Hunt: State Editorials Show Detectable Narrative Patterns Before Going To War
Ben Hunt · Ben Hunt - The Stories that Drive Markets (EP.393) · Jun 24, 2024 · at 9:36
Ben Hunt, creator of Epsilon Theory, discusses his academic research and first book, 'Getting to War', analyzing media narratives preceding international conflicts.
0:00 / 0:52exact quote · 52.7s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“My idea was that before a government would do something risky, start a war, start fighting with another country, they're going to tell efforts to tell a story to their people. So the idea was that by looking at domestic media, in particular, editorials, which haven't changed in purpose or meaning for 200 years now, they are efforts to shape opinion. They're direct efforts to say, here's how you should think about a subject matter. To look at newspapers that were closely associated with a government, and I was going to do this across countries, across time, Is there structure there? Can you see a pattern in the opinion-leading efforts in media, the storytelling by governments, to prepare population for war? And the answer is, oh my god, absolutely.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Hunt
Hunt: Financial Markets Are Entirely Driven By Narratives Over Fundamentals
“I am today a strong form narrativist. I think it's all stories all the way down, and that includes the stories we tell ourselves about value, about growth.”
Hunt: Private Credit Reinsurance Structures Recreate Pre-2008 Citigroup SIV Risks
“My strong belief is that we've shifted around a lot of risk into the insurance, particularly the offshore reinsurance world, where leverage ratio is incredibly high, increasingly invested with affiliates. And we all know what that means, but it's, the reason I…”
Hunt: The Ability To Sell Stories Defines Successful CEOs Today
“This is narrative creation. This is what makes for a successful CEO today, Ted, is the ability to create and sell a story.”
Hunt: Iran-Israel Conflict Will Likely Escalate Beyond 'Phony War' Stage
“There is a hot war between those two countries. It is in its phony war stage. I don't think it remains in a phony war stage, or I think the risk is that it doesn't”
Hunt: Core Math Behind Narrative NLP Has Not Changed In 35 Years
“Nothing's changed in the math. It's the same algorithms, it's the same network math that I was using 35 years ago. What has changed is big data, so the access to all this information, all this text information.”
Hunt: Econometric 'Epsilon' Represents Human Narratives, Not Pure Error
“The fact is, epsilon is just what's not in your econometric formula. It's not error. It's what you don't know. Yes, there is error and stochastic stuff in there, right? But there's also human interaction. Strategic interaction. There's also how humans systemat…”