no need to wait for the receipt (I had reworked an old post for a psychiatry trade journal, which I would happily have linked you to, except that page 2 is behind a login wall. So here is the version I submitted before the editors edited it, slightly longer with more typos. I am posting this because of the new lawsuit against the American Board of Medical Specialties.) The mission of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology's Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Program is to advance the clinical practice of psychiatry and neurology by promoting the highest evidence-based guidelines and standards to ensure excellence in all areas of care and practice improvement. That's what the website says, I have no reason to believe they are not earnest. But far from succeeding, the program does the exact opposite. We have come to a moment of truth in psychiatry, and we are all going to fail. By which I mean pass. We can start with the 200 question certification exam. The most obvious clue that there was something suspicious going on with the test was that there were no questions about Xanax. How do you measure "excellence in all areas of care and practice" without asking about the most commonly prescribed medication in America, let alone psychiatry? Meanwhile there were several questions about pimozide, a medication which appears to be prescribed exclusively by psychiatrists who want to brag about prescribing it. I was repeatedly assessed on my competence in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, but was not asked to display my knowledge of SSI. You might retort that SSI isn't really psychiatry, but then why is so much of my time spent on it? The only thing I spend more time on is Xanax. But though the missing Xanax was a clue, the insidious problem with the exam was not the content. To see the bad faith obscured by the questions, put aside the usual college freshman complaints of, "why do we need to know about pimozide?" and ask instead, "what happens if I get the question wrong? What happens if I get them all wrong?" The answer is nothing. There are no consequences for failing this test, at all. First, 99% of the applicants pass, I assume the other 1% forgot to bring two forms of ID. Second, even if you fail, you can take it again and again, as many times as you feel it's worth the $1500. Third: there were a thousand easy ways to cheat, here are three: I could have walked out of the building on an unsupervised "break"; I could have Godfathered an ipad to the back of a toilet; or I could just picked up the phone and called everyone. Who was going to stop me? There is more security at a pregnancy test, which made me wonder if how easy it was to cheat wasn't... on purpose. The retort is that doctors are expected to behave honorably, but the honorable ones were going to pass anyway. Those in danger of failing-- the very people the test should detect-- would be most tempted to cheat. Doesn't the ease of cheating render the test unreliable? If the test is unreliable and 99% pass, why have a test at all? Which reveals the gimmick: the point of the test isn't to measure competence, but to convey the impression that competence was measured. The point of the test is to say that a test was given-- and nothing else. The question is, to whom are we saying this? It is as if psychiatry was in denial about its ordinary reality and was trying to create a different identity through the test itself. A psychiatry where there are right and wrong answers. Where pimozide and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy happens, a lot. Let me anticipate your retorts: that the questions are carefully constructed for their validity; that the test itself "incentivizes" learning; that not everyone prescribes Xanax; that if I'm such a smartypants, what system would I use? If these are your replies, you have missed my point: a flawed system isn't better than no system at all, it is worse than no system at all, because at least with no system we are forced to be accountable to ourselves for our education. "Not everyone will be so dedicated." Correct, but now those same undedicated people get an official blessing of their ignorance. Who doesn't walk out of even this ridiculously meaningless exam not feeling smart, accomplished, up to date? And who would dare, after passing, to criticize the exam that warmed his ego? In addition to the test, the Board also requires a nauseating number of CME credits, but these CMEs are an even worse affront to learning. The only thing that CMEs guarantee is that money was spent on buying them, $80 and no questions asked is all it takes, which is even sillier than it sounds since I could go to a number of websites which offer instant and unlimited free CMEs, so long as I skip the long text and just take the post-test, which I can take as many times as I want. I can get 1 CME every 25-50 seconds, depending on my ability to click "b". The retort is that the system is predicated on a certain level of honor, that physicians shouldn't cheat. Fair enough, but if you're trusting them to be honest in revealing what they learn, why not simply trust that they're going to learn it? Because the point isn't the education. The CME exists to say that there is CME; the CME exists to say there is oversight. To clarify: the important criticism here is not that the multimillion dollar CME industry is a gigantic money making scam, something on the level of the 15th century sale of indulgences, because to say that would be actually to defend that very system: the money is a diversion, a patsy, what is corrupt about CME isn't the money but, as the default mechanism for continuing education, it subverts its own purpose. It reduces the interest in actual education so that it can pretend that it explicitly monitors it. If you have a minute to spend on your "education," the system pushes you towards CME. "Why not do both?" Why do both, who can do both? There are only 24 hours in a day. In other words, the system doesn't just fail, it forces failure. Last year there was a large cheating scandal at Harvard, over a hundred students were accused of plagiarism in a government class, and amidst the usual self-aggrandizing criticisms of the college kids as entitled, lazy, or stupid, what no one wondered is why, in an introductory survey course predicated on institutionalized grade inflation and no wrong answers, did the students feel compelled to cheat when they were all going to get As anyway? The terrifying answer is that they weren't cheating to get the right answer, there was no right answer, they were forced to cheat to concoct the answer the professor wanted-- because that's the system. Meanwhile, while they were spending their time "cheating", what real learning could be done? None. So--- why bother with an exam at all? Why not just offer the course and give everyone an A anyway? Because the purpose of the test is to say a test was given, to prove to some hypothetically gullible entity that learning occurred-- and to prove it to ourselves. Which is why our reflex was to criticize the kids, not the system: we are products of that system, to criticize the reliability, let alone validity, of that system would be to open ourselves to scrutiny, to deprive us of a core part of our own identity. "Things were a lot more rigorous when I went to college." First of all, they weren't. Second, even if they were, why, when you got to be in charge, did you change the system to this? Seen this way, these tests, whether Harvard government exams or MOC exams, are nothing more than fetishes: a substitute for something missing which saves us from confronting the full impact of its absence. In less abstract terms, these tests allow us to believe NOT that we learned something, NOT that we know something-- but that there is something to know. Since there is nothing new to learn, therefore there must be a test. The logic of a 10 year MOC exam is to keep us up to date, so it's fair to ask: what in psychiatry has changed in ten years, what are the major advances? Depakote was discovered to be the default maintenance mood stabilizer despite no evidence supporting this, but that fell into disuse at a time oddly coinciding with its patent expiration, which is suspicious but I'm no epidemiologist. Anyway, it wasn't on the test. Anything else? A few new medicines have come out, though none of them appeared on the test either. There's money to be made on the west coast using giant magnets, (fortunately) also not on the test. So? Was the ABPN worried I'd forget how to use MAOIs? I'm never going to use them, I have enough problems monitoring Xanax. The astonishing truth is that despite millions of dollars and hundreds of academic careers psychiatry has made no progress in almost 20 years, let alone ten, a claim no other medical specialty can make, and the truth which cannot be spoken out loud. Hence an exam. Are you prepared to look inside yourself? When a nurse practitioner asks you what about your board exam is difficult, what will you say? Take a minute, it's important. "Well, it has neurology in it." Note carefully that the psychiatry questions aren't "harder," the appeal here isn't to a higher level of expertise in psychiatry, but an expertise in something else, something "more" than psychiatry, and it is this link that symbolizes our status as "experts." Older psychiatrists will be quick to assert that "clinical judgment" counts for a lot, and I don't disagree, but it's probably not testable, and it most certainly wasn't tested. So what does $1500 buy you? "Existential support." I hope it was worth it. What makes the MOC not just a bad exam but evidence of a pathology is that though college kids have no idea what they're up against, that the system works against their education, psychiatry is the very discipline that articulated these defense mechanisms. It should know better, it is supposed to know better; which means that we are either unable to see what we are doing or believe that we are somehow exempt from this. But here we are, spending time and money on cosmetics and pageantry to pretend that we are learning, to pretend that we are being measured, all the while slinging random neurochemicals + Xanax based on an a suspect but billable logic in the hope that something sticks and no one notices. Frantic activity as a defense against impotence. There is a term for that, but you can bet your career it won't be on the test. Pass.

what could it mean? You just watched a historical TV moment: never before has the audience for a show been smarter than its writer.   I submit as second evidence the season finale for The Bachelor that was on yesterday, for three hours, drawing ten million "people".  Just remember that the next time some dummy from The New Yorker complains that TV has a woman problem.  The Whitman's Sampler that was True Detective's finale is beyond discussion, literally, because what we now know is that no discussion was necessary.  All the references, all the philosophical subtext, all the weirdness-- turns out it was topping after topping, "does this make you watch?  How about this?"     Remember when the one character who turns out to be irrelevant says, "YOU'RE IN CARCOSA NOW," do you know what that meant?   Nothing.    The writer once read a story that had the word Carcosa in it but since his cat was already named Chuckles he used it in a TV script.  "It's a reference to--"  I know what it's a reference to.  Why is it a reference?  Does it mean anything?  Did "acolyte" or "metapsychotic"?  We see Errol shifting fluidly between several accents. Here is the show I thought I was watching: is this is a 1 Corinthians 14 "speaking in tongues"? Maybe coupled with the aluminum and ash reference it suggests Errol is Baal and Carcosa is Hell?  Here is the show I was actually watching: though not mentioned ever in the show ever, he did that because the accident that caused his scars also made it hard for him to talk in his normal voice. Meditate on that. The writer googled Chekhov's Gun, laughed mightily and roared, "you're not the boss of me!"  I'm confused, so the killer's ears were green because he painted houses with his ears?  The point isn't that this explanation is stupid, the point is he didn't need to have green ears. I don't care about "tying up loose ends" or sterile Judeo-Christian undercurrents, I have ABC for that.  I care only about internal consistency.  If you're going to make a show about, for example, zombies that is worth watching, at some point a character must say, "look, the only thing we know with 100% certainty is that every single one of us will eventually but unpredictably become a zombie, so we probably need to devote, oh, I don't know, 100% of our energy to dealing with that certainty."  Once you ask that question you are lead, for example, towards a sci-fi show about forced physical isolation where the only contact we have with each other is digital, but because of the lack of physical contact paranoia sets in, and suddenly every interaction becomes an implied Turing Test.  Would you watch that show?  Because without that question you have four seasons of Denial Lets Us Pretend The Old Rules Still Apply. A show about applied philosophy in the form of a crime drama sounded intriguing. All of True Detective's existential despair, posed as, "how do you solve a series of murders when humans are a mistake anyway?"  -- well?  It's finally solved incoherently with an appeal to the Old Testament.  Oh, so God exists after all?  That would have been helpful to know up front, because I thought we were in Schopenhauer's "time is a flat circle" universe.  But whirlwinds are cool, too. So through some kind of faith, Cohle loses both his nihilism and... his interest in pursuing child killers?  "We got ours."  Oh, we're done then.  Time for a sandwhich. "I don't sleep, I just dream." Turns out that doesn't mean anything either, but if you're 16 feel free to lay it on the artsy girls.  You'll think they'll think you're mysterious.   II. I'm sure everyone has their own idea of how it should have ended.  But as an exercise how could you take the finale that was aired and fix it using only an additional 10 seconds?  You can't change anything else. Could you have kept it true to the show's  original promise, such that "pessimist" Cohle is both redeemed AND still true to who he is?  Could you have rendered a closing scene so diabolically duplicitous that, on the one hand, most of the characters are saved/happy, while the world's bleak necessity of a tragic hero (since that's all he was, after all) becomes unescapable?  That we all live semi-peacefully only because of the sacrifice of a few loners in a garden, coming out one by one to allow their own crucifixion? "Compassion is ethics."  Yes it is. How do you take Nietzsche's nihilism and make it compassionate?  Yet not sappy?  If you accept that the theme of the show is that life has absolutely no meaning and therefore it is up to you to give it meaning, how do you take the mess that is episode 8 and say that? Could it be done in ten extra seconds?  At the end they optimistically talk about stars and daughters and life energies, and Marty smiles upon Cohle and Cohle smiles upon the universe, and Marty, having learned the true meaning of Christmas, skips off to go get the car. Cohle sits alone in the wheelchair, watching him.   The emotion in his face disappears.  His face hardens.  He takes a long drag from the cigarette. "But I lied for your salvation." Cut to black. Credits.

taking part in a particular pleasure [Pastabagel and I have emailed about the show.  Some excerpts of his]: In Episode 3, the preacher says to Cohle, "Compassion is ethics, detective" when he departs the trailer leaving the reformed pedophile Burt in distress.  Cohle replies "Yes, it is." But if Time was created so things could become, and if acting out of the interest of others is compassion, then we should assume that Cohle is "becoming", changing into something else.  But what? Cohle asks in Ep. 5 "Why should I live on in history?"  It's an odd line, especially when in episode 1 he tells Marty that he "lacks the constitution for suicide."  But he also meditates on the cross (as an atheist),  "contemplates that moment in the garden, of allowing your own crucifixion."  But by 2012, Cohle has changed.  He's resigned himself to ending his own life, but only after settling this debt- doing what he owes.  One last act of compassion before giving up the only thing he has.  His life.  And once he's willing to do that, then he can do all the things in his life that require selflessness, courage, etc (i.e. things that require faith).  You have to accept the infinite so you can make the right moves in the finite. And when he does this, when he resigns himself not to his fate but to his eternity of endlessly repeating, at that moment he will actually have faith, because that's when he proves he believes in the eternal.  Only after doing this last good thing does he believe that he could stand the idea of an eternity of rerunning his life, because he knows at the end, he's fulfilled it.  "Nothing is fulfilled--until the end." According to Kierkegaard, this resignation to the eternal is crucial.  Kierkegaard was not an atheist but a diehard Christian.  He believed that when a man resigns himself to the eternal, to existing in eternity, and gives up everything that ties him to this world then he becomes a "knight of faith" capable of great Christian acts (like the self-sacrifice that is almost certainly coming in ep. 8).  When Kierkegaard wrote about a Knight of Faith, he contrasted the Knight of Faith to the mere Knight of Infinite, the "God botherer"--a phrase used twice in the show.  What did Kierkegaard say the Knight of Faith looked like?  Like this: Why, he looks like a tax-collector!" However, it is the man after all. I draw closer to him, watching his least movements to see whether there might not be visible a little heterogeneous fractional telegraphic message from the infinite, a glance, a look, a gesture, a note of sadness, a smile, which betrayed the infinite in its heterogeneity with the finite. No! I examine his figure from tip to toe to see if there might not be a cranny through which the infinite was peeping. No! He is solid through and through. His tread? It is vigorous, belonging entirely to finiteness; no smartly dressed townsman who walks out to Fresberg on a Sunday afternoon treads the ground more firmly, he belongs entirely to the world, no Philistine more so. One can discover nothing of that aloof and superior nature whereby one recognizes the knight of the infinite. He takes delight in everything, and whenever one sees him taking part in a particular pleasure, he does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly man whose soul is absorbed in such things. He tends to his work. So when one looks at him one might suppose that he was a clerk who had lost his soul in an intricate system of book-keeping, so precise is he. [Here I said that the reference was clear, but that Cohle did not look like this at all, that he appeared much more like the knight of inifinite resignation, the "tragic hero."] The point is that the writer is taking the concept and running with it.  If we've already spotted Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, then we are firmly entrenched in the existential project, and we should expect to find references from other existentialists also.  And we do.  The preacher in 2002 tells us that God is dead ("only nearness is silence"). Ep 3 Marty asks Cohle the question from Dostoyevsky, "You know what people would do without God, it would be an orgy of murder and debauchery."  Would it?  Existentialists say no.  Do we have Sartre?  Why yes, we do.  There's angst and despair all over the place.  And the angst is brought on by the burden of freedom, not the absence of it. Think how often Cohle ruminations on suicide echo Camus's formulation of suicide as the fundamental question of philosophy in the Myth of Sisyphus (a guy endlessly pushing a rock up a hill, over and over, repetition, cyclical.)  But Camus answers it in the negative, faced with a meaningless world, you embrace the absurd and revolt, not commit suicide.  And isn't what they are doing now a revolt?  Kidnapping cops, burglarizing the houses of the most powerful figures in the state?  If this group has been kidnapping kids, if they held power for generations in the state, if they are plugged in all all levels, then isn't acting against them so deliberately a revolt against power? And if they are embracing revolt, if they are not embracing suicide (but are willing to make a sacrifice, is there a difference?) then they have embraced the absurd, and are on their way to the teleological moment ("Teleos de Lorca, Franciscan mystic"--a made-up guy that invokes Francis of Assisi a second time, reminds us of the teleological stakes, and re-invokes mysticism to bridge us from the ethical paradigm of the characters to the Continental philosophy started by Bataille (who was derogatorily called a mystic by Sartre, all in one shot, how is that for economy of storytelling, take that Cormac McCarthy)). Revolt: "Fuck this world," Cohle says. Remember how he says it?  Not in anger, almost off-handedly, like he's passing on the offer of a free lunch.  No anger, no big explosion.  Just...resignation. But he only gets around to trying to screw it 10 years after he says it.  And in 2012, it's jumper cable time.  No institutional rules.  And no masked perversion of the established rules.  (I'm a cop who's job is to uphold the law, and therefore I'm the one who can break it).  Rather than commit literal suicide, they commit it metaphorically, by giving up and saying goodbye to everything to take on the very institution that defined their identity. And if it is a revolt, then we invoke all the ideas of consistent with revolution?  Do we push out of the existential angst of the 50's into the revolution of the 60's and beyond?  The "present" in the show is 2012?  Will we get a postmodern postmortem, an aftermath 2 years later set in 2014? And by then, how much more of the landscape will be swallowed by Carcosa, the corrupting refinery towers that loom in the back of every scene in the show?

cue hatred Part 1 here IV. Off topic: Randi strongly believes Facebook has a legitimate place in the business world, and this makes me think Facebook is finished.  I realize this is a speculative trade to make.  The usual anxiety about Facebook's future is that teenagers aren't interested in it, but the more relevant demo here is adult men, especially the ones in suits.  Facebook runs 60/40 women to men.  In the language of self-aggrandizing social media, that's a tipping point.  5% more estrogen and Facebook will be perceived as a women's site and no guy will want any part of it except for guys you will want no part of.  Hush yourself, you have your sexism backwards:  The instant a woman notices a man flipping through Facebook and one eyebrow goes up, you can head to your car and beat the stadium traffic, the game is as good as over.  That's what happened to Myspace.  It tipping pointed into "unemployed/some high school" and The Ruling Class had to sell it to Ima Holla Achoo for 20x less than they bought it.  Now it looks like Windows Mobile, which is demographically appropriate. Lose the men and you've lost Big Business, and at some size point a technology needs Big Business to want it, which makes Pinterest more valuable than Instagram and WhatsApp completely worthless.  This is the story of Blackberry.  The conventional wisdom is that people didn't like their emails in monochrome and preferred the sleek and sexy iphones, but you probably remember all the business casual salarymen proudly carrying around two phones like some bourgeois Frenchman with a dignified wife and a touch sensitive mistress, a couple years in a guy's going to get to thinking, "what am I, a Mormon, how did I end up with two wives?"   When Business was henpecked into supporting the iphone, Blackberry went sadly into menopause and defiantly into Africa.  Plausible deniability requires that I do not explain how layered a joke that is.  V. I want to believe that Randi Zuckerberg is delusional, that because she is so wealthy and famous she sincerely believes if you take a MacBook Pro to a Panera and start a mommy blog or a particle accelerator, follow your passion, you should be a TEDx speaker in no time, but don't forget it's hard work, money isn't everything, and take time out to unplug! But this person was at Davos.  Now I'm confused, was the invite Mark + 1?  That's the easy criticism to make, that she's famous only because of her brother, but nepotism only gets you so  far, Mark has a much more intelligent wife who just graduated medical school and no one is interested in her, and when the media has no other choice but to acknowledge her they do this: I know, I know, it's probably photoshopped.  Still. So on the one hand the media has no idea what to do with an Asian physician except depict her as a borderline psychopath on Grey's Anatomy, on the other hand they are excited to interview a lunatic  who broadcasts the appearance of excessive action-- frantic activity as a defense against impotence-- that's what the demo wants, and if you've been paying attention you will understand the translation: since the target demo has no idea what to learn from the experience of an Asian woman who despite marrying the Powerball became a physician anyway, you get Davos updates from a woman who plurals adjectives.  This isn't a criticism of her, it's a criticism of you: what do you expect to gain from all the haste, the energy, the "finding ways to be creative?"  Unlocking creativity is the third biggest swindle perpetrated by managment consultants, after open floor plans and managment consulting.  Creativity was never the problem, the problem was always the math.  Randi probably read her book herself and I don't doubt that it took months to come up with the phrase "dot complicated", after which she needed a vacation, but she doesn't understand why she wrote the words she did, what forces were acting on her, and what these forces wanted from her that she was elevated to celebrity status.  Consequently, her demo doesn't understand either: they think she's an idiot.  This woman went to the World Economic Forum, which you probably think is irrelevant and you'd be right, but grant that they are at least pretending they are relevant; yet they still allowed her in, knowing full well if anyone found out it could completely obliterate their legitimacy.  Why take such a gamble, to what possible benefit?  Look, if Scarlett Johansson is going then at least you can say Scarlett Johansson is coming, I totally get it, but putting Randi Zuckerberg on the brochure should be brand annihilation.   for the sake of this premise, pretend she came to the 2014 Davos "I'm pretty sure that's Charlize Theron, not Scarlett Johansson."  And I'm pretty sure they're the same person, and just because now she's Rachel Maddow doesn't mean she's serious.  "But she did actually do serious humanitarian work."  Yes, great, how about that.  Is there a blonder picture we can use for the flier? It's probably very frustrating for whoever that woman is to try being anything other than whatever she is because no one will see her as anything but that, but this is the nature of the trade off: you spend your life trying to be seen as something, then if you happen to succeed then you will not want to be only that anymore, you are really something else.  But the world and/or your girlfriend won't listen.  This is especially hard if you simply age out of it, you want to move on with new ideas but the jerk in the supermarket wants you to be the person from '99, which means that the jerk in the supermarket still is the person from '99 and can't understand how calendars work.  "You changed!" he hisses with disgust because you fail to normalize his cortical sclerosis.  Sigh.  You can't punch him, there are witnesses.  There are always witnesses, and they will all be from '99. VI. You would be forgiven for thinking Randi was at Davos merely because she's rich, but consider that Warren Buffett was not there.  He's a capitalist, not a globalizer, so his brand doesn't synergize, in fact, he is the competition.   "No, he knows Davos is irrelevant!"  So why does he go on CNBC?  Buffett is a CNBC favorite, but what's so remarkable about his appearances is that while he is branded as a sober "buy and hold" investor, he is only ever asked about short term trends: are we at a bottom, what will the Fed do tomorrow, etc.  Why?  You know what he's going to say: "You want to buy good companies when they're undervalued," he'll intone over a cheeseburger, callously unaware that there are only 7 minutes until the close.  --What about Facebook?! Buy at 57?!   "Oh, I don't know anything about those new fangled tech stocks, I liked Wrigley's as a child, I understand the company, it offers durable competitive advantage."  --Oh, Uncle Warren, you're so out of touch!  (But the rest of you understand Facebook, you liked it as a child, doesn't it offer competitive advantage...?) What does Watch Us With The Sound Down And Feel Like You're Active need him for?  It's not his words, it's him, he's the draw, he is the aspirational image of the demo of 35-54yo hopefuls: "Someday I'll be old, but when I am, I'll have become rich through the market."  So keep trading.  And here I have to go back over something.  The harder part of the psychology is that the demo doesn't want to become full time traders, either at home all day or on Wall Street-- that part must remain a fantasy--  because then it would be a job and it wouldn't count; it has to be a side gig, then their success wasn't their "work self" but their "real" self;  no one else can claim a sliver of that success-- not the liberals with their "'entrepreneurs' just pretend they don't benefit from public services!" or the wives with their "behind every good man...!" or the echoes of their father yelling,  "you need to apply to Sperry Rand, now there's a company you can put in forty years with!"  It all happened in their head, no one else can share the credit, it is 100% a consequence of their personal value.    Bonus: if they fail, it can be quickly discounted as merely a hobby-- that wasn't, after all, their real self. The mistake is in thinking this has anything to do with the money.  It's said that most at home traders fail, but this is incorrect: they fail at making money, but they are successful at feeling like a trader.  That is the goal; the money is secondary, which is why they fail at making it.  The buy/hold/reinvest the dividends strategy of Buffet is totally opposite to what's desired, because the strategy does not involve market timing or status updates, it is on autopilot, and there's no "i" in autopilot.  Well, there's one, but it doesn't stand out.  The trading activity itself-- the frantic activity--  keeps the rest of reality away.  You're not your job-- you're something else.  You're not your family, you're more than that.  Things have the potential of possibly happening someday, and no work will have been necessary to accomplish it.  Just you wait. But even that's not true.   The hardest part of the psychology is that feeling like a trader isn't the final goal.  Turn CNBC back on, there's Buffett, and oh, look, there's Peter Schiff.  Peter Schiff is another CNBC favorite, and his presence is even more incongruous until you understand it isn't.   Whatever your opinion of his opinions-- debt/inflation/government/armageddon-- his are more political than financial or macroeconomic rather than technical and anyway they are 100% long term opinions.  He may tell you to buy gold for the coming collapse, but you have a few years to open a position.  So why is he there?  "Because he's right!"  No-- why is he on Fast Money?  Here is the unspoken fantasy that explains the presence of Warren Buffett and Peter Schiff on CNBC:  "Someday I'll be old, but when I am, I'll have become rich through the market.  And then people will want to interview me." VII. Swap out the demo, and this is Randi Zuckerberg.  She believes she is worth all her money, she believes she is more than Mark's sister, she believes she has valuable opinions.  Anyone who disagrees is a hater.  You're just jealous.  "No, she's a fool!"  Then how come she's so rich? Those who are enraged by her are actually suffering from the same delusion she is, which is why her target demo as seen by Davos includes her haters.  The standard criticism of her is that she didn't really do anything to deserve her money-- "she got rich because of her brother"--  but this is a profound disavowal of the reality: she got rich because of timing-- even though her job at Facebook was trivial, she was there from the beginning and got paid in stock options.  What's interesting is that no one makes this criticism of her, because that's what her haters believe is supposed to happen to them.   She timed the market the way you're supposed to; what she did that makes her hatable, therefore, is that she had inside information. I don't begrudge anyone the good fortune of right place/right time, take your money and run, but first drop a knee and be humbled before God reflecting soberly on the knowledge that you didn't deserve it.   I love getting paid, do whatever you can do to get paid, but do not let the money whisper to you that you are worth it, it will be lying and you will believe it.  You hold a fetish of value and not actual value.   But even her haters want the money to mean retroactively they were already deserving of it, this kind of fortune has bypassed reality testing and instead creates a new reality,  it uses the truth in order to lie: of course I'm not rich because of my work product, duh, you can't measure a human being's value based on his labor.  I'm rich because that's what I'm worth.  "Isn't that specious reasoning?"  Oh, dear, sweet, earnest, Lisa, I want to buy your rock. And so the hatred of her, like all hate, is revealed to be a defense.  To her haters Randi is a buffoon, a step above relationship expert, she is too glaringly undeserving of that money; Randi is an obscene counterexample to the logic that the payout mirrors value and self worth.  She is a narcissistic injury for everyone else.  So she's disparaged in a specific way: she doesn't deserve all that money because she got it from her brother. VIII. Not coincidentally, this is the narrative of Davos to the demo that, unlike Randi, will never, ever, ever be rich; but to whom Randi represents a possibility of it:  with globalism comes the possibility of a lifestyle independent of your work product, and, more deeply, that your self-worth will finally be recognized by the world that is happy to pay you just for your individuality.  Why wouldn't it?  Your baby pictures are adorable. To be clear, it's not a lifestyle that could be independent of your work product-- it has to specifically be independent of your work product, otherwise its based on something other than you and thus wouldn't count.  This is why one cannot profit from "nepotism" and "inside information".  Those are bad.  That they are, in fact, actually bad is besides the point: they are the exemptions which prove you are worth your money. It's probably unnecessary to point out that this increase in lifestyle is built on the increased work product of whoever will do it for 30 cents an hour, and anyway it is a red herring.  The real attraction for us isn't just the lifestyle, but that it systematizes-- it makes normal-- not ever wondering: how come we have more lifestyle when we didn't do more work?  How did that happen?  In 2008 it was 1933 and six years later it's 1999, what kind of bananastown calendar is this?  no caption is possible Confused, I run through my checklist: was there a war?  No.  Did they invent a new technology?  No.  Was cold fusion discovered?  No.  Did the aliens come?  Don't look at me like that, did they come?  Then nothing could possibly explain how we are all worth twice what we were worth in 2009, or even 30% more than we were worth in 2007.  "But stock prices aren't based on our worth."  Then what do they reflect?  Our productivity?  Our innovation?  A bet on our future prospects?  I ask you again: Did the aliens come?  And hence Globalism-- the brand, not the particulars-- is attractive because it is the physical manifestation of the logic of disavowal we already use for everything else.    "I don't know how it happened, but it makes sense.  After all, I am worth it."  Economics mirrors psychology, as it always must. So Randi goes to Davos, never once asking why they would want her there?  Convincing her demo of underproducing hyperconsumers that capitalism-- controlling capital-- is pointless and mean, but globalism-- doublespoken as "progress", "human rights", "everything is connected"-- that is a noble cause.  Remember that the "culture" she thinks she speaks for, including those that hate her-- "the startup culture"-- is premised on starting a business in order to sell the business to someone else.   Of course the idea is to get rich-- which sounds like capitalism, if you're retarded, but observe the message that is being taught: that the necessary correlate to getting rich is to give all the capital to someone else.   The power is traded for the fetish of power.  That's not capitalism, it is madness, and apparently Davos and Randi think women especially will heart it.   It'll work for a handful of well publicized people pictured above the caption, "$100 billion!  You could be next!"-- followed immediately by a story about how worthless the business turned out to be, so of course the goal for you is to sell out ASAP;  but the vast majority who have aligned their psychology with this vector will pursue an impossible fantasy at the expense of their labor and their lives.  If you don't believe me, believe Lori Gottlieb.  This logic recommended to her to drop out of Stanford medical school to join Kibu.com, and now she's a relationship expert.   "But capitalism exploits the worker."  I'll take my chances, because when you get a taste of the money but no access to the capital, you are easily seduced by Globalism-- the brand, not the particulars.  Hence the Hollywood stars, hence Buffett's grandson, hence Randi Zuckerberg, all who act like they belong there.  They do. Every time you hear the word globalism, you should hear three things: 1. wealth uncoupled from work product.  2. Lifestyle as a reflection of your personal self-worth.  3. You give up control of the capital, and by capital I mean you.    "Do I still get paid?"  Sure, but you have to promise to spend more than what we pay.  "How will that work?"  Don't worry, Visa will explain it all to you. IX. It is no coincidence that social media, "everything is connected" (the default is plugged), is a vivid metaphor for globalism, even as so many social media vaginalists think they are against globalism if it is defined as Wall Street.   Propaganda doesn't care about your motivations, so long as you act in the required direction. When social media is branded to men as a positive, the gimmick is that it magnifies their power,  e.g. "the hive mind."  This brand is reinforced even when it is depicted as bad, e.g. men's increased power to stalk, harass, or bully people.  On the other hand, when social media is branded to women with interests and passions but no math skills it's for "finding support" or "community"; nothing powerful is expected to occur there, it's a place to feel safe, "connect" and "have a conversation."  Those are not accidents, and they have nothing to do with biology, they are the result of market research and 50 years of very, very bad parenting. But my generation came of age in a world with social networks... we understand that the business leaders of the future will be three-dimensional­ personalities whose lives, interests, hobbies and passions outside of work are documented and on display. We should embrace this new world. The answer isn't fewer baby pictures; it's more baby pictures. It's not that I should post less; it's that everyone else should post more. Let's change what it means to be professional in the Internet age. The time when your personal identity was a secret to your colleagues is over and done.  And that is a good thing. This is a woman who hates everything.  I know that seems unbelievable given that she adorbs baby pics and is always shown smiling in lipstick three shades too bright for her hematocrit, but don't be fooled, her hate is transmogrified by money and fame and class buffers so it doesn't action the same way it does for Al Qaeda, but if she had a commercial pilot's license she would hit you with it. Think seriously about what she (thinks she) wants:  acceptance of her individuality-- by work.  Not for her work product-- there is none; but for her individuality, by work.  First question: which work?  Not the job you have, it's real, and it's boring.  It is a future "career", the fantasy environment seen on TV dramas where all of life takes place. Second question: why work?  Men are not being taught to want their job to value them, in fact, men want as little to do with their jobs as possible.  Randi and the globalism party bus are teaching women to want "careers"-- more precisely, to want to draw more of their identity from their careers.  The perk of taking your work home with you isn't more money, it's acceptance of your individuality.  Also you get to have to shop at Ann Taylor.  Before you seize on this as a biological flaw in women's character, let me remind you that they want work to accept their individuality because their family and relationships have failed them in this regard.  The only place they feel... happy?-- is when they are at work or plugged in.  "I know The Bachelor is mindless TV, but I just like it."  Keeps your husband out of the room, anyway.  How great is it to be alone? Third question: what are the consequences of Randi's utopian fantasy of your job valuing you as an individual for everyone else at work? She believes her authentic self, via Facebook, should be accepted everywhere, home and work, so the suits should just shut their greed vacuums and embrace her baby pictures, her individuality-- after all, that's why they hired her, right?  That sounds laudable-- except that she's lying.  Ok, I have to pretend not to be sickened by her baby pictures, will she Like me live-posting My Summertime Threesomes?  Huh.  So now individuality has an asterisk: since Facebook should be on at work, everyone's Facebook should be nonthreatening, not mean, safe-- work appropriate.  "Well, stupid, just don't put naked pics on Facebook."  Fair enough, but whereas before it was my poorly thought out choice, now it is not allowed by work. "Well, Facebook shouldn't be on at work."  Duh, of course it won't be on at work, no company would allow Facebook to be on at work, there's work to be done.   So "ok at work" really means "if work saw it" and "Facebook" really means "the internet." "Well don't put naked pics--" You're focused on the wrong side of the equation.  Why should I be careful of my internet behavior?  It's not because it can hurt me, it's because it can hurt the company.  What Randi doesn't realize she was used to say is that your internet life better be work acceptable since there's much more at stake there than at home.  If threesomes are't your thing, try a 2nd Amendment Fan Page or 10 Things I Hate About Senators and see if your job supports your individuality.  See how close to the edge you can get before Facebook itself censors you.  It is tempting to see this as a "war on men" because Randi tests as a genetic female, or a war on conservatives because Randi sounds like a "capitalism with a human face"-progressive who ran pass interference for the DNC in 2008, but I hope you can see that the force would equally oppose anything that was slightly outside of the mainstream.  Randi needs the job to tell her she is valuable, and the job wants frictionless employees.  The war isn't on men or women, it is on individual freedom, it is regression to the mean by suppressing the mean, where mean is defined by its deviation from SFW, according to W.  Since work has encroached on your home life at your request, since you've conflated plugged/unplugged with work/home, then "The time when your personal identity is a secret to your colleagues is over and done.  And that's a good thing."   It's good for the company, anyway.  You may be surprised to discover that the more replaceable you are to the company, the higher standards you are held to, that's what happens when you don't control the capital.  Rather than fostering individuality and creativity, Randi is telling the organ donors to sanitize their internet presence so that it doesn't affect the people who are profiting from your work.  Consolation is you get to post your baby pics and work has to accept it. X. In the absence of a big payday, the only things left that can value us are the job, and the media.   Regularly someone says something "offensive" in the media and the media punishes or fires him, and we debate whether that was justified or not.  The debate entirely avoids the most important point: the media company punished the guy in media.  They could have fired him privately, the way you would have gotten fired from your job if you started YZing all your coworkers.  Not only do they publicly fire him, they force the guy to make a public apology first-- and then fire him anyway.   Who benefits?   The offended victim? But as much as we say we hate their power to judge us, we want them to have this power-- who else is going to have it?  If they have this much power to destroy a person, then how much more significant is a RT?  How great would it be if they acknowledged my worth?  With no power, what other chance do I have?  In the fantastical words of Marshall McLuhan, "there is no sweeter praise than the gaze of a tyrant, especially if it's in HD."   This is what we want judging us, this is the calendar we're using.  Something external that can value us at 1999 levels while the real world is pricing us at 2008 levels.  My face is in my hands and I wonder how anyone could be asked to raise a girl in such a world?  Recently a female cardiologist with a "difficult" 10 year old daughter who had been well trained to want things but not control things asked me if I had read "the study in the New York Times"-- !?!?!?!?!?-- that said that people with the same surname, over generations, continued to achieve the same level of wealth, showing "therefore" that genetic factors were more important than the home environment in determining social mobility, isn't that probably true?  Having to do this sober I asked her, "But didn't you change your surname 11 years ago?  Or are you betting she can just upgrade hers?"  What else could I say?  If you read it, it's for you?