Alchemy

He kept his teacher's argument that we cannot know anything for certain, and drew from it the opposite conclusion about what to do on a Monday morning.

A course on the thought of George Soros.

Course outline

1. The Note — The standing charge against him is that the philosophy is decoration bolted onto the money afterwards. There is a dated document that settles half of it, and does not touch the other half.
2. Invest First, Investigate Later — Popper's argument is that we cannot know. Nearly everyone who accepts it becomes more careful. Follow the reasoning by which one man became faster instead — and hear him say out loud what he wanted…
3. Being Wrong Fast — Two men in one office with incompatible relationships to error — and a body that reported the bad news before its owner could say what it was.
4. The One Place a Prediction Costs Something — He named a single point on which he departed from his teacher, and it is the point the second course set up. The argument he makes for it is better than its reputation.
5. The Experiment That Publishes Its Own Failure — He ran a forecasting diary in real time, printed it with the outcomes, and left in the parts where he was wrong. Then the hard question: what does a mixed result prove about a theory that predicts…
6. 1957 — A paragraph, handed over without a date, about a prediction that causes the event it predicts — illustrated with a share price. Then the date. Then the part that is harder than plagiarism.

Part of the Symposium course library.