Weekend Reading #216

This is the two-hundred-and-sixteenth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 6th May 2023.

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What we’re thinking

It's time to stop hurkle-durkling and get moving. There is a coronation happening! I don’t really get too excited about all the pomp and ceremony of all things royal but everyone else sure does including my very British kids who can’t wait. The monarchy is a cultural phenomenon and the top brand in the UK and Saturday is a big day which promises a sensational spectacle of Britishness.

It’s the end of another heavy week for markets and US regional banks in particular. We’ve avoided all the chaos in our fund but once again we find ourselves wondering about the enormous divide between those that think the financial system is collapsing and those that think it’s a storm in a teacup. The voices are vociferous on both sides and markets, despite holding well at index levels are rioting beneath the surface. Another example of why we continue to believe 2023 is the year of dispersion. As usual we will use the price action to guide us. And right now, it’s telling some good stories.  

What we’re doing

Having arrived in Singapore on Thursday, we’ve settled in well and gotten straight down to meetings with more impromptu catchups scheduled over the coming weekend before we head to Hong Kong on Sunday night. It’s certainly humid, and this being my first time in Singapore, was not something I was expecting to continue all night long; my initial guess was that the evenings would be much cooler although sadly that wasn’t the case. The food has been fantastic as we’ve been hitting hawker centres to try many of the different local dishes. As I mentioned, our next stop is Hong Kong where in between our meetings we’ll be sure to enjoy many of Hong Kong’s famous local eateries. HS

Ben Hunt chatting on Howard Lindzon’s podcast

What we’re reading

I read with great interest that Geoff Hinton, whose interview I shared a few weeks back has left Google so that he can be free to warn about the dangers of AI. As I said then, he is the so called “godfather” of AI because he is one of the earliest proponents of neural networks and its potential as far back as the 60s. Furthermore, he is actually a cognitive scientist, so he knows a thing or two about human intelligence. This article in the New York Times after he announced his departure sums it up well.

On the flipside is Tyler Cowan who is a great proponent of human progress and in this essay reposted in The Free Press, he states very eloquently

“Besides, what kind of civilization is it that turns away from the challenge of dealing with more. . . intelligence? That has not the self-confidence to confidently confront a big dose of more intelligence? Dare I wonder if such societies might not perish under their current watch, with or without AI? Do you really want to press the button, giving us that kind of American civilization?”

It doesn’t seem to me that we can really do anything about it anyway now given the path that we are on. Perhaps Mr Cowan is correct.

Elsewhere in his blog, Marginal Revolution (post-dated May 3), I came across a short post about Zoom, in which he links to a study showing people who were face-to-face responded to yes/no questions in 297 milliseconds, on average, while those on Zoom chats took 976 milliseconds. Why is this important? CHEMISTRY. When one says it's just not the same virtually its actually true – the research backs it up.

Recently there seems to have been some shift in the tide of “wokism”. I’ve often wondered if some of these trends are linked to the economic cycle and whether in the recent decade or two as life got too good in the West, focus shifted to lesser important issues on the hierarchy of needs. This chart in an article I picked up in Unherd is fascinating in this context and suggests some possible correlation to the stock market cycle?

Then again if its genuinely a structural generational attitude shift, we have a major issue on our hands. I suspect that this is more likely the case as this chart from the same article shows too.

Obviously, there is lots more to this, but these charts give some food for thought.

Finally, I finished the second book in Wilbur Smith’s Ancient Egypt series, The Seventh Scroll. It's very clever. The first book, River God, which I wrote about a few weeks back takes place 4000 years ago in Ancient Egypt but this one is set in the late 1990s as a pair archaeologists discover the writings of book one’s protagonist, Taita, the polymath, eunuch slave. The race then begins to find the tomb of the buried Pharaoh along with all its treasures. Something a bit different and a lot of fun. Book three goes back to Ancient Egypt but I’ll take a break first for some other books I got piled up before returning to this series.

Otherlands by the award-winning young palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday is a fascinating and journey through the worlds that existed in the earth’s pasts long ago.  It’s beautifully perspective creating, as many of those worlds existed for much longer than humans have, and probably will exist. It also shows how amazingly resilient life has been on earth, once one starts thinking in geological and evolutionary, rather than human, timeframes. The book is fun as it brings to life giant geese, rodents, pinguins and much, much more. And it makes clear that life on earth will be ok long after humans are gone. DC

What we’re watching

I finally finished watching the Last of Us on HBO. After a great start, I found after the first two episodes which were proper fast paced fun, it got a bit fluffy. Too much backstory and too little of anything happening for large parts of the series. I persevered through and the last two episodes were fun. I recommend it as a prime example of how shows are being adapted from their core material (the videogame) with a new audience demographic in mind. It wasn’t really for me to be honest, but I do get it. DC

On the flight from London to Singapore, I managed to catch a recent Christopher Nolan special, Tenet. True to his style, Tenet is one of those films that leave you wondering if up is down and left is right. Without spoiling any part of it, because it is certainly thought provoking: what would happen in a world where the natural flow of entropy is reversed? The laws of thermodynamics dictate that the entropy (or “disorderliness”) of the universe is strictly increasing over time, a perspective that allows – rightly or wrongly – the passage of time to be equated to the increase in entropy. Tenet is a film that features bullets un-shooting themselves, birds flying backwards, people moving through time in reverse and a cool term called a “temporal pincer attack”. It’s not time travel per se, but inversion. And it needs to be watched to be properly understood. EL

What we’re listening to

Given the above context, it was pure coincidence that I had earlier listened to Peter Thiel himself. He doesn’t feature that often on the podcast/media circuit but this week he chatted to Bari Weiss for a full hour and twenty minutes on pretty much everything. He discusses why he isn’t backing anyone in the 2024 elections. He talks about the real issues facing America as well as AI, Meta, tech in general and of course has a few references to memetic theory and Rene Girard. He is also a strong Christian which as he says is “the prism through which he views the world” and had a really interesting comment to make about Judeo-Christian religions. He says Christ was a victim. Jews were oppressed by Pharoah in Egypt. His comment was about perspective. That both Jews and Christians tell the stories from the perspective of being on the receiving end of violence or injustice and hence these issues are important to them since the beginning. The story of Cain and Abel is told through the point of view of Abel (the aggressee). But in the pagan religions the story of Rome is told through Romulus (the aggressor) and not Remus. Conventional pagan culture tells from the perspective of the winners, Cain and Romulus. He has spoken before of his link between Judeo-Christian religion and western democracy and its principles, and I found this brief interchange rather revealing.

I also listened to a brilliant Tim Ferris podcast with Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine fame. Kelly has the most brilliant stories of his life, his travels and has lots of advice to dispense. This was a joy to listen to. I don’t even want to spoil it by giving too much away. But if you like interesting people who do things differently you simply have to listen to this one. What a legend! DC