Question

Why Wisdom （智慧）Doesn't Work as Well as We Think It Does

We relate wisdom to age. Most of us believe that gaining wisdom is like picking up stones on a path: the longer you're on the path, the more stones you'll collect.

It seems a reasonable inference, then, the older you are, the more wisdom you have. Older people usually make fewer careless mistakes, and they often know the best course of action in a given situation. But I think there's another explanation at play here, which we might consider in the light of what we know about human decision-making.

There are two different ways of decision-making: plans and habits. Here's an example of how these ways differ. If you’re driving somewhere for the first time, you'll need a plan. You will need to know whether to turn left or right, because you don’t already have that information stored away in your head. On the other hand, you don't need a plan when you're going somewhere familiar （熟悉的） because the order of steps that will take you there is stored as a habit. But if you find that the road is blocked by fallen trees, you’ll have to think about another way. Such a plan allows you to more easily deal with new situations, but they require a lot more attention.

The use of plans and habits changes over the course of our lives. A baby can't use habits to make decisions, because any situation she’s in will be a new one. As we build up a store of familiar situations, the more we can depend on habits. The older you are, the more likely your behavior is based on tried- and-true habits rather than fresh planning.

But what does this tell us about wisdom? Well, it suggests that wisdom is interactive, not static: it is a relationship between a person and their surroundings （環(huán)境），The reason that wisdom seems to come out so effortlessly from well-seasoned minds is that they have a store of habitual information about how to act in a given situation.

But it also makes a worrying prediction: if older people were put in a new situation, with which they had no familiarity, they wouldn't make better decisions than someone who is young. It is the same with mistakes. Older, seemingly wiser people make fewer mistakes because they're familiar with surroundings they often deal with. If you controlled for the familiarity of the situation, then people in different age groups would probably make the same number of mistakes. Younger people might even make fewer mistakes, because they are better at coming up with fresh plans.

While wisdom gives you expertise within a particular environment, it doesn't mean that you'll be able to generalize that to new experiences. It's not that we necessarily get wiser as we get older, but we put ourselves in fewer situations where we are likely to make mistakes.

1.What do we know about the two ways of decision-making according to the passage?

A.Using plans or habits to make decisions is an ever-changing process.

B.The use of plans and habits requires lots of attention and effort.

C.When going somewhere familiar, we need to work out a plan.

D.Younger people depend more on habits to make decisions,

2.What can we learn from the passage?

A.Younger people have a great advantage in becoming wiser.

B.Older people are better at making careful plans before action.

C.Older people seem wiser because they’ve stored more habitual information.

D.Younger people make more mistakes when they're in unfamiliar surroundings.

3.What does the underlined word “static” probably mean in Paragraph 5?

A.Uncontrolled. B.Unchanged. C.Increasing. D.Surprising.

4.What is the writer's main purpose in writing this passage?

A.To stress the importance of gaining wisdom.

B.To compare the two different ways of decision-making.

C.To call on younger people to learn more from older people.

D.To remind us to view the wisdom of older people reasonably.

Answer 1