Monetizing Stupid | Hacker News Reader

Monetizing Stupid

contemporaryidiot.com

English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton produced many works that would now be classified as occult studies. These works explored chronology, alchemy, and Biblical interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse). Newton's scientific work may have been of lesser personal importance to him, as he placed emphasis on rediscovering the occult wisdom of the ancients. In this sense, some historians, including economist John Maynard Keynes, believe that any reference to a "Newtonian Worldview" as being purely mechanical in nature is somewhat inaccurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...

Isaac Newton was, perhaps, one of the most brilliant human beings that ever lived. But even brilliant people get stupid sometimes. Spending the later half of his life on alchemy was an unfortunate waste of human capital.

The topic is interesting but this smarmy "I'm so smart" style drives me up a wall. You consider yourself superior to people who believe in astrology, we get it. Focus on the point

I mean, astrology is widely known to be nonsense.

True, but you'll be surprised at how many people want astrology and stuff like crystals and scented stones and magical beans across the United States. It's huge and truly a contest between literacy and the belief system.

"consider yourself superior to people who believe in astrology"

I mean...at some point a spade HAS to be a spade for this type of thing

100 on the tone. I can't stand it either.

Focusing on the point: let's all agree astrology is dumb and immature, sure. However, if your goal is to actually understand what moves a market (and presumably make money), I think it rather inexperienced and ruinous to ignore the effects of millions of people, who may be open to being influenced by astrological events, participating in the market.

My first thought before reading the article was "speculative cryptocurrencies." She takes it a step further by using astrology to predict crypto markets. Amazing.

I will note that if you tell people "The market of a thing essentially entirely controlled by human behavior will do X in response to highly predictable events, like new moons" is potentially self fulfilling prophecy. If large numbers of people believe that and act in response to that prediction, it can cause dips (or whatever).

For that and other reasons, this really isn't HN worthy.

Oh you think astrology is an ignorant way to predict stock movement? Let me tell you about the field of Technical Analysis... it starts with Japanese candlesticks...

“A fool and his money are soon parted” is well-known.

“A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place.” —Stanley Weiser

She charges in dollars, so she knows what's up.

"Monetizing stupid"

that is literally Facebook and Google's business model too.

"are these ads part of the search results? Only way to findout is to click!"

"are these ads part of my Facebook/Instagram profile or posted by my friends? Better click to find out!"

What a mean and immature article. The "influencer" is stupid (and a psychopath apparently), everyone is stupid, well everyone except the author of the text.

It does read like someone very young wrote it, I guess the author is young enough to know everything.

Totally agree. I came off the reading wondering how young the author is. The essay is quite immature.

The author is telling you how to make money. There is nothing immature about making money.

There is an interesting tangential public policy issue about how to limit societal damage from people taking advantage of others, but that is not the point of the article.

We're talking about the tone. The author's point is not entirely whacko: "hey plz stop using astrology to make investment decisions, it's stupid". But the tone of "hey look at how stupid Maren and all her 1MM followers are how does this even happen I thought the humans were more sophisticated than this, wow such crypto much stupid" is really kind of unpleasant.

But to your first point: how do you make money on crypto markets? I must have missed this nugget of wisdom in the author's rant.

Do we really have to be respectful of deliberate nonsense? It seems that only serves to validate that nonsense as worthy of serious debate... which it isn’t. This time policing serves only to help spread the ridiculous conspiracy theories, anti-science, and anti-reason.

Taking the high road has repeatedly failed in public discourse.

> ridiculous conspiracy theories, anti-science, and anti-reason

I am more humble than that.

It's not so much that I respect it out of awe or because I think it needs to be validated or is correct. It's that I disagree with such a hyper-rational conviction that there's no possible correlation between astrological events and human behavior (a market is entirely human behavior). Such conviction can be.. dangerous.

I do not believe a market is rational or scientific (they are certainly "efficient" though). I actually find those with a desire to approach such a human phenomenon scientifically to also fall in the anti-science anti-reason bucket, because they do not understand the limits of the scientific method or western rationalism.

When presented with a black-box market:

The scientific method can help you discover a model that answers the question, "how does the market work?".

Science cannot answer the question, "why does the market move?".

> But to your first point: how do you make money on crypto markets?

The author states this quite clearly. The way to make consistent legal returns off crypto is by selling snake oil to crypto speculators. "She’s leveraged her massive following into several lucrative revenue streams."

from the About page

college-educated-thirtysomething

well, young is relative :)

I have observed that mainstream pundits such as on TV and in print give worse advice compared to advice on Reddit, blogs,and other non-mainstream sources. James Cramer, whose only usefulness is he draws huge ratings, has been costing his viewers millions over the past 15 years with terrible stock picks. Wall Street Bets got in early on Gsmestop, Palintir, Tsla, Amc, AMD and others, while the likes of Peter Schiff have been saying to buy gold forever which has lagged stocks.

I find the author slightly annoying insofar as they think you can study markets scientifically and thus applying astrology to market behavior is idiotic. For all we know Elon times his tweets to key horoscope events and the market actually does invert every time mercury is in retrograde (which the data/history seem to support). If we were talking about trying build a bridge or something I’d be a lot more receptive to the idea that anything other than a rational approach is “stupid”.

The author's point seems to be that applying astrology to any decisions (not markets in particular) is stupid, speculating on crypto is stupid, and combining the two will give you an audience of especially stupid people who are willing to part with their money.

Markets are human things. If a non-zero subset of humans turn to astrology (as Maren's 1MM+ followers might suggest), even if only partially, when making any decision, wouldn't it be reasonable and quite rational to think that the market might actually move in relation to astrology events if enough of these "stupid" people are participating? Wouldn't that be the "smart" conclusion?

> For all we know Elon times his tweets to key horoscope events

That does not make it any less or more wrong. If someone takes actions to make the stock market fit horoscopes that does not make the horoscopes better or worse at predicting those actions.

Actual serious students of astrology: "The stars incline; they do not compel"

The rest of the world: "If you believe in astrology, you think you can know the future."

Whether they incline or compel, it would produce some measurable effect. It's easier to detect that effect if they compel, but even with an inclination, it's possible to demonstrate it statistically.

Analogy: a weighted die doesn't always turn up 6. The weight inclines, but does not compel. Still, if you roll it a lot and take the average, you can tell that something is wrong if the average is something other than 3.5.

As far as I have heard, studies have repeatedly demonstrated that the stars neither incline nor compel.

I would be interested in seeing a list of studies you have read on the topic.

Please and thank you.

There is a Wikipedia page on the subject. It's heavily footnoted with links to the studies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science

Thank you.

I would note that here we are talking about markets, not the types of things the linked article references as having been studied statistically. I don’t think anybody disagrees that there is absolutely zero scientific basis to astrology and its relevance in the physical world whatsoever. But that’s not the question. The question is whether an occult belief system can cause measurable effects in markets, which are not related in any way to the real world and purely derived from human sentiment.

What does predict those actions, then? Do you believe the sun will rise tomorrow?

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