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Welcome to the weekend.

Settle down with a cuppa and catch up on some of the best content from our premium syndicators this week.

Happy reading.

Hours after the United States voted, President Trump declared the election a fraud a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.

A New York Times examination explores the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration.

ALSO READ: Key takeaways from Trump's effort to overturn the election Trump's sleight of hand: Shouting fraud, pocketing donors' cash for future

I thought this was going to be a normal interview with Jordan Peterson. After speaking with him at length, and with his daughter for even longer, I no longer have any idea what it is. I don't know if this is a story about drug dependency, or doctors, or Peterson family dynamics or a parable about toxic masculinity. Whatever else it is, it's very strange.

Decca Aitkenhead of The Times talks to the superstar psychologist and his daughter about how he unravelled and their bizarre journey to find a cure.

Dave Grohl has done so much throughout his career drummed for Nirvana, arguably the biggest band of its generation; led Foo Fighters, one of the most successful acts of the past three decades; sold out Wembley Stadium, twice; played on the White House lawn; interviewed the sitting president of the United States; broke his leg during a show and finished the show with the broken leg; entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with another induction likely on the way; recorded with both living Beatles; appeared on The Muppets, also twice that when you ask him what's left, he takes a moment.

Jeremy Gordon of The New York Times talks to Grohl about the band's history and their latest album.

Guy Babcock vividly remembers the chilly Saturday evening when he discovered the stain on his family. It was September 2018. He, his wife and their young son had just returned to their home. Babcock still had his coat on when he got a frantic call from his father.

"I don't want to upset you, but there is some bad stuff on the internet," Babcock recalled his father saying. Someone, somewhere, had written terrible things online about Guy Babcock and his brother, and members of their 86-year-old father's social club had alerted him.

Babcock got off the phone and Googled himself. The results were full of posts on strange sites accusing him of being a thief, a fraudster and a paedophile.

Outrageous lies destroyed his online reputation.

But as The New York Times reports, when he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.

ALSO READ: Here's a way to learn if facial recognition systems used your photos

The Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was smiling as he made his way towards his country's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on the afternoon of October 2, 2018. He was happy. He was in love. He was planning a wedding.

The smile would not have lingered long on Khashoggi's face when he saw who was there to meet him inside the consulate a 15-member hit squad of Saudi government agents. After the Saudis suffocated their victim, a government physician dismembered him with a bone saw in the consulate "media room". His remains have never been found.

Khashoggi's fiance, Hatice Cenzig, talks to Matthew Campbell of The Times about the assassination that shocked the world.

The online trading app Robinhood became a cultural phenomenon and a Silicon Valley darling with a promise to wrest the stock market away from Wall Street's traditional gatekeepers and "let the people trade" making it as easy to put millions of dollars at risk as it is to summon an Uber.

Last week, in the middle of a market frenzy pitting amateur traders against hedge fund bigwigs, that veneer began to chip. As it turned out, Robinhood was at the mercy of the very industry it had vowed to upend.

The New York Times looks at how the highflying startup suddenly became an overwhelmed, creaky company.

ALSO READ: 'Let them trade': Washington struggles with Robinhood politics Robinhood's CEO is in the hot seat Opinion: Can we please stop talking about stocks, please?

In 2015, Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands, decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single, and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor.

She considered conceiving through a fertility clinic, but the cost was prohibitive for her. Instead, she found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for a Child, his name was Jonathan Jacob Meijer.

In 2017, when she decided to conceive again, she reached out once more to Meijer.

Even before then, however, van Ewijk learned some unsettling news. Meijer had fathered at least 102 children in the Netherlands through numerous fertility clinics, a tally that did not include his private donations through websites.

One man, hundreds of children and a burning question: Why?

On May 4, a new cruise ship called the Spirit of Adventure is due to leave the English port of Dover on a maiden voyage like no other.

The vessel's owner, Britain's over-50s holiday and insurance group Saga, is one of the first large businesses to make Covid jabs mandatory for its customers. No one will be allowed on board unless they are fully vaccinated against coronavirus or rather, almost no one.

In a sign of the fraught situation employers around the world face, the shots will be compulsory for passengers but not the ship's crew.

A few companies have introduced 'no jab, no job' policies, but as the Financial Times reports it is unclear if such steps are lawful.

The nearly 426 metre tower at 432 Park Ave., briefly the tallest residential building in the world, was the pinnacle of New York's luxury condo boom half a decade ago, fuelled largely by foreign buyers seeking discretion and big returns.

Six years later, residents of the exclusive tower are now at odds with the developers, and each other, making clear that even multimillion-dollar price tags do not guarantee problem-free living.

The New York Times looks at some of the significant design problems facing the luxury high-rise industry.

The news that Jeff Bezos would step aside as Amazon's chief executive was a surprise, but there were signs it may have been on his mind for some time.

With little sign of a horse race, Andy Jassy, the current head of Amazon's cloud computing division, will step up to be the new chief executive.

Amazon insisted that Bezos, as executive chairman, would only be involved in what it described as "one-way door" decisions, from which there is no turning back.

The Financial Times looks at how investors are reassured by the succession plan.

Officials in Australia moved mountains to make the country's annual professional tennis swing happen.

That will be far more difficult after the tour leaves the isolated, island nation, The New York Times writes.

Go here to read the rest:
77 days of Trump's lies and other premium stories you may have missed this week - New Zealand Herald

In response to your January 25 story Houses Divided, which asks, In the wake of the events of January 6, will the Big Five think twice about publishing conservative authors?, its important to clarify what publishers mean when they say conservative and why it is that your article and the phrase conservative publishing misrepresents exactly what critics take issue with. The fact is, while it may have taken Simon & Schuster a little over 24 hours to change course on its publication of Josh Hawleys forthcoming book The Tyranny of Big Tech, it took exactly seven business days for Regnery Publishing, which coincidentally is distributed by Simon & Schuster, to acquire it.

Hawleys response to his contract cancellation included an accusation of the violation of his First Amendment rights. This is a sentiment echoed by some in the industry, who view the responsibility to publish a wide range of viewpoints as a First Amendment issue. S&S is not the American government or a public institution and therefore does not fall under the protection of the First Amendment.

As cultural institutions, publishing houses certainly have a responsibility to document the many faces of society, including the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump. However, the framing of these viewpoints is an even more daunting task. From an innocent pat on the former presidents head by a late-night television host to the publication of a noted transphobic professor, the output of cultural institutions has an impact on the collective consciousness of American society. When the messenger upholds the dehumanization of Black, Indigenous, racialized, LGBT+, and disability communities, their message can and has led to violence against these communities.

For many years, publishers have been quietly profiting off of this violence and vitriol, all the while systematically excluding those on the receiving end from the publishing world. And even in the last decade when strides have been made, largely led by a new generation of publishing professionals and smaller indie publishers, to be more inclusive of minority communities both in books and offices, these controversial authors have continued to be published under the cloak of conservative presses.

The demise of conservative publishing is being framed as an issue of liberalism v. conservatism or left v. right. This is not only wrong but dangerous rhetoric. Younger industry members are not calling for the halt to reprints of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman or the muzzling of Grover Norquist, for a more contemporary example. Conservative houses and imprints like Regnery are responsible for publishing and giving a platform to a particular brand of conservative: far right and inflammatory.

Grouping the Norquists of conservatism with Josh Hawley, Jordan Peterson, and former president Trump and his administration normalizes the spread of misinformation and harmful stereotypes. It continues to frame the discontent of the critics of these titles as silencing opinions rather than forcing publishers to contend with the actual harm that is done when they give a platform to these writers. Finally, it also builds a readership that publishers are profiting from while turning a blind eye to the culture they have chosen to curate.

Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin Random Houses conservative Sentinel imprint spells it out: Publishing to the opposition presents us with a huge opportunity. That opportunity is profit over people.

Elham Ali and Anita RagunathanECW Press, Toronto

A version of this article appeared in the 02/08/2021 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Letter to the Editor

Read more:
Letter to the Editor: We Need to Define 'Conservative Publishing' - Publishers Weekly

ReadingRoom

Steve Braunias interviews Danyl McLauchlan on philosophy, faith, Richard Dawkins, Plato, Moro bars, the search for meaning, and the parable of the Drowning Child

Wellington writer Danyl McLauchlan is the author of Tranquility and Ruin, a slim, brisk philosophical examination of big questions What is consciousness? What is Being? "Why don't I get hungry at the monastery?" which he approaches with zest and wit throughout his narrative of four essays. Two essays are set in Buddhist monasteries, where he meditates, finds relief from his mental health problems (depression, insomnia), and thinks about the nature and purpose of existence. A third essay is set at a retreat held by the New Zealand branch of Effective Altruists, a worldwide movement which sets out to provide meaningful data that can best answer another of life's big questions, "How do I make the world a better place?" McLauchlan thinks a great deal about why the human race thinks that in the first place. He thinks a great deal about many things and worries he eats too much and in the acknowledgements he thanks, of all people, Matthew Hooton (for introducing him to the ideas of philosopher Derek Parfit); I remember McLauchlan once wrote that Hooton ought not be referred to as a political commentator but as "a National Party operative", and I have faithfully used that description every time I have written about Matthew Hooton, who is a National Party operative. Tranquility and Ruin is a wonderful book of ideas. Its non-fiction narrative is immensely readable. I interviewed the author on a Thursday night, when I conducted a live email interview over three hours.

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Danyl, the first time I met you was at the McDonald's in Manners St. We couldn't shake hands. Your paws were wet with cheese and sauce. I want to mention in this because fast food specifically, Happy Meals figures prominently in Tranquility and Ruin, as a code for the terrible things we do to the world and our reluctance to do anything about it, and as a sign that that the Earth is in sticky, inevitable collapse, and also in its actual state as a food that you like to eat but wish it was otherwise. In fact you go to the ends of the New Zealand earth (a monastery in Stokes Valley, another monastery somewhere at the northern end of the Southern Alps) to get away from it and to think your way through it, not merely because Happy Meals make you fat and unhappy, but also because Happy Meals and much else in the material world are a prison, and perhaps the central quest of your book is the search for freedom and purpose without turning into a religious maniac. When did you last eat McDonald's, and what did it make you think?

I hate to start in a contrarian mode, but I think the first time we met was at a writer's festival in the Wairarapa. You had bought a gigantic box of mushrooms off someone, somehow and were at a loss with what to do with them. I sometimes wonder what happened to them. But yes, the next time we met I was eating a burger. It was actually one of those massive, unmanageable burgers from some gourmet burger place, which is why I had cheese and sauce in my beard and running down my arms. You never get that with the McDonald's burgers. Say what you like about their nutritional quality, but it's very manageable food. The last time I ate at one was Tuesday: the last day of the school holidays. Sadie and I went to Te Papa, with its exorbitant sausage rolls which I refused to buy, and then the central art gallery, where she made me very proud by working out herself that most of the art was terrible and the cafe which is nice but also rather pricey - and then McDonald's, because we were getting tired and cranky with each other and needed to eat. It was good! The right decision. I stand by it.

That giant box of mushrooms! I wonder what happened to them too. Anyway, but when you were at McDonalds, and Im not seeking to shame you for that - as the author of The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road, I look on all fast food as a communal banquet, as the peoples food, as a good thing but when you were chowing down, did you think, Here we go again. I was at peace at the monasteries, or certainly I had glimpses of peace, and progress. But now look. And its not the fact of the burger. Its the prison of the material world its the middle-class life, with our consumerism, as well as our political infatuations and our boring need to cancel people in this Age of Chastisement. Tranquility and Ruin looks to rise above that, doesnt it?

I feel that more acutely when I eat a chocolate bar, which is almost every day, at the moment: the awareness that I'm about to buy and eat something that is basically a low grade poison, that I'm doing so because it's been specifically designed to light up the pleasure centre in my brain, that the pleasure will fade very quickly and I'll feel slightly worse afterwards, and that even though I'm aware of all this I'll do it anyway because I'm just a prisoner of my biology. That does weigh on me. And the frustrating thing is that I do go through periods of life, sometimes six months or a year, when things are good I'm able to approximate the level of self-control and equanimity I get at the monastery, or on retreat. During those times I am legitimately less trapped: I don't eat crap all the time, I lose weight, feel happier. But it isn't sustainable. My natural equilibrium seems to be someone who is somewhat depressed and unhealthy, and who actually needs to work to keep from being very depressed. This is legitimately what runs through my head when I eat a Moro. So yes, the book does talk about how to rise above all that, but doesn't try to pretend that I have succeeded in doing so. There are characters in it who have, at least far more so than me, but they've made some pretty big sacrifices to do so.

I really appreciate that answer and your honesty. There are times in your book when you do the old self-deprecating dance a book falls on your head, that sort of thing, which lightens the mood and makes the reader think, What an adorable chump! All that stuff. But this is a serious book and you go way beyond mere self-deprecation to talking being depressed, being anxious, having insomnia. You alternate between medication, and meditation. Nothing seems to last. There are no easy solutions or answers in this book but thats the point of it, in a way: you write about the need to feel uncertain about things, to have self-doubt. But we live in an age where everyone seems sure of everything and will argue about it to the death. Buddha said, People with opinions just go around bothering each other. Can you expand on what you mean when you write about the need for uncertainty, that uncertainty is essential for progress?

Uncertainty is a major theme in the book and it means slightly different things in different essays. One of them explores this idea that a major function of the brain is to minimise statistical uncertainty about the world, and how it works, and it wonders if depression and anxiety are malfunctions in that process.

I'm not sure how genuine that Buddha quote is, but the Buddhist philosophy that gets referenced in the book argues that our default assumptions about reality just aren't true, and that if you practise Buddhist meditation techniques you'll experience insights that will cause you to update your models of how the mind works, what reality is, yadda yadda yadda. And I don't know if that's true, but my experience is that their techniques are doing SOMETHING very strange and interesting to the mind. So again, in this different way it's worth being uncertain about what we think we know.

The social psychologists tell us overconfidence bias causes a lot of our poor decisions in life, and that we're more also likely to believe overconfident people, and that the more intelligent and educated we are, the harder it is for us to change our minds when we're presented with evidence that we're wrong, because you have access to so many persuasive arguments that you're actually correct, despite the data. So uncertainty is something you need to go out of your way to cultivate.

Uncertainty is also a major theme with the Effective Altruists, who are the subjects of the longest essay. They want to figure out how to do the most good in the world, but they're also very aware that the world is complex, and the human brain is easy to fool, so actually doing good is hard. And they have all these devastating examples of charities or states or philanthropists that set out to do worthy things but didn't think things through, or triggered all these unforeseen consequences and ended up making things much worse for the very vulnerable people they were trying to help. So the Effective Altruists do things like fund deworming projects in the developing world, because they're FAIRLY sure that's a good thing to do. But they're not totally certain: there are some studies that suggest it might not be that effective, they could be doing other stuff like providing anti-malarial bed nets instead. And they debate this and try and figure out if they're wrong and whether they should change their minds and do something else.

And this was fascinating and inspiring to me because it's all so radically different from most contemporary debates about politics or economics or morality, in which participants are hilariously overconfident about very deep, hard, long-running unsolved problems that they can't possibly have the definitive answers to. So the default EA position is that if you're not wondering what you're wrong about, and checking your assumptions and changing your mind about things, you're probably mostly wrong about a lot of important issues.

Great youve introduced the Effective Altruists to our conversation, and I really want to ask you about them and their example. But first, do you remember a few years ago, I commissioned you to write about that total egg Jordan B Peterson? I headlined it, The subtle art of not giving a fuck about Jordan B Peterson. I mention this because the headline was an obvious play on that awful book by Mark Manson and it struck me reading Tranquility and Ruin that an alternate title could be, The Subtle Art of Truly and Effectively Giving a Fuck. The essay on the altruists doesnt come to mock them. It comes to look at their ideas about how to make the world a better place. Many or some of them tithe give 10% of their income to charities. Do you do that? Are you an effective altruist? Come to think of it, are you a Buddhist? Or are you merely a tourist, a wandering essayist with insomnia?

I think that Jordan Peterson review inspired me to delete my Twitter account, because my feed flooded with both Jordan Peterson fans outraged that I'd disparaged the master, and left-wing scolds furious that I hadn't disparaged him enough. And deleting twitter definitely improved my quality of life, so thanks!

I am definitely just a tourist. Like a lot of writers I get deeply obsessed with things, write about them, then move on, maybe picking up bits and pieces as I go. So I donate to Effective Altruism charities, but don't donate 10% of my income. I meditate, but don't think of myself as a Buddhist, although I probably follow all of their precepts against drinking etc, purely because I'm boring and middle-aged. But I don't have a teacher, or a community I practise with. Total tourist.

It's funny: I wrote these essays as part of my masters in creative writing, and some people in the class HATED the Effective Altruists, and wanted the essay to eviscerate them and felt frustrated that it didn't. That's not an uncommon reaction to the EAs, and it's not hard to see why. The movement is both confronting and weird. But I love the weirdness. I love the culture of that movement. I've spent a bit of time around our left-wing political parties, and I don't want to write the parties off, I support them, but the culture of left-wing politics is very toxic, famously so, and the EAs have built such a great culture. I think some people will read that essay and think, "Ugh. These people are weird", while others will read it and go "These EAs are my people and I must be with them," and even if just a handful of readers have that reaction it'll be worth it.

Why did some people in your class hate the EAs? I hate those classmates of yours. I found the EAs inspiring. After reading your book, I got in touch with the EAs and signed up for a free copy of their book Doing Good Better. Because I want to do better. Buddha said, "Give, even if you only have a little." I want to save the Drowning Child. Thats a kind of thought experiment in your book: its an idea by Peter Singer, and it goes something like this: You walk along the street and see a drowning child. Do you save them? Of course you do, but in reality youre not: the world is full of children whose lives depend on you, but instead of giving to charities, you squander your money on coffee, on the mortgage, a nice holiday etc. But for Drowning Child, you could also say, Climate Change. Were not doing enough. Were not doing anything. Your book isnt an exhortation to do something, but dont you honestly want to do all you can, Danyl? But instead, there you are, chanting in monasteries! What good does that do?

There is a great book by Larissa Macfarquhar called Strangers Drowning, and it's about Singer's thought experiment and people who try to live out the implications, which is that you give absolutely everything you possibly can to effective charities. The EAs refer to them as extreme altruists. And some people do live these very saintly lives, but man it looks hard. The EAs actually discourage people from trying to live like that because the risk of burnout is high. It's more effective to give moderately over time than it is to overdo it and then give up. And that seems like a happy compromise to make with the drowning child argument.

Why do people hate the EAs? I think part of it is that there's this popular idea that being a good person is having the right opinions, and consuming the right cultural and media products. Hating Trump and reading all the right books, and the Guardian, and so on. And you can be very invested in that but then the EAs come along and say 'Actually none of that has any moral value. You have to be giving your money away to people living in absolute poverty.' You can see why people find that annoying.

Climate change is hard. Two of the frameworks the EAs have for deciding which problems to work on are tractability and neglectedness. How easy is the problem, and how neglected is it? Climate is very hard, and lots of smart people are working on it, so it's difficult to make a big difference because it's not neglected. One of my oldest friends is James Shaw, who is currently the Minister of Climate Change, and once a year or so have lunch with him and pester him with questions about why hasn't X or Y happened, and where is the government on Z, and he's like: "Yep. Here are all the problems with X and here's how we're fixing them. Here's why Y is hard. Here's why we can't do Z so we're doing something else." It's not like he's unaware of the urgency or scale of the problem. So one of the EA charities I donate to buys up land in rainforests and places it in trust for the indigenous people of the region, preventing it from being chopped down, and that seems more effective than just about anything I could do in New Zealand.

And I just want to clarify that I don't spend a huge amount of time chanting in monasteries. They make you chant in that one place I stayed at, but it's not a regular hobby.

I don't spend a huge amount of time chanting in monasteries, fumes author. Now this segues very neatly to a discussion on the search for meaning in a secular world, for non-religious morality, as I think philosopher Derek Parfit puts it. Now this is difficult isnt it. You write about Platos concept of the noble lie, in which for a long, long time we fooled ourselves there is a God, so that society can better flourish. Tranquility and Ruin is suspicious of faith, but you talk about Heideggers idea that science only goes so far in explaining the world, and that there are things outside rationality. And yet the search for meaning in the 20th century was so often the road to ruin alternate faiths, like Scientology, or alternate societies, like Centrepoint. What do you think? Is there an intellectual case for religious faith?

That's quite the sprawling question. Let me try and answer it biographically. Back in my twenties when I was studying biology the 'new atheists' were a big thing: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. And I got really invested in that and read all their books and was convinced that religious people were gullible suckers, and that religion was the cause of most of the problems in the world, and that scientific rationalism was the one true way of knowing anything. And some of that just kind of fell away as I got older. I met people who were religious and realised they were smart, and that their faith was a very meaningful part of their lives. I found out that there was a long and fascinating philosophical debate about exactly these questions, which none of the new atheists seemed to know anything about, and I now mostly feel embarrassed for them. And I'm still an atheist, but one who is way less confident about issues like faith and the infallibility of science.

Derek Parfit's project as a philosopher is to figure out a non religious morality. Back in the 19th century Nietzsche pointed out that modern societies all had moral values based on the assumption that God, or some other supernatural entities existed and wanted us to be moral and would punish us if we weren't. Moderns don't believe in God anymore - at least most of us don't - but we all kept following religious moralities, so what exactly were we doing? Parfit, who only died a few years ago, tried to work out a rational reason to be good that doesn't involve God or an afterlife. And he never quite got there, but he made a lot of fascinating arguments along the way. And because he's interested in building a rational morality, the Effective Altruists are super interested in him and his ideas.

Martin Heidegger is almost the antithesis to Parfit. Parfit and the EAs believe that reality is complex and rationalism is the way you understand it objectively and make good decisions. Heidegger pushes against that. He argues that reason and scientific rationalism are very artificial, very constructed ways of seeing the world, and that they contain assumptions that cannot be proved, and cannot answer the most important questions we have about existence. Science and rationalism 'conceal as much as they reveal', and the world they reveal is too impoverished for us to live in. For him a life in which I'm degrading the natural world to run around joylessly consuming chocolate bars and happy meals to compulsively spark little serotonin bursts in my brain is the logical consequence of the scientific worldview. So his goal is to try and build an alternate way of being in the world and knowing about the world which leads to a more profound and meaningful existence. And the fact that he joined the national socialist party and became a massive Nazi is something of a problem for the credibility of his project.

But the Buddhists have 2,500 years of a contemplative tradition that teaches that you can't understand existence rationally, you can only undertake these practises that reveal the true nature of existence to you at an experiential level. Which seems like a Heideggerian project that doesn't lead directly to death camps, so I thought that was an interesting connection to make. The Buddhist stuff I tend to read is a modern, secular interpretation of Buddhism but the monastery I stayed at is very much a religious institution. And, contra Dawkins et al, the monks and laypeople are definitely not gullible suckers. They just don't like the secular world, think the way the rest of us live is absurd, and have found an alternative that they find far more meaningful. The faith functions as a way to bind the community together. It doesn't work if they don't have faith. So for them there's an incredibly compelling case for faith.

Id like to end the interview with as much existential despair as possible. You write about the selfish gene theory of Richard Dawkins, how he posits that the human race are merely survival machinesrobot vehicles; we host genes, who drive us, and whose only function and purpose is to replicate each other. God, free will, fate and all of that are just illusions. Your book talks about readers who write to Dawkins in a state of great distress, wishing they could unread this, because its so profoundly upsetting. What do you think about it? Is life essentially pointless, Danyl?

It's fashionable to dunk on Richard Dawkins, so I do want to emphasise that I think he's a great science writer. And The Selfish Gene is a very good book. But . . . I mean he's exactly the sort of intellectual Nietzsche was making fun of all those years ago. He's supposed to be this super-rational super atheist, but the assumptions of his world view, that humans are exceptional, that we're exempt from all the implications of his book because we're rational and have agency are basically religious. It's what people believed when they thought humans had souls and were created by a divine being who endowed us with innate dignity and free will, but if you don't believe that, how does any of the rest of the worldview make sense?

If you don't believe in God and you do believe in scientific rationalism you are stuck with the implication that we're just survival vehicles for genes to keep copying themselves, and there's no actual point to our existence. You have a couple of strategies there: you can just not worry about it, which works unless suddenly it doesn't. You can adopt Parfit's approach of trying to figure out a rational way of living a meaningful life, and that can take you to some challenging and weird places, as the EAs show.

Or you can listen to Heidegger, who will point out that Dawkins, and scientists in general can't explain how consciousness evolved, or how material bodies constructed by genes possess it. They can't explain why the material world exists or has the properties that it does. Those are pretty big gaps in the worldview. So maybe there is some point to it all in there, somewhere, and even if we spend most of our lives drifting around in a state of oblivion, eating junk food and never thinking about any of this, there's still a space for it all to mean something.

Tranquility and Ruin by Danyl McLauchlan (Victoria University Press, $30) is available in bookstores nationwide.

See the rest here:
Danyl McLauchlan and the meaning of life - Newsroom

FOMO or Fear of Missing Out has been blamed for many of the extraordinary moves weve seen in markets. As investors watch from the sidelines while others make fortunes, it becomes too tempting not to join in.

Get the entire 10-part series on Warren Buffett in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues

Q4 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more

Ben Graham often wrote of irrational market moves like this, when The investors greatest enemy turns out to be himself. He defined the difference between speculation and investment, but admitted that speculation is often more fun!

Black Bear Value Fund performance update for the month ended January 31, 2021. Q4 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Dear Partners and Friends, Black Bear Value Fund, LP (the Fund) returned +1.1%, net, in January. The HFRI returned +0.7% in January. The S&P 500 returned -1.0% in January. Statements should be arriving by Read More

At times like these, there are some really important things to remember for investors who intend to thrive and survive over the long term.

Ben Graham read Classics and loved the Greek myths. His all-time hero was the wily adventurer, Ulysses. On his return voyage from Troy, Ulysses had to pass the Isle of the Sirens. The Sirens were beautiful mermaids, who would sing at passing sailors. Their singing was so seductive that sailors could not help turning their ships or swimming towards the island, where they would be dashed on the rocks and drowned.

To avoid this fate, Ulysses crew put wax in their ears so they could not hear the Sirens. Ulysses had himself lashed tightly to the mast, so when he heard the singing, he could not free himself and swim to his death.

In his book, Maps of Meaning, psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson explains that, even in their day, ancient myths were never viewed as accurate accounts of history or scientific explanation. Instead, they served as stories to teach people and communities how to act: and that is how ancient peoples used them, following the examples of their heroes.

Graham viewed them in much the same way. He used the example of Ulysses as a lesson for investors.

Ulysses is ultimately a tale of FOMO. In spite of his greatness, Ulysses knows he will not be able to resist the temptation, unless he prepares himself in advance with some sort of restraint.

Like Ulysses, investors need to plan in advance if they want to avoid being seduced and wrecked by FOMO.

The answer lies in having some simple and time-tested rules to protect yourself. These should be:

Perhaps the best exemplar of simple rules was Walter Schloss. Walter Schloss was a student of Ben Graham and a friend of Warren Buffett. He never went to college and shunned computers and complicated models. He worked on his own out of a tiny office. Over 50 years his partnership out-performed the S&P500 by over 8% per annum! His clients were a small bunch of wealthy families, many of whom stayed with him over his entire career, with their holdings passing down to children and grandchildren.

When asked to explain his approach, Schloss came up with this:

A single A4 typewritten page of one-line rules hed mostly picked up from Ben Grahams night class. It wasnt particularly original or surprising, and it certainly wasnt complicated. What mattered was that Schloss had his simple rules, they were sensible, and he stuck to them.

Shortly before Walter Schloss retired, he published a list of all the stocks he had owned over his 50-year career.[i]

As you might expect for a consistent deep value investor, there were plenty of heavy industry stocks. But there were also plenty of tech and media stocks, consumer staples, telecoms, banks, insurers, restaurant franchises, healthcare... in fact practically everything was on Walters list!

The point Schloss was making was that, over time, every stock and every industry had, at one time or another become a deep value stock that met his stringent criteria. He hadnt needed to chase any of them, they all came to him. At some point, they all ended up in the bargain basement. FOMO is just an illusion.

Now, fifty years might sound like a long time; but for the average saver starting out in their 20s or 30s, that is exactly the sort of timeframe they will be investing for. For charities and endowment funds, it is of course far longer. And, the good news is, with that sort of horizon, you get to buy everything dirt cheap, on your terms.

A simple solution borrowed from psychology, is to write a postcard to your future self.

It is simply a few lines on how you expect yourself to behave as an investor.

Then put it in your desk drawer and look at it regularly, to remind yourself what you stand for, and see how youre measuring up.

The idea behind the postcard is to give you something consistent to measure yourself against. We know that markets can go wild in both directions. Further, the internet is full of people who claim to have made easy fortunes, most of which are, at best, exaggerated. So, instead of measuring yourself against the market or others, find some simple, timeless rules and principles you can always check yourself against.

Warren Buffett calls this your Inner Scorecard. As Mohnish Pabrai recounts from his lunch with Buffett:

He said, look - you can live your life in two ways. You can grade yourself based on what you think the world thinks of you - an outer scorecard, or you can grade yourself internally - an inner scorecard. He said, Would you rather be the greatest lover in the world, and have the world think that you were the worst, or the worst lover in the world, and have the world think that you were the greatest?. He said that if you know how to answer that question, then life becomes pretty easy.[ii]

On several occasions, Warren Buffett has linked the market cap of the US stock market to US GDP as a handy rule of thumb for determining if the market is overvalued or not.[iii]

Currently US equities are at a record high of 190% of GDP. The long-run average has been just shy of 100% of GDP, with a low of 32% in the early 80s. That suggests the US market is about 50% overvalued.

Intuitively, the reasoning here is sound. Broadly, company profits grow with the economy. Another way to look at it is that when the stock market goes up, it creates paper wealth. However, if the economy is not growing at the same rate, there is not the real wealth (i.e. goods and services) to back up the paper wealth being created. So, one way or another, that paper wealth has to be destroyed. Most of those who have it will never get to spend it. It has to be this way.

We have seen this time and again through history: the South Sea bubble, the Mississippi bubble, the Japanese bubble, the TMT bubble, the real estate bubble. In all these cases, the world was full of loud mouths showing off their newly made fortunes and boasting how easy it was. Very few kept them. It has to be this way.

To put it another way, the stock market is normally a winners game, where the average investor is likely, over time, to come away with more than they put in. However, at points of speculative excess and overvaluation, it becomes a losers game, where the majority of investors will suffer major losses.

Stepping aside from speculative phases or speculative securities means missing out on an emotional rollercoaster, financial pain, and the real bargains that are left behind long after the bubble pops.

Charlie Munger famously quipped, Its remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by tryingto beconsistentlynot stupid, instead of tryingto bevery intelligent.

The risk is that were all prone to stupidity sometimes, and particularly when things are going well. It is at moments of triumph that we are most prone to throwing the rulebook out the window, and doing something dumb.

A perfect example of this is the recent short squeeze in heavily shorted stocks such as GameStop. In a matter of weeks, this has cost many short sellers and hedge funds their careers, their reputations and their fortunes.

It is a cardinal rule of short-selling that you never short a stock much above 15%. The reason is simple: When short interest gets much higher than this, it can get very hard to find enough stock to close out the short, triggering a short squeeze. If a short cannot buy enough stock, they can lose everything. This is a simple rule that has been around forever. It is there to prevent precisely this sort of thing.

What is remarkable is that many of the stocks involved had short interests of over 60 or 70%! Not only that, some of them, such as Bed, Bath and Beyond, are buying back their shares at the same time. How could so many experienced and reputable short sellers be so dumb?!

The answer lies in the fact that 2020 was such an amazing year for short sellers and hedge funds. Being long momentum (e.g. tech) and short stocks that had already done badly (e.g. retail) was a popular strategy and it paid off big as Covid struck round the world.

Drunk on their success, flush with cash and keen not to miss out on the next leg, the shorts completely forgot those simple, time-tested rules. Its at those very moments they matter the most.

The GameStop debacle also reminds us of something else about FOMO. Bubbles normally have a good reason for happening; such as a new technology, new markets or new methods of financing. There is a fundamental truth behind them; just as shorting traditional retailers in early 2020 made complete sense. Thats what makes them so alluring. What kills bubbles is not a flawed idea, but an idea that runs too far. Its that combination of overvaluation, overinvestment, and mis-execution that sets up the disaster.

During the roaring 20s, Ben Graham was a rising star of the investment scene.

He had come from a poor family and was keen to enjoy his newfound wealth. He spent lavishly, with fine furniture, servants, and a long lease on a fancy New York apartment. His clients too had sky high expectations.

When the Great Depression struck, Graham lost a lot of money, he struggled to meet his bills and he and his family faced financial uncertainty every day. His clients also suffered, making his work a constant battle and a burden.

As his friends attested, Ben Grahams experiences during the depression psychologically scarred him and led to more cautious approaches later on. Years later, Graham reflected that his luxurious new lifestyle did not make him any happier at the time, and brought only misery later on.

With runaway stock markets just like the roaring 20s, it is perhaps worth remembering a few things:

Putting all this together, it probably means that if youre making annualised returns much above 5% or 6% at the moment, it is probably not sustainable.

As Ben Graham and many others have discovered, a newly lavish lifestyle wont make you happy, but it could make you miserable and you could regret it.

Keep it real. Firmly and honestly manage expectations for yourself and your clients. Dont change your lifestyle much. Squirrel a bit away, reduce your liabilities, and maybe diversify a bit more, even if that means missing out a little.

At company and stock market level, FOMO is an illusion. The vast majority of those involved will eventually see paper profits end up as real losses. It has to be this way.

Like Ulysses, protect yourself from yourself. Dont believe you are able resist market manias: Speculation buys up the intelligence of those involved.

So prepare in advance with a handful of simple, timeless rules and principles you believe in. Write those rules down, and measure yourself against them, not against markets.

When things are going really well, double-check youre sticking to those sensible rules this is when they matter most. Be honest about what is sustainable, keep it real and dont let your lifestyle get ahead of you.

About the Author

Andrew Hunt is a global deep value investor and author of Better Value Investing: A Simple Guide to Improving your Results as a Value Investor.

End notes

[i] schloss+-+list+of+stocks+-+january+2007.pdf (squarespace.com)

[ii] Mohnish Pabrai's Advice For Value Investors (forbes.com)

[iii] Market Cap to GDP: An Updated Look at the Buffett Valuation Indicator - dshort - Advisor Perspectives

[iv] Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2020 (credit-suisse.com)

[v] Hiring Good Managers is Hard pdf (researchaffiliates.com)

[vi] See e.g. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21569397-art-picking-mutual-funds-best-worst-and-ugly, and http://uk.businessinsider.com/performance-persistance-of-top-equity-mutual-funds-2015-6?r=US&IR=T.

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Ben Graham Was Obsessed With FOMO - ValueWalk

Ferris State's Deng Reng (1) leads the charge down the court. (Pioneer photo/John Raffel)

Ferris State's Deng Reng (1) leads the charge down the court. (Pioneer photo/John Raffel)

Ferris State's Deng Reng (1) leads the charge down the court. (Pioneer photo/John Raffel)

Ferris State's Deng Reng (1) leads the charge down the court. (Pioneer photo/John Raffel)

Down to the wire: Ferris men edge Grand Valley

BIG RAPIDS It went down to the wire, but Ferris States mens basketball team did enough to pull out a 68-65

Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win against Grand Valley State at Wink Arena on Friday.

Walt Kelser had 20 points and four rebounds while Michael Peterson added 19 points and seven boards to lead Ferris (6-4. 7-6) to its third straight win.

Ferris built a 37-27 halftime lead. The Bulldogs were 13-of-29 from the floor for 44.8 percent while Grand Valley was 12 of 26 for 46.2 percent.

Michael Peterson was 5-of-8 from the floor and scored 14 points in the first half.

Deng Reng hit a 3-pointer and a field goal for an early 11-6 Bulldog lead.

Kelser scored for a 30-20 lead late in the half and sank a 3-pointer with 51 seconds to go for a 35-25 lead.

Kelser scored a 3-pointer off the glass to beat the shot clock and open the second half. Petersons 3-pointer made it 47-33 with 14:50. Mason Plines dunk at 12:17 put Ferris up 49-38. He hit two free throws with 10:17 to play for a 51-41 lead. Jordan Harris connected for Grand Valley to make it 51-45.

Petersons offensive rebound and putback at 6:55 made it 57-48. Jimmy Schollers 3-pointer made it 60-50.

Kelser scored for a 63-54 lead with 4:30 to go.

Harris 3-point play made it 63-59. Vejas Grazulis followed with a hoop for Ferris.

The Lakers hung tight and narrowed it to 65-63 with a minute to go on Jake Van Tubbergens basket. Kelser hit a free throw with 33 seconds to go. Christian Negron scored for a 66-65 game, but Reng hit two free throws with 15 seconds to go to make it 68-65. Jordans 3-point try was blocked but the Lakers got the inbounds underneath the basket with 3.7 seconds to go. They called another time out when they couldnt make the inbounds pass. Jordans 3-point try failed with a second to play and Ferris secured the win.

At the end they were a little more physical and getting to the free-throw line, FSU coach Andy Bronkema said. They were really pounding us on the glass. We hung on and made just enough free-throws. Kelser put up another 20 with all eyes on him. It was fun to see Grazulis battle. We have to do it again tomorrow. Well have to flip the page quick and see what we can learn.

Van Tubbergen had 19 points and nine rebounds for Grand Valley (4-4, 4-4).

We have figured out how to play hard and how to bring the energy, Bronkema said. Thats what we did again today for three wins in a row. We got beat up bad against Lake State as far as energy wise and hustle. Win or lose, you dont want to do that. Three games in a row, weve had it. I dont want to be outrebounded by 10 by anybody. Thats the game within the game.

Also scoring for Ferris were Pline (6), Reng (6), Grazulis (6), Scholler (3), Jeremiah Washington (3) and Logan Ryan (2).

Were used to packed gymnasiums for this rivalry, Bronkema said. Its unfortunate the guys dont get to experience that this year but yet its fortunate were playing. Were happy were playing.

Grand Valley had a 35-25 rebounding advantage. Ferris was 23-of-55 from the floor and 10-of-26 in triples. GV was 25-of-50 from the floor and 2-of-17 in 3-pointers.

There was a lot of energy on both sides, Bronkema said. That makes it fun.

The two teams play today at Wink Arena, with tipoff time at 3 p.m.

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Down to the wire: Ferris men edge Grand Valley - The Pioneer