Well, that time is upon us again, when private jets rain down on Eppley Airfield by the thousands (hundreds?) and every yuppie-wannabe in the city leverages their entitlement-oozing $4000 worth of Berkshire Hathaway shares to join the absurd spectacle known as "Woodstock for Capitalists". It is quite possible, I would imagine, that a line is already forming outside the Qwest center, 16 hours before the doors open tomorrow morning. Although the desire to access information is understandable, given Buffett and Munger's history of prescience and rationality - you can download a transcript twelve hours later; I'm not sure that I will ever understand the fervent behavior of the herd that pushes through those doors and up the stairs and around the corners leading into the auditorium at high speed, so that they can sit the closest to Warren Buffett, 80 years old, and Charlie Munger, 86 years old, as they talk about market dislocations and risk mitigation and how many Coca-Colas Warren has drank in his lifetime.
In that sense, it is strange that I can find the capacity to complain; I have resented so many times the vapid musical acts that engender similar reactions. Surely, this is what I want, right? Haha, well, hardly. Replace disgust with confusion; I am not healed.
Regardless, I sit here excited for the weekend. We shall see...
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Creation, Creatures, and Consciousness
I have been reading the book "Creation", by Steve Grand - a welcome return to nonfiction - now that there is a final wane in schoolwork volume as graduation approaches. Grand describes a model for artificial life that approaches the task from a novel point of view - a view of the universe as a laboratory for persistent phenomena and emergence. In this way, everything from atoms to ecosystems are really just stages (or levels?) of the same process. His other important diversion from the traditional A.I. blueprint is a better understanding and application of the principles that allow neural networks to function as learning machines (no surprise, through the same principles of emergence, persistence, and patterns of feedback). I'm excited to finish his book and try out the game that he created using his principles - Creatures.
I think that after this book, I will move on in a logical progression to another book I bought years ago (around the same time as Creation): "Consciousness: An Introduction". I have been scared of that book for some time (not wanting to totally remove the sacredness from my childhood universe). But, there is a time for everything, and bravery begets personal growth.
I think that after this book, I will move on in a logical progression to another book I bought years ago (around the same time as Creation): "Consciousness: An Introduction". I have been scared of that book for some time (not wanting to totally remove the sacredness from my childhood universe). But, there is a time for everything, and bravery begets personal growth.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Drama and Recognition
When I'm going to see a movie, I enjoy a good drama. They push some satisfying buttons in us. As with anything that has ever been considered artistic for any length of time (dramas go waaaaay back...), there has spawned a legion of cheap renditions that have become uncomfortably popular.
There was a time when one popular breed of these cheap renditions were called "soap operas". Nowadays, the main audience for soap operas are mainly senior citizens, due to habit and [importantly] to relative expectations and values. To many younger people, they appear silly today. Of course, our way of categorizing things is askew because we "chunk" the data that enters our minds (essentially, we find patterns in it that then trigger a grouped/pre-built recognition and response). If our recognition were not askew, we would see that they had become a moving target because our societal values and expectations have changed. Today, any number of evening television "dramas" appeal to the lowest common denominator through the same mechanism that made soap operas popular years ago. The fact that a soap opera viewed today is not identical to one of these "dramas" is not the point - the point is that their respective relationships to us, in each of their heydays, was/is the same.
They exaggerate people's actions and proclivities. They reduce people's thoughts and actions to simple and associative processes. People are "good" or "bad" for no reason than because they are "good" or "bad". Personality aspects that real people have disappear completely (usually if you can't define a necessary "arc" to the aspect, or a purpose to the storyline, a person will not have the aspect).
Sometimes it makes me laugh. People actually act quite peculiarly, if our yardstick is real human behavior. For instance, witness someone who "seeks revenge" (superhero style, of course) in these shows, and when they do, it is noble and powerful and right. They are ethically compelled to set things right. Uh, yeah.
In real life, when people seek revenge, it is unbearably disturbing to watch, as they first squirm and shrink from fear and belittlement, and then slowly (and in private), they twist their sexual drive into feelings of aggression and hunger which they extinguish in acts of violence, sometimes against the target of revenge and sometimes against an inanimate object nearby. Sometimes, too, their target simply becomes themselves. This is known as masochism. Ironically, television mostly gets masochism right, at least in theory, although the TV ratio of masochists to human beings is approximately 1,000,000 times greater than in the real world. However, I suppose this sort of predisposition is necessary. I don't want to watch television shows about people living empty, banal lives any more than anyone else.
There was a time when one popular breed of these cheap renditions were called "soap operas". Nowadays, the main audience for soap operas are mainly senior citizens, due to habit and [importantly] to relative expectations and values. To many younger people, they appear silly today. Of course, our way of categorizing things is askew because we "chunk" the data that enters our minds (essentially, we find patterns in it that then trigger a grouped/pre-built recognition and response). If our recognition were not askew, we would see that they had become a moving target because our societal values and expectations have changed. Today, any number of evening television "dramas" appeal to the lowest common denominator through the same mechanism that made soap operas popular years ago. The fact that a soap opera viewed today is not identical to one of these "dramas" is not the point - the point is that their respective relationships to us, in each of their heydays, was/is the same.
They exaggerate people's actions and proclivities. They reduce people's thoughts and actions to simple and associative processes. People are "good" or "bad" for no reason than because they are "good" or "bad". Personality aspects that real people have disappear completely (usually if you can't define a necessary "arc" to the aspect, or a purpose to the storyline, a person will not have the aspect).
Sometimes it makes me laugh. People actually act quite peculiarly, if our yardstick is real human behavior. For instance, witness someone who "seeks revenge" (superhero style, of course) in these shows, and when they do, it is noble and powerful and right. They are ethically compelled to set things right. Uh, yeah.
In real life, when people seek revenge, it is unbearably disturbing to watch, as they first squirm and shrink from fear and belittlement, and then slowly (and in private), they twist their sexual drive into feelings of aggression and hunger which they extinguish in acts of violence, sometimes against the target of revenge and sometimes against an inanimate object nearby. Sometimes, too, their target simply becomes themselves. This is known as masochism. Ironically, television mostly gets masochism right, at least in theory, although the TV ratio of masochists to human beings is approximately 1,000,000 times greater than in the real world. However, I suppose this sort of predisposition is necessary. I don't want to watch television shows about people living empty, banal lives any more than anyone else.
On the other hand, I also don't want to watch David Duchovney play a "good guy" who just happens to be addicted to sex and gets into alternately hilarious and adventuresome situations (you know, like having sex with an underage girl) and relies on his wits and heart of gold to escape. Or a woman who decides that selling marijuana is a regrettable but necessary way to pay to raise her kids so that they don't have to move out of their ridiculous yuppie surroundings (heaven forbid; a lower standard of living is like a public execution), and oh my, falls further and further into this unfortunate world. It is telling that these sort of plot outlines could underpin some of the most terrifying and cautionary domestic warning tales in years if the outcomes were traced to their conclusions through processes akin to the real world.
Not that anyone would watch them.
And yes, I am concerned about the answer to one question: how much time do I spend complaining?
Not that anyone would watch them.
And yes, I am concerned about the answer to one question: how much time do I spend complaining?
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The Peak?
Two peaks are on my mind.
Peak oil. It's amazing to me that there was any doubt for anyone who had read Hubbert's basic argument for peak oil. It is just a question of when. It would have already occurred if it weren't for technology. But I think it is a dim hope that technology will delay the peak long enough to effect market changes to make the transition smooth. As Charlie Munger has observed, it is unfortunate that we are eating through our supply of petroleum NOT because we rely on it so prevalently for transportation, but because we rely on it so prevalently - and without practical substitutes - for agriculture. Fertilizer is predominantly petroleum-based, and for these fertilizers, there are no petroleum-free alternatives. Clearly, the worrying risk associated with peak oil is not a collapse in Real GDP, it is a Malthusian catastrophe as agricultural land productivity plummets without recourse. This sets up the (admittedly slim) potential for extreme irony, as the vilified company Monsanto could literally end up responsible for saving millions of lives with the greater land productivity of their genetically-modified seeds.
The solution? Hedging massive real price inflation with stock holdings that will soar with oil prices. Trickier than it sounds, of course. If oil prices really take off, governments will tax oil producer profits (even though that discourages investment in new production). More practical for long-term safety is Transocean (RIG), who owns the world's largest fleet of oil rigs for underwater drilling (it is important to appreciate that deepwater oil deposits are undergoing the early stages of a large and rapid secular growth phase, as they become economical to develop with higher oil prices). Oil services companies are not as obvious of targets for windfall profit taxation, and better yet, Transocean is not an American company, but a Swiss company.
More exciting is peak #2, and is the absurd terror I feel approaching as so many things recently have gone my way. I have a very short history with determining my own destiny, so the concept of providing myself with significant amounts of satisfaction and joy is fairly foreign. And, I have to admit, I am a little skeptical.
The solution? Relax and take one day at a time, perhaps? But what am I going to spend my summer doing?
Peak oil. It's amazing to me that there was any doubt for anyone who had read Hubbert's basic argument for peak oil. It is just a question of when. It would have already occurred if it weren't for technology. But I think it is a dim hope that technology will delay the peak long enough to effect market changes to make the transition smooth. As Charlie Munger has observed, it is unfortunate that we are eating through our supply of petroleum NOT because we rely on it so prevalently for transportation, but because we rely on it so prevalently - and without practical substitutes - for agriculture. Fertilizer is predominantly petroleum-based, and for these fertilizers, there are no petroleum-free alternatives. Clearly, the worrying risk associated with peak oil is not a collapse in Real GDP, it is a Malthusian catastrophe as agricultural land productivity plummets without recourse. This sets up the (admittedly slim) potential for extreme irony, as the vilified company Monsanto could literally end up responsible for saving millions of lives with the greater land productivity of their genetically-modified seeds.
The solution? Hedging massive real price inflation with stock holdings that will soar with oil prices. Trickier than it sounds, of course. If oil prices really take off, governments will tax oil producer profits (even though that discourages investment in new production). More practical for long-term safety is Transocean (RIG), who owns the world's largest fleet of oil rigs for underwater drilling (it is important to appreciate that deepwater oil deposits are undergoing the early stages of a large and rapid secular growth phase, as they become economical to develop with higher oil prices). Oil services companies are not as obvious of targets for windfall profit taxation, and better yet, Transocean is not an American company, but a Swiss company.
More exciting is peak #2, and is the absurd terror I feel approaching as so many things recently have gone my way. I have a very short history with determining my own destiny, so the concept of providing myself with significant amounts of satisfaction and joy is fairly foreign. And, I have to admit, I am a little skeptical.
The solution? Relax and take one day at a time, perhaps? But what am I going to spend my summer doing?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sad Progress in a Bubble
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html
This is a fascinating field of inquiry that I believe is valid and holds significant promise. My only problem with it is that I believe that the knowledge of what is being taken will affect the success rate. Hopefully, I am incorrect. Regardless, I think there are simply too many societal barriers for this to become accepted any time soon. And, I resent that - I wish it were acceptable - but what can be done? This just goes to show the overreaching arm of the government in controlling what we do to our own bodies. Whose bright idea was it to control substances that are neither dangerous to others, nor physiologically addictive?
Psychedelic drugs (and psilocybin, in particular) have a profound effect that can best be understood by examining their effect in the context of the behavioral model of the human mind. There is a certain statistical situation that sometimes arises where the best predictor of a future value is the previous value; in other words, there is a tendency towards consistency, or mean-reversion. This tendency can be applied to human behavior. In other words, when held up to the wide variety of decisions that myriad humans will make, the best predictor of some individual's future behavior is their own past behavior. While this is commonsensical to us as observers of human nature, what we may not understand is the underlying neurological reason for this. In essence, behaviors, consisting of behavioral firing patterns, are learned in our actions because the firing patterns are learned in our minds. What we may not appreciate is the intricacy of these firing patterns. When we teach ourselves out of a behavior (which we have all experienced as being a difficult process at one time or another - whether it is an addiction such as smoking or something as simple as biting our fingernails), we are not re-writing the firing patterns from the ground up. Rather, we are interceding at one level - among many levels - to divert the learned sequence. Indeed, this level is very "high" on the continuum between deeply-learned, subconscious firings and high-level, conscious decision-making. In essence, there is a very real, "gestalt" behavioral pattern that gets built (at a high level) behind a conscious decision-making sequence when we perform it.
The role of psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds is to change firing patterns at a very low level. This has both immediate and long-term effects. The immediate effects are known as the "psychedelic experience"; a state, notoriously, where the "true nature of the universe is revealed". (Of course, this is not true, except in the perspective of the philosophical assertion that all reality is subjective) Instead, perception is altered because consciousness - as an emanation of the brain's memory mechanism - is altered. The fact that it is altered in such a perceptually unusual way is not an effect of a change in firing patterns per se - after all, a change occurs when we intercede on one of our habits, as well, and that doesn't seem perceptually unusual - it is altered in a perceptually unusual way because our firing patterns are altered at a very low level, and this is one of very few situations that can arise where such a change takes place. (as the above article alludes to, it would seem there is some sort of drug release that precipitates moments of "enlightenment"; would I be the first to speculate that the evolutionary mechanism of predispository selection would encourage this because of the positive effects of divine perception on morality in early cooperative societies? That is not only a mouthful, but it is spectacularly speculative, to the point of uselessness. Perhaps I should read "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" first...)
The long-term effects of psilocybin are to assist our "un-learning" of behavioral repetition that I mentioned before. In other words, someone who has been depressed for some period of time, and who escapes depression by means of a psychedelic experience does so not because they rationalize a greater mystery to the world, but because to some degree, they unlock the negative behavioral pattern that pushed them into depression in the first place. Having impliedly discounted the direct visceral effects of the experience, it is only fair to admit that the inspiration and excitement produced by a positive psychedelic experience are very capable of predisposing them to a replacement of the negative behavioral cycle with a positive one, capable of putting them in a position to fix their issues rather than let them compound.
This is a fascinating field of inquiry that I believe is valid and holds significant promise. My only problem with it is that I believe that the knowledge of what is being taken will affect the success rate. Hopefully, I am incorrect. Regardless, I think there are simply too many societal barriers for this to become accepted any time soon. And, I resent that - I wish it were acceptable - but what can be done? This just goes to show the overreaching arm of the government in controlling what we do to our own bodies. Whose bright idea was it to control substances that are neither dangerous to others, nor physiologically addictive?
Psychedelic drugs (and psilocybin, in particular) have a profound effect that can best be understood by examining their effect in the context of the behavioral model of the human mind. There is a certain statistical situation that sometimes arises where the best predictor of a future value is the previous value; in other words, there is a tendency towards consistency, or mean-reversion. This tendency can be applied to human behavior. In other words, when held up to the wide variety of decisions that myriad humans will make, the best predictor of some individual's future behavior is their own past behavior. While this is commonsensical to us as observers of human nature, what we may not understand is the underlying neurological reason for this. In essence, behaviors, consisting of behavioral firing patterns, are learned in our actions because the firing patterns are learned in our minds. What we may not appreciate is the intricacy of these firing patterns. When we teach ourselves out of a behavior (which we have all experienced as being a difficult process at one time or another - whether it is an addiction such as smoking or something as simple as biting our fingernails), we are not re-writing the firing patterns from the ground up. Rather, we are interceding at one level - among many levels - to divert the learned sequence. Indeed, this level is very "high" on the continuum between deeply-learned, subconscious firings and high-level, conscious decision-making. In essence, there is a very real, "gestalt" behavioral pattern that gets built (at a high level) behind a conscious decision-making sequence when we perform it.
The role of psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds is to change firing patterns at a very low level. This has both immediate and long-term effects. The immediate effects are known as the "psychedelic experience"; a state, notoriously, where the "true nature of the universe is revealed". (Of course, this is not true, except in the perspective of the philosophical assertion that all reality is subjective) Instead, perception is altered because consciousness - as an emanation of the brain's memory mechanism - is altered. The fact that it is altered in such a perceptually unusual way is not an effect of a change in firing patterns per se - after all, a change occurs when we intercede on one of our habits, as well, and that doesn't seem perceptually unusual - it is altered in a perceptually unusual way because our firing patterns are altered at a very low level, and this is one of very few situations that can arise where such a change takes place. (as the above article alludes to, it would seem there is some sort of drug release that precipitates moments of "enlightenment"; would I be the first to speculate that the evolutionary mechanism of predispository selection would encourage this because of the positive effects of divine perception on morality in early cooperative societies? That is not only a mouthful, but it is spectacularly speculative, to the point of uselessness. Perhaps I should read "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" first...)
The long-term effects of psilocybin are to assist our "un-learning" of behavioral repetition that I mentioned before. In other words, someone who has been depressed for some period of time, and who escapes depression by means of a psychedelic experience does so not because they rationalize a greater mystery to the world, but because to some degree, they unlock the negative behavioral pattern that pushed them into depression in the first place. Having impliedly discounted the direct visceral effects of the experience, it is only fair to admit that the inspiration and excitement produced by a positive psychedelic experience are very capable of predisposing them to a replacement of the negative behavioral cycle with a positive one, capable of putting them in a position to fix their issues rather than let them compound.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Greener Pastures
You could call it a ten-year plan.
The most recent step:
http://www.deltarep.com/alphafund.html
Also, doing some research on Nicholas Financial (NICK) this week. From a rudimentary check, can't see too much downside to that one right now.
The most recent step:
http://www.deltarep.com/alphafund.html
Also, doing some research on Nicholas Financial (NICK) this week. From a rudimentary check, can't see too much downside to that one right now.
A Silver Mt. Zion
Of the bands that I admire, A Silver Mt. Zion is at least as removed from the masses as any. Among their gifts is a propensity for awesome song titles. I often feel that it would be possible to relate entire travails using nothing but one or more song titles. For instance, how was my week? Well, it was this:
This Gentle Heart Like Shot Birds Fallen
Hang On To Each Other
Stumble Then Rise On Some Awkward Morning
Conversely, the year 2000 for me could be described as:
Tho You Are Gone, I Still Often Walk With You
Broken Chord Can Sing A Little
I Fed My Metal Bird The Wings Of Other Metal Birds
I have constant, timeless dreams that my future will be thus:
Sow Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom
C'mon C'mon (Loose An Endless Longing)
Collapse Tradicional (For Darling)
13 Angels Standing Guard 'round The Side Of Your Bed
Did I mention that I recommend them? I am not uniformly in love with their music; actually, I probably like a mere minority of it. But I couldn't live without such songs as "Movie (Never Made)", or "Horses in the Sky".
This Gentle Heart Like Shot Birds Fallen
Hang On To Each Other
Stumble Then Rise On Some Awkward Morning
Conversely, the year 2000 for me could be described as:
Tho You Are Gone, I Still Often Walk With You
Broken Chord Can Sing A Little
I Fed My Metal Bird The Wings Of Other Metal Birds
I have constant, timeless dreams that my future will be thus:
Sow Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom
C'mon C'mon (Loose An Endless Longing)
Collapse Tradicional (For Darling)
13 Angels Standing Guard 'round The Side Of Your Bed
Did I mention that I recommend them? I am not uniformly in love with their music; actually, I probably like a mere minority of it. But I couldn't live without such songs as "Movie (Never Made)", or "Horses in the Sky".
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)