(2018-10-02) Hunt Clear Eyes Full Hearts Can't Lose

Ben Hunt (Epsilon Theory) on Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose. ...the polarized electorate and the monolithic market are not stable.

Spoiler Alert: the scientists and logicians are the worst.

the future of a Three-Body System cannot be predicted.

even though the polarized electorate and the monolithic market aren’t permanent, we have NO IDEA how long they will last or where they will end up.

That’s a problem, because humans crave the Answer, in both our political and our investing lives. We are hard-wired to seek it. And just because the Answer does not exist … well, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t constantly going to fool themselves into thinking that they’ve found it.

In both politics and markets, the Answer is, by definition, totalitarian in nature

“Friday Night Lights” is a great book, a good movie, and a great TV series

What’s the secret to life, the universe, and everything? Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

It’s not an Answer. It’s a Process.

Process is the most important thing in every walk of life.

Because all of this has happened before.

on October 31, 1517 Martin Luther posted “95 Theses”

Everything Luther said 500 years ago rings so true for me today, not in a religious sense but in an intensely secular sense. In both our political and our economic lives, we are confronted by a priestly caste of pundits and politicians and central bankers and economists who interpret the World for us and tell us its “true” meaning. Game theory calls them Missionaries. Luther would understand this game.

You don’t beat a con with an Answer, because an Answer IS a con. You beat a con with a Process … a Process for making sense of the world with your own eyes, and a Process for acting in the world with your own heart.

What do we DO, you ask?

We train our mind’s eye to see clearly the invisible dimensions of Narrative, Abstraction, Metagame and Estimation, dimensions that subsume and control the visible worlds of politics and economics

We use that visualization of these wordly truths with a full heart, meaning that we act according to the principles of Reciprocity and Identity, principles that organize a pack Tribe of like-minded and truth-seeking individuals for long-term success

That’s the Process.

Okay, Ben, but how do we do THAT?

This is the why of Epsilon Theory.

seeing and acting on the six Process dimensions of Narrative, Abstraction, Metagame, Estimation, Reciprocity and Identity.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose isn’t just a sports slogan. It’s a process for living a non-alienated (alienation) life, a life of meaning as a citizen and as an investor. It’s a process for perceiving the invisible social dimensions that subsume and control the visible social world of politics and economics. It’s a process for resisting the corrupting blandishments of the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy.

I’m going to close out this note with a quote and a few thoughts on the notion of Identity

What’s the most important quality to instill in our children? Courage.

The only thing I really care about for my children is that they are brave enough to say, “I am.”

It’s not necessarily a BAD thing to go into debt to pay for your kids’ educations.

But are you doing it for the right reasons? Because if you’re not, then it IS a bad thing.

Do what is right, though the world should perish. ― Immanuel Kant

for the first 50 years of my life I thought this was a really stupid quote.

But then a few years ago I was thinking seriously about this quote, also by Kant – Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity – when I realized that you couldn’t have one without the other.

When you start down the instrumental (utilitarian) path … when you start cutting corners and telling white lies and selling just a teensie-weensie piece of your integrity to accomplish what you calculate will be a MUCH greater good that’s CLEARLY worth this small and inconsequential sacrifice of your duty … it ALWAYS ends terribly.

You want freedom? You want an autonomy of mind and spirit? You want that as an inalienable right? A right that is yours simply because you are a human being? Well, that comes at a price. And the Kantian price is this: everything you do, you must do for the right reasons.

What are the right reasons? You don’t need me to tell you. You already know what they are, in every situation you’re in. You have a moral compass.

Our core freedom – our autonomy of mind and spirit – is not granted to us by the State or the Oligarchs.

It cannot be taken away. But we can give it away. And that’s what we do when we act instrumentally rather than for our identity as a moral human being, when we treat other human beings as a means to an end rather than as an end in themselves.

On the other hand … when we vote and invest and advise and make and speak because it reflects our “I am” … when we vote and invest and advise and make and speak because it is in service to our pack, meaning in service to those who share and honor and reciprocate our “I am” … that’s when we become a human in full.

There’s a positive energy – I wish I had a better term for it, but really I don’t – that comes from knowing your “I am”, from acting for the right reasons and from finding your pack. It’s a positive energy that can carry you for life, in any walk of life.