Humans All Think The Same...?

Sometimes I remind myself not to even get close to assuming that other people automatically think in ways that I might otherwise take for granted are 'normal.' (Or my kind of normal, I must add here).

The media, politics, commercial product marketing - all these things are constantly before us operating from an assumption that the next person more or less thinks, given similar data and stimulus, in roughly the same kinds of ways within a broad range we deem 'sanity,' or rationality, and so on.

When there was high unemployment (lol).
And James Clapper knew where to wittingly get info
(pic courtesy Pinterest)

What I mean is that confronted with the exact same facts and from the same base conditions, two 'normal' human beings might come to similar conclusions and make broadly similar decisions as to suitable actions. You would suppose.

And that is not so, and I haven't found it to be so in any business situation I have ever been in that involved other people. In fact, I can literally count on the fingers of one hand, those business-people I know who shared the same basic traits as myself when it came to making decisions at various particular points in the flows of daily commercial and financial business. 

Over the years I have constantly had my head spun around by what people make of the facts and the data they are given, and then, what decisions they make and what prompts or motivates them to those decisions.

In my view it is perfectly useless to try and unpick between the various contenders for instance, for the current Republican Presidential nomination. I am an experienced deal-making business person myself and whilst I can comprehend what a Donald Trump is mostly about, I cannot say the same of any of the others. The only thing that stands out to me is the number of them with lop-sided mouths or faces and one eye squinting slightly tighter than the other...

Trump seems to have a bit of an over-bite but otherwise his mouth seems straight to me. And by straight I have to tell you that my impression about certain kinds of people is that the fixture of their facial muscles is grooved in over years and years - of something, I won't say lying necessarily because sometimes it is a question of someone simply trying to overcome a lot of social anxiety.

Modern politicians do not eat sharks fin soup.

Now you might be thinking to yourself hey but what if you're just observing that many people are motivated by gain and they have various layers that hide it - and that accounts for the way they make decisions. But no, I mean I have  - and you may have too - watched or encountered (although I tend not to personally encounter it directly in my business affairs) people whose real goal was exclusively to cheat or to in some underhanded way achieve a benefit, and that it is the cheating, and not the benefit, they are interested in...

You may not believe me but I have countless examples of people who have knowingly foregone massive and facile profits, in order to pursue a deliberately underhanded and yet complex strategy of work and action and the expenditure of a lot of energy, inclusive of the prospect and often the facts, of financial failure, just in order to secure some private and sly 'effect;' again, I'll not even say, some 'gain.'

Psychologists can put it down to human psychology. I don't. What I conclude is that human beings do NOT all think the same way and are not motivated by what they continually tell you they and me and you and we are all supposed to be thinking about as human beings and wanting.

People will tell you they want sex. People will tell you they want money. People will tell you they want a house with a paid mortgage. Some people will tell you they want a fast car or an expensive new saloon. Some people will tell you they want power or to lead the country or to help other people.

All nothing but cover stories...

These are all cover stories.

It is the most important thing you will ever learn or know about human beings at large and as this big monolithic social group. People speak lies.

Watch instead what they do...

You see, say you told someone right up front what I just said, namely that you believe all humans speak lies but act their truths - and then listen and watch their reactions. It would be an interesting experiment if you were prepared to be objective about the results of what you said to them.

In this blog I speak. Figuratively, this is me speaking here. And just for the sake of the exercise I am going to keep using words, but I'm going to ask you to suspend that bridge of disbelief and assume that what I tell you next, however, is an outside observer's report of my actions:

Now look, a couple of weeks ago I hinted at there being some obvious thing going on in the markets and that The Fed had made a grave miscalculation and a mistake. The way I acted, on my perceptions of things -  was that I shorted the gold price temporarily, as I saw first the platinum price sink what I construed as having been too far, and I also went a little long on platinum at that moment. And the two prices of the two related but different commodities, started to converge. 

This kind of thing is a fairly quick, and time-limited market position to have, and it doesn't constitute what we kinds of directional end-game thinkers would consider the way to conduct our business. It may have a short term positive profit entailed, but it isn't what I am thinking about as the reason that I play around with money and finance in the overall way that I do.

See, the following are a number of things I actually do and why I do anything at all:

1. I buy and use Shahtoosh shawls (an illegal woven cashmere-type of thing made from the endagered Chiku Tibetan antelope;

2. I definitely order and eat shark's fin soup - which is now broadly regarded as borderline illegal because of the over-fishing of shark in many places;

3. I have some real versions of what is mostly now the synthetic 'Ambrox' - which is made from ambergris if it is the real sort;

4. And I have a few broken virus tulip plants as well. Which is said to be illegal in a number of countries.

 

Nearly, a broken virus tulip, but not.

But it is the things I don't tell you about and can't tell you about that mark me out as someone 'different' from the crowd 'normalcy.'

Of course they are illegal things, in the minds of many people.

And I am so very skilled at what I can do...

I leave calling cards where I have been and no one gets them. Well you might get them... If you see them.

What I do is nearly illegal.