Too Clever by Half (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Too Clever by Half (2018)

epsilontheory.com

145 pointslrsjng31 comments

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This was posted here 9 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079369

Yes, I to remembered this. The article has eschewed the blockchain references this time.

Also, this time in my opinion, the comments seem more intelligent and engaging.

Highly interesting writing. I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with points - but mostly agreeing.

At the same time, some of it "plucked at my liberal nose", which bothered me, but further reading seemed to indicate that the author wasn't doing it to be "on a side" - in fact, I could see him "plucking the conservative nose" as well!

...and indeed, I believe that is intentional; his point being (I think) to get the reader to break out of the us-vs-them dynamic, try to see all points of view, especially those you don't agree with, and think more for yourself instead of succumbing to the systems in place that attempt to tell you what to think and how - and are oh-so-seductive as they do so.

I like to think, as we probably all do, that "I am better than that - I think for myself!", etc.

But do I?

This kind of writing makes me pause and question that; I find it a good...if a bit unsettling...thing.

The "nose plucking" is a recurring thing with Epsilon Theory, and yes – directed pretty evenhandedly at ridiculousness on both sides of the political spectrum.

You're dead on about breaking out of the "us vs them" dynamic.

Here's their series on that:

The widening gyre of political/ideological polarization: https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/

The opposite effect in markets/asset classes: https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-part-2/

Market participation in light of these phenomena: https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-part-3-marke...

Personal conduct and process in these contexts: https://www.epsilontheory.com/clear-eyes-full-hearts-cant-lo...

1 and 4 are especially relevant to your post. The first explains why your nose felt plucked, the last suggests what we all might do about it.

The coyotes know exactly* where the invisible fence begins and ends, without the benefit of ever wearing a shock collar. How do I know? Because they intentionally leave their scat on their side of the invisible fence, creating a demilitarized zone as precise and as well-observed as anything on the Korean peninsula.*

Hmm.. couldn't this be just a result of the dogs not having marked the territory where the invisible fence is? As in, it's just territory essentially open for the taking?

That's exactly the point.

What I'm saying is - it doesn't seem to be cleverness in action - just plain ol' animal instinct.

It's kind of like the domesticated dogs are dumbly telling them where the fence is.

Most domesticated dogs really are pretty stupid. Many of the smarter breeds, like the German or Belgian Shepherd dogs have fairly recent wolf admixture.

Indeed. It's kind of like, "The grass grows right up to the invisible fence, but won't cross it. Grass is so clever!"

No, it's just not growing where there's dog pee.

Alright so I was following with the author for the longform introduction about coyotes and raccoons (although essentially all his criticisms of raccoons apply equally to cats, which he seems to like).

But then he lost me when he started making it a piece about finance gone awry. I don't really follow the point, can anyone walk me through his example more concisely? He's throwing in a lot here in struck out letters, which is part of the joke, but I think I'm missing the big picture.

It's a markets/economics analysis blog that takes some pride in staking independent positions. (Charitably put.)

The segue to blockchain/MBS wasn't a non-sequitur, it was the eventual aim of the piece -- that smart people will invent, nasty people will ruin, smart people will be ruined and the state will intervene and grow in remit.

As for the strikethrough, it was to compare the causes of the GFC with the (at the time of writing more current) blockchain fad.

Wow thank you, I think you nailed it. I see all of this now.

Thank you. Fantastic TLDR -

that smart people will invent, nasty people will ruin, smart people will be ruined and the state will intervene and grow in remit.

(2018). Seen this before. It's good, though.

Very good. Both in itself and as a parable.

Epsilon Theory is one of those pieces of writing that remains rewarding across multiple readings. I find myself revisiting their entire catalog often. I'm shocked that every post they have doesn't do well here, the way say Patio11 or SlateStarCodex would.

It's a little more self-indulgent. Lots more pop-culture references, less data, less introspection and "what if I'm wrong" counterfactual exploration. I also think it makes less of an effort to make itself clear, because Epsilon Theory sees itself as talking to a particular free-thinking crowd, not trying to educate anyone who will listen.

Great point. I think you're right. ET leans into a "dialect" that sometimes assumes you're ramped up on the existing writing, in a way that I can't imagine SSC doing.

I don't fault them for this – it adds something, and I've gotten a huge amount of value from doing the same in my own journaling, but I get how it can be a turnoff. I really like Venkatesh Rao, but outside of more conventionally phrased works like The Gervais Principle, I sometimes struggle to get through Ribbonfarm because of his obscure style and linguistic choices.

Interesting writing style.

I really like the quote; "It's always the meta-game that gets you." (which is the whole point of the essay really).

Basically, if you think that you've found a way to win the mini-game that you're playing - you're being a coyote - so watch out! Because when that mini-game ends, the bigger, meta game is going to blow up and end your fun.

It's basically the concept of "finite" vs "infinite" games: Don't play an infinite game like a finite game. You'll think that you're clever and winning while you're playing - but the game will always get you in the end.

Somehow this reminds me of quarterly results and technical debt vs long term success.

“Somehow”

I've seen this pop up a couple of times now as well - are there any other similarly thought provoking articles anyone recommends?

Epsilon Theory has more, could read other stuff on the site.

Also recommend Ribbonfarm

A similar but, imho better piece can be found on https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths. Still, the interesting bits for me in this one were the following:

"Financial innovation is always and in all ways one of two things — a new way of securitizing something or a new way of leveraging something.

"Securitization is a ten-dollar word that means associating something in the real world (a cash flow from a debt, an ownership interest in a company, a deed on a property, a distributed ledger mathematical calculation, etc.) with a piece of paper that can be bought and sold separately from that real world thing. Leverage is a ten-dollar word that means borrowed money.

"That’s it. There’s nothing new under the sun. Finding new ways to trade things (securitization) or new ways to borrow money on things (leverage) is what financial innovation is all about, and there are vast riches awaiting the clever coyotes who can come up with a useful scheme on either. The biggest market disasters happen when both leverage and securitization get mixed up with the same clever scheme."

For learning the above this was worth the read.

Not much of a meta-"game", when humans are OP.

Scat marks the fence. They needn't remember.

Corollary: contemporary humans are a domesticated species, so we are also mentally inferior to our ancestors. This is more plausible than it first sounds, because our superior techniques and technology more than make up for intrinsic shortcomings.

This is the kind of article that makes people who think they are geniuses (but have produced nothing useful) feel justified in hurting others to get what they want.

I didn't read this article as encouraging either coyote or racoon behaviour, but rather to be an arborist [0]. What makes you think this?

[0]: https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-arborist/

The people I'm thinking of would read "Too Clever by Half" and think, "Obviously what I'm doing is a hole that needs to be filled [I won't admit it, but it's really because it would enrich me or make me more powerful], and so the rules and regulations shouldn't apply to me, it's just for those asshole raccoons."

A reasonable reading would interpret the article as praise for what the "geniuses" are doing, and lament that if only the idiots weren't so greedy, the geniuses could reap a justified reward for their fiendish cleverness.

Those people are rationalizing away harm to others as a moral concern. No phrasing is sufficient to prevent that, and all phrasing is sufficient to enable it. They’re not depending on the phrasing for anything more than a launchboard through the mental logic that lets them say “logically” that their methods are justified.

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