Best ever, Nate

Ph.D material.

The Money quote:

"Subsequent research has also shown that deprivation of an addicted substance even further steepens a subject’s preference for immediate consumption over delayed gratification."

I like this definition of the MPP:

The Maximum Power Principle states that all open systems (Bernard cells, ecosystems, people, societies, etc.) evolve to degrade as much energy as possible while allowing for the continued existence of the larger systems they are part of. [[1]]

And that we are natural born liars:

NATURAL-BORN LIARS

"Nor did a prince ever lack legitimate reasons by which to color his bad faith. One could cite a host of modern examples and list the many peace treaties, the many promises that were made null and void by princes who broke faith, with the advantage going to the one who best knew how to play the fox. But one must know how to mask this nature skillfully and be a great dissembler. Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions."
-- Niccolò Machiavelli

Studies have shown that people are not "rational" (in the Bayesian sense). Although the notion that people are "rational utility maximizers" was common a hundred years ago, only economists are still taught it. Scientists now know that human behavior is driven by "irrational" brain chemistry and then "rationalized" after the fact:

"When a split brain subject is subjected to tests where the left half of their brain does not know the correct answer, it will often make something up based on the information it does have." [[11]]

In the late 50s, the social scientist Erving Goffman made a stir with a book that stressed how much time we all spend on stage, playing to one audience or another. Goffman marveled that sometimes a person is "sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality."

What modern evolution theory brings to Goffman's observation is an explanation of the practical function of self-deception: we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better. In his foreword to Richard Dawkins' THE SELFISH GENE, Robert Trivers noted Dawkins' emphasis on the role of deception in animal life and added, in a much-cited passage, that if indeed "deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray -- by the subtle signs of self-knowledge -- the deception being practiced." Thus, "the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution." [[12]]

http://dieoff.org/page193.htm

In banking circles, a 20% drop in housing values is almost unheard of. Just about every house sold in the last ten years could come under the axe.

"As long as trillions in losses remain concealed or unresolved, the basic system for deploying capital will remain paralyzed.-Kunstler

Should the Saudi’s effectively decouple their oil from the US Dollar, the United States, for all practical purposes will cease to be a World power as it economy will collapse completely as the US Dollar has no value in and of itself due to the staggering debt of the Americans. Without oil they are nothing.