Recently, I have been reminding myself of one thing: Don't become the kind of "old man" who thinks that he has eaten more salt than others when he sees young people doing things. As we grow older, it's easy for us to fall into a sense of arrogance that comes with being an experienced person. But if you calm down and dissect our so-called 'experience', you will find that these qualifications are actually fragile and vulnerable in the face of macro historical currents: 1、 The truth you believe in may just be your luck A person's life is short, to the point where we easily mistake the 'dividends of the times' for' personal abilities'. Just imagine that a person who graduated when the Internet foam burst in 2000 and a person who graduated at the time of the financial tsunami in 2008, their views on "risk", "investment" and even "whether hard work pays off" are far from each other. The former may have learned conservatism and skepticism in the early stages of their career, while the latter may have learned how to survive in ruins in despair or lost faith in capitalism thereafter. Who exactly is right? Actually, everything makes sense. Our worldview is often shaped (imprinted) by the larger environment of the years we enter society. Using one's own survival rules for a specific year to guide young people in completely different years is not only unfair, but also a logical fallacy. 2、 The 'tradition' that we are accustomed to is actually just weaned Many of the tools or systems that we now regard as standards, in terms of the length of history, are simply infants. We talk about asset allocation and ETFs, and we believe that this is the right way to invest. But the world's first ETF (SPY) was only born in 1993, and its popularization has been almost 20 years; The internet, which we rely on for survival, has only truly entered thousands of households in 30 years. That is to say, our proud 'decades of experience' are built on a very small sample size and extremely short time span. Using the experience of just one generation (20-30 years) to try to frame the next generation, or even predict the direction of the next 50 years, from a statistical perspective, this number is not statistically significant at all, and can even be considered arrogant. 3、 All roads lead to Rome, and the paths may be completely opposite Even in the same era and industry, the path to success is never singular. 30 years of experience is certainly long, but it may also just lead you into a specific path dependency. Take the example of the financial investment industry: Warren Buffett and James Simons. Buffett believes in value investing, looking at financial reports, management, and long-term holdings. He relies on a deep understanding of the essence of business. Simmons, the founder of Renaissance Technology, came from a mathematician background and had no interest in fundamentals or even what the company was doing. He relied on quantitative models, high-frequency trading, and searching for small pricing errors in the market. These two are both the greatest money making machines of their time, but their philosophies are completely mutually exclusive. If you use Buffett's experience to teach Simmons a lesson when he was young, you would say he was not doing his job properly; Vice versa. This tells us that your success experience may be true, but it is by no means the only truth. When we try to guide young people, we may be killing another Simmons. 4、 Blaming young people is just a form of spiritual masturbation The internet has changed our generation, and AI will completely reshape the next generation, with speeds ten to a hundred times faster than the internet era. In this era of exponential change, the depreciation rate of experience is astonishingly fast. The skills we have accumulated in the past may be replaced overnight by algorithms. At this point, having an open mind to learn and try new things is far more important than sticking to old ideas. Always looking at young people with this and that is not right, sighing that 'each generation is inferior', to put it bluntly, this is just a kind of 'spiritual masturbation' for the elderly. This mentality is to conceal one's anxiety about being left behind by the times, and to maintain one's precarious self-esteem by belittling newcomers. I don't want to become that kind of person: just sit down and start nagging young people before my butt gets hot. I am busy guiding the country all day and can't hear any new ideas in my ears. The world is big, the waves are fast, and history has never lacked experienced people. What is lacking are those who are willing to admit their ignorance.