4 ms·

What's the actionable investment advice here? I couldn't seem to figure it out.

luser001 14y ago
None: it isn't an investment advice article.
scrumper 14y ago
You're asking for actionable specifics from an abstract discussion of philosophy. To take it back into our domain, it's a bit like reading an article on design patterns and saying, "Yes but can I have teh codez?" (Or, to be flippant, the advice might be 'persuade George Soros to take you as a client.)
afterburner 14y ago
"I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity." Or: People don't know sh*t, but they can still buy/sell stocks, which then affects the price.
tunesmith 14y ago
Well I suppose it could be seen as a defense of behavioral or technical investing, over strictly fundamentals-based investing. It's basically reinforcing the fact that while we take actions in the market based off of our understanding of what reality is, our actions in turn also affect the reality. I don't mean behavioral instead of fundamentals. I mean integrating behavioral into fundamentals, because his overall point is that both "understanding reality" and "manipulating reality" are valid factors. You get into trouble if you focus on one at the expense of the other. Overall I'm finding the article sequence a little disappointing. Transcript #3 is interesting in comparing enlightenment to post-modernism. But it all feels like it's a run-up to something actually insightful about what we should actually do, when it actually never quite gets there, aside from recommendations that politicians should be thinking in terms of the public good rather than in terms of the market. It's like, yeah, we already understand that. From a geek perspective it's somewhat related to subjects like complexity theory I guess. I don't know much about it, but one thing that depresses me is that even though it's possible for very simple inputs to yield highly complex (or random) outputs, it's impossible to take one of those complex outputs and reverse-engineer the simple inputs that created it. That makes me grumpy. I like those movies where some super-villain (or hero) introduces a silver bullet solution that spreads out and affects all sorts of things in exactly the way they intend. Just a fantasy, though.
helmut_hed 14y ago
No actionable investment advice but a fair bit of policy prescriptions in Lecture 2 that are IMO worth a read.

None: it isn't an investment advice article.

You're asking for actionable specifics from an abstract discussion of philosophy. To take it back into our domain, it's a bit like reading an article on design patterns and saying, "Yes but can I have teh codez?" (Or, to be flippant, the advice might be 'persuade George Soros to take you as a client.)

afterburner 14y ago

"I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity." Or: People don't know sh*t, but they can still buy/sell stocks, which then affects the price.

tunesmith 14y ago

Well I suppose it could be seen as a defense of behavioral or technical investing, over strictly fundamentals-based investing. It's basically reinforcing the fact that while we take actions in the market based off of our understanding of what reality is, our actions in turn also affect the reality. I don't mean behavioral instead of fundamentals. I mean integrating behavioral into fundamentals, because his overall point is that both "understanding reality" and "manipulating reality" are valid factors. You get into trouble if you focus on one at the expense of the other. Overall I'm finding the article sequence a little disappointing. Transcript #3 is interesting in comparing enlightenment to post-modernism. But it all feels like it's a run-up to something actually insightful about what we should actually do, when it actually never quite gets there, aside from recommendations that politicians should be thinking in terms of the public good rather than in terms of the market. It's like, yeah, we already understand that. From a geek perspective it's somewhat related to subjects like complexity theory I guess. I don't know much about it, but one thing that depresses me is that even though it's possible for very simple inputs to yield highly complex (or random) outputs, it's impossible to take one of those complex outputs and reverse-engineer the simple inputs that created it. That makes me grumpy. I like those movies where some super-villain (or hero) introduces a silver bullet solution that spreads out and affects all sorts of things in exactly the way they intend. Just a fantasy, though.

helmut_hed 14y ago

No actionable investment advice but a fair bit of policy prescriptions in Lecture 2 that are IMO worth a read.