Charlie passed on the values of thrift, duty, hard work, and simplicity to the world.
Charlie considered Ben Franklin his hero and got the value of lifelong learning, intellectual curiosity, sobriety, avoidance of envy and resentment, reliability, learning from the mistakes of others, perseverance, objectivity, willingness to test one’s own beliefs, and many more.
For Charlie, successful investing was a result of being organized and lifelong learning.
Main Ideas
Learning
“Go to bed wiser than you woke up.”
“You are hooked to lifetime learning.”
“Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty (Confucius).”
Develop mental models from multidisciplinary ideas.
Preparation
“The will to win is the will to prepare.”
“The best way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.”
Inversion
Solve problem by inversion. Avoid sloth, unreliability, addictions, jealousy, self pity, over spending, getting caught up in extreme ideology.
On Boredom
Most people make terrible mistakes because they can’t sit and get bored.
Ideas From “The Psychology of Human Misjudgement” Speech
- Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency
- Men’s behavior is heavily influenced by incentives. It’s such a strong factor in changing people’s behavior. You can read about the Xerox case and Federal Express shift problem resolution to understand this better.
- Liking/Loving Tendency
- When you love/like someone, you distort facts to believe what they are saying. Liking/loving someone with good values will change your mind for the better, and the opposite of it is true as well.
- Disliking/Hating Tendency
- When you hate/dislike someone, you don’t want to believe what they are saying, even if it’s true. Sometimes we make huge mistakes because we don’t believe a fact coming from the person we hate.
- Doubt-Avoidance Tendency
- Men have evolved to make decisions quickly from a survival standpoint; however, this leads to a lot of time spent making totally wrong decisions because we are trying to reach a conclusion faster.
- Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency
- The idea is people don’t change their minds easily. We absorb only the facts that support our beliefs. For example, if someone is an alcoholic, they will only remember the fact that people who drink alcohol have fun.
- Curiosity Tendency
- Humans have more curiosity than other animals. This sometimes helps prevent falling to other psychological biases
- Kantian Fairness Tendency
- Kant’s “categorical imperative” suggests that people should act in ways that, if everyone did the same, would create the best outcome for all. This idea of fairness influences much of modern behavior, where people expect and practice fairness.
- For example, in the U.S., people show courtesy on one-way roads or when merging in traffic, even without signs. Drivers often let others go ahead, as they would want the same courtesy in return.
- Envy/Jealousy Tendency
- The drive for food in resource-scarce conditions likely led to the evolution of envy and jealousy in humans. These emotions are deeply embedded in human nature.
- In modern settings, envy still fuels conflict, notably in environments like universities or law firms, where differences in compensation often stir resentment. Yet despite envy’s powerful influence, it is rarely discussed openly, even in psychology textbooks, possibly because labeling others as envious is perceived as deeply insulting.
- Reciprocation Tendency
- This is a strong psychological effect, very well described in Robert Cialdini’s book Influence. The idea is that when someone does a favor to us, we will return the favor. Many marketers use this effect by giving free samples of their product.
- Influence From Mere Association Tendency
- This is somewhat related to the Pavlovian association. Marketers put their product next to a beautiful girl and the idea of desirability works on the product as well. That’s the reason products like Coke use festivals and happy moments in their ads. Just the mere association triggers the similar emotions.
- Simple, Pain—Avoiding Psychological Denial
- We sometimes deny a fact because it’s so painful to accept that. Mothers whose children are criminals won’t accept the fact.
- Excessive Self-Regard Tendency
- Overoptimism Tendency
- Deprival-Superaction Theory
- Social Proof Tendency
- Contrast Miscreation Tendency
- Stress Influence Tendency
- Availability Misweighing Tendency
- Use-It-Or-Lose-It Tendency
- Drug-Mis influence-Tendency
- Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency
- Authority Misinfluence Tendency
- Twiddle Tendency
- Reason-Respecting Tendency
- Lollapalooza Tendency
Book Recommendation From Charlie
Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Selfish Gene, Ice Age, and Darwin’s Blind