1.1. Question 28: What happened 1973 and 1974 when your investment firm lost over half?
Charlie: Oh, that’s very simple. That’s very easy. That’s a good lesson. That’s a good question. What happened is the value of my partnership where I was running, went down by 50% in one year. Now the market went down by 40% or something. It was a once in 30 year recession. I mean monopoly newspapers are selling at 3 or 4 times earnings. At the bottom tick, I was down from the peak, 50%. You’re right about that. That has happened to me 3 times in my Berkshire stock.
so I regard it as part of manhood. If you’re going to be in this game for the long pull, which is the way to do it, you better be able to handle a 50% decline without fussing too much about it. And so my lesson to all of you is conduct your life so that you can handle the 50% decline with aplomb and grace. Don’t try to avoid it. (applause) It will come. In fact I would say if it doesn’t come, you’re not being aggressive enough.
1.2.
“I regard it as a part of manhood. If you’re going to be in this game for the long haul which is the way to do it. You better be able to handle a 50% decline without fussing too much. Conduct your life so you can handle a 50% decline with aplomb and grace. Don’t try to avoid it. It will come. And if it doesn’t come I’d say your not being aggressive enough”.
I don't know anyone who doesn't have the utmost respect for Karpathy. This short documentary shows once again what a great scientist he is. A huge win for Anthropic.
Charlie Munger on the origins of Chinese-Americans 🇺🇸 🇨🇳
“The Chinese first came in USA trying to build the Sierra, trans-continental railroad in the winter.”
“Our people were dying and it was just impossible, so they brought in 50,000 Chinese coolies, who were in those days practically slaves.”
“They took the coolies in the mountains and said - you build the railroads and they did it! The Americans couldn’t do it by themselves.”
“Fade in fade out 150 years later, due to immigration, these asians have rapidly become Doctors, Lawyers, Businessmen and succeeded mightily.”
“Every instrument that’s hard to play in symphony orchestra, is played by a Chinese face.”
- Charlie Munger. 2019
Founder of lululemon on what he'd tell every 25 year old:
"I'd tell them that every person in the world is an individual with a different genetic makeup and a different upbringing and the way that you're thinking is so radically different than every other person in the world and incomparable that if you have an idea and you want to move forward with it, don't worry so much about the competition because nobody will be able to replicate you and the way you think about it."
You can’t outwork the whole world. There’s always going to be someone somewhere willing to work as hard as you. Someone just as hungry. Or hungrier.
Assuming you can work harder and longer than someone else is giving yourself too much credit for your effort and not enough for theirs. Putting in 1,001 hours to someone else’s 1,000 isn’t going to tip the scale in your favor.
What’s worse is when management holds up certain people as having a great “work ethic” because they’re always around, always available, always working. That’s a terrible example of a work ethic and a great example of someone who’s overworked.
A great work ethic isn’t about working whenever you’re called upon. It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.
So how do people get ahead if it’s not about outworking everyone else?
People make it because they’re talented, they’re lucky, they’re in the right place at the right time, they know how to work with other people, they know how to sell an idea, they know what moves people, they can tell a story, they know which details matter and which don’t, they can see the big and small pictures in every situation, and they know how to do something with an opportunity. And for so many other reasons.
So get the outwork myth out of your head. Stop equating work ethic with excessive work hours. Neither is going to get you ahead or help you find calm.
[The Outwork Myth — It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work, 2018]
Warren Buffett reveals the ONE skill that's worth 50% more than any degree:
"I was totally terrified of public speaking. I couldn't do it. I would throw up. I mean, I just wouldn't. So I arranged my classes in high school and college so I didn't have to do it"
"I saw an ad in the paper. I went down to Midtown, New York. I gave him a check for 100 bucks to sign up for the Dale Carnegie course. I went back and stopped payment on the check"
"Then I came out here to start selling securities. I knew I had to do it. So I saw another ad and I went down and handed the guy $100 in cash"
"If you improve your communication skills, I will guarantee you that you'll earn 50% more money over your lifetime. It isn't some elaborate formula about options. Go out and improve your speaking and communication skills"
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Btw, 1.5 million views a week.
That's what our content infrastructure averages. We build it for founders who want distribution without the overhead.
We take on a handful per quarter - sign up here for a discovery call: https://t.co/SgdQTldYgD
I've been on a wild travel journey in China for several weeks, with only a backpack, making new friends and meeting & getting to know people from all walks of life. I've been truly humbled and inspired by everyone's kindness.
Next, I'm hopping over to Taiwan (first time for me) to hang out with Jensen, attend Computex, eat a bunch of street food, and just have fun talking to all kinds of folks around the city & beyond. After that, no plans, anything goes.
As always, please give travel suggestions or fill out coffee form if you want to hang out in Taiwain or anywhere else in the world. Love you all! ❤️
Charlie Munger, the Stoic: "Life will have terrible blows in it. Horrible blows. Unfair blows. It doesn't matter. And some people recover and others don't."
"There, I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something. Your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion."
best accounts to follow from each frontier lab to stay constantly up to date
Anthropic
@karpathy - must-follow account for AI; recently joined Anthropic
@bcherny - Claude Code creator, always shares great tips
@trq212 - also a Claude Code developer; writes amazing articles on CC
OpenAI
@polynoamial - works on reasoning research, shares a lot of technical details
@gabriel1 - Sora developer, great career path
@jxnlco - works on dev experience, shares a lot about Codex
Google AI
@OfficialLoganK - all the major Google Gemini and AI Studio updates
@ammaar - product and design; shares great things about vibe-coding in Google AI Studio
@fofrAI - cool use cases for generative models
Cursor
@leerob - the loudest voice behind Cursor updates
@ericzakariasson - shares great insights on using Cursor
@mntruell - Cursor’s CEO; major releases and usage updates
xAI
@milichab - recently joined xAI, shares updates on Grok
@skcd42 - also covers major Grok releases
@elonmusk - Elon does a great job reposting and hyping all xAI products
who else did I miss?
> be Andrej Karpathy
> born in Slovakia, move to Canada at 15
> start coding at 15. instantly obsessed
> become YouTube famous... for Rubik's cube tutorials
> get PhD at Stanford under Fei-Fei Li
> co-found this tiny startup called OpenAI
> Elon calls you "arguably #2 in computer vision in the world"
> go build Tesla Autopilot for 5 years
> leave. come back to OpenAI. leave again
> coin the term "vibe coding" casually in a tweet
> it ends up in the New York Times
> build an AI education company
> 9.3M people watch your next move
Today he joined Anthropic to lead pretraining research. The man never stops.
House Select Committee on the CCP released its scam compounds investigation yesterday. The bipartisan finding is that China isn't directing the system, but its deliberate failure to act has enabled it. For the first time, the report documents a Chinese state-owned enterprise contracting with Prince Group in 2018 to build infrastructure in Cambodia later used as scam compounds. Jacob Sims walked the committee through it. 1/5
Indian architects are quietly setting the pace for what architecture should truly be.
Deep overhangs, lush greenery woven into living spaces, courtyards that breathe, large openings for light and cross ventilation, materials that age beautifully.
Homes designed for living!
#BREAKING Australian actress Holly Valance says that everyone “starts out as a lefty”
But then you “wake up” when you try to “run a business or buy a home”
“And then you realise how crap their ideas are”
Hard to argue, Holly.