Book Club: Seeking Wisdom, From Darwin To Munger - by Peter Bevelin
The title of this book sparked my curiosity in a big way. For one, they both have the first name Charles which is hilarious. More than that though, they are both known as incredible thinkers of their respective generations in different ways. So what kind of business do they have being referenced in the same book we ask?
This is a book about the human mind and behavior (Darwin) as well as the improvement of intellectual capacity specifically “how” to think (Munger).
Seeking Wisdom, was one of the more unique books I’ve read this year. It’s premise made me reflect on the state of books written on the subject of self improvement. “Self Improvement” is a really broad category, but what I mean is the set of all books that one would read in order to ‘gain’ something other than just pure entertainment as they would a fictional romance novel.
With that defined, the theme of the modern self improvement book seems to follow “Learn how to do the incredibly difficult thing you most desire, and do it quickly with ease!” There’s probably something published on Amazon under that name already.
The point is, what sells nowadays is the proposed easy fix. The workaround or quick way to attain value without hard work. Obviously not all books follow this(See Steven Pressfield’s non-fiction), but I feel pretty comfortable in claiming that it is the trend. Seeking Wisdom is not apart of this trend.
The book is broken into 3 major parts. The first, how our anatomy influences our thinking, the second covers the psychology behind common misjudgements and the third is a framework for better thinking. All three sections have great depth without being too difficult to get through. As always, I won’t go into too much detail per section but I do highly recommend reading through it yourself.
If I had to pick one concept from the entirety of this book, I would say the notion of thinking in systems is most important. A system is a framework for doing something, meaning a set of rules that you follow repeatedly. Warren Buffett (quoted frequently) and Charles Munger think and operate their daily lives in systems almost exclusively. I don’t mean “First brush your teeth, then get dressed” etc. I mean that they way they both evaluate investments and core business decisions are systematic.
For example, they refuse to spend more than a few minutes considering investing in a company whose core business they don’t understand (ie nanotechnology and its use in re-engineering fossil fuels). Do they miss out on huge opportunities to make money by immediately dismissing the overly complex? Of course they do!
By letting a few winners go, they can devote the bulk of their time to companies with higher probabilities of success (ones they understand) and thus come out ahead overall. Their systems allow them to automate this thinking/evaluation process.
The section on our understanding of probability will also be incredibly profound for those that have not explicitly studied risk and chance.
Verdict: Read this book, if nothing else it will cause you to reflect inwardly on your thinking habits and common assumptions. Also, the entire commencement speech Charles Munger gave at Harvard is in the appendix and is a delicious read on it’s own. Enjoy!