Always Invert
Larry Walters always wanted to fly. When he was old enough, he joined the Air Force, but he could not see well enough to become a pilot. After he was discharged from the military, he would often sit in his backyard watching jets fly overhead, dreaming about flying and scheming about how to get into the sky. On July 2, 1982, the San Pedro, California trucker finally set out to accomplish his dream. Because the story has been told in a variety of ways over a variety of media outlets, it is impossible to know precisely what happened but, as a police officer commented later, “It wasn’t a highly scientific expedition.”
Larry conceived his “act of American ingenuity” while sitting outside in his “extremely comfortable” Sears lawn chair. He purchased weather balloons from an Army-Navy surplus store, tied them to his tethered Sears chair and filled the four-foot diameter balloons with helium. Then, after packing sandwiches, Miller Lite, a CB radio, a camera, a pellet gun, and 30 one-pound jugs of water for ballast – but without a seatbelt – he climbed into his makeshift craft, dubbed “Inspiration I.” His plan, such as it was, called for him to float lazily above the rooftops at about 30 feet for a while, pounding beers, and then to use the pellet gun to explode the balloons one-by-one so he could float to the ground.
But when the last cord that tethered the craft to his Jeep snapped, Walters and his lawn chair did not rise lazily into the sky. Larry shot up to an altitude of about three miles (higher than a Cessna can go), yanked by the lift of 45 helium balloons holding 33 cubic feet of helium each. He did not dare shoot any of the balloons because he feared that he might unbalance the load and fall. So he slowly drifted along, cold and frightened, in his lawn chair, with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He eventually crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX. A flustered TWA pilot spotted Larry and radioed the tower that he was passing a guy in a lawn chair with a gun at 16,000 feet.
Eventually Larry conjured up the nerve to shoot several balloons before accidentally dropping his pellet gun overboard. The shooting did the trick and Larry descended toward Long Beach, until the dangling tethers got caught in a power line, causing an electrical blackout in the neighborhood below. Fortunately, Walters was able to climb to the ground safely from there.
The Long Beach Police Department and federal authorities were waiting. Regional safety inspector Neal Savoy said, “We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot’s license, we’d suspend that. But he doesn’t.” As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter asked Larry why he had undertaken his mission. The answer was simple and poignant. “A man can’t just sit around,” he said.
In one of the more glaringly obvious observations of all-time, it is safe to say that Larry’s decision-making process was more than a bit flawed. The Bonehead Club of Dallas awarded him its top prize – Bonehead of the Year – but he only earned an honorable mention from the Darwin Awards people, presumably because, even though things did not turn out exactly as he planned (another glaringly obvious observation), he was incredibly lucky and his flight did not end in disaster. Among his many errors, Larry did not follow the inversion principle popularized in the investment world by Charlie Munger. Charlie borrowed this highly useful idea from the great 19th Century German mathematician Carl Jacobi, who created this helpful approach for improving your decision-making process.
Invert, always invert (“man muss immer umkehren”)....MUCH MORE
Jacobi believed that the solution for many difficult problems could be found if the problems were expressed in the inverse – by working or thinking backwards. As Munger has explained, “Invert. Always invert. Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead – through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die, that is, so I don’t go there.” Charlie’s partner, Warren Buffett, makes a similar point: “Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.”
As in most matters, we would do well to emulate Charlie. But what does that mean?
