Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen The Philosophical Seeker

... I am perfectly happy to be considered an unsuccessful philosopher. Section 1 The Failed Philosopher What motivated George Soros? money?Very few friends and assistants think so. "If you let him make another billion dollars," said his close friend Bai Rongwen, "it doesn't necessarily make him happy. The first billion dollars didn't make him particularly happy." Money, of course, would bring him happiness, but not by much.George Soros is too complex a person, and his thinking is not limited to this space.No matter how much money is pouring into his bank account, he will not be as satisfied with it as a person who wants to return home.In that sense, he was like many other plutocrats in the 90s.

For previous generations, being very rich meant being free to spend your time.They are wasting time and doing nothing.However, as the British writer Anthony Sapplin pointed out: "The rich no longer pursue ease of life, and work has become an extremely important part of their social image." As for the symbols of their favored social image - fancy hotel suites, speedboats and private jets have replaced fancy houses, gardens and parks.However, the biggest difference between the new rich and the previous generation is mobility.In addition to the ease of life, Soros pursued other things. He felt that flying was more comfortable than speedboating, hotel suites were more practical than huge mansions, and traveling around the world was more profitable than sitting by a pond.

One obvious difference between Soros and the contemporary plutocrats is that, in a certain sense, he lived the lifestyle of an intellectual.In addition to the works of Karl Popper, there are two books that have had the greatest influence on Soros. These two books are difficult to understand but convincing. One is "Godel, Escher, Bach, and Towards an Individual Ecology of the Spirit by Gregory Bateson.Soros sees himself not just as an investor, but as a philosopher.Or to put it more accurately, a failed philosopher who happened to be an investor. Autumn 1992.At Oxford, when he was admitted to the Donations Committee of the Justice Court, he asked to be listed as "a financial and philosophical explorer". "I do like being thought of as a practical philosopher," Soros once said, "but. I'm perfectly happy to be thought of as a philosopher who didn't succeed."

By the 1980s, he was already a billionaire anyway—regardless of what he had done outside of the financial world, he was often referred to as a "Hungarian entrepreneur", "management expert", "billionaire speculators" and was even once called the "bad boy of global finance" (Wall Street Journal, June 1, 1994).He tried hard not to put a label on it.An article put out to the press by the Soros Foundation in New York called him an "international philanthropist".He himself thought: "If I can't be called a philosopher, then at least don't think of me as a financier.

What he has done more is to seek the respect of others - to contribute to society through his own spirit, through his own theoretical viewpoints, and through his efforts in charity.If he calls himself a philosopher and does nothing else.People probably won't say much.He has said more than once that his success in the Wall Street area has made him the object of discussion, and this is where the severe accusations against him began. Soros saw himself as an intellectual with a European heritage.The Wall Street District is a great place to make money.But, apart from a small circle of people near Soros's office, the residents here have no interest in him. "I don't want to spend a lot of time with people in the stock market," he confided to journalist Don Doffman. "I find them annoying." He says he feels more comfortable with intellectuals than with businessmen much.

Perhaps he would be very happy if he stopped investing and devoted himself to philosophy, but that is simply not possible.In the Wall Street area, he had lost too much.If making money doesn't end on its own, it can give philosophers sitting in ivory towers a chance to practice. It is true that making money is easy for Soros, but at first he could not accept that he had chosen such a career instead of academic or intellectual work.However, he gradually got used to it. "For many years I rejected it as my profession. It was a means to an end. Now, I'm happy to embrace it—in fact, it's my life's work." In the early 80s, he was described as the How the most successful financial managers feel, he admits "feels really good".

In the Wall Street area, however satisfied he was that the business was doing well, Soros was not happy in any sense.Getting caught up in day-to-day investment decisions made him extremely depressed. "I'm totally into this job, but it's really a very painful experience. On the one hand, whenever I make a wrong decision in the market, I have to endure a huge mental torture. On the other hand, I really don't want to To make money as necessary in order to be successful. In order to find out the rules governing my financial decisions, I deny that I have succeeded." The reason why investing is so painful, as Soros once explained, is because it entails losses.And, as he points out, it's impossible to make money without risking a loss. The "personality transformation period" he experienced in the early 1980s was the result of his belief that making so much money was not the whole of life.

Soros worried, as thinkers have often feared, that the accumulation of wealth might have a bad effect on him, decadent, and whether people paid attention to him simply because he had so much money. "I had to accept the power and influence that came with my success... My greatest danger was this: Because of my huge assets, I also became a person with power and influence in the process." The personality transformation period is almost is a solution. Section 2 enjoy life He is enjoying the good life.He had four fine apartments: one in Manhattan, one in Southampton, Long Island, one in Bedford, New York, and one in London.However, compared with other rich men, he is very frugal, neither smokes nor drinks, and seems to have no interest in eating and drinking.

Edgar Este, his partner in London, often saw Soros outside his office.Soros' hobbies are not pretending to be elegant. He said that he likes theater and music, but he doesn't like collecting.He has several Hungarian works of art.He loves clothes and always dresses appropriately when he goes out. "I used to like collecting, but it didn't really have a lot of practical value," he told a reporter in 1993. "I liked comfort, but, really, I'm a thinking person. Every time Soros visited charities abroad, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s, Soros avoided drivers or bodyguards.When visiting university campuses, sometimes he stays in student dormitories, sometimes he takes a taxi, sometimes he walks several streets in a city, sometimes he takes public transportation.

Soros refused to live the life of a billionaire, leaving some interesting stories for many friends.Tepa Wim was a Hungarian intellectual who ran Soros' charity in Budapest.Once, they were sitting in the building of the Hungarian Academy of Social Sciences. "How can I get to that university?" asked Soros. "You can take a taxi," Wim told him. "Why not take the tram?" Soros asked seriously. Soros wasn't mean, Cheng Mu explained, he was pragmatic.In those days, trams were the fastest way to get from one place to another, so why not? Soros' house in Southampton is a limewashed, Spanish-tiled villa with a swimming pool and tennis court. In 1900, Soros held a ball here to celebrate his birthday.One guest said that the 500 guests he invited were all important business magnates and "Hungarian millionaires".

Soros tries to give the impression of frugality, which can sometimes be a little misleading.There are seaplanes between Southampton and his four apartments in Manhattan, but no speedboats or Rolls-Royces.When Soros travels, he usually takes a commercial flight (business class).Less use of private jets.Once, Soros really wanted to buy an airplane so that it would be more convenient to travel from New York to Europe.He asked Bo Rong Wen what he thought of this. "It's not a good idea," Wen told him. "If you own an airplane, you know you can only use it if the pilot wants to use it." Wen advised him to lease one whenever he needed it. Airplanes, Soros took his advice. Some consider Soros to be particularly shy, but he likes the company of people.Wen said: "He likes to live in a comfortable place. George doesn't take you around his house and say, look, this clock, or this statue, or this painting. He doesn't care for creature comforts." , likes a life of peace and ease. He likes to bring people into his home, to serve them good food, to provide them with help and convenience." He often holds dance parties.Sometimes he would call Suza at the last minute to invite some friends to dinner. "How many people?" "Oh, maybe 50 or 75," Soros would respond.Then, Su Zha personally prepared dinner for 70 Russians who held different opinions and their partners. Every year on New Year's Eve, he holds a party in his apartment in New York.In the summer, Soros would approach Pompampton every Saturday night, and these evenings were as important to him as business meetings and social events.Wen attended some of these evenings, and he observed that Soros was very popular.He greets everyone and remembers their names.Some of the people who attended the party were from the art world, some were golf partners, and some were government officials.There were so many people there that he was overwhelmed.Through these activities, he often earns money.More important, though, is that people have access to each other. Because of his sociable nature, Soros disliked living in one place.He wanted to be in the flow, to see other parts of the world, to keep his mind sharp, to interact with people who were doing important things.In short, he wants to go and actually is eagerly seeking opportunities to take risks in life.No wonder he hated merchants, and he hated housekeeping. Section Three Pretentious He believes that he is a special kind of person, a kind of person who has given a special purpose to life.We will remember that this is the man who, as a child, thought he was God. As an adult, he seems to understand that this kind of thinking can get him into trouble.For example, people would take him as a "narcissist". In 1987 he wrote in his diary: "The only thing that can hurt me is that my success reminds me of my childhood fantasies of omnipotence-but if I continue to engage in financial market activities, this fantasy seems impossible to change. become reality because they are a constant reminder of my own limitations. Financial activity also reminded him of his contacts with the press -- he's not infallible. In 1985, just as he was immersed in the joy of his most successful investment year, the journalist Don Doffman asked him what he would do if he were to live again. "It's basically a reproducible event," he said, "but from my point of view it is a reproducible event." The name means that, for George Soros, even Events that are impossible to happen can happen again. If he can cause the impossible to happen again, what can prevent him from using his intellect in the same way?What could stop him from making some great contributions to human understanding?But in the 1950s he hit a stumbling block and abandoned his plans to be a scholar and a philosopher.Today, the more money he makes, the more confident he is, and perhaps it is possible to return to the kingdom of knowledge. It was with these ideas that he invented theories—about epistemology, about history, about financial markets—and he came to believe that his ideas had value.He claims his "discovery" of taking into account the role individual participants' biases play in the quest for human knowledge is a key to understanding the entire historical process that involved thinking players. "It's as if genetic variation is the key to understanding biological evolution. Soros considered himself a highly unusual kind of person, and therefore found it difficult to be around people he considered untalented; after all, he believed he could see things for what others were not.For example, in his ability to understand financial markets, he wrote: "I think I do understand this process that is about to take place, this revolutionary process. I am better than most because I have a theory, a set of rational framework, you can use it. That's what makes me special, and it's real because I've encountered the same process in financial markets." As for others trying to explore the market, "I have a very low opinion of the intelligence of professional investors. I think the more influential their decisions are, the less capable they are of making good decisions." Jimmy Marchuez saw this very clearly when he worked with Soros in the mid-1980s: "He had this deep-seated belief that he knew better than anyone else. Not because he's trying to translate his thoughts from Hungarian to English, but because he's always trying to teach you. "He knew very well that he couldn't get you on his teachings very quickly, and he had this feeling that once he understood something, it was like he was talking to God. He was so confident that something was going to happen when He can be extremely surprised when things don't turn out that way. And if things turn out the way he wants them to, it's just the way it should be."