The Stories we should tell.

So the world changes and life seems to move so quickly, I listen to all these idiots trying to peer into the future by looking at the tea leaves of economic data. The mass hysteria which seems to be gripping the media seems to be missing the point and really makes me worry that democracy is finished. The panic that seems to be gripping the government just seems to reflect it.

So let's set one thing straight, Japan in the 90s was not economic Armageddon if I hear one more idiot discussing how we need to avoid Japan's situation like it was the worst thing for a millennium I think I might hurt myself. It had issues with moderately rising unemployment loss in wealth due to depreciating asset values but IT WAS NOT a basket case. For Christ sake folks the UK in the 70s was in a far worse condition.

Second thing we need to set straight is that many of the imbalances in the economy quite frankly need working through the system and we should not prevent them we should not allow the system to collapse however, the UK and other developed countries probably need to allow asset prices to drop, unemployment probably needs to rise we need re-balancing to take place. What we need to do is stop the worst case scenario, put safety nets in place invest in infrastructure but not panic. Can our democracy face these challenges that is the question.

It may become really bad, we may enter economic Armageddon however, at the moment in the West people aren't starving on the streets, people are not rioting except in Greece, but hell they do that when they get bored.

As I watched like millions of others Mr Obama taking his oath of office, listened to his beautiful words and his exquisite delivery, I thought but sir there are some things in life, some things which cannot be overcome by will alone, we are simply humans and we operate within certain rules. We can't stop the tide coming in, we can push it back we can reclaim land but it still comes in and it will take the land back eventually.

So as we over populate this land, as we struggle to feed the masses, we cannot give the whole world the standard of living the US has, we simply can't, and if we did then the world would not be worth living on. So what are we to do? We all watch American movies and they touch you like nothing else, or the best do, and we marvel at the houses, the standard of living yet we cannot give it to the world. Together we must encourage the world to have fewer and smaller families and if that were to be the case in a place like the middle east then I feel certain their anger would diminish. There are way too many young men with nothing to do, not enough land and not enough wealth so what do they do? Sadly they occasionally come into our lives through that little square box and frighten us by their other worldliness.

We ask ourselves how could they feel such anger yet occasionally when you feel very poor, when you feel like you have no chance in life then suddenly life changes. I once sat with a man in a South American city and he was a painter and decorator he had a small son, and he didn't have much, he didn't have great shoes. There I was within my pockets probably with one or two months salary for him and a bank card, yet we talked and he got up and walked across the square. Would I have done the same as him. Would I keep my dignity I ask you? Now there was a brave man, a truly brave man. Those are the stories we should tell more.

White Swan, Gray Swan, Black Swan - A critique

Black Swan is truly wonderful book from a man that is pushing himself to think, that is being brave enough to criticize and challenge the orthodoxy. It is an amazing thing from great thinkers that they are often breaking down barriers, they are having to challenge well accepted ways of thinking that they forget to be their own critics and talk about the dangers in their way of thinking. They don't have the time as all their energy is being used in breaking down barriers.

The Danger in Taleb's book is if we can't learn anything useful about the past, it is all stories he says and we can't predict the future so why should we even try. There is a great danger in this everything is a matter of luck, down to chance. Without doubt luck plays an enormous part in life, without doubt we fall for what he calls the narrative fallacy in terms of wanting to put stories around situations when perhaps there isn't one.

He forgets to mention or think about deep time. Ultimately the fate of mankind is predictable we will become extinct like most animals on his planet. We will all die, there will be earth quakes, there will be wars, so in some ways life is incredibly predictable the problem is in the time frames and then applying it to his first reason for investigating this area which is investing.

We should accept that we can't predict when things will happen, over the medium and short we are useless but over the very long with generalizations we are more accurate. He also doesn't talk about the fact there are patterns in life, there are trends, they change and evolve on an incredibly fluid basis, we have issues so really he falls for his own mechanical training.He is unhappy stepping outside of mathematical models and thinking about the patterns that exist in the world and how they move fluidly.

Some people spot these patterns and they use them and they are successful, sometimes the pattern doesn't turn out to be as expected, however, they still exist. The Germans knew the future was around tanks after the first world war, they guessed correctly, it was a correct prediction. Of course something else could have happened, a black swan however, they were correct.

Geronimo hiding in his last refuge with his twelve comrades in Mexico must have known all through his life it was inevitable that the white man was coming. The white man had technology and numbers it was inevitable. Of course a black swan in an epidemic could have come along but still there are patterns and trends to life which some of the Indians must surely have seen.

So in a way Taleb is a child of the thing he criticizes, he criticizes it beautifully with maths, he is beautifully read a wonderful mind, however, he fails to realize that life is full of patterns and the key point is in fact they are tenuous moving, difficult to catch on to prone to black swans and the future can only be guessed at except in certain areas over the very long term. Yet the patterns still exist, there are explanations to events we just don't always want to see them or report them and we make mistakes we are human.

In fact we should accept more vagueness, we should accept a lack of certainty we should acknowledge that sometimes maths is no use, sometimes we should trust fussy, open minded narrative and the human minds ability to spot patterns. They are prone to black swans, they will not be right but patterns do exist and there are reasons and explanations they are just not always the ones we like.

References:
I don't have f**k**g time, I have to work for a living, if you really must go buy something on Geronimo. If you must know about the tanks go get something on tanks and the first world war. Put Black Swan into Google.Happy?

Credit Crunch Humour

A man from a rather specific down to earth part of the UK said the following lines to me over the Christmas period,

'If these goddamn experts can't predict a credit crunch six months before it happens how the hell can they tell what the weather is going to be doing in fifty years time, global warming I don't believe it.'

Like many things in life most experts over complicate arguments to make themselves feel self important and intelligent, most arguments around the social sciences and sometimes even in science can be had on a way more basic level and the man on the street can be as likely to get it right as an esteemed Nobel prize winner.

The credit crunch at a simple level was should we be borrowing so much to spend on rubbish? How long can that go on? A very simple argument really.

Yet scientists will operate very hypocritically in that once they want to convince the public of something they will try and scare them by cutting out any sense of doubt in their estimation models. So without doubt it makes sense to try and conserve what resources we have, not be so wasteful, look at renewable forms of energy, but is global warming really going to happen, is the case really so clear, or are we simply focusing on the one factor which is less political and easier to explain.

Surely the more complex argument is we need to be eating different foods, we need to looking at how we can encourage smaller families as population growth combined with wealth growth is the true problem.

So will our form of capitalism based on ever increased wealth, which fuels the bribe that is democracy, I will make you richer and your kids so vote for me survive? I don't know if global warming will happen, but resource depletion will, competition over scarce resources will, a challenge to modern democracy will and the limits to growth will perhaps be reached.

This is my view though and not based on any empirical testing and i don't pretend to be a scientist who can prove it 100%, I leave that to others who cut out the doubt around prediction and there is always doubt, but we the public are too stupid to hear their doubts.