2023年06月六级第2套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

Chimpanzees (黑猩猩), human beings' closest animal relatives, share up to 98% of our genes. Yet humans and chimpanzees lead very different lives. Fewer than 300,000 wild chimpanzees live in a few forested corners of Africa today, while humans have colonized every corner of the globe. At more than 7 billion, human population dwarfs that of nearly all other mammals — despite our physical weaknesses.

黑猩猩是人类最近的动物近亲，与我们共享高达 98% 的基因。然而人和黑猩猩过着截然不同的生活。如今野生黑猩猩不足 30 万只，栖息在非洲少数几片森林角落，而人类已遍布全球每一个角落。人口超过 70 亿，几乎让所有其他哺乳动物的数量都相形见绌——尽管我们在体能上处于弱势。

What could account for our species' incredible evolutionary successes?

是什么造就了我们这个物种惊人的进化成功？

One obvious answer is our big brains. It could be that our raw intelligence gave us an unprecedented ability to think outside the box, innovating solutions to thorny problems as people migrated across the globe.

一个显而易见的答案是我们的大脑袋。也许正是我们与生俱来的智力，赋予了我们前所未有的跳出常规思考的能力，让人类在迁徙全球的过程中不断为棘手问题创造出解决办法。

But a growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists (人类学家) are rejecting that explanation. They think that, rather than making our living as innovators, we survive and thrive precisely because we don't think for ourselves. Instead, people cope with challenging climates and ecological contexts by carefully copying others.

但越来越多的认知科学家和人类学家否定了这一解释。他们认为，我们并非以创新者的身份谋生，恰恰是因为我们不自行思考才得以生存和繁盛。人们应对严酷气候与生态环境的方式，是小心翼翼地模仿他人。

In a famous study, psychologists Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten showed two groups of test subjects — children and chimpanzees — a mechanical box with a treat inside. In one condition, the box was opaque, while in the other it was transparent. The experimenters demonstrated how to open the box to retrieve the treat, but they also included the irrelevant step of tapping on the box with a stick.

在一项著名研究中，心理学家维多利亚·霍纳和安德鲁·怀滕向两组实验对象——儿童和黑猩猩——展示了一个里面装有零食的机械盒子。在一种条件下盒子不透明，另一种条件下则是透明的。实验者演示了如何打开盒子取出零食，但同时还加入了一个无关的步骤：用棍子敲盒子。

Oddly, the children carefully copied all the steps to open the box, even when they could see that the stick had no practical effect. That is, they copied irrationally: Instead of doing only what was necessary to get their reward, children slavishly imitated every action they'd witnessed.

奇怪的是，孩子们仔细地复制了打开盒子的所有步骤，哪怕他们能看出棍子毫无实际作用。也就是说，他们的模仿是非理性的：孩子们没有只做拿到奖励所必需的动作，而是亦步亦趋地模仿了看到的每一个动作。

Of course, that study only included three- and four-year-olds. But additional research has shown that older children and adults are even more likely to mindlessly copy others' actions, and infants are less likely to over-imitate — that is, to precisely copy even impractical actions.

当然，那项研究只涉及三四岁的儿童。但后续研究表明，年龄更大的儿童和成年人更可能不假思索地模仿他人的动作，而婴儿则较少出现过度模仿——即连不实用的动作也照搬不误。

By contrast, chimpanzees in the study only over-imitated in the opaque condition. In the transparent condition — where they saw that the stick was mechanically useless — they ignored that step entirely. Other research has since supported these findings.

相比之下，研究中的黑猩猩只在盒子不透明时才出现过度模仿。在透明条件下——它们看得出棍子在机械上毫无用处——就完全略过了那个步骤。此后的其他研究也支持了这些发现。

When it comes to copying, chimpanzees are more rational than human children or adults.

在模仿这件事上，黑猩猩比人类儿童或成人更理性。

Where does the seemingly irrational human preference for over-imitation come from? Anthropologist Joseph Henrich points out that people around the world rely on technologies that are often so complex that no one can learn them rationally. Instead, people must learn them step by step, trusting in the wisdom of more experienced elders and peers.

人类这种看似非理性的过度模仿偏好从何而来？人类学家约瑟夫·亨里奇指出，世界各地的人们所依赖的技术往往复杂到没人能靠理性推演学会。人们只能一步一步地学，并信赖更有经验的长辈和同伴的智慧。

So the next time you hear someone arguing passionately that everyone should embrace nonconformity and avoid imitating others, you might laugh a little bit. We're not chimpanzees, after all.

所以下次当你听到有人慷慨激昂地主张人人都该特立独行、不要模仿他人时，你不妨会心一笑。毕竟，我们又不是黑猩猩。