Mental Models 104 - Bear Or Bull? - George Mack - #253

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is current Modern Wisdom record holder and old time friend, George Mack. He is the human that tempted me to go out to Dubai, or maybe we egged each other on, I'm not sure. Anyway, he's the person who has spent the last month with me out in Dubai, and at the very beginning of that trip, we recorded Mental Models 104, the Bull or Bear edition. If you imagine your mind as an operating system, mental models are apps that you can install to give yourself extra functionality and improve decision making. They've been popularized by guys like Charlie Munger and Shane Parrish from fs.blog, and today George takes us through another batch of his favorites. So expect to learn about our brand new game, Bull or Bear, how you can use anchoring to get laid, why numeracy is a superpower, why remote working is a blessing and a curse, and much more. But for now, it's time to teach you about Bear or Bull. I am so excited with the wise and wonderful George Mack.
I'm joined all the way from Dubai by the man himself, Mr. George Mack. How are you?

**George Mack** (1:26)
I'm not too bad, I'm not too bad. How are you?

**Chris Williamson** (1:28)
I'm well. How could we not be well? On the 25th floor, this beautiful Dubai Marina apartment. There's worse places to do a podcast, isn't there?

**George Mack** (1:37)
Yeah, it's a contrast to Newcastle and Manchester, right? Or Skype. Or Skype, yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (1:42)
The year of Zoom finished up in Dubai. So yeah, not bad. Big year, 2020, a lot of stuff's happened. What's some of the main insights that you've realized in 2020?

**George Mack** (1:53)
That's a good question. I'm thinking obsessively about remote work and the effect that that has on location. I'm sure even the fact that we're here right now is quite a good little A-B test of that, proofs in the pudding, but it's going to be very, very interesting. Cause we were saying, like, are you bullish or bearish on people moving, particularly at the UK, because the UK has very poor weather. And for me at the minute, I'm thinking, if I move abroad, what would the checklist be? Or if I want to work remote? And as long as it has good weather, good time zone, and relatively good economic social activity, what does the UK have that, you know what I mean? Like, the UK for me is only viable for a few months of the year, and it's going to be very interesting to see how many people leave en masse, or if they do leave en masse.

**Chris Williamson** (2:41)
And I think, as well, that's probably not just going to be for the UK. Everyone thinks the place that they grew up, unless it's unbelievably good, is probably a bit crap. Everyone's disparaging about their hometown, even if your hometown was Dubai Marina, because it's just what you're used to, it's not cool or different anymore. So yeah, I wonder whether you're going to get mass swapping of populations from different countries.

**George Mack** (3:04)
I think once you've opened that door, even though I do think the pendulum will swing back to more and more office-based stuff, once you've opened that door, there's some people who are going to refuse to go back. So it's a very, very interesting time to be living through. And whether, because you've got two thought processes that run in your head, you've got obviously A, the vaccine comes out, things go back to normal. But even then, you potentially got B, which is you have mass migration at levels you've never seen before. I was chatting to somebody in the property business, and they said when COVID happened, they expected everything to come tumbling down. But actually, they had the busiest two months that they've ever had. It was like the equivalent of a year. Because I've got this idea that I've been thinking about, which is you have throughout childhood, you've got very clear events. You've got primary school, you've got year one, you've got year two or grade one, grade two. Then you go in the UK, you've got GCSEs, you've got A levels, you've got your degree. But then in adulthood, all you basically got is house, marriage, kids, death.
I think that COVID is now an event that exists. So like there's people who are like pre-COVID and then post-COVID. So it causes a lot of behavior change. It's really fascinating to see.

**Chris Williamson** (4:10)
Well, think about what the UK is trying to do at the moment. They've called it a circuit breaker lockdown. Why have they called it a circuit breaker lockdown? It's because they're trying to create a jolt in the system. You know, they've just added another little module in just a little bookmark. And you're correct. People live their life in epochs. This is what I learned from Tucker Maxx. Live your life in epochs. You're the sports guy for you. Like the football freestyler as a kid. You're the university student. You're the young entrepreneur. You're the young mother or father. You're the person who's in a relationship and retired somewhere. But you know what I mean? That's how we break our lives up. And you're correct. Maybe this is going to be one of those bookmarks in life for people.