Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
This is also a continuation of previous Sandbox threads (1) and (2) that have fallen victim to the dreaded page bug.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Completely unrelated:
An informative long read for those interested in the historical roots of “TSZ” in “TTZ”.
American Journal of Political Science issue issues a whoopsie:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12216/epdf
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/2155.html
Testing…
Random thoughts:
1. was shocked when I heard LeBron and the Cleveland basketball team won the championship. I actually thought they had lost it the way people were talking a couple weeks ago.
2. brexit? Good, bad, will it happen.
I’ll tell you later today. 😉 Gamblers and speculators say no.
Catching the news, I see this protest looks like a good election strategy.
A different way to look at the explanatory filter and by extension my game
symmetry= algorithmic=law
asymmetry= random=chance
beauty=design
check it out
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160622-beauty-symmetry-physics/
peace
Ted Kennedy was on the no fly list. Martin Luther King was on a terrorist watch list. Works for me. I don’t see what the fuss is about. If the government wants to have secret lists and deny rights without recourse, we should all submit.
Gays were on those kinds of lists, and labor leaders. Things were so much better then.
We all went crazy, screaming “Go Cleveland basketball team!!” Especially when LeBron forcefully inserted the basketball into the ring.
The Euro is rising slightly and so is the sterling, so this agrees with what you said, the sentiment by financial markets is for no brexit.
There is of course the question of a close outcome requiring a recount or contested count. In the USA in 2000 we didn’t even know who would be president for about 5 weeks since the election was decided by 537 votes (in contrast to about 100 million votes cast).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000
Smart money looks for arbitrage by betting on both outcomes provided there is a net positive payoff whatever the final result. Hard to find such gambles, and there is always risk the party (or company) that has to award payment defaults.
The most successful gambler I know of is Allan Woods who bet on horse races and was six weeks away from becoming the richest man on the planet had he not pulled out of his derivative “put” position on the NASDAQ just before it crashed in 2008. He teamed up with Bill Bentner. Amazingly the two kept very low profiles. It’s hard to get any data on them. Here is something from CNN on Bentner, the record on Woods is almost absent from reputable sources on the internet, plus the fact there are so many individuals with the same name!
Here is an article on CNN. I have friends who were professional sports bettors and some got barred for sharp betting in offshore casinos (prior to changes in USA laws) because they were so skilled. Anyway, its amazing Bentner and Woods weren’t barred from betting.
A less reputable source on Woods:
http://www.worlds-greatest-gamblers.com/gamblers/horse-racing/alan-woods/
Now a more reputable source on two successful gamblers, from the Wall Street Journal and other sources. Ed Thorpe, fractional billionare:
His pupil Bill Gross is a billionaire and manages a trillion dollar hedge fund
Sal:
RB:
I liked how they all ran out on the basketball playing surface to celebrate when the match ended.
Embraces and lacrimation followed.
Yeah, whatever their name is, that’s how much I follow the NBA. I learned about it because it was mentioned in connection with the Cleveland Indians on the MLB network.
I just heard that the number of bets predicting Brexit are greater than the number predicting a “stay” vote–while the volume of money predicting Brexit rather lags the money expecting the “stay” vote.
So it seems to be a question of who is better, the majority of people placing bets, or the people who are risking the greater amount of money. I suppose I’d go with the volume of money over the number of bettors because of the importance of the stakes.
Glen Davidson
Hedge funds apparently going about this scientifically:
http://www.businessinsider.com/eu-referendum-hedge-funds-banks-commission-opinion-polls-to-trade-on-result-2016-6
For the record, I have no direct bets placed on the brexit outcome. Not my specialty.
That said, just for fun, I have thought about posting at TSZ a paper trade based on mathematical analysis to show if my theoretical prediction about the market comes true.
stcordova,
I’m not a gambler and it’s the bookies who set the odds. It’s only three hours to wait for the exit poll which should settle the matter unless the result is very close. Bad weather in parts of the UK might affect the turnout. A “leave” result would be bad news for me and for the considerable number of ex-pats living in the EU. I think it will also be a bad decision economically for the UK as a whole.
The opinion pollsters mostly got the last UK election wrong. I’m hopeful the financial markets have some skills in predicting the outcome. The volatility in the currency markets has perhaps given doubters a glimpse of what might happen to the pound if “leave” wins.
stcordova,
https://storify.com/ImagineEurope/initial-sentiment-analysis
Correction. Apparently, no broadcaster has commissioned an exit poll, so we will have to wait for the count.
Is this The Day Of The Remains?
Live count.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/brexit-live-election-results/ar-AAhpf6e?ocid=ansmsnnews11
The financial markets look like they are hurting a bit, but not in a tail spin (yet).
Good luck, Alan, hope things work out for you whatever happens.
Holy crap! The pound is down over 9% at the moment.
Draw your own conclusions from the demographics : http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb
Thanks Rich, Keiths, all for your comments.
Well, that’s democracy! Now we’ll see what happens following Scotland’s decisive vote to stay in, compared to England’s vote to leave. Interesting times!
Start planning for a Trump victory, USians!
Alan Fox,
Mmmm, kind of isn’t, at least as generally practiced here. We elect both representative and principal officer at the same time, non-proportionally. We then entrust them to make judgements on issues – admittedly we hope they listen to us. But we very rarely ask the people for their net opinion on a specific issue, and it would be disastrous if we did so regularly. We integrate a dozen different issues, with variable grasp of the consequences among the polled. Without wishing to sound elitist, it would be a nightmare if every issue were decided by majority vote among the populace. It may seem like the ultimate in democracy, but would be a poor way to run a country. I’m reminded of the experiment in the early days of phone polling where the masses were pitted against an individual chess player. He ran rings round them – their collective strategies did not integrate into a good one overall.
We have had 3 referendums in history, and every one has been party political. We’ve had 2 on Europe, and both times the leader needed to cement his position by seeking a definitive steer, given division in the party. The other was on proportional representation, which was held in exchange for Liberal support in a low-majority parliament – they stood most to gain from PR.
Allan Miller,
Well exactly. Cameron should have taken legal advice. Don’t ask a question when you’re not sure of the response.
Alan Fox,
Aye, this will be his lasting legacy. Do what you think is right, not what is politically expedient – especially if only one of the outcomes is acceptable! If he wanted to strengthen his position, he’s actually hastened his departure.
I know nothing about British politics, but I know something about being older. I am surprised, but not a lot.
One of the deepest divisions is between young/old as share of the vote. There was strong support for Remain among the 18-35 age group, the opposite among older voters. Which I find a bit of a shame, since the latter are effectively dragging the former out – their outdated prejudices won the day. Not that I’m proposing any alternative.
Confession, I have some interest in brexit personally because I manage a small investment fund and total calamity (black swans) are generally bad, although if one happens to be holding the right derivative position, it can be lucrative, but black swans can swallow banks and brokers so even if one had the right trade in theory but the counter party (the other guy on the side of the wager) defaults — one is screwed.
My interpretation, fwiw: Brexit is like a boy and girl declaring to the world they’ve broken up, but they keep calling each other and dating even though they’ve officially broken up. Brexit isn’t very legally binding, and nothing is stopping the UK from cooperating with other countries in the future if they find it in the UK’s interest.
The relatively small lack of movement in the financial markets (like say compared to the 1987 crash) is modestly re-assuring. We’ll see. A lot of EU countries from what I hear don’t abide by EU directives and promises they’ve made to the EU anyway, so the UK isn’t that much a rogue in the deal, and certainly if the UK unilaterally cooperates with EU wishes and requests, then much may not change.
Anyway, the market isn’t moving much, not compared to the meltdown of 1987 and 2008 (the implosion of Merrill, Lehman, Bear Sterns and the Fed Chairman and Secretary of Treasury calling an emergency meeting of congress).
Brexit so far hasn’t affected the complex financial derivatives market. There are about 600 trillion dollars in financial derivatives (like say 10 times the GDP of the entire world). If that market starts to unwind in a disorderly way, it would be scary.
The problem is not that the world on the whole is lacking technology and natural resources (at least for now), but when all the contracts and agreements and promises that everyone has collectively made to everyone else in the form of money agreements gets broken at the same time — YIKES!
Allan,
It is a shame, but it also provides a basis for longer-term optimism.
Ditto in the US, where Trump’s unfavorable rating among 18- to 29-year-olds is an astounding 83 percent.
I would argue that older voters act as a kind of governor on the engine of change.
From my rather limited perspective, the most important political events in my life have been desegregation, gay rights, and the disintegration of the war on drugs.
Perhaps I’m biased, but all of the associated evils in these issues were government imposed evils. I grew up in the Jim Crow south, have watched in horror as generations of poor and black people had their lives destroyed by drug possession convictions, and observed from some distance the official criminalization of sex.
I have little knowledge of British politics, but I recognize symbolism. I think it is a calumny against my generation when opposition to centralization of power is portrayed as regressive. Some of us old farts have been around long enough to remember that powers granted to do good things will eventually fall into someone else’s hands.
I think it’d be nice now if Wales and Scotland left Britain, a couple of counties left Scotland and Wales, and the wealthiest families left those counties, because, you know, like patrick, they neither need/want anything from government themselves, nor feel any obligation to anybody other than their own children.
I mean, if decentralization is an unalloyed good, let freedom ring!
For those outside the USA, the guys in the costumes are a part of a racist organization called the Ku Klux Klan which was notorious for burning houses and killing blacks and whites who supported civil rights for blacks.
Whether the photo below is authentic, it did reflect the attitudes of the South in the USA at one time.
walto:
Patrick broke walto’s heart and walto will never, ever, forgive him for it.
Straw man soaked in oil of ad hominem, etc.
I’m not aware of anything in politics that is an unalloyed good, including “rights”.
I entirely agree with that. You weren’t the focus of my post. As pretty clearly indicated, it was aimed at Patrick. (I guess keiths hasn’t read patrick’s posts, but he’s a self-styled, unrepentant libertarian, who I think would happily pull out of all government just as I suggested some of those in maybe Argyll ought to do. )
Maybe keiths doesn’t agree with patrick about this, but that ought not to suggest that my description of the latter is incorrect or would even be denied by patrick himself. It simply shows just how off the wall patrick’s views are on these matters. (I mean if even keiths disagrees with them……) It also shows that keiths is being a toady–defending patrick on an issue on which patrick should be expected gladly accept my ascriptions.
Re “rights”–I think Allan’s post above about democracy shows the difficulties in assessing these views if one is not to be simplistic about it. Democracy has many so-called paradoxes. If we let the voters decide everything, we can get a tyranny and, perhaps, some results that are really contrary even to the voters’ own utilities. If we don’t let them vote for much, we can get another type of tyranny, as petrushka correctly notes (in his weirdly insulting way).
It’s notoriously difficult to find the right lines–unless one is either a libertarian or an authoritarian. Those positions are easy, largely because they’re dunce-friendly.
petrushka,
I think the perception of decentralisation of power among many voters is somewhat off the mark. My Facebook has been lit up today, many friends deeply angry about the result, others cock-a-hoop. And one makes the detailed point that the removal from the so-called unelected EU ‘oligarchy’ is the main prize. But only about 13% of UK laws come from the EU. Further, we got to vote on them. That is, our representatives did. 95% we voted for. I think people would be hard pressed to name a law we enacted against our will. Or even an EU law period. Most are positive (if one is of a liberal persuasion, anyway – I think there may be the rub).
Meantime, many laws are proposed by our unelected civil service and/or ratified by our unelected House of Lords.
To the extent that over-centralisation is an issue, it is not a reason to leave now. If it became one, we could exercise the option when it did, rather than doing so because it might.
Hear, hear.
It’s possible to have the benefits of free trade and freedom to work in other countries without the overhead, and risk, of a Europe-wide government.
Hahaha
walto,
I just think your obsession with Patrick is funny.
Your comment applies to an entire group of libertarians, but you felt it very important to direct it at Patrick personally.
Carry on.
ETA: And remember, in the event of erections lasting more than four weeks, consult your physician.
keiths,
He’s the only professed libertarian here, as far as I know. (Though he does have you as a toady.) So it kind of makes sense to mention him, as we, you know, are here.
You’re the one in love with the guy, not me. I think that’s your own erection you should be worried about.
I consider myself libertarian, but not A Libertarian. I do not do tribalism.
I have no idea where the right lines are or should be. I take anything and everything as its own case. I was born in the ashes of WWII, lived through the cold war, and consider most of today’s hot issues to be warm tea.
The really important issues for humanity have been settled, and the details are really beyond politics. Individuals and groups continue to be murdered and imprisoned, but the trend away from violence is set, and not something that can be altered by politics. The driving force in the world is consumerism and robotization. I have no idea how the details will be worked out, but in the future, everyone will have a smartphone.
At the moment, only five in seven have them. We have a ways to go.
Unlike Patrick, I have no strong opposition to social safety nets or the taxes required to make them possible. I think I would agree with Patrick that welfare, as implemented, is counterproductive and actually harms people and communities.
My beef is with implementation rather than with principle.
As for decentralization, I think people turn their brains off when politics is discussed. We have in the united States, Federal laws on drugs that are anti-scientific, draconian, and fucking stupid. They have destroyed black community and are the actual cause of most gun violence (including suicides).
Who is leading the country away from this madness? It is states that are disobeying and ignoring federal law. Using, ironically, the same states rights arguments that were used in the days of racial segregation. (Did I use the concept of irony correctly?)
Could be. To my mind, what’s important is that this determination be made on the basis of sound assessments of harm, and not on silly proclamations regarding violations of “natural rights.” That’s where the Libertarians go wrong. Theirs is a religious position with, as Patrick likes to say, no objective empirical evidence to support it (and no other kind either).
I’d wouldn’t be so against centralization if it weren’t for the fact there tends to be corrupt idiots at the center. It is related to the Peter Principle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
Should 1 million dollars of public money be focused on helping the ungifted, poor, and impoverished or given to the most brilliant and capable even though they are affluent? Which is better for society? Tough moral decision, but however the question is decided, I don’t think it should be decided by majority, let individuals decide how they will dole out their own money, not other people.
Unless democracy draws limits on how much rights someone has to their own property, then a democratic system can take away an almost unlimited amount of decision making at the individual level. It’s demoralizing.
Let the government control up to 10% of someone’s income. If people want to throw more into the public trust, that’s up to them, but when more than 50% of someone’s income is controlled by taxes and regulation (the will of other people than yourself), it starts to feel like slavery.
Government is like temperature, not too much, not too little, just right.
I live near Washington DC, have worked in the defense industry and briefly contracted for department of homeland security. It’s appalling to see first hand how public money is utter wasted and squandered. Bureaucrats are punished if they don’t spend all their budget, and forced not to be frugal lest in the next fiscal year, the powers that be think that the don’t need the money since they got by with less. The way to gain bureaucratic power is to mismanage and overspend, create a crisis and then get more taxpayer dollars to repair a problem that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
I used to be pro-taxation and centralization till I saw how it is squandered. It’s like giving alcohol to an alcoholic. Centralization creates systemic problems as a matter of principle.
We need some centralization, but not more than 10% of an individual’s time and money unless the country is in some crisis.
The Brexit is a side show. The fundamental issue is what extent democracy (the whims of the masses) can over-ride individual freedoms in decision making.
Aside from philosophical issues, we have really good empirical models of what centralization leads to vs. freedom : North Korea vs. South Korea, Cuba vs. Hong Kong (when it was free), Detroit Michigan vs. less regulated cities, etc.