Foresight

Since we can't be experts on everything, it is important that we have some experts we can trust. This requires separating the noise from the real knowledge, particularly in the media. The Internet might have increased this noise but it has also gives us tools that with some work might allow us to hear through it.

Most people in our society reprocess and repeat information that was processed and repeated by somebody else (somebody in the media, friends, colleagues...). I know I'm no exception but part of this chain in some topics and therefore part of the problem, just as we all are part of the cause of traffic jams that we despise so much. This is a long chain with the following consequence: most people don't have real knowledge of most subjects and basically function as echo chambers of some original source that might be truthful or not. How can we find the real original knowledge then?

One way to separate real knowledge from informational noise consists on assessing the "experts" by looking back at what they were saying before some important event happened. This can help us find those experts that we can actually trust for topics that are so complicated that we (and most of the people around us) can't adequately understand. Unfortunately by doing this exercise we typically find that the majority of those "experts" got it wrong and were not able to predict the event or even predicted the opposite.

One interesting example has been the financial crisis that started around 2007. Nobody (almost) saw it coming. Experts were predicting real estate prices would keep increasing, stock market indexes increasing, etc. Some were predicting some kind of softening or maybe even a mild decrease. But very few gave somehow indications that the economy was to be in great trouble and that we would end up in the Great Recession. There are two examples of experts who actually got it right.

The first one is Robert Schiller, a Yale economist. When I was thinking about buying a house a few years ago, while researching to decide whether buying or keep renting I came across an article in the NY Times based on his research. Schiller was predicting back in 2005 that there was a clear bubble forming in the US housing market and that housing prices may drop sharply.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/business/yourmoney/21real.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

His research allowed him to build this house price index evolution graph over the past 100+ years. It speaks for itself:

We know the rest of the story, or at least part of it. As of 2010 prices have dropped but seem to be now on the rise again.

The second example is fund manager Peter Schiff. He correctly predicted in 2006 a long recession, triggered in part by the real estate mortgage collapse, that would last several years.

The best part is being able to watch on live TV how other "experts" were rebutting his theories and in some cases literally laughing at him. Well, that was recorded and now thanks to the Internet we have easy access to compilations like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Not that we should believe everything Peter Schiff's says from now on. But at least this will serve us to question what those other experts caught on live TV will say in the future.

Mens et Manus

I started slowly getting back into studying a few years ago. I started in 2007 with a Project Management evening program at the local University. Last year I prepared and took the GMAT (interesting trying to relearn basic concepts like prime number series, triangles, probability, etc.) and I'm now taking a preparatory course for the PMP examination. I might even go back to university for a Masters degree in 2011, a plan still being defined... This is exciting but a lot of hard work too while doing my best in a full time job and trying to keep some balance enjoying time with friends and family.

All this ramp up has reminded me of the positive and negative parts of being a student. I don't particularly miss exams, weekends full of homework, late night papers, knowledge cramming and all the stressful things that come from taking six or seven courses simultaneously. But I definitely miss the feeling of growth and achievement, both personal and professional, that comes from learning so much every day. The feeling of frequently connecting dots mentally that allow you to understand the world a bit better every day. I have always been intellectually curious: the main issue I had was not being interested in learning, but focusing on one topic when there were so many that seemed interesting and worth exploring.

Once our professional life starts, this learning process slows down and stagnates somehow. One learns new things but at a lower pace and sometimes seems stuck on repeating same tasks over and over. This "taylorism" might increase our productivity but definitely not happiness for many of us. Getting a promotion or changing positions usually creates a learning curve that keeps us busy learning new things for some time, I would say around a year or two, but this is usually transitory. Even some jobs that on the surface might not seem so monotonous, since employees are exposed to new situations every day, are usually based on repetitions of similar situations. I think probably doctors, sales, police, etc. fit in this category.

It would be interesting to find somebody who has a job that doesn't fit this learning curve pattern description. I think I don't know anybody. Maybe a career in Academia? But that usually means extreme focus to become an expert in a very narrow subject. Or maybe there is no such job and the trick consists on changing focus every once in a while. This is what serial entrepreneurs and some politicians seem to do. Or be so immersed and interested in your work (in "flow" as some authors describe this) that everything else seems less interesting...

Cosmos from a cosmonaut point of view

Even though the title Cosmos was meant to refer to everything there was and everything there will be (as broad a definition as it gets), it has inevitably brought this image to my mind:

I can't really grasp how a few fortunate humans felt when witnessing this landscape.

Here is an interesting interview with Michael Collins, the third NASA astronaut on Apollo 11 mission who kept circling around the moon, forty years later:

Q. Circling the lonely moon by yourself, the loneliest person in the universe, weren't you lonely?

A. No.
"[...] I don't mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side."

[...]

Q. Turning to your flight, what is your strongest memory of Apollo 11?

A. Looking back at Earth from a great distance.

"I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied."

Small, shiny, serene, blue and white, FRAGILE. "

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/jul/HQ_09-164_Collins_statement.html

This kind of experience should really put things in perspective...

My first blog post ever. No kidding... El Primero

Believe it or not, this is my first blog ever. Si, el primero.

I did have some personal pages back in the 90s when I was young :) and the Web was something new and I was experimenting with it as an engineering student, but I never got into the blogging fever. Nothing surprising since I'm not somebody who kept a diary in the pre-Web times.

A note of caution: this blog is going to be very random (simply as a reflection of how my brain works) so don't waste a second of your time trying to find a unifying theme.

I will probably talk about films, music, photography, books, economy, psychology, science, traveling, work, etc. and maybe even my personal life.

This is why I called it simply... Cosmos.