On the Filter Bubble

Social media can isolate people from viewpoints they disagree with. Eli Pariser, an internet activist, calls this the “filter bubble”. Researchers at Indiana University’s Network Science Institute who analysed links shared on Twitter and searches on AOL, a web portal, showed that the sites reached from social media are much less diverse than those reached from a search engine. Pablo Barberá, formerly of SMaPP and soon to join the University of Southern California, who examined the political Twitterspheres in America, Germany and Spain, found they were indeed polarised, particularly in America.

"Tracking protest movements: A new kind of weather," The Economist, Accessed on March 27, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21695192-social-media-now-play-key-role-collective-action-new-kind-weather

This is one of the reasons I do not get my news from social media. I like to get a diverse set of views. Generally, in fact, I don't much care for social media at all and think it may actually be a bad thing in many respects. I'd be curious to know if anyone social scientists have looked into whether or not social media is a kind of emotional accelerant. I'd be willing to bet it is. 

Smokin'!

Simone de Beauvoir was “the prettiest Existentialist you ever saw”, according to the New Yorker in 1947. Her companion, Jean-Paul Sartre was no looker, but he smoked a mean Gauloise.

"Existentialism: Smoky and the bandits," The Economist, Accessed March 25, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21695369-fun-and-philosophy-paris-smokey-and-bandits?frsc=dg%7Ca

Something to Read for the Despot Shout-Downers

To be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, develops the feelings and capacities which have the good of others for their object. But to be restrained in things not affecting their good, by their mere displeasure, develops nothing valuable, except such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint.

[...] 

Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

Mill, John Stuart. "On Individuality, As One of The Elements of Well-Being." In Individualism: A Reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore. Washington, D.C.: Individualism.org a Project of the Cato Institute, 2015.

Too often these days we read of instances, particularly on our college campuses, of groups so certain of the righteousness and correctness of their vision that, by means of obnoxious disruption, they preclude others from speaking. It's a troublesome development and highly illiberal. These are usually, though not always, people of the left. I couldn't help but think of them today while reading chapter three of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty in Individualism: A Reader. Maybe they can rekindle some of their liberal tradition by re-reading Mill. And why should they? Because, as Mill writes, the only way for true progress to flourish is with a system of liberty where all voices are heard. Even those we disagree with because, 

There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life. This cannot well be gainsaid by anybody who does not believe that the world has already attained perfection in all its ways and practices.

Mill, John Stuart. "On Individuality, As One of The Elements of Well-Being." In Individualism: A Reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore. Washington, D.C.: Individualism.org a Project of the Cato Institute, 2015.

His Bugler

“You can always tell when the king is here.”Donald Trump’s longtime butler on his boss. The butler also revealed that Mr Trump wears a red baseball cap if he is in a bad mood, but cheers up if “Hail to the Chief” is played by a bugler as he enters his Mar-a-Lago estate.

"The campaigns: Heard on the trail," The Economist, March19th-25th 2016, Volume 418 Number 8981, 27,  accessed on March 21, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21695086-heard-trail

Smells Like Team Spirit

Teams have become the basic building-blocks of organisations. Recruitment ads routinely call for “team players”. Business schools grade their students in part on their performance in group projects. Office managers knock down walls to encourage team-building. Teams are as old as civilisation, of course: even Jesus had 12 co-workers.

"Schumpeter: Team spirit," The Economist, March 19th-25th 2016, Volume 418 Number 8981, 71, Accessed on March 20, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21694962-managing-them-hard-businesses-are-embracing-idea-working-teams

Worries Over Unintended Consequences of Central Bank Action in Financial Markets

Despite the Bank of Japan’s efforts to push down its currency and jump-start the economy with negative interest rates, the yen is up 8% this year and is at its strongest level against the dollar since October 2014. European central bankers are having similar problems containing the strength of the euro and other currencies.

These difficulties are a reminder that the long stretch of exceptionally low rates in response to the 2008 financial crisis has created market distortions that may be difficult for central bankers to contain.

This disconnect could produce more volatility in financial markets. Even if investors can predict what actions central banks are likely to take, they are having a hard time predicting how markets will react, potentially sparking a pullback from riskier assets, such as emerging markets or commodities.

[...]

A number of government bonds are yielding below zero in places like Japan, the eurozone and Switzerland. Money managers said this has added to concerns that central banks are distorting the normal market function and that investors are finding it difficult to fairly value financial assets.

Analysts said central banks need to pay attention to the unintended fallout on markets and banks from tools such as negative interest rates.

Zeng, Min and Iosebashvili. "Global Currencies Soar, Defying Central Bankers," The Wall Street Journal., Friday, March 18, 2106, A1, Accessed on March 18, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/global-currencies-soar-defying-central-bankers-1458258134

The City Mouse is Better

Cities have long been the most productive places to do business, because they bring firms, customers and workers closer together. A banker in New York is only a taxi ride away from her clients; a new restaurant there immediately has 8.4m potential customers on its doorstep. Where clever people congregate, innovation results.

"Varieties of inequality: The great divergence," The Economist, March 12th-18th 2016, Volume 418 Number 8980, 25, accessed on March 17, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21694356-inequality-between-states-has-risen-most-past-15-years-americas-most-successful-cities. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt on Individuality

Reason cannot desire for man any other condition than that in which each individual not only enjoys the most absolute freedom of developing himself by his own energies, in his perfect individuality, but in which external nature even is left unfashioned by any human agency, but only receives the impress given to it by each individual of himself and his own free will, according to the measure of his wants and instincts, and restricted only by the limits of his powers and his rights. 

From this principle it seems to me, that Reason must never yield aught save what is absolutely required to preserve it. It must therefore be the basis of every political system, and must especially constitute the starting-point of the inquiry which at present claims our attention.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von. "On the Individual Man, And the Highest Ends of His Existence." In Individualism: A Reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, Washington, D.C.: Libertarianism.org a Project of The Cato Institute, 2015.

Memory and Magic in the Early Portions of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend

Blood. In general it came from wounds only after horrible curses and disgusting obscenities had been exchanged. That was the standard procedure. My father, though he seemed to me a good man, hurled continuous insults and threats if someone didn't deserve, as he said, to be on the face of the earth. He especially had it in for Don Achille. He always had something to accuse him of, and sometimes I put my hands over my ears in order not to be too disturbed by his brutal words. When he spoke of him to my mother he called him "your cousin" but my mother denied that blood tie (there was a very distant relationship) and added to the insults. Their anger frightened me, I was frightened above all by the thought that Don Achille might have ears so sensitive that he could hear insults even from far away. I was afraid that he might come and murder them. 

Ferrante, Elena. My Brilliant Friend. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2012, 35.

That's a paragraph from the first book of Elena Ferrante's much lauded Neapolitan Novels. 

Believe the hype. 

So far I'm only about fifty pages deep into the novel and already I love it. This passage comes from a section of the book about childhood and Goldstein's translation expertly captures the evocative melancholy naturally associated with reminiscence on that subject. You can see it here with the narrator's attachment of supernatural qualities to a mysterious neighbor. This kind of piquant mixing of memory and magic is sprinkled throughout this opening section, though not so much as to shift the novel into boring melodrama. I assume that as the narrator grows older she'll begin to make more sense of the world and therefore adopt a more natural narrative style but I hope, through the sepia-toned, soft-focused filter of recollection, at least some hint of this kind of prose remains. 

What Americans Want

Americans want a President they can respect, not one who is a constant source of turmoil.

"Trump and the Protesters," The Wall Street Journal., Monday, March 14, 2016, A18, Accessed on March 14, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-the-protesters-1457909062

Pobrecito Pierre the Pessimist

He suffered from an unlucky faculty - common to many men, especially Russians - the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity of life to be capable of taking a serious part in it. Every sphere of activity was in his eyes connected with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he took up, evil and falsity drove him back again and cut him off from every field of energy.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2002, 612.

What Epictetus Would Tell Rostov

Nikolay Rostov was standing meanwhile at his post waiting for the wolf. He was aware of what must be taking place within the copse from the rush of the pack coming closer and going further away, from the cries of the dogs, whose notes were familiar to him, from the nearness, and then greater remoteness, and sudden raising of the voices of the huntsmen. He knew that there were both young and also old wolves in the enclosure. He knew the hounds had divided into two packs, that in one place they were close on the wolf, and that something had gone wrong. Every second he expected the wolf on his side. He made a thousand different suppositions of how and at what spot the wolf would run out, and how he would set upon it. Hope was succeeded by despair. Several times he prayed to God that the wolf would rush out upon him. He prayed with that feeling of passion and compunction with which men pray in moments of intense emotion due to trivial causes. "Why, what is it to Thee," he said to God, "to do this for me?  I know Thou art great and that it's a sin to pray to Thee to do this, but for God's sake do make the old wolf come out upon me, and make Karay fix his teeth in his throat and finish him before the eyes of 'uncle,' who is looking this way." A thousand times over in that half-hour, with intent, strained, and uneasy eyes Rostov scanned the thickets at the edge of the copse with two scraggy oaks standing up above the undergrowth of aspen, and the ravine with its overhanging bank, and "uncle's" cap peering out from behind a bush on the right. "No, that happiness is not to be," thought Rostov, "yet what would it cost Him!" It's not to be! I'm always unlucky, at cards, in war, and everything!" Austerlitz, Dolohov flashed in distinct but rapid succession through his imagination. "Only once in my life to kill an old wolf; I ask for nothing beyond!" he thought, straining eyes and ears, looking from left to right, and back again, and listening to the slightest fluctuations in the sounds of the dogs. 

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2002, 567. 

War and Peace is my favorite novel. I read it every year. One of the reasons is that it's the most human novel, the novel that best reflects upon the reader, with a simple clarity, the human spirit and condition. In this passage, for instance, we find an all too recognizable encounter one has with the self: that awful stress born of the gap between hope and reality. I find in Rostov's despair something very familiar. I'm also reminded of the stoic remedies offered for situations like this. Epictetus writes that, "The origin of distress is wishing for something that does not come about." Instead of engaging in such distressful desire, Epictetus counsels to, "Seek not for events to happen as you wish but rather for events to happen as they do and your life will go smoothly." 

Eventually Rostov chills out. I think it's in large part because he comes to understand this sentiment. If only we all could.

The One Truths

[T]he endless multiplicity of men's minds . . . leads to no truth ever being seen by two persons alike.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. New York: Random House Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2002 , 492.

Plenteous Tears to Drown the World

All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,/ That I, being governed by the watery moon,/ May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world.

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. New York: Simon & Schuster Folger Shakespeare Library, 1996, 109.

#electioncyclemood

For thou hast made the happy Earth thy hell

Shakespeare, William. Folger Shakespeare Library Richard III. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, 23.

What Junk Indicates

The revival is noteworthy because the junk-bond market is widely watched for clues about the state of the U.S. economy. Companies issuing junk debt have less financial flexibility to weather a downturn than higher-rated firms, often making the performance of their bonds an indicator of broader economic health.

Cherney, Mike and Goldfarb, Sam. "Junk-Bond Rebound Signals Easing Fear," The Wall Street Journal., Tuesday, March 8, 2016, A1, Accessed on March 8, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/junk-bond-rebound-signals-easing-fear-1457395260