Wit and Wisdom on Investing, Business, and Life
Aldous Huxley an English philosopher once said-
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
In isolation, experience and knowledge are useless. It’s the symbiotic relationship between these two that makes them valuable. Knowledge which doesn’t inspire action has a shelf life of a banana, i.e., it doesn’t last long. When actions don’t refine back the knowledge that initiated them, it’s like throwing darts in the dark.
How many times have you stepped into a public bathroom and felt disgusted by puddles of spilled over liquid around the porcelain urinal?
We all know that it’s the result of men relieving themselves carelessly. When people know they aren’t required to clean their own mess, they’re least bothered about aiming properly to minimize the spillage.
Maybe putting up notices like – Please piss responsibly – would help. But we know most people don’t heed to such requests. So the architects of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam came up with a brilliant strategy. They put a fly in each urinal.
[Read more…] about The Illusion of Free Will
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who lived during 5th century BC, said –
A man can never step into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
I would like to posit that Heraclitus’ observation applies to books also. Unlike the river, a book doesn’t change much but the reader does.
When you reread a book, what you see and understand is very different from what you saw when you read it the first time. It’s true for the good books as well as the bad ones. In your second reading, you may realize that the book you initially thought as amazing wasn’t really so and vice versa.
This isn’t your typical VIA interview, but a collection of wisdom from a few investors we have interviewed in the past. The topic is – lessons from the 2008 crisis. A decade has passed since this crisis (time flew, again!), and most lessons would have been forgotten (we have short memories).
As we see around, investors – especially new than old – are practicing speculative behavior. Not many investors who felt the pain in 2008 would possibly think this is a good idea even if no major crisis may be lurking around the corner. And this is exactly what came out from the questions we asked a few seasoned value investors, who were close witness to the crisis in 2008.
[Read more…] about InvestorInsights: Revisiting Lessons from 2008 — Part 2
From health risks to financial decisions, it’s often hard to make decisions because the statistics are usually presented to us by experts who misinterpret the data themselves. This remarkably intelligent book simplifies the world of probability, risk, and uncertainty. Plus, the book contains many simple (but powerful) rules to avoid the grave consequences of risk illiteracy.
Stories lie but numbers don’t, goes the adage. However, evolution has wired the human brain in such a way that our neural machinery isn’t optimized to have an intuitive feeling for numbers. As a result, numbers mislead us. Sometimes in shocking ways.
[Read more…] about BookWorm: Risk Savvy