Same As Ever

What do I think is true but is actually just good marketing? Am I prepared to handle risks I can't even envision? Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different? What are we ignoring today that will seem shockingly obvious in the future? How much have things outside my control contributed to things I take credit for? What's always been true? What's the same as ever?

The typical attempt to clear up an uncertain future is to gaze further and squint harder—to forecast with more precision, more data, and more intelligence. Far more effective is to do the opposite: Look backward, and be broad. Rather than attempting to figure out little ways the future might change, study the big things the past has never avoided.

The night before the D-Day invasion, Franklin Roosevelt asked his wife, Eleanor, how she felt about not knowing what would happen next. "To be nearly sixty and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous isn't it?" she said. It is. But we do. We always have. We always will. The idea that what lies in front of us is a dark hole of uncertainty can be so intimidating, it's easier to believe the opposite—that we can see the future, and that its path is logical and predictable. No belief in history is as commonly held, and no belief is as consistently wrong.

People will disagree, even as access to information explodes. They may disagree more than ever because, as Benedict Evans says, "The more the Internet exposes people to new points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist." Disagreement has less to do with what people know and more to do with what they've experienced. And since experiences will always be different, disagreement will be constant. Same as it's ever been. Same as it will always be. Same as it ever was.

The question "Why don't you agree with me?" can have infinite answers. Sometimes one side is selfish, or stupid, or blind, or uninformed. But usually a better question is, "What have you experienced that I haven't that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?" It's the question that contains the most answers about why people don't agree with one another.

People tend to have short memories. Most of the time they can forget about bad experiences and fail to heed lessons previously learned. But hard-core stress leaves a scar. Experiencing something that makes you stare ruin in the face and question whether you'll survive can permanently reset your expectations and change behaviors that were previously ingrained.

Permanent vs Expiring Information: Permanent information is harder to notice because it's buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But its benefit is huge. It's not just that permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it. It also compounds over time, leveraging off what you've already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened; permanent information tells you why something happened and is likely to happen again. That "why" can translate and interact with stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in.

A long time horizon with a firm end date can be as reliant on chance as a short time horizon. Far superior is flexibility. Time is compounding's magic, and its importance can't be minimized. But the odds of success fall deepest in your favor when you mix a long time horizon with a flexible end date—or an indefinite horizon.