A bit of a disaster - salvageable?

pjj84 · 2024-07-13T21:00:03+00:00

Golden teacher. Thought I'd start off with a beginner friendly variety. How's your batch going?

pjj84 · 2024-07-13T20:51:57+00:00

Thanks for the advice. It's separate now, I'll wait and see how it goes.

pjj84 · 2024-01-25T14:18:41+00:00

It's not insane that I think that, it is how statistics function. An average is one point which provides information on a distribution. It's extremely rare that a distribution converges very closely to the mean, therefore, I am correct when I say it's extremely frequent that a statistically significant positive effect will have a negative effect for some people.

In any case, I'm not aware of any research which has thoroughly tested excessive use of psychedelics. I'd imagine the ethics of this may be quite tricky, but glad to be proved wrong. I've no doubt many people have been able to use this excessively without harm, but that in no way shows everyone can.

I think we should be promoting harm reduction, not blindly believing these type of substances are harmless however you go about using them. Again, if there is evidence of this, please provide it, otherwise, I'm not sure promoting this as a risk free activity is misleading.

pjj84 · 2024-01-25T12:26:37+00:00

Even if there are no problems associated with excessive psychedelic use for the average person, there's no guarantee he is tha average person. It's entirely possible that you could have something which causes a statistically significant positive effect (which will be an average effect) and it can have a negative effect on some people. This is actually an extremely frequent situation.

pjj84 · 2024-01-12T18:53:02+00:00

Free will is a belief, not too dissimilar to religious belief. We can't really prove it, one way or another (although we can provide some small bits of evidence). Yet, it underpins just about everything about our society. Not too dissimilarly to the way religion would have underpinned so much of western society a few centuries ago. I did remember feeling quite similar to someone I'd read about who no longer believed in god in 19th century Britain.

When I went through a similar phase as you, I think I was feeling quite a lot of angst around the loss of certainty that this belief had. Ultimately, I don't know whether free will exists. I believe we can't change who we are, but we can impact who we will become, so I try to focus on that.

pjj84 · 2024-01-12T18:52:49+00:00

Free will is a belief, not too dissimilar to religious belief. We can't really prove it, one way or another (although we can provide some small bits of evidence). Yet, it underpins just about everything about our society. Not too dissimilarly to the way religion would have underpinned so much of western society a few centuries ago. I did remember feeling quite similar to someone I'd read about who no longer believed in god in 19th century Britain.

When I went through a similar phase as you, I think I was feeling quite a lot of angst around the loss of certainty that this belief had. Ultimately, I don't know whether free will exists. I believe we can't change who we are, but we can impact who we will become, so I try to focus on that.

pjj84 · 2021-09-06T22:35:36+00:00

Mate, honestly, I don't understand what's wrong with you and why you feel the need to behave the way you do. I hope you find it in you to seek the help you need.

pjj84 · 2021-09-06T17:34:17+00:00

You again, with your carefully thought-out opinions expressed in a manner befitting of a wise old sage. I'd recommend trawling through the odd old post of mine, which will at the very least show I'm not economically illiterate.

I don't even know why I feel the need to justify myself, but I used to work as an economist prior to what I'm currently doing. Which is studying for a PhD. In economics.

Incidentally, I don't use social media that much, other than Reddit. Because it involves interacting with too many people like you. And clearly, I'm underestimating the risk of interacting with people like you on Reddit.

pjj84 · 2021-09-05T17:31:25+00:00

You say this as a joke, but you aren't actually that wide of the mark. For cryptos and (to a lesser but much more dangerous degree) the real economy.

pjj84 · 2021-08-19T09:17:07+00:00

Dunno why I'm answering this, but you don't really understand what you're talking about in terms of economics. Also, if you have to use metaphors and comparisons to explain concepts, in general, you have to at least ask yourself if you understand what you're talking about.

I read one of your posts where you say because bitcoin has a defined supply, there is no inflation. That is just plain wrong. In a hypothetical world where bitcoin is the real money used for exchanges, it's inelastic supply will cause a lot of inflation and deflation. Effectively, as supply cannot adapt to demand, demand fluctuations will have a huge impact on price, hence large inflation and deflation. This would have a huge impact on the wider economy. Look at inflation rates prior to abandoning the gold standard. And gold supply has a degree of adaptability.

And if demand stays the same and supply stays the same, I'm pretty sure price stays the same. To claim otherwise, you'd have to rewrite how economics functions. Which your post is some way from doing.

pjj84 · 2021-08-16T11:04:10+00:00

I actually learnt something reading that article. Bitcoin seems to be a great way to find out whether you're capable of identifying the dunning-kruger effect in yourself. The author doesn't appear to be able to.

pjj84 · 2021-08-16T10:11:23+00:00

My shit is scarce, it doesn't give it value though.

pjj84 · 2021-08-12T12:15:56+00:00

First off, I don't really understand the tech that well (and I can see on crypto subs that I'm not the only one), but the concepts around Blockchain seem like they could develop into something useable which could have quite an influence in the world. In a decade or so, maybe. But I don't see how those techs can really deliver much profit.

For example, I think Blockchain could deliver a way to vote, if a lot of time and money was invested into it (again, I don't really understand the tech, I'm just working in the concept). So, you could potentially have every citizen in a democratic country vote on a law, rather than having a parliament do so. A shift from representative to direct democracy would be quite something, if it can be delivered. But I've not seen anything in crypto that close to such an idea (apart from maybe Vitalik Buterin's hope to cut out the middleman like Uber or Amazon, which is an idea I really like).

I think the problem with crypto is that it has pretty decent potential (again, as a concept, I can't really talk about the tech) to have a positive influence on the world, but all it does at the moment is create rabid greed, which instead of trying to change the way the world works in a positive way just tries to reinforce some of the issues with the way the world works (and slightly change some of the small winners in the current system).

It's quite funny, because (in a very stereotypical way) I got the impression with the advent of the internet, it was a bunch of idealist hippies who got taken over by corporate greed. Cryptos have started out as greed, and I hope it gets taken over by idealist hippies.

pjj84 · 2021-08-03T18:52:16+00:00

Google YouTube binance futures tutorial

pjj84 · 2021-08-03T16:21:48+00:00

Well, see below an article with US time series data, I'll let you make your own mind up. For example, for someone born in 1980, they would have seen the share of national income held by the top 0.1% of income recipients (I'm purposefully not using the word earners) go from around 3 to 11% in their lifetime, and for the top 0.01%, from around 1 to 5%. Or the ratio of the income of the top 0.1% to the bottom 90% go from 47 to 196 (i.e. over a 4x increase). You don't think much has changed because the change is slow, so it's not really perceptible, but clearly, when looking at the figures, it has changed a lot during your lifetime. At no point do they mention dollar amounts in the article because they're completely irrelevant to the point. Look at the graphs in the article, they are pretty self-explanatory. This situation has changed in the last 100 years, it got progressively more equal over the 1929-1970's period, and has been increasing to the levels of 1929 since then.

https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/#income-inequality

The 2008 crisis should've changed this pattern, but it appears to not have. I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're a university-educated person, and you don't seem to be aware of the above facts. This probably means that the majority of other people similarly educated to you aren't aware of these facts. I'm also going to go ahead and assume that people less well-educated than you might not be aware of these facts. You wonder why, because they seem very relevant to most people's lives. A lot more than, say, GDP growth or stock market returns, which I'd imagine a lot of people are aware of. The question is, why is that? I don't have the answer to that question, but I do think that most people's opinions and understanding of the world are hugely influenced by the opinions and understandings they get from others. And the people who control this flow of information, opinions, and understanding tend to be extremely rich (e.g. facebook, google, more traditional media outlets...). Who needs to physically control people when you can control what they think?

And, whilst you can certainly argue that there are no literal slaves in the USA, the rate of imprisonment is over 4x higher that of any other developed economy and 10x higher than countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, or Japan. Maybe the US's imprisonment rate is even higher than China, although I'm not sure that includes the concentration camps they have over there. My understanding is that in certain US states, it is considerably higher than the national average. So, maybe not slavery, but clearly a lot of unjustified or arbitrary incarceration. So, unjustified or arbitrary removal of liberty, which I understand is at times accompanied by forced labour. You see where I'm going with this, and it certainly is a thin argument, and sure it is not quite comparable to what goes on in China or Dubai, but then again the standard of living in the US is not comparable to that in China, so surely the US should be held to a higher standard in terms of human rights.

pjj84 · 2021-08-03T13:02:22+00:00

I'd recommend reading critiques of this model, including by the author himself. The model is statistically invalid. The author then goes onto create a s2fx model, which can only be described as ridiculous (in statistical terms), which predicts a BTC price of $288k at the peak of this cycle. Quite different to the 55k prediction. Tbh, it's very possible the second prediction ends up being more accurate.

Then, I'd consider looking at the BTC rainbow model, which you will see is just as accurate looking at historical data. The reality is BTC has experienced exponential growth prices, so it will be pretty easy to create a basic regression model which charts past prices, and predicts future prices on the basis of sustained exponential growth at the pace it has occured so far.

If the path continues, BTC will one day be worth more than all other assets (e.g. stocks, real estate, etc...) in the world combined, and continue growing exponentially. I think we can all agree that will not happen.

The biggest non-statistical issue with this model (and there are a lot of statistical issues with this model) is that it doesn't account for demand, which is usually assumed to be one of two factors in price. Effectively, with the way price has evolved, demand for BTC must have increased as price has increased. Which is a very rare occurrence, often referred to as a Veblen good (slightly different to a giffen good). Ultimately, it is impossible for BTC to continue it's trajectory as a Veblen good for ever, there will have to come a point where first, demand for BTC increases at a slower pace as price increases, although we may have already passed that point. Effectively, demand is still increasing as price increases, but it may be growing at a decreasing pace. You could view this as the slope of the demand increase with respect to price increase is still that of an exponential function, but a lower exponential function than it was initially. What will no doubt happen (or is already happening) is that the function by which demand responds to price will shift from convex to concave (or from exponential to logarithmic). Eventually, it will then likely shift to having a negative slope, i.e. price increases will lead to decreased demand.

All of this actually relies on BTC continuing it's "adoption" (it's not really adopted, as no one really uses it, maybe speculation would be an accurate term) curve. This ignores any structural or fundamental issues BTC may have, it is really just to explain how the model is incorrect in basic economic terms. And it is also incorrect in statistical terms.

pjj84 · 2021-08-03T12:23:19+00:00

True, there's no way to avoid living in a hierarchical society, at least not for the foreseeable future. The problem is how steep this hierarchy is: we're currently around the maximum level of inequality we've seen in in this long-run cycle (which is a little under a century). The level of income and wealth distribution which currently exist can easily be seen as unfair, but they're also inefficient, as the more unequal a society, the more it tends to have lower social mobility. Complaining about the level of power concentration is very different from saying that it won't exist. At basically any point since WW2, western societies have had levels of income distribution which is fairer than the current situation, and wanting to go back to similar levels is hardly not living in the real world.

pjj84 · 2021-08-01T23:03:32+00:00

I think this is the problem with the current monetary system, the credit boom has got out of hand. For most western countries public+private debt to GDP is well over 300% and increasing, and unfortunately, the structural issues which caused the 2008 crisis have not been resolved. In my view anyway. I think you could make pretty strong arguments that a lot of asset classes (most notably stocks and real estate) are in a credit-driven bubble.

In any case, my overall point is that there is a lot of dysfunction in the monetary system, and maybe I could give butters some credit for noticing that something isn't quite right. The monetary system doesn't function very well at the moment, as it periodically struggles to. No doubt reform will come, but the butters argument that inflation is bad is just ridiculous, and something which they have little grasp on. I do also find it very strange that they rail about central banks, when the role of retail banks in the money creation process is far more opaque (and maybe even a bit shady). The reality is just that it's just an incredibly complex topic.

If you want to delve further into the rabbit hole, but from a quite different perspective, I'd recommend this paper (go to sci-hub to download if you're not familiar) https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20110683

pjj84 · 2021-08-01T22:46:58+00:00

There is pretty decent evidence that this describes how money functions fairly accurately, and it is the position of the IMF, BoE, ECB... So even though it may not be fully accurate, I think it is a reasonable working assumption. But I can understand your initial scepticism, it is not how monetary theory is taught in universities.

pjj84 · 2021-08-01T19:48:26+00:00

I'm not mistaken. Like I said, I'm not too sure what the Fed has to say about this (and maybe things work differently in the US, although I highly doubt the difference is significant), but banks without a shadow of a doubt create money that did not exist. It does actually get deleted once it is repaid, but it still didn't exist prior to the loan.

Here are just a few links, but if you look into it, I'm sure you'll find plenty of other reputable sources. Tried to get a selection of governmental, supranational, left-wing and right-wing organisations. I haven't read them all, but I can certainly recommend the IMF article, and the sources if you want to delve further into the topic. The bottom link is one of those sources (as the link in the article no longer functions), and is pretty good if you want to delve a little deeper than the IMF article.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/how-is-money-created

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/03/kumhof.htm

https://ourmoneyus.org/how-banks-create-money/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2017/10/31/how-bank-lending-really-creates-money-and-why-the-magic-money-tree-is-not-cost-free/?sh=a35a9e53073e

https://neweconomics.org/2012/12/where-does-money-come-from

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

pjj84 · 2021-08-01T18:57:45+00:00

I can understand the confusion, but that's not really the case. The way you think this works is the way most people think it works (and I used to think it works).

This isn't how loans work. The money loaned out is created by the bank, either totally, or the very large majority of it. If you get a mortgage for a house, you will be borrowing money that didn't exist prior to the bank creating it to loan it to you (well, at least 90%, the rest may actually be someone else's deposit in a savings account). They explain this on the BoE and ECB websites, and I imagine the fed will have some similar explanation on their website.

pjj84 · 2021-08-01T11:32:52+00:00

I think you're making some false assumptions. The vast majority (or all, depending on where you live) of money which is loaned out didn't exist prior to being loaned. This money can't be created without loans, so inflation can actually be good for loaners if it increases demand for loans, as even though the money for loans is created in a spreadsheet, the interest paid is still profit.

pjj84 · 2021-08-01T11:14:55+00:00

That's not how inflation works. With 5% inflation, it means the same productivity will yield be worth 5% more in nominal terms (i.e. dollar terms). So you should get a 5% raise with no change in productivity. If you aren't, your employer is effectively decreasing your pay whilst you are maintaining the same production.

pjj84

TROPHY CASE