YouSaid · the spoken record

Shane Parrish

lines on the record: 95
first: 2023-09-27
most recent: 2023-09-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“On the train holding this ball, and we can't see that there's a person outside who has a completely different view into the exact same situation that we see. So we can mentally use these tools to sort of accommodate how we can look into the world from a different person's eyes or through a different lens, be that biology or through thinking or through, I mean, the most useful ones tend to be like, and then what? just asking yourself that simple question, I accomplish this and then what, then what happens inversion? How do I avoid all these negative outcomes that I don't want to get? And the Stoics, you've talked about this in the past. The Stoics have been doing this for a long time. They call it a pre-mortem. I think that those are just really helpful ways. And what they're really doing is they're just allowing us to put a different lens onto the problem and see it through a different light. And by seeing it through a different light, we slightly reduce our blind spots into the problem.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a great way to think about mental models is the source of all bad decisions is blind spots. Mental models allow you to see a problem through a different lens. You can adopt a different persona, a great example of a mental model is like how would Tim Ferris think about this? And then I adapt what I know about you and I try to see the problem from your perspective. And if I can see the problem from your perspective, now I've done the one thing that actually gets me out of cognitive biases, which is the source of all cognitive biases are basically we believe that what we see is all there is. And we learned about this sort of in physics, right? In grade nine, I think, where you're standing on this train and you're carrying this ball, and the train is moving at 60 miles an hour and how fast is the ball moving? Well, relative to you, the ball's not moving. But if you're watching the train go by, the ball's moving at 60 miles an hour. And so the source of all of our problems is that we only see that we're this person.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're always so focused on how do we accomplish the outcome we want rather than what are the key elements to this process that allow me to play for a long time? Am I going in the right direction? Do I want to get to where I'm going?”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of my favorite people, she's always one step ahead. She's amazing. I think that there's very few people who are well positioned in everything. Like if you look at somebody who's extremely good at one thing, like Buffett, that comes with extreme weaknesses. You can have a list of exemplars in your head almost of different people who are good at different positions. But you have to pick what direction you're going and then what positions do you need to be good at to be good in that direction? And so for me, like I circle back to sort of like core things, which people don't really think about, but they're core to everything we do in terms of like health and relationships and friendship and purpose and community. Am I working on something that I want to be working on? Am I moving closer to my destination? And is my destination the place I want to go? And I think those questions are stuff that we don't really ask ourselves.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we have a mutual friend of all Ravagant. He could be up there. Patrick Collison would sort of be up there. Kat Cole, who works at Athletic Greenland.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did he study? No, he sort of half asked it. And so, what happened was he was in a bad position at the moment he sat down to write that test. He was ill-prepared to write the test. But yes, he did the best he could in that moment. And so often we think about life in terms of how do I do the best I can in this particular moment rather than how do I put myself in the best position. And part of that is like we're always predicting. We're predicting creatures. And so we're always trying to gauge what the outcome is and maximize towards that outcome. I want to go all in on Tesla. I want to go all in on whatever because I want to maximize my return. And what we don't think about is like, okay, well, what is the cost of doing that?”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kids came home with an exam and he got a really terrible mark. And he hands it to me. And he's like a teenager. So he like hands it to me. He's like, I did the best I could, walks away. And normally the conversation ends there. And I was like, okay, well, now is not the moment that we're going to talk about this because I know we got this teenage attitude thing going on, but we're going to circle back to this. And so later that night, I was like, talk to me about what it means to do the best you can and what he told me about the best he could was like when he sat down to write that test from 10 to 11 he focused all of his energy and all of his effort on it he made the best decisions possible from 10 to 11 but what he forgot or didn't really appreciate is what position was he in at 10 a.m when he sat down to write that test did he fight with his brother in the morning yep he did he eat a healthy breakfast nope he didn't did he get a good night's sleep nope he was uplifted”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We seem to relearn these lessons over and over again. But positioning applies to so many other things that we don't think about. You can think about it basically as in your sleep, right? Did you work out? Are you healthy? Are you eating well? Are you investing in your relationship with your partner? What position am I in in the moment that I get into a fight or argument or disagreement with my partner or my spouse? And we don't think about the position we're in at that moment, but if you imagine that there's a patch of grass between you and them, is that grass dry or is it wet? Have I watered that for months, in which case the spark isn't going to light it on fire? Or is this smallest little spark going to start this forest fire? And the position that we bring into those arguments matters a lot in terms of the quality of the outcomes that we get. I'll give you another example. We were talking about kids earlier, and I assume a lot of people listening have kids. One of my kids.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let me talk about it in terms of finance and then apply it to something else that's totally you would think it doesn't apply to. So in finance, like you can think of low debt, you can think of saving money. You can think of always having dry powder. It doesn't matter if you have the best idea in the world, if you can't take advantage of that idea. You might as well not have the idea. You have to be in a position to take advantage of the ideas that you have. And you have to be in a position where somebody can't call you in at the exact wrong moment because that's really expensive as everybody sort of learned during the great financial crisis and is now forgotten.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Last quarter, he's got $150 billion on the balance sheet. And so, what he's always doing is he's, everybody thinks he's out of touch and he looks like an idiot, but he always wins because no matter what the outcome is, he wins. If the stock market goes up, he wins. If the stock market crashes, he wins because he's put himself in a position where no matter what happens, he can take advantage of circumstances rather than having circumstances take advantage of him. And I think that that's a key element we don't realize. If you put Warren Buffett in a bad position where all of his options are bad, it doesn't matter how smart he is. It doesn't matter how Warren Buffett is. Everybody looks like an idiot when they're in a bad position and everybody looks like a genius when they're in a good position.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The counterintuitive insight that I had about decision making from studying sort of Buffett and Munger and Peter Kaufman and a host of other people who've influenced my thinking is that they almost never find themselves out of position. And if you want to think of it as position as your circumstances, they're never forced by circumstances into doing something that they don't want to do. And often that means they look like an idiot in the short term. But in the long term, they win. And if you consider Buffett, for example, we've talked about, you know, he closes down his partnership during a bull market in the 60s because he doesn't know how to invest anymore. He's lost touch. He can't find what worked for him. He reopens it later in terms of Berkshire Hathaway. Time magazine, I think it was 1999. He's on the cover as being out of touch, 2001 stock market bursts. Right now, today, I think as of”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You tell yourself a story about why sunk cost doesn't apply in this situation or why you're not overconfident in this situation. And the smarter you are.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You come up with a checklist, like a lot of people have tried this, they come up with a checklist of cognitive biases, and they're like, okay, I'm going to see if this applies to me.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to go back to be sure, but I think there's stuff about I was trying to figure out how Daniel Kahnman came up with cognitive biases and Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger didn't really talk about cognitive biases, but seemed to avoid them. And so I spent a lot of time trying to like reconcile how cognitive biases can help you in the real world. And so what I sort of hit on, at least from my point of view, is like cognitive biases are really good at explaining why you made a mistake in the past, but they're really poor at preventing you from making mistakes in the future. They're intellectually very satisfying, but they don't really prevent you. Like if you create a checklist of cognitive biases and you're a smart person, you're just basically going to outsmart yourself. Am I overconfident? No, I'm not overconfident. I got this. I did the work. And so the story you tell yourself.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On rents. And then the NBA was sort of a way for me to step back from that for a couple years, do a less intensive role there while doing a full-time MBA. And that was when I got reconnected. I was like, oh yeah, this Warren Buffeta and Charlie Munger. But what are they doing? They're making decisions in the real world and they seem really good at it. So what can I learn from them?”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I read Buffett the making of an American capitalist, I think, in university, but sort of like everything got put on the back burner once I joined the intelligence agency and like the world changed. September 11th changed everything. I didn't really come up. I mean, I work six days a week, 12 hours a day for years. Didn't really have a lot of vacations, didn't have a lot of long weekends. And everybody else was doing the exact same thing. And it was the best time of my life, if that makes sense too. Not only you're working incredibly hard, you're working on amazing problems that you're really attracted to and you're working with a group of highly intelligent, dedicated people. Like it doesn't really get much better than that from a quality of life point of view, but everything sort of like all these outside interests got put on hold. I mean, I'm coming home. I'm like sort of like spending a little bit of time with a woman who was my girlfriend at the time. And then I'm going to bed and I'm waking up and like just repeat.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was like, fine, I'll just call it Furnham Street, which was the homage to Buffett and Munker, who I know have played like such a critical role in your life too.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, I don't know what year it is, but I'm not allowed to have a LinkedIn profile. I'm not allowed to have any social. You Google me. I do not exist. The intelligence agency would be livid if you had any sort of public profile, any sort of anything at all. And here I am. I'm like, oh, I'm just going to create this online journal. And this is how I'm going to chronicle my learning and development. I'm just going to take notes and I'm going to connect these ideas and I'm going to synthesize them and I'm going to compress them. And that is the act of reflection. So I'm going to basically learn things on my own. I'm going to reflect on them and then I'm going to write about them. And so I started this website and then eventually I don't even know how at this point we get to think it was like 25,000 readers or something. And then all of a sudden I started getting these emails, which is like, I hate typing in the name of your website. Can you basically like change the name?”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was like, well, I think people deserve better than me. And what can I do if I can't sort of like get out of this role? So I started following people around in the organization. I was like, how do these people make decisions? What can I learn from them? And I went back and sort of did an MBA. And when I was doing my MBA, I just rediscovered Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. And part of my MBA, it was so useless. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It just wasn't giving me what I needed at that particular moment to get better at the things that I wanted to get better at. But Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett were. And so I created this website, which was 68131-1440.blogger.com, which I don't own today. Somebody else has like taken this over probably because I talk about it a lot. But the website was basically the zip code for Berkshire Hathaway dash the unit number of Berkshire Hathaway in QAt Plaza. And it was my online journal. Now keep in mind this is.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember being put in charge of something that I didn't feel like I could quite handle. And I'm making decisions that sort of impact myself and impact my team and impact my country and impact troops in theater. And I have no idea what I'm doing. And so I went to my boss one day after a particularly challenging operation. I said, you know, here's how I thought about it. I don't think I'm ready for this job. I don't think I can do this. And he basically just looked at me and he was like, you're all we got. Like, what else are we going to do? Like, we're all just doing the best we can, get back to work. And I was like, that's the worst pep talk I have ever heard in my life.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when I was working at the intelligence agency, I started two weeks before September 11, literally two weeks later, the world changed. And everybody was thrust into roles and responsibilities over the coming sort of like decade, basically, that they weren't ready for. Nobody could have prepared you for. You just had to sort of do your best.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we missed that, right? School has become almost too easy. We're not challenging the kids and we're not holding them to a high enough standard. And it's causing all these downstream problems later on in life. At least that's my view. And I want my kids to be challenged. I want them to fail. I want them to learn how to overcome these obstacles. And you must have gone through something similar, right, when you're going from sort of like lead dog to maybe bottom middle of the pack. Where's my identity? You're not just dealing with how do I develop the systems to study and get the work done and all these people already know it. So I'm behind, but you're dealing with all these identity crisis in terms of your ego and how you think about yourself.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pause for one second. I want to know you said this was your decision. What made you decide that? Where did that come from?”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's not about grades. I mean, I would rather him basically fail at doing something hard than really succeed at doing something easy because I feel like we get wrapped up as parents. Our kids' successes are success. And so their grades become our success. But really what we want to do is produce independent adults who are capable of handling the ups and downs of life. And that means that they're going to fail. They're going to struggle. They're going to have teachers that don't like. They're going to get grades that maybe they do or don't deserve. And so I think about all of these things.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't speak French. I didn't speak French to him at home. He hasn't spoken French in like two and a half years because of COVID, basically. And all of a sudden he's thrust into a French school. And they're unrelenting. So he was so naturally smart that he didn't have to work for anything. And that school eliminates that. They're like, no, you have to work. And if you don't work, you can't get good grades. And it was so hard on him. And like I'm the parent who's like, hey, I love you. I know this is really hard. I know you can do it. Let's shift our mindset around this. And by the end of the, I would say December, he was like loving it. He's loved being challenged. And, you know, when it came time to pick a high school, he literally his filter was what school is going to challenge me the most. And I was like, oh, that school did an awesome job. I'm so happy that that's the way he's thinking about this.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10% off their essay because they were one day late. And the school's approach to this is like, look, we want to produce effective adults. And that means you're going to fail in grade seven. You're not going to fail academically because everybody there is really smart. You're going to fail at these little life things that you should have taken that into account when you planned your essay submission. And they put it on the students and they do it in such a way that the kids at first like My son was crying like He goes to the school and it's in a different language, and now it's 90 minutes of work a night.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a big believer that kids should be challenged, and I don't think that the schools around my house challenge the kids. So I found a school in Ottawa that I had to drive to and drop off my kids. And I'm the type of parent that's like, you can do things you don't believe you're capable of. And so starting in grade seven, my kids were getting 90 minutes of homework a night. They were taking school in a different language and they were pushed and challenged. And the standards of this school, and I take a lot of flock for those even from friends of mine, but the standards of this school are unrelenting. They don't care how you feel. And that, you know, is very countercultural in today's message. But if you go in there and you haven't done your homework, it does not matter. You get a zero. And to put things in context, we went to my grandmother's funeral in May, and they were one day late getting their essay in. And they were one day late.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get anywhere in the world really, really easily. Grade seven, at least for my kids, is when it started to change. And that's in part because of the schools that I sent them to. I think it starts to matter in grade seven increasingly and definitely in high school.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, my advice for what it's worth is I don't think it really matters much until they're sort of like grade seven and eight and certainly in high school. It matters a lot in high school. The consistency, the friend group, the sort of knowing what to expect. If I map myself to just my kids and their age, there's a lot of uncertainty in their life. There's a lot of things going on that we don't see. And then adding on to that, sort of like you're going to be in a different school with a different system, with a different teachers, you can't really thrive in that environment easily. That doesn't mean you can't thrive. It just means you're making it harder than it has to be. But before that, I would say up until grade six, again, just going on my experience with my kids, what they're really learning in school and from friendships is like, how do we be social? How do we interact with other people? How do we get in the habit of going to school? How do we learn to read and learn to do basic math? And that you can sort of.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Relationship and transitory means it's just going to go. And so you don't invest in it. You don't invest in it the same way that you would invest in your best friend or somebody like that because you knew the closer you got to that person at the end of the year, the harder it would be to leave. And so at that point in time, it was really difficult for me coming out of that, becoming a university student, and then joining the workforce to not have this mental default of this is going to go away or I might not see this person. But in flip side, it's like, I'm going to work with this person for the next 15 years. And I think that was really hard for me to sort of catch on to. It took a few years for me to really start investing in those friendships and those relationships in the way that I wanted to.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a couple different ways to think about that as it relates to my experience, which is I knew I was moving. So I knew at the end of the year I was going to be in a different school. I mean, that became apparent sort of at least by grade six or seven. And so every year I could experiment with myself and not consciously, but I could emphasize different parts of myself to do I fit in with the jocks. Do I fit in with the nerds? What is my group of people? And I could play a role for a year. The downside is I knew that I was moving in a year. And so I knew all of these relationships were sort of transitory. So I think the biggest impact it had on me is even in adulthood, it took me a long time to develop this person's going to be in my life for a long period of time. This isn't like a transitory.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My brain in a way that was giving back to the people and the community and the country in which I grew up, I thought that that was a really good sort of win-win, interesting problems, giving back at the same time. They came to the school. I applied for a job. And if I didn't get it, I was basically going to go back and do my MBA right away and do something else. But I ended up getting it, ended up working with an incredible group of talented people starting what then went on to become the largest part of the intelligence agency, I think now, or the most valuable part of it.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was just sort of luck. I was doing computer science at a time when the rise of the internet, I didn't want to work for like Nortel or any of these big companies. I really wanted to work for an intelligence agency. I thought that would be really fun. And coincidence that they happen to be at my school, I like problems that are not really solvable, right? That are intractable, that are big and gnarly and that you can sort of like you can never quite solve, but you can get better at. My parents were in the military. So I had a patriotic sense of giving back to my country. Like how fortunate am I to be born into a country with freedom and good school system and a good healthcare system? And I was taught and brought up in a way that you have an obligation to give back. And for anybody that knows me, I mean, I'm not going to give back standing on the front lines with a machine gun. That's like just dangerous for everybody involved. But if I could use my”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he was like, You're going to get zero on all your assignments. And I was like, what? That's not fair at all. And he's like, well, we're sort of retroactively changing the rules. And I was like, that doesn't make any sense. That's not fair. All the rich kids are like hiring tutors. I can't do that. Like, it doesn't make sense. Just go with my exam mark as my mark. And he said, no. And basically the assignments were so heavily weighted that I ended up failing physics.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I read all the policies and procedures, right? Like I was very careful about reading all the rules to make sure I wasn't violating any rules. But I would go to bed and I would just basically hit run on this program and I would wake up and I would have my full assignment submitted 20 out of 20.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's like, I want to see this student after class. And I was careful, like, I had read all the policies and procedures and it says unlimited guesses.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like a PowerPoint graph that he puts on this projector, and it's like average guesses on the Y axis and student number on the X axis. And like the average number of guesses per question was, I don't know, like 17 or something. And mine was like in the millions.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was like, this takes a lot of time. I got to work full time. I don't know if I can spend the 20 hours a week. It actually takes to do this. But I was in computer science. So I was like, I'll write a little program that just sort of like goes from negative 1,000 to positive 1,000 and guesses in increments of like 0.1. And so I did this little program and it worked great. I got 20 out of 20 on every assignment until March of my first year, the teacher comes in and he used one of those transparencies. And I don't know if people remember transparencies, but like basically like.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your assignments for you so everybody in the class literally had this different assignment. And each question was different. There was like 10 versions of question one. Then all the numbers were different. Even if you had the same version of question one that you could find somebody else with it, you had the same version you would have different numbers. So you couldn't just copy the answer. And so all the kids in school, all the rich kids basically bought the same tutor. And this tutor for 20 bucks or whatever, he just like you gave him your sheet and he spit out the answers for you because he had all the 10 versions of the question. He would just plug in your numbers and you go to school. And the way to submit your assignment wasn't you actually submitted paper. This is like the dawn of the internet, like 1998-ish. And so you would submit your assignment almost like over telnet. You would log in and it would say, what's your answer to question one? And you would submit your answer.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so that is also like a crazy story because intelligence agencies, I mean, they vet people up down, they interviewed neighbors, they interviewed teachers, they interviewed the references that I put down. They talked to people that I didn't put down. Like they want to know about your life. They want to know who you are as a person, especially for students and for people like me who have a bit more of a, I would say, troubled background, right? Like I don't, I'm not a straight A student. I didn't go to the best schools in life. I had a clean record, but I didn't, you know, if you look at the sort of supporting evidence, it's like, well, this person's been in trouble over the course of their life. And they talked to my professors and like one of my professors hated me. And so that conversation was like, it was just so weird. We had this, I don't know if other people had this, but in physics, first year of physics, they had this computer program that generated.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then In grade nine, like my grade nine teacher wrote in my report card that Shane would be lucky to graduate from high school.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I sort of got a little bit scared straight after that, not in terms of like, I'm going to devote myself to schoolwork and like get better grades, but straight in the sense of I don't want to do this. I don't want to get into this trouble. And then from that moment on, books sort of became an outlet for me to live in an imaginary world and to escape the world I was actually in and to sort of be part of something else. Have you ever had a book do that to you?”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so they knock on the door and they're like, come out with us and let's have some fun. And I was like one chapter away from the end. And I don't know. You've probably read a really good book and you want nothing to like interrupt you in that moment. You're like, no, like the world doesn't exist. I need to finish this book. There's nothing more important. So I like lied because if I told them I was reading a book, that would go over like a lead balloon. But I was like, you know, I'm not really feeling that well tonight. I'm going to stay in. I'm sorry about that. And so they go out and they end up breaking into somebody's house and getting caught and a whole bunch of bad things happened as a result of that. And if I was there, I probably would have been doing that with them. But luckily, I wasn't there. I didn't do that with them. I found out about what happened. And this is a chance event. This wasn't me like thinking about anything and saying no to this thing. It was just pure 100% luck.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was nothing seriously wrong with me. And so, in grade eight, I just started getting in more and more trouble. I started hanging around the wrong people. Your environment sort of determines your behavior a lot, not only your physical environment, but the people you surround yourself with. And it's just the slow escalation. And if somebody said, hey, you're going to go break into somebody's house, you'd never do it. But if you start with vandalism and you start staying out late and you start doing things that you're not supposed to, all of a sudden breaking into a house is like the next logical step. So we're doing this book report for grade eight. And I go to the library and I'm like not interested in reading. I'm not even interested in doing my schoolwork at all. And I just happen to land in this true crime section at this elementary school, which is like four books long. And there's one book called The Stopwatch Gang. And I was like, what's this about? I pick it up. And it's about a bunch of bank robbers. And I was like, oh, this is.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my parents were in the military. I live with my mom, my stepfather, my biological father lived somewhere else. And we moved every year. So every year I had a new school. I think the first school that I went to two years in a row was grade 10 and 11 to put things in context. Same school, two years in a row. For grade eight, I decided I was going to live with my biological father. So I moved across the country, lived with him. And for various reasons, this was a disaster. Somebody who really didn't have a lot of experience parenting me growing up all of a sudden has a teenager. My stepmother all of a sudden inheriting a teenager, living in the middle of nowhere, I'm already a borderline delinquent. I almost got kicked out of school in grade seven for skipping school. Like I skipped school for like seven or eight weeks. I had to go see a child psychologist to make sure as a condition of not being expelled that I was.”
2023-09-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT