Principles for Success:Everything is a Machine | Episode 5

BY RAY DALIO

Sometimes things happen that are hard to understand. Life often feels so difficult and complicated. It’s too much to take in all at once.

My deep pain led me to reflect deeply on my circumstances. It also led me to reflect on nature, bacause it provides a guide for what’s true. So I thought a lot about how things work, which helped to put me and my own circumstances in perspective.

I saw that at the Big Bang, all the laws and forces of the universe were created and propelled forward, interacting with each other as a perpetual motion machine in which all the bits and pieces coalesce into machines that work for awhile, fall apart and then coalesce into new machines. This goes on into eternity.

I saw that everything is machine, the structure and evolution of galaxies, the formation of our own solar system, the makeup of Earth’s geography and ecosystems, our economies and markets, and each of us. We individually are machines made up of different machines, our circulatory system, our nervous system that produce our thoughts, our dreams, our emotions, and all the other aspects of our distinct characters.

All of these difference machines evolve together through time to produce the realities we encounter every day. And I realized that I was just one tiny bit in one nanosecond deciding what I should do.

While that perspective might sound very philosophical, I found that it was very practical because it showed me how I could deal with my own realities in a better way.For example, I observed that most everything happens over and over again in slightly different ways, some in obvious short term cycles that are easy to recognize so we know how to deal with them, like the 24 hour day, some so infrequently that they haven’t occurred in our lifetimes, and we’re shocked when they do, like the once in a hundred year storm, and some we know exist but are encountering for the first time, like the birth of our first child.

Most people mistakenly treat these situations as being unique and deal with them without having proper perspective or principles to help them get through them. I found that if instead of dealing with these events as one offs, I could see each as just another one of those and approach them in same way.

A biologist might approach an animal, first identifying its species, then drawing on principles for dealing with it appropriately. Because I could see these events transpire in pretty much the same ways over and over, I could more clearly see the cause-effect relationships that govern their behaviors, which allowed me to develop better principles that I could express in both words and algorithms.

I learned that while most everyone expects the future to be a slightly modified version of the present, it is typically very different. That’s because people are biased by recent history and overlook events that haven’t happened in a long time, perhaps not even in their lifetime, but they will happen again. With that perspective, I realize that what I missed when I mistakenly called for a Great Depression was hidden in the patterns of history and I could use my newfound knowledge of these patterns to make better decisions in the future. And when I thought about my challenge balancing risk and reward, I realized that risk and reward natureally go together. I could see that to get the most out of life, one has to take more risks and that knowing how to appropriately balance risk and reward is essential to having the best life possible.

Imagine you are faced with a choice of having a safe boring life if you stay where you are or having a fabulous one if you take the risk of successfully crossing a dangerous jungle. That is essentially the choice we all face. For me, the choice was clear, but that dosen’t mean the path forward was without challenges. I still need to face two big barriers that we all must face.

In episode six, I’ll share some invaluable techniques I learned about how to best do that.

单词表

1. Ultra 过激论者，急进论者
2. Take in 领会 吸收 欺诈 接待
3. Guider 指挥者
4. Perspective n:透镜，观点，看法，远景 adj:透视的
5. In perspective 正确地 显示在脑海中 符合透视法地
6. Propell 推进，推动，驱使
7. Interacting with 相互合作
8. Perpetual 永久的，不断的，无限期的，四季花开的
9. Motion n:运动 手势 意向 请求 vt/vi 打手势
10. Coalesce into 合并成
11. Eternity 永生，永恒，不朽
12. Galaxy 银河系
13. Solar 太阳能的
14. geography 地理，地形，地势
15. ecosystem 生态系统
16. individually 分别 各自
17. Circulatory 循环的
18. aspect 方面 样子 外观
19. distinct 不同的，清楚的，明显的，确切的
20. bit 小块
21. Philosophical 哲学上的
22. Practical adj:实际上的，务实的，有用的，明智的，实际上的 n:实验课
23. slightly adv:稍微，身材瘦小
24. infrquently adv:稀少地 珍贵地
25. proper 正确的，适宜的
26. appropriately 适当的
27. transpire vi:蒸发，泄露 ，（事情）发生 vt:使蒸发，使排除
28. express 表达，邮寄快递
29. algorithm 运算法则，计算程序
30. biased adj:有偏见的
31. mistakenly adv:错误地，被误解地
32. fabulous 极好的，巨大的
33. barrier 屏障，阻碍，堡垒，栅栏;，挡板

• Previous
  Principles for Success: The Abyss | Episode 4
• Next
  Principles for Success: Your Two Biggest Barriers | Episode 6