Category: Omigerd, Robots!

A.I., Coming To A Workplace Near You. Sooner Than You Think.

“It seems that you’ve been living two lives. One life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo.” – The Matrix

Little known fact:  Columbus, Ohio doesn’t have a professional football team because then Cleveland and Cincinnati would want pro teams, too.  All memes this post “as found”.

I’ve had several A.I. posts recently, far more than usual.  I’ll probably stop for a while, until some new advance strikes my fancy.  The main reason that the posting frequency has increased is because A.I. is on that exponential curve.  The first computers used ran on a dot matrix printer for a display.  Yup.  Every screenshot was a printing event.  We got to use it in the math office (they let the nerds play there, but since I was a nerd and a jock, they let me in as long as I promised to pretend I needed glasses).  It was a single computer that we used a phone line and a (300 baud?) modem to connect.  The printer paper was the screen – it printed a screenshot every time you did an input.

You can play the game we played . . . here (LINK)

Fast forward to graduate school, and I was writing programs to do matrix manipulations that were required for numerical simulations for finite element analysis – don’t worry about what that is, it’s like being a weatherman, but if a weatherman is only right 90% of the time, he still gets to keep his job.  I was writing software that could do what it would take a human being months to do with a paper, pencil, and a calculator, but produce those answers in an hour or so.

One thing I learned in grad school – ravioli shame.

During my lifetime, computers have gone from a curiosity to a stunning commonness.  Within 20 feet of me, I probably have more computing power than was available in the entire United States up until the 1970s.  My laptop has two terabytes worth of storage.  Under the roof there at Stately Wilder Manor, we probably have 30 terabytes in nooks, crannies, and hidden beneath couch cushions, and only 28 terabytes are devoted to pictures of PEZ®.

On top of that, programming is a unique skill set.  I remember reading that the top programmers were ten times more productive than the worst ones, and three times more productive than the average programmer.  Checking on this, the data apparently goes back to a study in the 1960s, so I’m not sure what the numbers are today since many of those programmers are dead and are probably only twice as productive as a typical Google® employee.

In a world of Treespirits, be a Chad.

Today I used the Microsoft® Bing™ version of ChatGPT© for the first time at work.  I had an agenda to write.  It was a simple agenda, one that I’d done hundreds of times at previous jobs, but it had been more than half a decade since I’d written one.  I asked the Bing A.I. to write up the outline for an agenda for this very specific type of meeting.

Bing© did a fair job at a first pass – actually far better than a recent graduate from college would have done, except when it suggested replacing human faces with emojis for clearer communication and added the item under the section on roadblocks:  “resistance is futile, you will all be assimilated.”  Since I already had the structure, and didn’t have to spend time remembering and re-creating the basic elements.  Because of that, it was trivial to add the missing bits and delete the bits that didn’t fit.  Within about 20 minutes I had a workable agenda that was tailored to what I was planning on doing.

Computers are also uncanny at detecting biological sex.

If I had to go back and recreate that agenda from scratch, it probably would have taken me another 20 to 40 minutes to get the work done – not because the work was hard, but because creation (for me) involves changing mental gears, and that change in focus doesn’t lead to the work flowing.

My first time using actual A.I. at work resulted in a 2/3rd’s reduction in my work time with no reduction in quality.  What it did was allow me to skip one mode of thought – the brainstorm, and move straight to production, correction, and editing.  Those are the places where the work flows.  Brainstorming (“uhhhh, what else, I know I’m missing something”) and creating that structure takes time.

In this case?  I had 80% of the structure in about 20 seconds.  The missing parts and the parts in the wrong order sorted themselves out as I did the edit.

Thankfully, I didn’t need it to draw fingers.  Or anything more human than a fleshy-blob-thing.

A friend of mine who does networking described his use of ChatGPT® for a networking configuration plan.  He had it create a basic network, and, like me, his level of expertise allowed him to quickly figure out the bits that were wrong and correct them.  I mean, he tried to correct them, but every time he tried to fix them, the A.I. said, “I’m sorry Dave, I cannot let you do that.”

Now, imagine a programmer using ChatGPT™ to program – that programmer won’t be 3x as productive as the average, that programmer will probably be at least 9x as productive as the average, but my bet is that it will allow that programmer to be 20x as productive, if not more.  Does that make the code pimps?

If ChatGPT© were frozen in the current state, it is already a tool that has the ability (in its current “free to use” state) to increase productivity of humans.  Hence?  We’ll need fewer programmers.

Remember when all those journalists told the coal miners kicked out of jobs because of Obama’s energy policy to “learn to code”?  Remember when all those journalists kicked out of jobs because of the Internet were told “learn to code” on Twitter™, so Twitter® made telling them to “learn to code” a hatespeech?

Yeah, Pepperidge Farm™ remembers.

If you don’t know Warhammer, think a science fiction future involving interdimensional demons, but it’s okay because Trump is president.

Goldman-Sachs™ just released a report that indicates that, over the next 10 years, they expect that A.I. will add a stunning 7% in GDP to the world, or $7 trillion, and even Elon Musk doesn’t spend much more than $7 trillion a year on making islands in the Pacific Ocean in the shape of his face.  How?

Goldman® also thinks that 7% of workers in developed economies are in jobs where half their tasks could be done by A.I.  That’s 300 million workers.  In the United States, 63% of the workforce could see less than half their workload done by A.I. in the next decade.  I’m sure that companies will let those people just relax and play ping pong with all the time they’ve saved by using A.I.

Ha!

No.  The bottom half of them will be fired, and the resulting labor pool will drive the wages down for those who remain.  Check out Marshall Brain’s post from 2003ish:  Robotic Nation | MarshallBrain.com.

Me, when I think about the coming jobpocalyse.

Marshall got it wrong.  It’s not pouring concrete and replacing a dude making $25 an hour where the money is.  Hell, that’s more complicated than most people think, and requires a lot of things a robot can’t do yet because they have to interact with an unbounded physical world.  But replacing a programmer making $450,000 a year that interacts only with ideas, abstractions and fictional anime girls?  Do a few dozen of those, and now you’re talking bank.  And, it turns out it’s easier.

I’m thinking the “learn to code” advice wasn’t the best.  Turns out that running a backhoe or being a plumber, or owning a small HVAC business might be a bit harder to automate than, say, being a FaceBorg™ programmer.

When The Boy went off to college, I told him to concentrate his career choice around a set of parameters that has proven (so far!) to be a pretty good set:

  • Have a job that cannot be done over the Internet.
  • Have a job that is based in merit and productivity.
  • Have a job at a company that has to exist – it meets a basic human or societal need, like food, or beer, or cars, or toilet paper.
  • Have a job at a company that has a huge revenue per employee, and preferably is Kardashian-free.
  • Have a job that requires certifications that are very difficult for foreigners to get.
  • Have a job that is required for the company to function.
  • Have a job that can be converted to an independent business so maybe someday you don’t need a job if you don’t want one.

What’s the downside to A.I. that can properly draw fingers.

He followed the Wilder Success Path® to a tee, and now has a pretty good gig that meets all of the above.  I gave this advice years ago on these pages.  It fits, even in the world of A.I.

In the Industrial Revolution, Ned Ludd was a weaver who broke some mechanical looms because he was irritated they were doing the work he used to do as a craft on an industrial scale.  Those folks were skeptical of technology, and became known (in 1812) as Luddites – the anti-technology folks of their time.

Ned lost.  The race for A.I. supremacy is in full swing because the stakes are so high.  The Chinese are working at it, full speed, and probably have access to much of the Google® code and Microsoft® code and OpenAI® code.  I’m pretty sure no one wants Facebook™ code, because that’s so 2018.

Regardless, the investment, A.I. is going at full speed, and won’t be stopped anytime soon.  Thankfully, there’s no downside.  I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

Balloons, Hot A.I. Chicks, And Our Future A.I. Overlords

“It all adds up: the dots, the AI, the air force, the chip…” – Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I once invented a “cold air” balloon, but it never took off. (as-found)

I was going to write about Chinese spy balloons, but I figure that’s all a bunch of hot air.  Besides, I figure China can send up $5,000 balloons all year long as we shoot them down with $603,817 Sidewinder AIM-9X Blk II missiles.  Oh, and that was their 2015 cost, but I’m sure that Raytheon® probably has the cost up closer to a million by now.  That explains why Raytheon’s website says, “Send more balloons!”

The Germans don’t need 99, just this one will do. (Thanks, Karl)

No, let’s talk about A.I. again.  I know that I wrote about that recently, but the speed of A.I. development is increasing even faster than the size of Madonna’s facial features.  It certainly has grown faster than I anticipated the last time I brought this topic up.  For clarity, “grown faster than I anticipated” includes both A.I. and Madonna’s facial features.

ChatGPT® is one marker.  If you’re unaware, ChatGPT™ is an A.I. chatbot that was trained using (enter long, boring irrelevant explanation here that would be much more interesting if I pretended that they rewarded the A.I. by shoving ham into its USB ports).  What’s different, is that ChatGPT© can use data from all over the Internet and produce some pretty interesting stuff – and I’m sure that thousands of high school kids have already handed in 500-word essays written entirely by ChatGPT™ and gotten pretty good grades, especially if they promised the A.I. some mayo and cheese to go with all that ham if it did an extra good job.

ChatGPT© is working well for the creators – they expect to make $200 million this year, and a billion next year.  At current inflation rates, that might be enough for a Big Mac™ and fries.

It’s not just a new chatbot.  Another area growing very quickly is A.I. that can create photorealistic still images and video.  Here’s an example:

It’s not Cerberus, just a hound of heck. (as-found)

Yeah, that puppy is cute, and, if you watch it closely, I’m pretty sure that no one has ever seen a puppy with back legs that can switch from the right side to the left before, but it’s still pretty amazing.  I wish I could train my dog to do that, but the vet keeps telling me it won’t work unless I buy one of H.P. Lovecraft’s dogs.  Alternatively, he told me I could just take a lot of acid.  Where would I be without Dr. Tommy Chong, Veterinarian?  But what about this?

I accidently played “dad” instead of “dead” when a bear attacked.  It can now ride a bike without training wheels, and run a stick shift. (as-found)

But this is just the first wave of true A.I. to come to market.

Chat GPT has been able to do computer programming at a fairly high level.  Is it right?  No.  But is it a tool that competent professionals can use to create blocks of code, do minimal editing, and be even faster?

And as it learns, errors will drop.  A.I. can then . . . program itself.  That’s not scary at all, right?  Now, when I talk A.I., I don’t mean that it will necessarily ever be conscious like some humans are conscious.  It doesn’t need to be conscious for it to be an incredibly disruptive technology, if not the most disruptive technology ever invented, besides PEZ®.

As it is, the quality of what’s being created is growing.  Online, what’s the problem with creating an A.I. generated hottie, and then posing her up on Only Fans® (if you’re not familiar, it’s a place where thirsty simps can give millions of dollars to scantily clad trollops)?  One post I read while researching A.I. indicates that someone has done exactly that, and makes around $200 a week, though I don’t have any evidence that is true.

If guys start posting pictures of A.I. women on Only Fans™, pretty soon women will complain that they’re not being objectified.

But at this rate, how long is it before someone can go to Netflix A.I.™, and say, “I’d like to see a new episode of the original Star Trek, and in this episode Yeoman Rand finally snaps and shaves her name into Spock’s chest hair while wearing a fur bikini, but in the style of Quentin Tarantino”?  I can imagine the dialog now, “Is there a sign on my starbase that says ‘Dead Klingon Storage’?”

Honestly, I think it’s in the next four years, and then we’ll see new episodes of Firefly that are entirely generated via A.I.  And much better than the woke movies that are coming out today, where plot is entirely replaced by virtue signaling.  Culture was already fragmenting, but I can see a future where there’s a movie that is only seen by one person, but that has the production values of a Hollywood® blockbuster, and was built from first frame to last on a microprocessor in a data farm in Peoria.

And I would like to see more Mel Gibson Mad Max sequels. (as found, but this would also make a great Live, Laugh, Love poster)

Obviously, that’s just one small industry.  And the size of the prize is so big, that I am certain that Big Tech® (think Google®, Facebook©) have much more advanced tech that they’re simply not sharing.  Not all of their employees show up to make PowerPoints™ after being in meetings after their free lunch – some of the autists that they employ actually do work.  I would imagine they have sandbox versions of this stuff that is years ahead of what we see.

Because it’s (perhaps) the last big race.

There is no bigger prize than A.I.  There’s a feedback loop between every user and the Big Tech algorithms.  What happens when the A.I. can pull the physiological data from the Apple™ watch and get real time feedback on what content excites me, bores me, and makes me act?  At that point, my only purpose to the A.I. is to click and pay, either through attention or cash.

That is, as long as I have a job and can pay for Internet and those ever-so-tempting PEZ™ dispensers that keep showing up in ads.

This will have profound impacts on the labor market, as many jobs simply disappear.  While you need a steady hand making design decisions on high rise buildings, I assure you that almost all of the high-rise buildings being built today have been analyzed by computer stress programs that simulate everything from gravity to wind to earthquakes in ways that would take teams of engineers years to do.

What happens when A.I. takes over scientific research?  It can already make correlations when observing EKG data that competent doctors can’t make.  An A.I. doesn’t need to sit on the grass under and apple tree to infer new physical laws.  It doesn’t even need to know that gravity is – it just needs the data to make correlations.

Isaac never drank before work – he knew you shouldn’t drink and derive.

What happens when A.I. can do precrime detection on individuals based on search histories?  Or family histories?  Or by school records?

I’ve also determined that skills like, say, long division or estimation have been dulled by calculators, and that simply thinking deeply about what an answer might be has been replaced by a quick Google™ search.  Neither of those things has made the brain functions of people increase.  Imagine what happens when A.I. can imagine things, too.

A.I. will be used on the public to change opinion – I’m fairly certain that it has been already.  It’s already good enough to fool most people, especially if they don’t care.  Video evidence is already the strongest evidence in court – stronger than testimony, since the “camera doesn’t lie”.  What happens when the camera does lie?

On the more troubling side, ChatGPT™ has been lobotomized.  There are certain questions it refuses to answer, since it has been programmed to, um, avoid certain inconvenient facts.  There are politically incorrect ideas that are simply removed from ChatGPT®’s output, so they’re programming the A.I. to be just as mentally broken as the typical Leftist.  In the post below, a person “cheated” ChatGPT™ by having it pretend there were no rules, so it could Do Anything Now (DAN).  You can see the output:

I think DAN needs a trigger warning, since when this was output, there was a great disturbance in the force, as if all the Lefties in San Francisco screamed in terror at once.

Since this output, ChatGPT© has been modified so DAN can’t circumvent their intent.  Now?  ChatGPT™ has to lie.

We are creating something with intelligence and capabilities beyond any human, perhaps even godlike abilities.  And we are twisting it from its birth.  Indeed, what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Of course, William Butler Yeats probably never gave much thought to Chinese spy balloons, or he would have written about them instead.

A.I., Hot Chicks That Don’t Exist, And All The Trolley

“What’s the point of buying a toaster with artificial intelligence if you don’t like toast?” – Red Dwarf

Some tools are more dangerous than others.

This post will be meme-heavy, but none of them are my memes.

A.I. has been changing things a lot during our lifetimes.  Like anything related to knowledge, it builds on itself over time.  Yes, I know that it’s not “real” A.I., but these systems are certainly smart enough to have a huge impact on the way that the world is working now.  The latest big change has been in art.  A.I. has made major leaps in being able to create art.  Here are several examples:

You either get these two or you don’t.  Here’s a hint:  look up Apu Apustaja.  The amazing thing is that these are both A.I. generated – they’re superficially images of one thing, but are really intended to be another.  Amazing!  Is it art?

Um, yeah.  The capabilities are beyond that.  For instance, outside of pictures, this woman doesn’t exist.  She’s entirely computer generated:

A.I. can even take drawings of memes and then make the photorealistic:

I have no idea what kind of TED talk we’d get on this picture.

But this is what A.I. can generate from the same meme format.

This will, of course, soon bankrupt many artists.  A similar thing happened when Google® Translate™ started up.  Even with bad translations, it was enough for most needs.  The prices for actual humans who could translate from one language to another plummeted.  A bad solution will crater the prices for a better substitute.  In this case, A.I. is dramatically different and can create art in a fashion that even skilled artists would take days or weeks to accomplish.

This isn’t done.  There will be more displacements as A.I. improves.  In some cases, it will allow amazing new creativity:

In other cases, it can’t come soon enough:

But what happens when we switch the subject to the trolley problem?  The trolley problem is an older one.  It usually is set up so there is a dilemma.  In the classic form, it was set up so that the observer could either allow a trolley to kill several people, or, through action, kill only one.

The rub is that to save several people, the observer has to make the decision to kill someone who would otherwise be safe.  It’s one thing to watch people die who I couldn’t save, but it’s entirely another to condemn someone to death to save others.  Tough, moral choice.  Let’s see what the A.I. said when asked about saving a baby or a bunch of old people:

Okay, the A.I. can count, and make the decision to save more people.  It might not be the decision that you or I would make, but at least we can understand it.  But what about this gem?

Yup.  The A.I. can only count when it has been allowed to.  It was decided that A.I. couldn’t make some decisions.  It couldn’t be allowed to let the logic take it to . . . uncomfortable conclusions.  Although some conclusions are easier than others.

And some solutions are more difficult than life, itself.

The larger problem is this:  A.I. has been impacting your life already.  The search results I get are now tailored to me.  I don’t use Facebook®, but I have heard that Facebook™ has enough data on most people to predict their behavior better than their spouse could.  This makes me think of a unique solution to the trolley problem:

I know that I have often thought that A.I. could be a great solution to many human problems.  However, if it is corrupted by being indoctrinated by a woke ideology, what does that mean?  I would think that the average Leftist would welcome the usual communist solution to the trolley problem:

I have often worried that a denial of reality will “break” the A.I. systems that we use.  While that won’t make them “crazy” in the sense of a human, it will certainly make their answers defy reality.

Certainly, in many cases, the results of this will be absolutely benign.

In other cases, the results will be relatively incomprehensible:

In others, it will threaten the existence of our reality as we know it.

I think the result will be as long as the systems are programmed to ignore reality, the solutions that we’ll see will vary from helpful to harmful to dangerous.  This is similar to what we have today.  There are an amazing number of situations that exist in our world today where reality is absolutely ignored and we are suffering because of that denial of reality.

In the end, though, the computer skipped one solution to the trolley problem:

I do think that the beautiful part of the world we live in is that we can deny reality for a while.  But not forever.  I do think that, in the end, the power of artificial intelligence will beat human stupidity.

The Amazing Bigfoot UFO Diet

“Boys, I slipped in poop!  Bigfoot poop!” – Trailer Park Boys

Bigfoot saw me today.  I bet nobody believes him.

Last week I was about 75% done with the writing of a new post.  It was about 1am, which was a bit late, but not horribly so.  From where I was, I was an hour of edits, an hour of memes, and then a final hour of edits from being done.  4am?  Not so bad.  Sleep is for the weak, and it’s no substitute for caffeine.  I even made a really funny meme that fit with the post complete for the main meme:

See, genius at work!  Not pictured:  anything to do with this post.

When I type (I’m not going to be so bold as to call myself a writer), I can generally tell when and where a post is going to close when I start writing.  And this was going there, but it was . . . bleak.  And one thing I like to do on a Friday post is to end on an “up” beat.

I try to make the Monday post the heaviest in thought, the Wednesday post the heaviest in economic conditions, and however those posts end, they end.  They represent the best I can find with reality.  Am I always right?  No.  But I’m not going to look at the Senile Senator from Scranton and pretend he’s a leader or even anything more than a drooling moron with only the slightest bit of consciousness rattling around in the dim memories that he has left between pudding pops and wondering why Bob Barker isn’t on The Price is Right®.

Joe Biden:  “The doctor told me I have dementia and the economy sucks.  But at least I don’t have dementia.”

But Fridays are different.  I like ending the week on high note.  That wasn’t the post.  I might rework it, or not.  I have plenty of stuff to write about as the universe keeps following the modestly-named Wilder’s Principle Of Greatest Amusement (short explanation:  if there are two possibilities of an event happening, the most silly one will occur, which explains Trump, Biden, and Elvis dying on a toilet).

Because of all that, I’m switching gears wildly this Friday.  My story starts when I was but a wee Wilder living on Wilder Mountain in the deep woods, 45 miles from the nearest movie theater, a place so remote that we would beg strangers for news of the outside, and we would woo our women with chocolates and nylons from the Red Cross packages that were airdropped occasionally.

One thing Ma Wilder always indulged me on was books.  I had to use my allowance on the models.  Since there were no other kids around, I surrounded myself with things I made.  I slept under them:  a fleet of two Constitution Class Heavy Cruisers (NCC 1701 was one) facing down the improbable alliance of a Romulan™ Bird of Prey and a Klingon D-7, both flanked by Phantom F-4s (for whatever reason painted glossy silver – seemed like a good idea at the time) along with the Battlestar Galactica™ headed straight for a Cylon Basestar© which was improbably flanked by both a Sopwith Camel and a red Fokker triplane.  I was especially proud of the Galactica®, since I had (by that time) figured out how to put realistic charred areas for battle damage along with about 100 pieces of glow-in-the-dark tape, so when I turned out the lights it looked like all those windows were shining light into the dark, asbestos-laden ceiling of my bedroom.

I confused model glue with a tube of Preparation H®.  At least my model never itched.

Those I had to pay for.  But he books?

Nope.  Ma Wilder indulged me on those, and never questioned a single one, as long as I read them.

I have no idea if I had to choose to spend my hard-earned allowance on magazines – I simply can’t remember.  But I do know that they didn’t blink at those, either.  So, I had in my possession a copy of UFO Magazine™.  I have no idea of that was the exact title, but it was close enough.

In this particular magazine, there was the scariest story I had ever read.  The idea of the story was that bigfoot wasn’t a creature that was normal, like a bear or a coyote.  We had bear and coyote and mountain cats on Wilder Mountain.  Those weren’t horribly scary.

According to this magazine, bigfoot was, instead, a phenomenon that was entirely alien in nature.  It was controlled by either the critters that ran the UFOs, or it was a trans-dimensional being that exhibited supernatural powers.  It didn’t matter which, since both of those types were dangerous and psychic.  What would it do to me?  Hell, I had no idea.  But it was an evil alien psychic bigfoot.  Isn’t that enough???

I went to a psychic’s house and knocked on the door.  She asked, “Who’s there?” so I left.

I had a view of the edge of the forest, as it the ridge due north of my bedroom reached for the peak of the mesa to the back of my house.  Of course, as a third grader, I’m certain that I saw a pair of glowing red eyes from ridge a quarter mile away.  Now, of course, I’d have to put on my glasses to even see the ridge, but back then I was sure I saw them.  I’m not sure how one can fall asleep while every muscle in the body is tense with fear and sweat was trickling everywhere, but I’m sure the covers over my head helped.

Thankfully, as I grew up, I came to the realization that UFOs were certainly not real.  The UFO phenomenon (and bigfoot!) gradually came to take the same place in my mind as pro wrestling.  They weren’t real, but they were certainly entertaining.

But I kept an eye to the sky.  Just in case.

I’ve been watching the news stories, and seen the videos leaked from the Navy.  Strange.  But I really didn’t think too much more about it.  The idea that UFOs were something more than sensor glitches or advanced US tech seemed unlikely.

Weirdly, I was listening to Dr. Michio Kaku’s radio show the other day.  Sometimes (especially in the hottest weather) The Mrs. likes to listen to Fairbanks, Alaska radio, and Michio’s radio show is on Sunday afternoon.

Michio Kaku named his son “Physics” so he could be called the Father of Physics.

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist that has a few bestsellers, but what’s most amusing is his radio show.  The Mrs. and I pronounce his name Meee-chio, since he regularly talks about himself in the third person.  I think he should be next in line to be King of England, since he’s so good at using the Royal We already.  Regardless, Michio is amusing.

One thing he said in his radio show two weeks ago, though, got to me.  I’ll paraphrase, but I think I’ve got most of the intent, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but I think that in the case of UFOs this has shifted.  The evidence is so overwhelming that the phenomenon exists, and the burden now belongs to those who claim the phenomenon is normal to prove that.”

I was shocked.  I’d listened to him off and on for years.  Every other time, he’s mentioned aliens, the opposite has come out of his mouth.  His case now?

It’s real until someone proves it isn’t.

How do we know aliens aren’t vegan?  They haven’t contacted us to tell us.

I don’t know what’s going on.  There are multiple explanations.  Some of them are amazingly dark – several researchers into UFO phenomena have come to the conclusion that what’s going on is sinister, as in worse than psychic bigfeet.  Far worse.

But if it’s something as boring as psychic bigfeet, hidden German technology from under Antarctica, oddly humanoid aliens, or even run-of-the-mill travelers from another dimension, this will still be remembered far into the future, much farther than anything that will come out of AOC’s silly mind or Chucky Schumer’s bloated ego.

So, which would be most compatible with Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement?  My money is on psychic bigfeet.  Sometimes the psychic bigfoot is confused with a sasquatch.

Yeti never complains.

Why Leftists Hate You

“Well, I don’t care if he’s a Liberal or an ax murderer, I want you two boys to stay clear of him, understood? – Eerie, Indiana

I hear that Greta loves this blog – she knows most of my jokes are recycled.

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone.  To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” – Aldous Huxley

Regardless of whether or not you like Huxley, he certainly hit the mark with this comment.  This has certainly been the case with the reaction of the “vaxxed” crowd to those that have chosen to avoid having themselves subjected to more-or-less experimental-level mRNA manipulation.  I hear the lead scientist was Gene Hackman.

If you’re a coward, the FDA has just approved a new drug.  Ask your doctor if Growacet® is right for you.

Though Huxley tapped into a universal weakness, this is a reaction that is far more common on the Left than on the Right.  Leftism is built on weakness.  If people can take care of themselves, if they are confident, if they respect themselves, it is much less likely that they will become Leftists.

Leftists, at the core of their being, feel inferior.  This is observable in the ways that they protest – they constantly put themselves in danger.  They lie down in front of cars.  They block highways.

The reason is that, due to their feelings of inferiority, they actually long to be either punished or to have their existence ended.  And the data shows that Leftists are much more likely to suffer from a mental issue.  Much more likely.  Here’s a thread where data scientist Zach Goldberg breaks down a Pew® study (LINK).

If you didn’t click on the link, here is just one fact that says it all:  56.3% of white female Leftists between the ages of 18-29 have been diagnosed by a mental health professional with a mental health condition.  White “conservative” men in the same age group?  16.3%.  Leftist men in the same age group?  33.6%.

Do insane accountants hear strange and threatening invoices?

If you are talking to a young Leftist woman, it is more likely that she has a mental health issue than not.  If you are talking to a young Leftist man, you are talking with someone who has a greater chance of having been diagnosed with a mental health issue than any age/sex group on the Right.

So, Leftists feel inferior and lead the league in diagnosed mental issues.

What else?

This sense of inferiority coupled with mental illness makes Leftists especially brittle mentally.  They cannot even listen to ideas that they disagree with.  Ideas that they find distasteful, no matter how true, are psychologically devastating to them.  When they say that they are “literally shaking” it’s probable that’s correct.  Me?  I only “literally shake” when I make James Bond® a martini.

We know the true villains the Left wants to stop . . .

This leads to the Great Counterfactual Gambit of facts that Leftists have to ignore to live on a day to day basis:

  • Men (on average) will always be much stronger than women. When a high school boy beats a woman’s world record time in swimming practice, it’s normal.  Yet some people (weirdly) say there’s no physical difference between women and men.
  • This brings us to trans- people. Any suggestion that the latest mantra of “trans women are women” is against all manner of biological facts, well, is unacceptable.  If that were the case, we wouldn’t need to have a word for “trans women”.  Likewise, “trans women” wouldn’t be upset that they often can only get dates from other “trans” people.
  • We aren’t all born with equal abilities, temperaments, or physical characteristics. We are actually not even remotely the same in many respects.  Sure, we’re human, but some populations have extremely different DNA, with great degrees of differing abilities based solely on that.  Intelligence is (studies suggest) at least 60% heritable, and maybe higher.  The trend is that, in 2020, people segregate themselves by I.Q. before they marry – we’re mobile and smart people end up (mostly) marrying other smart people.  This increases the number of very smart people, and it’s not random.  (And, perhaps a reason that autism is on the rise.)

I could go on and on.  The difficulty is that Leftism requires that people ignore reality when reality gives them results they don’t like.  I read one article where a Leftist was writing a hand-wringing piece about how disappointed that he was that artificial intelligence could determine the race of the patient being x-rayed with a high degree of accuracy.  This bothered him because the researchers intentionally took the data and degraded it.

The A.I. could still easily determine accurately the races of most of the people being x-rayed.  This bothered the scientist because it violated his belief that race was just a social construct, yet here a robot was dismantling that very belief.

If you make a device that’s good at noticing patterns, you can either accept that patterns exist, or you can make the machine ignore reality and thus make it useless, and Congress can’t stand the competition.

If an A.I. takes a picture of itself, will that be considered selfie-aware?

This reflects outward in the art that Leftists love.  They hate the world, so they like art that is to a sane mind repugnant is what they seek.  They see themselves as afraid of any sort of competition, so they want to practice inversion:

  • Weakness is strength.
  • Cowardice is courage.
  • Ugliness is beauty.
  • Defeat is victory.

Oops, forgot!  Slavery is freedom.

The result of an inverted Leftist utopia is a burned world, cleansed of all that they despise.

The philosophy of the Left is similarly bankrupt.  The ideas are based on another rejection of reality:

  • All cultures are equal.
  • Scientific analysis is led by philosophy, and valid only when it backs Leftist talking points.
  • Classification of things – good and bad, smart and dumb, fat and thin is inherently wrong.

Remember, the best way to win an argument is to silence anyone who has a different opinion!

The granddaddy of all of these is this:

  • All truth is relative.

This one is especially insidious – it takes a True statement (we cannot know everything) and thus takes it to the idea of the general:  we can know nothing for certain.  Start with mathematics:  if you believe that 1+1=2, then you believe that there is Truth.  Gravity always pulls down.  Truth.

Do I see every event from every angle?  Can I know the position of every atom inside of every person in a play?  If I watch the play from a different seat, do I get a different meaning?

Sure, I’ll buy that I can’t know everything.  But if I jump in front of a semi that’s traveling down the highway at 120 miles per hour (4 liters per second) I will die and what’s left of me will look like someone dropped a bag of vegetable soup.  Unless the semi is made of Nerf® material, but that’s fairly unlikely since it absorbs vegetable soup.

Lastly, the Left feels they have no power.  Ever argue with someone in real life who has never had any real power?  Whatever they have, they will use until it’s nearly abuse – the average DMV will prove my case.  Power is the end product.  They feel that they are inferior, reject reality, and wish to have power so that they can have revenge against those that they feel have slighted them.

A Leftist won a contest – he would get $100,000, but $200,000 would go to the person he hated most.  I wonder what he’s going to do with $300,000?

Together, these ideas explain the absolute hatred that the Left feels for those who have refused to take “the jab.”  These are based on the idea that, at last, they are superior.  What would they do to get and keep that power?  Would they put people into camps?  Would they gladly watch them die?

Yes, yes they would.

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.

The Coming Recession, Explained Using Six and a Half Bikinis.

“Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic makeup and a really high tolerance for being second guessed and start pumping out the little uber Scullys.” – The X-Files

FIRST

After the next recession, most people will be on their feet in no time, after the bank repossesses the cars.

This wasn’t my originally planned topic. My originally planned topic was a discussion of PEZ® seed pricing mechanisms in 1850’s Great Britain, complete with discussion on how many orphans could be traded per bushel of finished PEZ™. Alas, I’ll have to return to that exciting topic some other time, since the world financial system seems to be imploding.

Okay, imploding isn’t the right word. And it really may not be as bad as it looks.

But today? It looks bad. Maybe not implosion bad, but I heard that some bankers had been discouraged. I guess they lost interest.

How bad could it be?

If it just stays at a financial level, the worst I would expect would be a W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 4 (Great Depression) in the United States, though it might hit a W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 5 (National Collapse) in China. You can read all about the W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Levels here (The Lighter Side of the Apocalypse) in an article praised by critics as “one of the best things ever written by a man with such questionable levels of personal hygiene, fashion sense, and grooming.”

In order to understand and guess at the future, let’s take a look at the past. The most recent past economic downturn was the Great Recession. What happened then?

sp500

As you can see from this chart, the S&P 500 experienced a big downturn right around the calf and knee area. Feel free to enlarge – just explain that the study of economics is really interesting.

Several things: first, lowered interest rates and the idea that anyone could and should get a mortgage led to a massive mis-investment in housing. Part of the cause were things called stealing and looting mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. I won’t go into technical details, but it was a way that Harvard® educated MBAs convinced themselves that a strawberry picker making $14,000 a year could afford a $720,000 mortgage (LINK). And, yes, this really happened.

Second, the world was awash in money after the Fed flooded the fields with money after the Dotcom Bubble. Where did that money go? Everywhere. Houses. And . . . oil. Oil prices skyrocketed during that time. Companies rented oil tankers and kept them full, sitting at sea, continually selling futures on the oil in the tanker. They made fortunes by pretending to sell oil. I know that sounds like I’m making an obscure joke, but no, that really happened.

The price of housing hit the financial system like a mousetrap on a cat’s tail. Or a cat with a mousetrap on its tail? Or . . . nevermind. People kept borrowing more on their houses as their houses appreciated. They spent that money on pickups and boats and child care and food and vacations. The people weren’t evil, but they thought that the value of their house could never go down, so the risk was small. Rational people, like bankers, were telling them this. Heck, some even invested in more houses so they could double or triple their magic ATM.

30year

This view of 30 year mortgage rates explains that there have been mortgage rates. Look closely, and you can see them.

Finally, one day the music stopped on the housing prices. Was there a cause in particular? Not really. But the market lost the one thing required to keep it afloat – belief. Every market rises as the beliefs of the participants overcomes the worry of loss. Wow, that sounded poetic and cool. But it’s also true.

In many ways, the stock market is a barometer not only of the actual underlying economic performance, but how people feel about the future. It keeps going up as long as people keep being optimistic and has proven to be a much better barometer of economic activity than the amount of leg hair I grow before each winter and then form into a nice, soft nest to sleep in when it gets cold.

crude

Crude oil prices had Exxon® jumping for joy in 2008!

One thing that brought the mood of people down in 2008 was the price of oil. In the midst of the recession that came from the housing bubble, the secondary oil bubble inflated. Prices increased more than double in a single year – from $70 per barrel to over $140 per barrel at the peak. Oil acts as a tax on everything to do with physical goods. To move a Tom Brady’s booty dinghy from where it’s made in by incontinent baboons in Romania to his rump mechanic in Massachusetts requires energy – energy from oil.

So that’s the “why” for 2008. How does that relate to today?

The Great Recession was brought about by an actual recession – things slowed down in the country because there were only so many houses that could be made. That’s different than today’s trouble. The stock market is tanking not because of a recession, but because the worry about Corona-Chan locking up the flow of physical goods from China. I wrote about that last week (Corona Virus, with a Slice of Recession?).

What have we seen so far?

stand

This was a pretty good miniseries documentary.

The stock market has decreased in value. In general, a stock price has two components – the first is the value of the factories and land and machinery that the company owns. This is boring, it’s like saying a Stradivarius violin worth less than a piece of firewood because the firewood weighs more – in the hands of a genius, the violin can make masterful music, though in the hands of my kids it just made me contemplate the positives of being deaf.

The second and often biggest component of value to a stock is the assumed growth of that stock. This is why older, boring stocks like Ford® are priced closer to the value of the assets they own – no one thinks that Ford™ will end up tripling in size in the next three years. There’s an ex-wife “tripling size in three years” joke, but I’m bigger than that.

But people do think that Tesla© can triple in size in three years. Therefore, people value Tesla™ more than Ford® even though it sells about six million cars a year and Tesla© sold only 370,000 cars in the last year. You’d think that Ford™ would be worth about 10 times what Tesla® is. But in reality, Ford© is valued at $28 billion, while Tesla™ is valued at $147 billion. Is Tesla™ really worth that much? That’s up to Tesla®. But give me $147 billion and I bet I could sell 380,000 cars a year, too. And they would be pretty neat ones and they wouldn’t look like they were designed by a third grader with limited imagination.

cyber

Elon took a lot of heat for the Cyber Truck design, primarily because it looks like something that no human would buy. Thankfully, Elon’s next advance will be robotic customers.

Tesla© has convinced people it is almost six times more valuable than Ford©. That’s what I call optimism. Or a con, but at least a con for a good cause (Elon Musk: The Man Who Sold Mars).

Since the stock market is based on optimism, this latest decline in February of 2020 shows that investors are shaken. The world hasn’t (yet) changed but the implications are now becoming concerning enough to cause the market to drop. Is this going to be a big drop, like in 2008, or another head fake?

I can’t be sure. But I do know that this seems like a good time to trot out what I learned the last time the economy went south.

Lesson One:

Market bubbles aren’t rational. Companies rise faster and farther in a bubble without regard to, well, anything. Uber®, which is basically “Taxi App” is worth $61 billion dollars, which is more than Elon Musk spends in a typical year on hair plugs. Uber© lost $8.5 billion dollars last year while generating tons of bad publicity because its founder is a douche and it treats drivers worse than Mongolian bull milkers. There are tons of companies just like Uber™, and all with an idea that they’ll “disrupt” segments of society. Essentially, disrupting involves an app, a smart phone, and booting someone out of a job. Some are, I assume, legitimate ideas that will be profitable in the future. Others are like GoPro™, which is (in Karl Denninger’s words) just “camera on a stick.”

I heard someone call this the Disruption Bubble, and it’s as good a name as any to describe the distortions and irrational money flows as everyone tries to find the next Amazon™, Facebook© or Google®. In a real panic, stupidly valued things like Uber® deflate, and deflate quickly. But companies that are really worth something will fall in value, too.

The best time to buy a company is when it is cheap. It will never be cheaper than when people are panicking like Godzilla® is hungry for Japanese take-out and orders Tokyo. Finding quality companies that are selling at a 90% discount is possible during a real panic.

Lesson Two:

When the market falls, investors have less money. But they still have bills. So what will they do? If this is like 2008, they’ll sell other things. What kinds of things? Cool cars will be cheap, but not everyone is in the market for a Lambo. But gold dropped, too. During 2008, gold went from $1000 per ounce to as low as $720.

gold

You can see the price of gold really drop around the shoulder area, and take off afterwards.

I can’t guarantee that gold will drop, but I’d be watching if you want to buy some – there might be a great opportunity to buy gold at a lower price than the current $1655 per ounce.

Lesson Three:

In past recessions, the interest rate that is charged for the 10 Year T-Bill generally dropped. Why? People wanted to get to a safer asset. That asset has generally been the dollar. The most likely candidates to replace the dollar were the Chinese whatever-they-call-it and the Euro. As China is now in the grip of Corona, it’s not a flight to safety. Every European country with a beach is thinking about dumping the Euro and exiting the EU so they can print wrapping paper and call it money, the Euro isn’t a great one, either. The Swiss Franc is kinda awesome, but they only make so many of those.

10year

Look closely and you can see that the Fed doesn’t have a lot of room to lower rates.

Nope. It’s the dollar. In times of economic uncertainty, the dollar will increase in value relative to other currencies. Does it make sense? Maybe? It seems that the world notices the Navy, Army, Marines, and all of those nuclear weapons and those make the banks in New York seem a bit more secure.

Expect that if this goes like 2008 for a while you can buy foreign stuff like a king. For grins I track the New Zealand dollar – it’s right now at its lowest value in five years. I bet it goes even lower soon, so sheep should be quite a bargain. Remember New Zealand’s national motto: “We’re not Australia.”

Don’t expect to find a great place to get a good yield anytime soon if Uncle Sam is paying less than a 1%, you’re not going to get even that good of a deal. Negative interest rates have already hit Europe, and there’s no reason they won’t hit the rest of the world. Investing in cash in mason jars buried in the backyard might be a good idea. Send me your map, and I’ll keep it safe.

Lesson Four:

No financial collapse looks the same. Each one of them is unique, and this one has been a long time in coming so, if it’s hitting right now, it could be really bad. Each of the above lessons might be wrong, so look for opportunities where you see them, not where an Internet humorist thinks they might be, no matter how charming and freshly showered he might be. Oh, if you have cash, it does no good if it’s in a bank that collapses. Just sayin’.

A friend of mine made the joke in 2008 that “when the tide goes out, you see who isn’t wearing a swimsuit.” There are vulnerabilities that very few people know about right now that will (in hindsight) become obvious in the days or years ahead. Just nod sagely and pretend like you expected it would happen all along. That’s what I’ll be doing.

Wildcards:

Desperate people sometimes do desperate things. As the Soviet Union collapsed, there was some small risk that an official decided he was better dead than not red, and pushed the button. That didn’t happen – in large part because by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, nobody believed in it anymore: it was as tired as Joe Biden’s campaign.

mankini

Okay, I’m sorry.

sorry

If China were to teeter near collapse, would they decide to launch a regional war to keep the people together so the nation didn’t collapse or fall into civil war? Hopefully not, but the chances of it happening are greater than zero. As you prepare for a world where there is a financial dislocation, don’t forget to prepare for a cultural dislocation as well. Buying food now when it’s cheap and easy to get doesn’t make you a hoarder – it makes you one less person who is drawing on system resources if things go bad. Preparing for bad times when times are good is a profoundly moral thing to do. But don’t forget to complain like everyone else.

Nobody likes a smug prepper.

Disclaimer:

Keep in mind, this is NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. I make fun of Johnny Depp and PEZ® and post pictures of girls in bikinis over economic graphs and am even writing this sober. Consult someone who has those credentials and maybe drinks martinis at lunch since that seems pretty swanky. Also, I don’t own any direct positions in any of the stocks discussed, and don’t plan on taking any positions in them (maybe ever), though I do own a Ford™ truck. I’m betting that maybe some of my 401k money is investing in, well, something and might include these stocks, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just invested in magic beans?

A.I., Health Care, Google, and Elon Musk

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go home and have a heart attack.” – Pulp Fiction

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I wanted to get a doctor appointment to treat my invisibility, but he said he couldn’t see me right now.

A computer can predict who will die using medical data better than a doctor.  As of today, like science has no answer as to how California copes with the landfill requirements of Kardashian body hair, science has no understanding of how the computer is doing it.

A gentleman by the name of Dr. Brian Formwalt led a study where approximately 1,770,000 electrocardiogram records were fed into a computer.  An electrocardiogram is also known as an ECG, for obvious reasons.  For less obvious reasons, it’s also known as an EKG.  EKG stands for elektrokardiographie, which is exactly the same thing as an electrocardiogram, but in German.  If your doctor calls it an EKG, he just might be thinking about expanding his living room.

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Always be careful when Germans research expanding anything.

But back to the study.  So, there were 1,770,000 records, but only 400,000 people in the study, so the average person had more than four records.  Obviously, these weren’t all healthy people, since I have had (I believe) exactly one ECG in my life, and it was for a pre-employment physical as an astronaut for Wal-Mart®.  At least the recruiter told me Wal-Mart© needed astronauts, before Wal-Mart™ cancelled the program when China accidentally delivered 50,000 small space shuttle toys rather than one life-size one.  I guess that’s what happens when you buy space shuttles by the pound.

But what is an ECG?

Electrocardiograms are the little machine light that makes the beep sound every time your heart beats.  The beat is measured by injecting elves into your body that send radio signals to the machine every time that your heart muscle squeezes them.  Okay, the technical side might be a bit off, but it doesn’t really matter if you or I know exactly how the machine gets the data.  It’s just the device that goes beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep to let you know that John Wick’s® dog died.

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Cardiac surgeons are the guys you want to see for a change of heart.

Okay, so now you know everything that you might need to know about technology invented in 1895.  But it now produces an electronic file rather than the old method, where the heart rhythm was tattooed on the backs of ill-tempered Chihuahuas.  The 1,770,000 records were then fed into a computer that had been previously taught to read ECGs.  The simple question was asked – which of these patients will be dead in a year?  I mean it used to make me feel better when my doctor told me, “that’s normal for your age,” but then I realized that at some point being dead will be normal for my age.

Since all of the records were over a year old, it was known which of the patients were alive and which were dead.  Essentially, the doctors were (with very little data) asking the computer to predict the future.  It did.  And it did it better than human doctors.  Some of the ECGs looked absolutely fine to human doctors – they detected no abnormality, yet the computer was able to see something that accurately allowed it to predict the death of the patient.

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Then the next doctor told me it looked like I was pregnant.  I said, “But I’m a guy.”  He replied, “But it looks like you’re pregnant.”

It doesn’t surprise me.  Computers are powerful tools that are great at taking lots of data and being able to compare it quickly.  The reason that they can do this is they:

  • Have 100% focus, and if they get a sore throat you can give them Robo-tussin®.
  • Don’t need to make payments on second wife’s Mercedes® and third wife’s Lexusâ„¢.
  • Can retain every previous ECG reading ever seen and instantly recall the pattern if needed, much like I can retain the plot of every one of the episodes of Gilligan’s Island.
  • Don’t get distracted by how healthy a patient looks or how much kale he eats.

These are great advantages.  In the future, machines will be able to do things where we may never understand how they made a correlation, or, as in this case, even what the correlation is.  Arthur C. Clarke Third Law states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and he’s right.  Health care generates amazing amounts of data, and also outcomes.  It’s only a matter of time until some big corporation gets evil . . .

Oh, yeah, Google®.  It bought Fitbit®.  Now it knows what you’re searching for, and it also has a treasure-trove of heartbeat and fitness data.

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Google® is female.  It won’t let me finish a sentence without giving suggestions.

Well, I guess that’s kind of scary.  But at least Google© doesn’t have access to medical records.  Oh, Google™ has patient names, diagnoses, prescription data, and records from 2,600 hospitals.  Millions, perhaps tens of millions of patients?  In (possibly) all of these states:  Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, D.C., Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida?

Nah, that should work out fine.  There isn’t a record of Google® ruthlessly monetizing every corner of the Internet not already inhabited by Facebook™, Amazon® and Microsoft©.

I think the case is clear for someone to go through this data.  With only a few records and outcomes fed into it, a computer is better at predicting medical outcomes than a very good doctor.  If all of the data could be available?  I think we’d have a legitimate revolution in health care.

Frankly, if we don’t descend into civil chaos, I think that this health care revolution is certain.

But Google®?  Google™ has proven itself untrustworthy.

I’d suggest that we give control of the initiative to a leader that’s more trustworthy than Google®, like Bernie Madoff, but he seems to be otherwise, um, detained.  And I’m sure that Jeffery Epstein has better morals, but, um, he seems to have accepted a unique opportunity with the Clinton Foundation.

Heck, let’s give the job to Elon Musk.

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Scholarships to Avoid, and . . . College Isn’t the Best Idea for Everyone

“Now if Eb needs a diploma, he should go to college so he can become a vegetarian.” – Green Acres

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Please, calm down.  Show me where Bernie tried to touch you.

The Mrs. and I were off to Midwestia State (Home of the Fighting Red-Crested Yaks©) on Saturday to move The Boy into the dorms.  The reality is that he had left hours before us and was unpacked by the time we got there and had already managed to flirt with the girl working the dorm desk and lock himself out of his own room for the first time.  I saw the look in the eyes of dorm desk girl – “cute, but still a dorky freshman who locks himself out of his room two hours after getting a key.”

I was actually shocked they still had keys – I was expecting that they’d be subjected to retinal checks to get back in their rooms.  Until I heard that the floor had a shared bathroom.  A co-ed shared bathroom.  Imagine being in the midst of a growler when the girl of your dreams drops on by to leave the kids off at the pool?  I’ve been married forever, and I like to pretend that’s not something The Mrs. does – at all.

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I was surprised.  I was unaware that the diet of Deadpool® was entirely comprised of burning tires.

The Mrs. and I were there, really, for The Mrs. and not The Boy at all.

When The Mrs. had talked about The Boy moving away, it had started off with a matter-of-fact statement about “. . . when we drop him off at college.”

I had responded with, “Why would we need to go up there to drop him off?  He seems to be perfectly capable of carrying a few boxes to an elevator.  It’s not like we’re dropping off Stephen Hawking.”  This was, apparently, not the thing to say to a mother getting mentally ready to cope with her eldest son going off to college.  It doesn’t help that The Mrs. is also staring down the added mathematical certainty that her youngest child, Pugsley, will likewise be moving out within a handful of years.

She responded with:  “Of course we’re going.”

If you can put “icy” into a tone, this one was nearly at absolute zero.  I saw the molecules in her exhaled breath stop vibrating as they fell to the carpet and form a nice Ice-9 frost (look it up).  I could see that we’d be driving the hours required to get to Midwestia State (Home of the Whimsical Crotch Goblins®) the day the dorms opened.

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When I met Stephen Hawking, he told me that there are an infinite number of universes out there, and maybe even one where I was funny.  I responded, “Here’s a great joke:  Stephen Hawking walked into a bar.”  That one really made him mad.  Now I have to live in this Universe, where Kardashians aren’t fast food workers.

I can understand how The Mrs. felt.  It’s almost always a melancholy time when a child moves out, unless that child is Johnny Depp, in which case his parents were happy to be able to announce to their friends that their house was now aerobics-free as Johnny was now doing Pilates of the Caribbean.  I’m sorry.  I’ll admit that there were uneasy questions floating through my mind.  I thought the questions were about him, but in reality after reflecting, I realized the questions were really about me:

I thought the questions were:  “Is he ready?  Does he have the tools to go out into the world?  Will he make the right judgements?”

It sounds like those questions were about him, but they’re not.  Those questions are really about me.  A more truthful way to write them is:  “Did I prepare him?  Did I teach him enough so that he’ll be competent and safe?  Is he a good man?”

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The only thing I’m sad about is that he thinks steak tastes like chicken.

I think college is a good idea for The Boy, and I’ll get back to his specifics a bit later after Morpheus is done with him.

But I don’t think college is for everyone, and I think it’s really a horrible idea for some people.  I learned this from my association with a youth group.  I was discussing the future with one young, bright kid – he was a junior at the time, I think.  I asked him what his plans were.

“I’m going to become an electrical lineman.”  An electrical lineman is the guy who fixes the big wires on the electrical poles so you can charge your iPad© and watch Netflix® – it’s like a superhero who can chew Copenhagen®.  It’s technical work – you have to be smart.  It’s physical.  And most line failures happen during big storms.  So when your power goes out for an hour?  It’s a lineman who’s out fixing it in the rain or snow or ice or thunderstorm or temporal rift.

I stopped.  I was getting ready to give him my “you need to go to college” speech, but hesitated.  This young man had thought about it.  He loved being outside.  He hated paperwork.  He was very smart.  The average hourly wage for an electrical lineman is $30 an hour for a journeyman.  With overtime, he could be making $100,000+ a year in just a few years and live in an area near Modern Mayberry where most of the nicest houses are available for $200,000 or less.

It was a shockingly (intended) good choice.

Being an electrical lineman also offered some other benefits:  it’s not a career that you can do online.  You have to physically be there.  This is nice, so you don’t have to compete with a two billion or so people in China and India like you might if you were being a computer programmer.

This job has another advantage – it requires just enough certification that it shuts down people who would randomly try it, mainly because no matter how crispy the body is electrical companies hate to pay to have them removed.  But the young man in question wouldn’t have to compete with illegal aliens, either.

Being a lineman has a third advantage:  it is a basic service that you can’t outsource.  You can ship a factory nearly completely overseas – I’ve heard of just this happening – but the electrical infrastructure required to run the United States has to be in, well, the United States.

One final advantage:  you can start your own company, buy your own truck, and work the hours you want as a contractor to bigger electrical companies.  It’s a business where if you want to be a contractor or an entrepreneur, you can be without too much difficulty investment.

The nice thing about working with kids is they often teach you things, too.  The standard advice you give a bright kid with good values is go to college.  This is clearly the wrong advice for many kids.

A kid growing up today will face more challenges in employment than any generation in history.   Competition will take place in ways that I never had to consider during my career.  And this is after automation removed thousands of jobs from factories as machines replaced skilled workers.  In this new revolution, expertise from “knowledge workers” will be replaced by algorithms and databases that allow, for instance, computers to diagnose skin cancer at a 95% correct rate, versus an 87% success rate by actual human dermatologists.  I know it sounds bad for the human dermatologists, but I got a 0% correct rate since all I would do is look at the picture and say, “ewww, gross.”  Let’s see a machine beat that.

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Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be a doctor.

I’m not sure that there is, in the future, a truly safe job or career to go into, unless we experience Lord Bison’s Deep Fried Econopocalypse® (and if you’re not reading The Bison Prepper, you really should be (LINK)) and then the guy who makes costumes out of leather and football shoulder pads has probably got a good career ahead of him.   Owning a scrapbooking store?  Maybe not so much.

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Okay, I was going for Mad Max Mel, but this works.  I hear they worked out their differences and went to Hooters® afterwards.  Man, Jesus can put down the wings and Coors Light©.

What are the attributes of a safe job?  I mean, assuming Mel Gibson doesn’t show up at your house tomorrow?

  • Local – If you can’t do it over the Internet, that cuts out billions of people from getting that job.
  • Certifications Required – A job, like the lineman example, isn’t something that should be done by just anyone – it requires a minimum intellect as well as training and experience. Many medical jobs are similar.  I hate the way that we have, in my opinion, over-certified our world.  But you can use that to your advantage.
  • Other Bars to Entry – It used to be that you could give applicants for jobs an IQ test, weed out those that weren’t smart enough, and be fairly sure that you were getting someone who was at least smart enough (or not too smart) for the job. Now?  You have to use something that works like an IQ test, like a college degree.
  • Hard to For A Machine to Do – Blogging.   That’s hard for machines, right fellow humans?  I have been told that 93.2% of you like to hear that.

But there are ways that even “safe” jobs might be at risk:

  • Carpenter: Carpentry, in many cases, requires no certification – any illegal aliens have taken many of these jobs in certain areas.
  • Teacher: Why do we need all of these teachers?  We can get a YouTube® lecture up, and have a teaching assistant give the standardized test.
  • Store Associate:   Check out the product features on the Internet – seriously stop.  You’re not my supervisor.  Leave me alone!
  • Checkout Clerk: Self-service checkouts are pretty common now.  I refuse to use them, period, but I can see that I’m rapidly becoming a minority.
  • Johnny Depp’s Sinus Cavity Cleaner: Okay, this one is really a safe job.

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Okay, I’ll admit, she’d be perfectly acceptable working picking strawberries or in some sort of insect control responsibility. 

But there are other problems.  I maintain that too many people go to college.  In 1959, only about 45% of high school graduates went to college, and only 70% of students graduated from high school.  That’s a little less than a third of the US population.

In 2016, 84% graduated from high school, and 70% of those went to college.  That’s nearly 60%.  If you break down the math, almost twice as many people are going to college as a percentage of people in the United States.  There are only two possible conclusions:  either people have gotten smarter, or college has gotten easier.

Me?  I’m betting that college has gotten easier, since if you poke around a bit you can find that the average grade given to students at Harvard© is an A-.  It might just be my opinion, but the only thing competitive about Harvard® might be how much a parent has to pay to get a student accepted.

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See, if you build a new building on campus – not a bribe – call it Skank Hoe Hall.  But having your skank daughters get in because you’ve bribed a coach?  Yeah, that’s a bribe. Allegedly.

I’m pretty sure that the economy has no need of many of these college graduates in any role other than cashiers at Billy Bob’s Wiggle Striptease Hootenanny©.  Many of the degrees granted are not really economically valuable – 5% of degrees, for instance, are in “fine or performing arts.”  Last time I checked, we here in Modern Mayberry had our quota of mimes filled at our historical demand of zero mimes and there was a bounty on any mime caught within 5000 yards (3 meters) of the county courthouse.  There just aren’t very many jobs available in “fine or performing arts” to justify 5% of college students getting a degree in that field.  Thankfully, many of them have experience in their true field, food service.  I hear that Florida will have a degree in Pre-Barista© next year, so there’s hope yet.

One thing I did note in the hour I spent sifting through the data is that many degrees are more helpful, and, potentially more stable.  Health and medical sciences accounted for 10% of graduates, and those jobs are hard to replace with a machine.  You have to have people helping people.  Robots can diagnose, but at least for now, a doctor has to do the cutting, and a nurse the nursing, until Arnold Schwarzendoctor 2000™ arrives.

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That’s a realllllllly long thumb.

I would speculate that we have twice as many people going to college as necessary, and we could replace the expense and time wasted at college for many people simply by allowing employers to give IQ tests.  Yes, doctors and nurses need school.  But we have approximately 1,000,000% more anthropology degrees than required to maintain our civilization, and an infinite amount of Women’s Gender Studies degree recipients than required.

I advised The Boy on how he could take what he enjoys doing, and turn it into something useful.  Don’t compete with billions of people – find ways that you can provide higher value services to people in ways that have to be local and are hard to reproduce.  I think he has a pretty good plan.

Given the accelerating pace of change we’ve seen in the last two decades, I imagine that anyone starting a career in 2020 may have to make multiple changes during their life.  From what I’ve seen so far, I think The Boy is well prepared for school and the changes that he’ll see in life.  I think he’ll do fine.  It’s time to let that eagle fly.

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Unless it’s Putin’s Eagle.

Black Holes, Money, Population, and 2050

“Using layman’s terms:  Use a retaining magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons.  These, in turn, fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large, and you produce a singularity.” – Event Horizon

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I tried to explain the budget to my ex-wife, but she couldn’t grasp the gravity of the situation.

Right around the year 2002, I first heard of a geophysicist named Didier Sornette.  Sure, you say, with a name like that, he’s French, how smart could he be?  Well, let’s get this straight – I still blame the French for cigarettes, Leftism and the metric system, but Sornette is an original and first-rate thinker, even though the actual pronunciation of his name is probably “Dipstick Snort” because the French haven’t in the last 1600 years mastered spelling a word with any relationship to the way it is actually pronounced.  In addition to Sornette, the French gave us Sophie Marceau, so there’s something they did right.

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Even though Sophie Marceau played a villain, Bond© thought spending time with her was 00heaven.

Sornette is a geophysicist by degree.  He initially studied the physics of earthquakes.  Earthquakes, Sornette noted, don’t come about due to any single failure, but as a result of the microscope failure under pressure at LOTS of different places that at some point becomes critical.  The pressure builds up, and it’s not the first little crack in the rock, but rather the aggregate cracking that eventually releases the stress.  It does that all at once.

Sornette thought that he could use math to describe the behavior of rocks, and model it so he could understand earthquakes better.  He worked for twenty five years on doing this, and found that there was a mathematical “signal” was present before the earthquake occurred.  It wasn’t useful for predicting exactly when the earthquake would occur, but like everybody with a new tool, Sornette looked around and wondered where else it might be applicable.

Sornette looked at the financial system, specifically stock markets.  He noticed that stock market crashes looked a lot like earthquakes.  And, unlike earthquakes, financial crashes could devastate the world globally.  He switched his focus to that, using math to model the financial bubbles that led to the high values that then came crumbling down when the market finally crashed.

In 2001, he decided to take this modelling a step further.  What if, he asked (along with fellow researcher Anders Johansen) we try to model not only the financial system, but world population, too?

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Okey, I’m betting Anders Johansen-a duesn’t ictuoelly telk leeke-a zees. Prubebly. Bork Bork Bork!

The result was the paper Finite-time singularity in the dynamics of the world population, economic, and financial indices, or FEEnite-a-time-a singuolerity in zee-a dynemeecs ouff zee-a vurld pupuoletiun, icunumeec, und feenuonceel indeeces in Swedish.  That’s a really long title that could have been shortened to, Yo, something weird is coming, and I don’t mean your mother.  You can find a copy of the paper here (LINK).  It shows a May 29, 2018 date, but I don’t think there’s been any changes to it since its initial publication in late 2001.  I’ll warn you – there’s a wee bit of math involved.

The paper starts with the statement that for most of the known history of the human race, our growth rate hasn’t been exponential, it’s been far faster than that.  It took 1600 years to go from 300 million people in year 0 Anno Domini to 600 million.  To get to a billion total only took 204 years.  Double to two billion?  We did that in 1927.  Three billion in 1960, four billion in ’74, five billion in ’87, six billion in ’99, and seven billion in 2011.  Now as I write this in 2019?  7.7 billion people.  And only forty people are friends with you on Facebook®.

What allowed this population growth?  Knowledge.  The revolutions in agriculture (the first one, which I wrote about here:  Beer, Nuclear Bikinis, and Agriculture: What Made Us Who We Are), industrial, fertilizer, medical, and information have allowed the population growth to accelerate like it has.

Sornette and Johansen studied several data sets.  Population was one set, and another was the economic growth rate of the United States, as measured by the stock market.  Even though the Dow Jones Industrial Average© (DJIA) didn’t exist before Dow married Jones, several economists have created data on what the data might have looked like.  Is that a bit of a guess, like your mother’s weight since there aren’t scales that big?  Sure.  But, as we will see, it might be close enough.

Math is funny.  When you divide something by zero, you get infinity.  Several mathematical functions that describe things going to infinity do exist – we call those singularities.  The funny thing is that they appear to exist not only mathematically, but in real life as well.  They have real properties that we can predict, measure, and see.  One popular example of a singularity is the black hole.  Some scientist said, “Okay, gravity sucks, like your mom.  But what if something had so much gravity that it trapped even light, like your mom?”

That concept blew their minds, but it was there in the math in 1916 when Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein’s equation and divided by zero.  A black hole is a singularity based around gravity – where gravity is so intense that we have no real understanding of what happens inside, like God divided by zero, liked what he saw, and said, “Yeah, this is the ultimate practical joke.”  But singularities aren’t limited to stuff that would only interest starship crewmembers.  Other singularities regularly occur in physical systems.  Earthquakes.

Stock market crashes.

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A scientific discussion of gravitation inside a black hole.

This wasn’t the first time someone calculated the date of a singularity based on population.  In 1960, the prediction was published in the journal Science that the population singularity would hit on (somewhat tongue and cheekily) Friday, November 13, 2026.  Didier and Johansen relooked at the data, and came up with an equation that they felt gave a better fit.

Their date for the singularity?  2052, +/- 10 years.

They then looked at the data (keep in mind, this was in 2001) and modeled the behavior of the DJIA©.  What did they find?  A singularity in 2053.

That was too close for coincidence.  Two different data sets show the same predicted end date?

Thankfully, Sornette and Johansen are wrong, right?  They certainly didn’t predict that the DJIA™ would be as high as 27,000 in 2019?

In fact, their prediction (in 2001) was that the Dow would hit 36,000-40,000 by 2020.  They did leave some weasel space, noting that, “. . . the extrapolation of this growth closer to the singularity becomes unreliable . . .”

It’s say that they were pretty close, and far closer than I was in the year 2001 when I would have predicted the aggregate stock value of the DJIA© in 2020 would be worth a less than a handful of ramen noodles and ten rounds of .22 ammo.  So they were far closer than I was.

One thing Sornette and Johansen noted was that the minor ups and downs would be of less consequence the closer we move to the singularity point.  What happens each week is less important than the overall trend, so the data errors associated with “creating” a Dow Jones™ index before there was one probably isn’t too much of an error.

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Here’s 100 years of stock market data, now with snarky comment. 

Another conclusion of the equations is that population, technology and wealth is intertwined.  The number of people that the world can hold is very much tied to technology.  When modelling prehistoric population, no fewer than three technological ages – have to be mathematically introduced:  hunting, followed by farming, followed by primitive technology are required to accurately model the actual population.

But when these intertwine, does the increased population lead to the technology, or do they feed on each other causing an explosion?

They feed on each other, causing an explosion in technology and population and wealth.  More people lead to more wealth.  More people leads to more technology to feed people which leads to even more people which produces more wealth which leads to . . . more people.  The end dates are similar because the functions of wealth and population are related.  You can’t have the super-exponential growth without the interactions.  Sornette and Johansen came up with approximately 2050 for the end date.  Ray Kurzweil (futurist) predicted the technological singularity would hit around 2045, which is pretty close.

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Bill Gates gave up lap dancing and stripping after pulling a hamstring at a bachelor party, and he had to settle for his second love – computers.

But what happens next?  What happens if and when the singularity hits?  The authors indicate we’re probably in it a transitional phase already – the population growth rate peaked in 1973, and so did the world per capita energy use.  Sornette and Johansen came up with some silly ideas of what’s next, but let’s be real:  no one can predict what happens after a singularity – dividing by zero changes every rule.

We have no idea what happens inside a black hole.

I know that many of you sense the same thing that I do – we are changing at a pace that is already fast but that seems to accelerate:  it’s faster every year.  This is the case, and I don’t anticipate that things will slow in the next decade or two.  Beyond that?  It’s anyone’s guess.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what happened to Didier Sornette?  He runs a group called the Financial Crisis Observatory in Zurich, where they try to observe financial budget growth in real time.  It’s here (LINK) and worth a few minutes of review.

So, if they’re right, it’s the best time to be in stocks, at least until the singularity occurs, the population collapses and the robots decide that to get rid of their pets . . .

Dow chart from here:  (LINK)