The third helpful notion is that it is not enough to think problems through forward. You must also think in reverse, much like the rustic who wanted … - Charlie Munger

The best armour of old age is a well spent life preceding it.

Fourth, in filling scarce academic vacancies, professors of superstrong, passionate political ideology, whether on the left or right, should usually be avoided. So also for students. Best-form multidisciplinarity requires an objectivity such passionate people have lost, and a difficult synthesis is not likely to be achieved by minds in ideological fetters. In our day, some Harvard Law professors could and did point to a wonderful example of just such ideology-based folly. This, of course, was the law school at Yale, which was then viewed by many at Harvard as trying to improve legal education by importing a particular political ideology as a dominant factor.

The first helpful notion is that it is usually best to simplify problems by deciding big no-brainer questions first. The second helpful notion mimics Galileo’s50 conclusion that scientific reality is often revealed only by math as if math was the language of God.