Notes and Takeaways: The Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Thinking
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My Notes
According to the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “to understand is to know what to do.” You make fewer mistakes when you understand something. Mistakes come from blind spots—areas where you lack understanding.
Complex is not sophisticated. Albert Einstein once listed his five ascending levels of cognitive prowess: 1) Smart (lowest), 2) Intelligent, 3) Brilliant, 4) Genius, 5) Simple (highest). Simple is better than genius because you can understand it. For example, Ethics by Benedict De Spinoza was written by a true genius, but you can’t understand anything in it. Simple transcends genius.
Why is it important to be a multidisciplinary thinker? “The frog in the well knows nothing of the mighty ocean.” If you only know one discipline, you are like the frog in a well. If you want to make good decisions in the complex system of life, you must be multi-disciplinary.
Peter Kaufman tried to learn what Charlie Munger calls “the big ideas” from the core disciplines. His trick was to read all the interviews from nearly 12 years of Discovery Magazine's archived publications. He printed out 144 interviews and read them over six months. This gave him every big idea from every domain of science and biology. (I found someone online who has collected many of these here.)
Peter Kaufman tested, confirmed, and developed his 30 or so big multidisciplinary ideas/models across what he calls his “three buckets”. The three buckets represent three distinct large, relevant sample sizes:
Bucket #1: 13.7 billion years of the inorganic universe. Physics. Geology. Anything that’s not living. This is what we live in.
Bucket #2: 3.5 billion years of biology on the planet Earth. This is what we are a part of.
Bucket #3: 20,000 years of recorded human history. This is our story of who we are.
“How does everything work in two words?”
Mirrored reciprocation. Let’s test this against each bucket:
Bucket #1 Test: According to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “for every action, there will always be an equal and opposite reaction.” Everything in the inorganic universe works that way.
Bucket #2 Test: Mark Twain said that a man who picks up a cat by its tail will learn a lesson he can learn in no other way. What happens if you pick up a cat by its tail? But what if instead of doing something disagreeable with this cat, we do something very agreeable with this cat? Everything in the biological universe works that way.
Bucket #3 Test: Peter Kaufman tells an elevator story. When you walk into an elevator with a stranger, you have three choices for how you’re going to behave. You can smile and say good morning, you can yell and his, or you can do nothing. 98 percent of the time, people will mirror you. Every interaction you have with another human being is a mirrored reciprocation.
“What’s the most powerful force that humans can harness to achieve their goals?”
Dogged incremental constant progress over a very long time frame. Let’s test this against each bucket:
Bucket #1 Test: According to Albert Einstein, the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. He called it the greatest mathematical discovery of all time and the eighth wonder of the world. “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.”
Bucket #2 Test: It’s the machine of evolution.
Bucket #3 Test: If you want to win a gold medal in the Olympics, learn a musical instrument, learn a foreign language, or build a great company, you want dogged incremental constant progress over a very long time frame.
Constant vs intermittent
You have to be constant. But human beings don’t like to be constant. How many people do you know who are constant in what they do? Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger got rich were constant. They were not intermittent. Intermittency is one of the most important things in your life. In geometric terms, this is called variance drain. Whenever you interrupt the constant increase above a certain level of threshold, you lose compounding. You fall back onto a linear curve or step down a curve. Intermittency impacts everything from trust in relationships to performance at work to personal health.
Leadership trait list
Every person is on a search for the person they can 100 percent trust. Someone who is trustworthy, principled, courageous, competent, kind, loyal, understanding, forgiving, and unselfish. And if you ever think you may have encountered this person, you will test them to make sure they are real and that you’re not being tricked. The paradox is that it looks like you’re probing for weakness, but you’re not. You’re probing for strength. And you feel betrayed if you ever get back weakness instead of strength because you’ve got to start your search all over again. If you want people to go all in for you and attach themselves to you, be the person they have been looking for. In all of your interactions, be trustworthy, principled, courageous, competent, kind, loyal, understanding, forgiving, and unselfish.
Human basic needs
We all have the same basic needs. We want to be 1) paid attention to, 2) listened to, 3) respected, 4) loved, and we want 5) to experience meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment in life. The only difference is the strategy we each employ to fulfill those needs. All you have to do, if you want everything in life from everybody else, is pay attention to them; listen to them; show them respect; love them; and give them meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment. This is what being a good person looks like. And what are you going to get back? Mirrored reciprocation. You just have to go first!
Why don’t people go first? There’s a huge asymmetry between the standard human desire for gain and the standard human desire to avoid loss. We fear the 2% chance of loss more than we desire the 98% chance of positive gain. We’re not willing to be vulnerable and expose ourselves to that 2% to have a chance of finding the 98%. Lou Brock might have put it best when he said, “Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.” If you’re getting beaten in life, chances are it’s because you’re afraid of appearing foolish.
Counter example: If you scowl and hiss at the world, that is what you will get back!
Dog hack: Every single time your significant other comes home, greet them at the door with the biggest unconditional show of attention that they’ve ever gotten in their whole life. Then you can go back to doing whatever you were doing before and completely ignore them for the rest of the evening.
You only have one lifetime. Don’t spend it fighting with other people. Live a celebratory life. All you have to do is go positive and be patient enough for it to work (usually 6 months).
What must you necessarily do if you’re interested in achieving win-win frameworks with your important counterparties in life?
The basic axiom of clinical psychology reads, “If you could see the world the way I see it, you’d understand why I behave the way I do.” There’re two corollaries to that axiom via logical extension: 1) If that axiom is true and you want to understand the way someone’s behaving, you must see the world as they see it; and 2) If you want to change a human being’s behavior, you must first change how they see the world.
The three hallmarks of a great investment are superior returns, low risk, and long duration. Treat these three things as co-priorities and great win-win alignment with your stakeholders. Don’t be proud of win-lose relationships with vendors, employees, or investors. According to game theory, these lead to suboptimal outcomes. The secret to leadership is to see through the eyes of all six important counterparty groups and ensure that everything you do is structured to be win-win with them. So here are the six groups: your customers, your suppliers, your employees, your owners, your regulators, and the communities where you operate. And if you can truly see through the eyes of all six of these counterparty groups and understand their needs, their aspirations, their insecurities, their time horizons—how many blind spots do you have now?
“No road is long with good company.”
The essence of life is to surround yourself with good company. If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. Live your life so you can go far together. Don’t live it to go quickly alone. What really matters is to have people pay attention to you, listen to you, and respect you; to love you; and to show you that you matter. And to have it be genuine, not bought.