Chapter 4 The Paradox of Foresight and Shortsightedness

Entrepreneurs are good at creating new orders, and they understand the value of no boundaries.Oracle CEO Larry Ellison also coined a new term "removing the built-in hat".That year Ellison was invited to speak at Stanford University's commencement ceremony.Facing the expecting students, he offered an incredible advice: "Pack up your things, take your ideas, and don't come back. Drop out and start acting. I want to tell you, a hat and a set of degrees Suit will definitely make you fall!" These seemingly absurd words contain a kind of cold reality.Many people around him don't have any unique endowments, nor do they have any broad vision or foresight, nor do they show any great talents and strategies, but he just looks for a path and does it very professionally, and he is able to achieve something. Fan career!And other people, with extraordinary knowledge, first look for reasons, grounds, and feasibility when encountering things.After a large circle of arguments, the risks are often greater than the opportunities.So they justifiably stopped and watched.They are immobilized by the truths of many languages.An excess of knowledge or an excess of history forms a great burden, stifling a man's strongest instincts, such as passion, rebellion, selflessness, and imagination.The ultimate emphasis on martial arts is to forget moves and routines, and the body and mind are integrated into a natural state; the extreme emphasis on business is to remove the "built-in hat" and enter a state of freedom.

Larry wasn't alone, nor was he the first, to question that "built-in hat."Business guru Konosuke Matsushita, Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Sam Walton and financial guru George Soros all hold the same view.In his early years, Soros studied under the British liberal philosophy master Pope, and was deeply influenced by his concept of an open society. Unlike ordinary pragmatic investors, he used a profound philosophical background and ideas, combined with his own temperament and To understand and operate social, economic and financial markets in an interested way.Therefore, on a deeper level, it has formed its unique thoughts, theories, viewpoints and methods.Pope's fallibility of human cognition (FALLIBILITY) is the starting point of his thinking.

Soros attributed the "built-in hat" to people's prejudices, which are often integrated into many theoretical hypotheses, customary rules, and even unshakable systems.The integration of these biases lacks an awareness of the fallibility of human knowledge and an understanding of the interplay between cognitive and participatory roles.The secret of Soros making money lies precisely in his reverse thinking, discovering market and institutional flaws, and consciously making use of these flaws to make money.Soros successfully predicted the 1987 crash and made a fortune in the 1997 Southeast Asian financial crisis.Therefore, all the filth he has thrown at market fundamentalism is more marketable.He believes that the blind faith in the laissez-faire market is based on the assumption that the market mechanism tends to equilibrium to achieve optimal allocation.And that assumption was never fulfilled.This “built-in hat” is the fundamental flaw of the market, and of global capitalism.

Human beings' cognition of things is incomplete, flawed, and inherently error-prone. This is the basic criterion by which he judges the world and himself.Soros believed that the greatest ability that set him apart was his quickness to spot mistakes.To be able to do this, one must have a keener mind and superior courage.Of course, finding mistakes is a very happy thing for Soros, and it is as natural as breathing.He knows that as long as he knows the shortcomings of the public and his own, he can lead the market optimistically.Soros often conducts reviews and debates with actual traders on investment issues.His questions are professional and tricky, until there is no need to ask any more questions, and until he finds the weakness of the public and his own inseparable, he can invest with confidence.

Erasing the aura of being always right and throwing away the "built-in hat" has given Larry Ellison and George Soros a distinctive power.This kind of power is not the combination of foresight and decisiveness we usually imagine, but often manifests as the fusion of short-sightedness and single-minded focus. The general understanding is that far-sighted entrepreneurs create strengths, while short-sighted people can only make family workshops; but in reality, far-sighted and broad-minded people only create real disadvantaged people, while short-sighted people only focus on a little bit of territory right now , but can cast a real strength.Unbelievable, but true.