RoboVault
The Delusions Of Others
Last year (been waiting a few days to say that) I wrote about the lies we tell ourselves in order to successfully navigate our lives. Unfortunately, the propensity we have towards delusion means that we are also subject to the delusions of others. My guess is that this is part of the the in-built crowd…
A Real-Life Trader Talks About “The Big Short”
What surprised you the most in the movie’s portrayal of the impending financial collapse? It was surprising to me that some people, portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale and others, actually got to the bottom of some of those mortgage products—figuring out that they were being fundamentally mispriced—when so many others didn’t. We had…
Absolutely Clueless
Occasionally you come across someone who is so clueless about probability as to leave you dumbfounded.
Lies, Damned Lies And Ouselves
We all lie to ourselves – it is part of the human condition. Sometimes the lies are a simple mechanism design to protect our ego’s. Sometimes they are to create a more palatable or interesting narrative about our lives ala Walter Mitty. Occasionally they are designed to protect our psyche during turbulent moments when we…
Being happy does not help you live longer
Call it the optimism fallacy. It’s widely thought that staying happy and stress-free helps keep you healthy. But a massive study on the link between mood and mortality suggests that happiness actually has no effect on death rates. Other research that has found the opposite must have been mixing up cause and effect, says epidemiologist…
Music in the brain
Scientists have long wondered if the human brain contains neural mechanisms specific to music perception. Now, for the first time, MIT neuroscientists have identified a neural population in the human auditory cortex that responds selectively to sounds that people typically categorize as music, but not to speech or other environmental sounds. “It has been the…
The Lonely Death of George Bell
This is a long form piece that the New York Times excels at. It is sad and depressing but thoughtful and gentle. It is also worth reading this follow up piece on the comments to the original article.
So What About 2016?
Currently the media is awash for predictions for next year, some are optimistic, some are pessimistic and all are bullshit. The world would be a lot better off if idiots in financial markets who thought they could predict the future would just spontaneously self combust and leave the rest of us grown ups alone. So…
