The average investor has a visceral aversion to forecasting technological change. Radically transformative technologies such as Tesla, Bitcoin, and even the internet itself are initially met with heavy skepticism and even outright dismissal by mainstream pundits. Mainstreet and Wallstreet alike miss the boat, leaving the most explosive early returns to fringe visionaries.
“If you are right in consensus, you don’t make money because your returns get arbitraged away. The only way to make outsized returns as an investor or entrepreneur is to be right in non-consensus.”
Andy Rachleff, Wealthfront CEO
Our aversion to future projecting is neurobiological. Indeed, when pondering what innovations might shape our future, our medial pre-frontal cortex—the part of the brain that references the self—shuts down¹. This means that individuals with a strong attachment to the sense of self—and unfamiliarity with ego-dissolving states of consciousness—feel repulsed trying to imagine a future where they, quite literally, feel like strangers to themselves. Our brains are hardwired to resist envisioning such ego-disruptive futures.
Could mindfulness meditation, in tandem with practicing the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, make us better investors? It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s best investors (Naval Ravikant, Ray Dalio, etc.) laud meditation as their most impactful daily practice. Meditation quiets the default mode network of the brain, responsible for self-referential, “me”-centered thinking. The state of non-attachment and present-state awareness reached during meditation strips bias (sunk cost fallacy? No more!), encourages flexible thinking (fMRI shows disparate areas of the brain begin to communicate during meditation), and helps down-regulate the two main emotions that plague investors: fear and greed.
Perhaps investors trained in quieting the ego through meditation are better suited to see and embrace disruptive technologies than their peers. After all, asymmetric returns come from being long—rather than short—innovation.
“Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.”
Naval Ravikant
¹ From Peter Diamandis in “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”