INTRO Per Gessle, the Swede who composed the song “It Must Have Been Love” that was featured in the Julia Roberts movie “Pretty Woman” has said that he only writes when he’s inspired. I’m mostly like that too, all other comparisons aside. This post formed in my head over the course of less than a minute, not unlike this one on The Meaning Of Life.
THEME Contemplating and discussing the true nature of reality over the last six months seem to have led to me being hit by and interacting with a stray inspiraton* five minutes ago, incidentally right after re-watching the amazingly entertaining movie “The Wolf Of Wall Street” during a long and late Saturday brunch.
* a very rare elementary particle
CONCLUSION Cutting straight to the chase, my conclusion is that what matters on the stock market is how consistently and predictably you can earn “money” that can be used for manipulating reality into subjective experiences with certain desired properties (I hint at what those properties might be in my Perspectives article series. Start here).
IN SHORT: DO WHAT WORKS, and take a good hard look at Gran Colombia Gold Corp
This morning Mike Cernovich referenced a quantum physics article in Scientific American that discussed a new slant on how to interpret the problems of wave collapse, observer dependency, matter duality and more. It got me thinking. By the way, if you’re interested, here is my immediate reaction to the article:
God and reality
Winter came, and with it late night discussions about the existence and nature of God. Yes, “God”, as in some kind of power or presence outside the laws of nature, or as the very laws of nature (whatever that’s supposed to mean; I mean are they laws, or aren’t they).
For me the word “God” is too tainted by culture and tradition to possibly serve as the basis of an open minded conversation about existence. As much as I try to suppress images of a potent and aware entity, and replace them with “anything or everything” or “purpose” or some other temporary placeholder, I keep failing.
In parallel with discussing the God delusion we have talked at lenght about reality, not least whether it’s objective or not, i.e., whether reality exists or not.*
(* I’ll just add here that reality does exist. This, here that we experience is reality. In my view, that holds water whether reality actually exists or not, since I think the word ‘reality’ is defined as “this, here” that I experience and I have good reason to assume you experience too)
Solipsism and pragmatism
The conversations have ranged from pure solipsism* to self-referential unusable tautologies such as “the universe is the universe”, “God is all and all is God”, “purpose is the purpose”, and much more.
(* solipsism = I am the only thing that exists and everything else is just a dream – quite a complex dream with billions of dreamed up personalities, trillions of other seemingly independent living things, quadrillions of celestial bodies scattered over trillions of cube light years, evolving over billions of years, including Darwinistic trajectories and thousands av brilliant scientists climbing atop each others’ shoulders to scout ever further. Imagine all that in just one entity, i.e., me, not to mention I have forgotten it all and am lost in my thoughts slowly rediscovering minuscule fractions of it all before imagining dying)
I am a practical person. And, as much as I’m a fan of basic research, understanding that we can’t know when and for what that knowledge might come in handy, pure philosophical word play that doesn’t even aim for practical use, but rather aims for self-containment and non-practicality quickly loses its appeal to me.
By the way, if this post triggers a strong need in you to explain to me all the ways I have misunderstood solipsism or any other branch of philosophy, or quantum physics for that matter, please don’t. This article is not about that at all. Quite the opposite. It’s about doing what works.
The universe is all mental
The quantum physics article Mike linked to builds up to an idea about thoughts being the ultimate building blocks of nature, perhaps a little like the illusive inspiratons I jokingly mentioned above.
These ubiquitous “thoughts”, which I assume are pretty dissimilar from the everyday brain thoughts with which we humans are familiar, interfere with each other as well as with organical thoughts; thus giving rise to the physical reality.
With “thoughts” everywhere, from the empty voids of space to the cores of stars and brains of humans I’m guessing brains acts as a kind of amplifying antenna that can focus inanimate thoughts into living thoughts.
Alright, as much as I try to keep an open mind – on a theory stating that brains and thoughts are not the product of billions of years of evolution, pattern recognition and survival of the most adaptable – trying to comprehend a theory of substrate-free “thoughts” as the ultimate building block is just as difficult as stripping the word “God” of all its religious baggage.
Please explain
Why “thoughts”, I ask? Why not just super strings? They are equally mystical, ethereal, versatile and infalsifiable. Whether you decide to build a world view with turtles all the way down, hyperdimensional strings, gods behind gods in Russian dolls, or thoughts all the way down, doesn’t really matter. You’re still not explaining anything. And you’re not adding anything to the toolbox of improving your own subjective experience (except for the fun it might be to play a meaningless game for a while).
Experience, prediction, manipulation
For me, my experience is all that matters. My reality is my reality, but it’d better be pretty well attuned to the more or less predictable laws of nature for my subjective experience to be sustainably pleasurable.
Experience is all, since non-experience is non-experience. Per definition.
If you want to define these words any differently, be my guest, but I won’t understand you. Hint: if you want to be understood, strive to use unambigous words that people (can) understand.
What interests me are reliable predictions in as much as they allow me to manipulate and control my experiences.
The actual and ultimate truth might be something altogether different and incomprehensible. But that doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is what I (can) experience.
I can’t remember anything before my birth, and there are no believable recounts of post-death experiences. This, here, this stream of consciousness began some time around the birth of this body, and it seems destined to end with this body (not yet fully counting on uploading or immortality).
So, I can experience what I can experience, and that is what appears to be a physical world of things, including electrochemical patterns in brains. Humans now understand a great deal of what can and does affect us (cause experiences), and of what can be manipulated by us. That’s just another way of saying science has laid out a pretty good map of reliable laws of nature; laws that I consider when making decisions I hope will lead to as meaningful a life as possible.
That which might “exist” but can’t be manipulated or affect us is simply irrelevant. Per definition. The world may be a dream, or nothing at all. Maybe I’m alone, maybe not. Maybe I’m a simulation… Maybe there is a “God”, even though it has left no trace of its existence since the Big Bang.
In any case, my actual personal experiences are more or less limited to sleep, food, love and a few other “experiences”. My aim is to optimize those over the course of my life, by designing as solid and consistent a foundation of predictions and manipulations as I can.
Pragmatism and investing
And, that is also exactly how I would, in the best of worlds, go about my investments. I don’t care whether the world ‘really’ exists (though it should be clear by now, that to me “exists” means whatever this experience is. Per definition), or if a country’s or company’s operational fundamentals exist objectively. I don’t care if “valutions” are real or not.
What I do care about is how to predictably and as consistently as possible make decisions that enhances my potential for manipulating reality into better subjective experiences. That might include maximizing dollar amounts on the stock exchange, or units of gold, or analysing historical metrics patterns. In doing so, I like to rely on consistent laws of nature, rather than fickle gods and “it’s all a dream” fantasies.
What matters isn’t if valuations, profits, money or even the universe is real. What matters is how I feel about it, and not least what I can do to improve on that situation.
P.S: Please, let’s keep “free will” out of today’s discussion.
Gran Colombia Gold Corp
-when did you last see a Price Earnings ratio of 1?
By the way, have you seen this Price/Earnings = 1 company in Canada? Gran Colombia Gold Corp. Disclaimer: this is not an investment recommendation and any losses incurred are your own. In addition, PER=1 might be significantly misleading due to dilution, but I’ll leave that to you. I personally, however, would be surprised if the stock didn’t reach 6 dollars per share by the end of 2018.
