我们究竟了解多少？

这是隐藏的思维。

This is Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡尔·维丹塔。

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

几个月前，我将隐藏思维头十年的七个关键见解带到了旧金山和西雅图的现场演出中。

Some months ago, I brought seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain to live stage performances in San Francisco and Seattle.

那些夜晚气氛热烈。

The evenings were electric.

由于这两场售罄演出收到了大量积极反馈，我们决定在未来几个月展开巡演，覆盖十多个城市。

We got so much positive feedback from those two sold out shows that we've decided to launch a tour to more than a dozen cities in the coming months.

我将前往波特兰、丹佛、明尼阿波利斯、芝加哥、奥斯汀、达拉斯、波士顿、多伦多、克利尔沃特、劳德代尔堡、凤凰城、巴尔的摩、华盛顿特区和洛杉矶。

I'll be coming to Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Los Angeles.

要抢购门票，请访问 hiddenbrain.org/tour。

To snap up your tickets, please go to hiddenbrain.org/tour.

您也可以注册与我打招呼并合影。

You can also sign up to say hello and get a photo with me.

在某些地方，你可以报名参加我和几位其他粉丝的亲密对话。

In some places, you can sign up for an intimate chat with me and a handful of other fans.

我很期待在那里见到你。

I'd love to see you there.

再次提醒，请前往 hiddenbrain.org/tour。

Again, go to hiddenbrain.org/tour.

好的。

Okay.

接下来进入今天的节目。

On to today's show.

这是Hidden Brain。

This is Hidden Brain.

我是Shankar Vedanta。

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

差不多一个世纪前，一艘英国船只‘坚忍号’被困在了南极海冰中。

Almost exactly a century ago, a British ship, the Endurance, became trapped in Antarctic sea ice.

船上共有28名船员，由探险家欧内斯特·沙克尔顿领导。

Aboard were 28 men led by the explorer Ernest Shackleton.

1915年10月27日，冰层的压力压碎了‘坚忍号’的龙骨。

On 10/27/1915, the pressure of the ice crushed the keel of the Endurance.

冰冷的海水迅速涌入。

Freezing water rushed in.

水手们将救生艇和补给品从船上拖到冰面上。

The sailors dragged lifeboats and supplies from the ship onto the ice.

他们扛着救生艇，开始徒步前往开阔水域。

Carrying the lifeboats, they started hiking toward open water.

一周后进展甚微，欧内斯特·沙克尔顿意识到，他们最好在浮冰上扎营，等待浮冰漂向开阔水域。

After a week with little progress, Ernest Shackleton realized they would be better off camping on an ice floe and waiting for it to drift toward open water.

接下来发生的故事，是一段关于智慧与应变能力的非凡经历。

What followed was an extraordinary story of knowledge and resourcefulness.

探险者们成功将救生艇放入水中，划行至陆地——一个名为象岛的地方。

The explorers managed to get their lifeboats into the water and row to dry land, a place called Elephant Island.

但这个荒凉的岛屿资源匮乏，也毫无获救的希望。

But the desolate island offered little by way of resources and no hope of rescue.

于是，欧内斯特·沙克尔顿带领一小队人乘上一艘救生艇，前往一个捕鲸站。

So Ernest Shackleton and a smaller group took one of the lifeboats and set out for a whaling station.

那里距离800英里，途中是巨浪滔天、风暴致命的海域。

It was 800 miles away across seas with towering waves and deadly storms.

探险者们只配备了最基本的导航设备。

The explorers had only basic navigation equipment.

不知怎的，他们依靠星辰指引，成功抵达了南乔治亚岛。

Somehow, using the stars to guide them, they made it to the island of South Georgia.

但风暴将他们吹到了岛屿的错误一侧，而捕鲸站位于另一侧。

But storms had blown them to the wrong side of the island as the whaling station.

他们必须横跨全岛，翻越冰封的山脉和冰川，才能找到救援。

They now had to hike across the island, across frozen mountains and icy glaciers, to reach help.

最终，欧内斯特·沙克尔顿指挥一艘船返回象岛，救出了其余的船员。

Ernest Shackleton eventually commanded a ship back to Elephant Island to rescue the remainder of his crew.

他救下了每一个人。

He saved every last man.

这种故事在小说和电影中很受欢迎。

This is the kind of story that is popular in novels and movies.

探险家们针对问题提出了富有创意的解决方案，并对面临的挑战有着深刻的理解。

The explorers came up with creative solutions to problems and displayed a deep understanding of the challenges before them.

他们保持冷静，自救成功。

They kept their heads and saved themselves.

这类故事掩盖了我们对自己世界的了解有多么有限。

Stories like this obscure how much we understand about our own worlds.

当我们面对障碍时，即使是像轮胎漏气、手机故障或胃部不适这样简单的问题，我们真的能想出应对办法吗？

When we face obstacles, even simple problems like a punctured tire, a malfunctioning phone, or an odd pain in our stomachs, are we any good at figuring out what to do?

缩小我们所知与自以为所知之间的差距，本周请关注《隐性大脑》。

Closing the gap between what we know and what we think we know, this week on Hidden Brain.

人类，据我们所知，是进化史上产生过的最聪明的生物。

Human beings are, as far as we know, the most intelligent creatures ever produced by evolution.

我们的大脑极其复杂，能够完成非凡的发明与创造。

Our brains are unimaginably complex and capable of extraordinary feats of invention and creativity.

然而，这些了不起的大脑也存在某些局限。

And yet, these amazing minds also come with certain limits.

在科罗拉多大学博尔德分校，菲利普·费恩巴赫是一位认知科学家。

At the University of Colorado Boulder, Philip Fernbach is a cognitive scientist.

他多年来一直在研究一个相当令人谦卑的问题。

He has spent many years studying a rather humbling question.

我们对所生活的这个世界究竟了解多少？

How much do we actually know about the world in which we live?

菲利普·费恩巴赫，欢迎来到《隐藏的思维》。

Phil Fernbach, welcome to Hidden Brain.

能和你在一起真好，尚卡尔。

It's great to be with you, Shankar.

谢谢。

Thank you.

菲尔，1946年，八个人聚集在新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯的一家核实验室。

Phil, in 1946, eight men gathered in a nuclear lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

他们在那里观看一位杰出的研究人员进行一项被称为‘逗弄龙尾’的操作。

They were there to watch a distinguished researcher perform a maneuver known as tickling the dragon's tail.

这些人是谁，菲尔？

Who were these people, Phil?

当时发生了什么？

What was going on?

这是美国历史上最引人入胜的时期之一。

This was one of the most fascinating periods in American history.

那是发生在新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯的原子弹研发过程。

It was the development of the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

这些是顶尖的物理学家，他们在测试核弹中裂变材料——钚的反应。

And these were very eminent physicists who were testing, the reaction of the fissile material in the bomb, the plutonium.

而这项特定实验，正如物理学家理查德·费曼所说，被称为‘逗弄龙尾’，是一项极其精细的实验，涉及将两片包围钚核心的铍半球逐渐靠近，以测试钚的反应性。

And this particular experiment, which the physicist Richard Feynman, as you said, called tickling the Dragonsdale, it was a very delicate experiment that involved taking two hemispheres of beryllium that were surrounding the plutonium core and moving them closer and closer together to test, the reactivity of the plutonium.

钚具有放射性，会释放中子。

So the plutonium is radioactive and gives off neutrons.

这些中子从铍上反弹，引发链式反应。

Those neutrons rebound off of the beryllium and create the reaction.

当两个半球逐渐靠近时，反应会增强。

As the hemispheres get closer together, you get more of that reaction.

这个实验如此精细且危险的原因是，如果两个半球靠得太近，可能会引发链式反应，释放出大量辐射，非常危险。

What's so delicate and dangerous about this experiment is that if the hemispheres get too close together, it can create a chain reaction that releases a burst of radioactivity that can be very dangerous.

因此，负责这项实验、也就是在‘逗弄龙尾’的首席科学家名叫刘易斯·斯洛廷。

So the lead scientist who was running this experiment, who was tickling the dragon's tail, if you will, was named Lewis Slotin.

他是一位经验丰富的物理学家，对吧？

And he was a very experienced physicist, was he not?

是的。

He was.

他是原子弹的开发者之一，是一位极其杰出且经验丰富的物理学家。

He was one of the developers of the bomb and was an extremely eminent and experienced physicist.

他是这个实验团队最重要的成员，因为正是他亲自负责将两个铍半球逐渐靠近的过程。

He was the most important member of this experimental team because he was the one who was actually engaged in the process of bringing those hemispheres of beryllium closer together.

他是怎么做到的？

How was he doing it?

他当时在做什么？

What was he doing?

这可是故事中最疯狂的部分。

Well, this is the crazy part of the story.

他实际上用一把普通的平头螺丝刀来保持两个铍半球之间的分离。

He was actually using a common flathead screwdriver to keep the two sections of beryllium apart.

不幸的是，在关键时刻，螺丝刀滑脱了。

Unfortunately, at the critical moment, the screwdriver slipped.

两个铍半球猛然撞在一起，释放出强烈的放射性辐射。

The two hemispheres of beryllium crashed together, and they released this intense burst of radioactive radiation.

当时就在装置旁的斯洛廷受到了最严重的辐射，八天后在医务室因辐射中毒去世。

Slotin, who was right next to the apparatus, took the worst of it, and he actually died in the infirmary, eight days later of, of radiation poisoning.

房间里的其他物理学家都是杰出的科学家，他们都幸免于最初的辐射爆发。

The rest of the physicists in the room, all eminent scientists, all survived the initial burst.

其中一些人不幸英年早逝，可能是因为他们接受了过量的辐射。

Some of them, unfortunately died before their time, potentially due to to the radiation dose that they that they received.

有没有更安全的方法来进行这个实验？

Was there a way of conducting this experiment more safely?

当然有。

There certainly was.

例如，一个明显的方法是将其中一个铍半球悬挂起来，然后从底部升起另一个半球。

For instance, an obvious way to do it would have been to, suspend one of the hemispheres, of beryllium, and then the other hemisphere could be raised from the bottom.

在这种情况下，如果发生任何滑动或问题，重力会自然将两个半球拉开，这样进行实验会安全得多。

In that case, if anything slipped or there was any problem, gravity would have just pulled the two hemispheres apart, and that would have been much less of a dangerous way to conduct the experiment.

你认为路易斯·斯洛廷为什么没有那样做呢，菲尔？

Why do you think, Lewis Slotin didn't do it that way, Phil?

我认为，斯洛廷和其他任何人一样，由于他的经验，没有预见到这种潜在的危险。

I think, Slotin, like any other person, by virtue of his experience, did not foresee this potential problem.

他因为多次成功进行过这个实验，并且在这个领域拥有丰富经验，变得过于自信。

He became overconfident in his ability to conduct this experiment because he had done it so many times before and he had so much experience in this domain.

我想问你另一个发生在多年后的事情。

I want to ask you about another incident that took place many years later.

2009年，法国航空447号航班坠入海洋，机上超过200名乘客遇难。

In 2009, Air France flight four forty seven crashed into the ocean, killing more than 200 passengers on board.

当飞机的黑匣子被找回后，发现飞机当时进入了失速状态。

When the black box of the plane was recovered, it appeared that the aircraft had stalled.

你能先解释一下什么是失速吗？当飞机失速时，飞行员应该怎么做？而447号航班的飞行员实际做了什么？

Can you first explain what a stall is and what you're supposed to do when the plane stalls and what the pilots of flight four forty seven actually did?

失速是非常可怕的事情。

A stall is a very scary thing.

当飞机失去空速时，就会 literally 开始从空中坠落。

So that's when an airplane loses airspeed and literally starts falling out of the sky.

每个飞行员在学习飞行时，这都是他们训练中最重要的内容之一。

Every pilot, when they learn how to fly an airplane, this is one of the most important things that they train for.

因此，他们实际上会故意让飞机进入失速状态，然后学习如何脱离失速。

So they actually will purposely put the airplane into a stall and then learn how to take it out of the stall.

你该如何让飞机脱离失速？

How do you take a plane out of a stall?

实际上，你需要做的是反直觉地将机头向下压。

Well, actually what you need to do is point the nose of the plane down counterintuitively.

你本想往上飞，但实际必须把飞机机头向下。

You wanna go up, but you actually have to point the plane down.

你必须增加加速度。

You have to increase your acceleration.

你必须重新获得空速，然后才能实现高度修正。

You have to regain airspeed, and then you can actually, achieve, an altitude correction.

当他们从这架飞机上找回黑匣子时，令人惊讶的是，发现这位经验丰富的飞行员所做的恰恰与失速时应有的操作完全相反。

When they recovered the black box from this airplane, surprisingly, what they found was that this very experienced pilot had done was exactly the opposite of what you're supposed to do in a stall situation.

他实际上试图拉起飞机，但在没有空速的情况下，这是根本不可能的。

He was actually trying to pull the plane up, but without any airspeed, that's just impossible.

飞机根本不可能恢复。

There's no way that the plane could recover.

因此，不幸的是，这导致了灾难性的后果。

And so, unfortunately, this led to this devastating outcome.

我在想，美国联邦航空管理局或其他安全机构有没有评估过这个错误是如何发生的。

I'm wondering whether the Federal Aviation Administration or other safety organizations evaluated why the error had come about.

他们有调查过那段录像吗？

Did they look into that film?

是的。

Yeah.

他们进行了非常深入的分析，试图找出哪里出了问题。

They did, very extensive analyses to try to figure out what went wrong.

他们的一项总体结论是，飞行员普遍对自动化系统过于依赖，导致一些基本飞行技能退化。

And one of their overall conclusions was that pilots in general have become too reliant on automation and have lost some of their basic flying skills.

现代飞机，尤其是现代客机，技术极其先进，很多时候软件和飞机本身已经承担了大部分工作。

Modern, airplanes, especially modern jetliners, are so technologically sophisticated that a lot of the time the software and the and the airplane are doing most of the work.

飞行员几乎就像是一个旁观者，看着飞机自己完成任务。

The pilot is almost like an observer watching the airplane do the job.

当然，飞行员必须在出现异常情况时介入干预。

The pilot, of course, has to be there to intervene in unusual situations when something goes wrong.

问题是，由于软件能力越来越强，这些需要干预的情况正变得越来越罕见。

The problem is that those situations are becoming more and more rare because the software is becoming more and more capable.

因此，在需要干预的情况下，飞行员可能没有做好充分准备，因为他们过度依赖自动化系统。

So in cases where an intervention is necessary, the pilot might not be as prepared as they should be because they become too reliant on the automation.

我的意思是，我在一个小得多的范围内思考这个问题。

I mean, I'm thinking in a much, much smaller scale.

我太依赖导航工具和GPS技术来帮我出行了，以至于手机没电的时候，我突然觉得自己连个纸袋都走不出去。

You know, I am so reliant on my navigation tools and GPS technology to get me around that on the occasions when my phone dies, I suddenly feel like I can't find my way out of a paper bag these days.

我也有过完全相同的经历。

I've had the exact same experience.

事实上，我听说过有人因为GPS的指引而开车开进了湖里。

In fact, I've heard stories of people driving into lakes because that's what the GPS tells them to do.

我自己的亲身经历是，我现在开车时经常使用自动驾驶软件。

My own personal experience with this is, I use self driving software all the time when I'm driving now.

它表现得非常好。

It works remarkably well.

但过去几年里，我注意到自己实际上成了一个更差的司机。

But one thing I've noticed over the last few years is that I've actually become a worse driver.

你知道，没人愿意承认自己成了一个更差的司机。

It's, you know, no one wants to admit to themselves that they become a worse driver.

但对我而言，到目前为止，证据几乎是无可辩驳的，因为过去几年我发生了几次轻微碰撞，而以前我从未有过这种情况。

But for me, the evidence is kind of incontrovertible at this point because I've gotten into a few fender benders over the last few years, which I've never done before.

于是我问自己，这里到底发生了什么？

And so I've asked myself, what is going on here?

我真的认为，这是因为我对汽车代劳太过依赖，导致失去了对路况的感知能力。

And I really think it's because I've become so reliant on the car doing the work that I've lost my situational awareness.

当出现异常情况需要我接管时，我就无法做好准备，就像自动驾驶飞机上的飞行员一样。

And then when something unusual happens and I need to take over, I'm not ready to do it, just like a pilot on an automated airline.

洛斯阿拉莫斯事故和法国航空空难都涉及经验丰富的人员，但他们却犯了看似基本的错误。

Both the Los Alamos accident and the Air France crash involved highly experienced people who made seemingly elementary mistakes.

菲尔的研究表明，还有许多其他案例中，经验较少的人也会犯错，部分原因是他们假设其他聪明人知道该怎么做。

Phil's research suggests there are many other instances where less experienced people also make blunders in part because they assume that other smart people know what they're doing.

以2008年美国金融危机为例。

Take for instance the two thousand and eight financial crash in The United States.

2008年的金融危机在很大程度上是由于某种名为衍生品的金融产品价值大幅下跌所致。

The financial crash in two thousand and eight was in a great part, due to a massive decline in the value of, these, financial products, a certain kind of financial product called a derivative.

衍生品是非常复杂的金融工具，很难准确预测它们的行为表现。

Derivatives are really complicated financial instruments, and it's really hard to predict exactly how they're gonna behave.

交易员喜欢衍生品，因为它们通常能带来很高的回报。

Traders like derivatives because they can often generate really good returns.

在金融市场中，回报总是与风险相关联。

In financial markets, return is always correlated with risk.

因此，如果某物回报高，它的风险也往往很高。

So if something has a high return, it's also gonna have a high risk.

衍生品的问题在于，由于它们太过复杂，往往无法看清风险，或者很难看清风险。

The problem with derivatives is because they're so complicated, it's often impossible to see the risk, or it's very hard to see the risk.

风险只会在一些不寻常的情况下显现出来。

The risk only emerges in sort of unusual situations.

所以，这种产品看起来似乎非常安全，但突然间情况变了，它的价值不是只下跌10%，而是暴跌90%之类的。

So it's like, the product is, you know, it seems to be behaving just very safely, but then something changes and all of a sudden, instead of losing 10% of its value, it loses 90% of its value or something like that.

金融危机期间，这些衍生品最终出现在了本不该出现的地方，出现在了本不该承担如此高风险的机构中。

Now what ended up happening in the financial crisis was that these derivative products were ending up in places where they didn't belong, in places that should not have been taking on amount this amount of risk.

比如本应相对安全的养老基金。

Things like pension funds that should be relatively safe investments.

它们为什么会出现在那里？

Why did they end up there?

因为购买这些产品的人根本没意识到它们有多复杂。

Because the people buying them just did not appreciate or realize how complicated they were.

当美国房地产价格开始下跌时，这些与房地产价值和抵押贷款违约概率挂钩的产品就崩盘了。

And so what happened was when the price of, of real estate in The United States started going down, these products, which were tied to the value of real estate and like the default probabilities on mortgages, they crashed in value.

我们的金融体系中存在巨大的风险，因为这些产品渗透到了各个领域，并在这些领域中广泛存在。

And there was this huge amount of risk in our financial system because these products had entered into all these different areas and they were highly represented in all these different areas.

突然之间，所有人都感到震惊，因为养老基金因持有这些高风险产品而损失了大量价值，而人们根本没有意识到这些风险的存在。

And all of a sudden, kind of everybody was caught by surprise that, you know, the pension fund was losing a huge amount of its value because it had exposure to these very risky things, because people didn't realize that the risk was there.

某种程度上，这类似于飞机上发生的情况。

I mean, in some ways, it's analogous to what happened on the plane.

你知道，飞机变得越来越复杂，飞行员实际上大部分时间都依赖飞机自动飞行。

You know, the planes are getting so complex that the pilots, in fact, are trusting the plane most of the time to fly itself.

也许交易员或养老基金管理者只是看着市场，而市场变得如此复杂，以至于他们基本上只是说：好吧。

And and and perhaps traders or people who manage pension funds are basically looking out at the market, and the market has gotten so complex that they basically are saying, okay.

我们相信这些大银行知道他们在做什么，这些对冲基金知道他们在做什么。

We trust that these big banks know what they're doing, these big hedge funds know what they're doing.

在某种程度上，他们正在将应对危机的能力外包出去，或削弱自身能力，部分原因是因为情况变得过于复杂。

And in some ways, they're outsourcing or reducing their own capabilities to actually deal with a crisis partly because the situation has gotten so complex.

这完全正确。

That's absolutely absolutely right.

我认为，这种情况发生在不止一个层面。

And I think, it it happens at more than one level.

如果你考虑一位懂得什么是衍生品的养老基金经理，但他并不是衍生品方面的专家，他会依赖那些做衍生品分析的人，认为这个产品可能是投资组合中一个不错的投资工具。

So if you think about a pension fund manager who knows what a derivative is, but isn't a super expert in a derivative, he's relying on the people who do the analysis of the derivatives to kind of think, oh, this is potentially like a good investment vehicle for my portfolio.

他并没有仔细深入地思考该金融工具的风险特征。

He's not thinking in super careful detail about what the risk profile is of that instrument.

也许他或她本该这么做，但显然他们并没有。

And maybe he or she should be, but but they obviously didn't.

但这种情况还发生在另一个层面，即那些真正精通衍生品的人，结果发现，他们也没有完全理解这些工具会如何表现。

But it also, occurs at another level, which is the person who actually is the super expert on the derivative, even that person, it turned out, didn't understand completely how they these things were gonna behave.

因此，开发并销售这些金融工具的大型银行，会使用一个数学模型来精确预测这些工具的行为。

So the big banks who were developing these instruments and selling them, they would have a mathematical model that would determine exactly how these things would behave.

问题是，这些数学模型在大多数时候运行得非常好，就像高度自动化的飞机一样，但在非常罕见的情况下——也就是所谓的黑天鹅事件——它们会失效。

The problem is that those mathematical models work really well most of the time, like an airplane that's highly automated, but they actually break down in very unusual situations, a black swan event, so to speak.

而这正是当时发生的情况。

And that's exactly what happened.

所以，这些模型失败了。

So, the the models failed.

因此，即使是衍生品领域的顶级专家，也完全误解了这些产品中所蕴含的风险程度。

And so the super experts on derivatives, even they completely, misunderstood the amount of risk that was present in in these in these products.

整个金融系统都存在这种认知上的误判，并且引发了一连串的连锁反应：起初只是房价的轻微下跌，随后却演变成一场巨大的崩溃与灾难，不仅影响了美国，还波及了世界各地的国家，因为如今整个全球体系是如此紧密相连。

So it was across the entire financial system that there was these sort of miscalibrations in understanding, and there was this cascade effect that started with, you know, some slight decreases in the price of housing and then just cascaded into this massive crash, and devastation that not only affected The United States but, affected countries all over the world because the entire global system is so, connected nowadays.

我们回来后，聊聊为什么我们会以为自己知道的比实际更多，以及我们可以做些什么。

When we come back, why we imagine we know more than we do and what we can do about it.

您正在收听《隐藏的思维》。

You are listening to Hidden Brain.

我是 Shankar Vedanta。

I am Shankar Vedanta.

这是《隐藏的思维》。

This is Hidden Brain.

我是 Shankar Vedanta。

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

也许你有过开车去参加重要活动的经历。

Perhaps you've had the experience of driving to an important event.

你迟到了，于是决定要超越所有被困在交通堵塞中的司机。

You're running late, and you decide you want to outsmart all the other drivers who are stuck in traffic.

你拐进一条小路，因为你知道这是绕过拥堵的捷径。

You take a side street because you know it's a shortcut around the traffic jam.

开了三个街区后，你发现这条捷径根本不是捷径。

Three blocks later, you realize the shortcut isn't a shortcut.

事实上，它根本无法带你到达目的地。

In fact, it doesn't get you where you need to go.

在这样的时刻，你会对自己说什么？

What do you tell yourself in moments like that?

你会说：‘我这次真的搞砸了？’

Do you say, Oh, I got that really wrong?

还是会说：‘我的方向感一向完美，只是这次小小的失误而已？’

Or do you say, My sense of navigation is impeccable except for this one tiny misstep?

菲利普·费尔巴赫是科罗拉多大学博尔德分校利兹商学院的认知科学家。

Philip Fernbach is a cognitive scientist at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder.

菲尔，作为一名认知科学家，你研究过人类为何既如此聪明，又如此愚蠢。

Phil, as a cognitive scientist, you've studied how humans can be so brilliant but also really dumb.

这听起来像是一个悖论。

That feels like a paradox.

这确实是一个悖论，我认为这也是人类的核心悖论。

That is a paradox, and that is the paradox at the heart of humankind, I think.

一方面，我们登上了月球，创造了令人惊叹的人工智能，以及其他种种近乎魔法的能力。

On the one hand, we have visited the moon and created incredible artificial intelligence and all these other sort of almost magical abilities.

另一方面，人人都知道，人们会做出极其无知、极端和愚蠢的行为。

On the other hand, everybody knows that people can engage in behavior that's incredibly ignorant and extreme and foolish.

我们都曾这样做过，也都在他人身上见过这样的行为。

And we've all done it ourselves, and we've all seen it in others.

因此，研究人类心智的学者们创造了一个术语，用来解释为何我们自身的无知常常被自己忽视。

So researchers who study the mind have come up with a term to describe why our own ignorance is often hidden from us.

他们称之为知识幻觉。

They call it the illusion of knowledge.

这个幻觉是什么意思，菲尔？

What is this illusion, Phil?

知识幻觉是指我们认为自己对世界的理解比实际要深入得多。

The illusion of knowledge is the idea that we think that we understand the world in much greater detail than we actually do.

在认知科学中，这有时被称为解释深度幻觉。

In cognitive science, this is sometimes called the illusion of explanatory depth.

上世纪九十年代，耶鲁大学的一位心理学家弗兰克·凯尔及其同事做了出色的研究，他们正是对此感兴趣。

There was, great research done by, a psychologist at Yale named Frank Kyle and his colleagues in the nineteen nineties, and that's precisely what they were interested in.

人们对日常物品的工作原理了解得多深？

How well do people understand how everyday objects work?

比如马桶、圆珠笔或拉链。

Things like toilets or ballpoint pens or zippers.

在这些研究中，他们让受试者先大致评估自己对这些物品的理解程度。

And in these studies, what they asked people to do was to first just give a sort of impression of how well they understand things.

这个实验有趣的地方在于，你的听众现在就可以自己做这个实验。

And what's fun about this experiment is that your listeners can actually do this experiment on themselves right now.

所以想一想。

So think about it.

你对马桶的工作原理了解多少？

How well do you understand how a toilet works?

如果你和大多数人一样，此刻你可能正在点头，心想：我对马桶的工作原理有不错的理解。

And if you're like most people, you're kind of nodding your head right now and saying, well, I have a decent understanding of how a toilet works.

你认为在你的脑海中， somewhere 存在着一张标注详细的管道示意图，可以向我们描述出来。

You think that somewhere in your mind is something like an annotated plumbing diagram that you could, that you could tell us about.

但这里有个陷阱。

But here's the trick.

在实验的下一阶段，我要请你详细解释它是如何工作的。

In the next part of the experiment, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask you to explain to me in detail exactly how it works.

当我这么做的时候，一件非常奇妙的事情发生了。

And when I do that, something really remarkable happens.

人们深入思考后，发现自己几乎无话可说。

People reach inside, and they realize they have just about nothing to say.

事实证明，我们对世界运行方式的理解往往非常有限。

It turns out that we tend to know remarkably little about the way that the world works.

然而，我们最初却总觉得自己的理解非常深入。

And yet that initial impression we have is that we do understand in a lot of depth.

这就是凯尔所说的解释深度错觉，有时也更简单地称为知识错觉或理解错觉。

And that's what, Kyle called the illusion of explanatory depth and is sometimes referred to more simply as an illusion of knowledge or an illusion of understanding.

所以当谈到马桶这类东西时，我认为大多数人会想象你按一下把手，水就会流入便池，马桶就冲走了。

So when it comes to something like a toilet, I think most people imagine you press a handle and water flows into the bowl and the toilet flushes.

这就是马桶的工作原理。

And that's how the toilet works.

实际上，在大多数情况下，你只需要知道这些就足以正常使用马桶了，直到它坏了需要修理为止。

So that's actually most of the time pretty much all you need to know about how a toilet works until the toilet breaks and you have to fix it.

然后你才会意识到，原来背后还有更多复杂的机制。

And then you realize, actually, there's a lot more going on.

到这时，你可能会问自己：马桶是怎么工作的？

At this point, you may be asking yourself, how do toilets work?

我让菲尔测试一下他自己的知识，但他拒绝凭记忆解释。

I asked Phil to test his own knowledge, but he declined to offer an explanation from memory.

正如他所说，他关于这个话题已经学过大约一千万次，却始终记不住。

As he put it, he's learned it about 10,000,000 times but can never retain it.

所以现在他正在阅读这段解释。

So here he is reading the explanation.

北美最常见的冲水马桶是虹吸式马桶。

So the most popular flush toilet in North America is the siphoning toilet.

顺便说一下，这是一个非常巧妙的机制，是由人发明的。

And by the way, this is a really ingenious mechanism that was that was created.

它最重要的组成部分包括水箱、便池和存水弯。

Its most important components are a tank, a bowl, and a trap way.

存水弯通常呈S形或U形，在通向最终接入下水道的排水管之前，会先向上弯曲高于便池出口。

The trap way is usually s or u shaped, and it curves up higher than the outlet of the bowl before descending into the drainpipe that eventually feeds the sewer.

水箱最初是装满水的。

The tank is initially full of water.

当冲水时，水会迅速从水箱流入便池，使水位上升到高于存水弯最高点的位置。

And when the toilet is flushed, the water flows from the tank quickly into the bowl, raising the water level above the highest curve of the trapway.

这会将存水弯中的空气排出，使其充满水。

This purges the trapway of air filling it with water.

一旦存水弯被填满，神奇的现象就发生了。

As soon as the trapway fills, the magic occurs.

会产生一种虹吸效应，将便池中的水吸出，通过存水弯排入下水道。

A siphon effect is created that sucks the water out of the bowl and sends it through the trapway down the drain.

这和你用一根管子一端放入油箱、另一端用嘴吸来偷汽油的虹吸原理是一样的。

It's the same siphon action that you can use to steal gasoline out of a car by placing one end in the tank and sucking on the other end.

让我试着复述一遍，看看我能不能检验一下自己对这个知识的错觉。

Let me try and say it back to you to see if I can test my own illusion of knowledge here.

我认为它的意思是，马桶便池后面有一段S形的弯管。

What I think it's saying is that you have this S shaped curve in the pipe behind the toilet bowl.

当你冲厕所时，它会被水填满。

And as you flush the toilet, it's filled with water.

它开始填满这个S形管道。

It starts to fill up this s shaped pipe.

当水填满管道时，水基本上将空气排出，在这个S形管道的后端形成某种真空。

And as it fills up the pipe with water, the water basically pushes out the air, creating something of a vacuum on the back end of this s shaped pipe.

而真空会将马桶内剩余的水吸进排水管。

And the vacuum then suctions the rest of the water inside the bowl out into the drain.

我讲得怎么样，菲尔？

How did I do, Phil?

嗯，我觉得我们应该找水管工来验证，而不是问我。

Well, I think we should test that with the plumber, not with me.

但我认为你做得相当不错。

But I think you did a pretty good job.

你的意思是，我应该专心做播客，别碰水管工的活儿——我从你的话里听到的就是这个建议。

What you're saying is I should stick to podcasting and not plumbing is is the advice I'm hearing you give me.

我觉得我们都应该。

I think we both should.

但这突显了世界有多么复杂。

But what this highlights is just how complicated the world is.

有谁会想到，我们每天使用的这个物品里，竟然有如此精妙的机制，而我们却从未留意过。

Whoever thought, you know, there's this ingenious mechanism in this object that we use every single day and we never think about.

所以，请谈一谈认知错觉在某种程度上是如何源于人类思维的运作方式及其在应对这个极其复杂世界时的局限性的。

So talk a moment about how the illusion of knowledge in some ways is a product of the way the human mind works and its limitations as it interacts with this extremely complex world.

为什么世界的运行机制对我们来说如此难以理解呢，菲尔？

Why is it that the workings of the world are so hard for us to wrap our heads around, Phil?

我认为这反映了人类思维本质及其思考真正目的的一个深刻事实。

I think this reflects a really deep fact about the nature of the mind and what thinking is actually for.

思考的演化是为了让我们在世界上行动得更有效。

Thinking evolved to make us more effective at acting in the world.

世界极其复杂。

The world is extremely complex.

要在世界上做出有效的行动，确实需要在差异极大的环境中行动。

And to be able to choose effective actions in the world really requires acting in environments that are very different from one another.

我们几乎从未遇到过完全相同的情况重复出现。

We almost never see the same exact situation arise twice.

因此，我们的思维必须非常擅长概括。

And so our minds have to be really effective at generalization.

它们必须能够理解某种情况与另一种情况在某些方面是相似的，才能采取行动；存储关于世界及其运行方式的大量细节实际上是有害的。

They have to understand that this situation is similar to this situation in some way to be able So to act storing a huge amount of detail about the world and the way that it works is actually counterproductive.

我们真正需要做的是抛弃所有无关的细节，只保留那些更深层的原则和可概括的结构，这些才能帮助我们做出有效的行动。

What we really want to do is throw away all of the irrelevant detail and just retain the deeper principles, the deeper generalizable structures that are going to allow us to choose effective actions.

当然，这一点对世界上各种事物都成立，从细菌到树木的运作，再到飓风的形成，无一例外。

And of course, this must be true for all manner of different things in the world, everything from bacteria to how trees work to how a hurricane works.

所有这些在某种程度上都是复杂的现象，我们对细菌的行为、飓风的本质都有一个大致的理解，但并不了解其微观层面的具体机制。

All of these in some ways are complex phenomena where we have a general understanding of what bacteria do, a general understanding of what a hurricane is, but not the exact mechanics of what's actually happening at a granular level.

说得完全正确。

That's exactly right.

世界是如此复杂。

The world is so complex.

当你开始深入探究几乎任何事物的细节时，你会意识到它有多么复杂，而这种复杂性起初并不容易被察觉。

When you start, when you start digging into the details of almost anything, you realize how complicated it is and that you don't necessarily appreciate that complexity off the bat.

我记得听过一个关于石头、剪刀、布比赛的故事。

I remember hearing a story about a rock, paper, scissors tournament.

你知道石头、剪刀、布这个游戏吗？

Do you know the game rock, paper, scissors?

知道。

Yes.

对。

Yeah.

这是一个非常简单的游戏，对吧？

Very simple game, right?

看起来这个游戏没什么可学的，也没什么可理解的。

It seems like there's nothing to learn and nothing to understand about that game.

你怎么可能举办一个比赛？

How could you have a tournament?

你只是随机出拳而已。

You just throw randomly.

对。

Right.

但实际上，有一群人已经把石头剪刀布玩得非常出色了。

Well, actually, it turns out that there's a group of people who have gotten really good at rock, paper, scissors.

他们是怎么做的？

And what do they do?

他们精通了人类大脑如何选择出拳，以及如何进行模式识别和其他相关技巧。

They master the details of how the human mind chooses what to throw and how it engages in pattern matching and other kinds of things.

他们能够识别出新手玩家在出拳时的某些模式，并加以利用。

And they can identify certain kinds of patterns in what a more novice rock, paper, scissors player will do and take advantage of that.

我明白了。

I see.

换句话说，如果我是个新手，我可能会不自觉地陷入某些模式，而自己却毫无察觉。

So in other words, if I'm a novice, there might be certain patterns that I slip into, unconsciously without realizing I've slipped into the pattern.

而如果你是专家，就可以利用这一点。

And if you're an expert, you sort of can take advantage of that.

说得完全正确。

That's exactly right.

这听起来是个很荒谬的例子，但当我第一次了解到这个现象时，根本无法想象有人能在这一领域达到任何专业水平。

It's a funny kind of dumb example, but something where when I first looked at it, said, there is no way that somebody could develop any level of expertise in that area.

但事实证明，这里确实有值得学习的东西。

But it turns out, no, there is actually something to be learned there.

当我们观察一种极为罕见的状况——超忆症时，就能看到过度掌握世界细节所带来的问题。

So we can see the problem with mastering too much detail about the world when we look at people with a very rare condition called hyperthymesia.

这种状况是什么样的呢，菲尔？

What is this condition, Phil?

它是如何运作的？

How does it work?

是的

Yeah.

这是一个非常有趣的例子。

This is a super fascinating, example.

因此，超忆症也被称为高度优越的自传体记忆。

So hyperthymesia is also called highly superior autobiographical memory.

这些人的记忆能力极强，能确切记住发生在他们身上的每一件事。

And these are people who literally remember everything that's ever happened to them.

你可以和一位患有超忆症的人交谈，问他们：1985年8月15日上午10点30分，你经历了什么？

And so you could talk to a person with hyperthymesia and say, what happened to you at 10:30 in the morning, on 08/15/1985?

他们能精确地复述当时发生的一切。

And they can relate to exactly what occurred.

他们基本上拥有完美的记忆力。

They basically have perfect recall.

之前我提到过，我们的大脑非常擅长忽略无关的细节，而患有超忆症的人则恰恰相反。

So, before I described how our minds are very good at throwing away irrelevant detail, if you have hyperthymesia, it's the opposite.

你保留了发生在你身上的一切。

You retain everything that's ever happened to you.

这听起来像超能力，但实际上让生活变得非常艰难。

It sounds like a superpower, but it actually makes life really difficult.

阿根廷作家博尔赫斯写过一个精彩的小故事，名叫《富内斯的记忆》。

And there's an amazing short story by the Argentinian writer Borges, which is called Funes de Memorias.

它恰好描述了这样一个人：他从马上摔下来后，获得了完美的自传体记忆，能记住生活中每一个细枝末节，最终被逼疯。

And it describes exactly this, a man who falls off a horse and develops perfect autobiographical memory so that he remembers every little detail of his life, and it drives him crazy.

因为思考和认知的目的，其实并不是存储细节。

And that's because the purpose of thinking, the purpose of cognition is really not to store detail.

而是丢弃细节，以便能够进行概括。

It's to throw the detail away to be able to generalize.

这是认知极其重要的功能。

And that's such an important function of cognition.

如果你患有这种超忆症，生活实际上会变得非常艰难。

If you have this hyperthymesia, it actually makes life really difficult.

所以，菲爾，我聽到你說的是，在很多方面，對我們來說，拋棄大量細節，甚至根本不去學習這些細節，而只保留對世界非常概括的理解，反而更高效、更有效。

So what I hear you saying, Phil, is that in many ways, it's actually more efficient and more effective for us to discard a lot of details or maybe even never learn the details in the first place and stick with this very generalized, you know, understanding of the world.

所以，問題不在於我們不知道所有事情。

So the problem is not that we don't know everything.

這只是人類的本質而已。

That's just the human condition.

問題在於，大多數人都以為自己知道的比實際上要多。

The problem is that most of us think we know more than we actually do.

事實上，試圖了解一切是徒勞的。

In fact, it would be futile to try to know everything.

世界太過複雜了。

The world is just way too complex.

我們已經談過這一點了。

We've already talked about that.

個人根本不可能掌握足夠多的關於世界的知識，以至於儲存所有細節是有效的。

There's just no way that an individual can know enough about the world that it would be effective to store all the details about everything.

这正是作为人类的一部分。

That's just part and parcel of what it means to be a human being.

问题在于，我们没有意识到自己有多不了解。

It is a problem that we don't appreciate the extent to which we don't understand.

1995年4月，一个叫麦克阿瑟·威勒的人想出了一个在他看来万无一失的抢劫银行并逃脱的方法。

So in April 1995, a man named MacArthur Wheeler came up with what seemed to him to be a foolproof way to rob banks and get away with it.

告诉我他做了什么，菲尔。

Tell me what he did, Phil.

这真是个疯狂的故事。

This is a this is a crazy story.

这个家伙以为，只要在脸上涂柠檬汁，就能在摄像头前隐形。

So this, this guy was under the impression that he would be invisible to the cameras if he put lemon juice on his face.

你还记得小时候，用柠檬汁在纸上写字就能写出隐形墨水吗？

You remember when you were a kid, you could create invisible ink by putting lemon juice on the paper?

是的。

Mhmm.

所以他莫名其妙地认为，这种方法能让他在摄像头前隐形。

So he thought for some reason that this would apply to making him invisible to the camera.

于是他真的去尝试抢劫银行，既没戴面具，也没任何伪装，只是在脸上涂了柠檬汁。

So he actually went in to try to rob a bank with no mask, no subterfuge whatsoever, just lemon juice on his face.

于是他的影像被电视台播出了。

So his his image is broadcast on the news.

几分钟内，警察就登门逮捕了他，而他完全难以置信。

Within minutes, the police arrive at his door to arrest him, and he is completely incredulous.

他们怎么可能知道就是他呢？毕竟他脸上涂了柠檬汁啊？

How could they have possibly known it was him because he had the lemon juice on his face?

事实上，他之前测试过这个方法，用宝丽来相机拍了张自己的照片，确认自己的脸在照片里确实隐形了。

And in fact, it turned out that he had tested the method by taking a Polaroid of himself and making sure that his face was indeed invisible to the Polaroid camera.

至今没人知道为什么宝丽来相机拍不出他的脸，但有一种可能是，他的眼睛里进了柠檬汁，导致视线受阻。

It's never been discovered why the Polaroid didn't show his face, But one possibility is that he missed because his eyes were filled with lemon juice.

所以你的意思是，他不仅是个糟糕的银行劫匪。

So so what you're saying is he was not just a terrible bank robber.

他也是一个糟糕的摄影师。

He was a terrible photographer as well.

看来是这样。

Apparently so.

菲尔还发现，我们错误的记忆在知识幻觉中扮演了角色。

Phil has also found that our faulty memories play a role in the illusion of knowledge.

以人们认为自己在股票市场投资方面有多聪明为例。

Take for instance the research into how good people think they are when it comes to making smart investments in the stock market.

已有大量研究证明，人们往往对自己的市场超越能力过于自信。

It's been well documented that people tend to be very overconfident in their capabilities in terms of beating the market.

这可能导致灾难性的后果，比如人们承担了过多的风险。

And that can lead to really disastrous outcomes, like people take on too much risk.

事实上，人们交易越频繁，表现就越差。

And it actually turns out that the more people actively trade, the worse they do.

而频繁交易在某种程度上是对自己超越市场能力过度自信的体现。

And active trading is sort of an indicator of being overconfident in your ability to beat the market.

这篇论文是我和丹·沃尔特斯合写的。

This is a paper that I wrote with Dan Walters.

在这篇论文中，我们发现人们产生过度自信的一个原因是：他们倾向于记住好的结果，而忘记坏的结果。

And what we found in this paper is that one reason for the overconfidence, the reason that people feel that they can beat the market is because they tend to, remember the good outcomes and forget the bad outcomes.

所以，如果我进行一笔交易并大获成功，这个记忆会比交易失败时更加深刻。

So if I make a trade and I do great on it, that one's gonna stick in my memory more so than, when I make a trade and it does poorly.

这并不是说，如果你遭遇了灾难性的交易，你就不会记得它。

That's not to say that if you have a really disastrous trade that you're not gonna remember that.

你当然会记得。

You certainly would.

是的。

Yeah.

但总体而言，你会倾向于夸大好的结果而淡化坏的结果。

But on average, you're gonna tend to inflate the good over the bad.

其中一个原因是，我们倾向于记住那些有助于维持积极自我形象的事情。

And one reason for that is because we tend to remember the things that help us maintain a positive self image.