我们如何获得知识
我们可以通过主动或者被动的方式获得知识。我们通过直接体验、测试和证明一个观念（比如在科学实验中）或者推理来主动获得知识。当我们用推理方式时，我们分析问题，考虑所有的事实和可能的解释，然后得出符合逻辑的结论。
通过某些人告诉我们一些事情，我们被动的获得知识。绝大多数发生在教室里的学习和我们看电视或者读报纸或者杂志的过程就是被动的。在我们受被动学习的约束，毫不奇怪我们依靠就是每天和朋友和同事交流的方式。
糟糕的是，被动学习有严重的缺陷。它让我们倾向于不加思索（批判性）地接受告诉我们的事情，即使这些事情只是道听途说和谣言。
你有没有曾经玩过谣言游戏（或者电话）？最开始，一个人写下一段话，但是不能给任何人看。然后，一字一字地低声告诉另外一个人。这个人，再低声地告诉下一个人，以此类推，一直下去直到所有人参加完游戏。最后一个人一字一字地写下他或她听到的那段话。然后对比两段话。通常，原始的信息在通过人和人之间的传递时，戏剧性地被改变了。
这就是日常生活中发生的。没有哪两个单词的含义在各层面上精确的相同。于是，人们用自己的语言复述故事而不是精确的引用，这样的情况就会改变故事。还有，大多数人听的时候也不完整，而且很多人喜欢增添自己关于故事创造的感受，尝试增加个人风格标志的方式改进故事。这些倾向可能是有意识的或者无意识的。效果一样——听到的人认为自己已经知道了。
这个过程并不局限于人们日常的信息交换。它同样发生在学者和作者中：“一位作者陈述的意见被另外一位作为事实再次陈述，他的陈述又会被另一位作为权威意见被转述，这个过程可以不断的重复下去，除非有人质疑最初作者构建其意见的事实或者挑战他在这些事实上做的解释”
原文
How We Come to Know
We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea (as in a scientific experiment), or by reasoning. When we do it by reasoning, we analyze a problem, consider all the facts and possible interpretations, and draw the logical conclusion.
We achieve knowledge passively by being told something by someone else. Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV news reports or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it’s not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers.
Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious defect. It makes us tend to accept uncritically what we are told even when what we are told is little more than hearsay and rumor.
Did you ever play the game Rumor (or Telephone)? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn’t show it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements are compared. Typically, the original message has changed, often dramatically, in passing from person to person.
That’s what happens in daily life. No two words have precisely the same shades of meaning. Therefore, the simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words rather than in exact quotation changes the story. Then, too, most people listen imperfectly. And many enjoy adding their own creative touch to a story, trying to improve on it by stamping it with their own personal style. This tendency may be conscious or unconscious. Yet the effect is the same in either case—those who hear it think they know.
This process is not limited to everyday exchanges among people. It is also found among scholars and authors: “A statement of opinion by one writer may be re-stated as a fact by another, who may in turn be quoted as an authority by yet another; and this process may continue indefinitely, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts.”10
