8月27日，耶魯大學迎來了新一屆學生，校長彼得·沙洛維以對失實表述說不”為演講主題，表達了對耶魯學生的希冀。演講中，校長既沒有提起耶魯學生的“錢”途問題，也沒有談論什么高大上的話題，而是細而又細地強調了在耶魯接受教育的一個重要內容：學習如何辨別和應對“失實表述”。在他看來，成為一個更加審慎的批判性思考者，才能提高而不是削弱洞察力。



各位同事、各位家長，尤其是2020屆的本科新生們，早上好！歡迎你們參加今天的活動。
Good morning and welcome: to my colleagues here on stage, to the family members who have joined us today, and—especially—to the Yale College Class of 2020.


2020這個數字總會讓人浮想聯翩。如今它已成為你們在耶魯的班級代號，我相信無論是你們的直覺、思維敏銳性，還是意志力，都會在這里得到提升。招辦的工作人員向我保證，你們是經過層層篩選以后勝出的佼佼者。
Twenty-twenty—a term that inevitably brings to mind perfect eyesight. And now that all of you are wearing 2020 as your class label in Yale College, I am confident your intuition and your mental acuity will develop here to an equivalent level of strength. The admissions office assures me that everything possible has been done to guarantee this outcome.

2020屆新生來自全美50個州，留學生則來自全球50個國家和地區(qū)

盡管如此，我還是想在開學第一天這個特殊的日子里，好好思考一下你們在耶魯就讀期間，什么可能削弱你們的洞察力，什么又有可能讓它得到提升。
Nonetheless, I’d like to reflect—on your “first day of school”—about what might impede your insight and what might advance it in the course of your education here.


多年來，我為很多新生上過“心理學入門”。每次講到與社會心理學相關的內容時，我總會問學生，他們是怎么看待在不同社會情境中幫助別人這個問題的。同樣是在緊急情況下，為什么有時我們會出手相助，有時卻又袖手旁觀？
For many years, I taught introductory psychology to large numbers of freshmen. In the part of the course devoted to social psychology, I would ask my students to consider what we know about helping others in various kinds of social situations. Specifically, why is it that we offer assistance, or fail to offer assistance, in emergencies?


我想從一個大家都知道的悲劇——Kitty Genovese 事件說起。1964 年，29 歲的 Kitty 在位于紐約皇后區(qū) Kew Garden 的家中被害，這一案件引起了廣泛關注和熱議，也許你也聽說過關于此事的好幾個版本。據《紐約時報》報道，有 38 個人從自家窗戶看到了行兇過程，但只有一人報警，且報警時為時已晚。
I would begin with the tragic and well known case of Kitty Genovese, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who lived in Kew Gardens, Queens, and was murdered there in 1964. Her case received enormous attention and commentary, and you have probably heard some version of her story. As reported in the New York Times, thirty-eight individuals watched the murder from their apartment windows, but only one called the police, and by then it was too late.


這些年來，我多次描述這一令人震驚的案件，其他講授類似課程的社會心理學家們也是如此，還有一些社會學家試圖據此分析為什么目擊者們會如此冷漠無情，竟然能眼睜睜地看著這樣的犯罪行為發(fā)生，卻無動于衷。
Over the years, I have described this shocking incident many times. So have other social psychologists teaching similar courses, and so did the social scientists who sought to explain how witnesses could exhibit such callous indifference to a horrific crime taking place before their eyes.


問題在于：標準版 Kitty Genovese 案件描述在某些關鍵細節(jié)上出了錯。
Here’s the trouble: the standard account of the Kitty Genovese case is wrong in some of its crucial details.


Kitty 的弟弟 Bill Genovese，去年制作了一部名為《目擊者》（The Witness）的紀錄片。根據他在這部電影中所展示的實拍場景，并非所有旁觀者都冷漠無情：一個目擊者在窗口大聲呵斥兇手，另一個目擊者在 Kitty 離世時將其抱在懷中，也有其他目擊者在此期間報了警。
Kitty’s brother, Bill Genovese, produced a film last year called The Witness. In it, he documents that some bystanders were not indifferent: one witness shouted out the window at the attacker, another witness held Kitty in her arms as she died, and several called the police during the attack.



那么，為什么五十多年來，社會學家們一直在不斷復述這個故事的失實版本，并將其作為旁觀者極端冷漠的典型案例？暫且不論其他，這至少意味著，在不經意間，我們已經被“失實表述”混淆了視聽。這種“失實表述”雖然部分真實，但已被歪曲，就像上述案件被報道歪曲了一樣，因為報紙想激起人們憤慨、恐懼、憎惡等強烈的負面情緒。
So what does it mean that social scientists have been retelling an incorrect version of this story for over fifty years as a paradigmatic example of extreme bystander indifference? Well, among other things, it means that inadvertently we have been perpetuating what could rightly be called a false narrative—a version of events that, while partly true, had been shaped, in this case by a newspaper report, to elicit strong negative emotions like anger, fear, or disgust.


作為一名人類情緒的研究者，我知道即使是最負面的感受對我們而言也不可或缺：憤怒能有效地警示在實現目標路上有阻力；恐懼提醒人們謹慎行事并有所準備；憎惡讓我們對壞人壞事敬而遠之。
As an investigator of human emotions, I know that even the most negative feelings can be important to our survival. Anger effectively signals that a goal is being blocked. Fear motivates caution and preparation. Disgust moves us away from things that can make us ill. 


然而，有時我們的朋友、家人，還有政客、廣告主、各路專家會出于各自目的而操控我們的情感。憤怒、恐懼、憎惡這些情緒可以有效驅使我們去打開網頁、購買商品、為政客投票。
However, sometimes our friends, family members, politicians, advertisers, pundits, and others look to manipulate our emotions for their own purposes. Anger, fear, and disgust can be highly effective ways to drive eyeballs to websites, consumers to products, or voters to the polls.


我們每天都在經受著各種各樣“失實表述”的狂轟濫炸，它們的殺傷力不容小覷。當前正值美國的大選季，你可以毫不費力地找到種種這樣的案例。
My sense is that we are bombarded daily by false narratives of various kinds, and that they are doing a great deal of damage. In a national election season, you do not need to look very hard to find them.


我說這些的目的，不是為了嘲諷說謊之人，也不是為了給歪曲事實者貼上“匹諾曹”的標簽。我只是想讓你們明白，選擇任何一種立場都可能導致夸大、歪曲或者忽略一些重要的事實，從而助長憤怒、恐懼和憎惡的情緒。
It is not my purpose today to mock the biggest “whoppers” or award “Pinocchios” for the biggest distortions. Rather, I am only hoping to persuade you that advocates on any side of a question can be tempted to exaggerate or distort or neglect crucial facts in ways that serve primarily to fuel your anger, fear, or disgust.


如果我的上述說法成立，那么你們在此接受教育的一個重要內容就是：學習如何辨別和應對這些失實表述。
If I am correct, then an important aspect of your education here will be learning how to recognize and address these kinds of accounts. 


在此過程中，你們應該特別留心那些與你自己的想法高度一致的表述。如果你在政治、文化、宗教或經濟議題上持有堅定的立場，樂于接受那些能證實你原有觀點、妖魔化相反意見的論調，那就會像很多人一樣，掉入認知陷阱。
In the course of that, you should pay especially close attention to the narratives that seem to align best with your own beliefs. To the extent you hold strong political or cultural or religious or economic beliefs, you will simply be like all the rest of us if you gravitate toward explanations that seem to provide confirmation for those beliefs or to demonize those who hold different ones. 


我們都強烈傾向于接受與我們原有觀念相符的故事版本，忽略或者拒絕接受那些不相符的。社交媒體、博客圈和政治活動正充斥著失實表述，為負能量煽風點火，既阻礙著理性調查，也阻礙著不同意見的充分交流，甚至還會妨礙我們對全球共同面臨的挑戰(zhàn)性問題達成共識。
All of us are strongly predisposed to accept accounts that align with the opinions we already hold, and to ignore or dismiss those that do not. Social media, the blogosphere, and the political process are increasingly drenched with such narratives, inflaming our negative emotions and presenting real barriers to reasoned investigation, productive exchanges between differing views, and the search for common ground on the most challenging problems facing our global societies.


你們現在意氣風發(fā)，滿懷希望地想理解這個世界，找準你在其中所處的位置，并弄明白如何為它的進步貢獻你的力量。那么，當你對不同意見產生重大懷疑時，怎么去抵制“失實表述”的魅惑呢？
So, you are now embarking on an ambitious and hopeful effort to understand the world, your place in it, and what you can contribute to forward progress. How can you address the seductive power of false narratives, especially in a time when grave mistrust on many sides seems to be fueling ever more of them?


我對那些，在你們這群年輕學子以及整個高等教育界頗有市場的“失實表述”高度警惕。我有滿滿一架子關于當代社會的書，它們試圖讓我相信：
頂尖名校的學生不過是優(yōu)秀的綿羊
文科生畢業(yè)就等于失業(yè)
真正有想法有勇氣的學生都輟學去創(chuàng)業(yè)了
沒有主見的“千禧一代”需要父母出謀劃策
大學教授的政治觀點千篇一律
現在的學生都是柔弱的溫室花朵
不放棄言論自由就不可能形成開放包容的校園文化
我們的高等學府是與現實隔絕的象牙塔，等等。
It will not surprise you that I am highly aware of false narratives circulating about students like yourselves and higher education in general. I have a thick shelf of contemporary books assuring me that students at elite universities are merely excellent sheep, that a liberal arts degree is a ticket to unemployment, that truly inspired and courageous learners drop out of college to found tech companies, that millennials cannot make decisions without consulting their parents, that college professors have uniform political views, that students these days are fragile hothouse flowers, that it is not possible to achieve an inclusive campus culture without giving up on free speech, and that our colleges and universities are cut off from reality.



耶魯大學教授威廉·德雷謝維奇著《優(yōu)秀的綿羊》，他認為美國精英教育培養(yǎng)出來的學生大都聰明有天分，但同時又充滿焦慮、膽小怕事。


作為回應，我想說，你們在耶魯所受的教育不僅會釋放你的想象力，增進你的學識，推動你的職業(yè)生涯，更會提高你的領導力，讓你在這個兩極分化加劇的浮躁時代發(fā)揮更加積極的作用——而這種能力無疑相當重要。
In response, I want to claim that your Yale education will not only enlarge your imagination, advance your knowledge, and propel your career, but also that it will be absolutely critical to your capacity for playing a positive, leadership role in these increasingly polarized and fractious times. 

特別值得一提的是，你們的老師和導師都非常出色。他們的生活經歷和職業(yè)生涯有力地見證了訓練有素地、理性審慎地追尋光明和真理是多么有價值。
In particular, you are about to be taught by outstanding teachers and mentors, whose lives and careers constitute a powerful witness for the value of a disciplined, reasoned, and careful search for light and truth.


我們的老師（無論是工程專業(yè)、經濟學專業(yè)，還是英語專業(yè)、環(huán)境學專業(yè)），都秉承著同一價值觀，那就是，任何簡單粗暴、煽風點火、歪曲誤導的表述都值得懷疑。
What unites our faculty (from engineering to economics to English to environmental studies) is a stubborn skepticism about narratives that oversimplify issues, inflame the emotions, or misdirect the mind. 


當然，沒有人能完全擺脫偏見。但是，作為學者，我們力求審慎，對于所調查和最看重之事能有理有據地表達意見。如果學術界喪失這一理想準則，我們就會迷失；如果高等學府失去這一準則，整個世界都將迷失。
No one is free of biases, of course, but as a community of scholars we subscribe to the ideal of judicious, searching inquiry in the service of reasoned discourse about the matters we investigate and care about the most. We would be lost as academics without this ideal, and our global societies would be lost if universities stopped being places defined by this ideal.


我可以提供一份長長的耶魯教師名單，這些耶魯人數十年如一日地在實驗室、檔案館、圖書館和田野調查現場，尋找證據，挑戰(zhàn)已經被廣為接受的觀點、失實的表述，以及高度可疑的所謂常識。以下是一些例子：
I could supply you with a long list of the Yale faculty who have spent decades of their lives in laboratories, archives, libraries, and field settings collecting evidence to challenge some received notion, some distorted narrative, or some common wisdom that turned out to be highly questionable. Here are some examples:


很多人認為我們的法律系統(tǒng)幾乎完全建立在世俗傳統(tǒng)之上，當代法律中的質詢體系是對中世紀經典本質性的背離。但耶魯中世紀歷史學教授 Anders Winroth 反駁了這個“失實表述”，他提供了很多證據，證明當代法律其實根植于中世紀傳統(tǒng)。
Many people assume that our legal system was built almost entirely on a secular tradition. But Yale’s professor of medieval history, Anders Winroth, counters the false narrative that contemporary legal reasoning is a radical departure from medieval canon law by showing that in many ways it is rooted in it.


過去，宇宙天體學的重要理論多建立在“地球是宇宙中獨一無二的星球”這一假設之上。天文學教授 Debra Fischer 卻發(fā)現銀河系中有很多類似于太陽系的、行星圍繞恒星而轉的結構。
Important cosmologies of the past depended on the assumption that the planet Earth is unique in the universe. Astronomy professor Debra Fischer has discovered many “worlds” (called exoplanets) orbiting around “suns” in solar systems spread throughout our galaxy.


醫(yī)學研究者們多年來一直以為性別與疾病傳播基本無關。耶魯婦女健康研究中心主任 Carolyn Mazure，一直在研究性別在大范圍的生物體系中造成的重要差異，并將其運用到新的健康醫(yī)療實踐中。
Medical researchers assumed for many years that gender has little to do with the prevalence and course of most illnesses, and that findings from studies with men automatically generalize to women. Carolyn Mazure, the director of the Women’s Health Research Center at Yale, has been investigating critical differences that gender makes in a wide range of biological systems and translates those findings into new health practices.


大多數科班出身的古典經濟學家將仔細計算成本和利益過程作為人類決策的模型。諾貝爾獎獲得者 Robert Shiller 挑戰(zhàn)了“個人和市場是理性的”這一觀點，推動了人類行為理論的重大修正。
Most classically trained economists have modeled human decisions as the result of careful calculations of costs and benefits. Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller has emerged at the forefront of those who challenge the idea of rational individuals and markets, forcing major revisions to the theory of human behavior on which his field is based.


當我還在讀心理學研究生的時候，當時主流的說法是人類所學到的一切幾乎都來源于經歷。但是心理學教授 Karen Wynn 告訴我們，嬰兒有令人驚訝的天賦， 5個月大的嬰兒就能做初步的運算。西利曼學院的新院長、心理學教授 Laurie Santos ，則向我們展示了猴子也先天地具有憎恨、嫉妒、認知失調等復雜狀態(tài)。
When I was a graduate student in psychology, the dominant narrative held that humans learn virtually everything from experience. But psychology professor Karen Wynn has been teaching us that human infants have surprising innate capacities. Five-month olds appear able to make rudimentary arithmetic calculations. And psychology professor Laurie Santos, the new head of Silliman College, has been showing us that monkeys, too, seem pre-wired for such complex states as resentment, envy, and cognitive dissonance.


最后我要提到研究非裔美國人和美國學的教授 Hazel Carby。她的第一本著作《重構女性特質》（Reconstructing Womanhood）研究了19世紀美國黑人女作家是如何在白人主導的社會中，改變女性的家庭和文學形象的。Carby 教授還在為另一本書所作的序中，有力地評說了對邊緣人群失實和片面的描述：我們看到了不充足的證據是怎么重新組合，從而產生一種新的表述，看到了沉默是如何產生的……”
I will close my list of examples by referencing professor of African American and American studies Hazel Carby. Her first book, Reconstructing Womanhood, was an exceptional exploration of the ways in which 19th century black women writers in America confronted and transformed the domestic and literary ideals of womanhood in white society. Professor Carby wrote a telling remark in her foreword to a book called Silencing the Past, highlighting the power of challenging false or incomplete narratives about the marginalized: “We learn how scanty evidence can be repositioned to generate new narratives, how silences can be made to speak for themselves. . .”


人們會很自然地建構起對自己有利的表述。但在面臨壓力時，“失實表述”就會控制公眾的理智，操控輿論，煽動消極情緒，激化矛盾，我對此深感憂慮。特別是在我們這個時代，失實信息會在瞬間傳播，成倍放大。
People naturally construct narratives to make sense of their world. I have been concerned to point out that in times of great stress, false narratives may dominate the public mind and public discourse, inflaming negative emotions and fanning discord. In our times especially, a wide array of instantaneous transmissions rapidly amplify such narratives. 


因此，有時憤怒、恐懼或者憎惡會遮蔽我們的雙眼，讓我們無視世界的復雜性，放棄尋求對于重大議題的更深入的理解。
As a result, we sometimes find that anger, fear, or disgust can blind us to the complexity of the world and the responsibility to seek deeper understandings of important issues.


因此，耶魯教育的重要內容是，讓你成為一個更加審慎的批判性思考者——學習怎樣正確地評估證據，考慮得更廣更全面，從而得出你自己的結論。
One point of your Yale education, then, is for you to become a more careful and critical thinker—to learn the difficult, painstaking skills you will need in order to evaluate evidence, to deliberate more broadly and more carefully, and to arrive at your own conclusions.


尤其值得一提的是，耶魯會教會你怎樣以及為何要去了解那些與你持不同意見的人，它們將挑戰(zhàn)你曾經深信不疑的想法。它也會讓你們明白，為什么我們需要超乎尋常的訓練、勇氣和終其一生的堅持，才能構筑起一個全新的基石，去解決我們這個時代最棘手的問題。
More particularly, Yale is a place for you to learn how and why to gravitate toward people who view things differently than you do, who will test your most strongly held assumptions. It is also a place to learn why it takes extraordinary discipline, courage, and persistence—often over a lifetime—to construct new foundations for tackling the most intractable and challenging questions of our time. 


你已經來到了一個高度重視不同觀點和深度反思的地方，這里鼓勵觀點的多樣性和最大程度的言論自由。
You have come to a place where civil disagreements and deep rethinking are the heart and soul of the enterprise, where we prize exceptional diversity of views alongside the greatest possible freedom of expression.


我相信你會立刻發(fā)現耶魯的最寶貴之處，那就是：師長、同學會激勵你、啟發(fā)你，幫助你作好最充足的準備，去成為這個世界極度需要的調查者、有遠見之人，以及領導者。
So I trust that you will begin immediately to seek out what is best about this place: the faculty and staff and peers who will both inspire you and prepare you to become the investigators, visionaries, and leaders the world so sorely needs.


只有完成上述使命，我們才能迎來一個更好的世界，抑或一個更包容、更振奮人心的耶魯。而事實上，正是你們?yōu)槲覀儙砹讼Ｍ?，你們是我們成為教育家的初衷，也是我們今天相聚于此的理由?/span>
None of us here can hope for a better world, or even for a more inclusive and exhilarating learning community at Yale, unless we succeed at this mission. You are in fact what gives us hope. You are why we became educators. You are why we are here.


歡迎來到耶魯！
Welcome to Yale!
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