Socrates once said, "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing." When Munger and Buffett discussed their circle of competence, they emphasized that they know what they know and, most importantly, they know what they do not know.

Munger has spent his life identifying the traps in human nature and life, enabling him to consciously avoid them. What truly harms us is often not what we know we don't know but what we don't know we don't know. For the things we are aware of our ignorance, we can rely on the wisdom of others. This requires both self-awareness and the ability to understand others. As for the things we don't even know we are ignorant of, we must humbly accept that everything is subject to change at any time. The best we can do is prepare for the worst in advance while remaining humble and grateful when good things happen.

Self-awareness and understanding others are essentially the same skill, and the key lies in empathy. By reflecting on ourselves through the circumstances of others, we can gain a deeper understanding of our weaknesses and attachments. When we truly know ourselves, we can more quickly judge whether we should continue interacting with someone under certain circumstances. Learning self-awareness and understanding others is a process of shedding and acquiring - letting go of some things to discover others. If we keep failing to find what we are looking for, it is often because we are searching within the boundaries of the known. But what defines these "boundaries"? If they are defined by what we don't know we don't know, then perhaps the way forward is to abandon our current systems of understanding and approach new things.

"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it."― Albert Einstein