Part 2: My Most Fundamental Life Principles

第二章 我最重要的生活原则

Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way possible.

时间宛如一条长河，你在顺流而下的过程中邂逅各种现实的经历，并需要你做出各种选择。你无法阻止河水的流动，就像你无法避免各种现实情况不期而遇一样，只能以力所能及的办法化解。

That is what this part is all about.

这就是本章想谈的内容。

Where I’m Coming From

我来自何处

Since we are all products of our genes and our environments and approach the world with biases, I think it is relevant for me to tell you a bit of my background so that you can know where I’m coming from.

我们都是基因和环境的产物，身处的世界充满歧视，我觉得有必要跟你们谈一点我的个人背景，便于各位了解我来自何处。

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood on Long Island, the only son of a jazz musician and a stay-at-home mom. I was a very ordinary kid, and a less-than-ordinary student. I liked playing with my friends— for example, touch football in the street—and I didn't like the school part of school, partly because I had, and still have, a bad rote memory and partly because I couldn’t get excited about forcing myself to remember what others wanted me to remember without understanding what all this work was going to get me. In order to be motivated, I needed to work for what I wanted, not for what other people wanted me to do. And in order to be successful, I needed to figure out for myself how to get what I wanted, not remember the facts I was being told to remember.

我在长岛的一个中产阶级社区长大，父亲是位爵士音乐家，母亲足不出户，是位家庭主妇。我呢，曾是个很普通的小孩，但在学校里又是个不那么听话的学生。那时我老和一帮朋友们厮混，在街上踢踢足球什么的。并不是很喜欢学校上课的方式，可能是因为我一直不擅长死记硬背教科书上的内容，当然我现在依旧如此，还可能是因为如果别人要我在完全没搞清楚是怎么一回事的情况下就囫囵吞枣，死记硬背，我可真是一点都提不起兴趣。做事要想有干劲，得干些我自己想做的事情，而非他人逼迫我为之。想要做成一件事，我得弄清楚获得成功的过程，而非强记那些没用的知识点。

Rote memory is memory for things that don’t have an intrinsic logic for being what they are, like a random series of numbers, words in a foreign language and people’s names (all of which I have trouble with). On the other hand, I have a great memory for things that make sense in a context. For example, I can tell you what happened in every year in the economy and markets since the mid-1960s and how many things work.

死记硬背式的记忆是机械记忆，没有实质内容之间的内在逻辑，比如一串随机数字，外语单词，人名（这个我感到最头疼了）。可另一方面，我对语境中有意义的内容记得很清楚，例如我能告诉你自60年代中期以来每年在经济和市场方面发生过什么大事，哪些事起到了作用。

One thing I wanted was spending money. So I had a newspaper route, I mowed lawns, I shoveled the snow off driveways, I washed dishes in a restaurant, and, starting when I was 12 years old, I caddied.

我想花钱，那就得赚钱，所以那时我送过报纸、除过草坪、铲过公路上的积雪、在餐馆刷过盘子。12岁那年，我开始做高尔夫球童。

It was the 1960s. At the time the stock market was booming and everyone was talking about it, especially the people I caddied for. So I started to invest. The first stock I bought was a company called Northeast Airlines, and the only reason I bought it was that it was the only company I had heard of that was trading for less than $5 per share, so I could buy more shares, which I figured was a good thing. It went up a lot. It was about to go broke but another company acquired it, so it tripled. I made money because I was lucky, though I didn’t see it that way then. I figured that this game was easy. After all, with thousands of companies listed in the newspaper, how difficult could it be to find at least one that would go up? By comparison to my other jobs, this way of making money seemed much more fun, a lot easier, and much more lucrative. Of course, it didn’t take me long to lose money in the markets and learn about how difficult it is to be right and the costs of being wrong.

大概是在60年代吧，股市行情欣欣向荣，家家户户都在聊炒股，而我做球童时的那些雇主们更是热衷炒股，耳濡目染，我开始了第一笔投资。当时我买的第一支股票叫东北航空公司，选择的原因也只是因为在每股5块钱以内的公司里，我就只听说过这家公司。不过也好，至少我能多买几股，行情还是很棒的，因为这家公司刚要破产就被另一家公司收购了，市值瞬间涨到了从前的三倍，我靠这点运气也算小赚一笔，当然那时我还不清楚这些事情背后的具体原因。看起来这游戏不难玩，报纸上登的每天那么多公司都在上市，找家会涨的公司有什么难的？再说了，和我做过的那些工作比起来，这种赚钱方式既有趣又容易，还能赚更多钱，何乐不为？不过没多久我就开始亏钱了，原来选对股票并非易事，选错了代价也挺不菲的。

So what I really wanted to do now was beat the market. I just had to figure out how to do it.

好了，我现在觉得我真正想做的是击败市场，那就得搞清楚怎么来做了。

The pursuit of this goal taught me:

在实现这个目标的过程中，我学到几件事情：

1) It isn't easy for me to be confident that my opinions are right.In the markets, you can do ahuge amount of work and still be wrong.

1）坚信自己的观点都是对的可不是件容易的事情。股市里，做再多都可能是于事无补。

2) Bad opinions can be very costly.Most people come up with opinions and there’s no cost tothem. Not so in the market. This is why I have learned to be cautious. No matter how hard I work, I really can’t be sure.

2）糟糕的意见代价昂贵。很多人给出的观点和看法都是零成本，但在股市里可就不一样了，这就是为什么我已经学会了谨慎。因为再我怎么努力，我都无法100%肯定市场走向。

3) The consensus is often wrong, so I have to be an independent thinker.To make any money,you have to be right when they’re wrong.

3）大家的共识经常都是错的，要做独立的思考者。要想赚钱，那就得在别人都选错时，你选对才行。

So …

因此……

3.1) I worked for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do.For that reason, I never feltthat I had to do anything. All the work I ever did was just what I needed to do to get what I wanted. Since I always had the prerogative to strive for what I wanted, I never felt forced to do anything.

3.1）我干我自己想做的事情，而非他人逼迫我为之。这样我就不会感到被动，因为我所做的每件事都是为了达成自己想要实现的目标。对于我想要的东西我也一直拥有不去争取的自由，所以才不会感到被胁迫。

3.2) I came up with the best independent opinions I could muster to get what I wanted.Forexample, when I wanted to make money in the markets, I knew that I had to learn about companies to assess the attractiveness of their stocks. At the time, Fortune magazine had a little tear- out coupon that you could mail in to get the annual reports of any companies on the Fortune 500, for free. So I ordered all the annual reports and worked my way through the most interesting ones and formed opinions about which companies were exciting.

3.2）我把我能想到的最好的、独立的观点汇聚到一起，用以实现我的目标。例如，我想在股市里赚钱，我就得了解公司，从而评估该公司股票的吸引力。那时，《财富》杂志每期都附赠优惠券，可以撕下来邮寄给杂志，免费获取世界500强各企业的年度报告。我订了所有企业的年度报告，找出我认为最有趣的公司，形成自己的观点，选出自认为最有吸引力的公司。

> The way I learn is to immerse myself in something, which prompts questions, which I answer, prompting more questions, until I reach a conclusion.

我采取浸泡式学习方法，提出问题，给出解答，提出更多问题，直到得到结论。

3.3) I stress-tested my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong.I never cared much about others’ conclusions—only forthe reasoning that led to these conclusions. That reasoning had to make sense to me. Through this process, I improved my chances of being right, and I learned a lot from a lot of great people.

3.3）我对自己的观点进行压力测试，把我认识的最聪明的人都找来挑毛病，这样才能找出我观点中错误的地方。我不理会他们的结论，我只在意他们得出这些结论的推理过程，这才是对我有意义的地方。通过学习他们的思维过程，我提升了成功的几率，从成功人士身上受益匪浅。

This included my retail stockbroker, the people I was caddying for, even my local barber, who was equally engrossed in the stock market. (It wasn’t as precocious as it sounds. At the time, instead of talking about the Yankees, everyone was talking about stocks. That was the world I grew up in.)

这群人包括我的股票经纪人，做球童时的雇主，甚至当地的理发师，他那时跟我一样专注于股票市场。这不是因为我早熟，因为那个年代大家除了谈论扬基棒球队外，就都是谈论股票了，我就是在这样的环境下长大的。

3.4) I remained wary about being overconfident, and I figured out how to effectively deal with my not knowing.I dealt with my not knowing by either continuing to gather information until Ireached the point that I could be confident or by eliminating my exposure to the risks of not knowing.

3.4）我不敢太过自信，而是想办法有效处理我所不知道的事情。处理未知的事物我会不断搜集信息直到我对之胸有成竹，或降低遭遇“不知”情况的风险。

Sometimes when I know that I don’t know which way the coin is going to flip, I try to position myself so that it won’t have an impact on me either way. In other words, I don’t make an inadvertent bet. I try to limit my bets to the limited number of things I am confident in.

有时当我不知道硬币会投向哪面，我会选择重新给自己定位，这样正反都不会有影响。换句话说，我不打不加思考的赌，只对某些十分有信心的事情下赌注。

3.5) I wrestled with my realities, reflected on the consequences of my decisions, and learned and improved from this process.

3.5）我同现实展开斗争，反思所做决定带来的后果，从中学习与提高。

By doing these things, I learned how important and how liberating it is to think for myself.

就这样，我明白了独立思考有多么重要，多么自由。

In a nutshell, this is the whole approach that I believe will work best for you—the best summary of what I want the people who are working with me to do in order to accomplish great things.I want you to workfor yourself, to come up with independent opinions, to stress-test them, to be wary about being overconfident, and to reflect on the consequences of your decisions and constantly improve.

简而言之，这是我认为最适合你的方法，这也是我希望工作伙伴想要成功所需做到的：为自己工作，形成独立的观点，对之进行压力测试，不要过度自信，反思所做决定带来的后果，不断提升。

After I graduated from high school, I went to a local college that I barely got in to. I loved it, unlike high school, because I could learn about things that interested me; I studied because I enjoyed it, not because I had to.

高中毕业后我在本地上的大学，差点没考上。我不喜欢我的高中学校，可我很爱大学的生活，因为我能学习我真正感兴趣的东西，我学习，因为我享受学习的过程，而非被迫学之。

At that time the Beatles had made a trip to India to learn how to meditate, which triggered my interest, so I learned how to meditate. It helped me think more clearly and creatively, so I’m sure that enhanced my enjoyment of, and success at, learning.Unlike in high school, in college I did very well.

那时，披头士乐队在印度旅行，为的是学习如何冥想，我很感兴趣，于是也学了怎么冥想。得益于此，我思考问题时更清晰更富有创造力，也提升了我对于学习的兴趣和成就感。和在高中时截然不同，我在大学表现极佳。

By the way, I still meditate and I still find it helpful.

我仍在坚持冥想练习，也依旧觉得很有用。

And of course I continued to trade markets. Around this time I became interested in trading commodities futures, though virtually nobody traded them back then. I was attracted to trading them just because they had low margin requirements so I figured I could make more money by being right (which I planned to be).

当然啦，我上大学后依旧在市场中做交易。不过我开始对商品期货交易感兴趣，尽管当时还没有人做这方面的交易。商品期货交易的魅力在于保证金要求不高，所以只要我选对了，就能赚钱，这也是我当时的计划。

By the time I graduated college, in 1971, I had been admitted to Harvard Business School, where I would go in the fall. That summer between college and HBS I clerked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This was the summer of the breakdown of the global monetary system (i.e., the Bretton Woods system). It was one of the most dramatic economic events ever and I was at the epicenter of it, so it thrilled me. It was a currency crisis that drove all market behaviors, so I delved into understanding the currency markets. The currency markets would be important to me for the rest of my life.

1971年我大学毕业，考入了哈佛商学院，入学是在秋季。大学毕业后的夏天，我在纽约证券交易所里打工做职员。那年夏天，全球货币体系（布雷顿森林体系）崩溃瓦解。这应该是当时最举世关注的经济事件，我作为亲历者，感到兴奋不已。那场货币危机震动了整个市场，我也深入钻研学习了货币市场。货币市场对我此后人生可谓至关重要。

That fall I went to Harvard Business School, which I was excited about because I felt that I had climbed to the top and would be with the best of the best. Despite these high expectations, the place was even better than I expected because the case study method allowed open-ended figuring things out and debating with others to get at the best answers, rather than memorizing facts. I loved the work-hard, play-hard environment.

秋天我去哈佛商学院上学，我非常兴奋，因为我觉得那里都是精英，算是爬到了人才聚集的顶峰。我当时的期待已经很高了，但实际情况比我想得还要好。那里上课引用的案例研究方法是开放式的，也允许大家相互辩论获得最佳答案，从不让大家死记硬背。这里大家拼命学习，又懂得尽情放松，这种环境深得我心。

In the summer between my two years at HBS, I pursued my interest in trading commodities futures by convincing the Director of Commodities for Merrill Lynch to give me a job as his assistant. At the time, commodities trading was still an obscure thing to do.

哈佛商学院的第一年暑假，我继续鼓捣商品期货交易，并成功说服美林证券的商品主管让我做他的助理。在那时，商品交易依旧是一个很模糊的行业领域。

In the fall I went back to HBS, and in that academic year, 1972-73, trading commodities futures became a hot thing to do. That is because the monetary system’s breakdown that occurred in 1971 led to an inflationary surge that sent commodity prices higher. As a result of this, the first oil shock occurred in 1973. As inflation started to surge, the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy to fight it, so stocks went down in the worst bear market since the Great Depression. So, commodities futures trading was hot and stock market investing was not. Naturally, brokerage houses that didn’t have commodities trading departments wanted them, and there was a shortage of people who knew anything about it. Virtually nobody in the commodities futures business had the type of Harvard Business School background that I had. So I was hired as Director of Commodities at a moderate-size brokerage and given an old salt who had lots of commodities brokerage experience to help me set up a commodities division. The bad stock market environment ended up taking this brokerage house down before we could get the commodities futures trading going. I went to a bigger, more successful brokerage, where I was in charge of its institutional/hedging business. But I didn’t fit into the organization well, so I was fired essentially for insubordination.

秋天我回哈佛商学院上学，就在1972年到1973年的这个学年里，商品期货市场火了起来。因为1971年货币体系的瓦解导致了通货膨胀狂潮，物价飞涨。1973年，第一次石油危机爆发了。通货膨胀加剧，美联储收紧了货币政策，股票市场面临大萧条时期以来最糟糕的熊市。在此背景之下，商品期货交易变得炙手可热，股票市场投资无人问津。证券经济公司也想搞商品期货交易，但公司没人懂这些。事实上，从事商品期货交易的，很少有我这种具备哈佛商学院背景的。我很轻松地应聘上了一家中型经纪公司，担任商品主管，公司里一位在商品经纪领域经验丰富的老手也帮助我成立了商品分部。但我们还没来得及维持商品期货交易，股票市场环境就拖垮了这家经纪公司。后来我去了家规模和影响力大点的经纪行，负责机构事务与对冲基金业务，我没能很好地融入到这个公司里，最终因不服从领导被开除了。

So in 1975, after a quick two-year stint on Wall Street after school, I started Bridgewater. Soon after, I got married and began my family.

1975年，毕业后在华尔街混迹了两年后，我成立了桥水基金公司，结了婚有了孩子。

Through this time and till now I followed the same basic approach I used as a 12-year-old caddie trying to beat the market, i.e., by1) working for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do; 2)coming up with the best independent opinions I could muster to move toward my goals; 3) stress - testing my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong; 4) being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing; and 5) wrestling with reality, experiencing the results of my decisions, and reflecting on what I did to produce them so that I could improve.

就在上述的这段时期里，从我是个12岁的球童开始到现在，我击败市场一直都使用的是同一套方法：1）我干我自己想做的事情，而非他人逼迫我为之；2）我把我能想到的最好的、独立的观点汇聚到一起，用以实现我的目标；3）对观点进行压力测试，把我认识最聪明的人找来帮我挑毛病，找出我观点中错误的地方。4）我不敢太过自信，但很善于面对“不知”。5）我同现实展开斗争，反思为什么会产生这种结果，从中学习与提高。

Since I started Bridgewater, I have gained a lot more experience that taught me a lot more, mostly by making mistakes and learning from them. Most importantly:

成立桥水基金公司后，我积累了更多的经验，收获更多，主要得益于犯错并从中吸取教训。最重要的经验包括：

I learned that failure is by and large due to not accepting and successfully dealing with the realities of life, and that achieving success is simply a matter of accepting and successfully dealing with all my realities.

我发现，失败主要是因为不接受或不能成功应对生活中的现实情况。实现成功其实就是简单地接受现实、应对现实。

I learned that finding out what is true, regardless of what that is, including all the stuff most people think is bad—like mistakes and personal weaknesses—is good because I can then deal with these things so that they don’t stand in my way.

我发现，无论什么事，即使是大多数人认为坏的事情，譬如错误或性格弱点，只要找出真相是什么，坏的也能变成好的。因为我会了解应对这些困难的方法，不让它们成为拦路石。

I learned that there is nothing to fear from truth. While some truths can be scary—for example, finding out that you have a deadly disease—knowing them allows us to deal with them better. Being truthful, and letting others be completely truthful, allows me and others to fully explore our thoughts and exposes us to the feedback that is essential for our learning.

我发现，真相没什么可怕的。有些真相可能令人惧怕，比方说发现自己得了绝症，不过知道这个事实会让我们更好去应对。要实事求是，也要让别人这样做，我们的思想才能被完全开发，所获得的反馈对于我们的学习才是最有用的。

I learned that being truthful was an extension of my freedom to be me. I believe that people who are one way on the inside and believe that they need to be another way outside to please others become conflicted and often lose touch with what they really think and feel. It’s difficult for them to be happy and almost impossible for them to be at their best. I know that’s true for me.

我发现，实事求是自由做自己的延伸。表里不一、取悦他人的人往往会自相矛盾，也容易丢失自己的价值观。他们不容易感到开心，更不可能展现出自己最好的一面。反正我认为我是这样的。

I learned that I want the people I deal with to say what they really believe and to listen to what others say in reply, in order to find out what is true. I learned that one of the greatest sources of problems in our society arises from people having loads of wrong theories in their heads—often theories that are critical of others—that they won’t test by speaking to the relevant people about them. Instead, they talk behind people’s backs, which leads to pervasive misinformation. I learned to hate this because I could see that making judgments about people so that they are tried and sentenced in your head, without asking them for their perspective, is both unethical and unproductive.So I learned to love real integrity (saying the same things as one believes)and to despise the lack of it.

我发现，我想打交道的人是能告诉我他们真正所想的人，我也想倾听他们的反馈，以寻求真相。导致社会问题最根本的原因是人们有太多错误的理论，都是些批评他人的理论，而人们又不会跟相关的人谈起，无法检验这些理论的真假。相反，人们却在背后闲言闲语，错误的信息漫天飞舞。我很讨厌这样，我看到过这种情况：不去问对方的观点，就把别人在脑海中私自“判刑”，妄加评论。这么做既不道德，也很无效。所以我喜欢真正的表里如一，信什么，就说什么。不诚实的人，我是嗤之以鼻的。

It is unethical because a basic principle of justice is that everyone has the right to face his accuser. And it is unproductive because it does not lead to the exploration of “Is it true?” which can lead to understanding and improvement.

这种做法之所以不道德是因为公正的基本原则便是人人都有权利与批评者对峙。而说其毫无建设性是因为它阻断了对真相的探索，无法形成理解和提高。

I do not mean that you should say everything you think, just that what you do say matches your thoughts.

我不是要你想什么就都出说来，而是只说与自己想法相匹配的内容。

The word “integrity” is from the Latin root “integer,” which means “one” i.e., that you are the same inside and out. Most people would be insulted if you told them that they don't have integrity—but how many people do you know who tell people what they really think?

英文中的正直（integrity）一词来源于拉丁语的整体（integer）一词，含有唯一性。若我说一个人不正直，大多数人都会觉得我在辱骂他，但你认识的人里，又有多少人会告诉你真实想法呢？

I learned that everyone makes mistakes and has weaknesses and that one of the most important things that differentiates people is their approach to handling them. I learned that there is an incredible beauty to mistakes, because embedded in each mistake is a puzzle, and a gem that I could get if I solved it, i.e., a principle that I could use to reduce my mistakes in the future. I learned that each mistake was probably a reflection of something that I was (or others were) doing wrong, so if I could figure out what that was, I could learn how to be more effective. I learned that wrestling with my problems, mistakes, and weaknesses was the training that strengthened me. Also, I learned that it was the pain of this wrestling that made me and those around me appreciate our successes.

我发现，人人都会犯错，都有弱点，大家的差异在于处理问题的方式。错误是极为美丽的花朵，它蕴藏着一个谜题，解开了就能获得宝石，这颗宝石就是一条原则，避免以后犯同样的错误。每条错误，都可能是自己或别人过去犯错的一种反映，如果能指出来，就能提升效率。同问题、错误和弱点展开斗争会让自己变得强大，斗争中会感到疼痛，也正是如此我们才会珍惜成功的果实。

I believe that our society's “mistakephobia” is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to real learning. As a result, school typically doesn’t prepare young people for real life—unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that’s why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.

我认为社会上“犯错恐惧症”会带来严重后果。这个问题从小学就开始了，老师教什么，我们就学什么，也不会教我们树立自己的目标或实现梦想的方法，摆在我们面前的是机械地学习一堆知识并参加考试。犯错最少才被认为是最聪明的。要犯错或承认自己不懂，我们会觉得很丢人。我们的教育制度重心从来都不教学生从错误中学习，但其实从犯错中学习才是真正的学习。因此，学校培养出来的年轻人难以适应现实生活，不过如果他们愿意一生只做遵守指令、取悦他人的人，那就另当别论了。所以我觉得很多学校成绩优异的学生，人生并不成功。

I learned that the popular picture of success—which is like a glossy photo of an ideal man or woman out of a Ralph Lauren catalog, with a bio attached listing all of their accomplishments like going to the best prep schools and an Ivy League college, and getting all the answers right on tests—is an inaccurate picture of the typical successful person. I met a number of great people and learned that none of them were born great—they all made lots of mistakes and had lots weaknesses—and that great people become great by looking at their mistakes and weaknesses and figuring out how to get around them. So I learned that the people who make the most of the process of encountering reality, especially the painful obstacles, learn the most and get what they want faster than people who do not. I learned that they are the great ones—the ones I wanted to have around me.

我发现，大众对于成功的概念是这样的：穿着拉夫·劳伦服装，在一幅光鲜亮丽的宣传照旁边附上自己的成就介绍：上最好的私立预科学校，考入常青藤联盟的名牌大学，能答对所有的考试题。其实这是对真正成功人士生活的误读。我阅人无数，没一个成功人士天赋异禀，他们也常犯错，缺点也不少，他们成功是因为正视错误与缺点，找到日后避免犯错、解决问题的方法。所以我觉得，全力利用好直面现实的过程，尤其是在和困难障碍斗争时的痛苦经历，从中竭力吸取教训，这样定能更快实现目标。这样的人，才能成为成功人士，这才是我想打交道的人群。

In short, I learned that being totally truthful, especially about mistakes and weaknesses, led to a rapid rate of improvement and movement toward what I wanted.

简而言之，要直面真相，特别是自己的错误和弱点，会大大促进自我提升，离梦想越来越近。

While this approach worked great for me, I found it more opposite than similar to most others’ approaches, which has produced communications challenges.

尽管这个方法对我很适用，可是似乎与其他方法比起来，显得与众不同，很多人不认同，交流起来甚是困难。

Specifically, I found that:

具体来说，我发现：

* While most others seem to believe that learning what we are taught is the path to success, I believe that figuring out for yourself what you want and how to get it is a better path.

尽管很多人认为教你什么就好好学才能实现成功。但我认为，发现自己想要什么，明白实现梦想的方法，这才是更光明的道路。

After all, isn’t the point of learning to help you get what you want? So don’t you have to start with what you want and figure out what you have to learn in order to get it?

学习的目的不就是实现梦想吗？那一开始是不是就应该先弄明白自己想要什么以及要实现梦想需要学什么呢？

While most others seem to believe that having answers is better than having questions, I believe that having questions is better than having answers because it leads to more learning.

尽管很多人认为答案比问题更好，但我认为问题比答案好，因为问题能让我们学到更多。

In fact I believe that most people who are quick to come up with answers simply haven’t thought about all the ways that they can be wrong.

事实上，我认为那些很快就想出答案的人并没有考虑自己会出错的方方面面。

While most others seem to believe that mistakes are bad things, I believe mistakes are good things because I believe that most learning comes via making mistakes and reflecting on them.

尽管很多人认为犯错是坏事，但我认为犯错是好事，因为人们主要都是从犯错的反思中受益进而学习和提高自己的。

While most others seem to believe that finding out about one’s weaknesses is a bad thing, I believe that it is a good thing because it is the first step toward finding out what to do about them and not letting them stand in your way.

尽管很多人认为发现缺点是坏事，但我认为缺点是好事，因为认识到缺点是寻找解决办法的第一步，进而不让缺点成为自己的绊脚石。

While most others seem to believe that pain is bad, I believe that pain is required to become stronger.

尽管很多人认为痛苦不好，但我认为想要变得强大，就需要经受痛苦。

I don’t mean that the more pain the better. I believe that too much pain can break someone and that the absence of pain typically prevents growth so that one should accept the amount of pain that is consistent with achieving one’s objectives.

我不是说越疼越好，我认为过于疼痛会对人产生损害。没有痛苦一般不利于成长，所以我们应在与实现自己目标相一致的前提下，承受一定的痛苦。

One of the advantages of my being over 60 years old—and there aren’t many—is that we can look back on my story to see how I came by these beliefs and how they have worked for me. It is now more than 35 years after I started Bridgewater and about the same number of years since I got married and began my family. I am obviously not your Ralph Lauren poster child for success, yet I’ve had a lot of successes, though they’re probably not what you’re thinking.

我60多岁了，我这个年纪的人优势已经不多了，其中之一就是我能回望过去，审视这些原则是否真的发挥过作用。我成立桥水联合基金公司35年，结婚成家也差不多这么多年，从我的经历来看，显然我不是大家想的那种拉夫·劳伦宣传海报上的成功典范，但我还是取得了很多成功，尽管不一定是你想象的那种成功。

Yes, I started Bridgewater from scratch, and now it’s a uniquely successful company and I am on the Forbes 400 list. But these results were never my goals—they were just residual outcomes—so my getting them can’t be indications of my success. And, quite frankly, I never found them very rewarding.

成立桥水联合基金，我算是白手起家，现在这家公司已经非常成功，我也在福布斯400富豪榜上占有一席。但这些从来都不是我的目标，算是附加回报吧，这些不能说明我就是成功的。说实在的，我也不觉得这些所谓的成就有什么意义。

I have been very lucky because I have had the opportunity to see what it’s like to have little or no money and what it’s like to have a lot of it. I’m lucky because people make such a big deal of it and, if I didn’t experience both, I wouldn’t be able to know how important it really is for me. I can’t comment on what having a lot of money means to others, but I do know that for me, having a lot more money isn’t a lot better than having enough to cover the basics. That’s because, for me, the best things in life—meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures— are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money. For me, money has always been very important to the point that I could have these basics covered and never very important beyond that. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think that having more is good–it’s just that I don’t think it’s a big deal. So, while I spend money on some very expensive things that cost multiples relative to the more fundamental things, these expensive things have never brought me much enjoyment relative to the much cheaper, more fundamental things. They were just like cherries on the cake. For my tastes, if I had to choose, I’d rather be a backpacker who is exploring the world with little money than a big income earner who is in a job I don’t enjoy. (Though being in a job that provides me with what I want is best of all, for me). Also, from having come from having next-to-nothing to having a lot, I have developed a strong belief that, all things being equal, offering equal opportunity is fundamental to being good, while handing out money to capable people that weakens their need to get stronger and contribute to society is bad.

我一直都很幸运，因为我有机会体验身无分文，也知道富有是什么感觉。现在很多人都花很大精力赚钱，我如果没体验过贫穷与富有两种状态，就不会明白金钱对于我来说是否真的重要。富有对别人来说意义如何我是无法评论的，但对我来说，赚更多的钱同只能满足基本需求的收入相比，并没有那么大的差别。因为我觉得人生最棒的事情是：有意义的工作，有意义的人脉，有趣的经历，吃得好睡得好，听歌，各种新点子，性等其他基本需求和令人愉悦之物。当金钱积累达到某个临界点后，增加再多，也就不会明显提升这些我认为人生最棒的东西。金钱对我来说的重要性就是，能够满足我的基本生活需求，再多我就认为不重要了。我不是说认为拥有更多不好，只是觉得这没什么大不了的。花钱的时候，有些东西特别昂贵，购买这些东西并不能给我带来多少快乐，购买经济实惠且更重要的东西才能给我带来快乐。这就像蛋糕上的樱桃一样，锦上添花罢了。要我选的话，与其做一份高薪但不喜欢的工作，我宁可做个环游世界的穷背包客。对我来说，从事的工作如果做的是自己想做的就是最好了。从几乎一无所有到拥有甚多，我培养了一个很强的信念，即万物皆平等，提供平等的机会对成功很重要，有能力的人获得的报酬丰富，就可能削弱他们渴望变强大贡献社会的意愿，这对社会发展不利。

What I wanted was to have an interesting, diverse life filled with lots of learning—and especially meaningful work and meaningful relationships. I feel that I have gotten these in abundance and I am happy. And I feel that I got what I wanted by following the same basic approach I used as a 12-year-old caddie trying to beat the market, i.e., by 1) working for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do; 2) coming up with the best independent opinions I could muster to move toward my goals; 3) stress - testing my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong; 4) being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing; and 5) wrestling with reality, experiencing the results of my decisions, and reflecting on what I did to produce them so that I could improve. I believe that by following this approach I moved faster to my goals by learning a lot more than if I hadn’t followed it.

我渴望的是生活充满趣事，多姿多彩，不断学习，能做有意义的工作，能认识可交之人。我认为，能常常满足这些条件，我就很开心了。我还发现，从我是个12岁的球童到现在，我击败市场一直都使用的是同一套方法：1）我干我自己想做的事情，而非他人逼迫我为之；2）我把我能想到的最好的、独立的观点汇聚到一起，用以实现我的目标；3）把我认识最聪明的人找来帮我挑毛病，找出我观点中错误的地方；4）我不敢太过自信，但很善于面对“不知”；5）我同现实展开斗争，反思为什么会产生这种结果，从中学习与提高。

Here are the most important principles that I learned along the way.

来谈谈一路走来，我觉得最重要的一些原则吧