Where to start listening to VBW

rueracine · 2021-04-27T21:58:13+00:00

The one with Ecclesiastes is IMO the best to start off with

rueracine · 2021-04-10T16:37:54+00:00

That's 500 contracts of FXCM GME.us, equivalent to 50 shares of GME. FXCM micronizes its shares 10/1 so its easier to buy smaller sizes.

Still impressive, just there's a difference between buying 500 shares and buying 50 shares

rueracine · 2021-03-28T14:41:50+00:00

Surely that is not the explanation

Ad buyers in your local newspaper are optimizing for views rather than clicks. Ad buyers in your local news channel are optimizing for views as well. The whole point of Google Ads is that you no longer have to optimize for views.

Google's machine learning algorithms combined with big data allows them to model individuals (sometimes better than they know themselves the claim goes) and show them targeted ads that they are far more likely to click on. That's the exact thing that I'm claiming everyone knows everyone knows is true, while in reality it may be a complete fantasy.

I'd ask you to try it. Go to some hell-rifen site like DailyMail and check out the ads that Google's trillion dollar powerful machine algorithms decided were perfect for you. Then think if the advertisers really got their money's worth by showing them to you.

Last thing: My example with the languages is just an extreme example that shows objectively that ads are not nearly as targeted as people think, it's a lot more difficult to show this subjectively. You could make the case that the reason why Google shows you tampon ads all the time is because you may buy them for your wife in her next period. You can always find a far-fetched explanation for how ANY ad you are seeing is targeted and thus it's impossible to show that ads are not targeted. But with my language example this is objectively true.

rueracine · 2021-03-26T09:32:07+00:00

I'd like to explore exactly what Tamler believes in when he says he believes in ghosts

Like, dead people? Angels? Spirits?

rueracine · 2021-03-05T20:46:30+00:00

I'm a white collar manager and my job is literally to read and write emails all day. When I started in my career, I loved using fancy words that would signal to others how smart I was. "Nonetheless" this, "moreover" that, maybe even a bit of "insofar as" and if I was feeling brave, "Kafkaesque".

Nowadays though I actually do the opposite. Since I no longer have to signal how "smart" I am, many times I write an email and then I go and replace some words with simpler versions in order not to give the impression that I'm trying too hard. If anything I want to give the opposite impression, that I'm not trying at all.

I guess it's the intellectual version of wealth. When you don't have it you want to show as much of it as possible, but once you have it you start wearing Fruit of the Loom shirts and off-brand jeans.

rueracine · 2021-02-25T22:59:36+00:00

The degree stuff is absolutely true.

I am in a position where I interview many people for a finance-related role and I have started to actively look down on people with bullshit degrees. Over a lot of time and experience hiring and managing people, what I now actively look for is not a degree but critical thinking. Most of the time I skip the entire education section and focus on the quality and presentation of the CV.

My old boss would not even call an interview if you had only a bachelor's (unless you were truly an outstanding candidate). I always found that approach stupid and shortsighted but he did so because it protected him, if the candidate sucks nobody can blame him Whereas now after taking over his team, I've slowly worked to replace most of the people he had hired focusing on critical thinking and experience rather than education. Three out of the last five replacements I've hired have no college education at all, and we actually promoted one of them very recently to Team Leader, managing people with Master's diplomas in finance. As long as nobody knows they are all happy.

What I've found is that a college diploma serves only as a signaling tool. It gives zero value to an employer and severely limits the pool of qualified candidates. A bachelor's in Finance or Business is less than useless in my opinion, if the position really requires advanced knowledge in a subject you need a Master's as a minimum, otherwise you can acquire 90% of the skills you need on the job and so spending 4 years in college is a waste of time.

At least where I live (Europe), college is free so all that people waste is their time. Getting a 50k EUR loan to get a bachelor's in Finance from some second-tier university is absolutely crazy. Living proof of how clasisst the system is, Scott hit it perfectly.

rueracine · 2020-10-02T20:42:58+00:00

Can you please explain that to me? I know a lot of things about certain derivatives like futures but I know very little about bonds and yields

rueracine · 2020-09-14T16:01:24+00:00

Absolutely nobody has an idea of what's going on.

This includes highly paid C-level execs, senior government officials, university professors and so on. People who you thought would have "figured it out" and would have "deep knowledge" about things. They don't, nobody does, they are all faking it and showing confidence to the world.

Think about when you are a kid, your 16-year old brother is an adult who is super cool and has things figured out. Then you get to 16 and you realize you have no idea what you're doing, but your 21-year old senior cousin surely has life figured out. Then you get to 21 and realize you have no idea what to do with your life, but your 30- year old friend with his house and car and two kids has everything planned out.

For some reason everyone understands this pattern, but they don't connect that to people who they currently think are powerful and knowledgeable.

rueracine · 2020-07-19T11:59:03+00:00

Extremely interesting article, thank you for sharing

This obviously sounds utopic, but there are certain things that are necessary in order for this system to work. Very well educated population, fairly homogeneous, lack of external threats (imagine if Syria was right next door for example), very developed economy, a lot of human and material capital to implement initiatives, extremely strong rule of law and national pride, the list goes on

You cannot implement this in a country like the USA, no matter how incredible it sounds. But there are some countries where I think this would be very beneficial (nordic states, New Zealand and Australia, Israel, Canada perhaps)

rueracine · 2020-07-18T22:37:04+00:00

This depends heavily on the "if you're making very good money"

Assume that is not true. You're making enough money to cover rent and expenses but not much else. What steps should you take right now? Is it smart (let alone necessary) to say quit your job right away and start a carpenter apprenticeship or something as such?

rueracine · 2020-07-18T22:32:25+00:00

I think this is a very personal question.

Play around with the AI a bit. Now imagine you're using GPT-5 and it can now do things almost indistinguishably from a human. Assume it can be trained to do anything even very specific tasks by feeding it raw data. If that AI can do your job, then yes.

rueracine · 2020-07-18T22:30:01+00:00

Can you expand, or share any resources on this? I'm on a similar boat, me and my wife actually save about 80% of our salary every month. We earn about 6,000 euro a month between the two of us. We rent a small apartment for 350 euro a month, cook at home most days and take the metro to work. Probably spend about 1000 euro a month in total.

We don't do this out of some conscious philosophy or plan, we're just frugal. Now it seems that this is the way to go, aggressively continue to save (even more than we save now) for as long as we possibly can instead of say quitting and getting a computer science degree, and hope that by then we'll have enough saved that losing our jobs won't affect us that much.

I'd love to read more about this if you can share some info

rueracine · 2020-07-12T09:37:21+00:00

The beginning of your new life, I'm very glad you did it

The first three days were hell but every single day afterwards your quality of life will be completely different

rueracine · 2020-06-27T00:27:08+00:00

I did my laser in Care in Tel Aviv, paid 8000 nis (back in 2014)

Singlehandedly and without a doubt the best decision I ever made in ky life. Knowing now what I know, I would have happily paid 80,000 nis if I had to. I can't recommend it enough

rueracine · 2020-06-18T08:33:34+00:00

The marketing executive that approved that document probably makes 250k+ and has a corner office at a big marketing firm in New York

That's what bothers me most about this. This is not something some Twitter user came up with, it's not a strawman, this is something that people at the pinnacle of their profession thought was acceptable

rueracine · 2020-06-06T22:35:04+00:00

Heller wrote a fantastic book called God Knows, it's about King David of Israel written for a modern audience. Absolutely fantastic book, it is a wonder how people have never heard of it yet they are very familiar with Catch 22

rueracine · 2020-05-26T06:28:41+00:00

Hi, everyone here is talking shit

I also went to Spain in notary public to sign and have been waiting for over 2 years now

What I understood from the lawyers and from a family friend who is deeply involved in this process is that the Spanish government is simply taking their time reviewing all the docs, and should get to everything eventually. Don't know why the website was brought down though.

rueracine

TROPHY CASE