如何避免愚蠢的觀點-How to Avoid Foolish Opinions

　　How to Avoid Foolish Opinions

　　To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind is prone, no superhuman genius is required. If the matter is one that can be settled by observation,make the observation yourself.

　　Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters,there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good

　　evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in theology there is only opinion. So wheneveryou find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

　　A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.

　　For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time and space.

　　如何避免愚蠢的觀點

　　人類要避免容易產生的各種愚蠢的觀點，并不需要超人的天才。假如是一個通過觀察就可以解決的問題，那你就親自去觀察一下。然而許多問題通過經驗并不容易驗證。倘若你跟大多數人一樣，對于許多諸如此類的問題堅信不移，以下幾種方式可以讓你意識到你自己的偏見。如果一個跟你相反的觀點讓你生氣的話，那就表明在潛意識里你明白你那么想并沒有充足的理由。有人若是堅持認為二加二等于五或冰島位于赤道，你會感到憐憫而非憤怒：除非你對算術或地理幾乎一無所知，他的觀點因此動搖了你相反的信念。最蠻不講理的論爭是雙方就某些問題爭辯不休，可是都拿不出令人信服的證據。神學中有迫害，算術則沒有，這是因為神學只有觀點。 因此，無論何時，當你發現自己因為與他人觀點不同而惱怒時，你就得留神了；一經檢驗，你很可能發現你的信念并沒有足夠的證據。

　　使自己擺脫某些教條觀念的好辦法之一是了解自己生活圈子以外人們所持的觀點。你要是覺得有些人、某一份報紙狂熱，有悖常理，而且邪惡，這時你就得提醒自己，在他們眼里你沒有什么兩樣。這么想雙方都可能是對的，卻不可能都是錯的。進行這樣的反思，應該能使人保持一定的警覺。

　　想象力豐富的人可以設想一下自己跟一個見解相左的人進行辯論，這不失為一個好辦法。與同對手進行真正的辯論相比，這么做有一個、且僅有一個好處，那就是它不受時空的限制