1a Jesse's thought on gambling:
As a caveman Mormon, this is my moral definition of gambling. Gambling redistributes something on the basis of chance, without producing anything of value in the process. Granted, there’s an element of chance in everything in life, but most commerce we engage in produces something. If five people stick all their money in a pot, and one gets it, there's no more money, and nothing’s been created. If five people pool their money and buy an interest in a textile company, who uses the money to weave thread into shirts and sell it, they have been involved in creating something, and have hopefully profited. Because the capital used traditional investing is used to create something, I don't consider it gambling. When I buy a stock, the equity I give to the company is usually used to produce something. Gambling doesn’t create anything except the experience of gambling.
If you’re just paying for the experience, as Jesse’s poker implies, gambling still takes from someone else in order to enhance one’s position. In the case of a slot machine, you’ll get something not because you deserved it, worked for it, but entirely because of chance—that is, someone else paid for it. Or in other cases, someone else paid you because you or were just luckier or smarter (had a better understanding of the odds) than them. That seems to take advantage of unlucky/dumb people. I realize this oversimplifies things a LOT, but its my simple metric.
2. Leverage:
I had trouble believing that quants nearly destroyed wall street. I do not have trouble believing that lots of big mortgages, overvalued homes, Fannie Mae, and mortgage securitization did. We bought our home in Vegas when prices were going up 5% a month. Over the course of a few years the price doubled; now it would sell for less than we bought it. About 1 in every 70 homes received a foreclosure filing this April in Vegas. It is upsetting.
6. I like Greenspan's quote a lot: “I found a flaw...in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.” The May 6, 2010 Flash Crash drop in the stock prices that happened one day last month was interesting. The markets at that moment requiring an immediate downward readjustment would not match Greenspan's pre-crash model, though I imagine some bears out there were waiting for it.
7. It seemed that the moral was “greed is bad” and those really greedy guys who tried to make a lot of money ate it big, and boy, they sure had it coming. While I think greed is bad, I'm not convinced that quants are. I also wish there was an epilogue, as I imagine most of the “quants” are probably doing ok. I watched an interview with the author of a book called More Money than God that seems to represent the quants in a more favorable light, which I plan on reading. I enjoyed the book, but I admit I was glad to read Jesse's post.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Quants
1) Is Wall Street moral?
No. Are there moral people working on Wall St? Yes, I'd imagine. Do they allow their morality to affect their strategies? I imagine they wouldn't succeed if they allowed morality to influence them significantly. I guess that's the crux; Wall St. measures success in monetary gains. Money is an inherently amoral metric of success. So in that sense I would say Wall St. lacks morality.
That said, I think it would be a mistake to compel Wall St. to be "moral." I think a better question (although probably still not a very good one) is "Is Wall St. fair?" Fair is about as difficult to define in a rigorous way as moral, but I think it's plausible that society would be better off as a whole if Wall St. were more fair.
2) Does the solution have something to do with leverage?
Echoing Jesse, the solution to what exactly? Drastic rises and falls in aggregate stocks? I imagine bubbles will happen whether the government more strictly regulates leverage or not. To the question of whether hedge funds were at all regulated in their use of leverage, I don't know an absolute answer. But Patterson certainly gives the impression that they were internally regulated, either through overarching strategies (when they resided in investment banks) or through external pressues (as in the "run on the bank" deleveraging that Patterson describes in the last third of the book).
The issue of a hedge fund's (or an investment bank's) failure causing a hole in the economy that hurts lots of people "who didn't necessarily have it coming to them" I suppose that's sort of what I meant by "fair." You'd like the costs to be borne more heavily by the main actors rather than peripheral actors (presumably the staid retirment 401k investors, or the small business owners who can't make payroll because there's a credit crunch). But what you're perceiving as a lack of fairness (again, I'm not sure I'd define it that way) cuts both ways; during the boom years, small investors and small businesses benefitted from the cheap credit that was being generated primarily for the big players.
3) Did the quants really play as big of a role in the crash as Patterson makes out?
It seems unlikely to me that the Quants really played as significant a role as Patterson makes out. If I were assigning blame, it'd be 1) to the Fed for keeping interest rates too low for too long, 2) to the ratings agencies who weren't sufficiently reactive to the creation of new products and 3) to the government agencies who should have been more capably overseeing at least the foreign markets for US products.
4) Should the quants have seen it coming?
Do you mean "should they have been able to see it coming" or "were they wrong not to see it coming?" I would certainly say no to the second case, but a qualified yes to the first. At least from the analysis Patterson provides (which I recognize is not only incomplete, but likely biased) it seems like several of the strategies failed to learn adequately from the fall of LTCM. At least in Patterson's telling, it was viewed as an aberration that was statistically unlikely ever to occur again (lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice). If that's truly the case, then I would say anyone generating a market model that fails to explain what happened in the lead-up to the failure of LTCM was being myopic.
As an additional point, I know Patterson heaps contempt on the VAR and the Gaussian cupola, and probably rightly so. But it seems like there are regimes where the approximations work quite well. Perhaps some of those Phyics PhDs could come up with some sort of near field-far field approach to the markets, and particularly discover if there's a phase transition between the two.
5) Adaptive Market Hypothesis.
I thought the AMH (and the related "ecological" approach out of Sante Fe) were a little bit silly. Not that evolutionary algorithms or models can't perform well, but I didn't see (at least from Patterson's brief descriptions) any sort of rigorous analysis of why they should work.
Another note on modeling; where are the game theoretic models? If there's a shortcoming of the EMH, I would say it's in its failure to adequately model the impact of homogeneous strategies. Again, in the simultaneous deleveraging that occurred in Oct. 2007 (and throughout 2008) it seems like having an adversarial model (something akin to a multi-stage Prisoner's Dilemma) would have improved performance. But who knows; maybe that's exactly what triggered the deleveraging. Some company that decided they would deleverage first and stick everyone else with the sucker's payoff.
6) The last lines of the book are:
"Just look: exotic leveraged vehicles marketed to the masses worldwide, hedge fun ds gaming their returns, lightning-fast computerized trading robots, predatory ninja algorithms hunting liquidity in dark pools...Here come the quants."
This encapuslates much of what I don't like about the book. Patterson's moral (if there is one) is a cautionary tale about the harm in being overly certain. But then he lauds "non-Quant" investors like Warren Buffett and Bill Gross because they do things "the right way" in a certain sense. But the idea that theirs is "the right way" betrays (to me at least) the same sense of hubris and certainty in his own "rightness." After spending all book knocking the quants for believing in "the Truth," here's Patterson himself, in the final pages, looking to prophets like Taleb and Gross as conduits of the Truth. And he seems oblivious to the fact that he's doing, which is sort of disheartening.
7) What is the moral to Patterson's narrative?
See my answer to (6).
I did really enjoy the book. I didn't think I would after the first chapter, guessing it would suffer from the "Tracy Kidder" disease of overly flowery lauding of the protagonists. But once it got down to business, so to speak, I really felt it picked up and pulled me in.
Thanks for a great read!
No. Are there moral people working on Wall St? Yes, I'd imagine. Do they allow their morality to affect their strategies? I imagine they wouldn't succeed if they allowed morality to influence them significantly. I guess that's the crux; Wall St. measures success in monetary gains. Money is an inherently amoral metric of success. So in that sense I would say Wall St. lacks morality.
That said, I think it would be a mistake to compel Wall St. to be "moral." I think a better question (although probably still not a very good one) is "Is Wall St. fair?" Fair is about as difficult to define in a rigorous way as moral, but I think it's plausible that society would be better off as a whole if Wall St. were more fair.
2) Does the solution have something to do with leverage?
Echoing Jesse, the solution to what exactly? Drastic rises and falls in aggregate stocks? I imagine bubbles will happen whether the government more strictly regulates leverage or not. To the question of whether hedge funds were at all regulated in their use of leverage, I don't know an absolute answer. But Patterson certainly gives the impression that they were internally regulated, either through overarching strategies (when they resided in investment banks) or through external pressues (as in the "run on the bank" deleveraging that Patterson describes in the last third of the book).
The issue of a hedge fund's (or an investment bank's) failure causing a hole in the economy that hurts lots of people "who didn't necessarily have it coming to them" I suppose that's sort of what I meant by "fair." You'd like the costs to be borne more heavily by the main actors rather than peripheral actors (presumably the staid retirment 401k investors, or the small business owners who can't make payroll because there's a credit crunch). But what you're perceiving as a lack of fairness (again, I'm not sure I'd define it that way) cuts both ways; during the boom years, small investors and small businesses benefitted from the cheap credit that was being generated primarily for the big players.
3) Did the quants really play as big of a role in the crash as Patterson makes out?
It seems unlikely to me that the Quants really played as significant a role as Patterson makes out. If I were assigning blame, it'd be 1) to the Fed for keeping interest rates too low for too long, 2) to the ratings agencies who weren't sufficiently reactive to the creation of new products and 3) to the government agencies who should have been more capably overseeing at least the foreign markets for US products.
4) Should the quants have seen it coming?
Do you mean "should they have been able to see it coming" or "were they wrong not to see it coming?" I would certainly say no to the second case, but a qualified yes to the first. At least from the analysis Patterson provides (which I recognize is not only incomplete, but likely biased) it seems like several of the strategies failed to learn adequately from the fall of LTCM. At least in Patterson's telling, it was viewed as an aberration that was statistically unlikely ever to occur again (lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice). If that's truly the case, then I would say anyone generating a market model that fails to explain what happened in the lead-up to the failure of LTCM was being myopic.
As an additional point, I know Patterson heaps contempt on the VAR and the Gaussian cupola, and probably rightly so. But it seems like there are regimes where the approximations work quite well. Perhaps some of those Phyics PhDs could come up with some sort of near field-far field approach to the markets, and particularly discover if there's a phase transition between the two.
5) Adaptive Market Hypothesis.
I thought the AMH (and the related "ecological" approach out of Sante Fe) were a little bit silly. Not that evolutionary algorithms or models can't perform well, but I didn't see (at least from Patterson's brief descriptions) any sort of rigorous analysis of why they should work.
Another note on modeling; where are the game theoretic models? If there's a shortcoming of the EMH, I would say it's in its failure to adequately model the impact of homogeneous strategies. Again, in the simultaneous deleveraging that occurred in Oct. 2007 (and throughout 2008) it seems like having an adversarial model (something akin to a multi-stage Prisoner's Dilemma) would have improved performance. But who knows; maybe that's exactly what triggered the deleveraging. Some company that decided they would deleverage first and stick everyone else with the sucker's payoff.
6) The last lines of the book are:
"Just look: exotic leveraged vehicles marketed to the masses worldwide, hedge fun ds gaming their returns, lightning-fast computerized trading robots, predatory ninja algorithms hunting liquidity in dark pools...Here come the quants."
This encapuslates much of what I don't like about the book. Patterson's moral (if there is one) is a cautionary tale about the harm in being overly certain. But then he lauds "non-Quant" investors like Warren Buffett and Bill Gross because they do things "the right way" in a certain sense. But the idea that theirs is "the right way" betrays (to me at least) the same sense of hubris and certainty in his own "rightness." After spending all book knocking the quants for believing in "the Truth," here's Patterson himself, in the final pages, looking to prophets like Taleb and Gross as conduits of the Truth. And he seems oblivious to the fact that he's doing, which is sort of disheartening.
7) What is the moral to Patterson's narrative?
See my answer to (6).
I did really enjoy the book. I didn't think I would after the first chapter, guessing it would suffer from the "Tracy Kidder" disease of overly flowery lauding of the protagonists. But once it got down to business, so to speak, I really felt it picked up and pulled me in.
Thanks for a great read!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
I swear I didn't do it!
Thanks to Karl for posing a few questions to provide some structure to the discussion. As a preface I should make clear / remind that I am considered a "quant" by some people and work for/manage what most would consider a "hedge fund". I have met Cliff Asness (one of the "players") and am friendly with Boaz Weinstein (another "player"). So I am hardly an objective witness.
Before answering Karl's questions I'll start with my overall view of the book---namely that the author has no idea what he's talking about. He makes obvious that he doesn't know what quants are or what they do, and he has very little grasp of what happened in financial markets over the last few years. He's misinformed but with a strong (and populist) opinion, which makes for a dangerous combination.
1. Wall St is not moral. But are most people/professions? Commerce generally exists to make participants to a transaction better off. This is also the purpose of "Wall St". Yes it is full of egotistical, hedonistic gamblers. I'm not sure why that's relevant, except for schadenfreude, but even that is a failure here as the "quants" actually did very well in the crisis of the last few years (as I said, the author is fairly misinformed here).
1a. What is the line between investing and exploitation or gambling? I'm not sure where "exploitation" enters here as a possibility. The counterparties to transactions on Wall St are typically multi-billion dollar institutions, so it's hard for me to understand exactly how they are "exploited". Maybe the taxpayers are exploited because of the relationship between Wall St and the federal government (hint: not both working hard to help average taxpayer)?
More interesting to me is the difference between gambling and investing. Frankly I've never really been sure of this (but then again I've never really had an internal moral aversion to gambling). Life is full of decision-making with uncertainty. Is spending money on graduate school gambling? Buying a house? Buying home-owner's insurance? Waiting to get my transmission fixed? All of these have implications for my financial well-being. Maybe part of them is not gambling (part of the result is near certain) but that still leaves part of it as gambling. Most non-professional investors lose far more money picking stocks than they ever could in Las Vegas, yet view the former as prudent and honorable and the latter as scandalous and immoral. In both cases the deck is stacked against them, they on average give money away, and are doing it for no reason than to make money. On the other hand, if I play poker (which I enjoy doing from time to time) I on average make (small) money and do it primarily because I find it intellectually stimulating. As I said, I've never really understood this, so I'd be glad to hear others' thoughts.
2. The solution to what? It'd be helpful to know what we're solving before prescribing a solution.
"Leverage" is actually pretty hard to define. How levered is your car insurance company? If even 10% of their customers totaled their cars on the same day, they'd be insolvent. So is this imprudent "leverage"? Too often these terms are thrown around without proper context.
Was leverage in hedge funds a cause of the crisis? Not in the slightest. Of course that's because hedge funds had almost nothing to do with the crisis, especially quant hedge funds, but you'd never know that from reading this book. Can anyone name a single hedge fund that went under during this crisis that had any effect whatsoever on the rest of the market?
Leverage in banks? Now we're getting warmer. Govt regulation allowed banks to take on significant leverage but made it worse by arbitrary modifications to how that leverage was calculated (mark-to-market rules, etc). Regulation also allowed institutions to abdicate the responsibility for risk management in investments as they simply owned as much appropriately rated stuff as regulation would allow. "The govt says I can own up to 20% AAA securities, this is AAA, so I'm fine".
Leverage in the govt-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) and residential real estate market...bingo! If we're discussing outlawing anyone putting less than 30% down on their home then we're talking about something with real teeth...though somehow a bit less popular politically...
3. Quants if anything made the crisis less severe. Patterson is clueless but pushes a narrative that most people will find intuitive. Quants buy and sell things based on models of their value. The people who exacerbated the problems bought based on ratings/regulatory capital requirements. Again, can anyone name a single hedge fund whose demise had any effect whatsoever on the markets? It's really stunning how off-target this book is.
I'll skip the other questions as their answers would mostly refer to what I've already written. In sum I obviously didn't find the book too enlightening and think it mostly confuses what really happened. Of course to write what I think really happened would take more time than I have, but if any of you are ever in town and want to grab lunch...
June Book--Alice
Based on the comments, I'm going to pick A Town Like Alice. Sorry Alvin--as a consolation, you could watch the 1950s movie on YouTube. There are a few things about the book that I feel I should disclose: the characters are rather flat; the second half is, I'm told, a little boring; and you should skim the end of chapter 7.
Homo Politicus http://www.amazon.com/Homo-Politicus-Strange-Tribes-Government/dp/0385517505 was tedious, politically biased, and felt like a tabloid Magazine featuring only ugly evil people. It reminded me, however, how much I like DC but dislike Potomac Man.
The Drunkard's Walk http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040 felt like a well-written statistics primer until the last chapter, which was very interesting. It was interesting to have read this book prior to The Quants
The Nine http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Inside-Secret-World-Supreme/dp/0385516401#noop (ever so slightly dated Supreme Court expose, and though I've not read it, likely politically charged)
A Town Like Alice http://www.amazon.com/Town-Like-Alice-Nevil-Shute/dp/0345353749 (mostly fictional WWII story)
Right Ho, Jeeves http://www.amazon.com/Right-Ho-Jeeves-Audio-Editions/dp/1572704233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275410088&sr=1-1
PG Wodehouse is one of the funniest people ever to have lived; Jeeves, I think, is best on audio book.
Homo Politicus http://www.amazon.com/Homo-Politicus-Strange-Tribes-Government/dp/0385517505 was tedious, politically biased, and felt like a tabloid Magazine featuring only ugly evil people. It reminded me, however, how much I like DC but dislike Potomac Man.
The Drunkard's Walk http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040 felt like a well-written statistics primer until the last chapter, which was very interesting. It was interesting to have read this book prior to The Quants
The Nine http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Inside-Secret-World-Supreme/dp/0385516401#noop (ever so slightly dated Supreme Court expose, and though I've not read it, likely politically charged)
A Town Like Alice http://www.amazon.com/Town-Like-Alice-Nevil-Shute/dp/0345353749 (mostly fictional WWII story)
Right Ho, Jeeves http://www.amazon.com/Right-Ho-Jeeves-Audio-Editions/dp/1572704233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275410088&sr=1-1
PG Wodehouse is one of the funniest people ever to have lived; Jeeves, I think, is best on audio book.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The Quants: Discussion kick-off
Okay, I guess it's officially time for me to repent of my idleness. (If I may provide my excuse, I've spent my free time the last few months installing sod, sprinkler, drip irrigation, a garden, and most importantly, building a sandbox).
A few disclaimers: First, I listened to the abridged while navigating California traffic to and from work, so I now feel like I know just enough about the world of quantitative economics to make a fool of myself. Second, I will be referring to the main characters in this book as "quants" for convenience, even though I recognize that there are those who would consider some or all of the main characters not to be true quants.
Here my discussion questions:
1) Is Wall Street moral?
I wish Patterson ventured more into the morality/ethics of the quants. I thought he gave some suggestion of how he thinks I should feel about the quants in his description of their decadence, and in his constant gambling analogies. I think he tried to portray the crash as judgment from on high (i.e. from the god of this 'the truth' he keeps talking about). But honestly, without a more thorough analysis of the costs and consequences of the various trading strategies the quants employed, I'm not exactly sure how to feel. For example, were the quants really making money out of thin air (or rather adding value to the overall economy), or is there some group of people that ultimately lost as a result of the money the quants were able to make?
I guess this discussion hints at the question that bugged me most throughout the book. Where do you draw the line between investing--which I think has a fairly obvious social and economic benefit--and exploitation or gambling? Is finding a way to beat the market essentially the same as finding a way to beat the dealer, or is there an underlying economic benefit that is realized in, e.g., day trading or arbitrage? One benefit that was hinted at was that of correcting prices when uninformed traders shift them out of balance. But does this benefit justify the payout that the "quants" were able to make? And is it fair to so harshly penalize unwise traders for daring to trade without spending years and millions of dollars in computer systems to gather the same information that the "quants" were able to harvest?
I'm not saying that I think all investment fund managers are evil--I, for one, value some of the services that they theoretically provide--i.e. educating themselves about the best investment opportunities and investing my money based on the information they learn. But I'm skeptical about the underlying morality of many of the strategies the quants employed.
I guess I see the market as a system (albeit an imperfect system) for allocating capital to the most productive causes, and most other uses of the market seem like exploitations of flaws in the system. But then again, what do you do to fix things? You can't, for example, ban short sales simply because (as I suspect) they usually have no benefit to the overall economy, because then what do you do about those times when they do have a benefit?
2) Does the solution have something to do with leverage?
Here's my ignorance shining through, but were the hedge funds at all regulated in their use of leverage? At any rate, I can see the benefit in having some flexibility to borrow money, but the leverage ratios Patterson mentioned seem very dangerous. Theoretically, of course, it shouldn't matter. I firmly believe that, in theory, people should be allowed to be dumb and face the consequences of being dumb. But when a hedge fund collapses, it's not just the hedge fund (or their investors, or their creditors) that are harmed. It leaves a hole in the economy. And when you have enough people acting stupidly enough, with enough leverage involved, it leaves a very big hole in the economy that hurts many who didn't necessarily have it coming to them.
3) Did the quants really play as big of a role in the crash as Patterson makes out?
I really don't know. I think it's possible. When you have enough computers trading fast enough for long enough on (inevitably) flawed models with enough leverage, I think systemic consequences are possible. But I really would like to hear more from Jesse here, because I just don't know enough about the big picture.
4) Should the quants have seen it coming?
I wish the author had also spent time exploring the big picture impact of the various strategies employed by the quants on the rest of the market. Surely the quants were bright enough to realize that their strategies would have a butterfly effect on the rest of the market, and the effect would become larger the more the strategies were exploited. That being the case, should someone have, or did someone, recognize that they could have been creating a bubble.
5) Adaptive Market Hypothesis. Not a question. But if economic theories were women, and if I weren't already married, I'd be trying to get AMH's number right now. Not sure where things would go with her though.
6) I made a note to myself to write about the last line(s) of the book. I erased my audible copy (no, I don't plan on listening to it again), and I can't find the text, so I can't remember why. I think it may have been related to my favorite Alan Greenspan quote of all time, but I'm not sure. Anyway, nevermind.
7) What is the moral to Patterson's narrative?
I see Patterson's narrative as his attempt to tell a tragedy--essentially a cross of Icarus and the Tower of Babel. The problem is, I'm not so sure the real-life characters would have seen things that way.
Well, that's all I have time for. And I won't be too surprised if no one else picked the book up. But feel free to comment anyway.
A few disclaimers: First, I listened to the abridged while navigating California traffic to and from work, so I now feel like I know just enough about the world of quantitative economics to make a fool of myself. Second, I will be referring to the main characters in this book as "quants" for convenience, even though I recognize that there are those who would consider some or all of the main characters not to be true quants.
Here my discussion questions:
1) Is Wall Street moral?
I wish Patterson ventured more into the morality/ethics of the quants. I thought he gave some suggestion of how he thinks I should feel about the quants in his description of their decadence, and in his constant gambling analogies. I think he tried to portray the crash as judgment from on high (i.e. from the god of this 'the truth' he keeps talking about). But honestly, without a more thorough analysis of the costs and consequences of the various trading strategies the quants employed, I'm not exactly sure how to feel. For example, were the quants really making money out of thin air (or rather adding value to the overall economy), or is there some group of people that ultimately lost as a result of the money the quants were able to make?
I guess this discussion hints at the question that bugged me most throughout the book. Where do you draw the line between investing--which I think has a fairly obvious social and economic benefit--and exploitation or gambling? Is finding a way to beat the market essentially the same as finding a way to beat the dealer, or is there an underlying economic benefit that is realized in, e.g., day trading or arbitrage? One benefit that was hinted at was that of correcting prices when uninformed traders shift them out of balance. But does this benefit justify the payout that the "quants" were able to make? And is it fair to so harshly penalize unwise traders for daring to trade without spending years and millions of dollars in computer systems to gather the same information that the "quants" were able to harvest?
I'm not saying that I think all investment fund managers are evil--I, for one, value some of the services that they theoretically provide--i.e. educating themselves about the best investment opportunities and investing my money based on the information they learn. But I'm skeptical about the underlying morality of many of the strategies the quants employed.
I guess I see the market as a system (albeit an imperfect system) for allocating capital to the most productive causes, and most other uses of the market seem like exploitations of flaws in the system. But then again, what do you do to fix things? You can't, for example, ban short sales simply because (as I suspect) they usually have no benefit to the overall economy, because then what do you do about those times when they do have a benefit?
2) Does the solution have something to do with leverage?
Here's my ignorance shining through, but were the hedge funds at all regulated in their use of leverage? At any rate, I can see the benefit in having some flexibility to borrow money, but the leverage ratios Patterson mentioned seem very dangerous. Theoretically, of course, it shouldn't matter. I firmly believe that, in theory, people should be allowed to be dumb and face the consequences of being dumb. But when a hedge fund collapses, it's not just the hedge fund (or their investors, or their creditors) that are harmed. It leaves a hole in the economy. And when you have enough people acting stupidly enough, with enough leverage involved, it leaves a very big hole in the economy that hurts many who didn't necessarily have it coming to them.
3) Did the quants really play as big of a role in the crash as Patterson makes out?
I really don't know. I think it's possible. When you have enough computers trading fast enough for long enough on (inevitably) flawed models with enough leverage, I think systemic consequences are possible. But I really would like to hear more from Jesse here, because I just don't know enough about the big picture.
4) Should the quants have seen it coming?
I wish the author had also spent time exploring the big picture impact of the various strategies employed by the quants on the rest of the market. Surely the quants were bright enough to realize that their strategies would have a butterfly effect on the rest of the market, and the effect would become larger the more the strategies were exploited. That being the case, should someone have, or did someone, recognize that they could have been creating a bubble.
5) Adaptive Market Hypothesis. Not a question. But if economic theories were women, and if I weren't already married, I'd be trying to get AMH's number right now. Not sure where things would go with her though.
6) I made a note to myself to write about the last line(s) of the book. I erased my audible copy (no, I don't plan on listening to it again), and I can't find the text, so I can't remember why. I think it may have been related to my favorite Alan Greenspan quote of all time, but I'm not sure. Anyway, nevermind.
7) What is the moral to Patterson's narrative?
I see Patterson's narrative as his attempt to tell a tragedy--essentially a cross of Icarus and the Tower of Babel. The problem is, I'm not so sure the real-life characters would have seen things that way.
Well, that's all I have time for. And I won't be too surprised if no one else picked the book up. But feel free to comment anyway.
The LOST Book Club
Karl,
Now that the season finale of Lost is over, I figure you'll soon be getting around to posting on the 'March Book of the Month'. As I couldn't get Quants on audio, I never got past the first chapter before returning it to the library. Thus, I would like to suggest you start a thread on Lost instead of Quants. If you need some material to get started, today my bishop compared the 'Mist of Darkness' from the tree of life dream to the smoke monster from Lost. And yes, he did this over the pulpit in sacrament meeting, and I still think he's a great bishop. Good luck.
Alvin
PS Rob, feel free to pick your book now, so we can talk about it at the end of June.
Now that the season finale of Lost is over, I figure you'll soon be getting around to posting on the 'March Book of the Month'. As I couldn't get Quants on audio, I never got past the first chapter before returning it to the library. Thus, I would like to suggest you start a thread on Lost instead of Quants. If you need some material to get started, today my bishop compared the 'Mist of Darkness' from the tree of life dream to the smoke monster from Lost. And yes, he did this over the pulpit in sacrament meeting, and I still think he's a great bishop. Good luck.
Alvin
PS Rob, feel free to pick your book now, so we can talk about it at the end of June.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
One purple nation, under God
- Did this book seem repetitive? Maybe it was too academic for me. When I go back and read my own thesis, I think it's more than a little slow. I think I'm more of an executive summary kind of guy.
- A bit like Alvin, I found myself concentrating on the graphs and making my own conclusion, then skimming the text. My favorites were the color plates. I loved the plate of US divided into counties—it was like one big purple mess.
- I enjoyed seeing how red the Mormons are—it's almost comical. One thing that really irks me is when ward members send me an email for something political, especially when I would not associate with them if they weren't members of the church.
- Harry Reid gave a fireside in our Stake last month. While the fireside itself was more like a boring aubiography than a fireside or a political convention, it made me think about what he said at BYU a few years ago. To paraphrase: I am a Democrat because I'm (not in spite of being) a Mormon
I'm really disappointed in catch phrases featured often in the media. Why on earth, for example, would people have any desire to listen to Sarah Palin? I think the leftist media thinks her soundbites are so funny that they'll continue to feature her until the Republican party is obsolete.
On the other hand, I feel like Brother Joseph felt—the different parties interpret the same passage of a bill so differently as to obfuscate any understanding of law by an appeal to the bill itself.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tax the Rich! Oh wait, that's me.
Sorry, Peter, there hasn't been more discussion. I've had mine partially written for over a week.
I must preface my statements by saying I only partially read the book. I couldn't find it on audio, and I only found it in print in the county where I used to live, (Montgomery County, MD, which was mentioned in the book as being one of the bluest counties in the country).
First, let me call into question Peter's assertion that he lives in the bluest state. I mean, you just elected a Republican, knowing that it could ruin most of the blue plans. And not so long ago, you elected a Mormon Republican as governor. Of course, maybe that was just a blue expression of tolerance because even many red states wouldn't elect a Mormon.
I liked the idea behind the book, as I like looking at plots and interesting trends as much of the next guy, but I ultimately got frustrated that:
a) I couldn't look at their data myself and do my own analyses, asking specific questions that I found most interesting
b) It started to get a bit repetitive, and I'm not into the CNN style over-analysis of every single detail.
c)All of the examples were from the Bush election or earlier. I kept wondering how things have changed because where politics is headed is much more interesting than where it has been.
So here's my theory on why the rich individuals in rich states don't vote as heavily republican: They don't think they're rich. Being rich, after all, is relative. On my mission in Guatemala, you were rich if you had a microwave and super-rich if you had air-conditioning. Did Gelman ever show a graph of the top 5 or 10% in each state? (Again I skimmed.)
Interestingly, Gelman said that rich states attend church less and that church attendance was a better predictor of the way you voted among rich people than among poor people. But while I felt religion was a key piece in the big puzzle he was describing, I never felt like he tied it back into his overall theme or ever said anything definitive.
On the urban/rural point: I grew up in a very rural area (There were 72 kids in my high school graduating class.), and I currently reside in a very urban area (though we bought a home in a less urban area and I commute to work). As I started to write this post, I was going to poo-poo Peter's worries about urban values. It reminded me of the east-coast Mormons who are afraid of living in UT because of the way their kids will turn out. (Wait. Aren't we hoping for a world where everyone is Mormon?) Clearly, one can be a good or bad Mormon wherever, as one can have similar values both in an urban and rural environment. But when you look at the political map and see that every major urban area is blue, then being in a big city must affect people's political values if nothing else. I do think living in a big city takes away from your sense of self-reliance.
In the last three presidential elections, I've voted red, blue and neither, so does that make me a battleground state? No, I think I'm more red than blue. I've seen this recently in my work at the FDA. The law says devices have to be proven to be safe and effective. I have been reviewing a device that has been proven to be safe, but it only gives the hope of being effective. The long-term unblinded results are great, but the blinded (more reliable) results are borderline at best. Personally, my political leanings lead me to say that if it's safe, we can let the doctors, patients, and the market decide how well it works. We presented before an independent advisory panel, and they advised us to approve it in a 7-5 vote. But apparently, I'm the only person in the FDA who thinks the device should be allowed on the market, as my co-workers want to ignore the panel's advice.
I see the logic behind a lot of the blue regulations and bigger government ideas. In theory, I think it would be nice if someone could keep stupid people from being stupid. In practice, the problem is that the government can't. Every time the government solves one problem they create another problem. Plus, the government isn't very efficient. I know that the law-making bodies weren't designed to be efficient, but the unelected agencies that implement government policies are the problem.
Let's look at health care, for example. Unlike many red Americans, I don't think there is anything wrong with giving everyone health care. I don't see any reason why fighting disease should be a private enterprise when fighting bad guys is a public necessity. However, I have little faith in the government's ability to use my money efficiently to insure people. Can they do it? Sure, but at what price. The stimulus created jobs, but sometimes the government was spending 100K to create a single 50K job.
Technically, I'm socially conservative, but I think social issues are a bit of a red herring. Nothing ever happens on those fronts, so it seems a poor reason for casting a vote.
Back to the book, the one thought that struck me that I'm having a hard time figuring out is how much of what I believe is simply the result of my demographic influences. I like to think my political beliefs are as 'true' as my religious beliefs. I know there is a lot of gray in politics, and certainly no party has all the answers. Still, I like to think my thoughts are my thoughts because they are close to being right, not just because of my age, religion, income, etc. However, while there are a lot of wrong views out there, the correct approach likely depends on your demographic perspective.
On a personal note, last month my wife gave birth to a baby girl, Eliza, our third. If you aren't on our mass email list but would like to be, you can subscribe by sending me an email at vanordens@gmail.com. Glenn is coming to visit me this month, and the rest of you are invited to come if you want!
I must preface my statements by saying I only partially read the book. I couldn't find it on audio, and I only found it in print in the county where I used to live, (Montgomery County, MD, which was mentioned in the book as being one of the bluest counties in the country).
First, let me call into question Peter's assertion that he lives in the bluest state. I mean, you just elected a Republican, knowing that it could ruin most of the blue plans. And not so long ago, you elected a Mormon Republican as governor. Of course, maybe that was just a blue expression of tolerance because even many red states wouldn't elect a Mormon.
I liked the idea behind the book, as I like looking at plots and interesting trends as much of the next guy, but I ultimately got frustrated that:
a) I couldn't look at their data myself and do my own analyses, asking specific questions that I found most interesting
b) It started to get a bit repetitive, and I'm not into the CNN style over-analysis of every single detail.
c)All of the examples were from the Bush election or earlier. I kept wondering how things have changed because where politics is headed is much more interesting than where it has been.
So here's my theory on why the rich individuals in rich states don't vote as heavily republican: They don't think they're rich. Being rich, after all, is relative. On my mission in Guatemala, you were rich if you had a microwave and super-rich if you had air-conditioning. Did Gelman ever show a graph of the top 5 or 10% in each state? (Again I skimmed.)
Interestingly, Gelman said that rich states attend church less and that church attendance was a better predictor of the way you voted among rich people than among poor people. But while I felt religion was a key piece in the big puzzle he was describing, I never felt like he tied it back into his overall theme or ever said anything definitive.
On the urban/rural point: I grew up in a very rural area (There were 72 kids in my high school graduating class.), and I currently reside in a very urban area (though we bought a home in a less urban area and I commute to work). As I started to write this post, I was going to poo-poo Peter's worries about urban values. It reminded me of the east-coast Mormons who are afraid of living in UT because of the way their kids will turn out. (Wait. Aren't we hoping for a world where everyone is Mormon?) Clearly, one can be a good or bad Mormon wherever, as one can have similar values both in an urban and rural environment. But when you look at the political map and see that every major urban area is blue, then being in a big city must affect people's political values if nothing else. I do think living in a big city takes away from your sense of self-reliance.
In the last three presidential elections, I've voted red, blue and neither, so does that make me a battleground state? No, I think I'm more red than blue. I've seen this recently in my work at the FDA. The law says devices have to be proven to be safe and effective. I have been reviewing a device that has been proven to be safe, but it only gives the hope of being effective. The long-term unblinded results are great, but the blinded (more reliable) results are borderline at best. Personally, my political leanings lead me to say that if it's safe, we can let the doctors, patients, and the market decide how well it works. We presented before an independent advisory panel, and they advised us to approve it in a 7-5 vote. But apparently, I'm the only person in the FDA who thinks the device should be allowed on the market, as my co-workers want to ignore the panel's advice.
I see the logic behind a lot of the blue regulations and bigger government ideas. In theory, I think it would be nice if someone could keep stupid people from being stupid. In practice, the problem is that the government can't. Every time the government solves one problem they create another problem. Plus, the government isn't very efficient. I know that the law-making bodies weren't designed to be efficient, but the unelected agencies that implement government policies are the problem.
Let's look at health care, for example. Unlike many red Americans, I don't think there is anything wrong with giving everyone health care. I don't see any reason why fighting disease should be a private enterprise when fighting bad guys is a public necessity. However, I have little faith in the government's ability to use my money efficiently to insure people. Can they do it? Sure, but at what price. The stimulus created jobs, but sometimes the government was spending 100K to create a single 50K job.
Technically, I'm socially conservative, but I think social issues are a bit of a red herring. Nothing ever happens on those fronts, so it seems a poor reason for casting a vote.
Back to the book, the one thought that struck me that I'm having a hard time figuring out is how much of what I believe is simply the result of my demographic influences. I like to think my political beliefs are as 'true' as my religious beliefs. I know there is a lot of gray in politics, and certainly no party has all the answers. Still, I like to think my thoughts are my thoughts because they are close to being right, not just because of my age, religion, income, etc. However, while there are a lot of wrong views out there, the correct approach likely depends on your demographic perspective.
On a personal note, last month my wife gave birth to a baby girl, Eliza, our third. If you aren't on our mass email list but would like to be, you can subscribe by sending me an email at vanordens@gmail.com. Glenn is coming to visit me this month, and the rest of you are invited to come if you want!
Monday, March 22, 2010
Red State, Blue State, which state are you?
It's been a few weeks since I finished Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State. As a denizen of a rich, blue state (possibly the bluest, if not the richest) and a former denizen of a poor, red state (possibly the reddest, though certainly not the poorest) I found the book very interesting. I guess that's mostly as a fan of quantitative social and political science.
To recap for non-readers: the fundamental paradox Gelman's team set out to understand was why wealthy individuals voted Republican but wealthy states voted Democrat. The resolution of the paradox was that individual wealth impacted voter preference much more in poor states (where it made one much, much more likely to be a Republican) than in rich states (where it made one only marginally more likely to be a Republican).
I don't feel that Gelman ever really answered the question of what causes this paradox, at least not to my satisfaction. He analyzes a few other societal features (like race, income inequality and religious ideology), but doesn't come up with a convincing explanation to my mind. Does anyone have a speculative theory on why rich states tend to vary only slightly in partisan id with income, but poor states vary more dramatically?
I thought his insight about the red state-blue state phenomenon occurring primarily at the upper end of the income scale was insightful if not surprising. Poor people seem to be (according to Gelman's numbers) fairly ideologically homogeneous, while it's the rich who are bitterly divided. I think it also speaks to the wealth of the political elites (both in office and in the media) that they seem to be so focused on the partisan divide when it really only impacts a small portion of the overall citizenry (albeit an overwhelmingly influential subpopulation). So why is there such power in the red state-blue state meme? Is it because we want it to be true, in some sense? Because it speaks to a fundamental tension within each of us as citizens and within the structure of the nation as a whole?
A divide that Gelman touches on, but didn't seem to dive into really, is the urban-suburban-rural divide. I read an article during the 2008 election at Salon.com that I thought was somewhat insightful on this topic. As a rural idealist (in the form of Tolkien) I tend to denigrate the urban value system (or lack thereof). Having lived for some time now near a major city I've yet to be persuaded that urbanity has anything positive to offer from a moral perspective. When I've asked proponents of urban values to justify them, they almost universally point to multi-culturalism and tolerance as values you get in a city that you can't in the country. But to my perspective, those who tout the value of such multi-culturalism have only a thin veneer of tolerance, particularly across socio-economic lines. I think I learned significantly more tolerance of "the other" living in rural Utah than I have in multi-cultural Massachusetts. Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about flying out to Harvard for graduate school...
Another thing I found interesting in Gelman's development was breaking out social vs. economic value systems. While I don't know that those are necessarily the "right" axes to separate our political ideology, they certainly are evocative. In the comparison of economic values to income, being richer makes you uniformly more economically conservative, and by almost identical amounts regardless of ones stances on social issues. The social values aren't as uniform, but the strong trend is for more money to make you more socially liberal. So the real mass of people seem to be economically liberal (tax and spend, redistributionist Socialists) and socially conservative (values voting, gay-bashing religious Nutjobs). And that's where I tend to find myself, in direct counterposition to the socially liberal, economically conservative libertarians (of which David Frum is a light-hued version; for more pure examples, go to www.reason.com). And yet, as a Republican it's hard to ignore the youth appeal and renewed vigor of the libertarian movement with its Ron Paulistas and Tea Parties. So I feel conflicted; I'd like my party to look more like me (the compassionate conservativism that got lost post-9/11) but I also want my party to be strong and win elections, which right now seems to imply letting it look less like me.
Anway, I liked the book. I hope a few other people had the patience to check it out, and to wait all these weeks until I managed to get a post off about it.
P.S.- One final point I wanted to make (sorry if this reedit is generating lots of extra emails). When contemplating why I'm socially conservative but economically liberal I would point to my religion. But many of my co-religionists are much more economically conservative, and some are much more socially liberal, so I don't know that that captures the true reason. Thinking deeper, my "social image" (for lack of a better term) is that poor people have greater moral authority than rich people. And I think that's what leads me primarily to that upper-left quadrant in Gelman's 2-D political belief matrix. So a question I wanted to put to the crowd is whether you feel rich people or poor people have greater moral standing (or neither)?
To recap for non-readers: the fundamental paradox Gelman's team set out to understand was why wealthy individuals voted Republican but wealthy states voted Democrat. The resolution of the paradox was that individual wealth impacted voter preference much more in poor states (where it made one much, much more likely to be a Republican) than in rich states (where it made one only marginally more likely to be a Republican).
I don't feel that Gelman ever really answered the question of what causes this paradox, at least not to my satisfaction. He analyzes a few other societal features (like race, income inequality and religious ideology), but doesn't come up with a convincing explanation to my mind. Does anyone have a speculative theory on why rich states tend to vary only slightly in partisan id with income, but poor states vary more dramatically?
I thought his insight about the red state-blue state phenomenon occurring primarily at the upper end of the income scale was insightful if not surprising. Poor people seem to be (according to Gelman's numbers) fairly ideologically homogeneous, while it's the rich who are bitterly divided. I think it also speaks to the wealth of the political elites (both in office and in the media) that they seem to be so focused on the partisan divide when it really only impacts a small portion of the overall citizenry (albeit an overwhelmingly influential subpopulation). So why is there such power in the red state-blue state meme? Is it because we want it to be true, in some sense? Because it speaks to a fundamental tension within each of us as citizens and within the structure of the nation as a whole?
A divide that Gelman touches on, but didn't seem to dive into really, is the urban-suburban-rural divide. I read an article during the 2008 election at Salon.com that I thought was somewhat insightful on this topic. As a rural idealist (in the form of Tolkien) I tend to denigrate the urban value system (or lack thereof). Having lived for some time now near a major city I've yet to be persuaded that urbanity has anything positive to offer from a moral perspective. When I've asked proponents of urban values to justify them, they almost universally point to multi-culturalism and tolerance as values you get in a city that you can't in the country. But to my perspective, those who tout the value of such multi-culturalism have only a thin veneer of tolerance, particularly across socio-economic lines. I think I learned significantly more tolerance of "the other" living in rural Utah than I have in multi-cultural Massachusetts. Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about flying out to Harvard for graduate school...
Another thing I found interesting in Gelman's development was breaking out social vs. economic value systems. While I don't know that those are necessarily the "right" axes to separate our political ideology, they certainly are evocative. In the comparison of economic values to income, being richer makes you uniformly more economically conservative, and by almost identical amounts regardless of ones stances on social issues. The social values aren't as uniform, but the strong trend is for more money to make you more socially liberal. So the real mass of people seem to be economically liberal (tax and spend, redistributionist Socialists) and socially conservative (values voting, gay-bashing religious Nutjobs). And that's where I tend to find myself, in direct counterposition to the socially liberal, economically conservative libertarians (of which David Frum is a light-hued version; for more pure examples, go to www.reason.com). And yet, as a Republican it's hard to ignore the youth appeal and renewed vigor of the libertarian movement with its Ron Paulistas and Tea Parties. So I feel conflicted; I'd like my party to look more like me (the compassionate conservativism that got lost post-9/11) but I also want my party to be strong and win elections, which right now seems to imply letting it look less like me.
Anway, I liked the book. I hope a few other people had the patience to check it out, and to wait all these weeks until I managed to get a post off about it.
P.S.- One final point I wanted to make (sorry if this reedit is generating lots of extra emails). When contemplating why I'm socially conservative but economically liberal I would point to my religion. But many of my co-religionists are much more economically conservative, and some are much more socially liberal, so I don't know that that captures the true reason. Thinking deeper, my "social image" (for lack of a better term) is that poor people have greater moral authority than rich people. And I think that's what leads me primarily to that upper-left quadrant in Gelman's 2-D political belief matrix. So a question I wanted to put to the crowd is whether you feel rich people or poor people have greater moral standing (or neither)?
Next Book of the Month, and an aside
I'm going with "The Quants" for the Book of the Month. The question now is, which month? I have a somewhat long vacation coming up over Easter, and will be reading it then. And it seems like everyone's been pretty busy anyway, so should we just bump things back and make this the Book of the Month for April?
As an aside, I found this article to be the most sensible political piece I've read from a Republican in a while (granted, I haven't been reading too many political articles lately): http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/22/frum.healthcare.gop.strategy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+rss/cnn_topstories+(RSS:+Top+Stories)&utm_content=Google+Reader.
I'm especially in favor of dumping government incentives for employer-subsidized health care, for both the reasons he mentions (hiding the cost of health care to the end consumer), and for the reason that, ultimately, I suspect that government incentives for employer-subsidized health care result in an unfair distribution of government subsidies to those who 1) are employed; and 2) are employed by employers who can afford to offer health care. (However, I'm not familiar enough with the tax code to be able to say with certainty that tax breaks on health care plans selected by individuals aren't commensurate with tax breaks offered to employers).
Anyone want to discuss?
(The only point I disagree with is his point #1. Surely the $500,000 is or would eventually be keyed to inflation, rendering his primary argument that it would cover increasingly more Americans moot.)
As an aside, I found this article to be the most sensible political piece I've read from a Republican in a while (granted, I haven't been reading too many political articles lately): http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/22/frum.healthcare.gop.strategy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+rss/cnn_topstories+(RSS:+Top+Stories)&utm_content=Google+Reader.
I'm especially in favor of dumping government incentives for employer-subsidized health care, for both the reasons he mentions (hiding the cost of health care to the end consumer), and for the reason that, ultimately, I suspect that government incentives for employer-subsidized health care result in an unfair distribution of government subsidies to those who 1) are employed; and 2) are employed by employers who can afford to offer health care. (However, I'm not familiar enough with the tax code to be able to say with certainty that tax breaks on health care plans selected by individuals aren't commensurate with tax breaks offered to employers).
Anyone want to discuss?
(The only point I disagree with is his point #1. Surely the $500,000 is or would eventually be keyed to inflation, rendering his primary argument that it would cover increasingly more Americans moot.)
Monday, March 8, 2010
Justice
I've been reading my runner up selection for book o' the month last month (The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen) and thoroughly enjoying it, although I'm still convinced it would have made a lousy book club selection.
I've also been watching a series of lectures by Harvard professor Michael Sandel called, simply, Justice. The production quality is pretty good; Harvard teamed with WGBH to put it together. The lectures are fairly engaging, even if I feel too much time is given to Harvard underclassmen and not enough to in-depth topical development.
I'm wondering if there would be critical mass here at PVS for a discussion of some of the material. Is anyone interested in watching, say, one lecture a week (25 min.) and then having a collective discussion? Anyway, just a thought.
As for Red State, Blue State, I finished it some time back. I'll try and collect my thoughts and post something about it tonight or tomorrow.
I've also been watching a series of lectures by Harvard professor Michael Sandel called, simply, Justice. The production quality is pretty good; Harvard teamed with WGBH to put it together. The lectures are fairly engaging, even if I feel too much time is given to Harvard underclassmen and not enough to in-depth topical development.
I'm wondering if there would be critical mass here at PVS for a discussion of some of the material. Is anyone interested in watching, say, one lecture a week (25 min.) and then having a collective discussion? Anyway, just a thought.
As for Red State, Blue State, I finished it some time back. I'll try and collect my thoughts and post something about it tonight or tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
March BOM Candidates
I'm sad that I can't convince myself to find the time to re-read one of my favorite authors of all time (Douglas Adams). But if you've read Dirk Gently and Hitchhikers, and are now so obsessed with Adams that you need more insight into the man, may I recommend the post-humous collection of his ramblings entitled "The Salmon of Doubt." I once heard him say that he considered himself more of a philosopher than a comic, but I had dismissed the claim as disingenuous until reading "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish." I now think he honestly considered himself a philosopher, but was trapped by the realization that he was much better at being a comic--i.e., that he was much better at finding absurdities than reconciling them.
As for the March(ish) book of the month, in traditional PVS fashion, I have narrowed the list to three candidates, in order of the number of characters in their respective titles:
1) Life of Pi
If anyone has any preferences or thoughts on the list, let me know. Otherwise, I will choose one early next week.
Other candidates receiving votes: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (doesn't seem like a good choice for a book on tape); I Am America (And So Can You!) (the "surprise me" pages off of Amazon were pretty funny, but Colbert's style can get old pretty quickly); The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (heard the author on a radio program once and was impressed, but a quick thumb-through made me think I should read it before recommending it); Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (seriously, though, raise your hands if you've pulled something like this out of a box of childhood belongings in your parents' attic, and actually reread a few pages just for the memories. wait. I can't be the only one).
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Accountability
I just want to take a second and say I enjoyed Dirk Gently and I have read a good portion of
Red State, Blue State. I never really got to a meaningful post on Dirk, so this is just me checking in and saying I'm still participating. --DL
Red State, Blue State. I never really got to a meaningful post on Dirk, so this is just me checking in and saying I'm still participating. --DL
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Dirk the Great
- The theme of belief vs. doubt: Funny your alternate selections, Glenn, also had connections to Salt Lake City—Conan Doyle's Study in Scarlet is my least favorite Sherlock Holmes (though not because of the Mormon misinformation), and Louis Lamour often shows the Mormon's more favorably. The Walking Drum novel (the first LL I'd read in twenty years), was like a reading a western with swords in the dark ages. Dirk was by far the best choice, and I enjoyed it even more than the Hitchhikers Guide series, which gets progressively sillier.
- "I only believe in SCIENCE": I really feel like I know comparatively less every day. If you consider that there are lots of people learning more and more about the universe every day, even including me, then the ratio of my knowledge compared to the sum of all knowledge gets progressively smaller. Especially when you think that there are worlds without number and endless creations. (I'm hoping one of you will correct my math here). So we really know less and less every day. My prejudice is that the Brits seem to sneer at anything that's not published in three scientific journals.
- It seems that another theme was random coincidence, of which I think Adams was expert. Unlikely things don't just happen. My aha moment occurred when I Dirk said he was more concerned about McDuff breaking into the apartment than about Gordon Way's death.
- Do kids believe in the Easter Bunny? I wonder. I don't think any of my children really believe in Santa or in the Easter Bunny. They sometimes act like they do because it's fun to pretend, but they don't really.
- Audio books vs. paper books. Some books are better read (Peter's choice for this month, for example). I like most fiction in audio format, but I wonder about Douglas Adams—sometimes he's a little tangential.
- I only know one Dirk in real life. He prefers to be called Dirk the Great; maybe I'll try Svlad.
Thanks for all the Ghosts
I thoroughly enjoyed Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I read it through in about a week. Unfortunately that was almost a month ago now, and so it might not be terrifically fresh in my memory.
Picking out some interesting (to me) instances of the belief/doubt theme:
- I thought Dirk's rejection of his own clairvoyance and any supernatural explanation of his coming up with all the exam questions was interesting. When someone knows for certain that something (e.g. seeing the future) does not exist, no amount of evidence to the contrary can convince them.
- The revelation of how the vase trick was perpetrated, particularly the reliance on a child's naivete, illustrates how Adams simultaneously wants us to think we're too constrained by the rigid ideologies of "acceptable" reality and that we shouldn't go off believing absurd things, like (in his opinion, I suppose) religion. Time travel, if it explains the evidence, is great; I doubt he would exhibit such sangfroid over a religious explanation.
- Gordon Way's surprise at discovering himself to be dead and yet still in existence was interesting. I think Way is set up as a fairly normal, non-introspective member of society. He assimilates the new knowledge rather quickly, all things considered, and dramatically alters his world view to accept the new evidence. Compare that to Robin William's character in What Dreams May Come where he takes some time to accept the fact that 1) he's dead but 2) he still exists. I think that, in general, Adams' writings lead me to believe he approves of rapidly evolving world views in light of new evidence, but again this seems at odds with his antithesis not only to religion but to religionists.
- The music of the spheres that Richard and the others find so enamoring indicates to me Adams' deep-felt desire to believe in an overarching, harmonizing force from which all that is good derives. This is echoed in the whole Anthem (?) development, and Richard's evidence-less conviction that the arc of a bird's wing in flight would produce beautiful music.
- The hypnotism and possession sequences, in which characters behave in ways they believe are rational and reasonable and arrived at by their own agency, but are in fact decided by an agent completely external to the individual.
So, I guess I've belabored the point a bit, but I think it's interesting in its contradictions. We should free ourselves to believe whatever best reconciles the evidence, except when it disagrees with my prejudice which is infallible despite its evidence-free basis, and oh, By the Way, you can't be sure that your logic is really your own because what if you're possessed. From a technical standpoint, my own research touches on some of these topics tangentially, and the more I know about how we know what we know the more I believe ideological devotion to deductive logic in its purest form is utterly insane. There's such a host of evidence-less assumptions that must be made before the first deductive step that anyone who claims such a process is bias-free ought to blush.
I hadn't intended to rant on the failings of deductive logic. Really, I just thought the book was a fun exploration of some of these ideas with a pretty good story that had me guessing for about 200 out of 300 pages and entertained for the full 300. Cami, who says she enjoyed it almost as much as I did, claims to have known exactly what was happening from the very first chapter. I guess some people are just like that.
Picking out some interesting (to me) instances of the belief/doubt theme:
- I thought Dirk's rejection of his own clairvoyance and any supernatural explanation of his coming up with all the exam questions was interesting. When someone knows for certain that something (e.g. seeing the future) does not exist, no amount of evidence to the contrary can convince them.
- The revelation of how the vase trick was perpetrated, particularly the reliance on a child's naivete, illustrates how Adams simultaneously wants us to think we're too constrained by the rigid ideologies of "acceptable" reality and that we shouldn't go off believing absurd things, like (in his opinion, I suppose) religion. Time travel, if it explains the evidence, is great; I doubt he would exhibit such sangfroid over a religious explanation.
- Gordon Way's surprise at discovering himself to be dead and yet still in existence was interesting. I think Way is set up as a fairly normal, non-introspective member of society. He assimilates the new knowledge rather quickly, all things considered, and dramatically alters his world view to accept the new evidence. Compare that to Robin William's character in What Dreams May Come where he takes some time to accept the fact that 1) he's dead but 2) he still exists. I think that, in general, Adams' writings lead me to believe he approves of rapidly evolving world views in light of new evidence, but again this seems at odds with his antithesis not only to religion but to religionists.
- The music of the spheres that Richard and the others find so enamoring indicates to me Adams' deep-felt desire to believe in an overarching, harmonizing force from which all that is good derives. This is echoed in the whole Anthem (?) development, and Richard's evidence-less conviction that the arc of a bird's wing in flight would produce beautiful music.
- The hypnotism and possession sequences, in which characters behave in ways they believe are rational and reasonable and arrived at by their own agency, but are in fact decided by an agent completely external to the individual.
So, I guess I've belabored the point a bit, but I think it's interesting in its contradictions. We should free ourselves to believe whatever best reconciles the evidence, except when it disagrees with my prejudice which is infallible despite its evidence-free basis, and oh, By the Way, you can't be sure that your logic is really your own because what if you're possessed. From a technical standpoint, my own research touches on some of these topics tangentially, and the more I know about how we know what we know the more I believe ideological devotion to deductive logic in its purest form is utterly insane. There's such a host of evidence-less assumptions that must be made before the first deductive step that anyone who claims such a process is bias-free ought to blush.
I hadn't intended to rant on the failings of deductive logic. Really, I just thought the book was a fun exploration of some of these ideas with a pretty good story that had me guessing for about 200 out of 300 pages and entertained for the full 300. Cami, who says she enjoyed it almost as much as I did, claims to have known exactly what was happening from the very first chapter. I guess some people are just like that.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Those silly Brits
I get a kick out of British humour. Off the wall, subtle, clever. It's not clear to me why, but I enjoyed the book more last time (or my memory tells me that I enjoyed the book more 5 years ago) when I listened to an audiobook version of it. No Alvin, it was not the dramatic version complete with sound effects.
In an effort to get this post on the board and allow the discussion to proceed, I won't spend too much time thinking things through before I type them. It will be like speed chess, but without the chequed board.
In an effort to get this post on the board and allow the discussion to proceed, I won't spend too much time thinking things through before I type them. It will be like speed chess, but without the chequed board.
- The electric monk is such a creative labor-saving device: "Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe." Douglas Adams had a knack for inventing ideas that were funny in an odd way, like the babelfish. What "life-changing" device(s) would you have Mr. Adams create for you if he were still alive? I think I would like to see a device that goes around and scoops up dog poop. Like a Roomba for the backyard.
- Douglas Adams' initials happen to be DNA. He was born in Cambridge, England in 1952. Watson and Crick proposed the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 in Cambridge, England. Coincidence? Hmmm.
- DNA's writing style reminds me of the product lead-ins on woot.com
- One of my favourite parts of the book was the description of the software program Reason. Rather than giving it facts so that it could help make a decision, the user gave the program the decision it wanted and the relevant facts, and the program would create "a series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion." It's creator used Reason to get a Porsche despite the fact that he was broke. He later sells it to the US gov't (which must be what the current administration is using to fix the economy).
- I found the mention of fractals interesting. I remember seeing something on PBS about fractals and their occurrence in nature, and how using fractals in engineering could improve the performance of antennas.
- The two big themes in the book that I saw were belief vs doubt, and regret.
- Theme #2 was covered quite nicely by Alvin
- Theme #1: Ironically, DNA's father was a student of theology at Cambridge, and DNA became a "radical atheist." His handling of the idea of evolution, and his implication of blind faith in Salt Lake City, fit with his professed non-beliefs. Another famous atheist, Richard Dawkin, really enjoyed this book, though not necessarily because of its religious undertones.
I thought it was funny, and somewhat true to life, that "the more vague and ambiguous [Dirk Gently's] 'predictions,' the more other people's wishful thinking would close the credibility gap." While this is not quite the same thing as Dirk's classmates' jumping to illogical conclusions, I think I have been guilty of my brain completing a task that my body hadn't done. Example: "Are you sure I didn't take out the garbage? I could have sworn I did." The mind is an amazing powerful thing, it can almost create a virtual reality. I think DNA was suggesting that anything that is not based on concrete evidence is created by the mind. How did this book affect your thoughts about belief? - Perhaps my favourite quote from the book: "Only a child sees things with perfect clarity?, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see." In other words, children see things as they truly are. Do you think that is so? To some degree yes, but if that is completely true, then why in the world do all those millions of kids believe in the Easter Bunny?
- Did you find yourself frequently flipping back in the book in order to try to catch details that you missed the first time through? Did you have an "aha" moment as you approached the last few chapters, or did you see it coming early on?
- I think this book may have prepared me well for this final season of Lost. As the last few episodes come and I realize what the show was all about, I will probably have a urge to watch it all over and see it with new eyes, similar to my experience when I first read this book. I wonder if people in the Spirit Prison might have a similar feeling when they are taught what this life was really all about?
Monday, February 1, 2010
February's Book of the Month
I wish I had a creative response to Alvin's imaginative parody. Unfortunately, all my creativity has been sucked into a thesis vortex where it will remain for the next 12-18 months. The parody was evidently very amusing, as evidenced by the fact that Misty commented on my family blog that she laughed several times while reading it (hmm...maybe her comment was an oblique suggestion that she'd like to become a PVS contributor).
Anyway, as for February's book, I just decided on it last night:
Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do
Hopefully it's fairly available, although it's got enough graphs that I doubt an audio version is particularly coherent. I was trying to decide between this and Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice, but I decided that Sen's book was too heavy for PVS. But if anyone would rather the Sen tome, just let me know in the comments.
Anyway, as for February's book, I just decided on it last night:
Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do
Hopefully it's fairly available, although it's got enough graphs that I doubt an audio version is particularly coherent. I was trying to decide between this and Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice, but I decided that Sen's book was too heavy for PVS. But if anyone would rather the Sen tome, just let me know in the comments.
Glenn Jackson's Holistic Book Club: A Play in One Act
I know that its poor form to post on a book before the chooser of the book, but the short play I wrote in honor of Douglas Adams' unique genius has been burning a whole in my virtual pocket. Besides, I don't think it will take away from Glenn's ability to start the typical discussion. Also, I wanted to encourage Peter to choose February's book. (It's a short month.) I apologize in advance to any of you that are misrepresented or underrepresented in the following play. My memory is far less than perfect. No offense was intended towards anyone.
Glenn Jackson’s Holistic Book Club: A Play in One Act
[ Not one to have a boring normal book club, Glenn uses the information in Douglas Adams’ book to build a time machine and travels back to BYU at the beginning Winter semester of 1996 to discuss the book with Merrill Hall residents. Most of the 1100 floor is gathered in Jesse’s room for a late night symposium where he is instructing them in the art of making muscle T’s when Glenn walks into the room…]
Everyone together: GLENN!!!!!!
Christopher B: Greetings and Salutations, my friend.
Paul [sitting closest to the door]: Hug! [Paul stands up and stretches his arms out wide for an embrace, but when Glenn hugs him, he doesn’t close his arms around Glenn, making Glenn and everyone watching feel a bit awkward.]
Robert M: Good to see you, Glenn, but as Elders Quorum President, I feel it is my duty to ask, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be on in the MTC right now with Rob Chirstiansen?’
Glenn: I am in the MTC.
Ron: Dude, you’re right here.
Glenn: My 19-year old self is on a mission, but I am the older and wiser version of myself. I’ve built a time machine and come back in time to discuss a book with you.
Ron: You traveled in time just to discuss a book?
Eliott: Sweet. That’s an achievement that deserves recognition. Glenn gets to wear the Pimp Shirt!
Karl: Did I ever tell you guys how much I love TV shows that involve time travel?
Peter J: Yeah, Quantum Leap was a GREAT show, did you see that episode where… [and the room begins to break up in to 10 different conversations]
Doug: Wait a second, guys! Let’s find out why Glenn came to discuss a book and what book it is.
Glenn: Thanks, Doug. You see, in the future, we are going to start a book club over the internet.
Dave T: I knew the internet was going to be big.
Glenn: Oh you have no idea. For example, [looking around the room], Aaron, how much money do you spend every month calling that girlfriend of yours in
Aaron: Let’s see…$100 + $50 +$72…
Glenn: Well, in another 10 years you will be able to call her for free over your computer AND you’ll be able see her talking via video…for free.
Aaron: I’ve gotta go call my girl and tell her. [climbs over bodies and out the door]
Peter J: Well, since you know the future, can you tell me if my relationship with Misty is going to last, you know, forever.
Glenn: Sadly, some of these freshman romances won’t last, Peter, but there are some that will be very successful [he looks around the room trying to catch the eyes of Doug, Jesse and Ryan].
Dan [who was sitting between Doug and Ryan]: I KNEW IT! I’m going to call Jenn to tell her we’re destined for each other. [He quickly exits the room]
Doug: Was he looking at me? Does he know we’re not even dating?
Ryan: Me neither, at least not yet…I mean we’ve been on some walks but…
Christopher B.: Gentlemen, Gentlemen, Gentlemen, before this fine symposium devolved into talk of childish romances, our honored guest Glenn, from the future, was going to tell us ask us to discuss a book. Proceed.
Glenn: Thanks, Christopher. The book is…Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
Scott P: What a coincidence! I stayed up all night last night reading it in the bathtub.
Paul: I read it, too. After I read it for my Civil Engineering class, I got on a Douglas Adams kick and read every book he’s ever written. Did you know there is a sequel and a half?
James: It’s weird. I was just noticing how many different majors on campus had to read this book this semester. Maybe it’s part of some master plan by BYU.
Glenn: You’re right, James, none of this is a coincidence. You have to think like Dirk Gently and see the whole picture.
Doug: Wait, did you travel back in time and put this book on the syllabus of all of our classes?
Glenn: You’re quick…and not just when you’re running. What kind of assignments have your teachers given you?
Ryan: In my music class we had to perform the pieces by Bach that have the music of life from the spaceship woven into it. I liked how at the beginning of the book Bach didn’t exist and the best composer of his time was Buxtehude.
Christopher B.: Ah, yes, what would we do without Bach? Well if I were writing the book, I would have said that the scraps of the perfect song, the song reflecting the music of life, were found in Mozart or Vivaldi or Gustav Holst or….
Tim: Or Mahler!
Mark A: My cat can eat a whole watermelon.
Jesse: Maybe they had scraps, but Bob Dylan’s music has it all!
Peter J: In McDuff’s theory, all songs were fractals, or mathematically symmetric pictures that are undefined by Euclidean geometry, and can be reduced to mathematical language that our subconscious understands, though we do not. When I listen to a classic song from Neil Young, I get these fragmented images of the circuits for my EE homework. It’s inspiring
Alvin: I think if complexities of the Bengals’ music could be reduced it would look like the Egyptian pyramids.
[awkward pause]
Karl: Did you know they found fractal patterns in Jackson Pollack’s art? I was a piece of Jackson Pollack art for Halloween.
Jared: I remember Halloween because my nose still hurts from when I punched myself to get blood for my vampire costume.
Robert M: Speaking of things we regret, another interesting theme in the book is the things we are going to regret after we die. I try to live my life with no regrets.
Mark A: My only regret is not eating another bowl of lucky charms for dinner tonight.
Alvin [to himself]: I regret every card I play wrong in a game of UNO, but I think the people on the punisher board are more likely to be haunted by me than I am to be haunted a very few misplayed UNO cards.
Ryan: So Glenn, is there anything we’re going to regret doing, or not doing, in the next 10 years?
Glenn: Hmmm, I know that a few of you may regret some of the votes that you cast. Now that you’re all over 18, maybe you should have a symposium or two on politics. It’s not just about abortion, you know.
[Karl shrugs]
Glenn: Sorry, there was a long time in there where we didn’t all do a very good job of keeping in touch, so I don’t know a lot about what’s going to happen to each of you. I will say that you may end up in a career other than what you’re planning on now.
Christopher B.: That’s why I’m getting a double major in music and pre-med. Better to be safe than sorry.
Ron: Hey future boy, is Jesse alive in 10 years?
Glenn: Yes.
Ron: Then it won’t kill him if we all pile on top of him.
Jesse: Wha-
Tim [shouts]: You better protect your posterity!
[The whole room piles on top of Jesse.]
Jake [only half dressed]: Hey some of us are trying to get some sleep. Can you dogs keep it down?
Glenn [climbing off of the pile]: Sorry, Jake. I was just leaving. One last piece of advice: This is a unique, special time in your lives. Enjoy it while you can!
Friday, January 8, 2010
almost random books to choose from
My list of books, vote now or forever (or at least for a month) hold your peace:
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Douglas Adams is GREAT, and though this story is a little odd, it is fun and it comes together surprisingly well at the end)
A Study in Scarlet (the first Sherlock Holmes story, and though not my favorite, it features Brigham Young)
The Walking Drum (my wife read this and can not stop raving about it)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Douglas Adams is GREAT, and though this story is a little odd, it is fun and it comes together surprisingly well at the end)
A Study in Scarlet (the first Sherlock Holmes story, and though not my favorite, it features Brigham Young)
The Walking Drum (my wife read this and can not stop raving about it)
Thursday, January 7, 2010
New Year, New PVS List
I meant to do this a week or two ago during my Christmas break. Of course I also meant to do work on my thesis over the break as well. Anyway, the results of randomizing the order for book selection:
1 (Jan) Glenn
2 (Feb) Peter
3 (Mar) Karl
4 (Apr) Rob
5 (May) Paul
6 (Jun) Alvin
7 (Jul) Jesse
8 (Aug) Doug
I don't really expect those months to remain fixed; we'll probably slip a slush month in here and there.
Anyway, Happy 2010 everybody.
P.S.- I don't suppose anyone ever invited a spouse to post to the site? If any of your wives would like to participate in the PVS book club just let me know. I love the current PVS dynamic, but a little feminine perspective (probably) wouldn't hurt.
1 (Jan) Glenn
2 (Feb) Peter
3 (Mar) Karl
4 (Apr) Rob
5 (May) Paul
6 (Jun) Alvin
7 (Jul) Jesse
8 (Aug) Doug
I don't really expect those months to remain fixed; we'll probably slip a slush month in here and there.
Anyway, Happy 2010 everybody.
P.S.- I don't suppose anyone ever invited a spouse to post to the site? If any of your wives would like to participate in the PVS book club just let me know. I love the current PVS dynamic, but a little feminine perspective (probably) wouldn't hurt.
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