Why people believe weird things | Michael Shermer

翻译人员: Coco Shen 校对人员: Geoff Chen

I'm Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society,

嗨！我是 Michael Shermer 怀疑论者协会理事长

publisher of "Skeptic" magazine.

怀疑论者杂志的发行人。

We investigate claims of the paranormal,

我们调查声称超自然伪科学的现象，

pseudo-science, fringe groups and cults, and claims of all kinds between,

边缘科学、邪教和种种主张 -

science and pseudo-science and non-science and junk science,

科学和伪科学和非科学和垃圾科学，

voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science,

巫毒科学、病态科学、坏科学、非科学，

and plain old non-sense.

以及无稽之谈。

And unless you've been on Mars recently,

除非你最近去过火星，

you know there's a lot of that out there.

你知道世上有许多这些东西，

Some people call us debunkers, which is kind of a negative term.

所以，人人称我们为拆穿者 虽然这称呼有点负面。

But let's face it, there's a lot of bunk.

但是，承认吧！确实有太多胡说八道了。

We are like the bunko squads of the police departments out there --

我们就像是警察局的诈骗小组进行扫除工作，

well, we're sort of like the Ralph Naders of bad ideas,

我们就像是侦办坏主意的拉尔夫纳德检察官。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

trying to replace bad ideas with good ideas.

尝试将坏主意换成好的。

I'll show you an example of a bad idea.

让我给你们看看坏主意长什么样子

I brought this with me,

我带来了这个

this was given to us by NBC Dateline to test.

NBC晨间节目把这个给我们做测试

It's produced by the Quadro Corporation of West Virginia.

由西弗吉尼亚州的Quadro公司制造

It's called the Quadro 2000 Dowser Rod.

称为Quadro2000探测棒。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

This was being sold to high-school administrators for $900 apiece.

卖给高中职员 一个900块美金

It's a piece of plastic with a Radio Shack antenna attached to it.

由一片塑料连接RadioShack牌天线所组成。

You could dowse for all sorts of things,

你可以用它探测任何东西 但是这一款，是特别为

but this particular one was built to dowse for marijuana

探测学生置物柜里的大麻所设计的。

in students' lockers.

(Laughter)

(笑声)

So the way it works is you go down the hallway,

使用方法是你走进走廊一路侦测，看天线是否

and you see if it tilts toward a particular locker,

会指向某个置物柜，然后，你就可以打开来检查。

and then you open the locker.

So it looks something like this.

所以，看起来就像这样。

I'll show you.

我秀给你们看。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

Well, it has kind of a right-leaning bias.

不，噢！它似乎会偏右边。

所以，嗯！这是科学，所以我们来做个核对实验。

Well, this is science, so we'll do a controlled experiment.

从这边走应该就会朝向这边了。

It'll go this way for sure.

(Laughter)

(笑声)

Sir, do you want to empty your pockets, please, sir?

先生，可以请您掏出您的口袋吗？先生。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

So the question was, can it actually find marijuana in students' lockers?

所以，问题是，这真的能找出学生置物柜里藏的大麻吗？

And the answer is, if you open enough of them, yes.

答案是，如果你开得够多，就找得出来。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

(Applause)

(掌声)

But in science, we have to keep track of the misses, not just the hits.

但是，在科学上我们必须记录那些不准的，不能只记准的。

And that's probably the key lesson to my short talk here:

这也许就是我这简短演讲的重点，那就是

This is how psychics work, astrologers, tarot card readers and so on.

这就是通灵者占星家、塔罗牌师等等的运作原理。

People remember the hits and forget the misses.

人们会记住准的，忘记不准的。

In science, we keep the whole database,

在科学上，我们必须保存完整的数据。

and look to see if the number of hits somehow stands out

检视准确的数据是否会明显地

from the total number you'd expect by chance.

从全部可预测的机率数字当中突显出来。

In this case, we tested it.

在这个例子中，我们测试了这仪器。

We had two opaque boxes:

我们准备两个不透光的箱子，

one with government-approved THC marijuana, and one with nothing.

一个藏有政府认证含有四氢大麻酚的大麻，另一个是空的，

And it got it 50 percent of the time --

准确度是一半一半，

(Laughter)

跟你可预测的丢铜板的机率法则完全一样。

which is exactly what you'd expect with a coin-flip model.

So that's just a fun little example here of the sorts of things we do.

所以，这只是个有趣的小例子告诉你我们，工作的性质。

怀疑论者杂志是个季刊，

"Skeptic" is the quarterly publication. Each one has a particular theme.

每季都有个主题，例如这一个是关于未来智慧的，

This one is on the future of intelligence.

Are people getting smarter or dumber?

人是愈来愈聪明？还是愈来愈笨？

I have an opinion of this myself because of the business I'm in,

因为工作的关系，我自己对这有个人的见解。

but in fact, people, it turns out, are getting smarter.

但事实上，结果显示，人是愈来愈聪明的。

每十年提升3个IQ数值。

Three IQ points per 10 years, going up.

Sort of an interesting thing.

这点蛮有趣的。

With science, don't think of skepticism as a thing, or science as a thing.

讲科学不能把怀疑论或甚至是科学当作一样东西。

Are science and religion compatible?

像是在问科学和宗教可并立吗？

It's like, are science and plumbing compatible?

像是在问科学与水电并立吗？

They're just two different things.

这些它们其实就是两种不同的东西。

Science is not a thing. It's a verb.

科学不是东西，而是动词，

It's a way of thinking about things.

是思考事物的方式。

It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.

是为所有现象寻找自然的解释的方法。

I mean, what's more likely:

我的意思是，

that extraterrestrial intelligences or multi-dimensional beings

外星生物和多重次元的生灵横跨

travel across vast distances of interstellar space

星际空间浩瀚的距离，留下麦田圈，

to leave a crop circle in Farmer Bob's field in Puckerbrush, Kansas

在堪萨斯州帕克布莱西的鲍伯农场上，宣传我们的网站skeptic.com的可能性较大，

to promote skeptic.com, our web page?

Or is it more likely that a reader of "Skeptic" did this with Photoshop?

还是某怀疑论者杂志的读者利用Photoshop制作出来的可能性大呢？

And in all cases we have to ask --

在所有这些案例里头，我们都必须问，

(Laughter)

(笑声)

What's the more likely explanation?

最有可能的解释是什么？

Before we say something is out of this world,

在我们说有些东西来自外世界之前，

we should first make sure that it's not in this world.

我们首先应该查明它并不存在于这个世界。

What's more likely:

哪个可能性较高，

that Arnold had extraterrestrial help in his run for the governorship,

阿诺德·施瓦辛格有外星人帮忙竞选州长呢？

or that the "World Weekly News" makes stuff up?

或是世界新闻周刊捏造的呢？

(Laughter)

(笑声)

The same theme is expressed nicely here in this Sidney Harris cartoon.

其中同样的主题，却在辛尼海罗斯的卡通中，

被诠释得很不错。

For those of you in the back, it says here: "Then a miracle occurs.

给坐在后排的观众，这上面说，"然后奇迹发生，

I think you need to be more explicit here in step two."

我觉得你应该把第二步骤说得更详细一点。"

This single slide completely dismantles the intelligent design arguments.

这一张投影片完全拆散了智能设计论证。

There's nothing more to it than that.

再清楚也不过了。

(Applause)

(掌声)

You can say a miracle occurs,

你可以说奇迹发生。

it's just that it doesn't explain anything or offer anything.

只是这不能解释任何事情。

There's nothing to test.

不能提供什么。没有东西可以测试。

It's the end of the conversation for intelligent design creationists.

这是智慧设计创意工作者的谈话终点。

And it's true, scientists sometimes throw terms out as linguistic place fillers --

反之，确实科学家有时会丢出一些名词当作

语言学的填空词--暗能量或暗物质或其它类似的等等。

dark energy or dark matter, something like that --

until we figure out what it is, we'll call it this.

直到我们明白这是什么之前，我们就暂时称它为这个，

It's the beginning of the causal chain for science.

对科学而言这是因果连结链的开始。

对智慧设计创意工作者而言，则是因果连结链的末端。

For intelligent design creationists, it's the end of the chain.

我们可以再次询问，哪个可能性较高，

So again, we can ask this: what's more likely?

Are UFOs alien spaceships, or perceptual cognitive mistakes, or even fakes?

幽浮比较可能是外星人的宇宙飞船或是感官认知的错误或甚至是假的。

This is a UFO shot from my house in Altadena, California,

这是我从加州犹它旦市家中拍到的幽浮照片，

looking down over Pasadena.

向下俯瞰帕萨迪纳市。

And if it looks a lot like a Buick hubcap, it's because it is.

如果这看起来像别克汽车的轮盖，那是因为它根本就是。

You don't even need Photoshop or high-tech equipment,

你甚至不需要Photoshop，不需要高科技器材，

you don't need computers.

你不需要计算机，

This was shot with a throwaway Kodak Instamatic camera.

这是用柯达Instamatic抛弃型相机拍的。

You just have somebody off on the side with a hubcap ready to go.

你只需要有人在旁边准备掷出轮盖就可以了。

Camera's ready -- that's it.

相机准备好--就这么简单。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

So, although it's possible that most of these things are fake

虽然，大部份这些东西都有可能是假的，

or illusions or so on, and that some of them are real,

或是幻象等等，但有些是真的。

it's more likely that all of them are fake, like the crop circles.

更有可能全部都是假的，就像麦田圈一样。

On a more serious note, in all of science we're looking for a balance

说正经的，在所有科学里，我们都在寻找一种平衡，

between data and theory.

介于数据与理论之间。

In the case of Galileo, he had two problems

以伽利略来说，他有两个困难，

when he turned his telescope to Saturn.

当他用望远镜观察土星时，

First of all, there was no theory of planetary rings.

首先，那时没有行星环的理论，

Second of all, his data was grainy and fuzzy,

第二，他的数据是粗糙模糊的，

and he couldn't quite make out what he was looking at.

而且，他并不太了解自己正在看的是什么，

So he wrote that he had seen --

所以他就写下他看到了。

"I have observed that the furthest planet has three bodies."

"我观察到最远的星球有三个形体"。

And this is what he ended up concluding that he saw.

而这是他最后对自己的观察所做的结论。

So without a theory of planetary rings and with only grainy data,

没有行星环的理论且凭靠粗糙的资料，

you can't have a good theory.

你不可能建构很好的理论。

It wasn't solved until 1655.

一直到1655年才得到解答，

This is Christiaan Huygens's book that catalogs all the mistakes

惠更斯的书中记载了所有人在尝试了解，

people made trying to figure out what was going on with Saturn.

土星时所犯的错误。

It wasn't till Huygens had two things:

但是一直到惠更斯有了两样东西，

He had a good theory of planetary rings and how the solar system operated,

好的行星环理论和了解太阳系如何运转。

and he had better telescopic, more fine-grain data

而且，当时他有更好的望远镜及更细微的数据，

in which he could figure out that as the Earth is going around faster --

从中他了解到当地球转得比土星更快速，

according to Kepler's Laws -- than Saturn, then we catch up with it.

根据克卜勒三大定律，然后我们会追上它。

And we see the angles of the rings at different angles, there.

我们从不同的角度，看见行星环不同的角度。

And that, in fact, turns out to be true.

而事实上，结果真是如此。

The problem with having a theory is that it may be loaded with cognitive biases.

有理论的问题是，

你的理论可能会充满认知偏见。

So one of the problems of explaining why people believe weird things

所以，要解释人为何会相信奇异现象的困难之一，

is that we have things, on a simple level,

就是我们会简化事物。

and then I'll go to more serious ones.

然后，我之后会再说比较多的例子。

Like, we have a tendency to see faces.

例如，我们会倾向看见脸孔，

This is the face on Mars.

这些是在火星上的脸，

In 1976, where there was a whole movement to get NASA to photograph that area

1976年有很多运动要求美国太空总署

为这些地区拍摄照片，因为人们认为

because people thought this was monumental architecture made by Martians.

这些是火星人盖的纪念建筑。

Here's the close-up of it from 2001.

后来发现这是2001年所拍摄的近照。

If you squint, you can still see the face.

如果你斜视仍可以看见脸，

And when you're squinting,

当你斜视时，你就是在

you're turning that from fine-grain to coarse-grain,

将影像从微粒变成粗粒的。

so you're reducing the quality of your data.

也就是说你在降低数据的质量。

And if I didn't tell you what to look for, you'd still see the face,

如果我不告诉你，该看什么，你还是会看见脸孔，

because we're programmed by evolution to see faces.

因为进化将我们设计成，会看见脸孔的生物。

Faces are important for us socially.

在社交上，脸孔对我们很重要，

And of course, happy faces, faces of all kinds are easy to see.

当然还有笑脸，

各种脸孔都很容易被看见。

You see the happy face on Mars, there.

(笑声)

你可以看见火星上的笑脸在上面。

(Laughter)

If astronomers were frogs, perhaps they'd see Kermit the Frog.

如果天文学家是青蛙的话，那么他们可能就会看见芝麻街的青蛙柯密特。

Do you see him there? Little froggy legs.

看见了吗？

Or if geologists were elephants?

小小的青蛙脚。

或是如果考古学家是大象呢？

Religious iconography.

宗教肖像。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

Discovered by a Tennessee baker in 1996.

1996年由田纳西的一位面包师傅所发现，

He charged five bucks a head to come see the nun bun

他收一个人头五块钱来让人看这块修女面包，

till he got a cease-and-desist from Mother Teresa's lawyer.

直到他收到特瑞莎修女的律师寄来的禁止通知函为止。

Here's Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Watsonville, just down the street,

这是在下一条街的瓜达露佩圣母和华森维尔圣母。

or is it up the street from here?

或是从这里过去的上一条街？

Tree bark is particularly good because it's nice and grainy, branchy,

树皮的效果特别好，因为粗糙且枝繁，

black-and-white splotchy and you can get the pattern-seeking --

黑白有污点，然后你就可以寻找图样，

humans are pattern-seeking animals.

人类是图样找寻的动物。

Here's the Virgin Mary on the side of a glass window in Sao Paulo.

这是在圣保罗一个玻璃窗边上的圣母玛利亚。

Here's when the Virgin Mary made her appearance on a cheese sandwich --

而这是圣母玛利亚显灵在起司三明治上，

实际上我在拉斯韦加斯赌场亲手拿过。

which I got to actually hold in a Las Vegas casino --

of course, this being America.

当然因为这里是美国。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

This casino paid $28,500 on eBay for the cheese sandwich.

这间赌场在eBay上花了28500美金买下这起司三明治。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

But who does it really look like? The Virgin Mary?

但是这到底看起来像谁呢？圣母玛利亚吗？

(Laughter)

(笑声)

It has that sort of puckered lips, 1940s-era look.

有那种40年代噘嘴的样子，

Virgin Mary in Clearwater, Florida.

圣母玛利亚在佛罗里达州的清水市。

I actually went to see this one.

我实际去看过这个。

There was a lot of people there.

那里聚集了许多人--虔诚的信徒来到这里，

The faithful come in their wheelchairs and crutches, and so on.

有坐轮椅的、有撑拐的等等，

We went down and investigated.

我们到那里去做了调查。

Just to give you a size, that's Dawkins, me and The Amazing Randi,

顺便让你知道，我们的人力，那是道金斯、我和令人惊奇的瑞迪。

next to this two, two and a half story-sized image.

在两个两个半层楼高的影像旁边，

All these candles, thousands of candles people had lit in tribute to this.

所有的蜡烛人们，点燃成千上万的蜡烛来赞颂这景象。

So we walked around the backside, to see what was going on.

所以我们就绕到背后去看看，这到底是怎么回事。

It turns out wherever there's a sprinkler head and a palm tree,

结果发现只要有洒水喷头和棕榈树的地方，

you get the effect.

你就会看到这样的效果。

Here's the Virgin Mary on the backside, which they started to wipe off.

这就是在后面，他们已经开始在擦拭的圣母玛利亚。

I guess you can only have one miracle per building.

我想一栋建筑物顶多只能有一个奇迹吧！

(Laughter)

(笑声)

So is it really a miracle of Mary, or is it a miracle of Marge?

这到底是圣母玛利亚的奇迹？还是玛吉的奇迹？

(Laughter)

(笑声)

And now I'm going to finish up with another example of this,

接下来我想要以另一个类似的例子来作为结束，

with auditory illusions.

用听--听觉幻象。

There's this film, "White Noise," with Michael Keaton,

有部电影叫鬼讯号，

由麦可基顿主演，关于亡者回应我们的话。

about the dead talking back to us.

By the way, the whole business of talking to the dead is not that big a deal.

顺便说一下，跟亡者说话并没有什么了不起，

结论是任何人都做得到。

Anybody can do it, turns out.

It's getting the dead to talk back that's the really hard part.

叫亡者响应我们的话，才是真正难的地方。

(笑声)

(Laughter)

这个例子，在电子现象当中藏有一些讯息，

In this case, supposedly, these messages are hidden in electronic phenomena.

There's a ReverseSpeech.com web page where I downloaded this stuff.

我从ReverseSpeech.com的网站上下载了这个，

This is the most famous one of all of these.

这是向前转的，也是最有名的一段。

Here's the forward version of the very famous song.

这是这首非常有名的歌曲的正常版本。

(Music with lyrics)

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed now.

It's just a spring clean for the May Queen.

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run,

There's still time to change the road you're on.

(Music ends)

Couldn't you just listen to that all day?

天啊！这音乐可以让人听一整天。

(笑声)

All right, here it is backwards,

好的，接下来是倒转的版本。

and see if you can hear the hidden messages that are supposedly in there.

看看你是否听得出里面应该藏有的讯息。

(Music with unintelligible lyrics)

(Lyrics) Satan!

(Unintelligible lyrics continue)

What did you get? Audience: Satan!

你听到了什么？

Satan. OK, at least we got "Satan".

(听众：撒旦)

Now, I'll prime the auditory part of your brain

麦可‧薛莫：撒旦，好，至少我们听出了撒旦。

to tell you what you're supposed to hear, and then hear it again.

现在我将先替你头脑的听力部分做准备，

告诉你，应该听见的内容然后再听一遍。

(Music with lyrics)

(Music ends)

(Laughter)

(笑声)

(Applause)

(掌声)

You can't miss it when I tell you what's there.

我告诉你那里有什么之后，你就不可能会错过。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

I'm going to just end with a positive, nice little story.

好，最后我将以一个正面温馨的小故事做为结束。

关于怀疑论者协会是非营利的教育组织。

The Skeptics is a nonprofit educational organization.

We're always looking for little good things that people do.

我们总是在寻找人们所做的小小的好事。

And in England, there's a pop singer.

在英国有个流行歌手，

One of the top popular singers in England today, Katie Melua.

是当下英国最顶尖的流行歌手凯特玛露。

And she wrote a beautiful song.

她写了一首很美的歌。

It was in the top five in 2005, called, "Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing."

2005年排名前五名歌名，叫做"北京有九百万辆脚踏车"。

It's a love story -- she's sort of the Norah Jones of the UK --

描写一个爱情故事--她就像是英国的诺拉琼丝。

about how she much loves her guy,

关于她有多爱她的男人，

and compared to nine million bicycles, and so forth.

与九百万辆脚踏车做比较等等。

And she has this one passage here.

其中有一段歌词

(Music)

(Lyrics) We are 12 billion light-years from the edge

♫我们距离宇宙边缘120亿 光年♫

♫这是个猜想♫

That's a guess,

No one can ever say it's true,

♫从没有人能说这是真的♫

But I know that I will always be with you.

♫但我确切知道我会永远伴着你♫

这很动人。

Michael Shermer: Well, that's nice. At least she got it close.

至少她猜得很接近。

In America it'd be, "We're 6,000 light years from the edge."

在美国，就会变成，"我们距离宇宙边缘6000光年"。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

But my friend, Simon Singh, the particle physicist now turned science educator,

但是，我的朋友赛门辛是粒子物理学家，现在成了科学教育家。

who wrote the book "The Big Bang," and so on,

写了"大爆炸"这本书以及其它等等。

uses every chance he gets to promote good science.

他总是抓住每个可以倡导好科学的机会，

And so he wrote an op-ed piece in "The Guardian" about Katie's song,

于是，他就在卫报上写了一篇专栏关于凯特的歌。

in which he said, well, we know exactly how far from the edge.

当中，他指出我们确切知道宇宙边缘有多老及离我们多远，

You know, it's 13.7 billion light years, and it's not a guess.

就是12--137亿光年，不是用猜的。

We know within precise error bars how close it is.

我们知道在精准的误差杠之内，宇宙边缘离我们多近。

So we can say, although not absolutely true, it's pretty close to being true.

所以，我们可以说，虽然不是绝对正确但已非常接近。

And, to his credit, Katie called him up after this op-ed piece came out, and said,

为了赞扬他，凯特在专栏上报之后打电话给他，

然后说："我真是惭愧。

"I'm so embarrassed. I was in the astronomy club.

我曾经是天文学社团的团员，我应该最清楚不过了。"

I should've known better."

And she re-cut the song.

所以她就重录了这一段。

So I will end with the new version.

而我也将以这新版本结束这演讲。

(Music with lyrics)

♫我们距离可观察的宇宙边缘♫

We are 13.7 billion light years

from the edge of the observable universe.

♫137亿光年 ♫

♫这是在精密误差杠内产出的可靠估计♫

That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars.

♫从左证的资料中♫

And with the available information,

♫我可预测我将会永远伴着你♫

I predict that I will always be with you.

(Laughter)

(掌声)

How cool is that?

很酷吧！

(Applause)

(掌声)