Silence
In this embedded video, the very learned Swami Sarvapriyananda talks about how, when Gautama Buddha was posed certain questions, he chose to stay silent. Swami Sarvapriyananda reasons that for these 14 questions which the Buddha refused to answer, silence perhaps was the best possible answer.1
One of the first books that I read after tumbling down the Buffett-Munger rabbit hole was Influence by Robert Cialdini. When one reads and understands human biases such as commitment bias or consistency bias, it becomes very clear why the inimitable master of his craft, Warren Buffett refrains from talking about individual stock picks and he steers clear from sharing particulars of their investments, things like an ideal buy price, target price etc. This definitely avoids a very public spectacle of the kind which Bill Ackman gets into.
I am not wise enough to opine on whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic (existence of free will), but I do understand that there is an element of probability in what the future holds. Personal lives, businesses, pandemics, wars et al.
Looking ahead, the search space is exponential. And one rarely gets it right. As Munger often quoted John Galbraith, “the only role of economist forecasts is to make astrology look respectable”. The dots connect backwards.
I am hoping that learning to maintain silence when needed would enable me to tide over to the side of understanding, and connect dots backwards. A good anti-dote to consistency bias , commitment biases and my subtly accumulated hubris.
Thanks to Jubin Mehta for sharing this video.