I.H.186.Warren Buffett.Circle Of Competence
巴菲特有一句我非常认同的话：“如果你对某样东西是不是在你的能力圈里有疑问，那它就不在”，他的意思是：必须确信无疑，凡是心里打问号的，都不在能力圈里。
造成越界的，往往不是智力问题，而是性格缺陷。很多“胡言乱语”，不管表面讲的是宏观、科技还是故事股，高度压缩之后其实只是几种心态的变体：不懂但想要试一试、不想懂但想要试一试、知道是错的但想要试一试。大脑的部分功能是正常的，真正拦在前面的，是情绪。这时候，最好有人在旁边轻轻提醒一句——前提是，这个人的话你还听得进去。
情绪自律 = 人类版的 Value Function，在人工智能领域，Value Function 决定了一个智能体如何给不同状态和行为打分。对人类来说，情绪自律和边界感，本质上就是心智里的 Value Function。这套打分系统，很大程度上源自 Erikson 所说的 basic trust：我们在生命最初几年，对“世界是否可信、我的需要是否危险”形成的基本判断。
（1）基本信任
如果早期体验是：“饿了、怕了、痛了 → 有人来、被抱、被安抚”，写进大脑里的隐含假设：“问题是可以被处理的 / 世界大致是可以信任的”。在这样的 Value Function 下，一个人遇到问题时，第一反应更容易是：“怎么解决？”而不是“怎么自保？”。
有了这层安全感，大脑就有余地退一步看结构，第二反应会是：把复杂问题更好地压缩（简单化），用更简洁的思维框架来提高解决问题的效率。
（2）基本不信任
如果早期体验是：“被骂、被忽视、被羞辱”，写进大脑里的隐含假设变成：“表达需求是危险的 / 世界是不可信的”。在这样的 Value Function 下，遇到问题时的第一反应往往是：“怎么避免被责怪 / 被看见？”而不是“如何把事情做好？”
这会带来一种典型模式：把本来可以直接面对的简单问题，通过过度分析、过度担忧、过度外推，复杂化到“难以行动”，从而暂时逃避清晰的成败归因。表面上是“想得多、想得深”，本质上是：用聪明才智服务于逃避。
（3）性格是天生的
有几个显而易见的逻辑，第一是外部环境的可信度会影响人的行为；第二，一旦方向确定了会自我强化，Compression、Value Functions显然是循环递进的，这决定了越前期的影响越重要；第三，处于自我强化中的不可能靠自己逃出循环，不能自我选择的环境或许能起到点作用，如果还有可能的话。
（4）复杂问题简单化，简单问题复杂化
有基本信任的把复杂问题简单化，目标是解决问题；基本不信任的把简单问题复杂化，目标是想方设法逃避问题，比如，芒格的100个思维模型，25种人类误判心理倾向。
第一反应是解决问题的人，通常也大致了解自己的能力边界，具备这种特质的可以进入下一步：搭建正确的思维框架，尝试着给企业估值。巴菲特在2007年的股东大会有一个非常好的解释：（1）正确的思维框架，先有一个正确的方向；（2）竞争性的想法，没有竞争如何提炼出更好的想法？（3）亲身体验增加想法的置信度，置信度=敢用程度。
48. How to stay in your “circle of competence”
如何待在你的“能力圈”里
WARREN BUFFETT: What was the first question again that —
WARREN BUFFETT：刚才第一个问题是——
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was how a youngster like myself would define and develop a circle of competence.
AUDIENCE MEMBER：是像我这样的年轻人，应该如何定义并发展自己的能力圈。
WARREN BUFFETT: Oh, yeah, that’s a good question. And I’m — you know. I’d — I would say this, if you have doubts about something being into your circle of competence, it isn’t. You know, I mean, in other words, I would look down the list of businesses and I would bet you that you can — I mean, you can understand a Coke bottler. You can understand the Coca-Cola Company. You can understand McDonald’s. You can understand, you know, you can understand, in a general way, General Motors. You may not be able to value it. But there are all kinds of businesses. You can certainly understand Walmart. That doesn’t mean whether you decide whether the price — what the price should be — but you understand Walmart. You can understand Costco. And if you get to something that your friend is buying, or that everybody says a lot of money’s going to be made, and you don’t — you’re not sure whether you understand it or not, you don’t.
WARREN BUFFETT：哦，对，这是个好问题。我会这么说：如果你对某样东西是不是在你的能力圈里“有疑问”，那它就不在。换句话说，我会看一长串公司名单，然后打赌你能——比如说，你一定能看懂一个 Coke bottler（可口可乐装瓶商），你能看懂 Coca-Cola Company，你能看懂 McDonald’s，你大体上也能看懂 General Motors，虽然你未必会给它估值。但这类业务有一大堆。你当然能看懂 Walmart，这不等于你一定能判断出它的股价“应该是多少”，但你是能理解 Walmart 的。你也能理解 Costco。可是一旦你看到某个你朋友正在买的东西，或者大家都说“这玩意儿要赚大钱”，而你自己心里还不确定“我是不是真的懂这个”，那答案就是：你不懂。
必须确信无疑，但凡有疑问的都不是。
You know, I mean, and it’s better to be well within the circle than to be trying to tiptoe along the line. And you’ll find plenty of things within the circle. I mean, it’s not terrible to have a small circle of competence. I’d say my circle of competence is pretty small, but it’s big enough. You know, I can find a few things. And when somebody calls me with a Larson-Juhl, that is within my circle of competence. I hadn’t even thought about it before, but I know it’s within it. I mean, I can evaluate a business like that. And if I get called — I got called the other day on a very large finance company. I understand what they do, but I don’t understand everything that’s going on within it, and I don’t understand that — whether I can continually fund it, you know, on a basis, independent from using Berkshire’s credit, and so on.
你知道，我的意思是：待在能力圈“里面”要比踩在边界线上、踮着脚往外够安全得多。你会在圈子里找到足够多的东西可以研究。能力圈小一点一点都不可怕。要我说，我自己的能力圈其实挺小的，但已经“够用”了——我能在里面找到几样可以做的事。比如当有人给我打电话，说要卖 Larson-Juhl（画框业务）的时候，我以前甚至没仔细想过这个行业，但我一听就知道那在我的能力圈里，我能评价那样的生意。反过来，前几天有人打电话给我，讲一家很大的金融公司，我知道他们在干什么，但我没弄懂公司里面所有在发生的事，我也搞不清楚：如果不动用 Berkshire 的信用，我是不是能长期给它提供资金支持，诸如此类的问题。
So, even though I could understand every individual transaction they did, I don’t regard the whole enterprise, or the operation of it, necessarily as being within my circle of competence. Charlie?
所以，尽管我可以搞清楚他们做的每一笔“单笔交易”，但我并不认为“整家公司”或“整套运作模式”一定在我的能力圈里。Charlie？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, I think that if you have competence, you almost automatically have a feeling of where the edge of the competence is. Because after all, it wouldn’t be much of a competence if you didn’t know its boundary. And so, I think you’ve asked a question that almost answers itself. And my guess is you do know what you’re perfectly competent to do, you know, all kinds of areas. And you do have all kinds of other areas where you know you’d be over your depth. I mean, you’re not trying to play chess against Bobby Fischer or do stunts on the high trapeze if you’ve had no training for it. And my guess is you know pretty well where the boundaries of your competence lies. And I think you also probably know pretty well where you want to stretch the boundary. And you’ve got to stretch the boundary by working at it, including practice.
CHARLIE MUNGER：是的，我觉得如果你真的有“能力”，你几乎自然而然就会对“这个能力的边界在哪儿”有种感觉。毕竟，如果你连它的边界都不知道，那算不上什么真正的能力。所以，我觉得你这个问题本身就几乎带着答案。我猜，你其实很清楚自己在哪些领域是完全“得心应手”的；也同样清楚在另外一大堆领域里，自己一脚踩进去就会“踩空、没底”。比如说，你不会没学过就跑去跟 Bobby Fischer 下国际象棋，也不会没训练过就去空中飞人上面做高难度动作。我猜，你大致知道自己能力的边界在哪儿；你也大概知道自己想把边界向哪里推一点。而要扩展这个边界，你必须靠努力去做，包括不断练习。
能力=能力边界，巴菲特没有说死是想保留一点点的可能性。
WARREN BUFFETT: And one of the drawbacks to Berkshire, of course, is that Charlie and I, our circles largely overlap, so you don’t get two big complete circles at all, but that’s just the way it is. And it’s probably why we get along so well, too.
WARREN BUFFETT：当然，Berkshire 有个“缺点”，就是 Charlie 和我的能力圈大部分是重叠的，所以你并没有得到“两大整套完全不同的圈”，事实就是这样。不过这大概也是我们俩相处得这么好的原因之一。
14. How to be a better investor
如何成为一个更好的投资者
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 10, please.
WARREN BUFFETT：第十位，请。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Thomas Gamay (PH) from San Francisco. I’m 17-years old and this is my tenth consecutive annual meeting. (Applause)
AUDIENCE MEMBER：早上好。我是来自 San Francisco 的 Thomas Gamay（PH），我今年 17 岁了，这是我连续第十次参加股东大会。（掌声）
WARREN BUFFETT: You must be a Ph.D. by now at least.
WARREN BUFFETT：那你现在起码也该拿到一个博士学位了。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, I’m curious about what you think is the best way to become a better investor. Should I get an MBA? Get more work experience? Read more Charlie Munger almanacs or merely is it genetic and out of my hands?
AUDIENCE MEMBER：Mr. Buffett 和 Mr. Munger，我很好奇，在你们看来，成为一名更好的投资者，最好的路径是什么？我应该去读一个 MBA？还是多积累一些工作经验？或者多读一些 Charlie Munger 的“年鉴”？又或者这主要是天赋问题，不在我掌控之中？
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think you should read everything you can. I can tell you in my own case, I think by the time I was — well, I know by the time I was ten — I’d read every book in the Omaha Public Library that had anything to do with investing, and many of them I’d read twice. So I don’t think there’s anything like reading, and not just as limited to investing at all. But you’ve just got to fill up your mind with various competing thoughts and sort them out as to what really makes sense over time. And then once you’ve done a lot of that, I think you have to jump in the water, because investing on paper and doing — you know, and investing with real money, you know, is like the difference between reading a romance novel and doing something else. (Laughter) There is nothing like actually having a little experience in investing. And you soon find out whether you like it. If you like it, if it turns you on, you know, you’re probably going to do well on it. And the earlier you start, the better, in terms of reading.
WARREN BUFFETT：嗯，我认为你应该尽可能多读书。就拿我自己来说吧，到我——嗯，我清楚记得，到我十岁的时候，Omaha 公共图书馆里所有和投资有关的书，我都已经读完了，其中很多本我还读了两遍。所以在我看来，没有什么东西能替代阅读，而且阅读也绝不仅限于投资类的书。你需要做的是，让自己的头脑里充满各种彼此“竞争”的想法，然后随着时间推移，把它们慢慢整理出来，分辨出哪些真正讲得通。等你做了大量这样的积累之后，我觉得你必须“下水”——纸面投资，和真正拿真金白银去投，你知道的，就好比“看一本爱情小说”和“做点别的事”之间的区别。（笑声）在投资这件事上，没有什么能替代亲身实践的实际经验。很快你就会发现自己到底喜不喜欢它。如果你喜欢它，如果它能点燃你的兴趣，你大概率就会在这件事上做得不错。而就阅读本身而言，你开始得越早越好。
But, you know, I read a book at age 19 that formed my framework for thinking about investments ever since. I mean, what I’m doing today at 76 is running things through the same thought pattern that I got from a book I read when I was 19. And I read all the other books, too, but if you — and you have to read a lot of them to know which ones really do jump out at you and which ideas jump out at you over time. So I would say that read and then, on a small scale in a way that can’t hurt you financially, do some of it yourself. Charlie?
不过，你知道，我在 19 岁的时候读过一本书，从那以后，它就奠定了我对投资思考的基本框架。我的意思是，我今天在 76 岁时做事情的思考路径，依然是在沿用那本我 19 岁时读到的书里所形成的那套思维方式。当然，我后来也读了其他所有的书，但是只有在你读了很多很多书之后，你才能分辨出，哪些书、哪些想法会在时间的检验下真正“跳出来”，一直留在你的脑子里。所以，我会总结成：多读，然后在一个不会对你财务状况造成伤害的小规模范围内，亲自去做一点投资实践。Charlie？
（1）正确的思维框架，先有一个正确的方向；（2）竞争性的想法，没有竞争如何提炼出更好的想法？（3）亲身体验增加想法的置信度，置信度=敢用程度。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, Sandy Gottesman, who is a Berkshire director, runs a large and successful investment operation, and you can tell what he thinks causes people to learn to be good investors by noticing his employment practices. When a young man comes to Sandy, he asks a very simple question, no matter how young the man is. He says, “What do you own and why do you own it?” And if you haven’t been interested enough in the subject to have that involvement already, why, he’d rather you go somewhere else.
CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，Sandy Gottesman 是 Berkshire 的董事，他自己经营着一个规模很大、运作成功的投资机构，而你只要观察他的用人做法，就能看出在他看来“人是怎么学会成为好投资者的”。当有年轻人来找 Sandy 时，他无论对方多年轻，都会问一个非常简单的问题：“你现在持有哪些资产？你为什么持有它们？”如果你对这个领域压根没有足够兴趣，以至于事先根本没有这种实际投入，那他宁可让你去别的地方。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. It’s very — that whole idea that you own a business, you know, is vital to the investment process. If you were going to buy a farm, you’d say, I’m buying this 160-acre farm because I expect that the farm will produce 120 bushels an acre of corn or 45 bushels an acre of soybeans and I can buy — you know, you go through the whole process. It’d be a quantitative decision and it would be based on pretty solid stuff. It would not be based on, you know, what you saw on television that day. It would not be based on, you know, what your neighbor said to you or anything of the sort. It’s the same thing with stocks. I used to always recommend to my students that they take a yellow pad like this and if they’re buying a hundred shares of General Motors at 30 and General Motors has whatever it has out, 600 million shares or a little less, that they say, “I’m going to buy the General Motors company for $18 billion, and here’s why.”
WARREN BUFFETT：是的。这整个“你是在拥有一门生意”的观念，对投资过程至关重要。打个比方，如果你要买一块农场，你会说：我要买下这块 160 英亩的农场，因为我预期这块地每英亩能产出 120 蒲式耳的玉米，或者每英亩 45 蒲式耳的大豆，然后我可以以多少价格买进——你会把整个计算过程走一遍。这个决策会是一个定量的决策，而且是建立在相当扎实的依据之上。它不会建立在你那天在电视上看到些什么，也不会建立在你邻居随口对你说了些什么或类似那一类东西上。股票也是同样道理。我过去常常建议我的学生拿一张像这样的黄色记事本，如果他们打算以 30 美元买进 100 股 General Motors，而 General Motors 的流通股本是，比如说 6 亿股或者略少一些，那他们就应该在纸上写下：“我要以 180 亿美元买下整个 General Motors 公司，原因如下。”
And if they can’t give a good essay on that subject, they’ve got no business buying 100 shares or ten shares or one share at $30 per share because they are not subjecting it to business tests. And to get in the habit of thinking that way, you know, Sandy would have followed it up with the questions, based on how you answered the first two questions, that made you defend exactly why you thought that business was cheap at the price at which you are buying it. And any other answer, you’d flunk.
如果他们没法就这个问题写出一篇像样的“小论文”，那他们就根本没资格以 30 美元的价格去买 100 股、10 股，甚至 1 股，因为他们压根没有把这件事当成一门生意来检验。要养成这种思考习惯，你知道，Sandy 会在前两个问题的基础上继续追问，让你进一步自圆其说：为什么你认为在这个买入价格下，这门生意是便宜的？如果你的回答不是这一路的思路，那在他那儿，你就算不及格。
WARREN BUFFETT: I’m ready to hire your entire class right now. (Laughter) Well, I think you’re telling — you’re giving them some very good advice. I think that the most important investment you can make is in yourself. I mean, very, very, very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. And potential exceeds realization to just an enormous factor with so many people. And I — one illustration you might try with your class — I tell them this when I talk to high school groups — just imagine that you’re 16 and I was going to give you a car of your choice today, any car you wanted to pick, and — but there was one catch attached to it — it was the only car you were going to get in the rest of your life, so you had to make it last there. You can pick out the fanciest you want, a Maserati, whatever it might be. How would you treat it? Well, of course you would read the owner’s manual about five times before you turn the key in the ignition. You’d keep it garaged.
WARREN BUFFETT：我现在就准备把你们全班都雇下来。（笑声）我认为你正在——你确实在给他们非常好的建议。我认为你能做的最重要的投资就是投资自己。我的意思是，能把自己“潜在马力”转化为人生“实际产出马力”的人，真的、真的、真的凤毛麟角。对许多人来说，潜力与实现之间的差距大得惊人。而且——有一个例子你可以在课堂上试试——我在和高中生交流时也会这么说：想象你现在16岁，而我今天要送你一辆你自己任选的车，任何一辆都行——但有一个前提——这将是你此生唯一的一辆车，所以你必须让它撑到最后。你可以挑最华丽的，Maserati，或者别的都行。你会怎么对待它？当然，你会在点火前把用户手册读上五遍。你会把它停在车库里。
对自己的能力边界有感觉，情绪自律的人非常少。
Any little rust, you would get taken care of immediately. You’d change the oil twice as often as you were supposed to, because you know it has to last a lifetime. And then I tell the students, you get one body and one mind, and it’s going to have to last you a lifetime, and you better treat it the same way, and you better start treating it right now, because it doesn’t do you any good to start worrying about that when you’re 50 or 60 and the rust — that little speck of rust — has turned into something big. So anything your students do to invest in their mind and body — particularly your mind — we didn’t work too hard on the bodies around here, but — (laughter) — you know, it pays off. It pays off in an extraordinary way. Your best asset is your own self. And you can become, to an enormous degree, the person you want to be. When I get classes in universities, I just ask them to imagine they were going to buy one of their classmates to own 10 percent of for the rest of their life. Which one would they pick?
任何一点点锈斑，你都会立刻处理。你会把换机油的频率提高到规定的两倍，因为你知道它要撑一辈子。然后我告诉学生们：你只有一个身体和一个大脑，它们也要陪你一辈子，你最好用同样的方式对待它们，而且最好从现在就开始，因为等你50或60岁时再开始担心，等那一点点锈——那小小的锈点——已经变成了大问题，就一点用也没有了。所以，只要是对自己的身心进行投资的事——尤其是你的头脑——都值得去做。我们这里对身体不算太“下功夫”，不过——（笑声）——你知道的，这些投入会有回报，会带来非同寻常的回报。你最好的资产就是你自己。你可以在很大程度上成为你想成为的那种人。我去大学和学生交流时，会让他们想象：如果你可以“买下”某位同学未来一生10%的收益份额，你会选谁？
They wouldn’t pick the one with the highest IQ, or necessarily the one with the highest grades. They’d pick the person that’s going to be effective. And the reason people are effective is because other people want to work with them. They want to be around them. And other people they don’t want to be around. And those are qualities than an individual picks up — being generous, being humorous, being on time, not claiming credit for more than you do but rather less than you do, helping out other people — all kinds of human qualities that turn other people on, and then there’s things that turn other people off. And those are habits, and they’re the habits that you pick up when they’re the age of your students. The habits they have today will follow them throughout life, so why not have good ones? So that’s the only message I would give your students. (Applause)
他们不会选择IQ最高的那个，或者不一定选择成绩最好的那个。他们会选那个“有效”的人。而人之所以“有效”，是因为别人愿意和他一起工作，愿意待在他身边；相反，也有人会让别人不愿意靠近。这些来自个人所养成的品质——慷慨、幽默、守时、不把功劳往自己身上多揽、反而少揽、乐于助人——各种各样能让别人喜欢的品格；当然也有一些会让人反感的东西。而这些都是“习惯”，而且正是在你学生们这个年龄段养成的习惯。他们今天的习惯会伴随一生，那为什么不让这些习惯变得更好呢？所以这就是我会给你学生们的全部信息。（掌声）
一边是想把简单搞复杂的自己，另一边是喜欢别人把复杂搞简单，巴菲特的意思是通过这种方式反向改造自己，我自己的理解：（1）可能性很小，但确实是没办法的办法；（2）时间窗口很短，把简单搞复杂是本质，事情的积累越过边界了就不可能逆转；（3）环境，很难遇上好的文化和环境，学校确实是最合适的地方。
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I had 49 — mostly universities, a few colleges — that came to Omaha this year. We do them in clumps of six. And then the last one, we had an added university. So we had eight sessions, full-day sessions. And they asked me what — sometimes they asked me what I’d do if I was running a business school, teaching investments. And I’d tell them I’d only have two courses. One would be how to value a business, and the second would be how to think about markets. And there wouldn’t be anything about modern portfolio theory or beta or efficient markets or anything like that. We’d get rid of that in the first 10 minutes. The — But if you know how to value a business — and you don’t have to know how to value all businesses. On the New York Stock Exchange, I don’t know, there’s 4- or 5,000, probably, businesses and a whole lot more on NASDAQ. You don’t have to be right on 4,000 or 5,000. You don’t have to be right on 400.
WARREN BUFFETT：今年有 49 所学校——主要是大学，少数是学院——来 Omaha 看我。我们通常一次接待 6 所学校，最后一批又多加了一所，一共办了 8 次全天的交流。他们有时会问我：如果你来办一所商学院、专门教投资，你会怎么设计课程？我跟他们说，我只会开两门课：一门叫“如何给企业估值”，另一门叫“如何思考市场”。不会讲现代投资组合理论、beta、有效市场这些内容，这些东西前 10 分钟就会被清理出课程表。但是，如果你懂得如何给企业估值——而且你并不需要会给所有企业估值。纽约证交所大概有四五千家公司，NASDAQ 上还有更多。你不需要在四五千家公司上都判断正确，也不需要在 400 家上都正确。
You don’t have to be right on 40. You just have to stay within the circle of competence, the things that you can understand. And look for things that are selling for less than they’re worth, of the ones you can value. And you can start out with a fairly small circle of competence and learn more about businesses as you go along. But you’ll learn that there are a whole bunch of them that simply don’t lend themselves to valuations and you forget about those. And I think if — accounting helps you in that, you need to understand accounting to know the language of business, but accounting also has enormous limitations. And you have to learn enough to know what accounting is meaningful and when you have to ignore certain aspects of accounting. You have to understand when competitive advantages are durable and when they’re fleeting. I mean, you have to learn the difference between a hula hoop company, you know, and CocaCola. But that isn’t too hard to do. And then you have to know how to think about market fluctuations and really learn that the market is there to serve you rather than to instruct you. And to a great extent, that is not a matter of IQ.
你甚至不需要在 40 家上都正确。你只需要待在自己的“能力圈”里，做那些你能看懂的生意。在那些你能估得上价值的公司里，去寻找“价格低于价值”的标的。你可以从一个很小的能力圈起步，然后边走边学，逐渐了解更多的业务。但在这个过程中，你会发现，有一大堆业务根本不适合做估值，这些就应该直接放弃。在这里，会计对你是有帮助的，你需要懂会计，因为那是商业的语言。但会计也有巨大的局限性，你必须学到足够的东西，知道哪些会计信息是有意义的、什么时候必须刻意忽略账面上的某些项目。你要明白竞争优势什么时候是可持续的、什么时候是转瞬即逝的。换句话说，你得学会分辨“呼啦圈公司”和 CocaCola 这样的公司有什么不同——这并不算难。此外，你必须学会如何看待市场波动，并真正理解：市场的存在是为了“服务你”，而不是为了“指导你”。而在很大程度上，这并不是一个“IQ 高低”的问题。
必须有坚实的起点，从自己的能力圈起步，无脑复制一开始就是从想象中起步，这种心理上的锚点很难改变。
If you have — if you’re in the investment business and you have a IQ of 150, sell 30 points to somebody else, ’cause you don’t need it. I mean, it — (laughter) — you need to be reasonably intelligent. But you do not need to be a genius, you know. At all. In fact, it can hurt. But you do have to have an emotional stability. You have to have sort of an inner peace about your decisions. Because it is a game where you get subjected to minute-by-minute stimuli, where people are offering opinions all the time. You have to be able to think for yourself. And, I don’t know whether — I don’t know how much of that’s innate and how much can be taught. But if you have that quality, you’ll do very well in investing if you spend some time at it. Learn something about valuing businesses. It’s not a complicated game. As I say — said many times — it’s simple, but not easy. It is not a complicated game. You don’t have to understand higher math.
如果你——如果你在投资这个行当里，IQ 有 150，那就把 30 分卖给别人算了，因为你根本用不上。（笑声）你需要的只是“足够聪明”，但完全不需要当天才。事实上，天才反而可能会带来麻烦。但你必须具备情绪上的稳定性，对自己的决策要有一种内在的平静。因为这是一场游戏，你每分钟都在被各种刺激轰炸，周围的人不停地在发表意见。你必须能够自己思考。至于这种能力有多少是天生的、有多少可以教出来，我也说不清。但如果你具备这种特质，再在这件事上花点时间，学一点企业估值，你在投资上会做得很好。这不是一个复杂的游戏。我已经说过很多次：它“很简单，但不容易”。它真的不是一个复杂的游戏，你不需要懂高等数学。
有基本信任的把复杂问题简单化，目标是解决问题；基本不信任的把简单问题复杂化，目标是想方设法逃避问题。心理状态的默认设置中对世界有基本信任的才能进入下一步。
You don’t — you know, you don’t have to understand law. There’s all kinds of things that you don’t have to be good at. There’s all kinds of jobs in this world that are much tougher. But you do have to have sort of an emotional stability that will take you through almost anything. And then you’ll make good investment decisions over time. Charlie?
你也——你知道的，你也不需要懂法律。世界上有一大堆东西你都不必精通，世界上还有各种比投资难得多的工作。但你确实需要一种情绪上的稳定性，它能带你穿越几乎任何环境的变化。只要这一点在，时间长了，你整体的投资决策就会不错。Charlie？
7. Knowing your “circle of competence”
了解你的“能力圈”
WARREN BUFFETT: OK, station 1. We’re back at — here we are.
WARREN BUFFETT：好的，1号麦克风。我们回到了——对，就这儿。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, Mr. Buffett, and hello, Mr. Munger. Thank you for being extremely generous with sharing your wisdom. My name is Chander Chawla, and I am visiting from San Francisco. In the past, you have said that people should operate within their circle of competence. My question is, how does one figure out what one’s circle of competence is? (Laughter)
AUDIENCE MEMBER：您好，Buffett 先生，您好，Munger 先生。非常感谢你们慷慨地分享智慧。我叫 Chander Chawla，从 San Francisco 来。在过去，你曾说过，人应该在自己的能力圈内行动。我的问题是：一个人该如何弄清楚自己的能力圈到底是什么？（笑）
WARREN BUFFETT: Good question. (Laughs) Some of the people in the audience are identifying with it, I can hear them. The — it’s — you know, it is a question of being self-realistic, and that applies outside of business as well. And, I think Charlie and I have been reasonably good at identifying what I would call the perimeter of that circle of competence, but obviously we’ve gone out of it. I would say that in my own case, I’ve gone out of it more often in retail than in any other arena. I think it’s easy to sort of think you understand retail, and then subsequently find out you don’t, as we did with the department store in Baltimore. You could say I was outside of my circle of competence when I bought Berkshire Hathaway, although I bought it, really, to resell as a stock, originally. I probably was out of my circle of competence when I decided that I should go in and buy control of the company. That was a dumb decision — which worked out.
WARREN BUFFETT：这是个好问题。（笑）我能听出来，现场有些人很有共鸣。这个——你知道，这其实是一个“自我认清”的问题，而且不仅限于商业领域。我觉得，Charlie 和我在识别我们所谓“能力圈的边界”这件事上，做得算是不错的，但显然我们也有越界的时候。就我个人来说，我在零售领域出圈的次数可能比在其他领域都多。零售这个行当，很容易让人“以为”自己懂，结果后来才发现自己并不懂，就像我们当年在 Baltimore 那家百货公司的经历一样。你完全可以说，当年我买 Berkshire Hathaway 的时候是在能力圈之外——虽然一开始我买它只是想当股票倒手卖掉。但当我后来决定要进去买下公司的控制权时，那大概就真的是出了我的能力圈。那是个愚蠢的决定——但最后居然成了。
The — being realistic in appraising your own talents and shortcomings, I think — I don’t know whether that’s innate, but some people seem a whole lot better at it than the others. And I certainly know of a number of CEOs that I feel have no idea of where their circle of competence begins and ends. But, we’ve got a number of managers who I think are just terrific at it. I mean, they really know when they’re playing in the game they’re going win in, and they don’t go outside of that game. The ultimate was Mrs. B, at the Furniture Mart. She told me that she did not want stock, in terms of the Berkshire Hathaway deal. Now, that may sound like it was a bad decision. It was a splendid decision. She did not know anything about stock, but she knew a lot about what to do with cash. She knew real estate, she knew retailing, and she knew exactly what she knew and what she didn’t know, and that took her a long, long, long, long way in business life.
在评估自己的才能和短板时保持现实，我认为——这是不是天生的我不敢说，但有些人显然比另外一些人强得多。我确实知道不少 CEO，完全搞不清楚自己的能力圈从哪儿开始、到哪儿结束。相反，我们有好些经理在这方面就非常出色。他们很清楚什么时候是在打一场自己会赢的比赛，也不会跑到那之外去。最极致的例子就是 Furniture Mart 的 Mrs. B。她当年就跟我说，Berkshire Hathaway 的交易里她不要股票。听上去好像是个“损失很大”的决定，其实是个极好的决定。她对股票一无所知，但她非常懂得如何使用现金。她懂房地产，懂零售，她非常清楚自己“知道什么、不知道什么”，这点让她在商业世界里走了非常非常非常非常远。
非常温和的表述，越看越有道理，能看懂的自然能懂，只需要轻轻推一把；不能懂的，换成尖锐、刺激的说法也没用，认为有用的只能说明自己的心态不正确，已经超出理性的边界。
And that — that ability to know when you’re playing the game in which you’re going to win, and playing outside of that game, is a huge asset. I can’t tell you the best way to develop a great sense of that about yourself. You might get some of your friends that know you well to offer contributions. Charlie’s given me a few contributions occasionally, saying, “What the hell do you know about that?” That’s one way of putting it, of course. (Laughs) But Charlie, do — can you help him out?
而这种——知道自己什么时候是在打会赢的那场仗、什么时候已经跑到自己不会赢的游戏里的能力，本身就是巨大的资产。至于怎样培养出这种对自己的清醒认知，我也说不上来什么“最佳路径”。你可以找那些很了解你的朋友给点反馈。Charlie 就经常给我“反馈”，时不时来一句：“这玩意儿你懂个屁？”当然，他的表达方式就是这样的。（笑）不过 Charlie，你能不能也帮他补充几句？
情绪细想了有点意思，很多“胡言乱语”的不管讲的是什么，高度压缩后只是前后两个逻辑的几种变化，比如，不懂但想要试一试、不想懂但想要试一试、知道是错的但想要试一试，等等，大脑的部分功能显然是正常的，但是情绪拦在前面，这时候最好有人做个提醒。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I don’t think it’s as difficult to figure out competence as it may appear to you. If you’re five-foot-two, you don’t have much of a future in the National Basketball League. And if you’re 95 years of age, you probably shouldn’t try and act the romantic lead part in Hollywood. (Laughter) And if you weigh 350 pounds, you probably shouldn’t try and dance the lead part in the Bolshoi Ballet. And if you can hardly count cards at all, you probably shouldn’t try and win chess tournaments playing blindfolded, and so on and so on.
CHARLIE MUNGER：我倒不觉得“弄清楚自己的能力”像你想象得那么难。如果你身高只有五英尺二（大概一米五八），你在 National Basketball League 里大概不会有什么前途；如果你已经 95 岁了，你大概也不应该去 Hollywood 演浪漫男主角。（笑）如果你体重 350 磅，那你大概也别打算去 Bolshoi Ballet 跳领舞了；如果你连简单的点数都算不好，那就别指望靠“蒙眼下棋”赢国际象棋冠军，诸如此类，一直可以举下去。
WARREN BUFFETT: You’re ruling out everything I want to do. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：你把我所有想干的事都给否了。（笑）
CHARLIE MUNGER: But competency is a relative concept. And what a lot of us need, including the one speaking, is — what I needed to get ahead was to compete against idiots, and luckily there’s a large supply. (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER：但“能力”是个相对概念。我们许多人需要的，包括正在讲话的这个人（指自己），是——我之所以能往前走，是因为我大多数时候是在跟一群白痴竞争，而幸运的是，白痴的供应量相当充足。（笑）
WARREN BUFFETT: OK, Carol. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：好，交给 Carol。（笑）
8. Try to have a big circle of competence but be realistic about its perimeter
尽量让你的能力圈够大，但要对边界保持清醒
WARREN BUFFETT: OK, station 11.
WARREN BUFFETT：好的，11号麦克风。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, thank you for taking my question. My name is Feroz Qayyum and I’m from Mississauga in Canada, and now live in New York. My question is how to best emulate your success in building your circle of competence. Given the environment today in investing is a lot more competitive than when you started out, what would you do differently, if anything at all, when building your circle? Would you still build a very broad, generalist framework? Or would you build a much deeper but narrower focus, say on industries, markets, or even a country? And if so, which ones would interest you? Thank you.
观众：Buffett 先生、Munger 先生，谢谢你们回答我的问题。我叫 Feroz Qayyum，来自加拿大的 Mississauga，现在住在 New York。我的问题是：在构建“能力圈”这件事上，如何最好地向你们学习？考虑到今天的投资环境比你们当年刚起步的时候竞争激烈得多，如果让你们现在从头来构建自己的能力圈，会在哪些方面做得不一样？你们还会选择搭建一个非常宽泛、偏“通才型”的框架吗？还是会把重点放在更深、更窄的领域，比如某些特定的行业、市场，甚至某一个国家？如果是后者，那哪些领域会让你们感兴趣？谢谢。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, well, you’re right. It’s much more competitive now than when I started. And you would — when I started, I literally could take the Moody’s industrial manual and the Moody’s banks and financial manual and I could go through page by page, at least run my eyes over every company and think about which ones I might think more about. It’s — it’s important — I would just do a whole lot of reading. I’d try and learn as much as I could about as many businesses, and I would try to figure out which ones I really had some important knowledge and understanding that was probably different than, overwhelmingly, most of my competitors. And I would also try and figure out which ones I didn’t understand, and I would focus on having as big a circle as I could have, and also focus on being as realistic as I could about where the perimeters of my circle of competence were. I knew when I met (GEICO executive) Lorimer Davidson in January of 1951, I could get insurance.
WARREN BUFFETT：是的，你说得对。现在的竞争确实比我当年开始时激烈得多。那时候，我真的可以拿着 Moody’s industrial manual 和 Moody’s banks and financial manual，一页一页地翻，至少把每一家公司都扫一眼，然后想一想：哪些值得我再多花点功夫。当时——阅读这件事非常重要——我就是大量地读。我会尽量去了解尽可能多的业务，然后努力找出：在哪些业务上，我掌握了一些“重要的认识和理解”，而这些东西在大多数竞争者那里是缺位的。同时，我也会刻意去分辨：哪些东西是我不懂的，然后一边尽量让自己的能力圈尽可能大，一边又尽量在“能力圈边界”这件事上保持极度现实。我在 1951 年 1 月见到 Lorimer Davidson（当时的 GEICO 高管）的时候，就知道：保险这个东西，我是能搞懂的。
I mean, what he said made so much sense to me in the three or four hours I spent with him on that Saturday. So, I dug into it and I could understand it. My mind worked well in that respect. I didn’t think I could understand retailing. All I’d done is work for the same grocery store that Charlie had, and neither one of us learned that much about retailing, except it was harder work than we liked. And you’ve got to do the same thing, and you’ve got way more competition now. But if you get to know even about a relatively small area more than the other people do, and you don’t feel the compulsion to act too often, you just wait till the odds are strongly in your favor. It’s still a very interesting game. It’s harder than it used to be. Charlie?
我的意思是，在那个星期六跟他聊的三四个小时里，他说的每一件事，对我来说都特别说得通。所以我就顺着这个方向深挖下去，也确实把保险弄明白了——在这一块，我的大脑确实运转得不错。相反，我从来不觉得自己能真正理解零售业。我唯一的零售经验，就是在和 Charlie 同一家杂货店打过工，而我们俩从那段经历里学到的关于零售的东西并不多，除了一个教训：这活比我们希望的要辛苦得多。你也得干类似的事，只是你面对的竞争者比我当年多得多。但如果在某一个相对很小的领域里，你比其他人懂得多一些，而且你又不会有“必须频繁出手”的冲动，而是能等到赔率大幅偏向你那一边才行动，这个游戏仍然非常有意思，只是比过去要难了。Charlie？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I think the great strategy, for the great mass of humanity, is to specialize. Nobody wants to go to a doctor that half-proctologist and half-dentist, you know? (Laughter) And so, the ordinary way to succeed is to narrowly specialize. Warren and I really didn’t do that. And that — and we didn’t because we prefer the other type of activity. But I don’t think we could recommend it to other people.
CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，我认为，对于人类大多数人来说，最好的策略是“专门化”。没有人愿意去看一个一半是肛肠科、一半是牙科的医生，对吧？（笑声）所以，一般人成功的“标准路径”，就是在一个狭窄的领域里高度专业化。而 Warren 和我并没有走这条路——我们没有这么做，是因为我们更喜欢另一种类型的活动。但我并不觉得可以把我们的做法当作“通用建议”推荐给别人。
在一个比较窄的领域泛化不等于就会有边界感。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, a little more treasure hunting in our day, and it was easy to spot the treasures —
WARREN BUFFETT：是的，我们那个年代更像是在“寻宝”，而且那时候“宝藏”挺容易被看出来——
CHARLIE MUNGER: We made it work, but it was kind of a lucky thing.
CHARLIE MUNGER：我们把这条路走通了，但某种程度上，也挺靠运气的。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.
WARREN BUFFETT：是的。
CHARLIE MUNGER: It’s not the standard way to go.
CHARLIE MUNGER：这绝对不是“标准路线”。
WARREN BUFFETT: The business, at least I best understood, actually was insurance. I mean — and I had very little competition. You know, I went to the insurance department in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I remember one time I drove there just to check on some Pennsylvania company. And this is when you couldn’t get all this information on the internet. And I went in and I asked about some company, and the guy said, “You’re the first one that’s ever asked about that company.” And there wasn’t a lot. I went over to the Standard and Poor’s library on Houston — Houston — Street, I guess they call it. And I would go up there and ask for all this obscure information. And there wasn’t anybody sitting around there. They had a whole bunch of tables that you could set and examine things through. So, there was less competition. But if you know even one thing very well, it’ll give you an edge at some point. You know, it’s what Tom Watson Sr. said at IBM, you know.
WARREN BUFFETT：至少在我自己这里，我理解得最透彻的业务，其实是保险。也就是说——在这块上，我几乎没有什么竞争对手。你知道，我曾经专门开车去 Pennsylvania 的 Harrisburg，那次就是为了去当地的保险监管部门查一家公司。那会儿还没有互联网，信息没法像现在这样在线获取。我走进去问起那家公司的资料，那个工作人员跟我说：“你是第一个来问这家公司的人。”可见当时压根没多少人盯着这些东西。我也常去 Standard and Poor’s 在 Houston Street 的图书馆（大概是这么叫），上楼之后就会要求调各种非常冷门的资料。那儿摆了一大堆桌子让你坐下慢慢查，但几乎没什么人。竞争就是那么少。但只要有一件事你真的懂得非常非常好，在某个时点，它总会给你带来优势的。就像 Tom Watson Sr. 在 IBM 说的那句话。
“I’m no genius, but I’m smart in spots and I stay around those spots.” And that’s basically what Charlie and I try and do. And I think that’s probably what you can do. But you’ll find those spots in —
“我不是天才，但我在某些‘点’上很聪明，而且我会待在这些‘点’附近不走。”这基本上就是我和 Charlie 在做的事情。我也认为，这大概就是你可以去做的那件事。但你会在不同的——
理性是投资的基石，投资是保险的基石。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, we did it in several fields. That’s hard.
CHARLIE MUNGER：是的，我们在好几个领域都这么干过，那其实是很难的。
WARREN BUFFETT: And we got our head handed to us a few times, too.
WARREN BUFFETT：而且在这个过程中，我们也有好几次被狠狠教训过。
31. Expand you circle of competence if you can, but don’t force it
如果可以就扩张你的能力圈，但不要硬来
WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Station 8. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：好的，8号麦克风。（笑声）
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Warren. Hi, Charlie. My name is Jacob (PH). I’m a shareholder from China and also a proud graduate of Columbia Business School. Thanks for having us here. (Cheers) My question is, our world is changing at a faster pace today versus 40 years ago and even more so going forward. And in this context, for each of us individually, should we expand our circle of competence continuously over time? Or should we stick with the existing circle but risk having a shrinking investment universe? Thank you.
观众：你好，Warren。你好，Charlie。我叫 Jacob，是来自中国的股东，也是 Columbia Business School 的骄傲毕业生。谢谢你们邀请我们来这里。（欢呼）我的问题是：现在这个世界变化的速度，比 40 年前快得多，而且未来只会更快。在这样的背景下，对我们每个人来说，是不是应该不断扩张自己的能力圈？还是应该坚守现有的能力圈，但承担可投资范围逐渐缩小的风险？谢谢。
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, obviously you should, under any conditions, you should expand your circle of competence —
WARREN BUFFETT：嗯，很明显，在任何情况下，你都应该扩张你的能力圈——
CHARLIE MUNGER: If you can.
CHARLIE MUNGER：如果你做得到的话。
WARREN BUFFETT: If you can. Yeah. (Laughter) And I’ve expanded mine a little bit over time. But —
WARREN BUFFETT：如果你做得到，是的。（笑声）我自己的能力圈，确实也在这些年里稍微扩大了一点。但是——
CHARLIE MUNGER: If you can’t — I’d be pretty cautious.
CHARLIE MUNGER：如果你做不到——那我就会非常谨慎。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. You can’t force it. You know. If you told me that I had to, you know, become an expert on physics or, you know —
WARREN BUFFETT：是的。你不能硬来。你知道的。如果你现在要求我去成为物理学的专家，或者说——
CHARLIE MUNGER: Dance maybe the lead in a ballet, Warren. That would be a sight. (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER：也许是去跳芭蕾当男主角，Warren。那画面可就有意思了。（笑声）
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, well. That’s one I hadn’t really —
WARREN BUFFETT：是啊，这个嘛。这个选项我倒真是——
CHARLIE MUNGER: (Inaudible) now.
CHARLIE MUNGER：（听不清）现在可以考虑一下。
WARREN BUFFETT: That’s one you may be thinking about, but I— (laughter) — it hadn’t even occurred to me. (Laughter) But, you know, it’s ridiculous. That doesn’t mean you can’t expand it at all. I mean, I did learn about some things as I’ve gone along in a few businesses. In some cases, I’ve learned that I’m incompetent, which is actually a plus, then you’ve discarded that one. But it doesn’t really — the world is going to change. And it’s going to keep changing. It’s changing every day. And that makes it interesting. You know. And as it changes, certainly within what you think is your present existing circle, you have to — you should be the master of figuring that one out or it really isn’t your circle of competence.
WARREN BUFFETT：这个是你在琢磨的，但对我来说——（笑声）——连想都没想过。（笑声）不过你知道，这显然是不现实的。但这并不意味着你完全不能扩张能力圈。我的意思是，在过去的一些生意里，我确实慢慢学会了一些新的东西；有时我也学到“自己在这个领域完全不行”，这其实反而是好事，因为你可以把它从列表里删掉。但这不改变一个事实——世界一定会改变，而且会持续改变，而且是每天都在变，这本身就很有趣。随着世界变化，在你自认为现有的能力圈之内，你必须——也应该——做到真正的精通，如果连那一块你都搞不明白，那它其实根本不属于你的能力圈。
总得有一个点是懂的，起点必须是确信无疑的懂，即便是送外卖。
And if you get a chance to expand it somewhat as you go along — I’ve learned some about the energy business from Walter (Scott) and Greg (Abel) as we’ve worked together, but I’m not close to their level of competence on it. But I do know more than I used to know. And so, you get a chance to expand it a bit. Usually, I would think normally your core competence is probably something that sort of fits the way the mind has worked. Some people have what I call a “money mind.” And they will work well in certain types of money situations. It isn’t so much a question of IQ. The mind is a very strange thing. And people have specialties, whether in chess or bridge. I see it in different people that can do impossible — what seem to me — impossible things. And they’re really kind of, as Charlie would say, stupid in other areas — (laughs) — you know. So just keep working on it. But don’t think you have to increase it and therefore start bending the rules. Anything further, Charlie?
而如果你在这个过程中有机会稍微把能力圈扩张一下——比如，我和 Walter（Scott）以及 Greg（Abel）一起工作时，确实也学到了一些能源生意的东西，但我的水平离他们还差得远。不过，相比过去，我确实懂得更多了一点。也就是说，你可以有机会把能力圈往外推一点点。通常，我认为所谓的核心能力，大概率是跟你大脑一贯的运转方式“对得上”的东西。有些人天生就有“经济头脑”，在某些跟钱打交道的场景里，他们就能如鱼得水。这跟 IQ 高不高没那么大关系。人的大脑是很奇怪的东西，人们各自有自己的“专长”，不管是国际象棋还是桥牌。我见过一些人能做到在我看来“根本不可能”的事情，但同时，他们在别的领域——用 Charlie 的话说——其实挺愚笨的（笑）。所以，你就是不断在自己这块上多下功夫就行了，但不要因为觉得“必须扩张能力圈”，就开始扭曲自己的规则。还有什么要补充的吗，Charlie？
能力是天生的，真相信自己的能力会降低越界的可能性，真相信自己有一些确信无疑的胜算又总想着做点别的，不是不可能但可能性会少很多。
CHARLIE MUNGER: No.
CHARLIE MUNGER：没有了。
7、《2024-03-20 Mohnish Pabrai’s Interview with YPO United Mosaic》
Robert: Thank you so much for joining us today at "Exploring the Legacy of Charlie Munger, a Conversation With Mohnish Pabrai." Hello. My name is Robert Pittenger with the YPO Mosaic Chapter. Mohnish Pabrai has been a YPO member since 1997, lives in Austin, Texas, and graduated from Clemson University. He is the CEO of Dhandho Funds, which he grew from a million dollars with eight investors to million as of December 31st. A massive growth in that time. Mohnish authored two books on value investing, The Dhandho Investor and Mosaic: Perspectives on Investing. So it is only fitting that he is speaking to the YPO Mosaic Chapter today. Mohnish is a highly successful value investor who did it, according to him, by "shamelessly cloning" the management decisions of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. He always says thank you to them for his success. Mohnish Pabrai along with fellow YPO Guy Spier teamed up to purchase the 2007 charity lunch with Warren and Charlie for $650,000. The lunch was life-changing for both gentlemen and Mohnish is here to tell us more about his close friend, Charlie Munger, which he developed out of that lunch. Besides his friendship with Charlie, one of the things Mohnish is proudest of is his lifetime ban from a casino in Las Vegas for his Blackjack crowds. Mohnish thank you for being with us today. We are so grateful, and we look forward to hearing some of your wisdom about Charlie and about playing Blackjack. The first thing that we would like to start with is there is a quote that you have talked about that Charlie Munger has said, which is, "Take a simple idea and take it seriously." Can you talk to us about what that means? What did Charlie mean by that line and how did you apply it in your life and your investing?
罗伯特：非常感谢您参加今天的 "探索查理-芒格的遗产，与莫尼什-帕布雷的对话"。大家好。我是YPO马赛克分会的罗伯特-皮坦格（Robert Pittenger）。Mohnish Pabrai自1997年以来一直是YPO会员，住在德克萨斯州奥斯汀，毕业于克莱姆森大学。他是 Dhandho Funds 基金公司的首席执行官，该公司从最初只有八名投资者的一百万美元发展到截至 12 月 31 日的8.4亿美元。在此期间实现了巨大的增长。Mohnish 著有两本关于价值投资的书：《The Dhandho Investor》和《Mosaic: Perspectives on Investing》。因此，他今天在YPO Mosaic分会发表演讲是再合适不过了。Mohnish 是一位非常成功的价值投资者，据他自己说，他是通过 "无耻地克隆 "沃伦-巴菲特和查理-芒格的管理决策而取得成功的。他总是对他们的成功表示感谢。Mohnish Pabrai 与同为 YPO 的 Guy Spier 合作，以 65 万美元的价格购买了 2007 年与沃伦和查理的慈善午餐。这次午餐改变了两位先生的人生，Mohnish 将在这里向我们详细介绍他的密友查理-芒格（Charlie Munger）。除了与查理的友谊之外，莫尼什最引以为豪的一件事是，他因为玩二十一点而被拉斯维加斯的一家赌场终身禁入。莫尼希感谢您今天的光临。我们非常感谢，我们期待着聆听您关于查理和玩 21 点的一些智慧结晶。首先，我们想从您谈到的查理-芒格说过的一句话开始，那就是 "接受一个简单的想法并认真对待它"。你能跟我们谈谈这句话的含义吗？查理的这句话是什么意思，你是如何将它运用到你的生活和投资中的？
Mohnish: First of all, it is a pleasure to be with you. It is always a pleasure to talk to YPOs. Like many of you, YPO has completely changed my life for the better. I cannot even imagine what my life would have been if there was no YPO. There were just so many changes and improvements YPO brought along. I also wanted to share my grief and condolences with all of you on October 7th. Many of you, directly or indirectly, maybe knew some of the victims or the people who got injured or who got taken hostage. My thoughts and prayers are with you on that, and hopefully, we will get to a finish line on that at some reasonable point. My friendship with Charlie was quite unexpected and accidental. I never expected to even meet him. That was a great bonus of my life.
莫尼什：首先，很高兴与您在一起。与YPO交流总是一件令人愉快的事。和你们中的许多人一样，YPO彻底改变了我的生活。我甚至无法想象，如果没有YPO，我的生活会是什么样子。YPO给我带来了太多的改变和进步。10月7日，我还想与大家分享我的悲痛和哀悼。你们中的许多人可能直接或间接地认识一些受害者、受伤者或被劫持的人质。对此，我与你们同在，并为你们祈祷，希望我们能在某个合理的时间点找到答案。我和查理的友谊是意外和偶然的。我从没想过能遇到他。这是我人生中的一大收获。
The first time I met Charlie was even before the Buffett lunch. It was at a YPO event. One of the YPOers, Peter Kaufman, arranged for him to speak to YPO. I had just moved to California. That was around 2004. That was the first time I met Charlie and hung out with him a bit. The quote you brought up "Take a simple idea and take it seriously," is a famous Munger quote and it is something that I have always tried to practice in my life even before I heard of Charlie, or even before I heard about that quote because it is so powerful. As we go through life, we get some aha moments, where we uncover some nugget of wisdom or knowledge that maybe many other humans have either not figured out or not given the amount of weight they should to that particular piece of wisdom and knowledge. It can become a source of a tremendous competitive advantage. One of the things I learned about very early was the power of cloning and the power of copying.
我第一次见到查理是在巴菲特午餐之前。那是在 YPO 的一次活动上。YPO的一位成员彼得-考夫曼（Peter Kaufman）安排他到YPO演讲。当时我刚搬到加利福尼亚。那是 2004 年左右。那是我第一次见到查理，并和他一起玩了一会儿。你提到的那句 "接受一个简单的想法并认真对待它 "是芒格的名言，也是我在生活中一直努力践行的，甚至在我还没有我听说过查理，甚至在我听说这句话之前，因为它太有力量了。在我们的生活中，我们会有一些 "啊哈 "时刻，我们会发现一些智慧或知识，而这些智慧或知识可能是其他许多人都没有弄明白的，或者是他们没有给予这些智慧和知识应有的重视。它可以成为巨大竞争优势的源泉。我很早就了解到克隆的力量和复制的力量。
I remember when I was in my early twenties, I read a book by Tom Peters. He was a big management guru in the eighties. In that book, he was giving the example of two gas stations in California that were diagonal on a busy intersection from each other. Both the gas stations were self-service stations. You come in, you pump your gas, and you leave. The owner would come out maybe once an hour, pick a random car, wash the windshield, or check the oil; just some extra service at no charge. The guy who was diagonal across the street was seeing this take place. He said to himself, "Well, that is kind of stupid. You cannot do it for everyone. If you did it for everyone, you would lose your shirt because you are not charging for it. He never copied or cloned that.
我记得在我二十出头的时候，我读过汤姆-彼得斯（Tom Peters）写的一本书。他是八十年代的管理大师。在那本书里，他举了一个例子：加利福尼亚州有两个加油站，分别位于一个繁忙十字路口的对角线上。这两个加油站都是自助加油站。你进来，加油，然后离开。店主可能一小时出来一次，随便挑一辆车，洗一下挡风玻璃，或者检查一下机油；只是一些额外的服务，不收取任何费用。斜对面的那个人看到了这一幕。他对自己说："嗯，这有点愚蠢。你不能为每个人都这样做。如果你为每个人都这样做，否则你会赔得血本无归，因为你没有收费。他从来没有复制或克隆过。
Over time, what happened is that the gas station that was providing this random extra service saw an increase in business, and the one diagonal from him saw a decrease. Even after seeing the decrease, the guy across the street did not change his behavior. Tom Peter said, and this is what I found very unbelievable, that you can go to your most direct competitors and you can sit down with them, and you can give them all your trade scenes, everything that you learned that has given you an advantage, and they will listen to you, but there will be no behavior change. When I read that, I said, "This is ridiculous. This cannot be the way the world works." I am in my early twenties, I haven't kind of experienced life, and I don't know kind of how things work, but I made a promise to myself that I was going to prove Tom Peters wrong, and I was going to prove him wrong two ways. One, I was going to look for instances where humans see something smart happening and copy or clone it, because that would prove him wrong, and the second is, whenever I see someone doing something smart, I am going to copy it because that also proves him wrong. From my early twenties till now, this year, I am going to be 60, what I found, because I became a student of this, is that Tom Peters was mostly right. I still do not know why this is the case, but humans have an aversion to cloning. They somehow consider it beneath themselves that they did not come up with the idea. What I also found is that when I forced myself to copy things that I found to be smart, it gave me a big edge. This was an example of a simple idea. What I found is that there was a very small sliver of humans who were master cloners, and these humans owned the world. They did very well.For example, almost everything at Microsoft is cloned. Microsoft spends billions of dollars on its research labs. Nothing has ever come out of that. What has worked for them is looking at Lotus and creating Excel, looking at WordPerfect and creating Word, looking at the Mac and creating Windows, and so on. Even now, OpenAl is a partnership with AI. Google did the work. Microsoft did none of the work, and they are ahead. Sam Walton was another great cloner. In fact, James Sinegal, former CEO of Costco, had cloned the entire model from Sol Price, who he used to work for. Someone asked him, "What did you learn from Sol Price?" His response was, "It is the wrong question. Everything I know is from Sol Price. There is nothing I know that did not come from Sol Price." These were people who took a simple idea very, very seriously. It is not just enough to read about some idea and be impressed with it. When you see that something grabs you, you have to go all in and you have to fight the normal tendency of the status quo.
随着时间的推移，提供这种随机额外服务的加油站的生意越来越好，而他斜对面的加油站的生意却越来越差。即使看到生意减少，街对面的那个人也没有改变他的行为。汤姆-彼得说，这是我觉得非常不可思议的地方，你可以去找你最直接的竞争对手，你可以和他们坐下来，把你所有的商业秘密说给他们，你所学到的一切能给你带来优势的东西，他们会听你的，但行为不会改变。当我读到这句话时，我说："这太荒谬了。世界不可能是这样运转的"。我才二十出头，还没有经历过生活，也不知道事情是怎么运作的，但我向自己承诺，我要证明汤姆-彼得斯是错的，我要从两个方面证明他是错的。第一，我要寻找人类看到聪明的事情发生的实例，并复制或克隆它，因为这将证明他是错的；第二，每当我看到有人做聪明的事情时，我就要复制它，因为这也证明他是错的。从我二十出头到现在，今年我就要六十岁了，我发现，因为我成为了这方面的学生，汤姆-彼得斯大部分时候都是对的。我仍然不知道为什么会这样，但人类对克隆有一种反感。他们莫名其妙地认为，不是自己想出了这个主意，就有失身份。我还发现，当我强迫自己复制那些我认为聪明的东西时，会给我带来很大的优势。这是一个简单想法的例子。我发现，有极少数人类是克隆高手，这些人类拥有整个世界。他们做得非常好例如，微软几乎所有的东西都是克隆的。微软在研究实验室上花费了数十亿美元。但却没有任何成果。他们的成功经验是：研究 Lotus 并创造出 Excel，研究 WordPerfect 并创造出 Word，研究 Mac 并创造出 Windows，等等。即使是现在，OpenAl 也是与AI合作。谷歌（在AI方面）做了大量工作，微软没做什么工作，但他们却领先了。山姆-沃尔顿是另一位伟大的克隆者。事实上，好市多的前首席执行官詹姆斯-西内格尔（James Sinegal）就是从他曾经的同事索-普莱斯（Sol Price）那里克隆了整个模式。有人问他："你从索尔-普赖斯那里学到了什么？"他的回答是："这是问错了。我所知道的一切都是从 Sol Price 那里学来的。我所知道的一切都来自于Sol Price"。这些人非常、非常认真地对待一个简单的想法。仅仅读到一些想法并对其印象深刻是不够的。当你看到某个东西抓住了你的心，你就必须全力以赴，你必须与想要维持现状的倾向做斗争。
洞察是对的但认知是不完整的，但是这个例子说明巴菲特说的反向校正是有可能的，只是隐藏在最底层的对世界的基本不信任会不会被长久压制？“Think Independently，Think Correctly”，巴菲特说能“Think Independently”可以学一点“Think Correctly”，但他也对着一群大学生，告诉他们通过观察“Think Correctly”来培养自己的“Think Independently”，“Think Independently，Think Correctly”是相互促进，循环递进的两股力量，理论上通过“Think Correctly”的反向校正就应该是成立的，但时间必须尽可能的早。
Both Charlie and Warren, their success has come from the dogged pursuit of a few very simple ideas. For example, when they bought See's Candies in the 70s in California, it was a huge jump for them. They paid three times the book value for the company. They thought they were paying too much, and they didn't understand how good a business it was. The only thing Warren did every year was he left the management alone to run the business. However, on January 1st of each year, he changed all the prices significantly above the rate of inflation. For instance, if inflation was , he would raise the price , and the next year it was 3 or , he would raise another . What surprised him was he kept pounding in these very heavy price increases and unit volumes kept going up. It stunned him that you could have a business with this much pricing power. Both Warren and Charlie did not understand brands and did not understand the power of brands, but they became very ardent students of "What was this phenomenon? What did this mean? How can we apply this in other businesses?" Today, we see that it was fundamental to Berkshire, because it was, again, looking at a relatively simple idea, but trying to get your arms around it. Many of us start businesses because we see an offering gap. We see some product or service that should exist in the world but doesn't, or maybe there is not enough of it, so we go into it. Once we take that plunge, having this notion of the dogged pursuit of simple ideas will lead to a lot of good things.
无论是查理还是沃伦，他们的成功都源于对一些简单想法的执着追求。例如，70 年代他们在加利福尼亚收购 See's 糖果公司时，对他们来说是一次巨大的跳跃。他们为这家公司支付了三倍于账面价值的价格。他们认为自己花的钱太多了，而且他们并不了解这家公司的业务有多好。沃伦每年做的唯一一件事，就是让管理层独自经营公司。不过，在每年1月1日，他会上调所有价格，提价幅度远高于通胀增速。例如，如果通货膨胀率是3%，他就会把价格提高10%，第二年是3%或4% ，他就会再提高10%。让他惊讶的是，他不断地大幅提价，单位销量却不断上升。这让他惊呆了，原来企业可以有这么大的定价权。沃伦和查理都不了解品牌，也不了解品牌的力量，但他们都非常热衷于研究 "这是什么现象？这意味着什么？我们如何将其应用到其他业务中？今天，我们看到，这对伯克希尔公司来说是至关重要的，因为这同样是在研究一个相对简单的想法，但却要努力去掌握它。我们中的许多人创办企业，是因为看到了市场空白。我们看到一些产品或服务应该存在于这个世界上，但却没有，或者可能还不够多，于是我们就投入其中。一旦我们下定决心，坚持不懈地追求简单的想法，就会有很多好的结果。
2007年的股东信里有具体的数据，1972-2007年税前利润复合增速8.3%，销量增速2%，价格的复合增速6.2%。
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