How can you get into HFT without a degree from an elite school?
MIT is an elite school. Is this comment meant to be facetious?
Join Wall Street. Save the world
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#12I thought the recruitment pitch was, "Join Wall Street, fuck the world."
A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless. Some might even be considered socially productive.
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#13Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#14Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#15I am very suspicious of people who say they enter Wall Street to save the world. That said, I also believe most charity events are very economically inefficient. Rather than get a dozen musicians together for a discounted concert at a small concert hall, wouldn't it be more efficient to ask them all to donate one days worth of sales from performing at arenas? Rather than get a hundred bankers together for a $250/head…
I believe that what you are suggesting is what the first subject of the article is doing.
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#16Join Wall Street. Attempt to save the world through donations. End up unable to recognize what to solve.
This is a pattern that all these guys do. Even Warren Buffet just gave his money to Gates.
You'd think a guy who spends his life picking out successful businesses would be able to recognize this in non-profit / social ventures, but he's so removed from real problems he can't.
If you want to save the world, save the world first.
Stop. Fucking. Waiting.
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#17Is it really that simple? If your main concern is net "good" to the world, don't you have to balance that against any "bad" generated by your job? Wall Street certainly is capable of damaging people's lives, and HFT does get some of the blame. Also, is net gain the only concern - if an assassin donates his profits to charity and in the process saves more lives than he takes, is does his net "good" make him moral?
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#18One engineer donating $50k is great.
One teacher-focused engineer doing a decent job at influencing and educating others to do more with their money is... priceless?
It's good that Mr. Trigg is doing what he can, but discounting the ability of an education role to impact even more people is slightly silly.
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#19If you're interested in effective altruism, you might be interested in the Effective Altruism Summit, which will be held from June 30 to July 6 in San Francisco. All four of the effective altruism organizations mentioned in the article (GiveWell, Giving What We Can, The Life You Can Save, and 80,000 Hours) are participating, along with some not mentioned. Peter Singer, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn (co-creator of Kaz…
At a similar event on Efficient Charity at the Berkeley Faculty Club, Robin Hanson made some interesting (and unsettling) points about how most charities operate. [1] For example, he claims that most charitable contributions are actually about status signalling and not about maximizing impact. Because if someone truly wanted to do the Most Helpful Thing, they would save all their money and donate a single lump sum to a single charity right before they die. This strategy leverages compound interest while avoiding certain tax pitfalls, but has the downside of making you look selfish for most of your life.
Scott Alexander has a pretty good summary [2] of the event if you don't want to listen to the audio.
[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/04/more-now-means-less-la...
[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/05/investment-and-ineffici...
Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world
#20Join Wall Street. Attempt to save the world through donations. End up unable to recognize what to solve. This is a pattern that all these guys do. Even Warren Buffet just gave his money to Gates. You'd think a guy who spends his life picking out successful businesses would be able to recognize this in non-profit / social ventures, but he's so removed from real problems he can't. If you want to save the world, save th…
The question is whether the world is better off if Buffet had taken your advice. Not clear that it would be?