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by lesingerouge 3949 days ago
TLDR: not very sick, just very short-sighted, panicky and greedy.
2 comments

So it's made of people.
Which is a good thing I think. The sad thing would be if it had no reaction at all because it was dominated by trading algorithms which don't panic. Then I'd start to wonder whether or not it was a market at all.
Algorithms can panic too... on fake Twitter data for example [1] and many other criterias too...

1. https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-trading-influen...

Greed is good as Gordon Gecko put it, and science concurs. http://time.com/41680/greed-is-good-science-proves/
No, that's what the title says, but it is click bait.

What the actual article says is that in social groups with well defined hierarchies, higher ranking members tend to contribute more than average to the common good (though this might be biased due to their role in defense against external threats). This old fashioned notion that the rich are expected to hit above their weight level is called Noblesse Obligue, and it's almost the exact opposite of Gecko's doctrine.

What reasons there might be to have come up with such a title/conclusion given the information available? I can only think of one: Assholeness apologetics.

Slight nitpick: "noblesse oblige" not "noblesse obligue" French locution Noblesse oblige ~ En raison de leur caractère noble ~~ Because of their nobility
ok, thanks a lot. I was aware it was French, but cannot speak/write the language myself.
Greedy algorithms come up with simple, but often suboptimal decisions when the whole picture is taken into account.
As opposed to people, who generally come up with decisions of varying degrees of complexity, which are still suboptimal when the whole picture is taken into account.
*Scientists interpreted observation as clickbait worthy title for blog posts
That Time article is linked on a bunch of fora, but none of them have a link (or reference) to the actual study.

Any idea if it's available? I suspect that Time's treatment of it is not as nuanced as the original authors would have liked, and even then, the Time article doesn't actually concur that "Greed is good". They just have that phrase in the headline.

Thanks, much obliged. I wish articles would provide proper references!
If they did that, then more people would read the actual study and realize that the journalistic summary is completely full of it. Can't have that.
Define "good".
If you'd like someone to defined Good for you, I'm afraid putting it in quotes, like "stupid", is not a good start.