If you’ve ever been on a jury, you might have noticed that a funny thing happens the minute you get behind closed doors. Everybody starts talking about themselves. They say what they would have done if they had been the plaintiff or the defendant. Being on a jury reminds me why I can’t tolerate talk radio. We Americans seem to have lost the ability to talk about anything but our own experiences. We can’t seem to generalize without stereotyping or to consider evidence that goes against our own experience.

I heard a doctor on a radio show talking about a study that found that exercise reduces the incidence of Alzheimer’s. And caller after caller couldn’t wait to make essentially the opposite point: “Well, my grandmother never exercised and she lived to 95.” We are in an age summed up by the saying: “I experience, therefore I’m right.” Historically, the hallmarks of an uneducated person were the lack of ability to think critically, to use deductive reasoning to distinguish the personal from the universal. Now that seems an apt description of many Americans.

【參考譯文】

如果你曾經當過陪審員，你可能會注意到一件有趣的事情：一旦關上了門，所有人就開始談論他們自己。他們會討論，如果自己是原告或被告的話會做什么。擔任陪審員的經歷讓我明白了我為什么無法忍受談話性的廣播節目。我們美國人似乎只剩下了談論自己經歷的能力。我們似乎無法拋開固有的成見進行總結，也無法客觀地分析與自身經歷相悖的證據。

我曾聽過一位醫生在之聲節目上講述一項研究，該研究發現鍛煉能降低阿茲海默癥（老年癡呆癥）的發病率。而此時聽眾的電話一個接著一個，紛紛迫不及待地表達反對意見：“嗯，我祖母從不鍛煉，但她活到了95歲。”我們身處的時代可以用一句話來總結：“我經歷過，所以我是對的。”歷史上，無知之人的典型特征就是缺乏進行批判性思維、演繹推理和分辨個例與常態的能力。如今，用這句話描述許多美國人似乎恰如其分。

【解析】

文本節選自2011年7月29日的《基督教科學箴言報》（The Christian Science Monitor），探討現代人過度依賴個人經驗判斷、缺乏批判思考的問題。話題相對抽象，難度中上。