{"id":51423,"date":"2020-02-27T15:58:19","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T20:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51423"},"modified":"2020-02-27T15:58:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T20:58:22","slug":"covid-19-cargo-cults-why-the-market-is-still-too-complacent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51423","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 Cargo Cults & Why The Market Is Still Too Complacent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Covid-19 Cargo Cults & Why The Market Is Still Too Complacent<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people.  During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now.  So they\u2019ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas\u2014he\u2019s the controller\u2014and they wait for the airplanes to land.  They\u2019re doing everything right.  The form is perfect.  It looks exactly the way it looked before.  But it doesn\u2019t work.  No airplanes land.  So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they\u2019re missing something essential, because the planes don\u2019t land.<\/em><\/p>Richard Feynman, The Cargo Cult Science (Speech at Caltech in 1974)<\/em><\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I tease Ben sometimes for devoting his graduate studies to political science. Not because it isn\u2019t a worthy field of study. I tease him because the idea of politics being a science<\/em> is absurd on its face. And then he usually reminds me that my economics degree is nominally<\/em> referred to as a science degree, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am immediately chastened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are<\/em> a lot of scientifically minded people in the investment industry.<\/strong> In general, this is for the good. I mean, of course<\/em> it is. Investing in risky assets constantly appeals to our baser tendencies toward fear and greed. Worse, we do not respond to those appeals in isolation. We are surrounded by others who are watching us and responding to our actions for their own benefit. Process is a gift<\/em> to investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Covid-19 Cargo Cults & Why The Market Is Still Too Complacent In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people.  During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now.  So they\u2019ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29098,28817,29011,29097,24340,7258],"class_list":["post-51423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-cargo-cults","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-epsilontheory-com","tag-rusty-guinn","tag-viral-outbreak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51424,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51423\/revisions\/51424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}