Soft consensus, aka fecal matter.
Motto : Dio perchè ci hai abbandonati?
Hey, do you know I've been running an options market maker bot in BTC for over a year now ? It will actually be a year and a half next month or something like that. And it's still in business.
This pretty much unique vantage has allowed me to accumulate some experience, which I'll obviously share. So, at any point in time "people" (aka "everybody") are in consensus over subjects of import. The reason is quite simply that "people" (aka "everybody") are trained to follow, and more importantly are essentially followers to their core. The intelectual, psychological and emotional cost of maintaining divergent opinions is too much for their puny physiques to bear, and so they give in.
It's really easy for "public sentiment" to reach "consensus" when "everyone"'s motivation is to reach a consensus, no matter which just as long as it's what "everyone" says. This is exactly how consensus and more generally the electoral process got to be such worthless futility in our present times. It's not a lack of "critical thinking" that makes the populace unable to think critically. It's a lack of... worth, basically. It's a lack of that which makes mammals humans, mettle, morals, identity, personality, a soul, however you'd call it they don't have it.
This consensus business has proven itself to be completely off with such regularity that it's making me laugh. For instance, back in August 2011 the consensus was that someone else will be "imminently" releasing an options market which will wipe MPOE. This had been announced, for months. It never happened.
For another instance, the consensus was that, and I quote,
[17:05:52] shareholder3_ midterm this will win against MPEX and others as they will get shut down soon too
[18:01:03] shareholder3_ me neither MPEX is doomed big time soon
[18:07:43] shareholder3_ once the news about what we are talking about gets out, MPEX will be under huge pressure, if they want or not
etc
News got out. Then a day passed. Then a week. Then a month, and another, and a third... Obviously given the finite lifespan of everything that's man made MPEx will probably crap out eventually. Citi failed what, five times so far ? Revlon is no more, tho it was my mother's favorite brand back when she was labouring to get a wonderful child such as myself. Nothing lasts forever. But that aside, the consensus was wrong yet again.
O wait, it was the consensus of a single person ? So what does that have to do with anything ? Everybody has this handy everybody in their pocket which agrees with them, it's how consensus is made. That's why there's riots in the US every time somebody else than everyone's candidate comes out first. Heck, Washington gets burned to the ground every November. You never saw this happen ? Well... I guess you weren't in the right frame of mind.
For yet another instance, the consensus was that ASICs will be developed and delivered by a rag-tag assembly of dubious characters. Leave aside that a novel run will take years if not decades and millions if not billions. These people can do it, no matter what it is! So everyone announced delivery dates within months. Then blew them. Then blew them again. Currently... everyone is saying March. The consensus is March. Thus the only thing certain is that no ASICs will be delivered in March. It's more likely for it to happen in February than in March strictly because March is what the consensus is. And the consensus is unequivocally, without exception and always wrong.
To continue the examples, the consensus is that S.MPOE is overvalued. I wrote about this before, but meanwhile there's two little tidbits I'd like to add to help this consensus thingee along. One's this :
The money part is easy enough to grasp : bet a Bitcoin on Yes, get back ~100 Bitcoins if indeed it does crash.
The consensus part is also easy enough to grasp : fuckwits on parade. It's a scam! Child porn! Nothing's worth anything! I fail as a human being! Rawr!
The other tidbit is this : pretty much everything available on MPEx to buy is also available to short. "People" do not know this, mostly because... well, let's not go into that. So they build the usual flawed arguments based entirely on how things wouldn't work as they imagine them, and therefore things don't work. What, there's people smarter than them on this planet, that do things differently, and different from their consensus is unequivocally better ?! Heresy!
Someone (often but not always me) points out to them this simple hole in their mental representation : if you really think so, go ahead and short it. Do you know what happens at this point ? 'Cause it's also a consensus.
At this point people ask me for free shares to short.
No, really, I'ma let that stand on its own, read it again let it sink in for a moment. At the best - and I do mean best, it's something like
if you let me borrow some without collateral, i'll give you a detailed explanation of what i think is going on =)
Guy with an opinion wants no skin in the game. Why ? Why would you want no skin in the game ? Could it be simply that even the "people" themselves know their opinions are pointless drivel spawned by worthless subhuman lifeforms ? Could it be that the one thing everyone really knows, for keeps this time, is that everyone is full of shit ?
There's a very simple way to distinguish actual people from non-people. It's not whether their grandmother was Jewish or their hair is curly, it's not whether their skin tone is this or that shade of purple, it's not even if they do well in school, suck cock rapturously, work hard, obey the laws, go to church, respect their elders, floss, whatever the hell else. None of that matters.
Actual people are always on the lookout for games to put skin in. Everybody else just knows better, from the waysides.
And bathing in this consensus which instantly vanishes into explanations, excuses and elucubrations the moment a spec of skin is required to go further is really no different from that last bit they usually cut out of Salo.
Wednesday, 1 January 2014
Leaving this excellent Snopes article here for future reference : http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Here's a reasonably convenient example (from Don Bailey) :
This was the consensus. The consensus of shitheads, the consensus made of fecal matter, the shit "everyone" on the interweb agreed with. Up to and including the unprecedented vacation of the guy's conviction, a few years later.
This is the shit "everyone" on the interwebs STILL agrees with, and will permanently agree with, no matter what, period. Because "everyone" has shit for brains, and that's not about to change.