Floodlights and Goalposts

An online commonplace book

Charlie Munger on the wisdom of inverting the question

What Carson did was to approach the study of how to create X by turning the question backward—that is, by studying how to create non-X. The great algebraist Jacobi had exactly the same approach as Carson and was known for his constant repetition of one phrase: “Invert, always invert.”83 It is in the nature of things, as Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward.

– Charlie Munger

It’s not only Charlie’s bits of wisdom that leave you in awe, the number and variety of thinkers Charlie Munger references in each chapter is astonishing.

In this speech alone he draws on Samuel Johnson, Cicero, Johnny Carson, Moses, Benjamin Disraelias, Croesus, Issac Newton, Epictetus…

Stripe Press’s online version of Poor Charlie’s Almanack is what digital reading should be.

More to come.

https://www.stripe.press/poor-charlies-almanack/talk-one?progress=66.79%25


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