I.H.RP.104.Circle Of Competence
“能力圈”是“模糊正确”中最特别的实例，这个实例指向的是自己，明白自己“懂什么，不懂什么”，再进一步是知道什么重要、什么不重要，什么是重要并且可知的？什么是重要不可知的？
大部分人都能做一些简单的工作，比如，填填表格，但是很少有人安心于填表格，愿意这么做的能轻松获得竞争上的优势，巴菲特很喜欢用Mrs. B的例子，不是Mrs. B有什么特别的才华，而是她把谁都有能力做的事做到了极致。
I have been asked by a number of people just what secrets the Blumkins bring to their business. These are not very esoteric. All members of the family: (1) apply themselves with an enthusiasm and energy that would make Ben Franklin and Horatio Alger look like dropouts; (2) define with extraordinary realism their area of special competence and act decisively on all matters within it; (3) ignore even the most enticing propositions failing outside of that area of special competence; and, (4) unfailingly behave in a high-grade manner with everyone they deal with. (Mrs. B boils it down to "sell cheap and tell the truth".)
很多人问过我，Blumkin家族究竟有什么经商秘诀。其实并没有什么深奥的东西。家族所有成员：（1）以一种能让Ben Franklin和Horatio Alger都自叹不如的热情与干劲投入工作；（2）以非凡的现实感界定自己的专业能力范围，并在该范围内的一切事务上果断行动；（3）对超出该专业能力范围的提议，无论多么诱人，一概置之不理；（4）与所有打交道的人，始终保持高尚的行事风范。（Mrs. B将其浓缩为一句话："卖得便宜、说实话。"）
Our evaluation of the integrity of Mrs. B and her family was demonstrated when we purchased 90% of the business: NFM had never had an audit and we did not request one; we did not take an inventory nor verify the receivables; we did not check property titles. We gave Mrs. B a check for $55 million and she gave us her word. That made for an even exchange.
我们对Mrs. B和她家人诚信品格的判断，在我们收购其90%股权时得到了印证：NFM从未经过审计，我们也没有要求审计；我们没有盘点库存，也没有核实应收账款；我们没有核查产权文件。我们给了Mrs. B一张5,500万美元的支票，她给了我们她的承诺。这是一桩公平的交换。
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，这是更高的要求，很多人都能做一些简单的工作，比如，填填表格，但如果是对一些项目整体的判断就很难有相等程度的自信，说到底，这是本来就应该有的“模糊正确”的边界，静下心来都能想明白，安心填好表格是更好的选择，做不到显然是因为某种噪音的干扰，或者填表格在心理上的吸附力不足够的强。
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。
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？
2023年硅谷银行的例子也是很多真实人生的写照，一边是存款人的挤兑，另一边是大量资产的贱卖，理性和风险的距离有非常强的联系。
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。
64. 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？
想着扩大“能力圈”的往往已经越过边界，很多人不愿意从事简单的工作，愿意做这些人不愿意做的就是竞争上的优势，甚至是巨大的优势。
CHARLIE MUNGER: No.
CHARLIE MUNGER：没有了。
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