The Journey from the Basement

[SOCRATES]

Now before we carry on further, let us talk about the template mentioned above.The template is the way we adopt we ought to be looking at things. This template will exist in each idividual as a consequence of that individual's own life experiences but this template has limitations.

First of all as a consequence of being the result of that individual's own life experience it carries, not a view, but it has to be an opinion since it has emotions attached to it This is because the template is created within a humansistic environment for specific humanistic use, and therefore useless in the market, for trading. Now we can clearly see that what defeats the individual is his or her own humanity.

For the purposes of trading a new template has to be created that does not carry with it opinions and emotions but instead carries views and impartiality.This new template cannot be created and stored inside the persona like its original. It cannot be used from within the persona and directed from it.

This is what most people try and of course it does not and can not work, when they try to deal with the market, with the task or trading and with themselves as well which is an impartial multitasking excercise for which the persona is not built and therefore cannot cope.

What is required is the creation of a new persona with a new template that is housed in the new persona and used and directed from there and there only, then it will work effectively when dealing with oneself, trading and the market, but not anything else and kept separate.

 

[SOCRATES]

We are going to return to the Animal Lessons we have looked at so far, but before we do this let us examine how it is that our humanity interferes with our reason, impartiality and ability to act.
Constructive comments please.

 

[Rognvald]

A similarity with computers perhaps

It is not sufficient to use a dedicated drive and develop and install the software for the trading persona on it. In this case the drive is governed by the operating system governing all the other functions performed.

A separate Operating System should also be installed on this drive so that no corruption between the two can occur. The system should be dual boot so that a choice must be made as to which single system will be in operation at any one time

Problem - our human system is not wired this way. Our operating system is by nature a single one dedicated to our survival in the broadest sense. How do we try to separate this "trading template" (the separate OS, drive and software) from our natural protective system in such a way that our humanistic system cannot interfere and give us a dual boot capability?

 

[Glenn]

A lady came to my wife for treatment. She was obese. She had tried all the diets, exercise, the GP and anything she could to reduce her weight. She was determined and persistent, rather than playing at it. But nothing worked.

Under hypnosis the following story emerged.
When she was a little girl she lived in a house with a back garden.
In the garden was an old water well - a hole in the ground, covered over with wooden planks.
She and her older brother had been warned many times - "If you go near that well, the bogey man will get you - Keep away".

One day she and her brother were playing in the garden and her brother started to push her towards the well. She became frightened. He persisted. It got worse, She became mortified. She knew that if he pushed her down the well the bogey man would get her.
Her brother eventually stopped his game, but the damage had been done.
Her subconscious had kicked into gear. How to survive ? Become big so that you can't fall down the well.
So from that day she progressively put on weight and had been obese ever since into adulthood.
Such was the power of the subconscious.
Under hypnosis she was able to understand the what had happened to her from an adult perspective. She could rationalise the reason for her weight. She could see that she now had no reason to be concerned about falling down the well, so from that point on she could become her normal size.

By 6 weeks after that treatment session she had been restored to her normal weight without dieting or exercise and any other intervention.

Glenn

 

[bracke]

Self-Preservation, Fear and Greed ?

Regards

bracke

 

[frugi]

The fight or flight instinct is an essential, deeply ingrained, tool for survival but utterly unsuited to trading. Unfortunately the fear and greed involved in taking a position causes this instinct to try and control our decisions despite our rational wishes.

"Anger and fear are essential resources for coping with danger shared by a broad range of animal species. When our culture conformed more closely to our animal derivations, these emotions served us well. We could attack the beast that threatened us with a force alerted and mobilised by our rage, and augmented by our intelligence. But now danger is more likely to fall out of a envelope than jump out of a bush...millions of years of evolution may have been made obsolete by a mere 10000 years of civilisation." (Dr. Willard Gaylin)

Anger and fear do not have no place in modern life, and trading, but we are responsible for directinfg them properly.

"We can change the very nature of our reality. We are in that sense co-authors with nature of our future, not merely passive subjects of it." (?)

"Unlike other animals, our emotions are not automatic responses to what happens in reality, but are a result of our interpretation of what occurs." (Trader Vic)

"By practising the active and ongoing process of emotional discipline, you can take control over your mind and become decisive, while simultaneously reducing the frequency and intensity of emotional conflicts...But because most of us have accepted mixed and contradictory beliefs and values, many of which are hidden in the subconscious, practising emotional discipline is never easy. In particular, sorting out the roots of our emotional reactions is an enormously difficult task. It requires looking inward to identify and understand the relationship of our values and beliefs to reality and discarding beliefs that are contradictory. Further, simply discarding wrong beliefs and adopting new ones is no guarantee that our emotional awareness will change. To chage emotional responses takes constant self awareness, time, fundamental personal honesty and the willingness to suffer the pain of letting something go that we feel is dear to us."

(Also Trader Vic)

 

[SOCRATES]

This is already very good progress because what has to be accepted is that the humanistic persona is unsuited to the task in hand . The key word is "accepted". We must be able to accept before we can progress. And we cannot accept unless we have a realisation. We cannot have a realisation unless we
put our attention on it. Even putting our attention on in may not crack it. Why ? Because we may have stumbled upon a booby trap put there to "bend our percection, as part of the survival mechanism", in order to guide us in the direction that the survival mechanism considers is the best for us to look at and follow so that we should stay alive. Thus the survival mechanism is doing its best to protect us, which is all very well and good in ordinary life but here we have the first example where its interference actually hinders us. Now we have to look in anothr direction to try to circumvent this booby trap, whose exact location we dont even know ~ but our inability to progress actually detects for us(via awareness) its
covert existence ! Now we have to find another route to attack it from a flank on which it is lightly defended if at all. This is done by thinking and rolling a concept around inside your head until you have a realisation.

At this jucture it is important to mention that these booby traps are set up in the mind as a consequence of our own life experiences. They act similarly to circuit breakers. When a fuse blows because you are using a lamp that is not correctly wired, it blows the circuit breaker in the main {but only for that circuit, and not for all the electrical applications and appliances in the whole building} once a circuit breaker is set off a new booby trap is set. Therefore according to the life experiences of each person therefore according to how many times the circuit breakers have been set off. Therefore the more life experiences a person may have had therefore the greater the likelyhood of more or most of the circuit breakers having been set off. Do you remember how in an earlier discussion I defined experience as a process of continually making mistakes but not repeating them.? Now you can understand more clearly that lfe experiences not only do not prepare you for this, they in fact prevent you from progressing and at the same time limit you to dealing with this in the same way you would deal with ordinary life, but here it does not work, are you beginning to get my drift ?

 

[TheBramble]

If our humanity prevents us from (a) considering any 'outside' event without first filtering it for 'personal survival bias' and (b) considering any mechanism to override this filtering then the core issue would seem to be establishing what we would have to be or do to 'not' have either of these mechanisms in place.

A new born baby is significantly better off than we in this respect. No life experiences whatsoever. No filters. No programming of any kind other than the autonomous reflexes required to maintain things such as breathing and heartbeat.

Tabula Rasa?

Reason - is a process of intellectualising. Which is itself a consciously controlled and triggered event. We can choose to intellectualise or not.

Impartiality - total impartiality to everything and anything would require not just an acceptance but a genuine experience of non-being. Achievable through deep meditation, but normally requiring many years.

Ability to act - requires a motivation to achieve an end result. But I imagine in this context you mean ability to act selflessly? This would require an attitude of total non-caring.

Apart from the decision whether to intellectualise in order to reason, the other issues will normally require many years of dedicated and solitary practise. If you have managed them in just 11 years this is impressive. Can it be achieved by individuals with the right character in a similar amount of time?

If this is possible, the whole focus becomes one of character and how first to develop that?

 

[SOCRATES]

Wecome Sharky, nice to see you on the balcony,
thanks for your help, hope you like this and find it interesting.
Kind Regards.

 

[SOCRATES]

This space reserved fo expand on Bramble's post.

 

[SOCRATES]

This space reserved to expand on Glenn's post

# # # # # # have a lot of balls in the air at the moment, back asap # # # #

 

[Rognvald]

Socrates and theBramble
In general this tends to make depressing reading for those older seekers amongst us.

The older and therefore richer in experiences we are the more difficult the process will be? Socrates has though pointed out that it is only the relevant circuit breakers that fire.

"Life experiences not only do not prepare you for this, they in fact prevent you from progressing and at the same time limit you to dealing with this in the same way you would deal with ordinary life, but here it does not work, are you beginning to get my drift?"

Socrates - I understand the idea of the life experience obstacles - the product being their inability to function either along side or in control of the required new template.

The solutions to our problems are mostly triggered by our experience (empiricism ). We interrogate the database to see if we have experienced anything relevant and deal with it from that learned perspective.

The solutions to totally different problems require new responses quite unrelated to and not controlled by any or all of the others. We have no empirical experience (sense experience) either available or benefical for tackling the new needs. Therefore we need intellectual knowledge a priori. A new mindset.

To what extent can the will be brought into play here? Motivation? There is also a question over how life experience itself fits the individual for new challenges.

I have realised too that we have not spoken of the subconcious mind's filing system which is one of the two issues referred to in 560 and we have to learn to file systematically and avoid the disorganised patchwork of experience

I have slipped this in here so that Socrates may comment on it if appropriate

 

[SOCRATES]

Socrates and theBramble
In general this tends to make depressing reading for those older seekers amongst us.

The older and therefore richer in experiences we are the more difficult the process will be? Socrates has though pointed out that it is only the relevant circuit breakers that fire.

"Life experiences not only do not prepare you for this, they in fact prevent you from progressing and at the same time limit you to dealing with this in the same way you would deal with ordinary life, but here it does not work, are you beginning to get my drift?"

Socrates - I'm finding the underlined part difficult. I understand the idea of the life experience obstacles - the product being their inability to function either along side or in control of the required new template.

The solutions to our problems are mostly triggered by our experience (empiricism ). We interrogate the database to see if we have experienced anything relevant and deal with it from that learned perspective.

The solutions to totally different problems require new responses quite unrelated to and not controlled by any or all of the others. We have no empirical experience (sense experience) either available or benefical for tackling the new needs. Therefore we need intellectual knowledge a priori. A new mindset.

Are my underlined words an additional extension to this idea?

Also to what extent can the will be brought into play here? Motivation? There is also a question over how life experience itself fits the individual for new challenges.

I have slipped this in here so that Socrates may comment on it if appropriate

I have a few free minutes ~ it is a good thing that you have brought this up.

The key to the whole thing is Acceptance. Fortunately it is easier to have Acceptance
when you are older than when you are younger. It is a curious paradox.

When you are older you tend to have more patience, more tolerance,
this is a faculty that is very much in your favour. When you are younger you tend to think
you can conquer the world in five minutes. It takes you a lifetime to realise you can't.

Therefore it is swings and roundabouts. Therefore individuals who are immature are
not suitable for this profession although they might be able to cope at an intellectual
level but then fail at a personal level, although having said that there are many very
young traders who mature early.

You have just reminded me of a conversation I once had with my first Captain when I was a deck officer in the Merchant Marine. He was talking about his experiences in wartime. As a young cadet, his ship was torpedoed by a U Boat 300 miles off the coast of Ireland and was lucky to be rescued by a passing ship 4 days later.

He explained to me it was a well known fact that when shipwrecked it was always the older members of the crew in the lifeboat who were able to survive proportionatlely in greater numbers according to their ages. The youngest ones always went first. I asked him if he thought this may have been due to their increased metablolism.

He replied that in his experience having been torpedoed twice and survived to tell the tale
that he firmly believed it had to do more with the young ones losing hope at an early stage
in the proceedings. What he was really talking about was the contrast between acceptance
and the lack of it.

Of course , on the other hand if you are too old and doddery and cannot grasp new concepts then there is no chance, but I am sure you are exonerated from the afflictions that advanced age have a propensity to bring to the very old. From what you tell me you are probalbly at the right age to go through the mindset obstacle course with greater ease than most, so don't worry.

 

[SOCRATES]

Socrates and theBramble

I have realised too that we have not spoken of the subconcious mind's filing system which is one of the two issues referred to in 560 and we have to learn to file systematically and avoid the disorganised patchwork of experience

I have slipped this in here so that Socrates may comment on it if appropriate

Yes, OK. The problem is as follows:~

All our life experiences have to pass through the subconcsious mind. It is only the meaningfulexperiences that can be recalled with ease, the rest do not vanish,
they remain there, but the problem is that they remain there in the order in which they arrive,
which is in a jumbled order.

It is as if all these experiences which constiture thoughts, are piled up in heaps one on top of another and stored haphazardly. This discussion is premature at this stage not in terms of difficulty but because it would be in the wrong order of priority. But there is a solution and I will deal with it in due course when it falls into sequence with the development of the discussion.

 

[barjon]

Out all day (golf match) but glad to see on my return that we're backup and running.

It seems to me that the template triumverate of reason, impartiality and ability to act sit on the same circle and are interconnected. Although maybe all drawn from life's experience, there also seem two distinct families of booby traps.

One family is the emotional one (fear, survival etc as discussed) which primarily affect impartiality and ability to act. The other family is the "intellectual" one (for want of a better phrase) which primarily affects reason since it is mostly about the way one arrives at one's views (goddammit almost said opinions ) For example some people have an absolutely logical approach where one step must follow on from the other to arrive at a conclusion. Others are blue sky thinkers who are very comfortable thinking laterally and who are well able to ignore "logic".

For myself, I sit in the logical chair (which I doubt is the chair to be in for the right template purposes ) and probably presents a booby trap of pretty robust proportions.

 

[Thirteen]

dont take this the wrong way as im sure someone will. it isnt ment to be rude, dissruptive or anything.

if this mental process is so key, how do you explain all the traders who become successful consistently after 6 months of learning a proven strategy and implementing that - mechanically as u put it.. i know guys who started with $20,000 and earning $1mil in 2 years in the company i work at. no special mental process, no 11 years of learning how 2 'think', just a valid proven method. these are normal guys off the street who are keen 2 learn & 2 make lots o money.

 

[barjon]

Thirteen

That's fine - let's hope they are still making their millions in a few years time. But this thread is not about them or "mechanical" systems. It is about understanding the market, the people who operate within it and being able to trade it successfully wIthout the aid of any "system" that may or may not endure over the long term.

Skim - in the interests of continuity please feel free to delete this in due course if you're still in editing mode and not suffering from too much of a headache.

 

[Thirteen]

it not a mechanical system. its method. its about how 1 sees probabilities and where price will move next based on v simple ta - no indicators other than 10ma. as long as 1 sticks 2 method 1 makes $$$$.

anyway who cares about system. trading is bout $$$$

anyway - nuff from me. people have right to read this in peace so i will not detract. but they also have right to be open to other thoughts and wot trading really is & decide 4 self.

bye

 

[SOCRATES]

Out all day (golf match) but glad to see on my return that we're backup and running.

It seems to me that the template triumverate of reason, impartiality and ability to act sit on the same circle and are interconnected. Although maybe all drawn from life's experience, there also seem two distinct families of booby traps.

One family is the emotional one (fear, survival etc as discussed) which primarily affect impartiality and ability to act. The other family is the "intellectual" one (for want of a better phrase) which primarily affects reason since it is mostly about the way one arrives at one's views (goddammit almost said opinions ) For example some people have an absolutely logical approach where one step must follow on from the other to arrive at a conclusion. Others are blue sky thinkers who are very comfortable thinking laterally and who are well able to ignore "logic".

For myself, I sit in the logical chair (which I doubt is the chair to be in for the right template purposes ) and probably presents a booby trap of pretty robust proportions.

Barjon, the first part is spot on.The difficulty is that this template triumvate if left to its own devices is perfect, what messes it up are the inabilites.These inabilities diasable the triumvate but in such a way that the triumvate may be aware but unable to rid itself of the problem. The difficult part is that the triumvate may want to but not be able to, and in addition if this problem is not solved it becomes chronic. And so there are degrees of gravity accordingly.

 

[Trader333]

Glenn and Socrates,

I have a question based on Glenn's post # 565 of 30th June 2004 at 11.17am where a lady had hypnosis to address an issue that had affected her whole life up to the point where she received treatment and became normal after around 6 weeks

Socrates has stated that he has taken 7 + 4 years to reach a point where he has the right persona and mindset appropriate to being a successful trader. Now it is clear that hypnosis can program the subconscious directly and therefore there may be an opportunity for those who wish to develop the right persona and mindset to use this as a way of doing so.

My question is would it be possible through hypnosis to reduce this 11 years to a much shorter timeframe and if so by how much ?


Paul