vervez

Since it seems unlikely that governments will ban the use of data by companies for certain purposes like this or pay citizens a universal income for simply providing data to companies online, at least in the near-term, this seem like a ripe opportunity for more "counter-AI" and/or privacy apps.

I love using Ghostery to provide privacy. Why aren't there more consumer-facing apps that provide privacy or indicate when and how consumers may be manipulated by algorithms? Say you paid (nothing's free) an app to monitor your internet activity, allowing it to track and indicate how your personal habits may be exposing you to bias/bad decisions? I think this could help provide the average consumer with a sanity check. Knowing that you're being manipulated and someone is making a profit at your expense probably is one of the biggest motivators to alter human behavior, at least in Western society.

But hey, I still refuse to get Amazon Prime, so what do I know about the average consumer behavior.

This is a little bit of a tangent but I was just listening to a program on NPR about baboons and their relationships. Specifically, the toxic effect of being the alpha-male. While I couldn't catch the whole program, I did hear they mentioned that while baboons have tumultuous lives surviving, mating, and dealing with alpha males, they do have a small opportunity for friendship with one another. One of the surprising findings from a study on baboons was that the baboons who were friendlier/not alpha-males tended to have more offspring than the alphas. A case of nice guys winning and friendship being more meaningful than dominance.

Here, I'd gander that it's less about game theory and more about evolution of a cohesive unit. And that's my baboon tangent.

I've taken 3/5 of his Deep Learning MOOC and thought the calculus, at least its implementation, was very well explained. Were you dissatisfied with the lack of depth or lack of explanation? Just curious.

Well, I don't think everything will be useless. Think it was John Maynard Keynes who said "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." While that quote concerned shorting a bubble, I'd say the principle holds for determining when a bull market will turn, as well.

While I'm 'beating' the S&P by 10% over my puny 3.2 year life, I gained more value from feeling the urge to trade during downturns, but resisting, seeing bad investments fade away (thanks, SolarCity), and effects of global events, such as Brexit and Trump USA. I would recommend trying stocks to people who can afford to do so as a way to really learn what books mean when they say there is an irrational 'fight or flight' instinct that individual investors have, not to mention the herd mentality of institutional investors.

Hope that clarifies things.

Ha, yea, didn't even know they had a subreddit. I wouldn't go there for financial advice.

College kid who started trading in RH a while ago here. After reading some basic investment books from authors like Peter Lynch, Taleb, and What Jim Paul, decided to get some experience in the markets. Invested a little saved and since then made a decent return, better than if that money was in a bank. So far, I'm doing better than the large-company mutual funds after 3 years, but as I've been reading, that's probably good luck.

It's been an interesting experiment that gave me incentives to learn more about financial markets, which I otherwise would not have touched. However, I started by reading and knowing a little bit, so I won't touch crypto trading until I know more.