Calamity

Maybe it is because I'm still not there yet, but I feel that there is a nugget of wisdom in here that I still can't wrap my head around completely.

Is this pointing to the same idea behind "the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken"? I concede I may not be as quick to learn as I was when I was in my late teens/early 20s, but I hope that I'll still be able to learn new things and able to recognize the error in my judgement well into my old age - despite having been a classically high performer in school (although grad school did pummel me down).

Agree on the first part, but the second part doesn't seem as though it would practically work. Subreddits are the closest approximation and they still fall under a monolithic umbrella (and struggle to cope). Also, in terms of balance of power, breaking up all the different communities into separate smaller units gives too much power to the government IMO. It's essentially the ideal situation for a government who would like to pressure anyu one smaller community. Much harder to shush/gag/silence/stealth takedown a Facebook or a Reddit than it is a small entity. Divide & Conquer.

Facebook is definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place here though. This is why I think Mark Zuckerberg is actually being authentic when he says that "Facebook needs more regulation". He's already seen this problem and knows that having that subjective burden offloaded onto the government is the only true solution, i.e. "just tell me what the rules are and I shall play by them". Conveniently, these additional rules would also make it much harder for a new entrant to come unseat Facebook. So more regulation from the government is, in reality, win-win for Facebook.

If you guys know where one could secure those types of put options, please fill me in. The only avenue atm for me seems to be a spread bet on margin... Which I'm not that keen on as "market irrational for longer than solvent" and so forth.

I'm not sure I follow?

If one year an apple costs 2 gold coins, but next year, that same apple costs only 1 gold coin - this would be deflation. I'm still trading gold coin(s) for an apple (fungible), it's just that the currency itself got stronger against the asset I wanted to purchase.

I think your point was made and those who are actually listening have understood it ;) I think your analogy does a good job in conveying the point that deflationary =/= valuable.

Almost ironically, having a deflationary system is something one would really like to avoid if you thought about it. It only rewards hoarding. The king, with his hoard of gold, only grow's richer by the year. As long as he is cash flow positive, the supply upon which the peasants rely on to trade shrinks and therefore the value of each grain increases.

I, for one, don't think this system is one we should be rushing to return to.

Your comment actually embodies one of the most ironic parts of this whole fiasco: Bitcoin, which is purported as the anti-fed/anti-government savior of the future world economy (maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I don't think I'm too far off the mark), is ultimately going to serve as one of the best examples of exactly "why" we have regulation and oversight in the first place.

Yeh, well, that's what gets me the most about this. I can imagine the number of people jumping in on the bandwagon with money they can't afford to lose - and the pain that will inevitably ensue.

Smart move. They rake in the profits whether you're right or wrong. I've stock in something similar (plus500), but it makes an insignificant part of my overall portfolio. If you have a minute, feel free to PM a few that have caught your attention - the ideal would of course be something with valuation unaffected by the hype itself ;)

It just non-stop amazes me. There might be some psychological defensive-bias at work here, but just in these replies to my original comment... it's predominantly pro-btc.

The thing that has surprised me the most with the current crypto-craze is the number of people that I consider generally quite rational/thoughtful who could nonetheless not resist the temptation to jump onto the bandwagon. I'm left thinking that they must know what they're doing and that they simply enjoy the thrill of a game of musical chairs.

I'm not too sure I caught what you said in that last sentence? Do you mean it is difficult to argue that authority figures act in bad faith despite there being substantial evidence for it?

hahaha, don't sweat it mate. I'm right along there with you. I was surrounded by people dropping buckets of cash for GPUs back at the dawn of deep learning and was therefore naturally tempted to buy Nvidia's stock price (30$ at the time). In the end, I shied away due to the high PE too.

I take solace in the fact that some of biggest regrets or mistakes that Warren Buffet & Charlie Munger say they have made are those that you don't see - the deals they could have done but didn't and, in retrospect, should have.

Wow, thanks for providing that link. It really amazes me to see how much we don't even realize we attribute to hindsight.

Out of curiosity, what's your total return with this approach if, at expiry, the stock price matches the strike price? In other words, how much are you making with the premiums you collect?

I guess one issue with this approach is that it somewhat assumes a period of low-inflation between now and option expiry (unless you're factoring that into the 15% expected return).

Hey, thanks for this, just did this. Will now just have to wait and see until Google suggests me a new youtube video to see if it worked.

You know the worst part? I do pay for YT Premium and yet Google still finds a way to throw ads at me on Youtube videos through videos it suggests via Google Feeds (the leftmost screen on a Pixel). I bloody pay for the service and yet I am still getting ads on any youtube video I play when clicking any youtube suggested video on that feed. How annoying do you think that is? When you give in and pay, yet you are still getting harassed.

Another reason why something like Sci-Hub is a public good despite its negative press.

Thanks for this interesting follow up post! :)

In my mind, Schrödinger's cat was an important thought experiment that pointed strongly in this direction. Whether it is just a limitation stemming from our current knowledge of physics or something else is still debatable.

yeh, exactly this.

I've been on some pretty terrible "trips" (if you can call them that) while smoking weed. I don't know if I can call them hallucinations, but I definitely felt like I couldn't tell whether something I imagined actually happened or not and was just general confused and anxious. I mean, there have been the times where I've smoked and enjoyed it, but I now always have this lingering anxiety when I do that I might fall into that type of bad trip. This is the main reason I'm very cautious about LSD - I fear what a bad acid trip could end up like.

When I try and communicate to others this idea that death is actually truly a blessing, I generally begin by asking someone whether - if they really thought about it - they would choose to be immortal if given the option.

The classic idea of "heaven", from that point of view, takes on a different spin.

Have you ever watched "Mr. Nobody" (2009)? There's something about the scene where the main protagonist dies (the senior citizen living in the future) that resonates to the "haha, oh that's what it was all about!". Long movie but I enjoyed it.

It was a little surreal to read your post. The "putting on a show to entertain myself" is essentially word for word how I would describe it.

I generally have a hard time explaining it to others without starting to feel it's a ridiculous, convoluted or even egotistical (especially the whole "we're all god in a way"). In a way, whereas I used to be terrified of death, I now accept that immortality would be the more dreadful alternative. I remember treading on these ideas before having tried any type of drug. I've only ever gotten actually high on weed since then, but those experiences were generally not all that pleasant, e.g. had me becoming anxious/paranoid or generally overly introspective. That's also the reason that I've only ever microdosed LSD before as I fear getting actually high and falling into a more extreme version of that weed-induced paranoia/anxiety.

Out of curiosity, do you still hold onto that experience of oneness or do you just leave it as a "drug-induced" hallucination?

Unlike the "pseudo-random" number generators used in software everywhere, here we have a truly "random" number generator (at least with our current understanding of physics).

Impossible to predict the next number - no matter how much information about the universe you know.

So is the ultimate goal here to have something highly annotated? I.e. instead of having programmers comment their code, you have them code their comments?

I like the principle, but what you say are the limitations so far? What can it not do?

I think there is a good chapter from "Business Adventures" where it talks about and describes some typical annual shareholder meetings - from the book, it seemed essentially to be lip service by the company. Your average shareholder doesn't have a say. It would be more precise to say "large controlling interests" and by extension "board of directors"

I think that is what the current US administration is trying to instigate at the end of the day.

Do you mean just being immersed in the language here rather than practicing/using it?

In some sense though, I imagine that when you hear something in a foreign language, you are actively making links to sounds or words that you think it may relate to (so in some sense, taking a mental note).

Growing up, I found that listening attentively in class and asking questions had me retain the most. Overly focusing on note-taking actually distracted me and those would usually be my worse day. I still took notes, however, most of the learning happened in the classroom and my notebook was the "textbook" that acted as my reference later.

I think the problem here is not that the clocks are out of sync, but rather that the actual clock frequencies are voltage-controlled.

With the firefly analogy, it's like having one firefly flashing at 1.73513x (random number) faster than it's neighbor - can't easily have them persistently synchronized.

As far as I know, Skype is E2EE..