Methods for Rational Decision-Making | 5Y View

五源资本五源资本·July 14, 2023

Keep your thinking free from noise.

How do we make scientific decisions? We often think we can judge things clearly, but in reality, irrational factors in our brains are constantly interfering without us noticing. Is there a methodology for rational decision-making?

This article is excerpted from Guy Spier's book The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment. In 2007, Spier won a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett. He later distilled the conversation and Buffett's influence on his investing and life into this book.

In this piece, he shares a series of experiences and methods about how to build an environment suited to yourself — one that enables more rational decision-making. I hope you find it enlightening :)

Excerpted from The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment

By Guy Spier | Translated by Li Shaoming and Li Chao

One of the biggest problems all investors face is that too many external forces disrupt our thinking. We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures — and to some extent we are, but the reality is questionable. So-called professionals, myself included, are by no means immune to these mind-disrupting distractions.

The mind itself is a muddled thing, unfortunately tasked with investing. This book is not a popular science book, nor a tome on brain structure, but it is absolutely worth spending time thinking about why this is the case.

The Brain Is Not as Rational as We Imagine

People often have a misconception that the brain has only one structure — the cerebral cortex — which rationally absorbs and processes information before arriving at an answer. Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the 2002 Nobel Prize, uses the term "slow thinking" to describe this brain process. For my part, I used to delude myself into imagining I was a fighter pilot, closely monitoring the instrument panels in the cockpit, making optimal decisions, fully in control of all the aircraft's equilibrium.

Most of what we do at many good universities is designed to cultivate this rational, high-level thinking in our consciousness. The problem is that there is also an irrational, intuitive part of the brain — Kahneman uses "fast thinking" to describe this process, and in fact, most of our decisions are made this way.

Reading the works of many experts in behavioral finance and neuroeconomics, I became obsessed with people's strange, complex decision-making processes. For example, neurologist Benjamin Libet tells us that the brain completes the act of decision-making even before we become aware of it. Then there's the famous 19th-century case of Phineas Gage, who suffered an accident that affected normal function in half his brain; he appeared completely normal but could no longer make rational decisions.

Equally fascinating to me was research showing how the brain processes signals arriving at different times: for instance, the signal of a person's lip movements reaches the brain instantly, while the sound they produce arrives later, yet we perceive these signals as simultaneous. In other words, our brains construct our reality rather than precisely reflecting it.

This research helped me recognize that the brain is not as easy to manipulate as we imagine. One of the biggest problems in participating in the securities market is that the irrational part of the brain can trigger terrifying emotional fluctuations, including outbursts of irrational optimism and irrational pessimism. Of course, matters concerning money often activate the "irrational" part of our brains. When financial risks intensify and we feel ourselves in danger, our irrational intuition gets activated, and then the cerebral cortex rationalizes that decision.

To understand our nature as humans, it's also useful to consider the environment in which we evolved. Roughly speaking, anatomically modern humans with larger brains have existed for about 200,000 years. The most recently evolved part of our brain is the rational neocortex. But for most of human evolutionary history, we lived in very different environments. Many of our brain's cognitive structures evolved to help our ancestors survive in the wilderness, living by hunting and gathering. These primitive survival modes are deeply embedded in our brains and easily bypass the neocortex.

We might all like to imagine ourselves as rational beings like Isaac Newton, but it's dangerous to forget the other side of our nature. Moreover, Newton himself was a notoriously poor investor — given that he lost his life savings in the 1720 South Sea Bubble in Britain, he would have been better off exiting early. As Newton sarcastically remarked: "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

The Economy Is a Complex, Dynamic System

The problem is not just that our brains are highly irrational, but also that the way the economic world operates is staggeringly complex. The advanced economic theory I studied at Oxford and Harvard led me to ignore this terrifying complexity. A few years after I began investing, fund manager Nick Sleep recommended the Santa Fe Institute to me — an interdisciplinary research institution. I knew that Bill Miller, the famous fund manager at Legg Mason, was a trustee there. So I began reading some of their research papers.

One key idea I learned was to view the economy as a complex, dynamic system. Economists hate this concept because we can't model complex dynamic systems or deploy the mathematics we've learned to manage them. We also gravitate toward striking, harmonious, difficult-to-learn ideas like general equilibrium theory. This theory provides an excellent normative framework for explaining how the world should operate, which may be a useful guide for policymakers. But in practice, it disrupts our intuition.

Encyclopedic investors like Bill Miller and Charlie Munger quickly recognized that these standard models of the economic world don't adequately reflect market reality — biological models may be better. Inspired by the Santa Fe Institute, I read The Ants by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson. Most of the book is devoted to describing the different survival strategies used by ant species, exploring how these different species co-evolved and competed with each other. This single book taught me more about economics than I learned in several years at university. It sounds a bit crazy, but it's true. Because an ant colony, like the economic world, is a complex, dynamic system. Ant colonies have a set of basic operating rules that enable them to solve countless survival problems.

I had always thought I was looking for useful models to help me analyze the financial and economic world. I thought of Munger and his latticework of mental models, so I sent him a copy of The Ants. To my delight, he sent back a brief handwritten note saying he had long wanted to read it. At the same time, I began making a greater effort to read biology books. This research deepened my intuition and helped me see the economy as an ever-evolving, infinitely complex ecosystem. Companies are like ant populations — they must adopt certain strategies to thrive, or else face extinction.

I soon discovered that complexity research in other fields also offered models that could help us understand how the economic world operates. For example, Danish theoretical physicist Per Bak conducted a classic sandpile study, showing what happens when you keep adding sand to one location. Eventually, the sandpile reaches a "self-organized critical state," after which collapses occur, but the exact timing or shape of these collapses cannot be predicted. This model provides us with an intuitive scenario for observing market crashes — there are many parallels between the two types of collapse. For investors, the bottom line is to avoid this self-organized critical danger zone.

The key point is that the perfect economic theory I learned at university doesn't so accurately describe the true complexity of the economy or financial markets. At the same time, I also recognized that our brain's capabilities seem woefully inadequate when facing this extreme complexity.

For investors, this imbalance is a serious problem. This is our predicament — with somewhat irrational brains and oversimplified economic theory, how can we expect to figure out this incredibly complex world? Where is our opportunity? Is there any way to improve our chances of success in this difficult game?

In my view, the real challenge lies in the brain itself — it brought us to our current situation — it is the weakest link. It's like a small boat, drifting on an irrational sea,随时可能遭遇不期而至的暴风雨. And even the smartest neurologists can't fully understand it, let alone investors.

When I began studying behavioral finance and neuroeconomics, I felt a sense of excitement, as if I were exploring the deepest secrets of how the brain works and how it malfunctions. But initially, I mistakenly thought I could overcome these irrational tendencies through sheer mental effort. As I read about the brain's weaknesses, I would nod smugly to myself, encouraging myself that since I now knew where these mental tripwires were, I wouldn't get caught by them anymore. But I gradually discovered that intellectual knowledge and self-vigilance are far from sufficient. The difficulty is that we cannot use the brain to transcend the brain. So even if we know these weaknesses in our thinking, they remain the most vulnerable link.

So how should we solve this problem? I hope that by sharing what I've learned so far, I can be of help to you.

A Series of Practical Methods to Avoid Our Own Cognitive Traps

Through painful experience, I discovered that it's not easy to completely驱逐错误假设进行理性思考. Instead, I found that my only advantage as an investor lies in my humble recognition of how imperfect my brain is. Once I accepted this, I could design a series of practical solutions based on vigilance toward my own mental minefields.

As it happens, this minefield may be particularly dangerous in my case. Around 2004, a friend who taught at Mount Sinai School of Medicine invited me to take an anonymous test administered by his colleague Mary Solanto. The test concluded that I had attention deficit disorder. The test showed that I can sometimes concentrate intensely, particularly under pressure, but in ordinary life situations, I'm equally prone to attention traps. I can come up with great ideas, but my attention shifts too easily, causing me to lose track of basic things — like frequently forgetting the time or where I put my keys.

To address my attention deficit disorder, I needed to design a set of simple solutions — for example, installing a large clock in my office to help me keep track of time; keeping my desk tidy to reduce distractions; putting things in fixed locations so I wouldn't constantly misplace them. When hiring a personal assistant, I particularly emphasized that an important part of the job was to supervise me and prevent me from messing up simple things like catching flights, showing up to appointments on time, or closing doors when leaving buildings.

It turned out that all these efforts to build solutions and circuit breakers were beneficial — not only addressing my attention deficit disorder but also helping me become a better investor. In fact, all of our minds have shortcomings, though yours may differ greatly from mine. With this awareness, I began to recognize how important it is for investors to create a favorable environment for themselves, overcoming their cognitive shortcomings, quirks, and irrational tendencies.

After moving to Zurich, I invested considerable energy in creating an ideal investment environment for myself — one in which I could act more rationally. The goal was not to become smarter, but to build a better environment where my brain would be less troubled by extreme distractions and disruptions, which exacerbate my irrationality. For me, this was a life-changing idea. I hope that here I can invest more impartially, because it fundamentally improved my investment approach while also bringing me a happier, more tranquil life.

The financial crisis made it unmistakably clear that controlling the irrational factors in my brain had to become an indispensable part of managing my securities portfolio. It also highlighted how difficult I found this to achieve in Manhattan. We're subject to all kinds of distractions, and in New York, the restless energy, competitive spirit, and vast wealth amplified certain irrational tendencies of my own that are detrimental to good investing. I needed to find a place where I wouldn't be under pressure from others' expectations, wouldn't be assaulted by Manhattan's frenetic activity — where I could think peacefully and invest for the long term.

This isn't to say that New York can't serve as a base for any great investor. But I think for someone like me who came to New York from elsewhere, lacking a local foundation and not having the stable emotional footing of a native, it's more difficult to make it a base. For outsiders, it's easy to become unbalanced by unrestrained desires — including greed and envy — which financial centers like New York and London readily provoke.

Borrowing a classic formulation from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, these major cities are all "Extremistan." As we've seen in many studies, the difference between our own wealth and that of our neighbors largely determines our happiness. If so, seeing a New York-based billionaire like Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group might trigger unstable reactions in my irrational brain. Unless we have powerful methods to deal with these mind-distorting forces, we cannot avoid having our progress disrupted by them.

At least for me, living somewhere less extreme seemed wiser. Given my pile of flaws and vulnerabilities, I thought it would suit me better to live in what Taleb calls "Mediocristan" — a more ordinary life — where I could act more rationally.

So I began actively considering leaving Manhattan. For a while, I seriously considered moving to Omaha, because Buffett had done so well there. I also considered Irvine, California, where Mohnish lives. I considered other relatively small American cities like Boston, Grand Rapids, and Boulder. I even considered very low-key European cities like Munich, Lyon, Nice, Geneva, and Oxford.

But in the end, Lory and I chose Zurich. I had visited often as a child and always loved it. More recently, I had seen studies that typically rank Zurich among the cities with the highest quality of life in the world. The reasons aren't hard to explore. The city is compact, safe, modest in scale but beautifully built, with clean air and water, and top-tier infrastructure. It has excellent public schools, is just minutes from beautiful mountains and wonderful ski slopes, and has an outstanding airport quickly accessible from the city center.

Although Zurich is expensive to live in, it remains a highly egalitarian city because everyone there can more or less access the same things — from pristine lakes to public swimming pools that are better than the private pool at the fancy country club I belonged to in upstate New York. Similarly, Zurich's public transportation system is unmatched; it's so efficient that local billionaires use it. The rich don't live in worlds inaccessible to ordinary people, a reality that reduces the envy and sense of deprivation so easily felt in cities like New York and London.

I don't mean to say Zurich is perfect, but it had another quality that moved me: it's built on trust. For example, in the railway system, tickets are rarely checked, and there are no automatic turnstiles. In shops, customers generally buy wine and other goods on credit, with stores delivering the merchandise and invoice to their homes. Residents are part of this trustworthy network, which also brings them the greatest benefit. To some extent, this is life as Buffett sees it. Buffett treats the managers in his company with tremendous trust, giving them the power to make autonomous decisions, and in return, they do everything to live up to his expectations.

Willpower Is a Limited Resource and Must Be Used Carefully

Zurich also appealed to me because it's a place where one can live with a tranquil mind — quiet, comfortable, an environment with not too much going on, slightly plain. Here, I can focus on my family and fund without disturbance. Sometimes people ask me, "But isn't it boring there?" My answer is: "Boredom is good. As an investor, that's exactly the life I want." Because distraction is a real problem. What I really need is an unexciting, simple, unremarkable background environment. And I'm certainly not the first to discover that Zurich is conducive to clear thinking. Historically, this city has provided a venue for free thought, home to Carl Jung, James Joyce, Richard Wagner, Lenin, and Albert Einstein, not to mention someone like Tina Turner.

In Zurich, I'm not surrounded by people from investment firms, which is also important. This makes it easy to think independently without worrying that their ideas will seep into my own thinking. Zurich is off everyone's beaten path, so not too many people come to visit me; my closest friends and relatives do, but I don't have to spend much time maintaining less important relationships in my life. This may sound somewhat cold, but these are things that need to be considered when building an environment suited to one's particular personality. After all, my move to Zurich was an opportunity to start fresh, putting into practice what I had learned about how to act more effectively. I didn't want to mess it up.

Then, I began searching for the perfect office — another key element of my new environment. At first, I made a mistake, renting an office on Bahnhofstrasse for a year, that beautiful street that is Zurich's own "Extremistan." It was a premium area, full of expensive shops. But such top-tier wealthy environments aren't my ideal setting, because they stimulate unhealthy desires in me. So I quickly decided to move to another office across the river, a fifteen-minute walk from Bahnhofstrasse's glamour and temptation. For me, this felt like a safe distance.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has shown that willpower is a limited resource, so we must be careful not to exhaust it. In fact, his laboratory found that even resisting the temptation of chocolate chip cookies reduces people's willpower in subsequent tasks. Based on my experience, I don't want to waste limited energy resisting potential feelings of envy and greed, and Bahnhofstrasse is a place that provokes both emotions. The better approach is to build an environment suited to me that protects me from these harmful external influences. The key is to free my mind from all unnecessary mental exertion so I can devote my energy to more meaningful tasks.

As I thought about these issues, I also began to recognize that other investors I admire, whether intentionally or not, have taken similar approaches in crafting their environments. Take Mohnish, for instance — his office is in an ordinary office park in Southern California, with no financial institutions nearby. I once asked him why he didn't locate in Irvine's bustling commercial center, finding a more attractive office next to his favorite hotel. "Oh, Guy," he replied, "I don't need that kind of noise!" I was absolutely certain that he understood the influence of surroundings on his thinking.

Similarly, Seth Klarman, one of the world's most successful investors, works in a low-key, quiet location in Boston, far from Wall Street's frenzy. If he wanted, he could easily rent the top floor of a skyscraper overlooking the Charles River. Nick Sleep located his London office next to a Cornish pasty shop on King's Road, far from luxurious Mayfair, despite that being the holy land where British hedge funds congregate. Allan Mecham of Arlington Value Capital works from a modest office in San Francisco, equally distant from that city's financial district. And Buffett, as we know, made his mark at Kiewit Plaza in Omaha — a building that has never been known for its bustle.

This common characteristic of these investors, though not given much attention, I consider an important and significant factor in their success. So it's hardly surprising that I wanted to create my own version of Omaha.

The Most Striking Feature of His Office Was How Little There Was to Disrupt His Thinking

I'm not like Buffett — and not just in IQ. For example, I care about having a pleasing view from my office, while he doesn't bother with such aesthetic details. In fact, I often lean out to look at trees or similar beautiful scenery outside, while he pays no attention to this during office hours. But in many other ways, I deliberately emulate the environment he created in Omaha. For instance, Buffett's home is about a ten-minute drive from his office, far from downtown. Mohnish's office in Irvine is similarly about ten minutes from home, also away from the city center. Following their example, I chose an office far from downtown — a twenty-minute walk home, or seven minutes by tram. For me, being away from downtown has benefits, partly because it greatly reduces the number of people who drop by casually. Visitors need a stronger reason to make the effort to come, so their visits are more valuable.

These practices are the result of careful deliberation. For example, Mohnish and I once specifically discussed commute times, concluding that the ideal commute should be between ten and twenty minutes. Such a distance is close enough to enhance one's quality of life, but far enough to effectively separate work and family. For someone like me with high work stress, this separation is important. We need to take care of our families, spend time at home, rather than being completely submerged in work. For the same reason, cultivating some hobbies is also important. Among leisure activities, I enjoy running and skiing — they not only make me healthier and happier, but also clear my mind, keeping me above emotions and market fluctuations. If I spent all my time in the office, single-mindedly analyzing stocks, I'm certain my decisions and investment returns would suffer from the impact on my health and family life.

In any case, everything is interconnected. My original intention in creating a better environment was to improve returns. But these decisions brought me a better life.

When in the office, I was equally deliberate about creating a better environment to help me overcome my stubborn nerves and operate rationally and efficiently. I also realized that the internet and email could lure me into distraction. To overcome this problem and help myself stay focused, I divided my office into two parts. At one end of the hallway is my "office," with a telephone, a computer, and four monitors. But I placed the computer and monitors on an adjustable-height desk, which I generally keep raised so that I have to stand to use them. Replying to email is low-brainwork that easily leads to long immersion. So I deliberately arranged the desk this way to prevent myself from sitting at the computer. This may seem unfriendly, but my goal was to create a space in the office where I could think quietly and calmly. Small details like adjusting the computer's position help accumulate opportunities for me.

At the other end of the hallway is a room I call the library. There is no telephone, no computer. I wanted to encourage myself to spend more time sitting and thinking, so this room is arranged to be warm and comfortable. I can bring a stack of financial files to study here, or pick a book from the shelves along the wall to read carefully. If I close the door, it means no one is allowed to disturb me. This library also serves as a rest room. Coincidentally, Mohnish also naps in his office, and Buffett told us that his office has a place for a quick snooze as well. This isn't laziness — or at least, not entirely! A brief nap during the day keeps the mind clear, filters out noise, and provides an opportunity to reboot the system.

Though these may seem like trivial matters, even your office's decor style matters. Think of Oxford University, where the dining halls hang portraits of distinguished alumni. To some extent, their presence sends a motivational signal to current students. In a similar way, I placed a bronze statue of Charlie Munger in my office. I don't worship him as a god, but I hope his presence will inspire me — or at least remind me of the 24 standard causes of human misjudgment he identified in his speech at Harvard. Similarly, I've placed photos of Mohnish, Buffett, and me having lunch together in both my office and library.

I can't explain this on a strictly scientific level. But I feel that this mimetic neural mechanism helps us emulate great figures in life. Imagining Munger and Buffett in my office, I subconsciously let them influence my thinking, striving to gain an advantage in the game. I think this is a very common phenomenon. When I toured Winston Churchill's study at Chartwell, I was astonished by the items on his desk, including a bust of Napoleon, a porcelain figurine of Admiral Nelson, and a photograph of South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts. I don't think these were placed merely for decoration. I imagine Churchill may have asked himself at some point what these famous leaders would do in his situation. Religious items like crucifixes can be considered to serve a similar function, providing guidance to devout believers and improving their behavior. Given the power of mimesis, it's important to carefully choose the heroes and role models in our minds.

In my office, I also have photos of my father and some early investors, including some of my father's business partners. This reminds me who I'm working for, so I never forget my responsibility to shareholders. Later, I even considered hiring a photographer to take black-and-white photos of all my investors.

About a year after our charity lunch, Warren Buffett generously invited Mohnish and me to visit his office in Omaha. I was keen to see how he arranged his environment to reinforce his capacity for rational decision-making. Perhaps the most striking feature of his office was how little there was to disrupt his thinking. He has only two chairs, no place for large meetings — a practice that discourages unnecessary communication. His blinds are closed, presumably to help him concentrate on the work at hand.

On the wall behind his desk, Buffett hung a photo of his father, Howard Buffett, whom he admired. In Roger Lowenstein's biography of Buffett, Howard is described as a "stubbornly ethical" congressman who "refused invitations to junkets, even partially self-financed ones. During his first term, when congressional salaries rose from $10,000 to $12,500, Howard left the raise in the Capitol cashier's office, insisting that he had been elected at the lower salary." It's not hard to see his influence on Buffett, whose modest salary for running Berkshire reflects a similar selfless integrity. Beyond this, the photo also reminds us how beneficial it is to incorporate images of our role models when crafting our own work environments.

As for Buffett's desk, it's so small that it can't hold any clutter, forcing him to read with focus and efficiency. Above his desk, there's a box labeled "TOO HARD" — this visible item reminds him of the obvious great investment opportunities he's waiting for, like a two-foot putt in golf. His "TOO HARD" box label has a playful element, but it must also subtly influence his way of thinking. Of course, if Buffett didn't have a brilliant mind, these cues wouldn't help much. But that someone as extraordinarily intelligent as he also needs a box like this on his desk to keep his thinking on track — that's quite interesting. To me, this shows a very humble attitude toward his own capabilities.

I also noticed that there was no Bloomberg terminal in Buffett's office. Presumably, there is one somewhere else in the building, used by one of Berkshire's portfolio managers. Buffett can use it whenever he wants, but he deliberately doesn't keep this information faucet within arm's reach.

Similarly, when visiting Nick Sleep's London office, I was curious to find that he had placed his Bloomberg terminal in a very awkward position, accessible only by sitting on an uncomfortable low stool. Like Buffett, he deliberately designed his work environment to discourage himself from using this terminal that costs over $20,000 a year in rent. Why do this? After all, a continuous stream of information must be the lifeblood of all professional investors.

My own relationship with the Bloomberg terminal is similarly conflicted and tormenting. It's a powerful tool, and sometimes I find it useful as a quick channel for obtaining stock data or news. During my years in the New York vortex, it also served the dual function of propping up my self-esteem, making me feel like a privileged member of a club that could afford the most expensive toy; without it, I might not feel equal among my peers. But beyond this foolishness, using the Bloomberg terminal or similar terminals from Reuters or FactSet has a serious downside.

All of these products — especially the coveted, industry-leading Bloomberg terminal — are designed to attract customers with the promise of never-ending information. The terminal continuously floods investors' brains with streams of news and data, making it difficult to apply self-discipline principles to turn off this faucet and focus on what matters most. You can see stocks dancing before your eyes, news alerts straining to summon your attention. Everything is connected to everything else, so you often find yourself dragged deeper and deeper into this information world.

At first, I was completely hooked. In my early years as a fund manager, I would fire up my Bloomberg terminal immediately upon arriving at my Manhattan office. It would light up like a Christmas tree, its bright colors subconsciously spurring the user to action. But as my vigilance increased, I gradually recognized that this summons was of no help to me whatsoever, nor was endless information surfing. I began asking myself, "Is this really the best and highest use of my energy?" If my willpower is limited, how much should I expend resisting the temptation to indulge in this informational candy?

During the financial crisis, I saw more clearly than ever what unhealthy Bloomberg terminal addiction could lead to. The constant stream of bad news easily amplified my irrational tendencies, precisely when I most needed to filter out noise and focus entirely on my portfolio's long-term health. So I suddenly stopped using it completely. During the second half of 2008 and first half of 2009, as markets crashed, I kept my monitors off all day. Another trick I used to distance myself from the Bloomberg terminal was suspending my personal account, though we still had a company account. I also changed the color theme on my monitor's main screen to make it look dull and muted, preventing bright, harsh colors from agitating my irrational brain and minimizing unnecessary erroneous behavior.

When setting up my office in Zurich, I had to decide again how to handle the Bloomberg terminal dilemma. By then, I had grown accustomed to the service. Psychologically, giving it up would feel painful. I also knew it could be very useful at times. But I was equally concerned that its drawbacks outweighed its benefits. So in the end, I made a difficult compromise. I placed it on an adjustable-height desk in my office. In fact, I adjusted the desk height so that I have to stand to use the machine, meaning it would be difficult to be tempted to use it continuously for hours, sinking into unproductive distraction. Now, I often go weeks without turning on the Bloomberg terminal. But when I need it, it's still there — my own expensive version of a toddler's security blanket.

Of course, the rational part of my brain tells me I'd be better off getting rid of the Bloomberg terminal entirely. Why spend $20,000 a year to distract myself? I could do just fine without it. But I accept the reality that I may be wrong. I don't pretend I can be perfectly rational; I find it better to be honest about my irrational side. At least this way, I can take practical measures to help control my irrational self. Perhaps this is the best any of us can do.

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