原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU1MDQwNTgzMg==&mid=2247491096&idx=1&sn=3d42b1e087bce5fd9abb5709be13b3ca&chksm=fba04dbfccd7c4a9f5b16f775c222dea079ced95f8e06d8ac200c87846007b27a72f363b1612#rd
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感谢思维导图作者
Rena,坐标墨尔本的留学生,爱笑爱摄影爱看书
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听力|精读|翻译|词组
A question of judgment
判断力
英文部分选自经济学人20200718期Business版块
Bartleby
巴托比专栏
A question of judgment
判断力
A quality that is hard to define but important to possess
难以定义却非常重要的品质
The pandemic has required many people to make difficult judgments. Politicians have had to decide which restrictions to impose on citizens’ behaviour and individuals were forced to assess how much personal risk to take. Managers, faced with tough calls like which parts of their operations to close, have not been spared.
大流行病需要许多人做出艰难的判断。政治家必须决定对公民行为施加哪些限制,而个人则不得不评估要承担多少个人风险。经理们也面临着艰难的抉择——哪些业务要关闭,哪些业务则要继续运营。
Good judgment is a quality everyone would like to have. But it is remarkably difficult to define precisely, and many people are not sure whether they personally possess it. Sir Andrew Likierman of the London Business School has spent a long time talking to leaders in a wide range of fields, from business and the army to the law and medicine, in an effort to create a framework for understanding judgment.
良好的判断力是人人都希望拥有的品质,但是何为良好判断力却难以精准定义,很多人也难以判断自己是否拥有这种能力。伦敦商学院的安德鲁·利基尔曼爵士(Sir Andrew Likierman)花了很长时间与企业、军队、法律和医学等多个领域的业界领袖交谈,以期建立一个理解判断力的框架。
First he had to define the word. He suggests that judgment is “the combination of personal qualities with relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and take decisions”. And he argues that, thus defined, judgment involves a process—taking in information, deciding whom and what to trust, summarising one’s personal knowledge, checking any prior beliefs or feelings, summarising the available choices and then making the decision. At each stage, decision-makers must ask themselves questions, such as whether they have the relevant experience and expertise to make their choice, and whether the option they favour is practical.
首先,必须要定义何为判断力。利基尔曼爵士认为,判断力是“个人素质与相关知识和经验融合而成的观点和决策”。他认为,在此定义下,判断力包含了一个过程:获取信息、确定值得信任的人和对象、总结个人知识、确定优先的信念或感受,总结可用选项并做出决策。在每个环节,决策者都必须自问,比如自己是否具有做出选择所需的相关的经验和专业知识,以及他们偏好的选择是否可行。
Expertise can be useful in making judgments. But it is not the same thing. “Academics have expertise,” Sir Andrew observes. “They don’t necessarily have judgment.” People with judgment know when they are out of their depth in making a decision and typically then seek the advice of someone who has the right background and knowledge.
专业知识有助于做出判断,但是专业知识并不等同于判断力。安德鲁爵士评论道:“学者们具有专业知识,但不一定有判断力。”有判断力的人清楚自己何时无法做决定,然后通常会征求有适当背景和知识的人的意见。
It is, of course, possible to follow all these steps and still make the wrong choice. But Sir Andrew argues that a sensible process improves the chance of getting it right. The temptation is to look at people’s track records when assessing when they have good judgment, but luck may have played a huge part. “While good judgment is important to success,” Sir Andrew cautions, “success is not a signal that there has been good judgment.”
当然,即便你遵循了所有步骤却仍可能做出错误的决定。但安德鲁爵士认为合理的步骤可以提高做出正确决定的概率。评估一个人是否拥有良好的判断力,看他的最佳表现是个不错的办法,但也可能是运气起了很大的作用。安德鲁先生提醒到:“虽然良好的判断力对成功至关重要,但成功并不意味着个人拥有良好的判断力”。
注:
Track records:the best recorded performance in a particular athletics event at a particular track;the past achievements or performance of a person, organization, or product.
The degree of judgment required tends to increase as people take on more responsibility. Those with routine tasks generally have limited scope for judgment. Line supervisors have some discretion. For a chief executive, the proportion of decisions involving judgment is high. Deciding not to take action is also a judgment with potentially serious consequences (for example, “I won’t get vaccinated” or “I won’t pay my bills”). The world is full of people whose lack of judgment brought their careers or personal life crashing down. Many made the common mistake of assuming everything was fine.
一个人承担的责任越多,对判断力的需求程度就越大。那些完成常规任务的人通常判断力有限。生产线主管具有一定的判断力。而作为总经理,与判断有关的决策占比就相当之高了。决定不采取行动同样也是一种可能带来严重后果的判断 (比如,“我不会接种疫苗”或“我不会支付账单”)。这个世界上有很多人因为缺乏判断力使他们的事业或生活江河日下。很多人都犯了同一个错误:认为一切都没有问题。
Some people think that good judgment is innate. Sir Andrew accepts that some individuals are born with the ability to listen, be self-aware and better understand other people: all qualities that make good judgment easier. People with good judgment tend to have a breadth of experiences and relationships that enables them to recognise parallels or analogies that others miss. The ability to be detached, both intellectually and emotionally, is also a vital component.
一些人认为良好的判断力是与生俱来的。安德鲁先生也承认某些人一生下来就有良好的倾听能力、自知之明以及理解他人的能力,而这些品质让人更容易做出好的判断。具备良好判断力的人往往拥有丰富的经历和人际关系,使他们能够识别出其他人忽略了的事情间的相似之处。此外,保持智力上和情感上互相独立、不偏不倚的能力也是良好判断力所需的重要品质。
Others may have the wrong sort of characteristics; a tendency to ignore others, stick to rules irrespective of context, rush into action without reflection and struggle to make up their minds. Many leaders make bad judgments because they unconsciously filter the information they receive or are not sufficiently critical of what they hear or read. The danger is that people ignore insights that they don’t want to hear, a tendency that can increase with age.
另一些人的性格可能不利于做出良好判断,比如容易固执己见、墨守成规、不管来龙去脉就慌忙下结论、仓促行事或犹豫不决。很多领导者之所以会做出错误的判断是因为他们会不知不觉过滤一些接收到的信息,或是对其所见所闻缺乏足够的重视。危险之处在于人们会忽略自己不想听到的内容,这一倾向随着年龄增长会愈发明显。
As artificial intelligence gets used for more and more routine tasks in the service sector, exercising judgment may be one area where humans retain an edge over machines. This is far from certain, however. What people perceive as good judgment may stem from the ability to spot certain cues in the environment. This ability may be unconscious, just as a dog can catch a Frisbee in mid-air without knowing how to calculate wind speed and air resistance.
随着人工智能在服务行业的日常工作中得到越来越多的应用,做出判断或许是人类仍保持优势的一个领域。然而,这还远非定论。良好的判断力或许源于在环境中发现特定线索的能力。这种能力可能是下意识的行为,正如狗能在不知道如何计算风速和阻力的情况下接住半空中的飞盘。
With enough practice, machines may be able to recognise these implicit cues and thus display the equivalent of good judgment. But then, perhaps humans can be taught, too. In the long run one of the trickiest aspects of human judgment may be knowing precisely when to let machines take decisions and when to leave it to people.
经过足够的练习,机器也许能够识别这些隐含的线索,从而做出良好判断。不过,到了那时,人类的判断力也能培养获得。长远来看,人类判断力最棘手的问题可能是到底何时让机器做出决定,而又何时听从人类的选择。
翻译组:
Hannah,女,教书匠,经济学人粉丝
Hikali,女,准爱岛异术家,用力生活
Zoey,女,咨询行业,爱挠头的英文码字工
业
校对组:
Elle, 女, 靠着土豆腿前行的小土豆
VeRy,男,电气民工,经济学人资浅爱好者
Monica,女,MTIer,死不悔改的理想主义者
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观点|评论|思考
本次感想
Forest,女,自由职业,爱树的人
“……学研究似乎并不需要任何极高的特殊天赋……它是一门容易的学科,但这个学科中很少有人能够出类拔萃!这个悖论的解释也许在于杰出的……学家应该同时具有各种罕见的天赋…….他必须根据一般性来深入思考特殊性,并在思绪奔放的同时触及抽象与具体。他必须根据过去,着眼未来而研究现在。他必须考虑到人性或人的制度的每一部分。他必须同时保持坚定而客观的情绪,要像艺术家一样超然而不流俗,但有时又要像政治家一样脚踏实地。”
这是作为哲学家和经济学家的凯恩斯用来描述经济学家所需禀赋的一段话。异曲同工之言可见查理芒格所谓的多模型思维(即要想成为一个有智慧的人,你必须拥有多个模型。而且,你必须将你的经验,无论是间接的,还是直接的,都放到构成这些模型的网格上。)
明智来之不易,专业理论有帮助,然而又不止于此,说到底还是得通达。比如面对大流行病,要不要戴口罩?看似这是应该由个人决定的小问题。不戴口罩会增加自己传染的风险(这个是不戴口罩的时候就应该愿意承担的风险了),但因此增加“别人”被传染的风险却可能被个人忽略。如果能找出所有这些“别人”,并能对他们进行精确支付以弥补其损失,那这个人不戴口罩就应该是合理的。可惜这一点并不那么容易做到,甚至是不可能做到,或者需要无比高的不必要的成本才能做到。对这一问题的思考涉及专业理论的简单运用(经济学中的“负外部性”的概念),判断力可以从这个概念衍生出来。当然这里还需要其他学科的理论知识,比如大家都不要戴口罩,最终对于所有人会不会成本更低?真的有必要费这么大麻烦么,不就是戴个口罩吗?
什么专业理论都不是真理本身,都没办法直接套用。而且一种专业知识也只是从一个侧面看世界,更好的判断力,需要综合各种知识、需要灵活性和创造性。而面对机器,我们唯一能够出其右的大概也就是这种洞明和练达。
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