The old saying
There is a saying that says, “It’s as true as it gets”, but now it should be changed to “It’s more true than it is”.
The question is, which statement do people agree is true? I pondered this question a long time ago.
The answer is that people tend to agree with statements that match their expectations or perceptions.
Not everything that is said can be verified, and we don’t verify most of what is said in the world. Generally speaking, people’s judgment of the credibility of a certain statement relies mainly on their intuitive assessment of it.
When hearing a certain statement, the listener usually has a default answer to the question in mind, and if the speaker’s viewpoint matches the listener’s original viewpoint, the listener is inclined to believe the statement and regard it as the truth.
Story
This story is about two people in a remote village who went out to visit their sons, one to the United States and the other to a provincial town. One went to America and the other to the provincial capital. Later, the one who went to the provincial capital, out of vanity, also said he had been to America. When they returned to the village, they described to their neighbors what they had seen and heard in the United States.
A few days later, the neighbors thought that the one who went to America was bragging. Since none of the listeners had ever been to the United States, they could only judge the truth of the two men’s descriptions by common sense.
In the end, they realized that the “America” portrayed by the man who had gone to the provincial capital was more in line with their imagination of America, so they thought the man was telling the truth. This shows that people tend to believe statements that match their preconceived notions.
Kung Fu Practice
I practiced Xingyiquan when I was young, and my master taught me from the beginning to move easily, not to exert myself, to strike naturally and relaxedly, and to make every gesture with ease. He said that as long as you practiced carefully and mastered the essentials, you would be able to do it. I was envious of my peers who were practicing Changquan outside, because they were so vigorous and strong. I couldn’t concentrate on the seemingly simple and uncomplicated movements.
I secretly thought that Master must be lying! He didn’t want to pass on real kung fu to me, but was just killing time. I thought I would never be able to fight in my life if I practiced like this.
However, 30 years later, looking back at Sifu’s words and demonstrations, it dawned on me that everything he said was a true martial arts recipe, and everything he taught was true. It is a pity that precious time has passed and cannot be made up.
Therefore, it is very difficult for a child to be able to judge the words of an adult correctly, or for a teenager to have the eyesight of an old man.
This also explains why, even in the most democratic countries, when it comes to major foreign and national policy issues, governments tend to formulate them by consulting committees of experts rather than simply handing them over to citizens for a vote. A large number of people is not the same as the right number of people, and the opinions of ten children do not necessarily add up to the same adult’s thinking. The saying “three heads of the class are better than one” does not hold true in some cases.
Quantification
Quantification is also like this, beginners, or for the quantitative aspirations of people, often for quantitative have a dream, this dream will become the motivation to learn quantitative, but this dream or fantasy, will form a kind of cocoon, should be this way or should not be that way of thinking, will make quantitative learning and research into the wrong area.
As a result of the quantitative preconceived notions, the formation of a quantitative self-opinion, a quantitative expectations. In the future, anything that fits this inherent pattern will be unconsciously praised and followed.
So those god-awful yields are sought after. After a while, the exposure to such miraculous yields grows, but as soon as you get on the live market it’s all about endless losses, leaving you wondering what the problem is.
Those ideas, methods, and worldviews that are really helpful for quantitative, but will hide behind, even the real world is so cruel. Make you wonder if it is lying to you!
In the past few years, in the quantitative popularity of the world there are a few gods, in various self-media platforms non-stop publicity of their own performance is how excellent. Their own ability is how outstanding. Even a well-known quantitative trading team, claiming that they control how many how many funds. How many how many strategies in the real disk. But really into the team inside the realization but feel disappointed. Some friends complained: obviously with the mindset of learning to join the team, but also paid a lot of tuition, but did not expect the level of the real founder is so bad. A lot of basic algorithms and experience is it point this team. I really don’t know what the value of this tuition is!
Two friends and I were chatting a while ago about what is real quantitative trading knowledge and what is real research. Talked very well, when I asked about the specific odds, winning percentage, Sharpe ratio, they cited information for me to see. After reading the information, I can only be silent. This information, although on the surface of the rationale, the point of view is categorical, in fact, all a piece of nonsense, those who look so real back to the test returns are not added slippage and handling fees calculated.
Some time ago, the quantitative trading contests in various forums was a good thing. However, with the increase in the number of contests, it has been rumored that this type of contests have also been falsified.
Conscious and unconscious people, are creating a variety of information, the network and fueled, which makes the already dazzling quantitative world, even more dizzying.
A beginner to this quantitative world would be like a person living in the desert who arrives in New York City and is overwhelmed by everything that surrounds him.
But the more you are a beginner, the more you need to find the right path. But to find a correct path is required to have eyesight, and people most need eyesight, precisely when the eyesight is the weakest, which may be the nature of the inscrutable side of it.
