英語聽力文摘 人人都會讀心術(shù)？

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讀心術(shù)

Sometimes we get letters here asking whether psychics are for real. Well, despite the t.v. shows, there isn’t any scientific evidence that psychic powers, such as mind-reading, actually exist. That doesn’t prove they don’t exist–just that, so far, there’s no reason to think they do.

Still, the famous scientist and popular writer Isaac Asimov made an interesting observation about mind-reading once. Many people across the centuries have claimed they could read other people’s minds. If this is true, Asimov points out, then mind-reading would be a fact of nature. It would at least in some people be one of things that the human brain can do, just like dreaming or maintaining your body temperature. That would mean that mind-reading would have to be the result of evolution.

If, somehow, brains could read other brains directly, there would indeed be a very strong evolutionary advantage to it. In Asimov’s example, even a simple version of mind-reading, such as a chicken being able to sense an approaching fox’s brain as it thinks “food, food, food,” would be a huge advantage! Animals of any species that could do rudimentary mind-reading should survive much better than ones that couldn’t, and should pass on their mind-reading gene quite effectively.

Do you see the problem? The fact that there is a debate at all over whether mind-reading exists suggests that it doesn’t. If it were a real phenomenon, versions of it should be widespread, the way normal vision is. We would expect it to be everywhere . . . not just in a few “special” people with nothing up their sleeves.

我們有時會收到觀眾來信詢問通靈人是否真實存在。實際上，除了電視節(jié)目，沒有任何科學(xué)依據(jù)證明特異功能的存在，例如讀心術(shù)。但這也不能證明它們不存在。只是目前為止，我們沒有理由相信它們存在。

不過，著名科學(xué)家及作家艾薩克•阿西莫夫做過一次有趣的觀察，是關(guān)于讀心術(shù)的。在過去的幾個世紀(jì)里，很多人聲稱自己會讀心術(shù)。如果真的是那樣，艾薩克•阿西莫夫指出，那么讀心術(shù)便是一種本性。人的大腦是可以做到的，就像做夢或者維持體溫。這意味著讀心術(shù)是進(jìn)化的結(jié)果。

如果大腦能夠直接解讀其他大腦，必然會有一個強(qiáng)大的進(jìn)化優(yōu)勢。在阿西莫夫的實例中，即使是讀心術(shù)的簡單版本，例如雞能感覺到正在靠近的狐貍的大腦在想“食物，食物，食物”，這就是一個很大的優(yōu)勢。那些可以做最基本的讀心術(shù)的動物比不會讀心術(shù)的動物生存得更好，并且會高效地傳授它們的讀心術(shù)基因。

明白了嗎?關(guān)于讀心術(shù)是否存在的爭論表明它根本不存在。如果讀心術(shù)真實存在的話，它的版本應(yīng)該更廣泛，方式更正常。我們希望它無處不在，而不只是發(fā)生在幾個毫無根據(jù)的"特殊"的人身上。