Recently in Expert Witness Category

[Note: The Expert Witness series is an occasional Friday feature that allows guest bloggers to write about a topic in which they have a particular interest or expertise. This week's article "Six Principles for a Solid Investing Strategy" is by Austin Pryor from Sound Mind Investing]

A well-defined investing strategy is one of the cornerstones of a successful financial life. While investing techniques vary widely, all good strategies are built on the same foundation. For example, SMI offers two main investing strategies for our readers, Just-the-Basics and Upgrading. Their approaches are very different, but both are built upon six core principles which you should keep in mind as you plan for your own strategy.

Principle #1: Success in investing comes not in hoping for the best, but in knowing how you will handle the worst. Always remember: nobody really knows what's going to happen next. Some things can be predicted; most things can't. Since nobody really knows what is going to happen, your plan must allow for the fact that the investment markets will experience some unexpected downturns every now and then. That's where diversification comes in. The idea is to pick investments that "march to different drummers." This means your strategy involves owning a mix of investments that are affected by different economic events.

Surprisingly, it is possible to assemble some lower-risk investment combinations that give pretty much the same returns over time as higher-risk ones. Both of SMI's core strategies offer you portfolios that combine stocks and bonds in various combinations in order to reduce volatility and risk while still achieving attractive long-term returns.

[Note: The Expert Witness series is a regular Friday feature that allows guest bloggers to write about a topic in which they have a particular interest or expertise. This week's entry is by the pseudonymous blogger FMF.]

While personal finance is my main hobby, chess is a "fun" passion. And while it's said that chess takes "a moment to learn; a lifetime to master," I'm going to at least try and give you an overview of the Royal Game.

Why Play Chess

I started playing chess four years ago when I read how chess exercises your mind. The article noted that people who keep their minds active have less of a chance of developing Alzheimer's. So I decided that just as I exercise my body to stay healthy, I should also do the same with my mind. And since chess provides an on-going challenge and I could pay it alone if need be (with a computer), it seemed to be a perfect choice.

You Know the Basics

One assumption I'm going to make in writing this post is that you know the basics of the game -- how to set up the board, how to move the pieces, how they capture, and the like. Just in case you don't and would like a little primer, here are some links:

[Note: The Expert Witness series is a regular Friday feature that allows guest bloggers to write about a topic in which they have a particular interest or expertise.]

Having lived through the thrill of victory (the late 1990 bull market) and the agony of defeat (the 2000-2002 bear market), many people today are finding it increasingly difficult to know which is the "right" step to take. They wonder:
"Is this a good time to buy stocks?"

"Should I sell some of my employer's stock in order to diversify?"

"How much of my retirement plan should I put in stocks versus bonds?"

"If I sell this losing investment and buy something else, will I be better off?"

Since we cannot know the future with certainty, it's obvious that no investment portfolio that any of us comes up with will ever be perfectly positioned to profit from upcoming events. As the future unfolds, it will always be possible to point to ways we could have made more money than we did - and some of them will appear incredibly obvious in retrospect! This means that it's pointless to think of the "right" investment portfolio simply in terms of maximizing profits. If that is your approach, you will always be frustrated and second-guessing your decisions.

[Note: The Expert Witness series is a regular Friday feature that allows guest bloggers to write about a topic in which they have a particular interest or expertise.]

If any of you have ever visited my site at Free Money Finance you'll know how I dislike the term "expert." But, since this is the name of the column and I'm a guest, I guess I'll have to live with the Expert Witness name. But I don't have to like it. :-)

Why I Dislike Financial Experts

Seriously, there is a reason for my dislike of the term. The current state of personal financial media/information/data (or whatever you want to call it) is dismal. The industry is full of sales people (who call themselves "experts") who:

1) Overcomplicate the facts so the average person thinks he/she can’t possibly manage their own money

2) Want to make "your" money "their" money (or at least take part of what you have to give you "valuable" advice)

3) Don’t know much about personal finances.

I’ve found that there is a lack of financial wisdom (advice if you prefer) that is simple, easy to implement, and to the point. You don't need to be up on the latest tax implications of off-shore oil investments or be able to articulate the difference between puts and calls to be a success financially. You simply need to focus on the basics -- the 20% of tasks that will make 80% of the difference in your finances. If you do this, you'll be fine. More than fine really. With this in mind, Free Money Finance is an attempt to talk about finances in a simple, easy-to-understand manner that allows the reader to manage his or her finances without a lot of effort but still achieve superior results.

Why Listen to Me

Here's why you should listen to me instead of listening to "experts": You shouldn’t.

When Evangelical Outpost began this "Expert Witness" series he started with Bill Wallo of Wallo World on graphic novels. Bill did a great job, and I, in a vain attempt at humor, left a trackback to my usual Saturday post on "Comic Art," with a rather petulant link back to that post. As a result, Joe has quite kindly and needlessly offered to allow me to do this post on comic books -- but given how I love the medium, I cannot turn the opportunity down.

So first I should address the difference between graphic novels and comic books. The short answer is often not much. If you go to a book store these days you will generally find a section dedicated to graphic novels; however, most of what you will find there is soft cover compilations of the numerous comic books that comprise a story arc. It's kind of like someone took the old RKO serials and put them on a single real, editing out only the credits associated with each episode.

Comic books are stories, told graphically and episodically. A graphic novel is also a story told graphically, but when well done, it has a different narrative structure, lacking the numerous cliffhangers and gimmicks designed pull you back for the next episode. It's a subtle differentiation that obviously most people are oblivious to since so much of what is sold as graphic novels is really just a compilation.

Here I am addressing comic books, and most importantly, art in comic books. I am concentrating on the graphical part of the medium for one very good reason -- I buy comics far more because of how they look than the story they tell. So what do I look for?

In his essay, "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heidegger says that the primary question concerning technology is the question of "what it is." Many answers have been given to this question and there is not a definitive answer to the question. There is, however, agreement about many aspects of what technology is. The rest of this essay is going to explore various answers to the question.

A Definition (or Two) of Technology

One definition of modern technology given by the authors of Responsible Technology is

"a distinct human cultural activity in which human beings exercise freedom and responsibility in response to God by forming and transforming the natural creation, with the aid of tools and procedures, for practical ends and purposes."

Carl Mitcham's theory of technology includes four parts or, rather, four ways to view technology.

1. Technological objects (e.g., automobiles, hammers, computers, pencils, plastic bags, medication, chain saws, etc.)
2. Technological activities that produce these objects (e.g., designing, inventing, manufacturing, etc.)
3. Technological knowledge required to perform these activities (e.g., techniques, theories, rules of thumb, etc.)
4. Technological volition (the human desire to create these objects)

Under his view, a human with both the requisite technological knowledge and the will or desire can perform the technological activities required to produce technological artifacts.

[Note: Although originally written for the Master’s Programs for Autodidacts post, Dr. Forster has graciously agreed to let me use this piece for this week’s EW feature.]

Here’s my contribution for a do-it-yourself MA in political thought (I have a Ph.D. in political science from Yale). I should say as a disclaimer that graduate school in the liberal arts is not nearly so useless as MBA programs apparently are; you get a lot out of spending day after day discussing a liberal arts subject with other people who are studying it.

Most political thought programs start with Hackett’s The Trial and Death of Socrates, which collects four dialogues of Plato (the Apology, the Euthyphro, the Crito, and the Phaedo). This will give you an idea of 1) what philosophy is, and 2) why philosophy matters for the life of a political community.

Another good book to read at the outset, I think, would be G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. While it is not explicitly a work of political thought, it gives you a really valuable insight in to what paganism is (most Westerners just don’t have the first idea of how pagan people and societies actually think), what philosophy is (from the perspective of a critic rather than an insider, as with Plato), and what theism is, and how all three of these affect the way political communities think and act.

Then it’s time for the big plunge: Allan Bloom’s edition of Plato’s Republic. Make sure you get Bloom’s edition if you really want to read the book as Plato wrote it. Bloom’s interpretive essay is not required reading, but the textual notes in the back of the book are. You need to read this book with two bookmarks – one in the main text and one in the notes, which you should be following as you go along. The notes really should have been printed alongside the text, like a study Bible.

“Simple-mindedness consists in having too few thoughts and feelings to match the world as it really is. In private life and the field of personal morality it is often possible to survive in that state—indeed, the very statement for that case is over-simple, since the question of what moral demands life makes is not independent of what one’s morality demands of it. But the demands of political reality and the complexities of political thought are obstinately what they are, and in the face of them the simple-mindedness of utilitarianism disqualifies it totally.”
-Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism”

I have been given the good fortune to take a stab at replying to last week’s post by Kevin T Keith on consequentialist ethics with a post of my own on perhaps their main competitor in the field of ethics, deontological ethics. I’d like to proceed in three stages: to try and offer a brief explanation of what deontological ethics are (and why you should care), to explain some of the faults of utilitarianism (there are lots more where these will come from) and a bit of explanation for my own personal hobby-horse with respect to consequentialism (nobody actually believes in it), and then to look at some of the more notable (for better or worse) works which have attempted to incorporate deontological ethics.

[Note: More information about the Expert Witness series can be found here .]

Why “Situation-Ethics” is Morally Appealing and Morally Right

Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, often rail against “situation ethics” or non-deontological ethics (i.e., moral reasoning that does not adhere to specific, fixed moral rules). They seem to see such thinking as emblematic of an unprincipled, inconsistent, “if-it-feels-good-do-it” moral outlook, or as a form of moral relativism, contrary to the firmness and consistency of the “moral absolutism” that they value. This seems to be very much what was on the mind of then-Cardinal Ratzinger in his widely-quoted sermon before the recent papal election: