Jamesian Platonism

This is post is going to be at the wholesale, rather than retail, level. It applies to investing, and to anything else that requires understanding.

I would describe my philosophical stance these days, for the past decade or more, as Jamesian Platonism.

This is a school of thought that, to my knowledge, contains only one adherent. He happens to be the guy who blogs here.

So, what do I mean by the name, Jamesian Platonism?

From Plato, I take the idea that what we see and experience is perception, which only dimly, and only in part, reflects reality. Reality itself is always beyond our reach. And probably, reality is abstract and more like math than like daily life. If it makes any sense to speak of "ideas in the mind of God," I imagine them to be more like equations than prose. That is a way of thinking about something that is really beyond what our brains are capable of handling, so, do not take me too literally.

From William James, I get the idea that there is no reason to commit to any one school of thought. Somewhere, but I don't recall (or much care) where, James or one of his adherents says that philosophy is best thought of as a hall with classrooms on either side. We should not spend all of our time in one classroom. Use idealism when it helps; materialism when it works better. The whole idea of pragmatism is the willingness to use each philosophy insofar as it is useful, but not farther. Poke your head in and out of the various classroom, if, when, and as they are relevant.

OK, those are the ingredients. But, again, what do I mean by Jamesian Platonism?

I think in some deep sense that Plato is right, that we can't see things as they really are. But because of that, we need all the tools we can to get a grip. So I take a Jamesian approach to trying to get the best grip on reality that I can.

My friend Josh May (gated Financial Times link) tells me that I need to give an illustration or two. Josh is rarely wrong.

So: an example in daily life would be that if you are navigating, there is no need to attached to any particular map. A map of Nashville is useful only if you are in Nashville, not Miami. And, for that matter, each map of Nashville will have certain flaws, and has to leave things out. Some show you where roads are; some show population density; some show tourist attractions, etc. Nothing can show it all, because the only truly accurate 3-D map of the city is the city itself, and that is too big to carry around in your pocket.

In investing, an example is the different ways of valuing the stock market as a whole. To pick just a few interesting ones, there is the Shiller 10-year P/E, the ratio of market value to GNP, and the ratio of market value to replacement value (Tobin's q). You can look at each of these assuming that alternative investments in the bond market are rationally priced, or you can assume that bonds may be mis-priced as well. The key is having some sense of the insights and limitations that characterize each method.

The Other Shoe

My quick-witted friend, Josh May, is a close student of central bank policy in the US and abroad. More than once, he has opened my eyes to something that I was missing.

I told him recently that the side effects of years of super-easy money are not known yet, and that I am expecting the other shoe to drop, some day. This seems, to me, like a pretty safe bet.

He replied, “What if the guy upstairs only has one leg?”

I still think a central bank has two, but, hmmm...

Quote of the Day: Science is Not Advanced by Polling

But such exercises are futile: science is not advanced by polling. If it were, we would still be releasing phlogiston to burn logs and navigating the sky with geocentric maps.

E.O. Wilson, in this NYT piece from 2012.

Is monetary policy a science?

No, it's not. So says William White, in an interview earlier this year.

White is the formerly the head economist at the Bank for International Settlements, in Basel.

Read the whole thing, but here is a short excerpt:

What would help to improve monetary policy? 

I’ve become more and more convinced that the fundamental problem with the central banks – and for that matter with the broader economic community – is this insistence that the economy is a kind of machine that you can describe with many equations.

The reality is, that the economy is a complex adaptive system. Like a forest. The distinction between the monetarists and the Keynesians is nothing compared to this. The difference between all of these models and the kind of insights that you get from working with economies as complex adaptive systems are totally different. That is not yet accepted. 

How does a complex adaptive system function?

If you accept this complexity, then you have to accept a number of things that most central banks have not yet fully incorporated into their thinking. One of them is: these systems break down all the time. If the economy is the most complex adaptive system that mankind has ever created, it will break down on a regular basis. 

Historically it has broken down on a regular basis. And, like the boy scouts, we should be prepared for it. Fact of the matter is, when we went into this crisis, we were not prepared for it. And it’s not much better now. There was no bank insolvency regime, no deposit insurance, no memorandum of understanding – all these things that should have been in place, but they just weren’t.

Proving a Theory by Imagining It to be True

A highlight of the American Economic Association humor session, earlier this month in Boston, was a short talk by Zach Weinersmith. You may know his web cartoon, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Weinersmith's talk is to economics what Spinal Tap is to heavy metal rock 'n' roll.

A couple of key quotes:

"I only have about five minutes, so I'm only going to propose one structural change to society." (at 1 min. 23 seconds)

"Having proven the theory both by stating it and by imagining it to be true, I want to move directly to policy implications." (at 6 min.57 seconds).

It's good, and you can watch the video here.

Full disclosure, I appeared earlier on the same bill, as Merle Hazard. I'm hoping no video surfaces of my bit. Hard to judge from the stage, but I do not think my five minutes went over too well. I had better keep my day job.

Zero Interest Rate: Like Quantum Physics

It might be, says William White, formerly the wise and prescient chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements.

When interest rates cannot go lower anymore, when they hit the Zero Lower Bound, monetary policy might work like quantum mechanics. Take this simple example from the world of physics: Classical Newtonian mechanics only work when the mass of a body is big enough. When the mass is too small, you are in quantum mechanics. These are completely different ways of looking at the world. The Zero Lower Bound might be the quantum mechanics of monetary policy. Things just do not operate in the same fashion. If you think things do operate the same way, you might make a very dangerous mistake.

This is from an interview with him last month, in the Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft.

Demarest and Fischer on the Collapse of Civilizations

What kind of insights into the frailties of civilization would you get if you were a genius archaeologist, expert on the Maya, with a PhD from Harvard, living in a tent in Guatemala? Read this piece in which Arthur Demarest, and his interlocutor, Ted Fischer, both of Vanderbilt, talk about how and why civilizations collapse. Gloomy stuff, with no prediction intended on my end, but interesting and well worth the time.

The related audio podcast is excellent, too. A highlight is the unusual, but persuasive, way in which Demarest thinks about ideology and religion. This comes up eleven minutes into the conversation.