伯特兰 - 罗素论避免愚蠢的观点

伯特兰 - 罗素论避免愚蠢的观点

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Bertrand Russell: On Avoiding Foolish Opinions

伯特兰 - 罗素论避免愚蠢的观点

Want to steer clear of foolishness? Bertrand Russell has some timeless advice that can help. While it won’t make you infallible, his practical tips can go a long way in identifying and avoiding common pitfalls in thinking. Let’s dive into Russell’s wisdom and explore how we can apply it to our own lives.\ 想要远离愚蠢?伯特兰 - 罗素的一些永恒建议可以帮到你。虽然这不会让你变得无懈可击,但他的实用建议可以帮助你识别和避免思维中的常见误区。让我们深入学习罗素的智慧,探索如何将其运用到自己的生活中。

On Avoiding Foolish Opinions

避免愚蠢的观点

Via The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell:\ 通过《伯特兰 - 罗素的基本著作》:

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.\ 如果问题可以通过观察来解决,那就自己去观察。亚里士多德本来可以避免认为女人的牙齿比男人少的错误,只要他让亚里士多德夫人在他数数的时候张开嘴就可以了。他没有这样做,因为他认为自己知道。自以为知道,其实并不知道,这是一个致命的错误,我们都容易犯这样的错误。我相信刺猬会吃黑甲虫,因为有人告诉我它们会吃;但如果我要写一本关于刺猬习性的书,我应该先亲眼看到一只刺猬在享受这种难吃的食物,然后再下笔。不过,亚里士多德就没那么谨慎了。古代和中世纪的作家对独角兽和蝾螈了如指掌;他们中没有一个人认为有必要避免对它们发表教条式的言论,因为他从未见过它们。

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.\ 然而,许多事情却不那么容易经受经验的考验。如果你像人类中的大多数人一样,对许多此类问题抱有强烈的信念,那么你可以通过一些方法让自己意识到自己的偏见。

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 some one 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.\ 如果一个与你的观点相反的意见让你感到愤怒,这表明你潜意识里意识到自己的想法没有充分的理由。如果有人坚持认为二加二等于五,或者冰岛在赤道上,你会感到同情而不是愤怒,除非你对算术或地理知之甚少,以至于他的观点动摇了你自己的相反信念。最野蛮的争论是那些没有充分证据的争论。迫害用于神学,而不是算术,因为算术中有知识,而神学中只有观点。因此,每当你发现自己因为意见分歧而生气时,一定要提高警惕;你很可能会在检查后发现,你的信念超出了证据所能证明的范围。

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. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.\ 要想摆脱某些教条主义,一个好办法就是了解社交圈中与自己不同的观点。我年轻时曾在法国、德国、意大利和美国等国生活过。我发现这对减少狭隘偏见的强度大有裨益。如果你不能旅行,那就去寻找与你意见相左的人,读一份属于非你党派的报纸。如果这些人和报纸看起来很疯狂、反常和邪恶,那就提醒自己,在他们看来你也是如此。这样看来,双方可能都是对的,但不可能都是错的。这种反思应引起一定的警惕。

Becoming aware of foreign customs, however, does not always have a beneficial effect. In the seventeenth century, when the Manchus China, it was the custom among the Chinese for the women to have small feet, and among the Manchus for the men to wear-. Instead of each dropping their own foolish custom, they each adopted the foolish custom of the other, and the Chinese continued to wear until they shook off the of the Manchus in the revolution of 1911.conqueredpigtailspigtailsdominion\ 然而,了解外国习俗并不总是有益的。十七世纪,满清入主中原时,中国人的习俗是女人穿小脚,而满清人的习俗是男人穿 --。 他们不但没有放弃自己愚蠢的习俗,反而各自采用了对方愚蠢的习俗,中国人继续穿,直到他们在辛亥革命中摆脱了满清人的统治。

For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a 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 or space. Mahatma Gandhi deplores railways and steamboats and machinery; he would like to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting any one who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might say in refutation of them. 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.\ 对于那些有足够心理想象力的人来说,想象与一个有不同偏见的人进行争论是一个不错的计划。与实际对话相比,这种方法有一个优点,而且只有一个优点,那就是不受时间和空间的限制。圣雄甘地痛恨铁路、蒸汽船和机械;他想推翻整个工业革命。你可能永远不会有机会真正见到持这种观点的人,因为在西方国家,大多数人都认为现代技术的优势是理所当然的。但是,如果你想确定自己同意流行观点的观点是正确的,你就会发现,通过考虑甘地可能会说什么来反驳你想到的论点,来检验这些论点是一个不错的计划。通过这种想象中的对话,我有时真的会改变自己的想法,除此之外,我还经常发现自己因为意识到假设的对手可能是合理的,而变得不再那么教条和固执。

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 retort 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 corner 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 jellyfish.\ 对那些奉承你自尊心的观点要保持高度警惕。无论是男人还是女人,十有八九都坚信自己的性别是最优秀的。双方都有大量的证据。如果你是男人,你可以指出大多数诗人和科学工作者都是男性;如果你是女人,你可以反驳说大多数罪犯也是男性。这个问题本质上是无解的,但大多数人的自尊心掩盖了这一点。无论我们来自世界哪个角落,我们都认为自己的民族优于其他所有民族。看到每个民族都有其特有的优点和缺点,我们就会调整自己的价值标准,使自己民族所拥有的优点成为真正重要的优点,而缺点则相对微不足道。在这里,理性的人会承认,这个问题没有明显正确的答案。要解决人作为人的自尊问题则更为困难,因为我们无法与非人的思想进行争论。我所知道的解决人类这种普遍自负的唯一办法就是提醒我们自己,人类只是宇宙中一个小角落里一颗小星球生命中的一个短暂插曲,而且,据我们所知,宇宙的其他部分可能包含着比我们自己优越的生命,就像我们比水母优越一样。

Russell’s practical advice on dealing with foolish opinions holds as true today as when it was first written. He reminds us to base our beliefs on direct observations whenever possible, be aware of our own biases, seek out opinions different from our own, and be cautious of views that flatter our self-esteem. By following these simple yet effective guidelines, we can minimize our chances of falling prey to erroneous thinking and maintain a more rational outlook on life.\ 罗素关于如何应对愚昧观点的实用建议,在今天看来仍与当初写作时一样适用。他提醒我们尽可能将自己的信念建立在直接观察的基础上,意识到自己的偏见,寻求与自己不同的观点,并谨慎对待那些谄媚自尊的观点。遵循这些简单而有效的准则,我们就能最大限度地减少陷入错误思维的机会,保持更加理性的人生观。

Still curious? Check out Avoiding Stupidity and Russell’s 10 Commandments of Teaching.\ 还好奇吗?查看《避免愚蠢》和罗素的《教学十诫》。

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