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How to spot people who are talking out of their armpit? They're engaging in prophecy about the future, that's how. Nobody has any clue what the future holds, l

by pyalot2 13y ago

How to spot people who are talking out of their armpit? They're engaging in prophecy about the future, that's how. Nobody has any clue what the future holds, let alone the one of bitcoin. Everybody has a guess of course, but that's it, a guess. Now some guesses are more educated, and others are less so, but that doesn't make them any less or more likely to come to pass. But somebody will incidentially be right. Now it could be this guy, or it could be not. Nobody really knows. As to when it comes to guesses about bitcoin, it'd be particularly important not to play the blind & elephant game (it's a commodity! No, it's a currency! No, it's a payment system! No it's a store of value! No it's an accounting ledger! No, it's a p2p network! No, it's a protocol! etc.). That is, you can't comment on an aspect of bitcoin and derive your entire guess from that, while ignoring all other aspects of bitcoin. You're free to base your guess upon that basis, but it's quite likely that in this case, your guess does indeed have a lower likelyhood to hit the mark.

kolinko 13y ago
Well, sure, you can't predict future with 100% certainity. But sometimes you have to make an educated guess. If you have a million dollars to invest, you have to speculate - put that into dollars, into some "safe stock", into properties, or at least a small part into Bitcoin? At least this guy sets himself up to be accountable, compared to a bunch of experts who give vague statements like "Bitcoins are tulips, they will crash!", and then, once Bitcoins fall from $20k to $5k apiece 5 years later, they'll say: "see? I told you!"
- pyalot2 13y ago
  I actually suspect that the accountable game doesn't work. Have you ever heard of that guy? Nope. Will you ever hear of him again? Well only if he was right... The game works essentially like this. Create N identities for a topic, at each junction of the topic (substantial news, price developments, what have you) you'll have one of the identities make up a prediction that's exactly opposite of another identity. If an identity is now straying into the clearly "wrong" territory, discard it, continue with the identities which have turned out to incidentially make a right prediction. You continue this until you've weeded out all identities but one, which is now endowed with a streak of having made the right predictions. That's when you strike, now it's time to monetize on that belief that you're an expert in some or another fashion.

by pyalot2 13y ago

kolinko 13y ago

Well, sure, you can't predict future with 100% certainity. But sometimes you have to make an educated guess. If you have a million dollars to invest, you have to speculate - put that into dollars, into some "safe stock", into properties, or at least a small part into Bitcoin? At least this guy sets himself up to be accountable, compared to a bunch of experts who give vague statements like "Bitcoins are tulips, they will crash!", and then, once Bitcoins fall from $20k to $5k apiece 5 years later, they'll say: "see? I told you!"

pyalot2 13y ago
I actually suspect that the accountable game doesn't work. Have you ever heard of that guy? Nope. Will you ever hear of him again? Well only if he was right... The game works essentially like this. Create N identities for a topic, at each junction of the topic (substantial news, price developments, what have you) you'll have one of the identities make up a prediction that's exactly opposite of another identity. If an identity is now straying into the clearly "wrong" territory, discard it, continue with the identities which have turned out to incidentially make a right prediction. You continue this until you've weeded out all identities but one, which is now endowed with a streak of having made the right predictions. That's when you strike, now it's time to monetize on that belief that you're an expert in some or another fashion.