Skip to main content

The Fear of Fear



The stock market is going up and up both in the USA and the world, despite impeachment, Iran, climate, swine flu, nuclear bomb production, taxes, and everything else you might think should mitigate the market.  With so much negativity you must have thoughts of impending doom. I do.
Yet economic data are encouraging. People are spending money like crazy. Housing starts are up 16%.  The 10-year rate is strong. Unemployment is down. The new NAFTA and China deals are set. So, what do we fear besides fear itself? (Homage to FDR.)  Maybe Dengue fever?  Well, scientists have genetically modified mosquitos to fix that.  Is all this fear washed away?  Not quite.  
The national barometer of fiscal confidence is the NYSE, the New York Stock Exchange. Here’s the latest assessment from that group of money grubbers The greatest fear on the floor of the stock market exchange is the fear of no bad news.
This is singularly remarkable, that of discussing the fear of fear. So, what fear do you fear the most?

Maybe you fear the unknown, the unpredictable, the mystery solution? More mundane, maybe you fear more Trump, the advent of Bernie, an invasion by the faithful of any persuasion. Maybe regulations. Maybe the homeless. Maybe crime.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Accepting Fake Information

Every day, we are all bombarded with information, especially on news channels.  One group claims it's false; another calls it the truth. How can we know when to accept it or alternatively how can we know it's false? There are several factors which influence acceptance of fake or false information. Here are the big four.  Some just don’t have the knowledge to discern fact/truth from fiction/fact/false*. Some fake information is cleverly disguised and simply appears to be correct. Some fake information is accepted because the person wants to believe it. Some fake information is accepted because there is no other information to the contrary. However, the acceptance of  information  of any kind become a kind of  truth , and this is a well studied topic. In the link below is an essay on “The Truth About Truth.” This shows simply that what is your point of view, different types of information are generally accepted, fake or not.   https://www.linkedin.com/posts/g-donald-allen-420b03

Your Brain Within Your Brain

  Your Bicameral Brain by Don Allen Have you ever gone to another room to get something, but when you got there you forgot what you were after? Have you ever experienced a flash of insight, but when you went to look it up online, you couldn’t even remember the keyword? You think you forgot it completely. How can it happen so fast? You worry your memory is failing. Are you merely absent-minded? You try to be amused. But maybe you didn’t forget.   Just maybe that flash of insight, clear and present for an instant, was never given in the verbal form, but another type of intelligence you possess, that you use, and that communicates only to you. We are trained to live in a verbal world, where words matter most. Aside from emotions, we are unable to conjure up other, nonverbal, forms of intelligence we primitively, pre-verbally, possess but don’t know how to use. Alas, we live in a world of words, stewing in the alphabet, sleeping under pages of paragraphs, almost ignoring one of

Is Artificial Intelligence Conscious?

  Is Artificial Intelligence Conscious? I truly like the study of consciousness, though it is safe to say no one really knows what it is. Some philosophers has avoided the problem by claiming consciousness simply doesn’t exist. It's the ultimate escape clause. However, the "therefore, it does not exist" argument also applies to "truth", "God", and even "reality" all quite beyond a consensus description for at least three millennia. For each issue or problem defying description or understanding, simply escape the problem by claiming it doesn’t exist. Problem solved or problem avoided? Alternately, as Daniel Dennett explains consciousness as an account of the various calculations occurring in the brain at close to the same time. However, he goes on to say that consciousness is so insignificant, especially compared to our exalted notions of it, that it might as well not exist [1] . Oh, well. Getting back to consciousness, most of us have view