rbdunk

  “The best we can do is compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when stakes are high.” - Daniel Kahneman.  The best way to solve a problem is to avoid it in the first place. You have to recognize the situations when you need to actively put a buffer between reacting and responding. People make intuitive judgments all day; you’re constantly taking in information from the world and trying to make sense of it. When something or somebody affects you directly in a negative way, you respond because you want to manipulate whatever you can to control and change the situation. But most of the time, you don't control much. Unhappiness is when there is a difference between what reality is and what you want it to be. When someone slights you, you react because you don't see yourself that way, and you want to make sure that person doesn't see you that way. Or you want to be seen as someone who doesn't take ...

When you own something and are responsible for it, you want it to survive and thrive, but most importantly, you want it to survive. Thinking like an owner is an idea that I came into contact with as I was reading about Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, and Charlie Munger. The story and modus operandi of Berkshire is no secret, as it is one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. However, you can always find instances where businesses go against the values and practices of thinking like an owner and inevitably blow up or fail. Thinking like an owner means prioritizing long-term over short-term. Owning something means you want to keep it around as long as possible, and if you are a decision-maker, your job is to have good judgment. One thing I often read about is good decision-makers who wind up blowing up because they know they are good decision-makers. A thousand good decisions don't mean anything if you make one that kills you. You can't let your ego get...

Just because you have a good outcome does not make you a good decision-maker, and just because you have a bad outcome does not make you a bad one.  When making decisions under uncertainty, you can not judge the quality of the decision based on the outcome after the fact. First, if you're looking at it after the fact, you will probably attribute the wrong cause since you view it in hindsight (we crave causality and explanations). There is so much randomness in the world, and you can not possibly gather enough relevant information to make perfect decisions every time. You are a good decision-maker because of the decision-making process you follow. People with bad or no processes get lucky, and those with good processes get unlucky. You focus on the process of generating the decisions because that is the only thing you can truly control, and some strategies give you the best chance of making good decisions; the first is making sure that you stay far away from blowing up or death, more...

Startups and entrepreneurship have always interested me because they are a mechanism for solving problems. At a societal level, really, the only agents of change are people who are comfortable with risk and seek a reward. Obviously, that is very well known. But it's important to look at things from a fundamental basis. So, Startups are one way to solve problems. This point comes up a lot in the Startup literature. You always hear or read that the best Startups were originally the founders trying to solve a problem they knew on a personal level. These companies didn't get founded because they wanted to be rich and famous; they started because the founders experienced a problem and wanted a solution. Raising Canes, Airbnb, Facebook, Apple, Activision, Patagonia, and OpenAI all of these companies began with a problem. Now, the problems of not being able to find good chicken fingers and wanting to ensure the safe development of human-loving artificial intelligence are very differen...

Through my Father, I discovered the philosopher/entrepreneur Naval Ravikant. I can say that this introduction changed my life. I think that when you discover and latch on to the ideas of a great mind, you inevitably follow the rabbit hole of knowledge/wisdom all the way down. You want to know how they built their mind. Following this rabbit hole will lead you to other great thinkers. For me, it was Munger, Buffet, PG, Balaji, Sama, Andreessen, Andrew Wilkinson, Jobs, and many more. Once you get hooked on learning (reading), you develop and accrue mental models. As you develop and gain more mental models, you can literally feel yourself getting smarter (it's important to recognize confidence vs arrogance). Getting smarter is a fantastic feeling because learning is an exponential pursuit. It gets easier to learn as you build more knowledge. At a certain point of learning, you can begin to see multidisciplinary concepts connect to each other. Munger talks about having a latticework of...