Bored? Play a silly game featuring a bunny.  He stomps on the head of birds and bells. The was found on TheoCafe, here.

Steady hands seems to be the key to this game, but a good mouse probably helps a lot. Might be even easier with a track ball or a pen interface.  Anyway, I’m not very good. My top score after 15 minutes of play is 106,720. See screenshot :

This story has been going around the internet lately. For those who like me are probably too lazy to click the link and read through it, it shows a Craigslist posting by a  woman who is living in New York and seeking a man for ‘marriage only’ who is making $500K+ a year and describes herself as a “stunningly beautiful” 25 year old. In an amusing response, a man replies that what she is suggesting is “plain and simple a crappy business deal”. His argument being that his wealth will likely appreciate in value whereas her beauty will surely depreciate. Therefore, he would only consider a leasing arrangement with her, but not marriage.

It’s a pretty funny read all by itself and stands on its own, but for the sake of discussion and because I’m bored let’s assume that both the man and the woman are entirely serious and that this is really how they see the world rather than either one of them just trying to be funny or not expressing themselves clearly. In that case, we can clearly see that both are very shallow individuals. They are speaking about human beings as if wealth and beauty are pretty much the only relevant features worth bringing to the table in a relationship, and they don’t care about love or feelings or companionship or any of that “B.S.”.

Now obviously what the guy is saying in his response doesn’t make any sense if you take on a less shallow perspective on humanity. But what interests me more is the fact that the more I think about it, even if I force myself to think in a totally callous completely selfish fashion like he is, I still think what he is saying doesn’t really make any economic sense to me. So my problem with what he is saying goes deeper than the fact that it is a shallow analysis. My problem is, I find, that I just think he is just plain wrong. His reasoning is inherently flawed. I’m not sure how he made it to $500K+ a year with such faulty economic reasoning. Let me explain.

He argues: 

“ But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my
money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely
that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t
be getting any more beautiful!
“

But that’s just wrong. Money does not “continue into perpetuity”. Everybody knows cash depreciates in value naturally. That’s why we have to struggle so hard to find good investments for it. Over time, thanks to inflation, your money just becomes less and less valuable. The very worst thing you can do with your cash is stick it under your bed. Many, many assets you can buy, even though they depreciate are better business propositions than that, since you get an inherent use out of them, whereas money sitting under your bed just loses value while you get nothing out of it. 

He is really talking about his salary, but salary is not an asset really. That’s the return. The asset is “Him”. Namely whatever skills or knowledge he is bringing to the table that allows him to make that much money in his career. But there’s certainly no guarantee whatsoever that those assets will continue on into perpetuity.  Even excluding the possibility of a freak accident causing brian damage or the likelihood that times might change and his skill set many suddenly become obsolete, there’s the simple fact that he will eventually get old and at some point he just won’t have enough to bring to the table in order for him to continue on in whatever career he has.  Eventually he’ll be forced into retirement and most likely end up making considerably less than he made while working full time.

So he is overestimating the value of what he is bringing to the table. What’s more, hes also vastly underestimating the value of what she is bringing to the table. As she describes herself as bringing “looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth” whereas he only considers the “looks” part.  Minimally the “keeping a nice home and hearth” part adds minimally the value that would cost to pay for a housekeeper, and should they have  or adopt children, she adds the cost of childcare as well. That’s not huge, but it is certainly not an insignificant part of the equation. He is wrong to ignore that part of her proposition so thoroughly.

Furthermore, he seems to have a very bad understanding of the economic value of “beauty”. While it’s more or less true that “beauty” fades, that hardly means it is without value. Having a beautiful wife can be, if leveraged properly, a significant asset. It can open doors to opportunities for investment and power that do not exist for the less than aesthetically appealing amongst us. It can get you ensconced into social networks that are closed to those without the looks (see the episode of Family Guy where Peter is invited into the Beautiful People’s club as an example of this) and it can provide opportunities to manipulate and control those who are vulnerable to the wiles of a pretty face. The resulting wealth and influence could well lead to obtaining assets that not only don’t depreciate in value but appreciate much faster than the beauty depreciates.

Presumably “culture and sophistication” speaks in part to her ability to interact with social networks and be an asset for him in this regard. If she doesn’t already have a social network of connections she is bringing to the table, she is at least saying that she considers herself very capable of making the necessary connections that could help add value to their family unit. Yet he totally misses this point.

And you really can’t leverage that beauty as effecively or safely if you are simply dating the person rather than having married them. The ‘married’ status offers certain social benefits and gives you a kind of blanket approval status by society. And the risk of not being ‘married’ is considerable. Since she could easily leave him and go off with one of the many business liaisons he would have her interact with as part of leveraging her beauty. Marriage, especially with a good prenup provides some insurance against such a possibility.

If the two choose to have children, her beauty could prove to be an even more substantive asset. Since presumably some of her looks would pass on to their children, that would provide them with a powerful advantage during their early lives in their own pursuit of wealth and power. Assuming some minimal degree of loyalty, their success in the world will be only advantage to him or the ‘family unit’ as far as economic business propositions go. Of course, if she doesn’t bring anything else particularly helpful genetically to the table it may not be a good idea, but that’s just it really. He isn’t even looking into this potential investment enough to determine whether or not that could be advantageous to him.

I also don’t get the ‘buy’ versus ‘lease’ argument, not really. Even putting aside the fact that marriage and buying are very different and so are leasing versus dating, it doesn’t necessarily make more sense to lease than to buy in a situation like this. Assuming that leasing costs about the same as buying, that is he will be giving up the same percentage of his disposable income to her to use, leasing seems like just a bad deal to me. He is effectively just throwing the money away and not getting anything lasting in return. Much like when you lease a car, you never really ‘own’ it, but it still loses value all the same and you have almost exactly the same responsibilities toward that vehicle as you would if you owned it outright. It just isn’t ever really yours.

Leasing only allows you to live above your means and get a car that is more valuable than you could otherwise afford. Buying is more effective economic strategy unless you are a person who has to always be driving the latest and greatest vehicle out there. When you buy, you can drive the vehicle into the ground and make maximal use out of it. What’s more nobody can outright take it away from you on a whim or demand that you follow any restrictions such as mileage limits or whatever. Lastly, when you buy if you wreck the car you don’t have to pay for it, you just have to find yourself a new vehicle. When you lease you have to pay back the old and get a new one.

What does all that mean for relationships? Ur, well, I’m not sure I’m really prepared to go there. Let’s just say I’m not in any way convinced leasing/dating is the more effective use of your money.

Ok, lastly, I think the respondent is even wrong when he talks about efficient markets and his surprise that she hasn’t found someone making $500K already. First anyone who seriously looks at the relationship market would find themselves hard pressed to show that it acts as an efficient market at all. It is very inefficient from my observations and I’m sure most would agree. Secondly, even if it were an efficient market, that does not guarantee an efficient match between buyers and sellers of goods, rather it only speaks to the likelihood and the eventuality of it.  It’s entirely possible that at any given point in time a particular seller may not have been able to find a buyer for her goods. That doesn’t make the market inefficient.

O.K., now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that he should totally take her offer or that it is a good business deal in any way shape or form. What I am saying is that the responder is way to quick to dismiss the proposition altogether without further analysis. A businessman who is that quick to dismiss a possible proposition and on such spurious grounds is not a very good businessman in my opinion.  Rather he should rather carefully compare what she is proposing to other similar deals on the table and do much more research into each before picking the best one available. And he might as well spend his money on something or someone since it is just losing value otherwise. He could invest it in the stock market, a business, or he could invest it in a leasing arrangement with a woman or a marriage relationship with a woman, or whatever. He’s just got to decide what the greatest ROI will really be and then make the best choice possible.  I don’t think he’s doing that.

Ugh. I feel really dirty now after having made myself think like that. But there you have it.

This is a great question, but my answer depends on two things.

1. Can I go to the future?  That you say ‘era’ suggests not since I wouldn’t really know what eras exist in the future.

2. Can I change history? Again, I’d assume not since you say ‘visit’.

Ok, if I can change history then there’s really no question. I’d have to go back and stop Hitler and try to prevent the occurrence of World War II. There’s all kinds of atrocities I’d like to prevent but that seems to be the biggest and most important.  I might aslo consider doing as Orson Scott Card suggests and go back and stop Christopher Columbus from discovering America. That may well be a larger scale historical travesty with more far reaching implications, but I’m not sure. I’d probably go with the safe bet and take out Hitler.

If I can’t change history but I can visit the future then I’m going as far in the future as I can. As a time travelling sightseer there’s really only one thing I really want to know and that’s how this litle human experience ends. I need to see what the end of time looks like with my own eyes. So I would.

If I can’t go to the future, then I’d be a little bored with the whole time travelling power but I guess I’d go take a stroll in Ancient Greece and have a nice long chat with Socrates.

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I don’t think people really do care much about celebrities. Like any kind of empty casual activity, people follow celebrities because it is ‘fun’. It gives them something to talk about and dream about to pass the time. Most often people enjoy finding ways to feel superior to the celebrities despite their own lack of fame.

But in the end, we don’t *really* care. Whenever anything important comes up in any particular person’s lives, it will tend to take precedent over something like celebrity following which is just a minor amusement that doesn’t really mean anything to them.

The economics of modern society is built upon fostering interest in such irrelevant areas.

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Our fears push and pull us at the same time. We forget that sometimes.
We think that the things we fear only push us away from them, making us
avoid them, making us hide from them or do whatever is in our power to
keep them from coming to pass.  But that isn’t really the entire nature
of fear. Fear pulls too.

Sometimes we do things knowing that they will result in the realization
of our fears. We aren’t necessarily fully cognitive of our decision to
do these things, and if we are, we don’t realize that it is our fears
driving us to these actions. But it is the fear. In a sense we are
challenging the fear. Bating the fear. It’s as if a part of ourselves
needs to see deep inside the heart of our fear before we can fully
excise it. The stronger and deeper the fear, the more it pulls us
toward it.

Never is this more true than with the classical fears that are
associated in modern culture with social anxiety. We act in accordance
with these fears sometimes, running and hiding from them, but other
times we do the opposite, destructively and recklessly embracing them. 
We feel both the push and the pull and we are shifted back and forth
like a rag doll. We keep striving to keep our fears from being realized
while at the same time acting in a manner that we know is most likely
to result in that fear coming to pass.

So one who fears abandonment might purposefully do things to push the
very people they least want to lose away from them. One who fears
commitment might make increasingly strong commitments that they may
well not be able to keep. One who fears failure might explicitly choose
not to act to achieve things well within their power to achieve,
purposefully letting themselves fail. One who fears intimacy might
share intimate details about his or herself, sometimes negative
details, to those who don’t know them very well. One who fears his or
her own inadequacy might hesitate to strive or fight for the things he
or she wants or needs to achieve. And one who fears his or own
immorality might knowingly choose to be cruel and to hurt others around
them whom they care about.

All these things are examples of the pull of fear leading us to act in
a manner that is counter to ourselves. We bring about the very thing
that we were terrified might come to pass, the very thing we fear the
most, through our actions. It’s as if we want it to happen, as if we
need it to happen.

Why is this? It seems pretty masochistic when you think about it, but
we certainly do do this to ourselves, far more often than we would
like. Why would we want to make choices that are almost assured to lead
to doing harm to ourselves? It is passing strange, to say the least.

Perhaps part of us thinks that in order to get past the fear we have to
face the worst case scenario and see that it wasn’t real or that we
could get past it and still thrive. To be stronger than the fear. To
win over the fear. Maybe that is the need that drives us to these acts.
When stuck within a tyranny of fear, a part of us feels the need to
rebel, to reclaim our honor, so that we can really be free of it.

But the fallacy in this kind of reasoning should be clear. If you fear
abandonment or failure or inadequacy or any other feeling due to
personal experience with it, when you experience it again, it doesn’t
hurt less. It hurts more. And certainly the knowledge that you in part
did it to yourself doesn’t help any. Can you really and truly banish a
fear that you wanted to bring about in the first place? Worse, the pain
un-vanquished will just make you fear it all the more.

Still, perhaps you think that it is possible to suffer the same sorrow
enough times that it will become impossible for it to hurt you any
more. You can become used to it. You can become numb to it. Maybe that
is possible. But the only way I can see that happening is if you give
up much of your emotional attachment to your experiences. In that case
wouldn’t you have lost so much of yourself that the ‘cure’ you enacted
will prove far worse than the disease?

So if the experience of our deepest fears is just a way in which we
succumb to the manipulations of those same said fears, what does it
mean really to ‘face’ our fears? Surely facing our fears is good and
essential for our future growth. We can’t just let ourselves be pushed
away from them, for that way lies cowardice. But letting ourselves get
pulled into them can be just as bad if not worse.

There is only one other option of course. To stand our ground. We need
not rush toward our fears or away from them. We can simply face them as
they come to pass or not and accept them and learn from them. We can
feel the push of the fear demanding we flee and just say “No. I won’t
run away.” and stand our ground.  We can suffer that insidious need
pulling us into our fear so that we may wallow in it and say “No. That
pain isn’t worth it” and choose instead to stay where we are.

We just instead make choices based on our reason and our wants and
our needs and… what? just ignore the fear I guess. Don’t let it pull
you. Don’t let it push you. Just choose anyway. The fear will come
anyway. We can’t avoid it, but this way, we can calmly await the fear and when it comes we can accept it and
just maybe we’ll learn a little bit from it too. Maybe that’s how to face fear.

If I were brain dead I wouldn’t have much say in the matter I’d imagine.  But being me right now not at all brain dead I would say the only way I would allow myself to be kept alive if I were to become brain dead in the future is if I were so incredibly rich that I could ensure that my being kept alive causes no harm or hardship to anyone else alive or yet to live. In other words I’d have to own all the equipment and resources being used to keep me alive and I would have had to have paid to have it built specifically for me.  And a good chunk of the rest of my fortune would have to go toward buying medical equipment and resources for others who might need it so as to absolve my guilt over taking up space and energy with my dead lifeless body.  This, of course, after enough of my fortune has been used to completely setup everyone I ever cared about for life.

This is an unlikely scenario. So yeah, I’d say just figure on pulling the plug on me.

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I’m not opposed to Al Gore in any way. I was in favor of him in 2000, and I greatly liked An Inconvenient Truth. I did what I could to try and promote the movie back when it hadn’t yet reached wide circulation because I thought the message was important. So please don’t take what I am about to say as an attack on Al Gore. I only feel the need to write this because I absolutely deplore the unjust inconsistency in the world of politics.

Al Gore, in 2000 was a politician, bent on victory and very much willing to compromise in order to win. That’s not to say he was a bad politician, far from it, it’s just that like every politician running for president he needed to appeal to such a large variety of people that he couldn’t afford to come out in favor of or opposed to any positions that might alienate potential voters. He had to bend without breaking in order to convince enough people to vote for him. That’s just the way the corrupt system works.

He lost. There are a lot of reasons. But credible arguments can be made that he, and the people working for him are at least in part to blame. He messed up in Florida, didn’t give it the concern he should have, didn’t fight hard enough to do an appropriate recount and picked the wrong method for recounting, the one most likely to cause his loss when he did. So he lost, and we have George W. Bush and war and everything else. Would things have been the same had he won? Who can say? But it certainly seems unlikely.

After 2000, Al Gore became an advocate. He fights now for things that he believes in unapologetically and he does not need or try to compromise. And so he doesn’t. Rather than convince people that he thinks like they do, he gets them to think like he does. And great good has come from his fight, or at least started to. Climate Change is reaching the global consciousness. Maybe, just maybe, many lives will be saved thanks in part to his hard work and dedication.

Before 2000 Ralph Nader was an advocate, and he fought  to create change and to convince people to do the right thing when it was needed. He was a leader, much like Al Gore is now, trying to raise people’s awareness of issues that they’d rather not think about, rather not talk about, but deep down inside they now are important and need to change. He fought to create that change and through his work many lives were saved and much good was done.

Ralph Nader in 2000 was a politician, but a very different politician than Al Gore. Knowing his chances for victory were slim he did not compromise as much and fought to present his message unapologetically to the people in order to raise awareness, to bring the things he believes in to the global consciousness. He fought to present his message everywhere, including Florida, perhaps too much in Florida. But he like Al Gore was trying to have win, only for him victory was creating the greatest impact on the greatest number.

And Al Gore lost. And credible arguments can be made that it is at least in part because of Ralph Nader. Because Nader would not bow down, would not support Al Gore, would not compromise and would not stay away from Florida. And so we have George W. Bush and torture and everything else.

These two stories sound fairly similar do they not?  So what is the end result of this progression? Where do we stand right now?

Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace prize.

Ralph Nader is reviled and blamed for all the evil that resulted from the Bush presidency, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

How exactly is this in any way shape or form fair? Many commentators whom I have a great deal of respect for have joined on the hate Nader bandwagon and it is quite a disgusting thing to behold. Where is the consistency here? Why should Nader be blamed for everything that resulted from Al Gore’s loss but Al Gore himself get off scott free for that same loss? Do we really imagine that Nader had so much more of an impact than Al Gore had on his own future?  That seems unlikely and certainly unfair.

It seems Nader is faced with the curse of Caesar. The good is buried. The evil lives. My question is, why is it not the same for Gore?  Maybe it’s just because people see him as a more likable figure than Nader. Maybe it’s because he follows the norms and acts against the mainstream opinion and expectations so frequently. Society seems to hate and revile the rebel. We only support the people who we think of as being sufficiently “normal”. And Nader is anything but. I think that’s sad.

Maybe it is wrong for me to bring up this old news at the time of Al Gore’s triumph, but I can’t help it. Al Gore’s rise was totally predictable and I am in no way surprised by anything that has happened including this award. In my mind he had already won a long time ago. But I guess in my heart as much as I like Al Gore, I’m always wishing for the less renown figures to get more of their just deserved credit.

The other day I opened up this fortune cookie. I was quite surprised at the message inside. It said:

“You only treasure what you cannot possess.”

What a horrifying fortune. I can’t believe they actually willingly put this in a cookie. Most fortunes are either good or neutral but in a way that if you are optimistic you can read them in a good way. This one, though, I couldn’t and can’t figure out how to read it as good. It just seems bad any way I look at it.

It is either a terrible indictment on my character as I am now, or a terrifying prediction about my future or both. It is as if it is saying that I am doomed to a person ever grasping, never gaining, always wanting and wishing for more, never satisfied  or fully appreciating what I have now. Such a sad and terrible fate. It makes me weep just to imagine it.

But it’s just a fortune. Paper and ink wrapped in dough. It doesn’t mean anything.

Or does it?

Virtually any book can be good if it entertains us in some way or captures our attention. However, the greatest books resonate with us in some special way. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. They sort of create a feeling of connection with you that runs deep. You think this character is real. Or this person’s problems are just like mine. Or this fact is really important. Or this opinion really matters.  Events feel momentous. Stories feel powerful. As you are reading the prose you sort of feel a little shiver deep down inside as it connects with you in some inexplicable profound way. And then you know you can’t stop reading.

In a way, a good book feels more real than reality itself.

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Fixing the problem or resolving whatever conflict that is causing the problem is the only thing that can make me happy when I am sad. Everything else is just a distraction.

There are all kinds of distractions I engage in that make me feel immediate pleasure and gratification when I am sad and that shouldn’t be knocked. Good food and joyous experiences have a value all to themselves whether you are sad or not. Gaming. Reading. Television. Music. Movies. Conversation. Writing. All these and more I do to get just a sense of pleasure when I am feeling a little down for whatever reason.

The thing is, once I finish doing any one of these things the sadness just comes right back unchanged. Fun stuff doesn’t necessarily solve most problems, it just keeps us from thinking about those problems until a later date.

Sometimes that’s exaclty what I need though. A distraction. By stepping back for a while and doing something else I can refocus my attention and look at the problem more objectively and distantly. My mind is able to work without being fully wrapped up in nothing but the sadness and sorrow. That is often just the ticket for figuring out exactly how to reach a real and lasting resolution.

Actually resolving the conflict doesnt necessarily make me happy either. But it opens the door for happiness. Once the cloud of sadness hanging over me is dissipated, I can finally start to feel the warm light of the sun. Now pleasant activities become more than just base gratification distracting me from deeper issues. They become the building blocks of real and lasting happiness.

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