One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees Now | Hacker News Reader

One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees Now

online.wsj.com

25 pointsnreece10 comments

This is a great example of a major benefit of extending human life: Having people that have witnessed history to guide us through future problems.

Well, we still have quite a few wise folks who witnessed the Great Depression. Nevertheless, we didn't listen to them or consult with them or else we wouldn't be facing the current economic crisis. Life extension is good, but it will just mean that more people will witness history repeating itself.

The one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

Spoken like a man familiar with the problem of induction.

It is, in fact, going to be a wonderful environment in which to take risk, because there aren't going to be any excesses.

I certainly agree with this, but I wonder if we'll actually see any more posts than usual that say "@#$% my job, I'm doing a startup."

"Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,"

Damn good name for a book!

Anyone notice; if you selected text then right clicked, WSJ throws up some css box with information relating to that text>? kinda neat.

"Kinda neat", like, "I hope there's a Greasemonkey script to turn it off?" Or "kinda neat", like, "possibly a useful way to monitize my site and annoy my users".

Do you honestly think that anyone has ever selected some text on that site, and then randomly right clicked on it hoping that related search terms would pop up?

A lot of people on Wall Street seem to be fans of that book, but I found it a rather dull history of probability theory. There wasn't much focus at all on the development of the truly remarkable system of risk transfer and management via derivatives that underlies much of modern finance.

If the majority of investor will minimize the risk they take, there will be more opportunities and profit at hand for those who will dare to take a bit more risks. The good news is that it is much less risk as before.

The other good news is that the economy is much more fluid as before. The market has extended in size (Asian country) and the access barriers is continuously lowering (as for launching a startup). I'm optimistic. But not of the "wait and see" kind ;)

Is no one else going to comment on how ridiculously long his tie is?

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