"alter the mindset of the population" is such a vague boogeyman. Literally anyone with an internet connection has the capability to "alter the mindset of the population".
Not at scale. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hysterical about it, but to me it seems indisputable that media companies (and this covers TV companies, newspaper companies when you go back far enough) have the ability to alter how a significant section of the population feel about a topic. A single person with an internet connection does not have the same power.
Yes at scale. There are individuals who run social media accounts that reach hundreds of millions of people every month.
You can amass more reach and influence than many of the biggest TV stations / newspapers of the previous generation with nothing more than an internet connection.
> There are individuals who run social media accounts that reach hundreds of millions of people every month.
And who holds the levers to that reach? The social media companies. If they want that account’s posts and I be less visible to users they’ll be able to do it in a heartbeat (and have!)
Sure, I'm not disputing each social media company has the ability to alter public discourse.
My whole point is that there are literally billions of entities (everyone on Earth with an internet connection) who also have the ability to alter public discourse at scale. Hence why it's a vague boogeyman... the phrase "alter the mindset of a population" could be used to describe anything from a Orwellian propaganda machine to a Mr. Beast video.
In the 1990's, you could've claimed "Tetris is a software product developed by a geopolitical competitor (Russia) that has the capability to alter the mindset of the population" and you would've been right, but it would've been a silly thing to get worked up over.
Lol just because everything has risks and rewards doesn't mean that the risk/reward profile is the same for everything, and doesn't change the fact that most crypto trading is closer to gambling than it is to investing
I don't understand this attitude on HN. Crypto is here to stay and not every coin is the same. BTC cracked $70,000.00 this month. I remember buying it at $6.00 in '09.
What "managed decline"? The U.S. is arguably as strong as its ever been, and China's economy has been crashing recently.
The implications in this thread that US citizens are soon going to be running for their lives from foreign threats seem incredibly paranoid -- the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a ZeroHedge or InfoWars comment section, not on this forum.
The US stock market is as strong as its ever been. The allocation of capital past that is conducted in a way that doesn't bring much widespread or strategic benefit.
> I'd take a step back, and ask what makes art (music, visual, etc) valuable.
> To that, I'd respond "scarcity."
What is your definition of valuable here?
If you're referring to value to culture/society, I think you're very far off-base. The most culturally valuable artistic works are ubiquitous, the opposite of scarce. Art isn't really able to have any culture influence if it only impacts a small number of people.
If you're referring to monetary value, you're also dead wrong lmao. Look at the top 100 most-paid artists of the last decade, and tell me how hard it is to find and appreciate their entire artistic catalogue for yourself.
The argument that scarcity = artistic value doesn't have any basis in fact, and is the sort of thing that would only be shilled by someone trying to con you into buying an NFT.
> It's hard to imagine highly valued art (either culturally or monetarily) without scarcity.
hahahaha what? Compare the monetary and cultural impact of that one "ultra-scarce" Wu-Tang album (monetary: $2m, cultural: none) to the impact of Taylor Swift's last album, which is available on every streaming service (monetary: $200m+, cultural: very high)
Valuable as in culturally significant and monetarily expensive.
> The most culturally valuable artistic works are ubiquitous, the opposite of scarce.
Not so. Copies of those works are ubiquitous, but there is a singular, definitive work.
Name me a handful of world-famous works for which there are multiple, almost-indistinguishable but distinct copies.
The Mona Lisa has a few original alternates, and yet they pale in value to the famous one. Which itself, ironically, became popular famous mostly through being stolen (scarcity).
> Look at the top 100 most-paid artists of the last decade, and tell me how hard it is to find and appreciate their entire artistic catalogue for yourself.
> [Once Upon a Time in Shaolin] vs [Speak Now (Taylor's Version)]
Total artistic renumeration, especially in the modern period, is dominated by distribution volume.
But if we're talking about single work valuation, the Wu Tang album costs $2M.
> Copies of those works are ubiquitous, but there is a singular, definitive work.
When referring to recorded music, this isn't a distinction that has ever actually mattered in the real world, just a fiction made up to shill NFTs.
Are you going to pretend that anyone actually cares about a "singular, definitive FLAC file" that all of the streaming services' FLAC and MP3 playbacks are based on? This is pure fantasy, the copies are the same thing as the original piece.
The idea that Mona Lisa's (or any other artwork's) cultural influence comes from its scarcity is hilarious. Literally anyone can visit the Louvre and appreciate it for themself. Do you think it would have anywhere near as much influence if it was hidden behind closed doors and only 1 person was able to see it?
> But if we're talking about single work valuation, the Wu Tang album costs $2M.
Taylor's album costs $15.
Last time I checked, the sum of revenue from their discography is how artists and labels get paid, not based on the maximum amount that 1 person is willing to pay.
Speak Now is a single work, and it generated like 100x as much monetary value as Shaolin (with like 10,000x as much cultural impact). And those estimates are extremely conservative, when you consider that you can tour and sell merch off an album that people can actually listen to lol.
Literally every world-famous work has replicas and recreations, what's your point? Those copies are also part of the work's cultural influence, and in many cases (if the replicas are sold by the original artist) part of the monetary value as well.
This doesn't provide any more credence to the falsity that art's scarcity is the source of its value (when overwhelming evidence proves that the exact opposite is true)
> The one officially-blessed Taylor Swift album. The one version of Beethoven's Fifth.
Millions of people have bought vinyls/CDs/MP3 replicas of these albums. These are not scarce works. The demand is not for the scarce original (who even knows what that means when it comes to music), it's for a faithful recreation of the artist's work and creative output.
On top of that, nobody who listens to these albums really just wants one album... they want to listen to music that moves them. Taylor Swift fans will listen to other albums that she puts out, and music from other artists that they enjoy. When Beethoven released his 6th symphony, it didn't make his 5th any less valuable to those who enjoyed it.
Because for most people, the value of art comes from its intrinsic beauty, not its "scarcity". Unless if you're someone whose only attachment to art is as a vehicle for financial speculation, which is sad but unfortunately common in NFT circles, etc.
> But if that's not true, it should be possible to point to, say, a series of similar paintings or musical compositions that are all famous.
Have you heard the term genre before? It's literally a word for a group of similar musical compositions. Most genres contain plenty of similar compositions that are all famous.
If people enjoy a work of art, there is almost always other popular art made that's similar to it. Turns out, you get bored if you just listen to one album over and over again.
When it comes to art, most people enjoy variety, it doesn't "confuse them" lol. This is clearly reflected in the market, as there are hundreds of unique genres of music, each with thousands of unique artists.
I don't think this is accurate -- overt autotune in pop music peaked in the 00's, and has really not been as influential in the pop trends of the last decade or two.
Many of the most popular artists today lean away from heavy electronic control, and go for a more acoustic/natural sound.
I think that the AI vocals becoming indistinguishable from the real thing has more to do with the quality of the AI, and less to do with modern pop music sounding robotic.
Autotune and pitch correction are not the same thing. The majority of recent pop songs don't have a noticeable electronic vocal control in the way that the parent comment is describing.
The autotuned vocal style generally peaked in popularity a couple decades ago, and is much less common now (with many of the current top pop artists opting for more organic vocals).
I don't think that the incentive to "provide as little value as possible for as much money as possible" is in any way unique to the SAAS pricing model. Theoretically, every optimized pricing model will attempt to maximize revenue at a given value level.
And in practice, what does "get you hooked, take your data hostage" mean? I can't think of many SAAS subscriptions in my personal life where this is a real issue.
Where does the child fall on this hierarchy... do they get any input in what technology they derive value/enjoyment from, or is that entirely dictated by adults in their community who grew up 20+ years ago?
I think my point is pretty clear: you listed a whole hierarchy of people who you think should have control over your child's behavior (with you at position #1), and haven't given any answer for where you think a child's own decision-making should fit in
Did you miss my original question?
> Do they get any input in what technology they derive value/enjoyment from, or is that entirely dictated by adults in their community who grew up 20+ years ago?
Instead of focusing on your own point, look at the answer I gave you. You seem to make up an image in your mind that I'm disregarding the child's own personality, when I haven't even touched on that aspect. Fight a real battle instead of an imaginary battle.
You literally didn't give me one, what on earth are you talking about.
> You seem to make up an image in your mind that I'm disregarding the child's own personality
I don't know where you're getting that I've 'made an image up in my mind'.... I asked you a question about how you weighted your child's input / freedom when it comes to technology, and you've done nothing but deflect lmao. I'm not "fighting a battle"... I asked a straightforward question that has still received no answer.
I can't tell if I'm talking to a human or a chatbot at this point.
I think a more compelling argument against technical analysis can be found by considering the outcome of a semi-efficient market, and how unlikely it is that simple, purely momentum-based signals haven't already been arbitraged away by the other participants in the market (who have significantly more sophistication and speed-of-execution than anyone publishing technical analysis strategies online)
The Market Wizard series has several good interviews with traders with verified records that significantly outperformed for decades. The ones who used TA invariably say that it used to work but became less and less effective as computers became more prevelant.
I wonder if the crossover strategy would still outperform (on a Sharpe Ratio basis) starting in 2005 instead of 1998.
I also wonder if the crossover strategy would fail to outperform (on a Sharpe Ratio basis) once transaction fees were considered.
It still overperforms after 2005 (0.63 sharpe vs 0.55 for buy&hold). It gets kinda awful after 2015 (0.47 sharpe), with the V-shaped 2020 crash and recovery.
I always assumed any momentum effectiveness was arbitrage on trader volume scales differing by order of magnitude.
E.g. a major player rebalancing a position created distortions that allowed much smaller players to profit, but no distortion on the scale that would allow others trading at major volume to profit
> I always assumed any momentum effectiveness was arbitrage on trader volume scales differing by order of magnitude.
It's an area of active research:
> Students of financial economics have largely attributed the appearance of momentum to cognitive biases, which belong in the realm of behavioral economics. The explanation is that investors are irrational,[4][5] in that they underreact to new information by failing to incorporate news in their transaction prices. However, much as in the case of price bubbles, other research has argued that momentum can be observed even with perfectly rational traders.[6]
If not, what makes you confident that your peers were falling behind due to some sort of innate inability, instead of as a result of compounding poor teaching or other environmental factors?
Unless you can mass edit all the factors, then it remains that some people simply cannot do math past a certain level.
But for what it’s worth, it was a very small school in a VERY poor area. (Median income probably at or below $20k / year) The teaching was actually above-average for the area, but probably below average over a national rating.
I do think factors matter in my personal anecdote of my particular high school. However my LIFE has reinforced my observations: most people are profoundly bad at math, from a seemingly fundamental level.
