英语演讲稿 TED英语演讲：人类越来越聪明而阅读的内容越来越蠢.doc

TED英语演讲：人类越来越聪明，而阅读的内容越来越蠢 你最近一次读的书是什么?这本书你读了多久?你现在一年读几本书?现代人读书越来越少，这已经是全球公认的事实。而一些新的统计数据发现，即使是那些依然读书很多的人，或许也没有他们自己认为的那么有文化了。下面是小编为大家收集关于TED英语演讲：人类越来越聪明，而阅读的内容越来越蠢，欢迎借鉴参考。 People Are Getting Smarter, Contents Are Getting Dumber 演讲者是The Escapist 杂志的总经理，亚历山大马克利斯(Alexander Macris) Today, were gonna talk about the content we consume and what that consumption is doing to our minds. 今天我们要来谈谈我们消费的内容，以及这种消费对我们思维的影响。 But before I started to talk about content I wanna talk about something else we consume. 但在讲内容之前，我想先谈谈我们消费的另一种东西。 I wanna talk about food. 我想谈谈食物。 When we consume food, we experience its taste and we benefit from its nutritional value. 当我们吃食物的时候，我们能体验到它的味道，并从它的营养价值中获益。 Taste is subjective. For person to person it can vary. 味道是主观的。不同的人有不同的感受。 Nutrition is universal and objective. 而营养是普世的、客观的。 Those of us dont like our broccoli might say that food and taste and nutrition dont go well together. 我们当中那些不喜欢西兰花的人可能会说：食物、味道、营养不可兼得。 Others, strange people, like healthy food. 另一些比较古怪的人则喜欢吃健康食品。 At minimum we can agree that food can be tasty without being nutritious and vice versa. 不过我们至少能达成一个共识：食物可以好吃但没有营养，反之亦然。 Now one time the American diet consisted primarily of nutritious food such as organic vegetables, whole grain, grass-fed beef. 曾几何时，美国人饮食的主要成分都是有营养的食物，比如有机蔬菜、全麦、用草喂养的牛的肉。 But as food production became market-driven, food companies found that making food tastier is cheaper than making food nutritious, that consumers actually prefer tastier food rather than healthier food. 但是随着食品制造业变得市场导向，食品公司们发现制作更好吃的食物比制作有营养的食物更划算，而且消费者实际上也更喜欢那些更好吃的食物，而不是更健康的食物。 Overtime, nutritious food was supplanted by inexpensive cheap food that was available to everybody didnt have a lot of nutrition, while healthy nutritious food was limited to the dietary elite, the people that shop at Whole Foods. 随着时间推移，那些有营养的食物被廉价的食物取代了，那些营养不足的人很容易就能获得这些廉价的食物;而只有那些饮食精英才能获得健康的、有营养的食物，也就是那些在全食超市购物的人。 The gradual erosion of the nutritional value of our food was ignored by almost everybody until the obesity epidemic transformed our love handles into passion Bannisters. 而几乎所有人都忽略了这种对食物营养价值的侵蚀，直到肥胖症大面积爆发，并把我们的人鱼线全都变成了游泳圈。 And now were the fattest country in the developed world. 结果现在我们是发达国家中最胖的。 I believe when we consume content its a lot like eating food. 我觉得，我们对内容的消费和对食品的消费是非常相似的。 Like food, content has a taste to it. 就如同食物一样，内容也有自己的味道。 When you experiencce The Avengers, it tastes differently than The Dark Knight. 当你看复仇者联盟的时候，它的感觉和黑暗骑士是不一样的。 Which you prefer is just a matter of taste. 不管你喜欢哪个，都只是个口味问题。 Never before has the content menu offered so many varied excellent tastes. 在内容领域，我们还从未有过这么丰富的口味可供选择。 If you enjoy consuming content, the world is an amazing place. 如果你喜欢消费内容，那这个世界真是太美妙了。 But content also has a nutritional value. 不过，内容也是有营养价值的。 Just as food feeds our bodies, content feeds our minds. 正如同食物供养着我们的身体，内容供养着我们的思维。 And as with food, the nutritional effective content is objective and universal. 而且和食物一样，内容的营养价值也是客观而普世的。 Ive summarized the findings from over 40 studies on how content consumption affects us. 我总结了40多项研究的发现，它们都是研究内容消费是如何影响我们的。 Nutritious contents increase our knowledge. It expanse our vocabularies. It improves reflection, critical thinking, problem-solving, visual acuity, imagination. 有营养的内容能够让我们增长知识。它能扩充我们的词汇量。它能提升我们深入思考的能力、批判性思维的能力、解决问题的能力、视觉敏锐度以及想象力。 Unhealthy content shortens our attention span. It damages our concentration. It weakens our problem-solving skills and increase impulsivity. And like simple sugars, it leaves you addicted and wanting more. 不健康的内容会缩短我们的注意力时长。它还会损害我们集中精神的能力。它会削弱我们解决问题的，还会让我们更冲动。而且，就像单糖一样，它还会让你上瘾、让你欲罢不能。 We already know that the American diet of food rapidly changed in the 20th century in a way that made it tasty but less nutritious. 我们都知道，美国人的饮食在20世纪经历了急速的变化，越来越好吃但是越来越没有营养。 The American mind has also changed rapidly. 而美国人的思维也同样经历的急速的变化。 Did these changes leave our mental diet a healthy balanced on? Or have we began to feed our minds as badly as we feed our bodies, consuming nothing but junk all day? 这些改变有没有让我们的思维食谱更健康、更均衡呢?还是说，我们喂养自己思维的方式变得和我们喂养身体的方式一样糟、每天只吃垃圾食品? If our mental menu is nutritious, we should see people get smarter and sharper. If our mental menu is unwholesome, we should expect to see a spreading epidemic of stupidity that would parallel the epidemic of obesity. 如果我们的思维食谱是有营养的，那么我们应该会看到人们变得更聪明、更敏锐。如果我们的思维食谱不那么健康，那么我们应该可以想见：愚蠢会像肥胖症一样变成一个严重的流行疾病。 Lets start by examining our reading habits. 我们首先来看看我们的阅读习惯吧。 Reading, it turns out its the most nutritious way you can consume content. 我们发现，阅读是所有内容消费方式中最有营养的。 The better you are at reading, the better you are at thinking. 你的阅读能力越强，你的思考能力就越强。 And how do you get better at reading? By reading. 而你要怎么提高阅读能力呢?答案是：靠阅读。 Educators call this principle the Matthew effect. 教育家们把这个原则称为马修效应。 In a series of studies, researchers Cunningham and Standage have demonstrated repeatedly that a high volume of reading increases knowledge, broadens vocabulary and reduces the cognitive decline of aging. 通过一系列的研究，卡宁汉和斯坦迪奇两位研究者反复地发现：通过大量阅读，你能够增长知识、扩充词汇量，并减缓由衰老造成的认知能力下降。 And all of these studies were controlled for general intelligence and verbal abilities. 而且所有这些研究都覆盖了所有智力水平和所有词汇能力等级。 So in other words, its not that smart people reading although they do, but that reading makes you smarter. 所以，换句话说，事情的核心并不是聪明人读书更多(虽然他们的确读得更多)，而是读书能让你变得更聪明。 No other type of content consumption has been shown to provide these benefits. 我们还没有发现其他的内容消费方式能有这样的益处。 When you wanna strengthen your muscles, the best way to do it is to lift heavy weights, so Ive been told. 如果你想锻炼自己的肌肉，最好的办法就是用偏大的重量来进行负重训练(至少我是这么听说的)。 When you wanna strengthen your mind, the best way to do it is to read challenging literature. 如果你想锻炼自己的思维，最好的办法就是阅读有挑战性的文学作品。 So how challenging is our literature today compared to the past? 那么，我们如今的文学作品和以前的那些相比，有多么具有挑战性呢? I explored a corpus of best-selling books for the 300 years period from 1710 to 20xx and assessed sentence length, paragraph length and reading grade. 我研究了从1720xx年到20xx年这320xx年间的畅销书语料库，评估了它们的句子长度、段落长度和阅读等级。 Sentence length has been steadily declining for decades from an average of 40 words per sentence to an average of 14. 句子长度一直在稳步下降，从曾经的平均40个单词下降到了平均14个单词。 Its now as abrupt as our spoken speech. It cant decrease much further unless we start speaking in tweets. 现在它们已经变得和口语一样直白。再就没法下降了，除非我们都开始用推特体讲话。 Paragraph length held steady from the beginning of the 18th century until the middle of the 20th century when it suddenly began to plummet at an accelerating rate. This is when the era of TV began. 段落长度从18世纪到20世纪是一直持平的，但从20世纪开始就加速下滑，而这个时间点正是电视诞生的时候。 Books written before 1950 had an average paragraph length of over a hundred words. Books written after 1950 had an average paragraph length of 71 words. 1950年以前写的书的平均段落长度超过100个单词。1950年以后写的书的段落长度平均是71个单词。 And if you look at just books written after 20xx, the average paragraph has dropped to 58 words. 而如果你只看20xx年以后写的书，你会发现平均段落长度已经下降到58个单词。 Consequently the reading grade of best-selling books has also plummeted dramatically over time. 结果就是，畅销书的阅读等级也随着时间推移而大幅下降。 The reading grade started at 14.5 for bestsellers in the 1700s and then declined inexorably. By 20xx it was down to grade 4.5. 1720xx年代畅销书的阅读等级是14.5，自那以后它就在无情地下跌。到20xx年的时候，已经降到了4.5。 Now remember. This has nothing to do with taste. The data is not talking about the aesthetic taste of consuming book. There are enjoyable books written at every reading grade at every genre. 而且，请注意，这和口味没有关系。这些数据并没有谈及读书的美学品味。每个等级、每个门类的书里都有引人入胜的好书。 When we consider reading grade were only talking about nutritional value. And from that point of view, what weve seen is that bestsellers were once books that challenged the college-educated mind and they are now books that are easy for 5th graders. 当我们谈论阅读等级的时候，我们仅仅是在谈论它的营养价值。从这一点来看，我们发现，畅销书曾经是能够为大学等级的读者带来挑战的东西，而现在连5年级的学生都能够轻易读懂畅销书。 Also note that the reading grade of the works clusters tightly as we get around 1940. And the 1940s is when researchers began to develop and promote what they termed readability scores. 还需要注意的是，这些书的阅读等级在1940年左右的时候发生扎堆。而1940年代正好是研究者们开始研发并推广所谓的可读性分数的时候。 A readability score is a measure of the degree to which material can be understood by readers. So this Flesch-Kincaid reading grade is a readability score. 可读性分数被用来衡量读者能在多大程度上理解一段材料。这个FK阅读等级就是一个可读性分数。 Once publishers were able to measure readability, they could target the works they published at whatever reading level would reach the greatest number of people. 一旦出版商能够测量可读性，他们就能确定在什么阅读等级出书能够触及最大数量的人。 At the time when the average American could read at the 8th grade level but enjoyed reading at the 6th grade level, that is for recreation. People liked to read texts that are two grades beneath their actual reading level. 当普通美国人可以阅读8级的书，但却更喜欢读6级的书时，那其实是在为娱乐而读。人们普遍喜欢读低于他们实际阅读水平两级的书。 Unfortunately, research by Professor Lev Vygotsky found that reading is most nutritious when its slightly above your current reading level. Reading books that are at your present level or below does not improve comprehension. 不幸的是，列夫威高茨基教授的研究发现，那些稍高于你当前阅读水平的书才是最有营养的。阅读那些与你当前水平持平、或者低于你当前水平的书，并不会提高你的理解能力。 If you wanna increase your vocabulary and knowledge you have to encounter new words and new facts. 如果你想要增长你的词汇量与知识，你必须去面对新的词汇与新的事实。 And this is unfortunate because it means theres a negative correlation between taste and nutrition. 这是很悲剧的，因为这说明口味与营养之间是呈负相关的。 The books you enjoy are not gonna be the books that are best for you. 那些你读起来觉得愉悦的书，并不会是对你好的书。 So as publishers started to use the readability scores to guide their publishing it was inevitable they were going to start making the material tastier but less nutritious because thats what we the consumers wanted. 所以，当出版商开始用可读性分数来指导出版工作，他们就不可避免地在让书变得更可口却更没有营养，因为这就是消费者想要的。 And this is similar to what happened when farmers substituted corn for grass in the livestock. The beef tasted better but it became less nutritious. 这就像是农民用玉米代替草料来喂养牲畜，牛肉的口感变好了，但却变得更没有营养了。 The publishers of newspapers and magazines hired readability consultants to purposefully simplify their written content. And as a result, in the past 60 years, the reading level of newspapers and magazines has dropped by 2 to 4 grades. 报纸与杂志的出版商更是专门聘请了可读性顾问来简化他们的内容。结果就是，在过去的60年里，报纸与杂志的可读性下降了2到4级。 Decreasing the reading grade of the works allow the newspaper-magazine publishers to greatly increase the audience but it also reduced the nutritional value of reading. 降低材料的阅读等级让报纸与杂志的出版商能够大副提升读者数，但同时也降低了这些阅读材料的营养价值。 Now its not surprising that market forces are going to cater towards taste rather than nutrition. 所以我们也就能理解为什么市场的力量会偏向于口味，而不是营养。 Whats especially troubling is that our textbooks have also been dumbed down. 而真正让人担忧的是，我们的教科书也变得越来越蠢了。 The average 8th grader is now reading from the textbooks at the 5th grade reading level. 普通8年级的学生现在正在读着实际只有5年级水平的教科书。 The literature text that was required of 12th graders is nowadays simpler than the average 8th grade reading book before World War II. 现在20xx年级被要求读的文学作品，比二战前8年级读的书还要简单。 Despite the fact that books are easier to read than ever, the average American today reads less than ever. 而且，虽然现在的书比以往的都更容易读，但普通美国人读书的量也变得前所未有的低。 60% of 18 to 24 year olds used to read literature in 1982. By 20xx, this had dropped to 43%. 1982年的时候，18岁到24岁的人中有60%会读文学作品。到了20xx年，已经下降到了43%。 The percentage of adults who read for pleasure is decreasing by 7 percent every year. 成年人把读书作为娱乐活动的比例每年都下降7%。 And the average annual spending has dropped from 33 dollars to 28 dollars in the last 20 years. 过去20xx年人们用在书上的平均年消费额从33美元下降到了28美元。 Its accepted that the declining popularity of written media has been caused by the rise of screen media. 人们普遍接受的是，纸媒的流行程度日趋下降是因为屏幕媒体变得越来越流行。 So its a dietary shift. It means that not only are Americans reading simpler books, flipping through simpler magazines and learning from simpler textbooks, theyre doing less all of the above. 所以，我们的饮食方式正在改变。这意味着，美国人不光只能读懂更简单的书、只能翻更简单的杂志、只能看更简单的教科书，而且他们还看得越来越少了。 And these changes have occurred simultaneously with measurable decreases in our nations verbal skills. 与这种现象同时发生的还有整个国家语言能力那客观的下降。 This is what the mean verbal SAT scores look like after you correct for the fact that the test makers have been adjusting the scores upward to hide the decline. 上面这是SAT语言能力分数的平均值，我们在其中剔除了出卷人为了掩盖下降而对分数做出的调整。 There was a 50 point drop between 1962 and 1979. And 1962 TV reached 90% market penetration and textbooks got simplified. 从1962年到1979年，分数下降了50分。而1962年电视的市场渗透率达到了90%，并且教科书被简化了。 There has been another 10-point drop since 20xx when Internet access went mainstream. 20xx年互联网主流化的时候，又下降了10分。 Heres a comparison of the reading ability of adults in 1949 and 20xx, the world before TV and after TV. 这里有一张1949年月20xx年成人阅读能力的对比，分别代表电视出现之前与之后的世界。 The number of US adults capable of reading at the 10th grade level dropped from 54% to 20%. 美国成年人中能读10级材料的人，从54%下降到了20%。 The number of reading at even the 6th level dropped from 83% to 52%. 就连能读6级材料的人也从83%下降到了52%。 In other words, more Americans could read at the 10th grade in 1949 than can even read at the 6th grade level today. 换句话说，1949年能读10级材料的美国人比现在能读6级材料的还多。 And this is despite the fact that in 1949 the average American had 8 and a half years of education and now the average adult has 12 and a half years of education. 而且这还没说1949年的时候美国人平均只接受8年半的教育，现在则平均是20xx年半。 So 4 and a half extra years of education to do worse. 都受了4年半的教育，却越来越差了。 So far I focused on printed material because its the leafy green vegetables of the content diet. 到目前为止，我都在讲纸质的印刷材料，因为它们是内容中的绿叶蔬菜。 What about screen media? How are they doing? 那屏幕媒体又如何呢?它们的现状又是怎样? Well, printed media has obviously declined in popularity. Screen media is doing a little more better. 嗯，纸媒的流行度显然是下降了。屏幕媒体的状况要稍微好一点。 Watching television is now the developed worlds favorite activity taking up more free time than anything else. 看电视是现在发达国家最流行的消遣方式，它占据的时间比任何其他事情都多。 The only thing we do more than watching TV is sleep. 唯一一项我们花时间比看电视多的事情，是睡觉。 American aged 15 to 24 spend 2 hours a day watching TV and seven minutes reading for pleasure. 15到24岁的美国人每天花2小时看电视，而用阅读作为消遣的时间只有7分钟。 If books are the leafy green vegetables in the diet, TVs and computers are the daily bread. 如果说书是饮食中的绿叶蔬菜。那电视和电脑就是我们每天吃的面包。 Now, the good news is that screen media has been shown to increase visual spatial intelligence. 好消息是，有证据表明屏幕媒体可以提高我们的视觉与空间智力。 Video games have also been shown to improve hand-eye coordination, thank you, 5-year-old who beat me on xbox, and divided attention which makes us better at tracking multiple objects at once. 电子游戏被证明能够提高手眼协调能力，感谢某位在xbox游戏机上打败我的5岁人士证明了这一点，同时它还能锻炼我们一心多用的能力，这让我们能在同一时间内更好地关注多件事情。 The Internet has been shown to increase transactive memory which is sort of a meta memory of where to find information like I no longer remember my birthday so I google it. 互联网还被证明能够提高交互式记忆的能力，这是一种关于信息在哪的宏观记忆，比如，我不记得自己的生日了，于是就去谷歌上面搜。 In particular, the increase in visual spatial intelligence has been profound and you can see the increased scores on the Raven progressive matrices. 值得强调的是，视觉与空间智力的提升是很显著的，你可以从瑞文推理测试的分数上看出。 These are non-verbal IQ tests which provide a measure of visual intelligence. And screen media are like vitamins for visual ability. Tasty tasty vitamins. 只是一种针对非语言类智力的测试，它能衡量一个人的视觉智力。而屏幕媒体就像是视觉智力的维生素。而且是好吃的维生素。 The bad news is that all types of screen media come at a substantial cost. 坏消息是，所有类型的屏幕媒体都伴随着高昂的代价。 Professor Patricia Greenfield summarizes the findings as damages to our deep cognitive processes. 派翠西亚格林菲尔德教授将这些发现总结为对深度认知过程的损害。 A study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that for every hour a child spent watching television there was a 9% increase in their attention problems. 美国儿科学会的一项研究表明：一个小孩每多看1小时的电视，他患有注意力障碍的可能性就增加9%。 Children between age 11 and 15 spent 53 hours a week in front of the screen. 11到15岁的小孩平均每周有53小时的时间是呆在屏幕前的。 A 20xx study published in Brain and Cognition has found that the more we watch television during our middle years, aged 20 to 60, the greater our risk of Alzheimers. 一项于20xx年发表在大脑与认知上的研究发现：中年人(20到60岁)看电视的时间越长，他们患老年痴呆症的风险也就越大。 A 20xx study in Southern Medical Journal found that watching lots of soap operas and talk shows was associated with clinically significant impairment of attention, memory and psychomotor speed in older people like your professors. 一项于20xx年发表在南方医学杂志上的研究发现：看太多肥皂剧和脱口秀可以对你们的教授这样的老年人造成严重的注意力障碍、记忆障碍和精神运动障碍，这些都是有临床依据的。 A large part of television effect on our mind is caused by what Pavlov calls the orienting response. This is the instinctive response we get to sensitivity of change, vision, sound. 电视对我们思维的很多影响，都是巴甫洛夫所说的定向反应。这是我们对影响、声音与变化的本能反应。 Our brains get turned on by stimuli which triggers dopamine release whenever are. 当有东西促使我们的大脑分泌多巴胺的时候，我们的大脑就会被激发 Sorry. 抱歉。 In the last 2 decades, researchers have begun to examine how the shots-cuts edits and effects of television activate the orienting response. 在过去的20xx年里，研究者们开始研究电影镜头的剪辑以及电视对定向反应的影响。 A study of EEG activity in the processing of television published in Communications Research found that the more you have the shots quickly edited the more effect television has on your nervous system. 沟通研究发布过一项关于看电视时人