QuestionerI found that I've made a lot of mistakes in my business, looking back. And I want to know, besides thinking harder and learning from your own mistakes, what are the most effective techniques you've used to minimize the mistakes?
WarrenWell, we made mistakes, we'll make more mistakes. We do, we think not so much, we think in terms of not exposing ourselves to any mistakes that could really hurt our ability to play tomorrow. And so we are always thinking about, you know, worst-case situations, and there are, on the other hand, we have a natural instinct to do things big, both of us. So we have to think about whether we're doing anything really big that could have really terrible consequences.
CharlieWarren, I would argue that what you've done and what I have done to a lesser extent is to learn, a lot from other people's mistakes. that is really a much more pleasant way to learn hard lessons. and we have really worked at that over the years, partly because we find it so interesting the great variety of human mistakes and their causes. And I think this constant study of other people's disasters and other people's errors has helped us enormously. Don't you, Warren?
WarrenOh yeah, well, that's true. In terms of reading of financial history and all that sort of thing, I've always been absolutely absorbed with reading about disasters. And there's no question. I mean, when you look at the folly of humans, you know, I've focused on the folly in the financial area. There's all kinds of folly elsewhere. But just the financial area will give you plenty of material if you like to be a follower of folly. And I do think that understanding, and that's what gave us some advantage over these people in that cues of 180, you know, and could do things with math that we couldn't do. They just, they really just didn't have an understanding of, of how human beings behaved and, and what happens. 2008 was a good example of that, too. And so we've been a, we have been a student of other people's, of other people's folly, and, and it served as well.