“助推”的黑暗法則
If you want people to do the right thing, make it easy.” That is the simplest possible summary of Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. We are all fallible creatures, and so benevolent policymakers need to make sure that the path of least resistance goes to a happy destination. It is a simple but important idea, and deservedly influential: Mr Sunstein became a senior adviser to President Obama, while Mr Thaler is this year’s winner of the Nobel memorial prize in economics.
如果你想要人們做正確的事情，那就把做這件事變得容易。這是對卡斯?桑斯坦(Cass Sunstein)和理查德?塞勒(Richard Thaler)合著的《助推》(Nudge)最簡單的總結。我們都會犯錯，因此善意的政策制定者需要確保，最容易走的路徑通向一個好的目的地。這是一個簡單但很重要的想法，並且理所應當地具有影響力：桑斯坦成爲巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)總統的高級顧問，而塞勒則是今年的諾貝爾經濟學獎得主。Policy wonks have nudged people to sign up for organ donation, to increase their pension contributions — and even insulate their homes by coupling home insulation with an attic-decluttering service. All we have to do is make it easy for people to do the right thing.
爲政策絞盡腦汁的人一直在助推人們簽署器官捐獻協議，提高養老金繳款——甚至通過把房屋隔熱與閣樓清理服務結合在一起推動人們給房屋加裝隔熱材料。我們要做的就是讓人們能夠容易地做正確的事情。But what if you want people to do the wrong thing? The answer: make that easy; or make the right thing difficult. Messrs Thaler and Sunstein are well aware of the risk of malign nudges, and have been searching for the right word to describe them. Mr Thaler likes “sludge” — obfuscatory language or procedures that accidentally or deliberately encourage inertia. Voter ID laws, he says, are a good example of sludge, calculated to softly disenfranchise. Meanwhile Mr Sunstein has written an entire book about the “ethics of influence”.
但如果你想讓人們做錯誤的事情呢？答案是：讓做錯誤的事情變得容易；或者讓做正確的事情變得困難。塞勒和桑斯坦很清楚惡意助推的風險，並且一直在尋找合適的詞來描述這種行爲。塞勒喜歡“攪爛”（sludge）這個詞——用模糊不清的語言或者程序無意或者有意鼓勵惰性。他說，選民身份登記法就是“攪爛”的一個很好的例子，這是蓄意軟性剝奪公民選舉權的行爲。同時，桑斯坦還寫了一本主題爲“影響力倫理”的書。
And as we are starting to realise, Vladimir Putin is well aware of the opportunity that behavioural science presents, too. Rumours circulate that the Russian authorities are keen recruiters of young psychologists and behavioural economists; I have no proof of that, but it seems like a reasonable thing for the Russian government to do. I am willing to bet that not all of them are working on attic-decluttering.
就如我們開始意識到的，弗拉基米爾?普京(Vladimir Putin)也很清楚這種行爲科學帶來的機會。關於俄羅斯當局熱切招募年輕的心理學家和行爲經濟學家的傳聞正在流傳。我沒有證據，但對俄羅斯政府而言做這樣的事情似乎很合理。我敢打賭，他們之中並不是每個人都在研究如何清理閣樓。According to Richard Burr, chair of the US Senate intelligence committee, Russian troll accounts on Facebook managed to organise both a protest and a counter-protest in Houston, in May 2016. Americans are perfectly willing to face off against each other on the streets, but if you want it to happen more often, make it easy.
美國參議院情報委員會(Senate intelligence committee)主席理查德?伯爾(Richard Burr)表示，Facebook上的俄羅斯釣魚賬號在2016年5月成功在休斯頓組織了一場抗議活動和一場反抗議活動。美國人的確願意走上街頭彼此對峙，但如果你想讓這種事發生得更頻繁點，就把做這件事變得容易。A number of other memes, political advertisements and provocateur accounts — both left- and rightwing — have since been identified as of Russian origin. Social media networks have unwittingly sold them air time; news sites have cited them; people have shared them, or spent effort refuting them. Nudge isn’t the word for this, but neither is sludge. What about “grudge”?
其他的一些“模因”(meme)、政治廣告和煽動性賬號——無論是左翼和右翼的——後來都被確認來自俄羅斯。社交媒體網絡在不知情地情況下賣給它們出場時間；新聞網站引用了它們；人們分享了它們，或者努力駁斥它們。用“助推”這個詞形容這種現象不合適，“攪爛”也不合適。“怨恨”(grudge)這個詞怎麼樣？The Russians are not alone in using grudge theory to manipulate public opinion. Three social scientists — Gary King, Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts — recently managed to infiltrate networks of shills in China, who are paid to post helpful messages on Chinese social media. (Their nickname is the “50 cent army”.) Unlike the Russian trolls, their aim has been to avoid engaging “in debate or argument of any kind?.?.?.?they seem to avoid controversial issues entirely”. The tactic is, rather, to keep changing the subject, especially at politically sensitive moments, by talking about the weather, sports — anything. If you want potential protesters to make cheery small talk instead, make it easy.
使用怨恨理論來操縱輿論的並非只有俄羅斯。3名社會科學家加里?金(Gary King)、珍妮弗?潘(Jennifer Pan)和瑪格麗特?羅伯茨(Margaret Roberts)最近設法滲透了中國的水軍網絡，所謂的水軍是被僱傭在中國社交媒體上發送正面消息的人。（他們也被戲稱爲“五毛黨”。）和俄羅斯噴子不同，他們的目的是避免參與“任何形式的辯論或者爭論……他們似乎完全避免一切爭議性問題”。相反，5毛黨的策略是不斷地改變主題，討論天氣、運動等任何其他事情，尤其是在政治敏感時期。如果你希望潛在的抗議者轉而進行愉快的閒聊，那就讓這件事變得容易。
Just as noble tools can be turned to wicked ends, so shady techniques can be used to do the work of the angels. For example, why not disrupt online markets for illegal drugs by leaving bad reviews for vendors? Research by social scientists Scott Duxbury and Dana Haynie suggests that because people rely on user reviews on illicit markets, law enforcement officers could attack those markets by faking negative reviews, thus undermining trust.
正如好的工具也可以用於邪惡的目的，一些並不光明正大的手段也可以用來完成高尚的工作。比如，爲什麼不通過給賣家差評來擾亂違禁藥物的在線市場呢？社會科學家斯科特?達克斯伯裏(Scott Duxbury)和達娜?海尼(Dana Haynie)研究表明，因爲在非法市場，人們依賴於用戶評論，所以執法人員可以通過假差評來打擊這些市場，從而破壞信任。The parallel with Mr Putin is alarmingly clear: it is possible to attack democracy and rational discourse by creating an information ecosystem where everyone yells at everyone else and nobody believes anything.
這與普京所採取策略的相似之處清晰得可怕：建立一個每個人都在朝着對方大喊大叫、沒人相信任何事情的信息生態系統來攻擊民主和理性話語是可能的。
