Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

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This is a popular idea, but it's not just wrong, it's both systematically and personally dangerous. I am entitled to come to conclusions based on the partial information I have. If someone doesn't like those conclusions, it's on them to increase my access to information.

The alternative means that anyone and everyone can hide anything they like behind partial information, then declare any suspicions baseless and groundless based on their own hiding of information.

I speak only to this. Whether the linked article did a good job of their analysis I don't know. I'm just saying, the idea that people are not entitled to come to conclusions based on partial information is not valid. The conclusions come to should be hedged and made with the understanding that information is partial, but there is no obligation to not come to them. Otherwise you're obligating yourself to walk naked into almost any old scam you can imagine. This idea doesn't scale out into the real world where people happily abuse this.

> I'm just saying, the idea that people are not entitled to come to conclusions based on partial information is not valid.

It’s possible to get scammed by a person that’s telling you that something is a scam. That’s an affinity scam.

I’m not trying to tell you what to think. I’m saying that there are material flaws in the analysis.

Don't worry, your critique is fair and square, what you have to understand is that you probably piss a fair amount of people here already by virtue of your username alone! Cue takes on how "affinity scam" somehow doesn't apply & even more contrarian moaning re: crypto bad.

Is "crypto bad" even contrarian? It strikes me as the precise opposite: conformity to the "traditional finance good" status quo.

From the point of reference set to HN? I think so, yes, why not?

What we are entitled to do, what is polite to do and what we can do for clickthroughs are three different things. Coming to conclusions on partial information may as well be jumping to them in many circumstances. The ideal approach would be to add a disclaimer of where the fact to supposition transitions, and if the conclusion is sensible at least source similar cases.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck. Or a duck robot, or my kid running around with my phone again imitating a duck while watching duck YouTube videos.

Whatever the conclusion, state facts but don’t state conclusions as facts.

Except in the real world if people are actually putting their money down based on what those conclusions might be, you have to jump to something.

And the right thing to do is to jump to the most likely one based on the information available to you (adjusted for the consequences if you're wrong).

In this case, the most likely conclusion appears to be based on the info presented that it may be insolvent, and further, acting as if it is insolvent means you lose on limited upside if you're wrong, but avoid significant downside if you're right.

If Alameda is not a fan of this conclusion and if it's gaining traction in the community they can refute whatever might be wrong in the analysis and if nothing is wrong, provide the additional missing information that will correct the conclusion.

This is what CEOs and CFOs for public companies do everyday. Present their company's thesis to the public and refute analysts' theses where they think they're either wrong and/or don't have sufficient information. Why do you think they take so much time out of their schedules to do interviews on Bloomberg, CNBC, etc.

Alameda doesn't need to go down that route, but that doesn't mean independent analysis with conclusions based on incomplete information is a faulty process.

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