[FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

Fri Jan 20 00:52:09 EST 2017

Hi Steven,

Point taken.  I certainly did not mean it as you warned it could be taken
to imply. By "open minded," I meant being open-minded to *other *points of
view other than those, perhaps, to which we were inculcated by our own
culture.

As you pointed out, I said "Being open-minded does not mean you are
brainwashed.  Quite the opposite I would think ..."  This is what I meant:
open-mindedness =! prone to being brainwashed. [=! means not equal to].  So
listening to alternative points of view, whatever the source, does not lead
to a brainwashing if critical thinking is in force. Oops, now it sounds
like I am saying I am always protected with superb critical thinking. Not
so.  I can be fooled, just like most everyone else.  It's an on-going
process over a lifetime, but not always starting with a blank slate.  Eh?
 🤐

I do realize that openly saying that there is no harm in watching or
listening to a foreign news station such as RT is, perhaps, not a rational
thing to say in today's anti-Russian, anti-immigrant climate.  I can't say
or control what others will assume and only ask that they listen to and
judge the message more than judging the origin of the messenger and where
the listener might have been deluded by such an "open-minded" worldview. 😊

I think I heard it said somewhere, "one man's propaganda is another man's
truth."  Not sure where.

[image: Inline image 1]

To me, being closed minded is to *not *listen to other points of
view--calling it just propaganda--but only to stay within the bounds of
one's own echo-chambered bubble.  Moreover, I think the two kinds of
mindedness are easily differentiated by just listening.  When it comes to
conspiracy theories--like the Russian hacking of the elections--or the
like, you always have to ask, "Where is the evidence?"  And then go from
there ...

Cheers,

Robert

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 9:54 PM, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> 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>
> 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> on behalf of Robert Wall <
>> 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> ...] 😊
>>
>> [image: 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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