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Post by bb2 on Apr 11, 2024 1:15:58 GMT
So, Richard, maybe you have me muted. I've been busy but got to this this in your book, " Multifarious woe-laden mutterings". I'm hooked. Love the line(s).
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Post by richardsok on Apr 11, 2024 3:04:16 GMT
So, Richard, maybe you have me muted. I've been busy but got to this this in your book, " Multifarious woe-laden mutterings". I'm hooked. Love the line(s). Thanks, bb. But I can't take the credit. Richard Oldfield is the author, not me. I wrote "MEMOS From The Stock Trader's Notebook", not "Simple But Not Easy " Enjoy your read.
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Post by bb2 on Apr 11, 2024 18:28:55 GMT
Oh no! My mistake, another in a long line of embarrassments. Just got the paperback.
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Post by richardsok on Apr 15, 2024 1:35:01 GMT
Finished, after no little mental effort, the book "NOISE" by Daniel Kahneman.
If your team of five shooters all hit a target in the lower left corner, that is bias, (maybe your rifle sight is askew) but if their shots are scattered all over the target, that is noise. The transmission of a signal involves noise (entropy being a law of the universe). At the start of “Life of Brian” Jesus is giving his sermon on the mount. He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers” – but some further back hear “blessed are the cheese makers.” Of course, this causes an argument over why cheese makers are singled out for special blessing. This leads to a discussion of fallible inputs or inconsistent weights assigned to the inputs one is given.
This book is an analysis of how "noise" drives our failures in making judgments. You make a judgment when you do not know for certain – no one says, “I judge the fire to be hot”. Judgment implies weighing of variables. We tend to be far too confident in our judgments, and if the methods discussed in this book have one thing in common, it is to make us pause before we pass judgment, ways of ensuring you look before you leap.
Organization that make judgments, like judges who sentence criminals or insurance companies that weigh risk are shown to be wildly inconsistent when individual decisions are analyzed by groups of peers. Hiring committees are little better at choosing candidates than selecting people at random after basic requisites are met.
The nature of judgments is that they are always noisy, if not always twisted by bias. And whenever this is tested, judgments prove to be much more noisy than we would guess. This means that one judge might give a drug addict a suspended sentence while another might give someone else under the exact same charge 20 years. Efforts to create judgmental guidelines like mandatory sentencing (or picking stocks by technical indicators!) can do much to reduce noise … but many seem reluctant to use such guardrails against noise or bias. But this book isn’t about bias, it is about noise. Bias shifts all results in a predictable direction – noise is unpredictable. We can think that noise is fairer than bias – except, you probably wouldn’t think that if you were sitting next to the guy that got the suspended sentence.
The takeaway here is ‘wherever there is judgment there is noise, and more of it than you imagine.” There are some interesting ideas, like the idea of reducing noise as a hygiene task – since, you are unlikely to actually know the consequence of decisions you didn’t make, but reducing noisy decisions is likely to make better judgments anyway. Like washing your hands, you can never know the infection you might have ended up with if you hadn’t washed them.
“Noise” is an interesting book, if heavy going at times. The authors were needlessly turgid, I thought, and working my way slowly through the text felt a lot like work – a risky style if I'm your reader. My patience is getting thinner in my dotage. But I found a shortcut at the end – you can flip to the last chapter and get all the major ideas briefly summarized in quick succession. All signal, no noise, and zero redundancy.
So is the book worthwhile for the small investor who lives or fails on his judgments? I confess my bias: I favored the book because the authors promote objective techniques to reduce opinions in decision making -- much like I wrote in my book "MEMOS..." in choosing what stocks to trade and when. Still, the book will hardly make you a better investor, but it will induce you to think more clearly and more realistically about how you make the judgments you do.
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Post by bizman on Apr 15, 2024 1:55:08 GMT
Good call richardsok , I love Kahneman. Always gives you something to think about. Here are 3 quotes I like from him: "So, the pernicious effect of hindsight is that we get the sense, after the fact, that an event was predictable, so we get the sense that the world is predictable. We think the world makes sense, and that exaggeration of the coherence, consistency and predictability of the world means that we deny the real uncertainty with which we are faced in existence. And this denial of uncertainty in turn produces irrational action." — Daniel Kahneman“All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions.” — Daniel Kahneman"Let's start from the main domains where we know people don't change their minds — politics or religion. When you ask people, why do you believe what you believe? They answer by giving reasons for their beliefs. Subjectively, we experience that reasons are prior to the beliefs that can be deduced from them. But we know that the power of reasons is an illusion. The belief will not change when the reasons are defeated. The causality is reversed. People believe the reasons because they believe in the conclusion.”— Daniel Kahneman
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Post by Norbert on Apr 15, 2024 5:25:50 GMT
As a possible antidote to Kahneman's cynical (?) take on human thought processes, I recommend:
"Lee Quan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the US, and the World".
What impresses me about the father of modern Singapore, is his lack of ideological bias. He was a realist who cared about what works, not popular belief systems. Singapore is the result.Yew wasn't an academic scribbler; he was the creator and leader of a small nation.
This book is a collection of Yew's commentary selected by others. Next I plan to read Yew's own writing, "From Third World to First".
First, however, will finish reading "Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001". So far I find the book objective, detailed, and well researched.
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Post by johntaylor on Apr 16, 2024 21:31:05 GMT
Watching video of the old stock exchange in Copenhagen (with the spire of intertwined dragon tails) on fire
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2024 2:09:20 GMT
As a possible antidote to Kahneman's cynical (?) take on human thought processes, I recommend: "Lee Quan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the US, and the World". What impresses me about the father of modern Singapore, is his lack of ideological bias. He was a realist who cared about what works, not popular belief systems. Singapore is the result.Yew wasn't an academic scribbler; he was the creator and leader of a small nation. This book is a collection of Yew's commentary selected by others. Next I plan to read Yew's own writing, "From Third World to First". First, however, will finish reading "Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001". So far I find the book objective, detailed, and well researched. I recommend "Side by Side, Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine" if you are interested in another book on the subject.
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Post by racqueteer on Apr 22, 2024 9:21:17 GMT
Written 1992-1993, CHAINS OF COMMAND by Dale Brown hypothesizes an invasion of The Ukraine by Russia. Chilling given recent history. Not great literature, but relevance is obvious.
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Post by richardsok on Apr 26, 2024 21:37:36 GMT
Finished GENTLEMEN, SCHOLARS and SCOUNDRELS, a treasury of notable essays and articles from Harper's Magazine since 1850.
I found this old volume years ago in a One Dollar Specials bin of cast-offs in a flea market. Finally got around to it this week. It's a big book and there is a lot to interest no one – but among the dregs I found some gems. Here are a few:
ONE MAN'S MEAT ( E B White) A return to Walden Pond
WHISKEY IS FOR PATRIOTS (Bernard De Voto) Great cultures create great liquors – and great men to appreciate them. A+
SUBWAYS ARE FOR SLEEPING (Edmund G Love) Tracking a NYC hobo as he survives and, at times, thrives
THE GREAT WALL STREET CRASH (Galbraith) Probably the forerunner of his book-length classic.
THE SOUTHERN CASE AGAINST DESEGREGATION (T R Waring) An argument you'll never read again.
ON FEAR – THE SOUTH IN LABOR (William Faulkner) The iconic southern novelist is enlisted to refute the case for segregation
WILD BILL (George Ward Nichols) The true W B Hickok, as the author knew him.
THE HEIST (Everett de Baun) The theory and practice of armed robbery
CHIVALROUS AND SEMI CHIVALROUS SOUTHRONS (J W De Forest) On the humiliated and impoverished southern people after the Civil War. Written 1869.
THE COMING ICE AGE (Betty Friedan) Could this be THE Betty Friedan, feminist mouthpiece? Here, in 1958, in her pre-feminist days(?) she investigates scientists anticipating a cold, wet future as the poles drift. So much for predictions.
THE SECRET OF LIFE. (Loren Eiseley) I read this guy in high school. Here he muses how life may have erupted from dead matter and how modern scientific theories don't satisfy. … Lots more.
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BTW. Just finished viewing the entire OZARK series on Netflix. An ambitious family has more crises managing a business and employees than you'll ever have. A+
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Post by retiredat48 on Apr 26, 2024 22:36:47 GMT
+1...OZARK
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Post by Capital on Apr 27, 2024 11:49:27 GMT
I'm reading "All The Light We Can Not See"
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Post by richardsok on Apr 30, 2024 13:34:48 GMT
I'm reading "All The Light We Can Not See" Hm. The book has over a hundred thousand written reader reviews on goodreads! Almost all of them enthusiastic. Never saw anything like it. I'm not a big historical fiction buff, but will definitely give this one a peek. Hope you're enjoying it.
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Post by Chahta on Apr 30, 2024 13:35:35 GMT
I'm reading "All The Light We Can Not See" Hm. The book has over a hundred thousand written reader reviews on goodreads! Almost all of them enthusiastic. Never saw anything like it. I'm not a big historical fiction buff, but will definitely give this one a peek. Hope you're enjoying it. It is already a movie on Netflix.
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Post by Capital on Apr 30, 2024 15:39:28 GMT
I'm reading "All The Light We Can Not See" Hm. The book has over a hundred thousand written reader reviews on goodreads! Almost all of them enthusiastic. Never saw anything like it. I'm not a big historical fiction buff, but will definitely give this one a peek. Hope you're enjoying it. I am finding it quite enjoyable.
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Post by Capital on Apr 30, 2024 15:41:24 GMT
Hm. The book has over a hundred thousand written reader reviews on goodreads! Almost all of them enthusiastic. Never saw anything like it. I'm not a big historical fiction buff, but will definitely give this one a peek. Hope you're enjoying it. It is already a movie on Netflix. Yes it is a movie. I have not yet seen the movie. I plan to watch it after I finish reading the book.
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