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Principles: Life and Work

Ray Dalio · 6 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
#1 New York Times Bestseller “Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving.” — The New York Times Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals. In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success. In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve. Here, from a man who has been called both “the Steve Jobs of investing” and “the philosopher king of the financial universe” ( CIO magazine), is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

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If you google "ray dalio 1980" you'll see he's talked about that being his biggest mistake and massive learning opportunity [1, 2, 3]. He even dedicated a chapter to it in his book (chapter 3) [4]. It's sort of hard to fault someone for being wrong 40 years ago and think they have nothing new to contribute.

Suspect we'd all be completely screwed if we were wrong, never learned from it, and just continued on. No idea if he's right or wrong but guess time will tell. What you're implying here though, that because someone was wrong at a point in time, learned from it, evolved and changed their way of thinking, then think that all their future stuff is tainted somehow, seems pretty strange.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/04/billionaire-ray-dalio-was-on...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/bridgewater-ray-dalio-lesson...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/01/23/is-...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

civilized
I'm not impressed with his story about what he learned from it. He basically says he learned that sometimes he can be wrong. No indication of whether he's learned when he's more likely to be wrong or right.

If you must simp for billionaires, Jim Simons, Bill Gates, and the Collison brothers are somewhat more interesting people IMO.

WestCoastJustin
More of a Musk fan myself.

Since you mentioned him, Jim Simons has a really good interview too and it was pretty cool to hear his story [1]. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it and are into RenTec.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0

Anything about leverage. Here are the ones I read that were helpful. The second two are engineering-specific, but Principles is domain agnostic.

* Principles: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

* The Effective Engineer: https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Engineer-Engineering-Dispro...

* High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/d...

cmonaghan
+100 to The Effective Engineer. This is the best practical book on how to improve individual engineering effectiveness that I've ever read.
I learned so much about structure and organization from https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-XML-Schema-Charles-Goldfar...

I learned the value of utility from Nicomachean Ethics in that it establishes a value hierarchy starting from the fragment: that which exists for its own sake.

I liked this book for establishing ethics as the basis for rapid growth in business: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0...

A lot of people struggle with CSS. It’s not hard but it take some solid practice to master. This is the best book: https://www.amazon.com/CSS-Pocket-Reference-Visual-Presentat...

Honesty is important. Brutal honesty forces changes to culture and everybody wins. It forces you to act with ethics for the welfare of the group: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

Fear of innovation is a form of hecklers veto, more so when popularity or a majority is threatened. Originality, even when wrong, is always more important: On Liberty.

The first quote by Ray Dalio is from his most excellent book https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

I've listen to the section for personal principles on audible 5 times now, and I will probably keep repeating it at least a couple times a year.

Dark Matter: A Novel (Fiction) - One of my favorite SF story so far. https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Novel-Blake-Crouch/dp/110...

Principle: Life and Work, Ray Dalio (Business & Decision- Making) - Very interesting and thoughtful book around building a meritocracy. https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

yannickt
Principles is my best non-fiction read of 2017. Superbly written.
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