Why so much emphasis on self-improvement instead of laziness like The Dude?
12-01-2015, 04:29 PMQuote: (09-15-2015 07:32 PM)Brodiaga Wrote:
Quote: (09-15-2015 12:30 AM)jj90 Wrote:
I don't know of said RVF member Cardguy, and that may work for closed systems but that also reeks of excuses and cognitive dissonance. If said individual was so good, he should apply his talents to the capital markets. Where is Cardguy's billions?
Ego is the enemy, it's hubris to think one can contemplate every possible result. And then being able to act on such thoughts concurrently in real time.
Anyone who thinks that smart people should all be rich should read Nassim Taleb's books: The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness and Antifragile.
He explains the role of random events and luck better that I ever will, but the TL;DR version of the answer is basically that for every billionaire investor like Warren Buffet there are many who failed. Many of these losers may be just as smart as the winners, but they made the wrong calls and never recovered (or never had the balls to make big bets in the first place).
If investing, and getting above-average returns, was as simple as applying high IQ to solve a pre-defined problem in a classroom then finance professors would be billionaires as well.
I think you state it too black and white. It is true that a certain kind of intelligence or savviness is useful for making money, and obviously not every kind of intelligence. For every Warren Buffet there are many who failed, yes, but also many who sit on 10M or 20M or 50M or 100M instead of 60 billion, is that failing?
I really believe that there are so many (most) people around who don't really want or believe they can get rich, and won't become rich as a result.
Are there really so many people reading all those books and taking so much action?