Comment by gist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gist | Hacker News Reader

Just yesterday I saw an ad for Ray's book in the print WSJ. Full page. It was filled with quotes from people you've heard of giving 1 line compliments of essentially no substance in particular.

Some of them are on this page:

https://www.principles.com/

The first one (was on the middle of the print ad page) was from Bill Gates who said

"Ray Dalio HAS PROVIDED ME WITH INVALUABLE GUIDANCE".

Ray was someone who has agree to Bill's Billionaire Pledge idea and no doubt they rub elbows. So honestly he isn't even referring to what is in the book and why would Bill Gates even need advice from Ray? I am sure he gave him private investment ideas ... great.

Most are really lame (with no creativity or specificity) like Mark Benioff who says

"PRINCIPLES BY RAY DALIO IS A MASTERPIECE IT'S A MUST READ!"

Actually all of the quotes are all caps.

Here is what I'd like to see. Not quotes from people who have made it who have (obviously) been asked to submit a quote (they all trade quotes with each other, right). But by real people who have read a book and can document something they learned and how it helped them in their life in a specific nature.

Also I always wonder why a billionaire seems to need to write a book like this to begin with.

I read it, and thought it was really good. I took a bunch of notes on it and wrote down some of my favorite principles. Here are two and the notes I took on them:

1. Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine; and know you have ability to alter machines to produce better outcomes.

- distinguish between you as the designer of your machine, and you as a worker within your machine

- it's much more important that you are a good designer/manager of your life than a good worker in it

"To be successful, the "designer/manager you" has to be objective about what the "worker you" is really like, not believing in him more than he deserves, or putting him in jobs he shouldn't be in. Instead of having this strategic perspective, most people operate emotionally and in the moment; their lives are a series of undirected emotional experiences, going from one thing to the next."

2. reality exists at different levels; each gives valuable perspectives

- we're constantly seeing things at different levels and navigating between them

  - > i want meaningful work
  - >> i want to be a doctor
  - >>> i need to go to med school
  - >>>> i need to get good science grades
  - >>>>> i need to stay in tonight and study

- when line of reasoning is jumbled, it's often because speaker has gotten caught up in below the line details without connecting them back to major points

- only go below the line if it's necessary to illustrate something about a major points, and make sure you synthesize and tie things back

Principles no one is actually using - “In the end, my search failed to produce a single organization that adopted the principles in a Bridgewater-like manner” https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b184ggn6dd6090...

This is in stark contrast with John Doerr’s recent book, Measure What Matters, which is only examples of implementation.

Yeah and actually what I simply noticed was a promotional pattern that reminded me of things I read as a kid at my Dad's office and to this date. Generally for real estate investing where someone would send out newsletters with little actual information just general platitudes praying on people's lack of sophistication or simply looking for easy answers.

One other important thing is that there are also things that are missing from a book like this that might matter in terms of why a particular action worked. (At a particular point in time) Because they might appear to be sleezy (even if they aren't) and someone might not want to mention them for wide review or reading or have them known. So honestly you never really know the full story and without the full story it's hard to nail down exact steps and honestly you can't do that anyway (for example you can't control luck). [1]

[1] Not a great example but let's take an actress writing a book on how she got her first gig in Hollywood but she fails to mention how the director had the hots for her and what she might have done to lead him on into thinking she would sleep with him. Instead she just talks about things she can and people reading give that greater weight.

I had a personal impression that the PDF which was supposedly internal and then released into a publicly accessible host was more substantial than the book, which was disappointing. There were a couple of value-addeds that let me know that if Dalio's honest, then I'm going in the right direction - like using a cognitive assistant to coordinate my thinking. Yet there's a lot of implementation-level blanks to be filled which require some searching to find adequate procedural advice.

But you're right all around. There probably wouldn't be anything that will severely compromise a trade since to build up the model towards that trade, even if it follows some vaguely general learning procedure like Ray espouses, will have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars of labor costs and would have millions of dollars of opportunity costs on the line if people got in on the action. Why risk it?

I’m a real person and I read the book and I enjoyed it. I will say any “self-help” style book like his just has quotes like that and you can never tell if they are legit.

If you’ve read the “hard thing about hard things”, i found it pretty similar. It’s a mix of an autobiography as well as listing out his main life principles. It gets repetitive sometimes and I wish he’d get more specific in the details but overall I recommend it. Especially if you are in some sort of leadership or management position

Mr Dalio wrote the book because he is interested in optimizing business results, and learning how people work together best and why.

If you’ve started a business, or manage people in a business, this book is worth more than many MBA courses.

The fact that a person with his exceptional track record decided to share much of the Bridgewater “secret sauce” is rare, and a real treat.

Another reason that people like Dalio write books like this it to be able to justify their success for reasons other than just luck.

It's them saying "Sure I have a billion dollars but I deserve it because":

a) I have worked hard and long hours b) I am crafty and curious c) I think and I do smart things d) I put in a great deal of work and effort.

I remember long ago reading a book "Swim with the Sharks" about a guy who ran a envelope company. In reading what he said was the reason for his success were (from memory) a bunch of things that honestly all business people of that stature (small businessmen) generally do. I had heard those things in person (in various ways) from countless others. This author (Harvey Mackay) was all the rage in the 80's because he put in writing in a way that most people didn't realize was already common knowledge and being done. [1] The press loved it because it was folksy. Not the same as Dalio here but was a great marketing tool for Mackay and made him a mini celebrity.

[1] One of the things I remember in particular was his way of noting little things about people that he sold to so when he met them again he could act as if he cared about them. (He did I guess otherwise he wouldn't have taken the time to note things about them but it was really that he cared about getting more business not that he actually did care about them in a personal way).

What if they are right?

I was struggling with hiring and growing my team and Principles has a great section that helped me out.

Hire for values, abilities, and skills in that order. I went from having no idea what I was doing to having a decent blueprint.

He also writes that when you find the right person for the role there is almost an audible click. Whether for better or for worse, I am now always on the lookout for that click.

The book is great because it's very well organized with an index.

You can also see for yourself the key points in this pdf: https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt

Its a good book, with some useful insights, some interesting vignettes from the author's well lived life. He comes across as someone who genuinely wants to help others by teaching the system he developed - which he obviously regards as a key to his success and happiness. I don't see why being a billionaire should make him reticent to do this.

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