十个惊人的科学事实:我们为何热爱清单

　　一份典型的清单，它的样式对于这个博客的作者来说再熟悉不过了。 人们喜欢把事情列在清单上。清单在互联网上无处不在。任何你能够想到的事情，可能都有与之相关的清单，无一例外。甚至是在《卫报》的科学版块，最近几个月最热门的的一篇文章也是一份清单（译文在此）。但是，清单为何如此流行？下面十项关于清单的惊人事实或许有助于解释这一现象。

　　1. People will tend to remember the first thing on a list

　　一、人们更容易记住清单上的第一件事

　　Lists are commonly used as tools for assessing people's memory. Word lists are a typical tool for testing someone's ability to remember and recall items, and can be designed and adapted to analyse a wide variety of human memory abilities. One of the things uncovered by this sort of research is the primacy effect, meaning people are more likely to remember the first thing they are presented with, due to the way attention works and the demands of memory formation. So when you try to tell someone about this list, you may end up saying "The first thing on the list was that you're more likely to remember the first thing on the list".

　　清单通常是被用来评估人们记忆的工具。单词表就是用以测试记忆和回想条目能力的典型工具，它可以被设计并适合于分析人类记忆能力的多样性。这类研究所发现的事实之一就是“首因效应”，也就是说，由于注意力的工作方式以及记忆形成的需要，人们更容易记住摆在他们面前的第一样事物。所以，当你试图告诉别人本文中的清单时，你最后可以说，“清单上的第一件事是，你更容易记住清单上的第一件事。”

　　2. The human brain may automatically structure information in list form (although it may not)

　　二、人类大脑可能会自动将信息以清单形式加以组织（也可能不是这样）

　　Much research has been conducted into how humans store and structure their knowledge and thoughts. Collins and Quillan in 1969 proposed theirHierarchical Network model, where concepts and categories are stored at a certain level in the brain/mind and the properties of these are listed "below" (metaphorically). However, this view has met with some criticism, mainly based on how human memory or knowledge is rarely shown to be so rigidly³ organised. Still, it shows how fundamental lists may be.

　　许多研究都意在揭示人类是如何存储和组织其知识和想法的。柯林斯和奎利安在1969年提出了他们的层级网络模型，根据这个模型，概念和范畴储存在大脑/观念中的特定层面上，而它们的具体内容则列在下面（比喻说法）。然而，这一观点受到了一些批评，其理由主要是人类的记忆或知识很少表明是如此严格的被组织起来的。但是，这还是表明了清单可能有多么重要。

　　3. Lists take advantage of a limited attention span

　　三、清单利用了有限的注意力持续时间

　　There is an increasingly common view that internet use shortens a person's attention span. While a lot of this is Greenfield-esque paranoia⁴ about new technology, evidence suggests our visual attention is attracted to novelty, and on the internet novelty is always only a click away. There is data to suggest that this is how internet use works, and much of the web is dedicated⁵ to exploiting this. Rather than paragraphs of narrative⁶, pushing the limits of a typical attention span, lists offer novelty every few lines, and thus are more likely to avoid the dreaded⁷ TL:DR response.

　　一个日益普遍的看法是，互联网的使用缩短了人们的注意力持续时间。当网络用户中的很多人展现出格林菲尔德式的对新技术的狂热时，有证据表明我们的视觉注意力会被新奇事物所吸引，而在互联网上，新鲜玩意总是随着鼠标点击一闪而过。有数据显示网络使用是如何工作的，而许多网站都致力于利用这一点。不同于挑战典型的注意力持续时间的大段的叙述，清单用寥寥数行展示新奇事物，因此它能更加容易的避免令人担忧的“太长而不愿读”的用户反应。

　　4. You probably won't remember all the things on a typical list

　　四、你可能不会记得一份典型清单上的所有东西

　　A lot of lists are lists of 10, or some multiple thereof, given that the majority of humans have grown up using the decimal system. However, short-term memory, or "working memory" as it's known to psychologists, has an average capacity of 7 (+/-2). This means you can hold an average of 7 "things" in your short term memory. These can be letters, words, or even sentences, as long as they count as one "thing". This is the limit of your short term memory. These things can be transferred to the long term memory if you rehearse or encounter them enough, but this means that if you try to remember everything on this list to tell someone about later, you'll be unable to recall 3 items on average. This bit might be one of them, which would be ironic⁸.

　　许多清单都列出十项事情，或是十的倍数，因为大多数人类已经进化到使用十进制。然而，如心理学家所知，短时记忆或“工作记忆”的平均存储能力是7（+/-2）。这就意味着，在短时记忆中，你可以平均记住七项“东西”。它们可能是字母、单词、甚至是句子，只要能算作是一样“东西”。这是你短时记忆的极限。如果你重述或看到它们的次数足够多，这些东西就可以转化成长期记忆，但是这意味着，如果你试图记住本文列出的所有东西以便转述给别人，平均算起来，有三样东西你可能想不起来。这一段可能就是其中之一，真是有够讽刺的。

　　5. People are very good at grouping random⁹ things together, so lists can be about anything

　　五、人们非常擅长把随机事物组合在一起，所以任何东西都可以登上清单

　　Probability theories of category formation demonstrate that we tend to lump very different things together in the same category, (e.g. Football and Chess have very few features in common, but both would be considered a type of game). This tendency to group things together despite their differences mean lists with a nominal¹⁰ subject matter can include things that wander off topic quite bizarrely, like a list of scientific facts about the human body including a discussion of atomic structure.

　　类别形成的概率理论表明，我们倾向于把不同的东西堆在同一个类别之下(例如足球和国际象棋鲜有相同特征，但是两者都可以看成是游戏类型)。无视不同而将东西组合在一起的倾向意味着，有着一个名义上主题的清单可能包括一些风马牛不相及的东西，比如关于人类身体的科学事实的清单里却包括了关于原子结构的讨论。

　　6. Popular things can be listed

　　六、流行事物可以被列入清单

　　Lists are very popular, so logically lists about popular things would be more popular again. Bacon, sexy ladies, funny cats and tweets, all of these regularly end up on lists. You may say this point isn't scientific in any way, but I include it as evidence for the above point. Which means it is scientific in a very tenuous¹¹ way.

　　清单非常流行，所以从逻辑上讲，关于流行事物的清单会更加流行。火腿、性感女郎、有趣喵星人以及推特。通常情况下，所有这些东西最后都会排上清单。你可能会觉得这一论点根本不科学，但我把它作为上一个论点的证据。这意味着，它是科学的，以一种相当微妙的方式。

　　7. Lists fit the way humans tend to read

　　七、清单适合人类倾向于进行阅读的方式

　　It has been demonstrated many times, in scientific studies and Martin Robbins' blog, that the way people read things on the internet follows anF-shaped pattern. While this is detrimental¹² to blogs and articles with continuous prose, this is obviously beneficial for lists of things, as the reader is reading in a pattern that largely follows a list structure.

　　通过科学研究和马丁?罗宾的博客已经论证多次的是，人们在网上看东西的方式遵循着一种F型模式。这一模式不利于登载系列散文的博客和文章，却显然有利于清单，因为读者阅读的模式很大程度上遵循了清单的结构。

　　8. There are many popular types of list, not just on the internet

　　八、有许多受欢迎的清单类型，并不只是在网上

　　Lists predate the internet by some considerable margin¹³, and aren't necessarily constrained¹⁴ or dependent on it. Examples include shopping lists, bucket lists, guest lists and hit lists. These lists are invariably detached from the subject matter in some way; nobody ever buys a shopping list, bucket lists rarely feature buckets, a guest list is rarely seen inside a party/club, and there are no records of someone being killed with an actual hit list. Contrastingly, Craigslist was created by someone called Craig. To date, there is no evidence of a popular list of all the angles at which a ship may list, suggesting that list formats¹⁵ are incompatible¹⁶.

　　清单在很大程度上先于互联网，并且不受制于或依赖于它。例子包括购物单、愿望单（bucket lists）、宾客单和暗杀名单（hit lists）。这些清单总是以某种方式脱离主题；从未有人买过购物单，愿望单和“桶（bucket）”没有关系，宾客单在聚会或俱乐部里基本见不到，也没有关于暗杀名单上的某人被害的记录。相反，一个名叫克雷格（Craig）的人创办了克雷格清单网站（Craigslist，美国免费分类广告网站——译注）。迄今为止，尚无证据表明存在一个可以包罗万象的流行清单，这说明清单样式是不兼容的。

　　9. Some entries on a list are likely to be just padding

　　九、清单上的某些条目似乎只是打酱油的

　　As mentioned, a list of 10 things, or a multiple thereof. This will inevitably¹⁷ lead to someone preparing a list and including things that shouldn't really be in it in order to make it 10 items in length. This makes it look "proper". See the point before this one for a demonstration¹⁸ of this happening.

　　如上文所述，大部分人使用十进制。绝大多数清单除了在标题里使用“惊人的”、“令人震惊的”或“ 不可思议”等等词汇（听上去让人印象深刻，但在技术上无法反驳）之外，还会列出十项或者是十的倍数项的事物。这就不可避免的使得某些人在制作清单时，为了凑出十个条目而列出一些并不该出现的事物。这让清单看上去是“合适的”。本文第八条就可以证明这一点。

　　10. People will tend to remember the last thing on a list

　　十、人们倾向于记住清单上的最后一件事

　　Lists are commonly used as tools for assessing people's memory. Word lists are a typical tool for testing someone's ability to remember and recall items, and can be designed and adapted to analyse a wide variety of human memory abilities. One of the things uncovered by this sort of research is the recency effect, meaning people are more likely to remember the last thing they are presented with, due to the way attention works and the demands of memory formation. So when you try to tell someone about this list, you may end up saying "The last thing on the list was that you're more likely to remember the last thing on the list".

　　清单通常是被用来评估人们记忆的工具。单词表就是用以测试记忆和回想条目能力的典型工具，它可以被设计并适合于分析人类记忆能力的多样性。这类研究所发现的事实之一就是“近因效应”，也就是说，由于注意力的工作方式以及记忆形成的需要，人们更容易记住摆在他们面前的最后一样事物。所以，当你试图告诉别人本文中的清单时，你最后可以说，“清单上的最后一件事是，你更容易记住清单上的最后一件事。”

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