Thinking in the Age of the Everything Bubble

It has been years since I first read Ernest Dimnet’s The Art of Thinking. For a long time, it sat on the shelf, remembered fondly but not revisited. Then, not long ago, its pages came to mind with surprising clarity. To say that I was “thinking about The Art of Thinking” is either a contradiction or the setup for a comedian’s joke, but the paradox holds a truth. Clear, independent thought is rarer than we like to admit, and when it appears, it sharply contrasts with the borrowed and recycled opinions that dominate most of our daily lives.

Dimnet, a French priest writing in the 1920s, was not a market strategist. He cared little about price-to-earnings ratios or the Federal Reserve. His focus was on the habits of the mind: the tendency to replace our own ideas with others’ words, the comfort we find in repeating what’s fashionable, and how fear prevents us from questioning accepted wisdom. Yet his advice feels perfectly suited for the situation investors face today. We live in what’s called an “everything bubble.” Stocks, bonds, real estate, private equity, venture capital, and perhaps the greatest flight of fancy, not to mention outright chicanery, in modern history—crypto—are all priced for perfection, as if tomorrow will never disappoint. In such a climate, Dimnet’s warnings about borrowed ideas, herd mentality, and mental laziness seem as relevant as they are unwanted. Economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith sagely observed: “In the autumn of 1929 the speculators were in no mood to listen to warnings. They were enjoying a process of enrichment which it would have been ungracious to question.”

Dimnet’s Lessons for Investors

Dimnet wrote that most people do not truly think at all; they merely repeat what they have heard. It is a sobering indictment of human nature, but one that fits modern markets with unnerving precision. Much of what passes for “analysis” today is little more than the consensus dressed in new clothes. Central bankers speak, Wall Street strategists nod, financial journalists amplify the message, and investors quote it back to one another as if repetition were equivalent to insight. Dimnet’s challenge is to step outside that echo chamber and discover what we ourselves believe.

For him, genuine thinking only occurred when he was alone, grappling with ideas without the influence of popular trends. This is clearly applicable to investing. Markets continually pressure individuals to conform—to buy what everyone else is buying, to tell the story everyone else is telling. Thinking independently means risking looks of foolishness, accepting being out of sync, and tolerating the discomfort of silence. However, without that solitude, there’s no space for original judgment.

Clarity was another of Dimnet’s key principles. He believed genuine thought aimed to remove confusion and obscurity. In our world, investors often do the opposite, hiding uncertainty with jargon. We talk about “synergies,” “paradigm shifts,” or “AI transformation,” as if the very words give authority to our claims. Bertrand Russell, a contemporary of Dimnet though from a different background, once said that most people would rather die than think. Investors, it seems, prefer to hide behind complexity rather than state an idea clearly.

And perhaps most importantly, Dimnet believed that genuine thinking required the courage to doubt. It was not sufficient to just repeat what one had heard or to rephrase it in your own words. True thought involves daring to question existing assumptions, even when those assumptions seem safe. Every era has had its slogans: “this time is different,” “the Fed has our back,” “technology will save us.” Each of these has served as a substitute for real thinking, only to be revealed later as fragile reassurance. Doubt, though often unwelcome, is the discipline that guards us from confusing a story with reality.

The Everything Bubble as a Case Study

What we are experiencing today is not simply high valuations but the reinforcing machinery that sustains them. Speculative impulses are magnified by feedback loops of affirmation, and disbelief is suspended in favor of optimism. Risk aversion has gone quiet, and markets reward cheerleading more than doubt. It isn’t that rationality has vanished altogether, but that it is being drowned out by borrowed ideas.

Financial media, research reports, and social platforms reinforce each other in a continuous cycle of affirmation. The repetitive volume creates the illusion of truth. Dimnet’s warning that we confuse hearing with thinking has never been more relevant. In such an environment, it’s not stupidity that blocks independent judgment but fear: fear of exclusion, fear of missing out, and fear of being wrong alone. Questioning the prevailing optimism risks ridicule or, worse, underperformance.

Silence, which Dimnet believed was essential for reflection, is nearly impossible to find in today’s markets. The ticker never pauses. Headlines and alerts flow nonstop. The constant noise leaves little room to question whether the optimism is justified. Yet, it is precisely that quiet, that ability to step back from the flow, that separates the investor from the speculator. Without it, we are swept up by the crowd and mistake it for thought.

Practicing the Art of Thinking in Investing

How, then, might an investor practice Dimnet’s art? It starts with solitude. Time away from screens and feeds is not a luxury but a necessity. To reread one’s own investment theses quietly, to ask whether the logic still holds, is the closest we get to hearing our own voice amid the noise.

It requires skeptical inquiry. Every story is based on assumptions, and those assumptions need to be tested. Will earnings truly grow fast enough to justify today’s valuations? Are central banks truly all-powerful? Does enthusiasm for artificial intelligence reflect lasting economic change, or just the latest human hope? Asking these questions is not about claiming certainty but about recognizing uncertainty, and that’s the start of real thinking.

It also requires humility. Dimnet encouraged his readers to recognize their intellectual shortcomings. Investors, too, must acknowledge their vulnerability to confirmation bias, their comfort in following the herd, and their tendency to confuse noise with knowledge. Independent thought is not about feeling superior but about honestly recognizing our own limits.

And it requires courage. Standing apart is rarely easy. Contrarianism for its own sake is just contrivance, but real independence often takes us away from the crowd. When that happens, the strong urge is to go back to the comfort of consensus. Dimnet would remind us that resisting that urge is the essence of thinking.

A Russellian Echo

It is no coincidence that reading Dimnet reminds me of Bertrand Russell. Although one was a priest and the other a skeptic, both promoted mental freedom as the cure for conformity. Russell argued that the fear of being wrong—or of social disapproval—hinders true inquiry. Dimnet provided practical steps to overcome that fear. They came from different traditions but reached a similar conclusion: thinking takes courage.

A Paradigm Shift: The Investor as a Thinker

The “everything bubble” may end with a bang or a whimper; history will determine when. What is within our control is not the outcome but the quality of our thinking. Dimnet reminds us that genuine thinking is both rare and essential. Russell reminds us that most people will go to great lengths to avoid it. Together, they remind us that in markets flooded with repetition, jargon, and fear of exclusion, the disciplined investor must do what few others will: pause, reflect, and think.

The tragedy of most lives, Dimnet once wrote, is not that they fail to reach their goals, but that they never pause long enough to ask whether those goals are worth reaching. In investing, the tragedy is similar. Without the skill of thinking, we risk confusing speculation with wisdom and bubbles with wealth. Dimnet offers no market forecast, but something far more lasting: the reminder that the rarest—and perhaps the most profitable—commodity in finance is independent thought.