Tuesday, February 19, 2008

why some people believe in god...

Even if its a long shot, if anyone has your number it would be god. What could you lose by buttering the old guy up a little? We all understand the psychological observation that risk/benefit perceptions determine our behavior but with the following bias: a really terrible outcome that has a remote chance of occurring gets more weight than a mild adversity that is much more likely. The strength of that bias is much greater in the conservative mind but everyone makes that mistake to some degree. In fact the coldly rational risk takers, who have studied and overcome the bias in some area of endeavor, are the ones that seem crazy and audacious to the rest of us...but reap the great rewards. The markets in commodities, stocks and other financial instruments are full of these creatures, playing until their number is up.

And some people believe in political economics...
A dissection of that life expectancy table into socioeconomic, occupational and racial subgroups would produce numbers painfully diverging from the average depicted in the table. Why did you vote republican? Why did you vote fundamentalist? Do I have to draw you a picture? The main use of crosses, need I remind you, is to mark where the bodies are buried.

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