Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Here we go again, another major price drop for bitcoins
by
kjj
on 02/09/2011, 23:01:28 UTC
I agree some of his posts are hilarious.

But, there is no chance in trading.  There may be factors unknown to you, but that does not make it chance.  Everyone is placing conscious bid/sell orders and the bots are running according to algorithms dependent upon set parameters.

The more factors you are aware of, and the more you can understand the interrelationships between these factors simultaneously, your returns will be better.

I said this in another post, but chance in itself is a bogus word.
Saying something is due to chance is saying that acausality caused it.

Yup, Doctor House expressed this wonderfully in an episode.

Quote
Dr. Cameron: Idiopathic T-cell deficiency?
Dr. House: Idiopathic, from the Latin meaning we're idiots 'cause we can't figure out what's causing it.

Even probability theory doesn't rule out causality (e.g. the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes is said to be acausal) because one cannot assume that they can necessarily perceive/understand the logical syntax that guides this unique process.  Just cause you don't understand it doesn't mean it was luck or chance.

And, the Bitcoin market is far from the probabilistic nature of radioactive decay.

Actually, radioactive decay has a very certain and well understood cause.  Unfortunately, that cause is a quantum effect, so we can't predict it.  And if all of the experiments into J.S. Bell's theorem are right (and they certainly appear to be), we won't ever be able to predict it.  It isn't just that we don't know about the internal wheels and gears inside the particles, it really appears to be that there really aren't any.

At any rate, this isn't the right discussion to be having.  The bitcoin market is chaotic, not stochastic.  Actually, markets in general are chaotic.  Chaotic phenomena are totally deterministic, in principle, but never predictable.