lion457's Blog

Monday (Tuesday really) thoughts after a gambling weekend and Internet Forums

Was a great wekend with my 2 bro's down in AC. Have not been for a while and felt good. Interesting that I signed up and did the trip report thing on this board. I thought so many were from another era, school, lifetime and of course, way of thinking. I work in the aviation field and fly helicopters. So much of what I do is, 'by the seat of my pants', literally.

The way I was taught was to perform and excel at what you choose to do and if it involves instructions from your employer or otherwise, do it and live up to those expectations without question. This brings me to what I want to convey here and maybe, just maybe, some of you will understand.

The amount of information on the interenet and of course this site is overwhelming. Things can easily get distorted, over looked or easily misunderstood. Maybe it is better described as a bubble. Some of us are in it and others are outisde of it? Don't know, really don't care. Why do I mention all this? Because repeatedly over the weekend that is exactly what had happened.

Information has never been so ubiquitous. Internet content, the open source economy and the proliferation of seach engines and key words have generated an unprecedented amount of information. IBM has an estimate out there that over 90% of the world's online data has been created just in the past two years. DID YOU READ THAT? The past 2 years as of last year. Couple with greater awareness and use of electronic media by all concerned, it is staggering how we survive this information warehouse at our 24/7 fingertips.

Rather than enhancing knowledge, the internet has produced an information glut or prehaps 'infoxication'. Online stories and chat rooms and boards are to intellectual curiosity what fast food is to hunger! Really, no doubt about it in my book. The sad part is that most of the stories we consume online are as valuable as daytime television (or night time re-runs of the soaps and talk shows). Since online content is often curated to fit our preferences, interests and personalities, the I-net can even enahnce our existing biases and undermine our motivation to really learn or expand our individual horizans and truly learn new things.

Here is a thought for all of you 'know it alls' out there in Wizard of Vegas Board's land. Howcome there was the financial crisis of 2008? If information volume and expertise were positively correlated (as many ALWAYS claim they do) the 2008 crisis would have been clearly avoided. Instead, the plethora of data, knowledge and information on markets and the economy fueled the crisis like subprime gas selling for a buck a gallon!

Now what I am saying, is the more (generally) one posts on such this or other boards, he is only reinforcing and enhancing his own personna and with virutally zero intellect gain. Now, please don't take that wrong. There are different kinds of posting but I am referring to the senseless and meaningless posts that do nothing but cause drama and are crticial.

Yet the desire to prove ourselves right and maintain our beliefs trumps most attempts to be creative or more open minded. Believe what you desire to believe, after all this is a free country in that aspect. The problems arise here when your beliefs are projected and thrust out there as gospel. Talking, stating opinion and reporting is much different than projecting beliefs, at least in my book anyways! Thus the internet is best understood as a cultural lens through which we construct or distort. And what is that. That my fellow gambler is called, reality.