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Okay, can you just start by telling me a little bit about the dress? What does it look like?
好，你能不能先跟我说说你的裙子？它长什么样？
I must confess that I am not very good at describing dresses.
我必须承认，我不太擅长描述衣服。
So you don't, you don't have a minor in fashion?
那你没有，你没有辅修过时尚？
No, no. If you had told me 10 years ago that one of your key research programs is going to be about the way people will perceive dresses, I would have said, "There's absolutely no way that--that will never happen."
没有，没有。如果10年前你跟我说，你的一个重要研究项目将是关于人们对裙子的看法，我会说，“那绝对不可能--永远不可能的事。”
I don't care about dresses. I don't have a dress. I've never talked about dresses.
我不在乎裙子，我没有裙子，我也从未谈论过裙子。
And now I talk about it a lot.
而现在我却经常谈论它。
Oh, uncertainty! It can be so cunning!
哦，不确定性啊！真狡猾！
You literally never know what's going to happen next...
你真的永远不知道接下来会发生什么。
Or how some stranger's fashion conundrum could change the trajectory of your career.
也不会知道某个陌生人的时尚难题会如何改变你的职业轨迹。
And this dress--my first impression was that it's really ordinary.
而这条裙子--我的第一印象是它真的很普通。
It's a pretty standard dress, don't you think?
这是一件很标准的制品，你不觉得吗？
Yeah, it seems like the kind of thing you wear to someone's wedding when you don't want to be the center of attention.
是的，它看起来就像你在别人的婚礼上，想保持低调时会穿的那种衣服。
And that is exactly what it was bought for. So I talked to the person who took the picture, Cecilia Bleasdale...
这也是它被买下的原因。我跟照片的拍摄者塞西莉亚·布利斯代尔聊了聊。
And she said that was the purpose.
她说她买这条裙子就是这个目的。
She was wanting to buy a dress for the occasion of the wedding of her daughter, I believe.
她应该是想买一件礼服来庆祝她女儿的婚礼。
So they took pictures, and then they revisited the pictures to decide which dress to get, they realized they disagree about what the color of the dress was.
她们拍下了照片，然后重新查看照片，想定一下买哪条裙子，才发现她们对裙子的颜色存在分歧。
They were like, "What do you mean ‘it's white and gold?'" or "(What do you mean) ‘it's black and blue?'"
她们觉得，“你怎么说它是‘白金相间’的？”或“你怎么说它是‘黑色和蓝色’的？”
And that's how this all got started.
这就是这整件事的开始。
So what color is it?
那它是什么颜色的？
Christie, you're in luck. Let me show you something.
克里斯蒂，你很幸运。我给你看个东西。
Oh, I have the dress right here.
哦，裙子就在这儿。
Oh, my God, whoa! That is--definitely not the color I saw in the photograph.
哦，天哪，哇！这绝对不是我在照片中看到的颜色。
Wow. I need a moment to absorb this. Oh wow.
哇。我需要点时间来消化这件事。哦哇哦。
Okay, but before we talk about the actual color, I want to hear about the first time you saw the image of the dress.
好，但在我们谈论它的颜色之前，我想听听你第一次看到这件裙子的照片的时候。
What colors did you see?
你看到了什么颜色？
I can tell you that like it was yesterday because it was such a big day in my life...
跟你说，那天就像昨天一样，它是我生命中非常重要的一天。
It's a Thursday, and I was coming back from N.Y.U. on the train.
那是星期四，我从纽约大学坐火车回来。
I had finished teaching for the week.
我完成了那一周的教学任务。
And I was minding my own business, and (I) was at peace with the world.
我当时在想着自己的事，感觉内心很平静。
I was on the train, and I was checking Twitter. And a student had tagged me.
我坐在火车上，刷着推特，看到一个学生带了我的标签。
And they were like, "Professor, what do you see here?"
他们说：“教授，你看到的是什么？
And... I was like, "You know, this is obviously, obviously a white-and-gold dress... or, an image of a white and gold dress."
我说“这显然是一条白金相间的裙子。或者，是一条白金相间的裙子的照片。”
And a student asked, "Does it appear at all ambiguous?"
一个学生问，“它有没有任何模棱两可的地方？”
I said, "No, why? Why do you ask?"
我说：“没有，怎么了？你怎么会这么问？”
And that's how you learned that people were fighting over it.
那时你才知道人们在为它的颜色争论。
I said, "Well, I guess I can see how somebody could see it slightly off-white, but it is clearly white and gold to me."
我说：“我能理解为什么有人会认为它是灰白色的，但在我看来，它显然是白金相间的。”
So you think they're debating about white versus off-white.
你以为他们是在白色和灰白色之间争论。
That's hilarious and also totally understandable because I also saw a white and gold dress in the photograph.
很搞笑，但也完全可以理解，因为我在照片里看到的也是白金相间的裙子。
Do you still, to this day, see it as white and gold?
直到现在，你仍然认为它是白金相间的吗？
Absolutely! The very first time I ever perceived it as blue was when you showed it to me just now. It was shocking!
绝对的！就在你刚才给我看的时候，我第一次觉得它是蓝色的。太震惊了！
What about you? What happened after that note from your student?
你呢？学生给你回消息之后发生了什么？
So I go home to my wife and tell her--I don't know yet that it's a thing yet, I did not know that-- "Oh, you know, people online are so silly.
我回到家对妻子说--当时我还不知道这是件大事，那会儿还不知道--“哦，跟你说，网上的人太傻了。
They're arguing about the color of this dress. And it's obviously white and gold. I don't know what they're talking about."
他们在争论这件衣服的颜色。它显然是白金相间的。真不知道他们在说什么。”
So my wife looks me straight in my face. Oh, no. She thinks... It's black and blue.
我妻子直直地盯着我的脸。哦不是吧，她觉得...裙子是黑色和蓝色的。
What?
什么？
And at that moment is when I realized that we need a bigger boat, so to speak, because she's a very serious person.
就在那一刻，我意识到我们得好好研究一番，可以说，因为她是一个非常严肃的人。
She wouldn't, like, lie to me about this.
她不会在这件事上对我撒谎。
Now it's really got your attention.
它真的引起了你的注意。
So some people early on said, "Oh, this just reflects different screen settings."
所以早些时候有些人说，“哦，这只是因为人们的屏幕设置不同。”
Yeah, but I knew, immediately, two things.
是的，但我很快就知道了两件事。
Number one: she's not trolling me.
第一：她不是在骗我。
Number two: this has nothing to do with the screen because we are seeing it on the same screen.
第二：这与屏幕没有任何关系，因为我们是在同一个屏幕上看到的裙子。
I've done a Ph.D. in visual perception.
我修到了视觉感知博士学位。
I knew that we don't already know this. This is new. This is completely new.
我意识到这是我们未知的东西。它是新的，全新的东西。
You feel yourself on the cusp of scientific discovery. Wow!
你觉得自己位于科学发现的前沿。哇!
I did not sleep at night. No, it's true.
我晚上都睡不着觉。真的。
That night, I wrote a screed as to why we don't know what this is.
那天晚上，我写了一篇文章，解释为什么我们不知道这是什么。
What made it so new?
是什么让它这么新鲜？
What I found remarkable from the beginning was you basically locked in to your perception.
我从一开始就发现，不同寻常的是，你被困在了你的感知中。
You can't…you can't switch it. Now…you can't undo it, you can't unsee it.
你不能…你没法关掉它。你无法撤销它，你无法忽视它。
So it's not like those old-fashioned optical illusions.
所以它并不是老掉牙的那种光学错觉。
You know, the ones where the drawing can either be an old woman or a young woman. Or the duck or rabbit?
就是那种画的人既可以是老妇人，也可以是年轻女子。或者是鸭子还是兔子那种？
And if you know about both, you can pretty easily go back and forth between seeing the two versions--it's a duck's bill or it's a rabbit's ears; it's a duck, a rabbit, a duck.
如果你认识这两种动物，很容易就会在两者之间来回纠结--是鸭嘴或兔耳；是鸭子，兔子，鸭子。
But you're saying that with the dress, a single person can't see both versions?
但是，关于这条裙子，一个人不可能同时看到两种版本吗？
Most people cannot.
大多数人都不能。
And so that must reflect something about how they reduce ambiguity.
因此，这对减少歧义一定有启示。
Wait--what do you mean by "ambiguity"? What exactly is uncertain here?
等等，你说的“歧义”是什么意思？在这里面，到底有什么是不确定的？
So I want to be very clear and I make that point to everyone who is willing to listen-this is not about the dress.
我想向每个愿意听的人都清楚地说明白这一点--它与裙子无关。
