[Complete] Charlie Munger USC Law Commencement Speech - May 2007
YouTube 链接：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY1eNlL6NKs
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的毕业典礼上发表演讲，他在演讲开始时说道: “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。答案显而易见: 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，芒格一直在走下去。毕业典礼上的演讲是对一个重大问题的极好回应: 我们如何才能过上真正有效的生活？它包含了芒格的许多核心思想，以至于我们认为这篇演讲代表了芒格终身操作系统。
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To get what you want, deserve what you want. Trust, success, and admiration are earned.
为了得到你想要的，你应该得到你想要的。信任、成功和钦佩都是通过努力获得的。
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.
这是一个很简单的想法。可以这么说，这是一条黄金法则: 如果你在电话的另一端，你想把你想买的东西送给世界。在我看来，对任何律师或任何其他人来说，没有什么风气比这更好。总的来说，有这种精神的人会在生活中获胜，他们赢得的不仅仅是金钱，不仅仅是荣誉。他们赢得了尊重，赢得了与他们打交道的人应得的信任，而且从获得应得的信任中获得生活的巨大乐趣。
Learn to love and admire the right people, alive or dead.
学会去爱和欣赏正确的人，不管他们是活着的还是死去的。
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. 我很早就得到的第二个想法是，没有什么爱比基于赞美的爱更正确，而爱应该包括那些死去的有教育意义的人。不知怎么的，我得到了这个想法，并伴随它一生; 它对我非常非常有用。
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.
这个命题有一个必然的推论，非常重要。这意味着你迷上了终生学习，而没有终生学习你的人不会做得很好。基于你已经知道的东西，你不会在生活中走得很远。如果文明只有发明了发明的方法才能进步，那么只有学会了学习的方法，你才能进步。
Learn to fluency the big multidisciplinary ideas of the world and use them regularly.
学会流利地表达这个世界上的大多学科的观点，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.
我注意到的是，真正的大创意承担了95% 的运费，对我来说，从所有大的学科中获取所有的大创意，并把它们作为我的日常思维的标准部分，一点都不难。当然，一旦你有了这些想法，如果你不去实践，它们就没有意义，如果你不去实践，你就会失去它们。
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.
所以我一生都在不断地练习这种综合学科研究法的模式。我无法告诉你这对我有什么影响。它让生活变得更有趣，它让我更有建设性，它让我对他人更有帮助，它让我变得非常富有，你能想到的，这种态度真的很有帮助。
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.
现在那里有危险，因为它工作得很好，如果你这样做，你经常会发现你坐在其他专家的面前，也许甚至是一个比你更高级的专家，监督你。你会比他知道更多关于他自己的专业，更多。当他错过时，你会看到正确的答案。 […] […] 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.
仅仅知道足够多的知识并不能帮助你在考试中重新给出答案并得到 a。你必须以这样一种方式来学习这些东西，它们在你的脑海中形成一个精神格子，你会自动地在你的余生中使用它们。
Learn to think through problems backwards as well as forward.
学会向前和向后思考问题。
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.
复杂适应系统的工作方式和心理构造的工作方式，问题往往变得更容易，我甚至会说，如果你反过来，通常是更容易解决。
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?”你会想”印度最严重的伤害是什么?”？什么会自动造成最严重的伤害，我如何避免它?”你可能会认为它们在逻辑上是一回事，但事实并非如此。你们这些精通代数的人都知道，求逆常常能解决其他任何问题。在生活中，除非你比爱因斯坦更有天赋，否则反演将帮助你解决其他方法无法解决的问题。
Be reliable. Unreliability can cancel out the other virtues.
要可靠。不可靠可以抵消其他美德。
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. 如果你不可靠，那么无论你的优点是什么，你都会立刻陷入困境。因此，做你忠诚地从事的事情应该成为你行为的自动组成部分。你要避免懒惰和不可靠。
Avoid intense ideologies. Always consider the other side as carefully as your own.
避免强烈的意识形态。永远要像考虑自己的意识形态一样考虑对方。
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.
另一件我认为应该避免的事情是非常强烈的意识形态，因为它卷心菜在一个人的头脑中。你已经看到了。你在电视上看到很多，比如说，你知道牧师，他们都对神学有不同的看法，而且他们中的很多人的头脑都是白菜做的。
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.
但在政治意识形态方面，这种情况可能会发生。如果你是年轻人，你很容易就会变得忠诚，当你宣布你是一个忠诚的成员，你开始喊出正统的意识形态，你正在做的就是把它敲进去，敲进去，然后你就会逐渐毁掉你的思想。所以你要非常小心这种意识形态。这是一个巨大的危险。
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.
每当我想到意识形态的时候，我都会举一个小例子，正是这些斯堪的纳维亚独木舟运动员成功地驯服了斯堪的纳维亚的所有急流，他们认为他们能够解决美国大急流城的漩涡。死亡率为100% 。一个大的漩涡不是你想要进入的东西，我认为这同样适用于一个真正深刻的意识形态。 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.
我有一个我称之为铁的处方，当我自然地偏向一种意识形态而不是另一种时，这个处方可以帮助我保持理智。也就是说，我说: “我没有资格在这个问题上发表意见，除非我能比那些支持我的人更好地陈述反对我立场的论点。我认为，只有当我到了那个阶段，我才有资格发言。”现在你可以说，这是一个太多的铁的纪律。.这不是什么严格的纪律。这并不难做到。
Get rid of self-serving bias, envy, resentment, and self-pity.
摆脱自利性偏差、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、报复和自怜是灾难性的思维模式。自怜会变得非常接近于偏执，而偏执是最难扭转的事情之一。你不想陷入自怜。
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. 我有一个朋友拿着一大叠这么厚的索引卡片，当有人发表自怜的评论时，他会拿出一张卡片，把最上面的那张拿出来递给那个人，卡片上写道: “你的故事触动了我的心，我从来没有听说过像你这样有这么多不幸的人。”。好吧，你可以说这是在开玩笑，但我建议，每次你发现自己陷入自怜状态时，我不在乎原因是什么ーー你的孩子可能会死于癌症ーー自怜不会改善情况。给你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.
这是一种荒谬的行为方式，当你避免这种行为时，你就会比其他任何人，几乎每个人都获得巨大的优势，因为自怜是一种标准状态，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，自利性偏差一分钟，你会想要把这些从你自己身上挖掘出来; 认为对你有利的事情对更广泛的文明有利，并且基于服务于自己的潜意识倾向，将所有这些荒谬的结论合理化。
At the same time, allow for the self-serving bias in others who haven’t removed it.
同时，考虑到其他没有移除它的人的自利性偏差。
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. 你还必须考虑到其他人的自私偏见，因为大多数人不会成功地消除所有这些偏见，因为人类的现状就是这样。如果你不允许自私自利的偏见存在于你的行为中，那么你又是一个傻瓜。
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.” 我亲眼目睹了这位出色的哈佛法学院(Harvard Law School)培训出来的所罗门公司(Salomon)法律总顾问失去了自己的职业生涯。当这位首席执行官意识到自己的下属做错了事情时，这位法律总顾问说: “哎呀，我们没有任何法律义务报告这件事，但我认为这是我们应该做的，这是我们的道德义务。”
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，首席法律顾问是完全正确的，但是当然它不起作用; 这对首席执行官来说是一件非常不愉快的事情，他把它推迟，如果推迟，当然一切都被侵蚀成一个重大的丑闻，首席执行官和首席法律顾问和他一起下台。
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! 在这种情况下，本 · 富兰克林给出了正确的答案，他说: “如果你想说服别人，利益而不是理性。”自私的偏见是如此极端。如果法律总顾问说，“看，这是要爆发了，它会毁了你，拿走你的钱，夺走你的地位… 这是一个完美的灾难,”它会起作用的！
Avoid being part of a system with perverse incentives.
避免成为一个有不正当动机的系统的一部分。
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 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. 激励作为人类认知和行为的控制者太强大了，你会在一些现代律师事务所中发现计时收费的配额。我不可能生活在每年2400小时的计费时间限额之下。这会给我带来严重的问题ーー我不会这么做，我也没有解决方案。你必须自己解决这个问题，但这是一个重要的问题。
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，在他们之下工作，尽可能避免相反的情况发生。
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. 这需要一些人才。我解决这个问题的方法是，我找出我确实钦佩的人，我巧妙地策划而不批评任何人，所以我完全是在我钦佩的人手下工作。如果你足够精明能够解决这个问题，很多律师事务所都会允许你这么做。如果你在你真正钦佩的人手下工作，你的生活结果会更令人满意，也会更好。另一种选择不是一个好主意。
Learn to maintain your objectivity, especially when it’s hardest.
学会保持客观，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，达尔文特别注意否定证据，尤其是当证据否定了他相信和喜爱的东西时。如果你想成为一个正确的思考者，生活中完全需要客观性维护程序。在这里，我们谈论达尔文的态度，他对证据的否定的特别关注，以及对日常事务的检查。检查表例程可以避免很多错误。你应该拥有所有这些基本的智慧，然后你应该仔细检查并列出一个清单来使用它。没有其他的方法可以达到同样的效果。
Concentrate experience and power into the hands of the right people – the wise learning machines.
把经验和力量集中到正确的人手中——聪明的学习机器。
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. 我认为生活的游戏在很多方面都是把大量的练习交到那些最有学习能力，也最有可能成为学习机器的人的手中。如果你想达到人类文明的最高境界，那就是你必须去的地方。 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. 你不会想在五十个申请者中为你的孩子选择一个脑外科医生，他们只是在手术过程中轮流。你不希望你的飞机是这样设计的。你不会希望你的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司以这种方式运营。你想把权力交给正确的人。
You’ll be most successful where you’re most intensely interested.
在你最感兴趣的地方，你会最成功。
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，如果你真的想要出类拔萃，对这个主题的浓厚兴趣是必不可少的。我可以强迫自己在很多事情上做得相当好，但如果我没有强烈的兴趣，我就不可能在任何事情上做得相当好。所以在某种程度上，你得跟着我。如果在所有可行的，你想漂移到做一些事情，你真的有一个自然的兴趣。
Learn the all-important concept of assiduity: Sit down and do it until it’s done.
学习最重要的勤勉概念: 坐下来，一直做到底。
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.” 我在人生的一个小阶段选择的两个合伙人有以下规则: 他们创建了一个小型的设计/建造施工团队，他们坐下来说，两人合作，平均分配一切，这是规则; “无论何时我们落后于对其他人的承诺，我们都会每天工作14个小时，直到我们被赶上。” Well, needless to say, that firm didn’t fail. The people died rich. It’s such a simple idea. 嗯，不用说，那家公司没有倒闭。人们死的时候很富有。这是一个很简单的想法。
Use setbacks in life as an opportunity to become a bigger and better person. Don’t wallow.
利用生活中的挫折作为一个机会，成为一个更大更好的人。不要沉迷。
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. 另一件事当然是生活会有可怕的打击，可怕的打击，不公平的打击，没有关系。有些人恢复了，有些人没有。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表现良好的机会，生活中的每一次不幸都是学习的机会，你的责任不是沉浸在自怜中，而是以建设性的方式利用这一可怕的打击。这是一个非常好的主意。
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的无缝信任系统。
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. 我想告诉你们的最后一个想法是，当你们从事一个经常需要大量程序、预防措施和繁文缛节的职业时，这并不是文明所能达到的最高形式。文明能够达到的最高形式是一张无缝的值得信任的网。没有多少程序，只是完全可靠的人正确地相互信任。这就是梅奥诊所手术室的工作方式。 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程序，病人都会死。因此，永远不要忘记，当你是一名律师，你可能会因为出售这些东西而获得奖励，但你不必购买它们。在你自己的生活中，你想要的是一张无缝的值得信任的网。如果你的求婚合同有47页，我建议你不要进去。
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