布克反彈有趣小現象 爲什麼帥哥都那麼混蛋

Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending is a good novel. We know it's a good novel because lots of people like it, and because it won the Man Booker, one of the biggest prizes in English-language literature. But here’s the funny thing. After the book won the prize, people didn't like it as much! Its rating on the site Goodreads took a sudden plunge. And it wasn't the only book to suffer that fate. A recent paper by sociologists Balázs Kovács and Amanda J. Sharkey studied a group of 32 English-language novels that won major literary awards. After the prize, their ratings on Goodreads dropped from an average of just under 4 to about 3.75. A group of comparably rated novels that were short-listed for prizes, but didn't win, showed no such diminution.

朱利安·巴恩斯的小說The Sense of an Ending不錯。很多人都喜歡這部小說，並且它還獲得了布克獎——英語文學的重量級獎項之一。但是奇怪的事兒來了。在獲獎之後，人們沒有從前那麼喜歡這部小說了。它在Goodreads上的排名驟然下滑，而且它並不是唯一遭此厄運的小說。最近社會學家巴拉茲·卡瓦茨和阿曼達·J·莎克里發表了一篇論文，其中研究了一組共32部英語小說，它們都曾獲得過重要的文學獎項。在獲獎之後，它們在Goodreads上的排名平均下滑3.75到4個位次。另外一組研究對象則是入圍但是最終並未獲獎的小說，它們跟獲獎小說的水平相當，但是卻未出現如此現象。

When a book wins a Booker, that ought to make us think it’s good. Every sociologist—OK, every human being over the age of 12—knows we like things more when we hear that other people like them. So what explains the Booker backlash?

如果一本書能夠獲得布克獎，我們會理所當然的認爲它是本好書。每一位社會學家，好吧，每一個12歲以上的人，都知道如果我們聽說有其他人也跟我們一樣喜歡一樣東西，那我們會更加喜歡它。那又如何來解釋“布克反彈”現象呢？

At least in part, it’s a quirk of statistics called Berkson's fallacy. If you know one thing about correlation, it’s that correlation is not the same as causation. Two variables, like height and math scores in school kids, may be correlated, even though being good at math doesn’t make you taller, or vice versa. What’s going on is that older kids are both taller and better at math. Correlation can arise from a common cause that drives both variables in the same direction.

從某種程度來說，它是一種被稱之爲伯克遜謬誤的統計失真。如果你對相關性略知一二，你會知道相關並不代表因果關係。比如兩個變量，學生的身高和數學成績，它們可能具有相關性。雖然數學成績好並不能讓你長高，同樣的，你再長得高點，也不能提高你的數學成績。事實是，年齡大一點的孩子通常個子高一些，同時他們的數學成績也會好一些。基於一個共同的原因，使得兩個變量朝着相同的方向發展，由此兩者之間產生了相關性。

But that's not the only way misleading correlations can pop up. Joseph Berkson, the longtime head of the medical statistics division at the Mayo Clinic, observed in 1938 that correlations can also arise from a common effect. Berkson's research was about medical data in hospitals, but it’s easier to explain the phenomenon in terms of the Great Square of Men.

但是這並不是誤導相關產生的唯一原因。約瑟夫·伯克遜，長期擔任Mayo診所的醫學統計部領導，他在1938年發現共同的影響也可以導致相關性。伯克遜的研究是基於醫院的醫學數據，但是我們可以通過“大方塊中的男人”這個例子，來更容易的解釋這個現象。

Suppose you’re a person who dates men. You may have noticed that, among the men in your dating pool, the handsome ones tend not to be nice, and the nice ones tend not to be handsome. Is that because having a symmetrical face makes you cruel? Does it mean that being nice to people makes you ugly? Well, it could be. But it doesn't have to be.

假設你在和男人約會。你可能會注意到，在你的候選人員中，那些帥哥的脾氣更加不好，而那些友好的男人又往往更醜些。這是否意味着對人友好會把人變醜？好吧，也許是的。不過不是非得這樣。

Behold the Great Square of Men. (And I'd like to note that you can find more stunning hand-drawn illustrations just like this one in How Not to Be Wrong.)

讓我們回到“大方塊中的男人”。(而且我想提醒你，在How Not to Be Wrong.中你會找到比下圖更驚人的手繪插圖)

Now, let’s take as a working hypothesis that men are in fact equidistributed all over this square. In particular, there are nice handsome ones, nice ugly ones, mean handsome ones, and mean ugly ones, in roughly equal numbers.

現在，讓我們做一個有效的假設，即方塊中的男人實際上是等分佈的。更具體點說，我們把這些男人分爲4類，既友好又長得帥的，友好但是長得醜的，不友好但長得帥的和不友好又長得醜的，每一類的人數都差不多。

But niceness and handsomeness have a common effect: They put these men in the group of people that you notice. Be honest—the mean uglies are the ones you never even consider. So inside the Great Square is a Smaller Triangle of Acceptable Men:

但是友好和帥氣具有一個共同的效應：只有這些人你纔會注意到。說實話，那些脾氣又臭長得又醜的男人根本不在你的考慮範圍之內。因此在這個大方塊中，只有一個小三角纔是你的選擇範圍。

Now the source of the phenomenon is clear. The handsomest men in your triangle, over on the far right, run the gamut of personalities, from kindest to (almost) cruelest. On average, they are about as nice as the average person in the whole population, which, let’s face it, is not that nice. And by the same token, the nicest men are only averagely handsome. The ugly guys you like, though—they make up a tiny corner of the triangle, and they are pretty darn nice. They have to be, or they wouldn't be visible to you at all. The negative correlation between looks and personality in your dating pool is absolutely real. But the relation isn't causal. If you try to improve your boyfriend’s complexion by training him to act mean, you've fallen victim to Berkson's fallacy.

至此，這個現象產生的根源已經很清楚了，在你的三角中，最帥的人位於最右邊的線上，它幾乎囊括了人的所有品性，從最寬厚的到(幾乎)最殘忍的。平均而言，他們的友好程度跟全體男人的平均友好水平差不多，但是，我們必須正視，這個友好程度並不十分友好。同理可得，最友好的男人的相貌也只達到全體男人的平均水平。而那些你能看上的醜男們，他們可真是友好的不像話啊，雖然他們只佔了三角中的一個很小的角落。不過他們必須得是這樣的，否則怎麼入得了你的法眼。約會對象的相貌和品性之間具有負相關性，這是絕對真實的。但是這種相關性並不具備因果關係。千萬別想着通過訓練男友行爲卑劣，就能使他們的相貌增色幾分，否則你就淪爲伯克遜謬誤的犧牲品了。

The fallacy works, too, as a driver of literary snobbery. Why are popular novels so terrible? It’s not because the masses don’t appreciate quality. It’s because the novels you read are the ones in the Acceptable Triangle, which are either popular or good. So within that group, the good ones are less likely to be popular, for the same reason the handsomer men are bigger jerks. If you force yourself to read unpopular novels chosen essentially at random—I've been on a jury for a literary prize, so I've actually done this—you find that most of them, just like the popular ones, are pretty bad. And I imagine if you dated men chosen completely at random from OkCupid, you’d find that the less attractive men were just as jerky as the chiseled hunks. But that’s an experiment I can’t recommend, not even for the sake of mathematical enlightenment.

此謬誤也是文學上的勢力現象產生的驅動力之一。爲什麼流行小說評價如此糟糕？並非是大衆不懂得欣賞，而是因爲每個人讀的小說只在自己能接受的三角範圍內，它們要麼流行，要麼很好。在這個範圍內，好的小說更可能不那麼流行，就好比那些比較帥氣的男人更可能是個大混蛋！如果你強迫自己讀一些完全隨機選擇的非流行小說(我曾經當過一個文學獎的評委，所以我確實這麼幹過)，你會發現它們中的大多數，都非常的糟糕，就跟流行小說的表現一樣。而且我能想像，如果你從OkCupid上完全隨機的選擇約會對象，你會發現那些不怎麼具有吸引力的男人和俊朗的帥哥一樣混蛋。不過我可不推薦這個實驗，即便是打着數學啓蒙的旗號。

And now what happened to Julian Barnes is pretty clear. There are two reasons you might have read The Sense of an Ending and rated it on Goodreads. It might be because it’s exactly the kind of novel you’re apt to like. Or it might be because it won the Booker Prize. When a book wins a prize, then its audience expands beyond the core group of fans already predisposed to love it. That’s what every author dreams of, but more frequently read inevitably means less universally liked.

至此，朱利安·巴恩斯的遭遇已經相當明瞭。你可能已經讀過The Sense of an Ending，並且在Goodreads上給它打了分。這其中的原因可能有兩個，一個是因爲它恰好就是你會喜歡的那類小說，另一個是因爲它獲得了布克獎。如果一本書獲了獎，那麼它的讀者就不僅僅是那些之前就已經很熱愛它的核心粉絲羣體了。獲獎是每一個作家夢寐以求的事情，但是一本書被讀到的越頻繁，喜歡它的讀者的比例就越低。