Casual Conversation

Oh it absolutely is. I’m not immune to propaganda or missing information. But that’s always part of the calculation. Sorry for the novel in advance. 

I don’t make hard conclusions like a doomsday prophet. It’s about constantly consuming data from all places and keeping everything “on the table” mentally. I try to expand my ability to consume quality sources of information as best I can—to the point of learning additional languages to be able to read primary sources. 

What’s the worst case scenario if my hunch is *right* about COVID being big in Jan 2020? 1.2 milllion people die. Hospitals over run so basic services won’t be available if you have other emergencies. Supply chain falters and food scarcity climbs.

What happens if I was *wrong* about COVID in Jan 2020? The worst case is I had some masks I needed anyway and a few bags of flour and some cans of food I’d use up over the year. 

Being grounded in the reality and likelihood of being wrong is key to choosing an optimized response. There—what I needed to do was pretty reasonable and didn’t cost much versus the alternative (possibly death—which many of my relatives and friends died or were hospitalized).

I also read bad sources of information purposefully. This is mostly to keep tabs on political narrative and drawing rough timelines of when news hits and spin drops. I have a degree in political science and international relations and I do this constantly and habitually. I watch this across the political spectrum, across countries, from as much varied media that I can manage.

Hard data is becoming more difficult to source in America. Which is why I started learning German to read primary sources from Germans. I have a background in science and statistics as well. So, I try to use everything I have to my advantage. I basically never stop reading history, science, politics, foreign affairs, philosophy—everything. 

My desire for knowledge and to flip the world and human systems inside out is absolutely insatiable. I will never be finished or done understanding and knowing. I will never stop asking questions. Why? It’s partly why I’ve had so many careers. I just want to know how everything in our universe *works*.

The other trick is knowing what you know and what you don’t know. Always stay flexible so you can pivot. Always know that your current understanding could be wrong and that you’ll never have complete information. Constantly looking for data or information to flip or go against your current understanding. Scientific process as a way of life in every facet. 

For an example: I knew that the housing pricing spike from 2021 to 2023-ish was not a normal real estate trend. I was watching and fielding real estate data on the markets across the US (something I have done casually for about 25 years). I could tell the spike as being driven by *something* large and consistent across America. 

Why is everyone buying and scrambling all of the sudden and all at once? I knew I was missing information. 

At first I questioned whether or not it was being driven by people taking out a second loan/mortgage on their primary house to take advantage of the low interest rates. I could see that happening in some places. But I knew that it couldn’t be the primary driver for every house purchase. So then I knew: I was absolutely missing something. Something big. But knew I didn’t have the ability to collect or find that missing information either. Because I did go looking for it. So, I did all I could do. I waited. 

In hindsight, the answer is now easy. I was right about knowing I was missing something. I was missing the influx of PPP cash. And an additional cool billion in PPP loan fraud. Not all the houses were bought with fraudulent money, but *a lot* were. And the rest were bought with legitimate PPP money—enough to cause a feeding frenzy and rock the market. That was the missing driver. 

After figuring that out, I followed and watched the charges roll in for the PPP fraudsters. I read all the published reports on that data. And so on.

Basically, I’m an attractive/normal looking human who is also a neurodivergent weirdo. My drive and ability is not something I chose; it’s just my congenital disability. I have a min max build that’s backed up by over 100 pages of psychiatric tests and almost three decades testing and retesting by specialized doctors.  

There are trade offs. I have almost no sense of time minute by minute. I mean that literally. I have very little ability to create habits. Most people are able to do the same thing every morning—I can’t. One benefit (in my case) for being divergent (with the immense benefits of having a plush start in life, raw intelligence, and an Ivy-equivalent European education): I am hyper focused on big picture and my strongest skill is strategic planning. This is what I do *for fun*. 

Not all of us neurodivergents are as lucky as I am. I am admittedly also very lucky.

If you’re not geared this way, it’s totally fine. But if not, I’m sure you can appreciate that just as it’s probably hard for you to imagine how some people can see big picture, it’s just as hard for me to imagine how you manage to brush your teeth at the same time every morning. Or know how long you’ve been doing something. We all have abilities that come more naturally to us. This happens to be mine.