ON QUANTIFYING DELUSIONS Over the years I spent in the corporate world, competition in a market-based economy demanded that managing capital costs and production efficiency became essential for survival. In response to this incentive, an impressive array of digital mechanisms was developed for identifying, tracking and analyzing the market centered effectiveness of what was going on. In contemporary economic affairs, it can be difficult to escape injecting emotional factors that can distort ‘efficient’ decision-making. To reduce that vulnerability, the black-and-white world of mathematics has become a dominant analytic tool. One reason mathematics is so useful is there is an inherent, internal consistency generally uncontaminated by peripheral, emotionally-laden issues not recognized to be germane to the matter at hand. Let me say at the outset I am, even in retirement, addicted to Excel software generated bookkeeping spreadsheets. After years of having to formulate, defend and manage a corporate departmental annual budget, I couldn’t have survived professionally without relying on my ever-at-my-elbow spreadsheets. Even now in retirement, ensuring we have means to be financially independent requires we carefully manage the remaining resources we accumulated during our working lives. As a result, I still regularly use mathematically based, digital tools to help manage our economic affairs. However, an inherent vulnerability in using some tools is the risk the process itself can become an end rather than a means. Once we become captured by the notion that a digitized, internally logical system is automatically the ‘truth of a situation’ we can become dominated by it. Because some factor may be more readily quantifiable, we might easily miss the deeper significance of other more subjective decision components. There is apparently an inherent risk involved in a search for ‘analytical efficiency’ that might diminish a broader perspective. Living as retired Expatriates in Central Italy is instilling some new insights and adding strength to perceptions we already had. Over the past two years, the deliciously slow pace of retirement has allowed self-indulgence in taking time to think. As a result, I’m becoming concerned that insufficient attention is being paid to more subtle and subjective aspects of simply living. Fundamentally, I am coming to believe there is risk in placing too much emphasis on the readily quantifiable...