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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

~ I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Large groups of people are so embarrassingly bad at predicting the future that I'm always impressed when they get it right; but trying to do so often has a lot of positive side effects. Being ready to secede is a stupid one, but as a metaphor for "something goes wrong and we can't rely on people 1,000km away to provide for us" it would lead to some excellent planning.

Modern society is extremely efficient, extremely cheap and profoundly untested. We've had commercial electricity for 15 decades, the internet for 3 decades and quality GPS for 2. These are not long times on the scale that a country's logistics channels operate at; because things so central to how we work need to be ready for 1 in 100 and 1 in 200 year style events. Excessive caution may not actually be excessive.

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> Large groups of people are so embarrassingly bad at predicting the future.

They are pretty good at creating the future, though. As in - separating the power grid is a step towards separating other things and finally "separating the country". Classic Soros' reflexivity.

Isn’t the future inevitably created

It is, of course. But I'm talking about this, specifically:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

Which can be summed up as "if you think this hard enough it may just come true".

Soros developed this idea after studying under Popper and put it to test in his ridiculously successful hedge fund manager career.

Not sure I understand where reflexivity applies here. It’s a pretty straightforward concept mostly concerned with feedback loop driven price behavior (bubbles).

For example:

Separate the power system -> people's perception about Texas independence increases -> time passes -> let's separate something new, after all we're Texas, we get special treatment. Perception intertwined with action, so that you can't tell what comes first.

Reflexivity is by no means restricted to securities markets. It's an incredibly broadly applicable concept.

Also, in securities markets it's not just that price goes up so more people buy because the price has gone up, so price goes up even more. It's far far worse than that. It's that (for example) stock prices go up, therefore consumer/executive/banks confidence increases, therefore more credit and more spending in the economy, therefore higher corporate profits, therefore higher stock prices. The point is that it affects reality beyond just the securities markets, it affects the "fundamentals" too. I.e. you can't even trust something like a P/E ratio.

Regarding valuations, I hate using price ratios. But, being able to determine the "true" price of something is almost practically useless unless there are other people that at some point in time will agree with you. Otherwise the faux-price is what you will buy and sell at.

Regarding applying reflexivity to Texans, you'd be better off to recognize the long-standing, consistent cultural values of individualism and independence.

> long-standing, consistent cultural values of individualism and independence

Cultural values are a product of reflexivity. The very fact that they differ between places even in the absence of any difference in genetic material of individuals is very good evidence. After all it's clear there's no "Texan Gene".

And I'm not saying it's bad! It just is a part of reality.

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