Great post- over the last year all of these ideas have really influenced how I act
> And yet, people will tell you to play within it, because it does provide certain guarantees that they find comforting. If you can play by its rules, and hold up the proper signals, it will do its best to give you a “fair price”.
recently realized it’s more accurate to say the market doesn’t even give you a fair price, since the people circumventing the market are skimming off the best goods, services, partners. It punishes you for using it
> But the guy who shared a room with you for one year in university ended up solving the whole thing, just by talking to you 3 years later.
My story is a bit longer, and started with a birthday party I attended of a friend. But directionally, supports your point. I'm the one who solved the problem for my friend's company and continues to do so more than 10 years since said birthday party. I continue to reap financial reward from it.
> So, are you saying markets aren’t even real?
More like, weak ties are more real than markets. But knowing this fact and operating my life as if this fact is true, is a different story. I have operated my life more to the "markets are more real" notion.
Your article is a good reminder that I already knew this, but I haven't yet converted the knowledge into actions that are consistent with said knowledge. Which of course is as good as not knowing it.
> But fairness is not how things ever worked.
Not ever. Having said that, yes is also a sign of human progress that things are more fair now than past. More meritocracy though not absolute. And yes, people should also work towards things being more fair.
Having said that, at the individual level, not taking advantage of your personal (thus unfair) edge, so long as stay within boundaries of law and typical moral norms, is not automatically making the world more fair.
Maybe the best outcome for the world is that everybody makes full use of their personal, unfair advantage, reap the rewards, show genuine self-aware-ness and humbleness when people ask you about it, and then use some of that reward to benefit the world somehow.
I'm directing that last paragraph to myself. No response needed. haha
Now a fan. subscribing to you
> It’s no wonder then, that people are surprised by things like the unreasonable efficacy of cold e-mails.
Again, I have one success story amidst dozens of "nothing happened". I probably have hundreds more of "i shoulda but i didn't" examples.
A lesson popularized by Tim Ferriss book many years ago. probably one i should dust off the shelf and reactivate.
There's probably also a spammy way of doing the cold email. But that doesn't mean cold email automatically equals spammy.
> The reason public markets have no alpha left is not because they’re so wonderfully efficient, but because there’s barely anything happening there in the first place.
The classic saying goes, that if someone has a successful business formula (the alpha in the equation), why would they give it to you that easily (e.g. index fund strategies)?
Some observations from two opposing sides of the TLP-esque grindset:
1. Rao (paywalled XD): Male attractiveness has negligible or even negative alpha, but feminine attractiveness still has a bit of alpha left. End of alpha (charismatic heroism) is it the same thing as Fukuyama's "end of history" and Ortega's "mass man" as NPCs. https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-end-of-alpha
Combining these two, the terms "public markets have no alpha" and "easy mode in markets are for cowards" can be made through the bridge of thymos/ambition => market of ideas => aesthetics/attractiveness => no alpha/heroism => cowardice. It also leads to the weird side effect that unwise ambition escalates to cowardice.
this is so well said, i will send this to anyone who applies to jobs through the normal pipeline now and feels bad about doing it through another channel. i really like how you pointed out that it does feel like 'cheating' when it is easier
i never thought about applying to jobs because of market forces not being efficient but it makes so much sense, you put to words what i thought was so hard to articulate about why applying to jobs feels so monotonous and the forces influencing why thank you so much for more 🔥 pieces
Question: is this why every job application has to be through LinkedIn or some other basic "fill in your information" sites?
I would much rather be cold-called with a public profile and talk in person, than to constantly shill some kind of fake "personal brand" ala Byung Chul Han's Achievement Society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLZOdvK80ic
I like the description of what Hans Georg Moeller calls the age of "profilicity".
So like it or not, these profiles in LinkedInBigFaceStack networks are inevitable. They seem dehumanizing or monotonous yes. And tries to make us look like legible units of data which makes it even easier for the algorithm to sieve us via the particular filters of the hiring parties.
Almost like a game of Football manager scouting for players.
I cannot get angry at that phenomenon. I do that on the dating apps in the same way on the opposite side of the algorithms and filters.
As potential job applicants, we also do our own version of filterings and siftings.
I don't have anything to add other than I endorse a version of what Camus suggested as a response
I mean i do acknowledge the dehumanizing part of these "markets", and often they are unavoidable.
But every now and then when I can rebel either by "cheating" as what @judah writes here or subversively participate with an self-aware winking ironic attitude, i'll try to do that.
Having written this, my own reflection tells me I actually don't do enough Camus style rebellion. I withdraw or resign too much in the past.
Great post- over the last year all of these ideas have really influenced how I act
> And yet, people will tell you to play within it, because it does provide certain guarantees that they find comforting. If you can play by its rules, and hold up the proper signals, it will do its best to give you a “fair price”.
recently realized it’s more accurate to say the market doesn’t even give you a fair price, since the people circumventing the market are skimming off the best goods, services, partners. It punishes you for using it
> But fairness is not how things ever worked.
this is so so so important
yeah the quotes around fair price are doing a lot of work
visa had a comment about how "fair" is an interesting tangent on all it's own about people's perceptions and what they *choose* to see.
> But the guy who shared a room with you for one year in university ended up solving the whole thing, just by talking to you 3 years later.
My story is a bit longer, and started with a birthday party I attended of a friend. But directionally, supports your point. I'm the one who solved the problem for my friend's company and continues to do so more than 10 years since said birthday party. I continue to reap financial reward from it.
> So, are you saying markets aren’t even real?
More like, weak ties are more real than markets. But knowing this fact and operating my life as if this fact is true, is a different story. I have operated my life more to the "markets are more real" notion.
Your article is a good reminder that I already knew this, but I haven't yet converted the knowledge into actions that are consistent with said knowledge. Which of course is as good as not knowing it.
> But fairness is not how things ever worked.
Not ever. Having said that, yes is also a sign of human progress that things are more fair now than past. More meritocracy though not absolute. And yes, people should also work towards things being more fair.
Having said that, at the individual level, not taking advantage of your personal (thus unfair) edge, so long as stay within boundaries of law and typical moral norms, is not automatically making the world more fair.
Maybe the best outcome for the world is that everybody makes full use of their personal, unfair advantage, reap the rewards, show genuine self-aware-ness and humbleness when people ask you about it, and then use some of that reward to benefit the world somehow.
I'm directing that last paragraph to myself. No response needed. haha
Now a fan. subscribing to you
> It’s no wonder then, that people are surprised by things like the unreasonable efficacy of cold e-mails.
Again, I have one success story amidst dozens of "nothing happened". I probably have hundreds more of "i shoulda but i didn't" examples.
A lesson popularized by Tim Ferriss book many years ago. probably one i should dust off the shelf and reactivate.
There's probably also a spammy way of doing the cold email. But that doesn't mean cold email automatically equals spammy.
A two in one lesson I need to learn.
> The reason public markets have no alpha left is not because they’re so wonderfully efficient, but because there’s barely anything happening there in the first place.
The classic saying goes, that if someone has a successful business formula (the alpha in the equation), why would they give it to you that easily (e.g. index fund strategies)?
Some observations from two opposing sides of the TLP-esque grindset:
1. Rao (paywalled XD): Male attractiveness has negligible or even negative alpha, but feminine attractiveness still has a bit of alpha left. End of alpha (charismatic heroism) is it the same thing as Fukuyama's "end of history" and Ortega's "mass man" as NPCs. https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-end-of-alpha
2. Yarvin: Every idea market is an aesthetic device. Thymos (ambition) mimic Agape (empathy) and contaminates Logos (reason). https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-clear-pill-part-2-of-5-a-theory-of-pervasive-error/
Combining these two, the terms "public markets have no alpha" and "easy mode in markets are for cowards" can be made through the bridge of thymos/ambition => market of ideas => aesthetics/attractiveness => no alpha/heroism => cowardice. It also leads to the weird side effect that unwise ambition escalates to cowardice.
this is so well said, i will send this to anyone who applies to jobs through the normal pipeline now and feels bad about doing it through another channel. i really like how you pointed out that it does feel like 'cheating' when it is easier
i never thought about applying to jobs because of market forces not being efficient but it makes so much sense, you put to words what i thought was so hard to articulate about why applying to jobs feels so monotonous and the forces influencing why thank you so much for more 🔥 pieces
Question: is this why every job application has to be through LinkedIn or some other basic "fill in your information" sites?
I would much rather be cold-called with a public profile and talk in person, than to constantly shill some kind of fake "personal brand" ala Byung Chul Han's Achievement Society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLZOdvK80ic
I like the description of what Hans Georg Moeller calls the age of "profilicity".
So like it or not, these profiles in LinkedInBigFaceStack networks are inevitable. They seem dehumanizing or monotonous yes. And tries to make us look like legible units of data which makes it even easier for the algorithm to sieve us via the particular filters of the hiring parties.
Almost like a game of Football manager scouting for players.
I cannot get angry at that phenomenon. I do that on the dating apps in the same way on the opposite side of the algorithms and filters.
As potential job applicants, we also do our own version of filterings and siftings.
I don't have anything to add other than I endorse a version of what Camus suggested as a response
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism#:~:text=Instead%2C%20the%20individual%20should%20acknowledge%20the%20absurd%20and%20engage%20in%20a%20rebellion%20against%20it.
I mean i do acknowledge the dehumanizing part of these "markets", and often they are unavoidable.
But every now and then when I can rebel either by "cheating" as what @judah writes here or subversively participate with an self-aware winking ironic attitude, i'll try to do that.
Having written this, my own reflection tells me I actually don't do enough Camus style rebellion. I withdraw or resign too much in the past.
I should probably take my own advice more.