Never ask what someone thinks — ask what they are paid to think.
Munger said he underestimated the power of incentives his entire life, which is remarkable from someone who talked about them constantly. Treat that as a calibration note, not modesty.
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Typed edges. Anything below the line was authored on the other note and derived here.
prerequisite-of →Weight opinions by believability — track records, not titles, decide whose view counts on a given question.Before weighting anyone by track record, check what they are compensated to conclude. A believable track record built under a distorting incentive is worse than no track record, because it carries authority.
← extended byDon't take advice from someone who bears none of the cost of being wrong.
Munger tells you to read the incentives; Taleb says reading them is unreliable and you should restructure the exposure instead. The move from diagnosis to mechanism.
← supported byEvolutionarily stable strategies explain behaviour with no planner — equilibria emerge from payoffs alone.The formal machinery under Munger’s aphorism. Incentives do not merely influence behaviour, they determine the stable configuration a population settles into regardless of anyone’s intentions.