Flaws
The stock market, if you learn about it and look very closely, makes little sense.
There are good intentions behind it, and in the abstract it’s a decent means of getting resources where they need to be while incentivizing economic productivity and participation.
But the incentives at play are often misaligned, the mechanisms by which it’s managed and balanced are off-kilter, and the agglomeration of finicky, ultra-specific and arcane rules and regulations have made the whole, ponderous behemoth a shambling hazard in a persistent state of disequilibrium and near-implosion.
Despite its countless imperfections, though, the stock market functions decently well most of the time, and even if you possess an awareness of how bogglingly bad it is at so many things, it’s still possible to glean both meaning and value from it. You can acknowledge that it sucks, but also do okay by investing some money in it.
This could arguably also be said of the economy, more broadly. And our governments, our meta-governmental organizations, and the ideologies and theories that prop up the way we organize and manage the world. We can be aware of the flaws in these systems and still participate in them: we can aim to do well according to their rules, even as we work to fix them.
We might decide to become lawyers, learn about the legal system over the course of several years, determine that our government is barely holding on and only remains standing due to judicious use of bandages, glue, and perhaps miraculous intervention, and then we might struggle until we figure out a way to cope with this reality—until we sort out how to function within a flawed system that we can now see at an uncomfortably high resolution.
It’s possible to work to repair, replace, or otherwise correct such systems from inside them. Many people step into the fields in which they work with precisely this goal in mind, in fact.
Unfortunately, the practicalities of everyday life tend to nudge us toward operating in greater alignment with the existing dynamics of these systems. And it becomes easier to justify behaving dysfunctionally—in ways that are rewarded by the systems of which we’re components—once we become beholden to the privileges, and wary of the punishments, they dole out.
Even those with the best of intentions can lose sight of their original purpose—can become conveniently near-sighted, the cracks they previously perceived blurred into obscurity, their actions perpetuating and propagating that existing dysfunction—as soon as those flaws begin to work in their favor.
The goal, then, is to strike a stance that allows us to wield more power than we would otherwise—power that we will ideally use to remedy some of the flaws we perceive—without, in the process, becoming dependent on the current shape of things.
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Projects
Brain Lenses: Source Monitoring & End of History Illusion
Let’s Know Things: Myanmar Coup
Yesterday’s Newsletter: Hope, ICC, Venezuelan Refugees (Yesterday’s Newscast version)
Curiosity Weekly: February 9, 2021
Other: I’ve learned quite a lot from my experimentation with AI-powered voice-cloning over the past few weeks, but I’m now recording daily, Yesterday’s Newcast episodes using my real voice—which requires more time and effort, but I’ve decided, post-experiment, that the difference in quality is substantial enough to warrant the additional investment.
If you end up checking out that new, 3-minute-ish daily podcast (linked above) and you find some value in it, please consider leaving a quick review wherever you get your podcasts. Those make quite a lot of difference, especially early on in the life of such shows :)
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things to click:
The Mysterious Photo of a Purple Flower that Receives 78 Million Hits Each Day(fun internet story)
Topology 101: The Hole Truth(some interesting math)
Using Computer Vision to Explore the Science Museum Group Collection(good use of data and aesthetics)
Command and Control(on board game simulations of war)
Stripping the Power from Male Desire(good piece on an interesting photo project and the artist behind it)
IBM Components From 1948 to 1986(visuals & explanation of an old-school tech sample kit)
Earth at a Cute Angle(how we perceive satellite imagery, and how a small adjustment influences that perception)
Marine Ecosystem Paintings(beautiful work by Robert Steven Connett)
Outro
I’ve spent the last several weeks working on the first entry in a new series of books/guides, which until just a few days ago meant writing a few chapters, deleting everything, starting over, writing more, deleting, and repeating that cycle, potentially ad infinitum.
Along the way, though, I figured out which elements made sense for the project, and those elements have been aggregated into a list of guidelines for the series that I’m happy with, and the first few chapters have now been written.
The new book series, by the way, is part of a larger, even-more-in-the-background effort to wrangle my many projects into a coherent whole, not merging them, but basically bundling them into something people might actually find valuable, and then using that bundle as an excuse to try out some community elements that may or may not actually be good and worthwhile.
If you’re sensing some trepidation regarding that larger bundling effort, you’re not imagining it. I’m incredibly uncertain about a lot of what I’m dabbling in at the moment, and though that’s where I almost always find the most growth and benefits over time, those eventual positive outcomes don’t make the process of getting there any less ponderous, enigmatic, or (at times) stressful.
How’s your February progressing, thus far? Working on anything you’re excited/terrified about? Managed to get a vaccine yet? Keen to submit an awkward selfie?
You can reach me at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by responding to this email.
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You can also communicate via the usual channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or incredibly detailed replica of Ancient Rome.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work via one of these methods: Become a patron / Buy a book / Subscribe to Brain Lenses
You can also buy me a coffee if that’s simpler :)