正文翻譯
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻譯：yzy86 轉載請注明出處

2019年9月
作者為猶他谷大學哲學副教授C. Thi Nguyen

Pick any of the big topics of the day – Brexit, climate change or Trump’s immigration policies – and wander online.

挑選任何一個當下的重大話題：英國脫歐，氣候變化或是特朗普的移民政策，然后去網上逛逛。

What one is likely to find is radical polarization – different groups of people living in different worlds, populated with utterly different facts.

你可能會找到的是兩極分化的激進觀點，生活在不同世界里的不同人群，腦子里填塞著的是迥然不同的事實。

Many people want to blame the “social media bubble” - a belief that everybody sorts themselves into like-minded communities and hears only like-minded views.

有很多人想要歸咎于“社交媒體氣泡”，即相信每個人都會把自己歸入志同道合者的群體中，并且只聽取志同道合者的觀點。

From my perspective as a philosopher who thinks about communities and trust, this fails to get at the heart of the issue.

從我這個思考群體和信任的哲學家的角度來看，這沒能切中這個問題的要害。

In my mind, the crucial issue right now isn’t what people hear, but whom people believe.

在我看來，當前的關鍵問題并不是人們聽到了什么 ，而是人們相信的是誰。

Bubble or cult?

是氣泡還是邪教團體？

An echo chamber leads its members to distrust everybody on the outside of that chamber. And that means that an insider’s trust for other insiders can grow unchecked.

一個回聲室會引導其成員猜疑這間回聲室外面的所有人。而這就意味著，一個內部人對其他內部人，不經核驗就能發(fā)展出信任。

Two communications scholars, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella, offered a careful analysis of the right-wing media echo chamber in their 2008 book, “The Echo Chamber.”

兩位傳播學學者，凱瑟琳·霍爾·杰米森和約瑟夫·卡佩拉在他們出版于2008年的書《回聲室》中，給出了對右翼媒體回聲室的細致分析。

Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News team, they said, systematically manipulated whom their followers trusted. Limbaugh presented the world as a simple binary – as a struggle only between good and evil. People were trustworthy if they were on Limbaugh’s side. Anybody on the outside was malicious and untrustworthy.

他們寫道，拉什·林博和福克斯新聞的團隊有組織地操縱著他們的粉絲去信任某個人。林博展現給觀眾的世界是一個簡單的二元對立的世界，表現為一種只發(fā)生在善與惡之間的斗爭。只要站在林博一邊，便成了值得信賴的人。任何外部的人都是心懷惡意且不值得信賴的。

（譯注：拉什·林博是美國保守派廣播脫口秀主持人，全美第一名嘴）

In that way, an echo chamber is a lot like a cult.

這樣看來，回聲室是很像邪教團體的。

Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust. And echo chambers aren’t just on the right. I’ve seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums and even around exercise methods.

回聲室會孤立其成員，而這并不是通過切斷他們和世界的溝通渠道，而是通過變換他們所信任的人。而且回聲室不只存在于右派中，我見過左派中的回聲室，它們也存在于育兒論壇、營養(yǎng)論壇，甚至圍繞著鍛煉方法也會產生。

In an epistemic bubble, outside voices aren’t heard. In an echo chamber, outside voices are discredited.

在一個認知氣泡中，外部的聲音是聽不到的。在一個回聲室里，外部的聲音是沒人信的。

Is it all just a bubble?

這僅僅是一個氣泡嗎？

Many experts believe that the problem of today’s polarization can be explained through epistemic bubbles.

很多專家相信，現如今這個兩極分化的問題可以用認知氣泡來解釋。

Do social media feeds limit people’s ability of being exposed to a wider variety of views? Daniel Krason/Shutterstock

（圖解：社交媒體上的訂閱，是否框限了人們接觸更多樣化見解的能力？）

According to legal scholar and behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, the main cause of polarization is that internet technologies have made the world such that people don’t really run into the other side anymore.

根據法學家和行為經濟學家卡斯·桑斯坦的說法，造成兩極化的主要原因是網絡科技已經打造出了這樣一個世界，置身其中的人們不會再真正地遭遇到另一方了。

Many people get their news from social media feeds. Their feeds get filled up with people like them - who usually share their political views. Eli Pariser, online activist and chief executive of Upworthy, spotlights how the invisible algorithms behind people’s internet experience limit what they see.

很多人是通過社交媒體上的訂閱來獲取新聞的。他們訂閱的對象擠滿了和他們類似的人，這些人通常會轉發(fā)他們的政見。線上活動家兼網站Upworthy的首席執(zhí)行官伊萊·帕里澤，讓公眾注意到了人們網絡體驗的背后那看不見的算法如何框限了他們能看到的內容。

For example, says Pariser, Google keeps track of its user’s choices and preferences, and changes its search results to suit them. It tries to give individuals what they want – so liberal users, for example, tend to get search results that point them toward liberal news sites.

比如，帕里澤說，谷歌會記錄其用戶的選擇和偏好，并為了滿足他們的需要而改變其搜索得到的結果。它試圖給到個體他們想要的內容，這樣一來，比如說自由派的用戶，就容易得到能把他們指向自由新聞網站的搜索結果。

What’s going on, in my view, isn’t just a bubble. It’s not that people’s social media feeds are arranged so they don’t run across any scientific arguments; it’s that they’ve come to systematically distrust the institutions of science.

在我眼中，正在發(fā)生的情況可不只是一個氣泡那么簡單。并不是說人們的社交媒體訂閱是安排好的于是他們就碰不到任何符合科學的論點，而是他們慢慢開始有組織地不信任科研機構。

This is an echo chamber. Echo chambers are far more entrenched and far more resistant to outside voices than epistemic bubbles. Echo chamber members have been prepared to face contrary evidence. Their echo-chambered worldview has been arranged to dismiss that evidence at its source.

這是一個回聲室?；芈暿疫h比認知氣泡來得根深蒂固，對來自外部聲音的抗拒，也遠比后者強烈?；芈暿抑械拿恳粋€成員都已經準備好了面對反證。為了從源頭上摒斥證據，他們那有如回聲室一般的世界觀已經作好了安排。?

They’re not totally irrational, either. In the era of scientific specialization, people must trust doctors, statisticians, biologists, chemists, physicists, nuclear engineers and aeronautical engineers, just to go about their day. And they can’t always check with perfect accuracy whether they have put their trust in the right place.

他們也并不是完全失去了理性。在這個科學專業(yè)化的時代，人們僅僅為了過好自己的日子，也必須去信任醫(yī)生、統(tǒng)計學家、生物學家、化學家、物理學家、核工程師以及航空工程師。而通常，他們也無法去核驗自己的信任是否萬無一失地安放在了對的地方。

An echo chamber member, however, distrusts the standard sources. Their trust has been redirected and concentrated inside the echo chamber.

然而，回聲室中的成員是不信任標準（信息）源的。他們的信任已經被導向過，而且會集中在回聲室內部。

To break somebody out of an echo chamber, you’d need to repair that broken trust. And that is a much harder task than simply bursting a bubble.

為了能讓人從回聲室中擺脫出來，你必須修復已經破碎的信任。而這個目標可遠比僅僅戳破一個氣泡來得艱難。?

評論翻譯
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻譯：yzy86 轉載請注明出處

1、Climate change is perhaps an unrepresentative example to take. This is an area in which the issue can, in principal, be determined scientifically. Most of the issues that divide us are not like this.?

氣候變化可能是一個沒啥代表性的例子。在這個領域中的議題，原則上是可以用很科學的方式加以判定的。而大部分分裂了我們的議題，并不是這種類型的。

More typical issues are abortion, gay marriage, free speech, immigration etc. In most of these areas their are valid arguments on both sides, and a balance has to be reached. There are also frxworks for making sense of the world which can often seem incompatible.

更典型的議題是墮胎、同性婚姻、移民等等。在這些領域中有一大半，雙方都能拿出有效論證，而且必須達到一種平衡。也存在一些能在理解上貫通這個世界的體系，而它們看起來往往是不兼容的。

Polarisation in these areas takes the form of a refusal to accept that there are two sides to the argument. The rejection of relevant facts is then based on this already taken position.

在這些領域中的兩極化，表現為“拒絕接受這場爭論中存在正反兩方”這種形式。對相關事實的拒斥，是基于這個已然站定的立場。

4、Both sides of the political spectrum live in echo chambers. And both of their refusals to discuss their ideas has caused this great riff. This riff, unless controlled and demoted, will cause an even greater, more violent action by the extremists on both sides.

政治光譜中的雙方都活在回聲室里。而且他們都拒絕討論他們的想法，這就造成了這種復讀機的現象。這種不斷的重復，除非得到控制和貶斥，不然會造成雙方的極端分子祭出規(guī)模更大也更暴力的行動。