All Epsilon Theory Content
Everything we have published at Epsilon Theory since 2013, an archive of more than 1,000 evergreen notes.
2020 has awakened us to the Black Days constructed while we slept.
Now we act, and not just to avoid the worst excesses of the Trumpist clownshow or the Socialist lunacies.
Now we change the entire freakin’ world.
For ourselves, yes. For our children, even more.
One day we will recognize the defining Zeitgeist of the post-GFC Obama/Trump years for what it is: an unparalleled transfer of wealth to the managerial class.
This Wall Street Journal article is not an attack on that system. It is a defense. It is telling you that the system is fine … we just need to do something about these bad apple CEOs.
It is a literal golden age for CEOs whose talent is the creation and propagation of narratives.
Why? Because it works. And it works because we have accepted a financial and business media that has been redesigned into a cheering section.
This is a short-form summary of our long-form note The Projection Racket (Part 2), located here. While it attempts to present the most accurate picture…
The Projection Rackets will say that the solution to two-party dominance and the erosion of political self-determination is, like everything else, is to vote. Express yourself! Don’t you believe in democracy?
They are wrong. We, the people, CAN fix this. And if we want it enough, we will.
Yesterday, 5 GOP Senators wrote a letter to Netflix, saying that their plan to adapt Liu Cixin’s “The Three Body Problem” for TV/film amounted to “complicity” with the CCP and their horrific mistreatment of the Uyghurs.
Why am I reading this NOW?
Jonathan Plotkin is a longtime ET reader and brilliant cartoonist. For years he’s been sending Ben illustrations inspired by our notes and we’ve been dying…
It may be a brave new world of Davey Day Trader, but it’s not enough to convince yours truly to drink Huxley’s soma. Or the Fed’s SOMA (System Open Market Account).
The closing of the American mind is evolving into its next stage: the welding shut of the American mind.
What’s the difference between closing and welding shut? A closed door can be opened. A welded shut door cannot. We can’t save the minds already lost. We can only prevent our OWN minds from being welded shut.
And we can. Together.
My RBG story …
I thought she’d be all about women’s rights and legal theory this and legal theory that. I was SO wrong.
RBG’s death is an enormous loss for the UNITED States of America.
The go-to move by sophists like Vox and Trump is to claim that “many people” are asserting their made-up premise that justifies an otherwise ludicrous position.
Why do they do this? Because it works.
Why does it work? Because Common Knowledge game. Because of the power of the crowd watching the crowd.
In today’s episode, it’s all about BITFD and the almost hilarious extremes to which The Long Now has infected our financial world. Don’t forget to…
Some of us are uncomfortable with BITFD, and that’s OK. Small-c conservatives should be uncomfortable. Small-l liberals should be uncomfortable.
They should also get on board.
This is a series about why.
It’s been a full year since I wrote my last Mailbag note, which is kinda pathetic.
Well, better late than never. Reader comments and emails following our publication of Lucifer’s Hammer have been amazing, and it would be a disservice to the Pack if I didn’t collect some of them here. Enjoy!
I’m not saying that we all have to become volatility traders to survive in the market jungle today, any more than we all have to become game theorists to avoid being the sucker at the Fed’s communication policy table.
But if you’re a traditional investor whose sandbox includes big markets like the S&P 500, then you’re only disadvantaging yourself by ignoring this stuff.
We don’t need more minimally viable products.
We need more maximally viable organizations attacking big problems with a tinkerer’s mindset and a capitalist’s goals.
Guest post by Luis Perez-Breva, faculty director at MIT Innovation Teams.
Recent price action in Tesla is the Common Knowledge Game in action.
It is the power of the crowd watching the crowd. It is the power of – not what you think is true, and not what you think the crowd thinks is true – but of what the crowd thinks the crowd thinks is true.
Seeing cartoons made from data doesn’t give us license to ignore the underlying feature of the world being measured – it gives us a duty to cut through the abstractions obscuring that feature of the world.
There’s a comet speeding our way, a comet of endemic urban violence.
And for so many people – especially young men with the voice of Ego now shouting in their heads as the whispers are turned up to 11 by the amps of political party and social media – they think that post-apocalyptic world sounds just dandy.
In a world awash with cheesing, being lawful good doesn’t mean being lawful stupid.
But for God’s sake, don’t lose your soul in the process.