Self-Destructive Conformity or Liberating Truth?

The biggest challenge we face at our firm is contending with the self-destructive aspects of human nature…

Classical economics is predicated on the notion that people are rational beings. Most people believe this is at least approximately true.

After millions of dollars invested in marketing and thousands of conversations with people from every socioeconomic strata, I can tell you this statement is patently false. Regardless of whether you’re dealing with Fortune 500 CEOs, heads of state, or working-class citizens, rationality is the extreme exception—not the rule.

The overwhelming majority of people will choose self-destruction before releasing the false beliefs that drive their self-esteem. In other words, they value their socially-constructed identity more so than their own well-being—and often even more so than their own lives.

Our marketing machine learning algorithms can find only 15,000 or so people across all of Google and LinkedIn users who meet the criteria of truly rational decision makers: people who possess the ability to objectively assess their beliefs and change course in the pursuit of what demonstrably best serves their own stated self-interests.

In short, that means people don’t make decisions based upon objective, fact-based messaging.

This is why most commercial messaging is so blatantly dishonest. It’s designed to appeal to people’s false beliefs, internal narratives, and tribalistic adherences—all various flavors of a visceral drive to conformity. People complain about the dishonesty, but in the aggregate, their wallets send a very different message.

I have dedicated my life to learning and doing what is objectively best. That is the cornerstone of my identify, and Adagio Group is the manifestation of that principle.

In everything we do, we are driven by the belief that truth is more important than conformity.

The way we challenge conformity with truth is by driving advancement in accurate, easy-to-use risk-adjusted performance measurement and accessible asset-class-agnostic financial engineering.

We just happen to create great investments and capitalize deserving asset managers in the process.

It’s the exceptionally rational and impactful few who recognize what we are and what we do—as kindred spirits—that keep us going.

If that’s you, we’d like to have a conversation…