Utkarsh Amitabh explains a practical approach to forming and stress-testing opinions about complex, unfamiliar topics. He recommends building an "edifice" of knowledge using mental models (e.g., the 5 Whys, Charlie Munger's lattice of models) and first-principles thinking (avoid reasoning by analogy), then actively stress-testing beliefs by understanding opposing views and using a challenger network of trusted critics. The goal is improved judgment, not persuading others.
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Hi everyone, I'm Utkarsh, here to talk to you about stress testing your opinions. These days, so much is happening in politics, in economics, in the startup space. Pick any industry, any sector, there are way too many changes happening. And all these changes are being discussed about in public, on social media, on newspapers, television, what have you. It's important for all of us to figure out how to have an opinion on anything, that it's impossible to be an expert in everything that happens around us. So how might we go about forming an opinion? And then once we have an opinion, how do we stress test that opinion? So the first step is to figure out how to have an opinion on an unfamiliar topic. And I like to rely on mental models and first principles thinking when I'm forming an opinion on anything. For example, how to deconstruct what's happening in the Middle east right now. How do you figure out the various adventures in the blockchain space that are happening should you decide to invest? Is this particular politician good? Is the CEO fulfilling his or her duties? What more might your country or your community do to strengthen its defense architecture? All of these questions. No one person is an expert on it. It's impossible. But there is a way to go about this process. There are many time tested principles. For example, the 5 why framework. Whenever you think about something, ask yourself, why do you hold this belief? Or what part of this statement appeals to your reason and what part of it appeals to your emotion? And keep doing this why exercise five times. I have found immense amount of clarity that emerges when once I go through this five why exercise? And now I've made it a part of my daily routine. Whenever I feel like I need to make an important decision or I need to have an opinion on something that I may not be an expert in, I first of all try and conduct this exercise. Thereafter, I like to rely on something which Munger calls the lattice work of mental models. Charlie Munger. As many of you know, he's the business partner of legendary investor Warren Buffett. And he and Warren Buffet have formed a beautiful friendship and one of the most successful business partnerships in history. So he talks about this lattice work of mental models in many of his speeches in California and Cambridge and what have you. And he talks about how interconnected different strands of knowledge are. How economics, psychology, sociology, physics, all of these strands of thought could collide and converge. And. And when something happens in the world, it's not just an occurring in economics, it's when whatever is happening in the Middle east is not just a political event. There are lots of economic factors, social factors, anthropological factors, and for you to be able to understand, you need to fall back on the lattice work of your mental models, ones that you have framed yourself, and see how you can build up your edifice of knowledge by combining different blocks together. Network Capital has recently published a book of 40 mental models that can hopefully help you understand or remember the various frameworks that you can apply in different situations. You need to be able to contextualize these mental models to your lives. These are not unassailable truths, these are just guidance for or guidelines for smart and effective thinking. And I hope you all can check out NetworkCapital TV and explore the mental Model section. It's a well illustrated PDF done by one of our designers and I think you will enjoy that tremendously. While we are forming opinions, we also must rely on first principle thinking. This is something that Elon Musk and many other entrepreneurs and innovators talk about extensively. Essentially, there's a big difference between reasoning by analogy and reasoning from the building blocks of knowledge. Reasoning by analogy is that, oh, this event looks like something that I'm familiar with, so I'm going to directly apply everything that I saw here in this particular situation that may work occasionally, but often situation in the real and complex world are so different that it can be a huge mistake to directly put lessons from one into another situation simply because they look and sound similar. So we need to resist that temptation of reasoning by analogy on rely upon building our framework from the ground up using the lattice work of mental models, using the mental model that we've thought reflected and contextualized to our own life, and then see how we can build up the body of our knowledge. So once we've done that, once the body of our knowledge is ready, we come to the second, more challenging part, which is stress testing our opinions. And essentially stress testing opinions means trying to understand the other side of the argument as well as your own. Again, Munger says that I don't allow myself to have an opinion on anything until I know the other side's argument better than my own. You may or may not go on to that extent, but it makes sense to at least try and visualize why the other side or the other stakeholders believe what they believe. What are the other aspects of this particular argument that you may be missing because of perhaps your experiential biases? Perhaps you're not exposed to different scenarios. Perhaps just you're missing a point. All of us have busy lives and it's totally feasible and possible, actually quite likely, that we might miss something. So it's important to stress test your opinion. And the way I go about stress testing my opinion is to rely on my Challenger network. I have both personal board of advisors, people who I reach out to before making important life and professional decisions. And I also have a challenger network, a similar set of people, people who I respect intellectually and otherwise. And these are the people that I often turn to, who I actively ask to shoot down my ideas, to tell me what am I missing, what part of my belief system needs further refining. And I actively, on top of that, engage with people in social settings, in behind closed doors, in different situations and context, encouraging them to truly share with where they are coming from, not just what they are saying, but where they are coming from. Doing this has been tremendously beneficial for me in my writing, in my public speaking as I build network capital, because this exercise helps me see the whole picture, not just the picture that I want to see. So before having an opinion just to wrap up, make sure that you're reasoning by first principles, not reasoning by analogy. You're building your latticework of mental models and contextualizing them to your own situation. And once you have that edifice of knowledge ready, you rely on your challenger network and your other friends and perhaps people who disagree with you, to poke holes in the way you're reasoning, and you can thereby strengthen your argument. The goal of life and the goal of engaging in these kinds of situations is not to shove our opinion onto other people, but rather to step back and strengthen how we see the world. I hope this was useful. For more such insights, Please subscribe to NetworkCapital TV. We'll be thrilled to have you. Have a wonderful week ahead.
