원문 보기
Have you ever wondered why even such smart people sometimes make such big mistakes regarding money ? Legendary investor Charlie Mangad devoted his entire life to solving just this one puzzle. So let us today delve deeper into his thoughts on the psychology of human error. These words are from none other than the world's most successful investor, Warren Buffett.
And when a man like Warren Buffett calls someone a great partner, the world listens. This clearly shows that Mangar was one of the sharpest minds of his time. So the question arises, what was his secret? What did he know that you and I or the rest of the world could not see? This wisdom of Mars is like a very interesting puzzle which we will try to solve together today.
Look, Mars notices something very strange in the world around him. He noticed that no matter how smart people were, they were making the same mistakes over and over again. This pattern of irrationality, a pattern of mistakes, became the passion of his life. He just wanted to understand why this happens?
So the real problem that Mangad identified was that our brains are not designed to deeply analyze everything. He takes shortcuts. For example, when we see a familiar brand, we assume it must be good. Most of the time these shortcuts work. But Mars understood that these shortcuts, especially when we are stressed, can mislead us and make us make huge mistakes.
So what is the cure for this irrationality of ours ? The answer is Mars' famous list of 25 psychological reasons that cause us to misunderstand situations. Yes, not one or two but 25. Mars identified 25 different mental inclinations that lead us to make bad decisions. This number itself tells us how many weaknesses may be hidden in our thinking.
We'll just take a look at a few here, but the full list is a deep study in itself. This is one of the most powerful ideas of Mars. He used to say that if you want to change someone's thinking then do not give arguments. Give him incentives. Incentives are so powerful that they can make even good people do wrong things and the funny thing is that people even make big arguments to justify their actions.
This story fits perfectly. As long as FedEx was paying its employees by the hour, they would work longer , but as soon as the company told them to finish the shift and get paid, the same work started getting completed in minutes. The incentive changed his entire behavior. Has it ever happened that you did something just because everyone else was doing the same thing?
This is what social proof tendency is all about. When we don't know what to do, we look to others. The bubbles that form and then burst in the stock market are the biggest example of this. Ok? So we understood the problem. Now let's come to Mangal's powerful and practical solutions that were part of his mental toolkit for better thinking.
This is an amazing technique. Inversion means thinking in reverse. Most people ask how am I successful? Mangar used to ask, how can I fail for sure. And then he avoided those things at all costs. It's like walking backwards to success. What is the plan? Knowing what not to do is more important than knowing what not to do.
This is the essence of Mars' philosophy. He used to say that to someone who has only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Therefore, we need to borrow big ideas from different subjects so that we can look at any problem from many different perspectives. This is what he called worldly wisdom. Now we come to the most unique concept of Mars.
What happens when all these psychological inclinations not only combine but collide with each other to create a huge, powerful outcome? The most important thing here is that its effect is qualitative. Meaning multiplicative doesn't just add up. In simple words, two and two do not make four but they make 20 or 25.
When multiple inclinations push in the same direction, the result is enormous and often beyond logic. The Game Stop incident of 2021 is a perfect example of this. Social proof on Reddit made people join the herd. Tweets by prominent celebrities created authority bias, and the fear of missing out, or FOMO, added fuel to the fire.
All of this combined to create a Lollapalooza effect that shook the entire market and defied logic. And finally, there's one master principle of Mang's life and investing that is very simple yet profound. So this is the biggest lesson. Munger believed that the secret to great success lay not in being overly smart but in consistently avoiding stupid mistakes.
Avoiding mistakes is often more important than doing great work. So how to use it in real life ? Manger used to recommend a checklist approach. Before making any major decisions, look at this list of psychological inclinations and ask yourself. Am I falling prey to any of these? It can help us avoid our worst habits.
It's about humility. It's about recognizing your limits. And perhaps the greatest wisdom is to know where your wisdom ends. So all this leaves us with one last question. After all this information, what are our own beliefs that perhaps it is time to test them on the basis of these mental models?
Comments 0