Tag Archives: Philosophy

Psychology, Something completely different

The magical power of “I can’t.”

Words can be very powerful – especially the words we tell ourselves.  I recently made a startling discovery about this.

One of the things I told myself through life was that I couldn’t draw. I can doodle – make geometric shapes on paper, circles, squares, etc… But I couldn’t draw – this I knew about myself.

One day however, I was unable to tell myself this.

That day my son asked me to draw him something. Hmm… I’m his dad. I can’t tell him that his dad can’t draw. I’m supposed to be the strongest, smartest, most capable man in the world. Tellinig him that I couldn’t draw was out of the question. Continue reading →

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Policy, Politics, Psychology, Real life, Social development, Truth

Freedom of speech should be sacred

“There is no god higher than truth.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Update: just hours after I posted this article, Amazon.com sadly de-listed my book, “The Killing of William Browder.” (I assure you, there was no trace of hate speech in my book)

Across the Western world, government bureaucracies and large media corporations like Amazon, Google, Twitter and Facebook have been increasingly proactive in suppressing “hate speech,” always with bestest of intentions. However, these efforts are unnecessary and will likely prove counterproductive.

Warning about the danger of “disastrous rise of misplaced power” in our societies, Dwight Eisenhower said in his January 1961 farewell address that, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” can curb the power of the state, “so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Freedom of expression is the essential means of keeping the citizenry alert and knowledgeable. As such it should not be suppressed under any pretext, but encouraged and cultivated. Continue reading →

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Expertise, Psychology, Something completely different

In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities…

“State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” Thomas Jefferson wrote this in 1787, but his words remain relevant. Advanced education often narrows our perspective, obstructing our ability to fully evaluate new information or to adapt well to life’s changing circumstances. What we think we know may keep us from grasping new things we need to understand. Zen masters of old likened our capacity to understand to a water bowl: its purpose may be to hold water, but it is only useful to the extent that it is empty. Here’s a real-life example of this metaphor…

Continue reading →

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Asset management, Economics, Market research, Market trends, Stock market, Trend following

The crucial importance of trends

In Berkshire Hathaway annual report (1985), Warren Buffett wrote the following:

When a management with reputation for brilliance tackles a business with reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that stays intact. [1]

My wife and I recently spent some time in Egypt. For a few days we sailed up the Nile from Luxor to Aswan on a cruise ship that counted nearly 70 crew members serving the total of five guests. The manager of the vessel was Mr. Khaled, an impeccably polite and always well dressed man in his 40s who, in spite of running a nearly empty ship managed to keep the crew’s morale high and ran the ship’s operations admirably well. Unfortunately, even if Mr. Khaled were the world’s best cruise ship manager, this particular situation was a good illustration of what Warren Buffet was talking about in his 1985 annual report. Continue reading →

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