A really great article, full of truths about different things. The article is here, written by John Kay of FT. Here are some quotes from the article that I find worth mentioning .
“I was disappointed to find that the most distinguished of my lecturers, the economist Sir John Hicks, had never mastered how to hold the attention of a class. But clarity of thought and clarity of expression tend to go together. The best textbooks are often written by the best researchers: Richard Feynman could not only do physics brilliantly but also brought it alive with words.”
“… few people are as irritating as those whose combination of ignorance and arrogance is so profound that they claim to understand things they do not even know they do not know. The world of business and finance, which values confidence and certainty, is full of such people. “It isn’t really like that,” they will say; and when you ask what it is really like, they will tell you it is too complicated for you to apprehend. What they really mean, but do not recognize, is that it is too complicated for them to apprehend.
The bad financier, or businessman, like the bad scientist, pursues complexity almost willfully because he believes such complexity demonstrates his knowledge and sophistication. So the blind lead the blind through the mysteries of structured financial products and the jargon-ridden thickets of corporate strategy. People sell securities whose properties they only dimly appreciate to people who do not understand them at all. Consultants describe the business world in language – and, of course, PowerPoint presentations – whose elaboration disguises the banality of the thought.”
“Perhaps Henry Ford and Bill Gates were the men who really understood the automobile and computer industries, or perhaps they were just the people whose opinions turned out to be right, which is not the same at all.”
