Honestly this XKCD arguing that psychic phenomena don't exist because they're not exploited for profit is a comforting difficult to refute argument for me: https://xkcd.com/808/
In this universe, we do the same with numbers generated by ASICS or GPU: it mostly gives the power of money.
Also, if every profitable phenomenon in the world is already developed, then no business should ever invest in fundamental research - i.e., the pharmaceutical companies are wasting their research dollars.
Why is it comforting to you to believe psychic powers don't exist?
Just because something isn't particularly useful doesn't mean it cannot exist.
A little over 53% of days are up (green) days and yet you can’t use that 3x edge over a 51% predictor to make all the money.
> A little over 53% of days are up (green) days and yet you can’t use that 3x edge over a 51% predictor to make all the money.
You can make money, just not ALL the money. And that's because other people know that too.
Assuming these information sources are independent - even if the trends predicted the market in 99% and your prediction was only 51% - you can still combine them to get a better estimate than the generally known one.
IIRC, doing better than chance by 2^-32 is enough for the randomization system to be thrown out, and marching the output 51% is way better than that.
But yes, I’d agree with a steelmanned version of your point with a much smaller improvement over chance. But then, you would have to do a realllllly long test and it wouldn’t actually look that impressive.
So red queen effect [1]. Maybe telepathy evolves in tandem with resistance to telepathy.
So until the 1880s, there was no commercial exploitation of these compounds, yet they nevertheless existed either in actuality or potential. Once there was an understanding of the principles and the development of some related chemical and biochemical processing, this exploded and had a dramatic impact on human life.
If someone postulated in, say, 1785, the idea that perhaps there were specific compounds that could be used to cure infection, and these could be produced en masse, would it not be analogous to respond that since nobody is commercially exploiting (at the time), they clearly do not exist?
None of the ideas included in the xkcd comic are particularly new or obscure. Despite being pigeonholed as a certain kind of bullshit, they are still ideas that a lot of people have heard about and been hearing about for a very long time—more than enough time for someone to get around to commercially exploiting if that were in fact practical. Ghostbusters came out 37 years ago, and the stuff it made fun of was familiar enough to its audience.
However, in 1785 the principles of chemical engineering were largely unknown, precluding the development of a modern-style pharmaceutical industry. It did not, however, prevent widespread use of antibiotic treatments that we now understand the mechanism for and can refine or synthesize into more effective forms.
(2) It is intriguing to consider commercial music as an industrial utilization of lyric poetry, but the point is that the individual activity of lyric poetry is not amenable to industrialization IN ITSELF, but it still exists. But perhaps this example doesn't work -- the really important argument is above, namely, that the cultivation of these practices -- astrology, dousing, etc, is individuated, and oriented around virtues directly opposed to their mass utilization.
(3) As other commentators have noticed, we also don't know that these sciences aren't used on a mass technological/industrial fashion --- it seems likely, for instance, that there are corporate entities that use i ching divination, and likely, too, that there are financial firms that utilize astrological methods -- but wouldn't reveal this because of the likely opprobrium from a still dominant (if clearly declining) orthodox materialism...
But you could do that, or just make enough money gambling in poker rooms and racetracks.
Hell, if you could see a few days into the future, it might be smartest to just break that out when the lottery gets big enough one time.
It is known that many people who consider that they might have psychic powers are on the highly sensitive side.
Knowing people who are highly sensitive, I can easily imagine that the enormous stress, pressure and greed in a hedge fund environment would make hedge funds a horrible work environment for such people.
Maybe Simons is psychic and all the quant stuff is just a coverup.
Note, “just hold index funds” as a strategy should be dominated by “borrow a lot of money and put it in index funds” by the same arguments. Don’t see robos offering that though.
What about his track record cannot be adequately explained by mundane insider trading?
Edit: Puzzled by the downvotes. I think it's entirely fair to ask whether Cohen is enough of an outlier that it requires a psychic explanation, even after accounting for the degree of success that can be reasonably attributed to luck and non-psychic skill (effects which other hedge fund managers are also subject to) plus the insider trading he's been involved in (which other hedge fund managers are not necessarily subject to).
In a world with a finite number of hedge fund managers, there is always going to be somebody who is the most successful out of the bunch, and that somebody is almost certainly going to appear to be an outlier even without a supernatural influence on their success. So before attributing anything to psychic powers, we first have to establish whether he's too successful to be accounted for by the non-psychic explanations. I genuinely don't know enough about Steve Cohen's track record to know whether he's that much of an outlier, and I'd appreciate some real information about the degree of his success rather than just downvoting.
You can't prove they aren't using paranormal powers.
Ergo the case isn't closed yet.
But that's still a LOT less profit exploitation than e.g. GPS which is ubiquitous. Curses haven't replaced drones in the military. Crystals aren't in billions of electronic devices wait
A flipside example: Financial world could instead be used by individuals on casinos, betting, stock markets, etc. and they'd have incentive to keep it secret so they keep winning.
The more enormous the secret and the larger the group of people who supposedly are in on it, the more the probability of the secret not being a secret very long approaches one.
I find it very unlikely that a shortcut to making a lot of money would be secret for very long.
multiple and costly military invasions were to offer democracy as goodwill and for world safety.
a certain vaccine I can't dare to name is a vaccine as it does provide immunity.
the institutions of most democracies surely can't be so corrupted.
worldwide cocoa isn't mostly harvested by enslaved workers.
HIV is so far more prevalent in Africa because they can't afford treatment and understand prevention measures there.
JFK.
I could go on and on but not sure how many examples you would need to accept that the chances for enormous secrets known by even a significantly large group to not take a freaking long time before blowing up is rather close to zero. thus reconsidering your opinion on the existence of conspiracies.
and, about shortcuts to making a lot of money being kept rather well secrets: dark budgets, secret and hidden inflation, supply fudging
But I am not sure if we both mean the same things when we use the word "conspiracy". It's not a secret, for example. that cocolate has a slave labor problem. Planned obsolescence is not a secret (but it's more complex than just someone trying to screw you over). I don't think I understand the conspiracy aspect of the rest of your examples, save for the obvious JFK conspiracy theories.
> about shortcuts to making a lot of money being kept rather well secrets: dark budgets, secret and hidden inflation, supply fudging
I would put to you: If the chances of this blowing up is rather close to zero, how do you know about it ?
what is more straight to see is that you've just made a false attribution by distorting what I wrote about close to zero chances of a blow up. I don't question your intention and honesty, but read my comment more carefully, or quote verbatim without distortion, and resist the use of fallacies in general if you would like to engage in honest and fair argumentative discution.
planned obsolescence was a well kept from public industrial scheme, decided by a small group, screwing billions of consumers. it isn't a secret anymore, it blew up, it took several decades to blow up, kept being refuted by some who haven't caught up with the evidences.
and if you accept the JFK case then I suppose you are admitting to beleive in some conspiracies, while at the same time refuting the concept while it's enduring its long process of battle against deniers, during the inevitable period of evidences remaining arguably to few or too weak, simplifications of reality. consider at least accepting there is some contradiction this logic.
edit: had pressed send before finishing the comment.
It seems to help people relax going into surgery and improves outcomes.
Thus strengthening your argument that if it works, capitalism will exploit it.