From Ray Dalio’s fascinating book, Principles.
During those terrible days after 9/ 11, when the whole country was being whipsawed by emotion, or the weeks between September 19 and October 10, 2008, when the Dow fell 3,600 points, there were times I felt like hugging our computers. They kept their cool no matter what. This combination of man and machine is wonderful. The process of man’s mind working with technology is what elevates us—it’s what has taken us from an economy where most people dig in the dirt to today’s Information Age. It’s for that reason that people who have common sense, imagination, and determination, who know what they value and what they want, and who also use computers, math, and game theory, are the best decision makers there are. At Bridgewater, we use our systems much as a driver uses a GPS in a car: not to substitute for our navigational abilities but to supplement them.
Dalio treats principles as decision-making algorithms. He writes down what he thinks works as a decision-making process, then compares the results.
He’s also built a company culture that is all about finding the best information in order to make the best decisions – something he calls an idea meritocracy. So developing processes that allow people to make decisions in tandem with machines has been a natural extension of his approach.
It reminds me of Gary Kasparov’s “advanced chess” – also known more exotically as centaur chess – in which humans play alongside a machine. Players have likened it to moving from running to Formula One racing – it makes chess high speed, with ideas and approaches quickly tested with machines, or new angles the human polayer hasn’t considered suddenly presented as possibilities by the machine.
Links:
- Ray Dalio described his ideas meritocracy model in a TED Talk.
- I talked about Kasparov and “bicycles for the mind” a few years ago at the Inspiration conference.