ERICOPOLY

It usually happens in large volumes after the bad news comes out on earnings day. Today, it only required the announcement of the scheduling of the earnings release.

My wife has something to add... "Happy wife, happy life". There's morality that will make you happy :) Her "rules" are pretty easy -- so belonging to her social "marriage" group isn't hard. Find a cool wife and you'll have a happy life. That's my advice.

You don't have to rationalize what already fits within the rules of a social group (your social group, the mafia, wants you to carry out the hit). You aim to please the group in order to belong (driven by social instinct). You only have to rationalize things that go against what the group wants. The church creates a rule against murder -- you now feel guilty if you commit murder because you are putting yourself in a position of going against what the social unit wants. The church could arbitrarily create more rules and you would feel guilty about violating them too -- but not until they make rules against it. For example they could say that something pleasing like masturbation is immoral... and then you would feel guilty about that too! Oh wait, excuse me, they already did that. My bad. Think about it... any rule they make... anything they deem to be "immoral" will make you feel guilty. Your sense of belonging to this group called the church is so firmly entrenched that you take these rules as what you call "objective morality". However, that's due to your firm sense of belonging and how highly you value your membership to this group -- and thus your respect for it's laws/rules.

Your church is beneficial as a social group to which millions belong. Your church has a core set of moral-based rules... things like fidelity, charity, etc... Because you feel a strong attachment to this group, you feel guilty about these things when you violate them. It's your instincts punishing you for letting down your social group (in this case, your church). Finally, the church also tells you that it's God himself that made up the churches morals/rules -- but that's just what they say, and it doesn't necessarily make it so. It does however reinforce your sense of belonging to the group, because of the hook-in that comes with wanting to be with the group that God favors. That only makes you feel all the more guilty of violating their rules (because you feel motivated to belong to God's protected group), so when they pass the hat... you then give generously (one of the social group's rules is charity). Then, they've got you. But I think it's all manipulation of your social instincts. It's very clever. It's also largely harmless so I don't care.

I keep using the term "social group". You can have an easier time killing a person outside of one's social group versus within. There are also varying levels of attachment that a person feels to a social group, and can belong to more than one social group at the same time, with varying levels of loyalty to each. A "hitman" is serving the needs of one social group (the mafia). He might feel guilt at betraying a member of his own group, but may not experience guilt at carrying out hits on another social group. Social groups have their own rules and when you know the rules, you know what it takes to remain a part of the social group. If you need the group, you will feel bad about letting them down. Your skills as a hitman fulfill your social instincts as a member of the mafia group -- you will feel some manner of "good" by living up to the group's expectations of you... even if those expectations are to carry out a "mafia hit". It's all very nuanced, but we have social instincts that drive us to belong to various social groups. They have different rules. You can't say that a hitman is only going to belong to a group with "churchy" rules. So you can't use the hitman as a counterexample.

Right, but you have not conquered the instinct to eat. You have merely made a substitution of certain foods for others. This is very different from conquering the instinct to eat. Similarly, I assert that it's not possible to abandon your social instincts without your brain punishing you (with a negative emotion, like guilt).

You're not listening to me properly if you think that's my worldview. I believe that... It's not possible for a social adjusted individual to experience an absence of guilt when hoarding his money/food rather than sharing some of it. Or perhaps helping in some other way other than money. Completely ignoring others and only serving yourself is going in violation of your social instincts, and thus you'll get guilt. This is because he experiences both selfish instincts/needs as well as social/instincts needs. Only if he lacked social instincts could he not experience any guilt whatsoever. This is why I keep using the term "nuanced". Social instincts are not something to be "conquered". You might ignore them, or act against them, but then you get some associated emotion like "guilt". That's the mechanism by which instincts guide us to keep the social unit in mind. It will just keep whipping you each time you act selfishly -- you cannot get around it.

I agree, but... "you can't get there from here". Like I said, I might not want to be unplugged once on the machine. But I hesitate and choose my family over the machine due to the social instincts kicking in. Guilt (driven by the social instincts) makes me turn the machine down -- the guilt is triggered by the implication of social group abandonment/betrayal. It would be hard to choose the machine over them in the first place... You could do it if you suffered from less social attachment. Perhaps people who are abandoned early in life have trouble forming attached relationships, and for them it would be easier as they are not as close to a social group. You could act more selfishly if you were alone... or felt a lack of belonging despite living amongst others.

It would be that much were it not for the taxes paid along the way. Perhaps a shade under.

Pleasure is the experience of the good brain chemicals. Again, this is very nuanced. We have both selfish instincts and social instincts. About social instincts... social animals evolved to work together in social units. Instincts prevent us from feeling good about causing harm to others in our social unit. In your example, you mention cheating on the wife. Why this doesn't unequivocally equate to pleasure because of what I just mentioned about the social instincts. I might fall on a hand grenade to save my buddies in my platoon -- I am driven to do so by a social instinct, even though it's not the selfishly most optimal outcome. Just like I might forego a blow-job from the secretary... it's not the best for my personal short-term pleasure, but our minds are complicated by our instincts to help the social unit. When you violate what those social instincts are telling you, you experience guilt. So you can take the blowjob and feel good for the moment, and feel guilty afterwards. Or forego the short-term pleasure to avoid the guilt. Instincts often drive us to avoid the short-term pleasure in order to keep the social unit happy (the wife) -- our instincts reward us by not punishing us with guilt.

Perhaps the brain chemicals are what tell you what is good, and what is bad. Perhaps instincts govern the production and release of these chemicals. You somehow assume that you are making a conscious choice over this... that you first have the opportunity to think if your actions were really good or bad before the chemical release happens -- why do you have that belief? Instincts drive the release of them to your brain, you feel euphoric, and say "damn, I did a good thing today. that good deed made me feel great". You didn't first observe the dopamine meter on the machine rise -- you just experienced it positively and it set the tone for you to experience that as "good feeling" and equated that with your deed as a "good deed". Are there good deeds that make us feel bad? You save somebody's life -- you just feel good. It's not like you feel lousy afterwards after you find out that "good" was triggered by production of dopamine.

Have you never masturbated? Is there some greater cause other than pleasure? Does it only feel good to you because you believe you are doing a "good" thing? Once you've seen a movie before, you might experience boredom the second time around. You already know the ending. No suspense. I probably wouldn't give it up without a fight -- you should see us try to take the iPad from our kids :-) It's difficult to say that I would give up my life for such a thing, but just remember people commute hours each day and live unhappy lives believing that a little bit more money will make them happy. I think they are chasing this very machine, only they can't attain it. But I think we are evolved to feel good by helping others -- the survival of the social unit is important for the passing on of our own genes. We individually have better success through cooperation. So for better or worse, we can be happy without such a machine. Turning down the machine then might not be too crazy since we are programmed to think about others too, and not just ourselves in isolation. So, perhaps I would opt to stay with my family and social unit instead, and that would make me happy enough (knowing I hadn't abandoned them for a greater, yet selfish, pleasure). It's nuanced. THat's what the social instincts do to us -- they make it nuanced... sometimes you'll put the group before yourself, and even that will feel good because we have instincts to survive individually but also to ensure group survival.

Only if you believe it's pointless to do things merely because they make us feel good. I believe that we are all going to die and just be returned to dust. Nothing beyond that. So all we have in this life is to try to feel good about ourselves and experience joy. Fortunately, we can get that from helping others due to these social instincts that are within us. We can love and help others and if that makes us feel good, it doesn't make it pointless! Exactly the opposite. Knowing it's all due to brain chemicals is interesting... but it does not take away the pleasure of feeling good. It's like... knowing that physics can explain something about hitting a baseball over the fence does not make it less fun to do so.

Article says Clippers were purchased in 1981 for $12 million. 33 years later... $2b. wow, that's 17% annually compounding returns! I wonder what earnings were pulled out by the owners over the years... that 17% is just the capital gain. http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/12/us/sterling-nba-clippers-ballmer/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Just one sheep's opinion, but... Buffett was asked why he didn't own Citigroup and he said he didn't know what they would earn in the future. Given that they're both fairly cheap, I just choose to own BofA and leverage his wisdom. C may do better though.

A reminder of the much-dreaded quarterly ritual of reporting results seems to have ignited some selling today: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sears-holdings-announce-financial-results-171100263.html

I agree. 90% of money managers did not foresee the housing bubble, but many survived by not exposing themselves to the worst of the housing dependent stocks. In other words, you wear a seatbelt not because you forecast an accident, but because you really don't know what will happen.

If you had asked any investor in 2007 how their bank stocks would fare if real estate prices fell by 30%, I doubt that even one of them would have said, "I think they’d be fine." Our big mistake was that we didn't see the real estate crash coming. http://www.oakmark.com/Commentary/Commentary-Archives/2Q14--Bill-Nygren.htm?rf=dr Personally, I don't think that was his mistake. Warren Buffett's financial picks survived just fine. Nygren chose Washington Mutual to concentrate in, and Buffett was concentrated in Wells Fargo. So was not forecasting the real estate decline really Nygren's mistake?

You only enjoy your short time in this life if you are experiencing joy. You can't argue with that, so don't even try.

Tesla has also opened up all of it's patents around Superchargers and has invited all other car manufacturers to use it's chargers. They just have to pay an access charge in order to facilitate scaling up the network for greater usage. So basically, Tesla Superchargers everywhere, and meanwhile the evolving charging tech will improve the speed of charging a car.

Second, you know just how badly they want to vest those shares... these things must have very low strike prices relative to where the stock trades today. I feel like my 100,000 vehicle production bet is looking pretty good!

You get paid for execution at Tesla. Management's incentivized to hit 30% gross margin: In the March and June 2013 10-Q’s there is a section titled “Performance-based Stock Option Grant”. There are 782,500 stock option shares for certain employees that have four performance milestones. 1/4th of the shares to vest upon completion of the first Model X Production Vehicle. 1/4th of the shares to vest upon achieving aggregate vehicle production of 100,000 vehicles in a trailing 12-month period. 1/4th of the shares to vest upon completion of the first Gen III Production Vehicle; and 1/4th of the shares to vest upon achievement of annualized gross margin of greater than 30.0% in any three years http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2014/08/12/deutsche-bank-upgraded-tesla-from-hold-to-buy/?partner=yahootix

I have one. The beeping is the worst. I know nothing about the Prius but is this feasible? http://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Reverse-Beep-in-a-Toyota-Prius It's not a safety feature. No other Toyota beeps at the driver in reverse -- are all their other models therefore unsafe? Is that their point? Note... It doesn't beep outside the car, so it's not there to warn pedestrians. Only to warn the driver. I believe their engineers are such dipshits that, when told to implement an audible warning when in reverse, they misunderstood the point of it and did it inside the car by mistake. Then they can't lose face so they won't admit the error and remove it in latter models.

And I don't mean inside the car like those idiots at Toyota did for the Prius. My father has one of those cars and I drive him at night when I visit. He has a long driveway that I have to back down with a T-turn at the bottom. beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep ... Yes, I know it's in f**** reverse dum***... I get it... I'm the driver, not a pedestrian! Shut the hell up already!

You just need some of that self-driving technology to emit a noise when a person is walking nearby.