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[Chad Perrin]

On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 12:37:30PM -0500, Gary Gatten wrote:
>
> If I find someone with an IQ of 160+ and they ask everyone to play
> nice, will you?  Mine is only 140 something so I don't feel qualified
> to take this task on myself.  It would be nice though if someone took
> such offense to a post they would simply ignore it or contact OP
> offline.  Seem 50% of the content here is b!itching.  Now sometimes,
> and perhaps most times, it serves as a source of entertainment for me.
> Others it's just annoying  - such as now.  With all this brain power
> and apparently spare time, can anyone tell me how to get back all the
> money I've lost in the market over the last 3 years?  Or, perhaps in
> the last 3 days?  I would like some "help" with that!

Regarding IQ tests . . . there's not much point in comparing
measurements.  I've taken half a dozen or so IQ tests over the years.
Among them, all but two have landed between 135 and 168, depending on the
specific test, the scale used, what I had for breakfast that morning, my
mood, the sort of uses to which I've put my brain in the year or two
immediately preceding the test, my age, and numerous other factors.
Those other two tests -- one of them came in under 100, and the other was
off the charts to the tune of "+30 or more, probably a lot more"
according to the guy scoring it.  Add to that an SAT score from way back
when the SATs actually measured aptitude and were considered suitable
measures of IQ to qualify people for Mensa membership, with every single
score I've gotten differing notably from all the rest, and the result
seems obvious: Whatever each of you has for an IQ score from some test
years ago, chances are good that if you took a test again you would get a
wildly different result.

. . . and let's not forget that deficiencies in some areas can drag your
score down, while particular aptitudes can in others can drag it up,
skewing the overall results in a way that might set unrealistic
expectations one way or the other for judging general intelligence.  Good
at spacial relations, but bad at abstract logic?  Maybe you'll end up
confusing the hell out of people who think you're brilliant half the time
and rock stupid the other half.

As for your money lost to the market, you're going to have a tough time
getting someone to tell you a foolproof way to get it back that does not
involve time travel.  If I had a pretty clear view of your investment
patterns over the years that led to these losses, though, I could
probably give you some halfway decent advice to avoid taking similar
losses in the future.  Unfortunately, it's much more difficult to predict
future (safe) money-makers than to point out where someone is just
gambling with market trends that represent aberrations rather than the
consistent positive growth that they think it really represents, with a
basic grasp of some driving economic principles.

In general, my first piece of advice would be that you should never
invest in something whose success you do not actually understand at the
level of microeconomic principles.  Next, consider the political
landscape that might skew the effect of those principles.

. . . and if you can do that, you should also be able to develop a pretty
good intuition for dealing with security threats for your FreeBSD
systems, because a lot of those threats are essentially the result of
economic and political circumstances inspiring people to act according to
their natures.

Voila.  By a long and circuitous route, I brought it back to the subject
of FreeBSD.  Do I get a cookie?

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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