When & How ?
Cold emails, Difficult questions, Heterogeneous perspectives but – ‘A common goal to be better thinkers and decision makers.’ I remember the first time, two years ago when I had my first conversation with a fellow community member on how to increase the probability of winning in Poker. As the night drew on, the conversation got deeper and before we had realized it the clock struck 4 am. By now both of us had argued at length, failing to reach any concrete conclusion. The idea was to minimize the role of luck and increase the probability of winning. While our end goal was same, we both had differed on more than one parameter which made us further think ‘Are we being really contrarian or are we simply disagreeing to win the argument and prove that one’s thinking is better than the other?” Staring at a chart paper attached to the wall, scribbled with ideas and concessions, using a half functional cellotape, we thought on how to achieve a better outcome instead of trying to win an argument. What followed was a process of research, contemplations, and logical disagreements. In that we questioned if this idiosyncrasy can be utilized in our professional careers to be better decision makers. Born was the idea of ‘Contrarian Lens’.
What do we do ?
We realized that while most of us are great at further supporting an accepted viewpoint (as it is easier), the hard part lies in developing an independent/contrarian thinking mindset. Our community members take pride in creating a safe space for voicing individual opinions backed by data and reasoning while also showing the courage to accept failure when proven wrong.
Through, this platform, we strive to achieve the following things
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A Different View: Use examples from real world situations wherein we view the same incident from a different perspective.
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Sector Analysis: Talk about innovations and our independent analysis on sectors that we think would continue to grow.
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Mentorship: Help students to logically challenge assumptions through an in-house proprietary framework developed by a meticulous study of the impact of experimentation on businesses and real life scenarios.
What does ‘Contrarian’ really mean?
Like most languages, English too has its limitations. People often consider contrarian as a person who acts or thinks in a way that is contrary to popular or accepted opinion. This definition, however, oversimplifies the meaning & fails to understand the nuances involved. We’ve discussed this idea within our community often and I’ll delineate what does being contrarian really means to us. The stereotypical view is that just because everyone says ‘YES’, a contrarian says ‘NO’, picks ‘NORTH’ over the worldview of ‘SOUTH’, and ‘DISAGREES’ when everyone else ‘CONCORD’.
This, however, misses the entire point of being ‘Contrarian’. Contrarianism has a lot to do with logic and evidence – both of which are cardinal for a debate, which forms the basis of solving problems efficiently, refining thought processes, and fast-tracking innovations by minimizing error loops. To us, contrarianism means the ability to think independently, challenge the status quo (with logic, evidence, and reasoning), and become better at decision making. It is not an ‘end goal’ to be reached but a medium to reach the ‘end goal’ economically.
Why do we need more ‘Contrarian’ thinkers?
One might think that contrarianism might lead to debates which would then lead to discord so why does the world today need more contrarian thinkers? Well, it has to do a lot with individuals and their ability to handle emotions and less to do with ‘contrarianism’. Let me elucidate. Conflict is not a result of disagreement between individuals but their inability to accept that different people might have different opinions. The moment you take the ‘ego’ out of the equation and accept that disagreement is not with the person but with a thought that the person holds, then you make room for improving the thought process, a key criterion for achieving better results.
In his book, ‘Clear Thinking’, Shane Parrish talks about – The five enemies of Clear Thinking: 1.) The Emotional Default, 2.) The Ego Default, 3.) The Social Default, 4.) The Inertia Default, 5.) Default to Clarity. Shane explains Social Default as the state of mind wherein we lack the clarity to think independently. He says that social default inspires conformity. It coaxes us to fall in life with an idea or behaviour simply because others around us do. Conformity arises primarily because of three fears which are common among most of the human species. 1.) Fear of being judged, 2.) Fear of disappointing others, and 3.) Fear of being termed as an outcast. The history of conformity goes back thousands of years, to a time when the world was much greener and humans less technologically advanced. Back then, the idea was to solve for survival as threats from wild animals, other humans, and catastrophic disasters were far more imminent, precarious, and frequent. The fear of being hunted down coupled with the uncertainty of things back then made people conform to the ideas of a group instead of being able to hold or announce independent thoughts. Being contrarian makes us fear being snubbed, ridiculed, and treated like an idiot.
“The social rewards for going with the crowd are felt long before the benefits of going against it are gained.” – Shane Parrish, Author of ‘Clear Thinking’
Fast forward to the 21st century, a lot has changed and most of the innovations have been the result of people not accepting the beliefs their peers were so attached to. For many years, athletes had tried to run a mile in less than four minutes and their persistent failure to do so 1 Paraphrased Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow Contrarian Lens made everyone believe that it was a ‘physically impossible task’. Until of course, one person named Roger Bannister, a 25-year-old medical student completed the mile race with a time of 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. Similarly, despite Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph, the idea of a light bulb was considered starry-eyed, until he made it possible. Warren Buffet the famous contrarian investor once said, “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Almost all fields known to mankind are flooded with examples of contrarian thinking, long-term vision, and a self-belief deep enough to be unperturbed by sporadic currents of failure.
Should Contrarianism always be ground-breaking? (Contrarian vs Adamant: The Devil lies in the details)
NO. Like explained above, ‘Contrarianism’ has little to do less with outcome but more with improving the process. For everyone the thresholds, circumstances, and the timing of the event is different – basis which the applicability to contrarianism changes. For example, if you’re a student and a teacher teaches you to solve a quant problem in a certain way but you’re adamant that you want to use some other way, you are being contrarian but suppose if a similar problem appears on a your exam when you’re pressed for time and you could have solved the problem in half the time using the way your teacher suggested but you chose otherwise then are you being contrarian? NO – You’re being stupid! This is the difference between being ‘contrarian’ and being ‘simpleton’. How do you determine then when ‘You’re being Contrarian’, and when ‘You’re being Foolish’, especially when situations are far more convoluted than a simple quant problem – you may ask. Well, the solution to this quandary is simpler than you might have thought of, yet it is the most difficult to achieve – ‘Stay true to yourself’.
We often have reservations about accepting our failures in public and maybe rightly so, but the issue becomes larger when we start lying to ourselves. True, there will be instances wherein you might lose because of your ‘contrarian’ thinking and times wherein you win also because of your ‘contrarian’ thinking. Under both circumstances, the ideal state is to reconfigure your thought process and get to the root cause of your failure or success. This will enable you to further embellish your thoughts – an outcome we all should try to achieve to live better lives. There is a thin line between being ‘Contrarian’ and being ‘Adamant’. Selfreflection coupled with flexibility to change often helps keep a check on being adamant without a concrete reason – something we all should try to avoid. Raymond Thomas Dalio, (an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager, founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates), famously talks about the art of disagreement in his book, ‘Principles’. He attributes his success to his ability to see disagreements as opportunities for learning.
“In thoughtful disagreement, both parties are motivated by the genuine fear of missing important perspectives. Exchanges in which you really see what the other person is seeing, and they really see what you are seeing—with both your “higher-level yous” trying to get to the truth—are immensely helpful and a giant source of untapped potential. – Ray Dalio, Author of Principles.