[bigredhdl]

Just because something has benefit, doesn't mean the benefit outweighs the cost. Specifically we are talking about the opportunity cost of other valuable things these people could be creating. Obviously this can be difficult to measure.

[morei]

That's not a terribly strong argument. Should we ban making chocolate as well? Sports? Art?

After all, these people could surely be creating something more valuable.

If you want to make an argument based on opportunity cost, it generally should have specific alternatives and a viable cost metric. Without that, it's not an argument, just an opinion.

[tekkk]

You're way off the mark with your examples. More appropriate ones would be military weapons, multi-level marketing, payday loan firms with ridiculous interest rates, scummy advertisement firms. You might not remember that in the Middle-Ages a large portion of intellectuals were spending most of their time debating religion such as is God really omnipotent and what a specific verse in Bible meant.

Now sure you can argue that they were doing only what the society and themselves considered valuable. But one can only wonder if those smart people had been putting their best effort into other things, say developing agriculture or better industrial processes.

I myself did a little day-trading at one period in my life and while I made money, I thought it was the most useless thing I could spend my life in. I was just creating money out of thin air doing basically nothing. Maybe HFT is intellectually more interesting than day-trading but I don't believe it to be very gratifying at deeper level. Perhaps it requires a certain type of person to enjoy that kind of pursuit. I'm definitely not one of those.

[fao_]

> You're way off the mark with your examples. More appropriate ones would be military weapons, multi-level marketing, payday loan firms with ridiculous interest rates, scummy advertisement firms.

Agreed. Modern economics encourages waste, such as multi-level marketing, payday loans, advertising, etc.

Hell, I'm sure most people's jobs here, indeed, most jobs would fall under David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs".

> You might not remember that in the Middle-Ages a large portion of intellectuals were spending most of their time debating religion such as is God really omnipotent and what a specific verse in Bible meant. > > Now sure you can argue that they were doing only what the society and themselves considered valuable. But one can only wonder if those smart people had been putting their best effort into other things, say developing agriculture or better industrial processes.

... I cannot agree. A few years ago I picked up Anthony Kenny's "A Brief History of Western Philosophy", and "A New History of Western Philosophy". What these "useless" debates about knowledge got us were considerable changes in morality, metaphysics, and helped us create things that were useful in the long run. Indeed, the only reason formal 'science' is around is because of those changes in thought and reasoning.

Bertrand Russell has another sort of argument in the same direction, that I quite like. You can find it here: https://books.google.no/books?id=CnlbMP_vBmgC&pg=PA16&dq=use...

> I myself did a little day-trading at one period in my life and while I made money, I thought it was the most useless thing I could spend my life in.

Agreed.

[iujjkfjdkkdkf]

> Modern economics encourages waste

Correct in one sense, but assumes we know in advance what will be waste and what won't be. Central planning has shown itself to be far less effective, both in overall quality of life and in meeting specific demands, than more wasteful competitive economies. So although its easy to point to retrospectively wasteful activities, life without them would be objectively worse.

Tangentially, when covid was in early days and people were beginning to develop vaccines, I saw someone comment asking who was going to coordinate the many disparate development efforts to make sure resources were being effectively used. I can't think of a more starkly absurd idea - it's only by allowing free activity, incentivized by some external, real forcing function, that we can expect to see consistent success. Any central definition and sanction of what should and shouldn't be done instantly distorts incentives towards pleading some central arbiter, and fails.

So all the scuzzy businesses and pursuits that the GP thinks are wasteful, are part of the rich tapestry that overall feeds us and keeps lifting us up. The only way we'd should be signaling they are not helpful is by not using them (and just for greater certainty I'm not talking about tolerating things that are exploitive, harmful, etc, just "wastful")

[alasdair_]

>in the Middle-Ages a large portion of intellectuals were spending most of their time debating religion such as is God really omnipotent and what a specific verse in Bible meant.

Right. And through all that thinking about silly stuff, people eventually came to the idea that a LOT of this religion stuff is silly and not worth wasting time on, so smart people could skip worrying about it for the rest of human existence if they chose to. (Whereas beforehand, it was considered a super-important thing to think about).

You seem to imply all this effort was a waste but ultimately it led to the Reformation, various Renaissance periods and, most importantly, Douglas Adams.

I suspect that the same thing will happen with HFT. Either people will stop bothering with it eventually, or they will discover some fantastic new quantum effects that pay dividends for humanity forever more. :)

[jrochkind1]

Funny that you mention Douglas Adams. I am confident HFTers would be on Ark B.

[logotype]

Funny that you mention Renaissance, which happens to be the name of one of the major HFT firms, Renaissance Technologies

[jamiek88]

>and, most importantly, Douglas Adams.

Brilliant!

What a loss he was, died too young.

[filoleg]

> You might not remember that in the Middle-Ages a large portion of intellectuals were spending most of their time debating religion such as is God really omnipotent and what a specific verse in Bible meant.

And that lead to establishing a whole new field of social sciences that is philosophy. Yes, i am aware that middle-age debates and musings like that were not solely responsible for philosophy as a field of study, we gotta remember eastern philosophers and others too, but they were still monumental to making philosophy what it is today.

Regardless of how much their musings on god contributed to creating philosophy as we know it today in comparison to efforts of others working in that field (e.g., eastern philosophers in old China or middle eastern philosophers of about the same time period), their efforts accomplished a lot in terms of generating actual value for the society through philosophy as a field of study. Unless you are dismissing the entire field of philosophy as it stands today as "useless", then the value of those discussions is pretty obvious.

Not even mentioning second-order effects, like those debates making people question prior assumptions and embarking on important scientific endeavors, like trying to prove that Earth might be indeed revolving around the sun and not the other way around.

[colinmhayes]

Philosophy is much older than middle age religious debates.

[filoleg]

Absolutely agreed, it goes at least as far (if not further) as ancient Greece.

Just wanted to highlight that specific time period, since it was pointed out by the parent comment as a specific example of those efforts going nowhere.

[throwaway09223]

Debating religion is far from useless - these discussions are what ultimately helped us shape a coherent foundation for philosophy and science.

Most systems are pretty inefficient and the problem is at the time we do not know which pursuits will yield the most valuable results.

Top-down, authoritarian direction of intellectual pursuit tends to yield worse outcomes than just letting people do as they wish. It's dangerous to suggest that any single perspective can accurately decide value.

[andai]

>creating money out of thin air

Taking it from less skilled traders, actually.

[wglb]

Or slower traders.

[jasonlingx]

> Maybe HFT is intellectually more interesting than day-trading but I don't believe it to be very gratifying at deeper level.

HFT is automated day-trading in a way, so 1 meta level more intellectually interesting I suppose.

[jdc]

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

    — Daniel Yankelovich, "Corporate Priorities: A continuing study of the new demands on business" (1972).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

[TheNorthman]

the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between chocolate & HFT. you imbecile. you fucking moron"

[birdyrooster]

the wise man isn't being a good little ancap

[cscurmudgeon]

One of my friends made this argument. He was working in ad tech.

[bigredhdl]

Actually, I somewhat agree with you. In the interest of time, I had to just stop at "Obviously, this can be difficult to measure". I find this allocation of resources problem very interesting, but I don't claim to know the answer. You can even flip it around the other way and say "Actually there really isn't anything more valuable they could be doing." It sure seems however there is a ton of brain power being used for things that would benefit society more elsewhere, but who knows.