The World Within

 I started reading an eye-opening book by Dr. Stephen Gundry. I had no idea that our mitochondria, which regulate cell reproduction and operation, are not human. They have their own DNA. I gather from Dr. Gundry that our beneficial intestinal bacteria, which he calls our gut buddies, communicate with our mitochondria through bio-chemicals. The bacteria and the mitochondria are not sentient, although maybe by the time you finish reading this, there will be a news announcement about their personhood, such is the speed at which knowledge seems to grow these days. If they were sentient and engaged in dialogue, we would conscious beings that each of us humans are hosting within. The model reminds me of some people regarding Mother Earth as a living being that hosts us. And just as we, like the bacteria and mitochondria, communicate with each other while hosting those beings within our internal world that talk to one another, maybe the planet is communicating with other cosmic bodies that are each hosting a world of inter-communicating sentient lifeforms. I don’t believe any of this speculation, but hypothetically the pattern within our own bodies might be replicable on a larger scale.

By the way, Dr. Gundry informs us that a fat rat ingesting fecal matter of a skinny rat can become skinny, and vice versa. He tells us that depressed people given enemas containing fecal matter of happy people tend to become happy. It all has to do with the transference of gut buddies. Interesting reading.

Dismissing the Sagan Standard

 We often face circumstances or phenomena we want to explain, and obtaining a likely explanation can take a lot of time --- something most of us find is demanded by many things wanting our attention. It would be nice to have a way of speedily eliminating unlikely explanations. Philosophers have recognized several rules of thumb for doing that, and they are known as philosophical razors. Such razors shave away unlikely explanations.

Some seem valid. For example, Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The reason is that a simple explanation normally embraces less assumptions than a complex explanation, and the less assumptions there are, the lower the likelihood of error.

One philosophical razor that seems to me to be a fallacy is the Sagan standard: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Accepting the Sagan standard as valid implies accepting that simple claims do not require much evidence. To me, evidence is evidence, and if the evidence points to a conclusion that is common, or if it points to a conclusion that is remarkable, it is what it is. A proposition is either proven, or it is not.  Whether I assert that a cat’s name is Puff, or whether I assert that a man can bend a spoon purely by willing it to happen, both require proof. We accept the one claim more easily than the other because (1) the consequences of assuming the cat is Puff are not significant as assuming telekinesis, and (2) we know people can name their cats Puff, but we don’t know that anyone can bend spoons. Yet consequences are not proof, and I do not think that being unaware of a phenomenon heretofore is reason to dismiss its present instance. The acceptance of it should be determined by its present proof.

Helping China Shoot Us, and Getting the Stock Market to Agree with the Economy

 

The news is out today about western universities conducting research in AI, quantum computing, and bio-technology and allowing researchers who have ties to the Chinese military to join the projects. Of the ten universities that are most active in such joint research, it seems that three are Canadian: Waterloo, Toronto and McGill. The research is claimed as enabling China to modernize its military, and particularly to develop unmanned weapons. Yikes! It’s hard to imagine what the doughheads selecting personnel for such projects are thinking when they decide to help China develop weapons that can be turned against us.

The USA election in November should be interesting. Both sides have hired hundreds of lawyers to challenge the outcome. Imagine a court challenge of one mail-in ballot after another. It could take very long to resolve…..so long that Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, could temporarily be President. This year’s election may outrank the elections of 1876 and 2000 for its confusion and controversy. I would be surprised if it all goes peacefully.

The stress on markets may be significant. Investors are elated at recent all-time highs in the S&P 500: the covid crash has been resoundingly reversed. Hmmm…..not so fast. Microtek, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google between them account for about a third of the S&P 500 because those stocks have been doing very well. They have benefitted from the pandemic --- people sitting at home and buying, subscribing, and purchasing from them and their advertisers. Easy to do when there is so much new cash on the loose. So hard have they moved the S&P 500 that we may as well think of it as the S&P 6. The other 494 stocks as a group have not had the same recovery. About half the stocks that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average are tech stocks, so it has done well also. I think that eventually, people will wake up to realize that a P/E ratio of 33 for Facebook, 80 for Netflix, and 119 for Amazon may be unwarranted. Yeah, when customers of each of these companies could be numbered only in the millions, it may have made sense to anticipate the kind of growth in earnings that would justify such large P/Es, but once you have half the world’s population as your customers, does it make sense? How much higher can your customer base grow then? Or, maybe you think that existing customers will start spending a lot more. Maybe they will. Or even more likely, maybe they will tighten their belts as the economy contracts. Once government covid subsidies cease and businesses are footing their own payroll burden, watch for huge layoff numbers. It is already happening, even with the subsidies. The disparity between a slowing economy and a rising stock market will disappear as they align for the trip down. At least that is my expectation.