Break the rules. Build lasting wealth. Buy Rule Breaker Investing today.
More Art Than Science
Rule Breaker Investing is about the unknown. You’re trying to piece together where the future is headed. The future is unknowable! Thus, by definition you’re making stuff up. You’re imagining, later hoping. It’s fundamentally more art than science… more poetry, than rationalism.
Now, I love both art and science. I hope you do too. People who only orient toward one are missing half the picture. We need to integrate these things, and see each for what it is:
Art is rooted in the unknown. Artists can perhaps copy forms — follow someone else’s map, if you will. But they are ultimately judged and valued by their ability to navigate us to new places.
Science is rooted in the known. You are still trying to discover, but in a completely different way: Asking the best questions we can, we gather what data we see, and form hypotheses.
G.K. Chesterton had this right. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton sided with art. He wrote, “The poet [here, artist] only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician [here, scientist] who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
The logician investor seeks precision: numbers, searchable data. The numerical. A very left-brain approach to investing. These are the people who screen for stocks, who use numerical parameters. Maybe algorithmic-driven.
That’s not what we’re doing at Rule Breaker Investing. We’re looking CEOs in the eye. We’re looking the future in the eye as best we can — as best we can piece it together — and we know we’re going to get it wrong a substantial amount of the time. Again, if you have your math right, you’re never wrong. But even if you have your art right, you can still be wildly wrong.
So yes, for me, this unknown quality feels more like art, with its concomitant risks. We’re splashing paint on a canvas, as opposed to coolly, even coldly, pushing an abacus.
Ultimately, the greatest investors see and integrate both.
But most present-day investors that I encounter need more art. They’re only intending science.