Avoiding Stupidity
Charlie Munger’s singular advice is more important now than when he was alive
Better to be roughly right than precisely wrong
— Charlie Munger
Seasoned surgeons emphasize the need to know when not to cut. In contrast, surgical students jump at the chance to cut. The advice is an extension of what Charlie Munger lived by — avoiding stupidity.
Similar sentiments were expressed by the neurophysician who, after reviewing the patient, flashed out his fountain pen. Biro pens are not his forte. He distinguishes himself from the other doctors with both ink and pen.
How that is related to avoiding stupidity is subtle but evident once we dig deep into the details. Once biro pens run out of ink, they can no longer serve their purpose. Most, if not all, are disposed of. Since it’s relatively cheap, we get another one.
Once everyone joins the bandwagon of biro pen users, we create demand for the plastics industry. Every pen disposal is a serial accumulation of plastic waste. Suppose just a billion people use pens. If pens get used up after two weeks, then everyone buys 26 pens in a year. Eliminate a month of leave and the holidays, and we could work with 20 pens in a year. That’s twenty billion pens in a year. The plastics industry is booming. The costs are silent. The more visible plastics are water bottles, but biro pens continue to endure in the shadows.
In contrast, my senior colleague uses a single fountain pen the whole year. He has three in total, serially refilling them. Indeed, the fountain pens also have plastic covers, but he only needs to buy them once and take good care of them. That’s not too difficult.
From an out-of-pocket perspective, 20 pens are not quite expensive. But if one pen is half a dollar, that’s 10 billion dollars generated in a year. Oblivious to the users, biro pen manufacturers generate a tonne of revenue, all else being constant. Fountain pen users don’t fuel this demand, nor do they significantly contribute to the revenue.
At a planetary level, avoiding stupidity is similar to choosing fountain pens over biro pens, an unpopular opinion. In addition, the fountain pen holder looks stylish with their metallic silver or golden tips. Style drowns at the expense of popularity. The fountain pen stands out in multiple ways. The biro pen, on the other hand, sacrificed style for popularity. This comparison reminds me of our online habits.
So much to avoid
Biro pens show how we easily dismiss the throw-away price of getting another once the one you were using runs out of ink. Cumulative effects of actions don’t crystallize as visibly and fast as a used-up pen, with a mountain of paperwork within arms-length. Biro pens are available and convenient.
All of which are avoidable but appear burdensome. In a word, costly. Switching costs are usually avoidable too. Inertia-like behaviour prevents switching from something that’s very reliable: fountain pens are harder to find than biro pens.
The same goes for readily available online content. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix, Disney+, email notification, app update notifications, Google Calendar, TikTok messages, X notifications — all of which are expensive on a cumulative basis, like biro pens, but which are costly to switch from. This list is longer.
Compared to biro pens, we have a whole lot to avoid. Add AI slop to the list, and it becomes monumental. Over half of internet-generated content is now produced by bots. It does not help to get informed if what you’re informed about is mediocre. Noise dominates our virtual experience. Signals become difficult to identify.
At this point in human history, avoidance is the best strategy. It’s like the pro tennis players, who bank on the weaknesses of the amateur opponents. They know which strikes to avoid and which to capitalize on. Buffett compared it to the baseball swing. You don’t need to make your swing at every thrown ball. You have to be patient and swing when it’s just right. Ninety-five percent of those balls will fall out of the desired range — you have to avoid those. For the few that fall within the 5% bracket, you have to make mighty swings. The numbers are arbitrary but follow the general curve expected of independent swings in order to achieve outlier performance.
So much of our screen consumption will benefit us when avoided rather than consumed. It’s a huge toll, because it means you’ll need to avoid what almost everyone does. It’s like choosing to go for the fountain pens, knowing shops that sell these vintage treasures are rare. Biros are readily available. The mental effort is demanding. Avoiding this compulsion is difficult. Presently, we have so much to avoid, but few inspiring stories to show that it’s possible. That’s why I started with the fountain pens, besides their other admirable features.
Ryan Holiday confesses that this kind of wisdom takes work. It wasn’t meant to be easy. If it were, everyone would do it.
Our brains were not wired to seek the cryptic options. Simpler is better. Biros over fountain pens. Online slop over David Deutsch. Podcasts over essays. Notes over articles. Photos over words.
The modern world has integrated so much of our lives into a single device that what we have to avoid should immediately be noticeable. Should. But since most people hardly prefer this option, the black hole pulls them into consuming every content without filters.
Filters are screening tools. The more complex the filter, the more purified the product. I remember the layers we were taught in primary school for purifying water. Every layer served a role. In particular, I remember the charcoal layer. It served as a sticky column, adsorbing impurities as the water trickled down. The water would not make it to the other end immediately. It would take time before the final droplets started dripping downstream. From a single bucket, you can probably get a cup of water. So much has been avoided to get the water purified.
The filter also needed regular changes to maintain the standards. Otherwise, filters can get corrupted by too much content. Our online lives suffer this kind of battery. I write a lot about the harmful effects of social media and AI slop, but it does not mean I am immune. Writing is my accountability tool. It’s how I recheck my filters. It’s how I make my reps to avoid the biros to seek the fountain pens. There’s a lot to avoid. In particular, a lot of stupidity to avoid.
The surest way to gravitate towards truth is via negativa. Science progresses through these steps. Academia, however, has dominated science so much that it’s often that either of the two is conflated for the same thing. P-values get hailed as evidence of something novel when there’s a lot about them that can be avoided. P-values are convenient. They are biro pens. But it’s difficult to have your article accepted in a peer-reviewed journal if your work does not have statistically significant results.
When you torture data sets enough, you eventually get something statistically significant. But is it relevant? Such nudges inspire scientists to seek more funding for their studies because each stand-alone study prompts more studies in its recommendations section. There’s a lot to avoid, even in science, as it is continually corrupted by incentivized academia.
Merlin Sheldrake, for instance, accounts for how little is captured about fungi in popular books on evolution, and yet, the agrarian revolution, which seeded the industrial and scientific revolution, thrived off the mycorrhizal relationship. Generally, it’s easier to continue the discussion about what is already being discussed. Such topics have the tag and momentum of relevance. But as the seasoned surgeon asks: Is it necessary? Should we cut? Can it be avoided?
Munger emphasized the importance of avoidance because Mr. Market will always come to you with a good deal. No business markets its losses and costs; only its profits and revenues. Getting an advisor may seem like a healthy strategy, but they would never want to always be the bearer of bad news. Holding such a label will easily trigger you, the boss, who is a few strikes away from firing your “treasured” advisor. The recipient of bad news may not know how to separate the message from the messenger. Completely avoiding getting an advisor is possible, but the mental toll is costly.
I love concerts. What I don’t love is the urge for everyone to record the artist so they can post on their social media. Artists and we become the slop. We don’t have to document everything. It’s all avoidable, but mentally demanding. Avoiding these vogue trends is the surest way to alienate oneself, but it’s also the surest way to make astute observations.
Science experiments are sensible because the model exists outside the experimenter. When you’re part of the experiment, understanding the cause-and-effect links and the feedback loops becomes close to impossible. What’s more, the developer of any idea, scientific or otherwise, needs to have the courage to kill it. Becoming entwined with your best ideas is a recipe for disaster. We are the easiest persons to fool. So we can avoid nurturing an obsessive love for our ideas. There’s so much to avoid.
Further, social media thrives off emotion. The funny and the irritating ones are more widely circulated than the rest. I have no issue with the funny. The irritants, however, prompt you to comment, especially after browsing through the comments already posted. It’s all avoidable. But social media pushes these emotional buttons. Abraham Lincoln used to write letters he would never send to control his anger. Knee-jerk reactions are avoidable. Lincoln would not be the wise leader historically loved if he had never avoided his anger.
Indeed, anger is a signal. But it should not control you. You can avoid that path.
From a conceptual point of view, in our infinite ignorance, we’re all equal. We’re noticing just how far our ignorance can go. AI works in ways that developers hardly understand. Rather than blindly accepting their summaries and outputs, we need filters to know what to avoid about them and what to consider, since AI can be useful. Alphafold is good evidence of the potential importance of AI. However, avoiding it entirely is also not necessarily a bad idea. Choosing to use it but guarding your filters may even be a worthwhile endeavour. But failing to know what to avoid about them amounts to undisciplined consumption. Indeed, there’s a lot about what AI does or can do that must be avoided. But AI and biro pens are similar. Convenient. Readily available. More common than books. Polluting the internet as biro pens pollute the planet. Thus, as biros are avoidable, AI and AI slop too is avoidable.
Munger lived long enough to see all the new waves of exciting ideas, most of which crashed. He worked with the principle of avoiding stupidity rather than seeking brilliance. The internet is flooded with too much content, and filters end up crashing. Avoiding it might be a better option than lying to oneself that you’re smarter than you think. I try to limit my time online, but momentarily get sucked into the vortex. Writing and books are my refuge in such moments. Walks and workouts help too. Indeed, I have relished the moments when I have avoided that which is positively avoidable.
As AI slop continues to colonize every online space, isn’t it meaningful that we avoid the stupidity? Isn’t it better to be roughly right through avoiding what can be avoided, than to be precisely wrong with orthodox tenacity?
What I’m trying to say is…
There’s so much to avoid.
Books have always been my go-to space, but I discovered they, too, can be corrupted. Which took me back to the ones that were printed before the Internet boom. Old books. But even that can be corrupted. Agatha Christie’s books were recently altered. She must be turning in her grave.
Yet, those that hardly change carry with them a lot of wisdom, like fountain pens. Change may be constant, but that which is constant has survived the harsh elements of change. As time is the surest test, we can know what to avoid by borrowing the wisdom of that which survives change. And as our world continues to change at a rapid pace, there’s a lot to avoid.
Tarrus Riley sings:
Cut it off, let it go, start anew
It’s how the healing starts.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube