Buggy Messy Simple Robust

Sharing a presentation I made at IIM Ahmedabad, trying to combine 5-years of essays into something vaguely coherent & mildly helpful to audience of students

Although I have been publishing essays for five years under one overarching theme (Buggy Humans in a Messy World), they have been piecemeal. I had not managed to combine them into a longer form book-ish document. An opportunity to give a talk at IIM Ahmedabad acted as a forcing mechanism to get me off my lazy backside. I had to make a vaguely coherent presentation out a hotchpotch of essays. I am sharing the outcome of that process with you.

I first wrote out a storyline (shared below as text). Converted story to slides. As slides could not get too word-heavy, I wrote detailed 'speaker notes' under the slides. As each slide referred to prior essay(s), I added links. Before I could say buggy-messy, entire thing careened out of control into an awkward 40-page 'Buggy Messy Handbook' (link to which is shared at the end). This is the sort of thing that’s best read as a printout, for those inclined to read it in the first place.

Storyline of Talk given at IIM Ahmedabad:

We suck, in social world.

• We’re surprisingly bad at navigating the social world.

• Even seemingly smart people like us (e.g. fund managers, economists, CEOs).

Why?

• To truly understand social world, start by understanding (unchanging) human nature.

• Human nature -> inadequate brain capacity -> thinking in shortcuts -> which fail in predictable ways -> We’re buggy (like software)

• Worst part of bugginess is not realizing we’re buggy.

• As social animals, bugginess gets exacerbated as we go from individuals to groups …

• Making social world very messy (complex adaptive system, if you like jargon).

• Interplay of our bugginess and world’s messiness is why we suck.

• Our training – theory, models, exam-cracking mindset, false precision – worsens it.

• We can’t change our nature, but we can improve our training (cue … next section).

What can we do about it?

(illustrated via investing/Nalanda examples)

• Adopt uncomfortable ‘know nothing’ mindset. Don’t pretend, embrace cluelessness.

• Focus on one tiny corner of the messy world, for decades. Ignore all else.

• Within chosen niche, set realistic goals (e.g. be less stupid vs be very intelligent).

• Only way to get less buggy within niche is through learning by doing.

• Supplement this by learning from experience (not opinions) of others: apprentice under respect-worthy people; use ‘outside view’; study GOATs and long history.

• Don’t keep knowledge piecemeal, assimilate it into coherent mental framework …

• And a workable method, based on sound standards, that serves as guide to action.

• Way harder part is sticking to method. Temperament is much rarer than judgment.

• Apart from our bugginess, two external factors aggravate this challenge:

1. Dysfunctional scoreboard: inability to tell how well we’re doing since scoreboard is totally broken in short run, uncomfortably fuzzy in long run.

2. Institutional constraints: organization/industry plagued by short-termist culture & bosses; warped incentives; career risk for doing right thing.

• Without reality-check, how to tell if method is sound? Look for two characteristics:

1. Robust: worked for others; rooted in history/evidence; many layers of safety.

2. Simple: gardener’s approach, not craftsman’s; sidesteps known pitfalls; focuses on getting the big questions right; clears up what not to do.

• Sticking with method is possible only if method gels with who we are, deep down. It doesn’t just have to work, it has to work for us.

We are buggy, world is messy. Keep it simple, make it robust.

All the best.

Grand gala 40-page pdf file of presentation (slides+speaker-notes+links) is available at:

Buggy Messy Handbook

If you just want the slides I used at IIMA, without the nonsense of speaker-notes & links to essays, this is the file for you:

Buggy Messy Presentation