Then there’s the “personality cluster.” These traits are more self-explanatory. People in the River are trying to beat the market. In sports betting, the average player loses money because the house takes a cut of every bet. So if you follow the consensus, you’ll eventually go broke. Investing is more forgiving; just putting your money in index funds still has a positive expected value. Still, professional traders are trying to do better than the market-average return. So part of the job of people in the River inherently involves being critical of consensus thinking, often to the point of
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