塞翁失马，焉知非福
欲望的尽头总是无法满足。好奇的尽头可能是知晓领悟也可能迷惘困惑。
西汉·刘安《淮南子·人间训·塞翁失马》
近塞上之人有善术者，马无故亡而入胡。人皆吊之，其父曰：“此何遽不为福乎？”居数月，其马将胡骏马而归。人皆贺之，其父曰：“此何遽不能为祸乎？”家富良马，其子好骑，堕而折其髀。人皆吊之，其父曰：“此何遽不为福乎？”居一年，胡人大入塞，丁壮者引弦而战。近塞之人，死者十九。此独以跛之故，父子相保。故福之为祸，祸之为福，化不可极深不可测也。
investment and market
- gold
The price of gold has an inverse correlation with US dollar. When the dollar is strong, the price of gold falls. It has something to do with the interest too because gold has no interest. So if the interest is going to rise, then the price of gold might drop. When the inflation is rising, the interest rate may go up. Then the price of gold may drop. In the event of war and other disasters, the price of gold may go up.
- U.S Treasury
20260519: Inflation worries push up bond yields and over to the stock market: U.S. Treasury yields surged Tuesday afternoon as investors continued to retreat from government bonds amid mounting inflation concerns, driving borrowing costs sharply higher across the curve. US30Y up to 5.20%, reaching its highest level since 2007, marking a 19-year high. This move higher in yields reflects growing concerns that persistent inflation pressures could keep interest rates elevated for longer than previously expected. US10Y up to 4.67%. At the same time, the gold price is down to $4,481 and oil prices lower (Brent crude oil still over $110) Tuesday.
- Kevin Warsh, 1970-, 17th chair of Fed Reserve. Strong US dollar and shrinking the balance sheet to reduce the supply.
1992 graduated from Stanford, 1995 from Harvard Law School, 1996 joined Morgan Stanley. 2002 joined George W. Bush admin. 2006 Fed Governor. 2011 resigned from Fed Reserve and a lecturer at Stanford Graduate school of business..
Kevin married Jane Lauder in 2002. Ronald Lauder (1944-) a long-time supporter of Donald Trump. Ronald was President of the world Jewish Congress in 2007. Estee Lauder 雅诗兰黛, NYSE EL second to L’Oréal 化妝品集團.
加息之后，美联储就要缩表，即抛售美国国债，回收货币，市场上美元少了。既然物以稀为贵，那么借美元的成本就提高了，也就是利率提升了。
the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sets monetary policy. 7 members of the board of governors and 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, though only 5 bank presidents vote at a time: the president of the New York Fed and 4 others who rotate through one-year voting terms.
政府影响经济，有两条途径，一条是货币政策，权在美联储手上，美联储开会做决定，做完就执行，与总统国会没关系。一条是财政政策，加税降税，财政预算，是总统和国会的事。美国经济好坏，不能说和总统没关系，但是关系远没有与美联储那么直接。过去一百年里美国经济三次大的危机，1928年的大萧条，1970年年代的高通胀，2008年的次贷危机，都与美联储错误的货币政策密切相关。
stocks took a random walk and can not be accurately and consistently predicted
diversification - spreading the eggs across several baskets - would reduce the volatility of the portfolio. if we could use the volatility of a stock as a proxy for risk, then the diversification or a portfolio could reduce the risk. No. the volatility could not be treated as risk completely. the market portfolio is optimal to diversify. but the whole market is too big, how to sample the market for individual? the index is one of the choices.
the enemy is yourself: after you bought a stock, purely up or down are easy to deal, you sell or hold. the real struggle is the volatile time of ups and downs. when to sell? will it go up after my selling or go down after my hold? Is it too early or is it too late?
what kind of return should we expect? or what is a reasonable return for a specific stock we could get from the market, duration, entry price point and exit price point?
Fama proposed to Merton Miller that he would produce detailed evidence of Benoit Mandelbrot’s hypothesis that stock returns conform to “non-normal” distributions—in other words, they are nearly random and exhibit far more wild swings than one might expect—and a detailed examination of returns over time.
the stock market did indeed suffer from extreme movements outside the normal. The stock market conforms to Gaussian distribution, but only to a degree. Stocks do fall or rise 1 percent more often than 2 percent—but they also tend to fall by a statistically improbable amount far more often than a normal distribution would imply. stock market returns show a nasty tendency of having “fat tails” on an other-wise normal bell curve. the markets are close to random and therefore impossible to predict. the series of price changes has no memory, that is, the past cannot be used to predict the future in any meaningful way.
- beta: higher-beta stocks are more volatile. one specific against the overall market. volatility trading? daily spread? operational tacit? returns and spreads of a duration, daily, monthly, yearly? returns can be reasonably set and known beforehand. spreads like volatility are unknown and unpredictable. however statistically knowable with probabilities. Again, a warning, the history won’t repeat the same way but similarly?
John Hull, Options futures and other derivatives
Sheldon Natenberg’s Option Volatility and Pricing
- portfolio: how to sample the vast stock market? the index fund?
theory of the world
there are a lot of theory about the world. science is developed based on the theory of philosophy and the experiments of trial. however there are still unknowns in the wild world and the human society. so many theories are there without validations. still we need theories to operate in the unknown and to answer our questions.
释迦牟尼说人人皆佛，信则有，不信则无。他的理论是为了回答一个问题，人如何可以不再受苦。康德说人人都能思考，因为先验知识存在于每个人的头脑；理性存有边界，那些不基于经验的想法可真可伪存乎一心，二律背反的那些悖论就是例子。他的理论是为了探究人能否通过主观经验获得可靠的客观知识。佛陀和康德两人都已觉悟，他们深知思考的力量。
Kant, Einstein and Darwin
Kant learned from Newton and Leibniz. He put both time and space as a priori of human mind. How will Kant respond to Einstein’s space-time? In the light of evolution, how will Kant respond to Darwin’s theory about the mind and his critiques?
| who | when | what | where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isaac Newton | 4 Jan 1643 - 31 March 1727 | Newton mechanics | England |
| Immanuel Kant | 22 April 1724 - 12 Feb 1804 | three Critiques | German |
| Charles Darwin | 12 Fe 1809 - 19 April 1882 | evolutionary biology | England |
| Albert Einstein | 14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955 | theory of relativity, quantum theory | German |
Kant and Darwin
Kant and Einstein
Kant gave people a way to religious and intellectually sophisticated at the same time. They could have Jesus and Newton at the same time. Is it that way given the advancement of science later?
Kant takes reason as a constant versus varying emotion. Kant takes time and space from Newton as a priori. Evolution through natural selection shapes the world and our mind as well. A priori of our mind could be more complex than Kant’s proposal.
“… an enigma presents itself which in all ages has agitated inquiring minds. How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things? In my opinion the answer to this question is, briefly, this: as far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality …” – Einstein, Geometry and Experience, 1921
Einstein is insisting that mathematical proposition, which include those of geometry, can be synthetic (“refer to reality”) or a prior (“certain”), but not both. Is it?
Kant
- the concept of object or objective being, and its relation to human knowledge:
Like Copernicus let us see that the sun stands in the center while the earth revolves around it instead of the reversal, Kant showed us that the empirical object (the only one we konw) depends on a priori (free of sense-experience) from human understanding (intellect) that connects a multitude of sensible items into a unity instead of human knowledge around the object.
The prevailing metaphysical realism maintains that objective states of affairs exist in themselves, outside the mind, which must adjust its representations to them; whereas Kant reverses this order in stating it is the mind itself that endows the representations with the unity, the permanence, and the necessary relations by which the objective state of affairs (in short, the object) is constituted.
- Kant places the human subject at the metaphysical or philosophical center, as a constitutive and determining factor with respect to the world and within it. At the same time human reason, in all its doings, is inexorably dependent on the presence of sensible material—the given of Being—without which the spontaneous activity of reason could not take place, or would be meaningless and void of content. Yes, reason is great in its legitimate domain and it has its boundaries as Knat points out reason’s finitude and the finitude of human being.
in order to know the ways and modes of knowledge one must first know the knowing being, and the spectrum of his or her capabilities—mainly, though not only, the a priori capabilities, those that are not derived from experience.
two branches, a critical metaphysics of nature (including epistemology and ontology), and a critical metaphysics of moral action (including law, politics, history, and a moral religion).
- Dogmatism ascribes to human reason capacities it does not possess, and skepticism denies it the capabilities it does possess. The first builds groundless castles in the air, the second undermines all the grounded buildings. Thus dogmatism is flawed by excessive affirmation and skepticism by excessive negation, whereas the Critique, after rigorous scrutiny, combines within itself the negation and affirmation in a state of reciprocal and balanced tension.
Historically, Kant associates dogmatism with Leibniz’s rationalist school and skepticism with the British empiricists; at the same time he finds that each of those opposing movements also commits its opponent’s fallacy: empiricist skepticism is dogmatic since it does not question its own presuppositions, and rationalist dogmatism breeds skepticism because it leads to inner contradictions in reason.
- By the antinomy of reason Kant refers to the contradictions that inhere in philosophical reasoning when it tries to conceive of the world in its totality and describe its characteristics without critique. Does the world in itself have a beginning in time? Is it finite or infinite in space? Is the world made up of free, contingent events, or is it deterministic? Questions such as these have resulted in paradoxes and contradictions ever since Zeno of Elea—especially when the answer takes on the form of formal proof. Thus the authority of reason was undermined as contradictory arguments were equally supported by reason.
Kant started with the presupposition he held unshakable, that reason, by its very concept, cannot contradict itself. Therefore, if nevertheless we encounter a stubborn antinomy that refuses to disappear, it must necessarily be a merely apparent contradiction that, however, is deeply rooted in our ordinary ways of thinking. From here Kant’s way led to searching for the deep causes of the contradiction, and their removal. The conclusion of this investigation was that seeming contradictions occur when our mode of thinking takes the objects of our knowledge to be things in themselves. Therefore the Copernican reversal is needed, which replaces the dogmatic way of thinking with a critical way that sharply distinguishes between objects as phenomena and as things in themselves. Thereby naïve realism is replaced by the philosophical outlook Kant names Transcendental Idealism. And since the latter allows, as by-product, to solve the antinomy and restore reason to itself as a coherent system, Kant sees this result as reinforcing the reversal he suggested.
Kant tried to show that both the laws of nature and the laws of morality are grounded in human reason itself. By these two forms of law, however, he is often thought to have defined two incommensurable realms, nature and freedom, the realm of what is and that of what ought to be, the former of which must be limited to leave adequate room for the latter.
notes
Thucydides Trap: Graham Allison coined the term the Thucydides Trap to argue for the possibility of a war between the United States and China. It is based on an observation by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”. There is a book, Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017) by Allison.
how about digital empire? 英国最早的全球扩张，本来就和“合法海盗”分不开。十六世纪时，英国女王伊丽莎白一世公开支持像德雷克这样的海盗去抢西班牙商船。抢回来的黄金白银，一部分归王室，一部分归海盗。英国官方甚至给海盗发“私掠许可证”，意思是：平时你是海盗，但只要替国家抢劫，你就是“爱国商人”。很多英国贵族、银行、航运公司，第一桶金都带着海盗血腥味。后来美国崛起。美国西进运动，本质上就是不断扩张、战争、吞并。印第安人的土地被一步步吃掉，墨西哥大片领土被夺走，美西战争后又拿下菲律宾、波多黎各、关岛。再后来，美国依靠两次世界大战建立全球霸权，美元体系和军事基地遍布世界。
康德的墓碑并没有出现在康德陵墓旁，而是立在教堂院内。从墓碑上的墓志铭同时使用德文和俄文两种文字来看，墓碑应是俄国人所立。墓志铭是《实践理性批判》中的一句话：“有两样东西，我思索得越多越久，心头就充溢以愈见常新常增的景仰与敬畏，那便是头顶的星空和心中的道德律。”
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Neither of them need I seek and merely suspect as if shrouded in obscurity or rapture beyond my own horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with my existence.
Pascal’s Wager: This philosophical argument, named after Blaise Pascal, suggests that it is rational to believe in God, even if His existence cannot be proven, because the potential rewards of believing (eternal salvation) outweigh the potential costs (a finite life of piety).
sublime: Absolute Greatness: Kant defines the sublime as that which is “absolutely great,” meaning it is great beyond all comparison. “We call that sublime which is absolutely great. But to be great, and to be a great something are quite different concepts (magnitudo and quantitas).”
Respect. Universalizability: Kant’s Categorical Imperative is a foundational principle that dictates one should act only according to maxims that can be universally applied. This means considering whether the action you intend to take could be adopted as a universal law by everyone without leading to a contradiction.
Finitude of Man
我毫不怀疑，这段话可能是古往今来被世人引用得最多的文字之一。读过康德传记我才知道，天体理论（星空）和伦理学（道德律）其实是康德终身痴迷的两个领域。相比之下，康德最富盛名的《纯粹理性批判》却只是他争取伦理学教职不成转而教授形而上学过程中的一个应景之作。因此，这段话其实应该说是康德探索人类未知领域的愿景或总结。然而，由于它的文笔是如此优美，立论是如此深刻，再加上它语气君子谦谦，辞章品味纯正，心境细腻明澈，寓意志向高远，以至于今天的人们都把它看作是一位智者对外在世界和内在心灵的典雅赞颂，看作是对壮美和崇高的虔诚致敬。我相信，它之所以震撼人的心灵，是因为它唤醒了每一个人心中或朦胧或淡忘的追求和理想，坚定了人们始终不渝恪守真诚和自律的决心。
于1785年问世的《道德形而上学基础》概括出了道德律的三个表达式，即“要按照你同时也愿意它能成为普遍规律的准则去行动”（普遍规律公式）；“要永远把人当作目的而不是手段”（人性公式）；和 “ 要把自己视为规律制定者那样去服从规律”（自律公式）。康德道德律阐明的许多理念，已经融入现代文明，成为我们的常识。比如，人性公式就是现代人道主义和人权理论的基础。而自律公式包含了一个对于现代民主至关重要的理念：那些受到法律制约的人们必须拥有制定法律的权力。
康德其实认为，道德律的难点，不仅仅在于阐明道德律是什么，更在于揭示为什么只有道德行为才使人们感到自己人格的价值，而与此相比一切个人的利益得失都无足轻重。道德行为通常并不带来明显的利益，而且往往很可能损及我们的利益甚至要求我们做出牺牲，然而道德行为仍然被大多数人视为高尚，这是为什么呢？康德说这是因为人在本质上是自由的。所谓人本质上是自由的，康德有两个意思，一是指人由于天然地拒绝被利益考量和感性因素所限制或支配而得到的（消极）自由；二是指人本能地希望按照自己设立的规则去行动而获得的（积极）自由。根据这种对自由的理解，康德说自由意志和服从道德规律的意志，完全是一个东西。或者换言之，自由和自律是等同的。这就是为什么说康德的自由概念是他的道德律的基础。
维特根斯坦说，任何试图像说明世界那样阐释伦理学的尝试都是在冲击语言的界限，因此伦理学是不可言说的。但同时他也和康德一样对人们的道德冲动表示敬意: “世界是怎样的这一点并不神秘，而世界存在着，这一点是神秘的。”
2026 Hungarian election, April 12, 2026: 2010年维克托·欧尔班的菲德斯党上台执政后，匈牙利就成了那些崇尚腐败、法西斯主义以及对弗拉基米尔·普京忠诚之人的榜样。欧尔班政权带来了普遍的裙带资本主义、控制了匈牙利媒体，并安插了腐败的法官。他积极破坏欧盟内部的团结，并竭力阻挠对乌克兰的援助。欧尔班推行了他自己所说的“非自由民主”，重点在于“非自由”而非民主。欧尔班政权种族主义、反移民、恐同，反对言论自由和思想自由。向那些挺身捍卫自由与正义的匈牙利人民致敬。
meshtastic LoRa - long range wireless, AES-256 encyption, meshtastic github
Greek song: Tillyrkotissa · Mihalis Violaris
文摘
Einstein’s dictum—that everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler—became, in Neumann’s own telling, the seed of every research program of his career.
如果历史的是非曲直没有一个清楚的了断，历史又将何以为训？
雅斯贝尔斯以自己不惜以生命为代价的对妻子的忠贞不渝，告诉人们世上还有极权的冷酷和民粹的狂热压不倒摧不垮的东西：爱情，忠诚和良知。危难中无言的承诺，竟胜却人世无数海誓山盟！这绝望的抗争，孤独的坚守，只有亲身经历了那种时代苦难的人，才知道有多么可歌可泣，可敬可贵。这就是人性的光芒吧。我相信在文革中双双离世的傅雷夫妇，翦伯赞夫妇，刘绶松夫妇也彰显了同样的气节，只是他们没能像雅斯贝尔斯夫妇那样幸运，在无尽的苦难之中盼来一个光明的结局。
波普尔的《开放社会及其敌人》和汉娜·阿伦特的《极权主义的起源》一道，被认为是抨击极权主义的两部宣言。而在我看来，这两本书的问世正是哲学家对纳粹暴政的有力回应，它们的流行也是对纳粹劫难的最好警醒。
尼采受康德影响很深。康德最先指出，现象界，也就是展现在我们面前的这个世界，其实和真实的世界是不同的。不过康德用他的先验论和现象界达成了妥协，在康德那里，现象界至少在经验层面仍然是可以信赖的。叔本华追随康德，也认为现象界不真实，但他因看不到出路而走向悲观，把生活看得全无意义。尼采继承了康德和叔本华的衣钵，对现象界决不信任。但康德的中庸和叔本华的消极显然不合他的胃口。在天生叛逆的尼采看来，现象界可以也必须被抛弃和超越。不过尼采所要超越的现象界，比康德的还仅仅限于感官经验的现象界要大很多，它根本就是由现代文明造就的整个世界观，价值观和生活方式，其中包括宗教，艺术，历史，道德和哲学各领域的主流的看法和普罗大众的常识观点。简言之，尼采所要超越的现象界，就是已被公认的所谓人性。
一个思想自由，挑战公认人性的尼采和一个身体被世俗束缚的尼采，就构成了尼采的两个世界：思想的尼采高贵而真诚，对这个世界复杂的人际关系不屑一顾，它鞭策着世俗的尼采勇往直前；世俗的尼采则在人世的泥沼中四处碰壁，备受打击。尼采的一生，就是这两个旋律的交替变奏, 到了最后，思想的尼采贡献了他振聋发聩的哲学，世俗的尼采则留下传世的凄美故事。
1885年出版的《查拉图斯特拉如是说》就是要超越人自身。“超人”常常被误解为“超常的人”，但在尼采的原意，“超人”意谓“超越常人”，意谓超越通常人性的一种新的自由。《如是说》是尼采哲学的巅峰之作，它是哲学史上最著名的著作之一。
维特根斯坦展示了一种完全与众不同的人生态度，因而在扩展“人性”这一概念的内涵和外延方面，做出了独特而无可替代的贡献。可以说，维特根斯坦个人的人生境界使我们有可能在高度和维度的某些方面重新界定普遍的人性的边界。
至于为什么维特根斯坦要和家庭保持疏离，并没有一个公认的解释，但应当不是基于某种道德的或意识形态的原因。我觉得还是数学家拉姆塞的解释最靠谱：他从小接受的教育赋予他一种严苛的律己精神，绝不接受任何不是他自己挣来的东西。当然，更可能的是，他一生都沉浸在他卓越的智力带给他的精彩的精神世界里，世俗世界的七七八八的东西根本从来没有进入他的法眼。
不愿意置身事外的维特根斯坦觉得在战火之中做哲学是件荒谬的事，所以离开了三一学院的教职，选择去做一些最卑微的体力劳动。在申请成为救护车司机未果后，他去了伦敦一家医院做勤杂工，负责把药品从药房分发给伤病员，几周后又被调往实验室去配制软膏。…毕竟有这么一个人，够独立够强大，执着于自己的理念，一心只做自己热爱的事情，不戚戚于贫贱，不汲汲于富贵。那份超越，清高和潇洒，为人性的世界注入一股清流，使人的形象变得更加丰满而美好。所谓“天才”，也许就是这样定义的吧。
1919年，罗素在《数理逻辑导论》的一个脚注里地写道：“我过去的学生路德维希·维特根斯坦向我指出‘重言式’对定义数学的重要性，当时他正研究这问题。我不知道他是否解决了这问题，甚至不知道他是死是活”。这样深沉关切的语调出现在一部数理逻辑的专著里面， 极其罕见。哲学家是理性的代表，而俩位当事人更是理性和逻辑的世界顶尖高手，他们之间这样一种惺惺相惜的呼唤和牵挂，给人带来动人的温暖，哪怕战火也不能阻断。
在探索人性的无限可能性的跋涉途中，罗素和维特根斯坦是划过黑暗的天空的两颗灿烂的流星。在某一时刻，在某一点上，两颗流星有了交集，他们的碰撞迸发出了绚丽的光芒。然后两颗星各自东西，继续前行。无论从经验的归纳还是慨率的计算上说，两颗流星的相撞或两个绝世天才的相知相惜，都是可遇不可求的事情，一经出现，便成绝响。然而这千载难逢的相遇的意义，并不自动向所有的人展现，你得有一颗感恩的心和一双诚实的眼睛。
卢梭写作中一以贯之的情感表达和无处不在的道德评判，在以思辨为特征的哲学史上确属罕见。他的文字有超乎寻常的感染力，文风华美，雄辩热切，自有一种压倒性的风格。读者与其说是被启蒙了，不如说是被感召了。应该说他的写作就是在实践他心中理想的语言表达：劝导而不说服，描绘而不推论（persuade without convincing and depict without reasoning）。然而，诉诸感性的代价就是疏于论证。
为人类理性划下了界限：什么是可以认识的，什么是无法认识的。
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
tech as a new colonist
how power in the modern world is increasingly exercised not just through military force, but through technology, finance and control over information.
Baldur Bjarnason tech as colonist
AP
books
A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World, 2026, by Robin Wigglesworth
Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, by Anu Bradford
Richard Rorty: Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism