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Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#131

Post by ffggffggj »

jrm4 wrote: post #100
B8MGHCBekDuRi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine if some newspaper interviewed a recent lottery winner [...] But to the ignorant, it all sounds very impressive the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect described by Crichton comes to mind here. It is quite potent when media talk about crypto and usually involves evident logical fallacies that are not dissimilar to Orwellian double-speak. Like the idea that cash is freedom so crypto supporters also support no ca…

Really hard to underestimate how bad and old the doublespeak is. You ever thought about how a credit card is a debt card? Whereas, it's the debit card that actually spends your credits?

Credit cards create credits (a liability). Debit cards create debits (a nearly immediate transfer from your account). Seems accurate enough to me although I can see how debt and debit could be confused.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#132

Post by ricardobayes »

bulbosaur123 wrote: post #28

The poorer you are, the more you are interested in appearing rich. Higher EV in that play allowing increased chances to mingle with rich class. The richer you are, the more you are interested in appearing humble. Higher EV in signalling "money speaks, wealth whispers" message and appearing "down-to-earth" to win people over. Very often it pays to do the opposite of what is expected from you.

"Dress for the job you want, not the one you have"

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#133

Post by trasz2 »

cracrecry wrote: post #120
steveBK123 wrote: post #47

"An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car." This tidbit reminds me of a similar anecdote (that my experience aligns with) re: the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW i…

>the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW is frowned upon. There was a time, not that long time ago in which good clocks were expensive and expending 2ks on a good clock was similar to expending 2k on a laptop today, a functional, reasonable decision. My uncle earned a much more expensive Rolex than 2k in a Golf tournament and wearing it nobody believed it was genuine, even a watchmaker c…

Technically a Rolex, however expensive, will always be much worse as a watch than a 20$ Casio. But recently there's another aspect to this: there are now watches that are technically (mechanically) identical to rolexes. Same design, same mechanics, virtually impossible to tell the difference when you tear it apart. Rolex has always been more about marketing (artificial scarcity, waiting list etc) than mechanics, but now it's pretty much exclusively about marketing, since you can get the same engineering orders of magnitude cheaper. It's like DeBeers' diamonds.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#134

Post by steveBK123 »

closeparen wrote: post #119
steveBK123 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I think my point is that they simply signal differently by for example regaling you about how they spent $5000 on custom designed esoteric tiles from a local artisan for their shower. Personally I don't think things that are 90% purchase/consumption (housing/renovations/appliances) are hobbies in the same way as photography/kitesurfing/gardening/cycling which may be expensive but have some sort of skill/learning/…

Renovation isn’t the hobby here, they’re not doing it themselves. But a passion for cooking justifies the high end kitchen. An interest in architecture and design justifies bringing good examples of it home.

Sure, if you have the money and interest, spend it.

But people often conflate "investment" & consumption when its anything related to home renovation. I'd still argue these types of "hobbies" are 90% consumption, and for most of the people I know.. usually financed with loans.

No one I know with a $100k kitchen cooks any better than my poor immigrant grandmother did.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#135

Post by nibbleshifter »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #65
nibbleshifter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even though you can't buy crypto with cash and crypto cannot be converted directly to cash I have bought and sold crypto primarily using cash for the last ten years, what are you talking about. Yes, many people use an exchange. Many do not.

Physical cash? How?

You arrange to meet someone online, meet up, exchange cash for btc/whatever, done.

Never had a bad experience with it. You just sit in a coffee shop with the person for the few minutes it takes for a transaction confirmation.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#136

Post by nibbleshifter »

none_to_remain wrote: post #82
NikolaNovak wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical cash? How?

One simple option: Hand someone some cash, they send you some BTC

Precisely this. There's nothing complex about it either. You get a bunch of cash, they get btc, or vice versa.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#137

Post by tetris11 »

cracrecry wrote: post #120
steveBK123 wrote: post #47

"An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car." This tidbit reminds me of a similar anecdote (that my experience aligns with) re: the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW i…

>the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW is frowned upon. There was a time, not that long time ago in which good clocks were expensive and expending 2ks on a good clock was similar to expending 2k on a laptop today, a functional, reasonable decision. My uncle earned a much more expensive Rolex than 2k in a Golf tournament and wearing it nobody believed it was genuine, even a watchmaker c…

Is it envy, or disgust? If someone tells me they live in a castle, my initial instinct isn't "wow I wish in a castle too", but "wow what a wasteful needless thing to brag about".

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#138

Post by School-Cotton »

sys_64738 wrote: post #45
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #13

One of the best examples of counter-signaling was Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala. She wore a black dress that covered her from head to toe, including her face. It was kind of a statement that “even my silhouette is famous”.

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Kardashian Even after reading that I don't actually know what this woman is well-known for.

Her father was a very prominent lawyer (including for OJ Simpson) so she had entry into “socialite” circles through him. Her fame increased when a sex tape involving her and a singer was published, and since then she has been a TV personality.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#139

Post by fnbr »

trasz2 wrote: post #133
cracrecry wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW is frowned upon. There was a time, not that long time ago in which good clocks were expensive and expending 2ks on a good clock was similar to expending 2k on a laptop today, a functional, reasonable decision. My uncle earned a much more expensive Rolex than 2k in a Golf tournament and wearing it nobody believed it was genuine, even a watchmaker c…

Technically a Rolex, however expensive, will always be much worse as a watch than a 20$ Casio. But recently there's another aspect to this: there are now watches that are technically (mechanically) identical to rolexes. Same design, same mechanics, virtually impossible to tell the difference when you tear it apart. Rolex has always been more about marketing (artificial scarcity, waiting list etc) than mechanics, but…

What’s an example of a watch that’s mechanically identical to a Rolex?

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#140

Post by steveBK123 »

etherael wrote: post #126
steveBK123 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in any cohort of investors, by nature some random sample or going to outperform in any given year. In fact, statistically the concept of "hot hands" will rear its head because.. some subset of the outperformers will actually outperform over multiple years. It may be skill, it may be luck, or it may be both. But consider that this outperformance & hot-hand phenomenon can be replicated even in purely random games…

I get what you mean and I agree to an extent, but to give an absurd example, if you knew of a company that had a patent on cold fusion, and you had watched it actually work yourself and deployed it at scale in a project successfully, investing in such a venture and having an outsized return would have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with probability.

For sure! The point is that simply replication the behavior of winners is not any guarantee of winning.

Replicating SOME of the behaviors of SOME winners, upon careful study of what in their process actually allows them to differentiate themselves from others is the key, and is usually a process that requires a lot more work.

The work here was that they had some sort of investment process that required time & effort evaluating projects & their prospects over long time horizons. These sorts of processes require entire investment teams and are not the sort of thing that make it into their Fortune magazine blurb or pithy twitter posts.

The process cannot be summarized in a paragraph blurb, and even if you were to read a 300 page book you may not have the man-hours, technical skills or knowledge to replicate it.

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