In mid-December, Phil McNulty, the BBC’s chief football writer, offered us his predictions for the rest of the English Premier League season. My interest in football is limited but I found McNulty’s efforts fascinating. Even the most sceptical about football can learn a great deal from the episode.

12月中旬，英国广播公司(BBC)首席足球作家菲尔麦克纳尔蒂(Phil McNulty)为我们提供了他对英超联赛(English Premier League)本赛季剩下比赛的预测。我对足球兴趣有限，但我发现他的预测令人着迷。即使是对足球最持怀疑态度的人，也可以从中学到很多东西。

A brief piece of context for those sceptics. Chelsea, the champions, had just played Leicester City, a team that had been relegation favourites just a few months before. Leicester won the game. This result would have been surprising had it not been set against the even more surprising pattern of the season. Champions Chelsea had slumped towards the bottom of the league after producing an unprecedentedly appalling run of form; Leicester, meanwhile, were top of the table. Nobody was shocked to see them vanquish Chelsea but it felt like a significant moment nonetheless.

以下是一份为那些持怀疑态度的人提供的简短背景说明。获得上赛季冠军的切尔西(Chelsea)刚刚和莱斯特城(Leicester City)踢了一场比赛。在仅仅几个月前，莱斯特城还是一只濒临降级的保级队，然而莱斯特城赢了这场比赛。这样的结果本应让人感到惊讶，可是相比之下本赛季的走势更让人大跌眼镜。冠军队切尔西在史无前例的一系列糟糕表现后跌至联赛末尾。同时，莱斯特城则处于积分榜首。看到莱斯特城击败切尔西，没人感到震惊，尽管如此，这依然让人感觉是一个重大时刻。

What of McNulty? At the beginning of the season, he had predicted that Chelsea would be champions again, while Leicester would finish in the bottom three and be relegated from the Premier League. Both of those outcomes are now inconceivable. After admitting that his initial prediction had been about as wrong as it is possible to be, McNulty proposed a new set of predictions.

麦克纳尔蒂的情况如何呢？本赛季伊始，他曾预测过切尔西会卫冕成功，而莱斯特城将以最后三名的成绩结束本赛季并从英超联赛降级。现在来看，这两个结果都是不可想象的。承认自己最初的预测大错特错后，麦克纳尔蒂提出了一套新的预测。

Those predictions were … but wait. Why on earth should you care? McNulty knows a great deal about football — far more than I do — but he had conclusively proved that he can’t see into the future. And yet he felt bold enough to offer another forecast, which many sports fans read with great interest.

他的预测是这样的……但是等等。你干嘛要关心这个呢？麦克纳尔蒂对足球非常了解——比我的了解深得多，但事实已经确凿地证明他没法预见未来。然而他胆子足够大，又进行了一次预测，很多运动迷兴致勃勃地阅读了他的预测。

This is a common pattern in football and beyond: pundits make forecasts, their audience consume those forecasts with relish, the forecasts are proved wrong, nobody is very surprised, and the cycle begins again. Why?

这是足球和足球以外的领域的一个共有模式：专家做出预测，观众津津有味地消费了这些预测，事实证明预测是错误的，没人感到很惊讶，然后这一周期重新开始。为什么？

Part of the explanation is wishful thinking: we like to believe that the world runs on rails, and to trust in experts who claim to have decoded the timetable and can therefore explain what is going to happen, when, and why. Forecasters with a record of some success — such as data-driven political and sports analyst Nate Silver — soon find themselves saddled with unrealistic expectations.

部分原因是人们的主观愿望：我们倾向于相信世界在轨道上运行，倾向于信任那些专家，他们声称自己破译了时刻表、因此能够解释何事将于何时因何种原因发生。那些曾取得一些成功的预言者，很快就会背负上人们对他们不切实际的期待，比如依靠数据进行预测的政治和运动分析师纳特缠尔弗(Nate Silver)。

Silver correctly predicted the fine details of the 2012 presidential election but he is happy to admit three things: that US elections are data-rich environments and much more predictable than most; that he had some luck; and that the bar for forecasting success had been set very low by partisan pundits much more interested in cheerleading than accuracy.

西尔弗正确预测了2012年美国总统大选的精确细节，但他大方承认了三件事情：美国大选的数据很充足，比大多数事情容易预测得多；他有点幸运；党派专家将预测成功的门槛设得很低，因为比起精准他们对声援造势更感兴趣。

Sure enough, when Silver and his colleague Ben Lauderdale tried to predict last year’s UK election result, their performance was woeful. This was partly because the seat-by-seat polling data are far less detailed than in the US and partly because Silver’s good luck didn’t last.

果然，西尔弗和他的同事本劳德戴尔(Ben Lauderdale)试图预测去年英国的选举结果时搞砸了。部分原因是，比起美国，英国大选中有关每一个议席的详尽民调数据要少得多，还有一部分原因是西尔弗没能继续交好运。

We would be wise to have more realistic expectations, even of careful data-driven forecasters such as Silver. But perhaps our expectations are irrelevant. Even when we know that the forecasts are useless, when the pundits have no track record, when the events in question have always been unpredictable (the stock market; geopolitical shocks; recessions), we remain hungry for opinions about the future.

即使是对西尔弗等谨慎的、依赖数据的预测者，我们也应该抱一种更切合实际的期待，这才是明智的。但或许我们的期待无关紧要。即使我们明知预测无用，即使专家没有过往成败记录，即使相关问题一直都难以预测（股市、地缘政治突发事件、衰退），我们依然渴求对未来的观点。

The truth is that forecasts are like Pringles — nobody thinks that there’s any great virtue in them but, offered with the fleeting pleasure of consuming them, we find it hard to resist. I am not sure quite why this should be so, but I have a couple of theories.

真相是，预言就像是品客(Pringles)薯片——没人认为它们有什么很大的好处，但享用它们带来的短暂快乐让我们难以抵抗。我不是很清楚为何事情是这样的，但我对此有两种解释。

Possibility one is that the moment we hear a forecast, we imagine it happening. It then becomes a believable outcome and one that is easy to call to mind in the future. The scenario that we imagine looms large in our minds; other scenarios, equally plausible, fade to the background. As a result, we can be sceptical of forecasts in general yet still hooked by a particular one.

一个可能性是，在我们听到预言的那一刻，我们会想象预言的实现。然后，预言会变成一个可信的结果，我们很容易在未来回想起来。我们想象的场景在我们的脑海中很突出，而同样言之有理的其他场景将会淡入背景之中。其结果是，我们可能在整体上对预测抱怀疑态度，但依然会被某一个预言迷住。

I notice this tendency in myself whenever I hear someone opining on the stock market. As an abstract proposition I think that it’s almost impossible to predict what the stock market will do. But the moment someone starts to tell me a story about what will happen to it, I’m hypnotised.

我注意到，每当我听到有人发表对股市的意见，我自己身上就会显露出这种倾向。在抽象的观念上，我认为股市走势几乎不可能预测。但有人告诉我将会发生什么事情的时候，我就被迷住了。

Possibility two is that forecasts offer us a lazy way to understand a complex world. The background to the conflict in Syria is complicated. So is Chinese politics. So, too, is the evolution of the Japanese economy. Trying to understand what is going on in any of these places requires an investment of time and attention that most of us are not willing to make. Wise heads at this newspaper could explain the intricacies to you or to me for hours yet barely have begun to do the topic justice.

第二种可能性是预言为我们提供了一种理解复杂世界的懒人办法。叙利亚争端的背景很复杂。中国政治，以及日本经济的发展同样如此。试图理解这些地方中的任何一个在发生什么都需要投入时间和注意力，而我们大多数人并不情愿这样做。本报的一些聪明人可能花费数小时为你我解释错综复杂的细节却还没开始说到正题。

But a forecast? That’s different. A forecast about what will happen in Syria, China or Japan is a simple way to convey a fleeting sense of understanding. The forecast will probably be wrong. But at the instant it is consumed, it gratifies. As I say, a lot like Pringles.

预言呢？那就不同了。有关叙利亚、中国或者日本将会发生什么的预言能够简单地给人一种“懂了”的短暂感觉。预言很可能是错误的。但人们在消费它们的一瞬间获得满足感。就像我说的，和品客薯片很像。