Collaborate Like Charlie Munger

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Getting Help Like Munger: How to Collaborate to Acquire New Mental Models & Destroy Ideas.

Charlie Munger has a tip to help those interested in applying his mental models: "Quickly eliminate the big universe of what not to do, follow up with a fluent, multidisciplinary attack on what remains, then act decisively when, and only when, the right circumstances appear."

Charlie Munger.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a piece that is instructive on how to heed Munger’s advice.

Sean Pue, assistant professor of South Asian literature, was working on analyzing Urdu poetry. The process of analyzing was difficult and time consuming. He wanted to use computational resources to automate and speed up his analysis of the poetry’s internal meter. Unlike many humanities scholars, Pue had a bit of an edge: he was already a part of a fledgling digital humanities movement. So, he could use code. But he wasn’t proficient enough to tackle the complexities of Urdu poetry, which turned out to be what computer programmers call "combinatorially explosive.”

Luckily, Mr. Pue has a daughter. And his daughter has a best friend. The two take a ballet class together. And the daughter’s best friend’s mom, Tracy Teal, is a microbial ecologist who works at the same university. The parents struck up a conversation about Urdu poetry and Pue’s difficulties. And Teal saw analogies between Mr. Pue’s work and the way DNA causes proteins to form. So she offered to help.

It turned out that Urdu poetry was considerably more complicated and less predictable than the process by which DNA makes RNA protein (not a huge surprise, given Munger’s trenchant insight about another human behavior, economics, “Behavioral economics, how could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?”).

I won’t spoil the story for you, or the interesting interdisciplinary ramifications collaborations like these—which are increasing in frequency, by the way—the article mentions. It’s a good piece, well worth reading. I will mention that the piece cites Brandeis vice provost John Unsworth as saying that both biology and the humanities historically had "a certain disdain for quantitative methods as being an oversimplification of the wonderfully idiosyncratic and messy problems presented by living nature."

It was a disposition both needed to overcome. Sharing that (bad) trait and sub-optimal history, though, may help academics in both fields share a desire to overcome such intellectual obstinacy.

And it might bring researchers together in fecund ways.

Pue & Teal's story illustrates how collaboration can help us learn and use new models. Collaboration can also help us destroy ideas that are no longer useful. Lots of that happened in one of higher education’s most remarkable building MIT’s building 20. (It was also remarkably ramshackle: Fred Hapgood wrote of the building: “The edifice is so ugly...that it is impossible not to admire it, if that makes sense; it has 10 times the righteous nerdly swagger of any other building on campus, and at MIT any building holding that title has a natural constituency.”) Made of wood because steel was in such short supply in 1943, it was destined to be razed immediately following WWII but outlived its intended expiration date by more than 50 years. 

MIT's building 20, circa 1946.

Building 20's unexpectedly long lifespan was attributable to it being a hospitable place for creativity. And that it housed, and was loved by, some of the 20^th century’s brightest minds who came up with some of the 20th century's most groundbreaking ideas. Architecture author Stewart Brand asked the people who worked in building 20 what was so special about it. And they told him: “The ability to personalize your space and shape it to various purposes. If you don’t like a wall, just stick your elbow through it….We feel our space is really ours. We designed it; we run it. The building is full of small microenvironments, each of which is different and each a creative space.”

MIT professor Paul Penfield observed, “Its ‘temporary nature’ permitted its occupants to abuse it in ways that would not be tolerated in a permanent building. If you wanted to run a wire from one lab to another, you didn’t ask anybody’s permission — you just got out a screwdriver and poked a hole through the wall.” Penfield later complied many of the most compelling anecdotes about the building and the team of geniuses it housed.

What’s interesting from a Munger-like standpoint, is how the physical building—normally sacrosanct (the college I work for won’t allow me to paint my own walls, even if I pay for the paint and perform the labor myself, despite the fact they look like this: 

My office wall. Where my desk once was.

that’s right, they painted around my desk. Then moved it.)—wasn’t in building 20.

People had control over how to use the building, not the other way around. And that led to amazing results. While Jerrold Zacharias was working on designing the first atomic clock in the facility, for example, he “arranged to have sections of two floors removed so he could assemble a tall cylinder that was part of his design.”

Like Jesus who told his contemporaries that it is “not that which goeth into the mouth that defileth a man; but that which cometh out,” Munger’s perspective asks people to worry more about their mental rather than physical architecture. In Jesus’ parable (at least according to Matthew’s retelling), “whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught…But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart; and they defile the man.” Munger, I think, isn’t as concerned with the walls in his buildings as with the minds those buildings house.

But he proposes a similar process to building 20 for optimal mental growth: regularly blow the place up until it’s hospitable to good ideas. “If Berkshire had made a modest progress, a good deal of it is because Warren and I are very good at destroying our own best-loved ideas.  Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year.”

Munger's thinking suggests getting in the habit of destroying ideas, of reworking our mental architecture, until it no longer gets in the way of our creativity. Finding a friend or network of professional collaborators who can help with the destruction process—and in the process of cultivating and using mental models—is also a wonderful idea. It worked for Munger & Buffett on a large scale over many years, for the scholars in building 20, and so far so good for Mr. Pue & Ms. Teal.

Charlie Munger on Avoiding Intense Ideology

Avoid extremely intense ideology: it cabbages up the mind.

Munger & Buffett give thumbs-up to many things. But not extreme ideology.

Charlie Munger warns of the dangers of too-strong ideology. He argues that “not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life.” And I agree. The saying, ‘where one stands on politics depends on where one sits,’ holds a lot of truth. It holds to a large degree in many areas of life beyond politics. It is not, of course, everything. And the determinism it suggests is frequently overstated.

No matter where a person sits, so to speak, in life, if where she stands on issues is determined by which newspaper she reads, she’s got a problem. Extreme ideology too frequently blinds people. I want to turn to Charlie Munger’s injunction not to be so blinded and then consider how ideology is contributing to some pretty bad results economics and journalism.

Munger asserts, “When you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It’s a big danger.”

And so it is.

Let’s consider a recent dust-up that puts this problem on display.

Some economists, vigorously disputed by other economists with equally good credentials.

Economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart

Economist Paul Krugman hits the Washington Post for being among those giving Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff “almost sacred status” and treating the economists’ findings “not as a disputed hypothesis but as unquestioned fact.”

Economist Paul Krugman

Krugman chided the Post, inveighing against the paper for warning against any relaxation on the deficit front on the grounds that the U.S. is “dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.” Krugman takes especial exception to the phrasing: “’economists,’ not ‘some economists,’ let alone ‘some economists, vigorously disputed by other economists with equally good credentials,’ which was the reality.”

The left-leaning economist is certainly right about that.

Thomas Herndon, U Mass at Amherst Doctoral Student.

U Mass at Amherst doctoral student Thomas Herndon is straightforward about thinking the austerity movement in economic though & practice is wrongheaded. It’s hard to remain value-free in economics, at least about non-trivial topics. Researchers come equipped with biases—and that’s a good thing. Applying a scientistic technique won’t produce novel, interesting, or even, usually, accurate results in economics. Judgment is important. As Michael Oakeshott points out, “Nothing, not even the most nearly self-contained technique (the rules of a game), can in fact be imparted to an empty mind; and what is imparted is nourished by what is already there.”

This means that “a pianist acquires artistry as well as technique, a chess-player style and insight into the game as well as a knowledge of the moves, and a scientist acquires (among other things) the sort of judgment which tells him when his technique is leading him astray and the connoisseurship which enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable directions to explore.”

In a field as difficult and complex as economics, it’s ok if we sometimes wind up with theory that looks more like Tycho Brahe’s Geo-heliocentric model than a more accurate pure heliocentric model. Tycho had access to the best instruments in the world. And he was meticulous in recording accurately the movements he saw in the heavens. But, ideologically, he was a bit wedded to the idea (also popular in church circles during his time) that the Earth was the center of the universe. So, despite his accurate measurements and calculations, he came up with a theory that used good data to support an idea that those measurements should have outdated.

Postulate any interesting theory and you run the risk of being wrong. There are no guarantees. If you’ve got some economic theories you’re dying to get out there, just be glad that, unlike Tycho, you’re unlikely to get your nose cut off or your body exhumed to determine whether you died of poisoning.

Tycho Brahe's Geo-heliocentric model.

Economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have been hugely influential in the economic and political theory & practice of late. The authors published a 2010 paper that argued that economic growth suffers in countries whose debt exceeds 90 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Politicians got hold of their paper…and ran with it. The Reinhart/Rogoff paper was used extensively to justify austerity measures in nations that have, to be charitable, troubled economies.

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, and other economists who disagree with austerity on ideological grounds, didn’t love the paper. Or the politics it engendered (or better, the justification for that politics, which existed long before the paper, and such measures would have been advanced, though probably using different justificatory arguments). Critics charged the paper with many things, most damagingly, that it didn’t demonstrate causality, and that it didn’t show how climbing debt and economic slowdown interacted.

Krugman observed that, “many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth. It could just as easily be the other way around, with poor economic performance leading to high debt.” And points to Japan of the early 1990s as a case in point.

Selective and unconventional, yes. Good economic theory, no.

Critics on the left said the paper is ideology, not social science. And I think there’s far too much truth to that. But Herndon admits to entering the affair with a pretty well-established ideology, too. Why did he do better? While the third-year graduate student was working on an econometrics paper he attempted to replicate Reinhart’s and Rogoff’s results. Using the material publicly available, he couldn’t. So, smartly, he asked the authors to provide more. They did. The economists sent Herndon their spreadsheets.

Herndon, partly because of ideological differences, was skeptical from the start. But he didn’t just question the ideology; he examined the data. And he wound up finding errors with those data. The problems he found center on data that look at countries' economic growth and debt levels. As Krugman summarizes: “the mystery of the irreproducible results was solved. First, they omitted some data; second, they used unusual and highly questionable statistical procedures; and finally, yes, they made an Excel coding error. Correct these oddities and errors, and you get what other researchers have found: some correlation between high debt and slow growth, with no indication of which is causing which, but no sign at all of that 90 percent ‘threshold.’”

Not surprisingly, Herndon’s working paper got noticed. In a conversation Herndon had with the Chronicle of Higher Education he said, "The terms we used about their data—"selective" and "unconventional"—are appropriate ones. The reasons for the choices they made needed to be given, and there was nowhere where they were."

(Sometimes, when trying to avoid the ravages of extreme ideology, it helps to have a sense of humor. See video below).



This is more than an academic issue. And, while its consequences have so far mostly been felt in Europe, the debate is moving closer to home for the U.S. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity budget claims to have "found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth."

Abusing Parminides

Greek Philosopher Parminides

Greek thinker Parminies held the following precept: judge by rational argument. And I think there’s a way to look at things rationally without falling into the trap of thinking that there’s no way anyone who can think honestly and clearly will always agree with me. Munger is right, clinging to a too-strong ideology almost always leads to a ‘cabbaged’ mind. The problem isn’t about technique, really. It’s not about using Excel properly (though that would help). It’s about not letting ossifying ideology get in the way of intellectual honesty.

And Munger has some pretty good practical advice: "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 that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I qualified to speak."

The Bottom of the Pyramid: Nutrition & Learning

CrossFit founder Greg Glassman made a fitness pyramid. It's modeled after the FDA's food pyramid, except that it makes sense. It's design is modeled after the food pyramid.

CrossFit Fitness Pyramid

Nutrition is the base. By combining CrossFit training with a healthful diet--Glassman recommends meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar--will result in "a jet stream of adaptation".

I have some quibbles with Glassman's take on nutrition (primarily, that he's too scared of carbohydrates, especially those that come from fruits--see the 'paleo' pyramid below), but on the whole his nutrition advice is very sound. And so is his emphasis that our diet is the foundation of our health and physical performance.

A 'Paleo' Food Pyramid

Above the foundation of the stuff we eat is the stuff we do. Metabolic conditioning workouts, gymnastics, weightlifting and throwing, and a variety of sports. CrossFit does generate a lot of attention for its diet. Mostly, I think, because it's so strange. But it's interesting to look at Glassman's pyramid and to hear how important he thinks nutrition is to performance. Especially when one considers how empirically driven he is. 

Below is a video in which Glassman and other CrossFitters elaborate on why and how our diets effect what we're capable of doing physically.

What would an intellectual fitness pyramid look like? The base of Munger's intellectual fitness pyramid would have learning on it.

Munger attributes his partner Warren Buffett’s success to his ability to keep learning. “The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you.”Munger often cites reading as the key to learning. But he'll take learning wherever he can get it. And he asserts that he's never met a wise person who didn't read a lot.

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren (Buffett) reads -- at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”

But it's not just reading; it's reading and thinking. At high intensity. The way Munger approaches learning is similar to the way CrossFit approaches workouts. Reading, like running, is great. But you're not going to get super fit by doing it and nothing else. And, you're really not going to get fit if you don't do it at high intensity.

I'm not suggesting that reading is the intellectual equivalent of what CrossFit calls 'monostructural' physical activity. I do think, though, that it needs to be used in concert with other activities to achieve optimal benefit.

Munger has said that he and Warren Buffett "insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.”

And it's hard to argue with his results. Combining reading and thinking at high intensity has led him to exceptional intellectual fitness. His ability to continually learn (well, that a great partnership, impeccable timing and some luck) has separated him from the field. I'm sure Munger's IQ was pretty impressive to start with, but he's grossly outperformed it. And offers the following advice:

“The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you.”

Tortise or hare: run fast. Train, read, think at high intensity.

CrossFit was my college

Andrew Delbanco in his excellent new book College: What It Was, Is, And Should Be offers an interesting interpretation of Moby-Dick Author Herman Melville’s line “a whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard.” 

Andrew Delbanco--America’s Best Social Critic

Delbanco’s Melville recognizes college as a place people went to prepare for their lives. He argues that Melville uses “college” as shorthand for all the lessons that needed to be learned and the experiences that needed to be had for a person to become an adult.

In his book, Delbanco writes that college should strive to be, “a place and process whereby young people take stock of their talents and passions and begin to sort out their lives in a way that is true to themselves and responsible to others.” 

College and University Presidents address the question, 'What is College for?' in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece. And Scott Carlson asks whether ROI is the right measurement for what a college degree offers.

As the information that once was difficult to find outside of a college or university becomes increasingly available to anyone with a smartphone, the places where people can learn to take stock of their talents and sort out their lives in responsible ways will become increasingly important.

Delbanco’s idea of what a college should be is a great description of what happens at CrossFit affiliates. Eminent institutions, including Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, have made much of the information their professors provide available publicly and free. But I'm not so sure the newest methods for conveying information are great at also teaching people judgment.

Firing Live Bullets over foxholes.

Charlie Munger lauded the U.S. military’s practice of offering applicable, ‘real-world’ education to its soldiers preparing for war by firing live bullets over the foxholes they were training in for its vividness. 

What better way, after all, to get your trainees to get down than to make it a matter of life and death.
I’m sure the practice was effective. 

If only everything we needed to train for were so simple as hugging the ground. 

CrossFit founder Greg Glassman is known for his emphasis on training his clients for the ‘unknown & unknowable’. He also uses methods that, while less stark than Munger’s WWII example, are vivid and totally applicable to the tasks people face. Perhaps because he's spent so much time thinking about & designing for some of the least elegant, most demanding situations the human body has been put through—soldering—he’s accustomed to preparing people for the worst kinds of unknown & unknowable.

A previous post on this blog considered CrossFit’s elegance. Pat Sherwood’s piece lauded Glassman and CrossFit because they both are remarkably good at finding the best, simplest solutions to problems. In particular, Sherwood cited CrossFit’s now (in)famous 21-15-9 rep scheme. ‘Fran'—one of the most famous CrossFit workouts—consists of 21 then 15 then 9 repetitions of a pair of exercises: ‘thrusters', front squats into a shoulder-press, and pull-ups. (Here's trainer Bob Harper taking a crack at it). One cannot begin the pull-ups until the thrusters are completed each round.
 
As part of the open qualifying competition for the 2013 CrossFit Games, CrossFit director of training Dave Castro offered a workout—called 13.5—that included 45 total repetitions each of those exercises (though the chest had to touch the bar on the pull-ups instead of the usual standard of chin-over-bar) partitioned into 3 sets. But he deviated from the element Sherwood cites as the hallmark of CrossFit’s elegance: the 21-15-9. 

Why? With 13.5, all the reasons Sherwood cogently lists for the simplicity and benefits of the 21-15-9 are out the window. 13.5 was not elegant. To say the least. It's an ugly one. It’s also wonderful. The 15-15-15 rep scheme has the benefit of being easier to remember while fatigued, but the benefits extend beyond that. 

Probably every CrossFitter who still had hopes of making it to the 2013 CrossFit Games had done Fran—with its 21-15-9 reps—before. Most had likely done it many times. But Castro didn’t just change the rep scheme—he made other changes that cashed in the elegance of Glassman’s original in order to take something that people were familiar with, something they knew how to deal with both in terms of strategy and pain-management and provided something they had no idea how to manage. By mixing the familiar with elements of the unknown, he pushed people’s limits. 

That's the point of General Physical Preparedness. And General Intellectual Preparedness. Because life makes those kinds of demands on us. Jobs make those kinds of demands on us. Consider Delbanco’s assessment of what college is for. Then, ask yourself what you learn at your gym. A gym need not provide the stuff that prepares people for living, but CrossFit gyms do. I don’t even belong to a CrossFit gym, and the workouts alone prepare me in those ways (though I miss out on the magic formula for camaraderie—see video below for Glassman’s unique and colorful take on the formula!)



So, CrossFit prepares people for living. If we consider our mental preparedness, Munger’s thought does the same. Asking Delbanco’s question, “What's college for?” We see that it sometimes does a good job of preparing people for jobs, careers, and other times it fails. Sometimes it prepares people for the intellectual demands that will be placed on them by living in contemporary society and sometimes it fails.

Charlie Munger points to the single biggest problem plaguing higher education: a fatal disconnectedness. When I look at his proposals for solutions, I see Glassman looking over the fitness landscape. Fortunately, higher education is a lot better (and a lot more moral, with a much high character of the professionals involved) than the prevailing fitness model. But it’s still not perfect. And the stakes are a lot higher. Charlie Munger’s thinking goes a long way in remedying intellectual preparedness just as Glassman’s thinking (and practice!) has for the physical.

Philosopher Michael Oakeshott discusses the components of learning. Information is a necessary component of learning. And it’s pretty easy to impart. But judgment is important, too. And it’s much more difficult to impart. The greatness I recognize in CrossFit is that it offers people, even more than the camaraderie, is the physical equivalent of judgment—the ability to be prepared for novel and unexpected situations that extend beyond the movements/skills trained for. I see Munger’s latticework of ‘mental models’ as providing much the same thing for our intellectual needs. 

General intellectual preparedness, in the same terms Glassman holds as the ideal for general physical preparedness, is possible. And I think it’s possible to teach and train it in much the same way.

Charlie Munger Donates Second Largest Gift Ever--$100 Mill to University of Michigan

Charlie Munger is an honest guy. He donates $110 million to the University of Michigan, says he deserves little credit for it (and means it), and admits he got the idea for the donation from someone else and that one of the main reasons he's ok celebrating it is because he loves attention.

Charlie Munger Donates $110 Million

Munger was reported as saying he's “cheerfully cooperating in a limited amount of celebration of his gift,” partly out of duty and partly because he enjoys the attention.

“But I particularly want to avoid any perception that I claim large donative merit. After all, I waited until my 90th year before making the gift, then gained friendship and creative joy in working with the university in a very interesting design effort likely to have a good outcome, while I parted with assets I soon won’t need.”

He’s given UM previous donations. Those, though dwarfed in amount by this most recent gift, were similar to this $110 million donation in that the all were aimed at providing facilities improvements that would contribute to students’ ability to study comfortably. He gave $20 million for improvements to the campus’ Lawyers Club housing complex and $3 million to the UM Law School for infrastructure improvements.

The three gifts are and will continue to be hugely beneficial to students. Another Munger gift, though, holds much more promise. That gist was the result of a simple agreement Warren Buffett elicited from Munger at the behest of Peter Kaufman. Kaufman recognized that he was not alone in wishing for a book that complied Munger's wisdom, and so he prevailed upon the Berkshire Hathaway magnate to in turn prevail upon Munger, his long-time business partner, to agree to cooperate in the making of such a book. I'm not sure agreement is a proper description of Munger's attitude, but he, at least, acquiesced. Reportedly on the condition that any proceeds from the book be donated to the Munger Research Center at the Huntington Library.

Munger's Greatest Gift to Date

The resulting book is a tour-de-force. Mostly a collection of speeches he has given over the years, the book contains the ingredients to what Munger takes to be the keys to attaining 'worldly wisdom'. Modeled after Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack, Poor Charlie's advocates for a multidisciplinary education that integrates the biggest ideas into a coherent worldview.

Munger's ideas provide the impetus for this blog. I recognize in Munger's thought the mental parrallel to Glassman's thinking regarding the body. And I hope to be able, in future posts, to provide some insight as to how to accomplish the widsom Munger thinks is possible. I welcome any suggestions those familiar with Munger's thinking can provide as to how to accomplish this.

CrossFit, CrossFit Everywhere, CrossFit Near & Far

CrossFit has a new official Affiliate locator tool. 

So, those looking for a CrossFit gym can easily find one. Perfect for those looking to join or those going on the road who need a temporary box-away-from-home.

Here's what the global map looks like:

CrossFit's New Location Finder

And here's what it looks like near me:

CrossFit Affiliate Locations in the Salt Lake Valley

What would be cool is a 'way-back machine' feature that let us look at the number and location of affiliates at any day in the past.

Here, for example, is what CrossFit.com looked like on April 18, 2001:

CrossFit.com Circa April 2001

Greg Glassman & The Politics of Selflessness

CrossFit.com recently posted a video it called "Unfettered Capitalism." The video is powerful. It opens with the quote, "The unfettered have a deep appreciation of being unfettered, even if they are unable to express it."



CrossFit founder Greg Glassman professes to be a libertarian by birth. He mentions in the video that when he has his 'lefty friends' read libertarian publications they come back without objections. His befuddlement at those friends' failure to adopt a more fully libertarian worldview as a result is clear.

I do not consider myself to be consistently 'on the left' in political matters. But I do have a couple objections to his self-characterization.

I hadn't given the video too much thought since I first saw it, but I noticed an event posting for April 17, 2013 that spurred the initial impressions I had at first sight. (Glassman's event in Seattle looked awesome, by the way. Anyone who went, the comment section is open, please let me know how it was).

Greg Glassman at the Freedom Foundation

Before the objections, there's plenty to like in the video. In fact, even my objections aren't really criticisms of Glassman or CrossFit. Quite the contrary. In fact, I think Glassmans practice is better than his rhetoric.

Glassman is a contrarian. It's a big part of what makes him, and his training program, great. He looked at the fitness world and described what he saw as 'a bizarro world'. He saw it clearly. And started a program that was comprehensively better. CrossFit has revolutionized fitness. Not just the industry--the way fitness is done--but also the idea of fitness. Talking, even thinking, about fitness is different than it was before Glassman.

He's right when he says, "The [CrossFit] culture is crazy important." He's still right when he argues, "It's the thing we safeguard; it's what he do at HQ."

When Glassman talks about capitalism, though, it sounds a little like 'bizzaro' capitalism to me. I completely agree with the sentiment that informs his quote, "The unfettered have a deep appreciation of being unfettered, even if they are unable to express it." And I love his practice. What Glassman has done with the freedom he has been afforded is wonderful. It's spectacular. (Literally...the CrossFit Games draws millions of viewers!) But I'm not sure what he's done is the necessary, or even typical, outcome of 'unfettered capitalism'. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Political theorist Richard Flathman, I think, offers a better description of what Glassman is up to, and a stronger theoretical defense of ideas similar to those Glassman espouses. Flathman persuasively argues in favor of what he calls the 'liberal principle'. (Don't get your hackles up over the word liberal--he certainly doesn't mean it in a 'democrat' vs 'republican' way. It's about freedom, mostly negatively defined--about being 'unfettered' to use Glassmans terminology). The liberal principle states that "it is a prima facie good for persons to form, to act on, and to satisfy and achieve desires and interestes, objectives and purposes."

Flathman calls for a general presumption in favor of freedom--meaning when we assess what people should and should not be allowed to do, our default position should always be in favor of letting them do it. And any restriction on human action needs to pass a rigorous bar.

Flathman thinks that the highest ideal available to us is individuality "understood as self-making or self-enacting." And that the pursuit of this ideal requires "abundant social and political plurality and, essential to both, the widest possible freedom of action." His devotion to individual freedom is so extensive, those passages come from a book called Reflections of a Would-Be Anarchist.

Flathman despises the coercive power of the modern state. But he is no libertarian. Though he doesn't like it, Flathman does allow that institutions are necessary and desirable. The most important question that can be asked about institutions, Flathman thinks, is whether they "whether or in what ways...[institutions] contribute to or obstruct attempts to pursue and...realize...the ideals of self-making, self-overcoming, and self-enactment."

Instead of libertarianism (Adam Smith's famous laissez-faire is better interpreted as 'leave well enough alone' not 'leave everything alone, by the way.) Flathman posits a 'willful liberalism'. With Glassman, he thinks that for any society to work well, "there must be a substantial number of associates (people) who for the most part 'take care of themselves,' who do not need to be 'cared for' by others or by society. And there must be associates who, by cultivating virtuosities such as civility and especially magnanimity, care for others in the sense of not inflicting themselves harmfully or destructively on the latter."

This is better than libertarianism. A lot better. Libertarianism is often (sometimes rightly) subject to the charge of articulating a politics of selfishness. Flathman rejects much of libertarianism on the grounds that the economic character of much of the thought is dreary and dispiriting. He favors concentrating on the making of lives rather than on the making of livings.

But Glassman's practice is certainly not subject to these critiques. His belief that businesses must "Be Better Period" certainly does well in a capitalist system. (By the way, was #BeBetterPeriod trending on twitter, or was it just my feed?) And so does his practice of offering health & wealth for others. But it's hardly a practice exclusive to capitalism. Or even, unfortunately, a regular characteristic of it.

So, Glassman is interested in freedom. Even more than he perhaps is aware. Or at least more than his words would suggest. Flathman sometimes calls his thought 'virtuosity' liberalism. As the name implies, it centers on making people good at stuff.

Flathman hates the idea of government getting involved anywhere it doesn't have to. He's only a would-be anarchist, though--sometimes government works in ways that allow for more individual freedom and not less. As Michael Oakeshott put it, "Politics is the art not of imposing a way of life, but of organising a common life… the art of accommodating moralities to one another." It's what we do in the space afforded to us that our institutions and institutionalisms make possible that allows us to be better.

Frederick Nietzsche famously thought of himself as the argonaut not the evangelist of free-spiritedness. In that, he is quite like coach Glassman. Or even CEO Glassman, who embodies the best in what we can follow Flathman in calling 'virtuosity liberalism'. We can be inspired by that, even if we can see through his claim that he's a libertarian by birth.

Contrary to popular belief, Frederick Nietzsche did not popularize the term 'YOLO'

Glassman personifies Michael Oakeshott's belief that societies are led from behind and for those capable of leadership to give themselves up to political activity is to break away from their genius. Greg Glassman is a genius. And his leadership doesn't betray us. No matter what he says.

CrossFit Project: Turning 7s into 10s

Never an organization to shy from controversy, CrossFit media produced a video that depicts how people use the workout program to exceed their natural genetic capacity. Well, not all people, but women. And not all women, but Rita Benavidez, Jackie Perez, Erin Cianciolo and Andrea Ager. And it focused on their looks. Called, 'Turning sevens into tens,' the video wasn't universally well received by the +CrossFit community. But I think the tagline used is certainly appropriate and definitely applies to all CrossFitters regardless of gender: 'Beauty in Strength.'

CrossFit: Beauty in Strength

CrossFit athlete Jackie Perez

CrossFit athlete Rita Benavidez

Whatever one thinks of the video above, the ability that CrossFit has to transform people's lives is even more impressive than the program's capacity to improve their physiques.
 
And that's by design.

In his seminal piece 'What is Fitness' Greg Glassman writes, “We have observed that nearly every measurable value of health can be placed on a continuum that ranges from sickness to wellness to fitness….Done right, fitness provides a great margin of protection against the ravages of time and disease….A fitness regimen that doesn’t support good health is not CrossFit…being ‘CrossFit’ comes through molding men and women that are equal parts gymnast, Olympic weightlifter, and multi-modal sprinter or ‘sprintathlete.’ Develop the capacity of a novice 800-meter track athlete, gymnast, and weightlifter and you’ll be fitter than any world-class runner, gymnast, or weightlifter.”
 
Fitter than any world-class runner, gymnast or weightlifter is a pretty bold statement. And it's a pretty big improvement over the physical capacity anyone was born with.

The principle articulated in the United States' Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal," is so deeply engrained and beloved that it has become a truism most of don't even have to think about. But clearly, there are differences among us. People like Rob Orlando, Rich Froning, Chris Spealler (ok, or Kristen Clever, or Lindsay Valenzuela, or Katie Hogan) can all do things that I may not be physically capable of achieving. Ever. And physical aptitude comes more easily to some than others. Some people are just bigger, stronger, and faster than others.

Rob Orlando. Fitter than me.

An amazing thing about CrossFit, though, is that everyone can improve on whatever genetic inheritance they were given.

Similarly, adopting a latticework of mental models approach has allowed Charlie Munger to outperform those with much higher 'natural I.Q.s. For Munger, as with Glassman and CrossFit, performance is what matters.

Munger has remarked, "A money manager with an IQ of 160 and thinks it's 180 will kill you. Going with a money manager with an IQ of 130 who thinks its 125 could serve you well."

Chris Spealler. Fitter than me.

In CrossFit and in life, the difference between success and failure often has nothing to do with 'natural' capacity. And those with tremendous natural gifts are sometimes outperformed by those with lesser ability. There's a reason the story of the rabbit and the hare is one of the first we learn as children. As Munger puts it, "Smart people aren't exempt from professional disasters from overconfidence. Often, they just run aground in the more difficult voyages they choose, relying on their self-appraisals that they have superior talents and methods."

Kristan Clever. Yes, fitter than me.

CrossFit and Munger's mental model approach can help avoid those pitfalls. And turn our sevens into tens. Body and mind.

 

Finding the mental analog of CrossFit's '10 Physical Skills'

About nine years ago, a guy who owned a +CrossFit affiliate had a great idea. He wondered, given CrossFit founder Greg Glassman's belief that there exist 10 basic physical skills that indicate fitness, how to test for those skills.

Rich Froning has all 10 Physical Skills

The 10 skills are:
1. Cardio-vascular/cardio-respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Accuracy
9. Agility
10. Balance

The people at CrossFit headquarters have helpfully weighed in on the subject & provided several such tests. Others from across the CrossFit community have added their own considerable expertise.

Coach Burgener has become a staple in the CrossFit community, and the Burgener warm-up alone, for example, taught many people how to lift over many years--well in advance of the advent of CrossFit. Similarly, U.S.A. Weightlifting Hall of Fame coach Bob Takano's insights helped many become better lifters prior to his affiliation with CrossFit.

Glassman's original, elegant concept and program, though, has been able to incorporate these (and many others', obviously) teachers' insights & methods. And consider how CrossFit has amplified these teachers ability to influence and benefit others.

The same online technologies that allowed Glassman to take CrossFit so far beyond its Santa Cruz home so fast are those that would allow a revolution in education.  Thomas Friedman recognizes this possibility, enthusiastically writing, "I can see a day soon when you'll create your own college degree by taking the best courses from the best professors from around the world...paying only a nominal fee for the certificates of completion." The results, Friedman thinks, will be (at least) as positive and revolutionary as Glassman's have been for fitness. "It will change teaching learning and the pathway to employment," he writes.

That is, more or less, the process that CrossFit has adopted in popularizing the instructional methods of outside professionals. But it is not at all CrossFit's practice in each of its affiliates. There's a lot more to it than that*. Notice, for example, how popular coach Burgener is at any event in which he teaches in person.



Friedman, I suspect, is too sanguine about what an online education can do. Information, of course, is more widely available than ever before. But college, and the instruction available there, is much more than information. Just as CrossFit affiliates (find an affiliate anywhere in the world with this map) teach a lot more than online videos ever could, a collegiate education that consists in no more than knowledge attainment isn't a college education at all--it's an impoverished facsimile.

CrossFit instructors at affiliates teach people to develop physical, intellectual, and practical skills (Hence Burgener's injunction, "That's why they call you coach!" from the video above). And they do it in person, because these skills are notoriously difficult to acquire at a distance, as Hilary Achauer details.

I am interested in considering what tests, drills, exercises, or activities might look like for the top-10 (or so) list of mental skills. And who the teachers are in academic disciplines that might lend their expertise like coaches Glassman, Burgener, and Takano. Charlie Munger's idea of a latticework of mental models provides the kind of organizing structure to intellectual pursuits that Greg Glassman did for the physical.

Before the endeavor could succeed, though, we would still need to follow Glassman and identify and define what the most important intellectual traits are that comprise general intellectual preparedness.

Richard Feynman had (at least) the top-10 mental skills. Can we test for them?

*CrossFit icon Chris Spealler writes, "If you ever lose the community, the accessibility that CrossFit offers to everyone that walks through the doors regardless of their fitness level, and just throwing down with your friends, you may have lost CrossFit." His take on what affiliates, he calls them 'playgrounds' offer is available on the 'teamspeal' blog.

Elegance is for tailors. And CrossFitters.

Elegance is for tailors. Often attributed to Einstein, physicist Ludwig Boltzmann actually said those words. Einstein did say, "A scientific theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." It's an open question which is more elegant.

Albert Einstein

Ludwig Boltzmann

Reading Pat Sherwood’s lovely paean to CrossFit (and Coach Greg Glassman’s) elegance, I was struck by the mention of Blaise Pascal—a mention not surprising given his role in developing some of the most elegant (and useful) theory in mathematics.

The first time I ever came across a workout with the 21-15-9 structure, I thought of Pascal’s arithmetical triangle.

Pascal's Arithmetical Triangle

Looks like Greg Glassman is a genius.

But, I wondered when I saw the workout, why not 10 instead of 9?

Because the human brain needs a finish line. And with workouts only slightly less harrowing than this experience, I understood. 70 reps into ‘Fran’, 9 looks a lot better than 10, for reasons Sherwood nicely articulates.

Coach Greg Glassman

Pat Sherwood