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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

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Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#21

Post by IAmGraydon »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #5
rawgabbit wrote: post #2

Supposedly investors are leveraging/borrowing money to buy into AI stocks right now...

Oh, yeah, that's cooking lol: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGZ1FL663067003Q Speaking of which, I noticed that the big market reversal during the beginning of the Iran war happened right around when ESLR requirements were due to relax. Is this a transmission mechanism for that? Did some of the big brokerages run a big promotion (0% APR on margin debt!) or something?

That chart (and many from FRED) is unfortunately not useful without viewing it on a logarithmic scale. Things can look quite parabolic in a linear space, but exponential growth is quite normal in many financial contexts.

Click "edit graph" and change units to "natural log". Now look again. You'll see that the growth in margin loans is absolutely normal, and actually has only recently recovered from the dip caused by the 2008 financial crisis.

Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#22

Post by _jayhack_ »

steezeburger wrote: post #12
rauljara wrote: post #7

My intro to psychology classes was one of the most valuable classes I ever took, just with the way it systematically shattered my own notion of how much I could trust my own notions of perception and thought to be a rational and accurate reflection of reality. I definitely had a notion of how irrational “people” could be before that, but of course I somehow thought I was above all that.

This is why my favorite book is Thinking, Fast & Slow. It blew my mind and totally made me think about almost everything differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

The content on "priming" (significant pillar of the book) has collapsed as part of the reproducibility crisis in psychology. More here: https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...

Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#23

Post by jgilias »

wduquette wrote: post #8

Excellent book. The high point for me was the enterprising fellow who set up a stall in London during the South Sea Bubble (the original bubble!), allowing people to invest in "An undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." People lined up for a couple of days to give the fellow their money...after which the fellow disappeared, never to be seen again. No lies detected!

Wasn’t tbe Tulip Bubble the original bubble?

Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#24

Post by eykanal »

If you're interested in this type of stuff I strongly recommend "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. He describes the social psychology of mass movements, looking largely at religion and nationalism. He wrote it in 1951, but feels nearly perfectly applicable to today's global nationalistic trends. It's an incredibly compelling read.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#25

Post by paytonjjones »

rauljara wrote: post #7

My intro to psychology classes was one of the most valuable classes I ever took, just with the way it systematically shattered my own notion of how much I could trust my own notions of perception and thought to be a rational and accurate reflection of reality. I definitely had a notion of how irrational “people” could be before that, but of course I somehow thought I was above all that.

This is a common takeaway from Intro to Psychology but unfortunately it's just...not very true to life (or to psychological science).

It's a fault of us psychologists. The most interesting studies are those that are surprising, so that's what psychology classes are packed with. But we should know better, because that's just selection bias in action. Historically, this has led to intro courses consisting of 50%+ irreproducible studies.

But even after the reproducibility crisis cleanup, the selection bias still remains in place. There aren't a ton of fun studies about the typical accuracy of perception or how humans are often quite thinking and rational.

Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#26

Post by jona-f »

paytonjjones wrote: post #25
rauljara wrote: post #7

My intro to psychology classes was one of the most valuable classes I ever took, just with the way it systematically shattered my own notion of how much I could trust my own notions of perception and thought to be a rational and accurate reflection of reality. I definitely had a notion of how irrational “people” could be before that, but of course I somehow thought I was above all that.

This is a common takeaway from Intro to Psychology but unfortunately it's just...not very true to life (or to psychological science). It's a fault of us psychologists. The most interesting studies are those that are surprising, so that's what psychology classes are packed with. But we should know better, because that's just selection bias in action. Historically, this has led to intro courses consisting of 50%+ irrep…

Thank you, we need more of you. Though, I don't think we will ever be "after the reproducibility crisis cleanup".

Re: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

#27

Post by IshKebab »

daveguy wrote: post #16
IshKebab wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not about LLMs.

No, but it is about the, very expected, shitshow caused by the AI hype. When companies think cramming AI in any random place is a magic bullet for replacing workers, shit breaks. Because AI is dumb af. LLMs are just the shittiest of the ways to do it. Do you honestly think this particular "cram AI in everything" isn't related to the current AI hype? Or that AI applications and companies providing things like this won…

Nah, the kind of AI they were using has been around for a long time (AlexNet is 13 years old), and before that they would have used classical computer vision.

The only thing that happened here is that they didn't check it worked before firing everyone. That can happen with any automated system, AI or not.

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