Soros: General Theory of Reflexivity (2009)

Unfortunately it seems the lectures have been taken down.

a lot of depth; very insightful stuff.

thanks for the link.

5: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2ee0b622-bfeb-11de-aed2-00144feab4...

You're asking for actionable specifics from an abstract discussion of philosophy. To take it back into our domain, it's a bit like reading an article on design patterns and saying, "Yes but can I have teh codez?"

(Or, to be flippant, the advice might be 'persuade George Soros to take you as a client.)

Well I suppose it could be seen as a defense of behavioral or technical investing, over strictly fundamentals-based investing. It's basically reinforcing the fact that while we take actions in the market based off of our understanding of what reality is, our actions in turn also affect the reality.

I don't mean behavioral instead of fundamentals. I mean integrating behavioral into fundamentals, because his overall point is that both "understanding reality" and "manipulating reality" are valid factors. You get into trouble if you focus on one at the expense of the other.

Overall I'm finding the article sequence a little disappointing. Transcript #3 is interesting in comparing enlightenment to post-modernism. But it all feels like it's a run-up to something actually insightful about what we should actually do, when it actually never quite gets there, aside from recommendations that politicians should be thinking in terms of the public good rather than in terms of the market. It's like, yeah, we already understand that.

From a geek perspective it's somewhat related to subjects like complexity theory I guess. I don't know much about it, but one thing that depresses me is that even though it's possible for very simple inputs to yield highly complex (or random) outputs, it's impossible to take one of those complex outputs and reverse-engineer the simple inputs that created it. That makes me grumpy. I like those movies where some super-villain (or hero) introduces a silver bullet solution that spreads out and affects all sorts of things in exactly the way they intend. Just a fantasy, though.

"I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity."

Or: People don't know sh*t, but they can still buy/sell stocks, which then affects the price.

None: it isn't an investment advice article.

No actionable investment advice but a fair bit of policy prescriptions in Lecture 2 that are IMO worth a read.

Can you elaborate?

Under the principle of fallibility, OP is posting this because some of us might not have read it already. I had not.

Proper capitalism doesn't involve violence-- all market actors are participating out of free will. The government should be a referee to keep the playing field level, but usually the government is busy transferring resources from the general public to insider friends and groups.