新书速递：“多即是少”里有大文章(图)

　　Would you go to the supermarket, darling," my wife asks, "and get some butter? Nothing special; just for baking." A short time later, I'm standing at the butter section and am reminded of the story of the hungry donkey standing in front of two piles of hay. It looks from one to the other, but cannot decide which pile to eat first. The donkey finds it so hard to choose that it drops dead from hunger before touching the food.

　　“你能去趟超市吗，亲爱的？”妻子说，“买些黄油。一般的就行，只是烤点东西用。”片刻过后，我站在了超市的黄油区，想起了一头饿驴站在两堆干草前的故事。故事中的饿驴看看这堆草，又看看那堆草，却不知道先吃哪堆好。这头驴在拿不定主意，最后一口草也没碰，倒在地上饿死了。

　　So here I am, like the donkey, trying to choose between low-fat butter, sweet butter, mildly sour butter, easy-to-spread butter, original Irish butter and butter with herbs.

　　我站在这儿，就像那头驴一样，试图从低脂黄油、甜黄油、微酸黄油、易涂黄油、原产于爱尔兰的黄油和香草黄油中选出一种。

　　Time is money, and I'm spending my valuable time deciding between the cheap, low-fat kind and the best quality, fresh organic butter for three times the price. I finally decide to get the low-price, low-fat butter--which, my wife later explains, is not the best for baking a cake.

　　时间就是金钱，而我却把自己宝贵的时间用来决定是买便宜的低脂黄油还是买质量最好但价格却高出两倍的新鲜有机黄油。我最后决定买便宜的低脂黄油，而这种黄油，据我妻子后来说，并不太适合用来烤

　　The last time I bought butter was sometime in the early 1980s. Shopping was certainly simpler back then. You could buy what you wanted from a small selection. Today, consumers are faced with dozens of products that look more or less the same.

　　我上一次买黄油是在20世纪80年代初。那时候购物要简单得多。商品种类有限，但你想要什么，就能买到什么。今天，消费者们却要面对数十种看起来大同小异的商品。

　　In his provocative book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz describes some of the offerings in a mid-sized American supermarket. He counts 95 different kinds of snacks; 61 varieties of suntan oil and sunblock; and 80 different painkillers. There are 40 kinds of toothpaste, 150 lipsticks and 90 colours of nail polish, as well as 116 kinds of skin cream, and 360 types of shampoo and other hair-care products.

　　巴里·斯瓦茨在他颇具煽动性的著作《选择的悖论：多即是少》中描述了一家美国中型超市提供的部分商品。据他计算，这家店有95种不同的小吃，61种防晒油和防晒霜以及80种不同的止痛药。另外还有40种牙膏、150种唇膏、90种颜色的指甲油以及116种