A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet • Hacker News Board

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#31

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 3:25 AM UTC

byrneseyeview wrote: post #29

andreyf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the upside to the variable income lifestyle is a relatively small proportion of people living the glamorous lifestyle that Pavlina is selling but the downside is the much larger number of people who are barely scraping by making ends meet on the same system While this is true, I don't think the assumption that most of the people who end up on top somehow deserve their success and those on the bottom deserve their fai…

which is much more interesting than this Black Swan pep talk bullshit. Have you read The Black Swan ? It's not a pep talk. It's all about how much of what affects us is out of our control. I suppose one could mope about this, but what Taleb says is to do things that will reward you if the unpredictable happens. Persistence and effort, on the other hand, scales linearly - if you can iterate over 10 ideas instead of 1,…

[deleted]

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#32

Post by joubert » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 3:26 AM UTC

DarrenMills wrote: post #7

wallflower wrote: post #3

Working for someone else is not scalable. "Trading time for money" My creative/artist friends amaze me because they have mastered the art of income diversification (freelancing, multiple P/T jobs, selling stuff on CL, babysitting). While not in the realm of Pavlina's success, they seem to be unafraid of the two things most white-collar professionals may be most afraid of: 1) being laid-off or fired and 2) quitting yo…

As a freelance designer myself, I can see exactly what you mean @wallflower. One of the up sides of all the economic woes of late is that it's helped me build a resistance to the normal fears that creep in, ie. being laid off or fired. Lose a few clients and you'll quickly learn how adept you are at filling the gaps. Trading time for money is just working for someone elses dream.

Shouldn't it rather be wallflower@ ?

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#33

Post by sethg » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 3:36 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #26

If you hit ctrl+f and replace "fixed" with "low" and "variable" with "high", then and only then does this article make any sense at all. He points out that people on fixed incomes are screwed when things go wrong and expenses mount. Apparently in his mind, people with variable incomes (which I've had my entire adult life, btw) can just make more when they really need it or something. In fairness the first half of the…

I read the whole thing. It didn't redeem itself.

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#34

Post by ellyagg » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 3:42 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #26

If you hit ctrl+f and replace "fixed" with "low" and "variable" with "high", then and only then does this article make any sense at all. He points out that people on fixed incomes are screwed when things go wrong and expenses mount. Apparently in his mind, people with variable incomes (which I've had my entire adult life, btw) can just make more when they really need it or something. In fairness the first half of the…

Exactly. The whole first half was sand-poundingly stupid. Finally I got to a heading I agreed with, though: Stop fussing over expenses and taxes. I think many smart people don't value their time enough. My personal experience has been that I'm better off being creative and productive rather than defensive.

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#35

Post by andreyf » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 4:01 AM UTC

byrneseyeview wrote: post #29

andreyf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the upside to the variable income lifestyle is a relatively small proportion of people living the glamorous lifestyle that Pavlina is selling but the downside is the much larger number of people who are barely scraping by making ends meet on the same system While this is true, I don't think the assumption that most of the people who end up on top somehow deserve their success and those on the bottom deserve their fai…

which is much more interesting than this Black Swan pep talk bullshit. Have you read The Black Swan ? It's not a pep talk. It's all about how much of what affects us is out of our control. I suppose one could mope about this, but what Taleb says is to do things that will reward you if the unpredictable happens. Persistence and effort, on the other hand, scales linearly - if you can iterate over 10 ideas instead of 1,…

Have you read The Black Swan? It's not a pep talk.

No, but I've read the wikipedia article, and absolutely despised the tone of this article. That said, calling it "pep talk bullshit" was an emotional response - it's been a long day. What I mean to say is that Taleb is giving bad advice with a lot of confidence and bad "proofs" based on idiotically simple models. For example:

Taleb says is to do things that will reward you if the unpredictable happens

That sentence seems to either (a) have a huge gap of basic probability, or (b) contradict itself.

First, if "unpredictable" is to mean "low probability of happening", there are several orders of magnitude more "unpredictable" things than "predictable" ones (and that's why they have such a low probability of happening).

A better model of "events" and "probability" would consider the key variable correlating to probability of events is specificity - it's highly probable that some planes will crash in the next 10 years. That relatively general event can be partitioned into less probable (but more specific) events. There are more specific events than general events, and each is less probable in proportion to its specificity. If you could know which unpredictable thing were going to happen, they wouldn't be unpredictable anymore.

Of course, reality is stranger yet - events aren't all neat subsets and partitions of each other like they are in that model, and predictable varies with probable based on some measure of the accuracy of the world model of the predictor (which, I would argue, is usually pretty bad). Hence, I would argue that predictability doesn't matter much at all (after some point) - evolution and the ability to let go of one seemingly great ideas matters more.

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#36

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 4:27 AM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #34

mattmaroon wrote: post #26

If you hit ctrl+f and replace "fixed" with "low" and "variable" with "high", then and only then does this article make any sense at all. He points out that people on fixed incomes are screwed when things go wrong and expenses mount. Apparently in his mind, people with variable incomes (which I've had my entire adult life, btw) can just make more when they really need it or something. In fairness the first half of the…

Exactly. The whole first half was sand-poundingly stupid. Finally I got to a heading I agreed with, though: Stop fussing over expenses and taxes. I think many smart people don't value their time enough. My personal experience has been that I'm better off being creative and productive rather than defensive.

The problem with the second half is the guy spends pages and pages sucking his own cock about how successful and how much "value" he is creating. I have a news flash for him: just because you can convince some dejected and directionless individual to pay you for something does not mean you are delivering value.

Re: A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

#37

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Sep 11, 2009, 4:37 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #26

If you hit ctrl+f and replace "fixed" with "low" and "variable" with "high", then and only then does this article make any sense at all. He points out that people on fixed incomes are screwed when things go wrong and expenses mount. Apparently in his mind, people with variable incomes (which I've had my entire adult life, btw) can just make more when they really need it or something. In fairness the first half of the…

There's another huge hole in his thinking which is that he assumes living on a budget is nothing but pain, and making tons of money is nothing but joy. However this is only true if you're a workaholic with expensive tastes.

However most people are better rewarded by doing something they love and having good personal and family relationships. A relentless focus on earning money is going to detract from pursuing those more important things. That's not to say that one shouldn't be enterprising, but money beyond a reasonable threshold doesn't really make most people any happier.