托福阅读：群体智慧成了陈词滥调

　　当每个群体成员的判断不再是相互独立的，群体的智慧就会变得病态。当群体数量庞大、信息不灵通(或两者兼有)时，这种情况更可能出现。群体的本性决定了，任何与既有主流观点意见相左的人都会受到群体的攻击。在大革命时期的巴黎街头、在平壤的广场上，以及在切尔西俱乐部的看台上，情况都是如此。

　　Or on the trading floor of an investment bank. The supposed wisdom ofcrowds is used as ajustification for claims of market efficiency, crudelyexpressed in slogans such as “the marketknows best” and “you can’t buck themarket”. At a sophisticated level, the idea provides arationale for a regulatoryphilosophy that attempts to reproduce the conditions required forthe validity ofGalton’s result — the existence of many independent estimates of thesamevariable.

　　这种情形同样适用于投资银行的交易大厅。所谓群体有智慧的观点被当作支持市场有效论的理由，并被简单地总结为“市场最权威”和“你不能逆市而为”等口号。说得复杂一点，群体有智慧的观点则为一种监管理念提供了理由，这种理念试图复制证实高尔顿观察结果(即存在对同一变量的许多种独立估算)所必需的条件。

　　So we aim to promote a trading environment characterised by manyconflicting assessmentsof the value of a security based on identical — andtherefore necessarily limited — informationabout the value of securities. Thebelief that an aggregate of casual opinions provides a betterprocess of valuediscovery than a flow of informed judgment through close engagement byinvestors,is an article of faith rather than a matter of empirical evidence.

　　因此，我们的目标是推动这样一种交易环境，它的特点是，基于相同(因此也是有限的)信息，对一支证券的价值存在许多种不一致的评估。有人认为，与投资者通过密切关注而产生的大量明智判断相比，随机观点的汇总能更好地发现价值，这种看法只是一种信念，缺乏经验证据的支持。

　　Galton wrote of the wisdom of crowds. The still more distinguishedmathematician IsaacNewton, after losing vast sums investing in the South Seabubble, wrote more wisely of theirmadness.

　　高尔顿描写了群体的智慧。一位更著名的数学家艾萨克?牛顿(Isaac Newton)在南海股票泡沫中损失大笔资金之后，更明智地描绘了他们的疯狂。