Beware the Man With One Book: Build Your Latticework of Knowledge (and Opinion)
We’ve all met that guy who speaks in certainty, confidence and with authority. It’s so compelling you want to believe. Really believe.
Some of these thought leaders include successful technologists like Balaji Srinivasan, Marc Andreesen, Peter Thiel. Or Geopolitical analysts like Peter Zeihan, writer Yuval Harari, hedge funder Ray Dalio, financiers like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Jim Rogers. So many brilliant business people, academics, generals or influencers who have written amazing books or speak at TED, write online or show up on podcasts like Tim Ferriss, Jocko Willink or Joe Rogan. A plethora of very impressive people to follow. And they all have their fanboys and “stans” as hard core fans are called. Hero worshippers.
But this is very dangerous and when you become a fan or follower, you end up outsourcing your thinking. It’s a complicated world out there with very little certainty. I’ve learned there is no truth, there is only perspective and opinion. You can’t just take one data point or view.
What I found is that every single one of them is right in one way. And just because one person is right, doesn’t mean the other is wrong.
So for example, yes, as Balaji believes, China is in general, probably better run as a country & have far more competent bureaucrats. His view is that the USA and elites are inheritors and clueless grifters who can’t do anything right. Zeihan believes USA has major advantages in demographics, energy and food independence, and crazy good geography to boot while China has to import most of its food and energy and sharp terminal demographic issues.
Both Zeihan and Balaji’s views are probably directionally correct on a time continuum, even though at first glance they seem diametrically opposed.
My point is You have to do your own homework and pay attention to what all of them say. Process this in combination with other opposing views. Only then can you come up with your own point of view.
As Charlie Munger recommends: you have to build your latticework of knowledge. Latticework is defined by Joseph Abedesi as “Think of your latticework of mental models as tools in your toolkit. The more tools you have, the more you can draw upon to solve the problem. In contrast, if you have only one or two tools, then you'll contort the situation to be solved by just those tools, and you'll arrive at a suboptimal solution.”
Net net: read and watch everything. Learn from everything and everyone. Don’t take one impressive person’s strong views as gospel.