Discurso · 2007

Discurso de graduación de la Facultad de Derecho de la USC (2007)

13 de mayo de 2007 35 min vídeo

Fuente: YouTube · incrustado desde el original; no lo alojamos nosotros.

Si solo vas a leer un discurso de Munger sobre cómo vivir en lugar de cómo invertir, lee este, y aquí lo tienes en vídeo, algo que las charlas en texto más antiguas no ofrecen. Hablando ante los graduados en Derecho de la USC en 2007, un Munger de 83 años destila décadas de reglas acumuladas en media hora: sé fiable para que la gente te conceda «la confianza que mereces»; evita la ideología extrema; aprende a invertir el problema («lo único que quiero saber es dónde voy a morir, para no ir nunca allí»); y adquiere los grandes modelos de cada disciplina importante para dejar de ser el hombre que solo tiene un martillo.

Por qué verlo. Gran parte de la sabiduría de Munger está dispersa en las rondas de preguntas con los accionistas y en densas charlas escritas. Este discurso es uno de esos raros momentos en los que se sienta y expone los principios con claridad, en orden, ante un público de jóvenes que le preguntaron cómo construir una buena vida. El consejo sobre evitar la envidia, los celos, el resentimiento y la autocompasión es de lo más citado que jamás dijo.

La grabación enlazada aquí es la versión depurada «Complete» del discurso. Para el mismo material por escrito, Munger desarrolló estos temas a lo largo de las charlas recopiladas en Poor Charlie’s Almanack, pero la versión hablada conserva el ritmo y el humor seco que la página no puede transmitir.

deserved trust life advice inversion learning worldly wisdom

Léelo a la vez

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Generado automáticamente a partir de los subtítulos de YouTube y depurado ligeramente: la puntuación y los nombres propios pueden contener errores. No nos pertenece; todos los derechos corresponden a YouTube. Fuente ↗

thank you um Rosemary and congratulations to all of our uh Global law students uh it's now my honor to uh introduce our keynote speaker and I and I suspect there are you know some of you way back there who were here just for this reason uh I had the great privilege of being uh in pasaden on Wednesday afternoon of this week at the Westco board meeting where uh Charlie Munger speak spoke for three hours A lot of it was Q&A um and there were about a thousand people there had come from all over the world from New Deli and Delhi and Australia and various parts just to hear at Charlie talk so it's a tremendous honor and uh and a privilege that we're here uh presenting Charlie right here on the USC campus uh Charlie as many of you may know is the vice chairman of birkshire haway that is the legendary Investment Company headed by Warren Buffett um like uh like Warren Charlie grew up in Omaha um Charlie's also the chairman of Wesco which is a subsidiary of uh of birsh halfway and he holds an annual meeting every year and it's open to the public so hopefully I'll see some of you there next year it's a lot of fun Charlie Laren is a native of Omaha uh he studied at the University of Michigan and served in the United States Navy before entering Harvard Law School a little bit of a theme here uh Charlie founded and worked as a real estate attorney actually did some real estate development as well but he uh founded and worked as a real estate attorney at the very prestigious prominent firm of Munger tols and Olsen uh until 1965 when he left the practice of Law and became an investment manager uh now here's a sentence that's kind of standard in Charlie Munger law leaving the law was probably the best decision he ever made so just repeat uh leaving the law was probably the best decision Charlie ever made he took his legal education the kind of skills that he learned in law school and applied it to investing and today he is listed by Forbes as one of the wealthiest people in the world so there's hope if not for you for your parents and all those people that work so hard to support you for the last three years uh Charlie credits much of his success to his favorite pastimes reading and thinking one of the lines that Charlie developed in dispensing his wisdom at the Wesco meeting was if it's wisdom you're after if it's wisdom you're after you're going to spend a lot of time sitting on your ass and reading uh that's a quote from Charlie so read think uh question this is what Charlie is really about his observations about wealth business and life have inspired a near Cult of fans it's it's true they wear Charlie Munger shirts and they come to these meetings it's a spectacular thing to see lots of these are gathered up in his book poor Charlie's Almanac which was uh edited by Peter Coffman is over here the CEO of Glen air another USC Trojan graduate of our business and accounting schools and uh get that book it's a wonderful thing uh you can't get a I can't get a discount nobody can get a discount because it's a Charlie Munger book but uh it's called poor Charlie's Almanac and it's a collection of speeches and witticisms and thoughts that's tremendously powerful uh here's just an example in one of my favorite mungar isms uh quote all I want to know the only thing I want to know is where I'm going to die so I will never go there that's uh that's just Charlie another thing we heard both at Westco and again this morning we had breakfast with Charlie which was a lot of fun but a saying attributed I think I think this is from Warren but uh take the high road you'll find it less crowded uh so that's the way Charlie thinks he's a brilliant man he's been a friend a mentor uh throughout the past year and uh I'm delighted that we're going to get him to disend his wisdom as our keynote speaker so Charlie buer well no doubt many of you are wondering why the speaker is so old well the answer is obvious he hasn't died yet and why was the speaker chosen well I don't know that either I like to think that the development Department had nothing to do with it whatever the reason I think it's very fitting that I'm sitting here because I see one crowd of faces in the rear not wearing robes and I know from having educated an army of descendants who really deserves a lot of the Honors that are being given to the people up here in front the sacrifice and the wisdom and the value transfer that comes from one generation to the next can never be underrated and that gave me enormous pleasure as I looked at this sea of Asian faces to my left all my life I've admired Confucius I like the idea of fial piety the idea that there are values that are taught and duties that come naturally and that all that should be passed on to the next generation and you people who don't think there's anything in this idea please note how fast these Asian faces are rising in American life I think they have something all right the I scratched out a few notes and I'm going to try and just give an account of some ideas and attitudes that have worked well for me I don't claim that they're perfect for everybody although I think many of them are pretty close to Universal values and many of them are Can't Fail ideas what are the core ideas that have helped me well luckily I got at a very early age the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want is to try and deserve what you want it's such a simple idea that's the Golden Rule so to speak you want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end there is no ethos in my opinion that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have by and large the people who've had this ethos uh win in life and they don't win just money just honors and amols they win the respect the deserved Trust of the people they deal with and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust and so and the way to get it is to deliver what you'd want to buy if the circumstances were reversed occasionally you find a perfect Rogue of a person who dies rich and with uh and widely known but mostly these people are fully understood by the surrounding civilization and when the cathedral is full of people at the funeral ceremony most of them are there to celebrate the fact that the person is dead and uh that reminds me of the story of the time when one of these people died and the minister said it's now time for someone to say something nice about the deceased and nobody came forward and nobody came forward and nobody came forward and finally one man came up and he said well his brother was worse that is not where you want to go that's not the kind of funeral you want to have you'll leave entirely the wrong example a second idea that I got very early was that there's no love that's so right as admiration based love and that love should include the instructive dead somehow I got that idea and I lived with it all my life and it's been very useful to me a love like that celebrated by Somerset m in uh his book of human bondage that's a sick kind of love it's a disease and if you find yourself in a disease like that my advice you is turn around and fix it eliminate it uh another idea that I got and this may remind you of confusious too is that wisdom acquisition was a moral duty it's not something you do just to advance in life wisdom acquisition is a moral duty and there a corollary to that proposition which is very important it means that you're hooked for lifetime learning and without lifetime learning you people are not going to do very well you are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know you're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here if you take berer Hathaway which is certainly one of the best regarded corporations in the world and it may have the best invest long-term investment record in the entire history of civilization the skill that got Berkshire through one decade would not have sufficed to get it through the next decade with the uh achievements made without Warren Buffett being a learning machine continuous learning machine the record would have been absolutely impossible the same is true at lower walks of life I constantly see people rise in life who were not the smartest sometimes not even the most diligent but they are learning machines they go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that habit help particularly when you have a long uh run ahead of you Alfred North Whitehead said at one time that the rapid advance of civilization came only when man invented the method of invention and of course he was referring to the huge growth in GB GDP per capita and all the other good things that we now take for granted which happened just started a few hundred years ago and when before that all was stasis and uh so if civilization can progress only when it invents the method of invention you can progress only when you learn the method of learning I was very lucky I came to law school Having learned the method of learning and uh nothing has served me better in my long life than continuous learning and if you take Warren Buffett if you watched him with a Time Clock I would say half of all the time that he spends is just sitting on his ass and reading and a big chunk of the rest of the time is spent talking one on-one either on the telephone or personally with highly gifted people whom he trusts and who trust him other words it looks quite academic all this worldly success Academia has many wonderful values in it I came across such a value not too long ago well was several years ago when my capacity as a hospital board chairman I was dealing with a Medical School academic and this man over years of hard work had made himself know more about bone tumor pathology than almost anybody else in the world and he wanted to pass this knowledge on to the rest of us and particularly the people that treat cancer bone cancer and how was he going to do it well he decided to write a textbook that would be very useful to other people now I don't think a textbook like this sells 2,000 copies but those 2,000 copies are in all the major Cancer Centers of the world he took a Year's sabatica and he sat down at his computer and he had all the slides because he saved them and organized them and filed them he worked 17 hours a day seven days a week for a year that was his sabatical at the end of the year he had one of the great bone tumors mythology textbooks of the world when you're around values like that you want to pick up as much as you can the other another idea that was hugely useful to me was that I listened in law school when some wag said a legal mind is a mind that when two things are all twisted up together and interacting it's feasible to think responsibly about one thing and not the other well I could see from that one sentence that was perfectly ridiculous and it pushed me further into my natural drift which was into learning all the big ideas and all the big disciplines so I wouldn't be a perfect damn fool who was trying to think about one aspect of something that couldn't be removed from the totality of the situation in a constructive fashion and what I noted since the really big Ideas carry 95% of the freight that it wasn't at all hard for me to pick up all the big ideas in all the disciplines and make them a standard part of my mental routines once you have the idea is of course they're no good if you don't practice if you don't practice you lose it so I went through life constantly practicing this multidisciplinary approach well I can't tell you what that's done for me it's it's it's made life more fun it's made me more con constructive it's made me more helpful to others It's Made Me enormously Rich you name it that attitude really helps now there are dangers in it because it works so well that if you do it you will frequently find you're sitting in the presence of some other expert maybe even an expert that's Superior to you supervising you and you will know more than he does about his own specialty a lot more you'll see the correct answer when he's missed that is a very dangerous position to be in you can cause enormous offense by helpfully being right in way that causes somebody else to lose face and uh I never found a perfect way to solve that problem I was a great poker player when I was young but I wasn't a good enough poker player so the people failed to sense that I thought I knew more than they did about their subjects and it gave a lot of offense now I'm just regarded as eccentric but there was a difficult period to go through and my advice to you is to learn sometimes to keep your light under a bushel one of my colleagues also a number one is class in law school a great success in life clerk for the Supreme Court Etc but he knew a lot and he tended to show it as a very young lawyer and one day the senior partner he was working under called him in and said listen Chuck says I want to explain something to you say your duty under any circumstances is to behave in such a way that the client thinks he's the smartest person in the world if you got little any little energy or Insight available after that use it to make your senior partner look like the smartest person in the world and only after you've satisfied those two obligation do you want your light to shine at all well that have very good advice for rising in a large firm it wasn't what I did I always evade the drift of my nature and if other people didn't like it well I didn't need to be adored by everybody another idea and by the way when I talk about this multidisciplinary attitude I'm really following a very key idea of the greatest lawyer of antiquity Marcus Talus cisero and cisero is famous for saying a man who doesn't know what happened before he's born goes through life like a child that is a very correct idea of ciceros and he's right to ridicule somebody so foolish as not to know what happened before he was born but if you generalize cisero as I think one should all these other things that you should know in addition to history and those other things are the Big Ideas in all the other disciplines and it doesn't help you just to know them enough so you could prattle them back on an exam and get an A you have to learn these things in such a way that they're in a mental lattice work in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life if you do that I solemnly promise you that one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to your right and left and you'll think my heavenly days I'm now one of the few most competent people of my whole age cohort if you don't do it many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows another idea that I got and it was encapsulated by that story the dean recounted about the man who wanted to know where he was going to die and he wouldn't go that way go there that rustic who had that idea had a profound Truth uh in his hand the way complex adaptive systems work and the way mental constructs were problems frequently get easy I'd even say usually are easier to solve if you turn them around in Reverse in other words if you want to help India the question you should ask is now how can I help India you think what's doing the worst damage in India what will automatically do the worst damage and how do I avoid it you'd think they're logically the same thing they're not those of you who have mastered algebra know that inversion frequently will solve problems which nothing else will solve and in life unless you're more gifted than Einstein inversion will help you solve problems that you can't solve another way let me use a little inversion now what will really fail in life what do we want to avoid such an easy answer sloth and unreliability if you're unreliable it doesn't matter what your virtues are you're going to create her immediately so doing what you have Faithfully engage to do should be an automatic part of your conduct you want to avoid sloth and unreliability another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind you've seen that and you see a lot of it you know in TV preachers for instance you know they've all got different ideas about Theology and uh and a lot of them have Minds that are made of cabbage and but that can happen with political ideology and if you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the Orthodox ideology out what you're doing is pounding it in Pounding it in and you're gradually ruining your mind so you want to be very careful with this ideology I if you it's it's a big danger in my mind I've got a little example I use whenever I think about ideology and that's the Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the Rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirl pools of the Aaron Rapids here in the United States the death rate was 100% a big Whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep saying when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is I say I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can State the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it I think only when I've reached that state and my qualified to speak now you can say that's a too much of an iron discipline it's not too much of an iron discipline isn't even that hard to do it sounds a lot like the iron prescription of Ferdinand the great it's not necessary to Hope in order to persevere that probably is too tough for most people I don't think it's too tough for me but it's too tough for most people but this business of not drifting into the extreme ideology is a very important thing in life if you want to have more correct knowledge and be wiser than other people the heavy ideology is very likely to do you in another thing of course that does one in is the self-serving bias to which we're all subject you think the true little me is entitled to do what it wants to do and for instance why shouldn't the true little me overspend my income well there once was a man who became the most famous composer in the world but he was utterly miserable most of the time and one of the reasons was he always overspent his income that was Mozart if Mozart can't get by with this kind of asinine conduct I don't think you should try it generally speaking Envy resentment revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse you do not want to drift into self-pity I have a friend who carried a big stack of Lenin cards about this thick and when somebody would make a comment that reflected self-pity he would take out one of the cards take the top one off the stack and hand it to the person and the card said your story has touched my heart never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you well you can say that's waggery but I suggest that every time you find your drifting into self-pity I don't care what the cause your child can be dying of cancer self-pity is not going to improve the situation just give yourself one of those cards starts it's a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it you get a great advantage over everybody else almost everybody else because self-pity is a standard condition and yet you can train yourself out of it and of course the self- serving bias serving bias you want to get out of yourself thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and r alizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on the this subconscious tendency to serve oneself is a it's it's a terribly inaccurate way to think and of course you want to drive that out of yourself because you want to be wise not foolish you also have to allow for the selfs serving bias of everybody else because most people are not going to remove it all that successfully The Human Condition being what it is if you don't allow for self- serving bias in your conduct again you're a fool you just aren't comp I watched the brilliant Harvard Law riew trained general counsel of Solomon lose his career and what he did was when the CEO was aware that some underling had done something wrong The General Counsel said Gee we don't have any legal duty to report this but I think it's what we should do it's our moral duty and this and the general was totally correct but of course it didn't work it was a very unpleasant thing for the CEO to do and he put it off and put it off and put it off and du course why the thing eroded into a major Scandal and down went the CEO and the general counsel with him the correct answer in situations like that was given by Ben Franklin he says if you would persuade appeal to interest not to reason the self- serving bias is so extreme if the general said look this can erupt and something that will destroy you take away your money take away your status it's a perfect disaster it would have worked you want to appeal to interest uh you want to do it with lofty motives but you should not avoid appealing to interest um another thing perverse incentives you don't want to be in a perverse incentive system that's causing you to behave more and more foolishly or worse and worse incentives are too powerful a controller of human cognition and human behavior and one of the things you're going to find in some Modern law firms is bable our quotas and I could not have lived under a bable hour quot of 2400 hours a year uh that would have caused huge problems for me I wouldn't have done it and uh I don't have a solution for that for you'll have to figure it out for yourself but it's a significant problem perverse associations also to be avoided and you particularly want to avoid working directly under somebody you really don't admire and don't want to be like uh it's very dangersous we're all subject to control to some extent by authority figures particularly authority figures that are rewarding us and that requires some Talent the way I solved that is I figured out the people I did admire and I maneuvered cleverly without criticizing anybody so I was working entirely under people I admired and a lot of law firms will permit that if you're shrewd enough to uh work it out and your outcome in life will be more way more satisfactory and way better if you work under people you really admire the alternative is not a good idea objectiv objectivity maintenance well we all remember that Darwin paid special attention to disconfirming evidence particularly when it disconfirms something he believed and loved well objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you're going to be a correct thinker and uh there we're talking about Darwin's attitude special attention to the disconfirming evidence and also to checklist routines checklist routines avoid a lot of Errors you should have all this Elementary wisdom and then you should go through a mental checklist in order to use it there is no other procedure that will work as well a last idea that I found very important is I realized very early that non- egality would work better in the parts of the world I wanted to inhabit what do I mean by non- egality I mean John Woodman when he was the number one B basketball coach in the world he just said to the bottom five players you don't get to play your Spar your sparring partners the top seven did all the playing well the top seven learned more remember the learning machine because they were doing all the playing and when he got to that system why wouldn't won more than he'd ever won before I think the Game of Life in many respects is getting a lot of practice into the hands of the people that have the most aptitude to learn in the most tendency to be learning machines and if you want the very highest reaches of human civilization that's where you have to go you do not want to choose a brain surgeon from your child among 50 applicants follow of whom just take turns doing the procedure you know it's that's not the way to get the really important you know your airplanes designed that way you don't want your Birch your hathways run that way you want to get the power into the right people I frequently tell the story of Max plank when he won the Nobel Prize and went around Germany giving lectures on quantum mechanics and the chauffeur gradually me memorized the lecture and he said would you mind Professor plank just because it's so boring to stay in our routines would you mind if I gave the lecture this time and you just sat in front my chauffer sat and plank said sure and the chauffer got up and he gave this long lecture on quantum mechanics and after which a physics Professor stood up in the rear and asked a perfectly ghastly question and the chauffer said well he says I'm surprised that an advanced City like Munich I get such an Elementary question I'm going to ask my chauffeur to reply well the reason I tell that story is not entirely to celebrate the quick wittedness of the protagonist in this world we have two kinds of knowledge one is plank knowledge the people who really know theyve paid the dues they have the aptitude then we got chaffer knowledge they have learned to prattle the talk and they have a big head hair they may have find timber in the voice they can make a hell of an impression but in the end they've got Cher knowledge I think I've just described practically every politician in the United States and this and you're going to have the problem in your life of getting the responsibility into the people with the plank knowledge and a way for the people who have the chauffeur knowledge and they're huge forces working against you my generation has failed you to some extent we are delivering to you in California A legislature where only the certified nuts from the left and the certified nuts from the right are allowed to serve and none of them are removable that's what my generation has done for you but you wouldn't like it to be too easy would you another thing that I found is that an intense interest in the subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things but I couldn't be really good in anything where I didn't have an intense interest so to some extent you're going to have to follow uh me in if at all feasible you want to drift into doing something in which you have a natural interest another thing you have to do of course is to do of course is have a lot of acidity I like that word because it means sit down on your ass until you do it and I once I've had marvelous Partners all my life I think I got them partly because I tried to deserve them and partly because I was wise enough to select them and part maybe it was maybe there was some luck but two partners that I chose for one little phase of my life had the following rule when they created a little design build construction team they sat down and said Twan partnership divide everything equally here's the rule whenever we're behind in our commitments to other people we will both work 14 hours a day until we're caught up well needless to say that firm didn't fail the people died honored and Rich it's such a simple idea just it's such a simple idea be app another thing of course is the life will have terrible blows in horrible blows unfair blows doesn't matter and some people recover and others don't and there I think the attitude of epicus is the best he thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion that is a very good idea and you may remember the EP which epitus left for himself so here lies epicus a slave maimed in body and the ultimate in poty and favor of the Gods well that's the way epicus is now remembered he's had big consequences and he was favored of the Gods he was favored because he became wise and he became manly very good idea I've got a final little idea because I'm all for Prudence as well as opportunism my grandfather was the only federal judge in his City for nearly 40 years and I really admired him I'm his namesake and I'm confusion enough that even now I sit here and I'm saying well judge Munger would be pleased to see me here so I'm confusion enough all these years after my grandfather is dead to carry the torch for my grandfather 's values and grandfather Munger was a federal judge in a time and there were no pensions for widows of federal judges so he didn't sa from his income why my grandmother would have been in penury and being the kind of man I was he underspent his income all his life and left her in comfortable circumstances along the way in the 30s my uncle's Bank failed and couldn't reopen and my grandfather saved the bank by taking over a third of his assets good assets and putting them into the bank and taking the horrible Assets in exchange and of course it did save the bank and while my grandfather took a loss he got most of his money back eventually uh but I've always remembered the example and so when I got to college and I came across Houseman I remembered a little poem from Housman that went something like this the thoughts of others were light and fleeting of lovers meeting luck or fame mine were of trouble and mine were steady and I was ready when trouble came you can say who wants to go through a life anticipating trouble well I did all my life I've gone through life anticipating trouble here I am well along in my 84th year and like epicus I've had a favorite life it didn't make me unhappy to anticipate trouble all the time and be ready to perform adequately if trouble came didn't hurt me at all in fact it helped me so I quick claim to you housan and judge Munger the last idea that I want to give to you as you go out into a profession that is frequently puts a lot of procedure and a lot of precautions and a lot of mumbo jumbo into what it does this is not the highest form which civilization reach the highest form that Civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserve trust not much procedure just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another that's the way an operating room works at the Mayo Clinic if a bunch of lawyers were to introduce a lot of process the patients would all die so never forget when you're a lawyer you may be sold for selling this stuff but you don't have to buy it you may be rewarded for selling it you don't have to buy it in your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust and if your proposed marriage contract has 47 Pages my suggestion is you not enter well that's enough for one graduation I hope these ruminations of an old man are useful to you in the end I'm like old Valiant for truth and Pilgrim's Progress My Sword I leave to him who can wear it you all right thank you uh thank you Charlie for sharing your insights with all of us certainly for helping me throughout the year uh again a little shout out Charlie's Almanac you can get it online uh not at a discount uh now Charlie's a hard man I've really gotten to know and love him throughout the year uh he's a hard man to get things for that he doesn't already have but uh I did it we did it here today uh because we're giving him something we know he doesn't have uh the order of the koi for those of you who don't know is an elite National Honor Society that encourages excellence in legal education only the top 10% % of our graduating class is eligible for election to the order of the co Harvard Law School where Charlie and I and Dean Keeny went doesn't actually have an order of the CL uh we found out that here at USC G School of Law we're able to elect honorary members who have contributed in extraordinary ways to the legal profession and as far as we know we've never done it so uh this is the first time we're conferring U an honorary degree and we're uh Charlie to Monger in recognition of his extraordinary achievements and the honor he brings to our profession because one of the things I think you all learned is Charlie never really stopped being a lawyer he stopped working in the law firm he still has an office by the way uh this great Charlie wer story you kind of have to know Charlie to get this one but he has an office at Munger TOs and Olen because they gave it to him he's the founder of the firm he no you're going to stand you're going to sit corrected uh because they gave him this and he actually sublets part of it because he doesn't need all of it so uh he's a man who flies coach uh except when he's with Nancy uh he's a jewel he's a wonderful guy and uh we're very pleased and honored to give him uh this overly large uh well calligraphi order of the KO uh certificate I want to point out how wise SC is Caltech offered to give me a Masters of Science if I would send them $15 I completed the program and of course I never sent the $15 I get this one without having to pay for it not yet Charlie bills in the mail

En sus palabras — de esta charla

«Veo constantemente a personas prosperar en la vida sin ser las más inteligentes, a veces ni siquiera las más diligentes, pero son máquinas de aprender. Cada noche se acuestan un poco más sabias de lo que se levantaron, y eso ayuda muchísimo, sobre todo cuando tienes un largo camino por delante.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«Dedica cada día a intentar ser un poco más sabio de lo que eras al despertar.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«La envidia, el resentimiento, la venganza y la autocompasión son formas de pensar desastrosas. La autocompasión se acerca bastante a la paranoia, y la paranoia es una de las cosas más difíciles de revertir. No conviene dejarse arrastrar a la autocompasión.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«La vida traerá golpes terribles, golpes horribles, golpes injustos. No importa. Unos se reponen y otros no. Y ahí creo que la actitud de Epicteto es la mejor. Él pensaba que cada oportunidad perdida en la vida era una ocasión para comportarse bien, que cada oportunidad perdida en la vida era una ocasión para aprender algo.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

“La envidia es un pecado realmente estúpido, porque es el único con el que no podrías llegar a divertirte jamás. Hay mucho dolor y nada de diversión. ¿Para qué querrías subirte a ese tranvía?”

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«La forma más segura de intentar conseguir lo que quieres es intentar merecer lo que quieres.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«La forma más alta que puede alcanzar la civilización es una red sin fisuras de confianza merecida.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«Lo que quieres en tu propia vida es una red sin fisuras de confianza merecida. Y si tu propuesta de contrato matrimonial tiene cuarenta y siete páginas, mi sugerencia es que no te cases.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«En general, la envidia, el resentimiento, la venganza y la autocompasión son formas de pensar desastrosas. Cada vez que te encuentres derivando hacia la autocompasión, no me importa cuál sea la causa, tu hijo podría estar muriéndose de cáncer, la autocompasión no va a mejorar la situación.»

2007 USC Law School commencement address · 2007

«Hay que entregarle al mundo lo que tú mismo comprarías si estuvieras en el otro lado.»

USC Law School commencement address, May 13, 2007 · 2007

Grabaciones relacionadas

13 de junio de 1986 solo texto

Cómo garantizar una vida desdichada (Harvard School, 1986)

El discurso de graduación de Munger en la Harvard School en 1986, y la demostración más pura de su truco favorito: la inversión. En lugar de decirles a los graduados cómo ser felices y tener éxito, les da una receta paso a paso para una desdicha garantizada —sé poco fiable, aprende solo de tu propia experiencia, ríndete ante los reveses, nunca inviertas el problema— para que puedan hacer justo lo contrario. Breve, despiadado e inolvidable.

1996 solo texto

La sabiduría mundana, revisitada (Stanford Law, 1996)

Conferencia de Munger en la Facultad de Derecho de Stanford en 1996, planteada explícitamente como continuación de su charla sobre la «sabiduría mundana» pronunciada en la USC en 1994. Amplía la idea del entramado de modelos, insiste en que la ventaja de Buffett vino de no dejar nunca de aprender y —ante una sala de futuros abogados— se detiene en los incentivos, la prueba social y la necesidad de construir sistemas humanos difíciles de burlar.

1994 solo texto

Una lección sobre sabiduría mundana elemental (USC, 1994)

La charla en la que Munger expuso por primera vez la 'estructura reticular de modelos mentales': la idea de que debes colgar las grandes ideas de cada disciplina importante en un armazón mental, o tendrás un puñado de hechos inconexos que no podrás usar. Pronunciada ante una clase de empresariales de la USC Marshall en 1994, es el cimiento filosófico de todo lo demás que enseñó sobre el pensar, y termina con una sección franca sobre cómo elige realmente las acciones.