打开电视机,几乎每档节目你都能看到专家在侃侃而谈,大到解决世界经济危机、股市起伏,小到高考填表志愿、省钱诀窍,专家无所不在,无所不能。但似乎没有人想过,专家真的有这么大的本事吗?《群众的智慧》这本书告诉我们,专家其实也就那么回事。
在这本令人赞叹不绝的书中,《纽约客》杂志的专栏作家索罗维基致力探讨一个认知上虽很单纯,但实质上却极具复杂度的想法:一大群人比一小群菁英份子还来得聪明,不论这群菁英份子有多聪慧,前者更擅长解决问题,更能酝酿出革新,更能作出智慧决策,甚至能更准确地预测未来。这些似乎与我们直觉不符的想法,可以伸展出许许多多的分枝,深入商业运作、知识的累积、经济体系的整合、乃至我们的每日生活之中。作者带领读者穿越一个又一个的领域,如流行文化、心理学、生物学、经济行为学、人工智能、军事历史以及政治理论等,来证明这个想法在真实世界里是如何运作的。 .
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More important, there’s no real evidence that one can become expert in something as broad as “decision-making” or “policy” or “strategy.” Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management; these are skills that yield to application, hard work and native talent, but forecasting an uncertain future and deciding the best course of action in the face of that future are much less likely to do so. And much of what we’ve seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled decision-maker.
更重要的是,没有实质性证据表明一个人能够在非常宽泛的范围成为专家,如“决策”、“政策”或“战略”等等。将才能用诸于实践、努力工作、天赋这些因素对汽车维修、驾驶飞机、滑雪,可能甚至于管理技能的水平都有影响作用,但这些因素对于预测不确定的未来,并就迎接未来定下一个最佳行动方案则没有多少作用。迄今为止,我们看到的一切都表明,与那些即使是最熟练的决策者相比,一大群由各式各样的个体组成的人会得出一个更好、更能经得起考验的预测,并作出更明智的决定。
We’re all familiar with the absurd predictions that business titans have made. Harry Warner of Warner Brothers pronouncing in 1927, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”, or Thomas Watson of IBM declaring in 1943, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” These can be written off as amusing 1)anomalies. What can’t be written off though is the 2)dismal performance record of most experts. Between 1984 and 1999, for instance, almost 90% of mutual fund managers underperformed the Wiltshire 5000 Index, a relatively low bar. The numbers for bond fund managers are similar. In the most recent 5-year period, more than 95% of all managed bond funds underperformed the market. After a survey of expert forecasts and analyses in a wide variety of fields, Wharton professor J. Scott Armstrong wrote, “I could find no studies that showed an important advantage for expertise”.
我们都还记得那些商界巨头作过的荒谬预测。华纳兄弟公司的哈利·华纳在1927年宣布:“有谁会愿意听电影演员开口说话?”而IBM公司的托马斯·沃森则在1943年宣称:“我认为全世界对电脑的需求量大概是五台左右。”当然,我们可以把这些看成是可笑的异数而付之一笑。但对于大多数专家让人沮丧的表现来说,我们就不能一笑了之了。举例说,从1984年到1999年间,约90%的共同基金经理的表现比威尔逊5000指数还要差,而这个指数相对来说已经不算是什么高标准了。债券基金经理的表现也不相上下。在过去的五年里,95%以上管理基金的表现不如市场的整体表现。沃顿商学院的J·斯科特·阿姆斯特朗教授在对广泛领域的专家预测和分析作了调查后写道:“我发现没有一个研究显示专家意见有显著的优势。”
James Shanteau is one of the country’s leading thinkers on the nature of expertise. Shanteau recounts a series of studies that have found experts’ judgments to be neither consistent with the judgments of other experts in the field nor internally consistent. Experts are also surprisingly bad at what social scientists call “3)calibrating” their judgments. If your judgments are well calibrated, then you have a sense of how likely it is that your judgment is correct. But experts are like normal people—they 4)routinely overestimate the likelihood that they’re right.
詹姆斯·尚托是美国在研究专家意见特点方面的领军人物之一。尚托列举了一系列的研究结果。这些研究显示,专家的判断既不与同领域其他专家的意见一致,也与自己的预测相矛盾。而专家在社会学家称之为“调整”自己判断方面简直是糟透了。如果一个人的判断能够作很好地调整、校正,那他就会知道自己判断的准确性。可专家也跟常人一样——他们通常高估了自己的判断能力。
We know that the group’s decision will consistently be better than most of the people in the group and that it will be better decision after decision, while the performance of human experts will vary dramatically depending on the problem they’re asked to solve. So it is unlikely that one person over time will do better than the group. Now it’s possible that a small number of 5)genuine experts do exist. The problem is there is no easy way to identify them. Past performance, as we are often told, is no guarantee of future results, and there are so many would-be experts out there that distinguishing between those who are lucky and those who are genuinely good is often a near impossible task.
我们知道群体决定总是比群内大部分个人的决定要好,而且群体决定是一个比一个好,而专家的表现则极大地取决于他们碰到的问题。所以,从长远的角度看,个人的表现是不可能胜于群体的。当然,极少数真正的专家可能是存在的,但问题是没有什么轻而易举的方式让人辨别谁是真正的专家。因为我们常常被提醒说,一个人以前的表现并不能代表以后的表现。况且,还有许多自以为是专家的人,这样,要在那些只不过是运气不错和那些真正有本事的人之间分出个子丑寅卯来几乎是不可能的事。
We think that experts will, in some sense, identify themselves, announcing their presence and demonstrating their expertise by their level of confidence. But it doesn’t work that way. Experts are no more confident in their abilities than average people are, which is to say that they are overconfident like everyone else, but no more so. Similarly, there is very little correlation between experts’ self-assessment and their performance. “Knowing” and “knowing that you know” are two very different skills. If this is the case, then why do we cling so tightly to the idea that the right expert will save us? In a sense the crowd is blind to its own wisdom.
我们以为从某个方面上说,专家会自我昭示,向大家表明自己的专家身份,以他们自信的程度来表明自己的水平。但现实并不是这样的。专家对于自己的能力并不比平常人有更多的自信,也就是说,他们就像其他人一样过分自信。同样,专家的自我评估与他们的表现之间是没有任何关联的。“明白”与“知道自己明白”是完全两码事。如果事情真的是这样,那么我们为什么要死死抱住合适的专家能够拯救我们的想法呢?从某种意义上说,大众对自己的智慧视而不见。
Again, trying to find smart people will not lead you 6)astray; trying to find the smartest person will.
我重申,想找一些聪明的人不会让你迷失方向,但如果你要找到最聪明的人,那你就会迷途了。
翻译:丁一 
