Link dump 20221206: “How do trees find their sense of direction as they grow?”
Snippets of ideas that lead nowhere at the moment, but could down the road; and that I want to save somewhere that I won't lose track of
A treasure trove of thoughts and dreams,
A place to store and catalog,
The ideas that swirl and teem,
With potential, yet unknown.
A thought, a spark, a fleeting wisp,
A seed that may one day grow,
Into a concept, a theory, a twist,
That we may never know.
But still we gather, collect and hoard,
These tiny sparks of light,
For though they may not yet be quite assured,
They may one day ignite.
So let us hold on tight and cherish,
The ideas that come our way,
For even if we cannot yet discern,
Their value, or their sway.
For in the end, it may be clear,
That these ideas were worth the wait,
For they may lead us down a path,
That we could never have foreseen or fathomed.
--- A poem written by OpenAI's ChatGPT
OpenAI’s chatGPT demo that’s recently been opened to all: https://chat.openai.com/chat
Recently listened to Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth” interview series (always better to hear the author themselves vs a publisher’s hired narrator, IMO) and thought it was very interesting. So, in the interest of “killing your darlings” and with the knowledge that a good critique can often expand your mind just as much as the subject of its focus, I searched for and found these criticisms of Campbell which I think are very interesting as well: https://www.religion-online.org/article/the-romantic-appeal-of-joseph-campbell/
In a similar vein of spirituality, this response from Jed McKenna1 to a would-be disciple was interesting2: https://jedmckenna.com/?p=1387
“How do trees find their sense of direction as they grow?” Surely there are lessons here about capital allocation and capturing value as inspired by the longest-running evolutionary algorithm on Earth; “[T]hey can’t run, they have to adapt to their environment. And they’ve developed brilliant ways to do it.” (This resonance between better resource management and conformance with nature also ties into the Malmgren Strategic Institute’s vision of the 4th industrial revolution): https://knowablemagazine.org/article/living-world/2020/bent-shape-rules-tree-form
The (sizable) Role of Rehypothecation in the Shadow Banking System: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2010/wp10172.pdf
Zoltan Pozsar on the shadow banking system: https://www.financialresearch.gov/working-papers/files/OFRwp2014-04_Pozsar_ShadowBankingTheMoneyView.pdf3, I personally prefer the more accessible Maroon Macro (they make liberal use of diagrams and visual aids, which I believe often makes information more easily encoded in the brain vs the constrained linearity of written text):
Note, I’ve not actually finished reading this paper and I usually just read for things that catch my interest in a Binary Search fashion and devolve if needed as I find that info in anything written non-fiction (though not always when transcribed) is usually structured in a sorted way (in chapters, sub-chapters, or the across the book in total), which makes this algo very useful (in cases where you kinda already know what you’re looking for);
Speaking of Pozsar, while he appears to well summarize the general narrative of the inflation and deglobalization bulls in recent times (bulls isn’t not quite the right word, but does the job here), Ektrit (Kris) Manushi has an interesting variant perspective (of several) on what’s happening and where things are going: https://economics-is-a-dogmatic-religion.blogspot.com/2022/10/what-is-happening.html
The Crypto Story (so far): https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-the-crypto-story/
Wallabag is an open-source bookmarks manager similar to Pocket. I’ve been looking at this as an alternative, open-source way to save thought snippets — that comes with the benefit of implicit interconnecting ideas via multiple tags (as well as adding notes) — but haven’t decided if I want to pay or play around with the self-hosting option. You can self-host or use the project’s promoted commercial instance for 9EUR/yr (~$10) here: https://www.wallabag.it/en
You can see an good overview of the program here4:
I believe that having a mental web with a diversity of routes between ideas is good for retention and coming up with new ideas or questions. So anything that can help turn disparate concepts and facts into connected webs is a good tool. In the case of Wallabag tags, you can kinda think of the saved links as an edge that connects two different tags/ideas or nodes in an undirected graph.
An old interview with Murray Stahl by Value Investor Insights5: http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Value_Investor_May_2013.pdf
A Chris Mayer article on “100-baggers” written a few years before he published his book of the same name: http://www.valueplays.net/wp-content/uploads/Capital-in-Crisis-January-2015.pdf
* This article was written with the assictance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT
There appears to be controversy as to who McKenna was and about whether he actually died or not, but I suppose the thing to focus on is whether you personally take away anything from the letter — it’s not really something that needs to be peer reviewed
Some examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/JedMcKennaTwo/comments/ohf4bf/jed_mckennas_deathbed_confession/
https://realization.org/p/jed-mckenna/who-is-jed-mckenna.html
Whether or not Jed McKenna was a conman would not negate the value of his writings. The value of a work of literature or philosophy is not dependent on the personal characteristics or actions of its author. Instead, the value of a work is determined by its content and its ability to inspire, educate, or entertain its readers. McKenna’s background — or even authorial intent, to a degree — would not change the ideas and insights presented in his writings, and would not necessarily make those ideas any less valuable or worth considering.
If you’ve ever watched the movie or read the book “Fight Club”, the letter reminded me of this analysis of the story as a cautionary tale (a fitting tie-in, IMO, given that the first link in this post is related to Joseph Campbell):
The associated slides can be found here: https://www.financialresearch.gov/working-papers/files/OFRwp2014-04_Pozsar_ShadowBankingTheMoneyView_Attachment.pdf
I would have simply made the video a footnote, but I could not get it to format to the right size in the substack editor when trying to do this, no idea why.
Three years later, Stahl would be interviewed again by the same publication, this time talking Bitcoin, TPL, and shipping rates.