Charlie Munger is probably one of the top applied anthropologists out there. He is very eclectically read and constantly hoovering up knowledge. My kind of person, probably very fun to chat with at a dinner party...oh and he invests a bit on the side.
Take a look at a presentation he gave on his study of human biases here. I still believe that the Munger & Buffet magic has more to do with understanding cognitive group failure than anything else. Applying discipline and risk control are a part of it as well, but basically sitting back, connecting a few dots and seeing where the blindness of crowds has taken over gives a fellow a heck of an advantage.
Here is a fascinating video of Charlie Munger in action, he is older, but very sharp and I think his ability to grasp disparate information and think laterally is impressive.
Thanks to Shai Dardashti of Dardashti Capital for pointing it out.
Munger's mention of Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel should justify reading it for anyone. For those silly uni dimensional finance types out there, pull your head out of the Wall Street Journal and the increasingly useless Barrons and read some psychology (Cialdini) or sociology. You want your performance to deviate from the norm, but this can't happen if you behave and inhale the same information as everyone else.
I also agree with Munger's critique of derivatives and a significant amount of economic mathematics. It is intellectual masturbation masquerading as science and proving very expensive and dangerous to us all. The false notions of value and risk management conjured up are serious threats to everyone collectively, not just the egg heads, and I say that as a recovering quantitative analyst.
My final recommendation for those too downbeat about the present. Pick up a copy of The Singularity is Near, it will alter your view of the future. And since, I am being so damn preachy, get rid of your Television, I have survived without mine for 15 years and 6 countries. I don't know who won American Idol last year but I'll get over it.
