Nearly Infinite Leverage

We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
And all the great fortunes,
They're created through leverage
So your first job, obtain leverage
You can obtain leverage, through permission,
Take taking risks, getting people to work for you,
Or by raising capital or
You can get leverage permissionlessly
By learning how to code or
Becoming a good communicator,
Podcasting, broadcasting, creating videos,
Writing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
And that's how you get leverage
That's how you get leverage
But once you have leverage, what do you do with it?
Well, the first part of your career's
Spent hustling to get leverage
Hustling to get leverage
Once you have the leverage then
You wanna slow down a bit
Because your judgment really matters
It's like you've gone from steering your sailboat around
To now you're steering an ocean liner or a tanker
You have a lot more at risk but
You have a lot more to gain as well

We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
You have a lot more at risk
But you have a lot more to gain as well

In the age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes
The most important skill
My definition of wisdom is knowing the longterm
Consequences of your actions
Wisdom is just judgment on a personal domain
Wisdom applied to external problems I think is judgment
So they're highly linked
It's knowing the longterm consequences of your actions
And then making the right decision to capitalize on that
Judgment is very, very hard to build up
This is where both intellect and experience come in play
There are many problems with the so-called
Intellectuals in the ivory tower, they have no skin in the game,
They have no real world experience
So they just apply purely intellect and intellect
Without any experience is often worse than useless
Because you get the confidence that the intellect gives you
And you get some of the credibility but because
You had no skin in the game and you had no real experience
And no real accountability, you just throwing darts
The real world is always far, far more complex
Than we can intellectualize

We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
You have a lot more at risk
But you have a lot more to gain as well

Especially all the interesting fast-moving edge
Domains and problems
You can't get there without experience
So if you are smart and you iterate fast,
Even you put 10,000 hours into something,
But you take 10,000 tries at something
If you are smart and you have a lot of quick iterations,
And you try to keep your emotions out of it
The people with the best judgment are actually
Among the least emotional
A lot of the best investors are considered
Almost robotic in that regard
I wouldn't be surprised if even the best entrepreneurs
Come across as unemotional
There is this archetype of the passionate entrepreneur
And yeah, they have to care about what they're doing
But they also have to see very clearly
What's actually happening
And the thing that prevents you from seeing
What's actually happening are your emotions
Our emotions are constantly clouding our judgment
And investing or in running companies, building products,
Or being an entrepreneur, emotions really get in the way
Emotions that will prevent you from seeing what's actually
Happening until you can no longer resist the truth of what's happening
Until it becomes too sudden and then you're forced
Into suffering which is sort of a breaking of this emotional fantasy
That you put together

We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
Nearly infinite leverage
We are now living in an age of
Nearly infinite leverage
You have a lot more at risk
But you have a lot more to gain as well

Investment books are the worst place
To learn about investment
Because investment is a real world activity
That is highly multi-variate
All the advantages are always being competed away
It's always on the cutting edge
So what you actually just need is very, very broad-based
Judgment and thinking
And the best way to do that is to study everything
Including a lot of philosophy
And philosophy also makes you more stoic,
Makes you less emotional and so you make better decisions
You have better judgment
You can go within someone's feed and get at least
Some semblance of what it must be like
To be in their head all the time
The more outraged somebody is,
I guarantee you the worse their judgment is
If someone's constantly tweeting political outrage,
Seems like an angry person, getting into fights,
You don't wanna hand this person the keys to your car,
Let alone the keys to your company