Morgan Housel

I wouldn't pretend to think that I'm smart enough to preemptively do that, given how complex the world is.

The world isn't just infinitely complex machine.

with as many moving parts and levers and gears and gizmos as you can possibly imagine.

And it is so complex in the sense of like you twist one knob and a bunch of conveyor belts a mile down the road start acting funny.

It's just, it works in very complex ways.

But I think it's still intuitive for people to come up and be like, ah,

What if we pull this lever?

Let's see what happens.

What if we hit this with a hammer?

Let's see what happens.

And like, I don't want to fool myself into thinking that I can figure out something that is infinitely complex.

Seven billion people, hundreds of different cultures, millions of different companies,

infinite trends, different possibilities that could have played out, I think I can be like, oh, let me just pull up Excel and I'm going to calculate this and figure it out.

Like, who am I kidding that I can do that?

I think there are people who are extremely smart and lucky who can do that.

But I am neither the former or do I want to rely on the latter?

Yeah.

And the truth is, if I can be average for 30 years,

I will beat the vast majority of people who try, not all of them, but the vast majority of people.

And the idea that, let's say, if I can be average for 50 years, I'll end up in the top 3% of investors.