Summary of Charlie Munger USC 2007 Speech

Charlie Munger USC Law Commencement 2007

Accounts and Attitudes that have worked for me

Core Ideas

1. Safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want

2. No love that is so right that is admiration based love and that love should include the instructive dead

3. Wisdom Acquisition is a moral duty
a. Warren Buffett is a continuous learning machine
b. The skill that got Berkshire through one decade would not have sufficed to get it through the next decade

4. Rapid advance of civilization came only when men invented the method of invention

a. You can progress only when you learn the methods of learning
b. Learning should be continuous
c. Half of Warren’s time is sitting on his ass and reading the other half is spent talking on the phone or in person to highly gifted person that he trusts and trust him

5. Learning all the big ideas in the big disciplines
a. Not good if you don’t practice it
b. Multi disciplinary approach can be dangerous – it works so well – that you can be in front of an expert and you will see a correct answer that he has missed and must be tactful to avoid causing offense
c. Cicero famous for saying (my paraphrase): a man who doesn’t know what happens before he is born is doomed to go through life like a child
d. Learn them in such a way that they form a mental latticework in your head that you can use in everyday life situations

6. Work Problems in Reverse
a. Inversion will help you solve problems that otherwise couldn’t be solved

7. Avoid sloth and unreliability

8. Avoid really dead ideology
a. I tell myself I’m not entitled to have an opinion on a subject unless I can state the arguments against the position better than the people who are supporting

9. Avoid self serving bias
a. You should not believe that you are entitled to do whatever you want to do
b. Live below your means – Mozart was mostly miserable because of this

10. Avoid Self Pity
a. Disastrous behavior
b. Avoid it in yourself but allow for it in others
c. When encounter it try to reflect it by appealing to the interests of that person, do it of lofty motives
d. Never improves any situation

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