测试你自己的知识
下面是一些“常识”。看看你已经知道了多少，如果可能，再确定你是如何知道的。在继续阅读本章之前完成这个非正式的清单
1.女人有养育孩子的特质，男人没有。
2.在美国西部几乎没有非洲裔美国人。
3.发泄怒火有降低怒火和让我们感觉好一些的效果。
4.清教徒是“循规蹈矩，正派、拘谨而一本正经的人”。
5.在哥伦布到达新大陆之前，本地美洲人之间和平共处，与环境和谐友好。
6.阿尔弗雷德金赛关于人类性的研究在学术上是严谨和客观的。
7.为了省钱，雇主从其他国家引进非熟练技能工人。
8.奴隶制的实施起源于美洲殖民地。
如果你认为你对它们大多数都不知道，那就奇怪了。毕竟，很多作家写过它们，并且普遍认为它们是大家都认同的认知。让我们对每一条做更仔细的分析。
1.芭芭拉里斯曼（Barbara Risman）对这个观念很好奇，并决定进一步研究。她的发现挑战了传统的看法。很显然，负责照料小孩和年老父母的男人显示出通常和女人相关的同样的养育特点。她总结说，这些特点依赖于人在生活中的角色，就像性别一样。
2.这个事实和我们所知道的相矛盾。比如，德克萨斯州畜牧中25%的牛仔是非洲裔美国人，洛杉矶最初的移民中60%是非洲裔美国人。很多人不知道这个事实的原因可能是历史书籍中关于非洲裔美国人信息学术上的疏忽。
3.传统的看法又错了。在回顾发脾气的证据后，卡罗尔塔佛瑞士（Carol Tavris）总结到，“在实验的观察下，宣泄怒火的心理学理论并不成立。所有的证据恰好表明了它的反面：表达愤怒会让你更生气，固化生气的态度，养成敌视的习惯。如果你对突然发生恼怒的事情保持冷静，用愉快的活动让你分散注意力，直到你狂暴的怒火熄灭，相比你将自己丢进咆哮的争吵中，你可能会感觉好一些，并且更快的恢复好心情。”
4.虽然清教徒坚决认为性生活肯定是为婚姻而保留的，他们在公开场合毫不犹豫的讨论这个主题，在婚姻内并不那么拘谨。问题好像是人们混淆了清教徒和维多利亚时代的人。
5.这个纯粹是虚构。少数部落是非常爱好和平，还有一些不仅仅喜欢打仗，而且屠杀妇女儿童、虐待俘虏。有些部落还用人献祭，杀害老人，还有吃人的行为。说到他们宣称的对自然的和谐尊重，很多部落成片砍伐森林，无节制地杀害成群的动物。
6.阿尔佛雷德金赛关于人类性行为的研究被认为是客观的，学术的，超过半个世纪没有改变。事实上，它已经成为了心理疗法、教育甚至宗教的基础。令人惊奇的是在这全部时间里没有人批判性地阅读它，直到朱迪斯雷斯曼（Judith A. Reisman）和爱德华爱歇尔（Edward W. Eichel）。他们证明金赛的工作方法有固定的偏差，这明显的影响了他的结论。他企图创建这样的说法，排他的异性恋只不过是是特定条件压抑的产物，是不正常的。男人和女人之间的性行为并不比两个男人之间、两个女人之间、成年人和小孩、或者人和动物的性行为更自然；双性恋应该被认为是人类性行为的规范。当亚伯拉罕马斯洛（Abraham Maslow）向金赛显示他的方法不科学，金赛简单的视而不见。金赛继续宣称乱伦可以让人满足和充实，儿童对成年人性要求的不满仅仅是因为父母和法律权威的约束。作者还声称在金赛的研究里，金赛雇佣了9个性犯罪者用手和口的方式刺激，刺激数百个婴儿和小孩达到性高潮。
7.事实上，在很多情况下，如果将工人的运输费用一并计算，引进劳动力比国内的工人花费更多。比如，选择更多的印度工人而不是当地的非洲人在东非建设铁路。同样的，选择中国工人超过殖民地的马来人。在这两个案例中，使用引进的工人的总费用更高。但是每单位工作的成本更低，因为引进来的工人生产的更多。在这些和其他的案例中，选择外国人代替国内劳动力的主要原因是，外国工人“更勤奋，更可靠、技术熟练或者细心”。
8.这个观念也是错误的。奴隶制有几千年历史，比伊斯兰教、佛教、还有基督教更早。威尼斯人、希腊人、犹太人、中国人、印度人和埃及人、以及其他的地方都实施了奴隶制。在哥伦布时代很久以前，美洲本地的部落就互相奴役。，美洲和其他地方的区别不是引进了奴隶制，而是废止了奴隶制。西半球废止奴隶制的时间比非洲、亚洲和中东要早数十年。
对于这8个条目你“知道”的越多，并且你对你的“知识”越确信，你可能就有更多的困难去发现这些事实。事实上，你可能会这样想“等等，这一定有什么错误。卢杰罗（Ruggiero）引用的人是谁？它们是真的学者吗？我对它们全部抱有怀疑”。这个反应是可理解的，因为对一个错误的表述熟悉后，会让它看上去像真的。但是这是批判性思考者对于被控制和约束的反应。古希腊哲学家埃皮克提图（Epictetus）的警告很中肯：“消除自负，因为任何人都不可能会去学习他认为已经知道的事情。”
我们揭穿了传统智慧的真相，你还在困惑吗。那么，想想这些，数世纪以来，传统智慧还认为重的物体下落速度比轻的物体更快，还有意识来源于心而不是大脑。它还拒绝了这些想法：机器可以飞，让不同城镇的人进行通讯，创建人体内部图像。这些所谓的“智慧”确实是短视，但对于我们来说是显而易见的，这是因为有些人愿意问，有没有可能我和其他人认为我们知道的并不是这样的？这个小问题是批判性思维最有用的工具之一。
原文：
Testing Your Own Knowledge
Following are some items of “common knowledge.” Determine how many you already know, and then decide, if possible, how you came to know each. Complete this informal inventory before continuing with the chapter.
- Women are nurturing but men are not.
- African Americans had little or no part in settling the American West.
- Expressing anger has the effect of reducing it and making us feel better.
- The Puritans were “prim, proper, and prudish prigs.”
- Before Columbus arrived in the New World, Native Americans lived in peace with one another and in respectful harmony with the environment.
- Alfred Kinsey’s research on human sexuality is scrupulously scholarly and objective.
- Employers import unskilled labor from other countries to save money.
- The practice of slavery originated in colonial America.
It would be surprising if you did not think you knew most of these items. After all, many writers have written about them, and they are widely accepted as conventional wisdom. But let’s look a little more closely at each of them.
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Barbara Risman became curious about this idea and decided to study it further. Her findings challenged the conventional wisdom. Apparently, men who are responsible for caring for children or elderly parents display the same nurturing traits usually associated with women. She concluded that these traits are as dependent on one’s role in life as on one’s sex.1
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The facts contradict what is known. For example, 25 percent of the cowboys in Texas cattle drives were African American, as were 60 percent of original settlers of Los Angeles.2 The reason these facts are not more widely known is probably because of scholarly omission of information about African Americans from the history books.
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Conventional wisdom again is wrong. After reviewing the evidence about anger, Carol Tavris concludes, “The psychological rationales for ventilating anger do not stand up under experimental scrutiny. The weight of the evidence indicates precisely the opposite: expressing anger makes you angrier, solidifies an angry attitude, and establishes a hostile habit. If you keep quiet about momentary irritations and distract yourself with pleasant activity until your fury simmers down, chances are you will feel better, and feel better faster, than if you let yourself go in a shouting match.”3
4.Although the Puritans did hold that sex is rightly reserved for marriage, they did not hesitate to talk openly about the subject and were not prudish within marriage. The problem seems to be that people confuse the Puritans with the Victorians.4
5.This is pure myth. Few tribes were completely peaceful, and many not only were warlike but slaughtered women and children and tortured their captives. Some tribes also offered human sacrifices, murdered the elderly, and practiced cannibalism. As to their alleged harmonious respect for nature, many tribes deforested the land and wantonly killed whole herds of animals.
6.Alfred Kinsey’s work on human sexuality has been regarded as objective, scholarly, and definitive for more than half a century. In fact, it has become a foundation of psychotherapy, education, and even religion. Amazingly, in all that time no one read it critically until Judith A. Reisman and Edward W. Eichel did so. They document that Kinsey approached his work with a firm bias that significantly influenced his conclusions. He sought to establish that exclusive heterosexuality is abnormal and results merely from conditioning and inhibition; that sex between a man and a woman is no more natural than sex between two men, two women, a man and a child, or a man and an animal; and that bisexuality should be considered the norm for human sexuality. When Abraham Maslow demonstrated to Kinsey that his approach was unscientific, Kinsey simply ignored him. Kinsey went on to assert that incest can be satisfying and enriching and that children are upset by adult sexual advances solely because of the prudishness of parents and legal authorities.
The authors also allege that in his research Kinsey employed a group of nine sex offenders to manually and orally stimulate to orgasm several hundred infants and children.6
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The fact is that in many cases imported labor costs more money than domestic labor when the cost of transporting the workers is included in the calculation. For example, Indian workers were chosen over local Africans to build a railroad in East Africa. Similarly, Chinese workers were chosen over colonial Malayans. In both cases, the total cost of using imported workers was greater, but the cost per unit of work was lower because the imported workers produced more. In these and many other cases, the principal reason for choosing foreign over domestic labor is that the foreign workers are “more diligent, reliable, skilled, or careful.”7
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This notion is also mistaken. Slavery is thousands of years old, predating Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity. It was practiced by the Venetians, Greeks, Jews, Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians, among others. Native American tribes enslaved one another long before the time of Columbus. The distinction enjoyed by the Americas is not having introduced slavery, but having abolished it. Slavery was abolished in the Western Hemisphere many decades before it was in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.8
The more of the eight items you “knew,” and the surer you were of your “knowledge,” the more troubling you are likely to find these facts. You may, in fact, be thinking, “Wait a minute, there must be some mistake. Who are these people Ruggiero is quoting? Are they genuine scholars? I’m skeptical of the whole lot of them.” This reaction is understandable, because familiarity with a false statement can make it seem true. Yet it is a reaction critical thinkers keep on a short leash. The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus’s warning is relevant: “Get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.”
Are you still troubled by our debunking of the conventional wisdom? Then consider that, for centuries, conventional wisdom also held that heavier objects fall more rapidly than lighter ones and that the heart and not the brain is the seat of consciousness.9 It also rejected the idea that machines could ever fly, enable people to communicate with one another across town, or create pictures of the interior of the human body. That such “wisdom” is really shortsightedness is plain to us only because some individuals were willing to ask, Is it possible that what I and other people think we know isn’t really so? This little question is one of the most useful tools in critical thinking.
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