BBC Reel｜复刻成功人士的风险

The dangers of copying successful people

We love successful people, and we love trying to learn from and copy them, to try and understand the qualities that fueled their success. Steve Jobs, for example. Many of his biographers highlight his passionate temper as being one of the factors in Apple's success. Or take Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, neither of whom finished university, a fact that has attracted a lot of admiration in the media.
我们喜欢成功的人，我们喜欢学习和模仿他们，试图理解他们成功的特质。比如史蒂夫·乔布斯。他的许多传记作者都强调他的激情是苹果公司成功的因素之一。再以比尔·盖茨和马克·扎克伯格为例，他们都没有完成大学学业，但这一事实却引起了媒体的广泛赞叹。

But trying to learn from and copy the successful can be dangerous, and it comes down to something called survivorship bias. One of the most famous examples of survivorship bias in action was during World War II, when a statistician named Abraham Wald was asked to study how best to protect airplanes from being shot down. At first, the approach of his research group had been to look at the planes coming back, see where they were hit the worst, and then reinforce those areas.
但是，试图学习和复制成功者可能是危险的，这就是所谓的幸存者偏差。在第二次世界大战期间，一位名叫亚伯拉罕·瓦尔德的统计学家被要求研究如何最好地保护飞机不被击落，这就是幸存者偏差最著名的实例之一。起初，他的研究小组的方法是观察返航的飞机，看看它们被击中最严重的地方，然后加固这些区域。

Wald, however, realised this approach missed the valuable part of the picture. The planes that were hit, but that hadn't made it back. The planes they were looking at were just the survivors. The bullet holes they were looking at actually indicated the areas a plane could be hit and keep flying. These were exactly the areas that didn't need reinforcing. In other words, if you don't want to be misled by survivorship bias, you have to look at the whole picture.
然而，瓦尔德意识到这种方法忽略了画面中最有价值的部分。也就是那些被击中但还没有返航的飞机。他们看到的飞机只是幸存者。他们看到的弹孔实际上是飞机被击中后仍能继续飞行的区域。这些正是不需要加固的区域。换句话说，如果你不想被幸存者偏差所误导，你就必须纵观全局。

Survivorship bias can turn up in lots of places. A gym will share examples of people who have successfully changed their body shape in a short amount of time, of time but won't discuss all the other people who gave up along the way. Or, a 40-year-old car that's still running will have people saying, don't make them like they used to, ignoring all the other cars from that period that broke down and had to be scrapped.
幸存者偏差可能出现在很多地方。健身房会分享那些在短时间内成功改变体型的人的例子，但不会讨论所有在此过程放弃的人。或者，对于一辆车龄达40年的汽车仍能行驶，人们会称赞，现在的车不像以前了，却忽略了和那辆车同时期所有其他坏掉的、不得不报废的车。

Even in science, there's currently a worry about how journals prefer to publish studies with significant results, with studies that fizzled out or showed insignificant results left unpublished. The result in all these examples is a skewed picture of the world. And it's the same with the examples we were looking at earlier. If you only look at people like Gates and Zuckerberg when it comes to higher education, you're ignoring all the other people that didn't go to university. And the data, if you include them, show that average earnings for this group are lower. While you don't have to finish university to earn a lot, if you look at the whole picture, it's clear it does help.
即使是在科学领域，目前也有一种担忧，即期刊偏好发表有重大成果的研究，而对那些失败的或结果不显著的研究则不予发表。所有这些例子的都导致了对世界的歪曲。我们之前看到的例子也是如此。从接受高等教育的角度看，如果你只看像盖茨和扎克伯格这样（没完成大学学业）的人，你就忽略了所有其他同样没上过大学的人。数据显示，算上的人后，这个群体的平均收入更低。虽然你不需要完成大学学业才能挣到很多钱，但是如果你从整体上来看，很明显学历这是有帮助的。

And what about those entrepreneurs with the temper that didn't succeed? It's the same with all the remarkable qualities successful people tend to talk about. Without looking at all the others who took big risks or had the courage to ignore conventional advice, we don't know if these qualities help or, another option, they're irrelevant. And the success of the people you're looking at is the result of other factors, or just dumb luck.
但那些缺乏成功特质的企业家呢？成功人士津津乐道的所有卓越品质也是如此。如果没看到那些冒巨大风险或敢于无视传统建议的人，我们不知道这些品质是否有用，或者，换句话说，它们是无关紧要的。你看到的这些人的成功是其他因素的结果，或者纯粹是运气好。

In his 2012 book, Michael Mavison describes a man inspired by a succession of dreams to believe he'd win the Spanish lottery if he could purchase a ticket number whose last two digits were 48. After getting hold of such a ticket, amazingly, turned out to be a winner. Later, when an interviewer asked why he'd picked that number, he said, I dreamed of the number 7 for 7 straight nights, and 7 times 7 is 48.
迈克尔·马维森在2012年的书中描述了一个男人，他在一连串睡梦的启发下，相信如果他能购买一个最后两位数为48的彩票号码，他就会中西班牙彩票。在拿到这样一张彩票后，他竟然真中奖了。后来，当采访者问他为什么选择这个数字时，他说：我连续 7 个晚上梦见数字 7，7 乘以 7 就是48。

Maybe success can be helped by a temper. Maybe a lack of higher education can give you an advantage. Maybe innumerate dreaming can make you rich. But until you consider the whole picture, you might want to think twice before trying to learn from successful.
也许某些特质可以帮助你取得成功。也许没有受过高等教育也会给你带来优势。也许天马行空的梦想能让你变得富有。但是，在你考虑到全局之前，在试图向成功者学习之前，你可能要三思而后行。

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