Thirty two in the morning Kevin Gordon and for Brian Thomas fifty five KRC the Talk Station. If you checked out my Facebook page this morning, you'll notice that I'm going to have my next guest, vicrum Mansharamani. He is an economist and author and has written an interesting book, The Making of a Generalist Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, and then another book that he wrote, A Thinking for Yourself. Welcome to the program, Vic Crum
is certainly appreciated. And I hope I pronounced your name properly.
Yeah, that's perfect, Kevin, yep, Vikram monstremoney, So thank you for having me.
Oh, my pleasure. I guess I want to talk a little bit quickly if you don't mind. You ran for what the second district congressional seat in New Hampshire, and the primary was this past two day, correct and you unfortunately, and I watched a couple of the comments or a couple of the questions that were asked during one of the debates. I guess wm u R I think and I thought this guy's this guy's on fire. But anyway, sorry that that didn't work out. Well, I'm sure. I'm sure you are as well.
Look yeah, look, I mean these things, as you know, there's a lot of different variables. Unfortunately, New Hampshire has a very late primary, right we're the last in the nation primary, and it's a Tuesday, after a week after Labor Day. And for better or worse, New Hampshire is also a state where tourists come and overcome our state during the summer months, and so no one really pays attention until the eleventh hour. And so after Labor Day
is where the sprint happens. We have multiple debates and people pay attention. And despite that, you know, there were three major candidates in this race, and the three of us, the three of us in aggregate, I think, secured less than seventy five or eighty percent. Yeah, that means twenty percent just scattered among people that no one really knew about,
possibly random and even here's an interesting kicker. Roughly, uh, I think it was almost ten percent of those who came in to vote for the governor's race didn't even fill in a CD two candidate left it blank.
So and by the way, and so a six out.
Let's just say it was more than six thousand people that left it blank and I came in second by a margin about five thousand some odd votes.
Yeah, it's just incredible. And what now, correct me if I'm wrong? Apparently I am wrong. I thought New Hampshire primary was one of the first ones in the nation.
It is for the presidency, for the.
President, so they split the primaries.
Yes, oh wow in.
The nation president The first in the nation presidential primary took place in January. Uh huh. And then for the state primary, which is for you know, state offices as well as the two federal offices Senate and or Congress. If there is a set this this cycle, that happens to be no Senate seat that's up, but there are the two congressional seats that were part of that process, as well as the governor's race, so as well as all state offices.
That seems like a double expense for the poll workers, the you know, all the network or the networking that goes into that and the mechanics of that. That almost seems a little duplication of efforts.
But yeah, I don't know if that.
I don't know if that's true because let me tell you, being in New Hampshire during the first in the nation presidential primary process.
There is a huge value for being first in the nation.
And I mean, look, every presidential candidate descends on this, All of the media, national media descend on New Hampshire.
There are civic.
Engagement at a level you probably wouldn't see elsewhere in the in the country.
Frankly town halls.
Yeah, and I guess the local candidates would get pushed out as far as news coverage and stuff like that so much.
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So I think, you know, look, there's is it ideal?
No, But I will tell you the first in the nation process for the presidential stuff is a wonderful thing for the state of New Hampshire. It's a wonderful thing for America because look, Kevin, I will tell you I had multiple presidential candidates in my living room, where my children get to ask questions, our neighbors get to ask questions, and there is no pomp or circumstance. It is one
on one, real conversations with candidates. And New Hampshire does a great job of sniffing out, you know, real candidates versus those that are a little.
Isn't that amazing that that you know that is one of those facets of our political process that is just so unique to us and as actually unique to New Hampshire. That yeah, that is really cool. Hey, we need to take a quick break. It's away our clock works and we'll be right back if you can hang with us. My guest is Vikrum Charlemani and we're talking about his book and some interesting thoughts that he has in terms of thinking for yourself, as well as his latest book,
Being a Generalist, The Making of a Generalist. So anyway, we'll pick this up on the other side of the break. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KR see the talk station.
This is fifty five KRC, an iHeartRadio station.
Man, if you were so forty one in the morning, Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five care see the talk station. I guess is vic man Charromani. He is an economist and author lecturer at Harvard School. Being a lecturer there just a wealth of knowledge and if you got to check out his website and I will post that on my Facebook page as well as we'll have a link on it to our from our website
here at fich five KR. See, I'm fascinating. You know your first book, Thinking for Yourself, I think is what caught my attention when you came on my radar screen because I read a couple of articles by you. And how does that fit with the latest book being a general This almost seems like the two don't mesh? Or am I missing something?
Yeah?
Look I would, I would go back even further to my original, my first book.
So I've got three books out there. The first book is about.
Financial bubbles, and I'll quickly connect the dots between the financial bubble book, the book Thinking for Yourself and it's called Think for Yourself, and then this latest book to Jennalist. When I found Kevin very simply was when I studied
financial bubbles. It turned out that actually, while many economists would say you can't see a financial bubble, what I found was that if you use multiple lenses to evaluate it, that you could in fact probabilistically figure out whether you were more likely or not to be in a bubble. And the way I did that is I said, not just economics, you got to look at psychology, you got to look at politics, you gotta look at herd behavior.
You got to figure out FOMO.
And then when I applied that multi lens thinking logic to the world of strategy, personal decision making, and corporate decision making, what I found was actually it also worked. You have to be able to connect dots in a world where everyone is focused on generating dots. And I found this true in medicine. I found it true in personal finance as well as large corporate decisions and government actions. I said, you have to look through not only an
economic lens, but also a geopolitical lens. You have to understand what's happening with technology, you have to understand what's happening in energy, you have to understand what's happening with individual psychology, culture, etc.
Kind of the big picture effect, not just concentrating on a particular focus. And then, as you mentioned, the herd mentality, which is extremely dangerous, especially when you start looking at some of the investments and that type of thing that people were moving into. Well, whenever you've seen these bubbles, whether it was the dot com bust in the nineties and then the housing market in the late or two thousand and eight thereabouts. In twenty twenty, lindsight you say, oh,
here were the warning signs? Well, the warning signs were there, you just chose to ignore them.
Well, that's right.
And so just to quickly finish up there, ken the generalist book, the one that's called the Making of a Generalist, is in fact that right, which is what is a generalist. A generalist is someone who prioritizes breadth of experience over depth of expertise.
And the logic here is dots, using.
Multiple perspectives, multiple disciplines or lenses is actually helpful to navigate uncertainty. So it's sort of a contrarian lodge. Everyone gets taught, develop your expertise, your niche, and get deep and you know, learn something more than anyone else knows. Right, I'm going to suggest that actually that's not helpful. That's not helpful, particularly in a time of artificial intelligence and technology.
What you want is.
To be able to connect dots across these areas of expertise.
And you know when you vic monscharm romani is my guess the you know when you talk about that in terms of drilling down on just a particular data points or this is where you see where in I guess government or in regulations that they believe that they are almost like the center of the universe, and that everything evolves around them, whether it be the Federal Highways Traffic
Safety Administration or the EPA or CDC or whatever. They don't seem to think outside of their area and see how whatever these ramifications will be out in the world. And I've seen some people talk in terms of what they should do with the federal government is instead of having all of these departments in Washington, maybe move them out. Hey, how about the Department of Agriculture be out where agriculture is? You know that's right?
No, no, look, I agree with you, completely, completely agree him. Look it's not just and I'll broaden it. Look, it's this idea that.
Experts know best.
Yes, that actually there are people behind a guest who should tell all of us in the real world what to do. Like that is an offensive concept to me. I actually think a lot of us have knowledge and insight, and you know what, who knows better about me and my family than me and my family? No one can be Literally, I think I am the most informed person on that, and therefore having experts of any sort tell us how to do things is at some level offensive, right,
I mean again, we'll go back to the pandemic. I wrote this and think for yourself. You know, what was the cost? Actually I wrote it about think for yourself later. What was the cost of people missing mammograms or missing dental appointments that was not factored into the public health decision making process. Now, maybe you could argue it didn't need to be, but there was a cost.
It was not zero.
People missing a mammogram led to probably having more cancer and probably more death than any public health official even factored into their process.
Or even wanted to talk about.
It, or even wanted to talk about.
So they just talk about all we have to lock down, we have to do But that's okay, Fine, you can argue, and I would I'm not sure I would agree that there were benefits, but you for sure have to accept that there were costs. And this gets to your point, which is the expert class and embodied in some bureaucratic
institutions that you have three letter agencies. In that way, that expert class feels that they know better than the rest of us, and that is what Thing for yourself is the opposite of that book was written to say all of us know enough to be able to make our own decisions. All these experts live in silos. They don't understand the big picture. Only you can understand the big picture of your own decisions.
Yeah, my wife, from time to time will make the comment, you know, it appears as though our best and brightest ain't so best and bright sometimes.
Well that's right, that's right, that's exactly right.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's funny.
The reason I used the title for that book called Thing for Yourself, which is the image I had, was, you know, and my mother never really did this, but you can imagine a mother sort of slapping, you.
Know, not in a violent way.
Of course, Wait a minute, now, it's sort of you know, telling a child stop this and think for yourself, Like, don't just follow her behavior, don't just do these things.
Are stupid.
If you know something is stupid, actually, don't do it because someone told you to.
Yeah, if Billy jumps off the cliff, would you jump off the cliffs whole?
Yeah, it's freezing cold outside, go stick your tongue on the flagpole.
Yeah no, don't show.
That, Like, don't do that. That's stupid.
But yet, somehow, as we grow into adults, we start listening rather than to the cool kid. We start listening to the quote unquote expert who frankly doesn't understand the world the way they pretend to.
No, and and and it's and it's obvious by a lot of the decisions and a lot of things that you see. It's it's you come and away scratching your head. And especially you know, having a background of economics and I am I am a recovering accountant, so I have a tendency of delving out to the numbers way too often. And so it it. You know, things have to make sense to me. They have to pass the smell test. And so yeah, yep, exactly, exactly.
Okay, it's important to that. I mean, look, I do I do a lot of global work too, so it's important to think globally. It's important across industries, silos, think about geopolitics, economics, local technology developments.
I mean, there's you have to connect dots.
We live in a world where too many people focus on generating dots. We need to connect dots. That is the way to navigate uncertainty.
Absolutely. My guest has been back vicram manshar Ramani. Uh, how can people get ahold of your books to go to your website or yeah.
Well look they're available everywhere. Books are sold on Comazon, Barnes and Noble e. But the website is just my last name Monshuramani dot com. It's m A N s h A r A m A n I dot com.
I can't thank you enough for spending time with us today on such short notice. I certainly appreciate you. Have a great day and all.
About us to you perfect thanks very much. Caning?
All right, take care. Let's say we need to step out here real quick. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five kr SE the talk station fifty five KRC dot com.