Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Ep. 130 - Live)

Zeynep is starting as a professor at Columbia University in a new job.

泽伊内普开始在哥伦比亚大学担任教授。

She is the author of the renowned Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, a highly influential book.

她是著名的《推特和催泪瓦斯：网络抗议的力量和脆弱性》一书的作者，这是一本极具影响力的书。

Over the course of the last two years, she has become one of the central American public intellectuals on the issue of COVID-19, having been right about virtually everything ahead of all the curves, correcting the public health authorities when they were wrong, confirming them when they were right.

在过去的两年里，她已成为美国中部关于 COVID-19 问题的公共知识分子之一，她在所有事情上几乎所有事情都是正确的，在公共卫生当局错误时纠正他们，在他们正确时证实他们。

And she knows many, many other things as well.

她还知道很多很多其他的事情。

Zeynep, welcome to Conversations with Tyler.

Zeynep，欢迎来到与泰勒对话。

On the lab leak hypothesis

关于实验室泄漏假说

In fact, people have forgotten about it, but President Trump went through a period during which he denied the pandemic was a big deal and praised China’s president for a couple of months before it had exploded in the United States.

事实上，人们已经忘记了这一点，但特朗普总统曾经历过一段时期，在疫情在美国爆发之前的几个月里，他否认疫情有什么大不了的，还称赞了中国国家主席。

But when it came to the United States with its full exponential force, he switched to saying, “Well, it was China’s fault.” I think that created a big backlash among not just the scientists, but the public, because it really did seem like deflecting the blame in many ways.

但当谈到美国的指数级力量时，他转而说：“好吧，这是中国的错。”我认为这不仅引起了科学家的强烈反对，也引起了公众的强烈反对，因为这确实在很多方面似乎都在转移责任。

Plus, the attendant racism and calling the virus various racist names didn’t help the situation.

另外，随之而来的种族主义和给病毒起各种种族主义的名字也无济于事。

That’s, I think, the one that’s most obvious.

我认为这是最明显的。

The second one that’s not as obvious to people is that the world of virology is not that big.

第二个对人们来说不太明显的问题是病毒学的世界并没有那么大。

The Chinese lab in question, the Wuhan Institute of Virology — and there are a couple of other labs in Wuhan — they’re very much part of the scientific establishment globally.

所讨论的中国实验室是武汉病毒学研究所——以及武汉还有其他几个实验室——它们在很大程度上是全球科学机构的一部分。

I know there’s been some speculations about the whole bioweapons thing.

我知道对于整个生物武器的事情有一些猜测。

I have never been very interested in that because, if you’re going to do an actual bioweapon, a coronavirus is not your proper pathogen.

我对此一直不太感兴趣，因为如果你想做一个真正的生物武器，冠状病毒不是你合适的病原体。

The kind of scientists who work on coronaviruses are genuine, normal scientists most of the time and deeply, deeply embedded with the Western scientific establishment, especially since SARS — the other near miss we had in 2003 that didn’t become a pandemic because of a lot of reasons — had created a lot of interest.

研究冠状病毒的科学家大多数时候都是真正的、正常的科学家，并且深深地扎根于西方科学机构，特别是自 SARS ——我们在 2003 年遭遇的另一次险情，但由于多种原因没有成为大流行病 ——引起了很多人的兴趣。

So, you had this double whammy there, once there was the Trump angle.

所以，一旦出现特朗普的角度，你就会受到双重打击。

But there was also this defensiveness around both the field because you’re asking a field .

但在这两个领域也存在这种防守，因为你要问的是一个领域。

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I’m an academic, and if somebody came to me and said, “Would you like to think about the fact that your field may have inadvertently, perhaps, even in the mildest potential case, sparked something that killed millions of people?” Of course, defensiveness is very human in that.

我是一名学者，如果有人来找我说：“你想不想考虑一下这样一个事实：你的领域可能无意中，甚至在最轻微的潜在情况下，引发了导致数百万人死亡的事件？”当然，防御性在这方面是非常人性化的。

People sometimes see China versus US, but as I said, in reality, these scientific establishments that we’re talking about in this particular case is very, very much integrated with the Western scientific establishment, publishing in Nature, Science — all those big things.

人们有时会看到中国与美国的对立，但正如我所说，实际上，我们在这个特殊情况下谈论的这些科学机构与西方科学机构非常非常融合，在《自然》、《科学》上发表文章——所有这些大事。

So I think there was a desire to protect their colleagues, which once again, these are human.

所以我认为他们有保护同事的愿望，这些同事都是人。

Plus, if a lab incident of some sort or a field incident of some sort could be implicated, that really would bring the push for much more strict regulation on the kind of research we do.

另外，如果某种实验室事件或某种现场事件可能受到牵连，那确实会推动对我们所做的研究进行更严格的监管。

I’m talking about even the more benign scenarios.

我说的是更良性的情况。

Somebody screwed something up.

有人搞砸了一些事情。

They might not even have known about it.

他们甚至可能不知道这件事。

For example, there’ve been a lot of calls for moving the high-risk pathogen labs outside of cities, outside of populated places.

例如，很多人呼吁将高风险病原体实验室搬到城市以外、人口稠密的地方。

When I floated that with a couple of leading virologists, they were really aghast at the idea.

当我向几位领先的病毒学家提出这个想法时，他们对这个想法感到非常震惊。

They thought, “Well, how are we going to hire people if you put us in the middle of nowhere?

他们想，“好吧，如果你把我们放在一个偏僻的地方，我们如何雇用员工呢？

Nobody wants to work there.”

没有人愿意在那里工作。”

As an academic who also likes to choose where she works, I sympathize with that, but that’s a big conflict of interest.

作为一名也喜欢选择工作地点的学者，我对此表示同情，但这是一个很大的利益冲突。

The very field who has been quoted most in this is the most conflicted field because they both have colleagues and vested interest.

这里被引用最多的领域也是最冲突的领域，因为它们都有同事和既得利益。

The people you don’t hear from a lot are the biosafety people, who are the actual experts in this.

你很少听到的人是生物安全人员，他们是这方面的真正专家。

It’s them we should have been speaking to, or people who are perhaps independent in some ways from all of this.

我们应该与他们交谈，或者是在某些方面可能独立于这一切的人。

As the defensiveness grew, it became really hard, from what I heard from a lot of people in the field, to say, if you thought it was a viable thing, it should be investigated.

随着防御情绪的增长，从我从该领域的很多人那里听到的情况来看，很难说，如果你认为这是一个可行的事情，就应该对其进行调查。

You didn’t even have to believe what had happened because there’s so much obfuscation.

你甚至不必相信发生了什么，因为有太多的混乱。

You don’t really know what happened because the people who are loud were in relatively powerful and gatekeeping positions.

你真的不知道发生了什么，因为那些大声说话的人处于相对强大和把关的位置。

Do you really want to — in the middle of a pandemic — do you want to go to work on the pandemic stuff and do your work and get future grants?

你真的想 —— 在大流行期间 —— 你想参与应对大流行的工作并做好你的工作并获得未来的资助吗？

Or do you want to raise your hand and say, “Yes, my field needs more regulation, and perhaps some investigation into whether our research practices were implicated in something so horrendous”?

或者你想举手说：“是的，我的领域需要更多监管，也许还需要对我们的研究实践是否与如此可怕的事情有关进行一些调查”？

That’s not going to make you very popular with your colleagues.

这不会让你很受同事欢迎。

I think that’s how it was set up.

我想这就是它的设置方式。

The turning point, probably — probably not as visible to people outside — is the WHO investigation.

转折点可能是——“外界可能不那么明显”——是世界卫生组织的调查。

I wrote a New York Times article about the origins of COVID.

我写了一篇关于新冠病毒起源的《纽约时报》文章。

I didn’t really go into the WHO investigation.

我并没有真正深入了解世界卫生组织的调查。

It is a debacle.

这是一场灾难。

It’s going to go in history books into how bad it is.

它将载入史册，说明它有多糟糕。

It is essentially just typing up what the Chinese officials told them, almost uncritically.

它本质上只是把中国官员告诉他们的内容录下来，几乎不加批判。

I realize they were limited in what they could do because, in the origins investigation, you can’t do it if the Chinese government isn’t cooperating, but it wasn’t that.

我意识到他们能做的事情是有限的，因为在起源调查中，如果中国政府不合作​​，你就无法做到这一点，但事实并非如此。

That would have been an understandable limitation.

这是一个可以理解的限制。

The WHO report we got was almost a PR exercise in how it phrased things, what it was certain about, how it repeated assertions, what it didn’t question.

我们得到的世界卫生组织报告几乎是一次公关练习，它如何措辞，确定什么，如何重复断言，以及没有质疑什么。

It could have done things like, “Well, we’ve been told this, but we couldn’t verify.” Or it could have questioned the few things in the report.

它本可以做这样的事情：“嗯，我们被告知了这一点，但我们无法验证。”或者它可能会对报告中的一些内容提出质疑。

But the final report — written after the scientists had left the country, too — in my view was disgraceful that it was allowed to go out like that, instead of saying, “You know what, we can’t really do a great investigation.

但最终报告 ——也是在科学家们离开这个国家之后写的——在我看来，它被允许这样出去是可耻的，而不是说：“你知道吗，我们无法真正进行一项伟大的调查。

Here’s the limitations.”

这就是限制。”

I think that really got a lot of scientists who had been just waiting and thinking this is not that big of a deal, in terms of the actual pandemic to worry about, to think, “You know what, if we do this and let this be what’s going to stand for science, it’s just going to actually damage science because letting that kind of report appear as the voice of science, and if we do find something out, or — as we do at the moment — we keep finding cover-up from the Chinese side, which is not at all reflected in what’s going on in that report, it makes science itself look bad.”

我认为，这确实让很多科学家一直在等待，认为这并不是什么大不了的事情，就实际的大流行而言，需要担心，他们会想，“你知道吗，如果我们这样做，并让它成为科学的代表，那实际上只会损害科学，因为让这种报告作为科学的声音出现，如果我们确实发现了一些东西，或者  -  就像我们现在所做的那样  -  我们不断发现掩盖事实从中国方面来看，这根本没有反映在该报告中发生的事情中，这让科学本身看起来很糟糕。”

That’s how we got to the March letter in the scientific journal Science, where 18 very prominent people signed something saying, “You know what?

这就是我们在科学杂志《科学》上看到的 3 月份的信件，其中 18 位杰出人物在上面签名说：“你知道吗？

We need an actual investigation, whatever it can do.

我们需要进行实际调查，无论它能做什么。

The report was too certain, and both hypotheses are viable.”

该报告太确定了，两种假设都是可行的。”

I will say, the way they think about it would be that the existing evidence base, such as it is, is very limited and full of contradictions and a huge cover-up.

我想说的是，他们的想法是，现有的证据基础非常有限，而且充满了矛盾和巨大的掩盖。

It’s compatible with almost everything.

它几乎与所有东西兼容。

Almost anything you can imagine, the existing evidence base is compatible with.

几乎任何你能想象到的东西，现有的证据基础都是兼容的。

You can think what’s more likely or less likely, based on your own personal preferences, but there’s no evidence base to rule anything out almost.

您可以根据自己的个人喜好来考虑什么可能性更大或可能性较小，但几乎没有证据基础可以排除任何可能性。

I think that’s the turning point.

我认为这是一个转折点。

It’s a little bit like nuclear weapons and nuclear physics and nuclear reactors.

这有点像核武器、核物理和核反应堆。

They can be really powerful and useful.

它们确实非常强大且有用。

They might be very crucial for fighting climate change with the new kinds of energy you can use.

它们对于利用您可以使用的新型能源应对气候变化可能非常重要。

But if you don’t have it as a safe thing, if you have questions about its safety, people are not going to want to use it.

但如果你不把它视为安全的东西，如果你对其安全性有疑问，人们就不会想使用它。

Countries are going to say, “No, not in my backyard.” We see this.

各国都会说：“不，不要在我的后院。”我们看到了这一点。

I think Germany recently essentially stopped.

我认为德国最近基本上停止了。

It’s not going to have any nuclear reactors.

它不会有任何核反应堆。

That’s partly because of Chernobyl.

部分原因是切尔诺贝利。

It scared the living lights out of people, and for good reason.

它把人们吓得魂不附体，这是有充分理由的。

I think the fundamental mistake we’re making is not treating this like a biosafety crisis because we had one pandemic in 1977 that was indeed triggered because of a vaccine trial gone wrong.

我认为我们所犯的根本错误是没有将其视为生物安全危机，因为我们在 1977 年爆发了一次大流行，这确实是由于疫苗试验出错而引发的。

That was essentially covered up at the time, too.

这在当时也基本上被掩盖了。

The scientists knew that it had to involve something like a vaccine trial, but you got almost no public discussion of it till 2008, almost 30 years later, partly because the scientists were thinking now’s not the time to create a suspicion around vaccines or any of that.

科学家们知道它必须涉及疫苗试验之类的东西，但直到 2008 年，也就是近 30 年后，几乎没有公开讨论过它，部分原因是科学家们认为现在不是对疫苗或其他任何事情产生怀疑的时候。

In 1977, you’re at the height of the smallpox campaign.

1977 年，天花疫情正处于最高峰。

Then we have this one, which is unclear.

然后我们就有了这个，目前还不清楚。

If we have one more incident of any kind, it’s just going to be horrific, both for our research project and what we can do with it.

如果我们再发生任何类型的事件，无论是对我们的研究项目还是我们能用它做的事情来说，这都将是可怕的。

I think what ended up happening is that there’s a few people who keep getting quoted in media who are, actually, a small number of vocal people.

我认为最终发生的事情是，有一些人不断被媒体引用，但实际上，他们是少数敢于发声的人。

There’s a climate still where you can’t have a sensible conversation.

仍然存在一种无法进行明智对话的氛围。

That means that it’s gotten Republicans versus Democrats, or crazy scenarios versus a sensible oversight and investigation.

这意味着共和党与民主党的对立，或者疯狂的场景与明智的监督和调查的对立。

I don’t think that’s good because our medical technology is really powerful.

我认为这不好，因为我们的医疗技术非常强大。

It’s got all these great things.

它有所有这些很棒的东西。

Look at our vaccines.

看看我们的疫苗。

If you have a really powerful technology and a really powerful science, you have to figure out, does this power come with risks?

如果你拥有真正强大的技术和真正强大的科学，你必须弄清楚，这种力量是否会带来风险？

It’s very similar to nuclear physics, I think, in that way.

我认为这与核物理学非常相似。

If you don’t figure out the risks and the downside, it’s going to come bite you anyway without you knowing it.

如果你不弄清楚风险和缺点，它无论如何都会在你不知情的情况下咬你一口。

Even if this one had nothing to do with the lab, it would have been a good time to say, just the fact that we can’t be sure should make us act and make sure that we never find ourselves in this position again.

即使这件事与实验室无关，这也是一个好时机，我们不能确定这一事实应该让我们采取行动，确保我们再也不会陷入这种境地。

On problems with media and the scientific establishment

关于媒体和科学机构的问题

I have to say, I did not like it one bit.

我不得不说，我一点也不喜欢它。

I knew they were wrong around early March.

三月初我就知道他们错了。

I have links to Hong Kong.

我有香港的链接。

I was researching the field.

我正在研究这个领域。

There’s a lot of infectious disease specialists in Southeast Asia who are way ahead of us, partly because they’ve been through SARS and partly because they really are way ahead of us.

东南亚有很多传染病专家远远领先于我们，部分是因为他们经历过非典，部分是因为他们确实领先于我们。

I started tweeting out the argument on why they were wrong, just on the science side of the virus, the science side of masks — all of that.

我开始在推特上发表关于为什么他们错了的论点，只是在病毒的科学方面，口罩的科学方面——所有这些。

I just twiddled my thumbs after tweeting out the whole argument, hoping somebody would write it.

在推特上发布了整个论点后，我只是摆弄拇指，希望有人能写出来。

Not me because it shouldn’t be.

不是我，因为它不应该是。

It’s really terrible to undermine, as you say, a nation’s leading health authorities.

正如你所说，破坏一个国家主要卫生当局的地位真的很可怕。

I hoped it would come from — I don’t know — the ex-director of CDC, somebody like that, somebody with really high stature, so it didn’t look like a random challenger.

我希望它来自于 —— 我不知道 —— 疾病预防控制中心的前主任，这样的人，一个地位非常高的人，所以它看起来不像是一个随机的挑战者。

Because how are you going to distinguish that from an anti-vaxxer or a quack?

因为你如何将其与反疫苗者或江湖庸医区分开来？

That is a real problem, but it didn’t happen.

这是一个真正的问题，但它并没有发生。

I think the real question you’re asking isn’t what should the New York Times have done.

我认为你问的真正问题不是《纽约时报》应该做什么。

In some sense, I think, what should have our scientific establishment have done?

我认为，从某种意义上说，我们的科学机构应该做什么？

Why didn’t they create a consortium?

他们为什么不成立一个财团？

Why didn’t the universities create their own advisory body, even if our own authorities weren’t functioning very well, partly because of Trump’s not great — I mean really negative influence.

为什么大学不建立自己的咨询机构，即使我们自己的当局运作得不太好，部分原因是特朗普不伟大——我的意思是真正的负面影响。

We didn’t step up as academics to say, “Here’s another consortium of lots of experts.” Not just one person saying, “Oh, by the way .

我们并没有以学者的身份站出来说：“这是另一个由众多专家组成的联盟。”不只是一个人说：“哦，顺便说一句。

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.” Because that’s really corrosive, at some point, to have individuals be ahead of the health authorities.

”。因为在某些时候，让个人领先于卫生当局确实具有腐蚀性。

With other things, like vaccines, I’m on the side that there would have been problems with — and we can discuss it — with things like human challenge trials for a bunch of complicated reasons.

对于其他事情，比如疫苗，我认为，由于一系列复杂的原因，诸如人体挑战试验之类的事情会存在问题——我们可以讨论它。

What you needed was flexibility in what’s the right method, given the risk you’re taking.

考虑到您所承担的风险，您需要的是灵活地选择正确的方法。

For masks, I think it was clear.

对于面具，我认为已经很清楚了。

I asked many people who are experts in the area.

我问了很多该领域的专家。

They all assured me it could be done in less time than three weeks.

他们都向我保证，这可以在不到三周的时间内完成。

Yet it took three weeks, because what is it?

然而花了三个星期，因为那是什么？

It just takes that long to schedule the meeting?

安排会议就需要这么长时间吗？

Or there’s too much status maximization in the bureaucracy?

或者官僚机构中存在太多的地位最大化？

How do we fix that problem, which seemed to recur at many different stages?

我们如何解决这个似乎在许多不同阶段反复出现的问题？

I’ll give you an example that I can’t figure out right now, which is, why haven’t we gotten the full authorization?

我举个我现在想不通的例子，就是为什么我们没有得到完整的授权？

Right now, they’re still functioning as EUA .

目前，它们仍以 EUA 的身份运行。

That is both causing people to think it’s experimental because it’s still emergency, and it is holding back some of the necessary things, like mandates, because which employer is supposed to say, “It’s an emergency thing, and it’s not fully approved, but I’m forcing you to do it”?

这既让人们认为它是实验性的，因为它仍然是紧急情况，并且它阻碍了一些必要的事情，比如强制要求，因为哪个雇主应该说，“这是紧急事情，而且还没有完全批准，但我强迫你这样做”？

That doesn’t seem to make sense.

这似乎没有道理。

I’m just looking at it and thinking, we’ve vaccinated in this country no more than 100 million people.

我只是看着它并想，我们在这个国家接种疫苗的人不超过一亿。

We’ve vaccinated a billion around the world.

我们已经为全世界十亿人接种了疫苗。

We have a very good idea of the safety profile, and it’s better than most vaccines that are approved.

我们对其安全性非常了解，并且它比大多数已批准的疫苗更好。

So why are we waiting for the full approval?

那么我们为什么要等待完全批准呢？

I have no answer to that one.

我对此没有答案。

I tried to do the most charitable reading: maybe with the approval — the initial emergency one — maybe it could have been 10 days instead of three weeks, maybe a week difference.

我试着做最慈善的阅读：也许得到批准 —— 最初的紧急批准 —— 也许可以是十天而不是三周，也许相差一周。

I don’t really know.

我真的不知道。

I don’t have background information, but I’m just looking at the full approval, and I don’t understand.

我没有背景资料，只是看完整批文，不太明白。

I think there’s something that Trump’s presence has obscured, which is, there’s a malaise in the Western scientific, public health, economic governing our institutions.

我认为特朗普的存在掩盖了一些事情，那就是西方科学、公共卫生、经济管理机构中存在着一种萎靡不振的现象。

There’s something not functioning very well, but because we are fairly wealthy nations with an enormous amount of inheritance, we can get by.

有些东西运作得不太好，但因为我们是相当富裕的国家，拥有大量遗产，所以我们可以度过难关。

We have a lot of science.

我们有很多科学知识。

We have a lot of scientists.

我们有很多科学家。

We have excellent universities.

我们有优秀的大学。

We have a lot, but I feel like we’re almost the second generation or even the third generation that’s still spending the inheritance.

我们有很多，但我觉得我们几乎是第二代，甚至是第三代，仍在花费遗产。

Since we started so rich, it’s hiding the deeper problems.

由于我们一开始就非常富有，所以隐藏了更深层次的问题。

Trump’s year made it look like it was all Trump, but I’m looking at Western Europe, and they didn’t do that great either.

特朗普的这一年看起来好像都是特朗普的事，但我看看西欧，他们的表现也不是那么好。

In fact, they’ve done terrible, relatively speaking.

事实上，相对而言，他们做得很糟糕。

I feel we haven’t really gotten our heads wrapped around how we do risk assessment, how we move, as you say, fast when we need to move fast, especially for things like masking, of which downsides are very little.

我觉得我们还没有真正弄清楚我们如何进行风险评估，如何像你所说的那样，在我们需要快速行动时快速行动，特别是对于诸如屏蔽之类的事情，其缺点很少。

If you found out they were useless, you can change it next month, and you didn’t lose anything.

如果你发现它们没用，你可以在下个月更换它，并且你不会失去任何东西。

But we don’t do it.

但我们不这样做。

There’s something we haven’t completely come to grips with, and the pandemic’s urgency has, perhaps, acted like a stress test.

有些事情我们还没有完全解决，而这场流行病的紧迫性也许就像一次压力测试。

It’s shown us the problems, but it’s still ongoing, so we haven’t sat down and said, “Let’s think about it because this is not good.”

它向我们展示了问题，但它仍在继续，所以我们没有坐下来说：“让我们考虑一下，因为这不好。”

I think that’s job number one.

我认为这是第一位的工作。

After the pandemic gets calmer, which will happen pretty soon — it’s going so fast that it’s going to end relatively soon — we should sit down and say, “This wasn’t just Trump.

当疫情变得平静之后，这很快就会发生——“它发展得如此之快，以至于很快就会结束”——我们应该坐下来说，“这不仅仅是特朗普的问题。

We screwed up a lot of things, and we also have revealed a lot of cracks in our institutions, and it’s time to try to fix that.”

我们搞砸了很多事情，我们的机构也暴露了很多漏洞，现在是时候尝试解决这些问题了。”

On sociological insights into the pandemic

关于大流行病的社会学见解

If they had anybody with any social science background or any common sense in that group, they’d say, “Wait a minute.

如果该小组中有任何具有社会科学背景或任何常识的人，他们会说：“等一下。

How are sick people supposed to wear a mask?” That is just not humanly feasible for them to paint a target on themselves like that.

生病的人怎么戴口罩？”对于他们来说，像这样给自己画一个目标是不可行的。

That’s one of the ways that it helps.

这是它有帮助的方式之一。

The other way it helps — I used to teach things like groupthink and institutional inertia, and all those things that we’ve seen.

另一方面，它也有帮助—— 我曾经教过诸如群体思维和制度惯性之类的东西，以及我们所见过的所有这些东西。

One of my friends, who’s an immunologist and a medical doctor at Harvard, Michael Mina, who’s done a lot of work on rapid tests — one of the things he keeps joking about is how basic our virus is.

我的一位朋友迈克尔·米纳 (Michael Mina) 是哈佛大学的免疫学家和医生，他在快速检测方面做了大量工作，他一直开玩笑说我们的病毒是多么基础。

The virus that has caused our pandemic is a coronavirus.

引起我们大流行的病毒是冠状病毒。

It’s SARS-2, essentially, with a minor twist.

本质上，它是 SARS-2，只是有一点小小的改变。

There’s not much we need to figure out about it.

我们不需要了解太多。

Yes, of course, figuring out things like vaccines is important, but in terms of its basics, it’s not a retrovirus like HIV, which forced us to write the textbook.

是的，当然，弄清楚疫苗之类的东西很重要，但就其基础而言，它不是像艾滋病毒这样迫使我们编写教科书的逆转录病毒。

The virology part of it wasn’t very complicated, in some ways, to a competent virologist or something.

从某些方面来说，对于一个有能力的病毒学家或其他人来说，病毒学部分并不是很复杂。

Michael jokes first-year students can handle most of it.

迈克尔开玩笑说一年级学生可以处理大部分事情。

It’s a very simple, straightforward virus.

这是一种非常简单、直接的病毒。

But the things like the groupthink in parts of the scientific establishment, or the silencing.

但是像科学机构的某些部分中的群体思维或沉默之类的事情。

Right after I wrote about masks in March 2020, honestly, I thought that’s it.

2020 年 3 月我写了一篇关于口罩的文章后，说实话，我就想就这样了。

I’m going to get canceled.

我要被取消了。

That’s the end of my public writing career.

我的公共写作生涯就这样结束了。

I just contradicted the CDC and the WHO at the beginning of a pandemic.

我只是在大流行开始时就与疾控中心和世界卫生组织相矛盾。

I don’t have a medical degree whatsoever.

我没有任何医学学位。

I just thought, “I have to do it.

我只是想：“我必须这么做。

I’m a tenured academic.

我是一名终身教授。

If I’m not going to do this now, what is the point of tenure if I’m not going to take this risk?”

如果我现在不打算这样做，如果我不打算冒这个风险，那么终身教职还有什么意义呢？”

The sociology of the moment made me realize after that incident — I thought, you know what, sometimes being an outsider and not having my grants or my feelings or my professional career or my friendships be affected by this, gives me freedom to confront things.

在那次事件之后，当时的社会学让我意识到 —— 我想，你知道吗，有时作为一个局外人，我的资助、我的感情、我的职业生涯或我的友谊不会受到影响，这给了我面对事情的自由。

I know what the scientific underground is speaking about.

我知道地下科学在说什么。

I don’t have a medical degree, but I can read a good deal of the papers just at a basic level.

我没有医学学位，但我可以在基础水平上阅读大量论文。

I know statistics, and I can read some of the basics.

我了解统计学，并且可以阅读一些基础知识。

And I have a lot of friends, especially junior people.

我有很多朋友，尤其是年轻的朋友。

Some of them are aghast but cannot speak up, and because I don’t have as much to lose, I can write things, in a way, that sometimes they can’t.

他们中的一些人很震惊，但无法说出来，因为我没有那么多可失去的，所以我可以以某种方式写一些东西，有时他们不能。

That’s really made me think we need a mechanism for that to be possible for the scientists in the field.

这确实让我觉得我们需要一种机制，让该领域的科学家能够做到这一点。

Medical fields are very hierarchical, and there’s some positives to that.

医学领域是非常等级化的，这也有一些积极的一面。

You don’t want quackery there, but when they need to be challenged, there’s no mechanism to challenge them.

你不希望出现江湖骗术，但当他们需要受到挑战时，却没有机制可以挑战他们。

On being wrong

犯错时

I don’t know what I would call a mistake, but I have learned a lot more over the years about that line where you know enough about something to try to reason what you should be thinking about.

我不知道什么叫错误，但这些年来我对这条线学到了很多东西，你对某件事有足够的了解，可以试图推理出你应该思考的事情。

It’s gotten better.

它变得更好了。

I’m not saying I’m all done there, but I have the same academic disease that any academic will understand, that I get focused on the interesting because that’s appealing to me.

我并不是说我已经完成了，但我有任何学者都会理解的同样的学术疾病，我专注于有趣的事情，因为这对我有吸引力。

Most of the time, most answers are boring.

大多数时候，大多数答案都很无聊。

“It’s a respiratory disease.

“这是一种呼吸道疾病。

Wear a mask.” That’s a boring example.

戴上口罩。”这是一个无聊的例子。

Trying to be too clever, too smart, almost too contrarian sometimes — I would say that is something that I fight in myself because, like a lot of academics and a lot of intellectual people, I like the answers that surprise me.

有时试图变得太聪明、太聪明、几乎太逆反了 —— 我会说这是我自己内心挣扎的事情，因为像许多学者和知识分子一样，我喜欢让我惊讶的答案。

I like an example that’s a pure counterintuitive, but in reality, they’re almost never true.

我喜欢一个完全违反直觉的例子，但实际上，它们几乎从来都不是真的。

There are very few things in the world that I think are big and important, where they’re counterintuitive, and the surprising thing’s actually revealing.

我认为世界上很少有事情是重大而重要的，它们是违反直觉的，而令人惊讶的事情实际上具有启发性。

That’s my reasoning — not error as much as attraction — that I believe I have gotten a better handle on.

这就是我的推理——“不是错误，而是吸引力”——我相信我已经更好地处理了。

In fact, what I’ve done throughout the pandemic — and what some of the people you’ve named — is just say a lot of basic stuff.

事实上，我在整个大流行期间所做的事情——以及你提到的一些人——只是说了很多基本的东西。

Respiratory disease — you need masks.

呼吸道疾病——你需要口罩。

Vaccination — you need wider coverage as soon as possible.

疫苗接种 — 您需要尽快扩大覆盖范围。

Outdoors is safer.

户外更安全。

Those very simple things.

那些非常简单的事情。

If you’re having super-spreading events at a distance, it’s probably airborne.

如果远距离发生超级传播事件，它很可能是通过空气传播的。

Every time I do that, I do better.

每次我这样做，我都会做得更好。

I’m not against occasional bailouts, but I think it’s extra problematic when you have the executive pay be that high, and then at the first sign of stress, they’re like, “Taxpayers, bail us out.” I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy or the competition either, and that’s the extent of my opinion on stock buybacks before I get in more trouble on this.

我并不反对偶尔的救助，但我认为当高管薪酬那么高时，问题就更大了，而一旦出现压力迹象，他们就会说，“纳税人，救助我们吧。”我认为这对经济或竞争也不有利，这就是我在陷入更多麻烦之前对股票回购的看法。

It’s not necessarily pulling you to Trump.

这并不一定会把你拉向特朗普。

It’s not necessarily pulling you to this or that.

它不一定会把你拉到这个或那个。

It’s pulling you away from boring.

它让你远离无聊。

What is not boring is exciting to watch.

不无聊的东西让人看了很兴奋。

Who the heck wants to watch a movie of functioning bureaucracies and institutions?

谁想看一部关于运作官僚机构和机构的电影？

It would be great in a pandemic, but it wouldn’t make a good movie.

在大流行中这会很棒，但它不会成为一部好电影。

If you want to watch something, what you watch is the thing that’s exciting.

如果你想看什么，你看的就是令人兴奋的东西。

It’s the “10 biggest sinkholes in Florida” and “Watch the alligator almost eat the baby.” What you’re getting is pulled to the edge, and that’s true for politics.

这是“佛罗里达州 10 个最大的天坑”和“观看鳄鱼差点吃掉婴儿”。你得到的东西被拉到了边缘，对于政治来说也是如此。

That’s true for anything you want.

对于你想要的任何东西都是如此。

But there is an alternate literature.

但还有另一种文学。

Munger and Phillips, Ledwich and Zaitsev— those have written papers in the last three years saying no evidence that YouTube radicalizes.

芒格和菲利普斯、莱德维奇和扎伊采夫——他们在过去三年里撰写了论文，称没有证据表明 YouTube 激进化。

Maybe that’s agnostic.

也许这是不可知论的。

When I read you on lab-leak, it’s all about agnosticism, expected value, wisdom, multiple perspectives, but when I read you on social media, YouTube, it seems very hardcore.

当我在实验室泄露上读到你的文章时，你的文章都是关于不可知论、期望值、智慧、多重视角，但当我在社交媒体、YouTube 上读到你的文章时，它似乎非常核心。

“Here’s the right answer.

“这是正确的答案。

It’s bad for people.

这对人不好。

It radicalizes them.

这使他们变得激进。

It’s all about the ad.” It’s like these two Zeyneps, and why not apply the lab-leak approach to social media?

一切都与广告有关。”就像这两个 Zeyneps 一样，为什么不将实验室泄露方法应用于社交媒体呢？

But in terms of the algorithm pulling you to the edges, I do think it’s still true.

但就将你推向边缘的算法而言，我确实认为这仍然是正确的。

It doesn’t really mean it’s pulling you to only one side.

这并不意味着它只会把你拉到一边。

That’s the misunderstanding.

这就是误解。

One of the few pages that does really great on Facebook on the left is something called Occupy Democrats.

Facebook 上为数不多的左侧页面表现出色的页面之一是名为“占领民主党”的页面。

It’s just nonstop outrage and barely tied to truth, so it’s not just a right-wing thing.

这只是不间断的愤怒，几乎与事实无关，所以这不仅仅是右翼的事情。

The fact that it is very friendly to authoritarians for some reason, but the fact that it was more right in the United States, is more about the United States’ political structure.

出于某种原因，它对独裁者非常友好，但在美国更正确，更多的是美国的政治结构。

My criticism isn’t that it’s great for us to have these large platforms, in some sense, that greatly expanded speech, but the way they keep people on the site by keeping them interested is a bit like keeping people in a cafeteria by giving them constant chips and ice cream.

我的批评并不是说拥有这些大型平台对我们来说很好，从某种意义上说，极大地扩展了言论范围，但他们通过保持人们的兴趣来让人们留在网站上的方式有点像通过不断给人们提供薯条和冰淇淋来让人们呆在自助餐厅里。

I like chips.

我喜欢薯片。

I like ice cream, but I wouldn’t want a cafeteria whose business model is to keep me sitting in that table as long as possible.

我喜欢冰淇淋，但我不想要一家商业模式是让我尽可能长时间坐在那张桌子上的自助餐厅。

Because we know this.

因为我们知道这一点。

We know in cities where there’s the infrastructure for walking, people walk.

我们知道，城市里有步行基础设施，人们就会步行。

When you change the menu in cafeterias, people eat different things.

当你改变自助餐厅的菜单时，人们会吃不同的东西。

When you put stuff in different places, people watch different things.

当你把东西放在不同的地方时，人们会看到不同的东西。

I think the papers that you cite — one of the problems here is, it’s a little bit like China in that we have no data.

我认为你引用的论文——这里的一个问题是，它有点像中国，我们没有数据。

The YouTube stuff that we have tried to do — we’re literally looking at very, very, very broad data because what we need is YouTube’s internal data, perhaps linked to a panel.

我们试图做的 YouTube 事情 ——我们确实在寻找非常、非常、非常广泛的数据，因为我们需要的是 YouTube 的内部数据，可能链接到一个面板。

Think not the GSS , but something like a couple-of-thousand-people panel that is linked to data.

不要考虑 GSS，而是像与数据链接的数千人小组之类的东西。

It’s 20 years into the internet explosion, and we don’t have a single good study.

互联网爆炸已经 20 年了，但我们还没有一项好的研究。

Most of the data is locked up in the companies, and there’s not a good research thing.

大部分数据都被锁在公司里，没有什么好的研究东西。

I’m agnostic in the sense that I don’t really know exactly the extent to which the algorithm works, but that’s similar to lab leak, where I don’t know what to say because whatever data there is, it’s in China, and we don’t have access to it.

我是不可知论者，因为我并不真正确切地知道该算法的工作范围，但这类似于实验室泄密，我不知道该说什么，因为无论有什么数据，它都在中国，我们无法访问它。

On things and under- and overrated

关于事物以及被低估和高估的事物

I would say almost all of sociology is underrated in how dramatically useful it is.

我想说，几乎所有社会学的用途都被低估了。

Just ask me any time.

随时问我即可。

Early on, I knew we were going to have a pandemic, completely based on sociology of the moment in early January, before I knew anything about the virus because they weren’t telling us, but you could just use sociological concepts to put things together.

早些时候，我知道我们将会爆发一场大流行，这完全是基于一月初的社会学，当时我对这种病毒一无所知，因为他们没有告诉我们，但你可以用社会学概念把事情放在一起。

Max Weber is great at most of them and underrated.

马克斯·韦伯（Max Weber）在大多数方面都很出色，但被低估了。

The underrated part isn’t just that such a mechanism existed.

被低估的不仅仅是这样一种机制的存在。

The underrated part is that the country changed so much in 13 years that her teacher was able to prevail upon the family to let her go.

被低估的是，这个国家在 13 年里发生了如此之大的变化，以至于她的老师能够说服家人让她离开。

To have a 13-year-old be sent off to Istanbul, completely opposite side of the country, to a boarding school for education — that kind of flourishing of liberation.

让一个 13 岁的孩子被送到与祖国完全相反的伊斯坦布尔，去一所寄宿学校接受教育——那种解放的繁荣。

I’m not going to deny it was an authoritarian period, and minorities, like Kurds, during that period were brutally suppressed.

我不会否认那是一个独裁时期，像库尔德人这样的少数民族在那个时期受到残酷镇压。

I can’t make it sound like there was nothing else going on, but in terms of creating a republic out of the ashes of a crumbling empire — I think it’s one of the very striking stories of national transformation, globally, within one generation, so underrated.

我不能让它听起来好像没有其他事情发生，但就从一个摇摇欲坠的帝国的灰烬中创建一个共和国而言，我认为这是在一代人的时间内在全球范围内发生的国家转型的非常引人注目的故事之一，因此被低估了。

On sociology in movies and TV

论电影和电视中的社会学

In a sociological story, you can imagine yourself being almost anyone.

在社会学故事中，你可以想象自己几乎是任何人。

Instead of terrible, evil characters and good people, where you just identify with the good ones — which is the classic Hollywood narrative, which is also most of human narrative, you have the good one, the bad one — it’s more like a complicated mythology where you can imagine yourself being any one of those characters, even the ones that do the terrible things, you can see yourself doing it.

与可怕的、邪恶的角色和好人不同，你只认同好人——这是经典的好莱坞叙事，也是大多数人类叙事，你有好人、坏人——它更像是一个复杂的神话，你可以想象自己是这些角色中的任何一个，甚至是那些做了可怕事情的人，你可以看到自己在做这件事。

In a sociological story, you can imagine yourself being almost anyone.

在社会学故事中，你可以想象自己几乎是任何人。

Instead of terrible, evil characters and good people, where you just identify with the good ones — which is the classic Hollywood narrative, which is also most of human narrative, you have the good one, the bad one — it’s more like a complicated mythology where you can imagine yourself being any one of those characters, even the ones that do the terrible things, you can see yourself doing it.

与可怕的、邪恶的角色和好人不同，你只认同好人——这是经典的好莱坞叙事，也是大多数人类叙事，你有好人、坏人——它更像是一个复杂的神话，你可以想象自己是这些角色中的任何一个，甚至是那些做了可怕事情的人，你可以看到自己在做这些事情。

The second sign of a sociological story, for me, is when nobody has plot armor because it’s the setting that’s carrying the story, with lots of people, but it doesn’t rely on one person dying or not dying.

对我来说，社会学故事的第二个标志是没有人拥有情节盔甲，因为这是承载故事的背景，有很多人，但它并不依赖于一个人的死亡或不死亡。

For six seasons, you have a very institution sociology, very interesting.

在六个季节里，你有一个非常制度化的社会学，非常有趣。

It’s like The Wire.

就像《火线》一样。

People can die, but the story is still gripping because it’s sociological.

人可能会死，但这个故事仍然扣人心弦，因为它是社会学的。

Here comes season — whichever the last season is — and all of a sudden, Arya can walk through fiery dragons and nothing happens.

季节到了——无论最后一季是什么——突然之间，艾莉亚可以穿过火龙，但什么也没有发生。

It just misses her by an inch.

它只是差了她一英寸。

I’m like, “All right, you lost the plot here.” Plot armor essentially means you no longer have a solid sociological story.

我想，“好吧，你在这里失去了情节。”情节装甲本质上意味着你不再有一个坚实的社会学故事。

I watched it with great interest until the end, and in the end, I’m like, “What just happened?” I wasn’t really very clear with the novel world.

我饶有兴趣地看到了最后，最后我想：“刚刚发生了什么？”我对小说世界并不是很清楚。

I learned that the novelist had run out of material, and the Hollywood showrunners were now writing the script.

我得知小说家已经没有素材了，好莱坞的制片人现在正在写剧本。

I’m like, “Ah, that’s what happened.

我想，“啊，就是这样。

They switched to the good-versus-evil story.”

他们转向了善与恶的故事。”

They took a great story that was going to be how power corrupts, which clearly was the story, and in the end, they made the dragon lady snap just because she heard the church bells or something.

他们拍了一个很棒的故事，讲述权力如何腐败，这显然就是故事，最后，他们让龙女士因为听到教堂的钟声或其他什么而崩溃。

That’s not a good sociological story.

这不是一个好的社会学故事。

What happens is, every moment you’re thinking, “I’m doing the right thing.” You almost never think, “Let me go do evil things.” You convince yourself you’re doing the right thing until you lose your mind in it.

发生的事情是，你每时每刻都在想，“我正在做正确的事。”你几乎从来不会想：“让我去做坏事吧。”你说服自己你正在做正确的事情，直到你失去理智。

And you have people around you who are saying, “Yes, yes, you’re doing the right thing.” That’s a classic story of power.

你周围的人会说：“是的，是的，你做的是正确的事。”这是一个经典的权力故事。

I love movies like that, but Jar Jar Binks — just nope.

我喜欢这样的电影，但加·加·宾克斯 —— 只是不喜欢。

On Erdoğan and Turkey

关于埃尔多安和土耳其

Now that has been corrected, Erdoğan is a complicated figure, for sure.

现在这一点已经得到纠正，埃尔多安无疑是一个复杂的人物。

One of the things I think is less understood is that, for a long time, he had — and he still has — a genuine support base.

我认为不太为人所知的一件事是，长期以来，他拥有——而且仍然拥有——真正的支持基础。

It’s a very complicated, long story why that is.

这是一个非常复杂、很长的故事。

Right now, after 20 years in power, it’s got more of a centralization-of-power story.

现在，在执政 20 年后，它的故事更多的是一个集权的故事。

That’s the first thing.

这是第一件事。

The second thing is, when people want to understand Erdoğan, sometimes they compare him to, say, I don’t know, leaders of Iran.

第二件事是，当人们想要了解埃尔多安时，有时他们会将他与伊朗领导人进行比较，比如说，我不知道。

I’m like, you want to look at Putin.

我想，你想看看普京。

You want to look at Hungary.

你想看看匈牙利。

You want to look at Brazil.

你想看看巴西。

The similarity there isn’t necessarily, I think, which religion or the strength of the religious beliefs as much as, once again, a strong, popular, populist, authoritarian-leaning person getting elected and then staying in power and making sure he stays in power for a very, very long time.

我认为，其中的相似之处不一定是哪种宗教或宗教信仰的强度，而是一个强大的、受欢迎的、民粹主义的、有独裁倾向的人再次当选，然后继续掌权，并确保他掌权很长时间。

Actually, if anything, I would say it’s a very Western story.

事实上，如果有的话，我会说这是一个非常西方的故事。

We have many examples of it around the world.

我们在世界各地有很多这样的例子。

It is not a particularly Middle Eastern version of the story, of which there are many, but that’s, I think, a different version.

这不是一个特别的中东版本的故事，这个故事有很多，但我认为这是一个不同的版本。

I think that’s largely misunderstood.

我认为这在很大程度上被误解了。

In the past, if you wanted to have a movement, you necessarily had to build a lot of tools because you were out of power.

过去，如果你想发起运动，你就必须制造很多工具，因为你没有权力。

You had to build a lot of tools.

你必须构建很多工具。

If you wanted to organize, let’s say, the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s and ’60s, during that time, or the March on Washington, you had to spend a lot of time.

比如说，如果你想组织 20 世纪 50 年代和 60 年代的蒙哥马利公交车抵制运动，或者华盛顿游行，你就必须花很多时间。

The March on Washington took, I think, six months just to do the logistics.

我想，进军华盛顿就花了六个月的时间来完成后勤工作。

You don’t have Excel spreadsheets and things like that.

您没有 Excel 电子表格之类的东西。

From an idea to a march was about 10 years.

从一个想法到付诸实践，大约花了10年时间。

That kind of preparation work — arduous — and it kept these movements weak because you had to build that before you could do anything.

这种准备工作 ——“艰巨”——而且它让这些动作变得很弱，因为你必须先建立起来，然后才能做任何事情。

But if you did build it, you had something to stand on.

但如果你真的建造了它，你就有了立足之地。

Whereas right now, with social media, you can overcome censorship like this, especially if the government is not really very up on it, which at the time they weren’t, but you’re not ready for what’s coming.

而现在，有了社交媒体，你就可以克服这样的审查制度，特别是如果政府对此不太重视的话（当时他们还没有这样做），但你还没有为即将发生的事情做好准备。

I feel like it’s coming into a curve, going from 0 to 100 miles an hour, and you’re coming into a curve, but you haven’t built the car.

我觉得它正在进入一个弯道，从每小时 0 英里到 100 英里，你正在进入一个弯道，但你还没有制造汽车。

You don’t have a steering wheel.

你没有方向盘。

You just know how to speed up.

你只知道如何加快速度。

You see this in many other aspects of society as well, where digital technology lets people scale up very quickly.

你在社会的许多其他方面也看到了这一点，数字技术让人们能够快速扩大规模。

If you’re Instagram, and you go from zero to a million users or 10 million users, well, Facebook can come buy you, and you’re great.

如果你是 Instagram，你的用户从零增长到一百万或一千万，那么 Facebook 可以收购你，你就很棒。

That kind of speedy exponential growth is not a problem in many other areas.

这种快速的指数增长在许多其他领域并不是问题。

Whereas if you’re a movement, that kind of speedy exponential growth, without having built other parts of the infrastructure, means that when the government does come for you, you don’t have even a decision-making system.

然而，如果你是一个运动，那种快速的指数增长，没有建立基础设施的其他部分，意味着当政府来找你的时候，你甚至没有决策系统。

You don’t even know, “How do I respond to it?”

你甚至不知道“我该如何回应？”

When the Gezi Park movement started, I went there.

格子公园运动开始的时候，我就去了那里。

I went there as a participant-observer.

我以参与者兼观察员的身份去了那里。

I did hundreds of formal interviews.

我进行了数百次正式采访。

I stayed in the park.

我住在公园里。

I spent the whole time, essentially, living there with everybody else and just observing.

基本上，我整个时间都和其他人一起住在那里，只是观察。

Even then, when people asked me, “How is this going to end?” Because they realized I was a researcher because I’m doing interviews, and they would ask, and I already knew, in each of my friends who were in jail.

即使在那时，当人们问我：“这将如何结束？”因为他们意识到我是一名研究员，因为我正在进行采访，他们会询问我在监狱里的每个朋友，而我已经知道了。

I was already demurring, saying, “I don’t.” You’re a researcher, you’re not going to make predictions there.

我已经表示反对，说：“我不。”你是一名研究人员，你不会在那里做出预测。

I think the fizzling out of social media field movements — it’s not that they aren’t impactful.

我认为社交媒体领域运动的失败 ——并不是说它们没有影响力。

They’re just on a different trajectory.

他们只是处于不同的轨道上。

They start big, and if they’re in an oppressive, repressive environment, they can get crushed, whereas if they’re in a different kind of country, they could have time to build something.

他们一开始规模很大，如果他们处于一个压抑的环境中，他们可能会被压垮，而如果他们在一个不同的国家，他们可能有时间去建立一些东西。

I think we’re seeing some of that in Western nations, like Black Lives Matter.

我认为我们在西方国家看到了一些这样的情况，比如“黑人的命也是命”。

Whatever else you want to say, it is a sustained movement that has changed a lot of things in the country.

不管你还想说什么，这是一场持续的运动，改变了这个国家的很多事情。

Unlike, say, Turkey or Egypt, they’re not going to face a government that’s coming for them in the same degree, say, to what happens in Egypt.

与土耳其或埃及不同，他们不会面对像埃及那样对他们采取同样程度的政府。

I think it’s a little early to say the fundamentalism part is on the rise or not.

我认为现在说原教旨主义部分是否正在兴起还为时过早。

We have a more religious government, so there’s more religious official stuff and more encouraged and more rules about it and allowances.

我们有一个更加宗教化的政府，所以有更多的宗教官方内容，更多的鼓励和更多的规则和津贴。

Alcohol is more expensive, for example, and more restricted.

例如，酒精价格更高，而且受到更多限制。

Are people drinking less alcohol?

人们饮酒量减少了吗？

I’m not so sure.

我不太确定。

I think it’s a little too early to figure out what the long-term trajectory will be.

我认为现在判断长期轨迹还为时过早。

Everybody knows Aegean, and I don’t really need to explain it.

每个人都知道爱琴海，我真的不需要解释它。

It’s the other side of the Greek Islands.

这是希腊群岛的另一边。

It’s just the most beautiful place, but you know about it already.

这是最美丽的地方，但你已经知道了。

Another place that’s, I think, less known is the Black Sea region, where you have dramatic green hills meet the sea, not like San Francisco because the hills are very steep, and then you have a fairly little strip.

我认为另一个不太为人所知的地方是黑海地区，那里有引人注目的绿色山丘与大海的交汇，不像旧金山，因为山丘非常陡峭，然后有相当小的地带。

Very different climate and visuals.

非常不同的气候和视觉效果。

There’s a lot of historic stuff there, too, because obviously, it was the Ottoman Empire for a long time, but before that, it was the last bit of the Greek, East Roman empires and countries too.

那里也有很多历史资料，因为显然，它在很长一段时间内都是奥斯曼帝国，但在此之前，它也是希腊、东罗马帝国和国家的最后一部分。

There’s a lot of history there as well.

那里也有很多历史。

Two interesting places outside the usual tourist places.

通常的旅游景点之外的两个有趣的地方。

I am pondering to finally write a book.

我正在考虑最终写一本书。

During the first phase of the Arab Spring in 2011, I was there the whole time; I kept going.

2011年阿拉伯之春第一阶段，我一直在场；我继续前进。

I was in Tahrir Square.

我当时在解放广场。

I went to Tunisia.

我去了突尼斯。

I went all over the region.

我走遍了整个地区。

There are a lot of books that came out quickly at the time, and I just resisted writing a book just then.

当时有很多书很快就出来了，我当时只是抵制写书。

I’m from the Middle East.

我来自中东。

I felt like this is not over yet, and a lot of books were quite triumphant.

我觉得这还没有结束，很多书都还挺得意的。

It was only after the Gezi protests and how they played out, I felt like I’m going to write a book, and I feel like it’s a more durable and balanced book.

直到盖兹抗议活动及其进展之后，我才觉得我要写一本书，而且我觉得这是一本更持久、更平衡的书。

It’s not for or against social media.

这不是支持或反对社交媒体。

It’s also not saying the movements were triumphant or not, but I had the gift — I gave myself time to let it play out.

这也不是说这些运动是否胜利，而是我有天赋 —— 我给了自己时间让它发挥作用。

I feel the same way about the pandemic now.

我现在对疫情也有同样的感受。

I feel like it was a stress test, and I think there’s going to be a first crop of books that put most of the blame on Trump’s lap, which is not unjustified.

我觉得这是一次压力测试，我认为第一批书籍将把大部分责任归咎于特朗普，这并非没有道理。

That administration has a lot to answer for, but I think the things that it has shown us are much bigger than one administration’s admittedly very real failings.

这届政府需要承担很多责任，但我认为它向我们展示的事情比一届政府公认的非常现实的失败要大得多。

I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, there is space for a book that looks at some of the things you were talking about, which is, we have to revitalize how our society works.

我在想也许，只是也许，有一本书的空间来探讨你所谈论的一些事情，也就是说，我们必须振兴我们社会的运作方式。

We haven’t come to grips with this.

我们还没有解决这个问题。

I’m thinking I might be writing a book.

我想我可能正在写一本书。

It will come out after the first crop of the post-pandemic.

它将在大流行后的第一批作物之后问世。

There’ll be probably dozens of books in the next year, but mine will come after all those are over.

明年可能会有几十本书，但我的书会在所有这些都结束后才出现。

Q&A

问答

I learned probability theory from a book in Turkish.

我从一本土耳其语的书中学到了概率论。

It only exists in Turkish.

它仅存在于土耳其语中。

It’s written by someone from Turkey.

这是土耳其人写的。

The premise of the book is, there’s a little girl who wants to win at a game of dice, and she loses because she’s betting the wrong way.

这本书的前提是，有一个小女孩想在骰子游戏中获胜，但她因为押错了方向而输了。

Then she meets someone who says, “I can teach you how to win this game.” Then the book — it’s just a novel; I still have the book; it’s amazing — walks you through probability theory, including, I think, the binomial theorem.

然后她遇到一个人，他说：“我可以教你如何赢得这场比赛。”那么这本书————这只是一本小说；我还留着那本书；太棒了 —— 带你了解概率论，我认为包括二项式定理。

It’s something you can read when you’re in the third grade and understand.

这是你三年级时就可以阅读并理解的东西。

At the end of the book, the little girl discovers that there are textbooks, and she says, “That’s probability.

读到最后，小女孩发现有课本，她说：“那是概率。

I hate it.

我讨厌它。

My older sister reads it and hates it.” The person in the neighborhood who has been teaching her says, “That’s because you have this preconception that theory is something boring and dry.

我姐姐读了它并且讨厌它。”邻居里一直教她的人说：“那是因为你有一种先入为主的观念，认为理论是无聊而枯燥的东西。

Probability is something boring and dry and complicated instead of, as we were talking, something really exciting.

概率是一种无聊、枯燥和复杂的东西，而不是我们所说的真正令人兴奋的东西。

Understanding a bit better about probability and probabilistic thinking is really empowering and fascinating.”

更好地理解概率和概率思维确实让人充满力量且令人着迷。”

That’s the way I feel about sociology — that it’s actually, conceptually, really powerful, but the theory part can be really dry.

这就是我对社会学的看法——它实际上在概念上非常强大，但理论部分可能非常枯燥。

If you read it from an early 19th-century person, that person is talking about early 19th century.

如果你从一个 19 世纪早期的人那里读到它，那么那个人正在谈论 19 世纪早期。

That’s boring and dry and crazy to you.

这对你来说是无聊、枯燥和疯狂的。

Whereas, what you need is somebody to do it now.

然而，你现在需要的是有人来做这件事。

Ritzer does it for the 20th century, and it’s really good.

Ritzer 为 20 世纪做了这件事，而且非常好。

All his books are good.

他的书都很好。

I’m not sure if somebody’s updated it because, with the internet and stuff, we have 21st-century stuff to bring in, but they’re still equally valid, like institutions and the way they work.

我不确定是否有人更新了它，因为有了互联网之类的东西，我们可以引入 21 世纪的东西，但它们仍然同样有效，就像机构及其工作方式一样。

Humans are remarkably human.

人类就是非凡的人类。

If we want to convince people, we need to deploy the people on the ground that we have, wherever it is, who’s closest to those people.

如果我们想说服人们，我们需要在当地部署最接近这些人的人员，无论他们在哪里。

If you want to convince people on Staten Island, you’ve got to send people who live on Staten Island who can work for this, or whatever community it is.

如果你想说服史泰登岛的人们，你必须派出居住在史泰登岛的可以为这个项目或任何社区工作的人。

Instead, we’re lecturing at them.

相反，我们是在给他们讲课。

Nobody likes being lectured.

没有人喜欢被说教。

Even if the lecturing is all correct, it just doesn’t work.

即使讲授都是正确的，但也没有作用。

I would try to say, “Hold on, my Staten Island friend, I’m going to find you somebody that you relate to, who’s going to tell you why you should get vaccinated.”

我会试着说：“等一下，我的史坦顿岛朋友，我会找到一个与你有关的人，他会告诉你为什么应该接种疫苗。”

I’ve written this so many times.

我已经写过很多次了。

You’re going to eventually encounter it.

你最终会遇到它。

You either encounter it in its full form, where anything can happen, or you encounter what we have, which is just a spike, which will make you fine if you do encounter the full form.

你要么遇到它的完整形式，任何事情都可能发生，要么你遇到我们所拥有的，这只是一个尖峰，如果你遇到完整形式，这会让你没事。

There’s no avoiding the virus.

病毒是无法避免的。

It’s just a question of, do you want to fight it with your hands tied or do you want the defenses?

这只是一个问题，你想束手无策地对抗它还是想要防御？

That’s all I can say to people to whom I have no other relationship to.

这就是我对那些与我没有其他关系的人所能说的。

What you’re saying is that you can’t expect a business to differentially police.

你的意思是，你不能指望企业进行差别化监管。

“Are you vaccinated?

“你接种疫苗了吗？

Are you not vaccinated?” We’re still vaccinating people, and we have the compromised people, and we have children under 12 who are not even eligible.

你没打疫苗吗？”我们仍在为人们接种疫苗，我们有受影响的人，我们还有 12 岁以下的儿童，他们甚至没有资格。

While we work through this for a couple more months, perhaps, it makes sense — especially if it’s in less ventilated space — just to keep it up.

虽然我们还要再花几个月的时间来解决这个问题，但也许这是有道理的 ——尤其是在通风较差的空间里—— 只是为了保持下去。

At that point, I wouldn’t say you should wear a mask if you’re vaccinated because you’re at risk.

到那时，我不会说如果您接种了疫苗就应该戴口罩，因为您面临风险。

I would just say, “I think you’re fine, but the business can’t check your vaccination card.

我只会说：“我认为你很好，但商家无法检查你的疫苗接种卡。

We don’t have something like that.

我们没有那样的东西。

This is how it’s got to be.”

事情就是这样的。”

Even this is not very complicated.

即使这也不是很复杂。

Even if you did lie and get away with it, it would eventually come out.

即使你撒了谎并且侥幸逃脱，它最终也会水落石出。

It’s 2021.

现在是 2021 年。

There’s internet.

有互联网。

There’s social media.

有社交媒体。

The stuff would come out, and all you end up doing is creating less trust.

事情会暴露出来，而你最终所做的只是减少信任。

I think we could just tell people that.

我想我们可以告诉人们这一点。

“Really low odds, but here’s a free vaccine.” Why wouldn’t you take advantage of it?

“几率确实很低，但这是免费的疫苗。”你为什么不利用它呢？

The argument against vaccinating 11-year-olds now, for me, is that healthcare workers around the world are vaccinated.

对我来说，现在反对为 11 岁儿童接种疫苗的理由是，世界各地的医护人员都接种了疫苗。

That seems the wrong order of things, but once you take the supply part out of the question, if you’re 11, I’d be like, “Why risk the low but real side effects of the infection?” Because they’re going to get infected.

这似乎是错误的顺序，但一旦你把供应部分排除在外，如果你是 11 岁，我会想，“为什么要冒感染的低但真实副作用的风险呢？”因为他们会被感染。

There’s no getting around encountering this virus.

遇到这种病毒是不可避免的。

I think that still leans towards vaccinating young ones.

我认为仍然倾向于为年轻人接种疫苗。

It’s actually a much more — in some ways — racist society, in my experience, than the United States.

根据我的经验，它实际上是一个比美国更加“在某些方面”种族主义的社会。

That sometimes I differ on.

有时我对此持不同意见。

Another thing I differ on is that GDPR , the digital regulation — I think it was just at the wrong level.

我不同意的另一件事是 GDPR，即数字监管 —— 我认为它处于错误的水平。

If anything, it backfired.

如果有的话，它会适得其反。

I think you can’t just regulate something by wagging your finger across the pond sometimes.

我认为有时你不能通过在池塘上摇动手指来调节某些事情。

That just isn’t going to work.

那是行不通的。

I differ in some of those ways, the way I look at Europe.

我在某些方面与欧洲不同。

I think that’s partly because I have an immigrant’s view of the United States, which is, in some ways, more realistic.

我认为这部分是因为我对美国有一个移民的看法，这在某些方面更为现实。

But I’ve lived in Europe, too, so I have, I think, a lot more positive feelings about certain things that might not be as apparent to somebody who’s looking at Europe from this side of the Atlantic because some things look good if you’re an American, but are not necessarily great if you’re living in Europe.

但我也曾在欧洲生活过，所以我认为，我对某些事情有更多积极的感觉，而这些感觉对于那些从大西洋彼岸看待欧洲的人来说可能不那么明显，因为如果你是美国人，有些事情看起来不错，但如果你住在欧洲，则不一定很好。

I’m not a machine learning researcher.

我不是机器学习研究员。

I’m not going to develop advanced science or anything like that, but I understand what’s going on in a way that someone who’s just looking at the sociology of impacts might not because of my background.

我不会发展先进的科学或类似的东西，但我理解正在发生的事情，而那些只关注影响社会学的人可能不会因为我的背景而理解。

I had the same thing happen with the pandemic.

我在疫情期间也遇到过同样的事情。

I actually used to teach sociology of pandemics because I thought it was really fascinating sociologically, but I was always interested in the science side too.

实际上，我曾经教授流行病社会学，因为我认为它在社会学方面非常有趣，但我也一直对科学方面感兴趣。

I didn’t start knowing nothing.

我并没有开始什么都不知道。

I started knowing — yes, as a layperson, but a professor, an educated layperson, and somebody who taught some of the stuff.

我开始了解——是的，作为一个外行，但作为一个教授，一个受过教育的外行，以及一个教授一些东西的人。

I had some level of reading, and whenever possible, I just deepen it.

我有一定程度的阅读，只要有可能，我就会加深阅读。

I read textbooks.

我读教科书。

I read primary papers in a lot of fields that I’m trying to do sociological analysis in.

我阅读了很多领域的主要论文，我试图在这些领域进行社会学分析。

I think that’s something we don’t do enough of in the academy because we’re so siloed.

我认为我们在学院里做得还不够，因为我们是如此孤立。

We treat it like dabbling.

我们对待它就像涉水一样。

It’s not dabbling if you do it right.

如果你做得对的话，这并不是涉足。

Yes, you can do it in a bad way, but it’s not dabbling to get some level of understanding of a field.

是的，你可以用一种糟糕的方式来做到这一点，但这并不是涉足对某个领域的某种程度的理解。

You need to be careful.

你需要小心。

You need to be humble about what you’re doing and then apply your own field, sociology, to that base.

你需要对自己所做的事情保持谦虚，然后将你自己的领域——社会学——应用到这个基础上。

If you don’t have any of the other, you can get things wrong quite easily.

如果你没有其他任何一个，你很容易出错。

If you’re overconfident, yes, it can get into that heavily criticized dabbling where you’re just completely out of your depth.

如果你过于自信，是的，它可能会陷入那种受到严厉批评的涉足领域，而你完全超出了自己的能力范围。

But I think there’s great value to be added.

但我认为还有很大的价值可以增加。

It’s not really interdisciplinary.

这并不是真正的跨学科。

You’re rooted in one discipline, but you’re going and learning stuff, and you’re interacting with the field directly as much as you can.

你植根于一门学科，但你要去学习东西，并且尽可能多地直接与该领域互动。

I think that’s how it’s been broadly beneficial.

我认为这就是它广泛受益的方式。

Header photo credit: James Duncan Davidson/TED

标题照片来源：James Duncan Davidson/TED

Thumbnail photo credit: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

缩略图来源：伯克曼克莱因互联网与社会中心