原文信息：
- 标题：A Conversation with Distinguished Alumnus Charles T. Munger (CERT ’44, CAVU)
- 作者：Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Charles T. Munger
- 发表时间：2020-12-18
- 链接：YouTube
翻译信息：
采访者：罗森塔尔（Jean-Laurent Rosenthal），加州理工学院Rea A. and Lela G. Axline经济学教授，人文社会科学学院Ronald and Maxine Linde首席讲座教授。
以下为谈话内容记录，标题为译者添加：
芒格的人生经历与职业选择
Interviewer: As an investor, Charlie, if you would like to come on screen now, you have been phenomenally successful over the very long run. But perhaps we could try to start by looking back at the time when you left the Army, which brought you to Caltech. And to start, what was Caltech like in 1944?
罗森塔尔：这次非常荣幸也非常难得能和查理·芒格对话。我原想把问题按时间线展开，但事实上，好的谈话内容需要贯穿过往和未来。投资也是如此，因为一个人不得不依赖大量过去的事实做出判断，并在当下作出决定，但奖励或惩罚却要在未来才能兑现。查理您好，作为一名投资者，您在很长的时间内取得了惊人的成功，但也许我们的访谈可以从你离开军队，来到加州理工学院开始。先说说1944年的加州理工学院是什么样子的？
Charlie Munger (00:28): Well, the main campus looked very much the way it does now. And the Athenaeum was exactly the way it is now.
查理·芒格：嗯，主校园看起来和现在差不多，The Athenaeum（译者注：加州理工教职工俱乐部，可以吃饭）完全没变样。
Interviewer (00:34): How connected was the urology program to the rest of what was going on on campus?
罗森塔尔：那个时候气象学课程与校园里的其他课程有什么联系吗？
Charlie Munger (00:46): I was in the part of the campus where Thomas Hunt Morgan was. And, of course, he was the world’s greatest geneticist, and he used fruit flies. And they stank. And so, my whole part of the campus had the odor of dying fruit flies the whole time I was there. By the way I got used to the fruit fly odor.
查理·芒格：我当时跟托马斯·亨特·摩尔根（译者注：美国遗传学家、现代遗传学之父）在同一校区。他是世界上最伟大的遗传学家。他使用果蝇来做研究，而果蝇很臭。所以，我在加州理工学习期间整个校园里一直弥漫着濒死果蝇的气味。不过，我喜欢这个校园，也已经习惯了果蝇的气味。
Interviewer (01:09): But presumably you didn’t spend all your time with fruit flies. Or were they part of the way you predicted the weather in 1944?
罗森塔尔：但想必您没有把所有的时间都花在果蝇身上。还是说，在当时（1944年）果蝇也是您预测天气的方法之一？
Charlie Munger (01:15): I was so ignorant in those days, I could have walked over and introduced myself and he would have been quite courteous with me. And he was a very great man and I was too dumb to do it. It didn’t occur to me.
查理·芒格：那时候我太无知了，我本可以走过去向他介绍我自己，我想他也会对我相当客气。他是一个非常伟大的人，而我太笨了，没有做到这一点。当时我根本没意识到。
Interviewer (01:28): At the end of the war, you decided not to return to mathematics at Michigan or to stay and go to college somewhere else, instead you went to law school. So what can your…
罗森塔尔：在二战结束以后，您没有返回密歇根继续学习数学，也没有继续留在加州理工去其他学院学习，而是去了哈佛法学院。您的考虑是什么？【门达克斯的备注：1941年，查理.芒格最开始在密歇根大学学习数学专业。那时大西洋彼岸战火正酣，部队急需查理这个年龄段的人应征入伍，所以在他19岁在密歇根大学读完大二以后就参加了美国陆军空军兵团培养计划。他被送到加州理工学习热力学和气象学——这是两门对当时的飞行员很重要的学科。完成加州理工为期九个月的学业后，被派往阿拉斯加的永久军事基地，退役以后凭借“复员军人安置法案”申请了哈佛法学院。】
Charlie Munger (01:42): My father had gone to the Harvard Law School and my grandfather a distinguished judge in Nebraska. So that was a natural course of activity for me.
查理·芒格：我的父亲曾在哈佛大学法学院学习，我的祖父是内布拉斯加州一位杰出的法官。所以这对我来说是一个自然的选择。
Interviewer (01:55): In thinking about these career changes, which a lot of people go through over the course of their lifetime, what could our fellow alumni, and in particular, our soon to be new alumni, can borrow from your experiences in those early days of your life, when you were choosing a career that still has resonance today?
罗森塔尔：那么，您在考虑这些职业变化时有什么样的想法呢？很多人在他们的一生中都会经历职业的变化。对于我们的校友们，尤其是即将成为我们新校友的同学们而言，在您人生早期选择职业的时候，有什么经验至今依然有借鉴意义的？
Charlie Munger (02:16): Well, it’s very important when you choose a career. If you go into a career that’s very tough you’re not going to do very well. And if you go into one where you have special advantages and you like the work, you’re going to do pretty well. And so I went into law because I didn’t want to be a surgeon. I didn’t want to be a doctor. I didn’t want to be a … I finally got through, there was only one that… I just went down the family path, and it wasn’t the wisest decision I ever made.
查理·芒格：选择工作是非常重要的事。如果你去做一个对你来说很难的工作，你不会做得很好。而如果你从事一个你有特殊优势的工作而且很喜欢工作的内容，你会做得很好。我进入了法律界，是因为我不想当外科医生，不想当其他医生，也不想当大学教授。我最终只剩下一条路，就是沿着家族的事业路径走下去。这并不是我做过的最明智的决定。
Interviewer (02:55): Once you started to get into investment, your legal training, your mathematical background, your experiences. What came to be resonant for you?
罗森塔尔：当您开始进入投资领域，您接受的法学训练、您的数学背景、您的经验有没有给您带来帮助？
Charlie Munger (03:12): What happened was there were things I didn’t like about law practice, but I had an army of children to support and no family money or anything to start with. So I had to make my way in life for this army of children. It was going to be a little difficult and there were things about law practice I saw that were quite limiting. And what happened was, my pitifully, small earnings as a young man, I kept underspending them. I kept investing fairly boldly and fairly smartly. At the end of my first 13 years of practice, I had more liquid investments made than I’d made in all those years of law practice, pre-tax. I had done that in my spare time with these little tiny sums. So it was natural for me, partly prompted by Warren Buffett’s success, to think I should just start working for myself instead of for other people. … in my spare time, I thought, well, what will happen if I do it full time?
查理·芒格：事情是这样的，在当律师时，有一些事情我并不喜欢，但是我有一大群孩子要抚养，家里也没有钱或其他东西供我起步。所以我不得不为这群孩子们在生活中闯出一条路，我必须这样做。那时候这会有点困难，而且我所看到的律师工作中，有一些东西是很有局限性的。当时的情况是，作为一个年轻人，我收入少得可怜，只能省着花。与此同时，我也在相当大胆和聪明地投资。在我从业的第13年律师生涯结束时，我的流动投资资产比我这些年当律师赚到的所有税前收入都多，而这些投资只是在工作之余用很小的本金实现的。因此，我很自然地认为，我应该开始为自己工作，而不是为别人工作，当然这在一定程度上是受到沃伦·巴菲特成功的激励。闲暇时，我想，如果我全职做，会怎么样呢？
如何应对变化
Interviewer (04:31): One of the things that connects Caltech tech to investing is of course the process of discovery, which creates new technologies. For an economic historian, one thing that we’re very aware of is that technological change has driven a lot of the growth of the American economy over the last several centuries. But from your perspective as an investor, what have been the most dramatic transformation you’ve seen over those 75 years that Tom Rosenbaum reminded us that you’ve been connected to us, but also been living in Los Angele
罗森塔尔：加州理工学院与投资工作有一个相通之处是“探索和发现”，这个行为也导致了新技术的发明。作为一个经济史学家，我们能够深刻地意识到，在过去的几个世纪里，技术变革是如何推动美国经济实现如此巨大增长的。Tom Rosenbaum提醒我们，您与我们一直保持着联系，也住在洛杉矶，作为一个投资者的视角，过去75年中您看到的最巨大的变化是什么？
Charlie Munger (05:08): Well, of course there have been huge booms and huge bust, and that has been very interesting. And of course the government has tried to do things that will dampen down the fluctuations and make recoveries from the busts happen faster. And of course that’s caused a fair amount of inflation in a life that’s been as long as mine. What’s happening in the investment field is of course that so many people have gone into it and people have made so much money and it’s driven an almost frenzy of activity in the investment field. When I was young, there was practically nobody in it and they weren’t very smart, and now almost everybody’s smart, even a Caltech graduate. A good proportion of them are sucked into finance by the money. That’s been a hugely important development. I don’t welcome it myself at all. I don’t think we want the whole world trying to get rich by outsmarting the rest of the world in marketable securities, but that’s what’s happened. There’s been frenzies of speculation and so on, so it’s been very interesting, but it’s not been all good.
查理·芒格：过去那么多年中，我们经历了巨大的繁荣，也经历了巨大的萧条，这都是非常有意思的。在这个过程中，政府也在努力试图抑制经济的大起大落，并试图让经济从萧条中更快复苏。当然，这样做的结果是长期（和我寿命一样长）大规模的通货膨胀。在投资领域，巨大的变化是如今有那么多的从业者，而且他们赚了那么多的钱，这导致投资成为一个热门的行业。在我年轻的时候，这个行业几乎没什么从业者，当时的从业者也不是很聪明，而现在，行业里几乎所有人都很聪明。即使在加州理工学院的毕业生中，也有很大一部分人是被金钱所诱惑进入金融领域。这是一个非常重要的变化。对我而言，这种变化我一点也不喜欢。我认为我们并不希望全世界都试图通过在有价证券市场上跑赢其他人来实现财富增长，但事实就是如此。市场上存在大量的炒作机会，这些现象很有趣，但并不都是好的现象。
Interviewer (06:36): At some level, once you make an investment, you’re putting your money into the hands of an entrepreneur who is going to actually produce something. … seems that the value investment that you practice has that characteristic relative to a pure arbitrage approach to trying to make money in finance.
罗森塔尔：从某种程度上说，一旦你进行了投资，你就是把钱交到了一个企业家的手里，他要真正生产出东西来才行，至少相对于金融中纯粹的套利获利来说，您所从事的价值投资看上去具备这样的特点。
Charlie Munger (07:00): Well, I did not make my fortune by and large on the cutting edge of technology. My first investment with my pitiful savings of … I invested in a company right in Pasadena, and it was called William Miller Instruments. And I damn near lost all my money. It was hell on earth. We just barely squeaked out with a substantial outcome. What did us in is that the … that we’d invented and we were so proud of, and we thought it was going to knock the world flat. Somebody invented magnetic tape without telling me, and by the time we got that sl-o-graph ready to go to market, we sold three. Three total in the whole world country. This technology is a killer as well as an opportunity. And my first experience had damn near killed me.
Interviewer (08:11): That’s sort of the other part, right? Over the 75 years that you’ve been involved in investing …
Charlie Munger (08:17): Well, what that did for a long time was keep me out of venture capital on the edge of technology.
Interviewer (08:23): But even so-
Charlie Munger (08:25): I tried to avoid it.
查理·芒格：确实，我不是靠着最先进的技术发家致富的。我用微薄的积蓄从事的第一笔投资，是投资给帕萨迪纳市的一家公司，叫做威廉·米勒仪器公司（William Miller Instruments）。结果是，我差点把钱都输光了，那可真是“人间地狱”。当时，我们造出了一个有实际价值的产品——记录仪，这是我们发明的。我们当时很自豪，而且我们觉得这个产品会把世界夷为平地。没有人告诉我，有人已经发明了磁带。等到我们把那台电报机开始推向市场的时候，我们只卖出了三台。技术是机会的同时也是杀手，我的第一次投资经历差点要了我的命。这让我在很长的一段时间内远离科技类的风险投资，我想要避开它。
Interviewer (08:27): But even so, in the companies that you deal with, some of them are market leaders at one point in time, and as you just suggested, some technological change or change in preferences will lead those companies to be with less of a market than they used to have for their products. And so how does one think about this over the longterm? Because it’s an interesting …
罗森塔尔：即便如此，在您所接触的公司中，也有一些公司在某一时期是市场领导者。就像您刚才提到的，一些技术变革或消费者偏好的变化将导致这些公司产品的市场份额降低。如何从长期角度看待这件事呢？这是一个很有意思的问题。
Charlie Munger (08:47): Well, over the longterm, the companies of America behave more like biology than they do anything else. And biology, all the individuals die and so do all the species, it’s just a question of time. And that’s pretty well what happens in the economy, too. All the things that were really great when I were young have receded enormously, and new things have come up and some of them started to die. And that is what the longterm investment climate is. And it does make it very interesting. Look at what’s died. All the department stores, all the newspapers, US Steel, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil is a pale shadow of its former self. It’s just like biology. They have their little time, and then they get clobbered.
查理·芒格：从长期角度来看，美国公司的表现可以类比生物学，而不是其他的东西。在生物学中，所有的个体都会死亡，所有的物种也会死亡，这只是时间的问题。经济的发展也是如此。我年轻时曾经伟大的公司已大幅衰落，新的企业出现，一些曾经的巨头开始消亡。这就是长期视角下的投资环境。而这一点也让投资变得非常有趣。让我们来看看什么已经消亡：所有的百货公司、所有的报纸、美国钢铁……洛克菲勒的标准石油公司已经今非昔比。这就像生物学一样，这些企业只有很少一段属于他们的时间，然后他们就被打败了。
Interviewer (09:47): How does one as a witness, or, in a certain way, one lives longer than the life of some of these companies, deal with change? You could think about an investment portfolio that you create at a point in time will only outlive you for a certain amount of time. And so how does one learn to deal with change? It’s a question that I always ask my students, and I would just… How does somebody who has to take the resources of very large numbers of people, deal with this change? Any thoughts on that matter?
罗森塔尔：您作为一名时代见证者，或者说，作为一名活的比一些公司还要久的投资者，如何应对变化？或许您会考虑在某个时点构建一个投资组合，只在一定时间内有效。一个人应该如何学会应对变化呢？这是我经常问我学生的问题，我很好奇，您作为一个学识丰富的人，如何应对这种变化？对这件事有什么思考吗？
Charlie Munger (10:25): Well, some people try to get on the cutting edge of change. So they’re destroying other people instead of being destroyed themselves. And those are the Googles and the Apples and so forth. Other people, like me, do some of that, joining things like Apple, and in some ways we just try and avoid big change that we think is likely to hurt us. Berkshire, for instance, owns the Burlington Northern Railroad. You can hardly think of a more old fashioned business than a railroad business, but who in hell is ever going to create another trunk railroad? So it’s a very good asset for us. We made that success not by conquering change, but by avoiding it. Burlington Northern itself has been quite clever at adapting technology to their railroad. Imagine the good luck of being able to take an existing railroad and double deck all the trains and raise the heights of the tunnels and so forth, and all of a sudden you got twice the capacity at very little incremental cost, which is what that railroad has done. … Everybody uses new technology, but it really helps to have a position that almost can’t be taken away by technology. How else are you going to carry goods from the port of Los Angeles to Chicago except on our railroad?
查理·芒格：的确，有些人试图走在变革的最前沿，这样他们就能毁掉别人而不是被别人毁掉，典型的企业包括谷歌、苹果等。还有一些人，比如我，也会做一些这样的投资，投资苹果这样的公司。我这样做的原因，在某种程度上，只是在试图避免我们认为可能会伤害我们的重大变化。比如，伯克希尔·哈撒韦持有伯灵顿北方铁路公司（Burlington Northern Railroad）的股份。你很难想象还有什么比铁路业务更老掉牙的业务了，但是谁会想着来建造另外一条铁路干线呢？因此，对我们来说，伯灵顿北方铁路公司是非常优质的资产。我们不是靠战胜变化获得成功，而是靠避开变化。伯灵顿北方铁路公司本身就非常善于将新技术应用于铁路运营。想象一下，利用一条现成的铁轨，只需要将所有的列车变为双层的，同时将隧道的高度提高一点等等，突然一下子你就获得了双倍的运力，而增量成本是很小的。这等好事正是伯灵顿北方铁路公司已经在做的。每个人都在使用新技术，但是持有一家几乎无法被技术所取代的公司也是非常重要的。除了我们的这条铁路线外，从洛杉矶的港口运送货物到芝加哥你还有其他的选择吗？
Interviewer (11:57): So it’s innovation within an economy that continues to follow certain sets of rules, rather than looking for the new economy, is that another way one could think about it?
罗森塔尔：所以您的意思是说，要去寻找经济内部的创新，这种创新能够遵循现有的一系列规则，而不是寻找新的经济模式？这是您思考这个问题的另一种角度吗？
Charlie Munger (12:10): There are different ways. All successful investment involves trying to get into something where it’s worth more than you’re paying. That’s what successful investment is. And there are a lot of different ways to find something that’s worth more than you’re paying. You can look for it rather right on the cutting edge of technology, the way Sequoia does. The most remarkable investment firm in America is probably Sequoia. That venture capital firm, which absolutely fanatically stays right on the cutting edge of modern technology, they’ve made more money than anybody and they have the best investment record of anybody. It’s perfectly amazing what Sequoia has done.
查理·芒格：成功的投资有很多不同的方式，但其共性在于投资那些相比你的付出更值钱的东西，这是成功投资的本质。寻找比你付出更值钱的东西的方法有很多，你可以像红杉一样，在科技的最前沿寻找它。美国最杰出的投资公司可能要数红杉资本了。红杉资本狂热地站在现代科技的前沿，获得了超越其他人的投资回报，保持了最好的投资记录。红杉资本所做的一切完全令人惊叹。
如何防范心理偏见
罗森塔尔：您之前也多次谈到人类误判心理学，正如您所说，您不想成为最聪明的人，但您想避免做愚蠢的事情。那么，一个人在做决定时如何防范心理偏见呢？
Interviewer (13:01): You’ve also talked repeatedly about people’s mental biases, as you said, you don’t want to be the smartest person, but you want to avoid doing stupid things. So how does one guard against mental biases in one’s decision-making?
查理·芒格：我一生都在努力防范自己的心理偏见。首先，我时刻提醒自己曾经犯过的错误；其次，我将错误提炼得尽可能简单和基础。我很喜欢一个工程学概念叫安全边际。我是那种思考最基本问题的人，我尝试避免愚蠢。面对大量的难题，我有一种处理的方法：我把这些难题放在我称之为“太难了”的那一堆里面，并放任不理。我不会尝试在那堆“太难了”的东西里面获得成功。
Charlie Munger (13:18): I spent a lifetime trying to avoid my own mental biases. A, I rub my own nose into my own mistakes. B, I try and keep it simple and fundamental as much as I can. And I like the engineering concept of a margin of safety. I’m a very blocking and tackling kind of a thinker. I just try and avoid being stupid. I have a way of handling a lot of problems. I put them on what I call my too hard pile and I just leave them there. I’m not trying to succeed in my too hard pile. … in my too hard pile.
罗森塔尔：这些难题会有时再找上你，要求你来解决它们吗？
Interviewer (14:05): And do they sometimes come back and require for you to?
查理·芒格：是啊，有的时候我会遇到一些“太难了”的事情，遇到这种情况的时候，我就会失败。
Charlie Munger (14:07): Oh, I sometimes get things that are too hard and when that happens, I fail.
罗森塔尔：所以人要接受局限性，这是避免这些心理偏见真正重要的因素之一吗？
Interviewer (14:14): So one has to accept limitations, is that one of the really important pieces of avoiding these biases?
查理·芒格：我想说的是，如果你想避免很多愚蠢的错误，最重要的一件事就是知道哪些你能胜任、哪些你不能，知道自己能力的边界。这很难做到，因为你的大脑会天然地让你觉得自己比实际要聪明得多。
Charlie Munger (14:22): What I would say is the single most important thing if you want to avoid a lot of stupid errors is knowing where you’re competent and where you aren’t, knowing the edge of your own competency. And that’s very hard to do, because the human mind naturally tries to make you think you’re way smarter than you are.
如何看待金融创新
罗森塔尔：接下来的一个问题是个近乎个人的问题，基于我的研究领域，我想问一下有关金融领域创新的问题。在过去的半个世纪里，金融行业经历了几次巨变。在您刚出生的年代，那个时候全美有三万家银行。所有银行都不是特别特别大，只有纽约的一些银行大一些。而如今，前20家银行几乎占据了整个行业的收入。与此同时，金融领域经历了大范围的创新。毫无疑问，金融学术界对此也存在着一种争论：在这些创新中，有多少是对市场有帮助的，又有多少造成了市场实际的动荡。
Interviewer (14:44): So a question that’s almost personal, given my research, I can’t resist asking about innovation in finance. Over the last half century, it’s a sector that’s gone through several upheavals, radical change. To go back to the time when you were born, there were 30,000 banks in the U.S. None of them were very, very large. A few New York banks were big, and now the top 20 banks account for almost everything. But the range of innovation in finance has been huge, and there’s a debate in academic finance, for sure, about how much of this innovation is helpful to the markets versus how much actually creates instability.
查理·芒格：嗯，我对此有很明确的看法。在贾尼尼（Gianinni）创办美国银行时，银行早期的创新是非常好的。贾尼尼通过各种贷款帮助所有移民，他知道哪些创新对银行是有益的，哪些是无益的。银行因此帮助了许多值得被帮助的人。这种创新对经济有利，对每个人有利。但一旦银行业稳定下来，他们就变得很傲慢，想通过投机赚取巨额利润。我不认为这些发展有什么好处。换句话说，当他们在试图谨慎地避免损失时，我才喜欢银行业。
Charlie Munger (15:36): Well, I have a very clear opinion on that. I think the early innovation that the Bank of America did under Gianinni, where he helped all these immigrants with these loans of all kinds, and knew which ones were good for it and which ones weren’t, I think that brought banking and banking helped to a lot of people that deserved it. It helped the economy. It helped everybody. But once banking got so they wanted to be in soft white hands and make zillions as speculators, I don’t think those developments have been a plus. In other words, I like banking when they’re trying to avoid losses prudently.
如何看待疫情及其影响
Interviewer (16:30): So I have one more question, which I think a lot of people have in mind. COVID has been extremely disruptive to American society and to the American economy. How do you think the economy is going to emerge over the next 12 months from this period of great difficulty? And how much of the change that we’ve seen start to happen is going to be persistent?
罗森塔尔：我还有一个我想大多数人心里都想问的问题。新冠疫情对美国社会和美国经济造成了极大的破坏。您认为在接下来的一年里，美国经济将如何走出这段巨大的困难期？目前有哪些我们看到的变化，有可能在疫情过后依然持续？
Charlie Munger (16:59): Well, my opinion on that is no better than anybody else’s, but I think it’s quite likely that a year from now the worst of that will be very thoroughly behind us. It’s amazing. I watched the polio get totally killed by the vaccinations, and I think they’ll spread these vaccines over the world so fast it’ll make your head swim. So I think this horrible COVID thing, it’s very likely to shrink to insignificance in the course of the next year.
查理·芒格：我对疫情的看法并不比其他人高明多少，不过我认为最糟糕的情况很可能在一年后会彻底过去。这是很神奇的事。通过接种疫苗，我见过小儿麻痹症被全部消灭了。我想他们会把这些疫苗迅速地传遍全世界，速度会非常快的。所以我觉得这个可怕的新冠肺炎疫情，很可能在接下来的一年中变得无足轻重。
Interviewer (17:40): And what about the transformation to retail? So you said department stores are gone, but there seems to be at work a quite massive transformation of retail. Are we going to go back to old town Pasadena, for example, or is the shift to online retail more permanent?
罗森塔尔：那关于零售业的转型呢？您之前说百货公司都消失了，但是看起来零售业正在发生相当大的转变。您觉得，比如说，我们会回到帕萨迪纳原来那样，还是不可逆地转向线上零售？
Charlie Munger (17:57): Well, I don’t think retailing is going to go away after it’s been around for thousands of years, but certainly it’s been a very difficult place to make money, because of what the internet has done. I recently had a friend send me a blue blazer made in China, bought on the Chinese internet, and it cost $42 delivered. And it may not have been a perfect blazer, but it was an amazing blazer for $42. The person who created that blazer gave some little factory an order for 100,000 at once, and those had been pre-sold using the internet. And so it’s the most extreme kill all our competitors of selling I’ve ever seen. Of course, retailing hasn’t coped with something like that. How good is it for Brooks Brothers when somebody can deliver a thing with the internet from China for $42? It didn’t look like that bad a blazer to me either. Retailing has gotten very tough, and I think this online stuff is here to stay here, and we’ll get more and more efficient.
查理·芒格：零售业已经存在了几千年了，我认为它不会消失。但受互联网影响，零售业的确变得更难赚钱了。最近，我有个朋友给我寄来一件中国制造的蓝色西装外套，是在中国的电商上买的，算上运费只要42美元。它或许不是一件完美的西装外套，但是对于42美元这个价格来说，它已经足够惊艳了。商家先通过互联网进行预售，再一次性给一些小制造厂下10万件的订单。这是我见过的同行中销售模式最具有杀伤力的。显而易见，零售业还没有遇到过这样的情况。当有人可以通过互联网从中国以42美元的价格寄来一件西装外套的时候，这对Brook Brothers（服装公司）而言意味着什么？而且在我看来，那件外套也没那么糟糕。零售业的日子已然非常艰难，而且电商这种形式会一直存在，生产流通环节的效率也会变得越来越高。
Interviewer (19:25): So that could be actually good for the consumer, but more difficult for certain sets of investors, in particular, commercial real estate.
罗森塔尔：所以这是不是意味着，虽然对消费者来说可能是好事，这种趋势却让一些投资者（特别是一些商业地产投资者）的日子更难过了？
Charlie Munger (19:34): These changes are always bad for some investors and good for others, but when they’re bad, they’re very bad in the full brunt of the changes that are coming in terms of this online shopping. I am a director at Costco, and in the last reporting period, their online sales were up 86% over the same quarter last year. Now, that is a significant development. Is it good for other retailers? No. It’s good for Costco, but it isn’t good for them.
查理·芒格：这些变化总是对一些投资者不利但是对另一些投资者有利。但对那些不利的人来说，情况往往是非常糟糕的。网购带来的变化，首当其冲的是零售商们。我是Costco的董事，在最新的财报中，Costco的线上销量单季增速同比增加了86%。这是一个重大的进展。电商对其他零售商来说是好事吗？对Costco来说是好事，但对其他零售商来说并不是好事。
Interviewer (20:18): But how much of their brick and mortar stores, how much of this is people who would have shopped at Costco in the departments in the stores-
罗森塔尔：但是在Costco实体店中还有多少会被顾客光临呢？
Charlie Munger (20:27): … mortar stores are already doing well, but their brick and mortar stores have been enormously destructive because of their low prices and efficiency to other retailers. And now they’re doing all this internet thing. The last thing I would want to do in retail is compete with Costco.
查理·芒格：它们的实体店已经做得很好了，由于它们价格低、效率高，实体店本身已经对其他零售商造成了巨大的冲击。现在，它们又在做电商。在零售业，我最不想做的就是和Costco竞争。
Interviewer (20:51): So we’ve talked a bit about retail and the reorganization that the American labor force is also going to. Do you think that that is going to be a more transitory phenomenon, that once we get vaccinated, the jobs are going to return? Or are we likely to see a slow return of employment in the same way that we did after 2001, 2002?
罗森塔尔：上面我们讨论了一些关于零售业的内容，接下来我们讨论一下美国劳动力市场迫在眉睫的重整。您认为目前的情况是暂时的吗？一旦我们接种了疫苗，就业市场就能回暖吗？还是会像2001、2002年之后那样，看到就业率缓慢回升？
Charlie Munger (21:13): Remember, that I did not make my fortune such as it is by predicting macro economic changes better than other people. What Buffett and I did was we bought things that were promising and then sometimes we had a tailwind from the economy and sometimes we had a headwind. And either way, we just kept swimming. That’s our system. Now, after all, that’s the system from Caltech has too. Caltech Just gets up in the morning and keep swimming, and pretty soon their imminent. Caltech’s not trying to play the game of getting big advantage out of the booms and busts. We’re just like Caltech.
查理·芒格：别忘了，我并不是靠比别人更准确地预测宏观经济变化而发家致富的。巴菲特和我所做的是买入一些非常有前景的资产。有时我们会遇到经济上的顺风期，有时会遇到逆风期。而无论在什么时候，我们都保持前行。这就是我们的投资体系。毕竟，这也是加州理工学院的办学理念：尽早出发，保持前进。加州理工学院并不是从经济繁荣和萧条的周期波动中获得巨大的竞争优势的。我们也一样。
Interviewer (21:55): Well, we do hope that we are committed to our path of discovery and not the victims of the current fashion and that we have our own decisions about what we think is really important to search. So in that sense, you’re absolutely right.
罗森塔尔：是的，我们确实希望我们的研究能致力于探索之路，而不是成为当下潮流的牺牲品，也希望在什么是真正重要的研究上，我们有自己的决断。所以从这个意义上说，你说的完全正确。
Charlie Munger (22:10): Oh no, you’re trying to get the right answers, but you’re not really trying to predict what the economy is going to be like 18 months from now.
查理·芒格：哦，原来你是想得到正确的答案，并不是真的想预测18个月后的经济状况。
观众问答环节
糟糕的投资决策以及聪明人的认知偏见
Interviewer (22:22): So perhaps we now have a large number of really interesting and imaginative questions from the audience. So perhaps I could actually have you answer some of these, and I will just read them to you. Let me just close that a second. So the one from Dr. John Victor, who was a bachelor of science in chemical engineering in 1971, and he has two questions. The first is, he has a theory that really smart people foresee the future better than others, and so we can ask, what did you think about that? And then his second question is, did you ever make a bad business decision?
罗森塔尔：好的，我们这里现在有很多观众提出了非常有趣和富有想象力的问题。或许您可以回答其中的一些，我会念给您听。这个问题来自约翰·维克多（John Victor）博士，他在1971年获得化学工程学士学位。他有两个问题。第一个是，他有一个理论认为真正聪明的人比其他人更能预见未来，所以我们可以问，您是怎么想的？他的第二个问题是，您是否曾经做过糟糕的投资决策？
Charlie Munger (23:06): Well, the answer for the second one is, of course, I’ve made bad business decisions. You can’t live a successful life without taking some, doing some different things that go wrong. That’s just the nature of the game. And you wouldn’t be sufficiently courageous if you tried to avoid every single reverse. And what was the first question?
查理·芒格：嗯，第二个问题的答案是，当然了，我做过不止一个糟糕的投资决策。如果没有做过一些错误、棘手的事情，你就不可能拥有成功的人生。犯错误是人生固有的属性。如果你试图避免每一次的失败，你不会拥有足够的勇气。第一个问题是什么来着？
Interviewer (23:34): Do smart people predict the future better than others?
罗森塔尔：聪明的人会比其他人更能预见未来吗?
Charlie Munger (23:38): Well, that is a very interesting question. You could argue that both ways. A lot of smart people think they’re way smarter than they are, and therefore they do worse than dumb people, if you ask me. And it’s very common to be utterly brilliant and to think your way the hell smarter than you are. I think Warren and I have been pretty good at avoiding that one. We’re pretty modest. I know what my mental capacity is, and it’s pretty low compared to the best it could possibly be. When I was at Caltech, I took this course in thermodynamics from Homer Joe Stewart. By the way, a lovely human being and gifted beyond compare, and one thing I learned was that no matter how hard I would try, I could never be as good at thermodynamics as Homer Joe Stewart. And I think that is a very useful lesson. I knew what I could do and I couldn’t, and I never even considered trying to compete with the Homer Joe Stewarts in the world of thermodynamics.
查理·芒格：嗯，这是一个非常有趣的问题，你可以从两个方面来看待这个问题。很多聪明的人会高估自己的聪明程度，因此他们可能比愚蠢的人表现得更糟糕，我是这么看这个问题的。一个常见的情况是，非常聪明的人往往高估自己的聪明程度。我觉得巴菲特和我一直很善于克服这种认知偏差。我们对自己智力水平认知非常保守，而且和最聪明的人相比，要差好大一截。当我在加州理工学院念书的时候，我上过霍默·乔·斯图尔特（Homer Joe Stewart）的热力学课程。从这位可爱的、拥有无与伦比天赋的人身上，我懂得了无论我怎么努力，在热力学方面我永远赶不上霍默·乔·斯图尔特。我认为这是非常有用的一课，我知道了自己能做什么不能做什么。我完全没有考虑过要在热力学领域和霍默·乔·斯图尔特竞争。
气象学学习经历及气候问题
Interviewer (24:57): So the next question actually goes back to that time at Caltech, from James Univon, a bachelor’s of 1984. “How did the study of meteorology influenced your thinking?
罗森塔尔：下一个提问者是詹姆斯，他在1984年获得学士学位。这个问题要追溯到您在加州理工学院的时候：气象学的学习对您的思维有什么影响？
Charlie Munger (25:10): Well, not much, but you learn something from anything you do. It was a very empirical science in those days. We just made weather maps, which laid out the weather on the map. And then we stacked up those maps and by looking, as one followed another, you could see whether weather systems were moving, and that’s the way we were predicting the weather. And, of course, that’s a lot better than nothing. And we did have some little tricks like predicting icing and so forth. But basically we just were doing two things, we were trying to Burbank other pilot from going somewhere and not being able to land and therefore having to crash and die, or we were trying to prevent a pilot from going into icing that was so tough that he couldn’t handle it. And if I did that in my Army Air Corp, I knew I wouldn’t kill a pilot. Now, that’s not very complicated by Caltech’s standards.
查理·芒格：虽然没什么影响，但也可以说你从做过的任何事情中都能学到一些东西。那个时候，气象学是一门非常经验主义的学科。我们学的就是绘制天气图，也就是把天气在地图上标出来。然后我们把这些地图叠放起来，一张接一张地看，你可以观察到气象系统是否在移动，这就是我们预测天气的方式。在当时，这总比什么都没有好。而且我们的确还有一些小窍门，比如如何预测结冰等等。但基本上我们只是在做两件事，第一个是试图保护飞行员，不让他们飞到一些因为无法降落而导致坠机和死亡的地方去。第二个是试图保护飞行员，不让他们飞到一些他们很难处理的结冰环境中去。在陆军空军兵团中，如果我学会这个，我会知道如何保护飞行员。以加州理工学院的标准来看，这不是很复杂。
Interviewer (26:11): Well, there’s a lot of uncertainty.
Charlie Munger (26:14): Yes, there is.
Interviewer (26:16): Depending on the location you’re trying to predict the weather for.
罗森塔尔：预测天气有很多不确定因素，对吧？
Charlie Munger (26:17): Yeah, but sometimes, it’s pretty easy. And when it’s likely to be bad, you can tell them not to go. I was in the Ferry Command, so I didn’t have any bombing runs or anything like that. And so if it really was dangerous, we just told them not to go. It was such an empirical science. I never wanted to be in it. They threw the meteorology department out of Caltech early after World War Two, and I think it was a correct decision. It was too empirical an activity for Caltech.
查理·芒格：的确，但是有的时候这也很容易。如果某个地方的天气情况可能很糟糕，你告诉他们不要去就好了。我在军队的时候是在渡船指挥部，所以我没有经历过轰炸或类似的事情。所以如果真的某个地方很危险，我们就告诉他们不要去。气象学就是这样一门经验科学，我从未想过要做这方面的工作。二战结束后，加州理工学院就不再开设气象学系了。我觉得这是个正确的决定，气象学对加州理工学院来说太经验主义了。
Interviewer (27:03): Well we’re back in climate science, so I think things have changed since then.
罗森塔尔：不过，现在学校又开设了气候科学，所以我想是因为全球气候不同以往了？
Charlie Munger (27:06): Climate science is different from meteorology. That’s a very interesting subject about which there’s a lot of disagreement.
查理·芒格：气候科学和气象学不同。气候科学是一个非常有趣的学科，学术上存在着很多不同观点。
Interviewer (27:18): Well, we’re actually trying to make some progress in having better predictive model over the long run evolution of the climate of the globe.
罗森塔尔：嗯嗯，事实上我们正在努力取得一些进展，以建立更好的预测模型，对全球气候的长期演变进行预测。
Charlie Munger (27:25): Everybody is, but it’s proven very difficult. It’s better than nothing, don’t misunderstand me, but it’s proven very difficult. My attitude on that is that the worst that can happen in terms of global climate can be coped with by the advanced civilizations. If you had to erect sea walls to protect the entire breadth of the United States, that wouldn’t take that much of GDP per capita for that many years, and it could be done quite safely, if we had to. So I don’t see that as the worst tragedy that man- … if we had to, so I don’t see that as the worst tragedy the man could get.
查理·芒格：每个人都在这样做，但事实证明这非常困难。别误会，努力总比什么都没有好，但事实证明这非常困难。我对此的态度是，先进文明可以应对在全球气候方面可能发生的最坏情况。即使必须通过建立海堤来保护整个美国，也不会持续多年一直占用太多的人均GDP。即使非要这样做，也可以很安全地完成。所以我不认为这是人类可能遇到最大的悲剧。
通识与专业教育，跨学科思维
Interviewer (28:08): Our next question comes from Ms. Pavarti who has a bachelor’s degree of 2008. What is one critique of CalTech of its alumni that we ought to pay attention, or how should CalTech or its alumni evolve in the future?
罗森塔尔：下一个问题来自于2008年毕业的本科生帕瓦蒂·梅农。对于加州理工学院的校友们来说，我们应该关注的批评意见是什么？或者说，加州理工学院或者其校友在未来应该如何发展？
Charlie Munger (28:23): I think CalTech is doing very well, just the way it is. I think one of its great advantages is that it doesn’t change too much. I think it was very smart to keep the undergraduate department pretty small and make the graduate department so outstanding. In other words, I think the whole idea was, I think, quite sound and it hasn’t changed it all that much. Remember I was there when Milken was there and I knew him. Not well. It hasn’t changed that much. I think that’s been a strength.
查理·芒格：我认为加州理工学院本身做得就很好。加州理工学院最大的优点之一就是它变化不大。我觉得把本科生部的规模控制得相当小，而把研究生部做得如此出色，是非常明智的。换句话说，我认为加州理工学院整体的办学理念是相当健全的，而且迄今为止并没有改变太多。我记得我在学校时密立根（译者注：Robert Andrews Millikan，美国物理学家，1922年IEEE爱迪生奖章得主与1923年诺贝尔物理学奖得主。从1921年到1945年退休，密立根担任加州理工学院执行委员会主席，帮助学校变成了美国领先的研究机构之一。有讽刺意味的是，就在访谈结束后的一个月，在“种族正义运动”中非裔工程师和科学家的请愿下，加州理工学院因为密立根曾支持“优生学”，将其从学校除名）也在。我认识他，但是不太熟。加州理工学院迄今为止并没有改变太多，我认为这是一种优势。
Interviewer (29:04): One of the reasons, to extend, I understand that history is that we really wanted to focus on the ability of people with different backgrounds and different disciplines to talk to each other because we thought that new ways of thinking about the world, about science or about engineering, would emerge from that. That was one of the things that we’ve tried to privilege, but there also having situation where scale matters. In thinking about those investment opportunities or other kinds of activities in trying to be smart about things, how much of this is accepting information from a variety of different sources to cross-check the decision you want to make?
罗森塔尔：我理解加州理工学院拥有这种特质的原因之一，是因为我们真的想把重点放在不同背景、不同学科的人能够互相交流这件事上。而这又是因为，我们觉得这件事将会促成我们对世界、对科学或对工程新的思考方式。我们一直努力要做到的事情，这当然是其中之一，但在某些情况下，规模也很重要。比如，在思考那些投资机会（或者其他需要聪明智慧的活动）时，其中有多少是需要接受各种不同来源的信息来交叉验证你想要做出的决定的？
Charlie Munger (29:59): Well, I’m a big fan of knowing the big ideas in pretty much all of the disciplines, the ones that are pretty easy to assimilate, and then using those routinely in your judgments. That’s just my system. I don’t trust the executive … I don’t believe in just constantly consulting with experts and doing things that way. I might do that if I were building a chemical plant or something. But in investment decisions, I think it’s very helpful to be able to yourself be pretty comfortable with the big ideas in all the disciplines. I think that also life’s more fun if you do that. What I find it as though that academia is not very good at the interdisciplinary stuff. Academia rewards a researcher who knows more and about less and less, and there are real difficulties with that approach.
查理·芒格：嗯，我非常喜欢了解几乎所有学科的重要思想（这些思想非常容易被吸收），并在分析判断中经常使用它们。这就是我的决策系统。我不相信公司管理层，我也不觉得投资就是不断地咨询专家。如果我要建一座化工厂什么的，我可能会这么做。但是在做投资决策时，我认为广泛掌握所有学科的重要思想是非常有帮助的。而且我觉得，如果你这样做，生活也会更有趣。我发现学术界似乎不太擅长跨学科的东西。学术界奖励的是那些在越来越窄的领域里研究的越来越深的研究人员，这种方法在投资上确实会遇到不少困难。
Interviewer (31:10): Well, we try to … I mean, that is an inevitable part of the way we go about doing-
Charlie Munger (31:18): I know it.
Interviewer (31:18): … this work.
罗森塔尔：是啊，不过这是我们从事研究工作不可避免的一部分。
Charlie Munger (31:19): The inevitable way of doing it. But when you’re outside your own little field, it’s dangerous.
查理·芒格：我知道这对于研究工作来说是无法避免的，但是当你处于你自己那一片狭窄的领域之外时，情况就变得非常危险。
未来的预期回报率会降低
Interviewer (31:30):My next set of questions are more on the finance side. Paul Goodson, who is a bachelor’s degree of science in 1975, asks, “Do you expect the next 10 years to have lower returns in the equity markets than the last 10?” He doesn’t give us an idea why.
罗森塔尔：所以我接下来的一组问题更多是关于金融方面的。保罗·古德森（Paul Goodson）于1975年获得理学学士学位，他的问题是：“您预计未来10年股市的回报率会低于过去10年吗？”他并没有说他得出此判断的原因。
Charlie Munger (31:45):The answer is yes.
查理·芒格：这个问题的答案是肯定的。
Interviewer (31:47): Could you give us a hint as to why that might come to pass?
罗森塔尔：您能不能给我们一个提示，为什么会这样？
Charlie Munger (31:50): Yes. Because so many people are in it and the frenzy is so great. The systems of management, the reward systems, are so foolish that I don’t think it’s going to work at all. I think that the returns will go down, yes. In real terms, the returns will be lower.
查理·芒格：可以，因为市场涌入了太多的人，非常狂热。而管理体系和奖励机制又设计的如此愚蠢，我认为这根本行不通。我确实认为未来的回报率会下降，而且按实际价值计算，回报率会更低。
“惊世骇俗”的量化宽松政策
Interviewer (32:15): …, bachelor’s degree 1995, is going to ask about political economy. Two different questions. What do you think of the combinations of quantitative easing and large fiscal deficit, and where are they going to lead us?
罗森塔尔：1995年获得学士学位的舒勒·库伦（Schuyler Cullen）想要问两个关于政治经济学的问题。第一个问题是，如何看待量化宽松和巨额财政赤字的政策组合？第二个问题是， 这种情况会把我们引向何方？
Charlie Munger (32:32): Well, there I’ve got a very simple answer and that is it’s one of the most interesting questions anybody could ask. We’re in very uncharted waters. Nobody has gotten by with the kind of money printing we’re doing now for a very extended period without some trouble. I think we’re very near the edge of playing with fire.
查理·芒格：这是任何人都有可能问到的最有趣的问题之一，我有一个非常简单的答案：我们正处于一片未知的水域。没有人能像我们现在这样印钞票，在很长一段时间内不出任何问题。我认为我们现在的状况无异于“虎口拔牙”。
Interviewer (33:13): It is remarkable how much we’ve expanded the money supply, how low interest rates are, and how little initial response there has been on-
罗森塔尔：我们到底扩大了多少货币供应量，到底把利率降到多低的水平，市场对此的第一反应有多么不敏感，这确实很非同一般。
Charlie Munger (33:22): Remarkable’s not too strong a word. Astounding would be more like it.
查理·芒格：用“非同一般”这个词并不恰当，“惊世骇俗”可能更能体现目前的状况。
Interviewer (33:28): I will let you choose the adjective, Charlie.
罗森塔尔：哈哈，听你的，查理。
Charlie Munger (33:31): It’s unbelievably extreme. Some European government borrowed money reasonably for some tiny little fraction of 1% for a hundred years. Now that is weird. What kind of a lunatic would loan money to a European government for a hundred years at less than 1%?
查理·芒格：这是非常令人难以置信的极端情况，一些欧洲政府以1%的利率成功地借到了一笔钱，100年才会还清。这太奇怪了。什么样的疯子会以低于1%的利率借钱给欧洲政府100年呢？
Interviewer (33:58): Can I ask you a question that sort of falls out of this but from a different perspective? Which is for a long time, a lot of the policymaking in the world was because capital is scarce. For a long time, the world economies were poor. Since World War II, we’ve been creating wealth at a very, very high rate. Have the rules changed to some extent? Because in some sense, the developed economies are just very wealthy.
罗森塔尔：我能从另外一个角度问您一个与此相关的问题吗？长期以来，世界上制定的许多政策都是因为资本稀缺。长期以来，全球经济都很贫乏。但自第二次世界大战以来，我们一直都在以非常非常高的速度创造财富。现在规则是否已经在某种程度上有所改变？因为从某种意义上说，发达经济体已经非常富有。
Charlie Munger (34:25): Well, of course it’s changed to some extent because of developing economies are very wealthy. It’s changed enormously. In my lifetime, advanced civilization has gotten ahead faster than any century that existed before and nothing else was even close. It’s utterly without precedent in real terms. It’s unbelievable. I watched the whole thing practically because I’ve lived so long and it’s been absolutely astounding. I can remember having a five course filet mignon dinner in Omaha for 60 cents when I was a little boy. The world has really changed.
查理·芒格：当然，因为发展中国家现在也变得非常富裕，从某种意义上说规则当然有所改变。社会发生了翻天覆地的变化。在我的有生之年，先进文明的发展速度比以往任何一个世纪都要快，甚至是快出很多。这完全是史无前例的，非常难以置信。我活的太久了，因而可以亲历整个过程。这绝对是令人震惊的。我还记得我小的时候在奥马哈，一顿晚饭吃了五盘菲力牛排，只花了60美分。这个世界真的变了。
长期繁荣是否真实
Interviewer (35:14): Our next question, which is the converse, wealth can be high because we’ve accumulated a lot of wealth, or because the value of that wealth is high. Dr. David Whitner, who is an associate degree in 1975, asked, “Is it NASDAQ in a bubble and will it blow up? Do we know when?”
Charlie Munger (35:31): What?
Interviewer (35:32): Is it NASDAQ in a bubble?
罗森塔尔：我们的下一个问题和上一个问题视角相反。1975年获得副学士学位（associate degree）的大卫·惠特纳（David Whitner）想要讨论财富之所以多，是因为我们真的积累了大量财富，还是因为这些财富目前的估值很高。他的问题是，“纳斯达克市场是否有泡沫？泡沫会破裂吗？我们可以知道是什么时候吗？”
Charlie Munger (35:35): Nobody knows when bubbles are going to blow up, but just because it’s NASDAQ doesn’t mean it’ll have another run like this one very quickly again. This has been unbelievable. Again, there’s never been anything quite like it. If you stop to think about it, think what Apple is worth compared to John D. Rockefeller’s oil empire. It’s been the most dramatic thing that’s almost ever happened in the entire world history of finance. The other thing that’s really remarkable. The last 30 years of China, they have had real economic growth at a rate for 30 years that no big country has ever had before in the history of the world. Who did that? A bunch of communist Chinese. Now that is really remarkable. If you’re in studying finance, you got a lot of strange things to account for.
查理·芒格：没有人知道泡沫什么时候会破裂，不能仅仅因为它是纳斯达克就意味着它又会泡沫破裂。的确，纳斯达克的走势非常难以置信。再说一次，目前的情况是史无前例的。如果你停下来想一想，想想和约翰·D·洛克菲勒的石油帝国比起来，苹果公司值多少钱（译者注：截至2020年12月11日收盘，苹果公司2万亿美金市值，石油帝国主要成员埃克森美孚1822亿美金市值、雪佛龙1705亿美金市值、英国石油747亿美金市值、康菲石油461亿美金市值。石油的重要性远远高于消费电子，但市值却相差非常远）。这是最戏剧性的事情，在整个世界金融史上几乎从未发生过。此外，还有一件事情也是非同一般的，就是中国过去的三十年。中国30年的实际经济增长速度是世界历史上任何一个大国都没有过的。谁让这一切成为现实？一群中国共产党员。这真的很了不起。如果你在学习金融，你会有很多奇怪的事情需要解释。
中国的投资机会判断
Interviewer (36:43): Bob …, who is a PhD 1979 from aeronautical engineering, asked, “How would you rate investing in China with the current political tensions, or are you invested in China through the ownership of American companies that do business in China?”
罗森塔尔：1979年获得航空工程专业博士学位的罗伯特·布雷登塔尔（Robert Breidenthal）提问：“在当前的政治紧张局势下，您如何评价在中国的投资？您是否通过持有在中国开展业务的美国公司的形式来投资中国？”
Charlie Munger (36:58): Well, of course I’m invested partly in American companies to do business in China, including Coca-Cola, but I’m also invested very significantly in China through the management of Li Lu, moving the Munger family back heavily when he formed a little private equity firm to invest in China. He has had a very successful record that’s made me follow very closely the leading companies in China. Of course I’ve had very successful experience there. I think it’s likely to continue. The Chinese story is the damnedest thing that ever happened to a big country in terms of economics. No other big country ever got ahead this fast for that long.
查理·芒格：当然，我也投资了一部分在中国开展业务的美国公司，比如可口可乐。但同时，我主要通过李录管理的基金在中国进行了大量投资。当李录刚成立一家小型私募基金准备投资中国时，芒格家族就给予了他很大的支持。他的管理业绩非常优秀，这使我时刻关注着中国的优秀企业。我在投资中国方面的确有非常成功的经历，我觉得在中国的投资很可能会继续成功下去。中国故事是一个大国在经济方面发生过的最令人惊奇的事情。没有哪个大国能在这么长的时间里如此迅速地取得进步。
Interviewer (37:54):Does that say that the politics don’t matter so much?
罗森塔尔：这是不是说政治体制并不是那么重要？
Charlie Munger (37:59): Yeah, it does. That’s a very interesting observation. What that shows is exactly right. Who would have guessed that a bunch of communist Chinese run by one party would have the best economic record the world has ever seen? Of course it’s extreme. I think it proves … We Americans would like to think that our free expression and allowing all kinds of opinions and all kinds of criticism of the government is totally essential part of the economy. What the Chinese have proved is you can have screamingly successful economy with a fairly controlling government. All the government has to do is create a lot of Smithy in capitalism. If you do that, having sort of a controlling one party government doesn’t matter. That’s not a fashionable thing to say, but I think it’s true.
查理·芒格：是的，确实如此。这是一个非常有趣的现象，政治体制的确不重要。谁能想到一群中国共产党人靠着一党专政取得了世界上有史以来最好的经济增长记录？当然这个案例很极端。我们美国人会认为我们的言论自由，以及允许对政府提出各种意见和批评，是经济活动中不可或缺的一部分。但是中国人也同样证明了，在一个相当有控制力的政府手里，经济发展也可以取得惊人成功。政府所要做的就是创造大量的活力和可能性。如果你做到了，即使是一个强有力的一党专政政府也没有关系。这个观点可能不太主流，但我认为确实是这样。
优秀投资者的特质
Interviewer (39:03): For those of us who can’t only rely on that form of growth, Zach Rifkin, who’s a bachelor of science 2014 in math asks, “How do you encourage young mentees to take big bets on big edges? How should this be taught at CalTech?”
罗森塔尔：对于我们没有生活在中国这么高速增长环境下的人来说，2014年获得数学学士学位的扎克·里夫金（Zach Rivkin）有这么一个问题：“您如何激励年轻人在赢面大的地方下重注？加州理工学院应该如何教给学生这些知识？”
Charlie Munger (39:24): Well, if you ask how can CalTech teach people how to win chess tournaments or poker tournaments, you would find that some people at CalTech are very good at that and others aren’t. If you want to win at those things, you better bet on the people that are really very good at it. Not everybody is. I don’t think CalTech can make great investors out of most people. I think great investors to some extent are like great chess players. They’re almost born to be investors.
查理·芒格：如果你问的是“加州理工学院怎么教人们赢得象棋比赛或扑克比赛”，你会发现，有些人很擅长这个，有些人则不然。而如果你想在象棋比赛或扑克比赛上获胜，最好的办法是把赌注押在那些真正擅长的人身上。并不是每个人都对此很擅长。我认为加州理工并不能将大多数人都培养为伟大的投资者。伟大的投资者在某种程度上就像伟大的棋手，他们几乎生来就是吃投资这碗饭的。
Interviewer (40:03): That’s because of the tolerance for risk? Is it the patience? What are the traits of good investors?
罗森塔尔：是因为他们对风险更加容忍吗？是因为他们更有耐心吗？优秀的投资者有哪些特质？
Charlie Munger (40:08): Obviously, you have to know a lot. But partly it’s temperament, partly it’s deferred gratification. You got to be willing to wait. It’s a weird … Good investing requires a weird combination of patience and aggression and not many people have it. It requires a big amount of self-awareness and how much, you know and how much you don’t know. You have to know the edge of your own competency. A lot of brilliant people are no good knowing the edge of their own competency. They think they’re way smarter than they are. Of course, that that’s dangerous and causes trouble. I think CalTech would have a hard time teaching everybody to be a great investor.
查理·芒格：很明显，优秀的投资者需要懂很多东西。但这里面有一部分跟人的性格有关，有一部分跟延迟满足有关。你必须愿意等待。好的投资需要同时具备耐心和进取心，而拥有这种能力的人并不多。这需要非常清晰的自我认知，明白哪些是自己知道的，哪些是自己不知道的，你必须了解自己能力的边界。很多才华横溢的人并不善于了解自己能力的边界，他们会高估自己的聪明程度。当然，高估自己的能力边界是很危险的，也会带来很多麻烦。因此，我觉得加州理工学院很难教会每个人都成为伟大的投资者。
Interviewer (41:02): But could it help people discover that they have that temperament? Or is this something that you mostly should try on your own?
罗森塔尔：加州理工学院可以帮助人们发掘自己身上的那种性格特质吗？还是说这个东西更应该靠自己努力？
Charlie Munger (41:08): I think you find out whether you got the qualities to win at poker by playing poker.
查理·芒格：我认为你可以通过打扑克来了解自己是否具备在扑克游戏中获胜的能力。
Interviewer (41:19):That’s a very empirical approach, Charlie.
罗森塔尔：嗯嗯，这是一种非常经验主义的方法，查理。
Charlie Munger (41:22): Yes, but I think it’s right.
Interviewer (41:26): So-
Charlie Munger (41:27): Obviously it helps to know the basic math of Fairmath and Pascal, but everybody with any sense knows that stuff. But having a temperament where Fairmath and Pascal are as much part of you as your ear and nose, that’s a different kind of a person. I think it’s hard to teach that. I have found … Warren and I had talked about this. In the early days when we talked about our way of doing things, which is working so well, we found some people got it, and they instantly converted to our way. We found some people got it and they instantly converted to our way and did very well. And some people, no matter how carefully we explained it, and no matter how successful they were, they could never adapt to it. They either got it fast or they didn’t get it at all. So that’s my experience.
查理·芒格：是的，但我认为这是对的。显然，了解费马-帕斯卡系统（译者注：芒格常提到的思维模型中的一种，大致意思就是概率论的思维，具体可以参考《上帝教人掷骰子——“神童”帕斯卡与概率论》的相关论述）的基础数学原理很有用，稍有点概率论知识的人都知道这个事。但如果费马-帕斯卡系统就像你的耳朵和鼻子一样，天然是你的一部分，存在于性格特质中，那你就是截然不同的另一类人了。我觉得这个是很难教的，巴菲特和我以前讨论过这个问题。早些年，当我们谈论我们的投资方法（这套方法当时非常有效）时，我们发现有些人理解了我们的方式，马上就转变了投资方法，取得了很好的效果。而有些人，无论我们解释得多么仔细，无论他们已经多么成功，他们就是学不会这套方法，就是无法适应它。所以我的经验是：人们要么很快就理解它，要么就永远也理解不了。
选择什么样的工作
Interviewer (42:20): So, sort of related to this, Charles Miller asks, “You’ve talked about the search for psychological research and education grounding how humans truly operate. Have you found it yet?”
罗森塔尔：和上个问题相关，查尔斯·米勒（Charles Miller）提问：“您之前也谈到以人类真实运作机制为基础对心理学和教育进行探索，您有所发现吗？”
Charlie Munger (42:39): Well, no, I haven’t found anything yet except how to get by fairly well. It’s harder than a lot of people think. Just think about how hard it is to get far ahead in life. Imagine. Supposed you want to get ahead in Caltech, you like the academic a lot. Caltech is very good at getting people tenure. If you’re very brilliant and work 80 or 90 hours a week for 9 or 10 years, you get tenure. That is not what I call an easy life, and competing with the Homer Joe Stewarts.
查理·芒格：没有，我除了发现如何很好的混日子以外一无所获。这种探索比大多数人想象的要难。想想看，想要在人生中遥遥领先有多难。想象一下，假设你喜欢学术生活，如果你想在加州理工学院脱颖而出，即使你非常聪明，每周工作80-90个小时，这样持续9-10年，你才能获得终身教职（在加州理工学院获得终身教职还相对容易）。这不是我所说容易的人生，而且还要面临和荷马·乔·斯图尔特（Homer Joe Stewart）（译者注：加州理工学院航空学教授，航空工程师）的竞争。
Interviewer (43:22): Some of us love it. That’s all I can say, Charlie.
Charlie Munger (43:24): What?
Interviewer (43:25): Some of us love that life.
罗森塔尔：哈哈，查理，我只能说我们中有一些人热爱这种生活。
Charlie Munger (43:26): Yes, of course. I know. And that’s fine. I chose to avoid it because I knew I wouldn’t win big at it. A perfectly successful professor by ordinary standards, but I would not have been a star.
查理·芒格：对，当然，我理解，这没问题。我不选择这种生活是因为我知道我不可能在学术上获得巨大的成功。按照一般的标准，我可能会成为一个非常成功的教授，但我不会成为一个学术明星。
Interviewer (43:46): So finding your own path is something you really recommend to everyone. The place where you can shine-
罗森塔尔：所以您给大家的建议是，找到适合自己的道路？
Charlie Munger (43:57): No. What helps everyone is to get in something that’s going up and it just carries you along without much talent or work. And so if you pick a really strong place, like say Costco, and you go to work at it and you really are reliable and nice, you’re going to do fine in life. You got a big tailwind. But in the lead education, nobody wants to go to work for Costco, from Harvard or MIT or Stanford. And of course it’s the one place where it would be easiest to get ahead.
查理·芒格：并不是。真正对大家有益的建议是进入一些处于上升期的行业，你并不需要太多的天赋或努力，就可以走得很远。因此，如果你选择了一家真正有实力的公司，比如说Costco，你在那里工作并且为人善良可靠，你会生活得很好。行业或公司是你生活很大的推动力。但是教育精英们，无论是哈佛、麻省理工还是斯坦福的毕业生，没有人愿意去Costco工作。因此，像Costco这种公司就是年轻人最容易脱颖而出的地方。
Charlie Munger (43:57): No. What helps everyone is to get in something that’s going up and it just carries you along without much talent or work. And so if you pick a really strong place, like say Costco, and you go to work at it and you really are reliable and nice, you’re going to do fine in life. You got a big tailwind. But in the lead education, nobody wants to go to work for Costco, from Harvard or MIT or Stanford. And of course it’s the one place where it would be easiest to get ahead.
对于从事投资工作的建议
Interviewer (44:36): So I have a few more questions that are more on the finance side, but there’s one I can not resist asking you. … asks, “I’m 16. I want to take up investing as a full-time career. What is Mr. Munger’s best advice for me?”
罗森塔尔：虽然我这里还有一些金融方面的问题，但这个问题我想先问您，一位观众提问：“我16岁了，未来想从事全职的投资工作，不知芒格先生有什么最好的建议？”
Charlie Munger (44:57): Well, if you pursue any career with enough fanaticism, that’s very likely to work better than not having the fanaticism. And so if you look at Warren Buffet, he had this fanatic emphasis in investments from an early age and he kept making small investments, even with his paper route savings and so forth. And he finally learned how to be pretty good at it. And so if you want to succeed in investments, start early and try hard and keep doing it. All success comes that way, by and large.
查理·芒格：如果你满怀热情追求某一项事业，往往做的比没有热情的好。如果你看看沃伦·巴菲特，他从小就对投资有着狂热的兴趣，他不断地进行小额投资，甚至连他送报纸赚来的积蓄等等小钱也投到了项目里。最终，他学会了如何在投资上做得很好。所以，如果你想在投资方面取得成功，那么就尽早开始，好好努力，坚持下去。大体来说，成功都是这样取得的。
最自豪的事情
Interviewer (45:45): So, Laura Jalif, bachelor science, 2020, so a very recent grad asks, “What are you proudest of?”
罗森塔尔：下面一位提问者是一位刚刚毕业的同学，2020年获得理学学士学位的劳拉·贾里夫（Laura Jaliff），她的问题是：“您此生最自豪的事情是什么？”
Charlie Munger (45:59): Well, I’m proudest of avoiding some things I don’t like. I don’t like irrationality and I’ve worked to try and avoid it in my life. And I haven’t succeeded, of course, nobody does, but I’ve done better than I thought I would starting out at a very low state and it’s been a pleasant way of going. And Caltech, by and large, stands for that. Caltech really tries to figure things out. That’s the value. And having that just right into your gene plasm really helps. I work a lot these days with a Caltech postdoc who’s now a professor of physics at UCSB and he’s a pleasure to work from. He never says anything stupid. He’s just so talented. Lars Bildsten is his name. And he heads that visiting program for the physicist of the world at UCSB. But Lars, he is trying to figure it out right. And his graduate students are trying to figure it out, everything a little faster and better than other graduate students. That’s Caltech. He was at Caltech for, I mean, two or three years as a post-doc. And Lars Bildsten is a wonderful man. Caltech is full of people like that. I don’t think Caltech has a lot of improvement that they can do in their physics department. I think it’s pretty good the way it is.
查理·芒格：最自豪的是我避免了那些我不喜欢的事情。我不喜欢非理性，我整个一生都在努力避免它。我没有成功避免（当然，也没有人可以成功避免），但我已经做得比我想象的更好了。我会从很低的起点开始练习，这种方式令人愉快。大体来说，加州理工学院就是理性的代表。加州理工学院真的在努力解决问题，这就是价值所在。将理性植入你的基因之中，这真的很有帮助。我最近经常和一个加州理工学院的博士后一起工作，和他一起工作很愉快。他叫拉尔斯·比尔德斯滕（Lars Bildsten），现在是加利福尼亚大学圣巴巴拉分校（UCSB）的物理学教授，也是UCSB世界物理学家访问项目的负责人。他非常有天赋，从不说蠢话，总是在努力解决研究上的问题，甚至他的研究生在解决每一件事情上也比其他研究生更快和更好。我想，这就是加州理工学院的精神。拉尔斯是一个非常优秀的人，他在加州理工学院当了两三年博士后。在加州理工学院，到处都是这样的人。我认为加州理工学院物理系没有太多可以改进的空间了，现在已经做得很好了。
Interviewer (47:47):Well, we are very glad of that and very proud of that.
罗森塔尔：我们对此非常高兴也深表自豪。
Charlie Munger (47:51): You should be. It’s harder to be that smart in the liberal arts, partly- Many liberal arts professors are so leftist. It’s hard to be pretty smart if you’re a crazy leftist, you’re going to have the world a lot wrong.
查理·芒格：是很值得自豪。在人文科学领域，想要如此聪明是比较难的，一部分是因为很多文科教授的思想太左派（译者注：指支持平等原则和平等主义的政治意识形态）了。如果你是一个激进的左翼分子，你很难变得非常聪明，你会把这个世界搞得一团糟。
在加州理工学院最难忘的事
Interviewer (48:19): So, John [inaudible 00:48:22] 1961 asks, “What did you get out of Caltech that was the most memorable to you?” And you said a little bit about this just now, which is why I want to come back and this issue of figuring things out and also rationality. But what was the most memorable thing for you when you were at Caltech?
罗森塔尔：1961年的博士生约翰·丹尼斯（John Dennis）提问：“您从加州理工学院学到的最让您难忘的东西是什么？”您刚才也谈到了一点，就是努力把问题搞清楚，也即理性。我想再进一步聊聊这个问题，您在加州理工学院时最难忘的事是什么？
Charlie Munger (48:49): Well, it comes back to Homer Joe Stewart. Homer Joe Stewart was just exactly the kind of a person you want representing Caltech to the students. And I came back to my 50th anniversary for my time at Caltech, and there was Homer Joe Stewart, he must’ve been 88 or something. He was just sharp as a tack. And he started talking to me a little about thermodynamics. And he says, “You know,” he says, “What’s interesting about thermodynamics is how little of it was derived mathematically from Newtonian physics.” And that is such a good thing to say. And if you understand both subjects, it’s so correct. It’s weird. You would think that you could just derive all thermodynamics from what Newton, but you can’t. In other words, as long as you have people like Homer Joe Stewart, you don’t have to worry about Caltech.
查理·芒格：说到这个问题，又得回到荷马·乔·斯图尔特（Homer Joe Stewart）身上了。如果你想找一个人能代表加州理工学院的特质展示给学生们看，非荷马·乔·斯图尔特莫属。当我回到加州理工大学参加50周年毕业校庆时（译者注：应该是60周年，可能是芒格记错了。芒格1944年来到加州理工学习了9个月，毕业50周年是1994年，而斯图尔特88岁的时候是2004年），我遇到了斯图尔特，他当时肯定有88岁左右了，但依然思维敏捷。然后他开始跟我聊起了热力学。“你知道吗？”他说，“热力学有趣的地方在于，它几乎没有什么公式是从牛顿经典物理学经过数学推导得出的。”这个认知太妙了，而且如果你同时了解这两个学科，你就会发现他说的特别对。但这个认识太反“常识”了。你会觉得你可以从牛顿经典物理学中推导出热力学公式，但事实上你做不到。换句话说，只要学校一直有荷马·乔·斯图尔特这样的人，你就不必担心加州理工学院的未来。
关于慈善行为
Interviewer (50:02): So, one of my students, when she knew I was going to be talking to you, asked me to ask you about the role of philanthropy, but then a question came from Grace Leishman, a bachelor of science, 2016, about which of your acts of philanthropy are you proudest of?
罗森塔尔：接下来的问题来自2016届的理学学士格蕾丝·利什曼（Grace Leishman）。她是我的一个学生，当她知道我要采访您的时候托我问您一个关于慈善事业的问题：“您最引以为豪的是您的哪些慈善行为？”
Charlie Munger (50:23): Well, I’m not that proud of my philanthropy. I regard it as an absolute minimal duty somebody could be reasonably successful. You ought to be reasonably generous. So I don’t think you get big merit points for philanthropy, because you do that, you get a lot of this credit if you didn’t. And I don’t think I’ve been any record philanthropist. I’ve given away more money to my family than I’ve given to philanthropy. I am sort of a bad example. Now, I think my philanthropy has been pretty intelligent. I think I’ve done a lot of good with the money I’ve given away, but I don’t think I deserve any credit for giving away money that caused me pain. I don’t want to be under false pretenses on that.
查理·芒格：我并不为我的慈善事业感到骄傲，慈善几乎算不上什么义务或责任。有些人可能相当成功，那么就应该慷慨一点。我认为做慈善并不是为了获得什么巨额的积分，因为你参与了就会得很多分，没有参与就不得分。我不认为我是一个慈善家，和捐给慈善机构的财富相比，我把更多地财富留给了家人。我算是个坏榜样。不过目前，我认为我的慈善行为还算比较明智的，我已经用我捐赠的钱做了很多好事。但有些捐赠行为也给我带来了痛苦，这完全不值得称赞。我不想在这个问题上弄虚作假。
关于未来
Interviewer (51:15): So the last question comes from somebody who’s not affiliated with Caltech, but it’s a great question to ask you after your 75 year association with Caltech. Kristin Berry asked, “What are you most curious about in the next 30 to 40 years?”
罗森塔尔：最后一个问题来自于一个与加州理工学院无关的人，这是一个很好的问题。克里斯汀·贝里（Christian Berry）问道：“关于未来的30-40年，您最想知道的是什么？”
Charlie Munger (51:35): Well, having been an investor for so long I’m of course interested in these weird present conditions and these weird economic conditions where they’re printing money like crazy and so forth. And of course, that’s very interesting. And I’m interested in the fact that the world has come so far and having these undeveloped countries get ahead so fast, like China, and then I compare India, which has a way worse economic record, even though they got more free speech in India and a way worse economic achievement. I think the economic development of the modern world is very interesting. It’s a very interesting subject. And I see why so many people in economics like it because it is just so perplexing and so interesting. And of course the achievements have been so great and the technology is the same way. Who would guess that the whole world could have colloquial on Zoom? We weren’t doing it a year and a half ago. I mean, it’s just amazing what’s happened. A lot that’s happened should
查理·芒格：作为一个干投资这一行这么久的人，我当然对当前这种奇怪的经济现状感兴趣，比如政府正在疯狂地印钞票等等，这会非常有趣。此外，我还感兴趣的是世界的巨大变化，让像中国这样的不发达国家迅速崛起。我还感兴趣中国和印度的比较，尽管印度更多地借鉴了我们的政治体制，言论更加自由，但它的经济发展和中国比相差很多。我觉得现代社会的经济发展规律非常有趣，这是一门很有意思的学科。我明白为什么那么多经济学界的人喜欢这个议题，因为这实在是太复杂又太有趣了。当然，人类社会所取得的成就也是非凡的，在技术方面也是如此，谁能想到全世界的人都可以通过Zoom进行实时对话？一年半之前我们还没这么做。我是说，这个世界正在发生的事情真是太神奇了。未来发生的很多事情应该会让所有人都感到惊讶，这很有意思。
结束语
Interviewer (53:22): Charlie, thank you very much for this conversation. I particularly appreciate your enthusiasm and ongoing curiosity, which is something that we very much value at Caltech is that there’s always something new to think about, a question to ask again, and please accept my congratulations on the distinguished alumni award, and my very great thanks for participating in this event. Thank you very much.
罗森塔尔：查理，非常感谢您参与这次访谈。我特别欣赏您的热情和持续的好奇心，这也是我们在加州理工学院非常看重的品质：总有新的东西需要思考，总有问题需要再问一遍。再一次恭贺您获得加州理工杰出校友奖，非常感谢您参加这次活动，再次感谢。
Charlie Munger (53:56): I liked Caltech when I was there. It wasn’t on the career path I was going to choose for myself, but I love the detour that I got by accident of having to participate in the war. It was good for me to be in the Caltech for my nine months. And it’s been good for me to live in the same community all these decades since. No, I liked the whole thing.
查理·芒格：我在加州理工学院读书的时候就非常喜欢那儿。虽然这并不是我要为自己选择的职业道路，但我喜欢因为不得不参与战争而意外走的这段“弯路”。在加州理工的九个月对我来说非常棒，这几十年跟加州理工处于同一个社区对我来说更是好极了。我爱这一切。
Interviewer (54:21): Fantastic. And I want to thank the 2,400 people who have joined us for this conversation. Stay safe and goodbye.
罗森塔尔：太棒了。最后感谢参与这次线上活动的2400名朋友，疫情期间大家注意安全，我们下次再见。
Charlie Munger (54:30): Bye.
查理·芒格：再见。