Fool Me Three Times And I Give Up
Capital Thinking • Issue #161 • View online
“What you should learn when you make a mistake because you did not anticipate something is that the world is difficult to anticipate. That’s the correct lesson to learn from surprises: that the world is surprising.”
-Daniel Kahneman
From Morgan Housel at The Collaborative Fund:
The most significant part of the financial crisis that peaked ten years ago this month was that it took place within eight years of both the dot-com crash and 9/11.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times – oh, hell, why even try anymore?
Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan was published in April, 2007, 90 days before the financial crisis began. It sold well for two reasons: It’s a good book, and – as authors have known for centuries – the most effective writing is putting into words something people intuitively feel but haven’t yet articulated.
The Black Swan’s message – improbable outlier events run the world – wasn’t just interesting; it resonated.
“Yes, that’s my life! That’s what I’ve experienced over and over again for the last eight years!”
My biggest lesson of the last 10 years is that we’ve clung to that idea. Probably a little too much.
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*Featured post photo by Jonatan Pie on Unsplash