比起特朗普 人们对橄榄球比赛更感兴趣

Last weekend, I travelled to the Adirondack Mountains of Hamilton County, in upstate New York, for a Columbus Day vacation.

上周末，我前往纽约北部汉密尔顿县(Hamilton County)的阿第伦达克山脉(Adirondack Mountains)度过哥伦布日(Columbus Day)假期。

Since the second presidential debate was scheduled for Sunday night, I’d planned to watch it in a local bar, hoping to gauge audience reaction.

第二次总统候选人电视辩论安排在那个星期天的晚上，我计划在一家当地酒吧观看辩论，希望能看一看观众的反应。

Everybody I knew from New York was on tenterhooks about the debate — taking place just days after the release of the shocking video in which Donald Trump spoke about groping women.

在纽约，我认识的每个人都坐立不安，等待着辩论开场——因为就在仅仅数天前，唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)谈论他猥亵妇女的经历的令人震惊的视频刚刚曝光。

I had unthinkingly assumed that, at this critical juncture in the election campaign, the debate would be airing on bar screens everywhere.

我想当然地以为，在大选的这个关键节点，每个地方的酒吧屏幕上都会播放这场辩论。

Wrong.

我错了。

As I visited the main drinking joints of the local town, I was repeatedly rebuffed.

当我来到镇上的各家主要酒吧，我遭遇了一次又一次的生硬拒绝。

Finally, the burly, mustachioed owner of one of the bars explained why: the local bars had agreed that they would not tune their TVs to the debate since they did not want to create trouble — or stir up argument in a region where most people already backed the same party (Republican).

最终，一家酒吧留着卷曲八字胡的魁梧店主向我解释了原因：当地酒吧达成了一致，不会将电视调到播放辩论的频道，因为他们不想惹麻烦——也就是在一个多数人已经支持同一个政党（共和党）的地区挑起争论。

In any case, there was more interest in an American football game scheduled that night, featuring the New York Giants, than Trump and the scandal about the video.

无论如何，比起特朗普和有关那段视频的丑闻，人们对预定当晚播出的一场纽约巨人队(New York Giants)的橄榄球比赛更感兴趣。

It is a trivial tale.

这是个微不足道的小故事。

But it also points to a lesson that journalists, social scientists, writers and anyone who studies others for a living needs to remember: namely, that we are all creatures of our own cultural environment, prone to lazy assumptions and biases.

但它给记者、社会科学家、作家以及任何靠研究他人为生的人指出了他们需要记住的一个教训：即我们都是自身所在的文化环境的产物，容易受到想当然的假设和偏见的影响。

Sometimes these seem laughable (like my own naivety over the TV debate); sometimes they matter (most journalists completely failed to recognise the appeal of Trump until just before he won the Republican nomination).

有时这看起来很可笑（比如我自己在播放电视辩论上的想当然）；有时很重要（多数记者在特朗普赢得共和党总统侯选人提名前完全没有认识到他的吸引力）。

Either way, our biases are important.

无论是哪一种，我们的偏见很重要。

And that, in turn, suggests we could all benefit by looking at a concept that I first learnt about when I was studying anthropology: the dirty lens problem.

这进而暗示，我们都可以从研究一个概念中受益——脏镜头问题，这是我在学习人类学时首次接触到的。

This dirty lens tag refers to the idea that when scientists peer at an object through a microscope, their view can be distorted by a clouded lens.

脏镜头指的是，科学家在通过显微镜观察物体时，他们的视野可能会因为模糊的镜头而扭曲。

In a laboratory, smudges and smears can usually be wiped away with a cloth.

在实验室里，可以用一块布来擦去这些污渍。

But in the social sciences, the lens is our mind, ears and eyes, and it is harder to spot and remove our mental smudges.

但在社会科学中，镜头是我们的思想、耳朵和眼睛，发现并消除我们精神上的污渍更困难。

There is no cloth.

也没有什么可供擦去污渍的布。

Is there any solution? In anthropology classes at university, we were urged to do four things.

有什么解决方法吗？在大学里的人类学课程中，我们被敦促去做4件事。

First, to take the obvious (but oft-forgotten) step of recognising that our lenses are dirty.

首先，采取显而易见（但常常被忘记）的一步，认识到我们的镜头是脏的。

Second, to consciously note our biases.

第二，有意识地注意到我们自身的偏见。

Third, to attempt to offset these biases by trying to see the world from different perspectives; we must listen and look without preconception.

第三，尝试通过从不同视角来看世界，从而抵消这些偏见；我们必须不带任何先入之见地去听去看。

Last but not least, to remember that our personal lens will never be perfectly clean, even if we take the first three steps.

最后，同样重要的是，记住我们个人的镜头永远不会绝对洁净，哪怕我们做到了前三步。

We must be humble and remember the limits of knowledge.

我们必须保持谦逊，记住认识存在局限。

(Or as I sometimes joke to colleagues: on a good day, we journalists probably get 40 per cent of the truth; but what keeps me going is that I think that the FT tends to get a much higher percentage than most of its rivals.)

（或者，就如我有时对同事开玩笑说：在好的情况下，我们记者很可能获得了40%的真相；但让我继续前行的是，我认为英国《金融时报》很可能比大多数竞争对手获得了更高百分比的真相。

Putting this four-step mantra into practice is painfully hard.

把这四步真言付诸实践是一件非常困难的事情。

One problem is that these days the media landscape — and the academic world — is so resource-constrained that it is difficult to find enough time to clean our lens.

一个难题是，近来媒体界——以及学术界——的资源都如此有限，以至于很难抽出足够时间来清洁我们的镜头。

It is doubly hard when commentators and journalists are under pressure to perform (offer views) rather than absorb (listen quietly and patiently to what others say).

让事情倍加艰难的是，评论员和记者还面临着压力，必须拿出表现（发表观点）而不是吸收（安静耐心地倾听别人在说些什么）。

And in today’s cyber-saturated age there is another problem: although our smartphones give us the illusion that we are all hyperconnected all of the time, in reality, there is an ever-present tendency to self-segregate into echo chambers, because we tend to choose our news from customised sources.

而在今天的网络饱和时代，存在另外一个问题：尽管我们的智能手机让我们产生了我们无时不刻都处于超连接状态的错觉，但现实是，在回音室里自我隔离的倾向越来越严重，因为我们倾向于选择定制新闻来源。

If you don’t agree with this, look at who you follow on Twitter or who your Facebook friends are — and consider how much this shapes your concept of the news.

如果你不认同这一点，看一看你在Twitter上关注了哪些人，或者你的Facebook朋友都是谁，然后想一想这在多大程度上塑造了你对新闻的概念。

Then try deliberately changing your electronic news sources for a week or replacing who you follow.

之后在一周时间里试着有意识地改变你的电子新闻来源或者关注不同的人群。

Difficult or not, we need to teach our kids — and ourselves — to think about our dirty lens.

无论困难与否，我们都需要教我们的孩子，以及我们自己，思考一下我们的脏镜头。

Periodically, we should try to embrace a completely different world view, or at least listen patiently to others.

我们应该定期尝试接触一种完全不同的世界观，或者至少耐心地倾听别人所说的话。

There is another principle that we need to remember: a decade ago, when the 2008 financial crisis hit, I decided (somewhat cynically) that the only way for a country to avoid a massive banking crisis was to have regular, small bank failures.

我们还需要记住一个原则：10年前，2008年金融危机来袭时，我（或多或少有些愤世嫉俗地）得出一个结论，一个国家避免大规模银行业危机的唯一方法是时常经历一些小规模的银行倒闭。

Frequent, tiny failures are perhaps the only thing that really stop regulators and bankers from getting too complacent.

频频发生的小规模破产或许是唯一一件能真正阻止监管者和银行家变得过于自满的事情。

So too with our minds — and dirty lenses.

同样的道理也适用于我们的思想——和脏镜头。

In that sense, then, I am grateful to those bars in Hamilton County — and the way they wrongfooted my assumptions on Sunday night.

因此，在这个意义上，汉密尔顿县的那些酒吧，以及周日晚上他们让我的假设落空的方式，都让我心存感激。

As it happens, in the end I did find an establishment that was showing the debate.

事实上，最后我还是找到了一个播放那场电视辩论的地方。

But it was a hotel that catered to outsiders (like me.) It was still a fascinating, boisterous evening, and I learnt a lot.

但那是一家面向外来者（比如我）的酒店。那依然是一个迷人的、热闹的夜晚，我学到了很多。

But the lesson that will stay with me from that night is that we all need to check our lens — with all its biases or dirt.

但从那个晚上起，有个教训将一直伴随我，那就是我们都需要检查一下自己的镜头——看看有没有偏见或者尘土。

Particularly in this contentious election.

尤其是在这场有争议的选举中。