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eightyonekilograms · 3 years

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Someone on the Discord brought up fertility

Just like last time I'm lazy and just going to dump it instead of editing.

[5:10 PM] Me: Oh boy, I have thoughts about this

[5:12 PM] Me: I haven't brought it up here but demographics has been one of my covid obsessions. I got a couple books about it (What to Expect When No One's Expecting, One Billion Americans, etc.), read all the articles, etc.

[5:15 PM] Me: I agree with you about a couple things: namely that if we had "infinite free energy" we'd be a a lot better off in many ways including demographically, but I disagree with most of your other points.

[5:18 PM] Me:

Also we need not assume decline in population growth is chronic.

This is a tricky statement because there's a social aspect and a mathematical aspect. Socially you're correct in the sense that whatever trends are driving the current decline could, in theory, reverse at any time. But mathematically, population decline is exactly symmetrical to population growth: it's exponential (technically it's logistic, but that's the same as exponential in the short term), because having fewer people means fewer people to make more people later on.

[5:20 PM] Me:

Infact there is some evidence to suggest that we actually did more science when we had 4-6 billion people.

I disagree with the implication here: we used to do more science because there was more low-hanging fruit, which is now plucked, and further discoveries require more resources (human and financial). Actually one of the big reasons I disagree with Ray Kurzweil and the other singularitarians is that when they show these impressive-looking exponential curves about scientific progress, they quietly hide under the rug that these increases are requiring ever-more investment (again, in both people and money) to accomplish. Just to pick a random example, every time chip manufacturers go to a new process (14nm -> 10nm -> 7nm -> 5nm -> 2nm etc.), the cost to build the fab basically doubles. I remember a couple years back Intel had to spend $5 billion to hit a new process shrink; now TSMC needs to spend $28 billion to hit their next target: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tsmc-to-spend-up-to-record-28-billion-in-advanced-chips-capacity-11610623587)

[5:23 PM] Me: I will try to find it but I came across a paper a little while ago laying out in detail that the cost of new scientific discoveries has been steadily increasing over time. It's not that there's anything necessarily going wrong with the scientific process, this is just what you'd expect as we pick low-hanging fruit: the later discoveries necessarily become harder. But if you extrapolate that trend out forever you eventually hit a point where every single person needs to be a scientist, and every dime of capital in existence, needs to be used to make any new discoveries.

[5:26 PM] Me: (In most fields we're a long way from that point, but it actually is here or nearly here in e.g. particle physics. What I have been hearing from leading-edge particle physicists is that we've got maybe one or two more generations of particle accelerators left before we reach a point where, to probe any further (e.g. to see if string theory is true), we'd need to build accelerators the size of the Solar System, which would take more raw material than the mass of the Earth. Barring some new theoretical breakthroughs, we might actually nearing the "end" of high-energy physics.)

[5:30 PM] Me: Fortunately most fields aren't at that point, but my point is that the more we discover, the more human capital is required to make further progress. That's a tricky enough proposition with a growing population, never mind a shrinking one.

[5:36 PM] Me:

I don't think it is safe to assume lowering population growth is a biological disorder so much as a conscious choice most people in the younger generations are making for a variety of obvious reasons.

I agree with this, but it's important to dig into that a little and understand the reasons. For example, I'm not yet convinced that there is a mass epidemic of people choosing childlessness because of anxiety about e.g. climate change. In internet comments sections you certainly see lots of people making that claim, but talk is cheap and randos on the internet can say whatever they want. In terms of the actual reasons, the data I've seen shows that number of children continues to track closely with a couple data points, mostly housing costs, expected lifetime income and uncertainly about future income flow.

[5:40 PM] Me: Third, I think you should give more weight to the concerns Rhys brought up than you currently are. The environmental stresses of more people is certainly a big issue, but I think it's one that can be dealt with without too much struggle with increased deployment of clean energy (one of the few optimistic data points lately is that there's a staggering amount of wind and solar power being deployed every year) and a couple of lifestyle changes like eating less meat. Not to say these are easy, but contrast with the pretty serious problems of population decline, particularly the social safety net.

[5:41 PM] Me: And I don't just mean the explicit ones like Social Security, but even market-based, privatized ones like retirement savings have a hidden reliance on a growing population.

[5:42 PM] Me: When you "save for retirement", you're not stockpiling food and water to live off when you no longer work, you're collecting financial assets that you expect to sell to someone else and live off that income. But if there's no one to sell to, that doesn't work.

[5:44 PM] Me: This is a problem that's starting to show up at the top end of the income stack: see this WSJ article about retirees who can't find anyone to buy their $3 million homes: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-growing-problem-in-real-estate-too-many-too-big-houses-11553181782. It's easy to have schadenfreude here at those poor rich people who can't unload their huge mansion, but remember that this is inherently a problem which will start at the top of the income brackets and gradually make its way downward.

[5:46 PM] Me: You can push this problem back for a while by increasing taxes on the rich, and I do indeed think those should go up, but in a declining population that only buys you a little time. Remember that "money" is nothing but a claim on some fraction of total economic output. e.g. when you hold a dollar bill, you're essentially holding a note entitling you to one-zillionth of American GDP.

[5:47 PM] Me: At a certain point once population falls then total aggregate output necessarily falls too, and at that point taxing the rich hits rapidly diminishing returns: you're just claiming a bigger share of falling output

[5:49 PM] Me: One thing to keep in mind here is that most economies, but especially the U.S. economy, are primarily driven by consumer spending, i.e. normal people just buying and selling stuff to each other.

[5:50 PM] Me: This is why e.g. mass immigration isn't as huge a deal as a bunch of nativists like to think: immigrants get jobs, but they also spend money on goods and services just like anyone else: they generate labor demand as well as taking up supply

[5:51 PM] Me: But what I'm driving at here is that, again, a consumer-spending-driven economy with a falling population is going to get poorer pretty much by definition: fewer people buying stuff means fewer jobs to produce that stuff.

[5:54 PM] Me: Or to put another way, to use a ridiculously simplified model, GDP = Population X Productivity, and so if you take the derivative, then GDP' ~ Population' + Productivity'. So in a falling population environment, you need a lot of heavy lifting in terms of forever-increasing productivity in order for economic growth to be positive. And while there might be improvements down the pipe, frankly we kind of seem tapped out on productivity growth already

[5:55 PM] Me: Now, one possible response here is that we should work out how to have an economic system which delivers prosperity without endless growth, and I do agree we need that. But just saying that doesn't fix the problem that right now we don't have it and people will be poorer in a world without growth.

[5:56 PM] Me: And in such a world, I think it actually becomes harder to successfully transition to whatever post-scarcity economy can fix the problem, because people will be caught up in fighting over a shrinking pie.

[5:58 PM] Me: The neoliberal capitalist mindset of "a rising tide lifts all boats" isn't totally true and has been used to justify all kinds of nasty plutocratic behavior, but it isn't entirely false either. Without growth, at least in the system we have now, wealth distribution inherently becomes a zero-sum game. And that could get really ugly.

[5:59 PM] Me: So, that's most of what I have to say about why a falling population would be bad. But that's the easy part. Where this gets really complicated is why it's happening and what to do about it

[6:00 PM] Me: Now, I think one of the reasons I've been so fascinated by this is that it's been a pessimistic year, and falling birth rates are kind of the perfect pessimistic problem because I don't really see an easy way out. Also I'm just annoyed by partisans in general, and this is a perfect problem for that because it sort of frustrates partisans on all sides.

[6:02 PM] Me: e.g. the left mainly talks about the economic causes and proposes a variety of policy solutions, but an ugly little secret here is that government policy to increase birth rates has basically a perfect, unbroken track record of total failure

[6:03 PM] Me: All kinds of countries (mostly in Europe, but also in East Asia) have implemented all kinds of pro-natalist policies, and for the most part they have accomplished pretty much nothing. (Amusingly, this even goes back to antiquity: in the first couple centuries AD Roman Emperors were also concerned with falling birth rates, and implemented a variety of reforms that didn't do anything)

[6:03 PM] Me: You could always say they didn't go far enough, but at some point you're making an unfalsifiable hypothesis

[6:06 PM] Me: Meanwhile on the right, they're constantly talking about cultural factors, but this runs into two problems: it's again a set of mostly unfalsifiable hypotheses, but even worse since they're all tangled up in the Right's usual rants about The Way Things Ought to Be, but even if they turned out to be true, it seems like a hopeless cause because we basically have no levers to change culture.

[6:07 PM] Me: "Why does culture develop in the direction it does" is one of those huge questions I'm not sure we'll ever have a complete answer for, but I think it has to mostly involve technological determinism.

[6:08 PM] Me: https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ <-- this is a great article explaining what I'm talking about, as well as explaining why you should read Iain Banks

[6:09 PM] Me: But my point here is that all the cultural changes the Right laments as causing people to have fewer children, assuming they're even correct which I am definitely not granting, are pretty much all products of industrialization. You can't roll them back without undoing the Industrial Revolution. At least not without an insane level of authoritarianism

[6:10 PM] Me: So on the policy side we have a bunch of levers which don't do anything, and on the culture side there are no levers at all.

#meanwhile on the discord

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thespiralgrimoire · 4 years

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Would you consider posting your thoughts on the Twilight series? Because the bits and pieces I catch on your main are HILARIOUS though maybe it’s just because I find salt hysterical LOL

Oh good grief

Under a read more for my sake if not anyone else’s

The year was 2007. I was 11 year old, in 6th grade, nursing a substantial superiority complex over my classmates, and idolizing the 7th grade girls. This is where my story begins.

Now I won’t get into all the semantics as to why I was such an insufferable little garbage person in middle school, but I will tell you that I was convinced that I was not like other girls. While this proved true, my reasons as to why were completely off the mark in my tweens. Back then, I thought it was because I was smarter, wiser, and more mature than any of the other 6th grade girls in my class.

But not the 7th grade girls. The 7th grade girls were it, man. Nobody was cooler or smarter or more creative than the handful of ladies who were blessed with the patience to put up with my nonsense in middle school. So naturally, when they read Twilight, I read Twilight.

Twilight, if you have the good fortune to not be intimately aware of it by now, is about the Bella Swan, blandest girl in the entire world, moving to a small town to live with her emotionally awkward father, where she meets the Cullens, a clan of vampires who don’t drink human blood, because they’re trying to be morally upright. Her scent is irresistible to one of the vampires, (the only single one among them because the rest are dating each other) named Edward. Edward has the ability to read minds, and Bella is the only person he’s ever met who is immune to this power. I must stress again that she smells so good that he has to physically restrain himself from eating her, and murdering all witnesses. For reasons I can’t really remember now except “because that’s what the books are about”, they fall in love.

Here’s the thing about these books: Even as I was reading them, they gave me the creeps. Something in my little baby mind was vaguely aware that Edward was a messed up motherfucker, and Bella was a one-dimensional stand-in for the reader, and everything interesting in this story was happening on the fringes, facilitated by the far more interesting side characters. There were parts of these books that were uncomfortable to read. There were parts that made me seriously question why these books were so popular. There were parts that made it physically difficult to keep reading. About 3 things happen in the entirety of this series that feels good and satisfying, and none of them are things that the author, who I will derogatorily refer to as Smeyer, meant to be satisfying.

Two things kept me reading these books. The first was, obviously, the 7th grade girls, and my other friends in other grades who quickly caught the hype wave.

The second. Was the fact. That the writing style of these books, despite being the modem for a story that is absurd at best and a giant, flaming, stinking dumpster fire of bad takes, racism, and sexism at worst, is HYPNOTIC. A lot of my opinions about this series have changed drastically over the years, but this is one that I was acutely aware of even as I was reading these books. No matter how stupid or frustrating or repulsive the things that Smeyer is writing are, her writing style will not let you put the story down once you’re invested. And since I was reading these for social clout, I was invested on page 1. I want to believe that this was a trick played on my young mind, but after reading the first chapter of Midnight Sun (the newly released book that is literally just Twilight from Edward’s POV instead of Bella’s), I can confirm that this woman’s style is genuinely Like That. I enjoyed maybe 6 sentences of the 15-page chapter and I am still frothing at the mouth to read more.

So now that I’ve justified why I subjected myself to this shit in the first place, let’s get to some feelings about it.

Edward is a CREEP. He knows this. His family knows this. His love rival knows this. The only person who does not know this, rendering the fact completely inconsequential to the events of the story, is Bella. I’m not really willing to talk about how Edward is such a disgusting model for what young girls should expect out of a partner that there was discourse for MONTHS over Fifty Shades of Grey, but.... Edward is such a disgusting model for what young girls should expect out of a partner that Fifty Shades of Grey exists. It’s literally Twilight fanfiction. Fact check me. I wish I was making this up.

Bella is, as I said before, a cardboard cutout of a human being. The book is from her point of view, and includes copious amounts of her thoughts, and yet it’s still clear that she has absolutely no personality. She is supposed to be your Jane Everywoman, and yet there is not a single relatable thing about her. Her three personality traits are Brown Eyes, Clumsy (but not in a way that matters often), and Likes Edward. That’s it. This girl has nothing going on, which only draws more attenton to the fact that literally everyone else in the story has a rich and interesting backstory. But they’re side characters and this is about Stale White Bread Bella over here, so go fuck yourself if you want more information on Rosalie using her vampire abilities to get revenge on her fiance and his buddies, who assaulted her to the point of near death, or Alice, who sees the future and spent a good chunk of her life in an asylum, or Jasper, who was a Union soldier fighting the Civil War which was ALSO the vampire war???? Fuck off with that shit, this is about Bella.

But you know who the best characters are? The werewolves. But not REAL werewolves. These are Native Americans whose initial transformation is triggered by the proximity of the vampires, because vampires once terrorized their people and now this ability to turn to wolves is hereditary to protect themselves. The fact that these fellas are not REAL werewolves, and that there are real lycanthropes of lore, is mentioned in passing in the last book and never mentioned by anyone ever again.

One of these wolves is Jacob, Bella’s childhood friend and, for the first two books, an absolute sweetheart. Just a big goofball who’s a couple years younger than Bella, and all he wants is the best for her. Real wholesome shit. When Edward leaves her because he thinks that she’s too attached (SHE IS), Jacob literally talks Bella back from the brink. The wolf pack, and the Native American tribe, welcome her as one of them. They’re adorable. I can’t stress enough that they would have also been an excellent candidate for the focal point of this shitshow.

But it doesn’t last. Edward does some real dumb shit in Italy and Bella has to go rescue him, which tips off the Vampire Illuminati that Edward was trying to get killed by (i.e. the real dumb shit). They don’t like that Bella, a human, knows about them, and demands that she be turned. Edward’s family is divided on this. Eventually they decide that they got time because the Vampire Illuminati are ancient and don’t have a good enough sense of time to hold them accountable immediately.

So Bella is fine and Edward is fine and everybody is back in the same town and they’re dating again and literally everyone in the town is like Bella what the FUCK. Nobody likes Edward because they think he’s no good for Bella. They are written like the bad buys. Jacob especially, becomes a huge asshole. Because he decides that he’s in love with Bella now. Because werewolves can imprint on people, which is just a sloppy soul mate mechanic used for absolute evil in this story. He wants to fight Edward over her. Edward is chomping at the bit to throw down, but pretends to be the bigger person even though he’s just as big an asshole about all this as Jacob is. This is as misogynist as it sounds. From this point on Jacob is now also a creep.

Oh, but it gets worse!

I gotta talk about the last book in the series now, Breaking Dawn. Because this shit was so awful that it made me regret, instantaneously, ever second I spent enjoying Twilight.

Bella and Edward get married after they graduate high school because Edward is a religious virgin and Bella is HORNY. They go on their honeymoon. Bella gets pregnant. This is Not Something That Is Supposed To Happen.

Smeyer tells us WHY this happened post-canon. Edward, the virgin, has never nutted. Because of this, he still has living sperm in his balls. So when he boffed Bella, his 80-year-old sperm made it count. I wish I was making this up, y’all. I’m tearing up thinking about it.

Bella is now pregnant with a half-vampire baby that is destroying her body from the inside out. It is growing at an exponential rate. She’s eight months along after three weeks. Edward can hear its thoughts. It loves Bella. Bella has to drink blood or die. Jacob is like What the Fuck. I am also, pretty thoroughly like What the Fuck. A couple members of the Cullen family are, very quietly, like What the Fuck.

Queue the most forced and ineffectual pro-life discourse you’ve ever read in your life.

All is well and good until it’s not. Baby suddenly wants to get out of Bella RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY and thrashes so violently that it shatters every bone in her body between her ribs and her femurs. Edward has to rip her uterus open with his teeth. Baby is out. It has a full mouth of teeth. It bites Bella. Edward whips out several syringes full of his own saliva and injects them into Bella all over to make her change into a vampire. This is all written in disgusting graphic detail that still makes my skin crawl to think about. I cannot fathom why Smeyer was not made to tone this scene down.

So it takes a few days for Bella to change into a vampire, during which time the Cullens (and Jacob) have to look after her hellspawn of a daughter. Jacob decides that he must kill her, because she basically killed Bella. But--- surprise! He wasn’t in love with Bella! He was in love with the eggs in her womb-- particularly this one egg that is now a baby! No more crush on Bella! No more beef with Edward! He’s just in love with a newborn infant. I am, at this point, wondering in my little 12 year old mind, how this was allowed to be published.

Bella wakes up a vampire, and in her first display of rational thought through the entire series, does not like this. Don’t worry though, that’s quickly cancelled out by her naming her baby daughter Renesmee.

Renesmee is clearly supposed to be a sweet and gifted little angel that you’re meant to love, but frankly, all I can picture is the Chucky doll but quieter. She does not talk much, because she has the ability to share thoughts by touching people’s faces. She also grows super fast. In a few days she’s toddler age. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on and nobody has time to worry about it because the vampire Illuminati found out about this (a vampire friend of the family snitched) and they’re coming to fuck up the whole family.

There is a reason why they want to do this but it’s stupid and frankly I’m not going to explain it.

So the vampires mobilize. They call all their vampire friends because their plan is just to fight the thousands-years-old vampire Illuminati over this horrible child. For some reason dozens of vampires agree to this. They’re all smitten by Resume I guess.

So the illuminati comes, the family tells them that Ramune isn’t the problem that they think she is, and they leave.

That’s it. That’s the climax.

And then everyone gets their off-putting happily ever after: Bella and Edward can now fuck as much as they want because neither of them can die. Bella abandons her human life without so much as a second glance. Resonate will physically be an adult by the time she’s 7, which means that Jacob can start fucking her then. Bella’s dad sort of knows what’s going on, but doesn’t. For some ungodly reason I don’t make a bonfire out of these books.

You may notice, if you have any knowledge of Twilight, that there are whole plots that I didn’t talk about. That’s because I’ve surely forgotten things. While I read these books with what I can only describe as a manic fervor in my youth, I could never bring myself to reread them. On God, I tried. Multiple times in the last decade I have pulled my box set, hard covered Twilight books off my shelf, and opened them up. But I never even make it through the first chapter before I am so put off that I have to put them back. The plots are flimsy. The main characters are made of sand. The secondary characters are treated like garbage. The lore is disturbing.

And yet as soon as I heard that Midnight Sun was coming out, I knew that I must read it. I’ve made it through the first chapter. I do not know when and how I will make it through the next, but I know, for little middle schooler Theo’s sake, that I must.

Twilight? Horrible. Twilight Fandom? Geniuses.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#twilight #spinda tea #shinyshammie #this took a lot out of me #it's not even funny #we never really escape who we were at 12

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dalyunministry · 4 years

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TOPIC: HOW TO OVERCOME THE WORLD

By. Sister. Savita Manwani

💥

Let us Pray: Lord we thank you for the very breath of life and this precious opportunity to share your living word. I pray Lord, that you guide us and teach us to hear your voice so that we may be the doers of your word and not just hearers. Glory and honor be to your Holy name. Amen.

TOPIC: HOW TO OVERCOME THE WORLD

The world represents everything that displeases God, opposes His teaching, and is under Satan’s dominion. (1 John 5:19).

Many philosophies, ideas and doctrines distort or degrade Christ and His sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. These offer a salvation not found in the Word of God, and are all manifestations of the world.

The Apostle John points out 3 aspects that mark the love of this world: The desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life. John 2:15- 17 says “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever.

¶ Lust of the flesh:

These are those desires that are in us by nature and impel us to do the wrong things. They incite us, even from childhood, to yield to what the flesh desires. They can be described as the satisfaction, passion or enjoyment that is felt by doing wrong things. In doing these things, we give room to sin in our lives.

Galatians 5:17 says, “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” This shows the conflict found in every Christian life. The flesh wants one thing while the spirit wants another. That is why it is important to nourish our spiritual man.

Galatians 5:19 - 21 gives us a long list of the sins of the flesh. These include sexual sins, sins involving pagan religions such as witchcraft or idolatry and other sins relating to temperament and character. The fruit of the Spirit is everything that is opposite to the flesh.

• In relation to God: love, joy and peace

• In relation to others: patience, kindness and goodness

• In relation to ourselves: faith, kindness and self-control

Our goal should be that our spirit wins the battle against the flesh.>If we want to conquer the desires of the flesh, we have to pay special attention to our spirit. We must feed it and care for it in such a way that in the face of temptation, the spirit prevails.

¶ Lust of the Eyes:

The eyes can be a fountain of life, purity and inspiration, or they can be an instrument of evil, perversion, and bad desires. Dr. W. E Vine describes them as being, “the principal avenue to temptation. “The desires of the eyes” can be described as perversions, bad intentions and selfish delights that include not only the sight, but also the mind and imagination. The Bible teaches in 2 Peter 2:14 “having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease to sin, …” And in Matthew 5:27 – 29; “You have heard

that it was said to those of old, “You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

The word “look” refers to the desires of the eyes, a look laden with lust, which wakens impure images and desires in our minds.

Someone once said, “the first look isn’t sinful but the second look is.” This second look aims to satisfy the mind's own desires.

Beacon's commentary says that this type of lust is “the tendency to be captivated by the exterior appearance of things without looking into its real worth.” The lust of the eyes include not only sight but also the mind and imagination. They seek to satisfy themselves through pornography or unedifying books, magazines or movies. They create an addiction that can only be quenched by giving in to the pleasures of the flesh. Generally, these desires are fed by thoughts convincing us that sin is something pleasant, pleasurable and desirable.

We justify the sinful thought as being acceptable as something harmless and insignificant. And since we haven’t actually done anything we are convinced it is not sin.

What's more, it keeps us from seeing the consequences that our behavior may bring to our lives and to those that we love.

When the mind delights itself with memories of past sexual experience, drunkenness, parties, or gambling. The enemy shows you the fun you experienced, the pleasures you felt, and how wonderful it would be to experience them again. These memories are accompanied by thoughts like, “there’s nothing wrong with that,” or, “everyone is doing it”, or, “I can’t become a fanatic.” The mind does not concentrate on the consequences that will come sooner or later, but on the desire and pleasures it wants to feel again. The influence the lust of the eye has on us is acute. They manipulate our mind and cause us to forget what Christ did for us.

That is why it is good to follow the Apostle Paul's counsel, when he exhorts us to walk in the Spirit and do not satisfy the desires of the flesh.

¶ Pride of life: This refers to the belief that the reason for life is found in the worldly appearance and worth of things, and not in how God values them. Pride is the illusion that leads people into superficiality, inflates their egos, and makes them believe that their worth is based on position, money and friends.

These vanities turn into strongholds for people who open the door to them. Vanities lead them to believe that their own ability has given them positions of importance with their peers. For this reason, some people climb over others in life, violating biblical principles and the will of God. Behind their appearances they hide their insecurity.

An example of this is when you spend more than you earn and live in debt even though it steals your peace. You don't change because you want to pretend that you are rich. You buy designer clothes, expensive mobile phone or hang out at the most popular places. You have been led to think these things win people’s respect.

God wants us to be prosperous. When we love Him, He lifts us to a better position. God, not His blessings, gives us our value.

¶ How the world affects me: The young person's world is not a secret to anyone. It is one that offers parties, vices, sinful passions and a worthless and empty life. The media, radio press and television, along with society push us towards this type of lifestyle. They trick us into believing that to have fun you must become part of their activities. If we refuse, we are labelled as boring and bitter people. These words boring and bitter are the most commonly used words by non-Christians to pressure the believer into doing what they want or say. The world may affect me when I give into its ways. It affects me when I take part in its dirty jokes and perverted comments or accept its invitation to drink and party. It affects me when these activities stop being fun and become addictive when I end up caught in circumstances that I want to be free from but cannot.

For example, an ungodly relationship ends in frustration and deception; an excess of alcohol produces sicknesses such as cirrhosis and venereal diseases are a result of a degenerate and promiscuous life.

The life the world offers us is a mirror that makes us believe that it is true and fulfilling. However, it doesn't let us see the deception and true consequences of its ways. Jesus does not want to remove us from the world he wants us to shine and be a light wherever we are. Jesus said: “I do not pray that you should take them out of the world but that you should keep them from the evil one” John 17:15

¶ How to face the world now that I am Christian?

A. Not participating in what the world has to offer.

Ephesians 5:11 says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather expose them”. Right from the start you need to learn how to be radical in dealing with sin. Don't ever cloud the real issues. For example, if they offer you a drink, don't lie by saying, “No thank you, I am on medication and drinking could be harmful.” That is not true. You are not on medication. It is rather a matter of faith, but you are too embarrassed to tell the truth.

B. Be radical in your stand as a Christian.

Job 22:28 says, “You will also declare a thing. And it will be established for you; so light will shine on your ways”. Decide beforehand what things you are not going to yield to. For example, decide not to go to parties with nonbelievers or social events where drinking and other vices are predominant. By deciding ahead of time you will avoid facing temptation and prevent yourself from falling into sin. The main thing is to decide, “No matter what happens, I will not leave the path that I have chosen.” This is determination. When I do my part, God does His. He brings His light to reveal what we should say or do.

C. Avoid spending too much time with unbelievers.

They will constantly encourage you to do wrong, inciting you to turn back.

D. Look for friends that share the same purpose and goals.

Spend time with those people who challenge you and strengthen your relationship with God.

E. Strengthen your relationship with God.

Spend time with Him daily in prayer and live in such a way that you will not leave His side. When you are facing situations that you are uncertain and doubtful about, it will help to ask yourself, “What would Jesus do if He were in my place?. I will no longer talk much with you for the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in me. John 14:30

Allow me to end here. May God bless you all.

Let us Pray: Heavenly Father, we thank you for speaking to us today. Lord, I pray that you empower us with your spirit and enable us also to feed our spirit being so that we will be able to overcome the flesh and the world in Jesus Name. Amen.

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existdissolve · 4 years

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Serendipity in Openness

For most of my life I’ve been a closed door. If you had met me even six months ago (maybe even sooner!), you wouldn’t have met me: you would have met a shadow, a facade, an image. I didn’t project this to deceive or mislead; it was just in my DNA. Or so I told myself.

You’re an introvert. No one is that interested. Make this short and sweet and GET OUT OF THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

This was my modus operandi for interactions with pretty-much-everyone. Not too deep, not too personal, just enough to be pleasant and civil and perhaps even friendly. But that’s where the line is drawn.

Not surprisingly, this kind of approach to relationships and general interactions with the other humans doesn’t lead to a whole lot in the way of fulfilling relationships or meaningful friendships. It’s safe. And boring. Just like I felt myself to be. And so the cycle plays...

But then a funny thing happened. I went to Iceland. While there, I decided to take a 4-day trek in the highlands.

I originally wanted to do the trek completely by myself (please refer to paragraph #1 for a refresher of why). But as I researched it, the time of year I was going turns out to be a pretty good time of year to get yourself dead if you don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going. So then, I opted for the “guided” version of the trek.

Among others, a major implication of participating in a guided tour is that there are other people who are probably interested in doing the same thing. As it turns out, 15 other people happened to make the same plans that I did. When I found this out, I admit I was a bit hesitant. The thought of hiking, eating, and sleeping with 15 strangers in constant close quarters was not appealing. My mind immediately went to its defaults, trying to come up with strategies to cope for four days of deflection, self-deprecation, and finding ways to be as close to a ghost as possible.

But then something changed.

I’m not entirely sure what inspired the change. Maybe it was the thrill of fulfilling my dream (finally!!!) of going to Iceland, or the excitement of my very first international trip, or quantum something...whatever the reason, a hitherto unknown person inside of me decided to try something radical, something crazy: I would actually try interacting with people!

I know, I know. It’s a very NOVEL idea. But for me, it was scary and intimidating and intriguing and eventually something I committed to do, even though every instinct screamed bloody murder.

I have many blog entries to write about my experiences with the group of people I met and came to befriend. Someday I will get to it. But I don’t exaggerate when I say that the time we shared and the lessons I learned by being open to companionship, to friendship, to the unknown brought about real change within me.

It was such a transformative experience that I brought the experience home with me, and I’m trying very hard every day to put the same principles into practice in all that I do. I’ve found, as the title of this post indicates, that it can lead to serendipity in the big and small moments of life, if only one is only and simply open to it.

A New Pair of Shoes

About a year ago, I desperately needed a new pair of shoes, as the bits of canvas and leather that had valiantly tried to retain their form had recently given up their ghost to the unrelenting ravages of entropy.

Not being one who has ever been accused of having any sense of fashion, I made my semi-annual pilgrimage to the shoe seller to find something of good quality, sensible utility, and (of course) reasonable pricing. I browsed the aisles and aisles of complicated choices, trying to find the one that would check all the boxes.

And then I saw them. This pair of shoes seemed to call out to me. I picked them up, measured their weight, felt the stitchings.

Hmm. This is a NICE pair of shoes. Really nice!

Then I looked at the price.

Oof. Well, I guess not these.

I continued on, searching and searching. Nothing stood out to me, nothing seemed of any particularly good value, and I kept thinking about those damn shoes.

Ok, maybe I’ll just try them on. They’re probably quite uncomfortable.

Wrong. Dead wrong. These shoes were AMAZING. They seemed to cradle my feet perfectly, and the inside lining was soft enough to provide comfort without being stuffy and hot. And when I started actually walking around in them, my fate was sealed.

These are just right. I really like these shoes!

Ah, but the price... They were definitely well above what I wanted to pay for a pair of shoes. I argued with myself for a few minutes, trying to justify and rationalize why I should or shouldn’t buy them.

In this eternal war between head and heart, my heart won one of its rare battles. I bought the shoes. I stopped justifying the purchase to myself. They brought me joy and were something that I liked, even if no one else ever noticed.

That was enough.

On With the Story!

If you’re following along, I have new shoes and a new found commitment to being open to experiences, relationships and whatever else the universe is cooking up. Caught up? Good.

The finale of this story brings me to the present day. In my quest to continue decluttering and de-possessing myself of things, I cleared out two full boxes of clothes. Unlike my books, I had no trouble with this purge; the decisions were easy, not only because none of the clothes I own are of any particular value, but even more because of sheer necessity: fitting all my “daily use” possessions into a small office closet, as opposed to half of an entire walk-in closet :)

I decided to take my newly-boxed clothes to Goodwill. My day at work had been hectic, so I didn’t arrive until nearly closing time. I was afraid that drop-offs had been closed up already, but I rang the bell anyway.

I waited a minute, and then someone emerged from the receiving bay and waved at me.

Ok. Here we go. A chance to be open. To be friendly. To care and see what happens if I do.

The person who greeted me was an incredibly nice guy, probably 15 years younger than me. He smiled, said hello. I returned the smile, and the greeting...and then I just started talking. It wasn’t anything deep and personal; I didn’t say or ask anything profound. I just showed interest, trying to explore the notion of being open to the now.

We didn’t talk for long. A few minutes, maybe. It was enjoyable, just letting the moments happen, not walling off, just seeing what will be. And then something quite strange and remarkable and unexpected happened.

Completely out of the blue, without any contextual provocation, he said something:

Hey...I really dig your shoes.

I looked down at my feet.

Of course. I’m wearing those shoes.

Serendipity

I was surprised. I was shocked, actually. I couldn’t figure out what to say. The old demons in me that tend toward self-deflection and self-deprecation rose up fiercely, sensing danger or risk or whatever in that moment, beseeching me to fly away.

But an even more powerful energy was at work as well. I felt...gratified! Not being someone who gives much thought to fashion or appearance, it hadn’t actually ever occurred to me that receiving such a compliment could be such a validating experience. In that instant, a line was drawn connecting this moment with the silly struggle I had picking out a pair of shoes, and the compliment was a rewarding validation of the personal value I had imbued in my selection.

Ok, look, I understand: this isn’t life-transformative stuff. It’s just a compliment about a pair of shoes. But for me, in that moment, it was revelatory of a deeper principle and truth. If I had gone to defaults, if I had walled off, if I had just kept my head down and completed the logistics of the transaction, I would have missed something. That something wasn’t monumental, but it was life-giving in its own small way.

I am learning that this openness, this willingness to be present, this active seeking out of opportunities to connect...it carries with it an energy and power that is difficult to pin down or articulate, but is nevertheless impossible to deny. As I (imperfectly) seek to pursue this stance, I am daily finding moments of serendipity and happiness that would have otherwise been out of reach. And the best part is that these moments of surprise emerge organically; I don’t have to work myself to death trying to manufacture them. The energy of openness paves the way, smoothes the path, and swings wide the doors to vistas of possibilities that would otherwise be inaccessible.

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investintheself · 6 years

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The Art of Execution

[Introduction]

My findings show that the key to successfully executing great ideas and making lots of money comes down to the actions you take after you have invested in an idea and find yourself losing or winning. [Part 1 - I’m losing, what should I do] CHAPTER 1 In this part of the book we meet some of the world’s greatest investors in losing situations. These are situations we can all relate to - the investors have lost a lot of money and there is massive uncertainty and negativity surrounding their investments. They are faced with the need to make a crucial decision: to cut their positions or stick with them. And if they stay invested in a stock, should they invest more money? Through the Rabbits I will show you the ptifalls you should try to avoid. Through the Assasins and Hunters I will demonstrate exactly what to do if you want a hope of salvaging or indeed turning a loser into a winner. [Part 1 - The Rabbits - caught in the capital impairment] The Rabbits ended up being the least successful investors working for me, but you could never say they weren’t prestigious. Many of them were celebrated figures in the City and on Wall St. One occupied the top floor of a small skyscraper and had meeting rooms with breath-taking views over the City of London through floor-to-ceiling glass windows; a couple of large security guards greeted you before you even got to the marble-floored reception. Others had decades of experience and name-recognition- some were real ‘housewives’ favorites’. They were always likaeable and whenever I met them positively oozed success. However, like any investment legend, gaining access to them was easier said than done. For me, you could say it took $50 million. That was roughly the sum of each of them ended up managing on behalf of my firm. As this chapter unfolds you will see why, in the end, I wish I had never met any of them. (Jumping In) (Case study: Vyke Communications) Vyke Communications was a UK- based company that specialised in software that allowed users to make telephone calls and send text messages over the internet using their mobile phones, computers or normal landlines. Very big things were expected for this company when one investor started looking at it, not least because it basically meant tha tusers could more or less make international phone calls for free. This seemed like a huge deal. Perhaps Vyke was the next Skype. It could revolutionise global communications. The Investor bought shares in Vyke on 31 Oct 2007 at £ 2.10. As it happened. this would be more or less its peak price. When the stock started to fall shortly after his initial purchasse he bought more. So far, so good - this is, after all, what you should do if you are sticking with a stock for the right reasons. Then it kept falling. The investor chose to stay invested - but he refused to put more money to work Roll on 2 and a half years to 2 July 2010. At that point the investor decided to sell his entire position - with the stock down 99% and trading at £ 0.02. Assuming an annual average return for the stock market of 8% per annum, it would have taken this investor 60 years to make all my money back. he needed to produce a return of 9,900% to break even (Case study: Vostok Nafta) Vostok Nafta is an investment company listed on the Swedish stock exchange that invests in assets in the Commonwealth of Independent States(CIS), a loose association of some of the countries that used to make the the USSR. Its goal is to coordinate trade and security. As you might imagine, many of Vostok Nafta’s investments have been in oil, gas and mining companies - both private and public. In the past this had led many European investors to purchase its shares as a mean of expressing a positive view on commodities; it gave them a leveraged play on that theme. But more recently Vostok has diversified into consumer-focused companies and has significant investments in Russia’s first and only credit card lending company (Tinkoff Credit Systems) as well as an online classified ads company (Avito) The current Vostok really looks nothing like the old Vostok. It shows just how much things have changed in Russia and its neighbouring countries in the past 20 years. It certainly no longer represents a pure leveraged play on commodities. On 11 April 2008 an investor bought shares in Vostok Nafta at €9.14. 5 months of unexpected underperformance later and he was persuaded to finally sell at €3.95 - realising a loss of 57%. It is impoirtant to note that the only reason the shares were sold was because I was putting pressure on the investor to either buy more or to sell. The investor did not want to do anything but could not justify why. If I had not intervened, I am pretty sure he would still be holding the stock today. Assuming the stock reversed course and enjoyed the annual average return for the stock market of 8% per annum, it would take 11 years just to break even, Phrased differently, having lost 57% of the original capital invested, the reinvested capital would need to produce a return of 133% just to get back to the starting level of capital invested. (Case Study: Raymarine) Raymarine is a company that specialises in marine electronics helping yacht-owners kit out their yacht with radars, satellite TVs, fish finders, GPS gadgets and various other communication devices and bits of equipment. An investor bought shares in the firm on 31 May 2007 at £4.27 per share. Roll on 23 months and the stock price had collapsed. The investor was still invested. He was still talking about what a great company it was - though he hadn’t yet bought more shares. One of the reasons the investor put forward for doing nothing was that he was unable to buy more. The stock was too illiquid. Of course, that meant the chilling reverse might also prove true: it might be too illiquid to get out. In investment circles, this is a schoolboy error. You should never get into something that you cannot get out of in public markets. The investor also felt that enough money had already been invested. After pressuring him to do something, he eventually agreed - and managed to sell his entire position on 15 April 2009 at £0.17 per share. That was a loss of 96% on his original investment. Considering an annual average return for the stock market of 8% per annum, it would take 43 years to break even. He would need to produce a return of 2,463% to get back his original investment. (What the Rabbits did Wrong) The Rabbits often dug tunnels that were so deep, they never saw the light of day again. Why did they make this mistake so many times? I’ve used a slightly jokey name for this investing tribe, but the fact is their flaws were very human. I went over all their investments, and it broke down into 10 key factors - a range of biases and influences to which every investor is more or less prone, but which the Rabbits failed to control or circumvent through better habits. By giving in to these factors, they too often ended up caught in the headlights - the results of which were never pretty. 1) Unfashionable insects - one of the most important influences on the Rabbits is what I call NaFF-Bee - or narrative fallacy framing bias. - It is a condition that was alluded to in 1974 by two brilliant Israeli academics, Amos Tversky and his Nobel-Prize-winning collaborator Daniel Kahneman. - Tversky and Kahneman suggested that people’s decision makings is influenced by a cognitive condition they referred to as a framing bias or anchoring heuristic. In other words, when people make decisions they tend to reach a conclusion based on the way a problem has been presented. - One of the Rabbits’ mistakes was allowing their favourite type of investment to dominate how they looked at a stock. The Rabbit that invested in Vyke loved ‘blue-sky’ stocks, and because he was looking for shares that might be the big next thing, that’s what he saw when a stock gave him half the chance. - Naff-Bee also goes one step further than this and suggests that we can make up stories to positively explain losing situations - Whenever the Rabbits found themselves in a losing position, NaFF-Bee tended to kick in and made them think: ‘Okay, I have lost money - but my thesis , the story as to why I have invested, is not broken. The share price will turn around and I will still make a lot of money from here’. - They were capable of constantly adjusting their mental story and time frame so that the stock always looked attractive. - The Rabbits are a great example of how prefessional investors often react to a black-swan event - an event they did not anticipate and which has negatively impacted their investment story. They tend to dismiss it. There were problems at Vyke - serious ones, as it turned out. By 2011, the firm was delisted. Soon after, it went bust. The investor was lucky to get out at all. 2) I’m in Love - Primacy error was another issue. This describes the way that first impressions have a lasting and disproportional effect on a person. - A classic example of primacy error in real life is love at first sight. It is also demonstrated by newly hatched ducklings. The first living thing they see immediately after hatching they take to be their mother. Thus, if the first thing they see after hatching is you, you will soon have a line of loyal ducklings following you whenever you go. - With the Rabbits, first impressions were often everything. - The investor who bought into Vostok had taken a view of the firm some time ago and simply failed to update it to match reality. The net result was that they under-reacted when they found themselves losing money. - I’m afraid that misanthropic investors cannot rejoice as this point (if that idea is not a contradiction in terms): it is perfectly possible for the opposite of love to be an issue. - Stuart Sutherland in his book Irrationality talks about the halo effect and the devil effect. If the first time we are introduced to an investing idea we look at a price chart and see that it has consistently declined for the past 10 years, we are likely to classify it as a ‘baddy’ (a ‘dog’ as the investment pros woulc call it). Thereafter this taints our view even when the underlying facts might have changed profoundly for the better. So there can be perfectly good companies shunned for no good reason. Committed value investors will not find this too surprising. 3) Anchor Away - A closely related cognitive bias to primacy error is anchoring - or dropping our intellectual anchor and letting it sink deep into a view and being unwilling to accept new findings that suggest we are wrong and should haul it up and sail the hell out of there. - If a Rabbit did eventually change his mind, it was always an achingly slow process - It took one Rabbit 2 and a 1/2 years to change his mind on Vyke, and another Rabbit almost 2 years to react to Raymarine’s decline. The other never changed his mind on Vostok. Similar stubbornness occurred on many other investments. - Interestingly, in the investment world, anchoring explains why an earnings surprise typically follows prior surprises. Analysts tend to slowly adjust earnings numbers for a company in their models. No one likes to acknowledge they are wrong, especially if the change requires a complete about-turn. - As such, change tends to be a slow process of gradual adjustment. ‘Surprise’ after ‘surprise’. 4) Too soon? - Imagine a scenario where you buy a bar of gold for £1,000. The next day I offer you £500 for that bar. Would you sell it to me? I think most people wouldn’t. - Would your response change if I opened the newspaper and show you that the price of gold had crashed overnight and to sell your bad on the open market would only get you £250? - You probably still wouldn’t, and the same would be true of most people. You are anchoring to the £1,000 you paid yesterday. Moreover, you have a vested interest (you own the gold bar), so you believe the bar to be worth more than the price being offered. This is known as endowment bias. - If i asked you to name your price for that bar of gold, what would it be? I suspect it would be at least £1,000 given that is your anchor value - the price you paid. - My own experience of managing a team of investors is that large losses that happen over a short duration are almost impossible to accept, especially when they are substantial. - It’s easier to hold on to a losing position than realise the loss by selling up. Not least because people believe it to be Sod’s Law that the price will bounce back post-sale. The Rabbits could not bear the idea of crystallising a loss. They were too aware of how much they had paid for those losing shares. - I want you to now imagine that you have held the hold bar for 10 years. Chances are you cannot remember the price you paid for it all those years ago, and I suspect you would be more likely to sell it to me for £500. It would be an easy decision because you would be far less conscious of the anchor value. In addition, I am offering you twice as much as you would receive on the open markets so this would appear to be a good deal. 5) The Pull of the Crowd - I might be singling the Rabbits out for the money they lost me over the years, but the fact is they were rarely unique in the investments they made. Sadly, that was just another reason why they tended to persist with their mistakes. - Neuroscientists have shown that when we don’t confirm, the amygdala - the part of brain associated with fear - lights up. Doing against the crowd makes an investor nervous. Few investors are willing to be a lone voice for fear of others ridiculing them. - and many investors got burnt on the same investments as the Rabbits - Sadly, this same trait of conforming to peer pressure is why most investors only invest at the end of a bull run. No one wants to be seen as the fool who stood by the side while his neighbours and friends were making vast fortunes. - As a fund manager I can testify that the inner mental pressure to invest in stock that you do not hold and that are going up is immense. - Furthermore, you have to constantly fight the urge to sell stocks that are hurting you. Feelings of pressure, pain and fear go a long way to explaining investor actions and omissions. 6) Ego - The Rabbits really didn’t like being wrong - they were, in fact, ultimately more interested in being right than making money. Many professional investors I know are, deep down, the same. - Whenever a Rabbit defended a losing investment it reminded me of Warren Buffet’s famous saying: ‘forecasts tell you little about the future but a lot about the forecaster’ - The Rabbits all carried false passports - they actually originated from the fictitious country that Nassim Taleb calls Extremistan. They were never going to accept their views were wrong. - The fact is, the greatest minds on the planet can be wrong. My findings suggest you should expect to be wrong at least half of the time. The very best investment minds are! 7) It’s not my fault - Behavioral psychologists have a term for when we blame others or external factors for our misfortunes but take full credit when things go well. They call it self-attribution bias. It is one of the key reasons we don’t learn from past mistakes but keep repeating them. - It never ceased to amaze me how many times the same two villains popped up in the stories told by Rabbits harbouring a losing position: Mr Market (’the market is being stupid’) and his sidekick Mr Unluckly (’it wasn’t my fault, I was unlucky because of XYZ that no one could have foreseen’) - The Rabbits were not only good at blaming these two foes. With Raymarine, one of them was even able to blame the illiquidity - a real but entirely optional villain no serious investor should ever encounter - for his inaction. 8) The Wrong Information - Related to the problems of ego and self-attribution bias, whenever a Rabbit was losing you could always guarantee that he or she would go on a mission to seek out more information to help make the right decision - Unfortunately, undertaking additional research is not as good an idea as it may first appear. For example, if the additional research is carried out by the very same analyst who recommended the stock - as it often is in the City and on Wall St - naturally his or her focus will be on finding reasons to support the original recommendation. No one wants to admit they were wrong. - Moreover, the analyst will probably be someone the fund manager likes and respects, which means the manager will not be inclined to challenge his/her view. - When you consider all the variables and assumptions that analysts have to deal with before they reach a conclusion, it is mind blowing that they could have any degree of confidence at all. - Because many of the Rabbits had been professionally investing for a couple of decades, controlling a significant amount of assets, they had Rolodexes to die for. When they found the ‘story’ behind an investment being challenged, they liked nothing better than picking up the phone and dialling the CEO on his/her personal number to get to the bottom of things. Despite being reassured by the CEO that the setback was merely a bump in the road and the media was making a mountain out of a mole hill, the Rabbit would do nothing. They either bought more shares not sold their holdings. - A hugely appealing temptation for more information comes from the need to abrogate responsibility in times of crisis. It is very common when a difficult decision has to be made to see the decision-maker involving more people. The more people involved, the more they can relax because if it goes wrong it was not their fault. - In companies, the unwillingness of board members to make big decisions that may have far-reaching consequences is the reason financial consultants exist. Boards tend to heavily rely on external advisers when making such decisions. - Various studies focused on betting have shown that while more information increases a person’s confidence, it does not increase their accuracy (success ratio). 9) Too big to fail - Like many managers, the Rabbits were less inclined to walk away from a large losing investment than a small losing investment. - The denomination effect described by Himanshu Mishra, Arul Mishra and Dhananjay Nayakunkuppam and Priya Raghubir and Joydeep Srivastava helps explain this phenomenon. - Their research showed we find it easier to spend money if we have small denomination coins than when we have larger bank notes. The bigger the losing positions, the more nervous and indecisive most of us become. - This can be more of a problem if you have a smaller portfolio. The investors I worked with readily admitted that in their funds, some of which held up to 100 stocks, it was far easier to sell a losing position because it represented only 1% of the overall fund’s net asset value. Thus, if the stock was down 40%, it had only cost them 0.4%. Whereas with the money they managed for me, that stock was perhaps one of only ten positions, each position being on average 10%. As a consequence, to sell meant realising a 4% loss on the total assets managed. 10) I am due a win - Investors like the Rabbits typically suffer from a dose of gambler’s fallacy. This is the mistaken belief that the odds for a stock have become more attractive due to recent poor performance. - It’s the belief that you will win after a streak of losses playing roulette at the casino - ‘I am due to win.’ - Even when the odds are 50/50, like the toss of a coin, a deluded gambler believes the odds change in his favour the longer he stays in the game while on a losing streak. - The fact is, the porbability of a fair coin turning up heads is always 50%. Each coin flip is an independent event and all previous flips have no effect on future coin tosses. (What the Rabbits could have done differently) The bad news is, everyone can be a Rabbit. The good news is, no one needs to be. There are a few simple things they could have done to overcome their problems 1) Always have a plan - Investing is all about probabilities. Whether you invest should depend on the odds and your edge you think you have. - Given the odds and your edge you should know exactly what you are going to do if the stock you are investing in falls or rises by 20%, 50%, and so on. - When faced with a painful loss-making position, most people do nothing. They turn into a Rabbit and procrastinate, letting all their biases play havoc with their decision-making, hoping time will resolve their issues so they don’t have to. - The best way round this is to draw up a plan of precisely what actions you will take when your investments don’t work. The Rabbits didn’t have one. You can. - The necessary actions in a plan are really quite simple. As the next point explains, it all comes down to two choices. 2) Sell or Buy more| - When you hold a stock that is losing, you feel terrible. You beat yourself up and wish you could turn back the clock. You find yourself unable to sleep. - Some people turn to religion and pray for divine intervention - ‘Dear God, if you make the share price go back to the price I paid so that I can get out and not lose money I will be a good investor in the future. I am not asking to make money or be greedy.’ - I admit I have done this on more than one occasion(in the past). Sadly, it didn’t help. - The only solution to a losing situation is to sell out or significantly increase your stake - You have to materially adapt if you hope to survive and prosper. - If a stock price is down after your investment, the market is telling you that you were wrong. If you really do believe you were right to invest in that company, then you were clearly wrong in the timing. The sooner you acknowledge you have made a mistake and take steps to deal with it, the better your odds of achieving a successful outcome. - Ask yourself this key question I now ask all of my investors: ‘If I had a blank piece of paper and were looking to invest today, would I buy into that stock given what I now know?’ - If your answer to the question above is ‘No’, or ‘Maybe, but...’ then you should sell. - If you conclude that you would not buy the shares today but find that you cannot push the sell button, be aware that this is because of endowment bias and not a logical investment thesis. Sell. - Legendary investor Peter Lynch adopted a similar approach: ‘Every few months I checked the story just as if I were hearing it for the first time...(and I would) get out of situations where the fundamentals are worse and the price had increased... and into situations where the fundamentals are better but the price is down... a price stop is any opportunity to load up on bargains from among your worst performers... if you can’t convince yourself when I’m down 25% I’m a buyer then you’ll never make a decent profit in stocks.’ - Doing nothing when you are losing is never an option because if the stock price rises from here you should have put more money to work. If it falls further you should have cut your position. - The Rabbits weren’t terrible investors just because they refused to accept they were wrong. The real giveaway was that they refused to do anything when they found themselves in a losing situation. - Nowadays, I start to apply pressure on my managers when a stock is down over 20% to ensure action is taken before irreparable damage occurs. - I have learnt that I cannot trust great investors to do the right thing when they are losing - like top athletes, they require coaching and management. 3) Don’t go all in - A corollary of the previous point is to never put yourself in a position where you find you are still convinced by your original investment idea but are not able to invest more money when the share price falls. That is poor money management. Keep some powder dry. - This also helps neutralise the denomination type of effect - of feeling an investment is too big to be changed ‘In my own portfolios at Pabrai Funds, I adjust for this [getting the odds wrong] by simply placing bets at 10% of assets for each bet. It is suboptimal, but it takes care of the Bet 6 being superior to the Bet 2 problem. Many times the bottom three to four bets outperform the ones I felt the best about.’ - Mohnish Pabrai ‘Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action’ - Benjamin Disraeli 4) Don’t be hasty to jump in, do be hasty to jump out - we should all remember the following wise words: ‘It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.’ - Ned Davis in his book Being Right or Making Money, using the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1929 to 1998, showed that the bulk of investors’ losses in bear markets come in the final third of the fall. - This suggests that cutting your losers early is difficult - but makes a lot of sense. Not least because selling out of a stock helps clear your head and enables you to assess a situation more objectively. It’s like taking a decongestion pill when suffering from a cold. - And buying slowly over time (known as dollar or pound-cost-averaging), with a reduced position size at the outset, ensures you have plenty of ammunition left to load up when a share finally capitulates (assuming it does) - What seperates the winners from the losers? The answer is simple - the winners make small mistakes while the losers make big mistakes.’ 5) Remember there is a difference between ‘being right’ and ‘making money’ - Even if you are convinced you are right, remember the saying, ‘ There is nothing like an idea whose time has come.’. In investing, a lot of success can be attributed to being in the right place at the right time - otherwise known as luck. - A classic example of this is Laker Airways, which was founded in 1966 by Sir Freddie Laker. In 1977 this firm introduced the world’s first budget airline and operated low-costs flights between London Gatwick Airport and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. - Due to a combination of recession, high oil prices, changes in currency and simply being ahead of its time, it went bankrupt in 1982. Contrast this with today when there are many airlines successfully operating low-cost, low-frills flights, the most well known being Ryanair and easyJet in Europe. 6) Seek out opposition - When people lose money they don’t want to be told they are wrong. They want reassurance - the same way people sometimes visit a doctor to be told everything is fine. - What you should really do is to speak to someone with an opposing view. - Ideally you should also sell out of the stock while you do that so that you have removed the emotional attachment of a vested interest. This mitigates endowment bias and you can always buy the stock back later. - If you would not put money to work in a particular share today, knowing what you now know, then you have to concede that the investment is dead - and if you haven’t already sold, you absolutely should now. 7) Be Humble - As you can imagine, the Rabbits, like many investors, were incredibly smart. Many of them had MBAs, CFAs and other letter after their name that suggested they had an analytical advantage over the rest of the market. The Rabbits were often very confident. And they could be compelling. They never said ‘I don’t know’. - But this is a very dangerous mindset to have. First, it assumes the market is made up of buyers and sellers that are not equally expert, when in fact many will be. Second, ‘knowing more’ often leads to a person not seeing the wood for the trees. - And crowds are often surprisingly wise - the market can be right even when everyone who makes it up is individually wrong - in 1987 Jack Treynor presented 56 of his students with a jar of jelly beans and asked them a simple question. How many jelly beans were in this jar? There were 850, but not one student got it right - hardly surprising. - What is more important is that despite the guesses varying massively from one student to the next, the average number taken from all those wrong numbers was only 2.5% off the actual number of 850. Only one student guessed a number closer tot the actual number than the average. - Remember this the next time you pound the table shouting ‘I am right and the market is wrong.’ My findings show that on average, only 40% of great ideas make money. If that doesn’t scare you then consider this: another study found that fund managers who were 100% confident in picking winning stocks over the next 12 months were right even less - only 12% of the time. - You should expect your ideas to be wrong and invest with that in mind. 8) Keep quiet and carry on - Be careful who you talk to about your investments and how you talk about them. Some people have an almost religious zeal for shares they have bought, and like nothing better than sharing their views in public to as many people as possible. - Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to walk away from an idea without looking like an idiot. It’s an unnecessary hindrance. The Rabbits might have been less likely to get stuck had they not boasted of anticipated returns. 9) Don’t underestimate the downside - adapt to it - Many of the Rabbits who worked for me loved stocks that could shoot for the moon. They were stocks that had massive potential upside if the story played out. It was no wonder they were keen to jump in. - Unfortunately, unlike financial options, which have a limited loss (the premium paid), these stocks do have a downside - and it can be large. The prospect of huge profits tends to make the possibility of losses dwindle, but that possibility is always very much alive. - The solution is simple: treat them as if they are options. Invest an amount you are willing to lose in the same way that you would pay a one-off lump sump (called a premium) to purchase a stock option. This represents the maximum amount of money you can lose if the option contract closes out of the money. - If the stock does go ‘bang’ as opposed to ‘pop’, then the amount you have lost is not fatal. 10) Be open to different kinds of story - Many studies have shown that stock with the worst stories tend to produce the highest returns - Stated differently, value investing - investing in cheap stocks that no one likes because they have terrible stories that led to their stock price falling - produce the highest returns over time. - While I am not advocating the avoidance of what I call ‘magnet stock’ (or ‘glamour stocks’), remember that there are lots of different stories out there. 11) Get sick of sick notes - Over the years I heard many wonderful explanations as to why the Rabbits got things wrong, especially if we have to report to a boss and explain our actions. - Instead of coming up with increasingly fanciful explanations or why an investment hasn’t yet come right, I would urge you to use this tendency to your advantage and do the opposite: familiarise yourself with all the well-worn excuses in advance so that you waste no time trying to fool yourself or anyone else into persisting with a mistake. - Here are some of the excuses I have heard ovet the years: a) The ‘If only’ defence. b) The ‘I would have been right but for’ defence c) The ‘It just hasn’t happened yet’ defence d) The ‘Who could have foreseen at the time I invested that XYZ would happen..’ defence - Peter lynch in his book One up on Wall st lists the 12 silliest (and most dangerous) things people say about stock prices. Some of these are well worth including here too: e) If it’s gone down this much already, it can’t go much lower f) you can always tell when a stock hits rock bottom g) eventually they always come back h) when it rebounds slightly, I’ll sell - having this list of excuses to hand is very beneficial. Check it when you are losing. are you making any of these excuses to justify not selling? 12) Be suspicious of status - it is dangerous to assume that just because an investment professional is highly educated and has years of experience, he/she will be good at making money and getting the big calls right [It’s all about Capital Impairment] - One of the reasons that the Rabbits held on to losing investments was fear of the unknown: if they sold out, the shares might rally, and they would miss out. It was better to stick with a current loss than worry about that double-whammy. - This is known as ambiguity aversion, and describes why people prefer to stick with intolerable situations merely because a hypothetical alternative might be worse. Better the devil you know. - When it comes to losing investments, the facts basically never justify this, and the Rabbits should have used this to fortify themselves against inaction. Here’s an example of a Rabbit investment showing how wrong this thinking is: (Case study: Titan Europe) [Titan Europe is an engineering company that designs and manufactures wheels and undercarriage components for off-road vehicles used in the agriculture, construction and mining industries. It boasts manufacturing and distribution centres in countries as far afield as the USA, Brazil, China and Japan. Its shares went up a staggering 307% after one of my investors sold them on 5 December 2008. This fact alone would be enough to make any investor feel angry, but that is not the point. In this case, the investor had lost 95% during the previous two years when he held them and the fact is, even if he had chosen to stay invested, he would still have made a loss on the overall investment of 82%. The only chance to redeem the situation would have been to sell all his other investments and put all the money into the stock when it was down 95%, thus lowering his book price enough to allow him to get his losses back. The problem with that as a strategy is that it is the equivalent of going to the casino and betting everything on black. It either works or it does not. The outcome is binary.] - To make money you need to have money. In other words, to maximise profits you have to minimise losses. You must preserve your capital. When you are losing you have to materially adapt and mitigate the situation, as you will see when we come to the Assassins and the Hunters. Permanent impairment of capital destroys wealth. - When you have lost this much money it takes extraordinarily large returns to make up the lost capital, let alone turn a profit and make money. Here is one final notable example of this in a Rabbit investment: (Case study: Cape) [I have saved the best cast study to last. Make sure you are sitting down and don’t have a hot drink in your hand before reading on. One of my investors bought shares in Cape on 28 Sep 2007 for £2.79 per share. Cape is considered a global leader in the provision of essential services for the energy and natural resources sectors, ranging from industrial cleaning to painting and coating. It has operations throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Unfortunately, for this investor, a black swan hit in 2008 in the form of the global financial crisis. This led to cyclical companies with debt on their balance sheets being sold off. Cape, being a company with a small market capitalisation, suffered as investors headed for the doors, and lack of liquidity compounded the problem. He eventually sold on 10 march 2009 with the share price standing at just £0.18 per share, representing a loss of 94%. That loss is not the most startling aspect to this story. Nor is the fact that, once it was clear the world would survive the crisis, Cape’s share price rebounded and went up an eye watering 1,129%. The most shocking aspect of this story is that even if he had stayed invested and enjoyed the rebound in the share price, he would still have lost 32%!] - Unfortunately, large stock market returns are rare, even if you can hold your nerve and not sell out of one too soon. If you stick with a big loser and do nothing you are virtually guaranteed to be permanently destroying your wealth by creating a hole that is simply too deep to dig your way out of. - I believe that even the best investors often overlook the fact that a stock’s price would need a practically supernatural rise of 900% to break even if they have foolishly ridden it down 90% and done nothing. Losing 50% means you need a return of 100% to break even. - Clearly, most of my team knew the danger of suffering big losses and took action before irreparable damage was caused. This is shown by how few large losses we experienced. Overall, we avoided permanently impairing our capital. The remaining chapters show how. (The lessons of Poker) - Stories are the biggest factor in determining what decisions we make. For the Rabbits, the stories in their heads led them to invest many millions in companies that ultimately lost them and me vast amounts of money. Their actions post-investment were clouded by the story that led them to invest on day one. - The moral here is to try to avoid being blinded by your story. Above all, have a plan of action as to what you will do if you find yourself in a losing position, even if you still think you are right. - The key difference between the Rabbits and successful investors in this book is that when the Rabbits were losing they did nothing. As we will see with the Assassins and Hunters, they acted decisively to bail themselves out of the holes the found themselves in. ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change’ - Charles Darwin - If only the Rabbits had played poker. Any poker players knows that it is not how many hands you win that matters, it’s how much you win when you win, and how much you lose when you lose. - Each hand in poker represents a story and the goal for a poker player is to try to make money with whatever story they have been given - good or bad. If the story is poor then you don’t stick with it and throw money at the problem; the odds are stacked against you. You fold your hand, cut your losses and live to fight another day. - Likewise, if you are dealt a good hand but then see the flop and realise the hand is now nowhere near as strong as you though, you fold. (END OF CHAP 1)

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fesahaawit · 7 years

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Why I Stopped Extreme Couponing

[Happy Friday! Here’s a little ditty on Mrs. Picky Pincher‘s love/hate relationship with extreme couponing – something I’m sure we’ve all thought about and/or tried at some point ourselves! Let us know where you stand in the comments at the end :)]

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I am not an extreme person. If given the choice between couch-lounging and base jumping, I will always pick my couch and sweatpants. Always.

Predictability is a good trait to have, especially since I’m dumping $225,000 of debt to the curb. And that includes credit cards, student loans, and even my mortgage. It’s a lot to pay off and I’ll try just about anything to eliminate it.

In my quest to vanquish debt, I became a Savings Extremist. A year ago you would have caught me lounging on my couch as usual, manically clipping coupons and reading sale papers.

Somewhere along my journey I became a crazy extreme couponer. For the six months I couponed, every Sunday was like Christmas morning when the newspapers (plural) arrived with the next batch of coupons. I had accordion folders filled to the brim, bursting with meticulously-labeled Red Plums and Smart Source coupons.

I was this close to digging through the trash looking for coupons.

I was a little obsessive, but there were many upsides to extreme couponing.

It was fun: There was nothing like the thrill of scoring $60-worth of swag at CVS for a paltry $10! I salivated over my three-foot-long receipts with a $5 total. Math has never been my strong suit, but I really enjoyed planning my couponing hauls. I stuck it to The Man by swiping products off shelves for rock bottom prices. I did my fair share of happy dances.

There were good deals: I once scored a giant jug of Dr. Bronner’s soap for $10 – which normally retailed at $20. I also bought $4 bottles of shampoo for a mere $1 apiece, and cold medicine for $1 per pack. I won’t lie: you can find great deals with couponing!

I was always stocked up: Toothpaste? Check. Shampoo? Check. Hair gel? What brand do you want? I have 13. Extreme couponing is most effective when you stack coupons and buy multiple products at a time. Which meant I always had a treasure trove of household products and snacks at my disposal. It’s been over a year since I quit couponing and I still haven’t finished our stock of shampoo! It’s a great way to stock up on lots of items at once, and on the cheap.

Although extreme couponing was a blast in many ways, I decided it ultimately wasn’t for me. After saving over $300 by couponing, I called it quits.

Here’s why I stopped extreme couponing.

It was a time-sucker.

I spent an average of 15 hours a week couponing, and this was below the average (hardcore couponers spend upwards of 30 hours a week couponing!).

I spent hours scouring sales papers, company websites, and handfuls of coupon books to match deals. I carefully planned my weekly trips to CVS and Walgreens with precision math. I knew exactly how much money I needed to spend for each trip, taxes included. I memorized the rewards points balance on both mine and Mr. Picky Pincher’s store rewards cards.

It took for-freakin’-ever. Extreme couponing required an insane amount of planning that didn’t fit into my schedule. I already worked a full-time job and barely had the time to plan the shopping trips, let alone complete the act of the actual shopping.

I grew weary of extreme couponing after realizing it was my main hobby. I had video games to play and cats to pet, after all. I didn’t want to spend half of my waking free time at a drug store!

Bye-bye money

I’ve always been a big fan of spending more money on quality things. Whether that means buying sheets with a higher thread count, dropping more cheddar for good shoes, or buying in bulk. Couponing seemed like a natural way to use today’s money to pay for tomorrow’s bills – I dug it.

As it turns out, extreme couponing still costs money, even if you do it with care. I justified my addiction with the old adage, “You gotta spend money to make money!” and felt that, even though a CVS run cost $15, I was saving money in the long run.

Mr. Picky Pincher mercifully pulled my head out of the clouds. I was spending at least $15 a week between my couponing runs to Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart which added up to an extra $60 a month that we didn’t plan on spending.

I was spending more money on things we didn’t really need—which meant we put less money towards our debts.

At first that didn’t sound so bad. “So what?” I thought, “Those costs will even themselves out in our budget.” But they didn’t. Our expenses increased. The sixteen bottles of $1 nail polish weren’t saving us money—they were costing us money.

I lost my sense of practicality with extreme couponing. I bought hair gel, brushes, and crates of toothpaste that I didn’t need at all. I would buy items just because they were on sale. I was overspending every week and it added up quickly.

Finding cheaper alternatives

Even after realizing how resource-intensive couponing was, I still couldn’t kick my obsession.

I stocked up on makeup remover wipes, fancy lotions, packages of pizza-flavored chips, and bronzer – which is ridiculous when you’re vampire-white like me.

I cluttered our extra cabinets with this extraneous stuff, confident I’d use it all eventually.

But after watching the bills stack up, I wondered if there was a cheaper way to enjoy the same items? After snooping around, I found several cheap and easy alternatives for things I already bought.

Here are just a few items I make now to save money:

Instead of buying Neutrogena makeup wipes, I started using coconut oil to remove my waterproof mascara. Works like a charm!

We fry our own chips instead of buying 3 for $1 Pringles at Walgreens. I’ve also started opting for healthier whole food snacks, like almonds.

I bought a safety razor handle and a pack of safety razors. It cost the same as a new pack of razor cartridges with a coupon. The upside is the safety razors cost pennies compared to disposable cartridges and I get a better shave.

I love sugar scrub, so I started making it myself out of coconut oil, sugar, spices, and essential oils.

I use homemade dry shampoo instead of store bought. I add essential oils to corn starch and run a small amount through any greasy parts of my head.

The result with these are actual savings. By opting for a DIY approach, I got the same (or even better) result as store bought products. Couponing encouraged consumption of products that I found out I could make cheaply at home.

I know people hear “DIY” and think “Oh man, it’s so much faster just to buy it at the store,” but this didn’t happen in our case. After factoring in the time it took to hunt for coupons, match deals, and do the actual shopping, DIY always came out ahead.

This was the nail in the coffin. I canceled my multiple newspaper subscriptions, recycled my coupon books, and gave up extreme couponing.

The Bottom Line

I still love to use coupons, I just use them more judiciously now. By focusing on non-consumption and producing a few household items myself, I’m able to save more money than I ever saved with extreme couponing. I still think it’s great if you don’t get carried away, but in the end it just didn’t work out for me. This experience has made me realize that there isn’t a right way to save money, though. It’s all about doing what’s right for you!

How about you? Have you tried extreme couponing before? How did it go?

***** Mrs. Picky Pincher is the blogger and resident money maven at http://ift.tt/2cxNYME. She blogs about paying off debt while living the good life.

[Photo cred: YouthfulHomemaker]

Why I Stopped Extreme Couponing posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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heliosfinance · 7 years

Text

Why I Stopped Extreme Couponing

***********

I am not an extreme person. If given the choice between couch-lounging and base jumping, I will always pick my couch and sweatpants. Always.

In my quest to vanquish debt, I became a Savings Extremist. A year ago you would have caught me lounging on my couch as usual, manically clipping coupons and reading sale papers.

I was this close to digging through the trash looking for coupons.

I was a little obsessive, but there were many upsides to extreme couponing.

Although extreme couponing was a blast in many ways, I decided it ultimately wasn’t for me. After saving over $300 by couponing, I called it quits.

Here’s why I stopped extreme couponing.

It was a time-sucker.

I spent an average of 15 hours a week couponing, and this was below the average (hardcore couponers spend upwards of 30 hours a week couponing!).

I grew weary of extreme couponing after realizing it was my main hobby. I had video games to play and cats to pet, after all. I didn’t want to spend half of my waking free time at a drug store!

Bye-bye money

I was spending more money on things we didn’t really need—which meant we put less money towards our debts.

Finding cheaper alternatives

Even after realizing how resource-intensive couponing was, I still couldn’t kick my obsession.

I stocked up on makeup remover wipes, fancy lotions, packages of pizza-flavored chips, and bronzer – which is ridiculous when you’re vampire-white like me.

I cluttered our extra cabinets with this extraneous stuff, confident I’d use it all eventually.

But after watching the bills stack up, I wondered if there was a cheaper way to enjoy the same items? After snooping around, I found several cheap and easy alternatives for things I already bought.

Here are just a few items I make now to save money:

Instead of buying Neutrogena makeup wipes, I started using coconut oil to remove my waterproof mascara. Works like a charm!

We fry our own chips instead of buying 3 for $1 Pringles at Walgreens. I’ve also started opting for healthier whole food snacks, like almonds.

I love sugar scrub, so I started making it myself out of coconut oil, sugar, spices, and essential oils.

I use homemade dry shampoo instead of store bought. I add essential oils to corn starch and run a small amount through any greasy parts of my head.

This was the nail in the coffin. I canceled my multiple newspaper subscriptions, recycled my coupon books, and gave up extreme couponing.

The Bottom Line

How about you? Have you tried extreme couponing before? How did it go?

***** Mrs. Picky Pincher is the blogger and resident money maven at http://ift.tt/2cxNYME. She blogs about paying off debt while living the good life.

[Photo cred: YouthfulHomemaker]

Why I Stopped Extreme Couponing published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

0 notes