Persuade xor Discover

September 2009 When meeting people you don't know very well, the convention is to seem extra friendly.

2009年9月 当遇到不太熟悉的人时，惯例是显得格外友好。

You smile and say "pleased to meet you," whether you are or not.

无论你是否愿意，你都会微笑着说“很高兴见到你”。

There's nothing dishonest about this.

这并没有什么不诚实的地方。

Everyone knows that these little social lies aren't meant to be taken literally, just as everyone knows that "Can you pass the salt?" is only grammatically a question.

每个人都知道这些小小的社交谎言并不意味着从字面上理解，就像每个人都知道“你能把盐递过来吗？”只是语法上的一个问题。

I'm perfectly willing to smile and say "pleased to meet you"

我非常愿意微笑着说“很高兴认识你”

when meeting new people.

当结识新朋友时。

But there is another set of customs for being ingratiating in print that are not so harmless.

但还有另一种在印刷品上讨好别人的习俗，却并非那么无害。

The reason there's a convention of being ingratiating in print is that most essays are written to persuade.

印刷品之所以有讨好的惯例，是因为大多数文章都是为了说服而写的。

And as any politician could tell you, the way to persuade people is not just to baldly state the facts.

正如任何政客都会告诉你的那样，说服人们的方法不仅仅是直言不讳地陈述事实。

You have to add a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

你必须加一勺糖才能让药下去。

For example, a politician announcing the cancellation of

例如，一位政客宣布取消

a government program will not merely say "The program is canceled." That would seem offensively curt.

政府计划不会仅仅说“该计划被取消”。这会显得生硬得令人反感。

Instead he'll spend most of his time talking about the noble effort made by the people who worked on it.

相反，他会花大部分时间谈论参与该项目的人们所做出的崇高努力。

The reason these conventions are more dangerous is that they interact with the ideas.

这些约定之所以更危险，是因为它们与思想相互作用。

Saying "pleased to meet you" is just something you prepend to a conversation, but the sort of spin added by politicians is woven through it.

说“很高兴认识你”只是你在谈话之前说的话，但政客们添加的那种说法却贯穿其中。

We're starting to

我们开始

move from social lies to real lies.

从社会谎言转向真实谎言。

Here's an example of a paragraph from an essay I wrote about labor unions .

这是我写的一篇关于工会的文章中的一个段落示例。

As written, it tends to offend people who like unions.

正如所写，它往往会冒犯那些喜欢工会的人。

People who think the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers have a problem to explain: why are unions shrinking now?

那些认为劳工运动是英勇的工会组织者创造出来的人有一个问题需要解释：为什么工会现在正在萎缩？

The best they can do is fall back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations.

他们能做的最好的事情就是依靠对生活在堕落文明中的人们的默认解释。

Our ancestors were

我们的祖先是

giants.

巨人。

The workers of the early twentieth century must have had a moral courage that's lacking today.

二十世纪初的工人一定拥有今天所缺乏的道德勇气。

Now here's the same paragraph rewritten to please instead of offending them: Early union organizers made heroic sacrifices to improve conditions for workers.

现在，同一段文字被重写是为了取悦他们，而不是冒犯他们：早期的工会组织者为改善工人的条件做出了英勇的牺牲。

But though labor unions are shrinking now, it's not because present union leaders are any less courageous.

不过，尽管工会现在正在萎缩，但这并不是因为现任工会领导人的勇气有所减弱。

An employer couldn't get away with hiring thugs to beat up union leaders today, but if they

今天，雇主雇佣暴徒殴打工会领导人是不可能逃脱惩罚的，但如果他们

did, I see no reason to believe today's union leaders would shrink from the challenge.

确实如此，我认为没有理由相信今天的工会领导人会在挑战面前退缩。

So I think it would be a mistake to attribute the decline of unions to some kind of decline in the people who run them.

因此，我认为将工会的衰落归因于工会管理者的某种衰落是错误的。

Early union leaders were heroic, certainly, but we should not suppose that if unions have declined, it's because present union leaders are somehow inferior.

早期的工会领导人当然是英勇的，但我们不应该认为如果工会衰落，那是因为现在的工会领导人在某种程度上低人一等。

The cause must be external.

原因一定是外在的。

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