How to Avoid Foolish Opinions
如何避免愚蠢的見解
1. To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind is prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
1、要避免人們常常產(chǎn)生的各種愚蠢的觀點，并不需要過人的天賦。立幾條簡單的規(guī)則就可以使得你避免荒唐的錯誤，雖然不能避免一切錯誤。
2. If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them.
2、如果事情可以通過觀察來解決的，那你就親自觀察好了。亞里斯多德認為女人的牙齒比男人少，其實很簡單，只需請亞里斯多德夫人張一張口來讓他數(shù)一數(shù)，他本是可以不犯這一錯誤的。他沒有那么做，因為他認為他知道。自以為懂而實際并不懂是一種致命的錯誤，我們都易犯這種錯誤。我自己相信，刺猬吃黑甲蟲，因為人們告訴我，它們是這樣的。但如果我要寫一本論述刺猬習性的書的話，那么在我未親眼看到一個刺猬享受這種倒胃口的食品之前，我是不會動筆的。然而，亞里斯多德卻不夠謹慎。古代和中世紀的作家談起獨角獸和火蛇來如數(shù)家珍，但他們中沒有一個人認為，因為自身從未見過這些東西的任一種而有必要避免對它們作武斷的闡述。
3. Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
3、但是，許多事情是不那么容易用經(jīng)驗宋檢驗的。如果像大多數(shù)人那樣，在此類事情上執(zhí)迷不誤，那么有許多方法可以使你自己認識到自己的偏見。如果某—種與你相左的見解使你生氣，那么這就是一種跡象，說明你潛意識地感到，你沒法給自己的想法以充分的理由。倘若有人堅稱，2加2等于5，冰島是在赤道上，你只會感到同情而不是憤怒，除非你對算術或地理知之甚少，以致他的觀點動搖了你的立場。最激烈的爭淪是對那些雙方都沒有充分證據(jù)的事物的爭論。迫害儀發(fā)生于神學領域，而不見于算術領域，因為在算術中有知識，而在神學中僅有觀點。因此當你發(fā)現(xiàn)你自己對不同的意見氣惱時，你一定要警惕；通過檢驗你或?qū)l(fā)現(xiàn)，你的信念并無足夠的依據(jù)。
4. A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country—in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them.
4、使你自己擺脫某些教條主義的一種好方法是去了解與你不同的社會集團所持的意見。我年輕時常居住在國外—在法國、德國、意大利和美國。我發(fā)現(xiàn)，這大大有助于消彌井蛙之見。如果你無法遠行，那就找—些與你意見相左的人，讀一讀不屬于你們黨派的報紙。如果這些人和報紙看，上去瘋狂、荒謬和惡劣，那么請?zhí)嵝涯阕约�，在他們看來，你可能也是如此�?/p>
5. For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time and space. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent.
5、對于那些想象力豐富的人來說，假設與觀點不同的人進行辯論，不失為—種好方法。較之與對手進行面對面的談話，這種方式有一個好處，可以說是唯一的好處：它不會受到時間和空間的限制。有時，由于這種假想的對話，結果，我真的改變了我的想法。而有時雖然未能真的改變看法，我也常發(fā)現(xiàn)自己因認識到假想對手可能有道理而變得不那么武斷或自以為是了。
6. Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and men of science are male; if you are a woman, you can resort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. It is more difficult to deal with the self-esteem of man as man, because we cannot argue out the matter with some non-human mind. The only way I know of dealing with this general human conceit is to remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the life of a small planet in a little comer of the universe, and that for aught we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings as superior to ourselves as we are to jelly-fish.
6、對于那些迎合你自尊心的意見，要十分小心。無論男女，十有八九都確信自己這一睦別優(yōu)越。雙方都有充分的證據(jù)。如果你是個男人，你可以指出，大多數(shù)詩人和科學家是男性；如果你是個女人，你可以回敬說，大多數(shù)的罪犯也是男的。這問題本來就講不清楚，但是自尊心讓大多數(shù)人看不到這點。我們大家，不管來自世界何地，都相信自己的民族是最優(yōu)秀的。鑒于每一個民族都有其固有的優(yōu)點和缺點，我們常常試圖通過調(diào)整價值標準來揚長避短，以便證明我們民族所具有的優(yōu)點是真正重要的，而缺點則是相對不重要的。在這里，理智的人會再次承認，這類問題沒有一個明確的答案。而作為人類的人的自尊心則更難對付了，因為我們不能同某種非人類的觀點去進行辯論，以求得結論。我所知道的處理這種人類普遍具有的自負的唯一辦法是提醒我們自己：人類僅是宇宙一角中一個小行星的整個歷程中的一個短暫的插曲，也許，宇宙的其它地方可能有某種生物遠勝于我們，就像我們遠勝于水母一樣。
