# 14/ 平靜種下了瘋狂的種子，一如往昔
# 14/ Calm Plants the Seeds of Crazy, Same as Ever
平靜播下瘋狂的種子，一如往昔
Calm Plants the Seeds of Crazy, Same as Ever
平靜播下瘋狂的種子
Calm Plants the Seeds of Crazy
瘋狂不代表破碎。瘋狂是常態；瘋狂過頭也是常態。
Crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal;
beyond the point of crazy is normal.
貪婪與恐懼的循環很常見。它是這樣的：
There is a very common life cycle of greed and fear. It goes like
this:
首先你認為好消息是永久的。
First you assume good news is permanent.
然後你對壞消息變得麻木。
Then you become oblivious to bad news.
然後你忽視壞消息。
Then you ignore bad news.
然後你否認壞消息。
Then you deny bad news.
然後你因壞消息而恐慌。
Then you panic at bad news.
然後你接受壞消息。
Then you accept bad news.
然後你認為壞消息是永久的。
Then you assume bad news is permanent.
然後你對好消息變得麻木。
Then you become oblivious to good news.
然後你忽視好消息。
Then you ignore good news.
然後你否認好消息。
Then you deny good news.
然後你接受好消息。
Then you accept good news.
然後你認為好消息是永久的。
Then you assume good news is permanent.
然後我們回到原點。循環重複。
And we’re back where we began. The cycle repeats.
讓我們更深入地探討這個循環發生的原因，以及為什麼它總是會發生。
Let’s dig deeper on why this cycle happens, and why it always will.
1960
年代是一個充滿科學樂觀的時代。在過去的五十年間，世界從馬車時代邁入火箭時代，從放血療法發展至器官移植。
The 1960s were a period of scientific optimism. In the previous fifty
years the world had gone from horse and buggy to rockets, and from
bloodletting to organ transplants.
這促使經濟學家們努力想要消滅經濟衰退的禍害。如果我們能夠發射洲際彈道飛彈，也能登上月球，那麼我們一定也能夠阻止兩個季度的負經濟成長。
This caused a push among economists to try to eradicate the scourge of
recessions. If we could launch intercontinental ballistic missiles and
walk on the moon, surely we could prevent two quarters of negative GDP
growth.
海曼·明斯基 (Hyman Minsky) 在聖路易華盛頓大學 (Washington University
in St. Louis)
擔任經濟學家，他大部分職業生涯都在研究經濟的繁榮與蕭條週期。他認為消滅經濟衰退的想法是荒謬的，而且永遠不可能實現。
Hyman Minsky, who spent most of his career as an economist at
Washington University in St. Louis, was fascinated by the
boom-and-bust nature of economies. He also thought the idea of
eradicating recessions was nonsense, and always would be.
明斯基的開創性理論稱為金融不穩定假說。
Minsky’s seminal theory was called the financial instability
hypothesis.
這個理論並不用大量數學公式來解釋。它描述了一種心理過程，基本上可以這樣理解：
The idea isn’t heavy on math and formulas. It describes a
psychological process that basically goes like this:
• 當經濟穩定時，人們會變得樂觀。
• When an economy is stable, people get optimistic.
• 當人們變得樂觀時，他們就會負債。
• When people get optimistic, they go into debt.
• 當人們負債時，經濟就會變得不穩定。
• When they go into debt, the economy becomes unstable.
明斯基的重大理念是穩定會導致不穩定。
Minsky’s big idea was that stability is destabilizing.
缺乏衰退實際上為下一波衰退埋下了種子，這就是為什麼我們永遠無法擺脫它們。
A lack of recessions actually plants the seeds of the next recession,
which is why we can never get rid of them.
他在書中寫道：「在一段長時間的繁榮時期，經濟會從能維持穩定的金融關係轉變為導致不穩定的金融關係。」
“Over periods of prolonged prosperity, the economy transits from
financial relations that make for a stable system to financial
relations that make for an unstable system,” he wrote.
越來越強烈的認為一切都會好轉的信念，就像物理定律一樣，將我們推向不順利的一面。
A growing belief that things will be okay pushes us—like a law of
physics—toward something not going okay.
這適用於許多事物。
This applies to so many things.
想像一個股市永遠不會下跌的世界。市場穩定幾乎是確定的，股價只會上漲。
Imagine a world where the stock market never went down. Market
stability is all but assured, and stocks only go up.
你會怎麼做？
What would you do?
你會盡可能地買進盡可能多的股票。你會抵押你的房子，然後買更多。你甚至會考慮賣掉腎臟，然後買更多。那將是理所當然的事！
You would buy as many stocks as you possibly could. You would mortgage
your house and buy more. You’d consider selling a kidney and buy more
still. That would be the reasonable thing to do!
在這個過程中，股價會被推高。它們的估值會變得越來越貴。它們會變得如此昂貴，以至於它們未來的報酬前景將下降到接近零。
And in the process, the price of stocks would get bid up. Their
valuations would become ever more expensive. They would get so
expensive that their future return prospects would decline close to
zero.
就在那一刻，崩潰的種子開始萌芽。
And at that very moment, the seeds of breakdown would start to sprout.
股價越高，市場就越容易受到生活驚喜的影響，這些驚喜可能會以你無法想像的方式出現。
The higher stock valuations become, the more sensitive markets are to
being caught off guard by life’s ability to surprise you in ways you
never imagined.
驚喜有六個共同的特徵：
Surprise has six common characteristics:
• 不完整的信息
• Incomplete information
• 不幸的時間
• Unfortunate timing
• 糟糕的誘因
• Poor incentives
在資產價格高企且容錯空間極小的情況下，市場將岌岌可危，只要出現任何不完美跡象，就會立刻崩潰。
With assets priced high and no room for error, markets would be
hanging on by a thread, crushed at the first sniff of anything less
than perfection.
諷刺的是，當市場被保證不會崩盤時，或者更實際地說，當人們認為市場不會崩盤時，它們反而更有可能崩盤。
The irony is that when markets are guaranteed not to crash—or more
realistically, when people think that’s the case—they are far more
likely to crash.
單純的穩定概念，就會導致聰明理性的投資者將資產價格推高到足以造成不穩定的程度。
The mere idea of stability causes a smart and rational movement
toward bidding asset prices up high enough to cause instability.
穩定會帶來不穩定。
Stability is destabilizing.
或者換句話說：平靜孕育了瘋狂的種子。一直以來都是如此，而且將永遠如此。
Or, put another way: Calm plants the seeds of crazy. Always has,
always will.
作家凱利·海斯(Kelly
Hayes)曾經寫道："當你沒有接觸過歷史時，一切都會感覺前所未有。"
“Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with
history,” writer Kelly Hayes once wrote.
這是一個非常重要的觀點。
It’s such an important idea.
歷史學家丹·卡林(Dan Carlin)在他的著作《末日即將到來》(The End Is
Always Near)中寫道：
Historian Dan Carlin wrote in his book The End Is Always Near:
與古代人類相比，我們最顯著的差異在於疾病對我們的影响遠遠不如他們。……如果我們現代人要經歷一年古代工業化前人類一直面對的死亡率，我們整個社會都會陷入恐慌。
Pretty much nothing separates us from human beings in earlier eras
than how much less disease affects us. . . . If we moderns lived for
one year with the sort of death rates our pre-industrial age ancestors
perpetually lived with, we’d be in societal shock.
現代生活總體而言是史上最安全，而過去一個世紀所有進步幾乎都來自傳染病的減少。1900
年，大約每 10 萬名美國人中，有 800 人死於傳染病。到 2014
年，這個數字降至每 10 萬人中 46 人，下降了 94%。
Modern life in general is about as safe as it’s ever been. And
effectively all the improvement over the last century has come from a
decline in infectious disease. In 1900 roughly eight hundred per one
hundred thousand Americans died each year from infectious disease. By
2014 that was forty-six per one hundred thousand—a 94 percent decline.
這種下降可能是人類史上最棒的事。
This decline is probably the best thing ever to happen to humanity.
在這個句子後加上『但是』就過頭了，這完全是一件好事。
To follow that sentence with “but” is a step too far. It’s an entirely
good thing.
然而，這也創造了一個異常現象。
However, it creates an anomaly.
傳染病死亡人數的下降，使得世界對應對傳染病的能力下降了——也許不是醫學上的，而是心理上的。一個世紀前，傳染病死亡是悲慘但可以預期的生命的一部分，如今卻成為現代生活中悲慘且不可想像的一部分——這的確是讓新冠肺炎疫情如此令人震驚和不堪重負的原因。
The decline in deaths from infectious diseases has made the world less
equipped to handle them—maybe not medically, but certainly
psychologically. What was a tragic but expected part of life a hundred
years ago is now a tragic and inconceivable part of modern
life—which is indeed what made the COVID-19 pandemic so shocking and
overwhelming.
克拉克·韋爾頓 (Clark Whelton)，曾任紐約市市長艾德·科赫 (Ed Koch)
的演講撰稿人，曾寫道：
Clark Whelton, a former speechwriter for New York City mayor Ed Koch,
once wrote:
對於在 1930 年代和 1940
年代成長的人來說，發現自己受到傳染病威脅是件稀鬆平常的事。腮腺炎、麻疹、水痘和德國麻疹席捲整個學校和城鎮；我全部都得過。小兒麻痺症每年都會造成重大傷亡，導致數千人（大多是兒童）癱瘓或死亡。當時沒有疫苗。成長就意味著必須經歷不可避免的傳染病洗禮。
For those who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing
unusual about finding yourself threatened by contagious disease.
Mumps, measles, chicken pox, and German measles swept through entire
schools and towns; I had all four. Polio took a heavy annual toll,
leaving thousands of people (mostly children) paralyzed or dead. There
were no vaccines. Growing up meant running an unavoidable gauntlet of
infectious disease.
將這與我的世代相比，我們在出生後幾週內就能接種六種疫苗，這就像我們生活在不同的世界。我無法想像兩代人之前的生活是多麼的正常。
Compare this to my generation—who benefit from a half dozen vaccines
within weeks of birth—and it’s like we live in separate worlds. I
can’t fathom what was normal two generations ago.
我猜想，如果 COVID-19 在 1920
年襲擊世界，它只會是歷史書中的一頁，講述著又一場致命的大流行病，夾雜在眾多常見悲劇之中。但由於它在
2020
年相對平靜的時代襲擊，它將留下一個印記，重新塑造一些人對病毒風險的看法。
My guess is if COVID-19 struck the world in 1920, it would be a single
page in the history books about yet another deadly pandemic wedged in
between a long list of common tragedies. But since it struck in the
comparative calm of 2020, it will leave a mark that reshapes how some
people think about viral risk.
令人奇怪的是，需要思考的是海曼·明斯基版本的這個發展。
The odd thing to ponder is the Hyman Minsky version of this
development.
過去五十年缺乏大流行病，是否讓世界更容易受到 COVID-19
的影響？傳染病死亡率的下降，是否讓我們低估了它在現代可能發生的機率？
Did a lack of pandemics over the last fifty years make the world more
vulnerable to COVID-19? Did the decline of infectious disease death
make us underestimate the odds that it could happen in modern times?
COVID
疫情之所以危險，部分原因在於過去一個世紀，我們在預防流行病方面做得太好，以至於
2020
年之前，很少人會認為傳染病會影響到他們的生活。這很難理解。因此，當疫情來臨時，人們完全沒有準備好。好景的諷刺之處在於，它們滋生了自滿情緒，並對警告持懷疑態度。
Part of what made COVID dangerous is that we got so good at preventing
pandemics in the last century that few people before 2020 assumed an
infectious disease would ever impact their lives. It was hard to
comprehend. So people were utterly unprepared for a pandemic when it
arrived. The irony of good times is that they breed complacency and
skepticism of warnings.
流行病學家多年來一直在警告類似 COVID
的事情可能會發生，但大多數人充耳不聞，大眾認為流行病只存在於歷史書和世界其他地方。很難說服一個人他們正處於他們認為已經戰勝的風險之中。
Epidemiologists had been warning something like COVID could happen for
years—but mostly to deaf ears and a public that assumed pandemics were
something that happened only in history books and other parts of the
world. It’s hard to convince someone they’re in danger of a risk they
assume has been defeated.
「隨著公共衛生部門發揮作用，它成為了預算削減的目標，」全國衛生官員協會執行長勞里·弗里曼
(Lori Freeman) 在 2020 年表示。
“As public health did its job, it became a target” of budget cuts,
Lori Freeman, CEO of the National Association of Health Officials,
said in 2020.
平靜種下了瘋狂的種子。這經常發生。
Calm planted the seeds of crazy. And that happens so often.
一個常見的諷刺是：
A common irony goes like this:
• 偏執狂會帶來成功，因為它讓你保持警覺。
• Paranoia leads to success because it keeps you on your toes.
• 但偏執狂很令人感到壓力，所以你一旦取得成功就會很快放棄它。
• But paranoia is stressful, so you abandon it quickly once you
achieve success.
• 現在你已經放棄了讓你成功的東西，你開始走下坡路——這更令人感到壓力。
• Now you’ve abandoned what made you successful and you begin to
decline—which is even more stressful.
這在商業、投資、事業、人際關係中隨處可見。
It happens in business, investing, careers, relationships—all over the
place.
卡爾·榮格(Carl
Jung)有一個叫做「對立轉化」的理論。它的意思是一個事物過度發展就會導致其相反事物的出現。
Carl Jung had a theory called enantiodromia. It’s the idea that an
excess of something gives rise to its opposite.
讓我舉一個來自大自然的例子。
Let me give you an example from Mother Nature.
加州在 2010 年代中期經歷了嚴重的乾旱。然後到了 2017
年，降下了前所未有的雨量。太浩湖的部分地區在幾個月內下了超過 65
英尺的雪，這不是我編的。持續六年的乾旱宣告結束。
California was hit with an epic drought in the mid-2010s. Then 2017
came, dropping a preposterous amount of moisture. Parts of Lake Tahoe
received—I’m not making this up—more than sixty-five feet of snow in a
few months. The six-year drought was declared over.
你可能會想這很棒。但結果卻事與願違。
You’d think that would be great. But it backfired in an unexpected
way.
2017
年破紀錄的雨量導致當年夏天植物生長破紀錄，被稱為超級開花，甚至連沙漠城鎮都被綠色覆蓋。
Record rain in 2017 led to record vegetation growth that summer. It
was called a superbloom, and it caused even desert towns to be covered
in green.
2018
年的乾燥天氣讓所有這些植物都枯死並變成乾燥的引火物。這導致加州發生了有史以來最嚴重的野火。
A dry 2018 meant all that vegetation died and became dry kindling.
That led to some of the biggest wildfires California had ever seen.
因此破紀錄的雨量直接導致破紀錄的野火。
So record rain directly led to record fires.
這種現象早已存在，樹木年輪的紀錄證實了這一點，年輪上記載了暴雨和隨後的火災痕跡。兩者息息相關。美國國家海洋和大氣管理局寫道：「濕潤的一年會減少火災，但也促進植被生長，然而，隨著後續乾燥年份的到來，植被會變得乾燥，從而增加燃料。」
There’s a long history of this, verified by looking at tree rings,
which inscribe both heavy rainfall and subsequent fire scars. The two
go hand in hand. “A wet year reduces fires while increasing vegetation
growth, but then the increased vegetation dries out in subsequent dry
years, thereby increasing the fire fuel,” the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration wrote.
這一點乍看之下並不容易理解，但再次提醒我們：平靜的種子會孕育瘋狂。
That’s hardly intuitive, but here again—calm plants the seeds of
crazy.
平靜種下瘋狂種子的意義重大：它讓我們從根本上低估了事情出錯的可能性以及事情出錯的後果。當人們認為某事最安全時，它反而可能變得最危險。
What calm planting the seeds of crazy does is important: It makes us
fundamentally underestimate the odds of things going wrong, and the
consequences of something going wrong. Things can become the most
dangerous when people perceive them to be the safest.
在奧斯卡頒獎典禮上掌摑克里斯·洛克後，威爾·史密斯向丹佐·華盛頓尋求建議。華盛頓說：「在你最巔峰時刻，要小心。那是惡魔來找你的時候。」
After slapping Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars, Will Smith turned to
Denzel Washington for advice. Washington said, “At your highest
moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”
最後說說為什麼事情往往會失控。樂觀和悲觀總是必須超過看似合理的界限，因為發現可能的界限的唯一方法是稍微越過這些界限。
A final word about why things have a tendency of getting out of hand.
It’s that optimism and pessimism always have to overshoot what seems
reasonable, because the only way to discover the limits of what’s
possible is to venture a little way past those limits.
傑瑞·宋飛曾擁有電視上最受歡迎的節目。然後他退出了。
Jerry Seinfeld had the most popular show on TV. Then he quit.
他後來表示，他之所以在節目如日中天時結束它，是因為他認為，了解頂點的唯一方法是經歷衰退，而他對此沒有興趣。也許節目會繼續上升，也許不會。他並不在乎答案。
He later said the reason he killed his show while it was thriving was
because the only way to know where the top is, is to experience the
decline, which he had no interest in doing. Maybe the show could keep
rising, maybe it couldn’t. He was fine not knowing the answer.
如果你想知道為什麼經濟和市場總是超乎常理，從繁榮到蕭條，從泡沫到崩盤，原因就在於很少人擁有
Seinfeld
的思維。我們堅持要了解頂點在哪裡，而找到頂點的唯一方法就是不斷地推進，直到我們走得太遠，然後回頭說：『啊，我想這就是頂點了。』
If you want to know why there’s a long history of economies and
markets blowing past the boundaries of sanity, bouncing from boom to
bust, bubble to crash, it’s because so few people have Seinfeld’s
mentality. We insist on knowing where the top is, and the only way to
find it is to keep pushing until we’ve gone too far, when we can look
back and say, “Ah, I guess that was the top.”
股票是否被高估了？比特幣值多少？特斯拉能漲到多高？你無法用公式來回答這些問題。這些都是由他人願意在某個特定時間點支付的價格決定的
-
他們的感受，他們想要相信的東西，以及說故事的人的說服力。而故事一直在改變。你無法預測它們，就像你無法預測三年後的心情一樣。
Are stocks overvalued? What is bitcoin worth? How high can Tesla
go?
You can’t answer those questions with a formula. They’re driven by
whatever someone else is willing to pay for them in any given
moment—how they feel, what they want to believe, and how persuasive
the storytellers are. And the stories change all the time. They can’t
be predicted any more than you can predict what kind of mood you’ll be
in three years from now.
如果一項投資可能具有上漲的潛力，就會有人去測試它以找出答案。人們致富的渴望遠遠超過容易且明顯的機會數量。因此，如果你放了一個標誌寫著「這個箱子裡可能存在一個機會」，就總會有人打開箱子。也就是說：我們必須找出頂端在哪裡。
If an investment might have potential to go higher, somebody somewhere
will test it to find out. People’s desire to get rich far exceeds the
number of easy and obvious opportunities. So if you put up a sign that
says “There might be an opportunity in this box,” somebody will always
open the box. Which is to say: we have to identify where the top is.
這就是為什麼市場不會保持在理性的範圍內，以及為什麼它們總是過度悲觀和樂觀。
That’s why markets don’t stay within the limits of sanity, and why
they always overdose on pessimism and optimism.
識別頂峰的唯一途徑是推動市場超越數字不再有意義的點，甚至超越人們對這些數字的信念，只有這樣才能知道我們已經耗盡了市場的所有潛在機會。
The only way to know we’ve exhausted all potential opportunity from
markets—the only way to identify the top—is to push them not only past
the point where the numbers stop making sense, but beyond the stories
people believe about those numbers.
當輪胎公司研發出新輪胎，想要知道它的極限時，過程很簡單。他們把新輪胎裝在車上，一直開到爆胎為止。市場為了了解其他投資者能承受的極限，也做同樣的事。
When a tire company develops a new tire and wants to know its
limitations, the process is simple. They put it on a car and run it
until it blows up. Markets, desperate to know the limits of what other
investors can endure, do the same thing.
一直以來都是這樣，以後也將會如此。
Always been the case, always will be.
關於這件事，你可以做兩件事。
There are two things you can do about it.
第一件事是接受瘋狂不代表壞。瘋狂很正常；超過瘋狂的程度，依然很正常。
One is accepting that crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal;
beyond the point of crazy is normal.
每隔幾年，就會有人宣稱市場不再運作了——市場都是投機行為，或是脫離基本面。但一直以來都是這樣。人們沒有失去理智；他們只是在尋找其他投資者願意相信的界線。
Every few years there seems to be a declaration that markets don’t
work anymore—that they’re all speculation or detached from
fundamentals. But it’s always been that way. People haven’t lost their
minds; they’re just searching for the boundaries of what other
investors are willing to believe.
第二個是意識到「足夠」的力量。要更像《宋飛正傳》。投資人查馬斯·帕里哈皮提亞
(Chamath Palihapitiya) 曾經被問到如何獲得最高報酬，他表示：
The second is realizing the power of enough. Being more like Seinfeld.
Investor Chamath Palihapitiya was once asked about earning the highest
returns, and remarked:
我真的非常希望能以每年 15% 的速度複利增長。因為如果我能持續 50
年，那將是巨大的。穩紮穩打，解決艱難的問題。
I would really love to just compound at fifteen percent per year.
Because if I can do that for fifty years that’s just enormous. Just
slow and steady against hard problems.
也許外面有更多潛力，但說聲「你知道嗎，我很滿意目前的風險程度，我很樂意觀看這場遊戲的發展。」也無妨。並非每個人都能做到
- 而且市場平均而言永遠做不到 - 但我們中更多人應該嘗試。
Maybe there’s more potential out there, but it’s fine to say, “You
know what, I’m pretty happy with this level of risk and I’m fine just
watching this game play out.” Not everyone can do it—and markets on
average can never do it—but more of us should try.
接下來，讓我們談談另一個瘋狂的問題：人們傾向於想讓好東西變得更大、更快。
Next, let’s talk about another wild problem: people’s tendency to want
to make good things bigger and faster.