In This Episode
- Why there's pain and suffering in the world
- What true free speech really means to traders
- Why censorship might ultimately be futile
Should You Try to Change People's Minds?
This conversation centers around the idea of trying to change the thought processes of others. Many people will say that they don't care about changing minds, but in the heat of the moment, it can be a different story.
We see this in the trading world all the time. People argue on forums about which trading system is the best or how much risk is optimal to take per trade.
In the end, you have to ask yourself why you're trying to change someone's mind and if it benefits you in any way. Save your energy for something productive.
Read the Transcript:
Hugh: Hi, Walter. Here is an interesting idea especially during this time. Do you think it is possible to change everyone’s mind? Like to see your perspective at least.
Walter: I guess my question would be, why would you want to?
Hugh: That’s the thing though. A lot of people go around trying to change other people’s mind whether it is trading-related or whatever opinion they have. They try and go change another person’s opinion and then they get all frustrated and bad. I believe like you said, why would you want to change anyone’s mind?
Walter: It is tough. I’ve heard this before. People get really upset and say why there is pain and suffering and sadness in the world. The only way that you know that there are bad times is if you can kind of contrast it with something better. So if I disagree on the value of something like the Euro against the US Dollar, I think it’s a great thing that somebody else has the exact opposite opinion as me because that is what makes the market.
I am probably pretty close to a free speech absolutist. I know that is a big deal for a lot of people. They think that is really bad like you should not. If you’ve ever gone to like corners of the internet where, I mean it’s about pretty much as close to free speech, you will see like that is the thing about the internet.
Our society has changed. If you think about Washington and Abraham Lincoln back in the day, it was all about your honor. It is all about your word and honor. That was a really big deal. What happens now on the internet we’ve taken the identity away so it is not you anymore. You are like this ghost; you are like this online identity.
As an online identity, you can go out there on the internet. Go on these speech free forums. Just say whatever you want with no real consequences because at the end of the day, you can say all these crazy things and then you walk into the store and nobody knows that that was you saying that. Probably nobody in the store even goes on that online forum anyway.
It is sort of like we’ve taken that away. It is great that we have the internet and we have all these exchanges of ideas. Even though it is being suppressed now obviously in a big way. In a way I loved the free flow of information and exchange of ideas but taking a stand is not like what it used to be. It is because it is cheaper. It does not cost you so much to go out on a limp and make this claim.
So if I go out there and I claim that, “Redheads need to be all-rounded up because if it weren’t for redheads, we would not have poverty” or something like that. In the olden days, everyone would say, “Hey, Walter said that about redheads.” And, I’ll have a bunch of redheads upset with me. Maybe tailing me everywhere I went. But because online I could be anonymous and say that.
No one really knows who I am or where I live. They’ll just yell back at me on the internet. So it is kind of like it is cheap; it is hard to take a stand really. Unless you do it in the light and you say, “Here, this is me. This is where I live. This is what I am about and this is what I believe” like Jordan Peterson for example.
I do not know much about Jordan Peterson but I know he is controversial. Probably Noam Chomsky would be similar. They are both kind of outspoken, controversial figures. But what happens on the internet, for the average person we’re just anonymous. Nobody knows who we are and so we can say all these wild things.
I think we need divergent opinions for everything, especially for the markets. As traders, it is really important to have that and I used those opinions. I like looking at where traders are at in terms of their trading. I used that information for my own trading. So I really like the idea and I’ve learned things from people who have taken the opposite point of view.
One of the things that you’ll learn in Psychology, there are real subtle forms of prejudice. In the way that we look at groups and even though you would say, “I am not prejudiced. I give everyone an equal chance” or whatever that still comes out. That can come out just by calling the group the minority. Not by giving them a color of skin or a sex or anything like that. Just by calling the group a minority.
There’s a study in Psychology where they’ll say, “The majority group says this. The minority says this. What do you think?” Our prejudices actually get applied even if it is just minority versus majority. It is crazy you know that we’re built that way like we’re tribal people. It is fascinating in some ways but to me, free speech is really important.
I just wish that we all had to do it in a way where we were saying, “This is me and this is what I am saying” because then we would think probably more about the consequences of what we were saying because like I said about the redheads as an example. That would have severe consequences for me if I said, “Hey, I’m Walter. I’m in Australia. Redheads are the problem.”
If I did that, there are a lot of redheads down here in Australia you know. I would have some people upset with me. So that I think is one of the issues of free speech. It can be done anonymously now.
Hugh: Hey there! I hope you find this episode useful. I just want to let you know that Walter and I give away something valuable every month that helps traders improve their skills. You can enter to win by simply leaving an iTunes review and leaving a comment on our YouTube videos.
At the end of each month, we'll look at the comments and reviews from the month and we'll pick a winner at random. Each comment and each review counts for one entry during the month that it's pitted.
So, if you're interested in that, be sure to enter after this podcast is over. Alright, back to the episode.
Hugh: I think especially as you know like in those trading forums things can devolve pretty quickly when there’s a lot of anonymous tips. Do you think sometimes it’s worthwhile to engage in those things? As long as the other person is going to have a reasonable conversation.
Walter: Like to try and change the mind you mean?
Hugh: Yeah.
Walter: I think I am a big fan of, do you know how they teach in Law School? They ask questions. I don’t know if all Law Professors do this but I’ve been told by people who’ve gone through Law School. And actually when I did my degree in Psychology, my PhD in Psychology, I had a lawyer on my committee. So it was always like Psychology Professors and one Lawyer.
They ask questions like this Socratic Method or whatever. They’ll be asking questions for the class. They assume that you’ve done the reading that you’re supposed to do when you walk into the door. So they'll ask you, “Hugh, what do you think about the Johnson versus Tennessee case from 1859? Do you think that that would apply to today’s big tech question?”
They’re asking you to apply that. So I think that can be really useful also in anything like with trading or whatever. For example, one of the traders in my forum now has a system and it looks pretty good to me. He’s like, “I want to improve the win rate and I want to apply this sort of money management system to this and that”.
I’m like, “Why do you want to improve the win rate? It is already seventy-five percent. It already seems to be pretty good to me. If you run the numbers of the risk management system that you’re looking to apply to this, it’s going to look really good. So why not just do that?”
We get stuck into these little things that I think that is a problem too with trading. We can get emotionally attached to our strategies. We spent so much time working on them. It is really hard to throw them away. Whereas, if we have like a hundred strategies and we see one that is just not working anymore we can just click, “See you later. Goodbye”.
If we only got two and we’re emotionally invested, that’s tough. That’s really tough to be able to put it aside because now what else you’re going to do. You’re going to start from scratch again. It is really important to always be testing and looking out for new ideas. For me anyway that is important.
The best way to get someone to that point is to ask them questions and kind of lead them. Women are really good at this. Some women will say, “You are wrong” but that is more of a guy thing to do, right? Like, “You’re an idiot. You haven't even looked at it, have you?”
Whereas, women will say kind of in a subtle way, “I see. That’s interesting. So what do you think about this?” They’re trying to get you to get there on your own sort of thing you know. I think that is a more useful way than to say, “You’re wrong”. Just kind of gently get them to come to their own conclusions that perhaps for example focusing on win rate is not the be all and all for your trading.
Maybe you are already there. Maybe you are okay with the seventy-five win rate. Maybe that'll work for you and maybe instead you can just now start to look more at your risk rules.
Hugh: Totally. Along the lines of like this whole censorship thing and some posts getting taken down from various platforms, do you think that is going to lead to more second-guessing in the trading world?
I think it will. If people aren’t free to fully express their thinking about trading or any other part of their life, that might start to make them second-guess their own opinions, and their own beliefs. Maybe not go for a trading system when it obviously works but they are second-guessing themselves. Do you kind of foresee that happening with all these?
Walter: It could be or they could just go off and break off their own little enclaves or whatever. Like taking away from the mainstream. They could just fracture the groups. For example, there are videos on YouTube and you can see clearly where the numbers have been, they’ve been fudged. So there have been videos on YouTube where they’ve reduced the down votes or the thumbs down and stuff like that.
In some ways like doing stuff like that it’s just going to point out to the “minority” that it is obvious that they are in the majority. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say, where I live a lot of people have young families. In Australia there’s a bit of a population boom at the moment. Lots of kids everywhere.
If you have a daycare, you have a license to print money. Believe me, at least in the next ten years you are going to be full and you’re always going to be full. You just need more rooms; you need more teachers. So if you have a daycare center, you are loving it.
Let’s say you have a bookstore and in your bookstore you’ve decided that you are not going to have any children’s book or any books about parenting. Because you just think the world’s overpopulated. You don’t want to encourage that behavior. Do you know what I mean? What is going to happen to you if you do that? What is going to happen to you?
If you live where I live, where there’s a lot of kids and a lot of families, they are not going to your bookstore. If the word gets out that you are anti-kids and anti-family or anti-population or whatever, they are going to boycott you. I think the same thing could possibly happen with what you are talking about. If we are talking about the same thing where you have these big spaces on the internet.
Where they’re obviously fudging the numbers. Pushing people out that they didn’t have the wrong ideas or the wrong point of view and they don't want them in there. They want to keep people there so it’s a little tight eco-chamber where everyone kind of has the same thoughts and stuff.
What’s going to happen is that the group, whether it is the majority or the minority, are just going to break off and they are going to start their own bookstore that is just for families. So it is all a kid's book.
It is like drugs. What happens when you make drugs illegal? What happens? Well, the price just goes up. Making certain thoughts and statements illegal in a sense and suppressing them is just going to push them somewhere else. I think it is the prohibition of ideas.
There’s a big group of Christians in China and it is illegal. There are religions in China but it’s illegal like Falun Gong. There are these groups that are made illegal in certain places and they still exist. There was an underground railroad in the United States for slaves. They're in the underground world.
I think that is how I see it. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe people could just second-guess themselves and go, “Oh, I was wrong. Why was I thinking that”. Especially in the United States, the people in the United States historically have been very independent thinking. It is so funny. I love living overseas because you get these other perspectives of the States.
It makes me laugh every time when people say things like people in the States are so simple-minded. They never travel. They never go anywhere. In Australia they used to. People used to travel everywhere. There’s so many Australians in Europe. Every Australian winter they’re up there in Europe.
So they would say things like that and yet then they would put on their blue jeans. Invented in the United States. They would be on their iPhone, invented in the United States. Watching the Simpsons on TV, laughing that night. Simpsons from the United States. Winning the New Yorker on the weekend because they are so educated.
It is just bizarre to me that there’s that disconnect. But I think in the United States they’re very independent. People have this cultural independence, the Cowboy. The Lone Ranger sort of thing. I think that even though there is this free speech clamped down and there is censorship culture going on right now. People are getting cancelled all over the place.
I think it is going to eventually kind of re-stabilize and get to homeostasis where the first man beneath is not under threat. As funny as that sounds I think it’s going to eventually get there. I think it will. It will eventually get to the point where it kind of bounces back, let’s see.
Hugh: I hope so.
Walter: Me too.
Hugh: I definitely hope so unless you are in California then you’re lost.
Walter: Yes in California. The People’s Republic of California, totally a different place.
Hugh: Alright. Cool. Thanks, Walter.
Walter: See you!
Hugh: All the information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not trading or investment advice.
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