202401220759 Status: #🎤 #talk #antilibrary Tags: #reference #investing #wisdom-in-business #business Links: ___ # Go Positive, Go First Title: [The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking] Author: [Peter Kaufman] Link: [The Knowledge Project](https://fs.blog/great-talks/multidisciplinary-approach-thinking-peter-kaufman/) ## Summary Using a true multidisciplinary understanding of things, Peter identifies two often overlooked, parabolic “Big Ideas”: 1) Mirrored Reciprocation (go positive and go first) and 2) Compound Interest (being constant). A great “Life Hack” is to simply combine these two into one basic approach to living your life: **“Go positive and go first, and be constant in doing it.”** ## Quotes > “No road is long with good company.”  > — [[Peter Kaufman]] #quote ## Core Ideas 1. 2. 3. ## Worth it if… ### Further Reading, Listening, Watching 1. [Movie Name, Author] 2. [Documentary Name, Author] 3. [[TKP-Thomas_Gaynor]] ## Highlights Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said, “To understand is to know what to do.” Could there be anything that sounds simpler than that? And yet it’s a genius line—”to understand is to know what to do.” How many mistakes do you make when you understand something? You don’t make any mistakes. Where do mistakes come from? They come from blind spots, a lack of understanding. ** ** ** ** I have multiple examples of models that I derived from what I call my “three buckets.” Let’s see if I’ve got my three buckets in here. I do. I do have my three buckets. Okay.  So this is how I use ideas that no one else in the world uses, and yet I can be comfortable that they’re right. A statistician’s best friend is what? A large, relevant sample size. And why? Because a principle derived from a large, relevant sample size can’t be wrong, can it? The only way it could be wrong is if the sample size is too small or the sample itself is not relevant. So I want to tell you what my three buckets are where I derive my models, my multidisciplinary models. Number one is 13.7 billion years. Is that a large sample? It’s the largest one in the whole universe. There is no larger sample. Because what is it? It’s the inorganic universe. Physics. Geology. Anything that’s not living goes in my bucket number one: 13.7 billion years. Bucket number 2 is 3.5 billion years. It’s biology on the planet Earth. Is that a big sample size? Is it relevant? We’re biological creatures. Let me ask you this—inorganic, bucket number one, is it relevant? We live in it. So bucket number one we live in, 13.7 billion years. Bucket number two is what we’re part of: biology. 3.5 billion years. And number three is 20,000 years of recorded human history. That’s the most relevant of all. That’s our story. That’s who we are. Bucket 1: Newton’s Third Law of Motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) *Okay. Now is there a good word, a catchall word to describe what we’re talking about here when this pushes down and this thing pushes back? Yeah, it’s reciprocation, isn’t it? But it’s not mere reciprocation. It’s perfectly mirrored reciprocation. The harder I push, the harder it pushes back. Does everybody buy that? That’s bucket number one. That’s how the world works. It’s mirrored reciprocation. Everything in the inorganic universe works that way.* * * Bucket 2 + 3 *Mark Twain said that a man who picks up a cat by its tail will learn a lesson he can learn in no other way. What is this cat going to try to do? It’s going to do what? (Answer: “Attack you.”) Yeah, it’s going to try and scratch me with its sharp claws. And why? It doesn’t find being picked up by its tail very agreeable, does it? Now what if I start swinging this cat around by its tail—what does the cat do now? Now it’s trying to scratch my eyes out. It said, “You escalated on me pal, I’m going to escalate back on you.” Does that sound a lot like mirrored reciprocation? But what if instead of doing something disagreeable with this cat, we do something very agreeable with this cat? And this cat’s sitting here, and we come over and we gently pick it up by its tummy and we put it in the crook of our elbow and we gently stroke it. Does the cat try and scratch us? What does it do? It licks our hands.* *And as long as I sit here and stroke it, it’s going to continue to try and lick my hand. It wants to show me what? “I like this. This is agreeable. You’re a good guy. Keep it up, man!” It is mirrored reciprocation, isn’t it? If I act in a disagreeable way to the cat, the cat acts in a disagreeable way back, and mirrored. If I act in an agreeable way, what do you think we’re going to find when we go to bucket number three? It’s exactly the same thing, isn’t it? Your entire life.* * * Simple Albert Einstein once listed what he said were the five ascending levels of cognitive prowess. 
Smart. Intelligent. Brilliant. Genius. Simple. [[Compound Interest]] “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” But that’s not all he said about compound interest. He not only said that it’s the most powerful force in the universe, he said it’s the greatest mathematical discovery of all time. He said it’s the eighth wonder of the world. And he said that those who understand it get paid by it and those who don’t pay for it. What do you think we’re going to find when we go to bucket number three? 20,000 years of human experience on earth. You want to win a gold medal in the Olympics. You want to learn a musical instrument. You want to learn a foreign language. You want to build Berkshire Hathaway. What’s the formula? Dogged incremental constant progress over a very long time frame. Look how simple this is. This is above genius. It’s absolutely above genius because you can understand it.  “I know what everybody in the world is looking for.” Emily, your entire life you’ve been on a quest, an odyssey, a search for that individual that you can 100 percent absolutely and completely trust. But who’s not just trustworthy, but principled, and courageous, and competent, and kind, and loyal, and understanding, and forgiving, and unselfish. I’m right, aren’t I? (Answer: “Dead on.”) You know what else my eight-dollar crystal ball tells me? If you ever think you may have encountered this person, you are going to probe and probe and test and test to make sure that they are real, that you’re not being fooled. And the paradox is that it looks like you’re probing for weakness, but you’re not. You’re probing for strength. And the worst day of your life is if instead of strength, you get back weakness. And now you feel betrayed. You know why? You’ve got to start your search all over again.  trustworthy, principled, courageous, competent, loyal, kind, understanding, forgiving, unselfish I asked the group, show of hands, how many of you think all human beings are alike? Why? (Answer: “We all have the same basic needs. We express them differently. There’s tremendous diversity in how we go about meeting them, but ultimately we all have the same needs.”) All you have to do, if you want everything in life from everybody else, is first pay attention; listen to them; show them respect; give them meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Convey to them that they matter to you. And show you love them. But you have to go first. And what are you going to get back? Mirrored reciprocation. Right? See how we tie this all together? The world is so damn simple. It’s not complicated at all! Every single person on this planet is looking for the same thing. Now, why is it that we don’t act on these very simple things? Lou Brock set the Major League record for stolen bases with the St. Louis Cardinals many years ago. And he once said, “Show me a man who is afraid of appearing foolish and I’ll show you a man who can be beat every time.” The three hallmarks of a great investment are superior returns, low risk, and long duration. [[Seeing the World as I See It]]  The basic axiom of clinical psychology reads, “If you could see the world the way I see it, you’d understand why I behave the way I do.” That’s pretty good, isn’t it? Now there’s two corollaries to that axiom. And I say if you buy the axiom, which you should, you must buy the two corollaries as well, because they’re logical extensions. They’re undeniable. Corollary number one, if that axiom is true and you want to understand the way someone’s behaving, you must see the world as they see it. But corollary number two, if you want to change a human being’s behavior and you accept that axiom, you must necessarily, to get them to change, change how they see the world. The secret to leadership is to see through the eyes of all six important counterparty groups and make sure that everything you do is structured in such a way to be win-win with them. So here are the six. Your **customers**, your **suppliers**, your **employees**, your **owners**, your **regulators**, and the **communities** you operate in.  “If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”  “No road is long with good company.”