Those Algorithms That Govern Our Lives

And of course we have Al Gore_ithms that leads to climate fear and hysteria.

Ultimatly in an enthropic univese all sytems break down.

Is Light Slowing Down?
The speed of light is a universal constant — or is it? Some evidence seems to suggest it might actually be slowing down. Will we soon have to revise our cosmological beliefs?

http://www.opfocus.org/index.php?topic=story&v=8&s=4

I have a hard time with people who say 'right' after every statement. Adrien Dix of the BC NDP party does this and I vomit when I hear him talking. Right?

I unfortunately read the comments as I started this video and all I could hear was "right?", "right?", "right?", "right?"

Yeah and quantum physics atomic particles, named tacyons, move at speeds yet to be established, beyond that they exceeed light speed.

Even "Bg Bang" theory actually proposes that in the first seconds, split-seconds the universe expanded at many times the speed of light.

Quasars,currently the most distant observed objects, are so distant that the light we observe must have been radiated very early in the universe.

Jump we into the darkened maw
Avoiding forces real and raw
Understand it? Do we? Nah!
But we humans shun the blah!

tachyon particles were invented by the writers of Star Trek. It's a sci fi thing ... dude!

So much for my "Hunch Algorithm".
Looking back, second year calculus in Comp Sci seems more important than I could ever imagine. This is probably why I'll be working until the day I die instead of starring in a "Freedom 55" commercial.

And what is a “Speed of Light illusion” Algorithm?

Algorithm, Al Gore music, Al Gore my gal, who could ask for anything more?

Related -- a Techcrunch article a few months back lamenting all the top grads in engineering and science going into finance: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/26/friends-don't-let-friends-get-into-finance/

Sorry - that's http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/26/friends-don%E2%80%99t-let-friends-get-into-finance/

God, Melinda, if you spent more time researching the products and services you wish to trade in, and less time chasing this crap, you'd be further ahead as a trader.

This guy is the Al Gore of Finance. I suggest you track down some people who actually make their living doing financial engineering, (you clearly don't trust me to tell you how it is) but seriously, that this idiot thinks commercial real estate value in Manhattan is bound up in HFT? Christ, I'm outta here. Never try to teach a hippe anything - it wastes your time, and annoys the hippie.

Of course, the presenter carries on like the only purpose of HFT is to apparently "game" the system. Well in 1968 somebody (I forget who it was - a large corporate concern) dumped a very large order of IBM, not for any reason other than capital projects. The markets assumed this was defensive, not administrative, and reacted over the course of the next few months accordingly. IBM wasn't too happy.

Second, there will never be anything wrong with trading to the signal, instead of the noise. So just trade the underlying signal. Nothing says you have to open and close your own personal position every few minutes.

It's all about earnings and returns in the end, isn't it? I don't get why you guys aren't riding the volatility back down into the ground?

Anyhow, it may surprise you to know that my best returns are far from HFT. But think you're going to be able to trade realtime against a bot? That's like those guys still designing bridges with a slide rule. After we built an algo for a colleague that solved his entire class of problems in twenty minutes flat, the slide rule became a quaint party trick. He moved on, and became a better engineer as a result, but to be sure, a skill he possessed, which was once a sure way to make money, was now obsolete. So what? Time to expand your investing activities...

I'd suggest going long in health, and shorting the Euro every time the ECB gets together to talk about Greece!

bbss

An ad hominem followed by trading advice. Nice.

So I'm to assume that we're to marvel at the gentleman's revealed wisdom but with no prescription? That's a talk from which one comes away with nothing except to watch for the men behind the curtain. Right?

"Yeah and quantum physics atomic particles, named tacyons, move at speeds yet to be established, beyond that they exceeed light speed."

It's spelled "tachyon", and there's no evidence they exist. Saying that their speed is yet to be established is like saying that we've yet to determine what bigfoot's shoe-size is.

"Even "Bg Bang" theory actually proposes that in the first seconds, split-seconds the universe expanded at many times the speed of light."

Yep, there's no law limiting the expansion speed of the universe.

Alex

Yet.

That was fascinating. Also very enlightening regarding music and movies.
I had been wondering why every song on the FM dial sounds like every other song, now I know. They get focus-grouped and run through a sorting mechanism.

The presenter's solution is also something I understand and agree with. Actually have been forced into by my very nature. You just drop out of the mainstream and do your own thing by the backchannel. If there is no backchannel, you make one.

Also, observing the poo flinging extravaganza that is modern politics, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that decisions are being made by all political parties based on advice from a very small cabal of advice-sellers. Because no matter the party and no matter the subject at hand, the decisions always crap and are always the same. Like the songs on the radio.

The flash crash on that has already been determined. Its called a civil war, and you can see one brewing in Greece right now. Maybe coming to America real soon, maybe not.

Maybe this whole talk is all about why humans work best in freedom and worst in centrally planned tyranies. A tyranny is really nothing other than a method, or algorythm, applied relentlessly. The method could be Dear Leader's whim or a computer model, but the end result is the same. Thwarted humans get ugly and find ways to get around things.

There's no system yet devised that a bunch of kids with rocks can't break. Freedom is the great untried alternative. As usual.

So ... that explains Gaga, the Prius and Transformers XXI. Pass the vanilla. We're doomed!

I found this very thought-provoking, perhaps because, although I develop software for a living, I'm quite disconnected from these things (no television since 1976, no newspaper since 1993, go to maybe one movie every three years, listen almost entirely to classical music, live in a town of about 10,000 people with no other town of even 1,000 within ten miles). Thank you for posting it. I have a lot to think about.

The amazing thing is that when quantum physics predicts a particle's existence, what it predicts is eventually discovered. Always. While they have not "found" tachyons, the math predicts them and the universe conforms to our new quantum understanding. Who can explain it?

I could never get the hang of the rhythm method.

foobert; spend more downtime with Latinas...:)

this is fascinating

Great link. Thanks.

bbss-

The clip was an interesting compilation of various factors contributing to unintended consequences. An observation obviously lost due to your apparently thin skin.

Since you know everything there is to know about markets, of course.