Ray Dalio @ UJA

This morning I had the opportunity to attend a terrific UJA event with Ray Dalio discussing his beliefs as outlined in his book Principals. While there is no replacing the depth of content in his book, I thought I would highlight some of the topics he discussed. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he's an absolute intellectual powerhouse when it comes to managing money and life/business philosophy.

3 phases of life:

1. Learning and dependent on others
2. Working and others dependent on you
3. Focusing on helping others 

Principals can be coded into algorithms 

Successful at failing - what matters is if you learn from pain and reflection 

Success:

1. Must know goals
2. Encounter problems 
3. Diagnose problems and not tolerate them, must find root cause which might be you or somebody else
4. Once you know the root cause, must design way around issue
5. Move forward 

Find the smartest people in the world who disagree with you; how do I know I’m right? Be humble while knowing as much as possible as an independent thinker; idea meritocracy with the ability to disagree well; need to put honest thoughts on the table

Importance of thoughtful disagreement (with an ability to move forward)

Didn’t have a mentor; figured things out by his own trial and error

Israel: “If this was a club, I’d want to join!”; amazing story of entrepreneurship and innovation 

Need to determine how you think and your belief set

• Used to be determined more by religion
• Now determined more by individuals 
• Need to focus more on principals; different from education
• Don’t know the principals that bind us together as Americans

There are many other people who should write down their principals; examples:

• Henry Kissinger
• Elon Musk
• Jim Tisch

Meritocracy 

• In any relationship you must determine how to make decisions and how to disagree
• Great collective decision making is better than individual decision making
• Great team decision making leads to better relationships -> evolutionary process to move toward meritocracy; can be delivered better through tech

Not stress testing one’s own beliefs is one of people’s biggest flaws; the more an idea is stress tested the stronger the conviction 

Radical truthfulness boundary: making mistakes is okay but not if personal attack

Philanthropy

• Very active 
• Don’t like the term, multiple ways to approach accomplishing things with money relating to things that matter to you -> needs to be passion driven 
• Family activity 
• Focused on ocean exploration 
• Use principals in philanthropy - have rules and goals