Genuinity — a long lost virtue

There is a certain consistency about the pattern of the lack of genuinity.

The lack of genuinity pervades many aspects: company hierarchy, concept of career, CV building, publishing papers, reputation, risk taking, contrarian thinking.

In each of these aspects, the lack of genuinity leads us to focus on the things that are not actually important, a true recipe for failure. There is an increasing focus on the superficial and utlise the symptoms that are associated with success as the cause of the success itself. This leads people down the path of chasing the symptoms rather than the cause of the success.

In my view, the key to genuinity is the find true value and meaning in the action itself rather than using the actions as a proxy to attain something else. For example, there is an increasing number of people that are doing medical research for the sake of publishing papers. There is an innate disconnect between the work that they are doing and the motivations for doing so. In this sense, when planning for such a research project, it always starts with an optimisation for the end goal — how do we design this research project such that we can maximise publications. It’s almost as if a large part of the people doing research have forgotten that the things that they are researching are actually interesting. It is almost as if the idea of ‘curiosity’ and the willingness to find answers to interesting questions is non-existing in many of these people. Top level optimisation for an indirect proxy will never be as a good as good flow, to optimise for what really matters — to cultivate natural curiosity, and to be genuinely interested in finding answers. The thirst for discovery and the power of curiosity have a great potential to arrive at intersting discoveries, because after great curiosity drives interesting questions, interseting question drives interesting discoveries. And therefore the most groundbreaking and influential papers are generated not through an optimisation for crafting influential research or influential papers, but more of just a simple and blind follow of curiosity and spirit of discovery. In a sense, the idea of flow applies here, there is no need to care too much about the end product, there is no need to optimise for the end product, focus on what is ‘fun’ what is exciting and the results will follow naturally, the curiosity and genuinity will flow and eventually give you the results as a byproduct.

Perhaps the key to genuinity is about avoiding artifically optimising for things we perceive to be important to optimise for. Because most of the time, we do not know what we should optimise for and most of the time when we try to artificially optimise for something, we get it wrong. We might think optimising for publishing papers results in more papers published, but really optmising for geunine curiosity actually yields better results.

Another example is in company hierarchy. There might tend to be the tendency to enforce a sense of hierarchy and respect in the company culture. The juniors should respect the seniors and that the juniors should not talk over the senior and not disagree with them due to the idea of ‘respect’ and an understanding of hierarchy. There is an immense lack of genuinity in such a system, where there is a clear error in the optimisation in such organisation. We first start by asking: Why? Why is there a need for the enforcement of such hierarchy, why should juniors not talk over senior? Why?

A simple and logical deduction is that seniors are more experienced and they have been in more situations, they have solved more problems. Therefore, the probability that the senior will be correct and arrive at the right solution when solving a problem is likely to be much higher than a junior. This reasoning sounds very logical. However, the disconnect arises where we optimise for the opinions of seniors. In a sense, in such a system, the argument is that — because seniors have shown to have a higher probability of being correct, we therefore optimise to give seniors more say in decisions, we optimise to give more weights to the seniors in the right to discussion and the right to oppose. But why is there a need to optimise to give more weight to seniority? The key goal is getting the right answers, the right optimisation here is to optimise for the right answers. If a junior can form a more logical and convincing argument than a senior in a decision making process, there is sufficient reason to accept the solution by the junior. We should optimise for the right answers rather than optimising of a symptom of the right answers. In this case, seniority is correlated to the right answers, but that correlation cannot be as strong as a well-formed logical argument. In this case, a well-formed logical argument predicts the right answers much better than seniority. Optimising for seniority results in great losses and wrong decisions being made.

This is yet another example in which there is a failure to identify the core of the problem that we need to solve. The core of decision making is being able to choose the decision that maximises utility. To be geniuine means to be able to identify this can focus on what genuininely matters, a good and logical argument. Not whatever superficial things that might surround the problem.

In a sense, we can see geuninity as being able to step back and re-evaluate and reframe to keenly identify what is the core of the problem, and what is truly important to tackle the problem. This helps to avoid common reasoning heuristics and incorrect optimisation and avoid value losses.

In the previous examples, I have mentioned about the importance of curiosity and the importance of logical reasoning, but these traits can change from problem to problem. The idea of being genuine is not to blindly optimise for these traits. Maybe curiosity is no longer at the heart of scientific discovery anymore. The idea of being genuine is to be able to see to the core of the problem and to see through the superficial symptoms and get to the heart and find out what is truly important and to them work on what is truly important.

Last example is to do with risk taking and contrarian thinking. As with the book, ‘Skin in the game’ there is this emphasis of the important of risk-taking. In many investments ideologies, there is this concept of being contrarian to be a good investor. But really those are simply symptoms of success. Optimising for symptoms will lead to worse outcomes. Being geunine means to understand the core of the problem. In entrepreneurship, the key is to be extremely vision focus and goal-oriented. Because the core of entrepreneurship is about bulding a reality that we want to live in which doesn’t exist yet. The core of entrepreneurship is to build an alternate future that is more pleasant and more enjoyable than the current state. It is that enjoyment of this alternate future that really gives the fun aspect of entrepreneurship. Risk-taking is simply a symptom of such a goal-oriented nature, if you really want to fulfill the vision enough, taking risks doesn’t seem that big of a deal at all, risk-taking is simply a means to an end in order to achieve the vision. If risks needs to be taken to achieve that alternate future, then so be it, risks shall be taken. No one wants to take risks but risks are taken in entrepreneurship because there are situations where the vision cannot be achieved without doing so. People are forced to take risks in order to fulfil their vision. Only an idiot will willingly take risks, the best risks taken are the risks that people have no choice but to take them.

Putting in that perspective, it them become clear how incredible stupid it is for encourage people to take risks. There is a severe lack of genuinity here, immense superficial optimisation of risk-taking leads to failure. What really needs to be optimised for is a goal-oriented nature an obsession over an better alternate future. Risks are just a symptom of such goal-oriented nature. This again is another example of incorrect optimisation due to the lack of genuinity, the lack of understanding what is really important, the lack of understanding what is core of the problem at hand.

The same idea applies to contrarian investing. People optimise to go against the market to be ‘contrarian’ because many successful investors have been contrarian. In fact, the core of the problem is actually being able to have one’s own opinion regardless of others. The most successful investors are investors that can think for themselves, they are not affected by what other people think, they can think for themselves and they can think critically and form their own arguments. Because these people are self-reliant for they investment decisions, it is no surprise that they are able to come to investment thesis that no one has thought about, simply because their independent thinking ability has allowed them to do so without the need for others. What is important to optimise for in this situation is the ability to think independently, and not being contrarian in investing.

Throughout all examples, the common thread here is a misallocation of attention, most of the time, attention is placed on things that are most concrete: number of papers published, the stock picking strategies, the rank the position the hierarchy. However, being genuine means to be able to look past these concrete things and to dial in on what’s most important, and the ability to relentlessly and pursue with a genuine heart is a motto I believe is work sticking to.