Critical Thinking

Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription

May 22, 2019 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Intellectual inquiry is effortful, and you need a durable internal push to engage in it.

An inflexible approach impedes critical-thinking. I’ve discussed previously (here, here, here, and here) that a sophisticated critical-thinker considers alternative world-views that may cause him/her to philosophize differently.

For example, if you cling rigidly to a “raise taxes on the wealthiest people” position, you are possibly unwilling to contemplate that, among other problems, higher taxes disincentivize productivity, promote economic behaviors to dodge taxes, and contribute to class warfare. Examining all sensible inferences and considering a variety of possible viewpoints or perspectives may help you to arrive at more moderate, practical positions that are conceivably within acceptable limits.

Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription: Avoid Intense Ideology

One of the central wisdoms of Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice-Chairman and the distinguished beacon of multi-disciplinary thinking, is to keep an eye open for dangers that accompany in submitting to a particular ideology.

At his celebrated commencement address to the graduates of the University of Southern California Law School on May 13, 2007, Munger affirmed,

In my mind, I got a little example I use whenever I think about ideology and it’s these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools in the Aaron Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100 percent. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology.

I have what I call an “iron prescription” that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say, “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it.” I think only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.

…

This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very very important thing in life if you want to have more correct knowledge and be wiser than other people. A heavy ideology is very likely to do you in.

In the era of social media and group polarization, it’s easy to slip into confirmation bias by committing yourself to a self-imposed ideology.

As I’ve mentioned previously, studies have shown that associating with likeminded folks can make you even more disdainful of contradictory viewpoints. Nothing will ruin you faster than an ideology burrowing deeper in a closed mind.

Idea for Impact: Nothing deceives you as much as extreme passion

Stay away from intense ideologies until you’ve examined the opposing viewpoint. Don’t ignore the counterevidence. Consider the other side of any thought as carefully as your own.

Postscript: Munger’s other iron prescription concerns avoiding the victim mentality: “Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life… Feeling like a victim is perfectly disastrous way to go through life. If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it’s always your fault and you just fix it as best you can—the so called iron prescription—I think that really works.” See my previous article on Charlie Munger and lessons on adversity.

Four Ideas for Business Improvement Ideas

November 1, 2018 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Seek fresh eyes. Ask new employees and interns to make a note of every question they have about how things get done in your organization. If anything—reports, approvals, meetings, reviews—doesn’t seem sensible, let them record those inefficiencies. After a few weeks, when they’ve become familiar with the organization and its workflow, have them reassess and report their observations. The best improvement ideas come from people who aren’t stuck in the established ways.
Notice something? Fix it quickly or delegate. Never walk absentmindedly by something that could be improved. A cluttered instruments cabinet in a warehouse? A loose tile in a walkway? A broken link on your customer service website? Don’t take inconveniences and unpleasant situations for granted.
Explore the outsider’s perspective. Notice how trivial stuff can really frustrate you when you’re standing in line at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles or dealing with a slow bureaucracy? While running errands, do others’ rules, regulations, and procedures annoy you? Bump into something that doesn’t have to be laborious, arduous, expensive, or annoying, but is? Examine if your business imposes any of those inconveniences on your customers.
Make it easy for customers to complain. Seek customer feedback in such a way that it encourages people to share their negative experiences. As I’ve illuminated before, many innovative ideas have their roots in prudent attention to and empathy with customers’ experiences.

Idea for Impact: Problem-finding is one of the most significant—and overlooked—parts of innovation. Learn to pay attention to the subtle clues to opportunities all around.

A Guide to Intelligent Reading: Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’

October 29, 2018 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you’re interested in sharpening up your ability to read, comprehend, and debate, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren‘s bestselling How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (1972; first published in 1940 under only Adler’s name) is the definitive guidebook.

The book stemmed from Adler’s belief that students of liberal education needed to be grounded in the “great ideas” of humankind, as represented in the canon of Western classic literature. To Adler, the art of reading well is deeply correlated to the art of thinking clearly, critically, and freely.

After the publication of How to Read a Book (1940,) Adler advanced his ideas on educational theory further by starting the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. His later successes as a University of Chicago philosopher and an educator had an colossal influence on American education in the twentieth century.

Take-away Lesson #1: Active Reading is the Effort to Understand

How to Read a Book is divided into four parts:

Part one discusses the first two levels of reading: elementary reading (the level of reading taught in elementary schools and high schools) and inspectional reading (methodical skimming and cursory reading.)
Part two contains the third level of reading, analytical reading: classifying the author’s arguments and information, coming to terms with the book’s line of reasoning, establishing the author’s implications, criticizing the book, and critiquing the author.
Part three covers the particular nuances of reading various types of literature: practical books, creative literature, stories, plays, poems, history, philosophy, science, mathematics, and social science.
Part four of the book is earmarked to the ultimate goals of reading—viz., expanding one’s mind for further understanding—a goal facilitated by “synoptical reading.” Since, per Carl Jung, “one book opens another,” a determined reader should peruse several works on the same subject with the intention of establishing a broader outlook of the subject matter. According to Adler, syntopical reading is the hallmark of scholarship: “Knowing that more than one book is relevant to a particular question is the first requirement in any project of syntopical reading. Knowing which books should be read, in a general way, is the second requirement.”

The essence of reading’s comprehension and appreciation lies in how best the reader can answer four questions during the course of reading a book:

During elementary reading: “What does the book say?”
During inspectional reading: “What is the book about?” How the author is trying to say it? What methodologies, narratives, substantiations, and examples does he use?
During analytical reading: “What does the book mean?” And, “Are the author’s arguments and claims valid—in whole or part? What is the significance of the author’s theses?”
During syntopical reading: “How does this book compare with other books?” And, “What other sources of knowledge could be pursued?”

How to Read a Book concludes with two appendices: (1) a list of titles in the “Great Books of the Western World” program, and (2) a number of exercises and tests on all four levels of reading.

Take-away Lesson #2: A Reader Must Suspend Judgment Until He Can Express the Author’s Positions

“You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, ‘I understand,’ before you can say any one of the following things: ‘I agree,’ or ‘I disagree,’ or ‘I suspend judgment.'”
“Students who plainly do not know what the author is saying seem to have no hesitation in setting themselves up as his judges. They not only disagree with something they do not understand but, what is equally bad, they also often agree to a position they cannot express intelligibly in their own words.” As I’ve elaborated on this blog before (here, here, here, here, and here,) you must be able to accurately state—in your own words—the position of those you’re debating, before you can challenge them.
“When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously.” And, “Most people think that winning the argument is what matters, not learning the truth. He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong.”

Take-away Lesson #3: Reading Well is Better Than Reading Widely

The objective of reading a book is to evolve to the level of the author: “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” Additionally, “Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.”
Read a “difficult” book multiple times. Each time you read a specific book, you’ll discover more—new ideas, new concepts, and deeper truths.

“In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.”
“It is generally desirable to skim even a book that you intend to read carefully, to get some idea of its form and structure.”
“Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.”

Regarding the “ignorance of those who have misread many books”, Adler asserts that such people, “are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.”

Recommendation: Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading is a smart reading that should be on everybody’s library. It is a goldmine of invaluable insights into the art of reading, debate, and persuasion.

Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate

October 22, 2018 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Innovation by Imitation: Many Innovations Come from the Outside---How Henry Ford Developed the Moving Assembly Line for the Model T

Emulating others’ ideas is an underappreciated learning tool. Many creative innovators set forth as remarkably astute mimics of others. “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” prods a creator’s maxim often misattributed to Picasso.

Imitation is a leading pathway to business innovation, even if being an imitator is anchored by a sense of derision. Ever more businesses are nicking great ideas wherever they can obtain them—in their own industries or beyond. Hospitals have adapted safety and efficiency procedures from the military and the airline industry. Aircraft manufacturers have adopted the car industry’s lean supply chain management concepts. Ritz-Carlton, the luxury chain of hotels and resorts, runs the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center that has helped trained its legendary cult of customer service and employee empowerment best practices to managers from companies across industries.

Creativity by Taking Existing Ideas: Applying Them in a New Context

The most prominent example of innovating by imitation is Ford’s development of the automobile assembly line—a system Henry Ford copied (and improved) from the Chicago meat processing business.

Innovation by Imitation: Genesis of the Moving Assembly Line Henry Ford’s relentless ambition to build his Model T a high-volume-low-cost automobile, together with his engineering knowledge and manufacturing experience provided the leadership and creative environment that nurtured the development of the moving mechanical assembly line. Today, the moving assembly line is the epitome of manufacturing. Almost everything that is now industrially manufactured—automobiles, aircrafts, toys, furniture, food—passes down assembly lines before landing in our homes and offices.

The genesis of the moving assembly line is in the American agricultural products industry. During the late 18th century, the movement of grains changed from hand labor to belts and later moving hoppers.

Innovation by Imitation: Many Innovations Come from the Outside

Innovation by Imitation: Chicago Slaughter Houses Pioneered the Moving Disassembly Line Before Henry Ford Started His Assembly Line By 1873, Chicago’s meat-processing industry adapted belts and hoppers to transform beef and pork production into a standardized, mechanized, and centralized business. After cows and pigs travelled to their fate in train cars from farms throughout the Midwest, they were dropped into hoppers and killed. Conveyor belts then moved carcasses past meat cutters, who progressively removed various sections of the animal, cut them into appropriate sizes, and repackaged and dispatched processed meat across the United States.

The meat processors’ task was disassembly (as opposed to putting together automobile parts in Ford’s plants.) Each worker had a specific, specialized job. Production moved swiftly. The American writer Upton Sinclair famously described this industry’s ghastly working conditions in his acclaimed novel The Jungle and said, “They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

Chicago Slaughter Houses Were the Pioneers of the Moving Disassembly Line Before Henry Ford Started His Assembly Line

In the early 1900s, when Henry Ford wanted to keep Model T production up with demand and lower the price, Ford’s team explored other industries and found four ideas that could advance their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and cutting wasted effort. Ford’s engineers visited Swift & Company’s Slaughterhouse in Chicago and decided to adopt the “disassembly line” method to build automobiles.

The introduction of the moving assembly line process in 1913 enabled increased production up to 1,000 Model Ts a day and decreased assembly time from 13 hours to 93 minutes. Additional refinement of the process, thanks to reliable precision equipment and standardized shop practices, shortened production time radically: within a few years, a new Model T rolled off the assembly line every 24 seconds. First produced in 1908, the Model T kept the same design until the final one—serial number 15,000,000 rolled off the line in 1927.

Auschwitz-Birkenau and Victims of the Holocaust

Sadly, just as Henry Ford copied the Chicago meat processing and perfected the moving assembly line, the Nazi apparatus copied Ford’s methods of mass production to massacre six million people. While Midwestern butchers processed the livestock carcasses, the Nazis systematically handled corpses of the victims of the Holocaust. Nazi operatives removed victims’ hair, clothing, shoes, gold teeth, hairbrushes, glasses, suitcases, and anything of value to be repurposed for the Reich. The atrocities of this inexpressibly shocking disaster are on display at the train tracks and the museums of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.

Formal Strategic-Benchmarking Programs

Smart businesses have formal strategic-benchmarking programs to achieve significant efficiency improvements: they pinpoint the strategic capabilities that matter most to their businesses, seek out companies or businesses that currently manage those capabilities best, and try to copy and deploy those capabilities as rapidly as possible. But time is of the essence for the success of these undertakings, as the management guru Tom Peters warns,

I hate Benchmarking! Benchmarking is stupid! Why is it stupid? Because we pick the current industry leader and then we launch a five-year program, the goal of which is to be as good as whoever was best five years ago, five years from now. Which to me is not an Olympian aspiration.

Imitation is a Key Characteristic of Highly Creative People: The Case of Steve Jobs Copying from Xerox

One of the key characteristics of highly creative people is their exposure to and experience with working in several related domains. They are very good at crossing domain boundaries, relating their creativeness in new and perhaps unexpected ways, and adapting knowledge into new domains. The following case of one of history’s most famous innovators illustrates this distinguishing characteristic.

Steve Jobs of Apple introduced the revolutionary Lisa computer in 1983. It featured such innovations as the graphical user interface, a mouse, and document-centric computing. Jobs had taken—and refined—all these inventions from Xerox’s PARC research labs and introduced by Xerox on its commercially-unsuccessful Alto and Star computers in 1981. The biographer Walter Isaacson writes in his best-selling Steve Jobs: “The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry.” Isaacson cites Jobs: “Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas… They [Xerox management] were copier-heads who had no clue about what a computer could do… Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry.”

Innovation by Imitation: Steve Jobs of Apple copied Xerox's PARC innovations in graphical user interface, a mouse, and document-centric computing

Idea for Impact: Borrow Ideas from Others and Combine Them with Your Own Creativity

Interestingly, many “benchmarking” exercises in the world of business—even academia—do not come “top-down” out of strategy. In other words, innovations by imitation are typically not driven from the top down. Instead, they materialize from everyday operational challenges—those painful experiences that send managers scuttling for solutions in a hurry.

Look outside your industry. To improve your creativity, try spending time researching other smart companies—even those outside of your industry. Learning directly from other companies is a useful, underutilized form of research for finding ways to improve performance.

Attend to developments at your competitors and in other industries. Look for potential opportunities that have been discovered elsewhere. Avoid the “not invented here” syndrome—don’t reject other’s great ideas. Keep an open mind.

Don’t Ignore the Counterevidence

September 14, 2018 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don't Ignore the Counterevidence---Consider objections to your viewpoints Left to themselves, much of our opinions and judgments are subjective, imprecise, incomplete, narrow-minded, or utterly unapprised.

A good critical-thinker deliberates objectively about alternative world-views that may cause him/her to philosophize differently. The English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill made an unparalleled case for this intellectual obligation in his treatise On Liberty (1859):

If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections. … on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.

Mill recommends anticipating the potential objections to one’s argument, coming to terms with the merits of opposing points of view, and establishing why the balance of reasons still supports one’s viewpoints:

Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. … So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.

Idea for Impact: Consider objections to your viewpoints; Remain open to alternative interpretations.

Suspend your inclinations and commitments and ask whether any of the objections have some force against your argument.

Don’t argue merely from those premises that appear compelling to you; address the premises that appear compelling to your opponent.

As Aristotle counseled, “The fool tells me his reasons; the wise man persuades me with my own.”

Disproven Hypotheses Are Useful Too

June 21, 2018 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Hypotheses are conjectures—often merely proposals or intuitions—about what may constitute facts.

A specific hypothesis can be tested for its adequacy and proved correct or incorrect using the scientific method. Sometimes, a hypothesis is accepted for the time being, until further evidence suggests an amendment.

It does not matter if a certain hypothesis is proven incorrect because, in itself, the falsification of a hypothesis can offer precious insight about the “what is not” to enhance the “what is.”

Hypotheses are the bedrock of scholarship. Scientific understanding accrues when many interrelated and tested hypotheses are used to develop theories, and rethink and restructure our knowledge.

The Historian’s Fallacy: People of the Past Had No Knowledge of the Future [Mental Models]

June 7, 2018 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The practice of picking a thesis and then setting out to establish it is a widespread intellectual pursuit. But biographers and historians sometimes portray their subjects as if the historical participants could recognize what lay ahead of them.

The Historian's Fallacy: People of the Past Had No Knowledge of the Future Assuming that people of the past pondered over the events of their day from the same perspective as we do in the present is committing The Historian’s Fallacy.

The notion of the historian’s fallacy was first presented by the British literary critic Matthew Arnold (1822–88) in The Study of Poetry (1880.) In questioning how historical backgrounds were portrayed in the development of literary styles, Arnold called attention to the frequent logical error of using hindsight to assign a sense of causality and foresight of significant historical events to the people who lived through them. In reality, those historical participants may not have had wide-ranging perspective that we assume in interpreting the context, conventions and limitations of their time. Arnold wrote,

The course of development of a nation’s language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in criticising it; in short, to overrate it. So arises in our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic. … Our personal affinities, likings and circumstances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet’s work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance.

The American historian David Hackett Fischer, who coined the phrase “historian’s fallacy,” cited the claim that the United States should have anticipated Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor because of the many warning signs that an attack was in the cards. Fischer argues those signs seem obvious only in hindsight—to the World War II military leaders, many of those signs suggested possible attacks on many positions other than Pearl Harbor.

A good historian strives for objectivity by ignoring his own knowledge of consequent events and employing only what the historic individuals would have known in the context of their own time.

A related fallacy is Presentism—a manner of historical analysis wherein the past is interpreted by means of present-day attitudes. Presentism often fosters moral self-righteousness. Employing present-day moral standards to reflect on the Founding Fathers’ ownership of slaves, David Hume’s racism, or Gandhi’s opposition to modernity and technology should not be tainted by our stance of temporal condescension.

Turning a Minus Into a Plus … Constraints are Catalysts for Innovation

November 29, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Creativity Thrives Best When Constrained

“Art consists in limitation,” as the English writer G. K. Chesterton remarked. Constraints are the sine qua non of creativity.

One of the great ironies of creative thinking is that it seems to benefit from constraints. At first blush, inventive thinking may seem to require a great degree of freedom and a lack of restrictions, but the reality of the creative process is that it is frequently entwined with many challenging constraints and intractable requirements. In the right light, demanding constraints can truly be blessings in disguise as the French poet Paul Valery observed, “A person is a poet if his imagination is stimulated by the difficulties inherent in his art and not if his imagination is dulled by them.”

Constraints can shape and focus problems and provide clear challenges to overcome. Constraints stimulate creativity because they not only invigorate inventive thinking but also reduce the complexity of the problem at hand. That is to say, constraints can make a problem more controllable, and possibly even more appealing.

Constraints and Challenge Can Actually Be Assets to the Creative Process

When you explore inventions that are creative, you’ll discover that the creators often exploited some core constraints that had characterized their domain in the past. Here are six examples of creativity that exploited a constraint to great advantage.

In 1986, British Airways ran a “Go for it, America!” marketing campaign to give away 5,200 free seats—all seats on its scheduled flights between USA and UK on June 10, 1986. In response, the upstart Virgin Atlantic ran its own newspaper advertisements that declared, “It has always been Virgin’s policy to encourage you to fly to London for as little as possible. So on June 10 we encourage you to fly British Airways.” And in smaller type, the ad read, “As for the rest of the year, we look forward to seeing you aboard Virgin Atlantic. For the best service possible. At the lowest possible fare.” The British Airways giveaway generated a lot of publicity, but most of the news coverage also mentioned Virgin’s unexpected, witty response.
In October 1984, during the second presidential debate with challenger Walter Mondale, Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun questioned President Ronald Reagan about his age: “You already are the oldest President in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall, yes, that President Kennedy, who had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?” Reagan famously replied, “Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Tyrwhitt responded, “Mr. President, I’d like to head for the fence and try to catch that one before it goes over.” Mondale lost and Reagan got elected for his second term as President. [See YouTube clip of this debate.]
An determined young woman I knew was embarking on a career as a new architect. She had set her sights on a job with a prominent architectural firm, but her professors and career councilors urged her to gain experience at a smaller employer first, as no prestigious firm would take on an inexperienced, new graduate. Undeterred, the young woman applied to the firm she had set her sights for. When asked about her experience, she declared slickly, “I have no experience at all. You see, I want to learn this business at a top quality firm. Employ me and mentor me to suit your design practices. This way, I’ll not have to unlearn any of the second-rate skills I’d have learned in another place.” She got the job.
When YouTube launched in 2005, many of its upstart competitors examined each uploaded video for copyright infringement. However, unlike its competitors, YouTube calculatedly let users upload any content and waited for copyright owners to complain before taking down noncompliant videos. By choosing to put their business model at risk, YouTube rapidly grew in content and viewers. Its early rivals faded out, and YouTube got acquired by Google and went on to became the world’s leading video-sharing platform.
Legend has it that one day, the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) had only blue paint to work with. When he started toying with the effects of painting with one color, he discovered the potential to produce interesting paintings that conveyed a sense of melancholy. Picasso had just relocated to Paris and was deeply affected by a close friend and fellow artist’s suicide. Art historians believe this event marked the onset of Picasso’s Blue Period (1901–1904,) during which he produced many stoic and sentimental paintings in mostly monochromatic shades of blue and blue-green. In what would become the hallmark of this greatest artist of the 20th century, Picasso leveraged an apparent constraint into an unintended creative outcome.
When American sculptor Janet Echelman‘s art supplies never arrived to South India on a Fulbright scholarship trip, Echelman altered her plans and started working with bronze casts inspired by the local materials and culture of Mahabalipuram, fishing village famous for sculpture. However, she soon found the material too heavy and expensive for her Fulbright budget. While examining fishermen bundling their nets one evening, Echelman began speculating if nets could be a new approach to sculpture. However, the delicate surfaces of the fishnets revealed every ripple of wind. Echelman hoisted the fishnets onto poles and created sturdy volumetric forms without heavy, solid materials. Echelman’s building-sized constructed net art structures are now featured in many cities around the world. [See Janet Echelman’s TED talk.]

In each situation, the inventor reframed elements of his/her world that he/she couldn’t control.

When faced with an element of the situation that they cannot ignore or overcome, instead of tackling those problems head-on, creative folks tend to leverage their constraints in a creative way and reframe them into an exceptionally powerful problem-solving technique.

Idea for Impact: Constraints often stimulate creativity rather than suppress it.

The heart of many a problem lies in what seems to be a single, intractable element. When that’s the case, instead of asking, “how can I minimize this liability?” explore “how can I make the most of it?”

Fight Ignorance, Not Each Other

November 24, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Demonization in the Era of Hyper-polarization and Hyper-politicization

We live in a era of hyper-polarization and hyper-politicization. Studies suggest that we Americans have mostly devolved to two political groups that fervently believe that all wisdom resides in their particular standpoints and therefore care less and less to empathize with the other side.

People loathe the “other” ideological group with such visceral obsession that their hate pollutes their minds. Thanks partly to social media, self-organized tribes are isolating themselves into geographic, religious, ideological, educational, ethnic, and media bubbles of like-minded crusaders.

As I wrote previously, studies have shown that hanging around a group of likeminded folks can make people even more scornful of differing viewpoints, than they are as individuals. They demonize anyone who disagrees with them. They neither account for the case against their positions, nor find middle ground.

In the wake of the 2011 Tucson shooting (where perpetrator Jared Loughner shot and killed six individuals, and injured 14 others at a political gathering,) meditation teacher James Baraz of wrote a Huffington Post essay underscoring the ignorance that brings about the aforesaid demonization:

The real villain is in this story is not Jared Loughner. It’s not the media. And it’s not the gun rights advocates. The real villain is ignorance. Because of ignorance, people project their fear and turn those who are different into enemies—both in their minds and in actuality. Once you demonize the “other” they become less than human and you can inflict pain on them without guilt or shame.

Choose Your Role Models Carefully

November 17, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Chose Your Role Models Carefully Heroes and role models are very useful—they embody a higher plateau of cognitive and emotional truth, knowledge, and accomplishment that you can aspire to.

But the modern world has a dangerous problem with hero-worship: pop artists, rappers, film stars, sportspersons, capitalists, and so on command attention and affection as never before. This 2013 Financial Times article noted, “Way back in 2008, the three most admired personalities in sport were probably Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius. They were portrayed not just as great athletes but as great men, role models….” And all these three popular heroes fell from grace.

While admiring and drawing wisdom, meaning, and inspiration from heroes can be constructive, you must take “hero narratives” with a grain of salt. The Buddha warned us not to trust anybody or anything just because it seems logical or it resonates with our feelings. He advised that we test our hypotheses by the results they yield when put into practice and shield our minds against the risk of biases or other limitations of our ability to discern from our experiences wisely. According to the Kalama Sutta, an aphorism of the historical Buddha that has been preserved orally by his followers (translated from the Pali by the eminent American Buddhist monk and prolific author Thanissaro Bhikkhu,)

Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’—then you should enter & remain in them.

Idea for Impact: Don’t blindly place much faith in today’s experts and celebrities. Realize the truth yourself.

Critical Thinking

Intellectual inquiry is effortful, and you need a durable internal push to engage in it.

Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription: Avoid Intense Ideology

Idea for Impact: Nothing deceives you as much as extreme passion

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Take-away Lesson #1: Active Reading is the Effort to Understand

Take-away Lesson #2: A Reader Must Suspend Judgment Until He Can Express the Author’s Positions

Take-away Lesson #3: Reading Well is Better Than Reading Widely

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Creativity by Taking Existing Ideas: Applying Them in a New Context

Innovation by Imitation: Many Innovations Come from the Outside

Chicago Slaughter Houses Were the Pioneers of the Moving Disassembly Line Before Henry Ford Started His Assembly Line

Formal Strategic-Benchmarking Programs

Imitation is a Key Characteristic of Highly Creative People: The Case of Steve Jobs Copying from Xerox

Idea for Impact: Borrow Ideas from Others and Combine Them with Your Own Creativity

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Idea for Impact: Consider objections to your viewpoints; Remain open to alternative interpretations.

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Creativity Thrives Best When Constrained

Constraints and Challenge Can Actually Be Assets to the Creative Process

Idea for Impact: Constraints often stimulate creativity rather than suppress it.

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