【3.Interest rates in Japan】
Warren Buffett:
"Japan's record has been extraordinary. My guess is that Tim Cook would tell you that iPhone sales there are about as great as any country outside the United States. American Express would tell you that they sell their product very, very well in Japan. Coca-Cola, our investment, does extraordinarily well in Japan."
【批注】除美国以外更容易务实的接受美国文化的地方，反倒不是英国和欧洲，欧洲在文化上的防御更强，巴菲特不是在这里讨论空的东西，而是通过iPhone、American Express、Coca-Cola看到的事实。
【3.Interest rates in Japan】
Warren Buffett:
"I never dreamt of that when I picked up that little handbook, it was about that thick, but sometimes two companies to a page, and a couple of thousand pages, I believe. But it's amazing what you can find when you just turn the page. Turning every page is one important ingredient to bring to the investment field. That's what very few people do."
"So you've got to do a little of it yourself."
【批注】这是有前提条件的，先学会独立思考，再要有一个正确的思维框架，不然看什么都是天书。
【4.Berkshire Hathaway's cash】
Warren Buffett:
"Charlie always pointed out that we made most of our money. I'm above about eight or nine ideas over 50 years, and we talked about it every day, and we read every report, and we did everything else but if you think you can get an idea day from listening to your Frederick Booker or doing a lot of reading of the financial information published, forget it."
"Charlie always thought I did too many things. I thought if we did about five things in our lifetime, we'd end up doing better than if we did 50, and that we never concentrated enough."
【批注】收敛是一件非常难的事，碎片化要容易得多。
【3.Interest rates in Japan / 4.Berkshire Hathaway's cash】
Warren Buffett:
"I was just going through a little handbook that probably had two or 3,000 Japanese companies — sometimes two companies to a page. There were these five trading companies that had a special name form in Japan, but they were selling at ridiculously low prices."
"Things get extraordinarily attractive very occasionally. Nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, or next month, and nobody knows what business is going to do. But they spend all their time talking about it because it's easy to talk about, but it has no value."
【批注】对Right Business已经形成非常成熟的想法，翻看一些简单的材料，前面有一个细节是一页放了两家公司的内容，巴菲特的意思是仅需要这么简短的信息就能做出判断，这是高度泛化、高度压缩的结果。
【5.Real estate investing】
Warren Buffett:
"In real estate, when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase, then people start negotiating more things, and more things. It's a whole different game."
"In a real estate deal, every sentence is as important as a person. For a guy, 94, it's not the most interesting thing to get involved in something where the negotiations could take years."
【批注】房地产项目的时间拖的太长，想法的反馈受到时间上的限制，更容易产生不切实际的幻觉，比如，在泡沫时期把前景看的过于乐观，项目开始以后又很难再把想法收回来。
【7.Portillo's Hot Dogs】
Warren Buffett:
"Jay just gave me a lecture or a lesson on the tax code, and I could have gone to graduate school for years, and never learned as much as he did."
"Jay Pritzker was a remarkable manager. He found the opportunity in a complex system — Rockwood had 30 million pounds of cocoa on LIFO, and the tax code had one crucial provision that most people would never think to look for."
【批注】Jay Pritzker引出后面的Marmon，这样的人才非常稀少，是不是好到可以立即行动的点？巴菲特在后面的Ben Rosner做了生动的说明。Jay Pritzker所体现的是看问题的清晰程度，在一个复杂的制度体系中找到机会，能从复杂信息中泛化出简单、有效的知识结构，巴菲特不容易接受一个多元化的公司，最后接受了Marmon可能跟创始人的性格特质有关。
【9.Being patient vs acting fast】
Warren Buffett:
"He said to me, and Charlie, I'll run this business for you until December 31st, and then I'm out of here. I got Charlie, we went down the hallway, and I said, If this guy quits at the end of the year, you can throw away every book on psychology. So we bought the company and had a great relationship."
"When you get in the room with somebody like that, and they want to sell you something for $6 million, it's got 2 million in cash, and couple million real estate, and it's making 2 million a year — you don't want to be patient then."
【批注】Ben Rosner所体现的是"trustworthy"，愿意自己吃点亏，"trustworthy"比"able"更容易到达行动的点，可能是巴菲特想表达的东西。
【9.Being patient vs acting fast】
Warren Buffett:
"Among all my partners, I never had a single institution. I never wanted an institution. I wanted people. I didn't want people who were sitting around having people present to them every three months and tell them what they wanted to hear, and all that sort of thing."
"You have to be willing to hang up after five seconds, and you have to be willing to say yes after five seconds. You can't be filled with self-doubt in the business."
【批注】机构有自己想听的内容，不得不跟随机构的想法会造成情绪上的压力，Charlie Munger有一句非常直接的话：The biggest problem with professional money management is career risk.（职业风险比投资风险更可怕）。
【10.Modernizing GEICO】
Ajit Jain:
"He has basically reduced the workforce by 20,000. Starting with something close to 50,000. He's brought it down to 20,000, and that translates to, I guess, at least $2 billion. All this has allowed GEICO to become a much-focused competitor. So in the last seven quarters, GEICO has shown a combined ratio that has eight in front of it."
【批注】马斯克的方法论：先尽可能的删除，该删+有些不该删都删除，一定要删过头，只有删除过头了，注意力才有可能发现真少不了的、需要加回来的部分，这些就是真实的，在"事实+幻觉"的混合物中区分两者非常麻烦、甚至根本没有办法，只能眼睁睁看着，马斯克提供了一个可以通用的方法。
【10.Modernizing GEICO】
Warren Buffett:
"Somebody just made the judgment. That's all that came from USAA, which made the judgment that government employees — the name GEICO stands for Government Employees Insurance Company — the government employees were better drivers than average."
"I don't think he was an actuator or anything else, but he just made an observation."
【批注】最简单的事实也是最难发现的事实，Basic trust/Basic mistrust的分叉点离起点很近，拐入Basic mistrust的当然不知道离起点很近的风景。
【11.Greg Abel's successor qualities】
Warren Buffett:
"Glenn Miller went on from having a broken-down band for 15 years. He found the sound and created the first gold record — the Chattanooga Choo Choo in 1941."
"He turned around from being a nothing with the band that he had till he found the sound. I have always told my kids ever since that their sound isn't my sound. Don't worry too much about starting salaries, and be very careful who you work for because you will take on the habits of the people around you."
【批注】这里有两个非常重要的点，一是找到自己擅长的点，每个人都可能有自己的某种天赋；二是自己找到，这一点更关键，"Basic trust"的本质是主动，中间存在的空隙是"Basic trust"不够强，轻轻推一把、或者稍微用点力推，这些都是可以仔细琢磨的，但不会影响"Basic trust"非常强的那些人。
【11.Greg Abel's successor qualities】
Warren Buffett:
"If you don't find it immediately, you know, don't starve to death in the meantime, but you will find it, and you'll find it in the right individual. In this sense, it's almost like finding the right person in marriage."
"You can't even dream all the dreams that you could have about a place like Berkshire, but the big thing you have to do though, is always to be sure you can play the next day."
【批注】生存是有"重力"的，有一些不可避免的噪音，Basic trust的力量足够强就能够摆脱这些东西，不会"饿死"在寻找的路上。
【12.Investments in foreign currency-denominated assets】
Warren Buffett:
"The Japanese situation is different because we intend to stay long in that position, and the funding situation is so cheap. I've attempted to some degree to match purchases against yen-denominated funding but that's not a policy of ours. In fact, that's the first time we've done that."
"We do nothing in terms of the question about its impact on quarterly and annual earnings. What counts is where we are five, 10 or 20 years from now."
【批注】通常不考虑外汇的风险，日元是个特殊的例子，主要原因是融资成本低。
【14.Private equity "competition"】
Ajit Jain:
"We do not like the risk-reward that these situations offer, and therefore, we put up the white flag, and said, we can't compete in this segment right now."
Warren Buffett:
"There are people who want to copy Berkshire's model, but usually they don't want to copy it by also copying the model of the CEO having all of this money in the company forever. If what we do here at Berkshire doesn't work, I spend the end of my life regretting what I've created."
【批注】这些人的心理结构没办法放弃需要放弃的项目，如果真有这一份的"勇气"（这里的"勇气"和"Basic trust"是同义词）就不会从事正在从事的工作。
【15.Advice for young investors】
Warren Buffett:
"Who you associate with is just enormously important. You're going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people that you work with, that you admire, that become your friends."
"There are people who will make you want to be better than you are, and you want to hang out with people who are better than you are."
【批注】人际交往可能是最能让注意力处于活跃状态的地方，在交往中发现那些能闪光的点（头脑），如果能看到光点，看到一个光点就能够在往后的人生中找到更多的光点。
【15.Advice for young investors】
Warren Buffett:
"I would try to look for something that I would do if I didn't need the money. What you're really looking for in life is something where you've got a job that you'd hold if you didn't need the money."
"You don't want to associate with people or enterprises that ask you to do something or tell you to do something that you shouldn't be doing. That's one of the problems."
"Every one of those I named always did more than their share, and they thought like they never sought more than their share of the credit."
【批注】"不需要收入也愿意从事"=1，"不要和那些要求你做不该做的事情的人或企业在一起"=0，这是关于工作的量化指标，有很多事情不是不能量化，而是能做到"模糊正确"的地方为什么完全模糊了？
【17.Major setbacks or low points in life】
Warren Buffett:
"If you look at the lifespan of professional athletes, after a while, you get to decide that you're better off if you really weren't the first one chosen to be on the baseball team or the basketball team, or anything else."
"Charlie and I never really exercised that much or did anything. We have been carefully preserving ourselves for years. So look at the bright side of things to the extent that you can."
【批注】暗示"一定要赢"、"一定要战胜对手"的心态对身体的影响，说到底是外部计分卡的问题，赢了很激动、输了痛苦的要命，内部计分卡没有那种"被别人打败"的输，即使输了也只有离事实越来越近的感觉。
【18.Autonomous vehicles and GEICO】
Warren Buffett:
"If the game didn't change at all, it really wouldn't be very interesting. If every time you swung the baseball, you hit a home run in the game, it wouldn't be interesting. So the fact that there will be things you have to think about all the time as you go along, and you'll make mistakes, and all that, and then that's really part of the fun."
"Your brain would turn to mush if you didn't have a few problems now and then."
"We've got this wonderful world, which now we know that there are eight countries that can destroy it. We don't have what I would consider necessarily the perfect people leading each one of the nine countries."
【批注】巴菲特从乐观的角度看待变化，如果"没有变化，你的大脑反而会变成一团浆糊"，然后说到了原子弹和North Korea 这样的国家，这个世界需要变化。
【18.Autonomous vehicles and GEICO】
Warren Buffett:
"Cars become incredibly safer, and it costs 50 times as much down or thereabouts to buy an insurance policy."
"You never reach an answer in this business. You reach a point of action that you take, but we try to get into as high probability things as we think we can do, and play the game in the same way, but it will be different than you think."
【批注】安全边际的存在等于承认未来变化的不确定性，汽车保险是一个很好的例子，安全事故下降了，但是汽车安全在个人层面的注意力上涨的更快，要从单一变量预测未来非常困难，只有极少数的单一变量有预测的价值，并且也必须有安全边际的保护。
【19.Operating earnings】
Warren Buffett:
"It's like running a bank where people leave their money with you, and you pay a minus 2.2%, and you don't have any check clearing or anything else. We run our business actually with a different mindset than any other P&C company, I think, probably, in the world."
Ajit Jain:
"If you look at the entire range, including life insurance, our cost of flow to 2.2% negative, that means we've got the float plus somebody has given us 2.2% of that of cash."
【批注】银行，存款和存款人都带着恐惧，遇到危机时很可能发生挤兑； 证券，交易的灵活性、流动性给人"随时变现"的安全感，这是一种幻觉，作为整体是不能变现的，系统性危机时这个幻觉会破灭； 保险，把恐惧转移出去，保险浮存金是站在恐惧对立面的东西，不会在危机中挤兑保险公司，这是一个来自产品的结构性优势。
【21.What did Warren Buffett learn from Greg Abel?】
Warren Buffett:
"I spend more time looking at balance sheets than I do income statements and Wall Street really doesn't pay much attention to balance sheets. I like to look at balance sheets over an 8 or 10 year period before I even look at the income account. There are certain things that are harder to hide or play games with on the balance sheet than you can with the income statement."
"Charlie was never satisfied with just superficial things about any subject. He always would tell me not to take a position on anything until you can describe the arguments against it better than the person who is arguing with you."
【批注】性格中外溢的风险，再加上错误方向的正反馈就更麻烦了，会强化错误、让错误更快速的定型，很多人就是这么完蛋的，而资产负债表反映的是存量，最有可能看出定型后的错误行为的地方。
【25.How to get a meeting with Warren Buffett / 26.BHE's valuation】
Warren Buffett:
"There are some problems that can't be solved, and we are not in the business of trying to solve insolvable problems."
"But then the problem we have, of course, is that the people who work for you, that's their job. So they want to have reasons to keep going, and those are tough choices if you're managing, but that's why they have managers."
（2026年2月17日，PacifiCorp官方宣布，已与Portland General Electric签署协议，出售其Washington州服务区，交易价格为19亿美元。）
【批注】不受噪音干扰的情绪结构，想法如果不能收敛就会碎片化，听什么都有道理，分不清什么重要什么不重要；更不知道什么是重要并且可知的，什么是重要不可知的信息。
【26.BHE's valuation】
Warren Buffett:
"Berkshire Hathaway Energy is worth considerably less money than it was two years ago, based on societal factors. The public utility business is not as good a business as it was a couple of years ago. Look at Hawaiian Electric and look at Edison in the current wildfires situation in California and their societal trends."
"I would say that our enthusiasm for buying public utility companies is different now than it would have been a couple of years ago. It's pretty dramatic in public utilities because they are going to need lots of money."
【批注】规模扩大-》进入受监管的公共事业-》资本充公/或者成为国家的资产，这两者之间有时候是比较模糊的，反正都差不多，这个问题很难有好的答案。
【28.Investing in big-tech】
Warren Buffett:
"Hollywood's answer was always to get their money from other people to put up the capital. A lot of people have gotten very rich in the country by essentially figuring out how to get others to put up the capital."
"It'll be interesting to see how much capital intensity. There's more capital intensity going on with the Magnificent 7 than there was a few years ago. Basically, Apple has not really needed any capital over the years. Whether that world is the same in the future or not is something."
"It's a well-designed business for the people who practice it. The trick in life is to get somebody else's capital, get an override on it. But it can lead to a lot of abuse."
【批注】这一段的逻辑有点长：（1）科技公司变成重资产公司的趋势是起点；（2）然后解释为他人做嫁衣的可能性，Coca-Cola利用了瓶装厂，AMEX利用航空公司，汽车保险利用了汽车制造业，也包括私募公司利用别人的钱，其实保险也在利用别人的钱；（3）不能滥用作为收尾。
【29.Early influence】
Warren Buffett:
"If I spend 10 hours reading Ben Graham, I would be damn smarter when I got through. So minds are really, really different."
"I think there was a book that talked about spending 10,000 hours as something. I could spend 10,000 hours tap dancing, and you'll throw up if you watch me."
"My dad always used to tell me that you know you're something different, it may not be good, but you find your own path."
【批注】找到自己擅长的点，由此建立自己的"能力圈"，然后想办法待在里面、不出圈，这个事光凭技能上的天赋是不够的，情绪结构比技能上的天赋更为关键。
【30.DOGE】
Warren Buffett:
"We are doing something that is unsustainable, and it has the aspect that it becomes uncontrollable to a certain point."
"There is a downside, there's upside. It's the problem of the most successful company in the history of the world. At this point, we have a little room to go and solve."
【批注】"现实中有代价也有回报"，这是"模糊正确"的量化指标，还是一样，离源头越近的越是难以辨识。
【31.A fair capitalism】
Warren Buffett:
"I don't think you get very far by lecturing the world on how. I think it's a real mistake in communication and persuasion to lecture a bunch of people where you just won the game."
"The winners humiliate the losers and do all kinds of things."
【批注】输家的核心问题是心理上的防御，说教/羞辱都只会增强对方的防御能力。
【32.Greg Abel's approach to managing the operating subsidiaries】
Warren Buffett:
"A manager who behaves differently than what he's asking the people beneath them to behave — it just doesn't work over time."
"People want a manager that they admire, and they're not going to admire them if those people profess to behave in one manner and behave in another manner. It's easier for an organization to see its quality move downward than it upward."
"Once you start deviating downward, it is really contagious and it's hard to rebuild, so you really need someone who behaves well on top and is not playing games for their own benefit."
【批注】高高在上地说："你们应该这样做"，这是非常重要的提醒。心理上想着占据高位是很难改变的，"文化继承者"的身份绑定或许是一种对冲，"或许"的意思是指责别人、纠正别人、对别人施加压力，这股压力本身从哪里来？
【34.US health insurance reform】
Warren Buffett:
"There comes a point where the governments — health is so important to everybody. What I said to Jamie and Jeff, I said, well, the tape worm won. There are problems in society when you get 20% of your GDP going into a given industry. The degree of enthusiasm for changing that industry, the political power that the industry will have — that doesn't mean they're evil, it's everybody, they just ends up there."
"So we came to a conclusion, we didn't know the answer. Three of us had the money to do it. And we didn't know how to change what 330 million people felt about their doctor, felt about their health care, what they felt entitled to."
【批注】从"事实+幻觉"的角度入手，医疗的事实部分非常扎实，但也意味着一个更大、更难以控制的幻觉。
【34.US health insurance reform】
Warren Buffett:
"This country has worked out better than any country in the world, so you can't argue as a failure, but you can't argue that there are certain problems that are terribly tough to figure out ways to solve."
"If you get elected, you're going to say to yourself, well, I can do more good if I stay in. Then, if I really vote my conscience on this sort of thing, you give away a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit there. And finally, you don't recognize yourself in the mirror anymore."
【批注】就像一个人的优点和缺点，注意力盯着缺点，缺点不会消失甚至加速自我强化，但如果注意力盯着优点，缺点会因为失去注意力、失去能量的供应，慢慢消退，医疗问题的逆转可能跟选民的注意力有关，人们越来越关注，这个事就比较麻烦；如果关注度下降就有可能逆转。