my journal 3

[Yamato]

Why it doesn't make sense to get angry when things don't go your way:

1) the causes of your anger don't make sense (the expectation of things always going your way)

2) the consequences of your anger don't make sense (revenge, anger, complaining)

What makes sense instead is the analysis of the situation and finding the optimal reaction to it. If that means killing whoever insulted you, most unlikely it does, then go ahead and kill the person / thing that didn't act according to your wishes / expectations. But not on the grounds that he / it offended you.

You see, instead the reason I went short on the BUND with 10 contracts is that it had offended me by proving me wrong when I was short with 1 contract.

I must therefore train myself to not experience emotions when things do not go my way.

-----------

A perfect example of the damage that emotions add to annoyances is this: if the neighbor slams her door, I used to get very angry, and stayed pissed off for hours. Instead if I hear a sonic boom, I am not bothered although it makes the same noise, and in some places it is as frequent as a rude neighbor.

So what is the lesson to be learned from this?

The same noise doesn't bother me if it comes from a machine and I expect it and it can't be avoided, but it drives me mad if it comes from a human, who could avoid it. The lesson is that what makes me angry is not the noise, but the emotions I attach to it, namely the emotions stemming from my expectations that all people should be as considerate as I am. But these expectations are wrong. They didn't have my parents, they didn't have my life, they're not me, and furthermore, I used to slam doors when I was younger, too. So why do I fail to accept reality and that people will not always behave according to expectations and why do I have expectations that people will behave exactly as politely as I have become up to this point? This doesn't make sense and i don't know why I do it, but I must fix this irrational expectation... that people all have to be "good".

Other than this, I have demonstrated that what bothers me is not the damage done to me by the noise, but the emotions attached to the event. Therefore it is proven once and for all that emotions irrationally add frustration and inefficacy to your life.

 

[Yamato]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus

The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's Daedalus was a human-powered aircraft[1] that, on 23 April 1988, flew a distance of 71.5 mi (115.11 km) in 3 hours, 54 minutes, from Iraklion on the island of Crete to the island of Santorini. The flight holds official FAI world records for total distance, straight-line distance, and duration for human-powered aircraft.

The craft was named after the mythological inventor of aviation, Daedalus, and was inspired by the Greek myth of Daedalus' escape from Crete using manmade wings.

There were actually three aircraft constructed:

Light Eagle (originally Michelob Light Eagle): a 42 kg (92 lb) prototype.
Daedalus 87: Crashed during testing at Rogers Dry Lake (NASA Dryden Flight Research Center) on 17 February 1988, and was rebuilt as a backup.
Daedalus 88: Flew from Crete to just off the beach on Santorini.
Both Daedalus 87 and Daedalus 88' weighed 31 kg (69 lb).

All three aircraft were constructed at the MIT Lincoln Lab Flight Facility at Hanscom Field outside Boston, Massachusetts, by a team of undergraduate students, faculty, and recent graduates of MIT.

 

[Yamato]

Word order

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

In linguistics, word order typology is the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are the constituent order of a clause – the relative order of subject, object, and verb; the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; and the order of adverbials.

Some languages use relatively restrictive word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexibility, which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or focus. Most languages, however, have a preferred word order.[1]

Most nominative–accusative languages—which have a major word class of nouns and clauses that include subject and object—define constituent word order in terms of the finite verb (V) and its arguments, the subject (S), and object (O).[2][3][4][5]

There are six theoretically possible basic word orders for the transitive sentence: subject–verb–object (SVO), subject–object–verb (SOV), verb–subject–object (VSO), verb–object–subject (VOS), object–subject–verb (OSV) and object–verb–subject (OVS). The overwhelming majority of the world's languages are either SVO or SOV, with a much smaller but still significant portion using VSO word order. The remaining three arrangements are exceptionally rare, with VOS being slightly more common than OSV, and OVS being significantly more rare than the two preceding orders.[6]

http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/Word-Order.htm

"By the time English evolved into Middle English, loss of inflection meant that nouns no longer contained much grammatical information. On its own, the word man could be a subject or an object, or even an indirect object (as in 'The dog fetched the man a bone'). To compensate for this loss of information that inflection has provided, word order became critically important. If the man appears after the verb bite, we know he's not the one doing the biting: The dog bit the man. Indeed, having lost so much inflection, Modern English relies heavily on word order to convey grammatical information. And it doesn't much like having its conventional word order upset."
(Leslie Dunton-Downer, The English Is Coming!: How One Language Is Sweeping the World. Simon & Schuster, 2010)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject–object–verb#German

German is SOV combined with V2 word order. The non-finite verb (infinitive or participle) remains in final position, but the finite (ie. inflected) verb is moved to the second position. Simple verbs look like SVO, compound verbs follow this pattern:

Sentence
Words Er hat einen Apfel gegessen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V2_word_order

In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a specific restriction on the placement of the finite verb in a sentence. The V2 principle requires that the finite verb (the verb that is inflected for person) appears in second position of a declarative main clause, whereby the first position is occupied by a single major constituent that functions as the clause topic.[1]

V2 word order is common across the Germanic languages and is also found...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject–verb–object

In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements. It is the most common order by number of speakers, and the second most common order by number of known languages, after SOV. Together, SVO and SOV account for more than 75% of the world's languages.[3] It is also the most common order developed in Creole languages, suggesting that it may be somehow more initially 'obvious' to human psychology.[4] Albanian, Arabic, Assyrian (VSO and VOS are also followed, depending on the person), Berber, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish (but see below), French, Kurdish, Ganda, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Italian, Javanese, Kashmiri, Khmer, Latvian (but SOV if the object is a pronoun), Macedonian, Polish, Kashubian, Portuguese, Quiche, Romanian, Rotuman, Russian (but see below), Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, Yoruba and Zulu are examples of languages that can follow an SVO pattern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Nouns

Old English is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. As in several other ancient Germanic languages, there are five major cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and instrumental.

good thing it is dead

screw declensions

on the other hand, if declensions suck, and a person wastes half of his life to learn German, with all its declensions, isn't German a genetically inferior language?

Furthermore, they kept their fraktur characters all the way to 1941, so what about this crap?

What does it say about Germans?

Either that they're stupid and hard-working because they don't mind all the work their language entails and until recently their fraktur characters, or they're stupid because hard-working. On the other hand they excel at everything... so... I don't know. They were razed to the ground in 1945, and now they're back on top again. Same with the Japanese. And same problem with language.

Could it be that all people with ****ed up languages are the strongest ones?

 

[Yamato]

how being ashamed of losing affects trading

This is my latest analysis, this time entirely focused on the fear of losing, in every field of our life.

When somehow you grow up learning that you have to be afraid of losing, and ashamed of losing, this is how it will affect your trading.

I just noticed it in the chart game, on top of my years of trading.

1) you let losing trades go, because those losses might turn into wins. It doesn't matter if that may blow out your account, because that counts as 1 loss, which is the same as the loss you're having to take. So between choosing a certain loss of 500 dollars (using the stoploss) vs the possibility of blowing out my account, I always chose the possibility of blowing out my account.

2) you close your wins early, because you have a "win", little does it matter that it is 20 dollars and it could go to 2000 dollars. In your trading, you're affected by this desire to win, and shame for losing. You don't even observe the market anymore.

3) You keep going in the same direction where the market told you "wrong direction", because you were taught to not give up, by the same people who taught you that it is shameful to lose. The same people who trained kamikaze.

So, shame for losing leads to letting losses run, cutting wins short, revenge trading (whether by doubling up or closing and trying the same trade again, in the same direction).

And the same applies in life. You'd rather do a job that you know well, so you can impress people (equivalent to the 20 dollars win), than a job you don't know, and where you might not impress people. Instead it's more convenient to do the opposite, and learn as much as you can, especially when the job you know is now boring and repetitive, like at my office.

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

Ok, I can take a break for the rest of the day. I have almost finished page 2 of my nazi newspaper from September 2nd, 1939:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nwb&datum=19390902&zoom=33



It is becoming easier and easier. I now manage to translate about one sentence every minute and sometimes without using the dictionary. However, I have to take constant breaks because I want to appreciate what I am reading more. After all, I am interested in history more than in learning German.

Very satisfied with myself. I can't believe I am learning all this without ever setting foot in Germany (except for a few trips, only few hours each, when I lived on the border).

Finally my desire to understand Nazism is becoming a reality. I definitely had to learn German to do this. It could not be done with just English.

I will be happy if I'll be able to read one page per day after 2 more weeks of work.

 

[Yamato]

avoid emotions from both losses AND wins, because they impair decision-making

Remember how I created an excel file with all the telltale signs of stress and frustration?

I did it to monitor the state of mind which is not right for trading.

Now I also realize that euphoria (following wins) is just as inappropriate, as are all the feelings that arise from winning.

So let's start a little journey on this subject as well, with the help of a dictionary of antonyms:
https://archive.org/stream/completedictiona00falluoft/completedictiona00falluoft_djvu.txt

Quoting from the above-mentioned dictionary the antonyms of...

anger

ANT. Peace, peacefulness, peaceableness, appeasement, forgiveness, good-will, patience, forbearance, reconciliation, conciliatoriness, mildness.

stress

Alleviation, sli^itness, lightness, unimportance, casualty, touch, triviality.

frustration (I didn't find it, but only found various related terms)

Joyous, cheerful, merry, happy, gay, jovial, gladsome, blithe.

fear (here I used "afraid")

Fearless, inapprehensive, unsolicitous, easy, indifferent, secure, confident, bold, hopeful, eager, reckless, audacious, venturesome.

What I am getting at is that euphoria and joy are just as dangerous for trading, because whereas frustration and anger causes you:
1) revenge trading by going again (or adding more contracts without exiting) in the same direction that proved you wrong
2) ignoring stoplosses

... joy and euphoria cause you:
1) feeling powerful, intelligent and picking trades without thinking about them
2) feeling good and blessed by the gods, and this will set you up for disappointments and great anger when you'll lose

Feeling good about yourself when you win should be avoided just as much as feeling bad about yourself when you lose.

You should just do what works, as much as possible, all the time. Without letting feelings interfere with analyzing and implementing what works, both in life and in trading.

I will now proceed to analyze the antonyms listed above and mark in red the ones to avoid and in green the ones that are acceptable (if any). Then I will see what was my rationale for doing so.

ANTONYMS of ANGER
From the antonyms of "anger" I eliminated all those that reminded me of the Christian concepts, such as forgiveness and so on. Obviously trading has nothing to do with this. Regarding being "peaceful", it could be a good idea, although it should not mean that you're not lethal when required. Since I am not just talking about trading but about life in general as well, we must be able to defend ourselves if we're risking physical harm. So, ideally, we should be a peaceful killing machine.

ANTONYMS of STRESS
This series of antonyms alerts us to the fact that there is a very fine line separating these three states of mind: stress, attention, lightness (in the sense of being superficial, sloppy). We must not, after a series of wins (in life or trading) make the mistake of transitioning from attention (a mental state of "stress" also means attention, but too much attention, counterproductive attention, and attention accompanied by fear / panic) to sloppiness and lightness and carelessness.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stress

a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc.

We should pay attention, use our brain to the utmost, but not worry. I suspect the difference between attention (good state) and stress (bad state) is that stress is equal to the sum of attention + a series of feelings that interfere with attention: fear, worrying, etc.

And sure enough, the dictionary confirms my reasoning:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stress?s=t

...7. Physiology. a specific response by the body to a stimulus, as fear or pain, that disturbs or interferes with the normal physiological equilibrium of an organism.

So, by definition, stress is never good, and there can be attention without there being stress. A person who is extremely focused is not necessarily stressed. However, a person who is extremely focused, and then you open the door and let into his room an excited dog and a child... may become a stressed person -- something that would not happen to a jovial person. So let us say this: being focused increases your chances of becoming stressed. This explains why I get more easily upset than my colleagues, given that I work meticulously all day long, whereas they're slacking off all day long. Extreme concentration makes you more prone to stress.

So far we have clarified that stress and anger should be avoided, but not all their ingredients are bad. In stress there is a great quantity of attention, and this makes some of the antonyms of "stress" just as undesirable: lightness, triviality and casualty.

So the lesson here is "do not be stressed when you lose" but also "keep paying attention after you win".

ANTONYMS of FRUSTRATION
This might be awful logic and inference, but it seems to me that in this case, since all the antonyms of "frustration" are bad and in red, this also means that there are no good ingredients in frustration to be lost by doing the opposite.

Hmm, let's see. If I write "genius" and then look for the antonym and find "idiot", and find all antonyms to be not desirable, then we know that "genius" only came from good ingredients. Right?

I told you I am not as sharp as I used to be.

Let's keep going.

Then I write "pompous" (ostentatious), which is similar to "stressed" in the sense that not all ingredients are bad, because to be pompous you must also know something, just as someone who is stressed is at least paying attention to the source of his problems. I get these antonyms: "unpretending, unobtrusive, modest, unassuming, plain-mannered, humble-minded". And they're not all good.

Well, ok, let's see how this rationale applies to the antonyms of "frustration", which I marked all in red: "joyous, cheerful, merry, happy, gay, jovial, gladsome, blithe".

Now if the opposite of something bad is all good, then we have the certainty that it was bad, right?
But if the opposite of something bad is only partly good, then we know that maybe it wasn't all bad, right?
What if the opposite of something bad is all bad...?

... Then maybe this tells us that "frustration" is not bad at all?

...Hmm, what I see is that both states have in common emotions. "Frustration" means feeling bad emotionally, and "happy" means feeling good.

But these are both wrong, so this tells us that the enemy is not this or the opposite state but simply an emotional state, simply feeling emotions.

So I am back to an old question: should I abolish emotions altogether (and is it possible?) or should I limit myself to when I am trading or at the office? and also:
1) is it possible to abolish emotions only in certain situations?
2) isn't it easier to abolish emotions altogether?
3) are there situations where having emotions is useful?

ANTONYMS of FEAR:
Here some antonyms are desirable and some are not. This means that fear has positive ingredients, namely the fact that it might help you avoid something bad for you. That's why being "fearless" and similar is not a good thing.

But let's get back to trading and the concept of losses. Do we want losses? Absolutely not. Does this mean that we're afraid of losses?

Good question.

Do I want to be punched in the face? No, and that is why I stay away from fights.

Do I want losses? No, but I don't stay away from trading. Why?

And, also, I am afraid of being punched in the face. It never happened before.

And also, I am afraid of losses.

OK, it seems to me that the answer to why I don't stay away from trading is that a win annuls a loss, which then doesn't leave permanent damage on me. Whereas even returning a punch won't heal my face. OK, and this also tells me that fear of punches is good, because there is something to be feared. But fear of losses does not even make sense, because I can't be afraid of something that doesn't cause me permanent damage (provided that I am a profitable trader). In some rare situations, it might even be good to be able to take a punch, and more convenient than not taking it, but they're not very likely. For example, if someone insulted my girlfriend, I would start running and leave her there. But I'd definitely risk a punch for my parents.

So, recapitulating, if losses cause me anger, stress, frustration and fear, and these emotions have to be avoided because they interfere with my decision-making...

...it is conversely true that wins cause me other emotions to be avoided and also interfering with my decision-making: superficiality, cheerfulness, recklessness.

By the way: fearless doesn't mean reckless. Fearless doesn't mean you are not aware of the dangers. And fearless doesn't mean that you're going to take unnecessary risks. Having said this, I would not be recommend being fearless, but rather not fearing things that cause you no damage. "Fearless" is not a realistic concept for a human, anyway. It's just for actors in a movie.

Anyway, now what I have to do is play the chart game and write down the telltale signs of these three emotions that follow wins (whether in trading or in life): superficiality, cheerfulness, recklessness.

I have already noticed that today, when I received a compliment from my boss and another colleague, I was subjected to these emotions, and I reacted by talking more than I should have. A compliment triggered cheerfulness, superficiality and recklessness, which manifested themselves through excitement and talkativeness. So these are two telltale signs (excitement and talkativeness) that I have to write down as symptoms of emotions which impair my decision-making.

From now on, when I incur a loss (in life or in trading), I must make sure I don't experience emotions that impair my decision-making, and when I incur a win (in life or in trading), I must do the same exact thing.

 

[Yamato]

England was founded by a bunch of German immigrants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_immigration_to_Great_Britain#Angles.2C_Saxons_and_Jutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_invasion_of_Great_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_History_of_the_English_People
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/bede.html
http://www.heroofcamelot.com/docs/Bede-Ecclesiastical-History.pdf

I found yet another English word that may derive from German: "eek!". I didn't find the etymology anywhere on the web, but I suspect it is related to the German "ekel", which means "disgust":
http://www.dict.cc/?s=ekel
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/eek

Check out the sounds, they sound exactly the same. The only difference is the "L". Now imagine those Germans who came in the 500s to England, and how in 1500 years it could have easily changed... from /ik/ to ˈeːkəl

Different phonetic alphabet anyway, but I could not find the same.

I always thought, when I heard the "anglo-saxons" that it meant the Germans and the British, and so I thought: "right, so the English are certainly the Anglo- and so the Germans must be the Saxons...". Instead, the Germans are the Anglo- part (the Angeln, a Germanic tribe) and the -Saxons part are the Germans again (the Sachsen, a Germanic tribe). So this is equivalent to saying that the British are Germans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxons were a people who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. They included people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the southern half of the island from continental Europe, and their descendants; as well as indigenous Romano-British populations who adopted Anglo-Saxon culture and language. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of British history after their initial settlement, until the Norman conquest, between about 450 and 1066.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English

Old English (Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon[2] is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon.

It is a West Germanic language closely related to Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin. In most respects, including its grammar, it was much closer to modern German and Icelandic than to modern English. It was fully inflected with five grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammatical numbers (singular, plural, and dual) and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter).

Oh, wow, it changed meaning as time went by, just as I misunderstood so did almost everyone else and, believe it or not, the names of these two Germanic tribes, leads to a wikipedia entry, "Anglo-Saxon_world", which redirects to... the "English-speaking nations":
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anglo-Saxon_world

Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to a set of English-speaking nations with a similar cultural heritage, based upon populations originating from the nations of the British Isles: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and which today maintain close political and military cooperation.

This is as if we said that the "Greek world" is the world related to southern Italy and its colonies (which of course do not exist). And in fact in southern Italy we had Magna Grecia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Graecia

Magna Graecia (Latin meaning "Great Greece", Greek: Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, Megálē Hellás) is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Croton, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north.[1] The colonists—who began arriving in the 8th century BC—brought with them their Hellenic civilization, which was to leave a lasting imprint in Italy, such as in the culture of ancient Rome.

If these people in Magna Grecia (southern Italy) had been more successful, worldwide, than both the Greeks and the Romans, then today the world might have been colonized by them and they'd call it "the Greek world", and yet maybe they would speak a slightly different language (like English is different from German). Maybe the original Greeks would be upset, but no one would hear them because they'd be speaking a different language, not understood by the new "Greek world".

Here's another amazing entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_(disambiguation)

Anglo-Saxon world, modern societies based on or influenced by English customs

Dictionaries still have both meanings, the correct one and the wrong one:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anglo-saxon?s=t

5. a person whose native language is English.
6. a person of English descent.
7. (in the U.S.) a person of colonial descent or British origin.

So, here you go, I was wrong in my understanding of the term "anglo-saxon" along with a few billions people.

 

[Yamato]

for optimal effect on future events, don't be emotionally affected by past events

Imagine a calculator that returned different results to the same calculations, depending on whether it is in a good mood, since it just achieved a win, or in a bad mood (angry, frustrated, offended, or depressed) because it incurred a loss.

How good would it be? We would not buy it. We would throw it away.

Imagine a remote control that didn't change channels according to the numbers but according to how stressed out it is. We would throw it away.

Imagine a measuring instrument that measured things according to how afraid it is of its owner. We would not call it anything, and wouldn't consider it a tool.

Well, humans are this. Instruments to be thrown away.

To optimally affect (future) events, you must not be affected by (past) events.

Indeed, as established in previous posts, not only is your judgment impaired by emotions (anger, frustration, depression, fear, stress) arising from losses (in life and/or in trading), but it is also affected by wins, which cause superficiality, cheerfulness, recklessness.

Now that it is clear that we must not be emotionally affected by (past) events in order to optimally affect future events, the only question remains: can we turn our emotions off only while performing, or do we have to turn them off all the time?

Because if we have to turn them off all the time, then I'd be turning myself into a computer.

And also, what do I mean by "performing"?

It means acting, and we act all the time.

And obviously the more we act in an optimal way, the more efficient we become, so we should indeed turn emotions off all the time.

Then the question becomes:
1) is it realistically possible to turn them off all the time?
2) assuming it is possible, is a life without emotions pleasant?

By definition, pleasure is an emotion... or not? Not sure. Taking a cold shower is not pleasure. Taking a warm shower is pleasure, but then it is not an emotion. It's the lack of pain.

Avoiding pain is not an emotion, but a natural instinct. So seeking pleasure is an instinct as it means "avoiding pain".

I am just writing spontaneously here, maybe it's illogical. Maybe flawed logic.

So...

So if pleasure is not an emotion, we can still benefit from a life without emotions, and maximize our pleasure by optimally affecting our choices, through lack of emotions.

So, we can act as optimally as a computer, but unlike a computer we can feel pleasure.

To be continued... (in the next posts).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure

 

[Yamato]

holy ****, I have this one, too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions

Grandiose delusions (GD) or delusions of grandeur is principally a subtype of delusional disorder that occurs in patients suffering from a wide range of mental illnesses, including two-thirds of patients in manic state of bipolar disorder, half of those with schizophrenia and a substantial portion of those with substance abuse disorders.[1][2] GDs are characterized by fantastical beliefs that one is famous, omnipotent, wealthy, or otherwise very powerful. The delusions are generally fantastic and typically have a supernatural, science-fictional, or religious theme. There is a relative lack of research into GD, in comparison to persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations. About 10% of healthy people experience grandiose thoughts but do not meet full criteria for a diagnosis of GD.[2]

According to the DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for delusional disorder, grandiose-type symptoms include grossly exaggerated belief of:

self-worth
power[5]
knowledge
identity

exceptional relationship to a divinity or famous person.[6]
For example, a patient who has fictitious beliefs about his or her power or authority may believe himself or herself to be a ruling monarch who deserves to be treated like royalty.[7] There are substantial differences in the degree of grandiosity linked with grandiose delusions in different patients. Some patients believe they are God, the Queen of England, a president's son, a famous rock star, and so on. Others are not as expansive and think they are skilled sports-persons or great inventors.[8]

yep, i am that

Diagnosis[edit]
Patients with a wide range of mental disorders which disturb brain function experience different kinds of delusions, including grandiose delusions.[12] Grandiose delusions usually occur in patients with syndromes associated with secondary mania, such as Huntington's disease,[13] Parkinson's disease,[14] and Wilson's disease.[15] Secondary mania has also been caused by substances such as levodopa and isoniazid which modify the monoaminergic neurotransmitter function.[16] Vitamin B12 deficiency,[17] uremia,[18] hyperthyroidism[19] as well as the carcinoid syndrome[20] have been found to cause secondary mania, and thus grandiose delusions.

In diagnosing delusions, the MacArthur-Maudsley Assessment of Delusions Schedule is used to assess the patient.[21]

all right, i have it , but it is mild

besides, i suspect hitler and the other famous people of history also had delusions of grandeur, and that's how they made things happen

hitler and napoleon certainly did not think of themselves to be average idiots

they failed in the end, but they did pretty amazing things as dictators

kennedy, too, wanted to be president since being a child, or at least his father kept saying that his brother joseph (he died in the war) would have been president, ever since he was born...

all right, agreed, there is a difference between doing things, a step at a time, and just imagining things and not doing anything... but it is a fine line in some cases.

 

[Yamato]

If you have a regular life, and more or less I've had one, from the moment you are born, you're fed feelings.

Good feelings, from all your relatives. Or rather, you're fed events that cause you good feelings. And you feel no reason to close yourself and deactivate all feelings. If it only feels good, why should you?

Then, later on, with school, things get tougher, much tougher.

So tough that they encourage you to lose those feelings and that sensitivity, but if your first influence was good feelings, it is going to be hard to become different and forget those good times, and stop feeling emotions.

But then things are just bad, and so you are stuck with a life of complaining, if the beginning of your life was much better than what followed.

Now I am faced with a tougher life, which would greatly encourage me, not just for my trading needs, to lose all emotions. Not that it got tougher compared to a few years ago, but now I am more ambitious and I realize that emotions get in the way of trading, and this opened my eyes to the fact that they get in the way of everything.

I thought I wasn't "emotional" and instead very rational, but I now realize that, as far as some emotions (anger, frustration, disappointment), I am very emotional.

------

Right now the neighbor child is jumping up and down, and he's testing my ability to not react with anger to things not going my way, which is what blew out my account: getting angry when things don't go my way. He's training my rationality. This little idiot. He'll grow up to be the umpteenth idiot.

But you see, if the noise was produced by a machine, like a washing machine, it would not bother me. So this is all psychological. I can't accept that such an idiot, 5 years old, is still making as much noise as fireworks or a washing machine at its worst, on a regular basis, every day.

So you see, I am not bothered by the noise, but I am bothered by the fact that he's not living his life according to my plans. It drives me crazy. The more I think this kid is stupid and all his family, the more the thought drives me mad. I gain nothing from this. The noise doesn't bother me. I won't do anything about it, such as telling them to stop him or soundproof his room.

So, it totally makes sense to remove my feelings (anger) and the cause of them: my assumption that everything has to go according to my wishes and my order of things, to my rules, to my education (because they're indeed rude to let this happen). But if I think nothing can be done about this, why am I letting this drive me mad, when the noise itself doesn't even bother me that much?

Because I am doing something stupid and repetitive. Because I am keeping this stupid and wrong assumption that things will go my way. I have to fight this. Be it the door-slamming bitch, the jumping child, or the BUND causing me a loss. There is nothing to gain from this anger I am feeling.

And time that I lost thinking about these people, and money that I lost getting back at the BUND for not behaving according to my plans.

Accepting this imbecile child, and his noise, is going to make me profitable.

I must feel nothing, because there is nothing to gain from it.

Today I watched Lucy, with ugly bitch, forgot her name.

There was something good in it, like 1%. The concept of expanding our brain. This is what I must do.

Removing anger from things not going my way, and euphoria from things going my way, will at least add a 5% to what my brain can produce, even merely by giving it more time to think, by removing the rumination I used to engage in.

I must have spent a few years of my life complaining. In all the time I spent complaining I could have learned Chinese or Japanese. What a goddamn moron I've been.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lucy_2014/reviews/?sort=rotten

John Hanlon
July 25, 2014
A movie about intelligence that isn't half as smart as it pretends to be.

Clay Cane
July 24, 2014
With my limited ten percent brain capacity, it's possible that I couldn't grasp the film's greatness ... but I doubt it. Lucy is bland on arrival.

----

Recently I've felt like Samuel Jackson at the diner, when he talks about the "transitional moment". I, too, am in a transitional moment, and I am surprisingly insensitive to what used to bother me, and I seem very patient. I have two new colleagues and one of them yesterday told my boss that I am a saint and she told another colleague that I am "extremely patient".

 

[Yamato]

...what's very interesting to me is that my scratching my head was a signal, a symptom of my anger, and I kept telling myself, for years, "stop scratching", while I didn't realize that I had to solve the problem of my anger, and that, too, has another cause that has to be addressed. You can't just say "stop scratching" as much as you can't say "stop being angry". You have to go the first cause, and that is the wrong assumption that I've had since childhood, that things would go my way in life, that it would be the rule or even the permanent situation: things going my way, because i was special. Totally irrational belief and conviction, stemming maybe from a spoiled childhood, being an only child, who got all the attentions of very goodhearted relatives. The only asshole in the family was my father I think. Maybe that's why he got so far.

 

[Yamato]

Today I don't have much to say.

Slept well thanks to those two links I read:
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Autogenics

Furthermore, on top of these techniques, today I wasn't afraid of not falling asleep, which is a major cause of insomnia. I used to go like this: "Oh, damn... I only have 7 more hours to sleep.. I won't be rested"... "Oh, damn... I only have 6 and a half hours more to sleep...". This added extra anxiety. Today instead my approach was: if I don't sleep it will provide practice to learn to accept things not going my way. So, whether I fall asleep (win) or not fall asleep (loss, and practice in losing without suffering), it will be a good thing. So I had one less reason to worry, one more reason to fall asleep.

I woke up at 3 or 4 am, and started doing those relaxation techniques, after wasting 30 minutes trying to fall asleep normally. And within a few minutes I fell asleep. First I tried the relaxation, and then I tried the "hand getting heavier" method (autogenics). Interesting. I still don't know much about it, mostly because I don't remember by hear the methodology, but the little I know about it already helps.

It is really simple and stupid, but if you do it, it works.

On why relaxation techniques work
The important concepts about it are:
1) doing the autogenics mantra ("hand getting heavier", repeated 8 times) or the Progressive Muscle Relaxation forces you to focus on the exercise (by doing that, you're not thinking about the problems that keep you awake)

2) the deep breathing relaxes you and also makes me feel drunk (which has always worked with me for forgetting my problems). I think it's called hyperventilation.

...Oh, look. Go figure. I just found out that the inventor of autogenic training was not only a German and a Nazi, but a participant in T4 and persecution of homosexuals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Heinrich_Schultz


Wow, if it weren't for the dangers, I would have volunteered to be cured. Being a suspected homosexual, I would have been forced to have sex with prostitutes for free.

---

Anyway, today I also found this interesting symptom of stress (caused by trading losses or other daily life cause): changes in swallowing and salivation. I added it to my list of symptoms and body language signs to monitor, as clues to the mental state.

And I also added "squinting".

Remember: getting angry about losing... only makes you lose twice as much. With trading this means blowing out your account.

The very reason I blew out my account is that I wanted to get back at the BUND for not going in the direction I expected and causing me a loss... of 500 euros. Another time, it was because I wanted to get back at GBP for causing me a loss of 400 dollars.

But even in life, I would say that being vengeful / touchy causes you... not just twice the damage but the damage to the nth power.

In the previous episodes/posts, of the past 2 weeks, I have said that, through relaxation techniques (Progressive Muscle Relaxation or Autogenic training) you can effectively control your thoughts and physical response to those thoughts. This is at the basis of the psychological treatment of desensitization, which seems to be nothing other than practicing/experiencing bad thoughts/situations/phobias accompanied by relaxation techniques, so to train ourselves to not panic and remove our association/link of fear/phobia with that situation.

A practical example. The Orangutan has arrived in the room, and he's now singing and making unnecessary noise, showing all his rudeness. Usually I'd react with some symptoms of stress, some of those in my 30+ long list, such as facial tension, changes in breathing, and profound feeling of hate and discomfort.

But as I said, this doesn't help the situation, so I want to avoid all this. I don't want to add bad feelings to a bad situation, since there is nothing I can do to avoid the situation, let's pretend it's noise from a truck and not from a human, since what bothers me is not the noise itself but the fact that it's coming from a human. I would show no signs of stress, if it came from a machine.

So, what do I do?

1) The first thing to do or "not do" would have been to know that I can't expect everyone to be like me (polite, etcetera). So I should feel no stress from human/orangutan. Precisely, if it were an orangutan or a machine it would not bother me, so I should accept there's different humans from the ones I would have expected growing up in my family.

But this failed. The first phase failed, because I am still in the initial training. I suppose that later I will be better, and prevent the feeling. So, the feeling of hate arose.

2) I can still prevent its manifestation, by simultaneously:
a) removing the thought
b) removing the physical symptoms of the thought

This is done through relaxation techniques, that will remove the hate I am feeling and at the same time the physical symptoms I am feeling (being tense and changes in breathing, because it is a mild annoyance).

How is it achieved all at once with just relaxation techniques? As I said in the post I quoted, "It is really simple and stupid, but if you do it, it works". So what is it?

Simply this. I engage in the deep breathing described here:
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/autogen.htm#1

At the same time, I focus on the muscles that got tense, and relax them, as learned here:
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/pmr.htm

Then, anywhere, anytime, you can simply perform a quick “body scan” to recognize where in your body you might be holding muscle tension and then, using imagery and your cue word/phrase, you can let it go.

This, within less than 1 minute, will take care of your thoughts (which should not have arisen in the first place) and of your body.

This proves that we can control our thoughts, to a certain extent. No matter what we are thinking, with this technique, we can make them go away as soon as they arrive in our head.

It seems odd that I had never thought about this before, given how simple it is. Indeed, it suffices to think about something else.

This is extremely useful, needless to say, because at the very least it can save you some insomnia, when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about... that colleague who didn't say "hi" to you, like I did tonight. An hour later, through a lot of "the hand is heavier..." and similar, I went back to sleep. Without it, I would have been scratching my head for hours.

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

Father Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1971)

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/coughlin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

By 1934, Coughlin was perhaps the most prominent Roman Catholic speaker on political and financial issues, with a radio audience that reached tens of millions of people every week. Alan Brinkley states that "by 1934, he was receiving more than 10,000 letters every day" and that "his clerical staff at times numbered more than a hundred".[14] Moreover he foreshadowed modern talk radio and televangelism.[15] In 1934, when Father Coughlin began criticizing the New Deal, Roosevelt sent Joseph P. Kennedy and Frank Murphy, both prominent Irish Catholics, to try to tone him down.[16] Ignoring them, Coughlin began denouncing Roosevelt as a tool of Wall Street. Coughlin supported Huey Long until Long was assassinated in 1935, and then supported William Lemke's Union Party in 1936. Coughlin opposed the New Deal with increasing vehemence. His radio talks attacked Roosevelt, capitalists, and Jewish conspirators. Another nationally known priest, Monsignor John A. Ryan, initially supported Coughlin, but opposed his efforts after Coughlin turned on Roosevelt.[17] Kennedy, who strongly supported the New Deal, warned as early as 1933 that Coughlin was "becoming a very dangerous proposition" as an opponent of Roosevelt and "an out and out demagogue". Kennedy worked with Roosevelt, Bishop Francis Spellman and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) in a successful effort to get the Vatican to silence Coughlin in 1936.[18] In 1940–41, reversing his own views, Kennedy attacked the isolationism of Coughlin.[19][20][16]

the same things "conspiracy theorists" say today

minute 5 and later, against the international banksters -- the same things "conspiracy theorists" say today

 

[Yamato]

One good way to avoid symptoms of jubilation for wins and anger for losses, both counter-productive, is to avoid looking at the score until the end of the game.

I just played such a game:
http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68



By the way, as a side effect of not feeling anger, I can...

1) practice much more (no anger, no fatigue from playing games, no aversion for the games)

2) not screw up games once I incur losses (which used to cause me anger) or wins (which used to cause me euphoria)

and as a consequence my games are becoming more profitable, and the losing games are much less disastrous.

In other words, I can say that I am profitable at the chart game. I end with profit in the large majority of the games I play, and I lose very little when I lose (less than when I win, on average). So, to clarify, I win more, and when I win, I make more than when I lose.

Small satisfaction, for now, because I aim for much more. The absence of feeling of joy or anger, in trading and in life. Indeed, I cannot rely on this same calm, to continue when I'll be playing with thousands of dollars, betting with my old future foes, the BUND, and the other mother ****ers, who caused me so much pain and suffering. There's a risk for old resentments to be stirred and awoken, or... however you say this in English, you get my point.

Resentment is still there. When I hear, while listening to german radio news channels, the word "börse" (they say it before talking about the news from the stock market, which is what it means: "stock market"), I still get an unpleasant feeling, bad memories are triggered, and I change the winamp channel.

 

[Yamato]

Dagobert @ "Uwe Schenk trifft..." Raumpilot

Heute bin ich Raumpilot
und flieg hinaus durchs Abendrot
hinein in eine geistige Welt

Vor mir tausend Lichterlein
hinter mir das ganze Sein
fast genauso, wie man sich erzählt

Von weitem starrten sie mich an
und starben dann wohl irgendwann
doch immer noch kann ich sie vor mir sehn

All die tausend Lichterlein
jedes für sich ganz allein
bleibt Zeit für (?) am schwarzen Himmel stehn

ohohohoo Es gibt so viele neue Welten, überall wo wir nicht sind
und überall wo wir nicht denken

ohohohoo Mein Testament besagt nur eins:
Ich will dir alle, alle, alle, alle .. alle meine Liebe schenken

Ich will dir alle meine Liebe schenken

Heute bin ich Raumpilot
sterbe hier, bin dann tot
morgen bin ich nur noch dieses Lied

Und vielleicht kannst du mich manchmal sehen
wenn in der Nacht die Winde wehn
klingt da dieses Lied das ich nun bin

Eins von tausend Lichterlein
bin ich jetzt und will es sein
Ich leuchte noch ein Weilchen so mich hin

Und vielleicht kannst du mich manchmal sehen
wenn in der Nacht die Winde wehn
klingt da dieses Lied das ich nun bin

ohohohoo Es gibt so viele neue Welten, überall wo wir nicht sind
und überall wo wir nicht denken

ohohohoo Mein Testament besagt nur eins:
Ich will dir alle, alle, alle, alle .. alle meine Liebe schenken,

wuhouuh alle meine Liebe schenken

Ich will dir alle meine Liebe schenken

ohohohoo Es gibt so viele neue Welten, überall wo wir nicht sind
und überall wo wir nicht denken

ohohohoo Mein Testament besagt nur eins:
Ich will dir alle, alle, alle, alle .. alle meine Liiiiiiebe schenken


----

This song makes you want to learn German.

Mmh, I just translated it and it doesn't have so much meaning as I had expected. I guess I really liked the way he sang it, and of course the melody and arrangement. I still like it.

 

[Yamato]

To maximize results, you must eliminate both good and bad emotions from your mind, during your entire day. Plenty of examples of this fact in previous posts.

The mere understanding of this, should be enough to eliminate emotions.

However, if they still arise, it is possible to control your thoughts (and your physical reaction to them) through relaxation techniques (examples in previous posts).

This is the latest summary of my whole thinking on this issue I've been analyzing for the past few months.

 

[Yamato]

5 political leaders made famous by their own trial

In a chronological order:

Joan of Arc, killed after trial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc#Trial



Adolf Hitler, 20 years of successes after the trial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Beer_Hall_Putsch



José Antonio Primo de Rivera, killed after trial:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_...ra#Conspiraciones_contra_la_II_Rep.C3.BAblica



Fidel Castro, 60 years of successes after trial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel..._the_Moncada_Barracks_attack:_1952.E2.80.9353



Nelson Mandela, 50 years of successes after trial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Arrest_and_Rivonia_trial:_1962.E2.80.931964



A trial for an attempted coup (or similar) is very risky, because sometimes they kill you and you're lucky if they didn't kill you right after being captured, but, once they capture you, a trial provides a last shot at political success. So, in case you're captured after an attempted coup, do not despair.