I have to admit that lately I have been writing and quoting "Poor Charlie’s Almanack" by Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio) quite a bit. This is my second time reading the book, and it still impresses me that Munger covers such a wide variety of topics in the book.
This time, Munger touches upon heavy ideology. While the examples he quotes have some political connotations, this can apply to any aspect of our lives where we may exhibit inflexible thinking and a degree of certainty. Great thinkers are constantly looking for evidence that may prove their hypotheses and arguments wrong, instead of running into confirmation bias. This requires not only a great deal of humillity, but also a great deal of openness and flexibility.
Here are Munger’s comments on the topic:
“Heavy ideology is one of the most extreme distorters of human cognition. Ideology does some strange things and distorts cognition terribly. If you get a lot of heavy ideology young- and then you start expressing it- you are really locking your brain into a very unfortunate pattern. And you are going to distort your general cognition.
There’s a very interesting history if you take Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) as an example of worldly wisdom: Warren adored his father- who was a wonderful man. But Warren’s father was a very heavy ideologue, who hung around with other very heavy ideologues.
Warren observed this as a kid. And he decided that ideology was dangerous- and that he was going to stay a long way away from it. And he has throughout his whole life. That has enormously helped the accuracy of his cognition.
Therefore, in a system of multiple models across multiple disciplines, I should add as an extra rule that you should be very wary of heavy ideology. You can have heavy ideology in favor of accuracy, diligence and objectivity. But a heavy ideology that makes you absolutely sure that the mĂ Ânimum wage should be raised or that it shouldn’t- and it’s kind of a holy construct where you know you’re right- makes you a bit nuts… Being totally sure on issues like that with a strong, violent ideology, in my opiniĂłn, turns you into a lousy thinker. So beware of ideology-based mental disfunctions.”
Munger also discussed the case of a very well-prepared man, who he considers a genius, that ran into a heavy ideology. Munger stated that this happens on a daily basis, with the result being geniuses are surpassed in some aspects of life by flexible thinkers with a good system.
What do you think about this?
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