On Saturday, 28 July 2018 at 11:09:28 UTC, Abdulhaq wrote:
On Friday, 27 July 2018 at 23:42:47 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
For me, I think that managing money is about choosing to
expose your capital intelligently to the market, balancing the
risk of loss against the prospective gain and considering this
in a portfolio sense.
Prediction doesn't really come into that
I think this apparent difference of opinion is down to
different definitions of the word prediction. When I say
prediction I mean the assessment of what are the possible
futures for a scenario and how likely each one is. It can be
conscious or unconscious. I think my understanding of the word
is not an uncommon one.
By my definition, when you balance the risk of loss (i.e.
predict how likely you are to lose money) against the
prospective gain (i.e. multiply the probability of each
possible outcome by its reward and sum the total to get a
prospective value) then you are, by my definition and
therefore, for me, by definition, making predictions.
It's tough when dealing with genuine - Knightian uncertainty or
even more radical versions. When one doesn't even know the
structure of the problem then maximising expected utility doesn't
work. One can look at capacities - Choquet and the like - but
then its harder to say something useful about what you should do.
And I think when dealing with human action and institutions we
are in a world of uncertainty more often than not.
It's not the prediction that matters but what you do. It's
habits, routines, perception, adaptation and actions that
matter.
I agree they are integral to our behaviour and habits and
routines do not involve the element of prediction. Perceptions
come before and actions take place after the decision process
is made (conscious or not) and so don't factor into this
discussion for me.
But it's a loop and one never takes a final decision to master D.
Also habits, routines and structures _do_ shape perception.
In truth I avoid discussions that are really just arguing about
definitions of words, but you made a couple of sweeping
bumper-stickery comments
That's entertaining. I've not been accused of that before! Bear
in mind also I tend to write on my phone.
that trying to predict things was
usually a waste of time and as an alternative we should 'be the
change...'. I wholeheartedly agree we should 'be the change...'
but it's not an alternative to making predictions, it goes hand
in hand with it. I'm sure you've read Kahneman's Thinking, Fast
and Slow. You made a generalisation that applies to the 'fast'
part. I'm saying your universal rule is wrong because of the
slow part.
Yes I read Kahneman et al papers for the first time in 92 in the
university library. I speed-read his book, and I thought it was
a bad book. I work with a specialist in making decisions under
uncertainty - she was the only person able to articulate to
George Soros how he made money because he certainly couldn't, and
she is mentioned in the preface to the revised version of
Alchemy. She has the same view as me - behavioural finance is
largely a dead end. One learns much more by going straight to
the neuroeconomics and incorporating also the work of Dr Iain
Macgilchrist.
Kahneman makes a mistake in his choice of dimension. There's
analytic and intuitive/gestalt and in my experience people making
high stakes decisions are much less purely analytical than a
believer in the popular Kahneman might suggest.
What I said about prediction being overrated isn't controversial
amongst a good number of the best traders and business people in
finance. You might read Nassim Taleb also.
I learnt D many years ago just after Andrei's book came out. I
love it but it's on the shelf at the moment for me. I rarely
get time for side projects these days but when I do I want them
to run on Android with easy access to all the APIs and without
too much ado in the build setup. They must continue to work and
be supported with future versions of Android. At work, on
Windows, JDK8/JavaFX/Eclipse/maven and
python/numpy/Qt/OpenCascade/VTK hit the spot.
Well it's a pity the D Android ecosystem isn't yet mature. Still
I remain in awe of the stubborn accomplishment of the man (with
help) who got LDC to run on Android.
It's not that bad calling D from Java. Some day I will see if I
can help automate that - Kai started working on it already I
think.
each project I
start I give some very hard thought about which development
environment I'm going to use, and D is often one of those
options. The likely future of D on the different platforms is
an important part of that assessment, hence 'predicting' the
future of D, hard and very unreliable though that is, is an
important element in some of my less trivial decisions.
Since you already know D you need to answer a different question.
What's the chance the compiler will die on the relevant horizon,
and how bad will it be for me if that happens. Personally I'm
not worried. If D should disappear in a few years, it wouldn't
be the end of the world to port things. I just don't think
that's very likely.
Of course it depends on your context. The people who use D at
work seem to be more principals who have the right to take the
best decision as they see it then agents who must persuade others
who are the real decision-makers. That's a recipe for quiet
adoption that's dispersed across many industries initially and
for the early adopters of D being highly interesting people.
Since, as the Wharton professor, Adam Grant observes, we are in
an age where positive disruptors can achieve a lot within an
organisation, that's also rather interesting.
