Many, many moons ago, when I was a fresh-faced graduate with a chunk of student debt to pay off, I worked for a while in a nursing home. It was a rather grand, if somewhat faded country home that had been repurposed to cater to the needs of the elderly clients who lived there.
很多很多年前，当我还是个新生，有一大笔学生债务要还清时，我在养老院工作了一段时间。 这是一栋相当宏伟的乡间住宅，虽然有些褪色，但为了满足住在那里的老年客户的需求而进行了改造。
Many of them also lived with age-related medical conditions. These included, but were not limited to, physical disability, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia and arthritis. In most cases, they were not isolated but overlapped.
他们中的许多人还患有与年龄相关的医疗状况。 这些包括但不限于身体残疾、糖尿病、阿尔茨海默氏症、痴呆症和关节炎。 在大多數情況下，它們不是孤立的，而是重疊的。
At 20 years of age, my prefrontal cortex had not yet fully developed, but oh my word, had my ageism fully flourished? Yes. It had.
20岁时，我的前额叶皮层还没有完全发育，但哦，我的话，我的年龄歧视已经充分发展了吗？ 是的。 它有。
I assumed that Margaret, who talked to the flies in the lunch hall had always been dithery. Catherine, who had lost her sight and used a wheelchair had never been any other way. Henryk, who had forgotten how to talk and once got lost in a broom cupboard was no more than a silent caricature of himself.
我想Margaret在午餐大廳和蒼蠅說話，她一直都是dithery。 失去视力并使用轮椅的凯瑟琳从未有过其他方式。 亨利克忘记了如何说话，曾经在扫帚柜里迷路了，他无非是自己无声的漫画。
What I didn’t know back then is that things are not always as they seem.
那时我不知道的是，事情并不总是看起来那样。
The anchoring bias that led my younger self to pigeonhole my elderly friends is an example of a mindbug. Dr. Mahzarin R. Banaji, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, and Anthony G. Greenwald wrote about these invisible operating scripts that can cause glitches in our mental matrix in their book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, (2013).
导致我年轻时的自己把我年长的朋友归类的锚定偏见是心灵病的一个例子。 Mahzarin R博士。 哈佛大学心理学教授Banaji和Anthony G. Greenwald在他们的《盲点：好人的隐藏偏见》（2013）一书中写了这些可能导致我们心理矩阵故障的无形操作脚本。
“Mindbugs are engrained patterns of thought that lead to errors in how we perceive, remember, reason, and make decisions,” they explain, taking the reader on a journey from the concrete, visual mindbugs that we openly own and acknowledge to those more deeply intertwined with the essence of the self.
“Mindbug是根深蒂固的思维模式，导致我们感知、记忆、推理和做出决定的方式出现错误，”他们解释道，带领读者从我们公开拥有和承认的具体、视觉的Mindbug到那些与自我本质更深入地交织在一起的Mindbug的旅程。
No one minds admitting that they see a blue & black dress instead of gold & white dress, or two cups instead of a face, but to being biased towards one religion over another, or gender, or perish the thought, race? That’s a whole different kettle of fish.
没有人介意承认他们看到一件蓝黑相间的连衣裙而不是金色和白色的连衣裙，或者两个罩杯而不是一张脸，但对一种宗教或性别或种族有偏见，或者思想，种族会消失吗？ 那是一个完全不同的鱼缸。
Banaji and Greenwald’s logic is impeccable, however. By starting with low stakes optical illusions, which irrefutably prove that things are not always what they seem, they guide the reader towards a reconciliation of sorts between the idealised self they so want to be, and the mindbug-ridden self that they are. To mindbug is human. To outsmart the mindbug is divine.
然而，Banaji和Greenwald的逻辑是无可挑剔的。 通过从低风险的光学错觉开始，这些错觉无可辩驳地证明了事物并不总是看起来那样，它们引导读者在他们非常想成为的理想化自我和他们被心灵错误困扰的自我之间达成某种和解。 对mindbug来说是人。 智取智虫是神圣的。
Lived experience is perhaps the easiest way to outsmart mindbugs and realise the biases behind erroneous perceptions or reasoning. However, it is not often (or desirable) for a person to live such an eye-opening life. One example of bringing awareness to blindspots used by Banaji and Greenwald is that of America’s symphony orchestras. In the 1970’s, fewer than 10 percent of symphony musicians were women, and the selection committees were concerned about this and other biases that were inherent in the audition process.
生活经验也许是智取智虫并意识到错误感知或推理背后的偏见的最简单方法。 然而，对于一个人来说，过如此令人大开眼界的生活并不常见（或不可取）。 Banaji和Greenwald使用的盲点提高意识的一个例子是美国交响乐团。 在20世紀70年代，只有不到10%的交響樂手是女性，選拔委員會對試鏡過程中固有的這種和其他偏見感到擔憂。
The solution that they came up with was simple and elegant. They placed a screen between the committee and the candidates, and voila! Over the next 20 years, the proportion of women hired increased to 40 percent.
他们想出的解决方案既简单又优雅。 他们在委员会和候选人之间设置了一个屏幕，瞧！ 在接下来的20年里，女性就业比例增加到40%。
Blind hiring is now common at the early stages of recruiting to ensure equitable hiring, but beyond that, for me the important take away is not the solution in itself, but the acknowledgment of the mindbug and the action taken to squish it.
盲目招聘现在在招聘的早期阶段很常见，以确保公平招聘，但除此之外，对我来说，重要的带走不是解决方案本身，而是承认头脑错误和采取的行动来粉碎它。
Greenwald is also one of the co-creators of the Implicit Association Test, and has spent years refining it to test for a whole range of mindbugs. I suspect that I’m not the only one who has taken it more than once when the results revealed biases so deeply engrained, my conscious mind was unaware of them.
Greenwald也是隐性关联测试的联合创建者之一，并花了多年时间完善它，以测试一系列心灵错误。 我怀疑我不是唯一一个不止一次的人，当结果揭示了根深蒂固的偏见时，我的意识没有意识到它们。
But then, that’s how it goes.
但后来，事情就是这样的。
Interestingly, Banaji and Greenwald offer no hard and fast solutions for eradicating mindbugs. Being curious, learning where our own tendencies towards blindspots live, and neutralizing them as best we can seems to be the best we can do for now. But they are hopeful for the future.
有趣的是，Banaji和Greenwald没有提供硬性和快速的消除心病的解决方案。 好奇，了解我们自己对盲点的倾向在哪里，并尽我们所能消除它们，似乎是我们目前能做的最好的事情。 但他们对未来充满希望。
Margaret, who talked to flies, had been honoured as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her work in the medical field.
与苍蝇交谈的Margaret因其在医疗领域的工作而被授予大英帝国勋章（MBE）勋章。
Catherine, who could not see and could not walk taught me that problems were best tackled by a two-hour stroll, preferably she said, along a clifftop, but then each to their own.
凯瑟琳（Catherine）看不见，也不会走路，她告诉我，最好通过沿着悬崖顶散步两个小时来解决问题，但随后各有各的。
And Henryk, with his predilection for dark, quiet spaces, had been born in Poland and fought in WW2.
亨利克（Henryk）偏愛黑暗、安靜的空間，他出生在波蘭，在二戰中作戰。
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about these people, or worked in a nursing home. It’s certainly not the first time that I’ve realised that my thinking was faulty or skewed. Mindbugs, like bedbugs, are invisible until we become aware of them. The imperative to eliminate them is thankfully, equally strong.
我已经很久没有想过这些人了，或者在养老院工作过。 這肯定不是我第一次意識到我的想法有缺陷或有偏差。 心灵虫就像臭虫一样，在我们意识到它们之前是看不见的。 值得庆幸的是，消灭它们的当务之急同样强烈。
In this, then, we are all equal. Mindbugs are as universal as gut bacteria; a bit gross when you think too long and hard about them, but a necessary part of being human in the world. From the Southern Capital to the grand old house that was a nursing home in Dorset, from wherever and whenever you hail, those little critters are present, subtly guiding our thoughts and actions.
因此，在此，我们都是平等的。 心靈細菌和腸道細菌一樣普遍；當你對它們思考太久和努力時，會有點噁心，但這是世界上做人的必要部分。 从南方首都到多塞特郡养老院的宏伟老房子，无论何时何地，那些小动物都在场，巧妙地引导着我们的思想和行动。
Whilst no single solution is at hand, bringing awareness and working to neutralise our mindbugs is a step in the right direction. And then we keep walking, one step at a time.
虽然没有单一的解决方案在手边，但提高认识并努力消除我们的心理错误是朝着正确方向迈出的一步。 然后我们继续走，一步一个脚印。
Banaji and Greenwald begin their book with an observation from Emily Dickinson, one that is both pragmatic and hopeful when navigating blindspots between seeming and being. “The sailor cannot see the North- but knows the Needle can”.
Banaji和Greenwald以Emily Dickinson的观察开始他们的书，在探索看似和存在之间的盲点时，观察既务實又充满希望。 “水手看不到北方——但知道针可以看到。”
