【Native Speaker每日训练计划】No.2246 经管

HaibrarAi_sY

内容: Betty Qu  编辑: Selena Yan

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Part I : Speaker

How we can help young people build a better future

September 2018

A massive generation of young people is about to inherit the world, and it's the duty of everyone to give them a fighting chance for their futures, says UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore. In this forward-looking talk, she explores the crises facing them and details an ambitious new global initiative, Generation Unlimited, which aims to ensure every young person is in school, training or employed by 2030.

Source: TED
https://www.ted.com/talks/henrietta_fore_how_we_can_help_young_people_build_a_better_future

[Rephrase 1, 14’26]

Part II : Speed

Social media: how did we get here?

By  Rod Collin| Oct 08 2018

[Time 2]
One of the great ironies of the digital revolution is that while the world has been transformed into a hyper-connected community enabling instant collaboration, social media platforms have managed to divide us into a collection of fractious tribes that are wholly incapable of even basic compromises. Over the past few years, this fomenting tribalism has become troublesome as mutual accusations of bias among all the various clans have justified a plummet into a lack of basic civil behavior.

As is typical of tribal behavior, intense loyalty to one’s kind often fosters a false sense of self-righteousness that makes it all too easy to glorify those who think like us and to demonize those who don’t. Looking around, it seems that no tribe is immune from the toxicity of self-righteousness. We are reminded of Daniel Kahneman’s and Amos Tversky’s sage insights about the hazards of the unconscious biases that are inherent in human nature: “We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.” Unfortunately, one of the perils of tribal behavior is that it tends to promote collective unconscious blindness.
How is it that technological innovations that held so much promise for broadening human horizons have instead amplified the worst attributes of human nature? But more importantly, what can we do to restore the promise?
All Voices Matter

The antidote to tribalism is diversity, especially diversity of thought. If we don’t engage with people who think differently, we can’t expand our understanding of the world around us, we miss out on opportunities for the serendipity that is the catalyst for breakthrough thinking, and, as a consequence, we become prisoners to the tyranny of rigid parochialism.

Perhaps this is why the founders of the United States made free speech the cornerstone of their social experiment. In their new form of government, no authority would be able to silence another’s voice, no matter how eccentric or quarrelsome. They made a clear choice that the risks of allowing all voices to matter were far less than the pitfalls of silencing even one voice. The founders had a profound faith in the genius of the people and knew that our best thinking was more likely to emerge from their collective wisdom than from the precepts of an elite few.

In his seminal book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki provides powerful insights into the greatly underappreciated phenomenon of collective intelligence and explains both how and why the crowd tends to be smarter than individuals, as long as certain attributes are present. The first of these attributes is diversity of opinion. Encouraging different perspectives, including what many might consider eccentric notions, broadens the available information, provides the capacity for evolving ideas, and protects against the negative dynamics of shortsighted groupthink. This is why diversity is the countermeasure to the inherent biases in tribalism.
[473 words]

[Time 3]
The second attribute is independent thinking. Surowiecki emphasizes that each individual must be free to express his or her own opinions without editing and without any pressure to conform to the beliefs of others in the group. In other words, without individual freedom of speech, collective wisdom is not possible. Surowiecki makes the point that “paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.” This is in sharp contrast to groupthink where the price for nonconformity is often ostracization and explains why collective wisdom is the polar opposite of groupthink.

The remaining two attributes are local knowledge, which is the capability to draw upon specialized and localized information, and aggregation mechanisms, which are processes or algorithms for integrating the content of everyone’s observations and opinions. The latter is critical because without a well-constructed aggregation mechanism, accessing collective intelligence becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The Expansion of Platforms

When the founders of the United States made free speech the cornerstone of their new democracy, the only practical social platform for both encouraging and inhibiting open dialogue was the government. At the time, the primary vehicles for the dissemination of ideas were books, newspapers, and speeches in the public square. In an eighteenth-century world, the government was, for all practical purposes, the only social entity with the wherewithal to exercise censorship. By outlawing government censorship, the founders were able to accomplish the practical mission of assuring free speech and the propagation of a diversity of ideas that they felt were critical to the development of their young nation.

For more than two centuries, this bold experiment in free speech and trust in the genius of the people resulted in an explosion of innovation that defined and accelerated the growth of a nation. While certainly far from perfect, this novel, often messy, approach to economic and political organization worked, probably beyond the founders’ wildest expectations. However, over the past two decades, new technologies have dramatically reshaped both traditional media and the public square by creating new and unprecedented platforms for social discourse with the practical effect that the government is no longer the sole social entity that can exercise censorship.

These new platforms are the social media companies, and because they operate in the private sector, they are not legally bound by free speech laws. This is likely to change, and unless the social media companies correct for a missed opportunity, they are likely to be the consequences rather than the co-creators of change because the current environment of tribalism that they have enabled is not only unbearably toxic but clearly unsustainable.

[445 words]

[Time 4]
Algorithms

The lifeblood of social media platforms is algorithms. An algorithm is a set of rules that is used to process calculations in problem-solving. One of the earliest examples of the power of algorithms was the rapid rise of Google (disclosure: the author is invested long) in the late 1990’s. Google was a late entry into a crowded field of upstart search engines that were vying for the lead position in the burgeoning new market. In the mid-1990’s, it appeared that Yahoo would be the likely winner because, at the time, search was an editorial exercise using a cataloguing system similar to library science, and Yahoo had the best editorial experts. Instead, an innovative system that relied upon computer algorithms rather than expert human judgment enabled Google to become an overnight sensation and the longtime dominant leader of Internet search.

Google’s original algorithm - called PageRank - used collective intelligence rather than editorial experts to rank pages by doing a link analysis to determine which sites were the most visited by the users. The original algorithm was consistent with Surowiecki’s four attributes and is referenced as an example of collective intelligence in his book.

While the core elements of Google’s algorithms are proprietary, it is clear that over the past two decades the algorithm has evolved from its original rules. In particular, search today appears to blend collective intelligence with customized personal search patterns. Thus, for example, if you play Powerball on a regular basis and frequently check your numbers by Googling Powerball, as soon as you enter the letter “P,” the full word “Powerball” will be offered as a search option. Again, we can’t be sure because of proprietary considerations, but it appears today the Google algorithm likely reflects some combination of collective intelligence and human steering.

Facebook has also built customization into its evolving algorithms. Early on the popular site’s news feed presented its visitors with multiple perspectives on current events. But a few years ago, the algorithm was modified to present only the news that is consistent with people’s pre-disposed narratives. In their book The Truth Machine, authors Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna point out, “Consider how Facebook’s secret algorithm chooses the news to suit your ideological bent, creating echo chambers of like-minded angry or delighted readers who are ripe to consume and share dubious information that confirms their pre-existing political biases.”

Human Steering

The human steering by the custodians of social media platforms appears to be a strong contributing factor to our current state of fractious tribalism. When these custodians are overwhelming aligned with one of the tribes, it is not surprising that people aligned with other tribes feel that the human steering is attempting to silence their voices. Whether this claim is true or not remains to be seen. However, regardless of affiliation or like-mindedness, if the principle of free speech is to remain the cornerstone of social discourse, we need to assure that no authority has the wherewithal to silence the voices of those who think differently on any practical social platform.

Hopefully, the leaders of the social media platforms will follow the example of the American founders by placing their trust in the genius of the people and sustaining their platforms on the fundamental principle that all voices matter. If they fail at this critical task, we run the risk that the government will step in and impose its own form of human steering, which is likely to exacerbate rather than to solve the problem.

Next month, I will focus on an opportunity for the social media companies to evolve their platforms and hopefully diminish the pervasive tribalism by identifying new pathways for bringing us together.

[617 words]

Source:
Management
https://www.management-issues.com/opinion/7326/social-media-how-did-we-get-here/

The Importance Of Having Diversity In The Workplace  

By Vaibhav Joshi| October 25, 2018

[Time 5]
Even though considering differing opinions and opposing points of view during a brainstorming session can be frustrating, the process almost always seems to lead to an elegant and feasible solution. According to research, the same principle can be applied at work—studies show a diverse workforce can boost employee performance as well as that of the company as a whole.

Better Performance
The more diverse the board of a company is the better, suggests a study conducted by McKinsey. Examining the performance of 180 publicly traded companies in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States over the period from 2008 to 2010, their researchers found that companies with more women and foreign nationals as part of senior teams performed much better than less diverse boards.

For companies that ranked in the top quartile of executive-board diversity, the returns on equity were 53 per cent higher on average than those in the bottom quartile. Similarly, earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margins were 14 per cent higher at the diverse companies as well.

A similar study carried out by Credit Suisse Research Institute backed up their findings. Published in 2012, the Credit Suisse report revealed that companies with at least one woman on the board have outperformed their this with no women on the board by 26 per cent over the last six years. This was seen uniformly across all fronts, including returns on equity, debt to equity ratios, price/book value as well as average net income growth.

In a release related to the study, Stefano Natella, Co-Head of Securities Research & Analytics said, “This in-depth study provides investors with striking evidence that greater gender diversity is a valuable additional metric to consider when evaluating investments. The results of our analysis are irrefutable and for the first time offer a global view of this topic and a compelling explanation of why gender diversity adds value.”

Better Problem Solving
Having a diverse group of people attacking a problem could lead to a multi-pronged attack that results in better problem solving, suggests a 2006 study conducted at Tufts University. Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in April 2006, the study involved 200 participants on 29 mock juries.
The researchers found that panels of white and black participants performed better than all-white groups by a number of measures. "Such diverse juries deliberated longer, raised more facts about the case, and conducted broader and more wide-ranging deliberations," said lead author Samuel R. Sommers. "They also made fewer factual errors in discussing evidence and when errors did occur, those errors were more likely to be corrected during the discussion."

[438 words]

[Time 6]
While his study was set in a courtroom, Sommers also talked about the implication of the study’s findings in other situations."Because the study examines group decision-making in a realistic setting, the findings have potential implications for a variety of contexts--from the classroom to the boardroom, or wherever a premium is placed on fact-finding and reaching a good decision," he said. "Diverse groups show a number of advantages and benefits when it comes to this type of decision making."

Better Business Decisions
Researchers from Columbia, MIT, University of Texas-Dallas, Northwestern, and a few other prestigious universities looked at stock-picking in ethnically homogenous and diverse groups. In their study entitled ‘Ethnic diversity deflates price bubbles’ published in PNAS in December 2014, they focused on experimental markets in Southeast Asia and North America.

The findings of the study revealed that the financial decisions of the more diverse groups were 58 per cent better than those of the homogenous groups, which led to fewer bubbles on the market. “In homogenous markets, overpricing is higher and traders’ errors are more correlated than in diverse markets. The findings suggest that price bubbles arise not only from individual errors or financial conditions but also from the social context of decision making. Informing public discussion, our findings suggest that diversity facilitates friction that enhances deliberation and upends conformity,” wrote the researchers.

Better Exposure
In a study published in Scientific American in 2014 looked at 1.5 million academic papers and found that papers written by diverse groups are more likely to receive citations and had higher impact factors than those whose authors belonged to the same ethnic group. They also found that people of similar ethnicities are more likely to collaborate on papers more often, but the final product was much more impactful in the diverse groups. “Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not,” says the Scientific American report on the study.  

[320 words]

Source:
The Entrepreneur
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/322307

Part III : Obstacle

How to plug budget holes by managing public wealth better

By C.W| Oct 20th 2018
[Paraphrase 7]
PROPONENTS OF sovereign-wealth funds like to say that returns from publicly owned assets could in theory displace taxes. In countries that have not struck oil, however, the chance of politicians building up savings rather than running up debt seems remote. Yet states may not need to save in order to enable at least some tax-free spending. Most already have plenty of assets. The problem is that they do not sweat them hard enough.

Most public wealth falls into one of four categories: land and natural resources; property and infrastructure, such as ports and roads; public firms, such as utilities and state-owned airlines; and financial assets like those held by public pension funds. In estimates covering 31 economies released on October 10th, the IMF put the total stash at $101trn, or 219% of GDP.

The Fund’s estimates of governments’ assets and liabilities cast their fiscal health in a new light (see chart). Several rich countries’ governments have negative net worth, partly because of massive pension obligations to retired public employees. The picture would look still worse if the estimates included state pensions and other promises to ageing populations, such as to provide health care.

Although it is rarely quantified, investors are not oblivious to such risk. The IMF finds some evidence that government-bond yields respond to the health of public-sector balance-sheets, as well as to debt and deficits.

But a bigger point is that, with so many assets on the books, it would take only a small increase in yields to raise a lot of money. Dag Detter, a consultant who has co-written a book on the subject, says that increasing the return on public assets by a mere 2% would enable governments worldwide to double the amount they spend on basic infrastructure.

What would it take to make that happen? The yields for society from some assets, such as national parks, are non-monetary. Turning schools and hospitals into cash-cows seems implausible. Yet there are plenty of examples of inefficient government use, in particular of land. Mr Detter and his co-author point to Boston’s Logan International Airport, which sits on prime waterfront and could be moved inland. Even schools can be put in better or worse places. One of Rio de Janeiro’s sits on the Copacabana beach-front, wedged between pricey hotels. Putting it somewhere else and charging a market rent for the site could create new revenue for the education budget. A recent review found that 166 of the roughly 230 trusts making up England’s National Health Service report owning land they do not need.

Some countries seem to get much more from their balance-sheets than others. Take financial assets. The IMF calculates that a country moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile for risk-adjusted returns would raise 2% of GDP in new revenue (it spares policymakers’ blushes by keeping the leaders and laggards anonymous). Boosting returns might involve pooling investment portfolios in order to reduce fees; charging more for being an insurer of last resort, for example for bank deposits or flooding; and using offices and other types of property better.

Improving the profitability of public firms—think of post offices and the like—could raise another 1% of GDP, the IMF says. Middling government-run firms produce average returns of 1.9%, but better ones manage 4.3%—which is still only half the level of companies in the private sector. Some state-owned firms do much better. SNCF, France’s public-sector railway, earned a return on capital of 7.9% in 2017.

For many physical assets, the first step is working out the value of what is on the books. That is not always easy, because governments are bad at keeping track of their balance-sheets. Assets, such as the land on which Boston’s airport is built, often linger at historical cost rather than market value. But some countries are making progress. Since 2011 Britain has produced “whole-of-government accounts” that follow international accounting standards. They show assets of £1.9trn ($2.5trn or 96% of GDP). The government is combing through its balance-sheet to find ways to boost returns; it will report the results in its budget on October 29th.

Often, improving yields will mean selling things off. But without at least some effort to improve those yields first, it is hard to tell whether the price is right. Anyone sceptical of privatisation can point to some disastrous deals, like Chicago’s leasing in 2008 of its parking meters to a consortium at a price that, according to a later report by the city’s inspector-general, was almost $1bn too low. In 2014 a British parliamentary committee found that Royal Mail, the state-owned postal service, had been sold off too cheaply the year before. Its shares rose by 38% on the first day of trading.

Finance ministers may be more concerned with making up shortfalls in cashflow than getting a good deal. If governments keep an eye on net worth, shown on a balance-sheet, as well as on the debt-to-GDP ratio, then politicians would be less likely to sell assets too cheaply. And they would be more likely to keep a keen eye on their liabilities other than government debt.

The IMF argues that such an approach to fiscal policy is overdue. It has been wholeheartedly adopted only by New Zealand, which updates its balance-sheet monthly, and where the figures are “fully and deeply” embedded into fiscal decision-making, according to Ian Ball of Victoria University, who helped to create the system.

There are limits to the IMF’s exercise. A government’s biggest assets are its ability to raise taxes in the future and to change policy, for example by cutting state pensions. Yet these are assets nobody wants to see used to their full potential. The more that cash-strapped governments can raise from the stuff they own, the less they will have to cut and squeeze elsewhere.

[968 words]
Source: The Economics
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/10/10/capitalism-is-becoming-less-competitive

葛沙棘

emmm SPEED的一大篇切割成三篇有点speed up不起来呀
T2  3'41''
T3  2'52''
T4  4'38''
T5  2'29''
T6  1'55''
T7  7'11''
刚开始看的时候有点头晕...
有obstacle的句子细看第二遍也有点难，但是发现好像关注整句话而非细究句子结构会提高一点理解能力

邓小沐

【Time 2】4‘38 Now the digital world makes easier and complexed to opinions and tribalism.It can expand ones' horizons as well as stay blind to people's blindness.People and groups face challenges in their voices and behaviors in this social media background.However, the crowd's voice could actually stay smarter than individuals or elite crews.This is also the reason why the US  keep open-mind to all voice rights.
【Time 3】6'00 The second attribute is individual thinking.A group will stay collective wisdom only when everyone think individually.Then, the article introduces about the expansion history of idea censorship.How ideas grow in the government's censorship, and how voice right help improve our culture and collective wisdom, pushing the group intelligence.Nowadays, in social media ,without government censorship, it has been a new sustainable platform for tribal ideas to change.
【Time 4】4'49 The internet is a newly developed tribal platform, using algorithms to develop collective wisdom.The algorithms history as well as the collective wisdom development is introduced-The appearance of searching engine, customized individual searching pattern,xxxxx. Last not not least, since algorithms is largely based on tribal intelligence,no wonder that different tribes will be reluctant and feel refused to other tribes ideas when putting into others' pattern.In this way, and hopefully, social medias choose to follow government suggestion to keep all voices matter.
【Time 5】2‘23 More diversified a company is ,the better work performance it will have.
【Time 6】3'08 Better decision making and better explosure
【Time 7】13'33 5'04 The fiscal asset actually is difficult for government to handle correctly.The returns of public assets benefit the whole GDP a lot--a small increase in yields can raise a lot of money.Many different examples are listed . The first step is  to know the value of this assets clearly.Often, improving yields will mean selling things off, but it also depends on the way and the goal behind it.A lot of different outcomes will caused by the diversified action.The balance-sheet could deserve government deliberate thinking.

dream6667

03:33.11
03:56.14
04:49.32
04:30.05
03:01.29
Many politicians say that publicly assets’ return could replace taxes. Most public assets can be divided into four categories: land and nature resources; property and infrastructure; public firms; and financial assets. But in some countries that not depend on oil, accumulating assets seems hopeless. Especially in some developed countries, governments have negative net worth, because they have obligations to bear massive pension for retired employees. But if they take only a small increase in yield, they will raise a lot of money, for example, change the location of schools and airports, moving to inland areas, as it will bring a great deal of rent for government.

同学们加油啊

NO. 2246 经管【10.27】
Time 2  3'37
There are tribes(?) and biases in social media. Civils have unconcious blindness when using social media. The crowds are smarter than individuals because of diverse opinions.

tribe 部落  tribalism 部落文化  
Time 3  4'15
Three important attributes of collective wisdom. First, independent thinking of individuals. Second, local knowledge. Third, critical thinking.
The social media provides wider platform for free speech. The social media company can also exercise censorship just like the government did.
Time 4  6'24
Algorithm is the fundation of social media, and it also makes Google a better searching engine than Yahoo. Facebook also uses algorithm to match the content with the users' interests.
Also, this paragraph talks about human steering and place trust on social media? tribalism(?)
Time 5  3'38
Diversity in workplace has two major advantages. First, bette performance. Second, better problem solving.
Time 6  3'17
Diversity has two other advantages. First, better decision making. The price bubble appears under social decision making context. Second, bette exposure. Papers wirriten by diverse group of writers have more citations.
OBSTACLE  11'05
The IMF gave advice for governments to increase assets and deal with public health care. The increase of return on public assets would double the money government invests on basic infrastructures. Improve profit of public firms could also increase GDP.

yuxiaoy

10/26

2246 经管

T2[473 words] 1'20
T3[445 words] 1'10
T4[617 words] 1’13
The author discussed the trend existed on nowadays social media - tribalism, to counter the trend, the author of the book advocate tech firms to adopt diversity, algorithms to guard the freedom.
T5[438 words] 1’26
Some survey shows diversity in company and teams can cause positive performance.
T6[320 words] 0’55
The study also shows, diversity can foster problem-solving abilities and maximise business decisions.

renenwal

10.27
T2:2.21
T3:2.36
T4:3.17
T5:1.29
T6:1.54
Obstacle 12.46

DDDDoris

OB 08:57.56
中文逻辑
很多国家政府是没有很好的利用好公共资产。
说明原因，并比较不同国家之前的做法。
给出管理好公共资产的建议。
英文回忆
Although sovereign-wealth funds seems remote to coutries that have not struck oil, coutries ought to manage public
wealth better to plug their budget holes.Some rich countries have negative net worth ,partly because of the massive
pension obligations.There are other reasons.One is that goverments have inefficient use of assets,especially of lands.
If they used the land properly, they could get higher return on public assets, based on the massive assets on the bookes,
thus leading to raise a lot of money.Then, working out the value of what is on the books is also significant.Only in this
way can governments sell thing of at a good price so as to gain more.

lan0604

T2 05:07
Social media is supposed to bring us more opinions, however, we tend to easy reject these we don’t like. The most fundamental thing should be diversity. That is also the key element of the greatness of crowd.
T3 02:50
In the long past many years, government is the only censorship, while in the recent decades, social media companies interfere in the market and destroy the free speech.
T4 04:03
The instrument to realize the above is algorithm. At first, people use intelligent search for good use, but afterwards, the algorithm is revised with preference.
T5 02:39
According to research by McKinsey, companies with more diversity plays better than those with less diversity.
T6 02:20
Diversity give people more friction to rethink deliberately.
Obstacle 07:14
The government should increase yields on assets and do better at tracking assets to create more value.

BruceLin1993

NS.2246 181116
Speaker
The young people need more chances to be ready for their futures, because many of them have no opportunities to enter schools to get better education and to be taught accurately the proficiencies they need to get their livelihood, GEN-U is an open platform for everyone to deliver their solutions and opinions to face the problems.

Speed 200wpm
2 2’32”
The development of digital revolution has divided the human being society into several tribes, the most important thing in tribalism is thinking diversity, as the liberal speech in US has announced, the diversity of opinions produce the collective wisdom.
3 2’28”
The second attribute is independent thinking without influenced by other people in group, the remaining two attributes are local knowledge and localized information, the government is no longer the social entity that exercise censorship, the expansion of social companies are not legally bound by free speech law, that is gonna change.
4 3’30”
The algorithm of yahoo is editorial expert and that of google is collective intelligence and human steering, can recommend you the research target according to your research history, and human steering should’t curb the different voices in social media.
5 2’30”
The diversity in workplace is very important, it can lead to better performance, the gender diversity can make values on investment and the race diversity make better problem solving.
6 1’49”
The diversity group doing better on business decisions than the homogeneous groups because the price bubble is not only the matter of individual error or financial conditions but also the matter of social context of decision making, the paper written by diversity groups are more accepted and impactful.

Obstacle
The article told us that some countries are in huge debt of the liabilities to the pension the future retire employees need, to solve the problem, firstly, The government should find out the value the physical stuff on the books. and evaluate their asset sheet regularly to improve the yields, and produce more cash flows.