你沒有你想的那麼聰明

A decade ago, the psychologist Rebecca Lawson published a lovely paper on “cycology”. She posed a simple question: could people draw the basics of a bicycle?

10年前，心理學家麗貝卡?勞森(Rebecca Lawson)發表了一篇有關“自行車學”的有趣論文。她提出了一個簡單的問題：人們能否畫出自行車的基本構造？

About 40 per cent, including those confident in their ability to sketch pedals and forks, found it impossible. Fundamental errors included a bike frame linking the front and back wheels, making it impossible to steer, and the chain looping round both wheels (ditto). Even cyclists struggled.

包括那些自信能畫出踏板和車前叉的人在內，大約40%的人發現他們畫不出來。基本錯誤包括畫出同時連接前後輪的車架，這樣的自行車是無法操縱的，還有畫出同時環繞前後輪的鏈條（問題同上）。甚至連自行車手也犯了難。

“It seems that many people have virtually no understanding of how bicycles work?.?.?.?despite bicycles being highly familiar and most people having learnt how to ride one,” Ms Lawson, from the University of Liverpool, concluded.

“看起來，很多人幾乎完全不瞭解自行車的工作原理……儘管自行車是人們非常熟悉的事物，大多數人也學過怎麼騎自行車，”來自利物浦大學(University of Liverpool)的勞森總結道。

Our personal knowledge, then, of how even everyday objects function is sketchy and shallow. We are individual ignoramuses who somehow manage to pool intelligence, and then brazenly bask in the collective glory. Ms Lawson’s finding is writ large in The Knowledge Illusion, a recent book that exposes us for the intellectual shams we are.

哪怕是對尋常事物的工作原理，我們個人掌握的知識也是粗略和淺顯的。就個體而言，我們都是渾噩無知之人，卻總能把智慧彙集起來，然後厚顏沉浸在這種集體榮耀之中。勞森發現的這種現象，在最近一本新書中得到詳細闡述，這本名爲《知識幻覺》(The Knowledge Illusion)的著作揭露出我們的智慧是假象。

The authors, psychologist Steven Sloman and marketing researcher Philip Fernbach, argue that knowledge is a collective effort but that we underestimate how little of it we hold ourselves. Intelligence comes from without, rather than within, hence the book’s subtitle: Why We Never Think Alone.

本書的兩位作者——心理學家史蒂文?斯洛曼(Steven Sloman)和市場營銷研究人員菲利普?費恩巴赫(Philip Fernbach)提出，知識是一種集體努力，但我們對我們自己掌握的知識之少卻認識不足。智慧來自於外部，而非來自我們自身，因此這本書的副標題是：爲什麼我們從未獨立思考？

Before Ms Lawson wheeled out her bicycle challenge, the Yale psychologist Frank Keil had already been cataloguing our shaky grasp of how commonplace objects such as zips, mobile phones and flush toilets worked. Almost universally, people thought they could explain them. But when they actually sat down and tried to articulate the mechanisms, most were stumped.

在勞森提出她的自行車挑戰之前，耶魯大學的心理學家弗蘭克?凱爾(Frank Keil)已經指出，我們對拉鍊、手機和抽水馬桶等尋常事物的工作原理的理解並不紮實。人們幾乎無一例外地認爲他們能夠解釋這些事物。但當他們真的坐下來試圖清楚地說明其中原理的時候，大多數人都被難倒了。

Prof Keil and his colleague, Leonid Rozenblit, called it the “illusion of explanatory depth”, defining it like this: “Most people feel they understand the world with far greater detail, coherence and depth than they really do.” We do not reflect upon or double-check our knowledge nearly enough.

凱爾和他的同事列昂尼德?羅森布利特(Leonid Rozenblit)把這種現象叫做“解釋深度的幻覺”(illusion of explanatory depth)，他們對此的定義是“大多數人感覺他們對世界的理解非常細緻、連貫和有深度，但實際情況比這差遠了”。我們對我們所掌握知識的反思或者檢查是遠遠不夠的。

This phenomenon — which also suggests that people become humbler about their knowledge after having their deficiencies exposed — is surprisingly relevant to the way we think about policy. Prof Fernbach and colleagues have previously conducted research suggesting that voters who adopt extreme positions on issues such as how healthcare should be financed, or a trading system for carbon emissions, become more moderate once they are asked to explain the policies. Being forced to engage in “causal reasoning” can, it seems, temper hot thinking.

這種現象——它也表明人們在自己的不足暴露後會對自己的認知更謙遜——對於我們思考政策的方式具有非常重要的意義。費恩巴赫教授和他的同事們此前進行的研究表明，在醫保籌資方式或碳排放交易系統等問題上持極端立場的選民，會在被要求解釋這些政策後變得更溫和。看起來，被強制進行“因果推理”或許能夠緩和激進的想法。

Here, it is also worth mentioning the Dunning-Kruger effect: the least competent also tend to be the most confident in their abilities. Put another way, the most ignorant are the least aware of their shortcomings. To a degree, this makes sense: it is only by gaining knowledge that the gaps become visible. And very competent individuals are prone to underestimating their abilities — something to bear in mind when a politician championing a cause promises a paradise without caveats.

“鄧寧-克魯格效應”(Dunning-Kruger effect)也值得一提：最無能的人往往也是對自己的能力最自信的人。換句話說，最無知的人也是最意識不到自己的不足的人。在某種程度上，這是說得通的：只有獲取知識，才能看到差距。非常能幹的個人往往會低估自己的能力——如果一名宣揚某項事業的政治人士承諾一個天堂卻完全不提隱憂，有必要記住這一點。

Prof Keil has argued that, when asked to explain things, we do not reason causally — which explains why we are so bad at it — but instead grab our comebacks from intuition. That’s because the world is a massively complicated web of interrelated things and events, anchored in a vast ocean of causal complexity. Our recourse to intuition — the instant retrieval of information better known as gut instinct — is a sane strategy for reducing cognitive overload.

凱爾教授認爲，當被要求解釋事物的時候，我們並不進行因果推理——這就是我們如此不擅於此的原因——而是憑直覺做出反應。這是因爲，世界是一個建立在海量的複雜因果關係之上、由相互關聯的事物和活動組成的極其錯綜複雜的網絡。我們訴諸於直覺——即時抽取我們更瞭解的信息的本能——是一種減少認知超負荷的明智做法。

Technology, of course, allows greater and quicker access to ever more information. Every Google search, and each answer returned, perpetuates and intensifies a person’s belief that he or she is an under-appreciated genius. Remember, though, it’s an illusion: technology simply bolsters the fallacy that each of us is an Einsteinian beacon in a world of stupidity.

當然，科技讓我們能夠更廣泛、更快速地接觸更多信息。在谷歌(Google)上的每一次搜索，得到的每一次回答，都會維持和深化一個人對於自己懷才不遇的信念。不過要記住，這是一種錯覺。科技只是強化了一種謬見：在一個愚蠢的世界，我們每一個人都是像愛因斯坦那樣的指路明燈。