原文来自Morgan Housel的博客。这是我看到的关于信心最深刻的思考。最高级的信心帮助你的思考贴近事物的客观本质，不高也不低。所以，最高级的信心是理性。但是，保持在最高级其实很难做到，因为认知就是无知到有知到无知的循环。对了，高级的信心需要一些数学知识。Enjoy!
Take a person who is confident in something they know nothing about. We all know them.
让我们找一个对自己一无所知的事情充满信心的人。我们都见过这样的人。
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.
他们对某些事物更有信心，超过了他们真正有资格评价的事物。询问医生如何避免癌症，他们可能会说，
“
有一些常识性做法，但这是一个复杂的话题，我们仍需要数十年的研究才能真正理解这个问题。即便如此，也主要是运气不好。
“
然后问他们如何避免下一次经济衰退，他们可能会用非黑即白的语言告诉你美联储应该做些什么。
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.
让我们称之为第一级信心。你对某些事情充满信心，因为你不了解它因而完全不知道自己应该有多少信心。它源于直觉，以及相信你在一个领域的智慧足以证明你在另一个领域的专业知识。这是一团糟的事情，并且很少有人意识到他们的失败是因为这些缺乏专业知识的信念已经潜意识的印在了他们的脑子里面了。
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.
如果你对与你的专业领域沾点边的话题充满信心，那么我们就可以称之为第二级信心。假如你是建造汽车的专家。然后有人问你特斯拉股票是否被高估了。既然你对建造汽车有很多了解，那么你就有资格发表意见。但汽车制造是衡量汽车公司价值的数千个变量之一
—
而且最重要的变量是
“
市场当下的情绪
”
，这不是以精准为职业的工程师擅长的。你会轻而易举的认为你在一个领域的技能会使你成为相邻领域的专家。危险在于，相邻领域实际可能没什么共同之处。
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.
第三级信心是那些依靠他们不理解的原理或从未想过的东西的专家。棒球运动员可能对体育场经济学一无所知。木匠可能不知道承重物理学的精确计算。两者的职业都依赖于这些事情，但如果你向他们询问这些问题， 他们可能回复
“
别人会去搞定
”
，或者
“
我只是按照自己的方式行事，而且看起来没问题。
”
他们有信心事情会如其所愿，但是并不愿意去控制结果。
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.
第四级：你已经阅读并理解了话题的核心原则。这让你有信心知道它是如何工作的。但是你还没有意识到在大多数领域中重要的是核心原则的组合和排列，而真正重要的是规则之外的例外情况。四级信心的事情比如：雄心勃勃的大二学生在阅读完“聪明的投资者”这本书后就创立自己的对冲基金。
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.
第五级：你在一个主题上有真正的经验，具备有价值的第一手知识。但你错误地认为你的经历是正常的和可重复的。现实世界的经验让你相信你的观点是准确的，但由于你看到的内容比你所阅读的内容更可信，因此与没有经验但思想开放的人相比，这可能是一种负担。特别是当你的有限经验处于市场情况极端起伏的时期，则尤其如此。
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.
第六级：你已经在自己的领域中看到并经历了足够的成功和失败来扼杀你的信心。没有出现任何模式
;
一切看起来像随机的机会。你是一个愤世嫉俗的人。很多人都被困在这里。
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.
第七级：你已经意识到：信心不是非黑即白，全有或全无。这是关于赔率和百分比。你不知道如何计算这些几率
—
当你尝试时，他们会倾向于你想要的结果。但是，不管怎么说， 你终于可以以一种富有成效方式来思考信心了。
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.
第八级：你发现了基础概率的概念，或者你知道结果的几率应该从之前所有其他尝试的几率开始，然后根据你想要预测的事物的特征来调整。比如说你准备参加第一次马拉松比赛。假如曾经尝试过马拉松比赛的人中有
50
％未能完成，那么就从这个概率开始，然后针对你拥有的任何独特特征进行调整。
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.
第九级：你现在拥有足够的技能来让事情适得其反。你正在根据基本概率来计算概率，但你评估自己个人独特程度的能力很糟糕。如果有一半人无法完成马拉松比赛，那么你说，
“
好吧，但我的体型比普通马拉松运动员好
3
倍
”
，实际上你差的很远。所以现在你有一个无用的预测指标，但你对它非常有信心
—
比以往更有信心
—
因为你正在使用数学。不幸的是一大部分的专业人士停留在这里。
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.
第十级：如果你足够幸运地突破九级
—
这往往需要一个容忍无所作为的环境并说
“
我不知道
” —
你会发现当你和平均水平大不相同的情况很少见。十有之九的唯一信心就是，你预测某事的能力与其他人预测事物的能力差不多。
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.
第十一级：当你对一个不寻常的结果充满信心的罕见情况是：你以基本概率开始，并且根据数据驱动的研究进行调整，发现这些研究所度量的和你期望的独特特征相吻合。如果资产通常每年回报率为
6
％，那么只有当有研究表明，当目前正在发生的事情
—
低估值，高增长等
—
出现时，它往往会回报更多，那么你才会有信心相信。而且，回报表现优异的预期规模是和过去发生的事情相符的，就像它自己的基准概率一样。
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.
第十二级：即使你有第十一级信心，你也知道信心是一种概率游戏，几乎所有概率都低于
100
。
所以即使你有信心，你也会准备出错的情况，给错误和谦虚以空间。这让你有信心，你可以存活足够长的时间来赌下一个你有信心的东西。
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.
第十三级：你变得如此善于理性地分配信心以至于成功多失败少。成功越多，你对技能的信心就越大。你对技能的信心越大，你认为可以将它们应用到其他领域，包括你不了解的领域。
Level Fourteen: See Level One. Right back to where we started.
第十三级：参加见第一级。你回到了我们开始的地方。
最后上广告，如果你对你做到事情有信心，你应该找我们谈谈：-）
