“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” You may recognize this brilliant quote from genius physicist Albert Einstein.
你可能會記得天才物理學家愛因斯坦有句至理名言：“瘋子就是反復做著相同的事情，卻期望有一天會出現不同的結果。”
However, a quick Google search shows that this quote first appeared in print in 1981, in a pamphlet by Narcotics Anonymous (a US organization that helps people quit smoking), some 25 years after the scientist died.
而通過谷歌搜索，我們發現：1981年，這句話第一次出現在麻醉劑成癮者互誡協會（美國一所戒煙組織）的宣傳冊上。而那時愛因斯坦已經過世約25年了。
Many famous people have probably said less than half the things you’ve heard them being quoted on. This is because quotes are more quotable and inspirational when they come from those famous for their success and wisdom.
我們所聽到過的名人名言可能只有不到一半是出自名人之口。因為許多言論貼上“成功人士或智者”的標簽后，流傳度以及勵志性都會更上一層樓。
Misattributing quotes is just one aspect of our tendency to give celebrities more credit than they rightfully deserve. Nowadays, it’s not just wisdom we want to gain from famous people, we copy everything from soccer players’ hairstyles, to pop singers’ fashion sense and movie stars’ exercise regimes.
將名人名言張冠李戴只是我們對名人盲目崇拜的一個方面。如今，我們不僅渴望從名人身上學到智慧，還會去效仿名人的一切，從球星的發型、歌手的時尚品味，再到影星的健身之道。
In a recent BBC radio program, social anthropologist Jamie Tehrani tried to explain our obsession with celebrities from an anthropologist’s perspective.
在英國廣播公司BBC近期播出的一檔節目中，社會人類學家杰米• 特拉尼試圖從人類學角度來解讀我們對名人的癡迷。
Fame is a powerful cultural magnet. As a hyper-social species, Tehrani explains, humans acquire knowledge, ideas and skills by copying from others, rather than through individual trial and error. However, we pay far more attention to the habits and behaviors demonstrated by famous people than those demonstrated by ordinary folks in our community.
名人聲望就像是一塊強大的文化磁石。特拉尼解釋說，作為一個極端社會化的物種，人類通過模仿來獲取知識、思想和技能，并非經由個人反復試驗和試錯得出。而我們也會更多地去關注名人而不是街坊鄰里的言行舉止和生活習慣。
Tehrani calls this “prestige-biased learning”. Prestige is a form of social status that is based on respect and admiration for members of one’s community. In primitive society, if a hunter is extremely good at hunting, he would be well respected in his tribe and other hunters would study his hunting skills or copy his method of making weapons. Prestige-biased learning has been crucial to the evolutionary success of our species.
特拉尼將這種現象稱之為“聲望學習法”。聲望是一種基于對社群中其他成員的尊敬和羨慕而形成的社會地位。在原始社會中，如果一位獵人十分擅長狩獵，他將在部落里備受尊重，其他獵人都會前來學藝，或者模仿他制造武器的方法。“名望學習法”一直對人類進化起到至關重要的作用。
In the past, Tehrani said, any useless traits we acquired as a result of prestige-biased learning were offset by the benefits of picking up useful skills. So, in the long run, it was an effective, adaptive strategy.
特拉尼表示，過去，我們通過“名望學習法”獲得的任何無用的特性都將被習得的有用技能帶給你的好處所抵消。因此，從長遠來看，這的確是種行之有效的學習策略。
But in the modern world, politicians become famous through sex scandals and singers sell more albums after they die from a drug overdose.
但在當代社會，許多政治家通過桃色新聞而一舉成名，而一些歌手在死于吸食毒品過量后，其專輯卻大賣。
Bob Beckel from USA Today bemoans today’s pop culture, which awards celebrity status to people who have done nothing to deserve it, “other than being outrageous enough to get themselves in the tabloids”.
來自《今日美國》的鮑勃•貝克爾為當今的流行文化而感到惋惜，稱將那些徒有虛名者奉為名人，“除了離譜得足以登上小報之外一無是處”。
Being famous has become an end in itself. In primitive society, a good hunter was a role model because people could learn from him and had a better chance of surviving. Today, we need to ask ourselves if someone is really a good role model and what superior knowledge or skill they can teach us before putting them on a pedestal.
聲望本身已成為一個終極的目標。在原始社會，一位好獵手之所以被視為偶像，是因為人們可以向他學藝以便更好地生存下去。而如今，我們在膜拜偶像之前應該先問問自己：他們是否真的是一個好榜樣，而我們又可以從他們身上學到什么更卓越的知識與技能。 |
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