全自动麻将机多少瓦:《科学美国人》： 快闪族与Four Loko —脱离环境，体验非凡

这是一个普通的下午，在哥本哈根中央车站，一位表演者在大厅中央支起了一个鼓。一个大提琴手加入了进去，一个女人带着她的长笛凑了过去，他们弹奏了一曲大家熟知的旋律。随后，单簧管，低音管和其它乐器也开始了演奏。人们拿出手机开始录像。几分钟之内，整个交响乐团都聚在了车站中央，突然间，人们终于看清了这并非典型的街头表演，而是哥本哈根的爱乐乐团，他们演出的是拉威尔的波丽露舞曲。这个乐队快闪族的表演给人们的体验和在音乐厅看交响乐团的表演全然不同，或许是因为周围环境的新鲜感吧。

The same sort of disconnect may explain the peculiar potency of Four Loko, a fruit flavored, caffeinated, alcoholic drink that was invented by three Ohio State University students in 2005. Following a series of reported hospitalizations, in 2010 the Food and Drug Administration declared that it was illegal to add caffeine to alcoholic beverages, and the makers of Four Loko complied.

这样类似的疏离感或许可以解释为什么Four Loko饮料可以给人们带来某种独特的能量。Four Loko是果味，添加咖啡因的一种酒精饮料，由三个俄亥俄大学的学生在2005年发明。随着一系列住院的报道，美国食品与药品监督管理局在2010年宣布在酒精饮料中添加咖啡因是非法的，Four Loko的制造商遵从了这个规定。

Case closed? That caffeinated alcoholic drinks are dangerous is clear, but is caffeine the culprit? Shepard Siegel, a psychologist at McMaster University in Ontario writing in a recent issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, doesn’t think so.

这个案子就此了结了吗？毫无疑问，添加咖啡因的酒精饮料是很危险的，但是咖啡因是罪魁祸首吗？安大略省的麦克马斯特大学(McMaster University) 的心理学家Shepard Siegel在撰写关于心理科学的一则观点中提出，他并不这么认为。

For one thing, caffeine doesn’t seem to affect the way that alcohol gets absorbed by the body. Moreover, many drugs, including alcohol, are known to be more potent if they are taken in an unusual context. In a 1976 paper in Science, Siegel termed this the “situational specificity of tolerance.” Environmental variables ranging from the room where a drug is administered to flavor cues can influence an individual’s drug-related tolerance. What this comes down to is classical Pavlovian conditioning. The body of a social drinker learns to prepare for the alcohol in response to the environment, before the alcohol is even ingested. Siegel’s argument is that people became especially drunk after drinking Four Loko because of the unexpected way in which it was presented: it doesn’t actually taste like alcohol.

一方面，咖啡因似乎并不以人体吸收酒精一样的方式来影响人体。除此之外，很多药物，包括酒，在人们以一种非正常环境下饮用的时候会产生更大的效力。在1976年《科学》的一篇论文中， Siegel把这种现象称为“特定情形的忍耐度”。环境的变化，从药品的管理室到气味刺激都会影响到人的耐药性。这个现象还可以联系到经典条件反射。一个喜欢社交的饮酒者在喝下酒之前，身体就做好了准备，知道这种情形该如何应对。Siegel认为，人们喝下Four Loko 后特别容易醉的原因是因为人们没法预料饮用环境：而实际上这款饮料的味道并不像酒。

If Siegel is right, the decaf approach that the manufacturer of Four Loko has now taken could be troubling. It has announced a new beverage that comes with “a brand new flavor profile every four months.” This doesn’t fix the problem. Once someone becomes tolerant to the effects of the alcohol in one flavor, his or her tolerance would be eliminated when the next one is released. Intentional or not, Four Loko takes advantage of the situational specificity of tolerance. It has more in common with the ?Copenhagen Philharmonic flash mob than with your morning cuppa joe.

如果Siegel的观点正确，那么Four Loko 制造商现在采取的脱咖啡因措施可能就有麻烦了。他们宣布了新的饮料”每四个月就更换全新的口味“。这其实并不能解决问题。人们一旦能够耐得住某种口味的酒的效力，那么在换了新的口味之后他（她）的忍耐力就将消失。Four Loko就是有意识或无意识地利用了人们特定情形的忍耐度。这个原理与哥本哈根爱乐闪族有异曲同工之处，但是和清早的一杯咖啡似乎没有多大关联。