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8/08/2006 11:51:00 PM|||BWV|||Hey, it beats the tar out of unconscious incompetence.
In addition to a great charting and scanning service, my TeleChart subscription delivers a daily article/opinion/manifesto that gets selected for publishing from a horde of TeleChart clients' submissions. Many clients consider it an honor to be published, and the company even sends each "knighted" (published) client a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne.
With as much other content as I devour, rarely do I make it beyond line 2 of this stuff. But today's post instantly hooked me.. and I decided to republish here. Hopefully the Worden brothers (TeleChart owners) appreciate the lip service more than they deplore the plagiarism.
The smart guys may tell you they "know" where some market is going in a week, month, or year. But the really smart -- or maybe dumb? -- ones will at least have backup plans.
Dear Don,
I have to laugh every time I hear from somebody heralding that there is no Holy Grail for us speculators. Ho, ho. There most certainly is a Holy Grail and if your readers care to listen I'm here to tell them about it, unless they know already in which case they should read no further.
But first, if need be, let's establish that man is not particularly rational. Lots of cultural anthropologists and Keynesian economists think so, but I doubt that many politicians do. Mark Twain surely didn't think so, either. Sure, we live in houses with electricity and plumbing and go to the supermarket for food while chimps poke sticks into termite mounds and live in outdoor splendor when they are not being worked on in laboratories, but if we humans were so rational would we grow fat, smoke, drink cheap whiskey on a work night, fall in love, make promises, loan money, buy more stuff than we can afford, do the road rage thing, live inside tall buildings, and so on? Anyone with a brain can look at his or her behavior and detect a smattering, or more, much more, of irrational behavior, so why do we go around all the time insisting on our being so much smarter than we really are? If we are so rational, how come we aren't all rich, having earned, saved, and invested wisely instead of being middling having earned and spent or lost our money on wine, women, and song? How come we still vote for Republicans and Democrats?
We live in ignorance all day, every day. Ignorance is our common state, not rationality. Although rationality is something that may pop up now and then in our lives, it does not do so consistently and may fail us altogether at critical junctures. (As when we would rather hold a losing position to see what happens next than to close it and be done with it, thereby saving us anguish and the loss of resources, both monetary and psychic.)
So what's the deal here? Should we embrace ignorance and not rationality? Humph. Why would we do that? Why? Ha. 'Tis the Holy Grail it is. If your reptilian brain can be convinced of its almighty ignorance, it may turn out to be the most rational thing it has ever acceded to. We live in ignorance. We can't know ever so many things, let alone what is going to happen to a stock's price in the next week. Ignorance is far different from stupidity. It's stupid to think you can know something that is not knowable, but it is far from stupid to recognize your own ignorance when faced with the unknowable. Indeed, knowing your own ignorance is intelligence. (I hasten now to add that I think Don is one of the most ignorant people around.)
You as the "rational man" are in a losing position. Think of the energy wasted searching for justifications and reasons for doing this or that? But in contrast, you, as the ignorant man finding yourself in a losing position, do not bother yourself with constantly re-establishing the premise in your mind that you are so very smart and accomplished and good-looking. Instead, you can just act with sweet aplomb. To put it differently, if your energy is not corrupted and depleted by a continuous attempt "to be right, to be smart, to know more, and most deadly, to want to be better," then your energy for seeing reality becomes vastly increased.
Facts are always in the past. There is no future fact. What is known is in the past. As speculators we are interested in the future and use the past as prologue; however, if we get caught up in thinking that we can know the future if only we are just "good enough" and can gather more facts, or the right ones, and can then take the risk out of everything we do, then we are lost because we are living a lie. On the other hand, if we labor in ignorance as a matter of course, we are not then invested in this lie at all, but only in what is going on. This is freedom. You are no longer tyrannized by a mind that is overwhelmingly concerned with appearing smart to itself. The mind will act rationally when it is does not burden itself with trying to be something it is not. We live with "I don't know." So if we don't know, what do we do? Mitigate risk is the rational thing to do. Ah, at times, when we are relaxed, we can be rational! Hooray for evolution! And so ignorance leads to brilliance, but had we started out wanting to be brilliant, all would have been lost and the Holy Grail would still be hidden from our sight.
"Conduct your triumph as a funeral." Lao Tzu
In gratitude, Sir Bigfoot |||115509720305716942|||Conscious Incompetence as a Goal ?
In addition to a great charting and scanning service, my TeleChart subscription delivers a daily article/opinion/manifesto that gets selected for publishing from a horde of TeleChart clients' submissions. Many clients consider it an honor to be published, and the company even sends each "knighted" (published) client a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne.
With as much other content as I devour, rarely do I make it beyond line 2 of this stuff. But today's post instantly hooked me.. and I decided to republish here. Hopefully the Worden brothers (TeleChart owners) appreciate the lip service more than they deplore the plagiarism.
The smart guys may tell you they "know" where some market is going in a week, month, or year. But the really smart -- or maybe dumb? -- ones will at least have backup plans.
Dear Don,
I have to laugh every time I hear from somebody heralding that there is no Holy Grail for us speculators. Ho, ho. There most certainly is a Holy Grail and if your readers care to listen I'm here to tell them about it, unless they know already in which case they should read no further.
But first, if need be, let's establish that man is not particularly rational. Lots of cultural anthropologists and Keynesian economists think so, but I doubt that many politicians do. Mark Twain surely didn't think so, either. Sure, we live in houses with electricity and plumbing and go to the supermarket for food while chimps poke sticks into termite mounds and live in outdoor splendor when they are not being worked on in laboratories, but if we humans were so rational would we grow fat, smoke, drink cheap whiskey on a work night, fall in love, make promises, loan money, buy more stuff than we can afford, do the road rage thing, live inside tall buildings, and so on? Anyone with a brain can look at his or her behavior and detect a smattering, or more, much more, of irrational behavior, so why do we go around all the time insisting on our being so much smarter than we really are? If we are so rational, how come we aren't all rich, having earned, saved, and invested wisely instead of being middling having earned and spent or lost our money on wine, women, and song? How come we still vote for Republicans and Democrats?
We live in ignorance all day, every day. Ignorance is our common state, not rationality. Although rationality is something that may pop up now and then in our lives, it does not do so consistently and may fail us altogether at critical junctures. (As when we would rather hold a losing position to see what happens next than to close it and be done with it, thereby saving us anguish and the loss of resources, both monetary and psychic.)
So what's the deal here? Should we embrace ignorance and not rationality? Humph. Why would we do that? Why? Ha. 'Tis the Holy Grail it is. If your reptilian brain can be convinced of its almighty ignorance, it may turn out to be the most rational thing it has ever acceded to. We live in ignorance. We can't know ever so many things, let alone what is going to happen to a stock's price in the next week. Ignorance is far different from stupidity. It's stupid to think you can know something that is not knowable, but it is far from stupid to recognize your own ignorance when faced with the unknowable. Indeed, knowing your own ignorance is intelligence. (I hasten now to add that I think Don is one of the most ignorant people around.)
You as the "rational man" are in a losing position. Think of the energy wasted searching for justifications and reasons for doing this or that? But in contrast, you, as the ignorant man finding yourself in a losing position, do not bother yourself with constantly re-establishing the premise in your mind that you are so very smart and accomplished and good-looking. Instead, you can just act with sweet aplomb. To put it differently, if your energy is not corrupted and depleted by a continuous attempt "to be right, to be smart, to know more, and most deadly, to want to be better," then your energy for seeing reality becomes vastly increased.
Facts are always in the past. There is no future fact. What is known is in the past. As speculators we are interested in the future and use the past as prologue; however, if we get caught up in thinking that we can know the future if only we are just "good enough" and can gather more facts, or the right ones, and can then take the risk out of everything we do, then we are lost because we are living a lie. On the other hand, if we labor in ignorance as a matter of course, we are not then invested in this lie at all, but only in what is going on. This is freedom. You are no longer tyrannized by a mind that is overwhelmingly concerned with appearing smart to itself. The mind will act rationally when it is does not burden itself with trying to be something it is not. We live with "I don't know." So if we don't know, what do we do? Mitigate risk is the rational thing to do. Ah, at times, when we are relaxed, we can be rational! Hooray for evolution! And so ignorance leads to brilliance, but had we started out wanting to be brilliant, all would have been lost and the Holy Grail would still be hidden from our sight.
"Conduct your triumph as a funeral." Lao Tzu
In gratitude, Sir Bigfoot |||115509720305716942|||Conscious Incompetence as a Goal ?