《“多重事實”的迷思》（One event / incident, multiple facts?）

來源: 於 2023-11-29 09:54:05 [博客] [舊帖] [給我悄悄話] 本文已被閱讀：次

【“多重事實”的迷思】（One event / incident, multiple facts?）

很多年前，在我做第二期博士後的時候，碰到了一個有些“特別”的老板。他算是學界大佬，是我們這個方向知名學術刊物的主編，手上經費很充足。他讓我帶兩個人，負責他的一個項目。幾百萬美元的基金已經拿到手，但需要出數據、發文章。

In the past, when I was on my second postdoc stint, my advisor was quite "special". He was a big shot in academia, the editor-in-chief of a well-known academic journal in our field, and had ample funding. He asked me to lead a team of a couple of assistants, responsible for one of his projects. We had already secured grants of several million dollars, but we needed to produce data and publish articles.

我在他的實驗室每周至少幹70個小時，然而一年以後進展甚微。大約在2007年冬天的一個傍晚，在他的巨型辦公室，我倆有一段不長的交談。我們分坐在對角線的位置，相隔10米不止。黃昏天色黑下來，他不開燈，暗得臉都看不清。那氣氛真是幾分肅殺。我告訴他，他想要的data不可能得到。我詳細地向他論證、說明，告訴他誰也做不到。

I worked at least 70 hours per week in his lab, but couldn’t achieve much after a whole year.  On a winter evening around 2007, in his massive office, we had a brief conversation. We sat diagonally across from each other, more than 10 meters apart. The dusk settled in, and he didn't turn on the lights, making the room so dim that faces couldn't be clearly seen. The atmosphere was somewhat oppressive. I told him that the data he wanted was impossible to obtain. I elaborated and explained in detail, telling him that it was an unattainable task for anyone.

然而他卻說，你那麽聰明的人是應該能得到的。我爭辯說，他提出模型有問題，不可能得到預期的東西 — That’s the fact.

However, he insisted, saying that someone as intelligent as me should be able to get it. I argued that the model he proposed was flawed, and it was impossible to achieve the expected results—that's the fact.

屋子的那一端傳來他的笑聲。no， no， no，他說，假如馬路上出了一個交通事故，你站在馬路的一邊，我站在馬路的另一邊 – Then， we are seeing two different facts.

Laughter emanated from his end of the room. "No, no, no," he said, "Imagine there's a traffic accident on the road. You're standing on one side, and I'm on the other – then, we are seeing two different facts."

我目瞪口呆……幾個月以後，我離開了他的實驗室去了公司。

I was shocked… A few months later, I left his lab and joined the industry.

那一年半，從某種意義上講是不堪回首的。但他那句振聾發聵的話，卻在後來的日子裏對我頗有幫助 — 在看人和想事、做事諸方麵都有難以言狀的啟發。而且，近距離觀察大佬和他的左膀右臂們組成的shady圈子，也是難得的人生經曆。

That year and a half, in some ways, was not something I would want to revisit. But his stunning words actually have been helpful to me in the days that followed—making me in understanding people, thinking about things, and approaching tasks from a different angle that are hard to put into words. Additionally, witnessing the shady circler of the big shot and his right-hand people up close was a rare life experience.

由於這樣一個經曆，我後來也經常思考one event/incident，multiple facts 是否合理的問題。我了解到，在英語裏，fact與reality是有些不同的（我暫把truth，belief等放在一邊）。Reality是一個總體，一個比較抽象的概念。記得有一次在一個博覽會上，我跟一個公司的業務員說你們公司的口號“Help scientists to do science“ 挺好，他馬上說這不是slogan，這是reality。我想他是要強調的是這是公司的總體定位，不需要具體的例子。而fact是構成reality的具體方麵，它經常是可觀察、可測量的，也是可以根據某些標準作結論的。比如從科學實驗的結果看，尼古丁具有很強的成癮性，這是fact；但從社會現實和社會規則來看，吸煙並不等同於吸毒，這又是另一個fact。

Due to this experience, I often pondered the question of whether "one event / incident, multiple facts" is reasonable. I learned that in English, "fact" and "reality" are somewhat different (I put aside other concepts, such as "truth" and "belief"). Reality is a general concept, a more abstract idea. I remember once at an expo, I told a company's salesperson that their slogan "Help scientists to do science" was good, and he immediately said it's not a slogan; it's reality. I think he wanted to emphasize that it's the overall positioning of the company, not needing specific examples. A fact is a specific aspect that makes up reality; it is often observable, measurable, and can be concluded based on certain standards. For example, from the results of a scientific experiment, nicotine is highly addictive—that's a fact. But from the perspective of societal norms and rules, smoking is not equivalent to drug use—that's another fact.

但我依然有無解的困惑：用我前老板的例子，馬路的兩側假如看到的（或者錄像中顯示的）是相互矛盾的facts，那麽法律上怎麽判定呢？或者，這種矛盾其實根本不應該存在？

Yet, I still have unsolved puzzles: in the example of my former boss, if the facts seen (or shown in videos) on both sides of the road are contradictory, how does the law make a judgment? Or, such a contradiction actually shouldn’t exist?

【英文根據ChatGPT版編輯、修改】




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