First of all, there is a specific time in which you could evenly divide the period because there are only 60 seconds in a minute, which is divisible by three. Secondly, your article seems to say that we should use our anticipation wisely, which would seem to say that anticipating small things is pointless. However, anticipation is a very important part of human life experiences, and as such it is almost impossible to either use less of or create more of unless one is capable of fooling one’s self into an erroneous belief. Last, by anticipating an outcome using rational thought to be able to equally anticipate all outcomes reduces the amount of emotional affect on anticipation, when emotion is a very important part of our motivation. Without having a favorite, you no longer care about the issue, and unless you are a practiced pundit, you will be unable to actually seem authentic on air without having your anticipation emotionally charged and correct. If you see an error in my argument, please point it out, for this is my first post on these forums, and I’m still not used to thinking in your rational mindset.
The point of the article was that the subject really does anticipate different market outcomes to different extents, and that uncertainty can be represented using probability. Thus the 100 minutes of preparation time could be divided up usefully by spending n minutes on each justification, where n is reached by multiplying the probability of the outcome by 100 minutes.
For example, if you believe that the stock has a 60% chance of going up, a 35% chance of going down, and a 4.99% chance of staying the same, then you could spend 60 minutes preparing explanations of why it went up, 35 minutes preparing explanations of why it went down, 4.99 minutes preparing explanations of why it stayed the same, and .01 minutes fretting that you’ve forgotten one of the things that stocks can do.
You’re probably right about the emotional state of pundits, but that wasn’t really relevant to the point of the story.
It’s about how if you slide the probability of, say, bond yeilds going up, to be more likely, that makes the probablity of bonds yeilds going down or staying the same less likely. We can’t say, “I think that there is a 40% chance of bond yeilds going up, and a 70% chance of bond yeilds going down or staying the same.”
First of all, there is a specific time in which you could evenly divide the period because there are only 60 seconds in a minute, which is divisible by three. Secondly, your article seems to say that we should use our anticipation wisely, which would seem to say that anticipating small things is pointless. However, anticipation is a very important part of human life experiences, and as such it is almost impossible to either use less of or create more of unless one is capable of fooling one’s self into an erroneous belief. Last, by anticipating an outcome using rational thought to be able to equally anticipate all outcomes reduces the amount of emotional affect on anticipation, when emotion is a very important part of our motivation. Without having a favorite, you no longer care about the issue, and unless you are a practiced pundit, you will be unable to actually seem authentic on air without having your anticipation emotionally charged and correct.
If you see an error in my argument, please point it out, for this is my first post on these forums, and I’m still not used to thinking in your rational mindset.
The point of the article was that the subject really does anticipate different market outcomes to different extents, and that uncertainty can be represented using probability. Thus the 100 minutes of preparation time could be divided up usefully by spending n minutes on each justification, where n is reached by multiplying the probability of the outcome by 100 minutes.
For example, if you believe that the stock has a 60% chance of going up, a 35% chance of going down, and a 4.99% chance of staying the same, then you could spend 60 minutes preparing explanations of why it went up, 35 minutes preparing explanations of why it went down, 4.99 minutes preparing explanations of why it stayed the same, and .01 minutes fretting that you’ve forgotten one of the things that stocks can do.
You’re probably right about the emotional state of pundits, but that wasn’t really relevant to the point of the story.
Welcome to Less Wrong! It might be worth checking out Bayes’ Theorem.
This solution is the Kelly strategy. It isn’t generally optimal, but this makes it optimal in this case:
Nice—I’m not sure if I’ve encountered that strategy before.
It’s about how if you slide the probability of, say, bond yeilds going up, to be more likely, that makes the probablity of bonds yeilds going down or staying the same less likely. We can’t say, “I think that there is a 40% chance of bond yeilds going up, and a 70% chance of bond yeilds going down or staying the same.”