[j_timberlake]

The correlation between "speculator is a billionaire" and "speculator is good at predicting things" is much higher than the correlation between "guy has a HN account" and "guy knows more about the future of the AI industry than the people directly investing in it".

And he doesn't just think he has an edge, he thinks he has superior rationality.

[gf000]

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

You would need ~30 years of continuously beating the market to be able to claim that you are statistically likely to be better than random chance.

Does your average speculator have 30 years of experience beating the market, or were they just lucky?

[jwarden]

I haven’t heard that statistic before. And the formulation seems imprecise? Does continuously beating the market mean that every single minute your portfolio value gains relative to the market?

[j_timberlake]

"You would need ~30 years of continuously beating the market to be able to claim that you are statistically likely to be better than random chance."

You use the word statistically as if you didn't just pull "~30 years" out of nowhere with no statistics. And people become billionaires by making longshot bets on industry changes, not by playing the market while they work a 9-5.

"Does your average speculator have 30 years of experience beating the market, or were they just lucky?"

The average speculator isn't even allowed to invest in OpenAI or these other AI companies. If they bought Google stock, they'd mostly be buying into Google's other revenue streams.

You could just cut to the chase and invoke the Efficient Market Hypothesis, but that's easily rebuked here because the AI industry is not in an efficient market with information symmetry and open investing.