Investors Should Beware When Cloning 13F’s

In their recent episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast, Brewster, Taylor, and Carlisle discussed Investors Should Beware When Cloning 13F’s. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

Jake: First little nugget that we can take and maybe extrapolate back to our world of investing is that I think you have to be careful when you’re borrowing other people’s ideas through 13Fs or whatever you’re reading their– If you don’t have the same pre-digestion, the same cooking techniques for an idea that they have, you may not actually unlock the nutrients of that idea. You’re just not going to understand how they got there and you’ll never have the same conviction around the idea. All right.

Tobias: Long bow, but it’s a good story.

Jake: [laughs] Okay. That’s what we do here.

Okay. So, next thing is, it turns out there are brands come hardwired with some predetermined slots to them. Like language, animals, and plants, actually. If you notice, why is it that when we teach the ABCs? It’s generally taught through animals like A is for alligator, B is for Bear.

It’s because actually the human mind is prewired in a way to recognize fauna and associate and learn from that quickly. We’re then naturally drawn to it as well like we want to learn about animals when we’re kids. Also, same thing with plants. It’s a little bit the opposite.

They did the studies with infants where they’ll give them some object and the kid will put it in their mouth right away. You guys have kids. You’ve seen these phenomena play out. But if you give a kid, an infant a plant, they won’t put it in their mouth right away. Like we’re prewired.

That’s because the revolution, plants had their own evolution where they evolved nettles, and poison, and toxins, and oils that would cause irritation to not be eaten. And so, until an infant sees other people eating a certain plant, well, they then start to eat it. But before that they won’t. So, it’s a cultural learning about what plants are safe to eat.

Bill: That is neat.

Jake: I think so, too. Now, this applies to other things, too, as well. Westerners, we learn that insects aren’t edible as kids, typically. But some Asian populations learn that insects are edible and they taste good to them. It’s probable that once your wiring gets set for that, you’re never going to then find an insect to sound like something good that you want to eat in your youth we were exposed to it or not.

We learn this cultural adaptation really of, are insects edible enough. All the Davos people who are pushing for us to want to eat insects, you probably want to start now on this population that’s just born, because no one’s going to find it edible unless you learned when you were a kid.

Tobias: Thank you for many ideas, mate. Thank you for many ideas.

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