We live in an age of overwhelming information. Every day brings another data point, another Fed speech, another forecast of what comes next — a daily deluge of financial “news.”
We are drowning in Data, Information, and Knowledge (DIK), yet genuine Wisdom (W) feels scarcer than ever.
The Nomad Investment Partnership recognized this long before the age of infinite scrolls. They viewed frequent reporting — daily, weekly, even monthly — as “counterproductive.” Why? Because constant communication breeds what they called the say-something syndrome: the pressure to sound smart when there’s not much to say.
Robert Pirsig understood this too. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he warns that for every fact, there are “an infinity of hypotheses.” The more you look, the more you see — and soon, you see everything and understand nothing.
Nassim Taleb called this the Noise Bottleneck: “The more data you get, the less you know what’s going on,” because noise scales faster than signal.
The solution isn’t to consume more data — it’s to subtract. As Pirsig reminds us, truth emerges when we “look within ourselves.”
The Financial Takeaway
Wisdom sits at the apex of the DIKW pyramid. It’s not the accumulation of data but the discernment to act rightly with the data you have.
Clarity comes from subtraction, not addition. Remove noise, distractions, and unnecessary motion — what truly matters will reveal itself.
If it won’t matter in five years, don’t give it more than five minutes of attention.
Read less, re-read more. Don’t just process ideas — possess them.
Better one great book you fully understand than a thousand headlines you instantly forget.
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