Politically Incorrect WSOP Post

[Warren Whitmore]

I will give this one a try. I believe that I meet the criterion for being in the top 10 000 chemists & mathematicians in the country. My time is divided equally between real estate investing, poker, teaching chemistry (college) and stock market investing. I have been quite successful at all four. Prior to this I was a statistician for a major chemical (oil) company for 18 years. I hold degrees in Chemistry, Nutrition, and Microbiology. My IQ is > 2 standard deviations above the mean.

It turns out that there are two ways of learning about the world (reality). One is through memorization the other through conceptualization. Most people are good at one or the other. People who choose or inherit a tendency towards memorization tend to do much better at school, they are the folks who get the 4.0 and tend to get elected to various offices. People who are conceptualists tend to spell poorly, forget people’s names, do poorly in school (think Albert Einstein here). Took him a while to learn how to talk (memorization) but could figure out the universe better than most (conceptualization).

Now if you take all of the Harvard professors and put them together to invest (memorizers) and pit them against Warren Buffett (a conceptualist) I think you would agree that he would beat them all combined as an individual. In fact I think you will also find that people who memorize tend to like to work in teams and conceptualists like to work alone.

Conceptualists tend to be objective. Memorizers more mystic. I have read the bible through 4 times. All of the characters are mystics except one. Satan. Him and Jehovah are always butting heads. Its no fun being the only one in my family who sides with him but what can I say. Lets start at the beginning with Genesis. Genesis 17 “But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”

This is the first sin. The quest for knowledge. Its silly of course you can see the logic flaw. If they don’t know between good and bad how can they know which is which until they have tried it. The bottom line though is that knowledge (conceptualization) is in and of itself is evil. This theme continues from the start right to the finish of the bible. The New Testament even more so. Jesus says to love your enemy as you love yourself! Talk about a self-weighting dumb ass philosophy.

Getting back to the question, the reason math and science types don’t get into the more subjective fields is because in subjective fields your risk to reward ratio is in the hands of people who are themselves subjective. This includes all religions and most political systems.
Benjamin Graham has been quoted for saying in the short run the market is a voting machine in the long run it is a weighing machine. That’s true for any objective undertaking. For subjective undertakings however the long run could very easily be never.

[David Sklansky]

It sounds like you are agreeing with me. Except why are you calling Harvard professors memorizers?

[andyfox]

"you will see that more than two thirds of the players are either foreign, Jewish,"

Those are some good eyes you've got there.

[andyfox]

"a decent number of mathmeticans or chemists could become great political scientists if they had to. (Because ability in math is correlated to overall thinking ability)"

This assumes politics (there is no such thing as political science) can be "solved," like a math problem. And that assumption leads to grand schemes to improve society and those often lead to disaster.

Are there any examples of great mathematicians or chemists who have become great political scientists?

[David Sklansky]

"It may be that Jews and Asians are overrepresented because cultural pressures drive them into these fields."

Why is that an argument against what I am saying? Unless you are claiming that the cultural pressure is to help them make money. But in the two fields I picked, the cultural pressure would be to learn objective truths about the universe. Why don't religious Christians have the same cultural pressure?

Meanwhile as long as you admit that religious Christians are less likely to enter these fields, for whatever reason, you must therefore also admit that Christians are less likely to excel in other fields that make at least some use of the rigorous logical thinking that subjects like math and chemistry teach you. That includes debating by the way.

Meanwhile another poster wrote:

"Lets start at the beginning with Genesis. Genesis 17 “But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”

This is the first sin. The quest for knowledge."

Of course this could be applied to Jews as well. But perhaps they take the bible less literally. In fact maybe Catholics are a semi exception. You I agree certainly are.

[Warren Whitmore]

Because they are. Investing is taught as a subjective subject. As are most subjects (pardon the pun). Math being the main exception. With the exception of me even Chemistry is taught as just all memorization. I meet someone at a party the other day who just got his Masters in investing.

(1) He did not know who Benjamin Graham was.
(2) He was taught that Warren Buffett was "just lucky" (Very selective / aggresive) ($100 to $100 Billion)
(3) That the efficient market theory was the only way to go. (self weighting)

Just taught to memorize a bunch of junk. I find it hard to believe that his teachers knew the concepts but just chose not to teach them.

In sharp contrast look at "the theory of poker" One concept after another great stuff.

"The intelleigent investor" One concept after another great stuff.

I believe Warren Buffett could teach a person more about investing in 2 hours than the entire Havard staff could teach that same person in 4 years.

I believe you could teach someone more about poker in 2 hours than the entire statitics staff at Havard after 4 years.

I believe Robert kyosakii could teach someone more about real estate then all the real estate agents in the world could in 4 years.

I beleive Sir Issac Newton could teach someone more about physics in 2 hours than all the physics professors at havard could in 4 years.

[12AX7]

Geez, I don't know Dave. Maybe poker is just an old white guys kind of thing?

When I was younger and surfed I never saw a black surfer, in S. Fla no less. Riviera Beach up the road was 75% black. Not one black surfer on the waves. Very few even boating for that matter. Can't recall a single black jet-skier either.

I asked a black guy where I worked about that. He said black folks don't want to go in where the sharks are. Never been sure if he was joking or not. Seemed he was serious. Knew him for 11 years. He also said blacks have a thing about snakes too. Again. Not sure how serious he was.

So maybe like golf, poker is just something middle aged white guys were attracted to... Until TV (WPT) made it fashionable. I'd guess Tiger Woods and Venus Williams have drawn some attention to the other two traditionally white passtimes of golf and tennis too. But again... the TV exposure of those two being the prime determinant.

After all TV seems to be the arbiter of pop culture these days.

I played all along the strip and downtown in '98-00. White and Asians males were some 98%+ of the players just subjectively. I can count the african players I saw in all that time on one hand.

Haven't been to Vegas since 2000. So don't know how Post-WPT card rooms look.

Have they become all "Pimp My Ride" and such? Meaning all West Coast / Los Angeles-ish?

(Granted CA has had card barns for some time.)

Would I expect to see all these kids with dark glasses and hooded sweat jackets and all that stuff? LOL! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[12AX7]

Hi BluffThis,
I really don't agree that being white is some ticket to prosperity.

If anything the it's going the other way.

I worked at a Division of IBM as a contractor. I watched kids get hired out of college ahead of me as "real IBM'er" over my 20 years of experience... where I even participated in IBM's Autonomic Computing Initative as the *only* contractor. So I know I'm qualified. (At least they thought so at IBM Boulder. Would've been hired but that division was laying everyone off.)

I was basically told... oh, but they have Master's degrees (I only have a Bachelor's)... and yet the black guy next to me in the cubicles was a "real IBM'er" with *no degree at all*. (This was IBM Tucson) "Oh he has experience." Excuse me? I have 20 years experience and 5 years of IBM experience in the job we were both doing side by side.

Anyway. I felt like I was on the recieving end of both Age and Race discrimination (or I guess since I'm white that'd be reverse discrimination).

Of course when I brought that up and a few other issues, despite my overall service record with IBM... my contract was terminated. And the black guy next to me? Aaah... still drivin' a Mercedes and and a 350Z... both cars I cannot afford despite a degree in Comp. Sci. and 20 years mainframe experience in about 6-8 Fort. 500's.

So I don't believe that the present day situation is that White = Easy ticket to Prosperity. Nor apparently is industy experience.

And beyond that, having gone through this, I'll get blackballed and not be able to work in the industry again. I mean, what do you think they'll say when it comes time for a reference? "Oh he's white, so just hire him?"

So 20 years of my life wasted because I pointed out the facts.

I feel like Galileo, He said, "Just Look" and they banished him. Or maybe more like Niccolo Machiavelli, who said, "look here's the truth" and he too got banished.

Anyway, if being white where such an advantage they'd have said... "Well heck yer a white good ol' boy, here's a cushy corner office."

The empical facts I've confronted are quite different from the ones you appear to have run into.

A quick side thought. I'd say the "dominant culture" in America is becoming african. Look at all the white working class kids wearing baggy clothes etc. Eminem etc.

It's a curious time when our youth identify with the ghetto underclass more than our leaders.

If things were going well, african youth would be sporting Brooks Bros. suits etc.

But as always, this is an artifact of the media and the push on Rapp come "Hip Hop". (Though it is a mystery to me how Hip Hop gets lumped in with R&B on the charts.)

[12AX7]

[ QUOTE ]
It sounds like you are agreeing with me. Except why are you calling Harvard professors memorizers?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know what Warren will say, and I've never been to Harvard...

But... you have two kinds of teachers, right?

1) Teaches the same year over and over again.

2) The one that evolves over time.

Like the old quip. "Have you been teaching for 20 years, or taught the same year 20 times?"

The "same year 20 times" professor I'd call a memorizer more likely than not.

[Robk]

[ QUOTE ]
I believe you could teach someone more about poker in 2 hours than the entire statitics staff at Havard after 4 years.

[/ QUOTE ]

im in a good position to evaluate this claim, having spent four years with the math and statistics faculty at a good school (not harvard but close enough) and having taken two hours of lessons from david. (actually only one- he still owes me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]) in my opinion your statement is absurd, and perhaps you were exaggerating to make a point but it doesnt seem that way. perhaps if you were referring to the next two hours it would be true as it would probably take that long to teach those old guys the rules. but if they were acquainted with the game and had spent even a fraction of the years david has on it- ill take the professors. this isnt to take anything away from david, i think he would agree with me.

[ QUOTE ]
Because they are. Investing is taught as a subjective subject. As are most subjects (pardon the pun). Math being the main exception. With the exception of me even Chemistry is taught as just all memorization. I meet someone at a party the other day who just got his Masters in investing.


[/ QUOTE ]

you claim harvard professors are "memorizers" and then when asked why you cite what some things someone at a party told you about investing? did they even get their masters at harvard? how do you extrapolate the poor education some students have (possibly their professor is very little to blame) to such a generalization? and even if professors were merely listing useless facts in their courses does that somehow imply theyre not capable of doing more? in my experience some of the best researchers are quite poor teachers.

fwiw, my college experience was almost the opposite of what you describe. i even took several classes towards an mba as an undergraduate, including one in investing, and found those neither "subjective" nor "mostly memorization".