I'm Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, publisher of "Skeptic" magazine. We investigate claims of the paranormal, pseudo-science, fringe groups and cults, and claims of all kinds between, science and pseudo-science and non-science and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old non-sense. And unless you've been on Mars recently, you know there's a lot of that out there.
嗨!我是麥可‧薛莫,是懷疑論者協會理事長。 懷疑論者雜誌的發行人。 我們調查聲稱超自然偽科學的現象, 邊緣科學、邪教和種種主張 - 科學和偽科學和非科學和垃圾科學, 巫毒科學、病態科學、壞科學、非科學, 以及無稽之談。 除非你最近去過火星, 你知道世上有許多這些東西,
Some people call us debunkers, which is kind of a negative term. But let's face it, there's a lot of bunk. We are like the bunko squads of the police departments out there -- well, we're sort of like the Ralph Naders of bad ideas,
所以,人人稱我們為拆穿者 雖然這稱呼有點負面。 但是,承認吧!確實有太多胡說八道了。 我們就像是警察局的詐騙小組進行掃除工作, 我們就像是偵辦壞主意的拉爾夫納德檢察官。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
trying to replace bad ideas with good ideas.
嘗試將壞主意換成好的。
I'll show you an example of a bad idea. I brought this with me, this was given to us by NBC Dateline to test. It's produced by the Quadro Corporation of West Virginia. It's called the Quadro 2000 Dowser Rod.
讓我給你們看看壞主意長什麼樣子 我帶來了這個 NBC晨間節目把這個給我們做測試 由西維吉尼亞州的Quadro公司所製造, 稱為Quadro2000探測棒。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
This was being sold to high-school administrators for $900 apiece. It's a piece of plastic with a Radio Shack antenna attached to it. You could dowse for all sorts of things, but this particular one was built to dowse for marijuana in students' lockers.
賣給高中職員 一個900塊美金 由一片塑膠連接RadioShack牌天線所組成。 你可以用它探測任何東西 但是這一款,是特別為 探測學生置物櫃裡的大麻所設計的。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So the way it works is you go down the hallway, and you see if it tilts toward a particular locker, and then you open the locker. So it looks something like this. I'll show you.
使用方法是你走進走廊一路偵測,看天線是否 會指向某個置物櫃,然後,你就可以打開來檢查。 所以,看起來就像這樣。 我秀給你們看。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Well, it has kind of a right-leaning bias. Well, this is science, so we'll do a controlled experiment. It'll go this way for sure.
不,噢!它似乎會偏右邊。 所以,嗯!這是科學,所以我們來做個核對實驗。 從這邊走應該就會朝向這邊了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Sir, do you want to empty your pockets, please, sir?
先生,可以請您掏出您的口袋嗎?先生。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So the question was, can it actually find marijuana in students' lockers? And the answer is, if you open enough of them, yes.
所以,問題是,這真的能找出學生置物櫃裡藏的大麻嗎? 答案是,如果你開得夠多,就找得出來。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
But in science, we have to keep track of the misses, not just the hits. And that's probably the key lesson to my short talk here: This is how psychics work, astrologers, tarot card readers and so on. People remember the hits and forget the misses. In science, we keep the whole database, and look to see if the number of hits somehow stands out from the total number you'd expect by chance.
但是,在科學上我們必須記錄那些不準的,不能只記準的。 這也許就是我這簡短演講的重點,那就是 這就是通靈者占星家、塔羅牌師等等的運作原理。 人們會記住準的,忘記不準的。 在科學上,我們必須保存完整的資料。 檢視準確的數據是否會明顯地 從全部可預測的機率數字當中突顯出來。
In this case, we tested it.
在這個例子中,我們測試了這儀器。
We had two opaque boxes: one with government-approved THC marijuana, and one with nothing. And it got it 50 percent of the time --
我們準備兩個不透光的箱子, 一個藏有政府認證含有四氫大麻酚的大麻,另一個是空的, 準確度是一半一半,
(Laughter)
跟你可預測的丟銅板的機率法則完全一樣。
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,這只是個有趣的小例子告訴你我們,工作的性質。
"Skeptic" is the quarterly publication. Each one has a particular theme. This one is on the future of intelligence. Are people getting smarter or dumber? I have an opinion of this myself because of the business I'm in, but in fact, people, it turns out, are getting smarter. Three IQ points per 10 years, going up. Sort of an interesting thing.
懷疑論者雜誌是個季刊, 每季都有個主題,例如這一個是關於未來智慧的, 人是愈來愈聰明?還是愈來愈笨? 因為工作的關係,我自己對這有個人的見解。 但事實上,結果顯示,人是愈來愈聰明的。 每十年提升3個IQ數值。 這點蠻有趣的。
With science, don't think of skepticism as a thing, or science as a thing. Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things. Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.
講科學不能把懷疑論或甚至是科學當作一樣東西。 像是在問科學和宗教可並立嗎? 像是在問科學與水電並立嗎? 這些它們其實就是兩種不同的東西。 科學不是東西,而是動詞, 是思考事物的方式。 是為所有現象尋找自然的解釋的方法。
I mean, what's more likely: that extraterrestrial intelligences or multi-dimensional beings travel across vast distances of interstellar space to leave a crop circle in Farmer Bob's field in Puckerbrush, Kansas to promote skeptic.com, our web page? Or is it more likely that a reader of "Skeptic" did this with Photoshop? And in all cases we have to ask --
我的意思是, 外星生物和多重次元的生靈橫跨 星際空間浩瀚的距離,留下麥田圈, 在堪薩斯州帕克布萊西的鮑伯農場上,宣傳我們的網站skeptic.com的可能性較大, 還是某懷疑論者雜誌的讀者利用Photoshop製作出來的可能性大呢? 在所有這些案例裡頭,我們都必須問, (笑聲)
(Laughter)
What's the more likely explanation? Before we say something is out of this world, we should first make sure that it's not in this world. What's more likely: that Arnold had extraterrestrial help in his run for the governorship, or that the "World Weekly News" makes stuff up?
最有可能的解釋是什麼? 在我們說有些東西來自外世界之前, 我們首先應該查明它並不存在於這個世界。 哪個可能性較高, 阿諾史瓦辛格有外星人幫忙競選州長呢? 或是世界新聞周刊捏造的呢?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
The same theme is expressed nicely here in this Sidney Harris cartoon. For those of you in the back, it says here: "Then a miracle occurs. I think you need to be more explicit here in step two." This single slide completely dismantles the intelligent design arguments. There's nothing more to it than that.
其中同樣的主題,卻在辛尼海羅斯的卡通中, 被詮釋得很不錯。 給坐在後排的觀眾,這上面說,"然後奇蹟發生, 我覺得你應該把第二步驟說得更詳細一點。" 這一張投影片完全拆散了智慧設計論證。 再清楚也不過了。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
You can say a miracle occurs, it's just that it doesn't explain anything or offer anything. There's nothing to test. It's the end of the conversation for intelligent design creationists.
你可以說奇蹟發生。 只是這不能解釋任何事情。 不能提供什麼。沒有東西可以測試。 這是智慧設計創意工作者的談話終點。
And it's true, scientists sometimes throw terms out as linguistic place fillers -- dark energy or dark matter, something like that -- until we figure out what it is, we'll call it this. It's the beginning of the causal chain for science. For intelligent design creationists, it's the end of the chain. So again, we can ask this: what's more likely? Are UFOs alien spaceships, or perceptual cognitive mistakes, or even fakes?
反之,確實科學家有時會丟出一些名詞當作 語言學的填空詞--黑暗能量或黑暗物質或其他類似的等等。 直到我們明白這是什麼之前,我們就暫時稱它為這個, 對科學而言這是因果連結鏈的開始。 對智慧設計創意工作者而言,則是因果連結鏈的末端。 我們可以再次詢問,哪個可能性較高, 幽浮比較可能是外星人的太空船或是感官認知的錯誤或甚至是假的。
This is a UFO shot from my house in Altadena, California, looking down over Pasadena. And if it looks a lot like a Buick hubcap, it's because it is. You don't even need Photoshop or high-tech equipment, you don't need computers. This was shot with a throwaway Kodak Instamatic camera. You just have somebody off on the side with a hubcap ready to go. Camera's ready -- that's it.
這是我從加州猶它旦市家中拍到的幽浮照片, 向下俯瞰帕薩迪納市。 如果這看起來像別克汽車的輪蓋,那是因為它根本就是。 你甚至不需要Photoshop,不需要高科技器材, 你不需要電腦, 這是用柯達Instamatic拋棄型相機拍的。 你只需要有人在旁邊準備擲出輪蓋就可以了。 相機準備好--就這麼簡單。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So, although it's possible that most of these things are fake or illusions or so on, and that some of them are real, it's more likely that all of them are fake, like the crop circles.
雖然,大部份這些東西都有可能是假的, 或是幻象等等,但有些是真的。 更有可能全部都是假的,就像麥田圈一樣。
On a more serious note, in all of science we're looking for a balance between data and theory. In the case of Galileo, he had two problems when he turned his telescope to Saturn. First of all, there was no theory of planetary rings. Second of all, his data was grainy and fuzzy, and he couldn't quite make out what he was looking at. So he wrote that he had seen -- "I have observed that the furthest planet has three bodies." And this is what he ended up concluding that he saw. So without a theory of planetary rings and with only grainy data, you can't have a good theory. It wasn't solved until 1655.
說正經的,在所有科學裡,我們都在尋找一種平衡, 介於數據與理論之間。 以伽利略來說,他有兩個困難, 當他用望遠鏡觀察土星時, 首先,那時沒有行星環的理論, 第二,他的數據是粗糙模糊的, 而且,他並不太了解自己正在看的是什麼, 所以他就寫下他看到了。 "我觀察到最遠的星球有三個形體"。 而這是他最後對自己的觀察所做的結論。 沒有行星環的理論且憑靠粗糙的資料, 你不可能建構很好的理論。 一直到1655年才得到解答,
This is Christiaan Huygens's book that catalogs all the mistakes people made trying to figure out what was going on with Saturn. It wasn't till Huygens had two things: He had a good theory of planetary rings and how the solar system operated, and he had better telescopic, more fine-grain data in which he could figure out that as the Earth is going around faster -- according to Kepler's Laws -- than Saturn, then we catch up with it. And we see the angles of the rings at different angles, there. And that, in fact, turns out to be true.
惠更斯的書中記載了所有人在嘗試了解, 土星時所犯的錯誤。 但是一直到惠更斯有了兩樣東西, 好的行星環理論和了解太陽系如何運轉。 而且,當時他有更好的望遠鏡及更細微的數據, 從中他了解到當地球轉得比土星更快速, 根據克卜勒三大定律,然後我們會追上它。 我們從不同的角度,看見行星環不同的角度。 而事實上,結果真是如此。
The problem with having a theory is that it may be loaded with cognitive biases. So one of the problems of explaining why people believe weird things is that we have things, on a simple level, and then I'll go to more serious ones. Like, we have a tendency to see faces.
有理論的問題是, 你的理論可能會充滿認知偏見。 所以,要解釋人為何會相信奇異現象的困難之一, 就是我們會簡化事物。 然後,我之後會再說比較多的例子。 例如,我們會傾向看見臉孔,
This is the face on Mars. In 1976, where there was a whole movement to get NASA to photograph that area because people thought this was monumental architecture made by Martians. Here's the close-up of it from 2001. If you squint, you can still see the face. And when you're squinting, you're turning that from fine-grain to coarse-grain, so you're reducing the quality of your data. And if I didn't tell you what to look for, you'd still see the face, because we're programmed by evolution to see faces.
這些是在火星上的臉, 1976年有很多運動要求美國太空總署 為這些地區拍攝照片,因為人們認為 這些是火星人蓋的紀念建築。 後來發現這是2001年所拍攝的近照。 如果你斜視仍可以看見臉, 當你斜視時,你就是在 將影像從微粒變成粗粒的。 也就是說你在降低資料的品質。 如果我不告訴你,該看什麼,你還是會看見臉孔, 因為進化將我們設計成,會看見臉孔的生物。
Faces are important for us socially. And of course, happy faces, faces of all kinds are easy to see. You see the happy face on Mars, there.
在社交上,臉孔對我們很重要, 當然還有笑臉, 各種臉孔都很容易被看見。 (笑聲)
(Laughter)
你可以看見火星上的笑臉在上面。
If astronomers were frogs, perhaps they'd see Kermit the Frog. Do you see him there? Little froggy legs. Or if geologists were elephants?
如果天文學家是青蛙的話,那麼他們可能就會看見芝麻街的青蛙柯密特。 看見了嗎? 小小的青蛙腳。
Religious iconography.
或是如果考古學家是大象呢?
(Laughter)
宗教肖像。 (笑聲)
Discovered by a Tennessee baker in 1996. He charged five bucks a head to come see the nun bun till he got a cease-and-desist from Mother Teresa's lawyer. Here's Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Watsonville, just down the street, or is it up the street from here? Tree bark is particularly good because it's nice and grainy, branchy, black-and-white splotchy and you can get the pattern-seeking -- humans are pattern-seeking animals.
1996年由田納西的一位麵包師傅所發現, 他收一個人頭五塊錢來讓人看這塊修女麵包, 直到他收到特瑞莎修女的律師寄來的禁止通知函為止。 這是在下一條街的瓜達露珮聖母和華森維爾聖母。 或是從這裡過去的上一條街? 樹皮的效果特別好,因為粗糙且枝繁, 黑白有汙點,然後你就可以尋找圖樣, 人類是圖樣找尋的動物。
Here's the Virgin Mary on the side of a glass window in Sao Paulo. Here's when the Virgin Mary made her appearance on a cheese sandwich -- which I got to actually hold in a Las Vegas casino -- of course, this being America.
這是在聖保羅一個玻璃窗邊上的聖母瑪利亞。 而這是聖母瑪利亞顯靈在起司三明治上, 實際上我在拉斯維加斯賭場親手拿過。 當然因為這裡是美國。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
This casino paid $28,500 on eBay for the cheese sandwich.
這間賭場在eBay上花了28500美金買下這起司三明治。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
But who does it really look like? The Virgin Mary?
但是這到底看起來像誰呢?聖母瑪利亞嗎?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
It has that sort of puckered lips, 1940s-era look.
有那種40年代噘嘴的樣子,
Virgin Mary in Clearwater, Florida. I actually went to see this one. There was a lot of people there. The faithful come in their wheelchairs and crutches, and so on. We went down and investigated. Just to give you a size, that's Dawkins, me and The Amazing Randi, next to this two, two and a half story-sized image. All these candles, thousands of candles people had lit in tribute to this. So we walked around the backside, to see what was going on. It turns out wherever there's a sprinkler head and a palm tree, you get the effect. Here's the Virgin Mary on the backside, which they started to wipe off. I guess you can only have one miracle per building.
聖母瑪利亞在佛羅里達州的清水市。 我實際去看過這個。 那裡聚集了許多人--虔誠的信徒來到這裡, 有坐輪椅的、有撐拐的等等, 我們到那裡去做了調查。 順便讓你知道,我們的人力,那是道金斯、我和令人驚奇的瑞迪。 在兩個兩個半層樓高的影像旁邊, 所有的蠟燭人們,點燃成千上萬的蠟燭來讚頌這景象。 所以我們就繞到背後去看看,這到底是怎麼回事。 結果發現只要有灑水噴頭和棕櫚樹的地方, 你就會看到這樣的效果。 這就是在後面,他們已經開始在擦拭的聖母瑪利亞。 我想一棟建築物頂多只能有一個奇蹟吧!
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So is it really a miracle of Mary, or is it a miracle of Marge?
這到底是聖母瑪利亞的奇蹟?還是瑪姬的奇蹟?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And now I'm going to finish up with another example of this, with auditory illusions. There's this film, "White Noise," with Michael Keaton, about the dead talking back to us. By the way, the whole business of talking to the dead is not that big a deal. Anybody can do it, turns out. It's getting the dead to talk back that's the really hard part.
接下來我想要以另一個類似的例子來作為結束, 用聽--聽覺幻象。 有部電影叫鬼訊號, 由麥可基頓主演,關於亡者回應我們的話。 順便說一下,跟亡者說話並沒有什麼了不起, 結論是任何人都做得到。 叫亡者回應我們的話,才是真正難的地方。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
In this case, supposedly, these messages are hidden in electronic phenomena. There's a ReverseSpeech.com web page where I downloaded this stuff. This is the most famous one of all of these. Here's the forward version of the very famous song.
這個例子,在電子現象當中藏有一些訊息, 我從ReverseSpeech.com的網站上下載了這個, 這是向前轉的,也是最有名的一段。 這是這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)
天啊!這音樂可以讓人聽一整天。
Couldn't you just listen to that all day?
(笑聲)
All right, here it is backwards, and see if you can hear the hidden messages that are supposedly in there.
好的,接下來是倒轉的版本。 看看你是否聽得出裡面應該藏有的訊息。
(Music with unintelligible lyrics)
(Lyrics) Satan!
(Unintelligible lyrics continue)
What did you get? Audience: Satan!
你聽到了什麼?
Satan. OK, at least we got "Satan". Now, I'll prime the auditory part of your brain to tell you what you're supposed to hear, and then hear it again.
(聽眾:撒旦) 麥可‧薛莫:撒旦,好,至少我們聽出了撒旦。 現在我將先替你頭腦的聽力部分做準備, 告訴你,應該聽見的內容然後再聽一遍。
(Music with lyrics)
(Music ends)
(笑聲)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
You can't miss it when I tell you what's there.
我告訴你那裡有什麼之後,你就不可能會錯過。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I'm going to just end with a positive, nice little story. The Skeptics is a nonprofit educational organization. We're always looking for little good things that people do.
好,最後我將以一個正面溫馨的小故事做為結束。 關於懷疑論者協會是非營利的教育組織。 我們總是在尋找人們所做的小小的好事。
And in England, there's a pop singer. One of the top popular singers in England today, Katie Melua. And she wrote a beautiful song. It was in the top five in 2005, called, "Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing." It's a love story -- she's sort of the Norah Jones of the UK -- about how she much loves her guy, and compared to nine million bicycles, and so forth. And she has this one passage here.
在英國有個流行歌手, 是當下英國最頂尖的流行歌手凱特瑪露。 她寫了一首很美的歌。 2005年排名前五名歌名,叫做"北京有九百萬輛腳踏車"。 描寫一個愛情故事--她就像是英國的諾拉瓊絲。 關於她有多愛她的男人, 與九百萬輛腳踏車做比較等等。 其中有一段歌詞
(Music)
♫我們距離宇宙邊緣120億 光年♫
(Lyrics) We are 12 billion light-years from the edge
♫這是個猜想♫
That's a guess,
♫從沒有人能說這是真的♫
No one can ever say it's true,
♫但我確切知道我會永遠伴著你♫
But I know that I will always be with you.
這很動人。
Michael Shermer: Well, that's nice. At least she got it close. In America it'd be, "We're 6,000 light years from the edge."
至少她猜得很接近。 在美國,就會變成,"我們距離宇宙邊緣6000光年"。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
But my friend, Simon Singh, the particle physicist now turned science educator, who wrote the book "The Big Bang," and so on, uses every chance he gets to promote good science. And so he wrote an op-ed piece in "The Guardian" about Katie's song, in which he said, well, we know exactly how far from the edge. You know, it's 13.7 billion light years, and it's not a guess. We know within precise error bars how close it is. So we can say, although not absolutely true, it's pretty close to being true.
但是,我的朋友賽門辛是粒子物理學家,現在成了科學教育家。 寫了"大爆炸"這本書以及其他等等。 他總是抓住每個可以宣導好科學的機會, 於是,他就在衞報上寫了一篇專欄關於凱特的歌。 當中,他指出我們確切知道宇宙邊緣有多老及離我們多遠, 就是12--137億光年,不是用猜的。 我們知道在精準的誤差槓之內,宇宙邊緣離我們多近。 所以,我們可以說,雖然不是絕對正確但已非常接近。
And, to his credit, Katie called him up after this op-ed piece came out, and said, "I'm so embarrassed. I was in the astronomy club. I should've known better." And she re-cut the song. So I will end with the new version.
為了讚揚他,凱特在專欄上報之後打電話給他, 然後說:"我真是慚愧。 我曾經是天文學社團的團員,我應該最清楚不過了。" 所以她就重錄了這一段。 而我也將以這新版本結束這演講。
(Music with lyrics)
♫我們距離可觀察的宇宙邊緣♫
We are 13.7 billion light years from the edge of the observable universe. That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars. And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.
♫137億光年 ♫ ♫這是在精密誤差槓內產出的可靠估計♫ ♫從佐證的資料中♫ ♫我可預測我將會永遠伴著你♫ (掌聲)
(Laughter)
很酷吧!
How cool is that?
(掌聲)
(Applause)