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Tech, Strategy, and other interesting things by Roberto Zoiaby Roberto Zoia

Roberto Zoia

Lives of the Stoics, by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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Lives of the Stoics is a collection of short biographies. Like other books about Stoicism written by the authors, Lives of the Stoics does not pretend to dive deeply into the philosophy of the Stoics nor be an historical treaty, but to provide inspiration for life through its insights and stories.

From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, the authors give a good introduction to the lives and context of each stoic, distilling the essentials of their character, their historical background, their struggles with the powers that be, and other highlights of their lives. Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom. Self-rule is the greatest empire, character is fate.

Be consistently not stupid

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It’s remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: ‘It’s the strong swimmers who drown.’

— Charles Munger, quoted by Peter Bevelin in Seeking Wisdom. From Darwin to Munger, p. 58

Why even smart people get bad results

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Warren Buffet on why even smart people get bad results, quoted by Peter Bevelin in Seeking Wisdom. From Darwin to Munger (p.36):

It’s ego. It’s greed. It’s fead. It’s mindless imitation of other people. I mean, tehre are a variety of factors that cause that horsepower fo the mind to get diminished dramatically before the output turns out. And I would say if Charlie and I have any advantage it’s not because we’re so smart, it’s because we’re rational and we very seldom let extraenous factors interfere with our thoughts. We don’t let other people’s opinion interfere with it… we try to get fearful when others get greedy. We try to get greedy when others are fearful. We try to avoid any kind of imitation of other people’s behavior. And those are the factors that cause smart people to get bad results.

I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but then in terms of the output, the efficiency with which the motor works, depends on rationality. That’s because a lot of people start out with 400-horsepower motors and get a hundred horsepower of output. It’s way better to have a 200-horsepower motor and get it all into output. So why do smart people do things that interfere with getting the output they’re entitled to? It gets into the habits, and character and temperament, and it really gets into behaving in a rational manner. Not getting in your own way.

Company Hierarchy

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According to Venkatesh Rao, MacLeod’s Company Hierarchy is the cornerstone of The Gervais Principle, which supersedes both the Peter Principle1 and The Dilbert Principle2.

Company Hierarchy

  1. Laurence J. Peter, states that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”: employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent. ↩
  2. Developed by Scott Adams, it states that companies tend to systematically promote incompetent employees to management to get them out of the workflow. ↩