TED演讲之寻找真理:经验与记忆之谜(4)
This is an old study. Those are actual patients undergoing a painful procedure.
这是一个古老的研究。一些真正的病人将会接受一种痛苦的治疗方法。
I won’t go into detail. It’s no longer painful these days,
细节不再详述。现今的疗法已不再如此难受，
but it was painful when this study was run in the 1990s.
但在研究进行的九十年代时，这种方法令人痛不欲生。
They were asked to report on their pain every 60 seconds.
病人每隔六十秒则必须报告他们的痛苦指数。
Here are two patients, those are their recordings.
这边有两位病患，这是他们的记录。
And you are asked, “Who of them suffered more?” And it’s a very easy question.
我问你：“在他们之中谁最痛苦？”这个问题很简单。
Clearly, Patient B suffered more — his colonoscopy was longer,
显然，是病人B。他的结肠镜检查时间较长，
and every minute of pain that Patient A had, Patient B had, and more.
病人A每分钟感觉的痛疼，病人B也感觉到了，而且持续更久。
But now there is another question: “How much did these patients think they suffered?”
但现在还有另一个问题：这些患者认为他们受罪了吗？
And here is a surprise.
这里有个小意外：
The surprise is that Patient A had a much worse memory of the colonoscopy than Patient B.
令人惊讶的是病人A对结肠镜检查的记忆比病人B还糟糕。
The stories of the colonoscopies were different,
两段结肠镜检查的故事不同，
and because a very critical part of the story is how it ends.
这关键在于故事的结尾–
And neither of these stories is very inspiring or great — but one of them is this distinct
两个故事都不怎么启迪智慧–但两者显然是不同的…
but one of them is distinctly worse than the other.
显然其中之一的感受比另一个还差。
And the one that is worse is the one where pain was at its peak at the very end; it’s a bad story.
感觉较糟的这一个是在最后的时期里知晓什么是痛绝人寰。这不是个好故事。
How do we know that?
我们是怎么知道的？
Because we asked these people after their colonoscopy, and much later, too,
因为我们在检查结束后问他们，以及在很久之后再问一次他们，
“How bad was the whole thing, in total?”
“你们对结肠镜检查的整体印象如何？”
And it was much worse for A than for B, in memory.
结果是A的记忆感觉明显要比B更糟糕。
Now this is a direct conflict between the experiencing self and the remembering self.
现在这是经验自我和记忆自我之间的直接冲突。
演讲简介：
通过使用休假和胃肠镜检查的例子，诺贝尔奖获得者及行为经济学创始者丹尼尔·卡纳曼向我们揭示了“经验自我”和“记忆自我”是如何使用不同角度来理解快乐。这一新见解将会对经济领域、公共政策领域以及我们的自我意识产生深远的影响。