It's not often that billionaire investor Warren Buffett gets called out for being clueless.
身价亿万的投资家沃伦•巴菲特被人称作无知，这种情况可不常见。
But that's essentially what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen did this week at a virtual currency conference when he said, in reference to Warren Buffet's advice that investors stay away from Bitcoin, that "The historical track record of old white men crapping on new technology they don't understand is at, I think, 100%." Andreessen was responding to an appearance on CNBC where Buffett opined:
不过这确实是风险投资家马克•安德森上周在虚拟货币会议上所说的话。针对沃伦•巴菲特让投资者远离比特币的建议，他说：“一直以来，这些白人老头对自己不了解的新技术发表的言论全部都是瞎说。”安德森对巴菲特在美国全国广播公司(CNBC)上提出的观点做出了回应。当时，巴菲特说：
"Stay away. Bitcoin is a mirage. It's a method of transmitting money. It's a very effective way of transmitting money, and you can do it anonymously and all that. A check is a way of transmitting money, too. Are checks worth a whole lot of money just because they can transmit money? Are money orders? You can transmit money by money orders. People do it. I hope bitcoin becomes a better way of doing it, but you can replicate it a bunch of different ways and it will be. The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke in my view."
“离远点。比特币是海市蜃楼。这是一种转移资金的手段。它是一种有效的转移途径，而且可以通过匿名实现这个过程，还有诸如此类的一些特色。不过支票也是一种转移金钱的手段。就因为支票可以转移金钱，所以它就价值连城吗?邮政汇票呢?大家也可以通过邮政汇款转移钱。人们也是这么做的。我希望比特币能成为更好的转移金钱的手段，但你可以用许多方法创造出类似的货币，将来也的确会出现这种情况。在我看来，认为比特币拥有某种巨大内在价值的想法非常可笑。”
And yesterday Business Insider's Henry Blodget entered the fray, defending Buffett's skepticism of Bitcoin, saying it wasn't based on ignorance of the technology as Andreessen asserts, but a healthy skepticism of all new technologies. To back up his argument, Blodget quoted at length from a Buffett-penned article, which appeared in Fortune in 1999. The article was written during the height of dotcom mania, as Buffett explained why he avoided investing in the flurry of new technologies that were then hitting the market. Wrote Buffett:
昨天，商业新闻网战Business Insider的亨利•布拉吉也加入了论战，他为巴菲特对比特币的怀疑态度进行了辩护，表示巴菲特并不是像安德森所说，是由于对技术的无知，而是一种对所有新技术的合理的质疑。为了支撑自己的观点，布拉吉详尽地引用了由巴菲特执笔，登载于1999年《财富》杂志上的一篇文章。文章撰写于网络狂热的高峰期，巴菲特在文中解释了自己为什么不在当时冲击市场的新技术的骚动中跟风投资。巴菲特当时写道：
"The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage."
“投资的关键不在于评估这个产业将对社会产生多大影响，或是它将发展到多大规模，而在于判定目标公司有多少竞争优势。最重要的是，那种优势能维持多久。”
In other words, it's not that Buffett is ignorant about technology. It's just that he understands that it's impossible to know which specific investments will benefit from a technology's widespread adoption, even if you are prescient enough to know what technologies will revolutionize the world and how they will do so. Buffett chooses the examples of the car and aviation industries. many people saw the revolutionary potential of these inventions, but such clairvoyance would be worthless to an investor if he chose the wrong car company. The same goes for aviation -- which has notoriously been a difficult industry to profit from, despite its revolutionary effect on society.
换句话说，并不是巴菲特不了解技术。只是他明白，要确切知道哪种投资能够从技术的广泛普及中受益不太可能，哪怕你足够有先见之明，预见到哪种技术将彻底改变世界，以及通过何种方式改变。巴菲特举了汽车和航空业的例子。许多人看出了这些发明具有革命性的潜力，但如果投资者没有选对汽车公司，那这种先见之明就毫无价值。航空业也是一样——尽管它对社会起到了革命性的作用，但从这个行业获利的难度也是众所周知。
And by this logic, Buffett is right to be skeptical of Bitcoin. Whether you hope to profit from the rise of cryptocurrencies by investing in Bitcoin itself, or companies that would profit from Bitcoin'sascendence like the Andreessen-backed Coinbase, you're going to need to know more than just the fact that cryptocurrencies will change the world to make money. After all, what if you buy a bunch of bitcoins, but it turns out that a bitcoinvarient becomes the dominant form of virtual currency?
根据这种逻辑，巴菲特对比特币持怀疑态度合情合理。不管你是希望借加密货币的崛起之机投资比特币获利，还是像安德森支持的Coinbase这类公司借比特币的强势而获利，但在加密货币将改变世界这一事实之外，你还需要懂得更多才能挣到钱。毕竟，假如你买了一大堆比特币，但最后却是比特币的某一变种占据了虚拟货币的统治地位，到时候怎么办呢?
Adresseen, in an email interview with Forbes, called this analysis "unsophisticated." Writes Andreessen:
安德森在接受《福布斯》杂志的邮件采访中表示，这种分析“单纯而天真”。他写道：
"This is a standard trope of technology criticism by people who don't understand technology ... 'Yes, sure, it's great technology, but it won't be useful or valuable in the way that those crazy nerds think it will be useful or valuable.' I've heard it my whole life applied to every new important technology. It's fake sophistication -- it sounds nuanced but it's not."
“不了解技术的人总是用这种比喻来批判技术……‘是啊，当然，这技术很棒，但并不像那些疯狂的呆子所想的那么有用或有价值。’针对每种重要的新技术，都有这类论调，我这辈子已经听了太多。这不过是故作高深——看起来分析入微，实际上并非如此。”
The problem with this comeback is that Buffett isn't trying to sound sophisticated or nuanced. Buffett's very point is that a sophisticated or nuanced understanding of technology isn't necessary -- and is perhaps even detrimental -- to making money on investments. Buffett's style of investing requires very sophisticated knowledge of financials while avoiding understanding technology for fear that an emotional connection to the promise of that technology can take his eye off the ball of profits.
安德森的反驳存在一个问题：巴菲特并不想显得高深或是分析入微。巴菲特的重要观点在于：对技术有着深刻或细致的了解，并不是投资获利的必要因素，这甚至反而可能是有害的。巴菲特的投资风格要求他熟知金融知识而避免过分了解技术，以免对这项技术的前景的情感羁绊影响他对利润的关注。
Essentially this disagreement can all be boiled down to the fact that Andreessen and Buffett are two different types of investors. Andreessen is a venture capital guy who makes his money by putting bets on countless long shots, and only needing to be right a fraction of the time. To know what long-shot bets you should make requires a deep knowledge of the technologies you're investing in to aid you in your forecasting of how they will change the world. But even Andreessen knows he's only going to be right a fraction of the time on an investment-by-investment basis. Buffett takes the complete opposite approach -- by either investing in mature companies with very small and hard-to-perceive advantages over their competitors, or by leveraging his reputation and access to capital to make sure bets not available to anyone else (like the stake he took in Goldman Sachs at the height of the financial crisis).
实际上，这场争论可以归结为一个事实：安德森和巴菲特是两种不同类型的投资者。安德森是个在许多高风险的投资项目上下注挣钱的投资家，他只需要在短期内正确就够了。想知道应该投资哪些高风险项目，你需要对投资的技术有着深刻的了解，从而帮助你预测它们将会如何改变世界。不过即便安德森自己也知道，他这种不断投资的方式只能让他做到短期内正确。巴菲特的方式则正好相反，他或是投资那些比起竞争对手而言有着细微和难以察觉的优势的成熟公司，或是利用他的声望及资金来保证其他任何人都无法参与下注【比如在金融危机最严重的时候，他买入了高盛投资公司(Goldman Sachs)的股票】。
In other words, both men are right. (And that's why they have so much more money than you.)
换句话说，两个人都是对的。(这也是为什么他们拥有的财富比你多得多。)
