摘自: Why You Are Probably An NPC
译自: Chatgpt
背景: 医药CEO(美国)当街被枪杀，嫌疑人喜欢的一篇文章
It’s getting ever harder to distinguish humans from bots, not just because bots are becoming more humanlike, but also because humans are becoming more botlike.
现在，区分人类和机器人变得越来越困难，不仅仅是因为机器人变得更加像人类，还因为人类也变得越来越像机器人。
As knowledge of human psychology evolves, algorithms become better at shaping human behavior. Step onto social media and you’ll see the same groups of people getting outraged by the same kinds of things every single day, like clockwork.
随着人类心理学知识的不断发展，算法在塑造人类行为方面变得越来越精确。只要进入社交媒体，你会发现同一群人每天都对相同的事情感到愤怒，像时钟一样规律。
The rise of botlike behavior over the past decade has led to the creation of a meme: the NPC, or Non-Player Character. Once a term used to describe video game characters whose behavior is completely computer-controlled, it now also refers to real humans who behave as predictably as video game NPCs, giving scripted responses and engaging in seemingly mindless, automated behaviors.
过去十年间，机器人般行为的兴起催生了一个网络用语：NPC，或者称非玩家角色（Non-Player Character）。这个词最初用来形容视频游戏中的角色，它们的行为完全由计算机控制，而现在也用来指代那些行为像视频游戏中的NPC一样可预测的真实人类，他们给出脚本化的回应，进行看似无脑的、自动化的行为。
Naturally, everyone believes that their political opponents are NPCs, and no one ever suspects that they themselves are. But being an NPC is not about what you think or do, but how you determine what to think or do. And when judged by this standard, we are all, to some extent, NPCs.
自然，每个人都认为他们的政治对手是NPC，而从来没有人怀疑自己也是。然而，成为NPC并不是关于你思考或做了什么，而是你如何决定思考或做什么。当以这个标准来衡量时，我们在某种程度上都是NPC。
Here’s why: the brain is commonly regarded as a thinking machine, but it’s more often the opposite: a machine that tries to circumvent thinking. This is because cognition costs time and calories, which in our evolutionary history were scant resources.
原因在于：大脑通常被认为是一个思考机器，但它更常表现为相反的角色：一个试图绕过思考的机器。这是因为认知需要消耗时间和能量，而在我们的进化历史中，这些都是稀缺的资源。
As such, the brain evolved to be a “cognitive miser” that operates according to the principle of least effort, taking shortcuts in thinking and perceiving that build a workable but hugely simplified (and cost effective) model of the world.
因此，大脑进化成了一个‘认知吝啬鬼’，它遵循最小努力原则，通过在思考和感知中采取捷径，构建出一个可行但极度简化（且成本效益高）的世界模型。
An NPC, then, is someone who does precisely what they evolved to do. Instead of splurging time and energy to identify what’s true, they take shortcuts to “truth,” outsourcing their beliefs and automating their reasoning.
因此，NPC就是那些完全按照进化所要求的方式行事的人。他们不会浪费时间和精力去辨别什么是真实的，而是通过捷径获取‘真理’，将自己的信念外包出去，自动化自己的推理过程。
The web offers several different shortcuts to “truth,” and the route one takes determines the species of NPC that they belong to. I have identified five common NPC species into which the majority of netizens fall. Analyzing the shortcuts they take is crucial to understanding the information landscape. Further, since you’ve likely been using at least one of these shortcuts yourself, considering them will help you identify the flaws in your own belief-forming behaviors.
网络提供了几种不同的‘真理’捷径，而一个人选择的路线决定了他们属于哪种NPC种类。我已经识别出了五种常见的NPC种类，大多数网民都属于其中之一。分析他们采取的捷径对于理解信息环境至关重要。此外，由于你自己可能也在使用至少一种这样的捷径，思考这些捷径将帮助你识别自己在形成信念过程中的缺陷。
Let’s examine the various breeds of NPC and their different shortcuts to “truth.”
让我们来探讨不同类型的NPC及其通往“真理”的不同捷径。
NPC #1 The Conformist 顺从者
Conformists are the stereotypical NPCs. They trust the process by which society reaches consensus, so accept the mainstream view on all things. Whenever they’re in need of answers, they consult the top result of Google — typically Wikipedia — and accept whatever answer it gives.
顺从者是典型的NPC。他们相信社会达成共识的过程，因此接受所有事物的主流观点。每当他们需要答案时，他们会查阅谷歌的顶部搜索结果——通常是维基百科——并接受它给出的任何答案。
Trusting the consensus seems like a good shortcut to truth, because it feels like one is outsourcing one’s thinking to not one expert but to all of them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this in practice.
相信共识似乎是一个通往真理的好捷径，因为这让人感觉自己并非仅仅依赖一个专家，而是把思考的责任外包给了所有专家。不幸的是，实际情况并非如此。
In 2016 a team of physicists led by Lachlan Gunn investigated the accuracy of witnesses picking suspects from police lineups. They found that as the size of unanimous agreement increased, so did its inaccuracy, until it was no better than chance. The researchers discovered a simple statistical explanation for this “paradox of unanimity:” since everyone is different, the probability of every single person happening to agree on one belief is tiny unless some irrational force, such as laziness or social pressure, is making them agree. In other words, the more people agree, the less likely they are thinking for themselves.
2016年，由拉赫兰·冈恩（Lachlan Gunn）领导的一组物理学家研究了目击者从警察认人排队中挑选嫌疑人的准确性。他们发现，随着一致意见人数的增加，准确性反而下降，直到其准确率与随机猜测一样。研究人员为这一“全体一致悖论”发现了一个简单的统计解释：由于每个人都是不同的，除非某种非理性力量（如懒惰或社会压力）促使他们达成一致，否则每个人恰好就某个信念达成共识的概率是微小的。换句话说，越是多人达成一致，他们思考的独立性就越低。
This would explain, for instance, how Peter Daszak’s letter and the Proximal Origin paper led to a premature consensus around Covid’s origins in March 2020. And why in that same month the WHO disastrously announced that Covid was not airborne.
这就能解释，例如，彼得·达萨克（Peter Daszak）的信和《近源论文》（Proximal Origin）如何在2020年3月就COVID的起源达成过早的共识。而且为什么在同一个月，世界卫生组织（WHO）灾难性地宣布COVID并非空气传播。
When the truth is easily verifiable, such as in mathematics, consensuses are formed in the ideal way: when all the experts reach the same conclusion. But when the truth is not easily verifiable, such as in medicine or the social sciences, consensus is formed not when all the experts reach the same conclusion but when a few experts reach the same conclusion and then all the other experts simply take their word for it, typically because they lack the time or resources to challenge the prevailing hypothesis.
当真理容易验证时，比如在数学中，共识形成的理想方式是所有专家达成相同的结论。但当真理难以验证时，比如在医学或社会科学领域，达成共识的方式不是所有专家得出相同的结论，而是少数专家达成一致，然后其他专家只是简单地相信他们的观点，通常是因为他们缺乏时间或资源来挑战主流假设。
And the experts who initiate a consensus are often driven by bad motivations.
Academics are incentivized to publish findings that are notable, which often leads them to manipulate or fabricate data. In the past few weeks there have been several such scandals. In one case, a prominent “antiracist” professor faked research to portray the US as systemically racist. In another case, the president of Stanford was forced to resign after evidence emerged that his research contained manipulated images. In yet another case, a professor who studies dishonesty was found to have engaged in it in her research.
而那些发起共识的专家往往有不良动机。
学者们被激励去发表有影响力的研究成果，这常常导致他们操控或伪造数据。最近几周就发生了几起这样的丑闻。一个著名的“反种族主义”教授伪造了研究，以描绘美国是系统性种族歧视的。另一个案例是，斯坦福大学的校长因证据表明他的研究中包含了篡改过的图像而被迫辞职。还有一个案例是，一位研究不诚实的教授在她的研究中被发现也参与了不诚实行为。
Academics are also susceptible to being bought. In the 1960s the sugar industry initiated Project 226, the funding of a decades-long false scientific consensus that shifted the blame for heart disease from sugar to fat. Much more recently, the Deputy Mayor of London was caught asking a scientist on City Hall’s payroll to challenge studies questioning the effectiveness of the Mayor’s flagship Ultra Low Emission Zone policy.
学术界也容易受到金钱的影响。20世纪60年代，糖业发起了226项目，资助了一个持续数十年的虚假科学共识，将心脏病的责任从糖转移到脂肪上。更近期的是，伦敦副市长被抓到要求市政厅雇佣的科学家质疑那些质疑市长旗舰政策——超低排放区政策有效性的研究。
Besides money, consensus-makers are also influenced by ideology. Academia has a strong left-liberal bias, and many academics are “woke” in that they’re primed to see oppression in even trivial occurences, leading them to behave more like activists than scholars. This bias is now so prevalent that no attempts are made to hide it; last year the prestigious social science journal Nature Human Behavior loudly and proudly called for the suppression of scientific discoveries deemed politically incorrect. Not that they needed to; most academics already self-censor to avoid the wrath of woke colleagues and students, which is little wonder, considering that 75% of students recently claimed they’d report their professors for expressing an offensive opinion. Due to the fear of ostracism, academic circles are typically spirals of silence where few feel able to state heterodox views.
除了金钱，共识的形成者还受到意识形态的影响。学术界有很强的左翼自由主义偏见，许多学者“觉醒”了，他们准备在甚至最微不足道的事件中看到压迫，从而使他们更像是活动家而非学者。这种偏见如今如此普遍，以至于没有人试图隐瞒它；去年，著名的社会科学期刊《自然人类行为》大声而自豪地呼吁压制那些被认为政治不正确的科学发现。其实他们根本不需要这么做；大多数学者已经自我审查，以避免遭受觉醒同事和学生的愤怒，这也不足为奇，考虑到最近有75%的学生表示他们会举报教授表达冒犯性意见。由于对被排斥的恐惧，学术圈通常是沉默的漩涡，少数人敢于表达异端观点。
Since academia is the source of most new knowledge, its biases are inherited by every information source downstream of it, including the mainstream media, Wikipedia, Google, ChatGPT, social media algorithms, policy papers, Hollywood movies, and societal consensus itself. The ubiquity of woke liberal bias makes it hard for us to see, just as fish have no concept of water, but this is precisely why it must be called out; unlike more extreme political views, liberal biases affect everything.
由于学术界是大多数新知识的源头，它的偏见被所有下游的信息源继承，包括主流媒体、维基百科、谷歌、ChatGPT、社交媒体算法、政策文件、好莱坞电影，甚至社会共识本身。觉醒的自由主义偏见的普遍存在让我们很难察觉，就像鱼无法意识到水一样，但正因为如此，这些偏见必须被揭露出来；与更极端的政治观点不同，自由主义偏见影响一切。
Recent history shows the development of the mainstream’s woke bias. Between 2010 and 2019 there was a roughly 400% increase in the mainstream media’s usage of words like “sexist” and “racist,” which was not justified by the actual incidence of discrimination, and has led liberals to, for example, grossly overestimate the number of police shootings of black Americans. This media bias in turn influences the consensus-makers, bringing the system full-circle, and creating a feedback loop of social justice hysteria.
近代历史显示了主流媒体觉醒偏见的发展。2010年至2019年间，主流媒体使用“性别歧视”（sexist）和“种族歧视”（racist）等词汇的频率增加了大约400%，而这一增长并未由实际的歧视事件所支持，反而导致自由派例如严重高估了美国警方枪杀黑人美国人的次数。这种媒体偏见反过来又影响了共识的制定者，形成了一个闭环，并创造了一个社会正义歇斯底里的反馈循环。
All of this has driven, and been driven by, a mainstream gamma bias that emphasizes social disparities that disfavor women and minorities (such as movie representation), while overlooking disparities that disfavor men and white people (such as suicide rates). The former disparities fuel moral panics and conspiracy theories, the latter disparities are ignored.
所有这些现象推动了主流的“伽马偏见”（gamma bias），这种偏见强调那些不利于女性和少数群体的社会差距（比如电影中的代表性），同时忽视那些不利于男性和白人的差距（例如自杀率）。前者的差距助长了道德恐慌和阴谋论，而后者的差距则被忽视。
Conformists who rely on mainstream consensus can thus be identified by their (often hysterical) overestimation of issues facing women and minorities. Their social media bios will often be decorated with salutes to social justice — BLM, he/him, LGBTQIA+ — but their belief in what constitutes social justice will be dictated by popular fashions; for instance, demanding more Hollywood movie roles for black people, despite black people being overrepresented in movies. The conformists’ demands for a more just world may be sincere but their simpleminded sloganeering, double standards, and refusal to appreciate the complexity of the social issues they decry make their righteousness ring hollow. Further, their subtle radicalization by Wikipedia, which has convinced them their opinions are normal and anyone who disagrees is “far-right,” makes them impervious to correction and spiteful toward anyone who tries.
依赖主流共识的顺从者因此可以通过他们（通常是歇斯底里的）高估女性和少数群体面临的问题来识别。他们的社交媒体简介通常会装饰着对社会正义的致敬——例如BLM、he/him、LGBTQIA+——但他们对什么构成社会正义的信仰将被流行时尚所主导；例如，尽管黑人在电影中的代表性已经过度，仍要求为黑人提供更多好莱坞的电影角色。顺从者对更公正世界的要求可能是诚恳的，但他们简单化的口号、双重标准和拒绝理解他们所反对的社会问题的复杂性，使得他们的正义感显得空洞。此外，维基百科的微妙激进化使他们相信自己的观点是正常的，任何不同意见的人都是“极右”的，这使他们对纠正保持免疫，并对任何尝试纠正的人充满敌意。
Consensus leads to truth when the consensus-makers are motivated to reach truth. But public unanimity is as often a product of laziness, peer pressure, money, and ideology as of rational agreement, so the conformist often takes a shortcut not to truth but merely to the narratives that are most socially, politically, or financially convenient for the consensus-makers to have us believe.
当共识的制定者有动力追求真理时，共识会导致真理的形成。但公共一致性往往更多是懒惰、同辈压力、金钱和意识形态的产物，而非理性协议，因此顺从者通常并非寻求真理的捷径，而只是寻求那些对共识制定者来说，在社会、政治或经济上最方便让我们相信的叙事。
NPC #2 The Contrarian 反叛者
Contrarians are the antithesis of conformists: instead of believing whatever the mainstream believes, they believe the opposite. This is because they start from the position that society’s consensus-producing system is made to manipulate the masses.
反叛者是顺从者的对立面：他们不是相信主流的观点，而是相信相反的观点。这是因为他们从一个立场出发，即社会的共识形成系统旨在操控大众。
A contrarian’s distrust of the mainstream often stems from an ideology that encourages skepticism of society generally, such as Christianity, Islam, or NRx. But just as often, contrarians are disillusioned conformists.
反叛者对主流的怀疑通常源于一种鼓励普遍怀疑社会的意识形态，如基督教、伊斯兰教或新右派（NRx）。但同样常见的是，反叛者是那些对主流失望的顺从者。
A conformist who develops a sense of curiosity eventually realizes that the consensus has not been completely truthful. The realization usually starts with a single issue, for instance gender. The conformist may initially notice that neither she nor anyone she knows has this “gender identity” she’s told she has. Then she’ll notice that the narrative that claims of gender dysphoria are increasing due to the lifting of stigmas makes no sense, because the majority of new cases are adolescent females. Then she’ll realize that the frightening claim that gender-dysphoric youths are more likely to commit suicide if they can’t obtain “gender affirming care” — a claim that spurs many to support medical transition for minors — is unfounded. Then she’ll realize the “Dutch protocol” — the consensus that a course of puberty-blocking drugs followed by cross-sex hormones is a safe and effective way to alleviate juvenile gender dysphoria — was based on methodologically flawed studies funded by Ferring Pharmaceuticals. And when she speaks out about all this, and receives no answer except accusations of transphobia, she’ll conclude that the consensus has been intentionally gaslighting her about gender, and suddenly she’ll begin to doubt its claims about vaccines, and race, and climate change, and Ukraine…
一个发展出好奇心的顺从者最终会意识到，主流共识并不完全真实。这种意识通常始于一个单一的问题，比如性别。顺从者可能最初注意到她自己或者她认识的任何人都没有她被告知的那种“性别认同”。接着她会注意到，那些宣称性别焦虑症因去除耻辱而增加的说法没有意义，因为大多数新病例是青少年女性。接着她会意识到，那些声称如果性别焦虑的青少年无法获得“性别肯定治疗”，他们更可能自杀的可怕说法是毫无根据的——这个说法促使许多人支持未成年人的医学过渡。然后她会意识到，“荷兰协议”——即认为通过服用抑制青春期的药物，再加上性别转换激素，是缓解青少年性别焦虑症的安全有效方法——实际上是基于方法学上存在缺陷的研究，这些研究由Ferring制药公司资助。当她站出来说出这一切，却只收到“恐跨症”（transphobia）的指责时，她会得出结论，认为主流共识在故意对她进行性别上的精神操控，突然之间，她开始怀疑关于疫苗、种族、气候变化和乌克兰的主流说法……
Our hatred for something will be more intense if we once trusted it, so conformists who feel betrayed by the consensus will often overcorrect and stop believing anything the consensus says. Thus is born a new kind of NPC: the contrarian.
我们对某物的憎恨会因为曾经信任它而变得更加强烈，因此那些感到被共识背叛的顺从者往往会过度修正，停止相信共识说的任何话。于是，一种新的NPC类型诞生了：反叛者。
Since the mainstream consensus is left-liberal, contrarians tend to lean right. They are a rarer species of NPC than the conformists, but they dominate the broad fringes of the internet, and are served by a fast-growing alternative media that is already comparable in influence to the mainstream press. Moderate contrarians, who instinctively disagree with the mainstream only on the most contentious topics, may get their info from mildly contrarian outlets like The Hill and the Joe Rogan Experience. More committed contrarians will rely on aggressively anti-establishment sources like Russell Brand, Tucker Carlson, and Bret Weinstein. The most extreme contrarians, who disbelieve everything mainstream, will resort to professional fabulists like Alex Jones and David Icke.
由于主流共识倾向于左派自由主义，反叛者往往倾向于右派。他们是比顺从者更稀有的NPC种类，但他们主导着互联网的广泛边缘，且由一个快速增长的另类媒体服务，这些媒体的影响力已经与主流媒体相当。温和的反叛者，通常只在最具争议的议题上与主流意见相左，可能会从像《The Hill》和《Joe Rogan Experience》这样的轻度反叛媒体获取信息。更为坚定的反叛者则依赖于激进反建制的来源，如Russell Brand、Tucker Carlson和Bret Weinstein。最极端的反叛者，否定所有主流观点，可能会求助于职业虚构家，如Alex Jones和David Icke。
If a contrarian is not already a conspiracy theorist, then contrarianism will quickly make them one. This is because fringe media are naturally dominated by a single seductive narrative: that the establishment can’t be trusted because it’s controlled by shadowy puppetmasters seeking to manipulate the masses. The specific puppetmasters may vary — George Soros, Klaus Schwab, the Freemasons, the Jews — but in all variations of the narrative, the puppetmasters are using globalist policies and mainstream institutions to feminize men, create a one world government, and initiate some kind of “Great Reset.” It is this core belief that justifies the contrarian’s gambit of believing the opposite of the mainstream.
如果一个反叛者还不是阴谋论者，那么反叛主义很快会使他们成为阴谋论者。这是因为边缘媒体天然被一个诱人的叙事主导：即建制派不能被信任，因为它受到了阴暗的操控者的控制，这些操控者试图操控大众。具体的“操控者”可能不同——如乔治·索罗斯、克劳斯·施瓦布、共济会、犹太人——但在所有版本的叙事中，操控者都在利用全球化政策和主流机构来女性化男性，建立一个全球政府，并启动某种“伟大重启”。正是这一核心信念，支持了反叛者相信与主流相反的观点。
Conspiratorial thinking is hardwired into us via an evolved heuristic called “hyperactive agency detection.” Historically it was safer to be paranoid, because doing so helped us avoid traps. The result is that we've evolved to err on the side of presuming things are part of some scheme, which helps explain not just conspiracy theories but also creationism.
阴谋论思维是通过一种进化过的启发式方法“超活跃代理检测”深深植入我们的思维中的。从历史上看，偏执是更安全的，因为这样可以帮助我们避免陷阱。结果就是，我们进化出了倾向于假设某些事物是某个阴谋的一部分，这不仅帮助解释了阴谋论，也解释了创造论。
Today, with access to almost infinite information, contrarians can join whatever dots they need to in order to justify their paranoia. They’ll believe the mainstream when it supports their views, but will typically dismiss info that challenges their narrative as “WEF shilling” or a “Soros-funded psyop.” Basically, attacks on their beliefs become evidence for their beliefs.
今天，随着几乎无限的信息获取，反叛者可以将任何需要的事实联系在一起，以证明他们的偏执。他们会在主流观点支持他们时相信主流，但通常会把挑战他们叙事的信息视为“世界经济论坛的宣传”或“索罗斯资助的心理战”。基本上，攻击他们信仰的言论反而成了他们信仰的证据。
Contrarians will often justify their rejection of mainstream consensus by bringing up past examples of it being wrong. But they’ll never apply this same standard to the fringes, which have been wrong far more often.
反叛者通常会通过举出主流共识过去错误的例子来为自己拒绝主流共识辩护。但他们永远不会将相同的标准应用于边缘观点，而这些观点往往错误得更多。
We know academia has a replication crisis because academics discovered it does. The fringes don’t have a crisis of self-doubt, because they’re not even attempting to self-correct. This is why most of the research I cite in my articles comes from the mainstream. (If I ever appear to attack the mainstream more than the fringes, it’s only because I hold the mainstream to a far higher standard.)
我们知道学术界有复制危机，因为学者们发现了这个问题。边缘群体没有自我怀疑的危机，因为他们根本没有尝试进行自我修正。这就是为什么我在文章中引用的大部分研究来自主流媒体。（如果我看起来比起边缘群体更批评主流，那只是因为我对主流媒体的要求远高于边缘。）
The mainstream media mislead the public with Russell conjugations and paltering (highly selective reporting), but they take care to get the actual reporting right, and when they don’t, they usually issue corrections. In contrast, contrarian media rarely concede when they’re wrong; Fox News and Alex Jones knowingly peddled conspiracy theories for years, but only admitted to it when forced to in court.
主流媒体通过拉塞尔配对法和隐瞒（高度选择性报告）误导公众，但他们会尽力确保实际报道正确，当他们错误时，通常会发布更正。相比之下，反叛媒体很少承认自己错了；福克斯新闻和Alex Jones多年来明知故犯地传播阴谋论，但只有在法院被迫承认时才承认。
The allure of contrarianism lies not in its accuracy but in its intoxicating high: a sensation that one is more aware than the mindless “sheeple.” Contrarians are quick to call conformists NPCs, but in truth they are not doing any more thinking; it takes precisely the same amount of effort to disagree with everything the mainstream says as to agree with everything it says. Black sheep may stand out, but they’re still sheep.
反叛主义的吸引力不在于其准确性，而在于它令人陶醉的快感：一种感觉，认为自己比那些没有思考的“羊群”更觉醒。反叛者很快就会称顺从者为NPC，但实际上他们并没有进行更多的思考；反对主流说法所需的努力和完全同意主流说法所需的努力是一样的。黑羊可能更突出，但它们仍然是羊。
Contrarians are correct that the mainstream consensus is often wrong. But they commit an error when they assume, therefore, that the fringes must be right. Truth is not zero-sum; it’s possible to disagree with an idiot and still be an idiot. For this reason the path of the contrarian leads not to truth but to fringe conspiracy theories that are often fringe for good reason, and thus contrarianism is ultimately an even more perilous shortcut than conformism.
反叛者是对的，主流共识往往是错误的。但他们犯了一个错误，认为因此边缘观点一定是对的。真相不是零和游戏；不同意一个傻瓜并不意味着你就不傻。因此，反叛者的道路并不通向真相，而是通向那些往往有充分理由被视为边缘的阴谋论，因此，反叛主义最终是一条比顺从主义更危险的捷径。
NPC #3 The Disciple 门徒
The disciple is not so much a separate species to the contrarian as its imago; the butterfly to its caterpillar. But it takes a different shortcut to “truth,” so should be considered distinct.
“门徒”与“反叛者”并非完全不同的物种，而是反叛者的“形象”；就像蝴蝶与毛虫的关系。但门徒走的是一条不同的通往“真理”的捷径，因此应该被视为一个独立的类别。
There is a human need to have faith in something, and if one cannot have faith in societal consensus, then that faith must be placed somewhere else. Contrarians try to put their trust in the fringes, but the fringes are cacophonous, so contrarians will often be tempted to put all their trust in a single, charismatic, anti-establishment demagogue. In so doing, they devolve into the oldest NPC species: the disciple.
人类有一种需要信仰的需求，如果无法将信仰寄托于社会共识，那就必须将信仰寄托于别的地方。反叛者尝试将信任寄托于边缘群体，但边缘群体往往声音嘈杂，所以反叛者常常会被诱导将信任寄托于某个单一的、有魅力的反建制政治领袖。这样，他们便退化成了最古老的NPC物种：门徒。
Humanity’s first and simplest shortcut to “truth” was to choose someone considered wise — a sage, king, or prophet — and then believe whatever they said. In so doing, one outsourced one’s beliefs to the person they trusted was best at discerning truth.
人类最初、最简单的通往“真理”的捷径就是选择一个被认为智慧的人——智者、国王或先知——然后相信他们所说的一切。这样，人们将自己的信仰外包给了他们认为最擅长辨别真理的人。
Being a disciple is an attractive shortcut to “truth” because it requires no decision-making, only mimicry. Emulating a person is much easier than embodying an idea; when a Christian wants to know how to act, he could laboriously trawl through his Bible, or he could ask himself, “What would Jesus do?” Since people are mimetic, they tend not to follow ideologies but ideologues.
作为门徒是一个有吸引力的通向“真理”的捷径，因为它不需要做出决定，只需要模仿。模仿一个人比承担一个思想要容易得多；当一个基督徒想知道该怎么做时，他可以费力地翻阅圣经，或者他可以问自己，“耶稣会怎么做？”由于人类是模仿性的，他们往往不是跟随意识形态，而是跟随意识形态的代言人。
Today, many people form beliefs by engaging in a kind of cognitive cosplay, imitating the opinions of idols they admire. The most commonly followed idols today are men like Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk. These messiah-entrepreneurs, who typically advertize themselves as delivering the masses from the globalist elites and averting the feminization of men and the collapse of Western Civilization, tend to lean right because the establishment is left-liberal. Further, they tend to act unapologetically masculine to allure young men deprived of role models by the mainstream’s gamma bias against them.
今天，许多人通过一种认知的角色扮演来形成信仰，模仿他们崇拜的偶像的观点。如今，最受追随的偶像是像安德鲁·泰特（Andrew Tate）、唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）和埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）这样的男人。这些救世主型企业家，通常自诩为将大众从全球主义精英手中解救出来，防止男性女性化以及西方文明的崩溃，他们倾向于偏向右派，因为现有体制是左派自由主义的。此外，他们往往表现得毫不道歉地具有男子气概，以吸引那些被主流社会的伽马偏见所剥夺角色模范的年轻男性。
The idol exerts so much power over his disciples that eventually it overrides their integrity. Trump supporters decry the establishment for its dishonesty, while tirelessly making excuses for their idol’s pathological dishonesty. Andrew Tate followers are quick to call their opponents groomers, while dismissing substantial claims their idol is a groomer. And Elon followers, who are often terrified of vaccines, lab-grown meat, and social engineering, are seemingly at peace with their idol literally wanting to put chips in people’s heads.
偶像对其门徒有如此大的影响力，以至于最终它会超越他们的正直。特朗普的支持者痛斥体制的虚伪，同时不断为他们偶像的病态虚伪辩护。安德鲁·泰特的追随者迅速称对手为“儿童性侵者”，同时忽视有关偶像是“儿童性侵者”的严重指控。而埃隆的追随者，尽管对疫苗、实验室培育的肉类和社会工程感到恐惧，却似乎对他们偶像希望在人们头脑中植入芯片这件事感到心安理得。
The theoretical advantage of being a disciple is that if one can choose an individual with better judgment than oneself, then by adopting his opinions, one can appropriate that better judgment for oneself. However, in practice this tends not to work. A time-tested finding is the two-step flow theory, which states that most people's opinions are copied from their favorite “opinion leaders” (influencers, celebrities, demagogues), who in turn copy the opinions of their favored mass media. As such, a disciple’s idol is often themselves an NPC who is outsourcing his thinking to Fox News or some other low-grade source.
作为门徒的理论优势在于，如果一个人能够选择一个判断力比自己更好的人，那么通过采纳他/她的观点，他就可以将更好的判断力归为己用。然而，在实际操作中，这种做法往往行不通。一个经久不衰的研究结果是“两步流理论”，即大多数人的观点是从他们喜爱的“意见领袖”（如网红、名人、煽动者）那里复制的，而这些意见领袖又是从他们喜欢的大众媒体中复制观点。因此，门徒的偶像往往也是一个NPC，他将自己的思维外包给了福克斯新闻或其他一些低质量的来源。
This is especially true of opinion leaders who lead busy lives, such as Trump, Elon, and Tate, who couldn’t possibly have the time to adequately research and consider all the topics they confidently opine on. This is apparent in their many ignorant statements, such as Elon’s claim that the US would be Covid-free by the end of April 2020, or his promotion of a bizarre conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
这一点在那些忙碌的意见领袖身上尤为明显，比如特朗普、埃隆和泰特，他们不可能有足够的时间去充分研究和考虑他们自信表达意见的所有话题。这在他们许多无知的言论中可见一斑，比如埃隆声称美国将在2020年4月底前摆脱新冠病毒，或者他对南希·佩洛西丈夫的奇怪阴谋论的宣传。
But when you are a disciple, none of this matters; idolizing someone blinds you to their faults, which you end up emulating. The disciple is ultimately just an NPC following an NPC, and thus the shortcut he takes leads not to truth but to wherever his idol blindly leads him.
但是当你是门徒时，这些都不重要；崇拜某人会让你视而不见他们的缺点，而你最终会模仿他们。门徒最终只是一个跟随NPC的NPC，因此他所采取的捷径不是通向真理，而是通向他偶像盲目引导的方向。
NPC #4 The Tribalist 部落主义者
We lived in tribes for over 90% of human history. As such, tribalism is one of the most deeply hardwired of human instincts, and it frequently hijacks our quest for truth, so that other kinds of NPC tend to eventually evolve, or devolve, into tribalists.
我们在部落中生活了超过90%的时间。因此，部落主义是人类最深刻的本能之一，它经常劫持我们追求真理的过程，使得其他类型的NPC最终会进化或退化为部落主义者。
The tribalist’s approach to belief-formation is simple: they’ll seek out whichever tribe they feel the most affinity with, and, under the mistaken impression that those who share their political beliefs are best able to discern truth generally, will then crowdsource their beliefs from within the tribe.
部落主义者的信仰形成方式很简单：他们会寻找自己最认同的部落，然后在错误的假设下，认为那些拥有相同政治信仰的人最有能力辨别一般性的真理，随后他们便会在部落内部众包自己的信仰。
Tribalists have one clear advantage over other breeds of NPC: their tribe offers not just an easy way to form beliefs, but also a sense of belonging.
部落主义者比其他类型的NPC有一个明显的优势：他们的部落不仅为信仰的形成提供了一种简单的方式，还给予了归属感。
But tribalism also has unique disadvantages. Throughout history, tribes that held together would conquer tribes that didn’t, regardless of whether their beliefs about the world were true, so tribal belief-forming evolved not for truth but for binding the tribe-members together.
但是，部落主义也有独特的劣势。在历史上，团结的部落总是会征服那些不团结的部落，无论他们对世界的看法是否正确。因此，部落信仰的形成并不是为了寻找真理，而是为了将部落成员紧密地绑定在一起。
The glue that binds tribes together is usually a Manichean view of reality: “we’re fighting a battle of good versus evil, and, of course, we’re the good guys.” Tribes are held together less by intragroup attraction than by intergroup repulsion; they unite in response to external threats. This is why, in the absence of enemies, they will invent them. Instead of seeking to understand the real causes of an issue, they’ll instinctively scapegoat them on the outgroup.
把部落凝聚在一起的“胶水”通常是二元的世界观：“我们正在进行一场善恶之战，当然，我们是好人。”部落的凝聚力更多地是由群体间的排斥而非群体内的吸引力驱动；他们因外部威胁而联合。这就是为什么在没有敌人的情况下，部落会自己创造敌人。部落主义者不是寻求理解问题的真实原因，而是本能地将问题归咎于外部群体。
We see this constantly in the culture war; leftists will favor beliefs that exaggerate the threat of bigots, and rightists will favor beliefs that exaggerate the threat of groomers. Further, instead of seeking to understand the true causes of complex social problems, leftists will simply blame rightists, and vice versa. And if the two sides decide to discuss the issue, they’ll approach the debate like sports fans, cheering on their team.
我们在文化战争中常常看到这种现象；左派倾向于夸大大男人主义者的威胁，右派则倾向于夸大性别掠夺者的威胁。此外，左派不会寻求理解复杂社会问题的真正原因，而是简单地把问题归咎于右派，反之亦然。如果两方决定讨论这个问题，他们会像体育迷一样进行辩论，支持自己的队伍。
Since tribalists believe the outgroup is corrupt, they’ll rarely trust information from outside their filter-bubble, instead opting for intellectual incest in the confines of an echo-chamber, a kind of autoerotic asphyxiation that slowly starves them of sense.
由于部落主义者认为外部群体是腐化的，他们很少相信来自自己信息泡沫之外的消息，反而选择在回音室的范围内进行知识上的乱伦，一种自恋的窒息，使他们逐渐失去理性。
Tribalists are deceived not just by their need to demonize the outgroup but also by their need to fit the ingroup. They’ll become trapped in purity spirals where they’ll compete with their allies to show the most devotion to the tribe’s principles, leading to the whole tribe becoming more extreme (and deluded) over time.
部落主义者不仅由于需要妖魔化外部群体而受到欺骗，还因为他们需要融入内群体。他们会陷入纯洁性螺旋，在这里他们会与同盟竞争，展示自己对部落原则的最大忠诚，导致整个部落随时间推移变得更加极端（而且越来越迷失）。
Naturally, tribalism is the truth-seeking strategy most common in the most tribal of pursuits: politics. Political beliefs broadly fall into two camps, even though the beliefs in each camp are orthogonal — climate change has little to do with abortion, which has little to do with Ukraine — yet if you know someone’s beliefs on one of these things you can usually predict their beliefs on the others.
自然，部落主义是最常见于最具部落性质的追求中的“寻求真理”策略：政治。政治信仰大致可以分为两个阵营，尽管这两个阵营的信仰通常是正交的——气候变化与堕胎几乎没有关系，堕胎与乌克兰也没有直接联系——然而，如果你知道一个人在这些问题上的信仰，你通常可以预测他在其他问题上的立场。
Tribalism is an easy way to find a sense of community, but it’s no way to find truth. It invariably turns life into a fairy tale of good versus evil, or ingroup versus outgroup, and the need for belonging eclipses the desire for reality. Ultimately, tribalism is a shortcut not to truth but to an ever more polarized distortion of it.
部落主义是一种寻找社区归属感的简单方式，但它不是寻找真理的道路。它不可避免地将生活变成善与恶的童话，或者是内群体与外群体的斗争，归属感的需求超越了对现实的渴望。最终，部落主义是一条通向真理的捷径吗？不，它是通向一个越来越极端的、扭曲的真理的捷径。
NPC #5 The Averager 平均主义者
Averagers understand that both leftists and rightists are partisans who prioritize tribe over truth. They know that the truth is often to be found between the extremes, so they take the most moderate, centrist view on all matters.
“平均主义者”认为，左派和右派都是偏袒自己阵营的党派人士，他们把部落利益置于真理之上。他们知道，真理往往藏于极端之间，因此他们在所有问题上采取最温和、中立的观点。
Averagers think that by eschewing the excesses of the leftist or rightist, or of the conformist or contrarian, they avoid NPC behavior. In fact, averagers are not doing any more thinking than the extremists, and are therefore just as much NPCs.
平均主义者认为，通过避开左派或右派的极端，或者避开顺从者和反对者的极端，他们就避免了NPC行为。事实上，平均主义者并没有比极端分子多思考什么，因此他们也是一样的NPC。
Centrists who are thinking for themselves often pick sides; they’ll agree with the left on some things, and with the right on others. For instance, on healthcare I’m a socialist; I believe everyone should be entitled to free medically necessary treatment regardless of background. But on the issue of speech I’m a libertarian; I oppose government censorship of (legal) information and believe people should be able to decide for themselves what they can see.
那些真正为自己思考的中立者通常会选择立场；他们会在某些问题上赞同左派，另一些问题上则支持右派。例如，在医疗保健问题上，我是社会主义者；我认为每个人都应该有权获得免费的医疗必需治疗，无论背景如何。但在言论自由问题上，我是自由主义者；我反对政府对（合法）信息的审查，认为人们应该有权决定自己能看到什么。
Unlike non-NPC centrists, averagers never pick sides, instead endlessly hovering in the safe middle-ground between the two. By constantly appealing to nuance and compromise in the face of complexity, averagers can signal intelligence while sparing themselves the need for any.
与非-NPC的中立者不同，平均主义者从不选择立场，而是永远在两者之间的安全中立地带徘徊。通过在面对复杂性时不断诉诸于细微差别和妥协，平均主义者能够表现出智慧，同时避免任何深度思考的需要。
This is not to say that being an averager is simply about intelligence-signalling; averagers have usually learned to hedge their beliefs from experience; they are typically refugees from the extremes, who, after flirting with tribalism, conformism, and/or contrarianism, became disillusioned by these approaches and concluded that all sides are equally irrational.
这并不是说做一个平均主义者仅仅是为了信号化智慧；平均主义者通常通过经验学会了对自己的信念进行保留；他们通常是来自极端的“难民”，在经历了部落主义、从众主义或反对主义后，对这些方法产生了幻灭，并得出结论认为所有立场都同样不理性。
As such, averagers frequently espouse horseshoe theory, the idea that the left and right are fundamentally the same and differ only on superficialities. Horseshoe theory has some truth to it, but it too often becomes a lazy way to justify bothsidesism and avoid the need to honestly engage with either side’s arguments.
因此，平均主义者经常提倡“马蹄铁理论”，即左派和右派在本质上是相同的，只是在表面上有所不同。马蹄铁理论有一定的道理，但它往往成为一种懒惰的方式，用来为“双方都有问题”的立场辩护，从而避免真正诚实地面对任何一方的论点。
Averagers are correct that issues are usually more complex than they are portrayed, but since they instinctively dismiss each side’s arguments without trying to understand them, they seldom have a grasp of the nuance they call for. When pressed on why they disagree with both sides, they usually won’t be able to offer specifics, and will resort to their stock answer of both sides being biased.
平均主义者是对的，问题通常比它们被呈现的更加复杂，但由于他们本能地拒绝理解每一方的论点，他们很少能够真正把握他们所提倡的“细微差别”。当被问及为什么反对两方时，他们通常无法提供具体的理由，而会诉诸于“双方都有偏见”这样的标准回答。
Since averagers always refuse to commit to a side, all their beliefs become lukewarm, and they never burn strongly enough to stand for something. As such, averagers are the most anodyne of NPCs, the least prone to extremism but also the least principled.
由于平均主义者始终拒绝承诺某一方，他们的所有信念都变得温吞，永远不会足够强烈以支撑某种立场。因此，平均主义者是最无害的NPC，最不容易极端化，但也是最没有原则的。
The advantage of taking the median position on every issue is that you’ll rarely be completely wrong about anything. But you’ll rarely be completely right, either. The path of the averager is therefore a shortcut not to truth but to the murky middle-ground between truth and lies, and for this reason it should be avoided.
在每个问题上采取中间立场的好处是，你很少会完全错。但你也很少会完全对。
因此，平均主义者的道路并非通往真理，而是通向真理和谎言之间的模糊中间地带，正因如此，这条路应当避免。
Conclusion 结论
So those are the five major kinds of NPC. A person may fit neatly into a single category, or they may be “NPC-fluid,” straddling two or more species; a conformist on Ukraine and an averager on gender, say. But everyone is an NPC on at least some topics they opine on, because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to have an informed opinion on most of the issues we talk about.
因此，这就是五种主要的NPC类型。一个人可能完美地符合某一种类别，也可能是“NPC流动”的，在两种或多种类型之间摇摆不定；例如，他们在乌克兰问题上是从众主义者，在性别问题上则是平均主义者。但无论如何，每个人在他们发表意见的某些话题上都会是NPC，因为我们实在没有足够的时间对大多数我们谈论的问题持有一个经过深思熟虑的观点。
Think about it: the average lifespan of 80 years is just 4000 weeks. You’ve spent many of them already, and a third of what remains will be spent asleep, while most of the rest will be spent working and living. That doesn’t leave you much time to research or think about the things you’ll instinctively offer your opinion on.
想一想：80年的平均寿命也不过是4000周。你已经度过了其中的许多，而剩下的时间中有三分之一会在睡眠中度过，其余的大部分会被工作和生活占据。这并不会为你留下太多时间去研究或思考你本能上想发表意见的事情。
People become NPCs because knowledge is infinite and life is short; they rush into beliefs because their entire lives are a rush. But there’s a better way to save time than speeding through life, and that is to prioritize.
人们之所以会成为NPC，是因为知识是无限的，而生命却是短暂的；他们急于形成信念，因为他们的整个生活都是匆忙的。然而，比匆匆忙忙地度过人生更好的节省时间的方法，就是学会优先排序。
Ultimately the real crime of NPCs is not that they cheat their way to forming beliefs, but that they feel the need to have such beliefs at all. Trying to form an opinion on everything leaves them no time to have an informed opinion on anything.
归根结底，NPC的真正罪过并不是他们在形成信念时“走捷径”，而是他们觉得自己需要对一切都有所见解。试图对每件事都形成观点会让他们无暇对任何事情形成一个真正有见地的观点。
The solution is to divide issues into tertiary, secondary, and primary.
解决方案是将问题分为三级：三级问题、二级问题和一级问题。
Tertiary issues are those you don’t need to care about: the overwhelming majority of things. Consider what difference it will make whether or not you know something, and if it won’t make a difference, resolve to not have an opinion on that thing. Don’t even take a shortcut to beliefs about it. Just accept that you don’t know.
三级问题是那些你根本不需要关心的问题：也就是绝大多数事情。想想知道某件事会对你造成什么影响，如果它不会带来任何影响，那就决定对此不发表任何意见。甚至不要尝试通过捷径来形成观点。直接接受你不知道的事实即可。
Secondary issues are things that interest you, but which you don’t need to get exactly right. On these issues you must take shortcuts, so take the best shortcut there is: adversarial learning. Seek out the best advocates of each side, and believe whoever is most convincing. If that’s too much work, get your news from websites like AllSides or Ground News that allow you to see what each side is saying about an issue.
二级问题是那些你感兴趣但不需要完全正确掌握的问题。在这些问题上，你可以走捷径，而最佳的捷径是对抗性学习：寻找每一方最佳的论点，并相信最具说服力的一方。如果这对你来说仍然太耗费精力，可以从像 AllSides 或 Ground News 这样的网站获取信息，这些网站会展示各方对某个问题的观点。
Primary issues are the ones you care about most, the ones you’re determined to get right. Use the time you’ve saved from ignoring tertiary things and taking shortcuts to secondary things to learn everything there is to know about primary things.
一级问题是那些你最关心、最希望准确理解的问题。利用你从忽略三级问题和通过捷径处理二级问题中节省下来的时间，去深入了解一级问题的每一个细节。
When you’re about to have an opinion, first ask yourself whether it’s on a primary, secondary, or tertiary issue. On tertiary issues, be silent. On secondary issues, be humble. On primary issues, be passionate.
当你准备发表意见时，首先问问自己，这属于一级问题、二级问题还是三级问题。对于三级问题，保持沉默；对于二级问题，保持谦逊；对于一级问题，充满热情。
Your brain will always try to save time when forming beliefs — it’s what it does — but the best way to save time is not to take a shortcut to “truth,” it’s to take no route at all. So if you want to stop being an NPC, simply say “I don’t know” to all the matters that don’t concern you. And that will give you the time to not be an NPC on all the matters that do.
你的大脑总是试图在形成信念时节省时间——这是它的本能。但节省时间的最佳方式并不是试图“走捷径”以找到“真相”，而是根本不去寻找不必要的答案。因此，如果你想摆脱NPC状态，只需对那些与你无关的事情说“我不知道”。这将为你腾出时间，专注于那些真正重要的问题，从而不再是一个NPC。