Graphic of the Day: Knowledge Problem

From my favorite graphic artist, the highly creative Jessica Hagy

Graphic: Endowment Effect

Another gem from my favorite cartoonist Ms. Jessica Hagy of Indexed, who creatively turns complex ideas into simple graphics.

Ms Hagy calls the chart below as “What would you grab if the house was on fire?”

I would say that this is a precise depiction or representation of the endowment effect bias (from changingminds.org)

When I own something, I will tend to value it more highly. If I have to sell it, I will probably want to ask more than it is really worth.

Graphic: The Virtue of Failure

The incredibly creative Ms. Jessica Hagy has a great illustration of what I have been lately discussing about as the virtues of failure (which she calls 2nd (and 3rd, and 4th) chances are vital)

Bottom line: Failure, generally, brings about improvisation via learning.

(of course there will always be exception to the rule—as some people adamantly refuses to learn from repeated failures, mostly political authorities and their zealots. Albert Einstein called this insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)

Graphic: “Fear Always Springs From Ignorance”

Another wonderful diagram made by the highly imaginative Ms. Jessica Hagy at the Indexed.

The diagram encapsulates one of my favorite quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson “Fear always springs from ignorance”

The whole excerpt is from Mr. Emerson’s On the American Scholar, (bold emphasis mine)

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be—free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, “without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.” Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquillity, amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption that, like children and women, his is a protected class; or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles, to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike, let him turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin—see the whelping of this lion which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance—by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

I don’t think this just applies to scholars but to anyone who undertakes the task of research and investigation.

Importantly, I would add passion to being ‘free and brave’ as ideal virtues.

My favorite marketing guru Seth Godin has a timely advice

Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety.

While you can work hard to dream smaller dreams, I think it's better to embrace the fear and find bigger goals instead.

In working to attain our dreams, this means that we should become passionate with the pursuit of knowledge for us to overcome the barriers of fear and procrastination, as well as, in filtering out pretensions or politically slanted theories masquerading as reality.

War on the Internet: Freedom Wins Round One

Writes Mac Slavo

Amid significant pressure from tens of thousands of internet users and major web behemoths like Google, Facebook, and Reddit, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is, in its current form, Dead on Arrival:

“Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about.

“The first sign that the bills’ prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.

“The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration’s chief technology officials officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” It added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.”

…

“Though the administration did issue a formal veto threat, the White House’s opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form.

“A few hours later, Congress shelved SOPA, putting off action on the bill indefinitely.

“Sourced From Washington Monthly via The Daily Sheeple

Sponsored primarily by purported free speech advocates that include democrats and republicans alike, the SOPA would have fundamentally transformed the internet as we know it today. As Daisy Luther writes at Inalienably Yours, the bill was nothing short of a direct attack against the first Amendment and the right to free speech:

“On closer inspection, the legalese in the bill has the potential to eviscerate free speech….and like NDAA, without proof…only with suspicion of “wrong-doing”. It’s all about copyright infringement. If you tick off the powers that be, and you’ve quoted someone, somewhere, saying something, you may have infringed on their copyright. As a defendant, you are not even present at the legal proceeding allowing “them” to shut you down until you prove yourself innocent.

“How do they shut you down? Search engines are required to remove you from their listings. Internet Service Providers can be ordered to block access to your site. Advertising networks and payment providers can also be forced to cease doing business with you. This continues until you are proven INNOCENT. Wait – I thought it was innocent until proven guilty….oh….that was “before” the NDAA.

Source: The Internet: The Last Bastion of Free Speech

While this bill of goods was being sold to the American public as a way to reduce online piracy originating on foreign shores, in essence the legislation would have made it possible for any organization (with the financial assets and access to attorneys to do so) to target web sites (foreign or domestic) using excerpts, quotes, and videos without express permission of the authors or producers of such content. Furthermore, any web site linking to suspected copyrighted content would be guilty by association for fascilitating the infringement.

Read the rest here

In the growing realization that political power is being frayed by the ongoing information age revolution or the democratization of knowledge, the 20^th century welfare and warfare state will use anything, like Intellectual Property and copyright arguments, as pretext to rein control over the internet. Earlier they argued that the cyberspace can pose a threat to national security.

Today, Wikipedia and other websites has shut down to express their opposition to proposals over censorship masquerading as ‘foreign Internet Piracy’.

The above is just one of the other being actions undertaken such as Spying of Email and the harassment of Wikileaks

As I previously wrote

These actions represent “resistance to change”, whereby politicians will try to enforce information control or censorship in the way the industrial age used to operate.

The horizontal flow of information threatens the institutional centralized frameworks built upon the industrial age economy.

As I earlier wrote,

“Political and economic ideology latched on a vertical top-bottom flow of power will be on a collision course with horizontal real time flow of democratized knowledge.

“This would likely result to less applicability of ideologies based on centralization, which could substantially erode its support base and shift political capital to decentralized structure of political governance that would conform with the horizontal structure of information flows.

“People will know more therefore control from the top will be less an appealing idea.

But again these attempts to regulate the web are likely to fail.

Nevertheless the war on the internet accounts as part of the adjustment process away from the command and control structure of the industrial ages with the knowledge revolution taking place beyond the reach of politicians. Besides, technological advances will work around regulations.

Signifying the foundation of knowledge, the internet will serve as THE battleground between socialism and free markets, and this will be just one of the many series of skirmishes that are destined to occur. And as previously noted, many internet activists have already been preparing for the worst scenario.

Indexed’s Jessica Hagy has a nice graphical depiction of the ongoing war, which she calls: Dark Ages II: in discussion now!

Indeed, the left and vested interest groups wants us to remain in the Dark ages and as their serfs.

Graphic: Home Bias

Another nice graphic depiction of the home from the ever imaginative Jessica Hagy

Graphic: Knowledge Problem

Here is Jessica’s Hagy’s graphic version of what seems to be F. A. Hayek’s Knowledge Problem.

Ms. Hagy calls it There’s no such thing as a know-it-all.

Graphic: Devil Finds Work For Idle Hands

Here is another wonderful illustration from Jessica Hagy’s Indexed which she calls as ‘Often A wonderful thing’.

For me, this looks more like the idiom the ‘devil finds work for idle hands’

Graphic: Logic Is No Use Against Faith

Here is another gem from Jessica Hagy. She calls it “You can’t use logic against belief.”

She amazingly turns messages into revealing graphics which takes so many words for me to express.

Well, I call this blind faith analysis.

As I earlier wrote,

“applied to economic and political analysis, blind faith analysis is simply cart before the horse logic; of which the common characteristics are: they are full of factual errors, the frequent use of logical fallacies, deliberately misinterpretation of theories, ambiguous definitions and data mining or selective application of evidence.”

Graphic: Rule Of Law

Again from the ever creative mind of Jessica Hagy, a wonderful graphic depiction of social cooperation based on the rule of law. (From Indexed Be Nice; Stop plundering and looting)

Graphic On Social Signaling

Here is an awesome graphic representation of social signaling from the ever insightful Jessica Hagy. (published on her website Indexed as “So Who’s Winning”)

Graphic: Contrast Principle

Below is a nice graphical rendition of the contrast principle, courtesy of Jessica Hagy’s Indexed, or seeing the difference between things and not absolute measures (changing minds.com) or best represented by the axiom “what you see depends on where you stand”

Opinions As Opiate

I like this graphic depiction by Jessica Hagy on opinions because I find it poignantly relevant.

While Ms. Hagy calls it Opinions are like bellybuttons, I would call this ‘opinions as opiate’.

For me, the proportion of mainstream opinions are tilted towards what Ms. Hagy describes as based on low evaluations:

- parroting someone else ideas or regurgitating statements like an incantation or

-engaging in nice sounding political or economic talking points that in the end only signifies gossip.

Since gossips are hardwired on us for social/peer acceptance or for “feel good” or for attention generating or for self-esteem purposes, this may seem like an opiate. After all, gossips are hardly premised on sound evaluation but mostly on heuristics or mental short-cuts.

Graphic: Recalculation Theory

Jessica Hagy calls her splendid and evocative piece of graphic as “Somebody has to do something!”

Whereas my interpretation of this is Professor Arnold Kling’s Recalculation Theory.

This excerpt From Professor Kling,

``if the old patterns of specialization and trade are not sustainable, the economy faces the Recalculation Problem. New patterns of specialization and trade need to be created. While the economy is creating new patterns even in good times, when it faces a Recalculation Problem it cannot create new patterns rapidly enough to prevent widespread unemployment.” (emphasis original)

In the transition to the information age, the new pattern of specialization and trade is the discovery process called as the “seed of the start up”!

Graphic: Origin of The Rule of Law

This seems like an introspective portrayal by Ms. Jessica Hagy apropos "rules" which she calls Don't you know better by now?

From my point of view, this seems like a good depiction of the "origin of the rule of law".

Here is David Hume's the History of England, (bold highlights mine)

``No government, at that time, appeared in the world, nor is perhaps found in the records of any history, which subsisted without a mixture of some arbitrary authority, committed to some magistrate; and it might reasonably, beforehand, appear doubtful whether human society could ever arrive at that state of perfection, as to support itself with no other control, than the general and rigid maxims of law and equity. But the Parliament justly thought that the King was too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary power, which he might so easily turn to the destruction of liberty. And in the event it has been found that, though some inconveniencies arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law, yet, the advantages so much overbalance them, as should render the English forever grateful to the memory of their ancestors who, after repeated contests, at last established that noble principle."

Niche Versus Mass Marketing

Another splendid graphic from Jessica Hagy, which she calls "Ordinary Is Abundant".

From a marketing perspective, this chart/diagram basically illustrates on the distinction between mass marketing and niche marketing.

Marketing guru Seth Godin elaborates,

``Mass marketing works best when it assumes that everybody in the entire chain is just plain average. Or even a little bit less...

``Niche marketing, on the other hand, can thrive if it starts with the assumption that average products by average people for average people is just not your thing...

In short, general (mass) versus focused (niche).

As the world gets increasingly interconnected via the explosive improvements of technology, focus has been the intensifying trend of the markets.

So it would be a mistake to evaluate or discern events by simply basing on past paradigms when we have been segueing from the industrial age to the information age.

Successful Investing Is Boring

I fancy Jessica Hagy's Indexed blog. That's because Ms. Hagy can depict life 's paradoxes in simple but thought provoking art-like graphics.

This Normal is Boring is an example.

We can apply this to investing.


Simply substitute "Weird" with "Depression" and "Beautiful" with "Euphoria" then we come up with up with the theme: Successful investing is BORING!

Why?

Because successful investing should go against pulsating high risk momentum, sound bytes and popular opinion predicated on superficialities.

To quote on Warren Buffett (Tilsonfunds),

``I've seen nothing to improve on Graham and Fisher. Just think about stocks as a business and then evaluate that business. This requires insulating yourself from popular opinion." (emphasis added)

And to further quote John Maynard Keynes,

``Moreover, life is not long enough;- human nature desires quick results, there is a peculiar zest in making money quickly, and remoter gains are discounted by the average man at a very high rate. The game of professional investment is intolerably boring and over-exacting to anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll." (bold emphasis mine)

In short, one should focus on minimizing risks and optimizing profits which require equanimity and the avoidance of gambling instincts, all of which would should make investing...quite a boring stuff.

Technology's Early Adoptor Disproves Deflation

I'd like to rephrase the theme of Jessica Hagy's Shiny Object! Must Get! graphic in economic context: technology assimilation refutes the deflation bugbear in the absolute sense.

How?

This wonderful quote from Bloomberg's Matthew Lynn (Deflation Theory Is Lemon We Have All Been Sold), [bold emphasis mine]

``Everyone knows that a computer or an iPod will be both better and cheaper in six months. And people really want one right now. Torn between those two impulses, plenty of shoppers go out and buy computers and music players. It is true in the electronics industry, and, once they get used to falling prices, it will be true for other industries as well."

Moral: Prices are valued subjectively and relatively.

Jessica Hagy's Indexed On The Regret Theory

Jessica Hagy makes a great diagram illustrating the Regret Theory in her Wish you had, or wish you hadn’t? post.

Regret theory as defined by investopedia.com is ``A theory that says people anticipate regret if they make a wrong choice, and take this anticipation into consideration when making decisions. Fear of regret can play a large role in dissuading or motivating someone to do something."

How does this apply to investing? Dr. John Hussman has a befitting explanation,

``Anytime you discover you are taking too much risk, realize in advance that you will experience some level of regret as you correct it, if you sell your first portion and the market advances, you'll regret having sold anything. If you sell your first portion and the market continues to decline, you'll regret that you didn't sell everything. The way to keep from being "paralyzed" in the financial markets is to realize in advance that gradually changing an investment position will always involve regret. It is better to "lock in" an acceptable level of regret than to risk an unacceptable loss."

Jessica Hagy's Indexed: Teachers Can Save The Economy"

A simple but striking message from Jessica Hagy on how "Teachers Can Save The Economy"