the mathematics of persistence

[darkhorse]

Taking things personally is generally a bad idea because ego is a distraction. It gets in the way of objective analysis.

For more on this, consider the following Wikipedia description of Mushin, a concept favored by Bruce Lee:

Mushin is achieved when a person’s mind is free from thoughts of anger, fear, or ego during combat or everyday life. There is an absence of discursive thought and judgment, so the person is totally free to act and react towards an opponent without hesitation and without disturbance from such thoughts. At this point, a person relies not on what they think should be the next move, but what is their trained natural reaction or what is felt intuitively. It is not a state of relaxed, near-sleepfulness, however. The mind could be said to be working at a very high speed, but with no intentions, plans or direction. In analogy a clear mind is compared to a still pond, which is able to clearly reflect the moon and trees. But just as waves in the pond will distort the picture of reality, so will the thoughts we hold onto disrupt the true perception of reality.

p.s. The will to win should not be confused with the ability to detach. They are two separate spheres.

p.p.s. Practicing a detached self-assessment check at regular intervals throughout the day can improve long-term results. More here for anyone interested in that topic.

 

[gettinglucky]

Quote from darkhorse:

Taking things personally is generally a bad idea because ego is a distraction. It gets in the way of objective analysis.

For more on this, consider the following Wikipedia description of Mushin, a concept favored by Bruce Lee:



p.s. The will to win should not be confused with the ability to detach. They are two separate spheres.

p.p.s. Practicing a detached self-assessment check at regular intervals throughout the day can improve long-term results. More here for anyone interested in that topic.

it's funny you should use that example. Bruce Lee had the appearance of control and everything on the outside. but Bruce was all ego on the inside. the ego is lust. Bruce was known to flash a business card to the female reporters interviewing him, which read, "if you want to sleep with me, smile." you can guess how Mrs. Lee felt about that...

 

[jack hershey]

Often the viewpoints of contributors have as a context their experience directly or vicariously.

The Bayesian or "frequentist" orientation is most common here since most expereriences are saddled with contexts of previous choices. Induction has prevailed in this thread.

Two of my Peace Corps friends brought back a lot from Africa. One was bedridden with TB so we collaborated on making an alphabet as a bridge to systematizing an unwritten language. She had a party near departure for our cultural reasons. A chief missed the party but did meet with her just before departure. He had a question: "Why didn't she and other search for him when he became missing?"

Another friend became a quadraplegic in Africa. Both wound up in VA centers to deal with the consequences of their experiences.

My colleagual relationship, during the post quadraplegic rest of my friend's life, was in negotiations and contracting. He drove a Buick and did reports using a keyboard, computer and printer.

Both these people did not wear number 34 and they moved well beyond The vantagepoints most currently expressed.

How? is the topic and not Why?

How did a peace corp teacher required to teach Greek and Latin get to where the bridge needed to be built and build it? How could a person who became a quadraplegic regain a fuller life?

A person's nature propels him to and past the "4 Agreements" model and past the "champion" model. Nurture can always occur when there is an impediment no matter what size.

Most people mistake nuture as an externality relative to the nurtured. Secret societies have as part of their fabric, the understanding that nurture is an internally created path and the path is invariant.

From observer to beginner to advanced expert, no matter the approach, a simple self nurturing system is used repeatedly. I can stick with the limitation of not dealing with why (since it is not thought to be important by anyone here).

How this systematic self nurturing system works best is very important. It is persistent as pointed out in the thread topic.

The fork in the road for using one kind of nuturing over another is a classic location on the path.

Why did Bayes and frequentists prevail in the "unification". It was the path to scientific observation that confirmed hypotheses. Often the presence of the unseen was provided indirectly with more and more super tools.

You who are devoted to the CW and myths of the financial industry may want to look at just how the quest for super tooling the industry didn't work out.

The other side of the fork is there and to complete the path, THE SAME SELF NURTURING SYSTEM can be used.

How does a person deal with the X going to Z either directly or via Y in a correct manner? He builds the equipment to do it.

A person has to make a choice to begin to get equipped. I'll use the common language here and call this choice an "Action".

The fork in the road is left behind by either choosing to deal creatively or to deal with pragmatic evidence primarily. It can be argued that both are always on the table anyway. They are.

But there is a differentiating consideration. Bayes stayed with looking at evidence. Keynes and Carnap went beyond the 4 agreements and the unification.

Bayes looked at pieces and put them in piles. Bets were made and performance resulted. It is like a child learning to not put his hand on a hot stove by gaining a mental inference (long term memory) so he can "know and have the skill" to not touch something hot when he senses "heat" coming from the hot source. the child becomes an expert at one thing. He can use his 4 Agreements to deal with other things and grow his inferernce. Preception is sensing plus inference.

The other fork deals with the choice to create a system scientifically using reason. This is the convention of science to use deduction.

In markets and in trading all is observable and all is precisely defined when a person takes this fork in the path. The natural reaction to the sentence just ststed is rejection and rejection more easily occur outside of the correct operation of the 4 agreements (non performance).

The pieces, with respect to deduction, are in just a few groups and each group is totally explicit.

Thus, the definition of levels of trading are correspondingly explicit and the arrangement of knowledge and skills is a simple matter of handling.

When anyone reviews my writings, they see that the constant theme has always been problem solving using deductive reasoning. Any living person in the US and elsewhere is affected in at least three ways, daily, as a consequnce of my work as a team problem solving member.

By staying on a fifth grade level, a person can go through acquiring knowledge and skills from observer to expert.

It is simple a matter of using the market pieces, the market rules, and a person plan, strategy, and routine.

Notice I use words like "guidebook", "putting the pieces to gether" and "building the mind for building wealth".

Keynes stated that all system components must be "in kind". He is correct.

Carnap devised logic and logic theory.

The heart of the matter comes down to "accepting" the market's pieces and how they work together.

"Trust" ensues from "accepting".

These are way beyond the 4 agreements and the unification.

In the 1840's G. Boole came up with the "arithmetic" of markets. This was following the 1790 definitions of practice suggested by his predicessor. (google my schematic from 1790 to 1957).

What it looks like to me it that an accepting person can start with 5K and spend 60 days becoming a millionaire and get to intermediate. From that point on it takes another 60 days to become expert.

this person has to behave at the level of a fifth grader and he has to be doing a "process of learning". "Process of learning" is defined as building the mind's long term memory. so that the mind produces a one on one match for each of the subsets of elements in Monitoring, Analysis, Decision making and Action.

As we all know the decisom making full set has five elements: Hold, reverse, wait, enter and exit in their "frequentist" order.

Try "accepting" that, relativistically, there are the same number of cases in markets as there are digits in the ten based arithmetic symbol system. The arithmetic of markets has only two symbols: bigits. Why does no one, as yet, know (by making a statement of the facts) what the measured variables of the market are? I know this is a Why. Why was this unfortunate choice to not "accept" the market variables made? This is a nature question. What in your nature prevented this choice to be made?

What in human nature prevents proper choices when examining a system that is living and working?

You choose whipsaw I choose antiwhipsaw. Why?

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

So if you keep studying and practising something, you get better at it? Gods be praised!

Next question - what if you've been practising the wrong thing? Would kinda suck to reach 40 and realise you've spent half your life slaving away to become the world's best tiddlywinks player, or the financial equivalent thereof. Then you might have an existential crisis so bad that you'd resort to overpaying for pickled animal corpses or putting strangely shaped lumps of concrete on your front lawn, in an attempt to stave off the soul-crushing realisation that you just wasted your life on something completely meaningless.

 

[jack hershey]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

So if you keep studying and practising something, you get better at it? Gods be praised!

Next question - what if you've been practising the wrong thing? Would kinda suck to reach 40 and realise you've spent half your life slaving away to become the world's best tiddlywinks player, or the financial equivalent thereof. Then you might have an existential crisis so bad that you'd resort to overpaying for pickled animal corpses or putting strangely shaped lumps of concrete on your front lawn, in an attempt to stave off the soul-crushing realisation that you just wasted your life on something completely meaningless.

Read acrurary (sp?).

His very cool realizations were on top of determining to end his prior endeavors.

In construction it is common to have contractors fail to follow the architectural plans that had gone through the permitting process. Inspectors red flag their work. It is torn out and, thirdly, replaced correctly under architectural supervision.

Your assessment of tiddlywinks level trading is perfect.

One of the most persitent problems is dealing with platform providers to gert them to upgrade their services to a reasonable level.

I used to attend the Trader'sExpo and cruise the exhibition floor. It is like night and day when dealing with the spectrum of exhibitors.

It was not uncommon to have three way talks with the exhibitor coordinator and the presentation coordinator. The common joke was that either of them knew where I was most of the time.

One of the presenters raffled off a 2500 dollar set of CD's. When the inevitable occurred, he felt so neat about blowing my cover. the "sweet young thing" next to me complianed I had not filled in the raffle ticket, so I went through the motions. Then my cover was blown. I gave her two of my CD's as a consulation prize. Post presentation, I got to turn down a lot of speaking invites.

The point is this.

A lot of people have gone through the shift from CW tiddlywinks to partnering with the markets using binary vector paradigms. a lot of us, pros and amateurs have networking going all the time.

It would really wreck the expo world if the tide shifted to rationality.

Platform providers only go through providing binary vector tooling when their clients put their feet to the fire.

To this day there are vey few operating platforms with antiwhipsaw built into them.

A simple pass/fail test of forward looking outfits is the global variable issue. It is not ordinarily available on lousy platforms.

One of the most fun Expo session "after effects" is when the coordinators figure out how presenters are "reading" some guys in the audience for leading 'tells' and "confirmations".

sometimes there are threads here on "getting OPM". LOL

At expo's one of the things "money" is doing is finding "managers"

ALL of these searchers have been through switching out of tiddlywinks mangement to "the real McCoy" type management.

I am very appreciative that you have lifted the dialogue here to the level you have.

 

[darkhorse]

Quote from gettinglucky:

it's funny you should use that example. Bruce Lee had the appearance of control and everything on the outside. but Bruce was all ego on the inside. the ego is lust. Bruce was known to flash a business card to the female reporters interviewing him, which read, "if you want to sleep with me, smile." you can guess how Mrs. Lee felt about that...

I can sympathize with Bruce. Extremely beautiful women are a real weakness of mine.

Fortunately I'm not married...

Also, I would question your assumption that ego = lust. Speaking personally, sometimes it's just plain old sex drive. Being in peak physical and mental shape tends to enhance testosterone levels, as numerous fallen sports heroes have learned to their downfall.

Then, too, there is the connoisseur's taste for the female form -- which one can readily appreciate as a fine work of art...

Sorry, you got me going on one of my three favorite topics (trading, poker, and women).

 

[darkhorse]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

...in an attempt to stave off the soul-crushing realisation that you just wasted your life on something completely meaningless.

 

[darkhorse]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

So if you keep studying and practising something, you get better at it? Gods be praised!

p.s. It is easy to belittle what appears simple. The problem is that all wisdom in its most distilled form is simple. This creates the danger of a slippery slope, in which the belittler becomes a habitual rejecter of wisdom itself.

 

[murray t turtle]

Quote from darkhorse:

happy trails y'all

===============
Excellant article;
not that wisdom is found in a ''lucky city'' as the last line stated

I remember your name, [nickname]dark horse;
Ralph Reed wrote a book with your name[''Dark horse''[Strange political science fiction, but amazingly accurate /up to date for political science fiction]

Also Mr Warren Buffet had a real good point;
somewhat of a paraphrase follows- i could not do what i did in a commie country -evil empire]

I also like the power.... point/odds/rebuke, in that article

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from darkhorse:

p.s. It is easy to belittle what appears simple. The problem is that all wisdom in its most distilled form is simple. This creates the danger of a slippery slope, in which the belittler becomes a habitual rejecter of wisdom itself.

Well I question whether it is wisdom. Persistence in the wrong direction is clearly a mistake, and a very damaging one, given the time it requires. So I think a discussion on persistence is incomplete and even dangerous without first establishing what is worthy of persistence.

Also, sometimes persistence can lead you astray. If you are talented at something, you typically get results far quicker for a given amount of effort, than most other people do. Putting persistence on a pedestal risks persuading people to expend huge effort and time on things they are not talented at, rather than quickly giving up when it's obvious they are not suited to something, and then looking around for something they ARE good at.

10k hours is not necessary if you are truly gifted at something. 1 million hours is not enough if you are hopelessly unsuited to something.

The mathematics of persistence include the fact that 10,000 times zero is still zero, and that 10,000 times a negative number just results in an even bigger negative number.

My advice would be to spend the effort at the beginning, working out the true purpose of your intended goals, and how worthwhile they are, before expending 10,000 hours on them. Better to realise a mistake at the beginning before you put the big trade on, than after you've blown your account because you got the direction wrong and didn't think to use a stop.