我们为什么不再信任专家？

Last week, I decided to take a gaggle of kids for an end-of-school-year lunch in a New York neighbourhood that I did not know well. I duly began looking for a suitable restaurant. A decade ago, I would have done that by turning to a restaurant guide. In the world I grew up in, it was normal to seek advice from the “experts”.

不久前，我打算带一群孩子到纽约一个我不太熟悉的街区吃午餐，以庆祝他们学年的结束。理所当然地，我开始找合适的餐厅。10年前，我会去求助餐厅指南。依我的成长经历，向“专家们”寻求建议很正常。

But in Manhattan last week, it did not occur to me to consult Fodor’s. Instead, I typed what I needed into my cellphone, scrolled through a long list of online restaurant recommendations, including comments from people who had eaten in them — and picked one.

但这一次，我却没想到去查查Fodor's旅游指南，而是把自己的需求输入手机，接着浏览一长串的网上餐厅推荐，包括过往食客们的评论——然后选了一家。

Yes, it was a leap of faith; those restaurant reviews might have been fake. But there were enough voices for me to feel able to trust the wisdom of the cyber crowds — and, as it happened, our lunch choice was very good.

是的，这有些冒险;那些餐厅点评可能是伪造的。但点评的数量挺多，让我觉得可以相信网上群众的智慧——而且，事实证明，我选的餐厅棒极了。

This is a trivial example of a much bigger change that is under way, and one that has some thought-provoking implications in the wake of the Brexit vote. Before the referendum, British citizens were subjected to a blitz of advice about the potential costs of Brexit from “experts”: economists, central bankers, the International Monetary Fund and world leaders, among others. Indeed, the central strategy of the government (and other “Remainers”) appeared to revolve around wheeling out these experts, with their solemn speeches and statistics.

这件微不足道的小事体现出一场更大的变化正在发生;在英国脱欧公投之后，这一变化有一些发人深省的影响。公投前，英国公民被“专家们”关于英国脱欧潜在代价的建议狂轰滥炸。这些专家包括经济学家，央行官员，国际货币基金组织(IMF)及各国的领导人，等等。的确，政府(及其他“留欧派”人士)的核心策略，似乎就是搬出这些专家，让他们发表庄严的演讲，拿出严肃的统计数据。

The pro-Brexit politician Michael Gove warned, “People in this country have had enough of experts,” and to some extent he was proved right: the country narrowly voted to ignore their advice and leave anyway. Some might view this as an example of clever messaging by the Leave camp — or, if they agree with the Leavers, as a case of the right arguments winning through. Others might attribute it to anti-elite populism.

支持脱欧的政治家迈克尔•戈夫(Michael Gove)警告说，“这个国家的民众已经受够专家了”。在某种程度上事实证明他是对的：英国以微弱多数票数决定，无视专家们的建议，还是脱离欧盟。一些人或许会将此视为退欧阵营善于拉票的一个例子——或者，若他们与“退欧派”意见一致，则可将此看成一个以正确论点胜出的案例。其他人或许将其归结为反精英的民粹主义。

I suspect that it indicates something else: that citizens of the cyber world no longer have much faith in anything that experts say, not just in the political sphere but in numerous others too. At a time when we increasingly rely on crowd-sourced advice rather than official experts to choose a restaurant, healthcare and holidays, it seems strange to expect voters to listen to official experts when it comes to politics.

我感觉它反映了另一件事，那就是：网络世界的公民已不再那么相信专家们所说的任何事情，不仅仅是在政治领域，在其他众多领域都是如此。当我们越来越依赖来自普通人而非官方专家们的建议去挑选餐厅、医疗服务和度假产品时，指望选民们在政治问题上听从官方专家们的建议就显得很奇怪。

In our everyday lives, we are moving from a system based around vertical axes of trust, where we trust people who seem to have more authority than we do, to one predicated on horizontal axes of trust: we take advice from our peer group.

在日常生活中，我们正在脱离一个垂直信任体系(在这个体系里我们信任那些看起来比自己权威的人)，转向一个水平信任体系(在这个体系里我们听取同类人的建议)。

You can see this clearly if you look at the surveys conducted by groups such as the Pew Research Center. These show that faith in institutions such as the government, big business and the media has crumbled in recent years; indeed, almost the only institution in the US that has bucked the trend is the military.

由皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)这类团体所做的调研可以明显地反映出这一趋势。这些调研显示，近年来人们对政府、大企业以及媒体这类机构的信任已然坍塌;事实上，在美国几乎只有军队顶住了这一趋势。

What is even more interesting to look at, however, are the areas where trust remains high. In an annual survey conducted by the Edelman public relations firm, people in 20 countries are asked who they trust. They show rising confidence in the “a person like me” category, and surprisingly high trust in digital technology. We live in a world where we increasingly trust our Facebook friends and the Twitter crowd more than we do the IMF or the prime minister. 更有意思的却是信任度居高不下的地方。在爱德曼公关公司(Edelman public relations firm)的一份年度调查中，20个国家的民众被问及他们信任什么人。他们对“同类”这一类人的信任感上升，同时对数字技术表现出令人惊讶的高度信任。我们生活在这样一个世界里：我们越来越相信自己的Facebook好友和Twitter上的人，而不是IMF和首相。

In some senses, this is good news. Relying on horizontal axes of trust should mean more democracy and empowerment for ordinary citizens. But the problem of this new world is that people can fall prey to social fads and tribalism — or groupthink. 从某种意义上来说，这是个好消息。对于普通民众而言，依赖水平信任体系意味着更多的民主和赋权。但这个新世界的问题在于，人们可能会被社会风尚、部落主义(tribalism)或团体迷思所裹挟。

“The rise of ‘a person like me’ has given birth to a ‘post-truth’ era, where comforting narratives and familiar messengers beat fact and argument,” points out Nick Barron, an Edelman executive. “Social echo chambers prevent effective scrutiny of individuals, organisations and campaigns that we think are on the ‘right side’ of an argument . . . ‘My truth’, ‘our truth’ and ‘the truth I feel’ beat ‘objective truth’.”

爱德曼公关公司高管尼克•巴伦(Nick Barron)指出：“人们对‘同类人’的日益重视，催生了一个‘后真理’时代。在这个时代里，人们更愿意相信令人欣慰的表述和熟悉的信息渠道，而不是事实和论据。社交媒体回音室效应使得我们认为处于辩论‘正确一方’的个人、组织及拉票运动得不到有效监督……我们相信‘我所认为的真理’、‘我们所认为的真理’以及‘我所感觉的真理’，而不是客观真理。”无论如何，谁也不会将这个妖怪重新放回魔瓶里。因此我们都应思考在当今世界里，创造“信任”纽带的是什么。我们还应认识到，20世纪那种对专家和固定党派怀有敬畏的政治模式，也许终将会如同餐厅指南一样过时。我们所处的时代瞬息万变。

Either way, nobody is going to put this genie back into the bottle. So we all need to think about what creates the bonds of “trust” in today’s world. And recognise that the 20th-century model of politics, with its reverence for experts and fixed parties, may eventually seem as outdated as restaurant guides. We live in volatile times.

爱德曼公关公司高管尼克•巴伦(Nick Barron)指出：“人们对‘同类人’的日益重视，催生了一个‘后真理’时代。在这个时代里，人们更愿意相信令人欣慰的表述和熟悉的信息渠道，而不是事实和论据。社交媒体回音室效应使得我们认为处于辩论‘正确一方’的个人、组织及拉票运动得不到有效监督……我们相信‘我所认为的真理’、‘我们所认为的真理’以及‘我所感觉的真理’，而不是客观真理。”