C's Biggest Mistake on Hacker News

Laeeth Isharc laeeth at laeeth.com
Fri Jul 27 23:42:47 UTC 2018


On Friday, 27 July 2018 at 15:04:12 UTC, Abdulhaq wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 23:27:45 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
>> But making predictions is a tricky thing and mostly of not 
>> much value.
>
> I'm really surprised to hear you say this - so much money in 
> the financial services is poured into making predictions, lots 
> of them and as fast as possible. Isn't that one of the promises 
> of D in that market?

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 do personally sometimes write longer term pieces about markets 
- I wrote a piece in June 2012 asking if dollar is bottoming and 
I said it was.  But that was based on a gestalt not some 
Cartesian predictive model.

> Whatever the reality about that, in the life of all humans the 
> ability to make good predictions is fundamental to survival - 
> if I cross the road now, will I be run over? If I build a chair 
> to make money, will anyone buy it?

I disagree.  It's not the prediction that matters but what you 
do.  It's habits, routines, perception, adaptation and actions 
that matter.  What people think drives their behaviour isn't what 
actually does.  See Dr Iain Macgilchrist Master and His Emissary 
for more.

And in particular if you survive based on having insight then 
it's interesting to listen to what you say.  If you are known as 
an expert but don't depend on having insight, it's interesting in 
how others perceive what you say and how that evolves, but the 
substance of your analysis is not - without skin in the game, 
it's just talk.

Bernanke admits he has had no clue about economic developments 
before they happen.  I used to trade a lot of gilts and the UK 
debt management office asked me to meet the IMF financial 
stability review guy in 2005.  He had a bee in his bonnet about 
hedge funds and the dollar yen carry trade. I told him to look at 
the banks and what they were buying.  He didn't listen.  I had 
lunch with Kohn, Fed vice chair in summer 2006.  I asked him 
about housing.  He wasn't worried at all.

So lots of people talk about all kinds of things. Look at how 
insightful they have been in the past.  Predictions themselves 
aren't worth much - recognising change early is.

And for what it's worth I think D is early in a bull market that 
will last for decades.  The grumbling is funnily enough quite 
characteristic of such too.

> Likewise, if I am investing time in developing my skills to 
> further my career, will learning D be a net benefit?

It really depends. There are some very good jobs in D.  If it 
should turn out we hired you some day then most likely you would 
find it quite satisfying and well paid and be rather glad you 
learnt D.  If not and not someone else then who knows.

I personally found following my intuition like in a Jack London 
novel to be better than trying to live by optimising and figuring 
out the best angle.  But people are different and it's difficult 
to know.

If you feel like learning D, do it.  If it's purely a career move 
then there are too many factors to say.


> important question depends heavily on predicting the future of 
> D (among many other things). If I use D for my startup, will it 
> be the secret sauce that will propel us to the top, or will I 
> be better off with JDK8 or modern C++?

Things once alive tend to grow.  The future is unknown if not 
unimaginable.  I don't think life works like that.  It's more 
like you pick something for your startup and the start-up fails 
because your business partner gets divorced.  But through some 
unlikely chain of coincidences that leads to some better 
opportunity you never could have found by approaching it head on.

So things are beyond calculation, but not beyond considering 
intuition and what resonates with you.

See the work of my colleague Flavia Cymbalista - How George Soros 
Knows What He Knows.


>>  I think it's more interesting to be the change you wish to 
>> see in the world.
>
> This has a lovely ring but it doesn't mean not to assess / 
> predict if what you do will provide a net benefit.

It's really up to you what you do.  People who make high stakes 
decisions - also commercially - I'm really not sure if 
predictions play the part you think they do.

One little trick.  If you have an insight nobody agrees with then 
you know you might be onto something when surprises start to come 
in your direction in a way nobody could have quite imagined.  We 
are seeing this now with processor challenges for example.



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