夜讀｜《紐約客》談AI泡沫（中）：網際網路泡沫的兩個特徵已經出現

近期談AI泡沫的聲音增多了，比如OpenAI CEO Sam Altman近日也談到了這個問題，同樣和上世紀九十年代末的網際網路泡沫對比。

我們現在繼續看《紐約客》這篇文章：

Having written extensively on the dot-com boom and bust, I found some of Goldman’s analysispersuasive. Many people have either forgotten, or are too young to remember, the extremes reached during the dot-com years. In the logic of speculative hysterias—from the seventeenth-century “tulipmania” in Holland to the rise of Pets.com—greed, fomo, and the greater-fool theory of investing eventually combine to banish caution, common sense, and financial gravity. Back in March, there was plenty of fomo and trend-following on Wall Street, but it hadn’t reached the levels of the late nineties. Five months on, however, echoes of the dot-com era are getting louder.

作者讓一步，承認高盛報告具有一定的道理，但作者提醒人們不要忘記網際網路泡沫時代的極端案例，作者還舉了17世紀荷蘭的鬱金香狂熱和網際網路泡沫時代的寵物商店倒閉的例子。

boom and bust 繁榮和破裂。這裡還是用了頭韻修辭。

analysis 分析。動詞analyze，前面出現了一個詞analyst 分析師。analysis來自希臘語（ana-lysein），複數是analyses，是希臘語語法在英語中的殘留。類似的詞還有，emphasis，diagnosis（診斷，dia-，through；gnos，know），basis，crisis（注意發音，前面的I發音/ai/），ellipsis（省略號，注意區分 eclipse 日月食，ellipse 橢圓，如此ellipsis和ellipse共享同一個複數形式，注意在語境中區分）。

persuasive 有說服力的，動詞persuade，per-，through，completely，suade來自suadere（advise）。反義詞 dissuade（dissuade sb from doing 說服某人不做某事，名詞 dissuasion）。

speculative hysterias 投機性的歇斯底里症。hysteria 歇斯底里症，hysterical，詞根hyster是womb的意思，子宮，這是古代對醫學認識的侷限導致的。

tulipmania 鬱金香熱。mania表示某某狂熱，如bibliomania 藏書癖（biblio來自希臘語，bibliography 參考文獻，bibliophile 書籍愛好者，Phil是love；法語bibliothèque 圖書館，德語Bibliothek 圖書館），megalomania 自大狂，monomania 偏執狂（mono，一個）。鬱金香熱發生在17世紀的荷蘭，是歷史上第一起金融泡沫事件。大仲馬寫過一部小說《黑鬱金香》講的也是這件事，英國歷史學家撰寫《鬱金香熱》，詳細描述了這個現象。上世紀八十年代中國出現的君子蘭熱，也有類似的情況。

Pets.com：網際網路泡沫時期的一家線上寵物商店。曾出現在美國超級碗的黃金廣告時段內，也在印到了感恩節大遊行的氣球上。2000年2月，Pets.com上市，發行價11美元，融資8250萬美元，9個月後倒閉，價格0.22美元。

fomo，fear of missing out.錯失恐懼症。所謂的“不怕錯買，就怕錯過”的心態。

the greater-fool theory：The greater fool theory argues that prices go up because people are able to sell overpriced securities to a "greater fool," whether or not they are overvalued. That is, of course, until there are no greater fools left.價格能上漲，是因為持有人能夠將它以高價賣給“更大的傻瓜”，不必管是否價值高估。類似於我們說的擊鼓傳花。

financial gravity：Financial gravity is a sense of how heavily interest rates weigh on markets and the economy. It accounts for both the level of the rate and the time at that level.有的地方翻譯為金融重力。從釋義來看，指的是利率和時間對經濟的影響。不過我沒特別明白，希望有方家來指教。

Consider Palantir Technologies, whose A.I. software is used by the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and ICE, not to mention by many commercial companies. A couple of days before Huang visited the White House, Palantir released a positive earnings report. By the end of the week, according to the Yahoo Finance database, the market was valuing the company at more than six hundred times its earnings from the past twelve months, and at about a hundred and thirty times its sales in that same time span. Even during the late nineties, figures like these would have raised eyebrows.

進一步，作者以Palantir公司舉例，這家公司的軟體曾經被五角大樓、CIA和ICE使用，目前估值已經是一年前的600倍，銷售額達到了130倍，即便是上世紀90年代，也沒有如此瘋狂。

Pentagon 五角大樓。pent，希臘語，五；agon，角。本意是五角形。美國國防部大樓呈五邊形，pentagon大寫的時候指代這個機構。hexagon 六角形，heptagon七角形，octagon，nonagon，decagon。

C.I.A 中央情報局，全稱Central Intelligence Agency。另外還是司法部下屬的FBI聯邦調查局，Federal Bureau of Investigation。

ICE：移民及海關執法局(Immigration and Customs Enforcement)。Immigration 移民，指的是移入的居民，移出的居民稱為emigrant。一個美國人移民到德國，對德國來說，他是immigrant，對美國來說是emigrant。

raised eyebrows：不如菲茨傑拉德用的level好。“You precious!” cried Evylyn and kissed her, but before she left the room she levelled another frown at Hilda. （Fitzgerald The Cut-Glass Bowl）

Eye-popping I.P.O.s, another feature of the dot-com era, are also making a comeback. At the end of July, Figma, a firm that makes software used by internet developers, and which has added A.I. features to its suite of products, issued stock on the New York Stock Exchange at thirty-three dollars a share. When trading started, the price jumped to eighty-five. It closed the day at $115.50—a two-hundred-and-fifty-per-cent gain on the offering price. Watching this market action, I was reminded of August 9, 1995, when Netscape, which made the Netscape Navigator web browser, went public. Its stock was priced at twenty-eight dollars, rose to seventy-five, and closed at $58.25. In percentage terms, this leap was smaller than the first-day rise in Figma’s stock, but it’s often described as the beginning of the dot-com bubble.

本段是說，網際網路泡沫的另一特徵是瘋狂的IPO正在重現，並舉例Figma公司的例子。這家公司在紐交所上市，發行價33美元，當日一開始就衝到85，最終收盤價是115.5，漲幅250%。作者說，想起了1995年8月，另一家上市公司的情況，那次是網際網路泡沫開始的時候。

Eye-popping 令人瞠目的。

New York Stock Exchange 紐約證券交易所，世界上最大的交易所，簡稱NYSE。

offering price 發行價。IPO這個詞的O就是offering。

I was reminded of，注意remind這個詞後面用介詞of，令人想起。類似的詞還有，cure sb of sth（治癒某人某疾病），rob sb of sth（搶劫），inform，warn，常用語被動的deprive（剝奪）等。

went public 走向公開（市場），還是上市的意思。作者沒有使用同一個詞，而是換著用，漢語稱為變文。寫作中要注意，同一含義下變換詞句，避免單調，下文還有類似的例子。 (美廬)