Asset Allocation

I have put up my Asset Allocation scheme for the Facebook Fantasy Stock Exchange up here.

The sheet named "Tally" shows daily changes, while the sheet "Allocation" shows the allocation targets and howoff the portfolio is. TOGO shows the amount that needs to be changed to bring the portfolio back into balance.

Fortune's Formula

On days with snow, activity to clear it continues through the night. It's 2am, and I just finished reading Fortune's Formula, I'm pretty excited by the ideas in the book, especially this dilemna over the acceptance of the Kelly Criterion that it has presented. I think I know how to resolve it - using something about ensembles, about the non-axiomaticity of risk adversity. It's exciting to have something difficult but tractable to chew on, especially when the reform of personal values is potentially at stake - I've always never been satisfied with the idea that risk adversity was something innate - and in-born risk adversity must have evolved, and I think that I can prove that risk adversity of that nature could only have emerged via the Kelly Criterion.

The book as a whole was an inspiring story showcasing the power of ideas, I think. That's its strongest appeal to me, at least.

What I learnt

This year I learnt that consistency is to be had in moderation. Consistency is an excess that plagues intelligent minds. I have come to believe that the true function of intelligence is rationalization, of which reasoning is an inevitable side effect. It is when the line of narrative becomes too powerful that clashes with the id become sustainable, and the resulting internal tension that causes much of the suffering we call the human condition.

Never again will I sacrifice happiness for consistency.

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p.s. thanks to Wen for bringing to my knowledge Robert Triver's comments on the evolution of self-deception. It really completed the picture.