Do you see patterns in Random Walks?

[MAESTRO]

Quote from intradaybill:

+ 100

What Antisyzygy wrote is a very deep and important fact. Many people don't understand the concept of deterministic chaos. These are systems that have no connection to randomness but to the untrained they appear so. They are very hard to model, they have virtually no observability and controlability and building linear estimators leads nowhere.

Would you mind expanding on this concept of "deterministic chaos"? I would like to understand the major differences between a well defined chaos theory and this (I have to admit) new to me concept of "deterministic chaos". I might have missed something, but, as usual, I am willing to learn.

P.S. I think having your points of view here is very healthy. It makes this discussion more valid. Thank you for your participation.

 

[Samsara]

Quote from MAESTRO:

however, the processes that led this find to its decision to buy or sell cannot be logically (in a sense of "If- Then" statements) described. If the temperature suddenly drops and water freezes, it takes a shape that is certainly very structured and well defined (from the ice crystal stand point of view), however, the actual process of forming this shape cannot be describe using linear causality.

Ah, I see. This again goes back to your behavioral theory: that up to the decision to deploy funds, all of the information being processed by those deciding itself is subject to randomness -- am I close? And that probably includes psychological states and anything else (Malcolm Gladwell likes to popularize the contingent nature of our decision making). You draw this conclusion because we cannot linearly describe any aspect of causality in this whole process, and cannot posit true determinism.

If I'm understanding you correctly [not sure] and in lieu of digging more deeply into the specialized training required, this holds for me, because again there is no "god's eye view", and a transcendent account has no "cash value" in William James's parlance -- which is an approach I share.

I can already anticipate the common sense response though, so I'll put it out there: because we cannot predict the outcome, it doesn't necessarily mean determinism is not present. Before there were any ideas about Newtonian physics, or anyone to conceive of them, it doesn't mean the Big Bang didn't happen.

 

[MAESTRO]

Quote from Samsara:

Ah, I see. This again goes back to your behavioral theory: that up to the decision to deploy funds, all of the information being processed by those deciding itself is subject to randomness -- am I close? And that probably includes psychological states and anything else (Malcolm Gladwell likes to popularized the contingent nature of our decision making). You draw this conclusion because we cannot linearly describe any aspect of causality in this whole process, and cannot posit true determinism.

If I'm understanding you correctly [not sure] and in lieu of digging more deeply into the specialized training required, this holds for me, because again there is no "god's eye view", and a transcendent account has no "cash value" in William James's parlance -- which is an approach I share.

I can already anticipate the common sense response though, so I'll put it out there: because we cannot predict the outcome, it doesn't necessarily mean determinism is not present. Before there were any ideas about Newtonian physics, or anyone to conceive of them, it doesn't mean the Big Bang didn't happen.

Well, you have answered your own question better than I could.

The only thing that I'd like to add is the main reason for us to have difficulties in accepting the randomness at large is very similar to the difficulties we experienced accepting the relativity theory. In our practical world the classical physics and determinism are supported by our senses where the relativity theory experiments could not be conducted without arming our senses with quite sophisticated devices. In our day to day world the time compression while traveling with the speed closer to the speed of light cannot be demonstrated without something like particle accelerator. However, think how much more we know today and how much more we can harvest from nature by finally accepting the relativity theory. The same thing is happening today with the behavioral studies and mathematical psychology. Please give another read to this book http://www.amazon.com/SYNC-Emerging-Science-Spontaneous-Order/dp/0786868449 . I am sure we will get closer on our points of view. Also, my practical implementation of these new behavioral patterns work in real life the same way as nuclear reactors based on the theory of relativity are providing us with electricity.

 

[SteveNYC]

Quote from Antisyzygy:

Of course.

The market isn't random. Its a chaotic system. I.e. it is a highly nonlinear system that has feedback loops which exist sometimes and other times seem to not exist. These sort of systems appear random, but are not.

The issue is that human beings are not always rational. They act inconsistently many times, however sometimes they act together when they get scared, or confident. Then you have groups of humans in corporations, or banks, or investment firms acting as one unit which also drive prices. The problem is that no human is the same as the next, and no human group is the same as the next, and human beings drive the market. Furthermore, not every human being has the same information at any given time, and even if they were totally rational it would be impossible to duplicate eachothers actions.

If you were to model the universe and the minds of human beings you would be able to completely predict the market's move.

The best way to look at the market is using nonlinear dynamics paired with probability and statistics. This is also known as "chaos theory". Most traders are on the "Fractal" side today, however I actually believe this is the best starting point in spite of having limited concrete evidence myself. Empirically, you can look at any timeframe in the market and if you ignore the time-stamps or make it so you can't see what timeframe you are in, you cannot tell the difference many times between 1 minute timeframe and 1 day timeframe. This is a symptom of the market being "fractal".

Take a look at Fractal dimension indicators. As the dimension approaches 1.5 the signal approaches the same measure of dimension as total randomness. As a signal approaches a fractal dimension of 1 they tend to be trending, and as a signal approaches a fractal dimension of 2 it tends to by cyclic.

Check out this link for a good basic starting point :

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/psychology/cogsci/chaos/workshop/Fractals.html

Then check out this book for theory that will help you understand the market scientifically :

http://www.amazon.com/Fractal-Geome...dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

You sound like a PhD student/graduate.

 

[intradaybill]

Quote from Samsara:

Now, I'm going to test your reading comprehension, since you didn't seem to understand what I wrote earlier. You state there are two interpretations of QM.

Which interpretation of QM is <i>true</i>, and why?

There are at least 10 QM interpretations that I know of. These are philosophical interpetations. Some comit to deterministic worlds and some to randomness. All are experimentally equivalent. Thus, randomness is a philosophical issue. QM does not say the world is random. Only misinterpretation of QM found in cheap popular science books say so. I hope I am clear.

 

[SteveNYC]

Quote from Antisyzygy:

Even mathematicians and some other scientists, who use a form of language called "mathematics" to understand reality, realize its an approximation to reality. There are paradoxes that exist which do not makes much sense using our "math" language. There's even something called "Godel's Incompleteness Theorem" which states an uncountably infinite number of axioms exist in any system of mathematical logic. Axioms are things accepted as true that enable your math to work. The biggest one is the "Axiom of Choice", however many logicians and mathematicians do not accept it as truth and formulate their own alternative system.

However, the system we have made a consensus on is still the best approximation we have to understanding reality, and even being imperfect it enables us to build GPS satellites, transfer data via electromagnetic waves, and calculate things on a computer a human mind would take several lifetimes to calculate.

You sound like a TA of an applied math professor.

 

[henrik_freebsd]

Quote from MAESTRO:

...can harvest from nature by finally accepting the relativity theory. The same thing is happening today with the behavioral studies and mathematical psychology. Please give another read to this book http://www.amazon.com/SYNC-Emerging-Science-Spontaneous-Order/dp/0786868449 . I am sure we will get closer on our points of view. Also, my practical implementation of these new behavioral patterns work in real life the same way as nuclear reactors based on the theory of relativity are providing us with electricity. [/B]

A talk on synchronization from Steven Strogatz, the author of the referred book, http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync.html

 

[Samsara]

Quote from MAESTRO:

Well, you have answered your own question better than I could.

The only thing that I'd like to add is the main reason for us to have difficulties in accepting the randomness at large is very similar to the difficulties we experienced accepting the relativity theory. In our practical world the classical physics and determinism are supported by our senses where the relativity theory experiments could not be conducted without arming our senses with quite sophisticated devices. In our day to day world the time compression while traveling with the speed closer to the speed of light cannot be demonstrated without something like particle accelerator. However, think how much more we know today and how much more we can harvest from nature by finally accepting the relativity theory. The same thing is happening today with the behavioral studies and mathematical psychology. Please give another read to this book http://www.amazon.com/SYNC-Emerging-Science-Spontaneous-Order/dp/0786868449 . I am sure we will get closer on our points of view. Also, my practical implementation of these new behavioral patterns work in real life the same way as nuclear reactors based on the theory of relativity are providing us with electricity.

I see. I will definitely check out the book. Not sure which one first to read (whichever is shorter, perhaps).

Also, your final sentence is key. The truth of something is part and parcel of the systems used to verify it; in fact, it is solely the sum of those systems of verification (William James's "cash value" again). Like the ability to build a satellite that works as intended within our understanding of physics is an arbiter of truth (as another poster pointed out), the ability to generate consistent risk-adjusted returns is essentially the only way to verify the theory you're presenting here. Unlike with the academics who posit the EMH, even though they're the same flavor.

I would be interested in your response to my last point about determinism though, and in any continued line of dialog you have with folks like intradaybill. When I talked about the philosophical line in continental theory that goes through Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and lands in the lap of both modern theoretical physics and Davidson or Rorty, I'm basically already on that page, and it's not an easy place to be. But the analytical line whose picture is that we're always getting closer and closer to a truer language that describes reality -- that the map will become the territory someday -- is definitely worth addressing. It's a fundamental part of the debate in academia over the last 50 years, in fact.

I also don't exactly want to agree with you, because, as I mentioned before, any flavor of the EMH is disturbing to me as it might affect my bottom line. Haha.

 

[Samsara]

Quote from intradaybill:

There are at least 10 QM interpretations that I know of. These are philosophical interpetations. Some comit to deterministic worlds and some to randomness. All are experimentally equivalent. Thus, randomness is a philosophical issue. QM does not say the world is random. Only misinterpretation of QM found in cheap popular science books say so. I hope I am clear.

Let's continue this, because you're positing incorrect and correct interpretations of QM experiments, which is highly relevant to everything we're discussing. Your position is valid and I think it's worth trying to parse exactly how and why we all might agree and disagree -- without the grandstanding and animosity.

If there are 10 interpretations of QM, I assume only one can be true, as 2+2 cannot = 4 and 5 at the same time. You've hit on Karl Popper's criterion -- for something to be considered true, it has to be falsifiable first.

When you say one of those schema is a misinterpretation of QM and referring to it is a fallacy, you're implying that it at least has been falsified, right?

Which is the correct interpretation and why?

 

[intradaybill]

Quote from MAESTRO:

Would you mind expanding on this concept of "deterministic chaos"? I would like to understand the major differences between a well defined chaos theory and this (I have to admit) new to me concept of "deterministic chaos". I might have missed something, but, as usual, I am willing to learn.

P.S. I think having your points of view here is very healthy. It makes this discussion more valid. Thank you for your participation.

Deterministic chaos is a very old concept in mathematics and dynamics. It deals with systems whose tarjectory is sensitive to initial conditions. Our planetary system for example is a chaotic system. Change something and there it goes, hopefully not.

"Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

This is a very important paper. An excerpt:

"there are several deterministic systems used in science which give the same predictions at every observation level as Markov processes. All these results show that measure-theoretic deterministic systems and stochastic processes are observationally equivalent more often than one might perhaps expect. "

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135521980900032X

In other words, you may be thinking you see a random process but actually what you see is a deterministic non-linear system.