Negative space
Red versus blue? Give it a break
It's always the right time to think. So go on, think some more. You’ve probably forgotten to consider some edge cases. You should agonize a bit longer. If you don’t, someone will beat you to it. You’ll miss something. They won’t. They’re already finding the newest game to play. You don’t even know how to start looking for it. Prepare to be embarrassed and defeated.
You worthless piece of shit, you’re definitely gonna be part of the permanent underclass.
Traders are varying degrees of pretentious and paranoid. And why shouldn’t they be? They make more money than you. They expose themselves to more information than you. Obviously they’re in the right position to make all the important decisions. They’re stretching their intelligence to the limit. And all for the market, which is the world, practically speaking. We should thank them! Things are as good as they are, because of traders. They’re at the frontier of all that matters. Of course they’re better than you.
They don’t need to say it, though. It’s self-evident and void of alpha.
You know that “red button versus blue button” thought experiment that’s been lurching around the internet like an excessively fresh corpse?
My friends fixated on this question for a day or two. They’ve fixated on similar questions before. Every time, the sickness is short, but they’re always ready to be infected again.
After all, if we don’t think through the problem, the red button pushers might get us. Death. Death. DEATH!
The question kept our group chat occupied. I responded, but I wasn’t eloquent. I failed to express that 1) of course I agree we should be thoughtful, and that whether people press red or blue depends on where they live, and how long they think it through, and whether they get to push the button for their children, and… but also 2) that they were sniped so easily by the question made it clear that they had a hidden tendency to self-harm.
One of them, understandably misunderstanding me, implied that I was succumbing to the chaos of controversy. You angry, bro?
No. I’m willing to die if it means that the world will be more than 50% blue pushers, forever. I think some of my friends would claim the same,1 but the more they’re fixated on the button question, the less I believe them.
Not that my willingness to die even means anything here. How could anyone prove that my death would achieve such an outcome? I guess I’d need to be a trader to have access to that information. But then I almost certainly wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice myself. Catch-22.
Wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing. Do you know when not to think? Do you even know how? Do you think that you can gain an understanding of negative space by applying your frantic brushstrokes over the entire canvas? Don’t be silly. You are incompetent.
Go – sit down. Close your eyes, but not to sleep. Practice not thinking until you stop frantically pooping ink all over the page while secretly, in your pathetic background, in that place you paper over with rationality, you flee like a child from annihilation.
None of them responded when I asked them directly, but I’m charitable.