Psychology
A great story called “Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs” highlights the sort of “good obsession” that seems to be a part of success. In the milder form, we call it “hunger” in an earlier Buysiders.com post – an incessant and relentless drive to be/ become exceptional or, in this case, to create exceptional things. That said, this story relates behavior that borders on the troublesome, and part of the story regards VCs’ efforts to try to separate between “good” and “bad” manic behavior. But as a teaser and to paraphrase the old saying: could we be calling the insane “eccentric” just because they’ve gotten rich?
Quick collection of articles and papers with “psychological tidbits”. The first one is interesting as it can be seen as a sort of counter-argument against “confirmation bias”, but there’s more…
Munger’s classic speech in 1995 at the Harvard Law School is the quintessential example of the multitude of his mental models. In it Mr. Munger describes 24 “standard causes for human misjudgement” in separate, but then reminds us that these can combine to create potentially multiplied consequences. Since it can happen for good or bad, we’re better off informed and much smarter for the effort.
In the first of a series of posts, this one highlights the classic article by Robert Cialdini: “The Science of Persuasion”. It’s basically a 6-page summary for his must-read book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. We can’t stress enough how important the subject is – anyone interested in marketing, retail, personal relationships and, well, wants to reduce the risk of being tricked by a Madoff-like scheme should read this book.
