Skin in the Game 摘录

万维钢，《万万没想到》作者，说：“我非常喜欢塔勒布的文笔，有一种古典美，在英文畅销书里绝对不俗”。
我读不出英文写作风格好坏，但读清楚它们的意思是能够的。塔勒布作品有浓烈的个人特色，比如类似格言的表达。以下是我从他的书 Skin in the Game 中做的摘录。判断自己是否真的喜欢一本书，就看自己是否会重读它。
这本书全称是 SkIN IN THE GAME, Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life，出版于 2018 年 4 月，现已有中译本《非对称风险》。

Don’t tell me what you “think”, just tell me what’s in your portfolio.

不要告诉我你的想法，告诉我你的公文包里有什么。

the contact with the real world is done via skin in the game—having an exposure to the real world, and paying a price for its consequences, good or bad. The abrasions of your skin guide your learning and discovery, a mechanism of organic signaling, what the Greeks called pathemata mathemata (“guide your learning through pain,” something mothers of young children know rather well).

通过游戏里的皮肤和现实实际联系的方法——把自己暴露在现实世界中，并为此付出代价，无论好坏。你皮肤的擦伤帮助你学习、发现有机信号的机理，那正是希腊人说的“痛苦原理（pathemata mathemata）”（指导你从痛苦中学习，小孩子的妈妈很了解）

pathemata：希腊文有两个不同的字表示患难或苦难，一个是身体的受苦与情感的痛苦，原文为 PATHEMATA，另一个是精神或说理智的痛苦，原文该字为 THLIPSIS，这字原意为“狭窄”、“压迫”。

The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.

我们通过修修补补得到的知识，远远优于通过推理获得的东西。通过试错、经验、时间的付出，简而言之，就是和大地建立联系，自私的机构一直忙于掩盖我们的价值。

1. they think in statics not dynamics, 2) they think in low, not high, dimensions, 3) they think in terms of actions, never interactions.

1）他们静态思考，而不是动态思考；2）他们低维思考，而不是高维思考；3）他们只思考，而从不与人互动。

societies were run by risk takers, not risk transferors.

社会被冒险者驱动，而非风险转移者。

less than a third of Roman emperors died in their beds—and one can argue that given that only few of these died of really old age, had they lived longer, they would have fallen either to a coup or in battle.

不到三分之一的罗马皇帝在他们的床上死亡——人们可以争辩说，鉴于其中只有少数人死于真正的老年，如果他们活得更久，他们就会陷入政变或战斗中。

Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.

官僚主义是一个人行为和结果分离后的产物。

Decentralization is based on the simple notion that it is easier to macrobull***t than microbull***t. Decentralization reduces large structural asymmetries

去中心化基于一个简单的概念，大空话比小空话更容易。去中心化减少大的结构不对称。

You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.

你永远无法说服一个人他错了；只有现实可以。

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing.

现代化的诅咒是，我们的生活正在被一类人占领。比起理解，他们更善于解释，或者比起做，他们更擅长解释——他们只会解释。

The more they believe in their ability to forecast, the more they hate skin in the game. The more they wear suits and ties, the more they hate skin in the game.

越相信自己预测能力的人，越讨厌游戏里的皮肤。越是喜欢西装和领带的人，也越讨厌游戏里的皮肤

Systems learn by removing parts, via negativa.

系统通过消除部分学习。

Via negativa: the principle that we know what is wrong with more clarity than what is right, and that knowledge grows by subtraction. Also, it is easier to know that something is wrong than to find the fix. Actions that remove are more robust than those that add because addition may have unseen, complicated feedback loops.

否定法：一种原则，我们对什么是错误的理解比什么是正确的理解更清晰，通过做减法获取知识。此外，比起发现补丁，我们更容易发现问题。删除的行为比增加的行为更强壮，因为增加可能待了看不见的、负责的反馈循环。

The code has one central theme: it establishes symmetries between people in a transaction, so nobody can transfer hidden tail risk, or Bob Rubin–style risks.

汉谟拉比法典的主题：在交易中，建立人与人之间的对称性，因此没有人可以转移隐藏的尾部风险或 从用 Bob Rubin 风格。

What is a tail? Take for now that it is an extreme event of low frequency.

什么是尾部事件？对于现在而言是一个极低频的事件。

Hammurabi’s best known injunction is as follows: “If a builder builds a house and the house collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house—the builder shall be put to death.”

汉摩拉比法典最有名的审判是——如果一个建筑师建造一所房子，而房子坍塌并造成房屋主的死亡，那么建筑师也要被处以死刑。

Deal with weaker states as you think it appropriate for stronger states to deal with you.

以强者对待你的方式去对待弱者。

Universal behavior is great on paper, disastrous in practice.

普遍性在纸上是伟大的，在实际中是灾难

Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.

友好地对待你遇见的人。但如果他对你用权力的时候，你也要在他身上那么干。

Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.

避免采纳那些给你谋生建议的人的建议，除非他们的建议使得他们自身受损。

There is always an element of fools of randomness and crooks of randomness in matters of uncertainty; one has a lack of understanding, the second has warped incentives. One, the fool, takes risks he doesn’t understand, mistaking his own past luck for skills, the other, the crook, transfers risks to others. Economists, when they talk about skin in the game, are only concerned with the second.

在不确定问题中，存在随机成份的傻瓜和随机成份的欺骗元素。前者缺乏理解，后者扭曲了激励。一个愚蠢的人冒自己不理解的风险，把自己过去的运气当作能力。剩下来的骗子把风险转移给其他人。当我们讨论到游戏里的皮肤，经济学家是为一个关心后者的人。

disincentive is not enough: the fool is a real thing. Some people do not know their own interest—just consider addicts, workaholics, people trapped in a bad relationship, people who support large government, the press, book reviewers, or respectable bureaucrats, all of whom for some mysterious reason act against their own interest. So there is this other instance where filtering plays a role: fools of randomness are purged by reality so they stop harming others.

抑制是不足够的：傻瓜是一个真实的存在。一些人不知道自己真正的利益——考虑瘾君子、工作狂，陷入糟糕关系的人，支持大政府的人，出版社，书籍评论家，受人尊敬的官僚，所有的这些人都处于某个神秘的原因反对自身利益。这是过滤器起作用的一个例子：随机傻瓜被现实消除，所以他们无法伤害其他人。

You do not want to win an argument. You want to win.

你不是想赢得争论，你只是想赢。

Forecasting (in words) bears no relation to speculation (in deeds).

言辞上的猜测和行为上的预测没有关系。

what has survived has revealed its robustness to Black Swan events and removing skin in the game disrupts such selection mechanisms. Without skin in the game, we fail to get the Intelligence of Time (a manifestation of the Lindy effect, which will get an entire chapter, and by which 1) time removes the fragile and keeps the robust, and 2) the life expectancy of the nonfragile lengthens with time).

从黑天鹅事件中活下来的东西已经显示来自身的强忍，消除游戏中的皮肤会阻碍这种选择机理。没有游戏中的皮肤，我们将无法活得时间的智慧（一种林迪效应的表现，1）时间消除脆弱而保持强忍，2）非脆弱事物的寿命用时间衡量）

What is rational is what allows the collective—entities meant to live for a long time—to survive.

理性是使得集体里面的实体活得更久的东西.

Intellectualism has a sibling: scientism, a naive interpretation of science as complication rather than science as a process and a skeptical enterprise.

理智主义有一个兄妹：科学主义，一个幼稚的看法是，把科学当作复杂问题而非研究过程或怀疑精神。

Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk.

那些说话的人应该做，只要那些做的人才应该去说。

If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.

如果你不为自己的想法去冒险，那么你什么都不是。

I will keep mentioning that I have no other definition of success than leading an honorable life.

我将一直记得，比起过上光荣的生活，我没有其他成功的定义。

there are activities in which one is imbued with a sense of pride and honor without grand-scale sacrifice: artisanal ones.

充满了荣誉感而没有光荣的标准：艺术匠人的活动。

Having an assistant (except for the strictly necessary) removes your soul from the game.

除非直接必要，否则拥有一个助手会毁坏你游戏里的灵魂。

Nor can book reviewers—by the very definition of their function—judge books that one rereads. For those familiar with the idea of nonlinear effects from Antifragile, learning is rooted in repetition and convexity, meaning that the reading of a single text twice is more profitable than reading two different things once, provided of course that said text has some depth of content.

书籍评论员通过定义它们的功能，而不是重读的次数来评论书籍。对于那些从反脆弱中熟悉非线性关系影响的人，学习根植于重复和凸现。意味着读两遍比读两个不同的文章更有收获，如果那文章有足够的深度。

Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.

要明白那些给你建议的人，告诉你的某个行为对自身有益的同时也对他们有好处，而那些害处则不会直接影响到他们。

As a trader, you learn to identify and deal with upright people, those who inform you that they have something to sell, by explaining that the transaction arises for their own benefit, with such questions as “Do you have an ax?” (meaning an inquiry whether you have a certain interest). Avoid at all costs those who call you to tout a certain product disguised with advice. In fact the story of the turtle is the archetype of the history of transactions between mortals.

作为交易员，你要辨别并结识正直的人，那些告诉你他们有东西要卖的人，通过解释交易对他们自身的利益，比如“你有一个AX？（这是一个跟你是否利益相关的询问）不惜一切代价避免那些打电话给你的人兜售一些伪装成建议的产品。事实上，乌龟的故事是凡人之间交易历史的原型”

As the Romans were fully aware, one lauds merrily the merchandise to get rid of it.

罗马人都明白，一个人会高兴地赞美商品以摆脱它。

The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse.

法律应该与道德趋于一致，而非相反。

No person in a transaction should have certainty about the outcome while the other one has uncertainty.

没有人应该当其他人不确定的时候，在交易中获取确定性的结果。

Sympathy for all would be tyranny for thee, my good neighbor.

对所有人同情犹如对他们实施暴政，我的好邻居。

The skin-in-the-game definition of a commons: a space in which you are treated by others the way you treat them, where everyone exercises the Silver Rule.

游戏中的皮肤里的常识：在某个空间，你被其他人对待的方法也用于对待其他人，大家都遵循银规则。

I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.

在美联储一级，我是自由主义者; 在州一级，是共和党人; 在地方一级，是民主党人; 在家庭和朋友层面，是社会主义者。

A doctor is pushed by the system to transfer risk from himself to you, and from the present into the future, or from the immediate future into a more distant future.

一个医生通过系统把自己的风险转移给你，把现在的风险转移到未来，或者从眼前的未来转移到更遥远的未来。

an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer (who looks at the standard average) would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.

幼稚的观察者（只看标准的平均值）会让人觉得选择和喜欢是大众的事情。

Someone with a peanut allergy will not eat products that touch peanuts, but a person without such an allergy can eat items with peanut traces in them.

一个花生过敏的人不会吃包含花生的食物，但一个没有花生过敏的人可以吃包含花生的食物。

An honest person will never commit criminal acts, but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.

一个诚实的人绝不会同一犯罪行为，但一个罪犯也有合法行为。

If a meeting is taking place in Germany in the Teutonic-looking conference room of a corporation that is sufficiently international or European, and one of the persons in the room doesn’t speak German, the entire meeting will be run in English, the brand of inelegant English used in corporations across the world.

如果在德国的会议中，在一个国际或欧洲足够的公司的会议室里举行会议，并且会议室中的一个人不会说德语，整个会议将以英语运行，世界各地公司使用的不雅英语。

Genes follow majority rule; languages minority rule.Languages travel; genes less so.

基因是大众的，语言是小众的；语言在穿行，基因不会。

most persons are passive and don’t really care, or don’t care enough to request the banning.

大部分人是被动的，他们不关心，或者不足够关心禁令的需求 。

the asymmetry between obeying and breaking rules: a law-abiding (or rule-abiding) fellow always follows the rules, but a felon or someone with looser sets of principles will not always break the rules.

一个守法的同事总是遵循规则，但一个破坏分子则并不总是破坏规则——不对称。

Outcomes are paradoxically more stable under the minority rule—the variance of the results is lower and the rule is more likely to emerge independently across separate populations.

在少数人的统治下，结果更加稳定 - 结果的差异较小，规则更有可能在不同的人群中独立出现。

What emerges from the minority rule is more likely to be black-and-white, binary rules.

小群体规则更可能是黑白分明的二元规则。

The market is like a large movie theater with a small door.

市场是一个有着小门的大电影院 “the best way to detect a sucker is to see if his focus is on the size of the theater rather than that of the door.”

ntifragile has been about the failure of the average to represent anything in the presence of nonlinearities and asymmetries similar to the minority rule.

反脆弱是指，对于那些少数派规则，当非线性和不对称存在时，展示平均值是一种失败的行为。

The average behavior of the market participant will not allow us to understand the general behavior of the market.

市场参与者的平均行为不会让我们理解市场的平均行为。

You can examine markets as markets and individuals as individuals, but markets are not sums of average individuals (a sum is an average multiplied by a constant so they are both equally affected).

作为市场，你可以检查市场；作为个体，你可以检查个体，但市场不是个体平均的总和（和是一个常量的平均乘积，所以，他们的影响是相互的）不要向人展示平均数常量。

The psychological experiments on individuals showing “biases” do not allow us to automatically understand aggregates or collective behavior, nor do they enlighten us about the behavior of groups.

对个体的心理实验表明，偏见不会让个体自动理解总数或集体行为，也不会强调群体行为。

Understanding how the subparts of the brain (say, neurons) work will never allow us to understand how the brain works.

理解大脑部件（语言、神经）如何工作并不会让我们理解大脑如何工作。

Understanding the genetic makeup of a unit will never allow us to understand the behavior of the unit itself.

理解一个整体的基因组成不会让我们理解这个整体自身的行为

It may be that be that some idiosyncratic behavior on the part of the individual (deemed at first glance “irrational”) may be necessary for efficient functioning at the collective level.

在群体的层级上，一些个体部分的独特行为（乍看上去非理性的）对于高效的功能体系可能是必要的。

What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.

重要的不是一个人有什么或者没有什么，而是他害怕失去什么。

The Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI) is a product of modernity.

高智力的白痴创造了现代化。

True equality is equality in probability.and Skin in the game prevents systems from rotting.

真正的平等在概率上的平等。游戏中的皮肤可以防止系统腐烂。

Static inequality is a snapshot view of inequality; it does not reflect what will happen to you in the course of your life.

静态不平等是不平等的快照; 它并不能反映出你生命中会发生什么。

The way to make society more equal is by forcing (through skin in the game) the rich to be subjected to the risk of exiting from the 1 percent.

让社会更加平等的方法是通过强迫（通过游戏里的皮肤，风险共担）富人从 1％ 的冒险活动中退出。

Dynamic equality is what restores ergodicity, making time and ensemble probabilities substitutable.

动态平等是遍历性恢复的原因，使得时间和集合概率可以替代。

That which is fragile has an asymmetric response to volatility and other stressors, that is, will experience more harm than benefit from it.

脆弱的东西对波动性和其他压力有一个不对称的反应，比起从其中收益，它们更容易从其中受损。

Effectively Lindy answers the age-old meta-questions: Who will judge the expert? Who will guard the guard? (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) Who will judge the judges? Well, survival will.

林迪回答了古老的元问题：谁将评判专家？谁会守卫守卫？谁将评判评委？好吧，是生存。

That which is “Lindy” is what ages in reverse, i.e., its life expectancy lengthens with time, conditional on survival.

林迪效应是年龄的方向存在。在生存的附加条件下，它的寿命长度随着时间而延长。

Only the nonperishable can be Lindy. When it comes to ideas, books, technologies, procedures, institutions, and political systems under Lindy, there is no intrinsic aging and perishability. A physical copy of War and Peace can age (particularly when the publisher cuts corners to save twenty cents on paper for a fifty-dollar book); the book itself as an idea doesn’t.

只有不易腐烂才属于林迪效应。当谈到这个主意时，书籍，技术，程序，机构和政治制度时，没有内在的老化和易腐性。《战争与和平》的纸质书可能会老化（特别是当出版商为了一本价值五十美元的书而偷工减料二十美分时）；书本身作为一个想法没有。

Alfonso X of Spain, nicknamed El Sabio, “the wise,” had as a maxim: Burn old logs. Drink old wine. Read old books. Keep old friends.

西班牙的 Alfonso X，绰号 El Sabio，“聪明人”，有一个格言：烧旧日志。喝老酒。读旧书。留老友。

You can define a free person precisely as someone whose fate is not centrally or directly dependent on peer assessment.

您可以将自由人定义为，命运不是集中或直接依赖同伴评估的人。

And as an essayist, I am not judged by other writers, book editors, and book reviewers, but by readers.

作为散文家，我不是由其他作家，书籍编辑和书评人评判，而是由读者评判。

Being reviewed or assessed by others matters if and only if one is subjected to the judgment of future—not just present—others.

当且仅当一个人对未来，而不是现在，进行主观评价时，他才可以被其他的事情检查和估计。

a free person does not need to win arguments—just win.

一个自由的人不需要赢得一场争论，他只会赢。

题图来源：Skin in the Game 封面

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