At the end of September I started working with a company that repairs bank-owned homes (foreclosed homes). My job had me traveling from Maryland to South Carolina for 10 days at a time and we were about to move from Boise to the Raleigh area. The company called me while in NC one day and asked if I'd take a position in Salt Lake in the office of our largest client (one of those evil loan servicing companies that works for the bailed-out banks). So, we are moving to a home in Bountiful this week. We were excited about having an east coast family experience, but the new position is much more conducive to family life (no travel) for which I am grateful. Plus its closer to BYU football games!
I hope you have all had a great Christmas and may you all have a wonderful 2011!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Mythical Rob
I just got back from Utah where I saw Rob Christiansen. He told me he was aware of the Perpetual Virtual Symposium because of Scott and was interested in joining.
I just sent him an invitation and hopefully he'll be able to join soon and give you more of a background post. He claims to be the precinct chair for the local Democrats in Bountiful, Utah (all 10 of them?), but he thought reading some Ayn Rand together would generate some interesting discussion.
Here's hoping that some new blood and a controversial book will rejuvenate the PVS this next year.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Born to Conserve Energy
Since at least 3/4ths of the active book club members have already read Born to Run, I will kickoff the request to have a little discussion. The book's thesis is that early humans survived because they could out-run their prey. Thus, as part of our evolutionary DNA we are all potential distance runners. The fact that distance runners need to conserve energy, which would explain the human tendency toward laziness, makes the thesis all that more convincing. But were you completely convinced?
The author weaves his main thesis and his many sub-theses, quite entertainingly, into his story of legendary, super-runners. So lets' play a game called...
Do You Believe
I'll give a series of statements proposed directly or implicitly in the book, and you decide if you believe it or not. My answers are at the bottom and feel free to add to the list, as it has been a few months since I read the book.
Do you believe...
1. In evolution as a general principle?
2. That you, specifically, and modern humans in general are a product of evolution?
3. That modern man evolved from early distance runners?
4. That running injury-free is a realistic possibility?
5. That running barefoot, or close to barefoot, is the key to healthy running?
6. That shoe companies are a large racket that will eventually be exposed and fail?
7. That beer and magic beans are key components to a healthy diet?
8. That salad is the best breakfast?
9. That a species that evolved to chase down animals is better off not eating meat?
10. That an occasional drunken love-fest would be good for all societies?
11. That being happy makes you a better runner?
12. That you have the mental and physical powers to run an ultra-marathon (if you really wanted to)?
13. That you love your wife enough to run a marathon beside them as she runs an ultra-marathon?
14. That a super-fast lost indian tribe where the runners where capes and sandals is the coolest thing to ever happen to distance running?
My answers:
1. 100% Yes.
2. Unsure. There is certainly a lot of evidence for human evolution, and I think Mormonism includes all truth. Still, there are some Mormon doctrines that appear to be in conflict with human evolution (no death until after the fall, Adam as the first human, etc.), though there may certainly be ways for both the doctrines and evolution to be completely true. Gods ways are higher than mine own.
3. If 2 is true, then I like 3, as it explains laziness.
4. No.
5. I believe it should help.
6. Yes, and so are mattress companies.
7. No.
8. No. It's cereal.
9. The Word of Wisdom agrees with the little to no meat philosophy, but it seems contrary to point 3.
10. No.
11. It's difficult to separate cause and effect here, but being happy and loving what you do will tend to make you better at anything.
12. Nope.
13. No, but I'd drive beside her.
14. Most definitely. I loved the underdog sports story element to this book. The visual image of these happy, painfully-shy indians running against the best racers in the world in these impossibly difficult races was just awesome.
I really liked the book.
I liked the desire I had to run when I had finished the book.
Too bad that has passed.
The author weaves his main thesis and his many sub-theses, quite entertainingly, into his story of legendary, super-runners. So lets' play a game called...
Do You Believe
I'll give a series of statements proposed directly or implicitly in the book, and you decide if you believe it or not. My answers are at the bottom and feel free to add to the list, as it has been a few months since I read the book.
Do you believe...
1. In evolution as a general principle?
2. That you, specifically, and modern humans in general are a product of evolution?
3. That modern man evolved from early distance runners?
4. That running injury-free is a realistic possibility?
5. That running barefoot, or close to barefoot, is the key to healthy running?
6. That shoe companies are a large racket that will eventually be exposed and fail?
7. That beer and magic beans are key components to a healthy diet?
8. That salad is the best breakfast?
9. That a species that evolved to chase down animals is better off not eating meat?
10. That an occasional drunken love-fest would be good for all societies?
11. That being happy makes you a better runner?
12. That you have the mental and physical powers to run an ultra-marathon (if you really wanted to)?
13. That you love your wife enough to run a marathon beside them as she runs an ultra-marathon?
14. That a super-fast lost indian tribe where the runners where capes and sandals is the coolest thing to ever happen to distance running?
My answers:
1. 100% Yes.
2. Unsure. There is certainly a lot of evidence for human evolution, and I think Mormonism includes all truth. Still, there are some Mormon doctrines that appear to be in conflict with human evolution (no death until after the fall, Adam as the first human, etc.), though there may certainly be ways for both the doctrines and evolution to be completely true. Gods ways are higher than mine own.
3. If 2 is true, then I like 3, as it explains laziness.
4. No.
5. I believe it should help.
6. Yes, and so are mattress companies.
7. No.
8. No. It's cereal.
9. The Word of Wisdom agrees with the little to no meat philosophy, but it seems contrary to point 3.
10. No.
11. It's difficult to separate cause and effect here, but being happy and loving what you do will tend to make you better at anything.
12. Nope.
13. No, but I'd drive beside her.
14. Most definitely. I loved the underdog sports story element to this book. The visual image of these happy, painfully-shy indians running against the best racers in the world in these impossibly difficult races was just awesome.
I really liked the book.
I liked the desire I had to run when I had finished the book.
Too bad that has passed.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
One Nation, Under Science
Sorry for the extreme lateness of this response to the book club. I'd planned on writing something about three weeks ago, but life intervened. And I know that Alvin used the "One nation" schtick in his title too, but I really am just that unoriginal.
I enjoyed most of The Nation, right up until Daphne/Ermintrude's father arrived at the island. But I found the final few chapters thoroughly off-putting, to the point where I now tell people that I didn't much like the book. My particular gripes are about the need that Pratchett (an avowed humanist) had to intervene in the story and make it a moralistic play about the ability of science and exploration to give semi-mystical meaning to our otherwise purposeless civilization. Maybe that's putting it a bit strong, but I felt like the author spent four-fifths of a book exploring the interesting interstices of faith, doubt, miracle, perserverance, love and devotion, and then resolved it with some pablum about how "science doesn't belong to anybody" and can somehow both preserve our cultural traditions and at the same time unite us across all cultural boundaries. Which I think is absolute tripe. Science is (IMO) too revered in our Western culture (even our anti-authoritarian American culture); it's a useful tool, but it's not the answer to life, the universe and everything. Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Carl Sagan notwithstanding.
Whew, rant out of the way. What's hidden in there is I really did think it was a rippingly good book for about 200 pages. I think all of the questions Alvin and Paul raise are interesting and deserve a more full treatment than I can give at the moment, but I'll write my thoughts on a few.
The Culture and the Necessary I don't know to what degree I try to separate those aspects of my belief system that are culturally bred from those that are fundamental and invariant under multi-verses. I often ask myself questions like, "How absolutely wrong is it to drink alcohol?" (appropriate, given the context of the question within the poison beer). Obviously in ancient times and within the modern church prophets have drunk alcohol, presumably without everlasting consequences. So if alcohol isn't absolutely wrong, why is it wrong now in this time? Is it a cultural reason?
Perhaps more along the lines of what Alvin was thinking, I remember my shock during my first few weeks in Belgium when the Priests didn't cover the sacrament bread with a white cloth! I had seen in so many US wards the ritual of the sacrament that it seemed naked somehow without the solemn folding back of the cover to expose the bread, and then recovering and folding back the side to reveal the water. And I was doubly shocked when I realized that the sacrament ritual I was so used to was nowhere prescribed in the Scriptures. It was a bit of culture that had crept into the observance.
Are such things bad? I think they are, but not as bad as what can happen when you choose to confront them overly often. Specifically, performing spurious rituals and accepting as true and right things that are really just cultural appendages is (generally) preferable to attacking misfounded belief and risking 1) hurting another's faith and 2) accidentally hewing too deep and attacking well-founded belief. Excessive piety has seldom (it seems to me) led to excommunication, but if you slaughter too many sacred cows you may eventually find yourself killing something truly sacred (no offense to the Hindoos).
North vs. South In actual terms of North and South, it's interesting to note that most of the people live north of the equator (which makes sense since about 70% of the habitable land mass is north of the equator). So on one level it's almost inevitable that history would have a Northern slant to it.
To the more salient question of cultural superiority and subjugation, I feel pretty sensitive to it. I see within the US itself an increasingly homogenized culture, as regional dialects and accents disappear and we all shop for the same cheap crap at identical Walmarts and eat the same cheap food in identical plastic booths at fast food chain restaurants. I recognize that it's a completely rational decision; there are real to cost and efficiency benefits of the homogeneous culture. But I find it distressing that all local flavor seems to be disappearing from America. And I worry that the same thing is happening as a result of modernizing forces throughout the world.
While I feel that loss of cultural identity is a real problem, both within the US and internationally, I don't know that I would support any organized efforts to combat it. I think cultural preservation, and the desire and energy for cultural preservation must come from within the culture rather than without. Tying into the book, I thought the eventual protective role played by the British Empire while the island Nation made itself into a scientific Shangri-la derives from the same nation-building hubris that makes us believe we can export ideology. While I think it's important to engage on such matters (I'm a big supporter of muscular US diplomacy), I think the idea that a system in which local culture needs a global protector is doomed to failure.
Is there a time to lie In the tenth grade we were assigned to write an in-class essay on this very question. More specifically, on the portion of Adventures of Huck Finn when Huck lies to protectTom Jim and whether that was a moral decision or not. I rebelliously refused (in the most passively aggressive way possible) to write the essay until the final two minutes of class. Then I wrote a short note called "Lying: an existential viewpoint" in which I argued that lying was just a social construct and hence the question itself was meaningless. My teacher ate it up.
I think there is definitely a time to lie. I wouldn't be able to construct scenarios in which it is unambiguously the right decision, but I feel confident in a Nephi and Laban way that all actions, no matter how abhorrent in normal everyday life, may be right in certain circumstances. That said, I'm pretty careful about giving honest answers to my kids about things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I don't seek out opportunities to puncture their innocense, but if they come to me with questions I pretty unapologetically give honest answers. Because I think a lot of harm can be done when you put your child's trust in you at risk, and I think there are few reasons to do such a thing.
Still, though, I would not say never; I can easily conceive of scenarios in which I would purposefully mislead and even straight out lie to my children in order to protect them from truths which would, in my belief, harm them. And if slave-traders were really after my friend Jim, I would tell them he ran the other way and try to sneak off while they weren't looking.
I enjoyed most of The Nation, right up until Daphne/Ermintrude's father arrived at the island. But I found the final few chapters thoroughly off-putting, to the point where I now tell people that I didn't much like the book. My particular gripes are about the need that Pratchett (an avowed humanist) had to intervene in the story and make it a moralistic play about the ability of science and exploration to give semi-mystical meaning to our otherwise purposeless civilization. Maybe that's putting it a bit strong, but I felt like the author spent four-fifths of a book exploring the interesting interstices of faith, doubt, miracle, perserverance, love and devotion, and then resolved it with some pablum about how "science doesn't belong to anybody" and can somehow both preserve our cultural traditions and at the same time unite us across all cultural boundaries. Which I think is absolute tripe. Science is (IMO) too revered in our Western culture (even our anti-authoritarian American culture); it's a useful tool, but it's not the answer to life, the universe and everything. Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Carl Sagan notwithstanding.
Whew, rant out of the way. What's hidden in there is I really did think it was a rippingly good book for about 200 pages. I think all of the questions Alvin and Paul raise are interesting and deserve a more full treatment than I can give at the moment, but I'll write my thoughts on a few.
The Culture and the Necessary I don't know to what degree I try to separate those aspects of my belief system that are culturally bred from those that are fundamental and invariant under multi-verses. I often ask myself questions like, "How absolutely wrong is it to drink alcohol?" (appropriate, given the context of the question within the poison beer). Obviously in ancient times and within the modern church prophets have drunk alcohol, presumably without everlasting consequences. So if alcohol isn't absolutely wrong, why is it wrong now in this time? Is it a cultural reason?
Perhaps more along the lines of what Alvin was thinking, I remember my shock during my first few weeks in Belgium when the Priests didn't cover the sacrament bread with a white cloth! I had seen in so many US wards the ritual of the sacrament that it seemed naked somehow without the solemn folding back of the cover to expose the bread, and then recovering and folding back the side to reveal the water. And I was doubly shocked when I realized that the sacrament ritual I was so used to was nowhere prescribed in the Scriptures. It was a bit of culture that had crept into the observance.
Are such things bad? I think they are, but not as bad as what can happen when you choose to confront them overly often. Specifically, performing spurious rituals and accepting as true and right things that are really just cultural appendages is (generally) preferable to attacking misfounded belief and risking 1) hurting another's faith and 2) accidentally hewing too deep and attacking well-founded belief. Excessive piety has seldom (it seems to me) led to excommunication, but if you slaughter too many sacred cows you may eventually find yourself killing something truly sacred (no offense to the Hindoos).
North vs. South In actual terms of North and South, it's interesting to note that most of the people live north of the equator (which makes sense since about 70% of the habitable land mass is north of the equator). So on one level it's almost inevitable that history would have a Northern slant to it.
To the more salient question of cultural superiority and subjugation, I feel pretty sensitive to it. I see within the US itself an increasingly homogenized culture, as regional dialects and accents disappear and we all shop for the same cheap crap at identical Walmarts and eat the same cheap food in identical plastic booths at fast food chain restaurants. I recognize that it's a completely rational decision; there are real to cost and efficiency benefits of the homogeneous culture. But I find it distressing that all local flavor seems to be disappearing from America. And I worry that the same thing is happening as a result of modernizing forces throughout the world.
While I feel that loss of cultural identity is a real problem, both within the US and internationally, I don't know that I would support any organized efforts to combat it. I think cultural preservation, and the desire and energy for cultural preservation must come from within the culture rather than without. Tying into the book, I thought the eventual protective role played by the British Empire while the island Nation made itself into a scientific Shangri-la derives from the same nation-building hubris that makes us believe we can export ideology. While I think it's important to engage on such matters (I'm a big supporter of muscular US diplomacy), I think the idea that a system in which local culture needs a global protector is doomed to failure.
Is there a time to lie In the tenth grade we were assigned to write an in-class essay on this very question. More specifically, on the portion of Adventures of Huck Finn when Huck lies to protect
I think there is definitely a time to lie. I wouldn't be able to construct scenarios in which it is unambiguously the right decision, but I feel confident in a Nephi and Laban way that all actions, no matter how abhorrent in normal everyday life, may be right in certain circumstances. That said, I'm pretty careful about giving honest answers to my kids about things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I don't seek out opportunities to puncture their innocense, but if they come to me with questions I pretty unapologetically give honest answers. Because I think a lot of harm can be done when you put your child's trust in you at risk, and I think there are few reasons to do such a thing.
Still, though, I would not say never; I can easily conceive of scenarios in which I would purposefully mislead and even straight out lie to my children in order to protect them from truths which would, in my belief, harm them. And if slave-traders were really after my friend Jim, I would tell them he ran the other way and try to sneak off while they weren't looking.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Long Lost PVS Friends
Last week I got a phone call from this PVS
Since James isn't around much, I'll post a brief update on his behalf (and if I get it a little wrong he can correct me). He just graduated from Wharton (Penn) business school and decided to move his wife and 3 1/2 kids (due in December; congratulations!) to Delhi, India to pursue a business opportunity. He and a couple of partners have spent the last few months setting the business up, and hopefully within the year they'll have found success. I don't think James would like me releasing the details over the interwebs, but the idea is great and we obviously wish him all the success in the world (or at least I do; Alvin I'm not so sure).
So after an all-too-short visit, James headed down the Cape to pitch his business plan to some VC investors (I haven't heard whether that particular pitch was successful or not). Today, if I'm not mistaken, his plane is en route to India, carrying him and his family on their wonderful adventure. Safe travels Nuttall family and shubh kaamnaayein (शुभ कामनाएँ).
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Nation: I would like to eat your brains someday
I liked the book. The questions were also good.
Grandfathers speak
I listened to a story about an atheist who had been asked to pray to know if God was real—when he did, he decided that anything that he would receive as an answer would just be himself telling himself what he wanted to hear. I tend to disbelieve the religious experiences of a lot of people, which is probably the skeptic in me.
It seems to me that Mau was trying to resolve his tradition with his loss of faith in the Gods. His out-of-body Locaha experience was, I think, where he came to terms with the Gods. I liked the paradox and I think that is typical of finding out for oneself what one believes. Often, I think that the testimony someone shares is, if not a lie, a stretch of the truth they've accepted, and only then can the “voices of the Grandfathers” confirm the truth.
Spit Makes Good Beer
I am more curious what is in saliva that makes the beer turn out. There are a lot of cultural things that are nice to hang onto, but it's important to know the reason—like Daphne understanding there's something in the length of the song that makes the spit work its magic.
When we bless the refreshments, do we really thing the soda and sugar cookies will nourish and strengthen our bodies? Why do we have to bless the food before we eat? In our house, anytime before the dishes are put away counts.
What if _____ had never happened?
I don't think I really believe in “if” or a multiverse, but I like thinking about it, Schrodinger's cat and all that. Its amusing to think of what life would have been like had I done X, Y or Z instead of the what I actually chose. Considering that life is everlasting, does that make the multiverses infinite for each individual, or are they limited to a finite spectrum based on a finite character set which would never change? I suppose we've all got another multiverse involving drunken psychology.
Quotes and Comments
"When much is taken, something is returned"
This must be just another quantum version of the scripture. I like the version we have, as this seems like a little more vague platitude.
"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
Spinoza was frustrating to me for that reason. I don't know if there were answers in the philosophy, it just was at odds with the way I perceive the world, and I couldn't find a way to brush him away.
"I don't think he believes in his gods, but he believes in belief."
I like to think that I would be a Mormon even if something shook my faith—living the gospel makes me so happy. I believe in the ability of living my religion to make me happy.
On Good vs. Discussable Books
I remember a few years ago enough people told me to read the Da Vinci Code that I finally skimmed it and afterward I swore I would never waste that much time on filth. But I've done it since then. Popularity is occasionally valuable, but I value opinions of some more than others. In my mind a book club book should thought provoking first, enjoyable second. Though I've not enjoyed all the books I've read, I don't feel like I've wasted time (one of the benefits to reading rather than listening is that I control the pace).
Grandfathers speak
I listened to a story about an atheist who had been asked to pray to know if God was real—when he did, he decided that anything that he would receive as an answer would just be himself telling himself what he wanted to hear. I tend to disbelieve the religious experiences of a lot of people, which is probably the skeptic in me.
It seems to me that Mau was trying to resolve his tradition with his loss of faith in the Gods. His out-of-body Locaha experience was, I think, where he came to terms with the Gods. I liked the paradox and I think that is typical of finding out for oneself what one believes. Often, I think that the testimony someone shares is, if not a lie, a stretch of the truth they've accepted, and only then can the “voices of the Grandfathers” confirm the truth.
Spit Makes Good Beer
I am more curious what is in saliva that makes the beer turn out. There are a lot of cultural things that are nice to hang onto, but it's important to know the reason—like Daphne understanding there's something in the length of the song that makes the spit work its magic.
When we bless the refreshments, do we really thing the soda and sugar cookies will nourish and strengthen our bodies? Why do we have to bless the food before we eat? In our house, anytime before the dishes are put away counts.
What if _____ had never happened?
I don't think I really believe in “if” or a multiverse, but I like thinking about it, Schrodinger's cat and all that. Its amusing to think of what life would have been like had I done X, Y or Z instead of the what I actually chose. Considering that life is everlasting, does that make the multiverses infinite for each individual, or are they limited to a finite spectrum based on a finite character set which would never change? I suppose we've all got another multiverse involving drunken psychology.
Quotes and Comments
"When much is taken, something is returned"
This must be just another quantum version of the scripture. I like the version we have, as this seems like a little more vague platitude.
"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
Spinoza was frustrating to me for that reason. I don't know if there were answers in the philosophy, it just was at odds with the way I perceive the world, and I couldn't find a way to brush him away.
"I don't think he believes in his gods, but he believes in belief."
I like to think that I would be a Mormon even if something shook my faith—living the gospel makes me so happy. I believe in the ability of living my religion to make me happy.
On Good vs. Discussable Books
I remember a few years ago enough people told me to read the Da Vinci Code that I finally skimmed it and afterward I swore I would never waste that much time on filth. But I've done it since then. Popularity is occasionally valuable, but I value opinions of some more than others. In my mind a book club book should thought provoking first, enjoyable second. Though I've not enjoyed all the books I've read, I don't feel like I've wasted time (one of the benefits to reading rather than listening is that I control the pace).
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
One Nation. Under God Anchors.
I hope a lot of you have read or are reading this book because I have a lot of questions, more than I expect any one person to answer.
"Angels [and Grandfathers?] speak by the power of the Holy Ghost"
Mau has his whole world shattered around him when the wave comes. He suddenly does not believe in the Gods his people had always believed in. Yet, at the same time he hears the voices of his ancestors talking to him; he has conversations with Locaha, the God of Death; and he has an out of body experience. I thought this was an interesting and not altogether uncommon paradox.
I think sometimes we grow up with certain beliefs about religion, and then we have a catastrophe (like the wave) or a 'coming of age' (and Mau was right between boyhood and manhood) where we realize that our religion is not what we thought it was. It is then our tendency to throw it all out and not believe in anything, but simultaneously, we may be having experiences that should be affirming our faith that there is much more than science and reason can explain.
I used to see things in black and white, and I had a hard time when I came upon things that weren't so clearly defined. It was tempting to say that because some things weren't clear maybe nothing was clear, but I think the 'voices of the Grandfathers' are not just in my head. And I'm strengthened when others say they've heard the 'voices of the Grandmothers'. Am I making sense? Have you had your perception of religion shift drastically? Were the voices of the Grandfathers real or just in Mau's head? Why could the ghost girl hear the Grandmothers but not hear anything after the death of her mother?
The Parable of the Poison Beer
I think the spitting and singing to make the beer safe is a lot like many of our spiritual traditions. Some of it is necessary to keep us safe (i.e. the spitting and waiting) and some of it is just culture (i.e. the song about the 4 brothers vs. baa baa black sheep). If we are smart, we may be able to seperate the culture from the necessary, but it doesn't make the culture bad. It is much better to follow the entire spiritual tradition (culture and all) then to get lifted up in pride (as Foxlip did) and get killed. Do you agree? Do you try to separate culture from the necessary? Do you like to sing Baa, Baa Black Sheep? Does it affect the quality of your beer?
False Priests
I enjoyed the character of the priest that was silently struggling with his own faith in the Gods while simultaneously trying to restore everyone else's faith. He said some wise things in between acting rather stupidly. When he tried to keep Mau from bringing up the God Anchor that hadn't been there before, he showed that he believed in a dead religion. There are so many historical examples of religious leaders that fought against change because they thought it proved their religion to be false or it weakened their position. I'm grateful to be in a living church where we are encouraged to believe all things that are true. What is the appropriate way to react when things we thought were true turn out to be incomplete or false?
If North were South
While it's probably not unique to this book, I'd never really thought about the idea that the orientation of our globes (with North being on top) is arbitrary. I've never seen a map turned the other way around, and the idea of it would be difficult to adjust to. I liked how Pratchett said the cannibal looked like the Prime Minister; how he pointed out who the true savages were; and how the original thinkers were from the Nation. Do you think that museums and the idea that artifacts should be 'where the world can see them' are racist or cultural supremist or whatever the right word for that is? Do people in the Southern Hemisphere have inferiority complexes?
What if _____ had never happened?
At the end, Mau and Daphne wonder if they would have been better off if the wave had never happened. Daphne decides that she's glad the wave happened, and Mau decides not to decide and thinks there would be good and bad parts to each scenario in the multiverse. This illustrates the growth that can come through tragedy and trials and why they are an important part of this life.
However, just because we've grown from a trial does not mean that the trial was good. I've never met someone that has had a child out of wedlock that has regretted having that child. After all, how can you regret the creation of a wonderful child? But does that mean that the decision that led to having the child was good? Or that it was meant to happen?
We change through our life experiences and trials have an ability to change us faster than comfortable living, but the retrospective look back on our lives may not be the best way to decide if an event was good or from God. How does one determine if one's path was guided by God vs. allowed to happen by God? Or are all paths always guided by God at all times?
I don't know if I believe in a multiverse, but I like the idea of it from the ability of God to judge our actions. For example, He could say that if event A had happened, then we would have behaved like so, but if event A never happened, then we would have turned out like such and such. What are the multiverse versions of you doing right now? One of mine is in Texas with a PhD. Another might be a drunk psychologist.
Quotes and Comments
"When much is taken, something is returned"
It's like the inverse of the scripture (D&C scripture mastery!): when "much is given, much is required". Is the inverse of any scripture true? Is he that is compelled to do nothing a wise and not a slothful servant?
"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
How limited are we in our learning because we fix a perception of the world and make everything fit into it? I like to think that I think more than the average person, but I find it quite difficult to have lots of unresolved questions.
"You shout and stamp and yell that there are no gods, and then you shake your fist at the sky and revile them for not existing! You need them to exist so that the flames of your denial will warm you in your self-righteousness! That's not thinking, that's just a hurt child screaming in pain!"
Even atheism is a belief system.
"She just wanted an explanation that was better than "It's the will of God," which was grown-up speak for "because."'
We have inherent needs for explanations. If they don't exist or if we don't know them, we'll make them up. In sports, for example, we're quite good at coming up with explanations for random events.
"I don't think he believes in his gods, but he believes in belief."
There is lots of evidence for the power of our beliefs to have real effects on our health and other tangible events. Unfortunately, perhaps, I don't think you can just 'believe in belief.' You have to believe in something, and you have to really believe it for it to have any positive benefit.
"And that was a sin. Even if you have no god at all, that was a sin. Some things are a sin all by themselves. And I'm going to murder you, and that is a mortal sin, too."
Certainly ethics can exist outside of religion. In theory, things can be wrong (though perhaps not a sin) without a moral authority to say it is wrong. However, Cox reached a point where murder wasn't wrong, as did the cannibals.
"If a lie will make us strong, a lie will be my weapon. People want lies to live by. They cry out for them."
I do think that people want lies (including children), but lies are a dangerous weapon. When lies are uncovered, then any gain from the lie becomes nullified by the increased pain of discovering the lie and the consequent lack of faith. Of course, in this case, if the truth was discovered, then they would all be dead anyway. Is there a 'time to lie'?
On Good vs. Popular Books
I agree with Peter’s comment on my last post that the popularity of the book doesn’t make it a good book. And just because it’s a good book doesn’t mean it’s the best book for the book club. I wasn’t trying to demean any of the previous choices (except Peter’s) because I think all of the books have led to interesting discussions, and the only reason I tried to pick on Peter was because he hasn’t liked any of my book choices and I was trying to validate myself. (I really liked 2 of his 3 choices.)
I chose this book over the other options I presented because I remembered wanting to discuss it with the book club when I finished, even though the other options were probably both better and more popular. I value all of your opinions and thoughts, and I hope you’ll comment even if you haven’t read the book.
PS In case you haven’t read the book and in case it wasn’t clear from all of this rambling, the author ends the book on a note that indicates he does believe in God.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Seek Ye Out of the Best Books
OK, so quoting the D&C in my post title doesn't exactly mean I'm getting ready for seminary, but here's a little diversion. I've been looking up rankings on Goodreads.com lately to get some sort of outside ranking for all of the books I've read over the last few years. Personally, I refuse to rank books because each book is good/bad for it's own reason, and a simple ranking may ignore why that book is useful or good/bad for a specific audience. Still, I think they are fun to look at.
Note that the rankings are on a scale of 1 to 5, but it's almost impossible to get an average ranking below 3. The rankings are fluid, and the more popular a book is the more people will have given it a ranking. So it's not fair and I'm not saying I agree with every ranking, but it is interesting. Here are the rankings of all of the PVS book club books, as well as a few of the suggested books that were ultimately not chosen:
Homo Politicus 3.28 (Agreed, terrible book)
Why Men Hate Going to Church 3.41
Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State 3.43
State of Fear 3.46
Nudge 3.52 (I enjoyed this one, but writing about politics won't get you very high on this list.)
My Life As A Traitor 3.57
The Quants 3.61
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives 3.65 (Maybe it takes a statistician to appreciate this.)
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit 3.68 (I was disappointed this didn't rank higher.)
Getting at the Truth: Responding to Difficult Questions about LDS Beliefs 3.77
John Barleycorn 3.78
A Study in Scarlet 3.86
Twilight 3.87 (OK, so no one even suggested we read this (though Paul referenced it in a post), but I thought it gives perspective. One caveat is that almost 400,000 people have ranked this book as compared to <250 that ranked David O McKay.)
Year of Wonders 3.89
Outliers 3.97 (The highest of all of Gladwell's books.)
The Road 3.97 (This was left out of the original list.)
The Nine 4.00
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance 4.01 (I liked Complications (see below) so I found the 'sequel'.)
The Third Policeman 4.01
The Nation 4.05 (I'll kick off the discussion in another week, and then Jesse will have a turn to add to this list.)
A Town Like Alice 4.06
Complications: A Surgeons Notes on an Imperfect Science 4.11
Dirk Gently and the Holistic Detective Agency 4.16
Mountains Beyond Mountains 4.23
Omnivore’s Dilemma 4.23
David O McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism 4.30
East of Eden 4.32 (Impressive considering I think the site has a slight bias against older books some people were forced to read.)
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and The Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen 4.37
The Hunger Games 4.57 (Second highest ranking (after the Book of Mormon) out of the last 200 books I've read.)
In light of these rankings...
...I wish I had chosen Born to Run this month.
...I don't feel bad for skimming some of the books chosen.
...I do feel bad for only watching the movie of East of Eden.
...I think it's obvious that my book choices have been way better than Peter's.
Note that the rankings are on a scale of 1 to 5, but it's almost impossible to get an average ranking below 3. The rankings are fluid, and the more popular a book is the more people will have given it a ranking. So it's not fair and I'm not saying I agree with every ranking, but it is interesting. Here are the rankings of all of the PVS book club books, as well as a few of the suggested books that were ultimately not chosen:
Homo Politicus 3.28 (Agreed, terrible book)
Why Men Hate Going to Church 3.41
Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State 3.43
State of Fear 3.46
Nudge 3.52 (I enjoyed this one, but writing about politics won't get you very high on this list.)
My Life As A Traitor 3.57
The Quants 3.61
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives 3.65 (Maybe it takes a statistician to appreciate this.)
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit 3.68 (I was disappointed this didn't rank higher.)
Getting at the Truth: Responding to Difficult Questions about LDS Beliefs 3.77
John Barleycorn 3.78
A Study in Scarlet 3.86
Twilight 3.87 (OK, so no one even suggested we read this (though Paul referenced it in a post), but I thought it gives perspective. One caveat is that almost 400,000 people have ranked this book as compared to <250 that ranked David O McKay.)
Year of Wonders 3.89
Outliers 3.97 (The highest of all of Gladwell's books.)
The Road 3.97 (This was left out of the original list.)
The Nine 4.00
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance 4.01 (I liked Complications (see below) so I found the 'sequel'.)
The Third Policeman 4.01
The Nation 4.05 (I'll kick off the discussion in another week, and then Jesse will have a turn to add to this list.)
A Town Like Alice 4.06
Complications: A Surgeons Notes on an Imperfect Science 4.11
Dirk Gently and the Holistic Detective Agency 4.16
Mountains Beyond Mountains 4.23
Omnivore’s Dilemma 4.23
David O McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism 4.30
East of Eden 4.32 (Impressive considering I think the site has a slight bias against older books some people were forced to read.)
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and The Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen 4.37
The Hunger Games 4.57 (Second highest ranking (after the Book of Mormon) out of the last 200 books I've read.)
In light of these rankings...
...I wish I had chosen Born to Run this month.
...I don't feel bad for skimming some of the books chosen.
...I do feel bad for only watching the movie of East of Eden.
...I think it's obvious that my book choices have been way better than Peter's.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Better, Best and Alice
I really enjoyed A Town Like Alice. I'm sorry that neither Paul nor Alvin thought it was that good, but I'm not sure I can create a sufficient defense to change anyone's impressions.
The thing I liked most about Alice was the strong protagonist. I thought she was characterized quite well, put through a series of interesting and trying experiences, and yet remained an effective every(wo)man. In a lot of ways I saw one of my favorite movie protagonists in her: Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption. Dealt a rather tough hand, she proceeded to give hope to those around her and constantly work to improve their situation. When she was given money, she went on to return kindness to those who had shown kindness to her, and then through her courage and vision provide prosperity to a host of people.
To Paul's point about her money being misspent from a utility standpoint, I certainly see the truth of that statement. She could obviously have spent her money providing wells throughout Malaysia; this would likely have represented a greater "bang for her buck" way of approaching humanitarian aid*. But the message I took from her actions is slightly different, and more in-line with my own feelings on charitable giving. You have a greater moral obligation to those who come into your path than those who don't. I see justification for this in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The point wasn't to help _everybody_ or to help those most in need (although those are good things to desire), but rather that it is sinful to be in a unique position to help and not provide that help.
Consider the following hypothetical: you're all alone on your way to a job interview when a plane crashes into a nearby pond. The small plane is sinking, and you can hear the voices of a few passengers calling for help. The only thing it will take to save them is to wade into the lake, swim over, and pull them out. But in the process you will ruin your expensive interview shoes (seems a little unreasonable, but go with me here). Alternatively, you could keep your wardrobe pristine, go get your job, sell your shoes, and dedicate a portion of your salary and the sale of your shoes (second hand) to buying mosquito netting to save children from malaria in Africa. As in most hypotheticals, treat this as an exclusive set of options. What is the moral thing to do?
I contend that 1) it's not clear what the moral thing to do but 2) I'd be personally swayed to save the people on the plane because I am uniquely able to help them and 3) that there's nothing wrong with that per my understanding of the gospel. Similarly, for Jean Paget the option of dedicating her money to saving people in Malaysia by building wells would be a noble sacrifice, but I think the good she did to the town of Alice is no less in keeping with the moral of the Good Samaritan parable.
I guess in the end I liked the book for two reasons. One, I just found it entertaining. The plot line wasn't strong (particularly once the war ended), but I felt like there was a good blend of tension and description and characterization. And two, I felt buoyed up by Paget's example that if you work hard and smart, regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in, you can not only help yourself but help others in the process. If I were to summarize the moral of the novel (for me) it would be that strong character and perseverance can bring happiness and prosperity not only to an individual but to all those with whom she comes into contact. That probably isn't true (c.f. Candide), but it is what I wish were true.
*As an interesting side note, I recently read a story of an Afghan village where a well was built (by USAID, I believe). After a few months the well was destroyed, but not by the Taliban or by outraged village Elders. Rather it was the women of the village themselves who destroyed it because it took away their only opportunity to gather and socialize at the river. They saw the daily treks as a break from the monotony of the day. The point of the article was the US has invested huge resources in understanding the enemy in Afghanistan, but not many in understanding the culture of the Afghan people themselves.
The thing I liked most about Alice was the strong protagonist. I thought she was characterized quite well, put through a series of interesting and trying experiences, and yet remained an effective every(wo)man. In a lot of ways I saw one of my favorite movie protagonists in her: Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption. Dealt a rather tough hand, she proceeded to give hope to those around her and constantly work to improve their situation. When she was given money, she went on to return kindness to those who had shown kindness to her, and then through her courage and vision provide prosperity to a host of people.
To Paul's point about her money being misspent from a utility standpoint, I certainly see the truth of that statement. She could obviously have spent her money providing wells throughout Malaysia; this would likely have represented a greater "bang for her buck" way of approaching humanitarian aid*. But the message I took from her actions is slightly different, and more in-line with my own feelings on charitable giving. You have a greater moral obligation to those who come into your path than those who don't. I see justification for this in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The point wasn't to help _everybody_ or to help those most in need (although those are good things to desire), but rather that it is sinful to be in a unique position to help and not provide that help.
Consider the following hypothetical: you're all alone on your way to a job interview when a plane crashes into a nearby pond. The small plane is sinking, and you can hear the voices of a few passengers calling for help. The only thing it will take to save them is to wade into the lake, swim over, and pull them out. But in the process you will ruin your expensive interview shoes (seems a little unreasonable, but go with me here). Alternatively, you could keep your wardrobe pristine, go get your job, sell your shoes, and dedicate a portion of your salary and the sale of your shoes (second hand) to buying mosquito netting to save children from malaria in Africa. As in most hypotheticals, treat this as an exclusive set of options. What is the moral thing to do?
I contend that 1) it's not clear what the moral thing to do but 2) I'd be personally swayed to save the people on the plane because I am uniquely able to help them and 3) that there's nothing wrong with that per my understanding of the gospel. Similarly, for Jean Paget the option of dedicating her money to saving people in Malaysia by building wells would be a noble sacrifice, but I think the good she did to the town of Alice is no less in keeping with the moral of the Good Samaritan parable.
I guess in the end I liked the book for two reasons. One, I just found it entertaining. The plot line wasn't strong (particularly once the war ended), but I felt like there was a good blend of tension and description and characterization. And two, I felt buoyed up by Paget's example that if you work hard and smart, regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in, you can not only help yourself but help others in the process. If I were to summarize the moral of the novel (for me) it would be that strong character and perseverance can bring happiness and prosperity not only to an individual but to all those with whom she comes into contact. That probably isn't true (c.f. Candide), but it is what I wish were true.
*As an interesting side note, I recently read a story of an Afghan village where a well was built (by USAID, I believe). After a few months the well was destroyed, but not by the Taliban or by outraged village Elders. Rather it was the women of the village themselves who destroyed it because it took away their only opportunity to gather and socialize at the river. They saw the daily treks as a break from the monotony of the day. The point of the article was the US has invested huge resources in understanding the enemy in Afghanistan, but not many in understanding the culture of the Afghan people themselves.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Some Post-Alice Book Options
I'm expecting a few more posts on Paul's book, but as I'm next on the list, I thought I'd throw out some options. You can comment on the options as you share your Alice thoughts (or lack of Alice thoughts, like me.)
Since Paul has recommended choosing books we've already read (and I'm really hoping to get Peter's approval on one of my book choices (I'm 0 for 2 so far)), here are some of my favorite books from the past year:
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
For all of the runners out there or those who want to be inspired to run or just read about over-the-top runners.
The Nation Fiction, but there are some interesting religious and philosophical themes to discuss.
Hunger Games From a pure entertainment standpoint, this one is hard to beat. It's a bit violent in parts, as the story revolves around a futuristic gladitorial games with teenagers. Book three in this series comes out in August.
Outliers: The Story of Success I like all of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, but I think this is my favorite.
And if you want an option for one that I'm hoping to read, but haven't:
Who's Who in the Doctrine and Covenants I'm teaching seminary this year, and I could use all of your stories and insights.
Since Paul has recommended choosing books we've already read (and I'm really hoping to get Peter's approval on one of my book choices (I'm 0 for 2 so far)), here are some of my favorite books from the past year:
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
For all of the runners out there or those who want to be inspired to run or just read about over-the-top runners.
The Nation Fiction, but there are some interesting religious and philosophical themes to discuss.
Hunger Games From a pure entertainment standpoint, this one is hard to beat. It's a bit violent in parts, as the story revolves around a futuristic gladitorial games with teenagers. Book three in this series comes out in August.
Outliers: The Story of Success I like all of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, but I think this is my favorite.
And if you want an option for one that I'm hoping to read, but haven't:
Who's Who in the Doctrine and Covenants I'm teaching seminary this year, and I could use all of your stories and insights.
Monday, July 12, 2010
A Few Thoughts
On Gambling:
I disagree with Paul's theory that gambling is wrong because it doesn't 'create something', or at least I think it's incomplete. The idea that you don't have to work, that you can get 'something for nothing', is a damaging philosophy, both religiously and for society as a whole. However, you can imagine scenarios in which gambling creates something. For example, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) is televised nationally, so this event 'creates' entertainment. Are the players at the table that different than athletes or actors?
I think poker:UNO::alchohol:caffeine. The church prohibits poker and alcohol because they are addictive, and the church is adamently against anything that limits our ability to choose. (Plus, they are associated with venues, etc. the church doesn't want to be associated with.) UNO for push-ups is based on the same principles as poker. It's a game of chance where knowing certain probabilities may give you better odds, and it doesn't create much more than entertainment. UNO is similar to caffeine in that too much of it really isn't good for you, but playing UNO and drinking caffeine don't have quite the same consequences and tendencies to overconsumption as playing poker and drinking alcohol.
Personally, I believe if we (as humans) could moderate our consumption of alcohol, then there would be no rules against alcohol and we all would have had wine at our weddings (and on Sundays?). As we can't, the church/the prophet/God has suggested we just avoid alchohol (and poker) altogether. Alcohol and poker aren't evil, but our tendency to overconsume and lose control are. And without moderation, we violate the larger principles of taking care of our bodies and work/creation.
Thus, 'gambling' on the stock market is good in moderation, but don't overinvest yourself in the stockmarket's future.
On Alice:
Peter went through a lot of work to upload the audiobook for me, and I downloaded it on my computer and listened to a few tracks shortly before my computer crashed. I wasn't that impressed with the opening and Paul's review didn't make me want to read/listen to any more. However, after all of Peter's work I want to be convinced that it's worth it to listen to the book. Anyone?
On Paul's other books:
I had already put three audiobooks on hold before Paul made his final choice. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives was a fantastic book. As a statistician, I am a bit biased, and there were some examples in the book that are a bit overdone in statistical circles (i.e. The Monte Hall problem). Still, even statisticians overestimate our ability to control random events, and we attribute great characteristics to the person who does the equivalent of winning a coin toss and pronounce the coin toss loser a complete failure.
The Nine put Tammy to sleep after less than one CD, and I made it two-thirds of the way through Homo Politicus before becoming nauseated by the constant stream of outdated political gossip effectively designed to cause one to lose all faith in elected officials.
But thanks, Paul. It's worth 'reading' parts of a couple sloggers to 'read' one good book.
I disagree with Paul's theory that gambling is wrong because it doesn't 'create something', or at least I think it's incomplete. The idea that you don't have to work, that you can get 'something for nothing', is a damaging philosophy, both religiously and for society as a whole. However, you can imagine scenarios in which gambling creates something. For example, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) is televised nationally, so this event 'creates' entertainment. Are the players at the table that different than athletes or actors?
I think poker:UNO::alchohol:caffeine. The church prohibits poker and alcohol because they are addictive, and the church is adamently against anything that limits our ability to choose. (Plus, they are associated with venues, etc. the church doesn't want to be associated with.) UNO for push-ups is based on the same principles as poker. It's a game of chance where knowing certain probabilities may give you better odds, and it doesn't create much more than entertainment. UNO is similar to caffeine in that too much of it really isn't good for you, but playing UNO and drinking caffeine don't have quite the same consequences and tendencies to overconsumption as playing poker and drinking alcohol.
Personally, I believe if we (as humans) could moderate our consumption of alcohol, then there would be no rules against alcohol and we all would have had wine at our weddings (and on Sundays?). As we can't, the church/the prophet/God has suggested we just avoid alchohol (and poker) altogether. Alcohol and poker aren't evil, but our tendency to overconsume and lose control are. And without moderation, we violate the larger principles of taking care of our bodies and work/creation.
Thus, 'gambling' on the stock market is good in moderation, but don't overinvest yourself in the stockmarket's future.
On Alice:
Peter went through a lot of work to upload the audiobook for me, and I downloaded it on my computer and listened to a few tracks shortly before my computer crashed. I wasn't that impressed with the opening and Paul's review didn't make me want to read/listen to any more. However, after all of Peter's work I want to be convinced that it's worth it to listen to the book. Anyone?
On Paul's other books:
I had already put three audiobooks on hold before Paul made his final choice. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives was a fantastic book. As a statistician, I am a bit biased, and there were some examples in the book that are a bit overdone in statistical circles (i.e. The Monte Hall problem). Still, even statisticians overestimate our ability to control random events, and we attribute great characteristics to the person who does the equivalent of winning a coin toss and pronounce the coin toss loser a complete failure.
The Nine put Tammy to sleep after less than one CD, and I made it two-thirds of the way through Homo Politicus before becoming nauseated by the constant stream of outdated political gossip effectively designed to cause one to lose all faith in elected officials.
But thanks, Paul. It's worth 'reading' parts of a couple sloggers to 'read' one good book.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Alice Lost Her Muchness
To quote: “Oh my word.” I chose this book partly on a recommendation of a sister in law and I likely won't put her recommendations high on my list from now on. My mom likes books like this—we call them “isha” books—about women suffering through lots of things and don't we respect them for it; we're so grateful that we don't have to suffer like them. The second half seemed like a something between a Zane Grey novel and a self help book, “A Step by Step Guide to Establish Utopia”
I understand that the author based the Malaya portion on a true story about a group of women who were trucked around for a few years in Sumatra. I didn't mind the narrator but could understand why others would think this book was lame. I rather liked the Christ symbolism even though it was downplayed and later trivialized.
Interesting that the author didn't seem to have a lot of prejudice against the Japanese—the characters seemed to judge them as individuals—but his characters accepted the discrimination toward the Aborigines.
I think the part of this book that made me think the most was the second half. The book was originally entitled The Legacy, which seems just as good a title as Alice. I like the somewhat presumptuous notion that with a few thousand quid one can create an oasis in the desert. This half of the book is based on Burkestown in Queensland, which I believe had a similar population increase. I want to believe that with enough care and drive, it could be done. It did seem to paint a simple picture of how to make life more pleasant. Part of what bugged is that it was seeking for pleasantness rather than doing the most good. I wish, instead, that Jean and Joe would have decided to found an orphanage for poor Malayan children.
Digging a well for poor people to provide them with safe drinking water is a life changer. I have an older friend who went on a service mission to Fiji and dug wells for underprivileged communities—I hope to be able to do something like that (Paul Farmer again).
While I enjoyed the book, I usually adjust my reading speed based on how interesting and valuable the book is to me, and I read this one very fast. Incidentally, I also sat through the entire movie made in the 50's. I would understand if you didn't get too far into it, and my new rule for my turn on the PVS book club will be only to pick books I have already read.
I understand that the author based the Malaya portion on a true story about a group of women who were trucked around for a few years in Sumatra. I didn't mind the narrator but could understand why others would think this book was lame. I rather liked the Christ symbolism even though it was downplayed and later trivialized.
Interesting that the author didn't seem to have a lot of prejudice against the Japanese—the characters seemed to judge them as individuals—but his characters accepted the discrimination toward the Aborigines.
I think the part of this book that made me think the most was the second half. The book was originally entitled The Legacy, which seems just as good a title as Alice. I like the somewhat presumptuous notion that with a few thousand quid one can create an oasis in the desert. This half of the book is based on Burkestown in Queensland, which I believe had a similar population increase. I want to believe that with enough care and drive, it could be done. It did seem to paint a simple picture of how to make life more pleasant. Part of what bugged is that it was seeking for pleasantness rather than doing the most good. I wish, instead, that Jean and Joe would have decided to found an orphanage for poor Malayan children.
Digging a well for poor people to provide them with safe drinking water is a life changer. I have an older friend who went on a service mission to Fiji and dug wells for underprivileged communities—I hope to be able to do something like that (Paul Farmer again).
While I enjoyed the book, I usually adjust my reading speed based on how interesting and valuable the book is to me, and I read this one very fast. Incidentally, I also sat through the entire movie made in the 50's. I would understand if you didn't get too far into it, and my new rule for my turn on the PVS book club will be only to pick books I have already read.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Those Greedy Quants Almost Took Over the World
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.
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.
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!
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