Historian Will Durant once said, “logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe.”
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Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara viewed the world as a big math problem. He wanted everything quantified, and based his career on the idea that any problem could be solved if you obeyed the cold truth of statistics and logic.
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- [note::The problem with effective altruism right here.]

The “equation” would work only if the North Vietnamese leaders were calm, rational actors who would “calculate costs and benefits to the extent that they can be related to different courses of action, and make choices accordingly,” as one paper put it.
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- [note::"'Your adversary is a rational actor' is an assumption and it may very well be wrong."]

(highlight:: The danger, and you see it often in investing, is when people become too McNamara-like – so obsessed with data and so confident in their models that they leave no room for error or surprise. No room for things to be crazy, dumb, unexplainable, and to remain that way for a long time. Always asking, “Why is this happening?” and expecting there to be a rational answer. Or worse, always mistaking what happened for what you think should have happened.
The ones who thrive long term are those who understand the real world is a neverending chain of absurdity, confusions, messy relationships, and imperfect people.)
- No location available
- rationality, models, forecasting, decision-making, investing, 1socialpost-queue,

Historian Will Durant once said, “logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe.”
- No location available
-

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara viewed the world as a big math problem. He wanted everything quantified, and based his career on the idea that any problem could be solved if you obeyed the cold truth of statistics and logic.
- No location available
-
- [note::The problem with effective altruism right here.]

The “equation” would work only if the North Vietnamese leaders were calm, rational actors who would “calculate costs and benefits to the extent that they can be related to different courses of action, and make choices accordingly,” as one paper put it.
- No location available
-
- [note::"'Your adversary is a rational actor' is an assumption and it may very well be wrong."]

(highlight:: The danger, and you see it often in investing, is when people become too McNamara-like – so obsessed with data and so confident in their models that they leave no room for error or surprise. No room for things to be crazy, dumb, unexplainable, and to remain that way for a long time. Always asking, “Why is this happening?” and expecting there to be a rational answer. Or worse, always mistaking what happened for what you think should have happened.
The ones who thrive long term are those who understand the real world is a neverending chain of absurdity, confusions, messy relationships, and imperfect people.)
- No location available
- rationality, models, forecasting, decision-making, investing, 1socialpost-queue,