Morsel #2 — Oh Snap: A Tale of Cognitive Folly 📷
Read the rest of the article and its other morsels on our blog.
We’ve just passed another long weekend here in Australia (Melbourne in particularly). With any long weekend it’s a chance to catch up with family, relax or stack on a few kilos with some dubious nutrition decisions — whatever your preference.
One thing I always love about seeing family is the gags, jokes and teasing that’s delivered in my family catch ups. The teasing of my serious old man, the prodding of my sisters sensitivities, the moral detective work I try to do like Louis CK . It seems though that my family don’t think I’m very funny — more just of a pain in the ass really.
In fairness, it’s always been my mother and my girlfriend who’ve laughed consistently at my jokes. So perhaps I’ve had a comedic veil pulled across my life for too long. Or perhaps it’s just the fact I just enjoy lambastic, morality pushing humour ( like Aunty Donna ) a bit too much.
Have you found crickets while telling a joke? Then you’ll probably enjoy this structure breakdown of how Louis CK tells a joke , and it’s even helped my writing.
Oh Snap: A Tale of Cognitive Folly
Most of us are familiar with Snapchat. Whether you use it as a millennial or gen X’er, or see your kids using it as a baby boomer. You may also have noticed that they recently listed on the NYSE at a ridiculously overvalued price .
The value investing model, which over the course of the last century, has been the most effective and consistent model for investing (see Warren Buffett, Walter Schloss, Charlie Munger, Benjamin Graham et al) — clearly shows that this company is inflated beyond belief.
So why discuss it? Because I think this is a brilliant example of cognitive biases at play (see cheat sheet of biases here ).
Whether it’s the belief bias (logical evaluations distorted by tech dogma), confirmation/congruence bias (the search by tech bloggers to find information that supports Snap), or just Anchoring (using future predictions as the basis for reality) — this company listing is the greatest example of humans not checking themselves, and running with the wind. As Charlie Munger says, “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
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Happy reading,
Jordan & team @ neuralle.com
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