Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi is the mathematician Charlie Munger credits for the maxim at the heart of his talk Charlie Munger — Practical Thought About Practical Thought. Munger’s Third Notion of effective thought is Jacobi’s dictum “Invert, always invert” — solve hard problems backward, by figuring out what you want to avoid. Munger returns to Jacobi at the close of the talk, arguing that institutions like the University of Chicago keep their best values alive by “thinking in reverse” the way Charles Darwin did, so that “silly educational practices will eventually be replaced by better ones, exactly as Carl Jacobi might have predicted.” The reference anchors Munger’s broader doctrine of Inversion.

Context: Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) was a German mathematician known for foundational work on elliptic functions, determinants (the Jacobian), and dynamics; his advice to invert difficult problems is frequently cited by Munger as a thinking discipline.

Where this appears

• Charlie Munger — Practical Thought About Practical Thought — source of the talk’s Third Notion, “Invert, always invert,” and the closing image of thinking in reverse like Darwin.