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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org> <b>On Behalf Of </b>William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] AI as teacher<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>>…<span style='color:black'>I don't want to repeat myself: have I told you my theory of why children are afraid of men</span>?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>I don’t recall having heard it. Do share. I can think of an evolutionary psychology-based explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>>>…</span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:#222222'>I bought the hell outta Lockheed stock back in the day when we thought we were going under. We didn’t.<u> </u>spike</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>>…<span style='color:#222222'>So why did you buck the odds? bill </span>w<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Right decision for all the wrong reasons. I went to Lockheed in 1989 to get out of the military equipment biz. When Mr. Gorbachev tore down that wall, I thought war would go away. Lockheed made that war stuff, but they made a lot of other high-techy stuff that isn’t military, back in those days they did. We had a great Plowshares group, where we did systems engineering: trying to figure out ways to adapt military stuff for civilian use, then use existing expertise to make that, saving on development costs and so forth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Turns out Lockheed was great at making stuff no one could afford, and we lost our asses in all of it. I can’t even think of a good counter-example right off hand. But I worked there and saw how many smart people we had, perhaps let it influence my judgment on our chances of success. So I took full advantage of my stock options, bought like hell back in the early 90s at great prices because nooooobody wanted to invest in a stodgy old company back then. Everybody wanted to play the high-fliers, the startups, the silliest dot coms, the internet fly-by-nights, companies with business models so absurd you couldn’t even figure out why anyone would invest. Eh, the 90s were that way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>So… by the time that all crashed in about 2001, I wasn’t holding any of it. I was holding Lockheed stock and a few other dividend-paying value stocks, and over the long haul, it was good to me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Bill note you posted to ExI part of what was an offlist discussion. No harm done, and I am OK with sharing my philosophy on investing: high profit equals high risk. Play at your peril. Invest for the long haul, and in the long haul you will likely do well. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Of course I coulda done way better. I was right there when BitCoin started (we all were) and coulda been the next Jeff Davis, never bought a single one of those, back when they were 5 bucks. Never bought Tesla, even though my neighbor kept telling me it was a great investment. They were right. I couldn’t see why anyone couldn’t just start a new digital currency company on a whim and I definitely didn’t see anyone building cars for a profit in my neighborhood. Well, bzzzt and bzzzt, so now call me Tevye the milkman, for I am not a rich man.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>