BC CRYPTO
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

Someone tosses a coin ten times; it comes up heads every time. What's the probability it comes up heads on the next toss? (Pretty darn high—part of @nntaleb's work is unprogramming you from your high-school rules of thumb.) Now consider the (related) Gambler's fallacy...

 In this case, it's a theory about compensation: the worse one's luck is, the more likely it is to see a reversal. On the surface, it's irrational. The more bad luck you have, the more you accumulate evidence that the system is rigged.
But there's also an anthropic component. If the luck is bad enough, it starts to become inconsistent with your survival. You've accumulated evidence for correlations in the environment, but these correlations (may be) inconsistent with (people like you) being in this environment.
An example. You're in a city where everyone takes public transport. You encounter a string of bad delays. It's reasonable to conclude they'll end—otherwise people wouldn't take public transport. It's unlikely that you happened to show up right when the network collapses.
Of course, that's a bad heuristic in a casino, which relies on a constant influx of losers. But in other environments, particularly with persistent populations and no evidence for sudden changes in the underlying laws, it makes sense.
Another example: the three-card monte scam in a big city. You meet some guys on the corner, who convince you to go in on the game. You win, a few times. The more you win, the more you ought to be convinced that your luck will turn. Otherwise, how are these guys there?
(In this case, the anthropic reasoning concerns the scamsters—it's unlikely that you showed up right when their operation starts to fall apart.)
The general principle, which again is due to @nntaleb, is a new kind of failure. The "IYI", intellectual-yet-idiot. IMO, this is driven by standardized testing—we started to promote people on the basis of their ability to internalize fake-but-difficult-to-master rules...
In a previous cycle, the British ran their empire by fast-tracking twelve year olds who could master Latin grammar. The ambiguities of interpretation make this a much better idea than the SAT version, where one learns more abstract "grammars"—e.g., integration by parts.
Everything can be degraded, of course. When I give CMU students the coin-toss problem, it's usually unfamiliar enough that they're thrown back on a more complex, and life-integrated, form of reasoning. But ask that question enough, and tutors will arise to teach the solution...
...which negates the original value of the puzzle. (BTW, nearly all the students "get it", which bodes well for our future engineers.)
A final thought on this, before I get back to my real work. If you pose this kind of problem as a teacher, there's a second level to what's going on: your students are also modeling you! (and your class.)
i.e., they're asking themselves—is this a class where we're all living in la-la land, or is there some substance here, some connection to our own lived experience?
So, yes, I'm proud that most of my students get it. :)
This is lovely—yes! "I can't be the only idiot" summarizes why we keep waiting for the train with rising hope. https://t.co/s3d4aFg7Tv
You might also connect it to the bulk-vs-long-tail. "I'm not the only idiot" is true when there are repeated tests of the system of similar magnitude.
OK, truly one last thought. A scam is more likely to succeed if you're doing something new, but can convince people you've always been around, that this is "normal". Certainly psychologically obvious, but it's fun to look at it from the point of view of rational analysis.
(In the case where the scam operates by inducing the Concorde/sunk-cost fallacy—slowly extracting money from the person, who continues to believe in a final payoff.)

More from Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
So—probability. Do we really need it? This has been on my mind since 2017, when I finally sat down to think through quantum theory. (/n)

One thing that’s always struck me is how *late* probability theory came in intellectual history. We had integral calculus before we had probability. And probability is insanely simple, mathematically!

I’m tempted to say that probability theory is not, in fact, Lindy. Frequentist probability is (for all the usual reasons) best understood as a heuristic. Bayesian interpretations, by contrast, take the remarkable step of tying it to mental states.

You have to work very hard to convince yourself that beliefs really are “degrees of belief in sets of events” (or whatever). It’s not natural—and I won’t rehearse the whole story about rational choice and decision theory...

So with those critiques in the back of my mind, when I read David Wallace’s decision-theoretic account of the Born Rule I was rather primed to say, hey, so what? Meaning...
PROBABILITY
Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
Donna Strickland, one of this year's Nobel Laureates, was not considered "notable enough" for Wikipedia as late as this May—reported by a number of sites, including the Independent. I dug into this a little. Here's the data—


This is the first deletion, back in 2014. A bit hard to read between the lines, but the basic story that an admin had Stickland's page "speedy deleted"—i.e., deleted without debate. The method was something called Copyright Jujitsu.

In particular, the admin had the page deleted not because of notability, but because it included a photograph of Strickland that had ambiguous copyright status. This is a method that people developed to get rid of content they didn't want, but also didn't want to debate.

"Copyright Jujitsu" because it is usually used against spam from companies; a PR officer uploads promotional material to Wikipedia. Instead of debating whether it's neutral, the admin can say "we'd love to have it, but the material appears to violate your company's copyright".

Usually the PR office and the IP office are separate in a company, and the idea of releasing promotional material under public domain is such a legal nightmare that the PR person goes away.
ALL
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Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
On Bayesianism, the Many Worlds Interpretation, and personal identity.

Some thoughts worked out in a letter to a friend, which is the kind of thing you do when off Twitter for a glorious week. (🧵)

“Chance is ignorance”—the Bayesian story; all probabilities represent states of mind, not states of the world. One *could* put (some) chances “in the world”, but let’s take Occam’s Razor seriously...

That the probability of a fair coin coming up heads is 50% simply means that marginalizing (tracing, as the physicists say) over the hidden facts leaves you, nearly, maximally ignorant of the outcome.

Quantum uncertainty (access below!) poses an apparent challenge to this story. There seems to be nothing to be ignorant about when it comes to (say) electron spin—there is nothing “inside” the

The electron is a simple object, in other words. So where does the uncertainty come from? One could follow David Wallace’s wonderful interpretation in terms of chaotic dynamics and decoherence, but let’s see if we can take another route...
DATA SCIENCE
Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
ALL
Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
So, today, for the first time in 25 (!) years of Apple, I downgraded. From the 2016 MacBook Pro to my 2013, which I had kept in a drawer...


It was pretty simple to do—Apple Time Machine backups let me do it with one click.

That first tweet captures, in two pictures, how badly Apple has “lost the plot” (to quote @wylieprof). On the right is the Apple MagSafe adapter, from 2013. On the left, what I had “upgraded” to.

Thanks, Apple! I really was nostalgic for worrying about yanking my computer off the table.

Oh and I really appreciated not knowing if my computer was charging. What was great was the little whoop sound you used, so that the speaker before me could be informed I was charging my laptop.
TECH

More from Crypto

Spencer Noon
Spencer Noon
@spencernoon
11 signs $ETH is going to blow past its all-time high 👇🏼

#1: Ethereum continues to dwarf the entire crypto space in terms of fees paid ($7.25m daily avg) -- proving it's the most useful network in the world.


#2: The number of large $ETH transactions (>$100k) is 7x smaller than during its 2018 ATHs -- a sign that whales and institutions still haven't entered the game.


#3: Hash Rate is at an all-time high (313.12 TH/s) -- a sign that miners have never been more confident.


#4: Ethereum has nearly 550k daily active addresses (90-day MA) -- a figure that has doubled YTD and now sits comfortably at ATHs too.
CRYPTO
Jason Choi
Jason Choi
@mrjasonchoi
Crypto trading - some personal takeaways from 2020

Disclaimer: my job requires picking investments, at times with short/medium term view (days-months), many times with a long term view (years).

This is mostly a thread on reminders to myself relating mostly to the former.

Watch out for decisions based on fear & greed

Confirmation bias (ignoring contrary signals), anchoring bias (married to entry, trading PnL), sizing too big on low r/r trades, hesitating to buy cheap assets because "it's fallen/rallied too much".

/1

Minimize regret

Constantly question whether you have done all you could to maximize returns in the past month/quarter. Review all tools at your disposal (vol strats, momentum strats, fundamentals) but don't Dunning-Kruger yourself. There are no jack of all trades.

/2

You can't catch them all

Don't regret missing out on a few trades/ investments. Better to win big on 1 high conviction idea then win big on 100 small ones. Be ok with missing out but be ruthless with not learning from it.

/3
CRYPTO
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\U0001f42e Mikko Ohtamaa
🐮 Mikko Ohtamaa...
@moo9000
1/ Welcome to #DeFi Wednesday.

Let's talk about how interest-bearing cash on a blockchain is going to revolutionise boring corporate treasury management that concerns every company is is a larger business than all crypto trading in the world.

Enter the thread

👇👇👇


2/ Blockchain community is often seen as toxic maxis and redditors who shill other their weekly favourite shitcoin in the hope of getting Lambo.

Sometimes we also do things that progress humanity towards the better future and interest-bearing cash is one of those things.


3/ Less chad and more things that actually matter:

My incomplete theory of interest-bearing cash is also available also as a blog post:

https://t.co/uiG0fZiVyu

It is 15 pages. Pick your slow poison or die fast by continue reading here.

4/ First time in the history we have an ability to create interest-bearing cash-like instruments.

Interest-bearing cash ticks up dollar (euro) balance real-time in your wallet.

Here is a demonstration using @aaveaave aDAI, based on @makerdao DAI, and @TrustWalletApp


5/ Interest-bearing cash is not like your bank's saving account. Your money in a bank is not yours, but bank's. There are some flaws in the current banking system causing a headache for Chief Financial Officers (CFOs)
CRYPTO
Oliver Jumpertz
Oliver Jumpertz
@oliverjumpertz
"Blockchain technology is energy-intensive..." => No, it doesn't have to be.

Let's look at Proof-Of-Stake, an alternative to the energy-intensive Proof-Of-Work algorithm.

🧵🔽

1️⃣ A Quick Recap On Proof-Of-Work

A Proof-Of-Work algorithm requires miners to do a certain amount of work that is compute-intensive to gain access to a service or the right to do something. This algorithm, by design, also requires that the work done shall not ...

... be reusable for anything else than what it was performed for. This lies at the core of the security concept of a blockchain. To gain the right to append a new block to a chain and to get some currency as a reward, there is work to be done, and this work must be verifyable.

That work is a race between different miners. Many miners try to compete and to be the first to find the answer to a problem presented to them. This implies that a lot of energy is wasted as only the first correct solution is accepted.

You can find a more detailed thread on Proof-Of-Work
CRYPTO
Emperor\U0001f451
Emperor👑
@EmperorBTC
How to Trade without Fear, Stress or Anxiety. 💯

Trading should bring wealth, happiness and peace.
Not stress and sleepless nights.

Here is how to trade without dying faster.

Please share to de-stress the world.

A Thread.

The reasons for feeling anxious and Stressed.

1. Too high Position Size.
2. No Exit Plan.
3. Almost no Entry strategy.

We will learn about them below and try to find a solution.

1. POSITION SIZE.
Position size should be equal to what you're willing to lose and not cry over.

Eg. If your position size is 10K, you should be able to lose 10K without it making you depressed.

It doesn't mean you throw away 10K as a random experiment.

If you're stressed? Reduce your Position size, Now!

But If I trade with such a small position size, it won't be much Profitable?

-Profits and wealth are built slowly, trade with small amounts, built your system, profits will accumulate.

Small Position size. Low Stress. Better life.

Remember, you don't need a lot to become big.

1% gain per day compounds to 3700% Return per year.

- If Stressed or anxious, reduce your position size.

Switch to smaller position which doesn't make you feel sleepless.
CRYPTO

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Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
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Mangottu Bhagavathi Temple
#Palakkad #Kerala
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Mangottu Bhagavathi Temple is situated in Athipotta near Alathur of palakkad district. Devi is kshipraprasadi here and grants relief to those who worship with full faith.
Mookken Chathen, situated on the Northern 👇


side of the temple, is guarding Devi here.
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Pat Walls
Pat Walls
@thepatwalls
And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

The winners 👇

#10

Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

https://t.co/M75RAirZzs

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!


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Instaland - Create amazing landing pages for your followers.

https://t.co/5KkveJTAsy

A team project! @bpmct and @BaileyPumfleet built a tool for social media influencers to create simple "swipe up" landing pages for followers.

Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!


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SayHenlo - Chat without distractions

https://t.co/og0B7gmkW6

Built by @DaltonEdwards, it's a platform for combatting conversation overload. This product was also coded exclusively from an iPad 😲

Dalton is a beast. I'm so excited he placed in the top 10.


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CoderStory - Learn to code from developers across the globe!

https://t.co/86Ay6nF4AY

Built by @jesswallaceuk, the project is focused on highlighting the experience of developers and people learning to code.

I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!
MAKERS
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Greg Olear
Greg Olear
@gregolear
Trump is a Russian asset, a mob money launderer installed by his mob whoremasters to sow chaos and weaken the US & our allies.

EVERY SINGLE THING HE’S DONE since taking office is to achieve those purposes—that and to enrich himself personally.

[THREAD]


1/ His entire family is part of this. Melania is a fucking crook. Ivanka is a fucking crook. Junior and Gums are fucking crooks. They will all die in prison, except for Kushner, who, if he really *did* trade US intel for money, should be executed for espionage.

2/ Why do you think Trump installs uniquely corrupt & awful people to Cabinet positions? Pruitt, Zinke, Betsy, Rex/Pompeo, Wilbur "Melting Nazi Face" Ross. They are not there to serve us. They are not there to drain the swamp. They are there to BURN THE REPUBLIC DOWN.

3/ Trump steals. He takes taxpayer money—your money and mine—and lines his pockets with it. He exploits his office to make himself richer. This is all he cares about. Why are Republican citizens, you “fiscal conservatives,” not more angry about this? Riddle me THAT, #MAGA.

4/ Matt Whitaker, the human dildo and “acting AG,” was illegally installed to throw a monkey wrench in the Mueller investigation. That’s why they won’t release his financials. He’s fucking bought and sold. He’s going to prison for obstruction.
POLITICS
Raman Shalupau
Raman Shalupau
@ksaitor
Maker movement is doing to startups what startups did to corporations.

Here is why 👇

Startups fixed the problem of innovation, that corporations lack.

In big, slow corporations, innovation is a RISK and distraction from the core $$$ profitable business.

Agile startups could launch, iterate fast and eventually stumble upon new growing market opportunities.

However,

When a startup reaches product-market-fit, it has to 🚀 "grow at all costs" and reach market dominance before some giant corporation can replicate their new product and distribute it to their existing giant customer base.

Startup's "growth at all costs" often means growth at the expense of charging customers $$$ money.

Hence, to be sustainable, startups have to constantly chase investor money.

Startup teams spend more time finding and pleasing investors, than finding and pleasing customers.

95% of startups die because they run out of (investor) money + no business model + crazy investor expectations.

Same way corporations die, when unable to adjust to new technology and market shifts.
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Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
CRYPTO