All of masters02's Comments + Replies

Why thank you.

You're correct. I did think that the Muslim story was the truth. There were times when I was forced to face a mismatch between my beliefs and reality (evolution is an obvious one), but as you can imagine, I was a pro at rationalising things away. And when rationalisations didn't suffice, I simply put it down to my ignorance and didn't bother pursuing it. And to consolidate all my irrational behaviour, I had enormous social proof that this was the right thing to do.

I should have made it clear that I had no respect whatsoever for 'evidence... (read more)

"I’ve found that’s all you have to do to get ahead in life, be non-idiotic and live a long time. It’s harder to be non-idiotic than most people think." - Charlie Munger

I appreciate the opportunity, but I am very much a private person. Looks like an interesting website, I'll be checking it out.

I certainly had a huge emotional problem with being wrong. Three years ago when I was a Muslim, I had a considerably stronger attachment to my beliefs than to reality and truth. As far as I was concerned, my beliefs were the truth (haha) and I could never have distinguished between the two. In fact, everyone I knew was exactly the same, if not worse.

What helped me was having role models that showed me a completely different way of life (many hats off to Dawkins, Pinker, Buffett, Munger, Krauss, et al). I watched them for hours and hours in countless inte... (read more)

Hah, what a no-brainer error. I'm going to add that to my list.

I would drown if I included specific mistakes. I only note down the errors in an overly general way (e.g. I would have a subheading called "decision making" and under that I would have: - failing to make important decisions promptly - making decisions without taking loved ones into account - having high expectations of myself and others; etc). My mistakes (for the vast majority of the time) are recurring, so that chops off a whole bunch.

Three days ago, I created a "Temple of Errors" (borrowed from stock investor Chris Davis' Temple of Shame: a temple for things that made him lose money).

In a feat of laziness and mundanity, instead of an actual mini-temple, this became the title of a word document where I journal all my mistakes. I should be keeping my mouth shut since it's only been three days, but I'm excited. I created this document with the intention to strive to make new mistakes and avoid old ones (an idea stolen from Charlie Munger). So far, I've found this process to be i... (read more)

Thanks for the recommendation. I've seen Bevelin's book come up many times during my Munger-searches, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I'm sure I'll more than enjoy it.

There's no question that the convincing was gradual. Deep inside, I sensed something was wrong with Islam and god, but obviously I didn't even try to investigate this. If I encountered something that didn't make sense, I magically rationalised it away (which was very often). Funnily enough, before this discussion with my friend, I always considered myself an open-minded Muslim (I snort at this now, because it was a mere delusion), but when my friend brought reason to the table, I naturally became defensive. This defensiveness slowly, but surely, turned int... (read more)

I was raised as a religious Muslim and was in the same Saudi private school from year 1 until college. Now, if you're planning to put your child in one of the most irrational hubs of life, my school was the place. Arrogance and emotional arguments were glorified. As you can imagine, I was a machine of irrationality. I had no concept of 'evidence', I only engaged in emotional arguments, and I was riddled with all sorts of biases. I was a big fool and a gigantic mess.

Then I met a friend in my second year of university who was once a Christian and became an ... (read more)

I finished reading the "Commitment and Consistency" chapter in Cialdini's book 'Influence'. For the past 2+ weeks I have attempted to stay aware of this bias in everyday life.

What I have observed:

• I caught myself and others being automatically (and irrationality) committed to ideas (far too many times)
• Some of personal beliefs exist simply because I committed to them when I was younger and significantly more idiotic
• People are significantly more committed to goals when they publicly announced them
• People say mind-blowingly irrational statements

Hello all!

I'm a graduated International Relations student from London. I took a year off after graduation to learn how to manage my finances and invest in the stock market. Because of that, I came across my life hero, Charlie Munger, the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He is a machine of rationality and is by far one of the wisest men (if not the wisest) alive. He wrote an essay called, "The psychology of human misjudgement" (http://law.indiana.edu/instruction/profession/doc/16_1.pdf) which I implore all rationality-seekers to devour. This... (read more)