— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) February 24, 2020
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
February 24, 2020
February 10, 2020
Powerful concepts of understanding the world by @G_S_Bhogal
Causal Reductionism: Things rarely happen for just 1 reason. Usually, outcomes result from many causes conspiring together. But our minds cannot process such a complex arrangement, so we tend to ascribe outcomes to single causes, reducing the web of causality to a mere thread.
Emergence: When many simple objects interact with each other, they can form a system that has qualities that the objects themselves don’t. Examples: neurons creating consciousness, traders creating the stock-market, simple mathematical rules creating “living” patterns.
Cultural Parasitism: An ideology parasitizes the mind, changing the host’s behavior so they spread it to other people. Therefore, a successful ideology (the only kind we hear about) is not configured to be true; it is configured only to be easily transmitted and easily believed.
Cumulative Error: Mistakes grow. Beliefs are built on beliefs, so one wrong thought can snowball into a delusional worldview. Likewise, as an inaccuracy is reposted on the web, more is added to it, creating fake news. In our networked age, cumulative errors are the norm.
Simpson’s Paradox: A trend can appear in groups of data but disappear when these groups are combined. This effect can easily be exploited by limiting a dataset so that it shows exactly what one wants it to show. Thus: beware of even the strongest correlations.
Woozle Effect: An article makes a claim without evidence, is then cited by another, which is cited by another, and so on, until the range of citations creates the impression that the claim has evidence, when really all articles are citing the same uncorroborated source.
Emergence: When many simple objects interact with each other, they can form a system that has qualities that the objects themselves don’t. Examples: neurons creating consciousness, traders creating the stock-market, simple mathematical rules creating “living” patterns.
Cultural Parasitism: An ideology parasitizes the mind, changing the host’s behavior so they spread it to other people. Therefore, a successful ideology (the only kind we hear about) is not configured to be true; it is configured only to be easily transmitted and easily believed.
Cumulative Error: Mistakes grow. Beliefs are built on beliefs, so one wrong thought can snowball into a delusional worldview. Likewise, as an inaccuracy is reposted on the web, more is added to it, creating fake news. In our networked age, cumulative errors are the norm.
Survivorship Bias: We overemphasize the examples that pass a visibility threshold e.g. our understanding of serial killers is based on the ones who got caught. Equally, news is only news if it’s an exception rather than the rule, but since it’s what we see we treat it as the rule
Simpson’s Paradox: A trend can appear in groups of data but disappear when these groups are combined. This effect can easily be exploited by limiting a dataset so that it shows exactly what one wants it to show. Thus: beware of even the strongest correlations.
Focusing Illusion: Nothing is ever as important as what you’re thinking about while you’re thinking about it. E.g. worrying about a thing makes the thing being worried about seem worse than it is. As Marcus Aurelius observed, “We suffer more often in imagination that in reality.”
Belief Bias: Arguments we'd normally reject for being idiotic suddenly seem perfectly logical if they lead to conclusions we approve of. In other words, we judge an argument’s strength not by how strongly it supports the conclusion but by how strongly *we* support the conclusion.
Woozle Effect: An article makes a claim without evidence, is then cited by another, which is cited by another, and so on, until the range of citations creates the impression that the claim has evidence, when really all articles are citing the same uncorroborated source.
Tocqueville Paradox: As the living standards in a society rise, the people’s expectations of the society rise with it. The rise in expectations eventually surpasses the rise in living standards, inevitably resulting in disaffection (and sometimes populist uprisings).
Read more at https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1225561131122597896
Read more at https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1225561131122597896
October 23, 2019
June 12, 2019
Classic case of "Trump Derangement Syndrome"
This is when you start getting hysterical or hallucinating of terrible events in the future.
Note that the guy making the comment has nothing to lose if he is wrong... be very careful of such people who give this kind of advice.
Note that the guy making the comment has nothing to lose if he is wrong... be very careful of such people who give this kind of advice.
"If he loses... he won't go. I've been saying that since before he got elected."— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) June 12, 2019
"Real Time" host Bill Maher warns @ChrisCuomo that President Trump may not leave the White House is he loses the presidential election in 2020, saying it's something we have to worry about. pic.twitter.com/znTRm3yyO7
February 25, 2019
November 30, 2018
Climate change scientists - Intellectual yet Idiots
The classic intellectual-yet-idiot (as @nntaleb calls them). Physicists can tell you exactly where Mars will be on a particular day a hundred years from now, but “climate scientists” have been making inaccurate predictions for decades. https://t.co/6gL4aSqbq4— Brian Almon 🇺🇸 (@brianalmon) November 29, 2018
The Intellectual Yet Idiot
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.
But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.
Read more at https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
Read more at https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
October 15, 2018
A great example of how expectations guide perception
A very clean joke... if you see it differently, the problem is at your end.
October 10, 2018
September 29, 2018
Can you be very, very certain -- and wrong?
"Changing the details of an actual memory is a relatively easy thing to do. And it can happen spontaneously."
Washington (AFP) - US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says he sexually assaulted her decades ago, both say they are convinced their recollections of the past are correct.
But the stories do not match. How can one square the circle?
Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, says it's possible that both are entirely sincere.
Loftus has spent decades researching human memory, and how those memories can change based on suggestion and other factors -- notably in the legal context. She offered the following thoughts to AFP on the Kavanaugh hearings:
- Sincerity -
Q: Is it possible that both witnesses are sincere?
A: "Absolutely. Certainly she came across as very credible and sympathetic, with most people wanting to believe her, and she seems to definitely believe what she is saying.
"He came across very angry and belligerent, and that is to be expected by someone who is convinced that he is being falsely accused.
"If he did do this, and he has no memory of it because it was so long ago, because maybe he was drinking more than usual and he forgot about that, he could honestly believe his denials."
- False memory -
Q: How commonly can a person misremember details of a real event?
A: "That would be very common. When you have an experience, especially a very upsetting experience... you often remember the core of the event -- you know it was an airplane crash and not a huge fire, and you can remember certain core details, but often many of the peripheral details will suffer.
"And then memory changes over the course of retelling with different audiences -- with the exposure to new information, other details can change.
"We have done studies where we show people an accident -- where a car goes through a yield sign and we suggest later it was a stop sign -- and many people will tell us they remember seeing a stop sign.
"Changing the details of an actual memory is a relatively easy thing to do. And it can happen spontaneously."
Read more at https://www.yahoo.com/news/kavanaugh-hearing-very-very-certain-wrong-202229531.html
Washington (AFP) - US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says he sexually assaulted her decades ago, both say they are convinced their recollections of the past are correct.
But the stories do not match. How can one square the circle?
Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, says it's possible that both are entirely sincere.
Loftus has spent decades researching human memory, and how those memories can change based on suggestion and other factors -- notably in the legal context. She offered the following thoughts to AFP on the Kavanaugh hearings:
- Sincerity -
Q: Is it possible that both witnesses are sincere?
A: "Absolutely. Certainly she came across as very credible and sympathetic, with most people wanting to believe her, and she seems to definitely believe what she is saying.
"He came across very angry and belligerent, and that is to be expected by someone who is convinced that he is being falsely accused.
"If he did do this, and he has no memory of it because it was so long ago, because maybe he was drinking more than usual and he forgot about that, he could honestly believe his denials."
- False memory -
Q: How commonly can a person misremember details of a real event?
A: "That would be very common. When you have an experience, especially a very upsetting experience... you often remember the core of the event -- you know it was an airplane crash and not a huge fire, and you can remember certain core details, but often many of the peripheral details will suffer.
"And then memory changes over the course of retelling with different audiences -- with the exposure to new information, other details can change.
"We have done studies where we show people an accident -- where a car goes through a yield sign and we suggest later it was a stop sign -- and many people will tell us they remember seeing a stop sign.
"Changing the details of an actual memory is a relatively easy thing to do. And it can happen spontaneously."
Read more at https://www.yahoo.com/news/kavanaugh-hearing-very-very-certain-wrong-202229531.html
September 28, 2018
What you believe with all your heart is not necessarily the truth
Why would she lie? is not the question. She’s obviously sincere. The question is, Is her memory accurate?— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) September 27, 2018
From Elizabeth Loftus book Witness for the Defense pic.twitter.com/XTUDaMjH5E
July 9, 2018
Nice article: on the importance of solitude and being alone
Almost anything else that controls our life in an unhealthy way finds its root in our realization that we dread the nothingness of nothing. We can’t imagine just being rather than doing. And therefore, we look for entertainment, we seek company, and if those fail, we chase even higher highs.
We ignore the fact that never facing this nothingness is the same as never facing ourselves. And never facing ourselves is why we feel lonely and anxious in spite of being so intimately connected to everything else around us.
Fortunately, there is a solution. The only way to avoid being ruined by this fear — like any fear — is to face it. It’s to let the boredom take you where it wants so you can deal with whatever it is that is really going on with your sense of self. That’s when you’ll hear yourself think, and that’s when you’ll learn to engage the parts of you that are masked by distraction.
Read more at https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-most-important-skill-nobody-taught-you-9b162377ab77
My notes: the ability to do nothing for hours is one of the easiest ways to find inner peace and happiness.
We ignore the fact that never facing this nothingness is the same as never facing ourselves. And never facing ourselves is why we feel lonely and anxious in spite of being so intimately connected to everything else around us.
Fortunately, there is a solution. The only way to avoid being ruined by this fear — like any fear — is to face it. It’s to let the boredom take you where it wants so you can deal with whatever it is that is really going on with your sense of self. That’s when you’ll hear yourself think, and that’s when you’ll learn to engage the parts of you that are masked by distraction.
Read more at https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-most-important-skill-nobody-taught-you-9b162377ab77
My notes: the ability to do nothing for hours is one of the easiest ways to find inner peace and happiness.
June 23, 2018
Pedophrasty, Bigoteering, and Other Modern Scams (read FAKE news)
Pedophrasty: Argument involving children to prop up a rationalization and make the opponent look like an asshole, as people are defenseless and suspend all skepticism in front of suffering children: nobody has the heart to question the authenticity or source of the reporting. Often done with the aid of pictures.
Can also describe the exploitation of babies by professional beggars who rent them from their parents and use them as potent appendage in their trade(remember that children tend to grow and need to be replaced).
Pedophrasty is effective as it provides arguments to strike before the evidence is formed. People are moved into “doing something”.
Pedophrasts prey on our maternal (and paternal) instincts.
Pedophrasty has its most effects on actors, journalists and similar types who are intellectually insecure, deprived of critical judgment, and afraid of being classified as violators of some norm of political correctness. For instance, pedophrasty has been commonly used in the Syrian war by such propagandists as Julian Roepke continuously supplying the German public with pictures of dead children. Or the various lobbies hired by Saudi Barbaria (and allies), such as the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, to promote Sunni Islamist policies under the cover of “think tanks”.
Read more at https://medium.com/incerto/pedophrasty-bigoteering-and-other-modern-scams-c84bd70a29e8
Excellent example:
Can also describe the exploitation of babies by professional beggars who rent them from their parents and use them as potent appendage in their trade(remember that children tend to grow and need to be replaced).
Pedophrasty is effective as it provides arguments to strike before the evidence is formed. People are moved into “doing something”.
Pedophrasts prey on our maternal (and paternal) instincts.
Pedophrasty has its most effects on actors, journalists and similar types who are intellectually insecure, deprived of critical judgment, and afraid of being classified as violators of some norm of political correctness. For instance, pedophrasty has been commonly used in the Syrian war by such propagandists as Julian Roepke continuously supplying the German public with pictures of dead children. Or the various lobbies hired by Saudi Barbaria (and allies), such as the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, to promote Sunni Islamist policies under the cover of “think tanks”.
Read more at https://medium.com/incerto/pedophrasty-bigoteering-and-other-modern-scams-c84bd70a29e8
Excellent example:
The Honduran government has confirmed to Reuters that the crying girl on the TIME cover was never separated from her mother by US authorities https://t.co/WssaVCRvKe pic.twitter.com/1uA4gV5sUD— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 22, 2018
June 19, 2018
This happens in the stock markets only - no where else
This is the story of two investors, neither of whom knew each other, but whose paths crossed in an interesting way.
Grace Groner was orphaned at age 12. She never married. She never had kids. She never drove a car. She lived most of her life alone in a one-bedroom house and worked her whole career as a secretary. She was, by all accounts, a lovely lady. But she lived a humble and quiet life. That made the $7 million she left to charity after her death in 2010 at age 100 all the more confusing. People who knew her asked: Where did Grace get all that money?
But there was no secret. There was no inheritance. Grace took humble savings from a meager salary and enjoyed eighty years of hands-off compounding in the stock market. That was it.
Weeks after Grace died, an unrelated investing story hit the news.
Richard Fuscone, former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch’s Latin America division, declared personal bankruptcy, fighting off foreclosure on two homes, one of which was nearly 20,000 square feet and had a $66,000 a month mortgage. Fuscone was the opposite of Grace Groner; educated at Harvard and University of Chicago, he became so successful in the investment industry that he retired in his 40s to “pursue personal and charitable interests.” But heavy borrowing and illiquid investments did him in. The same year Grace Goner left a veritable fortune to charity, Richard stood before a bankruptcy judge and declared: “I have been devastated by the financial crisis … The only source of liquidity is whatever my wife is able to sell in terms of personal furnishings.”
The purpose of these stories is not to say you should be like Grace and avoid being like Richard. It’s to point out that there is no other field where these stories are even possible.
In what other field does someone with no education, no relevant experience, no resources, and no connections vastly outperform someone with the best education, the most relevant experiences, the best resources and the best connections? There will never be a story of a Grace Groner performing heart surgery better than a Harvard-trained cardiologist. Or building a faster chip than Apple’s engineers. Unthinkable.
But these stories happen in investing.
That’s because investing is not the study of finance. It’s the study of how people behave with money. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. You can’t sum up behavior with formulas to memorize or spreadsheet models to follow. Behavior is inborn, varies by person, is hard to measure, changes over time, and people are prone to deny its existence, especially when describing themselves.
Grace and Richard show that managing money isn’t necessarily about what you know; it’s how you behave. But that’s not how finance is typically taught or discussed. The finance industry talks too much about what to do, and not enough about what happens in your head when you try to do it.
This report describes 20 flaws, biases, and causes of bad behavior I’ve seen pop up often when people deal with money.
Read more at http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-psychology-of-money/
Grace Groner was orphaned at age 12. She never married. She never had kids. She never drove a car. She lived most of her life alone in a one-bedroom house and worked her whole career as a secretary. She was, by all accounts, a lovely lady. But she lived a humble and quiet life. That made the $7 million she left to charity after her death in 2010 at age 100 all the more confusing. People who knew her asked: Where did Grace get all that money?
But there was no secret. There was no inheritance. Grace took humble savings from a meager salary and enjoyed eighty years of hands-off compounding in the stock market. That was it.
Weeks after Grace died, an unrelated investing story hit the news.
Richard Fuscone, former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch’s Latin America division, declared personal bankruptcy, fighting off foreclosure on two homes, one of which was nearly 20,000 square feet and had a $66,000 a month mortgage. Fuscone was the opposite of Grace Groner; educated at Harvard and University of Chicago, he became so successful in the investment industry that he retired in his 40s to “pursue personal and charitable interests.” But heavy borrowing and illiquid investments did him in. The same year Grace Goner left a veritable fortune to charity, Richard stood before a bankruptcy judge and declared: “I have been devastated by the financial crisis … The only source of liquidity is whatever my wife is able to sell in terms of personal furnishings.”
The purpose of these stories is not to say you should be like Grace and avoid being like Richard. It’s to point out that there is no other field where these stories are even possible.
In what other field does someone with no education, no relevant experience, no resources, and no connections vastly outperform someone with the best education, the most relevant experiences, the best resources and the best connections? There will never be a story of a Grace Groner performing heart surgery better than a Harvard-trained cardiologist. Or building a faster chip than Apple’s engineers. Unthinkable.
But these stories happen in investing.
That’s because investing is not the study of finance. It’s the study of how people behave with money. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. You can’t sum up behavior with formulas to memorize or spreadsheet models to follow. Behavior is inborn, varies by person, is hard to measure, changes over time, and people are prone to deny its existence, especially when describing themselves.
Grace and Richard show that managing money isn’t necessarily about what you know; it’s how you behave. But that’s not how finance is typically taught or discussed. The finance industry talks too much about what to do, and not enough about what happens in your head when you try to do it.
This report describes 20 flaws, biases, and causes of bad behavior I’ve seen pop up often when people deal with money.
Read more at http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-psychology-of-money/
May 13, 2018
No one likes to learn... it is too difficult and exhausting
Same thing in stock markets... very few people want to learn ... vast majority is simply comfortable with tips.
Cognitive dissonance explained
Best example - Donald trump winning the election. The mainstream media and intellectuals/ elites were convinced he should not/ cannot win the elections. Yet he won.
What is the way out of this?
Explained in the last para above.
April 28, 2018
April 22, 2018
Nassim Taleb Warns Americans Should "Fear The 2% - The Intellectuals & Politicians"
Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-21/nassim-taleb-warns-americans-should-fear-2-intellectuals-politicians
Skin in the game means you own your own risk. It means people who make decisions in any walk of life should never be insulated from the consequences of those decisions, period. If you’re a helicopter repairman, you should be a helicopter rider. If you decide to invade Iraq, the people who vote for it should have children in the military. And if you’re making economic decisions, you should bear the cost if you’re wrong.
People ask me my forecast for the economy when they should be asking me what I have in my portfolio. Don’t make pronouncements on what could happen in the future if you’re immune from the consequences. In French, they use the same word for wallet and portfolio.
I have never, ever borrowed a penny. So I have zero credit record. No loans, no mortgage, nothing. Ever. When I had no money, I rented. I have an allergy to borrowing and a scorn for people who are in debt, and I don’t hide it. I follow the Romans’ attitude that debtors are not free people.
I carry euros, dollars, and British pounds. What I do with my money is personal. People who say they give it to charity, that’s a no-no in my book. Nobody should ever talk about a charitable act in public.
Better to miss a zillion opportunities than blow up once. I learned this at my first job, from the veteran traders at a New York bank that no longer exists. Most people don’t understand how to handle uncertainty. They shy away from small risks, and without realizing it, they embrace the big, big risk. Businessmen who are consistently successful have the exact opposite attitude: Make all the mistakes you want, just make sure you’re going to be there tomorrow.
Don’t invest any energy in bargaining except when the zeros become large. Lose the small games and save your efforts for the big ones.
There’s nothing wrong with being wrong, so long as you pay the price. A used-car salesman speaks well, they’re convincing, but ultimately, they are benefiting even if someone else is harmed by their advice. A bullshitter is not someone who’s wrong, it’s someone who’s insulated from their mistakes.
What is in his wallet? Euros, dollars, and British pounds.
There is less “skin in the game” today than there was fifty years ago, or even twenty years ago. More people determine the fates of others without having to pay the consequences.
Skin in the game means you own your own risk. It means people who make decisions in any walk of life should never be insulated from the consequences of those decisions, period. If you’re a helicopter repairman, you should be a helicopter rider. If you decide to invade Iraq, the people who vote for it should have children in the military. And if you’re making economic decisions, you should bear the cost if you’re wrong.
Ninety-eight percent of Americans - plumbers, dentists, bus drivers - have skin in the game. We have to worry about the 2 percent - the intellectuals and politicians making the big decisions who don’t have skin in the game and are messing the whole thing up for everybody else. Thirty years ago, the French National Assembly was composed of shop owners, farmers, doctors, veterinarians, and small-town lawyers—people involved in daily activities. Today, it’s entirely composed of professional politicians—people who are just divorced from real life. America is a little better, but we’re heading that way.
Money can’t buy happiness, but the absence of money can cause unhappiness. Money buys freedom: intellectual freedom, freedom to choose who you vote for, to choose what you want to do professionally. But having what I call “fuck you” money requires a huge amount of discipline. The minute you go a penny over, then you lose your freedom again. If money is the cause of your worry, then you have to restructure your life.
The best money I’ve ever spent has been spent on books. The stupidest thing I’ve ever spent money on? Books. Also, I cannot understand why anyone would spend any amount to enhance their social status.
If nobody’s paying my salary, I don’t have to define myself. I find it arrogant to call yourself a philosopher or an intellectual, so I call myself a flaneur and I refuse all honors. As Cato once said, it’s better to be asked why there is no statue in your name than why there is one.
Skin in the game means you own your own risk. It means people who make decisions in any walk of life should never be insulated from the consequences of those decisions, period. If you’re a helicopter repairman, you should be a helicopter rider. If you decide to invade Iraq, the people who vote for it should have children in the military. And if you’re making economic decisions, you should bear the cost if you’re wrong.
People ask me my forecast for the economy when they should be asking me what I have in my portfolio. Don’t make pronouncements on what could happen in the future if you’re immune from the consequences. In French, they use the same word for wallet and portfolio.
I have never, ever borrowed a penny. So I have zero credit record. No loans, no mortgage, nothing. Ever. When I had no money, I rented. I have an allergy to borrowing and a scorn for people who are in debt, and I don’t hide it. I follow the Romans’ attitude that debtors are not free people.
I carry euros, dollars, and British pounds. What I do with my money is personal. People who say they give it to charity, that’s a no-no in my book. Nobody should ever talk about a charitable act in public.
Better to miss a zillion opportunities than blow up once. I learned this at my first job, from the veteran traders at a New York bank that no longer exists. Most people don’t understand how to handle uncertainty. They shy away from small risks, and without realizing it, they embrace the big, big risk. Businessmen who are consistently successful have the exact opposite attitude: Make all the mistakes you want, just make sure you’re going to be there tomorrow.
Don’t invest any energy in bargaining except when the zeros become large. Lose the small games and save your efforts for the big ones.
There’s nothing wrong with being wrong, so long as you pay the price. A used-car salesman speaks well, they’re convincing, but ultimately, they are benefiting even if someone else is harmed by their advice. A bullshitter is not someone who’s wrong, it’s someone who’s insulated from their mistakes.
What is in his wallet? Euros, dollars, and British pounds.
There is less “skin in the game” today than there was fifty years ago, or even twenty years ago. More people determine the fates of others without having to pay the consequences.
Skin in the game means you own your own risk. It means people who make decisions in any walk of life should never be insulated from the consequences of those decisions, period. If you’re a helicopter repairman, you should be a helicopter rider. If you decide to invade Iraq, the people who vote for it should have children in the military. And if you’re making economic decisions, you should bear the cost if you’re wrong.
Ninety-eight percent of Americans - plumbers, dentists, bus drivers - have skin in the game. We have to worry about the 2 percent - the intellectuals and politicians making the big decisions who don’t have skin in the game and are messing the whole thing up for everybody else. Thirty years ago, the French National Assembly was composed of shop owners, farmers, doctors, veterinarians, and small-town lawyers—people involved in daily activities. Today, it’s entirely composed of professional politicians—people who are just divorced from real life. America is a little better, but we’re heading that way.
Money can’t buy happiness, but the absence of money can cause unhappiness. Money buys freedom: intellectual freedom, freedom to choose who you vote for, to choose what you want to do professionally. But having what I call “fuck you” money requires a huge amount of discipline. The minute you go a penny over, then you lose your freedom again. If money is the cause of your worry, then you have to restructure your life.
The best money I’ve ever spent has been spent on books. The stupidest thing I’ve ever spent money on? Books. Also, I cannot understand why anyone would spend any amount to enhance their social status.
If nobody’s paying my salary, I don’t have to define myself. I find it arrogant to call yourself a philosopher or an intellectual, so I call myself a flaneur and I refuse all honors. As Cato once said, it’s better to be asked why there is no statue in your name than why there is one.
April 10, 2018
The Failures of Anti-Trumpism
Over the past year, those of us in the anti-Trump camp have churned out billions of words critiquing the president. The point of this work is to expose the harm President Trump is doing, weaken his support and prevent him from doing worse. And by that standard, the anti-Trump movement is a failure.
We have persuaded no one. Trump’s approval rating is around 40 percent, which is basically unchanged from where it’s been all along.
We have not hindered him. Trump has more power than he did a year ago, not less.
We have not contained him. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is complete. Eighty-nine percent of Republicans now have a positive impression of the man. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 59 percent of Republicans consider themselves more a supporter of Trump than of the Republican Party.
On trade, immigration, entitlement reform, spending, foreign policy, race relations and personal morality, this is Trump’s party, not Reagan’s or anyone else’s.
A lot of us never-Trumpers assumed momentum would be on our side as his scandals and incompetences mounted. It hasn’t turned out that way. I almost never meet a Trump supporter who has become disillusioned. I often meet Republicans who were once ambivalent but who have now joined the Trump train
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/opinion/trump-republicans.html
We have persuaded no one. Trump’s approval rating is around 40 percent, which is basically unchanged from where it’s been all along.
We have not hindered him. Trump has more power than he did a year ago, not less.
We have not contained him. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is complete. Eighty-nine percent of Republicans now have a positive impression of the man. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 59 percent of Republicans consider themselves more a supporter of Trump than of the Republican Party.
On trade, immigration, entitlement reform, spending, foreign policy, race relations and personal morality, this is Trump’s party, not Reagan’s or anyone else’s.
A lot of us never-Trumpers assumed momentum would be on our side as his scandals and incompetences mounted. It hasn’t turned out that way. I almost never meet a Trump supporter who has become disillusioned. I often meet Republicans who were once ambivalent but who have now joined the Trump train
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/opinion/trump-republicans.html
March 30, 2018
My nuclear button is bigger than yours and it works
Hatsoff to US President Donald Trump for bringing N Korea closer to denuclearization.
See the sequence of events... students of psychology will see excellent persuasion skills at play.
See the sequence of events... students of psychology will see excellent persuasion skills at play.
North Korea threatens 'unimaginable' strike on United States
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/.../north-korea-threatens.../779097001/
Oct 19, 2017 - According to a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll published Thursday, a majority ofAmericans (54%) — Republicans and Democrats — view North Korea as the most immediate threat to the country. That represents a shift since July, when 41% of Americans viewed North Korea as the greatest immediate ...Trump threatens to 'destroy North Korea' if necessary | USA News | Al ...
https://www.aljazeera.com/.../trump-threatens-destroy-north-korea-170919140528723...
Sep 19, 2017 - US president expresses hope military action will not be necessary to thwart risk of North Korean nuclear attack. ... gathered in New York, Trump on Tuesday warned that the US would be forced to confront North Korean leader Kim Jong-un if he continued Pyongyang's reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons".March 27, 2018
Are human beings good at judging people? #ScottAdamsSays
We all like to think of ourselves as clever while unable to hold similar views of other people.
Sample these comments by a journalist in the NY Times:
The person being referenced here is none other than the US President Donald Trump.
How the hell can anyone arrive at these conclusions about someone else is something which beats me. This is a classic case of hallucinating or having a bias against someone and then creating content to support those views.
I am not perfect, you are not perfect (we all have our flaws and biases) and out of these imperfections we see the others and the world. Given this, it is difficult for anyone to form a correct view (there is nothing called a correct view actually).
But we still form our own opinions which we hold to be correct while being dismissive about other people who also form their own opinions.
Read complete article at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/opinion/donald-trump-war.html
Sample these comments by a journalist in the NY Times:
Add to his sense of panic his compounding emotional and psychological liabilities: He has an inflated view of his own skills, talents and expertise. He knows only a fraction of what he has convinced himself that he knows.
He prefers casual conversation to literary examination, opting to listen rather than to read, which is both a sign of a severely compromised and restrained intellect and an astounding arrogance about one’s information absorption.
The person being referenced here is none other than the US President Donald Trump.
How the hell can anyone arrive at these conclusions about someone else is something which beats me. This is a classic case of hallucinating or having a bias against someone and then creating content to support those views.
I am not perfect, you are not perfect (we all have our flaws and biases) and out of these imperfections we see the others and the world. Given this, it is difficult for anyone to form a correct view (there is nothing called a correct view actually).
But we still form our own opinions which we hold to be correct while being dismissive about other people who also form their own opinions.
Read complete article at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/opinion/donald-trump-war.html
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