Naval treats conventional wisdom as intellectual poison that clouds clear thinking. “Conventional wisdom is always wrong” becomes his compressed truth about capital allocation and value creation. This connects to his obsession with first-principles reasoning: conventional wisdom prevents seeing reality clearly.
The pattern repeats across industries through continuous iteration. “Before Microsoft came along, it was believed that the money was in hardware, not in software. Before Apple… it was believed the money was in mainframes and enterprise and not in consumer”. Each breakthrough builder possessed rare domain expertise that made conventional wisdom obsolete. They applied massive leverage to contrarian insights, creating exponential returns.
“Anything that becomes conventional wisdom in this business gets blown up” means rules become traps that misalign incentive structures. Naval learned this through owning his mistakes: following venture capital’s conventional wisdom meant missing asymmetric bets on the best founders. This damaged his track record until he developed high agency thinking.
This reveals how mass media shapes manufactured desires. Best-sellers optimize for social validation, not truth. They feed external scoreboards that trap readers in conventional thinking.
“If you really wanted to be successful, happy… you’re looking for a non-average outcome. You can’t be reading the average things”. Your intellectual diet determines your mental models, which determine your financial outcomes. Popular books create copycat behavior that destroys unique positioning.
“Social approval is inside the herd. If you want social approval, definitely go read what the herd is reading”. But “the returns in life are being out of the herd”. This reflects evolutionary programming: our tribal instincts optimize for group survival, not individual wealth. Breaking free requires game theory thinking: choosing positive-sum games over status competition.
“It takes a level of contrarianism in saying, ‘Nope. I’m just going to do my own thing, regardless of the social outcome’“. This requires moral courage and ownership of beliefs. The path to discovering truth runs through social rejection. Naval chose this path early by taking responsibility for his intellectual independence.
“Does being happy make you less successful? That is conventional wisdom”. Even inner peace gets corrupted by conventional assumptions about grinding and suffering. Naval’s approach through daily practice proves that freedom from desire actually enhances clear judgment, creating better outcomes than anxious striving.