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More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

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Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can it be anything but natural selection doing it's thing? Does it affect their reproductive chances? If not, then natural selection has nothing to do with it.

The purpose of sneering about "idiots" and inventing pseudoscientific gibberish about natural selection is to wash one's hands of moral responsibility for scamming naive young people, the elderly, or adults with psychiatric or cognitive disabilities. "It wasn't me robbing your college-age son out of a new car, that was just natural selection doing its thing! So long, losers!" My mom was a very crappy person who stron…

There's a difference between a grandma losing money to a phone scam and this kind of "hustle economy" gambling.

I've talked to a lot of people who participate in this stuff, they always know the odds exactly. They're fully aware. It's a combination of greed, thrill and attention seeking that doesn't deserve sympathy. Everybody who participates in hawk tuah coin crypto rug pulls knows how stupid it is, they just think they're the smart ones fleecing everybody else. Those people deserve the "sucker born every minute" treatment. That is their worldview, they just think they're the exception.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#22

I remember a controversial scamming figure in Italy that made millions by selling lucky numbers for lotteries or exploiting people's stupidity to part them with their life savings. Her motto was "idiots _have_ to be scammed". While this figure was morally and ethically deplorable, it always made me think how her motto essentially implied that there was an element of pure natural selection happening and she saw hersel…

Don't believe what you read on WSB. Most of those clowns are getting Internet karma points by making up stories, not by losing real money.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s overly simplistic to say that if a person has reproduced, then they have ‘succeeded’ in the natural selection game. There is a whole (potential) downstream genealogical tree branching off from each individual Certainly, any person who reproduces has done “better” at the game than someone who has not reproduced at all. But that is still not quite enough. If a parent reproduces, but none of their children themselv…

In theory yes, but given the birth rate demographics I don't think it's actually true. The families giving birth to the most children in the developed world are mostly either hyper-religious or poor, whether that's because it's generational or because they just immigrated from a developing country. I think the kind of men (probably in their late 20s/early 30s onwards) that can afford to gamble on stock market apps ar…

In that case it's just another symptom of the thing that is naturally selecting them

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#24
If you have the math chops, you should really try to get into it just so you can realize you are not going to make a money making algorithm. I got knee deep into it out of boredom during Covid and was able to have the "aha" moment where you realize the best you can do is buy index funds or just long hold companies you believe in that are in your area of expertise.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#25
post #17

I remember a controversial scamming figure in Italy that made millions by selling lucky numbers for lotteries or exploiting people's stupidity to part them with their life savings. Her motto was "idiots _have_ to be scammed". While this figure was morally and ethically deplorable, it always made me think how her motto essentially implied that there was an element of pure natural selection happening and she saw hersel…

This is a position commonly referred to as "Social Darwinism." The same logic can get you to "drunk women out by themselves _have_ to be sexually assaulted" and so on. No, it's not OK to victimize people just because they're vulnerable. It's an absolutely odious caricature of moral reasoning.

Not at all. Money represents resources, and it’s objectively better for society for resources to be in the hands of people who are not fools, instead of those who are.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#26

I remember a controversial scamming figure in Italy that made millions by selling lucky numbers for lotteries or exploiting people's stupidity to part them with their life savings. Her motto was "idiots _have_ to be scammed". While this figure was morally and ethically deplorable, it always made me think how her motto essentially implied that there was an element of pure natural selection happening and she saw hersel…

One of the justifications that psycopaths and sociopaths use is exactly this - If their victims weren't so stupid, they wouldnt be victims. (Often mixed with the "if I didnt exploit them, someone else would"). Its an excuse to rationalise and try to justify their bad behaviour.

NATURAL selection is built to deal with NATURAL problems, and they move and change and evolve at the same speed, natual selection changes at the speed of genetic mutations of large populations, we didnt have smartphones even 1 generation ago - so how the hell is natural selection supposed to adapt to that?

When you have an electronic device thats beaming in risky behaviour at millisecond latency, what's the difference than having a big pile of cocaine in the kitchen and then blaming the addicted person saying "Its just natural selection, that enourmous pile of drugs thats just sitting there - you took it willingly", this is hyperbole but its illustrating my point - immediate availabity of dangerous risky addictive behaviour is a problem that will seduce a lot of people that otherwise would not have had the problem.

Im definitly someone in favor of personal responsibility but "ne quid nimis" and this must be balanced by a strong culture with good leadership to help the people who cant do it by willpower alone, so saying "Its just natural selection" is pure sociopathic / empathy-less answer and is unacceptable in a world where we should be helping and guiding each other and not saying "sounds like a you problem" while cranking up the exploitation dial.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can it be anything but natural selection doing it's thing? Does it affect their reproductive chances? If not, then natural selection has nothing to do with it.

The purpose of sneering about "idiots" and inventing pseudoscientific gibberish about natural selection is to wash one's hands of moral responsibility for scamming naive young people, the elderly, or adults with psychiatric or cognitive disabilities. "It wasn't me robbing your college-age son out of a new car, that was just natural selection doing its thing! So long, losers!" My mom was a very crappy person who stron…

I would prefer clever people have resources instead of any of those groups you listed.

I have this preference even if I am not the one being clever (so, via the veil of ignorance).

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#29

If you have the math chops, you should really try to get into it just so you can realize you are not going to make a money making algorithm. I got knee deep into it out of boredom during Covid and was able to have the "aha" moment where you realize the best you can do is buy index funds or just long hold companies you believe in that are in your area of expertise.

Isn't that how RenTech got started?

From what I understand, that fund still does huge gains, and can't get too big.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#30
post #17

I remember a controversial scamming figure in Italy that made millions by selling lucky numbers for lotteries or exploiting people's stupidity to part them with their life savings. Her motto was "idiots _have_ to be scammed". While this figure was morally and ethically deplorable, it always made me think how her motto essentially implied that there was an element of pure natural selection happening and she saw hersel…

This is a position commonly referred to as "Social Darwinism." The same logic can get you to "drunk women out by themselves _have_ to be sexually assaulted" and so on. No, it's not OK to victimize people just because they're vulnerable. It's an absolutely odious caricature of moral reasoning.

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