I’ll preface this post with a reminder: Nothing I say should be considered investment advice or advice in general. I receive no compensation for anything, or from anybody mentioned in my posts because it seems wrong and nobody would pay anyway.

Now that that’s out of the way…

There’s a lot going on these days. $40 trillion in government debt, $1+ trillion in debt service, a sort-of-but-not-really war with Iran, pernicious inflation, the Social Security “Trust” Fund running out of money in the next few years, communism on the rise, dogs and cats living together, Mass Hysteria!

It’s way too much to address in one post, so picking apart this list will become a series.  I can’t address most of the financial stuff until January (for regulatory reasons), but I plan on getting to it. So let’s take a look at two of the topics.

First, let’s put the dogs and cats thing to rest right now. They’ll be fine.

Koda and Binx contemplating the vast mysteries of the universe

Second, let’s take on Mass Hysteria; starting with a confession. I’ve had a Twitter/X account under a pseudonym since 2020.

Could that be a hint?

I wanted to see what people with cell phones and too much time on their hands were talking about during the crucible that was the COVID “situation”. Social media crystalized Mass Hysteria in that era and ever since. It seemed to lead Federal, state, and local policy in a weird kind of circular co-dependency, so trying Twitter/X for a peek into Mass Hysteria struck me as a worthwhile exercise. On one hand it was, on the other it wasn’t.

Oh no! Someone or something’s gonna get me!

Worth it:

• It expanded my understanding of how large populations perceive and deal with life’s problems. No humble-brag here, but I live in rarefied air. I’m surrounded by highly skilled physicians and surgeons, savant-level statisticians, top legal eagles, and folks who know a whole lot about capital markets. My lens was narrowed by my atmosphere. Twitter/X broadened that lens as I read about people expressing sincere fear, while at the same time there was a glut of propaganda, insincere exploitation, and degradation of civil discourse. A wider lens is always better, I think. Especially during Mass Hysteria.
• I realized that everyone having a personal dais generates a massive amount of “noise”. Democratizing free speech online is great. I’m all-in on the 1^st amendment. But so many posters (the majority?) have ulterior motives – monetization, political advancement, foreign interference, trolling for yucks, mainstreaming the fringe (move the “Overton Window”!), or self-aggrandizing that the platform was rendered to mostly noise. It reinforced the need to constantly apply a “sanity filter” between real life and online life. And I learned about bobs and vangene too.
• It confirmed the teachings of George Carlin. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ’nuff said. Note: I plan on addressing the topic of stupidity in a future post. For a teaser, Google “Cippola’s Five Laws of Stupidity”.
• It proved that confirmation bias is a much stronger human need than I thought. People “like”, “follow”, “re-tweet”, and positively comment on things they already agree with. They demean, often cruelly, those they don’t. All for the comforting warmth of the crowd’s embrace. In the end nobody’s mind is ever changed, so it winds up being auto-fellatio at scale. Recognizing that played a big part in changing my perspective on what I’m told to think.
• It was a human colander. Mass Hysteria proved to be a sieve that filtered real relationships from those that were superficial or exploitive. In that regard, I found it invaluable. Gotta prune the tree from time to time.

Wasn’t worth it:

• It distorts reality.  Mass Hysteria’s tropes of illness, death, financial ruin, and racial/religious/cultural/sexual/political strife not only expend your energy, but gradually distort reality. You can ask the Jacobins for confirmation, if you can locate their heads. The fervor leads to a distorted world where there’s an even-money chance you’re looking through a fun-house kaleidoscope rather than a window to the truth. The whole thing is exhausting and requires constant checking of, and belief in, your agency. That can be a tall order.
• It wastes time. If you weigh the time spent watching and reacting to Mass Hysteria against how much your life has been improved by it, the scale will fall off the wrong side of the table. Mass Hysteria never mowed my lawn or cooked my dinner.
• It shows you the worst in people. Anonymity in a crowd pulls down filters faster than booze. I could write pages about this, but I’m sure you’ve seen it; it encourages Mr. Hyde to show up in your living room. For a better read about crowd behavior than I could ever write, I’ll suggest Noah Halberg’s 2013 book “The Psychology of the Masses”.

So, my wrap-up is:

1. Dogs living with cats is just fine.

2. Mass Hysteria is bad. Mmmm-kay?

Epilog: I’ve long since filtered my Twitter/X timeline to only cover sports and investment topics. Go Pens. Go retirement assets.