查理·芒格的操作系统

查理·芒格这个名字不用多说。芒格在南加州大学的毕业典礼上的演讲是一篇经典。你在YC上可以看到完整的文字。本文节选了演讲的很多段落，形成了所谓芒格的人生操作系统。

In 2007, Charlie Munger gave the commencement address at USC Law School, opening his speech by saying, “Well, no doubt many of you are wondering why the speaker is so old. Well, the answer is obvious: He hasn’t died yet.” 

2007年，查理·芒格在南加州大学法学院毕业典礼上，开场说：“嗯，毫无疑问，很多人都奇怪为什么演讲人这么老了。那么，答案是显而易见的：他还没有死。“ 

Fortunately for us, Munger has kept on ticking. The commencement speech is an excellent response to the Big Question: How do we live a life that really works? It has so many of Munger’s core ideas that we think the speech represents the Munger Operating System for life.

芒格的存在，对我们而言，是一种幸运。毕业典礼的演讲给一个大问题提供了极好的答案：我们应该如何把握人生？演讲中有很多芒格的核心思想，我们认为它代表了芒格人生的操作系统。 

1. To get what you want, deserve what you want. Trust, success, and admiration are earned. 如果你想获得你要的东西，那就让自己配得上它。信任、成功和钦佩都是靠努力获得的。 

It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule so to speak: You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have. By and large the people who have this ethos win in life and they don’t win just money, not just honors. They win the respect, the deserved trust of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust. 

这是一个简单的道理。有个黄金规则是这么说的：你贡献给世界的东西，应该是你会购买的东西，如果对换个角色。这条原则，在我看来，是任何律师或其他人都应该遵循的。总的来说，谁在人生中拥有这条原则，他们赢得的不仅仅是金钱，也不只是荣誉。他们会赢得了尊重，以及和他们合作的人的当之无愧的信任，信任会带来生活中巨大的乐趣。 

2. Learn to love and admire the right people, live or dead. 学会爱和欣赏合适的人，活的或死去的。

A second idea that I got very early was that there is no love that’s so right as admiration-based love, and that love should include the instructive dead. Somehow, I got that idea and I lived with it all my life; and it’s been very, very useful to me. 

我很早获得的第二个想法是，正确的爱应该基于钦佩。所谓的爱应该也包括那些死去的智者。不管如何，我有这个想法，并且一辈子坚持，这对于我非常非常有用。 

3. Acquiring wisdom is a moral duty as well as a practical one. 获取智慧是一种道德的责任，也是实际需要。

And there’s a corollary to that proposition which is very important. It means that you’re hooked for lifetime learning, and without lifetime learning you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you’re going to learn after you leave here…if civilization can progress only when it invents the method of invention, you can progress only when you learn the method of learning. 

这个主张有一个很重要的推论。这意味着你迷上了终身学习，没有终身学习你很难做的非常好。基于你已经知道的，你的人生不会走的很远。你需要用你离开这里后学习到的东西前进......如果说文明只有在发明了发明的方法后才能进步，你只有在学习了学习的方法后才能进步。 

4. Learn to fluency the big multidisciplinary ideas of the world and use them regularly. 熟练掌握世界上各大学科的思想并经常使用它们。

 

What I noted since the really big ideas carry 95% of the freight, it wasn’t at all hard for me to pick up all the big ideas from all the big disciplines and make them a standard part of my mental routines. Once you have the ideas, of course, they are no good if you don’t practice — if you don’t practice you lose it. 

我的意思是，因为真正的大的思想管95%的用处，对我来说，从所有的大学科获得大的思想，然后把他们变为我思考方式的一个标准部分，不是什么难事。一旦你拥有了这些思想，如果不实践，他们也没什么用— 如果你不练，你就失去它们。

So I went through life constantly practicing this model of the multidisciplinary approach. Well, I can’t tell you what that’s done for me. It’s made life more fun, it’s made me more constructive, it’s made me more helpful to others, it’s made me enormously rich, you name it, that attitude really helps. 

所以，我一生都不断去实践这种多学科方式的思考模型。我不能告诉你它到底为我做了什么。它使生活增添更多乐趣，它让我更有建设性，它让我更加乐于助人，它让我非常富有，还可以列举很多，这种态度确实非常有帮助。

Now there are dangers there, because it works so well, that if you do it, you will frequently find you are sitting in the presence of some other expert, maybe even an expert that’s superior to you, supervising you. And you will know more than he does about his own specialty, a lot more. You will see the correct answer when he’s missed it. 

这么做也有危险，因为它太有效了，如果你这样做，你会经常发现你和其他一些专家坐在一起，都是比你优秀的专家，对你虎视眈眈。然后，你发现你知道的比他的专长还多，多很多。你会看到正确的答案，而他会错过。

It doesn’t help you just to know them enough just so you can give them back on an exam and get an A. You have to learn these things in such a way that they’re in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life.  

如果只是知道这些大的思想，然后在考试中展示出来得个A，也没什么用处。你必须学会这些东西，把他们以思维网格的方式存在脑子里，在你的一生里自动的使用他们。

5. Learn to think through problems backwards as well as forward. 学会反向和前向思考问题 。

The way complex adaptive systems work and the way mental constructs work, problems frequently get easier and I would even say usually are easier to solve if you turn around in reverse. 

复杂自适应系统的工作方式以及心智结构的工作方式是这样的，如果你反向思考，你会发现问题通常会变得更加容易解决。 

In other words if you want to help India, the question you should ask is not “how can I help India?”, you think “what’s doing the worst damage in India? What would automatically do the worst damage and how do I avoid it?” You’d think they are logically the same thing, but they’re not. Those of you who have mastered algebra know that inversion frequently will solve problems which nothing else will solve. And in life, unless you’re more gifted than Einstein, inversion will help you solve problems that you can’t solve in other ways. 

换句话说，如果你想帮助印度，你应该问的问题不是“我怎样才能帮助印度？”，你应该思考 “对印度造成最大损害的是什么？什么会自动造成最大的损害以及如何避免？”  你会认为他们在逻辑上是同样的事情，但他们实际上不是。如果你们掌握代数就知道，反向经常会解决其他方式无法解决的问题。而在生活中，除非你比爱因斯坦更有天赋，反向会帮你解决其他所不能的问题。

6. Be reliable. Unreliability can cancel out the other virtues.成为可信赖的人。不可靠会抵消可以其他的美德。 

If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are, you’re going to crater immediately. So doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.

如果你是一个不可靠的人，你有其他的美德也没用，你会很快消亡。所以，做那些你有忠实信念的事情应该成为你行为中自动的一部分。你要避免懒惰和不可靠。 

7. Avoid intense ideologies. Always consider the other side as carefully as your own. 避免强烈的意识形态。始终以己待人 。

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology, because it cabbages up one’s mind. You’ve seen that. You see a lot of it on TV, you know preachers for instance, they’ve all got different ideas about theology and a lot of them have minds that are made of cabbage. 

我认为应该避免的另一件事是：强烈的意识形态，因为它把一个人的头脑变成了植物。你肯定看到过。你在电视上经常见，你可以一眼看出传教士，他们都得到了关于神学不同的想法，他们中的很多人拥有植物头脑。

But that can happen with political ideology. And if you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out， what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very careful with this ideology. It’s a big danger. 

但是，更常见的是政治意识形态。如果你还年轻，很容易陷入忠诚。当你宣布你是一个忠实的成员，你开始喊正统的思想的时候，你正在做的是不停的灌输，不停的灌输，最后逐渐毁了你的思维。所以，你要非常小心这种意识形态。这是一个很大的危险。 

In my mind I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology, and it’s these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools in the Grand Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology. 

在我脑子里，一想到意识形态，我有一个小例子。这是关于那些斯堪的纳维亚的独木舟船手的，他们成功地驯服斯堪的纳维亚半岛的所有急流，他们认为他们也会搞定美国大急流城的漩涡。结果：死亡率为100％。一个大漩涡不应该是你想要进入的地方，我认为非常深的意识形态也是如此。 

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think that only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.” Now you can say that’s too much of an iron discipline..it’s not too much of an iron discipline. It’s not even that hard to do. 

我有我所谓的铁律，可以帮助我保持清醒，当我自然地在两个意识形态中滑向另一个的时候。我说“ 我没有权利就某个问题发表意见，除非我能比我的反对者更了解他们的论据”。我认为，只有当我到达那个阶段的时候，我才有发言权。” 现在，你可以说这条铁律太过了，我不这么认为，它也不是很难做到。 

8. Get rid of self-serving bias, envy, resentment, and self-pity. 摆脱自私的偏见、嫉妒、怨恨和自怜。

Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge and self pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity. 

一般来说，嫉妒、怨恨、报复和自怜是思想灾难性的模式。自怜相当接近偏执，偏执是最难逆转的事情之一。你千万别陷入自怜。 

I have a friend who carried a big stack of index cards about this thick, and when somebody would make a comment that reflected self pity, he would take out one of the cards, take the top one off the stack and hand it to the person, and the card said, “Your story has touched my heart, never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you”. Well, you can say that’s waggery, but I suggest that every time you find you’re drifting into self pity, I don’t care what the cause — your child could be dying of cancer — self-pity is not going to improve the situation. Just give yourself one of those cards. 

我有个朋友，总是拿着一大叠索引卡，当有人的话流露出自怜的时候，他会拿出一个卡，最上面那张卡，把它交给那个人，卡片上写着：“你的故事感动了我，我从来没有听说过像你这样有这么多不幸的人”。 你可以说这很滑稽，不过我建议你每次自怜的时候，不管什么原因—那怕是你的孩子可能会死于癌症—自怜是不会改善情况的。送给自己一张这样的卡片。 

It’s a ridiculous way to behave, and when you avoid it you get a great advantage over everybody else, almost everybody else, because self-pity is a standard condition and yet you can train yourself out of it. 

自怜是荒谬的行为，当你戒掉它，你就相对于其他人获得了巨大的优势，几乎所有的人。因为自怜是一个很标准的反应，但你可以训练自己摆脱它。 

And of course self-serving bias, you want to get that out of yourself; thinking that what’s good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on the subconscious tendency to serve one’s self. 

当然，你需要戒掉自私的偏见。不要说对自己有好处的对更广泛的文明也有好处，不要为潜意识服务自我的荒谬的结论寻找合理的理由。

9. At the same time, allow for the self-serving bias in others who haven’t removed it.与此同时，允许自私的偏见在其他那些没有删除它的人身上存在。

You also have to allow for the self serving bias of everybody else, because most people are not going to remove it all that successfully, the human condition being what it is. If you don’t allow for self serving bias in your conduct, again you’re a fool. 

您应该允许自私的偏见在其他人身上存在，因为大多数人都不会完全成功删除它，人就是这样的。如果你的行为不允许这点存在，你又是个傻瓜了。

I watched the brilliant Harvard Law School trained general counsel of Salomon lose his career, and what he did was when the CEO became aware that some underling had done something wrong, the general counsel said, “Gee, we don’t have any legal duty to report this but I think it’s what we should do it’s our moral duty.” 

我看着才华横溢的哈佛大学法学院训练有素的所罗门的总法律顾问失去了他的职业生涯。他的所作所为是，当CEO意识到一些下属做错了什么，总法律顾问说，“哎呀，我们没有任何法律责任报告这一点，但我认为这是我们应该做的，这是我们的道义责任。” 

Of course, the general counsel was totally correct but of course it didn’t work; it was a very unpleasant thing for the CEO to do and he put it off and put if off and of course everything eroded into a major scandal and down went the CEO and the general counsel with him. 

当然，总法律顾问是完全正确的，但是没有用。这对该公司首席执行官是件非常不愉快的事情，他把它搁置了，一直搁置，直到一切侵蚀成一个大丑闻，CEO下台，总顾问也跟着倒霉。 

The correct answer in situations like that was given by Ben Franklin, he said, “If you want to persuade, appeal to interest not to reason.” The self serving bias is so extreme. If the general counsel had said, “Look this is going to erupt, it’s something that will destroy you, take away your money, take away your status…it’s a perfect disaster,” it would have worked!

在这样的情况下，正确的答案是由富兰克林给出，他说，“如果你想说服别人，诉诸利益而不道理。”  自私性偏见是非常极端的。如果总法律顾问这么说，“你看这件事肯定会爆发，它会摧毁你，让你损失金钱，失去身份......这是一个巨大的灾难”   或许这就可以凑效。

10.Avoid being part of a system with perverse incentives.避免成为激励不当的系统的一部分。

Incentives are too powerful a controller of human cognition and human behavior, and one of the things you are going to find in some modern law firms is billable hour quotas. I could not have lived under a billable hour quota of $2,400 a year. That would have caused serious problems for me — I wouldn’t have done it and I don’t have a solution for you for that. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself but it’s a significant problem. 

激励是非常强大的，是人类认知和人类行为的控制器。在很多现代的律师事务所里，你会发现一件事情是：按小时计费定额。我接受不了在每年2400美金一小时计费定额下生活。这会对我造成严重的问题— 我不会做它，我没有为你找到什么解决方案。你必须自己弄清楚，但它是一个很大的问题。

11. Work with and under people you admire, and avoid the inverse when at all possible.和你仰慕的人一起或在他之下工作，无论如何要避免相反的情况。 

And that requires some talent. The way I solved that is, I figured out the people I did admire and I maneuvered cleverly without criticizing anybody, so I was working entirely under people I admired. And a lot of law firms will permit that if you’re shrewd enough to work it out. And your outcome in life will be way more satisfactory and way better if you work under people you really admire. The alternative is not a good idea. 

这需要一定的天赋。我解决的方法是，我找到了我佩服的人，巧妙地把我操纵到他的下面工作，而不得罪任何人。如果你足够的精明你就可以发现门道，因为很多律师事务所都允许这么做。如果你在你真正钦佩的人下面工作，你的人生会满意幸福很多。相反的选择，就不是一个好主意。 

12. Learn to maintain your objectivity, especially when it’s hardest.学会保持你的客观性，特别是当它是最难的时候。

 

Well we all remember that Darwin paid special attention to disconfirming evidence particularly when it disconfirmed something he believed and loved. Well, objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you’re going to be a correct thinker. And there we’re talking about Darwin’s attitude, his special attention to disconfirming evidence, and also to checklist routines. Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary wisdom and then you should go through and have a checklist in order to use it. There is no other procedure that will work as well. 

嗯，我们都记得，达尔文特别重视反驳的证据，尤其是当它和他相信和喜爱的事情相驳斥的时候。如果你想成为一个正确的思想家，维护客观性的方法是必须的。我们谈论达尔文的态度，他特别注意驳斥性的证据，以及检查清单的方法。检查清单的方法可以避免很多错误。你应该有这一切的基本智慧，然后逐条研究，形成自己的一个清单，以备使用。没有其他的方法能同样有效。

13. Concentrate experience and power into the hands of the right people – the wise learning machines. 集中经验和能力于正确的人手中—像学习机器一样的人。

 

I think the game of life in many respects is getting a lot of practice into the hands of the people that have the most aptitude to learn and the most tendency to be learning machines. And if you want the very highest reaches of human civilization that’s where you have to go. 

我觉得人生的游戏，在许多方面，就是把权力交给那些最有学习资质并且最有动力成为学习机器的人手中。 如果你想到达人类文明的最高处，你必须这么去做。 

You do not want to choose a brain surgeon for your child among fifty applicants all of them just take turns during the procedure. You don’t want your airplanes designed that way. You don’t want your Berkshire Hathaways run that way. You want to get the power into the right people. 

如果你为你的孩子选择脑手术的医生，你不希望从50个随机排队的申请者里面选择。你不希望你的飞机这样被设计。你不希望你的伯克希尔公司这么运行。你希望把权力放到到合适的人手里。 

14. You’ll be most successful where you’re most intensely interested.你最感兴趣的地方，才能获得最大成功。

Another thing that I found is an intense interest of the subject is indispensable if you are really going to excel. I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things, but I couldn’t be really good in anything where I didn’t have an intense interest. So to some extent, you’re going to have to follow me. If at all feasible you want to drift into doing something in which you really have a natural interest. 

我发现的另一件事是，如果你真的要出类拔萃，对事情的浓厚兴趣是必不可少的。我可以强迫自己在很多事情做到还算不错，但我不能在任何我没有浓厚兴趣的地方做到真正的优秀。所以，在一定程度上，你将不得不跟着我。如果可行的话，你应该从事做你有天然兴趣的事情。 

15. Learn the all-important concept of assiduity: Sit down and do it until it’s done.理解刻苦最重要的概念：坐下来，把事情完成 。

Two partners that I chose for one little phase of my life had the following rule: They created a little design/build construction team, and they sat down and said, two-man partnership, divide everything equally, here’s the rule; “Whenever we’re behind in our commitments to other people, we will both work 14 hours a day until we’re caught up.” 

我的人生中有一小段有两个合作伙伴，他们设定了以下的规则：他们创造了一个小的设计/建造施工队伍，他们坐了下来说，两个人的合作关系，所有的事情平摊，规则是 “每当我们落后于给对方的承诺的时候，我们将一起每天工作14小时，直到我们赶上。” 

Well, needless to say, that firm didn’t fail. The people died rich. It’s such a simple idea. 

好了，不用说，那家公司没有失败。他们死的时候都很富有。它就是这么一个简单的想法。

16. Use setbacks in life as an opportunity to become a bigger and better person. Don’t wallow.让生活中的挫折成为契机，变得更强大更好。不要堕落。

Another thing of course is life will have terrible blows, horrible blows, unfair blows, doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. That is a very good idea. 

当然，另一件事是，生活总有有可怕的打击，恐怖的打击，不公平的打击，这无所谓。有的人能够恢复，有的人就不行。我认为爱比克泰德的态度是最好的。他认为，生活中的每一次不幸都是良好表现的机会，生活中的每一次不幸都是学东西的机会，你的任务就是不要在自怜中淹没，而是以建设性的方式充分利用可怕的打击。这是一个非常不错的主意。 

17. The highest reach of civilization is a seamless system of trust among all parties concerned. 文明的最高境界是利益各方之间无缝的信任系统 。

The last idea that I want to give you as you go out into a profession that frequently puts a lot of procedure and a lot of precautions and a lot of mumbo jumbo into what it does, this is not the highest form which civilization can reach. The highest form which civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another. That’s the way an operating room works at the Mayo Clinic. 

我想给你最后一个建议是，当你进入这个行业，这个有着很多的流程、大量的预防措施和大量的无意义活动的行业，你要知道这不是一个文明能够达到的最高形式。文明所能达到的最高形式应该是可靠信任的无缝网络。没有太多的程序，只是完全靠得住的人，正确地信任彼此。这就是Mayo诊所的手术室的工作方式。 

If a bunch of lawyers were to introduce a lot of process, the patients would all die. So never forget when you’re a lawyer that you may be rewarded for selling this stuff but you don’t have to buy it. In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has 47 pages, my suggestion is do not enter. 

如果一群律师引入大量的流程，病人早都死了。所以，别忘了，当你是个律师的时候，你可能会因为销售你自己也不会买的东西而受到奖励。而在你自己的生活里，你要的是可靠的信任的无缝网络。如果你提出结婚的合同有47页，我的建议是不要进入。

译者：戴汨 愉悦资本创始合伙人（[e-mail])

愉悦资本是新一代的VC基金，由刘二海、李潇、戴汨创立，我们是创始人也是投资经理；愉悦资本，创始人和创始人对话。