SeekingWisdom
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger (Peter Bevelin)
- Average overall: Strong at points
- Our life is what our thoughts make it. Marcus Aurelius
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- Placebos: like a pharmacy inside the body that has evolved during millions of years of evolution.
- Evolution is change which occurs over time through interaction with the environment
- Any method we use to kill bugs will, unless it completely wipes out a species, cause a population of resistant bugs.
- Humans have spent more than 99% of their evolutionary history in the hunter gatherer environment.
- Failure to detect threats is often more costly than false alarms.
- Conscience is the inner voice that tells us someone might be looking.
- We get what we reward for. If our methods for winnowing candidates for high positions favors stupidity, we will get stupid politicians.
- It is very hard to change a system when the guy whose hand is on the switch benefits enormously, perhaps disproportionately form that system.
- We never look at projections, but we care very much about, and look very deeply at, track records. If a company has a lousy track record and a very bright future, we will miss the opportunity. - Warren Buffet
BeTheGood - Intelligent ACTION is power
- Bad news that is true is better than good news that is wrong.
- The task of man is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. BeTheGood - Intelligent ACTION is power
- Obviously, you look ahead as far as you can. But thats not very far. But if you respond intelligently and diligently to the challenges before you, we think you'll tend to end up with a pretty good institution.
- You can't avoid wrong decisions. But if you recognize them promptly and do something about them, you can frequently turn the lemon into lemonade.
- A very important principle in investing is that you dont have to make it back the way you lost it. In fact, it's usually a mistake to try to make it back the way you lost it.
- Predicting rain doesn't count, building arks does. BeTheGood - Intelligent ACTION is power
- All mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to ones own advantage.
- We are easily influenced when we are told stories because we relate to stories better than to logic or fact.
- How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
- Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.
- "Gentleman, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here, Then, I propose we postpone further discussions of this matter to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about" – Drucker (former executive of GM)
- If we dont understand the meaning of an idea, we wont (dont) use it.
- Keep records of important events.
- Its not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? Dont confuse activity with results. There is no reason to do a good job with something you shouldn't do in the first place.
- Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools, because they have to say something. (Plato)
- I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
- He that would like in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees.
- One trick in life is to get so you can handle mistakes.
Munger quote on physics:
One of the things that influenced me greatly was studying physics… If I were running the world, people who are qualified to do physics would not be allowed to elect out of taking it. I think that even people who aren't [expecting to] go near physics and engineering [in their planned profession] learn a thinking system in physics that is not learned so well anywhere else. Physics was a total eye-opener.
The tradition of always looking for the answer in the most fundamental way available - that is a great tradition and it saves a lot of time in this world. And, of course, the problems are hard enough that you have to learn to have what some people call assiduity. Well, I've always liked that word - because to me it means that you sit down on your ass until you've done it.
Munger on social problems:
I'm all for fixing social problems. I'm all for being generous to the less fortunate. And I'm all for doing things where, base on a slight preponderance of the evidence, you guess that its likely to do more good than harm. What I'm against is being very confident and feeling that you know, for sure, that your particular intervention will do more good than harm given that you're dealing with highly complex systems wherein everything is interacting with everything else.
- Statement: "Life is hard" Reply: "Compared to what?" Voltaire
- Whenever a really bright person who has a lot of money goes broke, its because of leverage… Its almost impossible to go broke without borrowed money being in the equation.
- The most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences.
- He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind Examples: Psychology: "We get what we reward for" Physics: "Energy is neither created nor destroyed - only changed from one form to another"
- Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking. (Buffet)
- Be problem-oriented. Not method-oriented. Use whatever works. Why? Because the result is what matters, not the method we use to arrive at it. Look for good enough solutions appropriate to the problem at hand. Not perfection and beauty.
- We basically have the attitude that you cant make a good deal with a bad person. We dont try to protect ourselves by contracts or all kinds of due diligence - we just forget about it. We can do fine over time dealing with people we like and admire and trust.
- Two questions to ask yourself when making decisions: A) is it knowable ? B) is it important ? If its not knowable (there are all kinds of things that are important but not knowable) forget about those. If its unimportant, then it wont make any difference, so we dont care.
- You've got a complex system and it gives a lot of wonderful number that enable you to measure some factors. But there are other factors that are terribly important and theres no precise numbering you can put to these factors. You know they're important but you dont have the numbers. Well, practically everybody over-weighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they're taught in academia, and doesn't mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important.
- Its much better to let some things go uncompensated – to let life be hard – than to create systems that are easy to cheat.
- Do the best you can do. Never tell a lie. IF you say you're going to do it, get it done. Nobody gives a shit about an excuse. Leave for the meeting early. Dont be late, but if you are late, dont bother giving people excuses. Just apologize… Return you calls quickly. The other thing is the five-second no. You've got to make up your mind. Dont leave people hanging.
- Be happy while you are living, for you are a long time dead.
- What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intent to begin life at a point to which few have attained.
- Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.
- "Never get entangled in controversy, it rarely does any good and causes a miserable loss of time and temper." Charles Darwin
- Examine your thoughts. You will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do, its only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.
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