It's Better To Be Patient Than Right. Better Still To Be Disciplined.

Mindy Crandell was in line to purchase lottery tickets for the $590.5 million Powerball jackpot when another woman cut in front of her and her daughter. That woman, Gloria C. Mackenzie, won the lotto with the ticket Mindy would have purchased.

Powerball Lottery Near Winner Mindy Crandell.

I’ve never bought a lotto ticket and never will. After this Florida office pool won a recent lottery, I told my coworkers that I wouldn’t participate in one & wouldn’t collect a share of the winnings even if they won. Lotteries are bad, as James Poulos argues. Lotteries are so bad that the negative effects even extend to neighbors and family members of winners. I suppose Crandell’s story points to one reason Poulos doesn't mention why not to buy one: that you’ll avoid the situation of knowing you could have bought the winner if only…

Billionaire investorWarren Buffett provides a better rationale for staying away from the lotto. Former GEICO chairman Jack Byrne once offered a deal to everyone attending a business get together of golf and bridge. Byrne would take an $11 dollar ‘premium’ that would pay $10,000 to anyone who hit a hole in one over the course of the weekend. That’s a payoff of just about 1,000-1.

Jack Byrne

It was genius by Byrne. All the people attending were wealthy and could spare $11 without batting an eye. Plus, it was fun—and I’m sure made several T-boxes a lot more exciting places while well-struck balls were in flight.

Every single person who attended took Byrne up on his offer. Except Buffett. Though he could have spared the $11 more easily than most if not all of the participants—Buffett was at this point in the late 1980s well on his way to becoming a billionaire—he didn’t take the offer because he hated the odds.

Buffett was right. 

“Charlie Munger and I detest taking even small risks unless we feel we are being adequately compensated for doing so.” $11 dollars surely counts as a small risk. His discipline in not taking that bet offers a powerful lesson for those of us not on any Forbes lists.

If only Crandell knew her odds were worse than Buffett’s, she would have given up her spot not graciously, but enthusiastically. Interestingly, she did know. "The joke was, that's the lady that's going to win it. I was like, 'Yeah right. No one is going to win from little Zephyrhills,'" ABC News reported Crandell as saying.

Crandell’s attitude and courtesy are impressive and admirable. Refusing to engage in self-pity or schadenfreude, she reportedly is happy for Mackenzie and hopes the money "truly blesses her family."

A line from the ABC News report struck me: “The one thing Crandell did gain from the incident was a lesson she hopes her daughters learned.” I completely agree. Only I wish she had a different lesson in mind.

"It could have been us, but things happen. Sometimes it's better to be patient than right. I knew we were teaching our daughter the right thing," Crandell said.

She’s partly right. It is better to be patient than right. But, as Warren Buffett’s example teaches us, it’s even better to be disciplined.

It’s that discipline that allows him to win awards like this:

There’s nothing so insignificant as an extra $2 billion to an old man

That's Charlie Munger gently making fun of partner Warren Buffett. Buffett had just remarked that he gives away "4.75 percent of my stock every year. That’s $2 billion of stock."[1]

Charlie Munger elicits a smile from Warren Buffett.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman just penned a piece about the affluence of the U.S.’s older generation under the headline: “The geezers are all right.”
Krugman cites the CongressionalBudget Office’s May 2013 projections for debt and deficits as a sharp rebuke to those who have long been peddling imminent fiscal doom due to the crushing toll Social Security and Medicare will have on the U.S. economy. While acknowledging that recently released reports by Social Security and Medicare trustees released Friday do indicate that the U.S. retirement system is in need of fixing, Krugman thinks not only is the usual rhetoric surrounding the issue wildly overblown, but “the data suggest that we can, if we choose, maintain social insurance as we know it with only modest adjustments.”
I won’t go into the details of Krugman’s argument. It’s pretty straightforward. But I do want to take a look at a couple of items he cites and compare them to a broader argument Buffett advanced at the Berkshire shareholder meeting.
Krugman concedes that our Social Security system can use tweaks, largely because, “The ratio of Americans older than 65 to those of working age will rise inexorably over the decades ahead, and this will translate into rising spending on Social Security and Medicare as a share of national income.”
He’s only slightly less sanguine about Medicare—somewhat surprising given his  
The reason Krugman cites for optimism is this, “the latest report from the [Medicare’s] trustees still shows spending rising from 3.6 percent of GDP now to 5.6 percent in 2035. But that’s a smaller rise than in previous projections.” And the reason, Krugman theorizes, that this has happened is that the Affordable Care Act has worked; Obamacare has "bent the curve.” Furthermore, Krugman asserts, “because there are a number of cost-reducing measures in the law that have not yet kicked in, there’s every reason to believe that this favorable trend will continue.”
If those postulations are questionable (and I think they are), wait for this one: “Furthermore, there’s plenty of room for more savings, if only because recent research confirms that Americans pay far more for health procedures than citizens of other advanced countries pay; that the price premium can and should be brought down, and when it is, Medicare’s financial outlook will improve further.”
Can and should? Rather not hang my hat on that.
But my real issue with Krugman is when he writes,“The latest projections show the combined cost of Social Security and Medicare rising by a bit more than 3 percent of GDP between now and 2035, and that number could easily come down with more effort on the health care front. Now, 3 percent of GDP is a big number, but it’s not an economy-crushing number.” (Ital. mine). I really like Krugman. I do. A lot more than Chris Conover, anyway. His analysis in this case, though, relies on a lot of speculative propositions—not much of a ‘margin of safety’ in his projections. And, worse, he unhelpfully paints the magnitude of health care spending as a percentage of GDP even if the future winds up being as rosy as his outlook. And that’s a big if.
Here's Buffett's take on healthcare spending’s effect on the economy from the recent Berkshire shareholders meeting, "Health care cost is a big item. Say we spend 17 percent of GDP on health care. Most of our rivals pay 9.5 percent to 11.5 percent. There are only 100 cents in a dollar; if you give up seven cents on the dollar, that will be a major problem in competitiveness. It doesn’t relate to Medicare. The real problem is the cost, regardless of the payer system. ... Our system works, but the No. 1 problem for American business is health care costs."

Indeed.

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[1] His comment was in response to the question from a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder at the company's annual meeting asking whether Buffett's charitable donations had or would have an effect on the company. Buffett clearly doesn't think so, pointing out that his donations amount to less than 1 percent of Berkshire. "Many stocks on the exchanges trade over 100 percent a year. One percent is absolutely peanuts."  

Don't Forget To Eat Your...Dandelions?

I have no intention of dedicating this blog to nutrition, but a recent New York Times article on phytonutrients caught my eye. An earlier post on this blog notes that learning is at the bottom of Munger's cognitive fitness pyramid and nutrition at the bottom of Glassman's physical preparedness pyramid.

New York Times graphic on phytonutrients in contemporary food.

The New York Times piece by Jo Robinson opens with an argument nearly verbatim to advice my grandfather used to give me. He'd say, "it's always better to get your nutrients from food, not pills." Robinson's piece recites the idea that "food can be the answer to our ills...if we eat nutritious foods we won’t need medicine or supplements."

Robinson cites Hippocrates who, in addition to providing medicine's guiding principle more than 2,500 years ago (do no harm), also offered this insight that has become conventional wisdom, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." My foods & nutrition instructor in college liked to point out that the French were in the habit of making fun of 'Americans' for their habit of popping nutrition supplements noting that in addition to our poorer health and higher obesity rates, we also had a lot more expensive urine.)

It is a nearly universally held maxim today that optimal health can be achieved by eating lots of fruits and vegetables. (CrossFit founder Greg Glassman, interestingly, isn't crazy about fruit and hates sugar). And food may well be the answer, but Robinson notes that farming--even before Monsanto!--has robbed a lot of the stuff we eat of a lot of the stuff that is the most beneficial to our bodies. Phytonutrients--the parts of food scientists tell us are most likely to keep us from cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia--have been disappearing from our diets for about 10,000 years.

Robinson's piece tells a bunch of fascinating stories--most notably the story of how our corn came to be super-sweet, about 40 percent sugar, and devoid of phytonutrients after a scorched earth campaign launched by soon-to-be U.S. President George Washington against the Iroquois.

"If we want to get maximum health benefits from fruits and vegetables," Robinson argues, "we must choose the right varieties." And the right varieties are getting harder and harder

Form Before Function.

CrossFitters chase performance. They don't care so much what their bodies look like (the CrossFit Turning 7s into 10s video notwithstanding), but they're invested in what they can get their bodies to do. Just as many people exercize in order to look good rather than perform well, 19th Century gentleman farmer Noyes Darling set out to create an all-white, sweet varietyof corn. He succeeded in ridding corn of its erstwhile "disadvantage of being yellow."

Robinson's piece is a helpful corrective to crooked thinking about what's good for us to eat. She even offers some easy, practical advice for modern-day foragers, "Look for arugula. Arugula['s] greens are rich in cancer-fighting compounds called glucosinolates and higher in antioxidant activity than many green lettuces....Scallions, or green onions, are jewels of nutrition hiding in plain sight. They resemble wild onions and are just as good for you. Remarkably, they have more than five times more phytonutrients than many common onions do....Herbs are wild plants incognito. We’ve long valued them for their intense flavors and aroma, which is why they’ve not been given a flavor makeover. Because we’ve left them well enough alone, their phytonutrient content has remained intact." 

Think (Charlie Munger's) Mental Models?

The site Think Mental Models is impressive. The people behind it have put a lot of work into developing a list and explaining Charlie Munger's mental models.

Like Warren Buffett, I think it's a good idea to look to Charlie Munger for wisdom

Quoting Munger's longtime partner Warren Buffett, the site lauds Charlie Munger for having "the best 30-second mind in the world. He goes from A to Z in one move. He sees the essence of everything before you even finish the sentence."

Think Mental Models offers to help people think like Munger. It explains Munger's process as such, "he thinks by using the BIG IDEAS from disciplines as diverse as physics and psychology. He has a list of these ideas (mental models) in his mind and quickly picks the one(s) applicable to the given situation, much as a pilot automatically goes through a checklist prior to take-off."

Of course recognizing which models to use to analyze various situations is the hard part, as investor Mason Myers usefully deploys Clayton Christensen's thought to argue. "The trick is to know which theory to apply when." Indeed, even the best checklist (scroll to bottom of page for nice summary of Munger's checklists) is no good to someone who doesn't know how to use it.

Clayton Christensen knows the trick to Munger's mental models

Think Mental Models does provide a useful service; it lists and provides insight into a full 100 mental models either explicitly mentioned or inspired by Charlie Munger. It states, "Inspired by the work of Charles Munger, [this site] provides over 100 models that can be brought consciously to mind to aid the thinking process."

Think Mental Models compiles models into several categories:

Think Mental Models' Finance Models

Think Mental Models' Business Models

Think Mental Models' Thinking Models

Think Mental Models' Economic Models

Think Mental Models' Behavior Models

It's a pay site, and may be a good value. I'm sure its contents would aid the thinking process. Just understanding what mental models are and getting acquainted with the one hundred or so most important models will do wonders for anyone trying to get smarter. Adding Munger's insight that mental models need to be arranged in a supple mental latticework will help more. Add to that Munger's insight that you've got to continually use the models lest you forget them, and combine it with his concept of combined effects creating a 'lollapalooza effect' you'd really be onto something.

If Think Mental Models could teach the stuff Myers credits Munger & Christensen with teaching him, namely, "the best people can figure out which models are relevant to which situation," then it'd be a value at almost any price.

I haven't paid to see the site's elaborations of each model, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it could teach the skill of discerning how and when to use the models. Looking over the lists (and they are impressive lists) reminds me of a math class I took in junior high. Our teacher let us use one 5"x7" note card with any information we could hand print for the final test. We could write as many formulae as we wanted on the card. And we did. We even could have written (and perhaps some students smarter than I did!) write clues and rules to help determine when to apply which formula. Needless to say, even with the 'extra' help, not everyone got 100%.

Duke Huan of Ch'i

The reason is explained by an old Chinese folk tale:

Duke Huan of Ch’i was reading a book at the upper end of the hall; the wheelwright was making a wheel at the lower end. Put­ting aside his mallet and chisel, he called to the Duke and asked him what book he was reading. “One that records the words of the Sages,” answered the Duke. “Are those Sages alive?” asked the wheelwright. “Oh, no,” said the Duke, “they are dead.” “In that case,” said the wheelwright, “what you are reading can be noth­ing but the lees and scum of bygone men.” “How dare you, a wheelwright, find fault with the book I am reading. If you can explain your statement, I will let it pass. If not, you shall die.” “Speaking as a wheelwright,” he replied, “I look at the matter in this way; when I am making a wheel, if my stroke is too slow, then it bites deep but is not steady; if my stroke is too fast, then it is steady, but it does not go deep. The right pace, neither slow nor fast, cannot get into the hand unless it comes from the heart. It is a thing that cannot be put into words [rules]; there is an art in it that I cannot explain to my son. That is why it is impossible for me to let him take over my work, and here I am at the age of seventy, still making wheels. In my opinion it must have been the same with the men of old. All that was worth handing on, died with them; the rest, they put into their books. That is why I said that what you were reading was the lees and scum of by­gone men.”

So should we give up hope of learning Munger's 'mental models'? No. If Munger learned them, others can, too. And if he could learn them, they can be taught. The Clayton Christensen class Mason Myers cites is highly instructive in this regard. So is the Harvard Business School class Munger cites in his lecture on worldly wisdom, "Many educational institutions—although not nearly enough—have realized this. At Harvard Business School, the great quantitative thing that bonds the first-year class together is what they call decision tree theory. All they do is take high school algebra and apply it to real life problems. And the students love it. They're amazed to find that high school algebra works in life." But I don't think a book will do it. Not even Poor Charlie's Almanack. 

In a future post, I'll detail why the old wheelwright had a hard time teaching his son his craft and why we have a hard time 'learning' Munger's mental models from books.