Links - 03/25/2025
“Students of America go to these elite business schools and law schools and they learn corporate finance the way it’s now taught and investment management the way it’s now taught. And some of these people write articles in the newspaper and other places and they say, ‘Well, the whole secret of investment is diversification.’ That’s the mantra. They’ve got it exactly back-ass-ward. The whole secret of investment is to find places where it’s safe and wise to non-diversify. It’s just that simple. Diversification is for the know-nothing investor; it’s not for the professional.” —Charlie Munger (2008)
“It’s way better to be in securities markets if you have a hundred IQ and everybody else operating has an 80, than if you have 140 and all the rest of them also have 140. So the secret of life is weak competition. Somebody said, ‘How do you beat Bobby Fischer?’ You play him in any game except chess.” —Warren Buffett (1998)
The Four Pillars of Rationality (According to Charlie Munger) (LINK)
YouTube TV, Wiz, and Why Monopolies Buy Innovation - by Ben Thompson (LINK)
Trade War Explodes Across World at Pace Not Seen in Decades (LINK)
Founders Podcast: The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig (LINK)
The Knowledge Project Podcast: #220 Outliers: James Dyson — Against the Odds (LINK)
Invest Like the Best Podcast: Gili Raanan - Cybersecurity Investment Playbook (LINK)
Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: IN A TROUBLED WAY (LINK)
EconTalk Podcast: Bird Brains, Bird Sex, and All Kinds of Beauty (with Matt Ridley) (LINK)
Related book: Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin's Strangest Idea
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans - by Jeffrey Goldberg (LINK) [The Atlantic also recorded a podcast about the incident.]
Make America Smart Again [H/T @david_perell] (LINK)
Actually, AI is already being deployed with great success. One example: The Alpha School, launched in Austin, Texas, has a goal of completely reimagining education. Alpha co-founder MacKenzie Price says, “Students get AI-powered, self-paced learning plans and spend only two hours a day on academics. They learn twice as much in half the time. The rest of the school day is devoted to learning life skills like public speaking, financial literacy, socialization and teamwork.” To do this, teachers become guides, she explains, “doing what humans do best: emotional support, motivation and developing a personal connection to students.” It works. How do we scale this nationwide and then globally?
“The question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life—it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us—we are the ones who are questioned! We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential ‘life questions.’ Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to—of being responsible toward—life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.” —Viktor E. Frankl