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Jim Simons has died

simonsfoundation.org

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Re: Jim Simons has died

#301

Post by NhanH »

eru wrote: post #280
iamgopal wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their success is limited by what other party ready to lose, most of the time, these all are zero sum games.

Depends on how you look at it. Eg selling insurance can be seen as a zero sum game, but it's a genuinely useful product for people, even when the expected value for them is negative. It works, because utility is not strictly proportional to money. Similarly, market making delivers liquidity-on-demand for a fee.

Insurance is positive-sum because the value-generating enterprise (the buyer) gets to continue generating value after the unexpected thing happen. The alternatives is that the value creation process just stop. It is only seemingly zero-sum for the point in time when the accident happens and one side has to pay for the other.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#302

Post by mciancia »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #272
jasondigitized wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was worth an ungodly amount of money. His foundation or whatever vehicle he chose will surely be around for a long time.

This is what Elon musk could have been. Instead of that he became a 13 yr old guy.

Right, because spacex, starlink, tesla and neuralink don't exist. All he does is shitposting

Re: Jim Simons has died

#303

Post by kzzzznot »

elorant wrote: post #298
kzzzznot wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain why quantitative algo (not HFT) trading is “bad”?

Why do you make the distinction from HFT? At their heart they're both the same thing. You're using algorithms to trade and eventually manipulate markets. What kind of value are you adding to the whole system?

The distinction in my mind is HFT is “worse” for market participants because of the front running of large orders between exchanges.

I’d argue this cross exchange arbitrage does still provide some value by keeping prices of securities across exchanges/the world in sync, despite being quite unfair and taking value from those putting in large orders.

Liquidity provided by algo market makers is also a service to market participants because they take risk to ensure there is always someone to buy or sell - this reduces volatility and risk for everyone.

Algo trading is also required for keeping ETFs in line their benchmarks, which is an entirely separate subject you could fill a book with.

So no, all algo trading is not the same thing, there are valid and productive uses of code rather than people shouting across a pit or running slips up and down roads to keep capital flowing through markets efficiently.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#304

Post by ironSkillet »

caddemon wrote: post #115
qq66 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that he genuinely loved math. I don't think there's really anyone in his orbit who loves math as much. His family is his family and his colleagues love money. We'll see in the coming months and years whether he was able to create a structure that continues his legacy but usually the answer to that question is no.

His foundation also donates a lot to neuroscience research, particularly for Autism. I think there was a family reason for that, so probably at least some of his scientific philanthropy will continue for awhile. But yeah it's extremely hard to create a structure that would perpetuate without the remaining people at the top truly buying into and understanding the mission.

I have heard that he had at least one child with autism, hence his desire to fund efforts to better fund autism and the brain.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#305

Post by infecto »

vsnf wrote: post #269
belter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had leaks from even the NSA...But never from the RT fund.

From Wikipedia: “Employees: Classified (est. 30,000–40,000)” Obviously the number of people working on the super secret stuff is smaller, not to mentioned each project has a compartmentalized staff, but keeping secrets at this size is going to be a tough ask. They seem to do a pretty good job, but we know they’re not infallible at it. I imagine RenTech at 1/100th the size would have a vastly easier time.

That and I believe RT has a low turnover rate.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#306

Post by prepend »

ignoramous wrote: post #260
adammarples wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now picture yourself a million miles from that, on a semi anonymous third-tier comment thread on a bulletin board

LARPing is likely Internet's favourite pass-time.

Life in general, really.

Check out Finite and Infinite Games by Carse.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#307

Post by prepend »

77pt77 wrote: post #250
PaulHoule wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That money for the arXiv was a decade late. arXiv barely survived the 2000s.

How difficult is to run a glorified BBS over HTTP/HTML like that? Like seriously? It's not as difficult as the stuff being published there.

I’ve noticed this cycle for the past 30 years on the internet where a useful thing starts out really simply (host a BBS, or host a billion pdfs forever). It’s not trivial, but it seems like it should be pretty low resource.

Then people get hired and are into it and want to get paid (as people do). And costs go up. And slowly more people get added. And instead of looking for cheap ways to operate, they want to fund those people and give them 5% raises every year.

So they look for funders to cover “the bare minimum.”

So rather than figuring out how to operate efficiently, they look for benefactors.

I love arxiv and use it all the time. But why do they have employees? And what are their costs? And why not get it to the point of operating with volunteers.

I suppose someone can do that and set it up. Until then, I’ll just donate or applaud benefactors. And use scihub too I suppose. How much does that cost to run?

Re: Jim Simons has died

#308

Post by heresie-dabord »

altruios wrote: post #83
mycologos wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot. Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.

sadly, the trend for these sorts of things is to sour after the original founder leaves... There is an esoteric concept that has some dynamics that explain this phenomenon somewhat. Not to get to into the weeds (the origins of this concept are esoteric religious ideas - I mean this secularly, as it relates to business entities) but the concept is an 'egregore' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore#:~:text=An%20egreg…

Thank you for not dragging us into the weeds of esotericism.

What is the source for the quotation in your post?

Re: Jim Simons has died

#310

Post by ghaff »

eigenvalue wrote: post #289
paulpauper wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's doable. Institutions under top leadership can thrive long after its founders die. This is true of almost every Fortune 500 company. I am sure there is enough redundancy to continue the foundation's goal. Carnegie foundation or Ford foundation, or Apple computers after jobs died .

I’d argue that Ford and Carnegie foundations are not good examples here, having veered very far from the intention/goals of the original donors into directions that are arguably diametrically opposed. Essentially they were hijacked from within by hired “professional managers” who pursued their own agendas. Maybe in the future we can set up AIs to make the decisions on our behalf after we’re gone, because humans are e…

It’s also not unheard of to structure a foundation to just run their assets down over time exactly on the theory that, given enough time, who know how the money will be distributed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Olin_Foundation

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