Our mediated cultural transition from sadness to generalized anger to focused anger at specific people and institutions of the Other Party is an entirely intentional effort by Big Politics, Big Tech and Big Media.
This is the Great Ravine, and it’s all going to get much worse before it gets any better.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
The thing about the Common Knowledge Game is that once it breaks, you can’t put it back together again. It’s over, people. This only gets worse. You can’t “reassure” voters and donors after we all saw what we all saw. pic.twitter.com/fAG8ARAASQ
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) June 30, 2024
California's new $20 min wage law exempts restaurants that bake and sell bread, where bread is defined to exclude bagels and croissants. Only benefits Panera. Newsom mega-donor owns >24 Paneras. Newsom says "part of legislative sausage-making". https://t.co/8xvHPQQ3CD
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) February 28, 2024
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Palate cleanser ...
The McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies is up and running at Vanderbilt, thanks to a $5m gift from Epsilon Theory pack members!
Already doing some really cool work on the TV News Archive at Vandy!https://t.co/0DMryw49uR
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) February 26, 2024
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
CNN just described the people attending the political ceremony marking Gen Qasem Soleimani’s death as “pilgrims”.
I understand why the theo-fascist generals running Iran use this loaded language. I don’t understand why CNN copies them.
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) January 3, 2024
There has been a lot of concern about how the regulation of ChatGPT and LLMs will play out
In our latest episode of Breaking News, I asked @EpsilonTheory if it is warranted.
He reminded me that the ship isn't turning around at this point.
Full episode:https://t.co/f6VjaABCOA pic.twitter.com/0JY2s1wvIn
— Jack Forehand (@practicalquant) December 18, 2023
The most important and informative thread you will read this week. Promise. https://t.co/gLRXPLmy3l
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) November 16, 2023
I think what many Americans are missing is that Hamas has been fighting a Total War with Israel for decades, and since Oct. 7 Israel is fighting a Total War back. There are no ceasefires and no negotiations in Total War, just an existential fight to the end.
Full episode below. pic.twitter.com/rufC4bn64z
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) November 11, 2023
A fantastic conversation with @howardlindzon!
This is the Great Unmooring, and we are entering the Great Ravine. https://t.co/nPE5kEhDW9
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) November 5, 2023
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Would be poetic if the SDNY prosecuted this murder. pic.twitter.com/gZOgvyE1qL
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) November 3, 2023
Man, those internal Michigan polls must be brutal. https://t.co/GsuIgydRZq
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) November 2, 2023
If you don’t see that there is an intentional effort by China and Russia to astroturf pro-Palestine protests in the West, you’re just not paying attention. https://t.co/NtajhkPPeW
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) October 31, 2023
What’s happening right now in the art world is also exactly what’s happening in the Democratic Party. And what already happened in the Republican Party. These are schisms that cannot be fixed. https://t.co/xS1CWTrtzI
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) October 28, 2023
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
With nominal US growth of 8%+ after the fastest, severest rate hike program ever ... if you don't see that the Fed's monetary policy models are completely broken, then you're just not paying attention.https://t.co/AaImC021a1
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) October 26, 2023
The widening gyre is political polarization, presided over by the Beast of Big Politics, Big Tech and Big Media.
Why can’t we see the Beast? Because common knowledge.
Because everyone knows that everyone knows that the enemy of America is not the Beast of the widening gyre, but the Other Party.
Polarization often isn’t an accident. It is the result of intentional narrative construction – constructions designed to make us believe that we are sane and unfairly judged, and that our opponents are insane and hypocritical.
Understanding how to recognize and respond to these constructions in the wild is now an indispensable skill of the citizen.
The outcomes of NFL games are inordinately influenced by officials relative to other sports. This is not new. The narrative environment faced by the NFL in 2021, however, IS new.
I’m not sure they’re ready for it.
When a famous person shakes his or her finger at you, they’re not telling you a fact.
They’re telling you how to think about a fact.
Called It - Election Edition
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
Office Hours – 9.15.2020
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…
The Projection Racket, Pt. 1
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.
Mailbag – Lucifer’s Hammer Edition
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!
Invisible Threads: Matrix Edition
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.
A Society of Tinkerers
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.
The Game of Tesla
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.
The Cartoon Put
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.
Lucifer’s Hammer
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.
Webinar on Security Analysis Narrative Monitor
We think we can identify the periods where market participants are primarily focused on either multiples, fundamentals, or technicals in the way they talk and think about investing.
Each of these narrative regimes – multiples-focused, fundamentals-focused, and technicals-focused – generates a powerful signal of subsequent market dispersion (cross-sectional volatility) and subsequent market performance.
Cheesing
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.
Sacrifice for Thee, Vast Wealth for Me
Doug Parker, American Airlines CEO and Chairman of the Board, wrote a letter to his employees today that pretty much defines high-functioning sociopathy.
I’m going to reprint excerpts from that letter – which is couched in the saccharine vocabulary of modern team-speak, but is in truth a shakedown letter to employees and a ransom note to the US government – and then I’m going to tell you a few things about Doug.
The Fujiwhara Effect
Citizens must be capable of holding multiple ideas in their heads at once.
We can believe that the aims and intents of political powers are not equal while also focusing explicitly on the misuse of the tools of narrative to manipulative the populace by BOTH.
Facebook Delenda Est
More than any other company, Facebook is undermining our democracy and our most integral political rights.
More than any other company, Facebook has bought and paid for political cover at the highest levels of American, Indian and European government, political cover that prevents any of the actions we might take as a society to rid ourselves of this cancer.
Facebook delenda est.
Why Publish Academic Research?
There are many institutional gatekeepers. There are many powerful guilds and socially embedded practices that seek to limit our voices and ideas. Are academic journals the worst of these? Not by a long shot. But they ARE one of these.
This is how we change the world. This is how we unleash our voices and ideas. Not by attacking these institutional gatekeepers from the top-down with yet another institutional gatekeeper, but by making the institutional gatekeeper irrelevant through our bottom-up, decentralized actions.
“Rebalance Timing Luck: The Dumb (Timing) Luck of Smart Beta” by Hoffstein, Faber and Braun
Hoffstein, Faber and Braun construct long-only indices that provide exposures to popular U.S. equity factors (value, size, momentum, quality, and low volatility) and vary their rebalance schedules to isolate the effects of “rebalance timing luck.”
Their results suggest substantial problems for analyzing any investment when the strategy, its peer group, or its benchmark is susceptible to performance impacts driven by the choice of rebalance schedule.
Carny Barkers
In the age of capital markets as carny show, we are told by barkers like Cramer that this is what a smart investor or management team does … they should look to the grift du jour for their edge.
Can’t Fight This Feeling
No, I don’t think there’s a bubble. No, I don’t think a crash is coming. But when Mark Cuban says this reminds him of 1999 and 2000, he’s right.
And the reason worries me more than either of those things.
The Grifters, Chapter 2 – N95 Masks
I don’t think I have the words to communicate just how screwed up our PPE distribution system is in this country, or what a profound betrayal it is for our government to support this perverse system of personal greed and corporate ambivalence in exchange for campaign soundbites and photo ops.
But I’m gonna try.
Office Hours – 8.13.2020
It’s the August 11th…I mean, August 13th edition of Office Hours, an interactive livestream in which Ben and Rusty discuss all things narrative in the world today.
Get Me Tools and a Beer!
There is nothing wrong with wanting the US to bring back certain critical manufacturing industries to its shores.
But don’t buy the narrative that a crazy scheme like the Kodak grift is the only way to make it happen.