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

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#251

Post by jbay808 » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

corpMaverick wrote: post #245

jbay808 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and when governments are worried about deflation, UBI / helicopter money, which goes to people who need it and will rapidly spend it, seems much better than lowering interest rates, which mainly inflates asset prices and benefits the top 1%. I'm not sure why it's not more commonly employed. Of course, we're in an inflation scenario right now, but part of the reason for that appears to be that central banks a…

My only worry is that a lot of that money goes to housing. Rents go up immediately and also house prices. So we need policies to increase housing supply/density in most cities to counter this effect.

I think the trick would be to increase interest rates (deflationary, mostly for assets) and implement UBI simultaneously (inflationary, mostly for consumables). The increasing cost of debt will sink asset prices, houses most of all, while the UBI cancels out the systemic deflationary forces that result from that. I think the net effect of this would drive investment into more productive and less rent-seeking areas, incentivize a lot more innovation, and also significantly reduce the wealth gap. But that's just me.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#252

Post by blululu » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

eulers_secret wrote: post #219

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The bank owns the debt on the money that was used to buy the house, which is not the same as the house by any stretch. Having the deed to a house comes with a lot of strong legal protections.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#253

Post by anonporridge » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #232

anonporridge wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit that one of the things that makes me nervous about the Roth, and not taking your tax advantage now instead of later, is that in an extreme situation, the government could renege on the promise of tax free gains and distributions. They can't renege on the tax advantage they already gave you with a traditional.

You have to think more creatively :) What about a surtax on distributions from traditional IRAs?

Good point. I don't have a cohesive rebuttal.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#254

Post by nly » Sun, Nov 21, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #246

nly wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employer run schemes are/were supported by the business. The theory went that yes, they invested the pension funds in the market, but the business itself would always be there to contribute to cover the shortfall. What fucked these schemes is falling bond yields

> the business itself would always be there to contribute to cover the shortfall This is problematic because companies aren't eternal, and stock performance is somewhat liked to economic conditions, so if stocks are struggling, the company might be struggling, making the pension obligations a double-whammy, actually putting the health of the company at risk. These days, in the US, there seem to be a lot of romantic n…

You could argue that having any kind of benecits at all tied to your employment is a bad idea... Yet Americans love to do that with healthcare

I'm not convinced having the average person manage their own retirement fund choices is any better. They lack bargaining power and they lack the savvy to make wise choices for the long term

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#255

Post by pepoluan » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

I disagree with Ford's principle of "not logging failures". The key is to log _in_detail_ ... the setup, the materials used, the failure, and most importantly, how and why it failed.

If someone else wants to try, they can see that if they try the _exact_ same way they will end up with failure. But they can -- and should be encouraged to -- try with changes to the variables.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#256

Post by ItsMonkk » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

grog454 wrote: post #215

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…

> 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 hi…

This was a fair comparison - the same exact thing was true of Hughes and Rockefeller.

But your argument is actually my argument. The past 50 years wealth inequality has grown, and we are now starting to see liquidity issues where for their particular stock. But if we let this trend continue, sometime in the next 100 years, if they intend to sell and use their wealth for some utility, it will have a either have a liquidity effect on the entire market, or/and have substantial wage inflation as a result.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#257

Post by pepoluan » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #170

dsizzle wrote: post #88

This seems to assume that experts' advice can only be valued (or not) as an appeal to authority. But that would ignore that experts can also provide _explanations_: "This won't work because this subsystem would violate the laws of physics" e.g. -- and that explanation might then spur someone to find an equivalent subsystem without that flaw, or perhaps one would find a flaw in the initial reasoning, or whatever. Simi…

> Similarly, seeing a list of past failures may inspire variations that seek to overcome the shortcoming without having to waste time first reproducing the same failure. One can try to learn _why_ it failed and use that to guide future attempts. To me, this is a big thing that survivorship bias overlooks, to the detriment of us all. Taking Edison's "1000 failures to invent a lightbulb" can often be more instructive t…

I don't mind criticism, as long as it's constructive and not for the sake of bringing down someone.

"I did not see you considering X factor, do you think its impact will be insignificant" is a helpful, constructive criticism.

"This will not work. You're stupid to pursue this, pursue something else likely to succeed" is not.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#258

Post by pepoluan » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

clairity wrote: post #164

dsizzle wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your point about psychological safety, that is actually reason to have an initial phase of idea generation occur individually before meeting in a group. Even a fully "positive-only" group likely inhibits divergent thinking to some degree. Regarding groups, research challenges your claim that avoiding criticism during brainstorming "expands the boundaries of creativity", and that criticism is only useful for "winno…

no one's arguing that we can't (or shouldn't) have any criticism during brainstorming, only that negativity (which can also be read as aggression) reduces psychological safety, which in turn reduces creativity. people do pull back (consciously and subconsciously) when the sting of (negative) criticism looms. idea-focused criticism (rather than people-focused) can hone decision-making, but we still need that psycholog…

To put it in a nutshell: Criticism should be put forth in a "let's get this to work, together. Failure should not be feared; it's another data point" mindset.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#259

Post by selfhoster11 » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

pepoluan wrote: post #257

npsimons wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly, seeing a list of past failures may inspire variations that seek to overcome the shortcoming without having to waste time first reproducing the same failure. One can try to learn _why_ it failed and use that to guide future attempts. To me, this is a big thing that survivorship bias overlooks, to the detriment of us all. Taking Edison's "1000 failures to invent a lightbulb" can often be more instructive t…

I don't mind criticism, as long as it's constructive and not for the sake of bringing down someone. "I did not see you considering X factor, do you think its impact will be insignificant" is a helpful, constructive criticism. "This will not work. You're stupid to pursue this, pursue something else likely to succeed" is not.

Berating someone for having an idea is never the point of a brainstorm anyway.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#260

Post by brabel » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #90

brabel wrote: post #25

This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed and advice that was good in their own "time" is no longer good... however, that's an obvious remark: as another commenter pointed out, people almost always tend to think "this time it will be different" and choose to ignore the experts... I would say more usef…

If half the experts say to buy stocks and the other half say to sell, who is right? Aat some point, you have to decide. I have observed this a lot with finance. Listening to the wrong experts would have meant missing out on the biggest bull market ever (2009) or selling during the lows of the 2020 covid crash.

Finance is a discipline where expertise is really, really difficult to judge. You mention two extraordinary events though. Perhaps even in finance, on normal circumstances, i.e. 99.9% of the time, you would be wise to follow the experts, but on extremely rare events like a pandemic or the recovery period following a once-in-a-decade crash, no one, not even the experts, can predict what's going to happen (let alone you or me)?!