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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      The gods live in the kingdom of Dunmanifestin on Cori Celesti. Play on “done manifesting”. They have earned fuck-you-money levels of belief among the mortals so their fates are not tied to those of believers. No need to answer prayers or pay attention. https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Dunmanifestin …

      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      By contrast small gods of discworld are scraping by on low, critical levels of belief, not mass levels of uncritical belief. They have to *work* to keep divine status via belief flows. Better off than mortals since they are immortal but they’re the working rich without FU$.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      FU$ = no skin in society game

      2 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      Conversely, someone who owns no stocks, is unbanked, and can’t get any credit has no direct exposure to the meltdown right now. They’d be totally pleased to just get airdropped cash to stay home, and a free drive-through COVID-19 test.

      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      To what extent financialization drives *meaningful* computations is a distinct question from whether it does technically *correct* computations sorting signal from noise and doing arithmetic correctly.

      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      Alice might correctly bet that Bob is wrong by 2x on his belief about how many angels a Chuck believes Bob thinks fit on a pinhead. Correct but meaningless to non-angel-believers. Especially if *nobody* actually believes in angels. Only in other people’s beliefs about angels.

      2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      When you are in traffic, you *are* traffic, but at least everyone is going somewhere from somewhere When you traffic in beliefs about beliefs, you *are* belief... it’s like traffic that’s just going around in circles without trying to get anywhere from anywhere else.

      1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      Imagine driving around in traffic purely to hit the green stretches on google maps and beat the times on the red stretches. Grand theft auto joyriding. Imagine if that kind of driving behavior were 95% of traffic and you were in 5% trying to drive to work or home or go shopping.

      1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      Now imagine if the government printed money just to pay people to drive around for no reason. So you get paid by the mile, and big bonuses if you beat point to point times predicted by google maps. I suspect that’s what the economy is at this point.

      2 replies 1 retweet 33 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      This week has made me realize that my financial anxiety is 100% a function of my cash positions and guaranteed cash receivables. I‘ve had like zero emotional reaction to watching my retirement portfolio tank. It’s too far away in time. About 20 years before I plan on touching it.

      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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      That’s because as a largely passive investor, I’m screwed only if everybody else is as well, which means I have bigger problems anyway. Still the adrenalin rush of my small side bets on individual stocks doing well helps me understand the true market gambling addicts.

      12:18 PM - 13 Mar 2020
      • 14 Likes
      • Reclusive Wizard Paul McGrath 🌱 Puzzle man 🧩 max arb Andrew Brož Bob Kerns (No PhD, but I know what one is, WSJ) Fabian Harmik Stelzer Metatone
      2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          The pros say I have high time preference. I say they have low reality preference. We’re both right. For eg I bought $1500 worth of $ZM last week (yes, I’m sheeple). That’s my current play limit. I’d be pleased if that blew up to 15k. But I’d be 10x as pleased with 10k Fed airdrop

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          Why? The latter is more real. Like driving to work. The former is less real, like driving around to catch green stretches on google maps.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          But buying $ZM is still more real to me than say buying S&P puts, even though that’s an impoverishing mindset. If my Zoom bet goes to zero, I’ve learned something. My thinking about virtual future is off. I’m wrong to believe that we’re poised for secular shift to remote work.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          What have I learned if I lose the same amount on a miscalled S&P put? Just that I was wrong about beliefs about beliefs among a bunch of MtG-playing gods. Strikes me as... not very satisfying or meaningful. It’s also the reason I haven’t stocked up a million rolls of toilet paper

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          Yep, TP hoarding beyond your immediate needs, factoring in stock outs due to average TP-insanity levels, is the same exotic-financialization trader mindset. It’s just accessible to the prepper-poors. “Woohoo, I’ll sell my surplus TP at 100 rounds of ammo per roll when SHTF.”

          2 replies 2 retweets 5 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          Note though that vacuity of the underlying beliefs is what *creates* huge upside potential. A great stock bet might appreciate 10-100x. A great derivative bet can net you >1000x. A division by zero effect. That’s why nihilism makes for good traders. It rewards low meaning more.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Mar 13
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          You get high returns in 1 of 2 ways: betting on less meaningful stuff, adding more leverage to bets on more meaningful stuff (trading on margin). Two vectors away from reality. This is why I like crypto btw. It’s completely open about operating with a very low reality preference.

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        9. End of conversation
        1. Bob Kerns (No PhD, but I know what one is, WSJ)‏ @BobKerns Mar 13
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          Replying to @vgr

          The stock market now correlates with my longevity expectation, so I'll worry about it if and when I survive long enough to be vaccinated.

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