Because of the different ways that our brains are wired, we all experience reality in different ways and any single way is essentially distorted. This is something that we need to acknowledge and deal with. So if you want to know what is true and what to do about it, you must understand your own brain.

That insight led me to talk with many psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, personality testers, and other believable people in the field, and it led me to read many books. I discovered that though it is obvious to all of us that we are born with different strengths and weaknesses in areas such as common sense, creativity, memory, synthesis, attention to detail, and so forth, examining these differences objectively makes even most scientists uncomfortable. But that doesn’t make it any less necessary, so I pushed forward with these explorations over several decades.

As a result, I have learned a lot that helped me and that I believe can help you. In fact, I attribute as much of my success to what I’ve learned about the brain as I do to my understanding of economics and investing. In this chapter, I will share some of the amazing things I’ve learned.
WHY I TURNED TO NEUROSCIENCE

When I started Bridgewater two years out of business school, I had to manage people for the first time. At first I thought that hiring smart people—for instance, the top students out of the top schools—should get me capable employees, but as often as not, those people didn’t turn out well. “Book smarts” didn’t typically equate to the type of smarts I needed.
