Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
On 5 October 2014 10:04, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 18:47 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Spencer Tracy’s character, fashioned after the defense attorney Clarence Darrow, stands in the empty courtroom, picks up a Bible in one hand and Darwin’s “Origin of Species” in the other, gives a knowing smile and claps them together before putting both under his arm. Would that it were so simple. This is a uniquely American problem. If the problem exists in Europe, I have not heard about it. As an outsider in every one of several different ways, I think that the Bible has some good things (morality) that should not have been discarded and other things (like creationism) that need to be discarded. The church-rationality/church-science conflict has raged for centuries. The church lost a major battle in the mid 1600s after the Thirty years war and the Peace of Westphalia. The untrammelled power of the Church was broken back then but it continued to hold out till the 1950s and 60s when science began to play God by solving human problems where God did not appear to be helping out much. What America has done after that time is to discard morality as demanded by religion in favour of a mixture of rights mandated by laws. I am not sure that this has helped society in America. I think morality has been discarded simply as a reaction against religion and pseudo-scientific reasoning has been applied (along with, I believe) fake and contrived evidence to show that Biblical morality can be trumped by science. shiv My armchair theory explaining the rise in the numbers of the loonies, FWIW: The problem with deciding to follow one part of religion because it makes sense and jettisoning another because it doesn't is that the follower comes up against the very reasonable question - if parts of it are silly, is it really divine at all? and soon concludes in the negative. That leaves with only the everything-is-literally-true people whose tribe seems to be increasing not so much because their numbers are swelling as because the more rational guys are choosing not to believe in any of it at all. And politics being what it is, the loonies are always the first to be heard. -- Narendra Shenoy http://narendrashenoy.blogspot.com
Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
On Sun, 2014-10-05 at 15:59 +0530, Shenoy N wrote: FWIW: The problem with deciding to follow one part of religion because it makes sense and jettisoning another because it doesn't is that the follower comes up against the very reasonable question - if parts of it are silly, is it really divine at all? and soon concludes in the negative. That leaves with only the everything-is-literally-true people whose tribe seems to be increasing not so much because their numbers are swelling as because the more rational guys are choosing not to believe in any of it at all. And politics being what it is, the loonies are always the first to be heard. Yes. But this is the religionists viewpoint of the uncomfortable questions that religion faces. How about science? How come no one is asking science uncomfortable questions about why science finds it OK to discard morality, or not question the discarding of morality without having a clue about why and where morality came from. And no. Religion did not bring in morality. The very same concepts of morality pre-date the religions and exist outside religion. For example, look at this article http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/beyond-marriage.html?_r=0 The author (an economist, I think, certainly not a biologist of priest) starts by saying: MARRIAGE is disappearing. More than 40 percent of new mothers are unmarried. Later she says: Can marriage be restored as the standard way to raise children? As much as we might welcome a revival, I doubt that it will happen. The genie is out of the bottle. This statement brought a contemptuous smile on my face because the woman is bluffing. This is a classic example of GIGO by an ignoramus who is accustomed to bluffing her way through and does not require to meet the standards that a scientist is supposed to reach. For anything to be declared as impossible, one must first try and understand why something happens and then decide whether it is impossible or not. For example - 150 years ago, flying was thought to be impossible while people were experimenting with perpetual motion machines. Physics teaches us that perpetual motion without the input of energy is impossible, but heavier than air objects flying is possible. But what about marriage? Why have marriages existed before anyone can remember? Why have marriages been known from before many religions? If you do not know why marriages were thought necessary in human society for over 3000 years of recorded history, how on earth can the concept of marriage be simply dismissed? This is no better than alchemists trying to make gold from base metals. And this is the 21st century? shiv
Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 8:33 PM, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: How about science? How come no one is asking science uncomfortable questions about why science finds it OK to discard morality, or not question the discarding of morality without having a clue about why and where morality came from. Perhaps because science only concerns itself with making falsifiable, repeatable predictions. (Continuing your anthropomorphism to make a philosophical point) Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Financial planning
I'm late to this discussion :) Thanks Lahar for pointing out my post! I've changed on one thing since that post. Index funds may not be the best option in India - and this is due to: - bad construction of indexes (we use a free float market cap weighted index largely, like the Sensex or Nifty, which have stock and sectoral biases. The broad indexes have little acceptance, and we don't have stuff like equal weighted indexes yet) - dividends are a good source of income but don't reflect in the index values. There's something called total returns index, but no one mentions that for comparisons (it shoudl be the only thing compared) - non index stocks do well because the indexes of choice like Sensex or Nifty aren't broad enough. I wrote a post about the data: http://capitalmind.in/2014/08/in-india-mutual-funds-have-beaten-the-nifty-no-survivor-bias-edition/ The point was - let's take the TOP funds as they were in 2005, and assume you invested in the top 5 or 6 of them. Nearly all of them have beaten the Nifty (total returns, assuming reinvestment of dividends). THere's no survivor bias - I took the top 5 or 6 and all have survived, and I took only the top ones because they are the ones you would have bought. The fact remains that they aren't the top funds today, and some nowhere near the top, but they have still beaten the indexes, after accounting for fees. This I cannot ignore, so I should say I'm probably wrong about index funds. On the point about should investing be left to the professionals I'm with Mahesh that this is more like hubris. I think of investing like the great Chef Gusteau said about cooking in Ratatouille, that anyone can cook. This doesn't mean cooking is so easy that anyone can do it, but that it's a thing that anyone can excel at if they put their mind to it (and probably aren't even professionals). You can be a phenomenal investor and yet, have a day job. DIRECT mode - I've spent way too much time rescuing people from shitty advice from silly intermediaries who have ruined very solid portfolios - timing stocks I understand, and I do it, and I tell people that if they don't have the time, they should just use a fund to invest. But timing and rejigging investments in mutual funds is by and large a waste of time, and for every such rejig I have NEVER met a manager who has evaluated how much worse (or better) the investor would have been, had those rejigs not been done at all. The DIRECT mode gives you an edge of about 1% a year on equities. This, plus any fees you pay an advisor, add up to a layer of outperformance that the advisor has to provide just to break even with the direct mode. Good advisors too don't know what will happen, and tend to get into the herd mentality, the crowd, the loss aversion and all those little behavioural biases that screw up our investments. This happens with professional fund managers too...and the only real edge that professionals used to have was insider trading knowledge, which has become a little harder to come by. Advisors have almost no edge in fund selection; at best, they can use some data, which is just driving with your eyes in the rear view mirror. (Advisors though can help with things like setting up HUFs, creating inheritance structures, doing goal oriented investments etc. ) Deepak Shenoy http://www.capitalmind.in Twitter: @deepakshenoy On 2 October 2014 10:04, Deepak Misra yahoogro...@deepakmisra.com wrote: Jumping into this a bit late, but will try to avoid repititions 1) Open a PPF account in every member in the houses name. This is an absolute must and try to put as much as possible there. The high tax free return with compounding at zero risk is something that is difficult to match 2) The first house/real estate is not an investment. The subsequent ones are. While the ROI in terms of rent maybe low, the caital appreciation is what counts. As some earlier pointed out, the tax breaks on loans makes effective interest low. 3) An approximate cash flow statement needs to be prepared to plan for big ticket expenses. The savings/retirement strategy and allocation depends a lot on this. 4) Assume that good fund managers know more than you and have much better data. If you treat mutual funds as investing then this holds true over investing directly in stocks. Many peeople do make money on stocks but lots more do loose. In case you have the time, expertize and drive, then it make sense to research stocks and buy directly. 5) Allocate an ideal percent of cash to debt, small cap, balanced and large cap depending on risk profile and adjust investment accordingly. Even if the amount per month is miniscule, it all adds up 6) Regular SIP is a must. That is the key 7) For equity keep long term in view. If Mukesh Ambani sneezes, the stock market crashes, but that does not mean that all business are going to sink. ONce he starts smiling the market may boom. Over a 10+ year horizon this hardly matters.
Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
On Sun, 2014-10-05 at 22:37 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Perhaps because science only concerns itself with making falsifiable, repeatable predictions. (Continuing your anthropomorphism to make a philosophical point) Mostly, no disagreement with that. But science has spread itself over a vast domain and its record of making falsifiable, repeatable predictions is sketchy in some areas. Mind you it's still called science. Few people call it art or astrology or mumbo-jumbo and the scientists in those areas would be greatly upset at such accusations and get their knickers in a massive twist. The methods of research used in science is applied in the field of animal and human behaviour and social extrapolations are regularly made using the findings of such studies that are passed off as science For example, I read one more recent article that pointed out that homosexuality occurs in animals and therefore it should be acceptable to man. Fine. Let me not argue with that. But if you are going to apply animal models to man, how about intercourse as soon as menarche is reached. Why is that normal behaviour for animals but underage sex for humans? Among animals one finds polygamy, polyandry and the one partner for life model. Once could take one's pick and say all are right, but all can't be right. Convenience, politics and social norms dictate what science says and does and what is cherry-picked as the truth Scientists have failed to ask hard and uncomfortable questions that need to be asked and have lowered themselves to a level where religion, with some absurd theories is fighting neck and neck with science to win hearts and minds. What a come-down that is. shiv
Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
Shiv, Once again, I'm glad to see your sexist, misogynist, low IQ and completely bullshit comments on a well-researched piece. Once again, just because it contrasts with your equally bullshit theories of Ram Rajya and Ye Olde English Way Of Life:) Good to have you here, man :-) M On 05-Oct-2014 11:03 pm, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, 2014-10-05 at 15:59 +0530, Shenoy N wrote: FWIW: The problem with deciding to follow one part of religion because it makes sense and jettisoning another because it doesn't is that the follower comes up against the very reasonable question - if parts of it are silly, is it really divine at all? and soon concludes in the negative. That leaves with only the everything-is-literally-true people whose tribe seems to be increasing not so much because their numbers are swelling as because the more rational guys are choosing not to believe in any of it at all. And politics being what it is, the loonies are always the first to be heard. Yes. But this is the religionists viewpoint of the uncomfortable questions that religion faces. How about science? How come no one is asking science uncomfortable questions about why science finds it OK to discard morality, or not question the discarding of morality without having a clue about why and where morality came from. And no. Religion did not bring in morality. The very same concepts of morality pre-date the religions and exist outside religion. For example, look at this article http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/beyond-marriage.html?_r=0 The author (an economist, I think, certainly not a biologist of priest) starts by saying: MARRIAGE is disappearing. More than 40 percent of new mothers are unmarried. Later she says: Can marriage be restored as the standard way to raise children? As much as we might welcome a revival, I doubt that it will happen. The genie is out of the bottle. This statement brought a contemptuous smile on my face because the woman is bluffing. This is a classic example of GIGO by an ignoramus who is accustomed to bluffing her way through and does not require to meet the standards that a scientist is supposed to reach. For anything to be declared as impossible, one must first try and understand why something happens and then decide whether it is impossible or not. For example - 150 years ago, flying was thought to be impossible while people were experimenting with perpetual motion machines. Physics teaches us that perpetual motion without the input of energy is impossible, but heavier than air objects flying is possible. But what about marriage? Why have marriages existed before anyone can remember? Why have marriages been known from before many religions? If you do not know why marriages were thought necessary in human society for over 3000 years of recorded history, how on earth can the concept of marriage be simply dismissed? This is no better than alchemists trying to make gold from base metals. And this is the 21st century? shiv
Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
ADMIN: can we have less of (by which I mean NONE whatsoever) the ad hominem posts please? Make your points without namecalling. Udhay
Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology
Udhay, could you also clarify please if there are any group editorial guidelines regarding language? I generally keep it clean, but I was recently tempted. -Original Message- From: Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com Sent: 06-10-2014 08:10 To: Silk List silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] God, Darwin and College Biology ADMIN: can we have less of (by which I mean NONE whatsoever) the ad hominem posts please? Make your points without namecalling. Udhay Powered by BigRock.com
[silk] ADMIN: The rules of silklist
On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Shyam Sunder shyam.sun...@peakalpha.com wrote: Udhay, could you also clarify please if there are any group editorial guidelines regarding language? I generally keep it clean, but I was recently tempted. The three basic guidelines, which exist on the list homepage, and also in the welcome message sent to everyone who joins the list: 0. Assume goodwill. 1. No ad hominem. 2. No spam.
Re: [silk] ADMIN: The rules of silklist
On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 8:50 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: The three basic guidelines, which exist on the list homepage, and also in the welcome message sent to everyone who joins the list: 0. Assume goodwill. 1. No ad hominem. 2. No spam. 3. No top-posting. ;) -- Amit Varma http://www.indiauncut.com http://www.twitter.com/amitvarma
Re: [silk] ADMIN: The rules of silklist
On 6 October 2014 08:50, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: 0. Assume goodwill. 1. No ad hominem. 2. No spam. You'd think Be civil at all times would be obvious, but sometimes it would appear not. :) -- Madhu Menon Food Photography: http://madhumenonphoto.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/madmanweb
