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Either You Believe In Math; Or You Believe In Magic
Analogizing from the sleight-of-hand tricks of magicians to the confidence-based efforts of the world's central bankers, Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital provides at once an entertaining and also devastatingly simple explanation of what these guys are up to. As he notes, in deference to The Usual Suspects, "the greatest trick central bankers ever pulled was convincing the world that they work for the public and not for the banks." Comprehending the financial repression and inflation that is occurring - and knowing where to look to see the truth (and how to protect your assets) - is critical in not becoming the shill in Bernanke, Draghi et al.'s global game of Three-Card-Monte.
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Bullish
math is magick and magick is math. it's when the math in your bank account is zero and you can't afford your magick....boo!
So I'm sitting there thinking, "There's no way he's going to say Denmark and elephant." Wild.
But if you had eaten Japanese food for dinner you might have thought black eel......
I got Ostriches in the Dominican Republic. Does that make me a contrarian?
-Paris Hilton
Not very different from our electoral process.
You can have anything to drink that you want.
We offer coke and pepsi.
"But I don't want carbonated sugar water with coal tar to darken it. May I have lemonade?"
No, perhaps you weren't listening... Anything you want... coke or pepsi?
'... critical in not becoming the shill in Bernanke's global game ...'
At least a shill gets compensated for being in cahoots with the dealer. Whereas the mark simply gets taken.
As Robert Plant used to sing, 'Shill mark, shill mark, shill mark ...'
*launches killer air guitar solo*
I knew of course he would say Denmark and Elephant; it took me a minute afterwards to figure out why...
Take a number 1 to 10 and multiply by 9 -> You know it is a multiple of nine
Add the digits together -> All multiples of 9 have digits which add to 9. So we know the number is nine.
Hence we know the letter is "D". Probably something like 90+ percent of people will now choose "Denmark", and then given E think of Elephant, and most know elephants are grey. There was probably some data available which indicated "D" was the best bet for this sequence, hence we subtracted 5 from the digit total.
Of course there might be a wiseguy thinking of Beige Aardvarks from Dagestan.
I aspire to be that guy.
Great job. Thanks!
In case anyone is wondering why,
"All multiples of 9 have digits which add to 9",
9*X = 10*(X-1) + 1*(10-X) if X between 1 and 9.
Adding the digits together gives (X-1) + (10-X) = 9.
@vast-dom
Here is magic math puzzle:
Three friends go to a restaurant. The bill is $30. They hand the $30 to the waiter. The waiter goes to the cashier who is the boss. The boss sees the three friends and he tells the waiter to only charge them $25.
The waiter (he used to be a banker) takes the $5 dollars to give back but keeps $2 and gives them back $3.
That means that they paid $9 dolars each.
9X3=27 plus $2 that the waiter kept = 29 what happened to the other dollar?
Okay maybe zerohedgers can figure out the answer easily. But think about the masses! That's what the bankers count on!
"They hand the $30 to the waiter. .. 9X3=27 plus $2 that the waiter kept = 29 what happened to the other dollar?"
this seems confusing at first, because you think that 9x3+2 turns out to be less than the 30 they paid.
that's because you assume that 9x3=27
but since you know in advance that 9x3+2=30, that means 9x3=28.
problem solved.
Now that's bullish.
Well done SafelyGraze.
>that's because you assume that 9x3=27
No, not an assumption. The lynchpin of the deception is the line "That means that they paid $9 dolars each". They didn't, the storyteller is lying and because he's acting as an authority figure you believe it without questioning. The 3 friends actually paid $27.33 each (ok, there's a penny missing).
You people are all full of shit,,,,John Corzine has the remaining dollar...
Wrong. Of course they paid $27. They paid $30 and received $3 back which means they paid $27.
The deception is in the assertion: "9X3=27 plus $2 that the waiter kept = 29 what happened to the other dollar?"
The right thing to say is: they paid $27 plus $3 dollars that they recived back = $30. And from those $27, $25 went to the owner and $2 to the cashier.
wrong.
the right thing to say is: they paid $30 plus the $3 that the recived back = $33. And from those $33, $30 went to pay the bill, $2 went to the cashier, and $1 paid for the missing dollar. so that makes $33. check.
plus the $3 they got back, bringing the total to $36. so it all works out.
people struggle reaching this solution because they haven't taken accounting classes.
I got it now. XD
They did pay $9 each = 27. The trick is that the 27 contains the $2 that the waiter kept. Therefore, you can not add the $2 to the 27 again. it is a slight of hand.
So then, $25 went to the register and $2 to the waiter. Trying to sum up to $30 is the smoke and mirrors.
No, Safely. They did not pay 33. they paid 30. Multi's answer is right.
abra-cadabra al-ge-bra
it works out to 36, not 33.
to see it, you have to use two-column ledger sheets.
Jumblies, what is 27.33 x3? I don't think so, sorry.
Marked to market they had the same $30 that they originally invested.
The money handled by the waiter is in an off-balance sheet vehicle, that's why you don't see it.
They paid $25 for the meal and unwittingly paid $2 to the waiter. 25+2 = 27. Divided by 3 - they paid $9 dollars each.
Right. Kudos
25 *minus* 2, not *plus* 2.
so they paid 23 dollars.
23*3 = 69 total dollars, less the 36 (for the restaurant, the waiter, the 3 dollars returned to them, and the missing dollar). 69 minus 36 leaves 33.
so again, it all checks out.
Unfortunately yes, it is Bullish.
Jessee Ventrua is on Piers Morgan CNN right now and is tearing up the place.
No, JV is blowing up the CNN station.
No, This will be Pires Morgan's greatest show and will break, 400k viewers and probably set a new viewer record for him.
Amazing!
The Federal Reserve Corporation is owned by private share holders.
The debt the Federal Reserve Corporation holds belongs to the Share Holders of the Federal Reserve Corporation, Not the American people at large.
The defaulted debt coming the Federal Reserve Share holders have is their problem.
I don't think the Federal Reserve Corporation commands any Standing Armies I know of.
What say you?
Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes the laws.
-Paris Hilton
We'll see how much the Rothschild's care this time around the block.
There is an established pattern to their Freud.
Golden Rule: He who makes the gold, makes the rules.
Nothing a good 30,000 pound bunker buster bomb couldn't take care of.
The Federal Reserve also owns gold certificates pledged by the treasury as collateral - valued at some $42 or so (or last I heard it was).
The treasury doesn't have that gold, what happens when gold goes to the moon and the Fed calls it in to cover? Like deja vu all over again.
Haven't I seen this comment before?
“There's a fine line between being on the leading edge and being in the lunatic fringe.” — Frank Armstrong
http://oi49.tinypic.com/15phc15.jpg
It certainly is magical. I never thought I would see it happen on Jewtube MSM TV. All out 9/11 talk and all more.
Buy stock in Piers Morgan Show if he keeps this up.
love to see Piers (in the Mean Gene role) & Jesse moderate a prez debate. would suit the Wrestlemania theme of this sillycycle perfectly, no? (yet at the same time contain more seriousness in 90 minutes than the last 12 years of anglo-american pravda)
Since when does tag team wrestling involve rectal penetration....of taxpayers?
Always, from the D&R tag team.
Lloyd Blankfein aka the vampire squid is Kaiser Soze!
End the Fed!!!
Or just escape it.
I really want to escape it. & I have no idea where else to post this, lol... so here's goes 1 pathetic plea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o30t8Xd6q-8&feature=youtu.be
suggestion to ben: stop trading time derivatives of flowers and start growing actual flowers. gardeners are a grumpy sort, but much more grounded in the here and now in my experience.
Christ. It isn't about money. It isn't about power. It isn't about prepping. It isn't about survival.
Even if you take action on 30,000 variables, there are still ? variables left. Any one of those ? unaccounted for variables can fuck your shit up.
So what do you do? I don't know. You already seemed to be unplugged. Maybe you can do anything now. Maybe I'M insane. Maybe this helps. Good luck man.
Doom overload.
Step back, take a breath, re-assess.
Take a week off from info sites, then see what matters.
If you care, you'll still be back at truth info webs.
The red pill can cause enormous pains.
Wise words, Navigator.
Thank you.
"It's not the plan, it's the planning." -Patton
You see, planning is a creative process. You are trying to anticipate the future and come up with contingencies. We all know that you can't know the future, but this is not a futile exercise because you are thinking in an open way and playing with ideas of what might happen. When the future becomes now and nothing manifests itself like you planed, by the virtue of having spent time in the creative process you are far more adaptable. Not to mention your subconscious is always mulling over the ideas from your creative sessions.
You have a years worth of prep to hunker in place, but your hunker site is in the hot zone? By prepping you already have at least some mobile resources, have a mental list of the most important, and can boogie WAY more efficiently than someone who has not thought about things at all wondering what to take. You just abandoned 90% of your stash, but you have 10% more than others in the same situation and more importantly spare synapses to plan the next step.
Probably a dumb example, but you get my point. The most important prep is YOU and your ability to adapt your plans to the current situation. Beans, bullets and babes are only resources.
Vote for Pedro.
The Fed is more powerful than any army, can unleash more oppression and enslave the masses far more effectively than any modern warfare. And he gets labelled a hero in the media!
Does that not follow? Whose "media" is it anyway?
You'll all love this, bookmark it and send it to friends. You thought it was bad, but you probably didn't know it was THIS bad.
Television? Or is it Talmudvision?
The Jew Media Octopus:(TV Broadcast/Film Ownership and Management)
Jews do a great job with media.
They have had the best selling book of all time for over 5000 years.
They also do a great job with banking, but make no mistake about it.
The illuminatist bankers leaders care not whether one is Jew, Gentile, Arab, Hindu, or Buddhist.
Black, yellow, brown, white, or red.
They only care about results. More money, more control.
It has nothing to do with being Jewish, but more to do with being human.
It is in our nature to try and oppress others, and eventually our own kind.
Don't try to equate the sickness you describe as "our nature" with "being human".
One has nothing to do with the other, you're simply projecting.
So, what about humanity do you not understand?
Can you give me one example of a time in history when the strong did not oppress the weak?
So what is it about humanity you think you understand? In fact all you only understand is what a false humanity looks like, has produced, and how it has misbehaved in a relatively brief window of history.
This is hardly the same as knowing about Humanity. Like many, you are easily fooled by the appearances foisted upon you by your controllers. Is what you think of as "humanity" the real thing, or some counterfeit that nullifies the real article in the deceived?
You suffer from an Aristotilian/Malthuisan outlook. The funny part is that you don't know it, and you think you're prepared to make an accurate read of the world around you. You are not. Your conclusions will invariably fall within set limits that were predefined for you.
This is to your detriment in understanding much of anything, but most of all about the true nature of Humans.
Blah, blah, blah...
Judging from your nom de plume, and your posts, you are a very negative person, and you continually try to point out weaknesses that you imagine in others, as a way of drawing attention away from your own failures. I've never seen so much typing, with so little substance.
Please, for the benefit of all who read these presence, now and in the future, try to say something that actualy helps. If you can't think of anything real to say, just copy and paste from my posts.
Here's a good one:
Big people talk about ideas
Regular people talk about things
Small people talk about other people
As a Roman Catholic, I consider myself to be a Jew, with some additional enlightenment.
Not to say that they don't have additional enlightenment of their own.
As the Pope wears a yarmulke, you are one. There is no "further enlightment" there, just a continuation of an ancient evil in a new wrapper. My deepest sympathies to both of you.
What accomodation does light have with dark? There is none.
Good link. I have not seen that but knew anyway. The can of worms is being opened because of the internet.
I love many Jews and much of their work, and have Jewish relatives.
The problem I see overall with the Jewish community, especially because of tradition is, It's just a character flaw and they should have diversified their skill set. That's all.
The illuminatist bankers leaders care not whether one is Jew, Gentile, Arab, Hindu, or Buddhist.
Black, yellow, brown, white, or red.
They only care about results. More money, more control.
It has nothing to do with being Jewish, but more to do with being human.
It is in our nature to try and oppress others, and eventually our own kind.
___________________________________
Booom. Once again, the old 'american' trick: 'americanism' is human nature.
To jump the shark, as usual with 'americans', one has to submit to a breathtaking statement.
_________________________________
The illuminatist bankers leaders care not whether one is Jew, Gentile, Arab, Hindu, or Buddhist.
Black, yellow, brown, white, or red.
____________________________________
The 'american' banking world, that is the most dominant one, cares a lot about that. For it is composed with 'Americans'
At this point it is quite useless to claim that the 'american' banking world treats everyone equally or indiscriminatively, be it for membership to the banking world or recipients to their actions.
The way they are dealing with this crisis has little to share in terms of cruelty with the same they dealt with past crisis (minor in scale compared to nowadays).
The difference? The targets of those policies.
to Ginsengbull
Watch out for those who "Claim" to be from our brother Juduh, but who ARE NOT. These are the Kenites, the offspring of satan and they are the bad figs.
The Federal Reserve Corporation is owned by private share holders.
The debt the Federal Reserve Corporation holds belongs to the Share Holders of the Federal Reserve Corporation, Not the American people at large.
The defaulted debt coming the Federal Reserve Share holders have is their problem.
I don't think the Federal Reserve Corporation commands any Standing Armies I know of.
What say you?
Just TRY and get rid of the Fed - or try to get it to take any losses and you'll be lunch faster than you thought possible.
Sadly, in the long term, we're all Soylent Green........ it's coming faster than you think.
We have more guns and people who know how to use them on the streets of America then they do. Have you seen the record gun sales?
You're not counting the guns that can only be lifted by a vehicle or a drone and you're not counting the non-firearm weapons like nerve-gas.
You are hopelessly outgunned.
That's only if federal government employee paychecks are worth killing fellow Americans for. I doubt it.
Because both the Russians and the Americans were so "successful" at subduing the goat-fuckers with those very weapons, 20 years and unimaginable heavy weapons and WMD and they both failed to subdue the masses...
Homo homini lupus.
US military is paid using what? Federal Reserve notes & electronic tokens derived thereof in various banks beholden to the Federal Reserve.
Looks like a standing army to me.
We exist for the good of all mankind.
I exist for the good of MYkind
and agents of the ponzi continuum are not MYkind.
e
The Fed is the Hedge Fund for Primary Dealers to repo all their shit to. The Hedge Fund levers up until there is an accident. The ultimate "martingale" bet. No wonder vol distributions no longer "appear" normal
"Talking about their dual mandate is all nice fuzzy talk from the Fed, and while it's nice if there is low unemployment and inflation, if you really want to understand what the Fed does then you must understand that the Fed is 'Of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks,' and once you grasp that, then you'll have no problem understanding that the only real mandate of the Fed is to help the banks."
-- Jim Rickards, 2010.
Sleight of hand.
How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?
If you left that to chance, you're doing it wrong.
But the sucker just laughed and said "Put it away. I ate her all up, now what you gonna say?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYi83S0yIqI
You go heavy with the silver shot - and you make sure you use both barrels and have friends along, all firing at the same time.
Magic is much more believable. Another plus : there's no maths involved.
You don't shoot him at all just buy gold and watch him disappear into thin air....
ok that was creepy at 1:52 into this video I see my ex mother-in-law,at 6:58 I see all of satan's children and at the end I see grey elepahants in denmark! I'm going to have nightmares,thanks a lot.
Soooo... The FED is Satanic? But we knew this.....
...as soon as I the five finger hand is pointed out, I comprehend the one who runs the joint and shout... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tkT3AvE8kk
I believe in gold and silver. All else is debt.
Plumbum (lead) is better to give, than to receive.
Jeez, I forgot lead and brass. Beg pardon.
-Paris Hilton
BLACK EEL IN DENMARK BITCHEZ!!!
Exactly.
Or perhaps a black egret. Everyone looking for a black swan, and then a black egret from hell comes along. Never saw that coming. (-:
Statistics isn't real math.
http://www.quotegarden.com/statistics.html
"By holding cash you will safely lose your money."
I like that phraseology.
Excellent presentation Mr. Johnson of Santiago Capital!
Hey Brent, you left the toilet running...
I was thinking about jackals in Djbouti actually
Here's a big fat black swan :
Spanish military warning to prime minister : RESIGN! YOU ARE DESTROYING THE COUNTRY!! WE WILL DEFEND THE HOMELAND!
http://www.ionline.pt/portugal/associacao-pracas-pede-demissao-primeiro-...
Military coup in Spain would be quite something.
Someone should do some sort of interactive map highlighting all of the potential black swans / Archduke Franz Ferdinands (touches nose) NOT IT!
The squares of the Armed Forces remember that all military personnel are required to "swear an oath to defend our homeland and keep and do save the Constitution and laws of the Republic" and repudiate "vehemently policies that are being followed because they contradict" everything vowed to "defend". - Google translate from the article that you posted.
repeating the prelude to WWII in the same freaking country is a bit too over the top obvious don't ya think? besides, there's no Papa Hemingway this go-round. then again, maybe these fuckers are running out of storylines. if so, cue the bluebeam...
That's actually in Portugal. I'm from there and have friends and family over there.
The Government there has just passed a measure which increases Social Security contributions for all employees up by 7% of their gross salary while decreasing Social Security contributions for all employers by 4% (apparently something the Troika asked for).
EVERYBODY has turned against them, even the employers (which made their maths and came to the conclusion that taking an additional 7% away from the hands of consumers will be far worse for them than the good from those extra 4% per-employee).
Just recently there has been a huge demonstration in 40 different cities against it, one of the biggest in record.
Friends of mine which were barelly pollitical are becoming pretty active anti-establishment, making waves and going out on demonstrations. I know at least one city based professional middle class couple that has bought farmland and have been groing their orchade there for a couple of years now in preparation for whatever happens.
The funny bit is that this recent abuse has made a lot more people look at what's happening in Greece and ask themselves if it's not better that Portugal just defaults and leaves the Euro.
I believe "I'll have another" UTICA CLUB that is...
Brown Jackrabbits in Djibouti.
BTFD before the world ends.
Message from Fed: "We will continue to hand trillions of dollars to the banksters until the economy improves or Americans catch on."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBVOYkhNb1o
NOBODY else put this up?
I must be getting REALLY old.
In related news:
Any long lost relatives to THIS guy out there? http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/09/17/walter-samaszko-jr-leaves-7-mi...
Now THAT's a true stacker. Not a word & a nice dragon's hoard.
"Any technology, if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic."
Doesn't have to be all that advanced if you have the right audience......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RA4UnEuQ0
given the educational level of most Americans, MOPE is working fine....
Arthur C. Clarke.
-Paris Hilton
"Any technology, if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic."
_____________________
The situation is different.
'Americans' have complexified very simple observations in order to get away with.
It is not advanced technology. On the contrary. Due to physical world constraints, the very simple observations 'Americans' have been trying to conceal, are resurfacing.
'Americans' are exposed by plain and raw facts.
Time for bamboozling is over. It is no longer about claiming advancement in technology.
It is about pretending to believe what is not known to be untrue. Just because 'American' standard of life depends on adopting those lies as a creed.
Fantasy is the ultimate shelter for 'Americans' They know they are living in a world of fantasy. But they would no longer bear walking outside their shelter to confront reality.
Make me laugh!
Fantasy is the ultimate shelter for the RAGINGLY bigoted and hypocritical troll that is you. You know you are living in a world of fantasy, in which you must create the absurd fiction of "US Citizenism" in order to project the faults and faililngs of your own antheap society onto others. But you consistently refuse, and are unable, to bear walking outside your shelter of blind bigotry and collectivistic hatred to confront reality.
Strange Magic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLWboYFJ8GM (4:34)
ELO - Strange Magic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiCjyNo75mg (4:25)
Strange Magic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00kG7uTbFUk (4:33)
With the hindsight of the sufficiently advanced society, it's always seemed strange to me that that ultra-popular magic song was the worst off that whole new world record....high fires and waterfalls are where it's at.
From ZH twitter :
CHINA IS PREPARING ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AGAINST JAPAN, HKEJ SAYS
Just when I think that 0hedge is no longer worth reading...
Thank you Brent. And Tyler.
'course the real magicians (Greenspan, Rubin, Clinton, Paulson, more) make themselves disappear, after they've left the flaming bag of shit on our front door steps and have rung the doorbell, and left the lesser magicians to be standing in the yard (garden) when we open the door and stomp on it to put it out. Except maybe Clinton, who thinks he can BS his way out of anything, and the other guy, who's not bright enough to know his shoes stink and are burning.
And we're left with weasels who tell us that black is white, and that several billion people from another religion who are killing, burning and destroying are just angry movie critics. Ah the life of a community organizer and political activist. Goebbels would be proud.
funny shit curly, cuz it's so true. don't forget Fat Larry tho.
White emu in... yes, Denmark.
White House Says It's Unconstitutional To Strike Down The NDAA
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-administration-fights-for-the-ndaa-...
Obama is a TRAITOR!!!!! But this guy is as bad :
Appeals court unblocks indefinite detention law
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/09/appeals-court-unbl...
it has nothing to do with magic or math. for middle class, it just feels like being robbed at gunpoint by central bankers, and most would surrender their wallets.
'american' middle class is robbed by 'american' middle class, not by bankers.
For the 'american' middle class to endure, some of it has to be pushed under the train.
Its the math and code, they use it to hide risk and anyone who has written code knows the power. Who ever controls and writes the code controls the world so we all exist today to serve the banks as the quants write their fictitous code. Like hearing the quant teacher stating that economists are not scientists and they do not have laws, they just guess say the quants who write the code. We are all under the Attack of the Killer Algoirthms.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.gr/2012/09/quants-alchemists-of-wall-street-v...
Utilize math.
Believe in caution
2012 09 18 277week roc 01 | goldpricemodel - http://stks.co/nAfJ
Trusting maths or not has little to do with the current situation.
'American' economics leads to quantify and qualify the world.
Mathematics do not do that in the same extent.
For example, in mathematics (at least the ones called in the trusting maths or not statement), numeration is non ambiguous.
1 is 1 and stays so.
In 'American' economics, one is not one as one USD does not stay the same (as repeated lavishly on this site)
It breaks any strength mathematics could have at the moment.
'American' economics rely on non constant measurements to make the day.
The question is not whether you trust mathematics as mathematics are irrelevant in many properties they have but if you trust 'american' economics.
baboonomics personified...
Useless to invent new names when some already exist: what is going on is 'american' economics.
'Chinese Citizenism hypocrisy' and 'blobbing-up' also work nicely.
The Republican Party, especially the Tea PArty-religiously inspired wing, has decreed that its value systems do not coalesce with SCIENCE.
So now the USA has a strong political lobby that promotes obscurantist logic which makes Krugman's babooning sound like sweet nothings ballad type music!
My, is the intellectual race to the bottom hottening up; it is in strong correlation with the fiat bubble of first world. Heading to foggy bottom. It seems that the crazy hysterical world of current power play, totally head up the bottom hole, has two annointed meeting places for the new shootout of MIC OK corral : ME cauldron and SOuth China Sea jacuzzi.
Mindset morph and fiat inflation beanstalk the two teats of civilization regression; big time.
Spanish bad bank loans climbed to a fresh high in July, with almost 10pc of households and companies now behind on their payments, as the country prepares to sell short term debt on the market. https://miningstockvaluator.com/news.php?id=139
The show goes on...
Good, if not exactly novel, information in the video. However, he missed the most important part of stage magic - showmanship (presentation) - that is why the trick at the end fell a little flat.
The words of a national 'Hog Calling' champion (sometimes attributed to FDR) spring to mind:
"You have to have real appeal in your voice, you must convince the swine that you have something for them."
V = PY / M
"M" is always the problem because someone has expanded or contracted it at their whim for 5000 years. It's too bad no one has ever been able to solve for M via a provable, mathematical process that distributes fairly across the board so that velocity and value create a feedback loop.
What's that you say? Someone has found a method? And it's currently working in an environment running a live market with a market cap of around $120 million?
Bitcoin: Everything else isn't math.
Here at the GAO, we like to refer to it as "Mathgic" around the water cooler, it works as long as you don't monitor the real numbers.
That light at the end of the tunnel is just that, it's not a speeding freight train although I never heard the sun blow a horn before. It certainatly makes a baffon out of Authur Laffer.
I don't believe in magic.
I don't believe or disbelieve in math.
Remember, statistics is a branch of math.
And remember, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics!
Math can be a great tool, and is a tool I work with often. But there are endless ways to be misled by math, especially "other peoples' math". It requires just as much care, honesty, attention and diligence to apply math effectively as any other conscious process.
Consider e = mc^2 == mcc.
How many seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years or decades did it take you to realize that c (and c squared) is... meaningless? How long did it take you realize (after learning basic math) that any constant is meaningless... except for making units correspond? In other words, if we put e or m into a more convenient unit, the c term simply vanishes (or becomes equal to one, which has no effect, and therefore vanishes). As someone who became a scientist in elementary school (and went on to become a real scientist), it angers me (at myself) to recall how long it took me to realize some of these things. Even after we realize that c in e=mcc is just a constant, how many of us even bother to think deeply about the significance of e = m (energy = mass). What the hell does that mean? Are we to assume there is no difference between energy and mass, that mass and energy are identical, the same thing in every respect? Then why have two words? And if e is not absolutely identical to m in every respect, how much can we trust the result of any of our mathematics equations? I mean, if the holy perfect process that humans call "math" tells us that energy is the same as mass, and doesn't tell us anything about "how" or "what aspects" or "what limits" or otherwise makes sense of the situation, how much can we trust math. And when we come to realize that "time doesn't exist" (but "change" does), how do we understand any equation that contains t in it? Hmmmm.
My point is, math is not to be trusted either... not in and of itself, anyway. If we don't fully understand the nature and significance and limits of every input to a math process OR we don't fully understand the nature and significance and limits of each and every process in the math we perform... then we can be just as faked out as the audience by the magician.
The fact is, the only way to understand anything rigorously is to understand the processes of consciousness that we practice. Otherwise, how can we claim to understand anything? But how many people understand this? Hell, most people don't even realize the so-called "mind body dichotomy" is a scam (or mistake). They don't even realize there is simply "body" (the physical) and "consciousness" (processes of the physical). In fact, what people call "mind" is simply "consciousness", which is simply "processes of the physical body (including brain)". No magic. Nothing mysterious. But also not something many humans bother to worry about - the nature or validity of their own mental processes. So much confusion because someone created the concept "mind" as a noun? Yikes!
PS: My apology to scientists for simplifying the e=mcc discussion a bit to make it relatable for a wider audience. Don't beat me up about that, okay? At least not here in ZH.
grande bold please.
I had a pastor once who married my wife and I and discipled me, who was an ex-banker. He always said, "honesty is the best policy".
AN engineer uses math to build a bridge, but in many other disciplines, it's 'anything goes', including economics, which never was a hard science to begin with. But you do need a moral standard, a 'my word is my bond' to compare apples with apples. But when after doing all the correct math and physics our conclusions don't work, maybe it's because another dimension is poking through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeQ3DmKU7A
To say that our mind is the sum total of the physical processes of the brain is not true. This would be playing into evolutionary thought and Behaviorism and very 20th c. The mind in all its creativity cannot merely be the result of brain cells, but God feeds the thoughts of man from his 'cloud', from his limitless storehouses.
Someone ought to show Bernanke the book of Revelation, where it is written about the 4 horsemen of the Apokalypse cause he's laying the groundwork for it.