Crazymaker: Journal of American Media and Lifestyle
by ilene - October 29th, 2009 1:33 pm
Fun post for the evening, by Charles Hugh Smith, in case you missed it earlier. – Ilene
Crazymaker: Journal of American Media and Lifestyle
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
If you wonder why our society is so schizophrenic--look no further than Crazymaker Journal.
I happened upon a fascinating new online publication: Crazymaker, the Journal of American Media and Lifestyle. I have to say the content set me back on my heels; rarely do I see such an honest portrayal of the carefully mixed messages dished out as "news" and "entertainment".
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Gregory Bateson addressed how a cognitive "double bind" could create a schizophrenic state of anxiety and dysfunction.
Their findings indicated that the tangles in communication often diagnosed as schizophrenia are not necessarily result of an organic brain dysfunction. Instead, they found that destructive double binds were a frequent pattern of communication among families of patients, and they proposed that growing up amidst perpetual double binds could lead to learned patterns of confusion in thinking and communication.
Human communication is complex; 90% of it is nonverbal (see also Albert Mehrabian) and context is an essential part of it. Communication consists of the words said, tone of voice, and body language. It also includes how these relate to what has been said in the past; what is not said, but is implied; how these are modified by other nonverbal cues, such as the environment in which it is said, and so forth.
For example, if someone says "I love you," one takes into account who is saying it, their tone of voice and body language, and the context in which it is said. It may be a declaration of passion or a serene reaffirmation, insincere and/or manipulative, an implied demand for a response, a joke, its public or private context may affect its meaning, and so forth.
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This is an apt description of the craziness created by media/marketing messages every minute of every hour of every day in the USA. Bake a super-rich cake, and oh my, why are you so fat? Now you have to torture yourself with diets which don’t work.
Girls: want to look hot and sexy? if you don’t, you’re a loathesome loser.
Guys: not ripped with bulging muscles? Too bad--you’re a loathesome loser, too. Image and exteriors are everything!
The media profits from selling marketing/adverts. Marketing…
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Get An Emotional Margin of Safety
by ilene - August 25th, 2009 9:40 pm
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Get An Emotional Margin of Safety
Courtesy of Tim of The Psy-Fi Blog
Businesslike Investment
Warren Buffett states, quite frequently, that the most important investment statement ever made was that of his mentor, the father of value investing, Ben Graham:
"Investment is at its most intelligent when it is most businesslike"
Now if you’ve ever wondered exactly what that means you’re not alone. But it’s really one of the most important business lessons any of us can ever learn. It encapsulates the idea that investment isn’t about individual subjective feelings but about general objective rationale. To be good investors we need to learn to control our emotions. Unfortunately it’s got a bit more difficult since Graham first wrote those words.
Unemotional Investment
We find Graham’s statement difficult to understand because we don’t understand Graham’s – or Buffett’s – viewpoint. Although both men are amongst the best communicators the world of top-class investment has ever thrown up they still sit in the rarefied atmosphere of that elite group of investors who are able to step away from their own emotions when they come to investing.
By “businesslike” Graham meant “unemotional”. At the root of all good investment, he believed, was a focus on the underlying numbers. Graham, far more so than Buffett, was focused on the investment ratios and balance sheets of his investments. To be “businesslike” the individual investor needs to ruthlessly focused on the numbers, not the stories associated with them. Thus Graham and Buffett aim to remove the behavioural biases that affect most investors.
Of course, there’s no doubt that there are a select group of people who are more easily able to ignore the impact of group psychology than the rest of us. It’s possible – even probable – that the great investors of the world are simply psychologically unusual people who are capable of ignoring the impact of normal behavioural biases. These people are so rare that it would be interesting to take one of them and wire up their brain to a computer to see whether their responses are different from that of normal humans. Only trouble is they’re so rich that they can employ really big bodyguards and generally reckon their brains are their own concern.
Emotionless Delusions
Antonio Damasio has conducted lots of research…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site