The Lottery
彩票
Lotteries can be useful natural experiments; we can use them to test the accuracy of standard sociological theories, in which rich people buy their kids extra smarts, bigger brains, better health, etc.
彩票可以视为一种有用的自然实验。我们可以用它们来检测标准社会学理论的准确度。这些理论认为，富人能给他们的孩子买到额外的智慧、更大的大脑和更健康的身体，等等。
David Cesarini, who I met at that Chicago meeting, has looked at the effect of winning the lottery in Sweden. He found that the “effects of parental wealth on infant health, drug consumption, scholastic performance and cognitive and non-cognitive skills can be bounded to a tight interval around zero.”
在芝加哥那次会议上我遇到了David Cesarini。他研究了在瑞典中彩票的影响。他发现，“父母的财富对婴儿健康、药品消费、学业表现，以及认知和非认知技能的影响，仅在一个几乎为零的小区间内。”
As I once mentioned, there was an important land lottery in Georgia in 1832. The winners received an 160-acre farm. But by 1880, their descendants were no more literate, their occupational status no higher. The families in the top 2/3rds of income managed to hang on to some of their windfall, but lower-income families did not.
我曾经提到过，1832年在佐治亚州有过一次重要的土地抽彩。中奖者们得到了160英亩的农场。但是到1880年，（和未中奖者相比），他们后代的教育水平并不更高，他们的职业地位也不更好。收入在前2/3的家庭设法保住了他们的一些意外之财，而低收入的家庭则没能如此。
This remind of a story by Gerald Kersh, “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” – About a medieval soldier who stumbled into immortality. Someone asks him (in 1945) – why hadn’t he saved his pay? With compound interest, yaddaa yadda.
这让我想起Gerald Kersh写的一个故事，“Cuckoo下士怎么了？”——讲的是一个无意间获得了永生的中世纪士兵的故事。有人问他（在1945年），为什么不把工资存下来呢？有复利，等等等等。
“Why didn’t I save my pay? Because I’m what I am, you mug! Hell, once upon a time, if I’d stayed away from cards, I could’ve bought Manhattan Island for less than what I lost to a Dutchman called Bruncker drawing ace-high for English guineas! Save my pay! If it wasn’t one thing it was another. I lay off liquor. Okay. So if it’s not liquor, it’s a woman. I lay off women. Okay. Then it’s cards or dice. I always meant to save my pay; but I never had it in me to save my pay! Doctor Paré’s stuff fixed me–and when I say it fixed me, I mean, it fixed me, just like I was, and am, and always will be. ”
“为什么我没有存下工资? 因为我就是我，你个傻瓜！见鬼，曾几何时，如果我离开了牌局，把和人玩‘A大’赌几尼时输给那个叫Bruncker的荷兰佬的钱省下来，那可是买下曼哈顿岛还有余。存钱！不是这事就是那事。我戒掉了酒。好吧，如果不是酒，那便是女人。我戒掉了女人。好吧，接着就是牌或者骰子。我总是想要存钱，但是我从来就不是存工资的人! Paré医生的药治好了我——当我说它治好了我，我的意思是，它装配好了我，就像我过去，现在，永远都是的那样。”
Low leverage of wealth on your children’s traits is something that exists in a particular society, with a particular kind of technology. Back in medieval times, a windfall could have kept your kids alive in a famine, and that certainly had a long-term positive effect on their cognitive skills. Dead men take no tests. The most effective medical interventions today are cheap – everyone in Sweden and the US already has them – but there are places where those interventions are not universally available. Some families in Mozambique can afford artemisin, some can’t – this must make a difference.
财富对儿童性格的低影响存在于拥有特定技术的特定社会。回到中世纪时代，一笔意外之财可以让你的小孩在饥荒中存活，这必然就会对他们的认知技能有长期的正面影响。死人不能参加测试。当今最有效的医疗干预措施是便宜的——在瑞典和美国人人都已经拥有了——然而还有些地方，这些干预并不是普遍可得的。莫桑比克的一些家庭可以负担得起青蒿素『译注：一种有效的抗疟疾药物』，另一些则负担不起——这肯定会有重大影响。
Suppose we had a method of dramatically improving a kid’s genetic potential for intelligence and success, one that cost five million dollars a pop: then wealth could influence the next generation in ways that it can’t today. In other words, Cesarani’s conclusions are correct for Sweden-now (but not for Sweden in 1700), probably correct for the US today, but maybe not true tomorrow.
假设我们有一种特效药可以显著提高孩子在智力和成就方面的遗传潜力，五百万美元一针；那么财富将可以以现在不能的方式影响下一代。换句话说，Cesarani的结论对今天的瑞典来说是正确的（但不是1700年的瑞典），可能对今天的美国也是对的，但未来却不一定正确。
It is not just wealth that has a small effect on your kid’s potential: playing Mozart doesn’t help either. Other than locking away the ball-peen hammers, it’s hard to think of any known approach that does have much effect – although we don’t know everything, and maybe there are undiscovered effective approaches (other than genetic engineering). For example, iodine supplements have a good effect in areas that are iodine-deficient. We now know (since 2014) that bromine is an essential trace element – maybe people in some parts of the world would benefit from bromine supplementation.
不仅仅是财富对小孩的潜能影响甚微：练习莫扎特也没有什么帮助。除了锁起圆头锤【编注：意思大概是可以防止孩子把自己的脑袋敲破】，很难想象任何已知的方法会有很大的影响——虽然我们不知道所有的事情，或许有未被发现的有效方法（除基因工程以外）。比如，碘补充剂对碘缺乏地区有很好的效果。现在（2014年之后）我们知道，溴也是一种必要的微量元素——或许在这个世界的一些地方人们会受益于溴补充。
What about the social interventions that people are advocating, like Pre-K? Since shared family effects (family environment surely matters more than some external social program) are small by adulthood, I think they’re unlikely to have any lasting effect. We might also note that the track record isn’t exactly encouraging. If there was a known and feasible way of boosting academic performance, you’d think that those teachers in Atlanta would have tried it. Sure beats prison.
人们提倡的社会干预怎么样呢，比如学前教育？由于共享家庭的影响（家庭环境肯定比一些外部社会项目更重要）到成年时已经很小，我认为他们不太可能会有持久的影响。我们可能也已注意到这方面的跟踪研究并不那么令人鼓舞。如果有一个已知且可行的方法来提高学习成绩，我想那些亚特兰大的教师们大概已经试过了。当然，肯定比监狱强多了。
Maybe there’s an effective approach using fmri and biofeedback – wouldn’t hurt to take a look. But even if it did work, it might simply boost everyone equally, and obviously nobody gives a shit about that.
或许有一个有效的方法使用功能性磁共振成像（fmri）和生物反馈——看一看无妨。但是即便可以，它可能只是平等的提高每个人，但显然没有人在乎这一点。
翻译：babyface_claire(@许你疯不许你傻)
校对：沈沉(@沈沉-Henrysheen)
编辑：辉格@whigzhou