塔勒布是怎样跟 BS 吵架的

本文翻译自 Putting Skin in the Game into the Reviewers of Skin in the Game, Feb 26, 2018, Taleb, Medium. 是塔勒布对一些没看过、或看过了没理解，却对自己的书(Skin in the Game, SITG)展开评论的 BS 的回应，吵架的经验，忽视不感兴趣的，直接加粗部分。

BS 是 Bullshit 的缩写。

下面是正文

(Skin in the Game was embargoed (meaning no copy was sent to reviewers), as the book explains the agency problem of reviewers. Three UK journos got hold of it and hurriedly wrote revenge reviews, perhaps too hurriedly. This note exposing their errors of reading comprehension made them accountable, and led to no further journalist reviewing the book: only end users and specialists. Note that, something I wasn’t seeking, the book still made the top of the bestseller list in both countries, meaning neither nasty attacks (UK) nor silence (US) seems to affect it).

鉴于 Skin in the Game 解释了评论员的代理问题，这本书的电子版并未向外公布——没有发送给评论员。但三个英国记者不知从哪里得到这本书，匆忙地写下复仇的评论，他们太心急了。下面的文字揭露他们为自己阅读理解的错误所要承担的责任，并且没有记者会看这本书：只有最终的读者和专家会去看。请注意，有一点我没有考证，这真书仍然在美国和应该的畅销书排行榜中据首位，这意味着，无论令人讨厌的英国攻击者，还是沉默的美国记者，都没有影响到它的销量。

Skin in the Game is another addition to the Incerto, now volume 5; I avoided duplication by referring to where in the Incerto some points were developed such as via negativa or monoculture of forecasters or expert problems. You simply don’t repeat in chapter 23 what was said in chapter 5, but can make reference to it.

游戏中的皮肤是 Incerto 的另一个补充，现在是第五卷；我避免重复提到 Incerto 的某些内容，而对它们进一步扩展，例如否定法，或单一预测，或专家问题。你不能在第 23 章中重复第 5 章所说的话，但是可以相互关联。

Now it so happens that I am in the BS busting category, which includes journalists (especially journalists). And the book, written in the tone of J ’accuse or La trahison des clercs is designed to be hated by BS operators who can be revenge-reviewers. I instructed publishers to send the book to onlydoers, not people who make a verbagiastic living.

现在，我碰巧处在一群胡话分子的行列中，其中包括记者（主要是记者）。这本书以 j'accuse 或 La trahison des clercs 的口吻写成，目的是为了让那些可能复仇的胡话者们憎恨。我让出版社把这本书出给那些读书的人，而不是那些过着贵族生活的人。

Let me say it again. I am intolerant of BS; I suffers no fools (publicly) except when the BS is harmless. (But I do, socially).

让我再说一遍。我不能容忍胡话分子（Bullshit）；我不忍受傻瓜（公开地） ，除非当胡言乱语是无害的。（但对我而言，在社交方面，说胡话是有害的）。

So far three journalists have, while uninvited, attempted to do revenge reviews: John Gapper (FT), Zoe Williams (Guardian), and Phil Coggan (Economist; yes I am outing him, SITG). The problem however is that they agree with the general message of the book (who doesn’t ?) except in what concerns them, so the best way is to perform some assassination on side points: 1) find what appears to be a “flaw”, 2) use the technique of Sam Harris, i.e. make the author look like a hateful spiteful person who hates everybody simply because he doesn’t like bullshitters. The problem of course is that it is hard to claim I am against all experts, not just the .1% faux experts so they disguize the claim as a he is a “hates everybody” type of fellow.

到目前为止，已经有三位记者在未被邀请的情况下试图进行报复评论：John Gapper（英国《金融时报》） ，佐伊•威廉姆斯（《卫报》）和菲尔•科甘（经济学家; 是的，我正在揭露他，Skin in the game）。然而问题在于，他们同意书中的一般信息（谁不同意呢？）除了在他们关心的事情上，所以，最好的办法就是在某些方面进行抹黑：1）找到一个看起来是“缺陷”的东西，2）使用萨姆·哈里斯的技巧，也就是，让作者看起来像一个令人憎恨的恶毒的人——只是因为自己不喜欢胡说八道，就恨所有人。当然，问题是，很难说我反对所有的专家，而不仅仅是 0.1% 的人造专家，所以他们把这种说法伪装成一个“讨厌所有人”的家伙。

Also note that the book isn’t about SITG but the weird consequences (modern slavery, looks of surgeons, rationality of survival, religious practices, commercial ethics, Lindy effects, and, mostly, risk taking). You will also notice that given the effort done by journos, the “flaws” happen to be all be in the beginning, never at the end.

还要注意，这本书不只是关于游戏里的皮肤，还是关于莫名其妙的后果（现代奴隶制，外科医生的外表，生存的理性，宗教实践，商业道德，林迪效应，以及风险承担。你也会注意到，考虑到记者们的阅读能力，这些“缺点”恰好都是在开头，而不是结尾。

John Gapper(Financial Times)

John Gapper is a nice fellow with whom I sparred on Twitter for the usual reasons, his (justified) frustration over my open disrespect for the general members of hi profession. In all fairness, he finds the book entertaining (though hard to summarize journalistically, which explains the longevity of the Incerto but annoys reviewers) and important. As expected, he writes: “Taleb has again put his finger on a flaw in how society operates, one that has damaging moral and financial results.” But then he continues:

约翰·格珀是一个很好的家伙，我在推特上和他争吵，因为他对我公然不尊重高级职业的普通成员感到非常失望。说句公道话，他觉得这本书很有趣（虽然很难被记者总结出来，这解释了 Incerto 长寿的原因，还能让评论家很不爽) ，也很重要。 正如他所预期的那样，他写道：“塔勒布再次指出了社会运作方式的缺陷，这一缺陷损害了道德和财务结果。” 但他接着说:

GAPPER: The book’s weakness is that it never satisfactorily addresses the counter-argument to the need for “skin in the game” — that having a stake in an outcome eliminates impartiality and causes conflicts of interest. Judges are not paid according to how many people they send to jail and, more trivially，it would be a bad idea if I were being paid a cut of Taleb’s sales.

Gapper：这本书的弱点在于，它从未令人满意地解决了对“游戏中的皮肤”需求的反驳——与结果相关的利益消除了公正性并导致利益冲突。法官不会根据他们送入监狱的人数获得报酬，更一般的情况是，如果我获得 Taleb 的销售中分一部分，那将是一个坏主意。

On that, Mr Gapper misses twice. The book answers the point twice explicitly. Primo

在这一点上，Gapper 两次失手。这本书明确地回答了这个问题两次。

ME in SITG: “We removed the skin in the game of journalists in order to prevent market manipulation, thinking that it would be a net gain to society. The arguments in this book are that the former (market manipulation) and conflicts of interest are more benign than impunity for bad advice. The main reason, we will see, is that in the absence of skin in the game, journalists will imitate, to be safe, the opinion of other journalists, thus creating monoculture and collective mirages.

我在 SITG 中说：“以防止市场操纵，我们在记者参与的游戏中移除皮肤，这将成为社会的净收益。这本书中的论点是，前者（市场操纵）和利益冲突，比糟糕的建议更加肆无忌惮。我们可以看到，主要的原因是，在游戏中缺乏皮肤的情况下，记者们会模仿其他记者的观点，以保证安全，从而创造单一文化和集体幻想。

(Background: in The Black Swan I show a statistical illustration of such monoculture with forecasters without skin-in-the-game cluster on a wrong answers, which is nonrandom: the variance within forecasters is smaller than that between forecasts and out of sample realizations. Too technical for Gapper).

（背景：在《黑天鹅》一书中，我展示了这种单一预测的统计图表，在游戏中没有皮肤的预测者集中在一个错误的答案，这是非随机的：预测者内部的方差小于预测和样本之间的差异。对于 Gapper 来说太专业了。）

Secundo, he missed the discussion of the corrupt Persian judge Sisamnes: a judge’s skin in the game is in the exquisite symmetry of justice. Skin in the game means consequences when you are wrong as much as when you are right. Being paid simply to jail people is asymmetric and has no penalties (I wonder how he can make such a blatant mistake and fail to realize SITG is about matching disincentives to incentives).

塞昆多，他忘记了波斯法官 Sisamnes 的话：一个法官的在游戏中的皮肤是绝对对称的正义。游戏中的皮肤意味着当你错的时候，你的后果就像你是对的时候一样。仅仅支付给人们的报酬是不对称的，没有任何惩罚（我想知道他如何能够犯下如此明目张胆的错误，而且没有意识到 SITG 就是把抑制因素与激励措施相匹配）。

And John Gapper’s skin in the game as a reviewer is in the preservation of symmetry (again, not just incentives): my making him accountable in his review with a review of his review. Gabish?

约翰·格波在游戏中的皮肤是扮演观众角色，主要是获得对称性的保护（而不是，不仅仅是激励） ：我让他，在他的回顾中，对他的评论进行回顾。会发生什么？

Philip Coggan(The Economist)

It looks like Phil Coggan liked the book. He was just irritated by it. Fair:

看起来菲尔·科根喜欢这本书。他只是被它激怒了。公平起见：

The reader’s experience is rather like being trapped in a cab with a cantankerous and over-opinionated driver.

读者的经历就像是被困在一辆出租车里，驾驶员脾气暴躁，固执己见

The point is I had the exact same tone in The Black Swan and in Fooled by Randomness (calling economists charlatans etc.), books he liked. Except that the message did not make him feel uncomfortable then (someone insulting lucky and rich fools give journos a feeling of revenge).

关键是在《黑天鹅》和《随机漫步的傻瓜》（被称为经济学家的骗子）中，我的语气和他喜欢的书基本一样。但是这个信息并没有让他感到不舒服（有人侮辱了幸运和富有的傻瓜，给了记者一种复仇的快感）。

But one contention:

但有一点是肯定的：

Yet even here Mr Taleb applies different standards to his own arguments and those of others. When he criticises Western politicians for intervening in Libya, he has no skin in the game.

然而，即使在这里，塔勒布对自己和其他人的观点也采用了不同的标准。当他批评西方政客干预利比亚时，他没有亲自上阵。

I have extensively discussed the point in Antifragile, in the via negativa section. At length. Should one need intervention “to save the world” or something, one must the price for the failure. And it is a risk: to prevent the excuse of pushing a wrong button. Omission is not symmetric to commission under iatrogenics. The argument of “do something” is carefully plotted against the principle “first do no harm” and SITG is the solution: you own it if you break it. Under such symmetry, I am ready to act.

我已经在 Antifragile 广泛讨论了这一点，在否定法部分。总而言之。如果一个人需要“拯救世界”之类的干预，那么就必须为失败付出代价。这是一个风险：防止推错按钮的借口。遗嘱和医源损害下的佣金是不对称的。“做点什么”的观点与“首先不伤害”原则密切相关，而 SITG 则是解决方案：如果你打破它，你就对它负责。在这样的对称下，我才会准备行动。

Zoe Williams(Guardian)

Now, she has a problem. A big problem. A very big problem. Reading comprehension at a high school or perhaps elementary school level. She is the dream revenge reviewer as she pretty much gets everything wrong.

现在，她有了一个问题，一个大问题，一个很大的问题——在高中或者小学阶段的阅读理解。她是梦寐以求的报复评论家，因为她几乎把一切都搞错了。

(…)chief executives and shareholders who want values maximised — people whose skin is very much in the game of driving down wages.

(...)首席执行官和股东希望价值最大化ーー他们在游戏里的皮肤，很大程度上是在压低工资

What??? The book explains that skin in the game is not incentives, but disincentives. She mistook the need for SITG for conflict of interest. So I wonder about her own fitness to address anything beyond food labels…

什么？这本书解释了游戏中的皮肤不是激励，而是抑制。她误以为 SITG 需要用于利益冲突。所以我想知道除了食品标签之外，她自己是否适合解决任何问题。

You wouldn’t want homicide law to be written by the mother of a murdered child.

你不会想让一个被谋杀的孩子的母亲来起草杀人法

Of course, she gets it, again, backwards: the mother has a conflict of interest.

当然，她也能理解，反过来说：母亲有利益冲突。

She also makes many, many such mistakes not worth discussing here: doesn’t get the minority rule, knows nothing about helicopters; she practically knows nothing.

她也会犯很多很多这样的错误，不值得在这里讨论：不理解少数规则，对直升机一无所知；她几乎什么都不知道。

P.S. I was wondering of Zoe Williams was a lunatic to review a book in a domain outside of hers. It turned out she is indeed good at fabricating facts, as with this story retracted in the Guardian.apology-christopher-chandler

附注：我在想佐伊·威廉姆斯是个疯子，竟然在她的领域里看书。事实证明，她确实擅长捏造事实，就像《卫报》撤回的这个故事一样。 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/28/apology-christopher-chandler

Reference

https://medium.com/incerto/the-controversy-around-skin-in-the-game-6d46416ee47f

题图来源：WillTullos / dribbble

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