Human life has improved in many ways, both recently,according to a Swedish economic historian, and in the 19th century .
瑞典经济历史学家所言，最近以及19世纪人类生活的许多方面都有所改善。
HUMANS are a gloomy species. Some 71% of Britons think the world is getting worse; only 5%think it is improving. Asked whether global poverty had fallen by half, doubled or remained the same in the past 20 years, only 5% of Americans answered correctly that it had fallen by half. This is not simple ignorance, observes Johan Norberg,a Swedish economic historian and the author of a new book called “Progress”. By guessing randomly, a chimpanzee would pick the right answer (out of three choices) far more often.
人类是多愁善感的物种。有71%的英国人认为世界越来越糟，只有5%的人认为世界在改善。当被问及过去20年全球范围内贫穷下降了一半、增加一倍还是没有变化时，只有5%的美国人能正确地回答下降了一半。瑞典经济历史学家兼《进步》的作者Johan Norberg认为这可不能简简单单地说是无知。 就算是瞎蒙乱猜，大猩猩都能（从这三个选项中）选出正确答案。
People are predisposed to think that things are worse than they are, and they overestimate the likelihood of calamity. This is because they rely not on data, but on how easy it is to recall an example. And bad things are more memorable. The media amplify this distortion. Famines, earthquakes and beheadings all make gripping headlines; “40 m Planes Landed Safely Last Year” does not.
人们很容易认为很多事情比其本身要糟糕得多，这是高估了灾难的可能性，因为他们并非依靠数据，而是他们很容易想起例子来。糟糕的事情总令人记忆深刻，而媒体又将其放大：饥荒、地震以及枭首的画面总能抢得头条，而“去年有4000万飞机平稳着陆”却从来没有。
Pessimism has political consequences. Voters who think things were better in the past are more likely to demand that governments turn back the clock. A whopping 81% of Donald Trump’s supporters think life has grown worse in the past 50 years. Among Britons who voted to leave the European Union, 61% believe that most children will be worse off than their parents. Those who voted against Brexit tend to believe the opposite.
消极也会带来政治上的苦果。认为过去一切要好得多的投票者可能会要求政府“开倒车（重现当年的光景）”。高达81%的Donald Trump[i]（唐纳德·特朗普，下届美国总统候选人）支持者认为过去50年里人们的生活越来越糟。投票支持脱欧的人中有61%认为大部分孩子会比他们的父母更穷，而投反对票的人却恰恰相反。
Mr. Norberg unleashes a tornado of evidence that life is, in fact, getting better. He describes how his great-great-great-great grandfather survived the Swedish famines of 150 years ago. Sweden in those days was poorer than Sub-Saharan Africa is today.”Why are some people poor?” is the wrong question, argues Mr. Norberg. Poverty is the starting point for all societies. What is astonishing is how fast it has receded. In 1820, 94% of humanity subsisted on less than $2 a day in modern money. That fell to 37% in 1990 and less than 10% in 2015.
Norberg给出了大量的证据证明生活其实是越来越美好的，他描述了他曾祖父的曾祖父是如何在150年前的瑞典大饥荒中幸存下来。那时的瑞典比现在的撒哈拉沙漠以南地区要穷困多了。他认为“为什么有些人会穷困潦倒”这个问题是不对的，贫穷是所有社会的起点。但令人惊讶的是贫困的局面好转之迅速，用现在的钱去衡量的话，1820年有94%的人每天仅靠两美金维持生计，1990年下降到37%，2015年不到10%。
Not only have people grown much more prosperous; they also enjoy better health than even rich folk did in the past. This is due partly to galloping progress in medical science. When the swine flu pandemic threatened to become catastrophic in 2009,scientists sequenced the genome of the virus within a day and were producing a vaccine in less than six months.
人们不仅越来越富裕了，而且比过去有钱人也健康多了，部分是因为医疗科学的巨大进步。2009年猪流感肆虐时，科学家在一天之内就完成了病毒基因组测序工作，并在不到六个月之后生产出了疫苗。
The spread of basic technology, allowing for clean water and indoor plumbing, may have helped even more. Louis XIV’s palace was the pinnacle of 18th-century grandeur. Nonetheless, without flush toilets, it stank. “The passageways, corridors and courtyards are filled with urine and faecal matter,” wrote a contemporary observer. Now 68% of the world’s population have modern sanitation—a luxury denied to the Sun King—up from 24% in 1980.
基础科技的传播使干净水和抽水马桶成为可能，这对人类健康的改善大有裨益。路易十四的王宫算是18世纪最为豪华的了，但是没有抽水马桶还是会发臭。某当代观察家写道，“过道、走廊和院子里随处是尿液和粪便。”现在世界上68%的人口已拥有现代卫生设施---连“太阳王（指路易十四）”都无法享受的奢侈品，而1980年才24%。
People are growing smarter too. Americans scored, on average, 100 points on IQ tests just after the second world war. By 2002, using the same test, this had risen to 118,with the biggest improvements in answers to the most abstract problems. This “Flynn Effect[ii]”,as it is known, is observed in all countries that have modernised. The most likely reasons are better nutrition and the spread of education—brains that are well-fed and well-stimulated tend to work better—and environmental improvements such as the removal of lead from petrol.
人们也越来越聪明了。二战后美国人的智商测试平均得分为100分，2002年用同样的测试题平均分就上升到了118分，回答最抽象问题方面的进步最为显著。所有现代化国家都遵循这个大家熟知的“弗林效应(智商测试得分越来越高)”，最有可能的原因就是更优质的营养和教育的传播---大脑营养充足了并受到了激励---就能更好的发挥机制，以及环境改善了，比如汽油中去除了铅。
Mr. Norberg agrees with Steven Pinker, a psychologist, that humankind is also experiencing a “moral Flynn Effect”. As people grow more adept at abstract thought, they find it easier to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes. And there is plenty of evidence that society has grown more tolerant. As recently as 1964, even the American Civil Liberties Union[iii]agreed that homosexuals should be barred from government jobs. In 1987 only 48%of Americans approved of interracial dating; in 2012 that figure was 86% (and 95% of 18- to-29 yearolds).The caste system in India has eroded as individualistic values have spread:the proportion of
upper-caste weddings with segregated seating
fell from 75% to 13% between 1990 and 2008.
Norberg与心理学家Steven Pinker一致认为人们也正经历着“道德弗林效应”。随着人们越来越擅长抽象思维，设身处地地站在别人的角度思考也要容易得多，有很多证据都可以证明社会越来越宽容了。近到1964年，美国公民自由协会认为同性恋应该禁止从事行政工作。1987年只有48%的美国人同意跨种族约会；2012年达到86%（其中95%为18到29岁的年轻人）。印度的种姓等级制度也随着个人价值观的蔓延而逐渐削弱：1990到2008年期间
上层阶级婚姻中因歧视而分开坐
的比例从75%下降到13%。
Despite the bloody headlines, the world is far safer than it used to be. The homicide rate in hunter-gatherer societies was about 500 times what it is in Europe today. Globally,wars are smaller and less frequent than they were a generation ago. The only type of violence that is growing more common is terrorism, and people wildly overestimate how much of it there is. The average European is ten times more likely to die by falling down stairs than to be killed by a terrorist. Evidence that the past was more brutal than the present can be gleaned not only from data but also from cultural clues. For example, children’s nursery rhymes are 11 times more violent than television programmes aired before 9 pm in Britain, one study found.
尽管有那么多血腥的标题，世界也远比以前安全得多。狩猎社会的凶杀率是当今欧洲的大约500倍。于全球而言，现在的战争比我们上一代时期小得多、也没有那么频繁了，唯一的暴力倒是越来越普遍的恐怖主义，而且人们远远高估了暴力的存在。普通的欧洲人下楼跌倒死亡的概率是被恐怖分子杀害的十倍。能证明过去远比现在残酷的证据不仅仅来源于数据，而且还有文化信息，如某研究发现儿歌比上午9点之前直播的英国电视节目要暴力11倍。
That life is improving for most people does not mean it is improving for everyone. Male blue-collar workers in rich countries have seen their earnings stagnate. Even if the statistics fail properly to capture the benefits they enjoy as consumers of new technology, the slippage in their status is real and painfully felt.
大多数人的生活改善了并不意味着每个人的生活都有所改善。富裕国家的男性蓝领已经看到他们的收入停滞不前。尽管数据还不能很好地捕捉到新科技消费者所享受到的好处，但其地位的下滑倒是感受得真真切切。
Global warming is a worry, too, but Mr. Norberg hopes that human ingenuity will tame it. He writes with enthusiasm about all kinds of green innovation. For example, thanks to more efficient farming technology, the world may have reached “
peak farmland
”.By the end of the century, an area twice the size of France will have been returned to nature, by one estimate.
全球变暖也让人为之发愁，但Norberg希望人类的智慧能够控制住。他富有激情地写到各种绿色创新，例如由于更高效的农耕科技，世界可能已达到“
峰田？
”。有人预测到本世纪末，有两倍法国国土面积那么大的土地会回归到自然中。
This book is a blast of good sense. The main reason why things tend to get better is that knowledge is cumulative and easily shared. As Mr. Norberg puts it, “The most important resource is the human brain... which is pleasantly reproducible.”
这本书里都是比较好的方面。事物往往会越来越好的主要原因就是知识可以累积，也很容易共享。正如Norberg所言，“最重要的资源就是人类的大脑，而让人惊喜的是人类的大脑是可再生的。”
文中注释
[i]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
[ii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
[iii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
近半年没练翻译，最近一次竟然会是3月底一次考试，前两天幡然醒悟，“三天不练手生”，今后要捡起来，特练笔一篇，请广大简友/译友批评指正不当之处（尤其是文中划删除线的两处），谢谢！