Consistently Inconsistent

Logical consistency will separate you from the pack

One thing that, once seen, can not be unseen, is people’s ability to never think beyond small soundbites.

Now this is not a political substack in any stretch, but politics is one area you see this the most. Someone will hold 2 different soundbites in their head as truth (based on what their favored politician/MSM news talking head) and those 2 ideas will be completely incompatible if viewed in a vacuum.

But this phenomena cuts across all topics and subjects.

People tend to hear a soundbite that they agree with or is said by someone they approve of, and will incorporate it into their belief system. And this is done with no deeper thought about how it fits into the rest of things in that system.

A lot of this is due to the human brain functioning off heuristics to quickly make decisions. It is the ‘default’ mode of operation. Imagine a distant ancestor who was told that this red berry is good to eat, but this other red berry is poison. They didn’t survive by stepping back and pondering how to develop a theorem on red berries that allowed for both those facts to be true. The fact that it seems inconsistent that 2 red berries could lead to drastically different outcomes didn’t matter.

So it is understandable that people still default to this short cut method of thinking.

But it doesn’t mean it is ideal.

It just means that you need to recognize this default state and force yourself to think a little deeper on it, because the world we live in today is one that is more complex in the past.

Today’s post is going to go through some of my favorite (or most annoying) inconsistencies that fly around in personal finance.

These examples will be commonly held beliefs that certain gooroos or financial movements will hold that sound reasonable on their own, but can’t both be true based on the reason applied.

Whenever I see the same source say any of the below, I know that they are just regurgitating talking points without actually understanding or thinking through why. Hopefully after reading this post, you will think through your financial (and maybe even some non-financial) beliefs and see if you are holding logically inconsistent views.

We are talking about things like…