SnakePlissken

9 anni fadiscuss

There's a fantastic book by Roger Crowley called Empires of the Sea that covers the Habsburg-Ottoman war for control of the Mediterranean. The early chapters go into great detail on the Siege of Rhodes, including Tadini's efforts, and how the lessons learned there would set the stage for later battles (particularly Malta and Lepanto) and the end of Ottoman supremacy. For anyone interested in this article or the era in general I can't recommend it enough.

SnakePlissken

9 anni fadiscuss

>>It is well known that land and wealth has been acquired by expulsion of people from different faith from your territory (I'm thinking for example expulsion of Jews and Moors from Spain)

The problem with this line of argument is the land always belonged to somebody else first. The Moors took it from the Visigoths, who took it from the Roman Empire, who took it from Carthage, who took it from Celt-Iberian tribes that had been taking it from each other since time immemorial.

>>or taking it from natives of new territories (America, Africa)

Who were engaged in near constant tribal warfare against each other for the possession of territory. The Conquistadors had such an easy time toppling the Aztecs because two of their abused vassal states rose up in rebellion and joined the Spaniards (providing the bulk of Cortes' forces at one point). Africa's tribal kingdoms and regional empires show the same bloody history of conquest as any other region in the world.

Although it's certainly unsettling, one of the ever-present themes across human history is the legitimacy and endurance of conquest. Any attempt to challenge that legitimacy requires a coherent framework for dismantling the hierarchy and replacing it with a "fair" one (a fool's errand). This is precisely the task at which Marxism and its various Critical Theory descendants fail so spectacularly.

It's all well and good to say the current distribution of things is unjust and demands to be addressed. It's another thing entirely to actually do so "fairly" (and more importantly, peacefully). It seems to me far more likely that whatever agency or panel is authorized the enormous power necessary to affect such a change will inevitably abuse that power and merely replace the current hierarchy with a new one of their choosing. And the odds are that if mere government dictate could not accomplish it, they would resort to the same "violence, war, enslavement" that Marx was denouncing (i.e., conquering the conquerors). Friedrich Hayek put it this way: "Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order."

I'm reminded of the thought experiment in Rawls' Theory of Justice that he calls the "veil of ignorance"[0]. In short: before individuals enter a society they are totally blind to their own place in it (race, class, gender, wealth, etc), like a randomized spawn in a game. They are then asked to deliberate on the distribution of rights and resources before entering the society. Rawls concludes that everyone would agree on the most equitable distribution because they cannot know who they will be in this new society (e.g., a lopsided society where most people are incredibly poor or enslaved is a huge gamble to take).

What Rawls doesn't do is take things a step further and imagine what that utopian society would be like in practice. Once everyone "spawns" in and begins living (pursuing opportunities, acting out passions, planning for the future, etc) there are guaranteed to be unequal outcomes when some are more successful/economically valued/powerful/attractive/politically manipulative/etc than others. Soon enough the once-equals have established a new hierarchy, as human societies tend to do, and we're back to square one.

Marx was wrong to call Smith "childish", especially when his own ideals are so naively hopeful. Even in a hypothetical world where one could implement a completely "fair" redistribution of possessions, once people begin exercising their will and making choices, inequalities will inevitably emerge and Smith's view of original accumulation would play out.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

SnakePlissken

9 anni fadiscuss

Ted Cruz is probably more to blame in this case than Cambridge; he came across to many as supremely unlikeable/comically phony and clearly lost the mud slinging fights with Trump that dominated the Republican primaries. Whatever benefit Cambridge bestowed probably wasn't enough to turn Ted Cruz into a serious Presidential candidate. In more colloquial terms, perhaps even the most effective data targeting can't polish a turd.

SnakePlissken

9 anni fadiscuss

Google's Eric Schmidt proposed a plan similar to this (though in more ambiguous terms) back in 2014, sharing a draft with Cheryl Mills that was forwarded to the Clinton braintrust (John Podesta, Robby Mook and David Plouffe) and subsequently released by Wikileaks[0]. The use of quizzes as a front detailed in OP's article is especially insidious, but the idea of individually targeting voters with "stories" in such a manner was clearly in play. Whether they followed through with it or not, it seems naive to think they won't do something similar in the future now that Cambridge Analytica has been shown to have been so effective.

[0] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/37262

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

Gelernter summarized his view on the culture wars and the shift in America's elite class in a 1997 article in Commentary Magazine. It's an interesting take and certainly relevant to the current political climate.

http://archive.is/1rt2H

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

I'd never heard of Luzia, but I just read into it a bit and it's definitely intriguing. Thanks for the response and the new rabbit hole to dive into!

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

A great companion to this article is the Planet Money episode on Venezuela's collapse [0]. It's only 20 minutes long and combines anecdotes with a basic bird's eye view in NPR's typical fashion.

Venezuela didn't save its oil money. It used it to subsidize goods and services for the people, but in some unusual ways. Another choice: instead of making stuff at home, Venezuela imported almost everything it could. The government also kept tight control on the exchange rate between Venezuelan bolivars and U.S. dollars.

[0]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/21/498867764/episo...

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

I think the negativity is more focused on the "blockchain will revolutionize x industry" hype than on the blockchain technology itself. I've noticed a similar (and justified) degree of skepticism and fatigue here in regard to all of the AI hype in mainstream media, but nobody is discounting the technical advances made in the field; just the kind of unbridled, naive optimism that played a part in the "AI Winter" of the 80s and could lead to a similar disillusionment with the blockchain.

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

Can you expand on the evidence of "Negroids" in Brazil 40,000 years ago? I'm familiar with the idea of pre-Clovis settlements and the controversy around that, but I was under the impression these were thought to be earlier settlers from East Asia, like the Clovis people.

The only indication of Africans in South America I can think of are the much later statues and idols of faces from Olmec Mexico, circa 1000 BC, which some claim have "Negroid" features (a supposition that has to be debunked with an unfortunate degree of frequency).

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

>I'd prefer if you just said it's because you'd like protectionism to lead to higher wages for American citizens.

If he does want "protectionism to lead to higher wages for Americans", why is that wrong? The purpose of any government is to advance the interests of its own citizens first and foremost.

>Oddly enough, right now, the USA skims the world's talent this way. You get to tax the brightest, you get to profit from the companies they found here, the people they employ here, the business they do here.

I agree with you that inviting the world's brightest to come here certainly benefits America, but the system is being abused to bring in average foreign employees to the detriment of American tech workers(e.g., the Disney case). This practice should end, with H1B focused on extraordinary candidates only.

>I'm here on the E3. Australia has turned up for every US war since Korea. Our blood is mixed with yours in the mud of a dozen nations on four continents, including ours.

This is a bizarre comment; what relevance does it have? Should H1B favor military allies rather than the best candidates? Why does someone else's wartime sacrifice justify your presence here? Does their sacrifice nullify American sovereignty? If the people or their representatives decide to limit the flow of foreign workers, that is their right and that right supersedes any non-Americans privilege to come here.

>Our reward, as one of my colleagues quipped, is that the US gets to take our brightest people.

America isn't "taking" your brightest people, like some form of intellectual impressment. Those people are exercising free will and -choosing- to come here, as you seem more than happy to have done.

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

I rarely see in coverage of these mass replacements what kind of positions are being affected, just "IT workers". The article says they're mostly back-office staff but I don't know what that means at UCSF. Are these software engineers, systems admins, middle-managers, etc? Are they low level help-desk positions? Or is it a broad mix across the entire IT hierarchy? How does the answer in this case compare to other recent incidents (e.g., Disney)?

I don't ask to insinuate "lower-skilled" workers deserve to be replaced or should have prepared for it; I'm merely trying to get a better grasp on the scope of these recent outsourcings.

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

I understand and agree with your point ("a good answer", as I said). My point is that your position is weakened (for the individual you responded to and all other readers) by not naming the books and authors in question.

Anyone not previously familiar with suppression as it is practiced would be more readily swayed with something they can sink their teeth into and investigate. What you've given them instead are vague and unverifiable claims that, without elaboration, carry the hint of paranoid fancy rather than serious conspiracy(which risks unjust dismissal by someone could have otherwise been informed).

Let's use my first guess of Tragedy and Hope as an example. Consider the following:

-pedigree of Quigley: History professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service who taught Bill Clinton and an entire generation of diplomats

-contents of the book: macrohistorical view of Anglo-American governmental, financial and intellectual organizations and how they shaped history

-manner of its suppression: first editition pulled, subsequent editions published without the passages detailing the establishment of the BIS backed by private bankers and the existence of what Quigley called the "Round Table Groups"

These combine to paint a clear (and researchable) picture of what you alluded to: books not being banned, but having their impact diminished, because they challenge or critique the power structure.

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

A good answer for the distinction of suppressed inre: banned, but your post as a contribution to the discussion at large is weakened by the "wise mystic who won't reveal the whole truth for the good of the student" routine. You might as well speak in riddles.

I'm fairly certain your second example is Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley, although he was an American teaching at Georgetown. Your first might be Dark Alliance by Gary Webb (if one defines "distributor" very loosely), but I haven't a clue on the last two. They don't trigger anything in memory and the details are too vague for a fruitful search. Be a good sport and elaborate.

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

>How do we know that Plato wasn't reporting what Socrates taught him? And, if true, how can we be sure that Socrates didn't get the idea from someone else?

Quite plainly, we don't know. It seems irrelevant, however, as the line of inquiry was about whether the article-author mistakenly attributed the Allegory of the Cave to Socrates when the 'correct' attribution is to Plato (that is, the established/agreed-upon/canonical attribution), not whether or not the Allegory is a wholly original, purely inspired, spontaneously birthed thought from Plato.

In regards to the ideas truly being Socrates' or those of a precedent, I'm aware of nothing that indicates that being the case (other than the standard A influences B influences C, etc, nature of philosophy). I'm no expert, but it seemed clear to me in reading Plato's work after the death of Socrates (e.g., Republic) that he is radically departing from the views of his teacher. If the counterpoint is that Plato received all of this wisdom from Socrates, then attributed the introductory bits to his teacher and kept the juiciest for himself, we know that's not the case: many other contemporaries wrote about the views of Socrates and some even recorded Socratic dialogues.

In Republic, Plato advocates things like an elite intellectual class that actively deceives the hoi polloi and prevents them from accessing philosophy, yet Socrates was put to death for his repeated attempts at engaging all Athenians who would listen in philosophical debates. Socrates warned against the youth of Athens losing their ability to think critically, while Plato advocates a utopian system predicated on the vast majority of its citizens not questioning things at all. In fact, it's frequently suggested that Plato's dramatic departure from the Socratic notion of "I know nothing" and the near-totalitarian features of his Republic are direct results of the Athenians turning on and executing Socrates. The entire idea of a Philosopher King and an enlightened ruling class micromanaging the lives of the producer/worker and guardian/soldier classes seems like a plan to ensure that no great thinker ever suffers the same fate as Socrates. With the rebellious and reactionary nature of the Republic established, it seems clear he didn't get the ideas contained within from Socrates. This seems especially true because Plato does not discuss them until ~380 BC, almost two decades after the death of Socrates. If he inherited or stole the ideas, why wait so long to talk about it? And why didn't anyone else know about it (Plato was one of several students who followed Socrates)?

I've glanced, very lightly, over the Wikipedia page for the Eleusinian Mysteries, and there's nothing specific leaping out at me as inspiration for the Allegory of the Cave (other than the idea of a layered underworld, but that's not unique to the Mysteries or particularly reflective of the Cave). I'm unfamiliar with these ideas; can you expound upon the connection, or is the argument just that because the Mysteries were ancient and once orally disseminated, there's a chance that the Allegory was too and merely reported by Plato as original?

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

Would you recommend someone new to Reynolds start with Revelation Space or the Poseidon's Children trilogy?

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

It's an understandable mistake (if it was one), as Plato wrote most of his works as dialogues between Socrates and other Athenians (including Republic, where the Allegory of the Cave originates).

From another angle, the paragraph in reference is a summary of what the article's author believes the author of the book being reviewed alleges is the macro-narrative in regards to philosophy as presented today and understood by philosophy-averse intellectuals. As the article-author explicitly mentions Plato later in the article (in reference to an earlier work by the book-author extolling Ancient Greek philosophy) and distinguishes between the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, it seems impossible that either author doesn't realize the Cave isn't Socrates' idea. Although sloppy, it seems that the article-author is simply implying that there is so little familiarity with the full breadth and depth of philosophy that the average individual with passing knowledge of the ancients might know of the Allegory of the Cave/theory of the Forms/etc but would wrongly attribute it to Socrates as he is the mouthpiece in Republic.

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

There's a great anecdote about George Soros that this reminded me of: Despite the palindrome writing two dense books and conducting numerous interviews on his theory of 'Reflexivity'[0] as essential to his success, Soros' son thinks it really comes down to something like interoceptive ability, which Soros reasons is a combination of "theory and instinct"[1]:

.

.

According to his son, Robert, Soros’s trading was always influenced by more than reflexivity. “My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that”, he once said, “but I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, at least half of this is bullshit’.

“I mean, you know [that] the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him. It has nothing to do with reason. He literally goes into a spasm and it’s this early warning sign.”

Soros has admitted to relying greatly on “animal instincts”, saying the onset of acute pain was often “a signal that there was something wrong in my portfolio”.

His decisions, then, “are really made using a combination of theory and instinct”.

[0]: http://www.mercenarytrader.com/2014/02/lessons-from-the-pali...

[1]: http://bclund.com/2014/08/20/nothing-can-learn-george-soros/

SnakePlissken

10 anni fadiscuss

Satan isn't a dreadful spirit of the underworld, he's basically a corrupted angel!

I get where you're coming from, but this kind of pedantic hair-splitting with a condescending tone doesn't advance the conversation. There's nothing "scarily wrong" about a reviewer from 1956 not being intimately familiar with the breadth and depth of Tolkien's canon.

SnakePlissken

11 anni fadiscuss

This is a common misconception. It's certainly true that if the stock market was a mere game of chance, there would be some coming up heads for many flips in a row. Where the analogy fails is that the successful coin-flippers break into two camps (at the most basic level, value based or momentum based investors) that each have a method of coin flipping.

Warren Buffett explains it much more elegantly than I ever could in his legendary The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville [0]. Buffett's argument is in response to the EMH proponents like Fama who dismissed his stellar track record as a mere statistical anomaly (this was in the late 70s and early 80s - we know now of course who was right). The gist of it is that if one held a nationwide coin flipping contest and found that all of the successful streak-flippers came from one small village and were all taught how to 'flip coins' by one individual (Ben Graham, author of the Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis) that it would be foolish to dismiss their success as mere luck. Yet that is exactly what so many EMH theorists do.

Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, had this to say about it: “Efficient market theory [is] a wonderful economic doctrine that had a long vogue in spite of the experience of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact one of the economists who won — he shared a Nobel Prize — and as he looked at Berkshire Hathaway year after year, which people would throw in his face as saying maybe the market isn’t quite as efficient as you think, he said, “Well, it’s a two-sigma event.” And then he said we were a three-sigma event. And then he said we were a four-sigma event. And he finally got up to six sigmas — better to add a sigma than change a theory, just because the evidence comes in differently. [Laughter] And, of course, when this share of a Nobel Prize went into money management himself, he sank like a stone.”

And the above only concerns one method of active management, the value camp. Guys like Soros and Druckenmiller averaged 30% returns for decades using a method that many other traders (Paul Tudor Jones, for one) have seen success with: a global macro, go-anywhere/trade-anything attitude paired with momentum and sentiment analysis (and a dash of technical analysis, which should garner me some fun responses).

Commodity Corporation (later bought and absorbed by Goldman Sachs) was well known for producing dozens of millionaire traders who relied almost entirely on technical analysis. The Turtle Traders were a group that used trend following TA to teach successful trading to neophytes; many of the students went on to run multi-billion dollar funds. Some have fallen by the wayside (its a tough game and only tougher as you get bigger) and some have relentlessly outperformed.

Active trading is incredibly difficult and has only gotten more so over the years as markets and traders evolve. Those in the game estimate that only 10-15% of traders (most of them pros) achieve true alpha over long periods. But that failure rate is along the same lines as opening a restaurant or founding a startup. Nobody doubts those things are possible because the results are so obvious.

I often see a lot of hand-waving dismissal of active trading on HN, Reddit and other popular forums and I can't help but wonder how much personal exposure those people really have to it. I think the average person is much better off trying their luck in a passive way but I don't like the 'noble lie' of impossibility that seems to permeate so much discussion of trading.

[0] http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/rtfiles/cbs/hermes/Buffett1984....

SnakePlissken

11 anni fadiscuss

I believe the argument is along the following lines:

The more money that is placed into passive indexes (funds that merely attempt to track the performance of something like the S&P500 by owning a proportional, market cap weighted amount of each stock in the index), the less that is being actively managed by a human being or algorithm with the affect of price discovery.

With less 'players' in the game acting on their competing investment theses, inefficiencies are expected to widen. In other words, if AAPL is at price X on any given day, that price is the sum total of all buy and sell orders being placed. One can assume that even with a large portion of passive buying today, most involved in trading AAPL are trading on their own assessment of the true value of Apple's stock. If at some future point the majority of money in the market is simply passive/buy-and-hold, the price of AAPL (or any stock/wider index) will be less "efficient" because of the distortion in supply & demand created by an increase of mindless buy orders.

Some market watchers have attributed the abnormally placid bull tear of 09-present, at least in part, to this consistent buying. Josh Brown called it the relentless bid [0] and explained how the increased popularity of dollar cost averaging, scheduled index fund purchases, etc could be a major factor.

[0] http://thereformedbroker.com/2014/03/05/the-relentless-bid-e...

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