I'm inclined to call it "not even wrong", but let's take an example. The Financial Crisis is the crisis of 2008. It started (the crisis itself, not the preshocks), notably, with a bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers which the Fed allowed to happen. This, by the way, was later deemed to have been a mistake and the TBTF -- Too Big To Fail -- monsters were born. The immediate danger during the September and October of 2008 was that the global payment network would freeze because of counterparty uncertainty and that the world finance would, essentially, collapse. That did not happen, but the effects on real economy were severe nevertheless -- consult any GDP graph for the relevant period.

So let's apply Levine's definition. Who in 2008 were the borrowers and who were the lenders? It was deemed "socially or politically unacceptable" for which creditors to not get their money back? Is it a useful way to think about the situation?

will be/are being dealt with in the ongoing season, Owarimonogatari, which is very good so far.

I hope so. Hanamonogatari was a big disappointment after Second Season.

Her issue

No, I got that much. The dialogues were very blunt about that. The problem is that Nadeko is also explained at length to have several other issues, such as being so self-involved that she cannot understand or listen to other people besides her own delusions, and to have a fake love to insulate herself from other people, and these three character problems are practically mutually contradictory (if she's overly cute to please other people, then she doesn't need a fake love; if she's that self-centered & navel-gazing, then why does she need to be overly cute, and how did she fail at self-insight so consistently? if the love was just a convenience, what's with the whole homicidal rage, not to mention the rather sadistic treatment of snakes right from the beginning of her backstory? how does any of this really fit with the final twist of her being na nfcvevat znatnxn, juvpu lbh'q guvax jbhyq or nagvgurgvpny gb orvat hygen-frys-nofbeorq naq ynpxvat nal erny vafvtug vagb barfrys? and so on). The character makes no sense, but not in a good way, more of a 'Nise wrote himself into a corner and piled on too many problems to try to justify her homicidal rage' (ie 'the lady doth protest too much'). All in all, it left me feeling nonplussed and maybe a bit disgusted.

Nonfiction Books Thread

the Kanbaru arc which seems to be the final arc

That's the final arc chronologically, but there are still a number of unresolved/unrevealed things that will be/are being dealt with in the ongoing season, Owarimonogatari, which is very good so far.

I find the character Nadeko Sengoku impossible to understand

Her issue was that she felt forced to act overly cute to please other people, and eventually got sick of it and lashed out.

Fiction Books Thread

My question is simply: Do we have any reason to believe that the uncertainty introduced by quantum mechanics will preclude the level of precision in which two agents have to model each other in order to engage in acausal trade?

I made this joke site: https://flashcash.money

It's often rational to burn cash on positional goods like Rolexes and bottle service at clubs, but FlashCash.money takes that value proposition to the logical extreme.

Yes, I understand the point of acausal trading. The point of my question was to speculate on how likely it is that quantum mechanics may prohibit modeling accurate enough to make acausal trading actually work. My intuition is based on the fact that in general faster than light transmission of information is prohibited. For example, even though entangled particles update on each others state when they are outside of each others light cone, it is known that it is not possible transmit information faster than light using this fact.
Now, does mutually enhancing each others utility count as information, I don't think so. But my instinct is that acausal trade protocols will not be possible do to the level of modelling required and the noise introduced by quantum mechanics.

That's true, but he's talking from the company's side. If the target market are those that wouldn't invest at all, then the company could be providing real value overall.

I wouldn't use such a company, of course; but the target demo is not "people who think logically about investments unless they get fuzzies".

His argument is

1. Let people spend their extra cash however they want
2. This company seems likely to be a net utility plus for society

The fact that its users are still irrational seems irrelevant then, and it's reminding me of the whole "Copenhagen ethics" post (to make the analogy explicit, the company is being blamed for the fact that its users aren't perfect, even though they're better off than without the company.

Like it is easy for me to sit here and say to young people, one, you should invest in broad index funds, not funds concentrated in trendy areas like the Internet or clean technology, and, two, you should try to minimize fees instead of paying someone just to rebrand index funds for you. But you should drink tap water instead of Coke, too, and stay home and read Proust instead of blowing a whole month of your salary on Taylor Swift tickets. All consumption is dumb, if you think too hard about it. That's why it is consumption.

Matt Levine