原文來自Morgan Housel的博客。這是我看到的關(guān)于信心最深刻的思考。最高級的信心幫助你的思考貼近事物的客觀本質(zhì)，不高也不低。所以，最高級的信心是理性。但是，保持在最高級其實很難做到，因為認(rèn)知就是無知到有知到無知的循環(huán)。對了，高級的信心需要一些數(shù)學(xué)知識。Enjoy!

Take a person who is confident in something they know nothing about. We all know them.

讓我們找一個對自己一無所知的事情充滿信心的人。我們都見過這樣的人。

They believe in something with more conviction than other things they’re qualified to opine on. Ask a doctor how to avoid getting cancer and they might say, “There are common-sense practices, but it’s a complicated topic and we still need decades of research to really understand the issue. And even then there’s always just bad luck.” Then ask them how we can avoid the next recession and they may tell you in black-and-white terms what the Fed should do.

他們對某些事物更有信心，超過了他們真正有資格評價的事物。詢問醫(yī)生如何避免癌癥，他們可能會說，“有一些常識性做法，但這是一個復(fù)雜的話題，我們?nèi)孕枰獢?shù)十年的研究才能真正理解這個問題。即便如此，也主要是運氣不好。“ 然后問他們?nèi)绾伪苊庀乱淮谓?jīng)濟衰退，他們可能會用非黑即白的語言告訴你美聯(lián)儲應(yīng)該做些什么。

Let’s call this Level One confidence. You’re confident in something because you don’t know enough to realize how little confidence you should have. It’s driven by gut feelings and the belief that intelligence in one field justifies your expertise in another. It’s a mess, and one few people think they fall for because beliefs exempt from the nuance of real expertise are rubber stamped in your head as unequivocally true.

讓我們稱之為第一級信心。你對某些事情充滿信心，因為你不了解它因而完全不知道自己應(yīng)該有多少信心。它源于直覺，以及相信你在一個領(lǐng)域的智慧足以證明你在另一個領(lǐng)域的專業(yè)知識。這是一團糟的事情，并且很少有人意識到他們的失敗是因為這些缺乏專業(yè)知識的信念已經(jīng)潛意識的印在了他們的腦子里面了。

A step above this, let’s call it Level Two confidence, is when you’re confident about a topic tangential to your field of expertise. Say you’re an expert at building cars. Then someone asks you whether Tesla is overvalued. Since you know a lot about building cars you feel qualified to have an opinion. But car manufacturing is one of thousands of variables that goes into valuing car companies – and the most important variable is “whatever mood the market is in,” which isn’t the kind of thing engineers steeped in precision appreciate. It takes little effort to assume your skill in one field makes you an expert in a cousin field. The danger is that first cousins can have little in common.

如果你對與你的專業(yè)領(lǐng)域沾點邊的話題充滿信心，那么我們就可以稱之為第二級信心。假如你是建造汽車的專家。然后有人問你特斯拉股票是否被高估了。既然你對建造汽車有很多了解，那么你就有資格發(fā)表意見。但汽車制造是衡量汽車公司價值的數(shù)千個變量之一 —而且最重要的變量是“市場當(dāng)下的情緒”，這不是以精準(zhǔn)為職業(yè)的工程師擅長的。你會輕而易舉的認(rèn)為你在一個領(lǐng)域的技能會使你成為相鄰領(lǐng)域的專家。危險在于，相鄰領(lǐng)域?qū)嶋H可能沒什么共同之處。

Level Three confidence is an expert relying on something they don’t understand or ever think about. A baseball player might have no understanding of stadium economics. A carpenter likely doesn’t know the precise calculations of load-bearing physics. The careers of both rely on these things, but if you asked them about the topics they might reply, “Someone else takes care of it,” or “I just do it my way and it seems to work.” They are confident things will work yet are detached from controlling the outcome.

第三級信心是那些依靠他們不理解的原理或從未想過的東西的專家。棒球運動員可能對體育場經(jīng)濟學(xué)一無所知。木匠可能不知道承重物理學(xué)的精確計算。兩者的職業(yè)都依賴于這些事情，但如果你向他們詢問這些問題， 他們可能回復(fù) “別人會去搞定”，或者 “我只是按照自己的方式行事，而且看起來沒問題。” 他們有信心事情會如其所愿，但是并不愿意去控制結(jié)果。

Level Four: You’ve read and understand the core principles of a topic. That gives you confidence that you know how it works. But you haven’t grasped that what matters in most fields are the combinations and permutations of the core principles, and what’s really important are the exceptions to the rules. Level Four confidence is what happens when ambitious college sophomores starts a hedge fund after reading The Intelligent Investor.

第四級：你已經(jīng)閱讀并理解了話題的核心原則。這讓你有信心知道它是如何工作的。但是你還沒有意識到在大多數(shù)領(lǐng)域中重要的是核心原則的組合和排列，而真正重要的是規(guī)則之外的例外情況。四級信心的事情比如：雄心勃勃的大二學(xué)生在閱讀完“聰明的投資者”這本書后就創(chuàng)立自己的對沖基金。

Level Five: You have real experience in a topic, valuable first-hand knowledge. But you mistakenly assume your experiences are normal and repeatable. The real-world experience gives you confidence that your views are accurate, but since what you’ve seen is more believable than what you’ve read, it might be a liability compared to those with no experience and a more open mind. This is especially true if your limited experience were in periods of extreme ups or downs.

第五級：你在一個主題上有真正的經(jīng)驗，具備有價值的第一手知識。但你錯誤地認(rèn)為你的經(jīng)歷是正常的和可重復(fù)的?，F(xiàn)實世界的經(jīng)驗讓你相信你的觀點是準(zhǔn)確的，但由于你看到的內(nèi)容比你所閱讀的內(nèi)容更可信，因此與沒有經(jīng)驗但思想開放的人相比，這可能是一種負(fù)擔(dān)。特別是當(dāng)你的有限經(jīng)驗處于市場情況極端起伏的時期，則尤其如此。

Level Six: You’ve seen and experienced enough successes and failures in your field to throttle your confidence. No patterns emerge; everything looks like random chance. You’re borderline cynical. Many people get stuck here.

第六級：你已經(jīng)在自己的領(lǐng)域中看到并經(jīng)歷了足夠的成功和失敗來扼殺你的信心。沒有出現(xiàn)任何模式; 一切看起來像隨機的機會。你是一個憤世嫉俗的人。很多人都被困在這里。

Level Seven: You have a realization: confidence isn’t black or white, all or nothing. It’s about odds and percentages. You have no idea how to calculate those odds – and when you try they lean heavily toward the outcome you want. But you’re finally thinking about confidence in a productive way.

第七級：你已經(jīng)意識到：信心不是非黑即白，全有或全無。這是關(guān)于賠率和百分比。你不知道如何計算這些幾率 — 當(dāng)你嘗試時，他們會傾向于你想要的結(jié)果。但是，不管怎么說， 你終于可以以一種富有成效方式來思考信心了。

Level Eight: You discover the concept of base rates, or the idea that the odds you place on an outcome should begin with the odds of all other previous attempts at that outcome, and then tweaked for characteristics unique to the thing you’re trying to predict. Say you’re about to run your first marathon. If 50% of people who have ever tried to run a marathon have failed to finish, you start with that probability and then adjust it for whatever kind of unique traits you have.

第八級：你發(fā)現(xiàn)了基礎(chǔ)概率的概念，或者你知道結(jié)果的幾率應(yīng)該從之前所有其他嘗試的幾率開始，然后根據(jù)你想要預(yù)測的事物的特征來調(diào)整。比如說你準(zhǔn)備參加第一次馬拉松比賽。假如曾經(jīng)嘗試過馬拉松比賽的人中有50％未能完成，那么就從這個概率開始，然后針對你擁有的任何獨特特征進(jìn)行調(diào)整。

Level Nine: You’re now armed with just enough skills to backfire. You’re calculating odds based on base rates, but you’re wildly off in how unique you think your individual situation is. If half of people can’t finish a marathon, you say, “OK, but I’m in 3x better shape than the average marathon runner,” when in fact you’re nothing close. So now you have a useless prediction metric, but you’re highly confident in it – more confident than you’ve ever been – because you’re using math. An uncomfortable portion of professionals reside here.

第九級：你現(xiàn)在擁有足夠的技能來讓事情適得其反。你正在根據(jù)基本概率來計算概率，但你評估自己個人獨特程度的能力很糟糕。如果有一半人無法完成馬拉松比賽，那么你說，“好吧，但我的體型比普通馬拉松運動員好3倍”，實際上你差的很遠(yuǎn)。所以現(xiàn)在你有一個無用的預(yù)測指標(biāo)，但你對它非常有信心 —比以往更有信心 — 因為你正在使用數(shù)學(xué)。不幸的是一大部分的專業(yè)人士停留在這里。

Level Ten: If you’re lucky enough to break out of level nine – which often requires an environment tolerant of inaction and saying “I don’t know” – you realize that situations when you’re much different than average are rare. Nine times out of ten the only confidence you have is that your ability to predict something will be similar to everyone else’s attempt at predicting something.

第十級：如果你足夠幸運地突破九級 —這往往需要一個容忍無所作為的環(huán)境并說“我不知道” — 你會發(fā)現(xiàn)當(dāng)你和平均水平大不相同的情況很少見。十有之九的唯一信心就是，你預(yù)測某事的能力與其他人預(yù)測事物的能力差不多。

Level Eleven: The rare occasion when you’re confident in an unusual outcome is when you start with a base rate and only adjust it based on data-driven studies that measure situations with the same unique characteristics that you have or are looking at. If an asset typically returns 6% a year, you’re only confident that it will return more if there is research showing that it tends to return more when something that’s currently happening – low valuations, higher growth, etc. – occurs. And the expected size of that outperformance is guided by what’s happened in the past, like its own base rate.

第十一級：當(dāng)你對一個不尋常的結(jié)果充滿信心的罕見情況是：你以基本概率開始，并且根據(jù)數(shù)據(jù)驅(qū)動的研究進(jìn)行調(diào)整，發(fā)現(xiàn)這些研究所度量的和你期望的獨特特征相吻合。如果資產(chǎn)通常每年回報率為6％，那么只有當(dāng)有研究表明，當(dāng)目前正在發(fā)生的事情 —低估值，高增長等 — 出現(xiàn)時，它往往會回報更多，那么你才會有信心相信。而且，回報表現(xiàn)優(yōu)異的預(yù)期規(guī)模是和過去發(fā)生的事情相符的，就像它自己的基準(zhǔn)概率一樣。

Level Twelve: Even when you have Level Eleven confidence you know that confidence is a game of odds, and almost all odds are less than 100. So even when you’re confident you prepare to be wrong, with room for error and humility. That gives you confidence that you can survive long enough to bet on the next thing you’re confident about.

第十二級：即使你有第十一級信心，你也知道信心是一種概率游戲，幾乎所有概率都低于100。 所以即使你有信心，你也會準(zhǔn)備出錯的情況，給錯誤和謙虛以空間。這讓你有信心，你可以存活足夠長的時間來賭下一個你有信心的東西。

Level Thirteen: You become so good at rationally deploying confidence that success comes your way. The more success, the more confidence you have in your skills. The more confidence you have in your skills, the more you think you can apply them to other fields, including fields you know nothing about.

第十三級：你變得如此善于理性地分配信心以至于成功多失敗少。成功越多，你對技能的信心就越大。你對技能的信心越大，你認(rèn)為可以將它們應(yīng)用到其他領(lǐng)域，包括你不了解的領(lǐng)域。

Level Fourteen: See Level One. Right back to where we started.

第十三級：參加見第一級。你回到了我們開始的地方。

最后上廣告，如果你對你做到事情有信心，你應(yīng)該找我們談?wù)劊?）