TED：认知半径决定了一个人的能力

I'm a meteorologist by degree, I have a bachelor's, master's and PhD in physical meteorology, so I'm a meteorologist, card carrying.

我是一名气象学家，我有物理气象学的学士、硕士和博士学位，所以我是个气象学家，有证的。

And so with that comes four questions, always. This is one prediction I will always get right.

然而总有4个问题等着我，在这件事儿上我的预测总是对的。

And those questions are, "Marshall, what channel are you on?"

这些问题是，“马修，你在哪个频道呢?”

"Dr. Shepherd, what's the weather going to be tomorrow?"

“谢博德博士，明天天气怎么样?”

And oh, I love this one: "My daughter is getting married next September, it's an outdoor wedding. Is it going to rain?"

啊，我喜欢这个：“我女儿明年九月结婚， 是个户外婚礼。到时会下雨吗?”

Not kidding, I get those, and I don't know the answer to that, the science isn't there. But the one I get a lot these days is, "Dr. Shepherd, do you believe in climate change?" "Do you believe in global warming?"

没开玩笑，我总被问这些问题，然而我并不知道答案，科学在这儿不管用。但我这些天经常被问的是，“谢博德博士，你相信气候变化吗?”“你相信全球变暖吗?”

Now, I have to gather myself every time I get that question. Because it's an ill-posed question -- science isn't a belief system.

如今每次被问到这些问题时，我都得打起精神。因为这是个不恰当的问题——科学可不是一个信仰体系。

My son, he's 10，he believes in the tooth fairy. And he needs to get over that, because I'm losing dollars, fast.

我10岁的儿子相信牙仙的存在。他得克服这一点，因为太费钱了。(传说牙仙会用金币把小孩子掉的牙换走)

But he believes in the tooth fairy. But consider this. Bank of America building, there, in Atlanta. You never hear anyone say, "Do you believe, if you go to the top of that building and throw a ball off, it's going to fall?"

他的确相信牙仙。但想一想这个。这是亚特兰大的美国银行大楼。你从没听到人说，“你相信吗，如果你到那个楼顶，抛个球，它就会掉下去?”

You never hear that, because gravity is a thing. So why don't we hear the question, "Do you believe in gravity?" But of course, we hear the question, "Do you believe in global warming?"

你从没听过，因为重力是实际存在的。所以为什么我们不会听到这个问题，“你相信重力吗?”但我们肯定听过这个问题，“你相信全球变暖吗?”

Well, consider these facts. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, one of the leading organizations in science, queried scientists and the public on different science topics.

考虑到这些事实：美国科学促进会，简称AAAS，这是一个在科学领域的主要组织，曾就不同的科学课题向科学家和公众提问。

Here are some of them: genetically modified food, animal research, human evolution. And look at what the scientists say about those, the people that actually study those topics, in red, versus the gray, what the public thinks.

这是其中一些课题：转基因产品，动物研究，人类进化。看看科学家对这些怎么说，红色代表那些在研究这些课题的人， 灰色，则代表公众的态度。

How did we get there? How did we get there? That scientists and the public are so far apart on these science issues.

这是怎么造成的?为什么会有这么大的差异?科学家和公众在这些科学问题上意见如此相左。

Well, I'll come a little bit closer to home for me, climate change. Eighty-seven percent of scientists believe that humans are contributing to climate change. But only 50 percent of the public?

好了，我要说个我比较擅长的，气候变化。87%的科学家认为是人类的行为导致了气候变化，但只有50%的公众这样认为。

How did we get there? So it begs the question, what shapes perceptions about science? It's an interesting question and one that I've been thinking about quite a bit. I think that one thing that shapes perceptions in the public, about science, is belief systems and biases.

为什么会这样?这就引出了问题，是什么塑造了我们对科学的认知?这是个有趣的问题，我也一直在思考这个问题。我想有一件事影响了公众对科学的看法，就是信仰体系和偏见。

Belief systems and biases. Go with me for a moment. Because I want to talk about three elements of that: confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger effect and cognitive dissonance.

信仰体系和偏见。我来解释一下。我想要谈一谈这个问题的三个元素：确认偏误，达克效应和认知失调。

Now, these sound like big, fancy, academic terms, and they are. But when I describe them, you're going to be like, "Oh! I recognize that; I even know somebody that does that."

这些听起来都有点像不切实际的学术术语，它们也确实是这样的。但当我进一步做出解释时，你们就会恍然大悟，“哦!我听说过这个;我甚至知道有人就是这样的。”

Confirmation bias. Finding evidence that supports what we already believe. Now, we're probably all a little bit guilty of that at times. Take a look at this. I'm on Twitter.

确认偏误。寻找证据来支持我们已经相信的事。我们对此可能多少都难辞其咎。看看这个。我有自己的Twitter账户。

And often, when it snows, I'll get this tweet back to me.

通常，遇到下雪的时候，我会收到这样的转发。

"Hey, Dr. Shepherd, I have 20 inches of global warming in my yard, what are you guys talking about, climate change?" I get that tweet a lot, actually. It's a cute tweet, it makes me chuckle as well.

“嘿，谢博德博士，我院子里有20英寸的全球变暖(指雪)，你们这些家伙在说啥，气候变化?”我其实收到了很多那样的推特。

But it's oh, so fundamentally scientifically flawed. Because it illustrates that the person tweeting doesn't understand the difference between weather and climate. I often say, weather is your mood and climate is your personality.

这条推特挺逗的，也让我忍俊不禁。但它在科学上是站不住脚的。因为它说明了发推特的人并不理解天气和气候的差异。我常说，天气是你的情绪，而气候是你的个性。

Think about that. Weather is your mood, climate is your personality. Your mood today doesn't necessarily tell me anything about your personality, nor does a cold day tell me anything about climate change, or a hot day, for that matter.

想想看，天气是你的情绪，气候是你的个性。你今天的情绪不一定能代表你的个性，所以即使有一天特别冷，也不能说明气候变化了，有一天特别热，也一样不能代表什么。

Dunning-Kruger. Two scholars from Cornell came up with the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you go look up the peer-reviewed paper for this, you will see all kinds of fancy terminology:

达克效应。(高估自己的能力)康奈尔大学的两位学者提出了达克效应。如果你去查阅同行评议的论文，你会看到各种很炫的术语：

it's an illusory superiority complex, thinking we know things. In other words, people think they know more than they do. Or they underestimate what they don't know.

这是一种虚幻的优越感，以为我们什么都知道。换句话说，人们高估了自己所掌握的知识。或者说，他们低估了他们的无知。

And then, there's cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is interesting. We just recently had Groundhog Day, right? Now, there's no better definition of cognitive dissonance than intelligent people asking me if a rodent's forecast is accurate.

然后是认知失调。(新信息冲击现有认知)认知失调很有趣。我们刚刚过了土拨鼠节，是吧?对认知失调最好的解释就好比是，一个聪明人问我啮齿动物的预测是否准确。

But I get that, all of the time. But I also hear about the Farmer's Almanac. We grew up on the Farmer's Almanac, people are familiar with it.

但我一直都能理解。我也听说过黄历。我们靠着黄历长大，人们很熟悉它。

The problem is, it's only about 37 percent accurate, according to studies at Penn State University. But we're in an era of science where we actually can forecast the weather. And believe it or not,

但问题在于，根据宾夕法尼亚州立大学的研究，它的准确性只有37%。但我们身在科学的时代，我们确实可以预测天气。不管信不信，

and I know some of you are like, "Yeah, right," we're about 90 percent accurate, or more, with weather forecast. You just tend to remember the occasional miss, you do.

我知道你们有些人会说：“好吧好吧，你说的都对”，我们对天气预测的准确率有90%或者更高。但你们只会记得偶尔几次的失误，可别不承认。

So confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger and cognitive dissonance. I think those shape biases and perceptions that people have about science.

所以确认偏误，达克效应和认知失调。我认为是这些形成了人们对科学的偏见和看法。

But then, there's literacy and misinformation that keep us boxed in, as well. During the hurricane season of 2017, media outlets had to actually assign reporters to dismiss fake information about the weather forecast. That's the era that we're in.

但是，文化素养和错误信息也会让我们陷入困境。在2017年的飓风季，媒体机构不得不指派记者，驳斥有关天气预报的虚假信息。这就是我们所在的时代。

I deal with this all the time in social media. Someone will tweet a forecast -- that's a forecast for Hurricane Irma, but here's the problem: it didn't come from the Hurricane Center.

我一直在社交媒体上应对这些问题。有人会在推特上发布预报——这是飓风厄玛的预报，但问题是：它不是官方飓风中心发布的。

But people were tweeting and sharing this; it went viral. It didn't come from the National Hurricane Center at all.

但人们在推特上分享这个，消息就扩散开了。它根本就不是国家飓风中心发布的。

So I spent 12 years of my career at NASA before coming to the University of Georgia, and I chair their Earth Science Advisory Committee, I was just up there last week in DC. And I saw some really interesting things.

在来到乔治亚大学之前，我在NASA工作了12年，我是地球科学咨询委员会的主席，我上周刚刚去过华盛顿。我看到了一些很有趣的事情。

Here's a NASA model and science data from satellite showing the 2017 hurricane season. You see Hurricane Harvey there? Look at all the dust coming off of Africa. Look at the wildfires up in northwest US and in western Canada.

这是NASA的模型和 来自卫星的科学数据，显示了2017年飓风季的情况。你们看到那边的哈维飓风没?看看这些从非洲飘来的尘土。看看美国西北部和加拿大西部的野火。

There comes Hurricane Irma. This is fascinating to me. But admittedly, I'm a weather geek. But more importantly, it illustrates that we have the technology to not only observe the weather and climate system, but predict it.

飓风厄玛来了。这对我很有吸引力。无可否认，我是个气象迷。但更重要的是，它展示了我们拥有的科技不仅可以观察天气和气候系统，而且可以预测它。

There's scientific understanding, so there's no need for some of those perceptions and biases that we've been talking about. We have knowledge.

这就是科学理念，所以我们刚才说的那些观念和偏见是真的毫无用处。我们拥有知识。

But think about this ... This is Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey. Now, I write a contribution for "Forbes" magazine periodically, and I wrote an article a week before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, saying,

但是想想这个…这是飓风哈维过后的德克萨斯州休斯顿。现在，我定期为《福布斯》杂志撰稿，在飓风哈维登陆前一周，我写了一篇文章说，

"There's probably going to be 40 to 50 inches of rainfall." I wrote that a week before it happened. But yet, when you talk to people in Houston, people are saying, "We had no idea it was going to be this bad." I'm just...

“可能会有40到50英寸的降雨量。”我在它发生的前一周写了这个文章。但是，当你和休斯敦的人交谈时，人们会说，“我没想到会这么糟糕。”我只能…

A week before. But -- I know, it's amusing, but the reality is, we all struggle with perceiving something outside of our experience level. People in Houston get rain all of the time, they flood all of the time.

整整提前了一周。但是——我知道这有点可笑，但现实是，让我们理解经验水平之外的东西真的很困难。休斯顿的人总在经历下雨，雨水泛滥很平常。

But they've never experienced that. Houston gets about 34 inches of rainfall for the entire year. They got 50 inches in three days. That's an anomaly event, that's outside of the normal.

但他们从没有遭受过那样的情况。休斯顿全年降雨量约为34英寸。而那段时间，他们在3天内遭受了50英寸。这是异常事件，超出了正常范围。

So belief systems and biases, literacy and misinformation. How do we step out of the boxes that are cornering our perceptions? Well we don't even have to go to Houston, we can come very close to home.

所以信仰体系和偏见，文化素养和错误信息。我们如何走出左右我们认知的框框?我们甚至不需要去休斯顿，在家附近就可以观察到。

Remember "Snowpocalypse?" Snowmageddon? Snowzilla? Whatever you want to call it. All two inches of it. Two inches of snow shut the city of Atlanta down.

还记得“末日暴雪”吗? 雪魔?雪巨人?不管你怎么称呼她，都只有两英寸的雪。两英寸厚的雪就使亚特兰大市瘫痪了。

But the reality is, we were in a winter storm watch, we went to a winter weather advisory, and a lot of people perceived that as being a downgrade, "Oh, it's not going to be as bad."

但事实是，我们在严防冬季风暴，我们去了冬季天气咨询机构，很多人都认为雪灾会降级，“哦，不会那么糟的。”

When in fact, the perception was that it was not going to be as bad, but it was actually an upgrade. Things were getting worse as the models were coming in. So that's an example of how we get boxed in by our perceptions.

事实上，人们的感觉是，不会这么糟糕，但其实雪灾升级了。随着模型的出现，情况在变得更糟。这就是我们被自己的认知束缚的一个例子。

So, the question becomes, how do we expand our radius? The area of a circle is "pi r squared". We increase the radius, we increase the area. How do we expand our radius of understanding about science?

所以问题就变成了，我们如何扩大我们的认知半径?圆的面积是πR的平方。我们增加半径，就能增加面积。我们如何扩大我们理解科学的半径?

Here are my thoughts. You take inventory of your own biases. And I'm challenging you all to do that. Take an inventory of your own biases. Where do they come from? Your upbringing, your political perspective, your faith -- what shapes your own biases?

这是我的思考。你们列出自己的偏见。我想让你们所有人都这么做。列出你们的偏见。它们来自哪里?你的教养，你的政治观点，你的信仰——你自己的偏见是如何形成的?

Then, evaluate your sources where do you get your information on science? What do you read, what do you listen to, to consume your information on science? And then, it's important to speak out.

然后，评估你的信息来源——你在哪里获取科学信息?你读什么，你听什么，什么是你获得科学信息的来源?然后，重要的是说出来。

Talk about how you evaluated your biases and evaluated your sources. I want you to listen to this little 40-second clip from one of the top TV meteorologists in the US, Greg Fishel, in the Raleigh, Durham area.

谈谈你如何评估你的偏见和信息来源。我想让你们听听这个40秒的小片段，来自美国顶尖的电视气象学家之一，格雷格·费舍尔，他住在Durham的Raleigh地区。

He's revered in that region. But he was a climate skeptic. But listen to what he says about speaking out.

他在那个地区很受尊敬。但他是个气候怀疑论者。但是听听他关于发声是怎么说的。

Greg Fishel: The mistake I was making and didn't realize until very recently, was that I was only looking for information to support what I already thought, and was not interested in listening to anything contrary.

格雷格·费舍尔：“我犯过的错误，并且直到最近我才意识到的是，我只看那些能支撑我想法的信息，从来不对任何相反的信息感兴趣。

And so I woke up one morning, and there was this question in my mind, "Greg, are you engaging in confirmation bias? Are you only looking for information to support what you already think?"

所以有一天早晨我醒来，脑海中有个问题，‘格雷格，你是不是陷入了确认偏误?你是不是只看那些支持你想法的信息。’

And if I was honest with myself, and I tried to be, I admitted that was going on.

如果我对自己诚实，也试图对自己诚实，我得承认是这样的。

And so the more I talked to scientists and read peer-reviewed literature and tried to conduct myself the way I'd been taught to conduct myself at Penn State when I was a student, it became very difficult for me to make the argument that we weren't at least having some effect.

所以我和科学家交谈的次数越多，阅读同行评议的文献越多，我也努力像我在宾夕法尼亚州立大学上学时被教导的那样去要求自己，对我来说，就越难证明我们一点也没有被影响。

Maybe there was still a doubt as to how much, but to say "nothing" was not a responsible thing for me to do as a scientist or a person.

也许，到底被影响了多少还是个疑问，但作为一个科学家或一个人，说‘一点也没被影响’是一件不负责任的事情。”

JMS: Greg Fishel just talked about expanding his radius of understanding of science. And when we expand our radius, it's not about making a better future, but it's about preserving life as we know it.

JMS：格雷格·费舍尔刚刚在说，扩大他认知科学的半径。当我们扩大我们的半径时，不是为了创造一个更好的未来，而是为了保留我们所知的生活。

So as we think about expanding our own radius in understanding science, it's critical for Athens, Georgia, for Atlanta, Georgia, for the state of Georgia, and for the world. So expand your radius.

所以当我们想要扩大我们对科学的理解范围时，这对乔治亚州的雅典和亚特兰大，对乔治亚州和整个世界都很重要。所以，扩大你的半径吧!