[DoreenMichele]

Financial markets have no biological reality to tie them down

After years of reading various things trying to use past financial data to predict the next depression, I read a thing where a guy said that people get lazy and self indulgent during good times and then work harder during bad times and that explained the ups and downs. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but I stopped trying to find a model that used past financial ups and downs to predict the future. It's nonsense.

There can be real world bits that are useful, like the Peak Oil model which is based on something real and has a real world proven track record. But lots of financial models are in the territory of a con game.

I have a certificate in GIS, which involves literally studying maps. Maps have huge inherent issues if only because land is 3D and part of an imperfect globe and maps are 2D -- a flat drawing trying to unfold the surface of a ball and say something useful about it.

Making good literal maps can be quite hard. I have a longstanding interest in award-winning graphics of various sorts because graphics are information dense and when they get it right, it's incredible. But maps often say more about the mind that created it than the physical landscape per se and it's a huge mistake to fail to recognize this fact.

[quickthrower2]

Rather than Lazy/Work hard it might be more speculate/save. In a bull market you are trying to throw more money in. In a bear you are trying to save. It is self reinforcing too.

[DoreenMichele]

That's reasonable, but it's still substantially about human behavior not some abstract algorithm that can be inferred. That's my main point.

There's no certain number of years or something that causes it. It's human behavior and real world limits, like Peak Oil.