"How America Lost Its Way"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324798904578527552326836118.html

An insightful and controversial article by Niall Ferguson

Last Summer and Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Fergson

It took me longer than necessary to return to the blog. After not having written for a while, it just became a little awkward for me to resume blogging, and so I kept putting it off. Half a year of no blogging became a year, which became almost two years. However, with quite some time at my disposal until work starts at the end of June, and with the amount of thinking and learning I have been doing recently, I decided to shake off the slothfulness and get back into the habit of record keeping.

A lot has happened since my last post. Since then, I have traveled to two continents and five countries (Denmark, Germany, France, Peru and Chile). Seeing other corners of the world and learning and interacting with different peoples were not only eye-opening and educational, but those experiences also instilled a renewed sense of gratitude and added zest to my life. My recent trip to Peru was a particularly valuable experience which enabled me to witness a culture that is entirely different from my own, livelihoods that were unbeknownst to me, and a history that I was unfamiliar with.

Four years of college also came to an end (or I should say, the life after college has finally begun). Over the last two years at Penn, I have taken some challenging classes, attended interesting lectures by professors and guest speakers, become a leader, gained professional experience, expanded my professional network, and forged new invaluable friendships, as well as solidifying existing ones. As a lazy academic, I don't expect to miss schooling all that much for a while; however, saying goodbye to my friends, mentors and instructors was the most difficult part of graduation (commencement) for me. Yet, I am much looking forward to moving on, knowing that my old relationships and experiences will never cease to be part of my life.

I took a very interesting Anthropology seminar called Globalization and Health this past semester. The class discussed some of the important issues in global health and health intervention, drawing from a variety of ethnographic and historical writings, medical journals and ethical analyses. I found the class fascinating because culture, value and history become inseparable from public health in the global realm (versus local intervention). One of the salient issues throughout the semester was the benefactor-beneficiary relationship, which historically has been synonymous to the West-the Rest. Although we never reached a consensus on the justifications for health intervention, it seems as though most of us, as members of "Western" economics, had some type of moral obligation to intervene. Further, the haves' provision for the have-nots makes health intervention inevitably inseparable from (bio)politics.

Dr. Niall Ferguson's Civilization (BBC also produced a documentary series of the same title) provides a historical explanation for the "Western dominance" that characterizes the history of human civilization. He traces history, science and politics to unravel the course of events that led to the Western ascendancy, through a strictly objective and scholarly analysis. He argues that the West's historical dominance can be attributed to the six "killer applications" that the Rest lacked. These were namely: 1) Competition, 2) The scientific revolution, 3) The rule of law and representative government, 4) Modern medicine, 5) The consumer society, and 6) The work ethic.

I don't think that Dr. Ferguson's intention was to demonstrate Western superiority or to patronize the Rest. Rather, he praises the rapid economic development achieved by the Asian tigers, and the superior mathematical and scientific aptitude demonstrated by East Asian students. Additionally, Dr. Ferguson asserts that not only has the Rest been able to "download the killer applications" but countries such as China has also become an inalienable superpower in the global economy, ushering us into an age of cultural, economic and political collaboration between the West and the Rest. He cannot be more right on that point. However, some of his statements left me wondering and even slightly confused. For one, he concludes the book with: "Today, as then, the biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity - and by the historical ignorance that feeds it." Perhaps it's just the phrasing, but this sentence almost draws a divide between Western and Rest-ern civilizations, which completely defeats the purpose of this wonderful book. I feel like "The biggest threat to human civilization is posed by our own pusillanimity - and by the historical ignorance that feeds it" would have done better justice to this book, for historical ignorance and cultural supremacism are destructive to the "West" and the "Rest" alike.

A Short Justin Wolfers and Liaquat Ahamed Interview

Are we in a lost decade? | Marketplace From American Public Media

'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb's 'The Black Swan' completely defies what Statistics has taught us about Normal Distribution (The Bell curve/Gaussian distribution).

We have been taught that in a sample of numerous (hundred and thousands) of observations, the largest number of observations tend to converge toward the "mean," with most outcomes lying near the mean (i.e. 95% in the range of -/+ two standard deviations from the mean). The Bell Curve model naturally emphasizes convergence to the mean and with this model, it is easy to dismiss the observations in the either end of the tails, as being uninfluential, highly improbable "outliers."

Taleb presents to the reader however, numerous examples of such "outlier" events that transformed our paradigms. His chapters contain not only examples of real people and past events, but also compelling analyses of how we (as well as scholars and doctors) rationalize outlier events and proves the logical fallacy of such behavior. People behave this way when they are fooled by confirmation error, the fallacy silent evidence, future blindness, retrospective distortion and many more logical fallacies.

His book is filled with inductive logic and a lot of vocabulary requires logical comprehension; for example, it took me ages to differentiate between scalable and non-scalable (If you have a non-scalable job, you are paid by the hour you work). And what about Mediocristan and Extremistan! (In Mediocristan, nothing is "scalable" and one single extreme observation cannot affect the sum of all values in the distribution. In Extremistan on the other hand, extreme occurrences cansignificantly affect statistical properties) It is also complete with colorful narratives and the author's ego, which made it a very entertaining read. I should probably read it at least once again though, in order to fully appreciate the epistemology and logic behind the colorful narratives.

Summer 2011 Reading List

....AND yet another academic year's over! Summer 2011 is going to be awesome and I'm really looking forward to my 9-week-long Equity Research internship! Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a few hours of reading (and sleep) while commuting. Once the internship's over, I plan to devote the remaining month to relaxing, travelling and reading!

As per last year, I picked out a few books that look interesting from dad's list and from my own personal selection(in no particular order):

1. 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)' - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2. 'Security Analysis' - Graham and Dodd

3. 'Too Big to Fail' - Andrew Ross Sorkin

4. 'Outliers' - Malcolm Gladwell

5. 'Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy' - Joseph Stiglitz

6. 'How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities' - John Cassidy

7. 'The Power of Gold' - Peter Bernstein

8. 'Manias, Panics and Crashes: a history of financial crisis' - Charles P. Kindleberger

9. 'Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World' - Liaquat Ahamed

10. 'Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets' - Steven Drobny

11. 'Linchpin' - Seth Godin

Snoop by Sam Gosling

Gosling's 'Snoop' proposes to give an insight into what our personal spaces and possessions say about our personalities. It claims to turn every reader into a "super snooper," someone who is able to grasp the snoopee's nature by simply examining her bedroom. I too, was excited about becoming one and tried to fully master the art of "snooping." Unfortunately, the book only gives you a very limited snip-it of interpreting human psychology. It will take a lot of study and practice to become an expert "snooper."

Basically, Gosling's message is this: no matter how hard you try to camouflage and portray yourself as you wish to be portrayed, our identities are so strong that they will shine through no matter what. It is for this reason that Gosling teaches us not only how to interpret the most obvious signs such as organization but also clues of contrived display; for example, signs of hasty organization does not suggest that the person is conscientious by nature but he is merely trying to appear to be.

It is true that snooping only gives a relatively provincial knowledge of a person's characteristics. Nevertheless, it is still quite entertaining putting it into action and trying to determine the snoopee's openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion and agreeableness based purely on observation.

Shanghai Day 3 (Sunday, August 1)

We set out to explore about the city on our last full day of the trip. After breakfast at the hotel, we took a taxi to Longhua Temple. It is one of the most renowned Buddhist temples in China and the size and magnificence of its Buddhist sculptures clearly spoke for its reputation. I was dazzled by the size and colors of glittering golden sculptures: I don't think I ever saw that much gold assembled in one place. It was also interesting to see so many devout Buddhists visit the temple on the weekend and bow in front of the sculptures for many minutes.

Our next destination was an area know as the former French Concession, an area that was formerly occupied by the French. We arrived at our destination, expecting to see a street full of exotic Western stores and architecture. Surprisingly, there was one police office that used to be used by the French that was now being used by the Chinese police. When we asked one passerby, she told us that the building itself is often referred to as the 'French Concession.' Whilst wondering why French Concession was one of the top things to see in Shanghai, I also felt that I should have done more research on tourists attractions in Shanghai.

While walking down the street of the renowned "French Concession," we ran into a police officer and asked him if there was any famous tourist attraction nearby. He pointed us to the former residences of Zhou Enlai and Sun Yatsen. The former residence of Zhou also served as a meeting place for the CPC and a lookout for KMT spies. Sun's residence served as a memorial for Sun's political contributions to Chinese communism. The memorial was filled with the highest words of acclamation by China's former and present political leaders including Mao. Both sites were not exactly museums containing historical record but rather memorials dedicated to the respective historical figures, with subtle propaganda messages. What really surprised me was the security at both places. Every corner of the exhibitions was guarded by a police officer, scrutinizing each visitor's demeanor and making sure that we were not desecrating anything displayed there.

After some revision of Chinese history at French Concession, we headed over to Yuyuan and Old Shanghai streets. It was an old street filled with small stalls and stores, selling miscellaneous handicrafts ranging from paintings to teapots. We stumbled upon one unique shop selling matchboxes and fabric patches with Chinese propaganda posters painted on them. They were all so fascinating! (although I relied on Amanda's dad's translation) I even found a package of ten matchboxes with North Korean propaganda posters painted on them. I couldn't resist - I just had to buy them! After zooming through the shops on one side of the street, we went to Mao-jia-fandian (Mao family's restaurant) for lunch. I wasn't very convinced by the whole Mao family's marketing, but nevertheless, the restaurant had pictures of Mao on the walls. Over the course of the trip, I was constantly fascinated by the Chinese people's adoration of Mao. He does not only serve as a political leader figure, but his almost god-like presence transcends all areas. He appears on every single Chinese paper note, used as a friendly marketing figure and is still spoken very high of by modern Chinese people as the great "Chairman Mao."

When we walked across Yuyuan (aka Yu Garden), we reached the Bund. The Bund is a street of European-style buildings along the river. The buildings are now occupied by foreign banks and companies, but it wasn't hard to imagine what the Bund would have been like in the old days when the street was less busy with people and civilization. The Bund quickly became my favorite spot in Shanghai because you can also look out to the river and see the other side where the financial center is located. The sight was amazing: the co-existence of the old and the new had a very curious charm that I was not able to get anywhere else.

After enjoying the view of the river for a while, we decided to take a underwater cable car to the other side of the river. Although the cable car was kind of pathetic, the sight laid in front of me on the other side of me made me forget all about the horrible ride. The Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower was absolutely beautiful and the high-rises spoke directly of Shanghai's renown as Asia's emerging financial hub. When we got back to the other side of the river we decided to take a quick look at Nanjinglu (aka Nanjing Road), which was a shopping alley with lots of modern shops built inside old architecture. It was an extremely crowded street with both native and international tourists jumbled together; not to mention that everything sold there was ridiculously over-priced!

When it started getting darker at around 8 pm, we realized that everyone was exiting Nanjinglu to get to the Bund. It was almost like a mass exodus! There was more violent and disorganized pushing and shoving involved, of course. However, when we got to the Bund and the riverside, we realized that the trouble was definitely worth it. The skyline was absolutely mind-blowing and we spent a good half an hour admiring the stunning view.

I was really glad that the finale of this short trip turned out also to be the highlight. Despite the scorching summer heat and slightly coarse manner of the native tourists, Shanghai is a beautiful city without doubt. I would not hesitate to visit Shanghai again if I had a chance. It is a cultural, financial and technological hub of China, and there is so much to learn about the local culture. The food is great - but then again, I wasn't very adventurous with my choice of local cuisine, which is one thing that I wish I had done while traveling in Shanghai!