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To: djane who wrote (5773)	7/15/1999 8:06:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 29987

Self-delusion What an interesting post djane. Some time ago on the Iridium thread, I wondered why we tend to become so imbued with belief in a stock that we [not me, other people, I hope] ignore warning signs, reasoning and even direct evidence and 'go down with the ship'. I reckon it justifies reposting, so here it is again: <Calling all cults: After reading this column's back-and-forth with IDT investors, California clinical psychologist Jerome Silverman wrote that he believes it's clear the IDT-iots "reflect an additional classic behavioral principle. This has to do with external support for one's pathological condition. If an individual with pathological ideation is surrounded by people who challenge the pathological position there will be a reasonable probability that the position will be re-evaluated, rejected and a healthier one put in place. "However if the pathological position has external supports -- people who similarly hold that position -- there is often very little chance to have that position re-evaluated, let alone having it modified in a healthier way. "This is why cults are so powerful an influence on their members. It seems that for many buying a stock is similar to joining a cult. Instead of being investors -- open, alert, considering all information concerning their holding -- they become cultists, cheering the stock in spite of negative data and wanting to kill the messenger who brought it. "They find cult mates on Internet message boards and in a kind of ritualistic behavior, post wishful predictions like 'up 10% by next month' or 'big takeover coming.' These posts have nothing to do with fact, but by posting them the action itself serves to reassure them and other cultists that all is well and that they have done something in the service of the cult -- e.g. the post and prediction. "This is similar to primitive peoples who during a drought do a rain dance. It gives them something to do to validate their beliefs and it reaffirms the cultist hope." > This gets back to Goedel's stuff about self-referential systems being unable to change themselves. Also, it matches up with I was reading yesterday in this first url edge.org see The Reality Club in: edge.org about why human communities succeed, fail, change, lose or gain technologies. It shows why monopolies, especially government monopolies or power-based monopolies are so useless and damaging. They eventually collapse under pressure from an external influence, but things can stay ugly for a long time until the external influence arrives. Check out India as a case in point. It's a democracy but a billion people there choose to stay destitute. Or, more likely, 300 million of them are held hostage to the electoral kidnapping at the ballot box by 400m and the other 300m just try to keep body and soul together and don't enter the political process. To increase their prosperity, all they need to do is vote to allow external influences and investments. But even the mighty USA is running scared of externalities and has pulled up the drawbridge against the threat from NZ exports of lamb. Baaaaaa, Maurice