> I don't think either of us really misunderstand each other at the object level, we're just arguing pedantically about the precise statements we've made. (Which, no shade, this is one of my favourite hobbies).
I think I agree. And it indeed takes one to know one ;) That said, I wish to keep going for a bit at the least!
> My principal point is that it is possible to make statements about a system that are generally true without taking any view at all on the specific future states of that system.
So from a purely logical point I agree. However, I've found that in most discussions such statements aren't typically made, as participants share points that bring at least some level of new information or surprise into the discussion. And, perhaps as a fault that I should learn out of, I've come to expect this as the default mode of how conversation happens.
Raising points that the point-raiser themselves doesn't think carry any surprise or novel insight sounds strange to me. To construct a contrived programmer-centric analogy, it's a bit like including lines like `if my_boolean != true || my_boolean != false { panic!("my_boolean isn't true or false!"); }` in programs. It's not technically _wrong_ to do so, but it doesn't serve any point and lines like that are typically removed because they're redundant.
I suppose "redundancy" is the key term here. If you condition investment on (paraphrasing) "also tolerating the volatility in the interim", without intending that as a statement about volatility being particularly important over the period, that begs the question why was volatility as a point raised instead of, for example, opportunity costs or importance of a good brokerage or cons of dealing with plain stocks over more tax-efficient investments. And so, choosing between "this person has happened to include redundant if-statements around their booleans and is aware of their redundancy" vs "this person has included extra checks around their booleans believing in their purpose", I opt for the latter interpretation.
And so while I concede that I am making an assumption over the literal interpretation, I also believe that it's warranted. My claim is: a person wouldn't make statements about a topic, if they themselves didn't believe those statements to be worth raising, where worth is measured by the personally perceived insightfulness of those statements.
Although, thinking out loud a bit here, I suppose that statements can also be made for other perceived sources of worth, such as pointing out non-obvious behaviours for sake of informing or educating. But even then the point-raiser believes that the non-obvious behaviour is worth knowing about, i.e. it has some real effect when accounted for by a person who wasn't aware of that. In this volatility example, I think that would equate an underlying belief of "volatility negatively affecting whether short positions are worth taking", outside of the positively-affecting "required" amount of volatility resulting from the price dropping and the short position becoming profitable.
Regading this,
> > My principal point is this: any statement reflects underlying sentiments about what's expected to happen
> This is a statement about the stock market, how do I trade on this?
I suppose one could trade this (albeit somewhat contrivedly) by looking at what the people "in the know" make statements about vs. what they don't. As an example, a CEO making a press release about "We're increasing our usage of AI" is making an overt statement statement about the company's AI usage changing, and a covert statement about they themselves believing that communicating about increasing AI usage is a good thing. Depending on what slide of the keynote the line stands, it (in my mind, per my own perception of the rate of current adoption) reads as a stronger or weaker signal that the company is a technological laggard because the CEO thinks that communicating "yesterday's news" is still worth it.
How tradeable is that by itself? Likely not at all. As a component of analysis? Maybe it's worth something.
I think I agree. And it indeed takes one to know one ;) That said, I wish to keep going for a bit at the least!
> My principal point is that it is possible to make statements about a system that are generally true without taking any view at all on the specific future states of that system.
So from a purely logical point I agree. However, I've found that in most discussions such statements aren't typically made, as participants share points that bring at least some level of new information or surprise into the discussion. And, perhaps as a fault that I should learn out of, I've come to expect this as the default mode of how conversation happens.
Raising points that the point-raiser themselves doesn't think carry any surprise or novel insight sounds strange to me. To construct a contrived programmer-centric analogy, it's a bit like including lines like `if my_boolean != true || my_boolean != false { panic!("my_boolean isn't true or false!"); }` in programs. It's not technically _wrong_ to do so, but it doesn't serve any point and lines like that are typically removed because they're redundant.
I suppose "redundancy" is the key term here. If you condition investment on (paraphrasing) "also tolerating the volatility in the interim", without intending that as a statement about volatility being particularly important over the period, that begs the question why was volatility as a point raised instead of, for example, opportunity costs or importance of a good brokerage or cons of dealing with plain stocks over more tax-efficient investments. And so, choosing between "this person has happened to include redundant if-statements around their booleans and is aware of their redundancy" vs "this person has included extra checks around their booleans believing in their purpose", I opt for the latter interpretation.
And so while I concede that I am making an assumption over the literal interpretation, I also believe that it's warranted. My claim is: a person wouldn't make statements about a topic, if they themselves didn't believe those statements to be worth raising, where worth is measured by the personally perceived insightfulness of those statements.
Although, thinking out loud a bit here, I suppose that statements can also be made for other perceived sources of worth, such as pointing out non-obvious behaviours for sake of informing or educating. But even then the point-raiser believes that the non-obvious behaviour is worth knowing about, i.e. it has some real effect when accounted for by a person who wasn't aware of that. In this volatility example, I think that would equate an underlying belief of "volatility negatively affecting whether short positions are worth taking", outside of the positively-affecting "required" amount of volatility resulting from the price dropping and the short position becoming profitable.
Regading this,
> > My principal point is this: any statement reflects underlying sentiments about what's expected to happen
> This is a statement about the stock market, how do I trade on this?
I suppose one could trade this (albeit somewhat contrivedly) by looking at what the people "in the know" make statements about vs. what they don't. As an example, a CEO making a press release about "We're increasing our usage of AI" is making an overt statement statement about the company's AI usage changing, and a covert statement about they themselves believing that communicating about increasing AI usage is a good thing. Depending on what slide of the keynote the line stands, it (in my mind, per my own perception of the rate of current adoption) reads as a stronger or weaker signal that the company is a technological laggard because the CEO thinks that communicating "yesterday's news" is still worth it.
How tradeable is that by itself? Likely not at all. As a component of analysis? Maybe it's worth something.