【推文】James Lindsay - Scientists are almost always useless, at detecting and unmasking deception

這是 James Lindsay 最近寫的長推文

連結

• 原推文 - x.com/conceptualjame...

• Thread Reader App版本（一頁版本） - threadreaderapp.com/...

原文及個人翻譯

One of the most important lessons I've ever learned came from the skeptic community, and it's this: scientists are almost always completely useless, or worse than useless, at detecting and unmasking deception. We must be cautious, as we've learned, with deference to scientists.🧵

我生命中最重要的教訓之一來自懷疑論者社群，那就是：科學家在偵測和揭穿欺騙上幾乎總是完全無用，甚至比無用還要差。正如我們所學到的，我們必須對科學家保持警惕。🧵

Understanding why scientists are frequently worse than useless, often a positive liability, in matters of deception is a matter of understanding what scientists do: they work to understand and give explanations to phenomena observed in reality.

了解為何科學家在欺騙問題上經常比無用還要差，甚至成為一種正面的負資產，這取決於我們理解科學家所做的事：他們努力理解和解釋現實中觀察到的現象。

The trouble with scientists is that they very frequently (though not always) take the observed phenomena at face value. They might eventually get there and realize deception is a part of it, but it tends to take them a long time, during which the deception continues.

科學家的問題在於，他們非常經常（雖然不是總是）將觀察到的現象當成真實。他們最終可能會到達那一步，即意識到欺騙是現象其中的一部分，但這往往需要很長時間，在這段時間內，欺騙會繼續存在。

I learned this watching a video of an Indonesian magic man who could allegedly use his magical body energy (qi or whatever) to do all kinds of fantastical things, including lighting light bulbs and doing electroshock acupuncture therapy to people, which might have helped them.

Scientists surrounded the guy, studying the phenomenon, taking all kinds of measurements, doing all kinds of tests, etc., on the amount of energy and whatnot, trying to plausibly connect it to the action he was taking by moving his abdomen in a particular way and left baffled.

我看了一段印尼魔術師的影片，他據說能利用他的魔法體能（氣或任何其他能量）做各種奇幻的事，包括點亮燈泡和對人進行電擊針灸治療，這可能對他們有幫助。

科學家包圍了這個魔術師，研究這個現象，測量各種能量和數據，進行各種測試等，試圖合理地將它與他移動腹部的動作聯繫起來，但他們仍感到困惑。

There are entire books written about things like this, by the way, some by scientists taking up more and less plausible lines about the phenomena they think they're studying. In this case, a stage magician (who works in deception) realized the guy had a battery in his buttcrack.

Because of the high humidity or whatever other conditions, the guy could sometimes work up enough current to get certain things to work, I guess across his skin or whatever, IDK. The point was, the sham was easily seen through not by scientists but by a stage magician.

The reason for the discrepancy is that stage magicians work in deception while scientists tend to (but don't always!) take the observed phenomena at face value and try to work out how it works on the deceptive terms given to them. Thus the scientists get fooled and make it worse.

Scientists would, I think, eventually get to the bottom of it, so no shade against them for that, but it's very important to remember that their first tendency isn't to suspect deception but to explain the phenomena as they present themselves, which fails with deceptions.

事實上，關於這種現象有整本書籍在討論，有些是由科學家撰寫的，他們提出更可信或更不切實際的理論。在這種情況下，一位舞台魔術師（他專門在欺騙上工作）意識到這個男人臀部裂縫處有一個電池。

由於高濕度或其他條件，這個男人有時可以產生足夠的電流，讓某些東西在皮膚上或任何其他地方運作，我猜。關鍵點是，這個騙局不是由科學家，而是由一位舞台魔術師輕易看穿的。

這種差異的原因是，舞台魔術師專門在欺騙上工作，而科學家傾向於（但並不總是！）將觀察到的現象當成真實，並試圖根據他們看到包括欺騙在內的東西來理解它如何運作。因此，科學家會被欺騙，而且讓情況變得更糟。

我認為科學家最終會揭開這個謎團，所以對他們沒有任何怨言，但非常重要的是要記住，他們最初的傾向不是懷疑欺騙，而是根據現象本身給出解釋，而這在涉及欺騙時是失敗的。

The lesson I learned is to always be more skeptical about something that seems a little too good to be true or rather unbelievable, seemingly defying what we already know with high certainty (e.g., through common sense) about reality and its workings.

It's definitely the case that much that occurs in reality is non-intuitive, and the sciences have been great at uncovering and explaining many such phenomena, but a very healthy skepticism is almost always warranted around highly non-intuitive or bizarre phenomena.

我從中學到的教訓是，對於看起來太好而難以置信的事物，或者似乎挑戰我們對現實及其運作有高度確定性的常識（例如：常識）的事物，我們應該始終保持更懷疑的態度。

確實，現實中發生的許多事情都是非直覺的，科學在揭示和解釋許多這種現象方面做得非常出色，但對於非常非直覺或奇特的現象，保持健康的懷疑幾乎總是合理的。

This is particularly relevant today, though kind of tangentially, because we occupy a political warfare environment filled with propaganda and deliberate deception, including what I call "telling the truth, falsely," in which truths are told in an intentionally misleading way.

Furthermore, much of the behavior we see online is not at all organic. It's paid for. It's bots. It's foreign influence. If you take these phenomena at face value and try to explain them, like believing Woke or Woke Right is "just happening" organically, you miss everything.

這在當今尤其相關，雖然有點偏離主題，因為我們處在一個充滿宣傳和故意欺騙的政治戰爭環境中，包括我稱為「說真話，假裝」的現象，其中真相以故意誤導的方式被說出。

此外，我們在網絡上看到的許多行為其實並不自然。它們是有人資助的。它們是由機器人發動的。它們是有外來影響參與的。如果你將這些現象當成現實（Pika：尤其是指它們是人們自發的），並試圖解釋它們，例如相信「覺醒文化」或「Woke Right」只是「自然發生」的，你會錯過一切。

Woke is and was funded. Woke is and was funded in a coordinated attack against our society. It did not bubble out of the ground, though homegrown Woke Marxists are part of it, for sure. It got funded and structured into existence in a deliberate attack. Woke Right is the same.

If you run around saying "oh, well these people lacked something like religion and are looking for an outlet," "and it's social media these days!" you're missing the key variable (the battery in the buttcrack): that it's only a big thing because someone is paying $$$ to make it.

覺醒文化過去和現在都是一場受到資助並有協調地對我們社會的攻擊。它並非從地底下冒出，雖然本土的覺醒文化馬克思主義者確實是其中的一部分。它並非自然形成，而是受到資助並被組織起來的一場蓄意攻擊。「Woke Right」也是如此。

如果你四處奔走，說「這些人缺乏宗教之類的東西，正在尋找出口」，或者「現在是社交媒體時代！」你就忽略了關鍵變數（臀部電池）：只有因為有人資助才讓它成為大問題。

Most historical currents are not in fact organic movements, in all likelihood. Most historical currents are carefully orchestrated, if rather wild and unpredictable, operations funded by big money and power brokers who want to achieve certain ends in the world. Ex: WWI & WWII.

If your analysis doesn't include this more skeptical, cynical element, your analysis is like "science" explaining how the magic man can generate current using his dantien in his abdomen even though that's not what's going on at all to really produce the results we see.

大多數歷史潮流很可能並非人們自發的運動。它們通常是精心策劃的、雖然有些狂野和不可預測的行動，由大筆資金和權力交易者資助，以實現他們在世界上的特定目的。例如：第一次世界大戰和第二次世界大戰。

如果你的分析沒有包含這種更具懷疑和冷漠的元素，你的分析就好比科學解釋魔法師如何用腹部的丹田產生電流，儘管這並不是產生我們看到的結果的真正原因。