Cooking The Common Con

While I have tested negative twice, I am quite sure that I have been Covid positive over the last week and a half, but other than being annoying during work meetings as I have a dry cough, it hasn't slowed me down much at all. I have to keep muting myself and spluttering silently into the camera, as I can't to turn the camera off in time too.

It is funny though, as the recommendations have been changing over the last few weeks and now, even if getting a positive test, if there are no symptoms, you are free to go to work and school. How exactly does that stop the spread? It doesn't but logic isn't required to live in this world anymore.

As they say, common sense, isn't that common.

That usage of the term isn't actually correct however, as the Common, is the joining of the feedback of the available senses together to a common point, thereby creating our perception of the world. Essentially, our senses are a decentralized network of sensors, each reading the data of the world through a different frequency and building a picture from it. Generally, sight overpowers the rest of the senses, which is why when people are trying to hear, taste or smell something well, they will close their eyes instinctively. It is also why having the "lights off" occasionally isn't such a bad thing for the sense of touch too.

But, "common" makes something sound well, common and devalues it. When it comes to the phrase common sense, it makes it sound like everyone has it naturally, however if you take a look around at the world, I don't think people are actually paying attention to all of their senses. The information is coming in from many sources, but we are omitting what doesn't work for our belief system. We no longer trust our senses.

A friend of mine the other day was arguing with me that the story I told him was anecdotal and therefore shouldn't be trusted. But, it is my story and therefore as long as I trust my own senses, it should be weighted more heavily than statistical data. Yet, this person kept arguing that I shouldn't because the numbers say that statistically my anecdotal evidence is likely wrong. Poor logic.

Anyway....

Our body is pretty smart and acts on many inbuilt mechanisms that we have very little control over, as they are instinctual reflex reactions, however one thing that it doesn't really do well, is deal with numbers themselves. We created numbers, but our abilities to understand them especially when they get very large or when there is compounding factors involved, are very poor. We experience the numbers, but our senses just don't know how to translate them into something usable that our common person can use. This leaves them concept only and largely impractical, but this doesn't mean they don't evoke a reaction or stop us acting upon them.

This is why so many of us struggle for example to make wise trading decisions, because our "common sense" is acting on what it has available, which is essentially like me cooking from a recipe written in Cantonese. I can cook something, but I don't read or speak Cantonese, so the ingredients and the process I use are just me doing the best I can, even though it isn't related to what is in the recipe at all. If there is an accompanying picture, I might get some of the ingredients right, but I am not going to cook it even close to the formula required for a successful Szechuan Chicken.

Oh, that's the problem. The recipe is in Mandarin!

No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that I am acting the best I can on information that I am unable to parse, but still hoping for a result that is not possible using the ingredients I have or the processes I know.

However, someone with a lot of experience cooking might be able to look at that picture and guess at what needs to go in it and perhaps even, cook something that looks and tastes similar. It won't be "authentic" to the recipe, but the outcome needn't be bad. However someone like me who has no experience cooking that kind of food will get the expected result - poor. This is why so many people go to restaurants for food that they want, because they can't cook it easily themselves and can pay to have a chef cook it for them.

It is also why so many people go onto YouTube and watch traders looking at charts and giving "expert" advice, because they proxy the DYOR to the market chef. However, this doesn't mean that the chef is qualified or knows anything about anything at all and potentially, could be making the estimates on the reputation of a lucky call two years earlier. Not a chef, just someone that cooked a good meal once upon a time.

Trading psychology is an interesting topic to consider, because we do act on how we feel about what we buy or sell, hold or ignore completely. Often, we have "reasons" why we make the decisions we do, but most of the time it is not using all of the information we have available and overweighs the "feeling" part of it, even if we don't have the experience to create feelings we can trust. We use the anecdotal evidence of it, but we apply it to a domain that we aren't good at building experience from. This means that we are bound to make a lot of errors, and get lucky sometimes.

Lately, I have been buying a lot of SPS and DEC to pool in order to earn more SPS, as I feel that in the not too distant future, there will be a run on SPS due to the needs of it for LAND. I don't know this of course, but on the bits of information and anecdotal evidence I have, I am "confident" that it will go up. Confidence is a funny thing, isn't it?

What are you confident about? They always talk about market confidence but what is driving that confidence?

That is the last year of Meta (Facebook) share price value. Confidence fell off a cliff, but that is an incredibly large drop in one day - the largest ever in fact. This doesn't look like the market was losing confidence suddenly, this looks like a manipulation. But, now? What are the media reports saying about Meta? Well, they are giving all the reasons why investors shouldn't be confident - but do the investors really know why, or are they following the recipe handed them?

And, this is why with experience, the charts can tell something, because they are looking at the patterns of the past and trying to match up the tricks of the conmen. Confidence tricks. There is a recipe that they use and in the movies featuring con-artists, they will mention names of cons to run - bankers are no different. Identify the con and then, it is possible to ride the coattails.

When it comes to trading, I don't have enough experience to identify patterns in the numbers, so I often work on feelings. What this inevitably means is that I am more likely to invest into what I know and especially use, than what I don't have any idea about and as a result of me being emotionally attached, I am more likely to hold onto it - even if others are losing confidence. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes not, but, that's just the way I cook.

Thankfully, I am the only one who has to eat it.