2023年12月英语六级听力真题 卷二 录音3

Recording Three

录音三

By the end of 2016, anyone who had been paying even passing attention to the news headlines was highly likely to conclude that everything was terrible, and that the world was going to hell.

到了2016年底，任何人只要稍微关注一下新闻头条，都很有可能得出这样的结论：一切都很糟糕，世界正在走向地狱。

It was easy to feel depressed by the wars in different parts of the world, the spread of deadly viruses or terror attacks.

世界各地的战争、致命病毒的传播或恐怖袭击很容易让人感到沮丧。

Yet, 2016 was the best year in the history of humanity.

然而，2016年是人类历史上最好的一年。

Child mortality was roughly half what it was as recently as 1990.

儿童死亡率大约是1990年的一半。

And 300,000 more people gained access to electricity each day.

每天又有300,000人用上电。

Every single measure of material and environmental welfare in America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the world as a whole has improved rather than deteriorated.

美国、欧洲、亚洲、非洲和整个世界的每一项物质和环境福利措施都得到了改善，而不是恶化。

We are living in history's most peaceful era, with violence of all kinds in steep decline.

我们生活在历史上最和平的时代，各种暴力急剧下降。

Those are the facts. So why aren't we all optimists?

这些都是事实。那么，为什么我们不都是乐观主义者呢？

In a 2015 survey for YouGov, 65% of British people and 81% of the French said they thought the world was getting worse.

在2015年YouGov的一项调查中，65%的英国人和81%的法国人表示他们认为世界正在变得更糟。

However, according to numerous sensible statistics, these people are simply wrong.

然而，根据许多明智的统计数据，这些人根本是错误的。

Nobody in their right mind should wish to have lived in a previous century. Yet people do. Why?

头脑正常的人都不应该希望生活在前一个世纪。但人们是这样做的。为什么？

Our prevailing mood of despair is irrational. It says more about us than it does about how things really are.

我们普遍的绝望情绪是不合理的。它更多的是关于我们，而不是关于事情的真实情况。

It is best explained as the result of various psychological biases that served a purpose for our evolutionary ancestors 一but now, in a media-saturated era, constantly mislead us.

最好的解释是由于各种心理偏见，这些偏见为我们的进化祖先一服务，但现在，在一个媒体饱和的时代，却不断误导我们。

Once upon a time, it was of great survival value to be worried about everything that could go wrong. This is what makes bad news especially compelling.

很久以前，担心任何可能出错的事情都有很大的生存价值。这就是为什么坏消息特别引人注目的原因。

In our evolutionary past, it was a very good thing that our attention could be easily seized by negative information, since it might well indicate a dangerous risk to our own survival.

在我们进化的过去，我们的注意力很容易被负面信息所吸引，这是一件非常好的事情，因为它很可能预示着对我们自身生存的危险。

The caveman who always assumed there was a lion behind the next rock would usually be wrong, but he'd be much more likely to survive and reproduce than one who always assumed the opposite.

那些总以为下一块岩石后面有一头狮子的穴居人通常是错的，但他更有可能活下来并繁殖，而不是总是假设相反的人。

But that was all before newspapers, television and the internet.

但这一切都发生在报纸、电视和互联网之前。

In today's hyper connected times, our addiction to bad news just leads us to vacuum up depressing or enraging stories from across the globe.

在当今高度相关的时代，我们对坏消息的依赖只会让我们从世界各地吸进令人沮丧或愤怒的故事。

Whether these news stories threaten us or not, we conclude that things are much worse than they actually are.

无论这些新闻报道是否威胁到我们，我们得出的结论是，事情比实际情况要糟糕得多。

Really good news, on the other hand, can be a lot harder to spot in a newspaper because predictable daily events by definition aren't news.

另一方面，真正的好消息在报纸上很难发现，因为可预测的日常事件从定义上来说并不是新闻。

Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.

问题22至25是基于你刚才听到的录音。

Question22. What is one of the facts stated by the speaker?

讲话者陈述的事实之一是什么？

Question23. What do we learn about most British and French people in a 2015 survey for YouGov?

在 2015 年舆观调查网的一项调查中，我们了解到大多数英国人和法国人的什么情况?

Question24. What does our prevailing mood of despair indicate?

我们普遍的绝望情绪表明 了 什么?

Question25. What was a very good thing in our evolutionary past?

在我们进化的历 史上，什么是非常好的事情?

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