Gaming the System

I have a surefire way to beat the computer at chess - I make very convaluted moves that eats away at the computer's clock and then i win on time. (granted this strategy only works if you play timed games - I play with sigma chess.

This sort of win never feels satisfying. It feels like I cheated, like my win was not really a win. However, it is a win. I am using the computer's strength (reliance on search algorithms) against it. Were I playing a human, these moves would probably signal amaturish play and I would be swiftly beaten as my opponent changes gears and uses a different strategy (the strategy that defeats idiosyncratic chess players).

Winning is not a matter of degree it is a binary attribute. Either you win or you dont. You can have a better win. We may talk about perhaps a better win, a more elegant win, or a win with more points or something like that - but really these are just language games. You either win or you lose - everything else is superfluous to winning-ness. Winning is achieving something over another person according to certain rules.

So are there winners in life? In this I always think of Alan Watts - life is not a game where to goal is to get from a to b, but a dance or a symphony - and a dance or symphony really has no goal other to experience it. Winning only makes sense in a situation where there are rules - does life have rules? Life is just about existence.

I have been thinking about this idea of winningness in regards to one of the options strategies I trade. I have a few strategies that I use in different market conditions, but let me talk about one strategy where I trade various mean reverting stocks and try and anticipate pin action (pin action describes where the stock will end on options expriy day so that the most option holders to lose money). My algorithms are generally good at anticipating the pin, however they are bad at market timing (which means i have to deal with market to market loses sometimes until options expiry day which reduces my buying power)

In any case - I often feel like 'I win' when I successfully guess the pin and make money on my options (and dont have to deal with mark to market losses anymore) But is this really a win? For example, let me use aapl (which I dont use for my options strategy anymore but I used to) if I sell an aapl put (aapl is at 250) - 250 for $7 and my algorithm thinks the pin will be 250 than that $7 will go to $0 theoretically or probably $1.50. I will make $5.50. However in that time aapl may go down to 240 - that put will go up 10 bucks and I will carry a mark to market loss of $10. Now do I buy back the put as it goes down (for a loss) and then sell it again when it bottoms out (for more money)? Do I average in more puts when the cost goes up? Sometimes it pays to close out for a small loss and then get back in at a better price. Does this mean you lose?

Or for example - say if aapl 260 calls are $6. You can sell them and if aapl hangs out at 250 for a few days or even goes down, those may go down to $4. Should you buy them back then, as aapl will probably shoot back up above 250. and those calls may go to $7 (mark to market loses again). My pin algorithm says aapl will go to 250 so they will end up being probably 1.00, but you will have to deal with the mark to market losses

In any case - a win is not necessarily just picking the correct pin. The correct pin is like the perfect chess game. A noble ambition -but you dont need it to win, and it may end up hurting your game.

Early Evening with Otto and Lian

Lian is reading my last blog post and asking - when did you write this?? Was I up??

I have to say, too much of my time has been spent trying to manage my option trading - which took a big hit due to fslr tanking, and me not understanding how Interactive Brokers allocates margin requirements. I am still in the green, but it is a dim green, as opposed to last weeks neon green. Anyway this has taken up too much time from my other projects (like my yoga breathing iphone app inspired by a conversation I had last week with Jessica H.) Nov options expire next week at which point I am going to take a week off from the markets. I am only going to trade the last 2 weeks of expiry.


I am almost done reading 'The Temptation to Exist' and that is good because I just picked up Paul Farmer's Infections and Inequalities. The Temptation to Exist - I like Ciorian because he melancholic and world weary - like me - and so whenever he writes something I cannot help but say 'so true'. The one thing about Ciorian that I suppose mars many late 19th early 20th century thinkers is their confluence of metaphysics with race.

Today we talk about biology as destiny or not making biology destiny. For example, if I am a woman I should not be relegated to certain roles, or denied access to areas of work and study.
Back then it seems, race was destiny. So for example, the Jew (disclosure I was born to a jewish family) is ascribed all these sorts of pathologies or ways of being in the world on account of him being Jewish, a dessert nomad, members of a legislative religion, etc.

Ciorian spends a few essays discussing the modern world in relation to the Jew - this is sort of like discussing 'the noble savage' and it is sort of unfortunate that his thought has focused on such irrelevant bunk. Is this sort of inquiry really useful for philosophy, or is it some sort of observable art, a pseudo science - anthropology. And is it best engaged by an outsider (gentile in this case) or insider (jew) or both? What is the purpose of such a discourse? The most interesting thing is that this topic was worthy of serious philosophical discussion. I wonder what topics today will suffer the same fate of irrelevance?

But Ciorian, he makes thought provoking pronoucements. Thoughts like: poetry exists on the fringes of society and only an established culture can create a prose literature. I think this is worth exploring. Prose literature is about rules, methods, codified learnings, poetry is about ecstacy and unmmediated expression. Prose is mediated. High culture is mediated, high culture is anything an actual thing itself. It is an aggregate of acceptable culture - it does not exist without someone (a critic perhaps) creating it and labeling it.

Anyway I digress - I have to go fix the permissions on my rapidsms-documentation cron job - apparently it has been failing since I updated sphinx (the documentation system)

Flight of the Iron Condor

Although I am not suffering from sleep symptoms of jetlag, I am suffering from disorientation and crazy anxiety. For the first time since high school I am not receiving a steady paycheck - in return for sitting mindlessly at a desk. I feel like I should be working on my projects all the time, or improving my etrading strategy, or doing something similarly productive. However, our new puppy Otto is reminding me of Alan Watts and reminding me to just play. He likes to sit on my lap and alternatively sleep and try to eat my computer.

So, I am late on my deadline for slides for the mHealth event. I thought it was due Oct 20, but apparently it was due Oct 12. I am trying to extend the deadline, since I am still coming up with the changprojects branding - and i am not sure changprojects is the right name - because people keep calling it changeprojects (probably because you cant spell change without chang :)

I am in the midsts of setting up some spreadsheets for my options strategy - since it is more m than e at the moment (manual not electronic) and I am making tea. All the flying has dried me out.