A month is too short term. Make it a year

But the invite only/read only subsection is not a bad idea either.

I am not saying that kids are dumb, but teens with less life experience pretending to know it all it irks me every time.
The equalizing effect of the internet (making feel that a teen has the same authority than a professional), plus the trolling effect that we all know, causes really exasperating situations.

I applaud any kid who has a inquisitive mind, and some of them may try to learn through arguments.
But you can really tell the mental age of someone by paying attention to the proper usage of vocabulary, terminologies and their reasoning pattern... Which is in turn always matching with their life experience.

Preteens typically make you refer to the dictionary. They have difficulties understanding that professional terminologies have specific meanings that are not reflected in vernacular usage.

Teens typically want to pretend to be cultured and most analyses are purely logical, they don't understand the difference between tautology and truth. They have hard time understanding fallacies. They heavily use rhetoric to cover their ignorance. They are still trapped in a word of definitions, but now less about semantics and more about of conceptual definitions from textbook. Male teens have a very hard time being flexible, they are still living in a world of absolutes. They may grasp conceptually but they lack understanding of fundamentals.
Existential questions abound, and their ideologies are paved with zeitgeist and 1984 instead of actual philosophy.
And those who eat better ideologies, they become fanboys. Basically because they lack of actual criteria, they are looking for authorities to respect and follow.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is fairly predominant in both preteens and teens.

Adults because of their life experience, they bring case studies and they understand the exceptions to the rule. We use models to understand the world, but we use empiricism to confirm. We learn that the world is neither black nor white, but gray.
Existential conflicts are mostly gone with puberty, although it may return at your 30's or 40's in what people call "middle life crises". But those are more in line with "what did I do with my life" instead of the teenage "why do I exist".

OP is right: your vocabulary and orthography reveals a LOT, and the way that one formulates their ideas exposes even more.
If you read enough how someone formulates their question and/or reacts, you can infer fairly accurately their educational level, and therefore estimate their (mental) age.

Now, I am not criticizing the kids, this is all part of their learning process. Also, there are very bright ones out there. But most of them are just adding noise.
Having an invite only forum would be fine, but those posts shouldn't be isolated from the public, instead it should be something like a +v channel... only those invited can reply and post. The rest just watch and listen.

*sigh* He's talking about kids like you

136 years your pendrive will be storing yottabytes, and for your harddrive they will have to make up some ridiculous names to store ridiculous amounts of data. Although moore's law has a physical limitation (we can't go beyond atomic scale) probably by then we will have some hack or discovery to keep evolving towards a world of data exuberance lol.

Some variation in the handwriting is always expected.
The following signature is from the first page of the contract: http://i.imgur.com/SouZWJz.jpg
I believe that the style is the same, especially his first name "Eric" is very consistent, along with the style of his "e" and "a". I would worry if I found any differences there, the a's tend to stay the same style for all your life since elementary school...
And the speed of the signature is consistent in all three.

Although I don't have the skills of a forensics document examiner, I am very good at telling someone's handwriting since I used to pay a lot of attention to minute details to decode my classmates' absolutely illegible class notes... to the point that I had to decode letter by letter, by comparing and analyzing every curve, slant and direction of their lines. So now I have an eye for these type of things, I can even read a doctor's handwriting

After reviewing the thread again I would summarize the current conclusion about tldoctor:
1) The existence of a person named Eric S. Neal is confirmed.
2) The existence of Eric S. Neal as CEO and founder of two skiptracing and collection agencies is confirmed with official documents.
3) The only current conundrum is if tldoctor is in fact Eric S. Neal

I can answer the third point because I contacted tldoctor through this forum and I ended up becoming his investor.
I can attest that tldoctor is in fact Eric S. Neal because of his signature.

If you see the registration of his company in NH, you will be able to see his signed documents:
For example, this document from 2010 http://www.sos.nh.gov/imaging/12926555.pdf
Which matches with the signature that I received in my contract in 2013: http://i.imgur.com/i9BT1qC.jpg
This pretty much answers and confirms tldoctor's identity as Eric Neal.

He also has proven to me that he does seem to have access to all the tools necessary to be a debt collector.
Having said that, currently I can't testify about his actual proficiency as a skiptracer because the portfolio has just been acquired, but I have no reason to doubt about his skills beforehand.

-nano

I use his technical analysis to do exactly the opposite of what he recommends.
He has a knack of being consistently wrong, and I am reaping profits from it lol

I would expect to actually see another resistance or even a crash at 99.
There is some resistance to round numbers, and 100 is a big milestone.

I rely on psychological pricing a lot.
It doesn't happen only with prices, but also with years.
Almost every time it is a year ending in zero, and especially "milestones" such as the beggining of a decade, century or millennium, there is a speculation of doomsday.
I believe in that case it might be related to apophenia and also in the way we learn the numeric system, our language system and some bad heuristics.

Lets say $1399, in written it is one thousand three hundred ninety nine.
And lets say $1401, in written it is one thousand four hundred one.
If someone is mathematically inclined and can take numbers objectively, and is asked to check a price from the newspaper and finds $1399, he would realize it is just 1 dollar away from $1400 so he would report back "oh it costs just about fourteen hundred dollars". That is how you synthesise the information.
Now, if someone who is less mathematically inclined, he would synthesize verbally instead of numerically. When he finds $1399 instead of synthesising numerically he would simplify it truncating it verbally "one thousand three hundred--", and report back "thirteen hundred dollars".

That is my hypothesis, and considering on how our brain is organized I would even say that the latter could be the characteristic of those who are more right brain dominant.

Well that will depend on the type and nature of the experiments that are performed, but thanks for the suggestions
Are you a statistician?

No, you are still wrong.
Yes, there are risks, that's granted. But when I say investing, I mean actually knowing what the hell you are doing financially.
Popping to the stock market and purchasing some shares is not investing, that's gambling.
Jumping in to the purchase of shares without the bare minimum knowledge of fundamental analysis, is gambling.
Daytrading, is mostly gambling.

Gambling is speculating without any proof.
Investing is speculating based on information, and by making a very educated guess.

Follow the steps of value investing, and you will be on the right track on investing.
Otherwise, better stay away from any kind of markets.

PS: Then definitely college, undergrad

Funny, I needed this paper to troll my professors
To be honest, I have my own criticisms as well, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that soft sciences are not real science.
It is science, not pseudo, not fringe, it IS science. At least psychology is a field that has been serious about it, and within psychology, neuropsychology, behavioral neuroscience, comparative psychology, neurobiology are the hardest of all in the spectrum of the psychological subdisciplines. In fact, there is nothing really "soft" in them, they all are very well versed on NHST (well, they should be), it is a requirement for research for that line of study.
I will read that paper with more time to dissect it carefully later, I love it, thank you.

Now, responding to your remark: "compare them along any measure and you will find they are different if you look close enough".There are always differences, that's granted. What matters is if it is statistically significant. To be sure there are different experimental designs to filter out, changing criterion, reversal and other that are very well known in medical research, double-blind testing, control groups. We use Analysis of Variance to tackle that problem, which is the same statistical tool used in any other "hard" science.

The only difference with the hard sciences, is that we are much younger and growing.
Btw, we are way offtopic.

PS: Let me share this paper: http://www.statpower.net/Steiger%20Biblio/Steiger04b.pdf

That kind of questions makes me think that most people here are just high schoolers.
For you guys making any kind of investment is a gamble.

Why do I think you are a high schooler? You could have said, "how about risk and uncertainty", but no, you have to jump all the way to terms that are way out of topic, but common to find in youtube.

That is a grave statement and a deep misunderstanding of the scientific process.
First of all, what is your profession? I just want to know what kind of audience I am responding to.
Are you a graduate student in hard sciences, an academician or just an average joe fanatic of the sciences?
If you are one of the first, I am appalled at the lack of epistemological understanding. (this is something I also realized among the grad students in my school)

You can never know what is false unless it is tested. If your mentality was widespread, all counterintuitive hypotheses would be rejected from the get go. That kind of prejudgement is very harming for scientific discoveries, which makes me think that you are not actually related with any scientific discipline, either that or you are too new to this.

If you want to know about researches in social sciences, simply subscribe to social scientific journals yourself. If you work in academia, you should have free access to all of them. You have plenty of social disciplines that use quantitative research.
You can start with SSRN and then the Journal of experimental social psychology (ISSN: 0022-1031), Personality and social psychology review (ISSN:1088-8683), Journal of personality and social psychology (ISSN: 0022-3514), Experimental Economics (ISSN: 1386-4157).

Finally, I invite you to read this article published in Science:
http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp200935.pdf
Have fun.

For people who didn't make their homework, yes, it is gambling.
For people who do their homework, it is never a gamble.

If you put money in a company knowing that they have a good product, you confirmed that their management is experienced, and checked that their sales team is sharper than a knife, then why on earth it would be a gamble? You project their potential earnings and weight them out with their the potential risks.
If you put money in this case, it is investing.

If you put money in a company you know nothing about, you don't know about their business model, don't know who they are or how experienced they are in whatever they claim to do. You don't know how much money your investment will make, and what are the potential risks.
Then that is plain suicide.
If you put money on it, certainly it will be a gamble. A stupid gamble.

And yes, if you put money based on Technical Analysis, it is also a stupid gamble.

Doubtful.
Chartists are limited in two ways:
1) All the techniques that they learn, it is basic and known by millions of wannabies who learn the same MACD indicators. EVEN if it worked, there is no advantage to be profitable. And because everyone shares the same knowledge, the market reacts based on that preconception, and it works only because everyone agrees that it will happen, thus happens. This is known in psychology as self-fulfilling prophecy.

2) They are human. What I mean by this is that they can't process all the indicators in real time, they must simplify and most of them rely solely on graphical patterns, neither mathematics nor market analyses.
Those who rely on math, end up generating algorithms, which are obviously kept secret if it works, therefore they have an edge they can profit from. If everyone knew THE a successful strategy, the edge would be lost.
Charters (TA's) don't research the market for indicators, they apply tools that had existed for centuries. And because every average guy know what you know, you can't beat them unless they make a huge mistake. At the end, without solid math, it becomes a cheap martingale (the betting system, so popular among amateur gamblers).

The way I see it, Technical Analysis is to alchemy, what Algorithmic Trading is to chemical engineering.
In algos you go beyond what the drawn pattern, you gather waaaaaaaaay more data in search of patterns that may anticipate the market.


I would like to know what you consider to be a Social Science, you are encompassing a whole spectrum of disciplines.
Are you talking about Political Science, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Social Psychology, Social Neuroscience or Economy?
The way that people generalize "Social Sciences" is not only rude, but very ignorant... especially when they have a distorted concept of science even among those who claim to love hard sciences. And I blame the schools and colleges for not teaching the history of science.
I would understand from high schoolers, but seeing this kind of behavior from adults is very frustrating at the least.

First of all we must define that science is the pursuit of objetive understanding of the natural world, first and utmost.
Then IF this understanding is true, it should be testable, reproducible, therefore, it should have predictive power.
And IF this understanding is false, it should be provable as false.
This is the key requirement to be scientific.
Science+Time refine this knowledge. High accuracy is not an excluding requirement to be scientific (or to discredited), but it is a refinement of the result of this testing and retesting process over time to confirm, improve or reject an hypothesis or a theory. It is really not the result but the process that matters.

Currently all social sciences (excepting political sciences), have predictive power. Some disciplines have more, others less.
Obviously the "harder" it gets (such as the neuropsychological branch), the more accurate it will be.
And yet, all the corpus of knowledge from all the disciplines are extremely useful and relevant for our everyday life, and they are actively exploited commercially. It is so pervasive that it is transparent in our daily lives, but right now you are being manipulated by the biggest marketing firms.

You should ask yourself why did you buy the brand what you bought. You might think you had free will, think again.

Seeing the lack of rebuttals, I think he just created this thread as a sandbox for us for all the bitching.
Genius move, haha


Social science is real science.
Experiments follows the scientific method, they ARE falsifiable, they are quantifiable, they can be empirical, and they are peer reviewed.
It also relies on observation, and there are a very eclectic range of subdisciplines.
Social Psychology and Behavioral Economics are my favorite because of their counterintuitive discoveries, and I exploit them effectively to push sales every day, to influence people and to seduce women.

Please, don't ridicule things simply because you don't understand. You'll end up ridiculing yourself.

What about tatooing a QR code on his forehead? LOL
He should charge double for that