I read it mainly as a criticism of this site and this application of deep learning. Predicting stock prices slightly better doesn't really make the world a better place or improve anyone's lives. But it does consume the time and resources of very intelligent people who might be able to do incredible things elsewhere.
Particularly the problem of this website, is it's huge focus on anonymity. You don't need to expose your code or methods, or even your name. It's an ongoing competition so it encourages secrecy so you can make more money next week.
This means even if someone does invent a new super ML method, they have every incentive to not share it and keep it a secret. So this website could actually have a net negative impact on the world.
Don't you think that is says something (not terribly good) about society that these very intelligent people must spend their time this way if they want to be rewarded?
Why spend 80 hours a week chasing grant money when you can spend 60 moving numbers around?
No. First off, "reward" is not just about the money[0]. The job presented on this site, on the other hand, due to the encryption, is motivated purely and entirely by monetary reward. Everything else is shielded.
In fact I'd say this job is quite uniquely, extremely, only about the money. Even when compared to other kinds sweet/lucrative, perhaps "stupid lucky" jobs you may find, that may require 60 hours mindlessly pushing papers, yet paid extremely well. I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any hypothetical kind of job could be more sharply, singularly focussed on the "do extremely-intelligent-monkey-dance, receive ample bio-survival-tickets" to the exclusion of any other meaning or fulfilment than this Encrypted Machine Lottery/Learning/Sudoku.
Second, I could be wrong (or too optimistic) but I'd hope that most "very intelligent" people demand more nourishing reward than just money to regularly put in more than 40h/wk. You can do this for research and advancement of science, or maybe because one considers the work itself a net positive to society, or maybe you chose to sacrifice those hours of your life to support loved ones, maybe there's some deep personal reward in it, or maybe it's temporary and you're saving for something rewarding. But to pretend just money is enough to waste your life on, hey it's a choice, but I'm going to have to see you turn in your "very intelligent"-card.
On the other hand, there will be exceptions. Some people don't care, just want to maximize $$$ for the least amount of effort/hours of one's life, regardless of side-effects. This website does not fill a niche for these people. If you are extremely intelligent, just want money and don't care about moral aspects, there's always been plenty "business opportunities" to fulfil these particular needs.
Finally, if one would argue, but this job isn't quite explicitly "badwrong" like those others. I'd suggest to think it through: On the one hand, a (possibly) well-paying job that is designed from the bottom up to have no way of determining whether it has a net positive or negative external effect besides the money it pays you. On the other hand, literally anything else you could do with your time.
I can see people trying this for a short time, as a funny puzzle, at most.
[0] I don't mean this one, but because I still think it's funny, I'll point out the way-too-easy retort here: this says something (not terribly good) about you. (j/k)
> Predicting stock prices slightly better doesn't really make the world a better place or improve anyone's lives.
Actually, it does. Increasing liquidity, communicating price information, more accurately accounting for predictable future changes in price, and absorbing risk allow for increased agricultural and industrial production. Like I said, you have to think through a few layers of abstraction.
A nice rule of thumb is that if someone is getting paid to do something you personally think is useless, it's either a government job or you just don't get what they're doing, but the market does.
I don't believe that increasing liquidity produces much, if any, value for the world. The stock market itself is pretty disconnected from any real value, and at best any benefits just benefit rich investors buying stocks. It certainly doesn't increase production.
But the opportunity cost is what I'm getting at. So many very intelligent people could be producing immense value in other areas, but instead drained away doing this garbage. And they are incentivized to keep anything useful they invent a secret.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Avoid speculating on such things when you clearly have no background in them. You will accomplish nothing but spreading misinformation.
The stock market is absolutely connected to "real value" (which doesn't make sense as a concept in the way you're trying to use it). Besides allowing companies to raise capital for future endeavors, it also allows the market to communicate price information, which is critical for reducing the risk associated with a given transaction.
> at best any benefits just benefit rich investors buying stocks.
It benefits everyone; investors risk their capital by selling it to companies in exchange for partial ownership, which allows the company to grow, and if the investment pays off the person who risked their money is rewarded. Without the stock market, companies would have to get loans for growth, which is risky and too expensive to be practical.
> It certainly doesn't increase production.
Yes, it very much does, for the reasons I outlined above. This is like Econ 101; why are you commenting so strongly when you clearly do not have any background here?
> but instead drained away doing this garbage.
A small efficiency increase expressed over 100 trillion dollars of trades every year is a huge productivity increase for society.
I think you are the one spreading misinformation. I'm well aware of the arguments and find them extremely unconvincing.
Look, for instance, at high frequency trading. Traders spend millions of dollars trying to get signals across the earth a millisecond faster than the competitors. Does it actually benefit anyone that information travels a millisecond faster? Who benefits from the high frequency traders at all? Yet they eat up millions, maybe even billions, of the economy's resources doing this nonsense.
Look at these trader spending millions of dollars to fly drones over oil tankers or parking lots, to get slightly more accurate information faster than anyone else. Look at these hedge funds spending tons of money on bribes to people in companies to get insider information before the public does. These things clearly provide zero benefit to the world, it's just a massive waste of resources.
This hedge fund is a bit different, in that they seem to be actually doing fundamentals and longer term bets. That's not so bad, but it's still pretty disconnected from any real world benefits. At best they predict a company will increase in value and buy it's stock. How does that benefit anyone? It's almost a zero sum game. The people that buy the stock that week lose, because the price is higher than it otherwise would have been. The people that sold the stock lose, because it was really worth more than they actually sold it for. Any money the hedge fund makes necessarily comes from someone else losing that money.
The stock market itself is not really connected to the real world. Sure sometimes companies sell stock to raise capital. But most stocks being sold and bought are not by the companies themselves. It's a huge indirect chain of traders and investors and speculators, trading these stocks many, many years after the company sold them. And the company itself would still be able to sell stocks if there were fewer traders. At worst the prices would be slightly less accurate.
Price information of stocks is also a horribly inefficient way of getting this information. These companies are often involved in many separate projects. So even if someone has a model that can exactly predict the success of products, it's very difficult to use that information. You also need to determine how much the company is worth given all of it's projects and businesses and property it owns. It doesn't directly give that information to the company itself - they see their stock went down, but they may have no idea why. Not to mention Keynesian beauty contest problems, where you have to predict not what the company is worth, but what other people think it will be worth, and how much they know currently, and what the interest rate is, etc.
But you didn't address my main concern, which is the bad incentives of secrecy, and the opportunity cost of employing smart people doing this, instead of doing something else. Even if it does produce some value, it doesn't mean it's worth the cost.
Nice straw man, but the market doesn't have to be right about everything; it just has to not be completely wrong about a market worth tens of trillions.
The stock market is one of the mechanisms that allows the market to be right by communicating price information.
Particularly the problem of this website, is it's huge focus on anonymity. You don't need to expose your code or methods, or even your name. It's an ongoing competition so it encourages secrecy so you can make more money next week.
This means even if someone does invent a new super ML method, they have every incentive to not share it and keep it a secret. So this website could actually have a net negative impact on the world.