
The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (2005) [pdf] - atomroflbomber
http://web.archive.org/web/20151004200748/http://law.indiana.edu/instruction/profession/doc/16_1.pdf
======
sivers
This is by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's less-public partner.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger)

There are two great books collecting his thoughts:

[https://sivers.org/book/SeekingWisdom](https://sivers.org/book/SeekingWisdom)

[https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/pca.php](https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/pca.php)

His main quip is, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never
go there."

It's meant metaphorically, in that his approach to success is mainly to just
avoid mistakes.

(He's my hero.)

~~~
danvoell
Interesting. I've read quite a few of Buffett's year-end reports, I wonder how
much of these are written by Munger? Their writing style seems to overlap a
little.

~~~
dforrestwilson
Charlie influences Warren's style for sure. He edits the rough drafts and
gives feedback to Warren.

~~~
caycep
And the amusing thing is during the meetings, while Warren is going to town on
the podium, he just sits back and eats candy with this wry smile on his
face...

~~~
dharmon
"Nothing to add..."

------
t27
Here's a web article version of this PDF, which I had converted some time
back. There are some minor hyphenation issues, but otherwise I have fixed the
formatting so that it shows up good on web and mobile displays.

Obviously, all credit goes to Charlie Munger. [https://t27.github.io/to-
read/MungerMisjudgement.html](https://t27.github.io/to-
read/MungerMisjudgement.html)

I'll be glad to take PR's on the github repo for fixes to any errors that may
have come up in the conversion of the PDF article

~~~
egd
Oh that's much better.

How'd you do the conversion?

~~~
t27
I found a pdf version which, unlike the link above, was not a scanned copy. It
had the proper text. Used a web based pdf to doc converter, fixed some
formatting and converted the .doc to html using libre office. To fix
artifacts, fonts and other extra html, I used plain old regex based find and
replace on Atom. Finally used the stackedit css for the fonts and styles.

------
ableal
Although this scan is quite readable, I did a cursory search for a cleaner
PDF. Failed, but the first hit was a nice transcript of the original talk:
[http://www.rbcpa.com/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf](http://www.rbcpa.com/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf)

It's interesting that the material was heavily rearranged for 2005 version
(submitted PDF scan), which is acknowledged at the end to be a combination and
enhancement of three talks.

~~~
mturmon
I think this fills the bill:

[http://fernbankpartners.com/files/mungermisjudgment.pdf](http://fernbankpartners.com/files/mungermisjudgment.pdf)

~~~
ableal
Indeed it does, thank you very much. Excuse me ...

^^^^^ BETTER PDF LINK ABOVE, GET THIS ONE ^^^^^

;-)

------
EdwardCoffin
In section 17, Stress-Influence Tendency (p21-22), he mentions some final work
by Pavlov, but doesn't provide a citation. I spent some time trying to find it
when I first read this years ago, but was unable to. I'm wondering whether
it's even reliable: I'd think that work by Pavlov could be found with him as
an author, rather than in a "popular paperback" written by an un-named
psychiatrist. If anyone knows what book he must have been talking about, or
can point to the particular papers by Pavlov, I'd like to know.

~~~
dfsegoat
Not sure if it is the case here at all. But sometimes those old Soviet-bloc
"original research" documents can be hard to find. An example of this
elsewhere is the Levenshtein distance -- everybody knows what this is, but the
actual original document was a Soviet-era journal: Влади́мир И. Левенштейн
(1965). Двоичные коды с исправлением выпадений, вставок и замещений символов
[Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals].
Доклады Академий Наук СCCP (in Russian) 163 (4): 845–8. Appeared in English
as: Levenshtein, Vladimir I. (February 1966). "Binary codes capable of
correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals". Soviet Physics Doklady 10
(8): 707–710.

~~~
niftich
Given the productivity of Russian academics and the difficulty in obtaining a
lot of these journals, has there been a concentrated effort to make these
available for a modern, web-enabled audience?

~~~
dfsegoat
That would be quite interesting to know actually.

------
eigenvalue
You can also listen to him giving this speech here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqzcCfUglws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqzcCfUglws)

I revisit this material every couple years. It's so easy to fall into these
traps in your thinking.

------
whack
I realize this is going to make me sound rather dull-minded, but despite the
pdf sounding very interesting, I don't have much inclination to read 27 pages
of it without knowing more. Can someone summarize the author's main thesis,
and whether he's able to robustly justify that thesis with supporting
evidence?

~~~
angersock
Sure, they totally did!

(And because you didn't read it, you'll never know if I'm bullshitting you or
not. Don't outsource your thinking.)

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> Don't outsource your thinking

Should he believe you or not? I'm baffled.

~~~
angersock
:)

------
mmaunder
Along the same vein, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow does a
comprehensive job of explaining why humans are really bad intuitive
statisticians and how the systems in our brain make decisions. He's the
authority on the subject and the book is revered by many in the psychology
field and outside.

------
kelukelugames
Thank you for posting this. I've read dozens of psychology books and articles.
Even though they repeat the same principles, they are always a fun read. But I
never apply them. Do people have guidance on how to start using this
knowledge?

~~~
rini17
Best by taking failures honestly. Almost always psychological stuff can be
discerned. Any failure will do, but bigger ones tend to be more edifying.

------
spoinkaroo
Is this speech available in a plaintext format for ease of reading? I couldn't
seem to locate it.

------
zafka
This article was updated in 2005 according to end notes.

