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Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

blog.janestreet.com

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Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#11

Post by vintermann »

JasonADrury wrote: post #10
wittyusername wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

>Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? How is finance not exactly that?

Isn't Jane Street mostly into HFT arbitrage?

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#12

Post by zeroCalories »

wittyusername wrote: post #5
dang wrote: post #175

[stub for offtopicness]

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

It's not wasted. Society can pay for the talent it wants, and they don't want to pay for this. Instead this talent helps to grow the overall wealth on in the world, letting us pay for the stuff we want.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#13

Post by azan_ »

wittyusername wrote: post #5
dang wrote: post #175

[stub for offtopicness]

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

There are much much more great minds working on new medicines than on HFT. Also HFT is good, it makes world better place!

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#14

Post by ViscountPenguin »

JasonADrury wrote: post #10
wittyusername wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

>Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? How is finance not exactly that?

As someone who has worked in the industry, I've yet to see any compelling argument that high frequency quants are making any meaningful contribution to society. Maybe on the low frequency end, but slightly higher market liquidity doesn't serve that large a social good imo.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#15

Post by JasonADrury »

ViscountPenguin wrote: post #14
JasonADrury wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? How is finance not exactly that?

As someone who has worked in the industry, I've yet to see any compelling argument that high frequency quants are making any meaningful contribution to society. Maybe on the low frequency end, but slightly higher market liquidity doesn't serve that large a social good imo.

High frequency quants almost certainly don't directly provide a massive social good, but they're one of the many facilitators enabling the smooth functioning of markets that do.

But FWIW, the comment I was replying didn't seem to be specifically critical of high frequency quants. Dismissing the entire field as something that doesn't contribute to society is beyond absurd.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#16

Post by ViscountPenguin »

paulluuk wrote: post #9
wittyusername wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

Don't we already harvest more food than humans could ever eat, and have a huge pharmaceutical industry? I get what you're saying but these two examples seem counterproductive imho. Which begs the question: what would actually be a good field to apply human potential towards? I agree that finance, sales and ads are very low on that list.

I would imagine that increasing crop yields would do social good primarily via decreasing the amount of cultivated farm land, especially since we're well past Jevons paradox territory with calorie intake I imagine.

While the pharmaceutical industry is large, the marginal researcher does still seem to have a pretty positive impact from an outside view.

The most positive use of human time probably looks something like antiwar advocacy, but I don't really think that most quants have the social skills for that tbh.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#17

Post by JasonADrury »

vintermann wrote: post #11
JasonADrury wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? How is finance not exactly that?

Isn't Jane Street mostly into HFT arbitrage?

You need market makers like Jane Street to have well functioning markets.

The markets have shown themselves to be an excellent way of applying human potential to things like crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#18

Post by ViscountPenguin »

JasonADrury wrote: post #15
ViscountPenguin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in the industry, I've yet to see any compelling argument that high frequency quants are making any meaningful contribution to society. Maybe on the low frequency end, but slightly higher market liquidity doesn't serve that large a social good imo.

High frequency quants almost certainly don't directly provide a massive social good, but they're one of the many facilitators enabling the smooth functioning of markets that do. But FWIW, the comment I was replying didn't seem to be specifically critical of high frequency quants. Dismissing the entire field as something that doesn't contribute to society is beyond absurd.

The context of the comment being a Jane Street blog post is why I singled out HFT.

I think we're probably roughly in alignment w.r.t. other forms of finance, but the market liquidity gained by a marginal HFT employee almost certainly isn't worth the marginal cost imo. Even in finance, you could do a lot better by expending that human capital into optimising the structure of the markets themselves (there's lots of research on how hideously inefficient the TSE is because of its coarse tick sizes, for example; but vested interests get in the way of fixing that).

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#19

Post by tux3 »

vintermann wrote: post #11
JasonADrury wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? How is finance not exactly that?

Isn't Jane Street mostly into HFT arbitrage?

There's that, but the market in the West was already over-saturated with HFT arbitrage. What's hot is growing markets that get a little less attention. The big Jane Street maneuver in India made a lot of noise recently. They've been "banned" for "market manipulation", but that was one of their biggest play to date.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#20

Post by throwaw12 »

JasonADrury wrote: post #15
ViscountPenguin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in the industry, I've yet to see any compelling argument that high frequency quants are making any meaningful contribution to society. Maybe on the low frequency end, but slightly higher market liquidity doesn't serve that large a social good imo.

High frequency quants almost certainly don't directly provide a massive social good, but they're one of the many facilitators enabling the smooth functioning of markets that do. But FWIW, the comment I was replying didn't seem to be specifically critical of high frequency quants. Dismissing the entire field as something that doesn't contribute to society is beyond absurd.

> facilitators enabling the smooth functioning of markets that do

Do you think without HFT markets stop functioning properly?

What if they are one of the contributors of highly inflated valuations?

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