Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
 
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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 (with the attending, so-called 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.
[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 ...] 😊 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?
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 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 [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. 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:
So if it is true that there is no distributional purpose to luck other than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic 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 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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"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 <[hidden email]> on behalf of Robert Wall <[hidden email]>
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 (with the attending, so-called 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.
[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 ...] 😊
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?
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 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 [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.
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:
So if it is true that there is no distributional purpose to luck other than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic 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
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Robert Wall
"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."
It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that one cannot optimize multiple objectives at once, e.g. their own good and the common good. It is not even hypocritical. The fact is that it takes money and power to change things, so they went out and got some. No, she should have been a nun, but the Donald can swoop down with his kleptocrat friends and do god knows what..
Marcus From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Robert Wall <[hidden email]>
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 (with the attending, so-called 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.
[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 ...] 😊
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?
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 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 [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.
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:
So if it is true that there is no distributional purpose to luck other than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic 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
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet. Of course, they'd have their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power. I think you should try to understand it before you castigate it as Russian propaganda. I know it is popular in the MSM to press this canard--as the MSM is dying--but did you think what was presented in the clip I posted as being anything like Russian propaganda ... something Putin would want us to realize as if we didn't already realize it? Do you think Al Jazeera is also not worth listening to either? Given the fake news coming from our own MSM, more and more folks are looking elsewhere ... to alternative viewpoints, even if foreign ... and even if funded by our current bogeyman. As I hear it told, Putin has very little to say about the journalistic content of RT. The same is said of Rupert Murdoch's influence over our own Wall Street Journal. Let's look closer at Fox "News," MSNBC, CNN, etc. I thought the Columbia Journalism Review of RT--What Is Russia Today?--was a reasonable accounting of this alternative news outlet. They provide a worldview from their own perspective. If we want to understand this country better instead of just using them to generate fear in the US in order to promote a domestically destructive neoliberal agenda, then I submit that this is a good resource for that. Being open-minded does not mean you are brainwashed. Quite the opposite I would think ... On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Robert -
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!"
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that Hillary Clinton? RT? Though the initial response you gave seemed to be on topic or near it, regretfully, you seemed to have gotten side-tracked by other things in my prose about it. And so, to me at least, you seem to be cherry-picking things of no consequence here to the topic. I guess that's okay, but I don't think I want to go there with you at the risk of being side-tracked myself. Perhaps these could be the subject of another thread? I can join you there for a more detailed response. To be sure, this particular thread is about whether or not massive wealth or disproportionate global prosperity is earned or achieved mostly by luck. It is about neoliberalism as an excuse by those who benefit for the continuance of the current trends in the ever-widening wealth gap, not only in this country but in others as well. How do Trade Agreements fit into this? Could this be a prequel to a dangerous tipping point towards the instability of a society? At least that is what I intended to convey. On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 9:28 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Robert Wall
"Do you think Al Jazeera is also not worth listening to either?"
I used to watch it more, not so much lately. I got the impression that the English version was not representative. I don't think it is directly comparable to RT. Lately Der Spiegel is relevant to my concerns, and the Guardian. I would say that "from a perspective" is going to be a sort of persuasion, if not outright propaganda. That's why I like reading Mother
Jones too. I know what their `perspective' is. I'm less thrilled with outlets that try to be all things to all people. Really we need a reporters that act more like intelligence agents. Like diplomatic immunity or similar.
From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Robert Wall <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 9:41:01 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet. Of course, they'd have their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power.
I think you should try to understand it before you castigate it as Russian propaganda. I know it is popular in the MSM to press this canard--as the MSM is dying--but did you think what was presented in the clip I posted as being anything like Russian propaganda
... something Putin would want us to realize as if we didn't already realize it? Do you think
Al Jazeera is also not worth listening to either? Given the fake news coming from our own MSM, more and more folks are looking elsewhere ... to alternative viewpoints, even if foreign ... and even if funded by our current bogeyman. As I hear
it told, Putin has very little to say about the journalistic content of RT. The same is said of Rupert Murdoch's influence over our own
Wall Street Journal. Let's look closer at Fox "News," MSNBC, CNN, etc.
I thought the Columbia Journalism Review of RT--What Is Russia Today?--was a reasonable accounting of this alternative news outlet. They provide a worldview
from their own perspective. If we want to understand this country better instead of just using them to generate fear in the US in order to promote a domestically destructive neoliberal agenda, then I submit that this is a good resource for that.
Being open-minded does not mean you are brainwashed. Quite the opposite I would think ...
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels
<[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
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.  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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Robert Wall
"To be sure, this particular thread is about whether or not massive wealth or disproportionate global prosperity is earned or achieved mostly by luck. "
Smart or stupid, hard-working or lazy, we are physics. There is no `earning' anything. I was just making the distinction about how much self awareness there is once that distribution of
wealth exists. If there is self awareness of the accident of their good circumstance in some very wealthy individuals, does that ever get used to create productive social systems in a more efficient way than if there is a more uniform distribution of wealth?
How is productive quantified? One reason rich neoliberals might control their wealth would be because their subjective understanding of the world, and the actions they would take based on that understanding, seemed more likely to work to them, moreso than
what might happen if they just gave it away and tried to advocate their vision in the hopes of getting adoption. That is, they didn't `earn' the money, but they happened to be in the right place and the right time with the right amount of intelligence.
So they make a company and colonize Mars or whatever.
Marcus From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Robert Wall <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 10:15:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent It is a double standard and a failure of imagination to think that
Hillary Clinton? RT? Though the initial response you gave seemed to be on topic or near it, regretfully, you seemed to have gotten side-tracked by other things in my prose about it. And so, to me at least, you seem to be cherry-picking things of no consequence
here to the topic. I guess that's okay, but I don't think I want to go there with you at the risk of being side-tracked myself. Perhaps these could be the subject of another thread? I can join you there for a more detailed response.
To be sure, this particular thread is about whether or not massive wealth or disproportionate global prosperity is earned or achieved mostly by luck. It is about neoliberalism as an excuse by those who benefit for the continuance of the current trends in the
ever-widening wealth gap, not only in this country but in others as well. How do Trade Agreements fit into this? Could this be a prequel to a dangerous tipping point towards the instability of a society? At least that is what I intended to convey.
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 9:28 PM, Marcus Daniels
<[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
I am with you there Marcus. We all have to decide where the truth lies (no pun intended). 😊 Listing to multiple news sources is the best way when one has the time to do it. I have at least a dozen go-to news sources that all seem to provide different, if not conflicting points of view. I don't listen to RT exclusively or even predominately, but I haven't gotten a direct sense of any "propaganda" as such. But, it's tough to say that it doesn't exist. It exists everywhere. Multiple points of view ... Cheers On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 10:22 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Robert Wall
Robert - I think I was mostly just being a deliberate curmudgeon. I am
afraid that public discourse has gotten rather layered, and my
point was just one of *many* examples of the way we deliberately
delude ourselves (and one another). Some have all but used up
ideas like "Truth" and "Open Mindnedness" by trying to co-opt it. I am very leery of *all* news sources myself. I have had the (mis)fortune of having a number of Right-Wingnut friends and family who seem to be completely duped by the Rhetoric of the Right that make claims for their news such as "No Spin" when at best their spin is the anti-spin of the mainstream Lefties. And the whole rhetoric of "fact based", and now another layer with "fake news". Anything *I* don't agree with is probably 'fake news', and anything I believe in is "fact based", etc. ad nauseum. I am a fairly practiced "critical thinker", or at least a "knee jerk" critical thinker in the sense that I can often recognize Hooey, even when it supports my own pet theories. THAT seems to be the largest enemy to proper critical thinking... a variation on confirmation bias... And *all* media seems to cash in on that. They basically "tell us what we want to hear", even if it appears "shocking" on the surface. Being "shocked" seems to be a popular form of entertainment these days.
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're
uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Good morning Marcus, I didn't give you a fair reply to this particular post; I got distracted myself by the RT thing. 😊 I will try to make amends here ... The Nautilus article--including my response to it--is about the "secret sauce" to massive wealth. The author's surprising conclusion after doing multiple stochastic simulations is that it is predominantly luck that accounts for success even after treating the experiment for talent.
So I guess Moshe Levy, the author, has been looking at this for a while. So, he wonders that if the secret sauce is just luck, then shouldn't we "tax" the lucky in a way to rebalance the game? It is an interesting question for a hypothetical, non-intuitive result: the massively wealthy are massively lucky ... by virtue of the way they accrued their wealth. [an aside: using the Buddhist concept of dependent arising, in this context, one can never say "I did this all by myself."] If you are a dyed in the wool capitalist you would likely recoil from such a suggestion; you would say that "these personal gains are due to an individual's hard work and talent ... we don't want to tax these virtues as it would provide a disincentive and bring the whole enterprise to a screeching halt." So the luck hypothesis seems to turn this argument on its head. Moshe also squeezes in another "snarky" bit about the massively wealthy being able to avoid hard work and just live off of their investments. That just leaves talent or skill, which we are told he treats for in his experiment. Your idea, it seems, is that the answer to Moshe's wonder is that what anyone does about the wealth gap should depend on how one actually uses their wealth. Let's call this the use argument. Do they, for example, use their wealth for improving society or for separating themselves from the same and living in their own gilded bubble? [Please note that the thread's issue is with personal wealth and not corporate profits, leaving Google and payday loan institutions on the sidelines for the moment.] Risking to make your point a little better, in this case, I would have juxtaposed Bill Gates with the owners of WalMart, the family that owns as much wealth as the bottom 42% of all Americans combined. And, the latter entity will not even consider paying a living wage to its employees such that the American taxpayer do not have to pick up the tab for the rest. Bill and Malinda Gates are well-regarded philanthropists. So okay; which one should be "taxed" more? I am not really in favor of using taxes as the sole way of righting the ship. We have to also provide other ways for the 99% to earn their own way on their own steam, as it were.“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” as Reagan is famous for saying. But I would amend Reagan's First Innaguaral insight by saying that a large or growing governemnt is just a symptom of the problem. The problem with government is that there is too much demand for it. If you ensure a living wage and provide for economic opportunities for all Americans there would be less demand for government. Moreover, the American economy would have more viable consumers and less social dependency. The New Deal was all about this kind of fix to an ailing economy, which was also due in some part to a grossly exaggerated wealth gap. But this is something the capitalist failed to do themselves at that time. 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. I think I can partly agree with this statement ... about the biased coin thing. That is the rigging, IMHO; by not making adjustments to the flow of wealth [akin to blood flow in a body] the system gets sicker and sicker. Our economic system is arguably sick now when you consider the body composed of constituents comprising the consumers in the system [the cells, keeping with the metaphor]. To be sure, government does not have to be the institution making the adjustments; the captains if industry should do this first to avoid any necessary government intervention. Just like you say that there are differences in billionaires, there are differences in trade agreements. IMHO, the trade agreemets like NAFTA and TPP help to perpetuate the neoliberal status quo with the multi-national companies being the exclusive beneficiaries and the American worker [and society] being the ultimate loser. We might look at this with a biological metaphor, say, the KT-extinction event, which percipitated a structural evolution allowing only the strong members to survive--strong for that niche, to be sure. This would be in keeping with the former neoliberal trope: "We make money the old fashion way; we earn it." [Remember that commercial in the early eighties with John Houseman ... who played Contract Law Professor Charles Kingsfield Jr. in the TV series The Paper Chase? 😎 ] But, do we want to "live" in a world like that? Or, can we evolve consciously as a society to find a more inclusive solution? If it plays out as it has throughout history, the anser will be "not likely." I mean this hope could be bordering on complete naïveté, calling for a universal Kumbayah moment. Yes? 😕 But let's go on ... Neoliberalism is now well-established in American politics, especially with the SCOTUS' Citizens United decision. Just another symptom. The "blood" has mostly gone to the head. It will take a revolution like the Arab Spring, IMHO. Not a Kumbayah moment! As the Pareto distribution of wealth versus population continues to skew more, this will ultimately reach a tipping point ... and revolution will become more and more likely even in this country. And, I didn't learn that at RT. 😁 [an aside: Capitalism requires some skew to the wealth versus population distribution in order for there to be incentive--the engine for such a market-based system ... and a very good system when resources are intelligently managed to not be wasteful--it's biggest arguable hit for the health of the planet. I get that, just like Kurt Vonnegut did in his Breakfast of Champions (1973). Capitalism is like gambling and investments. There has to be sufficient likelihood of winning.] As I watch the Inaguaration this morning and the mounting resistant to a Trump presidency, I see an irony unfolding that suggests that maybe half of America believe that the American economic situation could be different with a different election result. Neoliberalism--not the Russians--has effectively uncoupled those events. The root of the problem is neoliberalism itself, IMHO. Yikes! I am kind of sounding like Reagan who ushhered in neoliberalism in the country thirty-five years ago. 🤔 🤐 Sorry. Neoliberalism is a whole 'nother, different thread. I hope this is a better response Marcus ... Cheers, Robert On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Thanks, Steve for your detailed response on open-mindedness. I think we are agreed on what was meant and about critical thinking--something this society needs much more of, in order to keep the media honest. As a critical thinker (wannabe?), I am more interested in the *question* than the *answer*. It's the Socratic way and the underlying process to a so-called Socrates Cafe, which is what a thread-oriented forum--like FRIAM--usually promotes with good effect. I "feel your pain" with respect to determining fact-based truth from today's Fourth Estate. It has been argued that the Fourth Estate has sold out (literally) to corporatism. Now we have the Fifth Estate--the bloggers and such--keeping an eye out on the former and for fake news. The former is arguably dying and the latter is emergent, but with no code of ethics to guide the purchase. The former--predominately the MSM--freely castigates any news source other than from among their own too-often colluding colleagues. The former fears the latter, especially since the barriers to entry are so low, comparatively. The truth somehow gets lost in all of this. I think that using a multi-source strategy can help and then calibrating on which is reliable. Still not easy to do when even "official" stories turn out to be faked for a hidden agenda: "Yes, Mr. President. It is a slam dunk that Iraq has WMD." I am glad to have found the FRIAM forum--thanks to Steven Guerin--as it so often has an array of viewpoints that come from a variety of learned backgrounds and borne up by interpretations from a variety of news sources. In spite of these differences, the forum threads remain very congenial toward exploring a variety of contemporary topics. I wanted to respond to the original subject of the thread which I apprehend as the question of pre-determination vs. free will. But that was too hard of a "good question". That's an interesting way of putting it. But, I see the original topic as a question of skill or talent versus luck in the game of economic strategies. Pre-determined would be associated with the idea that sufficient skill will bring reliable economic gain. The corollary is that if you do not win, you are not skilled enough and therefore not as valuable to society. This is the underlying concept in Human Capital: Labor conceptually turned into Capital, such that education and training are not represented in the cost of goods sold (COGS). That is up to each individual to make themselves more valuable to the consumers of human capital: the capitalists. It sounds reasonable on the face of it, but it has the tendency to sort society in the same way as luck does in the investment game. I think you are associating the free will thing, then, with luck ... or, better, non-determinism. Free will is certainly about choices, but it is the source driving the outcome of those choices that is of interest to the original subject. Is is skill or chance ... with just the illusion of free-will being at play? The Nautilus article is suggesting that we delude ourselves into thinking that we had anything skill-wise to do with the outcomes. This is not an intuitive conclusion. But, if true, shouldn't it affect the way we regard any tax policy or each economic policy that affects access to possible prosperity for individuals--adjusting the probabilities of the game? In the context of the Human Capital trope, access to effective education and training could be where we would look to "taxing" the lucky to benefit the "unlucky." Who should do this: the public or private institutions operating on public infrastructure? It's a thinker, especially since multi-nationals are the big players these days ... that was the gist of the RT segment. Cheers, Robert On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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