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In life, once on a path, we tend to follow it, for better or worse.
在生活中，一旦走上了一条道路，不论好坏，我们往往会在这条路上走下去。
What’s sad is that even if it’s the latter, we often accept it anyway because we are so accustomed to the way things are that we don’t even recognize that they could be different.
令人难过的是，即使这条路是不好的那条路，我们也经常会接受它，因为我们很习惯于事物存在的方式，以至于我们甚至没有意识到它们可能是不同的。
This is a phenomenon psychologists call functional fixedness.
这是一种心理学家称之为功能固着的现象。
This classic experiment will give you an idea of how it works and a sense of whether you may have fallen into the same trap:
这个经典的实验将让你了解这个现象是如何起作用的，还会让你知道你是否会掉入同样的陷阱。
People are given a box of tacks and some matches and asked to find a way to attach a candle to a wall so that it burns properly.
实验者给了人们一些大头钉和一些火柴，让他们想办法把蜡烛固定在墙上，使蜡烛正常燃烧。
Typically, the subjects try tacking the candle to the wall or lighting it to affix it with melted wax.
通常情况下，受试者会把蜡烛钉在墙上，或者点燃蜡烛，用融化的蜡把它粘在上面。
The psychologists had, of course, arranged it so that neither of these obvious ap-proaches would work.
当然，心理学家们已经安排好了，所以这两种明显的方法都不会奏效。
The tacks are too short, and the paraffin doesn’t bind to the wall. So how can you accomplish the task?
那些钉子太小了，而且石蜡也粘不到墙上。所以该如何完成这个任务呢？
The successful technique is to use the tack box as a candleholder.
成功实现的方法就是把钉盒用作烛台。
You empty it, tack it to the wall, and stand the candle inside it.
你需要把盒子清空，把它钉在墙上，然后把蜡烛放在里面。
To think of that, you have to look beyond the box’s usual role as a receptacle just for tacks and reimagine it serving an entirely new purpose.
要考虑到这一点，你必须超越盒子通常的角色，不再把它看作是一个仅仅是为了图钉而设计的盒子，而是把它重新想象成一个有全新的用途的工具。
That is difficult because we all suffer to one degree or another from func-tional fixedness.
这是困难的，因为我们都或多或少地承受着功能固着的痛苦。
The inability to think in new ways af-fects people in every corner of society.
无法用新的方式思考影响着社会的每个角落的人们。
The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase frozen thoughts to describe deeply held ideas that we no longer question but should.
政治理论家汉娜·阿伦特创造了“冻结思维”一词，它用来描述我们不再质疑、但应该质疑的根深蒂固的想法。
In Arendt’s eyes, the complacent reliance on such accepted “truths” also made people blind to ideas that didn’t fit their worldview, even when there was ample evidence for them.
阿伦特认为，自满的依赖这些公认的事实使人们对不符合他们世界观的想法视而不见，即使有足够的证据支持这些想法。
Frozen thinking has nothing to do with intelligence, she said. “It can be found in highly intelligent people.”
她说，“冻结思维”跟智力无关，智商高的人群中也会出现这种现象。
Arendt was particularly interested in the origins of evil, and she considered critical thinking to be a moral imperative—in its absence, a society could go the way of Nazi Germany.
阿伦特对邪恶的起源特别感兴趣，她认为批判性思维是一种道德要求——如果没有批判性思维，一个社会可能会走上纳粹德国的道路。
Another context in which frozen thinking can turn truly dangerous is medicine.
另一个冻结思维可能变得真正危险的情况是医学。
If you land in the hospital, it’s natural to want to be treated by the most experienced physicians on staff.
如果你住进了医院，很自然你会想要由最有经验的医生来治疗。
But according to a 2014 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), you’d be better off being treated by the relative novices.
但《美国医学会杂志》2014年发表的一项研究显示，你最好是接受相关新手的治疗。
The study examined nearly ten years of data involving tens of thousands of hospital admissions
这项研究调查了近10年来涉及数万名入院患者的数据，
and found that the 30-day mortality rate among high-risk patients with acute heart conditions was a third lower when the top doctors were away at conferences.
并发现，当顶尖医生不在时，患有急性心脏病的高风险患者的30天死亡率降低了三分之一。
