之间进行比较。我想探索的问题是: Relative to their population, which countries are the best and worst at soccer? And why? 相对于其人口数量,哪些国家在足球方面做得最好?而哪些国家又做得最差?为什么? #165-3 If we imagine that soccer affinity is normally distributed, a country’s population is the size of the bell curve and the national affinity is how far to the right on the ability axis the center of the bell curve is. The level of a country’s national team is how far on the ability axis the best 11 men and women are. 如果我们假设“足球亲和性”这个因子服从正态分布,一国的人口就是钟形曲线的面积,而一个国家的“足球亲和性”则可以被定义为钟形曲线的中心线在能力轴上的投影与原点之间的距离。而该国国家队的水平则取决于该国最优秀的11名男球员和女球员在能力轴上所处的位置。 Clearly, having a larger bell curve (more people at every level of play) and shifting the curve to the right (better players on average) should both contribute to boosting the level of the national team. The fact that there are over 15,000 Chinese for each Antiguan, and yet the soccer teams are comparable in level, presents the following puzzle: 很显然,拥有一个面积更大的钟形曲线(在各种水平上都拥有更多的人口)以及让钟形曲线向右移动(更高的球员平均水平)都有助于提升一国国家队的水平。而中国的人口是安提瓜人口的15000倍,但这两国的国家队水平却处于同一档次这一事实则向我们提出了如下的难题: Why does it seem that national team level depends on affinity much more than on population? 为什么国家足球队的水平对“足球亲和性”的依赖程度要远远高于对人口的依赖程度? The answer to that puzzle is: Because the tails of a normal distribution fall much faster than you think. 而这个问题的答案是:因为一个正态分布的尾部下降的速率比你想象的要快得多。 In plain(er) English: every point on a bell curve is some distance away from the middle (the mean). The further away from the mean you go the less points there are (lower curve). These distances are often measured in standard deviations, or SD, shown by the vertical red lines on the picture. On a standard bell curve, just over 68% of the points are found a distance of less than 1 SD from the mean in either direction. 更直白的就是:钟形曲线上每个点和中心(也就是平均值)都存在一个距离。与平均值的距离越远,这个水平上的点数也就越少(在曲线上就越低)。而与中心的距离通常是以标准差计的(在图中用红色的垂直线条表示)。在一个标准的钟形曲线上,有68%的点都会落在均值两端一个标准差的距离之内。 #165-4 Looking naively at the familiar bell picture, it seems that the curve drops sharply over the first 2 or 3 SD to either side and then levels off around 0 when you move further away. That’s extremely misleading: the relative height of the curve actually drops faster the further out you go. It’s invisible on the chart because the line further than 3 SD out is squished very close to 0. The height of the curve at 1 SD is 4.5 times higher than that at 2 SD. The curve at 5 SD is 250 times higher than that at 6 SD and it keeps getting steeper and steeper. 如果我们直观地看一下这条熟悉的钟形曲线,看起来曲线两端在距离中心最初的两三个标准差内下降得非常快,而在之后更远的距离上就会在零附近以一种接近水平的方式缓慢下降。而这实际上会造成巨大的误导:事实上,距离中心越远,曲线的相对高度下降的速度越快。但由于在3个标准差之外,曲线被压缩到了非常接近0的高度,所以在图上我们看不到。曲线上1标准差处的高度是2标准差处的4.5倍,而5标准差处的高度则是6标准差处的250倍,而随着离中心越来越远,曲线的陡峭程度还在不断上升。 The best male soccer player in China (Zheng Zhi?) is almost literally one in a billion, which means that he’s almost 6 standard deviation better than the average Chinese. If the population of China doubled (they’re working on it!), there would be 2 players as good as Zheng is. However, if the population of China became just one standard deviation better at soccer, there would be over 200 players at least as good, and a few dozen who are much better. 中国最好的男性球员(是郑智吗?)在中国差不多是十亿里挑一了,这意味着他的水平比中国人的平均足球水平要高6个标准差。如果中国的人口增加一倍(他们的确在努力这么干!),那么中国将会出现两个和郑智一样优秀的球员。然而,如果中国人的平均足球水平能够提高一个标准差的话,那么中国就会有超过200名球员和郑智水平一样高了,而且还会有几十名球员的水平比他高得多。 It could be that a normally distributed soccer skill model is wholly wrong, but it does seem to explain some of what we see in reality. For anything that’s distributed roughly like a bell curve, the quality of the best people in a large enough group (like a country) depends much more on small differences in the average level than on large differences in total population. Hey, I wonder if that’s why so many Nobel prize winners are… *gets repeatedly electrocuted* 实际上这个正态分布的足球水平模型可能是完全错误的,但是它看起来的确解释了一些我们在现实中观察到的现象。对于任何一个分布接近钟形曲线的群体,在一个足够大的群体(比如一个国家)中,水平最高者的能力更多地取决于平均水平上的微小差异,而人口总数上的巨大差异所发挥作用则要小得多。嘿,现在我开始怀疑这就是为什么如此多的诺贝尔奖得主都死于触电的原因了。 Whoops, sorry about that. Let’s see this effect in action on the one trait that we can all agree is close to normally distributed and varies among nations: human height. 抱歉这个梗有点欠。让我们通过一个特征来看看这种效应的实际力量,该特征的近似正态分布得到了大家认可,而且在国家间存在差异:那就是人的身高。 The average Indian dude (sorry for the androcentrism, ladies, there’s just better data on male heights and male soccer teams) is 165 cm (5′ 5″) and there are roughly 630 million of them. The average Norwegian dude is 180 cm (5′ 11″) and there are 2.5 million. The standard deviation of male height is around 6 cm around the world. If heights were distributed in a perfect normal bell curve with those parameters they would look like: 印度6.3亿成年男性(女士们,抱歉了,这里看起来似乎有点大男子主义,但有关男性身高和男子足球队的数据质量的确更好)的平均身高是165厘米(5英尺5英寸)。而挪威250万成年男性的平均身高则是180厘米(5英尺11英寸)。全世界身高的标准差大约是6厘米。如果身高完全服从一个由这些参数构建的正态钟形分布,那么看起来将会像下图这样: #165-5 As we plot them side by side, the Indian curve completely dwarfs the Norwegian one, even for pretty tall dudes. There are 9 Indians who are exactly 180 cm (5′ 11″) tall for every Norwegian. 5′ 11″ is tall, but not super tall. The higher mean effect only kicks in for the real outliers, so let’s zoom the above plot in to the really tall dudes. 当我们把整个分布画在一起,印度的曲线看起来完全压倒了挪威的曲线,即使对于身高很高的成年男性也是这样。印度和挪威身高180(5英尺11英寸)厘米的人口数量比例是9比1。5英尺11英寸算是高了,但并不是非常高。高均值效应只有在那些真正的异常值上才会起作用,那么让我们将图上那些真的很高的成年男性所对应的部分放大看看。 #165-6 Here, the picture reverses completely. There are 100 times as many Norwegians above 195 cm (6′ 4″) as there are Indians. Under a normal distribution assumption, the tallest Indian at 6′ 7″ would only match the 1,000th tallest Norwegian. 在这里,情况完全颠倒了过来。身高超过195厘米(6英尺4英寸)的成年男性数量,挪威和印度的比例是100比1。在正态分布的假设之下,印度最高的成年男性的身高将是6英尺7英寸,而这个身高在挪威人中只能排在第1000位。 It’s important to remember that a normal bell curve is a very simplistic model, real life is messy, and Dharmendra Singh is 8′ 1″. Even inside the realm of mathematics, a normal distribution has narrower tails (the height drops faster as you get away from the mean) than most other widely used distributions that look sorta like a bell curve (like the student’s t or the gamma distributions). A normal model underestimates the number of outliers and overstates the importance of shifting the mean. 我们必须记住的是,正态分布的钟形曲线是一种非常简化的模型,真实情况要复杂得多,实际上印度最高的男性Dharmendra Singh的身高是8英尺1英寸。即使在数学王国中,相比其他大多数常用的看起来像钟形曲线的分布(例如学生t分布或gamma分布),正态分布也有着窄得多的尾部(这意味着在远离均值时,曲线下降的速度更快)。一个正态分布模型会低估异常值点的数量,同时会高估平均值移动的重要性。 With that said, my main point stands: it should not surprise anyone that the achievement of extreme performers doesn’t strongly depend on the population of a country but does on the average. There doesn’t have to be something horribly wrong with China to account for its disappointing soccer team, they could be just a little bit to the left of other countries on national soccer affinity. 但即使考虑到这些情况,我的主要观点仍然成立:那些表现极端出众的个体的出现并不太依赖于一国的人口数量,而非常依赖于该国在这方面的平均水平。中国国家足球队令人失望的表现背后也许并没有什么错得离谱的东西,这也许只是因为中国在“足球亲和性”的分布上稍微靠左了一些而已。 We still don’t know what makes up soccer affinity, just that it’s enough to explain the disconnect between populations and team performance. With the math lesson behind us comes the fun part: in the next posts we’ll rank the world’s countries by average soccer affinity, throw a bunch of data at it to see what it correlates with, and see if can get any insight into what makes countries good or bad at soccer. 我们仍然不知道“足球亲和性”是由哪些因素构成的,但它足以解释人口和团队表现之间脱节的现象。在我们的这节数学课之后才是真正有趣的部分:在接下来的几篇文章中,我们将会把世界各国按照平均的“足球亲和性”进行排名,通过一系列的数据来看看它与哪些因素相关,并试着获得一些关于是什么让一个国家在足球方面表现得好或不好的深入见解。 (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——

[译文]仅靠慷慨满足不了器官需求

Generosity won’t fix our shortage of organs for transplants
慷慨解决不了可移植器官的短缺

作者:Tyler Cowen @ 2015-12-28
译者:龟海海
校对:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)
来源:The Washington Posthttp://www.aei.org/publication/generosity-wont-fix-our-shortage-of-organs-for-transplants/

Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about government compensation for organ donors. 
《华盛顿邮报》的“理论”栏目每周都会从新闻中选取一个大胆话题,从不同角度进行探索。本周我们的主题是政府对器官捐献者的补偿。

Sally Satel is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. She is the editor of “ 标签: |

6552
Generosity won’t fix our shortage of organs for transplants 慷慨解决不了可移植器官的短缺 作者:Tyler Cowen @ 2015-12-28 译者:龟海海 校对:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子) 来源:The Washington Posthttp://www.aei.org/publication/generosity-wont-fix-our-shortage-of-organs-for-transplants/ Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about government compensation for organ donors.  《华盛顿邮报》的“理论”栏目每周都会从新闻中选取一个大胆话题,从不同角度进行探索。本周我们的主题是政府对器官捐献者的补偿。 Sally Satel is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. She is the editor of “When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors.” Sally Satel 是美国企业研究所常驻学者和耶鲁大学医学院的精神病学讲师,也是《当利他主义不够时:补偿捐肾者的理由》一书的主编。 My interest in the national organ shortage began one steamy afternoon in August 2004. That day, my doctor told me my kidneys were failing. As a physician myself, I knew immediately that I would need to find a replacement organ or else face a shortened life tethered to a dialysis machine. My search was rocky at first, but finally I did get a kidney from a casual friend — now a very dear one. 我对国内器官匮乏的关注始于2004年八月一个闷热的下午。那天我的医生告诉我,我的肾快要不行了。作为一名内科医生,我立刻知道我需要找到替换的器官,否则我将命不长久,而且余生都要栓着透析机。 At the time of my search, there were about 60,000 people on the national waiting list maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing. Today, a decade later, there are roughly 101,000. Meanwhile, donation rates from both living and deceased donors are effectively flat. The death toll is 12 people per day — individuals who could not survive the years-long wait for an organ. 根据我当时搜索的结果,美国器官共享网络的全国等待名单上大约有6万人。十年过去了,如今上面大约有10万1千人。与此同时,活体和死亡捐献率都走势平平。结果就是每天有12人由于多年得不到新器官而死亡。 Clearly, our current organ transplant policy is a qualified failure. And it is because our current system, by law, mandates altruism as the sole legitimate motive for organ donation. We need to give more healthy young and middle-age people a reason to become living donors. 显而易见,我们现今的器官移植政策是十足的失败。那是因为按照法律,利他主义是器官移植唯一的合法动机。我们需要给健康的年轻人和中年人足够的理由来让他们加入活体器官捐献者的行列。 Tragically, altruism is not enough. The yield from public awareness campaigns, the organ procurement teams that meet with families of the recently deceased and the reimbursement for donors’ expenses has leveled off. Moving to an opt-out system, under which we would harvest people’s organs at death unless they had earlier indicated they didn’t wish to donate them, can do only so much — relatively few people die in ways that leave their organs suitable for transplantation. 不幸的是,利他主义并不够。公众宣传活动,器官采集团队造访最近有亲人去世的家庭,为捐助者报销费用,这些措施的效果已趋于耗竭。即使在捐献者死去时默认可以采集器官(除非他们早先曾表明不愿意捐献),成效也不会太好——大多数人的死亡方式决定了他们的器官不适合移植。 So, to save lives, let’s test incentives. A model reimbursement plan would look like this: Donors would not receive a lump sum of cash; instead, a governmental entity or a designated charity would offer them in-kind rewards, such as a contribution to the donor’s retirement fund; an income tax credit or a tuition voucher; lifetime health insurance; a contribution to a charity of the donor’s choice; or loan forgiveness. 所以,为了救人,我们可以试试激励机制。一个理想的补偿计划应该是这样的:捐献者不会收到一笔现金,但政府部门或者指定的慈善机构会为他们提供非现金奖励,例如:向捐献者的退休基金供款,所得税抵免或者学费代金劵,终生健康保险,向捐献者指定的慈善机构捐款,或者债务豁免。 Meanwhile, the law can impose a waiting period of at least six months before people donate, ensuring that they don’t act impulsively and that they offer fully informed consent. Prospective compensated donors would be carefully screened for physical and emotional health, as all donors are now. These arrangements would filter out financially desperate individuals who might otherwise rush to donate for a large sum of instant cash and later regret it. 与此同时,法律可以规定捐献者在捐献前有至少六个月的冷静期,以确保他们不是冲动行事,而是经过周详考虑才决定同意。和现在所有捐献者一样,有偿捐献者也需要经过仔细筛选以保证身心健康。这些措施可以把那些急着等钱用的人过滤掉,他们会为了那笔钱而冲去捐献,但事后追悔莫及。 The donors’ kidneys would be distributed to people on the waiting list, according to the rules now in place. (People who wanted to donate a kidney to a specific person — say, a father to a son — would still be able to, alongside this system.) Finally, all rewarded donors would be guaranteed follow-up medical care for any complications, which is not ensured now. 根据现行规则,捐出来的肾将分配给那份等待名单上的人。(如果有人想把肾捐献给指定的人,例如,父亲捐给儿子,也同时可以做到。)最后,所有有偿捐献者都将得到术后并发症的跟踪治疗,这个规定是现在没有的。 The good news is that the general notion of incentivizing donations is gaining traction. A 2009 poll of the membership of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons revealed that 80 percent supported or were neutral toward the provision of tax credits for donors. In 2014, the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons published the results of a workshop in which the societies expressed approval of testing third-party, in-kind incentives. A few weeks ago, the American Medical Association passed a resolution in favor of testing the effect of incentives on living and deceased donation. (A reward for deceased donation could take the form of a funeral subsidy or a contribution to the estate of the deceased.) 好消息是,为捐献提供激励的观念正日益赢得关注。2009年一项针对美国器官移植外科医生协会的调查显示,80%的协会成员对向捐助者提供税收抵免持赞成或中立态度。2014年,美国器官移植协会(AST)和美国器官移植外科医生协会公布了他们一个研讨会的结果,在该研讨会上,两个协会对试行来自第三方的非现金奖励表示支持。几周前,全美医疗协会(AMA)通过决议,支持测试为活体和死后器官捐献提供激励的效果。(死后捐赠的奖励,可以葬礼补贴或并入死者遗产的方式实现。) The objections I heard years ago seem to be wearing thin. Take the objection that rewarding donors “commodifies the body.” We already commodify the body, speaking strictly, every time there is a transplant: The doctors get paid to manipulate the body. So does the hospital and the agency that obtains and transports the organ. Why would we now object to enriching the donor — the sole individual in this entire scenario who gives the precious item in question and assumes all the risk? 多年前我所听到的反对声音,如今似乎越来越少了。例如,有人反对说奖励捐献者是“人体商品化”。其实,严格来说我们早就将人体商品化了,每一次移植手术,医生们都是拿着薪水在操纵着人体。那些获得和运输器官的医院和中介机构亦是如此。那我们现在为什么要反对给捐献者报酬呢?在整件事里面,捐献者才是唯一一个提供宝贵器官和承担所有风险的人。 At the heart of the “commodification” claim is really the concern that donors will not be treated with dignity. But dignity is affirmed when we respect the capacity of individuals to make decisions in their own best interest, protect their health and express gratitude for their sacrifice. Material gain, per se, is not inconsistent with this. The true indignity is to stand by smugly while thousands of people die each year for want of an organ. 诟病“人体商品化”,其核心实际是担心捐献者得不到有尊严的对待。但我们尊重他们有为自己做出最有利决定的能力,保证他们的健康,对他们的牺牲表示感激,这些就保证了尊严。物质上的获益,实质上与此并不矛盾。真正不光彩的,是眼见每年数以千计的人在等待器官中死去,却还站在一旁洋洋自得。 Some worry that that rewarded donation will attract only low-income people. This is possible, though only a trial project can provide the answer. But even if this turns out to be the case, why doubt the capacity of low-income people to make decisions in their own interest? From the standpoint of the recipient, it is low-income individuals who stand to benefit the most, as they are disproportionately represented among those waiting for a kidney. 有人担心奖励捐献只会吸引低收入人群。这是有可能的,但只有通过试验计划才可以得到答案。但即便事实就是如此,我们又为什么要去怀疑低收入人群基于自身利益作决定的能力呢?从器官接收者的角度看,受益最大的正是低收入人群,因为他们在等待新肾的名单上比例偏高。 Yet regardless of who ends up donating, any plan must ensure that donors’ decisions are thoroughly informed, their health is protected and they are amply rewarded. As the organ waiting list grows, the need to test incentives becomes stronger and stronger. 然而,无论谁来捐献,任何一个计划都必须确保捐献者在做决定前得到充分的信息,他们将得到健康保障和足够的奖励。由于器官等待名单日益增长,试行“激励计划”也变得越来越迫切。 We need to liberate patients from the tyranny of “the gift.” It’s glorious when you are the recipient, as I know better than most, but the penalty for being unlucky should not be premature death. Hollow moralizing from critics in the face of so much needless suffering must be replaced by sensitive and pragmatic policy. 我们需要将病患从“礼物”观念的思想束缚中解放出来。能得到器官捐赠当然非常美好,对此我比绝大多数的人都深有体会,但运气不好的病人也不应该就这样英年早逝。在如此众多不必要的痛苦折磨面前,批评者空洞的道德说教,必须被通情达理且切实可行的政策所取代。 (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——