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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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The main argument I can think of is from the "Jewish Lawyer" scene from Atlanta. The extent to which the talent is undervalued may not compensate for the extent to which they're excluded from/lack connections within important professional networks. Particularly when it comes to starting a business connections are really important and even if you're top tier at trading stocks that doesn't mean you're really good at organizing a firm.

Also, it's a big leap from, "x demographic is systematically undervalued" to "a firm composed entirely of x demographic would outcompete the field". Say you figured out that the NBA systematically undervalues players from Europe, should you attempt to compose a team entirely of European players?

Huh, why the hell not? Isn't that the plot of Moneyball? Just buy all the people you think are undervalued, and success will follow mathematically.

Yes broadly acquiring undervalued people is good. Identifying that a single demographic is undervalued doesn't mean that you can then build an entire team out of that demographic because the demographic could be small enough that there aren't enough of them in the right tail of the distribution to build a dominant team.

Then you'll still get a decent team for much cheaper than usual, and you can used the saved money to get an advantage in other ways or collect the difference in profit.

there's enough europeans for a good basketball team

Say you figured out that the NBA systematically undervalues players from Europe, should you attempt to compose a team entirely of European players?

Entirely? No. But if the European players really are just as good but valued less, one would be a fool to not prioritize recruiting them. You would get equally skilled players while paying less.

Yes. Black Female Caribbean traders are such a small percentage of total traders that it's completely plausible that they're systematically underrated and that there's still not enough of them in the right tail of the distribution of traders for a firm composed entirely of them to succeed. What could succeed would be a 2010s Spurs type arrangement where a player from right tail of the properly valued majority demographic (Tim Duncan) is bolstered by a bunch of players from the systematically underrated demographic the team picked up cheap (Ginobli, Parker, Diaw).

I don't think it's a mystery whey there isn't some firm of all Afro-Carribean gay disabled stock traders blowing away the competition. Even if systematically undervalued why would we expect enough of this subset of traders to be in the right tail to succeed on their own. The question is: is there some majority white male/Asian firms that happen to have figured out that x demographic is systematically undervalued and hires them and promotes them at a higher rate then everyone else and enjoys a small advantage from doing that. There could be, and there could still be a lag before everyone else catches on. It took the NBA a while to catch on to what Popovich figured out about European players and the kings still took Bagley over Luca.

There may not be a lot of female Afro-Caribbean traders, but there are ostensibly enough discriminated against female traders, black traders, and Hispanic traders for dozens of boutique investment firms, which usually have fewer than 100 employees yet see billions in review.

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