> I think it's partly because most bullies grow out of it, and partly because as an adult you're usually afforded the agency to leave situations where you're being bullied.
It is because you can defend yourself. That's all there is to it. If you can defend yourself, people will not mess with you.
Parents that leave children into "schools" so they can get "bullied" and nobody protects them are committing cruelty of the highest order I can imagine.
> Parents that leave children into "schools" so they can get "bullied" and nobody protects them are committing cruelty of the highest order I can imagine.
The grandparent poster here is saying that this bullying is a feature not a bug, and that the bullying prepares you for adulthood! I don’t buy any of it, but that’s the counterpoint to what you are saying.
> In my younger Slashdot days, I would read these polarized discussions, and it taught me about many perspectives on even the simplest thing.
I know precisely what you mean, but I'd argue that you were in a position to consider multiple perspectives in the first place. A lot of people are not. They have determined their position ahead of time, and regardless of new information, they will not change it.
Where did you find that 10% beat S&P? First of all, that's low %, but I don't think even that is accurate. So you have 1 in 10 chance of identifying who might beat the S&P. Congrats.
Can you share a source for that? As far as I remember, the odds are around 1 in 300 (this is from memory, but that information is from Bogle's books directly). I think that research was done since 1970, but I am not sure.
> And over a full 20-year period ending last December, fewer than 10 percent of active U.S. stock funds managed to beat their benchmarks.
Still, if it was 1 in 300 I think they would say “fewer than 1% or fewer than 0.5%”. So I’m assume between 9 and 10 percent beat the S&P.
I suggest reading the linked article with the mindset that nearly all of the content comes from S&P directly. It’s basically a market piece. For instance, when they say the mutual funds don’t perform consistently, they use a crazy metric of picking the top 25% performers from one year and seeing how many are in the top 25% next year. Basically their point is that mutual funds won’t beat the S&P every single year, and therefore the S&P is better. But if course, unless you’re only investing for a single year, you should care more about the expected total return. Just my two cents.
They are talking about 2000-2021; what I mentioned is from 1970 (again, that is from memory, I don't have the book in front of me, at the moment). But almost surely that number is nowhere near 10% that can beat S&P in the last 50 years.
Not a lot of funds even continuously exist for 50 years - most of them closed.
It is true that about 10% of large cap mutual funds beat the S&P 500 over a 10 year period (see the latest SPIVA study). At 20 years it goes down to about 5% that will beat the S&P 500.
> I almost feel like the discussion at this point should proceed straight to "no anecdotes please, show your work" (evidence, data, the more the better).
wallstreetbets figured it out: "positions or ban" :) It's a rule there.
This is not applicable. What is your exact positions, and time frame (exactly)? Then we will see if you hit or miss.
That may be the only thing I "like" about WSB: "positions or ban". Otherwise everybody would pretend that they are a genius investor doing 50% yearly easily, etc.
Anyway, it's not impossible to beat the market, but I don't know a lot of people that beat it consistently over long periods of time. Really, a few names come to mind. That's all out of millions and millions of investors. That's hard data.
> It really drew the point home that a random non-insider individual who thinks can do that over decades is likely delusional)
You are, of course, correct, and it has been proven time and time again. People think that just because we had a few years of 0% rates that they are somehow geniuses who can do 15% CAGR for 50 years without a problem.
In reality, almost nobody can beat the S&P500 low-cost index fund, after all expenses. People still dream, though.
If anything at all is objective, it's mathematics. Anyone can verify if the statements are true, independently. Granted, some of the statements are massively complicated, so not everyone can do it reasonably fast; however when you state something, typically you need to prove it.
I (naively) thought this protected this particular discipline from "modern politics" or whatever we want to call this insanity that is spreading. I worry that we might reach a place where people believe that 1+1 is not exactly 2, it is dependent on the emotions of the person uttering the words, akin to the current discussions of male/female, genders, pronouns and so on.
It looks weird even typing this, but I am sure someone in 19th or 20th century would say the same thing about the current state of what is a man, what is a woman, who gives birth.. things that are so obvious that but yet disputed.
I don't understand what can be done about people legitimately believing insane things. I have no doubt that they believe what they are saying. We ought not to fund it with tax $ at least.. disappointing.
> The QAA’s benchmark document that defines the common mathematics curriculum has grown in length by 50 per cent in just three years, but not because of any radical shift in the nature of the mathematics. Instead there has been a been a decision to introduce teaching on diversity,
Just like the communists forced Marxism upon everyone, and Nazi Germany did the same thing to their youth. I expected Math would be the last place to be infected with this, but it has happened. We'll see how much it spreads.
> Activists also have statistics in their sights. One academic review of school statistics textbooks ‘with a theoretical framework of queer theory and critical mathematics’ notes disapprovingly that ‘pregnancy was used frequently in problems involving females/women.’
Cannot be distinguished from pure comedy. What a reality we are living in.
The application of mathematics is, however, not objective.
To use your last sentence about statistics, how you choose to handle variables, how they're put into regression models, and how those results are interpreted all have potentially subjective and cultural aspects to them.
As someone who works on mathematical and statistical models for a living, there's plenty of opportunities for subjectivity, from how methods are applied to what questions are considered important.
When I first watched Interstellar, I thought the scene where the school official talks about how the moon landing was faked was a bit outlandish but nowadays it seems like something that could happen in the next 10 years.
Same exact story - I was perhaps 9 or 10 and got to Beej's work on sockets. It was one of the more accessible things available to me (or known to me). I remember reading Stevens books next.
So interesting that so many people have the same experience
I think most chess players are comparing them in the same circumstances, e.g on pure skill.
So for example Fischer said Capablanca and Morphy, under the same circumstances, could beat anyone (if they were born in the same era, using the same tools, etc.)
It is because you can defend yourself. That's all there is to it. If you can defend yourself, people will not mess with you.
Parents that leave children into "schools" so they can get "bullied" and nobody protects them are committing cruelty of the highest order I can imagine.