Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, cites principles as his key to success.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Over forty years later, Bridgewater has grown into the largest hedge fund in the world and the fifth most important private company in the United States (according to Fortune magazine), and Dalio himself has been named to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way Dalio discovered unique principles that have led to his and Bridgewater’s unique success. It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio, that he believes are the reason behind whatever success he has had. He is now at a stage in his life that he wants to pass these principles along to others for them to judge for themselves and to do whatever they want with them.
Work Principle
If you ask someone a question, they will probably give you an answer, so think through to whom you should address your questions.
I regularly see people ask totally uninformed or nonbelievable people questions and get answers that they believe. This is often worse than having no answers at all. Don't make that mistake. You need to think through who the right people are. If you're in doubt about someone's believability, find out.
The same is true for you: If someone asks you a question, think first whether you're the right person to answer it. If you're not believable, you probably shouldn't have an opinion about what they're asking, let alone share it.
Be sure to direct your comments or questions to the believable Responsible Party or Parties for the issues you want to discuss. Feel free to include others if you think that their input is relevant, while recognizing that the decision will ultimately rest with whoever is responsible for it.
RECENT USER EXCHANGES
How does “believability” account for the reality-bending types among us who can make you believe anything? Or the quiet voices of those who recognize an embedded pattern that is wrong to its roots but don’t have the track record to be considered?
Let’s agree that we’d rather have believable (I.e. capable) people helping us make our decisions than to have incapable people do that. Then we can move on to how to judge if they’re believable. Nobody said that believable people needed to be conventional people. The “Reality-bending people” you refer to who are successful are probably people are creative, determined or whatever it is that lets them “bend reality”.
“Believability” can become a blind spot, causing us to miss valuable input while over‑trusting accepted experts. Since knowledge constantly changes, I aim to stay radically open‑minded to input from anyone. This requires a “quiet” mind—alert, non‑judgmental, and observant—which can be cultivated through yoga and meditation.
Being believable is essentially the same thing as being a recognized expert. While experts aren’t perfect, I’d rather get the input from them (while also trying to see if they’re logic rings true) than listen to non-experts. The fact that sometimes experts are wrong doesn’t change my mind about my wanting to pick the most believable people to triangulate with. If you use 1) my principle about being aware of people’s believabilities, 2) my principle about triangulation and 3) my principle about how to be open-minded and assertive at the same time, you practically can’t help but be successful.
Don’t you think that those who think with clarity and rationality are often the best to ask questions of any matter to? For wouldn’t they know when to say that they don’t know the answer, and wouldn’t they be more believable when they have an opinion even if they don’t appear to have as much subject matter expertise as others who may have a different opinion? As far as I’m concerned, the ability to reason logically and with clarity will always bring you a more truthful answer than having someone with less logical thinking but who has subject matter expertise
The ability to reason well and the information one has to reason with both count. Good reasoning abilities with experience and other forms of knowledge is not good enough.
Regarding questions we are asked during interviews, they always have the answers already. Instead, we should ask interviewees about the reason why they ask the questions.
I use my PrinciplesYou test and resume and background data, which are much more scientific than interviews, though I use interviews to supplement the other data.
I believe "believability" is not enough. Expertise is required: you actually have to know something about it
Expertise enters into determining one’s believability. Believability just means the degree to which you should believe someone. What determines that is up to you. It can be their track record, the quality of their logic or whatever else gives you confidence that you will get a good perspective.
It’s a useful principle, but identifying the right people is hard—especially under pressure or when emotions run high. That makes you vulnerable to bias or misleading influence. A cool head and common sense can help counter that.
Every day you are making choices about who to believe about different things. Different people have different quality opinions based on experience, knowledge and reasoning capability. I’m just saying think about that when listening to people opinions.
It’s always tough to admit to someone that you aren’t the best resource for an opinion/answer to a question but people respect you more in the long run if you do so. It also forces you to interact with more people with better knowledge/resources than you.
You got it!
Is the most difficult part is to judge who is believable?
Think of being believable and the same thing as being a well recognized expert. Determining who is believable is not harder and no easier than determining who is an expert. The biggest thing is for you to know to look for these folks rather than to not know that. Once you know to want that, you will do a much better job of getting it and getting the better result that it will produce.
So I assume you prefer not asking any questions than asking the "wrong" people.
Asking the wrong people is a waste of time. Asking believable people gives you gems.
Humans are bad at knowing what we don’t know, yet quick to form and express beliefs. That tension feels overwhelming, and I hope you can shed more light on it.
See this week’s Case of the Week for a great and real example. You can find the case on my free “Principles in Action” app that’s available in the Apple iOS App Store. People live it and find it very helpful so it has 4.9 rating.
Where do you draw the line on believable? When should I take ownership of answering the question, and when should I redirect to a more believable other?
When asking a question we have to realize that different people have answers of different value - eg some have more expertise than others. When answering we also should think if we have the best answer and good answer. Ignoring thinking about the quality of the answer gives one bad answers that are realized on and cause problems. See a real case example on this week’s “Case of the Week” on my free app “Principles in Action” which is available on the Apollo iO App Store and will be available on Android in September.
Yes, this is very meaningful! Be good at asking, be cautious of answering.
Good expression - be good as asking and be cautious of answering.
Work Principle
- Believability Weight Your Decision Making
- Understand how people came by their opinions.
- If you ask someone a question, they will probably give you an answer, so think through to whom you should address your questions.
- Understand how people came by their opinions.
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
