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 Will We Know We're Not Alone? – The Joy of Why

We have identified thousands of planets just in our neighborhood in the Milky Way, mostly from the way they impact their host stars. Basic calculations suggest that there are countless more across the galaxy, and that billions of them could potentially support life. But what kind of life they host, and how we would be able to detect the presence of those biological processes from Earth, remain big questions in the world of exoplanets and astrobiology. What technologies might lie ahead to help us answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe? Lisa Kaltenegger, an astrophysicist and astrobiologist at Cornell University, talks to Janna Levin about that search, the atmospheric fingerprints of life, and why an advanced alien civilization might decide not to talk to us.

1. How Will We Know We're Not Alone? 37:48
2. How Is Cell Death Essential to Life? 38:51
3. What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language? 42:09
4. How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction? 36:48
5. How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction? 30:12

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