If you were a smart guy like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and you thought a stagflationary tsunami of enormous proportion was going to wash over the US economy regardless of who wins in November, what would you be doing right now?
I think you might be doing whatever you can to get liquid in the global reserve currency without spooking the marks.
Our kids are being rewired.
The data implicating the smartphone-based childhood are compelling but not conclusive – and may never be.
So how should governments, communities, schools and families decide what to do?
City of God / City of Man
An AI in the City of God
The City of Man always wins.
The Visigoths always sack Rome. The Vandals always sack Hippo. Augustine always dies in the siege. Bad things always happen to good people … at scale.
Here’s how we use generative AI to flip the script.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 1: Virus
This is a story about a virus and the gain-of-function research that produced it.
It’s not what you think.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 2: Carriers
Every virus needs carriers to spread. Even a Narrative virus.
We can learn a lot from what they have in common.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 3: Memetics
In the same way that genetics governs how physical viruses reproduce within a host, memetics governs how narrative viruses reproduce within a culture.
And the memes which govern our narrative virus are powerful.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 4: Epimemetics
Every narrative is built on memes that have evolved and adapted to human culture over centuries.
But some environments change the way that those memes are expressed. The effects can be explosive.
Men of God in the City of Man, Pt. 5: Epidemic
Men of God prophesied as early as 2007 that God would make Donald Trump the President of the United States.
Our narrative virus gave these predictions fertile ground to take root.
Men of God in the City of Man, Pt. 6: Pandemic
Surprising outcomes in reality world that seem to confirm a narrative often produce explosive growth in its scale.
But also in its scope.
Men of God in the City of Man, Pt. 7: Mutation
Narrative viruses are not immune to events in reality world – especially when we have made those narratives part of our identity.
And when a narrative becomes part of our identity, it changes what we need to be true.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 8: Zoonosis
Physical viruses sometimes jump from one species to another.
Narrative viruses sometimes jump from one culture to another.
All it takes is the right virus and a susceptible host.
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Recent Notes
Thanksgiving
A moment to say thanks and accept responsibility.
Office Hours – 2.18.2020
This Office Hours is all about Coronavirus, except it’s not – it’s all about how institutions who solve for narrative outcomes invariably create bad results in the Real World.
Love in the Time of COVID-19
Within a few months, the reality of COVID-19 will overtake the propaganda of the CCP and their toadies at the World Health Organization, as real-world companies begin making real-world economic decisions to maintain their enterprises in the face of a real-world threat.
Those decisions will be led by sports franchises.
The Industrially Necessary Doctor Tedros
To date, WHO leadership has simply been part of the Chinese Narrative Machine.
It’s not just a betrayal of the researchers and clinicians who do important work under WHO auspices. It’s a betrayal of the world.
Options
Our social institutions require of us many songs. One of those songs is about the roots of poverty in immorality. If we’re going to stop singing their songs, this may be a good place to start.
Body Count
China is fighting nCov2019 exactly like the US fought North Vietnam … with policy driven more by narrative control than by what’s best to win the war.
That was a disastrous strategic mistake for the US then, and it’s a disastrous strategic mistake for China today.
We Hanged Our Harps Upon the Willows
Because the danger of powerful memes, cartoons and narratives is not that they demand our acquiesence. It is that they demand our participation.
Credit and Debt Monitor – 1.31.2020
The decline in the strength of the Q4 Narrative of a risk of “collapse” in credit markets continued in January.Uniquely among our macronarratives, cohesion actually…
The Promised Land!
Every once in a while, narrative-world gives you a gift that just keeps on giving. So it is with outgoing CEO Ginni Rometty’s regime of despair at IBM.
Today my focus is on the IBM-sponsored hagiography that is springing up like slime molds on the underside of rotting swamp cabbages.
The Inevitable Afterbirth
Two weeks ago we were being told about the coronavirus outbreak. This week we are being told how we should think about it. Right or wrong, it is important to have Clear Eyes about this kind of Fiat News.
Notes from the Diamond #9: How About Never
Axioms to live by in baseball and in investing!
1) Outsiders to an organization can never know in real time what goes on inside it.
2) Human labors can never be gauged fully and dispositively in real time.
3) Chains are never stronger than their weakest links.
Once You Buy a Prize, It’s Yours to Keep!
Outgoing IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has filed 167 SEC Form 4s detailing her stock transactions in the company.
So I downloaded and compiled all of them to see how much money she has sucked out of IBM, just like I did for outgoing Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
Stuck in the Middle With You
There is a median narrative theorem that can serve as a central pillar of a NEW approach to social choice theory, an approach less pedantic in its assumptions about human nature and less naive in its assumptions about modes of social power.
The median narrative theorem generates powerful predictive hypotheses about elections, hypotheses that predicted Trump’s Republican primary victory in 2016 and – if current data holds – predicts Sanders’ Democratic primary victory in 2020.
The Curious Case of Candidate Sanders
Everyone complains that their favorite candidate isn’t being treated fairly in the media. It’s the Bernie Bros’ turn…but are they right?
You Had One Job
Forget about impeachment and its partisan Kabuki theater. It’s a joke.
If there’s some rich dude who bought his way onto that Wuhan evacuation flight, and you know there is … if this Administration is forsaking its ONE JOB to protect American citizens, and you know they are …
THAT’S what brings down this government.
A New Road to Serfdom
There are many roads to serfdom, and they have all become faster and more perilous. We are walking down one of them now.
Pleased to Meet You, Hope You Guess My Name
It’s the one thing that Donald Trump and Rachel Maddow can agree on … “who the hell cares about the budget?”
If you don’t see that every government in the developed world is about to embark on a massive deficit spending spree, with modern-day ziggurats constructed in every burg and hamlet … you’re just not paying attention.
The Drum Major Instinct
On MLK, Jr. Day, we present an excerpt from a powerful and under-read sermon about status delivered to the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
The Church of The Long Now
I know, I know … it’s me being mean to Neel Kashkari again.
Sorry, not sorry. Belittlement and scorn is the only weapon we have against the creeping ensorcellment of the Long Now.