On Friday the UK parliament will vote on whether terminally ill individuals with mental capacity can ask for medical help to hasten death. If the assisted dying bill passes, the country will move closer towards sanctioning state-assisted suicide, bringing it in line with countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and Canada.

周五，英国议会将投票决定是否允许精神健全的绝症患者寻求医疗辅助来提早死亡。如果辅助死亡法案获得通过，英国将离批准国家辅助的自杀更近一步，跟瑞士、比利时和加拿大等国家实现同步。

There are compelling arguments on both sides of this emotive issue and the result feels impossible to call. While public opinion broadly supports change, parliamentarians seem more divided. 

在这个容易触发情绪的议题上，正反双方都有令人信服的论点，投票结果似乎难以预料。虽然公众舆论普遍支持变革，但议员们之间的分歧似乎更大。

But one aspect has been overlooked: the science of predicting survival. As a safeguard, the bill restricts the right to assisted dying to those with less than six months to live. While ballpark estimates of survival can be calculated using patient groups, forecasts for individuals are harder to pin down.

但有一个方面被忽视了：预测人还能活多久的科学。为保险起见，该法案将辅助死亡的对象限制为剩余寿命不足6个月的人。虽然患者群体的大致存活时间可以估算，但预测某一个患者的大致存活时间却很难。

——本文2024年11月29日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 On assisted dying, are we really any good at predicting survival?

When a stock market is shrinking, delistings are demoralising. On Wednesday, Just Eat Takeaway said it would ditch its secondary London listing. It’s a sensible move for the lossmaking company which needs to cut costs. But it again highlights the challenges facing the London market after a stream of departures. 

当股市萎缩时，退市会让人士气低落。本周三，Just Eat Takeaway表示将放弃在伦敦的二级市场上市。对于需要削减成本的亏损公司来说，这是明智之举。但这再次突显了伦敦市场在大量公司退市后所面临的挑战。

Still, the gloom about the London market looks overdone. The IPO pipeline is improving, even though this year 14 IPOs have so far raised just £750mn. French media conglomerate Vivendi’s planned €6bn-€8bn IPO of its TV business Canal+ is set to be the largest London listing since 2022. That, in turn, could be eclipsed by a proposed listing of Chinese fast-fashion group Shein. The long-awaited crop of fintech listings may even start to arrive. 

尽管如此，对伦敦市场的悲观情绪似乎有些过度。首次公开发行(IPO)的前景正在改善，尽管今年14次新股发行仅筹集了7.5亿英镑。法国媒体集团威望迪计划将其电视业务Canal+进行60亿欧元至80亿欧元的IPO，这将成为自2022年以来伦敦最大的上市。与此同时，这可能会被中国快时尚集团希音(Shein)的拟议上市所超越。期待已久的金融科技公司上市潮甚至可能开始到来。

The London Stock Exchange is hoping that new listing rules will burnish the UK’s appeal. They give bosses more freedom to make decisions without shareholder votes, and make it easier to adopt dual-class share structures. The exchange can also talk up disadvantages faced by relatively small companies that switch a listing to the US. A review of 20 companies that listed in the US since 2014 found more than a third had delisted. 

伦敦证券交易所希望新的上市规则能够提升英国的吸引力。它们赋予老板更多的自由，可以在没有股东投票的情况下做出决定，并使采用双重股权结构变得更加容易。该交易所还可以宣传相对较小的公司转向美国上市所面临的劣势。对2014年以来在美国上市的20家公司的审查发现，超过三分之一的公司已经退市。

——本文2024年11月29日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 The gloom about the London market is overdone

At an FT event a few years ago, Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates was asked what painful lessons he had learnt when building his software company. His answer startled the audience back then and is all the more resonant today.

几年前，在英国《金融时报》主办的一个活动上，有人问微软(Microsoft)联合创始人比尔•盖茨(Bill Gates)，他从打造自己的软件公司得到了哪些痛苦的教训？他的回答当时就让在场的观众大吃一惊，如今的回声则更加响亮。

Gates replied that in his early twenties he was convinced that “IQ was fungible” and that he was wrong. His aim had been to hire the smartest people he could find and build a corporate “IQ hierarchy” with the most intelligent employees at the top. His assumption was that no one would want to work for a boss who was not smarter than them. “Well, that didn’t work for very long,” he confessed. “By the age of 25, I knew that IQ seems to come in different forms.” 

盖茨回答说，在他二十出头的时候，他曾确信“智商是同质的”，但他错了。他的目标曾是聘用他能找到的最聪明的人，构建一个企业“智商等级制度”，将智商最高的员工放在最高层。他的假设是，没有人愿意为一个智商不如自己的上司工作。“嗯，那个假设并没有持续太久，”他坦言。“到25岁时，我领悟到智商似乎有不同的类型。”

Those employees who understood sales and management, for example, appeared to be smart in ways that were negatively correlated with writing good code or mastering physics equations, Gates said. Microsoft has since worked on blending different types of intelligence to create effective teams. It seems to have paid off: the company now boasts a market value of more than $3tn and will celebrate its 50th birthday next year.

盖茨表示，例如，对销售和管理内行的员工的那种聪明，似乎与写出好代码或掌握物理方程式的能力呈负相关。自那以来，微软致力于融合不同类型的智力，以打造高效的团队。这一努力似乎颇有成效：该公司目前市值超过3万亿美元，明年将迎来50岁生日。

——本文2024年11月29日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Silicon Valley billionaires remain in thrall to the cult of the geek

If you enjoy watching narratives disintegrate and re-form like crystals in a supersaturated solution, you’ll have loved the last few days in Washington.

如果你喜欢冷眼旁观叙事像过饱和溶液中的晶体那样解体然后重新成形，那你会喜欢过去几天的华盛顿。

On Saturday, Donald Trump nominated hedge fund titan Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary, and the financial markets sighed in relief that one of their own had been selected rather than, say, tariff warrior Robert Lighthizer, the trade representative in Trump’s first term. This sanguinity was rather upset by Trump’s Monday night surprise of threatening 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada (and a surprisingly modest extra 10 per cent on China) to force a clampdown on immigration and fentanyl smuggling by inauguration day.

上周六，唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)提名对冲基金巨头斯科特•贝森特(Scott Bessent)担任美国财政部长，这让金融市场松了一口气，因为被选中的是他们的自己人，而不是像特朗普第一个任期的美国贸易代表(USTR)罗伯特•莱特希泽(Robert Lighthizer)那样的关税斗士。但这种乐观情绪没能持续太久。周一晚，特朗普出人意料地威胁要对墨西哥和加拿大征收25%的关税（并对中国额外征收10%的关税，幅度之小令人意外），以迫使两个北美邻国（以及中国）在他就职之前打击非法移民和芬太尼走私。

Some market-watchers had already combed through the Bessent back catalogue and decided that the important thing is that he’s an economic historian. The idea is now out there that he’s all about surgically reordering the world, geopolitically as well as economically, through whatever economic means possible, including but not limited to tariffs.

一些市场观察人士早已仔细查看了贝森特的过往履历，认为重要的是他是一位经济历史学家。现在有一种观点认为，他会通过一切可能的经济手段——包括但不限于关税——从地缘政治和经济方面重新安排世界秩序。

——本文2024年11月29日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 The contradictions of Trumponomics over tariffs lie exposed