I met Charlie Munger once, at a dinner in his Pasadena home in June, 2022.
I was not prepared for the opportunity to speak to him personally. I was told to let Charlie speak. For, inevitably, his thoughts would be infinitely more valuable than any others.
But an unanticipated moment arrived where I was invited to ask a question.
So I pulled one randomly from a corner of my mind:
“Is Wall Street growing less moral?”
The great man spoke without hesitation.
No, Wall Street was always the hotbed it is today.
And I realized that my question was born of sentiment: veneration of the past.
As the ringmaster explains in the classic film “La Ronde” (1950):
“I adore the past. It is so much more peaceful than the present and so much more certain than the future.”
But Charlie counsels rationality not sentimentality, facing reality when we don’t like it.
Especially when we don’t like it.
For rationality always yields more wisdom than sentiment.
Invert, Always Invert
Charlie’s favorite rational thinking tool has always been algebraic inversion: solving problems by turning them upside down or running them backwards.
So let us apply Charlie’s principle of inversion today.
Though we mourn his death—little more than a month shy of his 100th birthday—let us celebrate his life and the gift of his teachings.
Here’s Charlie, in his prime, addressing the graduating class of the University of Southern California School of Law on May 13, 2007:
About the Author
Mark Tobak, MD, is a general adult psychiatrist in private practice. He is the former chief of inpatient geriatric psychiatry and now an attending physician at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Harrison, NY. He graduated the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Columbia University School of General Studies. Dr. Tobak also has a law degree from Fordham University School of Law and was admitted to the NY State Bar. His work appears in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychiatric Times, and American Journal of Medicine and Pathology. He is the author of Anyone Can Be Rich! A Psychiatrist Provides the Mental Tools to Build Your Wealth, which received high praise from Warren Buffett.
