2022 – Best of Week 13

2 min

When the Optimists are Too Pessimistic

This is why even the optimists can be too pessimistic. Because we are using linear thinking to imagine a geometric future. It just doesn’t work.

(6min _ OfDollarsAndData)

The Worst Run For Bonds Since 1980

Yes, bonds have gotten killed in the last three months, but this really needs to be put in context. A 5% negative total return over a three-month period isn’t fun, but that’s like a bad week for a stock index and a stormy afternoon for an individual stock.

If you’ve hated bonds for the last couple of years because rates have been so low, then the recent uptick in rates should be welcomed with open arms.

(7min _ TheIrrelevantInvestor)

“Death Wish”

If you have the “will and intention” to be a Managing Director by thirty five, any superior opportunity that flows in your direction that doesn’t support that fixed goal will get disregarded.

As a result, you risk achieving your limited goal, reaching a steep fitness peak, but with no idea what to do next. Be careful what you wish for.

(5min _ TheAttentionSpan)

How People Think

But so many behaviors are universal across generations and geographies. Circumstances change, but people’s reactions don’t. Technologies evolve, but insecurities, blind spots, and gullibility rarely does.

This article describes 17 of what I think are the most common and influential aspects of how people think.

(13min _ CollaborativeFund)

Bitcoin’s Lockstep March With Stocks Raises
Thorny Questions About Its Usefulness

The cryptocurrency hasn’t worked as the “digital gold” it was touted to be. Should
institutional investors even bother with it? (Part of the crypto column series.)

(11min _ InstitutionalInvestor)

Yes. I once wrote: “The difference between being an economist and being a physicist is that most economists have never really seen a successful model.”
Kind of long winded but anyhow — https://t.co/uDHMDMJveB

— Emanuel Derman (@EmanuelDerman) March 24, 2022

How Can Math Help Beat Cancer? – The Joy of Why

When we think about medicine’s war on cancer, treatments such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy spring to mind first. Now there is another potential weapon for defeating tumors: statistics and mathematical models that can optimize the selection, combination or timing of treatment. Building and feeding these models requires accounting for the complexity of the body, and recognizing that cancer cells are constantly evolving. In this episode, host Steven Strogatz hears from Franziska Michor, a computational biologist, about how our understanding of evolutionary dynamics is being used to devise new anticancer therapies.

1. How Can Math Help Beat Cancer? 42:52
2. What Can Cave Life Tell Us About Alien Ecosystems? 44:32
3. Can Thermodynamics Go Quantum? 42:54
4. Do We Need a New Theory of Gravity? 42:17
5. Are Robots About to Level Up? 38:22

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” _Eleanor Roosevelt