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Wasn’t tbe Tulip Bubble the original bubble?

Well they did disrupt the market, albeit at the cost of looking over their shoulder for the rest of their life. lol =3

... and funny too. A great book!

Yes a lot of it was based on anti tulip propaganda pamphlets that circulated at the time, and survived more because they were more interesting due to the exaggerated stories.

>Peter Garber argues that the trade in common bulbs "was no more than a meaningless winter drinking game, played by a plague-ridden population that made use of the vibrant tulip market."

So basically, it was the GameStop of the 1630s. Humans never change.

This is why my favorite book is Thinking, Fast & Slow. It blew my mind and totally made me think about almost everything differently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

This is a common takeaway from Intro to Psychology but unfortunately it's just...not very true to life (or to psychological science).

It's a fault of us psychologists. The most interesting studies are those that are surprising, so that's what psychology classes are packed with. But we should know better, because that's just selection bias in action. Historically, this has led to intro courses consisting of 50%+ irreproducible studies.

But even after the reproducibility crisis cleanup, the selection bias still remains in place. There aren't a ton of fun studies about the typical accuracy of perception or how humans are often quite thinking and rational.

Human beings are rational animals as such, but our exercise of that rationality can be quite weak and subject to character flaws and bad habits, and requires cultivation to refine, purify, and actualize.

Of course, we also must be careful here because you're using your own faculties to judge the content of the psychology class (as were the psychologists who produces the content you were learning). Skepticism falls into special pleading, because in order to take a skeptical stance toward the human intellect as such, one must somehow transcend the human intellect to be able to make those sorts of judgements [0].

I would also not say that we are inherently and constitutionally irrational. I would say rather - to use the old cliche - that the intellect's facility is like a muscle that needs to develop, to grow, and to be conditioned to become strong. I would also say that some have greater capacity and potential on constitutional grounds.

Furthermore, the cultivation of virtue is essential, as errors of reasoning are shaped by our vices and not just cognitive limitations or whatever. Indeed, the more intellectual power someone has, the more essential virtue becomes, lest the intellect destroy itself with rationalizations and abuse [1].

[0] Of course, what constitutes correct reasoning is a teleological matter. Otherwise, there is no reason to favor one conclusion over another or any conclusion at all.

[1] A coward of high intelligence will the rationalize powerful. In Chomsky's view, for instance, the overwhelming majority of intellectuals have historically acted as servants of power, rationalizing the status quo, and manufacturing consent. Or as Adam Zamoyski said pithily when discussion Napoleon's relationship with French intelligentsia, intellectuals are mostly tarts for power.

Oh, yeah, that's cooking lol: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGZ1FL663067003Q

Speaking of which, I noticed that the big market reversal during the beginning of the Iran war happened right around when ESLR requirements were due to relax. Is this a transmission mechanism for that? Did some of the big brokerages run a big promotion (0% APR on margin debt!) or something?

Margin debt (debt used to leverage stock buying) Is near record highs, and most of it is flowing into AI stocks ...

Ruh roh. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o

Thanks!

I happened to read Trollope's The Way We Live Now, which is a fantastic take on the railway mania, at the height of the dot com bubble. Really increased the enjoyment to read about it and see it unfold in real time.