The Most Difficult Illusion To Spot

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach, gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change.  Think of it as a more scientifically interesting Real World (where you put six twenty-somethings who have no career or other prospects in life together and see how long it takes them to either sleep with each other or hit each other).

As you can imagine, the early meetings between the three Jesuses (Jesusi?) were a little stormy.  Interestingly, none of them left those two years any less convinced of their own divinity.  When asked to explain the beliefs of the other two prodigal sons, the chief rationalization was that they were insane.  The point (outside of the production of some amazing interview transcripts) was to demonstrate the biases in peoples' perceptions.  Jesus was always willing to call the other Jesus crazy while insisting that they themselves were... well... Jesus.

My first portfolio manager out of undergrad tried to teach me to never apply my own beliefs to my investment thesis.  The idea that I would act in a certain manner and then extrapolating that to a data-set.  He stressed this by walking backwards from the world population down to me employing a very short list of metrics.  The point was, you and your thought process was the minority.  I will never forget that lesson, which was of course vital in a Graham & Buffett framework of "is this business model dead or alive" kind of world.

The idea of both of these thoughts is that we often mislead ourselves based on a preference for ourselves and the familiarity of our own logic.  

It has been a rough morning in Los Angeles.  It has been a rough few months and a hell of a 2010 to wrap my head around.  The Hammer, The Delorian, The General & English have been tremendous in helping me sort through everything.  While the over-under on me remaining in Los Angeles gets more divergent by the day I do know that I have my head up and I am going into tomorrow with my eyes wide open.  No illusions for me.  I know what is real and what isn't and, god help me, I am going to fight for the former.

Word,

-I Heart Palindromes