#he's a little ball of contradictions that make perfect sense when looked at in context

[lloydfrontera]

Now that Javier experienced Lloyd sacrificing himself do you think he will still want him to go and sacrifice himself and save others or will he be now fine with Lloyd wanting to runaway especially with what he heard through the door?

that's such an interesting question.

to start with javier never wanted lloyd to sacrifice himself. just to be clear. that's not something javier ever wanted of him. he hoped he would try to help others even if it meant risking his life which is different but i guess the difference can be a little tricky.

that being said.

i don't believe javier would ever want lloyd to put himself in danger ever again, not for him, not for the estate, not for anyone else. but. i do think he would subconsciously expect it from him. you get what i mean?

like. he'd never want or think to ask lloyd to risk his life again, he'd do everything in his power so lloyd is never in a situation where he would have to, just like he swore to do in ch 384

And on the other hand, he made a promise. He was determined. I will protect that stupid friend even more firmly. No matter what happens. No matter what situation comes. I will protect that coward who pretends to be calm. ‘So don’t whine that you don’t want to die. Because that won't happen. If that moment comes, I will be the one who dies. for you... I'm willing to do that.'

so like. as far as javier is aware he would never let lloyd do something like that.

but. he would expect it. because that's what lloyd got him used to. which is,, very important to remember imo. i don't think it's fair to get upset at javer for feeling disappointed when lloyd says he won't put his life at risk for the sake of others when time after time lloyd has shown that he's very much willing to do so. and has explicitly said he will do so. like!! talk about giving mixed signals here!

remember the mastodons incident?? that time javier got upset precisely because lloyd kept putting his life in danger?? and lloyd was the one that told him that sorry but he would keep doing it anyway??

"I fully get what you are saying," Lloyd continued. "And I know you have good intentions. You're telling me to run safely and don't take things into my own hands when danger arises. Right?" "Yes," Javier confirmed "But you're upset because I always get winded up in this situation by risking myself, totally ignorant of my place. I'm right on this one, too, right?" asked Lloyd. "Yes, that's right." "But what else can I do? I don't think I can be more careful in the future." "Why is that?" asked Javier. "There are people that trust and work for me." Javier wanted to refute and fight back. But he couldn't come up with anything, so he stayed silent. Lloyd continued to speak amid his silence. "Of course, I don't want to be in danger, either. I'm scared. And I hate dying all the more. But you see, everyone has their own responsibilities," said Lloyd.

like?? i don't think it's unfair for javier to expect lloyd to try to help others even if it means putting his life in danger when this is an actual conversation they had.

the misunderstanding here was that when lloyd said he had a responsibility to others, he meant the people that worked for him, the ones under his care, the people he's in charge of. he owes them that protection because they put his trust in him and he's not gonna betray that even if it means his life.

but javier thinks they have that responsibility with everyone. he thinks it's their duty to protect those than can't protect themselves, even if they're not part of their estate or territory. he believes they owe them that protection because they are stronger than they are and it's their responsibility to do their best to help even if it means their lives.

and guess what! lloyd always ends up coming back to save everyone anyway! despite his fears, despite his protests, he always ends up risking his life for strangers anyway!... okay, mostly for javier but still! javier doesn't know that! he doesn't know that the major reason lloyd disregards his safety is because he cannot stand the idea of javier dying while being a hero! why would he! they're both very stupid when it comes to the other!

as far as javier knows lloyd always ends up doing the altruistic thing despite his words to the contrary. why wouldn't he expect him to do it again even when he doesn't want him to.

so like. yes javier would be okay with lloyd running away but he wouldn't actually expect him to and it would be a jarring surprise to him if lloyd did.

and the thing is. i think if lloyd suggested running away and javier accepted, it would even more jarring for lloyd, because that's just... not what he would expect from javier. which i believe would then send him down a spiral of anxiety and mixed feelings about being the reason javier gave up one of the things he most admired in him that would end up with him deciding to stay and help. thereby confirming exactly what javier expected of him. again.

but again. that's just what i think ajskdjskdfds

[sugar-petals]

I know you've been getting tons of requests for more tarot readings, but OH DEAR LORD, PLEASE MAKE ANOTHER ONE! Also, I luv ur blog have a blessed day!!!

i had a sexy idea. what about i take you to date night with SuperM 👀

Taemin: THE CHARIOT

That card has major prince in extra shining armor energy. It’s a highly decorated guy riding a star-spangled wagon pulled by two sphinxes. Pretty extravagant is an understatement. It can’t get any more glamorous and it’s perfectly Taemin. Especially because THE CHARIOT traditionally symbolizes being famous. Rings a bell right there. Date night will go down in a fancy car or limousine, or you will spend a major part in some kind of expensive vehicle getting you where you planned to go. Safe to say the overdressed one will not be you. Yep, no matter how hard you try. And it can’t be any other way. Taemin will stun with glitter, high fashion, perfect hair, jewelry, makeup, lavish fabrics, a perfect body, anyways. So expensive, lord. You date the Prince of Korea. Taemin might get into trouble with fans or frentic paparazzi when he shows up like that man. So it only makes sense the venue is likely a bit out of town because the chariot card is set with a city backdrop that fades in the distance. It’s gonna be next to a body of water which is depicted behind the chariot. Really a more secluded and remote area. That also tells me it’s you he dresses up for after all, not the public. And, either way. That the main theme of the card is the vehicle, that’s where you’ll be cheek to cheek. Driver, roll up the partition, please. 

Baekhyun: KING OF SWORDS

Powerful card. Either of you, I suspect it’s Baekhyun, takes responsibility to organize everything to the very last detail. It’s more head over heart energy, a hurricane, literal brain-storm even. He will surely think it through a thousand times. You gotta be the one who says easy easy, it’s about you and me and not some management job where the setting and timing and whatnot gives you all kinds of pressure. Now you understand that Baekhyun’s serious, performance-like mode is at full throttle because he’s nervous as fuck, cares about you, and doesn’t want to make any mistakes. But that contradicts what date night is all about. It’s not supposed to be stress or a task. Rather than making a good impression and being perfect, you remind him to let go a little more and return to his goofy personality. The lesson of the card might go as far as having both of you realize that racking your brains to hard is a sign to do something else. Staying at home is not a bad thing, you might even enjoy yourselves much more because everything is already taken care of. Sword energy cuts, especially if it’s the King wielding it, in this case the cutting might refer to canceling plans short notice to pursue what you’re really in the mood for as a couple. Which in turn will be rewarding and something healthy to do because you don’t force yourselves into an obligation.

Lucas: THE LOVERS

So… to state the absolute obvious right away. Even if you aren’t too familiar with Tarot at all, you know for a fact that this card is a darn good one to pull for a relationship question. Lo and behold: Lucas is your #1 address for date night. If I were unsure whom to pick, THE LOVERS are the most unequivocal sign like, pack the condoms, bring out the perfume, feel good, make out… wait, too fast. First things first: Oh my, he’s gonna be amazing as your kind of date consort. The chemistry! Explosive. Since the card depicts Garden Eden, that’s gonna be your overarching theme if you will. Cloud nine essentially. This evening will be blessed and sheer paradise. Adam on the card is surrounded by flames on a tree so you bet Lucas is gonna be on fire. There are also quite a few fruits depicted so I guess your food will be sweet and light rather than heavy. Now, as for the elephant in the room. Adam and Eve are more than stark naked on that card. Sex will be involved 10/10, out of all member’s he’s the one guaranteed to lay that pipe. The Lovers card also symbolizes a decision. It might be the day Lucas chooses to propose to you, even. Your relationship will be bound for the next level there. The angel on the card tells me you are safe and protected.

Mark: THE TOWER

Unexpected! That card is just way too dramatic for a light romantic reading. Seeeriously. Especially with Mark as a member who’s known for being super goofy and cute instead of serene and grumpy. What it’s about is plain ole doom and destruction, bringing down the old to build and restart the new. Natural catastrophe and firestorms, even. Yeah like imagine sitting together with Mark eating chipotle and some bloody earthquake hits, that’s the scenario and… actually, no. Worry not, I think the card wants us to take the image literally. The date will be in or close to some kind of tower. Or any elevated structure for that matter. Eiffel Tower much? Tower of Pisa? Sounds very romantic to me. That we have a huge thunderstorm raging on this card tells me you’ll be inside watching the huge grey clouds and thunder which is gonna be quite spectacular. Summer might be the time of the year that date goes down since it’s the season most prone to thunderstorms. Note also how dark the tower card is, that date night will go on past midnight and it will be steamy, too.

Ten: FOUR OF CUPS

Instantly when I drew that card, I knew it’s him on it. The four of cups shows a young black-haired man with closed eyes, sitting under a tree. Whether he’s dozing, sulking, meditating, or ignoring what goes on around him isn’t entirely clear. To me, and for Ten, I feel like it’s more of a worn-out day he’ll experience. Not the date itself, mind you, it’s the social circumstances. He’s tired from dance practices and all those schedules. All the fan interactions and SNS to be taken care of. Lots of stuff going on in the group. Truth be told, the card says date night isn’t the best way to go about it. He wants to be in a state of full energy when being with you. That works best if he has a separate day planned. And not date night as an addition to an existing schedule. Cramming it in seems like deprioritizing his partner so he won’t easily consider even if you yourself suggest date night. He has his reasons but might not always care to elaborate which is interesting given how outspoken Ten is otherwise. Maybe he’s not keen to burden you with his stress and his main strategy is to stay indifferent to keep things at bay, he really values relaxation time — nothing against you, just virtue of his business.

Taeyong: TWO OF PENTACLES

Interesting and simple, beautiful card! It shows a young man juggling two pentacles inside an infinity symbol, acting as a scale. That tells me two things: a) you’ll split the bill and b) this is a long-term relationship. Random I know, but makes for interesting context. The main theme from the card is the following though. It’s gonna be a date by the sea. There are water and ships pictured. You’ll see the anchorage and freight ships, even take a trip across a river alternatively. Who knows, the River Han is a popular dating spot in Seoul, I am sure someone so fond of all things nature will gravitate towards that. Looking at the waves is like a meditative experience. I also got an idea looking at that card once more, something more small scale: A pool date, super sexy. Like, imagine that. Taeyong is just an avid swimmer in pools, we’ve seen it. A bit of refreshment, some games with a ball, a bit of accidental exercise along the way without it feeling like a chore? Sounds about right. Plus you automatically get frisky in your swimwear. He’s not afraid to show his body. Whatever it is, a body of water will be involved for sure. If it’s by the sea an not inside water: Taeyong will wear either a red or even orange suit, we’re going fashion forward tonight babey, he can pull it off.

Kai: TEN OF WANDS

When I drew this I was like oh nu why :/ But we gotta roll with it. It’s not a seriously scary thing or something, just a more strenous, not 100% smooth romance card. The Ten of Wands is more of an indicator that there’s an obstacle or strain involved. It might be the kind of date where Kai is clumsy, someone doesn’t make it on time, it’s a hassle to find the parking lot, and so on and so forth. Consistent bad luck I do not associate with the TEN OF WANDS, however! It’s more of a what effort you put in is what dictates the result energy. The card shows a hunched guy carrying ten huge wooden sticks toward a town in the backdrop. And you can really see it’s heavy and he’s struggling because he has to carry so much. So, it might be a scenario where like, say Kai and you get stuck in traffic before you arrive. Which, you know, can be super annoying but can easily turned into a perk if you know what to do with the extra time. Or, Kai takes up so much responsibility with planning that he gets exhausted with the rest of his work in the mix. Though remember, effort always comes back tenfold (it’s the ten of wands after all) so it might be worth it and be a wholesome evening after some initial stress. Something unrelated I picked up from the imagery is that the date will be in a castle, because that is pictured in the backdrop!

[funkymbtifiction]

Ne+Ti vs Ni: An ENTx endless rambling

First things first: thank you for once again answering my ask, I appreciate it and again, it did help. I’m sending this message knowing that it’ll be probably ignored or worse, blacklist me but I’ve reached the limit to where I can go without direct and specific input, so here goes nothing:

(Mod note: italics indicate Ti, bold indicates Ne)

I’ve been trying to nail down my type for quite some time now yet I can’t settle down for any typing because

1) I invariably start questioning its validity since contradictions are bound to appear and even if I can justify or rationalize them (which I have a pretty good ability to do, sadly, since it drives me insane), they bother me to no end hence I start looking or a “perfect” diagnosis again

2) I can see significant traits of myself in several of very different types, it’s maddening

3) When I spot a connection between myself and a type being described I immediately (can’t control it really) start rationalizing why it could be true, why it would explain this and that, why I couldn’t see it before, for what I was mistaking said trait/behavior for, memories of time since which I display said traits/behaviors flood my mind as well as multiple examples of people of said type I always felt a connection to or was intrigued by…all seemly at the same time or in such rapid succession I have a really hard time calming down my mind in order to try and make sense of all of what’s going on inside of it.It’s like I can find compelling (as seen by me) evidence to me being a lot of types, and I’m always 100% serious about it at the time…except my “sureness” never lasts for more than two days at a time, mostly.

It frustrates and embarrasses me because I’m hardly unsure about figuring out (and typing) other people, and I’m seldom wrong at that, but I can’t pin myself down and it makes me feel incompetent and unfit. Everyone always says I’m good analyzer and jokingly refer to me as a blunt psychologist, yet my MBTI confusion makes me feel like a fraud and I HATE it.

I highly suspect I might be mixing the 8’s need to control (I’m a 873 with 8 being the core type), which comes across as “J-ness” for Ni fixed path/truth thing (besides ENTJ lately I never get high Te or Ni types in tests, it’s always high Ti ones) and lately I’ve been daily noticing my Si “trips” so to speak and pondering over my supposedly hilarious “gastronomic memory” (I somehow can recall and describe days and situations based on what I ate that day if it was particularly delicious. I know it sounds ridiculous and I have no idea how that works, but it’s true).

I’m also pretty certain I value Fe over Fi, though ethics in general definitely take a backseat to logic most of the times, it’s noticeable enough for people to comment on it.

Two minor things I relate to Ne that I display in spades and everyone seem to find amusing is that I can never see a thing separately for a noticeable time before I see it integrated to a  grid of things like it or other contexts in which the same principle or happening applies to or will influence it. Words and images almost always bring other words and images to mind and I go crazy if I can’t recall what it reminds me of specifically. This seldom happens though, usually I can reference several things/people the original object is alike to, though it seems that to a lot of people these similarities can’t be observable or comprehensible at all, but it makes perfect sense to me and I can explain how.

The other thing is that I have way too many interests for my own good and I tend to obsess over them until they saturate me, I’m totally a slave to what my mind finds interesting in detriment to my actual obligations. I also always have at least 20 tabs open on my browser, because somehow I can’t seem to read an article or watch a video without having to Google something referenced on it, which starts the rabbit hole that has no end and makes me forget what I was reading/watching/researching in the first place. Also my mom is an ENFP and so I thought I couldn’t be a Ne user because we are both alike and so different at the same time, but I now truly realize that a function may manifest differently depending on what is it paired with, and her Fi is really strong, which I can’t relate to at all. I won’t even go into Ti vs Te because by now this is already ridiculous long and I doubt anyone would even finish all this. 

How can Ne+Ti mimic (or more precisely, appear to be) Ni? If possible please include concrete examples, whether fictional or real.

In that vein, could an ENTP 8 be reasonably mistaken by an ENTJ?

If you survived all this rambling and take your time to answered this somewhere in the future…you’re a hero, truly.

Not only am I a hero, my ENTP friend is a hero, since we both read it. ;)

Do you need me to say it?

YOU ARE AN ENTP.

Stop doubting it. Chill with it. Dig it. Tell your NeTi to stop considering other types. That it continues doing that should prove your own Ne-ness to you.

Everything you describe is heavily Ne, with an emphasis on Ti, so I’ll just pull a few comments out and talk about them.

Also my mom is an ENFP and so I thought I couldn’t be a Ne user because we are both alike and so different at the same time, but I now truly realize that a function may manifest differently depending on what is it paired with, and her Fi is really strong, which I can’t relate to at all. 

The bold is the pure truth, my friend. ENFPs and ENTPs might look like each other on a superficial level but they are not the same thing at all. As ENTP puts it, “You have moralizing tendencies and I deconstruct all your morals.”

It’s true. My morals scream loud and clear. In fact, I can look back at my teen years and see just how black and white my moral thinking was; everything was right or wrong, good or bad. That is a WHOLE OTHER ball of wax from NeTi and their attitude of “People should be able to believe what they want, even if it’s wrong.” (This was an actual conversation I had this morning. =P)

Ne is inclined to change its opinions and perspectives with very little warning, which makes the “inconsistencies” of Ne-doms somewhat obvious (when trying to determine ENXP from ENTJ), but there are many mistypes between them floating around the internet. For example: those who insist Obama is an ENTP instead of an ENFJ, when he was there for one thing – health care  – or who believe Stephen Hawking is an INTJ instead of an ENTP despite the fact that he routinely challenges and deconstructs his own theories. ;)

ENTJs have a no-nonsense approach, disinterested in deconstruction. It’s just facts and business with them, in the sense that Te wants an object to do its job, and needs no complete understanding of that object to move forward.

Since ENTPs have Ne/Fe loops, they are zany, often aimed at provoking humor in the audience, have a general sense of amiable goodwill, and are able to handle anything you throw at them without a moralizing tendency (unlike the ENFPs). Good examples of this are Billy Crystal (ENTP not INFJ), Jeff Goldblum (ENTP) and Robin Williams (ENTP, not ENFP – he’s got TONS of Fe), who described his inner chaotic world as similar to what you said above.

Yes, Enneagram makes a difference. 8′s are aggressive and that might make you come across as more ‘challenging’ of others than is typical for a Ne-dom.

- ENFP Mod

Here’s what my ENTP friend has to say:

I’m not one of the professional mods, but I AM an ENTP. And as one ENTP to another, I’m here to assure you that ENXPs’ minds move at a frenetic pace, bouncing around from idea to idea, from THOUGHT TRAIN A to THOUGHT TRAIN Z without any obvious link between them, contributing to restlessness, anxiousness. High Ne just can’t ignore the various combinations between your past and present behavior and all the different MBTI types. It constantly scans for new possibilities, new patterns and associations.

Ne is not intensive and convergent like Ni. When it reaches a sense of conviction and closure, it’s because the aux function has guided it to that direction. Ti identifies all exceptions or imagining scenarios in which a proposed explanation might falter. Our Ti reduces everything to a system, a large logical ensemble of arguments and counter-arguments, into an interconnecting network of principles and rational procedures that is disconnected fromreality and with the assistance of dom Ne, it sees the bigger picture and builds many different perspectives.

Now I am going to paraphrase the words of the Doctor. “Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire, through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought, and a whole, terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities, I welcome you to the ENTP club!”

- ENTP

[heliosfinance]

Latticework Of Mental Models: Hedgehog Vs Fox

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States. Most political forecasters and pundits brushed this news as Trump’s another gimmick for seeking attention and creating sensational news.

Sixteen months later, as November 2016 approached, it became frighteningly clear that Trump was very close to winning the elections.

However, when the experts were shaking their heads in disbelief and talking about all the things that were wrong with Trump, there was a cartoonist in San Francisco who had been writing blogs all through 2015 and 2016, claiming that Trump will win the elections in landslide. He received a lot of flak (even threats) but on November 8, 2016, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert was proved right.

Not entirely right because Trump’s victory wasn’t exactly a landslide but he did win the elections. But Adams was way ahead than the experts who were sweating over predicting precise numbers by which Trump will lose.

Charlie Munger likes to say, “It’s better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.”

Adams was approximately right and the experts were precisely wrong.

Surprisingly, Adams didn’t crunch any numbers neither did he rely on complicated models that most political forecasters swear by. He looked at the Presidential elections from the lens of a different mental model – Psychology of Persuasion.

The intellectuals and the experts squirmed every time Trump quoted a wrong fact (which he did quite often) or used a bad vocabulary. But Adams noticed that Trump was doing those things deliberately to manipulate people’s attention.

Watch this interview where Scott Adams explains how Trump had odds stacked in his favour right from the day he filed his nomination.

The political experts thought like hedgehogs whereas Adams thought like a fox.

The Two Animals

Hedgehog is an interesting creature because of its unique design. It’s very small and easily fits in the palm of a human hand. It has a very prickly body design which provides protection from various predators. But what’s strange about the hedgehog is its self defence mechanism. Sensing a threat it simply curls up in a ball to confuses its predators.

So hedgehogs survive by just performing one trick (rolling up in a ball), but doing it very, very well. However, it’s the only defence mechanism the hedgehog has, unlike fox. A fox has a number of survival tricks that allows it to evade predators.

Inspired by this observation, the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in his essay titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” wrote –

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

In his essay, Berlin argues that writers and thinkers can be divided into two categories –

Hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea, and

Foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea.

Although you can interpret Berlin’s words in many different ways, one of the best insights you can draw from this idea is to answer the question – which experts should be trusted with their forecasts and which shouldn’t be?

A general physician is like a fox who knows little bit about all the disciplines of medical science. A specialist, e.g., an orthopaedic surgeon, is a hedgehog. If you’ve got a broken bone, by all means, consult the orthopaedic surgeon. In other words, being a hedgehog is useful in certain context but when it comes to dealing with the uncertainties under which we make decisions, especially about money and investing, it’s better to take the ‘foxy’ approach.

Philip Tetlock, a political psychology professor, is an expert on experts. In his book, Expert Political Judgment, he writes about his research in which he tracked some 82,000 predictions by hundreds of experts in different specialties over past few decades. Tetlock found that the predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a monkey throwing darts at a board. The reason for this was that the experts were often blinded by their preconceptions, essentially led astray by how they think rather than what they think. He wrote –

The most important factor was not how much education or experience the experts had but how they thought…The better forecasters were like Berlin’s foxes: self-critical, eclectic thinkers who were willing to update their beliefs when faced with contrary evidence, were doubtful of grand schemes and were rather modest about their predictive ability.

The less successful forecasters were like hedgehogs: They tended to have one big, beautiful idea that they loved to stretch, sometimes to the breaking point. They tended to be articulate and very persuasive as to why their idea explained everything. The media often love hedgehogs.

Famous French philosopher Emile Chartier once said –

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it’s the only one we have.

Hedgehogs have a tendency that they torture the reality so that it fits their worldview. They are like the proverbial man with hammer who sees every problem like a nail. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book The Bed of Procrustes, writes –

Procrustes, in Greek mythology, was the cruel owner of a small estate in Corydalus in Attica. He had a peculiar sense of hospitality: he abducted travellers, provided them with a generous dinner, then invited them to spend the night in a rather special bed. He wanted the bed to fit the traveler to perfection. Those who were too tall had their legs chopped off with a sharp hatchet; those who were too short were stretched…we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on occasion, has explosive consequences.

Hedgehogs approach history and the current events with a deductive frame of mind. They have a certain framework and they try to absorb all the facts into that framework. Their modus operandi is to extend their favourite theory to as many different domains possible. They exude supreme confidence, a typical characteristic of all the experts.

Foxes acknowledge the fact that the universe is complicated and inherently unpredictable. They’re unsure about future because inside their head, they have myriad of contradicting insights coming from different disciplines. Doubting everything and thinking in terms of odds and probabilities is how they operate. They hold their beliefs loosely and change their mind as soon as the facts change.

Richard Feynman, the famous scientist and a nobel laureate, said –

I can live with doubt and uncertainty. It’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, possible beliefs, different degrees of certainty about different things but I am not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don’t know anything about. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing anything.

Feynman was a teacher, scientist, musician (he played drums in carnival), master locksmith, polyglot (fluent in Japanese and Portuguese) and knew hundreds of other things from diverse disciplines. He was an unusual academician and a true fox.

Do yourself a favour – read Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman. It chronicles the adventures that Feynman pursued to satisfy his unparalleled curiosity and how it led him to discover many important truths about the workings of this world. It’s a mind blowing book.

Being A Fox is Hard

Being a fox is easier said than done.

Nate Silver, who had successfully called the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, in his book The Signal and the Noise, writes –

Hedgehogs are type A personalities who believe in Big Ideas – in governing principles about the world that behave as though they were physical laws and undergird virtually every interaction in society. Foxes, on the other hand, are scrappy creatures who believe in a plethora of little ideas and in taking a multitude of approaches toward a problem. They tend to be more tolerant of nuance, uncertainty, complexity, and dissenting opinion. If hedgehogs are hunters, always looking out for the big kill, then foxes are gatherers.

For his website, Silver adopted the fox as the logo. He believes in collecting information from many different sources, integrating those facts into sophisticated analytical and mathematical techniques to come up with best predictions. Ironically, all his ideas boil down to one single thing – use statistical methods to make predictions. No wonder he failed to predict Trump’s win. He failed to update his mental models. He probably assumed that the ideas that helped him in predicting 2008 election results will hold true even in 2016.

It’s even more difficult to identify foxes. Foxes are usually not very articulate unlike hedgehogs who are not only eloquent but very convincing. A hedgehog’s theory has one unifying theme and all the examples, evidences and arguments support that one theory. It’s easier to listen to this kind of argument because human mind finds it easy to digest conflict-free information. A fox on the other hands sounds confused and seems to contradict his own ideas. It’s very difficult to differentiate between a fox and a hypocrite. To identify a fox, you have to think like a fox.

In Investing

A hedgehog investor is pre-occupied with grand theories about what the world will look like in future. He thinks and talks about the macro events like demonetisation, elections, Brexit, national budget, oil prices, market crash, interest rates, GDP rates, currency fluctuations, terrorism, social unrest, etc. He believes it’s possible to predict the outcome of these events and their effect on stock market prices.

An investor who thinks like a fox doesn’t have all these delusions. He knows that it’s extremely difficult to predict the future of a company even few years out, let alone predicting the future of broader stock market. Looking for business with strong fundamentals and honest and competent management at the helm is what keeps the fox busy.

While hedgehogs wait for market crashes and try to time the market, foxes let their SIPs continue and keep their search for good companies on. While hedgehogs dig their nose in the excel models, foxes study the annual reports and try to understand what creates a competitive advantage for a company. Hedgehogs are looking for information that confirms their beliefs, foxes actively seek evidence that can prove them wrong.

Conclusion

The whole discussion here on hedgehog and fox underscores the need to be a multi-disciplinary thinker. However, I want to make sure that I haven’t given you a lopsided view and made the poor hedgehog into a villain of some kind. Thinking like a fox is important but hedgehog has its own strengths.

For most people, especially the part time investors like us, who need to devote a majority of our waking hours to our full time job or profession, having characteristics of hedgehog is beneficial. We need to make sure that we continue to refine our skills in our primary area of work. Being very good (not necessarily world class) in at least one thing is very important to be useful to the world.

In other words, if you’re a doctor, be a good doctor. If you’re a software programmer, write good code and keep your skills updated. If you’re a writer, strive to improve your writing.

Save the foxy thinking for those occasions where you have to make decisions under uncertainties. Like investing our money.

Take care and keep learning.

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Iron Fist Season 1 Review

I went into Iron Fist knowing next to nothing of the character: only his reputation as Luke Cage’s best friend/fellow Hero for Hire and his “zen surfer” portrayal on Ultimate Spider-man. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave the character’s first live action showcase, currently streaming on Netflix, a fan. It’s gotten a lot of bad reviews, and sadly I think they’re largely deserved. The show is low-stakes and repetitive from the get-go, never really has a grasp of who Danny (Finn Jones) is or what the main threat should be, and (though this doesn’t seem to be entirely their fault) boasts a mythology behind its central character that makes little to no sense.

Full spoilers…

First off, I don’t understand the Iron Fist mythology. Iron Fist is supposed to be a great warrior who guards the path to the mystical K’un-Lun (which only appears in our reality every 15 years), meaning he has to stay there. But he’s also the sworn enemy of The Hand…so how can he destroy them if he’s not supposed to leave his monastic Brigadoon? Was the plan to just wipe out any Hand who happened to try to take the village whenever the path appeared, hoping they’d never stop trying until their ranks had been completely destroyed? To the show’s credit, Danny does realize this contradiction…eleven episodes in (and even then, it comes off as an excuse for why he won’t go back rather than a mission-altering epiphany). It would’ve been a stronger character motivation had he left K’un-Lun to destroy The Hand to complete that portion of his duties instead of completely abandoning them, choosing a proactive approach rather than sitting and doing nothing. That’s another issue: since K’un-Lun only appears in our plane of existence every 15 years, their information is outdated, but even that doesn’t excuse the idea that The Hand are talked about as if they’re mythical enemies who haven’t existed for a very long time. Danny has no idea The Hand are currently active in modern-day New York when he gets there; who did he think he was training to fight all these years if he didn’t believe The Hand were still real? Why is the Iron Fist necessary to protect the gateway to a magical training camp that didn't even know its sworn enemy was still around? Is Danny Rand anything more than a mystical doorman? I don’t know if any of this is the case in the comics, but if it is, the show should’ve either updated it, better explained it, or used it to spin the characters into interesting directions.

K’un-Lun itself should’ve been much more explored. We got maybe five minutes of screentime spent there, all of it very vague and barren. There's not much context to anything Danny felt there because we barely even saw snippets of his stay; it's all secondhand for us. These were the 15 most transformative years of Danny’s life and we saw next to nothing. We never see him struggle (except for one random scene of the monks beating him as a child). We never see him as an outsider. What we did see was entirely unimpressive. I didn’t need the entire series to be about his training (nor would I want it to be), but I definitely needed a better idea of what it was like and how being there changed him (since we have no information about the kid he was before he went missing either). Maybe the show should’ve started off with the first two-three episodes detailing his training or the rules of magic in Danny’s world. Much like Dr. Strange, I wish they'd gone FAR weirder and more outlandish with the supernatural elements. A season later, I’m not even sure what's so great about K'un-Lun that makes them so much more important than the rest of the world. And who were the masters of the Iron Fist mysticism, who thought it unnecessary to teach Danny how to use his focused Chi to heal others, or even to recharge his powers? Even if his “training went a little sideways,” as he claims, shouldn’t recharging his abilities have been lesson #2?

My first impression of Danny Rand from the trailers was that he’d be yet another rich guy who got lost/traveled abroad and came back to save his city with new powers and/or skills. Having seen this from Green Arrow, Batman, Iron Man, and Dr. Strange, I wasn’t sure what new twists Iron Fist could bring to the table. Turns out, not many. Not every character has to reinvent the wheel—there are only so many origin story tropes—but they should all find some fresh angle. Iron Fist didn’t. He doesn’t seem to come home with a concrete goal at all, beyond convincing people he’s really Danny Rand. His attempt to get back into his family’s company feels half-hearted (unfortunately so, since I liked him best when he was insisting on better business practices and on using their resources to help people) and is quickly forgotten. It barely even feels like getting in is what he wants (he doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to do there once he’s in); it’s just something to kill time. He later centers on trying to figure out who killed his parents, eventually giving us the season’s main villain, but even that felt completely routine; the only trope more well-trodden than dead parents inspiring heroes and guys coming back home with skills/talents is evil businessmen. I didn’t find Danny compelling, but the unfocused writing and direction may take some blame off Jones. They asked him to show several seemingly conflicting facets of Danny’s personality that never had a strong connective tissue (more on that in a bit). 

Rand was surrounded by controversy from the show’s first announcement: some saw him as a white savior figure who’d appropriated Asian culture; a relic of the 70s that didn’t belong in the modern day. Many argued Marvel should change his character to be Asian-American. Others said they should remain faithful to his Caucasian comic book appearance, claiming an Asian character who’s good at martial arts would be racist in and of itself. It seemed Marvel was damned either way. I don't necessarily mind Danny being white and an expert at martial arts—there's no reason someone from any background can't become an expert in any field with enough practice and training (assuming we're not looking at a story where the white guy is just automatically special and better for no reason beyond the idea that he naturally is; a magical chosen white savior)—and the way he talked about wanting to be Iron Fist more than anything and fighting against impossible odds to attain the title and responsibilities associated with it felt respectable and earned. However, the way he's better at every aspect of Colleen Wing’s life and culture (fight skills, speaking Mandarin, knowing where the best food is served, dojo etiquette, meditation and Tai Chi techniques, capturing the attention of students (until he’s too violent), etc.) than she is does grate on me and crosses the line. His apology for correcting Colleen after informing her about challenging a dojo’s master also came off as condescending. Nothing said K’un-Lun culture had to be exactly hers—not every Asian culture is the same, obviously, especially not made-up mystical ones—but the show chose to have them correlate almost exactly, and it’s in his complete domination of her culture that he comes off as appropriating it. Iron Fist had a golden opportunity by going with Danny’s comic book whiteness to discuss cultural appropriation—what it is and isn’t, why it’s wrong, etc.—in the same way that Daredevil did gentrification, Jessica Jones did sexism and misogyny, and Luke Cage did racism. Danny's talk about feeling empty and thinking the Iron Fist would solve all his problems could’ve been a perfect metaphor for cultural appropriation if the show were at all interested in exploring that. But it isn’t. Had they gone with an Asian-American actor instead, Danny fighting so hard to claim the Iron Fist title could’ve been a great parallel to an Asian-American kid (who would already feel out of place in both American and Asian culture, by the way) fighting to reclaim his culture, as Lewis Tan (a potential Danny Rand) said. It was also frustrating that, even though Danny says he worked hard and earned the Iron Fist mantle, the show teases out an idea that he is some mystical Chosen One who was meant to be Iron Fist all along. That plays even further into the White Savior trope, and that’s not something I’m down to explore in future seasons.

One of the most common arguments I read about why Danny “had to be white” was that he had to feel like an outsider in the Asian-cultured K’un-Lun. If that’s an essential part of Danny’s background, the show completely dropped the ball. It feels like they paid lip service at most to Danny feeling like a fish out of water in both K'un L'un and New York. He commented on being called an outsider back in his mystical land and said there were some unhappy memories, but also mentioned a best friend and fun times sneaking wine. Episode 6 reveals that he might actually be a mighty prophesied savior and was trained to believe as such...some outsider. It does seem like the requirements of being Iron Fist are colder than I’d anticipated, but assuming the beatings he received as a child were part of his training (and we have no reason to think they weren’t), that seems like the rigors everyone else was going through too, not something specifically aimed at him because he was white. And there’s no “Man out of Time” element to his journey back to New York after 15 years; the only times he feels out of place amount to people questioning his lack of footwear, him being friendly with the homeless, not sleeping in a bed, and his lack of "business acumen"…which is really just him having the most basic compassion about clean emissions and the price of pharmaceuticals. He doesn't seem to struggle to connect with anyone he really wants to, unless the other party has dubious interests (the Meachums, mainly) and are intentionally working against him or have the common sense not to invite total strangers into their lives after being semi-stalked by them (Colleen). Nothing about his situation feels very different from any other superhero, much less any other rich guy who returns home with powers/tech to be a hero.

Danny's clear PTSD that he ignored to focus on his training feels like something that could’ve been explored more to add dimension to his character. His fear of flying and near-freakout during turbulence (that’s how his parents died) was a great eample of this, but it was never explored beyond his fits. Along the lines of another trope—the dead parents—why is it necessary that Danny's folks be murdered? Batman’s parents’ murders made him vow not to let that happen to anyone else. Uncle Ben was killed to show Spider-man he could and should be doing more to help people with his powers. What does Danny get out of the fact that his parents were murdered? Wouldn't a random accident providing no enemy to take out his frustrations on be a bigger challenge for his survivor's guilt and his (completely inadequate) attempts to re-center himself? Furthermore, his childlike sensibility upon returning to New York would’ve played better had it been the result of his training to suppress his emotions, rather than just existing completely independent of his PTSD, as if one or the other state of his being didn’t exist at various times. The other problem is we don’t really ever see his training work. It appears the best he can manage is seizure-esque outbursts of shouting and hitting things when he gets overwhelmed. These fits seem like they’re trying to show us a character who could break but for the sake of his training, but they only come off as making it seem like he’s wasted the last 15 years. Along those same lines, he says he took a vow of celibacy, but only a few episodes later sleeps with Colleen. Challenging his resolve, vows, and training would’ve been one thing, but it doesn't feel like he trained for 15 years to be the best anything (despite showing up Colleen at nearly every turn), much less a mystical warrior who's supposed to be in total control of his emotions (he is absolutely not). The show could’ve mined that for an interesting character development—and it almost does, with Claire calling out how unhealthy suppressing his emotions is—but Danny’s answer is to go back to K’un-Lun for even more training at the end of the season (completely reversing his epiphany from the final battle). Ultimately, Danny doesn't feel like he has an arc at all because he's just flitting from one situation to the next as the plot demands. It’s as if they regressed him from where he should’ve been at the start for the sake of drama to watch him kinda-sorta regain all of his skill again, only to have him set off for even more training at the end. He has the nuts and bolts of a complex personality, but they aren’t assembled or explored at all.

The series’ best attributes are without a doubt Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), and Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho). Carrie Ann Moss is another very strong Netflix-verse asset, though she doesn’t get as much screentime as the others. I'm glad Claire's here to talk sense into these heroes (she’s the wisest person on these Netfilx shows). I love her as a helper to heroes and I’m glad she’s adding self-defense to her skills (her insisting on going to collect Gao was great!). Claire's talks with Danny about dealing with his issues and letting his emotions out instead of running back to K'un-Lun were really solid. Dawson’s no-nonsense presence and sarcasm ground and humanize these shows so well I don’t know why they’re so afraid to go more fantastical. Galactus could show up and she’d still make it feel like we were tethered to the real world. And she got to say “Sweet Christmas,” which was great! Madame Gao was still the stoic and imposing Hand operative from Daredevil. I’ll always be glad to have her reappear. Since she’s apparently been around since the 17th century, it seems there are many more tales to tell about her!

Colleen was the best new addition to the Netflix-verse and I liked her a lot! Of the characters on the show, she’s the one I want to read more about in the comics. Her struggle with adhering to the Bushido code and keeping her students invested in training and off the streets was far more interesting than Danny stumbling his way through pretrial proceedings that ultimately went nowhere and his other issues. The things she was up against felt real—right down to just paying the rent—and Henwick brought a sense that Colleen really was tested by the forces against her, like with her comments about issues with control in the fight club. Danny’s approach to “dealing” with frustrations served to throw Colleen’s into a much more sympathetic light too. While his dating style—bringing a restaurant to her—felt just like any other billionaire, Danny being impressed with her sword and nunchuck skills—and her glee at showing him she was his equal for once—was cute. I didn’t need them to be together, but I was fine with their relationship. When she was poisoned, I was more concerned about Colleen dying than I was about anyone else at any point on the show, even though I figured she probably wouldn’t die. I absolutely did not see the reveal that she was proudly a member of The Hand coming! That was the one place the show truly shocked me—the one point where it took the more interesting option—and I loved it. I didn’t understand why a martial arts instructor would be training her students to hunt people on the streets, but then it all made sense. Colleen struggling to justify her Hand allegiance and having a good argument that certain segments do help people was good, solid stuff. Claire's retort that they should've chosen another name was perfect...I've had the same thought about SHIELD after they were outted as half-Hydra. It didn’t quite make sense that she wouldn’t know more about the Iron Fist if she were a member of The Hand, but I suppose she could’ve been playing dumb with Danny. I also thought her turn from true believer to betrayer was a little quick, but The Hand attacking Danny was a justifiable motivator and a strong reason to believe him. I’m glad we didn’t get anyone trying to convince her that Danny had struck first. I also felt sorry for her when she realized The Hand would kill her for her doubts, which would’ve been a great parallel to Danny's doubts in the Iron Fist's mission had his side been explored more. Although, him telling her that he knows what it's like to believe in something only to have it pulled away falls totally flat when he's the one who left K'un-Lun.

Iron Fist’s writing definitely has some holes (what psychiatric hospital would let their completely unknown new patient wander around unsupervised with a "tour guide" who was caught trying to convince him to kill himself???), but the biggest problem is that it’s nothing new or inventive. The dialogue isn’t the most original and the show’s pacing is way off. This has been a problem with previous Netflix shows too—I really wish they’d be a little less serialized instead of trying to be 13-hour movies with a single plot—but it was especially apparent here. Two episodes in, Danny was still mostly walking around going “I’m Danny Rand. No, really,” someone disbelieves him, and then he goes on to the next person to start it all over again. There’s also a recurring thing where everyone comments on Danny’s lack of shoes like it’s the funniest running gag ever (it’s not); as if that’s the only thing weird about this guy. There’s also a bit in episode two where Danny’s thought insane because he has a stolen passport with a different name on it, but Danny had no reason to believe his company and his best friends Joy and Ward Meachum (Jessica Stroup and Tom Pelphrey) are no longer friendly, so why didn’t he just call his company? Why all the subterfuge? The later reveal that he knows Jeri Hogarth (Carrie Ann Moss) and that she’s gung-ho about helping him confirms he could’ve just gotten her to bend the rules and let him in the country, making those early plot developments pointless. Even better, why not use his super-ninja skills to sneak in? Unnecessary speed-bumps like these slowed the plot down right off the bat and it never really recovers, thanks to wishy-washy writing around its lead character.

That the Netflix shows keep referring to the Avengers Chitauri invasion as "The Incident" and largely ignoring it has gotten annoying (at least Daredevil used it to regress Hell’s Kitchen and Luke Cage featured bootleg video of it as a plot point). I do not understand the desire to keep halfway pretending that they’re in some separate, mostly grounded universe; they are not. They don't need to talk about it as incessantly as SHIELD did in season 1, but coyly vague references draw more attention to the lack of Avengers than the simple fact that these heroes don't world-savers’ help does. On a show like this with magic, this is especially apparent. I’m not sure why Clarie wouldn’t think dragons might be real in this world. I mean, sure, just because one crazy thing is real doesn't mean they all are, but given everything that's happened to New York alone (not to mention the existence of Thor), a little less skepticism would be believable. Even more baffling, why doesn't Claire call Daredevil (or even refer to him by his superhero name)? He might be absolutely helpful in fighting the Hand! Just use an excuse that he’s out of town or something if they don’t want to bring Matt in.

This unwillingness to venture into a bigger universe extends to the opponents Danny faces. Madame Gao and The Hand are great villains, but The Hand aren't anything like what they were in Daredevil and don't come off as a threat here at all. They seem decidedly toned down and it feels like they could’ve been any generic mercenaries. Where are the badass, creepy, somewhat undead ninjas Daredevil fought? If you're going to start your show with Danny as a superhero (and for all intents and purposes, he was—this is 15 years into his training!), you have to give him opponents who are more threatening than random gangsters (Luke Cage had this issue too) and martial arts-trained street kids. If the street kids are supposed to undergo some kind of process to become the heartbeat-less assassins of Daredevil, where is that happening? And what happened to them after Danny busted out of their training compound? The Hand’s leader, Bakuto (Ramon Rodriguez) was just an OK villain, which wasn’t enough on a season this long when he was supposed to be second only to Meachum in terms of villainy (according to the season’s structure, at least). He seemed to have no real plan beyond the continued existence of the Hand via Rand Corp’s assets, making him seem pretty weak. Lewis Tan's drunken guard had more character and charisma than 90% of the characters on this show and also provided the best fight of the series up to episode 8. If they aren’t going to go creepy, they at least need to go distinct. The karaoke-loving assassin from episode 6 felt a little cliché, but at least he and the other three Hand champions Danny faced had personalities and unique fighting styles. Across the board on Netflix series, I want more powered supervillains and far fewer gangsters and businessmen. I don’t know who Danny has in his Rogues Gallery, but he’s gotta have a few mystical enemies he could’ve fought here, if for no other reason than to vary the fights and Danny’s tactics therein. On that note, Danny is the third Defender whose power is super strength. Obviously superheroes are more than their powers, but I’d like to see more variation of them (a super-punch is not that impressive anymore).

Davos (Sacha Dhawan), Danny’s former best friend in K’un-Lun, was another good opponent, and I would’ve liked his arc expanded a lot. There was a lot that could’ve been mined from his well-crafted belief that Danny wasn’t the right choice for the Iron Fist, which never came off as petty jealousy to me. He seemed legitimately hurt that Danny abandoned his duties and sided with a member of the Hand. The one area where Danny’s seeming failure in most of his training worked perfectly was in Davos’ assessment of him; Danny being so unbalanced fueled and justified Davos’ hate quite effectively. I absolutely believe Davos should’ve been the primary antagonist, if not secondary only to The Hand. Imagine how much more complex the show would’ve been had Danny left to defeat The Hand, with Davos following him to stand up for (and represent K’un-Lun and its teachings) and bring him back from the start. Davos chasing Danny for leaving his duties would’ve completed the parallel to Colleen being chased by The Hand for doubting their mission too.

The season’s actual main antagonists, the Meachums, were not compelling to me at all. Danny’s attempts to save Ward and Joy from themselves seemed to fall rapidly to the wayside as the siblings took turns going morally black before bouncing back to gray, then back again, over the course of the season. I understood their desire to keep the company they’d built and didn’t really harbor them any ill will over it—again, Danny never seemed to truly want it—but I never really cared about who controlled it. Ward’s drug problem didn’t interest me at all, nor did Harold’s (David Wenham) attempts to get the company back from his children and The Hand. I didn’t see Ward killing Harold or Harold’s resurrection coming, but I suppose I should’ve, given Nobu’s repeated resurrections on Daredevil. I wasn’t a fan of Harold’s confused undead state and apparently he’ll start becoming a crazed murderer, so a member of the Daredevil cast has that to look forward to… Harold was at least a little interesting to me when it seemed like he really was on Danny’s side, but the reveal of his true evil intentions fell flat because nothing about him stood out in the first place. I didn’t guess that he was behind the Rands’ murders, but it also didn’t shock me. That Harold’s entire goal was to be running Rand (he’s immortal and that’s all he wants? Really?) was so small compared to everything else going on that he felt like a minor villain who should’ve been dealt with by mid-season if not sooner. By no means did he deserve to be the embodiment of Danny’s cave dragon, which felt entirely anticlimactic. I don’t think my lack of interest in the Meachums was the fault of any of these three actors; they were just stuck in a mediocre plot that carried on far longer than it should have.

Speaking of the fights, outside of Bakuto vs. Colleen and Davos vs. Danny (and the massive battle leading into them), none of them have any emotional component to them. Maybe that’s just because most of them involve thugs, but even Danny vs. Harold—the climactic battle of the season—left me cold and just waiting for it to end. If the show doesn’t get me invested in the conflicts between characters, the fights will feel empty. Even though Harold killed Danny’s parents, I wasn’t feeling it. The choreography to Danny’s fights wasn’t the most polished either, but this wasn’t Jones’ fault, as he apparently only had 15 minutes of training before each fight was filmed.

I wish they’d done what the other Netflix shows have done: showcase the hero’s city in the opening credits to make it as much a character as anything else. Here, the credits only showed a CGI Danny doing kung-fu. They should’ve shown off K’un-Lun and juxtaposed it with New York City. The score also felt repetitive.

I didn’t want this to be disappointing (why would anyone want anything they’re watching to be bad?), but unfortunately it was. There are kernels of a good, maybe even great, show here (Colleen, Claire, Gao, Davos), but Danny’s character arc, the villain aspects, and the rest of the show never coalesce around them. It almost always takes the least interesting option, so it comes off as bland and repetitive. If Danny’s character can be redeemed in Defenders, then cool, but it will take a great deal of boldness and precise direction/writing/acting choices to right this ship.