You believe that the Sun is much larger than the Earth, that the Earth is a roughly spherical planet that rotates on its axis every 24 hours and it revolves around the Sun once every 365 days. You believe that you were born on a particular date, that you were born to two human parents and that each of your human parents was born on an earlier date. You believe that other human beings have thoughts and feelings like you do and that you are not surrounded by humanoid robots. You believe all of these things and many more, not on the basis of direct observation, which can't, by itself, tell you very much about the relative size and motion of the Sun and the Earth, or about your own family history, or about what goes on in the minds of other humans. Instead, these beliefs are mostly based on what you've been told. Without spoken and written testimonies, human beings could not pass on knowledge from one person to another, let alone from one generation to another. We would know much, much less about the world around us. So learning about a topic by asking an expert on that topic, or appealing to authority, helps us gain knowledge, but, it doesn't always. Even the most highly respected authorities can turn out to be wrong. Occasionally this happens because a highly respected authority is dishonest and claims to know something that she or he really doesn't know. Sometimes it happens just because they make a mistake. They think they know when they don't know. For example, a number of respected economists did not expect the financial collapse of 2008. They turned out to be wrong. Maybe they were wrong because they were overlooking some important evidence. Maybe they were wrong because they were misinterpreting some of the evidence they had noticed. Or maybe they were wrong simply because they were reasoning carelessly from the total body of their evidence. But whatever the reason, they turned out to be wrong and many people who trusted their authority ended up losing lots of money, losing lots of other people's money, on account of that misplaced trust. So while appealing to authority can sometimes provide us with valuable knowledge, it also can sometimes be the cause of monumental errors. It's important to all of us to be able to distinguish those occasions on which we can safely and reasonably trust authority from those occasions on which we can't. But how do we do that? In order to do that, nothing is more useful than an authority's track record on a particular topic. If someone turns out to perform well in a given situation much of the time, then it's likely that he or she will continue to perform well in that same situation, at least in the near term. And this generalization holds true of the testimony of authorities as much as of anything else. If someone can consistently pick winners in both politics and baseball, then we should probably trust him or her to keep on picking winners in both politics or baseball, though maybe not in other things where his or her track record may be less stellar. If other forecasters have a poorer track record on those same two topics, then we shouldn't trust them as much. So whenever you're considering whether to trust the testimony of some authority, the first question to ask yourself is, "What's their track record on this topic?" And notice that you can apply the very same lesson to yourself. Your instincts tell you that you've just met Mr. Right, but what sort of track record do your instincts have on topics like this one? Have your instincts proven themselves to be worthy of your trust? Just as we judge other people's testimony by their track record, so, too, we can judge our own instincts by their track record. And this brings us one step closer to an objective view of ourselves and our relation to the world around us.
你相信太陽比地球大許多, 而地球大概是一個球形的行星, 每 24 小時繞著自轉軸轉一圈 每 365 天繞太陽一圈。 你相信你在某一個特別的日子, 由身為父母的人類生下你, 而他們兩位 的出生日期在你之前。 你相信其它人類 有和你類似的思想與感覺, 環繞你身邊的不是擬人機器人。 你相信這些以及其他事 並不是藉由直接觀察, 因為有關太陽和地球 的相對大小以及相對運動, 觀察所能告訴你的有限。 你的家族史和別人的思想狀態, 也是一樣。 其實你的信任是以 道聽塗說為基礎。 若沒有言語或紀錄的見證, 人類沒辦法在人與人之間 傳遞知識, 更不用說 世代與世代之間。 我們對於我們的世界 將會知道得非常少。 所以藉由詢問一位專家 或是相信權威 來學習一個主題 可以幫助我們增長知識, 然而,這也不盡然如此。 即使是最德高望重的權威 也有可能出錯。 這偶爾會發生, 因為德高望重的權威可能說謊, 並聲稱他知道某件 他明明不知道的事。 有時候僅僅是因為他們犯錯了。 他們認為他們知道 但事實卻不是這樣。 舉例來說,許多知名的經濟學家 並沒有預測到 2008 年的金融海嘯。 他們錯了。 這錯誤可能源自 他們忽略了一些重要的證據。 也可能源自 他們對證據的錯誤解讀。 又或者 單單只是因為 他們從完整的證據 做出草率的推論。 但不管理由是什麼, 他們就是錯了 而且許多相信他們的人 最後損失了許多錢, 也損失許多其它人的錢, 都因為錯誤的信任。 所以當相信權威可以 提供我們有用的知識的同時, 它也有可能造成 嚴重的錯誤。 我們每個人都應該有能力分辦 在甚麼情況下我們可以合理地相信權威 那些情況下卻不行。 但我們如何分辨呢? 在這個狀況下, 沒有什麼比 權威在某專業的歷史紀錄 更為重要了。 如果某人在某一情況下 總是表現得很好, 那麼他就很可能 在同一情況下 一樣表現得不錯, 至少就短期來說是如此。 而這個推論對 不同領域、不同權威的說法 也是對的。 如果有人持續地在 政治及棒球上 選對勝利者, 那麼我們也許可以相信他 會繼續在這兩樣上 預測正確, 但紀錄不好的其它領域 我們可能就沒辦法如此推測。 如果其他預測員 在這兩方面 的紀錄更為不良, 那麼我們也不該那麼相信他。 所以每一次你在決定 要不要相信某權威時, 第一個要問自己的就是: 「他在這專業上過去的紀錄如何?」 值得注意的是 你可以將 這件事用在自己身上。 你的直覺告訴你 你遇到了對的人 但是自己直覺在這方面的紀錄 是如何呢? 你的直覺有證明 它們是值得相信的嗎? 就像是我們 藉由紀錄 來判斷別人的說辭, 我們也可以用紀錄 來判斷自己的直覺。 而這讓我們更進一步了解 對我們自己的客觀看法 以及我們與宇宙共存的關係。