Years of Poems and Spirits

“The world is rich in data, and if tortured sufficiently, any data will confess.”
–Jan Rivkin, “An Option-led Approach to Making Strategic Choices”, HBS Note 9-702-433, Feb. 2006

This quarter is perhaps one for the ages. I didn’t expect MBA program would be any more intellectually challenging than poli-sci, but I start to realize how wrong I was.

Although this quarter has been difficult for other reasons, I am amazed at how much I was able to drag myself out of emotional doldrums by holding on to my study in MBA.

For example, this is perhaps the fourth time I took Macroecon so I didn’t expect too much new stuff coming out of the class. But Karma is a great professor, very knowledgeable not only in theory but also in practice. I thought the Fed operation was an absolute eye openner for me. Now entering the FOREX operations, I realized how mechanical my prior econ knowledge has been. For the first time, capital becomes so alive to me. Interacting with Karma is a really stimulating exercise.

Marketing and strategy are not as glamorous as I hoped for, but my hope was very high. I was so happy that Porter was discussed in detail. With Levitt’s Myopia article before him and the Blue Ocean after, strategy becomes more of a discipline than a practice.

Finance … oh, I adore Jennifer–as much as I did Jane Kennedy. Although I didn’t do too well in the midterm (damn the arbitrage thing), I could have had a much worse life in B school without people like Jane and Jennifer.

Just read the latest news: Reading hidden intentions in the human brain

If this discovery comes to fruition, it has to be a very disruptive outcome: if not in our daily life, at least in our perception of individual-society relations. I have to say I was never distressed by any technology before, until now that is.

There has always been some buffer between what is rational and what is private. Cognitive dissonance used to be the only link (albeit a Möbius-strip type of link) between the two spheres. Now the strip is broken and being flattened out. I can’t even describe how I feel right now: scared, upset, bewildered, excited, agitated …