Rory Sutherland shares a fascinating anecdote about a couple in their mid-fifties who found themselves in a fortunate financial situation after selling their flats and owning a mortgage-free house in west London worth over £1 million. The husband, originally from Norfolk, wanted to move back to a larger and more beautiful country home costing half the price, allowing them to bank £500,000 in tax-free profits and retire early. However, his wife, a lifelong Londoner, refused to leave the city. This dilemma serves as a perfect example of the ‘inversion’ technique practiced by the late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man. Munger’s mantra was ‘Always invert,’ which involves considering the mirror image of any decision. Sutherland applies this technique to air fryer sceptics who dismiss it as ‘just a small convection oven.’ He argues that a convection oven is merely a needlessly large and inefficient air fryer, as the need to cook large birds like swans or ostriches is rare. Sutherland then challenges electric car sceptics to imagine a parallel universe where all cars are electric, and a rogue German engineer invents the internal combustion engine. In this thought experiment, the internal combustion engine would be seen as a peculiar innovation, much like electric car sceptics view electric vehicles today. By inverting our perspective, we can gain new insights into our preferences and biases.
