2007: Are some questions too imporport to be put into the "too hard" pile?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon, Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger. My name is Robert Piton (PH), and I’m from Chicago, Illinois.

Over your careers, has there been any question, either personally or professionally, that you haven’t been able to get a comfortable answer to that you cannot simply put in your “too difficult” pile? Thank you.

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, sure. You get —

WARREN BUFFETT: You may have just asked one. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Sure. If you’ve got a child dying of some horrible disease, you have a problem you can’t just put in a “too difficult” pile.

So there are lots of things in life that come to you that you — where you have no option to not consider the issue.

But where it’s voluntary, like choosing one investment from many, then the “too difficult” pile is a marvelous way of sifting your daily grist.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. I have a file on my desk — Laura Graham gave it to me — that’s entitled “too hard.” And, as Charlie said, if something is optional and it’s too hard, you just throw it in there.

If you’ve got the problems of weapons of mass destruction, it is too hard, but you have to keep wrestling with it. Because if you even reduce the probabilities a tiny bit, you know, you’re doing something. But you’re never going to solve it.

You just have to keep working at certain types of problems, and you hope you don’t have too many like that.