Hello Friend!
In today’s edition I bring you an insight that will help you become a more objective individual.
“There is hardly anything more important than being rational and objective.”
- Charlie Munger
👤 Authors
💡Nugget
✦ Charlie Munger:
Question from the Crowd: I was hoping you might share with us some examples of how you have used disconfirming evidence to change some of your important held beliefs?
Well, of course being able to recognize when you are wrong is a godsend [aka “blessing”].
[A] good bit of the Munger’s fortune came from liquidating things we purchased because we were wrong.
Of course you have to learn to change your mind when you're wrong…
And I actually work at trying to discard beliefs.
[But] Most people strand cherish whatever idiotic notion they already have because they think it's their notion [so] it must be good.
I think… Of course you want to be re-examining what you previously thought.
Particularly when disconfirming evidence comes through.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
There's hardly anything more important than being rational and objective.
Just think of all the dumb things you can do in life.
Think of the brilliant people—who are just utterly brilliant—who do some of the dumbest things.
Now let's hear Warren Buffet on this issue, from his speech at the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting.
✦ Warren Buffet:
The word “anomaly” I have always found interesting—what it means is something that the academicians could not explain.
One theory that Warren and Charlie criticize is the "Efficient Market Theory". Charlie Munger even called it "bonkers".
And rather than re-examine their theories they simply just discarded any evidence of that sort as “anomalous”.
I mean… Columbus was an “anomaly”.
I think when you find information that contradicts previously cherished beliefs… You've got a special obligation to look at it and look at it quickly.
I think Charlie [Munger] told me that one of the things [Charles] Darwin did was that whenever he found out anything that contradicted some previous belief, he knew he had to write it down almost immediately because he felt that the human mind was conditioned—so conditioned—to reject contradictory evidence that unless he got it down in black and white very quickly his mind would simply push it out of existence.
✦ Robert Greene (on Niccolò Machiavelli):
In Western culture, we tend to associate strength of character with consistency.
[But] The great Florentine writer Niccolò Machiavelli saw these values of consistency and order as products of a fearful culture and something that should be reversed.
In his view, it is precisely our fixed nature, our tendency to hold to one line of action or thought, that is the source of human misery and incompetence.
Those who remain true to some idea or value without self-examination often prove to be the worst tyrants in life.
“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Characteristics of the rational soul: Self-perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants...
Also characteristic of the rational soul:
Affection for its neighbors. Truthfulness. Humility. Not to place anything above itself - which is characteristic of law as well. No difference here between the logos of rationality and that of justice.”
- Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, page 147 / Gregory Hays's translation)
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs or beliefs."
- Leo Tolstoy
💥 Stuff I Loved
The way I think about this is that if you don’t have enemies, it means you don’t publicly stand for anything. And you are probably not standing against any societal norm and you are just doing what everybody else is doing.
Of course most societal norms are good, but there are always a few that are bad or false (at least on an individual level). As Naval Ravikant said: “What Society wants for you is not what’s always good for you.”
Such individual would care more about “fitting in” than seeking truth.
Such individual would care more about being liked and accepted, than embodying the timeless virtues of heroism and independence.
Such individual would be purely driven by external validation, without any regard for respecting himself or following his inner compass.
Such individual is therefore, not trust-worthy.
Best advice that Brian Chesky (founder of Airbnb) got from Paul Graham → "It's better to have a hundred people love you, than a million people that just sort of like you. If you have 100 people that love your service... They will tell everyone they know! People who love something... become your Marketing Department."
If you are like me, you probably have a long—very long—list of books that you are planning to read.
And if you are also like me, that list just gets longer and longer as time passes.
But the reality is that, in words of Naval Ravikant, most books should be blogposts.
So I made my “filtering system” much more strict, but I also didn’t want to miss out on the wisdom of the books that I filtered out.
Luckily, around that time I discovered Shortform—A website / app with amazing writers who create amazing study-guides from a curated list of hundreds of non-fiction books.
So I converted my book’s reading list into a Shorform study-guide’s reading list (almost all the book titles were available). And after reading a study-guide I would make the decision as to whether to buy the book (if I felt that it’s worth it) or not (if I felt that the study-guide was enough to absorb the wisdom from the book).
It’s been exactly a year (October 2022) since I implemented this system, and I can confidently say that it saved me a ton of time and money and it also shortened my knowledge growth curve.
So if you are thinking of taking a similar approach, I would definitely recommend you to check out Shortform!
Shortform is not sponsoring this newsletter edition but I do have an affiliate link which gets you a 5-day free trial and a 20% discount on the annual subscription (cost equivalent to the price of one book a month) - https://shortform.com/pickingnuggets
Wishing you a lovely weekend!
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my free 80-page ebook. It’s packed with 23 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!