原文来自：The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works
The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works
芒格操作系统：如何过上真正有效的生活
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 (Charlie Munger) 在南加州大学法学院的毕业典礼上发表演讲，开场白说：“嗯，毫无疑问，你们中的许多人都想知道为什么演讲者这么老。嗯，答案很明显：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.
对我们来说幸运的是，芒格一直在努力。毕业典礼演讲很好地回答了这个大问题：我们如何过上真正有效的生活？它包含芒格的许多核心思想，我们认为该演讲代表了芒格终生操作系统。
To get what you want, deserve what you want. Trust, success, and admiration are earned.
要想得到你想要的，就得配得上你想要的。信任、成功和钦佩是挣来的。
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.
这是一个如此简单的想法。可以说这是一条黄金法则：最终你想要传递给世界的也应该是你最想要的东西。在我看来，无论是对律师还是对其他人来说，这都是他们最应该有的精神。总的来说，拥有这种精神的人在生活中能赢得许多东西，他们赢得的不只是金钱和荣誉，还赢得尊敬。理所应当地赢得与他们打交道的人的信任，能够赢得别人的信任是非常快乐的事情。
Learn to love and admire the right people, alive or dead.
学会去爱和欣赏正确的人，无论他们是在世的还是死去的。
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.
我很小就明白的第二个道理是：正确的爱应该以仰慕为基础，而且我们应该去爱那些对我们有教育意义的先贤。我懂得这个道理，且一辈子都在实践它；这对我非常非常有益。
Acquiring wisdom is a moral duty as well as a practical one.
获得智慧是一种道德责任，也是一种实践责任。
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.
有一个相关的道理非常重要，那就是你们必须坚持终身学习，如果不终身学习，你妈将不会取得很高的成就。光靠已有的知识，你们在生活中走不了多远。离开这里以后，你们还得继续学习，这样才能在生活中走的更远… 人类社会只有发明了发明的方法之后才能发展，同样的道理，你们只有学习了学习的方法之后才能进步。
Attain fluency on the big multidisciplinary ideas of the world and use them regularly.
要掌握世界上多学科的大思想，并经常使用它们。
What I noted since the really big ideas carry 95% of a phrase, 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.
因为真正重要的大道理占每个学科95%的份量，所以对我而言，从所有的学科吸取我所需要的95%的知识并将它们变成我思维习惯的一部分也不是很难的事情。当然，掌握了这些道理之后，你们必须通过实践去使用它们，这就像钢琴演奏家，如果不持续练习，就不可能弹得很好
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.
所以我这辈子不断实践那种跨学科的方法，这种习惯帮了我很多忙。它让生活更有乐趣，让我能做更多的事情，让我变得更有建设性，让我变得的非常富有，而这无法用天分来解释，我的思维习惯只要得到正确的实践，真的很有帮助
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.
但这种习惯也会带来危险，因为它太有用了。如果你们使用它，当你们和其他学科的专家，也许这位专家甚至是你们的老板，能够轻而易举地伤害你们，在一起时，你们会常常发现原来你们的知识比他更丰富，更能够解决他所遇到的问题
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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.
但如果你对一种知识死记硬背，以便能在考试中取得好成绩，这种知识对你们不会有太大的帮助。你们必须掌握许多知识，让它们在你们的头脑中形成一个思维框架，在随后的日子里能自动地运用它们
Learn to think through problems backwards as well as forward.
学会逆向思考问题。
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.
对于复杂的适应系统以及人类的大脑而言，如果采用逆向思考，问题往往会变得更容易解决，如果你们把问题反过来思考，通常就能够想得更加清楚
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.
例如，如果你们想要帮助印度，应该考虑的问题不是我要怎样才能帮助印度，与之相反，你们应该问，我要怎样才能损害印度？你们应该找到能对印度造成最大损害的事情，然后避免去做它。也许从逻辑上来看这两种方法是一样的，但那些精通代数的人知道，如果问题很难解决，利用反向证明往往就能迎刃而解。生活的情况跟代数一样，逆向思考能够帮助你们解决正面思考无法处理的问题
Be reliable. Unreliability can cancel out the other virtues.
要守信。言而无信会抵消其他的美德
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.
如果你们言而无信，就算有再多的优点，也无法避免悲惨的下场。所以你们应该养成言出必行的习惯。懒惰和言而无信是显然要避免的。
Avoid intense ideologies. Always consider the other side as carefully as your own.
避免极端的意识形态。永远要像考虑自己的问题一样仔细考虑对方。
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.
另外要避免的是极端的意识形态，因为它会让人们丧失理智。你们看到电视上有很多非常糟糕的宗教布道者，他们对神学中的细枝末节持有不相同、强烈的、前后矛盾的神学观点，偏偏又非常固执。我看他们中许多人的脑袋已经萎缩成卷心菜了
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.
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.
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.
“我无权在这个问题上发表意见，除非我能比支持我立场的人更好地陈述反对我立场的论据。我认为只有当我到了那个阶段，我才有资格发言。”
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.
总的来说，嫉妒、怨憎、仇恨和自怜都是灾难性的思想状态。过度自怜可以让人近乎偏执，偏执是最难逆转的东西之一。你们不要陷入自怜的情绪中。
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.
我有一个朋友，他随身携带一大叠厚厚的卡片，每当有人说了自怜的话，他就会慢慢地夸张地掏出那一叠卡片，将最上面那张交给说话的人，卡片上写着：“你的故事触动了我的心，我从来没有听说过有人像你这么倒霉”。好吧，你们也许认为这是开玩笑，但我建议，每当你们发现自己产生了自怜的情绪，不管是什么原因——哪怕由于自己的孩子患上癌症即将死去——你们也要想到，自怜是于事无补的。这样的时候，你们要送自己一张我朋友的卡片。
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.
自怜总是会产生负面影响，它是一种错误的思维方式，如果你们能避开它，你们的优势就远远大于其他人，或者几乎所有人，因为自怜是一种标准反应，但你可以训练来摆脱它。
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.
你们当然也要在自己的思维习惯中消除 “自利性偏差” ；别以为对你们有利的就是对整个社会有利的，也别根据这种自我中心的潜意识倾向来为你们愚蠢或邪恶的行为辩解
At the same time, allow for the self-serving bias in others who haven’t removed it.
与此同时，允许那些没有消除自我服务偏见的人。
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.
你们必须在自己的认知行动中允许别人拥有 “自利性偏差” ，因为大多数人无法非常成功地清除这种心理，人性就是这样。如果你们不能容忍别人在行动中表现出 “自利性偏差” ，那么你们又是傻瓜。
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.”
所罗门兄弟公司的法律顾问曾经做过《哈佛法学评论》的学生编辑，我亲眼看到他毁掉了自己的前途，当时CEO意识到位下属做错了事，总法律顾问说，“哦，我们在法律上没有责任汇报这件事，但我认为这是我们应该做的，那是我们的道德责任。”
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.
从法律和道德上老说，总法律顾问是完全正确的，但他的方法却是错误的；他建议日理万机的CEO去做一件令人不愉快的事情，而CEO总是把这件事一推再推，因为他很忙嘛，完全可以理解，后来，主管部门责怪他们没有及时通报情况，所以CEO 和总法律顾问也跟着下台了。
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!
遇到在这种情况，正确的说服技巧是本杰明·富兰克林指出的那种，他说，“如果你想要说服别人，要诉诸利益，而非诉诸理性。”人类的 “自利性偏差” 是极其强大的，应该被用来获得正确的结果。所以，如果总法律顾问说，“喂，如果这种情况再持续下去，会毁掉你的，会让你身败名裂，家破人亡……我的建议能够让你免于陷入万劫不复之地，”这种方法会奏效的！
Avoid being part of a system with perverse incentives.
避免受到变态的激励机制的驱动
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 hours 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.
变态的激励机制具有控制人类行为的强大力量，人们应该避免受它影响，您将在一些现代律师事务所中发现的其中一件事是计费小时配额。我无法生活在每年 2,400 小时的计费小时配额之下。那会给我带来许多问题，我不会接受这种条件；我没有办法对付你们中的某些人将会面对这种局面。你们将不得不自行摸索如何处理这些重要的问题
Work with and under people you admire, and avoid the inverse when at all possible.
与你钦佩的人一起工作，或者在你钦佩的人手下工作，并尽可能避免相反的情况。
Perverse associations, also to be avoided. You particularly want to avoid working directly under somebody you really don’t admire and don’t want to be like.It’s very dangerous we are all subject to control to some extent our authority figures strictly authority figures that are rewarding us.
违逆的工作关系也是应该避免的。你们要特别避免在你们不是真正钦佩或者不想像他一样的人手下干活，那是很危险的，所有人在某种程度上都受到权威人物的控制，尤其是那些为我们提供回报的权威人物，要正确地应对这种危险。
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.
而这需要一些天赋（必须同时拥有才华和决心）。我的办法是找出我尊敬的人，然后想办法调到他手下去，但是别批评任何人，这样我通常能够在好领导手下工作，很多律师事务所都会允许这样做，只要你们足够聪明，能做得很得体。总之，在你真正仰慕的人手下工作，在生活中取得的成就将会更加令人满意。替代方案不是一个好主意。
Learn to maintain your objectivity, especially when it’s hardest.
学会保持客观公正，尤其是在最困难的时候。
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.
我们都记得达尔文特别留意相反的证据，尤其是他证伪的是某种他信奉和热爱的理论时，如果你们想要在思考的时候尽量少犯错误，就需要这样的习惯。人们还需要养成核对检查清单的习惯，核对检查清单能避免很多错误，不仅仅对飞行员来说是如此，你们不应该光是掌握广泛的基础知识，而是应该把它们在头脑中列成一张清单，然后再加以使用。没有其他方法能取得相同的效果。
Concentrate experience and power into the hands of the right people – the wise learning machines.
任人唯贤
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.
我认为，生活就像比赛也充满竞争，我们要让那些最有能力和最愿意成为学习机器的人发挥最大的作用。如果你想要获得非常高的成就，你们就必须成为那样的人。
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.
你们不希望在50个轮流做手术的医生中抽签选一个来给你们的孩子做脑外科手术。你们不希望你们的飞机是以一种太过平等主义的方式设计出来。你们也不希望你的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司采用这样的管理方式。你们想要让最好的球员打很长时间的比赛。
You’ll be most successful where you’re most intensely interested.
在你最感兴趣的领域，你会取得最大的成功。
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.
另外一件我发现的事情是，如果你们真的想要在某个领域做的很出色，那么你们必须对它有强烈的兴趣，我可以强迫自己把许多事情做得相当好，但我无法将我没有强烈兴趣的事情做得非常出色。从某种程度上来讲，你们也跟我差不多。所以如果有机会的话，你们要想办法去做那些你们有强烈兴趣的事情。
Learn the all-important concept of assiduity: Sit down and do it until it’s done.
勤奋学习最重要概念：坐下来做，直到把事情做完。
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.”
我早期的生意上曾经有过两位合伙人，他们俩在大萧条期间合资成立了一家建筑设计施工公司，达成了很简单的协议，这是个两个人的合伙公司，他们说一切平分，现在定一个规则：如果我们没有完成对客户的承诺，我们俩要每天工作14个小时，每星期工作7天，直到完成为止。
Well, needless to say, that firm didn’t fail. The people died rich. It’s such a simple idea.
不用说你们也知道，这家公司做得很成功。我那两位合伙人广受尊敬，他们这种简单的老派观念几乎肯定能够提供一个很好的结果。
Use setbacks in life as an opportunity to become a bigger and better person. Don’t wallow.
把生活中的挫折当成成为更伟大更好的人的机会。不要沉沦于不幸中。
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.
另外一个你们要应付的问题是，你们在生活中可能会遭到沉重的打击，不公平的打击。有些人能挺过去，有些人不能。我认为爱比克泰德的态度能够引导人们作出正确的反应。他认为生活中的额每一次不幸，无论多么倒霉都是一个锻炼的机会，他认为每一次不幸都是吸取教训的良机，人们不应该在自怜中沉沦，而是应该利用每次打击来提高自我。他的观点是非常正确的。
The highest reach of civilization is a seamless system of trust among all parties concerned.
文明的最高境界是有关各方之间建立一个无缝的信任体系。
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.
由于在你们将要从事的行业中有大量的程序和繁文缛节，最后一个我想要告诉你们的道理是：复杂的官僚程序不是文明社会的最好制度。更好的制度是一张无缝的、非官僚的信任之网，没有太多稀奇古怪的程序，只是完全可靠的人正确地信任彼此。
That’s the way an operating room works at the Mayo Clinic.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.
那是玛约医疗中心手术室的运作方式。如果那里的医生像律师那样有那么多繁琐的程序，更多的病人会死于非命。所以当你们成为律师的时候，永远别忘记，虽然你们在工作中要遵守程序，但你不用总是被程序牵着鼻子走，在你们的生活中，应该追求的是尽可能地培养一张无缝的信任之网。如果你们拟定的婚姻协议书长达47页，那么我建议你们这婚还是不结为妙。