社会科学 · SOCIAL SCIENCES

安德鲁·阿伯特:专业知识的未来

The Future of Expert Knowledge, by Andrew Abbott [1]
安德鲁·阿伯特 著
刘文楠·周忆粟 译

感谢弗兰岑(Martina Franzen)博士的介绍。我很高兴能在这里对如此考验我能力的听众演讲。由于时间有限,我就不客套了,而是直接进入话题。很抱歉我没用德语来讲,因为我德语欠佳。

今晚,我将谈的观点是,不同规模和时间尺度的历史力量结合在一起,似乎对专业知识的本质突然造成了危机。这些力量中一些是新的,另一些则历史悠久,故此,它们的结合(conjuncture)[2] 很难诠释。通过对这些力量进行仔细的归类,并指明它们彼此的对位关系,我的目的是全面分析专业知识的情况。你们当中那些了解我工作的人会认识到我通常的策略,那就是进行过程论论证(processual argument)。我将把当下分解成几个不同过程的交集,它们具有不同的时间特征。然后我将用那样的分解方式来提出可能的干预点。

1. 并无革命

不过,我今天要讲的第一点是一个重要警告:我不打算谈论任何当前的「知识革命」,因为当前并无知识革命。我们处在某个革命性时期的想法,是当前知识世界各种团体的一种意识形态,这些团体希望驱使或强迫其他人支持他们对未来的特定设计,他们的设计与知识基本无关,但与资本主义密切相关。在学术界内部,对「创新」、「创造力」和「卓越」的狂热,源于将各种管理的意识形态机械且不恰当地运用于智识生活。可以肯定的是,目前技术进步异常迅速,但是基础科学的进步则慢得多了。在一个又一个领域,我们今天依靠过去的基础科学过活,为量子力学、板块构造、新生物进化论和文化相对论等理论填写脚注,推导它们的技术应用,而所有这些理论都可追溯到二十世纪上半叶。在我看来,与1870年到1950年的发现相比,基础研究最近无甚进展。

清华大学梅汝璈法学讲席教授冯象:欢迎来到硬规则世界

这是一本新书,《我是阿尔法》,封面画着两个人:机器人高出一头,向人类伸出手来,可是那个抬头仰视的人身子僵直,不愿握手。

“原本草稿上,俩人是一样大的。后来我建议机器人大点,人小点。”作者冯象先生说。

他说,国内学界讨论人工智能(AI),经常落入一个误区:把AI理解成了自动化问题。可是自动化,从发明轮船火车开始,产业升级“腾笼换鸟”的挑战,是人类社会一直在应对的,至少有200年了。人工智能之所以值得探讨,是因为地平线上升起了两片阴霾:大失业同AI军事化。终极的威胁则是,发展下去,人类可能会面临一个远比自己聪明的物种,其行为、性格与思想意识人绝对无法理解。这,才是新问题。

已故的麻省理工教授明斯基(1927-2016),人称AI教父,曾说:“智能的力量源于我们自身广博的多样性,而非某种独一无二的完美原则所赐”(The Society of Mind, 1986, p.308)。在他看来,本质上,人的感情和心理意识跟演算、逻辑推理没什么不同,都是智能的表现形式。人们引以为傲的各种智能,都可以还原为神经元相互作用的过程。

利求同:隐私的未来

“秘密是撒谎,分享是关怀,隐私是偷窃。”

这是美国科幻作家埃格斯(Dave Eggers)对未来的大胆想象。他的小说《圆圈》(The Circle)拍了电影,这句话是影片里面同名超级公司的训言,同公司建筑的极简主义风格一起,接受“吸科技”的瘾君子朝拜。那里,我们习以为常的道德规范被颠倒了,做成新的信条:藏着隐私是严重的人格缺陷,上缴个人信息等于实现人生自由,光大“分享主义”美德;而保护隐私就视同盗窃,要受新人类的唾弃,并交给新法律制裁。

隐私,能如此激发作家的想象,应该说是物联网智能时代的一个标记。不过,作为隐私的法定业主,我们得感激埃格斯先生的慷慨。因为在他的超级智能化的未来,隐私仍是有价值的,且依法享有平等的保护。人们只需修正价值观,将隐私从“私”和“隐”的疆域中剥离,转化为信息/数据财产,就能继续熟悉的生活了。当然,这新财产总是落在了别人,例如圆圈公司的手里,留给我们个人的,只是生产和再生产即奉献隐私的许可,人格权的一具空壳。但权利的空壳也是权利,也能给人带来安慰,因而是促进社会和谐美丽所不可少的一项制度。

事实上,这隐私的未来已经到来。做一个透明人,自愿或被迫交出隐私,供人牟利,业已是生活常态了。只是,价值观的修正跟社会道德转型尚待完成。转型时期,还会有人呼吁,试图保护隐私;隐私的归属和使用上的冲突,却日益频发而尖锐起来。这是因为,在资本当道的条件下,隐私同分享有着不可调和的矛盾。最近脸书在美国乃至全球受到质疑,就是生动的例证。国会一边吵架,一边调查,俄国是否介入或干扰了美国大选,脸书却被爆料曾泄露8,700万用户的个人信息,给一家英国公司。脸书声称,这些用户信息是第三方以“不正当方式”获取的。小扎亲自出面,向公众道歉,保证今后严加管理。殊不知,早在二〇一一年,脸书就用户信息泄露事件做出过几乎同样的承诺。而那承诺之所以未能兑现,是因为无法兑现;实际上,国家法律也不允许兑现。现在的商业模式和残酷的产业竞争,有哪一家网络企业,包括电商大鳄,不是靠挖掘买卖用户信息赚钱的?手里的用户隐私越多,市场就越大,利润就越高。假如隐私当真严加保护,不就等于支柱产业集体自杀了?

New Book: The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America, by Beth Lew-Williams

The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America, by Beth Lew-Williams. Harvard University Press 2018. ISBN 9780674976016

有声书下载 Audiobook Download [MP3]:Magnet Link

中译本:《无处落脚

The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885. Following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming Territory, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. Beth Lew-Williams shows how American immigration policies incited this violence and how the violence, in turn, provoked new exclusionary policies. Ultimately, Lew-Williams argues, Chinese expulsion and exclusion produced the concept of the “alien” in modern America.

The Chinese Must Go begins in the 1850s, before federal border control established strict divisions between citizens and aliens. Across decades of felling trees and laying tracks in the American West, Chinese workers faced escalating racial conflict and unrest. In response, Congress passed the Chinese Restriction Act of 1882 and made its first attempt to bar immigrants based on race and class. When this unprecedented experiment in federal border control failed to slow Chinese migration, vigilantes attempted to take the matter into their own hands. Fearing the spread of mob violence, U.S. policymakers redoubled their efforts to keep the Chinese out, overhauling U.S. immigration law and transforming diplomatic relations with China.

By locating the origins of the modern American alien in this violent era, Lew-Williams recasts the significance of Chinese exclusion in U.S. history. As The Chinese Must Go makes clear, anti-Chinese law and violence continues to have consequences for today’s immigrants. The present resurgence of xenophobia builds mightily upon past fears of the “heathen Chinaman.”

Beth Lew-Williams is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University.


“With scrupulous research and conceptual boldness, Lew-Williams applies the nuances of a ‘scalar’ lens to contrast anti-Chinese campaigns at local, regional, and national levels, producing a social history that significantly remakes the well-established chronology of Chinese exclusion by highlighting the role of anti-Chinese violence and vigilantism in advancing immigration controls on the Chinese from goals of restriction to exclusion.”—Madeline Y. Hsu, author of Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction

“The Chinese Must Go presents a powerful argument about racial violence that could not be more timely. It shows why nineteenth-century pogroms against the Chinese in the American West resonate today. White nationalists targeted Chinese immigrants as threats to their homes and jobs and blamed the American government for failing to seal the borders.”—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896

“Moving seamlessly from the local to the international, The Chinese Must Go offers a riveting, beautifully written new account of Chinese exclusion, one that foregrounds Chinese voices and experiences. A timely and important contribution to our understanding of immigration and the border.”—Karl Jacoby, Columbia University


Table of Contents

Introduction: The Violence of Exclusion
Part 1: Restriction
1. The Chinese Question
2. Experiments in Restriction
Part 2: Violence
3. The Banished
4. The People
5. The Loyal
Part 3: Exclusion
6. The Exclusion Consensus
7. Afterlives under Exclusion
Epilogue: The Modern American Alien
Appendix A: Sites of Anti-Chinese Expulsions and Attempted Expulsions, 1885–1887
Appendix B: Chinese Immigration to the United States, 1850–1904
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

《经济学家》2014年最佳图书

参考:《经济学家》年度最佳图书:2011201220132015201620172018

The best books of 2014 were about the South China Sea, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the publishing of “Ulysses” and capitalism in the 21st century

Politics and current affairs


The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited. By Louisa Lim. Oxford University Press; 248 pages; $24.95 and £16.99. Buy from Amazon.com
Twenty-five years after the bloodshed in Beijing, new details keep emerging. This reconstruction, by a correspondent for America’s National Public Radio, is as important for Western readers as it is for the new Chinese generation that has grown up since 1989 and knows little of what happened.


The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech. By Flemming Rose. Cato Institute; 240 pages; $24.95. Buy from Amazon.com
The culture editor of the Danish newspaper that published cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 offers a personal account of the ensuing controversy and what it means for democracy.

约翰·萨顿:《垄断的秘密:沉没成本与市场结构》

社会思想译丛 ★ 新书讯

垄断的秘密:沉没成本与市场结构约翰·萨顿(John Sutton):《垄断的秘密:沉没成本与市场结构》(Sunk Costs and Market Structure: Price Competition, Advertising, and the Evolution of Concentration),艾佳慧、贾绅译,北京大学出版社2014年。ISBN: 9787301242353. @豆瓣 @小组

《垄断的秘密:沉没成本与市场结构》一书在近年来支配了产业组织文献的博弈理论模型与传统的结构/产品/绩效范式(由贝恩及其理论继承者发展而成)倡导的实证研究主题之间搭建了一座桥梁。

由于很多理论结果被证明其依赖于很难被测定的市场特征,一些观察者认为博弈论文献不能为构成20世纪50年代以来该主题的跨行业实证研
究提供理论基础。运用当前的博弈理论模型,约翰·萨顿重新检验了传统研究主题。他指出, 尽管许多结果具有“微妙”的性质,但在合理改变
模型设定时,存在一些被证明是相当稳健可靠的理论预测。因此,当我们在范围很大的跨行业间寻找统计规律性时,应当考虑这些结果。

萨顿收集了一个行业研究“矩阵”,包括6个国家(法国、德国、意大利、日本、英国和美国)和食品饮料部门中的20个行业。为解释产业结构的演化,他结合理论、计量证据以及在细节上展示各不相同的结构演化模式以发现在复杂的产业结构演化中博弈论进路的长处和局限。

理查德·波斯纳:《资本主义民主的危机》

理查德·波斯纳文集 ★ 新书讯

资本主义民主的危机理查德·波斯纳:《资本主义民主的危机》(The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy),李晟译,北京大学出版社2014年。@豆瓣 @小组

本书是波斯纳关于2008年全球金融危机的第二本著作。作为《资本主义的失败》的后续,《资本主义民主的危机》进一步深入到经济学的理论语境当中,不仅从现实层面对于奥巴马政府的危机应对政策做出了细致分析和犀利批评,还从理论层面讨论了金融危机的形成与发展所带来的启示,在此基础上提出了有建设性的改革措施,建议通过经济、法律、公共政策等多方面手段加强政府的金融监管,并展望了后危机时代的前景。波斯纳指出,金融危机不仅反映了投资者与公众面对泡沫时的盲动,更显示出政府放松监管背景下金融本身的危险性和当下经济学学术发展的误区,以及美国政治结构内在的低效、分裂与冲突,因而不仅是经济危机,更是资本主义民主的危机。

Francis Fukuyama: Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.

Francis Fukuyama: Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. ISBN: 0374227357; 9780374227357.

弗朗西斯·福山:《政治秩序与政治衰败:从工业革命到民主全球化》

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of DemocracyThe second volume of the bestselling landmark work on the history of the modern state

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Gress called Francis Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order “magisterial in its learning and admirably immodest in its ambition.” In The New York Times Book Review, Michael Lind described the book as “a major achievement by one of the leading public intellectuals of our time.” And in The Washington Post, Gerard DeGrott exclaimed “this is a book that will be remembered. Bring on volume two.”

Volume two is finally here, completing the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West.

《经济学家》2013年最佳图书

参考:《经济学家》年度最佳图书:2011201220142015201620172018

分为政治、传记、历史、经济、科技、文化、小说七类:

Politics and current affairs


My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. By Ari Shavit. Spiegel & Grau; 464 pages; $28. To be published in Britain by Scribe in February; £20.

Drawing on interviews, historical documents, diaries and letters, as well as his own family story, Ari Shavit, a Tel Aviv newspaper columnist mines four generations of history to tease out the conflicts and contradictions in his controversial homeland. A passionate elegy.

沈明:经济危机与经济学的危机

经济危机与经济学的危机:从波斯纳的研究切入

Economic Crisis and Economics’s Crisis: A Critique Inspired by Richard Posner’s Studies

内容提要:作为一九三〇年代经济大萧条之后的最严重经济衰退,始于二〇〇八年的经济危机事实上已经成为另一场经济萧条。这场灾难的根本原因在于资本主义经济制度内在的系统风险,因此它标志着以自由市场竞争为基本特征的资本主义制度遭遇了一次重大失败。除了担负经济监管职能的政府之外,经济学职业界对这场危机负有不可推卸的责任。过去三十年间的主流经济学特别是宏观经济学和金融理论研究在方法论上存在重大缺陷,有用的理论建树乏善可陈。经济学职业界在经济危机爆发前后的表现均令公众大失所望,凸显了这一学术领域所面临的危机。当下的经济危机和经济学危机为中国经济发展和经济学研究提供了教训与启示。中国经济学界尤其应当警惕市场原教旨主义在认识论上的谬误和实践中的危害。经济学等社会科学研究者必须约束意识形态前见,以实用主义的态度面对并致力于解决真实世界中的问题,并不断寻求新知,追求自我超越。

经济学的危机

Abstract: As the most severe economic recession after the Great Depression, 2008 economic crisis has turned out to be another depression. The fundamental reason of the calamity is the internal systematic risks of capitalist economy; the crisis therefore symbolizes a remarkable failure of capitalism whose key feature is free market. In addition to governments in charge of economic regulation, economics profession must claim an inescapable responsibility for the bust. In past three or so decades, mainstream economics, particularly macroeconomics and financial theories, have demonstrated serious methodological flaws, hence little useful theoretical achievement. Economics profession disappointed the public very much by its both ex-ante and ex-post performance in regard of the crisis, which suggested economics profession’s own crisis. Current crises of economy and economics provide lessons and revelations for Chinese economy and economics studies. Chinese economists ought to pay alerted attention to epistemological fallacy of market fundamentalism and its harms to economy. Economists and other social scientists are expected to constrain their ideological preconceptions, and to pragmatically face and overcome problems in the real world, while marching toward new knowledge and self-transcendence.

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苏力主编:《法律和社会科学》第八卷

《法律和社会科学》第八卷

法律和社会科学》[Law and Social Sciences] 第八卷,苏力主编,法律出版社 2012年。

购买:亚马逊当当网

主题讨论:基层社会与司法

农田水利纠纷与乡村秩序:鄂中w村调查/焦长权
“彻底解释”农民的地权观/朱晓阳
人民法庭对绅权的转化和替代/孟庆友
基层法院办案方式的转变(1982-2008年)/朱涛
基层法院“送法下乡”的行为逻辑——以对西北某基层法院的观察为例/葛峰

评论

“地方政府都市化”策略下的户籍制度改革——以重庆户籍改革为切入点/卢 超
信息成本下的公共执法与私人参与——从“钓鱼执法”事件切入/昊义龙
网络舆情中的风险、认知与规制/胡 凌

批评:两湖平原“混混”研究

法律能否治理“混混”/王启梁/
“乡村江湖”的兴起如何可能/林辉煌
巨变年代的底层、基层与经验研究/易江波
对“混混”研究的质疑/侯猛

约翰·卓贝克(编):《规范与法律》

社会思想译丛 ★ 新书讯

规范与法律

约翰·卓贝克(John N. Drobak)(编):《规范与法律》(Norms and the Law),杨晓楠、涂永前译,北京大学出版社2012年。ISBN: 9787301199541. @豆瓣 @小组

购买:亚马逊中国;当当网。

内容简介

本书包含了来自法律、经济学和政治学等不同领域的世界知名学者对法律和规范之间的关系提出的观点。作者们从法律、法律史、新古典经济学、博弈论、政治学、认知科学和哲学等广泛的视角,运用不同的方法对此进行了分析。这些文章探讨了规范和法律在四种语境下的关系。第一部分的文章从认知科学和行为经济学的角度分析了对法律有影响的规范。在第二部分,作者们运用三种不同类型的共有财产来分析合作的规范。第三部分的文章分析了规范对司法机构施加的限制。最后也就是第四部分探讨了正式的法律对规范的影响。

罗伯托·曼加贝拉·昂格尔:《觉醒的自我:解放的实用主义》

社会思想译丛 ★ 新书讯

觉醒的自我:解放的实用主义

罗伯托·曼加贝拉·昂格尔(Roberto Mangabeira Unger):《觉醒的自我:解放的实用主义》(The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound),谌洪果译,北京大学出版社2012年。ISBN: 9787301167380. @豆瓣 @小组

购买:亚马逊中国当当网

内容简介

在哪种世界上,为了哪种思想,时间才是真实的,历史才是开放的,新奇才是可能的?在哪种世界上,为了哪种思想,人类自找麻烦而非远离麻烦才是有意义的?在这部期待已久的一般哲学著作中,罗伯托·曼加贝拉·昂格尔对有关自然、心智、社会、政治和宗教的既有观念提出了某种彻底的重新定向。他指出,如果我们要做到恰当对待我们那些最为独特的当代经验、发现和理想,我们就必须做出怎样的改变。《觉醒的自我》充分动用几个哲学传统的资源,并针对实用主义这一当今最具影响的传统,发掘出一些前所未闻的革命性内涵。

本书尽量避免高深术语和故弄玄虚,并已充分的理由表明哲学是最高的智力竞争活动,坚持认为哲学的力量应该用来处理那些最重要的问题。

书评

罗伯托·昂格尔是我们时代少有的极具原创性的政治哲学家之一。他的著作《觉醒的自我》简洁洗练,深入浅出,用一种独特的立场来看待政治哲学的一个重要问题,并阐发了该立场对于我们时代的各种政治困境的意义。该书为他的复杂深邃的思考提供了最好的入门引导。对于那些不愿走回头路的勇敢的世俗人文主义者来说,本书为那种重要的对话做出了一个重要的贡献。——布鲁斯·阿克曼,耶鲁大学法律和政治科学斯特林教授,《国父们的失误》作者

《经济学家》2011年最佳图书

参考:《经济学家》年度最佳图书:2012201320142015201620172018

分为政治、传记、经济、历史、科技、文化、小说、诗歌八类(封面图片链接至 Amazon):

The best books of 2011 were about China, Congo, Afghanistan, Charles Dickens, Vincent van Gogh, the “Flora Delanica”, Jerusalem, Mumbai’s dance bars, quantum physics, sugar, orgasms, blue nights, two moons and other people’s money

Politics and current affairs

Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future
Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future. By Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron and Meera Balarajan. Princeton University Press; 352 pages; $35 and £24.95
Few things will affect our future more than migration. By calculating the how, where and why of future labour shortages, the authors analyse the costs and benefits of human migration.

Thinking, Fast and Slow. By Daniel Kahneman

Thinking, Fast and Slow. By Daniel Kahneman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2011. 512 pages. ISBN: 0374275637; 9780374275631

购买本书@亚马逊

Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book.

Thinking, Fast and SlowIn the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.

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