source: goodreads

Poor Charlie’s Almanack

The early values Charlie’s children got from Charlie were the value of thrift, duty, hard work, and simplicity.

Charlie considers 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.

Charlie learned from his grandfather the sound principles: to concentrate on the task immediately in front of him and to control spending.

For Charlie, successful investing is a result of being organized and lifelong learning. “”

Main Ideas

Learning

“Go to bed wiser than you woke up.”

“You are hooked to life time learning.”

“Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty (Confucious).”

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency
  6. Curiosity Tendency
  7. Kantian Fairness Tendency
    • Kant’s “categorical imperative” is a rule suggesting 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Reciprocation Tendency
  10. Influence From Mere Association Tendency
  11. 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.
  12. Excessive Self Regard Tendency
  13. Overoptimism Tendency
  14. Deprival-Superaction Theory
  15. Social Proof Tendency
  16. Contrast Miscreation Tendency
  17. Stress Influence Tendency
  18. Availability Misweighing Tendency
  19. Use-It-Or-Lose-It Tendency
  20. Drug-Mis influence-Tendency
  21. Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency
  22. Authority Misinfluence Tendency
  23. Twiddle Tendency
  24. Reason-Respecting Tendency
  25. Lollapalooza Tendency

Book Recommendation From Charlie

Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Selfish Gene, Ice Age, and Darwin’s Blind

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