mycorrhizal

No, the discussion was specifically a response to a comment speculating that a person with 100M in 1971 would have been better offer investing in the S&P 500.

Quotes from the GP

> Actually, from the article it's unclear if he's beaten the S&P500 as an investor.

> If his total investments at that time was $100 million, which seems somewhat reasonable given how much he lost in the margin call, investing that in the S&P500 would be worth $4 billion today, which is quite a bit more than the $2.3 billion he's actually worth.

And the parent made a snarky comment about why internet commentators always bring up the s&p 500. And the simple answer is that for most of us ETFs are probably one of the best options for growing wealth. No one actually thinks they will be billionaires by retirement age with ETFs. So if you want to be a billionaire go get richer parents and if that doesn't work, invent Google. Good luck.

Because it has been very well demonstrated that almost all active investors, fund managers etc... virtually never beat the market cumulatively over decades. There are some exceptions, but not more than you would expect from random chance due to large sample size (a lot of people playing). So given that information why should most of us spend the effort trying to beat the market especially considering the low expense ratio on some really solid ETFs. Generally speaking if you expect the economy to continue to grow for the next few decades than index funds are a pretty good option.

Definitely impressive work, but the fact that this is hard to distinguish from human text, if true, is pretty sad for humans. Even sadder if anyone reading this could be swayed by such an argument.

Heck, maybe having to compete with this will raise human discourse (Joking).

Aren't a lot of these European countries a lot more pragmatic (cut throat?) about who can go to college? For example in Germany, I was under the impression that around adolescence they start dividing people into the university path people and the non-university path people. I don't think this type of system would go over well in the US with its individualism/"control your own destiny" mindset.

I'm not saying the European countries have it wrong, but their systems seem far from free college for everybody (how it is often reported in the states) and much closer to free college for the worthy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

What kind of question is that? Do you seriously expect me to give an "exact" solution? Furthermore how many complicated issues have solutions that have no potential to cause harm and are guaranteed to help. I think it is pretty clear at this point that there is no magic solution to climate change and we have to make some collective sacrifices. Individually I did make a "sacrifice" by going vegan. After 3 years I haven't noticed any harm and I'm confident it has helped about epsilon amount. I guess that fits your criteria.

The cynical answer is about 7-15: themselves, their family and close friends. Or at least thats how it appears in the US given how little we do about it, even though we (half) give it plenty of lip service.

Another interesting story in undergrad I had a thesis supervisor who was working in cosmology, but had a 20 year career in high energy particle physics (5 as a grad student, 10 as a research scientist and 5 as a pre-tenured faculty member). Basically the moment he got tenure he switched from experimental particle to observational cosmology because as he said "I saw the writing on the wall that after the higgs there was no clear direction for high energy and no clear direction for even finding a way out of the aimlessness." I thought it was kind of crazy that he had a multi-year plan for leaving particle, but I guessed it worked out for him he is now reasonably successful and is a leader in both DESI and LSST. I ended up leaving physics entirely.

From physics, it seems like cosmology has a whole bunch. What the heck is dark matter made out of? Why is the the expansion of the universe accelerating? These seem qualitatively different than the "aesthetic problems" she points to.

Not the OP but I believe the second option would be raising the child.

I appreciate the response, but I definitely did not mean to imply that I don't care about other people's problems, but was simply questioning and hoping to get a more exact and maybe quantitative picture of the control these companies have. Perhaps I made a mistake in thinking too much about my own (important) personal decisions and the information and processes I use to make them.

With respect to the sneaky game purchases are you referring to the stories of facebook letting children make purchases and not reimbursing the parents? Because the ability to control children is much different than the ability to control adults.

The wedding ring for cash is definitely creepy and I can see how that would add additional distress to your friend. But I guess my point is: how much did that ad contribute to your friend deciding to get a divorce? Had she not see that ad and probably other similar ads would she have not gotten a divorce? I think at least attempting to quantify these questions is important when trying to understand the level of control of these companies. We have to go beyond "This company showed a creepy ad(s)" to "This company showed a creepy ad(s) and this is the extent it influenced my final decision."

Right, so I was speaking personally there and I can confidently say among the priority of things I care about my relationship with my wife, how I manage my budget and my overarching career goals all of the decisions related to these things are done with a great deal of deliberation and research. So I'm not saying I'm somehow special and immune to propaganda, but I think when practically anyone takes the time to research and deliberate on big decisions and asking people they trust for advice these companies have a marginal effect.

I can specifically point to times where these companies have and have not influenced my decisions. For example my wife and I decided we could afford a 3k vacation this budget was informed by looking at our incomes, expenses, savings and job security. But social media definitely influenced where we chose to go and what we did once we got there. I'm much more concerned with the first decision (I can afford to blow 3k) than the second (where we ended up going).

I definitely don't contest the amount of tracking these companies do. I wouldn't even be surprised if it goes beyond what I can even imagine. But when it comes to control can we at least attempt to quantify it or at least make it a bit more exact. For example I'm positive these companies have influence over what brand of headphones I buy next, but I'm even more positive, at least on a personal level, that these companies have zero influence when it comes to convincing me to take money out of my IRA and using it to buy something I can't afford. Frankly what I'm getting at is I buy into the argument that these companies can influence smaller behaviors, like restaurant A or B but I'm really dubious of their influence reaching to more important decisions like to get a divorce or not maxing out my 401k and/or IRA. So I find myself not really caring about their influence because I don't think it pertains to the big decisions that I really care about.

I absolutely agree if your model is wrong any causal inferences you draw will be wrong. However his framework does provide mechanisms for determining if your data is inconsistent with your model (ie certain independences should or should not exist). So hopefully if your model is wrong your data will tell you so and you can change your model.

I think you are overstating Judea Pearl's argument. He doesn't claim it is impossible to answer causal questions (on observational data) without resorting to do-calculus. What he does claim is that to answer causal (interventional or counterfactual) questions you need to define a model and reason on that model in a way that transforms the question into conditional probabilities. Do-calculus provides a framework to help you perform that reasoning, but certainly people have been using things like the backdoor criterion before the invention of do-calculus to answer interventional questions.

He might claim that any other method can be reduced to do-calculus. I'm not sure. I do believe at the core of his argument is need for an explicit model.