Liberty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field

All dog species have as common ancestors wolves. As with all selective breeding, useful traits were selected and reinforced over generations. Selection from wolves probably started with docility as the primary traint, but once you have a lineage that doesn't want to attack you, you can then start selecting for other traits; Some dogs were bred to hunt, or herd sheep, as alarm systems, or to act as companions, or just to be cute. In fact, it's no surprise why puppies and especially kittens are so cute -- the cuttest animals in any litter had more chances of being picked by humans for companionship, and over thousands of years, this results in huge selective pressure for traits that humans would describe as cuteness* :) *Exhibit A: http://cuteoverload.com/

I don't know, it's the opposite view that scares me; without a big security camera in the sky, the religious people would no doubt try to kill and rape me and steal my stuff? That's scary. There are quite convincing evidence from evolutionary psychology that morality is evolved (the brain is an evolved organ and we are not born blank slates -- in fact, certain types of brain damage can affect people's morality and ethics), and common sense shows that even religious people who pretend they get their morality from their religion know how to pick and choose from their religious texts, so they actually have a moral foundation that doesn't come from their magical books (ie. the bible is full of genocide, prejudice, antiquated beliefs, etc, yet most religious people leave that stuff aside and won't stone women for wearing certain types of textiles or idolatry or whatever). There's also no evidence that people raised in non-religious families are any less moral, or that religious leaders are more moral (how many scandals with priests and preachers?). I recommend reading The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, and The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. Anyway, I'm out. Religious and partisan politics aren't productive to discuss on the internet. I just wanted to give my 2 cents about the origins of morality. Domesticated animals are the result of selective breeding over many generations, so they've been shaped by humans to fit their needs. It's not really an example of morality; It's the real 'intelligence design' because it was done by people :) Natural selection has its own criteria for selection (reproductive fitness), but humans have different ones, including not being eaten :)

What a mess. If I had to guess, I'd say that they will eventually monetize the debt one way or another. There's no way that the german voters are more resolved to avoid bailouts than southern voters are resolved to avoid the pain of austerity and pro-growth reform, especially since the germans are in a kind of lose-lose situation; if they say no to bailouts forever, they can still get hit by an Europe-wide crisis, while the southern countries can win if they just get the germans to pay for them (through monetary inflation, most probably). The real question is 'what then?'. Once that's done, will they try to federalize Europe more, or will they leave it as is and periodically subsidize the south with newly printed money? Or maybe I'm missing something important... In any case, I don't feel confident enough about any of this to base an investment on it.

I just want to say, this was an excellent post. Thanks writser!

How do you know in advance where the price is going to go? Picking winners and avoiding losers can be done by studying the fundamentals of a business. But once you've bought something, it doesn't become a loser because price moves around IMO. What matters is how price compares to your estimate of intrinsic value and how fast IV is growing (if it is). Edit: I was looking at it from an investor's point of view, but I guess it can make sense for a trader, though I don't know how to be a successful trader, so I don't really know.

Thank you!

If you are a dropbox user you should be able to put it in your public folder and get a link to it from dropbox.com If not, you can go to a file locker like http://rapidgator.net/ and upload it and make sure to cut & paste the link they gave you once it's uploaded.

Moderating the forum posts itself is more complex because you need really trusted people.. But this forum has so little drama that it's probably not what is taking Parsad's time. Moderating submissions for membership is probably more factual: Is this obviously spam, or a real person? Yes/No. But I still think there's probably a technological way (a better captcha or human-test) to reduce the spam numbers by a few orders of magnitude. But even after that, having a few people going through the submissions might still be a good idea.

Thank you. Does anyone has the file? I'd like to download it without signing up for that site...

Each CPC ad has its own rate determined by auction. Some ads for keywords where demand is high but supply low can pay tens of dollars per click (I think the most lucrative term a little while ago was for a rare form of cancer that trial lawyers were advertising against, it was probably hundreds of dollars per click). So it's definitely possible that if one month you are lucky and get even a few very high-paying ads that people clicked on, the numbers could be much higher than a month with a similar number of impressions but only lower-paying clicks. Google has a lot of anti-click-fraud counter-measures and that whole system is basically a black box because if they explain how it works, there will be more fraud. I doubt you'll ever get details on how it works and what the exact CPC is for each ad.

I think reminding people of the donation option once in a while is a great idea. It doesn't even have to be done by Sanjeev. I'll set up a calendar reminder :) I agree that a way must be found to stop the spam. The fee would work, though I suspect that $1 would work as well as $50 (spammers will never ever pay anything, and if they are stupid enough to do and give you their real email/name via Paypal, you just ban them as soon as they spam and keep their money, and report them to their ISP). But better spam-catchers OR getting trusted volunteers to do some admin duties would also work. Most really popular forums end up with a team of admins/moderators, so it would probably be a normal evolution here to delegate some tasks. Just food for thoughts. Update: I agree with others that we should keep spam out without erecting too high barriers to entry because it would be tragic if they kept out the next great contributor. In theory a small fee shouldn't keep anyone out, but in practice, people are so used to not paying on the internet that it irrationally might do just that, and we'd all lose out a lot more in value than what that fee would bring in...

Along with the spam filter and CAPTCHA, I have three questions registrants have to answer...they still somehow get through! It's a pain in the ass, but I'm still impressed how programmers do it. Cheers! Maybe a visual captcha that shows pictures of cats and dogs or whatever and asks you to pick the happy-looking cat or saddest looking dog exists. That'd be hard to get around (as long as the image files aren't named "happycat.jpg") :)

That makes a lot of sense, but if I try to look at the other side of the argument, I would say: 1) If you buy a basket of other currencies and they all inflate, you could be losing purchasing power anyway, while gold might still go up as a safe haven (but can we prove that? not really). 2) If you buy a basket of commodities and there's a big negative event (devaluation, inflation, loss of confidence in the USD, etc) that creates a big global recession/depression (even if just by crushing animal spirits), demand for industrial commodities could go down at the same time as demand for gold goes up (again, as a safe haven that is not anyone's liability, but who knows how that would play out exactly). (in other words, some would claim gold/silver would protect you against those two scenarios, while with your approach, you kind of have to pick one and be right or split capital between the two and potentially lose on one side, and maybe both) 3) Unlike most other commodities, it's easy to take possession of gold and store a lot of value in little space. Most other commodities, you probably won't take possession, and if all goes to hell, having a piece of paper that says you own "X" might not help much. It's still very hard to value gold, but if we look at the cost of production, it seems to be pretty high now, especially if you don't just include the cash cost of taking it out of the ground but also the costs of exploration. What I've seen makes me think the real cost of production is well above 1000/oz, but that won't help if demand dries up, if the paper market is manipulated, or if central banks decide to flood the market again.

+1 :)

I agree. What I meant is I think is that there's a big incentive to inflate the money supply while keeping official CPI numbers 'within the normal range' (trying to have their cake and eat it too), so there's a very high chance that the CPI numbers understate actual price inflation. What this actually ends up meaning at the end of the day is unclear, as is pretty much everything else in the macro world (just too many other variables and feedback loops). As William Goldman would say, nobody knows nothing.

Sometimes I feel like I'm sitting between two chairs and just can't figure out which chair is the solid one and which one is about to break down... The more I read about fiat currency, the more disgusted I am by how manipulated and "faith-based" that system is, and I also find it scary how the powers that be equate consuming and spending with saving and productive activities, but I also can't figure out what precious metals are worth and whether that the fiat system can just keep going and be patched for a very long time. I like to invest in things that I can understand, but I don't really understand macro... My strategy is still pretty Buffett-esque, in that I want businesses I understand with pricing power & a moat & a margin of safety & profitable growth & good capital allocation, etc.. But I've started to look a lot more closely at getting some exposure to commodities (mostly indirectly/obliquely, as mining is such a hard business and I don't want to own miners) in case all the newly created dollars/euros/yuans/etc end up creating a lot more price inflation than people expect (the official CPI definitely should not be trusted, based on what I've been reading) and/or there's a crisis of confidence and financial assets suddenly start to feel a lot less 'real' than hard assets. But who the hell can really know what's what in the macro world? It's so confusing. I hear an argument that makes a lot of sense, and then an opposite argument that also makes a lot of sense... In the end, I think I'll have to just keep buying good businesses when they appear cheap and hope for the best. Being a macro investor isn't for me, even if I really wish I could get a clearer overall picture of the world economy's foundation to better position my portfolio for what is coming (huge crisis? next bull market? inflation? deflation? more government intervention? or even more government intervention than the high level we already expect?). I wish I had the conviction of either the doomers or the optimists, but I just don't know, so I'm trying to put something together that should do all right either way. I guess that's Buffett-esque too, though he might be a bit more optimistic than I am* :-\ *Sometimes I wonder if Buffett isn't a bit over-optimistic because a lot of the data that he gets from Berkshire's businesses comes from such good, above-average businesses. While it is pretty representative of trends in the general real economy, it might still paint a too-rosy portrait. Just a theory... He 's smart enough that he probably compensates for that, so the theory probably isn't correct.

Well, not that it matters that much, but if you mute Monish's microphone, you stop having Guy's own voice feedbacking through his own speakers & mic, so the ultimate source was Monish's mic. The varying delay was probably just latency spikes which become more obvious when repeated in a feedback loop. Usually when everybody except one person has echo when they speak, the echo is caused by the person who doesn't sound echo-y :)

Thanks for posting this Parsad! Heh, maybe it's because I spend so much time on conference calls, but it's so obvious to me that Monish is causing the feedback by not muting his microphone, and Google Hangout constantly switches back to him because it interprets the mic signal as him speaking.

Sad news :(

http://variantperceptions.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/david-tepper-on-investing-under-uncertainty-theory/ http://variantperceptions.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/david-tepper-on-investing-under-uncertainty-practice/ Thanks.

Somehow it's the first time I hear about this guy. I like his style. Any recommended sources to learn more about him, his record, and his investment philosophy?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/08/facebook_should_be_nationalized_to_protect_user_rights_.html I'm posting this for laughs. It's so ridiculous.. ;D I'm fascinated by people who understand business and economics so little, as well as government and civil liberties.

Google finance shows me that BRK has beaten both the SP500 and Dow Jones index over the past 10 years. Not by a lot, but it did better. By my count it did much better when it comes to intrinsic value creation, and with much lower risk, but it might take a while for that IV to be recognized in the secondary market (who knows?).

Thanks for the history, guys. Wish I had been around back then :)