Started this blog just a year ago, but really got it up to speed with containment in order to stay active and fight boredom.
2021 is the year when people should start using again their brains in a normal way if we want to get out this crisis sooner than later. For this, let’s turn to neuroscience!
The brain, pretty much like any computer, stores information and can retrieve it with filters or criteria or whatever way to sort out things. Brain relies primarily on vision to distinguish one thing from an other one. One is blue, big and moving while the other one is red, tiny and static. Then other pieces of information are used, like when when you saw that big blue moving box, if it was hot or cold, if it was smelling funny or not. The brain can NOT negate differences, one can try to negate then from language and it will end up with neurosis sooner or later, so this will fail!
Conspiracy theories are also an other subject that has kept many busy in 2020 to appear as the greatest theorist in this or that area, virus and vaccines attracting most candidates. What is happening exactly? Brain, again, stores the information it perceives mostly from vision or hearing. Now numbers, dates, … are meaningless as standalone information. So the brain has a way to memorize these information, which is different from computer science, which is to build stories, consciously or not. Your brain is very good at identifying coincidences, these are events happening at the same time, but are typically the work of a random process. By putting coincidences together and building a story, your brain builds the memory of events. Now the media have peppered lots of numbers every day since the beginning of pandemic, so it is now wonder that many stories have emerged in conscious level and people are writing them down all over the social networks. Then, the media are shocked by the big number of conspiracy theories aka fake news, and they fall to the same fallacy: their brains are making a story about the numbers reported in ‘fake’ news… we are in a matrix of conspiracy theories!
The best wish I have for 2021, is that everyone focuses on what they do best. If you are no expert in pandemics, vaccine technology, statistical long tails,.. then avoid being just an other fool on internet. Be patient, think correctly your brain with its strengths and weakness, learn and seek the truth via scientific approach!
That’s it. Stay with me for trading. Until next time, trade safely!