Experts from a world that no longer exists • Hacker News Board

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#211

Post by bee_rider » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

raziel2701 wrote: post #37

nickdothutton wrote: post #23

What I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t know. I wrote a little about it here: “Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignificant…

I went through grad school and I saw how change comes about one funeral at a time. A big shot professor that has made their name with their pet theory/work will fiercely defend it against competing ideas, and people will defer to their expertise. It's not scientific, it's egotistic. They are a wall against progress that gets removed upon death. These professors can also create a dogma through their students who also…

There's always the quote attributed to Clarke,

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

It is unfortunate -- sometimes very smart people try good ideas, but the world isn't quite ready yet so they fail, move on to something different, and write off the old idea.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#212

Post by bamboozled » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #165

ItsMonkk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They simply can't do it and rather extrapolate current conditions to infinity. This is what I think more people should be paying attention to. I keep seeing the FIRE(financially independent; retire early) people talk about the returns they have gotten the past 100 years, not taking into account that the first 50 of those years saw tremendous growth, and the last of those 50 years saw tremendous stagnation and debt…

>> What happens when interest rates are unable to fall further? We are there. QE is the next thing. I think they understand now that raising interest rate quickly will kill the housing market like in 2007. So they need inflation while slowly raising rates.

Why is it that property / houses seem to end up so overvalued and then interest rates become such a crisis?

It's weird to me that as a society, it's such a priority to borrow huge amount of money to buy property we cannot afford, then end up in this situation where the worst thing ever would be to put up the interest rates and force everyone to lose their shirt.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#213

Post by grog454 » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

jprd wrote: post #196

aembleton wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market. You get a private pension.

Yep. If you pay very close attention, research, move things when necessary, etc. That's either a cool hobby or a second job. Here's the thing, most humans find it less than scintillating to devolve ALL their activities to some sort of spreadsheet or algo optimization. World of Warcraft is fun for most until the end-game where discovery and imagination is ripped away and all that is left is actuarial tables and dice r…

most humans find it less than scintillating to devolve ALL their activities to some sort of spreadsheet or algo optimization.

Happy to be the exception that proves the rule: as an undergrad my friends and I would often have to resort to a spreadsheet that allowed anonymous ranking of activities to decide what to do to maximize fun.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#214

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #208

jjoonathan wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Strategy 1 was "offer retirement plans and default on them," strategy 2 is "let them buy assets, dilute them with printed money." I also agree that when the middle class erodes to the point that asset ownership falls below 50% is when things get, uhh, interesting.

A lot of people think this - but most of Europe has been like this for a while. Why will it be so interesting when it happens in the US?

Yeah middle class homeownership is bullshit. Middle class stock ownership is less obviously good or bad, because the 0-sum nature of land is not present.

When one gets right down to it, ownership is a too strong stuff. Total Control for eternity which is then sold in finite time in practice? Woah there, why so many infinities? "Rent" has a bad rep, but the problems of rent have to do with it being backstopped by ownship --- i.e. private landlords. "Rent all the way down" is good and conceptually simpler as their are no crazy cancelling out infinitis or whatnot. It's a system of flows that more accurate tracks how the "real economy" works.

Of course, it is important there is still leverage, futures markets, etc. etc. of various sorts to push along history, but full ownership is too much a sledgehammer.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#215

Post by grog454 » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

ItsMonkk wrote: post #154

pezzana wrote: post #116

> “Don’t buy stocks when the P/E ratio is over 20” was a good lesson to learn from the 1970s when interest rates were 7%, the Fed hadn’t yet learned what it’s capable of, and most businesses were cyclical manufacturing companies vs. asset-light digital services. Is it relevant today? At a broad, philosophical level, yes. In practical terms, probably not. In the same sense, buying stocks at all seemed like nothing but…

> They simply can't do it and rather extrapolate current conditions to infinity. This is what I think more people should be paying attention to. I keep seeing the FIRE(financially independent; retire early) people talk about the returns they have gotten the past 100 years, not taking into account that the first 50 of those years saw tremendous growth, and the last of those 50 years saw tremendous stagnation and debt…

> Musk, with a wealth 100x that of Hughes at $290 billion

I've never really understood this kind of net worth valuation. Since most of that value is tied up in Telsa stock, he's only worth that as long as he keeps doing what he's doing. In a way he's a slave to his net worth (not that I would mind being in his financial position).

If, tomorrow, Elon throws his hands up and decides he's had enough and wants to exit his position, there would be significant downward pressure on TSLA price not just from his huge sell orders but from the panic of investors wondering why Elon is quitting. (Ex: TSLA was down 15.4% the week of his recent sale of $6.9B which was somewhere around 3% of his holdings). I'm also not sure how cap gains taxes are being factored in to, well, anyone's net worth calculation.

A more meaningful measure of net worth is probably assets excluding stock in one's day job (or include the stock at a massive penalty depending on the dependency of the company on said person). Which would still probably be billions for Elon.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#216

Post by dwiel » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #35

dwiel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow ZeroHedge, but this statistic isn't very helpful without knowing the number of false positives or incorrect timing.

At the risk of explaining the joke... "predicted 83 of the last 7 downturns" implies a false positive rate of at least 76 incorrect predictions for 7 correct ones. Of course, if they made 83 downturn predictions but didn't correctly predict the 7 that actually occurred, thee false positive rate could also be worse than that.

Haha, I read that too fast thanks

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#217

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

redisman wrote: post #157

nly wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is we're all now dependent on stock market performance to make retirement feasible. Employer guaranteed defined-benefit pension schemes are dead. My uncles pension scheme was structured to pay out 1.5% of his final salary, inflation adjusted for the rest of his life, for each year he'd worked. He worked at one company his whole career, from age 18 to age 55, when he retired. Factoring in his mortgage, whi…

I don’t know how a pensions would work in tech. 95% of the companies won’t exist by the end of your career so who pays for the pensions?

The state. Is our physical economy not capable of taking care of old people?

The monetary economy and real economy are less delinked than the populists think, but sometimes....c'mon people. If we can't pay for our old people what does that mean? Saving the money for later is an abstraction, we are not literally stockpiling canned food and adult diapers.

Ultimately if there is is a problem taking care of retirees, it is because we continue to let this ridiculous healthcare system exist. And honestly, I am not sure that is actually a limiting factor, or just a stupidity.

Frankly, as a huge net importer there are very few clear material limits --- port of LA problems have more to do with rate of change or imports than absolute amount. China, Germany, S. Korea, etc. could just stop exporting to us and all hell would break loose here, but it would be pretty weird there too.

Back to retirees. Let's not beancount our way to poverty. To paraphrase Keynes, if we can do it, we can afford it. On the flip side, if don't do it, then we will loose what capacity we had in that area.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#218

Post by ivalm » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

bsedlm wrote: post #110

chaxor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make any sense. Aging is certainly a problem that needs to be solved, but the idea that you expressed here seems to be that younger people are better at their jobs - which is very wrong. This line of thinking is akin to "If less of the postmen had diabetes, I would get more of my mail faster!" Don't fall for these ageist logical inconsistencies

> Aging is certainly a problem that needs to be solved by that logic, childhood is also a problem that needs to be solved. I have to get metaphysical to argue against the mindset, but IMO the origin of seeing aging as a problem stems from seeing death as the opposite of life.

But also children don’t have position of great power while cognitive decline with age is real and affects nearly everyone.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#219

Post by eulers_secret » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #208

jjoonathan wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Strategy 1 was "offer retirement plans and default on them," strategy 2 is "let them buy assets, dilute them with printed money." I also agree that when the middle class erodes to the point that asset ownership falls below 50% is when things get, uhh, interesting.

A lot of people think this - but most of Europe has been like this for a while. Why will it be so interesting when it happens in the US?

It's already that way in the US, the percentage of paid off home owners is ~29%.

I don't know why some people consider themselves "owners" of assets the bank actually owns, but it's normal in the USA.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#220

Post by varelse » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #203

varelse wrote: post #84

When someone today complains that solar power is still too expensive, or that cell phones and flat screen TVs in the hands of poor people proves they aren't really poor, they immediately flip my Bozo bit. To be fair people who hate nuclear power have always flipped my Bozo bit although they might have done the job delaying its adoption long enough for solar power to become cheaper by now.

> or that cell phones and flat screen TVs in the hands of poor people proves they aren't really poor I have been to a social services building, many times, that also has a homeless shelter. I often see shelter residents hanging outside. They almost all have cellphones. They are probably bottom-tier Android devices (all the phones I saw looked like smartphones). Instead of making me think that “the homeless are coddle…

Derrick Soo, the homeless candidate for mayor of Oakland, has solar panels on his tent to charge his devices. And good on him!