Saturday, August 30, 2025
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
suspicion......................
I used to identify as libertarian, but then I would find myself defending positions I hadn't thought through because they're a part of the libertarian canon. If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.
-Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
objectivity.......................
The life of Darwin demonstrates how a turtle may outrun the hares, aided by extreme objectivity, which helps the objective person end up like the only player without blindfold in a game of pin-the-donkey.
If you minimize objectivity, you ignore not only a lesson from Darwin but also one from Einstein. Einstein said that his successful theories came from: 'Curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism.' And by self-criticism he meant the testing and destruction of his own well-loved ideas.
-Charlie Munger, as excerpted from this speech
debts.....................
It's almost impossible to go broke without borrowed money being in the equation.
-Peter Bevelin, Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger
unimaginable................
The most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of coincidence.
Monday, August 25, 2025
develop......................
The brain can be developed just the same way as the muscles can be developed, if one only takes the pains to train the mind to think.
On retirement spending....................
The truth is, you can’t predict the future. Black swan events, long-term care needs, unexpected medical expenses—these things happen. But the bigger danger for this audience isn’t overspending.
It’s under-living.
indulging.....................
The house gives signs of enjoying the emptiness. It is rearranging itself after the night, clearing its pipes and cracking its joints. This dignified and seasoned creature, with its coppery veins and wooden feet nestled in a bed of clay, has endured much: balls bounced against its garden flanks, doors slammed in rage, headstands attempted along its corridors, the weight and sighs of electrical equipment and the probings of inexperienced plumbers into its innards. A family of four shelters in it, joined by a colony of ants around the foundations and, in spring time, by broods of robins in the chimney stack. It also lends a shoulder to a frail (or just indolent) sweet-pea which leans against the garden wall, indulging the peripatetic courtship of a circle of bees.
The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness.
-Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
Hey.....what?....wait a minute...........
I’ve seen all sorts of estimates for the coming wealth transfer from baby boomers to the next generation. $16 trillion. $84 trillion. $124 trillion. . . .
Here’s the one part of this conversation we’re not really touching on — The Great Wealth Transfer requires that the baby boomer generation dies off. Death and taxes, right?
-Ben Carlson, from here
purpose......................
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
Fifty years ago................................
induced......................
To twenty-first-century policymakers, the interest rate is simply a lever used to control inflation and tweak economic output. Yet an acquaintance with the Babylonian origins of interest should give pause for thought. Interest has always been with us because resources have always been scarce and must be rationed somehow, because wealth is unequally distributed between creditors and borrowers, and because, as Böhm-Bawerk says, 'interest is the soul of credit.' Interest exists because loans are productive, and even when not productive still have value. It exists because those in possession of capital need to be induced to lend, and because lending is a risky business. It exists because production takes place over time and human beings are naturally impatient.
-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
the time value of money................
For Turgot, as sum of money delivered immediately and the promise of the same amount of money at some future date could not possibly have the same value. Time preference explains why Aristotle was wrong. Interest is the difference in monetary values across time, the rate at which present consumption is exchanged for future consumption. Interest represents the time value of money.
-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
about those rates................
In truth, Child's advocacy for lower rates was intensely self-interested. Like a modern buyout baron's, his control of the East India Company, where he was shortly to become Governor, was maintained through the extensive use of debt: the greater the gap between the company's profits and the cost of borrowing, the greater his personal gains. . . .
There was a sense that higher interest rates improved the quality of lending. The author of 'Usury at Six percent Examined' (1669) claimed that a reasonable lending charge ensured that money got into the best hands: "Tis much better for the publick,' . . . Thomas Manley added that lowering the rate of interest would involve robbing Peter (the creditor) to pay Paul (the borrower).
-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
Checking in......................
........................with Barry Ritholtz:
We spend too much time worrying about big, rare events, while ignoring the mundane everyday factors that are far more dangerous.
On a long enough timescale, everything is transitory. As we work our way through the detritus and minutia of life, we should not lose sight of that.
Those who are least knowledgeable are often the most cocksure about their own skills, abilities, and beliefs. This is an especially expensive error to make in trading and investing.
Once you recognize how little the experts (and the rest of us) know, you come to recognize how much humility investing requires. Accept the wisdom of recognizing our collective ignorance, and you will soon see how much better off you will be then . . .
Success is an iterative process—we often overlook the misses, the almosts, the faceplants, and the failures that precede victory.
Whatever my views are about the economy, markets, my portfolio, etc., I am always ready to discard them as I amass sufficient evidence my beliefs are wrong. "Strong opinions weakly held" means reversing your priors when necessary, cutting losses quickly, and never marrying any holding or belief system—ever.
Sunday, August 24, 2025
worthy suggestions....................
Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom. Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing.
Unfortunately......................
The preconditions for a durable peace often come only from a credible threat of war.
-Alexander C. Karp/Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
Outliers...........................
Meanwhile, the conventional path parades its rewards right in front of you every day: the promotions, the vacations, the security. You can see exactly what you’re giving up, while what you’re building remains invisible.
Most people optimize for comfort. They choose being one blade of grass among many over being a tall poppy, the safety of the group over the risk of criticism for being different.
Outliers pick their own game, choose how to keep score, and then pay the price to play it.
-Shane Parrish, from this week's edition
Context matters...........................
When you’re younger, you are swept up in the drama of your own life: leaving home, making a career, creating a family. As you age, unless you are either a world-historical genius or self-deluded, you begin to realize that whatever you accomplished doesn’t actually amount to all that much. The meaning of your life has more to do with your place in a direct chain—proceeding, obviously, from you down to your children and grandchildren, but also, less obviously, from you upward through generations of people you may not have known or even have heard of. They’re your context. You need to know about them in order to understand your own life fully.
-Nicholas Lemann, as culled from this story
effective spiritual aid...................
It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the unexercised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood.
-Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces
on forging your own way..............
This idea of forging your own path, of being a trailblazer, is beautifully illustrated in an old Arthurian legend, La Queste del Saint Graal, written by an anonymous monk in the thirteenth century. In the story, the knights of the Round Table are inspired to seek the Holy Grail after it briefly appears before them. But instead of setting out together, they make a profound choice. As the text reads, "They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path."
The renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell often cited this tale as a powerful metaphor for the individual's journey through life. To Campbell, it captured the essence of having the courage to follow your own path and find what truly fulfills you. "Where there's a way or a path," Campbell writes, "it is someone else's path."
What Campbell means here is profound: The well-trodden paths in life—the ones that are clear and easy to follow—have already been carved by others. These paths represent conventional wisdom, societal expectations, or traditional routes to success. But true fulfillment, Campbell suggests, comes from forging your own way.
-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports
received instruction.................
30. I passed by the field of the sluggard,
And by the vineyard of the man lacking sense;
31. And behold, it was completely overgrown with
thistles.
Its surface was covered with nettles,
And its stone wall was broken down.
32. When I saw, I reflected upon it;
I looked, and received instruction.
33. "A little sleep, a little slumber,
A little folding of the hands to rest,"
34. Then your poverty will come as a robber,
And your want like an armed man.
-The Holy Bible, The Open Bible version, Proverbs 24: 30-34
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