[FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Jan 19 23:54:04 EST 2017
Robert -
>
> Being open-minded does not mean you are brainwashed. Quite the
> opposite I would think ...
I don't know if this is responsive to your specific intent, but when I
first heard it, it was a powerful point and fit *way* too many people I
know who *purport* to be "open minded" (after all, who actually *claims*
to be otherwise?).
/"Having an open mind, means just about anyone can pour just about
anything into it!"
/
I find (too) often that people use the phrase "be open minded" as a jeer
or an intimidation tactic meaning something more like "If you refuse to
believe what I do, you are being close-minded". I *especially* find
this happening among Trump supporters right now. But it also happens
among my stronger conspiracy-theorist friends (who are, surprise,
Trumpians!)... those who start with "fouride in the water is a gubbmin't
mind-control plot" and tend to end up somewhere around "We are all
descended from Atlanteans who were really aliens who gene-spliced in our
special form of intelligence and other hidden powers most people can't
access, because they don't believe!"
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com
> <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>
> "The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated
> and disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving
> rise to the resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto
> distribution of wealth versus population. It certainly does seem
> like an increasing biasing of the metaphorical /fair /coin [e.g.,
> the busted "trickle down" metaphor of President Ronald Reagan]."
>
>
> I think it depends in part on the source of the wealth and how it
> is used. There's a qualitative difference between a Google and a
> payday loan company that preys on the poor. Are these wealthy
> people creating new high-paying jobs or locking-in people to
> dead-end jobs like coal mining? Do they have a vision of
> advancement of humanity (Gates) or just a unnecessary assertion of
> the `need' for a lowest-common-denominator dog-eat-dog view of
> things? How does their wealth and power matter in the long run?
> It is at least good that there isn't just one kind of
> billionaire, like the sort that destroys the environment and
> enslaves people.
>
>
> A problem with government is that the agency it gives people is
> either very limited (you get food stamps so you can eat), or it is
> also hierarchical like these enterprises (you don't get much
> agency unless you fight your way up or are an elected official).
> For people to truly be free means creating a commons that
> facilitates other kinds of motivators that are rewarding in more
> complex ways than just salary or status. Universities don't
> really deliver on this, except perhaps for some professors who are
> in that world for most of their adult life.
>
>
> I would say neoliberalism is trying to engineer biased coins that
> land in a coordinated ways to build something more complex. One
> way is with trade laws.
>
>
> Marcus
>
>
> P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet. Of course, they'd
> have their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Robert Wall
> <wallrobert7 at gmail.com <mailto:wallrobert7 at gmail.com>>
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 19, 2017 4:57:14 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
> This is just an exploratory thought piece to try in this forum ...
> please skip if it seems, right off the bat, as being too
> thought-full ... 😴😊
>
> Does *Pareto's Principle
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle> *(with the
> attending, so-called Power Law
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law>) provide good
> _moral_ justification for an amped-up progressive tax strategy or
> a reverse-discriminating set of rebalancing policies [e.g.,
> changing the probabilities for the "everyman"]? And, is the
> argument one of *morality *or one of *necessity*? That's what
> this thread and the subject /Nautilus /article intend to explore,
> especially with the events that will begin the next four years
> tomorrow.
>
> /Nautilus/: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
> <http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-talent?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaign=f5f998a451-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc96ec7a9d-f5f998a451-56531089> (January
> 19, 2017).
>
> /The surprising message of the statistics of wealth
> distribution./
>
>
> /I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
> swift, nor the battle to the strong, /
> /neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of
> understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, /
> /but time and chance happeneth to them all./(Ecclesiastes 9:11)
>
>
> [*an introductory aside*: As computational statisticians, we love
> our simulations ... and our coin tosses. 😎 We are always mindful
> of *bias *... as, say, apparent with the ever-widening wealth gap.
> Money, Money, Money
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0> ...] 😊
>
> Inline image 1
>
>
> So, as described in the subject /Nautilus /article, Pareto's
> Principle, descriptively seen so often in nature, seems to imply
> that the current widening wealth gap is, well, "natural?" Judging
> by its prevalence in most all rich societies, it does seem so.
> However, remembering that this sorting process works even with
> /fair /coin tosses in investments and gambling, this process
> phenomenon with its biased outcomes seems to occur in many places
> and on many levels ...
>
> For example, we find this aspect of /luck in nature/ elsewhere in
> biological processes; from /Wikipedia /... /Chance and Necessity:
> Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology/ is a 1970 book
> by Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of
> evolution to show that life is only the result of natural
> processes by "pure chance." The basic tenet of this book is that
> systems in nature with molecular biology, such as enzymatic
> biofeedback loops [/metabolisms/] can be explained without having
> to invoke final causality [e.g., Intelligent Design].
>
> Usually, relatively very few winners and many, many losers.
> Phenotypical luck or luck in tectonic location?
>
> According to the introduction the book's title was inspired by
> a line attributed to Democritus
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus>, "Everything
> existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity."
>
>
> But, is there a /necessity /to Pareto's Principle? To answer this
> I must defer to my theoretical mathematician friends who so often
> look to Plato for such answers. 🤔😊 My thought is that the
> necessity comes from a need to, perhaps teleologically, react to
> it ... as the planet's only available potential intelligent
> designers ... the purpose being, on some scale, Darwinian-level
> survival.
>
> And, this aspect of /fate by chance/ is also reasoned in the
> Pulitzer-winning/ Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human
> Societies is a 1997/, a transdisciplinary non-fiction book by
> Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the
> University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
>
>
> The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations
> (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others,
> while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due
> to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent
> genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and
> technology between human societies originate primarily in
> environmental differences, which are amplified by various
> positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences
> have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the
> development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic
> diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because
> of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for
> example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different
> cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.
> [Wikipedia]
>
>
> The luck of geography. So then, should the more fortunate nations
> be more progressively taxed? Maybe we should ask Greece? Or see
> what Germany has to say? Followers of egalitarianism would argue
> yes. Followers of Ayn Rand's capitalism or her Objectivism [like
> Speaker Paul Ryan] would argue no. I think most of the rest of us
> fall somewhere in between; that is, not sure. So, let's go on ...
>
> *Is the (economic) game rigged* then, as Bernie Sanders and
> Elizabeth Warren have insisted? Personally, I would say absolutely
> yes, and *neoliberalism *is the underlying philosophy of the
> rigging process
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9wUGxgEFsw> [hear just the 1st
> 12 minutes, if you watch]. But, maybe this political ideology is
> just one that is eventually spawned by a conspicuous need for
> moralistic or even Randian justification, by the winners, for its
> resulting destructiveness--as we so often hear, "wealth
> accumulation is based on hard work and talent." So, intelligent
> design?
>
> The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and
> disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise
> to the resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of
> wealth versus population. It certainly does seem like an
> increasing biasing of the metaphorical /fair /coin [e.g., the
> busted "trickle down" metaphor of President Ronald Reagan].
>
> Going forward, maybe we need to think about this neoliberal meme
> as the next four years, with a* President Donald Trump*, begin
> tomorrow ... while also remembering that *morality *is a human
> concept or "invention." Or is it?Or, does that even matter?!
> Perhaps, morality is just a necessity ... but what are its goals
> ... dare I say its "purpose?" When did it emerge? With
> consciousness? How did it emerge? By chance, as Monad and
> Democritus would insist?
> *
> *
> *_Conjecture_*: *It would seem that morality's human purpose is to
> check, slow, or rebalance the effects of the Pareto phenomenon in
> social and economic processes.* Wealth has always been
> disproportionately distributed. Surely, just like the "selfish
> gene," morality arose out of self-interest; so it arose with
> prerequisite consciousness and *not *necessarily just with human
> consciousness [e.g., we see evidence of "morality" in other
> primate social systems]. As a system model, neoliberalism is
> connected with a positive feedback loop to morality and with a
> negative feedback loop to social stability. I think that there is
> a tipping-point distribution of wealth versus population
> <https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-02-04/is-inequality-approaching-a-tipping-point->.
> *_
> _*
> *_Conclusion_*: The above conjecture is borne up by chance and
> necessity. The necessity is manifested by the need to rebalance
> the outcomes of the game [e.g., wealth or opportunity] every now
> and then, in order to ensure social stability. This just seems
> like a brain-dead conclusion that even Warren Buffet and Bill
> Gates get. But will Trump? Strong critics of Hillary Clinton
> imply that she, like her husband, would surely have strengthened
> the negative feedback effect of neoliberalism toward their own
> self-interest and toward worsening social stability, IMHO. The
> results of the November election are a kind of testament to this
> conclusion. In an unexpected way, we may have a /chance /with
> Trump to bring even more /necessary /awareness to the
> aforementioned system model that has often played out in human
> history and as recounted in Jared Diamond's book-length essays.
> Bernie-style revolution? Perhaps.
>
> So, that is the idea of how /chance /and /necessity /fits here in
> "the game.". Now, let's dig into this idea of *morality *a bit
> more and how it fits in with the need for a different kind of
> evolution, not biological, but *conscious evolution*:
>
> This comment from a /Quora /article on this subject titled Is
> morality merely a social construct or something more?
> <https://www.quora.com/Is-morality-merely-a-social-construct-or-something-more> is
> notable:
>
> Mindaugas Kuprionis
> <https://www.quora.com/profile/Mindaugas-Kuprionis>, works
> at CERN
>
> Written 17 Sep 2010
> <https://www.quora.com/Is-morality-merely-a-social-construct-or-something-more/answer/Mindaugas-Kuprionis>
>
>
> Just recently Edge.org <https://www.edge.org/>held a
> conference titled "The New Science of Morality
> <https://www.edge.org/event/the-new-science-of-morality>".
> Consensus statement signed by several scholars (list
> below) was such:
>
>
> 1) Morality is a natural phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon
>
> 2) Many of the psychological building blocks of morality
> are innate
>
> 3) Moral judgments are often made intuitively, with little
> deliberation or conscious weighing of evidence and
> alternatives
>
> 4) Conscious moral reasoning plays multiple roles in our
> moral lives
>
> 5) Moral judgments and values are often at odds with
> actual behavior
>
> 6) Many areas of the brain are recruited for moral
> cognition, yet there is no "moral center" in the brain
>
> 7) Morality varies across individuals and cultures
>
> 8) Moral systems support human flourishing, to varying
> degrees [aside-- so morality may be akin to metabolic
> systems at the level of society --regulating feedback
> loops of sorts]
>
> [*aside*-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky's /Crime and Punishment
> /comes to mind. Under this eight-point new science,
> how would we judge the "higher-purpose" actions of
> Rodion Raskolnikov?]
>
>
> So if it is true that there is no distributional *purpose *to
> l/uck /other than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleonomy> sorting mechanism of
> outcomes in accordance with a Power Law, then should there be a
> /necessary/, periodic re-sorting of the initial conditions now
> skewed by /chance /... like with a deck of cards before the next
> deal ...? 🤔 All poker players would insist on no less. Don't we
> all insist on a /fair /game? It's an interesting question, IMHO.
> Yes, I know; lots to unpack here. Sorry. Nonetheless, I thought
> the /Nautilus /article was quite thought-provoking as they always
> seem to be.
> Cheers,
>
> -Robert
>
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