It's Monday morning. In Washington, the president of the United States is sitting in the Oval Office, assessing whether or not to strike Al Qaeda in Yemen. At Number 10 Downing Street, David Cameron is trying to work out whether to cut more public sector jobs in order to stave off a double-dip recession. In Madrid, Maria Gonzalez is standing at the door, listening to her baby crying and crying, trying to work out whether she should let it cry until it falls asleep or pick it up and hold it. And I am sitting by my father's bedside in hospital, trying to work out whether I should let him drink the one-and-a-half-liter bottle of water that his doctors just came in and said, "You must make him drink today," -- my father's been nil by mouth for a week -- or whether, by giving him this bottle, I might actually kill him.
星期一的早晨 在华盛顿 美国总统 坐在椭圆形办公室里, 思忖着是否 要打击也门 的基地组织。 在唐宁街(英国首相府) 大卫·卡梅隆(英国首相)正在考虑 是否削减更多公共部门职位 以对抗二次经济衰退。 在马德里,玛丽亚∙冈萨雷斯 站在门边 听着她的孩子不停哭泣 她想弄明白是该让孩子继续哭 哭到自己睡着 还是把孩子抱起来,哄一哄。 在医院,我坐在父亲的病床旁, 想知道 是否让他喝下 那瓶1.5公升的水 刚才他的医生来到病房说: “你今天必须让他喝下去,” -- 我父亲饮食难咽已经一个星期了, 让他喝下这么一大瓶水, 简直是要了他的命。
We face momentous decisions with important consequences throughout our lives, and we have strategies for dealing with these decisions. We talk things over with our friends, we scour the Internet, we search through books. But still, even in this age of Google and TripAdvisor and Amazon Recommends, it's still experts that we rely upon most -- especially when the stakes are high and the decision really matters. Because in a world of data deluge and extreme complexity, we believe that experts are more able to process information than we can -- that they are able to come to better conclusions than we could come to on our own. And in an age that is sometimes nowadays frightening or confusing, we feel reassured by the almost parental-like authority of experts who tell us so clearly what it is we can and cannot do.
在我们的一生中,我们会面临着种种重要选择, 这些选择的结果 会产生重要影响。 我们有各种途径来应对这些选择: 跟朋友倾谈 上网搜索 或者查阅书籍 但是 即便当今 我们有谷歌、到到网 和亚马逊推荐, 我们仍然 最信赖专家-- 尤其是在风险很高 选择非常重要更是如此。 因为在一个拥有海量数据 和极其纷繁复杂的世界中, 我们相信专家 比我们更善于处理信息-- 他们给出的结论 往往比我们自己的结论要好。 在一个 让我们时常感到恐惧 有时困惑的时代, 我们只有把专家 当作父母一样的权威 来信赖 听从他们所说的话 遵循他们的建议做选择才感到安心。
But I believe that this is a big problem, a problem with potentially dangerous consequences for us as a society, as a culture and as individuals. It's not that experts have not massively contributed to the world -- of course they have. The problem lies with us: we've become addicted to experts. We've become addicted to their certainty, their assuredness, their definitiveness, and in the process, we have ceded our responsibility, substituting our intellect and our intelligence for their supposed words of wisdom. We've surrendered our power, trading off our discomfort with uncertainty for the illusion of certainty that they provide. This is no exaggeration. In a recent experiment, a group of adults had their brains scanned in an MRI machine as they were listening to experts speak. The results were quite extraordinary. As they listened to the experts' voices, the independent decision-making parts of their brains switched off. It literally flat-lined. And they listened to whatever the experts said and took their advice, however right or wrong.
但我认为 这是一个大问题 甚至可能严重的影响到我们 整个社会 整个文化 及我们个人。 我并不是在否定专家 对世界作出的巨大贡献-- 他们当然有贡献。 问题出在我们身上-- 我们已变得过于依赖专家。 我们过于相信专家是千真万确、 十拿九稳、 永不出错, 在这一过程中 我们放弃了自己的责任 丢弃了自己的逻辑思维 和聪明才智 只相信专家的”真知灼见“。 我们放弃了自己的力量, 因为自己无法确定感到苦恼, 所以幻想通过 专家的确定性 来排解我们的苦恼。 我没有夸张 最近有一个实验 对一组成年人 的大脑进行磁共振扫描 同时让他们听专家讲话 扫描结果让人惊讶: 他们听专家讲话的同时 大脑负责独立决策的区域 就停止活动-- 屏幕上出现一条直线。 无论专家所说的话是什么 他们都全盘接受专家的建议,不分对错。
But experts do get things wrong. Did you know that studies show that doctors misdiagnose four times out of 10? Did you know that if you file your tax returns yourself, you're statistically more likely to be filing them correctly than if you get a tax adviser to do it for you? And then there's, of course, the example that we're all too aware of: financial experts getting it so wrong that we're living through the worst recession since the 1930s. For the sake of our health, our wealth and our collective security, it's imperative that we keep the independent decision-making parts of our brains switched on. And I'm saying this as an economist who, over the past few years, has focused my research on what it is we think and who it is we trust and why, but also -- and I'm aware of the irony here -- as an expert myself, as a professor, as somebody who advises prime ministers, heads of big companies, international organizations, but an expert who believes that the role of experts needs to change, that we need to become more open-minded, more democratic and be more open to people rebelling against our points of view. So in order to help you understand where I'm coming from, let me bring you into my world, the world of experts.
但是专家也会犯错。 你们知道有研究表明 医生的诊断结果中 有40%的误诊率吗? 你们知道有数据表明 如果你自己填纳税申报单, 自己往往计算得正确, 而找一个纳税顾问 来帮你报税 正确率要差很多吗? 当然,我还能举出 大家更熟悉的例子: 正因为金融专家 大错特错, 所以我们陷入了自30年代以来 最糟糕的经济衰退。 为了我们的健康, 繁荣 以及共同安全 我们必须要保持 大脑的独立决策能力 时时开启。 我是一个经济学者, 在过去的几年中 集中研究 我们人类的想法 我们相信谁以及为什么相信他们。 但同时-- 我也意识到比较讽刺的一点-- 我本身就是专家 也是一名教授, 我为许多首相、大公司的领导 和国际组织 提供建议; 但我自己却认为 专家的角色需要转变, 专家的思维应该更开放, 更听从公众的意见, 更加能容纳 那些质疑 我们观点的人。 为了帮助大家了解 我的背景, 我先带大家了解下我的世界 专家的世界。
Now there are, of course, exceptions, wonderful, civilization-enhancing exceptions. But what my research has shown me is that experts tend on the whole to form very rigid camps, that within these camps, a dominant perspective emerges that often silences opposition, that experts move with the prevailing winds, often hero-worshipping their own gurus. Alan Greenspan's proclamations that the years of economic growth would go on and on, not challenged by his peers, until after the crisis, of course. You see, we also learn that experts are located, are governed, by the social and cultural norms of their times -- whether it be the doctors in Victorian England, say, who sent women to asylums for expressing sexual desire, or the psychiatrists in the United States who, up until 1973, were still categorizing homosexuality as a mental illness.
当然,现实中不乏例子表明 专家推动了人类文明的进步, 但我的研究表明 专家整体上倾向于 形成非常顽固的阵营, 在每个阵营之内 有一个占主导地位的观点 常常压制其他的反对观点。 专家也都随波逐流 通常都追捧 自己那一派的泰斗。 阿兰·格林斯潘曾经宣称 经济增长会连年持续 不会停滞, 业内没人挑战他的权威, 但后来经济危机却席卷而来。 你瞧, 我们要明白 专家也有地域性, 也受到 既定的社会文化准则 的制约-- 举几个例子: 英国维多利亚时代的医生 把表达自己性欲的女性 送到精神病院; 美国的精神科医生 一直到1973年 还把同性恋归结为 精神疾病
And what all this means is that paradigms take far too long to shift, that complexity and nuance are ignored and also that money talks -- because we've all seen the evidence of pharmaceutical companies funding studies of drugs that conveniently leave out their worst side effects, or studies funded by food companies of their new products, massively exaggerating the health benefits of the products they're about to bring by market. The study showed that food companies exaggerated typically seven times more than an independent study.
所有这些表明 人们的思维范式 根深蒂固、迟于改变, 而且忽略了复杂性和差异性 还往往向金钱看齐-- 我们都看到过 制药公司 出资研究药品 却图方便对药品最大的副作用 置之不理, 还有一些食品公司 出资研究自己的新产品, 但却对他们准备推向市场的新产品 的健康疗效极其夸大。 研究表明,食品公司的研究结果 往往比独立研究要 夸大七倍
And we've also got to be aware that experts, of course, also make mistakes. They make mistakes every single day -- mistakes born out of carelessness. A recent study in the Archives of Surgery reported surgeons removing healthy ovaries, operating on the wrong side of the brain, carrying out procedures on the wrong hand, elbow, eye, foot, and also mistakes born out of thinking errors. A common thinking error of radiologists, for example -- when they look at CT scans -- is that they're overly influenced by whatever it is that the referring physician has said that he suspects the patient's problem to be. So if a radiologist is looking at the scan of a patient with suspected pneumonia, say, what happens is that, if they see evidence of pneumonia on the scan, they literally stop looking at it -- thereby missing the tumor sitting three inches below on the patient's lungs.
我们也要认识到 专家当然 也会犯错。 他们每一天都会犯一些错误-- 往往是由于粗心引起的。 《外科档案》杂志最近有一个研究 报道外科医生 摘除健康的卵巢, 做脑手术时弄错了左右, 也会搞错要动手术的是哪只手, 肘,眼睛或者脚; 他们还犯一些思维上的错误。 一个常见思维错误就是 放射科医生的诊断-- 他们看到病人的CT扫描, 就会参照转介医生 如何诊断病人的病症, 而他们的判断 就会极大的受到 先前诊断的影响。 所以如果一名放射科医生 接待一个被诊断为疑似肺炎 的病人,看着扫描结果, 可能有这种情况发生: 他们一旦看到屏幕上 有肺炎的症状, 就不会进一步观察-- 结果就忽略了 病人肺部几英寸以下 还有肿瘤。
I've shared with you so far some insights into the world of experts. These are, of course, not the only insights I could share, but I hope they give you a clear sense at least of why we need to stop kowtowing to them, why we need to rebel and why we need to switch our independent decision-making capabilities on. But how can we do this? Well for the sake of time, I want to focus on just three strategies. First, we've got to be ready and willing to take experts on and dispense with this notion of them as modern-day apostles. This doesn't mean having to get a Ph.D. in every single subject, you'll be relieved to hear. But it does mean persisting in the face of their inevitable annoyance when, for example, we want them to explain things to us in language that we can actually understand. Why was it that, when I had an operation, my doctor said to me, "Beware, Ms. Hertz, of hyperpyrexia," when he could have just as easily said, "Watch out for a high fever." You see, being ready to take experts on is about also being willing to dig behind their graphs, their equations, their forecasts, their prophecies, and being armed with the questions to do that -- questions like: What are the assumptions that underpin this? What is the evidence upon which this is based? What has your investigation focused on? And what has it ignored?
目前为止我已经跟大家 分享了一些我对专家的看法 当然我不只想跟大家 分享这些想法 而是希望至少让大家明白 我们为什么要停止崇拜专家 为什么要质疑他们的想法 以及为什么要保持我们的 独立决策能力常启常新 具体要怎样做呢? 因为时间有限 我在这里主要讲三种方法 第一,我们应该自愿主动的 反对专家的意见 摒弃那种把他们当成现世圣人 的想法。 这不是意味着你得成为 某个学科的博士 大家听到这句会松一口气 而是说,比如,专家难免会 表现的不耐烦 例如,当我们 想让专家用我们 能明白的话解释一些事情时。 为什么这么说呢,有一次我要做个手术, 我的医生跟我说, “赫兹小姐,小心体温过高的 症状,” 他可以简单的说, 小心别发高烧。 听从专家的意见 也就是要主动的 探寻他们给出的图表, 等式,诊断,估计等等 背后真正的涵义, 还要自己准备问一些问题, 比如: 你是基于何种推断得出这种观点? 推断的依据是什么? 你的检查是集中于哪方面, 忽略了什么方面?
It recently came out that experts trialing drugs before they come to market typically trial drugs first, primarily on male animals and then, primarily on men. It seems that they've somehow overlooked the fact that over half the world's population are women. And women have drawn the short medical straw because it now turns out that many of these drugs don't work nearly as well on women as they do on men -- and the drugs that do work well work so well that they're actively harmful for women to take. Being a rebel is about recognizing that experts' assumptions and their methodologies can easily be flawed.
最近有研究表明, 有些专家对即将上市药品 进行测试的时候 他们通常首先 在雄性动物身上试验, 然后在男性身上试验。 他们好像忽略了一个事实: 世界上超过一半的人口是女性。 所以女性在医药测试中总是倒霉的一方, 因为现在证明许多药品 对男性有效 对女性效果却不大, 甚至由于药品药性过于强大,女性服用后 反而对身体造成很大伤害。 所以质疑专家实际上是 认识到专家的推断, 他们采用的方法 也往往是有缺陷的,
Second, we need to create the space for what I call "managed dissent." If we are to shift paradigms, if we are to make breakthroughs, if we are to destroy myths, we need to create an environment in which expert ideas are battling it out, in which we're bringing in new, diverse, discordant, heretical views into the discussion, fearlessly, in the knowledge that progress comes about, not only from the creation of ideas, but also from their destruction -- and also from the knowledge that, by surrounding ourselves by divergent, discordant, heretical views. All the research now shows us that this actually makes us smarter. Encouraging dissent is a rebellious notion because it goes against our very instincts, which are to surround ourselves with opinions and advice that we already believe or want to be true. And that's why I talk about the need to actively manage dissent.
第二, 我们需要营造出一种空间 ”提出管理性异见“。 如果我们要转变思维和行为模式, 取得突破, 打破神秘, 我们就需要培养出一种氛围, 让专家的想法打出胜负, 让我们大胆地提出各种新的 不和谐的声音和离经叛道的想法, 在参与讨论的过程中 我们要无所畏惧。 因为我们知道进步不仅来自于 提出新构想, 也来源于解构旧想法; 因为我们知道 我们必须敞开心胸接受各种 不和谐的声音,接受 离经叛道的想法。 所有研究表明只有这样 我们才会变得更聪明。 鼓励不和谐的声音其实很反叛, 因为这与我们的本能背道而驰, 我们的本能是只接受 那些我们已经深信或者 主观上想去相信 的意见和建议。 这也就是为什么我提倡我需要 积极的管理异见。
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a practical practitioner of this philosophy. In meetings, he looks out for the person in the room -- arms crossed, looking a bit bemused -- and draws them into the discussion, trying to see if they indeed are the person with a different opinion, so that they have dissent within the room. Managing dissent is about recognizing the value of disagreement, discord and difference. But we need to go even further. We need to fundamentally redefine who it is that experts are. The conventional notion is that experts are people with advanced degrees, fancy titles, diplomas, best-selling books -- high-status individuals. But just imagine if we were to junk this notion of expertise as some sort of elite cadre and instead embrace the notion of democratized expertise -- whereby expertise was not just the preserve of surgeons and CEO's, but also shop-girls -- yeah.
谷歌首席执行官埃里克·施密特 在现实中就秉承 这种哲学理念 开会时,他就望向房间里的人-- 他的手臂端着,神色些许困惑-- 他让每个人参与到讨论中来, 看看这些人能否真正 提出不同的意见, 这样会议室内才有各种不同的声音。 管理异见就是 认识到让各种不同声音, 不同意见 百家争鸣的价值性。 但我们需要更进一步, 从根本上重新定义 专家的概念 传统概念 将专家定义为那些有 高等学位,有名头衔 持各种证书或 写过畅销书的人-- 都是有名望的人。 但是请想象一下 如果我们抛弃 把专家的意见当成 金科玉律的想法, 相反,勇于接受让专业知识 走向平民化的想法, 这样专业知识就不仅仅是外科医生 或首席执行官的独有领域, 也可以由店员传授给你。
Best Buy, the consumer electronics company, gets all its employees -- the cleaners, the shop assistants, the people in the back office, not just its forecasting team -- to place bets, yes bets, on things like whether or not a product is going to sell well before Christmas, on whether customers' new ideas are going to be or should be taken on by the company, on whether a project will come in on time. By leveraging and by embracing the expertise within the company, Best Buy was able to discover, for example, that the store that it was going to open in China -- its big, grand store -- was not going to open on time. Because when it asked its staff, all its staff, to place their bets on whether they thought the store would open on time or not, a group from the finance department placed all their chips on that not happening. It turned out that they were aware, as no one else within the company was, of a technological blip that neither the forecasting experts, nor the experts on the ground in China, were even aware of.
美国百思买是一家 消费型电子产品公司, 它鼓励公司所有员工 无论是保洁员,店员,还是 后勤人员参都与公司决策, 而不是把这些任务 留给预测团队一力承担。 员工共同参谋比如 某一产品能否在圣诞节前畅销, 或者顾客提出的新想法 是否可以被公司采纳, 某个项目能否 及时进行等等。 通过利用 和鼓励专业知识 在公司里普及, 百思买得以发现,例如, 公司计划在中国开业的 大型百思买商店 却不能按期开业, 因为当时公司问员工, 让所有的员工下注 猜中国的商店能否如期开业, 公司财政部的一组员工 全部都投了否定票 认为不会如期开业。 结果证明这组员工 在公司其他部门都没有意识到时候 对技术性的故障已有先见之明, 而对这种故障无论是预测专家 还是在公司在中国的专家 都没料到。
The strategies that I have discussed this evening -- embracing dissent, taking experts on, democratizing expertise, rebellious strategies -- are strategies that I think would serve us all well to embrace as we try to deal with the challenges of these very confusing, complex, difficult times. For if we keep our independent decision-making part of our brains switched on, if we challenge experts, if we're skeptical, if we devolve authority, if we are rebellious, but also if we become much more comfortable with nuance, uncertainty and doubt, and if we allow our experts to express themselves using those terms too, we will set ourselves up much better for the challenges of the 21st century. For now, more than ever, is not the time to be blindly following, blindly accepting, blindly trusting. Now is the time to face the world with eyes wide open -- yes, using experts to help us figure things out, for sure -- I don't want to completely do myself out of a job here -- but being aware of their limitations and, of course, also our own.
今天晚上 我跟大家探讨的策略-- 欢迎不和谐声音、 反对专家的意见、 让专业知识走向平民化 接受不同的意见, 我认为这些策略 能让我们游刃有余地 应对当今这个迷乱、复杂 艰难的时代为我们 带来的挑战。 如果我们保持 大脑的决策功能 时时开启, 如果我们挑战专家,敢于质疑, 瓦解所谓权威, 如过我们能提出反对声音, 同时, 如果我们能更加坦然接受 所面对的差异、 不确定性和质疑, 如果我们也允许 专家能够以这些方式 来阐释他们自己, 我们就能够更好的 武装自己, 应对21世纪的挑战。 现在比以往 更需要我们 抛弃忙从、 盲目接受 盲目相信。 现在正需要我们 睁大眼睛看世界-- 当然也需要专家帮助 我们解决问题-- 我还不想让自己彻底失业-- 但是,要意识到 专家的局限性 还有我们自己的局限性。
Thank you.
谢谢大家
(Applause)
(掌声)