"Never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep"
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is a newsletter.
So buckle up.
Newsletters, Blogs and How Does This All Work? Glad you asked. You will see many blog posts throughout the week that do not get emailed to you. The Newsletters will be much longer and refer to the... you know what? Fuck it. I wrote all of this already here. Read that first and then continue with this, it's a bit of a doozy. Once you're done you might ask...
"Nic, Why bother writing a newsletter?"
That's a good question.
There is a very interesting breed of self-proclaimed "gurus" out there today. These self-described experts find pools of people on social media to feast on and add to their "tribe.” These poor souls aren't intelligent enough to define intelligence so they fall into circularities. Their main skill is their impressive capacity to repeat the shit they hear from other people.
Here's an example from one of the most well-known "experts" out there right now. This was pulled from a "foundational pillar" of his program:
"Since not more than 50% of the individuals can be wealthier than average..."
This almost sounds reasonable. In fact, he built his entire philosophy on a foundation of statements like this. All deductions, facts, lessons, or "points” he is making stem from his belief in these statements.
When elementary math shakes the foundation of your base knowledge, we've got a problem.
Let's say we stumble upon a village of 100 people. 90 of them have a net worth of $10,000 and 10 of them have a net worth of $1,000. There are 100 villagers with a total net worth of $910,000; an average net worth of $9,100. ...9 out of the 10 have above-average wealth. Turns out that more than 50% of individuals can, indeed, be wealthier than average. Things that sound good, are often uttered by and believed by people that forget that things move.
This expert and other "experts" have methodologies built on the "factual and obvious". The problem is that they are neither factual nor are they obvious. Simple observation and basic pattern recognition can disprove most of them. It doesn't even require doing the math. The base knowledge from which they are reasoning is faulty. It's a broken operating system.
Does that stop them? Of course not. Should I care? It depends on the day. Between you and I, I vacillate. On some days it drives me nuts. On others, I find it humorous and realize that in the long run, can only be good for me. More people playing stupid games on faulty foundations means less competition in the long run.
Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes.
What I have a hard time ignoring is that these goofballs pathologize others for doing things they, themselves, don't understand. They fail to consider that it's their own understanding that may be limited.
After some soul-searching, I think that’s why I keep showing up and writing. Not because I care if they blow themselves up, but because I care that YOU don’t. So you have the tools to recognize these dingleberries and develop a special pair of glasses. BS glasses, which specialize in spotting when the blind are leading the blind.
Usually, it's nothing fancy or complicated. It takes about a fifth-grade education to discredit most faulty operating systems. But we live in a complicated world. We come hardwired with biases and emotions.
Cognitive distortions blind us to reality.
Sometimes, it's more complex. Averages, indexing, and stuff like not understanding how to amalgamate data are nuanced. They take to understand and spot. It's not about doing the calculations and getting it right. It's about having heuristics to slow us down to think before we act.
Like this:
When a business coach shows you his or his average performance and it sounds good
...remember that it also sounds good that more than 50% of people can't have above-average wealth.
Entrepreneurs are risk-takers. It's in our blood. I'm certainly not suggesting avoiding taking risks. I'm suggesting that you be very careful around the eloquent. Learn to think about what is being said. Stress test it. And remember that things move.
As for me, I am going to keep stress-testing my base knowledge and sharing my experience. If you have a sound base from which you reason you can figure anything out.
And that's what this newsletter is all about. Until next time.
Nic